The Cult City Triumphant
Daniel J. Flynn has produced a truly remarkable work detailing San Francisco’s descent into multicultural madness in the 1970s. In Cult City. Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days that Shook San francisco, the prolonged orgy that characterized San Francisco civic life resulted in two disasters. It culminated in the Jonestown massacre in November 1978, claiming 918 lives, including 287 children, and then a few days later, in the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk at the hands of a dismissed public employee Dan White. Flynn shows incontrovertibly that these events went together as a form of cosmic justice. Moscone and gay activist Harvey Milk had been among the biggest boosters of the mentally unhinged Jim Jones, who had pushed his followers into committing suicide in Guyana on November 17.
Since the early 1970s, Jones had been a celebrity in California Democratic politics and prefigured the culturally leftist course that his party would take nationwide in the ensuing decades. Jones was well-connected to black radicals like Angela Davis; he identified with the rising gay insurgency championed by his friend Milk; and he led a cult that combined New Age features with devotion to Jones as a leader with supernatural powers. By the way, it was only by reading Flynn’s book and then interviewing him in a podcast that I became aware that Jones was white. His charismatic power over blacks, who comprised most of his following, made me assume that he too was black. When he took his devotees to Guyana, where he conspicuously starved and abused them, he continued to enjoy the fervent support of the entire Democratic establishment. Whenever a complaint began to circulate, his highly placed army of defenders would spring to his aid. These included President Jimmy Carter, California Governor Jerry Brown, who succeeded Ronald Reagan in 1975, Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Speaker of the California House of Representatives Willie Brown, Mayor Moscone of San Francisco to City Supervisor Milk. Prominent journalists like Abe Rosenthal at the New York Times, were also found among Jones’s legion of political admirers.
Before Jones dragged off his crowd to Guyana, he ran the Peoples Temple in San Francisco. There, no matter what scam he engaged in to increase his private wealth as a “religious and civic leader,” (and Flynn is not hesitant to reveal these misdeeds) he always had political allies who covered his back. Had Jones stayed in California and not fallen prey to murderous and suicidal tendencies, he might have remained a force in Democratic politics and possibly been elected to high state office. After he killed himself and got his followers to “drink the kool aid,” what happened was described in misleading terms, as Flynn carefully explains. It was made to appear (and this was my impression too in 1978) that Jones was a fundamentalist religious fanatic, who because of his (presumably Christian) fanaticism planned and assisted in the deaths of hundreds of people. Flynn demonstrates that Jones was anything but a devout Christian. He was an admirer of Soviet communism and encouraged his followers to donate money to the Soviet state. He also tore up copies of the Bible, which he considered unacceptable competition for his own evolving belief system. Not surprisingly, all of Jones’s erstwhile friends went along with this doctored narrative and explained the Jonestown massacre accordingly.
Equally mendacious were the ideologically tailored reports about the assassinations of Milk and Moscone by a former city employee. In what Flynn describes facetiously as “sanitized facts,” the two victims of assassination died as martyrs to the gay cause. Nothing of the sort took place. They died over an issue of patronage, which seems to be an inconvenient fact that filmmakers and LGBT advocates have worked their way around. The murderer of Moscone, who was heterosexual, and of Milk, who was gay, was apparently -- like his victims -- on the political left. The media and the city of San Francisco were both expeditious about airbrushing both Jones’ Peoples Temple (which has been supplanted by a post office) and his relations with prominent Democrats out of the received historical accounts. Even the hapless Democratic congressman Leon Ryan, who went to Jonestown to report on what was happening and had his plane shot down by Jones’s hit squad, has been pushed down the memory hole. The very mention of Ryan might recall unpleasant memories that the media has worked to remove.
The larger picture that Flynn reveals in his scrupulously researched account of San Francisco’s tumultuous history in the 1970s is one of transformational politics. What seemed goofy in this “cult city” during that decade, such as love fests, widespread drug usage, and the celebration of alternative lifestyles and bizarre New Age movements, would spread to the rest of the country. There was also a political change going in simultaneously that Flynn notices, and it affected the Democratic Party fundamentally. Before “Governor Moonbeam” won his first term in 1975 (Jerry Brown, now in his eighties, is still governor of the state), Reagan had served in that office for two terms. His predecessor and Jerry Brown’s father, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, had served as governor from 1959 to 1967 and unlike his son, was a very traditional Irish-Catholic Democrat. Pat was sympathetic to organized labor and other Democratic constituencies but left it to his Republican successor to pass what was then considered a liberal abortion-rights law. Indeed Pat rose to statewide fame as a district attorney who prosecuted an abortion provider. It was not Pat but Jerry and figures like Dianne Feinstein and George Moscone who would preview the new Democratic Party of expressive freedoms and minority grievance. Flynn provides a detailed picture of how this was already taking place, with disastrous consequences, in Jim Jones’ San Francisco. Equally important, he reveals how the media even back then had already begun to tamper grievously with facts that didn’t suit its political purpose. It didn’t start with MSNBC.
