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California: A Dreamscape that Ignores the Reality of Incentives and Disincentives

 

A homeless encampment in SF.

California is a real-life version of a Salvador Dali painting. The state is governed as if certain realities can be twisted by fantastical imagination – even ignored entirely – in the service of an all-embracing dream. Case in point: the “putrid city by the bay” *. San Francisco is the poster child of unintentionally engineered urban decay. This happenstance wasn’t produced by magic. Policies of longstanding have unexpected consequences of longstanding.

First, the situation. It is best described by local media reports:

– “Trash bags full of approximately 20 pounds of human poop were left on the sidewalk over the weekend in downtown San Francisco. It’s the latest — and perhaps most alarming — sign of the increased filthiness of one of the most popular cities in the United States”. Fresno Bee, July 4, 2018. **

The 20 pounds of SF human poop reported by the Fresno Bee.

– An investigation by NBC Bay Area “reveals a dangerous concoction of drug needles, garbage, and feces lining the streets of downtown San Francisco. The Investigative Unit surveyed more than 150 blocks, including some of the city’s top tourist destinations, and discovered conditions that are now being compared to some of the worst slums in the world.” NBC Bay Area, Feb. 18, 2018. ***

Needles, garbage, and dried feces on the streets of SF.

– The president of the SF’s travel association reported the cancellation of a convention by a medical assication due to the city’s filthy and mean streets. He said, “They just said that the conditions of the streets, in their mind, had gotten to the point where their delegates don’t feel safe coming to San Francisco. They see harassment on the street, and it’s not a pleasant environment, so they have reconsidered all future years in San Francisco.” NBC Bay Area, July 3, 2018. ****

– The problem encompasses more than SF. Similar conditions can be found up and down the state’s urban coastal corridor and capital. In Sacramento, the Sacramento Bee reported that “safety inspectors have issued nine citations and fined the Department of General Services for failing to adequately prepare groundskeepers asked to clean up needles and fecal matter in Capitol Park.” *****

Typical homeless camp in the American River Parkway, Sacramento.
A homeless encampment arrayed along the Santa Ana River, southern California.

Why is this so? For one, the state is smothered in regulations. Many of them meander back to lefty utopia-building. Take rent control. SF plans to address its homeless crisis with – you guessed it – rent control, the same mantra that helped create the problem. Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck put it best: “Next to bombing, rent control seems in many cases to be the most efficient technique so far known for destroying cities.” If SF’s elected officials were doctors, they’d be practicing phrenology.

The state is infatuated with regulating its way to the better world. Greenie obsessions are at the top of the list. Obsessions have consequences. Today, temps in Bakersfield will top over 100 degrees … but don’t turn on your air conditioner unless you want to file bankruptcy. Of course, you could surrender to the state’s shotgun wedding between you and solar panels.

And we have the tangle of intestines of the state’s multi-faceted, multi-layered system of land use controls. It’s something that would make Daedalus, the engineer of King Minos’s Labyrinth, green with envy. So, forget about addressing the state’s housing woes with an increase in supply.

RVs are seen parked on South 7th Street in San Jose on Dec. 5, 2017. Government officials and homeless advocates have seen an increase in the number of working poor residents living in RVs on public streets. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
RV resident Robert Ramirez, 54, has been living in his RV for about six months. Ramirez supports himself by collecting recyclable materials and also gets government assistance. He wishes he could park his trailer in a RV park for more stability in his life but he can’t afford it. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)

Run to the hills if you have a six-figure income and wish to avoid the minefield of feces and needles, because you will pay, and pay, and pay in so many ways.

The state is a psychiatric patient in a condition of perpetual denial. It has unleashed a host of incentives and disincentives pointing in one direction: decay. While Dali had clocks melting over the edge of a table, the creators of California’s mess have constructed a canvass of a more all-encompassing meltdown. Let’s see if the state’s voters can find a new bank of artists before it’s too late.

