Gov. Newsom Proposes "Marshall Plan" to Reimagine "L.A. 2.0"

Alludes to U.S. investment in rebuilding Europe after it was destroyed by World War II.

Several readers have asked me what I think about California Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent weird interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.” in which he stated he is “organizing a Marshall Plan to reimagine L.A. 2.0.”

As the U.S. National Archives describe the 1948 Marshall Plan:

Secretary of State George Marshall proposed in a speech at Harvard University on June 5, 1947, that European nations create a plan for their economic reconstruction and that the United States provide economic assistance.

On December 19, 1947, President Harry Truman sent Congress a message that followed Marshall’s ideas to provide economic aid to Europe. Congress overwhelmingly passed the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948, and on April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the act that became known as the Marshall Plan.

Over the next four years, Congress appropriated $13.3 billion for European recovery. This aid provided much needed capital and materials that enabled Europeans to rebuild the continent’s economy.

For the United States, the Marshall Plan provided markets for American goods, created reliable trading partners, and supported the development of stable democratic governments in Western Europe.

Note that Governor Newsom mentions obtaining federal funding for his Marshall Plan, though he performs a verbal sleight of hand trick by intimating that it is part of the city’s preparation to host the 2028 Olympics.

Newsom’s statement reminds me of recent literature and discussion about so-called disaster capitalism. As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, disaster capitalism is:

The exploitation of natural or man-made disasters (such as catastrophic weather events, war, epidemics, etc.) in service of capitalist interests; the practice of using unstable social, political, and economic situations to impose or benefit from deregulation, the privatization of public assets, etc.

In recent years I have been concerned about what I perceive to be a growing perception—among certain interest groups—that disasters such as infectious disease pandemics, wars, and fires are a good thing because they unleash deluges of federal money for so-called “countermeasures,” disaster relief, and rebuilding.

While federal, state, and municipal governments find it difficult to allocate funds for long term investment in infrastructure, maintenance, and disaster prevention, politicians are heavily incentivized to open the money spigot after disasters have struck and caused widespread loss of property and life.

Going back to the Marshall Plan: The lesson learned was that the U.S. government will divert billions of taxpayer money to armament manufacturers, and then divert billions more to contractors for rebuilding the cities that are destroyed by the armaments.

German cities such as Dresden, Cologne, Essen, Dortmund, Hanover, Nuremberg, and Chemnitz were almost completely destroyed, even though they had little to no military value. The Marshall Plan helped to “rebuild” these cities, but their architectural and artistic treasures—built and created over centuries—were gone forever.

William Dodd, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937, sent innumerable cables from Berlin to Washington, warning that not nearly enough was being done to manage what he perceived to be increasingly dangerous situation in Germany. Likewise, it was clear to many observers after the 2018 Woolsey Fire that not nearly enough was being done to manage the fire risk in Los Angeles.

To be sure, the daily grind of managing affairs is difficult and unexciting, and most of the time it doesn’t yield an obvious profit. And so, we often fail to manage things. We may muddle through, improvise, and get lucky for a while, but the day will eventually come when a heavy price will be paid (by someone) for our mismanagement of things.

Governor Newsom appears to be positioning himself to net billions from the federal government for his “Marshall Plan to reimagine L.A. 2.0.” If will be interesting to see if the incoming Trump Administration gives him what he wants.