Posted on 03/05/2018 8:12:01 AM PST by SeekAndFind
It finally happened. After 22 years in Los Angeles -- 13 on its West Side -- I threw half my life into boxes, the other half into dumpsters, and returned to my native Arizona. It wasn't a decision I had been pondering for very long. After the first of the year I began to kick the idea around rather casually, then a few things fell into place quite unexpectedly and, by the middle of January, getting out seemed like the only logical thing to do.
Emotionally, it was a different story. I love California. More specifically, I love Los Angeles. There have been many people I've known both in and out of the entertainment industry who seemed to be working on an exit plan as soon as they arrived in L.A. They were regret-free when they did get out, which was usually sooner rather than later.
My time in California may have begun solely because I was an entertainer. However, I had always been politically active too and my years there saw my most intense activism. Alas, I was perhaps focusing too much on national issues when I should have been throwing some effort behind keeping my home state from rushing headlong off of a progressive cliff.
Some of my efforts were actually spent at home. While so many conservatives in California were longing to get to more politically friendly states, I was relentlessly advocating for staying and fighting. States that were already electing conservatives and/or Republicans didn't need more conservatives there, I maintained. It was the places in America that were becoming liberal wastelands that were in need of some opposition voices.
It was a pitch that could have been applied to any number of states, but I meant it for California. I don't care what the libs do to the likes of New York, Chicago, or the Pacific Northwest. Let the progressive loons have cities and states that are already cold, wet and miserable.
But, as I often asked audiences, why should we let them have a place as glorious as California?
Apparently, no one was listening.
When the Democrats gained a super-majority stranglehold on the California legislature, they didn't waste any time letting their far-left freak flag fly. As soon as some bills were floated, then passed, people began asking me in private and in public interviews about the legislative madness issuing forth from Sacramento.
I thought most of it was boilerplate liberal lunacy that wouldn't stand up to any strict legal scrutiny, which made me shrug it off.
Last summer, however, the extent of the lunacy started to really come into focus and made it more difficult to keep at arm's length.
The far-left progressive Democrats in the California Assembly went to war with their still quite left "moderate" Democratic colleagues for not being fully on board with a single-payer health care bill that was problematic, to say the least.
This escalated quickly, which led to an effort to recall Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, who, by the way, is progressive.
Not progressive enough though, it would seem.
Rendon is a proponent of single-payer health care. His only objection to the bill in question was its funding, which was practically nonexistent.
Now firmly in the grip of the super majority, California politics had devolved into an ideological battle between the far left and people who think Fidel Castro was too conservative.
Forget hoping that moderate Republicans would have a voice in Sacramento, the moderate Democrats didn't even have a chance.
Conservatives? Yeah...no.
It was at this point that I began to wonder if the two progressive factions had pulled California's political center so far to the left that it could never be brought back to a sane place on the spectrum. In years past, I would dream of a day when control of the state would return to the adults and there would be a huge correction.
The legislative madness of 2017 was bad enough, but the state hit full "hold my beer" mode in 2018.
One Democratic legislator actually proposed fining wait staff in restaurants for offering plastic straws to customers. Ian Calderon, the legislator behind this, isn't some newbie back-bencher who is trying to make a name for himself, he is currently the assembly's majority leader.
The only people who aren't rich who seem to be moving to California from other parts of the United States are young, idealistic people who want to be in the entertainment industry. They usually get jobs in bars and restaurants when they arrive.
The Democrats now want to make their lives more miserable.
That idea is the kind of thing that makes people from other parts of America see all of California as a literal lunatic fringe of the continental U.S. It's too insane to worry about because it probably won't ever come to be.
More problematic is the open hostility that the Democrats running California have for things like the rule of law and lower taxes. You know, things that sane, rational free people enjoy.
It was when the state's attorney general said he would prosecute hard-working citizens who were providing jobs if they obeyed the law that I began to take a serious look at how far away from me California had drifted.
We'd never been a good fit politically. I used to live in Maxine Waters' district. I went from there to Henry Waxman's. My senators were Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, who was then succeeded by Kamala Harris.
Put very mildly, I wasn't feeling very well represented in this country that is supposed to be a representative republic.
It was then that I began to ponder a return to the desert.
As many have pointed out, the politics in my hometown (Tucson) aren't much better than California's, which is true. However, the governor here is great and, with any luck, we will be getting an upgrade from Jeff Flake soon. Also, it's easier to fight for some change in a medium-size city than in the most populous state in the union.
Most importantly, I don't feel fire-breathing hatred from the state capital.
It's quite refreshing.
