Recession Barely Registers at CA FWD’s Economic Summit

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference in San Francisco on Oct. 6, 2022. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Commentary

Talk about clueless.

The California Forward (CA FWD) 2022 Economic Summit was held Oct. 27-28 in Bakersfield. It’s worth examining its “Playbook: Energizing for the Future.” CA FWD, according to its own online description, “leads a statewide movement, bringing people together across communities, regions and interests to improve government and create inclusive, sustainable growth for everyone.”

The honorary chairs of the Summit are Gov. Gavin Newsom and Leon Panetta. The latter currently is with the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, but is well known as a former congressman from California, chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, secretary of defense, and CIA director.

The buzzwords “inclusive” and “sustainable” form a big part the Playbook. But the word “recession” occurs only twice, first on page 8 in reference to the 2014 passage of Proposition 2, which established a Rainy Day Fund. Second on page 9 in reference to “dramatically different regional recoveries in the wake of the Great Recession [20007-10]. This highlights the importance of regionally based economic development strategies like the Community Economic Resilience Fund (CERF).”

But even as the summit was being held—11 days before the Nov. 8 election—the tech markets on which the state’s prosperity depend were crashing. Although it’s not in the online text, the Axios Markets’ early Oct. 28 email newsletter headline read, “Dot-com bust 2.0.” I’ve also been using that phrase, warning of an eventual crash in the tech field similar to Dot-com bust 1.0 in 2000-01. The tech industry hardly had its hair mussed in the Great Recession more than a decade ago.

“There’s a distinctly dot-com-ish feel at the moment, as even tech companies that once seemed untouchable are taking massive tumbles in the stock market,” Axios reported. “Shares of social networking giant Meta [Facebook] crashed yesterday in part because its floundering virtual reality environment lost nearly $4 billion, with the red ink still to grow ‘significantly.’ The stock suffered its second-worst single-day drop on record, collapsing by nearly 25 percent. …

“Meta’s 75 percent collapse since its September 2021 peak has destroyed more than $800 billion in stock market wealth.”

Meanwhile, reported CNBC also Friday morning, “Amazon shares plunged more than 10 percent in early trading Friday, a day after the company projected sales in the holiday quarter would be far below expectations. Shares are now off about 50 percent from their highs, resulting in about a $940.8 billion hit to Amazon’s value.”

Then there’s the finalization of Twitter’s purchase by Elon Musk. He tweeted, “the bird has been freed.” He began by firing the company’s top executives, who have been imposing a reign of censorship terror he says will end. And he says he will fire 75 percent of current employees. The main effect for California is thousands of these employees make high-six-figure salaries and pay huge state tax bills. Now they no longer will.

Summit Fantasies

Which brings us back to the CA FWD’s Summit Playbook. We don’t know how bad the recession will be, but it could be devastating. The Summit should have focused on such things as cutting taxes and regulations to get all of us through the coming hard times. Instead, it was the usual topics.

From page 5, here were the Concurrent Working Sessions at 1 pm on Oct. 27:

• Building a Sustainable Energy Future
• Broadband for All
• Economic Prosperity in a Changing Climate
• Housing and Homeownership
• Advancing Inclusive Regional Economies (Going Beyond CERF) [Community Economic Resilience Fund]

And here were the Concurrent Working Sessions at 3:30 pm:

• Education and Workforce
• Resilient and Productive Landscapes
• Entrepreneurship and Small Business Ownership by People of Color
• The Creative Economy

Again, note the buzzwords these folks swim in: “sustainable,” “changing climate,” “inclusive,” “people of color.” Page 11 adds, “Creation of a BIPOC developer fund to add capacity and reduce barriers.”

BIPOC—I always have to look it up—means, “Black, Indigenous, and people of color,” and is pronounced “bye-pock.” It’s so confusing in June 2020, during the riots that summer, Vox helpfully told us, “Why the term ‘BIPOC’ is so complicated, explained by linguists. There is no one size fits all’ language when it comes to talking about race.”

No kidding. That’s why CA FWD’s Summit shouldn’t use such terms. All they do is divide us during a time becoming more difficult every day due to the economic crisis. We should just use Dr. Martin Luther King’s well-known plea from his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

That’s especially true in California, where the 2020 U.S. Census found, according to the PPIC summary, “No race or ethnic group constitutes a majority of California’s population: 39 percent of state residents are Latino, 35 percent are white, 15 percent are Asian American or Pacific Islander, 5 percent are Black, 4 percent are multiracial, and fewer than 1 percent are Native American or Alaska Natives.”

That is, BIPOCs—to use CA FWD’s term—are 65 percent of the population and rising. Creating a “BIPOC developer fund” would just be a socialist redistribution scheme, causing even more division instead of lifting all boats together.

Climate Change

Page 15 describes the session on “Economic Prosperity in a Changing Climate.” It’s not about the economic climate crashing and prosperity ending, which is really going on, but about “climate change.” It says, “Climate adaptation and mitigation can create pathways for new industries, technologies, jobs and economic mobility. These opportunities can be designed in a way that addresses historic inequities and environmental injustice while accelerating economic mobility for disadvantaged communities.”

“Historic inequities and environmental injustice” is just more socialist rearranging of wealth. I grew up in Wayne, Michigan, a factory town where the belching smokestacks advertised good, high-paying jobs for everybody, even a high-school dropout. My parents always lamented when “the smoke stopped flowing” at such plants in the 1930s Great Depression. Fortunately, modern anti-pollution policies have made the air and water cleaner for everybody. But the fact is not everybody can work as an environmental consultant on a pleasant business “campus.”

As to “economic mobility,” we’re seeing a lot of that as Californians keep fleeing a state where CA FWD’s policies have been so influential in killing jobs.

CERFing Buzzwords

Another working session is titled, “Advancing Inclusive Regional Economies (Going Beyond CERF).” When I hear CERF, I always think of Bennett Cerf, a Random House editor and writer who was a panelist on the TV show “What’s My Line?” Or Vint Cerf, one of the co-creators of the internet.

The Summit explained:

Through the Community Economic Resilience Fund (CERF), the state has incentivized regions to work together to pursue inclusive economic development outcomes. However, regions need continued critical support to successfully and equitably implement solutions including and beyond CERF by raising awareness, building regional capacity and strengthening partnerships. The working session will share lessons learned from implementing inclusive economic development strategies and help institutionalize work happening at the regional level.

More buzzwords to divide us even as the economic ship is sinking: “incentivized,” “inclusive economic development outcomes,” “equitably,” “raising awareness,” “partnerships,” “institutionalize.”

Translation: More work for consultants to implement all these “strategies” that actually kill jobs, divide people, and drive actual Californians from the state.

And how does any of that help us cope with 8 percent inflation?

I’ll analyze some of the individual sessions soon. But for now, one thing is for certain: Next year’s Summit will have some different sessions, likely with such titles as: “Surviving Municipal Bankruptcy”; “From $100 billion State Surplus to $40 Deficit”; and “Where’d all the Californians Move To?”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.