In an editorial fit for The Onion or the Babylon Bee, Los Angeles Times’ letters editor Paul Thornton wrote a column this week entitled “If you want to leave, fine. But don’t insult California on the way out.” The column acknowledges an exodus from the state, but sees the problem as former Californians sharing their experiences about what drove them from the Golden State. It is like Captain William Bligh asking the mutinous crew of the Bounty for a reference as they head for the lifeboats.
Thornton wrote that “more than 800,000 Californians moved away in 2022, and many thousands more left last year. Often, the departees, cash in hand from the sale of their $1-million bungalows, feel the need to express disdain for their home state, and even some anger too.”
He then begs them to keep mum about their reasons for leaving the state, which commonly range from rising crime to high taxes to runaway spending. Instead, he portrays those leaving as intolerant bigots for criticizing the “California ways”:
“And which ways would those be? Perhaps it’s our embrace of LGBTQ+ Californians. Or it’s our liberal politics, with the state Republican Party shrunk to irrelevance after its vicious attempt in 1994 to marginalize immigrants with Proposition 187.”
The reference to Proposition 187 was interesting since it passed with roughly 60 percent of the vote in the blue state to deny social services to illegal migrants. It was blocked by the courts, not the voters, including many democrats. Recently, California added free healthcare to other benefits for undocumented migrants.
The week that Thornton wrote his plea for people to keep quiet about conditions in California, the staff of the LA Times conducted a strike to oppose massive layoffs due to declining readership and profits of the newspaper. Like other newspapers such as the Washington Post (which lost $100 million last year), the editors and reporters appear willing to consider any option other than returning to objective reporting.
We previously discussed the release of the results of interviews with over 75 media leaders by former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. They concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”
Downie recounted how news leaders today
“believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”
Now, objectivity is virtually synonymous with prejudice. Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press declared “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”
The L.A. Times has long been known for such advocacy journalism. As readership and revenue declined, it has gone through various owners and restructurings. However, it is still effectively writing off half of the population with its advocacy reporting. That is why it is so telling that an editor’s solution to the state’s problems are the same: simply do not report the problems. It will have the same success as framing the news in the newspaper.
Thornton, however, pledges that they will stay the course — just as his paper has done:
“We have 39 million people, Hollywood and Shohei Ohtani. This state is a haven for reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, but income disparity and the housing crunch are critical problems we have to fix for progressive ideals to match the reality on the ground.”
One fix again being discussed is a wealth tax, which will likely expedite the exodus of those trash talking former residents. They are also planning to tap their emergency reserves as legislators continue massive spending plans.
There is a pathetic element to the column’s plea. High earners are leaving the state as many undocumented migrants continue to arrive. Thornton admits that “the departees, cash in hand from the sale of their $1-million bungalows, feel the need to express disdain for their home state, and even some anger too.” He is hoping that these “departees” simply say that they loved the state that they just left at considerable cost and inconvenience. Alternatively, they could just say “I can’t talk about it” to, as Thornton suggests, “extend some goodwill to those of us who remain?”
I happen to love California. I would go there to spend summers with my grandparents in Cherry Valley. I also used to write regularly for the LA Times. I am also an avid hiker who loves the wonderful parks in the state. I have been crushed by watching the decline of both the state and the paper. The way to send “goodwill” to those who remain is to tell the truth about the state and the disastrous course that it is on.
We should not have to wait for LA Times or the state to collapse to discuss these problems. Both are a huge part of our nation and our history. So here is an idea for the LA Times. Instead of asking “departees” to stay silent, why not start to listen to them?
“The reference to Proposition 187 was interesting since it passed with roughly 60 percent of the vote in the blue state to deny social services to illegal migrants. It was blocked by the courts, not the voters, including many democrats. Recently, California added free healthcare to other benefits for undocumented migrants.”
I was living there during that time period. After I learned the courts blocked what 60% of the citizens wanted, I stopped voting for years. I remember thinking, how can an illegal alien have a bigger say on how WE spend our tax money than the citizens? It showed how powerless and fruitless it was to vote.
Thank God I got out of there in 2004.
Jonathan: We know how DJT’s lawyers are deserting him like rats on a sinking ship. Ken Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell come to mind. They have all plead guilty in Fani Willis’s sprawling RICO indictment in Fulton County. But what about the lawyers in DJT’s inner circle–in the WH and the DOJ? What is Bill Barr doing these days?
It may come as no surprise to you, because you are a close friend of the former AG, but Bill Barr has formed a new law firm/think tank in DC–the name is “Torriden Law PLLC”. The partners are Barr, Pat Cipollone, Eric Herschmann and Pat Philbin–the latter all WH Counsel under DJT. And all the above will be testifying against their former boss in Jack Smith’s criminal case. They are the Mount Rushmore of lawyers who once represented DJT–and this will not be lost on the jury that sits in judgment. And all are Republicans–which puts the lie to DJT’s false claim that his prosecution is all the work of “Sleepy Joe”.