RogerG

Footnotes:
* “Increasingly Putrid City by the Bay”, Steven Greenhut, California Policy Center, July 5, 2018, https://spectator.org/increasingly-putrid-city-by-the-bay/…

** “Approximately 20 pounds of human poop was found on a sidewalk of San Francisco”, Bryant-Jon Anteola, Fresno Bee, July 4, 2018, https://www.fresnobee.com/news/state/article214320174.html

*** “Diseased Streets”, NBC Bay Area, Feb.18, 2018, https://www.nbcbayarea.com/…/Diseased-Streets-472430013.html

**** “San Francisco’s ‘Dirty Streets’ Scare Off Long-time Convention with 15,000 attendees”, NBC Bay Area, July 3, 2018, https://www.nbcbayarea.com/…/Dirty-Streets-Threaten-San-Fra…

***** “Feces, blood, syringes at California Capitol: Workers unprepared for clean up, OSHA says”, Sacramento Bee, July 3, 2018, https://www.sacbee.com/…/the-state-wo…/article214208014.html

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A Chance Meeting and Not Connecting the Dots, 5/26/2018

An accidental meeting on a forest road with a semi-Californian/Montanan – he spends his winters in California (understandable) – showcases much that has gone astray in the America of today. Our biggest threat doesn’t arise from material circumstances but from what rolls around in our heads. Occupying the synapses are an excess of unexamined assumptions and the crazes that they feed.

Let me explain. While riding our ATV’s through the forests near our property, my wife and I came upon a man on a motor-bike. Pleasantries and friendly conversation arose. It turns out that the man haled from Redding, Ca. He had few nice things to say about the winters and complained of the shrinking longevity of restaurants in the area. I mentioned that we had lost our appetite for our native state after one of many recent visits. Prohibitions, high prices, and petty annoyances – the plastic bag carousels are empty at the stores for instance – have soured us.

He complained about the plastic litter in a feeble defense of the ban. I don’t think that he, and many others, connected the dots between the propensity for prohibition and the new feudalism that is taking shape in the so-called golden state. Many off-the-cuff reactions to a hypothetical evil produce unexpected effects. Too much plastic bag litter? Ban them. Too many poor people? Tax the rich. Don’t like carbon? Command people to put solar panels on their roofs or punish them with high utility bills – or both. Don’t like suburbia? Strangle it in a maze of land-use controls. The only problem is: growth suffocates; the middle-class flees; and the cost of living inflates. The result is a new feudalism of the hyper-rich in their manorial enclaves surrounded by a growing low-wage servant class.

As for the limited restaurants in our area, our friend showed no acknowledgement of rudimentary cause-and-effect. Enterprise has been suffering in industrial and rural America for quite some time. Take away the primary industries – mining and lumbering in our case – in those places dependent on them and poverty, meth use, and social chaos erupts. Tourism is a very poor substitute.

Many of these ruminations were kept to myself. He did say that he didn’t like mining for its scarring of the land. I responded with the obvious: without it, he and I wouldn’t be on our vehicles. He dismissed the claim with a cursory, “I’ll buy it from China”.

There you have it. Don’t think of employing our own people; export our wish-fulfillment to foreign lands; and don’t give a second thought about the repercussions. As long as the consequences are invisible to us, and we remain ensconced in our comfortable illusions, all is right with the world. Right?

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Luke 23:34

RogerG

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The Free State of … San Bernadino

US President Donald Trump makes remarks at a roundtable meeting on sanctuary cities May 16, 2018, in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, DC. Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel is 3rd from left.(Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

From 1864 to 1865, Jones County, Mississippi, and its immediate environs were in open revolt against the Confederate state of Mississippi and its governor, Charles Clark – a Democrat by the way. The so-called “Free State of Jones”. Numerous state officials were assaulted and harassed, some probably killed. Clearly, this was a pro-union constituency. Project forward to May 16, 2018 and a meeting of disgruntled California local leaders with President Trump. A parallel anyone?

Some firebrands of the left – who rule the roost in California – are as incensed about federal immigration law as the South was about abolitionism and tariffs. They have made cooperation with ICE the equivalent of assisting child porn traffickers. What’s next, an act of secession?

Well, some in the state are having none of it. They have approached the president, as surely as some in 1864 Jones County would relish a confab with Lincoln.

History seldom repeats, but it does rhyme. (Reputedly stated by Mark Twain)

RogerG

* See “Orange County, Inland Empire leaders talk immigration with Trump in White House”, Roxana Kopetman, Orange County Register, 5/17/2018, https://www.pe.com/2018/05/16/trump-meeting-today-with-leaders-from-orange-county-inland-empire/

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The Season of Living Dangerously

“The Year of Living Dangerously” (1982) with Mel Gibson and Linda Hunt.

