Gov. Gavin Newsom, 2024 State of the State address. (Photo: gov.ca.gov)
The Gaslighting Governor: Gavin Newsom Shamelessly Claims California is an ‘Economic Powerhouse’
Newsom has never apologized to the people for unnecessarily destroying so many lives over a contagious flu
By Katy Grimes, October 12, 2024 4:55 am
“It isn’t by accident that California is an economic powerhouse. Whether it be around education, infrastructure, or immigration, we’re following a formula for success,” California Governor Gavin Newsom claims in a video posted to X.
Newsom’s gaslighting would merely be sophomoric is he didn’t lust for the U.S. Presidency.
Newsom’s Formula for Success
In spite of Gavin Newsom’s leftist politics, there still are some successful businesses and industries in the state. But it is not because of Newsom’s or the state’s far-left Democrat politicians.
There is no ignoring Chief Executive Magazine which reports annually on the Best and Worst States for Business. Predictably, in their Best and Worst of 2024, California is ranked number #50 – again… the 11th… or 12th… or 13th year in a row.
Remember, Gavin Newsom’s reaction to the Covid flu was to lock the entire state down for three years, as well as most of the 40 million residents. He’s never apologized to the people for unnecessarily destroying so many lives over a contagious flu.
Under his one-man rule, Californians suffered immensely.
During Covid, Newsom arbitrarily ordered all “non-essential” businesses closed while big box stores remained open. Newsom ordered churches closed while liquor stores remained open. Newsom ordered parks and beaches closed. He ordered restaurants closed, and then got caught enjoying a lovely meal out at the French Laundry in Napa Valley. He ordered people to forgo family holidays. He ordered gyms closed. He ordered Covid patients into nursing homes. Churches were only allowed to reopen for in-person religious services at 25% capacity or be held outdoors. He’d ordered music, TV and film production closed down. He ordered hotels to close down. Professional sports were closed down. Hair and nail salons and Estheticians were closed down. Concerts and festivals were ordered closed down by Gavin Newsom. He ordered live theater, nightclubs and theme parks closed down. As the Globe reported at this time, Newsom closed down anything fun. And he ordered retail stores closed down.
California permanently lost one-third of all small businesses thanks to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lockdown and shutdown orders. Combine Newsom’s authoritarian Covid orders with California’s overbearing regulatory environment, high taxes, inordinate fees, and the general high cost of doing business in the state, and many business owners have moved their operations to more business-friendly states.
Henry O’Loughlin of BuildRemote.co reported in December, “53 Headquarters Have Left San Francisco Since 2020. Where did they go? San Francisco businesses moved to Arizona, Utah, Virginia, Florida, and most to Texas. And 10 of those businesses moved in 2023.”
“Ruiz Foods isn’t the only large company to move their corporate headquarters to Texas in recent years. Tesla, for example, relocated their headquarters to Texas. Exxon Mobil, AT&T, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are just a few of many household names who moved to the Lone Star State.”
So claiming that California as an “economic powerhouse” is dishonest. The industry growing and hiring in California currently is state and local government.
As the California Policy Center reports, “California’s GDP today may be impressive, but the rate of GDP growth since 2000 does not begin to compare to its growth during the booming 1980s and 1990s.”
Education
As for education, besides ranking dead last in literacy, and nearly as bad in math, California’s public school system has turned into a sexually explicit DEI factory, foisting pornographic books on the little ones, by hard-core leftist teachers with purple hair. The educational priorities now include “comprehensive sexual health” under the banner of the California Healthy Youth Act, which curiously takes you to the ACLU Northern California.
Remember that Gov. Newsom closed down the public schools, public colleges and public universities, sending every student home to “distance” learn online for over two years. However, his own school-aged children continued attending their private school in Sacramento.
The SAT exam was cancelled. High schoolers lost college opportunities, academic scholarships, and sports scholarships. And while other states allowed athletics to return, California high school and club sports teams remained benched under Newsom’s cruel orders. Teen suicides exploded.
California’s school kids still have not recovered from the horrific learning loss.
Infrastructure
Gov. Newsom’s economic powerhouse on infrastructure, except California’s infrastructure is crumbling: bridges and highways are in third-world shape, desperate for regular maintenance and repairs. California’s energy grid is compromised because of increasing renewable energy mandates without the necessary oil and gas backup, the state suffers rolling blackouts, and turns the power off whenever the wind picks up.
According to Chief Executive magazine’s Best and Worst of 2024, as doubts fester about the reliability of the American electric grid, chiefs in power-hungry nascent industries are looking more closely at energy availability… and they are not looking in California.
We could produce all of our own energy needs with a “all of the above” policy, and have plenty left over for sale to other states, but Newsom instead has declared war with the oil and gas industry resulting in Chevron Oil Company announcing in August they are moving to Houston Texas from the Bay Area, where it has been based since 1879.
Chevron President Andy Walz sent a letter Tuesday condemning Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to decrease the state’s gas supply, which will clearly result in even higher gas prices at the pump.
