 So California is a basket case. It's a basket case in so many dimensions and I wanna touch on just a few today just to give you a little bit of flavor of the nonsense that is going on in California. And look, I am not typically a California basher. California is a phenomenal place, a good place to live, you know, super productive, people in incredibly productive Silicon Valley still the most productive place on earth. Hollywood is still amazing in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego. I mean, it's just from every perspective from a productivity perspective, from a, in many ways, a sense of life perspective. It's just California is stunning, beautiful, amazing, productive, but insane. Insane, literally crazy. So let's start with just a few simple, you know, just a simple one. Now, you all know the gas prices are really high. I know some of you are in Europe right now, but so you'll have to try to do the translation into your local currency. And of course in Europe, gas prices are a lot higher than they are in America, but remember, Americans live on their, you know, they live in their cars. So they use a lot of gas, so gas prices constitute a big chunk, a big chunk of your regular expenses. So gas prices in the United States have risen quite a bit. They rose a lot in the summer. They've declined since as global oil prices have come down, but they have not come down in California. I don't know how much this means to you if you don't live in the United States, but right now in California, it costs $6.42 a gallon, a gallon, that is about twice the cost nationally. It's double what it costs anywhere else in the country. Now, gas in California is always more expensive than the rest of the country, primarily because of taxes on environmental fees and state taxes and all kinds of dues, but not enough to justify a doubling. And by the way, in the Bay Area, I heard the gas prices at $8 a gallon in some places in the Bay Area, $8 a gallon, which is insane. So why is this? Why is California so much more expensive than the rest of the country? Well, and this is something I've known since I live in California and I've known this a long, long time, but I don't think people realize this, including people who live in California. During the summer, California forces gas stations to sell a special summer blend of gasoline. This is a blend of gasoline that supposedly is less polluting and therefore creates less smog with the summer heat and this blend is very few states use this blend, California and I think five other states use this blend. So there are very few refineries in the country that actually produce the blend. So it's typically refineries in California producing the blend that California uses. So what happened in California, and this has happened in the past, this is not the first time, is that this year, three refineries that do this blend have temporarily stopped production, this is planned maintenance. And then another refinery in Los Angeles, unplanned maintenance has stopped production. So four refineries are off the grid. Now theoretically California could import gasoline from other states, refineries out of state, but they can't because only these refineries, only refineries in the state and certain other refineries, very few of them produce the California blend of gasoline. So the supply of this blend has shrunk and yet the demand is as usual, everybody's driving in California, California is a state that requires you to drive a lot. So demand is high, supply is crumbled because of this ridiculous idea that California needs its own summer blend even though it's October. And therefore prices are gone through the roof. So in California, you know, pay in some places in California $8 a gallon in most of the United States, it's three and a half. In some places it's about three, about three. I don't know where Tom is, I don't know where he's paying six bucks and 10 cents. So I don't know whether that's Canadian, that's Canadian, right? So no, I mean, you're paying nothing as compared to California. Now, Governor Newsom has a solution for this, don't worry California, Governor Newsom is going right to the rescue. And in this case, he's done something rational, given the irrational state of affairs, it's not that hard to do something rational. What he's done is, so what happens is the summer blend is typically used until November one. I can't remember when it comes in, I think June one, but it's used until November one and then they switch to winter blend and the winter blend is the same blend as the rest of the country. And all of this has to do with also with, what do you call it, the stuff they make from corn ethanol, right? So it has to do with ethanol and the production of ethanol and the availability of ethanol and sometimes the corn harvest is not that big so there's less ethanol, so there's less supply, so prices go up because of shortage of ethanol. So it's a mess, right? It's a complete mess. Anyway, November one, they shifted the winter blend. So what Governor Newsom has done in his brilliance is he has suspended, I guess he can do this unilaterally, he has allowed everybody to switch to the summer blend as of September 30th. So in California, you should start seeing prices decline over the next few weeks, although this is happening, the switch to the winter blend, just as Saudi Arabia in OPEC Plus slapped Biden in the face, basically it was spat in his face, I don't know if it's slapped him in the face or spat in his face, but whatever it is that they did to Biden's face, they basically announced as beige assistance to the Russians that they are gonna reduce the supply of oil by I think two million barrels a day or whatever so that prices are gonna go up. So prices are going up of oil, just as California is trying to reduce prices. So they'll come down, but they won't come down anywhere near as fast as if OPEC had done something different. And of course, we in the global market should be less dependent on OPEC and on Russia if the United States has cranked up our own fracking and our own ability to produce our own natural gas and oil. And of course, Europe