Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, as I had mentioned earlier, has had a series of podcast interviews and he’s selected conservatives. Charlie Kirk, Michael Savage, and others have been meeting with him.
Steve Bannon was the most recent and they’re asking him a series of questions, but none of them seem to really get to the heart of the matter. And that is to ask Gov. Newsom why this state is a dysfunctional and unsustainable project.
I’m not talking just about the $100 to $200 billion high-speed rail debacle. I’m not even talking about Gov. Newsom’s blowing up of four dams on the Klamath River. Took about a quarter of $1 trillion that he took out of a bond measures fund to do what? To build reservoirs.
I’m not even talking about his cancellation or delaying of three reservoirs— Los Banos Grande, the Sites Reservoir, and Temperance Flat—which would have given us, in a year like this, where we have ample rainfall and snowmelt, about 5 million acre-feet of storage, which would have come in handy in August.
I’m not talking about any of that. I’m talking about the more dire catastrophes.
Right now, the state started the year 2024 $76 billion in debt. We have the highest income tax rate at 13.3. We have the highest gas taxes at nearly 70 cents a gallon. We have among the highest sales taxes, property taxes.
But here’s my question. Right now, Gov. Newsom, half of all births in California are covered by Medi-Cal. We have spent almost $11 billion on indigent aid, mostly for people who are here illegally. You are now broke. Even that was not enough. You are asking to borrow $3.4 billion from the general fund, which was in arrears, to pay for the health care of people who were largely allowed to come into California illegally. More importantly, in addition to that, almost 20% of all the people who are PG&E—Pacific Gas and Electric—users have not paid their bills. It’s a fantastic multibillion-dollar shortfall. What is your plan to address that?
If it’s to raise rates, we already pay 70% to 80% higher electric bills than any other state, and in general, higher than the average American. We’re up to German territory. What is your solution to that?
Recently there have been surveys of roads and infrastructure. California is either dead last or among the five worst states as far as the conditions of their freeways and general roads. How can that be when we have the highest gas taxes in the United States by far?
So, my question to you is, you’re governor, you have this enormous tax base, you have a $9 trillion industry in Silicon Valley, and yet you will not address these existential needs that we don’t have affordable power; we don’t know what to do with the millions of people, 1 out of every 5, who won’t or can’t pay their power bill; we don’t have enough money to give medical support for illegal aliens.
Twenty-seven percent of the population of the state was not born in the United States. That’s an enormous task of integration and assimilation and civic education in our schools, which we’re not doing.
Our school test scores are among the bottom 10 in the United States.
And given all that, it’s an abject disaster because what you have done, governor—and you didn’t do it all, you inherited a lot from your predecessor, Jerry Brown—but you created a state which has the highest taxes and the worst social services.
And the result of that is three things.
No. 1, 10 to 15 million people said, “If I’m going to pay the highest taxes and yet live in a state that has a high crime rate, poor social services, awful schools, I’m out,” and they have left. And that was our traditional middle-class entrepreneurial cohort.
Second, we have more illegal aliens than any other state in the union. You have welcomed them in without any plan: how to assimilate, integrate, house, feed, take care of their health needs. So, we have a huge number of poor people; 1 out of every 3 people on public assistance in the United States lives in California. We’re up to 20% of our population lives below the poverty rate.
Third, the only reason that this country, this state is even in existence is that we have this global tech empire in Silicon Valley. But the result of it is we have a pyramidal medieval society in which we have a small billionaire class and 1% of Californians pay about 50% of the income tax that has utopian agendas about solar and wind power and diversity and equity, but they’re not the majority of the population. They’re not the minority of the—they’re a tiny little influential coastal elite who has become the richest group of people in history because of Silicon Valley.
And then you’ve taken the middle class and driven them out of California. And then we have this large segment on the bottom of the pyramid that is poor. It cannot afford to pay its power bill. It has no access to health care because the system is broke, given the numbers of people who’ve come here from southern Mexico and other places in dire poverty. And you have no plan, instead we’re talking about transgender athletes and men participating in women’s sports.
That’s nothing, that is, of all the great issues in the world, that’s nothing compared to what’s going on in California. We are in an existential freefall. And you as governor either can’t or won’t do anything about it. And if this continues, in another decade, this is going to be a completely medieval Third World society, if it isn’t already.
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