Category Archives: Economy

Monday’s Review

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https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSczwSA0_rO4tNqCsfF0bhYNTWsKfo5QUvhJPa-LhNzsXjcI8ABJust after Thanksgiving I read an article that predicted gas under $2/gallon by Christmas. I didn’t believe it. My wife told me that price of unleaded regular at our neighborhood gas ‘n grub was $2.149 this morning. That’s down 11¢ since Saturday, the last time I remember seeing a gas price. OPEC’s oil war against our fracking and oil-shale technology continues. The US will cave as soon as OPEC complains to Obama. In the meantime, enjoy the low gas prices while you can.

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Quote of the Day from Bloomberg News…

Bloomberg: “Of the 23 Republican senators up for re-election in 2016, 16 voted for Cruz’s parliamentary objection, known as a point of order, against what he called Obama’s “amnesty.” Two of them, Rand Paul [R-Ky.] and Marco Rubio [R-Fla.], are — like Cruz — considering presidential bids…”

Bloomberg News appears to think this action is negative, limiting spending, pandering to the voters of 2016. On the contrary, I think these Senators heeded the voices of their constituents and their votes should be lauded, not ridiculed.

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There was a terrorist hostage incident in Sydney, Australia. Five people were shot, two killed including the RIF who started it all. From initial reports, their other person fatally shot was killed by the RIF. The Sydney Police, in another report, admit using live ammunition.

 

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Kansas City is #26

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An article appeared today listing 19 cities with a greater number of public employee to resident ration than Detroit. Detroit’s statistics are:

DETROIT

Residents per employee 61
Population: 713,777
Employees: 11,645
Annual payroll: $651,437,244
Average compensation: $55,941
What’s not included?

Number 1 on that list is, not surprisingly, Washington, DC.

WASHINGTON DC

Residents per employee 25
Population: 601,723
Employees: 23,631
Annual payroll: $3,477,829,176
Average compensation: $147,172
What’s not included?

What isn’t shown in these demographics is the income to debt ratios. We know that Detroit’s ratio was negative…more debt than income. Decades of deficit spending came home, finally, to roost.

Detroit has been ruled by democrats since 1962. Louis Miriani Mayor of Detroit.jpg Louis Miriani, a republican, was Mayor at that time. Being a ‘pub didn’t excuse him from being corrupt. In 1969, he was convicted of federal tax evasion and served approximately 10 months in prison.[96]

The city really didn’t go downhill until the election of Coleman Young. Young was elected in the aftermath of the 1967 riots and the resulting “white flight“ from Detroit. Coleman blamed his predecessors and called them an “occupation army.” Young used the falling economy of Detroit to build his power base. It was  the beginning of the end for Detroit.

You can find the list of failing cities via this link. Kansas City isn’t in the top 19 but at #26, it’s close.

KANSAS CITY

Residents per employee 69
Population: 459,787
Employees: 6,646
Annual payroll: $357,365,988
Average compensation: $53,771
What’s not included?

Kansas CIty, like Detroit, has been suffering under decades of democrat rule who, like all democrat pols, blame everyone else for their failings while ignoring the very visible fact that it is their policies and actions that was the root cause of their continuing failure. That is also true of other major cities across the US.

Mrs. Crucis and I are fortunate we moved from Kansas City and Jackson County nearly two decades ago. Kansas City’s finances are as shaky as is Detroit. The city’s allegiance to unions and their opposition to Right to Work result in more and more businesses and industries moving across the state line into Kansas, a Right to Work state.

The real tragedy is that Kansas City and Jackson County (MO) residents have swallowed the democrat line, hook, line and sinker. They ignore the warnings, if they see them at all. The Kansas City ‘Red’ Star certainly won’t report the coming danger. No, they are part of the problem—becoming the democrat’s propaganda organ for Kansas City.

