So Close – But Yet So Far

The debacle of California is perhaps the most grossly underreported story in America today.

It should be no surprise that I suspect that this is because it’s a story of the failure – indeed, catastrophic collapse – of exactly the form of liberal, “everything-to-everyone” government that Obama and his Democrat majority want to bring the rest of us, and the media just can’t wrap their arms around admitting that just yet.

The London Observer comes oh, so close:

“If California was an experiment then it was an experiment of mass irresponsibility – and that has failed,” says Michael Levine.Nowhere is the economic cost of California’s crisis writ larger than in the Central Valley town of Mendota, smack in the heart of a dusty landscape of flat, endless fields of fruit and vegetables. The town, which boldly terms itself “the cantaloup capital of the world”, now has an unemployment rate of 38%. That is expected to rise above 50% as the harvest ends and labourers are laid off. City officials hold food giveaways every two weeks. More than 40% of the town’s people live below the poverty level. Shops have shut, restaurants have closed, drugs and alcohol abuse have become a problem.

Standing behind the counter of his DVD and grocery store, former Mendota mayor Joseph Riofrio tells me it breaks his heart to watch the town sink into the mire. His father had built the store in the 1950s and constructed a solid middle-class life around it, to raise his family. Now Riofrio has stopped selling booze in a one-man bid to curb the social problems breaking out all around him.

“It is so bad, but it has now got to the point where we are getting used to it being like this,” he says. Riofrio knows his father’s achievements could not be replicated today. The state that once promised opportunities for working men and their families now promises only desperation.

The story catalogues the woes – overwhelming and unsustainable social spending, the downside of sprawl – fairly capably…

…but, being from the Observer – the web end of the Labour-Party-oriented Guardian – it still misses the point:

California has long been an incubator of fresh ideas, many of which spread across the country. If America emerges from its crisis a greener, more economically and politically responsible nation, it is likely that renewal will have begun here. The clues to California’s salvation – and perhaps even the country as a whole – are starting to emerge.

Take Anthony “Van” Jones [yes, that Van Jones – but that’s not the point.  Bear with us, here – Ed.], a man now in the vanguard of the movement to build a future green economy, creating millions of jobs, solving environmental problems and reducing climate change at a stroke.

All in the future tense.

We see where this is going, right?

Jones believes California will once more change itself, and then change the nation. “California remains a beacon of hope… This is a new time for a new direction to grow a new society and a new economy,” Jones has said.

It is already happening. California may have sprawling development and awful smog, but it leads the way in environmental issues.

And in this entire, otherwise-fascinatingly-thorough piece, nobody connects the two points!  Nobody notes that California has clawed billions and billions from taxpayers and businesses and gutted the state’s business climate and employment base…

…to pay for the feeble “promise” of “Green Jobs“?  To pay for fripperies like solar panels while the state’s business are packing up and leaving to escape rolling blackouts and confiscatory taxes?

To pay for a vision of government that will perpetuate the problem rather than ever fix it?

5 thoughts on “So Close – But Yet So Far

  1. It just goes to show you what happens when a government attempts to radically alter an economy that doesn’t want to be altered. You must take away people’s freedom first. Replicate California’s madness at the national level, as The One is trying to do, and there will be no escape for anybody.

  2. The parallels to what I was born into are staggering! Does anybody on the left study history?

  3. I work for a company that does business in California and it is a horrible place to be. We are there because there are millions of people there with money. But if there was a way to serve them from South or North Dakota, we’d be out of there quicker then you can say “diversity reports are due to the city annually”. (seriously, we have to report the skin color of our employees to certain cities)

  4. We had to destroy Mendota to save the planet.

    The reason unemployment in Mendota, CA is so bad is that all the nearby farming is shutting down thanks to the Greens getting their environmental way with water distribution.

  5. I’ve lived in California all my life. I grew up in Sacramento, which felt very much like a mid-western town in the 70s until Real Estate became the new Californian Gold in the 1990s. Sure, all the politicos assembled in our town, but, generally, most of the wacky “Grape Nuts” (Fruits and Nuts as Carson used to say) stereotypical California was not something you encountered often.

    I moved to the El Dorado County Foothills 14 years ago. It still feels like a Mid-Western town. I still work in Sacramento, and my family is still there as well. The town, for the most part has a mid-western feel, but nothing like the past.

    With Term Limits, we’ve seen most termed out Politicians elect to stay in Sacramento as Lobbyists and influence peddlers. The money is pretty good. Not “Legistlator’ good, but still good. And now Sacramento is center left, while most of the suburbs are center right – Tom McClintock is my Congressman, so I’m in good shape.

    The best description I’ve read recently of the essence of California was “Environmentalist Preening” Now plug in the other constituencies in front of “Preening” and there you have it. Union, Class, Sexual Preference, Race, Education, and Immigrant – Preening. It’s all Kabuki. They have to put on a big show to FEEL Good about themselves. Our Environmentalist Governor is the best – worst example. Wants to focus on making the State more Business Friendly – by raising taxes on energy, and regulating everything in sight. That’s Friendly!

    Hundreds – HUNDREDS – of pieces of legislation are passed each year. You’d think that after 150 years we would have gotten most issues that need attention resolved, and that there wouldn’t be a need for so many bills being fought over in the Capitol. Or not.

    And therein lies the second part of the California problem. The Legislature. Their motto:

    We’ve got to DO something. About SOMETHING!

    The third problem – Us. Californians – we keep electing and re-electing these jokes to office. Because they give us stuff. For FREE! Well – someone else pays for it. We also keep spending more and more money via the initiative process.

    When Alexis de Tocqueville said “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” he probably didn’t foresee that Californians would be able to take it a step further and Bribe themselves with their own money.

    Three problems
    1.) Feel Good Preening
    2.) Self Aggrandized Legislators
    3.) Ballot Box Spending

    Now how do we fix it?

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