Change—and Some Hope
Rays of Sun Amid the Storm
The Rasmussen Tracking Poll recently had Romney up 50 to 42 over Obama. At this early juncture, such polls mean nothing—except as diagnostic indices of why perhaps both candidates go up and down in popularity.
So why has Barack Obama plunged in the polls these last few days?
The Republican slugfest is over. The media cannot headline any longer the daily conservative suicide. Barack Obama’s job report came out at 8.1% unemployment—but, more importantly, with information that a smaller percentage of adult Americans are working than ever before, and fewer in absolute numbers than nearly four years ago when Obama took office.
So someone must be asking, “What then was the lost $5 trillion for?” Note, in this regard, the 5.4% unemployment rate that won George Bush the slur of a “jobless recovery” in 2004.
There was some pushback to Obama’s spiking the football on the anniversary of bin Laden’s death.
And have you noticed how Team Obama keeps losing the doggy wars? Seamus begat a photoshopped Dachshund sandwich; Romney’s supposedly terrible polygamist great-great grandfather in Mexico begat Obama’s polygamist father in Kenya; Rush Limbaugh’s “war on women” begat Bill Maher’s misogyny; Romney the high-school hair cutter begat tapes of Obama as the chronic drug user and recollections of Biden, the neighborhood teen bully. I know why the Obama people wish to distract from the economy, but at some point they must accept that they are losing these trivia tit-for-tats, and it now is beginning to show in the polls. (Hint: you may think it neat to ridicule a Mormon, but for purposes of fielding a clean candidate, Romney is a political operative’s dream in this age of adultery, sin, drug, and drink—which is why the Washington Post is back to a supposedly insensitive 18-year-old Mitt Romney this last week).
The flip-flop on gay marriage, of course, did not win Obama a single vote, just plenty of one-percenters’ money. More injurious to his cause was his idiotic refrain about his “evolving” views. No one believed that yarn: fifteen years ago he was for gay marriage when it was smart politically for him to be so, and then he revolved to “no” when it was not. All that happened this week was that clueless Joe Biden jumped the gun. Obama with a wink and nod had privately assured rich gays, as he had Putin, that after his reelection he would give them what was wanted, but could not quite yet, given his need to hoodwink the clingers to get reelected. I think most voters understood that con as emblematic of this presidency.
Then there are the lack of press conferences, the non-stop shakedowns of rich people whom he caricatures, and the somnolent speeches (“make no mistake about it,” “I/me/mine,” “in truth,” “let me be perfectly clear,” “I inherited a mess,” “pay your fair share,” and blah, blah, blah).
Add all that up, and one loses 6-8 points. Keep doing it and he will lose even more. At this rate, Obama will be October surprising Iran.
Despite, not Because of, Obama
But there is more good news. Surveys of federal oil and gas reserves keep soaring. At some point, some president is going to realize that by tapping such bounty all at once he can create new jobs, earn budget-deficit-reducing cash, stimulate the economy, cut down on the trade deficit, and marginalize the Middle East as a security issue. If Obama wishes to pass on that godsend, so be it: he can bequeath to his successor even greater riches that will only increase in value.
Rather than Obama destroying the economy, there is a sense emerging that he is merely restraining it. Should Obama lose in November, there will be the greatest collective sigh of relief since 1980 and a yell that all hell will break lose, in the good sense of business activity, commerce, investment, hiring, and resource utilization being unleashed.
Look at it this way: for four years Obama has poked and jabbed at the corralled stallion, and when the gate goes up he will roar out as never before. Or if you are a Greek, try this: for 30 years we have been lectured to death about global warming, the brilliant Ivy League technocrats, the genius of Keynesian borrowing, the need for multiculturalism in the White House, if only we had open borders, why lawyers and academics need to be in charge—all on the “what if” presumption that no one in his right mind would let any of the above become gospel. And so we had the constant liberal whine, “if only.…” Now we have it in the flesh, and in cathartic fashion Obama is going to purge us of that unhinged temptation for another generation.
We’re Mississippi and Massachusetts—All in One
In California, it is also the best of times and the worst of times. Jerry Brown just announced we are short $16 billion, not $9 billion, as he does his best to promote his massive tax increases on “them” on the June ballot. Yet it is still hard to kill off California.
Due to the globalized rise of Asia, there are now a billion new consumers in China, India, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, with money to buy California fruits, nuts, beef, and fiber. And while the state’s students have never been more unprepared in science and math, California high-tech farming—run by just a few thousand entrepreneurs—has never been more sophisticated and ingenious. Never have there been so many new hybrid species of trees, vines, and row crops, never so much mechanization and replacement of manual labor, never so much sophisticated computerized irrigation and fertilization. Just when I think no more production can be squeezed out of an acre, no more markets can be found for yet another 1,000-acre block of almonds or pistachios, no more new machines can figure out how to eliminate labor, prices keeps soaring and the profit margins keep growing—and in a government-induced depression no less.
New Carthage, Circa AD 400
Yet amid the good news, the wealthy agribusiness baron does not put his kid in the school next to his sprawling acreage. He factors into his expenses the serial theft of copper conduit from his pumps and the daily vandalism as the cost of doing business. He knows better than to drive a rural road after 10 p.m. when shootings, drunk driving, and violent crime will leave their detritus for the morning clean-up.
Most big farmers live in northeastern Fresno or Clovis for the ambiance and the schools, and then drive out to their goldmines in the outback in my environs. In some sense, rural central California has never been more lucrative for a few, and never more foreboding for the rest of us. I was reminded of this the other day, when an agribusiness man at a lecture I gave offered me some wise, if cynical, advice: “You have it backwards, Mr. Hanson. You’re supposed to live in a good place and drive out to lots of your farmland, not live right on top of very little of it.”
The same disconnect is true of the state in general. Facebook, Google, and Apple have never had more profits or cash. Silicon Valley has never been richer. I eat at restaurants on University Avenue amid software engineers, bankers, and lawyers from China, India, Germany, and Japan. Yet drive just 100 miles inland to the other California, the Mississippi half of the state, and you encounter not hundreds of thousands, but literally millions of those without high school diplomas, English, or legality. Last week, I was counting the different languages spoken at a Palo Alto outside Italian eatery (Punjabi, Chinese, German, Italian, French, and Russian)—and, three hours, 180 miles away, warning the stalled driver ahead of me not to dump his three cans of raw trash on the side of the road.
As the wine country booms, as Hollywood still reels in global cash, as universities like Stanford, Caltech, and USC are flush with cash and with long waiting lists, the infrastructure of high-tax California is shot, with repair and improvements diverted to redistributive social entitlements. Last month, I drove again down 101, the state’s coastal “freeway”: lots of Mercedeses, Lexuses—and clunker trucks with boards, wire, and scrap bouncing in the back—all weaving in and out of the two-lane, pot-holed excuse for a freeway. It reminded me of Road Warrior.
I went to a rural hospital lab two weeks ago to get a simple blood test: six were ahead of me. Two spoke English. All had presented their Medi-Cal cards. Altogether there were ten small toddlers, with parents all either sick or pregnant or both. A five-minute visit in 1980 now took an hour—all a world away from Stanford Medical Center or the Palo Alto Medical Foundation.
Yes, there is free care in California without Obamacare—available to anyone who wishes it, as good as my university Blue Shield plan. Part of me looked at the lab crowd, with dependents, little income, no education or much English, and health problems galore, and sighed: “This isn’t going to work”; and part of me sighed: “At least they are confident and having kids and not neurotic like so many of the childless elites on the coast.” You decide, reader; I cannot. (A final observation: Do not believe the liberal myth that hordes of young hardy Mexican nationals are going to suffer to take care of aging whites and Asians on fat pensions. From my observations, morbid obesity and an epidemic of onset diabetes among new arrivals from Mexico are the next great health crises to come. The sociable, kindly woman ahead of me at the lab earnestly explained to me her health issues: diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure. She looked about 26 and was pregnant with her fourth child.)
What a weird, weird bi-state. In the Bay Area, acquaintances initiate conversation by announcing the discovery of a new underappreciated bistro in Los Altos, Palo Alto, or Menlo Park. In Selma, conversations are started with the latest weird theft. (Yes, roses are the most recent: any rural residence with lots of roses growing near the road will find them gone, periodically picked for the new burgeoning flower industry of peddlers, who sell pilfered bouquets on the rural intersections. [This Mother's Day I feel like buying back at the stand down the road the long-stemmed roses that were stripped off my roadside bush]). Oh, for those who write in: The tab the last two weeks? Just roses and an air compressor. Not too bad.
In the last few months some disturbing statistics made the news about California. We now have about nine million residents who were not born in the U.S—or one of every four Californians. In recent public school science testing, California school students ranked 47th in the nation. That’s the scientific reality beneath the thin tony veneer of Apple, Facebook, and Google elites. And of the last ten million persons added to California’s population, seven million of them are now on Medicaid. In that same last twenty years the number of new tax filers (150,000) was almost matched by the number of new prison inmates (115,000).
Yes, it is the best or worst of times in California. My poor grandfather huddled around an ancient black and white TV to get the news; I flip open my laptop in his house and in a nano-second read analysis about the news in Germany, or access the corpus of Greek literature. Yet he never had a lock on his door; I’ve installed gates to close my medieval compound at 9 each evening before the hunters and gatherers begin their nocturnal foraging for copper wire and tractor batteries.
Now and then, you can almost catch glimpses of greatness again. Were the borders to close, were integration and assimilation to catch up, were we to unleash the entrepreneurs in farming, oil, and minerals, then these isolated spots of prosperity would spread and turn the desert green. Even a Jerry Brown, the California legislature, the Berkeley professor, or the Santa Cruz activist could not stop the prosperity.
Give Obama some credit. He has framed the 2012 election as a conflict of visions unlike any of our time. It’s our choice now, no excuses, no one left to blame. Change is coming, and with it, hope. This week I saw a ray of sunshine amid the clouds.
…”somnolent speeches (“make no mistake about it”, “I/me/mine”, “in truth”, “let me be perfectly clear”, “I inherited a mess”, “pay your fair share”, and blah, blah, blah)”
How about the remark that the soldiers and sailors are out there ” fighting on my behalf”? What’s the difference between somnolence and delusion?
It is wonderful to see an optimistic posting on Pajamas Media, and with such salient details. I take down Warren Buffett and his allies here: http://clarespark.com/2012/04/12/the-donkey-serenade-and-buffetts-rule/. The music alone will cheer you up, worried PJ Media readers.
I suspect you’re correct about the “corralled stallion.” Businesses large and small are sitting on their hands, not wanting to do much of anything lest some idiotic new federal regulation implemented by some apparatchik who wishes to “crucify” someone foul up their plans. Banks buy no-risk treasury bonds rather than try to lend and make a bigger profit, lest they be branded “fat cats” who should be chased with pitchforks. Few wish to display wealth lest they become targets for a foul-mouthed mob with bad sanitary habits. They all know Obama won’t be flying around on Air Force I forever – whether it is in 2013 (hopefully) or 2017, his miserable administration will be nothing more than a bad memory. Might as well bide one’s time and save one’s money until that happy day.
Yes. Business owners are sitting on their hands and their money (when they have that option). The sound of wallets, checkbooks and vaults slamming shut becomes louder with each successive round of Obama’s accusations and scapegoating of American business.
Almost every business I know has Plan A (if Romney wins) and Plan B (if Barry wins).
Plan A is to systematically pursue the growth, innovation and expansion that’s been delayed or derailed under Obama. Plan B is the “out” plan: try to ride it out, or equally likely, get out of business if not the country.
VDH is right: If Romney wins, “all hell will break lose, in the good sense of business activity, commerce, investment, hiring, and resource utilization being unleashed.”
I live abroad, and may have to move back to the US. If Barry wins, I suppose we move to Silver Spring, north of DC; the economy in Washington is booming. If Romeny wins, we can live anywhere else.
You might consider Texas: 8 straight years of job growth. Perry et al seem to be doing something right.
I was going to say something about it being the “best of times and the worst of times,” but then saw that VDH referenced that in the third to the last paragraph. Truly, that is what he described as going on in California.
The US is in its ‘late Roman’ stage, and like the Roman Empire the US is on same path to its dissolution. I would like to hope and hold on, like Mr Hanson and many readers at this site, but at this late stage of the dissolution there is little to hold onto except for images and memories from the past. I am planning to move my family out of California to a site where we can stay, as much as possible, out of the way of the tidal wave of history coming our way. Terrible times are ahead, no matter who is elected in November. Keep you powder dry.
If you want comparisons to the Roman empire, I think it makes more sense to compare the US now to Rome during its transition from being a Republic (yes, Rome started out as a sort of Democracy) to the Principate under Caesar Augustus. This transition involved a round robin of bloody civil wars as various would-be dictators contended for absolute power. When Augustus Caesar finally got it, he made a lot of good decisions and established Rome as acknowledged and stable overlord of the Mediterranean.
