text:
We keep trying to understand the enigma of California, mostly why it still breathes for a while longer, given the efforts to destroy the sources of its success. Let's try to navigate through its sociology and politics to grasp why something that should not survive is surviving quite well — at least in some places.
Conservati delendi sunt
The old blue/red war for California is over. Conservatives lost. Liberals won — by a combination of flooding the state with government-supplied stuff, and welcoming millions in while showing the exit to others. The only mystery is how Carthaginian will be the victor's peace, e.g., how high will taxes go, how many will leave, how happy will the majority be at their departure?
The state of Pat Brown, Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson, and George Deukmejian is long dead due to the most radical demographic shifts of any one state in recent American history — as far away as Cicero was to Nero. One minor, but telling example: Salinas, in Monterey County where the murder rate is the highest in the state, just — at least I think the news story is not a prank — named its new middle school after Tiburcio Vasquez.
A convicted murderer.
He was the legendary 19th-century robber and murderer who was hanged for his crimes. But who is to say that Vasquez is a killer, and Henry Huntington a visionary?
The New Demography
California has changed not due to race but due to culture, most prominently because the recent generation of immigrants from Latin America did not — as in the past, for the most part — come legally in manageable numbers and integrate under the host's assimilationist paradigm. Instead, in the last three decades huge arrivals of illegal aliens from Mexico and Latin America saw Democrats as the party of multiculturalism, separatism, entitlements, open borders, non-enforcement of immigration laws, and eventually plentiful state employment.
Given the numbers, the multicultural paradigm of the salad bowl that focused on "diversity" rather than unity, and the massive new government assistance, how could the old American tonic of assimilation, intermarriage, and integration keep up with the new influxes? It could not.
Finally, we live in an era of untruth and Orwellian censorship. It is absolutely taboo to write about the above, or to talk about the ever more weird artifacts of illegal immigration — the war now on black families in demographically changing areas of Los Angeles, the statistics behind DUI arrests, or the burgeoning profile of Medi-Cal recipients. I recall of the serial dissimulation in California my high school memorization of Sir Walter Raleigh:
Tell potentates, they live/Acting by others' action/Not loved unless they give; Not strong but by affection; If potentates reply/Give potentates the lie.
There were, of course, other parallel demographic developments. Hundreds of thousands of the working and upper-middle class, mostly from the interior of the state, have fled — maybe four million in all over the last thirty years, taking with them $1 trillion in capital and income-producing education and expertise. Apparently, they tired of high taxes, poor schools, crime, and the culture of serial blame-gaming and victimhood. In this reverse Dust Bowl migration, a barren no-tax Nevada or humid Texas was a bargain.
Their California is long gone ("Lo, all our pomp and of yesterday/Is one with Nineveh and Tyre"), and a Stockton, Fresno, or Visalia misses their presence, because they had skills, education, and were net pluses to the California economy.
Add in a hip, youth, and gay influx to the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, and coastal Los Angeles that saw California as a sort of upscale, metrosexual lifestyle (rule of thumb: conservatives always find better restaurants in liberal locales), and California now has an enormous number of single-person households, childless couples, and one-child families. Without the lifetime obligation to raise $1 million in capital to pay for bringing up and educating two kids from birth to 21 (if you're lucky), the non-traditional classes have plenty of disposable income for entertainment, housing, and high taxes. For examples, read Petronius, especially the visit to Croton.
Finally, there is our huge affluent public work force. It is the new aristocracy; landing a job with the state is like hitting the lottery. Californians have discovered that, in today's low/non-interest economy, a $70,000 salary with defined benefit public pension for life is far better than having the income from a lifetime savings of $3 million.
Or, look at it another way: with passbooks paying 0.5-1%, the successful private accountant or lawyer could put away $10,000 a month for thirty years of his productive career and still not match the monthly retirement income of the Caltrans worker who quit at 60 with modest contributions to PERS.
And with money came political clout. To freeze the pension contribution of a highway patrolman is a mortal sin; but no one worries much about the private security's guard minimum wage and zero retirement, whose nightly duties are often just as dangerous. The former is sacrosanct; the latter a mere loser.
The result of 30 years of illegal immigration, the reigning culture of the coastal childless households, the exodus of the overtaxed, and the rule of public employees is not just Democratic, but hyper-liberal supermajorities in the legislature. In the most naturally wealthy state in the union with a rich endowment from prior generations, California is serially broke — the master now of its own fate. It has the highest menu of income, sales, and gas taxes in the nation, and about the worst infrastructure, business climate, and public education. Is the latter fact despite or because of the former?
How, then, does California continue? Read on, but in a nutshell, natural and inherited wealth are so great on the coast that a destructive state government must work overtime to ruin what others wrought.
Also, when you say, "My God, one of every three welfare recipients lives in California," or "California schools are terrible," you mean really, "Not in Newport or Carmel. So who cares about Fresno, or Tulare — they might as well be in Alabama for all the times I have been there."
So Much Taxation, So Little in Return
Thank God for Mississippi and Alabama, or California schools would test dead last.
Somehow, in just thirty years we created obstacles to public learning that produce results approaching the two-century horrific legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. About half the resources of the California State University system are devoted to remedial schooling for underperforming high school students (well over half who enter take remediation courses; half don't graduate even in six years; and well over half have sizable financial aid). The point of CSU's general education requirement is not so much any more to offer broad learning (who is to say what is "general education?"), but rather to enter a sort of race, class, and gender boot camp that allows some time off to become familiar with how the culture and politics of the state should continue.
The majority of the once-vaunted upper-tier University of California campuses now resemble second-tier CSU of old. Yet I think a Fresno State graduate of 1965 was far better educated than a UC Irvine or UC Santa Cruz student of today.
The state's wealthiest and best-prepared students are perhaps only well-taught at its elite schools — the two UC campuses at Berkeley and UCLA, Stanford, Caltech, USC, Pepperdine, or Santa Clara — while the poorer but still serious students increasingly enroll in the new private online and tech schools that sprout up around failed CSU campuses. Why pay for the farce of GE, when you can just get the nuts-and-bolts job skills cheaper and quicker at a tech school?
Stagecoach Trails
Little need be said about infrastructure other than it is fossilized. The lunacy of high-speed rail is not just the cost, but that a few miles from its proposed route are at present a parallel but underused Amtrak track and the 99 Highway, where thousands each day risk their lives in crowded two lanes, often unchanged since the 1960s.
The 99, I-5, and 101 are potholed two-lane highways with narrow ramps, and a few vestigial cross-traffic death zones. But we, Californian drivers, are not just double the numbers of those 30 years ago, but — despite far safer autos and traffic science — far less careful as well. There are thousands of drivers without licenses, insurance, registration, and elementary knowledge of road courtesy. Half of all accidents in Los Angeles are hit-and-runs.
My favorite is the ubiquitous semi-truck and trailer swerving in and out of the far left lane with a 20-something Phaethon behind the wheel — texting away as he barrels along at 70 mph with a fishtailing 20 tons. The right lane used to be for trucks; now all lanes are open range for trucking — no law in the arena! The dotted lane lines are recommendations, not regulations. (Will young truck drivers be hired to become our new high-speed rail state employee engineers?)
When I drive over the Grapevine, I play a sick game of counting the number of mattresses I'll spot in the road over the next 100 miles into L.A. (usually three to four). Lumber, yard clippings, tools, and junk — all that is thrown into the back of trucks without tarps. To paraphrase Hillary: what does it matter whether we are killed by a mattress or a 2 x 4? In places like Visalia or Madera, almost daily debris ends up shutting down one of the only two lanes on the 99.
Wrecks so far? It is not the number, but rather the scary pattern that counts. I've had three in the last 10 years: a would-be hit-and-run driver (the three "no"s: no license, no registration, no insurance) went through a stop sign in Selma, collided with my truck, and tried to take off on foot, leaving behind his ruined Civic; a speeder (80 m.p.h.) in L.A. hit a huge box-spring on the 101 near the 405, slammed on his brakes, skidded into a U-turn in the middle lane, reversed direction, and hit me going 40 m.p.h. head-on (saved by Honda Accord's front and side air-bags and passive restraint seat harnesses; the injured perpetrator's first call was to family, not 911); and a young woman last year, while texting, rear-ended me at 50 m.p.h. while I was at a complete stop in stalled traffic in Fresno (thank God for a dual-cab Tundra with a long trailer hitch). She too first called her family to try to help her flee the scene of her wrecked car, but my call apparently reached the Highway Patrol first.
Drive enough in California, and you too, reader, will have a '"rendezvous with Death, at some disputed barricade."
West and East Californias
The coastal elites unite politically with the interior poor, in the fashion of the Caesarians and the turba. I suppose that their common adversary is, as was true of Rome, the disappearing middle class. Along the coast, elites have harvested well California's natural and acquired wealth. I'll again just toss out a few brands; you can imagine the lucre and jobs that are generated from Santa Rosa to San Diego: Apple, Chevron, Disney, DreamWorks, Facebook, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Hollywood, Napa Valley, Oracle, PG&E, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Wells Fargo, the ports of Los Angeles, San Diego, and Oakland.
So let us not speak of California decline, but of California's decline and another California boom — one of 6% unemployment and another of 16%, one of $100,000 per capita income and another of $15,000, one of cottages sold on the first day on the market in Newport and another of vacant McMansions molding away in Stockton.
Success continues on the coast and is managed by very wealthy and mostly liberal residents of the sprawl that surrounds Los Angeles and San Francisco. For the five million or so who are enriched in enterprise zones like these — and there are thousands more spin-off and smaller such companies — life is pretty good if you keep your household small, inherited a house, or make enough money to buy something at about $500 to $1,000 dollars a square foot. In Selma, new 1800 sq. foot homes sell for $140,000; in Palo Alto, dollhouses go for $1.5 million. So who is the prince, and who the fool? Are opera tickets and a street light that still has its wire worth it?
The Cost of Doing Business
Coastal folk seem to view high taxes like Mafia protection money, but in the sense of psychological satisfaction and freedom from guilt. For now, sales, gas, and income taxes are not so high as to matter to those who voted for them, at least in view of the social and political advantages of coastal living: the beautiful weather, the Pacific panorama, the hip culture of recreational light drug use, neat restaurants, sports, fine wines, solar and wind romance, foreign cars, and general repugnance at religion, guns, conservatives, and traditional anything.
To the extent that "they" (i.e. you, reader) exist, the distant others are nebulous, rarely thought-about souls. Perhaps they really do enjoy polluting the planet as they generate the electricity, pipe in the natural gas and oil, refine the fuels, grow the food, and cut and haul the lumber that gives a Palo Alto or Santa Barbara the stuff to go on one more day.
Vote For Me Not To Represent You?
I still can't figure out politics and culture of our vast interior, both the enormous and mostly empty state above Sacramento, and the huge Central Valley and Sierra. As my neighbors put it, life would have to get pretty awful here to be worse than in Oaxaca. I once asked a neighbor why he was hauling wrecked trailers onto his small parcel. He smiled and told me California was "heaven." From my few trips to Mexico, I could not argue.
One of the questions I always hear from strangers: "Why doesn't everyone leave?" The answer is simple: for the coastal overdogs there is nowhere else where the money is as good and the weather and scenery are as enjoyable. How much would you pay to walk in cut-offs in February and not in three jackets in Montana? And for the interior underclass, California's entitlements and poor-paying service jobs are paradise compared to Honduras, Jalisco, or Southeast Asia. And, yes, the middle-class small farmers, hardware-store owners, company retirees, and electricians are leaving in droves.
Weird Politics
The Latino population, I would imagine, would be in revolt over the elitist nature of California politics. Of course, thousands of second-generation Latinos have become public employees, from teachers to DMV clerks, and understandably so vote a straight Democrat-public union ticket. But millions are not working for the state, and they suffer dramatically from the ruling Bay Area left-wing political agenda of regulations, green quackery, and legal gymnastics. It is not just that the foreign national illegally entered the U.S. from Oaxaca, but entered the most complex, over-regulated, over-taxed, and over-lawyered state in the nation — hence the disconnects.
Take energy. California may have reserves of 35 billion barrels of oil in its newly discovered shale formations, and even more natural gas — the best way to provide clean electricity and, perhaps soon, transportation energy for the state. Tens of thousands of young Latino immigrants — given that agriculture is increasingly mechanizing, construction is flat, and the state is broke — could be making high wages from Salinas to Paso Robles, and along the I-5 corridor, if fracking and horizontal drilling took off. Even more jobs could accrue in subsidiary construction and trucking. And for a cynic, billions of dollars in state energy taxes from gas and oil revenue would ensure that the state's generous handouts would be funded for a generation. Did someone forget that the California boom of the 1930s and 1940s was fueled by cheap, in-state oil?
More importantly, our power companies have the highest energy bills in the nation, given all sorts of green and redistributionist mandates. The costs fall most heavily on the cold winter/hot summer interior residents, who are the poorest in the state. Those who insist that the utilities invest in costly alternate energy and other green fantasies live mostly in 65-70 degree coastal weather year-round and enjoy low power bills.
Yet the liberal coastal political lock-hold on the state continues.
No one in San Joaquin or Tranquility cares about a baitfish in the delta, but they do vote nonetheless for the elites who divert water from farms, put the poor farm worker out of work, and feel good about saving the smelt in the process. Go figure.
Soft Apartheid
How then does the California coalition work, and in some sense work so well?
The coastal elite offers an agenda for more welfare funding, scholarships, class warfare, public unions, diversity, affirmative action, open borders, and amnesty, and in response the interior voter signs off on everything from gay marriage, solar and wind subsidies, gun restrictions, mass transit schemes, and the entire progressive tax-and-spend agenda. Most of this coalition never much sees one another.
The young Mountain View programmer keeps clear of Woodlake. He even has only a vague idea of what life is like for those who live in nearby Redwood City and make his arugula salad at the hip pasta bar in Palo Alto. In turn, the Redwood City dishwasher has an equally murky sense that the wealthy kid who works at Google does not wish to deport his uncle — and so the two become unspoken political partners of sorts. One of the state's wealthiest cities, a gated Atherton, is juxtaposed to one of its most Latinate communities, Redwood City. But they might as well be Mercury and Pluto. Or should we applaud that the owner of the manor and his grass cutter vote identically — and against the interests of the guy who sold and serviced the Honda lawn mower?
In the flesh, the energetic people I associate with during the week in Silicon Valley and see on the Stanford campus and on University Avenue are, it must be said, innovative folk, but soft apartheidists: where they live, where their kids go to schools, where they eat, and whom they associate with are governed by a class, and de facto racial, sensibility that would make Afrikaners of old proud.
The liberal aristocracy is as class-bound as the old Republican blue-stockings, but saved from populist ostracism by what I have called the "hip" exemption — liberalism's new veneer that allows one to be both consumer and critic of the Westernized good life, to praise the people and to stay as far away from them as possible. Mitt Romney is an outsourcer; Google's offshore holdings are cool.
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Is there hope? Can there be honesty about our crises and courage to address them? If there is not to be assimilation and integration at the rate as in the past, then I sometime fantasize that a new conservative movement of second- and third-generation upper middle-class, over-taxed Mexican-Americans will demand competitive schools for their children without the fantasies of Chicano studies and coastal global warming indoctrination.
They will push for energy development, beefed-up law enforcement, and reasonable taxes and power rates, and so lock horns with the coastal elites, well apart from abortion, the death penalty, and the constant alternative lifestyle agenda. Some already are heading that way; more would if the borders were closed and the old forces of the melting pot were not impeded.
Or maybe change will come from the other end of the surreal coalition. I talk to young, high-end yupster couples and wonder how they can vote for 40% federal income taxes, 11% state income taxes, Obamacare, and payroll and Medicare surcharges on their hefty incomes when increasingly they don't use the public schools. Or if they have children, they pay exorbitant prices for private schooling and coastal housing that anywhere else would be laughable. I don't think Menlo-Atherton High School, or the average paving on any residential street in Palo Alto, or the security on Willow Avenue, or the square footage of the typical Menlo Park bungalow is all such a great deal for losing 55% of your income to the local, state, and federal redistributionists.
Will Howard Jarvis return, with Birkenstocks and ponytail?
Would some young visionary see that just a few ecologically correct new dams, and a well-run development of the Monterey shale formation, would enable vast new increases in California energy and agriculture — food and fuel are what sustains mankind — and launch another Gold Rush?
Then I wake up and accept that contemporary California is a quirk, one governed by a secular religion, a non-empirical belief system that postulates that natural gas is bad because it produces heat and that dams that store precious water are unnatural. So far the consequences of such thinking rarely boomerang on the cocooned fantasists.
We are like the proverbial spoiled third-generation progeny of the immigrant farmer: the first-generation toiler lived in a hovel until he bought his 80 acres with paid cash. The second remodeled the old house, had a nicer car than a tractor, doubled the acreage, but took the weekend off and had less money in the bank than did his dad. The third fantasized and puttered about in his hiking boots, went through the inheritance, mortgaged the land — and was as glib and mellifluous as he was broke.
California is a tired idea.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast.
(Thumbnail on PJM homepage by Shutterstock.com.)
Also read: Are Obama and Rubio That Far Apart on Immigration Reform?
246 Comments, 84 Threads
1. Jim in Merced
I wish I could say that you're wrong. Except for when I was in the army I have lived my whole life in California. That's half a century.
This is no longer the place I grew up in.
January 29, 2013 - 12:48 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
This is no longer the country I grew up in.
January 29, 2013 - 6:23 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
I keep hearing about European Socialism coming to America, but all I see is Eastern European Socialim – Bolsheviks – Soviet Communists, and Stasi. I wonder when the empty-headed, though not particularly malevolent typical liberal will look around and realize they have helped imprison themselves in a Marxist -Leninist cage. Why do Americans think that t can't happen here? It can and it is. Obama is the new slavery president, our very own Robert Mugabe.
February 6, 2013 - 11:07 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
I have a morbid desire to return to Merced. I almost did for my 25th High School reunion, but I thought better of it.
January 29, 2013 - 8:21 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Old School
Haha … me too! Passed up my 25 year High School reunion at Atwater High School next door to you Rik. I was last through the Central Valley in 2010 for Christmas and it was depressing. Atwater looks like third world country. I almost cried driving by the house I grew in. Merced is no better. Highway 99 is dump.
I said this way back in the late 80′s … CLOSE DOWN CASTLE AIR FORCE BASE AND WATCH THE AREA TURN INTO ONE LARGE GHETTO/BARRIO. All that military housing in Atwater … Hello Section 8!
January 29, 2013 - 3:03 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Dear newly minted citizens of California,
When the call for revolution comes, when the new leaders demand retribution for crimes committed against the poor people of Northern California. Please don't riot and burn homes in East Palo Alto, Hunters Point and Richmond.
Remember this: The rich white people live in Los Alto, Los Gatos, Hillsborough, Woodside, Mill Valley, Tiberon, Pacific Heights in San Francisco and the Oakland Hills.
February 9, 2013 - 8:44 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Jim feels that vast changes have overtaken California, whereas I see it as a locale where the Reformation and Counter-Reformation are still slugging it out, with great implications for our social policy and for how we educate our children. I first wrote about this issue here: http://clarespark.com/2009/07/04/unfinished-revolutions-and-contested-notions-of-identity/.
