Let’s Hear It for Gas Tax Increases

Stop putting out fires with gasoline

San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, consumer advocate? Not so fast.

He’s beating the social media drum, crying out against a pending 1.9 cent increase in the gas tax. The issue is such low hanging fruit that Carl DeMaio has joined the chorus.

Now that Trump’s order to block immigration reform in Congress is about to be partially overridden by executive order, California Republicans have pivoted to the pocket book as their fear of the month.

Gas prices are high. And there’s a 1.9 cent increase coming on July 1st. due to Senate Bill 1, known as the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017, which includes an annual escalator to increase the gas and diesel excise taxes. Revenues from gas have decreased as more electric vehicles have been purchased. 

Potholes, on the other hand, haven’t decreased. CalTrans says the excise tax pays for 80% of highway and road repairs. On average, Californians pay roughly $300 a year in state gas taxes.

Desmond staged a press conference before last Thursday’s Board of Supervisor meeting to advocate for a resolution calling on the Governor and legislature to stop the increase.

Here’s a snip, via the North County Pipeline:

• “It doesn’t sound like much … but it effects businesses and families and people throughout the state in a negative way,” Desmond said. “It will bring the gas tax burden to about 60 cents per gallon. And that’s just the state taxes.”

Republicans like Desmond also want you to be afraid of what they say will be gasoline price increases due to the Low Carbon Fuel Standard reforms that were created in 2007, likely rising by 47 cents next year and 52 cents by 2026.  Fox News calls this “California’s Secret 50 cent Gas Tax.” 

It should surprise exactly nobody that this claim is a) taken out of context and b) not a done deal. The report says nothing about taxes at the pump.

Price increases would flow from refinery efforts to meet increasingly stringent standards. The oft-cited (but apparently never actually digested by those making price increase claims) Low Carbon Fuel Standard 2023 Amendments (page 64) says this increase could occur if proposed carbon reduction standards are to be met.   

After the Fox News report was published, a CARB spokesperson responded:

• "There is no 'secret' gas tax hike with California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard. The figure the Senator cited is from an incomplete, preliminary document released last September which is intended to provide a range of financial possibilities looking at how various LCFS credit prices might be passed through to Californians by industry. It is not a prediction of gas prices or a staff proposal. I would also point out that there is no data showing a correlation between LCFS credit prices and fuel prices at the pump."

None=the-less, the DeMaios and Desmonds of the county are talking about it as if there’s a done deal. Given the way the dirty energy industry is already gouging consumers, those price increases could theoretically include no new taxes. To date, there is nothing on paper, just the gaseous discharge of Republicans desperate for attention and a Chevron propaganda campaign against refinery regulations.

All of this gas price stuff sounds terrible until placed into a global context. Climate change is here. It’s serious. And it’s going to get worse. Our state is trying, against all odds and politicians encouraging people’s most selfish natures, to do something. 

Driving down gas consumption is a real –not a hypothetical– act. (I’d love to hear a practical alternative, but none are on the table; just hot air designed to deflect away from the seriousness of the problem.) 

You know what’s even scarier? The record-breaking heat waves, currently centered over Central America, Northern Africa, Southern Europe, and the South Asian nations like India and Pakistan. 

In our hemisphere, those high temperatures have begun a northward slide. Florida cities broke all-time highs (upper 90s) in the weeks before Memorial Day. Key West experienced a heat/humidity combo that made it feel like 115 degrees. 

From PBS:

• Nearly three-quarters of the heat deaths last summer were in five southern states that were supposed to be used to the heat and planned for it. Except this time they couldn’t handle it, and it killed 874 people in Arizona, 450 in Texas, 226 in Nevada, 84 in Florida and 83 in Louisiana.

• Those five states accounted for 61% of the nation’s heat deaths in the last five years, skyrocketing past their 18% share of U.S. deaths from 1979 to 1999.

A couple of weeks ago La Puerta, Texas recorded an air temperature high of 116, breaking the all-time record for the highest temperature recorded in May in that state. The heat index in Austin, Texas is predicted to beat 110 degrees this week.

Temperatures in Northern India have been in the low to mid 120s in recent days. The capital cities of Mexico and India, facing record breaking heat, are also running out of drinking water.

April 2024 was the 11th consecutive month when the global average monthly temperature for that month touched a new record, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, an agency of the European Commission. The one year period between May 2023 to April 2024 was warmer than any previous 12-month period, about 1.61 degree Celsius higher than the pre-industrial (1850-1900) average.

Now, you can believe that higher gas prices in California aren’t going to stop these heat waves, and you would be right. This is about the heat domes of the 2030s and beyond. Seventy seven nations saw record high temperatures in 2023.

Global heat deaths are projected to increase by 370%. If average global temperatures reach 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — as is expected without drastic action — an additional 524.9 million people are also expected to experience food insecurity, aggravating the global risk of malnutrition.

Ultimately the GOP is looking out for Big Oil. Their presumptive presidential nominee promised to roll back environmental regulations as a return on campaign contributions. The New York Times story on a Mar-a-Lago chopped steak dinner with oil execs cited one billion dollars for Trump’s campaign as a suggested goal.

