Unemployment In US. 1 in 10 on foodstamp scheme

[Disco_Destroyer]

Link

[Disco_Destroyer]

States' Funds for Jobless Are Drying Up 15 Dec 2008 With unemployment claims reaching their highest levels in decades, states are running out of money to pay benefits, and some are turning to the federal government for loans or increasing taxes on businesses to make the payments. Thirty states are at risk of having the funds that pay out unemployment benefits become insolvent over the next few months, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Funds in two states, Indiana and Michigan, have already dried up, and both states are borrowing from the federal government to make payments to the unemployed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/us/15funds.html

[Disco_Destroyer]

Pay cuts, layoffs mount in US By Tom Eley 23 Dec 2008 The US government loans to the auto industry, conditioned on a massive attack on the wages and jobs of auto workers, are being used as a spearhead for broader attacks on the working class throughout the country. This attack has already begun, with numerous companies recently announcing pay cuts and layoffs for the coming year in response to the deepening economic crisis.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/dec2008/wage-d23.shtml

[Disco_Destroyer]

http://www.businessweek.com/print/bwdaily/dnflash/content/mar2009/db20 09033_306801.htm

Report: 1 in 5 Mortgages Are Underwater
In Nevada, more than half of all mortgage borrowers are upside down
By Mara Der Hovanesian

It's bad enough when the value of your house is sinking like a lead balloon. But for a growing number of Americans, their woes are compounded by owing more on the mortgage than what that house is now worth. It's called having negative equity—the opposite of what happens when a home appreciates and a homeowner builds positive equity above and beyond his initial investment.

In a new report released Mar. 4, more than 8.3 million U.S. mortgages, or 20% of all mortgaged properties, were saddled with negative equity at the end of 2008, according to LoanPerformance, a company that tracks mortgage data. That's up two percentage points, from 7.6 million borrowers, from the end of September 2008. California led the nation with a monthly average of 43,000 new negative-equity borrowers over the three-month period, followed by Texas (16,000), Nevada (15,000), Florida (14,000), and Virginia (14,000).

"Given that we've never seen house price declines of this magnitude, this is probably one of the highest negative-equity levels we've ever seen," said Mark Fleming, chief economist for First American CoreLogic, LoanPerformance's parent. "House price declines have taken hold everywhere."

Temptation to Walk Away
The study is based on the data of some 45 million properties that carry a mortgage, which accounts for more than 85% of all U.S. mortgages. The data was filtered to include only properties valued between $70,000 and $1.25 million.

The most severe "underwater mortgages"—mortgage loans that are 125% or higher than the value of the property—are in five states: California (723,000), Florida (432,000), Nevada (170,000), Michigan (128,000), and Arizona (122,000). Underwater homes are of serious concern because for some homeowners there is little incentive not to walk away and allow the home to fall into foreclosure. Foreclosed homes drag down the prices of neighboring properties, possibly dragging more homes underwater.

A veteran real estate broker in Las Vegas who declined to be named said that in 2004 there were only 2,000 homes on the market; now there are some 20,000 and growing. "Everybody became crazy," she said. "In certain areas [home prices are] off 60% from the peak. It's really sad because there's no equity and people can't refinance."

Nevada Leads Negative Equity
The negative-equity conundrum appears poised to get worse. LoanPerformance calculates that there are another 2 million houses that are approaching the danger zone, that is, within 5% of being in a negative-equity position. Negative-equity and near-negative-equity mortgages combined account for a quarter of all homes with mortgages nationwide.

The distribution of negative equity is heavily skewed to a small number of states, according to Fleming. Nevada has the highest percentage of negative equity: More than half of all mortgage borrowers in that state are now upside down. The average loan-to-value ratio for properties with a mortgage in Nevada was 97%, or less than $8,000 in equity. That leaves the typical mortgaged homeowner with virtually no cushion for the rapidly declining home values.

