The tiff began when the CPUC “hired outside lawyers as federal and state investigators probed allegations of official influence-peddling and improper deal-making with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and other utilities,” as the San Francisco Chronicle reported. As NBC Bay Area reported, the tab for those attorneys reached $5 million.

That led legislators in Sacramento to cut $5 million from the CPUC’s annual budget in retaliation. “If the commissioners are doing something wrong, they should pony up and say this is what we’re doing wrong and take the brunt of it,” said state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, according to NBC.

Picking a fight

“Lawmakers didn’t specify where the commission had to make budget cuts, however,” the Chronicle added. So the agency — in what seemed to be a calculated effort to make lawmakers look bad — “took the money in part from efforts to implement antiterrorist legislation.” Not by coincidence, CPUC Executive Director Timothy Sullivan chose to postpone implementation of Senate Bill 699, authored by Hill himself. Signed into law last year, the bill “ordered the state’s power providers to draw up security plans to harden the electrical grid against saboteurs,” according to the Chronicle.

Hill’s legislation was no bit of precautionary housekeeping. “The law was passed in response to the sabotage of the PG&E Metcalf substation in April 2013, the day after the Boston Marathon attacks,” as AllGov recalled. In that incident, one or two assailants — officials never determined which — “entered two manholes at the power station just southeast of San Jose and severed fiber optic cables. 911 service was cut to the area and AT&T cellphone service was disrupted. Someone then shot up the place with a high-powered rifle, pumping more than 100 rounds into several transformers. Cooling oil leaked out and the overheated transformers shut down. No one was injured and the disruption of electrical power was minimal. But power had to be rerouted.”

National fears

Although the attack was never formally connected to a terrorist organization, the precision and efficacy of the strike put state and federal officials back sharply on their heels. “Shooting for 19 minutes,” the attackers “surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

“Utility executives and federal energy officials have long worried that the electric grid is vulnerable to sabotage. That is in part because the grid, which is really three systems serving different areas of the U.S., has failed when small problems such as trees hitting transmission lines created cascading blackouts. One in 2003 knocked out power to 50 million people in the Eastern U.S. and Canada for days.”

In a December 2013 regulatory hearing of the Energy and Commerce Committee, then-ranking member Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., tried to raise the alarm. “It is clear that the electric grid is not adequately protected from physical or cyber attacks,” Waxman said, Foreign Policy reported. “He called the shooting at the the San Jose facility ‘an unprecedented and sophisticated attack on an electric grid substation with  military-style weapons. Communications were disrupted. The attack inflicted substantial damage. It took weeks to replace the damaged parts. Under slightly different conditions, there could have been serious power outages or worse.'”

Abuse of power

Given the revelations surrounding the CPUC’s once-secret conduct, its willingness to dawdle on improving grid security seemed likely to backfire. “The lawmakers’ action, while ostensibly tailored to the outside legal bills incurred by the CPUC, was meant as a general rebuke to the commission’s cozy relationships with the utilities it regulates,” AllGov noted. “Critics have long complained about the public’s business being done behind closed doors, but the release of emails last year during a federal court proceeding exposed unethical behavior that could very well prove to be illegal.”

In the 26th Senate district, seven Democrats and one non-partisan candidate are running to replace Democrat State Sen. Ted Lieu. The Torrance moderate is running for the congressional seat of retiring Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Beverly Hills. The district is considered a safe Democratic seat, according to the ATC Partisan Index, which ranks districts based on their competitiveness in the 2014 election.

However, with so many Democrats and no Republicans in the race, law professor Seth Stodder, the lone non-partisan candidate, is almost guaranteed to be the top vote-getter in the first round in June.

Non-partisan Seth Stodder: End one-party rule in California

“In my home state of California, dysfunction has taken the form of one-party rule,” Stodder wrote in recent column at the Huffington Post. “The Republican Party has all but collapsed because extremists have pushed it away from the mainstream. As a result, the Democratic Party and its entrenched interest groups have gained total control.”

He’s already received an endorsement from former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a moderate Republican. Stodder, who cites California’s high tax rates as part of his campaign pitch, won’t be the only candidate courting the district’s independent and Republican voters, who represent a combined 52 percent of registered voters in the district.

