People used to say California was the future of America in preview form.
Geez, I hope not!
It's one of the larger states and still the most populous state, though it's lost several hundred thousand residents who have fled the Democrat super-majority that rules there with some zany priorities.
Its current leader (political presider might be a better word) is Gavin Newsom, the modern-day example of the Brylcreem man with a fixed hood of hair. He has a shady background but fancies himself as a future president.
Watching what he did to San Francisco and now the entire state of California, regular Americans who are not diehard progressives should be afraid, very afraid.
We'll see how that plays out in a couple years, hopefully not well. But meantime, Newsom and gang have never seen a tax dollar they didn't want to spend. That's what Democrats do with other people's money, spend it for them.
My RedState colleagues have written much about Newsom here and here. And not everyone knows that Newsom's state government is an active issuer of commercial licenses to drive big rigs to illegal immigrants who don't speak or read English. Unable to read road signs or pass simple driving tests for such heavy vehicles, they've been responsible for numerous fatalities.
In fact, at the moment, Newsom et al this budget year are set to spend around 18-billion more dollars than they have in income. Golden State residents are already the most heavily-taxed people in the land, at least until New York City's new socialist mayor really gets going with his free universal daycare, free city buses, and city-run grocery stores.
No Democrat ever considered cutting the vast amount of desired spending to match their revenues, as families make their own spending match their income. One of the new ideas now emerging to cover California's huge deficit is to levy a five-percent tax on the fortunes of the state's billionaires.
Advocates rush to point out this would be a "temporary tax." Honestly, have you ever seen such a thing?
This new levy is likely to cause a flight of rich folks from California, along with the jobs and ideas they create. This and more is the subject of this week's brief audio commentary, which you can access by clicking right here:
This week's Sunday post was another in the unfolding series of Memories from my decades in journalism that have appeared here on RedState. Each one contains links to all the previous ones.
The main character in this one was Helen Myers, one of the favorite people I've met and written about during all these years. She was one of those hardworking can-do people like the folks who settled the Midwest and West earlier in our history.
She was always doing something for other people, including founding a little local library to teach townspeople the same excitement from book-reading that Helen's mother gifted her so many years ago.
The Memory also detailed some rather unlikely coincidences over the years. And I describe the afternoon I followed a Soviet satellite dictator and his portly wife as they tried to buy Macy's main Manhattan store out of women's underwear and men's socks to take back to their Communist paradise.
They did not experience a happy ending.
The most recent audio commentary grew out of a realization from a visit by one of my sons with his young son. It was how the hallowed Christmases of my childhood have changed over these passing decades.
They've become bronzed into treasured memories like parents used to do with their baby's shoes. The special thing about such irreplaceable memories is that they last forever, or at least as long as you do.
Nothing can take them away because, in the end, all any of us, rich or poor, possess are our own memories.
