California Death Watch

"After more than 150 years of becoming a destination, California is becoming a place entrepreneurs, investment capital and the hardy workers who made it a global leader in agriculture, technological innovation amd scientific research are leaving. The exodus is the marker of something deeper than a national recession. It's a sign that the attempts by state leaders to spend their way back to prosperity are killing California. ... Citizens are burdened by all sorts of state regulations. ... Entrepreneurs and investors, seeking the path of least resistance, leave when it becomes easier to make a living in more business-friendly states. ... Over the past few years, we've witnessed the state government's response to the capital and entrepreneur flight out of our state: Taxes remain high, and lawmakers employ all sorts of tricks in the book to produce 'balanced' budgets from shifting expenses around to borrowing ever larger sums of money", my emphasis, Devin Nunes (DN) at the WSJ, 10 January 2009.

"California is in crisis. Maybe we should recognize that it's terminal. The problem: Sacramento is in a state of total capitol dysfunction. The budget has grown vastly more impossible to balance (an additional $40 billion over 18 months must be scrounged up somehow), but the tax-intoxicated Democratic legislature insists upon more money from its citizens. ... We have been warned so often about the disaster that it can be difficult to believe that the axe may be close at hand. ... The Sacramento politicians hoped that good economic news would appear to rescue them from responsibility. ... Californian's have tried long and hard to make Sacramento get serious about the state's business. ... According to calculations by State Senator Tom McClintock, spending under Gov. Davis had grown by seven percent annually. But, since then, Schwarzenegger has increased that rate to 10 percent. ... At least one of those money magnets, education, is hugely impacted by the entry of millions of immigrants and illegal aliens. ... It is likewise significant that SacraMexico pols won't even take action against the low-hanging fruit for spending cuts, e.g., the taxpayer tuition subsidy (AB 540) for illegal alien college students (many of whom are Asian, interestingly). That issue had to be dragged through the courts over years at great expense for the participants because the legislature is too Mexifornicated to mind the people's business properly. It was recently announced that the case would be advanced to the highest state level, California Supreme Court to take on state law granting in-state tuition to illegal immigrants [LA Times, Jan. 5, 2009]. ... The tuition debacle has gone on for so long (since 2001), that there are now hundreds of illegal alien college graduates who benefitted by the program of taxpayer subsidy but who are unable to work legally. After years of unearned entitlement, the young foreign adults are miffed that they cannot obtain employment in America. ... Many Californians have voted against incompetence and Mexicanization by leaving. ... California may just be too big and diverse to govern. California's difficulty excessive has resulted in balkanized tribal areas of different ethnicities and languages, as well as vastly diffent ideas about how (and whose) resources should be used. Teddy Roosevelt's characterization of "squabbling nationalities' comes to mind. California has the highest percentage of foreign language speakers--43 percent speak a language other than English at home. In particular California has too many Mexicans who care more about their ancestral homeland than assimilating to this country. In addition, immigration-caused diversity is a force multiplier of societal stresses. As sociologist Robert Putman has determined, diversity decreases trust. It doesn't help that immigrants are never satisfied, never done with demanding more than what cirtizens receive, like tuition breaks and totally free medical care. ... No one in California government today is willing to take the tough measures necessary to solve the structural financial problems. The short-term fix is to kick them down the road into someon else's adminstration. ... It is an axiom in the patriotic immigration reform movement that good fences make good neighbors. By limiting the opportunity for cross-communal plundering through the tax system, good fences could make fiscally-responsible neighbors too", my emphasis, Brenda Walker, 12 January 2009 at http://www.vdare.com/walker/090112_crisis.htm.

"Mike Reilly spent his entire lifetime chasing the California dream. This year he's going to look for it in Colorado. With a house purchase near Denver in the works, the 38-year-old engineering contractor plans to move his family 1,200 miles away from his home state's lemon groves, sunshine and beaches. For him, years of rising taxes, dead-end schools, unchecked illegal immigration and clogged traffic have robbed the Golden State of its allure. Is there something left of the California dream? 'If you are a Hollywood actor,' Reilly says, 'but not for us.' ... But for many California families last year, tomorrow started somewhere else. The number of people leaving California for another state outstripped the number moving in for another state during the year ending on July 1, 2008. California lost a net total of 144,000 people during that period--more than any other state, according to census estimates. ... Why are so many looking for an exit?", 12 January 2009, link: http://www.msnbc.com/id/28625138.

"In 2004, FAIR published a study estimating California's annual cost for illegal immigration at $9 billion, an amount which surely has not decreased in the intervening time. But the goodies for illegal aliens are not being cut, even as basic services are being axed for citizens. The presence of millions of illegal aliens--many of whom are uneducated, unskilled and non-English speaking--is not the only cause of California's budget crisis, but it is a significant part. ... Schwarzenegger called it a 'big mistake' Wednesday to blame illegal immigrants for the state's looming $8 billion budget gap [in August], just as Republican lawmakers have proposed a rollback of benefits for illegal immigrants to save money", Brenda Walker, 18 January 2009 at http://vdare.com/archieves/2009/01/18/californa-budget-meltdown-staggers-along/

DN is a Congressman from California. He can't say, "The exodus is largely a response to the Mexodus".

Illegal aliens' UCLA and Berkeley tuition is less than foreigners, i.e., Arizona and Nevada kids! If illegal aliens attend UCLA, why doesn't the (in)Justice Department raid UCLA's registrars office, identify, and deport them? Then find a charge to arrest UCLA's adminstrators on. Californians follow Lenin's dictum, they are "voting with their feet". I'm sure this makes Paul Krugman cringe. "Balkanized tribal areas", see my 6 September 2008 post: http://skepticaltexascpa.blogspot.com/2008/09/coming-civil-war.html. The majority of LA County (LAC) residents speak a language other than English at home. The LAT reported 53% of LAC residents are functionally illiterate. What country is LAC in anyway? Robert Putnam is a Harvard professor. I'm surprised he hasn't been driven off that campus. Totally free medical care. Is that making California hospitals close? "Tough measures"? My fix: let California issue its own money then hyperinflate it out of existence! "Cross-communal plundering", I love it! See also gm's comments at my 4 January 2009 post: http://skepticaltexascpa.blogspot.com/2009/01/backlash-afoot.html. California is a witches' brew of troubles.

Because it's too expensive to live there and large parts of California are no longer part of the US.

Is the Guvernator serious? What is California's annual illegal alien and anchor baby cost? 60,000 prison inmates @ $36,000 each or $2.1 billion; 530,000 LAUSD students @ $13,000 each or $6.9 billion, 5.5 million people getting medical care @ $1,500 each or $8.2 billion; that's $17.2 billion already. Either the illegal aliens and their progeny will be denied services at the barrel of a gun, or the Franchise Tax Board will take Californian's property at the barrel of a gun. The question is: who will the gun be aimed at? This reminds me of something Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels said, "The most important weapon of war is propaganda. Why? Any idiot can be taught to carry a rifle. But it is the proper administration of propaganda which determines the direction in which he points it".