Gov. Gavin Newsom glamour shot at the Great Wall of China 10/26/2023 (Photo: gov.ca.gov)
It’s Time to Take Back the People’s Power – in California and DC
Gavin Newsom’s seemingly bold, progressive stances are merely designed to raise his public profile – he always wants to be the first to do something
By Katy Grimes, December 2, 2024 2:55 am
The power of the American people has been stolen by politicians and the permanent government bureaucracy. This bureaucracy exists in every state and Washington DC. The “Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE” will start taking the people’s power back one regulation, one department, one NGO, one fraudulent non-profit, one “public-private partnership” at a time.
According to John Locke, the 17th century English political philosopher, there is little difference between a partisan, prejudiced government and a thief. Locke was an “intellectual titan, one whose thoughts and ideas can be found throughout our country’s earliest political documents, including and especially the Declaration of Independence.”
Nowhere is this more apparent, or a DOGE is needed, than in California. At this juncture with Gavin Newsom impersonating a Governor, Californians could turn blue in the face waiting for a DOGE to happen.
In a recent article, I said, “California needs a DOGE oversight agency to dismantle government bureaucracy, and cut wasteful expenditures.” What an understatement.
According to the State Controller, there are 247,515 state employees as of October 2024, but that doesn’t account for the universities. Another 265,000 employees are employed by the University of California. There are 63,357 employees in the California State University system. And there are 88,000 employees in the California Community College system – this totals 416,357 state university and college employees.
There are 1,800 state legislative employees according to a bill authorizing unionization of legislative staff – which Gov. Newsom signed into law.
The grand total thus far is 665,672 employees in state jobs.
There are more than 2.4Million total government employees in California which would include city and county employees.
DOGE, as announced by President-elect Donald Trump, is an advisory group intended to streamline, reduce, and reform federal government operations, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Here are some key points regarding the DOGE, which promises to reverse a decades long executive power grab:
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The initiative aims to address government waste and inefficiency by slashing regulations, reducing federal workforce, and restructuring government agencies.
- The primary goals include cutting up to $2 trillion from the federal budget, reducing the size of the federal workforce significantly (Ramaswamy has mentioned cutting up to 75% of federal employees), and eliminating or downsizing numerous federal agencies. They are aiming to cut $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended.”
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Operational Strategy: Rather than being a formal department within the government, DOGE operates as an external advisory group. It will provide recommendations to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rather than having direct executive power. This setup allows Musk and Ramaswamy to continue their private sector roles while advising on government efficiency.
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Public Engagement: They have announced plans for a podcast named “DOGEcast” to bring transparency to their efforts, discussing their findings and strategies with the public to explain the waste, fraud, and abuse within government operations.
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Musk and Ramaswamy envision applying private sector efficiency principles to government operations. They propose using executive actions and recent Supreme Court rulings to justify their recommendations for regulatory cuts and workforce reduction. (Grok)
Just as California Gov. Newsom has allowed, “Federal government agencies are using, on average, just 12% of the space in their DC headquarters. The Department of Agriculture, with space for more than 7,400 people, averaged 456 workers each day (6% occupancy). Why are American taxpayer dollars being spent to maintain empty buildings?” Musk and Ramaswamy posted on the DOGE X page.
And that’s just the starters.
California also could cut billions from the state budget, “$288.1 billion in total spending, down from the $291.5 billion that Newsom proposed in January, and significantly down from the $310.8 billion approved last year for the 2023-24 budget despite many indications that it was not sustainable relative to the state’s revenue,” CalTax reported.
…and by reducing the size of the state workforce significantly… by say 50%?
Gov. Newsom comically claims the state budget is balanced. Such bravado, arrogance and ridiculousness. The reality is that Gov. Newsom’s Administration consistently underestimates short and long term costs and debts – including the $1.5+ Trillion unfunded public employee pension and health obligations, the Unemployment Insurance loan repayments, and the more than $300 billion High Speed Rail estimate former Senate Transportation Committee Chair Mark DeSaulnier (D) provided – just a few examples.
California state employees are not required to be back in the office full time. Some are back 2 days a week, while the state-owned buildings sit empty the rest of the week.
A huge swath of state employees are grossly overpaid for what is effectively clerical work. Many of the state jobs are unnecessary or redundant, or used-to-be/should be done by private sector businesses. But pay and benefits attract employees to the state, and then pays them higher than they would be paid in the private sector, effectively enslaving them to government work and health benefits they could never afford otherwise.
