California, Watch Us Leave!

By Alan Caruba

A popular Al Jolson song when your grandparents were young began, “California here we come, right back where we started from.” For many of that generation, California was a land of golden opportunity, a destination for the “Okies” whose farms had succumbed to a long drought in the 1930s, and for all manner of people who saw it as a place to make a life and maybe even a fortune for themselves.

Now it’s a place that many are increasingly leaving. Between 2004 and 2008, more than a half million Californians left and for good reason.

It is a political, economic, and environmental basketcase. Very little about California seems to make sense and, despite public referendums reflecting the growing concerns of its dwindling population about illegal aliens and other issues, its legislature has reflected the U.S. Congress by being unwilling to stop spending money of every leftist cause imaginable.

Those days may be over. California is so broke that, at the start of the summer, it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. As a recent article in The Guardian, a British newspaper, points out, “Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave.”

“It is the eighth largest economy in the world, with a population of 37 million. If it was an independent country it would be in the G8. And if it were a company, it would likely be bankrupt.”

Part of California’s problems stem from its aggressive environmental programs that include the refusal to permit oil and natural gas exploration and extraction off its coast in recent years. Thousands of jobs and billions in revenue could have been created.

The most recent example of environmentalism destroying California’s economy is what Investors Business Daily describes as “the largest man-made agricultural disaster since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.” It stems from the application of an Endangered Species Act decision the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that denied water to the farms of the San Joaquin Valley to protect the habitat of the Delta Smelt, a small fish.

“To protect the smelt, billions of gallons of water from the mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channeled away from farms and into the ocean.” The Valley was one “the most productive agricultural region in the world.” This is a repeat of what occurred when water was shut off to the Klamath Valley, a farming region in southern Oregon.

Anyone who still doubts that the aim of environmental organizations is to destroy America’s agricultural and industrial base is simply not looking at the facts on the ground.

Because of environmentalism, Californians resisted building coal-fired and even nuclear plants to generate electricity for their economy, electing to purchase it from other States. What has followed since then have been periodic blackouts and brownouts. Californians still believe that solar panels and wind turbines will provide sufficient electricity, but that is a fantasy.

Companies that depend on a constant source of electrical energy decamped and moved to neighboring States and, of course, jobs went with them. The war on coal-fired plants nationwide will produce a similar result as companies leave for other nations seeking a dependable supply of energy and a corporate tax rate lower than America’s, currently among the highest in the world.

The other problem plaguing California is illegal immigration. American values that put a premium on volunteerism, neighbors, friends, faith, family and towns and cities with low crime rates, are causing Californians to leave. This is reflected in other areas of the nation overrun with illegal aliens and the costs they generate for educational and healthcare systems.

In a new book, “Searching for Whitopia” by Rich Benjamin, the author chronicles the flight of whites from cities and towns in decline.

“Whites, like Americans of all races, have felt pushed by stagnant job opportunities, pricey housing markets, congestion and traffic, crumbling public facilities and services, and neighborhoods that seem hostile to raising children. Quality of life and pocketbook factors matter greatly.” California is a case study in such flight.

“In one generation,” notes Benjamin, “between 1970 and 2006, the number of Mexicans in the United States increased more than tenfold, from 760,000 to 11.97 million. Ten percent of all Mexican nationals now live in the United States. One third of all foreign born persons in the United States are Mexican. Since the 1990s, 80 to 85 percent of newly arrived Mexicans have come here illegally.”

“Whitopia” is a coined word to describe an America that accepted and integrated populations from Europe and Russia in the last century. It refers to places around the nation where whites have moved in order to preserve their shared values.

As America continues its failure to stem the tide of illegal aliens and has given itself over to environmental attacks on the use of vast national reserves of coal, oil and natural gas to generate energy, the nation is experiencing what California has already demonstrated for all to see.