Voters Remember CA Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Troubles Began Before COVID Lockdown, Part IV

In Part l of Voters Know CA Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Troubles Began Before Pandemic, we highlighted many of Newsom’s disastrous policies his first year in the governor’s office 2019, including:

• announcing state-funded full scope Medi-Cal healthcare to 138,000 illegal immigrants,
• reinstating the Obamacare individual mandate requiring everyone to buy health insurance or face tax fines, and
• signing an executive order that he would grant reprieves for all 737 death penalty murderers on California’s death row, calling the death penalty “ineffective, irreversible and immoral.”

In Part ll we outlined the many Executive Orders Gov. Newsom signed in the first half of 2020, making law, under the auspices of emergency powers because of his statewide COVID shutdown. We also addressed his new campaign to fight the pending gubernatorial recall election, calling it a “partisan, Republican recall — backed by the RNC, anti-mask and anti-vax extremists, and pro-Trump forces.”

Part lll covers the second half of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2020, while the state was in various stages of lockdown and curfews:

• convicted criminals were being released from prisons. By the end of August, 18,000 convicts had been released;
• during the state’s heatwave, and record temperatures throughout the state, rolling blackouts hit millions  during the very hottest weather. While the governor said he was investigating the power outages, he also said Californians needed to get used to it;
• Before August ended, Gov. Newsom issued a third set of re-opening plans, moving the state re-opening goalposts once again;
• September 2020: Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 145, which lowers the penalties for adults who have sex with same-sex minors. As Senator Melissa Melendez Tweeted, “Well what a shock. Newsom signed SB145, the bill that allows a 24 year old to have sex with a 14 year old and escape a felony conviction and requirement to be a registered sex offender. Absolutely disgusting.”

This is Part IV, which will address January 2021 to date.

Many fed up small business owners are suing Gov. Gavin Newsom and the many counties over the business shutdown and stay-at-home order.

On November 30, 2020, Governor Newsom and the State Legislature announced the allocation of $500 million available to small businesses and nonprofits that have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, these grants are not issued on a first-come, first-served basis, but will be awarded based on race-based “equity.”  “Inclusive, equitable relief is fundamental to the small business support developed by this administration,” said Isabel Guzman, CalOSBA Director.

This “equity based” government grant program appears to be more of a scheme to send funding to non-governmental organizations and dubious non-profits attached to government, with many owned/operated by elected officials. As we saw with the federal CARES Act funds, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s companies applied for and received nearly $3 million in federal loans meant for small businesses to help them survive the state closures. More than 100 publicly traded companies have received coronavirus aid meant for small businesses.

State Senator Melissa Melendez (R -Lake Elsinore) was compelled to introduce two new bills in early January to protect small businesses from malicious COVID-19 fines. “Business owners are draining their finances to comply with COVID regulations, and the Governor has continued to change the rules with no data to support his mandates,” Melendez said in a statement. “Now small businesses are facing fines and penalties as they try to stay afloat and keep their lifelong dreams alive.”

Melendez’s bills will prevent regulatory boards and agencies within the Department of Consumer Affairs, and the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, from revoking licenses or penalizing small businesses owners for failure to comply with any COVID-19 emergency orders.

Her second bill is a reintroduction of Senate Concurrent Resolution 5, that ends the State of Emergency, restores checks and balances between the Legislative and Executive branches and allows local governments to handle the pandemic locally instead of top-down mandates from the state.

Gov. Newsom’s California Health Corps call for Health care professionals with an active license, public health professionals, medical retirees, medical and nursing students to help ease the burden during the coronavirus crisis landed 95,000 responses, but only 850 of those were qualified by the state. By January, only 15 medical professionals were actually used.

The Globe opined, “The 836 available and vetted Health Corps volunteers is a good place to start. And what about employing medical professionals from all of the closed medical practices in the state, which died when the governor cancelled all “elective” surgeries and treatments? There are a lot of out-of-work doctors and nurses. What about the furloughed nurses from closed hospital units? In a state of 40 million residents, which constantly decries the nurse and doctor shortage, there shouldn’t be unemployed medical professionals.”

Governor Gavin Newsom announced mid-January he would activate up to 1,000 California National Guard troops to help protect the Capitol Building and “critical state infrastructure” in preparation for planned armed protests  during President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. The Globe learned that Gov. Newsom’s beefed up security in and around the State Capitol for Inauguration Day cost taxpayers $73 million. And there were no riots, no rallies and no “armed protests” at the State Capitol January 21, 2021, which was encircled with chain-linked fencing.

The gallery in the California State Senate was closed to the public the Friday before Inauguration Day, disallowing the usual public review, and locking out members of the Third House, who like to observe the Senate while it is in session.

