California Democrats Split on Culture War

Staking his claim to the title of America’s most aggressive culture warrior, California Attorney General Rob Bonta is now officially deploring 26 of America’s 50 states and banning state-funded travel to these condemned jurisdictions. The AG is acting under an ill-advised 2016 law that empowers him to add states to the banned list when they deviate from the radical social agenda expressed in Golden State statutes. Mr. Bonta’s new spasm of intolerance is especially disappointing because other California politicians finally seem willing to stop waging their interstate cancellation campaign.

Lindsey Holden and Maggie Angst report for the Sacramento Bee:

Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Friday that California was adding Missouri, Nebraska and Wyoming to the list of states where official travel is banned, bringing... the total to 26...

State leaders added Missouri and Wyoming because of new laws that prohibit transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports. Nebraska made the list because of the “Let Them Grow Act,” which would bar health care providers from providing gender-affirming care to anyone under the age of 19.

Did anybody on Mr. Bonta’s staff consider the possibility that condemning most of the country is pretty good evidence that California is the one with the problem? The good news is that some Californians actually want to fix this problem. The SacBee reporters note:

The travel ban additions come at a peculiar time, as a bill to repeal the ban is making its way through the Legislature. Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, authored Senate Bill 447 to lift the state restrictions. Atkins, who identifies as a lesbian, argues the ban is well-intentioned but has resulted in unintended consequences. Her bill would end the travel ban and create a program for inclusive LGBT messaging in other states.

People can disagree about whether the law was well-intentioned while still recognizing that California’s ban has been counterproductive.

As this column previously noted, even the San Francisco Board of Supervisors agreed this year to normalize trade relations with the United States. The city found that as much fun as it was for local pols to pretend to be more virtuous than people in other jurisdictions, it turned out to be very expensive to cut off the city’s government from vendors in sensibly-governed states.

As for California’s government travel ban, it has been fairly effective at limiting opportunities for communication and collaboration. Ms. Atkins noted in a March press release:

As the years have passed, the travel ban has had the unintended impact of further isolating members of the LGBTQ+ community in those states, and hampering Californians from being able to conduct research, business, and engage with all people from those states.

Doesn’t sound very inclusive, does it? The travel ban is not as effective as it could be because the money available in college sports has persuaded state officials to allow UCLA to convert the ban into an empty virtue signal for the purpose of joining the Big Ten athletic conference. The banned list’s new inclusion of Nebraska—home to yet another Big Ten opponent—underlines the hypocrisy of California officialdom.

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Blue Flight from Blue States
Some California readers may wish that California law banned all types of government-funded travel—and lots of other things currently receiving government funding.

Perhaps these readers already know that there is a group of public employees who are increasingly paying their own way to get out of California—and who can blame them?

Libor Jany and David Zahniser report for the Los Angeles Times:

With negotiations over a new salary contract dragging on last month, the Los Angeles Police Protective League’s vice president, Jerretta Sandoz, hopped on Facebook to speak her mind.

In a comment that was apparently later deleted, the union leader for more than 9,000 LAPD officers laid out what she saw as the hardships of being a cop in L.A... Sandoz advised departing LAPD officers to find jobs in communities where the political leadership “understands your worth.”

“Go somewhere that respects the work you do and you don’t have to beg for a great contract,” she wrote, according to a screenshot of the post that was reviewed by The Times. “Go somewhere that has a city council or city manager that openly acknowledges the great work you do, go somewhere that doesn’t have Two or more City Council members who hate you (no exaggeration).”

The post, written a few weeks before the expiration of the LAPD’s contract on June 30, raised eyebrows among some inside the department, who questioned why a high-ranking union official — venting or not — would endorse the departure of cops at a moment when the LAPD is hemorrhaging officers. The number of officers dropped to 9,027 last week, down roughly 1,000 compared to 2019.

Union representatives can be extremely demanding around contract time, but a large number of officers quitting is a fairly strong signal that L.A. cops are not overpaid. The Times report continues:

In a follow-up email to The Times, Sandoz said she hopes the department makes “improvements” and that officers choose to stay with the LAPD, while adding that the “criteria I advise officers to evaluate when they are choosing to work for another agency is, in many respects, the same criteria officers are using to determine if they are going to stay with the LAPD.”

No doubt many Angelenos value the work that police do and want them to do much more of it.

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival” and also the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi.”

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(Teresa Vozzo helps compile Best of the Web. Thanks to Tony Lima.)

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