Fabian Nunez and Bill Lockyer have proposed AB 457, a bill that introduces a price cap:

Frustrated by soaring gasoline prices, two of California’s top elected officials proposed legislation Thursday designed to crack down on consumer gouging by allowing a temporary price cap in times of “abnormal market disruption.”

Attorney General Bill Lockyer and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez jointly proposed the measure, Assembly Bill 457, in response to pump prices that have jumped by more than $1 per gallon since January.

“We need to make sure that California is not the victim of any type of market manipulation or Enron-type scheme to artificially inflate the price of gasoline at the pump,” Núñez said.
***
“It’s a publicity stunt,” said Assemblyman Russ Bogh, R-Cherry Valley. “It will do nothing to solve the gas problem, because they’re not addressing the real issues.”

Rather than demonize oil companies, lawmakers ought to be pushing to fast-track refineries and increase oil supply, Bogh said.(SacBee 6/9/06)

Personally, I don’t think that the way to deal with this is to extend temporary price caps and interfere with the market.  The market has a way (Adam Smith’s invisible hand) of making sure that gas gets to the people who value it most highly. 

However, Bogh has it even more wrong than the bill.  The way to solve the problems is not to increase refinery capacity for many reasonsts.  Of course, the most glaring reason is that nobody really wants to build any more refinery capacity.  The other major reason is that there just isn’t the oil to keep building refineries and expect the oil just to keep rolling in. 

So, the obvious suggestions would be to increase public transport capacity and alternative fuel production.  But, those don’t sound as immediate as gas caps, so gas caps it is I suppose.

[Originally posted at NorCal Politics on January 31, 2006]

I don’t know enough about the politics of the Public Utilities Commmission to know exactly how this happened (note to self:  learn more about PUC), but it seems that they’ve done something good:

Continue reading [From NCP] PUC Kickstarting Solar Power →

[Originally posted at NorCal Politics February 14, 2006]

This Mercury News Article outlines an upcoming measure to limit growth in Southern Santa Clara County:

The Sierra Club, Greenbelt Alliance, Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society and other members of the coalition — which already has $300,000 in the bank — must collect 36,040 signatures from registered county voters to qualify for the November ballot, something they and their opponents expect will happen.

The measure, which farmers and ranchers fear would drive down the value of their land, would affect nearly half of Santa Clara County’s 839,000 acres.

The complex proposal would essentially do two things. First, it would reduce the number of homes that could be built in unincorporated, rural areas along the east foothills of the Diablo Range from Milpitas to Gilroy, the Santa Cruz Mountains from Gilroy to Los Altos and east of Mount Hamilton. On lands zoned for ranching, for example, it would allow only one home per 160 acres, down from up to eight homes per 160 acres now.

It also would set limits for new development in those areas: curbing the amount of square footage that could be built per parcel, reducing building on ridgelines and banning building unless adequate water is available.

The article has an interesting mini-profile of the author of the measure and a standard set of he-said, she-said quotes.  The final quote of the article is interesting, though:

“Owners have been taking care of their land all these years knowing that at some point they’d be able to sell a piece or two and be able to retire on their land,” said [Jenny] Derry [executive director] of the [Santa Clara County] farm bureau. “We see it as a property rights issue.”

I’m incredibly sympathetic to the need to balance conservation, profitable use, and the traditional rural culture of America.  I’m not, however, sympathetic to painting a rentier’s desire to speculate for extraordinary profit as a “right”.

Land use is where the knives come out in local politics, so this is going to be interesting.  NorCal Politics will try to get sufficiently educated to be of use.

California Blog Roundup for this rainy Easter Sunday. Teasers: Prop 82 con and con, Field Poll results and spin, 15% Doolittle, CA-11, rabid Republicans, some news in the campaign for Governor, some global warming, some sound principles for infrastructure, and some miscellany.

Prop 82

• Governor Schwarzenegger swings from appearing moderate by backing Proposition 82 to appeasing his corporate backers by opposing. Again, I wonder what big business doesn’t like about a tax which falls solely on high-earning individuals… What could it be? What could it be?
• Bill Bradley reports that John Burton, liberal firebrand, comes out against Prop 82 because the guarantee of universal preschool subsidizes people who don’t need the subsidy. I’m sympathetic to this criticism — you put the money where it’s needed — but one of the things we’ve learned in the United States is that once you make something into a program for the least fortunate among us, it turns into a target for the least generous among us.