January 29, 2013 - 10:11 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Good luck with that. California's hit the tipping point. The welfare class will continue to be bought with more promises of handouts at the expense of middle-class producers until all the producers are gone (and they're fleeing more quickly these days). Then the ruling class will have the gall to be amazed that THEY'RE going to have to foot the bill for handouts or flee. Shortly thereafter, it will be torches and pitchforks. California's in a death spiral.
January 29, 2013 - 5:46 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
I feel bad for the huge number of Californians who spent their whole lives there only to have the rug pulled out from under them one tax bracket at a time. This IS the California I grew up in: the ruling class liberals continually voted in by the bought-and-paid-for welfare class, all at the ever-increasing expense of the ever-shrinking middle-class struggling to own a home and raise a family.
I'm lucky. I got out when I was a newlywed with nothing invested. I warn my own parents to sell out while they can and get out before exit taxes grow and they're walking out with nothing. I tell them to come to a red state, where whatever they get for their Pyrite State properties will probably buy them a very comfortable home, and they can retire comfortably on pensions that are taxed at a far smaller rate.
A friend of mine has in-laws who sold their So-Cal home for $750k and bought a red-state home for $185k. They were sad to sell the home they raised their kids in. After a brief period of mourning, they heard a knock on the door, and met their neighbors who both spoke their language and welcomed them to the neighborhood with delicious treats and offers of help with anything they needed.
They've never looked back.
January 29, 2013 - 5:43 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
I know some folks in the moving business. They say that NOBODY is moving into California – the flow is essentially all OUT.
January 30, 2013 - 12:44 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
After the productive, middle-class people have finished bailing out of California, it'll be time for the rest of the US to do THIS to get out from under the dead weight.
January 30, 2013 - 4:57 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Which is why there is an extra fee for renting trucks going out-of-state.
January 30, 2013 - 6:33 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
I moved out of California last year after staying there for just a little over a year. The move was not meant to be a temporary one. I had lived in San Jose as a child and I missed it. I had troubles with everything there from the get go – gangs, public transportation fail, public highway fail, home invasions n my street, people doing drugs in my yard, a mentally unbalanced neighbor who tried to shoot my cat – through my kitchen window! I decided enough was enough. It didn't take long to realize that it would need a time machine to revisit the land of my youth. I got back out as quickly as I could. It was very cheap to move to California and very expensive and time-consuming to move out. So many people were fleeing California for New York that there was actually a moving service that specialized in that specific move! And yes, the net migration is out. Very much so.
February 6, 2013 - 11:19 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Did Texas take $24 billion in stimulus? – http://window.state.tx.us/recovery/
January 29, 2013 - 9:13 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
This WAS the place I grew up in and left.
January 30, 2013 - 6:30 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
2. East Bay Mike
I gave up on this fight a long time ago. I recently posted elsewhere on PJ my comments below, which I will abbreviate. VDH's story sounds all too familiar to me.
Three years ago, an illegal alien woman broadsided me, fled the scene of the accident and left me behind, injured. A cop arrived as I was being treated. In the meantime, she returned. The cop then interviewed her and spoke to me. He explained that she was illegal and had no license, no insurance, no proof of ID and that her car had out-of-state plates. Furthermore, he pleaded with me not to push the issue as she might get deported and separated from her children. He let her go.
In short, a policeman, a union-member public employee, instructed a woman who had fled the scene of an accident, to leave, as he wouldn't recommend pressing charges. I ended up with a fresh car payment, jacked up insurance rates and a permanently damaged eye.
And no doubt the children of the woman who broadsided me will receive Affirmative Action benefits, and once legalized, will all receive Obamacare. Democrats clearly feel that the suffering of people like myself, and thousands upon thousands of others, like me, is worth it. Democrats are very cruel people. We always need to remember that. And I have one and one-half eyes that remind me of that fact every day.
January 29, 2013 - 12:53 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Just feel fortunate as the next person she hits, she may kill. Could well have happened already and maybe more than once. Sounds like the police officer didn't care about such a possibility/probability.
January 29, 2013 - 1:55 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Oh, that train has sooooo' left the station…http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331989,00.html
Oh, wait, I forgot; she complained of discrimination, through her court interpreter. (Minnesota's courts have a hard time finding interpreters for all the varieties of immigrant criminals.)
But, no worries; soon we'll have about 10 million more through amnesty, turning law breakers into citizens, and they'll legally (this time) climb onto taxpayers backs and apply the spurs.
January 29, 2013 - 4:21 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
A very solid answer: He does not care. He has a good job and it pays well. The
very soon 'future' holds for him, a very nice retirement. His only concern is,"the NOW". As I near ninety, I echo earlier stated sentiments; "This is not
the country I willingly went to war for in 1943.
Jim Limerick
Mtn.Home,ARJanuary 29, 2013 - 5:21 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
I have a boss like that. Matter of fact, I've had MANY bosses like that.
All they care about is to keep sucking on their corporate teat until they're old enough to retire. There isn't anyone or anything that they wouldn't throw under the bus to make sure that happens.
January 30, 2013 - 4:51 am Link to this Comment | Reply
He may have "recommended" not pressing charges, but why didn't you just demand to so so anyway? If he refuses file a lawsuit against the police department. I would suggest filing a lawsuit against her personally even though you probably wouldn't recover anything, but if it went to a jury trial you'd be virtually guaranteed to get a jury of her peers, not yours, and she'd be let off. At the very least I would've gotten her identity and consulted with a lawyer to see if there's any legal shenanigans you could do to make her life difficult. Maybe go over the local cops direct to ICE and try and get her deported, something, anything, to extract some justice. The only thing required for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing and this sort of thing is happening because too many do nothing.
And yes the Democrats are cruel people, but in their secular faith they justify their cruelty as compassion. Make no mistake, they revel in your suffering at the hands of one of their "victim classes", they probably consider it some perverse form of "social justice". Remember that their vision of "social justice" is to real justice as sarin is to man. Deadly poison.
January 29, 2013 - 6:08 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Understandable thoughts. But he would be unlikely to file a lawsuit unless he could pay every nickle of the costs, and that would likley be a bundle, just to make a statement. Plaintiff's counsel that work in this field just won't touch a case where the possibility of a monetary recovery is not pretty good. For them it's a business.
January 29, 2013 - 7:23 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
East Bay Mike
"The only thing required for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing and this sort of thing is happening because too many do nothing."
Well, I think good men have been doing quite a bit for 20 years, including countless lawsuits and ballot propositions and national forums and debates, and it does nothing but come down to the argument that the good men are racists and the illegals are the victims in the matter.
At the time, by the way, I had far more to deal with than I could either handle or afford, such as medical costs, doctor's visits and getting my eye fixed, and finding an affordable car, than trying to prosecute her. And what would have happened, realistically? Even my insurance company wasn't interested in pursuing it. And by the way, my insurance rates went from $1100 per year to $3200 per year. Thank you Farmers, despite having had but one prior accident (also not my fault, and in that case a legal immigrant who was a lousy driver was the cause) many years before and never a ticket. I have a different insurance company today.
I am tired of it all now. Even essays such as these leave me too agitated for my own good. I accept that they have won the war. I was just one of the minor casualties on the battlefield, so to speak, as others have been killed. I have zero faith in our government — local, state or federal. They have all failed in their most basic duty, and the fact that both parties publicize this as a strength rather than a weakness is beyond comprehension. The writing is on the wall for the United States and it isn't in English.
January 29, 2013 - 9:21 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
East Bay Mike
Accepted. And indeed your point is very well taken also; just telling a tale of woe is rarely, if ever, productive. God willing this kind of accident doesn't happen to me again; however, if it does, I can follow your command chain to help both myself or friends confronted by the same mess.
January 29, 2013 - 11:10 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Colorado Guy
After reading the LONG article and some of the complaints, I can only wonder why you (collectively) put up with the dump. There's not that much 'California Dreamin" in the world, and I occassionally have to go there on business.
January 29, 2013 - 3:11 pm Link to this Comment
Micha Elyi
The writing is on the wall for the United States and it isn't in English.
+5 Insightful
January 29, 2013 - 1:21 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Dwight Lee
As indicated above, the victim of the hit-and-run is under no legal obligation to follow the officer's suggestion to refrain from pursuing criminal charges against the perpetrator. If the officer refuses to cooperate or otherwise engages in harrassment of the victim, then the victim should obtain the officer's name and badge number and send a detailed, written complaint to the chief of the officer's department. In addition, the incident should also be reported to Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE will follow up on a report of a felony committed by an illegal alien. This can result in deportation of the perpetrator, without the victim of the crime having to spend personal funds on legal counsel.
The bottom line is that one should not expect any justice if one does not report incidents to the proper agencies. I'm sorry, but if you truly think that this is all just a waste of time and "all is lost" anyway, then you have already lost the battle without a fight (read: pathetic!). I, for one, refuse to give up that easily!
January 29, 2013 - 9:29 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Mike East Bay
Again… "At the time, by the way, I had far more to deal with than I could either handle or afford, such as medical costs, doctor's visits and getting my eye fixed…"
"Pathetic," thank you, and eff you.
January 29, 2013 - 9:58 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
I apologize if you were offended by my response. I can imagine that the experience of the accident (and its aftermath) must have been extremely upsetting for you. I hope that you recover from your injuries.
"I have zero faith in our government — local, state or federal. They have all failed in their most basic duty, and the fact that both parties publicize this as a strength rather than a weakness is beyond comprehension."
Your point is well appreciated.
January 29, 2013 - 10:42 am Link to this Comment
Nothing like fighting a battle on principle on your own dime.
So you sue her. You get to pay attorney's fees up front, plus court costs. After tens of thousands, you win. She has no assets. You go to collection. She takes the kids and leaves the country. You've now lost your house to fight your battle, and she's no worse off.
You can't squeeze blood from a stone, or money from one with no assets.
January 29, 2013 - 5:51 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
My educated guess is that the officer would not have taken that form of action without knowing that his superiors would comply.
January 30, 2013 - 6:55 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Dutch 1960
I had a similar situation. 15 year old drunk illegal with no ID, beer in the unlicensed, unregistered car. The cop released him on the spot, he drove away in his slightly damaged Pontiac, my Mazda was totaled. The cop said he would have me prosecuted if I complained. This was in 1978. This stuff has been going on a long, long time.
January 29, 2013 - 8:13 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
I guess that van full of surfers was right about Officer Poncharello!
January 29, 2013 - 8:22 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
That same year 1978, I went to court where the drug-addicted illegal driver's wife and children approached me to warn me of retaliation. Also, the court bailiff did same. I dropped it.
January 30, 2013 - 7:04 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
VDH seems hard-headed. Race and culture are related. Culture is the individual personality of a people writ large. Italians will never, in a million years, have a culture similar to Finns or Chinese. They are different peoples and will create their own cultures according to their strengths and weaknesses. Blacks have lived in the US for 350 years, and still retain their own, unique, separate, culture — not having assimilated to white culture in all their time here. The Amerinds from south of the Rio Grande are no different, except that their homelands are close and reinforcements ready to ride. Only Americans (i.e., NW Europeans) created American culture, and only Americans can assimilate successfully into it. I'm sorry, but these people coming from Latin American sh*t-holes are not like the people who immigrated here from Sweden or Germany. They are exactly as different as Sweden is from British Honduras.
January 29, 2013 - 4:24 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Thank you for saying what I said as well. VDS is an idiot and a coward. People like him are the greatest obstacle to any sort of meaningful reform. Until America admits that her culture was created by whites, and that only an overwhelming white majority can maintain this nation, and steer the ship of state across choppy waters, this country will turn into the dump I've immigrated from. I have no intention of residing in Mexifornia, or Sino-fornia, or India-fornia.
This is AMERICA. A historically white nation. That's why it is a first world nation. Please, please, keep it that way.
January 29, 2013 - 8:01 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
George B
While a Northern European majority set up much of the framework of American culture, cattle ranching and cowboy culture has origins in Spain via Mexico. Texas has always had a large Tejano minority that is fairly well integrated into the culture of the state. I would also argue that immigrants from various Asian countries have made a positive contribution to the United States and are well on their way toward assimilation.
January 30, 2013 - 2:22 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
unfortunately the Asian immigrants have brought with them the culture of corruption. This separatism that come with Asia immigrants is promoted by the culture in California and Hawaii.
This is the view from my window here in Asia, the real hard knowledge that is gained from living here so many years and can not be learned by be a two week tourist.
February 4, 2013 - 4:31 am Link to this Comment
I would have insisted the cop follow the law and if he didn't taken his name and badge number in order to file a complaint. However, I would have taken the woman's name address, relieved her of her cell phone and told her I would pursue damages so she had to leave the country.
January 29, 2013 - 5:02 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Oh come on.
The cops would beat the hell out of you, and the courts would take your house away.
California is a democracy. You have been outvoted. To fix the problem, have to end democracy.
February 2, 2013 - 4:56 am Link to this Comment | Reply
A sad story that I have heard before.
January 30, 2013 - 6:42 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
3. Robert Haymond
Professor Hanson: I'd just like to say how worthwhile this essay on California is, as have been those published in the past. You are familiar with the state and I am not (reside in Israel) but I also derive benefit because it (the essay) also provides for a model of the welfare society and "modernism" and its tenets can be found elsewhere so what I learn from your writing is transferable to other situations. And most noticeably, I appreciate how you employ classical learning to understand current times. The most advanced thinkers and modellers of society are able to provide others with models and understandings from our own classical (Hebrew) learning to comprehend what is happening now as well as providing models for clarifying the sanest direction in which we should be heading. Incidentally, I've read several of your books on military strategy and warfare and hope to read still more. It's a delicious feeling to know that there are so many more outstanding works by a particular author still available. I recall, many years ago, how sad (bereft) I felt when I had completed reading all of Doystoyevski's works.
January 29, 2013 - 1:11 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
This battle is lost.
There is simply no way that the progressive crowd in California will ever wake up to the disaster that they have wrought. They will go to their graves mouthing platitudes that would make Pangloss red-faced with shame.
I'm leaving this state before memorial day, going to a part of the country that hasn't yet been destroyed by the Left.
Unfortunately, I think we're all living thru the time of the End of America. I fully expect that within my lifetime America will either break apart or the nation in it's entirety will be dragged down to a third world status, broken and never able to recover it's past glory.
My dad's and granddad's generation split the atom, invented the laser and transistor, and went to the moon. My generation will be the last to know what such people were like.
It troubles me profoundly that the last glowing embers of the Enlightenment will go dark during my days. I don't see how not just this nation, but the world itself, will ever recover.January 29, 2013 - 1:18 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
"I don't see how not just this nation, but the world itself, will ever recover."
The coming biowars will thin the herd. Be prepared.
January 29, 2013 - 6:27 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
The battle is never lost as long as one breaths.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter will return. It's our obligation to minimize the terror and slaughter.
January 29, 2013 - 7:23 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Harry the Horrible
Or at least try to direct them to our enemies…
January 29, 2013 - 9:23 am Link to this Comment | Reply
Rb London
'They will go to their graves mouthing platitudes that would make Pangloss red-faced with shame.'
Very well put.I is cognitive with these people.
January 29, 2013 - 8:05 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
"This battle is lost. There is simply no way that the progressive crowd in California will ever wake up to the disaster that they have wrought."
Yes, but the parasite shall feed upon the host until both the host and its parasite perish. Beware!
January 29, 2013 - 11:12 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Mike G
"The battle is lost"
I do not take issue with anyone who sees things this way. Indeed, I fear that to think otherwise is just wishful thinking. Two years ago I created UCAPS , a concept that I thought might be able to wake up the private sector middle class in California.
It was based on the theory that the powerful public sector unions are the root of almost all of our problems here. The strategy was to provide a similar advocacy engine for the "rest of us" . Some of the key concepts:
1) Private sector workers and professionals actually out number public service workers – but the public unions are ultra organized and we are not.
2) The only reason they can receive such lavish benefits is because the rest of us don't get them. If we all got such wonderful lifetime benefits for such meager production, the prices for everything would go through the roof thus wiping out any lifestyle differential. UCAPS' first campaign would try to shut down the use of public funds for public pension and benefits shortfall unless an equivalent per capita amount was assigned to a fund available to the private sector.
3) Politicians who serve at the pleasure of public service unions can create with impunity any number of extreme environmental, social, regulatory or entitlement programs. So long as they take care of the unions, they have carte blanch to do whatever feels good. They cannot be defeated no matter how harmful their governance is to the private sector. UCAPS would seek to create a counterbalancing voter block.
There are more but unfortunately I had to let the concept go dormant in order to attend to making a living as the local economy has not been kind to me or my business. But if anyone is interested in helping, I can be reached through the site.
January 29, 2013 - 3:28 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
mzk1 (Haifa)
Sort of a Conservative Claude-Piven strategy? Nice.
February 3, 2013 - 2:10 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Some parts of the world will survive. I suggest that you look for a place that does not have much of a social "safety net."
January 30, 2013 - 4:54 am Link to this Comment | Reply
5. Subotai Bahadur
Dr. Hanson, we may well have lost the entire country. There is no doubt that we have lost California and it is not redeemable. I know I am not the first to say it, but it would relieve a number of people if you would move back to America.
#2 East Bay Mike
Democrats clearly feel that the suffering of people like myself, and thousands upon thousands of others, like me, is worth it. Democrats are very cruel people. We always need to remember that.
Well said, and well worth repeating. I am pretty sure that we are going to get more examples of their cruelty soon. The question is, how long will it remain unanswered?
Subotai Bahadur
January 29, 2013 - 1:19 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
6. Fail Burton
Welcome to the Third World, or at least a strange fusion of success and failure we haven't really seen in America before. Whatever it is or whatever you call it, it will spread to the other states eventually; our lax policy and politically correct attitude towards illegal immigration says so.
The problem is that this new demo shift is still in flux, and not tipping towards a positive paradigm but a negative one. If Latin America could do what old America could, they'd already have done so. Shifting millions of Hispanics here won't mean "same as the old immigrants" but an influx of culture that still isn't as sophisticated as mid-18th century England, which is where many of the old immigrants came from. Bolivians today still can't invent the time-keeping at sea that was being bandied about in England in 1750. Instead they fly over cables in the Yungas valleys like a circus act. The goal? To get to the other side. A Third World solution using a 20 yr. old iron cable they can't even reverse engineer themselves. No bridge for the exceptional.
Modern day Cairo isn't as advanced as NYC a hundred years ago.
What will emerge is anyone's guess but failure will be high on the list. Failure in education, social mores, individual initiative, cultural innovations, etc.
In Calif. what will increasingly emerge are upscale shanty towns clustered around the diminishing gold mines of gov't work and Google. Eventually the goose will stop laying golden eggs and those Third Worlders will have only each other to look at, and a slightly upscale fusion of the sad polities they once sought to escape from.
But the sad truth is that, as Dr. Hanson points out, a stupid and lesser version of America is still a shining city on a hill to someone from Asyiut, Mumbai or Chiquimula. The influx won't stop until Asyiut, Mumbai and Chiquimula are here to stay, and trust me, it will happen. The potholes of Calif. mirror the potholes of Kathmandu.
America a hundred years from now will not be a success, but a ravening failure of hordes of failed dog-eat-dog generational veterans of Third World life. Liberalism, and its racial PC which has the old guard on the run, also has success on the run and failure is lapping at the bulwarks. That is why liberalism is a suicide cult in generational and cultural terms.
