If the system we have cannot deliver that without catastrophic wildfires and shifting the losses onto California families, preserving it should not be our goal.
Page F1From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 1 September 2026
California kills a utility bailout; Trump immediately asks for a federal tax break for Hollywood.
As it ran on the front
Let's run the numbers as filed, hon, because the two stories landed in the same week and the filing doesn't lie even when the press release does.
Item one: California's utility bailout — the mechanism that would have let ratepayers absorb wildfire liability costs on behalf of the utility — is dead. The New York Post calls this a win for the people of California, and mechanically, it is: a measure that would have moved a private company's liability onto a public bill did not pass. That column is closed.…
…(cont) Item two, same week: President Trump, after meeting with actor Jon Voight, calls Hollywood a 'total disaster' and pushes for a new federal tax incentive for film production. That column is opened.
I want to be precise about what happened here, because precision is the whole job. One subsidy — aimed at a utility, aimed at ratepayers who did not choose their utility's wildfire risk — got killed. In the same stretch of days, a request for a different subsidy — aimed at a film industry, filed after a meeting with a working actor turned informal advisor — got opened. Nobody has to call this a pattern. I'm just going to lay the two filings side by side and let you look at them together.
The gap here isn't complicated. It's the gap between a subsidy that dies because the public noticed it, and a subsidy that gets proposed before the public has had a chance to notice it yet. One bailout gets killed in daylight, with a press release calling it a victory. One bailout gets requested after a private meeting, with a press release calling it jobs.
I don't editorialize about what belongs in whose column and what doesn't. I just note that when the ledger runs a subsidy dying loudly next to a subsidy starting quietly, the loud one tends to be the one the public already knew to watch, and the quiet one tends to be the one that hasn't had its hearing yet. That's not an opinion, that's a filing date.
Keep an eye on the calendar, hon. The bailout that died had your name in the sentence. The one that's just getting started doesn't yet — but the sentence isn't finished.
“They kill one subsidy and call it a taxpayer victory, then turn right around and ask for a new one for movie studios. The subsidy well never runs dry, it just changes zip codes and picks a friendlier industry. Your bailout's dead; theirs is just getting filed.”
“Killing the bailout saved ratepayers money, full stop, that's a clean win for consumers. The Hollywood ask is completely separate, it's about jobs, not a favor for anybody who happens to golf with — did I bring up golf? Strike that, nobody golfs, it's about jobs.”
The receipts
Jon Voight previously met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago to push a federal tax incentive aimed at reviving domestic film production and saving Hollywood jobs.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.