The best we can do, to lessen the impact of Kansas City’s coming failure, is to isolate the consequences to Kansas City and Jackson County. When Kansas City and Jackson County inevitably arrive at Jefferson City with their hands out, we, the citizens of Missouri, our Legislature and Governor, must be ready to say, “No!”

Kansas City, like all the democrat ruled cities,  has created their problems. It must be up to Kansas City, and those other cities in similar circumstances, to get themselves out or their predicament. The day of cities sucking off the rest of their state is over.

Oh, by the way, St. Louis is in that list at #11…higher than Detroit!

ST LOUIS

Residents per employee 50
Population: 319,294
Employees: 6,335
Annual payroll: $600,533,640
Average compensation: $94,796
What’s not included?

 

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Forward!

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Today’s post title was Obama’s campaign theme in the last election. We are now in Obama’s second term and what is the headline across the internet? Our GDP—that is our Gross Domestic Product, the sum of all our country produces is down 1/10th of a percent.  It’s the first contraction of our nation’s economy since…the beginning of Obama’s first term. After five years of Obama’s rule…administration, our economy has made no progress and we’re worse off than we were during G. W. Bush’s last year in office.

The democrats believe that shrinkage is a good thing.

In response to the news today that the economy contracted -.1 percent in the final quarter of last year, Democrats are touting the claim that this is “the best-looking contraction in U.S. GDP you’ll ever see.” The claim was originally made by chief U.S. economist for Capital Economics Paul Ashworth.

“The drag from defense spending and inventories is a one-off. The rest of the report is all encouraging,” Ashworth also claimed.

The claim was quickly seized upon by Democrats, looking to share good news about a contracting economy. — The Weekly Standard.

If Ashworth is correct, the downturn was due to a decrease in military spending, what is likely to come when Sequestration fully kicks in? More shrinkage and more job losses.

Job losses?  Yes. Along with this report is another one. The jobless claims went up too. After the usual “readjustment” in a week or two, those figures could reach the 400,000 mark again.

Instead of moving forward, we moving backward and the dems think that’s a good thing. The Luddite wing of their eco-wackos must be ecstatic. Less is More! Let’s retreat to the good old days before nasty technology ruined everything. Of course they conveniently refuse to acknowledge that the nation cannot exist today using 16th Century technology—those years of plague and starvation.

I noticed that in Colorado, some students were forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic. Perhaps the target century for the dems is the 7th Century, the days of Mohammad, instead of the 16th.

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The resistance to the Obama/Feinstein gun-grabbing continues. Various states have legislation to block any anti-2nd Amendment actions by the Feds. Wyoming’s law has passed their legislative House. A similar law is Arizona has passed out of committee. Missouri has a similar bill pending in committee as well as bills to allow teachers with a CCW license to carry in school.

The dems retreated to their usual theatrics. Senator Feinstein had a carefully scripted dog and pony show include numerous “evil” military-styled weapons.

Republicans tried to counter these cheap theatrics. As freshman Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas explained, “Emotions in Washington often lead to bad policy,” and the Senate often “operates in a fact-free zone.” Mr. Cruz and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina wanted to bring actual firearms to the hearing to demonstrate the absurdity of the laws currently being proposed.

Unlike Mrs. Feinstein, who had four local and federal law enforcement agencies aid her bringing rifles that are banned in the District to her Senate news conference, the Republicans were not able to do so.

So Mr. Cruz used a photo of a standard wooden hunting rifle and held up a plastic pistol grip to demonstrate how one irrelevant part transformed the item into a scary and creepy “assault weapon” under Mrs. Feinstein’s definition.

Day One in the legislative battle over the nation’s firearms laws ended with proof liberals will say or do anything to gut the Second Amendment. — The Washington Times.

Durbin and others directed their questions to the usual hackneyed subjects. Their pet Baltimore Police Chief said it was “scary” and “creepy” answering calls without knowing what’s behind the door. He ignored the fact that that situation would still exists for every domestic disturbance call they would make. A gun ban would not change that situation.

