Billionaire Polluters Pay a Million to Foul California’s Air – Who’s Behind Prop 23?
By Ann Notthoff
NRDC
Of one thing you can be certain: when the Koch Brothers ride into town, dirty money follows. This is particularly bad news for California as the Koch Brothers last week arrived to join other out of state polluters trying to buy their right to keep polluting our air here in the Golden State.
The two billionaire siblings, David and Charles Koch, own Koch Industries, a Wichita-based oil conglomerate that maintains refineries in three states and 4,000 miles of pipeline.
As energy companies go, Koch Industries is something of a stealth entity. The Center for Public Integrity recently completed a major report on the company, noting that “Koch Industries could be the biggest oil company you have never heard of.” While it is little known to the public, its estimated revenues in 2009 were about $40 billion, making it bigger than AT&T, Microsoft or Merrill Lynch.
Doesn’t Sound Like a Come-on Line from 76 years ago…
“When a cold mama gets hot, boy how she sizzles.”
– Fellow Bus Passenger Hitting on Claudette Colbert in 1934’s It Happened One Night
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Governor Considers Bill That Would Prohibit Marijuana Dispensaries from Being Located 600 Feet from Schools
Medical marijuana buyers’ clubs and dispensaries would be prohibited from being within 600 feet of public or private school under legislation on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk.
Through local zoning ordinances, cities and counties already have the ability to restrict where various types of establishments are located. Los Angles, for example, faces court challenges over an ordinance that took effect in June that will close 439 marijuana collectives and forbids any remaining ones to be located within 1,000 feet of a school or another dispensary.
More than 40 cities and counties have passed ordinances regulating the activities of dispensaries— limits on plants and buds, for example. Several other cities including Walnut Creek and Danville, have passed local laws restricting dispensary locations. Berkeley restricts dispensaries from being within 1,000 feet of a school.
So far, the state has not inserted itself into local land use decision-making on the issue.
“As medical marijuana dispensaries continue to open throughout the state, they are increasingly located near schools and parks, public libraries and child care facilities,” wrote Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, a San Ramon Democrat in justification for her bill, AB 2650.
“To keep medical marijuana dispensaries from further encroaching from (sic) places where children and families congregate, we believe we need to keep them a measured distance from these locations.”
State law currently prohibits a variety of activities within 1,000 feet of a school. Tobacco advertising on billboards is one. Possession of gun is another. Sex offenders cannot live within 1,000 feet of a school. Drug dealing within 1,000 feet of a school carries a harsher sentence.
Buchanan’s bill originally was a measure on medical treatment of inmates by Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, a Fremont Democrat.
She gutted that measure and replaced it with one that restricted dispensaries from being located within 1,000 feet of a school.
The Marijuana Policy Project, which favors legalizing and regulating marijuana, opposed Buchanan’s bill.
“MPP and our allies helped dramatically weaken the bill by reducing the buffer from 1,000 feet to 600 feet and grandfathering in dispensaries in cities with pre-existing ordinances that were less strict,” the group says on its website.
While Buchanan’s bill would “grandfather in” local ordinances approved prior to January 1, 2011, cities and counties are still free to pass more restrictive ordinances.
Among the bill’s supporters are the Association of California School Administrators, the California State PTA and the California Police Chiefs Association.
Home schools are not included in the bill’s restrictions.
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September 7 is the 69th day of the new fiscal year for which no budget has been enacted. The Legislature is required by the constitution to send the governor a spending plan by June 15, two weeks before the start of the fiscal year.
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Key Patient Protection Bills On Governor’s Desk
By Anthony Wright
Health Access
The California Legislature ended their session last week after passing over a dozen patient protection measures. If signed by the Governor, these bills will implement and improve a number of provisions of federal health care reform law, enacting a number of new consumer protections.
A lists of the measures related to implementing federal health reform, and how they fared in the California Legislature, is available on the front page of the Health Access website.
These bills that passed are now on the desk of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Labor Got It Right — Who Could Have Known?
By Dave Johnson
“Who could have known?” That’s the cry from the big-corporate and DC elite as the economy and the environment and so many imporant things crash around us. (Around us, not them, they’re doing just fine and taking good care of each other.)
Who could have known that 25%-per-year house price increases was a bubble?
Who could have known that a housing bubble could burst?
Who could have known that deregulating the financial industry could lead to a financial meltdown?
Who could have known that concentration of wealth could cause consumer demand to dry up?
Who could have known that huge tax cuts for the rich combined with huge military spending increases could cause massive budget deficits?
Who could have known that the Social Security trust fund needed a “lockbox” so it wouldn’t be given away as tax cuts?
Arnold "Bohemian Grove" Schwarzenegger Calls for Transparent Government!
By Dan Bacher
In the most absurd episode in the bad action flick that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has starred in since being elected Governor in 2003, the “Fish Terminator” on Saturday morning spouted off about the need for “transparent” government in his weekly radio address.
“Ever since I became Governor, I have pushed to make California government more transparent,” Schwarzenegger claimed. “Now, I don’t have to tell you that this is a time of deep recession, all around the world.”
“It is more critical than ever that government be held accountable for every dollar it spends, that it live within its means, and that it show total transparency at all levels: at the local level, the state level and the federal level,” said Schwarzenegger.
A Local Alcohol Fee: Fairly Sharing the Costs of (Over) Drinking
By Steve Heilig and Michael Rokeach, M.D.
San Franciscans, and visitors to our fair city, love our food and drink. One good side of this is San Francisco’s ever-evolving cornucopia of fine and fun eateries and bars, serving up virtually every kind of cuisine and cocktails from almost everywhere in the world. The bad side is that some overconsumption of alcohol results in health and other problems that cost all of us money, whether we are directly involved or not.
Labor Day Kicks Off Final Push in Battle for the Soul of California
By Art Pulaski
California Labor Federation
This Labor Day, California is at a crossroads. We can either continue the economic race to the bottom – exacerbated by corporate policies and Gov. Schwarzenegger’s slash-and-burn budgets – or we can chart a new course to rebuild California from the bottom up. The heart of California’s economy, our workers, are struggling with near record unemployment, stagnating wages and devastating budget cuts that are eroding the California Dream.
This November, Californians have a critical choice to make about which direction our state should take to deal with the enormous challenges we face. This election is simply a battle for the soul of California.
In the race for Governor, the choices couldn’t be starker.
Legislature Rejects Last Minute Plays to Side-Step Environmental Review
By Traci Sheehan
Planning and Conservation League
At midnight September 1st the gavel came down and the 2009-2010 legislative session came to a close. While not all bills had the outcome we would have liked, we can happily say that thanks to the hard work of community groups around the state, we have made it through the year without a single bill exempting a project from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) from passing. This is a huge victory that could not have been achieved without the effort of a coalition over 150 (and growing!) environmental and justice groups, housing advocates, businesses and community leaders.
September 3 is the 65th Day of the New Fiscal Year. The Legislative Session is Over. No Budget Has Been Approved
The Assembly and the Legislature did manage to pass 772 bills in the final days of the session, 423 of which have already reached the governor who has until the end of the month to act on them.
In fairness, the Legislature couldn’t pass a bill to ban single-use plastic bags, either.
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