There are a lot of obvious things that could be done to improve the US that are now stymied — and have been for decades — by the need to satisfy corrupt voting blocks and established gatekeepers. As VDH says
“Were the borders to close, were integration and assimilation to catch up, were we to unleash the entrepreneurs in farming, oil, and minerals, then these isolated spots of prosperity would spread and turn the desert green.”
I suspect this observation just scratches the surface of what could be accomplished with sensible government policies, which suggests that a benevolent dictator, like Franco in Spain or Pinochet in Chile, could — like Caesar Augustus in ancient Rome — accomplish wonders. The dangers of dictatorship, of course, are that you get someone like Castro or Chavez instead who runs the country the all the way into the ground very quickly. If you escape that short-term danger, there is the longer-term problem of an ever more corrupt authoritarian establishment creating inescapable long-term decline, again like in ancient Rome.
This sort of long-term problem is what you are referring to when you say the US is in its “late Roman” stage. We’re not there yet because on an individual level most of our citizens are still talented and productive. In a late Roman stage everybody is lost, with those in charge of the government having no clue how to regain power and those in charge of maintaining the infrastructure unable to find anyone who knows how to repair the crumbling roads, bridges, buildings, etc. because even the productive skills of the common citizen have disappeared. Right now in the US that is the situation only in places like Detroit and East St. Louis …
The dangers of dictatorship, of course, are that you get someone like Castro or Chavez…
Or, the Guiding Light of the Intellectual, King of the Narrative, the Inspiration of the NYT and WaPo, Scourge of the Tea Party, Eminence of the 99%, Savior of Julia, the everlasting B. Hussein Obama.
I suspect someone who had it in him to be a for-real dictator would quickly chew up Obama and have him for breakfast. It’s easy to forget, watching him act against the constitution (viz. recess appointments and over-reaching regulations) making one bad decision after another, that the beginning and end of his true personality is to do as little work as possible. In addition, it’s easy to push him around — take a look at his description of this incident in middle school:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/324702
This is not the material from which dictators are made.
Obama is, however, through his laziness and fecklessness, doing a nice job of softening up the present constitutional order, laying the groundwork for a much more authoritarian form of governmenrt. I’m especially impressed by the way the MSM has transformed itself into a pro-Obama organ of propaganda — and also with the way the new internet-based media has started to libel and slander those private citizens who have the temerity to contribute substantial sums of money to anti-Obama politicians and causes. All good, authoritarian practices, soon to be followed by federal indictments based on those lies and slanders. Heck, why wait? Look for Holder and the DOJ to indict Romney for “aggravated mopery with intent to creep” just before the election if the polls suggest Obama is about to lose.
It’s all in “The Blueprint” but now writ larger and with control of law enforcement and regulatory authority at the federal level. There was a reason that the Democrat Convention and the Immaculation were held in CO and a reason Comrade Obama kowtowed to the gay marriage lobby and the Gil Foundation even though it wasn’t in his electoral interest to do so. There is no doubt that the Left will harrass and sue any significant money raisers for Republicans at all levels. They will make every attempt to reach inside the bureaucracy to create voting irregularities so the election can be thrown into recounts and the courts. I beleive they will also try significant voter intimidation in white suburbs in battleground states by unleashing riot and rumors of riots to get the mushy middle to stay home, vote more easily stolen absentee ballots, or vote Obama to keep “his people” from rioting.
I disagree with your characterization of Comrade Obama. He is a Red Diaper Baby born and raised to be a dyed in the wool communist apparatchik and chosen by the Soros Cabal to be the front man for their coup d’etat. They have to move more slowly than did the Clintons for fear of provoking another backlash such as they experienced in ’94, so Obama’s job is to steer as much federal money as possible to unions and other Democrat front groups to bulk them up for action; he and his handlers really aren’t interested in actually doing anything for client constiuencies, e.g., blacks, gays, activist women, because they need to have them worked up to a tumutuous uproar for the election. I’ve dealt with this in collective bargaining with lefty unions as it gets close to election time; unless you can seriously threaten their certification and their dues income, they’ll walk away from any agreement because they’d rather have their members all worked up than have them quietly under contract.
This really isn’t like the last days of the Western Roman Empire. It’s a fondly held Christian myth that the Empire fell because it lapsed further and further into degeneracy and debachery, but it simply isn’t true. Sure, there were a share of degenerates in high places just as there are in any wealthy society, and among the wealthy even in poor societies, but the average Roman was a pretty solid and straitlaced guy who learned a trade or business, had a wife and a home and raised kids to be like him and his wife, and that continued even beyond the end of the Empire as an organized political and financial entity. It should be remembered when we read surviving Roman literature that its audience was almost exclusively the Roman upper class, so reading material aimed at the Senatorial and Knightly class about the Emperors is pretty much like reading the NYT and WaPo about Republican politicians. Romans were intensely homophobic, so acusing a prominent married man of homosexuality was about the worst insult possible and probably goes further to explain why so many emperors are accused of it than does any actual homosexual activity they might have engaged in.
Fundamentally, the Western Empire with the loss of Africa to the Vandals lost its primary source of grain and a huge source of revenue and simply ran out of money to keep its army in the field and its government functioning in the colonies. By the late 300s the villa rustica was becoming a fortified predecessor of the medieval castle and the wealthy Roman was leaving his villa for the towns throughout the Western Empire and even the western reaches of the Eastern Empire, e.g., the Balkans and northern Greece. Garrisons were withdrawn or allowed to languish because they were needed elsewhere or there wasn’t the money to arm and pay the troops. At the frontiers, the army just dissolved because it was not being maintained. Eastern intrigue and Byzantine propensity to use clients to fight on their behalf essentially turned military power in the West over to the Ostragoths who set up an Italian kingdom as the rest of the Western Empire devolved to the predecessors of feudal warlords living in their fortified castles and maintaining private armies. In reality, the Black Death had more to do with the dissolution of the Western Empire than anything else because it prevented several attempts to reunite the Eastern and Western Empires and in the end so dramatically weakened the Eastern Empire that the Muslims made irretrievable inroads. That said, it took a bunch of rampaging Franks, descendents of those inhabitants of the Roman colonies, to lay Constantiople so low that it never recovered its strength and ultimately fell to the Turks almost a thousand years after the last Western Roman Emperor.
I remain cautiously optimistic that Obama’s “laziness and fecklessness” will be his Achilles heal. Can you imagine the peril we would face if he had Bill Clinton’s shrewdness and drive to promulgate his anti-American ideology? Never give in or give up. Look to November 6 as Liberation Day, and “unleash the stallion”.
Savior of Julia! Brilliant! Can I use those?
I’ve thought about this a lot: that the strongest and most admired institution in the USA is the military. So far, it is adamant that it is apolitical. However, there are straws in the wind: the soldier who, on facebook, wrote a nasty about Obama. Obama, himself, mispronouncing “corps.”
And then, there is that softy romance, “The Lucky One.” The hero is a marine, a vet, completely superior to every other man in the movie. He is a ‘man’, who fixes the tractor and the boat, and is USEFUL, in a completely female run business. Wow.
We are not very far from a militarization of the US of A.
“I think it makes more sense to compare the US now to Rome during its transition from being a Republic”
The best comparison is with the late Hellenistic age, which is in fact as you say, the late republic. This does not bode well for our freedom.
Though there are similarities with ancient Rome, the differences are glaring. Rome became wealthy by attacking and plundering other nations, their gold then used to build the things that made living in Rome more pleasant. They also taxed the crap out of “non-Romans” whenever it was convenient. Non-Romans were those people of “conquered status”. Thus, it became unprofitable to be a non-Roman and overall production would suffer or the entrepreneurial types would figure out ways to circumvent having to pay the government.
Then there was the slavery. 1/3 of Rome proper was slaves. There was a large population in the city itself with varying degrees of wealth but most were not of the elite. The money taken from other plunderings had to be poured into the city to keep it solvent and as long as there were lands to conquer, the money came in.
But they ran out of other people’s money. This, of course in the tax-based attitude of the socialist is what always happens in a socialist nation. Rome ran out of other people’s money because they ran out of places to beat up and steal from. The wealth got “re-distributed” to other areas, to pay for armies, make political deals and build mega-structures and roads. Lots of roads. (I’m not saying it was all bad but the roads were built to be able to more quickly dispatch military forces to trouble spots)
With Europe largely Romanized and the wealth reaching equilibrium, there just wasn’t profit in war anymore. How fascinating it would have been to see a kindling of real republicanism and an infrastructure of commerce blossom, which it did, in places. But 98% of what Rome used in the city was imported. Cattle, vegetables, oil, seafood, etc were all taken from other areas and those areas suffered greatly under Roman rule. Everything was produced to go to the capital. And it was largely paid for with increasingly diminishing funds. Though there were bastions of “capitalism”, the money supply eventually ran out. Real, true capitalism acknowledges that there is no end to how rich people can become and everyone can, if they have the ability to find and generate a source that satisfies a need.
In Rome, they simply took. Yes, there was commerce but if the government needed to satisfy an issue, say, large segments of hunger, they would plunder the graineries of the private entrepreneur and put him out of business in order to feed the army. The laws of unintended consequences worked back then as they do now.
At the end, Rome was a shell of its former self with paper tiger dictators and lots of infighting and squabbling amongst its leaders in government. By that time, the people who had been conquered by Rome centuries before had had enough and came and plundered the city and went off to start their own countries, thus entering Europe into the dark ages. It’s been my contention that had Rome never become the powerhouse it was, the dark ages would never have happened. But that’s just empty speculation on my part.
The United States became financially solvent in a big way by producing those things that people wanted, in and of itself as well as worldwide. Planes, cars, trains, heavy machinery, steel, steel, and more steel. We exported incredible amounts of stuff. The growing middle class after WW II wanted things as well. Houses, cars, clothing, toothpaste, TV’s, bicycles, all kinds of goods and they were made here…in the good ol’ US of A.
Unions came along and decided it was a good idea to make the company they work for pay for that which they could not pay for themselves, given the wages that were offered. Companies agreed begrudgingly. But the face of industry was changing and companies no longer “owned your ass”; The employees had spoken and decided that the companies might be better served if their employees were happy in their work and that loyalty would go some distance. For a time it worked.
Until the unions got greedy. They lost their ability to be reasonable and demanded things that genuinely hurt the manufacturer and caused the things they made to be 1000% more expensive to produce for all the costs they incurred due to the new labor agreements. So they moved away. Mills in the Carolinas shut down in droves. Makers of electronics opened factories in the Far East. Jobs were diminishing, slowly at first then faster.
Both democrats and republicans pooh-poohed the notion and put their weight behind NAFTA. Many of us said, “let me know how that works out for ya” and here we are.
Everything I buy at Walmart is made not in the USA. CD’s, DVD’s, kitchenware, tools, paint, boat parts, all made elsewhere. In 1970, I said we’d go the route that Great Britain took and become a nation of consumers. We were still a nation of producers at the time but aviation manufacturers were feeling the pinch and now we have Boeing and Lockheed left. We used to have 25 different aircraft manufacturers at one point in the nation. The number of auto producers has diminished to three, not counting the marginal work of Tesla and a couple of others that are not really manufacturing examples to go by.
Rome? Maybe. I think the similarity is more within the confines of what happens in the government rather than how the people act and where the money comes from, except that the government thinks that taxing people to non-existence is the solution. But that methodology has always been very short-sighted in 36 AD as well as now.
“For a time it worked.
Until the unions got greedy”
Don’t believe the Union fairy tales. It’s always been a communist plot to exploit worker’s greed. All the idiotic stuff that killed the manufacturing base and that is causing businesses to be AWOL from this economy were always the true agenda. It was a feature, not a bug.
Once the law of contracts was abridged to give workers, with no skin in the game and no responsibilities to the owners, the right to tell the managers what to do, the game was up. Once the lunatics realize that the guards in the white coats are on their side, all is already lost!
I am so tired of the “I gave 30 years to that company” horse hockey, I want to puke. You got paid every Friday, schmuck. That’s all you bargained for. You also didn’t work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, like your boss did. You got yours, no matter what. He probably did not. This crap that the company OWES you something is just that: crap. Every Friday, along with your paycheck, you and your boss became even-steven. What, pray tell, did you ever do to deserve anything more? Your job?
This rant, in no way, is meant as an insult to your quite good post. Just please, give more thought to using leftist talking points without actually thinking about them. If you need some education in the depth and breadth of the liberals’ deceptions and lies, get Jonah Goldberg’s new book on cliches. Remember, almost everything you ever learned from televison or your teachers is wrong. Dangerously wrong. Unions were never good for America. They were just good for FDR. And for their bosses.