The bottom line is that liberals are naive morons who live on a faith in something that quite literally does not exist, and that is the idea of the Oaxacan and Somali whose children will innovate the latest aircraft carriers and fractal geometry.
Good luck with that one. Reality dictates that those who can do a thing will have done such a thing. Potential is an illusion; history is reality, and it's coming to America. No force in history has stopped Latin America from success but themselves. They'd already be riding donkeys in Detroit if it weren't for the people they hate all the while they huddle up to them as close as possible, the better to not sit by the side of a road and sell razor blades and Bic pens, or deforest a jungle while taking gold out of rivers by handling mercury with their bare hands, or burning out precious metals from English TV sets in Ghana over an open fire.
This is the exceptionalism coming to America.
January 29, 2013 - 1:28 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
I find your vision of the future quite astute and highly likely. We will see a new dark age unfold, complete with monasteries and castle keeps. Like "Zardoz".
January 29, 2013 - 3:39 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Who Knows?
That movie is a must-watch treasure from the past.
January 29, 2013 - 6:55 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Le Cracquere
Well, THAT doesn't sound very Californian.
January 29, 2013 - 12:21 pm Link to this Comment
"…a ravening failure of hordes of failed dog-eat-dog generational veterans of Third World life…" A bleak vision indeed Fail. But it isn't over until we give up the fight. Are you the type who will concede defeat, give up your birthright and that of your children before the battle is truly even joined?
"Liberals are naive morons…" Some liberals are quite clever. So much so that they have convinced many of us that they are liberals, when in fact they are criminal minded, life-hating, totalitarian thugs. For decades now they have been quietly infiltrating institutions of all kinds around the world. Banking, corporate, state, media, ngo, academic, artistic, scientific, you name it… Once they reached the controlling summits, they began to alter the purpose of that organization below the surface, while maintaining an respectable facade. Beneath the marxist-light platitudes you refer to are really two driving purposes: 1) to destroy the power (freedom) of the unfettered individual, and 2) to concentrate power absolutely.
"liberals" fear the free and powerful individual because they are terrified by the unbounded. They feel comfortable in narrowly defined boxes, which is why their arguments are always circular and emotional. They also fear the individual because he or she is a threat to no. 2, the concentration of power they so crave. The crave this power because it is the only thing that distracts them from the moral terror in which they live. Therefore the liberal elite who are directing the creation of the new global leviathan that we are witnessing, are the ultimate cowards.
California was one of their laboratories, and they have perfected many of their techniques there. But their script went awry in 2000. (After Reagan they had pledged to themselves that would never happen again). Gore was supposed to be up next, but Bush was elected instead, and the wave of patriotism that followed 9/11 terrified them to their core. That is why they have accelerated their program; and that is also why they are now visible to us. They hadn't counted on that.
You see they fear us, and you can sense that fear behind everything they do. They know they are only one step away from a sudden and messy end. That is why they spend so much energy trying to lull us to sleep, or convince us we cannot win. This alone is proof that we are stronger than you think.
Is the road ahead a perilous one? Yes. There may be war. But to declare defeat at this stage is premature.
January 29, 2013 - 4:45 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
We make a grave error when we conflate and then confuse liberals with leftists of the small c communist ilk.
Workers Party thugs are not liberal in any sense of the word. California is now and has been for over a half century, a haven for haters of free market democracy.
A "liberal" is a raving hypocrite who espouses free speech on the inhale and makes excuses for its suppression on the exhale. The leftist doesn't make the effort to inhale and doesn't offer excuses for thuggery, he revels in it.
When you combine the "state party apparatus" with Workers Party thuggery, you are going to get open corruption, graft, and treason against the people. Bell, California is one that tolls for all of us.
(having moved from Chicagoland to California a decade ago, I traded a bad weather political cesspool for a nice weather one)
Owning the information stream gives us 24/7 leftist propaganda, sugar-coated with "liberal" pap and a steady stream of coverups, lies, slander and traitorism.
This state does not like this country. Leftists don't like America. They "have not been proud" of their country in their adult lives. No matter how much they steal from her, it will never be enough until they kill her off.
Taking the Constitution and shredding it is only a debate between leftists…about speed, not degree.
Gut the military, take the gun rights, suppress the speech…this all has a familiar ring. But, the disguise…the masquerade…is hippie Bohemian, so that boiling this frog goes unnoticed as it heats up. It is not a Banana Republic, it's a Bandana Republic.
And "liberals" are enablers for the thug leftists. Never again listen to a liberal drool on about "tolerance" or "free speech" or "freedom of religion" or "the sanctity of life" or "summary executions" or honor, integrity or loyalty. They have sacrificed all principles for the "get out of peer pressure jail" cards.
They have no longer even principles of convenience. They have none.
They have become cult followers of leftist thuggery. And, we ought to recognize who is pulling the sled and who is cracking the whip. We fail to do so at our continuing…and probably at this stage…permanent peril.
January 29, 2013 - 9:36 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
To break it down further…
"state party apparatus" includes:
-A Media that conspires to run cover for the ruling party.
-Scientifically crafted propaganda that works on the same principles as advertising.
-An academy that suppresses free thought and reinforces party dogma.
-In other words, covertly disassembling all existing social, economic and military structures and re-assembling them to serve the ruling caste rather than the population at large."Workers Party thuggery":
-Dividing society along various lines and pitting them against each other.
-The creation of a permanently loyal dependency class
-Deliberately overloading the support systems.
-Deliberately sabotaging economic activity.
-Using crisis both at home and abroad to curtail our freedoms.But ultimately the one's pulling the sled are not communists. They spew socialistic prattle to mesmerize the soft-headed many but what really drives them is the creation of a world-wide feudal empire that is managed by a class of privileged technocrats. And like kings and queens of old they will rule from their rarefied perch above it all. That is why I often refer to the cabal that is driving the current push as 'autocrats' or 'absolutists'.
They were not expecting to become so visible to so many of us so soon. Much of their time now is spent trying to cover up that visibility. That is one chink in their armor we can exploit. On the surface it would seem like they have made much headway lately, but actually they are in a very fragile position. Their greatest strength is that currently we are divided and unsure how to respond. That may not last…
I agree that clearly defining our enemy is paramount. I use the term 'liberal' the same way I use the term 'Nazi' when discussing WWII. A loose way of referring to anyone who passively or actively supported Hitler's tyrannical regime, whether through naivete, ignorance or malice aforethought. At certain stages of the war, this included practically the entire German population.
Therefore anyone who supports Barrack Obama, the Democratic Party, the "progressive" cause, or the UN driven globalist agenda – or who are prepared to bow to them are de facto enemies of freedom. To hell with them all.
January 29, 2013 - 11:20 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
The fight is over when it is over and your defiance of the fact and your desperate hope to reverse it won't change it. Instead, that just piles the bodies even higher – you have heard that most of the casualties occur after the war is already lost and the outcome isn't in doubt. What is, is to be. Perhaps this is the time the People of the Light look towards wandering in the wilderness………
January 29, 2013 - 11:10 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Fail Burton
No matter what wilderness we found the people who hate us the most would find a way to snuggle right up beside us. That's called voting with your feet and why liberalism at its heart is an Orwellian lie. The Rainbow Coalition would drop dead of a heart attack if they suddenly found they had no conservatives to protect them even while they rail against them as the main enemy.
January 29, 2013 - 3:12 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
May your chains weigh lightly upon you.
January 29, 2013 - 10:44 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
You have decided what the world looks like without seeing it. A grave disadvantage in a serious fight, and all I'm concerned about is not being crushed out before having a chance to fight….'>>………
January 30, 2013 - 2:15 pm Link to this Comment
Charlie Griffith
Thank you. All very eloquently said.
Particularly, "If Latin America could do what old America could, they'd already have done so."
Apply this terribly politically incorrect concept generally, broadly, to "affirmative action" thinking today. It's all such a waste. Spinning wheels…..bust…busy…busy.
January 29, 2013 - 5:58 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
7. FeralCat
"California is a tired idea.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast.Clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. – Mark Twain
January 29, 2013 - 1:50 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
8. judge arrow
Of all the states California lends itself to impression, a collage of many scenes that form an inchoate pattern and I sense that VDH more than anyone has managed here to capture its strange asymmetry. No question something is in the air; he senses it, many of us do, something shifting around, as if everyone, save for the leftist, statist ideologues are holding their breath, waiting for the kaboom. Maybe it will take the national economy to finally hit the gong, some implosion of the cruel fantasy that now fogs Washington and most of the western world – perhaps the trip wire is in Europe. But I know of no one who does not sense we are in an economic minefield. From the mailman to the mechanic, to the workers in the citrus groves to the over 50% who take a state check – everyone senses we are in serious trouble, something in our direction is very wrong. There are simply too many out here who have no resources, no resilience, no self-reliance and will not take no and will push the political class for more and when more runs out…well, the asymmetry as described by VDH here is transitional. The physics of such instability defines chaos.
January 29, 2013 - 2:01 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
"Maybe it will take the national economy to finally hit the gong…" Keep in mind that vast emergency powers are already on the books, ready to be invoked by a Congressional declaration of emergency. This is an urban nation now and the bulk of the population is unable to hack out a living from the earth as so many could in the Great Depression. When the financial system is finally acknowledged to be dead (probably precipitated by a run on the dollar and inflation) it will only take a few weeks of chaos before people are clamoring for the government to take control.
That will only bring in a new phase of the decay, not a solution.
January 29, 2013 - 6:46 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
judge arrow
Yes but likely not a lapse into genteel decay and too, government in crisis will fail to provide because of its incompetence and corruption. Consider instead desperation over a large population and what that has always brought through history – the difference being this time it will be done amidst plenty – and for that reason will be all the more desperate.
January 29, 2013 - 10:44 am Link to this Comment | Reply
Yes, there is clearly something in the air. The zeitgeist a jittery nervous forced optimism trumpeted by an almost uniformly leftist commentariat reveling in their apparent victory while experiencing a creeping dread that this was not how it was supposed to be. When, as now, they finally elevated one of their own, a true son or daughter of the far collectivist left, things were supposed to be better, all the problems created by the capitalists swept away in a rush. Yet a decade of real wage declines continues apace even as inflation in food & energy further erodes the earnings of a middle class being slowly inexorably ground out of existence by the financial strain of supporting our new governmental aristocracy. The partisan divides grow, the friction increases exponentially and it feels as if the inflection point must be upon us.
But I think the surprise may be just how long this can continue. Consider: Europe is at least a couple of decades further into the depths of their socialist experiments than are we and Japan is, perhaps, a couple of decades ahead of us in growing their national debt and neither has collapsed. Yet. Further, every time the global economy hiccups the dollar skyrockets thus strongly implying that we can continue our national irresponsibility longer and to a much greater degree than either of the aforementioned. Still, there's a reason hedge funds are buying tract homes in Phoenix and farm land in Kansas ….
Though the Lilliputians seem to have, at long last, succeeded in their decades-long quest to hamstring and shackle the American economy there are still green shoots … in places that can't be seen from thirty thousand feet by the denizens of New York and California as they shuffle between SFO and JFK (the sole outposts of civilization on an otherwise barbaric continent). Here the governor has already given back to small businesses all the tax hikes imposed from DC. We're still starting businesses, people looking for work knock on our doors daily and we hire as many as we can because we're busy.
Looking around the nation things similarly appear far from hopeless. A vast swath of the middle has begun to compete on both tax policy and the size & scope of government. More states are refusing to voluntarily submit to Obamacare than are willingly participating fully and many will refuse to expand Medicaid thereby foregoing federal subsidy for their citizens, something I do not recall happening even once in my lifetime. Something like thirty (!) states boast both legislative and executive branches completely controlled by the party on the right to, I believe, seven on the left. And the Republican bench is not only deep but young, intelligent, articulate and possessed of ideas to gut the left. Consider, for example, Sen. Rubio's economic appeal to reform immigration based on skills, a tactic that would likely quickly erode the economic standing of the blue state professional classes. Or Gov. Jindal's dynamic appeal to federalism. Everywhere you look the likes of Cotton, Scott, Haley, Rubio, Jindal, et al. are advancing the ideal of liberty and, often as not, providing living embodiments of the American Dream as exemplars to groups allegedly lost forever to the political right.
And in its hubris the left is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. From a governor of Texas joking about secession, to very serious people advancing ideas as radical as Constitutional Conventions or Bills of Federalism, down to even the idea of the protean corporation that would create a nation of entrepreneurs unlikely to lay down for federal dictats while allowing businesses to evade Obamacare, radical ideas run rampant just below the national dialogue and, often as not, they're being advanced by very serious people.
While the left celebrates in DC the right is busily rebuilding America from the ground up in those places leftists can't be bothered to examine. I do tend to believe that the dark visions for California set forth here will likely come to pass. But rather than portents of an American decline, I tend to believe it more likely that, after a federalist restoration of our national government, California will exist as something like North Korea, a socialist Disneyland, a stark warning and vivid reminder of the consequences of failed ideas best left on the scrap heap of history.
January 29, 2013 - 9:17 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
East Bay Mike
"Everywhere you look the likes of Cotton, Scott, Haley, Rubio, Jindal, et al. are advancing the ideal of liberty and, often as not, providing living embodiments of the American Dream as exemplars to groups allegedly lost forever to the political right."
And in the case of Rubio, and probably a few of the others you listed, giving massive amnesty to illegals. Yeah, things look really bright.
January 29, 2013 - 9:28 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Like it or not some sort of regularization of those here illegally is going to happen. Similarly, like it or not Republicans can get on board and have some slim chance of beginning to repair the damage done to their brand by the likes of Tom Tancredo and his ilk or they can adopt your view and watch, in the absolute best case, as Madame President Hillary Rodham Clinton is sworn in four year hence. Take your pick.
Besides, if you'd listen to Rubio, rather than bigoted caricatures of him, you'd realize that what he's advocating and attempting to advance is probably about as good as it's going to get on a bad issue for Republicans: control of the border signed off by border state governors & law enforcement as a precondition to any regularization, regularization via a path to a green card (but only after everyone already in the queue advances) rather than blanket amnesty & immediate citizenship as Obama prefers, and the option thereafter to join the queue for citizenship like everyone else. Estimates are that no one would become a voting citizen in less than fifteen years under this plan.
By then we'll be well on the way to having solved our problems or will be so far gone that it won't matter how these new citizens vote anyway. Given the makeup of the Senate & the present occupant of the White House the plan Rubio described yesterday would be nearly a home run.
January 29, 2013 - 10:04 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
I would add to Rubio's bill reinterpretation of the 14th amendment and positive steps toward consumption taxes as a gradually phased-in replacement for much of the federal income tax. Thats two low-hanging fruit items that so-called GOP can ask for in return.
Wilson went off on his Prop 187 quest right as the Class of '86 was finally swearing their citizenship oaths. Timing can be everything.
January 29, 2013 - 11:14 am Link to this Comment
A difference between you and many of the other responders on this thread is that you look for solutions and are hopeful about what you can do. Most of those we hear from are bitter and essentially resigned. They seem to be in over their heads and resigned to muttering and howling; cursing the darkness. You, on the other hand, see a lot of candles and fires that can be lit. Congratulations.
January 30, 2013 - 7:25 am Link to this Comment | Reply
9. firstname.lastname@example.com
The eventual loss of California to Narco-Mexico means the end of America as Pacific, and world, power. Unless dealt with now, I give it two to three more generations before we lose Texas as well..
Could a nineteenth century pioneer have thought this possible? Then again, it can happen. Could an ancient Greek possibly believe that his culture would no longer exist in Asia Minor?
January 29, 2013 - 3:13 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Losing California to Mexico is preferable to allowing the leftists who run this state continue on their present course. Maybe there is more hope for us from Mexico City than from Washington, DC.
January 29, 2013 - 3:37 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
10. Libertyship46
Somehow I think nobody will really notice California's slide into abject poverty until Hollywood decides that it's time to leave. Once that iconic industry goes, people will really notice that there is something wrong with California. And it's already happening. More and more films and TV shows are filmed outside of California, especially in Canada. It will only be a matter of time before major studio heads decide to go someplace else, like nearby Nevada. Heck, a whole movie industry could sprout up in a place like Las Vegas. Think about it. Las Vegas already has the hotels, amenities, housing, and resources to accommodate the movie industry. I'll bet it won't be too soon before some smart person in Hollywood decides that California just isn't worth the money anymore. And since Hollywood is all about dollars and cents, that day may be coming sooner rather than later. And when that day does come, California really will be finished, at lest in the eyes of the rest of the nation. And it looks like the majority of the people in that state are OK with that. Sad.
January 29, 2013 - 3:53 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Robert Haymond
What about my beloved San Francisco Giants? Where in Nevada could they play ball?
January 29, 2013 - 5:31 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
They could just add a deck to the AAA stadium or use the re-work the outdoor boxing arenas at Caesars or MGM. Looking forward to when they play the Oklahoma Dodgers, Boise Angels, Omaha A's or Dakota Padres.
January 29, 2013 - 11:18 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Herbert Kaine
Instead of the SF Giants, why not the Tehran Giants, Aleppo Giants, Cairo Giants, Damascus Giants, etc
January 30, 2013 - 4:21 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
This is how you get paid back for stealing them from New York. And that goes double for stealing the Dodgers from Brooklyn.
February 3, 2013 - 2:17 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Andrew X
And then "Hollywood" will pack up and move… and set up shop in a more economically promising place, bringing all those "artists" and cultural mavens with them. They will so move because of the wreck that California became –
– And they will never, never, never, NEVER, NEVER acknowledge their own integral role in bringing that about. Never. NEH-VER!
They will not do it. Ever. Ever. They will see their own lives uprooted over it big time, and in the year 2017 they will undoubtedly blame George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and the NRA before they EVER start to question the Democratic shibboleths that have created today's world. One can not and does not turn one's back on one's God, ancient… or New God on the Block… lightly. So they will not do it. CNN, and the New York Times, if they still exist, will fill them with reasons why they do not have to. Truth in such matters, of course, will be an antediluvian (literally) concept.
This post and its associated comments may be one of the most depressing reads I have ever seen on the Net. Because so many of us really believed that, no matter what, "the truth will win out in the end". And now we start to, not wonder, but to actually see before us, the reality that that too may be a treasured shibboleth, with basis only in hope, and not reality. Huxley's narco-populace is fantasy no longer…. it is our world.
God Help America.
January 29, 2013 - 5:37 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
And when they depart Hollywood, as LS46 suggests, will they leave the rot of their progressive mindset behind? Of course not. They will simply transplant it and it will germinate in new soil with the native morons who vote Democrat "'cause we have always voted for Democrats". My advice would be to live in a solidly middle-class rural community (a "hick town" by liberal standards) in a state where agriculture plays a major role. Believe me, the lack of urban accoutrements is more than off-set by the peace of mind of being able to live affordably and free of fear of predation by either the local politicians or the street hoodlums. I like the idea that the would-be home invader, for example, has more to fear of me than I do of him, and he knows it. It sets just the right tone.
January 29, 2013 - 7:15 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Where will Hollywood move?
Austin has the basic liberalism that they would require, and a veneer of sophistication.
I'm sure the rest of TX could erect suitable barriers and checkpoints to ensure that the contagion doesn't spread.January 29, 2013 - 11:54 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Alla ya chumps fergit that Hollywood was built by people who immigrated to California. Yep, by people who were born and raised in the other 57 states.
