New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s call for his state’s biggest government pension fund to

The Common Fund – New York’s pension fund for state and local public sector employees – has $200 billion in holdings. Cuomo, a Democrat who is expected to run for president in 2020, said it was time to craft a “de-carbonization roadmap” for the fund, which “remains heavily invested in the energy economy of the past.”

New York City Comptroller Scott Stinger agreed with Cuomo and called for changes in the investment policies of the city’s five pension funds, with holdings of about $190 billion.

The announcements were hailed on social media as a reflection of the mission statement of the 2015 Paris Accord outlining international efforts to address global warming.

It’s possible Brown could use his State of the State speech later this month to reveal his call for CalPERS and CalSTRS climate-change divestment. The pension giants have already been forced to end investments in coal companies because of a 2015 law signed by the governor, selling off shares worth less than $250 million, a tiny fraction of their overall portfolios.

But selling off stakes in energy companies would be a much more impactful event. Giant firms like ExxonMobil are among the most common holdings of pension funds around the world.

Some unions worry divestment will hurt CalPERS finances

And while the California Democratic Party has been largely unified behind Brown’s and the state Legislature’s efforts dating back to 2006 to have California lead the fight against global warming, such unanimity is unlikely should Brown follow Cuomo’s lead because some public employee unions are worried about divestment damaging the finances of CalPERS and CalSTRS.

As of July, CalPERS had $323 billion in assets and said it was 68 percent funded – meaning it had about $150 billion in unfunded liabilities. As of March, CalSTRS had $202 billion in assets and said it was 64 percent funded, leaving unfunded liabilities of about $100 billion.

CalPERS’ steady increase in rates it charges local agencies to provide pensions and the heavy costs facing school districts because of the Legislature’s 2014 CalSTRS’ bailout have taken a heavy toll on government budgets.

Corona Police Lt. Jim Auck, treasurer of the Corona Police Officers Association, has testified to the CalPERS board on several occasions, imploring members to focus on making money with investments, not making political statements.

According to a July account in the Sacramento Bee, Auck said public safety is hurt when police departments must spend ever-more money on pensions.

“The CalPERS board has a fiduciary responsibility to the membership to deliver the best returns possible,” Auck testified. “Whatever is delivering the return they need, that’s where they need to put our money.”

The International Union of Operating Engineers, which represents 12,000 state maintenance workers, has taken the same position, according to the Bee.

In New York, Gov. Cuomo also is not assured of success. The sole trustee of the Common Fund is State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. While he agreed to work with Cuomo in establishing a committee to consider possible changes in its investment strategies, his statement pointedly emphasized that there were no present plans to change the fund’s approach to energy stocks.

While DiNapoli cited his support for reducing global warming and the Paris Accord, his statement concluded with a sentence emphasizing his priorities: “I will continue to manage the pension fund in the long-term best interests of our members, retirees and the state’s taxpayers.”

Among the bills that were vetoed at that time were two that would have repealed sales taxes on diapers and tampons. Both measures passed unanimously, but the governor wanted to assure that new spending-related measures didn’t lead to deficits. So the authors of those two measures are back again this year – but this time they are addressing the revenue issue.

The Common Cents Tax Reform Act, Assembly Bill 479, would “exempt diapers, tampons, pads and other basic necessities from California’s sales tax,” according to a statement last week from its authors. The February version of the bill would have exempted sales taxes from the sale, storage and use of various physician-prescribed medicines, but was amended to target diapers and feminine products.

To deal with the governor’s concerns, its co-authors (Assembly members Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, and Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego) want to raise taxes to offset the tax cut. The bill would increase the excise tax by $1.20 per gallon on hard liquor that is 100 proof and and by $2.40 a gallon for liquors that are more than 100 proof.

They estimate the tax increase will add about 1.5 cents per gallon to the typical hard-liquor serving and say that it’s a modest increase, but the tax rate would be boosted by more than 36 percent – raising it from $3.30 a gallon to $4.50 a gallon. The state’s excise taxes, however, would remain the same on the sales of beer and wine.