The real issue for the democrats is they don’t have all their own members, those from Red or Purple states, in line. If Feinstein’s bill every came to the Senate floor, they have no guarantee of getting 50 votes.

Speaking of 2nd Amendment issues, the Eastern Sporting and Outdoor Show, scheduled to open February 2nd, has been postponed. Reed Exhibitions, the British company managing the show has refused to rescind their no “military styled rifle” and hi-cap magazine ban. So many vendors have dropped out, at their great financial cost, that the show will not open as scheduled.

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Gold, Gold, GOLD!

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There was a movie released when my wife and I were newlyweds titled, “McKenna’s Gold.”  It starred Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif, Edward G. Robinson and a host of others. What makes it relevant to today’s post is the theme song, “Old Turkey Buzzard,” that has a refrain of, “Gold, Gold, GOLD!”

The trigger for all this is an article that appeared in the Financial Times.

Republicans eye return to gold standard

By Robin Harding and Anna Fifield in Washington

The gold standard has returned to mainstream US politics for the first time in 30 years, with a “gold commission” set to become part of official Republican party policy.

Drafts of the party platform, which it will adopt at a convention in Tampa Bay, Florida, next week, call for an audit of Federal Reserve monetary policy and a commission to look at restoring the link between the dollar

The move shows how five years of easy monetary policy – and the efforts of libertarian congressman Ron Paul – have made the once-fringe idea of returning to gold-as-money a legitimate part of Republican debate.

Marsha Blackburn, a Republican congresswoman from Tennessee and co-chair of the platform committee, said the issues were not adopted merely to placate Mr Paul and the delegates that he picked up during his campaign for the party’s nomination.

“These were adopted because they are things that Republicans agree on,” Ms Blackburn told the Financial Times. “The House recently passed a bill on this, and this is something that we think needs to be done.”

The proposal is reminiscent of the Gold Commission created by former president Ronald Reagan in 1981, 10 years after Richard Nixon broke the link between gold and the dollar during the 1971 oil crisis. That commission ultimately supported the status quo.

“There is a growing recognition within the Republican party and in America more generally that we’re not going to be able to print our way to prosperity,” said Sean Fieler, chairman of the American Principles Project, a conservative group that has pushed for a return to the gold standard.

There’s much more at the Financial Times. I urge you to follow the link and read it in its entirety.

I remember when Nixon removed the last link to the Gold Standard during the 1971 oil crisis. Nixon was no financial conservative. He instituted wage and price freezes reminiscent of FDR’s failed schemes.  The immediate result was a spike of double digit inflation and skyrocketing interest rates.  My wife and I bought our first new car during this period with a double-digit interest rate…and we were glad to get a low one via our USAF credit union.

We have been off the gold standard for forty years. I’m not a financial wizard. I don’t know how moving back to that standard would affect our economy. Especially now that I’m on a fixed income. There’s also the question whether sufficient gold exists to meet our economic needs.

This is one question I have no competence. I admit the possibility is intriguing. My one concern would be if that gold-standard link to our currency makes our economy a zero-sum game.

There is a finite amount of gold available in the world.  Yes, it would make gold mining viable again at a much larger scale. Still, I don’t think there is enough. On this planet anyway.

Supposedly, the asteroid belt is a fractured planet that just never came together. If there was gold, silver and other valuable metals of the platinum group, would that spike another gold rush? Maybe I should invest in Space-X and Burt Rutan’s enterprises?

Gold, Gold, Gold! Hitch your wagon to Space-X and be a prospector out of Ceres!  L. Neil Smith will bust a gut laughing to have been vindicated.

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There oughta be a law!

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Perhaps today’s blog title should be viewed as a question. Why should there be a law?  When I was growing up, our neighbor down the road had a standard statement whenever he was frustrated. “There oughta be a law!”