In states where unemployment is high and rising, such as Michigan, the problem of upside-down mortgages is acute. "It's the combination of underwater and losing a job that is of most concern at this point," says Fleming. "If you're underwater but can still pay your mortgage, you're O.K. And if there's equity in the home and you lose a job, you can always refinance" to tap into that to make ends meet, providing a bank will approve a new loan.

Worst Is Yet to Come
Ranking the states by total number of borrowers underwater, California came in first with more than 1.9 million borrowers in negative equity, followed by Florida (1.3 million), Texas (497,000), Michigan (459,000), and Ohio (435,000). These five states account for more than half of these problem mortgages.

For states that haven't seen a widespread problem in declining prices and therefore upside-down mortgages, the worst may be in store. Fleming forecasts that the largest increases in the share of negative-equity mortgages will likely occur in states that have not yet experienced deep declines. "The worrisome issue is not just the severity of negative equity in the 'sand' states," Fleming said, "but the geographic broadening of negative equity that is expected to occur throughout the year."

Der Hovanesian is Banking editor for BusinessWeek in New York.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009 030301196.html?hpid=topnews

As Markets Slump, U.S. Tries to Halt Cycle of Fear
Top Officials Push to Inspire Confidence in Crisis Response By Emphasizing the Long-Run

By Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 4, 2009; Page A01

The Obama administration yesterday made a concerted push to boost confidence in downward-spiraling financial markets, assuring Americans that officials are taking the steps necessary to contain the worsening economic damage and to restore the nation's long-term fiscal health.

A day after the markets hit crisis lows, the administration sought to restore calm. The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve launched a long-awaited program to pump money into consumer lending. Aides, including the White House budget director, vowed that the president's spending plan would benefit the vast majority of working Americans. And officials in various public venues used soothing language in an effort to inspire hope.

"What I'm looking at is not the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market," said President Obama, speaking to reporters at the White House, "but the long-term ability for the United States and the entire world economy to regain its footing."

The nation is caught in a dangerous cycle in which an endless stream of grim news -- waves of layoff announcements, signs that banks are teetering financially and negative economic data -- has contributed to anxiety among American consumers and businesses. That, in turn, has caused further economic weakness. The White House appears to be moving to arrest that cycle.

But words weren't enough to end the raft of bad news yesterday.

Among the items on the business news ticker: U.S. auto sales fell further in February, with General Motors sales down 53 percent from a year before. An index for pending home sales dropped more than expected in January, to a new low. And shares of General Electric fell sharply as investors worried that its credit rating could be cut.

After trading higher early in the day, the stock market ended down 0.6 percent, as measured by the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, now at its lowest level since 1996. The index dropped 9 percent over the preceding four days.

Obama urged Americans not to obsess over the stock market, which he likened to a political tracking poll. "You know, it bobs up and down day to day," the president said. "And if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you're probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong."

He even seemed to make an unusual foray into investment advice. "What you're now seeing is profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you've got a long-term perspective on it," he said.

A key aide, meanwhile, argued that government spending could have an unusually strong impact on the economy given the current weakness. At a time when Americans are strapped, they may be more likely to spend extra dollars received as government stimulus than they would in normal times, said Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

"I think it is possible that fiscal policy will have even more oomph in this situation," Romer said at the National Association for Business Economics conference in Arlington.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke offered a more mixed assessment of the potential impact of stimulus. Testifying before the Senate Budget Committee, he said that while the scenario outlined by Romer is possible, it is also possible that "heightened economic uncertainties and the desire to increase precautionary saving or pay down debt might reduce households' propensity to spend," which would make the stimulus less effective.

Moreover, he said, it is hard to tell how long it will take for the spending to ripple through the economy. While it should provide a boost over the next two years, he said, "the timing and the magnitude of the macroeconomic effects of the fiscal program are subject to considerable uncertainty reflecting both the state of economic knowledge and the unusual economic circumstances that we face."

Bernanke repeated his call for continued government action to bolster the financial system, which he described as crucial for a sustainable recovery to take hold.

"Historical experience strongly suggests that without a reasonable degree of financial stability, a sustainable recovery will not occur," Bernanke said.

Today, the Obama administration is expected to unveil more of its economic recovery plans, with new details of its $75 billion plan to help people at risk of foreclosure stay in their homes. Just yesterday, Citigroup announced a plan to reduce what mortgage borrowers must pay each month if they lose their jobs. Such borrowers would be eligible to make a reduced payment for three months.

Obama's aides yesterday continued to try to drum up support for his budget. The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter R. Orszag, argued that the spending plan, to the tune of $3.6 trillion, would prove fiscally responsible in the long run.

"When recovery is firmly established," Geithner said, "we bring the deficits down the point where they are sustainable.

Congressional Republicans expressed deep skepticism. "When I look at this budget, I see a net tax increase of about $1.4 trillion, a tax increase that will fall especially hard on job-creating small businesses and charitable organizations," said Rep. Wally Herger (R-Calif.). "But in spite of this tax increase, this budget also manages to increase the debt held by the public by $7 trillion over the next 10 years."

[Disco_Destroyer]

Link

[conspiracy analyst]

officially, unnoficially it is probably around 3 out of 10 as those on illegal labour living 5 to a room and slaving away on below the minimum wage arent' really employed....

[Disco_Destroyer]

Recieved by e-mail
I was looking at foriegn markets about 4 years ago. This is crazy though.

[Disco_Destroyer]

Economic casualties pile into tent cities
By Emily Bazar

Go To Original
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-05-04-new-homeless_N.htm?loc= interstitialskip

Jim Marshall recalls everything about that beautiful fall day.

The temperature was about 70 degrees on Nov. 19, the sky was "totally blue," and the laughter from a martini bar drifted into the St. Petersburg park where Marshall, 39, sat contemplating his first day of homelessness.

PHOTOS: Tent cities help victims of a bad economy
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/flash.htm?gid=992&aid=4648

"I was thinking, 'That was me at one point,' " he says of the revelers. "Now I'm thinking, 'Where am I going to sleep tonight? Where do I eat? Where do I shower?' "

The unemployed Detroit autoworker moved to Florida last year hoping he'd have better luck finding a job. He didn't, and he spent three months sleeping on sidewalks before landing in a tent city in Pinellas County, north of St. Petersburg, on Feb. 26.

Marshall is among a growing number of the economic homeless, a term for those newly displaced by layoffs, foreclosures or other financial troubles caused by the recession. They differ from the chronic homeless, the longtime street residents who often suffer from mental illness, drug abuse or alcoholism.

For the economic homeless, the American ideal that education and hard work lead to a comfortable middle-class life has slipped out of reach. They're packing into motels, parking lots and tent cities, alternately distressed and hopeful, searching for work and praying their fortunes will change.

"My parents always taught me to work hard in school, graduate high school, go to college, get a degree and you'll do fine. You'll do better than your parents' generation," Marshall says. "I did all those things. … For a while, I did have that good life, but nowadays that's not the reality."

Tent cities and shelters from California to Massachusetts report growing demand from the newly homeless. The National Alliance to End Homelessness predicted in January that the recession would force 1.5 million more people into homelessness over the next two years. Already, "tens of thousands" have lost their homes, Alliance President Nan Roman says.

The $1.5 billion in new federal stimulus funds for homelessness prevention will help people pay rent, utility bills, moving costs or security deposits, she says, but it won't be enough.

"We're hearing from shelter providers that the shelters are overflowing, filled to capacity," says Ellen Bassuk, president of the National Center on Family Homelessness. "The number of families on the streets has dramatically increased."

'A change in the population'

Pinellas Hope, the tent city run by Catholic Charities here since December 2007, has been largely for the chronically homeless, some of whom suffer from mental illness or struggle with drugs or alcohol.

About 20% of its 240 residents became homeless recently because of the economic downturn, says Frank Murphy, president of Catholic Charities, Diocese of St. Petersburg.

"We're seeing a change in the population. … We're seeing a lot more that are just plain losing their jobs and their homes," says Sheila Lopez, chief operating officer of the charity. "A lot are either job-ready or working but have lost their home because they were laid off, or their apartment, and now can't go to work because they're not shaven, they're not clean, they're living in a car, or they're living on the street."

