Decoding why California’s gas prices are higher than a chain of islands deep in the Pacific
California’s gas prices are near record highs, even after easing slightly in the past few days. And the craziest thing is that Hawaii pays much less per gallon.
California’s average price Tuesday, Oct. 20, for a gallon of regular unleaded gas was $6.14. The national average was $4.30. And Hawaiians paid $5.63 per gallon, on average.
That’s 51 cents cheaper, per gallon, than in California.
There is no natural explanation. Gas should not be more expensive in California than in Hawaii.
As The California Post has reported, Hawaii has higher energy costs than California — and understandably so, because it has no oil or natural gas of its own and must rely on imported fossil fuels. Solar energy cannot make up the gap.
California, at least, has some domestic fossil fuel production, as well as hydroelectric power from dams. Democrats’ green mandates still make energy far too expensive in California, though.
The fact is that California has chosen to become an island, in energy terms. It has cut itself off from nearby pipelines. It uses a fuel blend that applies stricter environmental standards, so it cannot import fuel from other states. And California’s state government has driven refineries out of business, so California refines very little of its own fuel.
Add to that a dollar per gallon in taxes, and $0.26 per gallon in climate change costs through the cap-and-trade system — oops, “cap-and-invest” — and it is clear that California pays more for gas by choice.
Yes, the Iran war has driven up gas prices, especially for diesel, because Iran has defended its tyrannical regime and its apocalyptic nuclear program by trying to choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and by firing missiles at refineries in noncombatant countries.
But that affects every state, and does not explain why California still pays more than Hawaii — and the rest of the nation.
It is almost unimaginable that, in energy terms, California would be more isolated than a small archipelago in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean.
Woman stalked, stabbed Jewish man with ‘syringe’ in terrifying NYC attack: sources
A Jewish man was stalked and then stabbed by a woman who stalked him on a busy Midtown street during the Wednesday evening rush, police sources said.
The victim, 26 – wearing traditional Jewish garb – was walking on Fifth Avenue near West 47th Street in the Diamond District just before 6 p.m. when a woman speaking Russian started following him, according to the sources.
Alarming video posted on X by the Manhattan Shomrim shows the suspected attacker closely following the victim around a parked car as he attempts to avoid her – while several pedestrians pass on the sidewalk.
Feds bust $2B medical fraud rings secretly operating in California — as agents seen scaling rich doctor’s mega mansion
Feds busted Los Angeles medical fraudsters accused of stealing $2 billion Thursday, cuffing white-collar thieves for unneeded surgeries, hunting the homeless for rehabs and billing the government for phony hospice care.
Department of Justice officials charged 15 defendants in all, including medical professionals, for making fraudulent claims to government and private health care programs – including $1.6 billion sham rehab case, the largest of its type ever.
The California Post was there as Federal SWAT teams sought their suspects in a series of predawn raids, targeting high-class criminals such as Dr. Hany Malek, 61, an allegedly armed-and-dangerous chiropractor accused of keeping an arsenal in his $2 million Tarzana mansio
“Come out with your hands up,” called an FBI agent in the huge, gun-toting team of camouflaged officers who encircled Malek’s massive suburban home with a swarm of armed vehicles.
Agents cut Malek’s security gate and placed ladders against his tall fences, training guns on his home. Three flash-bang grenades exploded and sirens were activated.
After a few moments, the FBI brought their man down in handcuffs and placed in him an armored truck.
Malek is accused of working with Dr. Harold Tabaie, 78, of Anaheim, a cardiothoracic surgeon, of stealing $134 million in fraudulently billed to Medicare claims for unnecessary atherectomy procedures that resulted in injury to patients.
Authorities say Malek posed as a medical doctor and diagnosed patients with arterial disease, recommending that they receive the invasive procedure in which a bladed catheter is used to clear plaque from arteries.
Tabaie then performed the procedures on patients who did not actually have disease, executing repeat atherectomies on some who he previously treated unsuccessfully with the procedure, prosecutors
First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said the cases represent billions in intended losses.
“It is especially egregious when doctors and other health care professionals, who pledged to do no harm, resort to petty greed and criminality,” said Essayli.
“Every dollar drained from our private and public health insurance systems is one less dollar available to those who truly need it,” he added.
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“It is especially egregious when doctors and other health care professionals, who pledged to do no harm, resort to petty greed and criminality,” said Essayli.
