Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ‘free’ diaper plan is full of you-know-what

California families are struggling to afford housing, electricity, insurance, gasoline, groceries, childcare — and now even diapers.

Gavin Newsom’s answer?

A government-branded box of free diapers handed out at the hospital.

Under Newsom’s new Golden State Start program, California will provide 400 diapers to families with newborns leaving participating hospitals.

Sounds generous. Until you do the math.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom boxes diapers as part of the Baby2Baby nonprofit scheme. Getty Images for Baby2Baby

A newborn can go through eight to 10 diapers a day. So 400 diapers lasts roughly five weeks.

The cost to taxpayers is about $12.4 million this year alone.

Newsom calls this “what affordability looks like.”

No. It is what dependency looks like.

Diapers are expensive. For struggling families, every dollar matters. There is nothing wrong with churches, synagogues, charities, neighbors, or extended families helping new parents through a difficult season.

But that is not what this is.

The diapers will be provided through Baby2Baby, an LA nonprofit with deep ties to Hollywood and corporate philanthropy. Getty Images for Baby2Baby

This is Sacramento taking taxpayer money, running it through government, partnering with a politically connected nonprofit, and handing some of it back as a “free” benefit.

The real question is why so many California families are financially cornered in the first place.

California has spent years making ordinary family life harder to sustain.

Housing costs have exploded. Utility bills keep climbing. Insurance costs are surging. Taxes, fees, fuel mandates, labor mandates, and regulation chew up more and more of the household budget.

Then Sacramento acts surprised when families cannot afford the basics.

Instead of lowering the cost of living or letting families keep more of their own money, the state creates another program.

Another announcement.

Another press release.

Another photo op.

Kelly Sawyer Patricof, Newsom and Norah Weinstein pose for photos at Golden State Start event in San Francisco. Getty Images for Baby2Baby

The diapers will be provided through Baby2Baby, a high-profile LA nonprofit with deep ties to Hollywood, corporate philanthropy, and California politics.

The group says it can manufacture diapers far below retail cost. Maybe it can.

But that does not answer the larger question: Why is California creating a new statewide diaper apparatus at all?

Pacific Research Institute’s Matt Fleming points out that California already has diaper-distribution programs serving low-income families through existing nonprofit partners.

So why create a brand-new statewide diaper operation?

Because this is not just policy. It is branding.

California has more than 500 hospitals. This program will start with only a portion of them.

So taxpayers across the state help pay for it, but access depends on where a baby happens to be born.

That is not clean policy. It is political theater with a warehouse.

Baby2Baby itself sits comfortably inside California’s interconnected political and celebrity nonprofit culture.

One of its co-CEOs, Norah Weinstein, is also listed in leadership with Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s California Partners Project.

That does not prove wrongdoing. It does prove how small and cozy California’s governing class has become.

The same circles keep showing up: politicians, nonprofits, donors, celebrity activists, state-funded partnerships, and elite philanthropic networks.

The public pays. The politicians get the headline. The nonprofit gets the role. The system gets bigger.

And the families?

They get five weeks of diapers.

This is the deeper problem.

California did not become unaffordable by accident. It became unaffordable through years of policy choices: higher taxes, higher energy costs, higher housing costs, more regulation, more mandates, and more government control over ordinary life.

Then, when families are squeezed, the same people who helped squeeze them show up with a program.

Baby2Baby itself sits comfortably inside California’s interconnected political and celebrity nonprofit culture. AP

Not relief.

A program.

In a functioning state, parents should be able to buy diapers with their own money. Churches, synagogues, relatives, and local charities should be able to help the families who truly need it.

Sacramento should not need a branded diaper pipeline to prove it cares.

Government can hand out diapers. It cannot create family stability. It cannot rebuild community trust.

It cannot replace personal obligation, local knowledge, or the moral formation that comes from family, faith, and community.

Yet California keeps moving in the opposite direction.

The state grows larger while the institutions underneath society grow weaker.

Of course parents will take the diapers. Most people would. California families are already paying punishing taxes while trying to survive one of the highest costs of living in America.

But that is precisely the point.

Sacramento takes away the economic room families and communities once had to care for themselves and one another.

Then it returns a small piece of that money through a government-branded program and expects applause.

The scandal is not that some families will receive diapers.

The scandal is that California has become so expensive, so bureaucratic, and so dependent on state-managed solutions that even diapers are now treated as a government “affordability” strategy.

Of course, Gavin Newsom really only wants you to answer one question:

Shouldn’t a governor who can bring you free diapers be your president?

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com.

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