Tag Archives: Central Valley

Bye Bye California

Posted on by Standard Reply

Calexit

Poor California.  She is just trying to be nice, and all she gets from most of her brothers and sisters is derision and ridicule.

She wants to save the planet, so she destroys her agricultural industry by diverting all the Central Valley’s water into the ocean to protect a tiny fish.  She feels sorry for poor people from all over the world, so she opens her borders and gives away her peoples’ jobs, streets and money.  She even chose to be a sanctuary state, so that illegal aliens who commit violent crimes won’t be sent away.

She says marijuana is cool and should be legal.  She thinks anybody should be able to choose their gender, and change it at any time.  She believes white people are mostly racists, men are mostly rapists, and if guns were outlawed, nobody would ever be killed again.  Except babies in the womb, who are terribly inconvenient.

The rest of the family just doesn’t understand her, Daddy Trump is threatening to send her to bed without supper, and poor California is so upset she wants to run away from home.

A group called Yes California leads the secession movement, saying:

Being a U.S. state is no longer serving California’s best interests. On issues ranging from peace and security to natural resources and the environment, it has become increasingly true that California would be better off as an independent country.

Their website lists many reasons why California should secede.  Their liberal values are impeded by our federal laws.  They are tired of contributing to the United States’ military apparatus, and think separation from the USA would make them less likely targets for terrorists.  They are convinced that their votes don’t count because of the electoral college, and as a result they now must bear the ultimate insult in the form of President Trump.

The California secessionists are right about one thing:  secession is a perfectly legal and legitimate option to states.  Despite Lincoln’s heavy-handed and bloody suppression of the southern states during the Civil War, and the federal corruption and abuse that continued for decades after his death, our Constitution allows and anticipates that states can leave the union.  The nation was created by the states, not the other way around.  The notion that secession is treason is nothing more than revisionist history.

Should anyone find the possibility of a state splitting the sheets with its mother country unthinkable in this day and age, consider Catalonia, whose citizens voted for independence from Spain and hope to raise their own flag by the end of this year.

Secession is complicated.  Will California pay its share of the national debt?  Will the USA have to shut down its military installations?  Will Trump have to build a wall around California to keep illegal immigrants from fleeing to Nevada when the state runs out of money?

Anyway, I say go for it, California.  You don’t have to put up with us meanies any longer.  Go ahead and secede.  Party on.

Just don’t call us to pick up the pieces when the fun is over.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

You can go your own way
You can call it another lonely day
You can go your own way
You can call it another lonely day

 

It’s Not a Game – Politicians Can Hurt People

Posted on by Standard 1

The debates and the surrounding hoopla have the flavor of a football game.  After the battle, the winning side cheers and the losing side retreats, licking its wounds and vowing to “get ’em next time”.  Monday-morning quarterbacks natter about body language, game plans, and alpha males.

It’s so much more serious than that.  Politicians can, and do, hurt people.

I have a friend who lives in the Central Valley of California.  He has been sending me heart-wrenching letters over the last two years about the devastation that politics has wrought on the Valley and its residents.

In January of 2010 Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA) made an impassioned plea to the US House of Representatives for relief from the man-made drought brought on by the Obama administration, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA).  In a shameless appeasement to their environmental extremist lobbyists, this group of all-stars diverted 200 billion gallons of water away from Central Valley farms into the Pacific Ocean, leaving only 5% of the water the farmers were entitled to.  All for the benefit of the Delta Smelt, a tiny, useless fish – listed as “endangered” by the EPA, but not even indigenous to California.

The loss of irrigation water destroyed 500,000 acres of what was once considered the richest and most productive farmland in the nation,  and put 37,000 families out of work, leaving proud fathers standing in bread lines to feed their families.

California Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) could not hold back his frustration as he called out the Democrats in Congress for bankrupting thousands of families and businesses tor a fish.  And the situation is not getting any better.

Today I talked with Brian Whelan (R-CA), California candidate for US House of Representatives.  “Our valley is now called the Appalachia of the West”, Whelan said.   “We’re still getting only a small percentage of the water we are entitled to.  Having half the allotment of water that a grove of pistachio trees needs to stay alive is as bad as no water at all.  Fields have been left fallow.  Meanwhile my opponent, Jim Costa (D-CA), hands out carrots grown in China to destitute families at a food bank.”

There are real families suffering here at the hands of politicians.  My California friend laments that, like thousands of others, his daughter’s Central Valley family has been pretty much destroyed.

“She had a daycare and her husband had a good job.  They had a very nice home two blocks from a nice school in a beautiful neighborhood.  It didn’t happen all at once, but her husband had less and less work.  They lost their home, then their rental home.  Because his employer was broke too, her husband was only receiving his earned pay intermittently.  Finally he “snapped” from the stress and the family broke up.  Sick kids.  Power and water shut off.  It’s like a bad dream.”  The daughter and children have moved back in with her father.

Look back at the names of the politicians in this article.  Notice the “R” after the guys who are trying to help.  Notice the “D” following the names of those who caused the problem and won’t back off.   Am I a partisan?  Damn right.  I’m calling you out, too, Democrats.  You talk big about caring for the “middle class” and the less fortunate.  But yet you can do this kind of damage to real families and brush it off on the way to your next DC cocktail party.

As a nation, we voters had better get it right this time around.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

My Chevrolet just made steam,
Your crop is laying foul,
My grass skirt’s lost its green,
I’m alive but I don’t know how.
I need water, good good water,
They need water.

Water – the Who