This community opinion was contributed by Rob Bernosky. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent BenitoLink or other affiliated contributors. Lea este artículo en español aquí.

Californians are dealing with:

  1. High Home Prices
    • Locks out too many from home ownership.
    •  Increases property taxes
    • Prevents people from downsizing which decreases housing stock for families
    • Decreases capital available for other uses, i.e., property improvements and new cars.
  2. High Rent Prices
    • Decreases Quality of Life
    • Incentivizes corporate ownership of homes.
    • Decreases ability to save for home ownership
  3. High Fuel Costs
    • Decreases quality of life
    • Minimizes new business investment
  4. Forced Electrification
    • Increases costs of home ownership
    • Increases all costs, for food, rent, heating, cooling
    • Decreases quality of life
    • Decreases mobility 
  5. Transportation funds misallocated
    • Most people would benefit from regional rail where all the congestion is, not high-speed rail
  6. High Taxes
    • Decreases take home pay
    • Drives away businesses that create jobs
  7. Welfare State
    • Increases taxes
    • Decreases capital for other purposes, i.e., transportation solutions
    • Not fair to hard working Californians
    • Attracts more public charges
  8. Over Regulation 
    • Compliance costs hinder business creation
      • Decreases innovation
      • Decreases job creation
    • Risk of litigation chills new business investment/establishment closure

Democrats and their one-Party rule have created this mess, but don’t seem to do anything about it except to double-down on the policies that created this misery. Registering and voting Republican can lead to these solutions:

  • No institutional/foreign owners of homes (decreases high bids on new homes/lowers rent)
  • Allow practical and safe fossil fuel harvesting and refining
  • Eliminate laws that force electrification – let consumers choose for themselves
  • True hand up/not hand out to immigrants (decreases costs to state/increases productivity)
  • Have built in sunset provisions for laws and regulations that force reevaluation every 5 or 10 years
  • Abandon high speed rail and invest in regional rail
  • No counting of ballots received after Election Day
  • Voter ID will quell suspicions of nefariousness

We don’t want to abandon our unique Californian values, and all of the above can be done with them in mind. But we need the balance of two-party rule and be able to elect those who understand the suffering that the majority of Californians and San Benito residents feel.

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