by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n I\u00a0thought of my fellow Californian Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week, when I paid $4.89 a gallon in Gilroy for regular gas \u2014 and had to wait in line to get it. The customers were in near revolt, but I wondered against what and whom. I mentioned to one exasperated motorist that there are estimated to be over 20 billion barrels of oil a few miles away, in newly found reserves off the California coast. He thought I was from Mars.<\/p>\n California may face the nation\u2019s largest budget deficit at $16 billion. It may struggle with the nation\u2019s second-highest unemployment rate at 10.6 percent. It will soon vote whether to levy the nation\u2019s highest income and sales taxes, as if to encourage others to join the 2,000-plus high earners who are leaving the state each week. The new taxes will be our way of saying, \u201cGood riddance.\u201d And if California is home to one-third of the nation\u2019s welfare recipients and the largest number of illegal aliens, it is nonetheless apparently happy and thus solidly for Obama, by a +24 percent margin in the latest Field poll. The unemployment rate in my hometown is 16 percent, the per capita income is $16,000 \u2014 and I haven\u2019t seen a Romney sticker yet.<\/p>\n Shortly before taking office, Secretary Chu, remember, quipped that he would like to see American gas prices rise to European levels \u2014 presumably $9 or $10 a gallon \u2014 to discourage driving and thereby lower our carbon footprint. If $50 for half a fill-up is any indication, California is over halfway toward achieving Chu\u2019s dream. If green bicycles are the ultimate aim of our central-planning regulators, then they are making headway. I\u2019ve never seen so many new rural bike riders, though most of them out here in the San Joaquin Valley have a bad habit of riding on the wrong side of the road.<\/p>\n A refinery fire, a power outage, a uniquely Californian gasoline formula, years of regulating refineries into stasis \u2014 all that has finally caught up with the state, as prices soar at the pump. Yet what perplexes about California\u00a0in extremis<\/em>\u00a0is the liberal ability for our state government simply to ignore its own regulations, which it has been using to paralyze businesses for years. For example, a panicked Governor Brown just asked the state air-resources board to suspend the law that requires gas stations to sell our special summer fuel formula through the month of October. The state asserted that a one-time suspension would increase supplies and yet not materially affect our air quality \u2014 which begs the question: Why, if that is true, would such a regulation have been passed in the first place?<\/p>\n California has the nation\u2019s highest gas taxes and fuel prices, and the tightest supplies \u2014 and reputedly one of the worst-maintained infrastructures, with out-of-date, overcrowded, and poorly maintained freeways. When I head home each week from Palo Alto, I feel like an Odysseus fighting modern-day Lotus Eaters, Cyclopes, and Laestrygonians to reach Ithaka, wondering what obstacle will sidetrack me this trip \u2014 huge potholes, entire sections of the freeway reduced to one lane, or various poorly marked detours? If the nation\u2019s highest gas taxes give us all that, what might the lowest bring?<\/p>\n Although the state is facing a $16 billion annual budgetary shortfall, Governor Brown is determined to press ahead with high-speed rail \u2014 estimated to cost eventually over $200 billion. Such is his zeal that he intends to override the environmental lawsuits that usually stymie private projects for years. The line is scheduled to pass a few miles from my farm, its first link connecting Fresno and Corcoran, home to the state prison that houses Charles Manson.<\/p>\n Yet a money-losing Amtrak line already connects Fresno and Corcoran. I often ride my bike near the tracks and notice the half-empty cars that zoom by. Most farmers here are perplexed about why the state would wish to borrow billions and destroy thousands of acres of prime farm land to duplicate this little-traveled link. Support for high-speed rail is strongest in the San Francisco Bay Area, but there is no support for beginning the project where the noise and dirty reality might be too close to home for green utopians.<\/p>\n California schools rate among the nation\u2019s lowest in math and English, but our shrinking numbers of teachers are among the country\u2019s highest paid. One-third of the nation\u2019s welfare recipients live in California, and 8 out of the last 11 million people added to the California population are enrolled in Medicaid, but we are also the most generous state in sending remittances to foreign countries \u2014 we contribute a third to a half of the estimated $50 billion that leaves the US each year for Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. It is puzzling in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley to see both federal and state medical centers and nearby offices that specialize in cash transfers to Mexico. But no one seems to see any disconnect between the public need for free healthcare and the private desire to send money to Mexico.<\/p>\n California has built the nation\u2019s largest prison system, but there is no room left in either state or county facilities for an increasing number of dangerous felons. The same day last week that I emptied my wallet for gas, my 15-hp ag irrigation pump simply quit during the night. Nocturnal copper-wire thieves had come into the vineyard and yanked out the electrical conduit. That\u2019s the third theft of pump wire I\u2019ve had this year \u2014 and it costs $1,500 each time to repair the damage. I\u2019m told that Mexican national gangs go down to Los Angeles with their stolen copper to sell it to mobile recyclers. No one calls the sheriff any more. Instead, we swap stories about protective wire cages, spikes, cameras, lights, and booby traps. Barack Obama once thundered, \u201cRich people are all for nonviolence. . . . \u00a0They don\u2019t want people taking their stuff.