http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/california-the-road-warrior-is-here/?singlepage=true


Our Version

Sometimes, and in some places, in California I think we have nearly descended into Miller’s dark vision — especially the juxtaposition of occasional high technology with premodern notions of law and security. The state deficit is at $16 billion. Stockton went bankrupt; Fresno is rumored to be next. Unemployment stays over 10% and in the Central Valley is more like 15%. Seven out of the last eleven new Californians went on Medicaid, which is about broke. A third of the nation’s welfare recipients are in California. In many areas, 40% of Central Valley high school students do not graduate — and do not work, if the latest crisis in finding $10 an hour agricultural workers is any indication. And so on.

Our culprit out here was not the Bomb (and remember, Hiroshima looks a lot better today than does Detroit, despite the inverse in 1945). The condition is instead brought on by a perfect storm of events that have shred the veneer of sophisticated civilization. Add up the causes. One was the destruction of the California rural middle class. Manufacturing jobs, small family farms, and new businesses disappeared due to globalization, high taxes, and new regulations. A pyramidal society followed of a few absentee land barons and corporate grandees, and a mass of those on entitlements or working for government or employed at low-skilled service jobs. The guy with a viable 60 acres of almonds ceased to exist.

Illegal immigration did its share. No society can successfully absorb some 6-7 million illegal aliens, in less than two decades, the vast majority without English, legality, or education from the poorer provinces of Mexico, the arrivals subsidized by state entitlements while sending billions in remittances back to Mexico — all in a politicized climate where dissent is demonized as racism. This state of affairs is especially true when the host has given up on assimilation, integration, the melting pot, and basic requirements of lawful citizenship.

Enron ruined California's economy almost all by themselves...and that was caused by energy deregulation, not too much regulation.

Fish on...

Todd

Yeah California definately needs more progressive thinkers like you along with more regulation...

Enron was barely a drop in the bucket, make that a drop in an Olympic sized swimming pool compared to the real problems California is and has faced but ignored and continues to ignore.

No, what we need are a bunch more clowns and buffoons like you to watch it happen right in front of their fuckin faces, and then claim that exactly the opposite happened and that we need exactly more of exactly what fukked it up in the first place.

Fish on...

Todd

Or, to not watch it happen, or know jackshit about it, but to read what right wing dingbats have to say about it on some stupid blog, when they're the ones who fuckked it up in the first place, and accept it hook, line, and sinker because reading right wing horseshit is easier than thinking, and fun to boot.

Fish on...

Todd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

(annotated with things like facts, and sources, unlike the crap you posted)

Fish on...

Todd

If by Enron you mean Mexicans and by doing it all by itself you mean with progressive free-thinkers like yourself I agree.

Otherwise your "it's all Enron or Bush or evil corporations fault" bullsh it is just that...bullsh it.

Californias problem is that it's run by dipsh!ts like you.

Enron caused plenty of trouble but it didn't single-handedly bring down one of the largest economies in the world. That dubious honor rests on the back of gutless, progressive, 'free thinkers', La Raza and the simple fact the your utopian ideals have been tried and are failing.

You can holler and cry all you want but your liberal fantasies are crumbling right in front of Californias eyes and blaming conservatives for the failure of that liberal playground is laughable, expected but laughable.

The wikipedia citation was a nice touch, or should I say a desperate reach.

Hank--- Of course it has nothing to do with Enron but progressive panty sniffers never miss a chance to blame anything or anybody but themselves (the real cause).

While Todd stamps his wittle feet and yells even louder at his monitor while throwing out little gems like this....


"No, what we need are a bunch more clowns and buffoons like you to watch it happen right in front of their fuckin faces, and then claim that exactly the opposite happened and that we need exactly more of exactly what fukked it up in the first place."


Somebody buy Todd a mirror please.....

Well, Hell......let me throw this in the mix.....I'm sure you've never heard of it before......but.......California will be declared "too big to fail" and then us Wrinkled people up here and farmers in Iowa and everyone else will be bailing out that state full of liberals. Bank it.

Yeah, you're right. It's the same ones who ruined the economy, made all the banks fail, destroyed billions in retirement funds, spilled oil in the Gulf, and is causing global climate change.