“Common sense is that liquor is a choice and a luxury and human biology is not,” said Garcia, who authored the tampon-tax bill last year. “There is no happy hour for menstruation. Our tax code needs to reflect the fact that it’s not OK to tax women for being born women.” Gonzalez Fletcher, who had authored the diaper-tax measure, depicted the matter as one of “babies over booze.” Because the bill requires a tax increase, it will need two-thirds supermajority support in the Legislature.

But opponents of the legislation caution against using the tax code to favor some goods over others. “Taxing drinks to reduce the taxes on other consumer goods is folly – not least because retailers will mark up diapers and feminine care products to their current price,” said Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow of the R Street Institute in Washington, D.C., and author of the 2016 book, “Moonshine: A Global History.”

“Drink taxes should only cover the social costs they produce – not expenses attributable to normal bodily functions like defecation and menstruation,” he added. “What’s next – taxing drinks to pay for toilet paper and fingernail clippers?”

This is likely to become a partisan issue. Some California Republicans supported previous efforts to reduce taxes on diapers and tampons, figuring any tax reduction is a good thing. Likewise, many Republicans generally took issue with the governor’s statement equating tax cuts as spending. If a cut is the same thing as a spending hike, then it implies the government – rather than individuals – is the steward of all income. But they appreciate Brown’s insistence the budget remain balanced, which means any diversion of revenue has to be made up somewhere else.

California Democrats are jumping on a national “gender equity” campaign designed to reduce the prices of feminine products and other necessities. For instance, the Washington Post reported that New York’s Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo last year signed a law exempting sales tax from tampons and Washington, D.C.’s Democratic mayor signed a law that also removes the tax from diapers. Cuomo blasted the tax as regressive – meaning it hurts the poor the most – and called it a “matter of social and economic justice.”

Assembly Bill 479 isn’t the only recent effort to rearrange the tax code to favor in a targeted manner. “The Teacher Recruitment and Retention Act of 2017,” introduced by Democratic state Sens. Henry Stern, D-Agoura Hills, and Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton, would exempt public-school teachers from paying state income tax on their teacher salaries if they stay in the field for at least five years. The goal is to address a shortage of classroom teachers.

The diaper/tampon exemption would be revenue-neutral because of the corresponding booze-tax increase, but the teacher exemption is estimated to cost more than $617 million a year. Although the state’s highly progressive tax code already is filled with special privileges for some and higher tax rates for others, critics worry that this new spate of tax exemptions could spark a frenzy of similar bills, and the slow expansion of state tax exemptions from one favored group to another.

When Gov. Brown vetoed seven tax bills last year, he noted that their cumulative effect would be to reduce revenues by around $300 million. He cautioned about cutting such revenues “when the state’s budget remains precariously balanced.”

Although there’s disagreement on the likelihood of new deficits, there’s little question that California’s budget remains as precarious as ever. That gives the teacher exemption a huge obstacle – but it’s unclear what the governor might do if AB479 passes now that supporters of the tampon and diaper exemptions identified a tax hike to make up for lost revenue.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

New York’s decision to ban fracking for health reasons could reverberate beyond the state, bolstering other efforts to limit the controversial method of drilling for oil and natural gas.

While two dozen U.S. municipalities and at least two countries, Bulgaria and France, have also adopted bans, states have been slower to act. Fracking opponents say New York, which surprised them Wednesday with the boldest move of any state so far, will change that.

“It definitely has a national political impact … It really has a domino effect,” says Deb Nardone, director of the Sierra Club’s Keeping Dirty Fuels in the Ground initiative.

She and other activists say the measure could intensify pressure to roll back nascent fracking plans in California, Illinois, Maryland, and North Carolina, and to help secure a permanent ban in the Delaware River Basin, which supplies drinking water for nearly a thousand community water systems in the mid-Atlantic region. It could also buoy efforts in various state legislatures, many of which return for a new session in January.

Anti-fracking measure succeeds in Central Valley

There is little question that California greens will mount an intense new effort to ban fracking. They were intensely disappointed in Gov. Jerry Brown’s seeming agnosticism on whether fracking was bad for the environment when a compromise state law was passed in 2013. Rules stemming from that law will go into effect in July 2015.

Greens’ success last month in getting rural San Benito County to ban fracking, however, could lead to a statewide ballot initiative — not to a new fight with Brown, Republican lawmakers and oil lobbyists over legislation in Sacramento. The victory of the ban in the poor, mostly Hispanic, heavily Democratic county was unsurprising, especially because of the local arguments that suggested fracking would take even more water away from the Central Valley.

