Blowhard Republican gas tax repeal initiative fails to qualify

A ballot measure to repeal California’s controversial new gas tax sponsored by blowhard Assemblyman and Republican governor candidate Travis Allen failed to submit signatures by its deadline this week.

Separate ballot measure to repeal the law continue to gather signatures.

The incompetent Allen’s campaign was unable to collect signatures due to a series of legal battles with Attorney General Xavier Becerra last year over the wording of the ballot measure.

The gas tax, which was passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last year, raised the tax on gasoline and diesel and raised vehicle registration fees in order to gather $5 billion annually for road repairs and other transit projects.

A separate ballot measure campaign to repeal the gas tax — sponsored by Allen’s Republican rival for the governor’s office, businessman John Cox, and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — is still collecting signatures and has a May 21 filing deadline.

The East Bay Times reports that petition has gathered 400,000 signatures of the necessary 585,407, the campaign said in a statement Friday.

It’s an anticlimactic close to a campaign that had elevated Allen’s stature and name recognition among California Republicans. He had titled his committee “Join Travis Allen to Repeal the Gas Tax,” and built his political brand by railing against the law.

 

What a loser.

Trump vs. Clinton: White People’s Last Stand

The dramas surrounding the Trump campaign have sometimes obscured an underlying reality of 2016: Trump and Clinton are running for the same job, but they are talking to and being sustained by two different Americas.

There’s the old one — a distinction not of age alone, but cultural perspective and outlook — that Trump appeals to as he courts white, rural voters and social conservatives. His support base is heavy with voters uneasy with the turns the country has taken in recent years and, broadly speaking, more comfortable with an era when white men like Trump ran things.

And there’s the new America, the one Hillary Clinton has homed in on with her appeals to women, gay and lesbian Americans, the young, and minorities.

Clinton is not a perfect representative of that new America — in part because of her long tenure on the political scene. But the themes on which she has conducted her campaign and popular surrogates like the Obamas have helped shore up her connection.

Only a generation ago, in the 1992 election, according to statistics kept by the U.S. Election Project, more than 87% of the electorate was white. By 2012, that figure had fallen to 74%.

Rising most rapidly, and expected to rank even higher in November, are Latino and Asian voters. The Pew Research Center estimated a 17% jump in eligible Latino voters between 2012 and 2016, with a potential 16% increase in Asian voters. The number of eligible white voters was expected to rise a mere 2%.

Where the demographics are headed is undeniable. By 2065, according to another Pew study, only 46% of the American population will be white, down from 62% last year. All told, Latinos, blacks and Asians will make up 51% of the country. While voting performance lags because those populations are younger, they will inevitably be eligible to vote.

The Republican Party, in a report written after the 2012 presidential election, acknowledged that the party had a problem due to the changing face of the nation.

Problem is an understatement…Republicans are primarily white bigots. There’s no room for them in American any longer.

More at: This election is much more than Trump vs. Clinton. It’s old America vs. new America – LA Times

Jay Z video: the war on drugs filled prisons with young African American and Latino men

Rapper Jay Z has weighed in to support Proposition 64, which would legalize the recreational use of marijuana in California, calling the war on drugs “an epic fail,” in a YouTube video, which also describes how the effort filled prisons with young African American and Latino men.

“Young men like me who hustle became the sole villain,” Jay Z says as the video depicts the deterioration of a neighborhood drawn by artist Molly Crabapple.

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who helped qualify the initiative, praised the rapper on Twitter, writing “Thank you, Jay Z, for your strong voice for social justice & co-creating this new @Yeson64 video!”

Source: A new Jay Z video says pot should be legal in California and calls the war on drugs an ‘epic fail’ – LA Times

California’s electric car program — #EpicFail

California’s Zero Emission Vehicle program — which pushes automakers to sell an increasing number of electric cars, plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell vehicles in the state — has become a source of increasing concern to environmentalists, who say it risks falling short of Gov. Jerry Brown’s goal of having at least 1.5 million emissions-free vehicles on the streets by 2025.

“The program is in dire need of a tuneup,” said Simon Mui, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s clean-vehicle efforts in California. “It won’t be delivering as many vehicles as the state wants.”

According to an analysis by the the defense council, the program will lead to only 1 million cars by 2025 — well below the state’s goal.

Hmmm….and we were just getting comfortable with the idea of living in Libtopia.

Aware of the concerns, the Air Resources Board is considering changes. The agency plans to discuss the program’s future at a hearing in December.

No state has more electric vehicles than California, thanks in part to the air board’s insistence that automakers offer them here. Even so, in a state where officials consider emissions-free cars essential to the fight against climate change, the trend has been slow to catch on.

People like horsepower.

Since the current wave of electric vehicles hit the market at the end of 2010, about 223,700 electrics and plug-in hybrids have been sold in the state. That’s 46 percent of the nationwide total, but it’s less than 1 percent of all cars registered in California. With low gasoline prices, clean-car sales have remained sluggish.

So this is really about a gas tax CalNews.com readers. Hold on to your wallets.

Source: The San Francisco Chronicle

@CalPERS just makes stuff up: This isn’t news

California’s two enormous pension pools — the biggest in the nation — favor the long view on investment returns. Up and down economic times shouldn’t dent the overall ability to pay benefits to state workers and teachers, who number 2.6 million and counting.

But that comforting outlook is falling apart. Both funds are running drastically short of yearly goals of a 7.5 percent return. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as CalPERS, with $300 billion in its pool, eked out a 0.6 percent return, and the teachers’ fund grew by 1.4 percent this past fiscal year.

It was the worst performance since 2009.

Pension experts both here and across the country are sounding the same warning note about unrealistic earnings expectations.

