Posted on 11/03/2012 8:51:38 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
In some towns, visitors are warned to keep an eye on their stuff, or to watch out late at night. In the Californian city of Stockton, the anxiety is more precise – and it kicks in early. "Take care downtown after 5pm," one local person told me. "Don't hang out too long."
A few hours later, I saw what she meant. Almost as soon as the offices shut, the city centre empties. Then the sun goes down and a different cast takes to the streets: the homeless, the drug dealers, and clusters of young men patrolling up and down on bicycles.
Stockton ranks among America's 10 most dangerous cities, and everyone here seems to operate under a self-imposed curfew. The commuter admits she doesn't dare go to the cinema after 8pm; the father expects his 18-year-old daughter home by 10 – "and she totally gets why." Others prefer not to go out at all. All give the same reason: the spiralling number of violent crimes.
Last weekend, the city notched up its 60th murder of the year, up from 24 for all of 2008. At just under 300,000 residents, this river port has about the same population as a London borough. Imagine a couple of your neighbours getting killed every week, and you'll understand why almost all the conversations here touch on a recent homicide.
It happened in this park, they tell you; outside that drive-through; on a first date. Then the inevitable coda: "It happened in broad daylight."
The last time Stockton attracted so much attention was in 2008, as the biggest housing bubble America had ever enjoyed was turning into the biggest bust it had ever suffered.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Well, California (directed at the state, not you, MinRep)... you get the economy you vote for, so change your voting habits. Of course you won`t, but it doesn`t hurt for you to hear that once in a while.
No on 30
Yes on 32
I talk to people from California. I try to explain to them how voting liberal Democrat is bad.
And they sneer and take that smug, holier than thou glow as they begin lecturing me about how much they care and how I’m ignorant, etc.
Then I read stories like this and can only shake my head.
Partisan Media Shills alert — “housing bubble” mentioned. Thanks MinorityRepublican.
I was in Nashville, TN for the CMA, and I saw a California tourism ad on television. Really, California is having to advertise to get people to go to their state? Things must be really bad.
Maybe by the time California get to be like Michigan (Detroit), they’ll start rejecting liberal politics.
1.) City public schools have high dropout rates and a majority that graduate are functionally illiterate. Illiterates are not prepared to work and do not contribute to society or pay taxes.
2.) Cities have been dominated by Democrats for decades. Democrats focus on handouts and involving city governments in ventures that should be left to the private sector. In the process, cities have accrued massive debt and no means to pay down their debt.
3.) The people that live in cities by and large do not take responsibility for their own property, surroundings, and safety. They assume government will take care of them and they are entitled. Government always does the least efficient and effective job.
The solution is simple. State and federal funds need to be eliminated from cities. The people that live in cities need to pay for things with their own money. If they paid for their own schools, then maybe they would value their educations. If they had to pay for their own housing, they would have to work. If they had to pay for their own local government services they would quickly determine what they can afford and what they can't. Truly nonessential services would disappear, creating a focus on what is really needed. Which in reality is very little. The last lesson that city folks need to learn is the hardest. They need care for their own environment. This means cleaning their yards, sidewalks, and streets of trash, drug dealers and thugs. This means taking personal responsibility and not relying on government to do so.
What a shame — a town with such a rich history and once the largest town in California — the Barkleys must be turning over in their graves ... and reruns.
Liberal Democrats live in a bubble, much like the housing bubble and the previous Tech bubble, the bubble they live in is about to burst, there will be weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
We need to be constantly aware of this, and confront their foolishness, it will be a very tough time for our Country, on top of everything else.
Stand fast therefore!
I’m not familiar with the ad. Did it by any chance say that we can accommodate lots more tourists than usual now that so many Californians are leaving the state, making extra room?
That would be truth in advertising.
As for Stockton, I spent a year there one weekend, and don’t know why anyone would visit.
We have to get domestic news from foreign newspapers. Amazing.
So how will the Stocktonites be voting this Tuesday? Think they’ll reelect BO?
“State and federal funds need to be eliminated from cities. The people that live in cities need to pay for things with their own money.”
Newark NJ just laid off hundreds of cops because fed & state funds dried up; Camden NJ is dropping its police force completely and replacing them with a some other kind of force (county?). The teachers’ unions are strong enough to hang on (at the expense of police & fire protection); the crime rates reflect those decisions...
"So, what brought us here? [Speaking of CA's current financial and social disaster:]
"Our culprit out here was not the Bomb (and remember, Hiroshima looks a lot better today than does Detroit, despite the inverse in 1945). The condition is instead brought on by a perfect storm of events that have shred the veneer of sophisticated civilization.
"Add up the causes. One was the destruction of the California rural middle class. Manufacturing jobs, small family farms, and new businesses disappeared due to globalization, high taxes, and new regulations. A pyramidal society followed of a few absentee land barons and corporate grandees, and a mass of those on entitlements or working for government or employed at low-skilled service jobs. The guy with a viable 60 acres of almonds ceased to exist.
"Illegal immigration did its share. No society can successfully absorb some 6-7 million illegal aliens, in less than two decades, the vast majority without English, legality, or education from the poorer provinces of Mexico, the arrivals subsidized by state entitlements while sending billions in remittances back to Mexico — all in a politicized climate where dissent is demonized as racism. This state of affairs is especially true when the host has given up on assimilation, integration, the melting pot, and basic requirements of lawful citizenship.
