We will let readers decide for themselves who they think won the Newsom-DeSantis debate last night. But we were impressed that Newsom seems to have that Bill Clinton quality of lying with such conviction that he would pass a polygraph test.
As a public service we will point out four clear distortions of fact that leaped out at us last night.
First, he said at least twice that more people are now coming to California from Florida than vice versa. Wrong: here is the up-to-date data:
2021 and 2022 combined, there was a two-way NET +34,917 to FLORIDA
Moved from California to Florida: 88,165
Moved from Florida to California: 53,249
The overall trend of in-migration versus out-migration for the two states:
Second, he said there were more deaths in Florida from COVID than in California. Wrong: since Covid was always a virus that almost exclusively killed elderly Americans, you have to age-adjust the data for an apples-to-apples comparison. When doing so, California’s mortality rate was HIGHER than Florida’s despite the fact that Florida opened up while Newsom kept California schools and businesses closed.
Fourth, he said that California taxes the rich, not the middle class. But this chart from our friend Tom Del Beccaro shows that the income tax rates in California even on people making as little as $75,000 (which is not RICH) reach 9.3%. No other state has such high-income tax rates on the middle class.