So, chumps, when your cousins come back home to you give 'em a big hug and a warm welcome. And stop yer bitchin' when they do what comes natural to 'em. They're your own kind.
January 29, 2013 - 1:45 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Andrew X
Beg to differ – Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Jimmy Cagney, Lauren Bacall, Heddy Lamarr… hell.. Samuel Goldwyn and Irving Thalberg…. these guys were about as close to today's crew as Harry Truman and John Kennedy are to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
Different, and better… era. That today's left holds in gleeful contempt. Hence the cancer.
January 29, 2013 - 11:56 pm Link to this Comment -
Old Hollywood played to decent people. New Hollywood plays to degenerates.
January 30, 2013 - 10:37 am Link to this Comment
Herbert Kaine
Let them move to Cairo or Aleppo-great places to film desert scenes and destruction
January 30, 2013 - 4:24 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
To your suggestion on where to live I would add, do not live too close to an interstate corridor, if one is choosing a new place to live. These are arteries for the lawless as well as commerce. Just a suggestion.
January 30, 2013 - 7:00 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
A buddy of mine from here, Westchester County NY was on business in LV recently. The porno industry has already moved there because Cali demands condoms. Ironic, isn't it? Condoms? Like a condom can fix their problems.
January 29, 2013 - 9:12 am Link to this Comment | Reply
11. Robin
Your comments about the lack of assimilation and integration reminded me of a 2002 national conference held at Chapel Hill to lay out the vision of how to use education to change the future. Sounds like California got the memo. Which is not surprising. They enthusiastically embraced sociocultural theory in education and those Joyce Foundation financed Standards for Teaching and Learning by the early 90s. That's what the math and reading wars were really all about. Not a different way to teach but pushing the idea that "meaning" is something the group can determine by consensus and then enforce against everyone else. It's also called the Discursive Classroom.
Ohio State prof john a powell laid out this actual view of integration at the 2002 conference. Its goal is to transform the mainstream at a structural level so that "institutions, communities, and individuals are fundamentally changed." I wrote about it here http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/building-a-compelling-future-political-coalition-around-advocacy-for-keeping-the-axemaker-mind/ .
Clearly that is what has happened in the State of California and many of our urban areas. It was not accidental and Chicago was a prime place where all these transformative theories were created and first implemented.
And now it's going national in Obama's education reforms that amount to a wholesale overhaul of education from top to bottom (their words quoted in a 2010 CA interview with David Conley in Kappan Magazine). With Change at the internal, emotional level of the student being the new definition of Learning.
There's a reason fed Ed Secretary Arne Duncan began the Second Term announcing that the federal civil rights law are about assuring an equal opportunity for every student. No they are not but this is the new enforcement criteria and it means open season on any individuality that might give a person the ability to break away from group mediocrity. Or that consensus of the majority described above.
January 29, 2013 - 3:57 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
"…It was not accidental and Chicago was a prime place where all these transformative theories were created and first implemented…"
And what Marxist, Alinskyite, Radical do we know active in the Ed Establishment in Chicago?
Can you spell: B.I.L.L…A.Y.E.R.S!
and his very special friend who now resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.January 29, 2013 - 11:58 am Link to this Comment | Reply
12. clamdigger53
Thank you Dr. Hanson for a good definition of "high water mark". Never so completely understood what it was.
January 29, 2013 - 3:58 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
13. JImG
Thank you Dr Hanson for your insight!
Public safety officers have somehow become sacred persons who not only get outsized salaries but retire with pensions at 90% of their last salary with COLAs. Being hired as a fireman, Highway Patrolman or police officer is akin to hitting the lottery.
Many members of the CHP receive annual pay in excess of $200,000 and as Dr Hanson points out their jobs entail much the same risks as private security guards making little more than minimum wage. Can the public afford to pay an active police force while paying an equal amount or more to those retired from the same force?
Such is California where public employee unions rule!
January 29, 2013 - 4:30 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
And most of them retire within 3 months of a major promotion and upgrade in pay, thereby raising their retirement pay. If unable to do that, they retire on disability, which is much higher than the regular retirement rate. It's how the system works.
With regards to the coastal yups not using public schools, I know many who do. I know families who actually sell their houses and move a few blocks simply to get into a better school district. Defies all logic to me, going through the expense and trauma of moving an entire household, and usually losing equity in today's market, rather than investing in a REAL education in a private school or homeschool. But then, most of them were also raised in public schools, and therefore have limited critical thinking skills.January 29, 2013 - 6:55 am Link to this Comment | Reply
14. Ernie G
I followed the link to the story about the naming of a school after a bandit. The superintendent's response was to recite Zinn/Chomsky talking points:"There are issues with our Founding Fathers," he told Fox News. "They wrote a great Constitution. I understand that. But Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. Does that make it okay? Ronald Reagan ordered the killing of over 400,000 Central Americans and had the whole propaganda against Grenada in the 80s. Is that okay?"
A school superintendent is spouting that bilge. Is that okay?
January 29, 2013 - 4:37 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Have they come up with a mascot yet for that school? Maybe the Frito Bandito gets a curtain call?
January 30, 2013 - 7:04 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
15. Jan
The people who have fled California, the vaunted middle class, showed up in Colorado over the past 20 years and are turning that beautiful state into a meca for drugs, liberal lifestyle, Obamacare, welfare, etc. Can't we send them to Mexico, Costa Rice, South in exchange for hard working illegals. Just saying…..
January 29, 2013 - 5:10 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Isn't it more likely that it's your schools that are turning your children into drones that votes against you?
I'm a native Californian and I'm also conservative. I left California in 95 and I will NEVER go back! I vote conservative and my area (NOVA – Northern Virginia) seems to swing both ways, but we've been getting a HUGE influx of Marylanders who've been taxed to death – by policies THEY voted into place.
January 29, 2013 - 12:03 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
The people who have fled California, the vaunted middle class, showed up in Colorado over the past 20 years…
–JanNothing stops you Coloradans from sending all the California high tech (and its jobs) back to the Golden State where it came from, honey.
Go for it.
January 29, 2013 - 2:55 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
Jan as a visitor to Rosta Rica myself i found the population to be very hard working and with an unemployment rate of around 4.5 percent they must be doing something right. I didn't meet too many that wanted to come here.
January 29, 2013 - 3:46 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Ten years ago, after moving back to Chicago from the Bay Area, I was doing our partial year income taxes for California. Despite hefty payroll taxes and our living there for only eight months (two of which when my husband was unemployed), we still owed the State of California more money and for what? The sheer joy of living in the Golden State?
January 29, 2013 - 5:13 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Micha Elyi
…moving back to Chicago from the Bay Area…
–SNABAfter helping wreck the Golden State you couldn't stand to stay there, eh?
January 29, 2013 - 3:01 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
17. Robert Haymond
Robinson Jeffers, one of the greats of early 20th century American literature (poetry), often unrecognized, made a home out of stone and rock in Carmel, California (built partially by himself). I recall reading in college in the 1960s one of his infrequent essays which preceded one of his a narrative poems, his stating that western civilization had reached its apex during his lifetime and, as a result, he was in a position to look down at both sides, so to speak. He forsaw a massive deterioration was immediately in store and he was right. I took him seriously as I held ultimate respect for the poet and…I am not therefore surprised although I could not have predicted the details as, for instance, so well elaborated by Professor Hanson or some of the Responders.
January 29, 2013 - 5:43 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
My first contact with Jeffers (also college in the '60s) was to read 3 incomplete lines from "Birth Dues":
"The world's God is treacherous and full of unreason; a torturer, but also
The only foundation and the only fountain.
Who fights him eats his own flesh and perishes of hunger;…"I immediately bought a copy of "Selected Poems" (the little book) and started to read. I have given copies of his Selected Poetry to all three of my children.
People would do well to read and contemplate what he says. One of the most prophetic:
The Purse Seine by Robinson Jeffers
Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net,
unable to see the phosphorescence of the
shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting
Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off
Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color
light on the sea's night-purple; he points,
and the helmsman
Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the
gleaming shoal and drifts out her seine-net.
They close the circle
And purse the bottom of the net, then with great
labor haul it in.I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible,
then, when the crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall
to the other of their closing destiny the
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body
sheeted with flame, like a live rocket
A comet's tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside
the narrowing
Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up
to watch, sighing in the dark; the vast walls
of night
Stand erect to the stars.Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top
On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light:
how could I help but recall the seine-net
Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how
beautiful the city appeared, and a little terrible.
I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together
into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now
There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable
of free survival, insulated
From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all
dependent. The circle is closed, and the net
Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet
they shine already. The inevitable mass-disasters
Will not come in our time nor in our children's, but we
and our children
Must watch the net draw narrower, government take all
powers–or revolution, and the new government
Take more than all, add to kept bodies kept souls–or anarchy,
the mass-disasters.
These things are Progress;
Do you marvel our verse is troubled or frowning, while it keeps
its reason? Or it lets go, lets the mood flow
In the manner of the recent young men into mere hysteria,
splintered gleams, crackled laughter. But they are
quite wrong.
There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew
that cultures decay, and life's end is death.January 29, 2013 - 7:08 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Robert Haymond
"fred-m": Thank you for the reminescence. I first heard of Jeffers in 1959 when, a year off from college (Haverford), I used to habituate coffee houses in Greenwich Village (quite exciting for a young man, 1959). It could have been one called "The Dollar Sign", owned by a Harvard drop-out I was told, one who then later committed suicide. One evening, I was seated next to a young man, older than myself, who told me he was a printer. He also told me about a book he was reading, about this poet, a man named Robinson Jeffers, and read some of his poetry to me. I recall neither being too impressed nor at all put off. Sometime later, I began to realize that he was a straight shooter who saw things as they were and I still believe it. Later, in 1960, I went hitchhiking across the USA (not nearly as dangerous then as it would be now), from hometown in Connecticut all the way to California via my uncle's home in Las Vegas, to Tiajuana and back again. I made sure to make a pilgrimage to Carmel, Big Sur, and visited his (Robinson Jeffers') home (Tor House) where he and wife Una lived and brought up their twin sons. No one was home. I forget whether he had already passed on, however. Una Jeffers died before him. As an old man, he wrote a griefstricken poem about her. This man's tortured lament for her passing was immeasurably beautiful, especially given that he, himself, downplayed mens' (humans') feelings in the grand scope of things. Later, as a professional psychologist of thirty years (and as an aside), one of my conclusions at the end was that feelings were highly overrated, both my own and my clients'. Jeffers was, of course, right!
January 29, 2013 - 9:36 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Thank you for the Jeffers'poem, which also triggered some interesting responses. Clearly, I need to read more of his work.
January 30, 2013 - 7:42 am Link to this Comment | Reply
East Bay Mike
Robinson Jeffers, in one of his poems, I can't recall which, prophetically summed up today's California with the phrase "something in the air that hates humanity."
January 29, 2013 - 9:47 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Something more on Robinson Jeffers. He was versed in the classics (Latin and Greek). He had a special affinity for Lucretius. He was called by critics an "inhumanist". That title doesn't really do him justice. He saw human beings for what they were, not too important in the scale of things. The Renaissance made man "the measure of all things." Jeffers understood that we were creatures, not more important than the animal creatures amongst whom we inhabited and certainly of lesser importance than the stars, the moon and the sun, the infinity of space. He understood how impermanent we were. He disparaged how we treated the earth and how we treated each other, our enormous egos and faint understanding of our place in the universe. Now I realize how I gravitated towards the Indian people amongst whom I lived and sought understandings and education on the prairies in Canada, the Cree, Blackfoot and Objibaway.
January 29, 2013 - 10:35 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Robert Haymond
Forgive me; I forgot to sign off on the above.
January 29, 2013 - 10:36 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Ave Caesar
No bitterness: our ancestors did it.
They were only ignorant and hopeful, they wanted freedom but wealth too.
Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.
Or rather–for we are not aquiline Romans but soft mixed colonists–
Some kindly Sicilian tyrant who'll keep
Poverty and Carthage off until the Romans arrive,
We are easy to manage, a gregarious people,
Full of sentiment, clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries.
Robinson JeffersJanuary 30, 2013 - 2:02 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
19. bob sykes
It should be remembered that the Latin American pattern of a small, rich, white ruling class governing a large mestizo/Indian/black underclass is stable. It is immune to revolution. It is the pattern even in Cuba. There is little or no progress on any front, the masses have no interest in education or the arts or the environment, but a little bit of socialism buys them off.
This is the ancient historical pattern for almost all human societies everywhere. The modern American/European exception is THE anomaly. Think back to the world of Jane Austin. The landed gentry maintained large staffs of servants and peasants. This goes back to prehistory. It is a form of income redistribution. It is not in any sense democratic nor does it imply any idea of God-given human rights, mere customary privilege.
California is in fact fully returned to humanity's historical social organization. The only question is how far the rest of the American/European exception will be rolled back.
January 29, 2013 - 5:50 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Roger that. The culture of the peon is what keeps the underclass voting Democratic in such unbalanced ratios. They are quite accustomed to supporting the gentry politically, for the illusion of state largess.
One might ponder for a moment the Republican establishment's oft repeated statements that the Hispanics are "natural Republicans" and the level of appreciation that statement reveals for the political realities we now face in our multicultural country.
January 29, 2013 - 7:44 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Tom T
As we might say, our quaint little experiment with our particular form of democracy is drawing to a close.
January 29, 2013 - 11:15 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded- here and there, now and then- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.This is known as "bad luck."."
"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."
-Robert A. Heinlein
January 29, 2013 - 12:11 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
the subLogician
There is no worse tyranny…
–Robert A. HeinleinHaving heard so many claims that this or that tyranny has "no worse tyranny" or "no greater tyranny", I conclude that all tyrannies are equal in their tyranny.
January 29, 2013 - 3:13 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
I lived in California for 10 years. Had the best job of my life there. Bought two houses there – when interest rates were 10-11%. Got my pilot's license there. Now work for a company HQed there. Still have many very good friends there.
I last went back there in August 2001. Things had changed. Across the street from the first place I worked, soon after I got there, a farm (right next to LAX!) had been replaced by a Large Scale Integration IC manufacturing facility. Now that same building is a Big 5 Sporting Goods store. The place I worked has been replaced by condos. I saw that all over; manufacturing and high tech employment has been replaced by shopping and housing.
The roads were always crowded … but now! It's a continuous high speed stunt driving exhibition, broken only by the periods of quiet reflection brought on by the inevitable wreck. While off the freeway, in a small desert town, I was stopped by a CHP officer, who cautioned me about not slowing down before I got to the speed limit change and lectured me on the dangers of reading a map while driving.
I read – simultaneously, mind you – that California is the state where everyone is leaving and one with the highest influx of new people. I guess they keep two sets of books.
Land of contradiction it was and is! But that used to be about the weather and geography, not the people.
January 29, 2013 - 5:55 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Robert Haymond
In 1969, I left (with my future wife) for Canada, British Columbia, to be specific. It was one of the few really smart moves I ever made. My children always thank me for allowing them to be born and raised in Canada (the West to be specific). The further north you go, the fewer the people.
January 29, 2013 - 9:42 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
That leads me to recall something I read in the LA Times just after I got the area in 1978. A man took his family out of the LA area and moved to an island off the coast of Oregon, I think it was. There were no bridges to the island, only a ferry. After living there a year or so they decided the island compared poorly to LA and moved back.
Even then, I thought this was comparable to eating a steady diet of Big Macs and fries and then, after becoming disgusted, swearing off all meat and going vegetarian. Then deciding you did like meat and going back to the just Big Macs. He could have moved to Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, Lompoc, Ojai, And Luis Obispo or other similar places or even Camarillo or Ventura and had more options than the distant island but a lot less hassle and downsides than LA. Of course so is BC
Now, of course those other Calif places are a lot more like LA.
January 29, 2013 - 4:51 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
If it wasn't for the influx of foreign immigrants, both legal and illegal, CA's population figures would have collapsed as the Middle-Class is abandoning the state for other climes.
Remember, the Re-Apportionment following the 2010 Census, was the first one in the history of the state where CA did not increase its Congressional representation.January 29, 2013 - 12:15 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
21. davelnaf
There's always an element of the cautionary tale in each of the good doctor's articles. Those of us in the other border states worry that Democrats will one day get control of our state and 'Californianize' it. Perhaps our concerns are overblown and California's problems are unique to the state. My worry is that they are not.
So, why are illegals so much more of a problem in California than they are elsewhere? Certainly, when their numbers are sufficiently concentrated—as in parts of Chicago—you get a high murder rate. But I agree that the answer comes down mainly to state-wide culture. The culture of California has been debased, first by liberals and now by illegals. But are illegal aliens from Mexico and other parts of Latin America more prone to chaotic behavior to the point of anarchy or is it an expression of an abiding contempt for the non-Latino, the non-Mexican, or perhaps even the un-Mexican? In my state illegals do many of the same things mentioned in Dr. Hanson's essay. Their resentment of the non-Mexican is freely expressed wherever conditions and situations permit. But their numbers here are not even close to what they are in California. And the big difference, so far, is that liberal Democrats are not in control. They want very badly to be in control. So far, though—as in keep your fingers crossed, voters have had the good sense to keep them largely at bay.
January 29, 2013 - 5:58 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
When areas of the country come to be dominated by the Hispanics, of illegal origin or otherwise, do not expect affirmative action for whites. I think we will then see an even greater "need" for redistribution of wealth and opportunity. Such has been the fate of displaced peoples and cultures from the dawn of time. As Sam Huntington has said, in the struggle for dominance, it is not the superior culture that wins out, but the more vigorous. Think about what happened to the indigenous Egyptians when the Arabs rode into the Nile Valley.
January 29, 2013 - 7:53 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Um, because new mexico has indians, so they can't play the indigenous violin. arizona, well, have you seen jan brewer? would you sniffle about unfairness in her presence? and texas was taken from mexicans and indians in the first place. we don't think they're harmless.
we think they need to turn into texans. this means pledges of allegiance every morning, to the united states flag, the texas flag, and a moment of silence.
the kids' elementary got designated a spanish- speaking intense school, so they do the pledges in english and in spanish. those kids might visit mexico, but the words in their head,in spanish, are " pledge allegiane to estado unidos americano" or something like that- not "estado unidos de mexico." Ya'll keep talking gramsci- it works both ways.
that's the kids. the grownups? low-transfer payments. they have to work. once they work, they get wealthier. they have a wealthy tejano culture. then the kids assimilate. There are five different cowboy boot styles at the Western wear store- mexican, tejano south, tejano north, etc etc etc. the boot store is pretty open that it sells luxury- and that it works best with Wal-mart styles. So, there's dignity, no matter what.
Squalid and trashy- that's a personal choice, not a given.
churches, and door- to-door proselytizing. in cali, there are black jehovah's witnesses. here, it's a rainbow. the kids end up non-denominational, or drinking koolaid. it's hard to be a coastal elite atheist. you can manage it in one town, and then only if you're quiet, in the other cities. But-you're an oddball, not the baseline.