Mexicans.

You guys are fuckin brilliant.

If we just got rid of regulations we could let the "free market" and the trustworthy big banks fix everything, 'cuz that's been working so fuckin good so far, except for letting the Mexicans foul it all up.

Fish on...

Todd

Now enron spilled oil and is the root cause of "GLOBAL WARMING". They're probably behind all those dead pitbulls in the story too...huh?

To ignore the illegal problem shows you have not a clue, which doesn't surprise many of us coincidentally.

For a 'guy' that thinks so highly of himself you prove what a phvcking idiot you are.

No, dumbass. Mexicans did it all.

Fish on...

Todd

P.S. Not blaming everything in the world on Mexicans is not ignoring them, it's called "not being a fuckin idiot".

To ignore that they have played a major role in California shows you are a complete fuckin idiot.

You tried and failed on this thread, proved again that you are a fuckin idiot, and now are left without anything but sarcasm.

Let me see if I get this, California is going broke, and it's the Mexicans' fault. Uh-huh, that makes sense. In that case, the obvious solution is to give California back to Mexico. Every place in the state has Mexican names anyway.

Apparently Todd thinks so. Millions of illegal titt-suckers does tend to drain an empty system. Does that make sense Salmo?

Give the state back to Mexico, La Raza thinks it belongs to them anyway, but it'll sure as hell make Oregon more uncomfortable. Eventually that cancer'll spread to Washington more so then it has now.

Yeah, when I point out that you are retarded if you think it's the Mexicans fault, that means I want to give California back to Mexico.

That makes as much sense as when I point out that it was, in all probability, that Mexicans are also responsible for global climate change, the banking meltdown, the disappearance of billions and billions in retirement funds, not to mention the Gulf oil spill, and I'm being sarcastic and clearly too clever by half for your retarded self to understand, what I really mean is that Enron is causing global warming.

You're on a roll tonight, RvW...usually your just kinda dumb and entertaining, tonight you're full on stupid as a box of rusty hammers with busted handles.

Fish on...

Todd

I'd not be inclined to give CA back but it doesn't surprise me that Salmo sees that as the only solution. His defeatist attitude is even apparent in his feable attempt at sarcasm.

He comes running (or biking) to Todds' aid like a silent whistle was blown for a dog...

Now you're just showing off just how stupid you can be.

No more...you win!

Fish on...

Todd

Nice one Einstein.





You've bobbed and weaved, diverted and obfuscated, done everything you can but you still haven't made a case for Enron being the reason California is bankrupt. Nice try but you have completely failed.

I always know that you'll respond to any post that has anything, remotely to do with liberals, fags and now California. You have proven (again) that you like nothing better than to hear yourself talk/type and have virtually nothing to offer to a debate.

Now go on and tell us how Enron caused what we see today (11yrs later) in California, defend illegals, over-spending, over-regulation, over-taxation, etc and try and do it with a straight face.

Usually you're so fuckin stupid I ignore you but since this was my thread I felt obligated to respond to your stupidity. I've read your sh!t too long to know there is no convincing you that you're a fuckin clueless progressive that spent too much time getting an 'education' only to never use it.


It's a shame how much mommy and daddy spent on your education only to have you (and them) waste it online. You really could have done something, anything with your life.

So yeah I win. I have won pretty much all my life with everything I've done and have a hard time identifying with folks like you...you're a loser....probably always will be. That's why you can't STFU as evidenced by your post count, incessant ranting and raving and...well your station in life.

In any case have a good night and I'll 'see ya tomorrow'.

". . . incessant ranting and raving . . ."

This couldn't possibly be a case of pot meet kettle.

RVW, it's hard to blame the Mexicans for taking advantage of any good deal offered by California or any other state or country. If clueless progressive attributes are the problem, I suppose you think your clueless regressive attributes would be a solution? You seem sufficiently far right, in a Limbaugh-esque sort of way, to be unable to see that neither the far right nor far left have the necessary common sense to solve any problems, except their own, temporarily, at someone else's expense.

And defeatist attitude? You gotta' be kiddin'. I'm the modern day Polly Anna. While your cup is half empty, and Todd's is half full, mine is positively over-flowing.

