The Final Boss of Failing Upward

California's leadership already has a staggering talent for losing things.

During the pandemic, Sacramento managed to lose over $31 billion in EDD unemployment funds to international crime rings, domestic fraudsters and death row inmates.

We watched Gavin Newsom lose over 400,000 public school students since 2018. The state bled the equivalent of a mid-sized city as families fled failing districts.

Xavier Becerra takes this catastrophic negligence to an entirely different level.

As President Biden's appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Becerra lost contact with 85,000 unaccompanied migrant children.

85,000 kids. Gone.

Becerra expedited the release of vulnerable minors to completely unvetted sponsors for one reason: to juice his performance metrics. He rushed to clear out federal shelters to make his dashboard look green.

Every working professional knows the type. It is the exact mentality of a slimy tech manager who happily sacrifices their own direct reports, cuts every conceivable corner and torches team morale just for a short-term boost on a quarterly dashboard. They wave their minimum viable product scorecards around and demand everyone get back to basics. (Sound like any tech-CEO Mayors from the South Bay we know?)

A missed Q3 target in tech is bad. Treating the lives of underage children like a vanity metric is an atrocity.

These are vulnerable minors who were handed off and vanished. The New York Times exposed the direct result of Becerra's metrics obsession. Kids were trafficked and shoved into hazardous, illegal slave labor operations across the country.

When grilled about massive COVID-19 fund fraud or the disappearance of these children, Becerra deflects. He blames local authorities. He blames the sheer size of his department. He points everywhere except the mirror.

His utter lack of oversight is not just a federal problem. It is a defining feature of his own political operation.

Late last year, a federal indictment exposed a massive public corruption ring right inside Becerra's inner circle. His own former Chief of Staff Sean McCluskie and top political allies were indicted for funneling $225,000 out of his dormant campaign accounts. They treated his political war chest like a personal piggy bank to fund private jets, luxury handbags and lavish vacations to Mexico.

Becerra's defense? He claimed he had no idea.

If a man cannot even secure his own campaign bank account from his own staff, how on earth can we expect him to manage California's $348.9 billion bank account?

Becerra is the son of working-class Mexican immigrants. His actions betray the exact community he claims to champion.

Immigrant families come here seeking safety, security and economic mobility. They do not want a system that hands their vulnerable children to traffickers and their hard-earned tax dollars to fraudsters. They want the rule of law. They want competent governance.

At his campaign rallies, Becerra likes to lead chants of "Sí, se puede".

Yes, he can lose track of 85,000 vulnerable children. Yes, he can let his inner circle embezzle a quarter of a million dollars right under his nose. Yes, he can continually fail upward.

The immigrant community did not rally behind that phrase to watch a politician use it as a shield for gross incompetence. "Sí, se puede" should mean that we can demand better. It means we can require professional problem solvers who treat accountability as the bare minimum requirement for the job.

We won't be astroturfed into installing the "Final Boss" of failing upward.

Californians cannot say "Sí, se puede" to a governor who loses everything he touches.