I'm just waiting for the Vermont legislature to borrow more of California's ideas. Thanks, you guys. The only thing saving us so far is that we're a small, not-terribly-rich state, but the lefty ladies in the state house will surely give it their best go.
Regarding the dash over state borders, one of the things that upsets Montpelier so much is that, being a small state, we can easily shop in New Hampshire, which has no sales tax. They've tried all kinds of ploys to recapture that lost income, to limited success, but surely they're losing boatloads of cash nonetheless. I also suspect that a lot of people buy their beverages in NH, which does not add 5¢ to each bottle, and then redeem those containers in Vermont, another sore point for our legislative AWFLs.
Vermont already blazed trail on the Blue Model, proposing to implement state-funded single-payer healthcare and hiring Jonathan Gruber to tell them how, until they figured out that oh wait we need money. As a Californian, I bow to the Vermont legislature.
I forgot about that, must be why "health care" here is so great. Not. The plan reeks of Bernie Sanders and his acolytes.
Oh, and we don't have money for anything worthwhile, not that it makes a difference to our legislature.
P.S. I complain about Vermont, because we are governed by self-serving, woke idiots. This does not detract from the fact that this is an absolutely gorgeous state, filled with really, really, wonderful people - as long as you stay clear of Those Women™. I am confident Chris could say exactly the same about California.
"This does not detract from the fact that this is an absolutely gorgeous state, filled with really, really, wonderful people - as long as you stay clear of Those Women™. I am confident Chris could say exactly the same about California."
I'll let Chris answer re California, but what you say about Vermont echoes the reasons I'm stubbornly holding out here in WA state. If we all leave in disgust the a**holes will end up with all the nice places and that just ain't right.
Besides, they're going to follow you wherever you go. All you're doing by leaving is postponing the inevitable. From what I hear their numbers are growing even in places like Georgia and *Texas*, something I never expected to happen in my lifetime.
As much as we might like to peacefully separate and keep our distance from them, they will not allow it.
This is true at all levels, from "silence is violence" to their abhorrence of the idea of us forming communities based on traditional values. For people who like to talk so much about "tolerance" they sure are bent on universal domination.
As long as you stay out of Burlington and the other major cities, Vermont is great. Gorgeous country and fine people. Or was it gorgeous people and fine country? I don't remember. Maybe both.
My sis lives there- she’s a radical “progressive”. Couldn’t help but notice during our last visit how run down everything is. And she teaches ahem $cience in Woodstock. Her vast scientific knowledge includes denying natural immunity (this caused a rift between us- I had no idea it was remotely controversial) and masking outdoors all alone with noone in sight for miles and the cherry on top, she declared she had been sentenced to death when she had to return to in person teaching. Somehow the news that all of Europe was doing just fine never made it into the NYT or WaPo. Playground of the rich and famous. Her school is absolutely falling apart and looks like there hasn’t been a screw tightened in decades. Yay progress.
I tried- i was on the contract sub committee (I'm a CPA) for two contract terms. It's a racket. We would pay for teachers to get a Masters, then have to pay them a huge increase. Very discouraging. I am still here, until I retire from my accounting practice.
So, was having to go back to her school employment in person a death sentence for her? Figuring not since you wrote she "lives" there.
; )
Things must hit true rock bottom for "them" to tighten few loose screws. I'm in California's Silly Valley and have been watching the Big Ds' 66% Sacramento supermajority be slowly eroded since November 2024. Down in a December 2025 runoff election to "just" under 66% from over 74% in November 2020. Slooowly more voters are waking up.
Pretty sure sis could see one of her kids drop dead 15 seconds after a jab and not see a thing. She’s a good person but oh so clueless. Babbling about cow farts and such. Zero actual thinking. All regurgitation.
I've got cousins like that. At least I've scars nearly 6 years old now to have a better poker face to deal with such mental toddlers and find a brand new group of more-distant family and many new friends who never fell for the insanity or woke up relatively fast.
The schools don't need all that money either, it's not as if they're graduating geniuses or anything. A person on the select board in my village has a child in the local high school. She's mentioned that the French teacher is terrible, and the math teacher isn't very good, either. Her child wants to be an engineer so she's had to arrange (and pay for) private math tutoring so that her child can get into a good college.
Meanwhile, the legislature, in its wisdom, keeps adding expensive requirements that burden the schools and the taxpayers. Stop it.
I bet the VT schools are not reallly getting the money. It's that way in California, where I live...actually I live in a very rural, conservative area of Cali. Anyway, two of my kiddos have been teachers for over two decades and say that their schools do not receive the monies...probably the State Teachers Union does, which means that the schools do not receive the monies. They both advocate for abolishing Federal and State Teachers' Unions, because they are deep black holes, in which all the monies get put.
Especially the Calif retirees with gold plated benefits for themselves and any spouse, too. Thanks to union power to strike, once they maxed out their local cuts of property tax they negotiated for massive retiree pension and medical benefits. And, then blew big chunks of their retirees' investment portfolio chasing "big" annual returns with reckless investments by gambling... so it's all a big Ponzi scheme now.
A week ago I heard abut a local Silly Valley teachers union which forced their members to walk precints for a recent election under threat of "not getting a raise" if they didn't do that whether a ballot item passed or not. Boss Politics 101.
I live in Utah, and the lions share my property tax goes to schools. Utah is always near the bottom of education-quality lists. From what I can see, most of the money goes toward building, not teaching.
I live outside of Chester, but it doesn't matter, they're all the same.
Just to illustrate how brain dead they all are, at a sort-of local high school the secretary was paid to work every day until 3:00. The plan was to hire someone else to work the last couple of hours each day.
