Speaking of solutions to the universal problem of living. Confronted with catastrophes on all sides, our politicians turn to the meditative practice of Telling Us What to Do, and specifically to the high-capacity manufacture of new initiatives you’d swear were designed by our enemies in a city in hell hacked out of salt. Since last we met, Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued yet another emergency order, this one to ban commercial property evictions — because, you know, during COVID, the state has better uses for your property than you do. Newsom’s order doesn’t explain how the eviction of commercial tenants does anything to slow the spread of COVID, nor how commercial landlords are supposed to pay their own bills or maintain their properties without the power of eviction. The governor’s seal should be revised to include, under a gorgeous head of hair and massive ambition, the Latin phrase “Id est quaestio ad aliam personam” — That’s somebody else’s problem.

Despite his hip-hop artist’s freewheeling use of language – his use of words like “emergency” and “authority” – the governor will not do what he could by the time you finish reading this sentence: Use his expansive emergency authority to suspend collective bargaining and allow teachers to return to classrooms. 

Or maybe problems to the solutions of living? Meanwhile, under the cupola (as they call the shapely dome that protects our legislators from the justice of lightning strikes delivered by outraged divinities), there’s the bill that returns like a recurring nightmare to haunt the very retailers Newsom’s executive order is supposed to protect. Cupertino Assemblyman Evan Low’s bill would fine retailers $1,000 for distinguishing between boys and girls toys and clothes. “Brick-and-mortar shops would have to display the majority of their products and clothing aimed at children in one undivided, unisex area on the sales floor,” report our friends at Reason. “They'd also be barred from putting up signage that would indicate whether a product was intended for a boy or girl.” Low helpfully offers suggestions for government-approved signage — “kids," "unisex," or "gender neutral.” We’re not clear how this meets the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expression for adults who own retail stores or feckless shoppers who need a pair of tiny pants, not a lecture. But Low hews to a standard far higher than mere Constitution: "This is an issue of children being able to express themselves without bias.”

Elsewhere in Capitol Cancelling: Whatever your thoughts about the November 3 election, if  California’s lawmakers don’t like them, they don’t want to hear them. A new bill proposes silencing in our statehouse Republicans who might believe there were shenanigans. (Insert at this juncture usual stuff about First Amendment.) The Sacramento Bee says those targeted include Rep. Ken Calvert, Corona; Rep. Mike Garcia, Santa Clarita; Rep. Darrell Issa, El Cajon; Rep. Doug LaMalfa, Richvale; Rep Devin Nunes, Tulare; Rep. Jay Obernolte, Big Bear Lake; and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Bakersfield. As with confiscating commercial property (above), forcing retailers to speak only in the tongue of gender neutralty (ditto), our lawmakers are untroubled by antiquated notions of liberty. Author Assemblyman Marc Levine of Greenbrae says he’s just protecting the “sacred shrine of our democracy.” 

Let’s pause for a moment of hope, shall we? Yes, let’s. California’s government unions have lost some 250,000 members since the 2018 Supreme Court decision in Janus v AFSCME – in part because of California Policy Center’s outreach to union members. We educate California’s government employees on their right to leave unions because union leaders won’t. Declining union membership means declining union revenue – because every time a government worker leaves a union, the union dues go with them, and an angel gets its wings. California government payroll records obtained monthly by CPC put the unions’ annual revenue loss at about $200 million – and that means less money with which to corrupt California politics. Our success is giving union leaders a case of the fantods. We’ve been so successful with assisting workers trapped in the execrable Service Employees International Union, for instance, that the union’s leaders now tell their members we’re terrible – high praise, indeed!

Friends don’t let friends join California’s government unions. If you or someone you know is paying dues to a government union, go this site right here and learn how to save money while saving California. 

