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[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a 28-minute pre-recorded State of the State address and ominously opined that the state’s values and status as “a beacon of hope” are “under assault.”
A beacon of hope?
The pathetic load of BS strewn by Newsom during his talk could easily fertilize a farm for an entire year. He spent part of his time defaming his political foes, explaining that “conservatives and delusional California bashers” want to “roll back social progress, social justice, racial justice, economic justice, clean air, clean water, and basic fundamental fairness.”
Newsom’s portrayal of the state is remarkably misleading. He insists, “When it comes to the southern border with Mexico, California has proven time and time again that it’s willing to tackle the hardest problems.” He also asserts, “We’ve got more business starts in California than any other state in America and among the highest average wages in America for working people.” He adds that “four of the seven most valuable companies in the world” are based here.
And then there is reality. As noted by Victor Davis Hanson, Newsom enjoyed a recent $98 billion budget surplus—gifted from multibillion-dollar federal COVID-19 subsidies, yet, practically overnight, he turned it into a growing $45 billion budget deficit. California has the highest income tax in the nation and among the country’s steepest sales and property taxes. The average price for gas in the U.S. is $3.49 per gallon as of June 30, but in California, due to excessive taxes, it is $4.80 per gallon, the highest in the country. California also has the second highest home prices and cost of living in the U.S.
Nearly half the nation’s homeless sleep on the streets of its major cities. The state’s downtowns are dirty, dangerous, and increasingly abandoned by businesses that cannot rely on a shackled police force. Additionally, Newsom’s California has spent billions on homeless relief and has subsidized millions of new illegal migrant arrivals across the state’s porous southern border.
There are ongoing mass smash-and-grab attacks on California retail stores. Carjackers and thieves are thriving. They are rarely caught, even more rarely arrested.
His “seven most valuable companies” comment is laughable. Silicon Valley has been a global tech hub since the 1960s, but companies are now packing up and leaving for friendlier states. Texas alone has drawn Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and Tesla.
The Republicans in the state legislature took great umbrage at Newsom’s many fairytales.
“While this pre-recorded speech fulfills the governor’s legal mandate, it does not in any real way fulfill his responsibility to Californians who deserve a safe, affordable, and opportunity-filled future,” said state Senator Kelly Seyarto.
“California remains the country’s homeless capital, businesses are closing their doors, and crime continues to rise. The state of this state is simply not good under Newsom’s leadership, and any claims to the contrary he makes in his speech will be patently false. The good news is, it can be fixed, and Legislative Republicans continue to work to that end.”
It’s important to note that with left-wing Democrats controlling the state legislature, not all the blame for the state’s woes belongs to Newsom. Most recently, legislators passed a minimum wage law that guarantees fast food workers at least $20 per hour. This move will drive some companies out of business and force those that remain to raise their prices considerably, making their food unaffordable for many. UCLA economist Lee Ohanian estimates the law has cost the state 10,000 fast-food jobs.
Additionally, a set of ambitious reparations proposals, including legislation that would create an agency to help Black families research their family lineage and confirm their eligibility for any future restitution passed by the state, is in the works. State Sen. Steven Bradford, a Los Angeles-area Democrat, said California “bears great responsibility” to atone for injustices against Black Californians.
I had only one ancestor in the country at the time of slavery in the U.S. My paternal great-great grandfather was an immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1849 and fought for the Union in the Civil War. Why should I have to fork over any money to the state for reparations?
The legislature is also sex-obsessed and regularly passes laws that are anti-parent and downright perverse. Passed in 2023, AB 223, the “Transgender Youth Privacy Act,” requires courts to seal any petition by minors to legally change their gender or sex identification to protect their privacy. Parent authorization is not needed to change a minor’s vital records.
Similarly, AB 1955, introduced by Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, would ban parental notification policies and explicitly disallow teachers from telling parents if their child identifies as transgender. The bill awaits Newsom’s signature.
AB 1184 “prohibits insurance companies from revealing to the policyholder the ‘sensitive services’ of anyone on their policy, including minor children (starting at age 12), even though the policy owner is financially responsible for the services.” The term “sensitive services” refers to all health care services related to mental or behavioral health, sexual and reproductive health, sexually transmitted infections, substance use disorder, gender-affirming care, etc.
