Hey Josiah, does this sound true to you? It sounds extreme, even as one who dislikes the progressive politics.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019...s-progressive-adventurism-policy-and-politics
I LOVE California.... and can't image living anywhere else
I LOVE the nature..... From incredibly beautiful forests (with the oldest trees living) to vast deserts, from the highest spot in the continential USA to the lowest, to majestic mountains to the longest (and most beautiful) coastline in the continential USA. You can be where no one has been before and you'll never see another human to a place with 50,000 all jammed into one spot. You can ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon. There are some of the worlds best universities here.... the Arts thrive here as the world's center for film (and to a great extent for music)... live theatre is more popular here than in New York or London (in spite of not being as well known for that)... good sports.... good commerical..... And the world has come here, making for wonderful and rich diversity (and some GREAT restaurants; every food of the world can be found here). Consider Big Sur..... the Golden Gate Bridge.... Yosemite. And Disneyland and Universal Studios. I
love it here!
But there is a flip side. WAY too many have come to live here; crowds are often a big factor of life. And the cities have grown MUCH faster than the transportation infastructure (we lost pace in the 1970's and it's only gotten worse). The city of LA for example has gained well over one million residents without building even one mile of additional roads). And all this has made land absurdly expensive. My beloved and I are shopping for a new house... and the cheapest home our realtor has shown us is $739,000. And MOST of that price is the value of the land (and INCREDIBLE taxes and fees charged to builders who just pass it on to the buyer - in perpetuity). And we have among the highest gas taxes (and among the worse roads!), sales taxes, business taxes (THE highest there, California HATES business and does everything it can to force it out), and income taxes. All at the top or near the top for the USA.
But the worse is the government. I'm far from alone in calling my beloved state, "The People's Republic of California." It is a ONE PARTY STATE. There is no opposition. There is no balance. There is no accountabiltiy. The Democrats (and VERY liberal ones at that) RUN things (entirely unchallenged) - the Courts, the Legislature, the governorship. Nearly all Mayors in California are uber-liberal Democrats, too. And all the newspapers here are simply puppets of the Democrat Party (fortunately, they don't have the influence that they once did; they are SO biased that many don't read them anymore - even Democrats). Our new Governor (who has publicly MOCKED Christianity) simply ignors the Law whenever he wants to - in spite of his oath to uphold the law, but if he disagrees with it, he simply says "It will not be enforced." And we passed a proposition to fix our roads and authorized a gas tax increase but the money could ONLY be used for roads - that's the LAW - but he said that's bad for global warming so the money will be used for mass transit instead. NO ONE holds him accountable because there is no other side....the Press is a puppet of the Party and there is no other political party with any voice.
In this one party state... where there is no accountability or opposite and where the Rule of Law is irrelevant because all the Courts are liberals appointed by Democrats... there is also a sense that California is not American. It's big, some 40 million, and the liberals in California often have an attitude that we are a separate country - quite embarrassed by the USA; California often does (or at least wants to do) it's own thing - because we are smarter than Americans and big enough to snub our noses at Washington. There is at times a kind of anti-patriotism here. NOW... not everyone buys into this. I mean Trump got SOME votes here! And I think there is one consevative mayor in this state (Fresno I think, at least Fresno USED to have conservative mayor; there's a Republican mayor in San Diego but he's more liberal than most Democrats). They are just powerless. And ignored.
Hey, can't have everything.
- Josiah
we lean mostly conservative here and no radical progressives here either.. The ones who actually vote here would never elect or pass "tolerance" laws because there is no need for them... We all tolerate each other respectively and everyone plays nice... just don't move to Houston, the traffic blocks police patrol so criminals pretty much always get away with robberies..