12/26/2025
Corruption Rules in California
There is no state that compares to California. For 175 years, it has drawn dreamers, risk-takers, and innovators in search of opportunity and reinvention. California’s natural beauty and resources, cultural influence, and economic might are what make it not just special, but consequential. What happens here rarely stays here—it often becomes the catalyst for change across the nation, for better or worse. Rich in natural resources, minerals, and precious metals, California spans sunlit valleys, iconic beaches and coastline, majestic mountains, ancient redwood forests, and fertile farmland. It has rightfully earned its name as The Golden State. California boasts the largest state economy in the United States and the fifth-largest economy in the world, approaching four trillion dollars. Home to the busiest ports in the Western Hemisphere, California connects the rest of the country to global markets—and ensures that its successes and failures reverberate far beyond its borders.
Yet for all its promise and power, California is not immune from corruption and dysfunction. The same scale, wealth, and influence that make the state a global force also create opportunities for abuse, mismanagement, and misplaced priorities. When transparency gives way to political convenience and accountability is treated as optional, public trust erodes and communities pay the price. California’s challenges are not the result of a lack of resources or talent, but of failures in leadership, oversight, and integrity—failures that demand honest examination if the state is to live up to its potential.
For many years, California has been a reliable Democratic stronghold. Democrats have held two-thirds supermajorities in both houses of the legislature for much of the 2000s, and the state has not elected a Republican governor since ~Arnold Schwarzenegger~ left office in 2011. Prior to that era, Californians experienced far more balance of power, with competitive statewide elections and divided government. California was even the birthplace of three Republican presidents—~Herbert Hoover~, ~Richard Nixon~, and ~Ronald Reagan~—reflecting a political culture that once valued moderation and accountability over ideology.
Today, the consequences of prolonged one-party control have become increasingly difficult to ignore. Out-of-control spending and taxation, bloated budgets and public salaries, and a growing lack of transparency and accountability have eroded public trust. With meaningful competition diminished, accountability has weakened and oversight has suffered—creating fertile ground for waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption. Good government depends on competition, transparency, and accountability, not on which party holds power. One-party rule, over time, undermines all three. States function best when leaders are forced to defend their decisions, justify their spending, and earn the public’s trust at every election.
In just over a decade, California has more than doubled its state spending. The General Fund now stands at roughly $228 billion in 2025, an increase of approximately $137 billion since 2012, when the General Fund totaled about $91 billion. California now spends more than any other state on homelessness, welfare and social services, K–12 education, and climate and environmental programs. It also spends more per corrections inmate than any other state, while carrying the largest public-employee pension and retiree-benefit obligations in the nation, with long-term liabilities exceeding those of any other state.
California doesn’t spend more simply because it’s large; it spends more because it has chosen expansive, centralized, and often permanent programs, many of which lack clear performance benchmarks, enforceable accountability, or exit strategies.
Put plainly, this approach is reckless and unsustainable.
The question all Californians should then be asking is this - Are the results of a 150% increase in spending such that it can be justified? Has your life improved 150%?
Many Californians are left asking a simple question: where did all that money go? The answer is buried deep within a maze of bureaucracy, shielded by a persistent lack of transparency and accountability that has come to define our state government. A government run and controlled almost exclusively by Democrat politicians. Politicians who consistently over promise and under deliver on virtually every issue.
Take, for example, the promises made to Californians regarding high-speed rail. In 2008, voters were asked to approve Proposition 1A, authorizing $9.9 billion in bonds to build a high-speed rail system connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. The project was presented with an estimated total cost of $33 billion and a promised completion date of 2020. To date, Californians have spent at least $13–$15 billion, yet no operational high-speed rail track has even been laid. Meanwhile, projected costs have ballooned to over $100 billion, with no clear timeline for completion.
Doesn't that beg another question - Where did our 15 billion dollars go and where is the accountability?
Another example of the failure of prolonged one-party rule is California’s inexplicable explosion in homelessness. In 2012, California accounted for roughly 20% of the nation’s homeless population, totaling about 130,000 people. By 2019, that number had climbed to more than 150,000, representing approximately 27% of the national total. Since then, California has dedicated more resources to homelessness than any other state by a wide margin, with estimates showing $24–$37 billion spent since 2019 alone. Yet despite this unprecedented investment, California’s homeless population grew to over 180,000 by 2024—an increase of nearly 25% in just five years. The scale of spending alongside worsening outcomes raises serious questions about effectiveness, oversight, and accountability. We would have been better off just writing every unhoused person a check for $100,000.
This failure eventually drew national attention. In response to recommendations from California’s State Auditor, a bipartisan bill was introduced and later passed by the Legislature. AB 2903 would have required annual reporting on how homelessness dollars are spent and what outcomes those programs actually achieve. It was a modest but meaningful first step toward restoring transparency and accountability in a system that desperately needs both. Instead, ~Gavin Newsom~ vetoed the bill. Stating it was "unnecessary and duplicative"—the governor instead chose to preserve the status quo rather than allow independent scrutiny of billions in public spending. This reeks of corruption.
