Senator George Runner
Serving the 17th District which incorporates portions of the Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Ventura and Kern counties.

At a time when the United States should be strengthening its borders and supporting immigration laws that are fair to all immigrants, one of my colleagues in the California Senate introduced a resolution that urges Congress and the President to relax immigration laws.

I believe we should enforce the current laws of immigration and they should apply to everyone waiting to become American citizens — it’s the only fair way to go about the process.

The same senator also introduced a resolution that essentially limits free speech by asking that the government to limit language that might be construed as “hate speech.”

This opens the door to unnecessary lawsuits, as almost any differing opinion stands the chance of being interpreted as hate speech.

This measure would chill free expression of ideas in our state, particularly the voices of talk radio hosts, bloggers and other newsmakers. I vigorously opposed this idea on the Senate floor last week.

The good news is these proposals only passed in the Senate but were “held at the desk” in the Assembly. Apparently, some Democrat Assembly members had the good sense to oppose these precarious bills. The bad news is these proposals could be re-introduced in January when the Legislature reconvenes.

Cement Companies must choose paying new taxes over creating new jobs

Imagine that you are the proud owner of a cement manufacturing company. The government has just sent you an informative, yet unfortunate reminder that your production costs are about to be raised yet again.

As a person working in the cement industry, you probably followed the legislative proceedings regarding the Global Warming Solution Act of 2006 (Nunez) that was passed into California law. After three years, you receive this reminder from the government that, after three long years, their statewide crackdown on global warming is ready for action!

Well, not exactly.

Before things really get going, they’ll need just a little more of your money: 10 cents for every ton of cement that your plant produces, to be exact. This may not seem like much to an ordinary citizen, but you know full well that the average cement establishment, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Portland Cement Association, produces over 420,000 tons of cement yearly. This means that the $42,000 you could have spent to create another California job is now going to help pay for a new government position on the Air Resources Board.

And even that assessment is an underestimation of the costs to you because, as it turns out, none of this money is actually going to the implementation of AB 32’s “improved” industry regulations. This newly-minted fee is merely going to feed into the California government’s bureaucratic expansion, simply repaying the $57 million in start-up loans that the state took out to that effect. After all, global warming is a ruthless enemy, and it’s going to take more than a few rounds of fees from you to make it fully equipped.

In all seriousness, the cement manufacturing sector (along with companies in the oil refining business) is facing yet another set of regulatory impositions that will make it even less appealing for them to do business in the state of California. Like all other industries that may, in some way, emit carbon dioxide, their normal business models are being threatened by aggressive bureaucratic attacks in the name of fighting an enigmatic foe. If we continue to allow bills like AB 32 to pass, those emissions will simply waft elsewhere.