By Samuel Strait – Reporter at Large – May 3, 2022 The results are in, 120,000 more of California's population have left the State. Long has California been a destination for many in the rest of the United States, and now the tide has turned. Taxes, Leftist policy making, crime, illegal immigration, homelessness, and the list goes on and on, making California a place where many are eyeing the exits. Those with their hands out for California's nanny state dole cannot keep up with those that are headed out. If anything could possibly more harmful to the standard of living for most in the State, the Governor and Sacramento's government are ready and willing to oblige. Medi-Cal for all but those 26 to 50 no matter if you are a legal citizen or not. Everyone by 2024 if Hair Gel has his way. Climate change extravaganzas unlimited. Money thrown left, right, up, down without a problem solved in sight. Government growing faster than the weeds in most people's lawns, yet the never changing solution for Governor "Hair Gel" Newsom is bigger has to be better. No attention to the fact that California is bleeding those that pay for most of the Progressive a la carte that is served up by what passes for government in the State. Already shorn of several seats of federal representation by its population losses, with nothing to show for it but a huge population of homeless, and illegal immigrants. As much as current Board of Supervisor's District Three representative, Chris Howard, likes to portray the population as growing, the County has lost nearly one thousand residents since the last census in 2010. Stagnation is the word inspite of all the "rosy" pictures and numbers that current estimates project. High inflation on top of an already expensive State to live in, has many low income and impoverished recent residents regretting their choice of moving to the sunny climates of California, where even the freely dispensed "hand outs" can no longer keep up with cost of living. Here in Del Norte County the picture of local government is no different. What has afflicted the State to a large degree has invaded our local shores. High taxation, thanks primarily to our local BOS and City Council has sent those that have not permanently fled, to Brookings in larger than ever numbers to shop. Empty store fronts are beginning to be the norm rather than the few. A parade of ever growing government and taxpayer follies grace the landscape, often fronted by "grant funding", only to leave the local population with the costs for those for the future. Leadership without any vision of what comes next, yet certain local media outlets leading the chant of more, more, more, clueless about what comes next. This sad but sorry tale has overtaken what was once the best place to live in the United States of America. The growing trend that has devastated urban population centers has spread like an epidemic to infect even much of rural California without there ever being any kind of revolution or major conflict. Californians have done it to themselves. No one can claim to think that the liberal/progressive path espoused by the Democrats for decades has led to a better California as a place to live. Other states throughout this country that have bought into California's insanity find themselves in similar states of decline. So how is it that the Democrat message is held near and dear by so many in this Country and even here locally, that continues to show any measure of success. As this Country has become divided, evidence that certain ways of conducting oneself have clearly been revealed as successful, others have not. For nearly two hundred years this Country sustained itself successfully on the premise that smaller government and less taxation was the path to that success. That is no longer the case. From the Federal government to State and local spectacles to include Del Norte County, it has become almost painful to characterize anything as growing or successful. It can and must begin, this change, at the local level to a more responsible and functional government, without all the useless "decorations" of benefice that benefit no one.