The charity plans to expand the tent city and build an encampment in a neighboring county, an idea that has drawn objections from nearby homeowners and businesses.

Communities elsewhere are facing similar pressures:

• In Massachusetts, a record number of homeless families need emergency shelter, says Robyn Frost, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. In mid-April, there were 2,763 families in shelters, including 655 in motels because the shelters were full, an increase of 36% since July, she says.

"We have a high number of foreclosure properties, and many of them are multifamily apartments," Frost says. "We were seeing a great number of families being displaced."

• Reno officials shut down a tent city in October after making more shelter space available, but new encampments are popping up along the Truckee River and elsewhere, says Kelly Marschall of the Reno Area Alliance for the Homeless.

The homeless include "a startling number of first-time homeless," she says. "We asked them what industries they were involved in. The majority were talking about construction, the housing industry, real estate. There was a direct correlation to the housing market crash."

• In Santa Barbara, Calif., 84 men and women sleep in their cars, trucks or recreational vehicles in 17 parking lots around the city, says Jason Johnson with the New Beginnings Counseling Center, which runs the RV Safe Parking Program. The city, which allows the use of three municipal lots at night, supports the program, says city parking superintendent Victor Garza. Last May, there were 58 participants and no waiting list. Now 40 people are waiting.

"People's last refuge has become their vehicle," Johnson says.

Objections by residents

Pinellas Hope in Florida looks like a cookie-cutter subdivision, except that the orderly rows are of tents, not houses. Besides 250 tents, all of similar size, shape and color, there are 15 wooden sheds, 6 feet by 8 feet, that Catholic Charities built as shelters.

The charity plans to reduce the number of tents to 150 and erect 100 sheds, which are more durable, and build as many as 80 permanent studio apartments on the property, Murphy says.

His group also wants to open a campground for 240 homeless people in neighboring Hillsborough County, he says, primarily using wooden sheds.

Unlike Pinellas Hope, which doesn't border residential neighborhoods, the Hillsborough County parcel is across the street from a tidy 325-home subdivision called East Lake Park. There, opponents of the tent city have a website: www.stoptentcity.com.

Hal and Cindy Hart are raising three grandchildren in their home on the lake. The kids, 4 to 13, fish for bass, ride their bikes to friends' houses and attend neighborhood parties.

The Harts fear that large numbers of homeless people, some with addictions and criminal backgrounds, would loiter in the neighborhood. "We will not be able to let our grandchildren ride their bikes outside without constant supervision," says Hal Hart, 52, a paralegal.

The Harts agree that the homeless population needs services, but they think the emphasis should be on programs that will help families, not single adults.

Murphy says the diocese wants to address the neighbors' concerns and has lowered the number of proposed occupants from 500.

'A temporary situation'

Pinellas Hope, which has a waiting list of about 150 people, is attracting a growing stream of homeless men, women and couples. Families with children are sent to area shelters.

New arrivals must agree to rules, such as not using drugs or alcohol, and perform chores, Lopez says. They get mats, sleeping bags, toiletries, flip-flops for showers and lockable boxes in their tents to store valuables. Within one week, they must make a plan describing how they will work their way out of homelessness.

Residents are expected to move on within five months, but some stay longer. Campers have access to trailers with bathrooms, showers, computers, washers and dryers and a room of donated clothes. They get a free bus pass the first month and advice on writing résumés.

By day, some leave camp to look for work or ride the bus to pass the time. Others stay, watching TV in large communal tents, doing laundry or playing Monopoly. At night, an off-duty police officer patrols the camp, which is governed by curfews: 10:30 p.m. on weeknights and midnight Fridays and Saturdays.

The camp bustles at dinnertime, when everyone gathers for a hot meal provided by churches and other organizations.

A year ago, there were 5,500 homeless people in Pinellas County, says St. Petersburg police officer Richard Linkiewicz, a homeless-outreach officer. This year, there are 7,500, including 1,300 children in homeless families, he says.