“Fani Willis’s sprawling RICO indictment in Fulton County”
What about Fani’s sprawling thighs, Dennis?
“All of the above will be testifying against their former boss.” How do you know how they will testify?
Wdwardmahl: Trust me, I know. They are all on Jack Smith’s witness list. They wouldn’t be there if JS didn’t know what they would say.
Actually, Captain Bligh and his supporters were the ones forced into the Bounty’s open launch and set adrift. After a 3,500 mile journey, he and his crew safely reached Timor, and went on to Batavia, where Bligh and three others booked passage back to England. Several years passed before some of the mutineers were caught and transported back to Portsmouth. Bligh had the satisfaction of seeing some of them swing from ropes, but apparently it was a complex case, as a goodly number of mutineers were pardoned or acquitted. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty
“California Dreaming” has plummeted into “Californication Scheming”. Ah, yes, California—the land of fruits and nuts! And now the fleeing will infect everything they touch and everywhere they go with their inbred foolishness.
Jonathan: I’m partial to LA. I was born and raised there–surfing the local beaches and enjoying all the amenities. So once or twice a year I fly out to LA and my host drives me south from LAX so I can see the Pacific while driving along all the beaches–Manhattan, Hermosa and the Palos Verdes Peninsula while the Beach Boys blare on the car’s radio. The views of the Pacific are still breath taking! And I subscribe to Paul Thornton’s Saturday column so I can keep up on all things LA.
Now we know you are dismissive of California’s “liberal” politics. You point to the layoffs at the LA Times where you claim it’s politics have gone wrong. But layoffs are going on all over the country in the traditional media. It’s not just a problem at the LA times. But you seem to think its all because the Times and other media practice “advocacy journalism”. What you ignore is that the greatest practitioner of “advocacy journalism” is Rupert Murdock on Fox News and at his tabloid NY Post–two publications you often cite in your columns. I guess “advocacy journalism” is in the eye of the beholder.
Then you turn to the exodus from the Golden State. Sure, when you can sell your 2-bedroom bungalow near the beach for over $2 million–why not? Why not move to Texas or FL where housing is a lot cheaper. But people move all the time. Black people are leaving FL in droves because of Gov. DeSantis’ racist policies. So, for whatever reasons, people move from state to state.
What you don’t mention is that your boss, Rupert Murdock, apparently likes CA just fine. He lives in a mansion in Bel Air with a vineyard and winery. He sells his wine in the local market. In 2019, his son, Lachlan, paid a whopping $150 million for a huge property near his dad. Doesn’t appear either plan to leave CA any time soon.
Despite your dire predictions it doesn’t appear CA is going to “collapse” any time soon. Yes, like a lot of states, CA has its problems–how to house and care for the homeless and migrants. But, unlike red states, it is not rejecting them. And CA is a huge state with lots of resources. If CA were a sovereign nation, it would rank in terms of GDP as the world’s fifth largest economy! And CA is an attractive state for the LGBTQ+ community and women seeking abortions. That’s not about to change. So please, don’t criticize California!
Nobody cares.
Cali use to be great….has not been since the 90s…I left in 2022
The only act left to execute in the Mexican and Flotsam Communist People’s Republic of California is to send in the military, recover the territory, execute the mass deportation of centuries of illegal aliens, import masses of temporary non-voting foreign laborers, and rebuild and reimplement an American constitutional, restricted-vote republic.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“[We gave you] a [restricted-vote] republic, if you can keep it.”
– Ben Franklin
________________
You couldn’t.
“Shut up,” he explained.
Reading the review of the California writer desperately attempting to re-write history and claiming “How dare you suggest there’s anything wrong going on here”, I thought he and his efforts were eerily similar to our very own resident Dennis McIntyre/Bribery Biden’s Baghdad Bob and his posts here. The writer deflects from and defends California, his state. Dennis McIntyre/Baghdad Bob, deflects and defends The Big Guy, his employer, Bribery Joe Biden.
Does that similarity make Dennis McIntyre/Baghdad Bob so uncomfortable that he’s noticeably absent in putting up his mandated invariably completely off-topic post with some sort of BUBUBUbuutttt, MUH TRUMP!?
