Newsom wants to impose the ‘California Way’ on all of us. Florida has the better idea | Opinion
Popping up across Florida these days are T-shirts and hats celebrating the free state of Florida, suggesting “Make America Florida.”
Yet California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom has opposite notions. He wants to impose the California Way on all of America. He has run the almost comically tone-deaf ads here in Florida. If Newsom has his way, he would “Make America California.”
Former White House aide Michael Anton once described California as “the greatest middle-class paradise in the history of mankind.” California has since experienced a flood of economic and political refugees fleeing the growing challenges of sustaining businesses or finding affordable food and housing — or even safe drinking water.
In 2021 alone, 360,000 people participated in the “California Exodus” — not just to Texas and Arizona but, in the irony of all ironies, even to Mexico! Gas prices in California are close to $6 a gallon, running more than $1.50 a gallon above the national average. This fuel cost burden is on top of regular rolling blackouts despite massive energy resources. (California has America’s third highest oil reserves.)
Democrats in control
California has been in Democratic control for nearly two decades (no Republican has been elected to a statewide office since 2006) and leftists have put in place a state driven, command-and-control economy. During that time, California turned from — in the words of Elon Musk, who moved Tesla headquarters to Texas — a “land of opportunity” to “the land of taxes, overregulation and litigation.”
The Pacific Research Institute notes California has the most regulatory restrictions — per George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, 396,000 of them — and the worst environment for litigation, according to American Tort Reform Foundation rankings, with more than 200,000 jobs lost to legal abuse per year by one reckoning.
There is an enduring image of California’s obtrusive COVID crackdowns, contrasted with Newsom’s unmasked feast with friends in a posh Napa eatery, all the while police were enforcing COVID restrictions by tackling a lone surfer far from shore. Personal liberty was surrendered and personal prosperity was lost in the name of safety and the good of the collective.
California demanded that its citizenry surrender individual freedoms for a centralized authority pursuing idealist (socialist) notions that would provide all citizens with (a false sense of) safety. Instead, that surrender of personal liberty as well as the loss of personal fortune led inexorably to Winston Churchill’s definition of socialism: the equal sharing of misery.
The enticing waters of collectivism have led to crumbling infrastructure, exploding poverty, record homelessness and the deprivation of basic human rights and freedoms, including extreme challenges to personal safety in the face of increasing lawlessness, in a one-party state. California is following the downward path that South Floridians from Venezuela and also Cuba know all too well.
Beyond the Left Coast’s economic woes, the real irony of Newsom’s ad campaign is its attempt to compare Newsom’s California to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Florida. The California Way supports state-dictated indoctrination of school children as opposed to Florida honoring parental prerogative, particularly when lecturing 5-year-olds on racial privilege or sexual identity.
Schools closed too long
California has kept schools closed so long getting students back to class has been challenging (a quarter of students in San Francisco are still chronically absent). Florida kept schools open and student achievement is quickly rebounding. California is now reducing educational choice for parents with excessive regulation resulting in an actual decrease in a once robust charter school movement. They have opted instead to give more power to state run school boards empowering bureaucrats. On the other hand, Florida continues to encourage educational options and empower parents.
While Florida has been ranked first among states to open a new business, California has seen businesses the likes of Walgreens and even Starbucks closed due to high, unprosecuted crime. Businesses thrive when basic freedoms are protected. There can be no freedom when it is impossible to walk safely, even during the day, in some neighborhoods. The streets of once-great cities like San Francisco or Los Angeles are now overrun by violent crime, theft and homeless tent cities, despoiled by needles and piles of human excrement.
While our state leadership in Florida is fully supportive of law enforcement, the California Way has created lax enforcement and soft prosecution leading to rampant crime. The effect is the loss of the most fundamental liberty, as once described by Justice William Douglas: the simple “freedom to walk, stroll…” through a city street after dark.
The choice is clear: the California Way or, as the slogan says, “Make America Florida.” At some point, the rest of America will undoubtedly join this debate.
Edward J. Pozzuoli is the president of the law firm Tripp Scott, based in Fort Lauderdale.
