Who screwed up California ? Can it ever be fixed ?

jack4freedom · Jul 9, 2016

Draco said: ↑

Just drove from LA to SF for the first time in a while, I've never seen so many anti liberal signs on the freeway as in central California. Was pretty shocked

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The Central Valley has always been a GOP stronghold. Darryl Issa country.

jack4freedom · Jul 9, 2016

APACHERAT said: ↑

It's liberal elitist who hide in their safe spaces.

The same liberals who are disarming law abiding citizens live behind gated communities with armed security guards.

This Zuckerberg dude buys up all of the surrounding estates around his own estate in Palo Alto to shield himself from the real California while calling everyone a xenophobe.
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I have lived all over the "real California" for over 50 years and it is still by far the greatest of the 50 states by far. As always, the land of opportunity.

APACHERAT · Jul 9, 2016

jack4freedom said: ↑

I remember when his father Edmund G. (Pat) Brown was the driving force behind the building of the California aqueduct system in the '60s and the nit wits from the GOP were whining about the cost. In retrospect, it was one of the greatest, most cost effective projects constructed in the in the history of our state and we are still benefitting from it. Jerry Brown is an excellent governor and if and when his proposed RR project gets built I predict the same successful result. It could be the start of a much needed upgrade in our national transportation system with California, as always leading the way.
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You are making (*)(*)(*)(*) up, you must be a lib ? Am I right ?

I wasn't even in my teens back when the California voters went to the polls to vote for Prop One. The Burns-Porter Act, formally known as the California Water Resources Development Bond Act, was placed on the November 1960 ballot. Also known as Proposition One.
http://www.water.ca.gov/swp/history.cfm

In the mid-1950s, California was experiencing substantial growth. San Francisco's Caspar W. Weinberger, Chairman of the California Assembly Government Organization Committee, held a series of statewide hearings in 1954 and 1955 focused on creating a State Water Project that could supply the growing municipal and agricultural demands of the state. On July 5, 1956 in a special session of the California Assembly, Governor Goodwin J. Knight signed Weinberger's bill to combine the then Division of Water Resources of the Department of Public Works with the State Engineer's Office, the Water Project Authority, and the State Water Resources Board into a new department: the Department of Water Resources. Consulting engineer Harvey O. Banks was appointed by Governor Knight as the department's first director and given the task of developing a plan for the proposed State Water Project.

In 1959, the Legislature enacted the Burns-Porter Act which authorized $1.75 billion for the construction of the proposed State Water Project. The Burns-Porter Act was approved by Californian voters in 1960 and in the same year the Whale Rock Dam, DWR's first major water project located near San Luis Obispo, was completed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Department_of_Water_Resources
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Caspar Weinberger (R), hey that was President Reagan's Secretary of Defense.

Governor Knight (R) I'm pretty sure he wasn't a RINO.

Michael Corleone · Jul 9, 2016

Technology is huge in the economy of California. It had a GSP of 4.1% last year.

Rekt.

APACHERAT · Jul 9, 2016

jack4freedom said: ↑

The Central Valley has always been a GOP stronghold. Darryl Issa country.
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Darrell Issa is from Northern San Diego County representing 49th Congressional District. More than a few hundred miles south of the Central Valley.

Texas Republican · Jul 9, 2016

akphidelt2007 said: ↑

California is the most productive state in America. What you should be asking is who screwed up the degenerate south? 10 of the least productive states in America are Republican states from the south. California by itself produces more than those 10 states, lol.
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California was built as a red/purple state. That's when it boomed. In the last 30 years it turned blue. Coincidentally, that's when it started to have problems.

guttermouth · Jul 9, 2016

logical1 said: ↑

Democrats are turning the whole state of Calif into another Detroit.
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Good then it will be a net gain for the country when the big one drops the entire state into the Pacific ocean.

akphidelt2007 · Jul 9, 2016

Texas Republican said: ↑

California was built as a red/purple state. That's when it boomed. In the last 30 years it turned blue. Coincidentally, that's when it started to have problems.
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You're making stuff up. It has only gotten more productive. Especially with all dem liberal techies

DOconTEX · Jul 9, 2016

APACHERAT said: ↑

Kinda looks like it was liberal Democrats who screwed up California and also illegal aliens.
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Over time, Professor Hanson has written many columns of his observation over time of the destruction of California life for ordinary people by politicians and coastal leftists who command them. His family has been in Cali for 150 years and his commentary is a warning of what can happen to the rest of the country if the leftist vision of life is put in place in the rest of the country. It is frightening.