San Francisco Spends More Than $385,000 to Register 61 Non-Citizen Voters
2:15
The city of San Francisco spent more than $385,000 to register non-citizen voters, but only 61 of those voters signed up to vote Tuesday in time for the midterm elections.
John Arntz, the director of the San Francisco Department of Elections, confirmed with Breitbart News on Tuesday morning that the city registered 61 non-citizens to vote in local school board races, and reports say those votes came with a hefty price tag.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported last week that the city spent $6,326 per non-citizen voter— a total of $385,886 for 61 voters—to get them to vote in the school board elections.
Part of the high price tag for votes came from having to set up a separate registration for non-citizens who cannot under federal law vote in federal elections.
“We had to create a separate database,” Arntz said, according to the Sacramento Bee. “We created a separate ballot for these folks. We have separate roster pages for the polling places, we have a separate registration affidavit. We have a separate vote by mail ballot application, we have a separate website page.”
The city’s department of elections began registering non-citizens to vote in July, after residents approved “Proposition N” in 2016, giving non-citizens—including illegal aliens— the ability to vote in some local elections.
But the San Francisco Department of Elections website warned potential voters that their voter registration information might be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“In addition, if you apply for naturalization, you will be asked whether you have ever registered or voted in a federal, state, or local election in the United States,” the website says.
San Francisco followed the lead of Chicago, Illinois; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and several cities in Maryland in allowing non-citizens to vote in school board or municipal elections.
STEALING AMERICA!
Here’s how California surrendered
to Mexico… OR WAS HANDED TO MEXICO BY NANCY PELOSI, DIANNE FEINSTEIN, KAMALA
HARRIS, JERRY BROWN and GAVIN NEWSOM!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/08/california-under-mex-occupation-do-not.html
THIS IS WHAT THE DEMOCRAT PARTY OF CORRUPTION AND OPEN
BORDERS HAS DONE TO ONE CITY!
SANCTUARY CITY
SAN FRANSICO
AMERICA’S
DUMPSTER CITY OF FILTH AND DRUG DEALERS
HOME TO SENATOR DIANNE
FEINSTEIN, SENATOR KAMALA HARRIS, REP. NANCY PELOSI and GAVEN NEWSOM
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/10/monica-showalter-sanctuary-city-san.html
THE INVISIBLE CALIFORNIA
De facto apartheid world in the Golden State.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270265/invisible-california-bruce-thornton
ABOUT BRUCE THORNTON
STEALING AMERICA!
Here’s how California surrendered
to Mexico… OR WAS HANDED TO MEXICO BY NANCY PELOSI, DIANNE FEINSTEIN, KAMALA
HARRIS, JERRY BROWN and GAVIN NEWSOM!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/08/california-under-mex-occupation-do-not.html
THIS IS WHAT THE DEMOCRAT PARTY OF CORRUPTION AND OPEN
BORDERS HAS DONE TO ONE CITY!
SANCTUARY CITY
SAN FRANSICO
AMERICA’S
DUMPSTER CITY OF FILTH AND DRUG DEALERS
HOME TO SENATOR DIANNE
FEINSTEIN, SENATOR KAMALA HARRIS, REP. NANCY PELOSI and GAVEN NEWSOM
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/10/monica-showalter-sanctuary-city-san.html
“It’s almost impossible
to get convicted in this city,” said [Sgt. Kevin] Healy, who works in the
Police Department’s narcotics division. “The message needs to be sent that
it’s not OK to be selling drugs. It’s not allowed anywhere else. Where else can
you walk up to someone you don’t know and purchase crack and heroin?
Is there such a place?”…
Police say drug dealers
from the East Bay ride BART into San Francisco every day to prey on the
addicts slumped on our sidewalks, and yet the city that claims to
so desperately want to help those addicts often looks the other way.
