Tag Archive for: Gavin Newsom

Why A Newsom Recall Can Succeed

There isn’t a political professional to be found in California who believes that the current attempt to recall Gavin Newsom will succeed. With petitions approved for circulation and a deadline of November 17, recall campaign volunteers are trying to defy the momentum of history.

To recall a sitting governor in California today, based on the voter turnout in the November 2018 state election, proponents will have to turn in 2.0 million signed petitions in order to yield, after verification of signatures, addresses, registration status, eliminating duplicates, etc., a net total of 1,495,709 validated petitions. Without millions to pay professional signature gatherers, this is considered impossible.

It’s not impossible. Not with the power of the internet and social media. Skeptics must consider only two factors: Are there more than 2.0 million California voters who would sign a recall petition? The answer to that is undoubtedly yes. The second question is more to the point: Can the recall campaign find 2.0 million voters in California willing and able to sign a recall petition?

To this second question, the professionals would have an immediate and unequivocal answer. No. But they are mistaken. In today’s fraught political environment, in this season of heightened political awareness, in this era of internet access, Gavin Newsom is one viral video away from seeing his name on a recall ballot, in a special election to be held in early 2021.

Newsom, to his credit, is taking the Recall Gavin 2020 campaign more seriously than the thousands of members of California’s conservative establishment elite, who remain skeptical. Around the time recall petitions were approved for circulation by the California Secretary of State, Newsom released an official statement in response:

“GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM’S ANSWER TO RECALL STATEMENT: WARNING: THIS UNWARRANTED RECALL EFFORT WILL COST CALIFORNIA TAXPAYERS 81 MILLION DOLLARS! IT IS BEING PUSHED BY POLITICAL EXTREMISTS SUPPORTING PRESIDENT TRUMP’S HATEFUL ATTACKS ON CALIFORNIA. In 2018 California voters elected Governor Gavin Newsom by historic margins. As Governor, Newsom is working to 1) increase funding for public education, 2) protect and secure Californians’ health and health care, 3) improve water, roads, and bridges, 4) address the challenges of housing affordability and homelessness, and 5) prepare for the threats of wildfires. Our budget is balanced. Our fiscal reserves are unprecedented. Our economy and employment are historically strong. Yet a handful of partisan activists supporting President Trump and his dangerous agenda to divide America are trying to overturn the definitive will of California voters and bring Washington’s broken government to California with this recall effort. The last thing California needs is another wasteful special election, supported by those who demonize California’s people and attack California’s values. Do not be fooled – California’s police officers, firefighters, first responders, public school teachers, health providers, and business leaders all STRONGLY OPPOSE this costly recall. DO NOT HAND OVER YOUR SIGNATURE, YOUR SUPPORT OR YOUR PERSONAL, PRIVATE INFORMATION TO THIS DESTRUCTIVE RECALL SCHEME.”

Who is the “Political Extremist?”

To lead off by calling the recall proponents “political extremists” who are “supporting President Trump’s hateful attacks on California” is unfortunately typical of not just Newsom, but all Democrats. They always start by smearing their opponents. But Newsom goes on to defend his record, and every point he makes invites vigorous rebuttal.

Newsom claims to be “working” on the following five big projects, “1) increase funding for public education, 2) protect and secure Californians’ health and health care, 3) improve water, roads, and bridges, 4) address the challenges of housing affordability and homelessness, and 5) prepare for the threats of wildfires.”

An objective examination of Newsom’s performance on each of these five projects yields withering criticisms. His drive to increase funding for public education is a gift to the teachers unions, who have monopolized public education. For over a generation they emphasized leftist indoctrination over genuine education. Their failures have been especially felt in California’s low income inner cities. These unions protect bad teachers and disruptive students, they shut down any attempts to introduce alternatives such as charter schools, and they never saw a tax increase or budget boost they didn’t like. By all means, Gov. Newsom, give them more money.

As for California’s need for “secure” health care, Newsom has not done anything to lift the restrictions on the number of nursing graduates coming out of California’s colleges and universities. He hasn’t even signed a waiver to permit independent contractors to continue to work for clinics and hospitals during the COVID crisis. And he’s willing to spend hundreds of millions to provide free health care to undocumented immigrants, which even if motivated by compassion, ignores the challenges facing millions of working citizens who still cannot afford health care in California.

And then there’s “improve water, roads, and bridges.” Where? Newsom continues to try to fund “High Speed Rail,” wasting billions, instead of improving infrastructure Californians need. Has Newsom ever said a word about reforming CalTrans, the state department responsible for implementing road improvements, where additional billions are squandered? Has he done anything to reform CEQA, California’s disastrous Environmental Quality Act, which ties any attempt to improve roads up in the bureaucracies and courts for years, costing additional billions?

When it comes to “housing affordability and homelessness,” Newsom’s record is a corrupt joke. His solution to housing affordability ought to be to deregulate the process of building new suburbs and enabling infrastructure. Instead, since California’s state government has made it impossible for developers to sell affordable homes and still make a profit, Newsom has conned voters into passing tens of billions in bond financings. These billions are used to pay Newsom’s cronies, who are building “affordable” housing at an average cost well in excess of a half-million per unit.

As for California’s homeless, instead of providing cost-effective shelters in low cost areas of California’s beleaguered counties, Newsom, along with all the Democratic mayors, have allowed the homeless to take over downtown areas and choice neighborhoods throughout the state. By the tens of thousands, these homeless squatters openly consume hard drugs, steal to support their habits, harass working residents, and often cope with terrifying mental illness. Does Newsom challenge any of the laws and court rulings that might allow the state to help these homeless? Of course not. Build “supportive housing” instead, on expensive real estate. Newsom’s performance on California’s homeless crisis epitomizes cowardice and corruption.

Point five in Newsom’s description of his priority projects is to “prepare for wildfires.” This is laughable. Has Newsom ever acknowledged that poor forestry management is the reason California is experiencing catastrophic wildfires, or that droughts just as severe as those in recent years have occurred for centuries? Has Newsom made any credible attempt to allow timber companies to selectively harvest mature trees, many of them dying, in exchange for also clearing away underbrush? That deal would cost taxpayers nothing. Has Newsom admitted that most of the stress on the forests is because the trees have become too dense due to fire suppression, preventing healthy trees from getting enough nutrients? Or will he keep on bellowing “climate change,” and use that mantra to tighten the screws of the regulatory state?

When it comes to political solutions, Newsom is the extremist. He is a puppet of the teachers union, an organization with extremist views that they pass on to California’s captive youth through the public school system. He is a puppet of extreme environmentalists, a powerful lobby that effectively fights any attempts to build cost-effective transportation assets or housing subdivisions. He is a puppet of crony developers who rely on subsidies and tax breaks to build a handful of ridiculously expensive “affordable” or “supportive” housing units, solving nothing. And he is a puppet of the compassion brigades, who think letting people kill themselves on the streets with heroin and methamphetamine is respecting their “lifestyle.”

Newsom’s Comeuppance is Inevitable

While the “projects” Newsom touts as his accomplishments merely reveal him to be a dangerous fraud, what he states next offers clues to his dismal political future. He writes “Our budget is balanced. Our fiscal reserves are unprecedented. Our economy and employment are historically strong.”

Now we know Gavin Newsom isn’t this stupid. He submitted his statement against the latest recall effort in June. Newsom knew perfectly well that California’s 2020-21 budget is now forecast to have a $54 billion deficit. As for “fiscal reserves” that are “unprecedented,” really? How much? At best, $18 billion, much of which will be used up in this fiscal year, and which in any case is nowhere near the $54 billion they’re going to need next year.

More to the point, however, Newsom’s “historically strong” economy was on thin ice before the pandemic wreaked catastrophic damage on it. Has Gavin Newsom ever stuck his neck out and explained that by most credible estimates, the unfunded pension liability for California’s state and local government agencies now tops nearly a half trillion dollars? Where does he think he’s going to find all that money? Has Newsom ever suggested that maybe, just maybe, California’s public sector workers might accept lower pension benefit accruals at least for future work? Of course not. Public sector unions, along with tech billionaires, own Gavin Newsom.

Instead of focusing on these economic challenges, and calling for meaningful reforms to public education, housing polices, environmental regulations, and how we help the homeless, Newsom spouts Black Lives Matter slogans. He says nothing as the legislature decides to remove the statue of Christoper Columbus – on of the bravest human beings the world has ever seen – from the state capitol rotunda. To be exceedingly generous, and at best, this is useless posturing.

If Gavin Newsom weren’t a coward and a puppet, deserving to be recalled, he would tell the truth: People with low incomes in California will be helped, regardless of the color of their skin, if California’s cost-of-living is lowered through regulatory reform, and the schools are improved by standing up to the teachers unions.

Eventually these truths will be understood by the majority of Californians, and Gavin Newsom will be swept into political oblivion. Don’t feel sorry for him. The coiffured aristocrat will merely retire to one of his wine estates, enjoying that life of hereditary privilege and obscene wealth that he so readily condemns in his public statements.

Californians may yet defy the skeptics, and confound the professionals. They may send this embodiment of Democratic party dysfunction to an early retirement.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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From the California Militia to Pharoah Newsom

Over the past month, and with growing intensity, protests are cropping up in California against the pandemic shutdown. And as stay-at-home orders are gradually lifted, populist pressure continues to build, because the long term economic consequences have just begun. Rising prices in the stores just as households have spent what remained of their savings. Businesses fitfully coming back to life, but too late, with limited hours. Millions of jobs and businesses still lost, many lost forever.

History will judge whether or not this disease posed such an apocalyptic threat that choosing an economic depression was the preferable option. But at least half of all Americans today are completely alienated from the mainstream press. They view the totality of its product as nothing more than agenda-driven, self-contradictory, sanctimonious propaganda. For these Americans, the destruction of their liberty and livelihoods is a tough sell. And now in California, that feeling of alienation and mistrust has spread across ideologies and become a populist movement.

It may surprise many in the other 49 states, but even before the pandemic struck, California had its share of alienated citizens. In 2016, more than 4.7 million Californians voted for Donald Trump for president, and their support hasn’t wavered. These Californians are alienated from their state government, in most cases from their local governments as well, and they are grossly underrepresented by their congressional delegation.

Along with being politically disenfranchised, these millions of conservative Californians are belittled and dismissed in their own state by a liberal culture dominated by Silicon Valley and Hollywood. They try to make a living in the most hostile business environment in America. They cope with the highest cost-of-living, almost all of it politically contrived. They pay the highest taxes and fees. They contend with the most byzantine, punitive codes and regulations. They have no voice, no hope to change anything, in this deepest blue of blue states.

Along with the hindsight of knowing how the COVID-19 pandemic could have been perfectly handled, history will also judge how well, in the aftermath, Americans navigated their way back to guaranteeing the individual rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Will 2020 have been the turning point, the year when America’s constitutional republic became a complete façade, and a plutocratic police state emerged, brazen and omnipotent? Plenty of pessimists, not without reason, claim we’re at that point.

Rather than trying to peer into that crystal ball, here is a report on the latest happenings in the heart of the beast, the epicenter of California’s political power, the capitol building in Sacramento. On May 1, according to multiple sources including police observers speaking off the record, over 5,000 protesters swarmed the capitol grounds, the sidewalk around the grounds, and the streets surrounding the grounds. There are conflicting accounts of why 32 arrests were made on that day; one version is that protesters were arrested when they tried to enter the capitol rotunda. Other accounts claim the police abruptly began pushing protesters off the lawn and sidewalks close to the capitol, making arrests in the process.

Whatever happened on May 1, by Saturday, May 9, there were barricades in place across the entire capitol grounds, restricting access to any areas apart from the surrounding sidewalk. Wearing riot gear, there were police in skirmish lines, positioned every few yards, along the perimeter. There were also police in formations of one or two dozen each, stationed in strategic spots such as on the capitol steps. There were smaller groups of police on bikes and riding horses. Outside, on the streets, there were dozens of police on motorcycles, and there were police vehicles blocking access to 10th street, which runs along the west side of the capitol building’s main entrance. There must have been at least a few hundred police stationed around the capitol that day.

 

And facing these police were members of the California State Militia. Unlike the week before, this was not a huge and eclectic swarm of protesters. This was a handful of committed activists who have felt marginalized in California politics for a very long time. Holding American Flags, along with the Gadsden Flag (“Don’t Tread on Me”), and many, many signs, about 100 members stood on the sidewalk side of the barricades on 10th Street. Their leader, Major D. Pague, agreed to be interviewed. In the verbatim transcript to follow, he had plenty to say to Governor Newsom, who, regrettably, was not on hand at the time.

Why are you all here today?

The significance of why we’re here is that the people are attempting right now and over the last few weekends to come down here and exercise their first amendment rights by standing here and peacefully assembling and redressing their grievances to the governor and instead of either sending somebody or coming out himself and saying hey, who is the leader of this, come in and talk to me, they’re shutting them down, they’re telling them you can’t do that, but the constitution and even the attorney general of the U.S. Bill Barr are saying you’re walking a thin line of violating everybody’s civil rights and they can’t do that.

We all understand the COVID thing and all that, although it’s not as bad as they made it sound at the beginning. It’s bad if you’re elderly and have underlying conditions, but if you’re healthy, it’s no worse than the flu. They don’t need to crush the American economy by shutting everything down, just have everybody be smart and do the right thing. I think everybody is going to be smart and do the right thing, I don’t think anybody wants to jeopardize their families and all that.

We are here this weekend, not to protest because we’re not a protest organization. We are demonstrating to them that whether they know we exist or not, we’ve been watching them. They’ve done many things over the years, under Brown, attacking our amendments and our constitutional rights, and we’ve stayed fast and just been quiet. But last weekend, when they arrested 32 people for exercising their rights, they weren’t being rowdy, they [the police] actually got in their faces. That’s not right. You don’t do that. But today they have a fence up, you can’t even get close. And do they send out a representative to talk about what they can do to fix it? No.

So they shut all the businesses down, then they say the churches can’t open up for up to six months. What’s up with that? Those are our constitutional God given rights. He does not have the right to do that. He needs to loosen up his heart a little bit. You listen to his language on the news, even though he’s saying he’s going to open some things up, he’s saying it like ‘I’m going to allow you to do this, I’m going to allow you to do that.’ But you [Newsom] don’t allow us to do anything, alright? You work for us, we pay your salary, we pay all their salaries [the police], we own that building. Ok? We are here peacefully today. But if things don’t change, and get better, we might not be peaceful next time.

This is just a small contingent of my men. You check us out. We have thousands of us in the state, we train every single month, we’re here to take care of our community, and what you’re doing [Newsom] is wrong, and if you want to stay in office you need to fix yourself and get yourself right. I don’t know, you must be cheating to get into office, because I can’t believe with how many people are upset with you that you are staying in office. But you should be addressing your people.

You should come out here and ask what you can do to fix things and make things better for people. Don’t put people on unemployment and then they don’t get the money. What about the federal money that the federal government is giving you, and now, four weeks later, people just just now starting to get the six hundred dollars that they were supposed to get. And that’s not going to go anywhere. You can’t even go to the store now and spend a hundred dollars and feed a family of four. Kids aren’t in school they aren’t learning, but that’s ok? Kids need to go to school. Families need to go to church and get preached to by their pastors so they can feel God in their heart, but you’re telling them no. That is wrong. That is tyranny, just like that man’s sign down there.

Tyranny is why the militia was created in the first place. To stop tyranny. What you [Newsom] are doing is wrong, and you better stop it now. Our president, our attorney general, they’re telling everybody, you need to stop this, let everybody get back to their lives, and let them use common sense, and protect themselves.

How many of your men are veterans?

I don’t have an exact number, but we have a lot of veterans. I won’t point them out, but they served our country, many of them have gone over and fought for many years. We’ve been at war now for what, eighteen years – since 9/11? And they come back home, and they’ve pretty much got dumped off by our own VA, they don’t even get help. And so they feel this need that they need to help their communities. Once you’ve taken that oath – even these guys here, they took that oath. The same as these gentlemen here [points to the police], the same as the governor, they’ve all taken the same oath, to uphold the constitution, and they are here because they love this country, they love this state, and they want to see everything get back together.

You can’t sit there and keep the economy down, and expect it’s going to bounce back. What’s going to happen is they’re going to bring it all the way down until it’s crumbling to nothing, and then we are not going to be able to get it back up. Throughout history, many civilizations have made the same mistakes, and they’ve lost their civilizations. The great Roman Empire ruled more than half the world and they crumbled. The Ottoman Empire ruled half the world, and they made mistakes, and they crumbled.

Do you have retired members of law enforcement in your ranks?

I would say there is a possibility of that.

ER. It’s interesting that you have taken the same oath.

Well it’s the oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. When everybody comes into this organization and joins, after they’ve come to a few trainings, they get asked to stand up and hold up their right hand, whether they’re a veteran or whatever their job was, they get asked to take the oath again. It’s called the citizen’s pledge.

What is your role in the organization?

My role? I’m the regiment commander. I hold the rank of major. We have nine companies currently under our regiment.

Is it one regiment in California, or are there more than one?

I have enough to worry about what these guys are doing, not to worry about what other guys are doing. We are the 2nd Regiment of the California State Militia and that’s all I care about.

Do you want to be quoted by name or do you want to be quoted anonymously?

I’m Major Pague. I’ve done interviews in newspapers, I’ve been on TV.

What’s your first name?

Just D. [motions to his name tag ‘D. Pague’]

Is there anything else that you want me to make sure I record?

That we are here and we are pleading to Governor Newsom, open up your heart a little bit. I’m a Christian, so I refer to you as our modern day pharaoh, with a hardened heart. Soften it. Let people go back to work. Let people get money so they can feed their families. Let the kids go back to school. I was so blown away when I was driving down here, a seven hour drive on the freeway, so many flashing signs saying ‘save lives, stay home.’ Don’t do anything. Who is paying for all that! We can’t afford that. We really can’t. And it’s sad that everybody looks to the federal government to bail them out. If the states have sovereignty, then do the right thing. Show us that you can do the job. If you can’t do the job then let’s put somebody in there that can do the job. That’s the whole problem.

Where do you think this came from?

The virus? Well they say it came from China. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. And like everybody else, when it first happened, I was scared, I had no idea. But throughout history – back in the 1960s they had the Hong Kong flu – they didn’t shut down the whole world.

Why do you think there’s such an overreaction?

I think some of it’s political. They despise the president so much that they’ll try to do anything to ruin what he’s done. He’s not perfect. None of us are. Sometimes I get mad when he opens his mouth and says something he shouldn’t. But that’s a New Yorker. You ever been to New York? That’s the way they are, ok? We put him in office to do business and he at least tells you what’s on his mind and he does what he says he’s going to do. He’s not like these other politicians that make empty promises when they’re running for office and once they get in there they don’t do anything. He at least does what he says. He’s got the economy doing the best it’s ever done, or it was. And it’s already bounced back quite a bit from where it dropped down to, and if we open up and let him do what he’s supposed to do it will do even better later on.

Thank you very much.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Separating Good Bailouts From Bad Bailouts

The pandemic shutdown is about to enter its third month, and economic repercussions have just begun. Too much has been shut down for too long. In California, the initial reopen is not going to include huge business sectors – theaters, concerts, conventions, sports, travel, hotels – and other sectors such as restaurants and retail establishments are going to be at half-capacity. Business revenue and profits have crashed, with proportional hits to tax receipts. The cascading economic damage is likely to far outlast the spread of the virus.

The federal response so far has been the COVID-19 CARES Act Relief Bill, which allocates $1.8 trillion in emergency spending to stimulate the shut down economy. This dwarfs the $831 stimulus package passed in 2009, and is equal to more than half of 2019 federal revenue which was $3.5 trillion. In terms of spending, it represents a 40 percent increase to the 2019 federal spending of $4.4 trillion. Using these numbers, a reasonable estimate of the federal deficit in 2020 would be $2.7 trillion, before any additional relief bills are passed, which is likely.

California’s economy, huge and diverse, may confound its critics and weather the coming deep recession better than other states. The tech sector benefits by providing enabling technologies for distance learning and telecommuting, and it will also benefit from likely new infusions of cash into defense R&D as tensions with China deepen. California’s agricultural sector may slow down but it won’t crash, because people have to eat. And while California’s real estate industry has been in a bubble for years, the state’s irresistible weather and scenery guarantee it will remain a favored destination, as will its population emerging from the pandemic relatively healthy compared to other major states.

California’s state and local governments, however, face unprecedented financial hardship. Only a light breeze was necessary to disrupt their finances, and what’s happening today is a hurricane. And even after the economic weather stabilizes, the state government’s financial house of cards will remain scattered.

Only two months ago, Governor Newsom proudly released his 2020-21 budget, calling for record spending of $222 billion and projecting a $5.6 billion surplus. That was then. On May 7, the California state Department of Finance projected that between now and the end of the 2020-21 fiscal year, i.e., over the period ending just over one year from now, instead of a $5.6 billion surplus, they expect a $54 billion deficit. What about a federal bailout?

Governor Newsom has joined other governors, mostly from states controlled by Democrats, in criticizing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who stated “states dealing with budget issues resulting from the coronavirus pandemic should seek bankruptcy protections instead of receiving federal aid.” It’s going to be a tough negotiation.

If a Republican controlled U.S. Senate and a Republican occupying the White House cannot use this opportunity to demand reforms from financially mismanaged states controlled by Democrats, then they never will. The financial challenges facing California’s state government began well before the pandemic. And they weren’t limited to California’s state government, almost without exception, they also afflicted California’s local governments and agencies.

A revealing article published by CalMatters last month explains in lurid detail what’s coming next for California’s cities. From north to south, it’s a dismal portrait.

San Francisco’s controller “recently estimated the pandemic will push the city between $1.1 and $1.7 billion into the red over the next two years — wiping out the city’s $800 million in reserves.” The pandemic is expected have at least a $100 million impact on San Jose’s budget. Los Angeles expects tax revenues to drop by $600 million; San Diego, $250 million. It’s the same story everywhere, from Eureka to El Centro.

California’s Three Financial Policy Failures

When it comes to civic finance in California, however, it is the long history leading into this immediate crisis that should be the real story. For the last several decades, policy decisions made by California’s elected democrats have had a cumulative impact and delivered accumulating consequences in three broad areas:

First, they have over-regulated literally everything, from retail and restaurant operations to manufacturing and resource industries, to home construction, and this has driven up the cost-of-living. A high cost-of-living has driven out the middle class and much of the tax base, exiled to friendlier states in America. It has also affected the second big category of policy mistakes, which is out-of-control public sector compensation.

Instead of paying attention to the impact their policies were having on California’s cost-of-living, and doing something about that, California’s elected officials instead compensated their public employees with wage and benefit packages that were far in excess of private sector norms. This helped mitigate public employees from the consequences of the policies that were making California unlivable for the citizens they served.

It’s important to view California’s third big policy blunder in the context of the first two. If California were an inviting place to retire on a limited fixed income, higher pension benefits would not have been such a priority for government union negotiators. And if the high cost-of-living hadn’t fueled demands for higher wages, governments wouldn’t have had to trade higher pension benefits in exchange for less expenditures in the present for higher wages. As it is, pensions were eating California’s government budgets. Before the pandemic struck.

Good Bailouts vs Bad Bailouts

Writing for Forbes last month, author Kathryn Judge expressed a common and valid warning usually heard from libertarians and conservatives, that there is a “moral hazard” in government bailouts of huge corporations that get into financial trouble. She correctly cites the corporate borrowing binge of the past decade, the useless channeling of that debt into stock buybacks, and makes the logical conclusion that these corporations did this because they knew that if they ever needed to, they’d get another bailout.

This is true enough, but there is a hierarchy of moral hazards, and the highest one, topping even corporate bailouts, is government bailouts. Corporations that cannot compete in a market economy, even those that get bailouts, eventually get their comeuppance. Governments, on the other hand, especially state and local governments, are not held accountable by the market, they are monopolies. And in California, they are barely accountable to voters.

Governments in states like California are controlled by public employee unions, who collect and spend over $800 million per year in member dues, and use that financial power to campaign and lobby for politicians who will do their bidding.

In these times, no serious observer is denying that federal stimulus money is necessary. But a good bailout might look like this: First, send money to individual households. Next, send money to small businesses. After that, and with extreme caution, send money to large businesses. And finally, with strings attached, send money to state governments. And make those strings tight indeed.

For example, before any federal money gets into Gavin Newsom’s hands, demand he convene the state legislature, and pass a pension reform act that adjusts all pension benefits to PEPRA‘s terms (the Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act of 2013) for ALL state and local employees regardless of hire date, effective retroactively to January 1, 2020. Heck, maybe he can even do this via an emergency executive order. Do that one, simple thing, something everyone can understand, and something that would save hundreds of billions over the next few decades.

There’s much more that could be done. Moving back through the three policy blunders – lower public employee wages, along with lowering their pensions. Lower the cost-of-living through deregulation, so not only public employees can cope today, and thrive tomorrow, but everybody living in this still wonderful state.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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California is Ready to Get Rid of Newsom

Across California on May 1, tens of thousands protested in defiance of the lockdown orders. In Sacramento, the west lawn of the state capitol building was filled with protesters, with thousands more marching along the sidewalk surrounding the capitol grounds. Additional thousands driving their cars and honking their horns created three hours of total gridlock on the streets that looped around the capitol. Noteworthy protests have occurred in San DiegoEncinitasLaguna BeachHuntington BeachPaso RoblesSanta Rosa, and even tiny Lakeport on the shores of Clear Lake. There is no end in sight.

While the media has typecast these growing protests as populated by right-wing extremists, Trump supporters, and remnants of a geriatric Tea Party movement, the reality in California is different.

In Laguna Beach, the protest was organized by surfers. Overall, these protests included people who claimed they have never been involved in politics, people who identified themselves as former Democrats, and young people. Thousands and thousands of youth; children, teenagers, college students, twenty-somethings. A generation is waking up.

And among the constituencies outraged by the shutdown are not only people who can’t work, or people who can’t run their businesses, or free speech advocates, defenders of the 2nd amendment, and anti-vaccine activists, but also devout Christians.

As perhaps the biggest and most politically neglected constituency in California, in poking Christians, Newsom may have poked a sleeping giant one time too many. An inflection point will be reached this month, as growing numbers of pastors in California and across the nation have declared they will open their churches to congregants.

Of course the question boils down to this: is this health emergency sufficiently dire to merit an ongoing lockdown that has turned the entire nation into a minimum security prison? And unfortunately, there isn’t much information available to Americans that doesn’t come with an agenda.

Why have the data on death rates been skewed upwards? Why have the social media and search monopolies suppressed contrarian information, such as the possible efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc? Why can’t general practitioners prescribe these drugs, or try other promising therapies, before the disease becomes life threatening?

Questions are endless and urgent. Is there enough focus on therapies, along with trying to develop a vaccine? Why, at a time like this, has the media attacked every move by the president, while defending every move by Democrats? Why is the media defending the fascist regime of China? Why didn’t Americans try the Swedish approach, encouraging social distancing and prioritizing resources to protect the most vulnerable? Why does the United States stand on the brink of economic suicide, when maybe, just maybe, other tactics could have managed the pandemic without destroying the economy?

It isn’t unreasonable to ask these questions, and when the answers are unsatisfactory, anger grows.

Newsom’s Record Invites Criticism

It’s also not unreasonable to take issue with Newsom’s performance as governor before this crisis began.

Apart from doing whatever the public employee unions and his left-wing billionaire donors tell him to do, he really hasn’t pleased anyone. If you work as an independent contractor, Governor Newsom put you out of a job by signing AB 5. This draconian and poorly conceived law, written for the state legislature by the unions, requires companies to hire independent contractors as employees. Instead, and in an instant, most of them lost their jobs.

How does that work, if you’re a “non-essential” writer, musician, or artist, or, more to the point, an “essential” nurse, caregiver, or truck driver? Essential or non-essential, workers need to work. With one signature, Newsom robbed millions of Californians of that right. Before the pandemic hit.

And then there’s California’s 150,000 homeless, seeded with tens of thousands of criminals granted early release to relieve overcrowding, or released because in California drug and theft crimes now carry less punishment than traffic tickets.

These homeless, some of them merely down on their luck, others hardened predators, have turned California’s streets and sidewalks into a public toilet, with many of them stealing to support their drug habits, and none of them held remotely accountable for their behavior. They could have been rounded up and treated, overnight. The national guard could move them onto public land and help them recover. Because among other things, the homeless constituted a health emergency. Before the pandemic hit.

So why is it Governor Newsom could lock up nearly 40 million residents of his state, at the same time as he lets the homeless consolidate their control of entire cities? Could it be the homeless are a useful political tool? Never mind that Democratic policies created unaffordable housing, decriminalized petty theft and hard drugs, and emptied the jails.

Now the Democrat allies in the media and the well heeled nonprofits can point their cameras at these squalid “urban refugees” and scream “social injustice.” Taxes must be raised. Bureaucrats must be hired. Massive borrowing must be approved for affordable housing bonds. And developers make tens of billions, building a handful of palaces for a lucky few, solving nothing, at an average cost to the taxpayer of $500,000 per unit.

One of Newsom’s Democratic cronies, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, presides over a city council that is considering using federal bailout money to buy up homes where landlords have been prohibited from evicting tenants.

Let that sink in. Instead of using federal bailout money to help tenants pay rent, the Los Angeles city council is poised to wait till the small landlords go belly up so they can buy their live-in duplexes and triplexes out of foreclosure, evict them, and fill those homes with homeless people. Eventually their developer friends will consolidate the properties and demolish them to build high rises. You can’t make this stuff up.

Newsom can blame the pandemic for the imploding revenues that doom his state to budget deficits that will make the great recession look like a picnic, but voters will see right through that.

Did Gavin Newsom ever stand up to the teachers unions, and tell them they’ll never get another dime until they agree to reform CalSTRS, the teachers’ pension fund? No, but he let these unions successfully advocate for curricula that, among other things, “challenges binary concepts about gender” in third grade.

