The California Nightmare

California is the kind of blue state that will vote overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in November--indeed, it epitomizes what he would like the U.S. as a whole to become. California used to be a place many Americans yearned to move to, including those ambitious people who had dreams and wanted to build big companies--think Intel, Apple, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard--but no more. Oh yes, Silicon Valley is still there (at least for now), but technology is no "lover of place" and even Mark Zuckerberg has expressed regrets for having moved Facebook to the state. Meanwhile other tech centers are rising fast: both here in the U.S. and places like London and China. So what happened? California is the epitome of the fruition of Democratic Party policies--

The Great California Exodus - WSJ.com: What is driving the middle class out of the Golden State? Joel Kotkin, leading U.S. demographer and 'Truman Democrat,' explains in a piece by Allysia Finley in the Wall Street Journal (excerpt below):

" . . . . Now, however, the Golden State's fastest-growing entity is government and its biggest product is red tape. The first thing that comes to many American minds when you mention California isn't Hollywood or tanned girls on a beach, but Greece. Many progressives in California take that as a compliment . . . . Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. . . . things will only get worse in the coming years as Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his green cadre implement their "smart growth" plans . . . Oh, and don't forget the $100 billion bullet train. Mr. Kotkin calls the runaway-cost train "classic California." "Where [Brown] with the state going bankrupt is even thinking about an expenditure like this is beyond comprehension. When the schools are falling apart, when the roads are falling apart, the bridges are unsafe, the state economy is in free fall. We're still doing much worse than the rest of the country, we've got this growing permanent welfare class, and high-speed rail is going to solve this?" Mr. Kotkin describes himself as an old-fashioned Truman Democrat. . . . Meanwhile, taxes are harming the private economy. According to the Tax Foundation, California has the 48th-worst business tax climate. . . . As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California's politics become even more left-wing. It's a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, "the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees.". . ." (bold added)

Read the full article to get a true picture of the California "nightmare."

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