Much like GOP gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari, former Writers Guild of America West president Patric M. Verrone has emphasized a message focused on jobs and education. “This region scripted the California Dream,” he told Variety. “From aircraft factories to movie studios, we produced middle-class jobs that bought homes, sent kids to college, and provided families with a secure retirement. Now, we must preserve those jobs and attract new ones to keep the dream alive.”

Dr. Vito Imbasciani’s personal story

Another candidate with cross-over appeal is Dr. Vito Imbasciani, a U.S. Army surgeon who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Although the district lines have changed with the 2011 redistricting, Lieu’s own military service played well in this district, where he won an outright victory in a special election.

Imbasciani’s appeal to independents and Republicans also comes without ceding ground to liberal Democrats. In 2012, President Obama highlighted Imbasciani’s personal story as part of his change to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which prohibited gay and lesbian service members from serving openly.

He’s also got another ace in the bag. A long-time member of the California Medical Association, Imbasciani could benefit from outside support from one of the state’s most active political groups. According to a March 2010 report by the Fair Political Practices Commission, the California Medical Association ranked 23rd on the list of top political spenders from 2000-2010. Unlike other political associations on the list, the CMA gets involved in legislative races. In 2010, the organization spent heavily in support of Dr. Richard Pan’s campaign for the State Assembly.

Amy Howorth: Local leadership, fundraising lead

Not relying on outside fundraising help, Manhattan Beach mayor Amy Howorth holds a commanding early fundraising lead in the race. The former Manhattan Beach school board member has raised at least $290,660, including $200,000 in personal funds. According to state law, candidates can loan a maximum of $100,000, which means that her second six-figure contribution is committed to the campaign.

But don’t think her fundraising lead will stop her from running an effective grassroots campaign.

“I am really excited,” Howorth told the Daily Breeze, the district’s main newspaper. “To me, there is no greater privilege than getting to go door-to-door and meet new people and see what their concerns are, hearing them and coming up with pragmatic solutions.”

Howorth’s years of involvement in local politics will be buoyed by a great ballot title, “Mayor/Education Advocate.” That will help Howorth compete with Santa Monica school board member Ben Allen for the education vote.

Allen, a two-term member of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, has the backing of big-name Democrats, including Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and state Sen. Fran Pavley. Allen’s campaign, which will reportedly show $225,000 cash on hand in its next campaign finance report, appears concentrated on education.

“Of course, remember, that half of the state’s budget is in education,” Allen told the Santa Monica Daily Press. “It’s an enormously important part of the state’s work so all of my education work, both on the school board and teaching, is very relevant to working at the state level.”

Butler, Fluke round out field of Democrats

Rounding out the list of top contenders is former Assemblywoman Betsy Butler, whom many consider a front-runner in the race. Butler represented a partially overlapping Assembly district from 2010 to 2012. After redistricting, in 2012 she lost a bitter intra-party fight to Assemblyman Richard Bloom. In that race, Butler spent more than $2 million, and she’ll have a similar warchest this time around. Her campaign claims to have raised $255,000 so far.

With 46 percent of the district registered Democrat, Butler will face steep competition from fellow Democrat Sandra Fluke. She is best known for her high-profile battle over Obamacare with conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. With few direct ties to the community, she is making her “progressive” ideology a central focus of her candidacy.

“I’ve worked on a myriad of progressive issues,” Fluke lists as her first qualification in a recent Huffington Post blog post. So voters don’t forget her progressive message, she lists as the fourth reason, “Sacramento is where I can most effectively create progressive change.”

With so many candidates in the race, even a lesser-known Democrat, such as attorney Barbi Appelquist, stands a chance. The  two-time cancer survivor says her top priority will be “to make early child education more accessible and affordable for families.”

The 26th Senate district is exclusively in Los Angeles County and spans coastal communities from Santa Monica to the South Bay Peninsula. Democrats hold a commanding edge in voter registration, with independents outnumbering Republicans, according to voter registration information from Political Data, California’s largest provider of voter information. In the 2010 gubernatorial election, Brown carried the region by 22 percentage points.

Fundraising Totals from AroundtheCapitol.com

By Katy Grimes

Reader warning: Only read this story if you have low blood pressure; this could make your head explode.