Many of the newly homeless worked in construction, a booming industry in Florida before the economic bust, he says.

David Grondin, 48, moved in on Feb. 7 and stayed for two months. A union carpenter, he graduated from the University of South Florida in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in fine arts.

He struggled as carpentry work and odd jobs disappeared. When his 1992 Saturn died in August, he could no longer get to jobs far from public transportation routes.

Frustrated by his inability to find a job in Florida, last month Grondin took a bus to Portland, Maine, where he's staying with friends and looking for carpentry work. "I was definitely middle class," he says. "I had a car. I got a paycheck every week."

Kevin Shutt, 53, moved into Pinellas Hope in March after he was laid off from his job waiting tables because diners "stopped coming through the doors," he says.

Shutt has decorated his tent with house plants, including a ficus tree his mother gave him nearly 30 years ago, and pinned Tampa Bay Rays and Buccaneers jerseys to the inside walls.

He tearfully recounts how he got kicked out of his apartment by a roommate when he couldn't come up with the rent. A former homeowner who made Caesar salads tableside at restaurants, now he can't get a job at Taco Bell, he says. "This is the first time in my life I ever dreamed about living in a tent," he says.

An optimist by nature, Shutt vows that his stay will be short. He has filled out more than 175 job applications and occasionally works for a friend doing canvas work on boats. "This is a temporary situation," he says.

A diminished outlook

Marshall, the former autoworker, has an associate's degree in electronic engineering and is less encouraged.

He remembers a comfortable life in Michigan, where he worked in automotive testing, owned a brick ranch-style home, made up to $50,000 a year and played in softball leagues.

Companies he worked for started losing contracts a few years ago, and eventually the work dried up, he says. He sold his house and moved into an apartment, but by 2007 he couldn't pay the rent.

He came to Florida in August, thinking the job market was better. But he couldn't pay the rent here, either.

At Pinellas Hope, Marshall searches online job sites or takes the bus to apply for work at McDonald's, factories and Wal-Mart. He gets $45 a week selling his blood plasma.

"I have my résumé online. I go door to door. I make phone calls," he says. "I have not received one phone call, one e-mail. I thought with my experience and my degree, it wouldn't be this difficult."

Marshall feels ill at ease in the camp and has trouble sleeping, and not just because of the armadillos that burrow under his tent. "I'm scared," he says. "If I can't find a job, where do I go next?"

At this point, he has lowered his expectations. "I don't expect ever to make $50,000 a year working in the auto industry, but just enough to survive, have my own place, buy my own food, my own clothes," he says. "What every American would expect."

[Oldman]

I fell from a scafold nearly 6 years ago working on a sidejob inbetween jobs, and became disabled. If it wasn't for that, my family and I would be screwed ourselves because there simply isn't any work out there any more.
I can work somewhat, but at a slow pace. I have worked as a leadman or foreman in nearly every trade in construction you can think of from building homes from the ground up to welding/pipe fitting and electrical. If I were in great shape I couldn't get a job anywhere. The only thing I have going for me is a $736 a month check and a house and 58 acres of land I don't have to make payments on. I won't get into that, plus my wife works at Wendy's, after two years of colledge for working with computers. She graduated in the top 5% of her class, has put in probably over 100 app,s and is still fixing hamburgers.
Atleast we canned over three quarts of food from the garden this year.
Hopeing to sale some food this coming season but more than likely will give it to family and friends in need. And that least keeps growing.
I cut our gas off because we couldn't afford the $400 a month bill and built a blower for thew two fireplaces we have for heat. It works pretty good but it heck on a broken back to cut the firewood, but it could be a lot worse for us.
With a life time of construction work behind me, all my friends are construction workers and so far I have had 7 of them stay with us. I have an extra bed room and "we built" two sets of bunk beds in there. I built one set when I had one friend staying here and another needed somewhere to stay, Then a third came up and then a fourth. Right now there is a couple with two children staying here. It is depressing to see people in this boat, but I guess I best thank God for what we do have.
But I sure would love a tractor and some electric fence.

