Yesterday’s adoption by the California Air Resources Board of a comprehensive plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is really worthy of praise.  Ignoring the bleatings of neo-Hooverists and apologists for polluters who insist that concern for the environment is a “job-killer,” the board, led by Mary Nichols, put forward 31 rules designed to cut carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.  This will force innovation and provide a boost to the economy and the burgeoning industry of green technology, as the Governor noted in his remarks.

The Modesto Bee has a look at some of the plans.

INDUSTRY:

• Impose an emissions cap on utilities, refineries and other large industrial sources of greenhouse gases.

• Allow those large polluters to gradually lower emissions by participating in a cap-and-trade market.

TRANSPORTATION:

• Put into effect a 2002 California law requiring automakes to produce cleaner vehicles. The Bush administration has blocked the law, but state regulators expect President-elect Barack Obama’s administration will back it.

• Require fuel companies to reformulate fuels so they are a combined 10 percent less carbon-intensive by 2020.

• Give local governments incentives to curb urban sprawl and reduce how far people drive to work or school.

• Require cargo and cruise ships to turn off their engines while docked.

ENERGY:

• Require utilities to generate one-third of their electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal by 2020.

• Strengthen energy-efficiency standards for appliances, as well as for existing and new buildings.

The fact that a renewable standard, cap and trade, green building, smart growth and development, energy efficiency and clean fuels are all combined into this large agreement is very hopeful.  While the political sector is a mess, this is truly one area where California can become a model for the nation.  And while there will be up-front costs, those can be mitigated by expected federal attention to renewable energy and green jobs, which could allow consumers to be eligible for federal tax incentives to implement these ideas.  What’s more, as Nichols argued, this is a big-picture savings over the long term.

But Air Resource Board chairwoman Mary Nichols said California’s plan would save its residents and businesses money in the long run.

“We believe that California, again and again, has pushed for higher levels of efficiency in our electric sector, our buildings and appliances, and time after time it turns out efficiency measures have not only saved us money but leaped our economy ahead,” Nichols said after the vote.

A board report found that the average household would save $400 a year by driving more fuel-efficient vehicles and living in more energy-efficient homes. And already, private investors have given more than $2.5 billion this year to new companies that have sprung up in California, in part to respond to the state’s environmental goals, said Bob Epstein, co-founder of Environmental Entrepreneurs.

“Our president-elect has called for stimulating our economy,” said Bill Mcgavern, director of California’s Sierra Club. “I think he and the Congress will be looking to the state of California, and these measures can serve as a model for the rest of the country.”

This is one area where we can be proud to be Californians.  The SacBee has more.

When Josh Richman, the fine reporter for the Oakland Tribune, called me for comment yesterday on the breaking news that Don Perata transferred $1.5 million dollars the day after the election from an IE account intended to elect Democrats to the State Senate and wage initiative campaigns into his personal legal defense fund, my initial reaction was “I’m not surprised.”  My slightly longer reaction is captured in the article:

David Dayen, an elected Democratic State Central Committee member from Santa Monica, blogged angrily this summer about his party’s contribution to Perata’s legal defense fund, contending the money would’ve been better spent on legislative races. The same goes for Leadership California’s money, he said Wednesday; despite a Democratic presidential candidate carrying California by the largest margin since 1936, Democrats netted only three more Assembly seats and none in the state Senate.

“Every time I asked the California Democratic Party about getting more active and involved in local elections, they said the state Senate and the Assembly control those races “… and we don’t have a lot of flexibility. So Perata, at that time, and Nunez or Bass had the authority to run those elections,” Dayen said. “Now we see what happens when you vest power in these closed loops – suddenly self-interest becomes more important than the good of the party.”

He believes this is why Perata didn’t step aside as Pro Tem earlier, as Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez relinquished his post to Karen Bass in May: “Darrell Steinberg was sitting there ready to go “… and we were all like, ‘What the hell is going on?’

“We speculated it had to be that he still needed the leverage to make the calls to raise money for himself.”

I want to expand on that.  The behavior of Don Perata can be directly tied to the continuance of a status quo that has failed and is failing California families.  At no time is the way elections are run – without transparency, without accountability, without meaningful checks on the potential for corruption – questioned by the powers that be.  It is enabled through a shrug of the shoulders and the words “that’s the way things are.”  What Perata did was perfectly legal, although that is subject to change, as the state Fair Political Practices Commission votes today on making such transfers illegal.  But as Michael Kinsley famously said,  “The scandal isn’t what’s illegal; it’s what’s legal.”  The bigger scandal is that there’s no desire or even interest at the top to see that change.  And why not – it suits them just fine.

