Replies

"That’s the message I’m getting from those I know there.....they’re either busy, doing something, helping out or trying to find a way to get to their jobs."

Not all of California is like that. Attitudes differ significantly from South to North, for example.

When the terrible earthquake hit the Bay Area in 1989 and a big freeway fell down, there commenced ten years of arguing and obstructionism on the part of the locals. The area is filled with neighborhoods where you can drive for blocks and blocks and know with certainty that no one there had held a job for four or five generations. But they have plenty of time on their hands to get in the way of progress. The impasse eventually resulted in the State and Federal agencies capitulating to their demands, and the freeway was re-routed out of its former neighborhood and onto fresh landfill in the Bay, with new feeder roads (including the "Mandela Parkway"). Until the Big Dig took the crown in Boston, the result was the costliest roadway in the nation.

Ten years. Ten years of wrangling and griping and posturing and obstructing.

In the middle of it, four years in, Southern California had a terrible earthquake and a big freeway fell down. Within two weeks a parallel alternate road had been opened. Within six months the freeway had been completely rebuilt.

We asked our Bay Area friends why it was that the Oakland freeway still hadn't been rebuilt when it was clear from Southern California's example that the job could be done. Their reply: "Well yeah, that's 'cause all the rich Republicans there stole all the money for freeway rebuilding."

I kid you not: In all sincerity, they believed that the weekly spectacle of mobs of welfare myrmidons yowling at endless panels of commissions and planners and review agencies and councils for four endless years had nothing to do with it. Oh, no, it was the eeeeevil Republicans and their sticky fingers, four years in, which deprived the Bay Area of the money that was rightfully theirs.

This was one of my early educations into the mental dysfunction that is leftism.

I fully expect the San Diego situation will be held aloft by the Left as clear proof that Bush and Rove victimized the denizens of New Orleans because of their skin color, or because they vote Democrat, or something of the sort. The culture of self-sufficiency and community that characterizes Southern California simply cannot be grasped by these people.

You’re probably talking about the freeway pass in my area that collapsed and as an alternative the Old Road pass which goes out into the valley was opened. You’re right, it took months to get the freeway pass rebuilt, but luckily we live in a heavily republican area otherwise it might just have taken years. This area at the time of the ‘92 quake was mainly middle class, now I’d say we have quite a bit of upper middle class living in this area.