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Her Tips for a Good Life

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When Eva Marie Saint was born, Calvin Coolidge was president, George Gershwin had just premiered Rhapsody in Blue, Columbia Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer were still upstarts, and television progenitor Charles Francis Jenkins was months away from demonstrating the first synchronized transmission of pictures and sound.

Saint was born on July 4, 1924, meaning she turned 101 years old this Friday. She became a centenarian this time last year — with BFI noting that she’s the earliest surviving and the oldest living Academy Award winner — and she shared her tips for a “good life” during those milestone celebrations.

At the time, Saint was getting ready to celebrate her 100th birthday in Los Angeles with four generations of her “dear, dear family,” who were flying in from around the country, as she told People.

And the Hollywood legend told the magazine about the simple pleasures that were making her life worthwhile. “I certainly don’t feel 100 years old,” she said. “I continue to take walks out in the fresh air, like watching baseball — especially the Los Angeles Dodgers — and enjoy time with my family and friends. A good life.”

Getty Images

Saint is perhaps best known for 1954’s On the Waterfront, in which she made her feature-film debut, starred alongside Marlon Brando, and earned an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other big-screen credits include 1957’s A Hatful of Rain, the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock picture North by Northwest, and 1960’s Exodus. In 2006, decades into her career, Saint got a blockbuster role when she played Martha Kent in Superman Returns.

On television, Saint starred in the 1977 miniseries How the West Was Won, which earned her an Emmy Award nomination, and the 1990 miniseries People Like Us, which earned her an Emmy win. She also recurred as Cybill Shepherd’s onscreen mom in Moonlighting and, more recently, voiced Katara in The Legend of Korra.

On the personal front, Saint was married to TV director and producer Jeffrey Hayden from 1951 until his death in 2016, and they had two children, Darrell and Laurette.

Balancing her career and her family was “never an issue” because Saint “made decisions,” as she said in a 2014 CBS Sunday Morning interview. “I had an agent once who wanted me to do many more movies, and I said, ‘I can’t. I can only do one a year, if that. I have children, little children.’ And he said, ‘Well, I guess you won’t be a superstar.’ And I said, ‘Well, I guess not.’ [I] fired him.”




This story originally appeared on TV Insider

TikTok building new version of app ahead of expected US sale: report

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TikTok is building a new version of its app for users in the US ahead of a planned sale of the app to a group of investors, The Information reported on Sunday, citing unnamed sources.

This comes as President Trump said on Friday he will start talking to China on Monday or Tuesday about a possible TikTok deal.

He said the US “pretty much” has a deal on the sale of the TikTok short-video app.

TikTok plans to launch the new app in the U.S. on Sept. 5, according to The Information. REUTERS

Last month, Trump extended to Sept. 17 a deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the US assets of TikTok.

TikTok has developed a plan to launch the new app to US app stores on Sept. 5, the report said.

The report added that TikTok users will eventually have to download the new app to be able to continue using the service, although the existing app will work until next March, though the timeline could change.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.


Close-up of Donald Trump speaking.
President Trump said Friday that he will begin talking to China this week about a possible TikTok deal. AP

A deal had been in the works earlier this year to spin off TikTok’s U.S. operations into a new U.S.-based firm, majority-owned and operated by US investors. That was put on hold after China indicated it would not approve it following Trump’s announcements of steep tariffs on Chinese goods.

Trump said the US will probably have to get a deal approved by China.



This story originally appeared on NYPost

Democrats still clueless, Mamdani’s insulting child care ‘fix’ and other commentary

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Liberal: Democrats Still Clueless

In the “half a year since their catastrophic loss to their arch-nemesis Trump,” frets the Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira, Democrats’ “favorability rating is still dreadful, they have only a modest lead in the generic congressional vote for 2026” and their chances of “taking back the Senate are slim.”

The “drive to reinvent the party seems to have stalled out” as leaders remain “in denial about how serious their wounds are.”

They haven’t “staked out a middle ground” that adopts popular Trump actions, but instead remain “deeply convinced that Trump is perhaps the worst person to ever walk the earth and find it difficult to relate to voters whose views are more mixed” — “that a breaking point from Trump’s actions will inevitably be reached where voters will wake up and realize Democrats were right all along.”

Libertarian: Zo’s Insulting Child Care ‘Fix’

Socialists like Zohran Mamdani “pretend they want to support mothers and motherhood. But they don’t understand what type of help mothers need at all,” fumes Reason’s Liz Wolfe.

