Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1   Report Post  
Posted to rec.audio.opinion
BretLudwig BretLudwig is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 696
Default Paradise Lost: Crowdifornia 2008

Paradise Lost: Crowdifornia 2008

By Brenda Walker

"Not so long ago€”before the Immigration Profligacy Act of 1965 took

hold, and before Washington decided to stop enforcing the law against
illegal aliens€”California was Eden, even for average folks.

The late demographer Meredith Burke wrote in The Union Sells Out The
Little Man€”and the Nation [San Francisco Chronicle, March 27, 2000]
about the life her parents had in post-war Los Angeles:

€˜My father's long workweek earned him about $25-30 in 1938 when he and
my mother married and perhaps $65-70 in the postwar era. On this he and my
mother were able to buy into the American dream. They could afford the $58
monthly payments on a three-bedroom stucco bungalow house. Sundays we
enjoyed drives to near-by San Gabriel Valley farms and orchards or a day
at an uncrowded, unpolluted beach. My mother used to say, thanking God,
€˜Where else can working folk live like this?

€œ€¦The low cost of living, the unparalleled beauty of the natural
setting my father's generation enjoyed were benefits conferred by a
sustainable population base. In 1940, the country had 132 million people;
California, 7 million people. By 1950, the nation's 150 million and
California's 10 million people were both butting up against ecological
limits. Yet land for postwar housing tracts was cheap; one merely had to
convert nearby farmland. Long Island and San Gabriel Valley farms alike
vanished.€

The speed at which postwar California has been paved over for dubious
progress and substantial profit has been breathtaking. California is full
and getting fuller, but They Keep Coming€”everyone on earth, or so it
appears. The Golden State is losing its luster to many€”but not enough.
As a result, the state's population is expected to pass 40 million in 2012
and exceed 50 million by 2032.

Unpleasant crowdiness is becoming normal as quality of life drops off the
chart in the place that was once close to paradise on earth. It seems
every day brings another report about worsening everything, and how much
more it will cost.
bullet

Here in Alameda County, east of San Francisco, where I live in the
Peoples Republic of Berkeley, the water barons just announced that
mandatory rationing will be imposed immediately.

Robust January rains looked bright for bringing the state's snowpack and
reservoirs up to snuff for the current population of 38 million. But late
winter rains ended like drinks at 2am, so now we face short showers, brown
lawns and drought anxiety disorder lasting for who knows how long.

I suspect that even seasonably normal rainfall will not provide enough
water in the near future, and some form of rationing, e.g. very high
charges above a certain level of use, will remain permanently.

If California were still a semi-manageable 23-24 million residents€”as it
was during the moderate late 1970s drought€”these harsh measures would not
be required, at least not this early. But Washington's immigration treason
has painted us into a corner of few options and bad choices.
bullet

Down south where water concerns are more pressing, Los Angeles Mayor Tony
Villaraigosa has been talking up water conservation.

(Even Mexican mayors are supposed to sound green in California nowadays.
Particularly when political advancement is desired... )

The ambitious water plan carries political risks for the mayor, but also
could burnish his record as an environmental leader in a bid for higher
office. A number of key details remain to be worked out and vetted by the
City Council, including the cost of various elements and how they would be
financed. [L.A. prepares massive water-conservation plan, By Rich Connell,
Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2008]

The Mayor's 20-year master plan includes recycling sewage water, a scheme
which met stiff resistance in an earlier trial balloon; see Slate's 2000
report, L.A. to serve toilet water.

However, LA's exploding population will largely nullify water conservation
efforts. The county added over 400,000 residents 2000-2006 and had the
fourth-highest numerical increase in the nation during that period,
according to the Census. The LA Department of Water and Power estimates a
mere 15 percent increase in demand by 2030 due to population growth, which
sounds unduly optimistic, even with giveaway programs of low-flow toilets
and the like.

Exhortations in Spanish to conserve water won't help much with a
demographic tsunami of this magnitude.
bullet

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is eliminating seats in order to squeeze in
more people: 6 seats removed from some BART cars (San Francisco Chronicle,
May 9, 2008).

BART, the regional rail system that is carrying more passengers on a
typical weekday than ever before, has been quietly removing seats from
trains to make room for even more riders.

Soon we can rename the system Bay Area Standing Transit.

In 1970, when BART was being completed, the population of the nine
counties comprising the San Francisco Bay Area was around 4.6 million; as
of 2006 we were a crowded 7.1 million.

