Greece is the word...

[4est_4est_Gump]

There Is No California
By Victor Davis Hanson, NRO
August 16, 2012

Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line.

Consider the disconnects: California’s combined income and sales taxes are among the nation’s highest, but the state’s annual deficit is still about $16 billion. It is estimated that more than 2,000 upper-income Californians are leaving per week to flee high taxes and costly regulations, yet the state government wants to raise taxes even higher. California’s business climate already ranks near the bottom in most surveys. Its teachers are among the highest paid, on average, in the nation, but its public-school students consistently test near the bottom of the nation in both math and science.

The state’s public employees enjoy some of the nation’s most generous pensions and benefits, but California’s retirement systems are underfunded by about $300 billion. The state’s gas taxes — at over 49 cents per gallon — are among the highest in the nation, but its once-unmatched freeways, like 101 and 99, for long stretches have degenerated into potholed, clogged nightmares unchanged since the early 1960s.

The state wishes to borrow billions of dollars to develop high-speed rail, beginning with a little-traveled link between Fresno and Corcoran — a corridor already served by money-losing Amtrak. Apparently, coastal residents like the idea of European-style high-speed rail — as long as the noisy and dirty construction does not begin in their backyards.

As gasoline prices soar, California chooses not to develop millions of barrels of untapped oil and even more natural gas off its shore and beneath its interior. Home to bankrupt green companies like Solyndra, California has mandated that a third of all the energy provided by state utilities soon must come from renewable energy sources – largely wind and solar, which currently provide about 11 percent of the state’s electricity and almost none of its transportation fuel.

How to explain the seemingly inexplicable? “California” is a misnomer. There is no such state. Instead there are two radically different cultures and landscapes with little in common, the two equally dysfunctional in quite different ways. Apart they are unworldly; together, a disaster.

A postmodern narrow coastal corridor runs from San Diego to Berkeley; there the weather is ideal, the gentrified affluent make good money, and values are green and left-wing. This Shangri-La is juxtaposed to a vast impoverished interior, from the southern desert to the northern Central Valley, where life is becoming premodern.

On the coast, blue-chip universities like Cal Tech, Berkeley, Stanford, and UCLA in pastoral landscapes train the world’s doctors, lawyers, engineers, and businesspeople. In the hot interior of blue-collar Sacramento, Turlock, Fresno, and Bakersfield, well over half the incoming freshmen in the California State University system must take remedial math and science classes.

In postmodern Palo Alto, a small cottage costs more than $1 million. Two hours away, in premodern and now-bankrupt Stockton, a bungalow the same size goes for less than $100,000.

In the interior, unemployment in many areas is over 15 percent. The theft of copper wire is reaching epidemic proportions. Thousands of the shrinking middle class have fled the interior for the coast or for nearby no-income-tax states. To fathom the nearly unbelievable statistics — as California’s population grew by 10 million from the mid-1980s to 2005, its number of Medicaid recipients increased by 7 million; one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients now reside in California — visit the state’s hinterlands.

But in the Never-Never Land of Apple, Facebook, Google, Hollywood, and the wine country, millions live in an idyllic paradise. Coastal Californians can afford to worry about trivia — and so their legislators seek to outlaw foie gras, shut down irrigation projects in order to save the three-inch-long Delta smelt, and allow children to have legally recognized multiple parents.

But in the less feel-good interior, crippling regulations curb timber, gas and oil, and farm production. For the most part, the rules are mandated by coastal utopians who have little idea where the fuel for their imported cars comes from, or how the redwood is cut for their decks, or who grows the ingredients for their Mediterranean lunches of arugula, olive oil, and pasta.

On the coast, it’s politically incorrect to talk of illegal immigration. In the interior, residents see first-hand the bankrupting effects on schools, courts, and health care when millions arrive illegally without English-language fluency or a high-school diploma — and send back billions of dollars in remittances to Mexico and other Latin American countries.

The drive from Fresno to Palo Alto takes three hours, but you might as well be rocketing from Earth to the moon.

