More than 2 million Californians were recently left without power after the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric — which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year — preemptively shut down transmission lines in fear that they might spark fires during periods of high autumn winds.
Consumers blame the state for not cleaning up dead trees and brush, along with the utility companies for not updating their ossified equipment. The power companies in turn fault the state for so over-regulating utilities that they had no resources to modernize their grids.
Californians know that having tens of thousands of homeless in their major cities is untenable. In some places, municipal sidewalks have become open sewers of garbage, used needles, rodents and infectious diseases. Yet no one dares question progressive orthodoxy by enforcing drug and vagrancy laws, moving the homeless out of cities to suburban or rural facilities, or increasing the number of mental hospitals.
Taxpayers in California, whose basket of sales, gasoline and income taxes is the highest in the nation, quietly seethe while immobile on antiquated freeways that are crowded, dangerous and under nonstop makeshift repair.
Gas prices of $4 to $5 a gallon — the result of high taxes, hyper-regulation and green mandates — add insult to the injury of stalled commuters. Gas tax increases ostensibly intended to fund freeway expansion and repair continue to be diverted to the state’s failing high-speed rail project. read more
Will the last Conservative leaving California turn out the lights?
Oh, wait. They’re already off.
Febreze, perfect!
The democrats answer to everything!
California has become a cautionary tale, to which the other 49 states must listen.
1976, loaded up my ’52 Dodge Route Van and headed east.
The “righting” was on the wall, way back then.
Sounds like postmodern to me.
Seems like most of the other 49 want to follow CA into the abyss.
Let’s nationalize CA’s stupidity!
Yeah, that’s the ticket!
See, under the dictatorial rule of a Warren or a Sanders (or HRC) we can “forgive” student debt (which means pawn it off on the taxpayers, nationwide), “insure” the stolen public pensions (which means pawn it off on the taxpayers, nationwide), and “regulate” commerce to a stand-still!
Only those who donate (much and often) will be “allowed” to do business in America.
Just like California!
Sacramento ignores the Hollyweird pedophilia – because (either) the judges and “prosecutors” are participants or they’re getting paid (or some combination).
Think Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union with computers and modern technology! The evidence stares us in the face and we ignore it at our peril.
izlamo delenda est …
The last scene of Atlas Shrugged — Ayn Rand was prescient, but only the locale was wrong.
The lights were going out in New York City, as the free marketeers left the city behind to all the Socialist looters and wildfires. The locale really turned out to be California.
The only reason I give a shit about California is because a lot of my hard-earned federal tax dollars are going to fund this insanity! The sooner the giant federal tit gets shut down to to a trickle to that state the the sooner they get the message that they need to get their house in order and the sooner that money can be better spent more usefully! Money doesn’t solve problems like shit-holes and schools that can’t teach, it created them by financing and emboldening Leftists! The pendulum has swung far enough! It’s time for it to go the other way!
Have you bought your Generic and Square D stock?
California has been steadily eliminating the only source of reversing the state’s prospects and that is the middle class. Unfortunately this is raging out of control nationally just like their fires.
If half the nations voters don’t see a problem with the present circumstances of our nation then what chance do we have?
Parasites.
Lazlo grew up in CA, move out (escaped) in the eighties
Had to go to the coast this year to put a good friend’s ashes in the ocean at his favorite beach near the Redwoods
My heart aches for California, the northern coast is Maxfield Parrish beautiful, the buildings are right out of Steinbeck, but every single other thing is dismal and repellant.
I drove through a small valley with a freeway through it. We were going against the commute. We were traveling on five lanes and over on the commuting side there were more sitting cars in that little valley than in the entire town I live in, and in two or three neighboring small burgs. This is just a small section of the cars on the freeway
I would see another house on the coast and wish I could live there, but only for a second, and then my dream would die as I realized that even armed with a billion dollars and the ability to buy anything I chose, I could not stomach the crowds.
California may be nice again, but I suspect it will be only after the humans are gone.
The difference between CA and the Titanic?
Titanic’s lights were still on when it sunk.
I have two issues for the author:
1. The loss of the middle class that he mourns has moved on and are in the process of turning their new homes into Democrat trash pits. Just look at Colorado (mine) and Texas. Every time I see a California plate here (and there are hundreds), I cringe. Colorado is now a cesspool, and we natives have to flee the invaders, Californians.
2. What is he going to do about it? All I ever here is complaining and waling, but I see very few “conservatives” get up off their asses, turn off their football, and take to the streets. At least the Antifa losers leave their momma’s basements to break things. When are we going to start responding with the violence this situation merits (and Thomas Jefferson demanded)? I bet we won’t even do this when Trump gets impeached and, yes, he will be impeached. Democrats are counting on white American men to do what they do best, nothing.
Sounds like a good script for another Mel Gibson movie. Call it “FOAD Warrior”.
@gin blossom November 1, 2019 at 10:27 am
> If half the nations voters don’t see a problem with the present circumstances of our nation then what chance do we have?
There’s a word for it.
But that’s terrorist talk.
@Anonymous Lazlo November 1, 2019 at 10:39 am
> the northern coast is Maxfield Parrish beautiful
Do you… grasp?… the umbræ.. even the penumbræ… of how American, and un-United Statesian… that description makes you?
“These” are not “your” people. If you want a home, this… United States… can not be it.
@SoldierMom November 1, 2019 at 12:20 pm
> we natives have to flee the invaders
Yes. If you agree that whoever squats here, must vote. If you agree that whatever is voted on, must be.
> 2. What is he going to do about it?…
When the system is working according to design. When it has been tuned, and patched, to keep it within design parameters. For generations. Why would you think it, even could, do anything else?