California Political Class Insanity and Socialism, Part 4: More Blackouts, High Gas Prices, and Bad Budget Priorities

We have done any number of posts strictly focusing on the crises in different California cities, from going broke to large homeless problems to medieval diseases making a comeback. What was once the land of opportunity is now the land of impending disasters on several fronts, fronts we will be exploring in a series of posts.

Before going further, let’s review a few California realities we have covered previously:

• There are upwards of 30,000 homeless Americans roaming the streets of San Francisco.
• Without a home to go to, the city has made it legal to defecate, urinate, and shoot up drugs anywhere in the city including in public and on the streets of the city.
• This has led to a public health hazard and has caused the city to hire five full time government employees who go around the city each day in hazmat gear to pick up human feces and to clean the spot where it was found.
• Things are so bad that residents can use a city cell phone app to report where they found piles of feces.
• There are upwards of 60,000 homeless Americans in Los Angeles that is causing some of the same problems that are going down in San Francisco.
• Public defecation and urination in LA is causing health problems in that city which has actually led to the outbreak of at least one medieval disease, typhus, and the concern is that the bubonic plague may also make a comeback, given how the exploding rat population has fed off of the garbage that homelessness causes.

The reason we are doing so is to point out that the state that has had the most far reaching intrusions into freedom and citizens’ lives, the state that has put its nose into every aspect of citizens’ lives, the state that has has misspent and overspent its way far down the road of bankruptcy, and the state that has reduced the freedom of its citizens the most is the state of California. The state is by far the most socialistic state in the union and has basically been ruled by a single party for decades, the Democrats. 

And since a number of Democratic candidates for President have basically declared themselves to be socialists, I thought it might be an interesting subject to explore what would happen if socialism took over the whole country. What would it look like if the country took on the aspects of socialism and Democratic rule that has swept up California. Warning: the future is NOT bright if California is the leading edge.

In our first two posts we discovered nine current characteristics of living in California:

1. The rate of sexually transmitted diseases is skyrocketing.
2. Gas prices are about twice as much as the average price across the country.
3. Citizens are enduring rolling electricity blackouts.
4. Medieval diseases are making a comeback in Los Angeles.
5. Solar panels do nothing for you when the electric company blacks out your area on purpose.
6. San Francisco no longer feels like America.
7. The state government financial situation is very bleak.
8. California city governments are also deep in debt.
9. California has a dysfunctional voter registration process.
10. State politicians worry more about what other states are doing rather than fix what is wrong in their own state.

Let’s find out what other “adventures” Californians are living through:

1) The state of California has over $200 billion in unfunded future liabilities. This debt burden will likely bankrupt the entire state government in the not too distant future. But rather than work fixing overspending and debt loads, the state government politicians are working on spending more, not less taxpayer wealth:

• The Democrats in the state government and in the governor’s mansion in California have recently passed a plan that would allow the state government and the state’s taxpayers to pay two years worth of tuition at community colleges.
• This will likely cost the taxpayers $42.6 million a year and affect over 30,000 community college students.
• So the governor and state legislators are worrying about helping 30,000 students avoid paying for their education while well over 100,000 state residents are homeless and roaming the streets of the state’s cities, with about 90,000 just in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
• According to the Feeding America organization, the average cost per meal to feed a homeless American is $2.94 per meal.
• Thus, in theory, that $42.6 million could provide over 14 million meals to the homeless population of California.

How many lives of needy California Americans could be helped by getting a good meal vs. paying for the college tuition of other citizens who in all likelihood know where their next meal is coming from? Such bad priorities of state politicians.

2) We have already talked about how gas costs so much more in California, in some places twice as expensive than the national average. Chris White, writing for the Daily Caller website on October 24, 2019, did an analysis of why that is the case and not surprisingly, state politicians and their over regulation of the lives of state residents are the main causes of sky high gas prices:

• The average price of a gallon of gas in the state is $4.18, about double the national cost.
• In some places in California the price is actually over $5.00 a gallon.
• In 2017, the governor at the time, Jerry Brown, signed legislation that raised the state’s gas tax 12 cents a gallon on gas and 20 cents a gallon on diesel.
• At the same time the state raised vehicle license fees from $25 to $175 per car.
• This tax increase was not an absolute number, it was based on a percentage of the price of gas so if the prices goes up the tax goes up also, a very sneaky way of increasing taxes without having to legislate it.
• According to Kara Siepmann, a spokeswoman for the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA): “State and federal laws like the recently approved gas tax, the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, and other fuel-related taxes and fees add a little over 92 cents to each gallon of gas and have a profound impact on California’s businesses and communities.” 
• California has the second highest gas tax in the country.
• The state’s strict, and likely unnecessary, regulations result in California requiring gas sold in the state to be blended differently, adding additional costs to refining and making it impossible to import gas from other states, reducing the potential supply and increasing the price.
• Adding insult to injury, the special California blended gas changes depending on what time of year it is, adding additional costs and reducing the supply.
• Local and state zoning strategies have reduced the available land that could be used for gas stations, further reducing supply and increasing prices even more.
• There are 40% fewer gas stations in San Francisco than there were ten years ago.
• Some California cities are suing oil companies because of their obsession with global warming and if they go too far down that road these oil companies might just stop selling and refining gas in the state which would further increase prices.

Obviously these folks in the state government have a tremendous lack of economic knowledge, supply and demand drive prices. By reducing supply in so many ways prices go up and state taxpayers get stuck with more costs of living in the state with no relief insight.

3) Let’s finish up this series on the hell that California is becoming from a daily living perspective with an update on the intentional blackouts that are still going on, blackouts that definitely reduce the quality of life in the state:

• The latest blackouts by Pacific Gas and Electric are affecting almost a million customers and likely over 2 million people.
• This is being done to try and stop the utilities’ equipment from adding to the wildfires currently raging in the state.
• These people being blacked out range over 36 counties.
• The latest blackouts will last for two days.

Now, while the utility can rightfully be blamed for these disasters and the blackouts and fires its faulty equipment causes, keep in mind it is the state government which regulates all of the utilities’ operations. They should be overseeing the operations of all utilities so the state government bureaucracy, and the politicians that oversee this bureaucracy, are also to blame for this mess.

So in summary, Democrats and liberals who dominate state and local governments in the state of California have succeeded in bringing the state’s residents high gas prices, rolling electricity blackouts, bad spending priorities, a skyrocketing homeless population, the appearance of at least one Medieval disease, skyrocketing sexually transmitted diseases, heavy government debt burdens, and a dysfunctional voter registration system. 

This is what socialism looks like as practiced in California. It is not pretty along so many dimensions and yet, Democrats think socialism is still a good idea. Proving again, that when it comes to the American political class there is still no cure for stupid.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w