June Primary Will Decide Environmental Balance in Legislature

Wow, thanks for the detailed analysis.

There is also a good environmental vote in the Governor's race. Mike Strimling is currently
involved in litigation as an attorney against toxic polluters. As a matter of fact, Mike Strimling was in Court twice this week in cases against Chevron and General Chemical Corporations for their toxic spills in Richmond, California. Mike's Sierra Club
card says that he has been a member since 1989, but he was a member before that (in 1986-88 he was in the Peace Corps). He did not just become an
"environmentalist" to be elected. Mike Strimling has been a consistent yearly contributor and member of Earthjustice, the League of Conservation Voters, NRDC, The Nature Conservancy, EPIC, Greenpeace, The California State Park Foundation, National Wildlife Federation, American Farmlands Trust, Defenders of Wildlife, World Wildlife Federation, TURN and other
similar groups for all of his adult life.

In fact, Mike Strimling was an intern at Natural Resources Defense Counsel during law school 25 years ago, analyzing and writing a report that was used
to show the ridiculous economics of nuclear plants in the WPSS system. Three years later those nuclear plants were abandoned because of those economics (there still is no solution for nuclear waste, and it looks like
we are going to soon rediscover that the cost of building a "safe" nuclear plant is much higher than estimated or simply impossible). Mike has litigated cases based on the California Environmental Quality Act. He worked successfully to save virgin rainforest timber from a Japanese lumbering concession
while a legal advisor to the Solomon Islands in the US Peace Corps.

Mike Strimling has a strong environmental plank in his platform. He has a zero tolerance view for cutting the small amount of remaining old growth, or for pollution of water sources. He is against dams on wild rivers. Further, Mike's proposal to tax corporations on the true value of their property will help control urban sprawl. Many properties in existing cities and suburbs are allowed to sit vacant or not used for housing,
because corporations have such a low property tax burden on old properties that they do not sell for uses such as needed housing. Because of this, new
developers go after prime open space land for suburban sprawl.

We do not emphasize the environmental angle of this campaign because all of the Democrats are talking like environmentalists - that is not our strong
difference with them. Arnold also talks a good line but his score from the California League of Conservation Voters was 58%, whereas most
Democrats easily did better. We would be at or near 100% on the League's positions. We had some of the same doubts that Westly has expressed about Angelides' high level of dependence on developer contributors. That was one reason Mike got in this race, to be a true environmentalist, but we'd like to take them both at their word. In any event, you'll know that with Mike
Strimling, you have such a true environmental activist.

On the issue of energy and fuels, there are some overarching policies in America and California which prevent real change on use of fossil fuel. Although California has strict emissions standards, Californians have been resistant to measures that will cut down on use of fossil fuel. In particular, California's gas tax, at 18 cents, is one of the lower taxes in the nation - Wisconsin charges 29.1 cents, Rhode Island 30 cents, Montana 27 cents. Roughly two-thirds of States are over 20 cents a gallon.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/TaxFacts/TFDB/TFTemplate.cfm?Docid=434&Topic2id=90

The federal tax is also only 18 cents. There was a large hue and cry when Clinton and Gore wanted to raise that by 4 cents. Of course, when Mike was campaigning for Paul Simon, in 1988, many were predicting we would be in exactly this situation today (of out-of-control energy costs and dependence on foreign sources) and calling then for a 50 cent or 1 dollar increase in the gas tax to deal with the deficit. Of course, Japan and European countries have long been faced with the national security dilemna of having little or no fossil fuels of their own, and their taxes have generally been on the order of $3 or $4 per gallon for decades. This encourages fuel economy, development of alternatives (Germany is leaping ahead in solar panels) and the use and construction of transit and rail service. America passed the point of having its own energy resources in approximately 1970, but its tax structure has never caught up with that fact. Our taxes still reflect an overall philosophy of easy and cheap and plentiful oil, which also raises our spoiling the atmosphere with fossil fuels. Ergo, global warming. Of course, we pay (in our trillions of dollars in the defense budget, much higher per capita than other countries) to preserve the illusion of cheap oil. When we add the defense budget into the cost of gasoline, we arguably pay more than Europeans. If we taxed use of petroleum, we could reduce our dependence on it, reduce our defense budget and need for our young men and women to be killed, wounded or traumatized to defend our oil sources, reduce our emissions and the danger of global warming. Biodiesel and other fuels and alternatives will also be produced and distributed more widely as and when it is financially feasible. Mike Strimling would propose that this State immediately cut its sales tax in half or less (which would also make our merchants more competitive with the Internet and low sales tax states such as Oregon), and make up for that revenue in a tax-neutral way by a general increase in the tax per gallon on oil. That would not cost the average taxpayer anything (since sales tax would be reduced) but penalize those who consume too much oil. The change could be phased in over 2 or 3 years, to give people a chance to change their habits and machinery. It is now painful to propose any tax on gasoline, and perhaps that is going to have to wait until prices fall a bit, but we can structure a tax that people see is revenue neutral.

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