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Will California Ever Thrive Again?
Townhall.com ^ | July 7, 2016 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 07/07/2016 5:45:22 AM PDT by Kaslin

There was more of the same old, same old California news recently. Some 62 percent of state roads have been rated poor or mediocre. There were more predictions of huge cost overruns and yearly losses on high-speed rail -- before the first mile of track has been laid. One-third of Bay Area residents were polled as hoping to leave the area soon.

Such pessimism is daily fare, and for good reason.

The basket of California state taxes -- sales, income and gasoline -- rates among the highest in the U.S. Yet California roads and K-12 education rank near the bottom.

After years of drought, California has not built a single new reservoir. Instead, scarce fresh aqueduct water is still being diverted to sea. Thousands of rural central California homes, in Dust Bowl fashion, have been abandoned due to a sinking aquifer and dry wells.

One in three American welfare recipients resides in California. Almost a quarter of the state population lives below or near the poverty line. Yet the state's gas and electricity prices are among the nation's highest.

One in four state residents was not born in the U.S. Current state-funded pension programs are not sustainable.

California depends on a tiny elite class for about half of its income tax revenue. Yet many of these wealthy taxpayers are fleeing the 40-million-person state, angry over paying 12 percent of their income for lousy public services.

Public health costs have soared as one-third of California residents admitted to state hospitals for any causes suffer from diabetes, a sometimes-lethal disease often predicated on poor diet, lack of exercise and excessive weight.

(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; US: California
KEYWORDS: apple; regulation; vdh; victordavishanson
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To: Kaslin

And yet somehow California’s economy has been growing faster than the rest of they country. In the last few years it’s gone from equivalent to 8th in the world (if it was a country) to 6th. And real estate, both sale prices and rents have gone up with it. Don’t ask me how, with all the crap the Democrats have done to us we should be in a depression.


21 posted on 07/07/2016 6:11:00 AM PDT by Hugin (Conservatism without Nationalism is a fraud.)
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To: Kaslin

I still believe that the Mexican really means “Reconquista.” It is only a matter of time until the Stars and Stripes is taken down and the Mexican flag is raised over California’s public buildings.


22 posted on 07/07/2016 6:11:10 AM PDT by AEMILIUS PAULUS
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To: freedumb2003

We were in CA for 20 years. LOVED the activities and the weather. Husband’s company closed shop in CA several years ago and moved us all to AZ. Really miss beautiful California, but not the politics or the killer taxes.


23 posted on 07/07/2016 6:11:12 AM PDT by originalbuckeye ("In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell)
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To: bestintxas; COBOL2Java; DuncanWaring; EXCH54FE; ExTexasRedhead; FreedomPoster; Gondring; Kennard; ..

Victor Davis Hanson Column


Please Freepmail me if you want to be added, or removed from the ping list

24 posted on 07/07/2016 6:11:16 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him. He got them and now we have to pay the consequences)
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To: lurk

Reminds me of how a virus works. It infects a cell, reproduces huge numbers, destroys the cell then migrates to thousands of other cells to do it all over again. Finally the body gets wise and produces anti-bodies to start killing off the virus if it is not too late.
Forty years go the most popular bumper sticker in Colorado was DON’T CALIFORNICATE COLORADO! Well, now it has been, along with Oregon, Washington, and they are moving into my beloved New Mexico.


25 posted on 07/07/2016 6:11:39 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: lurk

Saw Lombard Street & the Presidio in 1958. Saw the bluest sky ever on the way to Travis AFB & Vietnam. Done with CA.


26 posted on 07/07/2016 6:11:53 AM PDT by elcid1970 ("The Second Amendment is more important than Islam. Buy ammo.")
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To: Kaslin

No


27 posted on 07/07/2016 6:15:39 AM PDT by broken_arrow1 (I regret that I have but one life to give for my country - Nathan Hale "Patriot")
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To: Hugin

Don’t forget the possibility that it wasn’t CA that rose, but that the rest of the world fell.


28 posted on 07/07/2016 6:17:21 AM PDT by Balding_Eagle ( The Great Wall of Trump ---- 100% sealing of the border. Coming soon.)
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To: 556x45

To be honest, I’d LOVE it if Trump would build a wall - around California! If the people there get tired of living in California, let them move to Mexico, Venezuela, etc...