Quite notably, Walz said of the 36 states in which they work, only California has the highest gas prices.
Nearly every expert in California agrees that more water infrastructure is necessary, because water restrictions and conservation alone will not provide a reliable water supply to Californians. Voters have approved more than $30 billion in water bonds which have not led to two approved reservoirs being built, or even more water storage.
Instead, Newsom and his appointed state water board have imposed water restrictions on the people, creating water scarcity, ostensibly to combat “climate change.” But in reality, Newsom’s “water scarcity” is a tool for amassing political power. California has plenty of water for urban and agriculture uses, just not the political interest in making it available for everyone. Controlling the water is the most powerful political tool Newsom has.
And then we have High Speed Rail – except it isn’t built yet. High Speed Rail has been under “construction” 16 years since 2008 when voters were convinced to approve Proposition 1A, a $9 billion bond to build a high speed rail system. However, high-speed rail has become nothing more than a pipeline project for grabbing taxpayer funds and is a big deceit on voters and taxpayers. I’ve been covering this for many years. State lawmakers and rail officials have treated the largest public works project in the state’s history as if it’s a design-as-you-go bathroom remodel, with unlimited funding.
And really, why would voters invest in technology that’s been around for over a 100 years?
Immigration
California is now the number one state to illegally cross into the United States. And why wouldn’t illegal aliens look to California – the first state to offer health insurance for all illegal immigrants, unemployment pay, and drivers licenses, and free education, and many layers of welfare benefits… illegal immigrants in California can apply for Disability Insurance (DI) and Paid Family Leave benefits, even if they do not have a Social Security number, according to the California EDD.
According to Steven A. Camarota, Director of Research Center for Immigration Studies, in congressional testimony, welfare use by illegal immigrants is 59.4 percent of illegal immigrant households, which use one or more welfare programs. Compared to the U.S.-born, illegal-headed households use every program at statistically higher rates, except for SSI, TANF and housing. Illegal immigrants have especially high use of cash (mainly the EITC), food programs and Medicaid.
Four years ago, the annual expenditure of state and local tax dollars on services for that population and their children totaled $23 billion – it has to be double this amount now.
In June, “an audit conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (OIG), found that California improperly claimed billions of dollars in federal reimbursements to pay for the health care of illegal aliens enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program,” the Federation for Immigration Reform reported. “Whether intentional or accidental, the state must repay the federal government a whopping $52.7 million. It may also be required to pay back money the federal government has given California in previous years.”
In May 2021 during the Covid pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he would let another 76,000 prisoners out of state prisons – on his own authority through Executive Order – as violent crime was spiking in California’s cities. Together with hundreds of thousands of drug-addicted homeless vagrants and millions of illegal immigrants, crumbling infrastructure, illiterate school children, is it any wonder that Gov. Newsom said a few years ago when he was looking at Los Angeles, “My God it looks like a third world country!”
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Geez- what a dismal record. No wonder Newsom is hoping to get out of state to DC if Harris is elected. But in the face of all these ratings, statistics, and facts, Newsom still has the ability to stand up and blatantly lie with a straight face about business,crime, education, water and transportation, always relying on some very strained and misleading statistic. Maybe he could take a new job as press secretary for a foreign dictator.
Yes, Rod. In hindsight Newsom gives Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (aka Baghdad Bob) a run for his money “There are no American tanks in Baghdad.” “California is an economic powerhouse.” They both are/were preposterous lies. One is just more current. Liars lie. That’s what they do. I blame moron voters for believing their BS.
Sometimes it seems as though for certain people, the gutsy and steadfast Katy Grimes for example, that to see what’s coming, understand it, and sound the alarm by writing about it repeatedly for years and years, is a thankless task. Often, at the time the warning comes, we don’t want to believe it, we’re in denial about the red flags, we can’t face that our home is on a disastrous path and it is NOT going to end well.
Thank goodness for it now, however, and for Katy Grimes’ part in what we hope will be a more sensible future (knock wood). Now that more are waking up to it, seeing it, understanding it, we can imagine again how wonderful California would be if only we can begin to drive out the power-mad, money-grubbing, destructive politicians and their dazed and cooperative henchmen. Here it all is, on the record, in archives here at the CA Globe, Calwatchdog, and elsewhere, to provide historical context and guidance in what we hope will be better days ahead.
