More Biden corruption comes to light, California gets even more crazy, and two former European Prime Ministers step out of the spotlight in different ways.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer revealed Thursday that he expects there is evidence of at least $20-$30 million being made in illegal payments by foreign nationals to the Biden family.
Appearing on Fox Business, Comer stated “We have more bank records coming in but we’re gonna exceed $10 million this week but I think we’ll get up to $20-$30 million.”
He further noted that it is becoming clear that the Bidens potentially engaged in bribery, influence peddling, and money laundering.
“This is going to be hard for Biden to explain, this is not going to go away, and I think eventually the mainstream media is going to start asking the real questions,” Comer added.
“They know there’s something wrong here. They know all the allegations have merit, because of where Joe Biden was, because of what we’ve seen on tape before, where Joe Biden bragged about firing that prosecutor,” he added,
“They know that this family created these shell companies. They know this family was money-laundering, they were profiting off Joe Biden’s influence,” Comer asserted, adding “The media knows that – they’re just not covering it.”
“I can assure you: there is more money that we’re going to be able to identify, that was transferred between foreign nationals in other countries and the Biden family,” Comer further emphasized, adding “I think, eventually, the mainstream media will turn on Joe Biden and start asking the real questions: ‘What did your family do to receive all this money?’”
Speaking of Biden family corruption: “House Oversight Panel Subpoenas Former Hunter Biden Associate Devon Archer…[The committee] is particularly interested in Archer’s involvement in the family’s international business deals, which included countries like China, Russia, and Ukraine.” Archer was in Global Seneca Partners with Hunter Biden and John Kerry’s stepson.
“Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison stepped down this week as the progressive-run city struggles with homicides, a drug crisis, and a troubling rise in violence involving teenagers.” Time to pull this out again:
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s longest-serving prime minister, dead at 86. Berlusconi revived Italy’s economy, but then couldn’t keep it out of the PIIGS. But for a whilehe kept the wolves at bay.
Also stepping out of the spotlight this week: Former UK Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned from Parliment. Other than getting Brexit accomplished, Johnson’s tenure seemed all sizzle and no steak.
In April 2023, an unelected Board in California voted to force trucking companies to buy zero-emission trucks. This technology is at early-stage adoption in limited segments, and infrastructure buildout is lagging behind what is required to support electrification in our industry. The Board unanimously advanced the Advanced Clean Fleet rule to accompany California’s equally tough electric vehicle sales mandate regulation, the Advanced Clean Truck rule, that would require truck manufacturers to sell zero-emission vehicles. These two regulations together are designed to create an artificial electric vehicle market sooner rather than later.
This new rule was made at the behest of the environmental lobby, which pushed for unrealistic targets and unachievable timelines that will undoubtedly lead to higher prices for goods delivered to the state and fewer options for consumers. ATA has strongly opposed this rule from the outset and testified at a hearing in Sacramento to express the trucking industry’s concerns directly to the Board.
Snip.
Today’s clean diesel trucks can spend 15 minutes fueling anywhere in the country and then travel about 1,200 miles before fueling again. In contrast, today’s zero-emission trucks:
Have significantly less range of about 150-330 miles between charging or refueling;
Need to be charged or refueled more often and for longer periods of time leading to unproductive downtime;
Cost two to three times more than a comparable clean-diesel truck; and
Weigh thousands of pounds more, reducing payload capacity and requiring more trucks and drivers to move the same amount of freight.
Also: “The California Energy Commission estimates that 157,000 chargers will need to be installed by 2030 to support California’s heavy-duty vehicle electrification goals.” Assuming there’s enough Lithium in the world for the batteries… (Hat tip: TPPF.)
Hope for San Francisco? Residents replace drug-addicted transients on their local sidewalks with large planters.
Here’s a bit of appliance review that, alas, I probably can’t profit from in any way, since Amazon doesn’t seem to sell the model.
My old Whirpool washer died in December, so I did some research as to what washer I should be. And most of my research was watching this video:
And the two brands he recommended were:
The Speed Queen TC5000, for which I was quoted delivery times of 6-8 weeks, and
The Maytag MVWP575GW, which I could order directly from Maytag in about a week for around a grand, plus shipping and install. So that’s what I did.
That’s more than you’re going to pay for an average washer these days. I’ve been using it for six months now, and I’m pretty satisfied.
What’s so special about it? It uses commercial grade mechanical parts instead of cheap plastic parts and fragile electronics.
