It’s June, the time of year when traveling carnivals move from town to town to entertain the public, with dangerous rides and rigged games of chance, all designed to separate the customers, whom they call “marks,” from their hard earned money.  These carnivals typically are run by shady and unscrupulous people, “carnys,” who derive their income from exploiting the workers who rely on them, cheating, and bribery.

Given that pedigree for the typical carny, it should come as no surprise that the elected carnys of the Left have gotten into the carnival business too.  After all, they already support dangerous positions, and rig elections in order to separate taxpayers from their hard earned money, so why not?   The Democrat Party has become a traveling circus, featuring the same kinds of oddities one finds in the crudest of carnivals.  The elected carnys include the traditional bearded lady –The geek, who draws a crowd by biting the heads off chickens –

And an astonishing assortment of other freaks.

And recently, the Democrats’ traveling carnival of lies arrived here in New Jersey.  I speak, of course, of the nights of violent rioting that Democrats brought to Delaney Hall, a privately run detention facility in Newark, which currently houses illegal aliens arrested by ICE, who are awaiting deportation.

Members of Congress, including Geek Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Andy Kim, and our illustrious new Governor, Mikie Sherrill, turned up outside the facility to help rouse a crowd, composed of the usual suspects from No Kings rallies (deviant shut-ins with garishly dyed hair, and decrepit senior citizens trying to relive the 60’s), as well as an array of paid protestors, some coming from as far away as Portland, Oregon, who hail from the military wing of the Democrat Party, Antifa domestic terrorists.  Add to this the fact that New Jersey is one of those wayward States who’s leaders have declared it to be a “sanctuary State” for illegal aliens, and which, as a result, refuses to permit it’s law enforcement officers to cooperate with federal officers, and what possibly could go wrong?  As it turns out, a lot.

As an aside, let me touch on the notion of any State, County, or municipality declaring itself a “sanctuary” for illegals.  Legal sanctuary was a doctrine practiced  by many religions, in which an accused could enter a church and be immune from prosecution.  It was recognized in English Common Law from the 4th Century to the 17th Century.  Because the 17th Century ended in 1699, and our Declaration of Independence wasn’t made until 1776, the concept of legal sanctuary has no place in U.S. law.  And even if it did, the hijacking of a religious doctrine by an entity which devoutly opposes religion is the height of hypocrisy.  In other words, a typical move by the Democrat Party.

Moreover, it’s time that legal action was taken on a case or cases which eventually can be ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court, which once and for all will declare Sanctuary States, cities, or whatever, unconstitutional.  Article I, section 8 of the Constitution makes immigration enforcement the sole responsibility of the federal government.  In 2012, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that States cannot intrude on the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration law as it sees fit.  So-called Sanctuary States represent such an intrusion.  And as municipalities are merely the creatures of the various States, cities have no more right to impede federal law enforcement than do their parent States.  Article VI of the Constitution states that it and all federal laws supercede those of the States.  End of sermon.

Back to the Delaney Hall riots.  All good riots stem from a basic lie.  The 1967 Newark riots were sparked by the false story that police had killed a black cab driver.  The Delaney Hall riots stemmed from false reports of unhealthy conditions inside the facility, including deficient and tainted food.  These false reports prompted State and City health agencies to demand entry for inspection.  These agencies have no jurisdiction over the facility.  A bit of history is in order.

Delaney Hall is a privately run detention facility, owned by the GEO Group.  In February 2025, the facility was leased for 15 years by ICE, to house illegal aliens taken into ICE custody.  You may recall that, shortly after it opened, in May 2025, the facility was the scene of a similar incident, in which Democrat Congress people, including big-assed House Member LaMonica McIver, tried to storm the facility.  McIver assaulted law enforcement and later was indicted.

The Delaney Hall facility, owned and operated by the same company, was used by Il Duce Obama to house illegal aliens subject to deportation, starting in 2011.  No Democrat ever complained about the facility or conditions therein, until the president was named Donald Trump.  Governor Sherrill and her ilk, have denounced conditions in Delaney Hall, calling it America’s CECOT, the forbidding illegal alien prison in El Salvador.  It’s anything but that.

