A recent news story featured in Freedom’s Phoenix tells how people along the lower Colorado River in western Arizona are angry about Californians dumping hazardous waste in a couple of their landfills, instead of disposing of the waste in California (where it comes from).

The story is exaggerated: there are at least 660,000 pounds of waste containing some heavy metals and other hazardous materials that is reported. Sounds like a lot, until you realize that is just 330 tons: or what just 13 or 14 semi-trucks would haul if it were sand and gravel. And while they point out that under California law, stricter than either Arizona or federal law, much of the waste isn’t considered hazardous, they also do not point out that California’s laws and regulations are not just stricter than other law, their laws are ridiculously strict and represent “science by election” more often than not?

Science by election? The people who make decisions in California about labeling and banning things as carcinogenic or toxic or hazardous are either the voters in referendums or their representatives who think that science is some sort of magic or religion and subject to popular vote. And whom are often frightened to death by doomsayers and environists and con-artists. For more info, read about Proposition 65. California politicians and activists and parasites are good at whipping up fear and panic.

Anyway, it is very likely that a lot of that hazwaste really is NOT, except in the eyes of the People’s Republic of California. Still…

Look at almost anything you buy in a store, including things like plastic rulers and sand, and you will likely see a California label. Even if you bought it in Florida and it was made in, oh, Belize. Or Nigeria. Or even Florida. Companies bow low to keep the 50-million-strong market of California accessible to them.

It is not the only way that California seems to dominate the Fifty States – and even the world. Especially when it comes to environists and celebrities. Consider a few:

• Look under the hood (or actually under the body) of your car or truck. Yeah, a lot of that “pollution control” equipment is federally mandated, but California requires even more: driving the cost of buying and repairing those vehicles up by thousands of dollars.
• Recently California decided to ban the sale of diesel-powered trucks in California. While we might think that is a boon for dealers in Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona – maybe even Utah – don’t count on it. What is more likely is that manufacturers may stop making them.
• More and more States (like Colorado and Montana) adopt California standards for air emissions from all sorts of things.
• California exports a lot more than just stupid, goofy standards and regulations – and what they call hazwaste:
  • Fruit – but at the same time, they have (or had) checkpoints to make sure you don’t bring fruit into California
  • California exports a lot of television and movies, but also the arrogant, know-it-all attitude of the celebrities that it makes and supports (with the dollars that flow from the consumers of other States)
  • Massive numbers of border jumpers, especially those who decide that the State is too hot for them: legally hot
  • Massive numbers of “less-woke” and “less-liberal” people who flee California because of high taxes and government regulations but bring their attitudes of worshipping government and “letting George (Washington – DC) do it” to new home States.

Of course, Arizona and Nevada bear the brunt of those exports and attitudes. Oregon not so much, for two reasons: first, it is further from the major Californian urban areas, and second, its ruling class (the Willemite Valley denizens) are as woke as the rulers of San Francisco, Sacramento, Silicon Valley, and the LA Basin.

So, dear reader, what do you think? Is California a bad neighbor? Let us know.