SB 107, which became law in 2023, erodes parents’ rights by allowing minor children to travel to California for trans procedures. According to the Protect Child Health Coalition, the law authorizes parental kidnapping (when a non-custodial parent illegally takes a child from the parent who has legal custody) if the purpose of the kidnapping is to subject the child to radical gender transition procedures.
Just for comic relief, AB 1810 seeks to erase what a woman is by requiring menstrual products and birth control in jails and prisons for both males and females. The bill replaces all mentions of females and women in the current statute with the word “person,” ultimately rejecting reality.
The state does excel in one way, however: indoctrinating students. Californians for Equal Rights (CFER) looked at 350 school districts across the state and found that almost 90% of them promote DEI and its cousins, Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Ethnic Studies (CES) to varying degrees, with 23% “engaging in omnipresent indoctrination in curriculum, policy, expenditure, and personnel.”
CFER ranked schools from zero to five. A score of zero means all-encompassing promotion of DEI, CRT, and CES, while five signals the district’s non-participation in indoctrination and intentional distance from them. The results show that 83 scored zero, 69 got one, 91 had a rating of two, 67 got three, and 38 had a score of four. Only two school districts in the state, the Paso Robles Joint Unified and Ramona City Unified, scored five.
At the same time, the most recent Smarter Balanced test scores released in October 2023 indicate that just 46.7% of California students are meeting literacy standards, and a meager 34.6% are proficient in math. This standardized test is given to all students in grades 3–8 and grade 11. Also, the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that 30% of the state’s 8th-graders are proficient in reading and 23% are proficient in math.
What is the state doing to improve these dismal numbers?
Not much. California Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo has introduced a nonsensical bill banning excessive homework, however.
Considering all the above, it’s hardly surprising that enrollment in California’s public schools has fallen by 6% since 2013, and the state projects another 12% decline over the next decade, according to the Public Policy Institute.
Overall, about 200,000 Californians flee the state every year. Many people are fed up with the governance of the formerly Golden State and are moving to healthier places. Who can blame them?
Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.
Governor Nuisance is even more bigger idiot then Moonbeam and Biden
The Democrat Party is ruining the state, while claiming credit for the good things about the state, that they inherited, but were due to their predecessors, or to nature.
Currently the Democrat Party is trying to restrict water usage, instead of increasing water storage capacity.
“The Democrat Party is ruining the state”… WHAT?? That’s not quite true at all! What you should say is that “the democrat party HAVE ruined (past tense) the state of California. I’ve lived in this sh*thole state my hole life so I know.
And don’t even mention republicans. You can fit the number of elected republicans in this state in the back of a Special Ed school bus and they’re mostly all RINOs who are in essence “controlled” opposition.
RINOs are there in Sacramento, the state’s capital, to give the appearance that the dems don’t have totalitarian control of California. Don’t fall for that illusion. When a democrat in Sacramento says jump, RINOs respond by asking: “how high?”
Or admitting that there are seven major aqueducts that provide so much water that even after it’s pumped through city pipes and the bottled water companies which collude with the government get their fill, millions of gallons are dumped into the Pacific daily. The seven big ones are:
Central Valley Project (federal). Delivers about 7 million acre-feet (MAF) per year. …
State Water Project (state). Delivers about 2.3 MAF / year. …
All-American Canal (local). Delivers 3 MAF / year. …
Colorado River Aqueduct (local). Delivers 1.2 MAF / year. …
Los Angeles Aqueduct (local). Delivers 200,000 AF / year. …
Mokelumne Aqueduct (local). Delivers 364,000 AF / year. …
San Francisco Hetch Hetchy Project (local). …
Added to those are smaller ones and countless canals. I remember the Gage Canal in the orange groves of Riverside when I was a kid. A lot of water flowed through that thing.
There hasn’t been a real water shortage in our lifetimes. As often as possible, the state government and the fake news media it colludes with claim we’re suffering a drought but they’re lying out of their asses each time. Not only that, but the CA watershed is huge and widespread, especially in the Central Valley and even more so north of Wine Country. There are two big aqueducts/canals north of the Bay area which I guess is wine country and the watershed north of that is so generous all year round that aqueducts aren’t even necessary.
