House of Eratosthenes

Tens of thousands of prisoners are scheduled by a U.S. Supreme Court order to be released. But why this inability to house our criminals when we pay among the highest sales, income, and gas taxes in the nation? Too many criminals? Too few new prisons? Too high costs per prisoner? Too many non-violent crimes that warrant incarceration?
:
Our schools rate just below Mississippi in math and science. Tell me why, given our high taxes and highest paid teachers in the nation? Can the governor or legislature explain? Is the culprit the notoriously therapeutic California curriculum? The inability to fire incompetent teachers? The vast number of non-English speaking students? Derelict parents? How odd that not a single state official can offer any explanation other than: “We need more money.” What is the possible cure for the near worst math and science students in the nation? Yes, I see it now: the California Senate just passed a bill mandating the teaching of homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered history, just the sort of strategy to raise those English composition and vocabulary scores among the linguistic and arithmetic illiterate.

Try driving a California “freeway” lately, say the 101 between Gilroy and San Luis Obispo or the 99 between Modesto and Stockton, or an east-west lateral like the 152 between Casa de Fruita and Gilroy, or the 12 between Napa and Stockton. In other words, just try driving across the state. These stretches are all nightmarish death traps (the concrete divider on the two-lane 12 is a sick joke, a sort of kill-contraption), no improvements from 40 years ago when there were 15 million fewer people and far better drivers. But how did this happen when we pay the highest gasoline taxes in the nation; where did the revenue go? Is there some cruel joke I’m missing — a stash of billions in gas tax money buried somewhere and never used?

That just sums up life in California right there: Is there a big stash somewhere? A big palette of hundred dollar bills being used to level out a table with a shorter leg, or maybe for extra insulation the attic? Otherwise, it doesn’t add up. It’s like handing over your paycheck to your lovely wife, month after month, year after year — but the the bank account is still empty, the bills still show up past-due, every single one of ’em…and dinner is always liver & onions or ham hock soup. Or that ever-popular modern-American single-income-household cuisine, I-didn’t-feel-like-cooking-let’s-order-out.

VDH is on to us. Our state treasury is a black hole; the astronomical metaphor applies every single way it possibly can. The escape velocity has long ago exceeded c, the speed of light, and nothing in our known universe can escape it. The gravity well only increases with every bit of detritus and flotsam that becomes so ensnared.

It isn’t very happy reading, but it is necessary reading. Especially if you are sharing this state with me. Or rather what’s left of the state.

Hat tip again to Gerard Van der Leun.

If it is that bad why are both of you still there? Honestly, I hear much doom and gloom from Californians and there doesn’t appear to be any end in sight to the current economic model, why stay?
- Duffy | 05/25/2011 @ 05:08
Plotted against economic success, the union seems to have taken the shape of an upside-down teardrop. So it’s all too clear which part of it is pointed downward and is lower than all the rest, but the opposite ended is rounded — and shuffling — it’s not at all clear who’s most prosperous. Texas seems to be taking that place for the time being, but it has its own warning signs of danger ahead. Red ink in the budget, a bunch of lefty types insisting insufficient tax rates represent the only identifiable cause…looks like the same story unfolding.

The job, as I’ve said, is kick-ass. That’s important; I’m in a process of making up for lost time. When you do things differently from everybody else, it seems jealousies tend to enshroud you, and you get a lot ill will you didn’t ask for. Plus, as you know from reading these pages for awhile, my relationships with women have been tempestuous throughout my youth. When you’re a man, that translates to “expensive.” So all in all, as I’ve learned about life, I’ve paid an inordinately high price for being around petty jealous colleagues and vindictive women. I can’t point to any one singular wrong decision I made to bring this about; many’s the time I thought maybe California is the problem — I moved here when I was very young, and if my inexperience showed in my bad decisions since I got here, it was doubly horrible before I showed up, but it seems like I’ve seen more conflict since the move here.

But for the immediate efforts that make up for lost time before, the immediate prescription is to stay. This gets into my concerns about the software industry; I have noticed very often, my job description as an engineer tends to devolve into something like “do things exactly the same way the other guy would have done them,” which as you’ve seen before, I’ve long declared is the exact opposite of what technology really is. Assuming, that is, that this attitude is carried to an extreme…which it strongly tends to be. So, the short answer to your question? I may not be confined to the extreme tip of the bow of the boat that is slipping beneath the waves; but I am confined to the boat itself. Said boat being both technology, and America. What would be the point of moving astern?
- mkfreeberg | 05/25/2011 @ 06:48
A couple of things:

1. California has never been as free or Conservative as Texas–ever. There is no comparing the two–pure apples and oranges. I lived in California for over 25 years; I currently live in Texas for the second time in my life, and I think I’ll be staying this time. Texas will never be California…thank God.

