Busybody Lawmaker Tells LA Dodgers to End Their Sponsorship Deals with Oil Companies

Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) sent the Los Angles Dodgers a letter Tuesday telling them to end their sponsorship deals with oil companies.

“As the Senate Majority Leader, representative for California’s 33rd Senate District, and a lifelong Dodgers fan, I am writing to urge you to end the Los Angeles Dodgers’ sponsorship deals with fossil fuel companies,” Gonzalez said in her letter.

What a busybody. I can think of many more pressing issues in Los Angeles should Sen. Gonzalez be interested in actually improving the lives of Angelinos.

What is the basis of her “urging?”

“The state of California is currently suing five of the largest oil and gas companies in the world for decades of misleading the public about climate change. This lawsuit includes Philips 66, owner of the 76 brand of gas stations. As a State, we are leading the way in climate action and decarbonizing our economy. Yet, Big Oil continues to engage in climate denial and just last year spent a record amount lobbying the State Legislature against common-sense public health measures.”

“Climate denial.” It’s now a crime in California to be a climate denier.

“California’s Governor and Attorney General are suing oil and gas companies over climate woo woo and pseudoscience,” the Globe reported in 2023. “The discovery phase of their lawsuit will be delicious when Bonta and Newsom will have to produce actual evidence that 5 oil companies have caused wildfires, heat waves, snow storms, flooding, wind and rain in California.”

California has highest-in-the-nation gas prices and the highest energy costs, which have increased 50% since 2019 according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The blame for the 50% increase in energy costs according to the LAO is California’s “ambitious climate‑related goals,” “intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation and help the state meet its larger climate goals.” This severely affects electricity prices.

Senator Gonzalez takes a different tact:

“The recent devastating wildfires in Los Angeles are focusing attention on a reality that my constituents have known for decades: that fossil fuel pollution is responsible for not only the climate crisis, but also the persistently harmful air quality in the region.”

That’s some pretzel logic. The Palisades and Eaton fires are bringing attention to LA’s climate change? Did I miss something?

Instead of making life more affordable for Californians by producing more of our own energy, and using our own resources to bring down costs and build a more affordable future for everyone, California’s lawmakers continue to push for unrealistic “green energy” mandates. They restrict our car choices, and force many people summer and winter to live uncomfortably because of high heating and cooling costs.

Gov. Newsom threatened to call a special session if lawmakers didn’t pass his Venezuela-Like price controlsproposal of the oil and gas industry – unless lawmakers passed his latest proposal to control California’s petroleum industry.

Here it is February, and once again, there are news stories that the CEC is more aggressively proposing the takeover of the California’s refineries.

Sen. Gonzalez’s colleague California Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced a new bill to hold “Big Oil” responsible for natural disasters in California. Gonzalez is a co-author. Sen. Wiener proclaimed that “The fossil fuel industry is fueling climate change,” and then announced Senate Bill 222 to force the oil and gas industry to pay for all disasters in the state – and in doing so, will allow insurance companies and victims of fires, floods, rain and sleet, wind events, mudslides, and earthquakes to sue fossil fuel companies for damages, the Globe reported in January.

“The fossil fuel industry is fueling climate change,” Sen. Wiener says. “They [fossil fuel industry] knew it was leading to disaster for decades, and have incapacitated lawmakers” to make money, he said in January.

Sponsoring Wiener’s bill is the Center for Climate Integrity, which brags that they are “Exposing Big Oil’s Lies & Demanding Accountability.” The Center for Climate Integrity is a Washington DC non-profit whose “contributions” dramatically increased from $130,000 to $7.5M in 3 years – a grand total of $17,431,13 in contributions in three years. USAID anyone?

That’s a lot of moola. Their fundraising scheme goes directly to ACT BLUE.

If ACT BLUE rings any bells, it is the Democrats’ online fundraising scheme, which House investigators believe has been “channeling large, illegal foreign contributions into Democratic Congressional candidate coffers by taking names and addresses of actual American citizens and attaching them to Democrat campaigns as if they are small dollar donors when in actuality these folks have no idea their identities are being misused this way.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson said “it looks to be a money-laundering operation involving foreign nationals.”

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) are leading an Oversight Committee investigation into potential fraud and illicit financial activity linked to ActBlue campaign contributions. In a letter to U.S. Department of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the lawmakers requested all suspicious activity reports (SARs) related to suspicious financial activity.

Someone with the authority needs to subpoena and question Senators Wiener and Gonzalez for their strong-arm tactics, and get them on the record about the real intent of Senate Bill 222 after hooking up with ACTBLUE and the Center for Climate Integrity.