As Gov. Gavin Newsom gears up to run for president, what in the world will he run on?
Californians know that Newsom will not boast, “I will do for America what I have done to California!”
Why not?
Count the reasons.
California’s astronomical gas prices and taxes remain the highest in the continental United States.
Ditto the state’s trifecta of the highest electricity rates, the costliest home prices, and the fourth-highest home-insurance costs.
California carries the largest debt in the nation, approaching $270 billion, mainly due to unfunded liabilities for state workers’ benefits.
The budget deficit each year usually ranges from $15 to $70 billion.
Such profligate spending and deficitsexplain why the state also has the highest income taxes and state sales tax rates in the nation.
Just 1% of California households pay 50% of the state income tax — and the fleeced are leaving in droves.
Newsom recently boasted that he extended Medi-Cal health insurance to thousands more illegal aliens.
No wonder he next begged for a nearly $3 billion Medi-Cal federal bailout.
Half of the state’s 41 million residents are now on Medi-Cal. Some 50% of all births are Medi-Cal-provided — and growing.
California has a lot of other “mosts” among the 50 states:
- The largest population of illegal aliens.
- The largest number of homeless people.
- The largest number of people fleeing a state.
- The largest number (11 million) and percentage (27%) of foreign-born residents.
- The largest number of people living in poverty.
- The highest food prices in the continental US.
- The state’s infrastructure is usually rated near the bottom.
- It ranks among the five worst states in per-capita violent crime.
California is a naturally wealthy state, and the third largest by area.
It ranks seventh in the nation in oil reserves, and no state has more agricultural production or forested land acreage.
So it’s hard to bankrupt California — but Newsom has managed it.
Under prior Governors Pat Brown, Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, California was the best-run state in the country.
California once produced more oil than any other state except Texas.
Its now-moribund timber industry was once the third largest in the nation.
And its currently ossified mining and mineral industries were once among the top 10 producers in the country.
No state politician over the last three decades has been more responsible for California’s decline than Newsom: six years as governor, eight years as lieutenant governor, seven years as mayor of San Francisco, and seven years on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
In those 30 years, California chose decline, driving out somewhere between 18 and 20 million affluent and middle-class state residents, the largest state exodus in US history.
Its open border welcomed in an influx of over 10 million illegal aliens.
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley’s $11 trillion in market capitalization created the nation’s wealthiest and most left-wing out-of-touch elite.
The result was a medieval state of a few million rich elites, a mass of poor people, and a vanishing middle class.
Such influxes and exoduses, along with gerrymandering, ensured a one-party state. There are no Republican statewide officeholders.
Democrats control all branches of government, and only 17% of its congressional delegation is Republican.
So the left proudly owns what California has become.
What, then, will Newsom run on?
Certainly not high-speed rail — 17 years and $15 billion later, not a foot of track laid.
Certainly not a $500-million exploding solar battery plant.
Certainly not illegally issuing 17,000 commercial truck driver’s licenses to non-resident illegal aliens with little or no English competency.
Certainly not the horrific but preventable Pacific Palisades fire.
And certainly not a now-closed $2 billion desert solar plant boondoggle.
Instead, Newsom will continue his he-man threats against President Donald Trump — saying things like “We’re going to punch this bully in the mouth.”
But will such bluster lower the state’s gas and power prices or reduce its sky-high taxes?
On social media and in podcasts, Newsom will keep making adolescent threats to federal officials like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem while serving up potty-mouth smears.
But that profanity won’t lower crime or housing prices.
In other words, in the Democratic primaries, Newsom will try to out-crazy the violence, profanity and extremism of the even crazier Democratic Socialists.
He will rant nonstop about the evil Trump, but neither offer a word nor do a thing about his own responsibility for the collapse of a once-great state.
He will lecture on “affordability” without mentioning that he has created the most unaffordable state in the nation.
Will his gobbledygook work?
It did in New York.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness.
The post Let’s count the reasons dishonest Gavin Newsom shouldn’t be president appeared first on New York Post.
