The Land of the Living Dead

Once again I have returned to the land of the living after visiting California, where it is perpetually sunny and each day brings another influx of illegal aliens and sun worshipers. Why these people are drawn to this land of the dead – not only brain dead but morally dead as well – I have no idea. When you ask the answer is always the same – the weather. Every day is a beautiful day and you have the beach, the mountains, skiing, the desert, -- in short you have everything except a parking place. What no one is willing to admit is that while the beach is only minutes away there is no parking and if you are lucky enough to find a parking place the beach itself is filled with some pretty strange people and generally not a place to take your family – unless of course they have completed their sex education course with honors.

Then you have the mountains which are beautiful – but what goes unsaid is the end of the phrase which is – when you can see them. In the period of one week I did not see the mountains except once and even then they were only a shadow seen dimly through the brown muck which they call air. Of course the good news is that if you can actually get to the mountains then that same brown muck shields you from seeing the sprawl of houses, strip malls, and freeways. One of the challenges in getting to the mountains is the traffic. It is hard to imagine twelve lanes of cars going 10 miles an hour for miles and miles. The logical question is where are all of these people going? Naturally the answer is that they are 1) going home, which is only 100 or so miles from where they work, 2) they are going to the mountains or desert; 3) they are headed to the beach – but the fourth option is never mentioned and that is that most of them are looking for a parking place.

The traffic is terrible and it is that way virtually 24 hours a day. However, California is a state filled with enlightened people who generally feel they are smarter than the rest of kids so they have solutions for everything. Most of all they are the Nannies of the world so they feel that most of us are too stupid to make decisions for ourselves so they must take care of us. Consequently there are signs everywhere telling you about the dangerous chemicals in the buildings (janitorial supplies), alcohol is dangerous (no warnings about drugs though), and that coffee cups contain hot liquids. The signage is everywhere – but in English even though almost no one actually speaks English there anymore. My favorite traffic solution offered by the enlightened elite are the diamond lanes. As stated earlier the traffic is horrendous and moving at a walking pace. The brilliant solution offered by the state was to create special lanes for those people who have more than one person in the car thus reducing the capacity of the freeway by 25% . The intent was to encourage people to develop car pools but alas the law of unintended consequences took effect so the result was to create even greater traffic jams.

But remember this is California, the land of the liberal elite. This is the state that guarantees anyone who can sneak into the country Constitutional protections, welfare, free education, and free medical. This is a state where the homeless are subsidized with stipends – a state filled with people who feel and care for their fellow man and who are willing to protest at the drop of a liberal cause. However, the traffic is terrible which makes it difficult for these liberals to get to the place where they can protest the plight of the poor and downtrodden – so they have come up with the solution – TOLL LANES. Therefore, for the limousine elite they can use their personal money by buying their way around the traffic jams they caused for the poor and downtrodden so they can rush to the places where they can protest for the poor and downtrodden. The hypocrisy of this seems to escape them.

In spite of what most civilized people would consider drawbacks to living like this the reality is that people are flooding into California – many legally. The result is housing is hard to come by but you can still buy a 1940’s two bedroom one bath bungalow for – depending on location -- $500,000 to $900,000. Selling a house there is quite an experience because you simply place your house on the market and wait for the bidding to begin. No one ever reduces their price because they always expect someone to pay more than the asking price. So who would pay this kind of money for what most people would consider a shack or at best a starter home? The brain dead – that’s who – these are the people who feel that living in perpetual sunshine is more important than having quality. There is no doubt but that California is the home of the living dead – their brains have been cooked by all of that sun.

Rights in Review

The newspapers are an endless source of insight into how the media think, liberals feel, and union labor reacts. It seems that Carly Fiorina (former CEO of Hewlett Packard) had the temerity to state – flat out – no spin or diplomatic political correctness – that NO ONE IS ENTITLED TO A JOB. This unvarnished statement gave the liberal press the vapors, caused some of the audience to swoon, and the unions to erupt into paroxysms of socialist regurgitation. Ms Fiorina rightfully pointed out that America is competing in a global economy where China and Russia have brought 300 million people into the workforce – workers who are competing with Americans for jobs. Many of these foreign workers have skills equivalent to Americans and many more have technical skills that are increasingly hard to find in America. She went on to say that the American education system is failing and that if something is not done soon to bolster our education in math and science America will no longer be able to compete.

