Reports From the Bridge

    From an email sent to me from Terrance Berg

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. 

                                IF THIS TEACHER HAS THE GUTS  TO SEND THIS,
WE SHOULD HAVE THE NERVE TO FORWARD  IT.  SHE WILL PROBABLY LOSE HER JOB.
DO  WE AMERICANS HAVE THE NERVE TO STAND BEHIND  HER?  IF WE AGREE, OR DO WE
JUST LET HER AND  OTHERS LIKE HER CARRY OUR LOAD?  INTERESTING  QUESTION.
                                Wow  Again…
                                This  4th grade teacher has said it all, and
she was brave  enough to attach her name to it.
                                April 17,  2009

                                The White House
                                1600 Pennsylvania  Avenue NW
                                Washington ,  DC     20500

                                Mr. Obama:
                                I have had  it with you and your
administration, sir. Your  conduct on your recent trip overseas has
                                convinced me that you are not an adequate
representative of the United States of America  collectively
                                or of me personally.

                                You are  so obsessed with appeasing the
Europeans and the  Muslim world that you have abdicated the
responsibilities of the President of the United  States of America . You are
responsible to the  citizens of the United States .. You are not
responsible to the peoples of any other country on  earth.

                                I personally resent that you go around  the
world apologizing for the United States telling  Europeans that we are
arrogant and do not care about  their status in the world. Sir, what do you
think  the First World War and the Second World War were  all about if not
the consideration of the peoples of  Europe ? Are you brain dead? What do
you think the  Marshall Plan was all about?  Do you not  understand or know
the history of the 20th  century?

                                Where do you get off telling a  Muslim
country that the United States does not  consider itself a Christian
country?  Have you  not read the Declaration of Independence or the
Constitution of the United States ?  This  country was founded on
Judeo-Christian ethics and  the principles governing this country, at least
until you came along, come directly from this  heritage.  Do you not
understand  this?

                                Your bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia  is
an affront to all Americans. Our President does  not bow down to anyone, let
alone the king of Saudi  Arabia . You didn’t show Great Britain , our best
and one of our oldest allies, the respect they  deserve yet you bow down to
the king of Saudi Arabia  .  How dare you, sir! How dare you!

                                You  can’t find the time to visit the graves
of our  greatest generation because you don’t want to offend  the Germans
but make time to visit a mosque in  Turkey … You offend our dead and every
veteran  when you give the Germans more respect than the  people who saved
the German people from themselves.  What’s the matter with you?  I am
convinced  that you and the members of your administration have  the
historical and intellectual depth of a mud  puddle and should be ashamed of
yourselves, all of  you..

                                You are so self-righteously offended by  the
big bankers and the American automobile  manufacturers yet do nothing about
the real thieves  in this situation, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Frank, Franklin  Raines,
Jamie Gorelic, the Fannie Mae bonuses, and  the Freddie Mac bonuses. What do
you intend to do  about them?  Anything?  I seriously doubt  it.

                                What about the U.S. House members  passing
out $9.1 million in bonuses to their staff  members on top of the $2.5
million in automatic pay  raises that lawmakers gave themselves?  I
understand the average House aide got a 17%  bonus.  I took a 5% cut in my
pay to save jobs  with my employer. You haven’t said anything about  that.
Who authorized that? I surely  didn’t!

                                Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie  Mac
will be receiving $210 million in bonuses over  an eighteen-month period,
that’s $45 million more  than the AIG bonuses. In fact, Fannie and Freddie
executives have already been awarded $51 million not  a bad take. Who
authorized that and why haven’t you  expressed your outrage at this group
who are largely  responsible for the economic mess we have right  now?

                                I resent that you take me and my fellow
citizens as brain-dead and not caring about what you  idiots do. We are
watching what you are doing and we  are getting increasingly fed up with all
of you.

                                I also want you to know that I personally
find just about everything you do and say to be  offensive to every one of
my sensibilities.  I  promise you that I will work tirelessly to see that
you do not get a chance to spend two terms  destroying my beautiful country.
                                Sincerely,
                                Every real American

                                P.S. I rarely ask that emails be ‘passed
around’…………..PLEASE SEND THIS TO YOUR EMAIL  LIST……it’s past time
for all Americans to wake  up!

                                Ms Kathleen Lyday
                                Fourth Grade  Teacher
                                Grandview Elementary School
                                11470 Hwy  . C
                                Hillsboro , MO 63050
                                (636) 944-3291  Phone
                                (636) 944-3870 Fax

THE OLD MAN! 
As I came out of the supermarket that sunny  day, pushing my cart of groceries towards my car, I saw an old man with the hood of his car up and a lady sitting inside the car, with the door open.
   
The old man was looking at the engine. I put my groceries away in my car and continued to watch the old gentleman from about twenty five feet away.