You will find this pattern reflected in many other places in America where affluent liberals isolate themselves from the realities of the Dreams of their Fathers...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

What was Obama promising to be more flexible about? The microphone picked up the phrase “these issues — but particularly missile defense.” Putin, of course, has long insisted that the U.S. leave itself permanently vulnerable to a Russian missile attack, that the U.S. not utilize its cutting-edge technology to protect people and property from offensive missiles that might be fired by Russians.

Even good reporters persistently get this wrong. They talk about Putin’s “fears” that American missile defenses would be “aimed” at Russia. But American missile defenses can be aimed at only one thing: missiles targeting America or America’s allies. You aim a spear; you don’t aim a shield.

There are Americans who agree with Putin, arguing that the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) worked well and should be maintained. On the other side are those who contend that we now have the technological know-how to prevent offensive missiles fired by any nation from reaching their intended victims, and that we should put this knowledge to use — for both strategic and moral reasons.

This is a hugely consequential policy choice — all the more so following the revelation this week that a nuclear-powered Russian attack submarine recently operated undetected in the Gulf of Mexico. About the same time, a Russian strategic bomber flew into U.S. airspace near California, where it was met by U.S. interceptor jets. And recall that, in May, General Nikolai Makarov warned that Russian forces might consider preemptive attacks on U.S. and allied missile defenses in Europe. Shouldn’t Obama and Romney at least be talking about such matters?

Clifford D. May
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/314108/obama-s-future-flexibility-clifford-d-may

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

...

You will find this pattern reflected in many other places in America where affluent liberals isolate themselves from the realities of the Dreams of their Fathers...

Gallup has recently released a poll showing which parts of America are most confident economically and which are least confident. (The District of Columbia, of course, is not a state but rather a federal district, but it is included along with the fifty states in the poll.) In every state, the Gallup Economic Confidence Index is negative: there are more respondents pessimistic about the future than optimistic. But there is one place in America in which residents have a very positive economic outlook: our nation's capital, the District of Columbia. The gap in economic outlook between the home of federal bureaucrats and the least negative state, Minnesota, is huge. D.C. has a +29 positive outlook, and Minnesota has a -6 economic outlook.

Those who hold federal power treat themselves luxuriously at our expense. Where are the richest Americans? As Forbes noted in an article earlier this year, the richest counties in America are those in Maryland and Virginia surrounding Washington. The United States has 3,007 counties, with six of the richest ten of them right next to Washington, D.C.

These rich Americans are also the most strongly Democrat of any state in the nation. Indeed, the gap between Democratic partisan advantages in the District of Columbia and in the most Democratic state of the union is jaw-dropping: 66 percentage points in D.C. versus 26 in Rhode Island. Is it any surprise that Republicans have carried every state of the union in presidential elections since 1972, but have never come close to carrying the District of Columbia?

The divide between Washington and America is more than just partisan; it is ideological. Gallup has had a number of polls over the last few years dealing with the ideological inclination in different states. The latest, in 2012, showed that in every state except Massachusetts, conservatives outnumber liberals. (The article title was "Mississippi the most conservative state, D.C. the most liberal.") In fact -- forgetting that D.C. is not a state -- the difference is huge. No state was remotely as leftist as our federal district. This is a pattern which has been true in every Gallup poll on that subject.

Other research shows that the ideological voting pattern in the District of Columbia is wildly disproportionately left of center: 9.59% conservative to 90.41% liberal. However, out of the 237 cities reviewed in this study, Washington, D.C. was not the most liberal. Detroit, Gary, and Berkley were slightly farther to the left, but D.C. is profoundly leftist nevertheless.

Bruce Walker, What Washington Does not See
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/what_washington_does_not_see.html

Wealth in America is becoming like wealth in the Soviet Union, or in any other empire ruled from a distant and indifferent imperial capital with no real interest in its subjects becoming prosperous, independent, and content. Those who have political power, not those who drill for oil or write software or create businesses, have practical control of the wealth of America. The classes in America, if the left insists on defining America in terms of class warfare, consist of the ruling class in the District of Columbia and those who do real work in the rest of America.

