Saturday, November 2, 2019

Statist Saturday: California “Power” Grab Edition

Citing untenable situations such as the wildfires aggravated by government policy and inaction, preemptive power shutoffs by a bankrupt power company, squatters living and crapping in city streets, high priced gasoline, emergency rooms straight out of Dante’s inferno, grossly underperforming public schools, an antiquated highway system and unfettered swarming looters, Victor Davis Hanson asks “Has California Becoming  Premodern?”

Lights from San Francisco are seen in the distance from Wyngaard Avenue and Estates Drive, when the Oakland neighborhood’s power was shut off by PG&E earlier this week.Lights from San Francisco are seen in the distance from an Oakland neighborhood where the power was shut off by PG&E earlier this week

I think Professor Hanson intended it as a rhetorical question but the answer of course is yes: California is morphing into one of those “third-world s***holes” President Trump tried to warn us about.

Insatiable state tax collectors and agencies are viewed by the public as if they were corrupt officials of Third World countries seeking bribes. Californians flip their switches unsure of whether the lights will go on. Many are careful about what they say, terrified of progressive thought police who seem more worried about critics than criminals.

Still, despite the fact that nearly one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients live in California, no one dares connect the dots.  

No one would dare to connect the crumbling infrastructure, poor schools, and failing public health care with the non-enforcement of immigration laws, which has led to a massive influx of undocumented immigrants from the poorest regions of the world, who often arrive without fluency in English or a high-school education.

But rest assured Californians, your Governor has a solution – state takeover!

“PG&E as we know it may or may not be able to figure this out. If they cannot, we are not going to sit around and be passive,” he said at a news conference at the Capitol. “The state will prepare itself as backup for a scenario where we do that job for them.” – SFC

A state controlled power company; that should seal the deal.

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The state’s elite took revolving-door entries and exits for granted. They assumed that California was so naturally rich, beautiful, and well-endowed that there would always be thousands of newcomers who would queue up for the weather, the shore, the mountains, and the hip culture.

Our resolute ancestors took a century to turn a wilderness into California. Our irresolute generation in just a decade or two has been turning California into a wilderness.

The deeper the government sinks its claws the faster the fundamental transformation will go.

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