Independent Declaration: Why California's Court of Kings Must Fall

Two hundred fifty years ago last Saturday, a rabble of colonists signed a document declaring that when government turns against the people it was created to serve, the people have the right to alter or abolish it.

Last week Gavin Newsom, apparently missing the irony gene entirely, proclaimed July 4 “Independence Day” in California. A king in all but name proclaiming a holiday to celebrate the overthrow of kings! Even Marie Antoinette knew better than to hand out cake at the barricades.

I write this not as a Republican, not as a Democrat, but as a subject of England and a guest of California. Which is roughly the position Benjamin Franklin held in London before the Crown branded him a traitor and he fled for home. I have spent years watching California’s one-party court govern like the very monarchy the founders fled.

Fifteen years, since Jerry Brown reclaimed Sacramento in 2011, one party has held the Assembly, the Senate and the Governor’s mansion. Answerable to no opposition. No check. No balance. That is not democracy. That is a Royal Court with better weather.

So please indulge me. In the tradition of 1776, here is the case against King Newsom’s court, in the form our founders would recognize.

It has taxed its subjects at 13.3 percent, the highest income tax rate in the nation, while tied with Louisiana for the highest poverty rate in America once housing costs are counted.

Imposed, by bureaucratic decree, a tax on energy. Electricity is roughly 33 cents a kilowatt hour. The highest in the continental US against a national average near 18 cents. Gas prices are the highest in the nation.

Presided over a homelessness crisis of more than 187,000 Californians, a quarter of the nation’s total, despite spending over 24 billion dollars since 2018.

Health, wealth and opportunity split along the same fault line. Nearly six years of life separate rich and poor Californians. One of the widest gaps between rich and poor of any state in the union.

Our public schools trail the nation in every subjected tested while per pupil rose by 102%Meanwhile they have spent over $128 billion on a bullet train to nowhere while no major reservoir has been built since 1980.

Then, when the map itself threatened his court’s grip on power, Governor Newsom did not seek the people’s consent. He rewrote the districts through Prop 50 and called it reform. Representation redrawn by decree rather than consent.

If this were Boston in 1773, we would call the toll on our wallets a Tea Tax. If it were 1765, we would call the state’s fees, surcharges and mandates a Stamp Act. Sacramento calls it reform.

None of this is one man’s fault. It is systemic. An Administrative State so entrenched, public sector unions so powerful, that no election truly changes course. The civil service outlasts every governor. The unions fund the campaigns that write the rules that protect the unions. Government of the bureaucracy, by the bureaucracy, for the bureaucracy.

Every argument in 1776 came down to a core idea. Liberty against coercion. A government that taxes without consent, regulates without limit and treats dissent as heresy has crossed from governing into coercing.

Let’s be clear what gives this court its confidence. Not competence. Not consent freely renewed by genuine contest. Just inertia, incumbency and ballot access rules written to protect the incumbents who wrote them. They have no more Divine Right to rule California in 2026 than George III had to rule Massachusetts in 1776.

Benjamin Franklin, asked what the founders had produced, answered “a republic, if you can keep it.” California has not kept it. We swapped a hereditary king for an elected one. Then made the throne permanent by strangling every rival at the ballot box with rules written by the incumbents they protect.

Nobody needs another Boston Massacre, let alone a Revolutionary War. What California needs is a Continental Congress of the unaffiliated and one thing California hasn’t produced in fifteen years. An opposition.

A coalition of the roughly 60 percent of Californians who don’t genuflect by rote to the Court of the Democrats. No Party Preference voters. Independents. The Forward Party. The Lincoln Club. Lapsed Republicans and lapsed Democrats. Anyone who still has a mind of their own and hasn’t donated it to a party.

A gathering of independent minds, drafting their own Declaration of Independence from one party rule. Then writing a sequel to Thomas Paine’s best seller. A subversive manifesto for the common reader rather than the Sacramento insider.

California is overdue its own Common Sense pamphlet. The only open question is who has the standing to be its John Adams, and the wit to be its Franklin.