America’s
First Third-World State
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/california-third-world-state-corruption-crime-infrastructure/
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Medieval diseases, gangs,
corruption, crime, crumbling infrastructure, out-of-touch wealthy elites …
‘Third
World” is now an anachronistic geographical term of the old Cold War. But after
1989, “Third World” was reinvented from a political noun into an adjective to
mean more than just Asian, African, and Latin American nations nonaligned with
either the West or the Soviet bloc.
Rather, the current modifier “Third
World” has come to transcend geography, politics, and ethnicity. It simply
denotes poor failed states all over the globe of all races and religions.
Third World symptomologies are
predictably corrupt government, unequal or nonexistent applicability of the
law, two rather than three classes, and the return of medieval diseases. Third
World nations suffer from high taxes and poor social services, premodern
infrastructure and utilities, poor transportation, tribalism, gangs, and lack
of security.
Another chief characteristic of a
Third World society is the official denial of all of the above, and a
vindictive, almost hysterical state response to anyone who points out those
obvious tragedies. Another is massive out-migration. Residents prefer almost
any country other than their own. Think Somalia, Venezuela, Cuba, Libya, or
Guatemala.
Does 21st-century California
increasingly fit that definition — despite having the nation’s most amenable
climate and most beautiful and diverse geography, with major natural ports
facing the dynamic Asian economies, and being naturally rich in timber,
agriculture, mining, and energy, and blessed with a prior century’s inheritance
of effective local and state government?
The California Manor
By many criteria, 21st-century
California is both the poorest and the richest state in the union. Almost a
quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. Another fifth is
categorized as near the poverty level — facts not true during the latter 20th
century. A third of the nation’s welfare recipients now live in California. The
state has the highest homeless population in the nation (135,000). About 22
percent of the nation’s total homeless population reside in the state — whose
economy is the largest in the U.S., fueling the greatest numbers of American
billionaires and high-income zip codes.
But by some indicators, the
California middle class is shrinking — because of massive regulation, high
taxation, green zoning, and accompanying high housing prices. Out-migration
from the state remains largely a phenomenon of the middle and upper-middle
classes. Millions have left California in the past 30 years, replaced by
indigent and often illegal immigrants, often along with the young, affluent,
and single.
If someone predicted half a century
ago that a Los Angeles police station or indeed L.A. City Hall would be in
danger of periodic, flea-borne infectious typhus outbreaks, he would have been
considered unhinged. After all, the city that gave us the modern freeway system
is not supposed to resemble Justinian’s sixth-century Constantinople. Yet
typhus, along with outbreaks of infectious hepatitis A, are in the news on
California streets. The sidewalks of the state’s major cities are homes to
piles of used needles, feces, and refuse. Hygienists warn that permissive
municipal governments are setting the stage — through spiking populations of
history’s banes of fleas, lice, and rats — for possible dark-age outbreaks of
plague or worse.
High tech does its part not to clean
the streets but to create defecation apps that electronically warn tourists and
hoi polloi how to avoid walking blindly into piles of sidewalk excrement. In
Californian logic, public defecation butts up against progressive tolerance, so
it is exempt from the law. Yet for a suburbanite to build a patio without a
permit, for example, costs one dearly in fines. Indeed, a new patio without a
permit can be deemed more dangerous to the public health than piles of
excrement in the public workplace.
One out of three Californians who
enters a hospital for any cause is now found to
be suffering from either diabetes or pre-diabetes, an epidemic that hits the
Hispanic community especially hard but for a variety of reasons has not led to
effective public-health efforts and sufficient publicity. State-run dialysis
clinics now dot the towns and communities of the Central Valley — a tragic
symptom of dietary culture, massive illegal immigration, and poor public-health
education.
Infrastructure Is for the Unwoke
California’s transportation system,
to be honest, remains in near ruins. Despite the highest gas taxes in the
nation, none of its major trans-state
freeways — not the 99, not I-5, not the 101 — after 70 years off use, are yet
completed with six lanes, resulting in dangerous bottlenecks and wrecks.
