Everything Wrong With California in One Photo

From Steven Hayward at National Review:

Nationwide gasoline prices are below $3 a gallon. But here in California it is not unusual to see prices still over $4 a gallon. So what do liberal here want to do? Pass a law that mandates reducing gasoline consumption by 50 percent by the year 2030—just 15 years from now.
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Sponsors of the bill could not say how a 50% reduction in gasoline consumption would be accomplished. Higher prices? Rationing? Mandates that we all drive Teslas and Priuses? Even an economic illiterate could figure out that at the very least it would mean higher gasoline prices for people who cannot afford Teslas.

So Gov. Jerry Brown killed this part of the bill. But in typical Obama fashion, he says he will pursue the same goal with administrative regulations through the Air Resources Board.

The Primary Sponsor of the Bill was State Senator Kevin De'Leon, who represents some of the poorest people in the State. But he was encouraged by the likes of Tom Steyer, a multi-billioniare Green Warrior, who ironically got rich via coal.

How One Man Has Essentially Bought the California Legislature

From Ace of Spades HQ:

De Leon and Steyer have been super-glued together of late. As the Bakersfield Californian reported, "Steyer, a major donor to Democrats nationwide, is pouring money into the California Capitol, and de Leon is introducing bills that echo Steyer's environmental agenda." Steyer has appeared at hearings for de Leon's Senate Bill 350, which would mandate a 50 percent cut in gasoline consumption in the Golden State by 2030. The only way to achieve that goal would be to increase prices substantially. Hardest hit by Proposition 39 and the scorched-earth environmentalism of SB 350 would be de Leon's own constituents in East Los Angeles, one of the poorest areas in a state with the highest poverty rate in the nation. Working- and middle-class Californians with long commutes or who drive trucks for a living would suffer the consequences.

Steyer wants to become the next Governor of California. The irony of his transformation to a green warrior, it that he made his fortune in coal.

Tom Steyer wants to know why the gas prices he jacked up are so high

From Hot Air:

It’s impossible to simply skim over the irony of someone demanding to know why gas prices are so high in the very same press release where they push for an additional ten percent tax on oil extraction. Does Tom Steyer actually understand where gas comes from?
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The disconnect here is shocking. Dan Walters notes that Steyer really doesn’t seem to know how all of this works. (Sacramento Bee)

Just two months ago, at UC Berkeley, Schremp laid out the cost factors for nearly all of the 52.1-cent-per-gallon differential between California and the rest of the nation for “reformulated” fuel. They were higher taxes, 17 cents; higher production costs, 10 cents; cap-and-trade fees, 10 cents; and “an isolated market,” 10-plus cents.

The latter is very important. California requires a unique fuel blend to fight smog, making it very dependent on a few in-state refineries. Therefore, when there’s a strike, a fire or some other refinery disruption, California-only fuel supplies shrink and prices rise.

Were there some “nefarious” conspiracy to keep prices high, as Steyer suggests, California’s prices would not only be high, but stay high.

Thanks to precisely the initiatives which Steyer has backed in the past, Californians have to use a special snowflake mixture of gasoline which is only produced in a couple of refineries. When you limit supply, prices are vulnerable. They have a cap and trade plan which mandates that each gallon of gas will cost more than it does almost anywhere else right off the top. And their gas tax is already stupidly high, even before they tack on the next 10% Steyer is pushing for.

And yet he wants an investigation to find out why their gasoline costs 51 cents more per gallon. Can somebody remind me again how Tom Steyer managed to become a billionaire in the first place?

He knows, but this is all just PR. An miserable attempt to "feel" the problems of the common man. He's almost as tone deaf as Hillary.