One of our supporters asked us recently how things were for California conservatives. Apparently, word had gotten out that things aren’t so golden in the Golden State, and the following was my response to our friend’s email. It has been edited for some “colorful” descriptions in the original.
California Conservatives: The Blight
It’s a nightmare.
Everyone has ideas on how things should be, but very few of those ideas are, “Figure it out yourself.” Apparently, very few mothers in LA over the past century taught their kids “Look, just don’t be a jerk, mind your own business, and you’ll be fine.”
Nope. Instead it’s people who think they know what a “gun culture” is because they once read a piece in the Huffington Post about videogame violence “being bad or something.”
There is no incentive to start a business, because the state is fiscally retarded (both literally and figuratively) and it taxes businesses to the point where it doesn’t make sense to start new ones. They need those taxes because they need to finance the pensions and absurd wages that are paid to the government workers because the unions call the shots. They strike regularly because, Hey, the government has infinite money! Just tax more!
Not to mention the illegal immigration problem, but thankfully that isn’t too bad anymore…but that’s because there aren’t anymore opportunities for a better life here, so the illegal immigrants either stay in the warzones that the boarder towns have become, or go to a different state. Unfortunately, our economy is dependent on illegal aliens and the cheap labor they provide, so that—along with our astronomical cost of living—makes it impossible to get anything done.
It’s like Brazil, Russia, Mexico, or any other third-world country or state. There are the insanely wealthy who couldn’t care less and think they’ve “paid their dues” because they fulfilled the minimal requirements to receive the trust funds they were left by their parents, or they scammed their way to opulence and slothfulness and now that they have theirs, also don’t care about anyone else—unless, of course, those “less fortunate” people could end up trying to take some of their ill-earned fortune. Since, you know, money is finite because paper has innate value and there is only so much that can ever go around at one time.
Then there are those who can’t afford anything without the help of the government. Where I live, it takes a minimum of $45k a year just to afford auto insurance (which is required by law here), pay my $1k rent (which is a bargain basement price), feed myself the worst possible quality food, pay for gas, pay the gas and electric bills; and that doesn’t even cover health insurance, cell phone (don’t get me started on “Obamaphone”) bills, internet, car maintenance, and other non-immediate survival necessities. Trying to accumulate any kind of savings is as likely as buying a Hawaiian island.
We had one of the strongest economies in the world in the late 80s and early 90s, and it took one Democratic governor to irreversibly screw it all away. Add one meat-headed Austrian who was too busy porking his housekeeper and anything else that moved to pay attention to the colossal mess that he was supposed to be picking up, and people still wonder where it went wrong. Now we have some of our biggest cities going bankrupt and no way to keep that disease from spreading.
Then, on top of that, we have the most psychotic and brutal police force in the entire nation. Sadly, as bad as that sounds, and whatever you’re thinking of how bad that can be, it is worse. I know Arizona isn’t exactly a picnic, but the way LA County treats criminals is beyond criminal—it is inhuman.
Our educational system is such a joke that it doesn’t even warrant talking about it. Scrap it, copy Finland, and it would be a done deal.
Our roads are thrashed because we don’t have money to repave them—but the federal government gave us money to plant ornamental shrubs along the sidewalks of the dilapidated streets so it looks nice.
That last bit is an apt metaphor for our state. The media makes it seem like no conservatives exist here, but that’s bull. There are a lot of us. We just get drowned out by the Left and cries of how everything is so much more unfair now than it was 20 years ago. Never mind the fact that California was a Red state more than 20 years ago and has moved progressively more Blue since then—that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it!
On that jolly note: how’s Arizona? My brother lived out there for a few years while he went to ASU—moved back here to CA only about two years ago now, and considering moving back.