Driving the 99 south of Visalia, or the 101 near Paso Robles, or the 5 north of
Coalinga is right out of Road Warrior — but not
as dangerous as the fossilized two-line feeder lines such as 152 into Gilroy,
or the 41 west of Kettleman City. The unspoken transportation credo of Jerry
Brown’s aggregate 16 years as governor apparently was “If you don’t build it,
maybe they won’t need it.”
Meanwhile the concrete carcass of the
recently cancelled multibillion-dollar high-speed rail system dots the skyline
over Fresno. Bureaucrats now insist that more billions must be spent to ensure
that a short segment of the least traveled route will be finished, though they
obviously do not anticipate spurring a new tourist or commercial corridor
between Merced and Bakersfield.
High-speed-rail gurus insist on
salvaging something of the boondoggle not because they have an economic
rationale justifying more dollars — they would be far better invested in
improving freeways, airports, and rails — but largely out of pride and shame
that demand some small token rescued from a very bad pipe dream.
In 1973, when I first visited and
lived in Greece, the roads were medieval. The old Hellinikon Airport was
dysfunctional, if not creepy. Highway rest stops were filthy. I have lived in
or visited Greece in the ensuing 45 years since, including occasionally after
the 2008 meltdown and European Union standoff. And yet today, the freeways,
chief airport, and rest stops of relatively poor Greece are in far better shape
than are California’s. LAX’s poor road access, traffic, uncleanness, crowds,
and chaos seem premodern compared with the current Athenian airport.
It is an eerie experience to see
America’s once premier state, currently at its supposed acme, now resemble
Greece of the colonels a half-century ago, while 2019 Greece seems more like a
functioning 1973 California. Athens and Thessaloniki are still dirty in a few
places, and there are homeless and illegal immigrants. But one does not see
needles and feces on the sidewalks, and it is safe to walk in the evening.
Greek public restrooms, once notorious, are far more sanitary than those at
rest stops in Fresno, San Francisco, or Los Angeles.
Power outrages are characteristic of
Third World countries. Here in California we are advised to brace for lots of
them, given that our antiquated grid apparently contributes to brush fires on
hot days. As a native, I do not remember a single instance of our 20th-century
state utilities shutting down service in the manner that they now routinely
promise.
California for Others
Crime the last three years has
increased. It is epidemic in local jails. San Francisco has the highest
property-crime rate per capita of any major city. The California prison system
is a mess, and sanctuary cities ensure that illegal aliens charged with crimes
will not be deported. Pick up a McClatchy paper and you’ll see that the day’s
fare of Central Valley criminality, even after sanitization and
editorialization, is mind-boggling.
California’s cycles of wet boom years
and dry bust years continue because the state refuses to build three or four
additional large reservoirs that have been planned for more than a
half-century, and that would store enough water to keep California functional
through even the worst drought. The rationale is either that it is more
sophisticated to allow millions of acre-feet of melted snow to run into the
sea, or it is better to have a high-speed-rail line from Merced to Bakersfield
than an additional 10 million acre-feet of water storage, or droughts ensure
more state control through rationing and green social-policy remedies.
Twenty-seven percent of Californians
were not born in the United States, a large minority of them residing in the
United States illegally. Yet California’s universities and popular culture are
at the forefront of salad-bowl and identity-politics policies that obstruct
assimilation, integration, and intermarriage — the historical remedies for the
natural tensions that arise within multiracial and multiethnic societies. In
this perfect storm, at the very moment the world’s poorest citizens from Oaxaca
and Central America flooded into America, de facto rejecting the protocols of
their home, their hosts’ messaging to them was that they should lodge
complaints about the social injustice of their new home and romanticize the
culture that they had just forsaken for good cause.
California schools are usually in the
bottom decile of national rankings. No one in polite conversation asks why that
is so, given that the state’s K–12 schools used to be among the most
competitive in the United States.
Yet, again in medieval fashion, the
professional schools and science and technology departments of California’s
premier research universities — Cal Tech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC —
are among the highest-rated in the world. Imagine something like the scribal
oases of Padua, Oxford, or Paris in an otherwise frightening 13th century. If
one wishes to be schooled as an electrical engineer or cancer researcher,
California is an attractive place; if one wishes to be a knowledgeable graduate
of a public elementary and high school, it most certainly is not.
