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The blue-state exodus gains momentum
The Hill ^ | January 10,2020 | MERRILL MATTHEWS

Posted on 01/11/2020 7:44:35 AM PST by Hojczyk

But that trend also highlights a problem: Some of the people fleeing destructive blue-state taxes and regulations appear to drag their pro-big-government philosophy with them — apparently oblivious to the fact those policies destroyed the state they are trying to escape.

One can even see that dynamic occurring in Texas. For a decade or so, liberals have been predicting (not to mention hoping) that Texas’s growing Hispanic population would turn the state from deep red to purple, and perhaps even blue.

In addition, many California families have decided to migrate to Texas simply to find more affordable housing, lower taxes and streets that aren’t rife with homeless people, feces and used drug paraphernalia. And Texas even has a 367-mile-long coast!

But we cannot overstate the significance of the Bureau’s top-line finding: Texas will gain two or three congressional seats after 2020 while California will likely lose one.

That’s a big deal for California, which has never lost a congressional seat. It is a tacit repudiation of California’s over-the-top taxes and policies. Some of the other blue states, like New York and Illinois, have been bleeding people for years.

Several years ago I interviewed the editor of Chief Executive magazine, which conducts an annual CEO survey of the best and worst states to do business. The editor told me the survey had two constants: Texas always comes in as the best state to do business, and California always comes in dead last. Oh, and Florida, which is projected to gain two seats, usually comes in second place.

But there is another factor: Texas has become one of the primary destinations for disaffected Californians, as more and more California businesses have concluded it’s time to go where they will be appreciated.

(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...


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1 posted on 01/11/2020 7:44:35 AM PST by Hojczyk
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To: Hojczyk

All in an effort to turn red states blue.


2 posted on 01/11/2020 7:47:00 AM PST by al_c (Democrats: Party over Common Sense)
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To: Hojczyk

Migration always destroys.


3 posted on 01/11/2020 7:48:31 AM PST by Theoria (I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive)
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To: Hojczyk

I’ve seen MANY calimexico license plates here in my back of the words in Texas and across our beautiful state! They are all heading towards San Antonio and some of the most more cheaper places to live. We even have a billboard that says do not California my beloved Texas! But we’re screwed royally screwed these people do not change their spots overnight they only increase!


4 posted on 01/11/2020 7:48:58 AM PST by RoseofTexas
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To: RoseofTexas

The country is doomed...there will only be a few blue states in ten years...

I move to Colorado in 1980 and left in 2000..


5 posted on 01/11/2020 7:52:06 AM PST by Hojczyk
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To: Hojczyk

We can only hope that the main of the ones migrating are doing so BECAUSE they are fleeing leftist tyranny; and they DO understand and favor clearer thinking, and will bring less leftism with them.

As many fled to The New World from Europe just to find a better, less constrained and tyrannized life, with more opportunity for self-sdvancement.

Let’s hope the Tigers are migrating, and the mice are too fearfull of the unknown, and stay pit.


6 posted on 01/11/2020 7:58:44 AM PST by William of Barsoom (In Omnia, Paratus)
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To: Hojczyk

The republicans and whatever allies they have need to educate these people leaving Blue States why they left and to convince them NOT to bring the same Political beliefs that ruined the States they left.


7 posted on 01/11/2020 8:03:49 AM PST by Old Retired Army Guy
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To: al_c
All in an effort to turn red states blue.

Exactly! The parasites are abandoning the host that they just killed and are infecting a new one. They will keep voting the exact same way but now they will be in your state

8 posted on 01/11/2020 8:03:58 AM PST by Colorado Doug (Now I know how the Indians felt to be sold out for a few beads and trinkets)
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To: Hojczyk

It’s all explained here (from 2002):
https://www.unz.com/freed/the-suicide-of-marlboro-man-172/

In its entirety:

The Suicide of Marlboro Man
The Price Of Freedom Is Slavery. Sort Of. A Little Anyway

The other days I was reading G. Gordon Liddy’s book of conservative nostalgia, When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country. He paints a sunset picture of former times when America was free, farmers could fill in swamps without violating wetland laws, and guns were just guns. People were independent and had character, and made their own economic decisions. The market ruled as it ought, and governmental intrusion was minimal.

The picture is accurate. I lived it. I wish it would come back, which it won’t. It was a world certain to kill itself.

What happens is that, in an independent-minded rural county full of hardy yeomen, the density of population grows, either nearby or at distant points on each side. A highway comes through because the truckers lobby in Washington wants it. Building a highway is A Good Thing, because it represents Progress, and provides jobs for a year.

