It's hard for me to comment and not get political, but I have lived in Colorado (born and raised) most of my life... I left and spent 7 years in Texas because I didn't like what the state was becoming - and as you can see from the rant over eggs it is getting even more head in the sand stupid worse than 10 years ago.
I will say this, without getting too hateful of any state. When I started noticing a-holes on the road (not even old enough to drive yet) was a year or two after the big fires in California and interestingly enough Colorado reported a huge influx of people moving into the state.... That trend repeated itself over and over and over. With the legalization of Mary J. by both Washington state and Colorado (fall of 2014), I could see it was gonna get ridiculous - so that is when I left. It went into effect Jan 1 2015, and I had everything staged to leave. I exited the state April 1 of '15. In those 3 months I saw greater than 50% of the license plates in the parking lots were out of state, and I am not talking any one state and not all rental cars, these were people who had just moved here. Every state was represented even Alaska. I'm not mad at those states, I am not mad at the people of those states, the way I see it the absolute dregs of those states (every place has em) left to come here and make a mess of "my" state.
I came home to visit and I saw homeless people staking out the public library at 6:59 am just waiting to rush in and find a place to be out of the elements... I have read dozens, maybe even hundreds of news stories now about Narcan being placed here and there cause they want it available since the OD's are happening. Prolific drug use in the bathrooms at the public library led to them locking and barricading the bathrooms and refusing bathroom use to anyone at the largest public library in the state.
Being forced to come back due to Elon's shenanigans in Austin and I am grateful that I am 300 miles from civilization, out here there are no out of state plates and nobody but cows, corn, and farmers/farmer's families.
I will say that leaving a major metro of 2 million (Denver) and moving to a major metro of 2 million (Austin) it was refreshing to find road manners again, people letting you pass instead of trying to run you off the road, smiling, waving, letting you in when you are signalling properly and driving responsibly. I had thought all "big" cities would be like Denver has become, but I am glad to see that is not true. The one fault I would give Austin in the roads is kind of a "head in the sand" moment too, the leaders refused to expand and improve the transportation grid specifically saying (and this is a quote from news who was directly quoting) "If you don't build it, they wont come." meaning to slow the growth they were going to intentionally leave the city gridlocked and snarled up in a log jamb.
Every state has their moments, every leadership does some dumb thing at some point, we are all in this together dealing with the same things everywhere.
/end rant