California’s Department of Motor
Vehicles is perhaps the worst public-service entity in the United States. To
enter any branch office is to venture into a Dante’s Inferno of huge lines,
chaos, unkept rest rooms, and rude and often incompetent unionized employees.
The only efficient DMV office in the state is the unmarked and secret branch in
Sacramento reserved for state legislators and grandee insiders who oversee the
DMV for the rest of the population. For a fee, concierge private auto clubs and
firms often duplicate some DMV services, a de facto admission that the state
needs something else besides itself to offer basic services. I once asked a DMV
clerk, after a long wait in line, if it was right to be wearing a purple SEIU
organizing T-shirt; she replied, “Do you still want to be served?”
The DMV scandals are multifarious:
Thousands of motor-voter registrations sent to the wrong people, including
illegal aliens supposedly ineligible to vote; corrupt employees who sell
commercial truck driver’s licenses to the unqualified; and private corporations
and occasionally individuals selling hard-to-obtain reservations and
appointments.
California now has the nation’s
highest basket of sales, gas, and income taxes. With a state surplus, and a
slowing economy, one would think that the legislature and governor would pause
before even considering raising more taxes. After all, new federal tax law
limits write-offs of state and local taxes to $10,000 — radically spiking
upper-bracket Californians’ federal tax liabilities.
Yet the rule in California is to
punish the upper middle class while pandering to the rich and romanticizing the
poor. Thus, the legislature is now considering a punitive new inheritance tax,
and it just imposed an Internet sales tax.
Again, the message is that if
Californians can survive a recent 13.3 percent top state-income-tax rate, and a
vast increase in their federal tax liability, then certainly they can be easily
squeezed further after death to pony up 40 percent of their already taxed
estates that are over $3 million in value. Translated, that can mean that a
tract house in Los Angeles or the Bay Area and a modest 401K are proof that you
did not build your wealth on your own, so the state has a second shot at
appropriating your postmortem capital, to ensure that your children will see no
benefit from your parsimony and thrift.
California’s apocalyptic present has
created an alternate universe, in good Third World style, of pay-for-play
services. To avoid the emergency room (the last time I used one, two gangs
squared off in the waiting room, to continue what their wounded members were under
treatment for), progressive Californians often pay for concierge medicine and
anything private to avoid at all costs using any state services.
The coastal corridor elite often put
their kids in tony prep schools that have sprung up or vastly expanded, in the
fashion of the 1960s white Southern academies that were designed to circumvent
federal desegregation edicts. Elite progressives mimic old-style, 1960s
segregationists but feel that their children’s green and multicultural
curricula offer enough penance to assuage their guilt over abandoning the
state’s much praised “diverse” schools.
Our Dreams, Your Nightmares
What caused this lunacy?
A polarity of importing massive
poverty from south of the border while pandering to those who control
unprecedented wealth in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the tourism industry, and
the marquee universities. Massive green regulations and boutique zoning, soaring
taxes, increasing crime, identity politics and tribalism, and radical one-party
progressive government were force multipliers. It is common to blame California
Republicans for their own demise. They have much to account for, but in some
sense, the state simply deported conservative voters and imported their
left-wing replacements.
In a reductionist sense, perhaps if
former governor Jerry Brown knew that he would one day retire to Delano and
drive the 99 daily, rather than to Grass Valley, with several state pensions in
his bank account, or if Dianne Feinstein dwelled in an East Palo Alto or
Redwood City residence rather than in Pacific Heights, or if all the Pelosi
grandchildren had to attend state public schools, then the architects of
21st-century California might have had to live with the consequences of their
own dreams and been less eager to inflict their nightmares on the other 40
million Californians.
But then again, such a radical
divergence between a few insider elites and a massive underclass, with little
in between, is perhaps what best defines “Third World.”