Mamdani “promises to implement free child care.” But then “if you’re a mother who wants to take care of your own kids, your household — through your tax dollars — will be forced to subsidize those who use the state-run day care system.”

Will moms who stay home or “rely on grandparents, a nanny, or any sort of local child care collective” get “any tax credit or subsidy”?

Families vary, but “Mamdani and other socialists like him are saying that one form of child care is above all others and that New Yorkers should be forced to pay for it.”

Democrat: Return to Basics

Zohran Mamdani is “a charismatic, smart and effective campaigner” who has “tapped into” widespread anxiety about “bills, rent and job security,” admits Tom Suozzi in The Wall Street Journal — but his “lofty promises” of free housing and transit lie “far beyond his authority” and will have to be “paid for by huge tax increases.”

Better “another way” based on “stronger unions, revitalized manufacturing, and a labor market that rewards hard work over wealth accumulation.”

Mamdani didn’t win because New Yorkers love socialism, but “because too many voters think the rest of the Democratic Party no longer stands for them.”

And that will keep haunting the national party.

Culture critic: Rowling Right on Pronouns

The pronoun trend is “a fast track to declaring your side in a culture war,” fires Stella O’Malley at Spiked.

“Harry Potter author JK Rowling” is “certainly no hostage to this trend,” as she flames: “When you tell a woman she must pretend a man is a woman, you’re asserting the right to control her speech and perception of reality.”

Says O’Malley: “What Rowling understands is that pronouns carry an entire worldview,” so “using ‘he’ instead of ‘she’ can feel like firing the first shot in a culture war.”

“For the linguistically sensitive, a misused pronoun registers as a breach of reality.”

“Rowling is right — pronouns are not just a matter of politeness. Grammar is being used to smuggle in an ideology.”

Campus watch: Columbia Prez’s Telling Texts 

Leaked text messages show interim Columbia President Claire Shipman has “all the instincts of a dodo bird,” snark The Washington Free Beacon’s editors.

The texts show her thoughts on “anti-Israel and antisemitic protests that have roiled the Ivy League school for the past two years.”

After students violated University policy (which would eventually “lead the student encampment and occupation of a university building”), she called to “unsuspend the groups before the semester starts” and for the school to “do some things with Rashid” — that is, events promoting virulently anti-Israel “Rashid Khalidi, the former Palestine Liberation Organization flack” and longtime Columbia prof.

Her “first response to Oct. 7 and the campus crisis it spawned was to push an outspoken Jew off the Columbia board and fill the spot with an Arab.”

So “Columbia trustees might wonder” if the school needs “new leadership.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board



This story originally appeared on NYPost

Check out the latest easyJet share price and dividend forecasts. Time to consider buying?


Image source: Getty Images

The easyJet (LSE: EZJ) share price has bounced around over last five years or so and there’s little sign of that changing.

It’s just hit another patch of turbulence, dropping 8.5% in a month. The shares are still up 15% over 12 months, but down around 10% over five years.

This now looks like a FTSE 100 bargain, trading on a trailing price-to-earnings ratio of just 8.7. That’s undeniably cheap. But then, it’s looked cheap for some time.

FTSE 100 recovery play?

There’s plenty going in its favour right now, including a low oil price and the growing success of the easyJet Holidays business. I’ve been baffled by its underperformance for months. So what’s holding easyJet back?

First-half results, published on 22 May, offered a few clues. The airline posted a pre-tax loss of £394m for the six months to 31 March. That was in line with expectations, and slightly better than last year if the timing of Easter’s stripped out.

Third-quarter bookings were 80% sold, with the fourth quarter already 42% full. easyJet Holidays is expecting 25% customer growth this year.

Costs are coming down though. Capacity rose 12%, and its holidays arm posted a £44m profit, up £13m. Fuel cost per seat fell 8% year-on-year. The oil price remains low today, despite Middle East tensions. That could change, of course.

The foundations look solid. Yet the market remains cautious.

Dividends picking up

I don’t really think of easyJet as a dividend stock. The trailing yield’s a modest 2.3%, but there’s more income coming our way.

After three blank years during the pandemic, it paid 4.5p per share in 2023. Last year, that jumped almost 170% to 12.1p.

That kind of rebound won’t be repeated, sadly. The dividend’s forecast to climb to 14.14p in 2025, then 15.44p in 2026 and 17.3p in 2027. Based on today’s 525p share price, that would deliver a yield of 3.3% in two years.

