mollyfamwatLee Pitts is a freelance columnist for The and Paso Robles Press; you can e-mail him at [email protected].
To my sweet, fake Haley,
Have you lost your mind? I used to proudly say I was a fifth-generation Californian, but now I try to hide that because you have turned the California dream into a nightmare. Or a bad joke. Your roads are terrible and your schools are even worse. Decency and politeness? Forget it. There is human excrement on the sidewalks of San Francisco, where the average price of a shabby house is a million and a half and the typical driver on our highways texts with one hand, drinks a five dollar cup of Starbucks with the other and blows you away with the other. That doesn’t leave many other hands to drive the car.
I know what the problem is. They have moved from an economy largely based on agriculture and oil to one powered by bits and bytes. Needless to say, each attracts a different type of person. Their Central Valley is still the largest agricultural phenomenon in the world, but the WOOFYs (wealthy senior citizens) who live on the coast and work for the government, are retired, or are professors who teach communism at a university, are trying to cut off the farmers’ water so they have enough to fill their hot tubs and pools, water their lush lawns and gardens, and save the fabulous shrimp. They drove the cows off their land because they would drink too much water, and planted grapes and marijuana in their place, drying up our aquifers. Self-driving cars can’t come early because a large percentage of your drivers are either drunk on wine or bitten by weed.
They shut down offshore oil wells because they’re ugly. I think you think of giant wind turbines and solar panels when you drive your smart cars, and you wonder more than once where the energy will come from to charge your batteries. You California snobs with stickers on your Priuses and Teslas saying: Break down the dams, have no idea that without hydropower you would run out of gas at the worst possible time. Has anyone figured out what they are going to do with all those old spent batteries and solar cells, or are they just going to store them next to the spent radioactive fuel rods?
I feel like I live in a container or Neverland, and it’s never been that way. When California was an economic heavyweight, you had leaders with common sense. Ronald Regan was your governor, for God’s sake! But uncontrolled illegal immigration and the rise of technology have made you a madhouse. You liberals have a stay-away policy in your forests and then wonder why there is a fire season every year where whole towns burn down and the smoke doesn’t clear until November. Californians are such hypocrites. You think cow farts contribute to your precious theory of global warming, but not to the smoke clouding our air from forest fires?
I can’t even keep track of all the rules and regulations you don’t understand. You can’t build a house on your own land, where you pay huge property taxes if you find certain couriers there, and my friend had to get a permit that cost $137 just to cut down a THOUSAND tree on his own land! Another acquaintance is upset that his pine trees have grown so large that they are blocking his solar panels, but the municipality won’t let him cut down his own trees. They have the highest taxes in the country and high-income people are leaving the state in droves, so what have Sacramento’s politicians done? They passed a law that taxes the income of former Californians if they live in another state but spend 60 days a year here. And your latest plan to pay $600 to everyone in the state, including illegals, would have put you out of business….. if you hadn’t already.
They say the trends start in California and follow in other states. If that is the case, my fellow Californians, I suggest we move to another country. Like Texas.
Sincerely, disgraced Californian
Dim:
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We’ll get through this together, Atascadero…
mollyfamwat
