04/06/2026
This is a reply to Jim Franklin’s show of April 5, 2026.
Jim Franklin quoted C.S. Lewis writing that Jesus’ claims to be the Jewish Messiah commit him to being either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. Was Jesus lying to us, or was he crazy like the many psychotic residents of mental wards who claim to be the Messiah, or was He as He said He is, the Lord of the time and eternity. We can ask as similar question of Franklin and his implication that if California eliminates the state gasoline taxes, fuel prices will go down. Is Franklin a liar, or ignorant of economics, or a prophet of lower fuel prices? As the Bible says, “The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights I men who are truthful.” (Proverbs 12:22) Giving Franklin the benefit of the doubt, let’s assume that he is not lying, but simply ignorant of economics and explain it to him.
First, in Franklin’s defense, an interviewer on National Public Radio made the same error in a comment, asking if canceling gas taxes would make up for the increase in gas prices that are now higher after the mining of the Strait of Hormuz. The incorrectness of this suggested corrective is understandable as we consider why the prices went up after the Strait was blocked—even though filling station’s gas tanks were not yet empty and in need of refilling—and anyway, the U.S. is the world’s largest petroleum driller, and Kern County (a county of large land area) is the largest oil drilling county in the nation: the recent increase in the price of motor fuel is unrelated to the costs of producing and delivering it, including the cost of taxes.
As the news tells us, oil is a world-wide-traded commodity, and the local price is a function of the world price. That is, oil companies are not loyal to their nation, selling petroleum first to their own people, but loyal to their profit. They can make more profit by selling as much oil as they can to oil companies in countries that do not drill, or as much, petroleum as the U.S. does, and thus they must pay more for it as it comes from elsewhere. After this, our oil companies don’t have sufficient petroleum to fuel the U.S., thus they raise the price. Why?
Oil companies raise the price of the smaller supply of their products IN ORDER TO reduce the demand for it and thus the purchase of it. As prices rise, buyers drop out of the market. These buyers buy the product at the lower price, but their budgets and their lesser needs for the product motivate them not to buy. The higher the price, the greater the number of buyers who stop buying. (Some products, including gasoline, resist this buyer-drop-out effect since the buyers have built their lives around use of the product without other options available, and they have needs more than desires for the product. Yet ultimately the price may go so high that they must accept the suffering of not having it, and they will drop out, too.) Now consider how gas taxes fit into this situation.
The reason why fuel prices must go up is to move some buyers to get out of the market, to stop or reduce buying. This reason has nothing to do with the suppliers’ costs of drilling, refining, storing, and delivering the fuel. It has to do with its more limited supply. Gas taxes, which are collected by both the state and federal governments, are part of the costs of producing and delivering the fuel product. As explained above, the price increases are unrelated to the costs of buying, producing, and delivering the gasoline. As such, gas taxes are UNRELATED TO the price of gas. Eliminating or lowering these taxes will not have an effect on the price of gas chosen by the oil corporations.
What if we the people, misguided by commentators such as Franklin, move our legislators to eliminate the state and/or federal gas taxes. This is something that could be done. But after that, the oil companies’ gas prices would be kept the same, to fend off buyers of their newly limited product. But oil company profits would be raised by the amount of the reduced tax. Gas tax reductions simply would be gifts to oil companies.
Do we want to give oil companies this gift? We certainly do not. They should be taxed to cover some of the costs of the air and water pollution that their product gives off, which raise our health care costs to treat emphysema and cancer. Their executives should be heavily fined and imprisoned for their campaign of lying to us, saying that global climate change from carbon dioxide released from burning their product was a matter of controversy in science when actually the evidence was incontrovertible by all who knew the facts about chemistry and atmospheric science.
What if an elimination of gas taxes were to come with a requirement that the price of gasoline had to be lowered by that amount? The lower gas price would then fail to discourage fuel buyers from buying, and more people would be lining up to buy the cheaper fuel. They would literally be lining up their cars, as people did during the “fuel crunch” of 1977 (after a problem with getting oil out of Saudi Arabia), lined up at filling stations that extended into the streets and around blocks. These motorists strongly desired to buy gasoline even at the near-double cost of fifty-two cents per gallon, which had suddenly gone up from twenty-nine cents per gallon. That price had not gone up enough to stop people from getting in gas lines. Is that what we want? The gas lines would w**d out gasoline purchasers who would be unwilling or unable to wait it in those lines, with the same result, of fewer people buying the reduced supply of fuel.
What the people of the U.S. should do in this time of globally fungibly priced fuel is to forget buying as much of it as we once did by using alternative ways of transporting ourselves. The Fresno FAX bus system will continue operating using the higher priced gasoline. It may have, or will get, battery-powered buses, too. Each bus has 35 seats, ten straps for hanging, more room to hang from ceiling rails, ramps and fasteners for wheelchairs, and bicycle racks to hold means for getting to and from bus stops. And bicycles can be used for entire trips.
For faster and less exerting travel, electric bicycles are increasing in popularity. The bigger the battery they come with, the farther and faster they’ll go. At the low end new electric bikes are available for $700. Most of our gasoline powered travel is for short, urban trips that electric bikes will cover. Bicycle trailers are available for children, doubling for carrying cargo. The ultimate transition away from fossil fuel are electric cars, which already are part of the state’s passenger fleet, more expensive than internal-combustion cars, but running on electricity at the equivalent of $2.50 per gallon gasoline.
At the end of the first hour of Jim Franklin’s show, he said that he would be back in the second hour to have more to say about the fuel situation. Instead, after the commercials and station breaks, he said the same thing as the first hour, and again that hour ended saying he would be back to talk more about the topic. Instead, after those commercials, “The Real Money Show” came on. Is Franklin a liar, a lunatic, or a prophet? The liar was the KMJ show programmer who chose to broadcast the parts of “Jim Franklin Live” that contained these falsehoods.
