Two Californias

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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.

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Very interesting article. California is a loss, Oregon is not far behind and so is Washington State. Might as well write off the entire West Coast.

I can't think of a more in-your-face example of applied liberal public policy.

Great thread!

I see exactly the same things.

There has been talk in NorCal of splitting up the northern part of the state from the south because of everything you just mentioned. While in the north, it still faces the same list of problems, it is far less pervasive.

As soon as the government runs out of benefits to give out, watch how fast the majority of these people leave and flock back to Central and South America.

California is a microcosm of what is coming to the rest of the country. This state drives most of the entire country's economy simply due to it's size and population. Once this state hits bottom, it will have direct implications on the other states, the immediate surrounding ones being the hardest hit.

If they would just audit the welfare system and cross-check everyone using the ICE system, they could stop paying benefits to EVERYONE who doesn't deserve them and most of those people would just leave. Once they were "flagged" in the system, they wouldn't be able to remove that flag without becoming a citizen. So the option would be to stay illegally and hope they can find a job somewhere, get legal, or leave. Simple.

As an American (first) and a Californian (second), I don't mind paying taxes that are used for benefits for people that NEED them, but to come to this country and honor your heritage and culture while simultaneously disrespecting mine is worth of a bullet in less-modern times, let alone my hard earned money.

S&F for you... great thread, I hope it gets some attention.

~Namaste

Coming from a former American Liberal let me tell you in confidence that American liberalism will do nothing but destroy any society. It will stagnate an economy, oppress the culture, and focus singly on minority interests.

California is one of a handful of modern day examples of what happens when Liberalism gets its paws on a city or state. The most Liberal cities are crime ridden, failing, impoverished, and immoral. The most Liberal states however do have variants ranging from Liberal Libertarian Vermont to Social liberal California.

This however does not mean that Republican ideology works better rather that does not work either. The valley of California is rather Conservative inside a Liberal state. The Old Democratic principles of hard work, limited welfare, low regulation, populism, and social conservatism, are the only true principles that worked. The nation used these polices under Roosevelt(D), Truman(D), Eisenhower(R), Kennedy(D), Johnson(D), and the first term of Nixon(R).

You have a state implement those policies and I promise you it will work. California could learn to accept any of those noble principles and drop the minority driven, late sipping, prius driving, secular, liberals for the old principles of the Democratic Party before it was taken over by the ‘60s Liberal Hippies.

Nice thread!

You want to see a huge difference, drive up to Washington State on Hwy 97, then cross into Canada.

Washington State - scrubland, delapidated farms, shuttered up buildings, rusting tractors.
BC - immediately north of the border, lush orchards, picture perfect villages, rich farmland and vineyards.

reply to post by jerico65


while the artical leans heavily on the hispanic ruin of it all, I have to say that this duality is similar in most southwestern states, including NM, AZ, NV...but NOT in texas unless you include the western tip which could be called the northern tip of cuidad juarez or south el paso...

Anyway, I find the article rings true with I have seen over the entire southwest USA during the past 10 years.

Originally posted by EdWard54
reply to post by jerico65

 

while the artical leans heavily on the hispanic ruin of it all, I have to say that this duality is similar in most southwestern states, including NM, AZ, NV...but NOT in texas unless you include the western tip which could be called the northern tip of cuidad juarez or south el paso...

Anyway, I find the article rings true with I have seen over the entire southwest USA during the past 10 years.

Why 'not' in Texas? What are they doing different, from the other states?

reply to post by jerico65


I fleed cali last summer with my family to NC.. after living in irvine, burbank, pt reyes, petaluma, san diego, el cajon. from 93-09 i had enough.. maybe one day we can come take back socal. but we must first understand WHO made it great, HOW they made it great, and WHAT extent they went to to do so. the following letters go a LONG way in explaining WHO the caucasian people were that built socal over the last 100 years. ----K.I.G.Y.----

reply to post by jerico65


I am very afraid that this is what we can expect most of rural US to look like in the near future.

The US Congress just slipped the Food Safety Farce bill in to the budget and passed it. At this point, thanks to the viral internet "hysteria" of Linn Cohen-Cole, John Munsell, Nicole Johnson and a host of others we got the Tester Amendment temporarily protecting small farms from the massive amount of red tape... well maybe. However history shows that as soon as the public's attention is removed, the law, once passed, will morph back into the Corporate friendly law originally drafted to wipe out the competition. Then we can say good by to rural America.

Red tape is no big deal for multinational corporations with a captive consumer base and deep pockets, especially when they control the government agencies auditing them. The Congressional hearing into Hallmark/Westland with the discounting of Stan Painter's testimony highlighted that in SPADES.

Testimony:Mr. Stan Painter, Chairman, National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals: In his testimony Mr. Painter describes how "favored" corporations are let off the hook by higher management.

December 2004: Union president Stan Painter receive reports from union member that SRM regulations are not uniformly enforced. Painter writes to the Assistant FSIS Administrator for Field Operation about enforcement problem. USDA responses by placed Painter on disciplinary investigation status and contacts the USDA Office of Inspector General about filing criminal charges.

