The War Against YOU.

Photo: Saint Howard Jarvis Copyright 1978 Los Angeles Times

Gavin Newsom and elected Democrats throughout California (and there are in reality so few Republicans able to be elected in this State no one even things of them as a force any longer) don’t react like normal people when they hear the statistic that over 850,000 residents have moved out of the State in the last three years. They don’t react to the news that California over the last three years has a net population loss of 700,000 people.

A normal elected in a normal frame of mind would be not only completely humiliated by such population loss, but panicked and busily hiring consultants to figure out why this is happening and how to stem the tide of escapees from one’s beneficent rule. Nothing of the kind is happening.

When confronted with the tax revenue loss these 700,000 California refugees represent what is the California Democrat party idea? Tax people’s income and purchases for a decade after they leave California as if they were still living here. This is in addition to new sales tax fees on the sales of homes and hefty fees to transfer vehicle registrations out of state. Yes, those unjust soviet era leaving fees that the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany and Romania used to impose on their citizens? California has gone one better- a DECADE of payments for services one will never receive to a state government one has fled. It died in committee, but have no thought of peace, eventually the Comintern in Sacramento will pass it.

Beyond the numbers of how many people are leaving California is the more important story WHO is leaving California. A lot of attention last year was placed on Elon Musk getting fed up and moving to Texas. Mr. Musk’s leaving, including his key employees who moved to Texas account for just over 0.026% of California’s $68,000,000,000 deficit. or a mere $1,768,000,000. It’s estimated that the other 700,000 people who moved oit lost the state another $33,000,000,000 Together, Musk, his key employees and the 700,000 now former Californians represent half the States budget shortfall.

To understand who is leaving California and why, you have to understand that the plutocrats who own, control and run California have been at war with the rest of the California population since at least 1974 when they foisted Jerry Brown on the People as Governor. Jerry had a saying that everyone thought of as a goofy hippiesque new age ditty and that because no one understood it, no one paid attention to it- “Less is MORE.” Jerry Brown rather famously lived in a small apartment that was bare as a Zen dojo, drove a beat econo car, ate a mostly vegetarian diet. He talked a lot about environmentalism, about sacrificing for the ecology. Everyone thought Jerry Brown’s “Less is more” was about consuming less material goods and being happier spiritually. It was never about that. It was always about fewer demanding Middle-Class people meant more power, more concentration of wealth into the hands of his family and his plutocratic friends. You see, the California Plutocrats had decided California with it’s mild year-round weather, it’s astonishing scenery, it’s resource bounty was too darn nice for people who they considered their lessors who were not their servants. Those pesky small business owners and middle-class people who expect their taxes to go for roads, quality schools for their children, working infrastructure and police protection for all citizens, not just those who live near Johnson Lake, San Marino, Beverly Hills, and Knob Hill. Jerry Brown saw his father (also a California Governor) Pat Brown’s decades long efforts to expand the wealth and health of every Californian as an era of profligate policy error. Jerry would convey this often in well-rehearsed polished speech fragments. Even as a young person from a Ronald Reagan supporting family, I found the denouncement of Governor Pat Brown’s policies of building the California economy and middle class by his Governor son, confusing at best. Even the staunchest California Republicans in those days had to grudgingly admit, Governor Pat Brown had made every Californian’s life better.

Jerry Brown and the Democrat office holders surrounding him went on a crusade to raise California property taxes. Governor Brown’s rising taxes were slowly taxing retired seniors out of their homes, forcing them into poverty. The Democrat Party ignored this poverty creation entirely. It would have been a easy matter, and one that the Democrats could have championed and turned into a senior voting bloc, to fix, reduce or eliminate retired Californian’s property tax. The fact that this logical plan never was even spoken of by any Democrat office holder as thousands of California seniors were made homeless between 1974 and 1978 is telling and illustrative that a plan was at work- a plan to eliminate people who decades later Hillary Clinton in a moment of unguarded honesty about the Democrat psyche would call “deplorables”. There arose a hero to fight Jerry Brown, his useful idiot Democrat office holders and the Plutocrats who controlled them. A gruff, cheap cigar smoking, awful suit wearing ,cursing , vulgar wonderful man- one Howard Jarvis.

Jarvis began attempting to get a measure on the ballot to cap California Property taxes starting in 1974. He made four tries. In 1978, he succeeded with what became known as Proposition 13. As the sample ballots came out for the election so did the next years property tax bill. I remember rather vividly, my mother bursting into tears and crying inconsolably as she opened and read that property tax bill. Until 1974 when Jerry Brown became Governor, my parent’s property tax bill had hovered below $250. After jerry brown it went to $350, then $500, then $750. The proposed 1978 bill was $1995! In those days my Father made roughly $25,000 a year There wasn’t any money for this tax increase. This bill hit every working class and middle-class homeowner in California. Needless to say, Proposition 13 passed, the taxes rolled back. every sane Californian had a new saint, a new miracle worker, a new dragon slayer- Saint Howard of Jarvis. Every government employee and elected nationwide considered Saint Howard to be a terrorist.

My father knew Saint Jarvis. His best friend was a Hollywood stunt man, Lorin Janes, who often introduced Howard Jarvis and my dad in Aerospace and evangelical settings often intoduced his friend who introduced Howard. When Proposition 13 passed Howard Jarvis said to me “Proposition 13 will test the morality of California government. I have left them enough money to either honestly provide Californians with services or to waste on their profligacy, but not enough for both.” We each bet on profligacy. We each thought the People of California would rise up again and end the profligacy. How little we each understood.

Proposition 13 kept Californians in their homes. The Plutocrats and the Democrats still wanted us gone. First, they slashed every service that went to middle class people. deep cuts were made to police and fire protection, schools, road repair, water infrastructure. After many years of privation, the People of California raised their taxes for roads and water storage, but in spite of three separate rounds of taxation for each, all the money was captured in the General fund and spent elsewhere. Important needful things like Kindergarten Spanish language gender pronoun training for trans sensitivity, or studies defining when multi racial students either MUST identify as White or may identify as another race, you know, essential services.

California of course, increased income taxes, erected thousands of fees, increased all of the rest, and then when privation and other forms of taxation didn’t work, began a regulatory assault on businesses. The new regulations in California are like attempting to get a drink of water out of a firehose. They come at you fast and furious. Many of these regulations come with pop inspections and to add insult to injury, forced payment for the inspections themselves. It isn’t unheard of for City or County governments to harass certain businesses with multiple inspections and re-inspections. The inspections generate citations of violations and there are fees to file for correcting those and costs and reinspection fees and all this cost and annoyance distracting a person from running a business. Unspoken of, is that small and medium sized businesses have been leaving California for thirty-five years by the hundreds every year. I personally know engine rebuilders, transmission rebuilders, Fishing reel manufacturers, Car parts manufacturers, furniture factory owners, mattress factory owners, even coffee shop owners who just had enough. No one in the California press reports on the mass exodus of small and medium employers. Electeds never speak about it except to mock people moving to Texas, Florida and Idaho and to talk about how awful the weather there is. They never think about the jobs lost. The lost taxation doesn’t seem to bother them. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that there needs to be a policy adjustment.

Thats because those people leaving, the productive people who want a return for their taxation in terms of a society that functions, the elimination of them IS the policy. There is no failure here. The objective is being met. Less of you is MORE for them.

People talk about “Is and American Civil War going to break out?” In California that Civil War has been raging as no one would talk about it, for four decades. So far the Plutocrats are winning. Proposition 13 was the only battle the people of California have really won thus far.