Newsom's Gas Failures

about the oil and gas industry. And this comes off the news that two major oil refineries in the state are closing down, meaning, with lessened supply and demand not really changing very significantly, prices for gas are going to skyrocket by twenty twenty six. So the state legislatures gathering together to askool what what happened and how is this happening? And everyone's all in a tizzy over it, And what no one wants to acknowledge is that the state legislature

did this. This is all the state legislature's fault and Gavin Newsom's fault. Chiefly Gavin Newsom's fault. They took actions in twenty twenty four in which they were warned if you do this, bad things will happen, refineries will close, prices will go up, and they did it anyway. It's all one hundred percent their fault. All right, what am I talking about? Well, it all has to do with the extraordinary session of the legislature. Gavin Newsom called last

year he was upset at price spikes for gasoline. Basically, he's he gets upset that in the summertime, when demand goes up, the cost of gasoline throughout California goes up. And Newsome kept insisting basically ascribing these price spikes not to the normal fluctuations of supply and demand in the market, but ascribing it all to greed on the part of oil companies, price gouging on the part of oil companies.

So he introduced legislation a bill called ab X two dash one ab X two to one that put requirements on California oil refineries or fine oil and gas for our cars to maintain a higher supply of gas at all times in order to avoid the fluctuations, to offset the fluctuations. Basically, just maintain a higher supply of gas at all times. Then when demand gets high, you already have the gas on hand to do that. Well, it's

not that easy. If it were just that easy, that you could well just maintain a higher supply and then when the you know that, you know that demand's gonna increase, So when demand increases, then you're ready. It's not that simple. Keeping an artificially higher supply of gas, a supply of gas that's higher than the current demand is costly. It adds costs, and the gas company have to pass that cost along somehow, and guess how they pass it along. They pass it along in the form of higher prices.

And the gas companies at the time last year, around this time when ABX two to one was being debated, the gas companies told Gaven Newsom told the state legislature very bluntly, in no uncertain terms, if you pass this, it's just going to lead to higher gas prices throughout the year. We can't. This puts more cost on us if you insist that we maintain artificially inflated higher levels of gasoline in our refineries. Because let's remember why it's

like this California specific problem. If you insists that we maintain this higher level of gas at all times, then it's going to add more costs to us, and we have to start questioning as a business whether we want to keep maintaining our California based refineries because our California based refineries cost a lot of money to maintain year over year. To maintain an oil refinery a gas refinery over the course of a year requires something like three

hundred million dollars per year of investment. It's a lot of investment. If we're not making enough profit because our prices have to be too high and a certain point it's hurting our bottom line, then we're gonna move. We're gonna stop our California based operations. And if we shut down our California based refineries, it's gonna have a massively negative impact on prices for the California gas consumer. The oil companies told us that last year they explicitly warned

us of this. The state legislature passed this law anyway, and that outcome has happened. Two major refineries have shut down. Gas prices are gonna skyrocket. Now, why is it that we're so dependent on like two refineries shutting down, Like wouldn't you think the whole California market would be bigger and bigger and diversified enough to sort of absorb the

blow of something like that. Well, it gets back to the whole reason why gas is expensive in California in the first place, a problem that everybody understands, and nobody with any power in California government wants to grapple with. The reason why gas is expensive in California is not a mystery, and it is not the result of oil or gas price companies being greedy. It's not like they're greedier in California than they are in Nevada, or greedier

in California than they are in Massachusetts. Gas prices are more expensive in California because of one, taxes, but more significantly regulation regulation on the kind of gas that can be sold in California, which is different from the kind of gas sold in the rest of the country. It's a different blend that you can't get that is California specific. You can't just use the gas that's sold at the pump in Oklahoma in California, because California has these specific

regulations that make it different. You have to do a different refining refining process. As a result, oil and gas companies they still wanted to sell in the California, so they made the investment to set up refineries that are California specific. California is a gas island, it's supply chains for getting crude oil and making it into gas are