I don't know how this fits- but we did import Germans, about like other places imported slaves. there's are distinct german cultural habits, worldwide- like, all the peaceful, decent places in africa are german-influenced, while the british-influenced ones are a lottery, and seem to have massacres and cannibals. I can't pick it out, exactly, hard work, order, and such- but german farmers married mexican girls ( think buddy holly and his wife) and so there isn't this huge divide between whites and mexicans- everyone thinks they can reach middle-class comfort, if not ricas y famosas levels of crazy showing off rich-
January 29, 2013 - 8:23 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Democrats have control of city government here in Tucson and they are following the California model of Stuck on Stupid. They're the Quislings who will hand the keys over to the Atzlan movement who want to turn the Southwest into a third world craphole like their homeland.
January 29, 2013 - 9:14 am Link to this Comment | Reply
22. Ceteris Paribus
49% of the population are willingly enslaved by 51%. Why? Because they are idiots who have to obey the rules, no matter how stupid those rules are. The 49% deserve everything that is coming to them. Evolution will have it's way.
January 29, 2013 - 6:21 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
23. john
What the state needs is for the industries that have fled to return.
The Great Mall in Milpitas , if some are not familiar with it, is a giant shopping mall built on what used to be an automobile assembly plant.
It was Dr Hanson's Meskins that caused Californios to essentially outlaw any kind of industry.
But if you guys like there are plenty of other web site you can go to that extoll the genetic propensity for 'Aztecs' to build pyramids and take up human sacrifice.
January 29, 2013 - 6:40 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
wasn't Meskins. misspelling kind of ruins the entire screed.
January 29, 2013 - 6:41 am Link to this Comment | Reply
24. inspectorudy
As an airline pilot for over 30 years I flew into and laid over many hundreds of days in California. To say that it has changed is an understatement. My favorite city was San Francisco and I spent many many days in that lovely city with its warm and kindly people. I went back about ten years ago and was amazed at what had happened to my city on the bay. There were homeless people in every little park with the odor of urine every where. The run down state of the streets was appalling and all of the little Mom and Pop stores were gone. The presence of Latin influence was everywhere and the grating sound of Spanish being shouted drowned out the streetcar bells. I had read of the travails of the political state but failed to realize how that would affect the old state that I knew and loved. California is lost and it probably is the fate of ALL border states, if not all US states.
January 29, 2013 - 6:53 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
25. Chris in N.Va.
Excellent and sobering (wonder if it would work on sobering up "light recreational drug use" — nah, probably not) gist of a state wherein in went to High School and college (graduated CSUF in 1972) and to which I have ZERO interest in ever returning. In fact, I have friends here who escaped the People's Democrat(ic) Republic some years ago with the same present non-existent level of intent to return.
It's become a bipolar petri dish of toxic political/cultural compounds.
As for California Libs infesting Colorado with their California/Dem Diseases, here we have Libs who've "fouled their nest" in the increasingly-over-regulated People's Near-Socialist State of Maryland who are now moving to Northern Virginia to escape the onerous results of their Lib/Utopian/Statist wet-dreams. In typical Liberal self-unawareness and willful ignorance of cause-and-effect, they wish to inflict some of the same brain-dead ideas on their new home state. Fortunately there is some push-back —– so far at least!
Loved the Shelly quote. Since his initial "Ascension to the Throne" I've referred to our Dear Leader as "Ozymandias on the Potomac" and am still looking forward to his being reduced to "two trunkless legs of stone" amidst the blowing sands of time.
I hope California can be rescued the from the maw of the abyss (father-and-mother-in-law still live there), but it's pretty hard to be optimistic given the current state of things.
January 29, 2013 - 6:58 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
26. Dave in Houston
About the fate of California, do I care? No, just as long as they leave me alone. We have our own issues here in Texas, increasingly the main one being not becoming another California.
January 29, 2013 - 7:03 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
27. Dave A
As a native Californian and refugee I can't say I enjoy reading these very sad comments on what I predicted back in the 90″s when I packed my bags and left. Why more don't is what really amazes me. Once I figured out I was simply a revenue source for the state and local governments for their populist agenda with little concern or appreciation for my efforts it was "See Ya". When I was turned down for a Cal Vet Ag Loan (which I qualified for) because I made to much money and a white male (didn't they want to get paid back?) it was time to seek greener pastures. Pun intended. Best move I've ever made. I can only encourage others to get the heck out. You can always visit. However, I don't even like to do that anymore.
January 29, 2013 - 7:07 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
My spouse wants to return for vacation (San Diego and San Francisco). I refuse to spend any of my hard earned money (and time) on idiocy.
I shall not go back.January 29, 2013 - 5:27 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
Moved the heck out of this pathetic socialist utopia in 2005, got married, started a real life and have never been happier. Shame on what the Left has done to CA.
January 29, 2013 - 7:12 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
29. jao44
My parents were born in California. I was born in California. Every day I walk outside, the sadness at what I have seen happen to our once great state becomes more and more overwhelming. California is lost. As Betty White commented in one of her ads for California, "This is how we roll (over those that disagree with us)." A sad part of what's happening is those in Hollywood, once they have overseen the destruction of this state, have the money to relocate and start the destruction of whatever state they invade.
I once remarked about a study done that came to the conclusion that we, as a people, are becoming dumber because we no longer have to fight for survival. Well, some no longer have to fight for survival because the government gives them everything. Those of us that fall outside this sphere of entitlement because of our race, skin color, religious beliefs, etc., etc. are finding it much more difficult to survive.
I hope my wife and I can carry on long enough and with enough financial reserves to leave this sink hole of stupidity and relocate as far away from here as we can afford.
January 29, 2013 - 7:13 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Head east my friend. Its lovely. Plenty of states to pick from. I'd start with the lowest taxing ones if possible Plenty of resources on the web to compare. I read that the CIA has done studies that show the vast majority of people will move less than 25 miles from their birth place. Must be hard for most people but best thing I every did. It costs me exactly 50% less to live in SW Virginia that it did in California with a much better standard of living. Housing being the largest one of course.
Good luck.
January 30, 2013 - 6:25 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Salt Lick
Yes, moved to SW Virginia in 1987 to escape many of the problems VDH catalogues, and have never looked back. Conservatives and Libertarians seeking a better deal — check it out. Would love to further stack the deck for Liberty here.
January 30, 2013 - 4:51 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
30. Rob Crawford
"I sometime fantasize that a new conservative movement of second- and third-generation upper middle-class, over-taxed Mexican-Americans will demand competitive schools for their children without the fantasies of Chicano studies and coastal global warming indoctrination."
Sadly, it's a fantasy. They'll vote themselves a new Mexico.
January 29, 2013 - 7:14 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
31. Surellin
Ah, you quoted Alan Seeger ("I have a rendezvous with Death…")! Thank you, I had forgotten. And he is somewhat less depressing than your article and the comments. What can't continue, won't. And I suspect that we will reach a forced stopping point before we reach Merovingian status. This particular iteration of the Tyranny of the Stupid is, I think, more fragile than it appears. Not that wading through the consequences won't be painful, annoying and time-consuming.
January 29, 2013 - 7:14 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Here's my tin-foil hat conspiracy. The elite are actually actively planning the de-population of the state. Use high taxes and massive regulation to drive out the middle class. When tax revenues die, use that as an excuse to cut social programs and hand-outs. Raise property taxes to the point where no one save the elite can afford to own property (see Aspen). Once you drive out the middle and lower class, all of California is for the elite! They only need a few illegals to do the housework and the yard work. That and enough movie industry to lure all those young and ambitious (and attractive enough) to do anything for a part.
Once the elite own all the land, they can go back to drilling for gas and oil…as long as they don't actually have to see the drilling rigs.January 29, 2013 - 7:16 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Not so tin-foil as you think; I've often felt the Delta Smelt restrictions were a beta-male way of dealing with illegal immigration because Arizona-like measures would never leave ground in the Assembly.
The only way Hansen gets one of the twin anchors of lib-dem hegemony to rise and leave the ship is if the opposite anchor gets 80-90% what it wants. Pete Wilson had become so angered at ilegal immigration that I think he'd officiate 100,000 same-sex ceremonies and 200,000 gay adoptions if it accelerated the emergence of middle-class concerns and electoral responses in the new families. Maybe others would have to bite the bullet and emphatically elavate some token R Mexican like Abel Maldonado or Rosario Marin to the governorship and at least bring an entreprener-friendly, regulation-averse, public union-unfriendly government style. A strong amnesty or a green-utopia on hyper drive may have to be that clarion call.
January 29, 2013 - 7:53 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
The problem with that strategy JB is you have a large underclass of gangbangers and assorted riffraff who will not go off quietly into the good night. Here's a song for Cali when it all comes down.
January 29, 2013 - 9:39 am Link to this Comment | Reply
33. Kevin M
California's only hope is to split into 3-5 states that each have a common interest and can serve their regional needs. One state in the Bay Area, one or two in the south, and one or two in the central valley and the mountain north. Water dealt with by compact.
When the inevitable bankruptcy resolution happens, it will fail unless this kind of structural reform accompanies it. California cannot continue as a unitary state of 40 million people and 160,000 square miles.
January 29, 2013 - 7:20 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
34. Snowy Heron
As bad as things are, Dr. Hanson may be onto something about coming change.
I have worked in the finance industry for many years. It is a familiar situation, where an entrepreneur starts a business with his mother doing the books, his wife the cash register, and his kids assembling boxes for it. The second generation still remembers how hard his/her parents worked, and does the same, but gives his kids the "advantage" of a name college and the accoutrements of a well to do life. Those grandkids, however, manage to bungle the business into bankruptcy. In 3 generations, back into a lower middle class existence, if not abject poverty and I've seen it happen more than a few times.
So what happens in the next generation? Depends a lot on genetics. Are they bright enough to see what fools their parents were and try to recover the prosperity of their great grandparents? Or are they just plain stupid?
January 29, 2013 - 7:20 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Buckeye Abroad
"So what happens in the next generation? Depends a lot on genetics. Are they bright enough to see what fools their parents were and try to recover the prosperity of their great grandparents?"
Alot of internecine fighting going on now amongst some families I know. Try spending an evening with retired UAW or public employees, those on disability, etc… who don't see any problems nor don't want to hear about any. When confronted, they offer simple slogans to the current problems which they never could grasp to begin with.
January 29, 2013 - 7:55 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Dr Spyn
It's called "shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves in three generations."
An attorney I know — who built his dad's two-lawyer firm into a medical malpractice *defense* powerhouse — called the second generation "kennel kids": raised without trevail or ambition. Sadly, he could not see he was doing the same for his own son.
January 29, 2013 - 1:45 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
35. Sean
I live in Newport Beach, went to USC and have lived in California most of my life. I sent my children out of state for college as did a lot of my neighbors. None of the kids are coming back and I'm moving out of state in May. Most of my life long friends will follow me taking about $1,000,000.00 per year in state tax revenue with us. We added it up at the last USC/Stanford game. The state is going to collapse it is just a matter of time. Things that can't go on won't.
January 29, 2013 - 7:26 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
36. Who Knows?
Another dreary report from our man on the war scene called California.
After reading Dr. Hanson for years, and very much appreciating his expansive updates on the Golden State, herewith a few thoughts—
Render up to Caesar etc. Human life is not only about politics and economics, and even just about culture. Each person who chooses to live in the state of X, the city of Y, the house on Z street, is all about—himself. Of course, family is preprogrammed to be an essential aspect of "himself", until and unless he wakes up.
Therefore, trying to make sense of the melting (or not) pot of ANY collection of humans within ANY boundaries, say what's known as California, is rife with potential for missing the big picture. First, California qua a state is a legal fiction, of course with the consequences listed by VDH.
Picture it as broken up into fifty or a hundred Rhode Islands. Actually, de facto that about sums up the woe-is-me take from our war correspondent in Selma.
When I was a radical at UCSB, from 1969-72, suicidally affected by Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb", and so many other leftist sources, the disparity between a place like India and the USA always "felt" so bad. Why is the world so cruel? What can I do?
One idea floating around was to somehow just find a way to ship our JUNK, epitomized by a car that's stopped working, to the eager beaver Indians. They'd be motivated and find a way to make good use of it! (An aside—who knew I, myself, would later own an old Toyota truck, and end up going to many junkyards to find useful old parts, to keep it running?)
Well, maybe "India" and "Mexico" are, in effect, just coming to California—since we can't ship our crap THERE (too expensive), the answer is for human beings from those places, that are WORSE than our junkyards, to come HERE.
Maybe it'll all work itself out, in the next hundred or thousand years. We'll always have Paris—no, "California" will always have the weather and the land, and despite the ruination currently happening, both in political and economical terms, the boundaried Earth with that name will triumph.
California UNBOUND is a'coming.
January 29, 2013 - 7:45 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
I picked tomatoes as a kid, mom and dad were pickers too. Worked hard in school, got good grades, then went on to a university with a year abroad in India at one of its cluster colleges.
Wow, were those limousine liberal* kids' minds blown when they came back for their senior graduating year. They were guilty liberals made even guiltier.
*What Learjet liberals used to be called. Ask your granddad.
January 29, 2013 - 4:23 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
37. Brian in Clovis
VDH has been re-writing the same story for the last two years. The key question remains: What are Californians prepared to do about it?
Not one goddamned thing.
The people that are in any kind of position to do anything about it (Democrats) actually like California just fine the way it is. The rest of us, simply hope that gas prices don't go any higher and our unemployment checks arrive on time.
January 29, 2013 - 7:46 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
38. Art Chance
It's happening in all of Ecotopia from Anchorage all the way to San Diego. The coastal areas west of the mountains are a leftist La-La Land. I accepted the rabid left in Juneau because it was a capital city and all the whackos gravitate to them everywhere. But now the only difference between Anchorage and Seattle is that ANC still has conservative suburbs whereas Seattle's 'burbs are just as lefty as the downtown.
January 29, 2013 - 8:09 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Damn. I was hoping an escape to Alaska, away from the seething lower 48, was the answer. Where to go now?
January 29, 2013 - 8:47 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Bozo the Clone
I was disabused of the notion that AK was rugged individualism territory some time ago. While there is room for many such independent, self-reliant folks (and they are well-represented in AK), the state itself is heavily dependent on the feds. A majority of Alaska's territory is federal land, and Alaskans also get a stipend from the oil industry. "Big Oil," while generally considered a bogeyman of the Left, has corrupted AK politics (which is why Sarah Palin became governor — to counteract that). I am not objecting to the oil industry per se (that would be stupid), but recognizing a reality on the ground in Alaska.
January 29, 2013 - 10:33 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Art Chance
Well, Bozo, that's more like the Half-Governor's version; half true – maybe. Native Alaskans, i.e. Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts are heavily dependent on the US, St. Sarah's husband and his family haven't minded using those federal benefits and Indian Preference laws; not everybody can get one of those set-net permits on Bristol Bay where Sarah did that fishing she likes to brag about and a little Indian Preference didn't hurt getting that job on the North Slope. Todd's just Indian enough to claim it. About a third of that landmass south of Hawaii on your weather map belongs to the State of Alaska, a third is Native land, and a third is federal. Most federal spending here is on federal things, not Alaska things; the Natives are a federal Constitutional responsibility though Alaska pays for Native education rather than have the BIA's indoctrination camps do it. There is a large military presence here but it isn't here to protect us; it is here to protect you and to project US power in the Pacific. There is a large USCG presence here and while it from time to time fishes some Alaskan out of the drink it is mostly here to patrol the North Pacific fishery in which Alaska and Alaskans are a relatively minor player. In other words, the guys on The Deadliest Catch are mostly from Seattle. The USCG also is here to patrol the Great Circle route taken by container and bulk cargo ships from the West Coast to and from the Orient and also to patrol the tanker routs in the Alaska oil trade. We certainly benefit economically from the federal presence here, but they're here for their own things, not ours and the economic benefit comes at a very high price.
We don't get "a stipend" from the evil "Big Oil." The people of Alaska own the resource and we lease the fields and sell the oil to the Industry. In addition to income and property taxes on the field and on earnings, we take 12.5% of the oil in kind as royalty and sell it. 25% of the proceeds of our earnings in taxes and royalties from oil go into a "rainy day account," a managed investment fund called the Alaska Permanent Fund. Each year we inflation-proof the Fund, make half the earnings available to the Legislature and pay out the other half of the earnings per capita to residents as the Permanent Fund Dividend, which has ranged from as little as $600 or so a head to as much as almost $2000 a head. It could have easily been more than $2K but we didn't want to take the heat. Sarah also put out a $1K "Resource Dividend" that year because in 2008 when ANS was $140/bbl. not even the Alaska Legislature could spend money as fast as we were taking it in. I don't think the Legislature has ever put the half available for appropriation into the General Fund, but rather has appropriated it back to the Permanent Fund.
Most of the corruption is in Sarah's mind and she had absolutely nothing to do with the Legislators who were charged with corruption or with the Veco scandal or with the Stevens matter, almost all of which were subsequently overturned. It is a delicious irony that the changes in the Ethics law that she had little to do with but liked to brag about are what ultimately chased her out of the Governorship; those silly ethics thingies were standing between her and a lot of money. She considers the head of the Alaska Republican Party to be corrupt but she and her puppy Joe Miller have failed every time they've tried to take him out and he remained head of the Party long after she'd become a failed footnote and the brunt of lots of joke in Alaska, and I don't mean jokes by the lefties; Sarah couldn't win a Statewide race for dogcatcher, but you guys down in the Lower 48 like her.
January 29, 2013 - 1:30 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Man, when you hate you really hate don't you? So much of what you have said here is just your slanted opinion of what happened to Palin and entry into AK politics. The "Little ethics thingy" turned out to be 100% made up crap by the Republicans and Demorats to shut her up and run her out of office. Everyone of them has been made public and debunked for truth. She had nothing to do with the legislators or corruption within the AK government? Where the hell did you come up with that fairy tale? It means nothing to me if you live there anymore than it means anything that Obama lives in DC so what he says about DC is the truth!
January 29, 2013 - 2:13 pm Link to this Comment -
Art Chance
@inspectorrudy -
"It is a delicious irony that the changes in the Ethics law that she had little to do with but liked to brag about are what ultimately chased her out of the Governorship; those silly ethics thingies were standing between her and a lot of money."
Actually knowing what you're talking about and reading for comprehension are both very good skills. What more or less vindicated her over Troopergate and the emails was she lost and after her staff stalled for a couple of years she was essentially a nobody and nobody cared about the emails. She is a very smart woman when it comes to doing well by Sarah Palin. She understood that after losing she had a shelflife. Those changes in Alaska's Ethics Act, I think even the Ethics Act before the Palin Era changes, prohibit her from doing stuff like TV shows and making money of memoirs while still an officer or employee of the State of Alaska. The answer for Palin was to quit as governor and cash in. I don't blame her for doing it; Hell, it pays better than being governor of Alaska, a notoriously cheap state when it comes to paying elected and appointed officials. I know; I was one. I do blame her for being self-righteous about it and claiming she was doing it for the State's benefit. Sarah lost all interest in being governor when she learned that the Governor of Alaska is a working bureaucrat who actually has to know how to get stuff done and who doesn't really have anybody to do the details part of the job like she'd had as Mayor of Wasilla, a government about the size of a suburban real estate office.
