THE DEATH of CALIFORNIA:
CALIFORNIA UNDER MEX-OCCUPATION: POVERTY, GANG CRIME,
STAGGERING LA RAZA WEFLARE STATE on LEGALS’ BACKS
SHOCKING REPORT OF POVERTY, CRIME AND LA RAZA SUPREMACY
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-passes-uk-to-become-worlds.html
China: Nancy Pelosi ‘Grossly Interfering’ in Hong Kong by Supporting Democracy
6:32
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying accused Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Tuesday of “bolstering violent radical criminals” by offering encouragement to the peaceful anti-communist movement in Hong Kong, urging her to stop “grossly interfering” in Chinese politics.
Pelosi has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the protest movement, which is seeking democratic reforms in the capitalist city. The movement began as resistance to a proposed law that would allow China to extradite anyone present in Hong Kong for perceived violations of Communist Party law, essentially making that law viable on Hong Kong soil.
The “One Country, Two Systems” policy China agreed to when taking Hong Kong back from the United Kingdom in 1997 forbids China from imposing communist law in Hong Kong. It conversely forbids Hong Kong from declaring independence from Beijing.
“Nancy Pelosi and some other U.S. politicians have been calling white black time and again, bolstering violent radical criminals and even justifying and whitewashing their behaviors,” Hua said during her regular press briefing on Tuesday. “They’ve also wantonly smeared and vilified the just move of the SAR [Hong Kong Special Administrative Region] government and police to uphold the rule of law and order.”
“This is no different from covering up, conniving at and supporting illegal criminal behaviors, which again reveals their malicious intention of anti-China and messing up Hong Kong,” Hua insisted.
“The Chinese side must once again urge the relevant American politicians to immediately stop condoning violent crimes and grossly interfering in Hong Kong affairs,” Hua urged. “Any attempt to undermine ‘One Country, Two Systems,’ and Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability will surely be resolutely opposed by all Chinese people, including the Hong Kong compatriots. Any attempt to interfere in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs is doomed to fail.”
The Chinese government news agency Xinhua also attacked Pelosi on Wednesday.
“People like Pelosi turn a blind eye to the lawless deeds done by violent radicals. They chose not to see just and righteous actions taken by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government and police, just as they kept mum on the prevalence of police brutality in their own country,” Xinhua argued, echoing far-left critiques of Pelosi for allegedly being insufficiently sympathetic to the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
“When they stir up violence in Hong Kong using ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ as a pretext, do they have any sense of shame?” Xinhua asked.
The Chinese communist regime’s broadside against Pelosi appears to be a response to a statement the House Speaker made on Tuesday confirming “Democrats and Republicans in Congress stand united with the people of Hong Kong.”
“As they have all summer, today the people of Hong Kong are sending a stirring message to the world: the dreams of freedom, justice and democracy can never be extinguished by injustice and intimidation,” Pelosi’s statement read. “The extraordinary outpouring of courage from the people of Hong Kong stands in stark contrast to a cowardly government that refuses to respect the rule of law or live up to the ‘one country, two systems’ framework which was guaranteed more than two decades ago.”
“The people of Hong Kong deserve the true autonomy that was promised, with the full rights guaranteed by the Hong Kong Basic Law and international agreements,” Pelosi said. “The Legislative Council must finally take long-overdue measures to meet the legitimate democratic aspirations of the Hong Kong people – starting with completely and immediately withdrawing the widely-repudiated extradition bill.”
“When we return to Washington, the bipartisan, bicameral Congress will begin our work to advance the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, and fight to preserve democratic freedoms and the rule of law in Hong Kong,” Pelosi promised.
The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act is a bipartisan bill currently in Congress that would require the Secretary of State to certify that Hong Kong is free of communist intrusion on an annual basis, ensure that Hong Kong protesters who may have criminal records tied to peaceful dissidence can get U.S. visas, and call for travel alerts and other safety protocol for Americans should Hong Kong pass the extradition bill, which would affect American citizens present in the city.
“The human rights of the people of Hong Kong are of great importance to the United States and are directly relevant to United States interests in Hong Kong [and] serve as a basis for Hong Kong’s continued economic prosperity,” the bill reads.
The Hong Kong protest movement has adopted the American flag as a symbol of its struggle for freedom. Protesters have prominently waved American flags during several of the protests occurring since early June, when civil rights groups began organizing. The Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), citing interviews with those protesters, reported that waving the flag is specifically a call for Congress to pass the Human Rights and Democracy Act, and more broadly a call for China to adopt America-style federalism, which would, in theory, allow Beijing’s ruling elite to coexist with a free Hong Kong.
