The 'California Kabuki Theater' on Gas Prices & CEQA

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There are certain kabuki dances that liberals insist we do
before anyone says I'm racist for saying kabuki dance. That's
a cultural reference to a dramatic, affected, elaborate dance. These

(00:21):
little kabuki dances that liberals have to do. One of
their favorite ones right now is still continuing to say, well,
we can't know for certain exactly the origins of COVID.
We can't know for certain that it came from a lab. No, no, no.
The only other theory going is it either came from

(00:42):
this lab in Wuhan, China, where they had lacks security
protocols and where they were studying studying dangerous coronaviruses, or
it came from a wet market right next door to it.
One or the other. I don't know. Call me crazy.
I think that the origin of a dangerous coronavirus might

(01:03):
have been from the lab that was studying dangerous coronaviruses,
not the wet market right next door to it. It
was also hilarious how the lab leak theory was deemed
the racist theory, not the idea that COVID originated from
a disgusting wet market with horrible sanitation practices, Like isn't

(01:27):
that a little more racist towards Chinese anyway. Another kobuki
dance that apparently we have to do is specific to
us in California, and that is we have to act
mystified about why gas prices are high. We have to

(01:48):
pretend like it's some great mystery, and we have to
seriously entertain liberals because they have the vast majority in
the Californy State Senate and State Assembly and the governor's
off mansion. Actually does the governor have a mansion? I
don't know if that's true. Well, they have the governor's office.
Let's say that we have to entertain the absurdity that

(02:16):
California has high gas prices for some reason other than
the very obvious policy choices we've made. We have to
pretend like it's something like price gouging. That's the reason
why price gouging news Gavin Newsom, that was his thing.

(02:39):
Big oil companies are price gouging California. So they're only
price gouging us in California, and they're not price gouging
people in Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon who have significantly lower
gas prices as soon as you cross the state line,
that they're only greedy for the California they don't care

(03:01):
about other states, that they don't mind other states. They're
they're only gonna screw us in California. They're gonna gouge
us so much that we're paying higher gas prices than
people in Hawaii are. Why, what devious? Evil? What did
California ever do to them that they are so punitive

(03:23):
and evil? It never made any sense. Of course, it
doesn't make any sense. It's a silly argument. And yet
from KTLA News in Los Angeles, policies, not greed, are
driving California's sky high gas prices, study fines as Californians

(03:44):
continue to wonder why they suffer disproportionately at the pump
compared to other states, Do we do Californians really not understand? Still,
really we don't understand. A new study from a prominent
researcher says the state's perpetually high gas prices are largely

(04:05):
self inflicted. Thank you, Captain obvious. Michael Mishi mish Mish
with the USC Marshall School of Business recently published quote
a study of California gasoline prices diving into the reason
why California is typically the most expensive state in the
US to fill up your vehicle. The conclusion California's high

(04:27):
gas prices are the quote, the result of directed policies
and a litany of regulations, taxes, fees, and costs. According
to Mischi, I could have told you that for free.
The data is overwhelmingly compelling. He told KTLA on Monday.
There is no evidence of price gouging either by gas

(04:48):
station owners or refiners or oil producers in the state,
at least widespread. All right, So here's what you are led.
Here's what liberals want you to believe and what they
want you to ignore. All right, here's what they want
you to believe. Price gouging. What is price gouging exactly?
You may have heard that term, all right. Price gouging

(05:11):
is basically where you can take advantage of high demand
to charge more or less whatever you want. So then
there are different examples of price gouging. So maybe price
gouging is all of a sudden, there's a I don't know,
there's a flood. There's flooding all over the place, and

(05:34):
there's a guy selling some urgently needed supply and he's
selling it at a huge markup. Okay, that's price gouging.
You're kind of taking advantage of a desperate situation to
make a ton of money because people have so much
demand that they're willing to pay prices they wouldn't otherwise pay. Okay,
but here's here's what price gouging means in this context,

(05:54):
what Gavin Newsom at all are alleging of the gas companies.
It basically has to do with uncompetitive an uncompetitive market,
a colluding market. All right, So let's explain monopolies and oligopolies.
A monopoly is when one business completely dominates an industry

(06:19):
and is the only entity selling a needed product. Right,
So let's say there's only one gas company for the
whole country. Well, if there's only one gas company, you
can't go to some other competitor. That that one gas
company is incentivized to just increase their price more and

(06:40):
more and more and more until you get to a
breaking point where you decide, forget it. I'm just going
to buy an electric car or ride a bike. Why
are they incentivised to raise their price like that? Well,
you have no one else to go to. There's no
other competitor in the market where you could take your
business to. So the gas company says, this person is
not going anywhere. Let's just keep on increasing the price.

(07:01):
It just makes our profit that much higher. Okay, that's
a monopoly, and oligopoly with anti competitive activity colluding is
kind of a similar end result. An oligopoly means there
are a few businesses that completely dominate the market. Oligoy

(07:24):
is the Greek word for a few. So let's say
they're three gas companies. They're operating like normal gas companies,
trying to lower their prices and trying to adjust their prices,
not you know, low enough to take business from the
other guy, but high enough to make sure that they're
making a profit still. And they're struggling against each other.

(07:46):
And then the three CEOs of the three oil companies
get together one day for dinner and they say, hey, guys,
what are we doing. We're making our lives harder. Why
don't we all just work together. We all have a
decent market share, all three of us are wealthy men.
We're all gonna do fine. Let's just all of us
together increase our prices, make more profit for each of us,

(08:11):
and not really be competing against each other for business.
We'll all increase our prices again up to the sort
of the breaking point at which someone decides, forget it,
I'm just gonna buy a bike, or forget it, I'm
just gonna buy an electric car. That is illegal. That's
anti competitive activity, and it has the same net result
basically as a monopoly. That's what an oligopoly is. Effectively,

(08:38):
That's what Gavin Newsom is accusing the oil gas whatever industry,
From mom and pop owners of a local individual point
of sale gas station, to the refiners, to the oil

(09:00):
companies themselves, that's what Gavinusom is accusing them of price
gouging in that respect, behaving in an anti competitive way
in order to increase prices in order to just maximize
their profits, maybe doing that within a region, et cetera.

(09:23):
That's what Gavin Ussom would have you believe is going on.
Here's the stuff that it ignores. California regulates oil and
regulates gasoline, the gasoline you put in the pump, more
so and differently from every other state in the Union.
In fact, California has its own specific blend of gasoline

(09:49):
that it insists upon in order to comply with California
emissions standards, the one state out of fifty that's doing
this so much so that the refinery system to take
oil and turn it into gasoline, the refinery system for

(10:09):
California has to be different and separate from the refinery
systems used by all the other states. So California is
a gas island, so to speak. It's off on its own.
It has its own sort of system of supply and refineries,

(10:32):
its own network of these things. So it can't just
use the same kind of gas that you would get
in Nevada or Oklahoma or something. No, it's a specific
California blend. Because of those requirements that California has insisted
upon for so long, it puts more cost on the

(10:55):
oil and gas companies, more cost to them, and that
cost they wind up passing on to the consumer. So
that's why, that's the only reason why. That's why California
somehow manages to have higher average gas prices than Hawaii.

(11:19):
That should never be the case. Hawaii doesn't get gas
unless it's transported there on a boat. Of course, Hawaii
is going to have higher gas costs. Hawaii's going to
have higher costs for pretty much everything. Because it's an
island out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's
sort of separate from the normal distribution for other American

(11:39):
goods and services. You gotta ship it out there on
a boat. Of course, Hawaii should have high gas prices.
Somehow we manage to have higher gas prices. Why. It's
not because oil and gas companies hate California. It's not
because they hate Californians. It's not because they hate Gavin Newsom,
although in fairness, he gives them plenty of reasons. It's

(12:03):
not some antipathy towards the Californian consumer. It's not that
they're sick of the Dodgers outspending everyone in Major League Baseball. No,
it's because of obvious economic reasons. And I knew all

(12:23):
that I didn't need this study by this guy at USC.
I mean, you know, good for him doing a study
to sort of conclusively demonstrate it. And I'm hoping that
this will be useful to people in the California legislature.
Problem is that the Democrats are just going to ignore it.

(12:45):
But it's, as he says, the data is overwhelmingly compelling.
He told KTLA on Monday, there is no evidence of
price gouging either by gas station owners or refiners or
oil producers in the state at least widespread. Mischi came
to that conclusion after examining about fifty years of gas

(13:05):
prices throughout the state and analyzing what led to spikes
and lulls. It is uniformly acknowledged that California has the
most stringent regulatory environment for oil and gas companies in
the world. The study reads, in part, regulatory oversight, irrespective
of one's political perspective, is layered into and accumulates throughout
the supply chain, ultimately adding to the cost to the

(13:26):
cost burdens of compliance for oil and gas industry operators,
which in turn contribute to higher consumer prices at the pump.
Mischi and other experts refute Governor Gavin Newsom's claim that
oil companies have been quote gouging California drivers for years
and that greed has played a larger role than policies
and market forces. The governor has targeted the industry with

(13:47):
investigations and legislation aimed at increasing transparency and keeping prices
in check, including some policies that designed to keep prices
in check that will likely just continue to inflate prices.
In a statement to KTLA, a spokesperson for Newsom said
he has quote avoided severe gasoline price spikes like the

(14:10):
historic twenty twenty two spike since he signed a price
gouging bill two years ago. The law established the nation's
first state level independent petroleum watchdog to hold big oil accountable,
and the state has more transparency from the industry than
ever before. The statement reads, in part, so anyway, everyone

(14:36):
knows this, this is the thing. Why it's it's kabuki theater.
Everybody understands the problem. Nobody doesn't understand the problem. Gavin
Newsom fully understands the problem. Every single Democrat in the
legislature understands the problem. Nobody is ignorant about it, and

(14:56):
everyone just keeps pretending like it's something other than what
it is. Why Well, big time Democrat donors are behind
the big time environmental groups, Okay, Sierra Club et al.

(15:16):
If Democrats were to actually propose a bill that weakened
emission standards in the name of and weakened regulatory oversight
for the oil and gas company in the interest of
lowering costs, those groups would lose their minds. They don't,

(15:41):
and that's what drives everything. What drives everything in California
politics is money. It's the moneyed donor class that controls
who wins and who loses in Democrat politics, and they
will not cross them. There are certain just red lines
that they want cross. It's one of many problems in

(16:02):
California that we fully understand the problem, we fully understand
the solution, and the solution is just off the table
because the donor class won't allow that solution to be
broached when we return. Other California state problems that we

(16:25):
just don't fix because the donors just don't allow us
to fix it. Next on the John Girardi Show, there's
this phenomenon within California politics of problems that we one
hundred percent knower problems, we understand the problem, and the
party that controls more than two thirds of the seats

(16:49):
in the Assembly and the state Senate and the governor's
office just pretends like we don't understand what the problem
is and elaborately makes these big shows and productions of
solving things other than the actual problem, which hilariously wind

(17:11):
up making the problem sometimes worse. And the greatest example
of that is why is gas Why are gas prices
so expensive in California. Well, we all know why. It's
because we have a separate refinery system, because we have
so many regulations on gasoline in California, specific California specific

(17:32):
regulations and a California specific blend of gasoline that requires
gas companies to have a separate set of refineries, whole
separate supply system, whole separate supply chain that leads to
far more costs on oil and gas companies to produce
and sell gas in California, which leads to higher prices
at the pump. It's the only logical explanation for why
California would have higher gas prices than Hawaii and literally

(17:53):
everyone else in the country. Everyone knows, everyone understands. Nobody
is unaware that that is the reason why. And we
will pretend like it's something price gouging. Why big oil,
Like like we're in the nineties and we're still doing
the big you know, name the industry that democrats don't like,

(18:15):
big tobacco, big oil, you know, et cetera. Like, No,
that's not why oil companies are not just greedy in California,
Like why would they have higher prices in California, then
I don't know some of the posh parts of Arizona.
It's not like people have less money in California than
they do in Phoenix. Like and why do people in
Phoenix pay less at the pump because Arizona has fewer regulations.

