"A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money," Sen. Everett Dirksen is supposed to have said more than 50 years ago, and if you do that 370 times, according to California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, you might have enough to cover the Golden State taxpayer dollars diverted into Democrat "voter machines."
The details get a little technical — money laundering isn't supposed to be easy to follow, after all — so I'll break down Hilton's allegations as quickly and cleanly as possible before we get to the big picture.
According to Hilton’s unofficial CAL DOGE, after California voters approved the Prop. 64 Cannabis Tax (I'll get back to what it's supposed to fund), here's what happened:
1. Californians voted to fund youth drug prevention through the Cannabis Tax. Instead, $370M in revenue is bankrolling leftwing activism.
2. The money flows through a single unelected nonprofit - The Center at Sierra Health Foundation’s Elevate Youth program.
3. The Center has gotten rich off this arrangement - growing from $11.8M in 2018 to $197M in 2024. The CEO makes over $600K.
4. The Center runs Prop 64 dollars through to a web of NGOs, including the Jakara Movement, Young Invincibles, and Asian Refugees United - for activism, organizing, and voter registration.
5. This is not drug prevention - it’s a taxpayer funded pipeline from the governor’s office to leftwing political organizing.
Those are the "voter machines" referenced earlier. There's nothing wrong with voter registration and GOTV efforts, but using state funds to favor one party — well, that's what happens in one-party blue strongholds like California.
Here's the kicker, so to speak: The money was supposed to go toward solving youth substance abuse problems.
Let's get back to that Center at Sierra Health Foundation, because it's just one state-level example of the national-level corruption uncovered last year by Elon Musk's DOGE and Data Republican. According to Hilton's organization, Sierra Health "retains 15 to 20 percent" of Cannabis Tax revenues as "administrative fees," which is nice non-work if you can get it. From there, the center "then sub-grants the remaining funds to community-based organizations through its own application process."
Imagine if the Republican Congress outsourced federal gasoline tax collection to a private non-profit and let them skim a generous portion off the top, then send the rest to organizations friendly to the GOP. Because if CAL DOGE has it right, that's exactly what's happened to more than a third of a billion dollars in Cannabis Tax revenues.
"The state does not pick who gets the grants," CAL DOGE said. "The intermediary does, bypassing the rigorous procurement processes mandated for direct government contracts under the Department of General Services and State Controller oversight."
That's a multimillion-dollar slush fund, in other words, in which tax dollars pass through to the well-connected for the purpose of maintaining Democrat control of the state. And, one presumes, lining pockets along the way —allegedly including Newsom's:
According to the California Fair Political Practices Commission's Behested Payment Transparency Report (pg.19-20), in 2020 alone, Sierra Health Foundation was the third-largest payor of behested payments statewide at $14,747,724 and the single largest payee of behested payments statewide at $30,869,901 — payments Newsom solicited from private companies.
"Newsom himself was the top behesting official in the state that year at $226.8 million total," the report continued, "and Sierra Health Foundation ranked among his top three financial partners in the system.
Youth drug prevention? That appears to have been a scam from the get-go. "Rather than awarding grants to recipients that qualify for Proposition 64's original purpose," CAL DOGE said, they direct "Prop. 64's taxpayer dollars to fund leftwing activist organizations."
If the first step is admitting you have a problem, the second is acknowledging that the problem is Democrats.
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