Inspections and politics

[Yikes]

Someone forwarded to me an essay by California historian and professor Victor Davis Hanson called "Two Californias". A central theme is that the middle and upper class is over-taxed and over-regulated, while the poorer class is ignored, both to their detriment (public safety) and to the benefit of their laissez-faire entreprenurial spirit. A couple of paragraphs describing the Central Valley area where he lives:

"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?"

Do you experience this in your job? How would you respond to him?

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/255320/two-californias-victor-davis-hanson

 

[packsaddle]

After reading the whole article, I would respond to him with "amen".

 

[conarb]

They came here to work in agriculture just like the Oakies did in the '30s, the Environmentalists had the water shut off and they found they could stay and not work, just live on government benefits.

California coastal elites may worry about the oxygen content of water available to a three-inch smelt in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta,

Even if the courts free up water for them the owners of the land fear investing money with Cap & Trade in place.

 

[brudgers]

The guy observes the replacement of the small family farm with free market industrial agriculture driven by shareholder interests.

And then blames regulation and taxes for the squalor.

What an idiot.

A broken record is less predictable.

 

[Jobsaver]

Usury, disquised as shareholder interest. The article reminds me of those written to address stored nuclear waste.

 

[conarb]

When the environmentalists sued to shut off the water to protect the smelt it destroyed both the family farms and the corporate farms, lack of water doesn't discriminate between private and corporate entities. In the end it was determined that it wasn't the pumps killing the smelt, it is the toxic sewage from the City of Sacramento that is poisoning them.

 

[Francis Vineyard]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/255320/two-californias-victor-davis-hanson[/URL]

Follow where they are spending those tax dollars to help.