@#$! OFF.

P.S. I left Cali after 2 decades. Best move I ever made…

The cost of CA taxpayers educating illegals and children of illegals kinda hurts don’t it? And it dilutes the quality of the education of the tax payers’ kids.

Now who’s kids and grand kids are at risk?

They are making an impact over 1000 miles away from my (and many others) home in no mans land (Dead Horse, the North Slope). My kids are safe, the water and air where I live is 100x cleaner than in California, that is for sure. There is 0 smog in our (or any) little town, we get our water from a nearby glacier fed stream. Alaska has the cleanest water in country. My kids are way better off here and safer here, it is a wonderful place for them to grow up and much safer in many ways than SoCal. The last time I lived in SoCal, 1998-2001, Huntington and Newport Beach had numerous beach closings due to pollution. It was pouring out of the SA river jetty. Is that still happening? Of course Labor Day weekend the toxic levels would somehow drop until Monday morning.

The freeways in CA alone are off gassing WAY more than the oil companies do here. Driving any support vehicle any where near an oil field here is under VERY strict anti-pollution guidelines. The same goes for drilling. LOOK IT UP! Also just go for a drive down to San Pedro some time. What a mess of smoke stacks, chemical vats etc, etc. And that is just one industrial place in SoCal, there are many more.

Its not like there is a shortage of pristine land here, not at all. Alaska is 1/3 the size of the lower 48 states, yet our population is 680 thousand people (CA alone is 38 million). It will be a long, long, long time before we “Destroy Our State”. Most communities are not even on a road system (mine is, thank god).

I think I have said enough, but here is more ammo to debunk your thoughts below:

When our tankers leave Valdez, where are most of them headed? Long Beach CA, to the refinery. We are just quenching a thirst SoCal is requesting. CA are burning it up, not us. And have you looked out into the smog filled horizon in CA? Noticed any the oil rigs out there in the water? Would you have ANY problem receiving a dime of that, or are they keeping it all? Protest to tear them down, and if it works, see how much more that negatively effects CA’s economics. (Not to mention some the best SCUBA diving in CA, look that one up also)

$1200 of the $3200 was an “Energy Rebate” to assist Alaskans in heating our homes this winter. It is the first time for this rebate and likely the last. Thanks Governor Sarah Palin! Lets see what Arnold can do to help Californians this year. (He cant, there is no money in the coffers)

It is in the interest of the oil companies to keep Alaskans here. Almost every job here in some way keeps the oil flowing, even fast food workers indirectly contribute. It would be even more costly for them to relocate people here from the lower 48. Alaskans gladly participate and reap the benefits. You don’t have to pay us to live here, the $2000 per person dividend has never been this large. It just broke the record this year (and will for about the next five years).

I also agree that there certainly a lot of WORSE places to live than CA. The point here being how much are you willing to pay for it and is it worth the expense.

As for the idiot factor, you move to CA and still cant get away from them. Consider ALL the idiots that caused the current crisis. Everyone living beyond there means just to remain up to status so the neighbor’s don’t think you are lesser of a person. Anyone that gets a HELOC for other than maybe home upgrades or the like is… well …. ummm, ya an idiot (tried to put it lightly).

And trust me, at least when I lived in the OC back in the day, the racism very much existed but much more passive and subtle than in TN. Mexicans were looked at as mules to do the work that the average SoCal citizen wont do (I’d say the rest of the country has its hand in that also). The very large Vietnamese communities of Westminister, Garden Grove, Anaheim and nearby, despise whites, and even other asians. Or dress a highly educated black man in suit and send him in for a job interview in Newport Beach, Corona Del Mar, Irvine, HB (add to the list if you must) and see how far that goes. At least the chances of verbal abuse or worse are very low, but like I said its passive.

I will not answer to debates on racism to keep this thread on track (and sorry Chuck P. if this crosses a boundary, remove it and I wont be offended). My point being that SoCal is also the most racist place I have ever lived (I never lived in the south). Everyone just keeps it in the closet.

Swarms of stinging insects (wasps, European wood wasps – hoo boy there are stories there, yellowjackets, hornets, etc).
Humidity you could swim through.
Ice storms in the winter that take your power out for 2 weeks.
A complete and total inability to find sushi.
Armies of idiots. Racists are only a subset of idiots here.
Difficulty finding white-collar jobs.

I’ll keep saying what I’ve said in the past… California offers plenty of revenue growth options due to its high cost of living. The jobs here pay expecting you to be financing (i.e. burning interest) a “normal” lifestyle.

