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California is Not a National Model, it is a National Warning: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bravado is undermined by reality.
City Jounal ^ | 07/29/2022 | Michael Lucci

Posted on 07/29/2022 10:45:52 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

California’s natural beauty and balmy climate are the envy of every state. Yet a strange thing has happened over the last two years: for the first time in state history, California has begun to shrink.

You wouldn’t know it from Governor Gavin Newsom’s air of public confidence. In the last few weeks, Newsom accepted a national award for education transformation and ran political ads to warn Floridians that their freedom is under attack. In both cases, he offered California’s progressive model as the right fit to reform the rest of America.

But his proud rhetoric doesn’t match California’s declining reality. Americans are voting with their feet to reject Newsom’s California model and heading to the very states that he criticizes.

The central plank of Newsom’s education transformation has been, in essence, to leave poor kids behind. California ranked last of all states in reopening schools after the pandemic, and the poor suffered the most. A study by Harvard economists finds that in states like California, where remote instruction was more common during the pandemic, high-poverty schools spent an additional nine weeks in remote instruction compared with low-poverty schools. In contrast, states like Florida and Texas had much lower rates of remote instruction, and smaller differences in its overall use between high- and low-poverty districts.

Brookings researchers have also demonstrated how school closings and remote learning hurt poor students. They showed that national “test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20% in math and 15% in reading.” The gap grew fastest in California.

Instead of a national model, Newsom’s California is a national warning of what happens when the progressive education establishment captures a state.

The political ads Newsom ran in Florida reveal perhaps an even greater disconnect between his rhetoric and California’s reality. Newsom warned Floridians that freedom “is under attack in your state,” and urged Florida residents to “join the fight, or join us in California where we still believe in freedom.” Newsom’s messaging turns gaslighting into a political strategy. If California believes in freedom, it has an odd way of showing it. After years of mask mandates, school closures, and pervasive lockdowns, Californians must be wondering what limits exist on state government intrusion into their lives. Nonetheless, they can’t help but notice the newfound freedoms that criminals and street homeless have enjoyed in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, where the rule of law has eroded at the hands of activist district attorneys.

Meantime, Californians who vote with their feet are fleeing to Florida in record numbers. From 2010 to 2018, California lost an average of 1,000 people to Florida per year, according to IRS taxpayer migration data. Then, from 2018 to 2019, California lost 4,800 residents to Florida. And from 2019 to 2020—the first IRS data that cover the early pandemic months—California lost 11,500 residents to Florida.

California’s outmigrants are bringing lots of income with them. The state shed an average of $270 million of annual income to Florida from 2010 to 2018. The annual loss jumped to $1.2 billion from 2018 to 2019, and then to $2 billion in 2019–2020. California’s losses, and Florida’s gains, have almost certainly accelerated in the intervening years. And Florida is not the only state picking up California exiles. The Golden State’s losses are at or near record levels with other states, too—in particular, states like Texas that Newsom targets with criticism.

Newsom wants Americans to believe that he has it figured out in California, and that the new American model for freedom is a progressive one. Yet his state’s aggressive population pivot has coincided almost precisely with his tenure as governor, making Newsom the first California leader to preside over a shrinking state rather than a growing one.

No amount of political rhetoric can mask California’s reality under Governor Newsom. Low-income students are being left behind, the rule of law is eroding, and residents are leaving in record numbers. The many former Californians watching Newsom’s ads in Texas and in Florida can only marvel at the hubris of the man.


Michael Lucci is a senior fellow at the Cicero Institute.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Mexico; News/Current Events; US: California
KEYWORDS: anarchotyranny; bloggers; california; californication; dystopia; gavinnewsom; mexico; model; newsom; whitesupremacists

1 posted on 07/29/2022 10:45:52 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
Wasn't there a Newsome recall vote in California? When that failed disgruntled citizens called the moving companies. That is the new growth industry on the Left Coast! I just hope that those who resettled in Florida and Texas left their liberal politics back in California.
2 posted on 07/29/2022 10:57:07 PM PDT by immadashell (Save Innocent Lives: Ban Gun Free Zones)
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To: immadashell

Heh, newsom handily beat that recall and he’s top #1 to be ont he dem’s 2024 candidate.