It’s a dumb washer rather than a smart one. This has many benefits:
Once you press Start, instead of spending 20 or 30 seconds with the “Sensing” LED lit up, it simply starts filing the tub with water.
If you forget to add something you meant to wash, you press the same Start button, lift the lid, put it back down, and press it again, and the washer simply starts washing where it left off. It doesn’t blink lights at you accusingly and refuse to run until you unplug and replug the machine.
So far it’s never stopped mid-cycle for no discernible reason.
It finishes washing quicker, even with a presoak and extra spin.
America’s misguided energy- and water-saving regulations have left us with an array of devices that inferior to earlier generations of dumb devices at the main job they were designed for.
Here’s a nice, short rant from Paul Chato (who I’d not heard of before) on why Disney’s social justice re-imagining of classic franchises fail: It’s not just their woeful ignorance of their own franchise, it’s the woeful ignorance of the vaster connected universe of fandom/geekdom/nerdom.
“The thing that really ties those of us who grew up reading comic books together is not the primary properties like Superman, Batman, Spider-man, or even Lord of the Rings, but the peripheral stuff or peripheral interests. When we talk to each other, we’ll also reference video games, anime, manga, computers, astronomy, network protocols, synthesizers, cars.”
Put a bunch of us nerds together, even complete strangers, into a room, well, Heaven help you, and soon we’ll be talking about Cowboy Bebop or Akira Kurosawa, or NES, Atari, ColecoVision, Ultraman, Kirby, Adams, McFarland, Studio Ghibli, second breakfasts, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Fireball XL5, Scooby-Doo, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Matrix (only the first one), Terminator, Blade Runner, Aliens, Herge, Miller, Robert E. Howard, Harryhausen, Lasseter, good scotch. Has anyone heard Kathleen Kennedy talk about any of those things? Of course not, and I can hear you laughing.
That’s a pretty good name check list, though I’d add Robert A. Heinlein and H. P. Lovecraft (among others).
But it’s an interesting point: Social justice showrunners are woefully ignorant of vast swathes of knowledge held by the fandoms they hold in such withering contempt.
Evidently it is the deepest desire of Democratic Party activists to turn the streets of American cities into needle-strewn wastelands of drug addicts openly shooting up and shitting on the street. Because that’s the results that the Democratic Party drug- and crime-tolerant policies create time and time again.
Here’s a video of the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.
“This is Kensington Philadelphia the center of America’s drug epidemic overrun with a drug known as tranq, a mixture of horse tranquilizer and Fentanyl that’s turning people there into real life zombies.”
Needles are everywhere on the streets, despite the remaining law-abiding occupants and shop owners sweeping them up in the morning.
“People come here from all over. They drive here and then they never leave. So everyone comes out here to get drugs. This is the hub, and you can shoot them up and cops wouldn’t do anything about it.”
“It’s crazy. You’ll see one block that looked clean, and then you go to the next block over: feces.”
“A new problem 24/7 gambling [machines]…they’re in every store.”
“Everyone’s using tranq.”
Even the drug addicts call frforom bringing the military in to clean up the place.
Unmentioned: Philadelphia’s DA is Larry Krasner, another George Soros-backed stooge. Vote for a Soros stooge, get 24/7 open air drug markets in your city, absolutely free!
The Ukrainian military has launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces, opening a crucial phase in the war aimed at restoring Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and preserving Western support in its fight against domination by Moscow.
Ukrainian troops, including specialized attack units armed with Western weapons and trained in NATO tactics, intensified their strikes on front-line positions in the country’s southeast on Wednesday night, according to four people in the country’s armed forces, beginning a significant push into Russian-occupied territory.
By “southeast” they mean “Zaporizhzhia,” where most observers have expected the main counteroffensive operational push to come.
Reasons for expressing some skepticism is the MSM source, but everyone has been expecting the counteroffensive to kick off for months. Another reason to assume the counter-offensive is real: Western armor has finally been definitively spotted among Ukrainian forces, including Leopard 2s, Bradleys and French AMX-10s.
“More worryingly was what we saw with the tactics of the armored group. Grouping vehicles closer together like that is just asking for trouble.” But Suchomimus notes we saw some stumbles like trhis at the beginning of the very successful Kherson offensive as well.
Independent journalist Wayne Dolcefino alleges that Lina Hidalgo’s hand-picked election coordinator Clifford Tatum deliberately shorted paper ballots to Republican precincts.
