Cross-posted at CalWatchdog.

A day of extremes at the state Capitol on Wednesday led to very different budget crisis resolution angles – green jobs or tax reform? From a press conference announcing a green jobs initiative to a panel discussion about how to implement tax reform, the extremes were arresting, and even comical.

In one corner was the Democratic team, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John Perez, proclaiming their “Green Jobs Initiative,” which amounts to another group of bills that push even more state subsidized “green jobs” and “clean energy” subsidies, and includes curriculum provided to high schools to educate students and prepare them for employment in clean energy field.

In the other corner was Republican Sen. Sam Blakeslee, together with a panel of tax reform experts discussing strategies to permanently reduce the volatility of state revenues, with the goal of making California a competitive job creator. There was no hype, and no reason to persuade anyone present of the need for tax reform.

This week California Forward
released the results from the first in a series of "California Viewpoints" surveys
on Californian’s attitudes toward state government, reform, and how they might address
the problems we face. The most striking finding is that Californians believe
our state’s problems can be solved and that California is governable. This is a
far cry from the doom and gloom we consistently hear from public surveys.

Although Californians
believe we can solve our state’s problems, mistrust and a lack of
accountability over many years stand in the way of major reform. So while we
are optimistic, we don’t trust our leaders. The politicians in Sacramento must
listen to their constituents and engage them, to regain their trust. In fact,
according to this survey, one of the major problems with state government is
that our leaders simply don’t listen.

We
don’t think of them as TV stars, but for two decades California Assembly
members have been on live TV via The California Channel every day they’re in
session. On Friday, February 4, 2011, The California Channel will celebrate its
20^th anniversary by replaying some of the most memorable moments
from the Assembly floor.

During
my 18 years as President of The California Channel, I have seen moments that
were amazing, unique and sometimes uncanny. I remember a particular instance
when several Republican Assembly members began singing The Beatles’
"Revolution" in the middle of a proceeding. Another unusual moment was former
Assembly member Diane Martinez’s wedding on the Assembly floor while they were
in session.

Operating
in a C-SPAN format, today The California Channel is dedicated to providing
unbiased and uncut gavel-to-gavel proceedings for all three branches of state
government. 

Many
Baby Boomers, who were spared leg braces and iron lungs thanks to polio
vaccines, were the first to eschew immunizations for their own children as part
of a misguided back-to-nature movement. 
Today, sons and daughters of the Boomers are following a similar road.

Encouraged
by the admonitions of celebrities like Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy, they
subscribe to the theory that childhood vaccinations can lead to autism, despite
scientists’ adamant repudiation of the only study to ever link the two and the
recent finding that the study was a fraud.

Celebrity-endorsed
pseudoscience has gained credibility via Internet websites and interactive
media, with pollsters now reporting that four in ten parents believe
vaccinations cause childhood autism and other illnesses.

Former governor Pete Wilson thinks its unlikely that Republicans in the legislature will vote to put Governor Jerry Brown’s tax extensions on the ballot.

I caught up with Wilson yesterday after he appeared on a panel at the Reagan Presidential Library discussing Ronald Reagan’s legacy as part of the centennial celebration of Reagan’s birth. (I’ll have more on the Reagan legacy panel discussion in tomorrow’s post.)

Wilson said with gerrymandered districts, Republican legislators live in districts in which their constituents do not want tax increases.

If the tax measures were to make it on the ballot by whatever means, Wilson thinks the taxes will be difficult to pass. "The only thing that would make it remotely saleable to the public would be if they combine it with a real, honest-to-God spending limit like the old Gann Limit," he said.

I read with interest in the Los Angeles Times that billionaire developer Philip Anschutz has apparently begun an all-out effort to get the California legislature and Governor to provide his planned 64,000 seat downtown Los Angeles football stadium project an exemption from onerous environmental regulations. Apparently these regulations would add years to the duration of time it would take to build the project, in addition to adding major additional costs.

On the natural, I would tell Anschutz and his lobbying team that they are tilting at a windmill — with the disturbingly wackly-left environmentalists that dominate the majority Democrat party in the Capitol in control of the process.

That having been said, I never would have predicted that in 2009 this legislature would do exactly that — waiving California Environmental Quality Act regulations — for another vastly wealthy major developer, Ed Roski, Jr., who is aiming to built his own football stadium on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County.

Last week’s appeals court decision barring the legislature
from writing titles and summaries for its own measures has sparked predictable
commentary that the court did the right thing. After all, lawmakers have
routinely used this power to write titles and summaries that are favorable to
their views – but not scrupulously accurate (or event all that useful) to
voters.

But does the decision leave us any
better off? Probably not. Because the court’s decision puts the power to write
such measures in the hands of the attorney general. Politics presumably will
continue to play a role. If anything, giving power to one person and one office
may make political gamesmanship with titles and summaries more common. One a.g.
playing politics can draft such labels alone (and there’s plenty of recent
history of this). In the legislature, any such label had to be a compromise.

Despite this, the decision offers a
bit of good news – or at least an opportunity to design a better system for
drafting titles, summaries and other public information on ballot measures.
There are many good models. Here are 3.

I represent an alliance of
nearly 1,000 small, mainstream companies in California, who employ tens of
thousands of people around the state, and who are committed to pursuing clean
energy policies that help grow the economy and create jobs. Our network is made
up of businesses from all geographic regions of the state and includes owners
of print shops, restaurants, construction firms, and landscape companies; CEOs
of and investors in solar and renewable companies; leaders of chambers of
commerce and business associations; and more.

Many of our members would
certainly join the chorus of voices, led by John Kabateck of the National
Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), calling for California to become
more business friendly, but not if regulatory reform occurs at the expense of
moving forward with critical clean energy policies. It is this pursuit of clean
energy that is resulting in thousands of new jobs in energy efficiency,
construction, and manufacturing – and all of this job creation benefits the
very small businesses that NFIB represents.

California tealeaf readers looking for hints on the future of the state budget battle won’t find out much from poring over Jerry Brown’s brief State of the State message Monday night.

In 14 minutes or so, the governor repeated what he’s been saying since he was elected:

1. The state’s in a financial mess and tough action is needed. Right now.

2. Republicans and Democrats legislators are all going to be unhappy with his budget plan, so deal with it.

3. Californians deserve a chance to vote on whether they want more taxes or fewer services.

Add to that some upbeat sentences about making the state “a leader in job creation, renewable energy and state-of-the-art efficiency, innovation of all kinds” and the usual stirring claptrap about how wonderful life will be in the Golden State once this budget unpleasantness is behind us, and the governor had a perfectly serviceable speech that likely didn’t change a single vote in the Legislature.