75,600,000 reasons California Governor Gavin Newsom Will Escape Recall

Governor Gavin Newsom is facing a recall election. He’s earned it as the second coming of recalled Governor Gray Davis. He is boring, boring, boring – totally uninspiring! Totally hypocritical second only to Michigan’s Governor Whitmer for violating Covid-19 restrictions imposed on the general public. His dinner soirée with lobbyists at the Napa Valley French Laundry in November. Prix Fixe meals start at $450.00. A contest between California’s Gavin Newsom, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and New York’s Andrew Cuomo for America’s worse governor would be close, but Gavin Newsom would win. Governor Gavin Newsom announced a budget surplus of $75.6 billion, a hundred fifty billion improvement from the projected $54 billion deficit a year ago. An additional $27 in stimulus money is scheduled to come from the federal government, He called it “California’s Comeback Plan.” He calls it “a historic transformational budget,” which sounds like President Biden. He said California roars back. The braggadocio governor exclaimed: “This is a generational budget – a historic budget.” Pie in the sky, manna from Heaven, dropped on California. A Constitutional Amendment in California requires tax revenues exceeding a high level shall be returned to taxpayers. What to do? What to do? The answer is obvious: Spend, Spend, Spend! $75.6 billions buys a lot of votes in a recall election, a little less than $2,000 for every man, woman and child in California. To quote Representative Ilhan Omar “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” stealing the lines from a Puff Daddy song. Spend, Spend, Spend! Buy, Buy, Buy votes. State law require s a refund to taxpayers in the rare times, such as now, that the revenues exceed convoluted formula. The sound practice would be to lower tax rates, but this is California. The public employee unions only support tax increases. Some legislators are proposing more personal and corporate tax increases. Let’s start with the $12 billion tax rebate. The Governor is scared of the recall. He proposes therefore to give a refund of $600 to taxpayers, $1,100 if they have children, to those with adjusted gross income of $75,000 or less – roughly 2/3 of California taxpayers. The refunds will go to all qualified, including undocumented immigrants, about the same time as the recall election. He’s proposing $$3.4 billion for free pre-K for four-year olds. Obviously the payments will be sent before the fall recall election. Ads are running: “Newsom is delivering money to your pocket” It continues: “Newsom is delivering money to your pocket. And free K-f for every California child. … Gov. Newsom is just getting started.” There should be a law against blatantly using taxpayer/public money to buy votes, but this is California. The $100 billion change in California’s fortunes came from the demagogued 1%ers, mostly in Silicon Valley. $1 billion to extend Medical to undocumented residents over 65, to come strictly out of state funds. $12 billion for the homeless. $8.75 billion for 46,000 units, which comes to $192,000 per unit. Los Angeles has already blown over $1 billion on the homeless, building. Examples include building 39 tiny homes of 400sf@$130,000 and 2 larger projects with each unit costing $750,000 each. A $1.2 billion bond issue was supposed to provide for 10,000 units for the homeless. The money was squandered. The prevailing wage laws, litigation, and bureaucracy devoured homeless money. Excessive studies, planning, public relations, and lawyers are a constant cost in California government projects. For example, the Governor wants $4.2 billion for the Bullet Train. Voters approved a $8 billion bond with representations of an estimated cost of $33 billion. The new estimate is over $100 billion. The $4.2 billion is technically being released by the Governor from the bond issue. As of now the goal is to complete the segment between Bakersfield and Merced in the Central Valley, the easiest part oof the line. The costs to date greatly exceed the bond limits. Then we have Irvine’s Great Park. The Navy turned over the closed El Toro Marine Base to the city. The County wanted to turn the airfield into an international airport. Voters rejected the airport. Opponents offered the 4,682 acre base as The Great Park with $200 million seed money. The money’s been spent. What’s left is a balloon ride that goes straight up and back down. Billions for local transit and $3.2 billion for zero emissions vehicles to prepare for global warming and rising sea levels. $11 billion for underfunded government pension plans – a long overdue contribution to the underwater pension plans. $1.2 for wildfire prevention. $500 million for grade separations and grade crossing improvements. $5.1 billion for drought, water infrastructure, and climate change. $2 billion for renters for back rent and utilities payments and going forward. The moratorium on eviction ends on June 30. A United States Census Bureau survey in December found 1.9 million living in rental homes were delinquent in their rents. $300 million for traffic fine relief. $1.5 billion in grants for small busines; obviously the ones that survived the lockdown, but perhaps for new start-up businesses. Who knows? $7 billion for broadband access to underserved communities. $1 billion for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Of course, in true political smoke and mirrors. There is no $76 billion surplus. Half of it is restricted to K-14 education, K-12 and two years of community colleges. The state’s K-12 funding will come to $14,000/student. Thus, he’s allocating $5 billion for after school and summer school programs for school districts with high concentrations of under privileged students. That reduces the $76 billion surplus in half to $38 billion. Second, he is drawing $12 billion from reserves and borrowing to jack up spending in the short term. Now we’re down to $26 billion plus the stimulus funds. $53 billion is still substantial. Spend, Spend, Spend! Why not lower tax rates and give back to all taxpayers? His proposed budget is a 33% increase in spending from the current $202 billion. Once upon a time, to quote the “California Dreaming Was Becoming a reality.” Now it in exodus. Once upon a time, not that many years ago, one had to pay a large surcharge to U-Haul to rent a truck to California. The opposite is true today. U-Haul charges substantially more to rent a truck leaving California. The population officially dropped by 182,083 last year. The net migration out of California has exceeded the in-migration for several years, 135,000 last year. California’s population continued to increase until last year because of a high birth rate and immigration, not always documented. Did I mention that Gavin Newsom is also disingenuous and incompetent?