Thank you to Steve Frank, publisher of California Political News & Views, for publishing my adieu to California. In October 2021, my family and I joined the exodus out of a state we once loved and once offered so many opportunities for work and growth. A misguided political class that rose to power in the early 1990s has chased away the middle class, invited in the billionaires, and blanketed the streets with the homeless.

Those of us who bailed out are not looking back. Those who chose to stay behind have one more choice to make: fight for a return to sanity or slowly descend into irrelevance.

Marcy Berry
Just Vote No Editor

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California Emptyin’

Some of us are old enough to remember the Mamas and the Papas’ iconic hit California Dreamin’.

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I’ve been for a walk
On a winter’s day
I’d be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.
California dreamin’
On such a winter’s day

There was a time when people did dream of coming to California. There was a time when L.A. was safe. But today, California is experiencing it’s own kind of winter’s day. There is less of California dreamin’ and more of California emptyin’.

Today the middle class – the backbone of America’s economy – is choosing brown leaves and wintry days over California’s nightmare of inordinate living costs, back-breaking taxes, endless restrictions, miserable schools, homelessness, and unsightly streets.

As I look out of the window of my new home in North Carolina, I see loads of brown leaves. I have already felt a couple of days of bone-chilling breezes, and I have been advised to purchase some heavy winter clothes. And I have met several California ex-pats who are happy to be here and are not looking back. We are the middle class. We are the workers on the ground. And we are leaving California.

The California political class is either amazingly brilliant or abysmally dull on the head. If their aim is to grow and cement inordinate power by methodically obliterating their constituents’ individual rights, they are doing a magnificent job. If they are hoping to maintain California’s stature as having an impressive production of goods and services, they are, as the saying goes, not all there.

Either way, though, the picture is not pretty. Either way, the state will disintegrate as other jurisdictions from Rome to Detroit have in the past.

This is the time to choose: bail out, roll up your sleeves and fight, or quietly descend into irrelevance.

Our family chose to bail out of California. But we have not chosen to stop fighting for the survival of the Republic our Founding Fathers envisioned.

We send you best wishes.