By John Duncan Jr.
Democrats should be very embarrassed that people all over this country are fleeing Democrat-run cities and states as fast as they can.
They are fleeing the high taxes and moving to conservative, low-tax, Republican-run cities and states, but it is much more than that.
They are also trying to get away from the high crime that inevitably follows soft-on-crime policies that Democrat city councils and state legislators seem to love.
Defunding the police, passing no-bail laws, and refusing to enforce laws against property crimes, like shoplifting, have all led to higher crime rates.
Releasing criminals almost as soon as they are arrested discourages police and also leads to more crime.
And nothing shows that a city is on the way down more than allowing drug addicts to live on its streets and openly use illegal drugs and even defecate on those streets.
People don’t want their children seeing or even, at times, having to walk by drug addicts doing these sickening things or begging for money or resorting to committing a crime to get it.
Honest, hard-working citizens are fleeing Democrat cities and states where their taxes are being wasted on failed woke social programs that do no good other than provide jobs for those who run the programs.
And people are fleeing cities and states that not only don’t help enforce our immigration laws but even encourage it by placing immigrants in nice hotels at taxpayer expense and giving them all kinds of welfare handouts (even cash sometimes).
This is being done because Democrats know they keep losing more and more native born Americans and have to rely on foreign-born people to be able to stay in power.
A large number of Mamdani’s votes in the recent New York City Mayor’s race came from foreign-born citizens. That is why national Democrats are fighting so hard against voter photo ID laws that 80 percent of the American people favor.
Democrats should be most embarrassed because of so-called exit taxes, which several states are imposing or considering to force people to stay by making it very expensive to leave or by taking one last bite of the tax apple on their way out.
The National News Desk put it this way on April 7: “Across the country, at least ten states are now exploring or have already passed an exit or wealth tax to combat revenue losses from residents fleeing to lower tax areas.”
Nonpartisan AI said: “Several high-tax (‘blue’) states, including California, New York, Washington and Michigan, are exploring or have proposed wealth and ‘exit taxes’ to combat revenue losses from residents relocating to lower-tax states.”
The National Taxpayer Union Foundation said between 2015 and 2025, an exodus of residents from New York and California cost those states more than $100 billion each in net adjusted gross income, with Florida and Texas reaping many of the losses.
A 2022 study reported by Business Insider found that 352 companies had left California from 2018 to 2021, and several hundred more since then. The primary beneficiaries were Texas, Tennessee, Nevada, Florida and Arizona.
Gavin Newsom has been the governor of California throughout this massive business exit. Now he wants to be president so he can do for the whole country what he has done for California. He is running businesses out, but welcoming illegal immigrants in.
Several years ago, a man who had moved to Knoxville from New Jersey told me his sister’s property taxes in that state were $20,000 on a 2,500-square-foot house. A man from Wisconsin said his property taxes on a 3,800-square-foot house there were $11,000, while taxes on a new 5,000-square-foot house on Dale Hollow Lake were going to be less than a third that much.
Democrat elected officials never think of reducing taxes or reducing the number of people on government payrolls. When so many upper-income people leave, the tax burden is harder on middle-income citizens.
Every Democrat needs to be asked this question: If your policies are so good, why are so many trying to get away from them?
