Gavin Newsom’s Prop. 1 ‘Baby’ Survived Childbirth Last Week

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 1 baby survived childbirth last week, squeaking out a tiny tiny victory.

That means the state will have another $6.4 billion dollars-ish to spend on homelessness and the issues that either cause it or are caused by it or are tangential to it.

Considering the state’s track record over the past few years, that additional spending should mean that California’s homeless population will grow by about 15,000 to 20,000 people.

Not even counting cities, counties, school districts or Medi-Cal or food stamps or anything else, the state has spent at least $20 billion over the last five years. In that same time, 40,000 people have been added to homeless roles, meaning another $6 or so billion should add even more.

In fact, if the spending/population trend holds, the homeless population will top 200,000 people soon.  For perspective, that’s about the size of Oxnard and bigger than Elk Grove and – if they all lived in the same place – would make “Homeless, California” the 22^nd largest city in the state.

But the narrowness of its passage means something else: Californians are fed up with the problem and really fed up with the government response of fire-hosing money in the direction of the homeless only to see it swallowed up by the homeless-industrial complex.

The per person spending numbers are staggering and utterly unjustifiable.  Divided evenly, just the state spending would have been enough to pay each person about $25,000 each year.

You know, rent.

How can we be certain the public has had enough?  Just take a look at the campaign spending.

Newsom and his minions dropped at least $13 million on the “yes” campaign.  The no campaign consisted of one guy putting $1,000 into a checking account and pretty much not even spending that.

And even out spending the “no” side by a factor of 13,000 to one, the margin was razor thin.

In other words, if someone or something or some group had spent say, $1 million – chump change in the California proposition world – Newsom’s dreamchild would have been beaten like a rented red-headed mule.

As to why no one spent anything, even though there were clearly people against, that cannot be stated with absolute certainty but we can take a flyer and probably get to about 99% certainty.

First, November is coming up with other props on the ballot and folks wanted to hold their money until then; it is more expensive to compete with presidential election noise than in 27%-ish primary vote.

Second, people didn’t think it was going to be that close, let alone imagine that a small amount of money could have stopped it cold.

Third, people didn’t want to piss off Gavin. He was very emotionally invested in the proposition – you can tell by delaying his “state of the state” speech until after the result was pretty much finalized.

But this is the second time that Newsom has had and/or needed overwhelming financial dominance to get what he wants (putting aside his personal connections to the overwhelming financial dominance of his Getty friends.)

Recall that in his recall, Newsom outspent the “yes” vote by a factor of infinity.  Newsom spent more than $100 million to keep his job and while the individual candidates trying to replace him spent a few million, literally not a single dime was spent on a general “Yes on Recall” campaign.

Zip, nada, null, the empty set.

Would it have a made difference? Of course it would have.

Would it have made enough of a difference to change the result and bounce Gavin from office? Maybe, but probably not.  Now if Gavin had run a campaign about his record and not simply yelled “LARRY IS A BIG SCARY BLACK MAN ! and “TRUMP BAD!” every eight seconds it would have, but Newsom got a pass from the media to not actually have to talk about California itself. Ever.

Well, except this once, and it did not go well:

So it seems that when Gavin has comparably infinite resources, he can win.  We’ll see how that holds up on the national stage when, sorry I mean, if he gets there.

Speaking of the national stage, the extremely curious case of Shohei Ohtani and his gambling-addled interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara. To recap: Ohtani moved to the LA Dodgers for 1,847 truckloads of money and took Mizuhara with him.  Recently, ESPN got to poking around Ohtani-related gambling rumors and Mizuhara admitted he owed $4.5 million to his Orange County bookie and that Ohtani was a nice enough guy to pay off his debt.

Seems pretty clear, if overly generous: Ohtani helped out a friend.

His lawyers – not so thrilled. They nearly claimed Mizuhara stole the money, a claim Ohtani re-asserted in a statement Monday.  

But that claim could be seen as a bit of a stretch. There’s paperwork and a multiple wire transfer record and wire transfers – especially for a half-million a pop – are something that banks make very very very sure that the person is the person and that he means it because there really aren’t any “backsies.”

Ohtani did not address that Mizuhara managed to drain his bank account of $4.5 million without him or his lawyers or his accountants or his agent noticing.

Even rich people notice that kind of money.

The problem with the “helping out a friend” story is that it turns out, you can’t use a bookie in California. It also turns out that if you pay a bookie in California, you’re pretty much considered the customer and that is not good and could get him in hot water with the feds and the league.

Mizuhara seemed to hint that Ohtani wired the money himself because he didn’t trust him to pay the bookie instead of going double or nothing on the Globetrotters finally losing a game.

The exact truth is as yet unknown, but neither scenario presented makes a whole lot of sense – either Ohtani is the nicest guy in the world of Mizuhara is the most brilliant thief in the world.

If Ohtani did actually pay off the debt as Mizuhara claims, without knowing the rules and regulations – very plausible – the lawyers should have immediately called the authorities, said Ohtani had no idea about the “can’t pay a bookie himself” thing, emphasize the act of kindness (to say the least) behind events, and agree to pay a fine and maybe even agree to take a “How to be Much Meaner to Your Friends” class.

But by throwing in the confusing theft angle, the lawyers have raised the specter that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t really Mizuhara’s debt and that the translator was covering for Ohtani or some other dodgy doings.

Personally, I strongly doubt that but the scenario cannot be completely discounted. And that’s not good for Ohtani – an amazingly gifted ball player – or Major League Baseball.

Speaking of good, we are pleased to announce – in case you missed it – that the war in Gaza is over.

Thanks to Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Governor Gavin Newsom and their calls and resolutions for a cease fire, Hamas and Israel sat down with each other and decided to call the whole thing off!

In fact – thanks to Newsom and Steinberg – Israel announced the creation of an entirely independent Palestinian state!!

Even more in fact – again, thanks to Newsom and Steinberg – the new state has already made a few major announcements!!!

First, former Harvard president Claudine Gay gets that word back before her name as she has been tapped as the new President of Palestine, Brought to You by Ben and Jerry’s (as you can see, Hamas sold the naming rights already.)

Second, the nation announced its new tourism slogan:  “You’ve got a Chum in Pal-estine!”

Third, and just to make sure the whole world knows how serious the new nation is about keeping the peace, the government announced that it will no longer call for the eradication of Israel and for th death of all Jews; instead, the new and improved Palestinian stance is that they merely hope all Jews die naturally, peacefully, and before they have children and within the next 10 years.

And finally, to really express how happy they are that Darell and Gavin suggested the ceasefire – it had never occurred to the Palestinians before – the new nation announced its national anthem.  

Take it away, Katrina and the Waves!

Thanks for reading the Globe!