There was a time when California celebrated the freedom and fun of cars, when The Beach Boys raised the “Little Deuce Coupe” to mythical status, and when the government thought its job was to build infrastructure that accommodated the growing population and raised the quality of life.
All gone, and now we’ve lost Brian Wilson, too.
This is how Gov. Gavin Newsom described gasoline-powered cars in a new executive order: “century-old outdated and ineffective technology, keeping us bound to a fossil fuel industry and manufacturers that benefit from thwarting progress and polluting our communities.”
The air has long since been cleaned up from the smog of the 1960s, so now the government of California is fully focused on degrading the quality of life. Along with raising the cost of electricity and water until air conditioning becomes unaffordable and fruit trees pay with their lives, the government is wasting your money on a failed high-speed rail boondoggle that will never be completed and trying to ban gasoline-powered vehicles.
Possibly one way to fix this is to have automatic voter registration at the In-N-Out Burger drive-thru. Instead of voting with their feet by leaving the state, Californians should stay and vote with their tires.
Newsom’s Executive Order N-27-25 was issued in petulant response to the federal government withdrawing the waiver that would have allowed California to enforce its regulation banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars statewide starting in 2035. It also had interim targets for electric vehicle sales to ratchet up the pressure until the total ban kicked in.
California has a special waiver from the federal Clean Air Act that allows the state to set its own, tougher standards, but each of the state regulations needs its own specific waiver approved by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The Biden administration’s EPA approved California’s ban on gas-powered cars on December 18, weeks before President Donald Trump took office. Congress passed a resolution withdrawing that approval, and Trump signed it last Thursday.
Heading straight to the microphones, Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a lawsuit to challenge the federal government’s action in court.
Did you know that no elected representatives of the people of California voted to impose a ban on the sale of gas-powered cars?
The ban was entirely Newsom’s doing. During the COVID emergency (that he declared himself) he used his emergency powers to ban gas-powered cars by executive order, directing the California Air Resources Board to develop regulations to implement it. CARB has to go through a public process to develop its regulations, but the regulators are completely free to disregard the views of the public.
It’s a process that really has to be seen to be believed. The entire economy of the state rests on the arbitrary decisions of the regulatory staff, while businesses, technology experts, utilities and entire industries can only submit public comment letters and stand in line to speak for two minutes to the board before the guillotine blade drops.
That’s how California banned the sale of gas-powered cars.
If we had automatic voter registration at car shows, this might not happen. Californians might elect Jay Leno governor, just to see his car collection take up residence at the state Capitol.
Leno was in Sacramento in April to promote a perfectly sensible law introduced by Sen. Shannon Grove that would exempt classic cars older than 35 years from the state’s smog-check requirement for registering vehicles. It’s difficult or impossible to find shops that have the right equipment to even run the test on older cars. This prevents car collectors from legally driving their beautiful vehicles on a beautiful Sunday in California.
That should be a birthright, not a crime.
Senate Bill 712, nicknamed Leno’s Law, was approved by the state Senate but only after amendments to add miserable restrictions and extra expense. We’ll see if that’s enough to get it through the Assembly or if the lower house wants to add its own thrill-kill to the bill.
Meanwhile, Newsom wants taxpayers to spend $1 billion a year to try to finish the bullet train from Merced to Bakersfield by 2033.
Restore freedom to California. Drive traffic to RegisterToVote.ca.gov.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley
