Is California Listing Toward Failed State Status?

California used to be known for its stunning weather, Hollywood movies and stars, Silicon Valley – home to the high tech industry, and for the agricultural products grown and raised for the state, country, as well as the rest of the world.

Today, California is known for its crazy Left wing politics, violent crime, bumper-to-bumper traffic, its homeless epidemic, out-of-control spending, record budgets, and the $1+ trillion unfunded pension obligation to state retirees.

Today’s headlines tell the rest of the story:

California’s firefighter union is poised to get a rare perk: Guaranteed raises, forever

Governor Newsom’s Budget Deficit Has Climbed To $31.5 Billion

State workers protest at California state Capitol to demand pay raises amid SEIU bargaining

California reparations report urges action on housing discrimination and overpolicing

Reparations task force gives recommendations on how California can atone for slavery

Bay Area transit agencies say $5.1 billion state funding deal is not enough

Is the California EDD Pulling a Pandemic Scam?

California taxpayers pony up for transit systems they’ll never use

California bacon law takes effect 

Thousands of SoCal hotel workers go on strike

More migrants from Texas arrive in Los Angeles over 4th of July weekend

Union members getting guaranteed raises forever; a record budget deficit; reparation payments to black Californians; SEIU demanding more raises… it never ends.

With headlines like these, it is not an intellectual challenge to conclude that California is headed straight for breakdown as a failed state.

A state is ordinarily considered “failed” when it is unable to justly enforce laws. California is certainly unable to enforce important but basic quality of life laws and is suffering under an horrific crime spike exploding across the state thanks to Democrats who are totally in control of state politics.

Here’s how they have achieved this:

Proposition 47, passed by misinformed voters in 2014, and flagrantly titled “The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act” by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris. Prop. 47 reduced a host of felonies to misdemeanors, including drug crimes, date rape, and all thefts under $950, even for repeat offenders who steal every day.

Proposition 47 also decriminalized drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor, removed law enforcement’s ability to make an arrest in most circumstances, as well as removed judges’ ability to order drug rehabilitation programs rather than incarceration.

Proposition 57 in 2016 reduced prison sentences, and Assembly Bill 109, Gov. Jerry Brown’s “prison realignment” scheme, shifted detainees from state prisons to local jails, overwhelming county jails.

Despite overwhelming evidence of rampant crime throughout the state, Gov. Gavin Newsom has continually praised Proposition 47, Proposition 57 and AB 109, claiming they had helped reduce crime in the state – rather than doubling down on the source of these crimes.

“Proposition 47 didn’t just make theft under $950 a misdemeanor, but also got rid of what we called “priorability”; [it] interfered with the police’s ability to arrest someone for misdemeanor shoplifting, unless they actually witnessed it,” said Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney Michele Hanisee. “Then of course, Proposition 57 allowed early release of not only nonviolent felons, but also sex offenders and three strikers. If you add to that some of the current policies we are seeing from the district attorneys and the courts, such as zero bail and district attorneys who won’t prosecute misdemeanors, it creates a perfect storm and there is just no consequence for crime.”

Propositions 47 and 57 were qualified for the statewide ballot and funded by myriad leftist organizations, and supported by the state’s Democrats.

“Left-progressive criminal justice and most labor union interests in the state, including the ACLU, the Open Society Policy Center (a Soros network company), and the California Labor Federation supported the measure,” Influence Watch reported.

The sketchy Yes on Prop. 47, Californians for Safe Neighborhoods and Schools committee, which raised and contributed more than $10 million to the Prop. 47 campaign, has disappeared and the link from Ballotpedia is no longer any good.

The top five donors to Proposition 57 were:

Again, George Soros was influencing California politics, together with Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire Tom Steyer, and then-Governor Jerry Brown.

If they wanted to turn California into a third world country, they are succeeding.

Other factors contributing to failed states include uprisings, high crime rates, byzantine bureaucratic processes, corruption, judicial incompetence and/or politicking, and military or government policing agencies interference in politics. (Now, re-read the above headlines)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom claims that California is a Nation-State:

“Speaking on MSNBC, Governor Gavin Newsom said that he would use the bulk purchasing power of California ‘as a nation-state’ to acquire the hospital supplies that the federal government has failed to provide. If all goes according to plan, Newsom said, California might even ‘export some of those supplies to states in need.’”

“Nation-state.” “Export.”

Bloomberg News was referring to Newsom’s ethically dubious and hurried $1 Billion deal with China’s BYD (a bus company) for masks in the early days of the COVID pandemic and state lockdowns, as the Globe reported.

In April 2020 Henry Brady, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley addressed Newsom’s claims of “Nation-State” status. Brady said “it is useful to introduce the word ‘country’ first and to then consider the words ‘state’ and ‘nation.’” He explains:

Is California a country? No. Countries have sovereignty over their borders, control over the military and their external affairs, the power to make the fundamental laws of the land, and ultimate control over the use of force within their borders.

Is California a state? Yes. California is one of the 50 states of the United States.

Is California a nation? It’s complicated. A nation is a community of people with a common language, territory, history, ethnicity or culture.

Is California a nation-state? It’s very complicated. It is certainly a state and its people may comprise a nation… “Nation-state” often means a nation that comprises an independent state.

There is nothing wrong with using this term in a colloquial fashion, especially if you are also willing to say that Texas is a nation-state and perhaps even New York or Pennsylvania.

Brady concludes that California could be considered a nation-state.

Therefore, let us summarize how and why this “nation-state” is failing, under the reign of Gavin Newsom.

This is the governor who created California’s new Department of Hate for snitches, tattletales and grievance hustlers. Gov. Newsom formed the State Reparations Commission to pay black Californians who never were slaves, money from taxpayers who never enslaved anyone, in a state that never was a slave state and openly supported the Union North.

Historical ignorance is no excuse.

We cannot forget how Gavin Newsom praised President Biden’s backing of failed Silicon Valley Bank customer deposits, but forgets to mention he was a client, as was his wife, who received funding from a bank executive John China, SVB Executive of Capital, who also sits on the board of Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s California Partners Project.

In just his first five months in office (2019), Gov. Newsom increased the state budget $5 billion – even with a tax revenue windfall. He could have cut the state budget and looked like a hero…

But Newsom owns it now. His current budget is over $300 billion with a $32 billion deficit.

Gov. Newsom has grown homelessness: California’s burgeoning homeless population, despite spending nearly $23 Billion ($23,000,000,000) on California’s homeless housing, homelessness continues to grow in California. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, “nationally, California has topped the list for the state with the largest homeless population for more than a decade. As of 2022, 30% of all people in the United States experiencing homelessness resided in California, including half of all unsheltered people (115,491 in California; 233,832 in the US).”

With Newsom as Governor, California loses nearly 700,000 residents since 2020.

As for issues that matter to Californias, business deregulation, honoring the independent contractor, re-shoring of industry, energy independence, securing the border, war on drug cartels, restoring law and order in the state, restoring water rights, plentiful water storage, parental rights (ie. ending the assault on the family), ending censorship, election integrity, back to basics school curriculum, honoring and restoring the second amendment, property rights – Gov. Newsom has only undermined these very important issues, while destroying the quality of life in California.

Do not forget Democrats in the Capitol in 2021tried to pass Senate Bill 300, to reduce the sentence for individuals convicted of the most serious and heinous murders. Why?

It’s not a stretch to see that under the Democrat one-party rule, California is failing – and failing everyone except the Newsom elites.

“Listing” is a nautical term to describe when a vessel takes on water and tilts to one side.