Correction: The article written by David Armstrong has been clarified. As mentioned above by Petrushma Moroni, the bill states that the tax cannot be passed on to consumers. Armstrong’s article did allude to the notion that he (we) would be paying higher gas prices for the rest of our lives. This has been taken out to avoid further confusion.

It should be noted that the nature of the oil industry is to raise prices as the reserve and available amount of oil reduces over time.

By David Armstrong

For the Daily Titan

California higher education is bleeding. The budget was cut by $888 million for the 2008-10 fiscal years, according to the Law Analysts’ Office.

Assembly Bill 656 will create an oil tax of 9.9 percent to fund higher education, an estimated billion dollars per year, according to the California Chronicle. However, should the state push this through?

AB 656 will create the California Higher Education Endowment Corporation and an oversight board to run it. The board are a dozen political appointees, five of whom are from community colleges, Cal State Universities and Universities of California and the other seven people coming out of Sacramento.

This dirty dozen will appoint a CEO to the CHEEC, who will then staff the company with personnel to accomplish its mission of refunding education.

The premise for the bill is outlined in Section 1, where Assemblyman Alberto Torrico (D-Fremont) estimates that in 2025, 41 percent of workers will need a degree to work in California. No evidence, he just said it.

Torrico plays the race card, claiming that by 2020, Latinos will make up 40 percent of the workforce (probably) but only 12 percent will have a college degree.

And this bill will fix that? And what are the equivalent ratios for whites, blacks or Asians? He doesn’t say. He doesn’t care.

The point is, before a single class is reinstated or a professor is paid at 2008 wages, more than a dozen new bureaucrats will be receiving salaries, health care, pensions and everything that government pays for that people hate.

This bill is supposed to give back money that the schools already had, so what do we need a new bureaucracy for? Why can’t the money be funneled through old channels? Because this new money has a mandate.

According to the bill, the money can only be spent on curriculum and programs related to renewable energy for community colleges, anything leftover is then allocated to the CSUs and UCs. I’m not against the environment, but it seems there are two environmental debates.

The first is clean water at Lake Tahoe. I love Lake Tahoe, and I’m all for a clean planet, but before my tuition can be reduced to below $2,000 a semester, the money has to make sure proper liberal indoctrination occurs in California’s lovely community college system.

Call me selfish and elitist, but I’m going to ask for something more than additional green programs at Mt. San Antonio College.

This is money that may never even reach community colleges. For those who don’t remember, California just weathered a budget crisis which in consequence brought us the February Agreement, the cause of the massive budget cuts.

A compromise as part of the agreement was to remove the gas tax provision from the budget. Currently, two assemblymen, two senators and the governor are being recalled as a result of the February Agreement.

In the May 21 special election, one proposition would have taken money gathered from the Millionaire’s Tax (to fund the care of the mentally ill) and the Smoker’s Tax (to fund anti-smoking programs) to pay for the state’s deficit.

The proposition failed, but it demonstrates the naked power grabs that sometimes take place in Sacramento. In the 2010-11 budget discussions, are they going to opt for taking of AB 656 monies to pay off the Prison Guard Union?

There are a lot of problems in the state, and the last thing California needs is another tax to fund green programs while politicians try to rob the crazies and teen smokers.