DOconTEX · Jul 9, 2016

APACHERAT said: ↑

Productive in what ???

Porn ? Even the porn industry is getting out of California with all of the regulations being forced upon them by liberals.

Now we have Governor Brown competing against Barack Obama as the best gun salesman in America.

Do you know what California's # 1 export is ? Empty cargo containers.

Do you know what California's # 1 import is ? Poverty.
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Every now and then someone publishes the stats on U-haul rentals out of the state vs. into the state. I recall it runs something like 4 or 5 to one rentals going out. Most of California's population growth, I understand, is from immigration, legal and illegal. Middle class native born aren't having babies, they can't afford to live in the coastal enclaves where the economy is doing well, whereas on the interior of the state, the economy is stagnating or declining.

I have posted a number of columns by VDH in the past as he describes the decline into Mad Max land of the interior areas.

nra37922 · Jul 9, 2016

Who screwed up California ? Can it ever be fixed ?

Only if God decides to give the world an enema and puts the hose .in California.

DOconTEX · Jul 9, 2016

jack4freedom said: ↑

I remember when his father Edmund G. (Pat) Brown was the driving force behind the building of the California aqueduct system in the '60s and the nit wits from the GOP were whining about the cost. In retrospect, it was one of the greatest, most cost effective projects constructed in the in the history of our state and we are still benefitting from it. Jerry Brown is an excellent governor and if and when his proposed RR project gets built I predict the same successful result. It could be the start of a much needed upgrade in our national transportation system with California, as always leading the way.
Click to expand...

And, as VDH describes in his commentary, it was the envirowacko left that stopped the expansion of the water system back when it was proposed and have even now demanded water be released to flow into the sea to help some baitfish. A water system built to serve 20 million is now supposed to serve 40 million and the envirowackos who dominate the Cali political system seem to think that water comes from the tap like they think electricity comes from the socket as they have opposed building new power plants.

- - - Updated - - -

US Conservative said: ↑

Leftists screwed up California-its what the left does.
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Yes, but they feel GOOD about themselves while doing it.

DOconTEX · Jul 9, 2016

jack4freedom said: ↑

Was Kenny Boy Lay a leftist? He and his pack of thieves from Enron are responsible for much of California's financial problems. Thankfully we have a great governor in Jerry Brown who has us on the right track again. California is still the greatest state in the Union by a long shot. I am not a bit worried about our future.
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Wow, that's going back quite a ways. You realize, that Kenny Boy couldn't have done what he did if the envirowackos hadn't had a policy of blocking the development of new power plants in Cali. They thought they could let other people have those nasty, smelly power plants in THEIR states. Cali would just buy the juice from them and THEY would suffer the consequences.

The envirowackos practically held a "KICK ME" sign on Cali ratepayers and invited Kenny Boy to screw them.

DOconTEX · Jul 9, 2016

Draco said: ↑

Just drove from LA to SF for the first time in a while, I've never seen so many anti liberal signs on the freeway as in central California. Was pretty shocked

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Cali seems to be like Maryland when I lived there. 23 counties were Republican, 3 were Democrat, but the Democrat ones had all the population, elected the most reps and the Governor. Most of us in Southern Maryland, Northern Maryland, and the Eastern Shore couldn't escape the destructive policies of the idiots in PG, Baltimore and Montgomery Counties. The coastal elites run California and have driven the rest of the state into despair.

Those who live in the envirowacko havens and gated communities of SF, LA, SD are doing great. Ordinary folks in the Central Valley are not. But they can't escape because the wackos and elitists run the state, suck up all the tax money for choo choo to nowhere and Ivanpah type boondoggles while the ordinary folks are going broke and have to pay to support the hordes of illegal aliens the SJWs support..