If this happened to anyone other than a government or politician, they'd be fired and most likely indicted. In the Golden State it's simply just another day in the office.
These are not California’s only failures. Recently, another story surfaced highlighting a major breakdown in the state’s green-energy agenda. Once touted as a “breakthrough in renewable energy,” the ~Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System~ has since become a textbook example of leadership that consistently overpromises and underdelivers. Taxpayers were promised reliable, large-scale clean energy—enough to power 140,000 homes—along with assurances that the facility would be net-zero, environmentally sustainable, and cost-effective over the long term. The project carried a price tag of roughly $2.2 billion, justified by claims of decades of strong performance.
What actually happened tells a very different story. Almost immediately after opening in 2014, Ivanpah produced 30–40% less electricity than projected. Environmental realities—cloud cover, wind, and haze—proved far more limiting than anticipated. Despite being marketed as clean solar power, the facility also required substantial natural gas use to start up and stabilize operations. Today, after barely a decade in service, plans are underway to begin shutting down parts of the facility as early as 2026, far short of the decades of use Californians were promised. What was sold as a bold leap forward in clean energy has instead become another costly lesson in wishful thinking, weak oversight, and failed accountability.
Other recent reports have come out with accusations of similar, widespread fraud and corruption, claiming tens of billions of dollars more in fraud. Governor Newsom's own former Chief of Staff was indicted earlier this year on 23 federal charges relating to fraud. Additionally, the Department of Justice announced new criminal cases against two LA area real estate developers who the federal government says misused roughly $50 million in a combination of federal, state and local dollars earmarked for homelessness.
These failures, while grand in scale, represent only a fraction of the broken promises made to Californians over the last decade. Additionally they represent only one side of the equation. On the other side are the burdensome taxes that California requires of its residents. This is what allows state leaders to spend unprecedented sums of our money.
During the same period of time Californians were made the promises of high speed rail, clean energy and reduced homelessness, a host of new taxes were introduced. These include Proposition 30 in 2012, Propositions 55 and 56 in 2016, SB 1 in 2017, and more recent expansions and adjustments to payroll and personal income taxes. Making us amongst the highest taxed people in the country. California proudly has some of the highest taxes in America, including the highest top personal income taxes, the highest gas taxes, highest sales taxes, along with significant business taxes and costly regulations.
I know some would claim they don't mind paying the taxes so we can fund essential services and social programs. The truth is though, the result has been a system that extracts record revenue year after year while delivering uneven results - at best. High taxes have not produced affordability, efficiency, or trust in government—only larger budgets, higher living costs, and growing pressure on families, retirees, and small businesses. Resulting in California's growth becoming stagnant at best. For multiple years more people have left for other states, than have moved in from other states.
California's one-party rulers, high taxes and wasteful spending have drawn a clear conclusion - Unchecked power without competition leads to a government without discipline. This prolonged single-party dominance has weakened accountability, reduced oversight, and normalized failure. High taxes have not produced better outcomes or affordability; they have produced larger budgets, bigger bureaucracies, and fewer consequences when programs fail. Waste isn't just tolerated, it's the expected outcome. Cost overruns are excused, and projects that would never survive scrutiny in a competitive system or the standards of the private sector, are allowed to continue indefinitely.
PEOPLE OF CALIFORNIA - How much more of this are you willing to tolerate?
California Democrats: why do you continue to defend corruption of this magnitude? Where are the demands for transparency, accountability, and measurable results? And to those who recently proclaimed "No Kings,” why do you look the other way as this governor and this Legislature show repeated disregard for taxpayer dollars and an ever-growing appetite for centralized power?
Time and again, local governments are overridden—on housing, land use, and community priorities—not through collaboration, but through coercion. Critical funding is conditioned on compliance with ideological mandates. Communities that disagree are threatened with the loss of resources. Emergency powers are normalized, exercised broadly, and extended far beyond necessity. Complex, deeply local challenges like homelessness are met with one-size-fits-all directives from Sacramento, while accountability for failure is quietly set aside.
When will enough finally be enough? When the consequences of reckless governance inevitably come crashing down, no one will be spared. You will lose just like everyone else.
To my Republican friends: how much longer will you sit quietly on the sidelines instead of fighting back? Millions of Republicans have simply stopped voting altogether. That silence has consequences. Complacency is not neutrality—it is surrender. If you refuse to show up, you are helping to cement the very system you claim to oppose.
And to those who have been awake, who have been engaged and pushing back: you must do more. The truth is, it hasn’t been enough. This moment demands greater involvement, louder voices, and sustained pressure. Change does not happen by observation—it happens when people commit, organize, and refuse to accept decline as inevitable.
Early Americans sought California because it embodied the American ideal and carried the promise of abundance and opportunity. It was understood that effort could overcome circumstance, and that in The Golden State, ambition could was transformed into achievement.
Let's get back to that.
