House of Eratosthenes

California Governor Jerry Brown declared a “fiscal emergency” in his state on Thursday, but nobody is even pretending that such a declaration is actually going to help matters. Brown wants to cut even deeper into the state budget (even after tens of billions have already been slashed out of it in recent years) and he wants to explore ways to raise even more revenue. Meanwhile, the standard of living in California is going right into the toilet. Housing values are plummeting. Unemployment has risen above 20 percent in many areas of the state…
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Of course on top of everything else there is the constant threat of wildfires, mudslides and earthquakes. One day a really “big earthquake” is going to hit, and once that happens many people believe that the geography of the state of California could be permanently altered forever.

But what most people are focused on right now is the horrific financial condition that the state of California currently is in. Governor Brown recently summarized his analysis of California’s financial condition with the following statement: “We’ve been living in fantasy land. It is much worse than I thought. I’m shocked.”
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The state has become a rotting, festering hellhole that is getting worse by the day. Yes, some really good people still live there, but there are some really, really good reasons why so many people are leaving the state in droves.

Yes, some really good people still live here. Gee, I’m having a Sally Field moment with that. You like me! You really, really like me!

Maybe my perspective is just skewed. I spent some years in Seattle…liberal shithole…and then Detroit, that would be a ditto. So I apply low standards to the Sacramento area, I admit.

I don’t think I’d be able to tell a front page of the Seattle P-I apart from the Detroit Free Press apart from the Sacramento Bee. I read way more than my share of all three of those — and, looking back on it, they all looked the same. “Wah! Wah! Social programs running out of money! Waaah! Deficit! Waaaah, gotta raise taxes! Wah!”

You put liberals in charge, that’s where things go. So, in truth, that’s a big reason why I’m not leaving quite yet. All our major cities, all across the country, are headed here. All run by left-wing tax-raising idjits. Where’s my sanctuary? Where’s Nirvana?

But I do have to agree with the article. It’s getting bad.

Well, we’re on the opposite coast, but there’s Mondoville…
- Profmondo | 01/25/2011 @ 08:55
The fun part is wanting to leave but being trapped here by regulatory capture (it’s not just the weather). That is if you own a home longer than ten years or so, the property taxes are significantly lower because of Prop-13 such that to sell and buy another one your costs would be astronomical and unaffordable. I still can’t see how “kids” here today can even buy a house unless they’re high-tech execs.
Since they mostly can’t, they get captured in the “Renter-Deduction” part of the 540A form and become a permanent part of the subordinate, service-class who clean Meg Whitman and Barbara Boxer’s kitchens.
I’ve lived in Asia, Europe, South Dakota and even Arlington VA, so I’ve been bent-at-the-knees by suffocating government regulation and incipient simmering violence, and lousy-lousy weather before.
- DirtCrashr | 01/25/2011 @ 11:15
The land the Unibomber cabin was on was up for sale awhile back.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/05/unabomber-land-for-sale-montana_n_792232.html
- vanderleun | 01/25/2011 @ 11:42
Probably got a dedicated Predator circling above it.
- vanderleun | 01/25/2011 @ 11:42
…tell a front page of the Seattle P-I apart from the Detroit Free Press apart from the Sacramento Bee.

I’d explain that to ya but you’d call me a raaaacist.

Nirvana? Texas. Until the inflow of Californians alters the demographics. See: Austin.
- bpenni | 01/25/2011 @ 11:59
Did I see something in Gerard’s pages noting the demise of the P-I? Or did I dream that. Too lazy to google it…
- mkfreeberg | 01/25/2011 @ 12:10
I live in the southern area of the Smokey Mountains. I expect everything in all of the urban areas of the United States to go completely to hell. I can only hope that the urbanites and suburbanites have a hard time finding us here when the food runs out after the riots fail to produce any “hope” or “change.”

I seriously don’t think that it has sunk in yet that the cities and States are not economically isolated from the rest of the country. When the house of cards finally falls, it will ALL fall down.

Some people may have farther to run than I have, but not by much. I just know that if you don’t already have a long term escape plan by now, it’s a bit too late.
- Moshe Ben-David | 01/25/2011 @ 14:14
The P-I, as of 3/09, is Web-only: no print edition.
- CGHill | 01/25/2011 @ 19:13
I have lived in California all my life. Let me concur with those who say that Northern California is a very different place than the south.

When people talk about our state, they seldom mention cities like Redding, Eureka, or even all that much about Sacramento. No no, California is defined by the Los Angeles basin and maybe San Francisco, you see. Oh, and the crappy economic climate in the San Joaquin valley.

Yes, those of us who live in the northern areas are getting dragged down by the fiscal insanity coming out of the state capitol, but our towns aren’t (yet) completely overrun by illegals and gang bangers. If you don’t count the pot gardens growing in our forests and mountains, it’s actually quite nice here. (I have been a hiker all my life and have yet to run across a pot garden. My guess is that they try to stay away from the established trails I’m hiking on. Fine with me.)

I also hear quite often that many other states – Michigan, New York, Illinois – have the same problems we do and then some. As bad as the economic climate is here, you can keep your Big Apple and your Detroit and your Chicago. You can also keep Cleveland. All the problems we have (mostly due to unchecked left-wing governance for decades, just like us) AND it’s bone-chilling cold. For that matter, I don’t relish the idea of living in a city like New Orleans, either. The Katrina debacle cured me of any desire to move down to Louisiana.