"Terrible governance was also a culprit, in the sense that the state worked like a lottery: those lucky enough by hook or by crook to get a state job thereby landed a bonanza of high wages, good benefits, no accountability, and rich pensions that eventually almost broke the larger and less well-compensated general society. When I see hordes of Highway Patrolmen writing tickets in a way they did not before 2008, I assume that these are revenue-based, not safety-based, protocols — a little added fiscal insurance that pensions and benefits will not be cut.
"A coarsening of popular culture — a nationwide phenomenon — was intensified, as it always is, in California. The internet, video games, and modern pop culture translated into a generation of youth that did not know the value of hard work or a weekend hike in the Sierra. They didn’t learn how to open a good history book or poem, much less acquire even basic skills such as mowing the lawn or hammering a nail.
"But California’s Generation X did know that they were “somebody” whom teachers and officials dared not reprimand, punish, prosecute, or otherwise pass judgment on for their anti-social behavior. Add all that up with a whiny, pampered, influential elite on the coast that was more worried about wind power, gay marriage, ending plastic bags in the grocery stores — and, well, you get the present-day Road Warrior culture of California."
That’s right. Foreign newspapers does a better job of reporting of what’s happening in the U.S.
Stockton is still California and fully invested in Barack Obama's Amerika. It is still counting on help from Washington and Sacramento and is still making payments to CalPERS for all of its retired public employees who are living large off of those still lucky to have a job out there.
So what if the city is unlivable and unsafe during the nighttime hours. 2/3 of a city is better than none and the politicians and police and firemen are just biding their time there until they too can tap that CalPERS retirement and get away to Nevada or Montana or Idaho and turn those cities into the next Stockton and their capitols into the next Sacramento.
Stockton is still California and fully invested in Barack Obama's Amerika. It is still counting on help from Washington and Sacramento and is still making payments to CalPERS for all of its retired public employees who are living large off of those still lucky to have a job out there.
So what if the city is unlivable and unsafe during the nighttime hours. 2/3 of a city is better than none and the politicians and police and firemen are just biding their time there until they too can tap that CalPERS retirement and get away to Nevada or Montana or Idaho and turn those cities into the next Stockton and their capitols into the next Sacramento.
The societal decay that occurs in areas of concentrated liberalism/progressivism are factually proven - the breakdown of the family, moral decay, the breakdown of stable and nurturing homes for children, the breakdown of education, addiction, and the laundry list of societal ills pervasive to inner-cities throughout American brought on by the evil nature of government unchecked.
The Progressive government, failed ideas, and policies are there throughout the decay to nurture and fertilize it with redistribution policies that are supposed to fix the problems. They will never admit they only grow the problems. Parent(s) abdicate their parental responsibility to the government and become inmates in an asylum they never recognize. The inmates have more children who are born as inmates.
Liberals are so blinded by their utopian ideas they fail to see the absolute reality that such a system is corrosive and unsustainable. Politicians today make the same promises and promote the same ideas every election cycle they have made for the past 50 years. The answer is always more money - never a new idea. Stockton is another Detroit and government continues to rob wealth to feed the problem.
Look at the numbers - welfare is the largest expenditure of our government now and it provides less than half of each dollar to the recipient - government absorbs the rest. The progressive war on poverty is evil. The system is self-sustaining.
Can anyone show a single city in America that was saved by welfare? Anyone? Can anyone show success for these programs? Anyone? Can anyone show a single progressive leader that has fulfilled his/her promises to fix the problem through wealth redistribution and larger government? Anyone? Can anyone show a new idea to address the problem?
The answer is clearly no, the left has brainwashed the rest of America that it is morally wrong to not fund these failed programs. I believe it is morally wrong to continue these same programs. Our nation will spare no expense or effort to rescue a child that has fallen into a deep hole. The media will breathlessly cover the rescue and we will all pray for that child and his/her rescuers. However, our nation is blind to the fate of millions of children born into the same hole statistically each year. We are blind to the reality that we created the hole.
Good for the people of Newark and Camden. I don't live in Newark or Camden. I don't get to vote in those places. But New Jersey state, Newark and Camden local governments and their schools get and waste my tax dollars. The people of Newark and Camden need to figure out how to do things on their own and with their own money.
I live five miles from Harrisburg, PA. Harrisburg has been dominated by Democrats for decades. Harrisburg has the next to worst schools in PA (Chester-Upland being the worst), high employment, high crime, high taxes, and many people that live in Harrisburg live in filth. The state has taken over Harrisburg city (which I disagree) so Harrisburg would not go bankrupt.
But where I live, only five miles away, we have some of the lowest local, county and school taxes in the state, highest employment, and lowest crime. Our school district spends $7,000 less per student per year than Harrisburg, but is one of the best school districts in the state. We are not up to eyeballs in debt. We have kept the unions check, although I think all public sector unions should be outlawed. Our local and county officials are Republicans. We have a Republican state rep, state senator, and US congressman. But most importantly, people where I live take care of each other without expecting the government to do anything.
The difference between where I live and Harrisburg or Camden or Newark is simple. It is the people. My neighbors and I are producers. They are the takers. I am tired of people taking my hard earned money to perpetuate their liberal utopias. Sooner or later they will have to take personal responsibility or deal with the misery for which they are to blame. It is not my fault. After all, I and people like me do not get to vote in those places.
I don’t disagree with your assessment, but let’s not pretend that Stockton was born under Obama. It was birthed by an intractable system and Obama is only the latest spokesperson.
I don’t think many of us make fun of North Koreans. Most of us recognize these people are brainwashed human beings born into a political system and nation they don’t control. At what point do we, the ones who can see (and pay for this), recognize the same reality now exists for our own fellow citizens who can vote to sustain it?
North Korea’s people are not the problem, their government is. Can’t the same in Kalipornia where the people actually choose their government.
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