Steinle’s
murderer, Jose Zarate and been deported 5xs!
"While walking with her father on a pier
in San Francisco in 2015, Steinle was shot by the illegal alien. Steinle pleaded
with her father to not let her die, but she soon passed in her father’s
arms."
THE
STAGGERING COST OF THE WELFARE STATE MEXICO AND THE LA RAZA SUPREMACY DEMOCRAT
PARTY HAVE BUILT BORDER to OPEN BORDER’
According to the Federation
for American Immigration Reform’s 2017 report, illegal
immigrants, and their children, cost American taxpayers a net $116 billion
annually -- roughly $7,000 per alien annually. While high, this number is not
an outlier: a recent study by the Heritage
Foundation found that low-skilled immigrants (including those here
illegally) cost Americans trillions over
the course of their lifetimes, and a study from the National
Economics Editorial found that illegal immigration
costs America over $140 billion annually. As it stands, illegal immigrants are
a massive burden on American taxpayers.
Adios, Sanctuary
La Raza Welfare State of California
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing
economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
BLOG: MANY DISPUTE CALIFORNIA’S
EXPENDITURES FOR THE LA RAZA WELFARE STATE IN MEXIFORNIA JUST AS THEY DISPUTE
THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS. APPROXIMATELY HALF THE POPULATION OF CA IS NOW MEXICAN
AND BREEDING ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE LIKE BUNNIES. THE $22 BILLION IS STATE
EXPENDITURE ONLY. COUNTIES PAY OUT MORE WITH LOS ANGELES COUNTY LEADING AT OVER
A BILLION DOLLARS PAID OUT YEARLY TO MEXICO’S ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS. NOW
MULTIPLY THAT BY THE NUMBER OF COUNTIES IN CA AND YOU START TO GET AN IDEA OF
THE STAGGERING WELFARE STATE MEXICO AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY HAVE ERECTED SANS
ANY LEGALS VOTES. ADD TO THIS THE FREE ENTERPRISE HOSPITAL AND CLINIC COST FOR
LA RAZA’S “FREE” MEDICAL WHICH IS ESTIMATED TO BE ABOUT $1.5 BILLION PER YEAR.
Liberals claim they more than make that up
with taxes paid, but that’s simply not true. It’s not even close. FAIR
estimates illegal aliens in California contribute only $1.21 billion in tax
revenue, which means they cost California $20.6 billion, or at least $1,800 per
household.
Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
"If the racist
"Sensenbrenner Legislation" passes the US Senate, there is no doubt
that a massive civil disobedience movement will emerge. Eventually labor union
power can merge with the immigrant civil rights and "Immigrant
Sanctuary" movements to enable us to either form a new political
party or to do heavy duty reforming of the existing Democratic Party. The next
and final steps would follow and that is to elect our own governors of all the
states within Aztlan."
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.
If
Immigration Creates Wealth, Why Is California America's Poverty Capital?
California
used to be home to America's largest and most affluent middle
class. Today, it is America's poverty
capital. What went wrong? In a word:
immigration. According to the U.S. Census Bureau'...: The Golden
State is peddling fool's gold lately.
California used to be home to America's largest and most
affluent middle class. Today, it is America's poverty
capital. What went wrong? In a word: immigration.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Official Poverty Measure, California's poverty rate hovers
around 15 percent. But this figure is misleading: the Census Bureau
measures poverty relative to a uniform national standard, which doesn't account
for differences in living costs between states – the cost of taxes, housing,
and health care are higher in California than in Oklahoma, for
example. Accounting for these differences reveals that California's real poverty rate is 20.6 percent – the highest in America, and nearly twice the national
average of 12.7 percent.
Likewise, income inequality in California is the second-highest in America, behind only New York. In fact, if California were an
independent country, it would be the 17th most unequal country on Earth,
nestled comfortably between Honduras and Guatemala. Mexico is
slightly more egalitarian. California is far more unequal than the
"social democracies" it emulates: Canada is the 111th most
unequal nation, while Norway is far down the list at number 153 (out of 176
countries). In terms of income inequality, California has more in
common with banana republics than other "social democracies."
More Government, More Poverty
High taxes, excessive regulations, and a lavish welfare state – these are
the standard explanations for California's poverty epidemic. They
have some merit. For example, California has both the highest
personal income tax rate and the highest sales tax in America, according
to Politifact.
