Billionaire Tom Steyer’s Profanity-Laden Tirade on California

Billionaire Tom Steyer launched into a profanity-laced rant when interviewed by the Sacramento Business Journal about his plans for the state.

Steyer, who spent $74 million in a largely wasted effort to elect Democrats in 2014, is planning to try again in 2016–and he has big plans for California, including more aggressive climate change laws, and a statewide $15 per hour minimum wage–regardless of what the facts say about the cost in jobs to the state.

The Business Journal quizzed Steyer about the fact that California pays higher energy costs than most other states, and about the flight of jobs from the state–even among “green” companies. Steyer denied the energy figures, saying those who cited them were “idiots” and that the true cost of energy, when health costs from pollution were factored in, meant that other states actually paid more, especially coal-burning states: “…not so cheap. It’s bad accounting.”

Steer seemed to lose his cool over the rising cost of doing business due to the California’s already-aegresive clean energy policies:

We’re trying to be the best place to live and work in the world. Everyone wants to reduce it to cost per hour, so let’s pay people nothing and pay no taxes and pollute like (expletive deleted). That’s not who we are. That’s not who we are trying to be. We have a completely different model, and it’s succeeding.

A number of exposés, including by mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, have detailed how Steyer has made a fortune from investments that include the fossil fuel industry. His defenders on the left say that scrutiny of Steyer’s past is “not legitimate.”

Steyer has not laid out details of which candidates or initiatives he will be supporting, but he is watching closely. Breitbart News spotted him at the last Democratic presidential debate.