Morning in America Comes Again to the U.S. Oil Industry
Where energy is concerned, one of the most symbolic votes taken anywhere on Election Night in the United States on November 5 came from California, where voters in the very liberal city of Berkeley soundly rejected Measure GG, a local law that would “impose a special tax on all buildings 15,000 square feet or larger that use natural gas.”
Measure GG was an initiative to approve a special tax on larger apartment, condominium, and office buildings that plan for occupants to be able to use natural gas for heating, cooking, and other appliances. It turns out that even supporters of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris like their natural gas, gas stoves, and other gas appliances despite the 4-year focused campaign mounted by the Biden/Harris administration and supporting media to demonize them.
That vote likely symbolizes a California population that has grown weary of paying the highest utility rates and gasoline prices in the US thanks almost entirely to the anti-fossil fuel policies enacted by a long parade of green-signaling governors and a state legislature increasingly dominated by the Democratic party. Those high energy costs reflect an entirely self-inflicted wound for Californians in the same way the rising energy costs and persistent inflation across the country have been attributed by many economists to the profligate spending of the Biden/Harris government, most notably in the oddly named Inflation Reduction Act passed on a strict partisan vote in 2022.