Did Gavin Newsom ever put forward a pension reform measure to save CalPERS, the largest public employee pension fund in the world, along with CalSTRS and dozens of other pension systems catering to California’s public employees? No. Everybody knew these pension funds were bankrupting California’s cities and counties and state agencies before the pandemic hit.

With a record like that, you’d think Governor Newsom would realize he was on thin ice. But how did he cope with the pandemic? He became King Newsom, issuing executive orders without consulting the legislature. He even spent $1.0 billion of taxpayer money to buy masks from a Chinese company, and the public still doesn’t have the details of that transaction.

Newsom’s Coronavirus “task force” is led by billionaire Tom Steyer, who when he isn’t paying for Democrat ballot harvesting, wants to save the planet by forcing Californians to live in small apartments and ride trains everywhere. Joining Steyer on Newsom’s dream team are dozens of other grandees, including none other than the disgraced Gray Davis, who may take comfort in knowing he may not be the only California governor to be recalled much longer.

A few months ago a rag tag team of volunteers, with no money and little previous experience in politics, gathered nearly 300,000 valid signatures in a failed attempt to recall Gavin Newsom. While this wasn’t even close to the just over 1.0 million signatures they needed, this is nonetheless an unprecedented accomplishment. They learned a lot, and now they’re trying again, this time with the ability to ride the momentum of an awakened electorate.

Have you lost your business? Have you lost your job? Do you think it was worth it, or do you think things could have been handled differently?

Gavin Newsom has a lot of explaining to do. But it may well be too little, too late to save his political career.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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State Legislature Continues Assault On Local Zoning Decisions

With the introduction of the latest housing density mandate, AB 725 in the California state legislature, the battle between state control and local control in California intensifies. At the same time, the pandemic crisis and its economic consequences add additional complexity to an already complex issue.

The debate over California’s housing policies offers an unusual combination: vehement disagreement between two bitterly opposed groups, yet within both groups are factions holding thoroughly divergent political ideologies.

This probably should come as no surprise. California’s housing crisis, and the policies that created it, incorporate big, challenging issues: income inequality, how to treat the homeless, environmental protection, public finance. Libertarians and leftists, along with Republicans and Democrats, are lining up on both sides of the debate, confounding easy categorization.

A grassroots organization fighting to preserve local control over residential zoning decisions is Livable California, founded by SF Bay Area activists in opposition to state legislation that would override local control of zoning laws. In less than two years, Livable California has grown its direct statewide membership to well over ten thousand, and has networked with allied groups that have hundreds of thousands of members.

If you follow the money, however, Livable California’s opposition, California YIMBY (“Yes in my backyard”), is far better funded. Receiving millions in support mostly from Bay Area tech moguls, California YIMBY and allied organizations lobby for state legislation mandating high density housing, as well as sue cities that resist existing state laws mandating high density.

Needless to say, YIMBY groups are adored by the media and have sprung up around the world. But in California they haven’t resolved a fundamental economic problem: The price of housing construction is so high that the only high density projects that get built are either luxury high rises that displace low income communities, or a small number of fabulously expensive “low income” housing units that only a small number of low income families will ever occupy.

The Livable California website shows their opposition to an assortment of high density legislation, AB 725 chief among them. According to Livable California, among other things, AB 725 “would open thriving working-class and middle-class neighborhoods to speculation and buy-outs, destroying housing to make way for up to 30 units of apartment housing per acre in metro counties, 20 units per acre in suburban counties, 15 per acre in cities in rural counties, and 10 per acre in unincorporated areas,” and “it openly targets single-family and low-density areas for high-density development — whether the community is served by transit or not.”

Some of the bills that Livable California have opposed must be seen to be believed. AB 3173 (still active) provides incentives for developers to build 80 square foot “micro-units” – at least that’s a bit larger than the 70 square feet that the American Correctional Association recommends as the minimum size for a prison cell! SB 902 automatically up-zones single family areas to six units or more per parcel. AB 1279 designates “opportunity areas” where housing could be up-zoned to high rises accommodating as many as 120 units per half-acre.

YIMBYs, on the other hand, support legislation that mandates high density. They want massive up-zoning of existing cities and suburbs. Within their odd coalition, the libertarians want zoning laws all but scrapped and expect the private market to swoop in to construct massive new supplies of housing. The leftists, on the other hand, want massive government borrowing to construct affordable housing and massive ongoing government spending to subsidize the rent payments.

No matter which YIMBY solution prevails, corporate developers alongside speculative investors stand ready to demolish aging inner city tenements and leafy residential suburbs alike, regardless of their current vitality or the wishes of the inhabitants.

Names matter. Opposed to the California’s YIMBYs are not so-called “NIMBYs” (not in my backyard); those favoring local control consider their opponents’ choice of “YIMBY” for a name to be a clever ruse to stigmatize them as NIMBYs. But the issue, say the opponents to YIMBYs, is over who makes zoning decisions. Local residents, or the state government?

Keith Gurney, a member of Livable California’s board of directors, explaining their position, said “we are not NIMBYs because we recognize there is an affordability crisis, and we support things we believe will mitigate the affordable housing crisis. If a city council wants to build high density, we will not argue with that. But the affordability crisis is a result of the state policy that tries to channel population growth into constrained boundaries. There is no way that stacking and packing in San Francisco will lower rents and purchase prices. This three year binge of state legislation trying to cram high density housing into low density neighborhoods is the wrong way to go.”

Livable California’s president, Rick Hall, expanded on this, saying “the gospel of high density and mass transit, and destroying existing residential neighborhoods in order to stay within the urban constraint will not lower housing affordability. There are places in this state where you can build a house for $250,000 with no subsidy. We support companies starting up satellite offices in places where housing can be constructed much more affordably.”

Livable California founder Susan Kirsch has disputed the estimated shortage of 3.5 million homes, claiming it is a pretext for pushing through top-down housing policy. But this calls into question a more fundamental question: What happens if the supply of housing in California is so huge that housing does become affordable?

This is far from academic. A crash in the value of housing requires a commensurate crash in the costs to build homes – which would require extraordinary deregulation – otherwise California’s private homebuilding industry would die off completely. As it is, private developers cannot afford to build low or middle income housing in California without subsidies. But what else would happen?

If California’s housing prices ever fell significantly, millions of homeowners would be underwater on their mortgages, unable to move and struggling to pay in a presumably down economy. The only way out of this would be broad based inflation, raising wages which would make it easier to pay fixed rate mortgages. And of course, property tax revenues would fall, adding additional stress to municipal government budgets.

Legislative solutions that Livable California does support include SB 795 which would fund expanded infrastructure and resources to serve additional housing, and SB 1299 which would provide incentives to repurpose idle big box retail and strip malls with housing.

The YIMBYs, with a torrent of money coming from big tech, real estate developers, and big finance, will never take on the elephant in the room, which is the state legislature’s ongoing effort to establish and strengthen urban containment polices. Until developers can construct entire new cities on open land within California’s vast Central Valley, along the Highway 101 corridor, and elsewhere, the only thing that will make housing affordable will be an economic collapse.

The uncomfortable truth is that years of neglected infrastructure, defacto rationing, and urban containment legislation have already taken away much of the local control that would have allowed Californians to expand their cities and towns, and keep housing affordable.

Livable California, a genuine grassroots movement, has the potential to reverse this trend. If successful, they may eventually alter the policy driven economic conditions that prohibit lasting solutions.  The YIMBY movement, on the other hand, funded by billionaires, will never solve California’s housing crisis, because they aren’t questioning the doctrine of densification. But so what? Their donors will see their real estate portfolio investments soar into bubbleland, as they virtue signal all the way to the bank.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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Suggested Executive Orders for Gavin Newsom

Without criticizing the tremendous efforts that are already being made, here are some additional steps that California Governor Gavin Newsom could take to combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Some of these recommendations may run counter to the political momentum of California’s one-party state, but perhaps in these extraordinary times, they should be considered based solely on their efficacy.

(1) Suspend AB-5, the new law that prevents millions of Californians from working as independent contractors. This law, which has attracted fierce opposition from people of diverse ideologies, is particularly harmful during this crisis. AB-5 has already put hundreds of thousands either out of work or into legal uncertainty regarding their future, and now it’s preventing hospitals from hiring part-time freelance nurses, support staff, translators, phone counselors, and others.

(2) California’s regulatory burden placed on individuals who want to operate as independent service providers was oppressive before AB 5. Now is a good time for Governor Newsom to issue an executive order to revise occupational licensing requirements. In particular, permit nursing school graduates to fulfill their clinical rotation requirements using simulations instead of in-hospital rounds which have been discontinued during this pandemic.

(3) Immediately free California’s nursing schools to graduate as many nurses as qualify for certification. This would end the state Board of Registered Nursing’s attempt to use its authority unconstitutionally to limit new nurses and to control the schools that train them. The governor can immediately rein in this out-of-control agency, and allow 10,000 new nurses into frontline emergency medical positions.

(4) As the economy stalls, with sales tax and state income tax revenues set to take a nose dive, to forestall a complete financial meltdown of state and local government finances, implement a non-refundable 20 percent cut to compensation for all public servants, to take effect immediately and last until all sheltering restrictions are permanently removed. Apply the reduction to all forms of compensation including hourly pay, overtime, specialty pay, all forms of “other” pay, and salaries. Unlike during the budget crises of 2009 and 2010, most public sector workers are needed to continue to perform their jobs, so this time there will be no “furloughs” to accompany these pay cuts.

(5) In order to improve the ability of small businesses to survive, for all California businesses with fewer than 50 employees, suspend all state and local minimum wage rules that raise the minimum wage beyond the federal minimum wage.

(6) Require all school districts to implement online learning to the best of their capacities, and ban school districts from not offering online learning simply because not all students have access to the internet. Require all school districts to do the best they can.

(7) Suspend Prop. 47 which downgraded property and drug crimes, and resume enforcement of the laws that were superseded by Prop. 47. Employ the National Guard to construct tent compounds on publicly owned land in rural areas to incarcerate offenders.

