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Title: How much longer will California remain a part of the United States?
Source:
www.dvorak.org
URL Source: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2010/06/ ... n-a-part-of-the-united-states/
Published: Jun 6, 2010
Author: Dvorak
Post Date: 2010-06-06 11:50:16 by Mind_Virus
Keywords: None
Views: 2111
Comments: 283
How much longer will California remain a part of the United States? Published on June 6th, 2010 California’s white population has declined since 2000 at an unprecedented rate, hastening the day when Hispanics will be the state’s largest population group, according to newly released state figures. Analysts said the decline can be attributed to two main causes – a natural population decrease as Baby Boomers enter their later years and die at a faster rate than younger whites have children, and a migration from California since 2001 among whites who sought affordable housing as real estate costs soared. The study also confirmed projections that a steadily growing Hispanic population will surpass whites as the state’s largest racial demographic in 2016. Hispanics are expected to become a majority of all Californians in 2042, Heim said. A University of New Mexico Chicano Studies professor predicts a new, sovereign Hispanic nation within the century, taking in the Southwest and several northern states of Mexico. Truxillo, 47, has said the new country should be brought into being “by any means necessary,” but recently said it was unlikely to be formed by civil war. Instead, its creation will be accomplished by the electoral pressure of the future majority Hispanic population in the region, he said.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 24.
#1. To: Mind_Virus (#0)
Just wait until the next two earthquakes flatten the state. They will also be plagued by race riots as soon as the US dollar collapses and debt increases will not buy more free stuff. You cannot project our past to predict our future.
Just wait till the Mexicans take over "Atzlan" (their fictional land). They will turn it into the same kind of $#ithole they are trying to escape.
I've had some recent contacts in the CA food industry, and many crops that were normally grown in the state are started to get imported directly from Mexico. They pay laborers less down in Mexico than growers are obligated legally to pay them here, and I imagine there is less agricultural oversight to have to deal with too.
Where are they getting the water? I actually have been seeing more produce from Mexico too.
Water in CA is being depleted, polluted, and there are also government regulations to try to spread what remains around more equitably. So the agribusinesses are complaining, but generally speaking there has not been much of a focus on getting anybody anywhere to use and conserve wisely.
bullshit
bullshit Mono Lake? Salinas Valley? Sacramento Delta? Bakersfield, Taft? Any reason for running sprinklers in the daylight instead of night, potty mouth?
Environmental kool-aide drinker.
Says the self-styled farmer who can't figure out any benefits running sprinklers at night.....
Just a quick point: farmfriend has consistently updated the water shortage issues in California based upon federal restriction guidelines, particularly in the central valley area which used to be the breadbasket of the world (now just a dustbowl with farming communities dying and where unemployment runs as high as 25%). She knows what she is talking about when the federal government steps in and restricts private farming/ranching productive efforts when the government has some kind of new fish or game to save. BTW, I have always enjoyed your posts (as I do farmfriend's). Please keep doing so on 4um.
