A longtime neighbor and resident of downtown Marysville, CA while out for a walk stopped to explain that he and his wife were moving. They visited relatives in Oklahoma at Christmas and there was no looking back to the Left Coast.
Gas was more than a dollar less in OK, at just over $2 per gallon. Everything was cheaper. He said the state even respects the Constitution, including gun rights.
Oklahoma allows most adults to carry guns openly, without a permit, as long as they aren't violating other laws. The state became even more gun friendly in 2019 by eliminating the license requirement for carrying concealed handguns.
Less government, fewer rules undermining freedom and more respect for the nation’s founding values sealed the deal for another “Golden State” family’s departure. They also liked the fact that OK is a Red State. The Republican candidate has carried Oklahoma in every presidential election since 1968, often by large margins.
The couple did not even take time to place their Marysville home on the market. One phone call to a home-buying firm and they were free to go.
Meanwhile, liberals in the California legislature are stumped by rising homeless numbers (CA has 12% of nation’s population, 25% of nation’s homeless) and the resulting filth, disease and crime. Meanwhile, the same political kooks are confident of cooling the temperature of the earth and lowering the ocean by severely taxing Californians. The lefties have a delusion about saving the planet while they cannot even keep the poop scooped and free syringes collected.
California has more than a third of America’s welfare recipients. Seventy-two percent of immigrant families and over 30 percent of native families in the state receive some type of welfare. Many of these benefits come in the form of no-strings-attached handouts to the poor and kind-of-close-to-poor. As long as your income falls under a certain threshold, you get free money—even if you are able to work but choose not to.
“In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some states—principally Wisconsin, Michigan and Virginia—initiated welfare reform, as did the federal government under President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress,” wrote Kerry Jackson of the Pacific Research Institute.
“The common thread of the reformed welfare programs was strong work requirements placed on aid recipients. These overhauls were widely recognized as a big success, as welfare rolls plummeted and millions of former aid recipients entered the workforce. The state and local bureaucracies that implement California’s antipoverty programs, however, have resisted pro-work reforms. In fact, California recipients of state aid receive a disproportionately large share of it in no-strings-attached cash disbursements. It’s as if welfare reform passed California by, leaving a dependency trap in place.”
After the legislature forced PGE (rates 2 times the national average) and other utilities aground with environmental and regulatory excesses, Governor Newsom is politically desperate for some positive news. He is crowing about tampons (and other feminine hygiene products) and diapers being declared sales tax exempt. Decades of democrat injustice and abuse of women by taxing vaginas is now being reversed.
It seems odd that Komifornia would untax something. When nearly all objects and services are taxed and some with multiple assessments politicians now score points for throwing the abused citizens a financial bone.
The diaper discount is also odd since the State funds the killing of diaper-using tiny humans even after they see the light.
California’s Green movement nonsense and failures are embarrassing and are leading to the enforcing of tighter and tighter controls on Californians. Most free people don’t voluntarily embrace economically stupid ideas. It has to be accomplished at gun point or by taking away options and assets.
In spite of adding 530 miles of commuter rail in So. CA. transit ridership has been declining since 1985. CA transit system spending went from $10.4 billion in 2014 to $12.3 billion in 2018 mostly coming from our road funds, not rider fees. Meanwhile, use slipped from 1.5 billion to 1.3 billion passengers with transit supplying less than 10% of our transport needs.
In 2017/2018 the LA region lost 27 million of its annual rides in spite of service increases and a roaring economy. Bay Area Rapid Transit lost 10 million uses in the last four years.
Meanwhile sales of electric cars are horrible and will fall far short of Governor Brown’s Commie-style “executive orders” of 1.5 million zero emission vehicles on the road by 2025 and 5 million by 2030.
As socialist politicians seeking a centrally-managed utopia waste the money of hard working Californians, more citizens are leaving the state each day for freer pastures.
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