CA Voters Say, "Tax Grandma, not Exxon"

Overlooked due to the Democrats’ victories on the national level, the votes on CA state propositions provided two victories for Big Business: No for renewable energy and No on a cigarette tax. Oil companies spent around $100 million fighting against Proposition 87 to avoid paying a tax for extracting oil in California. The proposed 1.5% to 6% tax would have brought California in line with other states and raised between $200 and $500 million annually to be spent on alternative energy research.

Big Tobacco splashed out $55 million on the fight against Prop. 86, which would have taxed cigarettes to fund hospitals, tobacco-use-prevention programs, and cancer research. It appears the days are over when major tobacco companies were hauled to Washington DC and made to pay $200 billion.

While voters declined taxes of $4 billion over the next 10-20 years on oil companies that earned $286 billion last year and are set for another record year, they passed Propositions 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, and 1E, that will cost taxpayers an estimated $74 billion.

These results are a boon to the Economics professors, who have been provided with a textbook example of revealed preferences to use in classes this year. Despite all the talk of climate change, including Britain’s headline-grabbing Stern Report on climate change and Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, even relatively progressive Californians aren’t prepared to put their money where their mouths are: guzzling gasoline at the pump.