And yes, I do hate her. Everytime she prattles on about how she "cleaned up the old boys" she's first not telling the truth and second talking about me and friends of mine. We don't have any place to go buy our reputations back after the self-serving b*tch trashed us before National television audiences. And, to go through the litany you usually get from Palin fans: she didn't fire me, she didn't refuse to hire me, she didn't refuse to sleep with me (I never asked), she didn't shoot my dog, she didn't pee in my cornflakes. Unlike you, I actually know her, was in the same administration as she, spent lots of Monday morning staff meetings having to listen to her word salads posing as reports to our boss. The woman is a fraud and a grifter. I won't call her a liar because most of the time I think she actually believes the crap that falls out of her mouth.
January 29, 2013 - 5:41 pm Link to this Comment -
I don't think that (Landmark Legal Foundation) Mark Levin, (Thoroughly vetted) Sean Hannity, or (99.8% correct) Rush Limbaugh would have supported Sarah Palin if what is posted here is factual.
Those three men certain have paid staff to thoroughly examine/research someone like Sarah featured on their nationally broadcast programs. People don't have to use a real name to post on these blogs…and anyone can claim that their reputation has been ruined by *somebody*.
Usually, it's (look in the mirror).
February 1, 2013 - 8:03 am Link to this Comment -
About a third of that landmass south of Hawaii on your weather map . . .
Dang, the Earth's poles did a complete flip and the MSM totally ignored it! -o
February 1, 2013 - 9:07 am Link to this Comment
Retired to Wyoming in '95. Low taxes, good scenery, freedom still an option. I rarely leave the state.
Wyoming claims to be "what America used to be". A slight exaggeration, but it conveys the idea.
February 1, 2013 - 12:02 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Please! Keep Wyoming and eastern Idaho a secret! It was my experience that when everyone wanting to escape the woes of California (and the like minded) discovered the incredible beauty and uncomplicated lifestyle of Northern Idaho, they felt welcome and moved right in. Then they went about trying to change everything, don't cha know, because they thought these backwoods types need help and they had a better "take" on how to run things. Moral of story: Keep idiots out of uncontaminated territory, or it too becomes 'Califoricated'.
February 2, 2013 - 8:50 am Link to this Comment
I understand the ex-mayor there is pretty hot, and her husband likes to play in the outdoors.January 29, 2013 - 1:42 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
Texas is a great place to move as long as your aren't planning on Californicating our great state. We have one of the best economies in the nation.
January 31, 2013 - 4:50 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
39. artghost
In 1969 I, a New Englander, moved to Berkeley where I remained for three years. I found the air, the atmosphere very odd and disquieting, especially at night. In the daytime the light perplexed me, it seemed to have a physicality separate from the landscape and architecture it shone upon. I found the people I knew there not laid-back, in the vernacular of the day, but intellectually lazy and self-satisfied. I attributed this to the mysterious properties of the air and light. Now, in retrospect, I realize that this could also have been because the only people I knew were involved in theater. Or perhaps it was a combination of the two.
January 29, 2013 - 8:51 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
40. Jim Stjernstrom
Invisible connections – I live in Texas. I frequently listen to KCEA broadcasting from Atherton. I knew nothing about Atherton until I read this piece. So I've been made aware that via the internet I have a connection with California's coastal elites but none with the central CA populations.
January 29, 2013 - 9:28 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
41. Pat
California is running out of other peoples' money. The same will happen to DC, sooner than we think.
California once had a GDP larger than all but seven or eight nations. Times have changed.
January 29, 2013 - 9:30 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
42. Washington76
Bernanke to Oprah: "I've Been Doping for Years"
January 29, 2013 - 9:31 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
43. Michael
I know what would help California. Section 8 housing in all wealthy cities and neighborhoods and all along the coast. Let the wealthy live in the multicultural paradise they believe they have wrought.
January 29, 2013 - 9:33 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
44. W. J. J. Hoge
I saw the direction California was heading when I left in 1990. I didn't think that it would go so far, and, yet, it keeps on going.
January 29, 2013 - 9:42 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Yes, but what if there were some monied conservative geniuses that bought air-time in a) all the inner ghetto zones and b) all the ag and forest and desert zones of California radio?
And they paid the funniest comedians to talk, I envision four wiseacres at a time – two men, two women, and RIP into every progtard line, precept, meme, trope and brilliant mind-enslavement scheme? Do this 24/7 in a) ghettos and b) fly-over country…. and the vote would shift ASAP, rather than the 50 to 75 years VDH is talking about. 5-10 years MAX, to make great, changing sea-shifts for good!
Next [by the way, VDH readers, I am boldly offering fixes, solutions, can-do things that'll work rather than ugga ugga amen known problems],
The GOP rads out and does the following program, which is based upon Madison's idea that none of us are angels, so let's agree with our opponents, while observing our opponents; won't. [rather than waste $ on next candidate progtards slime]
Such observations make the low-information types to think. Further, the old VW ads used this pattern, few if any political campaings. IT WILL WORK! (The concept: agree with demonizers. Get humble, stay humble.) Here goes:
In 1860 it was literal shackles. Now, it is shackles of debt, taxing, wrong schooling, wrong thought and disarming. Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
Vote for the ugly party, the party that freed the slaves. And who has enslaved you, and every citizen with $53,000 in debt? Not the ugly party! Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
If BAD is lowering the national deb we all owe, telling you to be skeptical of progressive tax and spend schemes, encouraging you to keep and bear arms, and recognizing absolute power has absolutely corrupted federal government, then WE ARE BAD TO THE BONE! Vote for the anti-slaver party. Vote GOP.
We are neither devils nor angels who ask you to vote for us instead of the party that always proclaims themselves angels while demonizing us. Will more power to these angels fix anything? We pledge to give power back to states, counties and you. Vote for the anti-slavery part. Vote GOP.
We didn't enslave the nation with six trillion dollars in new debt. They, who think themselves angels for it, did. Are we than devils for working to lower our nation's enslaving debt? Vote for the anti-slavery part. Vote GOP.
Yes, we are ugly. Truth can be. We're bad because we know neither they, nor we are angels? We give power back to the states, counties and you. Vote for the anti-slavery part. Vote GOP.
We know there are no angels to organize… anything. They don't. They believe themselves angels needing greater power. We give power back to states, counties and you. Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
We know absolute power corrupts, and would: us. So we limit Federal power and give it back to states, counties and you. Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
Your high-capacity magazine in your semi-auto gun is our nation's Damocles' sword. It is supposed to hang there and not fall. Gun ownership stiffens the spines of American citizens. Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
Even if you work for the government, you might want to vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
They say, the party who believes themselves angels, that whereas in 1860 the Republican party worked to stop slavery, the roles are now reversed? Reversed? Who takes away guns? Who increases taxes? Who built up trillion in debt? Who messed up schools? Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
[Note: Progtards will do the usual thing, and say Republicans increase debt. We'll call bull shit on that, & ignore them.]
So, lady, you have a concealed carry permit. What are you afraid of? She told us, "Absolutely nothing!" Yah, we're the ugly party… that GIVES YOU concealed carry. We put the right to bear: back into America's future, right where the future belongs. Ever seen a star-travel show or movie where the heros didn't pack heat? We haven't either. We have seen the future, and it begins in 1776, and we simply bring it forward, on your hip. Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
When it's a riot, the cops have learned to close ranks and work as one unit. Fiscally, educationally, government overreach is a riot. Individually, we can be demonized and appear ugly. But we are a beautiful party. Vote for the (not-so-ugly) anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
What difference does "what difference" make? Voting Democrat or Republican. The pro-lie party said for eight weeks before Obama's election, a Benghazi attack was over a YouTube video, not terrorism. It was terrorism. Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
Abraham Lincoln said America would lose it if citizens weren't generally intelligent, moral or didn't love laws and the Constitution. Well, we are losing it. Public education dumbs us down, PC universities give us a mortgage without a house, a pretend media has no morals and our government cheats on laws and the Constitution. We are the ugly party that freed the slaves. We aren't angels, but we know how to set us free from mental and financial slavery. Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
We like a good, knock-down verbal fight. They are word-burners and especially: thought-burners. They say we can't have ads that are politically NOT correct. We say, the hell you say. Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
When they demonize, they demonize well. (We believe they could demonize Tinkerbell, if we asked her to run for office.) When they do it to our next candidate we ask you to elect, ask yourself: Why do they always sell fear? Isn't the business of selling fear: enslaving! (And how they degrade America by demonizing all our Tinkerbell and Peter Pan nominees!) They exalt their personages and demonize our personages. They sell a person, we in these ads are selling ideas of freedom, even though our nominees are humans, not angels! We free people with ideas! They enslave with persona worship (of themselves) and demonizing (whomever runs against them.) Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP.
If enslavers always themselves become enslaved, then what about anti-enslavers? Whosoever sets people free, becomes also free. Who wants to increase taxes, not lower them? Who wants more debt, not less? Who wants bigger government, more laws not less? Who is enslaving whom, and where is any freedom in that? Vote for what sets people free. Vote for the anti-slavery party.
[OK, what's going on here. This is an ad campaign that doesn't give a flip what PC Progtards think of it. Since Goldwater thru Romney, they demonize, and demonize well. So we agree with Madison, our best has some demon in him or her. So what? We limit power, so power doesn't have our inner demons to play with. This ad campaign is chess moves ahead of the demonizers. And we stay humble. And we don't emphasize our candidate's name or persona. We emphasize the riot-control method cops use, which is to close ranks. We'll let Protards scream that Republicans made debt, taxes and all that. And we'll ignore 'em. We just keep raising the bet. Why? Because rebels are in the ghettos and deserts and fly-over country... especially immigrant rebels, and we LOVE THEM. We appeal to the risk-taking rebel immigrants, and they will vote for their best freedom-loving interests. They said "ef my old country's government, I'm going to America." We appeal to that goodness in them. And we shall have converts, and that: quickly. It's like a war. The quickest reacting army wins. The Blues bring in more immigrants to vote blue. The Reds outsmart them with cutting Hispanic-conservative, cutting black-talk radio PURE, GENIUS WIT..... Or not. Anybody interested? Please copy & send out at will.]
January 29, 2013 - 9:58 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Sure, the GOP is corrupt. But this can get them thinking, and I believe in DDT of ideas: They can Uncorrupt! Fumigate!
What do you say to an Active Shooter? BANG! BANG!, that is… if you live in a state allowing concealed carry in killing zone, i.e. public places and schools. (See Utah.) Otherwise, you can say something like this: "Sorry God, I lived in a state where the party in charge only protected their leaders with the kind of high-capacity guns that would have saved my life." Now, if you can hear or read this message, YOU ARE PART OF THE RESISTANCE! — resistance against enslavement to wrong ideas. Vote for the anti-enslavement party. Vote GOP.
January 29, 2013 - 11:02 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Thanks, Robert W B!
Repubs will win when they run as a team, not as 'the Nominee.' In 2016 I hope this ad campaign of yours is dominant across the country. All the governors who'll be competing for presidential nomination need to hold together as 'R Team' in order for conservatives to prosecute wide-ranging multi-pronged campaigns of war against the lib-dem-prog-statists, In Every State!
Like you said, how will the rebels learn who they are and join us, if we don't take the revolution to them?
January 29, 2013 - 11:32 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Righto, zorro-rides. What if we exaggerated a little?….okay, MORE than a little!….. ;)
Did you know that humans packed into a railroad car would by weight, require just one gallon of fuel to go 500 miles? To which we say to all environmental whack-jobs, Shaddup already! Our nation has enough energy reserves to outproduce every other nation. And the energy sector creates tons and tons (pun intended) of high paying jobs. But one party stands against all this, the angelic party. Our ugly party doesn't. Vote for the anti-slavery party, which still loves the environment, just not railcars full of human chattel nor any other environmental gobbledygook (which is the REAL pollution!) Vote GOP
January 29, 2013 - 2:15 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
RWB, you are a genius! I love it! You are SO right. Like Rush says, "Listen to me for X weeks, and you will love it." Or some such. Someone should take up your ideas and spread them around. We won't change anything until we change the culture.
January 29, 2013 - 5:36 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Thank you sciatica. Let's appeal to the machisimo, the strong male pride and manliness of our beloved immigrants, and since the Progtards have no governing device on how outrageous are the things they say against us, let's also partake:… ;)
Immigrants, why did you come here? To vote against our party, the ugly party? To eat crumbs and vote for the angelic party? To hate the "man," which is what they call us? Well, how is it working for you? Yah, crumby. We're the ugly party that believes in laws and the Constitution, we love morals and we believe we all can be generally intelligent. These beliefs come from Abraham Lincoln in 1848. You know, he and his party, which is our ugly party, freed the slaves. We don't vote for crumbs to be brushed off the tables of kings. We vote for guns on our hips, high-pay energy jobs in the oil patch, smart-not-dumb schools, low taxes, REAL SUCCESS, not crumbs. Vote for the anti-slavery party. To hell with crumbs. Vote GOP.
January 30, 2013 - 6:28 am Link to this Comment | Reply
46. Real Deal
I like your enthusiasm, and I think your approach is interesting, but you have one problem. The GOP itself.
It's a degraded, corpulent, filty old whore; not a bright shining lady who we can put our hopes in. Look at the candidates they've run. Look at what they did and let be done to Sarah Palin. Look at the legislation the "Mavricks" support yet remain prominent members of the GOP.
Jim DeMint was right its time to cut the GOP off and let it wither and die. It is no longer the vehicle for the Conservative message.
January 29, 2013 - 10:13 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Point made, I agree.
But Reagan taught us words and ideas matter. Let's duke it out with the RINOs and Progtards. Let's aim the Might Mo and load up its 16″ guns and fire a few salvos. Hell, lots of salvos. Endless salvos until we win the war of ideas. To wit:
To dream the impossible dream! That is America's dream, and should be Americans' dream. Are we dogs, dreaming of scraps from some Master's table? Our fathers came, perhaps you came, to America to leave off Kingdoms of Dogs, and inglorious begging, endless supplication: for scraps. How do we vote? For the angelic party promising to take from Masters what they won't give? What right have we to take? By what rights are you made by force, to give? We are the ugly party, that would neither beg nor force scraps from the rich. Agree with us, America is better than financial schemes of unending slavery. Vote for the anti-slavery party. Your, our ideas (and souls!) are rich. Dream BIG. Vote GOP
January 30, 2013 - 10:25 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
Immigrants: Have you been conned? The angelic party loosened our borders to gain a voting block. And they keep our borders loose. Where is the con? You vote for these angels, and they'll send money from rich folk they tax. But you came here to work, didn't you? Money earned is twice as satisfying, than even ten times the amount given, which is never enough. Lift your heads, stiffen your spines. We love immigrants. They replace the babies lost in abortions made legal by the angelic party. We are the ugly party, the party that sets people free. Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP
January 30, 2013 - 11:08 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
What we don't know: We don't know WHY places become corrupt when gun laws take away firearms from citizens. It's just a fact of life. More people were shot dead, 5,000 since 2001 in Chicago, than around 2,000 US troops in Afghanistan. If you don't want to be shot at home, get a gun in your home. If you don't want to be shot in public, get a concealed carry license and put a gun on your hip (or move to a state that allows this freedom-right!) The angelic party agrees in part: THEIR mayors, governors and leaders use high-capicty magazines in semi-auto guns with THEIR Overlord body guards… but they deny us peon citizens the same tools they will never-be-denied-themselves to protect their lofty personages. We are the ugly party that fights this corruption. Arm yourself mentally, and if need be, physically. For the better, it changes you, which is why they like to deny you this right. Vote for the anti-slavery party. Vote GOP
January 30, 2013 - 11:45 am Link to this Comment | Reply
47. Tex Taylor
The usual excellence. But the best was the last: We are like the proverbial spoiled third-generation progeny of the immigrant farmer.
That is exactly what is sustaining California. And if you're one of the lucky 3rd generation, times are great – but only for a time. Your legacy will be one of utter failure and ruin.
Ignis Fatuus
January 29, 2013 - 10:25 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
48. Bozo the Clone
An insidious problem with "failed" or "failing" states is that they take an awfully long time to fail. So long in fact that there is time to redefine both "failure" and "success" during the long drawn out deterioration. As a result, it dilutes the value of dire warnings and essays such as Dr. Hanson's.
We can't assume catastrophic collapse that 'proves our point," and also expect the victims of such collapses to come running to our points of view. Therein lies the challenge of selling the ideas of liberty, enterprise and prosperity to people who become accustomed to a "new normal." It's NOT just the economy, stupid.
January 29, 2013 - 10:44 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Bozo…I would agree if we were not talking about America. When America defaults, which may be much sooner than later, a worldwide house of cards is coming down. If it must occur then hopefully it will be on Obama's watch so he can get full credit. The "tipping point" people speak of is not the point at which collapse will occur. We have already passed that. It is the point that at which it will be understood as to the cause by the majority. Hopefully, we haven't passed that point.
January 29, 2013 - 8:46 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
49. David
My wife and I used to live in the bay area. We are both engineers and were making good money. However, we still could not afford a home. We were paying $1900/month for a 2br apartment (nice, but not palatial) and $1500/month in state income taxes. We left in 2006 and moved to Texas.
In Texas we own a 3400 sq. ft. home (at $1500/month including taxes, insurance, etc) and pay no income taxes. Unless you are rich, California is no deal. We left and it was the best move we have ever made.
January 29, 2013 - 11:38 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
50. dang
perhaps the governance and coastal elites in california will fade away as the british aristocracy did after lloyd george and world war I. one can see that interesting scenario in england in reruns of downton abbey. edwardian and victorian societies cannot last forever.
January 29, 2013 - 11:48 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
It's quite interesting that you should say that- I was discussing that with my spouse the other day. The aristocracy spoke rather demeaningly of the "middle class", while they took it upon themselves to take care of the servant class. It is no different in California (or really, any center of power in the US) today.
The middle class has always been a threat to the elites- that's why it never existed for most of history, and why it is under threat today.
January 29, 2013 - 1:04 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
51. kuchuk
Do none of you, "I am safe in TX/OK/whatever" get it? I escaped the USSR in 1978 and came to California. Andropov's psyops were here first and are winning bigtime now. Do you think they won't come for you? Are you going to wall off Austin or just your neighborhood? Believe me, if you run and take cover they will come for you.
And Bozo, I am with you. The reds destroyed education of a generation or two here — ideas of governance and freedom take that long to teach. Until then, the con of "they didn't do it correctly there" (in USSR, or California), "we wont make same mistakes again" will continue.January 29, 2013 - 11:56 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
see, I don't think it's a passive field waiting to be lain waste by the locusts. I could be wrong. Houston is progressive b/c in the 70′s they hired the flood of northerners- Houston had oil that needed to come out of the ground. There just aren't that many native liberals. The liberals I know moved here in the 70′s, and are kind of preserved in amber. Plus, they don't seem to get this whole 'have kids' thing down. Regular people roll their eyes, after the peter pans shut up.
Texas has a really strong evangelical culture. I've lived here in Austin since 1988, the supposed most liberal city in the state. I have had a door to door missionary knocking on my door at every address I've ever had at least once a month. It's not middle-of-the-road types. It's the sort of church that I worry about Hillary getting keys to the military again- she'd blow up people I know. Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Church of Christ, Baptists, conservative Methodists, non-denominational (conservative socially, modern musically) types. So, 25 years, 12 times a year minimum, that's 300 taps on the door. More, really. The Lutheran church we attend, the pastor did the same thing- door to door- until he built a church.
