Governor Brown Plays President, Signs Climate Agreement with China

Governor Brown of California has made it his life’s work to “Make California Great Again!” (without the accompanying racism, homophobia, bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia and Islamophobia, of course).  In his efforts to do so, Governor Brown has had to prioritize what it is that he believes is the way to greatness.

Over this past week, Brown has taken the opportunity to become quite incensed over the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Accord, considering that it was he, himself, who had worked so tirelessly a couple of years ago, as Breitbart puts it, “…[L]ead on the world stage. In late 2015, he traveled to Paris — in the immediate aftermath of the San Bernardino terror attack — to participate in the global discussions around the climate change accords that eventually emerged — and which President Trump subsequently rejected.”

So, with this being, in essence, a repudiation of “his” Accord really, Brown is fit to be tied.  Therefore, he does what any governor of a state would do…he got on a plane and took a trip to China to discuss climate change with the Minister of Science there!

In the meantime, let’s take a look, shall we, at some of the “successes” of the governor since he’s been resurrected…uh, reelected.

Oroville Dam:  This is the nation’s tallest dam that straddles an area about 70 miles north of Sacramento.  In the stone structure spillway about three-quarters of the way up is a gaping hole dozens of feet long which continued to worsen every month.  The dam was considered extremely unstable and had the potential to destroy billions of dollars worth of businesses and residences.  Already, the state had poured so much money into the dam to no avail.  When President Trump came into office, a request was put out to all Governors by the Association in order to list each state’s top requests for infrastructure aid from the Federal coffers.  Governor Brown’s office failed to list Oroville Dam in the brief.  Now, the problem had worsened to the point where the courts granted a private company to dynamite the spillway and start over again.

V-Dare website put it like this:

The recent drama at the Oroville Dam was a genuine horror show for us Californians who have been conserving water by the cupful for years. Huge amounts of water were released and flushed into the sea to keep the dam from failing and killing thousands. At least 188,000 people downstream were forced to evacuate.

Someday Californians will wish we had that water.

Governor Jerry Brown — a self-proclaimed environmentalist — has nevertheless encouraged diverse immigration and unlimited population growth, despite the state’s history of periodic and severe drought. In 2014, he declared to Mexico (population 125 million) “You’re all welcome in California.”

And the numbers make California priorities clear: state taxpayers are forced to pay over $25 billion annually for services going to illegal aliens and their2 dependents, according to a 2014 study from FAIR.

Meanwhile, vital infrastructure has been left to rot. Officials were warned a dozen years ago that the Oroville dam could fail because of its weak spillway design, but nothing was done.

California Pension System:  According to the Mercury News, Jerry Brown’s efforts to scale back and rein-in the state’s bloated and out-of-control pension system has been a colossal failure.  In a state where Liberals claim superiority in just about every way over all other states, they sure seem to be clueless when it comes to managing budgets and using something called “mathematics.”

Since 2012 passage of his much-heralded changes to state retirement laws for public employee, the pension debt foisted on California taxpayers has only grown larger.

The shortfall for California’s three statewide retirement systems has increased about 36 percent. Add in local pension systems and the total debt has reached at least $374 billion. That works out to about $29,000 per household.

It’s actually much worse than that. Those numbers are calculated using the pension systems’ overly optimistic assumptions about future investment earnings.

Using more conservative assumptions, the debt could be more than $1 trillion, says pension expert Joe Nation, a former Democratic state assemblyman who currently teaches public policy at Stanford.

Whatever the assumptions used, the trend is clear. California’s pension problem is getting worse — much worse. The system remains unaffordable.

Unemployment:  Of course, there’s the severely under-reported high unemployment rate in California that the mainstream media always seems to forget about when it talks about all the “green energy” successes.

Brown campaigned on the promise that he would get California working again, with job creation as his top policy priority. While the unemployment rate has declined during his term, to 8.5 percent from 12.1 percent, it remains the country’s eighth-highest, well above the national average of 7.6 percent. And the percentage of people who are unemployed, who have stopped looking for work or who work part time but want full-time work, is the second highest-in the country, at nearly 19 percent.

Examine the data more closely to see what’s happening in some of California’s communities, and the picture looks even more grim. Nine of the 15 metropolitan areas with the country’s highest unemployment rates are in California. El Centro, in southeastern California, is the metro area with the country’s second-highest level of joblessness at nearly 23 percent. And unemployment rates remain in the double digits in 10 of the state’s 26 metropolitan areas.

Brown’s actions on jobs have not been effective enough. His efforts have focused primarily on stimulating the creation of green jobs, as well as incentivizing business formation and growth through a combination of minor tax breaks. But he’s ignored the big-ticket reforms that could actually get the entire state’s economy going.

Climate Change:  Finally, there’s this whole polar bear-in-the-room issue of climate change.  WUWT has an interesting take on the governor’s record on global warming.

The Times presented a series of questions to Governor Brown addressing key topics regarding California’s efforts to address global climate issues at a state level. He readily acknowledged that other states are not buying his climate alarmist hype and moving in California’s direction and expressed frustration about this outcome.

Why haven’t more states followed California’s path on climate change?

California has done a very good job. But you can’t force Republicans to deal with climate change in a serious way …. I’m not giving up hope. But is has been difficult.

When asked about greater support for his climate change program outside the U.S. he attributed this to Republicans “belief” that global warming is a hoax, irrelevant or not a problem but failed to address the significant and well documented climate science flaws and failures which are clearly undermining the scientific legitimacy of climate alarmist positions and claims.

Why can it be easier to find partnerships with governments outside the country than with other states?

The Republicans are committed to global warming as a hoax, or irrelevant, or is not a problem. That is their belief. I’m not going to put them in jail. [“But I’d like to!”] All I can do is talk and encourage good climate actions and demonstrate our economy has benefited here.

When asked what could change peoples minds about climate change he said more “science” and recited the usual litany of climate alarmist claims about “heat”, more “storms”, “the sea level rise” and “Arctic melting”.

Will people’s minds change on climate change?

We need the science to continue. [Can I use finger-quotes on “science” here?] The heat, the storms, the sea level rise, the Arctic melting. These are all real facts that over time will sink in. [Or “float away”] The question is, will that be two years, or five years or 10 years? [Or 90 million years…we just…don’t…know]

So, you get the picture.  Governor Brown is committed (not committable) to the theory of climate change and won’t budge on that.  In fact, I’d venture to say that, should another San Bernardino-type tragedy occur, or maybe even another good, old-fashioned hippie-style “love-and-tolerance” Berkeley riot, perhaps Governor Brown can fly to India, too, where he can lay hands on the Ganges and perhaps heal the pollution there as well.

It might just pay off for California…in 20 or 30 million years.

Source:  Office of the Governor / Breitbart / Bloomberg View / Mercury News / V-Dare / WUWT

Image: Office of the Governor