California spent $189 million on tablets for inmates and the results are horrifying
High taxes are bad, what the money gets spent on, is stomach churning
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California’s liberal experiment is costing regular people a fortune, and the bill isn’t just for housing or gas anymore. It’s for the whole package—the “liberal surcharge” baked into every tax dollar that funds programs sounding compassionate on paper but delivering something uglier in practice. The state takes your money, slaps on layers of bureaucracy and connected insiders, and spends it on things that push even left-leaning tolerance to the breaking point. Families are buckling. Businesses are bolting. And the exodus isn’t some mystery—it’s math.
Start with the basics of living here. Gas in Los Angeles is flirting with $9 a gallon in some spots, thanks to state taxes and regs that tack on about $1.50 extra per gallon compared to the national average. Groceries run 11 percent higher. Utilities 61 percent. Housing? Forget it unless you’re already loaded. One study tracking movers from 2016 to 2025 found Californians who left saved $672 a month on housing alone. After seven years out, they were 48 percent more likely to own a home. That’s not ideology talking. That’s pocketbook reality. Yet Sacramento keeps doubling down on the one-party machine that created this mess.
Fox Business called it an “abusive relationship” with Democratic rule, and the description fits. No checks, no moderation, just relentless policies that crush the middle class while the wealthy and connected skate. LA’s GOP chair put it plain: parents commute across a massive county for jobs they can’t afford near home. The only non-Democrat on the LA City Council sees it in his own grocery runs and constituents’ complaints. Professor Joel Kotkin nails the dynamic—California had a thriving oil industry decades ago, now it’s regulated into oblivion under Gavin Newsom. Result? High poverty rates despite all the wealth creation on paper. One-party dominance means no pushback. Orange County’s 50-50 split forces some balance. Sacramento? Not so much.
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The money extracted doesn’t just vanish into vague “services.” It funds specific choices that test how far tolerance stretches. Take tablets in prisons. Back in 2023, the rollout looked like a tech-savvy win for rehab. California handed out about 90,000 free Android devices across its prisons.
No more lines at payphones causing fights and stress. Inmates could call family for free (with limited minutes), text, access legal resources, even meditation apps. Supporters sold it as bridging the digital divide, boosting family bonds, cutting recidivism. The New York Post described inmates streaming Hollywood hits like “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” curating Spotify-style playlists, playing games like Football Cup or Bingo World.
Aventiv Technologies, supplying hundreds of thousands nationwide, claimed educational content would slash the 70 percent reoffending rate. Cap Radio quoted prisoners saying the atmosphere improved—no more frustration, more connection, even estranged siblings reconciling. It was all framed as modern rehabilitation, preparing people for release in a digital world.
Fast-forward three years. The picture is darker. Newsom’s administration poured $189 million—potentially up to $315 million—into new tablets for every inmate, including death row, under the banner of “digital equity” and the California Model rehab push. No cost to the offenders themselves.
The devices were supposed to be tightly controlled education tools. Instead, they’re personal sex machines. Inmates stream porn via 30-second video clips during calls, where outsiders play explicit content on their end. They trade nude photos, sext, even receive nudes from the outside. Death row convicts have openly admitted it. One incarcerated serial child molester used his tablet for hours daily to harass a 12-year-old victim of his from inside prison, grooming and soliciting more images.
A former high-level prison official described the likely scale: vast amounts of child porn circulating, thousands of minors potentially groomed. The old “reintegration” promise? Buried under reality. Taxpayers aren’t funding Hamlet or job skills. They’re bankrolling boundary-pushing access that even the most progressive reformer might call a bridge too far.
As for the concerns about misuse? They were dismissed. With the former deputy director of California’s adult parole operations telling City Journal that “there is no way to monitor the nearly 90,000 inmates in the state prison system who have access to taxpayer-funded devices.”
This is the pattern. Problems get attention only when the fix enriches the right network. Look at the diaper program Newsom rolled out right before Mother’s Day. Golden State Start: $20 million to deliver roughly 40 million diapers to 100,000 low-income newborns—about 400 per kid, or roughly a month’s supply for a newborn using 10 to 12 a day. On the surface, hard to knock. But dig in. The state pays 50 cents per diaper through a Los Angeles nonprofit called Baby2Baby. Walk into any Target and the same everyday packs go for about 16 cents each. Three times cheaper.
The cash doesn’t go straight to parents or stores either. It routes through Baby2Baby, which handles distribution via hospitals. The co-CEO since 2011 sits on the board of the California Partners Project, co-founded and run by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the governor’s wife. That same project helped broker the partnership. Roughly two-thirds of the $20 million around $13.6 million never bought an extra diaper. It lines connected pockets instead. Families get the product. Insiders get the contract and the cut. Everyone else gots the invoice.
The consequences stack up for regular people. High costs driven by misspent taxes are driving the exodus from the Left Coast. It’s no longer just families packing U-Hauls. It’s structural. Starbucks, a Seattle icon tied to progressive roots, is dropping $100 million into a new corporate office in Nashville, creating up to 2,000 jobs. Washington’s business tax climate cratered from sixth-best to 45th.
Silicon Valley Tech billionaires like Zuckerberg, Brin, and Page have shifted billions to Miami where luxury home sales there are surging. Companies vote with their headquarters the same way individuals vote with their feet. Lost revenue means even bigger holes in state budgets, which gets papered over with more fees, more regs, more surcharges just to keep the same (corrupt?) game rolling and the cycle accelerates.
California treats its citizens like an endless ATM for ideological experiments and insider deals. The liberal attitude that once sold itself as enlightened now delivers porn tablets for death row, triple-priced diapers routed through the governor’s wife’s network, and policies that make basic life eye wateringly expensive. Families feel mugged at the pump, in the grocery aisle, and on their tax returns. Businesses see the writing on the wall and leave. The state keeps promising solutions while the practical impact on regular Californians gets worse. This isn’t sustainable.
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