(8) Use the National Guard to clear the streets of homeless people. Relocate them to established shelters and improvised new shelters. Require all public and private homeless shelters, including the new ones being improvised in recreation centers, hotels, and other public and private venues, to enforce sobriety and shelter-in-place mandates. Use the National Guard to relocate uncooperative offenders to supervised tent compounds on publicly owned land.

If one might search for a common theme to the policies of the one-party state that defines Gavin Newsom’s California, it would be that whatever big business and big labor want, big business and big labor get. Small businesses often fail because they cannot to adhere to the overdone laws and regulations that apply in California. When it comes to housing, apart from very high end luxury condos and mansions, California’s home builders can no longer profitably build housing without subsidies. The high cost of living and the decimated middle class are consequences of giving big business and big labor everything they want.

Another common theme embodied in California’s political culture is “protecting” the rights of every “marginalized” individual and every “marginalized” group no matter what the cost. This is seen everywhere, from keeping disruptive students in K-12 classrooms to permitting intravenous drug addicts to pursue their “lifestyle” unencumbered and in full public view. It is seen in rules, formal and defacto, that require “proportional” representation for every ethnic and gender identity, across every student body, corporate workforce, government bureaucracy, or government contractor.

All of this benefits big business, big labor, and big government (which in California is now merely a subsidiary of big labor). California’s one-party elites rely on leftist billionaires and public sector unions to fund a relentless public relations campaign assuring Californians that the one-party regime is fighting for them. But it isn’t. Rather the result of the one-party regime in California is high taxes, ruined schools, lawless streets, a crippling cost-of-living, and punitive regulatory obstacles to small businesses and independent contractors.

One of the great ironies of California’s political economy today is that California’s public servants could afford to earn less, if they earned less. Paying excessive pensions means fewer employees can be hired which means paying more overtime. Meeting these ever escalating personnel costs means there isn’t public money left anymore to fund infrastructure, which means home builders now have to pay infrastructure fees that add hundreds of thousands to the cost of homes. It also means fewer homes get built, reducing supply, which adds additional hundreds of thousands to the cost of homes. It is time to reverse this entire costly cycle, and public sector unions might cooperate in the process, if they truly care about all of California’s workers.

Governor Newsom, his ultra-rich compatriots, and California’s big labor bosses have done very well for themselves. And with every law they pass that only the wealthy and financially resilient can weather, their power and their profits grow. It is time for them to abandon their hypocrisy. It is time for them to either stand up for all of California’s workers, or admit the truth at last, that they are the party of privilege and wealth.

At a time like this, California’s one-party regime – along with fate itself – remind us how little power we often have over our own lives. But unlike the cruel fate of this pandemic, Governor Newsom can choose the course he sets for the rest of us. Perhaps he might consider this list, and extend some practical steps of mercy to millions of ordinary Californians.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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The Premises of California’s Dysfunction

Anyone unfamiliar with what is really going on in California would have listened to Governor Newsom’s State of the State address on February 12 and gotten the impression that things have never been better. Newsom’s opening set the tone for the rest of his 4,400 word monologue:

“By every traditional measure, the state of our state is strong. We have a record-breaking surplus. We’ve added 3 million jobs since the depths of the recession. Wages are rising. We have more scientists, researchers, and engineers, more Nobel laureates, and the finest system of higher education anywhere in the world.”

Newsom, to his credit, immediately qualified his sunny opening with a disclaimer that might be the understatement of the century, saying “But along with that prosperity and progress, there are problems that have been deferred for too long and that threaten to put the California dream out of reach for too many. We face hard decisions that are coming due.”

Ain’t that the truth. And Gavin Newsom, the political party he represents, and the ideology they’ve embraced, cannot possibly solve these “problems that have been deferred for too long.” First, because Newsom and his gang created the problems, and second, because the ideology they adhere to is based on premises that are both economically unsustainable and destined to eventually deliver not solutions, but tyranny.

Here are the three core premises of California’s dysfunction:

The Climate Emergency

Every policy in California must be ran through the filter of its “climate change” impact. At some point over the past 10-20 years the required “environmental impact” reports morphed into “climate change” impact reports. It is impossible to overstate the degree to which this has stunted economic opportunities and raised the cost of living in California, and there is no end in sight.

“Climate change” impact is the pretext for countless laws and regulations, along with endless litigation, and its reach expands every year. There is no aspect of life in California, almost no category of activity, that can escape monitoring. If what you do moves electrons or involves combustion, convection, emission, discharge, motion, extraction, construction, anything – than there is justification for “carbon accounting,” and into the breech ride the carbon accountants, the consulting experts, the bureaucrats, the attorneys, the regulators and the legislators. “Climate change” is the pretext for an entire parasitic industry, and there is no theoretical limit to the scope of its authority.

The problem with this premise, beyond the fact it justifies an ongoing and inexorable creep towards micromanaged tyranny, is that it can’t be challenged. To suggest there might be other political priorities, unintended consequences, or even to just ask for a cost/benefit analysis, is to be branded a “denier,” as if someone who doesn’t think the world is about to end via “climate change,” or just thinks the proposed solutions are ludicrous in addition to being tyrannical, is the moral equivalent of a holocaust denier.

The “climate emergency” is an explicitly fascist political ideology, according to at least two conventional definitions of fascism. It requires an economic model where corporate oligopolies act in junior partnership to an authoritarian government. At the same time, it justifies itself according to a moral framework that does not tolerate dissent and relies on fomenting panic and fear to secure popular support. There is nothing that escapes the authoritarian reach of “climate change” policies.

The entire premise, that “climate change” is an emergency and that no sacrifice is too great in order to stop it, is based on exaggerations and lies, spread by people motivated by power and profit. It is not enough to oppose the myriad policies justified by the “climate emergency.” This fundamental premise, that it is an emergency eclipsing all other political priorities, must be utterly broken.

Eliminating Privilege and Oppression

This mantra, repeated across the U.S. by the American Left, is especially entrenched in California. And the laws attendant to it, like those attendant to the “climate emergency,” continue to multiply with no end in sight.

Whether it’s women, transgenders, gays and lesbians, “people of color,” or any other identifiable group where some statistical disparity in their aggregate achievements can be identified, new laws are being passed to join well established laws, all designed to enforce equal outcomes.

All of this relies on a premise that has supposedly passed almost beyond debate, that “cisgender heteronormative white males” have engaged in systemic racism since the dawn of time against everyone who is not a “cisgender heteronormative white male,” and this explains every statistical disparity between their achievement and that of everyone else.

There is so much wrong and evil about this premise it is hard to pick where to begin. First of all, it probably makes sense to remind the purveyors of this nonsense that life on earth has never been fair, but when it comes to “inclusion and equity,” no culture on earth comes anywhere close to America.

Perhaps more people should say to anyone tempted to declare themselves a victim of systemic oppression, “too bad, and grow up, because the cure you are proposing is far worse than the disease.” Perhaps anyone who thinks they’ve got it so bad in the United States, much less California, is invited to return to their nations of origin, and see if they find themselves feeling more welcome, with more access to opportunity.

The problems facing California’s residents who are not “cisgender heteronormative white males” are made far more challenging by a Leftist establishment telling them their prospects are diminished by “systemic oppression” as by any actual oppression.

Join the military and get free college tuition when you’re discharged. Learn the plumbing trade and make $175,000 per year because there’s a shortage of plumbers. Quit pretending a degree in “ethnic (or whatever) studies” is marketable in the real world, and instead train to become a nurse and make $175,000 per year because there’s a shortage of nurses. Whoever you are: you’re not a victim, despite what you’re hearing from some blowhard who’s made a career of saying so.

Claiming “privilege and oppression” are “systemic” and that laws are necessary to stop it will literally destroy America. It will fracture our culture and further paralyze our economy. It is a lie based on biased, self serving facts and studies, and just as in the case with the “climate emergency,” it is used to justify a parasitic industry. It cannot be stopped by fighting the myriad and derivative battles over budgets and legislation. The root premise must be relentlessly rejected, and everyone, regardless of their possible “protected status,” must be recruited to join in this attack.

Capitalism is Evil, Long Live Capitalism

Into this broad category can be found most of the remaining flawed but fundamental premises of California’s ruling elite. In no particular order, here are the delusions and lies that derive from this impossible, contradictory, blatantly hypocritical premise:

It is possible to make it impossible for the free market to build anything affordable in California, thanks to crippling regulations and punitive fees, yet it is possible to spend even more per unit, using taxpayer money, to build government funded “affordable housing.”

It is possible to award pension benefits to state and local government employees that average literally three times (if not more) what private sector workers may receive from Social Security, and then, while attacking capitalist profiteers at every turn, and demanding more regulations and taxes to control them and make them pay their “fair share,” simultaneously claim that pension benefits are sustained by returns on smartly invested asset portfolios, returns that are only possible via profits.

It is necessary to curb the excesses of capitalism through expansive legislation and regulations, because capitalism is inherently oppressive to “marginalized communities” and “working families,” yet the ultimate victims of these laws and regulations are always the small family owned businesses and emerging innovative potential competitors to large companies, because they lack the financial resiliency to comply. Meanwhile, the large monopolistic corporations consolidate their positions in the market.

It is economically sustainable to curb development of land, energy, water and roads, in order to protect the environment, because the resulting scarcity creates an explosion in asset values. This in turn enables a financialization of California’s economy as people borrow on the artificially inflated collateral of their home equity. The increased consumer activity, debt fueled, bolsters corporate profits and investment portfolio returns. The bubble never pops.

The Consequences of Lies

Nearly everything California’s ruling elite does wrong derives from these three premises. The first two are never challenged, and the third is a paradox, barely understood but best summarized by this: Democrats, not Republicans, are the party supported by the financial sector and the super wealthy, and they are systematically exterminating the middle class, and making things harder, not easier, for low income communities.

One of the policies central to California’s oppressive dysfunction is so-called “densification” or urban containment. Rarely discussed holistically, it is foundational to what ails California, and it is a consequence of all three premises.

The policy of densification means that new cities and towns cannot be built outside of existing urban areas. New housing subdivisions cannot extend beyond the existing urban periphery. This is justified based on protecting the environment, as if 95 percent of California’s more than 160,000 square miles of land weren’t still rural. It is justified based on stopping “climate change,” as if vehicles weren’t becoming cleaner and greener every year, and as if jobs wouldn’t follow residents into new cities.

Densification is also justified based on combating “racism,” because if jobs follow residents to new communities outside the existing urban core, then somehow this means no jobs will remain for people still living there – who may be disproportionately represented by members of “disadvantaged communities.”

The economic premise behind densification, besides the rabid and cynical certainty that artificial scarcity causes asset bubbles which reward speculative investors and predatory home equity loan sharks, is that suburbs require roads which require “subsidies.” When making this argument, California’s ruling elites find useful and very idiotic support from libertarian dogmatists, who have made a lifestyle of living with paradoxical, self contradictory beliefs. “Let’s not subsidize the car,” is what these libertarians will smugly assert, hoping for a pat on the back from the progressives with whom they’ve found common ground. No, of course not. Let’s just subsidize light rail, trolleys, buses, and every other imaginable conveyance instead.

The wicked first cousin of Densification is “Inclusive Zoning,” is a policy that as well relies on all three of California’s dysfunctional premises. This policy, which like most leftist inspired policies, sounds so virtuous – “inclusive” – that only a heartless monster would oppose it.

Inclusive zoning takes the form of long-standing mandates to include subsidized “affordable housing” in virtually every housing development, and new mandates requiring cities and counties to approve “accessory dwelling units” inside any residential backyard bigger than a postage stamp. It is based on the fatally flawed premise that “disadvantaged communities” will suddenly be uplifted if they are able to live in subsidized units of housing in affluent neighborhoods.

Inclusive zoning is by its very nature consistent with the environmentally motivated policy of densification, since these mandated “affordable” units are smaller then the housing that surrounds them, consuming backyard lawns instead of “open space.” They are, as noted, also consistent with combating “oppression,” since lower income individuals will occupy these units.

California is Waging War on Working Californians

The most pernicious way in which inclusionary zoning follows from California’s dysfunctional premises, however, is in the economic realm.

What inclusionary zoning mandates allow is an invasion of predatory real estate speculators to pour into every tranquil, shady neighborhood in California, where they will encounter homes that are worth more demolished than left standing. They will raze, randomly, homes throughout these to-date intact neighborhoods, and then, relying tax incentives to fund the construction, they will replace these homes with fourplexes that will house low income residents living on taxpayer supported rent subsidies.

Densification and inclusionary zoning epitomize how California’s ruling elite is waging war against its own citizens – and that ruling class very explicitly includes Gavin Newsom.

These policies reflect a contempt for the middle class bordering on hatred. No fair minded person objects to people who look different or have different lifestyles living in their neighborhoods. What they object to is having their neighborhoods destroyed through densification, then filled up with new residents whose residences and rent payments are largely paid through higher taxes.

If you object to this because you worked hard to live in a nice neighborhood, too bad. It wasn’t hard work that got you there, it was “privilege.” And if you object because you don’t like seeing homes randomly demolished and replaced with apartments, too bad, you must be a “denier.” And if you think the economics are unsustainable – after all, at what percentage of tax subsidized construction of “affordable housing” and subsidized monthly rent do government budgets implode – too bad, because all the smart libertarians joined with all the smart progressives to do this to you.

As for the tony enclaves of California’s wealthiest? They litigate and lobby for exemptions to the rules they make the rest of us live by, and laugh all the way to the bank.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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The Manger vs The Monster

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
Luke 2:7

Advocates for the homeless frequently invoke biblical passages in order to appeal to the Christian compassion that still guides the hearts of most Americans, whether they are religious or secular. “No room at the inn,” is a phrase the American Left relies upon to justify everything from open borders and immigration amnesty to affordable housing and homeless shelters. But what sort of inn? An inexpensive manger that is warm, dry, and safe? Or an overbuilt monstrosity? Both options are warm, dry, and safe, but the monster is so grossly expensive that only a few find shelter.

California’s policies currently favor these overbuilt monstrosities, with the biggest losers the homeless. The average cost for “permanent supportive housing” in California is now easily in excess of a half million per unit. A recent audit in the City of Los Angeles estimated the average cost at $550,000 per unit. According to a program overview released by the Santa Clara County’s Office of Supportive Housing, their average cost is in excess of $500,000 per unit. In San Francisco, according to a report released by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, over $700,000 per unit. Across the Bay in Alameda County, a 2018 report released by the City of Oakland discloses average costs of over $600,000 per unit. On Federal property in Los Angeles County, remodeling an existing building to provide permanent supportive housing is estimated to cost over 900,000 per unit. But the champion of all monstrosities is in Venice Beach, California, where developers propose to construct housing for the homeless at a cost of approximately $1.4 million per unit.

Dubbed by its opponents as “The Monster on the Median,” this building is set to occupy three acres of city owned property located in the heart of Venice Beach. The land is currently used for public beach parking, as well as periodically hosting farmers markets and craft fairs. If these three acres were zoned for mixed use commercial development, they would sell for around $100 million. Any rational policymaker would either leave this property alone, allowing it to remain one of the last scraps of publicly accessible open spaces in Venice Beach, or sell it to a commercial developer.

Instead what is being proposed is a 140 unit “community project,” a concrete blockhouse with a three acre footprint that will rise over the residential neighborhoods of Venice Beach like the fortress of an occupying army, which is not an entirely inaccurate metaphor. At an estimated construction cost of around $700,000 per unit, and including the value of the land, the total project cost of this monstrosity will exceed $200 million. This is an astonishing, criminal waste of public money. To house every one of the City of Los Angeles’s estimated 60,000 homeless in structures like this monster would cost taxpayers around $100 billion. That will never happen. What’s going on?

It doesn’t require a cynic to recognize that something’s rotten: The incentive to build monsters instead of mangers is because with these monsters, project developers and financiers have a larger monetary denominator to work with. Much larger. That’s more budget to accommodate overhead, fat consultancy contracts, huge payoffs to litigators, hefty payments to the public sector for permits and fees, lucrative deals with subcontractors, and the promise of endless additional work since at this rate, and at this cost, the problem will never get solved. But how is this ever justified morally?

Here’s where one of the more insidious manifestations of socialist ideology comes into play. Like all socialist principles, it reeks with compassion but is utterly impractical if not nihilistic in the real world. Building homeless housing and low income housing on some of the most expensive real estate on earth is to fulfill the ideals of “inclusionary zoning.” Relying on “scientific studies” that defy common sense, the role of inclusionary zoning is to “encourage the development of affordable housing in low poverty neighborhoods, thereby helping foster greater social and economic mobility and integration.”

“Greater social and economic mobility and integration.”

In practice, this means if you work hard your entire life to live in a neighborhood where your children can go to decent schools and feel safe walking the streets, if you skip vacations and take on a 2nd job to pay off an astronomical mortgage, it does not matter. If you lose the inclusionary zoning lottery, prepare to have an apartment house dumped onto the lot where your neighbor’s single family home just got demolished. Then, while investors pad their profits with property tax exemptions for creating “inclusionary” housing, prepare to have this property occupied by tenants who pay little or no rent out of their own earnings – if they work at all – because your taxes will be paying their rent for them. Prepare for them to openly consume drugs and watch your belongings since petty theft and heroin use is now decriminalized in California.

That is what happened to Venice Beach. And it’s coming to your neighborhood.

There is nothing compassionate about this. In the real world, people congregate in low income neighborhoods because they have low incomes. This is where developers build, at no cost to taxpayers, defacto low income, market housing. This is where charities build and operate shelters, because they are affordable. And when people are fortunate enough to be able to afford to move from low income neighborhoods to middle income neighborhoods or beyond, they expect to be rewarded for their efforts, not have to wonder if the Homeless Industrial Complex will destroy their new neighborhood.

The obligations of compassion don’t end when the Homeless Industrial Complex is finally forced to build inexpensive mangers instead of overwrought monsters. What if baby Jesus was born in a barn filled with addicts injecting heroin and smoking methamphetamine? What if the three wise men didn’t have to bring gifts, because gangs of thieves had set up lucrative criminal enterprises to pay for their drugs, and instead of the hospitality of the innkeeper providing food, King Herod dispensed free government meals?

Compassionate Christians who reelect these corrupt politicians should imagine that scene defining their next Christmas pageant. And while this all sounds horribly cruel during the holiday season of giving, true cruelty is to accept the solutions currently being pursued. They are wasting billions while suffering only increases.

These are the tragic consequences of a perfect storm of flawed legislation and court rulings. In California, the practical effect of Prop. 47, sold to voters in 2014 as criminal justice reform, has been to decriminalize possession of hard drugs and petty theft. At the same time, court rulings such as Jones vs. City of Los Angeles prohibit law enforcement from relocating or detaining anyone camping in a public space unless they can offer them “permanent supportive housing.” The final straw is the “housing first” regulations originating at HUD during the Obama administration that require virtually all federal grant money get spent on housing, rather than also on parallel treatment for substance abuse and mental health.

Tolerate vagrancy, drug use and petty crime. Permit an alliance of developers, service nonprofits, and government bureaucrats to hijack and waste every dollar taken from taxpayers to help the homeless, abetted by useful idiots who believe this impossible, toxic intersection of futile, corrupt strategies somehow constitutes “compassion.” The result? Billions have been spent, additional billions will be spent, and the population of homeless in California, already numbering over 130,000, will only get bigger and more unmanageable.

This is the fraud presided over by supposedly compassionate politicians such as California governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. Hiding behind supposedly compassionate principles such as “inclusionary zoning” they are spending billions of dollars to construct monstrous housing boondoggles where homeless people will be given “permanent supportive housing” in order to “integrate with the community.” At the same time, California’s unsheltered homeless, the majority of whom are either mentally ill, substance abusers, criminal predators, or all three, shall be subject to minimal expectations.

