California was, once upon a time, the leader in offshore drilling. In fact, the first submerged oil wells was in the Santa Barbara Channel. Public acceptance can change rapidly when you spill 200,000 gallons of crude oil into the ocean. And change it did.

In many ways, that day in 1969 was the time when the environmental movement came of age.  It had a real, tangible event to show the world of how quickly we can turn a once beautiful strip of coast into a toxic mess.  And since that spill, we have cleared our coast of offshore drilling. But in the heat of the “Drill, Baby, Drill” McCain candidacy, George W Bush revoked the executive order putting a moratorium on offshore oil drilling. States across the South have invited oil companies to explore their coastlines.

But the Pacific Coast had held the line against offshore drilling.  During the Drill, Baby, Drill heydays, Arnold Schwarzenegger swam against the tide of his own party, calling for the continued moratorium on off-shore drilling.

America is so addicted to oil that it will take years to ween ourselves from it. To look for new ways to feed our addiction is not the answer. Anyone who tells you this would bring down gas prices anytime soon is blowing smoke.

But with Arnold, any principle can be sacrificed for the all-mighty dollar. So when it became apparent the May 19 election was going to fail, he turned his attention to the Tranquillion Ridge Project. The Project claimed that it would bring $1.8 Billion into the general fund. Each step of the way, John Garamendi fought him from his post on the State Lands Commission.

Despite a setback from that commission, Arnold still included the project in his proposals for the budget. Today, the LA Times called the plan out and provided a better method of attaining revenues:

Admittedly, the state could use the money. But that’s not a good enough reason to subvert the authority of the Lands Commission, sell California’s coastline in exchange for empty promises, ignore the wishes of Santa Barbara residents and dismiss the outcome of a long process of analysis and public hearings. The Lands Commission, in fact, was created in 1938 to bring more transparency to the awarding of oil leases after a scandal involving the Department of Finance.

If the governor really wants more oil money, there’s a better way: He could resurrect a plan he introduced last year calling for a 9.9% tax on crude oil extracted in the state. California is the only state in the union that doesn’t collect such an extraction tax, and Schwarzenegger estimated in November that it would bring in roughly $1.2 billion in the next fiscal year — dwarfing the $100 million that would be generated by the Plains Exploration project. (LAT 6/8/09)

A resolution advocating for oil severance made it through the CDP resolutions process, and such a proposal is now official Democratic Party policy.  If the Governor is serious about fixing the budget, that is where he would be pushing the Legislative Republicans. 70% of Californians support an oil extraction tax of some sort, yet the Republicans are still blocking the will of the people.

Drill, Baby, Drill is a recipe for disaster in both good and bad economic times. We should not be coompromising our goals of a clean and sustainable energy future for a few hundred million dollars.  I’ll be working to provide more depth on this issue, but in the mean time, consider emailing your legislator or joining John Garamendi’s facebook group to support the State Lands Commission’s position against drilling. We simply cannot afford another to turn our backs on 1969, the devastating consequences of a spill are just not worth the price.

The California Department of Finance wants to “drill baby drill” off the Golden State’s coastline, and they’re willing to undermine 70+ years of checks and balances to do it. Will we let them get away with it?

In late January, I joined California Controller John Chiang in a two-to-one vote of the California State Lands Commission (SLC) to reject what would have been the first new oil lease in California waters in more than 40 years. As chair of the SLC, I take my responsibility as a steward of the environment very seriously, and I did not think the proposal was in the best interests of the state. Beyond the inherent environmental risks posed by all new drilling projects, I did not think assurances included in the proposal to decommission oil platforms decades down the road were enforceable.

Unfortunately, the Department of Finance is unable to take “No” for an answer.  California needs your help over the flip…

They have drafted legislation that would, for the first time in our Commission’s 70 year history, bypass the SLC and permit the Department of Finance to authorize the oil lease off the Santa Barbara coast. As I explained in a blog post last month:

“Big Oil has essentially offered to California $100 million dollars to seduce the state into granting the first new oil drilling lease in California since the Santa Barbara oil spill 41 years ago, a spill that covered hundreds of miles of ocean and over 30 miles of sandy beaches with more than three million gallons of crude oil. Learning from history means not blindly repeating the mistakes of the past.”

