Prop. 23 Doesn’t Stand a Chance
The Critics call it Prop. 23. Supporters have renamed it ‘The California Jobs Initiative’ in an effort to ‘rebrand’ the oil company-backed proposition. Today, when I googled ‘Prop. 23′, the list of bad press headlines went on and on. In fact, I couldn’t even find the websites and press in favor until I typed in the alternate campaign name. There’s something here about ‘a rose by any other name’… Or in today’s terms, ‘putting lipstick on a pig’.
Since California voters had the sense to defeat Proposition 16 (the PG&E-backed attempt to block local governments from creating their own municipal utilities) this spring, it seems doubtful that Prop 23 stands a chance. With the crisis in the Gulf still very much alive, can anything that gets tagged with the ‘big oil’ association get votes?
Check out the related links below.
PG&E, cleantechs fight Prop. 23
By Lindsay Riddell, San Francisco Business Times, July 9th 2010
The Bay Area cleantech industry says California’s leadership on climate change and renewable energy is growing jobs and efforts to thwart climate change legislation will only delay the inevitable.
Shultz, Steyer join forces to battle Prop. 23
By Carla Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle, July 25, 2010
“Since AB32 was passed, $3billion in venture capital has been spent in California,” said [Tom] Steyer, who has been joined by a host of top Silicon Valley investment and tech leaders in opposing the initiative.
“It represents the seed capital in the start of the revolution of how energy is produced around the world,” he said. “California has been a place that has led intellectual and economic revolutions, specifically aerospace and (the Internet). And AB32 is a statement; we want to lead the (green-tech) revolution.”
He cited a new report by the Clean Economy Network, a national coalition of entrepreneurs, investors and researchers, that suggests the state has reaped 500,000 jobs in clean tech, including 93,000 in manufacturing and 68,000 in construction.
Read the full text of the proposition here (just scroll down on the page)
