Why doesn’t California Governor Gavin Newsom care about kids?
What is it with this “conservative”?
Last week, Newsom coldly deployed his veto pen to deny to Golden State public high school students the sex subsidies — in this case, free condoms — that a solid majority of their state legislators had determined were essential to their healthy development.
Senate Bill 541 would have mandated that all public schools make condoms available free to all students, grades nine through twelve. According to an Associated Press report, the legislation would also “have made it illegal for retailers to refuse to sell condoms to youth.”
The bill’s author, State Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Los Angeles Democrat, contends the legislation is needed to help “youth who decide to become sexually active to protect themselves and their partners from (sexually transmitted infections), while also removing barriers that potentially shame them and lead to unsafe sex.”
Newsom agreed that free condoms, even if not yet recognized as a fundamental human right, are “important to supporting improved adolescent sexual health.”
His problem? Condoms cost too much.
“With our state facing continuing economic risk and revenue uncertainty,” explained the governor, “it is important to remain disciplined when considering bills with significant fiscal implications.”
Seems California is already running a $30 billion deficit. Becoming the condom supplier of first resort for 1.9 million hormone-infused students each year would annually add a few million more to that deficit.
Ah, California … where Gavin Newsom is the voice of fiscal restraint.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “Fiscal Protector”
The Democratic governor of California vetoed a spending bill because the state has other spending priorities. It seems like to me that the snarky tone is completely unjustified. What would he need to do to please you? If not vetoing bills that spend too much money, what?
He’d have need to veto a great many bills before it, on the sane basis.
He’d likewise need to have veto bills that put tax rates well beyond the revenue-maximizing level.
He’d need to veto regulatory measures that have crushed commerce and industry.
He’d need to have respected liberty of expression and of religion.
He’d need to protect minors from adults who want to play games with their bodies that would make Victor Frankenstein vomit.
The state legislature can override his veto. Nothing’s stopping them.