separate from those of the rest of the country. So if we've got two refineries shutting down that are producing California gas, it's not like we can get it from other places. There are only so many places to get it. So again, this is yet another Gavin Newsome catastrophe. And this is like the I don't know, the sixth or seventh massive Gavin Newsome catastrophe that we've been dealing with

over the last year. Here between the structural deficit in the California state budget, wildfires being a problem for the whole Newsome administration and then culminating in the worst wildfires anyone's ever seen in January of this year, homelessness being a massive growing problem, and us coming to the conclusion last year that the state had spent twenty four billion dollars on homelessness to no impact, to no effect through programs that had no accountability, no metrics even for measuring

that they were effective, let alone demonstrating effectiveness. The high speed rail train that continues to just not be problem after problem after problem after problem, so specifically with gas, there was an oversight hearing in Sacramento in the state legislature about the Newsome administration and its approach to the

oil and gas industry. It was present there were members of the California Air Resources Board and they were discussing the various problems and difficulties that are coming out of one the Trump administration sort of undoing the all electric cars by twenty thirty five mandate, but then also dealing with again this fact that we're gonna have two refineries closing down and gas prices are about to go nuts.

So Ashley Zavala is a Sacramento based local news reporter in Sacramento who's like the only person who actually covers the state capitol. I'm convinced. She was live tweeting the event this hearing, and Siva Gunda from the California Energy Commission was presenting, and she presents this slide show about gas price spikes that the state is bracing for these

spikes to worsen with the loss of refining capacity. So because we have two refineries closing down, gas price spikes are going to be worse than they were last year. Which the irony of this is so rich. The whole reason why Gavin Newsom introduced and passed ABX to one last year. His bill to the whole point of the bill was to prevent gas price spikes by insisting that gas companies maintained artificially high supplies of gas at all times so that when demand spiked, they'd have enough gas

to do it. Well, now we don't have enough refining capacity. So because the company, the gas companies said, this is going to be way too expensive for us to do. It's way too expensive for us to maintain refineries if we have to jack up our prices this much, and this is not worth it for us anymore. We're pulling out of California. So now our supply is so low that the gas price spikes, they're still going to have to do gas price spikes, and in fact they're going

to be worse. They're gonna be worse. This bill, whose whole point was to prevent spiking prices of gas, has made it worse. And this is yet another, yet another Gavin Newsom failure, just of epic proportions. No one was talking about this legislation until Newsome stomped his foot and insisted on it. Last year, he called a special session of the legislature to do it because he has to

blame name somebody else. He and the environmentalist wacko controlled California state legislature that they are so insistent on blaming anyone other than themselves for high costs of energy, and it's only their fault. It's only their fault. The idea that you can blame gas and oil companies in California based gas and oil companies for being greedy. They're not any greedier in California than they are greedy anywhere else.

Their greed level is exactly the same. There's no reason why they would be so much greedier in California than they are in Hawaii. And everyone knows that greed is not the underlying reason for why gas prices are so high. Everyone understands why gas prices are high. They are high because of policy decisions made by California California lawmakers. Policy decisions that were made and maintained by California lawmakers. That's it.

That's the first, middle last, only reason why. And Democrats in California think they can constantly go back to this well of blaming the greed of big oil for why stuff is expensive. Ignore, and people keep voting for it, People keep buying it, People keep buying this notion that the gas companies are so powerful in California. They're not very powerful. Clearly, they're not very powerful. If they had power, they wouldn't they would have stopped the passage of ABX

two one. They didn't because they're not very powerful. You know who's powerful in California, environmentalist groups, that's who's powerful. So it's yet another Gavin Newsom failure. And when we return, I want to talk about the Gavin Newsom failures that they're not just like partisan failures, they're just non partisan any which way you look at it failures. Next on the John Growardy Show, here's the thing with Gavin Newsom's various failures. And I feel like I do this every show.