California has 63% majorities in both chambers of the legislature, has just seen a 61% share of the vote for a Democratic Presidential candidate – and yet this state is completely, inescapably and hopelessly beholden to right-wing interests, as a function of a backwards set of governing rules that have climbed the budget hole over $40 billion dollars, without any reasonable hope of getting out of it.  It’s been beyond clear for several years now that the ultimate solution will come at the ballot box, and yet the state party has entrusted the most crucial elections, the ones that could net a working 2/3 majority in the Senate, to someone more concerned with saving his political hide.  And so Hannah-Beth Jackson, who came within 1,200 votes of flipping a Republican seat, reads a story like this in shock and anger.  And the citizens in SD-12, promised a recall of Jeff Denham; and those in SD-15, expecting a candidate in their majority-Democratic district to take on Abel Maldonado; they are similarly angry.  Money they had every right to expect would go to help them now goes to help one man.

(By the way, the alibi from the defenders of Perata on this doesn’t scan at all.  First of all, nobody begrudges him from raising money in his own defense – the problem lies in taking that money from an account intended for campaign work.  And second, if this is a “political witch hunt,” as they say, why would he need this lump sum of money 75 days from the time when a Democratic Administration with no inclination to prosecute Democrats on allegedly bogus charges is about to be installed?  It’s either a witch hunt about to end or a going concern.  The alibi is pathetic.)

But the larger point is that the status quo, the closed systems at the top of the Democratic leadership, the lack of transparency and accountability, create the crises we see in our state, or at least disable anyone from reacting to them.  And this is not likely to change.  John Burton is going to be the next state CDP Chair.  He’s been in politics for 205 years, and he’s basically muscled out the competition for the job.  Does anyone think that a lifelong pol, with a long history of backroom deals, the guy who was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cigar-smoking buddy (that seems like a good profile for the opposition party chair), gives a damn about urgently needed reform?  He’s making sweet little noises about turning red areas blue, but there’s absolutely no hope that he will provide any change from the insular, chummy, mutual backscratching society that exists in Sacramento.  Grassroots activists should be furious that, in the wake of seeing countless opportunities wasted and crises lengthened, we’re boldly taking off into the future with a Party Chair who was first elected in 1965.

The future of California is a mystery right now, because there is a crisis of leadership and an unwillingness to reform.  At the very least, activists should look to electing Hillary Crosby as State Party Controller so that someone in the room will have a reform message that can spark a modicum of change.  But until the fundamentals are altered, we will lurch from one disaster to the next.

Yacht Party Assembly leader Mike Villines visited the Sacramento Bee editorial board yesterday, and like any good mob boss, he offered an ultimatum.

Solving the budget stalemate is simple enough, Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines said in a visit to The Bee’s Capitol Bureau Tuesday. Democrats have to capitulate to GOP demands for the 8-hour work day, meal breaks, looser environmental regulations, permanent budget cuts and a stiff spending cap, among other things.

Then, and only then, will Republicans come to the table to discuss — but not necessarily agree to — new taxes.

“We think you have to do these reforms first, cuts first and make sure that you’re doing an economic package that puts people back to work,” Villines said. “Then you have a discussion about revenue – and only then.”

Many of these things, you’ll notice, have nothing to do with the budget.  In fact, CapAlert published the ransom note that Villines brought with him, and while he puts his demands in somewhat vague terms (and the Bee should really spell it out if they want to inform the public), it’s pretty clear what he and the GOP want.  They want to eliminate overtime regulations and meal breaks for state employees.  They want to re-legislate already-passed environmental regulations on retrofitting buildings, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and air quality standards.  And they want a bushel of tax cuts for businesses.  I’ll put the ransom note on the flip.

Aside from being ridiculous, this is extremely close to being illegal.  Yes, illegal.  I know horse-trading is customary in politics, but it violates California law.  This is Section 86 of the California Penal Code:

86.  Every Member of either house of the Legislature, or any member of the legislative body of a city, county, city and county, school district, or other special district, who asks, receives, or agrees to receive, any bribe, upon any understanding that his or her official vote, opinion, judgment, or action shall be influenced thereby, or shall give, in any particular manner, or upon any particular side of any question or matter upon which he or she may be required to act in his or her official capacity, or gives, or offers or promises to give, any official vote in consideration that another Member of the Legislature, or another member of the legislative body of a city, county, city and county, school district, or other special district shall give this vote either upon the same or another question, is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years and, in cases in which no bribe has been actually received, by a restitution fine of not less than two thousand dollars ($2,000) or not more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or, in cases in which a bribe was actually received, by a restitution fine of at least the actual amount of the bribe received or two thousand dollars ($2,000), whichever is greater, or any larger amount of not more than double the amount of any bribe received or ten thousand dollars ($10,000), whichever is greater.

