If you are wondering where California’s tax dollars go and why the state is drowning in debt, here is a hint:
250 state employees were paid more than $600,000 last year.
California does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. pic.twitter.com/GfW06oY2Uh
— Stephen Moore (@StephenMoore) August 28, 2026
If you ever wondered why California is drowning in debt while regular families flee the state, economist Stephen Moore just handed you the receipts. Two hundred and fifty California state employees were paid more than $600,000 last year. The president of the United States makes $400,000. Some of these Sacramento insiders cleared well over $2 million.
California does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending-and-self-dealing problem.
That is the jump-off point for a much bigger story America has been living through for years: Democrats treat taxpayer money like a personal ATM. They pad public payrolls, park loyalists at PACs and NGOs, and for decades ran USAID as a slush fund that enriched contractors, consultants, and connected nonprofits while lecturing the rest of us about “equity.” President Trump and DOGE finally took a chainsaw to the worst of it. The Left screamed that children would die. What they really feared was the end of the lifestyle.
California: Six-Figure “Public Service” While the Budget Bleeds
The San Francisco Chronicle’s analysis of 2025 state compensation data is brutal. The highest-paid state worker, CalPERS chief investment officer Stephen Gilmore, took home more than $2.3 million in total compensation, including a massive “other pay” incentive. Other pension-fund managers, prison psychiatrists, and California Highway Patrol brass stacked up behind him. Roughly a third of the $600,000-plus club works at the giant public pension systems. Prison doctors and top cops fill out a lot of the rest.
Newsom’s California is running structural deficits even after years of record tax hauls. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office has flagged operating shortfalls and a growing “wall of debt.” Newsom and the Legislature paper it over with “solutions,” reserve raids, and delayed payments to schools — then claim the budget is balanced. Meanwhile, the people who actually run the machine collect compensation that would make a Fortune 500 mid-level exec blush.
This is not “paying for talent.” It is a political class that decided government exists to keep its own people comfortable.
BREAKING: Nick Shirley says California’s new “Stop Nick Shirley” law could fine him $4,000+ for exposing fraud at immigrant-service locations.
Newsom signed it.
Shirley: the bill was created by the Attorney General’s wife and co-sponsored by CHIRLA — a nonprofit that has taken… pic.twitter.com/PsgNXm97tT
— GRANDPA’s FREE ADVICE (@GOP_is_Gutless) August 28, 2026
Newsom’s Inner Circle Gets Paid Twice
Zoom in on Gavin Newsom and the pattern gets personal. Investigative reporting and FEC records show Lindsey Cobia — long described as Newsom’s “Swiss army knife,” a fixture since his 2018 campaign — collected a $213,000 bonus at the end of 2025 from Campaign for Democracy, the PAC apparatus built to boost Newsom’s national profile. She received hundreds of thousands more in salary and payments from the related entities. The PAC also reimbursed travel while she stayed close to the governor.
Jennifer Van Laar of RedState has documented the closeness, the travel, the husband’s later cabinet-adjacent role, and the bonus timing. Newsom’s team will say she earned it. Taxpayers who watch grocery prices and insurance rates explode in California are entitled to ask why a political aide on a PAC payroll is taking home Christmas money that most working families will never see in a year.
This is how the machine works: official salary on one side, PAC and nonprofit cash on the other, donors who later land appointments, and a media class that calls any scrutiny “right-wing smears.”
USAID Was the National Version of the Same Scam
For years Democrats sold USAID as lifesaving charity. Audits, guilty pleas, and DOGE’s look under the hood told a different story.
A USAID contracting officer and three businessmen pleaded guilty in a decade-long scheme involving more than $500 million in contracts. Bribes included cash, NBA suite tickets, a country club wedding, cell phones, jobs for relatives, and down payments on two residential mortgages. That is not a metaphor. That is the Department of Justice record.
Overhead was the quieter theft. Implementing partners routinely burned huge shares of grants on administration, consultants, and Beltway firms instead of the people the ads featured. Fifty percent overhead is not a charity. It is a jobs program for the connected. NGO executives pulled seven-figure compensation, first-class flights, housing, car loans, and club fees while the agency cut checks. Washington Examiner’s review of the nonprofit ecosystem that lived off USAID and similar agencies is a catalog of people doing extremely well by “doing good.”