Perhaps it’s time for the Homeless Industrial Complex bureaucrats to construct one of these housing monsters on the park property immediately adjacent to Gavin Newsom’s gubernatorial mansion. Isn’t that sort of “integration” the logical endpoint of “inclusionary zoning?” Perhaps these monstrosities should follow Gavin Newsom, and every other wealthy liberal who pushes these scams – and they are scams, designed to enrich the Homeless Industrial Complex, not to help the less fortunate – to the streets where they live and the schools where their children learn.

Instead of into the neighborhoods of hard working families, let California’s completely unaccountable homeless come en masse to the exclusive, “low poverty” enclaves of the liberal elites who engineered this crisis. Let them come, with all the lawless behaviors that California’s liberal laws enable. Let them urinate in your hedges, defecate on your lawn, shoot heroin and smoke methamphetamine in plain sight, beg, bellow, fight, rape, mug, murder, and, of course, steal everything that isn’t nailed down or under armed guard.

This is exactly what happened to Venice Beach. Fact. Where’s the difference?

And yes, we know, some of the homeless just need a helping hand. So how does it help the virtuous homeless when we fail to police the predators among them?

Isn’t it funny how politicians like Gavin Newsom are willing to impoverish the taxpayers with tens of billions in housing bonds that have not even begun to solve the problem, and leave unchallenged laws and court rulings that turn their state into a magnet for lunatics, addicts, predators, perverts and bums, and destroy neighborhoods across the state with “inclusionary zoning,” but make sure to leave their own streets and schools untouched by this growing nightmare.

Nothing about California’s homeless policies today qualifies as genuine compassion, because compassion has to be rational. Compassion has to have a winning strategy, not become an endless, losing war. California’s housing for the homeless policy is corruption masquerading as compassion.

If Gavin Newsom, Eric Garcetti and all the rest of them cared about the homeless, they’d build the modern day equivalent of mangers, warm, dry and safe, located in more affordable neighborhoods. They’d defy HUD’s preposterous “Housing First” mandate, rallying compassionate reformers in every Continuum of Care agency in the U.S. to back them up. They would use the money they saved to actually help the homeless in every way – managing their mental illness, treating their addictions, training them for jobs. That would be compassion worth its name, and worthy of the season.

An edited version of this article originally appeared in the California Globe.

Is Gavin Newsom California’s Denier-in-Chief?

California’s newly elected governor, Gavin Newsom, gave his first “state of the state” address on February 12, and it was a speech more noteworthy for what he didn’t than for what he did mention. Were Newsom’s sins of omission the conscious choice of a seasoned politician, or is he in denial, like so many of his California leftist cohorts?

Before criticizing the content, and the omissions, of Newsom’s speech, it’s necessary to make something clear: Nobody can deny California’s accomplishments; its great universities; its vibrant, diverse industries; its global economic and cultural influence. But California’s accomplishments are in spite of its state government, not because of it. That cannot be emphasized enough.

Newsom began by saying Californians had to make “tough calls” on the issues of transportation, water, energy, migrants, the homeless, healthcare, and the cost-of-living. He proceeded next to make no tough calls.

Forget About Fixing Roads, Let’s Build Half a Bullet-Train
With respect to transportation, Newsom made no mention of California’s crumbling, clogged freeways and connector roads. To be fair to Newsom, when you don’t have to commute day after day during rush hour—and even when you do drive, you have a driver so you can sit in the back seat of a very quiet, very smooth ride, and conduct teleconferences—you don’t really think about “roads” the same way the rest of us do. So understandably, Newsom chose to talk about high speed rail, and even on that topic, he hedged his bets. He proclaimed the project would cost too much and take too long to build a track from Sacramento all the way to San Diego, or even from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Instead he committed to focusing on completing the track from Merced to Bakersfield, where work has already begun.

Is this denial? Or just the out-of-touch priorities of an extremely wealthy man who doesn’t have to drive? Merced? To Bakersfield? Along the entire 163 mile stretch between these two cities, including everyone living in all the five surrounding counties, there are only 2.8 million people. How much will that cost? $10 billion? $20 billion (more likely)? Has Newsom considered how much highway improvement could be done with all that money? For that matter, might we ask the voters of Fresno and Kern counties, as if all that money should be spent there—“would you rather have $20 billion spent on road improvements, or that train?” Or are we afraid of the answer? Does Gavin Newsom understand that even if high-speed rail were built in all its original scope, it would still do virtually nothing to ameliorate California’s transportation challenges, which can only be solved by building new roads and widening existing roads?

Forget About Increasing Water Supply, Let’s Build Half of the “Twin Tunnels”
On the issue of water, Newsom also split the difference on what promises to be California’s second biggest infrastructure money pit after high-speed rail. That would be the two proposed “delta tunnels” that would transport runoff from Northern California, under the Sacramento River Delta, and onward to thirsty farms and cities in arid Southern California. But the governor didn’t call for two tunnels, nor did he kill the project. Like Solomon, Newsom is going to give the “water fix” advocates half of their baby. He wants to build one tunnel.

Newsom correctly stated that demand for water exceeds supply in California, but he was firmly in denial as to the solution, which is to create more supply. For the cost of even just one delta tunnel, massive desalination plants could be constructed on the Southern California coast. Those facilities, combined with runoff capture and sewage reuse projects throughout California’s coastal cities, could make them water independent. Seismic upgrades to levees along with new fish hatcheries could preserve cost-effective, environmentally acceptable movement of northern water to southern customers through the delta, something that’s worked for decades. And more storage via new off-stream reservoirs, aquifer recharge, and raising the Shasta Dam would supply additional millions of acre feet. Instead? A tunnel that will cost at least $20 billion, and add zero water to California’s annual supply.

Never Mind the Shortages We Created, Let’s Invite the World to Migrate Here
California’s politically sacred mission these days, of course, is to invite the migrants of the world to settle here. Newsom didn’t disappoint his crowd, trotting out dubious statistics to prove that undocumented immigration is a “manufactured problem.” But again, Newsom is denying the big picture: If California rolls out the welcome mat for the destitute masses of the world, where does it end? There’s good, accurate data available on this.

More than 800 million people in the world live in extreme poverty—defined as living on less than two dollars per day. What about Latin Americans, who according to Newsom’s equally photogenic counterpart in the U.S. Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), “must be exempt from immigration laws because they are ‘native’ to U.S. lands”? Over 150 million Latin Americans live on less than $4 per day. Hundreds of additional millions of Latin Americans struggle economically. Why not form “caravans” to bring them all here? Newsom, along with the entire California Legislature, will cheer them on and let them in, no matter what the cost.

As it is, currently 2.6 million undocumented immigrants live in California. Even the liberal website politifact.com acknowledges that 55 percent of immigrant households in California benefit from welfare, with their only supposedly debunking caveat being that some of these households have U.S. born children. Other recent studies put the California total as high as 72 percent. There is a cost to Californians for all this, estimated as high as $25 billion per year, so where does Gov. Newsom draw the line? Three million more migrants? Five million? Ten million? One hundred million? Or is he in denial?

And What About Those Politically Created Shortages?
Newsom mentioned “overcrowded classrooms,” and talked about “too much demand, too little supply” for housing. But his solution for education was, what a surprise, more money and “accountability for all public schools, traditional and charters” (a slap at the charter schools, well received based on the applause from the union-controlled audience). Newsom remained in denial as to the real reason California’s public schools are failing, the fact that teaching professionals have been unionized, and the unions have used the dues revenue to exercise nearly absolute control over state and local politicians. Thanks to the teachers union, bipartisan reforms to union work rules (dismissal policies, layoff criteria, lengthened tenure) are watered down or completely squelched, and charter schools are under constant attack.

As the old cornball adage goes, denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, Gov. Newsom. Public sector unions destroyed public education in California. Do something about that, if your thousand watt compassionate smile is doing anything more than hiding a vacuous brain, guiding a feckless, morally indifferent human, attracted to nothing more than publicity, power, money, and beautiful women. That’s probably an overly harsh, unfair and inaccurate assessment of the Governor. So maybe he will silence his skeptics, by doing something that takes actual courage. Take on the teachers union. Don’t talk about it. Fight them. Fight them tooth and nail. Fight them on the beaches. Fight them in the streets. Fight them in the hills. Never give up.

Wasn’t Newsom’s campaign slogan “courage for change”? Offer that slogan, but nothing else, to the semi-literate, totally innumerate, thoroughly indoctrinated products of California’s public schools, and see how much good it does. They are the victims of the teachers unions. Theyneed courage from the Governor. Not a pretty face. Not a pretty phrase.

Newsom’s solution for the housing shortage, so far, is to sue cities and counties that won’t build government subsidized “affordable housing.” But “affordable housing” is never affordable, and everyone knows that by now. It’s just a money tree for connected developers. To make homes “affordable” doesn’t have to cost taxpayers a dime. Just deregulate the private housing industry, making it easier to develop land. Then, strip away the overreaching design mandates that turn ordinary homes and apartments into hermetically sealed, stupefyingly expensive, miniature Borg cubes with embedded, connected chips in everything from the toilets to the coffeemaker, festooned with phony “gingerbread” eaves and trim that some marketing department tested with focus groups.

Newsom, to his credit, did mention the need to modify the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), an absurdly intrusive law that is a gold mine for trial lawyers and unions who use it to stop land development in its tracks. But his solution? Turning CEQA reform over to a task force consisting of union officials and large home developers.

Newsflash, Gov. Newsom! Union officials and large home developers won’t benefit from CEQA reform, so they won’t come up with anything useful. They like CEQA just the way it is. Because CEQA is the reason the median home price in California is $547,400. That is an absolutely obscene amount for anyone to have to pay for a home. But it further enriches the billionaire land developers who have the political clout and financial heft to withstand the avalanche of CEQA lawsuits and regulatory hurdles. Who is harmed by CEQA? The average Joe who owns ten acres and knows a building contractor. Those guys can only dream of meaningful CEQA reform. Better yet, they should move to Texas which is still open for business. Or, that is, move to Texas before Gov. Newsom’s other photogenic counterpart, “Beto,” and his gang of Leftists with a twang, manage to turn that state into another California.