Wanted to post this fascinating interview from yesterday of Harmeet Dhillon by Tucker Carlson as a sort of an adjunct to this article. Harmeet Dhillon’s story not only goes step-by-step over Kamala’s record in California by someone who knew the woman and carefully watched her from the beginning, but it also gives additional insight —– in one handy interview! —- into our corrupt Dem-Marxist politicians and thus the reasons for our present condition of end-to-end corruption and machine politics in California, which have resulted in the stinking, smoldering, crime-ridden, drug-infested, zombie-plagued landscape that we now see all around us. Take a look and then send it to everyone you know if you can (and if you dare 🙂 )
“Harmeet Dillhon: The Shocking Origin Story of Kamala Harris and All the Crimes She’s Committed”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omgw-g1gVnM
Thanks for the link, Showandtell. This interview of Harmeet by Tucker gives in DETAIL all you need to know about Kamala and what she is ALL about…..that is HERSELF. It also gives a precise picture of how the Demoncrat machine controls California through it’s fail-up promotion of people like Newsom, Padilla, Bonta, Ma, Su…..and all the rest of the mafia cabal. Democrats need to follow the example of Gloria Romero and disavow themselves from this satanic party.
Appreciated your reply, Raymond.
Two hours of interview is a good chunk of time, and I didn’t think I could spare it, but I started watching and couldn’t stop. Harmeet’s presentation was organized, clear, and compelling, and she had the goods to back up what she was saying. She obviously prepared extensively, as someone would who is prosecuting a case and, alongside her charisma and tendency to say somewhat shocking things with a poker face, I found it fascinating, and the time flew.
For anyone out there who is still on the fence about Kamala; who thinks she has been characterized unfairly and maybe isn’t so bad after all, who is voting for her because she’s “a woman” or “black” or because she “defends reproductive rights,” (!!!) the case Harmeet made from her vast knowledge of Kamala Harris should scare them straight. God forbid this woman should EVER be in the White House.
“Economic powerhouse”? Hahaha! California has the highest unemployment rate in the nation.
“Education formula for success”? Hahaha! Over one in five students are dropping out of school.
“Infrastructure formula for success”? Hahaha! California has the third worst roads of any state in the nation, and most of the state doesn’t even have snow.
Economic POWERHOUSE??? Newsom, as well as anyone who believes him or voted for him, needs to ADJUST THEIR MEDS!!! Newsom and Moonbeam Brown GUTTED California! This place used to be the ENVY OF THE NATION!!! Now it’s a RUNNING THIRD WORLD JOKE!!!! The only people who haven’t left the state are those who can’t afford to, are too old to, or are on the public dole!
You’re absolutely spot on. MoonBeam and Newsom, two of the cheesiest, lowlife politicians-ever! We just sold our home in CA, 45+ years, so we saw CA at its very best and at its worst. So. Ca was looking like a prison yard when we left to move to No Ca, and when we left No CA it was falling into the abyss. We love CA, but its a good representation of what our country will look like when we go full blown communism. A one party Liberal state.
Governor Gavin Newsom is handling the stresses, pressures, issues and strains of the Governor’s position very well.
But people keep voting blue and wonder why the state is immolating.
How old are you Earl? Do you work? Any strain or pressure that Newsom may have is self-imposed. He should never be allowed in DC, he hasn’t done anything for San Francisco, what he did do they are still paying for it,;2) inviting illegals into CA and picking up their tab was idiocy. He screwed himself, and the good taxpayers of CA. 40% tax on gas, really? Would you like a full list of what he has done just in his tenure? I can, if you like Earl.
When Newson was Mayor of San Francisco, he provided funding for battered women’s shelters.
So the girlfriends of Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff have a place to go to after they’ve been slapped and battered by him?
Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff sat down for an interview with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Friday and things went south when he was asked about “forcefully” smacking his ex-girlfriend:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/10/whoa-doug-emhoff-does-not-deny-he-forcefully/
Great question T.J.
Kamala the top cop feminist is married to an alleged abuser.
Oh but we are supposed to believe she reallllly, reallly, cares! #metoo
Give me a break!
Yay, Go women! You too can speak out of both sides of your mouth.🙄
Thanks for the troll post, Richard.
The man would be way better off if he told the truth about the state of CA. It is on him, he knows it, most people there know, own up to what you have done. People can be forgiving, if you are truthful. He makes excuses, for the things he has done. CA is not a powerhouse and not what you want you country to look like, Newsom, should have been gone in 2021, the recall, not sure how he won that election???? Very suspiciously. Remember, Aunt Nancy!
I have said this before, and I will say it again the house of cards is crumbling. Newsom will be held in account to his traitorous activities along with his Aunt Nancy.
To use Newsom’s own words against him. He is “significantly insignificant”!
If you are wondering what that means watch and listen to him and then compare him to the daily reality of what we are all living through.
He is worthless, his words have no meaning!
He should be considered a lame duck governor. His political career should be over!
His pathological lying will outlive his career. Time for him to save face, he should resign to “spend more time with the family”.
He and Kamala Harris are cut from the same cloth and come from the same San Francisco based political machine courtesy of Willie Brown and the Gettys.
I beg of my fellow Californias do not sit this election out, send it in and vote Republican straight down the ticket. We will sort out the RINO’s in 2 years.
With most major industries and businesses fleeing the state, being a sanctuary sate for transsexual mutilations, for illegals, and for baby killing abortions hardly qualifies California to be an economic powerhouse.
So true!
Only an out of touch elite would think our state is running on all 4 cylinders!