Funding Public Education in California ...

I am sure many of you have received what could be characterized as a potentially sincere effort, but it actually is a meaningless exercise in futility -- and could very well be a creative attempt by the oil industry and its PR advisers to divert meaningful and constructive actions against their interests and give their opponents an illusory sense of direction and accomplishment.  I am talking about such efforts as No Gas Day.

Alternatively, here is action alert that might be worth knowing about, and could provide a big help and provide much needed funds for eroding public education in California.    It calls for imposing a mandatory Oil Extraction and Depletion Fee to help raise over $2 B to fund public education in California.  Couple of short but informative video clips on the subject can be found here and here. More information on a proposed ballot initiative can be found at rescueeducationcalifornia.org.

Here is the announcement for a recent talk on the subject sponsored by San Jose Peace and Justice Center that I attended:

Peter Matthews Talk

Here are some reasons why having such a tax/fee makes a lot of sense:

1. As explained in this clip by Ralph Nader, we should be taxing activities and behaviors that hurt us, so we have sufficient incentives to gradually replace them with more productive activities.
2. Oil is a public resource, and a private enterprise should not be given a blank check to take it as their property without paying proper dues to the public who is the rightful owner of the resource.
3. Within the recent past, public education in California has been bleeding terribly, and is in dire need of proper funding.
4. An overwhelming majority of all other oil producing States and nations use their Oil revenue for funding public projects.  And it can be argued that public education is among the most important public projects to be supported.