Just over 84 years ago, on August 25, 1939, “The Wizard of Oz” hit theaters.
At 23 cents per ticket, one could have bought 55 more and shared them with friends for the roughly $13.50 in inflated Federal Reserve Notes a single adult ticket costs today. But the anniversary of this motion picture does more than reveal its staying power compared to the dwindling strength of US fiat currency. Indeed, the curiously multi-faceted fantasy acts as a parable about the importance of self-reliance, free association, gold and silver currency, and the frauds who usually occupy positions of self-aggrandized political power.
Perhaps it’s only fitting, then, that the charlatan Wizard’s phrase, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” should have been delivered and shot in California, where numerous of America’s biggest political frauds have emerged to pull the levers, and where the current Wizard-like Governor might want folks to pay utterly no attention to the clear disparity between reality and his fraudulent Climate Cult claims.
Fox News’ Thomas Catenacci recently played Toto in this ongoing Newsom charade, pulling back the curtain on the fact that Newsom’s government quietly is expanding the use of a “fossil fuel” facility that Greenie Gavin promised to shut down because, of course, his green mandates of solar and wind, and his attacks on oil and natural gas energy, were going to work like magic for all the poor citizen-munchkins out there.
“California's top state regulator that oversees utilities approved a plan to expand a controversial fossil fuel facility that Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has vowed to shut down.
The five-member California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted unanimously late Thursday to increase inventory capacity at the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility in Los Angeles County, the agency announced.”
Hold on. Did Catenacci write that the great Wizard Newsom pledged to shut down that Aliso Canyon gas storage facility, or was it an illusion?
It’s true, of course.
“In 2018, Newsom made a campaign promise to close Aliso Canyon, saying he was ‘fully committed’ to doing so.”
Indeed. Newsom has been very vocal about his desire to push California residents into an emerald-green utopia, where cheap, easily-acquired, gas and oil are virtually banned, carbon emissions are depicted as evil (despite having not been proven as divers of Newsom’s fantasy climate apocalypse) and ever more numerous wind and solar farms eat up resources and throw people onto an unreliable electric grid that already has been cited as a massive wildfire hazard.
He also pushed very hard to see the state impose a 2020 mandate forcing builders and buyers of new homes to burden the buildings with photovoltaic cells, and, in 2022, the state increased the mandates within their so-called “Title 24 requirements,” (those began in 1976) forcing additional “energy-efficient technology,” such as new onsite battery storage. And who can forget those heartwarming scenes in California history when the Wizard also pushed for and got even more power to slap costly, unnecessary, and immoral “emissions” impositions on automotive makers, sellers, and buyers, rather than take the peaceful route and go into the business as a private market participant?
The fact that Newsom’s earlier position doesn’t comport with his government’s new plan to expand the natural gas facility is yet another example that even he doesn’t believe the sorcery he promotes. The state can neither sustain current living and energy-use standards nor expand them under his paradigm that shuns cheap petrochemical energy and pushes for, as his PR-flacks label it, “100 Percent Clean Energy” by 2045. Catenacci notes:
“Overall, in 2021, the most recent year with data, wind and solar accounted for about 25% of total electricity generated in California, while natural gas accounted for more than 50% of in-state electricity generation, according to the California Energy Commission.”
And the virtually static models of anticipated future statewide energy use in their “100 Percent” plan are unrealistic, to say the least. In fact, even as Newsom and his assistants in fantasy-world performed various stunts in their “climate cult show,” pulling levers and speaking into microphones, people in the real world discovered that his administration quietly was allowing large corporations to increase their own “backup” (read: fossil-fuel) energy capacity should the already abysmal PG&E power monopoly again start rolling blackouts and rolling brownouts. That, coming on the heels of news that Newsom’s vaunted ban of internal combustion cars by 2035 will run into a virtual brick wall reality that the state won’t be able to generate enough electricity for the EVs he will mandate as the only options that supposedly free Californians can buy, sell, or drive.
Perhaps people will be able to click their ruby slippers to get home.
One thing is certain, Newsom’s hot air could fill the Wizard’s balloon. But it won’t get his climate cult ideas off the ground.
Only the real-world tests of market interplay, conducted by free people, can reveal what consumers find resourceful and drive providers to reduce costs through competition and productivity. No central authority, be he Wizard or Governor, can pull the levers on that system, and it’s high time more folks see the charlatan behind the curtain for the dangerous manipulator that he is.
Their economic future, and the future of their progeny, depend on it.