I feel like I go back to what's gonna happen on a Democrat primary debate stage in twenty twenty seven. In December twenty twenty seven, CNN presents the Democrat Primary Debate, the first Democrat primary debate, and Gavin Newsom's gonna be up there, grinning with his slicked back hair and his veneers shining in the camera and he's going to try to, you know, obviously, promote himself in the great work he's done in California, and someone's gonna turn to him and say,

are you kidding me? The great work you've done in California. Let me give you a list of horrible things that have happened under your administration. And then they'll proceed to give a list not of politically controverted things that Democrats like and Republicans don't like. That's not what's going to be presented again. It'll be a Democrat primary debate. Okay,

it's Democrats debating other Democrats. The thing is Newsome's biggest failures, his failure after failure after failure, spectacular failure after failure. It's all stuff that isn't really up for political debate. It's just an outcome that's obviously bad. California has the highest gas prices in the country. They had the highest gas prices in the country when you entered office, and

their gas prices are now much higher. In fact, after you passed the law in twenty twenty four to try to insist that oil refineries in your state artificially keep a higher supply of gas at all times in order to prevent gas price spikes, which they told you not to do, which plenty of smart people warned you not to do, because it would cause those oil companies to pull out of the state, close down refineries, and ultimately lead to higher gas prices. You charged ahead anyway, You

signed the legislation anyway, and that's precisely what happened. Within a year, two oil refineries were shutting down, and you're looking at eight dollars a gallon gas in some parts of California coming up in twenty twenty six, like eight dollars a gallon. Guess that's not a Republican problem. It's not a Democrat problem. That's a problem probl em. It doesn't matter if you're a Republican or Democrat. Homelessness was a bad problem in California in twenty eighteen when you

ran for governor. It's a worse problem here in twenty twenty. In December of twenty twenty seven, when this debate's happening, you inherited a state budget that was relatively stable. By the time you left office, your state budget was facing structural deficits of ten to twenty billion dollars every year. Deficits are just bad. Like, there's no it's not a Republican bad, Democrat bad. Everyone acknowledges that's bad. And there's only so many boogeymen Newsom can blame. Whom does he

blame for deficits? Well, it's the fault of uh, it's not the Republicans fault. And that's the thing with Newsome, it's all his fault. He has no Republicans to blame. There are like three Republicans in Sacramento. Republicans are not just the minority. They're not just the super minority. They are a super duper minority because Democrats don't just have a majority. They don't just have a super majority of

two thirds, which you need two thirds majority. If you have a two thirds majority, there's lots of additional things you can do. Democrats don't have two thirds. They have three fourths. They have three fourths of all the seats. For those of you from Rial Linda, three fourths is more than two thirds. So Republicans can stump their feet and shout all they want. They can't do a darned thing. It's all Newsome's fault. The high speed rail was not built when he started it's still not built when he's

leaving and not funded. He has these failures on issue after issue after issue after issue, where it's again, it's just not like a partisan deal. It's surely just a failure. Wildfires were a horrible problem his whole time as governor, and he clearly didn't take effective enough steps to correct it, because in January twenty twenty five, Los Angeles has the biggest wildfire in history. New housing construction was a problem that wasn't happening quickly enough in twenty eighteen when he

ran for governor. By you know, here, we are almost five months out from the wildfires in January, and how many permits for new homes to be rebuilt have been approved a paltry tiny fraction of all the houses that burnt down, Like he's just failed. And it's stuff that's objective, doesn't matter where you stand. And even the things where maybe you could criticize him one way or another politically, like medical coverage for illegal aliens, he gets it coming

and going. Conservatives can blame him and criticize him for providing medical coverage for illegal aliens, and then liberals can blame him for having to embarrassingly roll that back because it cost way more than he anticipated. So he's just faced and now with god knows where where his you know, head's gonna stop spinning on the transgender issue. Democrats might criticize him, Republicans might criticize him, like he's just got failure after failure after failure after failure that, and he

it seems like he's racking them up in rapid succession. Really, just over the course of twenty twenty five, he's cooked, he's done. I just don't think he's got a snowballs chance in hell of being elected president. Just the series of catastrophic California news, from the budget structural deficit, to the wildfires, to the alarming news about how underfunded the high speed rail is, how they seriously don't have enough money to get it done. Just boom boom boom boom,

thing after thing after thing he is. I just don't see how he can possibly credibly run for president when we return the inevitable criticisms of Diane Pierce and other local Fresno politicians talking about this whole state issue with transgenderism at the California High School Track and Field meet coming up this weekend that is next on the John

Girardi Show. So I went today to the press conference that Diane Pierce held for regarding the whole issue about transgenderism within California high school sports that took place at the Presno Veterans Memorial and about the California state high school track and field competitions which are being held the state wide championships that are being held at Buchanan over the course of this weekend, and which are prominently featuring a biological male competing in some of the women's events.

