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CA Finalizes Cap and Trade

CA Finalizes Cap and Trade

California’s streak of bad governance is coming to a climax with the finalization of their cap and trade legislation:

California’s plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions and put a price on carbon is set to take effect on Jan. 1 after the Air Resources Board voted Thursday to make final adjustments in the regulation.

This “model legislation” will inevitably be flooded with special interests, rake hikes, and more flight from California. (As my boyfriend pointed out, though, it’s still better than a pigovian tax.) For free market solutions to environmental problems, I typically look to Dr. Mark Pennington.

Between that and the California foie gras ban, I won’t look to the Golden State for investment. Their legislative body is immune to common sense.

I know we have a few Californians who regularly read this. I’d like to know how the debate has been going locally.

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Comments

I believe that the debate ended here with the 2010 elections. California is in the clutches of fanatical and stupid progressives, nee liberals, who have no sense of reality. California is financially doomed. It will collapse and the rest of the country will have to decide what, if anything, to do about that. We would leave, but our kids and grandkids live here.

Cassandra Lite | October 22, 2011 at 3:04 pm

Ditto. Especially the last line. What debate? Debate around here re anything outside the perimeter of political correctness is about as honest as a Stalinist show trial.

I lived in the Central Valley, which along with Orange and Riverside Counties, and the San Diego area, represents the islands of sanity remaining in the state. It is frustrating beyond belief to work with fellow conservatives and watch San Francisco and Hollywood/Santa Monica take the state straight into the toilet.

For an eye-opening view of what awaits California, read Michael Lewis’s article in Vanity Fair, “California, Boom and Bust.” It starts with an interview with Arnold and goes downhill from there. 🙁

I now live in Arizona.

    LukeHandCool in reply to ExExZonie. | October 22, 2011 at 6:26 pm

    @ExExZonie

    Santa Monica is my hometown and we’re living here now. Sorry about the problems we cause.

    I’d like to leave but our kids’ friends are here and all. When they’re all grown up we are outta here.

    It was a great place to grow up. Now, it’s a great place to live if you’re single, politically correct, and want to be in the entertainment business. Lots of looney far-leftists living in multi-million dollar homes. You know, the 1% in solidarity with the 99%.

    I think the only conservatives left in this city are David Mamet and yours truly.

    Cap and trade is popular around here … as is the new ban on plastic bags. We’re saving the world!

    I worked with a woman who acted as the self-appointed recycling Nazi on our office. She sometimes chided me about not making an effort to use scrap paper.

    The last time she bitched about me wasting paper, I told her that I’d make a point that evening of driving around the block a few times when I got home before parking to pollute the earth a little bit more and more than cancel out and benefit from her efforts. She never said a word again about recycling to me. Fun!

    LukeHandCool (who is eagerly awaiting someone else to chide him about recycling … so he can say, “Just for that, I’m going to purposely waste (whatever it is their whining about) in your honor!”)

      LukeHandCool in reply to LukeHandCool. | October 22, 2011 at 6:28 pm

      typo “cancel out ANY benefit”

        If you want to be a pill about it, ask her if she recycles her aluminum cans. If she says yes, reminder her that any income garnered from CRV income is taxable, and if she is not reporting it correctly, she is liable to an audit and imprisonment for tax fraud.

Just like the too big too fail banks, they do not fear the downside risk of their unicorn utopian (dystopian) visions because they just assume they will be bailed out when they start to crash and burn. They are our Greece.

    Speaking as a native and resident, my fervent prayer, ella8, is that nobody is stupid enough to “bail out” California. Unfortunately I have scant hope of that occurring.

    Some idiot somewhere down the line will think they see a personal political advantage to pouring someone else’s $$$$$$$ down a California storm drain, assuming about 10% of it will stick around. Please, please, US voter, don’t let that happen.

I live on the central coast, Kathleen, in a delightfully pleasant area populated mostly by nice and illogical liberal Dhimocrats – reminiscent, somehow, of many Canadians I know. Politically and philosophically I’m in a stupor over the incredibly bad choices voters made around the state the last two or three decades. We essentially now have a permanent legislature consisting of 80% spoiled selfish brats and 20% frustrated adults. And our governor is – well, let’s just say that he’s more qualified to be the object Judy Garland leans against while singing a hit tune from “Wizard of Oz”.