Here’s a little known, and little reported fact.  Before the 2025 ICE lease of Delaney Hall, the facility was under contract to the New Jersey Department of Corrections, which used Delaney Hall as a Halfway House and rehabilitation facility for State prisoners nearing release from prison.  I know this because I represented a number of these prisoners.  And in my experience, the State prisoners, United States citizens transferred there by the New Jersey government, were happy to go to Delaney Hall, because conditions there were far better than those they experienced in New Jersey prisons.

In late May, NJ politicians tried the same tactics they used during the McIver incident.  They showed up unannounced and demanded entry.  Now, all a Member of Congress, or a Governor, has to do is call ahead and schedule a visit, and they will be admitted.  They didn’t, so they weren’t.  The whole spectacle was merely for show; a pretext to bring in the Antifa terrorist bastards to start the riot.  And they did.

(An investigation is underway to determine who paid for and is supplying expensive gas masks and body armor to the rioters.  Under NJ law, the wearing of body armor while committing assault is a crime punishable by 5 years in prison.  Assaulting a federal officer is a far more serious federal offense).

The riots prevented family members from visiting the detainees.  The politicians blamed ICE.  ICE officers were assaulted, one was viciously bitten.  Things got so bad that even Governor Sherrill was forced to act.  You’d think that a graduate of the Naval Academy, and former Naval officer, would understand the need to enforce laws and protect the safety of law enforcement officers, but it took days of rioting before she finally, on the night of May 30, sent in a State Police unit, which quickly restored order, arresting more than 20 rioters in the process.

Then, having done the right thing, the Governor alibied to mollify the leftist nuts in her Party, claiming that she took action only to protect the rights of the detainees.  She later came to the revelation that most of the rioters were from outside New Jersey.  No shit Sherrill!  If you had permitted the State and local police to intervene sooner, there would have been no riots, and no interruption of visitations.  Idiot Newark Mayor Baraka also got in the act.  He’s blasting the State Police intervention, and he’s suing GEO, claiming his Public Safety Director should have been permitted to participate.  Hey Asshole, you’re the one who ordered City officers not to be involved in ICE operations.

At its heart, the Delaney Hall riots are based on false reports of food quality and living conditions in the facility, which was inspected by and passed federal inspections.  Reports of a hunger strike are lies.  Some detainees refused the meals provided, but subsisted on snacks such as honey buns and candy bars obtained from the on site commissary.  Indeed, the food served to these filthy, criminal illegal aliens rivals that provided by many schools to U.S. citizen students.

As this is written, the riots have subsided and relative calm has returned to the area around Delaney Hall.  The State has established a “Free Speech Zone” to accommodate any leftover blue haired protestors, so they can chant “Grab your guns and kill yourself,” and “Every cop, every fed, shoot yourself in the head,” to their heart’s content.  Whenever the politicians who are supposed to be in charge of protecting public safety actually grow some balls and permit the police to act, the cowardly bastards of Antifa tend to fade away, escaping back into their parents’ basements, until the carnival moves on to some new town, in search of new marks to be fleeced.

By the way, if anyone takes exception to the opinions expressed herein, I don’t know what you can do about it.  This is my Free Speech Zone.

Pope Leo XIV this week issued his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, in which he called for the limitation and control of artificial intelligence (AI) , which the Pope says threatens to normalize an anti-human vision, by concentrating immense digital power in the hands of a few private actors.  The Pope warns that AI represents “the industrial revolution of the modern age,” and poses challenges to human dignity, justice, and labor.

Dire warnings about the dangers of newfangled technology are nothing new.  All new technologies are met with fear by prophets of doom.  There were those who denounced those noisy, smelly horseless carriages as works of the Devil, which would put buggy whip manufacturers and horseshoeing businesses out of work.

I entitled this piece, Pope Luddite for that reason.  The Luddites were members of a 19th Century movement by textile workers who protested the use of automated machinery by the industry.  They have come to symbolize those who resist any technological advancement.