The California State Auditor Elaine Howle released a report in January exposing that Gov. Newsom’s Department of Finance distributed $9.5 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds with smaller counties receiving barely half of the funding per person than larger counties. “In August 2020, we designated the State’s management of federal COVID-19 funds as high risk and indicated that the likelihood of mismanagement of these funds is great enough to create substantial risk of serious detriment to the State and its residents,” Auditor Howle said.

The Department of Finance, an arm of the Governor’s office, and is responsible for overseeing and managing the $9.5 billion in CRF funds that the U.S. Treasury paid to the State, and for reporting back to the U.S. Treasury on the uses of the funds.

The news that Gov. Gavin Newsom would be lifting the stay-at-home order for all regions across the state January 25, 2021 came with high hopes, along with a lot of skepticism. It turns out that the skeptics won this bet. The governor simultaneously announced a new re-opening measurement, moving the goal posts once again (was this the fifth new re-opening  measurement?), saying that the he would now be measuring improvements in the state’s capacity projections in another 4-weeks, on February 21st.

When asked by FoxLA reporter Elex Michaelson if his anticipated decision to open the state up was because of the significant recall campaign and 20 different lawsuits, Gov. Newsom doth protest: “That’s complete and utter nonsense,” he huffed.

In November, Californians learned that upwards of $31 billion dollars in unemployment claims was fraudulently sent to prison inmates in California’s county jails, and state and federal prisons, out of state, and even out of the country, while legitimate claimants have been stiffed for months, or received late payments.

By January, Californians started receiving 1099-G tax forms summarizing their taxable earnings from unemployment benefits. Not only will the tax bill come as a shock to recipients, there is a distinct possibility many victims of fraud will be left on the hook for taxes on money never received.

Republicans sent a letter to Gov. Newsom reiterating the concerns of State Auditor Elaine Howle:

As we enter the tax filing season, many Californians will be surprised to learn that they have tax liabilities for UI benefits that were fraudulently claimed in their name. This is because 1099-G forms will soon be arriving in the mailboxes of taxpayers who were victims of identity fraud. Even more concerning is that there will be victims of identity fraud who will have no idea why they even received one of these forms until after they file taxes. This is because EDD is generally going to mail the 1099-G to the most recent addresses of record, which are the ones the bad actors used to obtain UI benefits.

By February 2021, there were reports of thousands of inconclusive test results coming out of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $100 million COVID-19 testing lab with the $1.7 billion contract with PerkinElmer. All of this expense was supposed to ramp up testing and processing, but the high number of false-positives were concerning.

The Globe reported on this lab in December, and spoke to a confidential source who shared concerns with the PCR tests. We also reported on three doctors in Contra Costa County who were concerned with the excessive COVID PCR testing leading to high numbers of false positive results.

Millions of Californians filed for unemployment benefits during Newsom’s government-ordered business shutdowns. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses have permanently closed. Public schools have been closed since last Spring. And WalletHub released a new report in comparing the Coronavirus restrictions in the 50 states and District of Columbia, and California is dead last at number# 51, with the most strict coronavirus restrictions.

California State Auditor Elaine Howle recently released a rather scathing audit of the management or mismanagement of Homelessness in California. She said that the state continues to have the largest homeless population in the nation “likely in part because its approach to addressing homelessness has been disjointed.”

California has spent $13 billion in just the last three years on the massive homelessness problem. The auditor said the approach to dealing with homelessness is so fragmented and incomplete it actually hinders efforts at getting people into stable housing.

The Globe reported March 3, 2021 that the California State Capitol remains fenced off to the public. One must ask permission to enter the Capitol grounds.

March 8, 2021, the Globe reported that Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Sports fund has raised more than $36 million, and helped 311 struggling businesses, including nearly 40 in California. In California, while Gov. Gavin Newsom continued to issue double mask mandates and kept businesses and schools closed, the state Legislature disappeared for 10 months ignoring businesses in their own cities, and county public officials enforced the draconian lockdowns, The Barstool Fund provided critical financial assistance to 38 businesses so they wouldn’t go under.

As the grassroots campaign to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom announced they successfully collected 1,950,000 million signatures, 10 days ago, and reached more than 2.1 million by March 17, 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom announced he would deliver his third State of the State Address Tuesday March 9th in “virtual presentation” to the California Legislature from Los Angeles County…. away from the State Capitol… away from most of the Capitol Press Corps… away from the prying eyes of the public.

The recall campaign did a study on a sampling of 20,000 of the recall signatures to see what the political party breakdown was. Recall campaign organizer Orrin Heatlie said 31.5% of the signers were “other than Republicans,” showing that this is a bipartisan event.

And that brings us up to date.

Voters Know CA Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Troubles Began Before Pandemic: Newsom still doesn’t understand that the RecallGavin2020 is a movement now. (Part I)