Posted on 12/15/2010 12:31:51 PM PST by ScottinVA
Abandoned farms, Third World living conditions, pervasive public assistance -- welcome to the once-thriving Central Valley.
The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California. I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most lavish entitlements, the near-worst public schools (based on federal test scores), and the largest number of illegal aliens in the nation, along with an overregulated private sector, a stagnant and shrinking manufacturing base, and an elite environmental ethos that restricts commerce and productivity without curbing consumption.
During this unscientific experiment, three times a week I rode a bike on a 20-mile trip over various rural roads in southwestern Fresno County. I also drove my car over to the coast to work, on various routes through towns like San Joaquin, Mendota, and Firebaugh. And near my home I have been driving, shopping, and touring by intent the rather segregated and impoverished areas of Caruthers, Fowler, Laton, Orange Cove, Parlier, and Selma. My own farmhouse is now in an area of abject poverty and almost no ethnic diversity; the closest elementary school (my alma mater, two miles away) is 94 percent Hispanic and 1 percent white, and well below federal testing norms in math and English.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Forgive me for the butt in, but I have lived here in Ca. for 50 years, and what VDH says is every word the truth.
The same.
What about the aliens with papers? Have the "legal" Mexicans in small town California become Conservative and pro-America or do they remain liberal and favor entitlements?
My direct experience is limited to Bakersfield in central California. My perception was that a good proportion of those of Mexican heritage did assimilate and take on American values. Most of them were nice to me and smiled when I said howdy.
On the other hand, the Mexican descendants in Los Angeles seemed to have a constant chip on their shoulder. Most of them sneered and seemed to be rather hostile.
>How odd that we overregulate those who are citizens and have capital to the point of banishing them from the state, but do not regulate those who are aliens and without capital to the point of encouraging millions more to follow in their footsteps. How odd — to paraphrase what Critias once said of ancient Sparta — that California is at once both the nation’s most unfree and most free state, the most repressed and the wildest.<
Yes.
I do not spend my travel dollars in California nor do I buy municipal issued in California.
Let’s starve these California Communists and just maybe the populace will revolt and remove these Marxists from office.
I also posted this in NRO. I’ve spent most of my adult life in California, and I have lived and worked in both Californias. For several years, I lived in the San Joaquin Valley and the Sacramento Valley, and didn’t realize how rich and enjoyable that experience was until I had spent nearly 15 years in the San Francisco Bay area. Drawing contrasts does not begin to define each region. It was the imagery of the Big Valley and the Sierras that defined California for me. I knew and lived and embraced diversity without knowing that it was some sort of label. Farming was the dominant industry for this state. Other than winter skiing, most urban, i.e. coastal, dwellers have no conception of what lies beyond the coast range, except it’s a microcosm of “flyover” country. It is the liberalism of the coastal regions that has slowly yet increasingly eroded the overall state. It has become ridiculously and insanely expensive to remain in the Bay area, yet I can’t go home to the valley, because what I knew and loved is gone. The liberals captured California, lot, stock and barrel in November, going against the tide of the rest of America. This time, California was no longer the trend setter. The ilk of Jerry Brown & Co. in Sacramento along with the ilk representing California in Washington will take this once fine state further down into the dark pit. The state will go broke, and there will no way to bail it out. As just a minor yet poignant example, when traveling in Arizona a few months back, I could not help but notice the beautiful roadways and how smooth the car felt. California used to be like that, in more ways than smooth highways. Now, it’s just one pothole after another, and all the band aids in the world are not going to fix what’s wrong here. No, like a growing number of Californians, when retirement comes in the next couple of years, I will leave this state. I will have a bitter longing for what once was yet has been decimated for good.
This is becoming somewhat of a problem for me. As my wife keeps wanting me to take her to California. Is it really that dangerous like I keep hearing? She wants to go to Cambria.
I do not spend my travel dollars in California nor do I buy municipal BONDS issued in California.
Let’s starve these California Communists and just maybe the populace will revolt and remove these Marxists from office
(corrected)
By definition. Breaking news if not.
He’s right about the conditions in the small farming towns around the valley. They’ve always been poor and somewhat rundown, but more recently they have degraded to third world status as the population becomes majority illegal alien and the schools are overfilled with their children. And I have heard of long time growers giving it up. I’d say his article is accurate.
But generally, the rooted people of the Central Valley are fairly conservative. Even so, Fresno State is infested with liberals preaching the godless Marxist gospel. It’s my understanding that Victor Davis Hanson was one of the few conservatives there.
I’m not sure how this state of affairs happened — I’ve voted in every election since I was eighteen, and I don’t remember the establishment of an apartheid state Mexican residents ever being on the ballot. But it happened on my parents’ and my watch. I should have screamed louder. So mea culpa.
What I don’t understand is the continued hostility of my fellow Americans. Why isn’t any of your invective reserved for the invaders? And why isn’t your impulse to help us rather than deride us?
The Federal Government (YOUR government, I don’t care what state you live in... so, in fact, YOU) is just as responsible as California for the Mexican colonization of a sovereign American state. They just chose to invade us first, not Rhode Island or Kansas or Georgia. Do you think your state would have reacted any differently?
When the Twin Towers fell, we were all New Yorkers. We didn’t get mad at New Yorkers for causing all this trouble and allowing terrorists to invade our air space, murder thousands, and wreak havoc. But in the case of California, the Federal government has failed utterly in its first and most important charge, protecting Americans on American soil from foreign invasion. And it’s your responsibility too, Rhode Island and Kansas and Georgia. You aren’t living in a sovereign country anymore. Wishing us out of the union because we’re the Mexican invasion Ground Zero so don’t have to do anything about it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve lost YOUR country, too.
So you just sit back and snark about “Kalipornia” while we’ve been beaten, humiliated, and driven out of our homes. What would you have done differently? And what would you do about it now? I’d really like to know.
“When in the course of Human Events ...”
Cambria is a nice place to vacation, and a short drive to Paso Robles...the temperatures can be 30-40 degrees different (100 degrees in Paso and 60 degrees in Cambria) but it is pretty...Hearst Castle is also nearby.
Bump for later read
I appreciate that info. But is that area overrun by illegals, gangs, crime, etc.? Is it dangerous to get there? Sorry if I sound weird saying this but I’m a Texas boy and I’ve never been to CA.
Oh for Pete’s sake, it’s like any other area of the country.There are dangerous areas and nice areas.I don’t feel particulary unsafe.By all means bring your wife out here. Use common sense and stay out of ghettos and run down places. Stay in family oriented and nicer neighborhoods. Yes there are plenty of them - no matter what you hear on the internet. The same things apply everywhere lock your doors, stay out of unlit places at night etc.I grew up in Texas and have lived at different times in the Pacific Northwest, Wyoming, New York and now just outside Fresno. There are nice people and crazy people everywhere. Not everybody out here is a liberal.The San Joaquin Valley btw is pretty conservative politically, just like Orange County.
“Please do not send me back to the culture I nostalgically praise; please let me stay in the culture that I ignore or deprecate.”
Everything is regulated or illegal, but nothing is controlled.
This crap has to stop.
Diversity is our strength.
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