I still love you, California, but you're hanging around with some really awful people.
Call me when they're gone.
New York state? Are you insane? What conservative wants to be under the taxationand regulations of New York state. I am not knocking the manyconserative places in New York, and that would be great if the state was politically conservative. But the laws and regs are horrendous. Conservatives just dont move to New York. Not happening. I am shocked you would recommend that.
She has family in New Jersey that’s why I suggested it———and there are some beautiful towns there.
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I ambetting some German Jews said the exact same thing in 1934.
I am betting some polish people said the exact same thing before the Russians drew the Iron Curtain.
When you are hopelessly outnumbered and the trend is accelerating, moving out is about freedom and sanity, not fighting some hopeless rear guard action. At some point, staying is cultural suicide, not fighting.
I have been in California for almost 60 years and have seen cataclysmic change. The time to stay and fight wasall duing the 1970s and 1980s. It is too late now.
You have to kno when to fold.
Fair enough. But my point stands. Someone will buy up the real estate once it’s sufficiently devalued and then develop it into something nice. People with money will move in. The neighborhood will change but the new residents will be accused of being racists who are forcing out the poor people. Politicians will act and insist on low income housing quotas, eventually the neighborhood will once again have islands of prosperity surrounded by wastelands dilapidated houses occupied by people who don’t care about the property they never earned or owned. And finally the last outposts of prosperity will flee, leaving behind a combat zone until gentrifaction returns in a couple of generations. This pattern seems pretty consistent in cities (Philly, New York, Baltimore, etc) except in a few spots where it is so bad it can’t take root (Camden New Jersey, for example). Of course all my examples are from the Northeast. Maybe in the Southeast it won’t go that way.
It seems that may be the best way forward, since the state government is clearly in a state of rebellion against the Union.
I think a strong case can be made that California has violated the terms of statehood, and should therefore have its statehood suspended until the rule of law can be re-established there.
That probably won't happen, but we're clearly approaching a point where federal intervention will be required, to keep it from becoming a separate third world country.
There are beautiful towns in California. I live in one of the 5 most conservative towns in California. That does not exempt me from horrific taxation or from living in a freaking Sanctuary State or allow me to conceal carry or prevent my tax ollars going to a flood of illegal aliens, etc.
Consevatives in NJ are looking for increased freedom and sanity. Moving to NY is just more of the same as NJ.
Had my first trip to Seattle in Dec/Jan, lovely skyline. However, in the city homeless and crazies rule.
I live in an eastern state—and would not recommend it to anyone.
Our secret is to live in the boondocks—way in the boondocks.
No-one bothers us.
Thinking California can be “FIXED”???
Not Bloody Likely!
I just need a shooting range and
I’ll leave You Alone !!!
Stop peddling that defeatist bull crap.
Avondale...
That’s near Goodyear and PIR?
I hear ya Brudda!!!
LOL..
Kelli Ward is the reason Jeff Flake is quitting.
Ward is the kind of Senator we need.
McSallycain would be just as bad as Flake.
Someone whispered sweet nothings in Joe Arpaio’s ear to get him into the Senate race so that McSallycain could win the primary.
Unless Joe drops out, he will get McSallycain elected.
There's still plenty to plunder, including other states when they can get it, and so I don't see the problem going away anytime soon. Fixing it will involve cutting taxes and the dependent population, and the momentum is still very much the other way.
What ever happened to Reagan’s California?
Yea, but the girls on the California beach Arizona sand does not have. Perhaps for the the gals the manly men of Arizona might be an attraction...but the California beach is not just sand.
I’ve been out of CA for 17 years and have never looked back. WA is very liberal but so far we have not come close to jumping off the cliff, unless one lives in Seattle. I’ll take our loony libs any day here than the pure communists in Sacramento. There’s hope here I think, not in CA.
Rather, my priority was always the economy ie professional career prospects. Second was maximizing the best possible place to live based on natural beauty, weather, activities, etc.
There are millions of people in this state making coin. And I don't mean just the tech people and entertainers. Contractors and others in trades are able to earn enough to allow these 'regular' people to purchase (albeit expensive & small) homes in beautiful coastal and/or hillside communities.
It's all relative - there isn't any free lunch. It almost doesn't matter how high taxes go, because they are always passed on in the form of higher wages and costs. We have many millions of tourists and visitors who actually bear a significant burden of the costs.
And of course, they keep moving here. I had a lady from England ask me last month if it was always so 'warm'. It was sunny, around 68 at the beach path, really nothing special, just a regular day. Here reply? "That't it, I'm moving here".
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