My dad was born in Los Angeles. I have lived there, too at times in my life. California is a cesspit that just continues to get worse and worse. It is a huge state, and anyone that thinks it’s all beautiful beaches and picturesque sunsets hasn’t spent any meaningful time there; it is a desert, it is largely a** ugly between the elite towns, and that is whole lot of space; there is nothing redeemable about their politics. The dems use CA as a template, and that will be our nation if we do not step up and get rid of these ridiculous people on the national stage. Too many people have been fooled into thinking there is anything glamorous whatsoever about this state. From a distance, like anything, it appears to be many magnitudes more appealing than it is. California is a place to leave, not to move to. A tiny handful of people actually live in the estates on the surf. The rest make do with the smog, the crime, the barrenness of the landscape. It is actually quite awful. 21st century politics have made it unlivable for anyone with a brain and a heart. One could be forgiven for thinking the world was indeed ending living in CA, and a lot of people there, due to its massive size, are too scared to go anywhere else.
James posted: anyone that thinks it’s all beautiful beaches and picturesque sunsets hasn’t spent any meaningful time there; it is a desert, it is largely a** ugly between the elite towns, and that is whole lot of space.
I agree that the politics of the coastal elite and Soviet Democrat Marxist Useful Idiots is appalling. So much so that the only way I will ever return to California even for a short visit will be due to necessity, and I will be there no longer than necessary. It seems that everything poisoning America comes from a seed that sprouted in California.
That said, anyone claiming that there’s nothing to California once you leave the beaches is only desert and ugly actually hasn’t spent as much time in California as they would like you to believe. My first trips from Montana down to California in the early 1970’s had absolutely nothing to do with the beaches and the coastline – or with deserts. We regularly headed down for backpacking/flyfishing trips in the mountain ranges of California. The Cascades, Yosemite, etc.
Y’know, for nothing but ugly desert, Yosemite National Park is just one example pretty piss poor mis-description. As is the implication that everyone other than the elites are living in the smog and share the same political beliefs. Like Washington and and Oregon to the north, the further east you travel from the state’s coastal cancer, the more conservative the people become.
You can rightly hate the state’s politics and the fact their poison spreads to the rest of the country without demagoguing the entire state and all it’s people. That’s out of Soviet Democrat Political Activism 101.
@oldairbornedog
I’ve lived in many other places too, and you are seemingly missing the forest for the trees. You remind me of the people that are too scared to leave California. It is not a pleasant place to live. A whole lot of people have simply built up a tolerance for it. Again, one could easily be forgiven living in CA for thinking that the world is ending; it isn’t. The same is true for coastal elites in the East (I have lived in New York as well). Get out of your bubble, life doesn’t have to be so hard every waking day. But please do not bring the mentality that ruined the place you are leaving with you.
Like many other beautiful states, the demoncrats have destroyed California. I have no sympathy, they did it to themselves. If I were governor of a destination state, I’d tax them double – call it an import tax. And I’d NEVER let them vote in my state. They’re like locusts, they’d no doubt destroy the next one if given the chance. It’s what the northeastern liberal have done to North Carolina.
New York State is the same…I grew up here in the 50 and 60s and in one of the most beautiful areas in the world…I have moved back after 50 years spent in other states and due to my love of what is STILL the beauty of the state…and the man I love, I will NOT be leaving again until I leave earth…but the taxes and politics of this horrid democrat “leadership” make my head hurt…they are such a Nanny state…EVERYTHING is either taxed or regulated…or both…EVERYTHING!
The Natural resources of California at massive. But the regulatory state has nullified the value of much of those resources. Like the starving people of Africa, the cause is not lack of production. The problem is a corrupt incompetent government.
Californias problems have spun of dozens of terrible govt programs.
The 2021-2022 supply chain problems centered in California because such a huge volume of goods get off loaded there.
The problem is complicated, but some things could have been done.
1. 18 year olds can get CDL’s but cant go interstate. 18 year olds can run the big rigs from Oregon to Mexico, maxing out the USDOT hours of service 7 days a week, but cant drive to Las Vegas. Those restrictions could have been lifted for 12 months to get more trucks leaving the ports.
BUT:
2. Half the big trucks on the nations roads cannot run in California because their emissions standards bar those trucks. Again, a 12 month suspension would have sure helped lessen the Supply chain problems.
But the Dems are at war with the people. Their precious policies take priority over all else.
This just one issue that simple adjustment would have made a big difference, but Policy over competence, is the Dem way
@iowan2
‘The Natural resources of California at massive’
Bingo. It’s the same reason Russia has forever been trying to annex the Ukraine. Money and resources – that’s about it. Putin is not going to nuke them or otherwise render them inert because he wants the resources, and that is a fact. Policy over confidence is 100% the dem way, and they will fight to the financial death over it. The second the dollars evaporate, they will be gone like a wisp on the wind, and I predict that is precisely what will happen with climate alarmism, just as it has with things like Common Core and DEI. SEL is next on the chopping block. And that is what we are seeing in these places. Anyone that still thinks they are on the side of sanity or justice or a world that works for everyone with the modern left needs to have their head examined. BLM was about dollars and influence, and in twenty years the people that jumped on board mindlessly are going to try to dismiss it the same way people have today with the way they behaved in the 70s. Count on it. And sorry, by and large, California is an ugly and barren desert. If you are rich enough to exist outside of that, bully for you, I guess. The average person isn’t.
