The migration from blue states to red states continues.
January 16, 2020
ITEM #1: New data from the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrates that taxpayers are continuing to “vote with their feet” by moving out of big-government/high-tax “blue” states and into “red” states that provide access to a much higher quality of life.
As columnist Merrill Matthews pointed out recently in a piece for The Hill, this migration is driven by people who are “increasingly fed up with the high taxes, heavy regulations and increasing social wokeness that have come to characterize most blue states — i.e., those dominated by liberal politicians and policies.”
Instead, what these voters prefer is to live in “a business-friendly, fiscally responsible state that minimizes its tax burden.”
The Census Bureau data only confirms what should be common sense to everyone — that left-wing, big-government policies kill prosperity, limit opportunity, and eventually make a state miserable to live in. Naturally, people want something better for themselves and their families.
Unfortunately, as Matthews notes, some of the refugees are bringing their bad habits with them:
“Some of the people fleeing destructive blue-state taxes and regulations appear to drag their pro-big-government philosophy with them — apparently oblivious to the fact that those policies destroyed the state they are trying to escape.”
This is exactly what’s been happening to Nevada, thanks to Californians who soiled their nest in the Golden State and are now trying to soil our nest here in the Silver State.
And it’s clear that Nevada’s left-wing state policymakers are more than happy to help with the soiling.
As the Las Vegas Review-Journal put it, in its own editorial on the subject:
“During the 2019 Legislature, Democrats passed, and Gov. Steve Sisolak signed, a budget-busting measure allowing state workers to bargain collectively. Progressive lawmakers have also telegraphed a willingness to impose large tax hikes — primarily to fund education — in coming sessions. But as Census Bureau and IRS figures show, if Nevada hopes to remain a net beneficiary when it comes to wealth migration, its elected officials would be far better off emulating Florida and Texas than New York and California.”
Prosperity doesn’t happen by accident, folks. We need to fight for it.
ITEM #2: Democrat-Socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders last week called for the cancellation of “all student debt in America." Responded FOX News’ Brit Hume:
“Would he also return the money to those who paid off their loans? Or would they just lose out for having done the right thing by paying back the money they borrowed?”
Funny how Sanders doesn’t address that question.
ITEM #3: Here’s a recent Associated Press headline:
“New year, same old roaring U.S. economy: Jobless rate low; consumer spending strong”
This at the same time Democrat presidential candidate Tom Steyer is running millions of dollars’ worth of TV ads claiming he’s going to beat President Donald Trump on the economy.
Good luck with that.
ITEM #4: California’s Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsome rolled out his new $222 billion budget proposal last week, which included giving taxpayer-funded health care benefits to “27,000 older low-income immigrants who are in the country illegally.”
California can’t even take care of its homeless population of American citizens, but it’s going to give health care benefits to illegal aliens?
ITEM #5: The Associated Press reported last week that Democrats in the Virginia Legislature “voted to ban firearms at the state Capitol, the first in what’s expected to be many contentious gun votes in coming weeks.”
“I just have to say that this is something that’s been recommended by our Capitol Police,” said House Majority Leader Charniele Herring. “And I think there are times when we sort of have to trust what our law enforcement officers are telling us.”
One problem:
“But Capitol Police Col. Anthony Pike said after the vote that he made no recommendations on whether guns should be banned.”
Yes, there are times we have to trust what our law enforcement officers are telling us. But no, we should never trust what dishonest Democrats tell us about gun-control measures.
ITEM #6: Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) tweeted last week…
“Family farmers should not be forced to pay into organizations that sometimes lobby against their own interests.”
We’re sure she’ll remain consistent by declaring that workers should not be forced to pay dues into unions that sometimes lobby against their own interests, right? Right?
ITEM #7: The late, great Milton Friedman once observed: “The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.”
That quote came to mind while reading this from Victor Joecks’ column in Sunday’s Las Vegas Review-Journal:
“Nevada’s quixotic quest to stop global warming requires more HOV lanes and less cow flatulence, according to government bureaucrats. They also suggest raising the gasoline tax and stopping new homes from having natural gas-powered appliances.”
As Ronald Reagan so famously put it: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government IS the problem."
ITEM #8: Largely unreported by the mainstream media last week was a settlement CNN agreed to in a $250 million defamation lawsuit brought by a Covington High School student, Nick Sandmann, over a confrontation in front of the Lincoln Memorial last year that was instigated by a Native American agitator named Nathan Phillips.
In an edited video broadcast around the world, Sandmann was seen wearing a MAGA hat and doing nothing more than smiling at the tom-tom-beating Phillips after “a group of Black Hebrew Israelites had provoked the confrontation by slinging racial slurs at the students.”
And while the press was all too happy to use Sandmann in their relentless effort to paint President Donald Trump and his supporters as “racists,” the story of the CNN capitulation was “completely ignored by ABC, CBS, MSNBC, and NBC, according to the Media Research Center.”
Go figure. They’re not called “fake news” for nothing.
ITEM #9: O.J. Simpson has sued the Cosmopolitan Resort in Las Vegas for defamation after the hotel/casino kicked him off the property for allegedly being “drunk, disruptive and unruly.”
Simpson, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal, “denies he was belligerent, broke glass or damaged property at the resort's Clique bar.”
“Simpson,” the RGJ report notes, “was acquitted in Los Angeles in the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. A civil court jury found him liable for the killings in 1997 and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to victims' families.”
But he was “defamed” by being kicked out of a hotel for drunk and disorderly?
NOTABLE QUOTES
“There is NO such thing as ‘democratic’ socialism. Socialism is the govt control of the means of production and there’s NOTHING ‘democratic’ about it. They’ll confiscate your freedom and your property, by force if necessary. Socialism is for imbeciles, don’t be an imbecile.” – Dan Bongino
“Bernie Sanders made $1,062,626 in 2016. His charitable donations that year? $10,600 - less than 1% of his income. He campaigns against greed and then hoards 99% of his income for himself.” – Charlie Kirk