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California politicians like Gov. Gavin Newsom have spent years pretending that California’s uniquely high gas prices are the fault of ‘greedy’ oil companies which are, for some baffling reason, willing to offer cheaper gas to the rest of the country, but hike gas prices in their state. The argument was so stupid that only the type of California Democrats flying an upside down American flag over a ‘Hate Has No Home Here’ woke word salad sign could believe it. But that’s the kind of voter who runs the state.
Still CBS News broke down the costs and predictably most of the high gas prices in the state are driven by Democrat regulations, greed and environmental nonsense.
Roughly 45% of the cost of every gallon of gas is made up of costs that are consistent across the country. That includes the global price of crude, which is higher for everyone right now, and an 18-cent federal tax that drivers pay in every state.
However, the remaining 55% of each gallon of gas includes California-specific costs.
Distribution and refining costs, which are more expensive in California, account for roughly 28% of every gallon.
California’s special gas blend tacks on roughly 10-15 cents per gallon to refining costs. Then there’s a 61-cent state excise tax and roughly 2 cents attributed to underground storage fees.
California’s cap-and-trade tacks on roughly 23 cents to every gallon, and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) adds another 14 cents.
On top of that, there are state and local sales taxes.
At $6 per gallon, that adds up to an additional $20 every time you fill up an average-sized tank.
This isn’t new. Local activists and media have broken it down before, but it’s helpful to do it at a national level so people understand what makes life in the ‘Golden State’ so uniquely miserable. A political machine, currently headed by Newsom, but that will be headed by some other party operative, is robbing people blind and then lying about it to their faces.
Today, surrounded by legislators and community leaders in the rotunda of the California State Capitol, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation to implement the strongest state-level oversight and accountability measures on Big Oil in the nation – bringing transparency to California’s oil and gas industry, shining new light on the corporations that have for decades operated in the shadows while ripping families off and raking in record profits.
“Record high retail gas prices — and record-breaking profits for Big Oil — hurt those who can least afford it most of all. For too long, Californians have been left in the dark when it comes to the practices of the gas industry. And while oil companies have been lining their pockets, many Californians are struggling to make ends meet. I
Attorney General Rob Bonta: “Record high retail gas prices — and record-breaking profits for Big Oil — hurt those who can least afford it most of all. For too long, Californians have been left in the dark when it comes to the practices of the gas industry. And while oil companies have been lining their pockets, many Californians are struggling to make ends meet. I proudly stand with the Governor as he signs into law our cosponsored bill to bring accountability and transparency to the gas industry. Together, we are fighting to even the scales for California consumers and take this burden off their shoulders.”
Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego): “This bill provides important tools to help Californians get the answers we deserve about oil company profits and price gouging. Through the leadership of Senators Skinner, Bradford, Limón, and McGuire, and our colleagues in the Assembly and the Administration, these new reforms are strong on transparency and accountability. That’s a big part of what it will take to stop any wrongdoing and protect California consumers.”
Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood): “Assemblymembers deserve praise for developing and passing this legislation, collaborating with the Governor and the Senate in the face of oil company intransigence. Our deliberations have been rigorous and transparent. Transparency is what we need now from the gas pricing system. That’s what this bill is about.”
What we’re looking at here is a completely shameless political criminal cartel that lies like it breathes and lies about what everyone knows is a lie and then doubles and triples down on those lies.
There’s no ‘price gouging’. There’s governor gouging.
Yeah, I’ve been following California gas prices for 50 years or so. The higher prices are entirely due to Democratic governance.
Even if oil was free for California gas would still be higher than most of the rest of the country
ALL the rest of the country.
California seems to want to maintain a high price, whatever their protests and claims. It’s been an open goal for dems since the 90s, having gas cost over$5 a gallon, to encourage conservation and alternative transportation. If the price of oil drops, they raise the tax. Federal and state politicians both make more off a gallon of gas than the oil companies they accuse of greed and price gouging.
Did any of those Democrats justify the higher prices by stating “‘higher prices’ is one of the most beautiful phrases in the English language”?
Yeah. And I’ve been paying those high prices all my life. I recall a time from the early years of my life when gasoline at 27 cents a gallon was considered expensive.
I still remember that, as a young teenager in the mid-1960s, I had a “business” mowing five or six neighbors’ lawns once a week during the summer…for $2.50 per mow (although most of these wonderful, good people would give me $3.00 and tell me, over my objections, to “keep the tip!”
A gallon of Gulftane gas for my lawn mower cost 25¢.
Obviously that was then, not now; and wouldn’t even be close to realistic today–nor do I expect them to be. But now they’re 20 times higher (yesterday I paid almost $5/gallon to fill up (although, admittedly, my Caddy drinks the 93 Octane high-test kind, not Regular); and ask any “landscaper” to mow your lawn for a mere $500 (20 x $2.50) and he (or more likely his Illegal employees) will laugh in your face.
