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How Quickly Can California Be Destroyed?

It’s hard to destroy a state. Or rather, the advanced industrial economy of a state.

Mud slides, eco-policy-abetted wildfires, exploding taxes and spending and regulations, riots, pandemics — such things go only so far. After the latest holocausts and catastrophes abate (if they do), survivors can still soldier on. Mow the lawn, say hello to neighbors, hop in the car to get to work, and so forth.

Is there a solution? Yes! Pile on the calamities thicker, faster, harder. While people are still reeling from one natural disaster or lunatic policy decision, slug them again!

California Governor Gavin Newsom is taking this lesson to heart, bless him. He has signed an order banning production of emission-emitting cars and light trucks by 2035, in hopes of eliminating “sales of internal combustion engines.”

He also wants lawmakers to get cracking on banning fracking. No point helping to produce abundant means of combustion if you’re outlawing combustion.

Alas, though Newsom’s heart is in the right place, he’s still somewhat pandering to friends of civilization and transportation. If gas be so wicked, turn off the spigot ipso pronto. Well, maybe in a month or two to give people a chance to practice their walking. Then shutter all carbon-emitting factories that make all the cars, including electric cars.

If the key to life is paying fealty to environmentalist pieties immunized from cogent analysis, we must end industry ASAP. Stopping plastic straws and internal combustion isn’t enough.

Sock it to ’em!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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California’s new top banana is playing politics the old-fashioned way: passing the buck.

Last week Governor Gavin Newsom directed the California Energy Commission (CEC) to look into the state’s higher-than-average gasoline prices.

“Independent analysis suggests that an unaccounted-for price differential exists in California’s gas prices and that this price differential may stem in part from inappropriate industry practices,” he wrote in an official letter to the CEC. “These are all important reasons for the Commission to help shed light on what’s going on in our gasoline market.”

Ah, shed light!

We are not talking about the bulb in your outbuilding.

Californians understandably grumble about having to pay higher taxes than elsewhere in the U.S. So Newsom pretends to suspect “inappropriate industry practices.” But what is inappropriate is Newsom’s directive to the CEC. As Christian Britschgi drolly informs us at Reason, Newsom, while lieutenant governor, had “supported a 2017 bill increasing the state’s gas taxes,” which looks like all we really need to know. Raise taxes, and businesses tend to increase prices rather than eat the extra cost. Higher gas prices are the result of higher taxes.

Duh.

But there’s more.

“When running for governor in 2018,” Britschgi explains, “he opposed a ballot initiative that would have repealed that same increase.”

So, is Newsom truly clueless of the obvious?

Hardly. And neither are “17 legislators who voted for the tax hike” who joined the governor in “wanting answers to this difficult headscratcher.” They are doing what pols usually do: deflect; misdirect; blame others … hoping that voters don’t pay close enough attention, or remember recent history. And busy people often do not.

Finding a bogeyman helps, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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