Some say that Pope Leo’s warning is more powerful because it comes from an American Pope.  Let’s put that argument to rest.  He may have been born in Chicago, but Pope Leo is more South American than North, having taken Peruvian citizenship when he was assigned to that country.  The Pope’s message isn’t coming from an American point of view, so much as a Progressive one.  This is unsurprising.

For those who think Popes only recently have begun spouting Progressive dogma, think again.  Pope Leo’s warning that AI is a modern day industrial revolution wasn’t original.  In fact, it is reminiscent of an encyclical of Leo XIV’s namesake, Leo XIII, who in 1891 issued Rerum Novarum, which warned that the industrial revolution was exploiting workers, denounced the concentration of wealth, and sought to improve living and working conditions for laborers.  Like Leo XIV’s  pronouncement, Leo XIII warned that new technology would cost workers their jobs.  Indeed, Leo XIV says that his choice of the papal name “Leo” was influenced by this 1891 encyclical.

The difference is that Leo XIII was advocating for the 19th Century entrepreneurs to establish now familiar social programs and advancements such as wage and hour laws, worker safety laws, and the protection of trade unions, while at the same time denouncing socialism and communism.  Leo XIV seems to be a dedicated socialist, bent on using AI technology to control State action.

At the heart of Leo’s argument is the notion that AI needs to be disarmed, and turned from an instrument of domination and death, to the service of the common good.  Leo says “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.”  He worries that AI makes war more feasible, and less subject to human control.

On one level, the Pope’s pronouncement may be seen as part of the ongoing dispute between he’s had with President Trump.  When he released his encyclical, Pope Leo had at his side Chris Olah, co-founder of the AI firm Anthropic.  Olah supports AI safety, a cause with which I cannot disagree.  But there’s more.

Anthropic is in an ongoing dispute with the Trump Administration.  Its AI program, Claude, is used by a number of government agencies, including defense agencies.  Because Anthropic seeks to limit the uses to which its technology may be put, such as being used to select and analyze military targets, the Trump Administration labeled it a supply chain threat to national security.  In essence, by controlling the permitted uses of AI, Anthropic or other tech companies could control the conduct of nation States.

Olah’s heart is in the right place, noting that AI companies have incentives that go against doing the right thing: commercial pressure, competition, pride and ambition.  He said there must be people outside those incentives, such as church leaders, who are willing to be thoughtful critics.

For his part, Pope Leo is calling for regulation of AI, to keep the technology from dehumanizing society.  He sees the challenge of AI about its design and about who gets to make choices as to its use.  I’m certainly not in favor of runaway AI programs which risk replacing human decision making with cold digital calculations.  People need to control the machines, not the other way around.  But who will be that guiding hand?

Magnifica Humanitas may be Pope Leo’s job application, but is he the best candidate?  Understand, I’m not bashing Pope Leo.  I think he’s striving for a more just and peaceful world, and that is a worthy goal.  However, the Pope, any Pope, isn’t merely some devout ascetic conscience of humanity, like the Dalai Lama.  He himself is a Chief of State, and the CEO of the conglomerate known as the Holy See.

The Pope may speak out against the dangers of commercialism and capitalism, but he’s got his own business interests to look after.  He has his own bank, the Vatican Bank, and the Holy See owns the Banco di Roma.  It has gold reserves, owns some 5,000 properties, making it a huge real estate company, it owns two insurance companies, and holds positions in Black Rock, J.P. Morgan, GE, IBM, and Bethlehem Steel.  Yet I’ve never heard the Pope lecture these companies about aiding in weapons production.

Despite the fact that the Pope regularly has audiences with tech billionaires, who come to Rome to kiss his ring, and pledge to advance Greenhouse Gas Emissions programs, the Vatican invests in Gulf Oil, and its ownership of a natural gas company, Italgas, may make its focus on Greenhouse Gas emissions seem a tad hypocritical.

Moreover, although the Vatican takes pains to criticize Western industrialists over pollution, CO2 emissions, and the like, it focuses little effort on the true despoilers of the environment in China, Russia, and India.  This may be due to the lack of Catholics in those places, but that’s the point.

Even if the Holy See could influence AI use, limiting it to peaceful uses which advance the health and safety of mankind in the West, it hasn’t a prayer of keeping the Chinese and others from making aggressive, warlike use of AI.

Leo’s encyclical condemns the servitude created by the technological revolution, including laborers in rare-earth element mines.  I guess he means in China, where most of these elements are being mined, but he doesn’t specify.  It also decries young people being exploited by online criminal networks.

No one is for that, of course, but he shouldn’t blame these problems on the fact that the technology exists.  Any technology or institution may be perverted for criminal purposes.  Even the Church, which is trying to extricate itself from the devastation sown by decades of sexual abuse of minors by its priests.  The San Diego Archdiocese had to file for bankruptcy protection due to judgments from abused victims.  These things didn’t happen because the Church exists, but because its stewards failed to prevent it.

I suppose we can agree that, regardless of whether he can bring about the regulation and limitation of AI that he advocates for, the Pope said what needed to be said.  Far be it from me to question a Pope’s motives, but the AI warnings in this encyclical may be as much about protecting a healthy bottom line as about protecting humanity.

The Holy See gets much of its revenue from a donation program called Peter’s Pence.  And we’re not talking about just pence.  The program brings in over $60 million a year, but donations have been going down of late.  Pope Leo XIII’s prediction that the industrial revolution would cost jobs, making the poor workers even poorer, turned out not to be true.  The Industrial Revolution led to higher wages, the emergence of the middle class, and vastly greater giving to the Church.

Leo XIV’s warning that AI will cost jobs mimics a common theme these days, but there’s no telling whether Leo XIV will be just as wrong about that as was Leo XIII.  I can understand Leo XIV’s concern, however.  People contribute to Peter’s Pence, computers and robots do not.  Food for thought.

As we gear up for the midterm elections, the political predictions are all over the map.  Democrats are ecstatic, expecting big gains in Congressional elections.  They are banking on President Trump’s supposed unpopularity to carry them to victory.  It might not be so easy, however.

First of all, you have to ask, “Unpopularity as compared to what?”  The groups betting on Trump’s unpopularity are viewing the field through a distorted lens.  Because they only interact with other Leftists, their estimation of the level of the President’s  unpopularity can’t be trusted.  Since they only speak to other Trump haters, they’ve concluded he’s highly unpopular. Moreover, whatever Trump’s approval rating is, the Democrats, as a group, have a lower rating.

The Democrats are suffering from their own unpopularity problem, due to their loony policies.  The increasingly scarce moderate elements in the Democrat Party have been sounding the alarm, trying to convince the Democrat powers that be that the Party has strayed too far to the Left.

The group, Third Way, a haven for moderate Democrats and Never Trumpers, is warning Democrats that if they move too far to the Left, even if they succeed in 2026, their Party will be unable to elect a president in 2028.  The advice Third Way is giving to Democrats shows how far from the mainstream Democrats have wandered over the years.  “Be plainspoken, not lofty or academic. Don’t live online, but be authentic on social media.  Loosen up, and be patriotic without fear that something like the American flag or Pledge of Allegiance has been co-opted by conservatives.”

Really?  Don’t fear the flag or the Pledge of Allegiance has been co-opted by conservatives?  Here’s a bulletin.  The flag and the Pledge don’t belong only to conservatives.  They belong to all Americans.  If Democrats actually fear their own flag, what does that tell you about them?

The problem for Democrats isn’t that conservatives have co-opted the Pledge, it’s that Democrats don’t believe a word of it.  The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a Baptist minister in 1892, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World.  You can stop right there.  Democrats hate Columbus because they blame him for bringing capitalism to the New World.

Then there are the words of the Pledge, which is a promise of loyalty to the United States.  “One nation under God?”  Democrats don’t believe in God.  “Indivisible?”  The Democrats exist solely to divide the entire country.  “With liberty and justice for all?”  Hardly.  Democrats seek to cancel liberty, and they confuse justice with revenge.

