Alas, California!

[fastbolt]

Okay, while I think Buchanan does a lot of ranting in his various artcles and books, and not a lot of it necessarily in good taste or correct ... he IS a politician, you know ...

I can say that I've noticed more and more folks from my agency retiring out of state in recent years ... and I hope to become one of them in another couple of years ...

Almost 21 years in this line of work, watching the changes in living conditions and the laws occur, seems like a lot longer ...

 

[Tady45]

While filling out a new insurance policy recently, I had to write about 29 times "I do read write and understand english" or something to that effect Never mind the fact that I paid with my own pre printed checks in English! I am the minority in the City of Los Angeles, and the future of this City, I will be watching from a distance. The Dems and the Catholic Church, have made this area like a Tijuana North...


Larry

 

[wingman]

I seem to remember a mexican leader in
calif. stating "we will take it back one
house at a time" My feeling is give it back to Mexico now.!!

In time we must face the issue of mass
immigration, both legal and illegal , as
we no longer live in the 1800's and a
growing world population we need to
control our borders.!!

 

[Blackhawk]

PJB continually drags out the old NAFTA and GATT stealing U.S. jobs bromide. Labor is a commodity, and when Americans again offer more efficient labor than what's available in other countries, U.S. manufacturing jobs will pick up.

Even so, his column is a good commentary on the problem with socialism within a state where the citizens have the ability to move. When the productive taxpayers can leave, the structure is doomed sooner rather than later. As he said:

The coming budget wars in state capitals should make for some interesting politics.

Indeed!

 

[Southla1]

"I had to write about 29 times "I do read write and understand english" or something to that effect"

HAH! It's not just CA that that happens in.

Some years ago I stopped at a Holiday Inn In Las Vegas, New Mexico for breakfast while traveling home from a Wyoming hunt. I had to go through THREE yea count em THREE waitresses before I got ONE that could speak a very rudimental English. (she still screwed up the order).

If I was in Mexico or Spain I would use Spanish..................in the USA I refuse to use any language except English! (Unless a little coonass french slips out of my mouth when I get mad )

 

[Art Eatman]

Lendringser, Tamara: Like I said in the beginning, Buchanan's causal relationships or conclusions are unimportant. One thing he ain't is a liar, as to demographics and economic numbers. All he's doing is take publicly available data and putting several different datasets into one location.

Based on a ton of other similarly available information, I came to the same general conclusions--but several years ago. Had it not been for aerospace and silicon-stuff, the trend that began with the LA riots would have been faster and more obvious.

Check out the "newbies" who've moved into the I-25 corridor from Las Cruces to Wyoming. Same for Salt Lake City or Durango. Same for Portland and Seattle...Californios.

Couple this with the movement of industrial jobs out of the country, with $25/hr folks going to $10 or $12 an hour...I believe it was Gary North who's referred to it as "The WalMart-ization of America". In many rural counties, the largest employer is WalMart. The small storekeepers give up, going from $30/$40 K a year to $26 K a year. Not good for the economy or the tax base.

Ergo, more socialistic trends, with the concomitant ordinances and laws to control people--including us and our guns.

Art

, Art

 

[Giant]

Thank you Art, well said! You expressed what is happening in relation to the article being discussed much better than I ever could have.

twoblink, I am sure a majority of people, no matter their ethnic group want to work, when work is available. the problem is there are not enough high paying and medium or low paying jobs to go around. Those who were employed at higher rates of pay are now unemployed. They are not paying for services, so many at lower paying jobs are unemployed, underemployed, too. So! social relief programs are running out of dollars, the tax income of the states and Federal consist more and more of tax from low paying jobs. Things are not good right now, I think it will not get better anytime in the next couple of years. And when things do improve the social landscape is not going to be as it has been in the past.

Giant

 

[alan]

Art Eatman:

Is what you made reference to otherwise known as the "Californication" of this or that area?

 

[Art Eatman]

Yeah, alan, close enough.

Back in the 1970s, in the giant demographic shift which gave us "Rustbelt" and "Sunbelt", many folks from up north moved to Texas. I met a fair number in and around Austin. One thing which struck me was their nostalgia for how it had been "back home". I pointed out that had it been so good back home, they would not have moved. It took a while, but some of them finally figured out that changing Texas to more resemble Michigan might well not be a wise thing.

Californians are trainable little critters, though; if they're smart enough to move, they're smart enough to learn local manners and mores.

Thirty years back, some folks in Colorado were yowling and howling to get the Olympic Games there. This led to a bumper sticker showing green mountains with the cutline, "Don't Californicate Colorado".

So start early with housebreaking of the little doofers...

, Art

 

[John in ca]

Jato writes:

"Then who is buying all of the numerous $500,000 houses as fast as they are being built? Burger flippers? Fruit pickers?"

John in ca responds:

What you have in California is more "haves" and and a whole lot more "have nots". Very crowded state. They keep coming in, rich and poor, skilled and unskilled, while the natives leave in droves. Again, the poor and unskilled far outnumber the skilled, which leads to alot of California's budget and crime problems.

 

[UnknownSailor]

This Kalifornian left in 1998 (for Japan, but that's another story), and will never look back. I won't ever be taking orders there again, and will only visit. Family, and all that.

 

[gordo b.]

I'm gonna fix the invading s.o.b.s , I just paid $600 to Mexican government for importation rights for some guns, then when I pay bribe for "transportation permit" I'm gonna travel around down there legally armed! Got a small ranch out in boonies ,hired guards and will go there in winters armed. I declared .38 Spec 4inch Colt revolver, .22/20ga. Savage O/U and .30/.30 marlin 336 to travel to and from and at my residence for "protection from pests".!!! I'm SERIOUS. Carry the war to them!