“There may be a temptation for some to see the presence of a foreign flag as an insult, but it should be noted that the flag bearers did not say that they intend to anger Beijing. Instead, they are appealing to a responsive institution – any responsive institution – for relief,” the HKFP noted.
Beijing’s repeated claims that the protests are violent largely obscures the fact that, in the absence of radical communist mobs, the protests have been largely peaceful. The protesters have proposed five demands: a full withdrawal of the extradition bill, an inquiry into police brutality, direct election of legislators, freedom for political prisoners, and, notably, a government statement apologizing for referring to the large June 12 protest as a violent “riot.” Insisting on their reputation for peace is a key characteristic of the Hong Kong protesters.
The protesters have faced significantly violence on the part of pro-China mobs. Late on Monday, protesters in the traditionally pro-communist neighborhood of North Point were cornered by an angry mob wielding sticks and metal rods, beating them while trapping them behind police barricades. Police arrested 80 people on Monday, but none were confirmed to be pro-China attackers. The incident resembled a similar attack in the Yuen Long suburb two weeks ago, when a white-clad mob surrounded protesters heading home from a peaceful rally at the town’s Mass Transit Rail (MTR) station and severely beat them, sending 45 people to the hospital. On that occasion, the mob targeted large congregations of people who were not protesting and injured several people who happened to be in the vicinity of the MTR station wearing black, but not participating in the protest movement.
Police confirmed protesters’ accusations that the Yuen Long attackers had ties to triads, Hong Kong’s organized crime groups.
Can the Democratic Party Govern America?
Bubonic Plague In Los Angeles? Is
California On The Verge Of Becoming A Third-World State?
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2019/06/25/bubonic-plague-in-los-angeles-is-california-on-the-verge-of-becoming-our-first-thirdworld-state-n2548969
The
Left and the Democratic Party are now so committed to open borders and illegal
immigration that they cannot reverse course without a major upheaval within
their ranks. Do they really give a damn about the African American
population, native born or naturalized Hispanics, and the low-income white
working families? Or, are the potential votes of the illegal population
more important? With the spending plans outlined above how will they buy
off these groups as there will be no money or jobs? How will they avoid
the inevitable friction and potential hostility with so many in the marketplace
and a limited number of jobs in the low-income sector?
Can the Democratic Party Govern America?
I recently had a lunch meeting with a
client of 25 years who is a lifelong member and financial supporter of the
Democratic Party. While we managed to avoid politics as best we could,
the inevitable subject of Donald Trump and the Democratic presidential field
reared its head. Once my friend got past the usual left-wing
talking points about Trump, I asked him a simple question. Given the
current state of the American Left and their domination of the Democratic Party
would the Democrats be able to govern a nation of 330 million people the size
of the continent of Europe if they assumed all the reins of power in Washington
D.C.? I was met with a blank stare and a stammered “I really don’t know.”
So, for the benefit of my friend and
his fellow Democrats and leftists some further questions to help them answer
that fundamental inquiry.
This same cabal that would be charged
with governing the nation has, for the past three and a half years,
marginalized, physically confronted and repeatedly accused 63 million Americans
who voted for Donald Trump of being not only racists but fascists and white
supremacists, as well as homophobic, xenophobic and among the most vile people
on the face of the earth. What will be their intentions for these rightfully
incensed citizens? Ignore them and hope they go away (which they will
not)? Or succumb to their base in order to stay in power and continue to
vilify nearly half of the voters in 2020, thus potentially fomenting serious
ongoing confrontations and retaliation.
Over the years 154 million fundamentalist, evangelical or
Catholic Christians have been denigrated, mocked and pilloried for their
beliefs as religious liberty is under continual assault by the Left and the
Democratic Party. What can this segment of society look forward to under
a government committed to promoting unfettered abortion and infanticide as well
as a determination to purge society of its basic Judeo-Christian
foundation? It is almost certain that the hierarchy of the party, in
order to placate their base, will continue, by litigation, administrative
decrees, and intimidation, to force their secularism on the nation. How
will they respond to what will be increasing anger and resentment by 48% of the
population?
In a nation of 330 million people
there will always be those who will commit mass murder. When and if the
current iteration of the Democratic Party takes over, these occurrences will
increase. The left has always blamed rhetoric and guns as the primary
causation. Thus, when mass murders occur, a Democratic Party in power
will have no choice but to appease their left-wing voters (the bulk of their
base) and continue to ignore underlying factors such as societal breakdown and
mental illness and actively focus on limiting speech and gun control.
