Gavin’s Great Cap-and-Trade Con

And why our gas prices are $5 a gallon

Gavin’s Great Cap-and-Trade Con

By Jim Reynolds | www.reynolds.com

Gavin’s Great Cap-and-Trade Con

By Jim Reynolds | www.reynolds.com

Grook: The Green Shakedown

They cap the air, then sell it back,
A market born from power’s rack.
They call it trade, they call it fair,
But it’s a toll to breathe the air.

The mob at least was plain and blunt,
Sacramento cloaks the shunt.
With smiles they tax, with virtue preach—
A racket dressed as noble speech.

California’s $33 Billion Hoax on Its Own Citizens

California has always loved to sell itself as the future. Clean skies, green virtue, and policies so enlightened that the rest of the country is supposed to take notes. But peel back the glossy rhetoric and you find the biggest hidden tax scheme in America: cap and trade. It is the policy Gavin Newsom hugs like a life raft, because it lets him boast of climate leadership while quietly siphoning billions from the people who actually live and work in California.

How the Scam Works

Cap and trade sounds sophisticated, but it’s basically a state-mandated market that exists only because Sacramento invented it. The state sets a cap on carbon emissions, then sells “allowances” to businesses so they can keep operating. Each allowance is just permission to do what was legal yesterday: run a refinery, generate electricity, or drive goods across the state. Companies bid for these hall passes at quarterly auctions, and if they need more, they buy them from each other.

That “trade” part is supposed to make it feel like capitalism. In reality it’s coerced scarcity, with Sacramento acting as dealer. The state gets the money, businesses get compliance headaches, and the costs roll downhill until they land in the lap of the California consumer.

Cap and trade is often sold with the language of markets, but strip away the technocratic gloss and you’re left with something much more familiar: a protection racket.

Mobsters have been running this play forever in America’s big cities. It works like this: the boss shows up at your shop and tells you, “Nice business you got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it.” Then he offers you a deal—you pay him a monthly fee and, in return, you get the privilege of staying open without being harassed or burned out. That fee is not voluntary. It’s the price of survival.

Cap and trade is the same shakedown, only with Sacramento playing Tony Soprano in a suit. The state creates the “threat” (you’re now forbidden to emit carbon without permission), then sells you protection from the very rules it invented (carbon allowances). Don’t buy enough permits? Your business gets fined, shut down, or regulated out of existence. Buy what you need, and you can keep the lights on—for now.

It’s pay to play—or more bluntly, pay to stay in business. Nothing about it is free, fair, or market-driven. It’s coercion with paperwork. The mob called it muscle. Sacramento calls it sustainability. Either way, the principle is the same: might makes right, and you pay the man to be left alone.

Bob: “Only difference between the mob and Sacramento is the mob didn’t pretend it was saving the planet.”

What It Costs

The numbers tell the tale. Since the program began in 2012, California has raised more than $33 billion in auction revenue. Today it pulls in $7–8 billion every year, much of it poured into the so-called Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. That fund bankrolls pet projects like high-speed rail, equity grants, and consultant contracts that always seem to land in friendly hands.

At the pump, cap and trade tacks on 20–30 cents per gallon—on top of the 71 cents of state gas taxes Californians already pay. Layer in the Low Carbon Fuel Standard and other hidden fees, and California drivers now pay over a dollar more per gallon than the national average. Electricity and natural gas bills carry the same invisible surcharge, buried under “compliance costs.”

Who Benefits

Follow the money.

• The state treasury gets billions in fresh revenue without ever calling it a tax.

• Political allies get subsidies: the rail lobby, green NGOs, housing authorities.

• Academic researchers get grants to “prove” climate urgency, keeping the panic well-funded.

Who doesn’t benefit? The small business owner, the family filling the tank, the utility customer opening the bill. They foot the entire tab, with zero say in how the proceeds are spent.

The Global Joke

Even if you buy the alarmism, California’s sacrifice is mathematically absurd. The state covers 0.1% of Earth’s land and emits less than 1% of global CO₂. If California were a country, it would barely crack the top 15 emitters. Meanwhile, China pumps out more than twice the emissions of the entire United States.

Here’s the kicker: in 2022, California managed to cut its emissions by about 9 million tons. In 2023, China’s emissions grew by 565 million tons. That means for every 1 ton California cut, China added about 61 tons. The whole exercise is like bailing a sinking ship with a thimble while Beijing is boring new holes in the hull.

Bob: “Sacramento trims a leaf; Beijing fells the forest before lunch.”

The Orwellian Twist

Cap and trade isn’t just bad economics. It’s language abuse.

• An “allowance” is a license to do what was lawful yesterday.

• “Flexibility” means pay more or close shop.

• “Climate investment” means subsidies for insiders.

This is Orwell’s dictionary at work: tax becomes “market,” confiscation becomes “reduction,” coercion becomes “choice.”

Pinning the Tail on the Donkey

This is Gavin’s baby. He defends it, expands it, and flaunts it as proof of his climate credentials. He is the milk-carton kid for cap and trade—a smiling face on the box of a policy that bleeds Californians dry while delivering nothing measurable to the planet. The high-speed rail boondoggle? Funded by cap and trade. The bloated NGO ecosystem? Fed by cap and trade. The extra dollar you pay at the pump? Cap and trade.

And the kicker: most Californians have forgotten it even exists. That’s the brilliance of the hoax. It hides in the fine print of your gas receipt, your power bill, and your grocery costs. You’re not supposed to notice, and you’re certainly not supposed to ask where the billions went.

The Bob Verdict

California built a Potemkin market to justify a cash grab, and Gavin Newsom turned it into his climate brand. The state’s citizens pay the ransom, the global climate doesn’t budge, and the insiders feast. That’s not leadership—it’s the most audacious farce our country has ever seen.

Bob: “They capped the air, sold it back to you, and called it freedom. Gavin’s face is on the carton, but it’s your wallet in the missing-persons ad.”