A silver bullet to boost Dem turnout?

But one element of the ban’s victory was extremely heartening for Democratic strategists in a constant struggle to find new ways to excite the base and increase turnout. This is from The Los Angeles Times:

Fracking opponents here were vastly outspent by oil companies that fought a measure to ban well stimulation techniques such as fracking, acidizing and steam injection, along with conventional drilling in some areas. With just $130,000, the homegrown campaign managed to draw 57% of San Benito County voters to the polls in a low-excitement midterm election. They held off oil companies that spent nearly $2 million opposing the initiative.

If fear of fracking is such a powerful tool to generate Democratic turnout in a small agricultural county, imagine its potential power to get out college students and marginal voters in a big urban area. Democratic officials are likely to support placement of an anti-fracking measure of some sort on the November 2016 ballot even if they think it goes too far or even if they, like the Obama administration, believes fracking is just another heavy industry.

This strategy isn’t just likely in California but in states across the nation.

The Northeast has been blanked by record cold and snow that makes it easier for us to put up with California’s high taxes, absurd regulations, absurdist politicians and preposterously high housing costs. The BBC just reported:

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called it a “historic event”, while a local official dubbed the storm “gigantic”.

Some places, including the city of Buffalo, are already underneath 5ft of snow, and eight people have died in New York state.

Weather-related deaths were also reported in New Hampshire and Michigan.

Freezing temperatures have continued in many parts of the US, with heavy disruption to travel.

The new storm blast spread across New York early on Thursday, bringing thunder, lightning and the spectre of several more feet of snow.

“It’s a force of nature, a massive force of nature,” Deputy Erie County Commissioner Richard Tobe told reporters.

“We’re prepared, but the storm is gigantic and persistent.”

Just two years ago, the same Gov. Cuomo was cited by New York Magazine as one of the “Reasons to Love New York“: “Because Our Governor Isn’t Afraid to Talk About Global Warming.” The article read:

“There were more urgent matters, like restoring electricity to millions. But Governor Andrew Cuomo stepped back for a few minutes to confront the ominous big picture. “People don’t want to accept climate change,” he said, sitting in his midtown office 36 hours after Sandy had ruinously flooded his state. “But it is real. I believe it’s been coming for twenty years. We’ve denied it, and I’ve heard the same thing—‘No, it’s once in a lifetime. It’s never going to happen again.’ ” A disgusted shake of the head. “The frequency is going like this.” An asymptotic line traced by his right hand. “My father was governor twelve years. I can count on one hand the number of weather incidents he had. I’ve been here 22, 23 months, and I think I’ve had more than my father already.” A Democratic politician in New York calling global warming a reality hardly qualifies as a profile in courage.”

Of course, although NY Mag uses “global warming,” Cuomo uses the P.C. phrase “climate change,” which uses any change in the weather — anything at all — as an excuse to increase government control and tyranny over people, while snow-shoveling massive profits to climate-alarmism manipulators like Al Gore.

At this point, Gore, Cuomo and other climate doomsters seem to think the 2004 movie “The Day After Tomorrow” — in which global warming absurdly causes global cooling — was a documentary.

UPDATE: Some Drudge Report headlines:

ALL-TIME SNOWFALL RECORD?

141 year old cold record falls in FL…

Gov. Jerry Brown was not amused this past February when Texas Gov. Rick Perry made a four-day recruiting trip to California, hosting meet and greets with CEOs and other business executives in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Orange County.

Perry invited the CEOs and execs to relocate their companies to the business-friendly Lone Star State. If they were unready to completely abandon California, he told them, they could expand their operations to such Texas cities as Austin, Houston or Dallas.

Brown downplayed radio spots featuring Perry, a Republican, which aired in selected California media markets. “It’s not a serious story,” Brown, a Democrat, told reporters at a Sacramento business event.

“It’s not a burp,” said Brown, flippantly. “It’s barely a fart.”

By contrast, California’s governor hasn’t been nearly as dismissive of a television commercial promoting New York’s business climate that aired here in the Golden State during December.

“With over $1 billion in new incentives and tax breaks, this is an economy that launched over 50,000 new businesses last year alone,” the TV spot boasted. “Find out how to move or grow your business,” it concluded.

