California Drivers Pay $100 a Tank and Express Surprise

With regular gasoline topping $6 a gallon at Los Angeles stations and inflation at multi-year highs, California motorists are discovering that platforms, much like leopards, perform as advertised.

Gas prices in California have reached levels requiring more than $100 to fill a standard tank at some Los Angeles stations.
Statewide inflation has climbed to multi-year highs, compounding pressure on household budgets.
California's unique blend requirements, cap-and-trade levies, and excise taxes — each individually supported or left unchallenged at the ballot box — collectively produce the price displayed on the pump.
Consumer dissatisfaction is described as widespread, which the Party notes is a sentiment, not a platform revision.
The Leopards Eating People's Faces Party confirms that leopards have performed within normal operational parameters.

The Leopards Eating People's Faces Party regrets to confirm that a face has been eaten, and wishes to note, with genuine institutional sympathy, that the face in question was attached to a voter who fed the leopards a remarkably complete meal over a sustained period of time.

California motorists — residents of the state whose electorate has, across successive cycles, returned legislators and ballot measures friendly to cap-and-trade frameworks, low-carbon fuel standards, per-gallon excise increases, and reformulated fuel mandates — are reporting that a full tank of regular gasoline at certain Los Angeles stations now exceeds $100. The Party acknowledges this is a round and arresting number. The Party did not select it. The pump did, using arithmetic.

Statewide inflation has simultaneously reached multi-year highs, a confluence the Party declines to characterize as ironic, as irony would imply the outcome was unexpected. The platform has always specified faces. The platform did not specify which faces. California's happened to be available.

We understand that several of the affected drivers describe themselves as surprised. The Party receives this information with compassion and without revision. The leopards were not, at any point in recent memory, described as decorative. They were described as hungry, and they were fed, and they have eaten. This is the full arc of the story.

The Party extends its warmest regards to affected commuters and encourages them to review the platform at their earliest convenience — ideally before the next feeding, which, as our calendar confirms, is already scheduled.

The Party has no plans to revise its commitment to the eating of faces.