California Continues to Stifle Innovation

John Fund writes for National Review Online about another piece of bad news from the left coast.

There’s no better illustration of California’s decline to banana-republic status than this: The all-powerful California Coastal Commission has voted to deny Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the U.S. Air Force permission to increase the number of their rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara.

The rejection was clearly based on petty politics disguised by a fig leaf of regulatory concern. “We’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race,” Chairwoman Caryl Hart lamented. Her colleague Mike Wilson ranted about Musk’s wealth and his social-media platform, X. Former union official Gretchen Newsom (no relation to California’s governor) railed against Musk for “spewing and tweeting political falsehoods.”

The commission’s rejection is aimed at a cutting-edge company that has revitalized California’s aerospace industry, which was flattened by the end of the Cold War. In 20 years, Musk has turned his SpaceX start-up into a $210 billion behemoth that employs 13,000 people in the state. It will continue to employ thousands even after it moves its executive operations to Texas in a couple years.

To win approval for its plans to increase the number of rocket launches from Vandenberg, the Air Force agreed last month to meet seven demands the California Coastal Commission had made to reduce the environmental impact of the launches — including the closer monitoring of a local colony of snowy plovers. Despite having its demands met, the commission gave the Air Force the back of its hand last week.

The California Coastal Commission has abandoned any pretense that it primarily uses its power to protect California’s 840 miles of majestic coastline. Instead, it restricts everything from economic development to home expansions based on its partisan whims or what concessions it can wring from applicants.

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