When You’ve Lost Gene Simmons . . .

After a certain point it becomes wanton cruelty to keep dunking on California’s slow motion suicide, but some stories are too good to pass unremarked. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that rocker Gene Simmons is KISS-ing California goodbye and moving to no-income tax Washington state, and in high KISS-my-ass style:

[Simmons] is now putting the property, which they later redeveloped into a sprawling European-style mansion, on the market for $22 million. The reason: They are moving to a 24-acre estate in Washington, near Mount Rainier, to escape the tax burden of living in California, Mr. Simmons said.

“California and Beverly Hills have been treating folks that create jobs badly and the tax rates are unacceptable,” he said. “I work hard and pay my taxes and I don’t want to cry the Beverly Hills blues but enough is enough.”

But California won’t be the same without him. How can such a person be replaced:

Incidentally, if Joe Biden wins and his tax plans are enacted, California’s combined state-federal marginal income tax rate will be 62 percent for high earners—a higher rate than in the days before the Reagan tax cuts of 1981. Back to the future indeed!

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