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?
I would add to VDH’s excellent rant that the single place in the Central Valley which sees noticeable regulation and inspectors, cops etc. is Glamis.
Here’s a website about Glamis.
http://www.glamisdunes.com/index.php
Glamis is a -store- in the middle of the Imperial Sand Dunes, a 40 mile wide stretch of SAND. Where nothing grows, nothing is made, built, mined, or otherwise consumed. People go there to rip around the sand in dune buggies, ATVs and motorcycles. That’s it.
There’s more BLM enforcers, greenie regulators, cops, firemen, ambulances and what have you on an average weekend in the dunes than there are in El Centro, a town of 40,000. A -lot- more. They seem to spend most of their time hassling people for fire permits, parking permits, off-road vehicle permits, gun permits, vendor permits, and drinking beer in their camp sites. With attitude!
Oh, and trying to have the BLM close the place so the sand won’t be destroyed. They spend a lot of time on that too.
Did I mention its a pile of sand?
Californian tax dollars at work.
Golly Phantom, I wouldn’t so much call that a rant 🙁
Everything will be fine though once they legalize marijuana and live off its avails….forever. You can make clothes and rope and billions of tax dollars with it :O
California is DOA…Nothing will save that sick puppy… It has to be treated as a POX on the rest of the Union…
The US Congress MUST reorganize the Ninth (9) Circuit to get looney California “off” the western smaller States, and the insane protection provided to the Environmental Fraudsters…
JMHO
VDH: “I note only that there are vast numbers of people [in California] 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.”
Passing a panhandler on the street in downtown Toronto the other day, my husband made a point of not giving the guy one red cent: He was smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone — to the guy just down the road to find out how much he’d made so far?
Sometimes I think these “beggars” are in business together and that they don’t make a bad living off the hard work of the rest of us, all tax-, responsibility-, and accountability-free.
A few eons ago I worked at an industrial bakery in Toronto, one of the perks of which was as much free bread as I could carry at the end of each shift. When the street kids begged for change, I could generally tell which ones were actually needy; they were the ones that would accept free bread in lieu of cash.
It’s always the easy target, folks.
Here in Canada our police forces confiscate more long guns from hunters and sport enthusiasts year over year than they do illicit handguns even though far more crime is committed with handguns.
Why risk life and limb to stop real crime when you can get more kudos for sticking it to the law-abiding long gun owner whose permit just expired?
And people wonder why the police chiefs endorse the gun registry?
Uh, Kate. I believe San Andreas is a little too west. Perhaps a tsunami flooding to the Sierra Nevada would do.
Progressive/liberal response:
VDH, nice article. But I think you’ve got things mixed up a bit. Wherever you see the phrase “illegal alien”, replace with “xenophophobic, racist american citizen”. Where you see citizen, replace with “hard working hispanic immigrant doing whatever he can to feed his family”. Now re-read the truth. We can’t have people spreading lies now.
Reminds me of Quebec in some regards . . a faux liberal society, with oh so progressives floating around the top and the whole thing a ponzi scheme economy dependent on the charity of external sources.
Isn’t San Andreas a saint already?
Great article, thanks. It makes me wonder what the extent of the underground economy has on the state. There must be studies out there somewhere.
The sad part is that no recovery is on the horizon.
Certainly the new/old Governor will cry and beg for more money from Washington and perhaps Obama will borrow more to keep them going.
The place is getting to depict the return of the grapes of wrath. Tent cities are on the rise and no hope at all.
I wish I could say that a Government change would make the difference, but it may be to late.
I lived in El Centro for a couple of years and it was in bad shape back in the 1990’s as well. The Dunes had a population rise of 40,000 every long weekend and someone always got killed from Booze, speed or stupidity.
It’s very sad to see the real suffering going on in California. It’s deteriorated from a fantasy dream land to a frightening sick land. But,I still love to go there.
Our friends at the ATF who have long shown a propensity to go after otherwise law abiding gun dealers & gun owners rather than prosecuting real criminals who often shoot back rather than meekly submitting to arrest. I suspect California regulators rightly fear a violent end if they even thought about enforcing the law.
It was announced on Global B.C. last night that the Liberals, if elected, would lower the voting age in provincial elections to 16 years. The NDP concur and have already allowed (was it 12 or 13 year olds) the right to vote in their won leadership contests.Now think back to when you were 16 and all the bright ideas you had then. The world has gone mad!
This is what you get for government policies that promote outsourcing.
No business or association can outbribe a country.
When China and India both bribe the Western governments to establish tax codes and business regulations that inhibit business in the West, it is impossible to confront as what is hurt is individual and small business that has no resources to lobby. The trans-national corporations don’t get hurt, they move like a squid or jellyfish, just shifting centre of mass from one continent to another.
And in the end you get a country going down the toilet, but it’s too late, because the bureaucrats have pocketed the cash and bought themselves bungalows in the Swiss Alps, while the local workers who lost the jobs also lost the qualifications and can’t get back to work even if business magically repatriates.
The two countries are destroying us with your oh-so ‘conservative’ approval. You are committing suicide and dragging me along, just like with many other issues. Time to smarten up and start packing rebar.
Orlin in Marquette
[…….It makes me wonder what the extent of the underground economy has on the state. There must be studies out there somewhere……]
Hanson described the cross-roads mobile “stores”.
What was called “the Black Market” in Europe is huge in California (dominant)..especially when you count in the drug trade….