Now, the commercial didn’t directly mention the Golden State (perhaps out of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s deference to Brown, a fellow Democrat). But it almost certainly was a shot across California’s bow.

Indeed, like California, New York long has had a reputation for onerous businesses taxes. In fact, in the Tax Foundation’s 2014 State Business Tax Climate Index, the Golden State ranks third worst, while the Empire State ranks worst.

Tax cuts

But while Sacramento continues to saddle California businesses with ever-higher taxes, Albany has launched a bold new tax cutting initiative that will make New York State a hotbed for startup businesses and a magnet for out-of-state companies seeking a low-tax environment in which to grow their business.

START-UP New York (State University of New York Tax-free Areas to Revitalize and Transform Upstate New York), as the initiative is called, is meant to transform SUNY campuses into tax-free communities for new and expanding businesses. It is the signature achievement of Cuomo’s governorship.

Businesses that locate in those communities will pay no state taxes for 10 years. No income tax. No state or local business or corporate taxes. No sales tax. No property tax. No franchise fees.

It’s not hard to imagine that more than a few California CEOs have seen the START-UP New York commercials on cable and have given some thought to taking the Empire State up on its offer of ten years of no taxes.

Some of those CEOS could be heads of California-based Fortune 500 companies so fed up with Golden State’s onerous business tax climate that they just might be persuaded to move their companies cross country to New York.

Some California gun owners say they’re confused about the new gun laws that will take effect in 2014. 

The law causing the most confusion doesn’t take effect in 2014.  It will ban lead ammunition for hunting when it takes effect in 2016.  

At the Just Guns store in Sacramento, Troy Alvarez was picking up three boxes of ammunition for target shooting over Christmas break.  The ammo is legal, but the magazine he currently has for his pistol will be illegal July 1st.  A new law bans magazines with more than ten bullets.

“I’m not real familiar of, with the new law as it applies to maybe grandfathered pistols and clip size,” Alvarez says.

All sales of ten-round clips will be illegal January 1st.

The group Gun Owners of California says it will likely take legal action to prevent  enforcement of the law. 

Also in January, people who buy long guns must register them and pass a safety test.

New York state has imposed such a law on long guns for several years now. When it further tightened gun laws with its “SAFE” law, the gun registry lists were used to go out and seize the formerly legal guns of citizens. Gov. Andrew Cuomo promised the seizures wouldn’t happen because of the law. But the Blaze reports:

Despite promises from the president and a host of other politicians who are pushing for more gun control that nobody is coming for your guns, the confiscation of guns and gun permits has apparently started in some form in New York State. One attorney representing several people who have been forced to surrender their guns spoke with TheBlaze and alerted us to some disturbing facts:

• Gun owners are losing their 2nd Amendment rights without due process.
• HIPAA Laws are likely being compromised and the 4th and 5th Amendments are being violated in some of these cases

How did confiscation start happening so quickly? Apparently the gun grabbing was triggered by something inside the NY SAFE Act — New York’s new gun law — that has a provision apparently mandating confiscation of weapons and permits if someone has been prescribed psychotropic drugs.

People considered “insane” include those who have been prescribed anti-anxiety drugs. Such drugs also are part of some dieting regimens. So someone needing to lose a few pounds after holiday feasting could end up with his guns seized.

The trip, which kicks off on Monday, is the second legislative junket to Cuba organized by Anderson this year. During the Legislature’s spring break, eight lawmakers participated in a similar trip that included a tour of a castle, afternoon salsa lessons and rooftop cocktails, among other activities, according to Assemblyman Katcho Achadjian, R-San Luis Obispo, the only legislator to speak publicly about the trip.

The legislative junket to Cuba has been criticized by ethics experts for conflict of interest issues as well as the questionable practice of setting up a nonprofit organization that is “a wholly owned subsidiary” of a lobbying firm.

Assemblywoman Campos confirmed as participant

It is unclear how many legislators or their staff are participating in this week’s trip. At least one legislator has been identified as a participant. The San Jose Mercury-News reports that Assemblywoman Nora Campos, D-San Jose, and her husband, Neil Struthers, are going.