“It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”
Wait, what? A left-wing worldview can be described that way – white, educated, fairly wealth. They’re the ones who voted for Obama and Biden. More and more, Trump’s base is blue collar.
My dad, part of the Greatest Generation, grew up in a small town in Illinois. He said at that time California was considered the promised land. How sad to see what has happened to this beautiful state in just a few generations. My dad ended up marrying a native Seattlite, and, like many in the Pacific Northwest, we spent lots of vacations in California, mostly in the Bay Area. I married a Bay Area man and again spent years in state. To see it go downhill is personally painful to me. I agree with Professor Turley that there is nothing to be gained by denying the reality of what has happened to this once great state.
Nevfornia, Azercalea, Texnia and Flornia could be new names of the states with California’s exiles. The exiles are sure to bring their socialist tendencies with them as the move away from the largest socialist state in the America’S. The movers are not going to change their thoughts; they will presume it’s not them, but their stupid socialist representatives that caused the problem from which they are moving away from. California has always wanted to be shining example on the hill, but has become a dream of nightmares, full of despair, hatred and conceit. Californians move in a haze of self-centeredness, unaware of the dangers they face drinking from a contaminated well poisoned by contemptible leaders. California, I do believe is lost and irretrievable until the monster of poverty descends upon them and awakens their inner strength of survival. There are other states that have been infected by the California contagion, my only hope is there becomes an awakening of the masses to nip this socialist movement in the bud before it causes the downfall of the United States of America.
God help us ALL.
Given that the topic is
PravdaLos Angeles Times, this might be a good place to remember the death of Vladimir Lenin, announced on this day, 100 years ago, by the British Times. The similarities between Lenin and Democrats like Obama are strikingLenin is dead after a year of agony
From The Times January 23, 1924
Lenin was Bolshevism, and Bolshevism was Lenin. ….He was a force that is everywhere felt. He was a disturber, for whose action analogies must be sought in remote and barbarous periods of history. ….The ruin he has wrought in a great Empire is manifest.
The destructive doctrines he taught are still poisoning the minds of many millions. Yet he was no superman. Lenin was extraordinary because the times in which we live are extraordinary. For he himself, …was but an ordinary, a rather commonplace man, …. It was not as a thinker that he attained prominence, but as a remarkable tactician. He had little experience of men, but he had an incomparable instinct for human weakness.
The Times
Democrat Geraldine Ferraro might have written such a summary of Barack Obama
The white middle class exodus from California gives now meaning to the phrase “quiet quitting.”
But not quiet enough for the LA Times, apparently.
Interesting article on quiet quitting in general, and among white males, now the most persecuted minority in America, who are the major cause for the decline in military recruitment, can be read at:
https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/22/white-americans-are-quiet-quitting-our-leading-institutions/
ONE would think that failing companies, newspapers or states would change course, simply to survive . . . but apparently, ONE would be wrong!
I wrote in a previous note about ARM (alternative reality media). The LA Times and this discussed column on leaving California is a prime example of the ARM.
Objectivity is a privilege of wealthy and educated, white, able bodied, straight males etc? Well actually it is not. Objectivity is a choice that any human being can make whether they are educated or not. It only requires a thinking mind and we usually have that going before any formal education starts.
What we once had in this nation was a profoundly superb university system, that was often slight more liberal than a more conservative general population but both served the nation well and were deeply connected to each other.
Now the higher education system is more doctrinaire and propaganda like and has cast loose itself from the rest of the people and now those low educated people are finding out that they can do well without being burdened by a horribly expensive and out of touch system that no longer gives value to the nation.
Same for the ARM.
How long before the Davos super-elites want to add shutting down gas-powered moving vans to their list of banned activities?
…after they have moved out…..
😉
The most amazing thing to me about these liberals is how they cannot see how their intentions at empathy and free assistance mostly only make things worse for those they’re trying to help. For more than 60 years their efforts have failed and yet they somehow miss the fact that their oh-so-righteous give-away programs overall have mostly only made things worse. Self-struggle is one of the most important elements in growth and a successful life. Yet, these people seem to see it as only bad. This creates a mind set in the people they are trying to help that they are victims, and they can only succeed with the help of others and if others are punished. And no – this is not a racist thing. It’s a principle of human life.
Apparently Progressives want to defy the laws of capitalism, but they’d have more luck defying that pesky law of gravity.