Lying sacks of shit. It’s just an obvious trick to increase taxes and fines, and a frightened population is easier to manipulate and control.
Absolutely! Didn’t they just tear down several dams in northern CA? Lying sacks of shit…
And out the other side of their mouths, they;re constantly telling us we’re in a drought. Yeah, right. A man-made drought. The type of drought that’s good for certain business interests and the recipients (i.e., politicians) of their largess and bad for the residents of California.
Yes, that drought lie has always infuriated me.
P.S.,
ONE acre foot of water is 325851.42857 Gallons!!!! Multiply that by 7 million AA. (You could probably do it in your head.) My calculator came up with 2.2809599E12, whatever that is. It looks like over a trillion to me. And these Dirtbagrat mother fuckers in the State Assembly claim we’re suffering a drought and have a water shortage? They want us to conserve a necessary commodity that we couldn’t waste if we tried? And that’s just the Central Valley Water Project. There are six other major aqueducts and countless smaller ones and canals.
Once and for all, people need to stop falling for the government’s abject lies about water shortages. It’s a scam on the level of global climate warming change.
P.P.S.,
most, if not all the water from aqueducts end in reservoirs that are so huge, they’re large lakes. The California State Water Project has 5.75 AF of water storage!!! The Colorado River Aqueduct ends in huge Lake Mathews, right outside of Riverside where I grew up. II’ve been there but it’s fenced off and guarded by rangers with telescopes and state of the art binoculars who arrest anybody who breaches the fence. The aqueduct and Mathews dam were constructed during the Great Depression and fish have been flowing in and growing ever since, so it would be a fisher’s paradise of huge fish if they were allowed in. You could probably just reach your hand in an grab one at random.
The Central Valley Project is a federally funded project to deliver water to the Central Valley. It usually delivers about 7 million acre-feet per year, mostly for Agriculture. The State dropped supplying water to “junior water rights users.” Their excuse for destroying farms and people’s livelihoods is the Bay smelt, which is ridiculous. I don’t know why those evil filth are really punishing farmers and consumers but I have no doubt it’s a truly despicable – and Dirtbagocrat – reason.
We all knew about the Bay smelt but I never knew how much water went through the CVP and which farmers were being persecuted. As we all know, the government is lawless and violating the farmer’s legal right to that water that has existed since the 1930s.
NEVER TRUST OR FORGIVE OUR STATE GOVERNMENT, CALIFORNIANS. Those cunts in the State Assembly don’t live under the edicts they impose on the rest of us, not the legal ones and certainly not the illegal ones.
California is a one party state and it’s rigged to stay that way. I got out of there in 05 because I just could not afford it anymore, and now businesses are all getting out too because they are being robbed blind since crime was legalized there, and the state regulates them to death. It’s been made a failed state deliberately by the Marxists in office. I cannot see it any other way. The Left destroys everything it touches.
All the streets are brown, and the sky is grey
Be careful where you walk, especially by the bay
No one’s safe and warm, living in LA
California Dreamin’, has met its dying day
Be careful where you walk, you might step on a hypodermic needle.
That depends on where you’re walking. There are cities and areas in this sh*thole state that any person who is not stupid and naive and wants to live would never consider walking past, through or around or anywhere near.
I’m originally from L.A., but moved out some 30 years ago. If someone offered me, say, 100 million dollars to move back to L.A., I’d tell them to keep their money and shove it up their arse!
Last I knew, LA was majority ethnic Mexican. Barrios aren’t nearly as bad as hoods but they’re to be avoided. You may get beaten up by a group but they won’t shoot you or rape any female you’re with as in the hoods. That’s why so many formerly black neighborhoods like Compton are now Mexican and have been for a long time. Those Vatos don’t put with that shit and they stick together. They even have a crude honor code.
Most of those people like me, though. For some weird reason they think I’m a Criollo. If they ask me, I lie and say my mother is from Mexico City.