“It’s an opportunity to develop economic and trade ties,” Campos spokesman Steve Harmon told the Mercury-News by email.

However, an ethics expert said this type of trip gives lobbyists an unfair level of influence.

“It absolutely raises ethical questions when lobbyists travel with elected officials,” Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor who specializes in ethics, told CalWatchdog.com in April. “We want elected officials to hear from all of us, not just those who are taking trips.”

The trip’s price tag, according to the invitation, is $4,175 per person with a $500 supplement for single occupancy. But legislators won’t be paying for it out of their own pockets. A spokesman for Campos told the Mercury-News that the San Jose Democrat would use campaign funds to pay for the trip.

Under the California Political Reform Act, legislators and their staffs cannot accept gifts worth more than $10 per month from a registered lobbyist. However, campaign accounts provide legislators with an easy vehicle for circumventing these strict limits on lobbyist gifts. Lobbyists can direct their clients to donate to a member’s campaign account. Then the member can use the campaign account to pay for personal expenses, including foreign travel.

Nonprofit has links to lobbying firm

In order to comply with the State Department’s ban on travel to Cuba, the trip was arranged by Californians Building Bridges, a shadowy nonprofit organization controlled by Anderson. The organization’s website was registered by an employee of Platinum Advisors in August 2010, who provided contact information for Platinum Advisors.

The nonprofit’s board of directors includes Anderson as well as Holly Fraumeni and Melinda McClain, both of whom are registered lobbyists with Platinum Advisors. Only two other individuals serve on the board of directors, Kevin Murray, a former state senator and lobbyist, and James Bruner, the director of Orrick’s Governmental Affairs Practice Group in Sacramento.

That information, Levinson previously suggested, raised the question of whether “the nonprofit is a wholly owned subsidiary of the lobbying firm.”

More evidence of lobbying firm directing trip

The latest trip provides even more evidence that Anderson has used the nonprofit organization as a subsidiary of his lobbying business. In June 2013, Anderson invited lawmakers on the trip on behalf of “Platinum Advisors” and signed the invitation on Platinum Advisors letterhead.

“On behalf of Platinum Advisors and in partnership with Californians Building Bridges, we are excited to invite you to join us on an upcoming trip to Havana, Cuba during December 2-7, 2013,” Anderson wrote on Platinum Advisors letterhead. “In 2010, I founded an exciting nonprofit organization, Californians Building Bridges (CBB), which gained independent approval from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control in 2011 to travel to Cuba and coordinate educational exchanges.”

Nevertheless, despite overwhelming evidence that the nonprofit is a subsidiary of the lobbying firm, Californians Building Bridges denies that lobbying will occur on the trip.

Jason Kinney, a spokesman for the nonprofit, told the Los Angeles Times that no policy issues are discussed. “These are nongovernmental educational exchanges with the people of Cuba — which means that no policy issues are discussed and certainly none relating to anything going on in Sacramento,” Kinney said in interview with the newspaper earlier this year.

83% of nonprofit funds spent on travel

Federal tax documents, filed by the organization on May 28, 2013, for the 2012 tax year, claim that the group’s primary purpose is to support other charitable endeavors. In 2012, $541,363, or 83 percent of the organization’s overall expenses, was spent on travel.

“The organization’s primary purpose is to assist other charitable organizations in expediting projects, setting priorities, and achieving goals,” the group stated as its charitable mission on tax forms for the past two years. “Californians Building Bridges will develop humanitarian programs that help volunteers and corporate partners alike make a useful connection to a world in need.”

Despite its tax-exempt status, Californians Building Bridges has little to show in the way of charitable activities. Californians Building Bridges, according to its most recent tax return, provided no financial support to domestic or international charities.

In fact, Californians Building Bridges, which spent $652,200 last year, has never spent a penny in support of grants or contributions to other charities, according to the two tax returns that are publicly available. Yet the organization’s mission, according to its tax return, listed as a priority making “one-time financial grants and donations of supplies and materials to charitable organizations that lack their own resources or do not qualify for assistance through existing agencies and organizations in their region.”

Darius Anderson: Sacramento’s ‘best connected lobbyist’

According to state disclosure reports, Anderson’s firm is the lobbyist of record for 68 government organizations and special interest groups, including Anthem Blue Cross, AT&T, California Thoroughbred Breeders Association, Clear Channel Communications, Station Casinos, Sutter Health, United Food and Commercial Workers, UPS, and the counties of Alameda, Napa, Orange, San Bernardino and Ventura.