“If you’re a Democrat, you didn’t like the KHOU investigation that cites more than 120 locations that were under supplied with ballot paper, while millions of ballot sheets were available in a warehouse.”
Lots of precinct judges, of both parties, testified that locations ran out.
“It’s not just ballot paper problems. Election judges reported 119 polls, nearly 15%, that didn’t open up on time on election morning. Late in the day, a district judge ordered that polls stay open until 8 PM, but a lot of election judges either didn’t get the message, or didn’t care when they did. 64 polls closed at 7 PM even after the judge’s order.”
“It should force judge Hidalgo to release all remaining public records.”
Of course, she’s waging a lawsuit to prevent just that…
Russia is doing what it always does: Lying about its battlefield achievements. Recently they claimed to have taken out a Patriot missile defense system sent to Ukraine. YouTuber Suchomimus has looked into their claims by comparing them with several relevant satellite images of the site and determined: Not so much.
Update on “the May airstrike in which Russia claimed to have hit two Patriot SAM launchers: we’ve had some newly released satellite imagery which does show signs of damage at the air base in question. However, is not as it seems.”
Satellite images show that one of the two impact craters were present before the Patriot system was installed.
A time sequence shows that the other crater was not in any of the locations where newly dug emplacements showed where new Patriot equipment was stationed.
The U.S. admitted that a Patriot was damaged by the attack, very possibly from shrapnel, but that it was minor and quickly repaired. Satellite image analysis supports this claim.
“While these satellite images are interesting, and they do confirm an impact at the airport, they don’t show evidence of a destroyed Patriot.”
I have an in-process post titled “League of the Boned” in embryonic form, which was going to be about how each country in the League has been screwed by deficit spending, high interest rates and endemic corruption. But there so much boning to write about, and so many members of the League, that I thought it best to split it up into individual posts.
First up is Turkey, not because it’s the most boned, but the one whose immediate boning is made more acute by recent events, namely Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s reelection.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s supporters are celebrating after Turkey’s long-time president won Sunday’s vote, securing another five years in power.
“The entire nation of 85 million won,” he told cheering crowds outside his enormous palace on the edge of Ankara.
But his call for unity sounded hollow as he ridiculed his opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu – and took aim at a jailed Kurdish leader and the LGBT community.
The opposition leader denounced “the most unfair election in recent years”.
Mr Kilicdaroglu said the president’s political party had mobilised all the means of the state against him and he did not explicitly admit defeat.
International observers said on Monday that, as with the first round on 14 May, media bias and limits to freedom of expression had “created an unlevel playing field, and contributed to an unjustified advantage” for Mr Erdogan.
President Erdogan ended with just over 52% of the vote, based on near-complete unofficial results. Almost half the electorate in this deeply polarised country did not back his authoritarian vision of Turkey.
Ultimately, Mr Kilicdaroglu was no match for the well-drilled Erdogan campaign, even if he took the president to a run-off second round for the first time since the post was made directly elected in 2014.
But he barely dented his rival’s first-round lead, falling more than two million votes behind.
Snip.
The president admitted that tackling inflation was Turkey’s most urgent issue.
The question is whether he is prepared to take the necessary measures to do so. At an annual rate of almost 44%, inflation seeps into everyone’s lives.
The cost of food, rent and other everyday goods has soared, exacerbated by Mr Erdogan’s refusal to observe orthodox economic policy and raise interest rates.
The Turkish lira has hit record lows against the dollar and the central bank has struggled to meet surging demand for foreign currency.
“If they continue with low interest rates, as Erdogan has signalled, the only other option is stricter capital controls,” warns Selva Demiralp, professor of economics at Koc university in Istanbul.
Tiny problem: Strict capital controls tend not to work. By the standards of the Middle East, Turkey is fairly open and fairly modern, and getting around currency controls is one of the use cases that cryptocurrencies are ideal for.
Indeed, the currency problem is so severe that Turkey’s foreign currency reserves just turned negative.
The Turkish central bank’s net forex reserves dropped into negative territory for the first time since 2002, standing at $-151.3 million on May 19, as the bank – following Erdogan’s strict orders – scrambled to counter demand for hard currencies (USD, gold, crypto) ahead of Sunday’s runoff vote.
Forex demand in Turkey surged to record levels ahead of May 14 on companies’ and individuals’ expectations that the lira, which lost 44% in 2021 and 30% in 2022, will plunge after the vote (spoiler alert: those fears have been justified).
