May
10
“Hot Mess” California Has (Mostly) the Democrats to Blame
“California in the 21st century [has been] possibly the most pathetic episode of progressive governance in the last 50 years.” — Jonah Goldberg, the “G-File” at The Dispatch
It was just a couple weeks ago that I wrote an intro about The Dispatch newsletters before sharing an excerpt from an Alex Trembath article at Dispatch Energy. I wouldn’t normally put out a second, Dispatch-sourced post so soon — unless possibly as part of a closely-connected series, of course, which this is not. But,…
I read this article a couple days ago, decided to grab an excerpt and share it now rather than wait a couple weeks or so, due to its relevance to what is going on in California in general plus the various state elections occurring now and coming soon. The article is from Jonah Goldberg’s “G-File”, a biweekly newsletter published by the Dispatch. The first part of the article, believe it or not, is about the Mob’s historic domination of seafood delivery and newspaper unions in NYC, followed by then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s breaking of that stranglehold in the 1990s. I found it quite interesting, but that isn’t the focus of this post. There is a connection to California governance, and it is Goldberg’s analysis of the latter that I wanted to excerpt “liberally” for this week’s blogpost.
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California’s problems aren’t identical to New York City’s problems prior to Giuliani, but they are similar in important ways. The state Senate has been run by Democrats since 1975. The Assembly has been controlled by Democrats since 1996. Democrats have veto-proof majorities in both chambers. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the last Republican governor and the last Republican to hold statewide office in the state. He left office in 2011, but that date is misleading because during his second term, he basically capitulated to Democrats.
And California is a hot mess.
In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a “Marshall Plan” to fight homelessness. Since then, the state has spent — I defecate you negatory — $37 billion on housing and homelessness-related policies. The result: a massive increase in homelessness — 24 percent since the launch of the “Marshall Plan” (and a 60 percent increase since 2015) — with a 2024 estimate of 187,000 homeless people living in the state. I’m not a math guy, but that means California spent roughly $198,000 per homeless person.
And those are just the budgetary costs. Homelessness imposes other costs, and not just to the homeless. Businesses shutter because of homelessness. Neighborhoods suffer. People leave because of the damage to quality of life and perceptions of safety.
Obviously, homelessness involves a lack of housing, but the reason a lot of people are homeless has to do with mental illness and drug abuse. The reason a lot of non-mentally ill, non-drug-addicted people can’t afford a home is because housing is so frickin’ expensive in California. Only 15 percent of Californians can afford to buy a house at the median price. In 2012 56 percent of Californians could.
I was recently in Los Angeles, where gas was about $6.50 a gallon and diesel was nearly $8. Prices are high all over, but California consistently has fuel prices about a third higher than the national average. That was true before the Iran war, and it’s true now. Why? Well, a bunch of reasons. California requires a special blend for its gas that basically only California refineries make, and California hasn’t opened a new major refinery since 1969, while several have closed. California has crazy high gas and diesel taxes. California is basically not part of the U.S. gas market, both because of the special blend it requires and because there isn’t a single pipeline that crosses the Rockies. Can you imagine trying to get a permit for a pipeline into California? That’s why the state relies on maritime imports more than any other state, save for Hawaii, of course.
If California were a country, it would have the fourth biggest economy in the world. And yet on a cost-adjusted basis, it has one of the highest poverty rates in the U.S.
And don’t even get me started on California’s high-speed rail project, which is now projected to cost $126 billion. It was approved in 2008 for a cost of $33 billion, and as of now even the first phase won’t be operational until 2033. I’ll believe that when I see it.
I could go on for a while. But just consider this: No less than Nicholas Kristof recently pointed out that “a black kid in Mississippi is two-and-a-half times as likely to be proficient in math and reading by fourth grade as a black kid in California.” The reason the legendarily bleeding-heart progressive journalist pointed that out? For the same reason I am: Democrats have had complete control of California for a very long time, and they’ve screwed things up royally.
Now, I am happy to argue that California is a mess because the progressives who control it have bad ideas. And in some cases, I think that’s definitely true. The soft-on-shoplifting nonsense in major California cities is so profoundly stupid it’s difficult to express my contempt adequately.
But another reason California is a mess has less to do with ideology than human nature. Democrats have been in power too long. The lack of competitive elections is a disaster for the state. It produces politicians like Newsom, Kamala Harris, Eric Swalwell, Katie Porter, Xavier Becerra, Dopey, and Sneezy. They know how to speak fluent progressive, but they don’t know how to govern outside their bubble. One reason Harris was such a bad presidential candidate is she never developed any muscle memory fighting the left. To get ahead in San Francisco and California politics meant pleasing, or at least placating, the left and demonizing the right. She couldn’t speak to normie, never mind center-right, voters because she never learned the language. That’s why she picked Tim Walz, because for a left-wing San Francisco Democrat, a white guy in flannel who knows which end of a rifle the bullet comes out of is a right-winger….
You don’t have to be a Marxist to understand that the political class, lacking meaningful competition, will become entrenched in the status quo and subservient to vested interests. Indeed, a Marxist would mess up the analysis by looking too hard at monied classes. But the rich don’t dominate California or define the politically possible. Unions, government workers, activists, and trial lawyers do. If the “billionaire class” ran California, the Service Employees International Union wouldn’t have gotten a wealth tax on the ballot for this November. If Hollywood moguls ran California, the film and television industry wouldn’t be bleeding out the way it is today. If Silicon Valley billionaires called the shots, why have Mark Zuckerberg (Meta founder and CEO), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google founders), and Peter Thiel (PayPal co-founder) fled the state? Why did Elon Musk move SpaceX’s headquarters to Texas?…
Simply throwing the Democrats out of power would do more for the state than enacting the top 10 progressive priorities….
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That’s a pretty strong case against the California Dems, if’n ya asks me.
Goldberg doesn’t leave the California GOP blameless, but clearly the Democrat near-monopoly for decades is at the heart of California’s problems, politically speaking. (Read the whole thing here.)
P.S. I’m going to have to add “I defecate you negatory” to my rhetorical repertoire….