What else is new? Newsom’s
budget calls for more spending, higher taxes
https://www.dailynews.com/2019/01/13/what-else-is-new-newsoms-budget-calls-for-more-spending-higher-taxes/
California Gov. Gavin Newsom
presents his first state budget during a news conference Thursday, Jan. 10,
2019, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
By JON COUPAL | |
To the surprise of absolutely no
one, California’s new governor has proposed a state budget with billions in
increased spending and lots of tax hikes. And, as an added bonus, he is
proposing new mandates on businesses and local governments as well as depriving
Californians of the right to vote on certain kinds of local debt. From the
perspective of taxpayers, this is not a propitious start.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget
envisions spending $144 billion of general fund dollars, a 4 percent increase
over former Gov. Jerry Brown’s last budget, which clocked in at $138 billion.
To put this in perspective, general fund spending was less than $100 billion
just six years ago. In California, state government is the No. 1 growth
industry.
No California spending plan would
be complete without new “revenue enhancements.” And the biggest item on this
list is the imposition of the “individual mandate” for health insurance. Recall
that President Obama’s so-called Affordable Care Act (which was anything but
affordable) imposed a burdensome tax on millions of Americans. (Indeed, it was
only the fact that the ACA imposed a “tax” that saved it from a constitutional
challenge).
The good news is that Congress
repealed the tax at the federal level. The bad news is that Gov. Newsom wants
to reimpose it at the state level in order to save Covered California from
imploding. The cost to Californians for a state-imposed individual mandate with
a penalty?: $700 per person, which is projected to raise $500 million in new
revenue.
Other tax hikes include a monthly
tax imposed on residential water use and a tax to shore up the state’s
emergency 911 system. Both deal with public health and safety so one would
think they would have first claim on existing general fund revenues — but,
again, this is California, where budgeting makes no sense.
Another major concern for taxpayers
is Newsom’s plan to deprive voters of the right to vote on local debt. Since
statehood, California’s constitution has reflected the policy of allowing
voters the right to approve long-term financial obligations. That policy has
been eroded over the decades and Newsom is pushing it further by proposing that
debt assumed by Enhanced Infrastructure Finance Districts (think
“redevelopment”) would no longer need voter approval. Translation: Today’s
politicians can put tomorrow’s taxpayers into debt without permission.
So, is there anything good for
taxpayers in Newsom’s proposed budget? Yes. This includes Newsom’s desire to
grow the rainy day fund — in order to prepare for the inevitable recession —
and also paying down pension debt. He also appears cognizant of the OPEB
threat. OPEB stands for Other Post-Employment Benefits, the largest of which
is, of course, promises for lifetime healthcare benefits to public retirees.
Taxpayers hope that the governor
will be able to resist even greater spending demands from state legislators who
want $40 billion for new, more costly programs.
Nonetheless, our primary concern is that the majority party in
California invariably reacts to any new problem — whether actual or imagined —
with a tax increase rather than taking the more prudent course of prioritizing
spending.
Finally,
if there is a coda to this sad story, it is this: State Controller Betty Yee
just announced that revenue is down almost $5 billion. Is this a precursor to a
recession in the state that will blow up all the governor’s plans? Time will
tell.
BLOG: THE MEXICAN TAX-FREE ECONOMY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY IS ESTIMATED
TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2 BILLION YEARLY. THIS SAME COUNTY HANDS ILLEGAL ANCHOR
BABY BREEDERS MORE THAN $1 BILLION IN WELFARE!
Eligibility would be determined by the same rules of Medicaid, based on
annual income. As many young illegals are working off the books, for cash, they
will have no official reported income regardless of how much they actually
earn, insuring their eligibility for Medi-Cal.
California Says: ‘Go West, Young
Illegals, Go West’
Doctors and hospitals are in the gunsights of many Democrats who
want Medicare-for-all as a draconian price control scheme by government over
all medical care in the US. Hospitals are told they charge too much and doctors
are vilified for earning too much.
What a relief that a sugar daddy has appeared, a rich boyfriend, a
benefactor with a fat wallet, ready to bestow his financial largess on
financially strapped healthcare providers.
This sugar daddy is named Gavin, tall and handsome with good hair.
I speak of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who finalized a
deal with the California legislature, “to provide full health benefits
to low-income illegal immigrants under the age of 26.”
California is the first
state to provide such benefits to
illegal or undocumented immigrants, depending on which term you prefer.
Specifically, this group of adults, age 19 to 25 will have access to the
state’s Medi-Cal program, California’s version of Medicaid.
California anticipates providing coverage to 100,000 people. I’m
not sure how they arrived at this number since I’ve always heard that illegal
immigrants “live in the shadows,” meaning we really don’t know how many there
are. And when word gets out to the rest of the country, expect that 100,000
number to grow exponentially just as it would if California announced it was giving
away cars to this same group of people.
BLOG: THE MEXICAN TAX-FREE
ECONOMY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY IS ESTIMATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2 BILLION
YEARLY. THIS SAME COUNTY HANDS ILLEGAL ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS MORE THAN $1
BILLION IN WELFARE!
Eligibility would be
determined by the same rules of Medicaid, based on annual income. As many young
illegals are working off the books, for cash, they will have no official
reported income regardless of how much they actually earn, insuring their
eligibility for Medi-Cal.
This scheme is to be funded by
taxing those who do not have health insurance. Who might that be? Not the young
illegals who how have free insurance. How about the small businessman who earns
too much to qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford an Obamacare policy with
massive premiums, copayments, and deductibles? Or the struggling wannabe actors
and actresses in the same financial boat as the small businessman? Or the
60-year-old retiree, not yet eligible for Medicare but unable to afford private
insurance given the higher premiums at her age?
How nice of California
taxpayers, those American born or here legally, having their earnings
confiscated to pay the medical bills of those not here legally. Who pays the
medical bills of those Americans who can’t afford their medical care?
Interestingly undocumented
elderly are not covered under this new plan. Sugar Daddy Newsom opposed this,
preferring the young over the elderly, likely due to the much higher medical
costs for those over age 65 compared to those under age 25.
This may have to do with
voting preferences. It is unknown how many illegals vote, but younger voters
tend to vote Democrat compared to older voters who lean Republican. Is this healthcare
scheme a form of voter outreach?
Why are doctors and
hospitals across America so grateful for their new sugar daddy?
Americans subsidize health
care for illegal immigrants to the tune of $18.5 billion a year according
to Forbes.
Imagine being able to now offload some of this care to California?
Hospitals are required by
law to render emergency care to everyone, regardless of a person’s ability to
pay. A pregnant woman illegally enters the US, and when she goes into labor,
the hospital is required to deliver the baby, caring for both baby and mother,
at an average cost of
$32,000.
What if the baby is born
premature and needs a few weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, or is born
with a heart or bowel defect, requiring additional surgery? The costs quickly
escalate into 6-figure sums.
Labor and delivery is
certainly common in the 19-25 age group. So are injuries that may require
non-emergency treatment, such as a retinal detachment or a ligament tear in the
knee. For the doctor, these patients are considered self-pay. Despite promises
to pay all of their medical bills, some patients, once reasonably stable after
surgery are gone with the wind, with no way to contact them, and no payment
made for rendered services.
What if doctors and
hospitals, when discussing costs of medical treatment, can now give the patient
a map? A few hundred years ago, newspaper editor and author Horace Greeley
advised the 19 to 25-year-olds of the day to “Go west young man”. The same
phrase may become popular again, particularly in states adjacent to or close to
California.
When faced with patients
with non-emergent medical problems, direct these patients to the nearest
east-west interstate, I-40, I-70, or I-80, and drive toward the setting sun
until seeing the “Welcome to California” sign. Go west and allow generous
California taxpayers to pick up the tab.
Hospitals won’t be stuck
with bad debt and physicians won’t be stiffed after offering their time and
expertise without compensation.
Nobel prize-winning
economist Milton Friedman said
this about an open-border immigration policy. "It's just obvious you can't
have free immigration and a welfare state." Which is exactly what
California offers, providing free healthcare to living in the state against the
law.
While at the same time, California
has an out of control homelessness problem, many of those homeless being
American veterans. They are living legally in their own country yet living on
the streets, in squalor, with rats and other vermin bringing back historic
diseases like typhus and typhoid fever. Where is their sugar daddy governor?
Busy pandering to those here illegally.
Down on their luck Americans
are told to pound sand while illegals are lavished with drivers licenses,
welfare benefits, and now healthcare. California cannot care for its own
residents, but is opening its doors to the world, promising goodies that will
do nothing but attract more of the world, regardless of laws.
