In California, the legislature does very little except add new taxes and regulations onto consumers while doing photo-ops about how much leadership they are showing.

In California outside pricey Sacramento buildings, it's less great. Already under the yoke of expensive electricity - poor people have to pay added taxes to subsidize million-dollar solar installations - and gasoline that is highest in the nation thanks to taxes, but now water is expensive also.

The legislature and governor are considered so useless - like 'a monarch in England' useless - that everything important is instead done by direct voter referendum. In 2015, voters demanded more water storage and infrastructure and the government has done...nothing.

Some of that is just politics. If you are an environmentalist, you are a Democrat, and you oppose new water infrastructure in the state, along with nuclear energy, natural gas, and conventional farming (fortunately, COVID-19 causes them to stop 'showing leadership' by leading the world in hating vaccines) - but despite the population tripling, there hasn't been a large water project in the north since the 1960s.

Worse, activists have pushed through river flow levels that were based on highs for the year - we literally dump our water into the Pacific Ocean at levels so high the state has to warn people in kayaks on the rivers - to protect critters that survived millions of years during the predictable booms and busts of California water.

Now with rampant inflation and booming costs for everything, water has followed, and poor people have to choose if they pay for electricity or water.

Just like he is opposed to higher taxes on the wealthy (his donors, of course) to pay for the electric cars he is forcing the poor to buy, Governor Newsom vetoed a bill to help poor people pay for the water he refuses to make affordable. He said it was an unfunded mandate, the first time he has decided not to mortgage the future, but right after a recall when he bragged California had a record surplus (but didn't know it was because people were selling stocks to pay bills and there were record tax revenues on things like gas.)

Yet in a state that drove its political opposition to Texas (and took a whole Congressional seat with them) Newsom is going to cruise to re-election, progressive elites in his circle having to pay their fair share of taxes or not. And the poor people suffering due to taxes on gas and everything else will be told they should be grateful a Democrat is in office. White Saviors to the rescue!