would not be as dependent and prices would be lower if Europeans were fracking all over Europe. And of course, if the Europeans had kept their nuclear power plants running, but this is the consequence of no strategy, no energy strategy in this case, none, none. So gas prices are going up, but that again, they're not gonna be as high as Jordan Peterson predicted they would be, prophesized, not predicted, prophesized that they would be. There is no such thing as the energy independence. That term is silly because energy is a global market. It's not like the gas produced in the United States goes to the United States or produced in the United States goes to the United States and we become independent. And that the price therefore is independent of the global price. Global markets, energy markets are global markets. Prices are set on a global marketplace. The prices go up, they go up in the United States as well because US energy companies have the option of selling them abroad. You could stop American companies from selling their energy abroad and it detach American energy from a global market, but then you'd see a sharp decline in production. You'd see massive distortions in energy. It would not be good for America. So we have a global energy supply we should be net exporters of energy right now. We have the largest producer of energy in the world, also the largest consumer, but the largest producer of energy we should be able to export. We should be able to affect world energy supply as much more. We would, if we'd built that pipeline, if we'd be fracking more, if we'd be pumping more energy out, if we'd be encouraging the Europeans to do the same and the rest of the world to do the same. But if Venezuela, Venezuela, you know Venezuela, remember Venezuela? Venezuela is the, there's the second largest oil reserves in the world. Imagine if Venezuela had a revolution and they kicked out the socialists and they actually allowed Western energy companies to come in and exploit their massive reserves, the oil problems of the world would be reduced because Venezuela has more oil than Russia, much more oil than Russia. So lots of ways to solve these issues, lots of ways to solve these issues that we're ignoring, evading. By the way, again, should the CIA get involved in a coup to get rid of the regime in Venezuela? Yeah, why not? I mean, what's the downside exactly? The upside is freedom from the Venezuelans and lower energy costs for Americans and just a better, saner, safer Western hemisphere. So it's part of the Monroe Doctrine. You could see the United States, I'm not sending the Marines in, don't need to, just hoping the Venezuelans get rid of the horrible regime that they have. But you know, we can't even do that. So we're just pathetic, pathetic, pathetic doesn't matter who's president, they're all pathetic. All right, let's, oh, we're still in California. Okay, so that was, that was energy costs in California. All right, what was that? There was another, oops, let me just find this, sorry. Second one, all right, let's talk about inflation checks. So I don't know if you know this, but the state of California is so rich, there's so much money and they do. They have a surplus over and above, they have taxes are so high and there's so many wealthy people in California paying those taxes. And there's so many companies in California, particularly last year that did well in California. And there's so much capital gains, particularly last year, not so much this year, but last year, that paid taxes, capital gains taxes in California, that California has massive amounts of income. So California has, you know, has more money coming in than it spends and has these massive budget surpluses. Now I'm not sure we'll have one next year because you've seen the stock market this year go like that. When the stock market goes down, California has a hard time raising money because all those capital gains don't get collected because they're no capital gains. Everybody has capital losses that they can actually write off. So California decided this year instead of putting the money in a reserve for linears or instead of cutting taxes or stuff like that, what they really should be doing is just cutting and spending dramatically. But anyway, they decided they're gonna send checks to everybody. So California is sending checks, one-time payments of anywhere between $700 to $1,050. So 700 individuals and up to 1,050 to married couples. This is not to poor people. This is all middle class. So in order to get one of these checks, you have to have filed a tax return in October of 2021, not eligible to be claimed as a dependent in 2020, where California resident for six months or more or California resident on the day the payment is issued, you get it if you made more than $500,000 as a household or more than $250,000 as an independent and everybody in California is gonna get a check. So they're sending out 18 million checks out of 23 million people in California, 18 million people are gonna get checks. So this is called vote buying. This is called kind of left-wing populism. This is getting the voters on your side. The middle class is the biggest voting block there is. So people kind of who are... Now, so it's not, it's kind of giving them their money back. There's a sense in which you're still redistributing wealth because the rich are not gonna get any of this. Corporations clearly not gonna get any of this. So the very wealthy are subsidizing the middle class. That is the most popular thing to do in America. It's not, the American welfare state, and this is one of the differences between the American welfare state and the welfare state in... The difference between the American welfare state and European welfare state. The European welfare state is very, very concerned about poor people and very, very efficient. About redistributing wealth to the poor. And the American welfare state is very, very concerned about the middle class and redistributing wealth to the middle class. But also, and not taxing the middle class too much, particularly the lower middle class and putting most of the burden of taxes