How many ways can California’s leftist Democrats turn the Golden State into a sh*thole? In Part l I addressed the outbound migration of California’s hard working middle class, as well as millennials choosing low-tax states to live and work. Despite this, California’s ruling party is doubling down on business-destroying policies, energy destroying policies, education destroying policies, and policies destroying California’s abundant natural resources.
A few examples:
California just passed a law prohibiting routine use of antibiotics on livestock in the state.
Governor Jerry Brown wants to ban the sale of gas and diesel powered cars in California.
The state Public Utilities Commission’s decided to close Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, marking the end of more than a half-century of nuclear power generation in the state.
California lawmakers passed a vehicle registration fee increase, as high as $175 for many cars.
California is now a Sanctuary State, harboring millions of illegal aliens, and preventing immigration officers from easily accessing criminal illegal aliens in jails and prisons.
We no longer have a high school exit exam in California, because so many students could not pass the easy test during the four years in high school. So leftist Democrats decided to do away with the test, rather than address the state’s failing schools. My son passed the exit exam in 9th grade.
California’s pet stores are now banned from selling dogs, cats and rabbits unless they are rescue animals. So much for free market principles.
Employers will no longer be able to ask job applicants about their salary history, compensation or benefits.
California community colleges are now free for first-time college students. Hmmm. Who is paying for this?
Because of “declining voter turnout,” neighborhood polling places will be replaced with elections by mail in California. No fraud here…
The State of California Agricultural Labor Relations Board is in collusion with the United Farm Workers labor union to force the state’s largest non-union farming companies into union contracts. Jerry Brown’s corrupt California Supreme Court recently ruled that forced collective bargaining is constitutional. Absolutely mind boggling.
California’s explosion of homeless people is largely thanks to Governor Jerry Brown’s prison “realignment” scheme, and two propositions which redefined many serious crimes to justify letting hardened criminals and habitual repeat offenders out of jails and prisons. The realignment scheme was so bad, the Legislature then had to pass another bill redefining “recidivism.”
And don’t blame the homeless population in California on Ronald Reagan – he did not close the state’s mental hospitals as the leftist media has incorrectly repeated for 50 years. It was President John F. Kennedy who in his October 31, 1963 legislation –The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 — ordered the building of 1,500 mental health centers so people with mental illnesses living in state mental hospitals could be treated while working and living at or near home. Kennedy’s program closed many hospitals over time, known as deinstitutionalization. (This article gives a detailed explanation)
The streets of many cities are littered with drug addicts, Hepatitis carrying, mentally ill crazy people, and bad people. While there are homeless who once were able to survive on the fringes, the state has an epic housing shortage, and the cost of living is too high for them now. In just Los Angeles alone, there are more than 400 unauthorized tent camps in parks, under bridges, on freeway medians and along sidewalks, proving that LA is California’s biggest sh*thole.
Because of California’s leftist politicians and leftist special interest groups, we’ve got many many problems, further degrading this once beautiful state. In my own city of Sacramento, the downtown neighborhoods are under siege by the criminal homeless population. Crime is dramatically up, homes and autos are broken into daily, mail and packages aren’t safe on doorsteps, anything on a front porch – including furniture and potted plants – is stolen, and homeless live and camp and sell drugs in the parks. But because Jerry Brown and Democrats and their spin doctors pushed Propositions 47 and 57, which decriminalized so many crimes like theft, and sex crimes, the hands of the police are tied.
California Democrats and Gov. Brown enacted AB 109 and AB 117 in 2011, ostensibly to reduce the prison population in state facilities. “Prison Realignment” was sold as needed to decrease California’s prison population by shifting “new non-violent, non-serious, and non-sexual offenders” from state prisons to county jails, while concurrently reforming the state’s parole system. One result of Realignment is that Sheriffs Departments now house prisoners in county jails who previously would have been sent to state prisons. And those criminals who would be sitting in county jails are walking and living on the streets.
Prop 47 spin doctors titled it the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.” Yet all Prop 47 managed to accomplish is to dramatically increase property crime throughout the state. It did nothing for schools.
Prop 47 reduced many drug and theft felonies to misdemeanors, and many others to nothing more than a citation. Prop 47 also allows inmates to petition for a reduction in their felony sentence if that crime had since been reduced to a misdemeanor.
“Those behind Prop 57 took their cues from Prop 47, selling the public with assurances that its early parole provision only applied to “non-violent” offenders,” Michelle Hanisse wrote in City Watch. “That’s news to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, whose published regulations on early parole explicitly include inmates sentenced to prison for violent offenses.”
The first year after Realignment was implemented the state’s violent crime rate increased by 3.4% while property crime rose by 7.6%, Prison Legal News reported. However, a report by the Public Policy Institute of California found “no evidence that realignment has had an effect on the most serious offenses, murder and rape.”
As California further degrades, I’m expecting ALEC’s 2018 Economic competitiveness report to show California in even worse shape, and with more outbound migration. Economics drive many decisions, but so does the safety and security of our families, homes and neighborhoods. California is no longer safe, nor is it economically feasible or even barely reasonable.