Why Stay; or Go? California dreaming

If I were even slightly in the mainstream of authorized life, I'd probably leave this state.  If you are rather wealthy, or not even on the scale, it works out OK.  The in-betweeners are screwed.   They try to screw the nebulous entity know as "the rich", but have only met with mild success.  If one has no tax specialist on retainer, I guess times are tough.  I don't know.

In my case, I lucked into the right place at the right time, and for now I see no better option.  So, I stay put.

The latest in California political buffoonery, if you don't count Maxine Waters claiming that "the sequester" will cost more jobs than exist in this country, is the plan to raise the tax on gasoline.   Why? Because people aren't buying a much as they expected them to when they set the last gasoline tax.

This is a state in which you often find specific parking places, up front by the handicapped spots, set aside for hybrid vehicles.   Yes, we reward you in you can afford a hybrid car.  

The hybrid perks are supposed to encourage being green and using less fuel.  Whether that all pans out when one considers various aspects of carbon footprint is not commonly explored.   I don't think it is anyone's business, but I'm in another universe, obviously.

So, go green, ride your bike, don't drive, great white sharks are people, too, welcome to California.

By the way, since you people are not using enough gasoline, we are going to raise the tax on it.  I guess they first used changing behavior as the rationale for upping the tax, and now they openly complain that they want more money because people changed their behavior.

In the long run, many of us will drive less, buy even fewer gallons of gas, experience even higher prices, and finally give up and move to Utah or somewhere.

This causes me to conclude that all the talk of wanting the leetle peeple to use less gasoline, drive less, etc., had nothing to do with environmental concern, but rather control and "revenue".   The revenue part is ever enough, so now they will punish the frugal for budgeting their automobile use.

If I were just a little bit closer to the border, it would make sense to buy gas in Arizona.   I don't trust the Mexican options over that border.  Besides crossing the border is too much trouble.  Search this and search that, and can't bring guns in case the Mexican police or gangsters (which is which?) decide to kidnap or kill me.

Already the highest prices in the US.  I thought I'd hit a real bargain yesterday when it was only 429.9 for a gallon of regularo.

What I do like about where I live is that I do not experience the harassment of gimme dollah guys like in Memphis.  There was almost nowhere you could go that you weren't bothered there.  Especially if you looked a little like me.  Four, five, six times a day if many errands were to be run.

Unlike some more urban areas, out here we don't have great herds of people clamoring for money or power under some mass ethnic hypnotic spell.   That is the advantage of more sparsely populated areas.  People do what they do and mostly shut up.

You still have riffraff, but they don't run things.  In town, the tweekers and criminals pretty much run the show, wear the badges, and cut the ribbons on crooked crony projects.

I'm not sure I could ever live in a more urban area again.  Especially the way the culture is trending.   It must be hard to continue the big pretense in those places.

We in CA are leaders.  Maybe if gas is so expensive in your state that you find ways reduce consumption, you too will be rewarded with additional per-gallon taxes.  It's for the children, I think.  Or maybe it is for Moonbeam's high speed rail to and from places which draw no riders.