2. California IS the problem. Women and colleagues are cooler elsewhere. It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. Certain types are drawn to California. They’re generally not the most congenial. I could write a book about these two points alone, with over half of it dedicated to the sociology of the so-called “Golden state.”

But I won’t bother. Move on, and find out for yourself. Life is better elsewhere.
- sanskara | 05/25/2011 @ 08:19
I’m still lookin’ for that kickass job takin’ pictures in the Rockies. *sigh*

It occurrs to me … if today the Federal Government thinks it can keep a company from building planes in one state vs another due to economic impacts on favorite groups, what’s to stop them from keeping you from moving to another state because you don’t like how overly bloated and endebted and regulating its government has become.

Mr. Beck keeps saying soon you will not recognize this country. I’ve often brushed that off as hyperbole … but I don’t know. We may just be about there.
- philmon | 05/25/2011 @ 08:29
I’m getting a new perspective on why I identified so strongly with Henry Rearden when I was reading that novel all those years ago. I thought at the time it was the “mooching family” thing, but there’s more. He & I both live in a world of “just build things, and make good money building things, everything else will work itself out.” Obviously there’s a limit to how much I really believe in that, if it was an absolute in my mind, I wouldn’t have a blog at all.

But I’ve already learned there is some truth to the situation the novel presents, in which the overly-simplistic Rearden view of how to succeed at life, is due for a major upset. What other people think does matter, if for no other reason, then because people have the capacity to become troublemakers. There is a pattern of this troublemaking becoming activated, and coming out in a variety of different ways, they aren’t producing anything and they see someone, in some functional proximity, who is. Our species seems to have some impulse wired into its motherboard, compelling us to jam a rake handle into the wheel spokes. “Crabs in a bucket” mentality.

I do have to say, this interfered with my ability to make a living much more in Seattle than in Sac. But Seattle is also something of a liberal pit, and some of the problem might have been my youth and inexperience working with people. On the other hand, I wouldn’t say I’ve been any kind of a genius about it here, either. But by & large, Seattle is where I racked up a huge tab, and California is where I paid it off…that’s gotta mean something.

Other than that though, there’s not much tying me here. The boy is some 400 miles away; so he’s not here, but then again, there’s a rather tight 800-mile-diameter circle drawn there since I wouldn’t want to move any further away from him.
- mkfreeberg | 05/25/2011 @ 08:42
What sanskara said: Texas. I shall continue to repeat myself as long as you do.
- bpenni | 05/25/2011 @ 10:48
Actually Gerard was saying something both resourceful and imaginative, which is par for the course for him: Vancouver, WA. Set up residence north of the river, no income tax, go shopping in Portland no sales tax. Win win.

In my case, that would break the 400-mile rule. As would Texas, I’m afraid…
- mkfreeberg | 05/25/2011 @ 10:54
Just move already. Everybody I know who lives in California and b*tches about it has trouble pulling the trigger, and it really is better elsewhere. I attribute it to a version of this:

http://www.theamateurfinancier.com/blog/your-mind-and-your-money-sunk-cost-fallacy/

In California, people come to define themselves based on the struggle of living there and how they match up to others running the same hamster wheel. Learning to be someone who isn’t afflicted and defined by your trials and tribulations, or the fight against the politics of your region, is an important step towards sanity. It will give you less to write about here in the blog, but you’ll be much happier overall.

Here in Austin, nobody cares how anyone else votes, or what they think about the next election cycle–and this is the liberal part of the state. I work for a “green” renewable energy company and am an outspoken Conservative (who thinks global warming is horsesh*t.) And yet the nature of the culture here, is that people don’t cross swords over politics. I even said in my interview that I was interested in the job and not the environment, and still got hired.

How did that work? Well, people are happy here, and don’t have the need to go all authoritarian on everyone around them. Now contrast that with California, and Californians in general: They need to control others through endless laws, and the blight on free speech that is political correctness, simply because they feel so miserable with their own selves that they must act out their issues by ruling over everyone else.

By the way, don’t limit yourself to less than 400 miles, or you’ll just get the dysfunctional California dump (ie. Las Vegas, Phoenix, etc.) Move across country to a completely different environment than you’re used to: one that’s quality of life oriented. Honestly, any place more than 300 miles is a plane ride anyway. What’s the difference if it’s one or three hours in coach?

Either way, it’s time to join your brethren on the outside of the prison walls. After you leave, your only regret will be that it wasn’t sooner, and that you ever had any doubts about leaving in the first place.
- sanskara | 05/25/2011 @ 11:23
And then there’s things like this. Yes, it does seem to be a good time to be a Texan.

It will give you less to write about here in the blog, but you’ll be much happier overall.

Actually I don’t blog about California too much; I have the feeling I should do it more often, and if I didn’t live in it, I’d probably still have the feeling I should blog California more often. The control-freaks who “need to control others through endless laws,” et cetera, they cannot be ignored. I have come to see them like fire, although not as useful — a logical person would say “okay well if I cannot extinguish it for some reason, then wall it off” inside a structure of iron, or brick. But then the fire would still try to get out.

None of which drives my decision to stay here, by the way. But I do have the impression people conclude that it is useless to try to make liberals into moderates or conservatives (which it is, in many cases) therefore it is useless to try to confine the scope of the damage that they cause. And so the scope ends up being unlimited. All liberal plans have it in common that their scope of control must be universal and there’s no getting away from it. So when we say “just let it go, get out of that dry rot place” it seems the next thing that always happens, is the control-freak liberals end up consuming everything else anyway. Like I said, fleeing to the stern section of a ship sinking bow-first; it just postpones the inevitable.
- mkfreeberg | 05/25/2011 @ 11:47
I think the thing about California is mostly of an intangible nature, and it won’t translate down into dollars and cents much.

People have different needs, for sure. One thing that you can’t quantify is that California is still gorgeous, and Texas…..isn’t. I lived in San Antonio, Dallas, Austin and Pampa 40 years ago, and I just didn’t care for the weather, the culture, whatever. Another thing is that you can pretty much forget about those long bike rides you like, and anything resembling camping in the mountains. 35% of California is public land; the percentage in Texas is less than 1. All that wide-open space belongs to somebody else, and it’s unlikely you’d be welcome behind those fences.

The other thing, for me, is music, of course. California is identifiably the big leagues in bluegrass, and classical music, and old-time jazz, and blues, and just about every other form I don’t know anything about. I never got over the feeling, even in Austin, that I was a helluva long way away from anywhere. Even if there are great players and singers in Texas (and there are,) there just aren’t enough of ’em to create that critical mass which results in The American Bach Soloists, or David Grisman, or the staggering level of bluegrass and old-timey music all over the state.

Acourse I’m a lot older than you are, and I’m pretty much unenthusiastic about starting over for the umpteenth time at this stage. I will admit that the bluegrass thing is starting to catch fire in me again after being unable to play for a few years, so the South and Southeast are catching my attention. Still, there’s a reason why people have come to the Bay Area for decades, and very little of it is about politics and money.
- rob | 05/25/2011 @ 12:11
Okay, last post on this for me, Morgan, but I’ll just leave you with a few more tidbits I’ve come to realize after fleeing California a decade ago:

1. I used to think the same as you do: gotta combat the liberals and keep the disease from spreading. I was born and raised in California, and I wasn’t going to let them take my homeland–very noble, and all that.

But this isn’t an honest exchange with clear battle lines–I could have won that. This is a war of ideas, and the enemy are immature morons, who will either a) never learn from their stupidity, or b) will learn eventually, but only if they’re allowed to experience the full blunt force trauma of their idiotic public policy (46,000 convicted felons being released onto the streets, for example.) Regardless, unfortunately, they get an equal vote–same as mine–and they want their way. This is a democracy, I need their cooperation, and they won’t listen to reason.

At some point you get exhausted, and just want to live out the rest of your days peacefully, and without other people taking your stuff. Ultimately, I’m not the one making the bad policy decisions or voting for questionable representation. Why should I be around to experience the consequences of bad ideology that isn’t my own? No, I’ll go somewhere else; a place where there are more people who have their heads screwed on straight. And then I’ll contribute to, and reap the rewards of that.

2. I know I made this point up the thread: Texas and California are VERY different. Texas will never be California. When I lived in California, I wrongly assumed that every other state was just in a different stage of degradation, but on its way to becoming California.

