Recently in Environment Category

There is a mailer reaching California's voters titled Vote for a Greener California, with a label that says "Californians Vote Green."

03/11/2010

CALIFORNIANS VOTE GREEN

SLATE MAILER PAYMENT

$40,000.00

Approving the Tranquillon Ridge project means we are again running a significant risk of a major and devastating oil spill striking what is one of the most unspoiled parts of the California coastline (the remote west-facing beaches of Santa Barbara County).

If a paragon of new offshore drilling technology can fail this catastrophically, it should cause Californians to seriously reconsider whether allowing new drilling off our coast is worth the considerable risk. As our oceans are already facing the stress of pollution, overfishing, and global warming, offshore drilling seems like the last thing we would want to do to our oceans, our beaches, our wildlife, and our economy.

Why won't Jerry Brown just announce that he is running for Governor?  Why won't he campaign?  Why is he letting Meg Whitman get so far ahead of things in this campaign?  Does he just assume he has it "in the bag?"

I suspect that is exactly what he assumes.  My take on Brown is that Democrats who were around when he was Governor and later when he ran for President in 1992 are going to support him, many quite strongly, and they regularly let him know this.  I suspect it is hard for him to go anywhere without stopping to shake a hand and hear from someone who tells him what a great Governor he was, that his ideas on energy and the environment were so far ahead of their time, that he should have been elected President, etc.

So he probably feels a wind at his back wherever he goes.  This is for sure: the "moonbeam" things Brown was about like energy and the environment and unions have proven to be the right things.  I wrote about this almost a year ago, 

He was called "Moonbeam" and mocked, but he was right, and we were right, and the country needs to come to terms with this so we can move on and finally DO right.

. . . It is 30 years later and the country needs to get past that mocking of the people who were right. But the mocking and obstruction by entrenched interests are still in the way of letting us move on and do the things we need to do for the economy, the country, and the planet.

The problem with this is that it really is 30 years later now.  This is 2010, and that pool of people just isn't big enough by any means.  You have to be "a certain age" to even care.  He needs to find a way to reach out and be relevant to people who were not around when he was Governor or when he ran for President.

Does he realize this?  If he is not meeting a lot of the people to whom he just isn't relevant and who just don't care, he might not be picking this up at all.  But it just is the case.  He needs to start campaigning and saying things that are relevant to the 21st century of he is going to win this election.

 

Here at Speak Out California, we're trying to bring some clarity and varying perspectives to the water wars that have been the hallmark of California politics since statehood. With the fight for precious water resources dividing the state along geographic as well as ideological lines, it is important that we bring you all sides of the debate....just in case anyone wants to really try to solve the problem for the betterment of the state.  While accusations are flying fast and furiously from north to south and east to west (and all places in-between)we hope the truth will emerge from healthy dialogue such as we hope to bring you here at Speak Out California.

The following post is the second in a series from Carolee Krieger whose organization, C-WIN, has been a leading resource in fighting to make sure we have enough water to keep our state going. Here are her comments. We welcome yours as well--especially from opposing points of view.  -- HBJ

California and Its Water Crisis

California is not running out of water; our water is just being badly mismanaged for the profit and greed a few people.  There are a few facts that we all need to be aware of when thinking about this complex question:

FACTS

·         80% of the developed surface water in California is used by agriculture; 40% of that water is used to grow cotton, alfalfa and irrigated pasture.

·         Only 11% of all the developed surface water is used by all the people, lawns, swimming pools and showers.

·         The cost to agriculture for much of its water is subsidized by the taxpayers.

·         Many of the crops grown, like cotton, are subsidized by the taxpayers.  In some years, the farmers are paid not to grow it.

·         1.3 million acres out of a total of 9 million acres of farm land in California is poisoned with salt, selenium, arsenic, and other toxic metals.  Taking this land  out of production would free up almost 4 million acre feet of wet water.

·         The California State Water Resources Control Board, the agency with the fiduciary responsibility to grant and revoke all water rights permits in California, including the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, has publically stated in their July 2008 Strategic WorkPlan, that they have issued 8 1/2 times more water rights permits that actual water exists in the Delta watershed.  So every drop of water has been promised 8 1/2 times over.

SOLUTIONS

The solutions are simple to understand and make a lot of common sense.  But because of greed and entrenched power, these solutions are very difficult to achieve politically.

·         Retirement from agricultural production of all 1.3 million acres of poisoned farmlands in the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project.  Redirect some of the current subsidies to encourage production of something California really needs; clean solar energy.  All of these lands are in semi desert; this could be a win/win solution.

·         Remove the "paper water", the water that isn't real, from all State Water Project and Central Valley Project contracts and abide by long established law protecting the area or origin and senior water rights holders.  The State Water Resources Control Board could and should do this.

