California - The Progressive Paradise (updated 2jan16)

George Rebane

Lenin promised Russians a workers’ paradise, the rest is history.

California’s progression toward socialism has long been acknowledged by both the Left and the Right.  The state is known globally as America’s leading laboratory of collectivist programs and practices.   Leftwing media around the world celebrate California’s ‘leadership’ in all things progressivist.  Leading publications and documentaries detail how the state has grown its reach into all aspects of life within its boundaries.  Huzzahs of approval and encouragement echo from liberals in other states and countries who wish their own jurisdictions to follow such exemplary leadership.

The Right, of course, takes a completely different view of what has happened to the once Golden State.  They point to statistics like the state having taken the lead in the downward dive in education, in the creation of the nation’s largest welfare class, in piling tax upon tax and regulation upon regulation that denies its citizens the use of both public and private resources, in inviting the worst of federal diktats to land and establish themselves first on its Left coast, and, of course, in driving start-ups and business expansions to friendlier regions and shores.

The Left sees none of this and points to the clatch of coastal high tech businesses whose climatephilic and highly educated workforce cares little about the marginal taxes they pay to live and work in such a selective paradise.  The tax revenues from the owners and workers of such politically correct high density, low polluting enterprises that easily succumb to Agend21’s ‘stack and pack’ are skewed beyond correction, but who cares – ‘we haven’t crashed yet’.  The implied deeper message is that "we don’t need no" water-consuming agriculture, thriving and unreliably voting middle class, and small self-sufficient communities, especially in places where only low-density native Americans lived that now should be ‘returned to Nature’.

But the powers that be do need a dependent and reliable voting class.  This has been easiest to create out of the growing cohort of systemically unemployed workers, and the corporatist class of siliconized workers and billionaires – both of them dependent on the government gun to keep their checks coming.  The only thing left to do to create the perfect progressives’ paradise is to domesticate or eliminate those pesky right-wingers, capitalists, and small entrepreneurs.  These people are easy to spot since they like to live in the soon-to-be-forbidden low density regions like the state’s rural counties.

And the program to do that is well under way.  The public schools have now pumped out two generations of correct thinking citizens who are statists to their (now Common) core.  They are encouraged to flood California’s hinterlands to gain control of local governments and ferret out the remaining knuckledraggers and Bible thumpers.  And when the time comes, these coastal immigrants will compliantly emigrate back to the approved ‘stack and pack’ communities connected by subsidized public transport, electric cars, and bicycles.

California’s economy, education, and politics have been owned by the Democrats for at least half a century, with the occasional token Republican or RINO governor sworn in now and then when the road to socialism has hit a noticeable rough patch.  But even these palliatives will not be necessary as more and more Californians become beholden to the Golden Leviathan.  Today’s insane public policies that plague our state are too numerous to recount here – however they do adorn past years of these pages.  Among the most recently surfacing travesties from decades of decadent leftwing rule is California’s ‘water shortage’ that has been politically compounded to serve many purposes.

The long and short of it is that the Left mandates the continual release of enormous amounts of fresh water into the ocean, claiming to protect the environment at all costs to agriculture and industry while shipping water south and continuing to fight the construction of more water catching and conserving infrastructure.  The state operates on infrastructure built to satisfy the needs of about half of today’s residents, an infrastructure that takes no count of the historical droughts that have visited the region for countless millennia.  The rest of this story is summarized well in the recently published ‘California Faces Lost Decades in Solving Drought’.

Today in California the evils of socialism are manifest wherever you look, you cannot avoid it.  And that is another example from the last great century of Man.

[2dec16 update] A reader sends updated data on the states’ indebtedness.  The details are chilling.  The Daily Caller report states that -

... some states are busted, with sluggish economies, while others are busting loose with growing economies and more opportunity. The reasons for both aren’t hard to find, they’re all in the numbers.

Take California and New York, for example, two states that have had big-spending governors and legislators for decades. Based on data compiled by statedatalab.org and Open The Books, residents of both states may want to prepare for hard times ahead.

California has $328 billion in debts, compared to only $94 billion in assets, for a deficit of $234 billion. If debt holders all tell state officials to pay up in 2016, every Californian will have to pay an additional $20,800 in taxes.

The careful reader will pick up that there is little chance that this debt will be made good from added taxes piled on already sky high state taxes and fees that must be generated from a limping economy that has no chance of reviving under the planned socialist nostrums, especially those involving environmental diktats and ‘green jobs’ imposed under the government gun. When the music stops, the dollar will be destroyed and the retired public employees (including teachers) will be SOL.  In the meanwhile we will suffer under ever stifling mismanagement from Sacramento of which we are reminded daily as we travel on California’s dilapidated roads while witnessing the impact of historically reliable droughts, increasing rolls of welfare recipients and ingress of illegal aliens, and broken K-12 educational system that turns out a reliable supply of ever more ignorant voters to accelerate the vicious cycle. (more here)

 

Comments

[drivebyposter]

I take your point here, but it seems to me that the primary driver in mass behavior changes in California isn't economics, it's demographics. State government policy is being dragged behind the freight train of culture.

