Anti-AB32 Ballot Initiative Renamed by Democratic Governator-Candidate Jerry Brown
February 12th, 2010 by Susan Kraemer
An attempt to overthrow California’s progressive climate bill AB32 has been slowed down by Attorney General Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate to be the post-Schwarzenegger governor of California.
Republican lawmaker Dan Logue and co-drafter and anti-tax agitator Ted Costa want an initiative on the ballot to kill AB32 (crafted to reduce California’s greenhouse gases by switching to clean energy sources as the ETS has in Europe), and they asked the big polluters in the state for funding, and all appeared to be set for success.
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The pair clothed the initiative in the usual euphemistic language that these kinds of regressive initiatives typically employ to befuddle voters. How hard is it to get the average person to sign up for a pleasant and unassuming-sounding “California Jobs Initiative”?
And what fossil energy polluter, with Fox, Rush and Beck carrying its water, wouldn’t fund such an initiative. After all, the $600,000 needed to pay signature gatherers is not a high bar. And voters are easily swayed. So, why on earth is the ballot initiative in trouble?
Well, it turns out that the Attorney General has the authority to clarify ballot measures by precisely naming them to make their intent clear for voters, and that’s just what Attorney General Jerry Brown did.
The Democratic candidate (by contrast with opponent Republican candidate Meg Whitman), plans to step into the very large climate-friendly shoes of the term-limited Republican Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Brown understands that the bill actually “Suspends Air Pollution Control Laws Requiring Major Polluters to Report and Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions That Cause Global Warming Until Unemployment Drops Below Specified Level for Full Year.” And that is how he renamed the bill.
Now we do have our share of stupid voters, like every state. But with a name like that, the initiative does have a higher bar to clear, because any honest attempt to gather signatures must show that description to prospective signers.
As a result, the “California Jobs Initiative” might actually run short of the $600,000 and the 433,000 signatures needed by April 16 to qualify for the general election.
Image: DrBlues
Source: New York Times
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About the Author
Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.
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