One of the most remembered lines in American cinema is from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke. After Captain (Strother Martin), the sadistic prison warden beats to the ground petty criminal Luke played by Paul Newman Captain says, “What we've got here is failure to communicate."

In 1978, Californians voted to change the way their property was being taxed saving thousands of owners from losing their homes and commercial real estate. In the 1970’s, due to a combination of severe inflation, population growth, and increased housing demand properties were routinely reassessed spiking taxes. 

An epidemic of taxes, fees and egregious regulatory obstacles have afflicted the lives of citizens though not the care of law makers or environmentalists. In fact, extreme greenies pray people leave so the state may return to the wild. 

California and Virginia legislatures, both with democrat majorities, are assaulting the Second Amendment, the right to firearms. California continues to pass laws hindering the use of guns -- mandating background checks to purchase weapons, sell them and now buy ammo. 

The seventy-four-year-old Garamendi was first elected to the California Assembly in 1974. He entered politics after graduating from college and serving two years in the Peace Corps. Garamendi has also been elected to the State Senate, as Insurance Commissioner and Lt. Governor of California. He was appointed to be Deputy Secretary of the Interior under President Bill Clinton.

Usually when trouble or miscues are discussed regarding Carden School at Juvenile Hall or TE Mathews (TEM) School for youth on probation the students are the topic. However, this year, it’s the teachers.

Last Saturday night, Panda Express in Marysville had two street guys welcoming customers at the front door. Another sojourner was snoozing along the east window like a big fish in an aquarium, just inches away from diners woofing down Orange Chicken inside. Under California’s Gig Economy law these ‘volunteers’ should be considered employees of the Chinese fast food outlet.

There have been hundreds of local tax increases proposed throughout California to deal with one problem – government employee pension debt. This debt was never authorized by voters but was incurred by politicians desiring the contributions and voting clout of employee unions. 

Liberals have controlled California policies for 50 years. They have an anti-freedom, anti-American agenda. They are line by line implementing a socialist minimalist lifestyle in the state. We can’t use the water, roads and the land. And that’s just the beginning. 

Socialism is not only evil, but deadly. It breaks the financial back of businesses and disrupts the distribution system of goods and services while killing people perceived to be in the way of the utopian mirage. Robert Heinlein said, “There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.” 

The Left hates Thanksgiving – the idea that we should honor God for protection and provisions, and should offer thanks to Him. God, like Bernie’s 2016 campaign got more yes votes at the Democratic Convention but was deleted from the platform language anyway. God and Bernie-the-Jew have something in common – being disrespected and ripped-off. 

Students are a lot like addicts. They don’t do their research. When addicts are asked if they read the label or Googled what was in that stuff they swallowed, shot, or snorted they give a weird look. They bet their lives on, “Yeh, this is good stuff man.” And into the future they go.

Sounds like an ad slogan. California – “2 percent of the states, 12% of the population, 25% of the homeless, 33% of welfare recipients, 100% of the bad ideas in government.” A professional counselor when told there were a lot of homeless in Yuba-Sutter reacted with exasperation, “What can be done with them!?”

Local taxpayers may be getting bond fatigue. Their financial blood is being extracted from every direction - elementary and high schools, junior college, cities, and counties all want more money. Then the state has multiple bond requests for water, education and roads. Don’t forget the levee and utility bonds, now emergency response charges plus more than 100 other taxes that dollar and hundred dollar a taxpayer to death every day.

California’s liberal aristocracy drunk with power has begun the dismantling of the nation’s most powerful economy. Under the climate catastrophe delusion that the sky is falling and managerial incompetence, a state blessed with natural resources in abundance is now rationing.

Venezuela once had one of the strongest economies in the world. The liberal media has cited a number of reasons for its downfall, corruption, mismanagement, falling oil prices, even blaming the United States.

The movement to minimize penalties for drug use combined with Prop 47’s reduction of sentences for criminal behavior has provided the “perfect storm” for more addicts to remain free to commit crimes, become homeless, overdose and die. 

Arresting addicts just might save their life. When the police arrested Paul Roussell with heroin, the 58-year old lobster fisherman had been using for a decade. He progressed from two to ten bags of heroin a day, then up to 17. He thought he was going to die in his addiction. He went to jail first.

Prior to the left’s takeover of California government, utilities were well-run, rates reasonable and living costs manageable. Power outages were rare and brief. Fires were caused by storms or humans but were rarely ever a holocaust, devouring entire cities and hundreds of people.

Socialism is deadly. The current international tragedy in Venezuela is the poster child of the chaos and insanity created by the government takeover of the means of production. The outcome is that the wealthiest country in South America has collapsed.