 

[alan]

Art Eatman:

Excerpted from your response, the following: Back in the 1970s, in the giant demographic shift which gave us "Rustbelt" and "Sunbelt", many folks from up north moved to Texas. I met a fair number in and around Austin. One thing which struck me was their nostalgia for how it had been "back home". I pointed out that had it been so good back home, they would not have moved. It took a while, but some of them finally figured out that changing Texas to more resemble Michigan might well not be a wise thing.

I started out in NYC, left there years ago, and during my career as "engineering gypsey" or "tramp piper", worked in 20 someodd states and 3 other countries(western europe). Quite a while ago, I ran into some expatriat Texans on a petro-chem job in Pittsburgh. Most of them were decent people, just trying to earn their lunch money, during a time when things were bleak in Houston, so they went where there was work. Did that some myself too. In any event, a couple of them were always going on about how it was so much "better" back home in Texas.

At one point, I asked one of them a rhetorical question, one that I'm sure you can devine the nature of. Didn't get much of an answer, which was fine with me, as I had no investment of emotional capitol in Pittsburgh, it was merely a place where there was, at that time, work and reasonable financial arrangements to be made.

Anyhow, it isn't just northerners who wax nostalgic, as I'm sure you might have noticed. Then there is the story written by Thomas Wolfe, as I recall. The title was either Return to Babylon, or You Can't Go Home Again. Ther basis of the story being as follows: Things often never were, as you remembered them being.

End of ramble.

 

[Art Eatman]

Ah, but Alan, there's a difference: Generally, Texans are jackin' their jaws about how wonderful Texas is--but they mostly don't try to change wherever they are. They're happy in their nostalgia. They don't feel the need to make changes. Whatever happens, it won't be as good as Texas--at least in their minds--and they'll be going home to Texas someday, anyhow...

Hey, I did the Chevy Test Lab thing in Detroit City for a year. Spent 30 years there, one winter. Went home.

The folks I'm referring to were often quite vocal about changing things around in Texas so as to have it more resemble "back there". Usually, it had to do with some aspect of public--tax dollar--assistance, or unions.

, Art

 

[Russ]

I'm a native Californian. I got out a little over a year ago. My grandparents came there in the 1930's. It really is a shame. I don't relish seeing the PRK going down the drain. The economic consequences will be felt throughout the country.

At one time, 20% of the US food supply came out of the San Joaquin Valley. The DemocRAT party has destroyed the state in fairly short order with wild overspending. Until people wake up to that, it won't get better. Gray Davis may be out in 2006 but don't bet on his successor being a Republican. I think Cruz Bustamonte or Dean Florez will have a good chance.

 

[alan]

Russ offered, in part, the following: "At one time, 20% of the US food supply came out of the San Joaquin Valley. The DemocRAT party has destroyed the state in fairly short order with wild overspending. Until people wake up to that, it won't get better. Gray Davis may be out in 2006 but don't bet on his successor being a Republican. I think Cruz Bustamonte or Dean Florez will have a good chance."

The "DemocRAT party" might well have made a mess of things in California, except for one thing, or so it seems to me. Since nobody had ever noticed a usurpation of government, violent kind that is, they must have done it in some other way, via being elected to public office likely.

Now for the interesting part: If things in California were so great, I cannot say either way, before the "DemocRATS" obtained power, why on earth would the electorate have opted to change things? If people who migrated there, from other places, because things were "bad", where they came from, and California was so much "better", why on earth would these people, having the benefits of The California Life, opt for change? If I'm missing some salient point, let me know.

 

[Art Eatman]

alan, you're not factoring in such things as decades of time and demographic shifts. This didn't happen overnight. The other part of the deal is that the population growth wasn't all that much from in-state births, compared to in-migration from not just other U.S. states but from many foreign countries as well.

Just one example, there are two disparate groups whose voting patterns run together: Those among the poor who seek government assistance, and those who are socialistic in political view who seek power. This leads to candidates of many promises of government largesse, in order to buy votes--and in many cases from groups with no notions of independence and liberty. Most foreign migrants grew up with total gun control, for instance.

The net result is ever-increasing governmental control, spending, taxation and deficits.

Young people growing up within a given system accept "the way it is" as "the way it always was". They just have no way of knowing differently, since this is not part of the history they're taught in school--nor at home.

Art

 

[Nannuk]

People think that I am strange when I say that Texas is becoming the new California. But with all the anti-property rights laws (anti-smoking legislation, new stipulations on mineral rights, etc) and the talk of a state income tax, many things in this state are begining to look decidedly un-Texan. This "Californication" is happening elsewhere, I have a friend in Denver who has worked at Lawerence Livermore in the past. He says that every year Denver looks more like his past locale in Cali. California's exports may be down in every area except the one that no-one wants. Having watched what has happened in this state over the last fifteen yers, I pity the other states giving refuge to those ex-pat Calis.

Nannuk
Sic Semper Tyrannis

 

[Ledbetter]

alan

In simple terms,

1. Notably self-reliant and independent until after the in-migration caused by the Depression and WWII, Californians started to elect lawmakers whose ambitions were to extend publicly-subsidized services and welfare to all.

2. More and more people started coming here, and electing more lawmakers as described above.

3. Many Mexican nationals, faced with corruption and lack of opportunity in their own country, were among those who came. Many arrived without adequate financial means to get by without public assistance, which is available to them on the same basis as US citizens. Their birth rate is about double that of non-immigrants.

4. The summary: To live in California, you used to have to pull your own weight, and now you don't, and there is no shame attached to relying on the government to feed your kids for you. Many adverse consequences result.

Regards.

 

[alan]

Art Eatman, Ledbetter and Nanuk:

Interesting points raised by you three. Read and duly noted.