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Ray Haynes

Musings on California in 2030

Dateline Texas 2030 – As I sit here on the beach on South Padre Island on a beautiful spring day, I am reminded about how much I have to be thankful for. I am thankful that I live in this grand country, in one of the best of the 49 states; that freedom is still celebrated here, that technology still advances (I especially like the holograms in cell calls, helps me use the car pool lanes). I’m still a little unhappy that I haven’t been able to get the hover conversion that the movie Back to the Future II promised would be here by 2016, but all in all it is still good.

We all know why California seceded from the union. It’s now trying to get back in. California’s budget and economy has collapsed, and it is desperately pushing to re-enter the United States, mainly for a federal bail out. However, California’s problems were created by an out of control government in Sacramento, and they should not be allowed to come back without major changes. This history is an attempt to recount why California should not be allowed to come back to the United States, and why its government should not be bailed out.

It began in 2017. I remember driving in Mexicali in 2017 next to border fence between the US and Mexico, a little ragged, scarred with graffiti, kind of short, wondering if then President Trump could actually get the wall he promised in the election of 2016 built. He got it done. It took a little time, but the unanticipated consequence of Trump’s success was that it led to a revival of CalExit movement in California, the movement to have California secede from the United States.

That movement rose in the aftermath of the Trump election in 2016, and petered out in 2017. After the wall along the Mexican border started, the left and the pro-illegal immigrant groups started CalExit again, qualifying it for the 2018 election as an “act of protest.” It passed. The politicians in California wanted to score points with California voters, but didn’t necessarily want to leave the US. It was political theater to them. They called it an “act of courage” designed to embarrass President Trump. The reaction of the rest of the country was a surprise to these California leftists. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out” said the rest of the country, the first time a state was allowed to leave the country. Armed with a new Constitution, the nation of California left the United States in January 2019, and the leftist politicians publicly announced the new nation would become the first successful experiment in socialism. No longer hampered by the United States Constitution, or the laws that protected individual freedom and property rights in that document, the new nation state of California embarked on its socialist journey. What followed next was surprising to many, how such a vibrant economy and beautiful state could collapse so quickly did not surprise some, but it shocked many in California and across the nation.

For my part, I had decided that if California passed a single payer health care system, that I was going to leave the state. That was the first thing the state did. I packed up my stuff, and moved to Texas, and encouraged my family to do the same. The new Constitution of California eliminated the taxpayer protections afforded by Proposition 13 and other taxing and spending protections, and within two years, the single payer health care system was collapsing, providing less and less health care at a higher and higher price. The system cost more and more, and provided less and less care. Taxes began to rise

But that wasn’t all. Soon after CalExit succeeded, California’s political leaders began removing the Mexico wall, but they were faced with another problem. People like me were leaving the state in droves, the working people, people who were paying the bills for the state, simply left. They still had their US passports,and the US federal government honored those passports until they expired. This mass exodus of working taxpayers led to a collapse in the state budget, as revenues dropped precipitously. To save its revenues, the new country of California passed a law preventing emigration. The new “illegal emigrants” were mainly (though not totally) middle class working people, on whom the tax burden of the new California socialist state seemed to be falling. Single payer health care, welfare and food stamps for the flood of Mexicans crossing the border after the wall had been torn down, increasing government salaries and pensions became a crushing burden had these taxpayers. They ran to a less pleasant natural, but a lot more pleasant economic, climate.

It only made sense. People know freedom, and they know justice. California had abandoned both in favor of what California politicians claimed would be “social” and “economic” justice. California’s legal system collapsed, and its economy was quickly in shambles, but it was a “socialist” paradise to those who ran the government in Sacramento.

(stay tuned for Part II – From Antifa to Fa, the Rise of the Socialist Hoodlums)