“We don’t CARE how y’all did things back in California”
“Welcome to Texas. Now lose those bad Yankee habits”
“Californians welcome. Your politics, not so much”
“You screwed up New York. You screwed up California. Now can you leave MY state alone?”
or the all-time favorite:
“Yankees Go Home”
We are all familiar with the topic: Californians / New Yorkers / etc. get sick of their home states, pack up and leave for places less screwed-up, but bring all their bad political- and voting habits with them, and proceed to turn their adopted states into copies of the ones they fled.
Over at Maggie’s Farm, one commenter made this suggestion, which I found perfectly acceptable:
States should pass a constitutional amendment as follows:
1. Persons establishing a new state residency (i.e., not a change of residency within state) shall be prohibited from voting in state elections for a minimum of five years (ten years, if the prior residency is California).
2. The waiting period shall start on the date of issuance of the new resident’s state-issued voter ID.
3. New residents shall be registered to vote at the time of issuance of voter ID, in precincts reserved exclusively for national races (i.e. for president and vice president).
Loyal Readers of this website probably wouldn’t have too much disagreement with any of the above, although the “ten-year California extension” probably wouldn’t survive the Constitution’s Equal Protection challenge, but that’s okay. Remember, what commenter Craig suggests is but a microcosm of federal citizenship law for immigrants: you can’t become a citizen until you are legally resident in the United States for five years (with a couple of exceptions), and therefore you can’t vote, and so on.
This piece of commonsense would have a very salutary effect: remember, a newcomer to say, Texas, could always vote for POTUS and VPOTUS — that’s his absolute right as a U.S. citizen. But he couldn’t vote for anything to do with the state of Texas until he registers to vote and passes the five-year moratorium after which Texas citizenship is automatically granted. (And I don’t want to hear about “taxation without representation” from some Illinois transplant, because unlike Illinois, we have no state income tax in Texas, so the argument is moot — or as we call it in Texas, “utter bullshit“.) So we Texans could be spared the dolorous consequences of Blue staters’s bad habits, at least until we’ve had a chance to turn them into Texans.
This is actually of more than a little concern to me, because my area of north Texas is fast becoming home not just to people fleeing Blue-state bullshit, but corporations (e.g. Toyota) relocating here to escape Blue state taxation and regulation — and these corporations are bringing a large number of Blue state people with them.
This is a big state, and there’s lots of room for more folks; but there isn’t a lot for room for neo-socialist and Big Government nonsense in our state. We got to where we are by severely limiting government influence in our everyday lives — the Texas constitution is one of the most restrictive governmental covenants in the world — and by not allowing our government to tax its people into penury.
Just so we’re all clear on the topic: we already have a real problem with Latin American immigrants — the legal ones — bringing the typical Latin-American pro-government / welfare state mindset across the Rio Grande, without having a bunch of Californians and northerners doing the same thing across the Red River as well.
And don’t even think about gun control, newcomers, unless it’s keeping the bullets to a 1″ circle on the target. That, we Texans can all get behind; the other kind… as they say up north, fuhgeddabahdit. Literally.
Like you, I am a transplant from the Chicago area (almost three years). A native Texan explained to me the difference between a Yankee and a Damn Yankee.
Yankees go back home.
My crazy Uncle Sam relocated me from the San Francisco Bay area to San Antonio way back when, and it was like loosening my tie, kicking off those too-tight boots, and drinking down that firsty, thirsty cold beer all at once. I suspect there are lot of California refugees who feel the same. But a five-year wait to vote? Cheap at twice the price!
I’m a fifth generation Californian. A couple of years ago I escaped from behind the Tofu Curtain to Missouri, taking my guns, NRA Life membership and conservative/ libertarian sensibilities with me. I find that again I’m to the right of the majority of my state’s citizens. Still want to treat me like a modern pariah?
It’s a little known truth that the majority of Cali’s snowflakes weren’t born there. They’re the refuse of other states or nations. They’re the unwanted, incapable, unwashed, unassimilated, welfare queens, tax cheats, actors, hair dressers, community activist, academicians, reality TV stars, et al that drifted into California, got on the welfare roles, and voted for more. Without California, they’d be screwing up the states they were born in.
You should thank Gawd for California — and wish for the earthquake that drops the whole sordid mess into the Pacific.
The state really needs to be divided. Let the Berkeley/SF/LA-Axis be it’s own thing, and the rest of the state can be two or three new (deep red) states. Maybe build a wall around Wackistan so they can’t escape to infect the rest of us.
I moved to NJ and the gun laws got BETTER (having moved here from NYC).
My next move will hopefully be to America.
I’d like to propose a Constitutional Amendment: If a law is struck down as being Unconstitutional, all Congressmen and Senators who voted for it, and the President who signed it into law, and any judges who disagreed with the ruling of Unconstitutional, shall be immediately removed from office, stripped of their pensions, and forbidden from ever holding public office or employment again. If they are no longer in office, they will be stripped of their pensions, any pension already paid must be repaid to the Treasury, and they will again be forbidden from holding public office or employ again. If a second law they voted for/signed/upheld is found to be Unconstitutional the offending public servant shall be taken out and promptly hanged.
You left out “public scourging”, but other than that, I like the way you think.
Oddly enough, the big Yankee reservation in Florida (the Villages) tends to vote pretty conservative.
Anyway, if I had my say in a Constitutional revision, I’d propose the following:
-All campaigning is to be done over a period of three months total (August-October). Heavy fines for those who start any earlier.
-All incumbents have to stand for a yes/no retention election on the first Tuesday of August. No campaigning for this one either.
And Election Day is April 19th.
One other potential benefit of a moratorium – after the waiting period, they may either become disinclined to bother voting or just plain forget.
Maybe you could sequester the unrepentant in Austin, there to suffer the high, self-imposed property taxes.