How California fixes its smog and wildfire problems.
Sounds crazy and expensive, but the cost is worth the savings.
The best current science says California would spend on the order of $60–80 billion over time to thin forests, use more prescribed fire, and harden homes. In return, every $1 spent on those treatments avoids about $3.75 in wildfire damages, in a landscape where annual losses run $185–540 billion. In simple terms: serious wildfire mitigation pays for itself several times over.
Scenario
Cost (billions $)
Savings (billions $)
Net benefit (billions $)
Low estimate
60
225
+165
High estimate
80
300
+220
So even at the conservative end, California would come out ahead by $165–220 billion over time.
Evidence mounts of noncitizens reaching voter rolls, casting ballots as DOJ speeds crackdown
Here’s why states are hiding their voter rolls.
I’ve repeated it numerous times, a loon from Northern California claiming that after checking all fifty states there was only one case of voter fraud and it was a Republican. Not one undocumented person voted according to this person. (Yeah, same person who couldn’t hold down a job making coffee).
DOJ officials have found three major problems in policing states’ voter rolls ahead of the 2026 election: there are hundreds of thousands of dead people still eligible to vote, tens of thousands of illegal aliens are on the rolls and scores of foreigners have gone beyond registering and have actually voted in a federal election, which is illegal.
California corruption. Dana Williamson, center, a former top aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom, leaves the courthouse Nov. 12 in Sacramento, after being indicted on federal charges alleging involvement in a scheme to steal campaign money from former federal Health Secretary Xavier Becerra. ((Sophie Austin / Associated Press))
FBI intercepted communications of Newsom administration officials, California political players.
The LA Times is reporting verified facts about an FBI wiretap operation. Current and former members of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration were among the dozens of Sacramento insiders who received FBI letters in recent days notifying them that their phone calls, texts or other electronic communications had been intercepted as part of the federal corruption case tied to Dana Williamson and two additional longtime Democratic operatives.
The notifications are routine in wiretap investigations once surveillance ends, but the letters set off a wave of panic across California’s political power structure. Other media sources are going a step further.
The FBI had a mole inside Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political orbit before the agency’s corruption probe expanded into the governor and his wife, The Post has learned.
Democrat insider Alexis Podesta, 45, secretly recorded conversations during the criminal probe into Newsom’s then-chief of staff, Dana Williamson, 53, who pleaded guilty to federal fraud and tax charges in May, according to Williamson’s attorney.
So why are the Governors wife’s nonprofits being investigated? State employee whistleblowers.
Yesterday the Governor of California claimed that Trump took a page out of the Biden DOJ and was going after him and his wife. What he left out was the fact that California state employees from multiple departments came forward.
Employees of the California Department of Justice (CA DOJ)
Employees inside the California Governor’s Office
Employees connected to state‑funded programs that interacted with her nonprofits.
Why not go to state agencies?
Whistleblowers believed state leadership would not investigate itself.
Some feared retaliation if they reported internally.
Several said they had already raised concerns inside state agencies and nothing happened.
This mirrors the pattern seen in other California scandals (EDD fraud, DMV contracting, etc.): state employees warn internally → warnings ignored → feds step in.
What the whistleblowers provided
Federal investigators reportedly received:
Internal emails
Financial documents
Communications between state agencies and Siebel Newsom’s nonprofits
Testimony about how grants, contracts, or tax‑related filings were handled
This is why the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento — not the State of California — is running the investigation.
Case
Who Was Involved
Connection to Newsom
Type of Misconduct Alleged
Who Investigated
Indicted?
Convicted?
Siebel Newsom Nonprofit Investigation
Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s nonprofits; state‑employee whistleblowers
Indirect — nonprofits run by governor’s spouse; staff interviewed as witnesses
Democrats can vote for a woman who hates the flag or a woman who didn’t realize the dead guy was her husband.
A left-wing Sacramento city councilwoman who is running for Congress has repeatedly turned her back on the American flag and refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance. She is seeking to unseat longtime Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui in the June primary election. A few years back reports had said that Matsui said she was running to replace the dead guy. He was her husband.
California saying goodbye to entertainment, manufacturing, and energy jobs.
Granted some have been in a spiral downfall for almost a decade but until now no one’s looked at the approximate numbers. How’s 250-350,000 job loss sound? And that’s the direct number. This doesn’t count the side jobs these industries provide.