Not only are California's taxes high, but successive
"progressive" governments have swamped the state in a sea of red
tape. Onerous regulations cripple small businesses and retard
economic growth. Kerry Jackson, a fellow with the Pacific Research
Institute, gives a few specific examples of how excessive government regulation
hurts California's poor. He writes in a recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times:
Extensive environmental regulations aimed at reducing carbon dioxide
emissions make energy more expensive, also hurting the poor. By some
estimates, California energy costs are as much as 50% higher than the national
average. Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics ... found that
"in 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced ... energy
expenditures exceeding 10% of household income."
Some government regulation is necessary and desirable, but most of
California's is not. There is virtue in governing with a "light
touch."
Finally, California's welfare state is, perhaps paradoxically, a source
of poverty in the state. The Orange Country Register reports that California's
social safety net is comparable in scale to those found in Europe:
In California a mother with two children under the age of 5
who participates in these major welfare programs – Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps),
housing assistance, home energy assistance, Special Supplemental Nutrition
Program for Women, Infants and Children – would receive a benefits package
worth $30,828 per year.
... [Similar] benefits in Europe ranged from $38,588 per
year in Denmark to just $1,112 in Romania. The California benefits
package is higher than in well-known welfare states as France ($17,324),
Germany ($23,257) and even Sweden ($22,111).
Although welfare states ideally help
the poor, reality is messy. There are three main problems with the
welfare state. First, it incentivizes poverty by rewardingthe poor with government
handouts that are often far more valuable than a job. This can be
ameliorated to some degree by imposing work requirements on welfare recipients,
but in practice, such requirements are rarely imposed. Second,
welfare states are expensive. This means
higher taxes and therefore slower economic growth and fewer job opportunities
for everyone – including the poor.
Finally, welfare states are magnets for the poor. Whether
through domestic migration or foreign immigration, poor people flock to places
with generous welfare states. This is logical from the immigrant's
perspective, but it makes little sense from the taxpayer's. This
fact is why socialism and open borders arefundamentally incompatible.
Why Big Government?
Since 1960, California's population
exploded from 15.9 to 39 million people. The growth
was almost entirely due to immigration – many people came from other states,
but the majority came from abroad. The Public Policy
Institute of California estimates that 10 million immigrants
currently reside in California. This works out to 26 percent of the
state's population.
This figure includes 2.4 million illegal aliens, although
a recent study from Yale University suggests that the true number of aliens is at least
double that. Modifying the initial
figure implies that nearly one in three Californians is
an immigrant. This is not to disparage California's
immigrant population, but it is madness to deny that such a large influx of
people has changed California's society and economy.
Importantly, immigrants vote
Democrat by a ratio higher than 2:1, according to a report from the Center
for Immigration Studies. In California, immigration has
increased the pool of likely Democrat voters by nearly 5 million people,
compared to just 2.4 million additional likely Republican
voters. Not only does this almost guarantee Democratic victories,
but it also shifts California's political midpoint to the left. This
means that to remain competitive in elections, the Republicans must abandon or soften many
conservative positions so as to cater to the center.
California became a
Democratic stronghold not because Californians became socialists, but because
millions of socialists moved there. Immigration turned California
blue, and immigration is ultimately to blame for California's high poverty
level.
REALITIES OF A STATE IN
MELTDOWN:
THE INVISIBLE CALIFORNIA
De facto apartheid world in the Golden State.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270265/invisible-california-bruce-thornton
In 1973, as I was going through customs in
New York, the customs agent rifling my bag looked at my passport and said, with
a Bronx sneer, “Bruce Thornton, huh. Must be one of them Hollywood names.”
Hearing that astonishing statement, I
realized for the first time that California is as much an idea as a place.
There were few regions in America more distant from Hollywood than the rural,
mostly poor, multiethnic San Joaquin Valley where my family lived and ranched.
Yet to this New Yorker, the Valley was invisible.
BLOG: FEINSTEIN & BOXER THREE TIMES
ATTEMPTED TO INSERT IN VARIOUS BILLS AN AMNESTY FOR FARM WORKERS TO REPAY THEIR
BIG AG BIG DONORS.
