“In California, they’ll have warm weather tomorrow, gang wars, and some overpriced real estate.” – Groundhog Day
My friend cut an artery, and the first aid book said to apply pressure, so I yelled at him, “If you don’t stop bleeding right now, you’ll die!”
The State of California has, in its infinite wisdom, decided to change physics to what they would like it to be and picked a fight with friction. The new law creates the first rolling resistance efficiency standards for replacement tires. Yes. That. I know, I know, they said, “Join the GloboLeft, it’ll be cool baby, you’ll have all the weed you want.”
But, let them in to absolute power, and soon enough their inner Papa Stalin pops out.
The idea is a simple one: have California create the Tire Immigration and Control Enforcement Division (TrICE) and set them to regulating. Those will apply to nearly everyone. Oh, if you have a Lambo®? Yeah, you can still get grippy treads. Same if you have the bucks for an extreme SUV that actually goes to places other than the grocery store and Pilates and the wine bar.
What would you call a horror movie in California after they outlawed gasoline cars? “The Silence of the Lambos.”
The good intention is that it will force allow California consumers the ability to avoid pesky choices and to spend an extra $200 to $400 per set of tires in 2033. Now, that’s an “industry estimate”, which is suspect, but the “regulator estimate” is laughable of . . . $1.50 to $6.50 a tire. $1.50 a tire? Obviously, a lie.
Here, I’m for the consumer being able to choose what kind of tire they want.
Given that, it sounds like I’m a free-trader. Mostly? I’d prefer those tires be made in the United States, so I’m okay with a tariff if we decide it’s worth it for that industry.
I’m complicated.
Anyway, it’s not illegal to own these cheaper “non-eco” tires. A Californian in 2031 can buy them in, say, Nevada and drive back to California. The bet is that people will be too lazy to do that or gas will be so expensive that they’ll be out fighting to save their rebel refinery from BDSM-clad bikers so they can escape the desert.
My take?
None of that will happen.
What will happen?
We’ll have groups of illegal aliens opening up illegal car tire bodegas. Sure, it’s illegal, but they’re already illegal. They already skirt every law that they can.
Later Speedy© got a job installing carpet, you could hear him for miles, “Underlay, underlay!”
These might be fly-by-night places where a vacant lot turns into Speedy’s ¡Ándele, Arriba! Tire Stop® for a weekend. Speedy will drive to Nevada, buy a truckload of illegal tires, and then sell them to you! This is not unrealistic, because illegals already do everything they can to avoid paying taxes, so sales tax would probably be optional.
Then, the hard-working illegal aliens would take the used tires and dump them. Probably at Victor Davis Hanson’s house. Then, Victor Davis Hanson would get a citation for illegally operating a landfill. Victor Davis Hanson would then go to court and plead innocent and maybe use the word “illegal alien” accidentally and then get charged with the Hate Crime of Illegally Discriminating Against Friendly Visiting Valuable Migrants by objecting to them using his farm for a landfill. Then, they’d send Victor Davis Hanson to prison, and give the land to the Friendly Visiting Valuable Migrants because it was land that was stolen by colonialists anyway.
Sure, sounds like satire, but it’s a reality already that California has a three-tiered justice system:
- A carte blanche for the media/techno sect of the GloboLeftElite,
- Actual arrests and jail and taxes for the Average Joe,
- Another hall pass anyone else who isn’t white or Asian.
Victor Davis Hanson is clearly inside the Average Joe classification, especially since in California because he’s white and not a movie star, so he’s stuck inside the only classification where laws are actually enforced in California.
I’m not trying to pick on VDH, he’s just the one that’s written most extensively about the abject failure to apply the law to illegals in California. But he still lives there, so in the end the state may eat him.
Don’t let California know about the car that runs on dead leaves, if they find out they’ll mandate the autumn-mobile.
It is clear that California is headed down the road to a dystopian hellscape. Sure, this is just tires, but California seems to think that they are capable of repealing the laws of physics. Take, for example, that by 2035 California intends to ban the sale of gasoline powered passenger cars. This was an executive order by Governor Zoolander Newsom, the Plastic Man with the Reptile Smile.
Did he ignore the fact that Pacific Gas and Electric, (NYSE Symbol “GRASSFIRE”) can’t produce enough electricity for Californians now without causing the place to blaze up like a Cheech & Chong® fan convention? No, because they’re not allowed to actually build power plants, because that could cause carbon to go into the air.
Bad mayor, worse firefighter.
Instead, Californians just buy it from across state lines so carbon goes up into the air in a different state, so they can export carbon production and import smug virtue. And higher prices.
But to Californians, the disconnect between the cause and the effect doesn’t matter. “Something that’s been in motion for a decade makes my life miserable now?” is a thought that cannot occur in the mind of a California leftist because they are so inundated with the dopamine they get from their good intentions.
And the state gets crappier. But, hey, no one wants to defund TrICE, right?
There are many variations on this theme that we could continue with, from the state’s affinity for illegal aliens to their declaring playground sand a carcinogen (yes, they did) to not building a train but spending billions to not do it to letting tens of thousands of criminals out of jail just as violent crime is increasing in California cities.
What do you call a group of deaf people? I don’t know, but it’s definitely not a herd.
I’d blame it on incompetence, but the GloboLeftElite seem to have found a winning ticket in California with a modified Cloward-Piven plan to just make everything awful and blame it on someone else, say capitalism or Donald Trump or colonialism.
