Let’s start here.  It is an exposé on just how bad of a failure Gavin Newsom’s “Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing” program actually is.  It is a toxic stew of incapability, bureaucratic entanglement and corruption.  Like most “bright” ideas in California, it is impractical to begin with and only grows worse in the execution.  When I moved to California in the 1980’s it was because of the opportunities available to anyone.  Now the only opportunity lies at sucking on the government teat in a corrupt and decidedly Democrat manner.  But Governor Hair-gel’s latest bright idea, well, that is truly a recipe for disaster.

Here it is:

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) pledged to seek a 100% tax on any money Californians receive from President Donald Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund.

The “anti-weaponization fund” is a sketchy enough idea to begin with.  It is described this way:

The unprecedented $1.776 billion fund will make payouts to those who demonstrate to a DOJ commission that they were victims of weaponization.

What qualifies as “weaponization” and what does not?  I personally think this will end up like those class-action lawsuit funds where the only people that see real money out of them are the lawyers that brought the litigation and administer the payouts.  Most people won’t be willing to do the paperwork to get the pay out and those that do weather that storm will be disappointed in the paltry sums distributed.  But that said, Trump has made his point and streamlined what is certain to be an unending river of litigation.

But Newsom, being truly and wholly Californian, wants to take what is already a bureaucratic tangle and create a Gordian knot never to be untied.  Assuming the sums to be paid out of the fund are sufficiently large enough to make it worth the effort, I can easily come up with a dozen perfectly legal laundering schemes that will leave the money unscathed by Newsom’s political stunt.  The fungibility of money is sometimes a wonderful thing.  This then will result in litigation galore from both sides aimed at the other until eventually the entire $1.776B is consumed in legal fees.

But that is not what truly upsets me about this whole mess.  California has never found a rule it cannot distort completely out of shape and reason.  Once California starts 100% taxing any income of any sort, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will find a way to expand the types until no one in the state is making any money in any way – all income will be 100% taxed.  That’s just the way of things in California.

I have watched it happen dozens of times in the realm of environmental regulation.  A rule, initially meant to address a limited situation, but one that absolutely necessitated regulation, is read, reinterpreted, redefined and expanded until everyone in the state is covered by the rule to some extent.  Said rule expansion does not really result in any significant increase in public safety or notable improvement in the environment, but the agencies get to levy more administrative fees and fines, hire more people and generally burgeon like the Blob of movie fame.

You also have to love the irony of weaponizing tax policy to fight an action taken to compensate for the weaponization of tax policy.  We’ve been talking all week about how liberals can no longer learn from their mistakes.  Res ipsa liquitor – the thing speaks for itself.