There will be no “studies”…..it is an inconvenient truth to be concealed/ignored.
This is what is known as Anarcho-tyranny..which is law without order. the middle is squeezed by the endless tyranny of petty bureaucrats and the ungoverned criminal classes that the elite refuses to control. The only laws that are enforced are the ones that entrench the power of the elite or punish resisters
Thus, the middle is the the victim of anarchy from below and tyranny from above.
What is happening in California couldn’t happen to a more deserving population of Leftist Loons.
Anarchy in sunny Cal .. is spreading like the wildfires in the Santa Ana winds.
When the top finally blows off and I trust it will be televised, I will watch it on a wide screen with a bottle of schadenfreude.
“Agriculture itself — from almonds to raisins — has increasingly become corporatized and mechanized, cutting by half the number of farm workers needed. ”
so why the bitching? this is capitalism at its purist. marginalize labour in favour of a machine that can be totally controlled and costed.
also, isn’t the californicate governor a republican? so again SDA, why the bitching and finger pointing and /sarc on stuff?
now carry on your hero worshiping.
Hey Aaron …it ISN’T the conservatives who want to give all our tax money to China so they can save the planet.
Chretien had billions stashed away to pay the “fines” incured for deliberatly NOT meeting Kyoto emission reductions.
Liberals had their duckets all lined up, they were about to (let the scimming begin).
You can thank Harper, for NOT signing on to the scam of the century , But we know you won’t.
I copied this comment from the NR. So Canadian, only the names have been changed.
“I applied for educational and media-based jobs all over Fresno in the early 1990s. (I applied to be a theater professor at your Cal State Fresno.) The jobs all called for bilinguality, and after 28 months in Mexico, I spoke fluent Spanish. In every case, I was told no Anglos need apply. So I changed my name to Reinaldo Garcia. I am a fourth generation Californian who has to masquerade as a Latino.”
California is a failed state, just like Mexico.
They go after the [reasonably] affluent and law-abiding, because they can. Why risk life and limb to enforce the existing laws? Besides, it pays better.
Great piece. It’s like reading a Cormac McCarthy novel.
I was looking for this link to juxtapose to the name change irony I noted a few comments back.
http://www.nelsonguirado.com/index.php/asymmetric/2009/10/31/anglicizing-names-jane-velez-mitchell-versus-rick-sanchez
Something I hadn’t noticed previously, Mitchell, at 1:55 in the first clip, declares that Texas, New Mexico and California were at one time all part of Mexico. The left is intent on rendering this territory indistinguishable from Mexico.
> Hey Aaron …it ISN’T the conservatives who want to give all our tax money to China so they can save the planet.
Attempt to distract from the issue of outsourcing using ‘clamatism’ FAIL.
You personally may not know it, but many on this forum argued with me about outsourcing for the last 6 or so years. They maintained that outsourcing to India and China was a positive capitalist thing, because – listen carefully – it gave an opportunity for those countries to develop their economy.
This is how I expose the closet collectivists pretending to be conservatives.
One of the best eye-witness reporting pieces I’ve read in some time. Many of my friends who travel the roads in the US SW say the same thing. The US has growing rural enclaves of 3rd world austerity. Much of it from (as the author says) over regulating and taxing chasing productive prosperity and 1st world populations out of the area. What has moved in to fill the void are corporations, who buy up the deserted properties at cut rate deals, and the illegal immigrant population they use for a resident low wage work force in their 3rd world agri-biz.
This is a living example that eventually socialism will bankrupt a prosperous country then the vultures (corporate feudalism) take over. After the pending debt implosion collapses the US economy and they realize they no longer have the agricultural and manufacturing base to recover, there will be a lot of rural regions in the US that look like the rural SW Cal.
If the US is lucky China will call a loan and take California off their hands in trade. They won’t even have to change the acronym – PRC.
The Alinsky left, which governs the US, loves the growing rich/poor demographic of California, and the shrinking middle class one. In fact, they view that demo as a winning combination that will only strengthen their position as the permanent ruling class as California has the largest chunk of House members and electoral votes in presidential elections. And, as VDH makes clear, they are the only winners in the new Mexifornia, as they are the only ones not harassed by the state government. An ultrarich/welfare recipients base has certainly proved a very durable electoral model in Europe.
The state won’t have a chance until that electoral combination is broken, and that will only happen when the bailouts from the Federal government are cut off. The state presently lives off the remnant institutions accumulated in its sane and uncorrupt youth.
Temmy: … the middle is squeezed by the endless tyranny of petty bureaucrats and the ungoverned criminal classes that the elite refuses to control is a good description of what the Left everywhere does: get rid of the middle class by taxing us to the max and giving our hard-earned dollars to the ungoverned criminal classes and the “victim class” ’caused’ (sic) by the values and mores of “traditional society.”
In this way, they destroy the class that thinks for itself, that works hard for itself in order to care for their families and the betterment of society in order to ensure a class that is in thrall to them and their socialist “largesse,” stolen, if you will, from the hard-working, independent middle class.
The only problem is, as Margaret Thatcher pointed out, the Left soon runs out of other people’s — aka, the middle classes’ — money, leaving society a total disaster.
Well it is run by lefties.
Larben
The BC NDP likes the idea of involving 12 year olds because their minds can still be shaped by the NDP’s best friends …….the BCTF(British Columbia Teacher’s Federation). Brainwashing is live and well in some BC classrooms.