8 ms·

I feel their pain. We here in Colorado are also seeing a big influx from California and their stereotypical culture and politics is unwelcome to many here. The

I feel their pain. We here in Colorado are also seeing a big influx from California and their stereotypical culture and politics is unwelcome to many here. The "pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps", "live-and-let-live" cowboy attitude most Colorado-born folks here have clashes in no small way with what most California's bring. And why the heck can't they drive like normal people?! <grin> Great thing about America, you don't like where you're at, you can move to someplace else. That goes for Californias and for Coloradans.

mc32 7y ago
The ironic thing is not that Californians are leaving the state. Why wouldn't you want to leave a state with dysfunctional politics and questionable policies? The irony is they take their politics and want to impose the same policies and politics in the new states --which if successful would create the same issues they are running away from!
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  The cause for the dysfunction in California politics is highly debatable. Is it just too liberal? Or is it too conservative? Has it been coopted by corporate interests, landowners and landlords? Or is it too sympathetic to the homeless? The list of purported reasons could and does go on and on, and everyone on each portion of the political spectrum has their own take on it. Where on the political spectrum these California expats fall and what (if anything) they think makes Californian politics dysfunctional is anyone's guess, but it's unlikely that they'll deliberately want to recreate any kind of dysfunction. If anything, they'll want to fix what what was broken about the way their state went about things.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    Uhh, "is California too conservative?" is a rhetorical question I thought I'd never hear. Democrats have supermajorities in state politics and all the major cities are dominated by Democrats. I think a problem will always develop at some point when a state becomes "too conservative" or "too liberal". Truly, the tug of war of ideas between the two is essential for good compromises to be worked out and to avoid the excesses of either ideology. That's an unpopular opinion these days but I think it's the reason for the United States success.
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      "Uhh, "is California too conservative?" is a rhetorical question I thought I'd never hear. Democrats have supermajorities in state politics and all the major cities are dominated by Democrats." It might come as a surprise to you, but there are conservative Democrats. There are Green party and Peace and Freedom party (which seems to be a more organized version of the Green party here in California) candidates in California, but they virtually never get in to office. The last time I looked Republicans won something like 40% to 50% of the votes in California (though they didn't win quite as much this last mid-term election, probably due to anti-Trump backlash). So Democrats might hold the reigns of power for the moment, but Republicans are in second place and had Trump not so soiled his party's image in all but the most conservative strongholds in the nation, they'd be close at the Democrats' heels. In fact, even in the 2018 election, with Trump at his loudest and most obnoxious, and with nearly the entire Republican party backing him, many Republicans in California still got 40% or more of the votes in California, and some of them even won.[1] But, whatever the balance of power, the really really progressive or left-wing parties have no share of it in California. Now let's look at one of the prominent Democrats who got in to office recently: Governor Newsom. I just searched DDG for "newsom vetoed", and some of the top hits showed that he vetoed: 1 - legislation that would have given Santa Cruz access to $16 million in affordable housing bond funds 2 - two child support reform bills that anti-poverty advocates had hoped would give a boost to low-income families 3 - a bill to give California one of the toughest recycling mandates for plastic bottles in the nation 4 - a bill that would have given teachers six weeks paid leave after giving birth 5 - a bill that would have let state workers bring their babies to work 6 - a bill aimed at stopping the Trump administration from rolling back federal environmental regulations in the state