Greetings and Happy New Year from the shores of the most scenic coastline and beloved craggy mountainous vistas in America called the West Coast, Messed Coast™. These states, filled with God's abundance and natural scenic beauty, are run by the slick-haired, clueless, and malevolent governors whose shared objective is to claw back from their populations the one gift of God these mere mortals could never give: freedom. So let's see how they're planning to rob you of that freedom in 2025.
Here's our cheer: Let's have this new year, unlike that last year! Gooooo West Coast, Messed Coast™!
Your humble correspondent has been on the DL for most of the holiday season with that bug "that's going around" this year. This energy-zapping bronchial bug is as prolific as the moves to raise taxes on the West Coast, Messed Coast™ states. It's as abundant as the minimum wage shenanigans in Washington State, which VodkaPundit writes about nearby and as I mention below. This bug is as ubiquitous as the bad ideas emanating from Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia.
Let's get started, shall we?
No, "taxes" please, we're leftists.
Over the holiday, Washington independent reporter Brandi Kruse received a copy of the guidebook for woke politicians on how best to sell tax increases to the public without calling them tax increases. The materials, featured at a recent Democrat retreat, are so slick that your humble correspondent believes these came from Democrat Central and are likely being used all along the West Coast, Messed Coast™.
With Kruse's permission, I give you one of the low lights from this dog and pony show.
This is a particular favorite of mine from Kruse's collection. This presentation slide urges politicians not to refer to this check jack as "taxing the rich," but by getting those mean old rich people to "pay what they owe," to "center the needs and well-being of real people." That's a Kamala line. Taxes are never to "fill a gap" or "hole" in the budget but as a "shared contribution." They also call rich people "villains," who, are "the wealthy few" who wrote our "flaw [sic] tax code 100 years ago."
Related: Seattle Set Minimum Wage Over $20 and You'll Totally Believe What Happened Next
Washington Democrats are also test-driving the unrealized capital gains tax to go after assets that haven't been sold and turned into fungible income. Watch for it in your town very soon.
Welcome to the People's Republic. Flee while you can.
HOW much?
There's pain and then there's self-inflicted pain. They call that masochism. Welcome to Seattle, masochism central, where the minimum wage has just gone up by 20% for 2025. At $20.29 per hour, Seattle's minimum wage is now $4.00 per hour higher than the state's $16.60 rate. Plus, they ladled on another paid week of time off.
Now over to this lady, whose West Seattle waffle business closed on December 30. The woke business owner supported the wage increase but did the math and realized she couldn't afford the additional $34,000 per year that it would take to pay her employees.
Seattle leftist cries about her business closing because of the new $20 minimum wage, but she supported the law and the politicians that enacted it
— Ari Hoffman 🎗 (@thehoffather) January 3, 2025
Sorry to be cold lady but I'll shed no tears for you or your business. You get what you vote for good and hard pic.twitter.com/djoFzSQEgl
The city of Burien takes top "honors" for disliking business so much that city "leaders" raised its minimum wage to $21.16 for companies with 500 or more employees.
The state's and Seattle's minimum wage increases are a big tell of how colossally bad the economy has been under Joe Biden and his West Coast, Messed Coast™ kindred. In 2021, the state minimum wage increase became automatically tied to the state's consumer price index which reflects the higher costs of food, housing, gas, and health care, among other items.
Can you hear me now?
On New Year's Eve, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department communication system suffered a catastrophic failure that one deputy called "our own little Y2K."
In the first moments of 2025, the CAD dispatch system did not allow "personnel to log on with the new year, making the CAD inoperable.”
Related: Woke DA Seeks Final Revenge on Voters Who Kicked Him Out of Office
The L.A. Times reported that the technology failure couldn't have come at a more sensitive time. The Rose Bowl and Rose Parade were scheduled for that day.
The net result of the computer failure meant patrol car computers were down, and "call takers have to write down all the information for each call and then the dispatch has to voice all the details and the patrol unit has to write it all down,” the Times reported. One deputy said they lost their ability "to run people or plates. They can’t pull report numbers to give to people, so they have to call dispatch.”
Schools are parents
California's 2025 laws include a break on bank junk fees, such as not charging a fee if you couldn't withdraw money from an ATM because there wasn't enough money in your account. But it's the attack on parents' rights in California schools that will make the biggest impact in 2025.
The state legislature passed, and Governor Hair Gel signed, a new law that allows schools to lie to parents if their kids identify as trans. The law "prevents schools from requiring staff to notify parents if a student identifies as LGBTQ... if a student identifies as a gender other than what’s on their school records," under AB 1955.
At the time it was passed, Republican Assemblyman Jim Patterson said "In the nearly 12 years that I have been in the State Assembly, I have never seen an effort to damage the relationship between children and their parents like this one." Patterson said this law would "create a government-imposed wall" between schools and parents. They used to refer to the students in government school districts
Safer transit?
A new Oregon law makes it a misdemeanor to ingest drugs on public transit. People convicted are subject to state-funded drug treatment.
A mentally ill man with a makeshift flamethrower on public transportation. @tarafaul503 and I have been investigating the chaos that occurs on public transportation and will share our story soon. Video shared by user. pic.twitter.com/xPxxpds3ZN
— Kevin Dahlgren 🥾 🥾 (@kevinvdahlgren) January 1, 2025
Oh, and Portland? Sit on this.
The deposed woke Portland area DA just said his final goodbye to the people who let him ruin their city. Mike Schmidt tried to give early release to a bunch of hardened criminals — including a murderer.
I wrote about Schmidt's big FU to Portland here, and you'll want to hear every gory detail.
They haven't ruined everything yet
Be careful out there.
Newport Beach, California #wildlifephotography #wildlife #NaturePhotography #NatureBeauty #NatureLover #nature #seascape #pacific #sightseeing #newportbeach #California #vacation #USA #travelphotography #Whale pic.twitter.com/PVXqjWSZeA
— Melodee L. St. James (@MelsBracelets) January 3, 2025
Join the conversation as a VIP Member