JOEL KOTKIN: Gavin Newsom: the chameleon who destroyed California.
Ironically, the minorities Newsom claims to champion have perhaps been hardest hit by his state’s economic ruin. He likes to cite ‘anti-racism’ and affirmative action as proof of his racial sensitivity, but on his watch, African Americans and Latinos in California perform far worse in terms of income and homeownership than in the rest of the country. Even immigrants, reacting to the lack of good jobs and high housing costs, are heading elsewhere. In the past decade, Los Angeles has actually lost foreign-born residents, who have been flocking to the very places – Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and Miami – that Newsom caricatures as racist hellholes. Migration to California is now, on a per capita basis, lower than virtually any state, while the numbers leaving have shot up since 2020.
Yet even with its high concentration of the ultra-rich in Silicon Valley – it boasts the highest percentage of billionaires in the US – California still runs persistent budget deficits. In his presidential run, Newsom will struggle to explain the steep descent he has overseen in the state’s finances. This will be even more difficult considering that the states he criticises, such as Florida and Texas, enjoy large budget surpluses, generate more jobs and, in some cases, have introduced tax cuts. Few examples better sum up Newsom’s economic mismanagement than the ‘bullet train’ farce. Newsom has refused to kill this disastrous high-speed-rail project, which continues to devour billions of taxpayer dollars, despite its chances of being finished before his dotage looking increasingly remote. Meanwhile, far more critical infrastructure needs, such as roads and water supply, have fallen by the wayside.
California, once synonymous with opportunity and the good life, now carries an undeniable stench of decline. In 2022, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen compared the state to the late, decaying Roman Empire. California’s version of bread and circuses consists of cheques being sent to poorer Californians, effectively substituting blue-collar jobs for welfare dependency.
The liberal media may ignore these issues, like they did with Joe Biden’s mental deterioration. But the rest of the country is unlikely to have the wool pulled over its eyes so easily.
Do we know what’s going on with Newsom’s comms shop? Just because you can effortlessly crank out AI slop these days, doesn’t mean that you should:
Does Newsom agree with Tucker that Winston Churchill was the big baddie of WWII? Will he be shooting cases of Bud Light with Kid Rock to protest Dylan Mulvaney?