It has often been said that “as California goes, so goes the nation”.  If that is actually true, we are all in very big trouble.  Once upon a time, California was a spectacularly beautiful state with a booming economy.  In fact, decades ago I very seriously considered moving there.

But now “the California dream” has become “the California nightmare”, and there is no turning back.  The state is relentlessly plagued by crime, homelessness, drugs and other extremely severe social problems.  In recent years, the number of people moving out of the state has greatly exceeded the number of people moving into the state, and many of those that are leaving are relocating to red states such as Florida

California lost 117,552 people between Jan. 1, 2021 and Jan. 1, 2022, according to the state’s Department of Finance, bringing its population back to where it was in 2016.

In 2022, Florida saw the biggest rush of new residents migrating from predominantly blue states with steep taxes, with about 319,000 Americans making the move there, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. That amounts to a population increase of nearly 2% – well above the 0.4% national growth rate recorded in the U.S. between July 2021 and July 2022.

If I was living in California, I would want to leave too.

At this point, things are so bad that even the rich and famous are fleeing the state…

In the past few years, a slew of Hollywood stars have ditched California and moved their families elsewhere in the U.S. and across the world amid the increase in taxes and high crime rates in the Golden State.

Superman actor Dean Cain became the latest Hollywood star to flee California as he joined the likes of Rod Stewart, Mark Wahlberg and more turning their back on Tinseltown.

A few days ago, Newsweek ran an editorial by a California resident named Rick Campbell that served as a police officer in the state for more than a decade.

In that editorial, Campbell tells us that he simply does not have the words “to describe the horrors I saw” in his line of work.

There aren’t words to describe the horrors I saw. And yet, in my opinion, civil rights advocates continue to stand in the way of reform.

So here I am in 21st-century California, no longer able to take my little ones exploring natural areas as I did as a kid right here in Oceanside. All of the natural areas I roamed here as a child are now filled with drug addicts in tents.

Our hillsides have been plagued with environmental destruction from human waste and trash, and violence perpetrated by the inhabitants of the camps on each other.

Just like so many others, Campbell places most of the blame on the politicians in Sacramento.

And the truth is that the politicians know that things have gotten really bad.

Even Governor Gavin Newsom is publicly admitting that the homelessness crisis in his state is “a disgrace.

Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has admitted that California’s homelessness crisis is ‘a disgrace’ – but tried to blame Republicans for creating the situation.

The Golden State is facing an opioid-fueled vagrancy epidemic, with cities like San Francisco and San Diego besieged with encampments and businesses shutting up shop.

Newsom was grilled on the subject by Fox News host Sean Hannity after the latest blow to San Francisco’s downtown as Westfield stopped making mortgage payments on its massive mall due to crime and tanking sales.

In virtually every large city, there are homeless people sleeping all over the place, open air drug markets operate freely, and crime is completely out of control.

Earlier today, I came across a story about one ice cream shop in San Francisco that was actually burglarized twice in a single morning

An ice cream shop in San Francisco was reportedly burglarized twice in one morning this month as crime in the Bay Area spirals out of control.

The shocking series of events happened during the early hours of June 2 in the Bayview neighborhood of Fog City.

At around 3 a.m., two suspects broke into What’s the Scoop and stole the cash register and point-of-sale terminal, along with other items.

When they exited the shop, they reportedly left the door wide open, enabling another suspect to enter the business hours later and help herself to food and merchandise.

Hordes of businesses are fleeing San Francisco, and this has made the city the epicenter of the commercial real estate crisis.

I could spend a lot more time talking about crime and drugs, but let me shift gears and talk about the “law-abiding citizens” in the state.

These days, if you take your kids to a “parade” in California, you are likely to get a whole lot more than you bargained for.

On Twitter, feminist outlet the Reduxx shared one graphic video from the parade where a nearly nude man was choked and whipped by another man in bondage gear.

“Two men performed a sex act in public as BDSM flags were displayed during the ‘family friendly’ West Hollywood Pride Parade yesterday. A witness to the ‘float’ informed Reduxx that there were children in attendance,” the outlet tweeted.

A journalist who shared their video from the event with the outlet said there were thousands of people lined in the streets and children were present.

This is what the state of California has become.

Sadly, instead of working to improve conditions in the state, the politicians in Sacramento just continue to come up with even more self-destructive laws.

For example, if a newly proposed bill becomes law any parents that refuse to “affirm” a child’s chosen gender identity would be guilty of child abuse…

A recently amended California bill would add “affirming” the sexual transition of a child to the state’s standard for parental responsibility and child welfare—making any parent who doesn’t affirm transgenderism for their child guilty of abuse under California state law.

AB 957 passed California’s State Assembly on May 3, but a co-sponsor amended it after hours in California’s State Senate on June 6.

Assembly Member Lori Wilson, D-Suisun City, wrote the bill and introduced it on Feb. 14. State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, co-sponsored it. Wilson’s child identifies as transgender.

And another bill would actually make shoplifting in the state even easier than it is now.

Shoplifting in California may get a lot easier, after the state Senate passed a controversial bill on May 31 that would make it illegal for store employees to confront thieves.

SB 553, authored by Democrat Senator David Cortese (San Jose), requires employers to maintain violent incident logs, provide active shooter and shoplifter training, and to discard policies requiring workers to confront suspected active shoplifters, the Epoch Times reports.

Amazingly, this is what California voters must want, because they keep sending the same politicians back to Sacramento over and over again.

America is falling, and California is leading the way.

That is such a shame, because no other state is blessed with so much natural beauty.

California should be one of the greatest places to live on the entire planet, but instead the entire state has been transformed into a hellhole.

Unfortunately, the entire country is going down the exact same path, and so let us hope that America will wake up while there is still time to do so.