Two Californias-MLB could open academies for dirt poor, Spanish speaking kids in California and save the air fare to the Dominican
- 12/15/10, "Two Californias": "The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California.
- segregated and impoverished areas of Caruthers, Fowler, Laton, Orange Cove, Parlier, and Selma. My own farmhouse is now in an area of abject poverty and almost no ethnic diversity; the closest elementary school (my alma mater, two miles away) is 94 percent Hispanic and 1 percent white, and well below federal testing norms in math and English.
- First, remember that these areas are the ground zero, so to speak, of 20 years of illegal immigration. There has been a general depression in farming — to such an extent that the 20- to-100-acre tree and vine farmer, the erstwhile backbone of the old rural California, for all practical purposes has ceased to exist.
On the western side of the Central Valley, the effects of arbitrary cutoffs in federal irrigation water have idled tens of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land, leaving thousands unemployed. Manufacturing plants in the towns in these areas — which used to make
- harvesters, hydraulic lifts, trailers, food-processing equipment — have largely shut down; their production has been shipped off overseas or south of the border.
Agriculture itself — from almonds to raisins — has increasingly become corporatized and mechanized, cutting by half the number of farm workers needed. So unemployment runs somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.
Many of the rural trailer-house compounds I saw appear to the naked eye no different from what I have seen in the Third World. There is a Caribbean look to the junked cars, electric wires crisscrossing between various outbuildings, plastic tarps substituting for replacement shingles, lean-tos cobbled together as auxiliary housing,
- pit bulls unleashed, and geese, goats, and chickens roaming around the yards.
The public hears about all sorts of tough California regulations that stymie business — rigid zoning laws, strict building codes, constant inspections — but apparently none of that applies out here.
It is almost as if the more California regulates, the more it does not regulate. Its public employees prefer to go after misdemeanors in the upscale areas to justify our expensive oversight industry, while ignoring the felonies in the downtrodden areas,- which are becoming feral and beyond the ability of any inspector to do anything but feel irrelevant.
- Are the schools so bad as to scare away potential agricultural entrepreneurs? Or are we all terrified by the national debt and uncertain future?
- in the epidemic dumping of trash, furniture, and often toxic substances throughout California’s rural hinterland.
- into the environment of my host.
- Perhaps before we cut off more irrigation water to the west side of the valley, we might invest some green dollars into cleaning up the unsightly and sometimes dangerous garbage that now litters the outskirts of our rural communities.
- There are no “facilities” such as toilets or washrooms. But I do frequently see lard trails on the isolated roads I bike on,
At crossroads, peddlers in a counter-California economy sell almost anything. Here is what I noticed at an intersection on the west side last week: shovels, rakes, hoes, gas pumps, lawnmowers, edgers, blowers, jackets, gloves, and caps. The merchandise was all new. I doubt whether in high-tax California sales taxes or income taxes were paid on any of these stop-and-go transactions.
In two supermarkets 50 miles apart, I was the only one in line who did not pay with a social-service plastic card (gone are the days when “food stamps” were embarrassing bulky coupons). But I did not see any relationship between the use of the card and poverty as we once knew it: The electrical appurtenances owned by the user and the car into which the groceries were loaded were indistinguishable from those of the upper middle class.
- By that I mean that most consumers drove late-model Camrys, Accords, or Tauruses, had iPhones, Bluetooths, or BlackBerries, and bought everything in the store with public-assistance credit.
- but often no apparent source of income.
- I was the only non-Hispanic — there were no Asians, no blacks, no other whites.
- where Spanish is the first language,
- the schools are not at all diverse,
- and the federal and state governments are either the main employers
- Again, I do not editorialize, but I note these vast transformations over the last 20 years that are the paradoxical wages of unchecked illegal immigration from Mexico,
- Fresno’s California State University campus is embroiled in controversy over the student body president’s announcing that he is an illegal alien, with all the requisite protests in favor of the DREAM Act. I won’t comment on the legislation per se, but again only note the anomaly.
- students in those classes heard of the sins of America more often than its attractions.
I note this because hundreds of students here illegally are now terrified of being deported to Mexico. I can understand that, given the chaos in Mexico and their own long residency in the United States. But here is what still confuses me:
- If one were to consider the classes that deal with Mexico at the university, or the visible displays of national chauvinism, then
- one might conclude that Mexico is a far more attractive and moral place than the United States.
- instead explained why, in fact, they want to stay.
- the attitude of the host, which by any historical standard can only be termed “indifferent.”
- that increasingly have plagued productive citizens to the point of driving them from the state,
Hundreds of thousands sense all that and vote accordingly with their feet, both into and out of California — and the result is a sort of social, cultural, economic, and political time-bomb, whose ticks are getting louder."
- "— NRO (National Review Online) contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution"...via Lucianne.com
1/4/11, Thomas Sowell, 'Mascot Politics': "What is going on? These and other groups, here and abroad, are treated as mascots
- of the self-congratulatory elites.
These elites are able to indulge themselves in non-judgmental permissiveness toward those selected as mascots, while cracking down with heavy-handed, nanny-state control on others.
The effect of all this on the mascots themselves
- is not a big concern of the elites.
Mascots symbolize something for others. The actual fate of the mascots themselves seldom matters much to their supposed benefactors."...
- photo above accompanied Dr. Sowell's article at Townhall.com lacks the aura of triumph promised when a Mexican flag was unfurled at an MLB game.
- Mets security personnel attempts to catch up with man carrying Mexican flag across the field during Mets game v Arizona Diamondbacks in NYC, 7/30/10, ap. Arizona won 9-6.
Labels: 'Two Californias, Spanish speaking kids, Two Californias-' MLB could drop in any time it wants and find dirt poor
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