Michael Corleone · Jul 9, 2016

So if California is a "disaster" what will you all consider Kansas as?

APACHERAT · Jul 9, 2016

DOconTEX said: ↑

Over time, Professor Hanson has written many columns of his observation over time of the destruction of California life for ordinary people by politicians and coastal leftists who command them. His family has been in Cali for 150 years and his commentary is a warning of what can happen to the rest of the country if the leftist vision of life is put in place in the rest of the country. It is frightening.
Click to expand...

Hanson's most notable was published back in 2010, "Two Californias"

Abandoned farms, Third World living conditions, pervasive public assistance -- welcome to the once-thriving Central Valley.

The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California. I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most lavish entitlements, the near-worst public schools (based on federal test scores), and the largest number of illegal aliens in the nation, along with an overregulated private sector, a stagnant and shrinking manufacturing base, and an elite environmental ethos that restricts commerce and productivity without curbing consumption.

During this unscientific experiment, three times a week I rode a bike on a 20-mile trip over various rural roads in southwestern Fresno County. I also drove my car over to the coast to work, on various routes through towns like San Joaquin, Mendota, and Firebaugh. And near my home I have been driving, shopping, and touring by intent the rather segregated and impoverished areas of Caruthers, Fowler, Laton, Orange Cove, Parlier, and Selma. My own farmhouse is now in an area of abject poverty and almost no ethnic diversity; the closest elementary school (my alma mater, two miles away) is 94 percent Hispanic and 1 percent white, and well below federal testing norms in math and English.

Here are some general observations about what I saw (other than that the rural roads of California are fast turning into rubble, poorly maintained and reverting to what I remember seeing long ago in the rural South). First, remember that these areas are the ground zero, so to speak, of 20 years of illegal immigration. There has been a general depression in farming — to such an extent that the 20- to-100-acre tree and vine farmer, the erstwhile backbone of the old rural California, for all practical purposes has ceased to exist.

On the western side of the Central Valley, the effects of arbitrary cutoffs in federal irrigation water have idled tens of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land, leaving thousands unemployed. Manufacturing plants in the towns in these areas — which used to make harvesters, hydraulic lifts, trailers, food-processing equipment — have largely shut down; their production has been shipped off overseas or south of the border. Agriculture itself — from almonds to raisins — has increasingly become corporatized and mechanized, cutting by half the number of farm workers needed. So unemployment runs somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.

Many of the rural trailer-house compounds I saw appear to the naked eye no different from what I have seen in the Third World. There is a Caribbean look to the junked cars, electric wires crisscrossing between various outbuildings, plastic tarps substituting for replacement shingles, lean-tos cobbled together as auxiliary housing, pit bulls unleashed, and geese, goats, and chickens roaming around the yards.

The public hears about all sorts of tough California regulations that stymie business — rigid zoning laws, strict building codes, constant inspections — but apparently none of that applies out here. 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. But in the regulators’ defense, where would one get the money to redo an ad hoc trailer park with a spider web of illegal bare wires?

Many of the rented-out rural shacks and stationary Winnebagos are on former small farms — the vineyards overgrown with weeds, or torn out with the ground lying fallow. I pass on the cultural consequences to communities from the loss of thousands of small farming families. I don’t think I can remember another time when so many acres in the eastern part of the valley have gone out of production, even though farm prices have recently rebounded. Apparently it is simply not worth the gamble of investing $7,000 to $10,000 an acre in a new orchard or vineyard. What an anomaly — with suddenly soaring farm prices, still we have thousands of acres in the world’s richest agricultural belt, with available water on the east side of the valley and plentiful labor, gone idle or in disuse. Is credit frozen? Are there simply no more farmers? Are the schools so bad as to scare away potential agricultural entrepreneurs? Or are we all terrified by the national debt and uncertain future?

California coastal elites may worry about the oxygen content of water available to a three-inch smelt in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, but they seem to have no interest in the epidemic dumping of trash, furniture, and often toxic substances throughout California’s rural hinterland.

