[ilbegone]

What has hurt California?

Several things.

A mass of people from other countries who work for nothing and eat all kinds of work place shit is one. California is well on the road to becoming the first third world state in the US.

Far left legislative fantasy is another, Jerry Brown's insistence on the mega billion dollar high speed train to nowhere with little to no available capital to build and operate it being a prime example.

Voters who buy into far left fantasy, whether from being bought off with government services, middle class kids who are "educated" into rebelling against middle class values, and Limousine liberals who have no idea of what is going on in real the world outside of their own removed from reality heads just down the hill from their own heavily policed, manicured communities.

Difficulty in legitimately operating a business, with some within the protected classes being quietly excused from compliance with overburdening rules and regulations (such as the health code concerning street vendors selling tamales, ethnic restaurants with large numbers of illegal employees within somehow operating with no apparent capital backing them while blatantly violating the health code, etc...).

Schools which fail to teach the kids how to read and write, but can sure teach English speaking kids to sing Spanish language songs - even if the kids have no clue as to what the words mean.

As mentioned above, the taxes disguised as "fees" scam, an end run around resistance to raising property taxes which rapacious legislators would surely raise beyond all reasonable bounds if not for Proposition 13.

The fact that California has 33% or more of the national welfare burden, with about 25% of California welfare dollars being sucked up by Los Angeles County alone.

One of the quieter outrages is, in spite of increased infrastructure capacity and lower demand, a CPUC proposed back door punishment for running air conditioners or doing laundry in the afternoon with electronic Time Of Use metering and higher prices for using KWH in the afternoon. As I understand it, those meters are also capable of detecting and passing on to the power company which late manufactured household appliances equipped to identify themselves through the circuitry are running at any time of day.

(A short list of infrastructure upgrade: The Sunrise power link and DPV2 transmission lines and substations built to take advantage of all those solar and wind projects sprouting up throughout the eastern deserts from the Mexican border to State Line not far west of Las Vegas, the TRTP transmission project running from the Tehachapi windfarm area to LA, and numerous other ongoing generation, transmission, distribution, and substation projects throughout the state. Due to the fact that the LA DWP is a mad cap municipality of a city run by political lunatics and the infrastructure is held together with bandaides rather than actual repair and reconstruction, Los Angeles might be in trouble).

Stay out of my wallet and leave me alone I say to the mad legislators, but of course that's going to fall on deaf ears in Sacramento.

Enough people have to get pissed off and take a stand, just a few getting loud are going to made examples of.