CA Gov. Gavin Newsom Sure Looks to be in 2024 Mix After Proposing Sensible New Programs
Newsom gives thumbs up to keep the nuclear power plant, starts addressing California’s mental health crisis, and challenges Oakland officials.
California Governor Gavin Newsom may have learned some valuable lessons by running ads in Florida deriding its governor, the very popular Ron DeSantis.
After much mockery and anger at his focus on another state, Newsom turned his attention to Golden State problems. For example, California’s troubling energy issues. He proposed extending the life of the state’s last operating nuclear power plant by five to 10 years to maintain reliable power supplies.
The proposal to keep the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant running beyond a scheduled closing by 2025 gave new urgency to a decades-long fight over the seismic safety of the site. And critics depicted Newsom’s plan as a huge financial giveaway for plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric, while warning it would gut state environmental safeguards.
Newsom’s draft proposal includes a potential forgivable loan for PG&E for up to $1.4 billion and would require state agencies to act quickly to clear the way for the reactors to continue running.
The seaside plant located midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco produces 9% of the state’s electricity. The proposal says its continued operation beyond 2025 is “critical to ensure statewide energy system reliability” as climate change stresses the energy system.
Newsom also offered a ‘master plan’ to address the mental health crisis among California youth. While mental illness significantly contributes to many of California’s problems, this is certainly a good beginning.
The plan includes training for 40,000 behavioral health professionals, creating an online platform for mental health assessment and intervention, a suicide prevention program, and doubling the number of school counselors in schools, by helping to pay for their education.
“We will provide 20,000 scholarships for two years of your service. You come to the schools and work as a counselor. $20,000 of any of your loans or student debt will be forgiven,” Newsom said.
Newsom challenged Oakland officials over the lack of adequate action in resolving a massive homeless encampment that has sprung up in the area.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office sent a scathing letter Thursday to Oakland criticizing the city for its handling of the sprawling Wood Street homeless encampment and threatening to withhold promised state funds for housing people at the site.
The state said Oakland is “seeking to shirk its responsibility” in providing housing to the residents of the encampment — in particular the nearly 200 people who live on Caltrans property at the site — resulting in a dangerous situation. The site has seen repeated fires and sanitation hazards.
The letter comes before a key hearing before a federal judge next week on the future of the encampment.
The letter, sent by Ann Patterson, Newsom’s legal secretary, to City Attorney Barbara Parker states that Oakland has refused to offer housing to the nearly 200 people living on Caltrans property.
While these are positive developments, the state will need more sensible governance and less ludicrous legislation between now and 2024. I also suspect that there will still be a great deal that primary opponents will be able to point to, these relatively positive developments notwithstanding.
But, credit where credit is due. And I would personally like to thank Gov. Ron DeSantis for making California a better place to live.
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“The plan includes training for 40,000 behavioral health professionals, creating an online platform for mental health assessment and intervention, a suicide prevention program, and doubling the number of school counselors in schools, by helping to pay for their education.”
What a racket. Pay the teachers to turn the kids crazy, then pay the counselors to make them healthy again.
That’s been the modus operandi of the Left since Day One. Create a problem, then propose a government-funded solution (with a bit of graft on the side).
More like make them crazier.
HB – Those particular counselors don’t make anyone healthy. Kids are sent to counseling if they appear to be too healthy after undergoing the state-mandated curriculum imposed by the teachers’ union. If counseling doesn’t work, then drug interventions are warranted and, as a last resort, forced lobotomy (in order to protect the community, of course).
Right? How much of this so-called counseling will be “gender-affirming” treatment?
Could they be the ones with whom the left proposes replacing the police?
It won’t be enough….
I’m not sure I’d use “sensible” in reference to Newsom. “Desperate” and “panicked” maybe…
“Gavin Newsom” and “sensible” should not be used in the same sentence.
But, it can be: Gavin Newsome often is the one pushing ideas that no one in their right mind could possibly construe as being sensible.
He’s the one that suggested bears hibernate for two years to reduce carbon footprint, save energy and reduce global warming.
Out of touch progressives will love him, the rest of the people, not so much. He’s too arrogant and his fake empathy is too easy to see through. Not to mention his record and hypocrisy.
Vote for Newsom!
Change the USA into California!
Newsom has made so many promises I’ve lost track of them. Where are the many rainwater capture reserves he has promised? How many times does he have to raise money to fund them? He is now asking the feds for money. All he does he spend money that gets stolen and wasted as he keeps paying off the electric utility companies and state employee unions, especially teachers’ unions.
He may win the nomination but so did John Kerry and Joe Biden. He is going to get eaten alive. Americans hate California so he is swimming upstream to start with.
He’s Kamala Harris, 0nly slightly smarter – and better looking.
Does the governor of California have the right to remove a DA from office? If the governor does, and Newsome wants to show he has come to his senses, he’ll remove Gascon who is the DA in LA, otherwise I agree with Rusty Bill above, he’s desperate and panicked.
