{"id":2654,"date":"2026-06-22T05:08:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T05:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=2654"},"modified":"2026-06-22T05:08:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T05:08:28","slug":"how-californias-self-sabotage-by-the-left-made-it-a-national-disgrace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=2654","title":{"rendered":"How California’s self-sabotage by the left made it a national disgrace"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By any measure, California is a failed state \u2014 and a national embarrassment.<\/p>\n

What happened to the nation\u2019s most richly naturally endowed, and once best-governed, state?<\/p>\n

Read more Family of California woman Ashley Phillips who went missing in Costa Rica shares tragic update<\/a><\/p>\n

The left took total control \u2014 after millions of the embattled middle class fled.<\/p>\n

Millions more impoverished immigrants, legal and illegal, took their place.<\/p>\n

Left-wing Silicon Valley spawned some of the wealthiest elite liberal enclaves in the world.<\/p>\n

The result was a neo-feudal society that\u2019s hardly democratic.<\/p>\n

As upper-bracket taxpayers fled, taxes rose on those who remained to fund expanding entitlements for newly arrived poor would-be residents.<\/p>\n

In turn, even more of the middle class left.<\/p>\n

The remaining pyramidal economic structure ensured a Democratic monopoly \u2014 further entrenched by changing balloting laws, gerrymandering voting districts, vote harvesting and ignoring or undermining popular referenda.<\/p>\n

For example, in 2014, Californians voted for Proposition 1, a $7.5 billion water bond designed to solve the state\u2019s chronic water storage deficit.<\/p>\n

Included was $2.7 billion specifically designated for new reservoirs: The last major reservoir had been built in 1980, when California had roughly half its current population.<\/p>\n

But bureaucracies, elected officials and green activists blocked all new reservoir construction.<\/p>\n

Adding insult to injury, Gov. Gavin Newsom used $250 million from the Proposition 1 fund to blow up four Klamath River dams that had once provided storage, electrical generation, recreation and flood control.<\/p>\n

Californians have twice voted in referenda (for Proposition 209 and against Proposition 16) to bar the use of racial preferences for contracting, admissions and promotion in public institutions.<\/p>\n

Most public universities simply ignored the law and continued their \u201cdiversity\u201d quotas under new names, against the will of the people.<\/p>\n

California voters in 2008 passed Proposition 11 to stop political gerrymandering via a supposedly nonpartisan state redistricting commission.<\/p>\n

But Democratic lobbyists and lawyers sabotaged the goal of disinterested redistricting.<\/p>\n

Although Republicans usually achieved nearly 40% of the California vote in national elections, two decades later there were only seven Republicans in the 52-person congressional delegation, a mere 13% of the state\u2019s representatives.<\/p>\n

Even that tiny contingent was considered too generous by the left: The 2026 redistricting will likely push the GOP down to four or five seats.<\/p>\n

The balloting mess in the recent Los Angeles mayoral race shows just how dysfunctional and anti-democratic California has become.<\/p>\n

Democrats warp elections in a \u201clegal\u201d manner by passing insane laws that ensure fraud and Democratic victories.<\/p>\n

Winners in the strange jungle primaries \u2014 usually both Democrats \u2014 weren\u2019t announced until a week after the polls closed.<\/p>\n

Read more The Anthony Fauci, COVID-19 origins cover-up runs \u2018deep\u2019 into our intelligence community<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the eventual winners in the mayoral race, the socialist Nithya Raman, gave a teary concession speech on Election Night.<\/p>\n

Republican Spencer Pratt was comfortably ahead of her in second place then \u2014 only to lose when large numbers of late ballots that broke roughly 90% Democratic arrived.<\/p>\n

Remember, every registered voter is sent a mail-in ballot. If it\u2019s postmarked on Election Day, it can arrive at vote centers up to seven days after the election.<\/p>\n

No one really knows whether the ballots are mailed to the dead, to former or nonexistent addresses, or to legally eligible voters \u2014 by design.<\/p>\n

Anyone can register and receive a provisional ballot on the same day.<\/p>\n

Campaign operatives can round up voters, gather their ballots and deliver them en masse to a voting center.<\/p>\n

They can register anyone to vote, provide a ballot, and then deposit it immediately.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no requirement to provide proof of US citizenship; a credit card without a picture suffices.<\/p>\n

It gets worse: If the potential voter has no license, no Social Security number, no proof of US citizenship and no credit card he still<\/em> will be registered \u2014 once harvesters provide him with a \u201cunique identifier\u201d number.<\/p>\n

If all that doesn\u2019t work, ballot \u201ccurers\u201d can be called in to help remedy rejected partisan ballots post facto.<\/p>\n

Democrats now rely on this system to ensure supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature.<\/p>\n

The more Democrats control the state, the more socialist, anti-democratic and autocratic California becomes.<\/p>\n

Their gift to the nation is a third-world failed state, now in danger of societal collapse.<\/p>\n

Fires rage \u2014 given ideologically driven prohibitions on brush and forest management \u00a0and sheer bureaucratic incompetence.<\/p>\n

Multibillion-dollar boondoggle rail projects rust.<\/p>\n

Billions of welfare dollars are stolen with impunity.<\/p>\n

Illegal aliens who cannot speak or read English are given passes to obtain commercial trucking licenses.<\/p>\n

Since 2020, over 100,000 criminals have been released early from state prisons.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Half the state\u2019s births are paid for through state-supplied welfare coverage.<\/p>\n

And now the homeless without addresses or IDs can determine elections.<\/p>\n

In sum, import poverty; romanticize illegal immigration; demonize the middle class; drive out private-sector capital; and exempt elites from the consequences of their own ideology\u00a0 \u2014 and you\u2019re left with a state where democracy dies.<\/p>\n

Along with everything else.<\/p>\n

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Bernie Sanders\u2019 call to seize the AI industry has damning lessons about politics today<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What happened to California, the nation’s most richly naturally endowed, and once best-governed, state? 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