Our California Experience
We just left California after living there for a month, traveling around the state from Fortuna to Lodi to Kingsburg to Santa Clarita. We enjoyed seeing the sites such as the Redwoods, Sequoias, Lake Tahoe, vast vineyards and fruit orchards, the beaches, as well as more populous places like San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Disneyland, etc. I wanted to try to understand how Californians have allowed the state to collapse to the degree that it has. Even while deliberately avoiding the worst areas, we still saw rampant homelessness throughout the state from the north to the south. There is litter nearly everywhere, and a general undercurrent of crime, with frequent graffiti, bars on windows, and more. The tourist parking lots of San Franciso were littered in broken glass from cars being broken into. This seems like the inevitable result of failure to prosecute criminals, which is the worst in the largest cities. I can understand why their police decline to put their lives and