Eventually, single guys get lonely, go to church to meet girls, get saved. They may or may not find a girl- but they get saved, which, really, is kind of weird. It's like knowing there's some sort of power-plant irradiating people, somehow. I mean, my dad, the lifetime, committed atheist, did it last year. It's genuinely not something I expected. Kids will go hang out with their friends, and ask their parents to come back. Not even trying – they just hang out and decide they like it. It helps that the cool kids in most schools are churched-up, more so than even the parents. We joke about it.
It's not a passive, weak social field. It's really assertive. Have you ever listened to an atheist in Texas? Or a liberal? They hate the place, and they don't win arguments, and they lose friends who convert. it's like rolling a vampire in a field of garlic.
We've got guns, and big-game preserves, and trucks, and boots and tight jeans. It's guy paradise. They agree to one part- boots and jeans for peacocking at the bar- or they go hunting- and they get really excited. I've been here forever. It takes about six months for most guys. Tough cases, or gay guys, they take longer. Really, most of the gay guys seem to have heart attacks, b/c we're close enough to Mexico and Florida to have cheap illegal drugs. The spouse noticed this at his job- the company has to work to keep up its diversity. They bring in gay guys from out of state, and they burn up. They're young to middle-aged, so it's not like they weren't managing their bad habits elsewhere.
I mean, our smart guys? Aren't wearing pocket-protectors and whingeing on about getting beat up. They're in pick-up trucks, getting drunk at bars, puking, going fishing, blowing stuff up. They don't want to be metrosexual, and they don't have to be. Even if they start that way- they get turned. My favorite math prof has the worst truck, ever, and likes cheap beer, and finally figured out he could successfully hit on bimbos. He's never going to vote Democrat- he likes bimbos. He likes being a man in a big truck, and he likes cowboy boots. He likes being able to tell his wife that he's going to the bar, and not getting a lecture.
Our dumb kids have jobs, too. Even Beavis and Butthead, the tv show? They have jobs. It's really hard to tell a dumb guy who barely finished high school and works night-shift at a fast food joint- but owns a sweet sportscar and has a cute girlfriend- that he's oppressed. He's king of his world. Who wants a lame check, when you can have a cherry red Mustang and a girl named Destinee and an X-box?
I mean, we've got sex and violence and money and God and oil and computers and trucks and luchaderos and concealed carry, and who knows what else? California had a dreamier, more daisy-dancing mix. We had poisonous snakes, and cannibal Indians, and leprous armadillos. It's just a meaner, tougher place.
January 29, 2013 - 1:10 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
The best example I can think of is the guy at the bar having a dilemma. In his eyes, he was short, balding, sensitive, european, competitive pianist, tech-computer type. and he came here and bought a cheap truck, and went out to a bar, and met two girls. and then went back, and here it is, six months later, and he's got two separate strippers cat-fighting over him. They said "he's got blue eyes, and he's smart- so we'll have cute babies!" in this drawly southern voice.
He didn't want to get married, and he didn't want to take girls without degrees home, and I had to hear all about it, until I pointed out that his multiple-degreed, brilliant girlfriend didn't want to marry him, didn't want kids, and was a depressed, not-shaving her legs type. He could be happy talking work at work, and sex and babies at home.
That man has a wife who thinks he's a sex-machine, kids who think he's a giant, and a hot wife. And a truck, and beer. That man will never upset the applecart.
the next guy with the same complaint- stripper wanting a rock and diapers arrangement- moved back to Cali. He's got a job, an apartment, and goes to therapy. She's got a guy with degrees, kids, and a happy husband.
It's practically a conservative man-making machine.
January 29, 2013 - 2:05 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
52. Washington76
US debt headed toward 200 percent of GDP even after 'fiscal cliff' deal By Vicki Needham – 01/29/13
January 29, 2013 - 12:05 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
NY is similar. I started my own business in '89. I tried, tried, tried to make ends meet, working 50 plus hours a week, no vacations, etc. Never exceeded 60K. Got clobbered by fed, state, local taxes. As soon as I had an employee, the nightmarish complications with state taxation started.
In '99 I passed a civil service exam, and then a promotional in '03. I now make twice as much as I did when I had my own business, work half the hours. But my take on it is that everyone needs a union and bennies. If you don't work for the government or a Wall St type firm, you're a sucker! At least here in NYS, and it sounds like in Cali, too, hard work, honesty, and all that good stuff are punished. I did it for a decade. It made me ill. My own company and a token would get me a ride on the subway. Now my govt job gets me what I need. But beating up on govt workers is not the solution. The fact that those who wish to start businesses get beat up is really a separate issue. It should be easier to start a business than be unemployed! It should be easier to start a business than work for the government. And right now, at least in NY, that is not the case. But beating up on government workers who are for the most part supportive of conservative causes is self defeating. We didn't create the system we work in. We were smart enough to read the signs posted at every corner.
January 29, 2013 - 12:41 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Micha Elyi
But beating up on government workers who are for the most part supportive of conservative causes is self defeating.
–RICKNYSYou and that other guy are collateral damage. Sorry. But either abandon the battlefield or ditch your uniform. Else you're gonna take fire like the rest of the enemy units.
January 29, 2013 - 4:42 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
6 yrs and I walk with a pension. Naaaah.
January 29, 2013 - 6:11 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
54. Moshe
This evocative and poignant account of California neglects a key alternative perspective: that the political culture of the Golden State enabled the election of President Obama, the most transcendent and transformational world leader of the past 2000 years. What the future brings to California, its role in removing the stain of racism from America's political tradition outweighs any negatives. As recognized by the Nobel Prize, President will bring peace in our time.
January 29, 2013 - 1:03 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
Thanks Moshe, the best laugh I have had in weeks. I appreciate it.
Saying all those things about the most divisive, most racist, most corrupt President and administration in history. Genius!
January 29, 2013 - 1:34 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
55. StephieClare
What a great essay! It just about said it all. I am a native Californian and have watched the State slide down the hill into the gutter. It's sliding real fast these days. I makes me very angry to see all of this go on. I was in Berkeley a couple of years ago and could not believe how FILTHY it was. The town, the campus, and many of the students and people. I never remembered it being that way. It almost smelled bad. Just read the coastal newspapers describe Colin Kaepernick. He's described by the coastal sportswriters and pundits as being from "nowhere." Isn't Turlock somewhere?
January 29, 2013 - 1:48 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Turlock is somewhere that even people from Stockton look down on.
The "Turkeys from Turlock" ad campaign is what most people think of when they hear the name Turlock even though that ad has been off the air for over a decade.
Or South Bay folks remember it as an exit sign off the freeway they take to Tahoe and the slopes – when they go the long way around (I580 to I5 to I80). I.e., "nowhere".
January 29, 2013 - 4:49 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Old School
San Jose St. professor Shelby Steele (an African American conservative for those who are not aware) wrote a book in 2006 called; "White Guilt." Pretty much sums up the "Coastal Elite." What he described back then is also the reality of today.
January 29, 2013 - 6:27 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Old School
Not sure why my comment when under here … sorry, not a reply although I did grow up near "Tur-loco."
January 29, 2013 - 6:28 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
56. Catino
"We are like the proverbial spoiled third-generation progeny of the immigrant farmer: the first-generation toiler lived in a hovel until he bought his 80 acres with paid cash. The second remodeled the old house, had a nicer car than a tractor, doubled the acreage, but took the weekend off and had less money in the bank than did his dad. The third fantasized and puttered about in his hiking boots, went through the inheritance, mortgaged the land — and was as glib and mellifluous as he was broke."
That is what the entire USA has done. California is merely the first.
January 29, 2013 - 2:25 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
57. ari
oh, the Texas textbooks are messed up. But- teachers can choose to use them, or not. I've got kids in public school: I've seen three textbooks issued by the school in use over the last 9 years, among three kids. They give them away at the end of the year. The district issues them; the teachers ignore them.
They are really messed up, though. "planes were made. cars were made. Cesar CHAVEZ made everything better for people." That's straight-up, messed up propaganda.
The middle-school has anti-racism training. I'm not sure it's getting the result they want. A real conversation with the kids included the gems that " the school says black people can't do anything right, so we have to take care of them…" with supporting evidence of all the bleeding heart books they'd been assigned. They thought it was messed up, since they went to school with black kids, and played sports with them. They didn't know why teachers thought it was important to talk about black people like they were 'retards.' They wondered if it hurt their friends' feelings.
About half the classes in middle-school, the teachers are using on-line resources. They are pretty open about wanting to go full paperless. The elementary uses Khan Academy, after two years of using for-pay online teachers' college content. They want high scores on their standardized tests. They tested on a vanguard of students, and then some teachers used it for the rest of the students. Teachers have sent home religious content on reading assignments- stories about creation, stories about easter and church. There's at least one seminary student who had a tutorial group for biblical greek- for elementary kids.He's graduated from seminary, and moved-but still- I don't know that that's even imaginable in California.
January 29, 2013 - 2:26 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
58. Old School
Fact is the coastal liberal elite is only out for themselves; their own protection. They got their wealth and don't want anyone else to have it. From Feinstein (sp?), Boxer, et al .. they all come from OLD MONEY, OLD CONNECTIONS. They are part of an elite California political fraternity with the attitudes as if they are Kings & Queens living high on the hog tending their Sheep (the California resident). But idiots continue to vote them in.
I've been up and down this State from the CV to SF Bay and now in LA. The only "normal" people I know who are making it comfortable with minimal stress (normal is in household incomes of $50k or so) are doing so because of OLD MONEY. They got their parents house, inheritance, etc. If you don't have that and want a decent lifestyle in California you are most likely in high debt living check to check.
We need to clean up Sacramento. All those up there on OLD MONEY need be the hell out. They are living in their own "coastal elite" world never stepping out thinking everything is good and dandy with all us. They are oblivious to what the average hard working non-Gov't California worker is going through.
Also, California's main urban hubs of SF and LA are very transient and young. Basically kids voting for costly social issues just to be hip and cool w/o even understanding what they are voting on. Try having a political conversation with a 20 year old so called Liberal. They only care about legal weed, free condoms, more money to stay in school than than traditional 4 years I was used to, more financial aid, and rent control. Who pays for it… You and I hard working Californians. Then within a few years, MOST THESE KIDS are up and out the State back to the East Coast, Midwest, or where ever. Thus, us long time California residents are always hit with wrath.
My family is out of California once the kids are in college. Can't leave know although I wish I could, but once they are in college, WE ARE OUT and nothing will feel more better than the DOOR SLAMMED ON MY BUTT (so go ahead and say it!)
January 29, 2013 - 3:25 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
59. Rick
As a resident of California for 50 years, and an inmigrant myself I can only corroborate what Mr Hanson has written. Liberals are a disease of society, filling up their empty souls by condemning those around them to pick up the tab.
There are two old sayings that should be taught in school to every do gooder out there."The road to hell is paved with good intentions"
"Those that would be kind to the cruel, will in the end be cruel to the kind"
These sayings carry the wisdom of thousands of years.
January 29, 2013 - 3:26 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
In the cases mentioned here, of the liberals allowing anybody across the border, then allowing them to get away with anything they want because they're so "poor and oppressed" the disease I could most compare liberals to is HIV.
Think about it. HIV itself is not what usually kills someone infected with it, they die because their immune system becomes so weak from the HIV that they get AIDS, and once that happens a common pathogen that a healthy person wouldn't even notice becomes a fatal disease. It's the same thing with the idealistic elite liberals. It's not they who steal the copper wire out of everything, not they who hit your car with no insurance and drive off, or kill you in a DWI, not they who rob, murder, rape, etc. It's just that they are the enablers that allow the pathogens to go unchecked. They rot the culture and institutions from the inside out such that the diseases of society that a healthy and sane system would squash instead grow into an unmanageable plague that kills host and parasite alike.
January 29, 2013 - 8:39 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
60. Mariel
This is all so familiar to me, as a person who went to Stanford many decades ago; familiar even to the Menlo Park bungalow, Willow Avenue, the Mexican that caused me to go into a ditch 50 years ago because he was going 10 miles an hour on the freeway to Chico, where I taught high school (the cop let him go, then, too).
I was in total shock then at the "class" system I found at Stanford, because I was a middle class girl whose father worked a second job for 17 years to send me there. I can honestly say, passionately knowing it is true, that the Community College where I worked in Seattle was a better educational institution than Stanford. I would have to write a piece as long as Hanson's to describe why, so I won't.
January 29, 2013 - 4:57 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Can you give 1 or 2 examples on why you think the community college is better than Stanford? I live in CT & I believe my local community college is a better investment deal for a student compared to Yale's or Columia's undergraduate programs.January 29, 2013 - 5:23 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
61. Rip Angel
A man on a white horse will ride on to the scene promising deliverance from chaos and corruption, punishment for the greedy, and a more fair social order for all. It is the same old pattern that has been followed for at least 3000 years. Not a darn thing has changed in the manipulation of the mob. Human nature has not changed. It remains the same since the era of Nimrod and Ahab in the Old Testament to today's President Obama and Saul Alinsky. Not a thing.
January 29, 2013 - 5:06 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
The only difference is that today its possible to create a totalitarian system so complete that humanity will never escape. It is the great danger we first glimpsed from the temples of Ur and Babylon.
January 29, 2013 - 11:34 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
62. Jeannine
What Dr Hanson writes about is the beginning of the breakup of the United States of America. The individual states will leave the union peacefully to create regional partnerships with other states based on predominate cultural values. I envision CA, AZ, NV, & NM merging with Mexico just as La Raza envisions. The North East down to Washinton DC would be another example of a region.
I don't want this to happen but the balkanization of America is taking place right before our eyes.
January 29, 2013 - 5:15 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
I hope the country does break up as you describe sooner rather than later, as it has become painfully obvious that our country has become practically ungovernable on a national scale.
January 30, 2013 - 9:33 am Link to this Comment | Reply
63. Mark Noonan
It is rather sad – the California my grandfather moved to in the 20′s and my father was born in is long gone…but, really, the fault lies with those of us who would rather it wasn't destroyed. We didn't really try to stop it, now did we? The California GOP was a less-of-the-same party which was barely distinguishable from the Democrats..and that GOP also gave up, entirely, fighting for Los Angeles and San Francisco. How can we expect people in those areas to vote conservative if no conservative ever shows up and tries to convince them? Heck, how can we get Latino voters to vote for us if we don't try?
The key to restoring California is to fight for it – all of it…until the GOP opens up 50 offices in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, nothing will change.
January 29, 2013 - 5:16 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
64. Adi
Mr. Hanson:
Either you're stupid, or you're willfully blind. Ever wonder why most white countries resemble each other? Or why most black countries do? Or why most Arab countries? Race and culture are inextricably intertwined and any man who denies that is a fool, a coward, or both.
I would thank you for the entertainment, but your articles are so whinny and so free of intellectual substance, that reading them is a masochistic chore.
January 29, 2013 - 7:56 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Yup, why does Russia not resemble the USA? Nor Hong Kong, China? Nor the Bahamas, Cuba? Nor Chile, Mexico? Nor the Congo, South Africa?
Maybe it is the ideas in our brain, whether we are dedicated to liberty, which is pledging mutual dedication to self-restraint.
Or maybe it is some other dedication, like Mandarin racism or progressive/socialist/communistic clap-trap. Just sayin.
January 30, 2013 - 10:46 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Yep, Mandarin racism – what a laugh! Why Nairobi resembles a big American city, incl. the crime rate? Why, oh, why?
Flawed comparisons do not an argument make. You do have to grow up one day, and see the light: It is all about race, and nothing but. The realization will slap you on the head, although I would not call it epiphany by any means. It is elementary, Watson.January 30, 2013 - 11:16 am Link to this Comment | Reply
65. Huntington Park
Almond prices have not fallen.
January 29, 2013 - 8:28 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
66. mannning
I look back at my sojourn in Marin County in 1950 as a magical experience. We lived on the Hamilton AFB, and had a grand view of the bay.The vegetation was brilliant green and the weather was beachy in February. San Francisco was a world of delights and strange habits, one of which amuses me still. It was the practice of going to bars and "loping", which meant imitating apes, and downing a jug of cheap wine. I believe the lopers have succeeded in taking over since then. I met a girl there and darn near married her. But. then came the outbreak of the Korean War and that shattered all the dreams.
In the 70′s I had a chance to return to the Bay area. It foliage was browned by exhaust gases, the roads were crumbling and crowded, and one heard the most outlandish ideas from listening to the local politicians. I retreated to Virginia with great haste. It wasn't my magical area anymore.
January 29, 2013 - 10:40 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
67. Kount von Numbacrunch
Things will change after the financial crisis hits. I don't pretend to know the outcome, but things will certainly change. Soon they won't be able to pay the pensions of current state and city of retirees and it will be apparent to even the dimmest of cops, firefighters and bureaucrats that they won't get the pensions they were promised. That's when this Democrat political machine falls apart. It may come in Illinois before it does in California.
January 30, 2013 - 3:16 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Buckeye Abroad
True, but once they bust the US dollar then what? The dems are simply prepping to sell the country down river once they are done plundering the treasury.
January 30, 2013 - 6:49 am Link to this Comment | Reply
68. Mike Telford
I figured all of this out in 2006. Very simple solution….move which is exactly what I did. Now my quality of life is much better.
January 30, 2013 - 5:27 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
69. skeet shooter
I fear that the California economic problem will come back to haunt us all. Think "too big to fail" on an epic level. Somewhere down the road will be the bailout to end all bailouts. If the Dems still control the white house, then look out. The economic "model" in California, if you can call it that, is destined to fail and the idiots running the asylum refuse to do anything about it. You can't make the problem go away with creative accounting. When the money finally dries up, the riots will start. The Feds will then have to step in – with our money.
January 30, 2013 - 7:00 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
Thankfully, no politicians are too big to jail.
January 30, 2013 - 10:39 am Link to this Comment | Reply
70. Denise
Culture is an expression of genes. It is Race. Race is in the genes. History proves this.
Why are you stll lying about this Hanson?
January 30, 2013 - 9:34 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
71. Smitty
I couldn't finish the article (got bored), its a big swing and a miss, what happened to CA was involuntary, it was a state sponsored criminal invasion, and a newsflash to the rest of the America, we didn't vote for any of this criminal Socialist invasion in CA, we fought it every step of the way, we just didn't use guns.
January 30, 2013 - 11:03 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
72. Gillyo
I'm sitting here in my home in East Contra Costa County, with Mount Diablo in the background. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and I'm very well aware that about 50 miles away from here the uber-leftists in Sacramento are putting the finishing touches on their destruction of my home.
This is my home. I am a fifth generation Californian. An ancestor of mine walked over the Sierra in 1841, and nearly starved to death doing it. He had a Mexican land grant, and was with Sutter when he went to Coloma to check out the reports of gold on the American River. On the other side I'm descended from an Irish immigrant who left Ireland in 1841, traveled to Illinois, then ran away from home. He ended up boarding a ship to San Francisco in the late 1850s. He owned two cigar stores on Market Street in San Francisco, was a founding member of the Olympic Club, and sold out to become a farmer in Yolo County, where he was one of the first to plant fruit orchards.
I am descended from those who knew many of the great characters of the age, Sutter, Bidwell, Marshall, Ralston, Wolfskill, Stanford, Huntington, Vallejo, and Fremont. These men were all dreamers, and all made California their home. This is my heritage, and all that my ancestors and these innovative men began has been destroyed.
