Save your state, vote Republican

The state Capitol in West Virginia opened in 1933. Designed by Cass Gilbert, he used its east wing as a model when he designed the U.S. Supreme Court building. The Capitol has everything and at one point, it housed all of the state’s government — except for regional offices such as State Police offices.

But one thing it lacked for 82 years was the one thing it needed most: a Republican state legislature. In 2014, West Virginians finally caught on and elected a Republican majority in the House of Delegates. They elected Tim Armstead as speaker. As a bonus, a Democrat flipped parties which gave Republicans control of the state Senate as well.

The result has been a gradual reversal of fortune. For 60 years, West Virginia suffered an economic exodus. Its population fell while the rest of the nation grew. The result is it went from six congressmen in the 1950s to just two today.

Sure, the coal mines cut staffing as mechanization took hold. But the chemical, steel and aluminum factories also suffered. In the 1980s, more people worked at chemical plants in the state capital of Charleston than worked for state government. The number of chemical plant jobs shrank by more than 90% since then.

Taxes and dopey policies such as paying unemployment to striking workers helped run employers out during the more than eight decades that Democrats owned the Legislature. Democrats also owned the state Supreme Court, the attorney general’s office, the agriculture commissioner’s office, cetera.

I mention all this because of a Moneywise story last week, “‘People vote with their feet.’ Florida is the fastest-growing state for the first time in 65 years — here are 3 top stocks to capitalize on this historical shift.”

During the last 26 years of the Dreaded Days of Democrat Dominance in West Virginia, I wrote editorials for a RINO newspaper. At one point, only one of the 34 state senators was a Republican. That is how bad it was. My editor’s favorite phrase for the drop in population was “voting with their feet.” We were not allowed to call it a brain drain.

It was. Those chemical plants hired many a PhD. They left when the plants closed. The Union Carbide Tech Center now houses a community college.

But the worse that things got for the state, the more Democrats were entrenched in power because the people leaving were Republicans. With failure came power.

What rescued the state was Maryland going even further to the left than the socialists and cashews who ran West Virginia. Maryland Republicans retreated to West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle and 20 or so years later, enough sanity spread over the state to save it.

Other states have turned Republican to succeed.

The Moneywise story on Florida said, “Florida has been in a growth phase for a while now. Its current population is over nine times its 1946 population of 2,440,000. But this is the first time since 1957 that Florida has taken the top spot for population growth in the country. There's more than 23 cities in the state that have seen more than 10% population growth between 2020 and 2022, according to a report by the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research.”

Sanity matters, which brings me to California. Once it was safely Republican. We called it the Golden State. Under Republican management, California built dams to serve the public.

Under Democrats, it is the Poop In The Street State. Democrats literally are destroying California — to media cheers.

On November 17, 2022, the San Francisco Chronicle gushed, “Largest dam removal project in U.S. history gets go-ahead in California.”

California is a state already suffering rolling blackouts in the summer — a state that is pushing to add cars to the list of appliances on the electric grid — a state that is pushing alternatives to coal and gas electric plants.

So what is it doing? Destroying hydro-electric plants.

Whee!

The damn dam damage isn’t even to save some squirrelly fish.

The story said, “The power company, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy, has decided the dams are too costly to operate.”

Too costly to operate? The plant is powered by gravity. Water flows through and turns the turbines. It takes a special incompetence to lose money on such an operation.

This is sabotage — sabotage that Californians voted for.

The story said, “PacificCorp is contributing $200 million to the effort, with the agreement that it can unload the aging facilities without liability. Voter-approved water bonds in California are covering the rest.”

Whee!

Voters also approved a $9.5 billion high speed rail to be built by 2020. Its new completion date is 2033 at a cost of $99 billion.

I am convinced there are no grown-ups left in charge. Consider Arnold Schwarzenegger the former governator.

NBC reported, “Arnold Schwarzenegger posts video filling in 'giant pothole' in L.A. — but city says it was actually a service trench.”

That the pothole was perfectly rectangular and manmade should have been his first clue that it wasn’t a pothole. I wonder if as a kid he didn’t find a black animal with a wide white stripe on it and took it home to be his pet cat.

Republicans are not known for their great intellect. One of their first laws after 84 years out of power in West Virginia allowed adults to drink raw milk. Some Republicans celebrated by drinking raw milk — and became ill.

But Democrats are evil geniuses who can destroy a state seemingly overnight. Democrats have controlled California’s General Assembly for almost 27 years.

Stupidities the legislature cannot enact become law through referendum. Voters de-criminalized shoplifting, which turned into gang-organized looting. If they don’t steal more than $950 each, it is only a misdemeanor with little if any jail time.

Stores are shuttering and abandoning the state. The media is in denial.

The San Francisco Chronicle said on October 18, 2021, “Data released by the San Francisco Police Department does not support the explanation announced by Walgreens that it is closing five stores because of organized, rampant retail theft.

“One of the stores set to close, on Ocean Avenue, had only seven reported shoplifting incidents this year and a total of 23 since 2018, the data showed. While not all shoplifting incidents are reported to police, the five stores slated to close had fewer than two recorded shoplifting incidents a month on average since 2018.”

What’s a little looting among friends?

We are not allowed to point out that a disproportionate number of the looting is by young black people, as are most crimes.

I could say that California has become West Virginia but things in my home state never were as awful as this. West Virginians are not necessarily more honest than Californians; it just never occurred to our Democrat politicians to allow people to steal in broad daylight.

California dreaming has become a nightmare. Protect your state. Vote Republican. A tummy ache from drinking raw milk is a small price to pay for sanity.