It also makes the country accessible to the big city fifty miles away. A real-estate developer buys 500 acres along the river from the self-reliant character-filled owner. He does this by offering sums of money that water the farmer’s eyes.

First, 500 houses go up in a bedroom suburb called Brook Dale Manor. A year later, 500 more go up at Dale View Estates. This is A Good Thing, because the character-filled independent now-former farmer is exercising his property rights, and because building the suburb creates jobs. The river now looks ugly as the devil, but this is a wacko issue.

At Safeway corporate headquarters, way off God knows where, the new population shows up as a denser shade of green on a computer screen. A new Safeway goes in along the highway. This is A Good Thing, exemplifying free enterprise in action and creating jobs in construction. Further, Safeway sells cheaper, more varied and, truth be known, better food than the half-dozen mom-and-pop stores in the county, which go out of business.

Soon the mall men in the big city hear of the county. A billion-dollar company has no difficulty in buying out a character-filled, self-reliant farmer who makes less than forty thousand dollars a year. A shopping center arrives with a Wal-Mart. This is A Good Thing, etc. Wal-Mart sells almost everything cheaply.

It also puts most of the stores in the country seat out of business. With them go the restaurants, which no longer have the walk-by traffic previously generated by the stores. With the restaurants goes the sense of community that flourishes in a town with eateries and stores and a town square. But this is granola philosophy, appealing only to meddlesome lefties.

K-Mart arrives, along with, beside the highway, McDonald’s, Arby’s, Roy Rogers, and the other way stations on route to coronary occlusion. Strip development is A Good Thing because it represents the exercise of economic freedom. The county’s commerce is now controlled by distant behemoths to whom the place is the equivalent of a pin on a map.

This is A Good Thing. The jobs in these outlets are secure and comfortable. The independent, character-filled frontiersmen are now low-level chain employees, no longer independent because they can be fired.

A third suburb, Brook Manor View Downs, appears. The displaced urbanites in these eyesores now outnumber the character-filled etcs. They are also smarter, have lawyers among their ranks, and co-operate. They quickly come to control the government of the county.

They want city sewerage, more roads, schools, and zoning. The latter isn’t unreasonable. In a sparsely settled county, a few hogs penned out back and a crumbling Merc on blocks don’t matter. In a quarter-acre yuppie ghetto, they do. Next come leash laws and dog licenses. The boisterous clouds of floppy-eared hounds turn illegal.

Prices go up, as do taxes. The profits of farming and commercial crabbing in the river do not go up. The farmers and fishermen are gradually forced to sell their land to developers, and to go into eight-to-fiving. Unfortunately you cannot simultaneously be character-filled and independent and be afraid of your boss. A hardy self-reliant farmer, when he becomes a security guard at the Gap, is a rented peon. The difference between an independent yeoman and a second-rate handyman is independence.

People make more money, and buy houses in Manor Dale Mews, but have less control over their time, and so no longer build their own barns, wire their houses, and change their own clutch-plates. Prosperity is A Good Thing. Its effect is that the children of the hardy yeoman become dependent on others to change their oil, fix their furnaces, and repair their boats.

The new urban majority are frightened by guns. They don’t hunt, knowing that food comes from Safeway and its newly-arrived competitor, Giant. They do not like independent countrymen, whom they refer to as rednecks, grits, and hillbillies. Hunting makes no sense to them anyway, since the migratory flocks are vanishing with the wetlands.

Truth be told, it isn’t safe to have people firing rifles and shotguns in what is increasingly an appendage of the city. The clout of the newcomers makes it harder for the independent whatevers to let their weapons even be seen in public. The dump is closed to rat-shooting.

The children of the hardy rustics do not do as well in school as the offspring of the commuting infestation, and are slowly marginalized. Crime goes up as social bonds break down. Before, everyone pretty much knew everyone and what his car looked like. Strangers stood out. Teenagers raised hell, but there were limits. Now the anonymity of numbers sets in and, anyway, there’s no community any longer.

And so the rural character-filled county becomes another squishy suburb of pallid yups who can’t put air in their own tires. The rugged rural individualists become cogs in somebody else’s wheel. Their children grow up as libidinous mall monkeys drugging themselves to escape boredom. The county itself is a hideous expanse of garish low-end development . People’s lives are run from afar.