In 2009, Anderson was voted by state legislators as the “best connected lobbyist,” according to a survey of all 120 legislators conducted by Capitol Weekly.

In 2010, Anderson and Platinum Advisors “paid $500,000 to settle claims by New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo stemming from a yearlong investigation into so-called pay-to-play practices in city and state pension fund investment partnerships,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

As of Sept. 12, seven of the eight legislative members on the spring-break trip to Cuba have been identified. Attendees include: Achadjian, Assembly Majority Leader Toni Atkins, D-San Diego; Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego; Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles; Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley; state Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello; and state Sen. Cathleen Galgiani, D-Livingston.

Additional background information, past coverage

California Building Bridges 2012 tax return

Platinum Advisors 2013 Invitation Page 1

Platinum Advisor 2013 Invitation Page 2

CalWatchdog: Legislators take secret trip to Cuba with Sacramento lobbyist

CalWatchdog: FPPC shuns investigation of CA legislators’ Cuba trip

CalWatchdog: Two more legislators ID’d who went on lobbyist-organized Cuba junket

LA Times: Six California lawmakers took trip to Cuba with Capitol lobbyist

CalWatchdog: 7th legislator on Cuba junket identified

San Jose Mercury-News: Nora Campos’ junket to Cuba

By Chris Reed

As I have noted many times in recent months, the Obama administration dismisses claims that hydraulic fracturing — the use of underground water cannons to free up oil and natural gas reserves — is an environmental nightmare. This has been true since the president’s first year in office. This is incredibly relevant to California, given that we could benefit enormously from “fracking” were it allowed to proceed and release the energy in the Monterey Shale.

But it took four years for this truth to finally appear in the pages of The Los Angeles Times — and even then it was in an op-ed, not in the news pages, which would rather not share with LAT readers the Obama administration’s gung-ho support of fracking’s safety.

Now it is time to start calling out California journalists by name for their refusal to provide the key context that the administration of the greenest president in history says fracking is just another heavy industry that can be made safe with proper regulation.

He writes about fracking safety, never mentions Obama stand

Meet Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star. He’s written many times about fracking, which could soon be big in eastern Ventura County if state regulators don’t get in the way. His latest piece — the link is from the Contra Costa Times, which doesn’t have a paywall, unlike the Star — is about how fracking scare tactics have fared in California.

“There is evidence to suggest that Californians are not so different from New Yorkers in their apprehension over fracking. In fact, a USC poll of Californians last month and a Siena College poll of New Yorkers this month revealed nearly identical public sentiment: 45 percent opposition here, 44 percent opposition in New York, and 37 percent support in both states.

“‘In New York, we are winning,’ Mark Schlosberg of Food and Water Watch told the crowd in San Jose last week. He said activists there have made it clear to lawmakers that there are political consequences to supporting fracking and that they’ve also dogged Gov. Mario Cuomo to keep up the pressure to maintain the moratorium.

“‘In California, fracking is virtually unregulated,’ he said. ‘Gov. Jerry Brown could really make a big difference.’

“Except there’s this: When asked publicly last month about his thoughts on fracking, Brown’s response was that while there are issues to examine, it ‘could be a fabulous economic opportunity.'”

Context? Not from Timm. Federal views of fracking disregarded

But did Herdt mention the Obama administration’s upbeat depictions of fracking’s safety? Did he make the obvious point that this might be why Gov. Brown is sounding positive about fracking? Did he cite the stands of the president’s energy secretary, interior secretary and EPA chief, all of whom deride fracking alarmism?

Nah.

Timm Herdt, for whatever reason, has decided that’s just not relevant to his coverage of fracking in California.

Incredible.

By John Seiler

Well, we still enjoy better weather. But our colleague Steven Greenhut makes the case that California is worse even than New York State under Gov. Andrew “Worse Even Than Pops Mario” Cuomo:

Whenever a free-market research or business group releases a “best and worst” list of states, my eye goes straight to the bottom: To see whether California is last or was edged out for the lowest rank by one of the other mismanaged liberal bastions. Illinois seems to exist to boost the self-esteem of Californians.