Currently 235 million Americans either own or could see
themselves owning a gun. How will the Democrats in power go about confiscating
guns in a nation of 3.8 million square miles? Utilize a national registry
of all gun owners? Outlaw all semi-automatic weapons? Impose onerous
taxes and insurance requirements making gun ownership unaffordable? Pass
open-ended red flag laws allowing virtually anyone to file a complaint against
someone, ostensibly based in their suspicions, thus allowing the police to
seize the guns of the accused? As for speech, will certain words, phrases
and organizations, as determined by the Left, be considered inciteful and
dangerous and thus outlawed? How will the Democrats deal with the
inevitable resistance and potential violent pushback from upwards of 72% of the
nation’s citizenry?
Once in power, the Democrats are
committed to Medicare for all, reparations for African Americans, and new
environmental programs amid a myriad of spending programs. The estimated
average annual cost of these proposals exceeds $6 Trillion over and above
current spending. At present the federal government spends $4.7 Trillion
(which includes $1 Trillion of deficit spending). Income taxes account for 50% of all government revenue
and Social Security and Medicare withholding account for 36%. Thus,
individuals account for 86% of all revenue. In order for the Democrats to
pay for these programs, revenue from individual taxpayers would have to be
increased by 200%.
As the Democrats have promised not to
touch Social Security and Medicare withholding, all the increase would have to
be in the income tax arena. Based on the most recent IRS analysis the effective average income
tax rate would have to be 80% on the top 10% of income tax filers, a rate of
65% on the next 40%, and a rate of 40% on the bottom 50% of filers. This does
not include Social Security and Medicare withholding of another 8 to 12
percentage points plus an average state income tax rate of 8.5 percentage
points. Further, the corporate tax rate would have to be increased from a
current rate of 21% to 60%.
How would the Democrats enforce these
new rates as people either refuse to pay or go into the underground
economy? How would they pay for massive unemployment and welfare
benefits as a result of an avalanche of layoffs and business closures?
What are their plans for the recession and potential depression that would
ensue? From whom would the government borrow money and at what exorbitant
interest rate? Would they successfully coerce the Federal Reserve into printing
trillions of dollars in new money creating massive uncontrolled inflation?
On the other hand, if they do not
initiate some if not all of these programs, how do they placate their base and
voters without blaming it on the other side as they are wont to do -- thus
further antagonizing and pitting segments of society against each other.
Recently the Democratic Party has
become the party of open borders and amnesty as well as ultimate citizenship
for upwards of 22 million illegal immigrants and with
open borders at least another 2-4 million more every year. The vast
majority of these illegal immigrants are functionally illiterate and lacking in
employable skills.
Currently 30% of all working families
(or nearly 50 million Americans) are essentially unskilled and low income but
above the poverty threshold. 60% of these are families headed by racial/ ethnic minorities. African-Americans, while 13%
of the population (41 million), account for nearly 30% of low income working
families. Another 39 million Americans live below the poverty level.
Thus, a total of 89 million live in low-income families or in
poverty. Yet the Democratic Party, that claims to be the champion of
minorities and low-income families, is pushing to ultimately legalize upwards
of 22 to 30 million unskilled illegal immigrants (equal to 55 to 73% of the
current African American population) which will devastate low income working
American families.
The Left and the
Democratic Party are now so committed to open borders and illegal immigration
that they cannot reverse course without a major upheaval within their
ranks. Do they really give a damn about the African American population,
native born or naturalized Hispanics, and the low-income white working
families? Or, are the potential votes of the illegal population more
important? With the spending plans outlined above how will they buy off
these groups as there will be no money or jobs? How will they avoid the
inevitable friction and potential hostility with so many in the marketplace and
a limited number of jobs in the low-income sector?
In summary, while the
current American Left dominated Democratic Party and its propaganda arm, the
mainstream media, may be good at sowing confusion, communicating overt
falsehoods and vilifying their opponents in order to win elections, they cannot
and will never be able to successfully govern a nation of 330 million people
the size of the continent of Europe. If they ever fully control all the levers of
power, this nation will, in due course, cease to exist.
Bubonic Plague In Los Angeles? Is
California On The Verge Of Becoming A Third-World State?
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2019/06/25/bubonic-plague-in-los-angeles-is-california-on-the-verge-of-becoming-our-first-thirdworld-state-n2548969
Source: Jeff Lewis/AP Images for AIDS Healthcare Foundation
A lot has happened. We’re still dealing with the border
crisis, the Democratic debates are about to begin, and Iran is rattling the war
sabers. The city of Los Angeles should be thankful there are so many
distractions. The Democrat-run urban center has become a total disgrace. And
that’s very common among the Left coast.
