Something In the Air

Santa Ana winds blow my neighbor's palm trees.

‘Cause the free wind is blowin' through your hair

And the days surround your daylight there

Seasons crying no despair

Alligator lizards in the air, in the air

About 40 years ago a California group with the audacity to call themselves America wrote these weird lyrics in a song named for a popular highway that hugs the coast north of Los Angeles. As I’m writing this article the Santa Ana winds, as they’re known, are whipping through the tree tops and knocking over the trash containers that line the street waiting to be emptied by the trucks with the robotic arms that make their weekly stop today. Even if alligator lizards are not among the debris being strewn by these mighty gusts, one might hope some of it might strike some clueless individual and make him question his sanity or at least scare him into leaving.

Santa Ana winds knock palm fronds to the ground.

In March I reported how the reality show with the housewives from Orange County, where I live in California, had decided to return to our state from their low rent accommodations in Texas. At the same time, my friend back in Wisconsin was kind enough to send me an article about how bad things are here and how the state is losing commerce to low rent, low tax red states. Ironically, some Stanford professor who refuses to leave wrote the article. My friend assured me the economy in our leftist, socialist state was going to implode and at least half of its 30 million inhabitants would leave.

Over the past couple months I’ve had the opportunity to test this theory. As nearly everyone is aware Los Angeles is once again the site of the nation’s worst traffic. A logical hypothesis everyone can understand is when the populace leaves the state the number of commuters will drop precipitously allowing those remaining to travel at speed limit. Unfortunately, Interstate-5 continues to slog along even late in the evening making the 35-mile trip take between an hour and an hour and a half in either direction. You can be sure once the commute is reduced to a comfortable half hour drive it will be duly noted right here at Hi Oh Silver.

Valentine's Day at Laguna Beach...why would anyone want
to live here when you can enjoy a red state like Idaho
for a whole lot less.

Regrettably, some of the liberal media is once again stirring the pot with ill-advised stories of the state of California having sufficient revenues to offset the $25 billion dollar debt it built up during the recession. Sure voters, many of who should have left the state by now, did pass the education referendum sponsored by Linda Ronstadt’s former boyfriend, but even Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a leftist professor at the University of Southern California Price School of Public Policy, notes “…it’s only a temporary fix. And so you’re going to see another cycle of boom and bust.” http://www.npr.org/2013/04/29/179762891/after-belt-tightening-some-states-are

-back-in-the-black

So, forget Horace Greely’s words, if you haven’t already, and “Go East, young man, go East.”