NEWSOM...AGAIN...A LETTER FROM JESSICAN DIECKMAN

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An excellent letter from Jessican Dieckman from this week's Gazette:

To the Editor,

California Gov. Gavin Newsom was noted for having downplayed the extent of the bout of violent rioting in Los Angeles in June. In the same month he also teased at presidential ambitions in a Wall Street Journal article. And now July brings another story highlighting the strange governing style of Gov. Gavin, in which over 300 illegal migrants, 10 being minors (8 unaccompanied) as young as 14 were found to have been working in the heat and sun on California marijuana farms.

Despite protests from members of the public (perhaps in favor of preserving child-labor, perhaps simply feverishly enthusiastic about protecting local narcotics production), federal immigration authorities executed an early-July raid on ‘Glass House Farms,’ the largest cannabis growing operation in CA. The president and owner of this business, Mr. Graham Farrar, is now having his business and farms investigated for child labor violations. The Department of Homeland Security is checking into the possible hiring of illegal workers, some of whom have been found to have criminal backgrounds. This must be particularly aggravating to Farrar, who happens to be a big donor to California Democrats, and especially to Gov. Gavin, to whom he has given thousands of dollars.

Gov. Gavin’s immediate response to the raids read like a ham-fisted defense of children laboring on farms. He posted an image on social media, captioning it, “Kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields.” Perhaps the children would not have been in the fields had the marijuana farm been compliant with child labor laws (in California, as with other cannabis-legal states, one must be 21 years of age to work in the cannabis industry).

Would Newsom really consider himself presidential-material, defending child migrants working on a farm (even if in “state-of-the-art greenhouses, drenched in the SoCal sun” as the Glass House website declares)? His bizarre response, and the chaotic situation itself that he’s defended, will not win over voters on a national level. Perhaps he’d better stick to California Dreaming and not Swing-State Dreaming.

Thank you,

Jessica Dieckman