on the wealthy. So it's really interesting. I mean, all our big programs, Medicare, Social Security are aimed at the middle class. These checks that California is sending aimed at the middle class. It's not about, so it's much more about vote buying than about, and much more about old people than about helping the poor. I think it's all equally wrong. It's all equally ultimately motivated by some form of altruism or another. It's all more equally motivated by a hatred of the wealthy and the rich and success. But it is interesting how the focus is different and as a consequence, you have, you know, I think at a huge cost has managed to reduce the levels of poverty that you don't get as many homelessness and people like that. In the United States, there's just no emphasis on that. Nobody really cares about that. The main thing is to keep the middle class voting for you, to keep this big block voting for you and to keep keeping on benefits to them and never claim you wanna reform Social Security or Medicare because that is the holy grail. That's the one thing you cannot touch in American politics. Why? Because it's the middle class. It's a majority of taxpayers. It's majority of workers in America. So interesting. Anyway, California, if you live in California, expect to check from the government. Another one. All right, let's now go to some of the more ridiculous stuff that's going on. Okay, let's check. All right, this one is spooky. This one is spooky. Let's see if I can find this. I mean, they're all spooky, but this one is, like this one could be directly out of Alashwagd. So California earlier this year in September, early September instituted a new law to regulate fast food restaurants. What they have done is they have formed a, what do you call it, a committee? A 10 member council. It's the 10 member, it's the fast food labor council. The fast food labor council. It is a 10 member council composed of representatives from labor and employers. And their goal is to oversee the fast food industries labor practices in California. Now, what this council could do is it is allowed to raise industry minimum wage as high as $22 an hour next year and then match it to inflation following that. That's instead of a 15.5 minimum wage right now. And on top of that, that's just one aspect. They cannot control the cost of labor for fast food companies. On top of that now, they will be able to determine labor practices, hiring, firing, safety, health. So it's not a legislative process anymore. No laws, all rules will be determined by this 10 member labor council, which is truly spooky, scary, scary if you own a fast food business. Now, this is what you call the Robot Full Employment Act. This is the kind of thing that will speed up the adoption of robots, computers, and the elimination of jobs in the fast food industry. This is guaranteed to reduce the number of employees in the fast food industry. And it's gonna be interesting to watch it, notice the state is now going to be responsible for labor practices of particular industry. Yeah, it's gonna decimate franchise owners, small businessmen. Now, this is an attempt at the state level to impose what the left would like to impose on a federal level, which is what they call sectorial bargaining. What they would like to do to get around the weakness of the labor unions is what they would like to do is to have employees of a sector, the entire sector, warehouse workers, or warehouse workers, not just Amazon or not just Walmart, or warehouse workers, negotiate their wages as a sector with the entire industry, not with individual companies. I think this is a model that is kind of modeled maybe after Scandinavia, but it is a disastrous model. It would bring about massive increases in the cost of labor, which would decrease the quality of life, standard of living, of the same labor whose costs are going up, because employers would have to pass the cost on to consumers, who are the consumers, the employees. And of course, they're not just raising their own cost of labor, they're raising the cost of labor for everybody, because everybody has to compete. So, craziness in terms of fast food industry in California. All right, let's move on to social media. Two social media bills passed in California. One, it's gonna require, this is AB 587, by the way, both of these had some Republican support, so these were not just Democratic bills, these including Republicans, but they, these are policies, both of the policies are basically aimed to regulate hate speech in social media. They are gonna require companies to post hate speech, disinformation, harassment, and extremism. The policies with regard to these, they're gonna have to post them, they have to post data on this, they're gonna have to file a semi-annual report to the state attorney general, disclosing these policies and how they've been applied. And, you know, they're gonna make them available to the public. This is a way to, for the Californians to try to rein in so-called hate speech in social media. It seems like the pressure government has put on social media to kind of regulate speech has not been enough. Now, California wants to make this explicit where the state intervenes and helps them define what social, what hate speech actually is. The industry will fight this, they'll fight lawsuits. What's interesting is there are very, very similar lawsuits, sorry, very, very similar laws being passed by Texas and Florida. So this is a bipartisan issue. This is a bipartisan issue. This is not uniquely nutty California. This is Republican states, very Republican states, and very Democratic states are passing the same kind of laws because everybody hates California, right? Everybody hates California. So that is, I think this one is gonna go to the courts and gonna be ruled unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds, but we will see. This is clearly state intervention. Second bill on social media, and this one was bipartisan, it actually passed the Senate and the House in California, I think unanimously, all the Republicans voted for it, all the Republicans voted for it. And this one is