Monday, May 14, 2018

The Governor

I just voted on my mail in ballot this week. We Californians are voting for our next Governor in the primary. The top two vote getters, regardless of party, will go on to battle in the General election. There will likely be two Democrats in the General election, and if that's the case Gavin Newsom will likely be the next Governor.

Gavin Newsom is the current Lt. Governor of the State and before that was the mayor of San Francisco from 2004-2011, the years that San Francisco lost its soul. Not that that was his fault, but he was definitely on the team that ruined the City. 

A little over ten years ago, while mayor of SF, Newsom had an affair with his campaign manager's wife. His campaign manager at the time has been described as being his best friend. Soon after, Newsom started dating a 19-year-old model, when he was 38. Here he is talking about that time of his life. 

Gavin Newsom has long called himself an "entrepreneur" but has been high on public money since 2004 and has mostly had one nepotistic relationship with a super wealthy San Franciscan patron, who I'm guessing gets political favors for being Gavin's real estate bank. Gavin Newsom is a schmarmy dirtbag, corrupt to the bone, operating in a State that seems to have a permanent Democratic majority, to our detriment. When you open your Voter's Guide, you'll see that he's one of the only candidates that hasn't provided a candidate's statement because he didn't agree to California's voluntary spending cap on gubernatorial races. He wanted to spend all he could. You know the higher ups in the DNC that "knew" Hillary Clinton would be the best person for the job and could easily beat Donald Trump, the DNC people that cut Bernie Sanders off at the knees? That's Gavin's circle. He runs with the super wealthy, does whatever he wants and panders to the poor by supporting policy that doles out welfare by the bucket load. He's one of the most privileged people in California politics, and for some reason just rises on up without a challenge. Maybe this is the year he gets derailed though, I think if a real opponent can make it to General, he could lose.  

There are two main reasons I won't vote for Gavin Newsom. The first reason is because I'm convinced he's a corrupt dirtbag. The 2nd reason is because the ongoing, 40+ year Democratic majority in California has been an impediment to prosperity and freedom in the State of California. The State is becoming a socialist experiment, and it isn't working. 

Consider these facts of life in California, a State where the Democratic Party has had unbroken legislative control for over 40 years:

California has the highest poverty rate in the nation. Higher than Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia and every other State in the Union. One out of five Californians are poor, and that number is arrived at while including non-cash government assistance AS INCOME. So the real number, if based on actual earnings, would be higher than 1 out of 5.

At Least 30% of Households all over California can't afford rent. In some areas that number rises to 60%

California has 12% of US Population - 21% of US Homeless Population - 34% of US Welfare Recipients. The Social services throw a lot of money around, and we stopped building houses for some reason. 

California has one of the most expensive prison systems in the world. 34 prisons, 30,000 employees, $11billion annual budget, $70,000 per inmate per year.  

3 Million Undocumented Immigrants. That's a lot and it isn't cheap. $25 billion is spent on K-12 education, medical services, public assistance, courts and other government services for non-citizens. Many undocumented immigrants are of course working and contributing to the tax pool by buying things. The estimate is 3.5 billion collected, but it would be more if those jobs were filled legally. And culturally more is brought to America's table when immigrants are allowed to and proud to assimilate. California's response to this soft border issue, is to do nothing, let people live in the shadows, get abused by employers, and issue drivers licences. I don't think that helps anybody.

Everybody gets a pension. We have tons and tons of government employees and huge pension plans for most of them. According to reporting from The Nation, the conservative estimate for unfunded promises to retiring government workers in California is $333 billion. It could be as high as over $1 trillion. No Democrat is saying anything about Pension reform because they get crazy money from the unions. But that amount of money means more taxes later, and it makes things like public education and social services really hard to fund later. Forget about single payer State healthcare. That's snake oil with $1 trillion of red ink in pension promises.

Laws for everything. In California there is a law for everything. I can attest to the byzantine labyrinth of food laws and building laws from small businesses I've owned. And now it looks like every new house built, starting in 2020, will be required to have a solar system. That's insane. There's a housing crisis where we should be building, at a minimum, of 100,000 new homes every year but we can only barely manage 80,000, and so housing prices and construction costs are out of reach for many working people, and by 2020 you can add another $30,000 to your already senseless mortgage to pay for the mandated solar array. And because almost all government interventions in the market create the opposite desired effect, I can't wait to hear how that initiative will somehow lead to an increase in energy use.

Assault Weapons Ban. Gavinites basically did that. We have an assault weapons ban in California. Which means almost nothing substantive. Our rifles can't have too many features on them like telescopic scopes and pistol grips and detachable magazines. You can have some features just not all at once. The ballistics and caliber of a bullet is never mentioned. So you can't have an AR-15 unless you take a couple of the tactical things off which is what people do, but you can go ahead and go to town on that 30-06 rifle, the same round that was carried by every infantryman in the M-1 rifle in WW2. It's a big nasty bullet. Was very much so a weapon of war. Anyone mentioning the 30-06? No. Just commonsense gun reforms to totally end gun violence. Good luck with that! Our State is part of the problem in missing the actual things in our culture that makes people insane enough to shoot up class rooms (spoiler alert it's the goddamn meds, no mental health department and fatherlessness and really bad police work by cops that get bloated pension promises).

Eventually the politicians will kill the Sacramento River. So up here in the Northstate we are a conservative area. The democrats in Sac don't get their votes or their treasure from us. Monied interests in the LA area and Bay Area mostly dictate our State politics. Jerry Brown wanted to build tunnels to suck water in unfathomable quantities to send South. I'm obviously not a hydrologist, but I've had friends of mine who are involved in water conservation tell me that if those things he wants get built and go online, the Sacramento River in our neck of the woods would be closer to a creek at certain times of the year. Whether that's true or not, I think it's a bad idea to pump tons of water to irrigate a desert, no matter what scale you're talking about. The point is, with a Democrat as governor, the entire Northstate is not represented. Because the Democrat doesn't have to listen to anything we say. A Republican would have to.

Truly High Taxes. Highest income tax in the nation. 12 cents per gallon additional gas tax. High sales tax with super aggressive Board of Equalization. Really high vehicle registration rates. All to fund some of the most bloated and inefficient government agencies anywhere in the country. Great.

John Cox should be the next governor because he will use a big and needed veto pen.


     

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