Golis: California will go its own way, but how far?

People are starting to notice Gov. Gavin Newsom's frequent allusions to the “nation-state” of California. The Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez was even moved to ask if it was time to divide up the country, leaving California and its neighbors to go their own way.

After an evening consumed with cable news shows, Lopez wrote: “We are so helplessly, irrevocably divided, it's time to quit talking about coming together as one and do the only sensible thing.”

In dividing the country, he said, there would be room for the Kingdom of Mar-a-Lago, too.

You don't have to believe in carving up the country to know that Americans are bitterly divided. Even a pandemic has become fodder for the national shouting match. Once upon a time, a public health emergency would have united Americans in common cause.

In red states, where people imagine themselves to be the last defenders of conservative values, California's (mostly) liberal politics make it a popular object of derision.

But here's what you need to know: Red states tend to pay less in federal taxes than they get back in federal largesse, while blue states tend to pay more in taxes than they get back.

This doesn't stop some red-state politicians from embracing one approach to federal aid when a hurricane strikes Texas and another when there's a hurricane or a pandemic in New York.

So it was that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell complained about proposed federal aid to states hardest hit by the coronavirus, a “blue state bailout,” his office called it.

McConnell comes from Kentucky, which happens to rank third among states that pay less in federal taxes and get more in return (second if you count per capita taxes and receipts).

These circumstances are not new, but they are confirmed in a new study by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. The study found Kentucky receives $2.41 for every dollar paid in federal taxes. Kentuckians, it turns out, are happy to accept a handout from taxpayers in places with more progressive views.

The New York Times, headquartered in a state that pays far more in federal taxes than it gets in return, was incensed. “Republicans,” the Times asked in an editorial, “who do you think is bailing out your state?”

In identifying California as a nation-state, Newsom said he was speaking to the “scale and scope” of a state larger than 20 others states combined and a state with the fifth-largest economy on Earth. In economic production, California ranks ahead of the United Kingdom, India, France, Brazil and Italy.

Newsom also seemed to be speaking to the willingness of Californians to pursue their own ways of doing things.

While the Trump administration vacillated, state and local governments in California pushed to expand shelter-in-place and social-distancing rules and to advance the availability of tests and protective equipment for health care workers.

Until now, Californians have been OK with paying more taxes than people in Kentucky, but Californians will notice if they are kicked in the teeth for it.

Consider the pseudoconservatives in Kentucky. Or consider Wyoming, which has 578,000 people and two United States senators. California also has two United States senators. They represent 40 million Californians.

Whatever the framers had in mind - at the time, there were 13 states, people owned slaves and women couldn't vote - no one would say this arrangement gives all Americans an equal voice in the direction of their government.

As President Donald Trump labored to blame others for the mounting death toll from COVID-19, the debate has managed to spotlight different views of federalism and of the respective responsibilities of the federal government and of the states.

With less support and guidance from the federal government, states have been left to organize their own strategies for controlling the virus and restarting their economies. In the West and elsewhere, some states have banded together, in part because viruses don't respect state borders.

It is, of course, nothing new for California to seek to pursue its own values. Public health and science, taxes, social programs, environmental protection, climate change, immigration, abortion, Wall Street regulation, foreign trade, medical care - there's a long list of ways that most Californians don't see the world in the same way Trump and his supporters view the world.

If Joe Biden is elected president in November, California may decide to make peace with the federal government. If Trump is reelected, however, we can expect the state to seek the authority to make its own decisions about the future.

Americans remain ambivalent about how the states and federal government apportion their responsibilities.

When some states seek to make it more difficult for people to vote, people in places like California believe the federal government must intervene.

But when the federal government wants to tell California when and how to restart its economy with a virus still lurking, that's a different story.

Representative government remains a work in progress. Asked it the new Constitution created a monarchy or a republic, Benjamin Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.

You can send a letter to the editor at letters@pressdemocrat.com.