Delusional or alzheimers, which are you affected by?

Perhaps our fisheries could use less of the 'rose colored glasses' you like to espouse and more of a serious hard look, you know the realism that comes with not pretending. You are, or should be retired by now and your damage is done so stop pretending your glass is "overflowing".

Maybe instead of pretending you're Polly Anna a more accurate descriptor would be Nero.

The same 'attitude' that fuckd our fisheries is quickly fuckng California. The 'let's pretend a problem doesn't exist' might be fine for you but us younger generation have to live with and clean up the chit you've chat. Pat yourself and stroke Todd all you want but it doesn't change the reality that exists, here and in California.

You should look into the mirror that will be bought for Todd. It's doubtful that mirror or history will show your best features.

In any case have a good night Nero in Polly Anna clothes.

Since it's obvious the 2 stooges want to argue semantics because the truth is too painful I'll post the whole article.....thereby saving similar retards the difficulty of clicking the link...

It's well written and an accurate assessment of the failure of folks with 'overflowing' cups. Perhaps the stooges could address the article rather than the rebuttles to their red herrings. I know it's too much to ask from emotional progressives but WTF.....





Where’s Mel Gibson When You Need Him?

George Miller’s 1981 post-apocalyptic film The Road Warrior envisioned an impoverished world of the future. Tribal groups fought over what remained of a destroyed Western world of law, technology, and mass production. Survival went to the fittest — or at least those who could best scrounge together the artifacts of a long gone society somewhat resembling the present West.

In the case of the Australian film, the culprit for the detribalization of the Outback was some sort of global war or perhaps nuclear holocaust that had destroyed the social fabric. Survivors were left with a memory of modern appetites but without the ability to reproduce the means to satisfy them: in short, a sort of Procopius’s description of Gothic Italy circa AD 540.


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Our Version

Sometimes, and in some places, in California I think we have nearly descended into Miller’s dark vision — especially the juxtaposition of occasional high technology with premodern notions of law and security. The state deficit is at $16 billion. Stockton went bankrupt; Fresno is rumored to be next. Unemployment stays over 10% and in the Central Valley is more like 15%. Seven out of the last eleven new Californians went on Medicaid, which is about broke. A third of the nation’s welfare recipients are in California. In many areas, 40% of Central Valley high school students do not graduate — and do not work, if the latest crisis in finding $10 an hour agricultural workers is any indication. And so on.

Our culprit out here was not the Bomb (and remember, Hiroshima looks a lot better today than does Detroit, despite the inverse in 1945). The condition is instead brought on by a perfect storm of events that have shred the veneer of sophisticated civilization. Add up the causes. One was the destruction of the California rural middle class. Manufacturing jobs, small family farms, and new businesses disappeared due to globalization, high taxes, and new regulations. A pyramidal society followed of a few absentee land barons and corporate grandees, and a mass of those on entitlements or working for government or employed at low-skilled service jobs. The guy with a viable 60 acres of almonds ceased to exist.

Illegal immigration did its share. No society can successfully absorb some 6-7 million illegal aliens, in less than two decades, the vast majority without English, legality, or education from the poorer provinces of Mexico, the arrivals subsidized by state entitlements while sending billions in remittances back to Mexico — all in a politicized climate where dissent is demonized as racism. This state of affairs is especially true when the host has given up on assimilation, integration, the melting pot, and basic requirements of lawful citizenship.

Terrible governance was also a culprit, in the sense that the state worked like a lottery: those lucky enough by hook or by crook to get a state job thereby landed a bonanza of high wages, good benefits, no accountability, and rich pensions that eventually almost broke the larger and less well-compensated general society. When I see hordes of Highway Patrolmen writing tickets in a way they did not before 2008, I assume that these are revenue-based, not safety-based, protocols — a little added fiscal insurance that pensions and benefits will not be cut.

