Here’s the newest entry in the “it’s insane to rely on government to hold back itself” file.
On Tuesday, June 8, the seven-member “California Citizen’s Compensation Commission” voted to increase by 4.2 percent the annual tax-sponging salaries of Governor Gavin Newsom (D) and the members of the California Assembly.
Because, who wouldn’t want to be certain that, after breaching his oaths to the U.S. and California constitutions, shutting down churches, and forcing into permanent closure nearly one-third of all the state's restaurants, an imperiously smug hypocrite and authoritarian like Newsom WOULDN’T get a pay raise?
Sophia Bollag reports for The Scramento Bee:
That would bring the governor’s official salary from $209,747 to $218,556. Most lawmakers’ pay would increase from $114,877 to $119,701.
So, Newsom will get nearly $9,000 more, and the Assembly members will each get nearly $5,000 more per year.
Those would be the folks in that mighty Sacramento building, the politicians who posted armed guards to block protesters, guards showing off heavy weapons in front of kids, then arresting people for not “social distancing” (in other words, breaking the bogus social distancing edicts themselves to conduct the arrests), all when people whose businesses were being destroyed by Newsom’s COVID-19 lockdowns allowed Newsom to keep his own winery open and saw him flout his own lockdown diktats by gathering with pals at an expensive bistro.
Related: Numerous CA Sheriffs Refuse To Enforce Gov Newsom’s New Lockdown
But, shoot, it must be completely fine, since the pay raise was allowed by the supposedly “independent” “California Citizen’s Compensation Commission” that was created by passage of a state Proposition in 2009.
Of course, that “independence” is a façade. As the commission’s own thrilling website admits:
The Commission has seven members, appointed by the Governor for six-year terms.
And, well, heck, they can only vote pay raises for their Governor and his political friends if the state has a “surplus,” which, oh-so conveniently, it has because, as I mentioned in May, the federal government got a heap of tax money and lots of borrowed, Federal Reserve-created, “dollars” and showered them on Newsom and the CA government. As I wrote at the time:
(E)mbattled Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom now is patting himself on the back for having a $75 billion “surplus” despite having sunk the state to a $54 billion deficit last year, and despite the economy tanking because of his COVID lockdowns, resulting in miniscule tax ‘receipts’ for the state.
This is an excellent example the folly of thinking that government will restrain its own power.
But Americans have been given examples of this since the U.S. Constitution usurped the Articles of Confederation. It’s the inherent problem for all people who believe the falsehood that a Constitution will hold back government. Government always grows because the people running it aggrandize power unto themselves by handing out favors, redistributing wealth, and circumventing the rules that they promised to uphold.
Even constitutional government does not hold back itself.
Only people who fight for liberty can do that.
That means it is up to us.
Related: Actor Rob Schneider Hammers CA Gavin Newsom’s Nutty 'Holiday Lockdown'
(Cover Photo: Gage Skidmore)