Newsom's Insider Diaper Deal Stinks

It always starts the same, with government promises of something like "Free diapers!" It always ends the same, too, with something stinky.

With fanfare better suited to a king distributing a few alms to the poor, California Gov. Gavin Newsom in May announced his "first-in-the-nation program providing free diapers for all new parents," as his press office put it, in partnerships with "Baby2Baby, a leading national nonprofit organization headquartered in California."

"As part of a broader affordability strategy – including CalRx – the Newsom administration is also exploring opportunities to lower the cost of diapers by challenging high prices from major brands."

Yeah, about those lower costs.

CBS News reported last week that although Newsom claimed the deal with Baby2Baby went through a competitive bidding process, "State records reveal it didn't."

"California's official contract database lists the $6.2 million Baby2Baby deal as 'NON-COMPETITIVELY BID.'"

This is where I will shock you with the totally shocking news that Baby2Baby's co-CEO, Norah Weinstein, "also sits on the board of the California Partners Project, a nonprofit founded by 'First Partner' Jennifer Siebel Newsom," the New York Post revealed so shockingly on Sunday.

That same Post editorial claimed that "the program has raised eyebrows, with critics saying that it would be cheaper to buy the diapers directly at a store, rather than going through a nonprofit with overhead costs and other expenses."

"Lawmakers tucked a single provision into the nearly 900-page state budget exempting the diaper program from competitive bidding laws, Department of General Services oversight and public posting requirements for no-bid contracts," the Post's Titus Wu reported last week.

"Nonprofit" is one of those catch-all words used to paper over all manner of malfeasance. Once you've deemed profits evil — as the left has done for nearly 200 years — then anything nonprofit must be virtuous.

Naturally, that includes giving an overpriced no-bid contract to your wife's friend to distribute diapers for "free."

How bad was it? So bad that on Monday afternoon, even CBS News decided they'd had it up to here with Newsom, and published a point-by-point defense of its reporting. The report is as close to an old-school fisking as you'll ever see from the Mainstream Media, and includes this gem: "The [governor's] office's response concedes the governor was not using 'bidding' in its formal sense."

OMG.

We're right back in 1998 with Bill Clinton musing about what "the meaning of 'is' is," but without any of that Clinton charm. And with diapers instead of... well, you know.

Let me finish by taking you on a detour that might reveal something about Newsom's character.

A few years ago, my wife and my storied New Year's Eve bash had a '70s theme. But not just any '70s theme — we turned our house into an (un)reasonable facsimile of New York City's notorious Studio 54 nightclub. In preparation, we watched Studio 54: The Documentary on Netflix.

My favorite parts featured former Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Sudler, who prosecuted club founders Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager for tax evasion — and got them convicted, too.

Sudler explained decades later that the IRS understands that nightclubs generate a lot of cash, and that not all that cash gets properly reported. But so long as the skim is reasonable — 10%, maybe even 20% in his estimation — then it wasn't worth looking into.

But Rubell and Schrager were stuffing 80% or more of Studio 54's cash literally into the walls of their office, and bragging about it in public. Rubell boasted they’d been so successful that “only the Mafia made more money."

Sudler said the two were basically daring the government to come after them with how blatant and reckless they were with the skim. They ended up being sentenced to 3.5 years each.

Rubell died young in 1989, but Schrager went on to reform and redeem himself so completely that Sudler himself urged President Barack Obama to grant him a full and unconditional pardon, which he did.

Here's the thing though. Rubell and Schrager were a couple of young guys running a coke-fueled disco in pre-Giuliani NYC. They were stupid, got caught in almost Florida Man-style, and did their time.

Gavin Newsom is the governor of the largest and richest state in the union. He's supposed to know better than to use his office to enrich his wife's friends (among others, cough-cough). And he's every bit as blatant and reckless as Rubell and Schrager ever were.

The Newsoms' finances have been under investigation since the Biden administration, and reportedly the Trump DOJ is serious about pursuing them.

Good, because the Newsoms have basically dared them to investigate.

Recommended: COURT: 'Smithers, Release the Biden Tapes!'

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Steve launched VodkaPundit on a well-planned whim in 2002, and has been with PJ Media since its launch in 2005. He served as one of the hosts of PJTV, a pioneer in internet broadcasting. He also cohosts "Right Angle" with Bill Whittle and Scott Ott at BillWhittle.com. He lives with his wife and sons in the wooded hills of Monument, Colorado, where he enjoys the occasional adult beverage.

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