That’s not going to get income hunters excited, but it’s heading in the right direction. Reinvested dividends could quietly build over time if the airline keeps growing.

Room to fly

The airline industry will never be risk-free. If fuel prices spike, that could quickly eat into earnings.Consumer confidence isn’t exactly soaring either, particularly in Europe. The summer heat’s another unknown. Repeated heatwaves could dent demand for southern getaways.

But the outlook’s upbeat. Analysts expect easyJet to report a full-year profit of £703m in 2025. And the group says it’s on track to deliver £1bn in pre-tax profits within a few years.

Forecasts are encouraging. Eighteen analysts produce a median share price target of 700p in 12 months. Now that’s a 33% gain from where we are today. Twelve out of 20 rate the stock a Strong Buy, with two more saying Buy. None say Sell.

That’s no guarantee of future returns, but the numbers suggest easyJet could reward patient investors in the long run.

With costs falling, bookings strong and dividends recovering, I think this is one FTSE 250 stock investors might consider buying. But they must be ready for more bumps along the way.



This story originally appeared on Motley Fool

Musk forms the America Party and Sam Altman backs ‘techno-capitalism’ as old economic consensus gives way to rival visions

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The so-called Washington consensus that touted the benefits of free trade and fiscal discipline looks headed for the dustbin of history.

That’s as President Donald Trump has launched a stunning trade war and pushed through a tax-and-spending bill with Republican support that will add trillions to the deficit.

Meanwhile, Democrats are still grappling with their own message as they continue to reel from Trump’s brand of populism that returned him to the White House. The turmoil points to a clash between competing visions for a new economic consensus.

Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University, sees the economy heading for an epochal change, though a dominant economic order has yet to fully take shape.

“The global economy is getting a hardware refit and trying out a new operating system—in effect, a full reboot, the likes of which we have not seen in nearly a century,” he wrote in the Atlantic last week. “To understand why this is happening and what it means, we need to abandon any illusion that the worldwide turn toward right-wing populism and economic nationalism is merely a temporary error, and that everything will eventually snap back to the relatively benign world of the late 1990s and early 2000s.”

Such churn was on display this weekend as top tech leaders Elon Musk and Sam Altman signaled their dissatisfaction with the current two-party system.

On Saturday, Musk announced he is forming a new political party, after feuding with Trump over the mega-bill that was just signed into law.

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk posted on X on Saturday. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX had earlier warned of “debt slavery” from the tax-and-spending bill and criticized the its treatment of EV and solar energy tax credits versus oil and gas incentives.

Similarly, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X on Friday that Democrats had lost their way and that he is now “politically homeless.”

He also appeared to refer to New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who said last week “I don’t think that we should have billionaires.” Altman said, “I’d rather hear from candidates about how they are going to make everyone have the stuff billionaires have instead of how they are going to eliminate billionaires.”

At the same time, he advanced his own vision.

“I believe in techno-capitalism,” Altman wrote. “We should encourage people to make tons of money and then also find ways to widely distribute wealth and share the compounding magic of capitalism. One doesn’t work without the other; you cannot raise the floor and not also raise the ceiling for very long.”

In Blyth’s view, a new economic order is not yet discernible, because the governing idea is still being debated. 

He described the MAGA vision as a combination of 1950s manufacturing, 1940s immigration and workforce trends, plus a touch of 19th-century, mercantilist “spheres of influence” foreign policy.

Then there’s the “Dark Enlightenment” wing of the tech sector where “Silicon Valley billionaires imagine an economy that runs not as a return to hard-hat industry’s glorious past but as a posthuman future of automation and space exploration,” according to Blyth.

Meanwhile, the Democrats still seem to represent the institutionalist status quo, he added, though Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders are pushing another option of left-wing populism.

A third Democratic vision is the “abundance” agenda, which seeks lower-regulation, pro-growth policies for renewed economic vigor.

The intra-party crosscurrents were highlighted recently when Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, stunned the Democratic establishment last month when he won the city’s primary with his own brand of populism that includes making bus service free, freezing rents on rent-stabilized apartments, nearly doubling the minimum wage to $30, building city-owned grocery stores, and hiking taxes on the top 1% of earners in the city.

By contrast, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic allies in the liberal bastion passed reforms to a landmark environmental law last week that will make it easier to build more housing, as state leaders acknowledged the need to boost supply in the face of high costs.