If you were on-the-fence about man-made climate change, this should finally knock you off and bring you back to reality.

The Hill reports A new Capitol Hill climate task force has appealed to a vast array of groups, “including energy companies, green groups, sports leagues and plenty in-between, to submit suggestions for federal actions to battle global warming.”

Really. This is not a joke. These knuckleheads sent a letter asking for help.

“We can’t delay action any longer. We want to jumpstart action by seeking recommendations on what every part of government can do now,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a statement.

The Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change has discovered “prospects for climate legislation on Capitol Hill are bleak, although it also asks for recommendations on congressional action.”

In other words, Democrats in Washington D.C. are desperately searching for ways to promote climate change, despite all of the evidence showing that it is not a man-made problem, or even a problem, for that matter. Democrats are actually soliciting unions and business for anything the federal government can do, any program it can create, to “reduce carbon pollution and strengthen our resiliency to climate change.”

“Washington is gripped in a barricade of special interests on the urgent issue of climate change,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., one of the leaders of the task force, the Hill found.

“That’s why we want to break the Beltway barricade and ask a broad array of businesses, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions to share their ideas about actions the federal government can take. Climate change is already affecting all of us, and we want to get all ideas on the table to address it,” he said in a statement.

Waxman’s website has the letter displayed, as well as this summary:

The organizations whose ideas are being solicited include:

• The five largest domestic oil companies
• The five largest natural gas companies
• The five largest U.S. coal companies
• The five largest electric utilities
• The five largest financial services companies
• The five largest U.S. auto manufacturers
• The three largest U.S. defense contractors
• The top two U.S. and global reinsurers
• Labor unions representing over fourteen million American workers
• Leading environmental and public health organizations
• Universities and think tanks

Maybe Democrats should just ask former Vice President, and global warming zealot Al Gore, what to do. Although, most people are finally realizing that the climate change hoax has been debunked now that Gore sold his failed television network, Current TV, to oil producers in Qatar, and Al Jazeera, for $500 million.

This week, television host David Letterman, and Today Show host Matt Lauer called Gore out for his hypocrisy.

“On ‘Today,’ Matt Lauer pressed the climate-change activist on whether it was hypocritical for him to sell Current to a network financed by fossil-fuel money,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “And last night it was noted interrogator David Lettermanholding Gore’s feet to the flame. Letterman asked about the stigma attached to Al Jazeera, which particularly during the early years of the Bush administration was seen by many as a platform for anti-American sentiment.”

This is just more proof that America’s elected representatives are out-of-touch windbags, who live in carefully protected bubbles, far away from reality and constituents.

Send a letter or email to Henry Waxman, or call his Congressional offices:  (202) 225-3976, or in Los Angeles, (310) 652-3095 / (323) 651-1040. Express yourself!

By John Seiler

Our colleague Steven Greenhut just wrote for Bloomberg on San Francisco’s hypocrisy on water. Read the whole thing here. Key graphs:

“Consider their response after a group called the Yosemite Restoration Campaign collected enough signatures to put a measure on the Nov. 6 ballot that asks San Franciscans to approve a study on the removal of one of the most controversial dams ever built, the O’Shaughnessy Dam in Yosemite National Park, and for the restoration of the Hetch Hetchy Valley. The initiative would force city officials to figure out a plan for replacing water supplies lost by eliminating one of nine dams controlled by the San Francisco public utility….”

]]> 30645 https://calwatchdog.com/2010/09/22/will-prop-23-kill-american-troops/ Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:17:19 +0000 http://www.calwatchdog.com/?p=9002 SEPT. 22, 2010

By JOHN SEILER

You know a campaign is going ballistic when the terrorism threat is brought up, even in a context seemingly not connected. That has happened with Proposition 23, which would suspend AB32 until unemployment in the state — 12.4 percent in August — dropped to 5.5 percent for a year.

AB32 is the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. It would mandate that California reduce greenhouse gas emissions statewide by 25 percent by 2020. Backers’ usual argument is that it would save the environment globally while creating “green” jobs. Opponents insist that it will cut employment.

Prop. 23 is being backed largely by two Texas-based oil companies, Tesoro and Valero, which own gas stations in California.