going to, it says that social media companies that operate in California have to consider the health and wellbeing of children in their policies. So it requires makers of social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok to study products and features that are likely to be accessed by minors and mitigate any potential harm before releasing them to the public. So just broad, you have to protect, not from violence, you have to protect the health and safety, ambiguous, and we're talking about mental health primarily, right? Well-being of kids. You have to protect the wellbeing of kids. How do you do that? Isn't that the job of parents? This one, as I said, bipartisan support. Everybody agreed with this, right? It's going to require companies to craft all kinds of policies specifically for children limit. I mean, the easiest thing for social media companies to do is to restrict children's ability to use social media, ban it or something like that, which is what Republicans really want and some Democrats really want, but it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable to me that we're now, I mean, imagine the lawsuits about the mental health and wellbeing of children. How do you measure that? How do you know? Which children? Is the children, are the children got insane parents and that's why their mental health is bad? Or is it social media and can words really have that kind of impact? And now we have free speech but not for children. We already limit what can be said to children or can be shown children somewhat rationally, but this is completely non-objective, completely nuts. And again, another chipping away at the First Amendment, another attempt to chip away at the First Amendment by both left and right. This is what's so scary. This is not in question. This is not, you know, this is not a partisan thing. This is not, oh, when the Democrats are out, the Republicans will save us. No, this is the one thing they both agree on. Regulate, control and limit our ability to speak on social media is the one thing Democrats and Republicans are unanimous on. Okay, and then finally, this one is like, I don't know. I mean, I think they're so bewilder and constitutional but it is fascinating. So, California is passing a law that, basically that the way they presented is that protects transgender children and protects them and allows them to get the kind of hormone treatment, surgery, psychological treatment, whatever, to transition, to transition. And, you know, on the one hand, it bans discrimination, it's not fine, but it protects these children's ability to do it starting at very young ages in California. California parents, it has all kinds of restrictions on parent rights and what parents can interfere with or what parents can decide. It's really scary if you have kids in California right now, kids who are susceptible to kind of the social pressure around the whole trans issue. And it's very dangerous now for parents to say to kids, no, you're not taking these hormone blockers, you're not doing, you're not transitioning, you're not doing this stuff. The state of California is now focused on the kids, not the parents. But what's scary is that this goes beyond the state of California and this is where the insanity really is. If you have a kid and you live in anywhere and the kid wants to transition and you don't want them to transition and they run away to California. And they're 15, let's say. The state of California will protect they right to transition. Now we'll see, again, I don't think this will stand up in court, but this is what the law is intended at, it's supposed to be a sanctuary for people, particularly kids, to escape parents who want to allow them to transition or to escape states where transition is going to become illegal like maybe Texas and Florida. Courts, now it's, again, the law is ambiguous but it could be interpreted in a way that suggests that courts could take custody of kids who are seeking gender transition treatment out of state and enroll them in California's foster care system and not allow the parents to have any say in what happens to them. And parents are out of state and not provide the parents with information about what's happening with them. So California doctors, and I'm reading from a story from what newspaper, some newspaper. Anyway, I think the daily something, daily signal. California doctors will be able to offer Pewdie Barker's hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgeries to minors without their parents' knowledge or consent. Potentially for kids who run away, or another example. What if one parent wants to support the kids' transition and another parent doesn't? Well, one parent can, in a sense, illegally take the kid out of state and the other parent would have no ability to find out what's going on, what's happening medically, has any say in what's gonna happen in California will provide them with, quote, sanctuary. So exactly how this will be interpreted, it depends on who you read. Again, I don't wanna sound too hysteric here but it sounds awful. It sounds awful within the state of California but the idea that it applies to everybody, it applies to run away kids, it applies to one parent, another parent has no say. It's terrifying, it's terrifying. And again, I think the federal courts are gonna rule this that one state can't interfere with another state and you can't kind of, in a sense, overwrite your state law from another state. So we'll see, I hope that's the case but it is truly terrifying that they're doing this. And that is my stick on California, scary stuff, scary stuff. It's an insane state. Why anybody stays there, I don't know. I think more people, I mean, I do know the weather, the people, the productiveness, the environment of entrepreneurship, I get that. But if you have kids, I wouldn't want to put them in the public schools in California or put them through this craziness or all of this, it's just, what a tragedy. I think the best state in America in so many respects is committing suicide is completely nuts, completely nuts. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.