The "Failure to Read the Room" award for June 2024 has to go to California Governor Gavin Newsom. On Tuesday, the impeccably coiffed California pol took to X to brag about the number of Fortune 500 companies in California - and got dragged,
Huge -- and something you definitely won’t hear on Fox News tonight.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 4, 2024
For the first time in 10 years, CA is officially home to the most Fortune 500 companies.
More than Texas.
More than Florida.
57 incredible and booming companies, right here in the Golden State.… pic.twitter.com/JgElhPi5ji
Leave it to the United Kingdom's Daily Mail to bring us the straight goods on all the replies to that tone-deaf remark.
But many were keen to point out that people have been heading in the other direction with 340,000 more leaving than arriving in 2022.
Los Angeles has 340,000 fewer people than it did in 2019, while San Francisco, San Diego and Santa Clara counties are each around 40,000 people short.
Florida meanwhile gained nearly 250,000, while Texas had 174,261.
California's population is 1.2 percent less than it was in 2019 will not reach pre-pandemic numbers until around 2032 on current trends.
'Expect most of their employees are virtual or work in other states,' tweeted Mericamemed.
'Funny how many people have been voting with their feet and fleeing your state!' added MacAttack001.
In the re-apportionment of House of Representatives seats after the 2020 census, California lost a seat. Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York all lost seats. The winners? Texas gained two seats. Florida gained one. So did North Carolina, Colorado, Montana and Oregon. That's not a perfect picture of people fleeing blue states for red; Ohio, for instance, is a pretty reliably red state these days, and Oregon's city centers have that state moving blue at the national level. Colorado is likely blue due to the influx of Californians that began in the late '80s. But the trend where California is concerned is obvious; the once-and-former Golden State, under Gavin Newsom, is a dumpster fire.
California has the most homeless people in the nation - at almost twice the number of New York, which has the second-highest population of "unhoused individuals." The Newsomville encampments block sidewalks and businesses, and San Francisco in particular - a city which, I remind you, Gavin Newsome was once the mayor - still finds it necessary to put out poop maps. Newsom's California has thrown over a billion dollars - that's a "billion" with a "B", followed by an "illion" - at the problem, and the population keeps growing.
See Related: Newsom's Making CA's Homeless Problem Worse, and So Are His Sycophants Like San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria
Newsom's American Vision: Rubio's Closes 48 Locations Due to 'Rising Cost of Doing Business' in CA
The state is having to cut spending across the board because, under Newsom, a $98 billion budget surplus has become a $30 billion deficit. The middle class is bailing for places like Texas and Florida - and it's costing the state. But hey, California leads the nation in so many ways - in homelessness, in fuel prices - even in potholes. The roads in California, at least the last time I drove the roads of that state (2017) were far worse than our roads here in Alaska, and California doesn't have our winters to contend with.
And Governor Newsom is bragging about Fortune 500 companies.
Look in the dictionary under "clueless," and you'll find Gavin Newsom's photo.
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