Dittoville

UPDATE 4/3/24: Lawlessness in our cities is the specific line of attack being financed by Soros backing of radical DA’s undermining law enforcement nationwide. A martyred NYC cop just joined the growing list of dead and terrorized crime victims piling up in the wake of this diabolical trend. A Riverside CA sheriff below courageously makes the case against this treachery, calling out Prog darling Newsom specifically and his blue state ilk.

 

UPDATE 3/14/24: One ruefully recalls when Mayoral candidate Eric Adams was the law-and-order choice who would stroll the streets of the Big Apple without a security detail because he’d be packing his own heat. Presumably, regular New Yorkers would be allowed to do the same. Wow! Second Amendment heaven, and New York would be THAT safe! But that was yesterday, and most political promises are lies best-known to the serial liars uttering them. Welcome to the Big Banana, 2024, creeping closer to being a North American version of those tropical cesspools of lawlessness run by oily psychopaths in military fatigues.

Apparently, much preferable to an effective police force like in the bygone Giuliani days. 

UPDATE 2/16/24: Without question, American cities are going to pot thanks to the Democrat push against law enforcement. This is no misjudgment or error but actually a tactic to maintain the Donkey Party’s mafia-style control of urban strongholds deliberately perpetuated as welfare cesspools of crime and poverty. Such a diabolical policy ensures massive blocs of votes for those handing out free stuff shaken down from the U.S. Treasury.

HOWEVER, as bad as things are in America’s cities, Tucker Carlson’s teeters on the ridiculous stating that Moscow, Singapore, Tokyo, Dubai are “so much nicer than any city” in the United States and all “wonderful places to live that don’t have rampant inflation.” Like any blinkered tourist in London, Paris or Rome, he appears to ignore the rather dismal quality of life of millions not living in the nicer, well-traveled parts of town, particularly in an authoritarian, corrupt society like Russia.

Every city (including Moscow below) has slums. Some societies, unlike our own, offer no way out. 

We applaud and support Tucker for his intrepid willingness to take on good topics and bag scoops like the Putin interview. However, he discredits himself when going overboard praising a well-acknowledged tyrant and his domain rather than just giving a reclusive figure self-revealing air time and letting the curious draw their own conclusions.

This is actual journalism which, like anything coming from a conservative, sparks outrage!! from the Leftist media. After all, Putin is their favorite bogeyman these days. Recall there was no controversy when Newsom gave the ChiCom dictator the sanitized tour of  a Potemkinized Frisco. All poop scooped and not an unconscious sidewalk junkie in sight. Admittedly, accommodating Tucker’s assertion, Moscow may actually look good compared to San Fran these days.

 

UPDATE 2/5/24: New York, once the powerful heartbeat of Western civilization, is fast becoming one more gangrenous appendage to the decrepit body of our culture. Woke New Yorkers can thank themselves for their consistently stupid choice of leadership.

Two highly infectious, anonymous individuals hiding out in quarantine.

 

UPDATE 1/24/24: Once the Golden State, now the blueprint model for destroying American society. Ask those venerable San Francisco businesses suddenly forced to close their doors after prospering for a century.

Plastic Fantastic Architect of ruin.

UPDATE 1/9/24: Conservatives noticed a long time ago that our country and culture are coming apart at the seams. That explains the rise of an American populist named Trump who has seen and felt the same rumblings. An airplane door flying off in mid-flight is a good metaphor for the larger societal disintegration we’re experiencing.

UPDATE 12/28/23: The story of Ilion NY is a tale of one small American town’s devastation at the hands of the anti-gun lobby and gouging unions. From another angle, it’s a case of massive corporations buying little companies and gutting them with no thought of the common folk they’re hurting. Whither Norman Rockwell’s and Frank Capra’s America?

UPDATE 11/14/23: Newsom’s attempt to impress Comrade Xi with a suddenly spruced-up Frisco is actually an amateurish attempt to imitate China’s and North Korea’s own vast network of Potemkin Villages, hiding from view sundry forms of tyranny visited upon their own people.

The California Cover Boy’s noticeable lack of concern for residents of the city when not sucking up to Communist dictators is telling.

UPDATE 9/28/23: NYC is on its way to full-blown, lawless Californication, and those residents who voted for both Di Blasio and Adams remain disconnected from what they have wrought.