\u201d I plead guilty to his writ, at least for a while longer. But I don\u2019t agree that copper conduit is mere \u201cstuff\u201d or that stealing it counts as social protest or that the thieves are necessarily poor.<\/p>\n The criminals have a sophisticated\u00a0modus operandi<\/em>, with lookouts who drive around and report by cell phone when the coast is clear \u2014 green-lighting comrade thieves who in a matter of minutes ride into the farm alleyways on bicycles, cut and pull the wire, and pedal out with little noise and no headlights. Two nights ago, when I returned to my farmhouse, an odd couple was sitting in a car \u2014 each one on a cell phone \u2014 next to my mailbox. They claimed they did not speak English, but after some harsh words they left \u2014 surprised and angry that I had dared to ask them to leave my property.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a veritable war these days in rural central California \u2014 as copper-wire thieves, gangs, drug lords, and fencers run amuck in a bankrupt state that can no longer afford to keep its felons incarcerated. President Obama soars with talk of amnesty and the DREAM Act. But if we are going to waive federal statutes for each illegal alien who we feel may some day become a neurosurgeon or an experimental chemist, can\u2019t we at least enforce the law against those not in school and up to no good in the here and now, like the two sitting in my driveway phoning directions for local thieves to yank out copper wire?<\/p>\n Open borders, redistributionist socialism, therapeutic and politicized public schools, and public-employee unions finally are proving a match even for Apple, Google, Facebook, the Napa Valley wine industry, Central Valley agribusiness, Hollywood, Cal Tech, Stanford, and Berkeley. In California, it is a day-by-day war between what nature and past generations have so generously bequeathed and what our bunch has so voraciously consumed.<\/p>\n On any given day, beautiful weather, the Pacific Coast, and the majestic Sierra Nevada are trumped by released felons, $5-a-gallon gas, and a 1970 infrastructure crumbling beneath a crowded 2012 state.<\/p>\n There are many lessons from California. One is that the vision of the present administration is already here \u2014 and it simply does not work.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online I\u00a0thought of my fellow Californian Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week, when I paid $4.89 a gallon in Gilroy for regular gas \u2014 and had to wait in line to get it. The customers were in near revolt, but I wondered against what and whom. I mentioned to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[16],"tags":[221,1057,1031,1059,213,219,131],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-6z","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":511,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/there-is-no-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":407,"position":0},"title":"There Is No California","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line. Consider the disconnects: California's combined income and sales taxes are among the nation's highest, but the state's deficit is still about $16 billion. It's estimated that more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6467,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-myth-of-a-california-renaissance\/","url_meta":{"origin":407,"position":1},"title":"The Myth of a California Renaissance","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Sacramento's strategy for recovery is more taxes, more regulation, and more government. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Are the recent raves about a new California renaissance true? Rolling Stone\u00a0magazine just gushed that California governor Jerry Brown has brought the state back from the brink of \u201cdouble-digit unemployment, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/SF_From_Marin_Highlands3-300x211.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1998,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-california-mordida\/","url_meta":{"origin":407,"position":2},"title":"The California Mordida","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services California now works on the principle of the\u00a0mordida, or \"bite.\" Its government assumes that it can take something extra from residents for the privilege of living in their special state. Gov. Jerry Brown made that assumption explicit in his latest back-and-forth with Texas\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3836,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/jerry-brown-modern-sisyphus\/","url_meta":{"origin":407,"position":3},"title":"Jerry Brown, Modern Sisyphus","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services California Gov. Jerry Brown must rapidly close a $25 billion budgetary shortfall. But right now it seems almost a hopeless task since the state's disastrous budget is a symptom, not the cause, of California's much larger nightmare. Take unemployment. It currently runs 12.6\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1464,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/beautifully-medieval-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":407,"position":4},"title":"Beautifully Medieval California","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 7, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Gates Close at Dusk At about dusk, I close two large metal gates to my driveways. The security lights come on, and I enjoy intramural life. I am not protecting my dogs from coyotes, although there are many in the vineyard, but rather the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3405,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-man-made-energy-crisis\/","url_meta":{"origin":407,"position":5},"title":"A Man-Made Energy Crisis","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Gas is well over $4 a gallon in most places in California \u2014 and soaring elsewhere as well. But are such high energy prices good or bad? That should be a stupid question. 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