Charisma Can’t Make Up for Denial, But Redemption is Possible
On every topic, Newsom’s theme was at least consistent. Let’s be tough, let’s be honest, let’s do our duty to ALL Californians. But he wasn’t tough, and he wasn’t honestly choosing the right questions to ask, so it’s hard to see how he was doing his duty to all Californians. And for a man leading the biggest state in the United States, who could very well end up being inaugurated as the next U.S. President in January 2024, we need more. Much more. Here are three topics of bipartisan urgency that Newsom should have, but didn’t touch.

He didn’t talk about how on the next economic downturn, state and local public employee pensions are poised to bankrupt half of California’s cities and counties and totally blow up the state budget.

He didn’t talk about how California’s public employee unions have formed a coalition with extreme environmentalists and Leftist billionaires to stop all development of land and energy in order to create an asset bubble that benefits public coffers and private investments while screwing everyone else.

He didn’t talk about how, even if you believe all the alarmist hyperbole regarding climate change, you can’t possibly go “carbon free” without more hydro-electric and nuclear power.

Newsom’s mannerisms might remind one of Chris Collinsworth, a tall and well-liked sportscaster who talks with a perpetual smile on his face. But Newsom isn’t a sportscaster. He’s presiding over a state—with 40 million people and “the fifth largest economy on earth”—that has been taken over by a gang of money grubbing, power-mad, opportunistic, platitude-spewing con artists.

If Newsom’s intentions are half as benevolent as that compassionate smile of his tells us they are, and if his “courage for change” is sincere, then here’s another way he can redeem himself in the eyes of his skeptics. He can live the life that his political comrades have imposed on California’s hardest working residents. Instead of moving into a 12,000-square-foot mansion, located on an eight acre compound in one of the wealthiest ZIP codes in Sacramento County, Newsom should move his family into one of those California median priced $547,400 homes, situated on a 3,200 square foot lot, surrounded by other homes on 3,200-square-foot lots, and send his four children to a public school.

Redemption is good for the soul, so there’s more: for Newsom to fully live the California dream, and prove he cares about “ALL Californians,” he should give his personal wealth away to charity—or better yet, send it to the CalPERS public employee pension fund because they’re going after every dime they can get their hands on. Then, Newsom should cut his governor’s pay to $71,805, which is California’s median household income, and refuse all outside honorariums and fees. And he should do this not for two weeks to make a statement, or even for the next four years. He should do this for the rest of his life.

He would be in denial no longer.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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The Future’s So Bright, Gavin Newsom’s Got to Wear Shades

Jerry Brown was governor of California for 16 years. His four terms, two that ran from 1975 through 1982, then two more that ran for the past eight years, bookended California’s transition from a sprawling and remote, sun-splashed coastal paradise, defined by Hollywood, the counterculture, and a rising technology industry, to an economic leviathan, the global epicenter of technological innovation, and cultural evolution.

So much has changed. California now boasts the fifth-largest economy on earth. California’s high-tech companies—Apple, Facebook, Google, and countless others—are defining how we will live in the coming decades. In nearly every significant area of politics, culture, and technology, Californians are global leaders.

California’s politics are also unique, insofar as no other state in the union is so absolutely under the control of Democrats. Every major state officeholder is a Democrat. Both houses of California’s state legislature are controlled by Democratic supermajorities. California’s congressional delegation, which at 53 is by far the largest in the U.S. House of Representatives, consists of 46 Democrats and only seven Republicans. California’s senators, the venerable Dianne Feinstein, and the ascendant Kamala Harris, are both staunch Democrats. And all of these Democrats proudly consider California to be ground zero for the anti-Trump “#Resistance.”

And so, on January 7, the Brown era came to an end, and a new governor took office: Gavin Newsom. Elected easily, the former lieutenant governor (and before that, mayor of San Francisco) ran on the slogan “courage for change.” Newsom’s inauguration speech didn’t disappoint. Change was indeed the message, consistent with the policy agenda he’d campaigned on—universal preschool, a guarantee of free community college, and universal, single-payer health care (including for noncitizens).

And to pay for all this? No problem. California is an economic juggernaut. California’s current budget surplus could be as high as $15 billion. California’s future’s so bright, you’ve gotta wear shades.

Except that it is not all that bright. California faces dangerous economic challenges likely to converge into a perfect storm, with devastating consequences. Here are a few things that Gavin Newsom in particular, and California’s Democrats in general, may wish to consider before they take their great leaps forward.

California’s State Government Revenue Is Vulnerable
The chart below, created using data from California’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2017, shows state government revenue by source for two select years, 2010 and 2017. The revenue stream of 2010 provides a sobering contrast to what happened in 2017 and likely in 2018, because 2010 represented the economic low point preceding recovery from the great recession. In 2010, California’s general state revenue was $94 billion, and personal income tax collections constituted 46 percent of the total. By 2017, revenue had grown by 56 percent to $148 billion, and personal income tax collections constituted 58 percent of the total.

This comparison between 2010 and 2017 should serve as a cautionary example to anyone considering expanding California’s state spending. Because nearly the entire increase in California’s revenue between the economic trough of 2010 and the current economic peak was the result of wealthy people paying enormous taxes on one-percenter levels of income and capital gains.

The Super Rich Pay Most of the Taxes Collected in California
If that fact isn’t yet obvious, here’s another chart derived from California’s June 2017 CAFR, showing how much income tax was paid according to the tax bracket of the taxpayer. This uses data for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015, which was the best available data at the time. It’s a fair bet the disparities depicted on the chart have widened even more, since investment appreciation in the two years through June 2017 were extraordinary.

As shown, of the $71 billion in personal income tax collected in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015, $28 billion, or 40 percent, was paid by only 70,437 individual filers. The vast majority of Californians, those declaring under $100,000 in income, contributed only $7.5 billion, just over 10 percent of total collections, even though they represented 81 percent of California’s taxpayers.

The cold fact California’s new governor must confront is that extremely rich people, paying the highest rates of state income tax in the United States, are the only reason the state has any surplus at all.

Personal income tax collections in California nearly doubled between 2010 and 2017. The reason for that wasn’t because people making under $100,000 were earning less and paying less in income taxes—they were, but those residents only contribute 10 percent of California’s income tax revenue, even though they are more than 80 percent of all taxpayers.

So what happens when rich people start paying less in taxes, because investment returns stop being extraordinary?

The Enabling, Overinflated Bubble in Tech Stocks and Real Estate
Between the fiscal year ended June 30, 2010, when California’s state government collected $43 billion in personal income taxes, and the year ended June 30, 2017, when the state took in $86 billion, the value of technology companies literally exploded. During that six-year period, the tech-heavy NASDAQ index tripled in value, from 2,092 to 6,153. In that same period, Silicon Valley’s big three tech stocks all quadrupled. Adjusting for splits, Apple shares went from $35.28 to $144.02, Facebook opened in May 2012 at $38.23, and went up to $150.93, Google moved from $216.86 to $908.73.

While California’s tech industry was booming over the past decade, California real estate boomed in parallel. In June 2010, the median home price in California was $335,000; by June 2017 it had jumped to $502,000. Along the California coast, median home prices are much higher. Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, now has a median home price of $1.3 million, double what it was less than a decade ago.

As people sell their overpriced homes to move inland or out-of-state, and as tech workers cash out their burgeoning stock options, hundreds of billions of capital gains generate tens of billions in state tax revenue. But can homes continue to double in value every six or seven years? Can tech stocks continue to quadruple in value every six or seven years?

Apparently, Gavin Newsom thinks they can.

Clouds Darkening the Golden State’s Future
California’s optimists may wish to take off their sunglasses, at least for a while, because economic storm clouds are on the horizon. More evidence that the tech stock and housing bubbles are deflating comes from Joel Kotkin, who in a recent column enumerated the factors driving values back down; slowing foreign investment that for years has helped propel California’s real estate values upwards, state GDP growth, tech sector expansion, and job creation falling behind other states, sky-high rents driving workers out, and “declining infrastructure, absurd housing prices, massive poverty, and the embarrassing budget-busting high-speed choo-choo.”

California’s state tax revenues are inordinately dependent on wealthy filers making a lot of money, which makes those revenues inordinately vulnerable to another economic downturn. But when the asset bubble pops, not only will revenues go down. Expenses will go up. Way up.

Because California’s state and local government workers collect some of the most generous, financially unsustainable pensions in the world. A recent study by the California Policy Center estimated California’s state and local government worker pension funds to carry an unfunded liability of $846 billion. Using the methodology offered by the prestigious Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, California’s unfunded pension debt is even higher, at $1.26 trillion.

California’s Profound Weaknesses Demand Caution
If the overall value of tech stocks and real estate plateau, much less decline, California’s state tax revenue immediately would drop by at least $10 billion per year, and the contributions they are required to make to their government worker pension systems would go up by at least $10 billion per year. This would wipe out any possible budget surpluses. And yet these programs, universal preschool, a guarantee of free community college, universal health care (including for noncitizens) and single-payer healthcare, come with staggering annual costs. To implement all of them likely would cost several hundred billion dollars per year. Where on earth will California get that money?

Barry Ritholtz, writing for Bloomberg in October, touted the accomplishments of California’s economy in comparison to the economy in Kansas—which he derisively held up as President Trump’s ideal policy environment. He decried Trump’s allegedly dystopian policies, claiming they would lead to the “Kansasification” of America.

But Ritholtz ignores California’s dependence on unsustainable asset appreciation to sustain its government budgets and its pension funds. He ignores the Golden State’s wealth inequality, the high rate of poverty, the even higher cost of living, the punitive regulations. He ignores the arrogance of the climate fundamentalists and open-borders fanatics, who are apparently unaware that when you can’t build anything at a reasonable cost (thanks to regulations inspired by the need for “climate change mitigation”), you might not want to invite the entire world’s huddled masses in for a permanent visit.

Gavin Newsom, egged on by leftist oligarchs, public sector unions, extreme environmentalists, opportunistic trial lawyers, the high tech, media, and entertainment communities, and the identity politics industry, is galloping exuberantly toward their common utopian vision: the Californiafication of America. With any luck, Newsom will take off his sunglasses, notwithstanding the lovely, lingering bright California sun, and looking to the horizon, avoid the abyss obscured by clouds.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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