HATING ON CALIFORNIA — GOES MAINSTREAM (OCT 2019)

Republicans have hated on California for years, and Trump made it very popular the last few years among his followers, but the first time ever — it appears mainstream/ left newspapers are picking up the talking points.

Oct 2019, hate against California GOES MAINSTREAM

California was always hated on by Republicans for many years, and with Trump it has become the number one target of America conservatives to receive hate. We in California knew that and some welcomed it — we were glad to be the opposite of what we viewed is now a party dedicated to hate and discrimination.

So when over the last year conservative news (WSJ, WSJ, Dallas, FOX, FOX, Breitbart, National Review) said that California is horrible and “get out now” we ignored it.

But something interesting and historic has happened in just the last few weeks, starting roughly in this month of October 2019. Left wing, or mainstream — not specifically hard core conservative news sites are spreading just has much hate and fear mongering on CA.

The NYT, a hard core liberal paper, the Atlantic another liberal site, Bloomberg, another liberal site, and a famous Youtube star who was there at Occupy Wall Street, and a international magazine that opposed the Iraq war, have all picked up traditional republican talking points and launched them all at the same time — during October 2019. THIS IS SOMETHING NEW

It is so bad that both of our major papers have had to comment on this shift — from Right to mainstream opinion that California hating is the thing to do now

We are done. We are history. Pack up and leave now, while you still can. LA TIMES

Everywhere you look, national media outlets can’t seem to stop publishing think pieces announcing the death of California. It was a good run, apparently, but now it’s all over. SF CHRONICLE

To be honest — all of the issues that these conservative and mainstream news organizations highlight are real issues:

1. Homeless, high rent, poop on streets
2. Gas tax and high taxes
3. Forest fires and people fleeing homes
4. Mass exodus from California

Why these articles are about hate, instead of just reporting the news is proven by two actions all of these news pieces take:

1. They act like it is the end of California — when we have suffered through worse and survived (remember the wild fires of 2016,2017 were worse, and the recession of 2008 hit CA the hardest in all of the USA)
2. They ignore a lot of facts — that point out these problems are caused because of our association with America. Yes — the problems they point out in America — are caused by America.

Here the facts they all leave out (conveniently)

1. Homeless, high rent, poop on streets — (rebuttal A) Half of the homeless are from America. They came to CA because their own communities abandoned them and left them to rot, and they moved to CA because they knew that we don’t do that. CA has a massive amount of homeless because of the careless attitude of Americans to their own people. (rebuttal B) Since we have half of the problem — shouldn’t we get half of the Federal homeless (McKinney Vento) funds. We don’t. We get a fraction when we should get 50%. Especially since we are taking care of America’s problem.
2. Gas tax and high taxes — (rebuttal A) We have to raise taxes on ourselves because we are a donor state. In 2018 we lost $14 Billion — while the Gas tax aims to raise over 10 years to get $52 Billion. If we weren’t a donor state, we could raise that money in half the time, with no tax increase. So we raise taxes on ourselves to cover for the welfare we provide to 35 states who love to read headlines like we are dying.
3. Forest fires and people fleeing homes — (rebuttal A) — Most of the forest is owned by the Federal government and has not been cleared of tinder by the Fed gov even though we asked them to from at least 2015. We don’t have the ability to clean up forests we don’t manage. Also, we had our money to deal with forest fires cut by the Federal government since 2017. (rebuttal B) — most of the homes in the mountains are by people with money — they are not the marginal Californians struggling to pay rent. — (rebuttal C) — Yes California did not regulate PG&E well and they did not upgrade their facilities — but why did the CA gov not come down hard on PG&E in the recent past when it was clear they were messing up. Well because of America . In 2001, a energy company in Texas price gouged California on power and caused electrical problems around the state. The problem was so bad that the current governor Grey Davis was recalled. The Federal government protected Enron from being investigated at all for years, and then Federal courts made it where Enron had to pay a fraction of the what they cost CA, years and years later. PG&E saw that and saw how scared governors were of blackouts and knew there would be no accountability and so they can use this political lesson as a push back for any CA government who wants to regulate PG&E. We did not regulate PG&E well enough — and the reason we didn’t do that is because of Federally protected corruption.
4. Mass exodus from California — (rebuttal A)- CA is losing people but they are people with low skills, no education, and barely making it, while we are gaining almost as many people who are educated, skilled and come to CA importing their wealth. So the effect to our economy is only good.

None of this is brought up.

When you add these facts — looks like we are doing poorly because of our association with America. Why aren’t these facts ever mentioned by conservative and now mainstream (non Californian) news agencies. BECAUSE THEY WANT TO PUSH THE NARRATIVE THAT WE ARE HORRIBLE HERE — and these facts muddy that narrative and make it clear California survives despite being part of America.