By John Ubaldi, “Ubaldi Reports”

Whenever he gets the chance, California Governor Gavin Newson touts his state is a “nation state” and should be the example for the rest of the nation; but does America truly want to embrace its policies or should it reject it outright.

No matter what, Newsom portrays how his state is better than the red states of Texas and Florida who he often derides at every chance he gets, however the governor fails to mention the major flaws of California.

California boasts itself as the most progressive and ethnically enlightened state in the country that should be the example of how to govern; unfortunately fact belays the real truth behind this façade.

As much as California touts how they care about ethnic minorities, especially people of color, the rest of America should be cautious of duplicating the states record especially with regard to education.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the state’s academic achievement for black and Hispanic students was 70% unable to do math or English to grade level, and with the latest test results showing that Los Angeles Unified School District has 80% of people of color unable to function at grade level.

This staggering trend is also reflective nationally, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a sector of the U.S. Department of Education, 84 percent of Black students lack proficiency in mathematics and 85 percent of Black students lack proficiency in reading skills.

Political columnist for “CalMatters” Dan Walters wrote that since the passage of The Local Control Funding Formula, California dramatically increased the amount of school spending. The 2021-22 state budget pegs state and local school financing at $123.9 billion, nearly twice what it was in 2013, and per-pupil spending at $21,555, “the highest levels ever.” California schools also are receiving $13.6 billion from the federal government to cushion impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

California despite spending billions on addressing its homeless population, which the state accounts for over 30% reside in the golden state. California has the highest number of income disparity of any state in the country; it ranks at or near the bottom of all economic indicators. This includes the highest poverty rate of any state in the country.

The state also has the highest tax burden, and now more people are fleeing the state then are moving in; hardly a metric to have duplicated across the country.

As much as Newsom ridicules red states such as Texas and Florida, these states are creating more housing units then California, with Florida at number two and Texas just behind at number six.  The lack of available housing units have impacted California’s rental costs, which is one of the highest in the country contributing to the economic disparity for its residents.

This is only a small sampling of how California is failing its citizen, and the rest of the country should be extremely wary of adopting this model. Just examine California’s governance on various projects to get a feel how dysfunctional the state really is.

The governor’s much touted bullet train which was supposed to be up and running by now bringing passengers from one corner of the state to the other, unfortunately, the state is still stuck building the initial stretch in the San Joaquin Valley which is probably years away from even working, all the while costs have skyrocketed into the hundreds of billions.

Just examine the reconstruction of the earthquake-damaged San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in 1989, the initial costs was supposed to be about $250 million ended up costing over $6.5 billion before it was finally completed.

How about the near collapse of the Oroville Dam on the Feather River in 2017, when sections of the main spillway gave way, then to add further to the catastrophic crisis was an emergency spillway eroded the base of the dam.  The state failed in its re-licensing of the dam years earlier, dismissing concerns about the dam’s integrity. Later and covered up by the state was that it was determined the main spillway had been poorly designed, but California still tried to shift blame.

Examine how California handled the massive sheading of jobs that were erased because of the economic shut down of the state’s economy due to the coronavirus. The State’s Employment Development Department whose sole mission was handling legitimate claims for unemployment insurance, instead suffered a catastrophic meltdown, instead issued out $30 billion in fraudulent claims.

This was well known a year before that the state was ill-prepared for any type of unemployment compensation pay-out to those unemployed. The state barely paid back its loan of $10 billion from the federal government, and had to borrow $20 billion additional funding from Washington for the coronavirus economic shutdown which it still hasn’t paid back.

How will California meets its obligation to those potentially laid off during an impeding recession which many economists expect to happen this year? Will they ask Washington for a bailout?

California is home to Silicon Valley a region in Northern California that serves as the epicenter as a global innovator for high technology, yet the state has wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on wasted projects and failed in its ability to implement these high tech projects resulting in massive cost overruns.

One only has to do a cursory examination how state and local government throughout the state have spent billions on homelessness, infrastructure, education and other projects, yet California ranks near or at the bottom of all states in all these categories.

California as a massive crime problem, but instead of addressing it they make the situation worse by reducing its prison population by sending felons unto local overcrowded county jails or just releasing them outright to commit more crime. Then factor in passing soft criminal reform legislation or through ballot initiatives.

Then finally the one area the media fails to hold California accountable is the unsustainable massive unfunded health and pension system that totals around $1.5 trillion.

This began in 1995, when the California Public Employees Retirement System with approval by a complicit and union supported legislators provided state and local government workers with lucrative unsustainable benefits; now the bill is due, and the California doesn’t have the revenue to support promises made.

No matter what Newsom utters California is a fiscal mess and if the U.S. adopts this model then America will face the fiscal disaster that is California.