A coarsening of popular culture — a nationwide phenomenon — was intensified, as it always is, in California. The internet, video games, and modern pop culture translated into a generation of youth that did not know the value of hard work or a weekend hike in the Sierra. They didn’t learn how to open a good history book or poem, much less acquire even basic skills such as mowing the lawn or hammering a nail. But California’s Generation X did know that they were “somebody” whom teachers and officials dared not reprimand, punish, prosecute, or otherwise pass judgment on for their anti-social behavior. Add all that up with a whiny, pampered, influential elite on the coast that was more worried about wind power, gay marriage, ending plastic bags in the grocery stores — and, well, you get the present-day Road Warrior culture of California.

Pre- and Post-Modern

I am writing tonight in Palo Alto after walking among nondescript 1,500 square-foot cottages of seventy-year vintage that sell for about $1.5-2 million and would go in a similar tree-shaded district in Fresno or Merced for about $100,000. Apparently, these coastal Californians want to be near Stanford and big money in Silicon Valley. They also must like the fact that they are safe to jog or ride bikes in skimpy attire and the general notion that there is “culture” here amid mild weather. I suppose when a car pulls out in front of you and hits your bumper on University Avenue, the driver has a license, registration, and insurance — and this is worth the extra million to live here. My young fellow apartment residents like to jog in swimming suits; they would last one nanosecond doing that on De Wolf Avenue outside Selma.

Survival?

Meanwhile, 200 miles and a world away, here are some of the concerns recently in the Valley. There is now an epidemic of theft from tarped homes undergoing fumigation. Apparently as professionals tent over homes infested with termites, gangs move into the temporarily abandoned houses to burrow under the tarps and loot the premises — convinced that the dangers of lingering poisonous gas are outweighed by the chance of easy loot. Who sues whom when the gangbanger prying into the closet is found gassed ? When I get termites, I spot treat myself with drill and canisters; even the professional services warn that they can kill off natural pests, but not keep out human ones.

No one in the Central Valley believes that they can stop the epidemic of looting copper wire. I know the local Masonic Hall is not the Parthenon, but you get the picture of our modern Turks prying off the lead seals of the building clamps of classical temples.

Protection is found only in self-help. To stop the Road Warriors from stripping the copper cable from your pump or the community’s street lights, civilization is encouraged to put in a video camera, more lighting, more encasement, a wire protective mesh — all based on the premise that the authorities cannot stop the thieves and your livelihood is predicated on the ingenuity of your own counter-terrorism protocols. But the thief is always the wiser: he calculates the cost of anti-theft measures, as well as the state’s bill in arresting, trying, and rehabilitating him, and so wagers that it is cheaper for all of us to let him be and just clean up his mess.

Reactionary Dreaming

In around 1960, rural California embraced modern civilization. By that I mean both in the trivial and fundamental sense. Rural dogs were usually vaccinated and licensed — and so monitored. Homes were subject to building codes and zoning laws; gone were the privies and lean-tos. Streets were not just paved, but well-paved. My own avenue was in far better shape in 1965 than it is now. Mosquito abatement districts regularly sprayed stagnant water ponds to ensure infectious disease remained a thing of our early-20th-century past. Now they merely warn us with West Nile Virus alerts. Ubiquitous “dumps” dotted the landscape, some of them private, ensuring, along with the general code of shame, that city-dwellers did not cast out their old mattresses or baby carriages along the side of the road. It seems the more environmental regulations, the scarcer the dumps and the more trash that litters roads and private property.

I walk each night around the farm. What is the weirdest find? A nearby alleyway has become a dumping place for the rotting corpses of fighting dogs. Each evening or so, a dead dog (pit bulls, Queensland terriers) with a rope and plenty of wounds is thrown up on the high bank. The coyotes make short work of the remains. Scattered about are several skeletons with ropes still around their necks. I suppose that at about 2 a.m. the organizers of dog fights drive in and cast out the evenings’ losers. I have never seen such a thing in 58 years (although finding plastic bags with dead kittens in the trash outside my vineyard was a close second). Where is PETA when you need them? Is not the epidemic of dog- and cock-fighting in central California a concern of theirs? (Is berating in Berkeley a corporation over meat-packing a bit more glamorous than running an education awareness program about animal fights in Parlier?)

