ShareThisBy DAN WALTERS
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
The two major parties and special interest groups spent many millions of dollars in one state Senate district this year and the net result was a virtual tie.
Republican Assemblywoman Lynn Daucher eked out a 13-vote victory over Democrat Lou Correa in Orange County's 34th Senate District on Election Day, with hundreds of absentee votes still to be counted, and by Thursday, her margin had climbed to 138 votes.
Regardless of who winds up with the seat, it's a fairly meaningless contest. Partisan competition for the Legislature was all but eliminated five years ago when leaders of both major parties cooked up a gerrymander of districts to protect the status quo. And it's been remarkably successful over three election cycles.
Two Assembly districts on California's southern edge and one Senate district in Central California that had been designed for Democrats were captured by Republicans in 2002, and their GOP incumbents all won re-election this year, but other than that, the 2001 gerrymander has held firm.
The gerrymander guaranteed that Democrats would control the Legislature by substantial margins for the ensuing decade, but not with the two-thirds votes that are critical on budget and tax issues. The real legislative contests, therefore, have been the Democratic primaries in Assembly and Senate districts whose incumbents have been forced out by term limits, often with liberal candidates and their backers _ labor unions, environmentalists, etc. _ vying against more moderate Democrats with business support.With overall Democratic control guaranteed, the interest groups have concentrated on the primaries to set the tone of the majority caucuses in both houses _ tilling the field, as it were, for dozens of specific bills that perennially pit business groups against liberal factions. Those Democrat vs. Democrat primary clashes tell Sacramento insiders what to expect from the Legislature in the ensuing two years.
The Legislature that returns to Sacramento in December to begin its biennial session will continue to be the most liberal of recent memory, but interest groups on the left, such as unions and environmentalists, may find it to be somewhat frustrating.
A surprisingly high number of the bills that business labeled "job killers" either died or were severely amended during the 2005-06 session, and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger executed the new survivors (except for AB32, the anti-global warming bill that the governor embraced to bolster his environmental credentials). Typically, the Senate would approve the business-opposed measures but the Assembly, thanks to a bloc of moderate Democrats, would either reject them or tone them down.
The Legislature that convenes in December will see a substantial internal shift. Many of the Senate's liberals, such as the 34th SD's Joe Dunn, are being termed-out, and their replacements have stronger ties to business. One example: Sen. Martha Escutia, D-Los Angeles, a liberal stalwart, will be succeeded by Assemblyman Ron Calderon, one of the state Chamber of Commerce's highest ranked Democrats in 2006, voting with business 11 times on 17 key issues.
Some of the liberal senators, such as Los Angeles' Richard Alarcon, are moving to the Assembly, meanwhile, and they will be joined by a largely liberal new batch of Democratic lawmakers, some of whom are replacing Democratic moderates. Thus the Senate appears to be drifting a bit to the right, while the Assembly edges to the left. And, of course, Schwarzenegger, having been re-elected by a landslide, will still be there to have the last word on any business-opposed bill that survives.
Bottom line: The stalemate on high-dollar tax, benefit and regulatory issues will continue.
Reach Dan Walters at (916) 321-1195 or dwalters(at)sacbee.com.
AB32/Prop.87
The $0.51 per gal. corporate welfare to the oil refiners for adding 5.6% ethanol to California gas is about $500,000,000.00 per year.
The ethanol may add over $1.00 per gal. to the gas profit in California.
That may be about $100 billion in oil profit from California motorists.
The science is interesting but so is the money.
A $4 billion Prop. 87 oil tax may add $40 billion in oil profit.
Charlie Peters
(510) 537-1796
Clean Air Performance Professionals
ethanol
Ethanol Eco nomics…
Tom McClintock’s Citizens for the California Republic, 06-18-2007
The public policy farce that the “Green Governor†unleashed with AB 32 (the so-called “greenhouse gas†law) continues. Using their newly granted power to slash carbon dioxide emissions, the California Air Resources Board (all Schwarzenegger appointees) has mandated that every gallon of gasoline sold in California must contain at least 10 percent ethanol by 2010.
First, a few basic facts. Californians use about 15 billion gallons of gasoline a year, meaning that the new ten percent CARB edict will require about 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol. Corn is the most common ethanol-producing crop in the country, yielding about 350 gallons of ethanol fuel per acre. That means converting about 4.3 million acres of farmland to ethanol production, just to meet the California requirement. But according to the USDA, California currently has only 11 million acres devoted to growing crops of all kinds. Get the picture?
The entire purpose of this exercise is to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from California automobiles (although Californians already have the 8th lowest per capita gasoline consumption in the country). And that’s where the public policy discussion becomes farce.
As more acres are brought into agricultural production, the demand for nitrogen fertilizer will grow accordingly, which is itself produced through the use of fossil fuels. And the most likely source of new agricultural land will be converting rain forests to agriculture, although deforestation is already the second biggest man-made contributor of carbon dioxide emissions, ranking just behind internal combustion. And here’s the clincher: ethanol is produced through fermentation, by which glucose is broken down into equal parts of ethanol and – you guessed it – carbon dioxide.
Obviously, this edict will hit gasoline consumers hard: ethanol is less efficient than gasoline and it’s more expensive – meaning you’ll have to buy more gallons at the pump and pay more per gallon.
The bigger impact, though, will be at the grocery store. By radically and artificially increasing the demand for ethanol, the cost pressure on all agricultural products (including meat and dairy products that rely on grain feed) will be devastating. Earlier this year, spiraling corn prices forced up by artificially increased demand for ethanol produced riots throughout Mexico.
The CARB regulations will undoubtedly hit Californians hard – but they will hit starving third world populations even harder. Basic foodstuffs are a small portion of the family incomes in affluent nations, but they consume more than half of family earnings in third world countries.
So when the global warming alarmists predict worldwide starvation, they’re right. They’re creating it.
http://www.carepublic.com/blog.html?domain=tom_mcclintock&blog_id=136&category_id=&start=0&arcyear=&arcmonth=&curyear=&curmonth=&curday=
Corn fuel ethanol policy
What was the cause of death of Alexander Farrell, 46, expert on alternative fuels?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/18/BAOK1087DP.DTL