Washington, March 27 (IANS) Indian-American Neel Kashkari, Republican candidate for governor of California, has released a jobs plan focused on rebuilding the middle class by putting Californians back to work to take on incumbent Democratic governor Jerry Brown.
Kashkari, 40, a former treasury department official who played a key role in bailing out the banks during the Bush administration, unveiled his plan at an event in San Diego Tuesday, according to his website.
“Governor Brown may be running on his decades of experience in government, but the fact is that his failed leadership has been devastating for millions of California families – especially the 17 percent of Californians who are struggling for work,” he said.
“Jerry Brown’s legacy is the destruction of the middle class, and we won’t let him get away with it.”
Kashkari’s 10 reforms, according to his campaign website, “will unleash the private sector to put Californians back to work and rebuild the middle class”
Kashkari’s jobs plan provides a general outline of strategies and initiatives, but it provides few financial details, according to San Francisco Gate.
In what the campaign said would be a national first, Kashkari’s goal of making California a “job magnet” includes a proposal for a 10-year moratorium on state corporate taxes for any business that moves to the state bringing at least 100 new jobs – or for existing manufacturers that expand here.
Among the more controversial aspects of Kashkari’s plan may be his call for “safe development” of the oil-rich Monterey Formation, it said.
Kashkari said the development should be in partnership with industry “to ensure that the interests of environmental protection and economic growth” will serve the state.
Brown faced virulent protests at the California Democratic convention last month from crowds of demonstrators passionately opposed to fracking and extraction in the Monterey Formation, which lies mostly in one of the state’s richest agricultural areas in the San Joaquin Valley, according to San Francisco Gate.