“The podcast too big to ignore”: Listen to Radio Free California, the esteemed National Review podcast hosted by yours truly and yours truly’s friend, CPC boardmember David Bahnsen. Available everywhere fine podcasts are available, RFC serves an audience of tens of thousands of enlightened listeners who call it “refreshingly different,” “always enjoyable,” “a continually pleasant surprise,” “smart,” “witty,” “amusing,” “an essential guide to California,” “the best, really,” and (my favorite) “twisted and ironic.” This week, David and I discuss in depth some of the stuff upon which I’ve lightly touched in this missive – plus this fascinating story about the Biden administration marching up the Supreme Court steps to denounce (seriously) then-California Attorneys General Xavier Becerra and Kamala Harris’s hamfisted/undependable/dangerous mishandling of confidential info about conservative donors to California causes. 

New marketing slogan: “California! It’s not just for self-inflicted disasters anymore!” Please read “The Best Bagels Are in California (Sorry, New York),” a New York Times story supporting what I’ve said for years now: our governors are equally incompetent (though that’s Andrew Cuomo pulling ahead by a nose hair), our states are dominated by the corrupting influence of government unions (we’re No. 1 in that dismal competition), and we’re both equally arrogant about our global leadership. But we have the best toast with a hole.  

He keeps pitching! Like many of the homeless in surrounding East LA, that was Gavin Newsom speaking audibly to almost no one inside Dodger Stadium. And like those same deeply troubled brothers and sisters of the street, the governor, under the banner of his annual State of the State address, was declaiming stuff that CPC’s Brandon Ristoff found simply bizarre — so provably/easily/verifiably false that one’s left wondering about the gov’s mental health. California has one of the lowest death rates in the nation? No. “California now ranks sixth in the world for vaccine distribution, ahead of countries like Israel”? What’s the Hebrew word for “wrong”? That the governor and his wife know the challenges of distance-learning? Mr. Newsom, please do not micturate upon our lower appendanges and tell us it’s raining: your four offspring attend — in person! — a private school in a public school district that the teachers union has closed to in-person learning. I could go on, but that’s Brandon’s job. Read him. 

COVID: A time for revolution: There was also this telling moment in the gov’s State of the State speech: “When this pandemic ends – and it will end soon,” he said, “we’re not going back to normal. Normal was never good enough. Normal accepts inequity…. So, our journey back must also be a path to close inequities." You know who else said that? The leadership of the United Teachers of Los Angeles — last summer. Declaring that they wouldn’t settle for something as simple as vaccines or a safe return to in-person learning, the union issued a manifesto. Reading it is like reading Mein Kampf and wondering how so few saw the coming disaster. Check this out from page 11 of the union manifesto, “Same storm different boats”: 

When “normal” means deep race and class fissures that result in increased infection and death rates in Black, Brown, and high-poverty communities; when “normal” means increasing police budgets even as schools, libraries, and public health face catastrophic cuts; when “normal” means corporations receiving trillions in bailout funds as federal commitments to support special education and high-poverty students remain unfulfilled; when “normal” means working families lining up for miles for food banks while US billionaires increased their wealth by over $584 billion — it is clear that going back to normal is not an option. This crisis presents an opportunity to create a new normal that supports all students.

Know this, dear friends: California’s public school lockdown was never about teacher, student or community safety. It has always been about expanding the power of the teachers union. Creating a phony safety threat, and then theatrically pretending to protect teachers via school closures is designed to (a) generate the loyalty of teachers to that union (b) in order to secure dues payments generating $300 million annually – money that (c) the California Teachers Association and its locals use to maintain their grip on politicians too fearful to stand up for ordinary Californians. 

Speaking of the United Teachers of Los Angeles: You may recall that CPC runs the Parent Union, a network of reform-minded parents of school-age kids. We support those parents in their frequent and otherwise insurmountable fights with government unions in the schools. This week, Parent Union members in LA retrieved this post from the union’s private, member’s-only Facebook page, and handed it over to local Fox News reporter Bill Melugin, who tweeted it:

Teach, sister! Fresno County teacher and Parent Union ally Lea Steele wants to get back into the classroom – in part because she knows school closures are a greater threat to children than Covid. We helped get her powerful op-ed published in the Fresno Bee. Lance Christensen joined the Trevor Carey Show (20 minutes into the podcast) in the Central Valley to encourage parents to speak out for their kids at school board meetings with resources available on our Parent Union toolkit. 