The truth is good enough. Unionization hasn’t always been a communist plot in America; the history goes back into colonial days. That said, by the turn of the 19th-20th Centuries there was a lot of communist influence and by the ’30s many were outright, openly communist. Unions are justly proud of the prodigious war production under War Labor Board dictated union contracts in WWII, but the interesting question is what would the unions have done had Hitler and Stalin concluded a separate peace or had the USSR broken off with the US over who got what in the Pacific. The sudden and unexpected conclusion of the Pacific War kept us from finding out if the unions would have stymied production the same way they had during the time of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. In any event, union execesses led to the Taft-Hartley Amendment in ’48 and were instrumental in the powerful anti-communist movement of the late ’40s and early ’50, so much so that the AFL and later AFL-CIO became and remained staunchly anti-communist throughout George Meany’s tenure, less so under his successors, and now many are once again open communists now that nobody seems to care and the AFL-CIO is dominated by public and service employee unions. Some of the unions, particularly the industrial unions on the CIO side of things, however, made only a pretense of forsaking their communist leanings even during the Meany days and CIO unions like UAW and IAM are as agressively communist in deed if not word as any of the more radical public and service employee unions.
You misunderstand the Labor – Management Relations Act and most of its state law analogs in the public sector if you think that collective bargaining rights have taken away management’s right to manage. Neither the federal law nor any state law I’m aware of compel an agreement on any subject. Union political power, not collective bargaining power has caused management to relinquish rights in the “Third Sector” industries that are nominally private but use public funding or are subject to extensive permitting or regulation. There really isn’t any unionization in the true private sector any more. In the public sector in most states the unions and Democrat administrations rather openly conspire against business and the taxpayers to loot public treasuries. Mine is one of the few states that has maintained an openly adversarial relationship with its unions for much of its history of collective bargaining, but that is largely because the Democrats are owned by organized labor and the Republicans are owned by the oil industry. When I was the Republican director of labor relations it was often like I had Saul Alinsky pushing me one way and the Director General of the British East India Company pulling me the other. Neither are nice guys.
Don’t forget Rome was conquered, it did not just fall. Think Ron Paul and others who think the rest of the world will leave us alone if we ignore it.
– California is in its death throes.
Couldn’t agree more still presuming the Feds don’t bail out CA, Il, etc. with other people’s money I am still not clear what a default bankrupt state looks like. Greece might be a good model, I suppose. I keep hearing that CA and Il are about to slip into the wormhole, but they just keep putt putting along as if it is business as usual. No one in charge that I have observed seems concerned in the least as they talk of high speed rail and further protection policies for the snail darter and no fracking in my back yard, keep those poor illiterate undocumenteds flooding the system, all hail the mighty public union strategies.
I’d sure like to be around to see the implosion, but it doesn’t seem to be happening very quick and I just turned 63, sheesh, is there time. Guess They both just need to herd a few more productive people out of the state and raise taxes a wee bit more. Will that do it? Sure hope so, I mean no ill will intended but I think it is important at this time in our history to get someones’ attention as the left seems to think that default can’t happen here and austerity is evil and taxing/spending is saintly. They need to be proved wrong on a smaller CA/IL scale before the whole party gets sucked down the hole.
Just thinking out loud. Thanks.
I’ll tell you what it looks like. You’ll know we’ve arrived when the state can’t print anything (flyers/brochures/forms) because nobody will sell them equipment or supplies on credit, because they don’t know when/if they’ll get the money. California already set the precedent with IOU’s and delaying payment to vendors by months.
Multiply that by everything the state does. In Greece, the state is behind by months on sending out PAYCHECKS!!! That won’t fly here.
They get FEMA, that’s it. Emergency food and shelter and a bus ticket. Not one penny more.
I don’t know anybody who saw a penny of that 5 trillion dollar downpour. I’ve always been middle-middle class with a few struggling friends and a few over the $250K red line. I fear it must have gone into the 1% underground of Democratic faithful who in Soros fashion will pour it out in Aug, Sept and October like a green Niagra Falls.
Thank you Professor for the positive take. It’s always a nice way to start the day. This blog is still the best.
That money mostly went to people working for the US government, which is why you keep reading about how prosperous Washington DC has become. Note that regional polls now tend to show that historically conservative Virginia — with lots of people living just across the border from DC, commuting into work there every day — is likely to vote for more Obama in 2012.
A goodly piece of the stimulus pie went to red state governments to enable them to avoid facing the tough decisions needed to address public employee benefit levels. This year, that money is gone while its debt lives on and those states are now avoiding the crisis by cutting essential services rather than face the ire of the unions.
“A goodly piece of the stimulus pie went to red state governments …”
I think you meant that it went to the Blue states; the Red states by and large solve their own problems and few of them have unionized public employees.
Virginia has proven that we will not.
Cities that were blue for more than 60 years now actually have republicans in office.
We haven’t changed our minds.
Nobama 2012!
I hope you’re right. However, as I commute from the Shenandoah Valley in to the Northern Virginia megalopolis each day, the only bumper stickers I see are pro-Obama.
There is a smattering of Ron Paul stickers, of course, but he doesn’t count, so neither do those stickers.
I have yet to see a Romney sticker.
Ron, I don’t know personally of anyone who got stimulus money, directly. Lots of communities did though, like the one I live in. And I’m not saying it was a good thing. We have a large traffic circle in town that goes past a hotel, the post office, library. Main streets feed into this hub.
I think the only people who thought it needed fixing were a few city employees.
But the availability of “stimulus” money changed that and suddenly it became important to improve the traffic circle. So up went the traffic cones, the jack hammering began, backhoes dug, guys built forms for curbs and yelled a lot, and they even planted some “bio swales” to filter runoff.
I haven’t talked to anyone who thinks it is any more than a minor improvement. And there are plenty who see it as worse than before.
The point is this: “Free” government money has this distorting influence. If all you have to do it apply for it, local politicians, are usually going to go after it. There were other things that needed to be done in this town, but this one was one of the ones that made the cut.
Diversity for the wealthy left means low cost lawn care and a new ” ethnic ” restaurant to try.
Great comment.
“You have it backwards, Mr. Hanson. You’re supposed to live in a good place and drive out to lots of your farmland, not live right on top of very little of it.”
Live in a good place? If you do not believe that living on a farm is the best kind of living, you should not be a farmer of any kind.
Of course, the new blue bloods would not wish to actually toil in the soil. They are gentleman farmers. Nothing wrong with that, except when the idea of being mere country nobility is abhorrent to them. Snobs. Arrogant elites.
They are real farmers. It is their livelyhood. It is a business where they make a living.
They wish to live in a modern house, in a modern suburb and send their kids to the Clovis School District, which is pretty darn good.
Very few of them are farmers. They are businessmen, who happen to be in the business of raising food. They know next to nothing about the soil. They hire people to do that, the way they hire people to mow their lawns, clean their houses, and raise their kids.
It takes a particular kind of courage to voluntarily live in an area where it is not safe to go out after 9pm. (I shudder at VDH’s descriptions of the vandals and thieves that freely roam his property.) If you have children, the decision to do so — when you have better options — takes on something like insanity.
Dr.Hanson, it was good to read that our spirits are lifted. You certainly lifted mine. I was really taken by your observation that we have an electorate that sees through the hollow, self-adulating rhetoric of Chairman BHO and is straining at the bit to break trhough the gate and make the economy surge. I have long contended that Obama’s big mouth and absurd claims of achievement are the GOP’s greatest asset. The independents and an increasing number of apprehensive Democrats will be negatively impressed by the desperation and venom of the Axelrod team. They are definitely on the defensive, going into a rear-guard strategy, and have always woried that their front man, without a teleprompter, will blow the game.
Obama’s life has been a long story of having everything handed to him because he is “cool”, and exotic, and has the gift of gab. He thinks he truly is wonderful and does not take criticism well. He may very well go off the track. Relentless ttaking him to task, demanding accountability is probably the best strategy.
As for life among the barbarians: I can’t understand why you don’t take your fellow farmers’ advice and domicile closer to the seats of academia. Sticking around because of your grandfather is romantic. Your neighbors” heritage is probably as deep as yours, and you know you are never going to win the battle against those whose livelihood depends on thievery.
Relentless ttaking him to task, demanding accountability is probably the best strategy.
Obama will be quite mad by November.
And what has he been for the last several years, the image of rational self-appraisal?
I shall never understand how the 53% could have missed the fact that Obama is nuts.
Never forget that only about 47% of the voters even bothered to vote in 08. Of that 47% 53% voted for Obama and I’m quite sure that there’s some 10% voting fraud in there so we’re actually looking at 43% of the 47% who bothered to vote.
In other words – we have a HUGE voter apathy problem in this country. Most of that problem is that the GOP gives us a McCain or Romney to vote for.
People are sick to death of voting for the lesser of two evils. Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.
Good job, Jimmy Obama.
Yes, there is a lot of pent up energy that will be released initially upon Mr. Zero’s removal.
But unless we also remove the sclerosis clogging the circulatory systems of the economy, by this meaning excess taxes and regulation, we risk a major relapse.
I am concerned that the GOP congressional leadership simply lacks the intestinal fortitude and certitude of vision to clear those obstructions. Perhaps their current spinal erectile dysfunction is for fear of being made the scapegoat. I hope that’s true! But then I see the “Young Guns PAC” pushing for has-been RINOs like Sen. Lugar rather than a vibrant younger leader, already elected statewide, and my concern returns.
No the TEA movement isn’t dead, though it has transformed itself somewhat. It never was a Party, per se, but lent its power to a Party on a case and issue specific basis. And so it will continue, unless tepid GOP leadership crashes that party irreparably on the reefs of ineptitude.
Rather than a benevolent dictatorship, if there ever actually was one other than descriptively, a return to genuine constitutional governance is the key to reenergizing and transforming this nation into renewed vigorous leadership.
And that is why it will be up to people like you and I to remain active in politics. It’s not your father’s political landscape. We need to stop being bystanders. We must educate and inform ourselves, then continually pressure, cajole, and remind our elected ones to do the right thing.
I would like a return to genuine constitutional government also, but there is still the problem of all those voters who voted for Obama back in 2008 — they, not Obama, are the real threat. Even genuine constitutional government fails when so many voters are fools and vote accordingly!
Unless the next Administration immediately purges at least 30% of all Federal Agencies, the sclerosis will continue to get worse. RIF ‘em, across the board. Also, throw out at least the same percentage of regulations in the Federal Registry.
Reducing the Executive Branch is key. The President along wields 1/3 of the Federal government constitutionally but spends perhaps 90% of the budget. I mean, really, how many actual dollars do the other two branches (SC and Congress) spend compared to all the agencies under the President?
Thus I maintain that the President on his own initiative could cut the spending of the Federal government even as our current boy president has expanded that spending to its current level.
“Unless the next Administration immediately purges at least 30% of all Federal Agencies,…”
That sort of naive proposal makes everybody who benefits from any federal program your enemy. Proposing a general decrement makes everybody think “their” piece of the government will do less of whatever it is they like to have the government do for them. It also assures that the programs of those agencies will not be cut at all, merely the supporting infrastructure of those of accounting, paying and receiving, budgeting, and human resource administration. Pretty much any government agency could cut its budget by 25% or more without any impact on its delivery of services to the constituents of that program, at least in the short run, but with a dramatic increase in the potential for fraud, waste, and abuse due to the cuts having been taken in the positions that are invisible to the public but which provide the internal controls over money, people, and stuff.
If you want to cut government, you cut whole programs or whole departments, and thereby only the specific constituents of that function are arrayed against you. You have to run on saying that you intend to eliminate the Department of Widgetmaking and explain how the widgets only serve a specific constituency to the detriment of other constituencies, or why widgets aren’t necessary any longer, or how as wonderful as widgets might be, they’re not nearly as essential as something else that you need the money going to widgetmaking to go to. Then when the Widgetmakers’ Union and all their friends on the Left start screaming that you’re pushing the widgetmakers’ grannies over the cliff, you just say that was what you were elected to do.
Don’t know what I did to appear as anonymous; I take responsibility for what I write.
The wind must be generally west by northwest, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t forget to enter your naming info. Somewhere out there there is a southerly wind post by a guy who has stolen your identity saying that President Romney should cut half of God’s creation, as soon as he can get his fingers around a pen.
And God bless the United States of America.
A little bit along the lines of VDH’s childless/childed dichotomy, I struggle with the glut of complete illiteracy vs the glut of “the connected”. How is it that so many are typing on keyboards (mobile or otherwise) – more so than every, I bet – when so many haven’t read a book in a decade? Weird.
At first I didn’t see any correlation but now that you mention it, I see that on conservative sites there’s usually pretty decent sentence structure and word-usage. There are the occasional “all caps” goons as well as those who couldn’t identify a preposition or adverb and use all lower case because, perhaps they are texting their input on their cellphone.
But largely, I’ve noticed that on conservative sites, the discussions are far more intelligent, logical and pointed while the left wingers scream a lot, call for blood and can’t punctuate to save their lives. Pathetic. Spelling and grammar on PJ Media is usually well-done, if sometimes marginal.
