Most of the statewide Candidates will be coming to the California Young Democrats Bay Area candidate forum on Saturday at 1PM in SF. Here’s the Facebook event. If you can’t make it in person, you can watch it online on VidSF or right here at Calitics. Pretty sweet. Anyway, I (Brian) will be there, so it’s sure to be a blast.
Here are some links for your weekend:
* Jerry Brown’s office was cleared in wrongdoing in the secret audio tapes made of calls with reporters.
* Tom Berryhill’s right-wing opponent, Heidi Fuller, in the senate primary to replace Dave Cogdill, is suing to block Berryhill from the ballot. He’s just now moving to the district and Fuller says that doesn’t meet a one-year residency requirement. Berryhill says that the one year rule is unconstitutional under a Supreme Court case striking down a similar law in Tennessee.
* The Republican primary for the Senate race could be getting really ugly. It seems the Demon Sheep has triggered something between Campbell and Fiorina. Meanwhile, the radio right-wingers John and Ken surprised Carly Fiorina with a call from Chuck DeVore.
* Speaking of Campbell, he’s going around proposing a “revenue neutral” carbon tax instead of cap and trade. His proposal is to eliminate or restructure the federal payroll tax (FICA) and replace the revenue with the carbon tax. I (Brian) won’t argue with him that the carbon tax is more efficient than cap and trade, that much is abundantly clear. However, replacing FICA is a bit more troublesome.
There’s a blog post over at Swing State Project where a person in a meeting with Rep. Diane Watson says she won’t run for re-election.
And the juicy news? Speaker of the Assembly Karen Bass will run for her seat.
A revenue neutral carbon tax could be a way to get it done. If taxpayers know that every raised dollar must, by law, be returned to them, the anti-tax rhetoric will sound hollow.
It also seems fair, since emitting carbon places costs on others, that we should all have to pay for that, but also that we get some money back. Those of us who live low-carbon lifestyles (that impose less costs on others today) will come out ahead; those of us who use carbon more intensively now will have a tax rebate to help transition to lower carbon use. The question is how to return the tax revenue.
The simplest would be a rebate check for everyone- we all have to deal with the effects of climate change, and it’s quite difficult to guess who will be hurt most. Cuts could also go to taxes that are seen as doing the most to distort market incentives (seems like this is what Campbell would want).
The problem with the using it to replace the payroll tax is that it is unfair to retirees- they paid into the social security system their whole working careers, and now they have to (indirectly) fund the same system, on the same footing as current workers, paying out of their pensions. The climate crisis poses questions of intergenerational equity- we should be aware that not dealing with climate change is unfair to future generations, but replacing the payroll tax with a carbon tax would be unfair to a different generation- today’s retirees. Let’s be conscious of intergenerational equity in both directions.
It’s true- Brian is a party animal. An experience not to be missed.
Dr. Bera continues his fundraising prowess.
What does Rob Stutzman from the Lungren camp do, he complains about grassroots fundraising by Dr. Bera and picks on the Indian American community.
Here’s Lungren’s astroturf roots.
Stockton has gone all activist on our arses. We got the CDP training going today and tomorrow and this evening, Anthony Woods returns to CA to be the keynote speaker at Central Valley Stonewall’s Carnival gala! http://www.recordnet.com/apps/…
How sad that these idealistic young acitivists will end up campaigning for the old fossil Jerry Brown and have their hopes for change crushed yet again by the Democrat Party that can’t even use its majority advantage to make progressive change.
Better that the youth look at the history of the Democrat Party and its source of power (exploiting volunteers to win elections then serving their corporate paymasters once in office) and look to the future where progress will only come from building an alternative to the corporate incumbent duopoly. Change will only be realized when we elect members of the Green Party, Peace and Freedom Party and Libertarian Party to the state legislature and statewide offices. But the Democrat Party will obstruct those parties every step of the way.