UPDATE 9/8/23:

De-civilization=Collective suicide. 

 

UPDATE 8/29/23: Woke anti-White racism has now joined forces with the Green Monster to divert blame for the Maui fires on…who else?…White supremacists and their fervent desire to destroy Mother Earth! Surely, it couldn’t be the result of a socialist paradise carelessly allowed to deteriorate into dangerous, self-destructive ruin. There is also the highly credible possibility of arson. Also to be considered in this and other cases of bad weather: Mother Nature has plagued mankind from his days in the cave and, thanks to human ingenuity (not politics), we have repeatedly conquered her and enjoy the blessings of modern life.

 

UPDATE 8/14/23: From the viewpoint of a former resident of Hawaii, the fires with all its loss of life and property destruction demonstrate there are serious consequences for the laid-back, do-it-manana, welfare state mentality, even in paradise.

Overriding everything, this is one of a series of disasters befalling Americans treated with utter contempt and indifference by BrandonWorld. Big hearted Leftism (and its attendant Zero Carbon insanity) is there to control everything within its cancerous reach, not to protect the annoying human beings suffering mightily in disaster zones like E. Palestine, Ohio and Maui.

UPDATE 8/5/23: Why worry about lawlessness and anarchy in Britain when the newly elected Mayor of Chicago insists on referring to shoplifting mobs of wilding teenagers as “large gatherings” and stating that use of the word “mob” in this context is “inappropriate?” Ditto yesterday in NY’s Union Square where another “mostly peaceful” “large gathering” tore the place apart expecting some undelivered free swag promised online by some YouTube “influencer.” Presumably, outrage expressed by owners of the private property destroyed will also be deemed “inappropriate.”

 

UPDATE 7/17/23: Nothing new in Hawaii, our not-so-glorious 50th State and Third World enclave. Still #1 welfare haven, no industry, no reason to work. 

UPDATE 5/5/23: New York is determined to keep up with California in making itself unlivable for its citizens. No natural gas stoves in new buildings and getting rid of charter schools are both good steps in that direction.

UPDATE 5/3/23: Like Detroit and too many other formerly model cities of American industry and prosperity, Gary Indiana is now a rotting dump. no longer anyone’s “home sweet home.”

UPDATE 4/30/23 Leaving California has become the Dust Bowl in reverse. Once the ultimate destination for those with high hopes heading West, it’s now a place to flee.

UPDATE 4/18/23: Portland offers a template for Soros’ ravaged America, reduced to anarchy and very possibly beyond recovery.

 

UPDATE 4/12/23: So goes California, so goes America, Does an exodus of more than a million people from the nation’s 10 most populous counties say anything about the deteriorating quality of life created by Democrat Party policy that virtually runs/ruins our major cities?

UPDATE 4/10/23: Mimicking nature’s equal opposite physical reaction, California leads the way in reflexively strangling the invincible entrepreneurial spirit with regulation and taxation. The burgeoning restaurant industry, as happily reflective as anything else of the healthy free market’s place for both creators and consumers, is a crystal-clear example of vibrant life going permanently head-to-head with the deadening forces of BigGov.

UPDATE 4/9/23: The threatened Trans Days of Vengeance have not been canceled after all but are in full swing with the physical assault on female swimmer/activist Riley Gaines in Progressive Frisco. After the Stanford Law School incident, the Bay Area has officially declared itself a NO FREE SPEECH zone.

 

UPDATE 4/6/23: Chicago is jumping out of Lightfoot’s frying pan into the full fire with their newly elected hard-Left mayor. Good luck with that, Windy City! Billie Sunday couldn’t shut it down, but Saul Alinsky’s descendants most certainly can.

Chicago pining for the good old days right after the Great Fire.

UPDATE 4/5/23: For progressive states like Maryland all gung-ho for DEI, California isn’t Woke enough. 

UPDATE 3/22/23: Depriving poor people of the amenities of modern life is yet one more example of the folly (and cruelty) of California’s unaffordable Zero Carbon goals. But why should Gavin Newsom or Aunt Nancy give a flip after their shameless Michelle-Antoinette designer ice cream/hair salon/French Laundry turns during the lockdowns? The grand message from on high: “Let them eat insects.” Yet one more sign of a once-Golden State that now resembles nothing so much as a futuristic horror movie. 

