🍊 🇺🇸 OC Conservative Brief - 11.3.23

Good morning, happy Friday, and welcome to your end-of-week edition of the OC Conservative Brief, your run down of Orange County's local politics from a conservative perspective.

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This week, we have a controversial new policy in Huntington Beach regarding library children’s books and a new $6.4 billion bond ballot measure to revamp the state’s approach to homelessness and mental health. But first, let’s dive into Gavin Newsom’s headline-grabbing swing through China and what was really going on behind the scenes…

NEWSOM SELLS OUT TO CHINA EVs California Governor Gavin Newsom took a high-profile state trip to China this week. You probably saw some highlights, mainly the clip of 6’3” Newsom plowing through a small Chinese child who was trying to defend him while playing basketball (GIF of that moment below).

That kid wasn’t the only one who got pummeled by Newsom while he was in China. American workers and consumers got a slap in the face as well.

California, with an assist from the Biden Administration, is mandating that every car sold in the state by 2035 be electric, a gargantuan dictate that will only be made possible by a massive transfer of wealth to China at the expense of American workers. While Newsom’s trip was ostensibly about statesmanship and reducing climate emissions, the elephant in the room was California’s insatiable demand for, and dependency on, China’s electric vehicle industry.

As things currently stand, China has an absolute stranglehold on the market for electric vehicles. Their EV models are cheaper and already making inroads into big European and Asian markets. 

• Meanwhile, the U.S. is struggling to catch up for a myriad of reasons. The strikes by U.S. auto workers were sparked in no small part over the fact that US automakers are being forced to allocate a huge amount of their profits towards EV research and development at the expense of those unionized workers.

China also dominates the world’s supply of rare earth metals and the processing of those metals, both of which are required to manufacture the batteries that power electric vehicles (and which produce nightmarish amounts of pollution).

That means that even if the U.S. ramps up production of its own EVs, China will still profit immensely off the batteries.

• Meanwhile, the United States is home to exactly one rare earths mine - in southeast California. Although it is currently the second-largest producer of rare earths materials in the world, most of its raw materials are currently exported to China to be processed. That site’s operator, known as Mountain Pass Materials, received a $35 million investment from the Biden Administration in 2022 to boost production.

Investments like this are a step in the right direction and there is a growing bipartisan consensus to boost the U.S. supply chain. But it will take time to grow a booming U.S. rare earths industry and a humming EV manufacturing industry that can mass produce affordable electric vehicles.

But Newsom and the Green Brigade don’t want to wait. They want it now.

Right now, China is the only country that can offer what the Washington Post described last month as “low-cost EVs for the masses.” They wrote, “After gaining a dominant hold on the raw materials and batteries necessary for electric vehicles, China is now making a play for the one thing it doesn’t have: cars on roads in the West.”

This where Newsom’s electric vehicle mandate - paired with the Biden Administration’s equally aggressive nation-wide push - becomes a massive gift to China. The zealous government requirement that every car sold in California be electric by 2035 (regardless of where they or their batteries come from or how much they cost consumers) only fuels more demand for China’s already booming EV industry.

• Case in point: Newsom took a photo op sitting in a $160,000 electric SUV made by BYD Company, a Chinese manufacturer with ties to the Communist Party that receives billions in government subsidies.

Bottom line: The Chinese Communist Party is looking to become the dominant player in California’s EV market. Newsom, through his mandate, is handing it to them on a silver platter, and his PR swing through China promoting Chinese electric vehicles shows it’s not a bug of the mandate but a feature.

HUNTINGTON BEACH BOOK BAN The Republican city council majority in Huntington Beach is under fire again, this time over its decision to create a 21-member Community Review Board with oversight of children’s books in public libraries. The proposal passed the council last month with a 4-3 vote.

• The Board will have the power to reject new books for the children’s section, or take current books out of the children’s section, that “do not meet the city’s community standards of acceptance,” including “any content of sexual nature.” Each councilmember will get three appointments to the board.

