Wes is a fourth generation Southern Californian born in Arcadia and raised in Glendora and is the youngest of three sons. His dad was a salesman whose territory was the western United States, and the family’s summer vacation was to jump into the ’73 Ford Maverick and join their father.
Gas prices are soaring in 2022. They don’t need to be. Bad policy decisions are restricting supply and driving up prices. Higher gas prices mean higher prices for food, consumer goods, and everything not grown or manufactured in our neighborhoods. If you are not growing all your own food yourself, you are relying on trucks to bring food to your neighborhood. If we are not manufacturing products locally, then we are relying on trucks and trains and ships to bring it too us. Higher fuel costs drive higher transportation costs, and those higher costs make everything more expensive.
​
Solar Power works great in Southern California – during the day. We should take full advantage of that natural resource that is solar power here.
​
But work trucks need fuel around the clock. We should not be paying $2 more per gallon in California just so people can get to work. We need to prioritize lowering energy costs for those who run small businesses and who rely on automotive transportation to get to work and school. It’s unjust to suggest that the poor should purchase a $50,000 electric vehicle.
​
The United States and North America should be energy independent. They should produce enough surplus energy to make our industries competitive with those around the world. We should produce enough surplus power that Europe and other nations turn to North America for their energy needs, not the bad actors in the world.
​
Canada and the United States need to be effective partners. That includes pipelines, which are safer than trains, to move petroleum from Canada to refineries in the U.S. Only by working together can countries with shared values provide energy to fuel our economy without relying on the bad actors of the world. Lowering oil prices by increasing production in North America offers the added benefit of de-funding our adversaries and their attacks on other nations. That’s how we stop wars: remove their ability to fund them through fossil fuel sales.
​
We need an all-of-the-above energy strategy. That includes efficiently extracting fossil fuels to drive the economic engine and get inflation under control.