To My Dear Cali-phony-a,

Have you lost your ever-loving mind? I used to be proud to tell people I am a fifth-generation Californian, but now I try to hide this fact because you’ve turned California Dreamin’ into a nightmare. Or a bad joke.  

The roads are terrible and the schools are worse. Common decency and courtesy? Forget it.  

There’s human feces on the sidewalks of San Francisco where the median price for a crappy home is a million and a half, and the typical driver on the freeway is texting with one hand, drinking a five dollar cup of Starbucks with another and flipping you off with yet another. This doesn’t leave many other hands to drive the car. 

I know what part of the problem is. You went from an economy largely based on agriculture and oil to one ruled by bits and bytes. Needless to say, each attract their own kind of people.  

Your central valley is still the biggest agriculture phenomenon in the world but the WOOF’s (well off older folks) who live on the coast who either work for the government, are retired from it or are professors who teach communism at universities, are trying to shut off the farmers’ water so they’ll have enough to fill their hot tubs and swimming pools, to water their lawns and succulent gardens and to save the fairy shrimp.  

You kicked cows off the land because they supposedly drank too much water and then planted wine grapes and marijuana farms in their place which are sucking aquifers dry. Self-driving cars can’t come too soon because a large percentage of your drivers are either drunk on wine or stoned on grass. 

You shut down the offshore oil wells because they’re unsightly. I guess you think huge windmills and solar arrays are pretty to look at as you cruise by in your Smart cars not once wondering where the power for charging the batteries came from.  

Many of the snobs who have bumper stickers on their Priuses and Teslas saying, “Tear down the dams”, have no idea without hydroelectric power they’d run out of “gas” at the most inconvenient times. 

 And, has anyone figured out yet what to do with all the old used-up batteries and solar panels, or are they just gonna be stored alongside the spent radioactive nuclear fuel rods? 

I feel like I’m living in a looney bin or never-never land and it didn’t use to be this way. When California was an economic juggernaut, you used to have common sense leaders.  

Ronald Regan was your governor, for gosh sakes! But, uncontrolled illegal immigration and the growth of tech has turned you into an insane asylum.  

Your liberals adopted a hands-off policy in your forests and then wonder why you have an annual conflagration season where entire towns are burned to the ground and the smoke doesn’t clear until November. Californians are such hypocrites.  

You think cow farts are contributing to your precious global warming theory, but the smoke that darkens our sky from forest fires doesn’t? 

I can’t even keep up with all the rules and regulations you’re passing. You can’t build a home on your own property you pay huge property taxes on if you find a certain snail there, and my friend had to get a permit costing $137 just to cut down a dead tree on his own property.  

Another acquaintance is in a tizzy because his pine trees have grown so high they’re blocking his solar panels but the county won’t let him cut down his own trees.  

You have the highest taxes in the country and high-earning people are leaving the state in droves so what did politicians in Sacramento do? They passed a law to tax ex-Californian’s income if they live in another state but spend 60 days of the year here.  

And the most recent scheme to pay $600 to everyone in the state, including illegal aliens, would bankrupt you… as if you weren’t already. 

They say trends start in California and are followed in the other states. If this is the case, to my fellow Californians might I suggest moving to another country, like Texas. 

Sincerely, 

An Ashamed Californian