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| -Election 2012 |
| Bankrupt California-VDH |
| 2012-10-09 |
| California has the nation’s highest gas taxes and fuel prices, and the tightest supplies — and reputedly one of the worst-maintained infrastructures, with out-of-date, overcrowded, and poorly maintained freeways.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 — huge potholes, entire sections of the freeway reduced to one lane, or various poorly marked detours? If the nation’s highest gas taxes give us all that, what might the lowest bring? Although the state is facing a $16 billion annual budgetary shortfall, Governor Brown is determined to press ahead with high-speed rail — 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. 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. |
| Posted by:Beavis |
| #5 People think that low price means low cost. Got to add up all the costs of the low price. This applies to illegals and it applies to the goods dumped on our shore from China. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2012-10-09 15:49 |
| #4 In a booming economy, large numbers of hard working Amigos are very much needed. In a busted economy with nearly zero new home starts and business construction, who can blame them for not taking the dole? Demographics, they do matter, and cheap labor comes with a price. I have no problem with documented Amigos. If there is work to be done, you'll find few who will worker harder. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2012-10-09 13:45 |
| #3 And if California is home to one-third of the nation’s 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 — and I haven’t seen a Romney sticker yet. Poor people have poor ways. That's why they're poor. You can give them all the money you want and they will squander it. You might as well put your money in the fireplace and burn it. But I will say, yet again as I have here many times before, that not all of this is the fault of Californians. The lack of enforcement of US immigration laws and the failure to secure our border with Mexico is a FEDERAL FAILURE NOT A CALIFORNIA FAILURE. In this respect we really are victims. And remember, if it can happen here it can happen to all of the rest of you. You can talk about Jerry Brown all you want, and I'm with you on that. But... It's hard to teach the children in our schools who don't speak English. A lot of the prisoners in our overcrowded prisons are illegal aliens. Finally, if your were unemployed, homeless, shiftless, drug addicted and had nowhere to sleep but outdoors where would you rather be, California or New York? Personally, I would let them starve but as a society we seem unwilling to do that. So what are we in California supposed to do when these people from other states and other nations show up here? |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2012-10-09 13:19 |
| #2 Electoral votes are determined by population, which is determined by the census. Next census isn't until 2020. |
| Posted by: gromky 2012-10-09 10:32 |
| #1 The high-speed rail to almost no where? I feel sorry for the honest, hard-working, responsible people of Kalifornia who get a lot of unwanted tax sucking and unwanted projects forced upon them. Kalifornia does not deserve 55 electoral votes. These votes should be redistributed to other states who are fiscally responsible and their people sane. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2012-10-09 09:33 |