[Oldman]

LOL, I meant 3 hundred jars of veggies.

[Disco_Destroyer]

http://flyingcuttlefish.wordpress.com
In the USA all the teachers are being fired this week.
5,000 + in LosAngeles (wsws.org)
and 3,000+ maybe today in Kansas City ... (kansascity.com)

[Disco_Destroyer]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100325/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/us_state_unemplo yment
States shed government jobs as revenue plummets - Yahoo! News
news.yahoo.com
Pennsylvania, Michigan and Washington shed government jobs last month, a result of shrinking state tax revenue that economists fear could weaken the recovery.

[TonyGosling]

Correspondent Cedric Moon and Photojournalist Jon Conway were featured at the 50th Annual Monte Carlo Television Festival for this story on the demise of a great American city.

Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-w7wQranV4

[TonyGosling]

Millions dread loss of US jobless benefits
By Hannah Kuchler in New York and James Politi in Washington
Published: December 2 2010 20:40 | Last updated: December 3 2010 00:17
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/306def50-fe51-11df-abac-00144feab49a.html
Tim Zaneske doesn’t know what to do. The father of two from the town of Flushing, Michigan, is facing the prospect of seeing his unemployment benefits vanish in two weeks.
After being laid off from his job in civil engineering for the first time in January 2008, and the second time earlier this year, Mr Zaneske, 44, is already using money from his retirement fund to help pay the bills. Chief among them is the mortgage payment on a house that has continued to lose value since the property crisis........

[Disco_Destroyer]

Damn Spammers ^^


http://www.businessinsider.com/detroit-garbage-pickup-bankruptcy-2010- 12

Detroit Is Halting Garbage Pickup, Police Patrols In 20% Of City: Expect Bankruptcy In 2011
www.businessinsider.com
Motor City is finally hitting a wall...

[Disco_Destroyer]

Unemployment. The UNREPORTED TRUTH! Get Informed at Inflation.US.mp4


Link



This is so true, creating work out of nothing, same here in UK

HIPs anyone?

This is 1984 or Terry Gilliams Brazil. That's push worthless paper folks!!

[conspiracy analyst]

Good-Bye California By Victor Davis Hansen at rense.com

How The 'Progressives' Ruined The State

The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California. I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most lavish entitlements, the near-worst public schools (based on federal test scores), and the largest number of illegal aliens in the nation, along with an overregulated private sector, a stagnant and shrinking manufacturing base, and an elite environmental ethos that restricts commerce and productivity without curbing consumption.

During this unscientific experiment, three times a week I rode a bike on a 20-mile trip over various rural roads in southwestern Fresno County . I also drove my car over to the coast to work, on various routes through towns like San Joaquin , Mendota, and Firebaugh. And near my home I have been driving, shopping, and touring by intent the rather segregated and impoverished areas of Caruthers, Fowler, Laton, Orange Cove, Parlier, and Selma . My own farmhouse is now in an area of abject poverty and almost no ethnic diversity; the closest elementary school (my alma mater, two miles away) is 94 percent Hispanic and 1 percent white, and well below federal testing norms in math and English.

Here are some general observations about what I saw (other than that the rural roads of California are fast turning into rubble, poorly maintained and reverting to what I remember seeing long ago in the rural South). First, remember that these areas are the ground zero, so to speak, of 20 years of illegal immigration. There has been a general depression in farming - to such an extent that the 20- to-100-acre tree and vine farmer, the erstwhile backbone of the old rural California , for all practical purposes has ceased to exist.

On the western side of the Central Valley , the effects of arbitrary cutoffs in federal irrigation water have idled tens of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land, leaving thousands unemployed. Manufacturing plants in the towns in these areas - which used to make harvesters, hydraulic lifts, trailers, food-processing equipment - have largely shut down; their production has been shipped off overseas or south of the border. Agriculture itself - from almonds to raisins - has increasingly become corporatized and mechanized, cutting by half the number of farm workers needed. So unemployment runs somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.

