California is a beautiful place, and when you remember that I'm speaking as an Alaskan, that's really saying something. But it's undeniably true, and it's easy to see why, once upon a time, California was the destination of choice. The once-Golden state has a wide variety of landscapes, from deserts to mountains to farmlands to beaches. The climate is salubrious and it's almost always possible to go a few miles to find temps that suit you; I remember working in the Santa Clarita Valley in 2007-2009, and on weekends when the Santa Anas blow like a blast from an oven out of the mountains, I was able to hop in my pickup and drive to Ventura, where I could walk the beach in pleasant 70-degree weather (oh, and watch the college girls playing beach volleyball.) I spent 2017 in the Bay Area, Los Gatos to be exact, and had much the same experience, except that by then, the city of San Francisco was already issuing their infamous poop maps, and a drive through the lovely hills frequently took you past bags of garbage casually thrown out of car windows.

Still, most of the state remains attractive. Which makes it rather sad to see that now, California's government has so badly hosed things up that people are leaving, in droves.

More than 75,000 people left California this year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's latest population estimates, as the Golden State exodus continues.

This year marked the fourth consecutive year of population loss for the Golden State. And although it's slowing from the previous two years, when California lost half a million residents, the federal estimates show that the exodus hasn't stopped. The state's projected net loss comes despite an uptick in foreign immigration that brought 126,000 people into California last year.

Did you get that? 126,000 immigrants — but what isn't presented is how many of those immigrants are legal and how many are not, and arguably should not be in the country at all, much less in California, placing a drain on the state's dwindling resources:

The census analysis comes as California's Democratic leaders face a $68 billion deficit next year, exacerbated in part by high numbers of wealthy people leaving the state for lower taxes and cost of living. Government budget analysts have already warned that California will have to deal with $30 billion deficits for at least the three succeeding years.

It's gotten bad enough that California lost one House seat following the 2020 census; that's the first time California has ever lost a seat in a post-census assessment. But in 2030, they may lose as many as four seats, with Texas, Florida, and other red states poised to pick those seats up.

The impeccably coiffed Governor Gavin Newsom deserves some of the credit for this, of course; under his leadership (and I use the word advisedly) California has gone Thelma-and-Louising off a fiscal cliff. The same big coastal enclaves that put him in power are also dealing ineffectively with ever-more-expansive Hoovervilles set up on the city streets, with open-air drug markets into the bargain. Crime in those cities is rampant and the enforcement authorities seem unable (or unwilling) to do anything about it.

In other words, California is in free fall, and there's no telling where it will bottom out. But the state still has a lot going for it, if only the government can be wrested out of the hands of the progressive-liberal urban coastal elites; and if one can apply what General Patton said about people to the state: The measure of their determination is not "how far they fall, but how high they bounce when they land."

Where is this all going?

That would be a good question to ask the California Republican Party. Admittedly I'm not an expert on California's internal politics; we have resident Californians here who can address that point, and I leave it to them to do so. But California's current woes began with the ascension of California's Democrats, making California a one-party state, and allowing coastal elites to form a coalition with urban "progressives" to bring us to the current situation.

California’s decline will, for the time being, probably continue.  That's sad, because I’ve lived and worked there and it’s a beautiful place, as I noted above; beaches, mountains, forests, deserts, a lovely climate.  But that state’s voters keep putting the same lunatics in control of the asylum. Nothing will change until that does.

I would caution California Democrats, though, to think hard about the many and varied applications of Stein's Law: What can't continue, won't. California cannot continue on the current trajectory. That way lies ruin. And I would likewise caution California voters: There are alternatives. If you want to salvage what is left of your once-Golden state, think on that.