Newsom’s Rule: Rights Deferred, Authority Expanded

The Golden State - no more

Real Clear Politics just released a new poll of polls comparing the leading democrat party candidates for president in 2028.

To use a old SNL joke from the 1980s, the rundown of candidates is “gag me with a spoon” gross.

First, in the lead, of course, is Mr. Gavin Newsom; the main reason being that if optics were electricity, Gavin Newsom could power the entire state. But the truth is that Gavin Newsom is a reckless, unctuous, authoritarian leader who has led California into financial decline and has compromised the rights granted to Americans by the Declaration of Independence, US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Since Gavin Newsom became governor, living in the state has become much more difficult due to rapidly rising housing costs, a growing homeless population despite significant investments, higher taxes and fees, and a cost-of-living crisis that outpaces wages for middle- and working-class families. Concerns about public safety, visible urban decay in major cities, and people fleeing to other states contribute to a declining quality of life. Meanwhile, Newsom’s ridiculous and hugely expensive climate and social policies have raised energy prices and regulatory burdens without providing any improvements to either the climate or to daily life.

The latest insult being that California is advancing a proposed one-time 5% wealth tax on individuals with a net worth of $1 billion or more, known as the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act or Initiative 25-0024. Basically, this is an effort to stop budgetary hemorrhage by arbitrarily taxing the tech bros. Although it is yet to pass, it has already resulted in massive capital (and business) flight from the Golden State, and I hear that there has been a strange rush to purchase high-high-end real estate in Austin, Texas, before the end of 2026 as a way to shelter cash outside the reach of Newsom and his Democrat-controlled legislature.

Newsom has come to personify “suicidal empathy” having led California down a steep path of economic and social decline to divert money and resources into causes that have inflicted real hardship on its residents.

Suicidal empathy occurs when empathy becomes so unrestrained that it ends up excusing, enabling, or accelerating harm; sometimes to others, sometimes to society as a whole. California has become a poster child for this societal ill that is already well advanced as a primary cause of European (and UK) political, social, and economic destruction.

The Normalization of Emergency Power

Furthermore, during COVID-19, Newsom’s executive power overreach, combined with the erosion of civil liberties, occurred as emergency orders shut down businesses, schools, churches, and public gatherings for extended periods, with limited legislative oversight and no clear off-ramps. Mandates and restrictions were often applied unevenly, punishing small businesses and ordinary citizens while politically connected institutions and elites received exceptions, undermining equal protection under the law. These policies normalized government intrusion into personal choice, speech, religion, movement, and livelihood, setting troubling precedents for suspending constitutional rights under indefinite emergency authority.

Gavin Newsom’s expansion of executive public-health power, first through sweeping COVID-19 emergency orders that restricted daily life and economic activity and now into a quasi-CDC state structure with coordinated vaccine policy, continues to concentrate authority in the executive branch at the expense of individual choice and legislative oversight.

California no longer allows religious or personal belief exemptions for school-required vaccines. A state law (SB 277 and related statutes, which Newsom signed into law) removed non-medical exemptions for school vaccinations, meaning students must meet requirements based on health codes, and there’s no formal opt-out for religious objections. Medical exemptions must now meet strict state criteria and are reviewed by public health authorities before being authorized, making them almost impossible to obtain, even for those at the greatest risk of vaccine-related injuries.

California’s Pandemic Playbook Goes Regional

California’s move to bypass federal public-health guidance by creating its own “CDC-like” alliance and issuing unified vaccine restrictions and mandates, which are presented as science-based but instead are normalizing top-down mandates and reducing local input on health decisions, is eroding citizens’ rights and autonomy in personal medical choices. Newsom’s newly formed “West Coast Health Alliance” also includes the states of Oregon, Washington, and now Hawaii.

The West Coast Health Alliance is widely seen as an unelected, regionalized public-health authority that concentrates power among governors and health officials while bypassing voters, legislatures, and local control. Led by Gavin Newsom, the coalition is exporting California-style mandates, particularly around vaccines, across state lines, narrowing medical and religious exemptions and normalizing top-down public-health edicts. This alliance entrenches COVID-era emergency governance, reduces transparency and accountability, and risks treating personal medical decisions as matters of regional compliance rather than individual rights.

Gavin Newsom is proof that confidence is not the same thing as competence, and this is who the democrats want to put in charge of the entire nation.

JD Vance undoubtedly appreciates the gift.

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The Death of the California Dream

Frank Zappa’s “valley girls” grew up to become and birth a generation of Californians who are willing to give up their constitutional rights for security. Generations who have so much guilt drilled into them, that they willing gave up on California’s dream.

One hypothesis is that the consumerist driven California children have rebelled against their shallow lives. That their newly found suicidal empathy, their guilt, is nothing more than an expression of the rebellious nature of a generation that never grew up.

One can only wonder, what the hell is wrong with them?

<JGM>

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<Jill was born in Van Nuys, CA, and grew up along the Santa Barbara coast, so she comes by her disgust of Valley girls honestly>