Yesterday, for example, I rode my bike by a stopped van just as the occupants tossed seven plastic bags of raw refuse onto the side of the road. I rode up near their bumper and said in my broken Spanish not to throw garbage onto the public road. But there were three of them, and one of me. So I was lucky to be sworn at only. I note in passing that I would not drive into Mexico and, as a guest, dare to pull over and throw seven bags of trash into the environment of my host.

In fact, trash piles are commonplace out here — composed of everything from half-empty paint cans and children’s plastic toys to diapers and moldy food. I have never seen a rural sheriff cite a litterer, or witnessed state EPA workers cleaning up these unauthorized wastelands.

So I would suggest to Bay Area scientists that the environment is taking a much harder beating down here in central California than it is in the Delta. Perhaps before we cut off more irrigation water to the west side of the valley, we might invest some green dollars into cleaning up the unsightly and sometimes dangerous garbage that now litters the outskirts of our rural communities. We hear about the tough small-business regulations that have driven residents out of the state, at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a week.

But from my unscientific observations these past weeks, it seems rather easy to open a small business in California without any oversight at all, or at least what I might call a “counter business.” I counted eleven mobile hot-kitchen trucks that simply park by the side of the road, spread about some plastic chairs, pull down a tarp canopy, and, presto, become mini-restaurants. There are no “facilities” such as toilets or washrooms. But I do frequently see lard trails on the isolated roads I bike on, where trucks apparently have simply opened their draining tanks and sped on, leaving a slick of cooking fats and oils. Crows and ground squirrels love them; they can be seen from a distance mysteriously occupied in the middle of the road.

At crossroads, peddlers in a counter-California economy sell almost anything. Here is what I noticed at an intersection on the west side last week: shovels, rakes, hoes, gas pumps, lawnmowers, edgers, blowers, jackets, gloves, and caps. The merchandise was all new. I doubt whether in high-tax California sales taxes or income taxes were paid on any of these stop-and-go transactions.

In two supermarkets 50 miles apart, I was the only one in line who did not pay with a social-service plastic card (gone are the days when “food stamps” were embarrassing bulky coupons). But I did not see any relationship between the use of the card and poverty as we once knew it: The electrical appurtenances owned by the user and the car into which the groceries were loaded were indistinguishable from those of the upper middle class. By that I mean that most consumers drove late-model Camrys, Accords, or Tauruses, had iPhones, Bluetooths, or BlackBerries, and bought everything in the store with public-assistance credit. This seemed a world apart from the trailers I had just ridden by the day before.

I don’t editorialize here on the logic or morality of any of this, but I note only that there are vast numbers of people who apparently are not working, are on public food assistance, and enjoy the technological veneer of the middle class. California has a consumer market surely, but often no apparent source of income. Does the $40 million a day supplement to unemployment benefits from Washington explain some of this?

Do diversity concerns, as in lack of diversity, work both ways? Over a hundred-mile stretch, when I stopped in San Joaquin for a bottled water, or drove through Orange Cove, or got gas in Parlier, or went to a corner market in southwestern Selma, my home town, I was the only non-Hispanic — there were no Asians, no blacks, no other whites. We may speak of the richness of “diversity,” but those who cherish that ideal simply have no idea that there are now countless inland communities that have become near-apartheid societies, where Spanish is the first language, the schools are not at all diverse, and the federal and state governments are either the main employers or at least the chief sources of income — whether through emergency rooms, rural health clinics, public schools, or social-service offices. An observer from Mars might conclude that our elites and masses have given up on the ideal of integration and assimilation, perhaps in the wake of the arrival of 11 to 15 million illegal aliens.

Again, I do not editorialize, but I note these vast transformations over the last 20 years that are the paradoxical wages of unchecked illegal immigration from Mexico, a vast expansion of California’s entitlements and taxes, the flight of the upper middle class out of state, the deliberate effort not to tap natural resources, the downsizing in manufacturing and agriculture, and the departure of whites, blacks, and Asians from many of these small towns to more racially diverse and upscale areas of California.