Long before I moved to San Jose there was a black neighborhood here but it’s Mexican American now. It’s a nice place. It has new library that’s so big it has a coffee house, a gym and an indoor basketball court. It’s used as a refugee center when Coyote Creek periodically floods the nearby neighborhoods.
Yeah, that’s why I pay so much attention to Mexican-American fighting techniques. Where I used to live black street criminals had the city terrorized for 40 years or so. Then Mexican immigrants started moving in en masse. I expected the black street criminals (who were often magnificent athletic specimens) to terrorize the Mexican immigrants also. But the Mexicans brushed them off like flies and took over black territory. I still remember vividly a black street thug sulking in his parked car playing loud rap music and glaring at the Mexicans who had taken over his turf in the park.
That’s why the Spanish-Portuguese rebellion against Napoleon is so fascinating to me. The attitude of their population and competence at street fighting and low level combat, combined with Wellington’s brilliant strategy, eventually drove the French Army out. The Spanish-Portuguese never gave up even after sometimes being slaughtered. Their guerrillas would often retreat into their mountains and the French couldn’t catch them.
There’s a Portuguese neighborhood here in San Jose, AA. It has an annual festival with food and entertainment. Some of those guys are pretty rough but I tend to like them.
You should watch a movie called “Pan’s Labyrinth” by the Mexican born film maker, Guillermo del Toro. He’s a very good director know for lavish and imaginative productions. It’s a fantasy and I usually hate fantasies but this one is excellent. It’s set in the Spanish Civil War and it’s more about that than the labyrinth. It favors the Republicans (who were hardly real Republicans) but oh well. Their were atrocities committed by both sides.
You’d like it. Even my meathead friends liked it.
Yeah, “The Streets of San Francisco” are like the Jersey Shore that way.
California Scheming on such a winter day
That describes the State Legislature perfectly! Governor Greasehead’s mansion, too.
I remember when California was a “golden state”, a magnet for Americans who wanted to get ahead and live in a great place. Now, look at the place.
I would like to see the Feds under Trump force the state to: not ignore federal immigration laws; get “homeless” institutionalized into prison or mental asylums as appropriate; force the big cities to enforce the law. California cities are American cities and belong to all Americans.
Yes and censure the State Assembly somehow for violation of more laws than I can count, all at the expense of its citizens.
I personally most of them should be arrested in late night, no knock raids and dragged off to jail.
Justice, justice, justice. Remember when Rush featured a comic bit about a law firm with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton named “The Justice Brothers”? But, as they explained, what it really meant was–“just us.”
Yes, so funny.
What a genius. We sure need him now. But he is probably looking down on us thinking ‘remember what i told you.’
Failing? Try failed.
Yeah, past the point of no return. Or so it seems. Just have to learn to live with it, apparently. With those who understand it having an edge. Like riding an avalanche downhill without getting crushed.
The Democrat Party has certain states permanently locked up, like California and New York. Gives them an edge in the Electoral College.
(locked up via vote fraud, judicial fraud, etc.)
Yes, and CA has the most electoral votes in the country. NY is number three if I remember correctly, after Texas. It’s VERY bad for the country.
California might be the beginning of the Death of America. We hope not, since we
actually love the Old America. But the new DEI America of crime, war, violence and
weird sex mutilations – this is just not a good thing. We fear that Calif. might be a
vision for the future of USA. The madness and failure needs to be stopped, before
all of America is degraded by the Leftists. They have destroyed every nation they
have taken over. Perhaps a massive earthquake will change things, and return us
to the original vision of what California was – a place of improvements, rather than
a place where everything is getting worse.
Hey! I live on the fifth floor in a South Bay apt. building. Don’t talk about earthquakes! I’ve only felt a few since I moved in here four years ago. Little ones, thank God.
Be very afraid! They used to say as goes California so goes the nation. How many times I wished they were wrong. Now it looks like Californian Cackling Kamala may be our next president, at least for a while. Pray for earthquakes…
You too? You’re for me to die, you know. 😛
I will never understand how or why politicians are able to ruin a once beautiful and golden place without knowing what they are doing deliberately. VDH says it is the elite wealthy of both coasts and including the super wealthy of silicon valley with their $9 trillion. It seems like their big tech intelligence only belongs to their tech businesses and not normal life. It seems they can not NOT know what they are doing. Something does not fit the picture.