I can raise a glass of zinfandel to California’s great victory in the Mercatus Center’s recent “Freedom in the 50 States” study. The state didn’t place last. That distinction went to New York, thanks to its highest-in-the-nation tax rates and entrepreneur-crushing economic regulations. I owe an apology to residents of the Land of Lincoln.

For all the study’s detail about tax rates and regulation, this information jumps out as the most telling about New York: “9.0 percent of the state’s 2000 population, on net, left the state for another state between 2000 and 2011, the highest such figure in the nation.” Moving is the surest sign of dissatisfaction, especially when people relocate from a state that has long been an economic and cultural magnet.

Californians talk incessantly about high-tailing it to Texas or Nevada, yet New Yorkers flee at about double our rate. Migration numbers aside, I would still rank the Golden State as the Most Hopeless State. There are other studies that bolster that case, including Chief Executive magazine’s “2013 Best and Worst States for Business” that places California dead last, with New York in 49th place.

Read the rest here.

By Chris Reed

California Attorney General Kamala Harris is among the many Americans of all political persuasions who are outraged that few are taking the fall for the grotesque irresponsibility that led to the housing bubble, its collapse, and the recession of the past six years.

She sued quasi-federal mortgage-issuing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in December over their foreclosures of 12,000 homes in California. Last week, she targeted Standard & Poor’s over the credit-ratings agency’s high marks for many firms involved in the bubble.

But Harris, who is half black and half Indian-American, is doing more than a little grandstanding here. Like most politicians and most of the media, she chooses to ignore the coarse racial politics that led both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton to push policies that inevitably inflated the housing bubble. It’s the uncomfortable back story that is usually ignored in favor of the tidy narrative of evil Wall Street and supine regulators.

On June 17, 2002, Bush announced a drive to get 5.5 million minorities out of apartments and into their own homes. The primary method amounted to affirmative-action lending — eliminating down payments and loosening income requirements. As The New York Times noted in a 2008 analysis, Bush’s primary means of achieving this end was insisting that “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet ambitious new goals for low-income lending.”

Against this backdrop, Harris’ insinuation that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were racially predatory looks grossly demagogic. This is from a Huffington Post account of her lawsuit:

“Harris also called on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to disclose whether they have complied with civil rights laws protecting minorities and members of the Armed Forces against unlawful convictions and foreclosures.”

So if affirmative action backfires, the quasi-government agency pursuing affirmative action under pressure from the president faces civil liability?

Clinton’s role in inflating the housing bubble was every bit as direct as Bush 43’s. In 1997, he appointed Andrew Cuomo, the current New York governor, to be secretary of housing and urban development. Cuomo had little banking or lending expertise, but he had a broad banking and lending agenda. Veteran journalist Wayne Barrett laid out his folly in a 2008 analysis in Village Voice:

“Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country’s current crisis. He took actions that — in combination with many other factors — helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded ‘kickbacks’ to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. …

“Perhaps the only domestic issue George Bush and Bill Clinton were in complete agreement about was maximizing home ownership, each trying to lay claim to a record percentage of homeowners, and both describing their efforts as a boon to blacks and Hispanics. HUD, Fannie, and Freddie were their instruments, and, as is now apparent, the more unsavory the means, the greater the growth.…

“Cuomo … did more to set these forces of unregulated expansion in motion than any other secretary and then boasted about it, presenting his initiatives as crusades for racial and social justice … .”

Somehow I doubt this coarse and depressing history will be mentioned by Kamala Harris, who is an utterly conventional California Democrat despite her exotic background and moralistic rhetoric. Wall Street did behave with gross irresponsibility, Standard & Poor’s did fail as a credit-ratings analyst, and thousands of other white-collar types did behave unethically. But the ethical failing that started it all was bipartisan racial pandering dressed up as the pursuit of “social justice.”

The result here in the Golden State:

“Latino and African-American homeowners in California have experienced foreclosure rates 2.3 and 1.9 times that of non-Hispanic white borrowers.  Latino borrowers alone make up 48 percent of all foreclosures.”

That is from a 2010 report by the California branch of the Center for Responsible Lending. How perverse that from 1997 to 2006, the Center for Irresponsible Lending was at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.