On libtard sites it starts out with marginal as the measuring rod and goes down from there. Why this is so I’ll leave to speculation. I have my own theories but they are neither politically correct nor can I separate them from my becoming angry so I would just rant here about that topic.
But I go to about five or six different conservative sites and the commenters all seem to have a grasp of proper syntax.
I do not, however see the corollary about how many books a person has read as a gauge to judge their worthiness about writing a comment.
That haven’t read a book stuff is mostly on the left side of the ditch, since you can now go K-BA without reading a whole book, and the semi-literate little lefty punks the colleges are spitting out are so enlightened that they really don’t need to learn anything more.
“A little bit along the lines of VDH’s childless/childed dichotomy”
Your savior with the Golden Tablets will emerge from the Secret Temple come November. The milk and honey will once again flow on the golden streets in the Golden State. The WASP minority will be procreating as if there is no tomorrow.
This is gonna be one heck of a interesting election. Might was well turn the whole thing over to the conservo-wackos again. Let ‘em have at it. The unwashed masses won’t mind picking $hit with the chickens as long as they know the gay couple next door isn’t married. Romney is gonna make George W Bush like progressive! Of course we all know where eight years of unrestrained Bush conservatism got us. You’ll be thanking your Chinese landlord if you have running water before it’s all over.
“Of course we all know where eight years of unrestrained Bush conservatism got us. You’ll be thanking your Chinese landlord if you have running water before it’s all over.”
Eight years of Bush got us $5 trillion deeper in debt. Obama matched that in 3.5 years. Projecting Obama’s excesses over 8 years would increase our debt by $11 trillion.
“Romney is gonna make George W Bush like progressive!”
That’s the idea – to elect someone who spends less than Bush or especially Obama, to get our national debt under control.
Proof once again that, given sufficient time, 1,000 chimpanzees in front of 1,000 computers…
As Gov. Brown throws the little children in front of his legislator’s pleas for more money to save “education” I am reminded of those children put forward by the Viet Cong now more than 45 years ago. What a con…
Let’s get Sally Struthers out in public flagging those starving kids…or now we have a 90 year old Betty White saying we need more of Obama…help the pets.
I like that yoke that’s been placed around my neck, do you like yours? Mr. Government Man only wants to help me help the others that he or she deems needs help…constantly.
I expect to see Van Jones out in the fields of California working with the illegals for months on end so that his hands begin to reflect his true inner beliefs and proud principles. It’s what makes a true leader beyond the true believer. Kinda like Mao fighting alongside his troops…
Yea, what wines are we being served this evening…dear boy?
I guess we no longer have to look to Greece to see what a failed welfare state looks like. All we have to do now is look at California. But I’m not too sure how much longer the people of California will put up with it. Many rich people are moving away from that state and the few that remain are being taxed to death. That only leaves a shrinking middle class and an enormous amount of poor people sucking up the social-welfare resources of the state. It ain’t working, as the most recent budget deficit in California proves. And with the economy going down and unemployment going up in California, I don’t think it will be long before you start seeing food riots or other forms of massive social unrest. I think the “Occupy” movement in Oakland, perhaps the most violent one there was, is only a taste of things to come in California. And when that happens, there won’t be enough police to maintain order, especially in the more rural areas of the state. If California goes bust, I guess Obama will step in to save it (especially in an election year), because it’s a state that’s “too big to fail.” But I see dark days ahead for California unless it gets a grip on all this spending, and simply taxing the “rich” isn’t going to do much of anything except drive even more rich people away from the state.
One of the points of this column is that a LOT of rich people remain.
Well, one big fish got away — the co-founder of Facebook. He not only left CA, he left the USA so he could save hundreds of millions on taxes. Gov Brown is counting on Facebook going public (and the State taxes that will generate) to help with the budget.
However, Apple has shown Silicon Valley how to really save money: Move HQ to Reno or Ireland, while keeping all your main operations in CA.
Yes Dwight, but not nearly enough to support the state. California is broke and although you may have some rich people left, it’s not enough to pay all of the bills, as the current enormous (and growing) budget deficit shows.
It never was and never will be enough to cover the state’s ballooning debt. You cannot take a lot from a very few and expect it to cover the small amount you give to the many who (apparently) get you elected. It’s bogus math on steroids.
This is why socialists never use actual, real numbers. Added to the fact that they ended up in politics anyway instead of designing some new piece of technology because the math skills aren’t there. They never were. Their, um, “strengths” were discovered as children when they learned they had a gift for getting people angry at them and manipulating and rigging things while pitting friends against one-another. We all know the type. No skills, no talent, no awareness but a mouth that was always open and an emotional streak a mile long.
One has to ask oneself, “What skills does a politician need?”
The conservative will give an answer that is laden with things like “actual life-experience, some leadership, some hard work, some education some travel and perhaps a sense of humor”
The socialist will tell you, “We need someone who can get the message out”.
And this is what captain McFlappy Ears has been doing for 3.4 years now and longer. Messaging, optics, the appearance of doing something which is often not the same as actually doing something. Even worse he gives the impression of meaning one thing while doing the exact opposite. He counts on the ignorance of his voter-base as well as their raw nerve-ending that they wear on their sleeves.
But many have noted that the large number of groups that make up the socialists in toto are diametrically opposed to one another in so many ways. Gays? Blacks? Ain’t gonna get them to agree on anything. Greenies and union goons? Ha! You’d do better to try to build a snowman in July in the Sahara.
Certain things about socialism naturally just lend themselves to self-defeat. Think “Green jobs”. Now, the solar panel gets money from D’oh-bama to crank up the plant. They hire (only) union employees who demand high salaries, enormously cushy benefits to include 100% dental, medical, mom and dad paid time off for having a baby, travel expenses to/from work, education benefits for their kids, a cafeteria with lots of choices, an on-site health clinic, and on and on. How can a start-up company cope with that? To say nothing of the fact that the market for solar cells is all but non-existent.
But again, the idea, at least with Barry the wunderkinder, was to simply dump US dollars down the sh*tter, intentionally to either “redistribute it” or to make sure it never entered into any other use than to be spent on frivolity. All-the-while using the “optics” to seem like he’s a real greenie when, in reality, he’s probably not.
I’ll bet you he and Moochelle never recycled while living in Sh*tcago, never considered any environmental impact in anything they did when buying nice things for themselves, etc. If their house needed a new roof, did they only consider union labor to do it? Doubtful.
The fellow readers here at PJ know it instinctively that Mr Mmmm mmmm mmmm is an act. He is heavily fueled by the socialist party and they manipulate him a LOT more than he can manipulate anyone else. They simply feed his microscopic ego and he does their bidding. Soros probably has him on a leash and with one phone call can get him to do whatever he wants.
If it wasn’t so serious, I’d be laughing my head off right now. Watching shallow people play off one another is unscripted comedy of the first order. All of them, you watch, all of them act as if they are the single most important thing to their “party” than anyone else. The fact that they get anything accomplished at all towards their goals is less a result of organization than it is a profound hatred for conservativism. But behind closed doors, I doubt that Holder says anything nice about Obama and vice-versa; That there’s any mutual respect between any of them. Nancy Pelosi probably thinks Reid is “ogling her with his sexist gaze” while Reid thinks Pelosi is a skanky old bat he wouldn’t waste a bullet on. Trust me, they all hate one another almost as much as they hate conservatives. But it’s the collective hate of conservatives that drives their engine.
Conservatives truly are, however, of a mind when it comes to values and standards. We know what “fair” really means as well as “compromise” and “cooperation”. The socialists do not and we know that. So this fall the goal is not only to rid the Fed of “D’oh-bama but also of RINOs and socialists alike. Granted, some of the promising candidates will be disappointments and Romney ain’t no Reagan. But he may surprise us all.
One thing we DON’T need is another “moderate” republican who is very concerned with everyone liking him instead of undoing the bubble-gum and bailing wire that this edition of government hath wrought. He needs to be held to conservative values but the big problem is that the socialists will play on disagreement in the ranks against Romney when he tries to pull a left-wing “get-along” type of thing. We can’t let them have any more. They have taken as much as this nation can handle and they’ve wasted it.
I enjoyed reading. One difference though, I don’t think the current occupant of the White House has a microscopic ego, as you stated. Quite the opposite.
I was correct. His ego is staggeringly small. You see, in psychological parlance, it is the small ego that has the need for self-gratification, recognition, aggrandizement and flash. The large, or healthy ego is satiated and content and confident…being self-actualized and comfortable in a variety of settings.
The tiny ego needs constant validation, reinforcement, praise and recognition.
Such are the egos of children, usually, until they grow up and become self-confident adults.
It’s been a mark of the media industry that has juxtaposed the concept. One thinks a “big ego” is a blustery, obnoxious know-it-all when in fact the opposite is true.
The Marxism, and illegal aliens is what the CFR North American Union brings.
Shades of 1969. LBJ had the smart political sense to drop out when challenged in the primary and saw he could not win. Not BHO, even when a Federal inmate receives 40+ % of a primary vote. Look for more and more rats to cut and run by Nov.
(Obama’s) need to hoodwink the clingers to get reelected. I think most voters understood that con as emblematic of this presidency.
The con is all he’s got left.
Actually, all he ever had.
VDH writes, “Even a Jerry Brown, the California legislature, the Berkeley professor, or the Santa Cruz activist could not stop the prosperity.”
But they will try. If the liberal media reaction to the re-opening of the prosperity floodgates is anything like what occurred after Reagan took office then we should expect them to do everything in their power to throw a wet blanket on it. Look for a non-ending stream of “examples” of how we are becoming a land in which “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” and prosperity is redefined as greed. For liberals the 1980’s will always be “the decade of greed”. Sadly, the failed vision of liberalism will never die, it will simply re-group. Obama will make millions on the speech circuit by telling his groupies how his and their dreams of utopia are being smashed by mean-spirited American capitalists (Republicans) and corporate greed. And the media and the NEA types will suck it up even as the vast majority of Americans prosper as never before. History repeats itself.
First, if Barry is relegated to the speaking circuit, so much the better. Thought I think after a few appearances, he will find himself with dwindling audiences, even amongst blacks.
Second, as for prosperity, I find it perfectly acceptable to pair “prosperity” with “greed”. When one is free to pursue their own best interest, they can then opt to help out those among them, in order to help cultivate a favorable relationship. I see nothing wrong with that.
So many movies paint the rich, white guy as “greedy”…well, in light of recent events, I have become a much bigger fan of Mr Potter than I am of George Bailey. The movie itself paints a false utopia with the Baileys offering “sub-prime” mortgage loans based on people’s intent to pay and “gosh-darned good nature”. Well, gee-willikers, when a small percentage of the mortgagees fail to pay on time or not at all, Bailey Building and Loan shutters, for good.
The only things I didn’t like about Potter was his demeanor and that he stole the cash that was wrapped in the newspaper that Uncle Billy was supposed to deposit.
But Potter was a savvy businessman. Bailey was a sucker. Sure, when scripted in the movies, everyone comes forward and helps ol’ George out. In reality, he’d be hung out to dry and, just like the lenders who offered sub-prime mortgages in the last decades, the “homeowner” is turning around and SUING them for LYING and DUPING them into mortgages they couldn’t afford. That’s “Wonderful Life” in reality. No Clarence the angel, no friends coming out of the woodwork helping George out. Nope, he’d be hanging by a phone cord in the closet, most likely by his own hand in Realville.
But when business works the way it should work, with companies looking out for and protecting their own self-interest, as should every single individual, then there’s no mystery. When a company prospers, then you see little league uniforms bought by that company, parks built, home loan assistance offered, etc etc.
But the socialists believe that something should be gotten for nothing in return, simply because they are breathing. But they never speak of the votes they expect. I work in a union and in my department, we vote 99% republican. Our dues go to pay for getting socialists elected and we don’t like it. But we have no voice, really, and use the union as a tool for negotiating an equitable work contract. We negotiated away a lot of nice things when our company was in bankruptcy but we kept our jobs…except when layoffs occurred anyway.
There is no easy answer but conservatives automatically know, or have learned to CYOAF. Everything else will naturally follow if you adhere to that one rule.
Also, Potterville seemed like a lot more fun town than Bedford Falls.
You are absolutely correct, Mr. Hanson. Almost every week I meet another business owner who is sitting on his expansion plans having decided that it’s just not worth it. They see what happened to Boeing and Gibson Guitars. They don’t want to do anything that brings them to the attention of an administration whose attitude toward business is ‘Crucify Them!’. On top of that, they know that as soon as they turn one shovelful of dirt, the barbarian hordes of environmental activists will descend upon them.
Better to keep their money tucked away until more favorable times.
