Saturday • October 25 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.XLIII
Manchester, N.H.
I can’t say whether anyone from states like Florida, Wyoming, Tennessee, the Carolinas or Dakotas, or any other appealing redder states uprooted to move to New Hampshire, but it seems unlikely. Californians, however – we got a bunch of those.
An estimated 1,877 refugees migrated to the Granite State from the Left Coast’s largest progressive enclave.
According to USA Facts.org, 725,000 people fled California since 2020—more than anywhere else in the country.
More than 100,000 Californians moved to Texas between 2020–21, well ahead of second place Arizona (63,000 Californians) and third ranked Nevada (55,000).
Texas has recently emerged as a popular destination, not just for Californians, but Americans from all regions. No state income tax and lower cost of living, along with a growing tech hub is pulling in Americans from all income brackets. Meanwhile, Arizona and Nevada offer similar tax and affordability benefits as well.
I’m sure it was for work. Right?
A key driver of migration is the state’s continuing affordability challenges where housing costs have pushed home ownership out of many Californians’ reach. It is also one of the most difficult states to retire in, where $1 million can last as little as eight years.
Separately, the rise of remote work in 2020 allowed many Californians to move out of their more expensive state to cross into regions with a lower cost of living while maintaining their economic opportunities.
COVID restrictions, high taxes, excessive regulations, green energy mandates (those meddling bureaucrats and their stupid governor).
The shift is causing housing crunches in other states and, more than likely (at least by a majority of transplants), voting for the solutions that led to them leaving. I’m sure they’ll do that here, though we have California refugees who are small government types like our readers. They aren’t all cursed to repeat the same mistakes, but what to do? Mandatory liberty training sounds sensible. A series of short classes on why New Hampshire is better than California and how “you can do your part” to keep it that way. It’s not complicated.
Vote, but don’t vote Democrat. Keep New Hampshire from turning into Vermont, which has already started to turn into California.
Please.
The post No One From Tennessee, Wyoming, or Oklahoma Seem To Want To Move to New Hampshire appeared first on Granite Grok.
Before delving into the dangers of eliminating cash and mandating that all transactions be conducted by digital means, let us briefly discuss the legal aspects of money. In the United States, as in all economies that have legal tender laws, only cash is recognized as money. Some may think that the balance of their bank accounts is money too, but that is not quite the case. Your bank balance is one step removed from legal money.
All banks must maintain minimum balances of reserves, in cash held either in their vaults—a very small amount—or in their “reserve accounts” with their local Federal Reserve Bank branch (there are twelve of them). These reserve account balances may be converted to real money, or cash, at your bank’s discretion. However, the total cash in our economy also includes cash held outside the banking system, such as the money in your wallet, cookie jar, or personal safe deposit vault.
The total of bank reserves plus cash held outside the banking system is known as the monetary base. The monetary base is not the same as the money supply. Most of the money supply is composed of bank credit not backed by reserves. When banks make loans, they credit your account, which becomes bank credit money. Yes, this money was created by the bank out of thin air. Notice that the banks did not create reserves, only credit money, which is not the same thing.
As of July 2023, the monetary base in the United States was $5.5 trillion, whereas M3—the total bank credit money—was $20.9 trillion! So, if everyone demanded real money (cash), the banks would be able to honor only about one-fourth of the requests. The possibility of your bank failing is real. Over nine thousand US banks failed during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Risks of Electronic PaymentsYour ability to hold real cash, not just bank balances accessible by check or electronic means, protects you from the inevitable infrastructure problems associated with any electronic system but also from the instantaneous seizure of at least some of your money. Cash is anonymous whereas a bank account is not. If something happens, you will still be able to function to the limit of the cash you happen to have on hand.
Now, let’s say that cash has been eliminated by some legal means and that you have angered the powers that be for some reason—probably for opposing them and asking others to oppose them too. All the banks must do is to freeze your bank account or eliminate it entirely. There are two examples of this very thing happening in the recent past.
First, the government of Canada froze the bank accounts of all those participating in the Canadian truckers’ general strike plus those who helped them. Second, British politician Nigel Farage had his accounts closed for political reasons and found that no other British bank would serve him. Without the means to use money, Farage came very close to emigrating. Just think about that for a moment. You could not fuel your car, buy groceries, pay your rent, or do a hundred other things without access to a bank account.
Risks of Central Bank Digital CurrencyAll of the world’s major central banks are drawing up plans to institute digital currencies that they themselves control. This is very dangerous for our civil liberties. Now the government would not have to seek the cooperation of the banks to freeze your accounts or “debank” you entirely, as the British banking system did to Nigel Farage. At the stroke of a keypad, you would not have access to your financial accounts—no fuel for your car, food for your family, or heat for your home.
No one should be allowed to hold such enormous power, which really is a life-and-death issue. Naturally, digital currencies are being promoted as efficient and modern. They are no such thing. This is a civil liberties issue and needs to be stopped.
Patrick Barron is a private consultant to the banking industry. He has taught an introductory course in Austrian economics for several years at the University of Iowa. He has also taught at the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Wisconsin for over twenty-five years, and has delivered many presentations at the European Parliament.
Patrick Barron | Mises Wire
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Califronia legalied prostitition. What could go wrong? Well, whatever one might expect. Increased visibility, more human trafficking, and wait for it. The cops can’t talk to the girls (unless they look underage), but they are all about ending the trafficking.
Who doesn’t oppose human trafficking (aside from the open-borders crowd, sex-work advocates, mostly Democrats)? California.
“Police can’t literally go and talk to them because they don’t have a right to talk to them because they are not doing anything wrong…Even if they are going out talking to someone in their car and sitting there when all they are wearing is less than a G-string,” National City Mayor Ron Morrison told CBS 8 news.
So they can’t stop solicitation, and it seems like there is limited ability to prevent indecent behavior (or sex in a nearby ally, for example) – don’t look kids! but the police say they are focused on the human trafficking that fuels sex work.
“Where we work in South Los Angeles, we’re not addressing sex workers where there is a voluntary exchange between two people,” Pinto said.
“What we are doing is addressing the human trafficking at the Figueroa corridor. There is a fear factor or coercion, and in the end, that pimp takes all of the money and she doesn’t get any money back. It’s been an ongoing problem for years, but the corridor has become an area where there’s been an uptick in trafficking victims.” ..
The problem has become so bad that the city, the LAPD, the LA City Attorney’s Office, local nonprofits, the Department of Children and Family Services and the US Attorney’s Office have banded together and started a new program in September called the “Figueroa Initiative” to help victims of human trafficking.
Prostitution is legal statewide, so it isn’t a problem limited to Los Angeles. But it is a problem. In August, we reported on the not-so-well-enough-known fact that sex work was legal in Rhode Island for nearly 30 years.
People who profit from prostitution are typically its boosters. They call it sex work, describe it as a right, and dress it up as a noble calling. That sounds great, but what legalized sex work actually looks like is slavery, trafficking, and sexual assault.
Democrats in California sell it as some empowering right. If a woman wants to sell her body, that’s her business. But it is always someone else’s business; the girls are just sex slaves to that revenue stream. Many end up addicted, mistreated, and, when used up, tossed in the trash. So, while it is noble to focus on human trafficking, legal sex work enables it and makes it harder on law enforcement and easier for traffickers.
Many of whom, by the way, move women and children across the porous southern border over which Democrats appear to care very little. Another policy that enables human trafficking. It makes you wonder who in Sacramento represents organized crime, cartels, MS13, and other street gangs who run the girls. Women aren’t making money or feeling empowered. They are victims, and the State of California made treating them that way legal.
HT | NewsWars
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