I don't believe we have an either/or choice where it's choosing production or saving species. All across the US the entire ecosystem has been trashed in little more than 100 years. When the Great Plains were first cultivated there was over 12-18 inches of topsoil just about everywhere. Then by the 1930's we had the "Dust Bowl," and today the norm for good soil there is about 4 inches. The silt has clearly washed down the Mississippi/Missouri river basin and dozens of miles into the Gulf - where now it gets mixed with oily goo. People back then just didn't care about the future, until big bad government decided to make them care. Not that the government choices thesmelves were always right, but at least it was movement into the right direction. So all this talk about the goodness of private enterprise and the badness of govenment control is really a big joke. Then take Colorado/Nevada/Arizona/Imperial Valley. The same type of waste and trashing of water resources. Added to this the violation of water treaties promising a certain amount of water to go into Mexico they can use for their own agriculture. The US has never delivered on those commitments to Mexico. Then some Americans complain when Mexican farm labor comes north to where the water is. Working west, the misuse of Sierra water for placer mining in the Gold Rush, then the construction of huge inefficient irrigation projects to move San Joaquin Delta water into parts of the Central Valley where lots of it evaporated, and some of the rest leached poisons into toxic cesspools like Kesterson. Even further west, over pumping of Salinas River Valley water causing salt water intrusion into the ground water table. Meanwhile in all these places listed above there has been heavy and sprawling construction activity with a heavy bias to generating sprawling urban and suburban tracts going in all directions. Last but not least, massive sheep and cattle raising in nearly every state which has seriously destroyed ground cover, making both water conservation more difficult, and major flooding easier. All these practices could have and should have been done more carefully and more with an eye to conserving for future generations. They weren't done that way because so-called free market forces were allowed to run rampant. And now we have the consequences of this systematic destruction of what was only 200 years ago was pristine agricultural land from sea to sea. Bottom line is the government is going to step in, and there are some people who are motivated to keeping and even improving what is left, and any people who don't like it are just going to have to get off the train and walk to where they're going. Because the train is not going to stop to please them. All the blather about eco-weenies, smelt-lovers, Gaia worshippers, leftists, property rights, Brave New World, government tyranny, etc. is not going to cut it because the "free market" forces have made a substantial hole in the system in little more than 100 years, and there are enough people wanting to see that hole start to get plugged that it will happen.
Last but not least, massive sheep and cattle raising in nearly every state which has seriously destroyed ground cover, making both water conservation more difficult, and major flooding easier. Why? Because of greedy, tight-fisted local farmers/ranchers or the demands based upon world markets? I grew up in Redding. As any Californian who has ever picked up a fishing rod knows, the region around this small north state city supports some of the best angling in the state. Lake Shasta and Whiskeytown Reservoir are literally in our backyard. The Trinity River, home to fine steelhead fishing, is an hour’s drive to the west. The Upper Sacramento River, Trinity Lake, the small, alpine lakes of the Trinity Alps Wilderness, Lake Shastina, Lake Almanor, the Pit River, the McCloud River and Hat Creek are all nearby, and all afford spectacular trout fishing. But it is the Lower Sacramento River — the portion that begins just north of Redding, below Keswick Dam — that historically has been the biggest draw for sport anglers. For one thing, this section supports a lunker native rainbow trout fishery. Drift boaters come from around the West to float the 30-mile stretch between Redding and Red Bluff, hoping — and usually succeeding — to tie into some of our football-size ‘bows. More to the point, the “Lower Sac” has long been sacred water to salmon fishermen. In 2008 and 2009, California’s salmon season was closed entirely due to low numbers of fish. This year, we’re having a very limited season — salmon numbers have bumped up a little, but not enough to warrant any celebration. Not so long ago, however, hundreds of thousands of big, beautiful, fall-run chinook salmon ran up this river to spawn. There were plenty of fish to sustain the runs, with plenty left over to catch. Each year, the anglers would be there in the thousands to greet the homecoming salmon. I was one of that crowd, both as a fishermen and a professional guide. I’ve always loved fishing for salmon — but more than that, as a guide, the salmon put (so to speak) meat and potatoes on my table. The salmon fishery on the Lower Sac was a recreational fishery, but it wasn’t just about recreation: It was about jobs. And jobs are a deadly serious issue in the north state. High unemployment is a relatively recent development in the San Francisco Bay area and Southern California, but it has been a concern with us for decades. The recreational salmon industry was big business in this area. Further, it was reliable, sustainable business. As long as the fish got what they needed — mainly adequate downstream flows — they returned, giving us what we needed: income. A 1992 University of California at Davis study concluded that each salmon caught in the sport fishery was worth $900 to $1,200 to the local economy. So when I boated a client’s salmon, I wasn’t the only one getting paid. The motel owners, the restaurateurs, the waiters and cooks who worked in those restaurants, the gas station owners — everybody got a cut And that’s just direct expenditures from the clients. The guides who fish this river also put a lot of money into the local economy. I run a $50,000 jet boat. Local mechanics work on that boat. I buy my fuel and tackle locally — and when the salmon are running, believe me, I buy a lot of fuel and tackle. So we can’t just view our salmon as noble, attractive, hard-fighting fish that happen to be incredibly delicious — certainly, they’re all those things. But they’re also something more than all that: They’re revenue multipliers. They generate wealth. Each fish represents life for Redding and all the other towns along the river. When we had full salmon seasons, some full-time guides made $70,000 to $80,000 a year — very good money for this part of the state. Guiding supported my family, and helped support the community. But now, more than 90 percent of my guide business has vanished — gone with the salmon closures. And it’s not just a matter of losing my salmon trips. Guiding is synergistic — I booked many of my trout trips while salmon fishing. The clients would get so excited after hooking into a few big fall-run chinook that they’d want to come back and try for our monster trout. If you don’t have that ongoing face-to-face interaction with your clients, if you don’t constantly cultivate and follow up contacts, if you don’t get that word-of-mouth buzz going, you’re not going to make it as a fishing guide. A fishing closure is like a monkey wrench thrown into a jet engine — everything stops, and it can be impossible to get things going again. It took me 20 years to build up my client base. Even if we eventually go back to full salmon seasons, it’s going to take me a long time to get back to where I was. What am I doing today? Like everybody else in this area, whatever it takes to survive: construction, remodeling, anything. My income, obviously, has fallen dramatically. These are tough times on the river — both for the fish and the fishing industry. Somehow, this debate over water has become characterized as a matter of “fish versus jobs.” The argument is that we can have salmon or we can have farming in the Central Valley, but we can’t have both. I think this is ridiculous. We can have both a healthy salmon fishery and a vigorous agricultural sector — we just have to allocate the water fairly and rationally. We need to change the way water is delivered, we need more habitat restoration, and we need to emphasize crops and technologies that conserve water. We also need to adjust water deliveries to accommodate the basic biological requirements of the fish. Spawning salmon need cold water in the river to successfully reproduce, and the young fish need adequate flows to ensure their successful migration to the sea. These baseline conditions must be met if we want to save our salmon and the jobs they generate. Unlike human beings, salmon are unable to compromise or to adjust: they simply need what they need. And what they need isn’t all that much — we can conserve them without disrupting, or even adversely affecting, state agriculture. Recent agreements on the Klamath River and the San Joaquin River have resulted in true “win-win” situations that accommodate both fisheries and farmers. We can do the same for the Sacramento River and the Delta. For my business, the bottom line is this: If we take care of the salmon, they’ll take care of us. Let’s quit all this bickering and get on with it. Mark Mlcoch is president of the Northern California Guides Association. The fact is, California *IS* running out of water. And the reason is because of the HUGE population increases over the last 60 years, drying up the once MEGA-ECONOMY into one in deadthroes and destined into national shock. Remember the once popular polititical quote by MSM pundits... "where California goes, so does the rest of the nation"????/ The water table has been seriously lowered EVERYWHERE simultaneously with an increasing average temperature while the demands of a swelling, unsustainable population base has eroded our quality life.
Big excesses come both from agribusinesses going for good current returns and willing to cut corners and try to keep the costs down, and also from individuals who frequently want to keep the land in the family for a few generations. There have been people on both sides who for years weren't held back by the govenment from whatever methods they chose. Free market choices have been made already and they have us where we are now. And where we are now is not where we want to continue being. One example: When I was growing up, farmers required their workers to use "short-handed hoes" which had handles only a couple feet long. These tools caused epidemic rates of back injuries by forcing laborers to constantly bend over through work days far exceeding 8 hours. During the mid 1970's Cesar Chavez's union went to court and sued to get the tools banned. Eventually they were banned - by evil govenment - and afterwards during the 1980's it was discovered that the now mandated long-handled hoes actually increased production 5% - 15%. So under free market and free enterprise, ruthless idiots running farms were free to make business decisions harming both their workers and themselves. And when the government lefties put a stop to this abhorrent practice, things got better for everyone. Same reasoning goes to water. The water table has been depleted by people thinking only for themselves. Intervention is needed to make them think for eveybody. It's not their own land or their own water. At best they are custodians only for the rest of the society.