“Every dollar drained from our private and public health insurance systems is one less dollar available to those who truly need it,” he added.
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“It is especially egregious when doctors and other health care professionals, who pledged to do no harm, resort to petty greed and criminality,” said Essayli.
“Every dollar drained from our private and public health insurance systems is one less dollar available to those who truly need it,” he added.
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“Every dollar drained from our private and public health insurance systems is one less dollar available to those who truly need it,” he added.
Neighbors said Malek was known as a crook, and used his cash to fund a high-flying lifestyle, including a fleet of luxury cars and boats he parked in trailers on the street. He lived in a 6-bedroom home with a massive pool.
“He was not a nice man,” said one neighbor of Malek.
Other defendants sought Thursday included Nathan Young, 39, and his father David Young, 71, who allegedly operated a $1.6 billion substance abuse scam to traffic addicts from around the country to dozens of Los Angeles rehab centers.
The Youngs directed “body brokers” to target vulnerable marks, including homeless people and addicts in support groups, placing plying them with drugs and placing them in hotels and trap houses, according to prosecutors.
The addicts didn’t receive treatment, according to court papers, but instead were told that they could “lay out on [the] beach” without having to participate in therapy that was subsequently billed to insurance companies.
Other defendants charged included accused fraudsters who operated fake hospice programs and participated in illegal medical kickback schemes involving unneeded genetic testing.
Federal prosecutors also charged local defendants for allegedly billing Medicare for more than $140 million in three different hospice fraud schemes where the patients were not terminally ill.
Another defendant was indicted after previously being charged in a $270 million scheme to defraud Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, by submitting pharmacy claims for bogus prescriptions.
The accused fraudsters arrested in the takedown were expected to appear at federal court later today in downtown Los Angeles.
Federal authorities are still investigating all of the cases in the operation. It was unclear as of early Thursday how many of the defendants had been captured. Prosecutors said they would provide more information at a press conference.
California-based United pilot sparks security fears after his pro-terrorist sympathies were exposed
A Los Angeles-based United Airlines pilot has sparked security fears for openly expressing sympathies for Iran and an allied terrorist organization.
Israel’s Transportation Ministry notified United Airlines on Wednesday that pilot Sina Amjadian is barred from entry, the Jerusalem Post reported, for sharing controversial posts on his social media.
A Los Angeles-based United Airlines pilot has sparked security fears for openly expressing sympathies for Iran and an allied terrorist organization. Instagram/@flywithsinaa
Israel’s Transportation Ministry notified United Airlines on Wednesday that pilot Sina Amjadian is barred from entry for sharing controversial posts on his social media. Instagram/@flywithsinaa
Amjadian’s bio on Instagram describes himself as “Persian made” and based out of Los Angeles International Airport. It has a heart icon next to IKA, the abbreviation for Tehran’s international airport.
He shared images on social media featuring Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, alongside Islamic Republic flags, while criticizing Israeli military strikes in Iran.
Two posts specifically seemed to have struck a nerve with Israel. In one video, he reportedly kissed and saluted the Iranian regime’s emblem.
In a second piece of content, he allegedly expressed support for the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organization by the US.
Amjadian’s bio on Instagram describes himself as “Persian made” and based out of Los Angeles International Airport. It has a heart icon next to IKA, the abbreviation for Tehran’s international airport. Instagram/@flywithsinaa
“The pilot’s details were forwarded to the relevant aviation security authority […] to ensure that he would not be permitted to enter Israel as a member of an aircraft crew,” an Israeli Transport Ministry spokesperson said to The Travel.
Information was forwarded to Israeli intelligence and defense agencies, which reviewed the findings and then made the recommendation to bar him from entry.
The California Post reached out to both United Airlines and Amjadian for comment.
The airline told the California Post that Amjadian is not currently flying for the company and has been on leave since 2024.
Information was forwarded to Israeli intelligence and defense agencies, which reviewed the findings and then made the recommendation to bar him from entry. Instagram/@flywithsinaa
It’s not immediately clear if he is back in the cockpit, though he was still posting flight videos in recent days on his Instagram and his LinkedIn shows him still with United since November 2022.
Before United, he was a pilot with flydubai, and according to the Jerusalem Post, he is likely currently staying in Dubai.
It was also determined that Amjadian does not operate international routes but mainly flies domestic within the US and Canada.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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