ONE-THIRD OF ALL FARM WORKERS END UP ON
WELFARE AS SOON AS THE ANCHOR BABIES START COMING
Coastal Californians are sometimes just as
blind to the world on the other side of the Coast Range, even though its farms,
orchards, vineyards, dairies, and ranches comprise more than half the
state’s $46
billion agriculture industry, which grows over 400 commodities, including over a third of the
country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts.
Granted, Silicon Valley is an economic
colossus compared to the ag industry, but agriculture’s importance can’t be
measured just in dollars and cents. Tech, movies, and every other industry
tends to forget that their lives and businesses, indeed civilization itself,
all rest on the shoulders of those who produce the food. You can live without
your iPhone or your Mac or the latest Marvel Studios blockbuster. But you can’t live without the food grown by the one out of a
100 people who work to feed the other 99.
A Politically Invisible Valley
Living in the most conservative counties
in the
deepest-blue state, Valley residents
constantly see
their concerns, beliefs, and needs
seldom taken
into account at the state or federal level.
Registered Democrats in California
outnumber registered Republicans by over 19%, and the State Legislature seats about twice as many Democrats as
Republicans (California’s one of only eight states nationwide with a trifecta of a Democratic and two Democratic
controlled legislative bodies).
California’s Congressional delegation is
even more unbalanced: in the House of Representatives, currently there are
fourteen Republicans compared to thirty-nine House Democrats (at least half of
those GOP districts are in danger of turning blue this fall); half the Republicans represent Central Valley districts, none
bordering the Pacific Ocean. The last elected Republican US Senator left office
in 1991. The last Republican governor was the politically light-pink
action-movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose second term ended in 2011.
This progressive dominance of the state
has led to policies and priorities that has damaged its agricultural economy
and seriously degraded the quality of life in the Valley.
Despite a long drought that has diminished
the run-off of snow from the Sierra Nevada, projects for dams and reservoirs
are on hold, seriously impacting the ag industry that relies on the snowmelt
for most of its water. Worse yet, since 2008, a period including the height of
the drought, 1.4 trillion gallons of water have been dumped into the Pacific
Ocean to protect the endangered Delta Smelt, a two-inch bait-fish. Thousands of agricultural jobs have been
lost and farmland left uncultivated, all to satisfy the sensibilities of
affluent urban environmentalists. And even after a few years of abundant rain,
Valley farmers this year are receiving just 20% of their South-of-the-Delta water allocation.
Or take California’s high-speed rail
project, currently moribund and $10 billion over budget just for construction of the easiest section, through the
flat center of the Valley. Meanwhile, State Highway 99, which bisects the
Valley from north to south for 500 miles, is pot-holed, inefficient, and
crammed with 18-wheel semis. It is the bloodiest highway in the country, in
dire need of widening and repair. Yet to
gratify our Democratic governor’s
high-tech green obsession, billions of
dollars are
being squandered to create an
unnecessary link
between the Bay Area and Los
Angeles. That’s $10 billion that could have been
spent building more reservoirs instead of dumping water into the ocean because
there’s no place to store it.
The common thread of these two examples
of
mismanagement and waste is the
romantic
environmentalism of the well-heeled
coastal left.
They serially support government
projects and
regulations that impact the poor and the
aged, who
are left to bear their costs.
The same idealized nature-love has led to
regulations and taxes on energy that have made California home of the
third-worst energy poverty in the country. In sweltering San Joaquin Valley
counties like Madera and Tulare, energy poverty rates are 15% compared to 3–4% in cool, deep-blue coastal enclaves.
Impoverished Kings County averages over $500 a month in electric bills, while tony
Marin Country, with an average income twice that of Kings County, averages
$200. Again, it’s the poor, aged, and working class who bear the brunt of these
costs, especially in the Valley where temperatures regularly reach triple
digits in the summer; unlike the coast, where the clement climate makes
expensive air-conditioning unnecessary.
Deteriorating Quality of Life
It’s no wonder then that Fresno, in the
heart of the
Valley, is the second most impoverished
city in the
poorest region of a state that has the
highest
poverty levels in the country and one of
the
highest rates of income inequality. Over
one-fifth
of its residents live below the poverty
line, and it
The greatest impact on the Valley’s
deteriorating quality of life, however,
has been
the influx of illegal aliens. Some are attracted by
plentiful agriculture and construction
work, and
others by California’s generous welfare
transfers
— California is home to one in three of
the
country’s welfare recipients— all
facilitated by
California’s status as a “sanctuary
state” that
regularly releases felons rather than
cooperate
with Immigration and Customs
Enforcement
(ICE). As a result, one-quarter of the
country’s
from underdeveloped regions of Mexico
and Latin
America that have different social and
cultural
mores and attitudes to the law and
civic
responsibility.