UPDATE 3/22/23: Stanford could once rightfully boast with pride of being the Harvard of the West. Sadly, the comparison is still apt but is now decidedly something to be ashamed of. Another dreary sign of the degraded Californication of American greatness. 

UPDATE 2/29/23: This article from City Journal is entitled “America’s Shadow Self” and subtitled “Ruinous policies have transformed California from a symbol of progress to a cautionary tale for the nation.” Says it all.

UPDATE 2/12/23: Some Dems (but hardly all) are making the connection between rampant urban crime and decades of corrupt Dem control that perpetuates dense cesspools of Inner City lawlessness. The urban Godfathers of post-Great Society America have demonstrated that there is immense political power and mountains of graft to be had owning whole desperate populations of the permanently unstable and poor.

Honest, decent Dems will eventually leave the Party realizing that preaching DEI, handcuffed law enforcement and other new variants of Liberal “compassion” is a refusal to face the harsh reality of crime and punishment.

 

UPDATE 2/10/23: The Blue states-proud of high taxes, strangling regulation, rampant crime-have become interchangeable when it comes to being unlivable. They’re ditching Illinois now by the thousands. “How can this be?” Leftists ask themselves. “Our policies are so virtuous!”

UPDATE 2/3/23: The exodus from high-tax, over-regulated, lockdown-loony blue states to the liberty-minded red states continues in staggering numbers (millions). Funny how the real circumstances of people’s lives, not Woke pipe dreams, influence their big choices like “Where can I live a decent life?”

UPDATE 1/24/23: A statistic hard to rationalize: 1 % of U.S. counties account for 42% of murders nationwide. It should be of further interest to anyone seriously concerned with crime that that 1% comprised of lawless locales are Democrat-controlled and “gun-free zones.” Need help connecting the dots here?

 

UPDATE 1/18/23: It’s a wonder how suicidally ineffectual socialized government repeatedly proves itself to be. California, supposedly drying up in drought, has managed to waste trillions of gallons in rainfall during this latest series of major downpours.

 

UPDATE 1/3/23: For a one-stop, hydra-headed lesson in the disastrous effects of normalized Woke, take your life into your hands and go live in (or just visit) the formerly Golden State.

 

UPDATE 12/31/22: Santa Monica, once a glamorous seaside playground for Old Hollywood and until recently still a lovely place to visit, now joins Venice and Frisco as the latest showcases of Californicated urban squalor and homelessness. 

UPDATE 12/1/22: In rejecting Caruso for mayor, the City of Suicidal Angels has declared all’s well with crime and the general deterioration of life there . Let the Californication/Detroiting continue!

UPDATE 11/23/22:  The all-too-obvious, utterly shameless cultivation of Inner City poverty by Prog/Dems as their major voting base should long ago have been rejected as pure destruction, bordering on slavery or genocide. But there’s too much money and power to be gained by politicians and too many of the guilt-ridden comfortably affluent eager to outsource human charity and empathy to those politicians.  

UPDATE 11/20/22: “California, here I come!” has become “Lemme the hell outta here!” VDH, a deep-rooted CA native and farmer, has to be grieving over what’s become of his home state.

 

UPDATE 11/10/22: Lo and behold, if election results are to be believed, New Yorkers are as unconcerned about safely walking the streets and general corruption as the rest of the nation. Who would dare question this?

 

UPDATE 11/3/22; In California we are treated to all the horrendous consequences of Woke/Progressive/Leftist/BigGov “thinking” (which isn’t “thinking” at all).The good news is that Californians suffering the consequences in their children’s schools and in the general quality of life in LA are waking up…and on their way to the polls to clean house.

UPDATE 10/9/22: In a grand return to reality and the chance for a real life, sensible Californians are moving east in record numbers. Sovietized California Dreaming is a nightmare more akin to Huxley’s dystopian vision than Orwell’s, the quiet dying of a once Golden State.