[George Rebane]

drivebyposter 1230pm - I would agree with your 'demographic', 'culture', and 'policy' points if we agree to link them into a vicious circle. I'm not particular as to where the circle is snipped to identify a 'primal cause' that gets the whole thing going. Most certainly economics is not the primary driver but an effect of that circle operating. However, were I forced to pick among the three for a starting point, I would pick ideologically driven government policy.

[jon smith]

Diametrically opposed to California in just about every way is El Paso, Texas. Wonderful place.

[Walt]

The real question is,, what will those who feel this is"paradise" do when the money from those that feel "otherwise" runs out? Or when there is not one more regulation that can be written? Next year you will need a permit just to wipe your,,, Ya... There.
You will be paying by the flush. Your water spigot will be coin operated.( for the underclass) The rest of us will have a credit card reader installed.(by gov. mandate)

[Todd Juvinall]

Hey a libnut (could be Pelline) has created a FB page on me. Check it out. What a hoot!

https://www.facebook.com/Draft-Todd-Juvinall-for-Supervisor-161826800844252/

[Russ Steele]

GEORGE WILL ON “THE FOOLISH ‘THEISM’ OF GOVERNMENT ENTHUSIASTS” IN THE WASHINGTON POST

“Secular theists” — economist Don Boudreaux’s term — produce governments gripped by the fatal conceit that they are wiser than society’s spontaneous experimental order. Such governments imposed order suffocates improvisation and innovation. Like religious creationists gazing upon biological complexity, secular theists assume that social complexity requires an intentional design imposed from on high by wise designers, a.k.a. them.

We can observe these "Secular theists" at work in Sacramento and some regional government agencies.

[George Rebane]

RussS 557pm - Agreed. This is a very fancy and intellectual way of paraphrasing that Man does not know how to centrally control large complex systems - a long held RR thesis and extensively covered in my Conservatarian Credo.

But this theistic belief in central control has been the mantra of collectivist everywhere starting with Marx and continuing this day to Obama et al. It is the most destructive religion that man has ever invented; much more destructive than any belief in an omnipotent God. Even ISIS has not come close to killing as many as collectivist tyrants have buried.

[Gregory]

I should reread Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies but I remember taking away the idea that large centrally controlled economies are heavily dependent upon always having the right person doing the right job, but open and free states are ones that are least damaged by having the wrong people in the wrong jobs, and that will never go away.

On a happier note, as of a moment ago his Purpleness has melted down in a fusillade of petty attacks against his real and imagined foes... one comment by that CEO of a wretchedly misnamed Truckee 501c3 followed by nine comment authored by Jeff itself. In short, Jeff and all his friends.

[George Rebane]

Gregory 725pm - I don't recall that Popper was ever familiar with a large successful economy that was centrally controlled by a right person doing the right job, or for that matter any one person doing any job, or even any central group of persons doing whatever jobs they wanted to do. I do confess that I am not familiar with history presenting us with any such example.

[Gregory]

I believe Popper was using the USSR, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as models, and the edition I read had a newer intro by Popper with a mild apology for the wartime fervor... 1945 was, in many ways, not a great year for dispassionate words.

[Account Deleted]

One of the most devastating aspects of the governance of Kali is the state government's attitude toward fiscal prudence. Even Pete Wilson thought it was a good idea to 'balance' the state budget by raiding the state workers' pension fund. The current pack of hyenas running the golden state claim all is well and the budget is balanced. They even claim there is a surplus. This is a laughable bit of comedy. Kali owes the feds billions for unpaid unemployment benefits as well as millions they 'project' to pay back later that were stolen from special funds. The current projection of unpaid liabilities stretches into the tens of billions for retirement benefits and now medical costs for the new socialist medical programs.
And how about Brown's choo choo train? Mired in debt and unable to come up with a viable legal financing plan, they have turned to fleecing the carbon credit fund for a life-line to some sort of flim flam deal down the road that will save it's hide.
The bankers love the golden state as a never-ending source of interest payments that will stretch out into the future for ever.
And the legislature is trying to figure out how to spend that 'surplus'.
I guess as long as you can pay off the current credit card with a new credit card all is good.

[George Rebane]

Gregory 831pm - If he initially thought that his 'models' were laudable, perhaps he lived long enough to have seen his error as witnessed by his "Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell."

[Gregory]

George, you seem to have Popper, and my recollections, 180 degrees out of phase... Hayek and Friedman were generally on the same page.

[Russ Steele]

Where is all the Sierra Business Councils good work in the Tahoe Region? A recent study:

• Tahoe has double-digit unemployment and poverty rates.
• More than 60% of children are on subsidized meal programs at their schools.
• Housing costs are beyond the reach of many of residents.
• Lake Tahoe includes two states, six local governments and 198 plan areas, making economic progress challenging.