“A new economic order is forming—which means that it is not yet fixed and can still be shaped,” Blyth wrote. “But time is running out. As jumbled as the regressive modernization is, it could win the day if we do not come up with a different governing idea of what the economy is and whom it is for.”



This story originally appeared on Fortune

Israel says it has attacked Houthi targets at three ports and power plant in Yemen | World News

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Israel says its military has attacked Houthi targets in three ports and a power plant in Yemen.

It came after the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) issued an evacuation warning for people at Hodeidah, Ras Issa, and Salif ports – as well as the Ras al Khatib power station, which it said is controlled by Houthi rebels.

The IDF said it would carry out airstrikes on those areas due to “military activities being carried out there”.

An IDF spokesperson said: “For your safety, we urge all those present in the specified areas, as well as ships anchored nearby, to evacuate immediately. Remaining in the specified areas puts you in danger.”

Earlier in the day, a ship was reportedly set on fire after being attacked in the Red Sea.

The assault, off the southwest coast of Yemen, resembled that of the Houthi militant group, said a private security company.

It was the first such incident reported in the vital shipping corridor since mid-April.

Maritime security sources said the vessel, identified as the Liberian-flagged, Greek-owned bulk carrier Magic Seas, had taken on water after being hit by sea drones.

The crew abandoned the ship.

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This story originally appeared on Skynews

Timelapse Shows Texas’ Llano River Completely Flood in Just Minutes : The Picture Show : NPR

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The Llano River swelled with floodwater in Llano County, Texas, on July 4, as heavy rain and deadly flooding hit the state’s Hill Country area.

Timelapse video captured by Robert Ivey shows authorities blocking off a low water crossing over the Llano River in Kingsland just before flash flooding completely inundated the area in just 10 minutes.

“I record the crossing 24/7 with a security camera,” Ivey told Storyful. “The river crossing is also known as ‘the slab’ and is a local swimming spot.”

In a news conference, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the death toll in the flash flooding update is now 69. This includes 59 in Kerr County and ten other victims in surrounding counties.



This story originally appeared on NPR

Emma Slater Shares Intimate Moment With Mystery Partner Sparking Fan Frenzy


Instagram/@theemmaslater

The post on Instagram by Emma Slater gave us all some serious heart eyes moments. The pro and former Dancer with The Stars shared a sweet picture of intimacy, and her followers loved it. Slater is toward the right side of the frame sharing a sweet little kiss on the cheek with her mystery partner. Both looked so happy against the backdrop of rustic veneer. The caption read, “Just a moment in time 💘” simply because it truly was.

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As if the picture needed to emit warmth! The partner, crowned with a cap with an arm laid back boasting bold abstract artwork-wide smile capable of lighting up a thousand cities-was receiving a sweet kiss on the cheek from Emma. The dim lighting erected a wall of intimacy in the scene, and the side-splitting comments weaved their way up faster than confetti cannon explosions at a Dancing with the Stars finale.

The fans came running to shower the post with love. One said, “Y’all are just the cutest!!! 🤍” while another one said, “I’ve always loved both of you as individuals and now I love that the two of you are together 😍.” Hereafter, the excitement did not end: “I’m so dang happy for you Emma!!! 💓 You deserve the light you put out for others!!!”; at this point, a supporter clearly is ecstatic over Slater’s happiness.

Then threw in the nostalgia bomb: “If you would ask me 5 years ago I would’ve chosen you two ❤️❤️❤️.” That’s way before this post; some of the fans have been rooting for the couple. There was also the playful yet demanding comment: “How long have you really been dating???👀👀👀👀👀.”

Then the real kicker came to play when DWTS fellow co-star and rumored flame, Alan Bersten, declared: “I miss you already :)”, sparking a reply tagging him with a crying emoji. Is it a little drama? Maybe. Is it cute? For sure.”

Then there were more memories: “Still love how I got to see your DWTS tour relationship hard launch! Love you two!!” Another chimed in: “DWTS has a lot of my favorite couples… I love you and Alan.”

For a while, Slater’s love life was hush-hush, but lately, with this post, the slew of support comments indicates she’s ready to share the good news. Whether it is a new romance or an older one stepping into the limelight for the long-awaited time, one thing’s for certain: the fans root for her with great fervor.

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And honestly? After everything we’ve been through this year, I think we all needed a bit of a love story on the internet. So please, Emma, keep this lit with more cute moments. We are watching. And swooning. Mainly swooning.



