Is there no Democrat out there who can do math anymore?
It’s a serious question. Has all that Common Core math they’ve been teaching in schools for years now completely overwhelmed any residual ability among leftists to perform even the most basic tasks of addition and subtraction? Is mathematical ability going to go the way of the ability to build great cathedrals and write lasting monuments of literature?
Or is the real problem here that the Democrats are desperately corrupt, and try to cover up that corruption by using the excuse of an “accounting error”? That’s the same excuse that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mogadishu) has trotted out for her bizarre claim that she doesn’t actually have $30 million, as previously reported, but a mere $95,000 at most. It was all a mistake, you see, on the part of her spectacularly incompetent accountants.
Apparently the Commissar of the California S. S. R., Gavin Newsom, has hired that same accounting firm, for Fox News reported Saturday that “California Democrats were aware of a roughly $2 billion budget accounting error for months, even though Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January spending plan already projected a roughly $3 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year, according to a report.”
Now, what’s weird about this is that it was actually good news. As Fox explained, “The mistake, tied to the state’s public employee retirement system, CalPERS, could shrink that projected deficit.”
One would think that Newsom and his henchmen would have been overjoyed to be able to announce that the deficit was going to turn out to be smaller than they had anticipated. Instead, they kept mum: “State legislative leaders learned about the problem as early as February, after it was flagged by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, but did not publicly disclose it until it was reported in April.”
Now, why was that? Did they plan to burn through a cool billion in some way that would be off the books? No doubt, these being the above-it-all, pure-as-the-driven-snow Democrats, there is some perfectly good reason for their silence about this. But if so, they haven’t been rushing to the microphones to explain it.
This is not to say that the budget error means that California is out of financial danger. In fact, the news after years of Democrat misrule is uniformly bad, and “state analysts warn California still faces far larger long-term budget problems, with annual deficits projected at $20 billion to $35 billion.” Yeah, Newsom is the guy who thinks his record in California is going to propel him into the White House.
If anyone remembers this by 2028, it’s not likely to work in Newsom’s favor. Already “the lack of public disclosure has drawn scrutiny, as lawmakers had been publicly warning of budget shortfalls while the issue remained internal.” It seems that “in its January overview of the governor’s budget, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said the administration projected a $2.9 billion deficit for 2026-27, while also warning the state faces multiyear deficits ranging from $20 billion to $35 billion annually.”
Even a budget error in the state government’s favor isn’t going to bail them out of that. The situation is dire, and that fact can’t be avoided forever: “The office called those long-term deficits ‘alarming’ and said they raise serious concerns about California’s fiscal sustainability.” Indeed. And they should raise serious concerns about Newsom’s viability as a presidential candidate, but it is still far more likely that he will not win the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination because he is a white male than because he has run California’s economy into the ground.
Related: Ilhan Omar: Hey, Um, As It Turns Out, I’m Not Actually a Multimillionaire After All
The Legislative Analyst’s Office’s report also said that “the governor’s budget was only ‘roughly balanced’ because of higher revenue assumptions, while warning that a potential stock market downturn could sharply cut income tax revenue and put the state on more precarious footing. Lawmakers are expected to ramp up negotiations next month when Newsom releases his revised budget,” but Gavin Newsom being Gavin Newsom, those negotiations are unlikely to result in anything substantive.
Gavin Newsom wants to be president. He knows that however bad things get in California, the establishment media will cover for him. Whether that will be enough for him to get the nomination, however, is another matter. Even if he can survive scrutiny of his destruction of California’s economy, he will still be a white male.
