By Steve Pomper
According to several reports, including at thehill.com, California Governor Gavin Newsom recently appeared to be threatening to lay off public safety employees if the federal government refuses to hand over the cash—oh, and I think to hold his breath and stomp his feet, too.
This doesn’t surprise me. It’s like with local governments when it’s time to vote for a new or to renew a bond or levy. You’ll notice they never cry about the city needing a new sewer sucking truck or having to lay off parks and recreation workers. Nope, it’s always they need a new fire engine, or patrol cars, or they threaten to lay off firefighters and cops.
As Victoria Taft at PJ Media recently interpreted Gov. Newsom’s rant, “Give me the money or HEROES get it.” Here’s what Gov. Newsom told CNN’s Jake Tapper:
“They say [the HEROES Act is] dead on arrival. The next time … I hope they consider this. The next time they want to celebrate our heroes, our first responders, our police officers and fire fighters, consider the fact that they are the first ones who will be laid off by cities and counties.” [Bold mine]
Gov. Newsom speaks as if the past three months of the CCP virus shutdown has been the primary cause of the economic devastation resulting from decades of state fiscal mismanagement. He has artificially exacerbated this latest worsening of an ongoing financial crisis by governing as the feudal lord of his self-proclaimed “nation-state” (wait for it…).
Holding public safety hostage is just another time-honored local political tactic but this time happening at the state level. Scaring people works. We’re seeing it right now all across our country. And a certain California governor is one reason people remain scared even after growing evidence is showing we may not have had enough to fear to justify shutting down our country.
We’re learning every day this pandemic is not worse than any other health “crisis” we’ve ever faced. But the overreaction by some leaders has created one of the worst economic crises we’ve ever faced.
And just look at the awkward position some leaders have put the nation’s law enforcement officers in, turning cops into petty tyrants to enforce their arbitrary edicts. Regardless of what you think about whether their authority is legitimate, they have put officers in the prickly middle of the issue.
Some politician’s capacity for straight-facedness (yes, now they’ve got me making up words) is uncanny. With a straight face, Gov. Newsom said California’s “budgetary concerns are a ‘direct result’ of the crisis.” Really? So, the state’s fiscal health was fine before the pandemic? Oh, and “budgetary concerns” has to be one of the biggest understatements ever uttered by a governor about a state’s impending economic apocalypse.
He said the federal government has a “moral and ethical obligation” to send funds to the states. Sorry, California’s fiscal straights resulted from decades of mismanagement of one-party government in Sacramento. As for morality and ethics, I’m looking for the moral authority the federal law and fiscal sanity-ignoring governor has to even address the issue, especially in such a haughty manner.
This governor, who’s blaming the CCP Virus for his “budgetary concerns,” is admonishing the federal government (the American taxpayer) that it has a moral obligation to refill an irresponsible state’s depleted coffers.
And he does this after recently announcing a plan to spend $75 million dollars (which, by its own admission, the state doesn’t have) on people in the United States illegally. Does he see this as an act of fiscal responsibility while simultaneously jacking the American people for more dough by putting cop jobs on the chopping block? Talk about spitting in the face of reality.
PJ Media published a Twitter post from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott showing a chart of the budgets of America’s four largest states, two Republican and two Democrat. The red states of Texas and Florida have balanced budgets. California and New York, both blue states, have anything but. New York’s debt is $6.1 billion, and California has a mind-blowing debt of $54 billion.
Oh, and California’s pension system is also underfunded by a disgraceful $1.5 trillion (yes, with a “T”), which also affects public safety personnel. Where is the “morality” in that number, even if, as the New York Times reported, Gavin Newsom calls himself the governor of a “Nation-State” (there it is). How much arrogance is one person capable of?
And how should California’s cops feel? The governor of their state is dangling their livelihoods and their communities’ safety over an abyss and challenging the federal government to make him drop them if they don’t give in to his petulant demands.
Gov. Newsom is exploiting the fact that cops are necessary to the safety and security of the state. He apparently has no compunction about scaring the citizenry to get his way. Once again, law enforcement officers are pawns in a political game that can only end badly.
Either President Trump slaps down a fiscally irresponsible governor’s attempt to extort the American people, in part, by threatening law enforcement and other public safety and public health jobs, or the President capitulates to the shakedown, and our children and grandchildren (and theirs) can deal with adding more of the nation’s life’s energy to an already enormous national debt.
Oh, and all the while California, after a bailout and while continuing to elect unconscionable sociopathic narcissistic governors, keeps on with its fiscally irresponsible ways, and continues to use cops, and threats to eliminate their jobs, as a truncheon against the people. I mean, if the feds—the American taxpayer—bail them out even though they created their own fiscal Gordian knot, if the federal government cuts the knot away, they’ll just retie the state’s economy into that fiscal knot again and again and….
Why wouldn’t they?