California Governor to Feds: Give Us the Money or the First Responders 'Get It'

California Governor Gavin Newsom often says on his local coronavirus updates that he’s opened up “70% of California’s economy,” which is abject nonsense as any out-of-work-waiter, nail-tech and Elon Musk can tell you. On national TV, however, the California governor is telling an entirely different story.

The man, who refers to himself as the governor of a Nation-State, is begging for federal money to bail out California’s over-leveraged and underfunded pension system, which is more than $1.5 Trillion in the hole. That’s a T for those of you playing the home game.

Of course he doesn’t say that, silly. He and the other over-leveraged, underfunded states with high tax rates and mandatory programs for everything say they need your money, middle America, because of the ‘Rona. Oregon and Washington, the Crabbe and Goyle to Newsom’s Draco, ride their brooms in close confederation with anything California does.

When the California governor is not dragging the Trump Administration into court over travel bans, state and local tax policy, keeping the state’s doors open for illegal aliens – and 60 other lawsuits – Newsom’s basically complaining about not having enough money to keep his state-wide lockdown going until November’s election.

But Newsom thinks he’s found the silver bullet to get Trump to fork over some of that $3 Trillion from Aunt Nancy “HEROES Act” money. The scam goes like this: Give me the money or HEROES get it.

On CNN’s State of the Union program with Jake Tapper, the California governor made it clear that if he doesn’t get the money, Trump as much as fired the first responders (forgive me in advance for the spotty punctuation. The man speaks in slogans and run-on sentences. I’m doing my best.)

They say [the HEROES Act is] dead on arrival. The next time … I hope they consider this. The next time they want to celebrate our heroes, our first responders, our police officers and fire fighters, consider the fact that they are the first ones who will be laid off by cities and counties. The folks that are out there – the true heroes of this pandemic – our health care workers and nurses – those county health systems that have been ravaged, their budgets have been devastated and depleted their budget depleted – they’re the first ones to be laid off, so we’ve got to square our rhetoric with reality. Twenty percent of Americans are unemployed. And in the next few weeks over a hundred thousand Americans will have lost their lives. These are depression era unemployment numbers.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is reaching for the world’s smallest violin – and a fact sheet – to counter Newsom’s whining, as my PJMedia colleague Stacey Lennox noted.

Hmmm… pic.twitter.com/k4S9xlGvdF

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) May 18, 2020

What a contrast! It turns out that when you open your economy and give way to the knowledge of individuals to run their own businesses, it’s better for everyone. Not so in the command and control high tax, less liberty states. If anything, the coronavirus has shown us that in high relief.

And that debt. Head-shaking.

With apologies to the great Crash Davis, “Man that [debt] got outta here in a hurry. I mean anything travels that [high] oughta have a damn stewardess on it, don’t you think?”

Here’s a tip to Gavin Newsom: Open your state and watch the money roll in instead of ‘jacking it from everyone else.