As a retired state employee I’m quite apprehensive of the reliability of my pension funds, though for a moment they seem secure. I’m also fearful for the future of my adult children and their families, who live nearby. About five years ago we began planning a multi-family move to Texas in an attempt to flee this cuckoo’s nest, but the housing market crash torpedoed those endeavors and we are likely stuck here until my grandchildren reach maturity. Since my kids are still in their productive years, that might take awhile.

I moved to another state. Life is to short for California.

As a 3rd-gen Californian I have to say that question in the last election was: “How stupid are the voters here, really?” The answer surpassed everyone’s expectations by an amount beyond measure.

Almost all of the people I talk to are actively hoping for a massive cataclycism, the likes of which has never been seen before, as they believe two things:

1) Nothing short of complete failure on all levels will break the Left’s death grip.

2) In that event, only the non-Left will survive. (OWS seems to be proving this point.)

Their views may be a tad extreme, but some days I’m not so sure.

For myself, I intended to tough it out while giving them all the rope they want, and keeping open my lines of retreat to Texas.

I’m 6th generation Californian. They say the ultimate form of control is to be able to destroy something, and any big government (like California’s) will attract control freaks. So things will just have to be destroyed until there’s nothing left for the control freaks to control, and then they’ll move on to new things to control (and destroy). That’s why small government works – the control freaks go into private industry (where competition keeps them in check). It’s just human nature.

I live in the Central Valley; my county’s board of supervisors has totally disavowed the High Speed Rail boondoggle; it was due to go throught our county cutting through homes and productive farmland. Proponents in our area claim it will bring in jobs; the county doesn’t feel it’s worth it. Neither do I, it’s a boondoggle. The county is also fighting the employees’ union to help the county meet its budgets. It’s just the dept. head, and a new lawyer for the county up against all of SEIU, which of course, has an unlimited pot of money, and whole cadre of lawyers. So my county is trying to fight the good fight…

You guys are in a tough spot as home owners in CA. As a former Floridian I was forced to move out of the state 900 miles to be employed so I can sympathize somewhat with your situation although given the insanity of CA leaders with their PC nonsense it’s going to be tough. However, CA leaders are counting on a captive audience. The internet tax didn’t work out so well for them when Amazon cut off their CA associates. It must have taken the libs by surprise that Amazon would literally drop a huge state and then they were forced to walk that law back. In the same manner, unless the population responds in a similar manner they will literally run the place into the ground all the while claiming they are the 8th largest economy in the world.

You might want to consider some alternatives as homeowners as I have experienced. Find employment out of state for one of the income earners in your family and then rent a place as a bridgehead for the others to have a local address in getting a job. If you have a friend in another state where you are looking for work, use their address on your resume’ (ask them first of course). What this means is you will have to maintain two residences, but in doing so your domicile home state will become the new one thus denying CA your income tax revenue and also sales tax revenue. If enough middle to upper class families do this, the revenue loss will become too great for the lib leaders to maintain their PC delusion as the ugly reality mugs them like a gang stomping.

I see a lot of people are thinking their friends and family are the primary consideration in this equation. Well, you have a choice, you can hold hands on the deck of the Titanic or get in the life boat. When (not if) CA’s economy crashes most of you will not be having a job so this calculation of friends and family will become irrelevant. Don’t think for one minute that the local and state governments are going to accept your excuse of unemployment to NOT pay your property tax. Your children’s friends don’t pay your property tax. Be prepared or you will get rolled.

Too many Democratic voters, aka “too big to fail.” Expect unlimited federal bailouts.

edgeofthesandbox | October 23, 2011 at 5:35 pm

I’m in SF Bay Area. It’s a very beautiful state, and food is good. Unfortunately, I wish I could say that things will have to get worse before getting better because I just don’t see how CA will improve. People who have some sort of sense leave. We are left with fanatical liberals and immigrants, legal or not, who will eventually be taken in by La Raza or some other lefty group.