This story originally appeared on Celebrityinsider

£10k to invest? Here’s a hot dividend share that could deliver a £2,653 passive income over just 3 years


Image source: Getty Images

I’m not just interested in high near-term dividend yields when I’m buying stocks for passive income. I want dividend shares that can provide a sustainably large and growing dividend over time.

As this table shows, Greencoat UK (LSE:UKW) is expected to deliver impressively on both counts during the next few years:

Year Dividend per share (forecast) Dividend yield
2025 10.38p 8.6%
2026 10.70p 8.8%
2027 11.01p 9.1%

It’s critical to remember that dividends are never, ever guaranteed. What’s more, City forecasts (upon which these yields are based) can shoot both under and above.

Yet, I’m confident this dividend star an deliver a long-lasting second income for investors. If projections are accurate, a £10,000 lump sum today will provide dividends of £2,653 between now and 2027 alone.

Here’s why I’m considering the FTSE 250 company for my own portfolio.

Good and bad

Holding renewable energy stocks can be problematic at times. When the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, profits can tumble as energy generation slumps, potentially impacting dividends.

This is a constant threat for Greencoat UK, all of whose assets are located in Britain, as its name implies. However, this tighter geographic footprint also has its advantages.

Britain is famed for its excellent wind speeds and long coastlines, and offshore wind capacity often exceeds 50%, making it one of the world’s leading places to build turbines. Capacity on future wind farms is tipped to rise as high as 65%, too, as technology improves.

The UK is also becoming one of the most supportive environments in the world for green energy. Just last Friday (4 July), the government announced new plans to turbocharge the onshore wind industry through steps like simplifying the planning process and boosting supply chains.

In doing so, the government is looking to almost double total onshore wind capacity, to 27GW-29GW by 2030.

A dividend hero I’m considering

This provides significant scope for Greencoat UK, which currently owns 49 wind farms, to keep its progressive payout policy going. As you can see, annual dividends here have risen consistently since it listed on the London Stock Exchange more than a decade ago.

Greencoat UK Wind's dividend history
Source: Dividendmax

The only exception came in 2024, when the company cut its long-term energy generation forecasts by 2.4%, leading to a drop in asset values. But with these changes made, City analysts are expecting dividends to start chugging higher again from 2025.

The graphic also underlines another attractive feature of renewable energy stocks like this. Electricity demand remains generally stable during all economic conditions, even during high inflation and pandemic-related downturns. So while these companies can keep producing the energy, the revenues and cash flows continue to steadily roll in.

While it’s not without risks, I’m considering adding Greencoat UK to my own portfolio for a long-term income.



This story originally appeared on Motley Fool

Contributor: We still rely on gasoline. Why is California adding to the cost and the pollution?

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California is a state of contradictions. We lead the nation in environmental regulation, tout our clean energy goals with pride and champion a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. Yet despite this green image, our economy — and daily life — still very much run on oil and gas.

Fossil fuels account for roughly 8% of California’s $3 trillion economy — but that’s the first 8%. “If you don’t get that first 8%,” I tell my students, “You don’t get the rest of our economy.” Oil powers everything from trucks to tractors to construction equipment. Without it, you can’t build roads or bridges or get goods to grocery stores. Without refined petroleum products, you don’t make cement, steel, plastics or even the lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles.

Despite these realities, California energy policy is leading to the dismantling of the critical infrastructure that supports this essential system. Our state has lost more than 30 refineries in the last few decades. We are now down to just nine major gasoline-producing facilities, and two more are scheduled to close in the coming months, Phillips 66 in Los Angeles and Valero in the Bay Area. Those two plants represent 284,000 barrels of daily production and account for nearly 18% of the state’s total refining capacity.

California sits atop one of the largest untapped reserves in the world, the Monterey Shale. But because of policy and regulation, we import most of our oil — including from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Guyana and Ecuador. California has also imported oil from Russia and Venezuela. Ironically, we have among the world’s cleanest refining standards, but we import fuel from places with lower environmental and labor protections.

All of this is enabled by a supply chain that’s more vulnerable than most realize. We have no major pipelines bringing oil to California. We rely on ships — many from Asia — that take 30 to 40 days to deliver fuel. These foreign tankers pollute at staggering rates. Stunningly, because that pollution happens over international waters, it doesn’t get counted by the California Air Resources Board. Closing a refinery in California and importing more fuel causes a net increase in pollution. And adding to our reliance on foreign oil is risky when global instability is rising.