·         Enforce the Clean Water Acts and other water laws.  A good place to start would be to give the State Water Resources Control Board protection from political influence and adequate funding to do its job.

·         Uphold the Public Trust Doctrine.  Our public resources, especially water, must be managed for the good of all; the people and the environment.

We must stop allowing subsidized crops to be grown with subsidized water on poisoned lands.

We must stop allowing the system to be gamed by people and big corporations for personal profit.  Once such abuser gained over $200 million by selling "paper water" that he had "banked" in an underground aquifer to the federal Environmental Water Account.  This speculator got his $200 million; the fish, however, never got their water; it was only "paper water".

Carolee Krieger, President, founded C-Win in 2001. She helped lead the campaign to prevent delivery of State Water Project water to Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. On behalf of the Citizens Planning Association (CPA), Carolee also led the fight against the Monterey Amendments to the State Water Project contracts. These amendments attempted to deregulate the State Water Project, give away public assets to private special interests for profit and make "paper water", water that doesn't exist, legal.  C-WIN has led the fight to stop speculative development in Southern California based on "paper water."  C-WIN is currently focusing its efforts on the fight to save the San Francisco Bay Delta and keep the salmon from going extinct.  She brings to C-WIN her passion for protecting public trust resources and stopping wasteful use of water in California..

We'll be doing more on this---trying to explain the water wars and commenting on it from a progressive perspective in the days and weeks ahead. Because the issue is bound for the 2010 ballot, with an $11B bond attached, the discussion and debate on this deal are far from over. -- HBJ

Statement by Assemblymember Nora Evans:

Evans Comments on Passage of State Water Bond

 SACRAMENTO -- The State Legislature passed an $11 billion water bond, along with a package of policy bills addressing water conservation and groundwater monitoring.  The following is a statement from Assemblymember Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa), Chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, about the bond.

"This water bond is an historic achievement for all the wrong reasons.  It was crafted behind closed doors, never received a public vetting, and was passed on the fly in the middle of the night by legislators who lacked an adequate analysis of it.  It brings our debt burden to historic new levels.  And, for the first time, it requires the public across the state to finance half the cost of new dams and reservoirs benefiting private interests.

By passing this bond, the Legislature is flirting with financial disaster.  Already, the state is unable to pay for services demanded by Californians.  We've just gone through three horrific state budgets to close a $60 billion gap.  And, more troubles lay ahead.  We face an $8 billion gap next year and a $15 billion gap after that.

When discussing recent state budgets, the governor and others said the state could not afford to fully maintain its universities, community colleges, HIV/AIDS services, poison control centers, domestic violence shelters, state parks, health care for children, and in-home care for seniors and the disabled.  Paying back this water bond will come at the expense of these services that Californians expect.

It's the same tired story all over again.  The Central Valley and Southern California plan to take water from the North by building a peripheral canal.  The rub is that they want Northern California to pay for it too.  All Northern Californians get from this bond is the privilege of paying the bill."

Response from Carolee Kreiger, President California Water Impact Network (C-WIN):

"I completely agree with Assembly member Evans, this water bill package will be financially devastating for the California taxpayers; and that it is only going to benefit private interests...corporate agriculture on the Westside of the San Joaquin River and developers in southern California like Newhall Ranch and the Tejon Ranch. 

But this package goes even further; it is attempting to turn 150 years of water rights law on its head...giving the most junior water rights holders (the State Water Project contractors and the Central Valley Project contractors) the ability to take water away from senior water rights holders (the Delta farmers and the Sacramento Valley farmers and the area of origin stake holders.)  This will assure a generation of lawyers a lucrative future.

Moreover, this package will put another layer of bureaucracy into a system that doesn't fund or allow the existing bureaucracy, the State Water Resources Control Board, to do its job.  Will they allow the new bureaucracy to function if it doesn't give them what they want?  I don't think so.

And the salmon will continue to go down-hill toward extinction; the fisherman and the lucrative sportfishing industry will continue to crumble.  And all this for a sector of California agriculture that is less than 1% of California's economy.  This does not make sense.

And perhaps most chilling; it will not produce any more water.  The $11 billion is the down payment on a $80 billion bill that will not produce any more water; just take water away from farmers with senior water rights but not enough power to protect them and give that water to junior water rights holders who have bought off the legislature.  And it will decimate the Delta and the environment."

Carolee Krieger, President, founded C-Win in 2001. She helped lead the campaign to prevent delivery of State Water Project water to Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. On behalf of the Citizens Planning Association (CPA), Carolee also led the fight against the Monterey Amendments to the State Water Project contracts. These amendments attempted to deregulate the State Water Project, give away public assets to private special interests for profit and make "paper water", water that doesn't exist, legal.  C-WIN has led the fight to stop speculative development in Southern California based on "paper water."  C-WIN is currently focusing its efforts on the fight to save the San Francisco Bay Delta and keep the salmon from going extinct.  She brings to C-WIN her passion for protecting public trust resources and stopping wasteful use of water in California..