One of our select board members asked why. After all, that means taking on the additional cost of a benefits package etc. Maybe it would be cheaper just to ask the current secretary to work the extra hour or two and increase her pay accordingly since she's already getting health insurance and all the other benefits?
Well, it had never occurred to anyone in the administration to solve the problem that way,regardless of how stupendously obvious it was. Honestly, we'd be better off with a school administration made up of old dairy farmers. At least they have some common sense.
BTW- have you seen the story in the VT Standard about the Bridgewater Community Center Foundation? Short answer, the Executive director is trying to pull an fast one, and fired several board members and replaced them with her friends. Two former board member filed suit against her. It's quite a mess.
I lived in VT for over 30 years, then fled to a southern red state, for both the political and weather climates. You are absolutely right. Although, I was thinking of the bottle bill as I drove past cans and bottles on the side of the road the other day. It really does keep the state much cleaner! I still remember doing bottle drives for school fundraisers. Pretty effective. We did buy liquor in NH but didn’t mind buying everything else in VT.
That's one thing we always notice when we drive through other states: the roadside trash. You just don't see that in Vermont, people are really careful to keep everything neat, and whatever might have been tossed out of a car window will be collected on the annual Clean Up Day. We also really appreciate the statewide no-billboards rule too, after we've driven out of state.
Related to some recent discussion here, and worth the time: "...when you unhook the reward button and rats no longer get a treat for pressing it, the rats go wild."
Thanks for giving gato a shout out, that piece is the best explanation of what’s happened and illustrates just how fucked any group that isn’t reversing course right now is. Total disconnection from reality.
I work for the state as an RN. We've had our "collective bargaining" contracts reneged on repeatedly the last three years through side deals. Raises not materialize, benefits reduced, etc. The blue bots around me continue to support our "union" and love Patrick Bateman. I point out the fact that the state has increased its budget by 60+% yet can't find the shekels to give us our contracted increases... where exactly is the excess 100s of billions going? Not to state employees... they look at me like I'm from Mars.
CA's best hope is it plunges into insolvency and is subject to total Federal Receivership- like Venezuela... Marco for Governor?!
That's certainly true. Although, I don't believe that is budgetary expenditure. It is disbursed from the CalPERS pension fund of managed assets. While the long term feasibility of that fund's ability to meet its obligations is dicey at best, it is not the source of our budgetary bloat.
“Although, I don't believe that is budgetary expenditure.”
Sorry, but this is incorrect.
Taxpayer contributions to state and (education) local employee pensions benefits is something like 5% of the annual budget spend.
And even at that CalPERS is only about 79% funded, which, while not as bad as the underfunding in some other states, still means taxpayers could be on the hook for billions more. The underfunding is about $170B. CalSTRS is another $90B underfunded.
you haven't seen anything yet. Calpers assumes a future rate of return of 6.8% on investments in order to meet its obligations. Does anyone believe that the stock market will return that much going forward? We are now at the peak of a bubble and probably face a decade or so with negative returns.
To be fair, that’s a nominal return, so they’re expecting a 4.5% real return. Which ain’t low, but neither is it ridiculous either.
No one actually knows whether we are at a peak or not (do you have your money where your mouth is? are you actually 100% short the market?), but certainly it’s not reasonable to assume the next 30 years will be as good for equities as the last 40. Although it’s *possible*.
I do have a lot in cash, but that is risky, too. Bonds are not the solution, since they will crash as the rate of inflation and interest rates go up. Unfortunately, too much of my wealth is in tax deferred retirement accounts, so there is a big tax penalty in taking it out fast. I'm convinced of the bubble by looking at the stock market. It has soared since the QE, so it looks like a monetary policy driven boom that does not reflect real productivity or value. This looks like a bubble to me, one that is much larger than 2008. See https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPASTT01USM661N
I stand corrected. The state budget is opaque enough I hardly bother to try and understand it. Regardless, 5% is not that much... compared to the 500 billion in new spending over the last 5 years that is essentially undetectable in the quality of everyone's life. My guess is it all got laundered through homelessness NGOs and CA's equivalent of "Quality Learing Center."
That is JUST the employee pensions. Employee compensation is in fact a huge fraction of the state budget.
Education is 40%-45% of the budget, and most of that goes to employee compensation.
Add in other direct state employees, and employee compensation is at least 40% of the budget.
Government employees are highly paid. While nurses and lawyers and judges likely are not overpaid in aggregate given market competition for people with those skills, most other employees surely are, thanks to public employee union bargaining with the politicians for whom they fund election in deep blue CA.
Redistributive transfers, most of which are for Medicaid and other health services, are a big portion as well, of course.
There may well indeed be a lot of wasted money laundered to NGOs. But while the amounts might indeed be huge in dollar terms - and hopefully this will be sussed out by the Chris Bray types (it surely won’t be the MSM…) and addressed - they simply cannot be that big in percentage terms.
Remember Gavin's Recall Election promise of $300 or so to all middle/low income taxpayers? After he won he sent out debit cards from the New York Community Bank which charged over $1.70 for every transaction, even for depositing the whole balance into a savings account, A year or so later that NEW YORK bank went belly up. So... follow the moola. Who made out like bandits in that fiasco?
I, for one, FULLY support the proposed solution..or response..or whatever the hell that was..that was, intentional or not, submitted as a reasonably viable "comeback" in this thoroughly inexact context of "hopeful", (as it might be otherwise be considered in a completely different, far more explanatory venue)...
Sounded right to me. There is much more out migration from Sacramento that U-Hauls are scarce and therefore more expensive? MUI (math under the influence) kills.
I think im on number 5! They really honor The Patriarchy down here in Mexico. Just tip them well the first time and they have a new one before you finish the old one.