“Silicon Valley” is actually Santa Clara Valley. They haven’t made silicon microchips here since the 80s.
The “tech” (social media) and other super wealthy here definitely make life worse for all us peons who are poor or middle class and they don’t care. They’re so unaware of everyday life they don’t even know they do it.
Not to mention poisoning the air and wrecking the water table. Santa Clara Valley used to produce some of the best apples, pears, and peaches in the country. Then came the semiconductor industry and the rest is history.
Yes, there are pocket groves left in Los Gatos and a few other places where they have fruit stands out front. You’re right, the fruit is fantastic.
The Central Valley has great fruit, too, especially the northern end. Unfortunately, supermarkets nearly all sell crap from Mexico and other inferior places.
Santa Clara Valley used to be known as the Valley of the Heart’s Delight. Best fruit trees in the world. My grandmother used to give me persimmons from there. Sweetest things I ever tasted. She used to say she was glad she had lived in the good old days.
I like to see remnants of old Italian wineries around here, and imagine what those times were like. Imagine all the work that went into putting up those rock walls.
Yes, it’s very sad that we’ve lost so much rustic beauty and gustatory excellence.
The house I lived in six years ago had a persimmon tree in the neighbors yard with branches that hung over the fence. I was able to reach up and grab them no problem. The squirrels liked them, too. They’d snatch whole persimmons and take them away to their drays to eat them. I saw one once walk across a telephone wire with one in its mouth and a small hawk kept trying to get him. I don’t know if they have squirrels up were you live but I assume they do, and I assume you’ve noticed how ballsy they are. This squirrel wasn’t worried at all and at one point when the hawk snatched at him, he just flipped over and continued climbing the wire upside down! It was so funny. That hawk went hungry but the squirrel didn’t, I can tell you that. I think maybe the hawk was young and inexperienced but the fact that squirrel thrive around Hawks proves how hard to catch they are. I once saw over twenty full grown red tailed Hawks in a tree in a park Greensboro North Carolina. They’re barrel chested just like bald and golden eagles but smaller, although quite large themselves. Not a single one caught a squirrel. Eastern gray squirrels are so numerous and ubiquitous in the Carolinas that their scientific name is Sciurus carolinensis. The squirrel I saw dodge the hawk was an eastern gray.
I’ve seen other animals that humans have introduced here, too, like Texas soft shelled turtles, the red eared slider turtle and a young snapping turtle, if you can believe that. I don’t know why people introduce so many turtles into the environment her. Other birds and animals too but I can’t remember which right now. This is a strange place.
Just waiting for characters like Tlaib to extend the notion of reparations to compensation for the Crusades. Pope Francis had better start auditing the Vatican valuables in readiness (actually, he probably would). Since reparations are payable only by palefaces, there will be no question of reciprocal payments for the many people enslaved by the Ottomans, of course. And certainly nothing for the Armenian genocide.
If more people leave California, then most likely California will default on its debt.
California … the land of the depraved psychopathic berserk prosperity destroying,
and illegal alien and crime welcoming politicians.
Where is the great West Coast earthquake that is supposed to crack California off from the mainland
and push it far into the Pacific ocean ?
An (ex) friend who lives in Carmel California, a rather upscale neighborhood, informed me that the Southern CA Border should be open for anybody that wishes to come into America in order to make a better life for themselves and all are welcome.
SO, I suggested to him that tonight before he goes to Bed that he should leave his Front Door wide open, leave the Porch Light on, a small table near by with a large Pitcher of Iced Tea and some glasses, maybe some cookies for the kids, post a sign in Spanish pointing to the Bathroom and then he can go upstairs and sleep the deep sleep with his Husband knowing what good he has done for humanity.
His reply…. YOU are a fascist racist evil bigoted uncaring person and I wish no more contact with you again.
My reply… But, but, but I was only trying to help you help the people you wish to help…
No reply… Go figure…
N.I.M.B.Y. old California saying….