But none of this is enough. If labor is worried about punitive ballot measures that severely cut pension benefits, it needs to advocate for a more realistic footing for pension funds.

If lawmakers want to avoid digging into state and local budgets to pay future liabilities, they need to heed sober pension predictions and start saving more money now.

Of course, everyone knows neither labor or elected officials will do anything. CalPERS will just keep making stuff up.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Cali’s Cap-and-Trade Scam…#EpicFail

The cost of sending a ton of greenhouse gas emissions into the air isn’t what it used to be, at least not in the handful of markets that are putting a price on climate change.

Similar to California’s weak May auction for carbon credits, the world’s two other greenhouse gas cap-and-trade markets are notching falling prices this year.

One in Europe is still adjusting to a glut of emission allowances it handed out before the recent recession drove down energy use.

The other, a collection of nine states in the northeast called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, is recording low prices while energy producers await a Supreme Court decision that could shape its future.

The markets’ recent lackluster performance is raising questions about how they can be reformed.

Source: The Sacramento Bee

Poll: Republicans have no chance in the race to replace Boxer

Kamala Harris has fortified her first-place standing in Tuesday’s primary for the right to succeed U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, while a splintering of lesser-known Republicans is vaulting fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez into the fall runoff, according to the latest Field Poll.

Source: The Sacramento Bee

#EpicFail: Cali’s cap-and-trade system may be crashing

California’s much-vaunted cap-and-trade system of reducing greenhouse gas emissions may be collapsing.

This month’s quarterly auction of carbon dioxide emission allowances, which was supposed to generate more than a half-billion dollars for politicians to spend, brought in a paltry $10 million as the Air Resources Board sold a tiny fraction of the allowances it was offering.

It could be a one-time adjustment, of course, but those who study the complex market believe that the underlying conditions are more systemic than situational, the most prominent being an increasing concern that the program will expire in 2020.

When the Legislature passed the enabling legislation a decade ago, it was aimed at reducing carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, not only through selling a declining number of allowances at rising prices, but through more specific targets, particularly increasing the level of renewable electric power generation.

Source: The Sacramento Bee

LOL! @MittRomney’s independent candidate search #EpicFail

Mitt Romney failed miserably in his effort to find a third party candidate to run against Trump. Another epic failure for the GOP elites in Washington.

Source: CNN

#Apple’s @Tim_Cook’s Next #EpicFail: #China

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook said Monday that slowing consumer spending in China hasn’t shaken his confidence in the company’s business prospects in the country.

Last week, the Cupertino, Calif., company announced sales in mainland China fell 11% in the first quarter compared with the same three-month period last year. The numbers from a year ago were hard to duplicate because sales of the new big-screen iPhone 6s at the time ran off the charts worldwide.

But the change in trajectory in China was among several disappointing results that spooked investors and sent Apple’s share price tumbling about 10% last week. China, Hong Kong and Taiwan add up to Apple’s second-largest business region after the Americas.

Source: LA Times

More on @TedCruz’s last stand in Cali: “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

“Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

White House hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz looked into the sea of 600 key activists at the California Republican convention Saturday and said, “I have to say, this has been a remarkable week.”

That depends how one defines “remarkable.” His lunchtime speech came at the end of a tumultuous week for the Texas senator, when two 11th-hour moves designed to revive his campaign, in which he badly trails GOP front-runner Donald Trump, were widely panned. Plus Trump crushed him in five East Coast primaries Tuesday.

Now, as the last of the remaining GOP candidates to address the three-day convention Saturday — Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich spoke Friday — Cruz needed to win over the party activists so he could have enough grassroots energy to carry him to victory in California’s June 7 primary.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

#EpicFail: @Ted Cruz and @JohnKasich make one last stand in Cali

While Donald Trump charged into California ahead of the state’s critical primary election in recent days, the candidates who could deny him the nomination stepped up their efforts at the margins on Saturday, marshaling supporters to prepare for a last stand.

In a more focused appeal than Trump offered the previous day, Ted Cruz, the U.S. senator from Texas, promised delegates at the California Republican Party’s convention that he is “all in.” He said he will mount a “battle on the ground, district by district by district” throughout the state.

Five weeks before the June 7 primary, Trump continues to lead Cruz and Kasich among likely Republican voters statewide.

Cruz and Kasich stand to benefit in California from a stop-Trump effort that will work for Cruz in the state’s inland areas, and for Kasich among more moderate Republicans in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Trump swept primaries in another five states last week, and a victory in Indiana on Tuesday – where the race appears close – could further weaken Cruz.

For Kasich, the reception over the weekend was thinner, expectations more modest.

Even Kasich, however, appeared uncertain about his prospects. “I don’t know where we are in this,” he said. “There may not be enough runway for me.”

Source: The Sacramento Bee

Nepotism, self-dealing and dishonesty – @LindaKatehi needs to go

The allegations are stunning: nepotism, self-dealing and dishonesty. And yet UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi defied even the president of the University of California, rather than gracefully leave.

On Wednesday, UC President Janet Napolitano was forced to place Katehi on administrative leave, paying her for 90 days, but also making clear the gravity of the allegations against her.

Katehi has been dogged for most of her 6½-year UC Davis tenure by mistakes caused, regrettably and in large measure, by hubris.

Source: The Sacramento Bee

Federal water bill on the road to nowhere

An ambitious California water bill will pass a key U.S. House committee this week and soon will sail through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on a near party-line vote.

Then it will crash into the U.S. Senate, where negotiators may or may not be able to craft a package acceptable to enough Democrats that it can become law.

It’s a familiar Capitol Hill script, where the ultimate plot twist for California water legislation would be bipartisan compromise that leads to relevant, real-world success.

via California water bill likely to pass U.S. House, then lose steam – Sacramento Bee.