I'm headed there in May to get out of this hell hole and move to a place with some sense! My son just moved in October, and we went to Arizona and rented the UHaul, drove it to CA, then to ID. IT saved us about $3,000. I hate CA.
When we moved our daughter, the U-Haul agent asked us to pull an empty trailer attached to the truck to LA because they were so short of U-Hauls. They weren’t offering compensation or discount, just asking customers to tow an extra trailer for free, so apparently they were not too committed to fixing the problem.
Does that actually say $7,000?!! Surprised the amazing, totally non corrupt governor hasn’t accused them of price gouging. Although it might draw attention to the massive emigration from the state. But when there’s no trucks left to move you out it will increase the cost. Economics 101. Not that he’d understand that.
That’s crazy. We have friends whose relatives left San Fran during pandemic years for Texas. They saw the writing on the wall, and could afford to get out. I don’t think the cost was as bad then. From what Chris writes, the state of things in CA has only worsened.
I continue to see a Democratic Party train wreck coming this year. A core aspect of their “brand” is that they are the good people who give money and services to the poor. Trump knows branding, and knows that revealing the fraud and corruption in Minnesota, California, and other blue states and cities will be utterly devastating to their brand. They can’t get credit for “helping the poor” when they’re allowing billions to be stolen, taking a cut, and using immigrants to steal elections. If some Republicans get taken down at the same time, so much the better. It’ll just show Trump isn’t being partisan.
You would think it would be devastating to their branding, but I have a leftist sibling who has not heard or read one single story about any of this. I would imagine there are millions of left types like this, whose news sources simply do not report on any of it. And they can’t read elsewhere because it’s blasphemy.
If they DO hear about it, they just twist it into Trump’s fault in some insane way that makes sense to them.
They firmly believe California is funding the rest of the country and so on, and they haven’t heard anything to refute this idea.
I’m not sure the Dem brand is hurt significantly by any of this. I mean, I don’t know how many converts the Normal team will actually win over from this mess.
The left won't read any non approved news and their news won't be honest about this if by any freak chance they even cover it. In general it is best to assume most people have no idea what is going on about nearly anything.
That’s true. I’ve tried with a friend of mine. Even sent the current list of immigration and customs enforcement catches. Oh thanks, I’ll get to them later. They’re long. I don’t know that history. Gosh you do a lot of research. But NPR says. … It’s like she’s inside a Teflon bubble.
Sure, just like everyone read the LAO reports. It isn't like those are hidden, but when people cultivate ignorance, they will resist anything that would cure them of that.
The reliable progressive sources will not give it the reporting you might imagine. That narrative will bear no resemblance to the reality on the ground.
The legacy media gets weaker all the time. because people get their news online. Their ability to control a narrative is slipping away. When Trump indicts people like Walz, Omar, and Ellison, they might try, but they won’t be able to ignore it or spin it.
The reliable progressive sources are struggling. Look at recent changes in the WaPo, CBS, and even some almost-reasonable reporting by the New York Times.
"they can’t read elsewhere because it’s blasphemy."
This is the central tendency, and the rest of your observations are spot-on, Brigitte.
It seems highly unlikely that logic will prevail, but penury is a moderately effective suppressant. This, I think, is why we see the incitement toward obstructing justice during arrests that are quite ordinary; the money for rent-a-mobs, is running short.
It's interesting to watch the equivalent of a landscaper trying to plant a lawn on top of astroturf.
The dem brand itself, has not been damaged in the least, among the party faithful. Folks sneered at the geriatric cohort of the "no kings" gatherings, but it's a mistake to discount that cohort; they are the remnants of the middle-income working class, dependent on the state for their continuing prosperity and they have learned to organize via videoconferencing.
They are not idle. They may tire more easily than the younger cohorts, but they still have more time available for collaboration.
Add the stubbornness associated with age-related cognitive decline, and we get precisely the "blasphemy effect" that you describe. They are fully indoctrinated.
In a rather horrible way, it's actually quite impressive. In my youth, I knew a dedicated socialist revolutionary. Last I heard, he'd gone to Egypt during the Arab Spring, still agitating for revolution after all those many years. I look around at the old, formerly-liberal dem party elders, and they are as staunch in their new ideology as that revolutionist I referred to.
What's impressive about these stalwart blue apparatchiki, is that they watched the betrayal of American workers by their party, and ignored it. What's interesting about that deliberate ignorance, is that the former liberals are mirroring the "I got mine" ethos of the "old right," the right-as-was when republicans served only the management class, fifty years ago.
Fascinating, what prosperity does to people. It insulates promiscuously and agnostically.
Hence all the pivoting to prosecuting ICE, etc. Fully expect to see all the DEI language trotted out for the mid-terms; basically some version of ‘things were just swell until Orange Man Bad!’
Chronicles has a noteworthy article up which points out that Obama was counting turnaways at the border as deportations. But he still let millions through and didn't do anything about the illegals who were already here (except proposing to give them all amnesty).
Trump on the other hand has dramatically reduced the incoming flow at the border. Now he's working on the problem inside the country, and as the article says, there's no "nice" way to solve that one.
Thanks to Minnesota for starting the trend of observing things, we won’t have to wait three years for this to become our story. More like three months.
And the whole “let’s riot” to distract gambit has a half-life of .005% compared to the heady days of George Floyd RIP George.
But we will try. I suppose we are due for a few riots. I mean, this is kind of what we do when presented with fiscal issues and social problems that we don’t want to acknowledge
My USMC son and his pregnant wife are currently in route cross country for a three year deployment to Camp Pendleton. He is reporting as XO to a force recon unit. I fear his safe return from the hell hole that is California more than anything he might face in recon.
Pendleton is another world. He'll be fine. And the MCX will shelter him from the tax climate. He'll essentially be living in a little American enclave inside California.
the natural beauty is still the same as ever. That’s about all I can say for the rest of our disaster. San Clemente is a nice city, and the base towns are the best places.