Tucker Carlson had historian Victor Davis Hanson on last
week, where the latter said that California is on the verge of becoming the
nation’s first Third World state. From trash being illegally dumped to city
hall becoming a rat-infested den in the city of LA, it all points to the decay
suffered when Democrats run things. Even police stations in the city are loaded
with rats; one was fined $5,000 over its conditions that
left one officer stricken with typhoid fever. It’s to the point where there is
a possibility that bubonic plague—yes, the black death—may be present in the
city. This isn’t new. Typhus outbreaks were being reported in February
(via NBC Los Angeles):
The full scope of the flea and
rodent problem inside City Hall is still unclear amid a downtown outbreak of
flea-borne typhus…
Staff from the General Services
Department, the Personnel Department and others gave updates to the council on
actions taken … when the council approved a motion seeking options on combating
the problem of rodents and fleas in the building, which may include removing
all of the carpets.
Department representatives told the
council a vendor is still in the process of inspecting every floor of City Hall
and City Hall East as it prepares a full report to identify where the flea and
rodent problems are. Staff also said cleanup efforts around the exterior of the
building have increased and work is being done to identify rodent entry points
and have them sealed.
[…]
Typhus is not transmitted person-to-person,
and flea-borne typhus can spread to people from infected fleas and their feces.
Typhus infection can be prevented through flea control measures on pets, using
insect repellent to avoid flea bites, and clearing areas that can attract wild
or stray animals like cats, rats and opossums, according to the Department of
Public Health.
Symptoms of typhus include high
fever, chills, headache, muscle aches and rash and can be treated with
antibiotics.
Health
officials in October announced there was a typhus outbreak in Los Angeles
County, including in the downtown area of Skid Row, where an estimated 2,000
homeless people sleep.
And it goes without saying; these burgeoning homeless camps are not oases
of hygiene. Dr. Drew Pinsky said this month that there has been a total and
complete breakdown of services in the city that has placed the population at
risk of infection and other health-related issues. The mayor’s office has
sought to shift blame away from the homeless, citing the illegal dumping of
trash, which only adds to the narrative that deep blue California and LA are
just Democratic cesspools. I mean, how does this sound any better?
‘It’s not the homeless, it’s just all the trash that’s
everywhere.’ You cannot make this up (via CBS News):
The city of Los Angeles is grappling
with deteriorating sanitation problems, as an increase in homeless camps and
illegally dumped trash have created conditions for rats and other vermin to
infest L.A. City Hall. … the Los Angeles Times reported an assessment from a
private pest control company placed the blame for the rodents in City Hall
squarely on the city's homeless population living in the nearby Civic Center.
[…]
The Los Angeles Times obtained the
assessment last month through a public records request. Los Angeles' City Hall
building has been plagued by a rodent problem for most of the year. The Los
Angeles Times reports there were pest complaints — rats, mice or fleas — made
in 20 different locations within City Hall for a five-month period through
February.
According to the newspaper, Elena
Stern, spokeswoman for the city's Bureau of Sanitation, said cleanups of
homeless camps currently take place every weekend in the Civic Center and
include the disposal of hazardous materials, the removal and storage of items
owned by homeless people, and the power washing of sidewalks.
The
rodent and homeless problems affecting City Hall and the Civic Center are part
of a larger problem of trash and sanitation in the streets of the city, which
has been profiled by an LA Times photographer. Last month, multiple LAPD police
officers contracted typhoid fever, and others contracted hepatitis A and staff
infections, while working at a police station in an area filled with hundreds
of homeless encampments.
Oh, yeah, and bubonic plague could be roaming the streets
(via Daily Wire):
“We have a complete breakdown of the basic
needs of civilization in Los Angeles right now,” Pinsky told Fox New host Laura
Ingraham. “We have the three prongs of airborne disease, tuberculosis is
exploding, rodent-borne. We are one of the only cities in the country that
doesn’t have a rodent control program, and sanitation has broken down.”
Pinsky said bubonic plague — also
known as the “Black Death,” a pandemic that killed off millions in the 14th
century — is “likely” already present in Los Angeles. The plague is spread by
infected fleas and exposure to bodily fluids from a dead plague-infected animal,
with the bacteria entering through the skin and traveling to lymph nodes.
[…]
“This
is unbelievable. I can’t believe I live in a city where this is not Third
World. This is medieval,” Pinsky said, according to Fox News. “Third World
countries are insulted if they are accused of being like this. No city on Earth
tolerates this. The entire population is at risk.”
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson noted how California was once a gem, an
example of the American dream in action and how it has now become hollowed out
with decay thanks to liberal policies. It’s a state that’s loaded with illegal
aliens, has a population where 40 percent live in poverty, and apparently has
its cities falling into a terrible state of disrepair. California is blue state
trash. Period. So, could, or rather should, we classify the Golden State as a
third-world state?
America’s
First Third-World State
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/california-third-world-state-corruption-crime-infrastructure/
·
·
A man who said he is
homeless stands outside his makeshift home near a housing construction project
in San Francisco, Calif., in 2015. (Robert Galbraith/Reuters)
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.”
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