Opponents of the measure are predictably decrying it as a “book ban,” although supporters pointed out that the Board does not have the power to “ban” books but merely to keep them out of the children’s section. Under the new policy, children will still be able to access books in other parts of the library if given permission by their parents.

• Nevertheless, the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register editorial boards both slammed Huntington Beach this week for their “moral panic” and stressed that it could prevent adults from being able to access certain books as well.
  

• The ACLU and other free speech advocates wrote a letter to the city attacking the measure as unconstitutional and worried that classic novels like The Great Gatsby could end up on the target list

Councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark, the sponsor of the new measure, said she was motivated to make it harder for children to access sexually-explicit books after she faced stiff resistance trying to get the graphic memoir “Gender Queer,” removed from the city’s public library in 2020 over concerns it could easily be accessed by kids.

• That book, which is extremely graphic and includes images of people engaging in oral sex, was eventually moved into the adult section of the library.

All of this is taking place amid a broader fight over what is - or isn’t - going on in Orange County schools regarding gender identity and other sexual content among children. Two OC school districts, Orange Unified and Placentia-Yorba Linda, have passed “parental notification” policies in recent months that require teachers to inform parents if a student is identifying as a different gender. Capistrano Unified rejected a similar policy last month.

A MENTAL HEALTH PROPOSITION Governor Gavin Newsom formally launched a campaign in support of the upcoming Proposition 1, a new $6.4 billion bond (aka money borrowing) measure to increase funding for and overhaul the state’s approach to homelessness and mental health.

• Don’t get confused with last year’s Proposition 1, the abortion rights state constitutional amendment that was approved by voters in the midterm elections.

The Proposition is part of Newsom’s broader campaign to revamp the state’s approach to mental health. Proposition 1, which must be approved by voters, proposes spending $4.4 billion to add 11,000 new treatment beds and another $2 billion on supportive housing options to “get homeless individuals who have been diagnosed with mental illness or substance abuse into treatment programs.” It also directs counties to readjust how they spend their mental health budgets.

• Newsom signed a related bill into law last month that expands the ability of state or local authorities to force someone into mental health treatment against their will if they cannot feed, house, or clothe themselves.

Where does everyone stand on the proposal? The bill to put the proposition on the ballot passed the state legislature in September with unanimous Democrat support, while Republicans split.

Notably, none of Orange County’s Republican representatives voted for the bill.

• Assemblymember Diane Dixon (R) voiced concerns that the proposal’s new directives on county budgets would adversely hurt Orange County’s approach to mental health, which has been a rare success story in an otherwise bleak state.

Meanwhile, Republican Assemblymember Bill Essayli slammed the proposition and its cost to taxpayers as a “a scam to further line the pockets of the homeless industrial complex … we have already spent $23 billion on homelessness and there’s nothing to show for it.”

On the other side, disability advocates worry that focusing on getting homeless people into treatment beds could return California to “the kind of institutional care that led to many people being held against their will for mental health issues.”

• Californians Against Proposition 1, a group describing itself as a “broad, nonpartisan coalition of people, including those who provide and receive local and statewide mental health services,” announced it will oppose the measure.

Just something to consider: A series of audits, which the state itself has asked for, have repeatedly found that California’s $10 billion-dollar approach to homelessness has been “disjointed” and hasn’t yielded significant results. I’ll end with two questions:

• If Orange County’s approach is working to reduce the homeless population, why would Sacramento force the county to change it?

• Pivoting the state’s homeless focus to mental health may be the right answer, but why does that require borrowing an additional $6.4 billion, let alone at a time of historically high interest rates?

WAIT, THERE'S MORE...

🇨🇳 A top California prosecutor warned Congress last week that Communist China may try to meddle in California’s 2024 elections.

🚗 The $2.16 billion project widening Orange County’s section of the 405 freeway to the 73 are set to open December 1.

⭐️ Real Housewives of OC star Shannon Beador pleaded no contest to DUI charges this week; she received probation and community service but no jail time.

Have a tip on a news item in Orange County conservatives should know about? Drop me a line at [email protected]