With Governor Gavin Newsom firmly in the lead, the Golden State’s Democratic Party is collapsing faster than an alpine glacier. Buried beneath the landslide of their servile politics are homeless people, rural and inner city residents, and the young—all of them.
The first big crack in the ice appeared last summer when Newsom warmly embraced the MAGA-dominated Supreme Court’s 6-3 immoral ruling to override unhoused people’s civil rights.
The Fresno City Council immediately applied the heat locally, joining with Republican Mayor Jerry Dyer in direct attacks on the most vulnerable people among us, including a policy that set the inhumane minimum temperature of 105°F before they’ll open public cooling centers.
Like Trump targeting immigrants and refugees, Dems have found and targeted their vulnerable “other,” an easily identified, nearly powerless minority to scapegoat, attack and harm.
Not all Dems, mind you, just all the ones in office. Consider two Council members currently seeking more power: District 1’s Annalisa Perea and District 2’s Michael Karbassi. Climate change and civil rights are the furthest thing from their minds.
Remove the top layer of rubble, known as campaign contributions, and there’s Perea, running for a State Assembly seat, accepting an endorsement and money from a police union association that includes the National Border Patrol Council. These are the armed individuals viciously attacking immigrant communities in city neighborhoods and on rural farms.
Perea’s history of full subservience to law enforcement, a family tradition started by father Henry R. and continued by brother Henry T., former politicians now working as industrial and oil lobbyists, respectively, was first reported in the August 2020 issue of the Community Alliance, “Fresno Unmasked: Police Reform Reveals Loyalties.”
There was no daylight between Perea and the Fresno Police Officers Association’s effort to undermine the Black Lives Matter movement here.
Likewise, Karbassi is running for county clerk and registrar of voters with a very MAGA-like strategy: He seeks to cast doubt on the validity of local election results.
Backed by his mentor, sprawl-developer Darius Assemi, president of Granville Homes and with whom he co-hosts a regular podcast, and guided by disgraced campaign consultant Alex Tavlian, the inexperienced, unqualified Karbassi thinks “Fresno County deserves better,” meaning him, falsely claiming that Registrar James Kus is “taking forever to count votes.”
It’s hard to judge which of the two Council members is the more ethically challenged, but they’re in good company. Newsom’s regressive politics will now be applied to human health protections, both immediately and for the long term, and the entire Fresno City Council will be in full support.
In the short term, Newsom’s latest attack on civil society is his gutting of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by tying its “reform” to the state budget in a June vote by the legislature and circumventing all public debate. Adhiti Bandlamudi, reporting for CalMatters, wrote in June:
“Matt Baker, state policy director for the Planning and Conservation League, an environmental advocacy group, said he was particularly concerned with the provisions in SB 607, which he called ‘the worst rollback of environmental and public health protections’ the state has seen in decades. ‘Side-stepping the legislative process in a fast-track budget deal that has had zero transparency for such significant changes to the one law that gives our communities voice in the planning decisions that affect them is just simply a disgrace to our democracy,’ he said. ‘This is the way you do bad things.’”
Misrepresented as a pro-affordable housing measure, the radical change also greenlights harmful industrial developments, including water- and energy-intensive data centers, in working-class neighborhoods. Karbassi has taken to calling CEQA advocates and its legal practitioners “terrorists,” another Trumpian talking point.
Newsom, his trail of political ducklings in tow, refuses to address the true underlying cause of unaffordable housing and homelessness in the state: billionaire and professional managerial class (PMC) investments in property.
The 1% invest their excessive cash earnings in unoccupied residential properties, inflating prices beyond affordability, while the PMCs are converting rental properties into Airbnb income earners.
Nor do developers build small homes any more, and City Council members refuse to require it of them through inclusive zoning requirements, much less create an adequate supply of public housing.
But Newsom’s biggest, most dangerous canard over the long term is high-speed rail and the $1 billion in annual funding—from carbon credit sales through the state’s cap-and-trade program meant to reduce greenhouse gases—he forced into the state budget. Asha Sharma of Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability wrote in the Fresno Bee before the fatal vote in mid-June:
“With poverty rates soaring and inequality expanding, the administration’s proposal—offering giveaways to industry while redirecting cap-and-trade funds away from programs serving frontline communities—abandons California’s most vulnerable people.
“It withholds support for clean drinking water during worsening droughts, protections from extreme heat, and access to clean energy upgrades—critical tools for climate resilience and equity.”
Unfortunately for the state’s younger generations, the bottom line for Newsom and the California Democratic Party is the financial bottom line of their political backers. From local to state and national politics, none of them would think to challenge the conventional wisdom of economics and climate change.
Their high-speed rail plan is rooted in the false assumptions of a 1970s vision, including unlimited consumption of resources stretching far into the future, their climate solution a failed market-based trading system for pollution of every type.
But time is quickly running out, particularly for anyone hoping to be alive beyond 2050, warns UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
“This is a story of avoidable injustice: The rich cause the problem, the poor pay the highest price,” stated Guterres in his opening remarks to the World Leaders Climate Action Summit late last year, the hottest ever recorded, noting that Oxfam has found that the richest billionaires emit more carbon in an hour and a half than the average person does in a lifetime.
“Unless emissions plummet and adaptation soars,” he emphasized that “every economy will face far greater fury.” And every life.