Big excesses come both from agribusinesses going for good current returns and willing to cut corners and try to keep the costs down, and also from individuals who frequently want to keep the land in the family for a few generations. There have been people on both sides who for years weren't held back by the govenment from whatever methods they chose. Free market choices have been made already and they have us where we are now. And where we are now is not where we want to continue being. One example: When I was growing up, farmers required their workers to use "short-handed hoes" which had handles only a couple feet long. These tools caused epidemic rates of back injuries by forcing laborers to constantly bend over through work days far exceeding 8 hours. During the mid 1970's Cesar Chavez's union went to court and sued to get the tools banned. Eventually they were banned - by evil govenment - and afterwards during the 1980's it was discovered that the now mandated long-handled hoes actually increased production 5% - 15%. So under free market and free enterprise, ruthless idiots running farms were free to make business decisions harming both their workers and themselves. And when the government lefties put a stop to this abhorrent practice, things got better for everyone. Same reasoning goes to water. The water table has been depleted by people thinking only for themselves. Intervention is needed to make them think for eveybody. It's not their own land or their own water. At best they are custodians only for the rest of the society. I'm sorry I just can't take it anymore your mixture of true observations and erroneous conclusions is driving me crazy. So let's separate out a couple of the key points. Large Agribusiness is largely a creation of government regulations and tax laws which favor and support strip mine farming. Through subsidies, not available or insufficient for small farms, tax laws which favor large operations, and regulatory overkill which creates a fixed overhead hard for the small farmer to cover and comply with, but much easier for a large operation since it is, as a percentage, a much smaller bite for the large operation. The small farm and responsible stewardship of the land has been killed by government. Another big difference is that corporations don't pay inheritence tax. Many small farms, if they have not sold out to pay the tax, are in their third and fourth generations of re-mortgaging the farm to pay the inheritence tax - which is NOT paid by corporations. Are there unethical or shortsighted small farmers? Sure, but they don't last long because the business model is not sustainable. Organic farming is not a creation of the government. Ag bureaus have been dragged kicking screaming into organic agriculture. They actually fought it in its inception all the way up until no more that 15 years ago. Even then they called it a "niche" market. Now as a result of the free market you deride it is rapidly becoming much more than a niche market as knowledgeable people are voting with their dollars and that vote is o-r-g-a-n-i-c. The first, and still best, organic certification organizations have all been private. A creation of that free market you disparage. And because of the higher return more farmers were beginning to make the switch until the favored mega-combines got fearful of the changing tide and prevailed upon the USDA to create their phony pseudo-organic label. The USDA has had, as their primary focus, for at least the last 70 years, been petrochemical based narrow range strip mine farming, and like all government agenicies they favor the largest players and respond to their pressure. State Extensions, although some were already changing, then followed the USDA into organic. If the USDA had, had their way organic would have been mariginalized and relegated to "a bunch of hippies". The nice thing about organic farming is that it builds soil fertility over time not depletes it as strip mine farming does. However, government is doing everything they can to kill the small farmer. All preferences and resources are aimed at and directed to the large corporate agri-combines such as ADM, Monsatan, and Tyson. Far from being the panacea you assume government has often been one of the biggest obstacles to sound management. People do learn, and family farmers live on and wish to preserve and pass down the farm to the next generation. You act as though that is a bad thing. Far from your assumptions family farmers are much more responsible than you would like to give them credit for. Mistakes in the past have been more a matter of ignorance not intent. As knowledge has improved land stewardship has improved. Trying to lump them in with the corporate agri-pirates and their buddies in big government is simply ignorant and tells me that you have spent no significant time studying the issues. I could go on into water allocation, but again it is largely the same thing - big growers with big influence with government get what they want and to hell with everyone else - but it is government dictat that provides the cover and authority for them to get away with it.
#27. To: Original_Intent, AGAviator, buckeroo (#24)
Large Agribusiness is largely a creation of government regulations and tax laws which favor and support strip mine farming. Oh you worded it soooooo much better than I. Totally agree. Of course the government regulations have all been pushed by NGO lawsuits. What they did to logging and agriculture they are now doing to energy markets.