If you wanna get ahead in California, live like a Tennessee redneck. Live in a trailer (you can get ‘em for $30k now, and space rental STILL costs less than property tax on $400kish homes!), air conditioning isn’t needed, you can drive the same car for 8+ years (not like it’ll rust out on you here), etc.

Live like this as long as you can put up with it, and save money for the future. Your rate of accrual while living far below your means, will most likely outpace that of someone living AT their means in a cheaper place. Quality of life in the meantime may possibly be another argument, but I’m happy enough…

And as for your pool, I hope you can afford the water in it and heating it in the winter. If so, great, more power to you. That means you can afford to live in LA. If I struggled, I could do it too. I would rather not struggle to live in that area, it is not worth it to me, not even for good weather.

I do like Washington, but not the Seattle area. It is a nice city to visit. The California exodus kind of ruined it, drove the prices and traffic up. Now Seattle is like LA, but with bad weather, might as well live in LA, I agree.
BUT there are some really great places to live around the rest of the State of Washington. South West Tacoma area is one of them.

The barn door has been wide-open since 1984 – and it still is wide open today in 2008. The conservative estimate is that 10,000 Mexicans illegal enter the US and no one does anything about it except from some really intimidating Minutemen let me tell you.

I agree with you. 10,000 illegals a day is a huge problem by itself. The far bigger problem is that American citizens are not holding elected leaders accountable. They’d rather watch “Dancing with the Staahs”.

I have great doubts that the US will ever solve this problem satisfactorily. In my view every incumbent in Congress should be voted out of office in November regardless of party.

If Americans were smart, they’d register all of these illegal workers and force them to pay state and federal income taxes or leave. Pipe dream, I know.

Well, in the meantime, you’ll forgive me if I partake in as many fiestas as possible as we all wait for the 2nd Great Depression to slam into us at light speed.

I also understand she got into a major tiff with blogger Jim the Realtor, which was later resolved, but there were some pretty harsh things posted on her site. Jim is one of the most level-headed agents in San Diego. If I remember correctly, SB was first a blogger and later an agent. To me she looks like a Gary Watts wannabe… of course who wouldn’t want to if you didn’t have to sell your soul? He makes good money from speaking engagements. Fortunately for the both of them, most (not all) agents are of the sunshine-gullible type.

Anyway, I may be wrong about her, but my point is how her article is relevant to this this thread and supports your bullet items. I liked it.

Schahrzad Berkland is an interesting character. I used to even have her on my blogroll.

As one of my previous posters put it: “She’s the Gary Watts of Bubble Bloggers”

I’ll leave it at that.

Chuck Ponzi

Schahrzad Berkland (the author and web site owner), is not a doomsday theorist like many of us. She is a successful and seemingly scrupulous realtor in San Diego. Her site is pretty unbiased, and shows the good and the bad of the SoCal economy. I am not sure what triggered her to write such a gloomy post, but she is very much a realist. There are some facts there for support. Check it out.

As mentioned above, the infrastructure is falling apart. Right now the CA prison system is being sued for over 8 Billion because the prisons medical facilities are substandard. And it looks like they will get it. That is yet another bill to add to the overwhelming CA budget shortfall. When was the last time state money subsidized YOUR medical bills? The wildfire crews, the water shortages, energy shortages, environmental considerations, and on and on and on….

MARK MY WORDS, ARNOLD WILL RAISE CA TAXES (AK Steve, 8-13-2008) whether he likes it or not (he doesn’t). I think he is waiting for a magic bag of money to fall from the sky, and things are just deteriorating. What other choice does he have? The CA democrat majority will go along with it for a while but when the corporations start heading for Nevada (no taxes at all) and elsewhere, the population will follow (it is already starting actually, Toyota is on their way out due to CA taxes and having to match high wages for their employees to live there). Then the general tax base will fall apart. Wow! What a scene, I’ll make sure I have lots of popcorn for this feature.

Not quite. Even putting aside the troubled inland counties (where home prices have fallen another $1,000 in the time it took me to write this sentence), there are plenty of areas of North Orange County and the OC Foothills (Fullerton, Anaheim Hills, La Palma, Brea, Ladera Ranch, Lake Forrest) that are safe, have excellent schools and are w/in 30-40 minutes of the business hub around the John Wayne Airport where you can find a 2000 square foot home for just under $600,000 and a small condo for less than $300,000. And all of those areas I mentioned are within an hour drive of the beach in the summertime. I I’d recommend you check those areas out before giving up on So Cal completely.