As Gavin Newsom Continues His One-Man Rule, He Uses COVID Testing as an Excuse to Grift for More Cash – Opinion

Governor Gavin Newsom is tripling down on his statewide COVID policy, using the Omicron variant and fears of “Flurona” as an excuse to get more of those federal dollars.

A NEW COVID-19 emergency response package is being proposed. It will be the most comprehensive in the country and provide funding immediately for:

– More tests
– More vaccines and boosters
– More support for hospitals
– More partnerships to fight misinformation pic.twitter.com/ejibt0cb33

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 10, 2022

Starting at The Los Angeles Times:

California will spend $2.7B to address the increase in COVID-19-related cases. This includes additional testing capability and hospital assistance, according to a Governor’s budget proposal. Next week, Gavin Newsom will deliver a budget proposal to the state legislature.

Newsom is also asking California lawmakers to create new COVID sick payment rules. They will follow the policies that expired last autumn and require businesses employing 26 workers or more to give up to 2 weeks of paid sick time to their employees.

The last time this kind of legislation was passed, it forced businesses to adapt their business models to make provision for COVID-19 payments to employees. What did the result look like? This resulted in fewer businesses hiring and more of these companies leaving California. When Los Angeles and Long Beach decided to vote for extra hazard pay for grocery workers, Grocery store chain Kroger’s response? Some low-performing shops in the region will be closed. Newsom is continuing his push to end California’s business sector, with the help of misinformation and testing.

“Our proposed COVID-19 Emergency Response Package will support our testing capacity, accelerate vaccination and booster efforts, support frontline workers and health care systems and battle misinformation,” Newsom said in a written statement Saturday.

You can find it here, Newsom is following Dementia Joe, the CDC’s and Lord Fauci’s so-called plans to ramp up testing. Vanity FairThis expose focuses on how the federal government rejected the plan for quick-at-home COVID-19 screening, which would have reduced some of those associated with Omicron or Delta variants.

This 10-page plan is available here Vanity Fair has obtained, would enable the U.S. to finally do what many other countries had already done: Put rapid at-home COVID-19 testing into the hands of average citizens, allowing them to screen themselves in real time and thereby help reduce transmission. It called for 732 million test per month. This would need a significant increase in manufacturing capacity. It also recommended, right on the first page, a nationwide “Testing Surge to Prevent Holiday COVID Surge.”

These antigen tests can be used to identify the virus during the most infectious stages. Though less sensitive than polymerase chain reaction (PCR) laboratory tests, which can detect the virus’s genetic material at any stage of infection, antigen tests provide a quick snapshot in time for those seeking assurance that they are safe to travel or won’t accidentally infect vulnerable relatives.

This is the problem. The federal government doesn’t have control of the numbers they use to ramp up fear and hysteria. If they have no control over people self-testing but not reporting, then they have no control over people’s behavior—and they really want control of that.

The plan, in effect, was a blueprint for how to avoid what is happening at this very moment—endless lines of desperate Americans clamoring for tests in order to safeguard holiday gatherings, just as COVID-19 is exploding again. Yesterday, President Biden told David Muir of ABC News, “I wish I had thought about ordering” 500 million at-home tests “two months ago.” But the proposal shared at the meeting in October, disclosed here for the first time, included a “Bold Plan for Impact” and a provision for “Every American Household to Receive Free Rapid Tests for the Holidays/New Year.”

Three days after the meeting, on October 25, the COVID-19 testing experts—who hailed from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Rockefeller Foundation, the COVID Collaborative, and several other organizations—received a back channel communication from a White House official. They were informed that their bold, big idea of free home testing for every American to prevent a holiday surge was dead. That day, the administration instead announced an initiative to move rapid home tests more swiftly through the FDA’s regulatory approval process.

In Newsom’s COVID testing package, there is nothing about at-home testing, allowing people to self-quarantine, or acknowledging natural immunity. The federal party is still in control, so it’s throwing money at an already failing system.

From the Office of the Governor’s website:

The package includes a $1.4 billion emergency appropriation request to immediately equip California’s health care system with supplies and staffing to battle the current surge. Governor Newsom’s package will ramp up vaccines, boosters, statewide testing, and increase medical personnel. The package continues CA’s focus on supporting the public health by improving accessibility, equity, timeliness and sustainability of COVID-19 efforts.

Hair Gel can only continue this route because he won’t relinquish his emergency powers. Newsom has California still in a state emergency and effectively shut down the California Legislature. So, it doesn’t matter if the rest of the nation is coming to terms with COVID-19 being endemic, as Colorado Governor Jared Polis has said, as long as there is money to be had, Newsom will maintain his pandemic forever stance.

It is because of this that he reinstituted the statewide mask mandate, which was extended until February 15th. Yes, Omicron cases have spiked; but as my colleague Scott Hounsell has pointed out, the case rate and hospitalizations are actually lower than they were in August of 2020, but Newsom was facing a Recall election and didn’t want to do anything that could hurt his chances of keeping his office.

Now he has nothing to worry about—or so he thinks.

It is impossible to do the same thing again and expect completely different results. This is insanity. He has proven himself to be a deluded thinker with Hair Gel. But he continues to push forward with the help of a Legislature.

Newsom’s advisers said that Newsom will request the Legislature quickly to authorise the first $1.4billion of the pandemic package. He is expected to send his annual state budget plan Monday to the Legislature. With most of the funding going to expanding testing programs, the remainder would be spent on viruses response efforts in California prisons.

The exodus, and signaled exodus happening in California’s governing body portends two things: 1) the members will go along with whatever Newsom wants, because they have one foot out the door, or; 2) they will stand against this push for more COVID cash because they have something to prove or nothing to lose.

Last week alone, the Capitol bid farewell to progressive powerhouse Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, who departed the Assembly to take the top job at the California Labor Federation. Then followed back-toback announcements made by Democratic Sen. Connie Leyva of Chino and Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell of Long Beach, who both said they would not be seeking reelection despite having four years left to serve under the state’s term limit law. Then, on Thursday, Republican Assemblymember Kevin Kiley of Rocklin, who ran in the 2021 gubernatorial recall, announced that he would be running for Congress.

And today, former Assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes of Rancho Mirage, now the only independent in the Legislature, announced he’s not running again. “I have seen first-hand the dangers of partisan politics.  Blind faith to political teams has created a toxic tribalism that is tearing families, friendships, communities and this country apart,” he tweeted.

We can count on Assemblyman Kevin Kiley (R – RockStar), to resist this overreach. Newsom will have the upper hand and the rest of the Legislature is likely to follow suit.

Assemblyman Kiley, KUSI News, explained that Californians are tired of being insane and have decided to get on with their lives.

‘Law enforcement is not implementing mask mandate,’ Kevin Kiley says https://t.co/jaA5M2aJgg

— Jennifer OO (@joliveroconnell) January 10, 2022