Be it a matter of taxes, the cost of cattle feed or when he just ran a bad weld on a seam, he said the same thing.  Repetition, of course, diminished the impact. I heard many say the same in the face of life’s adversity. In fact, I think there is (was?) a comic strip with that name. Whatever the reason, people seem to want government to resolve these situations.

Or, do we?

John Stossel wrote a commentary that appeared on Rasmussen’s website titled appropriately, “There ought Not to be a law.” Stossel takes the inverse view of this common statement and explains why more laws are not solutions to our woes. Sometimes the best solution, be it a new law or bailing out mega-corporations, is to do nothing.

 

There Ought Not to Be a Law

 

A Commentary by John Stossel

I’m a libertarian in part because I see a false choice offered by the political left and right: government control of the economy — or government control of our personal lives.

People on both sides think of themselves as freedom lovers. The left thinks government can lessen income inequality. The right thinks government can make Americans more virtuous. I say we’re best off if neither side attempts to advance its agenda via government.

Let both argue about things like drug use and poverty, but let no one be coerced by government unless he steals or attacks someone. Beyond the small amount needed to fund a highly limited government, let no one forcibly take other people’s money. When in doubt, leave it out — or rather, leave it to the market and other voluntary institutions.

But this is not how most people think. Most people see a world full of problems that can be solved by laws. They assume it’s just the laziness, stupidity or indifference of politicians that keeps them from solving our problems. But government is force — and inefficient.

That’s why it’s better if government didn’t try to address most of life’s problems.

People tend to believe that “government can!” When problems arise, they say, “There ought to be a law!”

…

 

The tea party gave me hope, but I was fooled again. Within months, the new “fiscally conservative” Republicans voted to preserve farm subsidies, vowed to “protect” Medicare and cringed when Romney’s future veep choice, Rep. Paul Ryan, proposed his mild deficit plan.

 

It is unfortunate that the United States, founded partly on libertarian principles, cannot admit that government has gotten too big. East Asian countries embraced markets and flourished. Sweden and Germany liberalized their labor markets and saw their economies improve.

 

But we keep passing new rules.

 

The enemy here is human intuition. Amid the dazzling bounty of the marketplace, it’s easy to take the benefits of markets for granted. I can go to a foreign country and stick a piece of plastic in the wall, and cash will come out. I can give that same piece of plastic to a stranger who doesn’t even speak my language — and he’ll rent me a car for a week. When I get home, Visa or MasterCard will send me the accounting — correct to the penny. We take such things for granted.

 

Government, by contrast, can’t even count votes accurately.

 

Yet whenever there are problems, people turn to government. Despite the central planners’ long record of failure, few of us like to think that the government which sits atop us, taking credit for everything, could really be all that rotten. 

 

The great 20th-century libertarian H.L. Mencken lamented, “A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. … Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general … are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.”

 

There is nothing government can do that we cannot do better as free individuals — and as groups of individuals working freely together.

 

Without big government, our possibilities are limitless.

I like Strossel’s writing. I invite you to follow the link and read the entire article. I don’t agree with everything he writes but I do agree most of the time.

His last sentence is intriguing. “Without big government, our possibilities are limitless.” NASA, surprisingly, is taking a step in this direction, albeit a small step.  NASA is privatizing our ground-to-orbit launch systems.  There have been a number of successes, small ones given the size of NASA’s current budget. It is an opportunity for a company or consortium, if they take the risk.

Limited government, limited regulation, will free innovation and growth.  That is what we need for the 21st Century or we will go the way of the Roman Empire, fragmented and powerless.

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RTW

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RTW—three letters that strikes terror in the hearts of liberals, democrats and unions. 

There have been a number of initiatives in Missouri to pass RTW or Right To Work to spell out the acronym.  Steve Tilley, who just resigned from the Missouri House, effectively blocked a vote on RTW saying, “It’s a waste of legislative time.”

