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.
I’m sorry
He’s right about the good things for sure about California ....man from the dust bowl till 1980s everybody wanted to go to California
Nashville has a street people or campers problem as well but not on the scale of Los Angeles though Nashville city is very left oriented
Think 85% as leftist as Austin or Boulder but more blacks although this hipster influx here dilutes blacks daily
And it’s a bit seasonable the bums problem but if you have property near it then it’s an issue.....which I do in west Nashville
I think he’s moving to where I am residentially
Franklin area south of Nashville
He and I differ a good bit politically but maybe his coming south will help him understand us better
He was a never trumper and his support even now is weak
I’m surprised posters don’t know this
Plus he’s a slavery And racism is our original sin sort And he lives to demonize my southern ancestry as Nazis Which is kind of tiring as our whole culture collapses around us as we place all our hopes yet again on Orange Man The Last Warrior ...which Trump is no question despite the efforts of Shapiro in 2016
I’ll pass But you’re welcome to him
Shapiro is definitely a stereotypical neocon
Fleeing a sinking ship that his predecessors helped create with cultural liberalism
To be fair Ben is a bit culture war on some things like abortion
I wonder if he’ll come here and try to remove our confederate memorial statues and other historical stuff he may find offensive to his sensibilities
Good catch
He talks effete
Not gay though
Nashville isn’t Los Angeles Jewish wise by a long shot but last count we had four congregations including Sherith Israel on West End which is our only orthodox temple and I’m assuming the one he’ll get a membership in
Folks here don’t really know Ben you can tell.....that said even I listen to him some just because he’s interesting even when he’s wrong
And his mind is quick....his thought to speech synapse is high octane
You rein in a horse
You don’t reins in a horse
Possible, at least in the short term. In 2018, Texas natives (58% of the vote) voted 51-48% in favor of Beto, while Texas transplants (42% of the vote) voted 57-42% in favor of Cruz. In short, Texas transplants save the state from the embarrassment of electing Beto as Senator.
The concern would be (a) the children of transplants moving to the left politically, and (b) the continued influx of illegals getting on the voter rolls. Our only kid (27 now) voted 3rd party in 2016 after having moved to Texas in the summer of 2016. This year, it will be for Trump (amazing what four years of working will do to one's politics), so not all hope is lost for Texas. At least not yet.
“The concern would be (a) the children of transplants moving to the left politically,”
Unfortunately I think that’s a concern for all children.
I heard that “Beta won native Texans” factoid. I think that deserves scrutiny before being accepted.
My source (2018 Exit Poll; The Dallas Morning News):
I’m a native Californian, why would I want to move to Vermont or Delaware, they are both shithole states, just like California.
I’m saying do it en masse and take over those (small) states.
Yeah I know the exit poll was the source.
But I’m not sure I trust that poll is what I’m saying.
It’s certainly possible, if “Natives” skew Hispanic. But my guess would be Cruz won Natives by a little but won transplants by a little less than that the poll showed, haven’t lots of scum moved to the Austin area?
I personally know about 20 people from CA who are about to infest the State of Idaho. These are relatives of a friend who are up there now looking for property.
One of these soon-to-be Idaho residents said a few months ago in a plaintive desperate wail about Joe Biden “He’s a GOOOOOOD MAAAAAN!”
Cannot facepalm hard enough for some of these people.
I knew he WAS a never-Trumper. Thought he had seen the light, so to speak.
He’s a racially sensitive libertarian pretty much
He doesn’t like Trump but doesn’t want to be irrelevant
And he’s moving near me..lol from Toluca Lakes I think
Like a strong possibility literally within a few miles I hear
I’ll have to keep my eye out for a little elfin guy wearing a kippah driving a mini van
His wifey is nice looking
He irritates me but I listen to him some times and have two of his books
I hope the South rubs off on him...he has no understanding of us
I think he views us as Cossacks
Afraid of us
No question his brain is fast
But for Young fast talking steel trap brain Jewish kids with pretty wives I’ll take Stephen Miller for 1000 instead
to GA where we lived until we were driven out of MA by semi-CA problems.
to GA where we lived until we were driven out of MA by semi-CA problems.
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