I previously wrote about Gov. Newsom’s corrupt proposal to boost California’s already massive $350 million Hollywood film tax credit to $750 million as a giveaway to his donors.
When Gov. Gavin Newsom faced a recall after a corrupt pandemic lockdown system that kept churches and small businesses closed, but allowed movie and TV productions to do whatever they wanted, Hollywood donors showed up to throw millions at Newsom. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings kicked in $3 million, Universal, Paramount and top celebrities also stepped up.
A ‘virtual’ event chaired by Dreamworks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, raised over $1 million to keep Newsom in office. FOX, Sony and other executives wrote checks for thousands of dollars.
Now, as Gov. Newsom plots a presidential run. he’s offering.Hollywood donors a taste of what a Newsom administration would look like.
Gavin Newsom responded Donald Trump’s demand for steep tariffs on movies filmed outside the U.S. with a plea for the President to “partner” with him instead on a proposed $7.5 billion federal tax credit for Hollywood.
The proposed tax incentive would be separate from the California state tax credits Newsom is trying to enact,
“America continues to be a film powerhouse, and California is all in to bring more production here. Building on our successful state program, we’re eager to partner with the Trump administration to further strengthen domestic production and Make America Film Again,” Newsom said in a statement Monday night.
Hollywood provides relatively few benefits or jobs to justify the massive amounts of money being thrown at it. What it does provide are sizable donations to politicians.
Newsom doesn’t seriously expect Trump to bite on the insane $7.5 billion in tax credits. What he’s doing is showing his donor base what a Newsom administration would mean for them,
Even the vastly inflated Hollywood estimates of jobs created and money spent is in the thousands (unless you also count their absurd numbers of ‘background performers’ or extras) compared to 130,000 truck drivers, whom California Democrats have been chasing out of the state, and over 4 million small businesses of which a third were shuttered by pandemic restrictions.
Gov. Newsom and California Democrats didn’t even blink at killing 7,500 small businesses during the pandemic, which employed far more people than the Hollywood productions do. If they really cared about jobs, they’d be providing massive tax breaks for some of those small businesses instead of writing $20 million checks to Disney and Netflix to “create jobs”.
And then there’s the drag queen subsidy.
The campaign video posted on Newsom’s social media and on the World of Wonder company which produces Ru Paul’s Drag Race raised legal and campaign issues that were never addressed. Those issues have only become more serious after World of Wonder received a $1.7 million film tax credit for a production listed only as ‘Untitled Drag Queen Movie’.
Around the same time that Newsom was getting his endorsement from World of Wonder, the production company debuted ‘Drag Tots’, an animated series targeting children, in which Ru Paul as ‘Corny the Unicorn’ promotes being a drag queen to kids.
‘Drag Tots’ is one of several ‘children’s’ shows produced by World of Wonder.
This is the ugly legacy of Gov. Newsom’s pandering to Hollywood.