(18:38):
Everyone understands why. No one is ignorant of this, and
we all pretend we have to pretend for some reason
that we have to pretend for some reason that it's
a reason other than the reason, and there are lots
of other reasons. Everyone kind of understood the thing that

(19:00):
we're driving homelessness, and now finally gavenusoms come around to
supporting the things that would help stop it, get anti
camping ordinances to actually prevent people from camping out. We
were all mystified as to whether or not camping ordinances
anti camping ordinances were helpful or not for the homelessness problem.
We are all pretending that we don't know what's the

(19:23):
solution to forest management. Why are we having all these
horrible forest fires? Gosh, wouldn't controlled burns be helpful? The
only people who don't like the idea of controlled burns
and thinning forests and forestry management are really wealthy, powerful
interests who control a lot of stuff with money in

(19:45):
Democrat politics. It's not that Liberals are terrified of the
Sierra Club. They are terrified of the billionaire donors who
give to the Sierra Club. So they're not going to
tick off the Sierra Club with environmental policies that the
Sierra Club doesn't like. That's all it is. Everyone understands

(20:10):
the problems, they just don't want to do the actual
solutions because the people who don't like the solutions are
some of the most important and powerful fundraisers in California politics.
Now we are beginning to see a crack in one

(20:31):
of those policies SEQUA, the California Environmental Quality Act. When
we return a Democrat legislature, legislator has introduced a bill
to get rid of many of the worst aspects of SEQUA,
the California Environmental Quality Act, and we're going to talk

(20:52):
about it next on The John Girardi Show. There is
a bill that has been sorry, a law that has
been on the books in California for decades and which
has been in recent years, the chief obstacle to one

(21:13):
of the big problems in California, which is the lack
of new home building. For decades, as long as I've
been yapping on the radio, certainly, we have been complaining
about the lack of affordable housing, the lack of available housing.

(21:33):
We need to be building x number of new homes
per year. We don't hit that mark. We are constantly
behind in new home construction. Every politician complains about it.
Every politician promises on the Democrats side that they're going
to take steps to address a Gavin Newsom's been promising
to take action on lack of development with housing for

(21:58):
his whole governorship. You know, we're six and a half
years in and nobody actually does anything to fix it.
And it much of it boils down to this thing
called SEQUA, the California Environmental Quality Act. And I've talked
about SEQUEL a lot on the show before. SEQUA does

(22:20):
kind of two things. One of the big things it
does is it requires for any new kind of construction project,
it requires an environmental impact study to be done. And
these environmental impact studies are very big, very onerous, very complicated,
very difficult, very very very expensive. And because of it,

(22:53):
it's so expensive that you have like cities who try
to like City of Fresno did this. I thought it
was smart. They try to go out of their way
for the city to do its own sort of environmental
impact study for basically ways in which the city wants
to zone and develop and plot out underdeveloped parts of
the city for how it would be zoned for new business.

(23:15):
So basically, okay, here's an empty plot of land. We've
already done the environmental impact study for if it is
zoned for industrial it will have this kind of impact whatever,
We've already done that work. So hey, new businesses we
want to come to the city of Fresno, We've already
done most of the environmental impact study for this plot
of land. Right here. You can get this plot of

(23:36):
land set up your factory, work warehouse, whatever it is.
We've already done most of the environmental impact study. You
can just come in and you can piggyback off of
our environmental impact study. That's a smart way the City
of Fresno has tried to attract new business. Well, then
comes the second problem with SEQUA. Yes, there's the extremely difficult, expensive,

(23:57):
onerous environmental impact study that's required, but then comes the lawsuits. Normally,
to file a lawsuit, you have to be harmed by something.
You have to face some kind of physical or economic

(24:19):
harm in order to have standing. Standing is a very
important sort of bedrock principle of American law, American law,
British law, all kinds of law. But within American law base,
it's not that anyone can fly in to sue anyone
over anything. You have to show standing. You have to
show that you have been impacted by something. I use

(24:41):
this example all the time. If someone crashes a car
into my let's take Agent Squires, the intrepid producer of
the John Gerardy Show. If someone crashes a car into
Agent Squire's house, and I feel bad for Agent Squires,
I can't sue the guy who crash his car into
Agent Squire's house. Why, well, it's not my house. I

(25:06):
haven't suffered the relevant harm here. My property wasn't damaged.
I didn't suffer financial loss. But I'm really upset. But
then I tell the judge, but I'm so upset for
my friend, and the judge will say, well, I don't care,
you're not You don't have standing to file this lawsuit.
Get out of here. Now. The argument has been so

(25:30):
Agent Squires can sue his house got smashed, he's suffered
the laws. He can sue. I can't sue. Okay, Now,
the problem with environmental harms is, well, who can sue?
Often with some sort of environmental harm, the harm is
so sort of dispersed so broadly that if you come

