California Is A Microcosm Of American Mediocrity

Investors' Business Daily ^ | 7-1-15 | Victor Davis Hansen

[afraidfortherepublic]

California keeps reminding us what has gone astray with America in recent years.

The state is in the midst of a crippling four-year-old drought. Yet it has built almost no major northern or central mountain reservoirs since the New Melones Dam of 1979. That added nearly 3 million acre-feet to the state's storage reserves — a critical project that was almost canceled by endless environmental lawsuits and protests.

Although California has almost doubled in population since the dam's construction, its politicians apparently decided that completing more northern and Sierra Nevada water projects was passe. So the parched state now prays for rain and snow rather than building reservoirs to ensure that the next drought won't shut down the state.

Curiously, once infrastructure projects such as the New Melones Dam are finished, few seem to complain about the life-saving water they provide the public in times of existential drought.

California has taught the nation its unique hypocrisy. We have stopped the Keystone Pipeline for now, but if it gets built eventually, few consumers will complain that it transfers oil at a cheap cost and with greater safety.

California has also schooled the nation on mutually exclusively goals. Its lax immigration policies have made for a rapidly expanding population, and yet it expects a sophisticated infrastructure that ensures plentiful, clean water — and dreams of a pristine, green, 19th-century paradise in a depopulated state.

California's major north-south highway laterals — the 99, 101 and I-5 "freeways" — often descend into deadly traffic quagmires. They were designed for a state of less than 20 million people, not one of more than 40 million. Recent national surveys have rated the state's road system as nearly last in the nation.

Most forget that California once all but invented the modern idea of a freeway.

[ponygirl]

Yes, and apparently a very good businessman. But he was a blond surfer whose priority was white, rich boy guilt and Captain Planet. Or Mother Gaia, whatever. It was an interesting documentary. Chandler, Arizona was named after the family (which was absolutely rolling in dough). I had no prior knowledge of how conservative LA had been before the sixties... You sure wouldn’t know it now.

[Osage Orange]

Good post.....

Great book...!!

[MSF BU]

Daft dodgers, etc. I never heard that explanation but it explains a lot. I think the NorthCal sodomite centers ought to be considered to. Remember what Nixon had to say about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPb-PN9F2Pc