Frosty Wooldridge: The deconstruction of America: California in two parts
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THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA: CALIFORNIA IN TWO PARTS
By Frosty Wooldridge
May 24, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
Degrade an conqueror
For the record, yours truly may be one of a handful of Americans to bicycle the length and width of California five times in the past 45 years. From the Pacific coast road to the interior middle road, and three separate routes crossing the width of California—I witnessed dramatic deconstruction of that once beautiful state.
From “See the USA in your Chevrolet” in the 1960s with getting your kicks on Route 66—to Santa Monica—to ultimately gaze upon all the trash alongside the highways filled with soiled baby diapers in my 2010 bicycle trip across California. I watched Yosemite turn from a mountain paradise to a gridlocked ‘people circus’ stuffed with so many humans—the animals flee for their own sanity.
While living in San Diego as a kid and a total population of 15 million in California, it now features 38 million in car-driving, gridlocked mega-cities. It adds 1,700 people daily and 400 vehicles added 24/7. (Source: Californians For Population Stabilization) California expects to add another 20 million people within 30 years. I cannot help but wonder who thinks that’s a good idea.
California breaks down beyond anyone’s understanding across this great land of ours. It’s the spear-head or you might call it the “Titanic” of the deconstruction of our country. Everything fails in California: schools, hospitals, infrastructure, law and order, safety, personal responsibility and personal accountability. In short, it is no longer America. In fact, it degrades rather quickly into third world conditions.
The driving force: legal and illegal immigration.
Finally, a no-nonsense historian, none other than California’s Victor Davis Hanson, wrote a sobering story for all of America as to relentless immigration pouring over our borders, both legal and illegal: “Two Californias—Abandoned farms, Third World living conditions, pervasive public assistance -- welcome to the once-thriving Central Valley.” Full text in www.capitoliticalnews.com
Not missed by this journalist, Hanson rode his bicycle to see firsthand what I witnessed on my heavily loaded touring cycle:
“The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California,” said Hanson. “I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most lavish entitlements, the near-worst public schools, and the largest number of illegal aliens in the nation, along with an overregulated private sector, a stagnant and shrinking manufacturing base, and an elite environmental ethos that restricts commerce and productivity without curbing consumption.
“During this unscientific experiment, three times a week I rode a bike on a 20-mile trip over various rural roads in southwestern Fresno County. I also drove my car over to the coast to work, on various routes through towns like San Joaquin, Mendota, and Firebaugh. And near my home I have been driving, shopping, and touring by intent the rather segregated and impoverished areas of Caruthers, Fowler, Laton, Orange Cove, Parlier, and Selma. My own farmhouse is now in an area of abject poverty and almost no ethnic diversity; the closest elementary school is 94 percent Hispanic and 1 percent white, and well below federal testing norms in math and English.
“Here are some general observations about what I saw (other than that the rural roads of California are fast turning into rubble, poorly maintained and reverting to what I remember seeing long ago in the rural South). 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 beyond the ability of any inspector to do anything but feel irrelevant. But in the regulators’ defense, where would one get the money to redo an ad hoc trailer park with a spider web of illegal bare wires?”
Listen to Frosty Wooldridge on Wednesdays as he interviews top national leaders on his radio show "Connecting the Dots" at www.themicroeffect.com at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning in to your time zone.
© 2012 Frosty Wooldridge - All Rights Reserved
Frosty Wooldridge possesses a unique view of the world, cultures and families in that he has bicycled around the globe 100,000 miles, on six continents and six times across the United States in the past 30 years. His published books include: "HANDBOOK FOR TOURING BICYCLISTS"; “STRIKE THREE! TAKE YOUR BASE”; “IMMIGRATION’S UNARMED INVASION: DEADLY CONSEQUENCES”; “MOTORCYCLE ADVENTURE TO ALASKA: INTO THE WIND—A TEEN NOVEL”; “BICYCLING AROUND THE WORLD: TIRE TRACKS FOR YOUR IMAGINATION”; “AN EXTREME ENCOUNTER: ANTARCTICA.” His next book: “TILTING THE STATUE OF LIBERTY INTO A SWAMP.” He lives in Denver, Colorado.