Not only are there two Californias, as seen in the authentic and informative parts of this piece, but there are two VDH’s. There is the one who acknowledges that a lot of wealth still is being created and that many of the poor around him are decent people, and possibly more authentic to those with his values than the toney folks back where he works. But then, there is the also the VDH who exudes giddiness and malice toward Obama, based on the latest poll. I respect the VDH who writes of the life which surrounds him in California; but as for the meaner-spirited writer of the insult list, not so much.
As for being a gentleman farmer, mentioned above: VDH on the cusp. But I sympathize; he is caught between two worlds, and not really at home any more in either. Turning his farm into a gated compound actually makes a lot of sense for a man in his position.
Maybe Romney will be a breath of fresh air for most of us and we can watch the left go into 24/7 insult mode and VDH can lighten up.
And while I’m at it, the mode of internet commenters in 2012 is to define, and possibly honestly believe that the other side is clinically, and often criminally, pathological, not a group of fellow Americans, whose values are needed to provide a check on your own group of American’s values. Okay, clearly there are the pathological on both sides, but the trick is now to define the other group by its worst outliers. To some degree, politicians have always tried to do that, but the nature of the internet, permits us to insulate ourselves from the legitimate values and critiques which the other side espouses. You can tell that at least a quarter of the commenters at PJM complain when they have to even HEAR “the other side” from the writers. But there I go, judging the site by its outliers.
My liberal internet acquaintances and family are also at least moderately offended when they have to hear the other side as well, and are disturbed that I might vote for Romney, so I am going out into my non-gated (so far) compound and plant my corn. ;-)
I don’t know, Dwight.
I don’t think VDH is presenting any duality of himself at all. He is presenting to us the irony of the situation.
I merely would ask the questions:
1)Does California have a $16 billion dollar shortfall? This is a question that is pretty binary, yes or no are the only answers to it.
2)Is Jerry Brown, the leftist, going to tap into the typical white grandmaster act of throwing taxpayers under the bus in order to keep up the leftist shell game? Soak the taxpayer until he takes his business to Texas, Nevada, or Florida?
3)On the other hand, does California not possess idyllic weather, a bounty of natural riches, some of the most powerful technology companies that are shaping the future of the world, some of the most creative and prestigious universities, sitting in a land that leftist politicians have essentially bankrupted?
4)Does California have a serious problem attempting to take care of border crashers and their families in numbers so large that it significantly impacts schools, police and fire, healthcare, insurance, and security in ways that exacerbate the reckless and destructive leftist rape of the economy?
It is very nice and compassionate to sing Kumbayah and pretend that these problems don’t exist, try to water them down to near meaningless by spouting leftist empty platitudes and to close one’s eyes tightly to wish them all away.
Here is the reality. Leftist irresponsibility, arrogance, corruption, graft and malfeasance has more than bankrupted the state. It is broke. And, the leftist mentality is to beat up on the very sources of actual recovery…the job creators and taxpayers. That’s all leftists do. That’s all they have in their little slimy bag of tricks. Well, that…and the state-controlled media which hides the truth, distorts it, and spits it back at the masses in a despicably corrupt game of “truthyness”.
Obama is the head leftist liar. The open assault on Romney by the Washington Post (WaPoo), is just now a long list of offenses against the information stream. The state-controlled media is nothing more than a red rag, filled with red diaper babies…diapers that now need changing for what they have left behind in the Martin/Zimmerman case, the coverup of Fast and Furious, the coverup of the Black Panther case, the coverup of every Obama mistep, their constant “unexpected” fiscal news, and the general breach of their mandate to inform.
Obama, according to the Scott Rasmussen latest poll may be falling, but if the truth was ever set free, he couldn’t get elected to national office in any capacity. He is dishonest, incompetent, and divisive.
And, for you, VDH…I think much of this article is spot on, as usual. But never, never…underestimate the power of evil. Those who are not evil cannot conceive of the ACORN/SEIU type fraud, the Blank Panter polling place thuggery, the credit card security system shutdown allowing foreign money into the coffers, the state controlled Propaganda and Lies Ministry hit jobs, distortion and lies impacting elections, the DOJ’s assault on American states, the NLRB assault on private businesses.
Patting Medevev’s knee and sending a message back to Vladimir about the “second term surprises”, and patting gay rights activists…well, wherever he is patting them…is just the first grain of sand through the second term hourglass.
What awaits would/will star Freddie Kreuger.
Dwight won’t allow himself to work through this, he needs to keep his eyes closed tightly. I don’t blame him. If the leftists continue to take this country down their path…we may all want to do the same.
Dwight: “…but as for the meaner-spirited writer of the insult list, not so much.”
Insult list? No no no. That list is what OBAMA uses to present to us his accomplishments while pres. The fact that you see it as an insult list says a lot about you, dear boy.
I find Dwight’s comment about “mean-spirited” funny. Act nice, talk nice, and be all touchy feely! That’s what has us in this predicament, and now that people are finally waking up and objecting, they’re wrong?? We need more adults who will stand up and peak staight, and we’re slowly getting them as they wake up. If the politicians can’t stand the heat they can get out of the kitchen, we have a right to question anyway we choose. They work for us, not teh otehr way around as they think.
Dwight tries to act like he’s some thoughtful “moderate” that might even vote for Romney, but actually he’s a Democrap whose mission here is to question things and try to shape the narrative. In this case, he’s just running the Lefty meme that it is OK for communists/Democraps to call Republicans/conservatives c*nts, b*tches, and such, but Republicans/conservatives must be nice and not insult the communist SOB that idiots like DeeeWhite elected.
A very astute observation that my self-appointed mission here is to question things and shape the narrative, but I also happen to be a moderate. You, on the other hand, enjoy being Phineas T. Bluster, intrepid identifier of communists and red-diaper babies, which in your lexicon, may or may not be the same thing as a Democrat, depending on whether the wind is in the west northwest, which might make it a day when you can or care to discriminate between a hawk and a handsaw.
permits us to insulate ourselves from the legitimate values and critiques which the other side espouses.
Please give me three examples…
Dwight, you don’t know what you are saying. You seem disingenuous to me. You seem to want to point to the fact that, yes, there are decent people who are poor and it is not wrong for them to receive government support (hence, your hostility in cutting government programs). But, Newsflash Dwight, Conservatives have been shown to be more benevolent in their charitable giving than liberals, consistently.
It seems to me that you remain a prisoner of the stereotype that conservatives are apathetic to the plight of the poor and those in need. (A talking point of the left, the lifeblood of their vitriol, which is why you are suspect.) The best case scenario for you from a conservative point-of-view is a double-edged sword, since you will have to swollow the pill of being wrong about the supposed charity of liberalism, or you will stay in your ignorance willfully hereafter. (Yes, I am being so bold.) It is the best case scenario because you come across as a stealth liberal with the o’ so sneaky personal plan to plant some seeds of doubt, but the benefit of the doubt is to concede that you really believe you are a moderate, though. Best case.
VDH hasn’t shown duality in, as you suggest, showing some glee in deriding and chronicling what he believes is a poor excuse for a president’s policies. It is that you are identifying Obama with being a friend to the poor. It is perfectly feasible for someone to not like Obama FOR enslaving the poor. The poor may want and need some assistance, but I cannot imagine any poor adult really wishing to be babified as some pawn in some power-grab to establish the ideal global government. Any emmination of glee in the article is probably a good thing, since it implies VDH is not necessarily anticipating the end of the world. Yes, VDH may really want Obama to go, but giddiness in such implies hope for continuing on, which was the final import of the article.
I imagine you as someone who believes that being moderate is somehow closer to the truth. It’s probably as simple as that in your mind, and you might have never actually brusqed up against it in your own realizations, even though you have it as an unsupported axiom to all of your political logic. You strike me, giving you the benefit of the doubt here, as one who believes both parties are wrong and both parties are right in certain particulars, and given that, the middle must be the best of both worlds.
And if you have bethought yourself, if you happen to even read this, that the idea that liberalism enslaves the poor is ALSO, accordingly, a supposition, a stereotype, say, of conservatives, well, you’d be right. But that isn’t the point. The point is that Moderates do not take a stand upon that which is not fickle. Choose a side, Dwight, is my advice, or keep your particulars better hidden, and use brevity, in your future comments.
I shake my head when Hannity and other news entertainers point out the latest hypocrisy of Prez Obama. It’s not the hypocrisy that matters, that’s trivial and personal. It’s the inconsistency that’s important. To operate a “narrative” (i.e., a story, a fake account of events) a politician must be let to get away with not accounting for the facts, one must be allowed to be inconsistent, and Obama’s got that license.
Mitt’s a weak candidate: he’s inarticulate, fearful, tentative and has no grasp of the situation we’re in, how historically critical this election is. Mitt doesn’t understand that he’s not running against Obama, he’s running against the media, the teachers and professors, the unions, the judges, the bureaucrats, the celebrities, and more. He’s acting as if he’s going up against Obama and not against pretty much everybody and everything that comprises the public discourse.
I wouldn’t be so optimistic.
You’ve got the right of it. Add cohorts of gays, women, blacks, hispanics, govt employees, govt contractors’ employees, employees of the contractors to the govt contractors, (..interate…), food stampers, transfer payment payees, and every mouth-breathing gum chewing mother’s idiot who completed any number of grades’ schooling from the 1960s teachers of the last 50 years ——
—— and you’ve got damned near 100% of the so-called American voters.
It’s over folks.
I think he knows he running against Obama. And I think he and his campaign realize there is little to gain by running against all the groups you named. Better to concentrate on the policies and failings of the current administration than to expend efforts trying to run against all the interest groups that support it.
Then Romney better learn to expound principle as well as, say, Rand Paul, Rubio or Cicero for Pete’s sake. But he can’t.
So he and his bunch need to put on the brass knucks or leave it to someone who will.
Re: Mr. Romney a flip-flopper.
Anyone who goes into his home town and says that the only way to save GM and Chrysler is for them to go into bankruptcy and have a judge put them back on sound footing has a pair. The current crony capatalism, if not nationalization of entire industries, can only have a bad end.
I suspect it’ll be the final showdown between keynesians (Dr. feel-good) v. austrians (“eat your peas”)- w/ Mr. Romney coming clearly down on the side of acknowleging markets work and models don’t (aka there’s no modeling free will). Can’t happen too soon.
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/raghuram.rajan/research/papers/FA%20May%202012.pdf
Agreed. So that’s “one”. But he still can’t explain it to Joe Six Pak.
VDH: Don’t spike your own ball just yet, Doctor.
Look no further than three blind accounts away for massive contributions from Putin’s friends in the U.S. Russki mobs.
Mob money, whether from Hollywood, Chicago or Brighton will win this election, not nicey-nicey Country Clubbers.
So true- ‘biznis’ has been beyond borders, thus beyond laws, since Teddy Rooseveldt’s private army began raiding the Carribean and lofted him into abuse of the US military and reorganization of corporate structure.
“I’ve installed gates to close my medieval compound at 9 each evening before the hunters and gatherers begin their nocturnal foraging for copper wire and tractor batteries.”
maybe a few heads on pikes would serve as a warning and as Voltaire said “Pour encourager les autres”
For the life of me, I don’t understand why Dr. Hanson doesn’t aggressively push back against these “hunter-gatherers” who seem to be continuously vandalizing his property. Hiding behind the walls of his castle while the denziens of the night run amuck is not a solution, but just a postponement of the eventual confrontation. Are there no neighbors to join together with to combat the goblins?
Dr. Hanson, you’ve written a lot of articles about what’s going on in California and it sounds like California is moving toward anarchy. The primary duty of government is to protect property. It’s the reason governments were first formed, so that people could go out from their property to do work and be sure that their property was intact when they returned home. When property is not secure, anarchy reigns.
Edmund Burke said over two hundred years ago that men who can’t control themselves from within must be controlled from without. Their passions forge their fetters. The same is true for a society. If California continues down the road the democrats have chosen for it, expect to see something of a police state rise up to control the masses (even though they don’t have the money to pay for an increased police presence). The society that won’t control itself from within must be controlled from without.
It is. Didn’t you know?
You Voted for Obama in 2008 to Prove You Weren’t a Racist,
Now Vote for Someone Else in 2012 to Prove You’re Not an Idiot
How did the country get here? How did we become ineffectual and seemingly unwilling to avert the the socio-economic precipice, the cliff, at which we now teeter?
There are many reasons, but the biggest is the absence of a genuine opposition party. The record shows that the Republican party is the RINO party, a faux opposition party that proposes Globo-Socialism Lite instead of real opposition. Don’t forget that the RINOs at the WSJ like illigal immigrants just as much as the socialists; they get their cheap labor rates while the socialists get their vote bloc. And, the Chamber and the Nat’l Assoc of Manufacturers like their taxpayer subsidies as much as the socialists, but for a different reason. That’s what the IMF does for them.
If you doubt this, look at what the RINOs let happen during the last lame duck session.
