Two Californias

[roo_ster]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/255320

Victor Davis Hanson takes a bicycle and auto tour through the other California that is not on the coast.  He compares what he sees with what he grew up with 40 years ago.

A tiny snippet:
"It is almost as if the more California regulates, the more it does not regulate. Its public employees prefer to go after misdemeanors in the upscale areas to justify our expensive oversight industry, while ignoring the felonies in the downtrodden areas, which are becoming feral and beyond the ability of any inspector to do anything but feel irrelevant. "

Well worth your time.

[Ben]

Thanks -- that was a really good read.

His farm is about 30 miles up the road from my folks' farm, and I'm in about 95% agreement with him and have seen most everything he describes.

The (probably) illegal aliens that pick my Aunt's oranges, whenever they take a break, just drop the trash from their snacks at their feet and move on. It's almost like reverse locusts -- leaving a ton of garbage behind their swarm instead of bare land. It's very common to see some little rice burner with $1000 rims sitting in front of a shack with boarded up, broken windows and holes in the walls. His roadside stand descriptions are spot on.

My answer to why some of the farming on the East side has stopped is a little different than his. On the East side it's the water too, thanks to what Pelosi and Boxer did to the West side. Water gets diverted, and combined with several years of drought, the water table has sunk. Just a couple of years ago my dad had to pay $80K for a new well because one of his started pumping sand.  My Aunt had to do the same last year, and many people it happens to simply can't afford the cost, so they let their land lay fallow in hopes we get enough rain that the water table comes back up.

Funny that all the illegal aliens that depend on water for their jobs still voted Boxer back in. Guess the food cards and welfare car rims are worth more than a job.

[dm1333]

Good article but he didn't drive quite far enough.  The further north you get from San Francisco the more you see two different Californias here on the coast.  The town I live in looks fairly prosperous, especially on the weekends when you see plenty of Porsches and Mercedes parked along HWY1 and affluent Bay Area retirees are out in force.  What most visitors don't see are the trailer parks, trash dumps in the woods and the junk left behind from grows.  Just about half of the school kids live below the poverty line.  Even in the midst of this housing crash many local professionals (cops, nurses, teachers, small business owners, etc.) still can't afford a home out here. 

As much as I love this state and the enormous potential it has you could never pay me to live here after leaving the military.  Even if some of the ridiculous laws and regulations were changed I couldn't hack living here.  Last spring there was a Living Light exposition here in town.  Without thinking about it I wandered into the building where this exposition was being hosted (there is a good coffee shop and bakery in the same building).  The place was packed with well to do people taking classes or shopping for "green" products.  One pair of shorts I looked at were made from bamboo (renewable! earth friendly! better than cotton!) and only cost about $100. 

I snorted so loud people around me turned to see what was funny.  The parking lot looked like it was a combination Volvo and BMW dealership.  I didn't say anything because the irony of these people driving up from the Bay Area or Sacramento in their shiny new expensive car, staying in an expensive hotel and then attending this exposition would have been lost of them.  They even had classes on how to prepare raw foods.  My mother taught me that for free, wash the lettuce, cut up the vegetables and add salad dressing!  None of these people were "living light". 

[vaskidmark]

I note this because hundreds of students here illegally are now terrified of being deported to Mexico. I can understand that, given the chaos in Mexico and their own long residency in the United States. But here is what still confuses me: If one were to consider the classes that deal with Mexico at the university, or the visible displays of national chauvinism, then one might conclude that Mexico is a far more attractive and moral place than the United States.

So there is a surreal nature to these protests: something like, “Please do not send me back to the culture I nostalgically praise; please let me stay in the culture that I ignore or deprecate.” I think the DREAM Act protestors might have been far more successful in winning public opinion had they stopped blaming the U.S. for suggesting that they might have to leave at some point, and instead explained why, in fact, they want to stay. What it is about America that makes a youth of 21 go on a hunger strike or demonstrate to be allowed to remain in this country rather than return to the place of his birth?
 
I think I know the answer to this paradox. Missing entirely in the above description is the attitude of the host, which by any historical standard can only be termed “indifferent.” California does not care whether one broke the law to arrive here or continues to break it by staying. It asks nothing of the illegal immigrant — no proficiency in English, no acquaintance with American history and values, no proof of income, no record of education or skills. It does provide all the public assistance that it can afford (and more that it borrows for), and apparently waives enforcement of most of California’s burdensome regulations and civic statutes that increasingly have plagued productive citizens to the point of driving them out. How odd that we overregulate those who are citizens and have capital to the point of banishing them from the state, but do not regulate those who are aliens and without capital to the point of encouraging millions more to follow in their footsteps.

'Nuff said.

But it needs saying over and over again.

Till folks who do not want to hear it have no choice but to acknowledge the words, if not the truth behind them.  And then some more again so that finally they hear that thruth.

stay safe.