UPDATE 9/15/22: In numbers of lives lost to violence every day, our cities are about as safe as fighting in the Ukraine war. We can thank the ignorant voting public’s refusal to credit this matter-of-fact, year-in/year-out social suicide to the political Party that has deliberately been turning our cities into hellholes for decades. It’s known as “The Great Unraveling” in that midwestern shooting gallery known as Chicago.

UPDATE 9/9/22: Add “Chicago! Chicago! That toddlin’ town” to “California, here I come!” and “It’s up to you, NY NY!” as one more pair of suddenly not-so-open arms of virtue-signaling, “sanctuary cities” having second thoughts about wide open borders.

UPDATE 9/6/22: The covered wagons are moving eastward in increasingly greater numbers as the formerly golden state has turned to dull, heavy, grey, lifeless lead. 

UPDATE 8/16/22: “Californication” is not an term of admiration, and its application to any field, especially to a healthy economy dependent upon an vigorous labor force, should be cause for alarm. In this case, it’s crushing the freedom of independent contractors.

UPDATE 7/29/22: Gavin Newsom’s unwarranted pride in crumbling California’s “success” is the delusion of millions nationwide, the illegitimate pride that inevitably comes before a mammoth fall. How stupid of voters to bestow power on the empty, rich and detached who hold the “little people” in contempt.

UPDATE 7/22/22: Centralized power is a bad thing as our wise forefathers knew and set the country up initially to have power shared both nationally (Washington) and locally (the states.) The same principle of separated power should apply to states and their cities since those immediately on hand are the ones who will suffer or benefit from whatever policies are in force. Sadly, New York City in Adams’ hands hasn’t gotten the message, and the boondoggle plan for revamping Penn Station and environs is handing the City over to Albany. Dumb move initiated for the benefit of some Cuomo cronies, and Gothamites will find themselves further marginalized nuisances at the mercy of a corrupt state government. But then, why should a City that voted itself a De Blasio followed by an Adams  think that one through?

UPDATE 7/5/22: The vacuous Gavin Newsom has apparently taken up stand-up comedy in  exhorting  Floridians to move to his magnificently run, “free” Golden Welfare State. 

Of all things, he offers oppressed denizens of the Sunshine State the chance to throw off the shackles of their thriving, prosperous, liberated lives and take refuge in his glorious domain of “freedom” (his word) with promises of defunded law enforcement, out-of-control crime, unaffordable housing, man-made drought, impossible regulation and taxation, record unemployment! For California and Democrats in general, “freedom” is just another word for nothing left to lose. (HT/Janis Joplin/Kris Kristofferson.) 

UPDATE 7/5/22: If the business of America is business, she will have to rethink her choice of  BrandonWorld over MAGA. Does the mass migration of actual, real, operating enterprises to low tax/low regulation Red states give anyone a clue?

UPDATE 6/14/22: What a switch for Americans, specifically Californians fleeing TO Mexico for a better life! 

UPDATE 5/25/22: There was a time when “So goes California, so goes the USA” was a good thing. Quite the contrary at the moment. 

 

UPDATE 5/9/22: Epoch Times offers a new documentary on California’s downward spiral into anarchy. Meanwhile in CA’s eastern counterpart after nearly half a year, NYC Mayor Adams has now fully revealed himself as all empty anti-crime campaign promises. Hey, Woke Urban Voters! How’s that lawlessness working out for you?

4/24/22: The formerly “golden” State has become the model for social disintegration of our cities and states. California’s numbers speak depressing volumes for the hell-bound road they and their imitators have gone down. 

UPDATE 4/20/22: The dire results of the Soros-backed Woke strategy to take over public prosecutors in cities nationwide is now becoming too obvious for knee-jerk Dem voters to ignore. Now that they’re the ones getting mugged, robbed, raped and murdered, they might come out of their self-imposed sleep walk and take responsibility for the Mad Max World they’ve created.

UPDATE 4/15/22: To get elected, Eric Adams made promises about cracking down on crime that  he really hasn’t intended to keep, and New Yorkers are already paying dearly. When will those suicidal Libs ever learn the difference between pretty words and real action?

UPDATE 4/2/22: Eric Adams, relatively new Mayor of Gotham, speaks with some authority when he calls crime-ridden New York a “laughingstock.” 

UPDATE 3/24/22: Open up that golden gate!!! California, here I come!!  It’s not everyman Al Jolson seeking the American Dream any more but hardened, organized criminals from all over the world heading West to a place where they can get away with anything.

UPDATE 3/23/22: Some of us from NYC’s good old days remember Mugger Money now making a comeback: keep a roll of small bills in the most available pocket to hand over to the guy sticking a knife in you while your substantial funds stay in your wallet.

UPDATE 3/18/22: Has California finally reached the boiling point and now about to say NO MORE in a big way? And does Miami offer a model for  urban recovery?

UPDATE 3/10/22: Urban murder rates explode, and as usual, the ignorant “experts” have the reasons all wrong. The pivoting of at least one prominently Woke DA (Gascon of LA) indicates the real light is beginning to dawn on the victimized public ready to junk these hoodlum huggers. Happily, it’s not all well-intentioned suicide for our cities. As the writer headlines his encouraging story on Miami: “The Least Woke City In America.”

UPDATE 2/23/22: The sudden decision to phase out the mandates in New York City is the first good thing to come out of the Adams administration. Sorry to say this is less a matter of principle than an impulsive panic move on the part of politicians getting a whiff of pushback from their constituency.

UPDATE 2/21/22: As real statistics make clear, there’s no good reason for any individual or business burdened by high taxes and excessive regulation to stay in a blue state when the red states are obviously friendlier environments.

UPDATE 2/18/22: Missing De Blasio yet? Adams kicks another jam out from under himself with renewed vax mandates and a bad habit of playing the race card with disturbing frequency.

UPDATE 2/17/22: To anyone seriously interested in diagnosing and describing the terrible consequences of Leftist Dem policy, start with our crime/drug plagued big cities.

UPDATE 2/16/22: New NY Mayor Adams is living up to his disappointing start and then some, now playing the race card in knee-jerk response to routine media criticism. The Apple is rotting from the top without the assistance of all the usual worms besetting a great metropolis.

UPDATE 1/31/22: In tandem with the Brandon administration’s subversion of law enforcement nationwide, the new Adams administration has New York City’s demise already in full swing with no sign of resistance from Gracie Hall. As unrepaired broken windows suggest a lawless climate, the forced closing of a totally looted Upper East Side Rite-Aid suggests even the toniest areas of Manhattan are now criminally occupied territory. The presence of a Mayor on record using the term “Crackers” and a DA who doesn’t plan to prosecute criminals is not encouraging. And don’t count on any deviation from this administration’s plans (or lack of) for deterring crime. Whatever qualification or walking back already put out is purely for today’s news cycle to diffuse bad optics. The course of action is set. The laughable “summit” of Biden & Adams only makes one think of a confab of Mafia bosses carving up their territories. May the future prove such cynical perspective totally off-base. But don’t bet on it.

In search of a Thug-To-Hug for a heartwarming campaign shot, Alvin Bragg settles on an old lady who allegedly cooked her own grandchildren and ate them. Allegedly.

UPDATE 1/27/22: It was clear from day one that Eric Adams was, contrary to his pre-election con, Third World/Banana Republic material. With each passing day, another destructive edict, a new outrage, one more worm to rot the Big Apple.

UPDATE 1/22/22: Unfortunately, Soros’ plan to install crooked, Woke DA’s throughout urban America is bearing fruit, the rotten kind. New York has the already-notorious Bragg bragging about (then toning down) his hug-a-thug plan to turn the Apple into George’s proudest piece of rotten fruit.

UPDATE 1/15/22: New York’s new Mayor Adams is already shaping up to make De Blasio look like Ronald Reagan. His hug-a-thug new DA Bragg promises a reverse “broken windows” policy which (hard to understand) guarantees the reverse of the dramatically low crime stats of the discarded Giuliani legacy. Clearly based on merit (and the Mayor’s newfound fear of “white supremacy”), Adams’ brother Bermard has been gifted a government position paying a quarter million bucks per annum. And like sharp tasty tacks sprinkled on this catastrophic cake, New York City has now opened the voter rolls to a million illegals.

What could possibly go wrong here?

UPCOMING 1/3/22: After DeBlasio, one positive view has been that at least no one could be worse.

Not so fast.

