CFC launches "No on 10" Website - The $10 Billion Boondoggle that's all About Greed, Not Green

August 28th, 2008

CFC Launches No on 10 Website!

We look forward to exposing this $10 billion boondoggle over the course of this campaign. To do that effectively we will need your help! To overcome T. Boone Picken’s millions - and the constant bombardment of Prop 10 green-washing ads - we will need to run a campaign powered by the grassroots, not fossil fuel money.

Click here to go to the No on 10 Website! 

CFC's No on 10 Materials 

No on Prop 10 - T. Boone Pickens Pickpocket Initiative
-- Richard Holober, Consumer Federation of California

Prop 10 is the worst kind of corporate raid on the public coffers. We simply cannot afford to cut our schools, our health services and our public safety programs further to enrich a Texas billionaire. Vote No on Prop 10.

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CFC's No on 10 Fact Sheet - It isn’t green, it’s greed

A fossil fuel corporation owned by Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens spent three million dollars to put Proposition 10 on the ballot. That corporation will reap a bonanza if Prop 10 passes. California taxpayers will be stuck subsidizing big trucking companies at a cost of $335 million per year.  California faces a $15 billion budget deficit crisis.  Prop 10’s raid on the state’s coffers will mean cuts to our schools, our public safety and health programs.

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No On Prop 10 Official Ballot Argument

"What do you call it when one company puts a measure on the ballot to put taxpayer dollars in their own pockets?

Special interest legislation. Corporate Welfare. Ripping off the taxpayers.

That’s the truth about Proposition 10."

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Press Coverage of Prop 10

San Jose Mercury News Editorial: "Prop 10 looks 'green' but it's the wrong shade"

"The billionaire oilman turned pitchman for alternative energy is the force behind Proposition 10, the initiative on the November ballot that calls for floating $5 billion in bonds to develop alternative energy. As it happens, he'd also profit from it."

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CFC's Op-Ed in The Desert Sun:"No on Proposition 10 – Stop T. Boone’s Pickpocket Initiative"

Hang onto your wallet. Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is spending a fortune on Proposition 10. His initiative would cost California taxpayers $10 billion...in tax giveaways to manipulate the marketplace to favor natural gas as a "clean" vehicle fuel to the disadvantage of cleaner alternative energy technologies.

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Dallas Morning News: "T. Boone Pickens Motives in Energy Plan Questioned" 

"Prop 10 just has all the earmarks of legislation designed to benefit a particular corporation, in this case majority-owned by Mr. Pickens," said Richard Holober, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California. 

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Los Angeles Times: "T. Boone Pickens' 'clean' secret - Proposition 10 would put California taxpayers on the hook for his natural gas plan."

"Given that Pickens can also play rough -- he was a funder of the nasty "Swift boat" campaign in the 2004 presidential election -- it'll take guts to challenge him. California's governor, attorney general and treasurer should be the first to say no, because there's certainly a case against a $5-billion bond that results in almost no lasting infrastructure, could siphon taxpayer money out of state and would distort the clean-vehicle market. The makers of hybrid and biofuel vehicles, and California teachers, hospitals and firefighters, who would be on the losing end of Proposition 10, should also think hard about what Pickens' plan would do to them."

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San Diego Union Tribune: "Referendum process now being used by wealthy"

According to the state fiscal analysis office, Proposition 10 would cost taxpayers roughly $325 million per year for the next 30 years to finance the bonds, as well as $10 million a year over the next decade for administrative costs. Critics note that Proposition 10 promotes natural gas over gasoline-electric hybrids, a cleaner and cheaper technology that is already making inroads into the marketplace. Proposition 10 would offer up to $50,000 in rebates to vehicles fueled by natural gas, but far less to hybrids.

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Wall Street Journal: "State Weighs Natural-Gas Push"

"Using natural gas has some small advantages," said Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California at Davis and a member of the California Air Resources Board. "If someone can make a business out of it, that's great. The public benefits are rather small, so I don't think...our government should put much effort into promoting."

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Who's Behind Prop 10? Who's T. Boone Pickens?

Alternet:"Why T. Boone Pickens' 'Clean Energy' Plan Is a Ponzi Scheme"

Pickens is currently the head of BP Capital Management, a secretive hedge fund (aren't they all?) that has extensive connections to the magnate's hated "foreign oil" interests. The most glaring example from its investment portfolio is Halliburton, which was once run by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, is currently headquartered not in America but Dubai, and whose main business segments and subsidiaries involve oil exploration, construction, production and refining. And that's not mentioning its resume on rampant fraud and corruption, especially in Iraq but also elsewhere, which has so far cost American taxpayers billions.

But Halliburton isn't the only BP Cap holding that stinks. Pickens is also heavily invested in Schlumberger, the world's largest oil services corporation; nuclear and conventional energy powerhouse Shaw Group; the embattled ex-Halliburton subsidiary Kellog Brown and Root and so on. For a very rich man who decries the influence foreign oil has on American life, Pickens sure hasn't put his money where his mouth is. He's put his money where the oil is.

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Organizations Opposed to Prop 10 (partial list)