Ever since the Trump ascendancy, the left has been on a tirade. The marches, the gnashing of teeth about fictional prophecies of doom, and the willingness to tramp over broken glass to defeat anyone with an “R” (Republican) after their name are loose in the land. They are ginned up as if on amphetamines. The political season erupted after inauguration and hasn’t let up. It’s the season of living dangerously.

2,500 unhinged protesters hit Boston Common to protest the election of Donald Trump, Nov. 2016.
Anti-Trump rally, NYC.
Man disrupted and had to be removed from Sen. Bill Cassidy’s (R, La.) townhall in Feb. 2017.

Case in point: lefty bankrollers like Tom Steyer and their misnomered “League of Conservation Voters” (LCV) are airing adds hyper-ventilating about the rape of nature by the R’s. The bilge of extremist rhetoric abounds. Here in Montana, the targets are Greg Gianforte and Brian Zinke. I’m sure that the field of fire is national.

So-called “dark money” abounds at the LCV. That’s the money hidden behind a non-profit label, taking full advantage of FEC regs. Peeling back the facade, though, one finds envirotopia’s big-time cleanup hitters.

The “League” ain’t a quaint collection of middle-class hikers. It’s heart is the well-heeled lefty do-gooder, anxious to order our lives according to their semi-literate conscience. The hall of shame includes Facebook co-founder Dustin Muskowitz and wife who cut loose with $5 mill for the “League” in 2016. 2014 saw AFSCME and George Soros ladle a combined $1 mill into the coffers. Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate Action poured $775,000 into the collection plate. That’s just a sample of the deep pockets.

Lefty billionaire activist Tom Steyer turns to people standing behind him before taking questions during a news conference in Washington, Monday, Jan. 8, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster).

This campaign has nothing to do with the grassroots. The average Joe and Jane want good jobs and healthy social conditions to raise their families. All the lefties can offer up is DMV-style government, debilitating dependency, and micro-management of our lives, aka California. The whole thing adds up to a social and economic cesspool.

Billie Jo leans back at her homeless encampment near unincorporated Cameron Park in El Dorado County, Ca.
A encampment is shown along the Santa Ana River trail on the border of Fountain Valley, Ca.

If they succeed, watch out! It certainly is the season of living dangerously.

RogerG

** Thanks to “League of Conservation Voters: Environmental Group or Democratic Campaign Heavyweight?”, Hayden Ludwig and Kevin Boyd, Capital Research Center, 7/6/2017, https://capitalresearch.org/…/league-of-conservation-voter…/

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Make-Believe and Its Costs

Student fights at West High School, Bakersfield, Ca., 3/15/2017.

Today, there seems to be a concerted effort to make-believe everyone is the same, not just equal: among the sexes, genders (?), racial and ethnic groups, social classes, everyone. Of course, this is a flagrant contradiction to multiculturalism’s worship of differences. But, pushing the incoherence aside is the pogrom against any real or imagined bigotries. It takes the form of a jihad to eradicate “disparate impact” – or the presence of unequal outcomes. If we are more than equal, but the same, too many of one group in an unsavory category is said to be proof of amorphous and shadowy forces of bigotry. The only problem: It’s all nonsense and, when implemented, a hot mess.

Recently, the Kern High School District in California was sued by the Dolores Huerte Foundation for a negative “disparate impact” in its discipline policies. Too many minorities were said to be kicked out of school. Now, in caving in to a judicial shakedown, the District implemented PBIS. Don’t fret over its meaning. It can be translated to mean more mothering for hellions. Too bad if you’re a good student or well-meaning teacher.

Bakersfield High School teachers expressing their fear and dismay:

Here’s a clip of fights at neighboring West High School from last year:

You see, hellions aren’t evenly distributed in a population any more than the social conditions that give to their rise.

Read the article: “‘Out of Control’: Teachers describe KHSD schools after anti-discrimination settlement”, Jeff Platt, Eyewitness News staff, BakersfieldNow.com, http://bakersfieldnow.com/…/out-of-control-teachers-describ….

RogerG

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How Is This Not Nullification?

The following is a comment to “‘We will prosecute’ employers who help immigration sweeps, California AG says”, Angela Hart, The Sacramento Bee, 1/19/2018, http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article195434409.html .

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State officials are not required to enforce federal immigration law. But California actions to not hold suspects of federal detainer requests, refuse to share information, and help facilitate violations of federal immigration law veer awfully close to nullification. Now, upping the ante further, the state’s attorney general threatens prosecution of any employer who adheres to the requests and instructions of federal authorities. Not participating has morphed into obstruction.