Incoming NYC Mayor Adams shows no sign of giving up mask/vaccine controls and even promises to expand them. Add to that his choice of a Progressive DA who thinks jail is an unkind idea for hardened criminals. If not already apparent, this is the strategy bankrolled nationwide by Soros to install criminal-friendly prosecutors and turn our cities into MadMax world.

In making the Deplorable Unjabbed his primary focus of punitive police action rather than looters, muggers and murderers, the day-old Adams tenure has already proven itself to be one huge, ham-handed blunder.

UPDATE 12/29/21: Politicians rarely back up their words and promises with concrete action. In the case of newly elected NY Mayor Eric Adams, it remains to be seen if he intends to radically change course from the devastation left behind by proudly communist wrecking ball DeBlasio. As a very “overserved” Andy Cohen candidly opined in Times Square last night, getting rid of The Blahs is something both Democrats and Republicans are celebrating.

UPDATE 10/27/21: As recently as last summer, Eric Adams was looking like the answer to The City’s spiral down the Woke De Blasio rabbit hole. But things are not looking so hopeful for any real change in direction for NYC. Adams is, according to one source, an Obamaic radical slickster masquerading as a tough-on-crime former cop. If true, wrecking ball De Blasio may be history, but his agenda sadly won’t be; and New York will move one step closer to being the Eastern seaboard version of the California wasteland.

Remember Adam’s the guy who said recently when asked about carrying a gun as mayor, “Yes I will, number one. And number two, I won’t have a security detail. If the city is safe, the mayor shouldn’t have a security detail with him. He should be walking the street by himself.” 

For the sake of NYC and all major  American cities desperately in need of a sea change blueprint, one can only hope he meant it…and means it.

UPDATE 9/29/21: Apparently the majority of New Yorkers have gone all “rightwing extremist” in that they see in moderate Democrat mayoral candidate Eric Adams the possibility of lower taxes (meaning a vigorous, business-friendly, job-producing economy that also just so happens to produce a thriving real estate market and ample affordable housing); AND law and order & public safety (meaning a strong police presence underpinning no-nonsense crime deterrence).

Since the George Floyd circus made policing and law enforcement passe and serial criminals heroic victims, nationwide homicide rates have risen an unthinkable 30% in the last year. Coincidence? Hard to figure out?

How mysterious it must be to today’s moronic Democrat mainstream that sane people prefer prosperity and a decent social order to the surefire social chaos and tyranny guaranteed by utopian/socialist frauds like a Di Blasio or AOC. 

Whether Adams proves to be the commonsensical godsend the City desperately needs to survive or just another slippery political animal remains to be seen. Whatever his fate, Americans everywhere wishing to retain a semblance of civilized life will be calling for a different sort of leadership than that offered by what has become the mainstream Democratic Party.

UPDATE 9/17/21: Californians, trend-setters and leading edge thinkers that they are, have overwhelmingly chosen to keep their hip hero Governor on. Apparently the consequences of his Leftist policies run amok are lost on those savvy Golden Staters;  things like exploding welfare rolls, crippled small business, power blackouts, water shortages, unmanaged wildfires, the once Promised Land of the West morphing into one big, Democrat-controlled Inner City. And millions of the sensible and fed-up are fleeing the state with many, many more to follow.

INNER CITIES

UPDATE 7/15/21: New York City is reverting to normalcy (at last!) with the rise of law-and-order candidate Eric Adams while deep-thinking Buffalo chooses to emulate the dazzling tenure of socialist cop hater Bill DeBlasio.

UPDATE 6/24/21: The first hedge against Californication/Detroiting of American cities is a return to law and order, that Deplorable rightwing extremist, fascist concept of penalizing criminals for crimes against innocent citizenry. The sarcasm here should come as no surprise to anyone aghast at the recent glorification/canonization of George Floyd and the whole line of serial offenders who came before him and those yet to be exploited. In case one needs reminding, crime by definition ranges from petty larceny like the Frisco shoplifting epidemic to arson, armed robbery, violent assault and murder. Could it be New York is finally catching on to the insanity of choosing for mayor an anarcho-communist partial to criminals and intent on undermining law enforcement, replacing him with a former Brooklyn cop who replies when asked if he’ll carry a gun, “Yes I will, number one. And number two, I won’t have a security detail. If the city is safe, the mayor shouldn’t have a security detail with him. He should be walking the street by himself.” 