Looks like central planning might be failing the Tahoe Region.

[George Rebane]

Gregory 118pm - Perhaps so, but do you not in your 725pm state that Popper maintained "that large centrally controlled economies are heavily dependent upon always having the right person doing the right job"? Is he not talking about successful economies centrally controlled, else his use of the word 'right' is superfluous?

No contention on the stances of Hayek and Friedman (the latter being a student of the former).

[Walt]

Our Dear Scott. Did you pay up your exit tax before you high tailed it across state lines?
Did you arrange to have a replacement move in from another state to pick up the tax loss?
The LIBS do see a bright side. If you sold your property, the poor bastard that bought it is now paying the full tax. You had the PROP13 "low" tax.. The "new guy" doesn't. The Tax man thanks you.

[Russ Steele]

Joel Kotkin on immigration and the Progressive's contribution to the destruction of our cultural heritage:

Yet a portion of these newcomers ultimately reject our culture and, in some cases, seek to liquidate it. They do this in countries where multiculturalism urges immigrants to register as “victims,” and not indulge in Western culture, as did most previous immigrant waves. After all, why assimilate into a culture that much of the cultural elite believes to be evil?

Perhaps the biggest disconnect may involve young immigrants and their offspring, particularly students. Rather than be integrated in some ways into society, they are able, and even encouraged, not to learn about “Western civilization,” which is all but gone from campuses, with barely 2 percent retaining this requirement.

The dominant ideology on college campus – “cultural relativism” – leaves little room for anything other than a nasty take on Western history and culture. Many students, whether of immigrant parentage or descendants of the Mayflower, have only vague appreciation or knowledge of Western civilization, making them highly vulnerable to such pleading. They often go through college now with only the vaguest notion of our history, the writings of the American founders, the philosophy of the Enlightenment, our vast cultural heritage or the fundamental principles of Christianity or, if you will, Judeo-Christianity.

This extends beyond religion to the very basics – like respect for the First Amendment – that underpin our social order. . . . In virtually every part of the West, more traditional values, from the primacy of the family to religion and belief in the efficacy of market capitalism, are being undermined, with increasingly disastrous results.

More here:http://www.ocregister.com/articles/western-697320-culture-climate.html

[George Rebane]

RussS 936am - that has been RR's observation since inception. And that active rejection of our culture (denied by many of Left) is another strong factor that mitigates toward a Great Divide between those who are children, students, and defenders of Western culture, and those who are its antagonists.

[Account Deleted]

Walt - you got that little detail about property taxes absolutely correct. The new owner will be paying quite a bit more. As far as replacements - our country's current open door policy for new Democrat voters will automatically provide dozens of new citizens for California.
They will, of course, be bringing in zero assets and lots of steady employment for the various social service agencies sprinkled through out the Golden (goose) State.

[Bill Tozer]

And lest we forget, urban centers are causing Global Cooling. Mid twenties in the Ventura area? Brrr,that be cold for them. Too bad they can't burn in the fireplace.

http://www.laweekly.com/news/baby-its-cold-outside-6424177

[Bill Tozer]

I was born in CA. CA was been the nation's leader with its innovative redwood hot tubs, bath houses, and allowing nude passengers riding the buses in Santuary Cities, Our state really has its pulse on the mood of the nation. Always the trend setter, The Golden Shower State is.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/pew-americans-the-least-concerned-about-climate-change/article/2579150

[Bill Tozer]

Well, this guy should be CA's Man of the Year, but he is not a resident. Too bad, our loss. I am certain he speaks for the CA mindset. Good job, sir.

http://ij.com/2015/12/501572-front-page-magazines-man-of-the-year-will-have-milliions-of-americans-cheering/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=Partners&utm_term=PRM7&utm_campaign=

[Bill Tozer]

Now have heard everything, which I will get to later. CA drivers licenses were not meant for air travel per the Feds. I used the argument myself when our brethren from the left said it was racist to have voters prove we are who we say we are and prove we are eligible to vote in districts where we live, not anywhere we choose. That was for voting, not air travel. My failed argument is that folks who cannot obtain IDs to vote have no problem seeking and obtaining ID for air travel, lol.

So, now you really have to prove who you are when it comes to domestic air travel. This goes against the grain of our liberal paradise of CA. The liberal state just can't seem to get their act together. Another extension??

The part concerning "now I have heard everything" is the lib argument. Passports cost to much money, folks cannot afford one. Well, people are flying to Denver, Ohio, Florida, and several times a year to various domestic destinations, but cannot afford a passport? WTF, have you booked a flight to Boston lately? Several times more expensive than getting a passport which lasts for ten years, lol. Only in lib speak does this makes sense.

http://m.kcra.com/news/california-wants-more-time-to-comply-with-id-law/37182878

[Bill Tozer]

F

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429130/california-government-inefficient-bureaucracy?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=56852e9004d3013cfcb29a0d&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter