Gavin Newsom’s diaper scandal blowout
(And his wife knows all about it)
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After the Palisades fire California has found another novel way to set taxpayer money on fire, and this time the fuel is diapers.
Gov. Gavin Newsom rolled out the Golden State Start program right before Mother’s Day. The pitch was simple and hard to argue with: give free diapers to newborns so low-income families don’t have to scramble.
The state is spending $20 million—$7.4 million already approved, another $12.5 million baked into the next budget—to deliver roughly 40 million diapers to about 100,000 babies. That works out to 400 diapers per kid. (The Capitalist’s independent research with new parents put the average daily diapers used by a newborn at between 10 and 12 per day) so that basically means that the State of California will cover between 33 and 40 days worth of diapers.
It’s the sort of proposal that all but the most cold hearted person could get behind. Diapers for new babies are a size-able cost to any budget and making things just that little bit easier for low income families with a newborn is probably a good thing.
We’ll ignore the fact that in the land of EV’s and “Climate Change” (something that California is always so keen on) 40 million disposable diapers is hardly a “green proposal,” and seems a little out of character but their heart seems to be in the right place so we’ll let it slide.
However, as this is deep blue California, let us dig a little deeper shall we? You know, on the off chance that maybe theres more to this than meets the eye.
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Steve Hilton, the Republican running for governor already did, he stood in a Target store and better yet he did it on camera.
The state is paying 50 cents per diaper through this program. A box on the shelf at Target runs $0.16 cents each. More than three times cheaper. Not even Costco prices—just straight off the shelf retail. Hilton wasn’t cherry-picking some obscure brand. He was holding up the kind of everyday pack parents actually buy. The program doesn’t beat the store. It gets crushed by it.
So the Taxpayers are literally getting gouged and the cost of the diapers are 3 times what you would pay in store.
Well thats not good, kinda makes you want to ask who in the hell is running this program????
We’re so glad you asked.
The taxpayer money doesn’t go straight to parents or even straight to stores. Nothing so simple. It flows through a Los Angeles nonprofit called Baby2Baby.
The group gets the contract, handles distribution through hospitals, and presumably pockets whatever margin exists between what the state of California pays them and whatever cost they can source diapers for in bulk (and it’s not out of this world to think that that bulk cost will likely be lower than the $0.16 cents you pay retail at Target.)
So who runs Baby2Baby? More to the point, how did they get such a deal?
Again, we’re so glad you asked.
The co-CEO of Baby2Baby since 2011 is Norah Weinstein who also sits on the board of the California Partners Project.
Who founded the California Partners Project?
You’re really good at asking questions, do you know that?
The California Partners Project was co-founded and run by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, (That would be the Gavin Newsom’s wife.)
The icing on the cake? The California Partners Project helped facilitate the partnership with Baby2Baby.
You don’t need a conspiracy board to see the overlap. It’s right there in the org charts!
Critics have been loud about it. One congressional candidate put it bluntly insinuating that Newsom is laundering taxpayer dollars to a nonprofit run by his wife’s friend.
This is how it works in California. Democrats spot a real problem—parents struggling to keep babies dry—and turn it into a government program that costs more than the private market while routing cash through politically connected middlemen.
The idea of helping with diapers is admirable. No serious person wants newborns sitting in soiled clothes because the family budget is stretched. But the execution here is pure grift. Taxpayers foot the bill at triple the retail rate so insiders can administer it, take their cut, then hand out the product with the state’s name attached. The families get the diapers. The connected nonprofit gets the contract. Everyone else gets the invoice and if they complain, well, “You must just hate babies!”
Let’s talk real-world consequences, because that’s what matters to the people writing the checks to pay for this. California families are already getting hammered on basics. Gas is more expensive because of special state blends and surcharges. Housing costs are insane. Groceries keep climbing. Now add this: the state takes your money, inflates the price of something you could buy cheaper yourself, and calls it compassion. If the goal was simply to make sure babies have diapers, the cheapest way would have been to cut parents a check or give them a voucher for Target or Walmart.