Then there was the product itself: millions for climate consultants, sex-change programs, LGBT voter projects, drag-adjacent “empowerment,” and fashion-week junkets dressed up as development. House Republicans laid it out in hearings. Senator after senator asked the same question American workers ask at the kitchen table: how is this America’s interest?
House Oversight Chairman James Comer put the political piece on the table: cut the NGO spigot and watch the money that used to flow toward Democrat candidates and allied groups dry up. That is why the same people who never met a foreign-aid line item they would not defend suddenly discovered a “constitutional crisis” when Trump moved to shut the party down.
X has been full of the same observation for months. Users point to the revolving door, the luxury, the kickbacks, and the fact that the loudest defenders of USAID were the people whose networks got paid. They are not wrong about the incentives. The documented cases are contractors, NGO bosses, and a crooked contracting officer — not every Democrat in Congress personally parking a Ferrari in the driveway. The system still functioned as a wealth-transfer from Midwestern taxpayers to a coastal and Beltway class that votes and donates as a bloc.
.@SteveHiltonx : California Has LEGALIZED Cheating and Corruption With Ballot Harvesting
“Depositing absentee ballots not belonging to you. That’s legal in California. It’s called ballot harvesting. It’s the law.”
“You have legalized cheating and corruption in this state, and… pic.twitter.com/qVN8Q6sDtV— Mr Producer (@RichSementa) August 26, 2026
Trump Did What the Swamp Said Could Not Be Done
President Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency did not “kill children.” They killed a business model. Programs that had nothing to do with American security or genuine humanitarian need got cut. A historic pocket rescission targeted woke, weaponized foreign-aid accounts. The people who lived off the old system called it cruelty. Voters who watched their own cities decay while Washington exported DEI and climate lectures called it overdue.
Stephen Moore has been saying it for years: foreign aid as practiced did not produce development. It produced contractors, consultants, and political clients. California’s $600,000 club is the domestic version of the same instinct. Pay the coalition. Grow the government. Call anyone who objects cruel or racist.
America First means the people who actually pay the bills come first. That is not radical. It is the opposite of the last decade of Democrat governance, in Sacramento and in the aid-industrial complex they spent years protecting.
The receipts are public. The guilty pleas are on file. The salary databases are online. The only remaining question is how many more years voters will let the same crowd lecture them about “fairness” while cashing the checks.
—-The Whatfinger News Team: Sgt L and Luke
From the folks
- Fire every CA State Employee making over $125K (exclude teachers, cops, fire). I predict service improves. Move 1/2 Fed Agencies out of DC, to low population States, 500K will quit. Progress. Launch “AI Fraud Moonshot”; Hunt thieves. Tax NGO’s &, Churches. Fake charities. – Craig K
- It’s much more than just a spending problem. They have a HUGE FRAUD problem, and stealing tax dollars from American citizens. It’s morally wrong, but it just keeps happening. Maybe that’s because then ones who are doing it are morally bankrupt! – the Real Lorenzo
- Continue comments below please
Resources
- Stephen Moore on X: California’s 250 state employees paid more than $600,000
- San Francisco Chronicle: California state employee salaries 2025 — 250 workers over $600,000
- New York Post: Top-paid California state employees — pension managers, prison shrinks, and CHP brass
- Jennifer Van Laar on X: Lindsey Cobia’s $213,000 Campaign for Democracy bonus and Newsom ties
- New York Post: Gavin Newsom PAC war chest and Lindsey Cobia payments
- Fox News: Four plead guilty in $550 million USAID bribery scheme
- USAID OIG: Former contracting officer and executives debarred after $500 million bribery scheme
- Washington Examiner: NGO bosses, seven-figure salaries, first-class flights, and taxpayer funds
- Just the News: Obama-Biden era USAID abuses, bribery, and wasted aid
- National Review: USAID’s long record of wasteful left-wing spending
- White House: Historic pocket rescission eliminating woke and wasteful foreign-aid spending
- House hearing record on USAID waste and ideological spending
- Orange County Register: California’s convoluted budget and ongoing operating deficits
- LAO: The 2026-27 California budget overview
- Rep. María Salazar: Wasteful DEI spending at Biden-Harris USAID
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