O.C. Housewives Return to California

Last week a dear friend from Wisconsin sent me an article about just how bad things are here in California. The article titled, Don’tPity California: It Did This To Itself, points out how we pay more for gas, have more traffic and more (a quarter) of the nation’s illegal immigrants than anywhere else in the country. On top of this the article reports we voted to tax our way out of debt forcing numerous businesses and citizens to flee to more tax friendly states like Nevada and Texas.

Jerry Brown, Linda Ronstadt and Entourage

So, I decided to investigate. Sure enough, we did vote on a proposition to raise taxes. Governor Brown claims he plans to balance the budget and eliminate the debt with this new influx of taxpayer dollars. That seems a little weird, but then Jerry Brown has always been a little weird, even when he was dating Linda Ronstadt back in the 1970s.

Further investigation revealed some remarkable changes of fortune. Producers of the hit reality series, “Real Housewives of Orange County,” announced they were returning the series to its original home in of all places Orange County, California. One of the wives, who was promised anonymity in exchange for her cooperation, claimed when they had told her they were moving the show she heard it was for “lower taxes,” and didn’t realize until they parked her car in a drive in suburban Dallas they had said, “Texas.”

They're back!

“Why they don’t even have one decent beach,” she said. “When I was driving outside of Ft. Worth some cowboy jumped out of his pickup, grabbed his rifle and shot a snake on the side of the road. As I tried to pull around him he spit tobacco all over the front fender of my Lamborghini.” Hanging her clothes back inside her villa overlooking Newport Beach she remarked, “I’d rather put up with some surfer dude kicking sand on my blanket than the heap of dust that low-life redneck sprayed all over my leather seats.”

In a related matter, a friend of my daughter who graduated from one of the state’s universities, either UCLA or UCI, a few years ago took a job with Johnson Controls right out of school. Johnson’s headquarters are in Milwaukee, my hometown. When he first got there he was determined to save a bundle of cash with lower taxes and cost of living. “It was cool, at first,” he admitted upon his return, “I mean the cows really do roam freely and eat grass, unlike whatever they feed them in those corrals in Norco (a California city with a large dairy cattle population), and while you can’t surf on the swells of Lake Michigan, there are some pretty nice beaches. But then the friggin’ winter hit. I thought I knew what winter was because I’ve been up to the mountains to ski. No way, bro. When it’s friggin’ 20 below you’re not going skiing. Besides, there isn’t one real ski hill, let alone a mountain in Wisconsin. Not to mention that skidding on ice cost me two accidents, and probably enough in damages to cover the difference in the cost of living and those friggin’ taxes.”

My daughter’s friend was glad to hear the guy with as he put it, “a bug up his ass,” who wrote the article about the terrible problems and high taxes has decided to stay in California and teach at Stanford. I wonder why he doesn’t want to teach at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin?