Cover image from @toby1942wow on Twitter

 

On Tuesday’s primary election in California, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom moved closer to becoming governor of the most populous state in the country and the world’s fifth largest economy. He will be going up against the hapless and uninspiring John Cox, a Republican, in the November general election.

Although current Governor Jerry Brown is quite an urban utopian socialist, he is at least leaving the state with a sizable surplus totaling $6.1 billion. But when Newsom takes over, that will be quickly dispensed with, and the situation in California will get worse than it already is.

Newsom is calling for a universal health care system and a plan for building affordable housing, in addition to: “A master plan for aging with dignity. A middle-class workforce strategy. A cradle-to-college promise for the next generation. An all-hands approach to ending child poverty.” His platform includes an unworkable array of big government proposals to save an extremely populous and drastically diverse state. He wants a state bank to finance infrastructure and many other costly items on his endless liberal wish list that would balloon the state budget that Brown has done a respectable job at right-sizing.

#LIVE: "We are the most prosperous state in America, but we are also the poorest," @GavinNewsom tells crowd of supporters https://t.co/TxMSbTKVFr pic.twitter.com/TrVHWbAHJk

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) June 6, 2018

He wasn’t always such a staunch socialist in the mold of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. In fact, he launched his political career in San Francisco a couple of decades ago as a moderate, business-friendly Democrat. But since becoming mayor of San Francisco and Lieutenant Governor under Jerry Brown, he has joined the far left flank of the already extremely progressive Democratic Party of California.

Newsom’s agenda, if enacted, would be more liberal than any other blue state in the country. With health care for everyone (including illegal immigrants), universal preschool, two years of tuition-free community college, and financial emphasis on renewable energy, Newsom will certainly shatter an already fragile state.

California’s one-party rule by Democrats has created an unaffordable and chaotic state. Their government solutions to each and every problem facing Californians is a case in point about how stifling the big boot of the state can be. Californians are in turn moving out of the country in droves as liberals enact unworkable and ridiculous policies on everything from water usage restrictions to solar panels on every new home. The proof of the existing and accelerating mass exodus of Californians is incontrovertible. A stunning revelation we just learned came from a survey of Bay Area voters: 46 percent plan to move out in the next few years.

Here’s an outline of the liberal utopian experiment in California that is going horribly wrong.

It’s Now Against the Law to Shower and do Laundry on the Same Day

A bill was just signed into law by Gov. Brown which creates mandatory water conservation standards and will be permanent, not just in times of drought. Instead of developing a long-term solution for California’s problematic water issues, Democrats have opted to punish California’s residents for the government’s lack of proper planning.

Assembly Bill 1668 establishes limits on indoor water usage for every person in California and the amount allowed will decrease even further over the next 12 years. Until 2025, Californians will be limited to using 55 gallons of water per day for indoor residential use and starting in 2025 that will decline to 52.5 gallons, eventually dropping down to 50 by 2030. The bill imposes civil liability for any violation of these provisions, turning utility providers into informants to bring massive fines down on anyone violating this new law.

How’s that socialism in California working out for you? #LiberalismIsAMentalDisorder pic.twitter.com/f9vNLoRB0S

— Just Dawn ✝️ (@dawn_of_america) June 5, 2018

Curious about the math behind this new reality adding up to Californians not being able to shower and do laundry on the same day? Well, an 8-minute shower uses about 17 gallons of water, and a load of laundry uses about 40 gallons of water, as noted by Daisy Luther of The Organic Pepper. Furthermore, an average-to-large bathtub can hold as much as 80 to 110 gallons of water, and a dishwasher uses anywhere from 5.5-15 gallons of water

Solar panels on every new house!

If that head-scratching water law baffled you, just wait until you hear about the latest law Democrats passed to make the housing crisis in California even worse.

California has now become the first state in the country that requires ALL new homes built to have solar panels. The rules will be initiated in 2020 and are part of the liberals’ virtue signaling efforts to save the environment and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Economy be damned! In a state where housing prices are already ridiculously unaffordable, this law will dampen new housing construction even more than it already is with rampant environmental and land use regulations developers already face.

New solar mandate latest chapter in ‘California craziness’ story via @ocregister https://t.co/m2HUaFmWYv pic.twitter.com/5W1l3C2lCs

— PRI (@PacificResearch) June 5, 2018

The new rules approved by the California Energy Commission apply to all residential buildings up to three stories high, including both single-family homes and condominiums. The utopians in Sacramento are hell-bent on having at least half of electricity come from renewable energy by 2030. Solar power already provides about 16 percent of California’s electricity and is the nation’s leader in solar energy.

These new regulations make building houses $8,000 to $12,000 more expensive, according to The New York Times, and this is in a state where the median home price is already $565,000, according to the California Association of Realtors. Instead of implementing pro-development policies, California Democrats have set up even more barriers to building more desperately needed housing.

Unfortunately, as California goes, so goes the rest of the country eventually. So gear up for solar panel requirements on every new home, universal healthcare, “free” tuition, onerous regulation, bullet trains to nowhere, and sanctuary states.

The Sanctuary State of California and Prioritizing Illegals Over Citizens

In a big fuck you to the Trump administration, California lawmakers decided to skirt federal immigration law by turning the state into a sanctuary state for illegal aliens. County sheriffs, law enforcement, and non-utopian citizens are all against these reckless policies that actually endanger the very people Democrats are trying to help. At least 41 percent of Californians oppose being a sanctuary state and cities and counties from San Diego County to Orange County and Tuolumne are revolting against Sacramento’s scary illegal immigrant-first policies.