As we discussed last week, the central bank’s forex reserves have sagged in recent years due to costly market interventions and other efforts to cool forex demand. The bank’s net reserves dropped by $2.48 billion in the week to May 19, to their lowest level since February 2002. They have dropped $27.7 billion since the end of 2022, and were at negative $3 billion as of May 19. The net forex reserves would be even more negative if outstanding swaps, courtesy of foreign central banks and which stood at $33.50 billion on Wednesday, are deducted (as they should be since the CBRT will have to repay these at some point).
And while the endgame here is clear to all, few are willing to say it out loud for fear of retaliation by the Erdogan regime (no really, he has been known to throw people in jail for recommending a Turkish lira short); yet one bank which decided to double down on Goldman’s dire view of how it all plays out is Morgan Stanley, which in a note last week (available to pro subscribers in the usual place), wrote that the turkish lira plummeting to 28 by the end of the year, is likely in the cards (in our view, that’s a rather optimistic take since the lira is about to become the new Bolivar where soon new zeroes are added daily if not hourly).
This is, I think, a bit of an exaggeration, since Turkey is a much bigger and more important country (and economy) than Venezuela, and while they’ve done several terribly stupid things with their economy, they haven’t gone full socialist starvation scenario on it.
The biggest concern when Erdogan came to party was his Islamist roots, and how he dismantled Turkey’s own peculiar systems of checks and balances, namely that anytime the government would move too far in an Islamist direction, the military would step in, depose the current government, rule for a while, and then step down once things had calmed down again. That doesn’t look very much like classic western democracy, but it served well enough for Turkey, partially insulating it from the wild swings between different despots common in the rest of the Islamic world.
The bad news is that Erdogan demolished those checks and balances in his drive to centralize power in his own hands, purging the military of anyone he thought might possibly oppose him. The good news is that, after all that, he turned out to mostly be a typical Middle Eastern strongman rather than a fervent jihadi. The bad news is that he’s also a complete economic ignoramus, and his stupidity is making Turkey’s economic problems much worse.
Here Patrick Boyle explains just how stupid:
On Erdogan’s idea that low-interest rates can cure inflation: “The official annual inflation rate in Turkey was 43.7% as of April. This is actually down from the 80% inflation rate that Turkey saw the prior year. There is no guarantee that this slowdown will persist. There is in fact widespread suspicion that the official numbers understate an inflation rate that according to independent experts is actually closer to 100%.”
The February earthquakes didn’t help.
“Another term for President Erdoğan would likely imply a continuation of the current policies with a heightened risk of persistent very high inflation and severe currency pressures.”
“The high inflation, along with government largess and efforts to prop up the currency are threatening economic growth and could push the country into a deep recession.”
The Lira is trading near record lows against the dollar.
“Net foreign assets, a proxy for the size of Turkey’s foreign currency holdings, have declined to minus $13 billion dollars from $1.4 billion dollars a year ago, according to central bank data.”
“Those figures include billions of dollars in funds borrowed from the domestic banking system through swaps. Pressure on international reserves has been ‘significant in recent weeks’ as the government made efforts to prop up the economy ahead of Sunday’s elections.”
“Turkey’s foreign currency and gold reserves tumbled $17 billion dollars in the six weeks leading up to the first round of the election according to the FT, a decline of 15 percent.”
“Turkey had a painful experience of high and chronic inflation from 1975 through to 2004 caused by political instability, poor institutions, high public sector budget deficits and depreciation of the Turkish Lira which culminated in a severe financial crisis in 2000-2001.”
“The establishment of an independent central bank in 2001, which focused mainly on fighting inflation along with tight fiscal policies implemented at the same time brought inflation under control.”
“During his election campaign, Erdogan showed no intention of changing his policies, doubling down on his claims that low interest rates would help the economy grow by providing cheap credit to increase Turkish manufacturing and exports. ‘You will see as the interest rates go down, so will inflation’ he told supporters in Istanbul in April.”
With the cost-of-living crisis on many voters’ minds, Erdogan launched a range of expensive policies in the lead up to the election aimed at reducing the immediate impact of inflation on voters. He raised the minimum wage repeatedly, announced a free month of natural gas for consumers, reduced electricity prices increased civil servant salaries and changed government policies to allow millions of Turks to receive early government pensions. Just days before the first round of the election He gave a 45% pay rise to 700,000 Turkish public sector workers, saying he would “not let anyone be crushed by inflation”.