What does it mean to be a "governor?"  What does it mean to "govern?"

In the news, the Governor has threatened to veto 700 bills in an attempt to force the legislature to do his bidding on water policy.

700 important items all held hostage, trying to stampede and scare the legislature to do something in a hurry, while terrible scare stories circulate on talk radio and throughout corporate media.  Does this sound like a familiar tactic?

Water policy is complicated because over many decades wealthy real estate developers bought permission to build huge swaths of housing in dry area, so water needed and needs to be piped in from  ... somewhere else.  And huge agricultural interests make a lot of money using water that used to be heavily subsidized, meaning the people paid for the water and a few wealthy corporate interests pocketed the profits.

At the same time there is less water to go around.  We have had three years of below-average rainfall, which is possibly a permanent condition because of climate change (which Republicans deny is happening).  And the destruction of the environment and fisheries and groundwater caused by past bad practices is catching up, so hard choices must be made.  Does our government protect the people, the environment, corporate profits?

So on one side of this we have giant corporations and the short-term profits they suck out of our communities and state, and of people who are where they are after being lured there for the sake of those short-term profits, and who eat the way they do because government had been "persuaded" (paid) to subsidize the water for the sake of those short-term profits.  People need water to drink even if they do live in a desert and need to eat and have gotten used to food that costs less because the water has been subsidized.  (But maybe they don't need to water their driveways and nice lawns.) 

On the other side we have the long-term interests of most of the people and of the environment.  See if you can guess which side the Republicans and the Governor are on?

The Commission on the 21st Century Economy, known as the "Parsky Commission" and COTCE is supposed to be figuring out how to reform the state's tax structure.  Back when the commission was announced Brian at Calitics wrote that he was hopeful that the Republican domination of the commission would lead to some solutions that were both sensible and that Republicans could vote for.  In Gerald Parsky, Bush acolyte, to head tax commission he wrote,

For some background, Parsky is the former chair of George W. Bush's California campaigns in 2000 and 2004.

[. . .] As a Republican with a strong background supporting Bush and McCain, Parsky will presumably have a better shot at convincing some of the Republican legislators of the importance of some of these reforms.  . . .  He's raised millions of dollars for Republican candidates, so if money counts, and it does, he should have the ear of the GOP legislators.  In many ways we need a prominent Republican voice on this commission, the Republicans need cover from a big-time money guy who has a track record on the GOP private sector trickle-down mumbo jumbo.

But no, instead the commission has floated one proposal after another designed to shift taxes from the wealthy and corporations to the rest of us.  There is the flat tax, for example, which lowers taxes at the top and pays for it by raising taxes on the rest of us.  There is the idea to get rid of taxes on corporations.  Etc., Etc.  The sensible idea of a pollution tax has been sidelined.

In Trying to Hide More Tax Breaks for the Wealthy, Hannah-Beth Jackson writes,

In that spirit, what is the first thing Parsky recommends? As the first order of business, he proposes a flat tax which will blow another $14 Billion hole in the state's already reeling general fund. But given his decision that one of the criteria of this commission is "revenue neutrality," ... somebody or something must pick up the slack. So in the tradition of the Bush tax cuts, where virtually all the benefits went to the wealthiest 1% of Americans, Mr. Parsky would have the rest of us paying more.

Then, yesterday, out of the blue, a different idea was introduced: expand offshore oil drilling.  This idea came from (surprise of surprises) Michael Boskin, who is on the Board of Exxon!

Calbuzz has been following this.  From Slimy Parsky Oil Play and a Yorba Linda Lecher

The recommendation came as a shock, not only because the offshore issue was only casually discussed during the commission's months of hearings, but also because it deepened the atmosphere of secrecy and sleight-of-hand in which Parsky assembled the agenda for the panel's final, crucial meeting. ...

The proposal for more offshore drilling seems to have worked its way onto the commission's plate at least in part at the request of conservative Hoover Institution economist Michael Boskin, who also sits on the board of Exxon Mobil.

So here we go again.  Another last-minute, shock-doctrine attack, this time on the environment, this time enriching oil companies.  note that the idea does not include asking the oil companies topay for the oil they take from us and sell back to us.  Calbuzz,

The recommendation, sure to draw the ire of environmentalists and coastal legislators, pointedly does not suggest imposing a new severance tax on oil companies. California is the only oil-producing state that does not have such a tax, which is being pushed in the legislature by several members of the Assembly, including Assemblymen Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, and Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont.

