West Coast, Messed Coast™– Holy Environy! Newsom Desperately Tries to Sell Refinery He Helped Close

Welcome to the West Coast, Messed Coast™ report, where this week the luxury-believing leftists ruling these states are beginning to realize they may have gone too far.

Running out of gas

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is desperately trying to find a buyer for an oil refinery that he and his policies were instrumental in shooing from the state. Newsom's policies have driven multiple refineries out of the state. Valero Oil has given up and plans to close a San Francisco-area refinery in 2026.

"California's effort to save the refinery from closing also marks a shift from the focus of government policy in recent years to champion green initiatives and restrict fossil fuel usage, that has led to an often tense relationship between the state and oil companies," Reuters reports.

Valero plans to completely close down in 2026. California had 40 refineries in the 1980s. The recently announced closures will leave as few as seven refineries operational by 2026.

West Coast, Messed Coast™ residents are finding out in real time, if they hadn’t known already, that high gas prices weren’t only the product of greedy oil companies and plundering gas station owners, as Democrats have told them all these years.

“High gas prices?! We’ll pass a law to investigate these scallywags!”

California’s gas prices are “42.2% higher than the national average, 40.7% higher than Arizona, 20% higher than Nevada, 46.86% higher than Florida, and a whopping 63.12% higher than Texas.” It's not a good look when you want to win your party's nomination to be president of the free world.

It turns out that when your environmental policies force the closure of multiple oil refineries cranking out homegrown gas, you are forced to import more expensive gas. It has the side effect of making you look really dumb, Gavin Newsom. Worse, it makes the other states that follow California’s environmental lead — looking at you, Oregon and Washington — look even dumber.

Although the California governor’s office dismissed the predicted $8.00 or more per gallon gas because of Newsom’s policies — “Just because one crackpot ‘expert’ says something does not make it true!” — if Newsom didn’t think it were true, why is he now desperately trying to find a buyer for a refinery his environmental actions closed down.

I wrote about the closing refineries in the story SHOCK PRICES: Gavin Newsom's War on Oil Is Expected to Spike Gas Prices to $8 a Gallon.

Now THAT'S environy.

'Eventually you run out of other people's money'

Margaret Thatcher's prediction about socialism appears to be coming true in Oregon.

When your goal is to become one of the nation's largest parks, as my friend Lars Larson puts it, you don't have enough to pay the bills.

And so it is with Oregon's vaunted light rail system, whose crown jewel is in Portland.

Ridership on Portland's TriMet light rail system is off by more than 60%. And the mood of the cadre at the palace they built for themselves is glum. They're running out of other people's money. There are fat salaries to keep in place, so there may have to be cutbacks for riders.

“We are at a time that we need riders," the head of TriMet beseeched. "We need you to come back to TriMet. Those that left us, come back and try us."

General Manager Sam Desue, Jr., admits that ridership plummeted, and that accelerated during the pandemic. Those riders haven't come back. The chief reason appears to be safety. TriMet's light rail stations aren't so much a place to wait for a train as they are the scene of a crime.

Billions were spent on this vanity light rail system years ago, when more flexible and cheaper buses would have sufficed. The progressives were warned. Now, Portland's transportation hub is hoping for a state bailout. The legislature closed its session without passing a hefty transportation package. The governor is calling them into a special session to raise more taxes so she doesn't have to lay off employees.

They always save their own.

Oregon's gas tax is 44 cents/gallon. The unfortunately named Gov. Tina Kotek wants to more than double them.

Oregon has among the highest gas prices in the country, but not as high as those in Washington state (55 cents/gal) and California (69 cents/gal).

Are you seeing a pattern here?

Homeless spending

It was just a few years ago that the West Coast, Messed Coast™ governors went from doing nothing about bums camping out on the streets to discovering that this could be a very well-paid career for their non-profit friends — or themselves.

Kevin Dahlgren follows this issue in Oregon, Washington, and California.

Imagine the surprise of this man when he learns that the state spends $97,000 to help each homeless person.

They didn't even get him a new shopping cart.

Even the homeless guy gets it.

$97,000 spent for each homeless person.

And they didn't even buy this guy a new shopping cart.@kevinvdahlgren

See this Instagram post by

@fed_up__californian https://t.co/fdeHzBpyfO
— Victoria Taft, The Adult in the Room, FITF Squad (@VictoriaTaft) July 25, 2025

Where'd the money go?

The Senate, ostensibly with Republicans in charge, is about to put nearly, if not all, of Donald Trump's named U.S. attorneys on the beach. These are interim appointments. After 120 days, U.S. district judges can name an interim until the Senate confirms a permanent one. This already happened to New Jersey U.S. Attorney Alina Habba.

The Senate could fix this by getting off its collective butts and working on it, but that seems highly unlikely as it's eyeing its next vacation, what they call August recess. Senators could take a real August recess, adjourn, and let President Trump do recess appointments.

On the West Coast, Messed Coast™, one of the first things Central California District U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli did was start an investigation into the billions of missing dollars that were meant to solve the homeless crisis. He's also instrumental in prosecuting thugs attacking ICE agents.

His interim term is set to end around August 1.

Portland's U.S. Attorney has been busy rolling up Antifa attackers.

John Thune's Senate should lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Downtown Willie Brown

Former Democrat Machine Boss and mentor to Kamala Harris, Willie Brown, says she will have a "difficult" time winning the California governor's election.

Willie Brown said she shouldn't have agreed to be Joe Biden's veep. He said Kamala should have asked to be attorney general and then Joe could have appointed her to the Supreme Court, where she'd have a full-time, forever job.

It's hard to imagine anyone being dumber and more ideological than Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, but had he named Kamala, he would have achieved peak dumb.

Speaking of which, since Joe proclaimed he'd ask only black women to be in these offices, it likely means that Karen Bass, the untalented commie mayor of L.A., would have been his choice for vice president.

Think about that.

🎶Letters, we get letters... and comments🎶

Tom mentions that I blamed Karen Bass for a Karen Barger problem in Los Angeles County in the story I did: LA's Worst Problems Just Collided to Put Fire Victims Into a NEW Ring of Hell.

Karen Bass is awful and deserves a lot of criticism, but she is NOT responsible for squatters in Altadena nor for any problems in Malibu.
These are seperate cities.
Pacific Palisades is a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles. That's on her.
Tom

He's right! The homeless squatting problem is on Barger and Newsom.

They haven't ruined everything — yet

It's peak orca (killer whale) season in Puget Sound in Washington.

Thank You Lord 🙏 They are incredible up close. These are transient orca. They eat seals, harbor porpoise, etc. They occasionally punt birds with their tails. These are T65A’s and though they are called transients these guys hang around the Puget Sound. The Southern Residents are… pic.twitter.com/fzliPizYop
— Michael J. McVicar II (@mcvicar_ii) July 21, 2025