This isn’t just a self-inflicted energy crisis in the making. It’s also a national security issue.

Military bases in California, Nevada and Arizona depend heavily on in-state refineries for specialized aviation fuel and other petroleum products essential to operations. As refineries shut down, the supply chain narrows, increasing reliance on imports from Asia and elsewhere. These gaps create unacceptable logistical and strategic risks for U.S. military readiness in the western states.

And remember, there are estimated to be hundreds of millions of barrels of accessible oil under our feet. Yet we’ve built an energy model that depends on importing foreign oil and, now, a growing dependency on foreign-supplied gasoline.

This isn’t just unsustainable. It’s also borderline irresponsible.

California’s energy transition is inevitable — but how we get there matters. We can’t pretend fossil fuels are already gone. We still need them for the economy, for mobility, for national security and for the working people who can’t afford a $60,000 electric vehicle or a solar roof.

We have the tools, talent and resources to lead a responsible energy transition, one that leverages our in-state production, balances environmental stewardship with economic pragmatism and protects our most vulnerable communities along the way.

But we have to be honest about where we are. And right now, fossil fuels still power the Golden State.

Especially because of coming refinery rules and a new tax taking effect in July, Californians are set to pay the highest gas prices in the nation. Our prices are inflated by a web of taxes, fees and boutique regulations that has grown thicker and more expensive over time. Even if oil dropped to $0 per barrel and refining were free, Californians would still be paying about $1.82 a gallon at the pump — $1.64 of that from state taxes and fees, plus 18 cents in federal gas tax.

According to CalTrans, Californians drive about 1,200 miles a month. If you’re a working-class Californian and gas goes up 50 cents per gallon, that adds about $500 in annual fuel costs. And because you pay for that with after-tax dollars, you’d need to earn at least an extra $750 just to cover it.

That matters to a construction worker commuting 60 miles a day in a pickup truck. It matters to a single mom cleaning homes across the city or a physical therapist driving to house calls. Most of these people can’t easily trade in their vehicles for Teslas and dodge gasoline hikes. Consumer analysis as noted in CalMatters indicates that the majority of EVs are bought by higher-income Californians living in areas such as Atherton, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Mountain View.

The people hit hardest by rising gasoline prices are the ones least able to afford alternatives. For most Californians, there is no viable mass transit available. People are just stuck spending more and more of their income on the gas-powered vehicles their lives depend on. Our state’s policies punish people for not being able to adapt quickly enough to a green future that’s not yet built. It’s a regressive tax masquerading as environmental action.

Until California realistically bridges the gap between aspirational climate goals and equitable policy execution, the state’s lofty environmental vision will continue to rest uneasily on the shoulders of its most vulnerable.

The new state excise tax adding about 2 cents a gallon went into effect July 1, and CARB is pushing for a new low-carbon fuel standard that could add and potentially major costs to the prices of gasoline and diesel fuel. No one knows exactly how much — not even the board proposing the rules.

At a recent Assembly oversight hearing, CARB officials were asked if they analyzed their regulations for consumer impacts. Their answer: We don’t calculate that. The room went silent. It was a stunning admission — regulators pushing policy without running the math.

No wonder we’re seeing an exodus of working families. By layering new and unclear costs on top of an already overstretched system, CARB and other regulators are creating what could become a self-inflicted economic shock.

And for what? Not environmental progress. California will be forced to source more and more fuel from overseas — at greater environmental and economic cost. By relying on polluting sources and carbon-intensive shipping, we’ve simply outsourced our emissions to other countries. California is not reducing emissions. We are exporting them.

If this sounds reckless, it is. But more than that, it’s unjust.

These policies are not burdening the wealthy. They’re crushing the working class. They’re forcing families to choose between gas and groceries, between job access and housing stability. They’re also outsourcing jobs overseas.

And they’re being implemented by unelected bureaucrats who, by their own admission in testimony before California lawmakers, haven’t calculated the real-world impact.

The people of California deserve better than this. They deserve honesty, transparency and policy grounded in economic realism, not ideological fantasy and environmental dogma. If recent and coming changes become a tipping point, it won’t be because of some unpredictable global event. It will be because we chose not to look before we leaped.

The path forward demands a pause, a recalibration and a return to common sense. Otherwise, this summer could mark not just another price hike — but the day we began losing control of our energy future.

Michael A. Mische is an associate professor at USC’s Marshall School of Business. A former KPMG principal, he is the author of eight books on business and strategy.



This story originally appeared on LA Times