Although normal inflation of course has a major influence on these prices, the policies and ever-higher taxes and increasingly restrictive regulations (“No more drilling! No more pipelines! No fossil fuels–you’re killing the Planet!”) of the America-hating Dems, and Global Warmists, and our foreign enemies, who finance and encourage them to impoverish and destroy us, are by far the main, and most important, cause.
Don’t lawnmowers mix gas and oil for fuel? Was Gulftane a mixture?
Gas is less than $3 bucks a gallon in most other states. Greasehead Newscum doesn’t seem to have a chance in a national election.
Even $6 bucks is better than $8 and $9 Biden bucks, though. I’ll just wait for prices to go down. Camry’s have gas tanks of over 15 gallons and they get great gas mileage so I can afford it.
Fuck Iran and the Strait of Whoremuz and Wall Street. Stock markets LOVE it when prices go up for ordinary people because it lines their pockets. The vampire class.
Costs are passed along to consumers? Shocking that. Maybe that’s also true for tariffs. Those tariffs are working….to help get Democrats elected. The tariffs are self-inflicted wounds. When the cost of imported inputs increase because of the tariffs, what do sellers subsequently do?!
Aisha Imsix:
What you say say necessarily implies that you approved of cheap foreign manufactured goods being dumped into the US at prices American manufacturers can’t compete with. That also necessarily means that you don’t have a problem with unemployed American workers.
You are either one or both of two things: economically illiterate or woefully stupid or is it you’re just a liberal democrat troll?. Care to weigh in to help the readers here decide?
It is YOU who clearly does not understand economics. Let’s demonstrate that. How can foreigners invest in the U.S., i..e. have a capital account deficit with the U.S., if they do not have a current account surplus? I suspect you will avoid answering because you cannot.
Every read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations? He shot down the entire “trade deficit argument? 250 years ago.
Should we get rid of Walmarts because it put mom and pop stores out of business. I have no problem with people who cannot compete as long as they do not want to make me poorer with protection from competition.
Advancements in technology put farmers out of business. Should the government have outlawed use of combines?
Pray tell, genius, what do consumers do with the money they save? Do low prices make consumers richer or poorer?
If Trump puts a tariff on the dunce cap you should be wearing, will you pay more as a result?
Tariffs have built this country from the very beginning. Read your factual history, not the skewed history you’ve been indoctrinated with.
Tariffs built this country? What entertaining nonsense coming from someone who alludes to “factual history.” Did foreigners invest in the building of U.S. railroads? (Maybe we should have kept the Chinese and Irish laborers out the country to “protect American jobs.”) For most of our country’s history, government spending was a small percent of GDP.
250 years ago Adam Smith pointed to the human “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange.”
It’s been one year since “Liberation Day” when Trump liberated us from low prices. His tariffs have not achieved what he said they would. “Tariff” is one of the most beautiful words in the dictionary? Talk about a dumb statement.
If the Japanese just dropped cars off on U.S. shores with the keys in them would Americans, net, be better off? How about the Japanese?
I’m still waiting for just one person to explain how a country can get the foreign investment Trump wants without running a current account surplus with the U.S.. After they fail to do that, they can educate us as to what the fair price is of anything.
I guess low prices are bad for consumers. Next up, let’s ignore the U.S. Constitution and have states put tariffs on goods imported from other states.
I Shit like I’msix is a D-Bag troll.
But I’ve never been taken to court for support payments. How about you?
Me? I’m a man, not a lefty scumbag.
Tell me why ex-husbands should pay their ex-wives money in perpetuity. “Child support? I’ll destroy that lie in one sentence.
C’mon, bitch.
I can think of a reason wives are awarded support payments. That Jeff cannot reinforces his inability to think critically.
Ex-wife support? Only human excrement support that government prostitution. Ex-wives are all nasty whores and deserve to die in horrific pain.
You don’t understand much, if anything, about basic Economics or the legitimate role of “tariffs” in a free-market economy, do you, Aisha Imsix?
One important purpose of tariffs on cheap imported goods is to “level the playing field,” so that, for example, a pair of shoes made in Communist China by slave laborers who are paid $3.00/hour in a dangerous factory where their hands might be chopped of in a dangerous machine can be sold here for a mere $95, while, in contrast, the same shoes, made here by American workers earning a living wage, in a safe factory, might cost the buyer twice that.
I happily pay the fair, higher price for products made here, by my fellow Americans. And if President Trump’s tariffs raise the retail price of foreign goods made by slaves, so much the better.
“Level the playing field” by making consumers pay more. Brilliant? C’mon, tell us how many people have been lifted out of poverty in China? Afraid to answer? What has happened to real wages in China over the past 30 years?
