Here They Go Again: Senate Republicans Demand Gutting California’s Global Warming Law and Other Laws on the Books and Plan to H

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Same Play as Last Year: No Respect for Laws Passed by the Majority and Supported by Californians—Only This Year, They’re Also Picking on Workers

By Frank D. Russo

Republican State Senators held a press conference last week and demanded that California delay implementation of AB 32—our landmark global warming law—and that other changes be made to our state’s overtime law, a progressive reform enacted decades ago. This is like a bad dream. And it could not come at a worse time than now, where there is a need to pass a budget on time or California will face irreparable harm to its creditworthiness and increased costs in borrowing.

Last year, the state budget was held up by this band of 15 because they wanted to deny California Attorney General Jerry Brown the funds to enforce California’s basic environmental law—signed by Ronald Reagan when he was governor—the California Environmental Quality Assurance law known as “CEQA.” They had egg on their face, came out on the short end of the stick and were blamed by California voters for their obstructionism. And they were thwarted.

Not a single one of these Senators voted for AB 32. Some of them, including Senator Tom McClintock, the right-wing nut job running now for Congress, are among the global warming deniers. McClintock in the Senate debate derided the idea that global warming was man made and talked about the coming of the next ice age. Failing in blocking AB 32, which passed both houses of the California legislature and was signed into law by Republican Governor Schwarzenegger, they now don’t want the law on the books to be enforced. This, from the party of law and order.

There are larger public policy implications for their actions that go to the very basics of majority rule and respect for democracy and the rule of law. The image that comes to my mind is that of terrorists—who cannot win by other means, including the ballot box where voters have displaced them to general irrelevance and recent voter registration figures show they are being outstripped by California’s Democrats who increased the gap in every single Assembly and State Senate district while Republican registration actually fell statewide. And I’m talking about registration changes after the California Presidential primary. You wonder why the Republicans are such a minority party in this state and have been literally a bankrupt party with more in debt than money in the bank, and its numbskull actions like this.