A last-ditch effort to pull California back from the brink

Hey, it's worth a try.

By Thomas Lifson
August 30, 2018

I fully understand the hatred and contempt many, if not most, conservatives feel toward California. A state blessed with so many advantages has surrendered to left-wing madness and, worst of all, pretends it has something to teach the rest of America. In the thirty-some years I have lived here, California has gone from Reagan Country to thrusting people on the order of Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom onto the national stage.
Of the two, Gavin Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco (and former husband of Kimberly Guilfoyle, late of Fox News and currently rumored to be an intimate friend of Donald Trump, Jr.), is in a position to do more harm in the immediate future, as he is running for governor of California on a platform of state-paid universal health care, including for illegal aliens who manage to cross the state border, from Mexico or Nevada or Oregon.
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom has made his most explicit endorsement yet of a controversial single-payer healthcare proposal that has roiled Democratic politics in California.
Newsom appeared Friday before the California Nurses Assn., the most ardent backers of SB 562, a stalled bill to establish a system in which the state would cover all residents' healthcare costs.
"There's no reason to wait around on universal healthcare and single-payer in California," Newsom said. "It's time to move 562. It's time to get it out of committee." The line prompted cheers and a standing ovation from the audience of about 1,500 members of the nurses' union.

There are only a few problems:
It would cost an estimated $400 billion per year and, although it would eliminate insurance costs for health care consumers, it would also require large tax increases. It would also likely require voters to approve amendments to the state Constitution, and the state would have to secure several federal waivers from the Trump administration.
The $400-billion cost of Newsom's scheme to offer free medical care to illegal aliens and everyone else would triple the state budget. Currently, about half of the state's income tax revenue comes from the top one percent of taxpayers. It is easy to foresee that a tripling of the tax burden (the current marginal income tax rate is 13.3%) could push tax rates to 37% on the highest earners, dwarfing the federal tax top bracket of 24% and yielding a top income tax rate of 61%. Add in the factor that state income taxes are not deductible from federal taxable gross income, resulting in massive double-taxation, and a massive departure of high-income earners is predictable.
As any dope could also foresee, free medical care, no questions asked, would be a magnet for poor people of all sorts, including illegals attracted from everywhere around the world, but most especially from Mexico and Central America.
Is this plan so ridiculous that even California voters would shun Newsom?
A group called Restore Our Values believes that it is worth a try to bring these considerations before California voters and has launched a fairly high-budget TV advertising campaign:



In my book, Gavin Newsom can never be trusted. He had an affair while mayor of San Francisco with his 33-year-old blonde appointments secretary, who was married to his campaign manager and close friend. Philandering male politicians may be wrong, but they are common. Seducing the wife of one of your best friends who also is your employee and carrying on an affair is so reckless, cruel, and stupid that it constitutes a capital offense so far as the public trust is involved.
Will California voters wake up before the state heads down the road of fiscal collapse, mass immigration of medical indigents, and chaos? I would not bet on it. But at least there is a chance.

Photo credit: Flickr.
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