The waves are great. The crowds have made it intolerable. I migrated north to the Central Coast where the frigid water and large marine life keep the kooks away.
"Hey everyone: don't look at the results of our crappy decades of work; look at mean ICE and Trump!" Yep: MN and CA are in the same tailspin. The only difference is we have more Republicans in MN, and the fraud is being investigated. It sometimes even makes it to court, where it is dismissed by activist judges! Sigh...keep covering this mess, though.
Just like here in NY as the day care centers grift was being exposed in Minnesota, Mommi Dany and Governor Beaver teeth were announcing universal free day care. You can’t make up the stupidity of their timing.
How this ends: State and Federal governments keep spending like drunken sailors and can't service their debt payments, the Fed prints money like there's no tomorrow and the value of the dollar makes Weimar Republic Marks look like a solid currency, Foreign governments stop financing our politicians insane profligacy by buying US Bonds. The End.
the bigger concern is that the political power of these Blue states will allow / encourage the next blue prez to nationalize their debts so the fiscally responsible (red) states will have to pay for the fiscally irresponsible blue states... "We can't let Silicon Valley go bankrupt!!!"
I was discussing this whole mess with my hairdresser yesterday, both of us long time California types. He kept coming back to “I just don’t understand the end game.”
Expect the Democrats to amp-up calls for fiscally sound and well-run states to fork over extra taxes to some new agency, so that these taxes can be used to "establish equitable conditions for those states and areas that suffer undue fiscal burdens".
That's what the Socialist Democrats did here 40 years ago, when the areas they had run as their own fiefs (51%+ of the local vote because they were supported by the Communist Party) since the 1930s consistently ran deep into the red (in more ways than one) every single year.
Musing:
Long ago, the was a popular Aesopic comic here, called "Spara & Slösa" (Save & Waste) about to girls, one called Spara and one callede Slösa. Spara would save, invest, work and strive. Slösa would spend and waste and then suffer lack and want.
The angle was clear: don't be Slösa, it's wrong and bad.
Only now, for almost my entire life, Slösa has been held up as the ideal.
By SocDems, by feminists, by libertarians, by liberals, by ancaps, by commies.
And now we may soon suffer real lack and real want.
Mr Bray, the above bit was the lead-up to ask if it is okay to push a book about the Swedish condition (as it may well become Americas condition too). I'll link to a review of it in The Federalist, if you don't mind (ty to Ryan Gardner for the tip about the review):
I'm just waiting for the Vermont legislature to borrow more of California's ideas. Thanks, you guys. The only thing saving us so far is that we're a small, not-terribly-rich state, but the lefty ladies in the state house will surely give it their best go.
Regarding the dash over state borders, one of the things that upsets Montpelier so much is that, being a small state, we can easily shop in New Hampshire, which has no sales tax. They've tried all kinds of ploys to recapture that lost income, to limited success, but surely they're losing boatloads of cash nonetheless. I also suspect that a lot of people buy their beverages in NH, which does not add 5¢ to each bottle, and then redeem those containers in Vermont, another sore point for our legislative AWFLs.
Vermont already blazed trail on the Blue Model, proposing to implement state-funded single-payer healthcare and hiring Jonathan Gruber to tell them how, until they figured out that oh wait we need money. As a Californian, I bow to the Vermont legislature.
I forgot about that, must be why "health care" here is so great. Not. The plan reeks of Bernie Sanders and his acolytes.
Oh, and we don't have money for anything worthwhile, not that it makes a difference to our legislature.
P.S. I complain about Vermont, because we are governed by self-serving, woke idiots. This does not detract from the fact that this is an absolutely gorgeous state, filled with really, really, wonderful people - as long as you stay clear of Those Women™. I am confident Chris could say exactly the same about California.
VFW you will appreciate elizabeth nickson's take on Those Women™
https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/four-hundred-thousand-women-left
Elizabeth Nickson is great, I look forward to her articles every week.
"This does not detract from the fact that this is an absolutely gorgeous state, filled with really, really, wonderful people - as long as you stay clear of Those Women™. I am confident Chris could say exactly the same about California."
I'll let Chris answer re California, but what you say about Vermont echoes the reasons I'm stubbornly holding out here in WA state. If we all leave in disgust the a**holes will end up with all the nice places and that just ain't right.
Besides, they're going to follow you wherever you go. All you're doing by leaving is postponing the inevitable. From what I hear their numbers are growing even in places like Georgia and *Texas*, something I never expected to happen in my lifetime.
Sadly true. We fled VT for southeast GA and the number of blue staters coming here and bringing their crappy politics with them is alarming!
As much as we might like to peacefully separate and keep our distance from them, they will not allow it.
This is true at all levels, from "silence is violence" to their abhorrence of the idea of us forming communities based on traditional values. For people who like to talk so much about "tolerance" they sure are bent on universal domination.
" If we all leave in disgust the a**holes will end up with all the nice places and that just ain't right."
This 1000%.
Truth! Wonderful place to raise children. And the scenery driving north on I89 takes my breath away every time I go back there.
As long as you stay out of Burlington and the other major cities, Vermont is great. Gorgeous country and fine people. Or was it gorgeous people and fine country? I don't remember. Maybe both.
Heh- have you seen what Woodstock is trying to pull with a new high/middle school? I live in Bridgewater.
Let's dock Allison Clarkson's salary, she's usually behind this stuff.