(25:57):
to the court and say, well, my child has asma
because of poor air quality because this factory was built
in this part of Fresno, what's the judge supposed to do? Like, well,
I don't know that you really have stand. I don't
know that we can show causation from this factory to

(26:20):
your kid having asthma. I mean, there are a lot
of different things that are happening that might cause your
child to have asthma. You know, there's other people producing
you know, dust and pollution into the air other than
this one factory right here. You know that there's it's
basically impossible to show causation enough for someone to have

(26:41):
standing under normal American doctrines of standing. So what California
does is basically say that anyone can sue. Anyone can sue,
rather than the reasonable answer being the state should enforce it.
If you're going to have emissions standards and not allow businesses, properties,

(27:04):
whatever to have emissions over a certain level. Then that's
something for the state to regulate. You don't need anybody
to sue. Why have anybody sue at all? Why deal
with this in the context of lawsuits with private plaintiffs
and jury trials. Have the state do it? There's no
just way for individuals to be involved with this. But no,

(27:28):
that's not the path California takes. The path California takes
is for anybody to sue, and they wind up broadly
expanding and so basically standing to sue was broadly expanded
under sequel. Basically, for anybody to come in and sue
a business to say that their environmental impact study is insufficient,

(27:56):
that's what you can sue for. You can sue some
business that's in development and say that your environmental impact
study is inadequate and insufficient and it might harm me,
it might it might harm somebody. And that is happening
all up and down California. It's happening with people who

(28:21):
you might have some left wing environmental nonprofit swoop in
and say nope, you can't have that business here. It's
gonna adversely impact people in the community with and and
your environmental impact study wasn't good enough. There was there

(28:42):
was a story like this just in December at a Pixley, California. Pixley, California.
This left wing environmental group sued the County of Tillarry
for okaying the building of a hydrogen plant in the

(29:03):
town of Pixley because oh, the environmental impact study wasn't
good enough. They use SEQUA in order to file a
lawsuit to block a hydrogen plant from being built in
Pixley on the grounds that, oh, oh, there will be
too much pollution from all the trucks that are going
to have to come to this clean energy production plant.

(29:25):
This is like Gavin Newsom's like, great hope is for
these hydrogen energy plants to start producing power, but apparently
the liberals, environmental liberals don't even want them to build
new clean energy plants. And the argument being well, it'll

(29:45):
increase truck pollution for residents of Pixley because trucks will
be coming to the hydrogen plant to drop off hydrogen.
I guess Pixley is right on the ninety nine. All
it is truck traffic. You know how many trucks pass
right through Pixley every single day, a hundred gazillion. So

(30:13):
some left wing environmental nut jobs fly in they stop
production of this power plant using sequa. The whole city
of Fresno now, so they'll do that for individual businesses.

(30:37):
And by the way, the way the Fresno Bee frames
the story is so ridiculous. It's they'll say, oh, the
residents of Pickley, of Pixley are forcing this to stop
because they don't want all this pollution. No, it was
probably like three. What actually happened was this left wing

(31:01):
nonprofit called the Leadership Council for Justice in Peace found
probably like three people in Pixley and said, hey, do
you think it's bad that they're going to have all
this pollution in Pixley with this hydrogen plant, this clean
energy hydrogen plant that might you know, bring some jobs
to Pixley. They got like three citizens probably to say, oh, yeah,
that would be bad, and then Leadership Council for Justice

(31:22):
and Accountability formed this entity called Pixley Citizens for Reproductive Justice,
for Reproduction for Environmental Justice, and those people suit. It
wasn't like the whole citizenry of Pixley came up in
arms at the idea. Oh no, a business in Pixley.
We must stop it. So liberals can stop construction of

(31:49):
new businesses. Liberals can halt construction of businesses for a
whole city. Okay. Another left wing nonprofit sued was suing
over new businesses being constructed in the South Presno. So
they wind up challenging the whole environmental impact study that
the whole city of Fresno had developed for the entire city.
So again, City of Fresno develops this environmental impact study