He’s advertising in red states, and I think he’s a likely 2024 winner. This country is just too left.


3 posted on 07/29/2022 11:04:00 PM PDT by Houserino
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To: Houserino

I would prefer DeSantis not to run in 2024, but if it is Newsom, DeSantis would be IMHO the better opponent to run against him.


4 posted on 07/29/2022 11:07:08 PM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Houserino

Not, joker face is not pres material


5 posted on 07/29/2022 11:09:28 PM PDT by markman46 (engage brain before using keyboard!!!you)
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To: markman46

If the Press wants him to be President, they can make him look good enough.


6 posted on 07/29/2022 11:10:07 PM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: SeekAndFind

The probable secret move going on is to get Biden out of the White House soon and to have Newsom run for President. As with VP Spiro T. Agnew suddenly resigning to be replaced by Gerald Ford just in time for Nixon to be out, there will be a plan that removes Kamala Harris.

Then women leftists can say “Gavin is so much cuter than ——(GOP candidate)” “Yeah, he’s a hottie. I like his smile and his hair a real lot. He’s got my vote.”


7 posted on 07/29/2022 11:11:51 PM PDT by frank ballenger (You have summoned up a thundercloud. You're gonna hear from me. Anthem by Leonard Cohen)
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To: frank ballenger

Then women leftists can say “Gavin is so much cuter than ——(GOP candidate)” “Yeah, he’s a hottie. I like his smile and his hair a real lot. He’s got my vote.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m0vtpyUbQY


8 posted on 07/29/2022 11:13:20 PM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: dfwgator

women’s right to vote clip....

Loved it. Another winner.


9 posted on 07/29/2022 11:20:52 PM PDT by frank ballenger (You have summoned up a thundercloud. You're gonna hear from me. Anthem by Leonard Cohen)
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To: SeekAndFind; All

I live in Ca. The guy is an empty suit. Like most democrats, he’s also STUPID.


10 posted on 07/29/2022 11:51:22 PM PDT by Cobra64 (Common sense isn’t common anymore.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Governor Gavin Newsom’s
air of arrogance

Newsom accepted a national award for
child mutilation, sterilization and grooming from academia

Newsom’s California is a national warning of what happens when the sexual perverted progressive Marxist education establishment captures a state.

newsom handily beat that recall with the help of dominion , drop boxes and the Colorado based “ track my vote”.

He’s advertising in red states, and he’s a likely 2024 whiner.

His campaign manager ,
the “ everything’s fine dog” can assure the nation that everything is fine.


11 posted on 07/30/2022 12:53:40 AM PDT by cuz1961 (USCGR Veteran )
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To: Cobra64
he’s also STUPID.

Isn’t stupidity required, in order to be a rat 🐀?

12 posted on 07/30/2022 12:54:26 AM PDT by Mark17 (Retired USAF air traffic controller. Father of USAF pilot. USAF aviation runs in the family )
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To: Houserino

I don’t think this country is socially conservative on the whole, but if we were “too left” then the 2020 election theft wouldn’t have been necessary.

The Dems’ gamble that their imported hordes of foreigners would be a lock in elections is falling apart; the trafficked imports didn’t come here to be planted in the worst neighborhoods with our violent unassimilated underclass. Many come here for a better life and opportunities, not the authoritarian socialist poverty they left behind.


13 posted on 07/30/2022 4:32:37 AM PDT by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: SeekAndFind

14 posted on 07/30/2022 8:01:53 AM PDT by caww (O death, when you seized my Lord, you lost your grip on me......Augustine)
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To: SeekAndFind
Oh no, not reality!

That's their real enemy. /snicker

15 posted on 07/30/2022 9:11:53 AM PDT by Salman (It's not a "slippery slope" if it was part of the program all along. )
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To: SeekAndFind

Bttt!


16 posted on 07/30/2022 9:19:48 AM PDT by Pagey (Valerie Jarrett. She IS STILL in DC creating More Havoc on This Country. )
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To: dfwgator

well then we defeat the media, they are not the press


17 posted on 07/30/2022 11:34:02 AM PDT by markman46 (engage brain before using keyboard!!!you)
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