At an open hearing of the SLC yesterday in Santa Monica, Controller Chiang and I again joined together to voice our opposition to this power grab, backing a resolution calling on the legislature to reject the Department of Finance’s proposal. I have put all discussion and testimony from yesterday’s hearing pertaining to the oil lease on YouTube, and I would encourage you to take a look. During public comment, 12 environmentalists agreed with our position — including representatives from the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Center — while not a single individual rose in support of the Department of Finance’s end-run around the SLC.

“We cannot get away from the fact that this is the first new offshore oil lease in 40 years, and if I sound upset, it’s because I am,” said Susan Jordan, director of the California Coastal Protection Network. “I have never seen such a blatant power grab.”

“We don’t always agree with the decisions made by this body, but we recognize and support the hard work of your staff and the public process designed to enforce the protection of our precious state lands,” added Joe Geeber, California Policy Coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation.

The science is clear; drilling for new oil now exposes our coast to the potential devastation caused by an oil spill and contributes to the greenhouse gases that chill our ability to combat global warming. As I’ve said in the past, California must focus on becoming a renewable energy leader and leave the extraction of new sources of fossil fuels to the 20th century.

But you don’t have to agree with me to appreciate the larger issues at stake. To bypass the SLC and give the Department of Finance authority to approve this oil lease threatens the independence of the SLC, a commission designed to be an independent environmental watchdog. More than 35 environmental organizations are opposed to the Department of Finance’s plan, including some that were initially supportive of the oil lease proposal. To allow the Department of Finance to usurp the independent commission responsible for protecting our state lands and waters means we will lose one of the most important safeguards available to California’s natural habitats.

As Assemblymember Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica) said in a statement submitted to the SLC:

“This proposal to override the Commission for the first time in its 70 year history is wrongheaded. It would throw our state into environmental reverse gear and would be a terrible precedent. I will urge my Assembly colleagues in the strongest possible terms to oppose this proposal.”

I am proud to have the support of Assemblymember Brownley in this struggle, but we need your help. The California legislature will be voting on this proposal soon, and it is imperative that your voices are heard. If you live in California and agree with me that new offshore oil drilling in California is unwise, or if you agree with me that maintaining an effective system of checks and balances is important in state government, please contact your state Assemblymember and Senator today and ask them to oppose the proposal. I’ve created a Facebook group highlighting the issues at stake, and I encourage you to join it. Together, we can preserve California’s fragile coast.

UPDATE: The Assembly Coastal Caucus joins the State Lands Commission in opposing the Department of Finance’s proposal.

John Garamendi is the Lieutenant Governor of California, chair of the California State Lands Commission, and a former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Interior Department. He also sits on the Ocean Protection Council and is the founder of the Clean Seas Coalition.

(Truly an amazing reversal by Governor Hoover on this. – promoted by David Dayen)

What can $100 million buy you? Apparently California’s coastline if Big Oil has its way.

In late January, as chair of the California State Lands Commission, I joined State Controller John Chiang in a two-to-one vote to deny the first offshore oil lease off the coast of California in more than four decades. To permit more oil production off the coast of California, a state seen the world over as a leader in environmental stewardship, would have sent a terrible signal that California isn’t yet prepared to embrace a green economy. The risk of a major oil spill killing marine life, soiling the coast, and decimating marine-based industries and tourism is simply too high for a quick buck.

Sadly, as part of yesterday’s drastic state budget May Revision, California once again faces a renewed push to allow oil drilling off the coast of California. Big Oil has essentially offered to California $100 million dollars to seduce the state into granting the first new oil drilling lease in California since the Santa Barbara oil spill 41 years ago, a spill that covered hundreds of miles of ocean and over 30 miles of sandy beaches with more than three million gallons of crude oil. Learning from history means not blindly repeating the mistakes of the past.

More over the flip…

Furthermore, the $100 million loan must be repaid by forgiving future royalty payments to California. This is an incredibly reckless fiscal policy. To drill ourselves out of a recession with this plan is like drinking sea water to quench our thirst. There may be a little temporary relief, but we’ll regret it later. California should be a leader in renewable energy production, not a producer of a polluting product best left in the 20th century. We are selling the coast for short term gain, long term loss, and possibly long term devastation.

The Santa Barbara Oil Spill did have one positive outcome. Many environmental historians suggest that it gave birth to the modern environmentalist movement. We need that enthusiasm again.