Education, Education, Education…

The public schools were once the key to California’s ascendance. Universal education turned out well-prepared citizens who were responsible for California’s rosy future — one based on an excellent tripartite higher education system of junior colleges, state colleges, and universities; sophisticated dams and irrigation systems; and a network of modern freeways and roads. In the private sphere, the culture of shame still prevailed, at least in the sense that no one wanted his 16-year-old son identified in the papers (with his home address no less) as arrested for breaking and entering. And such crime was rare. Rural California was a checkerboard of 40- and 80-acre farms, with families that were viable economic units and with children who worked until dark after school. It is hard to steal when you must disc ten acres after baseball practice.

I think it is a fair assessment to say that all of the above is long past. Since about 1992, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) testing, California ranks between 41 and 48 in math and science, depending on the year and the particular grade that is assessed. About half of the incoming freshmen at the California State University system — the largest public university in the world — are not qualified to take college courses, and must first complete “remediation” to attain a level of competence that was assumed forty years ago in the senior year of high school. The students I taught at CSU Fresno were far better prepared in 1984 than those in 2004 are; the more money, administrators, “learning centers,” and counselors, the worse became the class work.

I finally threw out my old syllabi last month: the 1985 Greek Literature in Translation course at CSU Fresno seemed to read like a Harvard class in comparison to my 2003 version with half the reading, half the writing, and all sorts of directions on how to make up missed work and flunked exams. It wasn’t just that I lost my standards, but that I lost my students who could read.

Life in the Whatever Lane

Does any of that matter? Well, yes. Those who are not educated soon inherit the reins of public responsibility. In practical terms, the symptoms are everywhere. I now expect that my county property tax returns will have common errors, from the spelling of my name or address to the particular acreage assessed.

When entering the bank, I expect people not just to not speak English, but occasionally not to write any language, and thus put a mark down, in Old West fashion, to cash their checks.

When I deal with a public agency, I assume the person on the opposite end of the counter or phone will not to be able to transact the requested service, or at least not be able to transact any other service other than the narrow one trained for. Calling any public agency is to receive a recording and then an incoherent order to press numerous buttons that lead to more recordings. Woe to the poor fool who walks into a Department of Motor Vehicles office on an average day, seeking to obtain a copy of his pink slip or find a registration form. The response is “get a number,” “make an appointment,” “get in line,” “wait,” or “see a supervisor.”

Cocooning

I quit not just riding a bike on the rural avenues where I grew up, but walking upon them as well. Why? There is a good chance (twice now) of being bitten not just by a loose dog without vaccination, but by one whose owner is either unable to communicate or vanishes when hunted down. And then there are the official agencies whose de facto policy is that our ancestors did such a good job eradicating rabies that we can more or less coast on their fumes.

Forty years ago I assumed rightly that cars parked along the side of the road were out of gas or needed repair. Now? I expect that the cars are much more reliable, but the owner of any car parked outside my house is either stealing fruit, casing the joint, using drugs, or inebriated. Last week I explained to a passer-by why he could not steal the peaches from my trees; he honestly thought not only that he could, but that he almost was obligated to.

What makes The Road Warrior so chilling a metaphor is the combination of the premodern and postmodern. While utter chaos reigns in rural California, utter absurdity reigns inside the barricades, so to speak, on the coast. So, for example, San Franciscans will vote on whether to blow up the brilliantly engineered Hetch Hetchy water project (I bet they won’t vote yes), more or less the sole source of water for the San Francisco Bay Area. The National Park Service debates blowing up historic stone bridges over the Merced River in Yosemite Valley — as hyper-environmentalists assume that they have so much readily available power and water from prior generations at their fingertips that they have the luxury of dreaming of returning to a preindustrial California. Of course, they have no clue that their romance is already reified outside Madera, Fresno, or Bakersfield.

High-Speed Madness

Take the new high-speed rail project, whose first link is designated to zoom not far from my house. An empiricist would note there is already an Amtrak (money-losing) line from Fresno to Corcoran (home of Charles Manson). There is now no demand to use another lateral (getting nowhere more quickly?). There is no proof that California public agencies — from universities to the DMV — can fulfill their present responsibilities in such a way that we would have confidence that new unionized state workers could run such a dangerous thing as high-speed rail (e.g., if we can’t keep sofas and washing machines out of the local irrigation ponds, why do we think we could keep them off high-speed rail tracks? Do we think we are French?).