Each failure seems to bind voters tighter to them, while the Average Joes, to the tune of hundreds of thousands a year, are flooding to anyplace but California.
But, hey, at least they’ll have decent tires thanks to the only functioning institution left in the state: Speedy.
https://youtu.be/JCRv_DnAZQs?list=RDJCRv_DnAZQs
Appropriate theme music.
California really needs to be spun off into it’s own state, at least the coastal corridor from L.A. to San Fran.
If you’re just going to blue-sky it, why not gibbet the Newsome-Pelodi class and slowly Pinochet the assorted imported dysfunctionals to allow the reasonably-innocent among them to deport?
California is beautiful. Why are we so happy to hand it over to evil parasites?
Yes.
https://twitter.com/i/status/2097062361861435706
Traitor?
Ahhh, Mexi-Cali-Pornia….
Your missive on tires was definitely not Tiring.
That deteriorating and depressed state reminds me of the lyrics: “Running on empty….”
Empty of actual facts being used to consider what might be a problem and then choosing an action that might be a solution.
Guess that if I was forced to live in MexiCaliPornia, I would turn to alcohol.
After all we learned that in Chem class that alcohol is widely accepted as a near perfect solution….
“Running on empty….”
“Running blind …”
Stiff tires and a good stiff drink.
The Based Book Sale is back for one week. Among other options are a few of my own stories, including for the first time, Camera Roll. I should let you know, this is a very different kind of story than I usually write.
https://basedbooksale.substack.com/p/the-2026-basedcon-based-book-sale
What do you call a group of deaf people?
It doesn’t matter what you call them. They’re not going to come.
That’s one they haven’t heard!
Need to change the ending of your VDH allegory. Given that he’s spent the last 25 years going out of his way to avoid blaming mestizos for anything (if we’d just enforce our laws they’d be just like us, they’re good people and hard workers, blah blah blah), he would continue to write articles (from jail) and perhaps an erudite book apologizing for being rayciss and describing how wonderful Mexico is because it’s full of Mexicans. Yeah, zero f**ks to give for VDH and other Conservative Inc. apologists.
“… how wonderful Mexico is because it’s full of Mexicans. ”
What ever happened to Fred Reed?
He still posts at his website every couple of months or so.
Which is why they’ll eat him.
Big funny…Here in Beaufort, SC we have a free weekly newspaper that comes out every Thursday. The last one was on 9/4. It’s your typical libtard editorial rag, but it does cover local news somewhat fairly.
On Page 5 or so, there was a 3″ long article that Gavin Newsom was coming to town to do a meet and greet with local Democrats (all 6 whites & a few gov’t 2Gs).
The funny? The event was on Wednesday, 9/3.
Bah-dum-tis!
Dear John,
A commifornia specific critique ? Fwiw, that’s not entirely without merit. But, yeah it’s been like : ) more than 50 years since the summer of love and I would humbly point out it’s an easy task to accomplish. And for my favorite perfesser, the cancer team at his alma mater was able to bequeath him with a few more years to witness the road to where ever we’re descending to. As they did for me.
For what is currently accepted as a commifornia perfesser, he’s at least noticeably more grounded. But I will admit, events have overtaken his prognostications. I met him once, about 10 years ago, and was able to ask him what he thought the central valley would look like in fifty years. He did not want to think about it. He actually said he did not know. Very telling, actually. He’s a historian. A good vehicle for the points you make, though.
Well, I’m now off to the day’s tasks.
Keep Up The Great Work
PS I escaped commifornia about 5 years ago.
So, what happened is I heard about the tire thing, then thought about VDH, then out comes this post.
Thank you! Glad you’re out of there.
Tire Inflation Regulation Enforcement Division. TIRED.
Perfect!
too comfortable to fight
Used to be a lovely state, top tier industry, innovation, great schools (I am talking the 1960’s) then the crazy took root.
Prohibit energy exploration and expansion. Adopt unicorn green new deal. Chase out all refineries, then complain about price of gasoline and diesel. Chasing out industry, then complain no jobs that pay well (the fix, raise menial job wages to prohibitive levels). Complain that there are no longer any entry level jobs for the young. Import more non productive persons that do not assimilate (and pay for their housing, food and education*). Destroy the educational* system with DEI BS and wonder why no one finds employment on erstwhile graduation. Destroy water reservoirs and dams leading to destruction of agriculture and entire city zones. Created a uniparty socialist state, make stupid decisions, blame the right which has mostly fled the state. Vonnegut was correct…. and so it goes (down the drain).
It was amazing. And very conservative. And then . . . the invasion.
I love the Potemkin high speed rail station and cougar bridge.
Commierado has the animal underpass.
HSR will never happen in West Israel.
It never will be built. But it will be paid for again and again.
> I’d prefer those tires be made in the United States, so I’m okay with a tariff if we decide it’s worth it for that industry.
Who is “we”, and show me the spreadsheet of how you “decide”. You’re not complicated, you’re a commie central planner protecting an uncompetitive industry from correction. You’re on the side of the losers who believe they can repeal the laws of economics.
Snippy! From a single point in time, you optimize. Let’s skip building computer chips and start building potato chips.
You understand there is zero comparative advantage in building them in China or Taiwan or here, but huge strategic and economic advantage?