So instead of fixing things, he's focused on what's important to him: keeping President Trump off the state's national election ballot in 2020, by signing off on a bill requiring him to release five years of tax returns, something he knows Trump is not going to do. Here's NPR's report :

Governor Gavin Newsom of California sits in the catbird seat. His state is falling apart — with homelessness, medieval pestilence, millions of unvetted foreigners coming to claim services, stratospheric housing costs, choking greenie regulations, faltering electrical grids, out-of-control wildfires, and soaring crime — yet in his rigged blue one-party state, he hasn't got a thing to worry about. The state will always be blue, right? No need to improve anything to stay in office. They've got it rigged.

A new law in California will require candidates for president to release their tax returns in order to appear on the primary ballot in March, 2020.

"States have a legal and moral duty to do everything in their power to ensure leaders seeking the highest offices meet minimal standards, and to restore public confidence," said California Gov. Gavin Newsom in his signing statement Tuesday. "The disclosure required by this bill will shed light on conflicts of interest, self-dealing, or influence from domestic and foreign business interest."

Ah, our own moral good, see. What would we do without such watchkeepers of it? It's kind of like how the mullahs do it in Iran, vetting candidates, setting preconditions on the ones they allow, all to keep us pure. Here's Newsom's tears and flapdoodle version of it:

These are extraordinary times. We can and must ensure those running for high office are held to a basic standard of transparency & accountability.



CA now requires those running for POTUS & Gov to release 5 yrs of tax returns to get on our primary ballot. pic.twitter.com/JglwAYOyOe — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) July 30, 2019

The real aim? To keep Trump off the ballot, rigging it again as virtue-signaling. As if the state might just go red and hand its 52 electoral votes to the Trump side instead of whatever extremist the Democrats put out against him?

There's not a chance in hell of it...yet he's signing off on this clearly illegal law, as if he wants to be absolutely sure.

Legal eagle Robert Barnes points out how this is going to work out:

This law will be struck down as unconstitutional. States cannot add qualifications for the Presidency. https://t.co/5tO0otZxBQ — Robert Barnes (@Barnes_Law) July 30, 2019

Barnes knows his stuff, so take this as the right forecast.

Here's another good tweet illustrating the absurdity of the whole thing.

How do you handle write in candidates? If you write in & vote for Mickey Mouse does Disney have to file financials? — John Costagliola (@Jcostoak) July 30, 2019

Keeping Trump's name off the ballot is nothing but another form of rigging. This one's an effort to depress Republican down-ballot voting for congressional slots with no Trump on the top of the ticket. Ballot-harvesting has already rigged the down-ballot seats into place, even in historically conservative Orange County. Could ballot-harvesting perhaps now not be enough? Certainly would explain this added layer of ballot-rigging.

Maybe that's because Newsom concerned that Trump is depressing the illegal alien turnout by threatening to penalize those who illegally cast ballots? If so, it would signal that Democrats are held into place in California in large part by illegally cast ballots, more so than most have imagined, and most importantly, that Newsom knows it. His payback, perhaps, then, is to depress GOP turnout by keeping Trump off the ballot.

So all the homelessness, the crime, the migrant sponging, the horrible public finances are nothingburgers to him. Like Louis XIV, he's comfortable being the sun king, and too bad about the descamisados. His real concern is for political rivals, and, though not symmetrical, none is more potent than Trump.

This is a dirty, slimy game he's playing. One can only hope the lawsuit is swift, the smackdown is hard, and the effect is more Republicans than ever coming out of the woodwork in the next election as a result, desperate to halt vote repression and teach this clown a lesson.

Image credit: Twitter screen shot.