So he combated inflation by guaranteeing there would be more inflation, just like Joe Biden.
Boyle thinks Turkeys problems can be solved by adopting sane economic policies. “For a country in crisis, Turkey’s problems are not that difficult to solve – it is not a total basket case economy like some other emerging markets. The country mostly just needs a sensible interest rate policy and an independent central bank. Turkey has a lot of positives, it has a diversified economy, growth is good, it has good demographics and an educated workforce.”
This is true, but it was also true before Erdogan got into power and screwed things up. Peter Zeihan thinks that Turkey has the right mix of geography and demographics to be a future regional power. But there’s an awful difficult present to get through before that happens…
We’ve already covered why Russia’s T-14 Armata tank isn’t all that. Here’s a somewhat more balanced look from David Willey of The Tank Museum:
The first ten minutes covers the basics of Soviet tank design (the philosophy of favoring firepower over just about everything else, and how political rivalries led to various Soviet tank designs). Then he goes into the details of the Armata.
Much of the Armata comes from the abandoned T-95 project. “Although the T14 is looked at as new, it actually relies on systems and ideas from some much earlier projects.”
“The smoothbore 2A821M 125mm cannon is an upgrade from the weapon on the T-90. Russian sources claim its muzzle energy is far greater compared to the Rheinmetall 120mm gun.”
The unmanned turret means no need for a fume extractor.
Theoretical fire rate of 10-12 rounds a minute. I suspect this is highly optimistic and the fire rate is probably the slower one round every ten seconds we already covered.
“The new Vacuum One armor-piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding-sabot round is fitted with a 90cm [900mm] long rod penetrator. That’s unusually long. It is said to be capable of penetrating one meter of rolled homogeneous armor at about 2000 meters.” That is quite long. The rod penetrator on the U.S. M829 APFSDS round is 684mm long. Western consensus seems to be that the Vacuum One and Vacuum Two penetrator cores are made of depleted uranium or tungsten.
“The A853 engine was a copy of a German x-shaped engine from the war years…the A853 was not however a reliable product, and from all reports it seems to have had major issues.”
When working, it theoretically has twice the horsepower of a T-72 engine and capable of reaching 56 miles and hour with a range of 500 kilometers.
“The T14 has new 70 centimeter diameter road wheels, and an electronically adjustable suspension system on at least the first two road wheels, and possibly the last ones, and [that’s] called an active suspension system but is fitted over a main torsion bar suspension. It also has rubber-blocked tracks.”
The Armata’s sealed crew compartment will have air conditioning, which was introduced in Russian tanks with the T-90M in 2016. (Starting with M1A2 SEPv2, the Abrams has cooling, but it’s mainly geared toward cooling the electronics.)
Digital screens with remote cameras.
“The gunner can see his target, but he can also choose through those screens a relevant ammunition type.”
“The chassis and turret are equipped with a ‘Malachit’ dual explosive reactive armor system, and on the front sides and the top there’s stealth coatings.” Assuming the ERA is actually there and not fake, as on so many captured and destroyed Russian tanks in Ukraine.
“The active protection system has a radar to detect and tract incoming anti-tank munitions it states a maximum speed of incoming interceptable target is 1700 meters a second, or Mach 5.” Let’s just say I have grave doubts that it actually works. The Pentagon went with Israel’s Trophy active protection system over Raytheon’s homegrown Quick Kill system for M1A2 SEPv3, and Raytheon is good at developing reliable, high tech weapons. Unlike Russia.
“The top of the vehicle is still vulnerable to top attack munitions.” So much for defense against Javelin. Which first entered service in 1996.
“However, on closer inspection a number of these technologies and features are not fitted to some of the vehicles. Some you can see there’s covers where the technology or that piece of equipment should be on others is fitted for, but not with.” And that was on parade demonstration vehicles before sanctions. Odds that Russia would have enough parts to fully equip high tech parts to all Armatas supposedly in Ukraine would appear to be slim.
Though reusing a lot of features from the abandoned T-95 project, “the new T14 tank is a radical departure in sense of its scale, its layout, its design features and technology from that era of evolutionary Soviet-designed vehicles.”
“Originally intended to replace all Russian army tanks, the Russian military had planned to acquire about 2,300 T-14s between 2015 and 2020…but by 2018, delays were announced until at least 2025. Subsequently announcements indicated the apparent cancellation of the main production run.” In between it announced it was going to build 100 of them, though that number may have included other armored vehicles using the same platform.