Every election cycle, the frame of the public discourse shifts several degrees to the Left, and every time, the RINOs persist in aiming towards that frame’s center. Mitt’s nomination is a slap in the face of the loyal resistance that rose up outside the RINO Party in the form of the poorly named Tea Party.
After Mitt’s defeat, it’ll at long last be time to seriously consider the destruction and replacement of the RINOs with a set of people who truly intend to return to freedom, which is to say the Constitution. This would mean the return of the nation to something that is uncomfortable, but realistic: rational, lawful government. To replace gubmint.
I blame this (the blurred distinctions between the major two political parties) on the incredible power of the MSM in its capacity to influence, mold & shape public opinion. Republican pols worry too much about being out of favor with the journalistas; thus, they constantly seek their approval. It’s sickening. They should follow Limbaugh’s advice to stop caring about the fact that they will never be approved by the leftists who control the MSM. Meantime, those pols on the far right need to let go of the social issues; this would go a long way towards the goal of winning over the Indies. The result would be a pattern of winning more elections, thereby displacing the RINOS & enabling them to exert more influence in the political arena of ideas & policies.
RE: Romney the high-school hair cutter begat tapes of Obama as the chronic drug user…
You forgot Obama the school yard bully who shoved and yelled at a lonely, overweight black girl until she ran away, probably in tears. And Obama and his cronies are bullies to this day as has been demonstrated by episodes from Joe the Plumber to his singling out by name and harassing Romney donors.
I can’t give up on America. It would be like giving up on my own life. Well, actually it would be giving up on my own life.
Yes, we are reaching a tipping point like Greece/Italy/France/et al who DO NOT want to pull themselves up by their own boot-straps and this is worrisome, this is where we have to question the WTF*cks in our own family because some of us must know these people.
Do you know there is a popular book in France about trying not even work during work hours? Just slacking?
Where have all our pioneers gone?
What’s most interesting to me about this article, is that you have plotted a science-fiction novel, and one Leftists say, it is racist to extrapolate, bigoted, unfair and reckless. People have been extrapolating this exact scenario for years – people who’ve spent time in the Third World. They will continue to extrapolate it out, and that vision is not only Dystopian, it veers close to outright suicide.
The article is a pure distillation of where success in fact comes from and where it does not, and what happens when you gerrymander reality to suit political correctness – what comes is failure and later, disaster. Where immigrants come from does in fact matter and this is made even worse when, besides the endemic failure they bring, it is enhanced both by their knowledge of how to con our system, their disdain for law, and our PC bureaucracy ready to indulge the entire package of failure to the hilt. Observing where failure comes from has nothing to do with wishful thinking or racism – some weird scenario where I want the Third World to look worse than it actually is to feed my own race-hatred.
The Left promotes their insane paradigm of equality, based not on reality, but on an almost religious faith and liberal “instincts” – the same “instincts” that told them Zimmerman was the tip of a white racist murder racket, the same “instincts” that tell them the British East India Company took over a sub-continent with less than 1% of the population by luck, the same “instincts” that tell them countries which have never produced a Bill of Rights or fractal geometry will do so now simply by the virtue of a long voyage and the failed osmosis theory of school busing whereby Mayan Indians will build the next space station merely by hanging around whites, a kind of training, until the Left’s diversity can replace racist whites and pare down their colonialist and oppressive instincts to manageable numbers.
Meanwhile, reality does in fact speak out against the unreality Leftist’s live in: people of color from all over the world are not fleeing racist America, but so ardent to enter they don’t even bother to knock. Black Africans are not wary of the New Jim Crow that will profile them merely to fill Michael Eric Dyson’s lying view of a “prison system that hungers for young black and brown bodies” but scheming how they can get to America to escape the howling failures of their own non-exceptionalist countries.
As you suggest Dr. Hanson, and just like the Martin case showed, the Leftist Orwellian view of the world is becoming unraveled, but in the case of Southern Calif., probably too late to help. New Hispanics will, not become the “greater good” Jeffersonians by osmosis envisioned by the Left, but will vote Hispanic to further Hispanic aims and bring in even more Hispanics. Our future is not one of asking what we can do for our country, but a Tower of Ethnic Babel, and very real Babel Wars are already being fought. The Left outright acknowledges this themselves with how they assume Latinos will vote by last name and race. And they’re right.
The Trayvon Martin case I see as a watershed moment in the history of, not only American political and social thought, but as a microcosm of the coming Babel Wars, with naked racial advocacy based on lies on one side, and 200 million racists saying, what did I do? It was also a watershed moment that completely exposed how black Americans think, and how their clueless Leftist allies support the black community’s distorted and false view of America, past and present. The Martin case was almost unprecedented in the amount of racism and lies coming from, not fringe lunatics, but many of our most popular and prestigious institutions. In short, the Trayvon Martin case was a perfect paradigm of how the Left not only explains away failure in Orwellian terms, but pins it on white people. Keep in mind this is done by a political movement that defines themselves at their core as anti-racists.
At the time of the Martin case, Obama’s friend, and a man who has specials running on PBS this very moment, had the hate-site he runs called The Root, publishing articles that were like reading Stormfront so odious were they, and completely one-sided, not only in terms of sheer numbers, but in how they lassoed logic and reality to suit their fundamental view that white people are bad and black people are good, blacks a moral weathervane like a canary in a mine, a thing white people have no instinct for, and so need to be funkified by diversity.
This also explains why there is no similar need for diversity at the staff of hate-sites, or black radio stations. In the black world, the NBA is an aberration of what America’s tech and art sectors would be like if only whites weren’t awash in white privilege that builds Suez Canals and moon landers.
If I want something done right, I want the best people, not the whitest, blackest or the one with the biggest turban. However, if failure consistently resides in one of these areas, or in people over 6 ft. tall, I’m not going to ignore it because I worship some never seen God that has conflated the words of men about being born equal. That sure as hell doesn’t mean it’s my job in life to make them equal around the world and when they’re 30 years old. I am not responsible for racial huddling, or the value system that emerges from it, for good or ill, but I will acknowledge it. I am not in the business of explaining why Kathmandu looks like a war zone on top of a garbage heap or why downtown Cairo at night looks almost exactly like a set from Blade Runner.
If I wanted to live in Brazil, I’d move there, not willingly transform my own country into a failure ripe for illegal shanty towns and easy child prostitution tourism. The fact is that all the people all over the world already exist and are not in danger of extinction – far from it. I just don’t get why they must all live here in America in some pie chart representative of the globe no matter how destructive they are before the TRUE America can emerge.
You want to live around black folks? There’s an entire continent. You like Hispanic culture, there’s part of a continent, an isthmus, and yet another continent. You love Islam, it’s dripping all over the place in the middle east. These are not passenger pigeons but crowded failures. Importing them here to the tune of 90%, as has been the case the last 10 years in America, will wreck the place. Calif. is wrecked and dying, let’s admit it.
Dr. Hanson has just provided an elegant description of the Third World;s social and political and knowledge-based failures intertwined with a paradigm of relatively peaceful success, and the demographics are a destruction, not a bright future of an exceptionalist melting pot.
Get a frickin’ map, identify failure and success, and cut ‘em off, and kick out the illegals. That is not the KKK in me or the Stormfront in me, but my own extrapolation of the perceptual trap Jesse Owens exposed at the ’36 Olympics – the one that says a man CAN’T do something because of the color of his skin. Well, the flip side and equally dangerous side of that trap is that a man CAN do something because of the color of his skin.
Thank you,I wish I could express my thoughts as well as you .
Al Heath
“Do not believe the liberal myth that hordes of young hardy Mexican nationals are going to suffer to take care of aging whites and Asians on fat pensions. From my observations, morbid obesity and an epidemic of onset diabetes among new arrivals from Mexico are the next great health crises to come. The sociable, kindly woman ahead of me at the lab earnestly explained to me her health issues: diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure. She looked about 26 and was pregnant with her fourth child.”
My observations are the same. As a translator for hispanic immigrants in a small hospital these health issues and more are common in this group. We talk to them about preventative care and prenatal care and the reply is basically, ‘Que sera, sera.’ Even with Medicaid to pay for it they are not interested. Pregnant Mexican women rarely seek any medical care until they are in trouble or well into labor. It seems that a large portion of their babies are born jaundiced which is prolonged because they don’t understand that they need to feed the baby more water. Why they can’t follow that simple direction is a mystery. When called to translate, the conversation is always the same. Feed the baby more water to get rid of jaundice. Your baby is underweight; feed the baby more often even if it means waking the baby up to do so. Keeping the baby too bundled up makes him too warm which makes him drowsy which makes him not want to feed.
They show up at the hospital for an appointment with out orders, don’t know what they are here for or even what their doctor’s name is. Just try getting a diabetic hispanic to participate in diabetes mangement classes. ‘No thanks, the doctor gave me a prescription so I’ll be fine’ which of course they aren’t. To be fair, other groups of people don’t seem to take care of their chronic conditions much better but the ‘que sera, sera’ attitude among hispanics stands out at least to me in my experience. Kidney disease is high among hispanics (not my observation but actualy a fact)and illegals can’t get on Medicaid until they are end stage so by the time they can get treatment they are sicker (about to go on dialysis) so they are costing the system even more and will be competing with American citizens for organ transplants. Meanwhile organ donation is low among hispanic immigrants.
By the way, did the sociable and kindly woman declare that American doctor’s are useless and that a doctor in Mexico or curandera would have cured her already? I hear that a lot too.
From our social circle here in Mexico City, we know one family who has illegal immigrant sisters who have lived in LA for 15 years. They all live on the public dole. Their parents went to visit them 10 years ago. While there, the father developed kidney failure and had to go on dialysis treatment – on the taxpayer bill. They stayed in California. None have jobs (maybe some under-the-counter ones)and the entire extended family lives there. The dialysis treatments alone must cost the State of California at least $80,000/a year, for ten years, with no end in sight, plus food stamps and immeasurable other “public assistance” dole outs. I truly believe the Left winks at this because of their “social justice” agenda – we owe Mexico for our invasion of 1846, so millions of Mexicans gaming our charity system for billions of dollars is payback. I wonder if they know real payback is on its way – bankruptcy?
That story is to shake one’s head at. But I don’t think the lefties who support these illegal aliens do so because they want justice. “Justice” is a figleaf for what they really want: control. They get it by impoverishing you and making the illegal aliens dependent on them.
I can’t figure them out. It’s as if they’re “moral” to the point of suicide. “Do the ‘right’ thing, even if it kills you – or kills the country.” Money doesn’t matter. Consequences don’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter. Evidently, if the country can’t be peaceful, prosperous, and powerful AND simultaneously give everybody everything they need or want at all times, then it doesn’t deserve to exist at all. It’s like the “I want it all” attitude on a national scale. It’s a vision unlimited by…anything. And anyone who objects to it is labeled cruel, heartless, angry, hateful, old-fashioned.
As Dwight said earlier, we need visionaries and moralists. We know how society can descend into indifference without at least a few voices reminding us to take the higher path. However, these voices need to be balanced by people whose feet are solidly on the ground and who understand how and why things “are the way they are.” These people know that wealth has to be generated through work and investment, that people respond positively to profit, that charity can have a downside, that more entitlements aren’t necessarily better, and that there’s not always enough money to go around.
It’s not an unlimited vision.
The Left’s vision is egalitarianism as a goal in itself. All forms of the Left–liberal, socialist, communist–all have that goal.
They just think it’s morally wrong for some people to have much more than other people.
There’s no real way to argue that rationally. They just think egalitarianism is The Very Best Thing. They do, we don’t, and we’re just at an impasse.
The only times when the public makes a decision is when whichever side is in power (left-wing or right-wing) is perceived as having screwed up; then the public votes the other bunch into power.
Yes, because our society generally likes both of the ideals, so they try one side, then the other side, with both sides staying, “If you stayed with us we wouldn’t have these problems right now,” whereas common sense tells us that we do not want a complete commitment to social Darwinism or socialism, but our own distinctive, and ever-changing blend of the two.
And today the D-White Reality Index was momentarily pegged at 2+2 = 5.00012262012. On that news, stocks were down mildly as the Pick It Fence But himself just might be the “ever-changing blend of” “a hawk and a handsaw”, the “might vote for Romney” Heisenberg Moderate/Centrist.
I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in
I watched myself crawlin’ out as I was a-crawlin’ in…
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in.
sinz54, they only think it’s morally wrong for some people to have much more than THEM.
It is not as if this were a truly impoverished family either. One sister and the father have their own houses here (and in Mexico that usually means free and clear.) They had their own businesses and a network of support – family members with businesses, ETC. They are there specifically to take advantage of the big California giveaway. And I still think that “social justice” is more than just a thin veneer for power-lust. Progs secretly delight in the destruction they are causing to America, the way they gloated over 9/11.
Last week I did not loose any roses but my restaurant building I converted into an art studio in Selma, CA was broken into many hundreds of dollars of art supplies and tools were stolen.