My sis lives there- she’s a radical “progressive”. Couldn’t help but notice during our last visit how run down everything is. And she teaches ahem $cience in Woodstock. Her vast scientific knowledge includes denying natural immunity (this caused a rift between us- I had no idea it was remotely controversial) and masking outdoors all alone with noone in sight for miles and the cherry on top, she declared she had been sentenced to death when she had to return to in person teaching. Somehow the news that all of Europe was doing just fine never made it into the NYT or WaPo. Playground of the rich and famous. Her school is absolutely falling apart and looks like there hasn’t been a screw tightened in decades. Yay progress.
I was on that school board 2000-2009. I pushed for a 10% cut in wages and benefits. I did not succeed...
Thank you for your service. Must have been exhausting.
I tried- i was on the contract sub committee (I'm a CPA) for two contract terms. It's a racket. We would pay for teachers to get a Masters, then have to pay them a huge increase. Very discouraging. I am still here, until I retire from my accounting practice.
So, was having to go back to her school employment in person a death sentence for her? Figuring not since you wrote she "lives" there.
; )
Things must hit true rock bottom for "them" to tighten few loose screws. I'm in California's Silly Valley and have been watching the Big Ds' 66% Sacramento supermajority be slowly eroded since November 2024. Down in a December 2025 runoff election to "just" under 66% from over 74% in November 2020. Slooowly more voters are waking up.
Pretty sure sis could see one of her kids drop dead 15 seconds after a jab and not see a thing. She’s a good person but oh so clueless. Babbling about cow farts and such. Zero actual thinking. All regurgitation.
I've got cousins like that. At least I've scars nearly 6 years old now to have a better poker face to deal with such mental toddlers and find a brand new group of more-distant family and many new friends who never fell for the insanity or woke up relatively fast.
For your sake, I hope that the lefties are not successful. California is a hot mess!
One of my best friends is in his first term as a state senator for VT. Any messages?
Taxes. They're killing us.
The schools don't need all that money either, it's not as if they're graduating geniuses or anything. A person on the select board in my village has a child in the local high school. She's mentioned that the French teacher is terrible, and the math teacher isn't very good, either. Her child wants to be an engineer so she's had to arrange (and pay for) private math tutoring so that her child can get into a good college.
Meanwhile, the legislature, in its wisdom, keeps adding expensive requirements that burden the schools and the taxpayers. Stop it.
I bet the VT schools are not reallly getting the money. It's that way in California, where I live...actually I live in a very rural, conservative area of Cali. Anyway, two of my kiddos have been teachers for over two decades and say that their schools do not receive the monies...probably the State Teachers Union does, which means that the schools do not receive the monies. They both advocate for abolishing Federal and State Teachers' Unions, because they are deep black holes, in which all the monies get put.
The teachers are getting the money.
Especially the Calif retirees with gold plated benefits for themselves and any spouse, too. Thanks to union power to strike, once they maxed out their local cuts of property tax they negotiated for massive retiree pension and medical benefits. And, then blew big chunks of their retirees' investment portfolio chasing "big" annual returns with reckless investments by gambling... so it's all a big Ponzi scheme now.
A week ago I heard abut a local Silly Valley teachers union which forced their members to walk precints for a recent election under threat of "not getting a raise" if they didn't do that whether a ballot item passed or not. Boss Politics 101.
I live in Utah, and the lions share my property tax goes to schools. Utah is always near the bottom of education-quality lists. From what I can see, most of the money goes toward building, not teaching.
I’ll pass it along!
Thanks!
What part of Vermont does s/he represent? If s/he is fairly conservative, I'd guess the Northeast Kingdom.
No, he’s a big, green lefty. He lives in Weston.
OMG! That's about 3 miles from our house, so he is probably our state senator. Big lefty? Grrrr.
No school choice? Charters?
Vermont is one of three states that do not allow charter schools.
Sure! Redirect the energy put into heroin traffic to actual services, like literacy and that sort of stuff.
Require cost cutting in school budgets. I'd like to see a 10% cut of salaries and benefits.
Stop Woodstock from building a new school. Property taxes going up far higher than inflation.
I live in Bridgewater.
I live outside of Chester, but it doesn't matter, they're all the same.
Just to illustrate how brain dead they all are, at a sort-of local high school the secretary was paid to work every day until 3:00. The plan was to hire someone else to work the last couple of hours each day.
One of our select board members asked why. After all, that means taking on the additional cost of a benefits package etc. Maybe it would be cheaper just to ask the current secretary to work the extra hour or two and increase her pay accordingly since she's already getting health insurance and all the other benefits?
Well, it had never occurred to anyone in the administration to solve the problem that way,regardless of how stupendously obvious it was. Honestly, we'd be better off with a school administration made up of old dairy farmers. At least they have some common sense.
BTW- have you seen the story in the VT Standard about the Bridgewater Community Center Foundation? Short answer, the Executive director is trying to pull an fast one, and fired several board members and replaced them with her friends. Two former board member filed suit against her. It's quite a mess.
NM takes all its political cues from CA too
Condolences.
I lived in VT for over 30 years, then fled to a southern red state, for both the political and weather climates. You are absolutely right. Although, I was thinking of the bottle bill as I drove past cans and bottles on the side of the road the other day. It really does keep the state much cleaner! I still remember doing bottle drives for school fundraisers. Pretty effective. We did buy liquor in NH but didn’t mind buying everything else in VT.
That's one thing we always notice when we drive through other states: the roadside trash. You just don't see that in Vermont, people are really careful to keep everything neat, and whatever might have been tossed out of a car window will be collected on the annual Clean Up Day. We also really appreciate the statewide no-billboards rule too, after we've driven out of state.
Related to some recent discussion here, and worth the time: "...when you unhook the reward button and rats no longer get a treat for pressing it, the rats go wild."
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/no-agency-without-responsibility
Such a great article! Imagine that, take responsibility for your bad actions, as they have consequences!