The latest argument against Prop. 23 comes from retired Admiral Dennis McGinn, whom the Los Angeles Times described as “a former deputy chief of naval operations who was part of a group of senior military retirees who warned in an influential 2007 report that climate change was a threat multiplier, potentially provoking instability in volatile nations vulnerable to floods, drought and rising sea levels.”

The admiral charged:

This effort by Texas oil companies to repeal California’s clean energy law … will clearly threaten national security. We continue to send out a billion dollars every day to pay for our oil addiction. Some of that finds its way to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We are killing our troops with petro-dollars.

We can expect similar charges, or worse, in the coming weeks — portraying a Mad Max future of battles over scarce oil.

“That’s nonsense,” Robert Michaels told me; he’s a professor of economics at Cal State-Fullerton, co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Contemporary Economic Policy and an expert in energy policy. “This is fundamentally somebody who doesn’t understand international trade or even markets. The big news is that we get about 4 to 5 percent of our oil from the Middle East. It’s not going to matter what happens. If they [in the Middle East] don’t sell to us [America], they’ll sell to someone else. It’s a world market.”

Of the argument made by the admiral about terrorism, Michaels said, “They’re bring out everything they can. That also was Sen. John Kerry’s argument to promote renewables. He also trotted out some generals” to back his position.

A year ago, Kerry was joined by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., to introduce what RenewableEnergyWorld.com described this way:

U.S. Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, today introduced the Kerry-Boxer legislation to create clean energy jobs, reduce pollution, and protect American security by enhancing domestic energy production and combating global climate change.

Sen. Kerry himself said, “Our addiction to foreign oil hurts our economy, helps our enemies and risks our security.  By taking decisive action, we can and will stop climate change from becoming a ‘threat multiplier’ that makes an already dangerous world staggeringly more so.”

Even if Prop. 23 is defeated and AB32 is fully put into effect, greenhouse gases would be reduced by 25 percent. California’s economy is roughly 2 percent of the total global economy. So global greenhouse gases would drop by 0.5 percent.

Energy import reality

It’s worth bringing up two facts not commonly known about energy. The first is from whom America imports oil. Here is the U.S. Department of Energy’s list of top oil importers to the U.S., with my addition of their relation to America:

1. Canada — friendly neighbor.

2. Saudi Arabia — close ally in the Middle East. The U.S. government is working on a contract to sell them $60 billion in arms.

3. Mexico — friendly neighbor.

4. Nigeria — friendly country.

5. Venezuela — leader Hugo Chavez currently is unfriendly, but in reality a minor pest.

6. Iraq — occupied by the United States.

7. Russia — friendly, despite some problems.

8. Angola — friendly.

9. Columbia — friendly neighbor; close military ties with the U.S.

10. Algeria — friendly.

The most conspicuous country that’s not on the list is Iran, with whom relations currently are difficult.

Energy price stability

The second factor most people don’t realize is that oil prices have been remarkably stable since World War II, at an average of one ounce of gold for 15 barrels of oil. As I write on Sept. 21, 2010, gold is $1,272.40 and oil is 73.52 per barrel. So, the ratio is $1,.272.40 / 73.52. Which makes the ratio:  17.31 / 1.

That means oil currently is undervalued.  So its price might rise to restore the 15 / 1 ratio.

What causes confusion is that oil usually is quoted in dollars, even though the dollar’s has lost about 75 percent of its value in the last nine years, going from $275 an ounce to today’s $1,272.40.

What has happened is not that oil has risen, but that the dollar has declined in value due to faulty policies by the Federal Reserve Board. So, our seeming increased dependency on oil, domestic or foreign, is a mirage.

Oil and gas production is one of the oldest and most mature industries around. Minor changes such as whatever happens with AB32 are bubbles on the surface of a tar pit.

Threat multiplier?

The influential report in which Admiral McGinn took part is “National Security and the Threat to Climate Change.” It warned:

Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States. Accordingly, it is appropriate to start now to help mitigate the severity of some of these emergent challenges. The decision to act should be made soon in order to plan prudently for the nation’s security. The increasing risks from climate change should be addressed now because they will almost certainly get worse if we delay.