What it comes to is that the self-reliant yeoman’s inalienable right to dispose of his property as he sees fit (which I do not dispute) will generally lead to a developer’s possession of it. The inalienable right to reproduce will result in crowding, which leads to dependency, intrusive government, and loss of local control.

I’d like to live again in Mr. Liddy’s world. Unfortunately it is self-eliminating. Freedom is in the long run inconsistent with freedom, because it is inevitable exercised in ways that engender control. As a species, we just can’t keep our pants up. But it was nice for a while.


9 posted on 01/11/2020 8:04:21 AM PST by cuban leaf (The political war playing out in every country now: Globalists vs Nationalists)
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To: Hojczyk

This is an invasion of the perverts by design...


10 posted on 01/11/2020 8:09:26 AM PST by WKUHilltopper
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To: WKUHilltopper

I moved from Seattle to rural KY in 2011. But I’m one of the ones that moved BECAUSE I gave up trying to make Seattle red.

You have to choose your battles.

I’ve moved from a place where my vote didn’t matter to another place where my voted doesn’t matter, but for the opposite reason.

The one exception is that I voted for Bevin. We’re already seeing the consequences of getting a tax and spend democrat in the office. Fortunately he’s surrounded by republicans. :)


11 posted on 01/11/2020 8:16:19 AM PST by cuban leaf (The political war playing out in every country now: Globalists vs Nationalists)
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To: Hojczyk

Last year...yes in one year...four...yes FOUR of my conservative friends bought property in Idaho. Two will make the move this year..two others down the road.


12 posted on 01/11/2020 8:17:12 AM PST by goodnesswins (Want to know your family genealogy? Run for political office...")
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To: al_c

...here in Central Texas we see more and more Californicate plates than ever before.... they come here with their bags of money from selling their houses in CA, and here, where they can buy two houses for their cash, then they say “Why can’t Texas be more like California...??” there is without a doubt a concerted effort to turn The Lone Star state blue....!!!


13 posted on 01/11/2020 8:19:31 AM PST by TokarevM57
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To: Hojczyk
Some of the people fleeing destructive blue-state taxes and regulations appear to drag their pro-big-government philosophy with them.

I think this is a canard. The people leaving the blue states are often more conservative.

Texas is a case in point. Native Texans voted for native Texan Beto O'Rourke, transplants went for Ted Cruz, exit poll shows.

14 posted on 01/11/2020 8:22:32 AM PST by semimojo
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To: al_c
So the tumor has become malignant (as in cancer is a "progressive" disease).

Time to remove it.

15 posted on 01/11/2020 8:24:14 AM PST by glennaro
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To: semimojo

semimojo wrote:

“Some of the people fleeing destructive blue-state taxes and regulations appear to drag their pro-big-government philosophy with them.
I think this is a canard. The people leaving the blue states are often more conservative.

Texas is a case in point. Native Texans voted for native Texan Beto O’Rourke, transplants went for Ted Cruz, exit poll shows.”

And if the transplants initially voted Democrat, they end up voting Republican after a short while.


16 posted on 01/11/2020 8:28:48 AM PST by WildHighlander57 ((WildHighlander57 returning after lurking since 2000)
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To: semimojo
The takeover is real. Across lots of areas, especially the south. Boomers die off and get replaced.


17 posted on 01/11/2020 8:35:59 AM PST by Theoria (I should never have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive)
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To: RoseofTexas

We had those signs but they didn’t work to stop it here in Oregon. It was “Don’t Californicate Oregon” by the way.


18 posted on 01/11/2020 8:40:53 AM PST by Cold Heart (.)
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To: Hojczyk

Californians will brag about how wonderful it is for about a year or two, Then the begin demanding policies they left behind. You’re already seeing it with drag queen story hours in Texas of all places. Future Texans will look back on governor Perry and governor Abbott and damn them both for hustling so hard to bring so many California companies into Texas. It’s literally an example of the capitalist selling the rope to the person who’s going to hang him.


19 posted on 01/11/2020 8:44:45 AM PST by DesertRhino (Dog is man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ....)
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To: goodnesswins

“FOUR of my conservative friends bought property in Idaho”

But conservative compared to who? I think this is an important point. Are they conservative in relation to their neighbors in, for example, San Francisco, or conservative as compared to someone from, for example, central Alabama? There can be a huge difference. I see comments on FR from people who would swear they’re the most conservative person around, and then advocate for higher taxes, more government regulation, or “common sense “ gun control.


20 posted on 01/11/2020 8:46:22 AM PST by suthener
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