To me, all of these vetoes (which are anti-worker, pro-corporate, and anti-environment) clearly show that he's, at least arguably, too conservative. Or take a look at Senator Dianne Feinstein, who voted for the PATRIOT Act and has been one of its most stalwart defenders, and also supported the Iraq war. It's hard to argue that these positions are not "too conservative", at least for California's left-wing reputation. Not to mention that California has a gigantic prison industry and one of the biggest prison populations in the world, is incredibly pro-corporate and pro-capitalist (else the Bay Area would not be so loved by some of the richest, biggest, and most powerful corporations on the planet). Many of California's corporations, incidentally, support the military, which is not a left-wing position, as the left-wing in the US tends to be anti-war and against the military-industrial complex. So, once again, California scores "too conservative" on this point. If California was really as left-wing as Fox News and right-wing talk radio paints it out to be, you'd have thought that it would have nationalized all corporations or made them worker-owned and outlawed private property. But nothing could be further from the truth. California is in many ways a capitalist paradise, not a Marxist utopia. It's just that, yes, it likes to keep its air and water clean, and has some worker protections, but (as Governor Newsom's vetoes show) not nearly as much as it could have, had it had a more left-leaning Governor, for example. [1] - https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2018-general/sov/2018-complete-sov.pdf https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2018-general/sov/2018-c...
- bonestamp2 7y ago
  All the Californians that I know who have left recently, did it mostly to escape the high cost of living. Only one of them also left for political reasons, but they moved to a state with the politics they wanted. I realize it's anecdotal, but I don't think all Californians are leaving to escape the politics.
  - onepointsixC 7y ago
    The complaint is not that they're leaving for politics but because of the direct results of the politics and bringing the same exact politics which created those results to other places.
    - mntmoss 7y ago
      It's hard to describe what California is now only in terms of the politics. Despite everything, the state has enjoyed a strong economy for many years, and that results in the symptoms of transcience: so many people enter the state to advance their career, then go elsewhere after getting established. They never fully engage with the politics. It's not just that it's too expensive or too liberal, rather, the local political machinery has grown accustomed to not actually being beholden to constituents in any long term sense. They get plenty of tax revenue and businesses clawing for attention.
    - laurencerowe 7y ago
      From the article: > One salvo in Richey’s battle against newcomers was his property tax proposal, which he called Proposition Zero One Two Three. His basic tenet: The longer you live here, the less you pay. Sixty-year residents would pay no property taxes, while newcomers would shoulder the burden. Amusing that the anti-Californian candidate here basically wants to introduce California's Prop 13 property tax rules which have done so much to discourage housing development and drive young people out of California.
matchbok 7y ago
"pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps" is not, and has never been, a real thing.
- sparrish 7y ago
  Spoken like a true Californian. <grin> My great great grandfather stowed away in a mail bag to get to the US. He homesteaded in Eastern Colorado and carved a living and a life where there was next to nothing. If you can do the same, I'd say you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps.
  - falcolas 7y ago
    It’s easier to do in small towns, where people support you and provide a safety net. You rarely get that in bigger cities. The ability to afford a home and a family while doing blue collar work helps a lot too.
  - matchbok 7y ago
    You know that most homesteads were subsidized by the government, right?
  - lidHanteyk 7y ago
    I'm gonna pull a No True Bootstrapper; if your ancestor had such a luxury as a mail bag, then they were not as hardcore as https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA/vid... My ancestors survived the Oregon Trail, and so what? At some point this degenerates into, say, "spoken like a true toilet-paper user."

