George Rebane
A heartening and well written op-ed piece ‘Like Having a Job? You’ll love Proposition 23’ appeared in 18sep10 The Union by James Kellogg, an official with the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry. These people, who organize workers in profit making private firms, have taken a look at how AB32, California’s global warming law, will raze such jobs in this state. And they concur with every credible independent analysis that gives lie to the progressive hoopla touting that more taxes, more regulations, and more federal subsidies are the solution to California’s unemployment and corporate exodus.
The only ones who still gather on the media hilltops to fight Prop23 are those whose wallets get filled from the public trough – led by the thousands at the California Air Resources Board, countless leftwing state enforcement bureaus, dubious public funded NGOs like our local Sierra Business Council, public service employee unions like the SEIU, and, of course, various private enterprises who see their investments insured by government guarded ‘green markets’ (remember the ethanol epidemic). The chairman of CARB will be here on the evening of 29 September singing for her supper at the Nevada City city hall.
Frantic lies about jobs creation and the 500,000 “clean tech” jobs at risk are pushed at the public daily, a public that really doesn’t have a clue about what is happening and will vote randomly, nudged by what clever sound bites most recently nibbled on their ears. The economic facts, as recorded here and other local blogs (NCMW, CABPRO Report, Inside NC Politics – links on the right), point to the loss of wealth creating jobs, loss of for-profit businesses, and uniformly higher consumer costs for EVERYTHING.
Prop23 has clearly added an ideological dimension beyond economics to the whole issue. The only ones denying the next step to socialism are the usual leftwing sources including bloggers who try to make the rounds hiding under their ill-fitting ‘middle of the roader’ suits.
The only organized voices for Prop23 have been conservative politicians, tea partiers, and job sustaining industry (including, yes Martha, those dreaded “filthy oil companies”) who are eyeing their job killing out-of-state options if Prop23 fails. Now we proponents of Prop23 are joined by private sector unions who are keenly aware of what maintains their membership rolls – and it isn’t the paltry 10,000 subsidized jobs that AB32 claims to add as it eliminates many times that number. The taxpayers of California welcome the private sector unions – now go put your shoulders to the wheel. In the meantime, vote YES on Prop23.