Rather than embrace the Pledge of Allegiance, Democrats instead would rewrite it.  “We pledge contempt for the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic which we despise, without reference to God, divisible into preferred identity groups, with tyranny and injustice for all who dare to dissent.”

Third Way tells the Democrats to be authentic.  “Voters in general are just crying out for authenticity.”  But it’s like that old joke, “Just be yourself.  Okay, but what if you’re an asshole?”  The Democrats’ problem is they have proven themselves to be authentic – authentic crazed socialists.

But don’t take my word for it.

CNN’s data analyst Harry Enten presented data recently that show a whopping 58% of voters say the Democrat Party is too liberal.  At the same time, a third of all Democrats think of themselves as Democrat socialists.  And that number rises to 42% for Democrats under 35.

The percentage of Democrats who say they are “very liberal” has quadrupled over the past 25 years.  According to a recent CNN poll, one in three Democrats surveyed now identifies as a Democrat “socialist.” That number rises to 42 percent among Democrats who are younger than 35. Meanwhile, the percent of Democrats who say they are “very liberal” has quadrupled over the past 25 years.

The nonprofit group, Welcome, consulted hundreds of thousands of voters over six months and found that 70% of voters think the Democrat Party is “out of touch.” Most voters, the group found, believe the party over-prioritizes issues like “protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans,” and “fighting climate change” while not caring about “securing the border” or “lowering the rate of crime.”

Need more proof?  Let’s hear from an authentic card carrying ultra-liberal.  Retired House member Barney Frank is one of the Democrats who’s concerned with the sharp leftward turn of his Party.  In Frank’s estimation, his and other Democrats efforts to focus the Party on the noble goal of opposing inequality enabled its extreme far-Left members to use the Party as a platform for social change the public wasn’t ready for, such as transgender politics and defunding the police.

Make no mistake.  Barney Frank hasn’t become more conservative.  His only objection is that the current crop of Democrats may prove themselves to be too crazy to get elected.  Frank isn’t calling on Democrats to be authentic.  The last thing he wants is for Democrats actually to tell the voters what they believe.  His prescription is from the same old Democrat playbook.  Pretend to be moderate and patriotic just long enough to fool enough voters to get elected.

And Barney Frank isn’t against all the crazy shit his Party has been pushing of late.  He just says the public “isn’t ready” for such changes.  This sounds a lot like the Communist Party line, which for years, has claimed America wasn’t “ready” for the revolution.  The problem is the Squad members, and their socialist fellow travelers are ready right now.  They’re only complaint is that the far Left crap hasn’t gone as far Left as they would like.

The wild card in this scenario is the influence of a biased media.  If the media outlets actually told the public the truth, Democrats would be roundly rejected in November.  But they avoid the truth in favor of spewing the far-Left Party line.

The other night, I had dinner with a group of people in a restaurant that had a TV, playing MS Now in the background.  The story was about the IRS making a 7 figure settlement with President Trump for the agency’s deliberate release of Trump family tax records, and Trump’s announcement that the money would be used to compensate the hundreds of people who’s lives Democrats ruined with lawfare weaponization of the justice system.

The MS Now story – “Trump launches a thug fund, proving that he doesn’t support the police.”  Any American who relies on this Shit Show network for news is having his, or more likely, her mind warped, if it wasn’t warped already.

Republicans will have to work hard to get their message out.  And that message should be, “We may not be perfect, but those bastards are bat shit crazy.”

The title of this week’s offering is a variation on one of the slogans of the Jacobins in France, who were responsible for the Reign of Terror, which saw the mass killings of tens of thousands during the French Revolution.  What they actually chanted was, “The Nation is Sacred.”

This seemingly obscure and arcane fact comes from a recent Oped piece written by historian Victor David Hanson, entitled Return of the Jacobins. In it, professor Hanson draws parallels between the 18th Century Jacobins and today’s Democrat Party.

Hanson notes that, for most of the the 20th Century, the Democrats focused on the concerns of working class Americans by supporting programs such as trade unions, the 40-hour work week, and Social Security, which they advanced by growing government and raising taxes.  All the time, however, the previous Democrats had a strong conservative faction, they supported a strong defense, fiscal prudence, and opposed antisemitism.

But now, they champion such things as illegal immigration, trans athletes, cashless bail, and racial reparations.  As Hanson points out, the Democrat Party no longer is democratic, more closely resembling the Jacobins of the French Revolution.  The similarities between them is uncanny.  The Jacobins were a political club in France, whose name was The Society of Friends of the Constitution.  Today’s Democrats constantly claim to be protecting the Constitution, which they really regard as no more than an obstacle to their plans.

The most powerful Jacobins were wealthy, well educated professionals.  Prominent Democrat-Progressives likewise are well to do college educated radicals.  As Professor Hanson pointed out, Commie Mamdani was a rich Ugandan.  You could add to that list expensive Prep School and Ivy League educated Il Duce Obama, as well as all the other Ivy League educated Democrat radicals.

Jacobins and Democrats also tend to be hypocrites.  Jacobins promised justice, but resorted to mass killings in the name of liberty.  “No justice, no peace!”  Sound familiar?  Tom Steyer, a California gubernatorial candidate, is a billionaire who preaches about climate change, yet made his billions investing in coal plants.  George Soros’ Tides Foundation seeks to destroy capitalism after capitalism made it possible for Soros to amass his billions.  And, Hanson reminds us that, when Socialist AOC and Bernie Sanders roamed the country supporting sedition, they traveled in a private jet.

The parallels between Jacobins and Democrats are alarming as well as uncanny.  The Jacobins relied on terror to crush any resistance.  Remember the George Floyd riots that burned parts of New York, Chicago, Portland, and other cities?  Jacobins said, “The Nation must be rebuilt from its foundations.”  Who was it who famously promised to “fundamentally transform” the United States?  That’s right, it was Robespierre Hussein Obama.

Jacobins said, “Freedom can only exist where equality replaces privilege.”  Democrats preach equality and equity, and decry what they call White Privilege.

Jacobins, like Democrats, opposed free speech, teaching that, “Dissent is treason.”  Democrats, you may remember, constantly call “disinformation” anything they disagree with.  They try to stamp out free speech on the internet, in academia, and in public spaces, teaching that, “Speech is violence.”

Much like the Jacobin Committee on Public Safety, Democrats preach about liberty, but try to restrict personal freedoms.  And too much like the Jacobins, today’s Democrats are perfectly comfortable using violence to get what they want.  The Jacobins – “Liberty will collapse unless the enemies of he revolution are identified and eliminated.”  The Democrats – “Trump must be eliminated by any means necessary.”  They must mean it, because they keep trying to kill him.  Many Democrats are only sorry they weren’t successful.

As Hanson points out, the old Democrat Party was embarrassed by their radicals, like the Weather Underground and Black Panthers.  LBJ used to call Hubert Humphrey a “bomb thrower” for his liberal positions.  Today’s Democrats are actual bomb throwers, who would consider Humphrey too conservative to be part of their Party.  Democrat millionaire, influencer Hasan Piker supports “social murder,” praising killer Luigi Mangione,  The arsonist who started the fire that burned the Pacific Palisades thought he simply was advancing “the revolution.”

The comparisons get even more alarmingly familiar.  The Jacobins led the charge to arrest King Louis XVI.  Democrats stage No Kings protests.  They have impeached Trump twice, and promise, if they win the House in November, they’ll do it again.

The Jacobins enacted The Law of Suspects, which allowed them to arrest anyone they accused of being hostile to their revolution.  The Law of Suspects required no proof of guilt in order to convict.  For them, ideology replaced law.  Democrats practice Lawfare, perverting the justice system to railroad Trump and all his supporters into jail.  They concocted the false Russiagate scandal out of whole cloth, falsified evidence, perverted the courts with false affidavits, carried out illegal wiretapping of American citizens, indicted Trump four times, and frustrated his first term.  At the end of the day, they proved no crimes.  And now, Democrat leaders promise to do it all over again when they regain power.  The Jacobins would be so proud.

