A few days back, on her newly slotted prime-time show, “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham kicked off her monologue with the headline, “These are not leaders.” A photo of California’s finest – Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi – accompanied the declaration.
People seem to think conservative news outlets exaggerate the extent to which California is in decline.
Of course, because they have a certain political story they want to tell, they only focus on the bad things happening here.
But they are not exaggerating. The bad things are bad. And they are getting worse.
California’s Famous Foursome
One woman interviewed said “People don’t feel safe in this city, it’s a reality,” commenting on the situation in San Francisco. “It’s not a media ploy.”
The Wall Street Journal asked this week, “Can San Francisco Save Itself from the Doom Loop?” referring to the cyclical relationship between homelessness, drug abuse and crime.
Nancy Pelosi, whose husband was assaulted in their own home in one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods (although all of that was pretty shady), has commented about the crime in her hometown:
“It’s absolutely outrageous. Obviously it cannot continue. But the fact is that there is an attitude of lawlessness in our country that springs from I don’t know where.”
Really Nancy? You don’t? I can give you five off the top of my head. Not prosecuting criminals. Destruction of the family unit. Poor education. Staggering costs of real estate and rent. A border crisis. All of which Democratic policies have contributed to.
California’s so-called leaders seem to be clueless as to how their agendas are literally killing people, all while wasting millions of dollars in taxpayer money trying to figure it out.
Gavin Newsom is more focused on amending the Constitution than helping his own constituents. Kamala Harris says she wakes up every day and worries about not the plight of people in the town where she rose to the ranks, but “democracy.”
Meanwhile, we have a senator that is ninety years old.
Can we please return some sanity to this state?
Newsom, the man who would be responsible for replacing her should she fail to complete her term, has stated, ““I have no objectivity on this topic.” You can simultaneously care about someone and see them as unfit for certain tasks.
It’s how most adult children feel about their parents driving.
I took a trip to downtown L.A. the other day. It’s not a pretty site. Homeless tents line the tunnels and streets. Some of the pedestrians on the sidewalks look like characters straight out of Night of the Living Dead. Others simply wander out in the middle of the street.
As you enter Malibu, there is a flashing sign typically used to alert drivers to construction zones or traffic pattern disruptions that reads “Don’t leave valuables in car – frequent thefts in area.”
My Story: The Good Old Days in California
Some have commented on my articles, saying I must be a trust fund child because of my conservative positions.
Once I could pick myself up off the floor from laughing so hard, I realized you have to be these days to be comfortable in Los Angeles and, more and more, anywhere in California.
It didn’t always used to be this way.
I moved to West Hollywood in 1998, pretty much flat broke.
I scored my first job at a swanky retail mart in Santa Monica called Fred Segal, which was as far from your middle America “mart” as tofu is from steak.
While I wasn’t living large, I could afford a nice two-bedroom top-floor duplex with hardwood floors and windows that opened up to a mini balcony overlooking one of the popular palm tree-lined streets a stone’s throw from CBS studios on Beverly Boulevard.
I shared rent with my roommate (a whopping $750), who worked as an assistant at a top agency (so L.A.) and still had money to pay for Tae-Bo classes in the Valley and afford the gas to get there.
Not to mention treat myself every once and a while to my favorite Chinese chicken salad at Chin-Chin or California Chicken Café.
Eventually, I found a career doing something I loved, and while I never got rich off of it, I enjoyed my life as opportunities continued to unfold.
That is not possible in today’s L.A. Young girls with stars in their eyes may not even make it working one of L.A.’s staple jobs – waitressing – without help from mommy and daddy back in Oklahoma.
And that’s a shame.
California used to be the place where young people came to chase their dreams. More and more, it seems to be the land where dreams die.
While the Golden State leaders’ policies have led me to sour on this state, there was a time I truly loved it. I don’t want to leave here feeling disgruntled and dismayed about the place I called home for almost 20 years, but it will be challenging not to.
California Is Truly Dying
Laura Ingraham is right. Mob robberies, bodies in duffle bags, and rampant drug use is the new norm, and the only ones who aren’t affected by the lawlessness and corrosion that have infiltrated the state are those with enough money to protect themselves from it. And even they are leaving.
Jennifer Galardi is the politics and culture editor for 19FortyFive.com. She has a Master’s in Public Policy from Pepperdine University and produces and hosts the podcast Connection with conversations that address health, culture, politics and policy. In a previous life, she wrote for publications in the health, fitness, and nutrition space. In addition, her pieces have been published in the Epoch Times and Pepperdine Policy Review.
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