John Garamendi is the Lieutenant Governor of California, chair of the California State Lands Commission, and a former Deputy Interior Secretary under President Bill Clinton.

Another No on Prop 10 Website, this time from the Prop 87 Proponent, Anthony Rubenstein.  In 2006, Prop 87, a royalty tax on the oil companies, was really the most contentious item on the ballot because Arnold had pretty much pulled away from the pack.  With the support of big-time enviros like Al Gore and a ton of money, it was kind of close for a while. But then Chevron threw down and that was that.  This time, Rubenstein says of Prop 10 in an email:

Prop10 is being funded by Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens and Oklahoma natural gas tycoon Aubrey McClendon who have been spending millions on TV ads pushing their national so-called “Pickens Plan” for U.S. Energy Independence. The reason these out-of-state guys operating in California’s initiative process is, in my opinion, because they can use their wealth to a fund a ballot initiative campaign in order to avoid going through the California Legislature where this measures would never have stood a chance.

For example, in contrast to presently on-going California alternative fuel subsidy programs, Prop 10 requires no accountability in terms of measuring tailpipe emissions reductions, petroleum usage reductions, and doesn’t even require that taxpayer subsidized natural gas powered trucks and cars even stay in California.  Meanwhile Prop 10’s commercials tout support for hybrid vehicles, while the only hybrid on the road that actually qualifies for funding from Prop 10 is the Toyota Prius, which arguably doesn’t need any subsidy because it’s on back-order.

All of prop 10’s dubious programming will be funded by making the State borrow $5 billion which when paid pack with interest will cost California taxpayers around $10 billion paid over 30 years at a cost of $330-plus million per year. This at a time when our state is in the midst of a budget crisis caused by a $15 billion deficit. Think about Prop 10 this way: would you ever buy yourself a car on a 30 year mortgage?  Not with your own money, you wouldn’t.  And neither would Prop 10’s backers, Pickens & McClendon – that’s why they’re trying to spend yours.

The Consumer Federation of California has a No on 10 website here.  While the Calitics Editorial Board is currently making decisions on the propositions, I can say for myself that I sincerely hope that Prop 10 is defeated.  Soundly.  It is an effort to wrap a gift to T Boone in a green pashmina.

One of the most potent objections to the Republicans’ drilling zealotry has been to remind Americans of the devastation that resulted from the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. As Van Jones explained in his talk with David Dayen, the fight against drilling is a fight FOR jobs and the economy and Santa Barbara knows this well. When oil drenches the beaches, kids get sick, service industry jobs that the already-struggling Santa Barbara working class depends upon vanish, and the overall economy suffers. Which is why Santa Barbara County has led the fight against offshore drilling for the last 40 years.

Until now. The rapid growth of Santa Maria, in the northern part of the county, has shifted the county’s political demography. North county conservatives now control the Board of Supervisors 3-2. And even though they voted last year to reaffirm their support of the offshore drilling ban, Santa Barbara’s role as the poster child for drilling’s consequences has led them to change their minds. As the LA Times reports, the Republican majority is expected to vote to support drilling:

Nearly 40 years after a disastrous oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast galvanized the nation and gave birth to the modern environmental movement, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors is poised to vote Tuesday in support of offshore drilling…

But Tuesday’s vote is as much about the tension between inland and the coast as it is about the price of a barrel of crude. Population and political power have been shifting away from the more liberal coast, and the board of supervisors has a conservative, pro-industry majority for the first time in about a decade.

The result: An expected 3-2 vote to support increased oil drilling off the same beaches that were coated in crude and covered with the corpses of birds, seals and dolphins after 3 million gallons of oil leaked from an offshore drilling site in 1969.

As you can see by the lede, the LA Times is dutifully buying into the Republican game plan – if you can show America that even Santa Barbara supports drilling, then your cause is boosted that much more strongly. The devil’s in the details, of course – the Supervisors that actually represent the coast support the ban, and the 3 who will vote against the ban are from inland areas. They’re playing their part in the grand Republican plan quite effectively.

At the same time they’re going against the economic needs of their constituents. The rapid growth of Santa Maria is driven by housing costs – it’s more affordable for workers whose jobs are on the coast to live in Santa Maria and commute down 101 to Santa Barbara. If drilling is renewed, it WILL lead to more oil spills, and Santa Maria residents will suffer. And for what? So that oil companies can sell the oil on the global market.