Put it this way, there’s a Governor in Illinois who just got arrested for this activity.

But instead of indicting Mike Villines, he will be allowed to hold up the California Legislature, confident in the knowledge that Democrats, given little choice with the 2/3 requirement, will come around to his demands. In fact, Villines has already announced his intention to run for Senate in 2014, something that even cranky winger columnist Jim Boren scoffs at.  

Villines helped lead the Legislature to an 85-day budget stalemate and then was a party to passing a phony budget that quickly fell apart. And so far, he’s done nothing to solve the state budget crisis in the latest round of negotiations. And that’s the record he’ll run on for his next post?

Do our legislators live in a world where doing badly means you get to move up?

Yes, in a word.

And mind you, what Villines illegally lays out is just a precondition to TALK about revenue increases.

“This is very hard for Democrats to accept,” Villines said of his list, which he said he had been distributed to the governor and other legislative leaders. “They’ll say that look, ‘This goes right to the heart of many things that we care terribly about and we just can’t go there.’ I understand that because we feel the same way about revenues.”

Jim Evans, a spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, challenged the Republicans to “put a specific $17 billion, half cuts, half revenues, deficit-reduction plan on the table and then we can begin productive conversations.”

Villines is holding out hope Democrats will cave. “I think that they’ll ultimately come around to this,” he said.

Why wouldn’t he say that?  A criminal who never gets caught usually keeps robbing banks.  The learned behavior is that Democrats will give up at some point.  And with General Fund revenue down another $1.3 billion in November, and the state due to run out of cash in February, who is going to disagree with him?

Or, the real question is, will anyone arrest Mike Villines for crimes against the state?

UPDATE: Denise Ducheny, Senate Budget Committee chair, sez:

“To the extent they’re saying, ‘Undo all the labor laws and we’re still not voting for taxes,’ there’s kind of nothing to talk about,” Ducheny said.

The correct response is “I am directing the Sacramento police to arrest Mike Villines.”

UPDATE 2: Even the Sac Bee describes this as a hostage crisis:

In other words, Republicans are refusing to negotiate. They will only release the hostages after their demands are met.

REGULATORY CHANGES – EMPLOYMENT LAW FLEXIBILITY

Employee Schedule Flexibility

Expanding Health Care Options for Employees (Health savings accounts)

Reducing Unwarranted Litigation

Overtime for high way earners

Meal and Rest clarification

Eliminate “needs test” to allow more apprenticeships

REGULATORY CHANGES – BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Design-build

Public Private Partnership

ADA compliance

Streamline small business certification process for micro businesses and sole proprietorships

Reclassify “destination management companies” (DMS) as consumers rather than retailers (SB 1628)

Streamlining the permitting process (THPS, development)

Contracting out

ENVIRONMENTAL FLEXIBILITY

Expanding deadlines for engine retrofits (on and off road)

Extending deadlines for greenhouse gas regulations (AB 32

Carl Moyer program changes

Regulatory flexibility for agricultural industry

3rd party analysis of economic impact of ARB regulations

TAX CREDITS

A new employee tax credit for businesses that hire out-of-work Californians

A manufacturing investment credit to help businesses purchase the equipment they need

Capitol gains reduction for businesses that invest in California

Modification of the tax code to encourage companies to locate jobs in California

Suspension of regulatory burdens that “discourage job creation”

I want to publicly thank Jordan Rau and Patrick McGreevey for ripping off my “Scared Straight” moniker to describe yesterday’s joint legislative session.  This is par for the course with the traditional media creatively borrowing the work of bloggers without attribution.  Hey, at least our site didn’t send us into bankruptcy.

UPDATE: Mr. Rau, in a somewhat snippy but professional email, tells me he doesn’t read the site and the “Scared Straight” idea was independently his.  Fair enough.

As for the effectiveness of the “Scared Straight” session, which posited that all state infrastructure projects would be shuttered by the end of the year without a new budget, and that the state would be essentially out of money by February or March, and that doing nothing will make the problem substantially worse… well, let’s just say it could have gone better.

