"Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" - more post-speech analysis

I first focused on the Governator's done-deal proposals regarding educational reform that have already passed the state legislature and are currently awaiting his signature because, being a California teacher and all, the issue of education in this state is near and dear to my heart (and my wallet). Bottom line is that in the pursuit of $700 million Race to the Top federal grants, our state government has decided to once again call teachers and school administrators to full account, while demanding no accountability of the parents and students.

However, as important as education is in this state - neither the state Democrats nor the Governator want education funding to be touched - the dominant priority in Schwarzenegger's remarks today focused on jobs. As he put it: "Jobs, jobs, jobs." Here is the relevant part of this morning's speech to the state legislature:

[T]here are four proposals to spur job growth that I will introduce:

First, you will receive a $500 million jobs package that we estimate could train up to 140,000 workers and help create 100,000 jobs.

Second, you will receive a measure to streamline the permitting of construction projects that already have a completed environmental report.

Third, to stimulate other construction jobs, you will receive a proposal for homebuyer tax credits of up to $10,000 for the purchase of new or existing homes.

And fourth, since we want California to be the dynamo of green technology, I ask you to pass our proposal exempting the purchase of green tech manufacturing equipment from the sales tax.

Let's pick these proposals apart where they need picking, shall we? And more importantly, let's consider some alternatives that I would have proposed had I been up at that podium instead the Governator.

First, I get nervous when politicians start talking about how many jobs they are going to create with their new programs. They even give actual numbers - in this case, 100,000. Human nature being what it is, how can you honestly deign to estimate how many jobs you are going to create? And why the discrepancy between 140,000 workers and only 100,000 jobs? What happens to the other 40,000? And for what jobs are you going to train these 140,000 workers? Do you have it all figured out where in the job sector these jobs are needed? Does government have some magical crystal ball that knows better than the free market what kind of jobs are needed and where? On top of that, according to this Heritage Foundation article, job training programs at the federal level have largely been found to be failures in achieving their stated goals. What this portends is $500 million dollars sunk down a rat hole. With our state at least $20 billion in the hole, that is another half-billion dollars that we can ill-afford. Instead, how about cutting personal and business tax rates that will cause businesses to feel more confident to invest and expand, thereby creating the jobs that this state so desperately needs? The governor provided a very enlightening statistic during his speech. Did you know that 50% of our state's tax revenues are provided by only 144,000 California taxpayers? Imagine that: 144,000 people pay half our state's taxes, while the other 37,866,000 pay the other half. Not surprisingly, these 144,000 comprise those evil hated rich people who just happen to employ hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Californians. Imagine how many more Californians could find employment if these suffocative tax rates were eased on this small minority of taxpayers so that their hard-earned money could be put to work through investment and expansion, rather than being shoved down the entitlement rat hole. In the meantime, millions of California residents who are currently either not contributing, or barely contributing, their share of income taxes need to become taxpayers who are properly invested in the system so that their role is more clearly defined as that of a producer, rather than a consumer. This means revamping our outrageous state tax code and implementing a system that is more consistent, more predictable, and more equitable. This means getting rid of our progressive income tax system; I system, I must remind you, that is the very first plank in Marx's Communist Manifesto.

Second, I agree with Governor Schwarzenegger that the mischief committed by environmental activists must be curtailed. Unfortunately, I attended the press conference where the Democrat legislative leaders - Karen Bass of the Assembly and Darrell Steinberg of the Senate - stated in unequivocal terms that they are opposed to any "rollback" of environmental laws - evidently, even at the expense of these oh-so-important jobs that the Democrats keep blubbering that our state needs. As long as the Dems have an airtight lock on the majority of the legislative seats in this state, nothing is going to change in the area of easing back environmental laws that create such a hostile and expensive business climate in California. This means that Conservatives, Republicans, Tea Party folks - I don't care - need to do a better job of pointing out to Californians examples of just how damaging environmental lawsuits and stonewalling can be to people. Make the environmentalists clearly own their desire to see insignificant animals be sustained while priceless human beings suffer.

Third, Schwarzenegger's idea to "stimulate other construction jobs," by offering homebuyers a $10,000 tax credit for the purchase of a new or existing home is admirable, but why now? My wife and I bought a home in 2008... where is our tax credit? If this idea ever passed into law, would it be made retroactive at all? My other concern is that I can think of a glut of homes that have been built just in the Sacramento area in the past couple years, and they sit empty. Will that $10,000 credit be enough to get people to buy the homes that no one currently wants, or will it simply spur builders to build even more homes that no one will buy? If you think construction firms won't build them, think of the recently-burst bubble that prompted them to build the homes that currently sit empty.

Fourth, I object to yet another attempt to change peoples' behavior through manipulation of our tax code. So we supposedly want to go solar... that means the solar - and wind, presumably - industry gets a leg up on other energy industries. And government gets to play favorites by picking winners and losers rather than the free market. One green industry of which I heard no mention was nuclear energy. Ooooh, I know - scary stuff, that nasty nuclear. Just ignore the fact that France produces somewhere around 80% of their energy with nuclear power, and just ignore the fact that the production of nuclear energy produces little to none of the greenhouse gasses that so scare the pants off the Cult of Global Warming crowd - cult members that include many of the Assembly and Senate Democrats, along with Governor Schwarzenegger himself.

But, you might say, what about the nuclear waste that is produced? What about it? What does France do with theirs? What is never mentioned is the waste and inefficient use of land that is part and parcel of the production and use of solar panels and windmills. According to an article in the Washington Post, the production of solar panels produces a highly toxic by-product called silicon tetrachloride. Many solar panels are produced in China, and the article gives some rather enlightening details about this chemical:

"The land where you dump or bury it will be infertile. No grass or trees will grow in the place. . . . It is like dynamite -- it is poisonous, it is polluting. Human beings can never touch it," said Ren Bingyan, a professor at the School of Material Sciences at Hebei Industrial University.

Wow. Go Green!

Then of course, there would be no sales tax to be paid on these wind farms that take up thousands of acres of land and are littered with 300 foot-tall monstrosities that look absolutely horrible, cause an ornithological holocaust, and don't really produce all that much energy for the amount of resources and space that are used to build and place them.

All in all, the speech was a classic Shakespeare moment. It was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Signifying nothing that is but a further invitation for federal involvement in what is supposed to be a state and local issue: education. While the jobs proposals are just that: proposals, the education reforms are soon to be reality. As a teacher, I am not too pleased about all that will be demanded of me when I will have little authority that is necessary to make it happen.

Good Day to You, Sir