I saw a young man in his early twenties with a grocery bag in his arm, walking towards the old man. The old gentleman saw him coming too and took a few steps towards him.
 
I saw the old gentleman point to his open hood and say something.  The young man put his grocery bag into what looked like a brand new Cadillac Escalade and then turn back to the old man and I heard him yell at the old gentleman saying,

‘You shouldn’t even be allowed to drive a car at your age.’ And then with a wave of his hand, he got in his car and peeled rubber out of the parking lot.

I saw the old gentleman pull out his handkerchief and mop his brow as he went back to his car and again looked at the engine.

He then went to his wife and spoke with her and appeared to tell her it would be okay. I had seen enough and I approached the old man. He saw me coming and stood straight and as I got near him I said, ‘Looks like you’re having a problem.’

He smiled sheepishly and quietly nodded his head. I looked under the hood myself and knew that whatever the problem was, it was beyond me. Looking around I saw a gas station up the road and told the old man that I would be right back… I drove to the station and went inside and saw three attendants working on cars. I approached one of them and related the problem the old man had with his car and offered to pay them if they could follow me back down and help him.

The old man had pushed the heavy car under the shade of a tree and appeared to be comforting his wife. When he saw us he straightened up and thanked me for my help. As the mechanics diagnosed the problem (overheated engine) I spoke with the old
gentleman.

When I shook hands with him earlier, he had noticed my Marine Corps ring and had commented about it, telling me that he had been a Marine too. I nodded and asked the usual question, ‘What outfit did you serve with?’

He had mentioned that he served with the first Marine Division at Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal .

He had hit all the big ones and retired from the Corps after the war was over. As we talked we heard the car engine come on and saw the mechanics lower the hood. They came over to us as the old man reached for his wallet, but was stopped by me and I told him I
would just put the bill on my AAA card.

He still reached for the wallet and handed me a card that I assumed had his name and address on it and I stuck it in my pocket.. We all shook hands all around again and I said my goodbye’s to his wife.

I then told the two mechanics that I would follow them back up to the station. Once at the station I told them that they had interrupted their own jobs to come along with me and help the old man. I said I wanted to pay for the help, but they refused to charge me.

One of them pulled out a card from his pocket looking exactly like the card the old man had given to me. Both of the men told me then,that they were Marine Corps Reserves. Once again we shook hands all around and as I was leaving, one of them told me I should look at the card the old man had given to me.. I said I would and drove off.

For some reason I had gone about two blocks when I pulled over and took the card out of my pocket and looked at it for a long, long time. The name of the old gentleman was on the card in golden leaf and under his name……..
‘Congressional Medal of Honor Society.’

I sat there motionless looking at the card and reading it over and over. I looked up from the card and smiled to no one but myself and marveled that on this day, four Marines had all come together, because one of us needed help. He was an old man all right, but it felt good to have stood next to greatness and courage and an honor to have been in his presence. Remember, OLD men like him gave you FREEDOM for America .
Thanks to those who served..& those who supported them.

America is not at war. The U.S. Military is at war. America is at the Mall. If you don’t stand behind our troops, PLEASE feel free to stand in front of them!

Remember, Freedom isn’t Free, thousands have paid the price so you can enjoy what you have today.

LET’S DO THIS  JUST 19 WORDS
 
GOD OUR FATHER, WALK THROUGH MY HOUSE AND TAKE AWAY ALL MY WORRIES; AND PLEASE WATCH OVER AND HEAL MY FAMILY IN JESUS ‘ NAME. AND PLEASE PROTECT OUR FREEDOMS AND WATCH OVER OUR TROOPS WHO ARE DEFENDING THOSE FREEDOMS.
IN JESUS NAME,AMEN

For those of you who don’t know, Col. Allen West is running for U.S.
Congressman Ron Klein’s seat in Florida . Attached is his article
regarding the shootings at Ft. Hood , Texas .

 Please take a few minutes to read what he wrote.

   “Tragedy at Ft Hood”

  Lieutenant Colonel Allen B West (US Army, Ret)

  This past Thursday 13 American Soldiers were killed and another 30
wounded at a horrific mass shooting at US Army installation, Ft Hood
Texas . As I watched in horror and then anger I recalled my two years
of final service in the Army as a Battalion Commander at Ft Hood,
2002-2004.

  My wife and two daughters were stunned at the incident having lived
on the post in family housing.

  A military installation, whether it is Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine,
or Coast Guard, is supposed to be a safe sanctuary for our Warriors and
their families. It is intended to provide a home whereby our “Band of
Brothers and Sisters” can find solace and bond beyond just the foxhole
but as family units.

  A military installation is supposed to be a place where our Warriors
train for war, to serve and protect our Nation.

