Gavin Newsom is, in many ways, the most corrupt governor in America.
By that, I don’t mean that he spends his time and effort skimming off the top to put money in his own pockets. I have no evidence that he does, although an awful lot of money flows to and through the fingers of his wife. His personal wealth is not staggering by California standards—estimated at a few tens of millions of dollars—and he has it through his relationship with the Getty Oil family. Sort of a nepo-baby once removed.
His corruption is more in the style of Putin—using power to make others rich and indebted to him, and he has pillaged the coffers of the City of San Francisco and the State of California in order to do so. The ultimate goal is ultimate power, and his path to that power has been to leverage the power he has gained at each step up the ladder to enrich a group of allies who will, in turn, fund his rise further.
In 2023 Newsom was given a bill to sign that would have required private insurers to cover hearing aids for children. Many other states require insurers to cover them.
According to NY Post, Newsom vetoed the bill and decided instead to have the state provide the hearing aids.… https://t.co/3ue0x6Ylpq pic.twitter.com/3LwRSa6L6w
— MAZE (@mazemoore) May 14, 2026
In 2023 Newsom was given a bill to sign that would have required private insurers to cover hearing aids for children. Many other states require insurers to cover them.
According to NY Post, Newsom vetoed the bill and decided instead to have the state provide the hearing aids. The result was $23 million spent on hearing aids for 300 people. About $76,000 a person. About 20,000 children in CA still need hearing aids.
Well done Gavin.
The scale of Newsom’s corruption is almost beyond comprehension. California, if it were its own country, would have the fourth-largest economy in the world. Its economy is about twice the size of Russia’s, and its state budget is about 50% larger than Russia’s, despite having no war to fund against Ukraine or anybody else besides the taxpayers of California.
That gives a lot of room for corrupt spending, especially when nobody is looking to uncover it.
The other day, I took a look at Newsom’s Baby 2 Baby free diaper program, which is an obvious scam, paying highly inflated prices for cheap Mexican diapers to an NGO run by friends of his wife, who all make nice salaries.
BREAKING: Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff pleads guilty to money laundering and tax fraud.
Dana Williamson, Newsom’s chief of staff in 2022 and 2024, appeared in court in Sacramento to plead guilty to counts of conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, subscribing to a… pic.twitter.com/NIBagYTagT
— E X X ➠A L E R T S (@ExxAlerts) May 14, 2026
BREAKING: Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff pleads guilty to money laundering and tax fraud.
Dana Williamson, Newsom’s chief of staff in 2022 and 2024, appeared in court in Sacramento to plead guilty to counts of conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, subscribing to a false tax return, and making false statements.
She is accused of being the ringleader for a plan to siphon $225,000 from a dormant campaign account belonging to Xavier Becerra, who is a leading candidate for Governor, to pay for her own personal expenses.
According to the US Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of California, Williamson was charged with a 23-count federal indictment alleging conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, defrauding the United States, obstructing justice, filing false tax returns, and lying to authorities.
Williamson also allegedly falsely claimed personal expenses as business deductions, including thousands on Chanel and Fendi bags, an HVAC unit for her home, and even a $150,000 trip to Mexico for her birthday.
Sean McCluskie, Becerra’s former chief of staff, and lobbyist Greg Campbell also pleaded guilty to charges related to the thefts.
But compared to that program, the hearing-aid-for-kids scam is truly impressive. Given the opportunity to close a loophole in California’s insurance requirements, Newsom vetoed the bill and created a state program to provide hearing aids to kids in need.
The number of such kids is small for a state like California; about 20,000 kids. Regulations to require hearing aids for children are hardly extravagant, compared to, say, providing gender-affirming care for all comers. Most states require it because kids are severely handicapped if they can’t hear well; it’s not an annoyance, but vital to their development and later success in life.
Voters: “Insurance should cover hearing aids”
Newsom: “No. Instead let’s send $23,000,000 of taxpayer money to a nonprofit connected to my wife. They’ll only provide 300 hearing aids, even though 20,000 kids need them. That’s about $76k per hearing aid. Fuck the deaf kids.” https://t.co/Q0F5cTx3tm
— varrock (@varrock) May 14, 2026
Rather than serving 20,000 kids through existing channels, Newsom spent tens of millions to help 300. Not in the first month, but over several years.
My wife wears hearing aids. She gets top-of-the-line aids for under $2,000 at Costco. Newsom is spending over $75,000 per child, while the program serves only a small number of children.
That, my friends, is a scam. Just as California’s Medicaid program is filled with scams. Its homeless programs are filled with scams. Its transportation programs. And so on.
Billions and billions of dollars get funneled through the state into the pockets of Newsom’s political allies, sometimes directly, often indirectly. The NGO complex is one big scam. Money and power are deeply intertwined, and in many ways interchangeable.
Of course, Newsom is hardly alone in using this strategy. The Democratic Party is, for all intents and purposes, an organized crime syndicate. That’s why Tim Walz was elevated to the VP slot—it was wrongly assumed that he was good at it and clever enough to get away with it, rather than a doofus who got a pass from the Minnesota media despite the corruption being so obvious that a blind man could see it.
And it’s why Newsom has a good shot at becoming the Democrats’ presidential candidate, despite such a bad record in California. Newsom really HAS been good at this game, having been trained since his teen years in exchanging money and power interchangeably.
How many people could have pulled off the High-Speed rail fiasco and come out smelling like a rose? Almost nobody.
Newsom’s biggest barrier to ascending to the presidency, or at least the nomination, is that the base of the Democratic Party is now filled with revolutionaries who don’t want to milk the system but burn it down. They are baying for blood, not bucks. They don’t want sweetheart contracts and payoffs, but dead Republicans and billionaires beheaded by guillotines.
The pay-to-play model—the Newsom model—is outdated. Democrats are baying for blood in the streets, not payoffs.
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