California leads the nation – off a cliff. With our friends at Americans for Prosperity, CPC signed onto a letter warning Congress of the very problematic PRO Act making its way through the Capitol. What’s CPC’s stake in national legislation? The PRO Act is the nationalization of California’s stupid AB5 – like Dr. Frankenstein putting an abnormal brain in a seven-foot-tall, 54-inch-wide gorilla. Driven (pun!) through the statehouse by Assembly Member Lorena Gonzalez (D–San Diego), AB5 was aimed primarily at Uber, Lyft and DoorDash drivers in an attempt to steer them (ditto!) into unions. In the process, it swept up multiple other freelancers – including photographers, caterers, journalists, wedding planners, graphic designers, and translators. It has since been Swiss-cheesed by multiple carve-outs for specific employee groups, and its application to app-based drivers was eliminated by voters on November 3. So, sure, like selling a vehicle that detonates on impact with reality and rains flaming auto parts across the landscape, why shouldn’t Congress impose AB5 on the entire nation? I’m asking seriously because Lorena Gonzalez would.

Americans know that CPC knows government unions. Something similar happened in Idaho’s legislature last week, where lawmakers were considering a bill that to allow collective bargaining for that state’s law enforcement officers. In written testimony, CPC policy genius Lance Christensen advised them against it. Citing the financial impact of government unions on California’s state and local budgets, Lance did not once deploy the phrase “Don’t Californicate Idaho” because he’s not 13 years old – or me. The bill died 6-3 in committee. 

Finally, a word about California’s Harry and Megan: Far be it from your faithful scribe to measure the depth of another’s experience — his/her pain or joy or inexplicable affection for spicy food – but I was truly weirded out by Oprah’s recent interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from the couple’s lovely SoCal home, conveniently located around the corner from Oprah’s place. Leveraging their own global celebrity, contempt/fascination for the British Crown, the terror of actual self-harm, and America’s newfound hatred of itself (for “systemic racism,” “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” and that greatest of evils, “capitalism”), it’s now apparent this is no attempt to bring down the British monarchy. In a weird way it’s that monarchy’s revenge on the American democratic experiment: California has a new social order, an aristocracy with a Prince and Princess of Woke. 

Note re: the prince, who truly is, well, a prince of a guy in so many ways — a man of royal birth who nevertheless served courageously in combat with his regiment in Afghanistan, and who likely sees in his recent experience a terrifying flashback to his mum’s harsh treatment and terrible end. Stipulated. But his problem (and may we call him the Californian Formerly Known as Prince?), is not, as he told Oprah, the whiteness of his privilege. It’s his privilege itself — he is literally a prince. And Ms. Markle, a biracial woman born in California, is his wife. And they’re now Californians. I’d say that’s a pretty generous world. 

It’s fitting that they (the PPW) chose to live in California, in this engine room of the steam-powered progressive movement. They could have lived anywhere in the world, but chose instead a $14 million Santa Barbara County mansion by the sea. I see in the couple the decades-old unfolding of a new class structure, a system in which each of us is incentivized to establish like the cast of a reality TV series that we’re the Greatest Victim and therefore have a powerful claim on the property and civil liberties of others. This way lies the perdition of a thousand similar and ancient experiments. Led by the likes of the Prince & Princess of Woke, we have boarded leaking little watercraft we think will ferry us to Good Time Island, boats that will instead, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “beat on, against the current” of true human progress, and carry us “back ceaselessly into the past.” 

--w

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Will Swaim is the President of the California Policy Center and co-host of National Review's Radio Free California podcast.