My family and I celebrated our tenth year living in California last month.

I remember the trek as if it was yesterday; the long, four-day 3,800 mile journey from Canton, Ohio to Sacramento, California, the last stretch of pavement all downhill on Interstate 80 past the foothills to rest in Rocklin, California.

When we arrived our children were 6 and 8-years old respectively. Today the oldest is in college and our youngest is battling junior-seniority as she prepares to graduate in May of 2011. When we set-up camp in California our marriage was just 11-years mature. This year my wife and I will celebrate our 22nd year as one.

The past decade features a quick love affair with California; her beautiful, geography and her climate are simply amazing.

One early memorable reference was a quote that came from our youngest daughter as we were driving around the Sacramento region in an attempt to grow more familiar with our surroundings. 

Windows down and the wind blowing through our hair (I actually had some then) each rider had their own pair of sunglasses fixed to their noses. In the midst of the joyride our youngest said, “Mom, Dad … I don’t like it here. It is too sunny.”

We laughed until we cried, as if to say, if that’s the best complaint a Midwestern transplant can come up with, then we’ll go with it. As we look back this month, it was – and still is – a great blessing to be called residents of California. This large and diversified state is often beyond explanation; to call her our home is an honor.

With any cross-continent move there is a trade-off and a few negatives. We don’t personally blame California, for her blemishes aren’t so much about her, but those who abuse her. The real blame rests with those who have been elected to be her caretaker. These are the villains who responsible for plundering California’s richness, individualism and economic appeal.

The first hurdle we experienced in becoming California residence was the pace of life.

In Ohio things moved much slower. But our first few months in NorCal we felt like we had to put track shoes on each morning, ’just to keep pace’ with this frenzied culture. The beautiful weather, beautiful cars and all of the beautiful people hypnotized us into a civic race and competition that we weren’t used to, nor prepared to run.

Exasperated we asked ourselves, “How can four simple Buckeyes survive in this culture?”

What we eventually discovered is that it wasn’t in our best interest to ‘keep up with the pace’, but to set our own – and we settled nicely thereafter. And once we become our own ‘pace-setters’ things found their normal routine inside of the Hogue Hut West Coast.

This past month we also celebrated ten-years of California’s employment opportunities, her scope of education, her richly diverse culture and the culture’s evolving family heritage. Since most of California’s genealogies arrived in the late 1930′s and 40′s during the Gold Rush – I consider ten years to be a good litmus test for a sincere evaluation.

As ”majority-of-life” Californians, our daughters know only to call themselves as “Cali-girls”. And my wife and I support the unwritten rule that seven years in you become a California native. Since we are now considered native, our citizen tenure has also been merited over the past ten years as we have journeyed through some of California’s most turbulent years in recent history.

Fairly speaking, there are many things we have grown to love about the state and her people – too many to count. We truly believe that California is a ‘great state’ and we are happy that we made the move in 1999. But for all of California’s benefits (again, they are many), there is also a citizens’ denial as to her immediate future.

There is coming a day where the essence of her population will shift dramatically. The continual battle between the ‘makers’ (private sector) and the ‘takers’ (public sector) is causing this state to fester from within. What was once known as the land of the 49′ers’ opportunity is now humorously referenced as a state of socialist government.

The questions that remain are many: Who will be the remaining residents of this great state ten or twenty years down the road from now? Will there be a private sector with innovation and entrepreneurs; or will the entire state be made up of government workers and their unions, preying upon what’s left of a private sector held against their will by government intrusion?

Truth be told, there is a ‘tipping point of reckoning’ when those who are the innovators, the entrepreneurs and business owners, will eventually be forced to give up on their love affair with California and leave her to the harlot that is government.

We discovered early on that one of the most frustrating aspects of residing in California is the inability for people to save money and support the family’s future. With the cost of living continually rising and the ever present reach of government fees, taxes and regulations, the private sector is of its means in saving for their future, and obtaining any shred of individual retirement.

