KUSI television reported on June 12 that “Gov. Brown and the Democrats in Sacramento are in open revolt against President Trump.” While not a new development, it seems to indicate that California is seceding from the Union as it had threatened without providing official notice.
Yes, it’s great fun for some Left Coasters to poke a figurative sharp stick in Trump’s eye. But none of the state’s many ills will be cured by Sacramento blue state-architects fabricating a People’s Republic of California bubble.
Trump had hardly hung up the telephone after taking Hillary Clinton’s concession call before talk from riled-up Californians who decided it would be a fine idea to leave the Union roared to the heavens. After all, Hillary Clinton won 62 percent of the California vote and Trump less than 32 percent. Why should so many have to endure the presidency of a man they detest?
The first formal act of resistance/secession was the Legislature’s hiring of Obama Attorney General Eric Holder in January. Holder, whose contract isn’t being renewed, was brought in to “safeguard the values of the people of California.” Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De León said Holder would be the state’s “lead litigator” and be provided “a legal team of expert lawyers on the issues of climate change, women and civil rights, the environment, immigration, voting rights – to name just a few.”
More recently, as KUSI reported, Brown and the Democrats have been declaring all of California a “sanctuary state,” and are rushing to establish a single-payer health care system as Trump and congressional Republicans try to pull down ObamaCare. Furthermore, the Governor is “declaring open season on the White House withdrawal from the Paris Accord.”
“He is continuing cooperation in a climate deal with the German government, the German environment minister in San Francisco instead of Washington,” said KUSI.
Brown’s cooperation with Germany and his effort, as described by NBC “to go overseas to lead America’s anti-global warming agenda,” is particularly interesting. The Constitution says that states cannot enter into international treaties. The authority to negotiate treaties resides in the federal executive branch and the power to confirm is left to the U.S. Senate. So what’s Brown’s plan? Entering into a symbolic international accord – which is all the Paris agreement is – whose provisions cannot be enforced?
California, of course, can chase its own environmental agenda. It’s done that for decades. But is it wise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions tighter than any government in history?
Already on the books is Senate Bill 32, signed into law in September by Brown. It requires greenhouse gas emissions in California to be peeled back to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, after first cutting them to 1990 levels in just three years from now. This bit of virtue signaling gone wild will cut deeply into economic growth. Environmental Economics, based in San Francisco, estimates that reducing emissions between 26 percent and 38 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 could cost $23 billion year. Don’t even ask what trouble a 40 percent cut could cause.
Sacramento’s attempt to force a single-payer system on the state will also have wretched consequences. Let’s visit a few places known for their state-operated health care systems.
First stop, the United Kingdom, where patients are denied care because it has to be rationed in a “free” system that’s invited a demand that widely outstrips supply.
Next up, Canada, where waiting times are longer than they have ever been, according to the Fraser Institute, and can be so extended that they become deadly.
Then there’s the Department of Veterans Affairs. CNN has reported it’s a system in which “veterans languish and die” while awaiting treatment.
Finally, Cuba – well, not even the defenders of universal health care will go there, neither literally nor anecdotally, unless we count leftist Michael Moore, whose documentaries should be more appropriately recognized as propaganda. Yet Sacramento seems to want CubaCare by another name for California.
Sacramento also wants to spite Trump by declaring ours a “sanctuary state” through the California Values Act (already passed in the Senate). This creates both a public safety risk and fiscal affliction that will hurt most Californians, and is an assault on the rule of law. The only beneficiaries of Senate Bill 54 would be the party that controls the state and those who have broken federal law by entering the country illegally.
Given how destructive the majority party’s Sacramento agenda is, it’s hard to see how it protects “California values.” It looks more like a war on Californians.
