Let me make sure I’m reading this correctly. California Democrats mishandled two billion dollars — that’s billion with a B, the kind of number that has so many zeros your eyes glaze over — got caught doing it on film, and their legislative response wasn’t an apology, wasn’t a resignation, wasn’t even a halfway convincing excuse. Their response was to introduce a bill making it illegal to film them.
You cannot make this up. You literally cannot. If I pitched this as a screenplay, every studio in Hollywood would pass because it’s “too on the nose.” But in California, the crime isn’t the crime. The crime is getting caught doing the crime. And getting caught on camera? That’s apparently a constitutional crisis that requires immediate legislative action.
Let’s walk through the sheer brass-plated audacity of what happened here. Two billion dollars in public funds — money that came from California taxpayers who already pay the highest state taxes in America — got “mishandled.” Now, “mishandled” is the word polite people use when they don’t want to say “stolen” in a way that triggers a libel suit. The money didn’t fall between the couch cushions. It didn’t get lost in the mail. It went somewhere it wasn’t supposed to go, and the people responsible are the same people who control every lever of power in Sacramento.
Someone filmed it. Someone was in those government proceedings with a camera — as is their constitutional right — and captured evidence of what was happening with the public’s money. And rather than face accountability, rather than explain where two billion dollars went, these Democrats sat down and said, “You know what the real problem is? Cameras.”
This is like a bank robber suing the bank for having security cameras. It’s like a shoplifter proposing legislation to ban loss-prevention officers. It’s the most California Democrat response imaginable — the problem is never what they did, the problem is always that someone noticed.
The bill they’re pushing would restrict filming of certain government proceedings. Read that again. Government proceedings. The ones that are supposed to be public. The ones that transparency laws were specifically designed to keep open. The ones where our elected officials spend our money and make decisions that affect our lives. Those proceedings. Democrats want to put a curtain around them.
And they’re doing it in broad daylight with zero shame, because in California, they can. When you have a supermajority, when you control every statewide office, when the media that covers you is ideologically aligned with you, accountability becomes optional. You don’t need to explain yourself. You don’t need to answer questions. You just need to make sure nobody can prove what you did — and if they already proved it, you make the proof illegal.
This is what one-party rule looks like, folks. Not in some theoretical civics textbook way. In the real, practical, “they stole two billion dollars and their punishment is more power” way. California hasn’t had meaningful Republican opposition in over a decade, and this is the result. Not better governance. Not lower costs. Not cleaner streets. Just bolder theft and faster cover-ups.
The video evidence is out there. People have seen it. The internet doesn’t forget, and no amount of retroactive legislation changes what was already captured and shared. But that’s not really the point of the bill, is it? The point is next time. The point is making sure that the next time they cook the books — and there will absolutely be a next time — nobody has the legal right to document it.
They’re not plugging a leak. They’re building a dam against future accountability.
Every Californian paying nine, ten, thirteen percent state income tax should be apoplectic. Every resident watching their roads crumble, their schools decline, their homeless population explode should be asking one very simple question: where did two billion dollars go? And why are the people responsible more focused on hiding the evidence than returning the money?
But we know why. We know because this is the same state that locked people in their homes for two years while the governor ate at French Laundry. The same state that decriminalized theft under $950 and then acted shocked when stores closed. The same state that declared itself a “sanctuary” and then complained about the cost of housing illegal immigrants. Rules for thee, exemptions for me, cameras for neither.
Two billion dollars. Gone. And the only legislative urgency in Sacramento isn’t figuring out where it went — it’s making sure you can’t watch them do it again.
That’s not governance. That’s organized crime with better PR.
