Believe what you want, but I think the governor is getting a bad rap on this coded veto message thing.

Let’s stipulate that the governor of California has a bawdy Austrian’s sense of humor.

And that he does use bad words every once in a while.

Maybe more than every once in a while, OK.

Except it’s hard for me to imagine that he himself would ever do something as sophomoric as embedding a nasty phrase in a coded veto message. It’s such a hack trick, used by bored and desperate writers, to say something with the first letter of each line or paragraph of a piece.

Signature gathering begins this week on an initiative scheduled for the 2010 ballot which will fix an inconsistency in the law, expand a discount, and lower auto insurance rates for millions of California consumers who continually maintain auto insurance coverage.

Under current law, insurers can give their own customers a discount for having maintained continuous auto insurance coverage (sometimes called the loyalty discount), but that discount is not portable if the customer wants to switch insurers.

The Continuous Coverage Auto Insurance Discount Act ensures all drivers who maintain their automobile insurance coverage are eligible for this discount even if they change their insurance company. Who benefits? Consumers do. Eighty-two percent of California drivers have auto insurance as required by law. This includes working families, single parents, elderly and young drivers.

Did you ever have the experience of reading about two seemingly unrelated subjects, but having the one bring the other into sharper focus? Perusing Sunday’s Los Angeles Times I came across an interesting article on page A35 about Senator Fran Pavley’s latest effort to reduce our energy consumption: SB 488. Entitled, “Keeping up with the Joneses’ electric bills”, the article describes the bill, signed by Governor Schwarzenegger, which will change the way our energy (and in the future, water) bills will look like in the near future.

SB 488 creates a series of pilot projects through the California Public Utilities Commission and California Energy Commission in which our gas and electric bills will not only tell us how much energy we used, but how this compares (generally) with our neighbors. Utilizing software from a company called OPOWER, the new statements will give consumers far better and clearer information, but, at the same time, based on a psychological concept called “norm to conform”, hopes that these comparisons will reduce our energy use through, essentially, peer pressure. As Alex Laskey, president and co-founder of OPOWER put it, “The utility bill we get in the mail is inscrutable. We thought there might be some opportunity to provide people with a better context for understanding their consumption and, in doing so, motivate people to take action.”

Once again there is a call for a tax on oil to help solve California’s budget problems. Assemblyman Pedro Nava called for a 10 percent oil severance tax piling on Assemblyman Alberto Torrico’s bill that would establish a 9.9 percent oil tax dedicated to higher education.

Both plans are a backward way to look at taxing oil extraction.

Adding another tax on oil companies for taking crude out of the ground will discourage production. Since practically all oil taken from the ground in California stays in the state, lower production will mean more reliance on foreign oil.

The cost of the product will undoubtedly increase, although Nava intends to prevent that with government price controls. He wants the Board of Equalization to monitor price increases to make sure that price increases at the pump are not a backfill for the tax. If prices do increase to make up for the tax, the bill would allow the attorney general to take action against the oil company. Did we mention Nava wants to be the next attorney general?

Extraordinary. Transformative.

These words are heard a lot at the Governor and First Lady’s Women’s Conference, as executed by Maria Shriver.

And as someone who attended the first Governor’s Conference for Women in 1986 when the keynote speaker was Mary Kay of Mary Kay Cosmetics and the conference was called the Governor’s Conference on Women in Business – because apparently that was so novel –all I can say is “We’ve come a long way baby”.

The 2009 Women’s Conference was the best ever. Just when you think Maria Shriver can’t take it any higher—she hits a longer home run. The two-day event, which drew a record 25,000 women, was way, way, way, over the top. Tickets went on sale last July and were sold out in a record two hours.

As I stated last week, the pension issue is gaining traction.

One major reason is that the mainstream media has taken notice. The media  has had help. The website, Pension Tsunami, gathers articles and facts about  public pension news from around the country. Collected and assembled by Jack Dean, one time Libertarian candidate for U. S. Senate in California and president of the Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers, the articles are distributed to more than 1,400 subscribers nationally, with the heaviest concentration in California.

While others have raised concerns about the pension issue, such as the Calpensions web site, I mentioned last week and talk radio hosts, Dean has been feeding material to radio hosts and news reporters and bloggers for five years.

He’s had a major impact.

California’s government code says that, in general, initiative petitions aren’t public records. That should change – if the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t get in the way.

The court recently – and unwisely – stepped in and blocked the release of the names of those citizens who signed a Washington state referendum petition to reverse a law granting more rights to registered domestic partners there. The court’s 8-1 decision was temporary, but the court won’t fully revisit the issue until after this November’s election is over.

Gay rights groups, seeking to put public pressure on those who signed a petition to limit domestic partner rights, have sought the public release of the petitions. Gay rights opponents (who are Referendum 71’s supporters) have fought the release, saying that it would subject the signers to harassment and worse.

A few thoughts:

Assemblyman Pedro Nava has essentially the same remedy for every problem facing California. Indeed, regardless of the question, Pedro’s answer is the same, create a new tax, hike an existing tax, or make a temporary tax wider, deeper and permanent. Nava’s advice for every fiscal ill that we face is to ask all of us to pay more taxes and call him in the morning…at which point he will probably be well on his way to his next political office.

In his latest attempt to right what he thinks is wrong about oil development in California, Nava is calling for…you got it, a new tax. A so-called "severance tax" on all of the oil produced here in California. This is Pedro’s latest political tonic to help grow his chances at becoming California’s next Attorney General. A severance tax is "fair", according to Nava, because oil companies are getting a "free ride" and that is, well, unfair. But are oil companies in California really getting a free ride as Nava suggests? Hardly. In fact, not only is this suggestion laughable, but the next thing we know Nava will suggest the Balloon Boy’s dad deserves the Nobel Prize for Science.

Over the last week and a half, four packed events have taken place with economic free market conservatives in the Bay Area.  One can only guess if this is a "new beginning" for those who care about affordable health care, economy and jobs – or a blip on the screen.

In San Francisco, Steve Forbes, recognized that Californians helped to create this high tech age and that people have now used those tools to organize politically when they feel something is wrong.

The President & CEO of Forbes, Inc. and one-time presidential candidate, told 350 paying attendees at the Pacific Research Institute Annual Gala how normal, everyday Americans used this new media to organize tea parties and town halls.  They are using the Internet to find their voice and organize themselves – not just as individuals – but as community activists who are working to preserve economic freedom.