Victor Davis Hanson // National Review
California’s state legislature just passed, and Governor Gavin Newsom signed, Assembly Bill 3121 to explore providing reparations to California’s African-American population — 155 years after the abolition of slavery.
Apparently, when California’s one-party government cannot find solutions to current existential crises, it turns to divisive issues that have little to do with the safety and well-being of its 40 million citizens.
California has the highest gas taxes in the nation, even as its ossified state highways remain clogged and dangerous. Why, then, does Sacramento kept pouring billions of dollars into the now-calcified high-speed-rail project?
When fires raged, killed dozens, polluted the air for months, consumed thousands of structures, and scorched 4 million acres of forest, the governor reacted by thundering about global warming. But Newsom was mostly mute about state and federal green policies that discouraged the removal of millions of dead and drought-stricken trees, which provided the kindling for the infernos.