This coming legislative session may be the time to reintroduce RTW.  A number of ‘Pub pols, including Tilley, aren’t coming back to Jeff City. Some were term limited like Tilley, others decided not to run, and still others lost in the primary.  Regardless of the reason, the number of ‘Pub RTW backers in the Missouri legislature is growing.

The real question is what is RTW and why is it good for Missouri.  The basic reason is that RTW is good for the economy and helps increase job growth.  It’s all about money.

Basically, RTW is the concept of freedom of employment without constraints or restrictions—like a union.  Unions on the other hand are against RTW because it reduces their power and their income via union dues and supplemental payments extracted from employers.

Depending upon the state—states without right-to-Work, some employees may not be required to join the union but they are still required to pay dues to the union.  What a racket—for the unions.  In other states, where a union exists, it’s join the union or no job. Think of it as being drafted into an organization that steals your money and does little or nothing in return.

The unions claim that they prevent employers from employer abuses. The truth of the matter is that unions preserve the jobs of the lazy, the incompetent at the expense of those who are productive.  Eventually, the union work force is filled with those they’ve saved—the lazy, the incompetent and others who wouldn’t be able to retain a job without the union.  The law of the lowest denominator. And before you criticize me, I grew up in a union household (UMWA) and have been a union member in the past (Teamsters.) I’ve seen with my own eyes the abuses and in some cases the outright extortion of unions.

Right to Work was allowed by the Taft Hartley Act in 1947, over Truman’s veto, that reigned in the power of the National Labor Relations Board.  Prior to Taft-Hartley, unions could, and did, close employment to only union members. Taft-Hartley gave the states the option to outlaw such tactics and to date, 23 states have done so.

The Taft–Hartley Act

Prior to the passage of the Taft–Hartley Act by Congress over President Harry S. Truman‘s veto in 1947, unions and employers covered by the National Labor Relations Act could lawfully agree to a closed shop, in which employees at unionized workplaces must be members of the union as a condition of employment. Under the law in effect before the Taft-Hartley amendments, an employee who ceased being a member of the union for whatever reason, from failure to pay dues to expulsion from the union as an internal disciplinary punishment, could also be fired even if the employee did not violate any of the employer’s rules.

The Taft–Hartley Act outlawed the closed shop. The union shop rule, which required all new employees to join the union after a minimum period after their hire, is also illegal.[1] As such, it is illegal for any employer to force an employee to join a union.

A similar arrangement to the union shop is the agency shop, under which employees must pay the equivalent of union dues, but need not formally join such union.

Section 14(b) of the Taft–Hartley Act goes further and authorizes individual states (but not local governments, such as cities or counties) to outlaw the union shop and agency shop for employees working in their jurisdictions. Under the open shop rule, an employee cannot be compelled to join or pay the equivalent of dues to a union, nor can the employee be fired if he joins the union. In other words, the employee has the right to work, regardless of whether or not he is a member or financial contributor to such a union.

We’ve all seen the effects of the union shop—GM, Chrysler, heavy manufacturing, mining. All those industries are failing.  In the case of GM, now popularly known as Government Motors, it is being propped up only by grants from the FedGov. Obama forced the sale of Chrysler to Fiat. Only Ford refused government money and is climbing out of its financial crises—there’s a lesson there for those who would learn it.

There is more proof at the state level that outlawing the closed shop works to increase employment and strengthen the economy.  I wrote about it some months ago in a blog post titled, “‘Missouri Drops in “Business Friendly State’ Poll.”

While the poll in that post is about business friendly states, those same states are also the ones with the best employment rates and economies in the nation.  The top twenty states in that poll have Right-to-Work.  If you examine the poll, those states with the strongest union presence and no RTW are at the bottom of the list. They are also the same states with the worse economies, highest unemployment and highest state debt.

This is another lesson supporting Right-to-Work if our state Representatives and Senators heed it. In the last primary, I voted for those candidates who supported RTW. I want them to validate my faith in them.