Musk and Ramaswamy are targeting wasteful spending:
The U.S. Government recently approved the following grants: -$45 million for a diversity and inclusion scholarship in Burma -$3 million for “girl-centered climate action” in Brazil -$288,563 for diverse bird watcher groups.
How the Government Spends your Tax Dollars: -$28 million on licensing fees for a green “camouflage” pattern on Afghan National Army uniforms -$2.5 million on a Super Bowl Ad for the Census -$1.7 million for holograms of dead comedians -$500,000 to build an IHOP in Washington, DC.
In 2024, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) spent $1.8 billion studying racism including: -$125K on “Examining Anti-Racist Healing in Nature” -$151K on “Perceived racism, cardiovascular disease risk, and neurocognitive aging” -$516K on “Effects of Racism on Brain and Pathways to Health Disparities”
and:
An estimated $100 billion in estimated improper payments were made in the Medicare and Medicaid programs in Fiscal Year 2023. This is 43% of government-wide improper payments that year.
They have a monumental job ahead of them – particularly since Washington DC is made up of a “creeping socialism” class, which will not willingly turn over power without a fight. We know that because of how the DC cabal of FBI/DOJ/DOD agencies has attacked, prosecuted, and litigated Donald Trump since he first announced his run for president in 2015. And that Trump’s life was nearly taken twice during the campaign speaks volumes.
However, we have already witnessed another leader implement his own DOGE: Argentine President Javier Milei.
Longtime journalist Elizabeth Nickson of the Absurdistan Substack reported:
“Milei was interviewed by Lex Fridman. In a detailed, theory-moving-to-practice rich interview, Milei asserts that after they took a chainsaw to the Argentine fiscal arrangement (the last word best drawled in an entitled French accent) they immediately 2.5Xed the per capita GDP of Argentinians.
His approval rating is now higher than it was when he took office. Despite their venal press.
In his first month, he did what everyone said he couldn’t. He balanced the budget. He balanced it by cutting 50% of bureaucrats and ministries. Fifty thousand civil servants lost their jobs. Thus in a single stroke he saved hundred of millions. His team then instituted a program of regulatory reform, over-regulation being the principal Marxist/socialist/commie tool for destroying economic health, initiative and creativity.”
So it is not only possible, it worked.
Nickson continues:
“Milei found that government offices were lying about all the stats. Every single one. They were lying about unemployment, they were lying about inflation, they were lying about government debt, they were lying about the poverty rate. They had run up prices through theft and regulation, then fixed prices, and lo and behold, no one could afford to make or import anything so there was nothing to buy.”
“We found that 13.5% of GDP was from money printing.”
Nickson continues:
“Biden printed almost $10 trillion in the past four years, shoved it into the economy, mostly by funding bank debt, hiring government workers and calling it growth. Therefore, roughly an equivalent %age of the U.S. GDP is from money printing. Which means the real growth rate is around -5%. That’s what real people are facing — feeling outside of the sheltered neighborhoods, we are losing 5% a year. Which means every year, we lose more agency, are more enslaved to debt.”
While Newsom’s isn’t printing California currency yet, he has implemented policies and regulations of the kind Javier Milei overturned to bring his country back from the brink of socialist hell.
Newsom’s seemingly bold, progressive stances are merely designed to raise his public profile – he always wants to be the first to do something, regardless of the outcomes. As San Francisco Mayor, Newsom started issuing same-sex marriage licenses in violation of state law. A few months later, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Mayor Newsom, and the City and County of San Francisco had exceeded its authority and violated state law by issuing the marriage licenses. But the headlines had already lauded the “progressive” Mayor.
Newsom was the first governor in the country to lock down an entire state and issue a stay-at-home order in March 2020 at the onset of the Covid virus, in one of the most egotistical, arrogant moves imaginable – he wanted to be the first in the nation to issue the stay-at-home order, thus propelling himself into the media as a national leader, with no consideration for the healthy in California. He was also the first Governor to face a recall election during Covid for his unconstitutional lockdown orders.
By November of 2020, we reported that Gov. Newsom had issued 58 executive orders, effectively ruling California by dictatorial decree, proving that his lust for power was indeed real. The executive orders would grow to 70 before he lifted the state of emergency, three years later.
Newsom’s COVID State of Emergency order continued from March 2020 until the end of February 2023 – over 1,000 days – locking down the entire state, businesses, schools. Newsom hung on to his emergency powers for three years, treating the state to his dictatorship. No other governor did this. Notably, the California media gave him a pass, proving they are his reliable propaganda arm.
