California Crazy

National Review Online

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

 

California has been a reliable incubator of far-left policies for quite a while, but the state seems to be outdoing itself as of late.

 

Perhaps the ghastliest policy is the state’s new transgender-sanctuary law. It essentially takes the principle of sanctuary cities on immigration and applies it to transgender laws in states. The likely consequences of that law will include cases of pitting children against parents, denying parents custody of their children, and performing irreversible procedures on minors that they may later regret.

 

California is taking a similar attitude toward abortion. In the aftermath of Dobbs, Governor Gavin Newsom wants the state to become a “sanctuary” for abortionists, going so far as to advertise California’s openness to abortion in other states. California’s status as an abortion safe haven may even be enshrined into the state constitution.

 

Newsom signed a Covid “misinformation” law that flies in the face of the First Amendment. The law will punish doctors for medical advice they give their patients about Covid if the California state government decides it is misinformation, on a more or less arbitrary basis. Even a progressive public-health activist wrote in the Washington Post against this bill, so egregious are its implications.

 

Newsom wants a windfall-profits tax on oil companies. Doing so would further discourage investment in energy production, the existing discouragements being part of the reason for high gasoline prices to begin with. But Newsom is undeterred, saying, “We’re not going to stand by while greedy oil companies fleece Californians.”

 

Newsom is perfectly fine if Californians are fleeced, so long as the California state government is the one doing the fleecing. At an average combined state-and-local rate of 68.15 cents per gallon, California’s gas tax is roughly twice as high as the average state’s. That’s the highest gasoline tax in the country, and lawmakers raised it again earlier this year.

 

But don’t worry, every once in a while when politicians are feeling generous (which has a mysterious way of aligning with the electoral calendar), they’ll give you some of your money back. California residents are getting $1,050 from the state government this month, in checks that Newsom claims are to “help address rising costs,” ignoring the role of government stimulus in contributing to the current levels of inflation.

 

It never occurs to these politicians to avoid taking so much money from residents in the first place. California is sitting on an enormous budget surplus, and rather than reforming its completely uncompetitive tax code to provide long-term relief, it is sending out these checks — while asking to raise income taxes. Voters in November will consider Proposition 30, which would increase income taxes on high earners to fund electric-vehicle charging stations.

 

Never mind that those high earners are already funding any number of other California boondoggles, including the notorious high-speed rail project that has ballooned in cost from $33 billion to $113 billion, that may never be finished, and whose mismanagement was detailed by the New York Times over the weekend. Or that those high earners are fleeing the state. Or that California already has an extremely progressive state income tax, yet still has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the country. The charging stations are a must.

 

But then again, Californians won’t always be able to use them because the state can’t generate enough electricity on especially hot days to sustain current levels of electric-vehicle usage. The state asked residents to avoid charging during a few hot days this summer, hot days not being a particularly unusual occurrence in the state, but nonetheless presenting a challenge.

 

It’s okay, just stick with gasoline cars. But Sacramento is banning sales of those by 2035. The state is forcing people to become evermore dependent on an unreliable electric grid, which is prone to power shortages because of the state’s radical environmentalist policies.

 

The state is also harming one of its most important industries, logistics, through overregulation. It’s harder to be a small-business trucker due to A.B. 5, and, even if truckers get past that, if their trucks’ engines were built before 2010, they’ll soon be illegal. The state’s rail infrastructure needs additional capacity, and private companies are willing to put up the money to build it, but the state’s environmental regulations have blocked construction of a key project for years.

 

The city-owned ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are prime destinations for freight from Asia, but they’re the most inefficient in the world, and organized labor makes improvement difficult. It’s no wonder more shippers are going elsewhere.

 

And California wants more workers to unionize (the Teamsters are overjoyed at the implications of A.B. 5 for truckers) and further entrench economic stagnation in other sectors. A $22 minimum wage for fast-food workers, which the unions are pushing hard, could be on the way, which would increase prices and cause restaurant chains to look for more ways to automate service.

 

All of this would be bad enough if only Californians had to suffer this misgovernance, but the entire country is affected by California’s failures. It’s the largest state by population and by economic impact, and it has a desire to spread its influence throughout the country. For the sake of Californians and of Americans, the Golden State needs better governance, and it needs it soon.