Posted on 09/30/2020 4:15:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
My family and my company are leaving California.
It's heartbreaking.
My parents moved to California four decades ago. I grew up here. For 33 of the 36 years I've spent on this planet, I've lived here. I was born at St. Joseph's in Burbank; I attended elementary school at Edison Elementary; I went to college at UCLA. I co-founded a major media company here, with 75 employees in Los Angeles. I met my wife here; all three of my kids are native Californians.
This is the most beautiful state in the country. The climate is incredible. The scenery is amazing. The people are generally warm, and there's an enormous amount to do.
And we're leaving.
We're leaving because all the benefits of California have steadily eroded -- and then suddenly collapsed. Meanwhile, all the costs of California have steadily increased -- and then suddenly skyrocketed. It can be difficult to spot the incremental encroachment of a terrible disease, but once the final ravages set in, it becomes obvious that the illness is fatal. So, too, with California, where bad governance has turned a would-be paradise into a burgeoning dystopia.
When my family moved to North Hollywood, I was 11. We lived in a safe, clean suburb. Yes, Los Angeles had serious crime and homelessness problems, but those were problems relegated to pockets of the city -- problems that, with good governance, we thought could eventually be healed. Instead, the government allowed those problems to metastasize. As of 2011, Los Angeles County counted less than 40,000 homeless; as of 2020, that number had skyrocketed to 66,000. Suburban areas have become the sites of homeless encampments. Nearly every city underpass hosts a tent city; the city, in its kindness, has put out port-a-potties to reduce the possibility of COVID-19 spread.
Police are forbidden in most cases from either moving transients or even moving their garbage. Nearly every public space in Los Angeles has become a repository for open waste, needles and trash. The most beautiful areas of Los Angeles, from Santa Monica beach to my suburb, have become wrecks. My children have personally witnessed drug use, public urination and public nudity. Looters were allowed free reign in the middle of the city during the Black Lives Matter riots; Rodeo Drive was closed at 1 p.m., and citizens were curfewed at 6 p.m.
To combat these trends, local and state governments have gamed the statistics, reclassifying offenses and letting prisoners go free. Meanwhile, the police have become targets for public ire. In July, the city of Los Angeles slashed police funding, cutting the force to its lowest levels in over a decade.
At the same time, taxes have risen. California's top marginal income tax rate is now 13.3%; legislators want to raise it to 16.8%. California is also home to a 7.25% sales tax, a 50-cent gas tax and a bevy of other taxes that drain the wallet and burden business. California has the worst regulatory climate in America, according to CEO Magazine's survey of 650 CEOs. The public-sector unions essentially make public policy, running up the debt while providing fewer and fewer actual services. California's public education system is a massive failure, and even its once-great colleges are now burdened by the stupidities of political correctness, including an unwillingness to use standardized testing.
And still, the state legislature is dominated by Democrats. California is not on a trajectory toward recovery; it is on a trajectory toward oblivion. Taxpayers are moving out -- now including my family and my company. In 2019, before the pandemic and the widespread rioting and looting, outmigration jumped 38%, rising for the seventh straight year. That number will increase again this year.
I want my kids to grow up safe. I want them to grow up in a community with a future, with more freedom and safety than I grew up with. California makes that impossible. So, goodbye, Golden State. Thanks for the memories.
My brother left after the “last earthquake”. Apparently people who didn’t grow up there have one of those. That and he suffered so many break-ins. .
He’s married to a woman, who is from Israel and they have 2 children.
Yup. I always think:
reign = royalty
rein = control
I was born in Santa Barbara. I spent many years of my life in California. I wouldn’t go back there not even for business. I was last there in 1995.
26’ U-Haul Truck: San Diego —> Tulsa: $2945. Tulsa —> San Diego: $474. OKC is $2818 & $886, which makes me wonder if safer cities have no one leaving. (BTW U-Haul tip: always check nearby cities. Decades ago we saved $500 picking our truck up in Phoenix instead of San Diego. Tulsa is a 90-minute drive from OKC. Take extra mileage charges into consideration. And check Penske.)
