California used to be a state rich in gold, oil, and innovative thinkers.
Now, however, the only things we are rich in are bureaucrats and politicians who promote and enforce dumb and/or dangerous ideas.
Take, for instance, the latest proposal by Los Angels Mayor Karen Bass. She wants to give more than $360 million to developers and nonprofits building and preserving affordable housing projects.The appropriation, which requires City Council approval, would fund 80 projects, with construction of 1,528 new units and repairs to more than 2,500 affordable units in need of work….The funding for the projects comes largely from the city’s United to House L.A. tax — also called the “mansion tax” — which imposes a 4% tax on property sales between $5.3 million and $10.6 million and a 5.5% on housing sales above that.The city announced the opening of applications for the project in September and the Los Angeles Housing Department on Monday released a report to the City Council detailing exactly which projects would be receiving funding — and how much.
As a reminder: This city is supposed to be preparing for the 2028 Olympics. It is transparently clear at this point that funds going to NGOs are used to support only the leaders and staff of those groups.
This is another stunt that will sink the region into more debt and despair.
Meanwhile, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton and his CAL DOGE watchdog group say California’s Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing program is a taxpayer disaster.
The program, funded by about one billion dollars from cap‑and‑trade proceeds, gas taxes, and utility bill surcharges, was supposed to put solar panels on low‑income apartment buildings to cut tenants’ power bills.
According to their review, only 72 million dollars has been paid for actual solar projects on 269 buildings, while roughly 928 million dollars was routed to administration, outreach, and Democrat‑aligned nonprofits involved in voter registration and activism.
Funded by gas taxes, utility bills “cap and trade auctions proceeds,”the program has completed only 269 projects worth $72 million since 2015, raising questions about the missing funds, the California Post reported.Notably, allocated within the bill was “Ongoing costs of $558,000 from the Public Utilities Reimbursement Account (special fund) for CPUC to oversee the contract to administer the program and to annually assess the success of the program,” according to Assembly Floor Analysis.So the California Public Utilities Commission was supposed to be overseeing the program. Instead, according to CAL DOGE, the program has received roughly $1 billion, “and according to SOMAH’s own reporting, just $72 million as of 2024 had gone to actual solar installations.That leaves $928 million unaccounted for, and no accountability to ensure those dollars aren’t flowing into a progressive voter mobilization machine. The evidence suggests they are.”
Clearly, this is another instance of a government program allowing NGOs to siphon off more of our money to fund themselves and their Democratic Party supporters.
California didn’t go from gold and oil to bureaucrats and bad ideas by accident. The common thread is programs sold as compassion that really function as taxpayer‑funded lifelines for the very political machine that hollowed the state out in the first place.
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