The more distant and powerful your government, the more likely it is to be dominated and controlled by just a very small group of people.
A_J, the Stupid

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"They've said it. Every Republican's voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they're proposing. Romney wants to let the-he said in the first 100 days, he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street! They gawn' put y'all back in chains."
Honest Joe Biden, a heartbeat away from the Presidency

You've got to have friends...

For all the bluster of Obama, pre- and post-2008, as well as that of Attorney General Eric Holder concerning the alleged criminal activities on Wall Street, there have been zero Wall Street prosecutions under Obama/Holder. Compare that with his predecessors Bush and Clinton:

GAI [Government Accountability Institute] details how the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations both actually took down financial criminals - unlike the Obama administration. Between 2002 and 2008, for instance, GAI points out how a Bush administration task force "obtained over 1,300 corporate fraud convictions, including those of over 130 corporate vice presidents and over 200 CEOs and corporate presidents."

"Clinton's DOJ prosecuted over 1,800 S&L (savings and loans) executives, senior officials, and directors, and over 1,000 of them were sent to jail," GAI adds.

But, despite having "promised more of the same," especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Obama administration's DOJ has not brought criminal charges against a single major Wall Street executive.

The Bush and Clinton administrations' track records on prosecuting white-collar crime, and the Obama administration's failure to do so, Schweizer said, is "evidence that this has less to do with some sort of partisan or philosophical issue."

Bush - 1,300 convictions;
Clinton - 1,000 convictions;
Obama - Zero attempts.

And why the difference in prosecuting the law? The GAI report reveals that the Department of Justice upper echelon is stacked with attorneys from law firms representing the very same companies involved in the financial meltdown of 2008, as well as financial corporations with questionable actions during the Obama administration...AIG, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, CitiBank, Deutsche Bank, ING, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Wilmington Trust, and John Corzine's MF Global.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/08/who_really_unchained_wall_street.html#ixzz23hg0KXkq

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Will President Barack Hussein "kill list" Obama never learn? Or does he know precisely what he is doing and now want to throw more tax dollars to his contributors?

Obama will expedite seven "clean energy" projects as a part of his "We Can't Wait" program. The seven projects are all on public lands in Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, and California.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, speaking on August 7, 2012, in a White House press release about the seven projects, said:

As part of President Obama's all-of-the-above strategy to expand domestic energy production and strengthen the economy, we are working to advance smart development of renewable energy on our public lands. These seven proposed solar and wind projects have great potential to grow our nation's energy independence, drive job creation, and power economies across the west.

W. A. Beatty

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012...a_still_haunting_taxpayers.html#ixzz23hiIRfxX


All the leaves are brown,
And the skies are gray...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The libs hate Science when it conflicts with the myths of Gaia...

An initiative mandating that foods containing genetically modified organisms carry warning labels has made it onto the ballot in California. Proposition 37, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act initiative, is an anti-science campaign that flies in the face of an overwhelming scientific consensus that genetically modified foods are safe and healthy. Corporate sponsors are working closely with unaccountable special interest groups in a disinformation campaign designed to frighten and confuse voters.

Ronald Bailey
http://reason.com/archives/2012/08/14/california-initiative-puts-profit-ahead

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

As soon as we become Greece the Libs will flee to Canada and we'll get America back.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Libs don't flee, they fleece...



They will open more borders and offer benefits to anyone willing to ______ them.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Libs don't flee, they fleece...



They will open more borders and offer benefits to anyone willing to ______ them.

Maybe both! Flee, flea, fleece

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Fleece like Greece with the moves like Jagger...

 

[RobDownSouth]

Libs don't flee, they kick mah half-breed ass on a daily basis in the doom 'n gloom thread...

Whereas cowardly Glibertarians such as yourself routinely flee from facts and opinions that run contrary to "teh narrative".

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Fleece like Greece with the moves like Jagger...

Wasnt that an old Julie Andrew tune? THE FLEECE IN GREECE STAYS MAINLY ON THE FLEAS.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Californication puts the flea in fleece...



RHCP