The Republicans, who attended reluctantly, refused to accept tax increases, instead emphasizing the importance of limiting state spending and ferreting out waste and bloat in existing programs.

“I didn’t see a lot of productive work there today,” said Senate minority leader Dave Cogdill (R-Modesto). “I think it was more about trying to heighten the intensity around this thing and push people to a place that they have been trying to push us to for a long time, and I don’t think it’s going to work.”

Sen. Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks) held aloft two weighty yellow tomes produced by the last effort to trim state government — Schwarzenegger’s 2004 California Performance Review, which suggested 279 ways to save money by reorganizing the state bureaucracy. Almost none were adopted.

Look!  The answer is just holding up the performance review and shuffling around the bureaucracy!!!  Ahem…

In his comments, Mac Taylor, the Legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal analyst, described the folly of trying to close the gap either by taxes or through spending cuts alone. A tax-only solution would require increasing the sales tax by 2 cents, adding a 15% surcharge to the personal income tax and hiking corporate taxes by 2% — making all of those taxes the highest in the nation, he said.

Taylor said erasing the budget gap by cuts would require lawmakers to end all funding for the University of California and state universities, welfare grants, developmental health services, mental health and in-home supportive services.

It’s of course a red herring that Democrats are seeking a “tax-only” solution, one that Karen Bass sadly saw fit to perpetuate yesterday by stating “I think some of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle are living in denial, frankly.”  Um, every Democrat in the Legislature voted for a shared responsibility budget that raised revenue and implemented painful cuts.  If Bass doesn’t want to make the fight at all, she ought to let everyone know.  It’s not helpful to try and spread the blame equally.  We have a Yacht Party that has no intention of lifting a finger in the face of crisis.  In fact, they see it as their opportunity to drown government in the bathtub and eliminate the social safety net permanently.

This is why the state GOP is bordering on irrelevancy throughout the state (BTW, if you want to laugh, read Ron Nehring’s prescription for Republicans.  Clueless and pathetic).  Californians have thoroughly repudiated the Yacht Party vision.  However, this is true everywhere but in the legislative chamber in Sacramento, where the 2/3 budget and tax rule allows them to hijack the legislature.  In the long term, there is nothing to do but to capture a 2/3 majority and finish the irrelevancy project.  In the interim, California’s Democratic lawmakers are better off flying to Washington, DC, where at least they’ll have a chance of getting money for state and local governments in the new stimulus package, then staying in Sacramento, where they have no shot at breaking the stalemate.  That’s just reality.

Scared Straight didn’t work.  On to DC.

UPDATE: This is better from Karen Bass.  I’ll put the whole release on the flip, but she is, as she has been doing repeatedly throughout the crisis, calling for specific aid from DC.  A taste:

Meeting with California Congressional leaders and President-elect Obama’s transition staff, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass today outlined specific steps the federal government can take to boost California’s economy and ensure that the state can actually benefit from stimulus packages currently under discussion.

“Infrastructure investment is critical to getting the national and state economies back on track,” Bass said. “But the major spending cuts and tax increases that California and other states will need to balance our budgets could undermine the success of any infrastructure stimulus efforts. Today, I shared with Representative Barbara Lee from the Appropriations Committee and President-elect Obama’s transition office California’s  firm belief that direct federal assistance has to be part of an economic stimulus plan.”

more…

Bass was accompanied by Assemblymember Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa), Chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, who noted that California’s budget problems are directly linked to the revenue meltdown that followed the national recession and crises in the mortgage, credit and automotive sectors.

“We need federal aid because our troubled finances are the result of our nation’s economic downturn,” said Evans.  “$25 billion of our $28 billion deficit comes from a revenue drop after the October stock market crash.”

In their meetings Bass and Evans emphasized several specific avenues for potential federal aid:

Maximize California’s Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentage (FMAP). Although California has a large number of low-income and disabled individuals eligible for the program, we receive only the minimum 50% sharing ratio from the federal government.

Reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Most states, including California, are overspending their SCHIP allocation and have exhausted their prior year unspent allocations. Reauthorization by March 2009 is critical.

Increase Food Stamp Funding. In California, roughly 1.7 million people receive food stamp benefits. Increased funding means more food purchasing power for children, adults and senior citizens.

Further Extend Unemployment Insurance Benefits. With an 8.2% unemployment rate California would benefit from a further UI extension, improved UI coverage and increased administrative funding for states to deal with the increasing number of applicants.