Right-to-Work. It’s time for Missouri to emerge from the unions’ socialists paradise.

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Mad Max, Redux

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I’ve been debating whether to write about this subject for several days.  It’s a column written by Victor Davis Hanson over the weekend and appeared in PJ Media.  The column sounds like a science fiction tale. Unfortunately, it isn’t. It is factual and it is happening today.

During World War II the government produced a series of movies, what we’d call infomercials today, called, “Why we fight.” Hanson’s column can be considered to fall into that category because if we don’t heed it, it will come to us.

When you read this, picture the events not in California, but here in Missouri.  Kansas City is just next door to our county. We already have criminal elements moving into our towns.  A number of years ago, a man was shot and killed in his drive-way. If I recall correctly, it later turned our to be a drug deal gone bad. That shooting occurred only a few blocks from my home.

Complacency is our enemy. It is our enemy to understanding our personal vulnerability and it is our enemy to our political vulnerability.  When half the population pays no taxes, is dependent on governmental largess, what do you think will happen when the gravy train stops, when Obama’s stash is empty? They will be coming at us to take our stash.

Where’s Mel Gibson When You Need Him?

George Miller’s 1981 post-apocalyptic film The Road Warrior envisioned an impoverished world of the future. Tribal groups fought over what remained of a destroyed Western world of law, technology, and mass production. Survival went to the fittest — or at least those who could best scrounge together the artifacts of a long gone society somewhat resembling the present West.

…

Our Version

Sometimes, and in some places, in California I think we have nearly descended into Miller’s dark vision — especially the juxtaposition of occasional high technology with premodern notions of law and security. The state deficit is at $16 billion. Stockton went bankrupt; Fresno is rumored to be next. Unemployment stays over 10% and in the Central Valley is more like 15%. Seven out of the last eleven new Californians went on Medicaid, which is about broke. A third of the nation’s welfare recipients are in California. In many areas, 40% of Central Valley high school students do not graduate — and do not work, if the latest crisis in finding $10 an hour agricultural workers is any indication. And so on.

Our culprit out here was not the Bomb (and remember, Hiroshima looks a lot better today than does Detroit, despite the inverse in 1945). The condition is instead brought on by a perfect storm of events that have shred the veneer of sophisticated civilization. Add up the causes. One was the destruction of the California rural middle class. Manufacturing jobs, small family farms, and new businesses disappeared due to globalization, high taxes, and new regulations. A pyramidal society followed of a few absentee land barons and corporate grandees, and a mass of those on entitlements or working for government or employed at low-skilled service jobs. The guy with a viable 60 acres of almonds ceased to exist.

Illegal immigration did its share. No society can successfully absorb some 6-7 million illegal aliens, in less than two decades, the vast majority without English, legality, or education from the poorer provinces of Mexico, the arrivals subsidized by state entitlements while sending billions in remittances back to Mexico — all in a politicized climate where dissent is demonized as racism. This state of affairs is especially true when the host has given up on assimilation, integration, the melting pot, and basic requirements of lawful citizenship.

…

…here are some of the concerns recently in the Valley. There is now an epidemic of theft from tarped homes undergoing fumigation. Apparently as professionals tent over homes infested with termites, gangs move into the temporarily abandoned houses to burrow under the tarps and loot the premises— convinced that the dangers of lingering poisonous gas are outweighed by the chance of easy loot.  Who sues whom when the gangbanger prying into the closet is found gassed ? When I get termites, I spot treat myself with drill and canisters; even the professional services warn that they can kill off natural pests, but not keep out human ones.

No one in the Central Valley believes that they can stop the epidemic of looting copper wire. I know the local Masonic Hall is not the Parthenon, but you get the picture of our modern Turks prying off the lead seals of the building clamps of classical temples.