29 posted on 07/07/2016 6:19:25 AM PDT by Mr Rogers (We're a nation of infants, ruled by their emotion)
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To: gaijin

You can’t throw a frisbee on the beach!?

WTH?


30 posted on 07/07/2016 6:25:23 AM PDT by AFreeBird (BEST. ELECTION. EVER!)
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To: Kaslin

The real tragedy in this story isn’t about kalifornia. They’re merely reaping what they’ve sown. The real tragedy is that kalifornians flee that sewer and migrate to civilization, then turn their new homes into mirrors of the dump they left.


31 posted on 07/07/2016 6:26:11 AM PDT by LouAvul (Freedom without responsibility is anarchy.)
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To: 556x45
‘One-third of Bay Area residents were polled as hoping to leave the area soon’

That's the problem. They leave and come to other states such as my state, NC. And screw that place up. (See Asheville, Charlotte, Raleigh, etc). Liberals are like cockroaches.

32 posted on 07/07/2016 6:27:11 AM PDT by Hyman Roth
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To: Kaslin

I left CA ten years ago and I have never looked back.

Its expensive, the regulations are oppressive and the traffic jams and crime are out of this world.

I wouldn’t live there if you paid me to.


33 posted on 07/07/2016 6:34:08 AM PDT by goldstategop ((In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever))
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To: Hyman Roth

“Liberals are like cockroaches.”

You are right on. We lived for a couple of months in an apartment complex just outside of Charlotte. I thought I was living in the Northeast. The majority of the residents were from New York, Mass, New Jersey and a Connecticut. No wonder the state is now purple, but soon to be blue.


34 posted on 07/07/2016 6:36:53 AM PDT by animal172 (Maybe there is hope.)
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To: oldplayer

The VDH article is a great one. But it is only a slight variation of other great articles he has written on the same subject. The “broken record” repetition of his grief over the loss of California is sad. But I’m not sure what he hopes to accomplish by writing, however well, about the same thing repeatedly.

I can only assume, since the situation is hopeless and he refuses to move, that he is simply waiting to be killed at home by a criminal one night and expecting one of these sad articles to be his epitaph.


35 posted on 07/07/2016 7:07:49 AM PDT by Cincinnatus.45-70 (What do DemocRats enjoy more than a truckload of dead babies? Unloading them with a pitchfork!)
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To: Hugin

ChiComs and limited space for tech workers have been driving the “housing bubble” in the SF/Silicon Valley area.

i’ve never understood the point of bullet trains between SF and LA when what’s really needed there are bullet trains between SF/Silicon Valley and the central valley. all of that farmland should be used for farming, but since the CA government is hell bent on ruining their farming industry there in favor of species of fish and insects that nobody truly cares about, they might as well convert some of that land to housing to ease the housing bubble that they have.


36 posted on 07/07/2016 7:16:34 AM PDT by TangibleDisgust ("To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." - Voltaire)
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To: Kaslin

The author forgot that MILLIONS are spent every week on the California Lottery, and it has been in place since about 1986.

I have never seen any type of accounting that shows where all the ‘money for schools’ has gone.

That money needs to be accounted for.

Gray Davis was impeached-—partially because HE raided the ROADS fund 3 times in California and put the money into the General Fund & that fund keeps paying for illegals, and other boondoggles.

The roads would be in decent repair if those years hadn’t been dormant with repairs, IMO.


37 posted on 07/07/2016 8:24:47 AM PDT by ridesthemiles
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To: Kaslin

They ate all the golden eggs now attack an emaciated goose with their forks and knives.


38 posted on 07/07/2016 8:33:29 AM PDT by Godzilla (3/7/77)
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To: lurk

California and the nation are facing great change. California will be great again—just wait.


39 posted on 07/07/2016 8:45:18 AM PDT by Forward the Light Brigade (Into the Jaws of H*ll Onward! Ride to the sound of the guns!)
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To: Forward the Light Brigade
California and the nation are facing great change. California will be great again—just wait.

Not in this lifetime!

40 posted on 07/07/2016 9:05:06 AM PDT by dearolddad (/i>)
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