(32:12):
for the whole city for zoning for different parts of
the city, basically to try to help businesses invest in
Fresno by doing a lot of the legwork of the
environmental impact report for them. And what happens, some left
wing nonprofits suites, some judge agrees with them. Oh, City
of President's environmental impact report is insufficient, stops all new
construction for the whole city. So if you're a builder

(32:36):
and you want to build a big track of homes, sequa, sequa.
Having puberty on the radio, sequa is this massive disincentive
to you because you don't know. One stupid lawsuit and
it could it could be from an environmentalist, it could
just be from a different home builder. Who's a competitor

(32:57):
of yours, who doesn't like that you're getting started up,
wants to screw with you. It could be from some
not in my backyard person who's saying, hey, I don't
want multi unit dwellings near my house because I think
it'll lower my property value. People are using sequa for

(33:18):
reasons that have nothing to do with the environment to
stop construction. So bizarrely, now, why have we preserved sequid
though for all these years Because liberals in California liberal
environmentalist and they're billionaire backers, don't want to get rid
of any environmental regulation. Ever, However, apparently some permissions must

(33:43):
have been granted from on High Bay Area Assembly Member
Buffy Wicks, there's a big hitter in the California State Assembly,
leads a group of state law group of state lawmakers
in Sacramento. On Thursday, Wicks is bringing forward a legislative
package of twenty two different bills, all aimed at fixing
California's housing crisis by reducing bureaucratic red tape. Housing is

(34:08):
the number one expense in almost every single household in California,
and lack of housing affordability effects every other aspect of
our Society, which said the bill package specifically looks to
overhaul the entire permitting process for new housing from the
application to the actual construction. It's gotten support from many
local housing organizations, that includes the Housing Action Coalition, says

(34:29):
the amount of time it takes to get projects moving
waste millions of dollars. And specifically it would exempt a
lot of different kinds of housing developments from SEQUA. And

(34:51):
here's the thing. When we return, we'll talk about all
the exceptions that liberals want to sequo, which should really
raise the question why have it at all? That is
next on the Andrerodi Show. Buffy Wicks, an Assembly member
from the Bay Area, seems to be signaling that the
powers that be, the big time moneyed interests in California politics,

(35:12):
are okay with chipping away at SEQUA in order to
actually fix the problem of not enough housing being built
in California. Big proposal, big package of bills to this
big package of bills to eliminate red tape to allow

(35:35):
for more construction. And I'm a little stunned at it
because it means that, I mean, for years, no liberal
would dare propose chipping away at SEQUA. Because basically, I
think that the way the dynamic in California is that

(35:56):
Democrats are terrified of crossing the environmental groups, not because
they're afraid of the environmental groups themselves, but they're afraid
of the billionaires who fund the environmental groups, who are
some of the big time powerbrokers within Democrat politics. Well,
Buffy Wicks, who's a pretty prominent member of the California
State Assembly, if she's doing this, I think it's signals

(36:16):
that some permissions were granted and a big time exception
to SEQUA for certain kinds of home construction in urban areas. Okay,
and that's the thing with sequa sequa, which lets people
sue some housing or construction or business project to say

(36:38):
that its environmental impact report was insufficient. It's environmental impact
study was insufficient, and anyone can just swoop in and sue.
Democrats have made exception after exception after exception for SEQUA
for things that they really want to get done right.
The huge renovation that's been taking place at the California
State Capital, for example, where all the legis offices or

(37:01):
the whole extension of the state Capitol building is being
renovated right now they exempted that huge gazillion dollar project
from SEQUA because they were like, well, it's kind of
really tie things up, so we should get rid of it. Yeah,
it ties things up for everything, just so it's directly
impacting that you have to walk to a different office

(37:22):
that's like, you know, a block or two away. Son,
you're gonna exempt yourselves from SEQUA, but you're not gonna
exempt us little people and the rest of the state
from SEQUA who want to just you know, build a
house or build an apartment or something. So they make
exception after exception of SEQUA already, which should really just
raise the question, why don't we just abolish it. Let

(37:47):
the state itself regulate emission standards and review environmental impact reports.
God knows our state government is filled with enough left
wing radicals already. Let them do it. Just give a
yes or no rather than letting any Tom Dick or
Harry swoop in and file a lawsuit to stop a
construction project that might be halfway done. That'll do it

(38:10):
for John Gerardi Show'll see you next time on Power Talk.