The California Recall Election

Full confession: I do not subscribe to or read the New York Times. I certainly do not waste time reading the mental drool of one Paul Krugman. The former professor has turned into a full-throated and rather mindless propagandist. For Times readers, apparently no longer the best or the brightest, this is not a problem. Feel some pity for Times readers.

Anyway, I was alerted to the existence of the Krugman brain, by a tweet. In it he said, referring to California:

A crazy recall process could lead to repudiation of the state’s policy successes. 

Of course, Krugman is the only living mortal who actually seems to believe that California is a great policy success. It is pathetic, to say the least.

In order to save you the trouble of looking up Krugman’s thoughts, I refer to an authoritative thinker on all matters California. Joel Kotkin, a Democrat, we are led to believe, but a man with integrity has been chronicling the failures of California for years now. (via Maggie's Farm) He lives there. He knows the state. He specializes in matters demographic. All of these qualifications Krugman lacks.

Here are a couple of salient points by Kotkin:

Newsom insists California is ‘doing pretty damn well’, citing record profits in Silicon Valley from both the major tech firms and a host of IPOs. He seems to be unaware that California’s middle- and working-class incomes have been heading downwards for a decade, while only the top five per cent of taxpayers have done well. As one progressive Democratic activist put it in Salon, the recall reflects a rebellion against ‘corporate-friendly elitism and tone-deaf egotism at the top of the California Democratic Party’.

“Tone deaf egotism”-- does that remind you of anyone else? Kotkin continues to critique the state regulatory policies, especially those that were designed to save the planet:

Much of this can be traced back to regulatory policies tied to climate change (along with high taxes). These policies have driven out major companies – in energy, home construction, manufacturing and civil engineering – that traditionally employed middle-skilled workers. Instead, job growth has been concentrated in generally low-pay sectors, like hospitality. Over the past decade, 80 per cent of Californian jobs, notes one academic, have paid under the median wage. Half of these paid less than $40,000.

Other government disasters can be traced back to efforts to present California as the global policymaking model for reversing climate change. Newsom predictably blamed the recent fires on climate change and pledged to switch to all-electric power over the next decade and eliminate gas-powered cars by 2035.

How well did these green policies serve the economy? Or did they make California’s forests into kindling:

Yet, as Pro Publica notes, the fires were made far worse by green policies, including constant lawsuits against local efforts to clean up dead vegetation. In fact, thanks to these largely preventable fires, California’s carbon emissions are now increasing.

Much the same can be said about the recent drought. Under Pat Brown, who served as governor during the 1960s, California constructed an enormous system of aqueducts and reservoirs. But, in recent years, the state stopped building new storage, and began siphoning water supplies into the river system, even in years of severe drought. Once California could withstand several dry years – now just one jeopardises the entire system, and threatens the state’s agriculture industry.

As for the California school system, it ranks among the worst in the country:

The state’s public schools were largely closed during the pandemic, although they did find time to add a course called ‘ethnic studies’ to the curriculum. This course promises to ‘build new possibilities for post-imperial life that promote collective narratives of transformative resistance’. But it won’t do much for the almost three-out-of-five California high schoolers who graduate unprepared for either college or a career. In terms of educating poor students, California ranks 49th out of America’s 50 states in education-performance tables. Indeed, San Francisco, the epicentre of California’s woke culture, has the worst test scores for African-Americans of any county in the state.

Chances are, Kotkin concludes, that Newsom will win the recall election. And yet, if progressive policies are so obviously failing in California, surely the Democratic Party will change its errant ways. You think?

Yet even if the recall fails to oust Newsom, a close vote would suggest trouble ahead for progressives, not only in California but also across the US. There is a growing gap between the Democrats, backed by Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and vast swathes of their own historic base. A close call or a recall victory would send a stinging rebuke to the Democratic elites. They now face the prospect of losing constituencies that they long saw as essential to maintaining power.