ACCOUNTABILITY NOT A CALIFORNIA VALUE

“The plan produced by the Ten-Year Planning Council is both a blueprint and a bold step toward a new and revolutionary way to break the cycle of chronic homelessness.” San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, June 30, 2004

Mayor Newsom made that promise 17 years ago. Governor, you are seven years past due. There were about 3,000 homeless on the streets of San Francisco when you made that promise. Today the estimate is in excess of 20,000 and growing. More than any city in the nation, San Francisco is governed by the political progressive left. California today has a super-majority progressive legislature that rubberstamps any and all left-wing legislative solutions to homelessness, water shortages, electricity shortages, unemployment, taxation, regulation, education policy, crime, streets, infrastructure, wildfires and censorship at state schools. California has decayed in every one of these areas under progressive control.

California is producing less energy today then 10 years ago and approximately 30% of its energy is purchased from other states. Nuclear power plants (the cleanest, safest and most efficient source of electricity) are being decommissioned, hydraulic fracturing is banned and the Monterey Basin (geologists tell us it contains large reserves of oil and gas) can’t be explored. With these realities in place the mavins in Sacramento plan to ban the sales of gasoline powered cars in 2035, leaving only unreliable and expensive renewables to fill a gaping  electricity shortfall. It’s a policy that demands dependency on more electricity while diminishing the ability to produce electricity. Brilliant.

Any fully conscious and mildly aware person would objectively say all these problems have worsened under one-party rule. This is the objective reality of California at the moment that 2 out of 3 California voters rejected the recall of the Governor. The possibility of a course change led by a black conservative born and raised in South Central Los Angles failed. Instead, for at least the next two more years, California will be led by a man born and raised with wealth and privilege into a left-wing political family. It is a family whose political footprints can also be found in another failed city called Baltimore. The roots of that failure have been transplanted on the west coast. 

Maybe this kind of an irrational result can be sourced in part to a culture where accountability has died? California is a state that does not prosecute thefts of merchandise in any one incident valued under $950. It is a state whose district attorney’s in Los Angeles and San Francisco have decided to blur the distinction between victim and criminal. This is the state whose governor prematurely released thousands of convicted criminals. This is the state that will not allow its law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration authorities concerning illegal immigrant criminals. This is the state that provides free health care to individuals who enter illegally while hard working Californians pay premiums for health insurance. This is a state that will eliminate standardized tests for admission to state universities. This is a state that solves obscenely high school dropout rates by making a ‘D’ a passing grade. 

I detect a pattern that does not demand results. There are little or no consequences for poor performance and criminal activity. So why would Californians hold politicians responsible for failure? Accountable is blurred because the powers that be in Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the media and academia offer a variety of scape-goat boogieman. Racism, climate change (formerly known as global warming), greed and insufficient spending are the go-to culprits shielding elected officials from responsibility for their failures.  

Never mind the fact that spending on all the aforementioned problems has continued to expand as problems worsen.

There can be no accountability without standards. For decades the basic standards of civilization via law enforcement have vanished in the once Golden State. Laws against defecating, urinating, camping on the street, public intoxication, loitering and graffiti have gone unenforced and in some cases are no longer illegal. The basic rules that maintain civilization, the ones that have separated humans from wild animals, have disappeared in much of California. A zeitgeist of standards free unaccountability liberates the political left from blame and shame.

At least 2 out of 3 voters forgave the Governor for not living by the rules his executive orders demanded of us plebeians. They have no problem with the privileged Governor eating out and sending his kids to school when the bourgeois were not allowed to do likewise. I had assumed a French laundry was an expensive dry cleaner until Gavin was exposed eating an obscenely expensive dinner with state medical officials while violating his executive orders and their “expert” advice. 

It should be no surprise that the campaign against Larry Elder was grounded in associating him with racism, climate change denial, greed, as an antivaxxer (he was vaccinated) and as a spendthrift, not willing to tax the rich even more. The top 1% of California earners paid 46% of state income tax in 2016. If only a few  of them leave the state, there will be a budget crisis. Gavin could not make a credible case for his successes. The low road of slander turned out to be very effective. 

California has the nation’s highest taxes, least affordable housing, highest utilities costs, 13% of the nation’s population with 34% of welfare recipients and is the poorest state when adjusted for cost of living. Violent crime has spiked as the post Michael Brown/George Floyd defund the police movement has spread. L. A. has “reallocated”  89 million dollar away from police enforcement. The rotting cherry atop the souring California sundae are K-12 schools performing among the worst in the nation. 

None of this is likely to change anytime soon. The recall failed massively. Productive people are leaving the state, illegal dependents are flowing over the border, federal dollars largely sustained by productive free states keep flooding in, state and federal checks in the mail keep coming; while the media and academia are overwhelmingly on the progressive side. There is no way I can predict when the total collapse will occur. But the California model is not a sustainable one. Like every system that has favored the takers over the doers, the criminals over the victims and foments divisiveness by targeting designated greedy white racists enemies of the state, it will fail. When it does, it will be even uglier than it is today.

Losing may have been a blessing for Larry Elder. As magnificent as he is, one great leader alone in Sacramento would have been largely powerless.