December 2004 Freedom of Information Act requests filed

August 2005 Over 1000 non-compliance reports – weighing some 16 pounds -- were turned over

It (the recall of Hallmark/Westland Meat) highlights one of the problems that we have attempted to raise with the agency ever since 1996 when the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) inspection system was put in place. There seems to be too much reliance on an honor system for the industry to police itself. While the USDA investigation is still on going at Hallmark/Westland, a couple of facts have emerged that point to a system that can be gamed by those who want to break the law. It (HACCP) shifted the responsibility for food safety over to the companies.
domesticpolicy.oversight.house.gov...

This is a transcript of the USDA patting Stan Painter and John Munsell on the head before blowing them off: www.fsis.usda.gov...

This is the Senate hearing where Stan Painter is ripped to shreds

...Question. Is USDA’s investigation of union president Stan Painter retaliatory?

Answer. USDA’s investigation into the validity of allegations that Specified Risk
Material (SRM) regulations are not being effectively carried out or properly enforced
was conducted solely to ensure the safety of our Nation’s food supply.

Question. Stan Painter, the president of the food inspectors union, set forth a se-
ries of concerns about SRM removal in a letter to the agency in early December.
I understand that FSIS has responded to the letter by launching a personal inves-
tigation of Mr. Painter. In January, for example, FSIS flew Mr. Painter to Wash-
ington DC and questioned him for 3 hours, to try to get him to divulge the sources
of his information. However, FSIS has a database of non-compliance reports, which
should document instances in which inspectors have reported non-compliance with
SRM removal.
Why has FSIS chosen to investigate Mr. Painter personally instead of addressing
the questions and concerns raised by his letter?

Answer. In a December 8, 2004, letter, the chairman of the National Joint Council
of Food Inspection Locals made unsubstantiated and non-specific allegations that
FSIS is not properly enforcing regulations requiring the removal of Specified Risk
Materials (SRMs) from beef products. Because of the serious nature of the allega-
tions contained in Mr. Painter’s Letter, FSIS immediately initiated an inquiry into
those allegations which included an informal interview of the union chairman. Dur-
ing that interview, Mr. Painter refused to provide specific information to support the
letter’s allegations. That inquiry subsequently resulted in a formal investigation by
FSIS to determine the validity of the allegations. As part of that investigation, Mr.
Painter was formally interviewed on two occasions in January. The FSIS investiga-
tion has been completed and the allegations concerning improper enforcement of
SRM regulations were not substantiated.....

www.access.gpo.gov...

Check out John Munsell's experience with the USDA that shows Mr. Painter was not lying:
Jolley: Five Minutes With John Munsell & A Trip To The Woodshed With The USDA

Here is an article by the lawyer who John contacted and who later represented the victims of ConAgra's fecal contaminated carcasses after John's fears came true.

One E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak I Think I could have Prevented

...ConAgra received 31 violations in the 13 months before its June and July 2002 ground beef recalls, and a September 13, 2002 letter issued by the following congressional members: Representatives Mary Kaptur, Rosa DeLauro, Henry Waxman and Senator Richard Durbin demanded to know why the USDA and ConAgra had failed to alert the public to possible contamination until more than two months after they knew there was contamination at the plant....

The infamous "tipping point" has been reached and surpassed in CA; whereby there are more low-to-non tax paying voters voting themselves goodies from the public treasury than there are taxpayers.

reply to post by SourGrapes


Slight tolerance for illegal aliens.

Originally posted by jerico65
www.nationalreview.com...

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.

=================================================================================

Very interesting article. California is a loss, Oregon is not far behind and so is Washington State. Might as well write off the entire West Coast.

I can't think of a more in-your-face example of applied liberal public policy.

edit on 16/12/10 by masqua because: Revived live link, added ex tags for external content and trimmed to three paragraphs

This was a great read. My familys roots are from central Ca. Monterey to be exact. We moved into the Sacramento region and in my many years working in Ca.the problem as I see it continues to grow unchecked. My trade as a home buider was over run around 1981 and now the typical contractor can't find any work to shake a stick at.
My daughters and I now live in Az. The problem is here also but the lawmakers seem to be trying to get a handle on it. We will miss Ca. but so far it is alot better here than in a state that is going in a downward spiral and soon to be in a bottomless pit they can't get out of.
On top of all those things the new generation will not be trained to build our infrastructure because it looks hopeless to try and compete with a group of people who work for half of what is fair wage. The statments of many contractors will testify to that if you get a chance to ask one. I wish all the best to my remaining family and I will bet they head this way soon.
The border should have been closed a long time ago! I fear now it is probably to late the third world is coming to this country faster than the speeding train of illiagals just plain walking in and ruining our country.

"while the article leans heavily on the Hispanic ruin of it all,"

Little of the problem in the central valley has to do with Hispanics.

A lot more has to do with environmental rules and regulations, Water shortages due to the big cities owning or controlling the water using there power and payoffs to state regulators
There are over a 1000 pages of rules and regs on just how you can kill a chicken.

A small farm can go out of business and be sold. If a developer buys the land and builds homes they can then control through the courts how farmers for 20 miles around them run there farms.
There have been cases where someone moved into a farming area and was allergic to one or more of the crops grown in the area and sued the farmers.
There have been cases where someone moved into a cattle or dairy area and sued because they did not like the smell of cow poop.

There have even been lawsuits and complaints about unused parked farm equipment(harvesting equipment use only during harvest ) parked in a farmers fields.
lawsuits by people living in LA Calif because they did not like the smell of a diary as they drove I-5 through the central valley going to San Francisco..

No wonder the Central Valley is dieing.
No wonder the rural people in Calif want to split from the big cities of Calif.

Nah the west coast is still the last frontier.
All the new inventions and technologies are being developed in CA.

Regulations are good, but one has to know where to draw the line. I feel that California goes to far lots of the time. Another problem is probably illegal immigration; saying that illegal immigration has nothing whatsoever to do with it is intellectually dishonest. Still, I think the majority of the problem is over-regulation and too many entitlement programs.

I left Southern CA in 2004 and went back home to the south, best decision I ever made.

Triple the cost of living, double the hassle and a pay scale that isnt any better than somewhere else that has half the cost of living.

Once you get past the glitz and the novelty of living in sunny California, you realize it is more like a third world country and not really that great.

Anyone who wants to pay $2800 a month to live in a Mexican gang neighborhood, have at it.

Maybe California is broke because all of the green laws. I have noticed that when govt's start throwing money at the green cause, or taxing business's for environmental purposes, the state or country is almost bankrupt or is bankrupt.. I did enjoy reading the article. This is just an idea or theory of mine. I have noticed it for a while.

People fight the New World Order as a problem as having a 1 world gov't yet, division within a state is ok based on biased accounts....

we live in a world as "do as I say, not as I do" sad days we live in..

reply to post by ANNED

...There are over a 1000 pages of rules and regs on just how you can kill a chicken....

WOW do you have a link to that?

I have seen the same thing in Mass, another far left state. A developer buys a farm and then organizes the home owners to drive the rest of the farms in the area out of business so he can buy their land CHEAP, built some houses and make another killing. A friend lost their farm that way. It had been in the family for over 300 years.

Unfortunately I am afraid the USA is going to find out WHY it is foolish to cuss a farmer with your mouth full.

The Ag Cartel has won and food prices will skyrocket in the next ten years. According to someone else on ATS Monsanto is already going farm to farm trying to buy up organic farms and my blacksmith said the Japanese were in Oklahoma buying up ranches ten years ago.

There is only so much farmland on this earth and the Ag Cartel has been aggressively buying it up for years with the aid of the World Bank/IMF Structural Adjustment Programs, the World Trade Organization, the EU and Congress. Portugal lost 60% of her farmers, Mexico 75%, a million farmers are to be removed in Poland, farmers in India are suiciding thanks to Monsanto and those are only the ones I have stumbled across!

Unfortunately it will be too late when the idiot sheeple finally wake up to the realities of "Socialism" and realize it should be known as serfdom. Why else have the bankers been funding it all these years?

reply to post by Misoir


Good luck trying to convince people that conservatism or libertarianism are better.

None of these ideologies are relevant in this century.

reply to post by The Sword

None of these ideologies are relevant in this century.

That is because john Dewey's disciples did such a good job of brainwashing and dumbing down American children for the last hundred years or so. They have succeeded in creating a society of sheep. Why do you think the elite send THEIR children to Philips-Exeter and the like so they get a good CLASSICAL education?

The relevant ideology is actually Neo-feudalism.


Capitalism - not the Neo-Corporatism we see today - is respect for others, that is the respect for the right of others to their earnings and property. The Left is essentially those who wish to violate this right. They take "the moral high ground" to anoint themselves as the divider-up of the earnings and property of others. What the Left never seems to realize is the earnings and property of the poor are diverted into the coffers of the rich in a fancy shell game devised by the Central Bankers. Bloodsucking Bankers


David Rockefeller in Baden-Baden, Germany, June 1991:
"... the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government which will never again know war, but only peace and prosperity for the whole of humanity. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in the past centuries."

Sounds a lot like “What unites the many different forms of Socialism.. is the conception that socialism (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) must be handed down to the grateful masses in one form or another, by a ruling elite which is not subject to their control...” doesn't it? marxists.org

Here is an example of educational brainwashing in action:

“... Over the last quarter-century, historians have by and large ceased writing about the role of ruling elites in the country's evolution. Or if they have taken up the subject, they have done so to argue against its salience for grasping the essentials of American political history. Yet there is something peculiar about this recent intellectual aversion, even if we accept as true the beliefs that democracy, social mobility, and economic dynamism have long inhibited the congealing of a ruling stratum. This aversion has coincided, after all, with one of the largest and fastest-growing disparities in the division of income and wealth in American history....Neglecting the powerful had not been characteristic of historical work before World War II. ” hnn.us...