As David Dayen and Van Jones agreed earlier today, Democrats need to fight back on economic terms. Santa Barbara County residents need permanent alternatives to high gas prices, they need good jobs, and they need affordable housing.  Santa Barbara County residents would be signing an economic death warrant by backing new drilling, regardless of which side of the mountains they live on.

Brian mentioned this in the open thread, but it really deserves its own post, it’s such a ridiculous column. George Skelton today made a full-throated but deeply flawed argument for offshore drilling that as far as I can tell boils down to “well we did it in the past, and it’s not going to help in the future…so why not?!” and winds up arguing that we should sacrifice the future for hardly anything in return. The column doesn’t start off on a promising note:

On some beaches around Santa Barbara, you could feel the oozing tar between your toes — and that was long before a Union Oil platform five miles offshore spilled crud all over 20 miles of coast in 1969. For centuries, the tar naturally had seeped up through the sand, providing the native Chumash with caulking for their canoes.

Calling it “crud” is deliberately misleading readers about what actually happened in 1969. From UCSB:

Animals that depended on the sea were hard hit. Incoming tides brought the corpses of dead seals and dolphins. Oil had clogged the blowholes of the dolphins, causing massive lung hemorrhages. Animals that ingested the oil were poisoned. In the months that followed, gray whales migrating to their calving and breeding grounds in Baja California avoided the channel -their main route south.

The oil took its toll on the seabird population. Shorebirds like plovers, godwits and willets which feed on sand creatures fled the area. But diving birds which must get their nourishment from the waters themselves became soaked with tar….

Grebes, cormorants and other seabirds were so sick, their feathers so soaked in oil that they were not difficult to catch. Birds were bathed in Polycomplex A-11, medicated, and placed under heat lamps to stave off pneumonia. The survival rate was less than 30 percent for birds that were treated. Many more died on the beaches where they had formerly sought their livelihoods. Those who had managed to avoid the oil were threatened by the detergents used to disperse the oil slick. The chemicals robbed feathers of the natural waterproofing used to keep seabirds afloat.

In all 3686 birds were estimated to have died because of contact with oil. Aerial surveys a year later found only 200 grebes in an area that had previously drawn 4000 to 7000.

Skelton’s blithe dismissal of the ecological consequences of drilling is appalling. It’s not as if our oceans are healthy – oceans face crippling ecological crises and they’re in no position to withstand drilling.

Skelton goes on to turn “Big Oil” into a nostalgia piece (I’m guessing someone didn’t see There Will Be Blood):

Oh, another thing: My dad was an oil field roustabout, or driller or whatever job he could fill on a given shift. So were his dad, brother and cousins. They left their Tennessee farms and followed the migration to California for the 1920s oil boom.

My first summer job out of high school was in a Ventura oil field, an experience guaranteed to prod a kid into college if nothing else would. (But the oil job paid better than newspaper work, I soon discovered.)

So “Big Oil” never has been a big bugaboo for me. It was the producer of a vital commodity and provider of working-class jobs. Although oil derricks annoy many people as unsightly, I’ve always marveled at how they work, especially all lighted up at night.

Nostalgic memories do not count as a sound basis for public policy – unless of course he thinks we should go back to the days before OSHA, dump our toxic waste into the drinking water supply, and drive without seatbelts.

Worse is the conflation of Big Oil with working-class prosperity. Perhaps at some moment in the past this was true, but Skelton here merely reveals that he, like all the High Broderists, does not live in the 21st century, instead assuming that the conditions of the 1970s remain true today. They don’t.

Here in the 21st century Big Oil sucks precious income away form working-class families while returning hardly any in the form of jobs, taxes, or anything else resembling prosperity. And as anyone living near the Torrance refinery knows, they tend to actually have rather debilitating effect on working-class communities.

More below…

Skelton’s main thrust of the article is some weird attempt to argue that offshore drilling will actually produce self-sufficiency – since California uses so much gas, shouldn’t we drill offshore for more?

This argument has numerous flaws. First, Californians are reducing their gas consumption which has been relatively flat over the last 8 or 9 years. Conservation, not wasteful and useless drilling, is what brought prices back from the brink of $5 earlier this summer, and it alone is what will produce long-term savings.