How many hundreds of million people have escaped poverty?
“Most of that foreign production is by slaves” said no honest person ever.
” Living wage?” Now you’re using liberal language. Congrats! I guess increasing the “minimum wage” to $30 is the answer. Here’s a photo of all of the people dying in the U.S. because they’re not being paid a “living wage”–>
What American- made products can you no longer buy because you’re spending more on other American- made products?
I’m still waiting for just one person to answer the question: how can foreigners invest in the U.S.–they need U.S. dollars, duhhh!–if they don’t have a current account surplus, i.e. a capital account deficit, with the U.S.?
We’ll wait. Please, educate us, what is a “fair price?” This is going to be entertaining.
Very well said my friend!
Educate these illiterates on the foolishness of protectionist policies.
You will notice that not one of them can answer how foreigners can get the U.S. dollars they need to invest in the U.S. if they do not have a current account surplus, i.e. a capital account deficit, with the U.S.
As China has gotten richer, has the U.S. gotten poorer? Looking at the economic pie as fixed in size is what liberals so often do. At the corner of Economically Illiterate and Tariff, billionaires can only get richer by making others poorer. DUMB!
What costs are passed on from the Strait of Whoremuz to America? All our oil and gas is produced here except for a whiz trickle from Canada.
What do foreign sellers do? Fuck off back to the Strait of Whoremuz.
D-Bags. You LOVE when consumers in America have to pay higher prices.
I was in California when Jerry Brown and the state senate passed a bill to add $.03/gallon to pay the legal fees for illegal immigrants. Never took it off!
I think Jeff Bezos just fled California the other day because of taxes. I won’t miss him but the State Legislature, Greasehead Newscum and Karen Ass will.
To be fair, and having lived there for many years long ago, Californians voted for this overwhelmingly, election after election. They never took a step back and made an honest assessment of their situation. They just agreed to tax the rich, tax those that aren’t rich, and give themselves huge pay raises every 2 years or so. And here we are.
No, most Californians are screwed over by our D-Bag State Legislature. We don’t want that shit but it’s forced on us.
Were those in the state legislature elected?
Yes they were “elected.” Just like Karen Ass and Alzheimer Joe were.
Well, the money to pay to the California fraudsters has to come from somewhere. May as well be gas. But then again there is room to increase the CA sales tax. Or CA wage tax. Or California property taxes.
Gruesome NewScam is a pathological liar and sociopath which is the makeup of most politicians from BCE to now.
President Donald J. Trump breaks the mold and sets a high bar that I doubt I will see any other politician come up to in my lifetime. Even if VPOTUS JD Vance and Sec State Marco Rubio serve two terms as POTUS and VPOTUS respectively with Marco Rubio as POTUS for two terms following, my “Wet Dream Team” successions. They will be MAGA but the chops are all President Trumps!
And I thank YHVH for President Trump.
Gruesome NewScam and his DemonKKKrat allies screwed CommieFornia good! And they have the media as their propaganda spokes holes.
The legal voting citizens of CommieFornia have got to be fed up, they got to go to their windows, open them up and yell as loud as they can: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore! I am going to make the 2026 midterms too big to rig!” (I saw “Network” again last week.) This way they can bring CommieFornia back to Californication and maybe after Christ Messiah returns, that event will bring Californication back to California and I will be able to get that house in Morro Bay!! Swim with the Pacific Ocean otters. Where the otters all say: “dude”.
So when gas prices crashed in early covid it must be because the companies were just generous???
Who or what gave you that idea? Gas prices never crashed here in California. You must live in the south where by California standards, gasoline is disgustingly cheap.
Sometimes when I hear what the price of gasoline is in a southern state, I want to gag and then go squeeze some state official’s neck to vent my anger and frustration. There are plenty of necks in Sacramento in need of squeezing….
Why do you say here in the South gas is “disgustingly cheap’? Because YOU voted for high taxes? Because YOU voted for Left wing nutjob policies? Because YOU voted for Socialists/Communists/Democrats? Because YOU couldn’t be man enough to vote for the right thing even though your wife and all her friends were belittling you as a fascist for even considering it? Because YOUR pair has shrunk into nothingness? Hey, you’re a Democrat in California. STFU.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, Van Demon. I bet you’ve never even been to California.
They crashed upwards. FAR upwards.
all red states don’t care if gas is 10$ a gallon for calf or ny. they deserve it. places like kansas still has $3.10/gal. much cheaper than biden had it a $4/gal
newsom and the people who elected him. enjoy your insanity!
Gas is actually only about $5 bucks a gallon here in San Jose, and it’s one of the most over priced cities in the state.
Lefties are lying, as usual. What makes that particularly disgusting is that they’re always the scumbags who drive prices up.