  On Thursday, 5 November 2009 Ft Hood became a part of the battlefield
in the war against Islamic totalitarianism and state sponsored
terrorism.

  There may be those who feel threatened by my words and would even
recommend they not be uttered. To those individuals I say step aside
because now is not the time for cowardice. Our Country has become so
paralyzed by political correctness that we have allowed a vile and
determined enemy to breach what should be the safest place in America ,
an Army post.

  We have become so politically correct that our media is more
concerned about the stress of the shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan. The
misplaced benevolence intending to portray him as a victim is
despicable. The fact that there are some who have now created an entire
new classification called; “pre-virtual vicarious Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD)” is unconscionable.

  This is not a “man caused disaster”. It is what it is, an Islamic
jihadist attack.

  We have seen this before in 2003 when a SGT Hasan of the 101st
Airborne Division (Air Assault) threw hand grenades and opened fire
into his Commanding Officer’s tent in Kuwait . We have seen the foiled
attempt of Albanian Muslims who sought to attack Ft Dix, NJ. Recently
we saw a young convert to Islam named Carlos Bledsoe travel to Yemen,
receive terrorist training, and return to gun down two US Soldiers at a
Little Rock, Arkansas Army recruiting station. We thwarted another
Islamic terrorist plot in North Carolina which had US Marine Corps
Base, Quantico as a target.

  What have we done with all these prevalent trends? Nothing.

  What we see are recalcitrant leaders who are refusing to confront the
issue, Islamic terrorist infiltration into America , and possibly
further into our Armed Services. Instead we have a multiculturalism and
diversity syndrome on steroids.

  Major Hasan should have never been transferred to Ft Hood, matter of
fact he should have been Chaptered from the Army. His previous
statements, poor evaluation reports, and the fact that the FBI had him
under investigation for jihadist website posting should have been proof
positive.

  However, what we have is a typical liberal approach to find a victim,
not the 13 and 30 Soldiers and Civilian, but rather the poor shooter. A
shooter who we are told was a great American, who loved the Army and
serving his Nation and the Council on American Islamic Relations
(CAIR)

stating that his actions had nothing to do with religious
belief.

  We know that Major Hasan deliberately planned this episode;  he did
give away his possessions.

he stood atop a table in the confined space of the Soldier
Readiness Center shouting “Allahu Akhbar”,

  No one in leadership seems willing to sound the alarm for the
American people; they are therefore complicit in any future attacks.
Our Congress should suspend the insidious action to vote on a
preposterous and unconstitutional healthcare bill and resolve the issue
of “protecting the American people”.

  The recent incidents in Dearborn Michigan , Boston Massachusetts ,
Dallas Texas , and Chicago Illinois should bear witness to the fact
that we have an Islamic terrorism issue in America . And don’t have
CAIR call me and try to issue a vanilla press statement; they are an
illegitimate terrorist associated organization which should be
disbanded.

  We have Saudi Arabia funding close to 80% of the mosques in the
United States , one right here in South Florida, Pompano Beach . Are we
building churches and synagogues in Saudi Arabia ? Are “Kaffirs” and
“Infidels” allowed travel to Mecca ?

  So much for peaceful coexistence.

  Saudi Arabia is sponsoring radical Imams who enter into our prisons
and convert young men into a virulent Wahabbist ideology….one resulting
in four individuals wanting to destroy synagogues in New York with
plastic explosives. Thank God the explosives were dummy. They are
sponsoring textbooks which present Islamic centric revisionist history
in our schools.

  We must recognize that there is an urgent need to separate the
theo-political radical Islamic ideology out of our American society. We
must begin to demand surveillance of suspected Imams and mosques that
are spreading hate and preaching the overthrow of our Constitutional
Republic……that speech is not protected under First Amendment, it is
sedition and if done by an American treason.

  There should not be some 30 Islamic terrorist training camps in
America that has nothing to do with First Amendment, Freedom of
Religion. The Saudis are not our friends and any American political
figure who believes such is delusional.

  When tolerance becomes a one way street it certainly leads to
cultural suicide. We are on that street. Liberals
cannot be trusted to defend our Republic,

because their sympathies obviously lie with their perceived victim,
Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

  I make no apologies for these words, and anyone angered by them,
please, go to Ft Hood and look into the eyes of the real victims. The
tragedy at Ft Hood Texas did not have to happen. Consider now the
feelings of those there and on every military installation in the
world. Consider the feelings of the Warriors deployed into combat zones
who now are concerned that their loved ones at home are in a combat
zone.

  Ft Hood suffered an Islamic jihadist attack, stop the denial, and
realize a simple point.

  The reality of your enemy must become your own.

  Steadfast and Loyal,

  Lieutenant Colonel Allen B West (US Army, Ret)