The article presupposes that any one is going to abide by crap and trade. The money has already been spent and California is is far in debt that 3 billion wouldn’t put a dent in it.
The alternative to being scammed by cap and trade is to shutdown. Watch the power plants go away. No taxes from them or from businesses who can’t function without electricity. Windfall? No. Windstorm with lots of damage.
magic thinking - on a par with cargo cults among Pacific islanders.
It seems to me that the net effect will be to force power generation and manufacturing out of CA.
The grid will have to be improved to accommodate the change. Remember the brown-outs?
Then Californians will pay rates for electricity that is imported from other states.
Perhaps CA will then increase taxes on imported energy to create the next “windfall.”
This is actually funny, in a sickening sort of way.
Democrats always project that they will get huge increases in revenues by raising taxes. And it *never* works. Never, ever. It is the curse of Arthur Laffer.
And corporate taxes are the worst, because Democrats are just unable to grasp the idea that all those “mountains of free money” that are corporate profits, DO NOT go to bizarre “Scrooge McDuck” types, who use it to fill swimming pools with gold coins, buy chicken egg-sized diamonds, and smoke cigars rolled in one million dollar bills.
But because of the mindless greed and hate of Democrats, corporations *do* spend far more money than they want to on ambitious young tax attorneys and accountants, who are then tasked with a major, ongoing project: Tax avoidance (note: “avoid”==legal; “evade”==illegal).
And when the Democrats projected tax revenues of “millions and billions and trillions” of dollars results instead in a handful of subway tokens and some used chewing gum, the Democrats loudly complain and whine that the “evil” corporations are “stealing” money from the government, and should be forced to give more money. That is, even higher taxes.
Some people are really slow on the uptake.
However, because of their persistence, some corporation do eventually cough up some bread, which instantly translates to inflation, as they pass 105% of the costs on to consumers. And while the Democrats have no problem with screwing consumers, in past, even in California, consumers had other ideas.
Yet this time, push may have come to shove. This is because California has been oppressing industry for years, to the point where California is borderline for any profit margin at all.
Cap’n Trade IS NOT about “global warming”, “climate change” or “savin da planit”. Cap’n Trade is about politicians stealing other people’s money to get themselves reelected by promising the voters more “free stuff”.
Wow. 100% of the comments at the mercury news site would fit in right here at FR!
““The windfall could come as soon as this fall...”
I thought windfalls were bad. The lefties are always screaming about the evils windfall profits. Where are they now?
Now, where is all the loot gonna really come from?
Utility companies that will bill consumers - especially all those businesses looking to locate to California?
Or maybe adding the “costs to pollute” to the other costs of starting and staying in business?
Farmers! yeah, go after agriculture! Farming pollutes!
Airlines? Make ‘em pay to fly.
The US military! Fine all those military bases - they pollute.
(crickets)
They must be on black tar heroin.. crack.. prescription drugs.. who knows.. legislators and the electorate are out of their freakin minds.. politics is whack in california if this happens..
You can bet there is going to an “unexpected” shortfall in this revenue stream soon.
As if pigs could fly. And bring your umbrella, too, ‘cause the skittle-pooping unicorn is scheduled for an over-flight.
Perhaps someone can explain it to me In a certain area of the Nation there are air quality problems, assume part to be particulate matter (PM). There are many sources ,large and small, some of both in violation of set emission standards for PM. Let us look at source A which is large and doing very well in having it’s emissions well under what the generalized or specific standard allows. Then we look at a source B, large or small, that has problems with emissions above the generalized or specific standard. B goes to A and says I will pay you a certain amount of dollars as allotted by the EPA for an emission credit from your operations to get my company under it’s generalized standard/allowance. A says good deal you can have some of my unused/unneeded emissions allowances. As such we will both be under the our allowed emissions and free of agency bother. Emissions haven’t changed. Air quality remains the same. However, A has made some money and B has saved some money. Apparently there was little need for making standards more stringent but this comes later on when EPA needs to justify the desires of some bureaucrat to keep government on the backs of employers.
Bookmark this fraud for later