Every day I turn on the news I hear one more reason to say goodbye to California. This makes me very sad as a native Californian. I was born and raised in California as were both my parents, and my maternal Grandmother. My boys were born here as well and I assumed the tradition would go on. However I am afraid I may have to say goodbye. I do not want to give up and leave, because that is part of the problem. The last few years California has actually seen it's population go down. When asked why people leave, there are various reasons, the taxes, the public schools, the illegal aliens, the cost of living and so on. These are very important issues to me as well but at what point do we say it is a lost cause? Can we ever get back to normalcy or are we so over run by special interests? Between the open border crowd, the climate change crowd, the pro-union crowd there is no room for the conservative Christian middle class crowd. Who is standing up for us? I want to stand up for us and fight for my state, but I think many people are so apathetic and disillusioned they think one person can not change. We are so busy working and raising our kids that we do not have time to go protest every other thing, and we are so busy that so much is slipping away. More and more of our income is being taken away, and thus more of our freedoms. I want to scream from the mountain tops but I have to go take my son to school.