It began after World War II, when after passing through the state as soldiers, many came back to stay. Many also came out here to work in the shipyards, and never went back to their homes. Then we had the hippies in the 1960s. This is when it really got crazy. Before that California had it's oddballs, but essentially it was a very business oriented state with an emphasis on agriculture and finance. San Francisco was an extremely conservative city when I was a kid, at least until the hippies showed up. It was the beginning of the end.
I'm in my early 50s and I personally do not know one Democrat my age whose parents were born here. They all came from out of state. Thank you New York, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin, you were the worst contributors. The problem is that those from the East and Midwest do not understand what California is.
People treat this state like they treat Disneyland. You see it in the stupid things people do in places like Yosemite, where they stand too close to waterfalls for photo opportunities and end up being swept away. Or when they drive through the Sierra in shorts and t-shirts, with no food or blankets, and then go off-roading and have to be rescued from their own stupidity. We've recently lost 3 people to "rogue waves" on the North Coast, which could have been avoided if they'd used some common sense. But they don't, they're in California, which they think is safe like what they see on TV, or experience at California Adventure. This is a real place with real problems that people have shoved under the rug for years, or kept pushing down the road for another generation to deal with.
Most of this state was once a desert, it was never meant to have the population it has, or even to be as agriculturally rich as it is. The northern inland valleys were always fertile, but the existence of most of the southern part of the state is based on the ability to pull water from the north via irrigation. Which is why we have huge canal systems. It also explains the real animosity that exists between the north and the south. They take our water, their population increases, and those of us in the north and inland valleys no longer have any voice because they have all the votes.
The other thing that really gets me riled up is the fact that California was probably the most diverse and assimilated population in the country before the 1970s. My father's school pictures from the 30s show a totally racially mixed group of kids. All of us in the valley grew up in diverse communities and we generally got along pretty well. The most overt act of racism I experienced was when a Filipino friend's father refused to allow her to date a Japanese boy. And don't get me started on the cultural and racial animosity between the "Spanish" Mexicans and those they called "peons." I grew up with the experience that racism existed between groups other than blacks and whites, who generally got along pretty well with each other. Now we have too many racial problems to mention.
VDH has it 100% right when he talks about the elitists on the coast. These people have absolutely no concept of how people outside of their bubble live. They spend all of their time talking to each other, going to restaurants only they can afford, and going the extra mile to talk about how diverse they want to be, while doing everything they can do to make sure that any of that "diversity" isn't in their neighborhood. One of the worst things they did for cities like Antioch and Stockton is to make housing so expensive in the Bay Area that Section 8 renters were forced to move into the Central Valley in order to find places they could afford to rent. This has created huge slum areas, and resulted in gang wars as the Bay Area gangs fight the Central Valley ones. Our little area has been fairly safe until recently when we've seen in uptick in gang related crime.
Of course, the people on the coast are thrilled that the majority of the violence isn't in their precious city or peninsula, it's in Oakland, and Stockton, and Fresno, where it doesn't affect them.
I keep thinking about something my grandmother said to me years ago. I was moving to New York City for a job, and she was appalled. She said to me, with all of the pride she had, "WE don't go East." I'm so glad she died before she had to see how far her precious state has fallen. Sorry Grandma, but I think that my son will be the 6th, and last generation born in California.
January 30, 2013 - 11:31 am Link to this Comment | Reply-
My home in the Mt.Diablo area sold this week ending my family connection with the area after 50 years. I'm an Englishman who is deciding whether or not to make a permanent to California/America from England. The problem is I always thought I was fleeing socialism and now I'm not sure what I'm fleeing to, I do love California though problems and all.
January 30, 2013 - 3:39 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
Excellent post Gillyo. You and I have a lot in common. My ancestors were Spanish and came out here in the early 1800′s with the Vallejo expedition. I can trace my father's side back to that time. My mother is Sicilian but she was raised in "little Italy" in San Jose – which is mostly barrio now. As a kid growing up in San Jose in the 60′s it was completely idyllic: it was a canning town then and you'd smell the prunes and apricots in the air as you rode your sting ray down a block of tree-lined homes that had front doors that were never locked. Those days are over for good now. The economic boom of the 80′s brought urban sprawl to San Jose and most of the bay area. After that, the economy collapsed and most of the big businesses began to move to other states. I'm not sure why all this happened: maybe the hippies grew up, traded in their VW Bus for a Range Rover and moved to Marin – and kept voting solid Democrat, figuring any Republican is no different than Nixon; maybe the Unions in Sacramento grew so powerful that they now run the state;. maybe the illegals have combined with redistricting to completely shut out any hint of conservative political influence. Maybe it's a combination of all three – I'm no political genius. I only know that the California dream I grew up in, handed down by several generations, has become a financial nightmare. I suspect I'll be moving out at some point as well, although I still have family here and I hope to be here for them in their old age. I only know that this all leaves me with a sense of sadness – to see such a beautiful state being destroyed.
February 4, 2013 - 2:23 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
73. Paul C.
VDH's comment about the three generations (near the end of the column) reminds me of an old saying from the early 20th century: "From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations".
January 31, 2013 - 3:06 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
74. hikerdude
We are doomed . We are morphing into becoming the World's mistress.
January 31, 2013 - 9:19 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
76. Todd Lewis
It's too bad conservatism lost, but as a bare set of empirical arguments it will never win against liberalism. Liberalism is a religion. It gives people the sense of moral rectitude and high purpose without requiring anything of them. Everything in liberalism is supposed to be a freebie, even the moral high ground.
Conservatism must understand it's roots in Christian belief or it will have no power to command people's loyalty. A well-crafted empirical argument about anything will not dent the collective cranium of immoral, envious, and ignorant masses of people without the sanction of genuine belief.
Imagine if "thou shalt not steal" were properly applied across the full range of it's meaning from tangible assets to the fruit of physical and intellectual labor to respect for another's conscience, character, and station in life. Most of our problems would vanish. But, alas, this and all moral issues require work, biblical understanding, and an authentic faith in God to actually live out.
January 31, 2013 - 2:00 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
77. Andy
The first two on your list of companies are moving to Texas: Apple and Chevron.
February 1, 2013 - 4:14 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
78. blert
President Sunbeam and Governor Moonbeam are the embodiment of pandemic parasitism.
Ideologically they're both anchored to National Solipsism, carbuncles on the raft of state.
They're rudderless: hence their drift and spin.
February 1, 2013 - 4:24 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
79. ManekiNeko
Much of the political changes in California can be traced back to the Supreme Courts decisions in Baker v Carr and Reynolds v Sims (and their progeny). Once the State Senate had to apportioned by population, all checks and balances in the state government were lost.
Per Wikipedia: Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois led a fight to pass a Constitutional amendment allowing unequal legislative districts.[1] He warned that
"…the forces of our national life are not brought to bear on public questions solely in proportion to the weight of numbers. If they were, the 6 million citizens of the Chicago area would hold sway in the Illinois Legislature without consideration of the problems of their 4 million fellows who are scattered in 100 other counties. Under the Court's new decree, California could be dominated by Los Angeles and San Francisco; Michigan by Detroit.."It is hard to see how California in its present form will ever recover.
February 2, 2013 - 10:52 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
VDH-Come to Texas. I realize you have attachments to a family farm that has been passed down through the generations, but you are obviously not California material any longer.
University of Texas or Texas A&M would easily hire you.
February 3, 2013 - 3:30 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
81. Fellow Traveler
Go down, sit in the dust, virgin daughter of Babylon;
sit on the ground without a throne.
Oh beautiful Babylon, sit now in darkness, and silence.Never again will you be known as the 'Lady of kingdoms.'
No more will you be called tender or delicate.You said, "I am forever—the eternal queen!"
But you did not consider these things,
or reflect on what might happen.Now then, listen, you lover of pleasure,
lounging in your security, and saying to yourself,
"I am, and there is none besides me":They come from faraway lands, from the ends of the heavens—
the LORD and the weapons of his wrath—to destroy the whole country.Everyone shall turn to his own people,
and everyone shall flee to his own land.
All the mixed people who are in the midst of her,
like a hunted gazelle, like sheep without a shepherd,
they will all return to their own people,
they will flee to their native land.Behold, the last of the nations shall be a wilderness,
a dry land and a desert.
Your mother shall be deeply ashamed;
she who bore you shall be ashamed.
For the LORD is destroying Babylon;
He will silence her mighty voice.This is the plan determined for the whole world;
this is the hand stretched out over all nations.
Oh, how the praise of the whole earth is seized!
How Babylon has become desolate among the nations!
How the hammer of the whole earth has been cut apart and broken!
How Babylon has become a desolation among the nations!
For she has been proud against the LORD.We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed.
Forsake her, and let us go everyone to his own country;
For her judgment reaches to heaven
and is lifted up to the skies.Oh you who dwell by many waters, abundant in treasures, your end has come.
Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain,
who destroys all the earth," says the LORD.
And I will stretch out My hand against you,
roll you down from the rocks,
and make you a burnt mountain.And though Babylon should mount up to heaven,
and fortify her skies, destroyers will come to her from me,
declares the LORD.
The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken,
and her high gates shall be burned with fire.
Because of the fire, the people and nations will labor in vain,
and they shall be weary.Keep on, then, with your magic spells
and with your many sorceries,
which you have labored at since childhood.Let your astrologers come forward,
those stargazers who make predictions month by month,
let them save you from what is coming upon you.Surely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them up.
They cannot even save themselves from the power of the flame.
These are not coals for warmth, this is not a fire to sit by.
All of them go on in their error; there is not one that can save you.Then the angel carried me away into a wilderness.
There I saw a woman, sitting on a beast…
The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and
decked with gold and precious stones and pearls,
having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations
and filthiness of her fornication.
And upon her forehead was a name written:
Mystery, Babylon The Great,
The Mother Of Harlots
And Abominations Of The Earth.The angel said,
"The woman you saw is the great city that reigns over the kings of the earth.
The seven heads are seven mountains on which the harlot sits.
And they are also seven kings.
Five have fallen, one is, and one is yet to come…"The angel said,
"The ten horns will hate the whore.
They will bring her to ruin, and leave her naked.
They will eat her flesh and burn her with fire.
For God has put it into their hearts to do his will,
and to give their power to the beast until God's words are fulfilled."
And the whole world wondered after the beast, saying,
"Who is like the beast?
Who can make war with the beast?"I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power,
and the earth was lightened with his glory.
And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying:
"Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
She has become a home for demons,
and a haunt for every evil spirit,
a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird.
For all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her porneia.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
and the merchants of the earth grew rich
from her excessive luxuries.Then I heard another voice from heaven say:
Come out of her, my people,
so that you will not share in her sins,
so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
for her sins are piled up to heaven.How much she has glorified herself,
and lived deliciously, so much torment and
sorrow give her. For she says in her heart:
'I sit as queen, and I shall see no sorrow.'Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her:
famine, mourning, and death.
She will be consumed by fire,
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury
see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her.
Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry:
"Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, City of Power!
In one hour your doom has come!"The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her,
because no one buys their cargoes any more.
Cargoes of gold, silver,
precious stones and pearls,
fine linen, and silk,
and purple and scarlet cloth,
every sort of citron wood,
And articles of every kind,
made of costly wood, ivory,
bronze, iron and marble.
Cargoes of cinnamon and spice,
of incense, myrrh and frankincense,
…of wine and olive oil,
of fine flour and wheat,
cattle and sheep,
horses and carriages,
and bodies and souls of men.They will say, "The fruit that your soul longed for
is gone from you. All your sumptuous things and
shining splendor have perished from you,
and you shall find them no more."The merchants of these things, who were made rich by her,
shall stand afar off, out of fear of her torment.Weeping and wailing, they will say,
"Woe! Woe, O great city,
clothed in fine linen, and decked in gold,
precious stones and pearls!
"In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!"Every sea captain, and all who travel by ship,
the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea,
will stand far off because of the fear of her torment.
When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim:
"Was there ever a city like this great city?"They will throw dust on their heads,
and with weeping and mourning, cry out:
"Woe! Woe, O great city,
where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth!
In one hour she has been brought to ruin!"Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder,
the size of a large millstone,
and threw it into the sea, and said:
"With such violence,
the great city of Babylon will be thrown down,
never to be found again.
"The voice of musicians and string players,
flute players and trumpeters,
will never be heard in you again."No workman of any trade
will ever be found in you again.
"The sound of a millstone
will never be heard in you again.
"The light of a lamp
will never shine in you again.
"The voice of bridegroom and bride
will never be heard in you again.
"For your merchants were the world's great men,
and by your pharmakeia, all the nations were led astray."February 5, 2013 - 1:03 am Link to this Comment | Reply -
82. JimB
Get out of there, Dr Hanson. Living in a cesspool is only for martyrs.
February 5, 2013 - 8:48 pm Link to this Comment | Reply -
You know, the nation will have to decide if it wants to be Constitutionally compliant, and where the rubber meets the road is concealed carry rights, Florida being the pioneer. The best concealed carry state allow students (25 minimum age) and instructors to be armed in public schools and universities, see Utah. Other states allow concealed carry into legislative halls, churches, casinos, any place not already providing protection by armed guards, such as courts. (i.e. any kill zone.)
The GOP will have to decide if it wants to be Constitutionally compliant, and support concealed carry into the future, for as I have said, there are very few Space Movies or TV programs where the Western Way isn't, of course, arming its citizens with guns on the hip into the beyond. It is the future, always has been. (BUT NYC, California are midieval wicked.)
Our emphasis as ascendent beings is not on unavailable perfect safety, but on more perfect awareness. The world, the universe is not entirely safe, and isn't ever supposed to be perfectly safe. But we can be aware, we can be on the high side of awareness of reality, of humankind's lack of angels to organize anything in life. That is what the universe is for, actually. It is to grow us humans up.
Back in 1776 a group of highly mature individuals figured this thing out into the future. Of course, New York abstained on the Declaration of Independence. Too bad we didn't start the nation with 12 colonies, and let New York be backwards.
Because New York, and now California, and with it Illinois and D.C. are retarded in human maturity, wickedly-evil in unawareness of history of liberty. They are places where it is virtually impossible for a good citizen to be armed. And therein is the problem, and nothing will be fixed until a leader from these retards places stands before his or her people, and knows they are armed with the same high-capacity magazines and semi-autos as is his or her security team.
Because literal arming causes spines to stiffen, characters to grow, ideas that are silly to go away, better ideas to stay. This is what happened to our forefathers for two centuries prior to 1776. By carrying their Brown Bess rifles, they stiffened their spines, their characters grew, silly ideas went away, better ideas hatched, i.e. the Spirit of 1776.
And when idiots in charge wanted, a hundred years after 1776, to oppress blacks, they took away their guns and rights to carry. And these idiots discovered they weakened the spines, characters shrunk, silly ideas grew and correct ideas died… not only in blacks, but all inner-city minions. So the gun grab expanded when Mandarins discovered it weakened souls, and enabled easy control of the masses, easy control of their fears, easy control of their pocket books, even sodas!
And that, friends, is why the gun debate is really an American Character debate. Gun grabbers really know what they are doing. They really don't despise guns, they actually have them and use them and keep them, mainly in fear of smart Constitutionally compliant throw-backs. THEY, the gun-grabbers really want to remove the Spirit of 1776, the stiff spine, the "Say-no-to-Tyrant-spirit" the anything that isn't boot-licking, ass-kissing and fully obeisance-charged.
So the GOP ad program that I went at lengths above to demonstrate shows how miserably separated the GOP is from truth of liberty. Carl Rove would hate Mark Levin's prescriptions for success, which is liberty ala 1776.
We now have a separation of states, the armed and Constitutionally-Constituted who, history shows, liberate hundreds of millions vs. the gelded takers who love Lie-Leaders who disarm them, as history shows, and kill hundreds of millions.
Reagan said words and ideas matter. Nobody at the GOP has contacted me regarding a great ad campaign that is Constitutionally compliant. Words and ideas that are outside the narrow canyon between Progtard and RINO don't interest the GOP?
Methinks the GOP has gone the way of California, New York, D.C., Chicago and all Mandarins of decline… or am I wrong?
February 6, 2013 - 12:00 pm Link to this Comment | Reply-
Okay, I can't resist.
Mexican overlords in government really cannot trust, cannot give the right of peasants to go about armed. Neither Californian overlords in government THEIR peasants, or US citizens.
European overlords in government really cannot trust, cannot give the right of paupers to go about armed. Neither New York nor D.C. overlords in government THEIR paupers, or US citizens.
But Our Founders knew it is actually different. The right to go about armed is an inalienable right, from God, and it cannot be surrendered, nor transferred.
Mexican overlords in government, European overlords in government, New York, California and D.C. overlords have done what cannot last, and what cannot be believed in: They think THEY have an inalienable right as governors to use high capacity magazines and semi-auto weapons to defend their personages… but scheme and plan and do all to deny SAME RIGHTS to their peons, their peasants, their plebes, their paupers… their ALWAYS lesser people, whose rights they grant.
Put another way, Josh Whedon expressed the right thoughts in "Our Mrs. Reynolds" episode of the Firefly TV series…
Are you going to kill me?MAL
What? What kind of crappy planet is that? Kill you?SAFFRON
In the maiden's home, I heard talk of men who weren't pleased with their brides, who…MAL
Well I ain't them. And don't you ever stand for that sort of thing. Someone tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back. Wife or no, you're no one's property to be tossed aside. You got the right same as anyone to live and to try to kill people. I mean, you know. People that are… That's a dumb planet.——
This humorous vignet expresses the raw, unadulterated truths of America's Founding. AND, at an even deeper, level… the discussion assumes that humans must not be players, humans must be honest brokers, and to play tricks on the human psyche… is worth than killing a person. You see, in this vignette, Saffron is a dishonest broker, a con artist operating at a high level. In another episode, she is dealt with severely, because she has abandoned the concept of Love.California, New York, Chicago, D.C. have really made this planet dumb. Time for them to realize how stuuuupid they are. And the wicked thing is, their policies kill (i.e. Chicago crime rate) their policies destroy (CA's interior) their policies are based on the same kind of high-level con job artistry as Saffron… who played the part of the ultimate gamer, player and tramp. She ends up in a trash heap, just like leaders of CA, NY, Chicago and D.C. will in the trash heap of history.
February 6, 2013 - 4:37 pm Link to this Comment | Reply
84. Rotus
VDH has always been wobbly/ PC on immigration regarding one thing. Mexicans and many from Central America will never assimilate like Italians. Italian never became the second language of America. Mexican women are not inter-marrying. Mexico has no ocean between us and them. Air travel is just a bit cheaper now than a 8-week boat ride from Italy was 100 years ago. The hispanic population will grow and grow. Millions more will arrive over the coming years, until America is broke or changes policy, which will be never happen now we are over the hump in terms of voters and hispanic and liberal pro-immigration politicians. We will not become more like Mexico, we will just sink lower into a larger welfare state and two-tier society. Many Maexicans will become something other than they were in Mexico, but it will not be like Italians or any Europeans. Italians did not get urged by the US government to apply for food stamps and other welfare benefits.
I wish he would stop the fantasy on this topic. He is normally rational, but I suppose he doesn't want to make enemies. He should just stop talking about immigration if he is going to be silly about it.
February 8, 2013 - 9:26 am Link to this Comment | Reply
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