Jane Fonda blasts wealthy Prop. 30 foes

Actress and activist Jane Fonda has a message for wealthy Californians who oppose Proposition 30, a November poll measure that will hike taxes on millionaires to subsidize electrical automobiles and fund wildfire response and prevention:

“People who would choose to get rich and stay rich, as opposed to helping create a livable future, have to really seriously examine their priorities.”

Fonda, who acknowledged that her personal taxes would go up if voters approve Prop. 30, shared her stance on the controversial poll measure for the primary time in an unique interview Monday.

Fonda spoke with me on Zoom from Los Angeles in between journeys to Michigan, New Mexico and Texas to stump for candidates endorsed by the Jane Fonda Climate PAC, a corporation she based this 12 months to assist elect leaders who “care about people and the planet and the environment and the future more than corporations.”

The PAC has up to now instantly contributed $60,800 to 29 California candidates on the federal, state, county and metropolis stage, stated Ariel Hayes, the PAC’s government director and former nationwide political director for the Sierra Club. Hayes stated the PAC continues to be figuring out how far more it plans to take a position earlier than the Nov. 8 election.

• Those figures don’t embrace cash contributed to “independent expenditure” committees — which don’t coordinate with the campaigns they’re making an attempt to assist — or cash raised by on-line or in-person joint fundraising drives, Hayes stated.

The PAC is simply the newest local weather endeavor for Fonda, 84, a two-time Academy Award-winning actress with a decades-long history of activism. Although Fonda announced in September that she had been recognized with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, “this f—–g cancer is not going to keep me from doing all that I can,” she advised me, including that the local weather disaster makes her “so scared I can’t sleep.”

After the November election, the PAC plans to zero in on California and the Gulf states, the place the oil business holds important sway, Fonda stated.

Other key takeaways from my interview with Fonda:

• On disagreeing with Gov. Gavin Newsom: By supporting Prop. 30, Fonda is siding with the California Democratic Party — however breaking with Newsom, who has joined the California Republican Party in urging voters to reject the measure. (Newsom has warned the measure might destabilize California’s funds, which disproportionately depends on taxes from excessive earners. Amid concerns of an impending recession, California’s tax revenues in September got here in $2.8 billion beneath projections, placing the state’s coffers about $7 billion beneath projections from the latest financial forecast, in accordance with a Monday report from the state Department of Finance.)
  • In a number of high-profile Dem-on-Dem races, Fonda’s PAC and Newsom have endorsed opposing candidates: For a hotly contested Sacramento-area seat within the state Senate, the PAC is backing progressive Dave Jones whereas Newsom is behind the extra reasonable Angelique Ashby. And for a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Newsom is supporting former state Sen. Bob Hertzberg — whom Fonda stated is “too much in bed with the oil companies” — whereas the PAC is backing his opponent, Lindsey Horvath. “A lot of us have been battling the governor for quite a long time, and he has finally done really, really, really well in the climate space,” Fonda stated. “But we don’t always see eye to eye.”
• On state lawmakers approving Newsom’s last-minute push to increase the lifespan of Diablo Canyon, California’s final nuclear energy plant: “Am I happy about the need to rely on nuclear energy right now? No,” Fonda stated. But as we “phase gradually out of fossil fuels, as we build up our sustainable green energy sector … we need a bridge.”
• On the oil business pursuing a referendum to overturn a lately signed regulation banning new oil and fuel wells near delicate areas: “Our elected officials voted for that. How dare the oil companies try to override the will of the California voters? How dare they? They’re already killing us because of what they’re doing to our planet and lying to us about what they’re doing. I mean, it’s a direct attack on democracy.”

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California plans to finish its COVID-19 state of emergency on Feb. 28, 2023, practically three years after Newsom first declared one to assist curb the unfold of the virus, senior administration officials announced Monday. Here’s a more in-depth have a look at among the public well being and political ramifications of the news, through CalIssues’ Kristen Hwang and Ana B. Ibarra:

2
Reports elevate concern over greenhouse fuel emissions

Monday greeted Californians with a blended bag of local weather news:

• Increasingly excessive wildfires might threaten California’s skill to achieve its formidable local weather targets. That’s in accordance with a new study led by University of California researchers and printed within the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Pollution, which discovered that wildfires in 2020 — California’s worst wildfire 12 months on document — resulted in additional than double the full quantity of greenhouse fuel emissions slashed by the state from 2003 to 2019. In different phrases, “Wildfire emissions in 2020 essentially negate 18 years of reduction in greenhouse gas emission,” stated Dr. Michael Jewitt, a UCLA Fielding School of Public Health professor of environmental well being sciences and a lead writer of the analysis, in a press release. David Clegern, a spokesperson for the California Air Resources Board, told the San Francisco Chronicle that “wildfire emissions and fossil fuel emissions are not the same” as a result of forest fires can have regenerative properties. But the research’s authors famous that forest regrowth wouldn’t occur rapidly sufficient to avert “highly dangerous levels of increased pollutions, temperatures and climate change.”
• Greenhouse fuel emissions additionally skyrocketed at California’s two largest ports in 2021, rising 39% on the Port of Los Angeles and 35% on the Port of Long Beach, the Los Angeles Times reports. Although emissions are still far below levels in the mid-2000s, the rise has infuriated environmental justice advocates and residents of close by communities. It’s additionally raised considerations in regards to the long-term environmental results of worldwide provide chain points exacerbated by the pandemic, which led to an enormous backlog of cargo ships on the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports and will have helped trigger a 2021 oil spill off Huntington Beach.
• Homeowners in areas at excessive threat of wildfires might see some reduction after guidelines proposed by Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara went into effect. But, as CalIssues’ Grace Gedye has reported, the laws gained’t be a silver bullet for Californians: They would require insurers to take owners’ efforts to scale back wildfire threat under consideration when setting premiums, however would nonetheless enable coverage non-renewals.

3
How politics affect the ‘California Exodus’

Ah, the California Exodus: The delusion that retains on giving. A Monday report from the Public Policy Institute of California was the newest to take a crack on the much-discussed and much-debated phenomenon by the lens of political ideology. A couple of significantly attention-grabbing findings:

• Asked if California’s excessive housing prices have led them to significantly contemplate shifting out of state, 26% of very liberal respondents stated sure, in comparison with 39% of those that self-identified as middle-of-the-road, 45% who described themselves as very conservative and 56% of those that disapprove of Newsom’s efficiency of governor. And 51% of Californians who stated they pay far more than they need to in taxes answered within the affirmative, in comparison with 23% who don’t assume they pay an excessive amount of.
• But, though 1 in 3 Californians has thought of leaving the state, solely about 1 in 10 really did so from 2016-20, in accordance with the report.
• The takeaway: “A large share of Californians feel like they want to live somewhere else, and dissatisfaction with the state’s politics is at least part of the reason why. This dynamic probably pushes a few who might otherwise stay to leave the state. The result may be a politically skewed departure that nudges the state’s politics ever so slightly to the left.”

And private funds might matter simply as a lot, if no more, than political ideology. As income inequality gaps grow, the Public Policy Institute of California has found that individuals leaving the state are much less wealthy than these shifting in — including from Republican-led states such as Texas. And though new U.S. Census information showing a drop in median household income in metropolitan areas such as San Francisco means that wealthy Californians are leaving, many might merely be shifting to cheaper areas throughout the Golden State. Indeed, the San Francisco Chronicle discovered that a growing share of city employees dwell in different Bay Area counties.

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