One cannot decry renewable energy subsidies and support fossil fuel industry, or vice versa, without being hypocritical or declaring that they have a favorite, in other words, a “horse in the race.” If you have a horse in the race, you’d better ask yourself why you support sometime inefficiencies and all-time distortions in the energy industry, because that’s what subsidies amount to.

The reality is that, due to fossil fuel subsidies, the U.S. pays a fraction of the true cost of energy, as evidenced by everything from the artificially low cost at the pump and on energy (utility) bills to low vehicle fleet fuel efficiency to taxpayer clean-up of privately originated pollution to litigation/defense after environmental disasters (of course these are just part of energy production, right?). For those deniers out there, the list just mentioned doesn’t even count GHG trading or tax regimes.

In the end, have the American society pay the true cost of energy generation then we can really begin to talk about efficiency and productivity.

Truthsquad, You really need to apologize to John and thank him, and others like him, for fighting for your right to make a living browsing the internet in your basement, making fake press releases, and lying for politicians. Although, I guess you could just as easily get a job in a communist country, they need people in their Propoganda Departments to lie to the public as well. I guess you can just adapt, but the rest of us appreciate what our veterans do for this country, eventhough it gives scumbag media relations people the chance to lie to the public while collecting tax dollars. We are willing to take the bad with the good.

Thank you John, Both for exposing the fraud that Maviglio is spewing, and for serving our Country.

Snake Oil Steve must really be getting desperate now. He has stooped to releasing BS press releases that try to make a big deal about an Air Quality Management Board not supporting the California Jobs Initiative, and he had to resort to quoting himself in the “press release” because nobody else even cared. You are really grasping for straws buddy. Whats next? Are you going to make up a press release about Tobacco Companies who are opposed to Cigarrette Taxes?

And stop it with the alarmist tactics. The Gulf Spill has nothing to do with California’s oil drilling, we are not drilling 1 mile below the water here. If anything, California is going to end up getting more tourists and sell more goods to make up for the damage in the gulf, which should make all the professional liars happy because that means more tax money to be wasted on the Maviglios of the world.

And besides, I’m sure Mary Nichols is already drooling and seeing dollar signs when she watches the news. Her husband is probably already meeting with the BP Executives and figuring out how much he is going to rake in from this disaster, just like he did when he defended Exxon after the Exxon-Valdeze spill.

This constant going to the public trough has got to end, the private sector is shrinking at a alarming rate, the tax burden put upon by the fat butt government cannot stand, the two ways government jobs or entitlments exist is by more taxes on the shrinking private sector or borrowing and the lenders are going to demand much more than a pound of flesh.

We could put a demand on all our public, elected and appointed officials by instituting a yearly public audit on their earnings and holdings in order to assure their commitment to public service, we could make our legislature conform to being a part time entity, we could use a moritorium on those whose public service is nothing more than changing jobs and appointments, we can use public intiative to control the cost and size of government. Being a public servant would be just that your service would be that of honor and pride not just looking for ways to pad your already comfy future and voting your own perks.

Kaaaleephornyaa had better regain it sense of balance or become a third world state of squalor and petty bureaucrats.

“On a useful output basis”? Seriously? Is that a definition Enron came up with? Talk about comparing apples with watermelons. Straight out fact: the fossil fuel industry has, and continues to receive, BILLIONS in federal subsidies and FAR MORE than the renewable industry.

Actually the first commercialization of renewables begin in the early 1980s with the Solar Energy Research Institute and regional solar commercialization centers that linked the public and private sector together. Let’s compare that to 100 years of oil and gas subsidies, federal limits on liability, and billions upon billions of subsidies for drilling on public lands and in public waters. Not even close.

And enough with the Spanish comparison, because you know it’s a a fraud (just ask the Spanish Secretary of Energy or read this article: Spanish Energy Official Debunks Anti-Solar Study. Again).http://thephoenixsun.com/archives/6124.

It’s actually 500,000 green jobs. And according to one of the best economists in the state, Stephen Levy, the recipients of these jobs are the very same unemployed you seem so concerned about. He’s not being bankrolled by Big Oil like you are either.

The “majority” of our imported petroleum comes from Canada and Mexico? So does that mean you are happy that we send billions of California dollars to those countries every day instead of keeping them in the local economy that California renewable facilities would allow? And does that mean we should write off the billions we’re sending to the Middle East — even though it’s not the “majority” of the oil we import?

Call me crazy, but I think the oil companies would be better off fixing the mess they have created in the Gulf of Mexico than buying their way onto our ballot.

By the way, please also understand that the MAJORITY of our imported petroleum comes from Canada and Mexico.

This bubble will bust sooner or later, when the public absorb the full extent to which they are being fleeced by AB 32 and similar laws.

The only ones who do not admit (or understand) that Climategate torpedoed this theory and the ship is sinking, are politicians with a finger in the cap and trade hypocrisy, the ever comatose media, and snake oil salesmen for objects like electric cars windmills and curly-q florescent light bulbs.

If you have a “green job”, be sure that it is not dependent on the CO2 hoax for justification. If it is, your job will not be there after the bubble breaks. The subsidies will dry up as taxpayers demand that AB 32 and similar legislation be repealed.

If you are an investor, try and bring up a chart of the defunct firm Kennetech, which folded a few years after the subsidy was stopped (1996). That is what will happen to such ventures as the Toyota-Tesla electric car, windmill turbines, solar panels, and other items dependent on the CO2 hoax and requiring a taxpayer subsidy

2: I have opposed all the wars in the Middle East, and favor bringing American troops home.

3. Fossil fuels are going to be around a long time because they are plentiful and cheap. The price of oil has remained constant since World War II at 15 barrels per ounce of gold. But there is a shift going on from oil to natural gas, which is a very plentiful resource.

4. I’m all for venture capital being invested in California clean tech — provided it really is venture capital, and not my tax money, or forced expenditures from AB 32 or other coercive schemes that, as my article showed, really kill jobs.

5. As to volunteering to clean up the mess in the Gulf of Mexico, I volunteered for four years in the U.S. Army. I put in my time.