Newsom was making law via his State of Emergency powers including:
- Permitting vote-by-mail procedures to be used in three upcoming special elections
- 2020 General Election Vote-By-Mail Ballots
- Waved Certain Privacy and Security Laws for Medical Providers to Provide Telehealth Services and Minimize Risk of Penalty
- Banned in-state sales for all new vehicles that are not zero-emission by 2035 September 23, 2020
Legacy media fawned all over Newsom for his bold proclamations “protecting” Californians – even when he cancelled Christmas in December 2020.
As the Globe reported in Dec. 2020, “In Gov. Gavin Newsom’s California business owners are fined and arrested for being open and doing business, while convicted criminals are let out of jails and prisons.”
We noted that the state’s Public Health doctors, while not in a medical practice, still were required to adhere to “Primum non nocere,” the Latin phrase that means “first, do no harm.” But they weren’t.
“Lockdowns are killing people, destroying businesses, and harming the state’s children who aren’t attending school because of the ordered closures,” we reported.
And Newsom was ordering all of this tyranny, while the fawning media never questioned his orders, nor the lack of science behind them.
As we continually remind readers, “Remember, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the compliant Democrat Supermajority in the California Legislature closed your children’s schools, shut down your businesses, ordered your churches closed, cancelled your holidays, ordered beaches and parks closed, masked your kids, mandated Covid shots to go back to work and school… while they exempted themselves from these mandates.” And while Newsom dined at the French Laundry, vacationed with his family, and sent his kids to their private school.
Newsom even forbid passing the offering plate at church, and specifically ordered no singing at churches that were only 25 percent capacity – and only opened again in late 2023 because President Trump’s administration ordered churches opened. Newsom was further disciplined by the US Supreme Court which lifted Newsom’s ban on indoor church services. “California worries that worship brings people together for too much time,” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch in an opinion concurring with the majority’s Feb. 5 decision. “Yet, California does not limit its citizens to running in and out of other establishments; no one is barred from lingering in shopping malls, salons, or bus terminals.”
Gavin Newsom was the Governor still clinging to his Covid State of Emergency powers when he was sworn in for a second term, January 2023, nearly three years after his first order, ruling by fiat. Newsom locked down 40 million people during Covid, issued more than 70 executive orders containing 561 provisions, and killed off half of the businesses in the state. He ordered Covid patients into nursing homes, effectively helping kill off the sick and elderly. And he hasn’t ‘t been held accountable for any of it. Yet.
We will never see government accountability in California as long as Gavin Newsom and the Democrat Supermajority are dictating policy detrimental to the people of California.
But never say never. The Trump Administration had a positive effect on California in Trump’s first term; we expect it will again. And Newsom will be gone at the end of 2026.
Notably, President-Elect Trump’s platform has a Dedication:
“To the Forgotten Men and Women of America”
And there is a PREAMBLE
America First:
A Return to Common Sense.
That is exactly what Jaview Milei’s focus was on – the forgotten men and women of Argentina and common sense – and now they are estimating a 7% growth rate for each of the next ten years.
That is the opposite of what Gavin Newsom is doing to the people of California.
As Elizabeth Nickson correctly concludes, “Massive fiscal reform will release that money and return it to you. The result will be a boom for the ages. Try to stay with me on this. It will be all anyone will be talking, shouting, complaining about for the next 18 months. And it is the only way to save the culture. No green economy, fancy derivative, debt forgiveness, UN plan or tax will stop a thousand years of misery. Only this.”
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To take back California you have to take control over the conduct of those who count the vote and how votes are counted. The fix was in for every encounter Newsom has had with an election, and nothing will change as long as dead or ficticious people vote. Next it’s about reining in bureaucrats who make law by fiat, making their pronouncements absolutely subject to debate and vote in the legislature. We have to recognize that bureaucracy is all about process with little to no attention to results, it’s time to change that attitude. The CAGOP could do with a tuneup and just because a politician with an “R” behind their title doesn’t mean they don’t vote “leftist” while talking “conservative.”
California is shifting to the right, driven by fears of rising crime, unaffordable housing and high taxes. Newsom will talk a lot, but I’m betting he will fold like a cheap tent when DOGE starts highlighting the exorbitant costs of housing, medical, education, and other government waste, and President Trump threatens huge cuts in spending. Why? Because it’s in Newsom’s own self-interest, the same thing that drives all his actions.