Finally, much like the Jacobins, Democrats are anti-religious.  The Biden Administration had the FBI investigating citizens who frequented Christian churches.  And make no mistake, the murder of Charlie Kirk was as much about his religious values as his political views.  Our Founders said our rights came from God.  For Democrats, the government is their Supreme Being, and there’s no room for any higher authority.  You’ll take whatever rights the government gives you, and like it.

Professor Hanson writes that, “The Jacobin Democrats of today are systematically destroying the legacy of the Democratic Party.  And why not?  Their model is no the American Founding, but the radical mandated equality – and violence – of the French Revolution.”

Yes, it seems if you scratch a Democrat, you’ll find a Jacobin.  As far as I’m concerned they can all go scratch.

No, it’s not what you think.  This piece is not about States that provide life-ending drugs to people who have decided to end their lives.  That’s bad enough.  The subject of this offering is the increasing tendency of Blue States to pursue policies that are causing millions of their citizens to flee to States which offer them a better quality of life.  These State policies are self-inflicted wounds that are driving productive residents away, and pushing the States closer to bankruptcy.

The massive population shift away from Blue States truly has been amazing.  Since 2020, a flood of Blue State residents from States like California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois have migrated to other States, principally, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada.  California leads the way in resident flight, with more than 1.3 million escapees since 2020.  New York has lost nearly 500,000, and the other States mentioned above smaller, yet significant, numbers of people.

And it’s not just residents who are fleeing.  Businesses are going elsewhere as well.  California has lost Chevron, Tesla, SpaceX, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard, to name just a few.  Many companies have relocated to Texas, notably from Wall Street.  Goldman Sachs has expanded operations in Texas, and J.P. Morgan now has more employees in Texas than in New York.  When companies and jobs are exported from a State, State revenues drop.  For instance, Wall Street employees pay half of the taxes collected by New York City.

In round numbers, the Blue State exodus has relocated more than 4 million people in the past 5 years alone.  Why are they leaving?  Remember that list of the  States most people are escaping from?  The one thing California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois have in common is that they are, by far, the most Left leaning States, led by the most rabid of the kooks who like to call themselves progressives.

The reasons for the relocations can be summed up in three words.  Safety, money, and freedom.  You know how people say that Democrats are on the wrong side of so many 80-20 issues?  One of those issues is public safety.  The Blue States have a nasty habit of coddling criminals and persecuting law enforcement.

Chicago is a war zone, where you’re much more likely to be killed than in the war with Iran.  Chicago’s Mayor, and Illinois’ Governor are unconcerned.  To hear them tell it, everything is just fine.  In New York, the DA’s won’t even prosecute people who assault police officers, preferring to prosecute the cops instead.  Businesses are closing because the City permits unrestrained shoplifting, without consequences.  CVS is shutting 5 pharmacies in the City.  Community Activists, a/k/a rabble rousers, have denounced the company, accusing it of “a first degree social crime” for abandoning their neighborhoods. Mayor Commie Mamdani sees no problem there.  Is it any wonder people are getting out?

The safety issue includes Democrats’ continued resistance to the deportation of illegal immigrants, which has caused them to support the illegals to the detriment of their own citizens who elected them, and who are financing their nonsense.  People write the immigration issue off as merely an anti-Trump reaction, but it’s more than that.

Not so long ago, even Democrats opposed illegal immigration.  In 1996, Bill Clinton said, “We oppose welfare for illegals.”  Notice he called them “illegals.”  Clearly, this was before the Democrats decided that, “No one is illegal.”  In 2006, Senators Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Il Duce Obama, and 23 other Democrats, voted to build a wall on the Southern border.  Around this time, Biden said, “No great nation can have uncontrolled borders.”