mc32 7y ago

The ironic thing is not that Californians are leaving the state. Why wouldn't you want to leave a state with dysfunctional politics and questionable policies? The irony is they take their politics and want to impose the same policies and politics in the new states --which if successful would create the same issues they are running away from!

pmoriarty 7y ago
The cause for the dysfunction in California politics is highly debatable. Is it just too liberal? Or is it too conservative? Has it been coopted by corporate interests, landowners and landlords? Or is it too sympathetic to the homeless? The list of purported reasons could and does go on and on, and everyone on each portion of the political spectrum has their own take on it. Where on the political spectrum these California expats fall and what (if anything) they think makes Californian politics dysfunctional is anyone's guess, but it's unlikely that they'll deliberately want to recreate any kind of dysfunction. If anything, they'll want to fix what what was broken about the way their state went about things.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  Uhh, "is California too conservative?" is a rhetorical question I thought I'd never hear. Democrats have supermajorities in state politics and all the major cities are dominated by Democrats. I think a problem will always develop at some point when a state becomes "too conservative" or "too liberal". Truly, the tug of war of ideas between the two is essential for good compromises to be worked out and to avoid the excesses of either ideology. That's an unpopular opinion these days but I think it's the reason for the United States success.
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    "Uhh, "is California too conservative?" is a rhetorical question I thought I'd never hear. Democrats have supermajorities in state politics and all the major cities are dominated by Democrats." It might come as a surprise to you, but there are conservative Democrats. There are Green party and Peace and Freedom party (which seems to be a more organized version of the Green party here in California) candidates in California, but they virtually never get in to office. The last time I looked Republicans won something like 40% to 50% of the votes in California (though they didn't win quite as much this last mid-term election, probably due to anti-Trump backlash). So Democrats might hold the reigns of power for the moment, but Republicans are in second place and had Trump not so soiled his party's image in all but the most conservative strongholds in the nation, they'd be close at the Democrats' heels. In fact, even in the 2018 election, with Trump at his loudest and most obnoxious, and with nearly the entire Republican party backing him, many Republicans in California still got 40% or more of the votes in California, and some of them even won.[1] But, whatever the balance of power, the really really progressive or left-wing parties have no share of it in California. Now let's look at one of the prominent Democrats who got in to office recently: Governor Newsom. I just searched DDG for "newsom vetoed", and some of the top hits showed that he vetoed: 1 - legislation that would have given Santa Cruz access to $16 million in affordable housing bond funds 2 - two child support reform bills that anti-poverty advocates had hoped would give a boost to low-income families 3 - a bill to give California one of the toughest recycling mandates for plastic bottles in the nation 4 - a bill that would have given teachers six weeks paid leave after giving birth 5 - a bill that would have let state workers bring their babies to work 6 - a bill aimed at stopping the Trump administration from rolling back federal environmental regulations in the state To me, all of these vetoes (which are anti-worker, pro-corporate, and anti-environment) clearly show that he's, at least arguably, too conservative. Or take a look at Senator Dianne Feinstein, who voted for the PATRIOT Act and has been one of its most stalwart defenders, and also supported the Iraq war. It's hard to argue that these positions are not "too conservative", at least for California's left-wing reputation. Not to mention that California has a gigantic prison industry and one of the biggest prison populations in the world, is incredibly pro-corporate and pro-capitalist (else the Bay Area would not be so loved by some of the richest, biggest, and most powerful corporations on the planet). Many of California's corporations, incidentally, support the military, which is not a left-wing position, as the left-wing in the US tends to be anti-war and against the military-industrial complex. So, once again, California scores "too conservative" on this point. If California was really as left-wing as Fox News and right-wing talk radio paints it out to be, you'd have thought that it would have nationalized all corporations or made them worker-owned and outlawed private property. But nothing could be further from the truth. California is in many ways a capitalist paradise, not a Marxist utopia. It's just that, yes, it likes to keep its air and water clean, and has some worker protections, but (as Governor Newsom's vetoes show) not nearly as much as it could have, had it had a more left-leaning Governor, for example. [1] - https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2018-general/sov/2018-complete-sov.pdf https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2018-general/sov/2018-c...
bonestamp2 7y ago
All the Californians that I know who have left recently, did it mostly to escape the high cost of living. Only one of them also left for political reasons, but they moved to a state with the politics they wanted. I realize it's anecdotal, but I don't think all Californians are leaving to escape the politics.
- onepointsixC 7y ago
  The complaint is not that they're leaving for politics but because of the direct results of the politics and bringing the same exact politics which created those results to other places.
  - mntmoss 7y ago
    It's hard to describe what California is now only in terms of the politics. Despite everything, the state has enjoyed a strong economy for many years, and that results in the symptoms of transcience: so many people enter the state to advance their career, then go elsewhere after getting established. They never fully engage with the politics. It's not just that it's too expensive or too liberal, rather, the local political machinery has grown accustomed to not actually being beholden to constituents in any long term sense. They get plenty of tax revenue and businesses clawing for attention.
  - laurencerowe 7y ago
    From the article: > One salvo in Richey’s battle against newcomers was his property tax proposal, which he called Proposition Zero One Two Three. His basic tenet: The longer you live here, the less you pay. Sixty-year residents would pay no property taxes, while newcomers would shoulder the burden. Amusing that the anti-Californian candidate here basically wants to introduce California's Prop 13 property tax rules which have done so much to discourage housing development and drive young people out of California.

matchbok 7y ago

"pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps" is not, and has never been, a real thing.

sparrish 7y ago
Spoken like a true Californian. <grin> My great great grandfather stowed away in a mail bag to get to the US. He homesteaded in Eastern Colorado and carved a living and a life where there was next to nothing. If you can do the same, I'd say you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps.
- falcolas 7y ago
  It’s easier to do in small towns, where people support you and provide a safety net. You rarely get that in bigger cities. The ability to afford a home and a family while doing blue collar work helps a lot too.
- matchbok 7y ago
  You know that most homesteads were subsidized by the government, right?
- lidHanteyk 7y ago
  I'm gonna pull a No True Bootstrapper; if your ancestor had such a luxury as a mail bag, then they were not as hardcore as https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA/vid... My ancestors survived the Oregon Trail, and so what? At some point this degenerates into, say, "spoken like a true toilet-paper user."