BTW: There's no frigging way the agenda and agenda packet was ready early enough for the public to have legal notice. Not that Parsky seems to give a rat's butt.

Brian at Calitics in yesterday's Parsky adds Oil Drilling to His Recommendation, writes,

How oil drilling got into a so-called tax commission shouldn't be a surprise when there was a faux transparency.  The website laid out a slew of emails and written conversations, but apparently Parsky and his cronies were working on something else entirely.

This is not the process that gets to determine whether we will set up oil rigs off of the entirety of our coast line.  That is an entirely seperate conversation, and frankly Mr. Parsky, I don't care one iota what you think about that.  Not that I really much cared about what you thought about our revenue system either at this point, but this was not your assigned task and frankly none of your business.

It's nice to see that ExxonMobil has its dirty hooves in just about political conversation where it can possibly make a buck. But if ever anybody thought that the Parsky Plan had any credibility as any sort of unbiased scheme, well, that can just about be written off right about now.

Even though this is health care week we need people to make some noise about this.  Hannah-Beth writes,

The way Mr. Parsky is running the show, his welfare for the wealthy and questionable corporate giveaways are all he wants to consider. He thinks he is running out the clock with his wealthy cronies way ahead, but we can let him know that feathering the beds of the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the neediest of us is so not going to happen.

To help let them know this isn't where we want the state to go, please send your comments to the public comment section of the COTCE website at comment@cotce.ca.gov and ask that your comments be posted.

Tell them NO to reducing the personal income tax on the wealthy and NO to their hide-the-ball efforts to push through a proposal without the necessary public debate. These issues are too important to the future of our state to be handled so secretively and so obviously in favor of the rich at the expense of the rest of the people of California.

Also, send a quick email to our legislative leaders Darryl Steinberg at Senator.Steinberg@senate.ca.gov  and Karen Bass at speaker.bass@assembly.ca.gov  will help put pressure on the Commission to back off these outrageous approaches to our state's difficult tax situation and force greater transparency in what they're doing.

I was in Sacramento for some meetings this week, and have a few thoughts and observations.

The first is the most important. The people in and around our government are good, dedicated people who are doing those jobs because they care and want to do the right thing.  You don't make big money in public service.  In the last few decades a government job meant less pay than a comparable "private" sector job and a number of working-environment hassles, like the extra procedures (paperwork and bureaucracy) that are required in public positions to involve transparency and accountability.  And, of course, they have to put up with the Republican-inspired abuse of people who work for the government.  So give these people a break and assume good faith.

After decades of budget cutting our government is universally strapped for resources and it makes for a difficult workday.  The things people went into public service to accomplish are being stripped out from under them by the state's structured-to-fail system (see below).  I hope the Bush years trigger some serious thinking about what things would be like without a government, because we are getting close to that possibility.

The state government is now structurally designed to fail -- and this latest budget deal compounds the problem.  This situation was created on purpose by anti-government ideologues, usually corporate-funded.  Thus really is a choice between government by the people or government by a wealthy few who happen to be in control of large corporations.  To them government is "in the way" of making money.  Government means food and safety inspectors so people don't get sick and workers don't get hurt, and protecting workers and the public costs them profits.  Government means regulations stopping them from dumping stuff in the water or air and properly disposing of waste costs them money.  Government means regulations that make them pay back customers who are overcharges.  Government means regulations requiring delivering goods and services that were promised.  SO you can see why the hate government and regulation -- they keep them from just taking your money and giving nothing back! 

So they have used the power that comes from their access to corporate resources to set up a state system that is giving them what they want.  They pay petition-gatherers to get anti-government initiatives on the ballot, and then they flood the TV and radio with lying ads that trick people into voting against their own interests -- and here we are.

Here are just a few of our designed-to-fail structural problems: 

• Term limits mean that thinking must be short term, and encourages passing problems along instead of solving them, because then the problems will be "not on my watch." People who are effective in their jobs are forced out, and voters who want to keep them there are prevented from doing so.
• The campaign-finance system puts corporate-backed candidates in office by necessitating big money to win elections.  And corporations, designed to amass resources, are perfect vehicles for pushing the interests of the few who control them. 
• The two-thirds budget requirement means that a few anti-government extremists are able to sabotage the process, keeping any budget from passing and shutting down the state.
• The disappearance of political reporting in California media means the state's citizens are uninformed about what is going on.  The corporate-owned media concentrates on sitcoms and what Britney is wearing, and does not let the people find out what government is about.

These are just some of the structural problems, and the system is. of course, structurally designed to keep us from fixing them.  The only way we are going to address this is to get lots and lots of people involved.  The election of Barack Obama tells us this is possible but I despair at amount of work that will have to be done to accomplish it.