Threatening secession is far from the only thing that the Golden State has in common with the Old South.
Excerpt:
Nonetheless, what is driving California’s current efforts to nullify federal law and the state’s vows to secede from the U.S. are some deeper — and creepy — similarities to the arrogant and blinkered Old South. California is likewise becoming a winner-take-all society.
It hosts the largest numbers of impoverished and the greatest number of rich people of any state in the country. Eager for cheap service labor, California has welcomed in nearly a quarter of the nation’s undocumented immigrants. California has more residents living in poverty than any other state. It is home to one third of all the nation’s welfare recipients.
The income of California’s wealthy seems to make them immune from the effects of the highest basket of sales, income, and gas taxes in the nation. The poor look to subsidies and social services to get by. Over the last 30 years, California’s middle classes have increasingly fled the state.
Gone With the Wind–like wealth disparity in California is shocking to the naked eye. Mostly poor Redwood City looks like it’s on a different planet from tony nearby Atherton or Woodside.
The California elite, wishing to keep the natural environment unchanged, opposes internal improvements and sues to stop pipelines, aqueducts, reservoirs, freeways, and affordable housing for the coastal poor.
California’s crumbling roads and bridges sometimes resemble those of the old rural South. The state’s public schools remain among the nation’s poorest. Private academies are booming for the offspring of the coastal privileged, just as they did among the plantation class of the South.
#1: Tooconservative To: redleghunter (#0)
Tooconservative posted on 2017-02-09 12:59:19 Reply Private Reply
#2: Hondo68 To: redleghunter (#0)
A British Marxist pounding on the keyboard while drinking massive quantities of Bourbon and watching Gone With The Wind, does not a Confederate Gentleman make.
Above is a working link to the rest of this drunken screed. Deport, the author!
Hondo68 posted on 2017-02-09 12:59:53 Reply Private Reply
#3: sneakypete To: redleghunter (#0)
sneakypete posted on 2017-02-09 13:04:41 Reply Private Reply
#4: sneakypete To: hondo68 (#2)
Ok,I read it,and I was born,raised,and lived in the south for most of my life.
What did he get wrong?
sneakypete posted on 2017-02-09 13:08:21 Reply Private Reply
#5: Stoner To: redleghunter (#0)
Does that mean California will sell Obutthole & the Wookie ? I doubt his skinny ass would bring much.
Stoner posted on 2017-02-09 13:39:41 Reply Private Reply
#6: Hondo68 To: sneakypete (#4)
You could say the same for most of the US. Where I am, they're widening the highway, adding lanes, and building new bridges. Yeah, there is probably some crumbling stuff somewhere, but that doesn't mean that everything's going to hell.
"Ballot measure"/initiative is pure democracy, not typical of the old south. Many States have added this to the ballot. IMO, it's unconstitutional since the Federal Government is supposed to "guarantee to the States a republican form of government" (U.S. Constitution - Article 4 Section 4 - The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.). Not old south, not even legal.
This is a nationwide phenomenon. The middle class is disappearing. It's not just California.
Hanson has cherry picked a few similarities to the old south, but couldn't you substitute other States names, and get the same results for the most part?
Hondo68 posted on 2017-02-09 15:35:11 Reply Private Reply
#7: paraclete To: redleghunter (#0)
paraclete posted on 2017-02-09 17:45:31 Reply Private Reply
#8: redleghunter To: paraclete (#7)
redleghunter posted on 2017-02-09 18:12:25 Reply Private Reply
#9: sneakypete To: hondo68 (#6)
The way it read to me,he is comparing California of today with the south in 1861.
Which is kind of unfair to the south because we were a LOT more civilized in 1861 than California has been at any time in the last 50 years,and they are rapidly getting worse. I fully expect violence and crime levels there to soon match those of official 3rd world countries.
sneakypete posted on 2017-02-09 18:32:14 Reply Private Reply
#10: paraclete To: redleghunter (#8)
Only the name has changed
paraclete posted on 2017-02-09 19:30:03 Reply Private Reply
#11: rlk To: hondo68 (#2)
Gone With The Wind was a glamorized myth lived by a very few people. The South was a corrupt European hereditary feudal society inhabited by a few lords and mostly impoverished serfs. The average white man in the South was worse off than the average black slave. A slave brought $1,200 or more at Nathan Monsanto's slave auction house. That was an enormous amount of money in those days. The average white man was worth nothing to anybody. Like most feudal societies, the lords were well dressed degenerate fops, not gentlemen. My great grandfather owned five to ten percent of Alabama.
rlk posted on 2017-02-09 23:50:42 Reply Private Reply
#12: rlk To: sneakypete (#4)
You may have been raised in the South, but you weren't raised in the confederacy. If you were raised in the confererate South you would probable be working twelve hour days as a share cropper hoping to get enough money to satisfy The Man.
rlk posted on 2017-02-10 00:41:47 Reply Private Reply
#13: sneakypete To: rlk (#12)
HorseHillary! You think picking cotton was the ONLY way to earn a living in the south of the 19th century? Seriously? Some of my ancestors built their own ships and were in business for themselves. Others just did the farming they had to do to provide for the necessities of life,and hunted to supplement their income to buy "store bought stuff".
Besides that there were logging operations going on,mining operations,road building,etc,etc,etc.
sneakypete posted on 2017-02-10 18:15:57 Reply Private Reply