Probably the most controversial new law for 2024, and the one that will undoubtedly prove to be the most costly to a dwindling number of California taxpayers is the one that provides free health care to illegal aliens streaming across the border. Keep in mind that there’s already going to be an ungodly cost spread out all over the state as county and city school districts have to absorb the cost of educating the children of these illegal migrants. There simply isn’t the monetary resources to fund this increase in students. Now, California is going to take care of their health care as well. In case you need a little help quantifying what that looks like, that’s 700,000 that just got added to the public trough. How much is that going to cost? The lowest number I’ve seen is $2.6 billion dollars, and the highest estimate is somewhere north of $3.1 billion. That’s on top of a $68 billion dollar budget deficit Gavin Newsom and the Democrats have produced for 2024. What’s 700,000 look like? It’s college bowl season, right? Take the top 8 bowl games – Rose, Orange, Cotton, Sugar, Peace, Fiesta, Citrus, and the one featuring the Pop-Tart guy. Everyone in the stadium. All of them. That’s the equivalent of who is now covered for the first time by the citizenry of California.

To be fair, California still has the best weather on the planet. We don’t have hurricanes, tornadoes, polar vortexes, or volcanic eruptions. What we do have, though, is a wee bit of a problem with crime.  Here’s Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve.

And here’s Oakland:

A cake, you say you want? Well, don’t go to Compton.

Add the equivalent of the city of Bakersfield integrated into California’s largest cities that don’t speak the language, don’t have jobs, many have criminal records in their home country, wherever that might be, and have already shown the propensity to ignore the basic law of sovereignty to get here in the first place. They’re going to be hungry very soon. Think they won’t figure out we don’t prosecute petty theft here under $1,000 per store, per person, per theft anymore by statute?

But at least you can be assured that the Capitol in Sacramento, where all the ramifications from bad laws and worse policies originate, is in perfect working order on the first legislative day of 2024. Nah.

In the Santa Rosa Press Democrat,  Governor Newsom, who visited Israel and was an early supporter immediately following the October 7th attacks, is now waffling and backpedaling as the nation’s largest Arab-American population is letting him hear it.

Basim Elkarra, executive director of the Sacramento and Central Valley chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations — whose parents were born in Gaza — said he shared with the governor that he had lost 73 members of his extended family, and that Palestinians in Gaza are starving and have limited access to water.

But he acknowledged that the governor is in a difficult situation politically.

“It’s very difficult for him to say anything or put out an announcement that can contradict Biden’s stance at the moment,” Elkarra said. “We still hope that somehow he’ll come out stronger.”

He also acknowledged that Newsom delivered on his promise to send medical and other aid to Gaza.

At the meeting, attendees asked the governor to “utilize his relationship with the president and other lawmakers to bring awareness to our sentiment and demands,” according to the Shura Council.

This sure seems pretty insurrection-y to me, considering what the new rule set is on interpreting the 14th Amendment. Josh Kraushaar points out this meeting between Newsom and CAIR, and the subsequent political two-timing on the Israel-Gaza issue. He’s clearly following the Joe Biden model of pandering to whomever is screaming the loudest. What is the result? More screaming. That seems to be a pattern when appeasement is applied. I think Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd has a case to throw Joe Biden off the 2024 ballot due to his top surrogate in California inciting an insurrection at the state level. At the very minimum, Joe Biden incited the riot by including CAIR as part of his White House task force on anti-Semitism. We obviously don’t need courts anymore, nor do we need due process, witness testimony, or evidence, apparently. All we need is what feels like the right thing to do. But back to California’s problems.

There are so many expensive items in California’s cart awaiting checkout that it’s not even funny, even with the deficit we’re facing. A $6 billion dollar federal grant was just given by Joe Biden to build a high-speed rail from L.A. to Vegas. What do you want to bet that the project’s cost overrun ends up doubling what the grant provides? Who will foot the bill for the extra tab, do you think? But wait, there’s more!

Newsom is begrudgingly beginning to admit that there’s a homelessness crisis in California that’s exploded on his watch. His solution? Throw $6 billion more dollars at the problem. Not his, mind you. If you still live in the Golden State, he wants to throw your money at it.

In March, a bond measure to pay for all sorts of new treatment beds for the mentally ill hits the primary ballot. Will it pass? Of course. We never turn down an opportunity to pass bond measures here. No one understands or seems to care where the money ultimately comes from. I do. The $6 billion of otherwise discretionary state money will now be mandatory redirected dollars coming straight out of California’s general fund. That means $6 billion dollars worth of all other infrastructure stuff – wildfire prevention and land management, roads, schools, revamping the electrical grid, desalinization plants for water, state law enforcement, pensions, etc. California already does not have the revenue to cover its current spending levels, hence the $68 billion deficit. So we’re taking $6 billion away from the available income, making the deficit actually $74 billion, plus the $3 billion for illegals’ health care, running the red ink up to $77 billion. The money will certainly have to come from somewhere, right?

Starting on January 1st, 2024, California broke its own dubious record, that of being the highest-taxed state in the nation on income. If you are one of the handful of top earners who haven’t yet rented a one-way U-Haul bound anywhere east of here, you are now paying 10% more in state tax than you did last year. The top marginal tax rate in the Golden State has been bumped up to 14.63% of your income to Gavin Newsom. Add that to the federal government’s 37%, and you’re combined income tax rate is at 51%. Forget the user fees, licenses, sales taxes, gas taxes, or any other revenue schemes governments at all levels concoct. For the first time in a very, very long time, prosperous Californians are now paying more to the government than they are taking home.

And before you dismiss this entirely because you’re not super rich and therefore don’t care, the 10% hike in California income tax as of this week is across the board. Because of Joe Biden’s inflation, coupled with California’s ridiculous minimum wage hikes, there is a new income poverty level in California for a family of four – $97,200 a year. If your household of four makes less than that amount, you qualify for government assistance. The 10% hike in your poverty line-level tax bracket means you’re paying 10.23%. That rate alone is higher than any other state in the nation’s top earner rate except Hawaii, New Jersey, and New York. So if you are a family of four in California and you are trying to net out $1 dollar more than the current poverty line, you actually have to bring in around $109,000 dollars a year. And that’s not including paying about 24% in federal income tax.

This state is in for a doom cycle if the only people that can make it here have to be pulling down Claudia Gay-type money. Why do I say that? California’s Personal Income Tax receipts for 2022, or PIT, were $143.62 billion dollars. If Sacramento collects all 10% more blood out of the remaining California turnips, that’s a little more than $14 billion. That doesn’t touch much other than the interest on the $68 billion deficit, and won’t do a thing to mitigate the sinkhole of spending that free health care for 700,000 illegal migrants is going to open up under California’s economy. And all of this doesn’t even begin to touch the $268-plus billion in unfunded pension liabilities that Californians are still on the hook for.

By the way, those one-way U-Haul rentals I was talking about? Let’s say you decided to bug out and head for a red state anywhere east of the Colorado River. For a truck that can hold all the accouterments you have in a three-bedroom place, it’ll run you $5,837 dollars.

By comparison, the Same truck, the same amount of miles, still a one-way trip, but headed west to California instead of east from California? It’s $1,655. Gotta love market forces in play. When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says people are voting with their feet on which form of governance is better, progressive versus conservative, they’re voting with moving vans, too.