Aside from the high taxes, the prevailing left-wing nutball public opinion, the choking regulation, the outrageous cost of gas, the hordes of non-English-speaking immigrants (legal and otherwise, some of whom have lived here for 25 years and still don’t speak our language)…

…the only other thing that really irritates the hell out of me is our insane gun laws. “Assault weapons ban.” Really? An 11-round magazine turns a person into a cold-blooded murderer, so we’re going to restrict you to 10 on any semi-automatic rifle? What’s that, you say – the federal ATF has issued you a firearm collector’s license, but your state government presumes the right to refuse to recognize it?

What’s that – you can’t get a concealed carry permit unless you A) live in a rural county with a common-sense sheriff or B) have contributed to your sheriff’s re-election campaign? What’s that – a 10 day waiting period (and a $25 fee that you get to pay) to buy a rusty old bolt-action rifle made in the Soviet Union in 1943? In. Sane. Our state legislature also tried to tell us we can’t buy handgun ammo over the Internet (a court just spanked them on that and overturned the law) and as I speak, they’re trying to ban open-carry, having already made it next to impossible to carry concealed.

First they take away our right to defend our homes, then they tell us that due to budget cuts, the police aren’t coming and the courts won’t prosecute. Gee, I wonder what could possibly go wrong.

I’ve dreamed about up and moving, but where would I go? Nevada’s a dried-up wasteland with the same problems, Oregon is beautiful but has the same problems we do (or is trying hard to follow our lead) and I sure as hell am not moving to Texas. My entire family is here and I’ll have to tough it out a bit longer.
- cylarz | 01/26/2011 @ 03:50
Just curious cylarz, why not Texas?
- KG | 01/26/2011 @ 08:59
I’m in the same situation as cylarz except he’s in a better part of the State. The Norther you get the better IMO.
Why not Texas? How’s it any different than Nevada? Personally, I don’t know anybody in Texas, don’t know where the good or better parts are, and have no job-prospects or connections there. If I move to just to retire and die there, I’ll always still be an outsider. Might as well move to Hawaii, the weather is perfect.
- DirtCrashr | 01/26/2011 @ 10:42
My aunt lives in Hawaii. Nice state, really.

Hawaii’s only real disadvantage (besides needing an airplane, or at least a boat, to get more than 30 miles from your house) is that everything – and I mean everything – is horrendously expensive. Housing, food, gasoline, you name it. The only things that aren’t are tropical fruits, and then only because they are the one thing that’s produced locally. Everything else that people need has to be brought over from the mainland.

Actually, it’s the main drawback for Alaska too…just substitute “salmon meat” for “tropical fruit” and assume lower land costs. (You still need an airplane to get around the state, from what I understand.) Never been there but dreamed of visiting it, at least on an extended hunting trip…especially after Sarah Palin’s recent TV show.
- cylarz | 01/26/2011 @ 10:58
Personally, I see no future in CA, especially after the last election. I love this state, but damn, I feel like I got to get out.

I’m not really interested in any other state, aside from Texas, and that’s because I know people there. It’s economy also seems to be in far better shape. Its big cities do seem to have significant liberal infestations, but then that would seem to be a problem anywhere you go. I don’t get that though, liberals supposedly hate Texas, so why do they live there?

Part of me doesn’t want to go, but at the same time, I just know the Dems are going to do their worst now that they have almost no obstacles to their power…
- KG | 01/26/2011 @ 15:40
Why not Texas?

Aside from the fact that it’s full of defensive uptight idiots (except Austin, which is full of defensive uptight Lefties,) there is no public land (which is to say that you will spend your life in a suburban tract home between long freeway trips looking at somebody’s private wide-open spaces that you’re not allowed on,) the near-universal lack of culture and the unspeakable weather, I can’t think of a thing.
- rob | 01/26/2011 @ 21:18
Huh, learn something new every day.

About the public lands thing, I mean.
- KG | 01/26/2011 @ 22:38
Rob, I’ve only been to Texas once, and even then I saw little of it except for a stretch of freeway near San Antonio and a quick glimpse of the Alamo.

I was going to answer KG’s question with, “Because it’s too far away from my family, and it’s too humid, and there are no mountains or forests like I’m used to (at least what Californians would call forests or mountains), because I don’t relish the idea of spending every year worrying whether this is the year a tornado will take my house, because it seems to have the same problems with illegal immigration that California does.” But your response was better.

Still, I hear the hog hunting in TX is fantastic, they don’t hassle you about your gun collection, and apparently you can actually find a job there if you want to work. And there is some neat American history there, and the cultural attitudes are far, far superior to California’s in every way.
- cylarz | 01/27/2011 @ 00:07
You mean like this?

Twenty-Two Facts About California That Make You Wonder Why Morgan Freeberg Would Still Want To Live In That Hellhole Of A State

Ok, somebody had to do it. 🙂
- philmon | 01/27/2011 @ 09:03
It’s been done before…I’ll enter you into the archive…
- mkfreeberg | 01/27/2011 @ 10:31
I do like trucking my dirtbike up into the Sierras (or other lands/forests) and going for a ride with friends. Redding is a great jumping-off point to ride, and if you get over to Oroville you can find dirt-roads and back-trails to connect up to Quincy. And then there’s the Downieville area. The High Country is pretty accessible, and there are old named mountain-passes on old broken-up roads that you wouldn’t believe. All off the Freeway. You don’t need Hwy 80, just some skill and a big gas tank. A lot of the fight in CA is between the No-Land-Use Wilderness types and Multiple-Access folk.
- DirtCrashr | 01/27/2011 @ 10:52
Sorry guys, Texas is full.

May I suggest Oklahoma?
- Daphne | 01/28/2011 @ 20:57
Daphne, doll,

You know I’m not really from here.
- mkfreeberg | 01/28/2011 @ 21:59

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