Clearly something changed, and it changed long before Donald Trump came down the escalator.  Actually, it was two things that changed.  Democrats came to the realization that they needed to expand their base with new potential voters.  Luckily, there was a vast supply of needy, would-be immigrants nearby, so voter replacement began.  At the same time, the crazy Socialists gained more power in the Democrat Party, and now control it.  The Clintons, Obama, Biden, and Schumer didn’t suddenly change their minds about immigration.  Their Party changed, and being political hucksters, they just followed along.

Flight for freedom began during the Wuhan virus pandemic.  Blue States closed down schools, businesses and churches, pushed for “vaccine passports,” and generally stifled personal freedoms, all in the name of totally made up 6 foot distancing, and a vaccine that really didn’t work.

But by far the biggest impetus for flight from the Blue States is their tax policies.  The people who flee due to ruinous taxes, unsurprisingly are the most productive and prosperous citizens.  The ones who are paying the bulk of the taxes.  The Blue States largely have replaced these productive people with needy illegal aliens, who they insist must be counted in the census.

Not coincidentally, the States from which people are fleeing are also the States with the highest State and local tax rates.  California’s top rate is 14.4%, and that’s on top of the federal 37% top rate, meaning more than half the income of its top earning residents goes to income tax alone.  New Jersey isn’t much better, with a top rate of 10.75%.  Add to this the highest property taxes, the sales tax, and the gasoline, and other taxes, and Texas and Florida keep looking better and better.

Yet despite these confiscatory tax rates, Democrats are still singing their usual song, about the rich needing to pay their fair share.  Federally, the top 1% pay almost 40% of the taxes, and the top 10% pay 70% of the taxes.  The bottom 50% of taxpayers pay 3% of the taxes.  But according to Democrats, the rich still haven’t paid their “fair share.”  And the Blue States, faced with millions of  productive refugees fleeing high taxes, haven’t learned a thing.  They’re doubling down on their “tax the rich” mantra.

In New York, Commie Mamdani wants to raise all taxes, but promises to target “white areas” of the City.  He’s even proposed a pied a terre tax, on properties valued at over $5 million, whose owners don’t live full time in the City.  Picture this.  A $5 million property already pays property tax of about $200,000 a year.  So Mamdani wants to add a surcharge of nearly $40,000, to further tax people who don’t consume City services.  What could possibly go wrong?  Maybe they’ll dump their New York second homes for a $5 million property in Miami Beach, where the tax is $41,000 a year, with no surcharge.

Perhaps the best example of State taxes causing an exodus is in the State of Washington.  Until this year, Washington didn’t tax income.  They now have imposed a 9.9% tax on earnings over $1 million.  This already has caused Jeff Bezos and the Starbucks CEO to move away.  66 other businesses have fled the State, including Meta and Oracle, taking tens of thousands of jobs with them.

The 9.9% tax is on top of a Seattle sales tax of 10.5%, plus high property taxes.  Seattle’s Socialist Mayor is unconcerned, however, telling the fleeing billionaires, “Bye.”  When she tries to close the budget hole that the loss of these billionaires and companies will cause, she may be singing a different tune.

But all these taxes are still not enough for the Left, which is also touting a “wealth tax.”  What this is, is an annual tax on what the government decides a person’s property is worth, including unrealized gains.  In other words, you bought stock for $10,000.  The stock price tripled, but you haven’t sold the stock.  Leftists want to tax your $20,000 unrealized profit.  It gets worse.  Many people are living in homes bought for $200,000, that now are worth $1 million.  But, you say, “I don’t have that money in my hand.”  The wealth tax proponents don’t care.  Like Paulie from Goodfellas, their response is, “You had a bad week, fuck you, pay me.”

On the federal level, it’s likely such a tax is unconstitutional, based on a 1920 Supreme Court opinion that decided that unrealized increases in value are not income which can be taxed.  On the State level, they will cause only more flight from the Blue States.

The bottom line is, if the Blue States don’t wise up, they will lose more Congressional seats, and thus, electoral votes due to decreased population.  In 2030, it’s expected that 8 House seats will move to Red States.  Don’t bet on the Dems wising up.  I’m not convinced that the leftist fanatics will ever decide they were wrong.