There's more
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/255320/two-californias-victor-davis-hanson
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Lesh · Jul 9, 2016

Surfer Joe said: ↑

Why the chicken little hysterics? California will do just fine
It has the largest state economy in the US and the 6th biggest economy in the world.
You people persist in embarrassing yourselves with such nonsense.
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It's Victor Davis Hanson. He's a right wing nut job with more education than he's able to use constructively.

Zorro · Jul 9, 2016

APACHERAT said: ↑

Kinda looks like it was liberal Democrats who screwed up California and also illegal aliens.
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And George HW Bush's Blue Ribbon Base Closing Commission. When all those bases were closed and all those Republican voters left the state. Engineered Demographics.

US Conservative · Jul 9, 2016

APACHERAT said: ↑

Darrell Issa is from Northern San Diego County representing 49th Congressional District. More than a few hundred miles south of the Central Valley.
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He doesn't sound like he's very aware of the political scene here. Likely a lefty.

US Conservative · Jul 9, 2016

Lesh said: ↑

It's Victor Davis Hanson. He's a right wing nut job with more education than he's able to use constructively.
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He's absolutely right.

US Conservative · Jul 9, 2016

akphidelt2007 said: ↑

You're making stuff up. It has only gotten more productive. Especially with all dem liberal techies
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The ones that have been leaving for years because its too damn expensive in Ca?

APACHERAT · Jul 9, 2016

Zorro said: ↑

And George HW Bush's Blue Ribbon Base Closing Commission. When all those bases were closed and all those Republican voters left the state. Engineered Demographics.
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It was the 1993 and the 1995 BRAC under the Clinton administration that closed most of the military bases in California. During the same time when Clinton over downsizing (dismantling) the Reagan military.

The 1993 Base Realignment and Closure Commission included:

March Air Force Base
Mare Island Naval Shipyard
Marine Corps Air Station El Toro
Naval Air Station Alameda
Naval Aviation Depot Alameda
Naval Hospital Oakland
Naval Station Treasure Island
Naval Supply Center, Oakland
Naval Training Center San Diego

The 1995 Base Realignment and Closure Commission included:

Castle Air Force Base
Military Ocean Terminal at Bayonne
Naval Shipyard, Long Beach
Naval Supply Center, Oakland
Oakland Army Base
Ontario Air National Guard Station

Now Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, Todd Shipyards, etc. had already made it clear that they were leaving California back during the early 1990's because of the state regulations along with Los Angeles becoming the Capital of the Third World.

The General Motors assembly plant in Van Nuys, Ca, moved out of California in 1992 because of California's insane regulations.

Texas Republican · Jul 9, 2016

US Conservative said: ↑

The ones that have been leaving for years because its too damn expensive in Ca?
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$1 million for an 800 square foot house next to an industrial park isn't my idea of the good life.

Zorro · Jul 9, 2016

APACHERAT said: ↑

It was the 1993 and the 1995 BRAC under the Clinton administration that closed most of the military bases in California. During the same time when Clinton over downsizing (dismantling) the Reagan military.

The 1993 Base Realignment and Closure Commission included:

March Air Force Base
Mare Island Naval Shipyard
Marine Corps Air Station El Toro
Naval Air Station Alameda
Naval Aviation Depot Alameda
Naval Hospital Oakland
Naval Station Treasure Island
Naval Supply Center, Oakland
Naval Training Center San Diego

The 1995 Base Realignment and Closure Commission included:

Castle Air Force Base
Military Ocean Terminal at Bayonne
Naval Shipyard, Long Beach
Naval Supply Center, Oakland
Oakland Army Base
Ontario Air National Guard Station

Now Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, Todd Shipyards, etc. had already made it clear that they were leaving California back during the early 1990's because of the state regulations along with Los Angeles becoming the Capital of the Third World.

The General Motors assembly plant in Van Nuys, Ca, moved out of California in 1992 because of California's insane regulations.
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Fair point. They either got lucky or out thought us.

jdog · Jul 9, 2016

APACHERAT said: ↑

Kinda looks like it was liberal Democrats who screwed up California and also illegal aliens.
Click to expand...

Nature will fix California, it is just a matter of time.

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