C-DOGE (California Department of Government Efficiency) is coming to this great state. Newsom and his merry little band of misfits (Democrat & Republican establishment class) are on the wrong side of history, and they will not remain in charge much longer. Right now, we are witnessing governments crumbling under their own weight of greed and corruption. It won’t be long until the greed and corruption that Newsom has surrounded himself with will bring down his administration as well. California is not as blue as we have been led to believe it is.
Being universally loathed —- in California and in the rest of the country —- has not affected Gavin.
Unlikable Nonsense-Spewing Kamala’s drubbing in the presidential election —- who, after all, was on record as having an insane Gavin-like agenda — hasn’t moved our Gov to re-think his nonsense in light of his hoped-for run for Prez in 2028.
Being called a “prick” by fellow Dem Chris Sununu, who also said that Gavin clears the room at a gov’s conference with all the governors running the other way when they see him coming has had no effect.
Conscience about destroying California has not disturbed him (because he has no conscience).
But really, now: Is Gavin not at all aware that his Upside-Down-Beat-‘Em-Till-They’re Bloody style of governance has suddenly (and mercifully) fallen out of fashion in the wake of Trump’s victory? That it has now become as gauche as a 1970s-era wide tie in the 80s?
No. Gavin weirdly does the same thing, year after year, like a programmed robot. The man is a clueless, washed-up politician. Katy Grimes hit the nail on the head when she said Gavin likes to be the FIRST to do the shocking thing, whatever it is, with impunity. E.g., same-sex marriage, EV mandates, whatever. It’s like political OCD. And boy oh boy, does he ever LOVE to jam the jackboot on the necks of the Californians he is supposed to be serving. But, too bad for Gavin, Californians’ and Americans’ obvious rejection and LOATHING of this crap has now hit critical mass.
Imagine what California would be like now if we hadn’t endured the destructive Gavin all of these years. The election cheating, the endless lying, the manic spending, the wanna-be Covid dictatorship, etc.
But never mind, we’ve been seasoned by it, and we WILL recover. Wait and see.
California is blue and will continue to be blue until the voting laws are changed to what they were 20+ years ago.
The Trump administration can only do so much to change the voting laws in this state.
It will take a ballot initiative to wrest the power from the super majority.
A ballot initiative started by doers not whiners.
I refer to the success of Sheriff McGinnis and proposition 36. It can be done.
Yes, indeed Tomorrow. Here is what the ballot initiative should include at the very least: require Voter ID, ban universal mail-in ballots, ban electronic voting systems, mandatory use of paper ballots, require vote counting to be completed 8-12 hours after polls close, clean and flush out voter rolls, ban ballot harvesting. There are probably other things that could be added…..
Alex Jones detailed on his show this morning how Gavin “Hair-gel Hitler” Newsom has been meeting with Democrat state and local officials making plans to foment civil unrest and create a violent armed uprising if the Trump administration tries to remove illegal aliens from California. If there is intervention by the National Guard and U.S. armed forces, they’ll try to claim that Trump is acting like a dictator and they’ll demand that Congress remove him. They’re basically making plans for California to secede from the United States. Is it a conspiracy theory? Alex Jones is almost always right?
TJ – UGH! How completely irritating that we actually have good reason to believe that this could be in the works. Newsom is a MENACE. Will we EVER see him pay ANY consequences for all the destruction and misery he has visited upon our formerly-beautiful state? And now he and his flying monkeys could very well be planning more? It’s ENOUGH ALREADY with this loser governor
I’m not sure if this would come with unintended consequences, but I think there needs to be a ballot iniative to restrict the california governor’s use of executive orders to a two thirds vote from both houses of the legislature approving the order, otherwise his executive order is null and void. Approved executive orders have a sundown provision of two months, then the governor has to resubmit the executive order to the legislature. And there has to be a penalty for violations of our constitutional rights, including but not limited to the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th amendments and any other section of the us constitution that may apply.
TWO HEADLINES from Epoch Times today 12/3 while Gov. Newscum is arranging to fight against Pres. Elect Donald J. Trump
I. Chinese Illegal Immigrant Shipped Weapons From California to North Korea: DOJ
Shenghua Wen told investigators he believed the North Korean regime wanted the weapons to prepare for an attack against South Korea.
II. 5 Chinese Nationals Indicted in California in $27 Million Scam Targeting Seniors.
Calif. needs U.S. Military to restore law and order and monitor elections and run a military style tribunal against Democrats in Calif.