The Californianster Scholastic Federation has updated some of its rules basically to allow girls who may have been bumped from qualifying for things to still participate, who may have been bumped for qualifying for things by a transgender biological male athlete to still qualify for things, but their policy is still not in conformity with the Trump administration's Executive Order et cetera, et cetera, And my thoughts turned to Diane Pierce, a public figure who has caused no small amount of

controversy in our local politics, and the controversy around her is always this. It's usually basically it's usually centered around other members of the City of Clovis City Council criticizing her for getting involved in issues that they say are outside the scope, outside the scope of what the city council is supposed to do. Why can't you just be

focused on fixing potholes, et cetera. Lynn Ashbeck is often the leading figure criticizing Diane Diane Pierce very publicly for this kind of behavior, and it leads me to want to offer a defense of Diane Pierce and of politicians like her, like Gary Brettefeld. Gary Bretdefeld gets hit with the same kind of accusation quite a bit, that he's a grand stander, that he's a self promoter, but also that he overly politicizes things and focuses on issues that

are outside of his ken. If you will, all right, City governments are supposed to represent us. That's what they do, and the work of city governments is limited. City governments and county governments are themselves purely and simply creations of state government. The parameters of what they do or can do are set by state law. This is true throughout the United States, Okay, cities and county governments only have

latitude to act. They only have freedom to act. They only have independence to act insofar as the state grants them that freedom latitude independence to act. So the range of what a city council can do is fairly limited. Their football field on which they can play is very small. Okay, the parameters are set by state law. So as a result, there's a lot of kind of big picture things national news controversies, even statewide news controversies that city council's city government,

local government, county government. They may not be able necessarily to have a big impact on it, or there might be some issue that's a county issue but not a city issue, or vice versa. The instinct of any local government official is to flee controversy, to settle themselves into something quiet, safe and secure. I think there's very much a temptation to do that in county government on the

County Board of Supervisors. The County Board of Supervisors made a lot of headlines by not really changing their boundary. Their redistricting boundary lines very much. So every ten years you do redistricting and the County Board of Supervisors, their individual supervisorial districts have to get redrawn to reflect the latest census data, and the president County Board of Supervisors

didn't change their boundary lines all that much. County supervisors make really good money for relative to other elected officials in California state government. County supervisors make very good money. They make much more than even City of Fresno City council members make. They make a comfortable into the six figures. And county supervisors don't have term limits. It's very comfortable. You can if you don't make waves. You maybe have

two or three controversial votes per year. You've got your district that's fairly Republican I mean that fairly Republican or fairly Democrat, and you can sit tight pretty well. And yet in the last county supervisor round of elections, two incumbents lost in favor of two pretty hard charging challengers. Gary Bretdefeld replaced Steve Brandew. And I like Steve Branda, and I'll say this, I don't think Steve Randall was like that. I don't think he was a comfortable sit

around guy. I mean he I'll always credit him for passing the library ordinance that took a lot of guts for him to do. But sal Can and Tara All so he got replaced by Luis Chavis. And I do believe that there is a real temptation in local government not to talk about your views on bigger, broader topics because you don't want to be controverari sial. Even though this is a thing you may not be able to impact it. But part of living in a political community

together is affirming what's good and denying what's bad. Alerting your citizenry about things that are happening that are good or bad, rallying attention, rallying concern on behalf of your city for things that are maybe beyond your city's power to immediately do something, but maybe your city ken if you will lobby for that thing. I think Diane Pierce was admirable for doing just this in the context of libraries. Here's the Clovis City Council, which, for those who haven't