Increase State Criminal Alien Assistance Program Funding. California spends approximately $1 billion per year to incarcerate an estimated 18,000 undocumented felons. However, for the fiscal year 2008-2009, the state will only receive $111 million in reimbursement from the federal government.

Increase Pell Grant Funding. The credit crisis has made it much more difficult for families to qualify for student loans, especially private loans. For FY 09, the estimated overall Pell Grant shortfall is $3.5 billion. Pell Grant funding should be increased to ensure that adequate funds are available for all eligible students.

Bass and Evans also stressed the need for infrastructure investments as part of federal stimulus packages, including investment in transportation, housing, flood control and green technologies:

Transportation:  Funding for California’s highways, transit systems, passenger rail and goods movements projects.

Housing: Housing construction related activities, foreclosure prevention and mitigation and housing market improvement policies.

Clean and Green Economic Sector: The economic stimulus infrastructure program should provide funding to help California achieve our renewal portfolio standard (RPS) goals through the siting, planning, and building of transmission lines, as well as funding for green job training programs for displaced workers, at-risk youth and veterans.

Flood Control Projects: California is eligible to receive $15M for flood control feasibility studies and over $112M for flood control projects. Federal funding should be provided for these important public safety projects.

“California stakeholders, including the legislature, the governor, city and county governments and other interested parties, are coming together to develop a list of projects and priorities for immediate federal infrastructure stimulus,” Bass said. “It is in the state’s best interest to speak with a united voice wherever possible in this process, so it’s important to have the stakeholders develop and vet such a list before making the case for individual projects.”

Bass added that the Assembly also intends to work closely with its Congressional partners as reauthorization of the Transportation Act approaches. Because reauthorization has such a potential impact on California and its economy, Speaker Bass will appoint a special Assembly Working Group in 2009 to help advance California’s interests throughout the reauthorization process.

Just because it’s never too early to get a campaign fix, here are a few items that amused, exasperated and provoked me the past few days.

• Topline political commentators still have no idea what they’re talking about concerning Barbara Boxer’s race for Senate in 2010.  Chris Cillizza seems to think that Boxer is vulnerable to a challenge by Arnold Schwarzenegger.  First of all, her approval ratings are BETTER than Arnold’s.  Second, there’s no way he can win a Republican primary after having advocated for tax increases.  His positions on health care reform and global warming and Prop. 8 don’t help either, but in particular the tax position is untenable in a closed Republican primary.  Chuck DeVore would slaughter him in a straight-up one-on-one matchup.  The Yacht Party isn’t going to line up behind Schwarzenegger.  It’s just not going to happen. And Arnold knows it, which is why he won’t run.

• As for Schwarzenegger’s successor, the great hope of the Republican Party, former eBay executive Meg Whitman, has already lost top political operatives Steve Schmidt and Adam Mendelsohn before she’s even announced for the position.  FAIL.  Although, given Schmidt’s performance on John McCain’s campaign, I’m not sure you want his help.  I think it’s important for Democrats to make Schmidt absolute poison for any California Republican seeking to hire him.

• Meanwhile, Jerry Brown, angling for the Governor’s office for a third term, is getting fund-raising help from Gray Davis.  See above re: poison.

• Glenn Greenwald has been tracking Dianne Feinstein’s presumed backpedaling and vagueness regarding torture and forcing all branches of government to comply with the Army Field Manual on interrogations.  This bears a lot of watching.  Feinstein’s equivocations and turnarounds against her constituents are so perfunctory now as to be banal, but if she thinks she can get away with wavering on torture and still try to win votes, she’s just flat wrong.

• This article at Swing State Project posits that Obama won 4 Congressional districts in California currently held by Republicans – Gallegly (CA-24); Dreier (CA-26); Bono-Mack (CA-45); Bilbray (CA-50).  He bases this on assumptions from the county-level data, assumptions which I’m not sure can be made.  Anecdotally, I heard Obama carried CA-48, so if anything the diarist may be undercounting this.  Once all the data is received, we’ll have a full report, but I find this too speculative to be worthy of comment.

• I should also note that Steve Poizer already has a campaign website up for the 2010 Governor’s race.  Only 547 days until the primary, it helpfully informs.

Dan Walters and Jon Ortiz from the Sacramento Bee are going to liveblog the joint session of the legislature helmed by Treasurer Lockyer and Controller Chiang today, coming up at around 3:00 PT.  Today we got a sense of what will be said in that session.

