T. Boone Pickens Prop 10 Campaign Launches "Swift Boat" Style Smear Campaign of Me

On August 1st, the same day Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger laid-off and slashed state workers’ pay because of California’s budget crisis, Boone Pickens’ Proposition 10’s supporters chose to spend their time launching false malicious personal attacks against me, a private citizen who dared to express an opinion, rather than spending their time and energy explaining to California taxpayers why we should support a ballot measure that the California Legislative Analyst has determined will deplete another $300+ million dollars per year from our state’s already busted budget for the next 30 years. I guess that’s why even the Republican Party of Placer County is against Prop 10. Good work.

Let’s be clear: I’m a private citizen expressing my own opinion, and I stand by every word I’ve written about Prop 10. You can disagree with my opinion if you want, but for anyone to try to smear me personally by posting lies and slinging mud all over the web is not only disgusting, it’s what I’ve heard political pundits call “getting off-message”. As much as I hate reading lies about me, keep posting them, because that’s how you lose elections. And in my opinion, Prop 10 deserves to lose. So in the infamous words of President George W. Bush, “Bring it on.”

While I’m not a member of any organized group opposing Prop 10, I’m not the only one who thinks Prop 10 is bad for California taxpayers, Everybody is Against Prop 10.

Referendum by Riches

So Proposition 10 isn’t the only Billionaire-backed “Clean Energy” initiative on the November ballot, there’s also Prop 7, called the Solar and Clean Energy Initiative, which is also basically completely financed by another out of state billionaire, Arizonan Peter Sperling, the owner of the University of Pheonix.

Prop 7 intends to mandate that the utilities in California acquire their power from at least 50% renewable sources by 2050. Currently the state’s mandate, called a renewable portfolio standard or RPS, is 20% by 2010. So here’s my take on Prop 7, it’s super complicated at 70 pages long, short-cuts public oversight by limiting the time allowed for public hearings to only 100 days, and will certainly raise all consumers’ rates. California is the national leader in the adoption of renewable energy for stationary power as a result of a long and sometimes painful process involving the utility companies, the environmental groups and the CleanTech industry. As the head of one of the biggest municipal utilities in the state told me: “We had a deal. We worked it out and we’re completely behind the current RPS. When we hit our goal in 2010, we all expected to sit back down again and raise the bar, but this Prop 7 upsets years of planning on everyone’s part.”

To me the bottom line is this: if Prop 7 is such a great idea, why isn’t Sperling doing it in Arizona which is lagging far behind California in adopting clean energy?

Here’s a great article on my site that lays it all out from the San Diego Union Tribune.

Please visit my website to see this and all my other postings.

It Was a Lonely Ride Home...

About a week ago I was asked by a small taxpayer’s rights group to appear at the Legislative Analyst’s Office to argue against Proposition 10. The Legislative Analyst reads all proposed legislation and analyzes what fiscal effect it might have on the state. I was not and am not being paid to oppose Prop 10. I’m doing it because, frankly, the proposition offends me. I’m not part of any official opposition, there is none as yet, but I flew up to Sacramento on my own dime and spent my own time to appear as an citizen expert to argue against Prop 10 because I was the Chairman of Californians for Clean Energy, and the force behind Prop 87 from which much of Prop 10’s language is drawn.

Just so you remember Prop 87, the Clean Alternative Energy Act of 2006 Prop 87 was written by the state’s leading clean energy scientists, environmentalists, CleanTech businesspeople, and energy policy wonks with the intent to make California the world center of sustainable energy R&D, and lower our net use of Petroleum by 25% over 10 years. Unlike Prop 10 which is rigged by its sole backer, T. Boone Pickens’ Natural gas fueling company Clean Energy, Fuels, to favor natural gas vehicles with huge arbitrary rebates of up to $50,000 per vehicle, Prop 87 was technology neutral - meaning that the vehicles and the fuels that reduced petroleum use and greenhouse gas and particulate emissions most, were the ones that got the most funding. While Prop 10 will cost California taxpayers almost $10 billion, Prop 87, would have been self funded by charging the Big Oil companies a fee for the right to pump oil from the ground in California.

If you saw the movie “There Will Be Blood” you’ll know that California is one of the biggest oil producing states in the U.S. But unlike Alaska, Louisiana, Texas and the others, California is the only state that doesn’t charge the oil companies any royalty or “severance tax” in compensation for depleting our natural resources. We supporters of Prop 87 thought that creating the self-funded “Clean Energy Manhattan Project” so many politicians and pundits have since called for was a great idea. The big oil companies, led by Chevron, disagreed.

And so there was blood – ours – spilled by a $100+ million dollar Big Oil ad blitz that misled California voters into believing Prop 87 would raise gasoline prices. For the record, gas prices in CA were about $2.90 when Prop 87 lost. It turns out the oil companies’ ad campaign was honest about gas prices going up, just not about why.
So I went to the LAO and explained to them what I thought for about an hour. Here are just some of the lowlights: that Prop 10’s rebates would go to vehicles that could and would likely leave the state; that the language about supporting hybrid vehicles and plug-ins were empty promises to draw public support even though, in fact, there are presently no such plug-in hybrids that could qualify for the rebates; and that regular hybrids were selling like hotcakes and really didn’t need any help; and that it allocates $200 million for a liquid natural gas terminal, something opposed by many Californians; and that even the LAO’s own guidelines for the use of generaI fund bonds calls for them to be used to finance lasting infrastructure projects like roads and levees, not trucks that will be on the scrap heap years before we’re done paying off the bonds.

Prop 10 mortgages a generation of California for thirty years. According to the LAO’s own fiscal analysis Prop 10 leaves us with $300 million a year less to pay for teachers, and hospitals, and fighting wildfires and natural disasters.

On the (natural gas powered) cab ride to Sacramento Airport, it suddenly dawned on me: I had just picked a fight with one of the most powerful men in the world, one who helped bring down John Kerry’s Presidential candidacy. And I’m not a Senator married to Mrs. Ketchup, I’m just an ordinary guy who’s trying to make a living by doing some good in this world. I remembered my days during Prop 87 when private eyes were snapping pictures of me, and people were almost daily coming to our office parking garage and putting nails behind our parked cars’ tires.

I actually got scared. To say that Boone Pickens could squash me like a bug overestimates me and under-estimates the kind of bugs Boone concerns himself with squashing. I’m pre-squashed. As far as “Swift-Boating” me goes, my best friends will tell you stories of my bad behavior over the years. If the stories make you laugh, then they’re probably true.

I got on Southwest and ate my little bag of nuts and tiny sip of diet Coke and finally decided: screw-it. I believe every word that I’m saying against Prop 10. It’s bad for the people of California, it’s bad for the clean and renewable energy industry and frankly I think it’s bad for T. Boone Pickens himself, because Prop 10’s deceptiveness and duplicity totally undermines the sincerity of his energy independence message.

All I can say is that if something does happen to me, please have George Clooney play me in the movie, not Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Nothing personal Mr. Hoffman...

Tune back in soon...