Many of the rural trailer-house compounds I saw appear to the naked eye no different from what I have seen in the Third World . There is a Caribbean look to the junked cars, electric wires crisscrossing between various outbuildings, plastic tarps substituting for replacement shingles, lean-tos cobbled together as auxiliary housing, pit bulls unleashed, and geese, goats, and chickens roaming around the yards. The public hears about all sorts of tough California regulations that stymie business - rigid zoning laws, strict building codes, constant inspections - but apparently none of that applies out here.

It is almost as if the more California regulates, the more it does not regulate. Its public employees prefer to go after misdemeanors in the upscale areas to justify our expensive oversight industry, while ignoring the felonies in the downtrodden areas, which are becoming feral and beyond the ability of any inspector to do anything but feel irrelevant. But in the regulators' defense, where would one get the money to redo an ad hoc trailer park with a spider web of illegal bare wires?

Many of the rented-out rural shacks and stationary Winnebagos are on former small farms - the vineyards overgrown with weeds, or torn out with the ground lying fallow. I pass on the cultural consequences to communities from the loss of thousands of small farming families. I don't think I can remember another time when so many acres in the eastern part of the valley have gone out of production, even though farm prices have recently rebounded. Apparently it is simply not worth the gamble of investing $7,000 to $10,000 an acre in a new orchard or vineyard. What an anomaly - with suddenly soaring farm prices, still we have thousands of acres in the world's richest agricultural belt, with available water on the east side of the valley and plentiful labor, gone idle or in disuse. Is credit frozen? Are there simply no more farmers? Are the schools so bad as to scare away potential agricultural entrepreneurs? Or are we all terrified by the national debt and uncertain future?

California coastal elites may worry about the oxygen content of water available to a three-inch smelt in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, but they seem to have no interest in the epidemic dumping of trash, furniture, and often toxic substances throughout California 's rural hinterland. Yesterday, for example, I rode my bike by a stopped van just as the occupants tossed seven plastic bags of raw refuse onto the side of the road. I rode up near their bumper and said in my broken Spanish not to throw garbage onto the public road. But there were three of them, and one of me. So I was lucky to be sworn at only. I note in passing that I would not drive into Mexico and, as a guest, dare to pull over and throw seven bags of trash into the environment of my host.

In fact, trash piles are commonplace out here - composed of everything from half-empty paint cans and children's plastic toys to diapers and moldy food. I have never seen a rural sheriff cite a litterer, or witnessed state EPA workers cleaning up these unauthorized wastelands. So I would suggest to Bay Area scientists that the environment is taking a much harder beating down here in central California than it is in the Delta. Perhaps before we cut off more irrigation water to the west side of the valley, we might invest some green dollars into cleaning up the unsightly and sometimes dangerous garbage that now litters the outskirts of our rural communities.

We hear about the tough small-business regulations that have driven residents out of the state, at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a week. But from my unscientific observations these past weeks, it seems rather easy to open a small business in California without any oversight at all, or at least what I might call a "counter business." I counted eleven mobile hot-kitchen trucks that simply park by the side of the road, spread about some plastic chairs, pull down a tarp canopy, and, presto, become mini-restaurants. There are no "facilities" such as toilets or washrooms. But I do frequently see lard trails on the isolated roads I bike on, where trucks apparently have simply opened their draining tanks and sped on, leaving a slick of cooking fats and oils. Crows and ground squirrels love them; they can be seen from a distance mysteriously occupied in the middle of the road.

At crossroads, peddlers in a counter-California economy sell almost anything. Here is what I noticed at an intersection on the west side last week: shovels, rakes, hoes, gas pumps, lawnmowers, edgers, blowers, jackets, gloves, and caps. The merchandise was all new. I doubt whether in high-tax California sales taxes or income taxes were paid on any of these stop-and-go transactions.

In two supermarkets 50 miles apart, I was the only one in line who did not pay with a social-service plastic card (gone are the days when "food stamps" were embarrassing bulky coupons). But I did not see any relationship between the use of the card and poverty as we once knew it: The electrical appurtenances owned by the user and the car into which the groceries were loaded were indistinguishable from those of the upper middle class.