Employers in a state, first and foremost, are citizens of the U.S., but merely residents of a state. Patriotism applies to loyalty to the nation, not a state. Mr. Becerra is forcing patriotic employers of the state into obstructing federal authorities in the fulfillment of clear and unambiguous Constitutional powers – Article I, Section 8, clause 3. The state is forcing U.S. citizens within its borders into not cooperating with federal authorities.

Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun disagreed over South Carolina’s nullification of the tariff law. Asked if he had any regrets during his presidency, Jackson said,  “[That] I didn’t shoot Henry Clay and I didn’t hang John C. Calhoun.”
Andrew Jackson threatened to march into South Carolina and hang the state’s government in 1833 over its nullification of the tariff law. U.S. AG Jeff Sessions needs to indict and submit Mr. Becerra to a perp walk. If the rest of the brood in Sacramento continues to interfere, a criminal conspiracy is at work. Apply RICO.

RogerG

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Purveyors of Poison, Part 2: Outbound/Inbound States According to North American Van Lines

The following is a reply to “Where are Americans Moving?”, 2017,  https://www.northamerican.com/migration-map.

*************

The map says it all according to a report issued by North American Van Lines for 2017.

Coupling the data about moves with economic rankings for states, Hillary country in the last election is a scary place for people wishing to better themselves. Take a look at the charts in the previous article and the map in this article and a picture crystallizes of people fleeing the Dems’ poison. Long term Dem control of the state legislature is a sure signal to look elsewhere to live.

Just saying.

RogerG

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Purveyors of Poison

The following is a reply to “America’s top five inbound vs. top five outbound states” by Mark J. Perry of AEI,  http://www.aei.org/publication/americas-top-five-inbound-vs-top-five-outbound-states-how-do-they-compare-on-a-variety-of-economic-business-conditions-and-political-measures/comment-page-1/#comment-191182.

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Below is a chart showing the states in the grip of the poison and those with the antidote.

I’ve been beating this drum for quite some time, and it deserves to be beaten, and beaten, and beaten. People know poison when they see it, at least those who can load up a U-Haul. The Dems are, at this juncture, the purveyors of poison, and it shows in moving stats.

Repetition may force the message to sink in as we approach the November 2018 elections. In spite of Trump’s Twitter flatulations, the Dems aren’t a choice to register discontent with presidential behavior. Slicing off your nose to spite your face isn’t sound medical advice.

If in power as of January 2019, the Dems will take California national. It’s their beau ideal.

Whichever way the electoral winds blow, I’m still vexed by the same question. How much do people understand of this state of affairs? Do they understand that poison isn’t a health food? Or, are they so deranged by Trump that they’ll take poison by voting to imbibe the California venom?

We’ll see come November 2018.

RogerG

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Two or Six Californias?

The above question comes to light in the form of two articles:

  • “Six Californias? Residents poised to vote on splitting up state”, CBS News, 7/15/2014, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/six-californias-residents-poised-to-vote-on-splitting-up-state/

  • “New California declares ‘independence’ from rest of state”, CBS News, 1/16/2018, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-california-declares-independence-from-rest-of-state/

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Fleeing the coop isn’t the only option for those disgruntled with the lefty coastal dominion over the whole of California.

First it was the north of the state petrified of the south stealing their water and turning them into another Owens Valley. Ex-state senator from Redding, Stan Statham (R), in the 70s and 80s, would introduce a bill at the start of each legislative session to split the state north from south. It’d go nowhere, of course.

Stan Statham from 1993 describing his plan to divide the state into three.

More recently, in light of the lefty state government’s delinquency on real infrastructure and the wild pursuit of the greenie utopia, the ol’ State of Jefferson was resurrected, a union of the northern counties of California with the southern counties of Oregon.

Earlier, in 2014, entrepreneur Tom Draper floated an initiative to break up the state six ways. See the above article.

And, again, more recently, is a proposal to amputate the lefty coast from the rest. “New California” would be free of the diseased part. See the above article.

Sure, the ideas will end up in the circular file. Nonetheless, they are a sign of desperation for people still anchored to the state but flabbergasted at the iron grip of the looney left on the state.