When does it end? I’ve
suggested that the Trump administration send refugees and illegals to sanctuary
cities, so those cities have the opportunity to live with the consequences of
their virtue signaling. Now doctors and hospitals can do the same. If
California wants to be an open borders welfare state, it’s the least the rest
of the country can do to help out by sending young undocumented immigrants to
the land of milk and honey.
Instead of “the doctor will
see you now”, expect to hear, “go west young man.”
Brian C Joondeph, MD, MPS, a
Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook,
LinkedIn and Twitter.
California could use a management change
Over Sunday lunch, a friend was saying
that he just got back from Los Angeles. He added that he had not seen
that much filth in some of the third-world countries that he visits for
business regularly. He looked at me and asked: " How do the voters
put up with that?"
My answer was that voters have been voting
with their feet for years. In other words, they leave the Golden State.
It has the
worst ranking for homelessness, 8th worst for roads, and worst for
teacher-to-student ratio. Its prisons are so crowded that the Supreme Court
determined them to constitute cruel and unusual punishment, and it suffered the
worst budget crisis of all the states during the Great Recession.
But residents
are so mesmerized by the amazing weather and beauty of the place that they tend
to overlook the quality of the services. And as a result, management does not
change. The state has been under the same Democratic Party management for
years. Their monopoly on power is so safe that they now hold supermajorities in
both houses of the Legislature despite California’s worsening condition. Management
has no incentive to change when it keeps getting re-elected.
Californians
may not be voting out Democrats at the ballot box, but they have been voting
with their feet. While California’s population has grown from 29 million to 39
million over the past 30 years, in each year during that period the state has
seen a net loss in migration to other states.
So will things change? I don't see
any change for now, although the article points out that Latinos get more
conservative as they get more prosperous.
California will continue until they hit a
financial wall or when the last taxpayer leaves the state. In the
meantime, be careful when you walk the streets of LA, and I'm not talking about
thieves.
California
Lawmakers Plan to Give Health Benefits to Illegal Immigrants
HANNAH BLEAU
Democrat state lawmakers in progressive
California have agreed to a plan that would extend health benefits to
qualifying illegal immigrants residing in the state.
The legislature has a June 15
deadline and is expected to approve the deal in the coming days. It essentially extends
eligibility to California’s Medicaid program to young low-income illegal
immigrants between the ages of 19 and 25. The move is part of a broader budget
plan, which clocks in around $213 billion.
Expanding California’s Medicaid
program to low-income illegals would cost the state about $98 million per
year. According to the Associated Press, roughly 90,000 will qualify.
“California believes that health is
a fundamental right,” State Sen. Holly Mitchell (D) said, according to the news
outlet.
A number of Democrat state lawmakers
wanted to take it a step further, offering coverage for all illegals in the
state, but Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the proposal, citing rising
costs.
The agreement also includes
assistance for middle-income families. A family of four making $150,000 could
qualify for a $100 a month subsidy from the government to help cover the cost
of their insurance premium.
Democrats in the state plan to pay
for the handouts, in part, by taxing those who do not have health insurance.
This is, in essence, another version of Obamacare’s individual mandate penalty,
which the Supreme Court upheld as a tax in a critical ruling in 2012. However,
it has remained a point of contention in
lower courts. Republicans in Congress worked with President Trump to scrap what
they deemed to be the unconstitutional penalty in 2017.
California lawmakers say these moves
are all part of the state’s wide-ranging effort to get everyone in the state –
including those residing there unlawfully – covered. This comes at the time of
a severe homelessness crisis in the state, particularly in Los Angeles County.
The number of homeless individuals
on the streets of Los Angeles has skyrocketed during the last year.
The newly released data revealed
that nearly three-fourths of the homeless population, which includes 58,936
people, are sleeping in cars, tents, and other make-do shelters.
Released by the Los Angeles Homeless
Services Authority to the Board of Supervisors, the data found that the
majority of homeless people were residing in the city of Los Angeles, which saw
an increase of 16 percent to 36,300.
About 3,800 are estimated to be
veterans.
San Francisco’s homeless population
has also experienced a spike, rising 17 percent in the last two
years.
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