[SFChronicle] Just five weeks into the job, Gov. Gavin Newsom has crystallized his vision of what California will look like in the Trump era: It won’t just be the hub of the resistance against the president; it will be its own nation-state.
But before Newsom can create a country-within-a-country, he had to defuse two multibillion-dollar grenades that his predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown, left in his in-box: high-speed rail and the delta tunnels project. In proposing Tuesday to scale back both of Brown’s unpopular legacy projects, Newsom hopes he can preserve enough political capital to get his own legacy projects on the fast track.
If he can do that, he can lead California down its own path for as long as Trump is president. California must go it alone, because Trump’s portrait of America is "fundamentally at odds with California values," the governor said Tuesday in his first State of the State speech.
Newsom said the president has "described a country where inequality doesn’t seem to be a problem, where climate change doesn’t exist, and where the greatest threat we face comes from families seeking asylum."
So California, as the world’s fifth-largest economy, is going to be a counterweight, a West Coast enclave built on its own values and funded, in part, by an anticipated $21.6 billion surplus.
So while the White House is "laser-focused on destroying the Affordable Care Act," as Newsom said Tuesday, he proposes that California offer its own health-insurance subsidies to families earning up to $150,000. He wants to expand Medi-Cal coverage to all Californians, including undocumented immigrants, until they are 26.
The United States Constitution. Article III, section 3 reads as follows:
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. [emphasis on topical legal premise added]. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
“The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted [sic]."
I lived in CA during "Fruit and Nuts." Great weather, laid-back lifestyles (for some, anyway) and South America wasn't using it as a magic ticket dispenser feeding the American Dream Nightmare. It's morphed into a place I cannot visit. 
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Victor Davis Hanson wrote about this very topic back in 2003.