The consequences of these feckless
policies are
found throughout the state. But they
are
especially noticeable in rural California.
There
high levels of crime and daily
disorder—from
murders, assaults, and drug trafficking,
to
driving without insurance, DUIs,
hit-and-runs,
and ignoring building and sanitation
codes—
have degraded or, in some cases, destroyed
the
once-orderly farming towns that used to
be
populated by earlier immigrants,
including
many legal immigrants from Mexico, who
over
a few generations of sometimes rocky
coexistence assimilated to American
culture
and society.
Marginalized Cultural Minorities
More broadly, the dominant cultures and
mores of the dot.com north and the Hollywood south are inimical to those of the
Valley. Whether it is gun-ownership, hunting, church-going, or military
service, many people in the San Joaquin Valley of all races are quickly
becoming cultural minorities marginalized by the increasingly radical positions
on issues such as abortion, guns, and religion.
Despite the liberal assumption that all
Hispanics favor progressive policies, many Latino immigrants and their children
find more in common with Valley farmers and natives with whom they live and
work than they do with distant urban elites.
Indeed, as a vocal conservative professor
in the local university (Fresno State), I have survived mainly because my
students, now more than half Latino and Mexican immigrants or children of
immigrants, are traditional and practical in a way that makes them impatient
with the patronizing victim-politics of more affluent professors. They have
more experience with physical labor, they are more religious and, like me, they
are often the first in their families to graduate from college. As I did with
the rural Mexican Americans I grew up with, I usually have more in common with
my students than I do with many of my colleagues.
And this is the great irony of the
invisibility of the “other” California: the blue-coast policies that suit the
prejudices and sensibilities of the affluent have damaged the prospects of the
“others of color” they claim they want to help. Over-
represented on the poverty and welfare
rolls, many
migrants both legal and illegal have seen
water
policies that destroy agricultural jobs,
building
restrictions that drive up the cost of
housing,
energy policies that increase their cost
of living, “sanctuary city” policies that put back on the
streets thugs and criminals who prey
mainly on
their ethnic fellows, and economic
policies that
favor the redistribution rather than the
creation of wealth and jobs.
Meanwhile, the coastal liberals who tout a
cosmetic diversity live in a de facto apartheid world, surrounded by those of
similar income, taste, and politics. Many look down on the people whom they
view as racists and xenophobes at worst, and intellectually challenged rubes at
best. This disdain has been evident in the way the media regularly sneer that
House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes is a “former dairy-farmer” from
Tulare County, an origin that makes “the match between his backstory and his
prominence” seem “wholly incongruous,” per Roll Call's David Hawkings.
Finally, those of us who grew up and live
in the rural Valley did so among a genuine diversity, one that reflected the
more complex identities beyond the crude categories of “white” or “black” or
“Hispanic.”
Italians, Basques, Portuguese, Armenians,
Swedes, Mexicans, Filipinos, Southern blacks, Chinese, Japanese, Volga Germans,
Scotch-Irish Dust Bowl migrants—all migrated to the Valley to work the fields
and better their lives. Their children and grandchildren went to the same
schools, danced together and drank together, helped round up each other’s
animals when they got loose, were best friends or deadly enemies, dated and
intermarried, got drafted into the Army or joined the Marines—all of them
Americans who managed to honor their diverse heritages and faiths, but still be
a community. Their most important distinctions were not so much between races
and ethnicities, though those of course often collided, but between the
respectable people––those who obeyed the law, went to church, and raised their
kids right–– and those we all called “no damned good.” Skin-color or accents
couldn’t sort one from the other.
What most of us learned from living in
real diversity in the Valley is that being an American means taking people one
at a time.
That world still exists, but it is slowly
fading away—in part because of the policies and politics of those to our west,
who can see nothing on the other side of the Coast Range.
ABOUT BRUCE THORNTON
Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism
Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover
Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State
University. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical
culture and its influence on Western Civilization. His most recent book, Democracy's Dangers and Discontents (Hoover Institution Press), is now available for purchase.