In recent years the amount of money the California state government steals directly from my paycheck had gone up dramatically, far in excess of what they claim for taxes. They do send out tax refund checks, but this was effectively a forced no-interest “loan” to people I loath. I just deposited my last tax refund check from California, and decided to use the money to do something to show what I think of the scum who rule that state. So, I bought 1,000 rounds of 5.56 NATO ammo–a type used by many rifles that they think only they and their enforcers should be allowed to own.
Tag: California
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Voting with their feet
The Weekend Interview with Joel Kotkin: The Great California Exodus. And things will only get worse in the coming years as Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his green cadre implement their “smart growth” plans to cram the proletariat into high-density housing. “What I find reprehensible beyond belief is that the people pushing [high-density housing] themselves live in single-family homes and often drive very fancy cars, but want everyone else to live like my grandmother did in Brownsville in Brooklyn in the 1920s,” Mr. Kotkin declares.
“The new regime”—his name for progressive apparatchiks who run California’s government—”wants to destroy the essential reason why people move to California in order to protect their own lifestyles.”
Housing is merely one front of what he calls the “progressive war on the middle class.” Another is the cap-and-trade law AB32, which will raise the cost of energy and drive out manufacturing jobs without making even a dent in global carbon emissions. Then there are the renewable portfolio standards, which mandate that a third of the state’s energy come from renewable sources like wind and the sun by 2020. California’s electricity prices are already 50% higher than the national average.
Oh, and don’t forget the $100 billion bullet train. Mr. Kotkin calls the runaway-cost train “classic California.” “Where [Brown] with the state going bankrupt is even thinking about an expenditure like this is beyond comprehension. When the schools are falling apart, when the roads are falling apart, the bridges are unsafe, the state economy is in free fall. We’re still doing much worse than the rest of the country, we’ve got this growing permanent welfare class, and high-speed rail is going to solve this?”
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According to Mr. Kotkin, these upwardly mobile families are fleeing in droves. As a result, California is turning into a two-and-a-half-class society. On top are the “entrenched incumbents” who inherited their wealth or came to California early and made their money. Then there’s a shrunken middle class of public employees and, miles below, a permanent welfare class. As it stands today, about 40% of Californians don’t pay any income tax and a quarter are on Medicaid. [The Wall Street Journal]
A good article from a few months ago on the exodus of the productive class from California, and why it’s happening. I’m looking at leaving myself in the not-too-distant future.
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California propositions
The results from the election are mostly in and can be seen on the Los Angeles Times website. While I voted no on all of them, I was paying particular attention to a couple that were put on the ballot by Christians: Propositions 4 and 8.
Proposition 8 was about making it illegal for same-sex couples to marry, so it was really simple to understand. The question on the ballot could just as easily have been, “Are you a bigot?” Sadly, 52.5% of the voters are bigots. This serves as a good illustration of why democracy isn’t the wonderful thing that it’s made out to be in the public schools: it ensures that hated minorities will be oppressed by a tyrannical majority.
I was also concerned with Proposition 4, which would have required doctors to notify parents and then wait 48 hours when a woman under 18 wanted an abortion (thus giving her parents time to torture her into changing her mind). I was worried about how this would turn out, because it wasn’t just about abortion. In this country people are legally considered property of their parents until they turn 18, and this appalling form of slavery has nearly unanimous support. As it turned out, though, 52% of the voters voted no, so apparently the pro-choice motivation was stronger than the slavery for young women motivation.
Regardless of the outcome, the fact that these two propositions made it on the ballot at all speaks very poorly of the people of this country.