UPDATE 5/31/21: Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood, in this case Florida, as rich Woke Californians flee the Progressive disaster areas they helped create for sane bastions of conservatism. Sad how that works in this world of  open borders within America and surrounding it: leave hell and bring it with you to recreate that hell in heaven. And then there is the infinitely more pleasing and optimistic take that the red states are just getting redder. I’d settle for them just staying red.

UPDATE 5/24/21: Affluent LA residents, many doubtless Woke enemies of Walls and sympathizers for the plight of capitalism’s victims worldwide and beyond (see NIMBY), vocally protest the arrival of homelessness with all its attendant perks in their own cushy domains. Ultrafashionable Pacific Palisades finds its beaches now the proposed site for homeless shelter cabins.  Paul Hogan, redoubtable “Crocodile Dundee” to millions, is just the latest to decry the Californication/Detroiting of his once charming, affluent Venice Beach neighborhood, now awash in drugs and violence. Maybe, just maybe this spreading social cancer has something to do with the SYSTEMIC Progressive policies of mass unemployment, government dependency and crippled law enforcement.

UPDATE 4/17/21: New York City, once an American pinnacle of prosperity and power alongside California and Detroit, appears poised to take its place of degraded shame alongside those two ruined remnants of what was once the greatest country in history. After accomplishing Biden’s dream of making America California,   will there be a recognizable trace of our greatness left?

UPDATE 12/22/20: Always ahead of the curve when it comes to undermining the independence of the American individual, California has hatched a tax-soaking scheme targeting the rich who’ve had the bad luck to spend more than a few days of residency a year in their golden state. Why not go national with this (NY? NJ? ILL?) but let’s not call it theft. Meanwhile, those that can will continue fleeing the Golden Gulag, tax hooks or not.

UPDATE 10/1/20: California, Here I Go!/Any place the taxes are low! And where basic, everyday life is livable. Ben Shapiro is pulling up roots and bidding  “Adieu!” to his Golden home state that has turned to poisonous Lead.

UPDATE 10/2/20: Yet another welcome addition to California’s debit ledger: slavery reparations! Will the Blackish Kamala be applying even with her Jamaican forebears being slaveholders themselves?

UPDATE 9/16/20: As predicted below, the Golden State has turned to dreck for all the usual Progressive reasons. Those reasons are elected representatives with names like Nancy, Gavin and Kamala. Hard to imagine it was once the consummate destination for any and all seeking the American Dream. California Dreamin’ no more.

 

DATE 4/8/18: “Sanctuary” California has a sick soulmate in ILLINOIS, in name the majestic Land of Lincoln, in reality A Place To Leave. One recent “development” is an Illinois town confiscating guns with Draconian penalties for any resistance. Obscenely high taxes go nowhere except into the pockets of the same old cronies (when they’re not buying whole voting blocs generation after generation). The idea of low taxes leading to thriving business and jobs runs totally counter to the Chicago/Illinois/California/Dem Party Way. What more fitting place to spawn a Saul Alinsky and his most apt pupils Barack and Hillary, the sage prophets of a Transformed Animal Farm America.

UPDATE 5/1/17: The exodus and complete reversal of fortune continues, driving out the young and innovative. Once America’s thriving birth center of healthy social innovation and reform, California and its metastasizing socialist ways is fast becoming our ICU and morgue.

UPDATE 3/10/16: California, here I go! The exodus from the tax-happy state is picking up. Now businesses and tax-weary citizens are heading to places like Tennessee where there’s no state income tax. Any other clues needed as to why they’re leaving?

ORIGINAL POST 6/13/15: Detroit. The images sting the mind’s eye. And now the Golden State, undergoing the Curley effect, declared dying if not actually dead. The causes? The usual thing: an electorate. who in defiance of De Tocqueville’s solemn warning have voted themselves too much of the Treasury. And soak-the-rich “green” schemes that never quite pan out. Oh, there’s Silicon Valley. There’s  Hollywood. There’s the Golden Gate. There’s lots of money there, and evidence thereof in flashy cities and suburban sprawl for the millions. But they’ve voted themselves into bottomless debt, drought and permanent servitude to themselves. Who’s gonna pay…and how…and when?