“Even if all California cars were removed from the road, it would not change global temperatures at all,” Marlo Lewis Jr. told me; a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where he writes on global warming, energy policy, and other public policy issue, he also has served as staff director of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Economic Growth, Natural Resources, and Regulatory Affairs.

He added, “Climate change as a national security threat is greatly exaggerated. I know of no one in the literature who says it will cause wars. At best, ‘threat multiplier’ countries are at risk of civil war, or regional conflict,” not with attacking the United States.

Lewis warned that “the real weakness” in the “threat multiplier” argument is that policies such as AB32 could retard economic growth in Third World countries, thus making it more difficult to deal with global warming and other changes in climate — should they actually occur. He pointed out that climate change in North America or Europe, the two most economically developed areas of the world, would be met with technological and political responses to deal with the crisis, not with war.

Thwarting development

Lewis  pointed to a recent study of his on this issue, “The Department of Defense Should Assess the Security Risks of Climate Change Policies.” He found:

Approximately 90 percent of the growth in global emissions for the remainder of this century is projected to occur in developing countries. Absent breakthroughs that dramatically lower the cost of zero-emission energy, there is no way to achieve the 50 percent global emissions reduction target without suppressing energy consumption and economic growth in the world’s poorest countries. Needless to say, thwarting developing countries’ aspirations for a better life would not promote stability and peace.

Even if developing countries successfully resist pressure to ban coal plants, they might still be harmed by the spillover effects of industrial-country climate policies. Climate policies that chill growth in industrial countries would reduce imports from, and investment in, developing countries.

Another paper on this subject is by Cato Institute scholar Indur Goklani, “Trapped Between the Falling Sky and the Rising Seas.” Lewis summarized its contents as showing that…

[E]ven the most pessimistic assessment of climate change impacts (the UK Stern Review) assumes that developing countries will be much wealthier in 2100 than we are today even after accounting for economic losses due to climate change. They will also have access to superior technologies not available to rich countries today. Consequently, their capacity to adapt to climate change will be significantly greater than ours is today.

A national AB32?

What if the dream of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Admiral McGinn and other opponents of Prop. 23 came true, and AB32 not only survived, but led the way to the adoption of similar legislation at the national level? Similar legislation already has been introduced, the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. It is named, tellingly, the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

Lewis pointed to a study by climatologist Chip Knappenberger, “Climate Impacts of Waxman-Markey (the IPCC-based arithmetic of no gain).” The study found that, if the bill reached its goal of cutting U.S. emissions by 85 percent by 2050, global temperatures (assuming there is global warming) would drop by nine-hundredths of one degree Fahrenheit.

Knappenberger wrote:

We have calculated only the climate impact of the United States acting alone. There is no successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol to bind other countries to greenhouse gas emissions reductions. But, truth be told, the only countries of any real concern are China and India. The total increase in China’s emissions since the year 2000 is 50 percent greater than the total increase from rest of the world combined and is growing by leaps and bounds. And consider that India carbon dioxide emissions haven’t started to dramatically increase yet. But it is poised to do so, and an Indian official recently stated that “It is morally wrong for us to agree to reduce [carbon dioxide emissions] when 40 percent of Indians do not have access to electricity.”

Wrapping up all these studies, Lewis told me:

To put this another way, even if climate chnage were a security threat, the California program would provide no protection unless China, India, and the rest of the developing world adopt it too. Adm. McGinn’s unstated assumption is that if California leads, the rest of the world will follow. But leading by example was supposedly what the Kyoto Protocol would do. Yet at last year’s Copenhagen conference, developing countries as a bloc continued to reject any agreement that would subject them to emission limitations.

The last refuge

Michaels brought up the phrase of English writer Samuel Johnson, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Dr. Johnson was the ultimate intellectual British patriot. But he meant that, when scoundrels can’t argue an issue on the facts, they turn to patriotism.

Michaels said, “This is as good an example of that as any.”

John Seiler, an editorial writer with The Orange County Register for 20 years, is a reporter and analyst for CalWatchDog.com. Although not rising to the rank of admiral, he served in the U.S. Army from 1978-82 as a Russian linguist and intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army. His email: writejohnseiler@gmail.com.