Thanks for giving gato a shout out, that piece is the best explanation of what’s happened and illustrates just how fucked any group that isn’t reversing course right now is. Total disconnection from reality.
This is an excellent analysis.
I work for the state as an RN. We've had our "collective bargaining" contracts reneged on repeatedly the last three years through side deals. Raises not materialize, benefits reduced, etc. The blue bots around me continue to support our "union" and love Patrick Bateman. I point out the fact that the state has increased its budget by 60+% yet can't find the shekels to give us our contracted increases... where exactly is the excess 100s of billions going? Not to state employees... they look at me like I'm from Mars.
CA's best hope is it plunges into insolvency and is subject to total Federal Receivership- like Venezuela... Marco for Governor?!
“…where exactly is the excess 100s of billions going? Not to state employees...”
I know nothing about your RN contract situation, but an awful lot of the money is in fact going to state employee pensions.
That's certainly true. Although, I don't believe that is budgetary expenditure. It is disbursed from the CalPERS pension fund of managed assets. While the long term feasibility of that fund's ability to meet its obligations is dicey at best, it is not the source of our budgetary bloat.
“Although, I don't believe that is budgetary expenditure.”
Sorry, but this is incorrect.
Taxpayer contributions to state and (education) local employee pensions benefits is something like 5% of the annual budget spend.
And even at that CalPERS is only about 79% funded, which, while not as bad as the underfunding in some other states, still means taxpayers could be on the hook for billions more. The underfunding is about $170B. CalSTRS is another $90B underfunded.
you haven't seen anything yet. Calpers assumes a future rate of return of 6.8% on investments in order to meet its obligations. Does anyone believe that the stock market will return that much going forward? We are now at the peak of a bubble and probably face a decade or so with negative returns.
To be fair, that’s a nominal return, so they’re expecting a 4.5% real return. Which ain’t low, but neither is it ridiculous either.
No one actually knows whether we are at a peak or not (do you have your money where your mouth is? are you actually 100% short the market?), but certainly it’s not reasonable to assume the next 30 years will be as good for equities as the last 40. Although it’s *possible*.
I do have a lot in cash, but that is risky, too. Bonds are not the solution, since they will crash as the rate of inflation and interest rates go up. Unfortunately, too much of my wealth is in tax deferred retirement accounts, so there is a big tax penalty in taking it out fast. I'm convinced of the bubble by looking at the stock market. It has soared since the QE, so it looks like a monetary policy driven boom that does not reflect real productivity or value. This looks like a bubble to me, one that is much larger than 2008. See https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPASTT01USM661N
I stand corrected. The state budget is opaque enough I hardly bother to try and understand it. Regardless, 5% is not that much... compared to the 500 billion in new spending over the last 5 years that is essentially undetectable in the quality of everyone's life. My guess is it all got laundered through homelessness NGOs and CA's equivalent of "Quality Learing Center."
“Regardless, 5% is not that much”
That is JUST the employee pensions. Employee compensation is in fact a huge fraction of the state budget.
Education is 40%-45% of the budget, and most of that goes to employee compensation.
Add in other direct state employees, and employee compensation is at least 40% of the budget.
Government employees are highly paid. While nurses and lawyers and judges likely are not overpaid in aggregate given market competition for people with those skills, most other employees surely are, thanks to public employee union bargaining with the politicians for whom they fund election in deep blue CA.
Redistributive transfers, most of which are for Medicaid and other health services, are a big portion as well, of course.
There may well indeed be a lot of wasted money laundered to NGOs. But while the amounts might indeed be huge in dollar terms - and hopefully this will be sussed out by the Chris Bray types (it surely won’t be the MSM…) and addressed - they simply cannot be that big in percentage terms.
Remember Gavin's Recall Election promise of $300 or so to all middle/low income taxpayers? After he won he sent out debit cards from the New York Community Bank which charged over $1.70 for every transaction, even for depositing the whole balance into a savings account, A year or so later that NEW YORK bank went belly up. So... follow the moola. Who made out like bandits in that fiasco?
The NY bank that failed was NOT the bank in question.
And the fees were for out of network ATM transactions. One could get their money without paying fees.
You've heard of Minnesota, right? Similar story I'm sure.
Wow. Bateman could literally pee in their mouths and they would thank him for the hydration.
They just lap up the propaganda from SEIU.
I, for one, FULLY support the proposed solution..or response..or whatever the hell that was..that was, intentional or not, submitted as a reasonably viable "comeback" in this thoroughly inexact context of "hopeful", (as it might be otherwise be considered in a completely different, far more explanatory venue)...
SO THERE! Put THAT in your pypensmoke-it!!
They’ve built a fine in state rail … oh wait.
🙌
The people have spoken, and now they must be punished.
Sorry California
- $7k Sacramento to Boise - 5 days - 26 foot U-haul
- $500 Boise to Sacramento - 5 days - same truck
See how that works, Gavin?
Enough said.
Other way around, I think
Whoops. Good catch. Im on vacation with a rum and coke in my hand....lol
Sounded right to me. There is much more out migration from Sacramento that U-Hauls are scarce and therefore more expensive? MUI (math under the influence) kills.
Yes. Its just supply and demand
😂
I think im on number 5! They really honor The Patriarchy down here in Mexico. Just tip them well the first time and they have a new one before you finish the old one.
Enjoy!! 🍹
I'm headed there in May to get out of this hell hole and move to a place with some sense! My son just moved in October, and we went to Arizona and rented the UHaul, drove it to CA, then to ID. IT saved us about $3,000. I hate CA.
When we moved our daughter, the U-Haul agent asked us to pull an empty trailer attached to the truck to LA because they were so short of U-Hauls. They weren’t offering compensation or discount, just asking customers to tow an extra trailer for free, so apparently they were not too committed to fixing the problem.