What is yours is yours today – for each tomorrow brings a new piece of legislation that taps your harvest to pay for a state government that is bloated. Each year she grabs; tripling vehicle license fees, raising more sales taxes and the annual increase of income tax – not to mention the ever growing list of government regulations and demands.

The continual increase of these freedom killing fees, taxes, regulations and tactics best described as maneuvers of ‘government grab’ has the private sector wondering if retirement is achievable - and if so – will it be an affordable?

As residence we have grown to appreciate California’s creation as we have grown bitter with her tremendously expense. The cost of living in California isn’t just in dollars and cents. Most of our neighbors pay a price that is much higher than they realize today.

Ten years ago we left Sunday afternoons that included afternoon naps, routine family dinners and early evening walks that ended with front porch talks over a glass of ice tea. The California weekend boasts of frustrated families trying to squeeze their most prized relationships into a 48-hour window of opportunity each week.

These two days (days off for some, but not most) are set aside for catching up on a few things: the past week’s remaining work, the body’s needed sleep, and checking off the guilt driven soccer match. Most families struggle in their efforts of ‘fit-it-in-if-you-can’ family time.

The burden upon the family from Monday to Friday is monstrous with a wide majority of homes featuring dual incomes just to meet the monthly bills. What used to be a variable choice of liberty – both parents working – is now a listed as a sunken cost (economically and emotionally) in raising a family. And this is an erosion cost that most will come to regret years later in life.

At the same time the family itself is under direct attack. The effort to legalize marijuana, releasing prisoned felons (murderers, molesters and convicted armed gunman) back into the populous, mounting agenda soaked educational curriculum, even a no-fault divorce system that takes pleasure in targeting fathers in the courtroom – even the essence of the institution of marriage itself is parsed on an annual basis – after the majority of the state’s citizenry has voted to protect the institution twice.

All of this before we get to the economical survival of families.

As it stands right now, there are only three areas of employment in California that have a bright future: education, medical and government jobs. The rest are burdened with taxes, regulations and a majority government ideology that legislates class warfare and hatred toward the private sector’s profits margins, creative innovations and growth.

The exasperation of many homes is, “if you can’t beat’ em, then I guess we’ll just join’ em.” During this great recession the only employment growth numbers (jobs) appear within the government sector, while the private sector is leaking thousands of jobs each and every month to Nevada, Arizona and Texas. 

Each family bean-counter has watched their 401k retirement savings shrink into a 201k at best while government workers continue to retire at age 55 with 80-percent of their income – only to return to work another government job so to double-dip upon the private sector taxpayers who are struggling to breathe enough air through a straw.

Families read that government pension lost billions of dollars with poor performing real estate investments, only to hear the union workers recite a contractual guarantee that the private sector is forced to pay it all back in within time; this while the families make a heart-wrenching decision to foreclose and walking away from their real estate deals (their homes) as the only option for their future.      

California’s scorecard now features family farms, small businesses and service specialists trying to simply survive in the private sector against a rogue government that is driven by growing numbers of a government workforce fueled by public employee unions who see the private sector as fair, free market competition.

The choice of many of our neighbors on our block is to join the ranks of the strong and find a government job, or pack up your belongings and leave this beautiful state to find rest, liberty and restitution inside of state that welcomes the individual, his family and his families’ future.

Mark my words, there is coming a day that will render California as a state full of government workers supported by government unions who fund their coffers with the political harlots in position of power in Sacramento; a coming day when California will no longer be a state of opportunity, liberty or individualism.

Unless something is done to reverse the course California will evolve into a state of takers who live off of the government’s bosom. A majority citizenry satisfied to who prey upon the remaining families who became trapped when the final remnants of liberty, the free market, and the ”Gold Rush” mentality left town.

When the last of the great republic have packed up their belongings and left California, the harlots will rejoice that they have finally made this great state a government brothel for those who are seeking a life of total government dependency.

We’ll make sure to turn out the lights when we leave, for there will be nobody left to pay for the utility bills.