My strip center in Lindsay CA was vandalized again, and someone got into my empty unit and took off with bunch of tools.
Think this might be your cue to seek residence elsewhere like millions of other Californians? I know that is what I’d do if in your shoes; there are simply too many other better places to be in our great country.
“Give Obama some credit. He has framed the 2012 election as a conflict of visions unlike any of our time. It’s our choice now, no excuses, no one left to blame. Change is coming, and with it, hope. This week I saw a ray of sunshine amid the clouds.”
It’s good to see you post with an optimistic tone, Dr. Hanson. I think it’s appropriate to be cautiously optimistic that O will be thrown out on his big ear this fall. Watching Mittens get sworn in on Jan 20 will be a truly glorious thing.
Watching Mittens get sworn in on Jan 20 will be a truly glorious thing.
Don’t forget Congress. If Mitt gets in but the socialists control one or both houses, there’ll still be a big problem.
On a brighter note, every state knows that in the case of an economic meltdown they’ll be forced to balance their budgets, will have to cut spending or raise taxes, no doubt both.
The thing to watch for if and when that happens is the specter of federal intervention by subsidy. That’d be totally illegal in addition to being economically insane. States have gone bankrupt before and they all still exist. But the Constitution, the law of the land, is more of a guidepost now than the law. A “living document,” so to speak.
One thing we’ve know: when Prez Obama threatens something, he means do it. He threatened two years ago to use federal money to save states from going broke, and he was talking about California when he made that statement.
I figure the Pubs will keep the House & will hopefully overtake the Senate. I am not sure why they didn’t take the Senate in 2010 (probably due to some weak & controversial candidates). Romney definitely needs to be in the hands of the Pubs, or he will likely wander too far off the reservation in dealing with the Dems. Congress enjoys the lowest ratings of all; not a good sign for either party IMO.
Turnover in the Senate is slower than in the House because elections are held every two years, but a term is 6 years long in the Senate. That means only 1/3 are at risk in each election cycle.
Romney sworn in won’t change a thing.
Romney sworn in won’t change a thing.
I think that Mitt would slow the pace at which the country hurtles over the cliff. It’d be more dignified that way, a more orderly collapse. That’s a change, but still you’re rat-on, cuz it wouldn’t be a change one could hope for.
That ray of sunshine will be completely hidden once the nimbus clouds of the mass media cover the skies. When the Romney vs. Obama campaign gets into full swing, the media continually will sling mud at Romney and republican congressional candidates. Any news that reflects badly on Obama will be buried.
Obama will raise hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy donors while using taxpayer dollars for his campaign travel expenses. TV, radio, newspaper, and magazine attack ads against Romney and republicans will air frequently by late summer. Romney and his supporters will not play as dirty as Obama and the democrats.
Most of the ignoramuses and fools that voted for Obama in 2008 will do so again in 2012. Gary Johnson might pull a million votes away from Romney, but Obama will win even if Johnson withdraws from the election.
Mr. Hansen is right-on! There is hope for America if Middle-America can regain control of its destiny from the Harvard elites. When Reagen defeated Carter in November 1980, there was a collective sigh of relief across America.
Thank you for that, Dr. Hanson. We need a little hope, because this current presidency has all but sucked the air out of this country.
The answer to Obama and his ilk is “get out of our way”. This nation has the material wealth and human resources required to ensure prosperity. We are not Rome, or Greece. We have the ability to choose our future. VDH is correct our problems are not insurmountable.
This nation has immense energy and agricultural resources and it is criminal malfeasance to keep these bottled up. The American people need to wake up and kick butt.
Hope? You are kidding yourself.
SCYTL.
The election is bought and paid for.
Yep…the fix is in. Barry’s remark to the Russian diplomat, ‘After MY election I have more flexibility’ said it all.
Nine hundred jurisdictions in twenty-six states and the military vote. Enough to swing an election? Of course.
The scariest and most telling bit of info on this matter is the complete lack of discussion in the major media outlets.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/michelle-malkin/scytl-voter-fraud-facts-and-fiction.html
Another fine commentary by Dr. VDH. I suspect that many wealthy Californians will not feel the need to escape their state. They can afford to build higher security walls, hire personal protection, and spend much time vacationing in other places and hiring accountants to escape the taxes. Obama appears to be seeking instruction from Putin on how to remain in power past the traditional limits. For this personal instruction Obama will provide a payoff to Putin after the election. You can be sure that Dr. VDH will regress to reality again after suffering more thefts and threats. This moment of optmisism is just another bubble to be burst. Sorry to say.
“And so we had the constant liberal whine, “if only.…” Now we have it in the flesh, and in cathartic fashion Obama is going to purge us of that unhinged temptation for another generation.”
I can only hope so, Dr. Hanson. But I don’t have faith that liberals in power will give up their crusade just because we voted in moderate candidates. At their core they are totalitarians, and they will continue to flaunt constitutional law until it means nothing, and they will implement their twisted agenda on the rest of us by force. This has always been the endgame of the liberal elite…command and control, everyone suffers equally under their thoughtful and caring leadership.
moderate candidates
This term is used all the time; it’s central to the “left-right” “liberal-conservative” spectrum through which modern politics is consumed. But what exactly is a moderate? You never get a definition of it. Is it socialism lite, or limited spending but with abortion and gay marriage? The term is more significant than ever in memory with Mitt chosen to go up against the slick, oily globo-socialist who now inhabits the White House.
Everyone is socialism lite. Even Paul is going to send the Social Security checks. The trick is to keep it from destroying the country.
Good Doctor, If you have time to scan these many comments and come upon this one, I would like to read your analogies of these conditions to those cited in Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart.”
Yours might be “Forced Apart.” The distinctions in how the conditions have come to pass would be worth a few of your words.
Dr. Hansen, you are right. I feel it coming too. It started with the Bakken oil and has grown. I checked for available jobs in Williston, ND. Its population 10 years ago was 13,000. There are now 550 jobs available within 50 miles of Williston, not just oil field jobs but all kinds of services for the needs of the booming population. That is being repeated in numerous other places now. And US Steel is going all out selling all the steel pipe they can produce. The coming boom will be based on plentiful oil and cheap energy from natural gas re-energizing the manufacturing sector, and at the expense of our collapsing European competitors. Meanwhile it feels like finally the environmentalist Luddites have begun to discredit themselves. It looks like the passing of an age. Even Obama cannot stop it, and if he goes and Mittens is in, Katey bar the door.
If you remember the history of the American Civil war then you will see the vestiges of the next civil war. The fly over states are not inclined to act like the blue states on these social issues and with the imperialistic Obama in control of the federal purse strings the friction will get much greater. Those of us who realize that the federal government is literally taking our money through taxes and GIVING it to groups that are at the least anti-American is enough to make our blood boil. The one weapon that we have that the Roman masses did not have is the internet and the other forms of electronic media. We are now an informed group within hours or sometimes minutes of a governmental decision that will affect us or our children. It is easy to find fault with an individual portion of our government but the only solution is to take back the White House and Congress. Never in my lifetime has the opportunity or the necessity been so starkly defined. I fear that if we fail this time to do it peacefully the next time may be the way of the past.
VDH wrote: “…At this rate, Obama will be October surprising Iran.”
The Dems are starting to face their upcoming political obliteration now. As previously noted, one has a major advantage when combating ideologues. That is because they cling to rigid (un-living) thought structures and are unable to fathom how real humans function (they are akin to sociopaths in this way). Thus they rely heavily on numeric data in order to manipulate us in large groups. Numbers don’t lie, but unravelling the truth they reveal is not always easy. Numbers may not lie, but they can be deceptive. Ideologues try to split the difference by relying on the nonsense theories they conjure up and cling to, hoping to create a fixed point of reference in an otherwise chaotic and meaningless existence. This is why they go so badly off track downstream. They will soon learn this lesson, but it is unlikely that they will interpret it correctly (as usual).
That is why they rely so heavily on crisis (they used to call it ‘War Communism’), to rule. On the one hand I do hope that Obama takes out the Mullahs (or at least their nuclear plants) because of the astronomical threat they represent. But I’m worried that in so doing, he might fool a lot of moderate Conservatives into voting for him again, or at least toning down their opposition. We’re not buying the Bin Laden narrative (saying “Romney wouldn’t have killed him” just makes Obama look like a child). But Obama would fully own a full-scale preemptive attack on Iran. If he timed it right, it would dominate the headlines in the final months of the electoral campaign. Of course it could easily backfire on him. Iranians may rise up in support of the Mullahs in response to an American attack. He would lose a lot of the points on the Left… Frankly I’m more concerned about a false flag domestic attack that would allow him to cancel the elections and impose martial law. But if the elections do go ahead under normal conditions, and we conservatives mobilize the way we need to, the Dems are toast.
But again, the hard work begins after November 2012. I’m not talking about the crucial steps needed to unleash the economy, reverse Obamacare etc. Neither about the vital need to purge the media and academia of their leftist bias. But rather the even more crucial task of punishing the ring-leaders. This must be done openly, methodically and severely, including charges of high-treason against people like Pelosi, Reid, Holder, Obama and Axelrod. This is only partly out of retribution and / or deterrence. The main reason is to create a dramatic spectacle which will have a strong emotional impact on future generations. It’s not enough to tell people that they must be vigilant for their are always those who are plotting to steal their freedom (as well as their property!), they must feel it in their bones for at least two generations. Then we can buy ourselves another 30 years or so to regain our leading position in the world.
In the longer term we need to grapple with the new kinds of pressures that being global hegemon in an interconnected world puts on democratic and free-market systems. But first things first…
We need robust lists and followthrough to cleanse our way to a better America.
We must avoid the witch-hunt mentality. But we do need to make a compelling legal argument that many leaders of the Democratic Party, as well as certain advisers and supporters, are guilty of seditious acts against the security and economic integrity of the United States. And that they have, with malice aforethought, acted to subvert the Constitution.
Do the worst possible thing you can do to them: make them live on the economy. Fire everybody President Romney has an arguable legal right to fire as his hand comes off The Bible. Then go into the federal budget both at the federal and state levels and root out every effin’ dime that is going to Democrat front groups. Then put a few decent audit teams out there looking at all those Democrat front groups and send a bunch of their leaders to jail. Sarah Palin said one thing right, though she didn’t follow through, as is her wont, about the strings attached to federal money. Most federal grants and contracts going to and through states are funding nothing more than sinecures for Democrats even inside Republican controlled governments. Yeah, there’ll be a lot of wailing and knashing of teeth if you don’t take federal funds, but in reality nobody who votes Republican cares or receives the funds, so it really is just Republicans foolishly reacting to the communist media.
A good start. But I am concerned with teaching an “object lesson” here, not so much to the leftist / globalist cabal itself, but to future generations. They need to learn how they can be seduced into unkowingly surrendering their freedom, throught promises of ever more freedom and no cost.
“I was for gay marriage before I was against gay marriage before I was for it”
Barry F. Kerry
You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
In JFK’s day, his foibles were kept secret, but ho boy, what a difference fifty years makes!
I’ll be 70 in a couple of weeks, and in my retired dotage, seeing old movies has become quite a consciousness-raising thrill. After viewing early 50’s flicks like “Cheaper By The Dozen”, the mind rolls on—just think, in 1952, it was only 20 years earlier that it was 1932, and the USA had to process all things to do with and by FDR, while suffering a depression that seemed to last for ever.
Here we are in 2012, and only 20 years ago it was 1992! Seems to moi like just a few days ago!
Also, in 1952, it was only around 50 years ago that it was 1899—which to us, NOWADAYS, seems like ancient history. But to me, 52 years ago, the year of 1960, when I graduated high school—why, eminently memorable.
My point?
The old saw that time waits for no man applies, in oh so very human and humorous spades.
Perhaps we, in Obama’s America, are too close to the denigration he and his leftwing ilk are gleefully producing. I had my own perspective vastly broadened last night, with a PBS program featuring a woman trekking around in Bangladesh.
What a country! CW encapsulates its essence in two “facts”—the regular flooding that happens there, and the terrible poverty suffered by the people of that bad assed land.
However! Even as all the living standard metrics are horrible, especially when compared to those of the USA in 2012, the humans living there are able to feed themselves and reproduce more of themselves, over time. Isn’t THAT in itself a success?
Therefore, perhaps we would be better served to look at humanity from Mars, say, and stop worrying about all the political and economical “ripples” from certain specific Obama-like “plucks” of reality.
Besides, there is only light.
It is surpassing strange how people can “know” about the spectrum of light, X-rays, ultraviolet rays, the visible part of the spectrum, infrared rays—the rainbow, for heaven’s sake—and fail to bodily incorporate this knowledge. The sensation receptors, especially the eyes, are always struck by light, in infinite forms, at the same time THEY, themselves, are gatherings of chemical elements, each of which is merely stepped down light.
And, the consciousness of all this, as well, is light. Indeed, consciousness is ALL.
“Be Consciousness.
Contemplate Consciousness.
Transcend everything in Consciousness.
This is the Epitome of the Way of Truth.”
From “The Liberator (Eleutherios)”, page 37, by Da Free John, 1982
Surely we remember the Carter desperation of 1979. Gold hit $800. Survivalist suppliers were all the rage. It’s back.
Gold hit $800 under Obama. Then doubled from there.
Get rid of Obama like we got rid of Carter, unleash the people and our minerals, and step back in amazement.
The answer is the same as 1980: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
By “hope and change” Obama means “better hope you have some change (when I get through with you)”.
The low constant level of criminality is now present even in our middle class So Cal suburb. Every person I know has at some point in the last found a person in their back yard looking for their cat/dog/ball but really casing the joint. Metal fittings and copper decoration are routinely stolen. Oh well.
All these years of excusing crime has now come home to roost. It’s gang bangers, white people, teens — everybody is in on the take. That’s why guns are selling big in CA.
Did you really have to take a shot at Mississippi in the article? We get enough of that from the MSM. Mississippi is two states as well. If you were to carve out the Delta portion of the state from our statistics, then we wouldn’t receive all the terrible rankings that we do. Regardless of that, there are also a lot of great things about the state. I suspect that we provide more professional athletes than any other state (on a per-capita basis). All modern American music comes from the state (Blues, Rock, and Country). Start with Dr. Arthur Guyton to learn of some of the medical accomplishments.
Although we have also suffered during the government led recession, we are adding jobs here. A new Toyota plant recently opened not far from where I live. Ironically, most of the equipment that was installed in the Toyota plant came from the NUMMI plant which was shut down in Fremont CA.
Thank you Sir, Mr Hanson, for your optimism.
Thank you VDH.
And, not that anyone besides myself will ever go back to see if I should be correct, here goes:
Romney wins big, by a near landslide AT LEAST.
George Zimmerman walks. The aftermath won’t be pretty, and I’m not saying that someone won’t sneak in 100 hours of “community service,” but, basically, his main hobby will be staying alive after he leaves the courtroom a free man.
We unleash the energy industry and its corollary, ALL OF INDUSTRY, after November. I love the fenced stallion metaphor.
We LOWER our marginal tax rates and lower, or eliminate, the capital gains tax.
Islam by its own lights is identified as a political entity whose reason for being is to displace our constitutional system of government and all other forms of governance as well.
Conservatives make major inroads in the senate. Could happen. Look at the way Joe Manchin has been backed into a corner in West Virginia, over coal. Get it?
By accounts, not a man well liked by his own party and now he must not endorse this president. What’s the takeaway? The senate will GO RIGHT no matter who is elected this fall.
A great column as usual, Dr. Hanson, and I offer this sophomoric, pedantic clarification only for the general amusement of your readers. Grammatically speaking, shouldn’t the term be tits-for-tat?
Come on Mr. Hanson…You write some really great stuff, go out on a limb, inspire us who cherish Liberty, tell it like it is, tell us how we have to come together in solidarity as our forebears did when they created America.
People will listen to you, they will believe in what you say, your the kind of American who has within himself something that others can aspire to.
Come on buddy, give it to us.
The hour is growing late.
We only get this one last chance at peaceful redress.
Come on Mr. Hanson, show us what your made of.
…”peaceful redress…?”
Come now. You think pulling several million people (filled with entitlement and resentment) off the government teat can be done in any sort of peaceful manner?…that they’ll slap their foreheads and exclaim,
“But of course!…certainly I understand there is no more money for my four bastard children, my diabetes and my asthma, my elderly, dependent parents and my two pitbulls and free cellphone…excuse me, my suitcases are just behind that door; perchance, have you any empty boxes? Thank you so very much…I’ll just be on my way now…”
Oh well, since it’s all George Bush’s fault, where’s my TV clicker? Oprah’s on.
Dr. Hanson lays out the basis for hope. The resources and the people and the brains are there to lift things again; the ingenuity, optimism, skill – still there – and yet, alas, the end game has begun. The debt bomb will go off and that’s all the difference this time – there is no political dealing with that – especially not with a leftist media. When the financial manipulations of the govt in the marketplace (worldwide, but especially the US Fed and the ECB) leads to collapse in Europe, now lurching and staggering, and then quickly here, the chaos will lead to economic paralysis, as it did in the 30′s. Most politicians are unable to define, let alone limit, the safety net. I do think that with a new tribalism to come from that, certain US states will become refuges and havens for the productive, while others will become lawless and under martial law. Think of now, only expand exponentially the good and the bad, by region and by people. Prosperous areas will become highly policed and restrictive. The rest will be looking to collapsed governments for security that does not come. Dark decades ahead and what will emerge in 30 years may bring to shinel Dr. Hanson’s rays of hope because only through necessity will this country be re-born.
While I concede that Romney inevitably would be much better on economic issues than training wheels Obama, I am appalled that he doesn’t even have enough compassion for a family pet let alone any animal, to tie it to the car roof in a crate for 8 hours for a family vacation. The dog soiled himself because he was scared out of his wits. But Romney says “he was enjoying himself!” Really Mitt? If there was no room in the car, why not board the dog? They certainly could afford it. Why not put the luggage on top of the car instead of the dog??
If you don’t have the sense to figure out this is insensitive to the animal, you should at least know that it’s not safe and it’s also illegal. It shows a complete lack of compassion. Before people start going off on me about how dogs are not people, they are indeed God’s creatures and should be treated with care.
The dog apparently survived his “ordeal” quite well. It sh*t probably because it had to go over the course of eight hours. I don’t know whether or not they gave him a chance to get out and stretch his legs, which I hope they did, but I don’t see it as a huge deal. We have folks now who believe that I should not let my cats outside, because they will kill birds, or get killed themselves. The cats purr, “liberty.”
Regarding businesses holding back on investments. Bill Mahre has already been talking about fatcats purposely not investing to ensure the economy stays bad so obama isn’t reelected. Of course the real truth is the plans A and B this article talks about. If Obama is defeated, invest big because the looters are gone, and whatever profits you get you will have a chance to keep. But until then, keep your cash liquid, so it Obama wins, you can still get your cash out of the country to keep it from the Obama looters. Its basically a case of our entire business class Going Galt.
same difference all over again.
What surely will happen is an ACORN election crooked to the core, with endless counts and recounts, looting, rioting, violence almost everywhere, all across the country, and the final results: unacceptable to the loser, no matter what.
What are you growing on that farm of yours Dr. H? I want some. What is there to be positive about from reading your essay. Oil surpluses dont win elections. The fact Obama can even get 42% of the vote tells you that either things are fixed and he is going to fraudulently win or that no matter how bad things get he is going to be awfully close to enough votes to win because of the kind of people that support him.
California is a lost cause. For the rich, it is the best place to live in the country, but for the middle class average person like my parents who came to California for jobs and a wonderful place to raise a family, today that is longer possible and despite your hard work you live on the fringe of poverty around the criminals, illegals, and entitlement population. What kind of life is that? It is not going to get better for you.
When you factr in the fraudulent vote and the average americans absolute disdain for their fellow man who succeeds and has money as well as the electoral college layout, I believe we could verify Obama was not born in the USA and his vote tally would not change and our leaders that we support would do nothing. The birther issue is a prime example of why this country is going the wrong way and you seem to assume that we will vote this guy out of office.
Obama overestimated the strength of his potential oppostion. He should have waited until his second term to push this Obamacare fraud as he needs a couple more SC justices to die off.
Most americans who would never consider voting for Obama are not going to do anything because they have their SUVs, big screen tvs and can drive through Taco Bell at will. That lifestyle is not condusive to speaking out against any opposition and taking action when he destroys your country like Obama did.
The fact Obama now openly supports gay marriage is complete faith in his reelection. Who really thinks Romney is going to beat this guy under any circumstances. Supporting gay marriage does not get Obama one vote and likely will cost him some undecideds but he still knows he will win so he comes out like its some new revelation.
Count up the electoral votes and the battleground states and you will see how close we are to relecting this foreign usurper who was born in Kenya and who likely is not even a citizen of our country.
This probably sounds nuts, but I wonder if Joe Biden might not be quite as obtuse as he seems. He might have jumped the gun on the gay marriage issue intentionally in order to force Obama into an unpopular pro-gay marriage commitment. Why do that? Maybe, being up close and personal with Obama like no one else but Michelle, he hates him as much as we do.
When reading this article, I was amazed in the Obama Mitt Romulus similarities, flip flopping on gay marriages, the healthcare bills, some borrowed some new kinda share fest. Are we in for a brutal awakening with the Mormon god Mitt Romulus Rohm Romney.I am a true Conservative, Rohm is not, he doesn’t even resemble a conservative and he is dangerous…But, this isn’t new is it? Wait till Obama’s attack dogs go into over drive “To Protect and To Serve” and his dirty to fraudulent business dealings come to the surface again “AGAIN”…Obama isn’t the big threat here, he’s the means…the biggest threat, is ourselves, the voters! Perhaps we are being turned over to our own sins, now all we have to do is find a good hiding place! That’s right, there won’t be any hiding places will there?
Go die, and please do it quietly; nobody wants to be bothered by you.
HOW CAN OBAMA WIN
in November when he’s running a Hoax and Blame campaign with the message: I SUCK. BUT THE OTHER GUY IS WORSE.
Click my name to read my piece: Zeroing Out The Obama Presidency
Mr Hanson, will you please publish and/or link your reference to the total number of California taxpayers (increase of only 150,000 over the last xx years). It is a stunning figure, and I have a cynical colleague who is not convinced. Thank you.
I am more skeptical than Dr. Hanson…probably the old soldier in me – better to overestimate your enemy and be pleasantly surprised when you defeat him than to underestimate him and get your ass handed to you.
That having been said, my main hope is that the Left has overplayed its hand and come out too aggressively and too early, thus waking the sleeping masses to the threat that they represent. Ten more years of this steady erosion and they take over in a cakewalk. Today, there is still time to hope and still time to fight the creeping darkness.
That is what I hope and pray for.
I agree with you, being pleasantly surprised is much preferable to having listened and believed the predictions of victory and then turning in on election night knowing that the worst has happened. The Left is so thoroughly ingrained in society that it will be a generational campaign to reduce their influence to just background noise, much less rid ourselves entirely.
Maybe we can “unleash the stallion” on a countrywide level, but California seems like it will continue to lag behind due to the far-left political climate.
I grew up in semi-rural inland Southern California in the 1950s when it was a land of dreams. The intermediate valleys between the coast and the mountains were a zone of small towns, orchards, dairy & poultry farms interspersed with 1950s & 60s inexpensive 3-5 bedroom exurban housing tracts thaat had been purchased by metro area commuter construction workers, military familes, and vast numbers of snow state retirees.
Public schools were superlative, taxes were low, people worked hard, we kids excelled at school & went on to the state’s nearly free colleges & universities while our parents coninued on in the neighborhoods until their deaths.
In the late fifties we got Fat Pat Brown and after a Reagan respite came Jerry. Fat Pat & Jerry installed the socialist welfare state that eventually transformed the region into a mess not unlike economic & social wreckage Dr. Hanson describes in the San Joaquin Valley.
The orchards have vanished along with the dairies and poultry farms and the weeds grow high amid the ruins. The snow country retirees now head to Arizona, Nevada, Florida, & Costa Rica to avoid the confiscatory taxes gifted to the ted California by coastal area democrat controlled state legislatures to pay for the maintainence of the parasite class & the meddling apparatchiki swarms of the Browns.
The once well tended spacious front lawns of the housing tracts are now parked full of rattle trap cars in the housing tracts that have become Latin American favelas. The yards are heaped full with semi-operational vehicles and deteriorated travel trailers& camper shells used as rental “housing” for the most recent load of arriving mojados. Trash & “junque” accumulations fill both the front and rear of the properties.
The once excellent performing schools are all failing academically. My former classmates, their now middle aged children and grandchildren have gone to Nevada, Texas, Arizona, or farther afield to escape the hellholes their towns & neighborhoods have become.
A few of the these valleys former outlying cattle & grain ranches have been builtup with mc manasion homes many of which are now abandoned foreclosure properties that are also weed ovegrown. My parents 1950 ranch style home is now near wreckage though my parents lived there and tended it lovingly until their deaths in 1985 & 86. I would never think of taking my grandchildren by it and saying this is where I grew up.
I reluctantly left California when my wife retired last year. I am an economist by education and unlike Dr. Hanson I can not forsee an California recovery. Two of my schoolmates became teachers at the town’s high school and are recently retired and tell me that the high school once an incubator for college graduates, doctors, & engineers has a 60+ % dropout rate and its graduates have on average fourth grade reading skills.
Can Californi recover from such a state? I think not! That’s why I departed the Golden State for my remaining golden years.
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