Posted on 09/02/2009 3:02:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
Welcome to Mendota, Calif. Its population is 10,000. Most of its families work in farming; the town used to be called the "cantaloupe capital of the world." Today, unemployment hovers around 41 percent. The town is now known as "the food-line capital," says Mendota's mayor, Robert Silva. This is the Dust Bowl, circa 2009.
Mendota is located in Fresno County, where July unemployment stood at 15 percent. And even that staggering number is artificially low because of all the temporary employees hired to pick the seasonal vegetables like squash, carrots, tomatoes and peppers.
Why are the communities of Fresno County suffering so deeply? Because in December 2008, the federal government decided that Fresno County, a farming-rich area which provides half of America's vegetables, no longer needed water. The farmers whose ancestors built the canals to irrigate the Central Valley have been totally cut off from their water supply, even though they're still paying bills for it. Hundreds of acres of prime farming land lie fallow, crops withered and dead.
All because the federal government thinks that smelt -- tiny 5- to 7-centimeter fish -- are more important than human beings. It seems that these annoying little creatures have been filleted by the water pumping systems necessary to make irrigation possible. They are now endangered. As the Fish and Wildlife Service put it, "it is the Service's biological opinion that the coordinated operations of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project, as proposed, are likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the delta smelt." In other words, all water supply must be shut down, lest the world lose the incomparably valuable smelt.
President Obama has two choices here. First, he can call off his dogs at the Fish and Wildlife Service -- after all, the Department of the Interior is answerable to the president. Second, he can declare Fresno County a disaster area and provide federal aid.
So far, he has done nothing.
"President Obama needs to come out here immediately," Silva tells me by telephone on Sept. 1. "Just the other day, 52 other mayors and I sent a letter to President Obama calling on him to visit Fresno County to see what the impact has been. We have the highest unemployment in the state of California. I don't have a problem with endangered species, but water distribution must be looked at."
Silva compares the situation to Hurricane Katrina. "This is man-made, and you've got a third-year drought," he says. "Just because there are no buildings knocked down, that doesn't mean you don't have the same situation as Katrina: food lines, hunger lines, people unable to pay their bills, people unable to pay their mortgages, people out of jobs. That's how we see it. The State of California has declared this a disaster area, but we've heard nothing from the federal government."
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the federal government was excoriated by members of the minority community for its sluggish rescue and rebuilding efforts, I remind Silva. Mendota is 94.7 percent Hispanic or Latino. Fresno County as a whole is 47.6 percent Hispanic or Latino. Could race be a factor here, too?
"It could be," Silva says. "I can't prove that, but it seems to me that if this happened in New Hampshire or New York City, the relief would be there automatically. As for us, we have to beg agencies. We have to beg them to put food on the table for these people. And they still won't open the spigots."
This doesn't just affect the people in Fresno County. Professor Richard Howitt of the University of California at Davis says that 45 percent of the Fresno County acreage could be out of commission. The prices of staple foods will rise all over the country as farmers plow the sun-scorched crops into the ground.
But most of all, it's the farmers in the Central Valley who will suffer. Apparently, President Obama's stimulus is available for labor union payoffs and big government boondoggles. Hispanic farmers are another story.
I think the headline is a bit of a stretch. The fact that the population of Mendota is 95% Latino is only incidental to the decision to create a dustbowl for the sake of a stupid fish.
However, liberals scream racism so often and with so little reason that I think it is high time we adopted their tactics.
I think that it’s time for the Mendota patriots to take matters into their own hands!
Hows that hope and changie thingie workin for you.
These folks let them turn their water off.
They had a choice. and their choice was to be good obedient unemployed starving citizens
As usual, the federal government's solution is one sided on the side of the fish.
I'm sure there is some way to preserve the fish and still provide irrigation, but that would help people and would not be as pristine for the fish.
Hey, this guy is so far gone, his only hope is to talk to school kids to see if they’ll believe his policies. How PATHETIC is that? I mean, really, pitiful.
Follow the money. Look to see who buys up the land.
Nothing happens by accident, or without someone benefiting.
That smelt are purportedly central to this problem gives us a perfect metaphor of small fish caught in large, deadly machines. The only times I’ve been able to make sense of the Obama administration’s behavior, it’s been by saying, “Well, maybe he really *is* trying to destroy this nation.” If that isn’t the awful-but-right answer, our president and his many advisors are all literally crazy.
California (and most of the rest of us) will soon be owned by what used to be our federal government. We will have no freedom until we free ourselves from our government. Judge Napolitano (sp?) says it well: “When people fear the government, that’s tyranny; when government fears the people, that’s freedom.”
I think Obama actually wants to strangle - and then control - the food production industry.
Water is a problem - so why aren’t they building desalination plants or attempting to deal with it in any way?
I think Obama basically wants to destroy these prosperous farms and turn them over to the union (I think it’s AFL-CIO) to run for the federal government.
Generally speaking, almost everything Obama does comes from his hatred of capitalism. Environmentalism is the tool all socialists embrace to help them install their socialist utopia, so I doubt racism is the culprit here.
I think we still have the title deeds my uncle picked up cheap back in the 1960s for land outside Phoenix (or any conceivable water supply).
The Commie-In-Chief is merely destroying another part of American productivity.
Commies are as Commies do.
Remind the women who dotingly voted for the Commie-In-Chief of this when veggies are priced out of the reach of their grubby little Democrapic reach.
What I am thinking is that you take productive land, let someone else build it up, build up the crop markets, the labor force...and then cut the water off....wait...buy the land cheap and then turn the water back on, politically.
Oceanside/Carlsbad California is building a serious desalinization plant. They finally realized that it’s just a matter of time until the government cuts off the water and they revert to being a desert. The plant is not without opponents ~ http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/article_b3443422-bd0e-5a41-9dfe-1321be1c629d.html
You can find plenty of worthless but tillable land throughout the region. Just bring water and grow crops.
Did you ever notice the tremendous road system in Southern California? Wide right of ways ~ wider than anywhere else in America ~ you couldn't afford to do that in, for example, New Jersey!
So, how does California afford those very wide rights of way? Well, first off the land didn't cost anything.
Un roaded, unfenced, unfarmed, undrained and leveled with piping or structures is equal to fenced, leveled, houses and farm buildings.
OK, whatever.
There’s no keeping an eco-weirdie happy!
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