These aren’t cyclical losses — they’re structural. They reflect long‑term policy choices that make it harder to film, build, or produce energy in the state. Compared to Ohio.
California vs. Ohio Job Trend Comparison Table
Category
California
Ohio
Entertainment
Significant job losses due to production flight; shrinking “Information” sector
Small sector; stable employment; film incentives attracting modest growth
Manufacturing
Long‑term decline; high energy and regulatory costs push firms out
Growth in autos, EV supply chain, steel, polymers, and advanced manufacturing
The SEIU declares war on California’s tax base — and its economy.
by Bruce Bialosky.
Unions sometimes destroy entire industries when they demand more than companies can afford.
In California, the union demanding a “billionaire tax” might just destroy the state itself.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is one of the country’s most powerful unions, representing government workers. Its California branch is the SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West.
Its president, Dave Regan, is the principal organizer behind the “2026 Billionaire Tax Act,” which said this week that it has collected twice the number of signatures necessary to qualify for a statewide vote.
Though the California secretary of state has yet to review and approve the initiative, it looks like the “billionaire tax” will be on the ballot on Nov. 3.
The SEIU is one of the country’s most powerful unions representing government workers. San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
We don’t know how much the union spent to put the tax on the ballot. That will be released by the secretary of state when it has officially approved the initiative.
What we do know is that the union likely spent a huge amount, both in hard cash and staff time, with expenditures drawing on various union funds.
The SEIU’s motivation is simple: 90% of the money that would be collected by the “billionaire tax” would be designated for health care spending. In other words, it benefits the union and its members directly.
The SEIU is pursuing that money, notwithstanding recent disclosures of significant fraud in California health care programs, including Medi-Cal, the local version of Medicaid.
After the Trump administration started examining fraud in hospices, California Attorney General Rob Bonta jumped into the act and discovered $267 million of Medi-Cal fraud in the hospice program. Bonta stated that over the last decade, such fraud amounted to $1.5 billion.
We can all imagine what the real fraud level is, across all of the state’s public health programs.
In effect, the unions are attacking California’s tax base. An unknown number of billionaires have already relocated out of the state. Some have done it very publicly — among them Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, and Peter Thiel. The amount of wealth that left with them is in the ballpark of $1 trillion. (That represents $50 billion in lost revenue under the proposed new tax.)
The SEIU’s motivation is simple: 90% of the money that would be collected by the “billionaire tax” would be designated for health care spending. In other words, it benefits the union and its members directly. AFP via Getty Images
It is the undisclosed departures that may do the real damage. We don’t know about them, and will not know for some time.
Most of those leaving have a residence in other states, including states with no income tax, and have been working overtime with their lawyers and accountants to make sure their official residence is not in California.
To evade California residency, they may have to show that they have a driver’s license from another state; that they get their medical care there; and even that they attend a house of worship there.
(My money is on the tax pros versus the California bureaucrats on that issue.)
We are already seeing the devastating results of the SEIU’s gambit, regardless of whether the billionaire tax actually passes.
In 2024, California collected $129 billion in personal income tax. The top 1% pay 40% of that. The state stands to lose annual revenues of $13 billion if just 25% of those people vacate.
That does not include the revenue from the businesses and employees they are taking with them, which could easily hit $25 billion in the first year.
The SEIU has estimated that a “one-time” 5% tax on wealth will produce $100 billion in revenue. You don’t have to be a financial wizard to realize that will never happen.
Dave Regan, is the principal organizer behind the “2026 Billionaire Tax Act” membersunited4strength.org
That is because every time we are told that a “new source” of revenue will produce a claimed amount, the true amount is never even close to what they project.
The billionaires who do remain in California will also be hiring attorneys and accountants to hide or devalue their assets and assure that they pay as little of the new tax as possible.
You’d better believe they are planning that already. None of them has the cash on hand to pay the prescribed 5% of their net worth. They could be forced to liquidate assets, including their stock of California-based companies.
That will drive down asset values for the billionaires — and also for all of the employees and all the California residents who hold the stocks in their 401(k) accounts.
Economic harm will spread among the residents of the state and boomerang, causing even less tax revenue to be collected.
All this to pay more into government health care programs riddled with fraud, and to punish people for creating jobs and wealth for people throughout California and the country.
The SEIU’s billionaire tax could impoverish California for generations. No billionaire comes close to that kind of destructive greed.
Bruce Bialosky, a former presidential appointee, is a certified public accountant specializing in taxes.