been to the closed City Council, it's this. It's right across the street from Clark Intermediate School. It's right near San Joaquin College of Law on Bullard, which turns into Fifth Street. Once you get to Old Town Clovis it becomes Fifth Street, and then as you leave Old Town Clovis it turns back into Bullard. So the Clovis City Council is in this sort of complex of buildings that

all look the same. It's right next door to a Fresno County Library, the Clovis branch of the Fresno County Library, and in the Clovist branch of the Fresnoe County Library. They had all kinds of smut aimed at kids. I go to that library, I've seen it to. It's not just Diane seeing it. I've seen it too. And so Diane Pierce made a big public stink about it and said, hey,

this is really bad. And it was right in the middle of this being a big national, you know, news story talking point in what was I guess this was twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, that public schools were introducing public schools and county run public libraries introducing more and more aggressive sexual content to younger and younger audiences, and Diane Pierce said, why the heck do we have this the al Basically everyone on the

Clovis City Council sort of wrung their hands and said, well, that's a controversial topic, and you're making city staff feel uncomfortable by drawing attention to it. And by the way, it's a county it's a county library, it's not a city library. So it's not your job. It's not your job to deal with that. You know what else isn't part of our you know, the Presdent City Council's job, or the Clove City Council's job. The Presno City council is not going to do anything to fix the Armenian genocide.

It happened one hundred and ten years ago. And yet every year in April, what do we do. We ceremonies, public ceremonies, speeches, gatherings in which we honor the victims of the Armenian genocide. Why, because this is a community. We are part of a community. Living in a polis, in a political community, in a city is a natural thing for human beings to do, and a city is a kind of naturally occurring thing. A city has stuff that ties it together. Things they think are good, things

they think are bad, are shared. American heritage, Pride in our country, pride in our agricultural economy, pride in this that there's a lot of ideas, ideals, principles that in a functioning city can and do unite you and city governments. It's good for us to honor things that are good and to object to things that are bad, even if

it's a little beyond our ability immediately to legislate to stop. Yes, I understand that the closed city council can't fix the problem of transgender athletes competing in California high school sports. It's above their pay grade. But I commend local government leaders for saying, you know what, it's happening right here in our town. I have citizens in my town who don't even realize this. Don't don't grasp the enormity of this, don't grasp the enormity of how this has taken away

the rights of women. And it's the state championships are happening right here in Clovis, California. So I say bravo to Diane Pierce, Bravo to Gary Brettfeld, Bravo to local government leaders who are willing to say you know what. Yeah, I know, my job is mostly concerned with potholes and fixing roads and hiring cops, but this is what I also But I also believe that this is right and this is wrong, and as a city leader, as a civic leader, I think it's right and just for my

voice to be heard on this. So kudos to them when we return the power of AI to really screw up your job. Next on the John Girardi Show, Misty her is in hot Water news story in GV wire by Edward Smith. Apparently the Fresney Unified administration presented the Teachers Association, the teachers' union that represents teachers in Fresney Unified, with a document this month that cited every instance that union leadership criticized Misty Herr in a quote inflammatory, unprofessional,

or dismissive way. But there was a problem this document that they gave the Teachers Association. It's nine pages long, document was sharing a bunch of quotes that were completely fabricated. None of the stories actually the actual news stories. When you went back to them, they didn't have the quotes that this dossier said they did, leading everyone to realize that this nine page dossier was created by AI. I

would just like to give this little thought. Everyone needs to realize that there's a lot of lazy, stupid people in the world, and that all of them are going to try to use AI, even in professional settings to cut corners at work, and it's going to lead to a lot of embarrassing situations like this. So mistery Hurr, you probably want a fire whoever made that document for you,

just just my two cents. If you don't want your students all using AI to cheat on work, you probably don't want people working for you who also use AI. And it's part of my ongoing luddite hatred of AI that I find. Look, if you want to use AI, Hey, I've got this kind of cheese and this kind of onion. There's a AI. Find me five recipes that will use these ingredients. All right, that's fine. Other than that I hate it. That'll do it, John Glady Show. See you next time on Power Talk