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The author should look at himself and his class for why the Central Valley is so bad. The Central Valley population is the serfs of a political system owned by
by abernard1 4y ago
The author should look at himself and his class for why the Central Valley is so bad. The Central Valley population is the serfs of a political system owned by a group that hates them.
Let's look at the blessings that class has brought:
- Failure of MTBE additive which poisoned groundwater, had to be reverted, and will take decades to pay off adding ~$1 to CA gas prices
- Pollution which flows downstream from Northern CA into a basin where it stays (those lovely SF winds blow that somewhere)
- A patronage system that spends all of its education money and qualitative goods in urban areas while denying those same benefits to the valley. Instead, economy and society destroying welfare is handed out that has low social capital.
- Political vengeance with diverting ~50% of available agricultural water to the ocean to protect for a variety of fish
- Buying off districts with political pork so that CA could have a veto-proof majority and not have budgetary constraints with the R minority. You thought the bullet train was a bug?... it was the feature. There was no intent to ever finish that train.
- Disabling of power plants via PG&E and a benchmark electricity rate that is based upon temperature ranges in.. you guess it, San Francisco. Combine punitive, non-linear prices with a location that gets in the 110s in the summer benchmarked on the temperatures of Northern California, their poorer southern neighbors pay substantially more in electricity.
- Massive illegal immigration. Those statistics were just legal. CA has well over 8 million illegal immigrants and almost all live either as transients or in crime-ridden areas where crime is not reported because of political inconveniences.
I could go on, but it won't matter. California hates the Central Valley, and hates the people in it. And that, coupled with sanctimonious how-could-this-be? ignorance is why I left.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago> California hates the Central Valley, and hates the people in it. I live in one of the cities mention in the article and yes, this disdain is apparent. When I go to cons in the bay, I hate mentioning where I'm from. The look on peoples' faces ranges from contempt to disgust. California has always had a costal/valley divide. You can read newspaper articles from the early 20th century about how money shouldnt be spent on the then-new hwy 99 because those on the coast don't want to fund valley projects. The same sentiment exists in the HSR discussions today. That's one example, and for nearly every issue there is a similar costal/valley dynamic. We often hear of the NorCal/SoCal division, but for political issues, we really should be talking about coastal/valley differences. I have neither an explaination, nor a call to action, but I know that I often feel like an outsider in both places. Not everyone here fits a type, just like how not everyone fits a type where ever one lives.
- diogenescynic 4y ago>I live in one of the cities mention in the article and yes, this disdain is apparent. When I go to cons in the bay, I hate mentioning where I'm from. The look on peoples' faces ranges from contempt to disgust. Completely agree. It's something I have also experience numerous times--especially in college where basically people from SF/LA/SD would be extremely judgmental and basically write you off just knowing where you grew up.
- masonic 4y ago>Pollution which flows downstream from Northern CA into a basin where it stays (those lovely SF winds blow that somewhere) The San Joaquin River flows south to north.
- Lammy 4y ago> There was no intent to ever finish that train. Same as it ever was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mussel_Slough_Tragedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mussel_Slough_Tragedy