Maybe the best option – for the country but nor for the masses beyond the Coast Range – is the looney left’s drive for secession. I hope they succeed so the rest of us can receive the refugees and say goodbye to the experiment to make the world’s largest hippie commune.

And secession’s likely result:

RogerG

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Can Republicans Make a Game of It in Blue-America?

The following is my posted response to Kevin D. Williamson’s column in National Review Online, “From Sea to Shining Sea”, 1/7/2018,   http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455208/conservatives-have-abandoned-coasts-cities-bad-move.

KDW,

Okay, let’s make a play for New York and California, and the rest of the blue dots on the election map. Yes, Republicans and conservatives seem to have abandoned them. But the interrogatives pinch me awake, especially how, who, what, when. The land of B1 Bob Dornan (ex-R, Santa Ana/Anaheim) is as firmly Demland as almost any of the precincts around Harvard. “Anacrime” and “Stabba Ana” are more than putdowns. They’re signs of the state-of-play in formerly conservative strongholds in a state that is more reflective of Nancy Pelosi than Ronald Reagan.

Nancy Pelosi, D, California
A Santa Ana Crime Scene Investigator takes photographs after a male was shot while riding a bicycle in the 3900 block of West 5th Street around 11:40 p.m. Tuesday night in Santa Ana.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: KEVIN WARN, CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER – 05/19/15 – A man riding a bicycle was shot to death in Santa Ana, police said today around 11:40 p.m.. The unidentified victim was riding in the 3900 block of West 5th Street when police received reports of shots fired and a victim down, Santa Ana police Sgt. Matt Hermans said. The victim was pronounced dead at a hospital, Hermans said.
Homeless encampment near freeway in Anaheim, Ca.

Napoleon was allegedly famous for having said, “When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna.” He could afford to say that. At that point in his career, he was unrivaled on the battlefield. What advantages do Republicans possess in areas currently on the verge of secession after the near-nullification of federal immigration law? Certainly, Rudy Guiliani won a couple of terms as NYC mayor, but it was after the city had cemented a reputation as an open sewer and murder capital of the world. The lesson: Take Vienna after the plague has set in.

1970s NYC street scene.
1970s NYC sqeegee boys. A form of aggressive pandhanding accosting motorists.
Undercover cop arrests a mugger on a NYC subway. The city’s subway system averaged 250 felonies a week during the early 80s. By 1990, annual homicides in New York peaked at 2,245.
Pictured, a woman exits the subway station at Grand Central among a score of sleeping homeless individuals sometime in the 1980s.
The urban decay led to the mayoral victory of Rudy Giuliani (r) over David Dinkins (l) in 1993.

The rot will have to ravage a lot more before Republicans have a real shot on the lefty coasts. Heck, the Republicans couldn’t field a candidate in California’s last Senate race. It was a brawl between two Dems: Loretta Sanchez – the big cheese of B1 Bob’s old district – and the lefty attorney general, Kemala Harris, the eventual winner … and scourge.

Poison is popular in California, as it is in the rest of blue-world. Scan the list of the recent popular initiatives. It’s become the land of the perpetual high, tax rape, greenie everything, transgender everything, and a plethora of petty annoyances like expensive eggs, pricey gas, skirting the Heller decision with clamps on ammunition, empty plastic bag carousels at the grocery store, etc., etc.

The state legislature could be confused with the staff of the Resistance, Black Lives Matter, and the LGBTQ… lobby. The governor travels around as the independent potentate of his own personal satrap. It’s not much of an exaggeration to ask if they’re channeling Nicolas Maduro and his consiglieres.

It must be said, though, that the bi-coastal insanities mirror the national map. These states are really blue along the coast and a scattering of blue dots elsewhere. But the red areas are shrinking as the sober flee the asylums. Andrew Breitbart was famous for exclaiming, “Politics is downstream from culture”. A cliché to be true, but still accurate. The culture is frightening for a church-going anyone with a spouse and a couple of kids.

County-by-county breakdown for Prop. 67, the ban on free plastic shopping bags.

So, how do we [conservatives] make a play? Take resources from Erie County where we have a shot and give them to lonely opponents of the lefty kleptocracy in California? If you’re talking about seed money to keep the movement alive, then I’m with you, KDW. If you’re talking about an abrasion-free message, call me comrade. After that, the zero-sum game presents too big of a toll.

Pray for rot. To borrow from addiction therapy, hitting bottom may work wonders.

RogerG