Skelton tries to dismiss the correct argument that drilling now won’t produce usable oil for at least ten years:

Offshore exploration opponents point out that if the federal drilling ban were lifted today, there’d be no immediate effect on gasoline prices. It could take 10 years to get any crude to the gas pump. Fine. Most people driving today still will be 10 years from now.

This is a statement deeply ignorant of how oil works today. He is assuming that the supply of oil and the demand for oil will remain static so that in 10 years, the oil we drill off our coast will make it to the pump and reduce prices.

He is wrong.

The fact is that the demand for oil is soaring around the world, and it is becoming difficult if not impossible to increase production to match it. That is the phenomenon of peak oil at work and that is why gas prices have climbed by 30% every year since 2002. Supply can’t match ever-rising demand. The oil off American shores is so small an amount as to not be able to dent oil prices that, ten years from now, are very likely to be much higher than they are today. As demand rises around the world, oil companies will sell the oil we drill off our coast on a global market. The chances it will bring down the price of gas here in CA is next to none.

The only thing offshore drilling will accomplish is fouling our already suffering oceans and wildlife while lining the pockets of oil companies that sell the oil to China and India. How is that useful again?

Skelton does deal with the argument that lifting the drilling ban detracts us from the necessary long-term investment in alternatives – by dismissing it almost entirely:

Alan Salzman, founder of VantagePoint Venture Partners…adds, “The car industry is going to switch over to electric, and that’s a certainty. Hundreds of thousands of electric cars will be on the road in 2011.”

Let me know when one is affordable, practical and in the showroom.

People didn’t give up their horse and buggy until Henry Ford began making affordable cars. We’re anxiously awaiting our next transportation mode. Meanwhile, we’ll need to keep pumping gas — some of it from the Santa Barbara Channel.

Skelton needs to get out of the LA Times offices and take a look at the city around him. He might be surprised at what he finds. Hundreds of thousands of his fellow Angelenos have found alternatives to driving. That’s what enabled them to reduce their gas consumption and in turn bring down prices, albeit slightly. They bike. They walk.

His own paper reported on Metro Rail’s soaring ridership and again on Metrolink’s soaring ridership. Nowhere in Skelton’s drilling article is the MTA sales tax discussed, which would have the Subway to the Sea open by the time the first oil from the Santa Barbara Channel reaches Chinese gas pumps. Nor is high speed rail discussed, or clean bus technology, or greater urban density, or any other alternative to oil that is ready to go, right now, stalled merely for lack of political will that is currently being wasted on drilling.

Al Gore said it best at the TED Conference here in Monterey last March: drilling is “like a junkie looking for veins in his toes so he can get one last fix.” Drilling distracts us from the real problems our state faces, and for absolutely nothing in return.

Skelton doesn’t have to live in a future where the oil runs out and Californians, instead of building alternatives when we had the time and money to do so, are left with no viable alternative to oil. Unfortunately the rest of us do.

His plan for more drilling isn’t letting go of the past, it’s clinging desperately to the past in a blind refusal to accept the need to change in order to produce a better future. Just as California has failed its offspring by kicking the tax and deficit issues into the future, so too will it fail the future by drilling instead of developing alternatives.

If Skelton wants to live in the past, he’s welcome to do so. But he should not condemn the rest of us to do as well. California must change if we are to have a prosperous future.  

As we’re all painfully aware, during the ’00s the US media have become ardent defenders of the status quo, generally unwilling to discuss harsh realities that might threaten that status quo unless absolutely forced to do so – Hurricane Katrina, for example, or the reaction to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Perhaps the most significant issue not being discussed in the media is peak oil – which, in its simplistic form, explains why the high fuel prices we are seeing today are going to be a permanent feature of life.

Gas prices are NEVER coming back down – rising demand is meeting a shrinking supply and the result is the end of the cheap oil that modern America was built upon.

As gas prices remain high more media outlets are discussing energy policy but only lately are they beginning to acknowledge that the era of cheap oil is over. Today’s Los Angeles Times starts examining the topic with a front-page feature, Envisioning a world of $200-a-barrel oil. It focuses on how consumers, transportation, and global trade will be affected, and even tries to examine the “upside” to this, particularly the eventual localization of American life, perhaps the closest a major American media outlet has come to embracing the ideas of Jim Kunstler.