Hair Gel endorsed him as Mayor of San Francisco and again as Governor when Gascon transferred to LA. He also endorsed DA Boudin who was also just recently recalled. He also appointed AG Rob Bonta.
I really doubt he will be successful running against Harris. They both share the same team of political advisors. And it doesn’t help that they are both from CA.
No, the governor does not seem to have that power. There’s a whole procedure with accusations, a jury trial, etc.
Too bad. In some states they do.
I have read the CA Government code.
The CA AG is imbued with the following two relevant powers:
A) The ability to assume any investigation conducted by any CA Sheriff’s office.
B) The ability to assume any prosecution conducted by any CA DA’s office.
I believe the legislature’s intent in supplying these powers was for the AG to invoke them on a case-by-case basis. However, insomuch as hundreds of thousands of felons were released from CA prisons in 2019, presumably by way of the Governor’s power of clemency, also intended to be invoked on a case-by-case basis, one can assume that a sufficiently motivated AG could basically overtake all prosecutions undertaken by LA’s Gascon.
Of course, there are A LOT of felonies committed every day in LA, such a maneuver would likely overburden the AG.
Erronius
None of this is surprising at all.
Newsom either wants ( or has been tapped) to run in 2024 because the left sees the writing on the wall.
They have no workable bench and he is about the most good looking” one they have.
I’m sure there will be many more doing the same thing.
I still expect the 2024 ticket to be either Harris or Clinton with Cheney as VP.
That’s a hard one to call.
I don’t see Harris as even possible.
I have always expected Hillary UNLESS the far left does fully take over then I suspect Hairdoo or possibly even AOC ( still think she’s too young and they wont sacrifice her this early even though she would be eligible but it would be an act of desperation)
The thing with VP Harris is the d/prog selected her to occupy the on deck circle. She is supposed to be the next batter. Then add female, black, Indian which checks three all important diversity boxes within d/prog ideology.
Dumping VP Harris for Gov Newsom means selecting a white, map, cis gendered scion of the CA ruling establishment. Given the importance the d/prog insist on placing on tribalism how do they pull that off cleanly? The d/prog establishment knows VP Harris is a dumpster fire but will the Diversity Olympians in the party accept that?
Bottom line is they chose poorly based on preventing a party fracture in the 2020 d/prog primary to ward off Bernie Sanders. Add the Bernie Bros to this mix; they got shafted 2 presidential primaries in a row and now are supposed to meekly agree to get shafted again for another d/prog establishment candidate? What if that wing demands their their turn as the price for not staying home or supporting a third party? Plots within plots.
Concur
The Dems will never run Cheney, as much as it would be humorous. They need somebody who will follow orders and not go off on a wild goose chase. Again.
Cheney will never, ever be the Dems’ VP candidate.
The Dems are using Cheney like sheets of TP to be discarded after use. She may try to sell herself to them as an endless roll and they may use her as one over and over. But in the end she’ll still be flushed for good the moment she is no longer useful in their ‘Get Trump’ crusade and inquisition.
No one on either side likes or trusts traitors.
Her moment is already gone. They’re going to dump her by the end of this year because its obvious she doesn’t have the competence or the ability to deliver Trump.
She’ll get a cushy gig as some token conservative that mouths ‘the conservative case for liberal bullshit’, but that’s it.
Her political career is over.
Cheney is kryptonite.
She and Cindy Sheehan can start a club….
After getting crushed in her primary Cheney is now a lame duck who will be formally out of office on 3 Jan.
Her only value to either party is as the lead Trump-hater on the 6 Jan committee, a committee which is quietly fading into irrelevance due to the up-coming mid-terms.
A sensible program would be to disband all of the ecofascist agencies and their commie cousins killing businesses. This is painting over the roaches and hoping no one notices.
We’re noticing.
But Rat McConnell, Rodent Ronna Romney and Boehner McCarthy “aren’t”.
None of this is ‘sensible’. It only looks that way on the surface.
1) Extending the life of the plant is NOT the right move. It’s a short term move that just pushes the problem past the point he’s in office.
They started building the plant in 1968 and it was officially commissioned 1985. It’s going to be 40 years in operation in 2025.
You can only extend the life of a plant so far before it will HAVE to be shut down for safety (or they have some kind of accident). The ‘sensible’ option is to build a replacement to be online by 2025, not continuously extending the life of an aging plant.
2) You’re delusional if you think the ‘behavioral health professionals’ and their new ‘school counselors’ are going to do anything but push radical trans crap on kids as a ‘solution’ to their problems. Just more makework jobs for insane leftist teachers that are unemployable anywhere else.
The so-called professional ‘mental health’ community is gearing up to declare all Trump supporters mentally ill. Which is what totalitarian authoritarian lefties always do to their political opponents once they have the power to do so and do something about it.
The Soviet Gulag was filled with ‘mentally ill’ people who did not sufficiently praise their government and the worker’s paradise it created.
I know little of such things, but, it seems to me there are far newer designs for nuclear reactors that are safer, smaller for a given output, easier to control.
