AB32 vs. jobs

The nonpartisan — and, in my experience, professional and objective — Legislative Analyst confirms that AB32 will kill jobs. AB32 is the 2006 bill that’s supposed to cut greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020. It’s called the “Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006,” and was passed before the Climategate scandal showed human-caused global warming to be as scientifically based as Piltdown Man.

The LAO wrote:

On balance, however, we believe that the aggregate net jobs impact in the near term is likely to be negative, even after recognizing that many of the SP’s programs phase in over time. Reasons for this include the various economic dislocations, behavioral adjustments, investment requirements, and certain other factors that the SP would entail. In the longer term, its net effect on jobs — potentially either positive or negative — is unknown and will depend on a variety of factors.

Predictably, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s counting on Piltdown Man — excuse me, global warming — and AB32 to be his legacy, rejected the LAO’s conclusion. Also sprach Arnold:

I travel up and down the state, unlike others that only have theoretical opinions,” the governor said during a brief sidewalk news conference after giving a speech at a downtown Sacramento hotel. “I see first hand … that all kinds of (green industry) places want to expand, all we have to do is give them the incentives, the tax incentives and the job creation packages. I know that AB 32 will create jobs.

As if his Potemkin tours could refute the LAO’s sensible analysis. And as to “tax incentives,” has he forgotten his record $13 billion tax increases?

Meanwhile, in the real California, unemployment rose to 12.5% in January, while national employment dropped a little to 9.7%. Thus the Jobs Gap, as I have called it — the difference between U.S. and California unemployment — rose to 2.8 percentage points. That’s way up from a 2.2 percentage-point Jobs Gap just two months earlier, in November 2009.

AB32 is, along with tax increases and a general anti-business climate, gutting the state’s economy. Yet Arnold thinks all is well. He seems to be living in the fantasy world of one of his action films.

A year from now, he’ll be skiing in Gstaad while tens of thousands of Californians, because of his beloved AB32, freeze in unemployment lines.

— John Seiler