Will he still get a bill for the next 10 yrs. of California income tax? Will he pay it? When I first heard that, I didn’t know if it was a joke or not....it sounded like one & how would they possibly enforce it?
The problem I have with Ben Shapiro (and I stopped watching him a few years ago) is the he tries too aggressively to appear bipartisan and attacks both sides.
Where he excels, is going on the attack for something that is innately conservative. In that respect, he is nearly unstoppable, as a multitude of videos on the Internet attest to.
He rarely ever gets even close to being owned.
Where I can’t stand watching him is when he attacks positions held on the conservative side, and appears to be doing it for political theater, just to show how even handed he is.
I have never been a fan of that, and though I have not watched him for some time, I presume he still does it. I wish he didn’t, because I have a high regard for his intellect.
I never thought he was gay. I just thought he was a very young man with a sharp voice, a quick mind, intense focus, and boyish looks.
Now, when I saw Richard Grennell in person at the RNC recently, I had never seen or heard him speak, and when I saw and heard him...my Gaydar pegged completely off the end of the scale, only to find I had never been paying attention, that was well known by everyone but me who pays attention to those things.
Not so with Ben Shapiro. He just reminded me of a really smart, sometimes annoying 16 year old boy.
Rain, Rein, or Reign, you better pack that mistake in a trunk and keep it safe, because, like or hate Ben Shapiro, you won’t get many of those trophies!
I guess he’s moving here to TN. That should be interesting.
Once I was watching a history of Tennessee, and I think I heard that at one point in time, centuries ago, Tennessee had the largest Jewish population in the country. Even more than NY. He should fit in fine as long as he stays conservative.
It is my hope that Ben Sharpiro becomes a fully partisan conservative, because I view his assumed even mindedness as a flaw.
There are many things I am in no way even minded on, because I have already thought them through and decided that at a conceptually foundational level, those things are utterly incompatible with my principles and I don’t have the bandwidth to waste on it.
Perhaps he does have that bandwidth, and it is important to him to do so.
I have respect for his formidable intellect, and wish that were not so.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word rein. Always as plural.
Keep ahold of the Reins to not fall off the horse.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word rein. Always as plural.”
That would be the noun “rein”.
“Rein” also is a verb — to “rein in” something.
Rein that animal in sir
Please check out Colorado Springs! You’ll love it here!
He's relocating to Nashville, TN
Check even further:
“26 foot” U-Haul truck is actually 23 feet on the floor—the other “3 feet’ is over the cab, and that is alot of lost cubic space.
The payload-—the weight safely carried-—in a 26 foot U-Haul is ONLY 7400 pounds.
I checked with Penske.
Their 26 foot truck is all of 26 feet on the floor—8 feet wide—8 feet tall & NO wheel well bumps like U-Haul.
The payload in a 26 foot Penske truck is 17,000 pounds.
That is 215% of the U-Haul truck.
When I checked the prices, etc, last time:
The low payload in the U-Haul truck of 7400 pounds caused me to have to rent TWO U-haul trucks PLUS TWO U-Haul 12 X 6 enclosed trailers.
The cost for all of that was $5500 PLUS sales tax, adding up to $5900 for a one way trip from Nevada to Missouri.
Penske quoted me $3468 only for 2 trucks, insurance, appliance dollies. That is a savings of over $2400.
I need to move a lifetime of items, plus ranch equipment—about 21,000 pounds. I have weighed every single item I can loft I put on scale, and recorded info for loading those 2 rucks. I have scaled those loads on graph paper, along with a LOAD SEQUENCE list. (Twice—U-Haul & then Penske)
My current property in N Nevada is for sale......set up for multiple horses.
Anyone interested can contact me.
BUT-—Look at Penske before you get sold on U-Haul.
The once-Golden State—the envy of the world—is now a Third World Hellhole.
—
... as in the scene at the end of Paint Your Wagon?
I am VERY CONCERNED because of the absolute CAOS they have created over these last 4 years that people will think if we just get rid of Trump the CAOS will stop!!
And still, the state legislature is dominated by Democrats.
It all started with the flower children in the 60’s and they never went away just hold office.
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