SB 54 spearheaded by California Senator Kevin de León, a Democrat from Los Angeles, was approved with a 27-11 vote last September. The law limits state and local law enforcement agencies from communicating and coordinating with federal immigration authorities, and even prevents state and local police from questioning and holding people on immigration violations.

https://twitter.com/surfermom75/status/986631978303696896

Sheriffs are disturbed and are in protest, claiming this law ties their hands and allows criminals to slip through the cracks. The Trump administration needs to ratchet up its defense of American citizens by taking the fight to these lawless sanctuary states and cities.

Bullet Train Debacle

Gov. Brown’s signature project, the “bullet train to nowhere,” has continued to be pushed forward by the 80-year old governor, despite the fact that the train is now nowhere near what the voters approved a decade ago, and costs have continued to blow past projections, amounting to $77 billion, which is 20 percent more than just two years ago, according to the California High-Speed Rail Authority. But the cost could be as high as $98 billion when all is said and done as the completion date has been delayed and delayed for the San Francisco to Los Angeles line, now scheduled for a 2033 completion.

#LIVE: "We are the most prosperous state in America, but we are also the poorest," @GavinNewsom tells crowd of supporters https://t.co/TxMSbTKVFr pic.twitter.com/TrVHWbAHJk

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) June 6, 2018

This train will not be completed. And if it is, it will be at least eight times as expensive as what was approved by the voters and will not be high speed in any sense of the term. And yet, as with all things in government, once a project or a program begins, it is virtually impossible for it to end. Recent polls show that most Californians are finally waking up to these facts and therefore want the funds to go to something else.

High Taxes and Disincentivizing Economic Growth

An anti-business climate is polluting California as it is nearly impossible to start a business here. Regulations and suffocating corporate and personal taxes cripple many California households and businesses.

In some parts of the U.S., Americans pay as little as 6.5 percent of the state’s income per capita in taxes, while New York has the highest tax burden at 12.7 percent. The average tax paid across all 50 states comes out to 9.9 percent. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed each state’s tax system from the report, “Facts & Figures 2018: How Does Your State Compare?” by the Tax Foundation.

California: high crime rates, dead last in education, mass homelessness, an exodus of families and business to other- more sanely ran-states, out-of- control taxes, suffocating regulations, rising costs, and looming pension and budget issues.
NO MORE
VOTE RED ????????!

— Antonio Sabáto Jr ?? (@AntonioSabatoJr) June 4, 2018

California ranks sixth in the nation in taxes paid as a percentage of income at 11 percent. The highest marginal tax rates exceed 13 percent, which is of course on top of federal taxes. State income tax collections per capita equate to $2,055, the 4th highest in the country. An inordinately high share of California’s revenue comes from personal income taxes. 34.1 percent of state and local revenue comes directly from employees’ paychecks, a higher share than all but two states. And it also collects a disturbingly high amount from taxes on businesses, bringing in $252 per capita in corporate income tax, more than all but six other states.

Spiking Home Prices, Sky-High Rents, High Cost of Living, and Overburdensome Taxes Spur mass Exodus

Over the last few years, far more people are moving out of California than are moving in. The Golden State’s utopian experiment has proved disastrous as rising crime, annoying traffic, rampant homelessness (Los Angeles’ homeless population has risen 50 percent over the last five years, bums are shitting on the streets and shooting up in broad daylight in San Francisco, and the unwashed masses are camping out on the sidewalks in Sacramento), and moronic politicians are tearing this beautiful state apart, exacerbating these already troubling problems.  

But in the end, it all comes down to money.

Over the last decade approximately 5 million people have packed up and moved out of the state, and this will only continue as things are only getting worse with Democrats’ stranglehold on Sacramento. No one enjoys being taxed out the ass or living in a high cost of living area, no matter how gorgeous it is.

California is simply too expensive for an increasing number of families. Taxes are already much lower in neighboring states like Arizona and Nevada. California taxpayers already pay nearly twice as much in state income tax as other states. The individual income tax rate is 4.54 percent in Arizona versus 9.3 percent in California, according to the Arizona Sun Corridor.

The high cost of housing has reached a boiling point for many. The average home price in California is more than $200,000 above the national average ($261,000 across the U.S. compared to $469,000+ in California). But in the heart of Silicon Valley in Santa Clara County, the median price of a home tops $1.4 million, leading to a massive amount of Californians packing up to lower cost cities like Sacramento or deciding to leave the state altogether.

Renting an apartment is just as bad, if not worse since you do not own any property. Rents are exploding. Sacramento led the nation in year-over-year apartment rent growth from 2016 to 2017, increasing 11 percent, almost double the average for California’s 6.5 percent growth, according to Apartment List. The median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the Los Angeles area is $2,249, but San Francisco leads the pack, recording a median monthly rent of almost $3,400. In contrast, the median rent for a one-bedroom in Las Vegas is $925 and in Phoenix $945, and for a two-bedroom in Las Vegas $1,122 and in Phoenix $1,137.

https://twitter.com/MistralWinds/status/938631827312357376

The rent is too damn high. The homeless are emboldened as more end up unsheltered on the streets every day. The taxes are out of control. The regulations are ridiculous. The policies enacted by utopian Democrats are destroying this state. The number of Californians moving out will only accelerate in the years to come as nothing will change anytime soon, especially with Gavin Newsom taking over.

Time to look for another place to live!

 

Follow me @BobShanahanMan

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