By that I mean that most consumers drove late-model Camrys, Accords, or Tauruses, had iPhones, Bluetooths, or BlackBerries, and bought everything in the store with public-assistance credit. This seemed a world apart from the trailers I had just ridden by the day before. I don't editorialize here on the logic or morality of any of this, but I note only that there are vast numbers of people who apparently are not working, are on public food assistance, and enjoy the technological veneer of the middle class. California has a consumer market surely, but often no apparent source of income. Does the $40 million a day supplement to unemployment benefits from Washington explain some of this?

Do diversity concerns, as in lack of diversity, work both ways? Over a hundred-mile stretch, when I stopped in San Joaquin for a bottled water, or drove through Orange Cove, or got gas in Parlier, or went to a corner market in southwestern Selma, my home town, I was the only non-Hispanic - there were no Asians, no blacks, no other whites. We may speak of the richness of "diversity," but those who cherish that ideal simply have no idea that there are now countless inland communities that have become near-apartheid societies, where Spanish is the first language, the schools are not at all diverse, and the federal and state governments are either the main employers or at least the chief sources of income - whether through emergency rooms, rural health clinics, public schools, or social-service offices. An observer from Mars might conclude that our elites and masses have given up on the ideal of integration and assimilation, perhaps in the wake of the arrival of 11 to 15 million illegal aliens.

Again, I do not editorialize, but I note these vast transformations over the last 20 years that are the paradoxical wages of unchecked illegal immigration from Mexico, a vast expansion of California's entitlements and taxes, the flight of the upper middle class out of state, the deliberate effort not to tap natural resources, the downsizing in manufacturing and agriculture, and the departure of whites, blacks, and Asians from many of these small towns to more racially diverse and upscale areas of California.

Fresno 's California State University campus is embroiled in controversy over the student body president's announcing that he is an illegal alien, with all the requisite protests in favor of the DREAM Act. I won't comment on the legislation per se, but again only note the anomaly. I taught at CSUF for 21 years. I think it fair to say that the predominant theme of the Chicano and Latin American Studies program's sizable curriculum was a fuzzy American culpability. By that I mean that students in those classes heard of the sins of America more often than its attractions.. In my home town, Mexican flag decals on car windows are far more common than their American counterparts.

I note this because hundreds of students here illegally are now terrified of being deported to Mexico . I can understand that, given the chaos in Mexico and their own long residency in the United States . But here is what still confuses me: If one were to consider the classes that deal with Mexico at the university, or the visible displays of national chauvinism, then one might conclude that Mexico is a far more attractive and moral place than the United States.

So there is a surreal nature to these protests: something like, "Please do not send me back to the culture I nostalgically praise; please let me stay in the culture that I ignore or deprecate." I think the DREAM Act protestors might have been far more successful in winning public opinion had they stopped blaming the U.S. for suggesting that they might have to leave at some point, and instead explained why, in fact, they want to stay. What it is about America that makes a youth of 21 go on a hunger strike or demonstrate to be allowed to remain in this country rather than return to the place of his birth?

I think I know the answer to this paradox. Missing entirely in the above description is the attitude of the host, which by any historical standard can only be termed "indifferent. " California does not care whether one broke the law to arrive here or continues to break it by staying. It asks nothing of the illegal immigrant - no proficiency in English, no acquaintance with American history and values, no proof of income, no record of education or skills. It does provide all the public assistance that it can afford (and more that it borrows for), and apparently waives enforcement of most of California 's burdensome regulations and civic statutes that increasingly have plagued productive citizens to the point of driving them out.


How odd that we overregulate those who are citizens and have capital to the point of banishing them from the state, but do not regulate those who are aliens and without capital to the point of encouraging millions more to follow in their footsteps. How odd - to paraphrase what Critias once said of ancient Sparta - that California is at once both the nation's most unfree and most free state, the most repressed and the wildest.

Hundreds of thousands sense all that and vote accordingly with their feet, both into and out of California - and the result is a sort of social, cultural, economic, and political time-bomb, whose ticks are getting louder.


Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.