TexasCHLforum.com

Liberty wrote:Arizona is a state that wishes that more would stay home. They have turned some formerly conservative areas like Phoenix and Tuscon into communist states

Phoenix and Tucson are conservative meccas compared to Flagstaff, which is a beautiful city, but seems to be Arizona's "Berkeley".

Abraham wrote:Thanks TAM, but you're post doesn't address my question...why do the remaining there, STAY there?

Gorgeous geography doesn't explain remaining in a fascist state or does it?

Are the remaining all fascists, super duper, PC fanatics?

Forgive my rant please...

I'm terribly frustrated as to why people are so deluded as to be part of a disgusting state bunch of fascists.

P.S. I'm sure not all are so. Especially the inland. Maybe a fund for helping the refugees of this fascist state come to freedom, instead of Syrian questionables...?

That answer is a little simplistic........

I came here with my job, so it was easy to make the transition. I sold a home in Pasadena in 2006, right at the height of a real estate bubble (it burst just two weeks after I sold), for more than 3 times what I had paid for it in 1999. It was crazy, but I'm not going to turn down a profit like that. But I arrived here cash-rich and already had a job here. So I paid cash for my house, and everything was an upside.

But, jobs aside, for those people who were still there just 3 weeks after I left, who might have been inclined to leave if they could, all of a sudden they were upside down in their mortgages and couldn't afford to sell, even if they had employment opportunities here (or anywhere else outside of California for that matter). So that alone is a big stumbling block.

Also, there's a frequent generalization made about California's voter base that doesn't describe the actual situation. California is a lot like Texas, in that a very large part of Texas's population (according to the 2010 census) is centered in the cities of Dallas (1,197,816), Fort Worth (741,206), Houston (2,099,451), Austin (790,390), San Antonio (1,327,407), El Paso (649,121), and a few others. Those Californian cities — San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego, etc., like ours, also tend to be where liberal politics are found. But the rest of the population in California is like the rest of the population in Texas - rural and fairly conservative. There just aren't enough of them left there to make a difference.

That could be US in a few short years if too many people leave California (and New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and other democrat dominated states) to move here for job reasons - but that is a different discussion. Suffice it to say that California's rural regions don't vote the same way as people do in the cities. Why? Because they understand hard work and the actual value of a dollar. But they may also be unable to leave for various reasons - such as the above example of upside down mortgage loans. It's just not that simple to up and leave...... EVEN if you do it the way that I did it, with a profitably sold home, and an already existing job here. It's difficult and complicated.

rexmitchell wrote:Short answer, yes. They like being told what to do by their government and be able to blame someone else for their problems. No different than liberals elsewhere, they just have a majority there. If they wanted to change it they could, but they don't. The real problem is the people from there moving here and trying to turn Texas into a toilet like California is.

See what I said about population distribution above. Yes, the people in the cities probably are that way, but there are large swathes of the rural population that are not, but they are also either too invested in what they're doing to leave, or they are financially upside down and can't leave.

By the way, the northern half of the state - above the bay area - has an ongoing independence movement to secede from California and create a new state called Jefferson. That movement is largely rural in nature, and if it every succeeds, Jefferson will be a state largely dominated by rural residents instead of metropolitan residents.

But the situation for a lot of people who don't like what is happening to their state, but they don't pick up and leave, is a lot more complicated than the simple question of "why don't they just pick up and leave".

Abraham wrote:Hey, it's a great place for welfare recipients!

One of the many things I don't understand about those remaining in Cal., if one isn't a welfare recipient, why stay?

Yes, it's an incredibly beautiful state no doubt, (I briefly lived there and went to Army basic training there), but the cost of housing, ( a 3 bedroom tract house, 1600 sq. ft. goes for 1/2 million or more, I'm not kidding...) outlandish taxes, ludicrous P.C., fascist/socialist state government, and on and on, why not move to a free state?

C'mon, you recent California residents, what gives?

Or, are you as baffled as am I...?

Let me help you....... The small (2,700 sq ft) white house with the dome roof that is 3rd from the left along the cliff, nestled between the 25,000 sq ft megaterranean on the left and the fake Italian villa on the right in the picture below? That was my mom and dad's house. My dad died in that house in 1990. My wife and I were married on the edge of the cliff, overlooking that blue, clear, water..........so clear that from the top of the cliff, you can see the fish swimming in it. My parents built that house themselves with their own hands, with some help from my brothers and me. Back then, the two houses to the left, and the one to the right, didn't exist. It was just open land back then. My parents' property was 1.2 acres, and included 108 ft of beachfront down below.

My mother just sold that property about a year and a half ago.......for 45 times more than they spent buying the land and building the house. It's an almost embarrassing amount of profit, but I am retired today because of that. That's one nice thing about California.



The California coast is FAR more beautiful and dramatic than the Texas coast.......and I love Texas, and love being a Texan. Texas has what passes for "mountains" in the Big Bend. California has the High Sierras with 14,000+ foot peaks. You can ski and surf in the same day in California. It has desert, it has rolling coastal savannah, it has rainforest, it has hidden foothills. It is one of the most beautiful states in the country.

And it is populated by fascists.

If it weren't, I might never have contemplated moving to Texas.......not because Texas isn't great, but because California would still be great too.... maybe even greater by virtue of the incredible geography.... if it weren't for the fruitcakes that vote there and govern it. That is one reason why I am acutely sensitive to what could happen to Texas if we ever started enacting the kinds of policies passed in California.

California is a de facto fascist state. All of its many charms are just window dressing. Every time I go back there to visit family, I feel like I've entered a third world nation......a replica of Mexico. And not because of the number of Latinos.... but because it has that same feeling that you do not enjoy the same constitutional protections you have "back home".......that you have to "watch what you say".....that maybe the police are NOT your friend.....stuff like that. It's weird. I lived most of my life there until moving here in 2006, but it no longer seems familiar whenever I return there — and it's not because I have changed (although I have). It's because California has changed. Drastically.