Wackadoodles, represent!

I read on Officials Say the Darndest Things that Ohio Gov. John Kasich, in his 2012 State of the State address, said:

A year ago, Ohio ranked 48th in job creation. We trailed only Michigan and California in lost jobs-Michigan, the home of the auto industry that was devastated and California, of course, filled by a bunch of wackadoodles.

I had to post a picture of a wackadoodle family (wearing tie-dye!) in response.

I would like to post a few facts about California. We have a significant automobile industry; one report estimates that California ranks 5th among the 50 states in automobile industry employment. We were hurt along with Michigan and the other automobile-producing states.

California is also a manufacturing powerhouse and that sector of our economy has suffered along with the rest of the US manufacturing base.

Our construction sector suffered from overbuilding and the inevitable collapse. That was self-inflicted and we accept the blame for that.

I would like to ask the CEOs of Ohio why, when my Ohio-built washer finally broke, I was unable to replace it with another Ohio-built one? Why had their CEOs decided to shut down the Ohio plants and move the jobs out of the country? I would have plunked down California-earned money to purchase an Ohio product, if they still produced it.

Our nation faces serious problems, and name-calling is not going to help us solve them.

Also in the speech, he said:

In the 21st century, you've got to move at the speed of the marketplace. And so we created JobsOhio. It's beginning to bear fruit in our state already and I'm so excited. Mark, thanks for coming from California. Now he is an Ohio resident. Who knows what we'll see next, right? It's amazing.

We are one nation and people migrate between the states. I have a friend who moved here from Ohio. Why make political hay about it? If you must, see the links below.

Now he's being facetious--I hope.

So we have to devise a strategy, and we're in the process of devising a strategy right now, where we can have a lot of foreign trade efforts and that's foreign trade to places like California and the State of Washington.

Addendum: Due to the timing of this speech, I now believe this is a reference to gay marriage. This is a display of bigotry and not humor.

Recommended reading:

• The Economist on the extent and causes of out-migration from California
• The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities takes a look at the actual data and concurs with the Economist:

  The migration that’s occurring is much more likely to be driven by cheaper housing than by lower taxes. A family might be able to cut its taxes by a few percentage points by moving from one state to another, but housing costs are far more variable. The difference between housing costs in two different states is often many times greater than the difference in taxes. So what might look like migration in search of lower taxes is really often migration for cheaper housing.

Study after study have shown that highly-educated Americans migrate into California for job opportunities and lower-educated ones migrate out of California for cheaper housing. That's not a record to be proud or ashamed of.

I am currently listening to Kevin Starr's whirlwind history of California. Everything transports me to memories about my California. I went to school with people with last names like Castro and Magellan. When I remade a shoebox into Mission San Jose, I never dreamed that I would someday serve as a bridesmaid there (or that the priest would officiate while wearing Birkenstocks).

When I left home to attend the University of California's flagship university, I didn't imagine that I would earn an Mrs to another child of immigrants. But here we are, a California wackadoodle family and proud of it!