Very smart
Does that actually say $7,000?!! Surprised the amazing, totally non corrupt governor hasn’t accused them of price gouging. Although it might draw attention to the massive emigration from the state. But when there’s no trucks left to move you out it will increase the cost. Economics 101. Not that he’d understand that.
Yes. It is that much. Or at least it was last Fall
The market is the market...
That’s crazy. We have friends whose relatives left San Fran during pandemic years for Texas. They saw the writing on the wall, and could afford to get out. I don’t think the cost was as bad then. From what Chris writes, the state of things in CA has only worsened.
They are targeting the billionaires fleeing the state. that is probably all they can afford by the time CA is done with them.
https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/U-Haul-Growth-Index-Texas-Back-ON-Top-As-No-1-Growth-State-Of-2025-36556/
Looks like sunshine was the biggest driver of U-Haul one way moves. I guess that man made global warning scam has run its course.
Newsome wanting to be President so he can pay off California debt is like the emporers of Rome running off to sack Sicily to cover debt.
I continue to see a Democratic Party train wreck coming this year. A core aspect of their “brand” is that they are the good people who give money and services to the poor. Trump knows branding, and knows that revealing the fraud and corruption in Minnesota, California, and other blue states and cities will be utterly devastating to their brand. They can’t get credit for “helping the poor” when they’re allowing billions to be stolen, taking a cut, and using immigrants to steal elections. If some Republicans get taken down at the same time, so much the better. It’ll just show Trump isn’t being partisan.
You would think it would be devastating to their branding, but I have a leftist sibling who has not heard or read one single story about any of this. I would imagine there are millions of left types like this, whose news sources simply do not report on any of it. And they can’t read elsewhere because it’s blasphemy.
If they DO hear about it, they just twist it into Trump’s fault in some insane way that makes sense to them.
They firmly believe California is funding the rest of the country and so on, and they haven’t heard anything to refute this idea.
I’m not sure the Dem brand is hurt significantly by any of this. I mean, I don’t know how many converts the Normal team will actually win over from this mess.
The left won't read any non approved news and their news won't be honest about this if by any freak chance they even cover it. In general it is best to assume most people have no idea what is going on about nearly anything.
That’s true. I’ve tried with a friend of mine. Even sent the current list of immigration and customs enforcement catches. Oh thanks, I’ll get to them later. They’re long. I don’t know that history. Gosh you do a lot of research. But NPR says. … It’s like she’s inside a Teflon bubble.
A good number of my friends still say "What laptop?" 😬
Once the indictments and arrests start, everyone will hear about it.
Sure, just like everyone read the LAO reports. It isn't like those are hidden, but when people cultivate ignorance, they will resist anything that would cure them of that.
True, but as you’ve probably noticed, Trump is very good at directing attention where he wants it.
The reliable progressive sources will not give it the reporting you might imagine. That narrative will bear no resemblance to the reality on the ground.
The legacy media gets weaker all the time. because people get their news online. Their ability to control a narrative is slipping away. When Trump indicts people like Walz, Omar, and Ellison, they might try, but they won’t be able to ignore it or spin it.
Exactly. They may even watch a live Trump speech, and then go straight to the hive mind for the 'proper interpretation.'
The reliable progressive sources are struggling. Look at recent changes in the WaPo, CBS, and even some almost-reasonable reporting by the New York Times.
"they can’t read elsewhere because it’s blasphemy."
This is the central tendency, and the rest of your observations are spot-on, Brigitte.
It seems highly unlikely that logic will prevail, but penury is a moderately effective suppressant. This, I think, is why we see the incitement toward obstructing justice during arrests that are quite ordinary; the money for rent-a-mobs, is running short.
It's interesting to watch the equivalent of a landscaper trying to plant a lawn on top of astroturf.
The dem brand itself, has not been damaged in the least, among the party faithful. Folks sneered at the geriatric cohort of the "no kings" gatherings, but it's a mistake to discount that cohort; they are the remnants of the middle-income working class, dependent on the state for their continuing prosperity and they have learned to organize via videoconferencing.
They are not idle. They may tire more easily than the younger cohorts, but they still have more time available for collaboration.
Add the stubbornness associated with age-related cognitive decline, and we get precisely the "blasphemy effect" that you describe. They are fully indoctrinated.
In a rather horrible way, it's actually quite impressive. In my youth, I knew a dedicated socialist revolutionary. Last I heard, he'd gone to Egypt during the Arab Spring, still agitating for revolution after all those many years. I look around at the old, formerly-liberal dem party elders, and they are as staunch in their new ideology as that revolutionist I referred to.
What's impressive about these stalwart blue apparatchiki, is that they watched the betrayal of American workers by their party, and ignored it. What's interesting about that deliberate ignorance, is that the former liberals are mirroring the "I got mine" ethos of the "old right," the right-as-was when republicans served only the management class, fifty years ago.
Fascinating, what prosperity does to people. It insulates promiscuously and agnostically.
Sounds like my neighbor, who lives in expensive waterfront property and drives a car emblazoned with “I Miss Jimmy Carter” stickers.
I agree. They're literally blind to all the bad things dumbocraps do.
The numbers of the truly brainwashed are indeed dwindling. Most of my friends are still that way. I used to be, so I know it's not incurable.
I read a poll the other day that about 25% of American voters are Democrat, 25% Republican, and half are now independent. Approximately.
Hence all the pivoting to prosecuting ICE, etc. Fully expect to see all the DEI language trotted out for the mid-terms; basically some version of ‘things were just swell until Orange Man Bad!’
Best one today: “Biden and Obama deported 6 million [don’t quote me on the #] without any of this mayhem and chaos….” So, OMB.