Treasurer Bill Lockyer, for instance, will tell lawmakers that unless a budget is adopted the state will stop financing construction projects for roads and other infrastructure. That’s not just bond sales for future projects — those will stop, too. It means projects that are underway will no longer be able to draw down cash from the treasurer’s pooled account as the state’s general fund moves toward insolvency. Thousands of jobs could be lost.

“No budget, no state financing,” said Lockyer spokesman Tom Dresslar. “The spigot is completely off. We’re talking about a complete shut-off of state infrastructure financing unless we get a budget fast.”

This is the exact opposite of what we should be doing, of course, and the exact opposite of what the President-elect wants to use as a means to kick-start the economy – massive spending on shovel-ready infrastructure projects.  But California does not, in the current context, have the money to support it.  In fact, we could be out of cash by February:

California is on track to run out of cash in February or March and faces a $15 billion cash shortage by the end of its fiscal year in June unless officials plug an $11.2 billion budget gap, according to the state’s budget director.

Additionally, if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers fail to close the current fiscal year’s budget shortfall soon, California, the most populous U.S. state, may in March delay payments to its vendors or hand them notes promising payment, according to a Dec. 1 letter to top lawmakers from the director of the Department of Finance, Michael Genest.

A copy of the letter was obtained on Friday by Reuters.

“Specifically, it now appears certain that available cash reserves from all sources will fall below the cash cushion target of $2.5 billion in February and that the state will begin delaying payments or paying in registered warrants in March,” Genest said in his letter.

That would be IOUs.  From the 8th-largest economy in the world.

Like I said last Friday, this should be a “Scared Straight” kind of presentation, only I don’t see how the Yacht Party members would be scared.  What’s being offered, a government shutdown, is basically their greatest dream realized.  And it’s not like there’s leadership at the top of their party to force any compliance – Arnold Schwarzenegger is too busy pretending he’s the world’s go-to source on global warming and trying to buddy up to Darrell Steinberg instead of making any effort to get members of his own party to stop hijacking the state.

If you’re a masochist, check out the liveblog at 3.

Scott Gold at the LA Times reports today on a massive solar project that may alleviate some of the pain felt in the Antelope Valley:

The buzz in the Antelope Valley these days is about a company called eSolar, which is putting the finishing touches on a thermal solar energy facility here — 24,000 mirrors that glitter like diamonds when you approach on Avenue G. There are plans for several more facilities in the area, all larger, the company says.

Local officials are atwitter at the possibilities. Visitors and investors are expected from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. A slew of jobs would be created; there were 225 people working last week on the Avenue G facility alone, most of them locals. Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said the solar plants could be the catalyst to restoring the sort of “intellectual excitement” that existed when aerospace, still a vital industry here, was the only game in town — when “if it went up, it came out of here,” he said.

“Now, we’re going to go a long way toward saving this world,” the mayor said. “Right here in Lancaster.”

I think it’s important to classify projects like this as what they are – INFRASTRUCTURE projects.  Too often we confine ourselves to thinking about infrastructure as solely referring to fixing roads or building physical structures like bridges.  A 21st-century energy creation system is the most important infrastructure improvement we can make, one that will not only create jobs but save billions in public health and environmental degradation costs.  Any stimulus from the federal government that includes infrastructure improvements should help incentivize companies like eSolar, as well as laying down high-speed broadband lines throughout the country, building a transferable energy grid, etc.

In the recent past in California, the way a depressed city could revitalize their economy was to bring a prison into town.  Now, the potential of green jobs is being realized, making the future (pardon the pun) sunnier:

It’s heady talk, and people are listening. Lancaster and the surrounding valley are suffering, even by the standards of a community that long ago acclimated to a boom-and-bust cycle. Many here are living on the edge, and some beyond, with tens of thousands more expected to arrive in coming years.

There is a sense that development cannot come fast enough, not with shops closing, one in five people living in poverty, high unemployment and the highest mortality rate in Los Angeles County. Not with so many houses falling into foreclosure that the city of Lancaster has gone into real estate — buying and renovating empty homes to slow the decline of neighborhoods.

“It’s bad,” said William Turner, 21, who got a job installing eSolar mirrors through a temp agency. He is among those vying for one of the full-time positions the company will offer soon; competition will be fierce and many of those hired will be overqualified for their jobs, officials said.

“People around here are really hurting,” Turner said. “We need a change.”

The new energy economy is California’s way out of the economic crisis.  Whether it’s building solar and wind plants or transferable energy grids or carbon capture and sequestration retrofitting or green building add-ons or the next generation of green cars, the potential for bringing hope to downtrodden communities, creating millions of jobs and protecting the planet is great.