I'm not posting my resume here, but suffice to say I have held one key management consulting job in a food company doing $200 million with over 100 grower contracts, and other consulting gigs in food-connected companies doing $25 million to $100. Which individual farmers willingly sign contracts with. I know enough to have a good overview of what's happening even though ag is not my principal profession. You left out stupidity and greed. At the time short-handled hoes were in use, they were mandated by the great majority of individual farmers and not just a few. The farmers fought tooth and nail to keep courts from making them illegal, and they were dead wrong both from moral and also productive grounds. American individual farmers also kept pushing the bracero program of Mexicans coming into the US, so as to weaken the organizing of Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers, which wanted living wages for legal Americans of Mexican descent, and wanted changes of using very toxic even carcinogenic substances applied to fruits and vegetables. Last but not least, any favorable reference to Jackalope Breeder is a pretty serious disqualifier about knowledge of what is going on in the ag field. The e. coli infections of spinach were always caused by feral animals and destruction of fencing, and never by any people who are required to use portable sanitation with its own water supply that gets pulled right behind them as they work the fields. And who made the requirements for field sanitation? Why, who else, the evil government. When requirements for porta- potties came out, growers placed media ads ridiculing the concept by showing a burro lugging a single seat porta potty. That's where "free enterprise" stood on the concept of field sanitation. The constant vitriol against Mexicans/Hispanics as being responsible for anything about e. coli was white trash speak from Day One. I spent months debunking one looney after another claiming that Hispanics and not natural causes were to blame. Don't know if I ever got through to anyone, but the problem has been fixed and once again it was government and not private industry that played a major role in the solution. Just some examples of how poor the judgment of individual farmers or groups of them can be, for years.
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#3. To: Horse (#1)
Just wait until the next two earthquakes flatten the state.
#6. To: James Deffenbach, Horse, abraxas (#3)
#7. To: AGAviator (#6)
#8. To: abraxas (#7)
Where are they getting the water? I actually have been seeing more produce from Mexico too.
#10. To: AGAviator, abraxas (#8)
Water in CA is being depleted, polluted, and there are also government regulations to try to spread what remains around more equitably. So the agribusinesses are complaining, but generally speaking there has not been much of a focus on getting anybody anywhere to use and conserve wisely.
#12. To: farmfriend (#10)
Water in CA is being depleted, polluted, and there are also government regulations to try to spread what remains around more equitably. So the agribusinesses are complaining, but generally speaking there has not been much of a focus on getting anybody anywhere to use and conserve wisely.
#13. To: AGAviator (#12)
potty mouth?
#14. To: farmfriend (#13)
Environmental kool-aide drinker.
#16. To: AGAviator, farmfriend (#14)
(Edited)
#17. To: buckeroo (#16)
(Edited)
She knows what she is talking about when the federal government steps in and restricts private farming/ranching productive efforts when the government has some kind of new fish or game to save.
#18. To: AGAviator (#17)
Meanwhile in all these places listed above there has been heavy and sprawling construction activity with a heavy bias to generating sprawling urban and suburban tracts going in all directions.
Mark Mlcoch: No water, no fish, no jobs
#19. To: buckeroo (#18)
(Edited)
Why? Because of greedy, tight-fisted local farmers/ranchers or the demands based upon world markets?
#24. To: AGAviator, farmfriend, buckarooey, Buckmonster Fullofit, buckeroo (#19)
Why? Because of greedy, tight-fisted local farmers/ranchers or the demands based upon world markets?
Replies to Comment # 24. I'm sorry I just can't take it anymore your mixture of true observations and erroneous conclusions is driving me crazy. So let's separate out a couple of the key points.
#39. To: Original_Intent (#24)
(Edited)
Trying to lump them in with the corporate agri-pirates and their buddies in big government is simply ignorant and tells me that you have spent no significant time studying the issues.
Mistakes in the past have been more a matter of ignorance not intent.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 24.