Field Poll Fun

• ABC has the headlines from the big 3 NorCal papers’ Field Poll articles on Schwarzenegger. I think they can be summed up as “lukewarm”. Also, here’s the Schwarzenegger vs. Angelides / Westly summary.
• ABC again on the lead that Steve Westly has purchased himself. They note that Mark DiCamillo thinks the lead is surprisingly large. I’m not surprised by DiCamillo’s spin on that; I’ve read some comments by DiCamillo in the past suggesting strongly that DiCamillo is not politically neutral, at least in his commentary.
• Frank Russo of the California Progress Report notes that the same Field Poll suggests that the anti-immigrant nativists are a definite minority in California.

Doolittle / CA-04

• Dump Doolittle notes that John “15%” Doolittle visited his district last week, but stuck to hand-picked audiences. Doolittle will also be at a photo-op with President Bush on Earth Day. Truth is stranger than fiction. I expect the audience there will be hand-picked as well — that’s par for the course with the modern Republican Party.
• Last, Dump Doolittle has a quick blurb on the FEC reports of 15% Doolittle and his Dem challengers. As one of the commenters notes, $287K raised by 15% Doolittle last quarter means that he put just over $43K in his own pocket.

Pombo / CA-11

• Progressive 11th notes that Richard Pombo will be receiving an award from Exxon on April 25, thanking him for his service.
• Say No To Pombo has a bit more information on the FEC filings of the major Dem candidates. For some fun inside baseball, make sure to read the comments. Apparently Filson’s financial director has been less than forthcoming about his relationship to the Filson campaign.

Campaign for Governor

• California Republicans: Nothing will ever satisfy them.
• I don’t know why Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn’t want to be seen with George Bush. After all, he’s surrounded himself with Bush Republicans.
• Frank Russo posts on the need for the candidates for Governor to address California’s structural deficit. Twice.
• Bill Bradley thinks it’s all a muddle.
• Schwarzenegger has “released” his 2002-04 tax returns. On Good Friday. By allowing reporters to go through the returns for a few hours in a closed room.

Environment

• The California Progress Report has a guest post by Craig Noble of the NRDC on the principles that should underpin an infrastructure program that would be sustainable over the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren — those for whom we hold the present in trust.
• ABC on the Schwarzenegger’s ineffective and politically weak middle position on Global Warming.
• Uneasy Rhetoric rips Daniel Weintraub for his schmibertarian global warming denial.

This ‘n’ That

• Apparently, thinking that a line-item veto is a bad idea makes one a rabid Bolshevik. No, seriously.
• At least these Republican spouses pay each other salaries, not commissions like 15% Doolittle. Did you know there were any meaningfully pro-choice Republicans left? Me neither. Mayor Sam’s Sister City tells us that one of them is term-limited out in AD-38, and reports on the race for his seat.
• From Brian Dennert Here: this is just funny.

OK, here’s the California Blog Roundup for today. Teasers: 5 House Districts to watch, a smidge more on CA-50, more fun with Brian Bilbray, wobbly Governor (and not the good kind of Wobbly), some endorsements from a couple groups, news of the funny and weird.

• AnthonySF at RemoveRepublicans puts together his top 5 hit list for House Districts in California. Now if he’d just add an RSS feed so it would be easier to integrate his work into our roundup reading.
• AnthonyLA at DailyKos has his own spin on what happened on Tuesday, as does our own CarlsbadDem. Also, Words Have Power, this brief pictorial history of Brian Bilbray.
• Alliance for a Better California points out the weakness and general wobbliness of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan for some kind of emission plan. In other news, neither Frank Russo nor Bill Bradley are impressed, though one criticizes on principle, one on tactics.
• Pombowatch catches Richard Pombo in what looks like a flat-out lie, or maybe if one were excessively generous, a flip-flop. It’s shocking, I know.
• We’ve got a couple sets of endorsements for June 6:
• California State Employee’s Association
• San Francisco Young Democrats (including some local candidates and measures)

• ABC takes Dan Walters to task for his smears of the CTA (apparently including making up his own facts.
• D-Day has news of the weird, and California Observer has what may be the funniest story about a Republican I’ve heard in a while.
• Oh, and Westly & Angelides for Prop 82, Schwarzenegger sells out Reiner by coming out against.

Everything but CA-50, which is coming up next.

• California Progress Report picked us as their site of the day. Thanks! A guest poster stands up for Prop. 82,
• The Mindful Mission dissects Tom McClintock’s editorial advocating the minimum wage as low as possible. Remember folks, Tom McClintock is Arnold’s running mate, the Dick Cheney of the Schwarzenegger campaign.
• Surfk9 has an interesting meditation on personal history and immigration.
• Bill Bradley reports that the Angelides campaign has hired a new consultant. He also has an interesting post on Arnold’s failure to sell his environmental efforts as better than the leaders of his party. (Better should not be taken to mean good enough.)
• Lying Media Bastards was at the San Diego immigrant march, and shares impressions.