If one were to drive on the 99, the main interior north-south “highway” from the Grapevine to Sacramento, one would find places, like south of Kingsburg, where two poorly paved, potholed, and crowded lanes ensure lots of weekly accidents. Can a state that has not improved its ancestors’ highway in 50 years be entrusted to build high-speed mass transit? Can a state presently $16 billion in arrears be expected to finance a $100 billion new project? Can a state that ranks 48th in math field the necessary personnel to build and operate such a postmodern link?

We Are Scary

One of the strangest things about Road Warrior was the ubiquity of tattooed, skin-pierced tribal people with shaved heads and strange clothes. At least the cast and sets seemed shocking some thirty years ago. If I now sound like a reactionary then so be it: but when I go to the store, I expect to see not just the clientele, but often some of the workers, with “sleeves” — a sort of throwback to red-figure Athenian vase painting where the ink provides the background and the few patches of natural skin denote the silhouetted image. And stranger still is the aging Road Warrior: these are folks in their forties who years ago got pierced and tattooed and aged with their sagging tribal insignia, some of them now denoting defunct gangs and obsolete popular icons.

I am not naïve enough (as Horace’s laudator temporis acti ) to wish to return to the world of my grandfather (my aunt was crippled for life with polio, my grandmother hobbled with the scars and adhesions from an unoperated-on, ruptured appendix, my grandfather battled glaucoma each morning with vials of eye drops), when around 1960, in tie and straw hat, he escorted me to the barber. The latter trimmed my hair in his white smock and bowtie, calling me at eight years old Mr. Hanson.

Like Road Warrior, again, what frightens is this mish-mash of violence with foppish culture, of official platitudes and real-life chaos: the illiterate and supposedly impoverished nonetheless fishing through the discounted video game barrel at Wal-Mart; the much-heralded free public transit bus zooming around on electrical or natural gas power absolutely empty of riders, as the impoverished prefer their Camrys and Civics; ads encouraging new food stamp users as local fast-food franchises have lines of cars blocking traffic on the days when government cards are electronically recharged; the politician assuring us that California is preeminent as he hurries home to his Bay Area cocoon.

On the Frontier

I find myself insidiously adopting the Road Warrior survival code. Without any systematic design, I notice that in the last two years I have put a hand pump on my grandfather’s abandoned well in the yard and can pump fresh water without electricity. I put in an outdoor kitchen, tied into a 300-gallon propane tank, that can fuel a year of cooking. I am getting more dogs (all vaccinated and caged); for the first time in my life I inventoried all my ancestors’ guns in all the closets and found shotguns, deer rifles, .22s etc.

I have an extra used pickup I chose not to sell always gassed in the garage. For all sorts of scrapes and minor injuries, sprains, simple finger fractures, etc., I self-treat — anything to avoid going into the local emergency room (reader, you will too, when Obamacare kicks in). And the more I talk to neighbors, the more I notice that those who stayed around are sort of ready for our Road Warrior world. At night if I happen to hear Barack Obama on the news or read the latest communiqué from Jerry Brown, the world they pontificate about in no way resembles the world I see: not the freeways, not the medical system, not the educational establishment, not law enforcement, not the “diversity,” not anything.

Hope and Change

Yet I am confident of better days to come. Sometimes I dream of the booming agricultural export market. Sometimes hopes arise with reports of gargantuan new finds of gas and oil in California. At other times, it is news of closing borders, and some progress in the assimilation of our various tribes. Sometimes a lone brave teacher makes the news for insisting that her students read Shakespeare. On occasion, I think the people silently seethe and resent their kingdom of lies, and so may prove their anger at the polls, perhaps this November.

One looks for hope where one can find it.


























PJ Media appreciates your comments that abide by

a simple search with something akin to "Why is California Broke?" will yield a multitude of articles....including a snippet or two about Enron's influence and it's manipulation of the cost of electricity.

edit: I found far, far more articles about other reasons than Enron....must be a bunch of idiots

Some..... as in a lot ......of people just don't like people who ask the wrong questions and upset their "vision"