Back during the construction period, downtown San Francisco's Market
Street was torn up for years with noise and dirt. The BART media folks
assured the public that a glorious future transit lay ahead and would be
worth all the mess and trouble.

To demonstrate its modernity, the first cars had no grabber bars on the
ceiling for standing passengers, because there would be seats for everyone
on the automated BART system! No one would ever have to stand, so bars
would be unnecessary.

What were those engineers smoking? These days, riders accept sardine
conditions as normal.
bullet

November's state ballot will have a bond measure for $10 billion as the
down payment on a $40 billion plan to build a bullet train, running from
San Francisco and Sacramento to Los Angeles and San Diego.

Supporters warn that without high-speed rail, California would need to
build 3,000 new miles of highway lanes, 60 new airline gates and five more
runways to meet the transportation needs created by the state population
growing from 35 million to 48 million over the next 25 years. [Bullet
train likely chugging to derailment, by Greg Lucas, San Francisco
Chronicle, January 26, 2006]

A major argument against the bullet train: the prohibitive price tag. The
state is up to its eyeballs in debt ($17 billion at last count), courtesy
of Gov. Schwarzenegger who has borrowed up a storm. He sailed into office
during the 2003 Recall election as the movie-star fiscal-reform candidate
who would clean up Gray Davis' financial mess. It hasn't worked out that
way.

We taxpayers have been assured by Governor Schwarzenegger that we will not
be stuck with the entire cost of the bullet train because he supports a
private-public partnership. A cynic would define that arrangement as where
the citizenry pays the costs and business reaps the profits. The details of
how the train would be financed remain sketchy at this point.

And any transportation system that makes travel easier and faster from
southern California must be viewed skeptically by us in the higher
latitudes. The idea of easing the migration of additional Mexicans by
hurtling them northward at 220 mph is not a pleasant thought.

As in the case of the bullet train, population growth is regularly cited
by political elites when they want more money from the taxpayer. The
appeal is geared to common sense: there are millions more people, so the
government has to build additional infrastructure to cope:

But when possible water restrictions were reported in the press in April,
a spokesman from the local water agency announced the resource shortage
had nothing to do with increased numbers of users. Water managers
apparently don't want citizens connecting excessive legal and illegal
immigration with having to cut back on normal water usage, which is
onerous and makes people angry.

€œ[EBMUD spokesman Charles] Hardy discounts population growth as a factor
in the water shortage: He said the district uses the same amount of
water€”about 230 million gallons a year€”as it did nearly four decades
ago when the population was two-thirds what it is today.€ [East Bay
water managers plan for drought, by Kelly Zito, San Francisco Chronicle,
April 24, 2008]

Which presumably means the agency is using water more economically€”but
that its efforts are being obviated by population growth.

You might think that environmentalists would have some interest in
opposing population growth€”in preserving California's unique natural
heritage, that is. But the managers of groups like the Sierra Club
studiously avoid the immigration cause of America's domestic
overpopulation crisis, because naming it upsets their open-borders
political allies.

The California salmon are gone with nary a peep from the Sierra Club about
the overpopulation factor that sways government water management. The
hoards of illegal aliens traipsing across the border leave millions of
pounds of trash that endangers wildlife and is generally disgusting. The
problem would be a natural for real conservationists to tackle.

Instead, environmentalists like the Sierrans have joined with other
far-left groups to oppose a border fence using the courts. Keeping its
Raza pals happy is apparently job #1 for the Sierra Club, e.g. when it
fought the REAL ID law last fall. (And environmentalists wonder why the
public doesn't trust them about global warming.)

Sadly, Crowdifornia has few organizations working to save what's left of
its inspiring beauty and livability. Only immigration realists like
VDARE.COM have the integrity to even discuss the real issues."


http://www.vdare.com/walker/080527_crowdifornia.htm

--
Message posted using http://www.talkaboutaudio.com/group/rec.audio.opinion/
More information at http://www.talkaboutaudio.com/faq.html


Reply
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules

Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Paradise Lost: Crowdifornia 2008 BretLudwig Audio Opinions 0 May 28th 08 02:49 AM
The Way to Paradise algagaa Tech 1 January 29th 08 10:47 PM
2008 new year,2008 new business, 2008 new life, much cheap andbeautiful product will help you [email protected] Pro Audio 0 January 5th 08 08:13 PM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 01:24 PM.

Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 AudioBanter.com.
The comments are property of their posters.
 

About Us

"It's about Audio and hi-fi"