They won’t be satisfied until even the soup kitchens run dry;
California’s dominant ruling class—consisting of public-employee unions, green jihadis, and Democratic machine politicians—has no real use for science as Gilman saw it: as a way to create prosperity for its citizens. Instead, the prevailing credo of the state has been how to do everything possible to return to its pre-settlement condition, with little regard for what that means to the average Californian.
Nowhere was California’s old technological ethos more pronounced than in agriculture, where great Californians such as William Mulholland, creator of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and Pat Brown, who forged the state water project, created the greatest water-delivery system since the Roman Empire. Their effort brought water from the ice-bound Sierra Nevada mountains down to the state’s dry but fertile valleys and to the great desert metropolis of Southern California. Now, largely at the behest of greens, California agriculture is being systematically cut down by regulation. In an attempt to protect a small fish called the Delta smelt, upward of 200,000 acres of prime farmland have been idled, according to the state’s Department of Conservation. Even in the current “wet” cycle, California’s agricultural industry, which exports roughly $14 billion annually, is slowly being decimated. Unemployment in some Central Valley towns tops 30 percent, and in cases even 40 percent.
And now, notes my friend, Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue, green regulators are imposing new groundwater regulations that may force the shutdown of production even in areas like his that have their own ample water supplies.
“… even the soup kitchens run dry.”
The hallmark of the equality movement is the free fall to the bottom such that everyone is equally deprived.
Well, everyone except the aforementioned ruling class.
Mark nails it to a T as to what is going on in California. It is amazing that the voters continue to stand for this systematic destruction of their state’s economy.
I’ve had people (from the ‘city’) come out and ask us why we use ‘quad’ bikes instead of horses.
I respond by asking them why the used a car to get here instead of a team and wagon.
I usually get the Homer Simpson ‘blink’ in response.
anyone giving odds on when the friends of the right, the Republicans, decide to invade Canuckistan so they can steal our water?
it’s not like they haven’t done that kind of thing before.
Heh.
I remember reading a memoir by a German soldier in horse drawn artillery unit pre/during WWII. The greatest moment, remembered fondly, of his soldiering career was having his unit be motorized.
Getting rid of the damn horses (plus F/T vet, plus blacksmith, plus feeding and cleaning, and lame and injured animals, plus all the food for the horses, plus masses of water, never mind the never ending stream of horse shit everywhere, and injuries to soldiers from the nags getting ornery ) made his life as a soldier about 1000% easier.
Horses can be fun to ride, depending on them day in and day out for hard work IS hard work…a never ending pain in the derriere. Sometimes literally.
It seems the current klepto-climatecrats running Ontario are mimicking California’s descent into Malthusian austerity. Actually the sickness these ruling elite suffer from (aside from morbid detachment from our realities) is a cross between Malthus-like paranoia and a Luddite hatred of technological innovation and industry.
At any rate the McGuinty Kleptocrats have done a screw job on Ontario like the California Luddites have done on California. Better learn to like living in a cold dark unserviced shack if you vote for Premier Dad.
California is well on it’s way to becoming a reality show set for something resembling Mad Max … only for real.
I look forward to the day when every single white English speaking conservative has left that state including Dennis Miller … then what’s left will be a reality show to end all reality shows.
California, once the dream land of all the wold, will be reduced to a horde of squabbling marxists, who will be intimidated by the street gangs who will have replaced the police and there will be very little to eat …. no gas for your Prius, No one to clean your pool or trim the hedges.
Look most people in california i would say iti s probably right at or just on either side of the tipping point as in those who are for and those who are against ..so for me if i was there i would leave i know shouldn’t have to leave casue of some idiot making stuipd laws i agree , but leave then eventually when all of the conservatvies are gone and it is only the lefties who support this garbage ..i say let em rot ..let em eat there own sh!t , let em suffer and let em all die at hands of their own selfrightiousness and don’t give em a dime let them rot in stat state so that they can see just hpw stupid they are and even after that and they come crawling back leave em for dead they will only do it again. that’s my opinion.
California isn’t being destroyed by the elites but by normal people who don’t have the cojones to stand up to the civil servants, socialist politicians and nutty environmentalists who are bringing 1 1/2 centuries of development and progress down around their ears. Things aren’t going to end well there.
Zog at September 6, 2011 12:27 PM
The problem with these deep-blue states is that when the natural and logical consequences of their poor voting behavior begin to appear, people leave the state that they helped destroy and move to another state (e.g., Texas & Colorado). They are always surprised to find that their new state begins to have the same problems they were fleeing from in their old state. Unfortunately, they have yet to figure out that there is a direct correlation between how they vote and the quality of life they enjoy.
It’s too bad that they can’t be fenced in and forced to live with the results of the policies and laws they voted to create.
The most likely scenario for Californian agriculture to stand up to enviro-leviathan is through the use of Mexican Drug Cartels as their protection force. Civil collapse at that level is the most likely way that a brain-dead electorate beyond hope reaches their discovery-of-reality moment. The same fate will befall much of the rest of America if Obama gets a second term. Social unrest, ethnic and union-thug rioting on a regular basis will be the bare minimum cost of electing a reformer to the White House. Rand was an optimist.
The Clock count is amost finished for California, ~ one more full moon & bingo…
The FED’s have been backing California bonds, although that was not approved by Congress…
Who cares about California?, let them and the Corrupt Ninth Circuit go to hell,
little ol’ moi
I won’t give odds for something that nuts, but I will for this senerio.
America has an Hispanic problem, do you really think they want a French one?
Alberta will sell our water for a profit, just like we do our oil,just as we did our coal.
Mean while the East will continue in green madness till they strangle on thier own poverty.
Its why Albertans make 30% more in wages.
We actually believe in a capitalist system. As do now our Neighbours Saskatchewan. There moving right on up the right way. No more left turns.
“Less Unions for better living.”
You’ve gotta love a place where every restaurant has a disclaimer that their food may cause cancer and/or heart disease.
I recall eastern europe in the ’80’s.
We were motoring along in eastern DDR (East Germany) and about noonish, we decided to stop for lunch.
The restaurant was closed “for lunch”….through the window we could see the employees eating their lunch….bizarre but true…
That is where California is headed.
Fred2
I recall reading that memoir….
I also recall Dad telling about my grandfather acquiring an old artillery horse….hitching it to a wagon and heading down the road to town. It had a mind of it’s own…walked on the flat with a steady pace…but took an unsolicited run at every up-grade and went downhill even faster….obviously afraid the the gun it was used to hauling would run it down….
Dad never drove that horse…grandfather dealt it quickly to the first aspiring horse trader he met….who was killed in a bizarre wagon upset….hmmm….caveat emptor.