Instead, Sacramento invented a bureaucracy, hired a nonprofit with ties to the first family, and paid premium rates. The difference—those extra 34 cents per diaper—multiplies across 40 million units. We did the math. Its roughly $13.6 million bucks. That means that two thirds of the tax money taken from California taxpayers doesn’t buy diapers for underprivileged kids at all, it lines the pockets of Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s buddy’s non-profit. That’s real money. Money that could have stayed in family budgets or gone to actual infrastructure (not high speed rail though, we beg you!)
This isn’t a diaper bill, this is a donation to a first family connected non-profit that just happens to hand out a few diapers on the side!
And this isn’t an isolated “oops.” It’s pattern recognition. Democrats see a human need and immediately build a program around it that benefits the political class more than the intended recipients. They did it with the aforementioned high-speed rail that never arrived. They did it with homelessness initiatives that produce more tents than housing. They do it with every feel-good handout. Everything requires a layer of connected consultants, connected nonprofits, and connected executives. The poor get the surface-level help lip service. The grifters get the steady revenue stream and make out like bandits and the taxpayers, well they get the bill and a lecture about caring.
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Baby2Baby isn’t some fly-by-night operation. It’s been around since 2011. But there are questions about how it operates and when it lands a $20 million no-bid-style deal tied to the governor’s inner circle, the optics rot. Hilton called it exactly what it looks like: a scheme that benefits cronies instead of letting people keep more of their own cash and decide how to spend it.
Newsom’s office hasn’t exactly rushed out a detailed defense. They’ve promoted the program as “first-in-the-nation,” which is true if you measure by novelty and not by efficiency. But novelty doesn’t justify the markup. If the state wanted to move product faster or reach more people, it could have partnered with big-box retailers for bulk distribution at actual market rates. Instead, it chose the path that keeps the money circulating inside the familiar network.
In a statement Newsom’s office told Fox News “As previously mentioned, the actual cost per diaper breakdown equates to about $.15 per diaper, not $.50.” The statement is basically worth the contents of a soiled diaper because their own numbers prove the cost.
400 diapers per kid x 100,000 kids is 40 million diapers
$20 million dollars ÷ 40 million diapers = Fifty cents a diaper.
As a commentator put it: ”Math always wins.” And the math here is embarrassing. Fifty cents for a government diaper versus sixteen cents for a retail diaper. No amount of press-release spin changes the price tag on the shelf.
The practical impact on regular people is straightforward. Working parents in California already operate with razor-thin margins. Every extra dollar sucked out in taxes or inflated program costs is a dollar not spent on rent, food, or gas. The same politicians who brag about helping families keep jacking up the cost of living everywhere else. This program doesn’t fix affordability. It mocks it.
This is the California model in miniature:
Identify a problem.
Create a well-intentioned program.
Hand it to friends and allies who run nonprofits.
Pay above-market rates.
Call it progress.
Watch the costs balloon and the results underwhelm.
Meanwhile, the people footing the bill—middle-class families, small-business owners, anyone who pays California taxes—get another reminder that government compassion is expensive, inefficient and shady.
The diaper program isn’t going to bankrupt the state by itself. California’s budget is already a multi-hundred-billion-dollar machine running on autopilot. But it’s a perfect symptom. When even something as basic and uncontroversial as baby diapers becomes an opportunity for triple-cost procurement and insider contracts, you know the system is rigged against the taxpayer. The admirable goal—babies shouldn’t go without diapers—gets lost in the grift. What’s left is another line item where Sacramento proves it can take a straightforward need and make it more complicated and more costly than it has any right to be.
At the end of the day, parents just want dry babies and lower bills. They don’t need a branded government initiative run through a politically wired nonprofit to get there. They need the state to stop inventing expensive ways to do what the market already does cheaper. Until that changes,
California will keep discovering new ways to burn cash and call it leadership.
Diapers today. Something else tomorrow. The fire stays lit.
The taxpayers keep paying.
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