The French (I know, I know…) have done wonders with nuclear power, and with the press being as “green” as it is, any accidents or near-misses would have been all over page one above the fold, in that crawly-thing that runs across the bottom of every TV news network screen.
Absolutely. The idea that we should continue using a plant built in 1985 instead of building a new one with modern technology is the very opposite of ‘sensible’.
I’m sure that makes sense… until you give the decision power to a large government. Government loves and lives on technology’s trailing edge. Recall how long air traffic control ran on vacuum tubes.
As DC technical sales rep for a leading edge minicomputer company in the Reagan years, I consoled my salesman when he bemoaned not being able to land a single large government contract, only commercial ones. I told him the way to sell our technology to the federal government was to dig a giant pit, line it with plastic, bury dozens of our machines there, dig them up in ten years, and federal agencies would murder each other for them.
He thought this was ridiculous… yet, most of a decade later, the very quarter we were going to desupport our version 1 machines, the USPS put in an order for 1,000 of them. Our company, who wanted badly to free up the manufacturing and repair parts warehouse space, offered the PO our second generation machines (4x the power) for the same price. “No, you’re trying to cheat us somehow,” came back the gist of their reply.
The newer designs may be safer, but the older ones are plenty safe by any reasonable standard. Even back in the 1970s nuclear power was the safest method of generating electricity, far safer than any of its alternatives.
The best proof of nuclear power’s safety is Three Mile Island. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong, and still nobody was harmed. The people who evacuated the area out of an abundance of caution were at more risk of dying in a car crash than they’d have been staying home.
Yes, the newer designs are much better. Diablo Canyon is still worth keeping on line. Living 1 mile downwind of Three Mile Island at the time of the incident and staying there for the entire year was less radiation than living in Denver for one year. The only power source that is both “environmentally sound” and “climate safe” is nuclear. I was in my nuclear engineering courses when Three Mile Island happened (and during the release of the Fonda/Lemmon “China Syndrome” movie). Fear mongering makes it hard to show people reality.
“…He proposed extending the life of the state’s last operating nuclear power plant by five to 10 years to maintain reliable power supplies.”
Which will be voted down by the regulatory commission composed of members that HE put on the commission. That’s what he did to the desalinization plant in San Diego, and he’ll do it here. Or, he’ll recommend it to the legislature, and the Dems, his own party, will vote ‘no’. Then Newsom will shrug. It’s not his electrical power that going to be cut.
California will be serious about the seriously mentally ill currently homeless on the streets when they rebuild their inpatient facilities. Not ‘hotels’, not ‘homeless condos’, but inpatient hospitals. That’s what the seriously mentally ill need, and what they currently don’t have.
Agree. I live in CA. There is ZERO chance of such happening.
Irony of ironies: one of the original state mental hospitals is now the grounds for a state university. CSUCI. “See Sucky”.
It’s the same thing. Only now they walk away with a diploma instead of dischage papers.
Totaly unlike the diploma, the discharge papers certified you sane.
There is nothing so ludicrous as a politician writing a “scathing letter”.
Scathe and cope.
Like Boehenr’s “lawsuits” when he was Squeaker.
Give homes to the homeless will just make the problem worse as it will be rewarding drug addicts and alcoholics for bad behavior. It will require tough love to fix the homeless problem. Create a huge homeless cam in the middle of no where, surrounded by barbed wire fences and armed guards. People who violate vagrancy laws would be sent to live in this camp until they can take care of themselves and leave the streets. People on welfare who violate vagrancy laws will lose half their welfare as rent to government.
“Give homes to the homeless will just make the problem worse as it will be rewarding drug addicts and alcoholics for bad behavior.”
It is likely paywalled, but there is a story over at City Journal about this very thing. The lead-in is some homeless guy applying for shelter, only to have it denied. He didn’t achieve a high enough needs score. Had he been a drug addict or a repeat offender criminal, or, (I think) sex crime type, he’d get the shelter.
I’ve never seen a paywall at City Journal. Here it is.
I stand corrected. Being a subscriber to the magazine I thought the website was a perk. Thank you.
What vagrancy laws? This country hasn’t had any for more than 50 years, since they were declared unconstitutional.
This is just normalcy theater for progressives. We’ve seen this dance too many times and thrown tomatoes…the question is, have those middle road Dems seen enough yet to realize they are being played over and over and over again in every election cycle?
There is nothing, zero, zilch in anything this guy has to offer which isn’t going to be put into the budget for more tax dollars, State and Federal.
He’ll delegate projects to crony losers, placating the progressive left agenda. Nothing different just more of the same for the next four years of all show no go. Of all what he is proposing is for one area of the state much like NY State in totalling ignoring the problems and issues of those living in the upper northern half if not 3/4. Calif. has need for better infrastructure where the many roads and dams have been ignored to the point of becoming the next disaster. The worse of all is his total contempt for supporting the working middle class which are the workers, businesses and taxpayers who receive less considerations than catering to the welfare of the illegalities and law breakers.
Kate Steinle unavailable for comment.
We don’t need new programs in this country we need fewer of them
The nation is going to implode, sooner than we think.