• “That has been his pitch to everybody,” said Michael McKenna, who worked in the Trump White House but did not attend the event in Florida.

• Mr. McKenna said the former president’s appeal to the fossil fuel industry could be summed up as: “Look, you want me to win. You might not even like me, but your other choice is four more years of these guys,” referring to the Biden administration. He added, “The uniform sentiment of guys in the business community is ‘We don’t want four more years of Team Biden.’”

It should be noted that the dirty energy industry has enjoyed record profits during the Biden administration

• Last year, the United States produced record amounts of oil. And even with the pause in new permits for gas export terminals, the United States is the world’s leading exporter of natural gas and is still on track to nearly double its export capacity by 2027 because of projects already permitted and under construction.

You should see all this lower tier political fear campaigning as part of a larger picture.

• The American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s top fossil fuel industry group, is running an eight-figure national advertising campaign to promote fossil fuels and “dismantle policy threats,” Mike Sommers, the chief executive of the trade group, has said. Separately, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, which represents petroleum refiners, has started to buy ads in nine battleground states urging Americans to fight Mr. Biden’s regulation on tailpipe emissions.

The cost of domestic climate change-attributable disasters in 2023 was $92.9 billion, as tallied by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Those losses linked to disasters last year affect more than just the people who’ve lost homes and businesses to storms or fires. The costs also translate into higher insurance premiums and price hikes for basic goods like groceries.

As the first wildfires of the season are burning in California, ask yourself if it’s worth it to take the time to listen to politicians preaching doom and gloom. The bill from society’s pollution of the atmosphere is coming due, and maybe they ought to be talking about what needs to be done to keep people safe.

If you’re worked up about paying more for gas, are you also willing to call a relative living in Texas to say “tough shit, it’s your time to die?” It really is that serious.

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Monday News You Should Read

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The Strange Villainization of the Walkable City by Michael Friedrich at New Republic

• There is, of course, a limit to how “radical” any policy can be when rammed through the meat grinder of liberal urban politics. One useful thing about the 15-minute city, as an idea, is that it asks planners to actually plan: to make thoughtful decisions about the entire urban ecosystem, what it contains, and for whom.

• Yet city planning today is hamstrung by fiscal austerity and obsessed with economic growth. So much of it is outsourced to the private sector. Cities can try to diversify uses by reforming zoning, discouraging car use, and greening their concrete wastelands, but it’s largely up to developers where things like housing and health clinics and grocery stores go. Typically, they are built where there’s capital to extract—and not, for example, in poor communities of color. “There are aspects of this for which we do not have a solution,” Moreno told Politico in 2022, “because it’s a matter that’s up to private enterprise to change.”

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Salem Apologizes, Retracts Dinesh D’Souza’s Debunked Election Fraud Movie ‘2000 Mules’ by Phillip Nieto at Mediaite

• The statement from Salem blamed D’Souza for the smear.

• “In publishing the film and the book, we relied on representations made to us by Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote, Inc. (‘TTV’) that the individuals depicted in the videos provided to us by TTV, including Mr. Andrews, illegally deposited ballots,” the company said in a statement. “We have learned that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has cleared Mr. Andrews of illegal voting activity in connection with the event depicted in 2000 Mules.”

• The company added, “It was never our intent that the publication of the 2000 Mules film and book would harm Mr. Andrews. We apologize for the hurt the inclusion of Mr. Andrews’ image in the movie, book, and promotional materials have caused Mr. Andrews and his family.”

• The statement concluded by noting, “We have removed the film from Salem’s platforms, and there will be no future distribution of the film or the book by Salem.”

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FBI Raids Big Corporate Landlord Over Nationwide Rent Hikes via Matt Stoller at BIG

• In a far less-noticed law enforcement action, the FBI this week conducted a dawn raid of corporate landlord giant Cortland Management over what’s called algorithmic price-fixing. This corporate real estate management firm, based in Atlanta, rents out 85,000 units across thirteen states. But Cortland is allegedly part of a much bigger conspiracy orchestrated by a software and consulting firm named RealPage to increase rents nationwide by coordinating landlord pricing decisions and holding apartments off the market. How much bigger? Well, there’s a civil antitrust action in Tennessee that’s been going on since 2023, where the argument is that RealPage has been working with at least 21 large landlords and institutional investors, encompassing 70% of multi-family apartment buildings and 16 million units nationwide, to systematically push up rents. And RealPage isn’t just some software company distorting rental markets, it’s also owned by Thoma Bravo, one of the biggest private equity firms in the U.S. So yeah, this scandal matters. (RealPage is also lobbying up, which politically connected firms do…)

• How does the cartel allegedly work? Well large corporate landlords, who would normally compete with one another for tenants via price or quality, have since 2016 stopped doing so. Instead, they all share “detailed real-time data regarding pricing, inventory, occupancy rates, and unit types that are or will be coming available to rent” every day with one another through RealPage’s revenue management system, which in turn sends back recommendations on pricing.

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PROGRAMMING NOTE: Yer Words & Deeds editor is undergoing cataract surgery today and has no idea of how this might impact his morning ruminations. See ya when I see ya.