Naturally this statement was met with denial and she was castigated for being out of touch, callous, and unfeeling. Notice that none of these attacks actually stated that she was WRONG – just that she was UNFEELING. What has gone unnoticed is that it is this focus on feelings by the elite media and the liberals that is the root cause. Such subjects as arithmetic, reading, and writing are no longer germane to the typical curriculum – instead we teach how to use calculators and computers – not how to build or design them. We focus on sex education rather than biology. We allow students to express themselves in writing but don’t mark off for grammar or spelling for fear of hurting their little egos by showing failure. Geography is deader than Latin as are the multiplication tables. The result is we are graduating kids who can’t read or write or even make change without a machine. These are the people that we are expecting to compete in a global labor market where the competition has been drilled in fundamentals from the first grade. Obviously this is an unrealistic expectation but then we send these same poorly educated kids off to the Universities which have ceased being centers of education but have become a cross between a poorly run business and a propaganda machine for the liberals.

These same under educated kids enter the university unprepared and disinterested in education. For the most part these are the final four years of high school where they are free to indulge themselves in sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. They take majors in gender studies, black studies, political science, philosophy, but rarely do they get involved in engineering, mathematics, physics, or any of those classes that require hard work or might prepare them for work as adults. These are the people who leave college and believe that they have a RIGHT to a job because that is what their left wing progressive professors have told them. They are offended at the idea that they have no skills and that the market for Philosophers has softened since Aristotle made it pay. The ardent graduate in gender studies think that they are entitled to a high paying job and the fact that they can’t get one is demonstrable proof that business is run by a bunch of misogynistic old white men. The idea that the businessman might be looking for someone with skills remotely connected with his business is never considered. The government should investigate this discrimination because these graduates have a right to a job.

I don’t buy any of this and think that Ms Fiorina, like Bill Cosby before her, told the truth and the liberals can’t handle the truth. The country had better wake up and get control of this situation before the American labor force sinks to unsuitability for anything other than raw labor.

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY – AN OXYMORON?

Once again the newspapers bring new insight into how liberals think but in reality they don’t think – they feel. Liberals are always in favor of helping the poor and the expense of the rich. They are in favor of education but with diversity, love, and understanding for everybody. They see all cultures as equal and sincerely believe all persons (they cannot bring themselves to say men) are created equal. They feel these things just as they feel that those that have worked hard and have accumulated wealth have a moral obligation to share that with the (how I hate this term) less fortunate.

Today we are treated to the New York Times informing us that Wal-Mart could pay their employees more. Of course this is true, any employer – including the New York Times—could pay their employees more and the reason they don’t is called “competition”. Customers – like the readers of the New York Times – are only willing to pay a certain price for a product and once the cost of that product is out of alignment with similar service providers the customers go elsewhere. Apparently this simple economic fact is outside of the educational scope of reporters employed by the NYT and the liberal establishment. The liberals essentially hate capitalism, competition, and anything that allows one person or group to gain more than what they feel is fair. The fact is that Wal-Mart is a business that started out as a small business and is now the largest business in the world. Because of this the liberals think they are morally obligated to pay more to their employees, pay higher prices to their suppliers, but not charge more for their products although that would be OK if it resulted in making them less competitive.

The entire argument revolves around the belief that Wal-Mart has a moral obligation to pay higher wages because they are profitable. However, nothing is said about other companies paying their employees more just because they are profitable. The attitude is that Wal-Mart is exploiting their workers but Wal-Mart has over a million employees, world wide and over 20,000 suppliers. Apparently the majority of these employees and suppliers are satisfied because if they aren’t they can certainly go elsewhere. Clearly the liberal community simply wants to destroy Wal-Mart because it is a vivid example of successful capitalism.

This brings us to the other item in the Newspaper where we are informed that government cuts in spending will reduce the number of internships available for low income students. First, it is worth noting that government cuts in spending never seem to impact any of the pork barrel projects, research grants to academia, or foreign aid, but they always seem to impact the poor, the down trodden, education, and fire and safety. But this is beside the point of this article which implies by its wording that students coming from affluent families will still get internships while those in low income families will be left out. How this conclusion is reached is not explained and I suspect it is not explained because it is untenable. As anyone who has ever hired an intern knows the number of internships is small but the ones that are available go to the most aggressive applicants with the best set of skills. It has nothing to do with their families and certainly has nothing to do with their need.

That is the thing about the liberal establishment, they want to make hiring dependent on race and need and independent of ability. It doesn’t matter if you can’t read or write or have only elementary qualifications, if you are homeless and poor you deserve to have a job or to be admitted to the finest educational institution on that basis alone. The liberals still cannot grasp the egalitarian concepts that underpin communism and socialism don’t work and have never worked. Rather that raising up the lower classes they bring down the upper classes so that everyone is equally poor. No one has any obligation to share their wealth or provide for the poor. If they do so then that is a choice but not an obligation.