Chronicles has a noteworthy article up which points out that Obama was counting turnaways at the border as deportations. But he still let millions through and didn't do anything about the illegals who were already here (except proposing to give them all amnesty).
Trump on the other hand has dramatically reduced the incoming flow at the border. Now he's working on the problem inside the country, and as the article says, there's no "nice" way to solve that one.
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/there-is-no-nice-way-to-do-mass-deportations/
Thank you so much for the link
And let in 20M+!!
Thanks to Minnesota for starting the trend of observing things, we won’t have to wait three years for this to become our story. More like three months.
And the whole “let’s riot” to distract gambit has a half-life of .005% compared to the heady days of George Floyd RIP George.
But we will try. I suppose we are due for a few riots. I mean, this is kind of what we do when presented with fiscal issues and social problems that we don’t want to acknowledge
My USMC son and his pregnant wife are currently in route cross country for a three year deployment to Camp Pendleton. He is reporting as XO to a force recon unit. I fear his safe return from the hell hole that is California more than anything he might face in recon.
Pendleton is another world. He'll be fine. And the MCX will shelter him from the tax climate. He'll essentially be living in a little American enclave inside California.
Kinda like an expat in his own country. LOL
I believe you are right Chris!
Stay on base. He’s in the safest part of our beautiful and devolved state.
Same thing for 29p.
They have movies and Starbucks on base.
They are renting a place in San Clemente. Wife and I are planning a trip there next month. Working on getting my head to swivel 360 degrees. 😁
might as well make the most of it.
the natural beauty is still the same as ever. That’s about all I can say for the rest of our disaster. San Clemente is a nice city, and the base towns are the best places.
They are excited and looking forward to it. We’ll see once it’s all in the rear view mirror.
San Clemente is wonderful. South OC mostly still feels like the SoCal I grew up in.
Good surfing 🏄🏽♀️
The waves are great. The crowds have made it intolerable. I migrated north to the Central Coast where the frigid water and large marine life keep the kooks away.
52 degrees used to keep people away, but all the IT dude bros have the money for good wet suits and they are everywhere.
I hope they got a good deal on rent .
There you go being mean again, Chris.
He’s not a nice man.
Yeah ,he always wants to know how it ends .🥰
its' true he does ask people to tell him.
lolololololololololol(breathe)lolololololololololol
"Hey everyone: don't look at the results of our crappy decades of work; look at mean ICE and Trump!" Yep: MN and CA are in the same tailspin. The only difference is we have more Republicans in MN, and the fraud is being investigated. It sometimes even makes it to court, where it is dismissed by activist judges! Sigh...keep covering this mess, though.
Federal fraud trials might just change that.
Oh, how I wish to see those come to pass!
I'm from a very rural, conservative area in Cali. The Dems MUST wake up! Our state is in a horrible mess. It's so sad!
Just like here in NY as the day care centers grift was being exposed in Minnesota, Mommi Dany and Governor Beaver teeth were announcing universal free day care. You can’t make up the stupidity of their timing.
How this ends: State and Federal governments keep spending like drunken sailors and can't service their debt payments, the Fed prints money like there's no tomorrow and the value of the dollar makes Weimar Republic Marks look like a solid currency, Foreign governments stop financing our politicians insane profligacy by buying US Bonds. The End.
But, but, but...TRUMP IS A NAZI!!!
the bigger concern is that the political power of these Blue states will allow / encourage the next blue prez to nationalize their debts so the fiscally responsible (red) states will have to pay for the fiscally irresponsible blue states... "We can't let Silicon Valley go bankrupt!!!"
Good point! Same end result though.
NO NEXT BLUE PREZ…
🙌
Then we in the red states, who make less money than those in the hi cost blue states, will need to take things into our own hands.
I was discussing this whole mess with my hairdresser yesterday, both of us long time California types. He kept coming back to “I just don’t understand the end game.”
Expect the Democrats to amp-up calls for fiscally sound and well-run states to fork over extra taxes to some new agency, so that these taxes can be used to "establish equitable conditions for those states and areas that suffer undue fiscal burdens".
That's what the Socialist Democrats did here 40 years ago, when the areas they had run as their own fiefs (51%+ of the local vote because they were supported by the Communist Party) since the 1930s consistently ran deep into the red (in more ways than one) every single year.
Musing:
Long ago, the was a popular Aesopic comic here, called "Spara & Slösa" (Save & Waste) about to girls, one called Spara and one callede Slösa. Spara would save, invest, work and strive. Slösa would spend and waste and then suffer lack and want.
The angle was clear: don't be Slösa, it's wrong and bad.
Only now, for almost my entire life, Slösa has been held up as the ideal.
By SocDems, by feminists, by libertarians, by liberals, by ancaps, by commies.
And now we may soon suffer real lack and real want.
Mr Bray, the above bit was the lead-up to ask if it is okay to push a book about the Swedish condition (as it may well become Americas condition too). I'll link to a review of it in The Federalist, if you don't mind (ty to Ryan Gardner for the tip about the review):
[https://thefederalist.com/2026/01/16/how-mass-migration-destroyed-swedens-scandinavian-utopia/]
Never necessary to ask -- comment thread is a free-for-all.
Thank you - I'm just a tad wary of coming across as a travelling door-to-door books' salesman.
I hate it when I enjoy an amusing Chris Bray piece that starkly warns of our inevitable doom. But forewarned is forearmed...
yes the well is running dry and let's please not fall for that as an excuse for digital currency
corruption --->investigation--->righteous rage--->digital surveillance
as the bumper sticker says, congratulations, you are now a slave
“(latest tech) is the way of the future. Can’t be a Luddite! Adapt or be homeless!” 😖😖😖
Digital currency could be the end game.