Children

I just had an epiphany.

I have been wondering non-stop as to why there's anyone left in California besides illegal immigrants, welfare recipients, gang members, drug-addled, naked San Franciscan hippies, sign twirlers, Starbucks baristas and slimy, liberal politicians.  Oh, and my wife and me.

I think I've finally found the answer:  Children.

Children, you say?  Why, Mr. Chuckmeister?  Well, my well-educated, high-information, snappily-dressed and unfailingly polite friends, here's why:

People came here to the once-Golden State looking for beautiful vistas, enticing seashores, glorious mountains, vast, shimmering arid deserts and a climate about which people go all orgasmically rhapsodic.  Oh, and the chance to make something of oneself.  Start a company, create something important, even become a movie star!  It was all here.  And that past-tense reference was completely intentional.

Now, California is a wasteland of liberal failure.  Decades of looney lib policies have turned this paradise into a place where businesses go to die, or die aborning before they ever get the chance to live. 

Examples?  The highest corporate taxes in America.  The highest personal tax rates in America.  Among the highest unemployment rates in the Country.  The lowest credit rating among all states in the nation.  The most restrictive pollution and environmental protection regulations.  The highest fiscal debt per capita.  The most restrictive anti-Second Amendment laws in America, and poised to get much, much worse.  Perennially rated as one of the worst governed States.  Ranked by CEO's as the worst state in which to do business for the past eight years in a row.  The worst collection of rules and regulations that make business formation difficult (ranked 50th in new business formation...is there anything worst than 50th?  Oh wait...Obama said he'd been to all 57 states...), and continued operation almost impossible.

As an example, our citizenry, including illegals who voted en masse, just passed a new law championed by our perennial Governor, Jerry Brown, who is likely to live out his entire life without ever having had a real, private-sector job.  It's called Proposition 30, which serves to redistribute wealth from those that made to those that sit on their asses and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon.

We now have one-party rule in Sacrascrewyou, completely unrestrained in any way as to the passage of new taxes.  I, for one, think the very best job in California now is to be a Republican legislator:  no one asks for their opinion, no one wants their opinion, and nobody gives a damn about their opinion.  The rumblings among the lib weenies are even beginning to start over their very public desire to overturn at least a part of Prop. 13.  Oh boy!  Property taxes are going up, ladies and gents!  Prepare yourselves.  When that happens it won't be a straw that break the camel's back; it will be the whole damn wheat field.

We here in the land of fruits and nuts even have our own "cap and trade" legislation whereby those who, according to our tree-huggers, pollute a little (very little!) can buy the right to do that polluting from those who don't pollute at all, but could.  And the pols in Sactorupyours will be pleased, thank you, to sell you that right.  That will produce even more money for them to spread around by selling those rights.  If you're a commie in Sacradonkeybrain and you can sell this bulls*t for a few hundred million, why wouldn't you?

Yes, kiddies we can buy credits enabling us to break a law that shouldn't exist by paying a fine...up front.  Apparently the otherwise unemployables in Sacranumbnuts believe there's a 60,000 foot tall Plexiglas wall encasing California, which keeps our air in, and the air from the rest of the world out.  Apparently they aren't aware that what's in Shanghai today will be here in about a week.  Like I said, otherwise unemployable.

Did I mention that we're the first and so far only state to do this little kabuki theater?  The Feds have even trying to enact such tomfoolery for several years, but even they are too smart, or too scared, to engage in such nonsense (even they?).  It's purely and simply another form of redistribution of wealth from the makers to the takers.  And the makers are getting really pissed.

There's many other ways California is blowing it.  But suffice it to say that the states that surround us, like AZ and NV and UT, are damned happy we are.  They are recruiting our best and brightest at flank speed, offering us a better and less expensive life just a few miles away.  They actually have offices in California dedicated to recruiting our people and their businesses.  Just recently, Texas Governor Rick Perry visited San Fran, the Silicon Valley and L.A. on a business-mining trip.  And he'll was warmly greeted by business owners who are ripe for the poaching.

Over the past decade more than a million of (now ex-) Californians have chosen to head for greener (or, in the case of Nevada, beige-er) pastures.  There's even in index rating of business exodus that ranks us at the very top in terms of the cost of one-way rentals of U-Haul trucks.  They're leaving so fast U-Haul has to hire people to drive them back here - empty - from other states.  Sad.  And alarming.

So, if it's that bad, why havent' even more Californians elected to leave?  Children.   We come here, we meet Miss or Mr. Right, we get married and we start procreating.  Then, one or two or three kids, or even more, result.  And then you discover that the harder you work the farther behind you become.  But by then it's too late.  You can't leave.  Your kids grow up, get married and then have kids of their own.  Your kids now have your grandkids.  Can you leave for tax-free Nevada or Texas and a better, cheaper life then?  No, you can't.

In fact, if I were a commie pinko dumbass liberal weenie politician up in Sactyohorsesass, I would begin offering special tax preferences and direct payouts to those who start pumping out kids like a Xerox machine.  These little "anchors" will insure you're stuck here, paying taxes until the day you drop dead.  They'll then be able to take all your money and redistribute it to those I listed in the second paragraph above.  Pretty scary, don't you think?

And infuriating...