Common sense dictates that Americans should immediately reject any politicians hailing from Michigan, New York, and California. These states are engaged in an intense race to the bottom, losing businesses and residents at an alarming rate. Sadly, they lack leaders who even recognize the issue, let alone have some original thoughts on how to solve it.
Trust me on this: Whatever Governors Gretchen Whitmer, Kathy Hochul, and Gavin Newsom are selling, Americans who care about the future of their country don’t want it.
I’ve written extensively about the circus act running Michigan. Whitmer is held in such a low regard that Ford played her for a fool and earmarked the biggest investment in the company’s history for Tennessee and Kentucky. I defy anyone to name a state attorney general more inept and clueless than Dana Nessel. Rep. Rashida Tlaib is recognized as one of the biggest Jew haters in the world. And Debbie Stabenow, a longtime state legislator and now Michigan’s senior Senator, recently flaunted her ignorance about how soaring gas prices are causing great economic harm, even among those like her who drive electric vehicles.
I’ll save a discussion on New York for another day. California warrants more immediate attention in wake of Newsom’s hare-brained ad in Florida this past weekend encouraging Sunshine State residents to move to California and state attorney general Rob Bonta’s decision to increase California’s state-funded travel ban to 22 states whose politics he disagrees with.
That’s right: California bans state-funded travel to nearly half the U.S.
Newsom’s hare-brained commercial
Newsom over the July 4th holiday aired a commercial in Florida urging residents to fight for freedom or move to California where he promised they could find it.
“Freedom is under attack in your state,” admonished the ad, which was paid for by Newsom’s re-election campaign. “Republican leaders – they’re banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors. I urge all of you to join the fight, or join us in California, where we still believe in freedom.”
Multiple news reports said the ad aired on the FOX News channel. Unbelievable: The LAST place to run a commercial hoping to sell viewers on the merits of far-left California is FOX News. The cable channel offers extensive coverage of California, but I assure you that when the average FOX viewer thinks of the state, they immediate imagine relentless crime, homeless encampments, defunding the police, forest fires, and rolling blackouts.
FOX News viewers are typically between 55 and 65, and I’d wager the network’s demographics skews even older in Florida. This is not an age group looking to uproot itself. FOX News’ audience is reportedly mostly male; promoting California to FOX News viewers makes as much sense as it would for Pampers to promote its baby diapers on that channel. The only diapers worth promoting on FOX News are the adult kind.
California, land of freedom?
California had one of the most prohibitive pandemic lockdowns, so it’s disingenuous for Newsom to talk about “freedom,” particularly to residents who were allowed to continue living their lives with few restrictions. Admittedly, Newsom was exempted from his state’s own rules, as was Rep. Nancy Pelosi, so perhaps Newsom was referring to the freedoms that he enjoyed.
It’s also debatable whether Californians hold as dear as they claim LGBTQ+ rights, unrestricted access to abortion, and racial equality. Tesla last December moved its headquarters to Texas, which is on California’s state travel ban list. Tesla’s biggest market far and away remains California; I’ve yet to read reports about Californians unloading their Tesla vehicles because of the Texas relocation or California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing’s report alleging systemic racism at Tesla’s plant near Silicon Valley so horrific that the Los Angeles Times issued a reader advisory atop its story.
I’d welcome knowing what sort of market research Newsom conducted to validate there exists even a coterie of Floridians who are contemplating moving to California because of the state’s liberal politics. There’s substantial evidence that Florida increasingly has become a draw for Californians.
According to Florida Realtors, a trade publication, Californians and New Yorkers are “flocking” to the state. In 2021, residents moving to Florida outnumbered those escaping the state by a two-to-one margin. In 2022, the surge has been led by those fleeing California and New York – each state representing 10 percent of inbound moves to Florida, or about 20 percent collectively. By comparison, refugees from Illinois accounted for 6.8 percent, New Jersey 5.9 percent, and Pennsylvania 5.4 percent.
Another reason to flee California
On Friday before the long weekend California AG Bonta issued this release announcing that his office had restricted state-funded travel to Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, and Utah because of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation recently enacted in those states. It appears from the release that Bonta can unilaterally make these sorts of rules on his own.
Bonta was cagey in his announcement, referring to the Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, and Utah bans as “new additions to California’s state-funded travel restrictions list” but he avoided naming the other states on the banned list. Perhaps it was an oversight, or perhaps he was embarrassed. With the latest additions, California now bans state-funded travel to 22 states.(The keeper of the official list forgot to include Arizona and Louisiana.)
I immediately looked to see if Texas and Ohio are on the “Do-Not-Visit” prohibition, and sure enough they are.
Texas in recent years has been cleaning California’s clocks, or perhaps more accurately our windmills. California has lost more than 100 big name companies to Texas including Tesla, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, and Dropbox. Texas has also claimed some high-profile entertainers, including podcaster Joe Rogan who sings Austin’s high praises.
Ohio won the economic development Super Bowl last year scoring a $20 billion investment from California-based Intel to build chip factories in The Buckeye State, initially creating 3,000 mostly high paying jobs. Additional California companies have announced or indicated they are considering relocating to Ohio to be closer to Intel.
If there were some California companies on the fence about relocating to Texas or Ohio, Bonta’s travel-ban list might be enough to push them over the edge.
No problem with China and Saudi Arabia
Notably, Bonta’s travel ban doesn’t include any overseas countries with prohibitive LGBTQ+ laws like China and Saudi Arabia. California is among the ten largest economies in the world and China is California’s third biggest export destination. Saudi Arabia is California’s 29th largest.
China has been engaged in a years-long campaign to combat what the government deems a “masculinity crisis” in entertainment and media promoting “sissies” and “indecent culture.” The Communist government under Xi Jinping, China’s leader for life, is quite determined. Last September it ordered the country’s gaming companies to eliminate “obscene and violent content and those breeding unhealthy tendencies, such as money-worship and effeminacy.”
In Saudi Arabia, homosexuality is punishable by death and LGBTQ+ people are routinely subjected to discrimination and violence.
A Marriage Made in Heaven
There was some more dismal news out of Michigan just before the long weekend. For the first time in more than a decade, the state’s population declined in an annual census estimate, yet another sign Michigan is destined to experience more economic problems, exacerbating its poor schools and abysmal roads. With Ford’s stock hitting a 52-week low today, CEO Jim Farley is under increasing pressure to relocate the company’s electric vehicle operations to a more desirable place to run a technology business.
There is speculation that if Newsom were to be the Democratic nominee for 2024, he would tap Whitmer as his running mate. It would be a political marriage made in heaven, as both Newsom and Whitmer are tried and true failures. After four years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, America can’t afford another dynamic failing duo.
For what it’s worth, readers of this blog can’t say I didn’t warn them about Harris.