Protection is found only in self-help. To stop the Road Warriors from stripping the copper cable from your pump or the community’s street lights, civilization is encouraged to put in a video camera, more lighting, more encasement, a wire protective mesh — all based on the premise that the authorities cannot stop the thieves and your livelihood is predicated on the ingenuity of your own counter-terrorism protocols. But the thief is always the wiser: he calculates the cost of anti-theft measures, as well as the state’s bill in arresting, trying, and rehabilitating him, and so wagers that it is cheaper for all of us to let him be and just clean up his mess.

…

In around 1960, rural California embraced modern civilization. By that I mean both in the trivial and fundamental sense. Rural dogs were usually vaccinated and licensed — and so monitored. Homes were subject to building codes and zoning laws; gone were the privies and lean-tos. Streets were not just paved, but well-paved. My own avenue was in far better shape in 1965 than it is now. Mosquito abatement districts regularly sprayed stagnant water ponds to ensure infectious disease remained a thing of our early-20th-century past. Now they merely warn us with West Nile Virus alerts. Ubiquitous “dumps” dotted the landscape, some of them private, ensuring, along with the general code of shame, that city-dwellers did not cast out their old mattresses or baby carriages along the side of the road. It seems the more environmental regulations, the scarcer the dumps and the more trash that litters roads and private property.

I walk each night around the farm. What is the weirdest find? A nearby alleyway has become a dumping place for the rotting corpses of fighting dogs. Each evening or so, a dead dog (pit bulls, Queensland terriers) with a rope and plenty of wounds is thrown up on the high bank. The coyotes make short work of the remains. Scattered about are several skeletons with ropes still around their necks. I suppose that at about 2 a.m. the organizers of dog fights drive in and cast out the evenings’ losers. I have never seen such a thing in 58 years (although finding plastic bags with dead kittens in the trash outside my vineyard was a close second). Where is PETA when you need them? Is not the epidemic of dog- and cock-fighting in central California a concern of theirs?

…

The public schools were once the key to California’s ascendance. Universal education turned out well-prepared citizens who were responsible for California’s rosy future — one based on an excellent tripartite higher education system of junior colleges, state colleges, and universities; sophisticated dams and irrigation systems; and a network of modern freeways and roads.

…

I think it is a fair assessment to say that all of the above is long past. Since about 1992, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) testing, California ranks between 41 and 48 in math and science, depending on the year and the particular grade that is assessed. About half of the incoming freshmen at the California State University system — the largest public university in the world — are not qualified to take college courses, and must first complete “remediation” to attain a level of competence that was assumed forty years ago in the senior year of high school. The students I taught at CSU Fresno were far better prepared in 1984 than those in 2004 are; the more money, administrators, “learning centers,” and counselors, the worse became the class work.

…

What makes The Road Warrior so chilling a metaphor is the combination of the premodern and postmodern. While utter chaos reigns in rural California, utter absurdity reigns inside the barricades, so to speak, on the coast. So, for example, San Franciscans will vote on whether to blow up the brilliantly engineered Hetch Hetchy water project (I bet they won’t vote yes), more or less the sole source of water for the San Francisco Bay Area. The National Park Service debates blowing up historic stone bridges over the Merced River in Yosemite Valley — as hyper-environmentalists assume that they have so much readily available power and water from prior generations at their fingertips that they have the luxury of dreaming of returning to a preindustrial California. Of course, they have no clue that their romance is already reified outside Madera, Fresno, or Bakersfield.

Hanson writes long articles. I’ve only quoted a small portion of his entire column. I urge you to follow the link and read all of it.  It could be prophetic, a cautionary tale coming to us if we are complacent. Now is the time to change our political climate. With that change in hand, we can attempt to reverse the social rot created by democrats and liberals. I know many who are taking Hanson’s warning to heart and, as individuals, are preparing as is Hanson.

Preparing as individuals does not change the future. We must work together, with a clear goal in mind, or as Franklin once said, “We will all hang together.”

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