The article is a good beginning, but it avoids the key question of how we ought to respond. Videoconferencing and staycations are not substitutes for statewide initiatives to deal with the crisis. The article discusses the airline crisis but doesn’t discuss ways to provide alternative forms of transportation such as high speed rail. Nor does it discuss ways to encourage more renewable energy sources, or local food production, or urban density.

Still, just as it took Al Gore’s movie to convince Californians to take even the small step of climate change action embodied in AB 32, so too will it take the media’s willingness to tell Californians that cheap oil is over to produce action on shifting our state away from an oil-based economy.

Cheap oil was responsible for much of the prosperity of the postwar era, especially in California. It enabled people to find an affordable home to purchase, even if it was distant from their workplace. It enabled them to buy inexpensive food without needing to grow their own. It enabled the development of global trade networks that provided markets for Californian products and services.

The end of cheap oil is welcome from an ecological perspective but it will finish off working Californians if we don’t proactively work to build a post-oil infrastructure to provide for prosperity, just as we spent the 1950s and 1960s building an infrastructure around oil to provide for prosperity.

Newspapers like the LA Times could help show Californians the need for and value of such projects. It will require them to break with the status quo – but Californians are already doing so in practice, riding mass transit and even their bikes in much higher numbers than ever before. In the absence of media coverage of our changing state, we in the blogs will do what we can to keep up.

Well, John W. McCain had a great couple of days in the Golden State.  First he went to Santa Barbara, site of a huge 1969 oil spill, to promote his plan to cancel the moratorium on offshore drilling, and he ran into an expert who rebutted his entire premise.

Feeney also took issue with McCain’s controversial proposal to lift the moratorium on offshore oil exploration: “It makes me nervous to think about those who are proposing to drain America’s offshore oil and gas reserves as quickly as possible in the hopes of driving down the price of gasoline, because I think when you look at the good sources of information, were we to open up the California coast or the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, it would be 12, 15, maybe 20 years before those resources came online and got to full productions.”

Adding that some research shows that drilling in ANWR would only “reduce our dependence on foreign oil from 70% to 67%,” Feeney added, “I’m not sure most Americans would think that’s really worth the price of admission.”

Then, in Fresno, he admitted that there would be no material benefit to offshore exploration:

That Charlie Black comment wasn’t McCain’s only off-message moment yesterday. At a town hall in Fresno, CA, McCain admitted that the offshore drilling proposal he unveiled last week would probably have mostly “psychological” benefits, NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy notes. “Even though it may take some years, the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial.” Uh oh.

Later, at a fundraiser, an attendee very nicely called him an idiot:

“We’re really kind of goosey here about oil spills, and we’re goosey here about federal drilling and oil lands, which are abundant offshore,” the attendee said. “So we ask you to look out there to the south and the southeast and remember the greatest environmental catastrophe that’s hit this state and then balance that with the notion of winning California.”

And McCain topped it off by telling Fresno that we went to war for oil.

I also want to make sure that we will take concrete steps towards eliminating our dependence on foreign oil.

And I am confident that uh, the, the conflicts that we are in in both Iraq and Afghanistan have also a bearing on that.

(Incidentally, is there anyone in America who doesn’t know this?  We’ve been going to war for oil since oil became profitable.  Before that the world used a lot of whale oil, and if we still did America would be at war with Sea World.)

Thanks for coming, Big John!  Please stop by again sometime and further ruin your candidacy!

Tuesday’s post began,

In Dubai, people get free housing, free medical care, AND $5,000 per month. The people of Dubai share in the country’s oil wealth.

In Alaska, people not only do not pay state taxes, the state government writes every state resident a check every year. The people of the state of Alaska share in the state’s oil wealth.

But in California the big oil companies get to pump our oil from the ground for free, and then sell it back to us.  Right now these oil companies are reaping the highest profits of any industry ever in history, making a few people immensely wealthy, and are not giving back any of this wealth to We, the People of California!  

Our state’s budget reflects our priorities and our values.  So I wrote that We, the People of California should ask big oil companies to give back some of the immense wealth they are generating for themselves with our oil, so we can fully fund our California schools.  I honestly did not know that Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez was about to introduce a bill to do just that.  Well, he did, along with a windfall oil profits tax, and this is what happened:

The bill, which required a two-thirds vote to pass, was defeated on the Assembly floor after Republicans refused to vote for the new taxes.

These are choices, and the people of California need to understand that a choice was made yesterday to continue to be the only state that allows oil companies to pump our oil and not pay anything for it.  And instead of asking the rich oil companies to give back a bit they want to cut the school budget by another 10%.

Republicans said the bill was a publicity stunt, saying Democrats know that no taxes can pass as long as there is a rule allowing just a few Republicans to block the will of the vast majority.  They mocked the effort as an “oil drill.”

“I think this truly is a political drill on the eve of the layoff notices that will go out all across the state and on the eve of (the legislative) spring break when we will be at home in our districts talking to our constituents,” Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, said during the Assembly floor debate that lasted about three hours.

But do the people of California understand this?  Do they realize that just a few votes can allow oil companies to get their oil free, while their children face ever-worsening schools?  We need more “publicity stunts” to help them understand the different values and priorities that are being reflected.  Politics and life are all about our priorities, not just our choices. What is more important to our people: rich oil companies or well-educated kids?

A choice is being made here, priorities and values are being expressed: cut our schools by 10% rather than ask rich oil companies to give back just a bit.  Say it over and over, and then do something about it.  Write to your legislators and demand they ask the wealthiest to start giving back a bit.  

And remember, this is an election year.  This is the time when citizens can do something about it when their legislators are not responding.  This is the time that you can remove legislators who give wealthy oil companies tax breaks while cutting school budgets.  You can volunteer to work in election campaigns, and go from door to door in their districts, letting voters know that their legislator made a choice and voted to cut school budgets while giving tax breaks to oil companies.

Help spread the word!

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

In Dubai, people get free housing, free medical care, AND $5,000 per month.  The people of Dubai share in the country’s oil wealth.

In Alaska, people not only do not pay state taxes, the state government writes every state resident a check every year.  The people of the state of Alaska share in the state’s oil wealth.

Approx. 12 percent of America’s oil production comes from California.  As I write this oil sells for $108.14 per barrel.  In 2005 the oil companies were pumping oil out of our state at a rate of approx 230 million barrels each year.  Oil company revenues and profits are the highest ever from any companies in the history of the world, ever.  Did I mention “highest” and “ever”?

But the people of our state, in our wisdom, have decided that instead of asking the oil companies to give back a bit, we will instead give them our oil.  Give them.  And then we buy it back to put in our cars, etc.  Yes, we, the people of the state of California have made the choice to give away our oil to greatly enrich a select few. (And this post is not even a discussion of the dozens of other ways that we have made the choice to allow the few wealthiest among us to avoid giving back by paying taxes.)

Today in California we are facing a budget shortfall.  And instead of asking oil companies and others to give back a bit we are on the verge of deciding instead to cut our school budget.  Again.  This time by 10%.  We are on the verge of deciding to cut health care.  Again.  And courts, police, and every other state service by 10%, again, rather than ask oil companies and others to give back from what they take from the state.

The way we solve this budget shortfall is a choice we make.  Our choice.  Our choices reflect our values and priorities.  And we all make these choices whether we think we do or not.  If you don’t vote, you are choosing.  If you vote for someone because you would like to have a beer with him or her, you are choosing.  If you choose to vote for candidates who tell you there is “waste, fraud and abuse” and then after they have been in office for decades, continue to claim there is “waste, fraud and abuse,” you are choosing. If you choose to let your government borrow and borrow, you are choosing.  You will have to pay that back with interest later, of course, but you are choosing.  

And if you choose to let your state give our oil away to wealthy corporations so they can sell it to you and get even wealthier you are choosing to make up that potential tax revenue yourself, through cuts in your children’s education and health care and law enforcement, or maybe through increased taxes in the future, but one way or another you are choosing.  

What are our priorities?  Further tax relief to the wealthiest corporations, or educate our children? Here you are on the verge of choosing to cut your schools by another 10%.  Is that the choice you want to make?

There is something else you can choose to do today.  You can choose to write to your legislators and let them know what your choice really is.  You can choose to talk to your family and friends and explain these choices and ask them to write to their legislators as well.

Click here to find out how to contact your California legislators.  If you so choose.

And give a click to Speak Out California.