“The [Russian] Deputy Minister of Defense said, quote, there is currently no need to mass produce the Armata when it’s older predecessors, namely the latest variants of the T-72, remain effective against American, German, and French counterparts.” Here the Deputy Minister of Defense is engaged in a time-honored Russian rhetorical device known as “lying his ass off.”
“The gradual tightening of sanctions, and then with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the problem of sourcing the essential microelectronics has come to the fore. Russian industry has been critically dependent on foreign microelectronics and associated technologies. These are no longer available due to sanctions.”
“The sights from France and other components are no longer available.”
“Other issues come into play that affect the wider Russian defense industries. One is the perennial Russian problem of corruption. Since 2011, a staggering 72,000 officials have appeared before the course on corruption charges.”
“The mythic way many Russian military systems and products have been promoted and sold has met a crushing reality in Ukraine.”
Even though there may only be 20 test vehicles available, there is an expectation they will make appearance in the battle. A British ministry defense statement said, and I quote, any T-14 deployment is likely to be a high-risk decision for Russia. 11 years in development, the program has been dogged with delays reduction in planned Fleet size and reports of manufacturing problems. If Russia deploys a T-14 it will likely primarily be for propaganda purposes. Production is probably only in the low tens, while commanders are unlikely to
trust the vehicle in combat.
So even a balanced, objective analysis of the T-14 Armata isn’t particularly optimistic about its chances in combat.
Californians continue to flee the no-longer golden state, and many of them end up in Texas. ABC7 News in the bay area interviewed eight who fled as to why California dreaming has become a nightmare.
Some takeaways:
“In the span of two years, California’s population has dropped by more than a half million people.”
“I was assaulted twice on the BART.”
“I’ve never had a house this large in my life.”
“It is definitely a lower cost of living in Texas.”
“The home that I once remembered and knew back in the 1980s and the 1990s, a lot of that’s gone now.”
“Home prices are lower [in Texas], and there’s plenty of job opportunities.”
The former mayor of Ventura, CA moved to Texas in 2014. “One of the things I greatly fear about Venture and elsewhere in coastal California is that it’s not a place for everybody anymore, and especially not a place for young families. It’s a place basically where older, affluent people now live. And I think something has really been lost there.”
“Home prices in Texas cost less than half of homes in California. U.S. Census Bureau numbers show that the middle and lower classes are leaving California at a higher rate than the wealthy.”
“Many who have left in recent years say they simply couldn’t afford to stay.”
A mother with six kids says it’s simply impossible to afford a house large enough in California. “I feel like the California Dream was the American Dream in my grandparents’ and parents’ era. That’s just not possible for our generation to live that American Dream in that state anymore. It’s so expensive that you’re struggling every month just to get by and pay your rent and your mortgage and put food on the table.”
Food truck owner: “The reason why I left California, honestly, is just the cost. The cost of living, the cost of running a business, regulations.”
Mention of the Move to Texas Facebook group for Californians looking to get the hell out of their failing state.
“Some people are moving to Texas because of their conservative values.”
” It seems that the environment, politically in California, has just been a one-party rule. Republicans have done absolutely nothing to change anything in any way, it seems to me. They’ve been cowardly about it.”
“It’s very sad in Contra Costa County. You can’t even be conservative. You kinda have to hide if you’re conservative almost.”
Man whose family moved to California from South Korea in the 1970s: “Unfortunately my parent’s grocery stores were burned down in the L.A. riots, two of them, near Koreatown. And so that was, you know, quite a traumatic experience for my family.”
“I definitely think [California] is mismanaged. We moved primarily because of the crime. And, for me, it was not only the crime but also, you know, the amount of homelessness, needles. I was assaulted twice on the BART. Those particular assaults I really do think it had to do with the same kind of violence that I saw in the Bay Area towards Asian Americans.”
“I miss the ocean but not enough to move back.”
What would it take to move back to California? “Number one, the whole state would have to clean up. Get some of those rotten politicians. Be tough on crime again, like you should. People’s attitudes would just have to change. But for the most part, I really am happy here.”
“My commute is seven minutes to work.”
“Yeah, we definitely have not even contemplated moving back. We are just really happy out here.”
One party Democratic rule has hollowed out the state of California, and the people Democrats used to claim to represent (the working poor and the middle class) are the ones most harmed by the graft, corruption, incompetence, and radical social justice-engendered spiraling crime rates.
Until that changes, expect people to continue to flee California.
