Originally published at: California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoes free condoms for high school teens, allows retailers to refuse to sell them | Boing Boing
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Looks like he’s on a roll…
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as long as no one counts the cost of stds, teen pregnancy, and dropping out of school so kids can raise kids - i’m sure he just saved the state a ton of cash
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Is he going to try for the GOP nomination in '28? He’s pulling out all the fascist stops.
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I was gonna say, $19 million is a great deal compared to the societal costs, and the costs to the State of California, for all of those things. Penny wise and pound foolish. I’m not sure what he thinks he’s doing. He may pick up some support from centrist and conservative Democrats, and moderate Independents, but it’s going to come at the cost of the entire progressive wing of voters, a segment that is growing.
ETA: Plus, he’d doing this backwards. Historically, you move left leading up to a primary run, and then back to center for the general. I hope he’s not thinking about running in 2024 as an Independent. That’s about the only way his actions make any sense. Jesus, that would be a disaster for the country.
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Ugh; bad decision.
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A payroll, sure, from the Bad Political Decisions thinktank.
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Does Jello need to make a new version of California Uber Alles?
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Especially infuriating since Gavin himself very publicly dated a teenager who was barely out of high school when he was a newly elected mayor. (He was 39 at the time.)
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I’m sort of glad he’s passing and vetoing all these things. Now I have a good reason not to vote for him in the 2028 primary other than my gut feeling that he seems like a giant douche.
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California currently has the 31st of all the states, when it comes to preventing teen pregnancy. This is not exactly a great record to begin with, so this move is extremely ill-judged.
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I’d like to invite my fellow California voters to take this opportunity to remind the governor that these laws were all duly passed by the state legislature, and the power of veto is not something to be arbitrarily used to shoot down laws that you mildly or even moderately disagree with. That is a clear abuse of his office.
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For sake of discussion, let’s accept for a moment that you really do have a budget overrun and need to reduce spending. This is like my family sitting down with our household budget and deciding that we can get it under control if we stop buying toothpaste. Not only is it an insignificant portion of the budget, but this is going to cause far larger, more expensive problems that will have to be paid for later!
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Notice his excuse. Other spending proposals (that he rejected) would have ballooned the budget by almost 7% (19B), so we can’t spend on moderate programs either. There are about 1.9M students in 9-12. Condoms cost less than $1 each. So it seems safe to assume this proposal costs a few million. Not insignificant, but I also believe the state spending on K-12 is about $73B.
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always happens. all progressive until it is time to vote.
another DINO.
fuck.
apologies to @beschizza
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Looking at the summary table of California’s 2023-24 budget, even if he were to claim that this program had not been included when that budget had been passed, the Rainy Day fund currently stands at $22 billion.
Spending even $22 million on “raincoats” (and I suspect it wouldn’t be that much; buy in bulk!) seems like a drop in the bucket of California’s coffers, and spending that money now to potentially reduce the demand on California’s child support programs in the future seems like a good idea.
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Is he planning on switching party? /S
Pandering to the fascists will lose him more votes than it can gain on the crazy side. To the GQP voters, he is just another liberal “elite.”
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If those gut feelings weren’t based on his earlier actions and behavior, were they based on his hair, I wonder?
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Serious question - aside from his pipe dream of creating a 28th Amendment, what, exactly, is Gavin Newsom “progressive” about?
Keep psychedelics criminalized? Don’t cap the price of life saving drugs? Don’t hand out condoms to high schoolers? Sounds like shitty Neo Liberal policies.
But he said this bill was one of several measures lawmakers passed this year that, when added together, would add $19 billion in costs to the state budget.
$19 billion? Is that accurate? For condoms? Back of the envelope math, and I figure that’s enough for each boy to have over 1,100 condoms if they cost a buck each. Are they really spending that kind of money on that program? Were there other elements of the bill adding to the cost?
And let’s say that number is accurate, how much does the increase in teen pregnancy costing the state?
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