I’ve been privileged to know and work with Rick Newcombe, the president of Creators Syndicate, for a decade. Creators has distributed my newspaper column since 1999. Newcombe is a visionary and a tireless entrepreneur with a dedicated staff.

And Los Angeles is driving them away.

In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Newcombe lambastes the city’s arbitrary and capricious tax rules. The intro:

If New Yorkers fantasize that doing business here in Los Angeles would be less of a headache, forget about it. This city is fast becoming a job-killing machine. It’s no accident the unemployment rate is a frightening 11.4% and climbing.

I never could have imagined that, after living here for more than three decades, I would be filing a lawsuit against my beloved Los Angeles and making plans for my company, Creators Syndicate, to move elsewhere.

But we have no choice. The city’s bureaucrats rival Stalin’s apparatchiks in issuing decrees, rescinding them, and then punishing citizens for having followed them in the first place.

Read about the whole nightmare here.

Like so many businesses in L.A. (and California, for that matter), Creators is ready to go Galt. Just another example of how the City of Angels has become the City of the Damned.