But no, every place is not that way. People make a place what it is. In order for Texas to become California, first of all, it would have to be the destination for get-rich-quick, self-absorbed, pathologically-self-centered sociopaths. Secondly, it’s value would have to be propped up by a hipster-obsessed media, that delights in polishing turds like San Francisco. Can you see it doing the same for San Antonio? I thought not.

Lastly, all the Conservatives here would have to suddenly keel over dead, leaving only liberal voters. Liberalism is not an inevitability. But even if you believed it to be so, would you rather live out the next twenty years where Conservatism is strong but waning, or where it’s long been stamped out and left-wing lunacy is reaching a fevered pitch?

Now I need to address Rob’s post, as he posted while I was writing this.

People don’t move to the Bay Area for the politics, Rob, really? Tell that to the Haight-Ashbury crowd. I was born and raised there. It sucks: the emperor is nude and needs to work out.

1. I never found California gorgeous. It’s mostly dry, barren hills, unless you’re counting the Sierra Nevada range–the Pacific Northwest beats the SNR any day. The CA beaches are okay, Florida slays it there.

Texas’ weak point, however, is it’s lack of geographic diversity, but I like the Texas hills just fine. And Southeast is very green and lush. The comment about kissing long bike rides goodbye is ridiculous–Lance Armstrong lives in Austin. There’s far more open space near major metros here than in California; the weather allows outdoor activities pretty much year-round, and the lakes and rivers are comfortably “swimmable.” I don’t know how anyone could think otherwise, unless they simply never left the house.

2. Austin: live music capital of the world. Period. I used to work as a studio musician in the S.F. Bay Area; I know a thing or two about music. Austin’s music scene is well-developed to say the least, especially for country, blues, and bluegrass, and has the largest concentration of upscale audio gear manufacturers in the U.S. for a reason. Houston has the largest concentration of theatre seats in the country, second only to New York City. This state is not the half-way house to nowhere. Let’s not pretend that CA is the be all end all, or that you don’t pay up the a$s for what you do get, should you fight traffic to get there.

Bay Area people always beat the Nor Cal drum ad nauseum, and are always pimping it at the expense of everywhere else, and basic common sense. They have to, to justify their decision to live there, as a quick trip through the region shows the obvious chinks in the armor and raises the question as to the cost of said same. Your mileage may, of course, vary, but it shouldn’t.
- sanskara | 05/25/2011 @ 12:48
sanskara,

Different strokes, I guess. Like I say, I lived in Texas for a long time in the ’60s. I’ve been back a few times since, and it just doesn’t seem that different. There’s always been a defining insularity about Texas that just leaves me flat.

About the music thing…..I know Austin’s fulla clubs (it was in the ’60s, too). Audio ain’t my deal, though, since I largely disqualify anything that comes through a speaker. And if there are dozens of pickers in Austin, there are thousands in California. Guys from Nashville and the Southeast most generally end up in L.A. or the Bay Area, not Texas, I think. That was resoundingly true in the ’70s, and seems to hold true still. I say again, I’ve never encountered a vibrancy in music like I have here, or as many people that are world-class to be encountered in the most unlikely circumstances. I’ve worked with several conductors here that could sightread orchestra scores at the piano, and transpose at sight too. And as far as Bach goes, anything outside of California and New York is definably the minor leagues; it may be triple-A, but it’s not part of the larger world. And by the way, if you were making a living in the California studios, hats off. I’ve done some studio work as a singer, and the level of players is jaw-dropping.

As for Florida…..well, if you like beaches that are more like L.A. than L.A, and are fond of 90% humidity. I’m not a beach guy, but I found after a lifetime in the midwest and Texas that the California coast has a powerful effect on me. I don’t “pimp” the Bay Area, as you like to put it, though I’ve rarely met a Texan who didn’t feel it necessary to be a boomer of their chosen state. And I mistrust any use of the word “should”.

I just live here, that’s all: I came here with a backpack and noplace to go back to, and it’s given me a life and taught me more music than I knew existed. I was 29 then, and 66 now. It ain’t over by a damn sight,and there could well be another place for me yet, but I expect it’ll be in the mountains if it’s not in a major-league city of some sort. Don’t think it’ll be Texas, though, on accounta it depresses the shit outta me.

I don’t like liberals any more than you do, and as I’ve been at some pains to point out, I live around more of ’em in Sonoma County than I ever encountered in Berkeley. But it’s quiet here, and I’ve been recuperating for a few years. And San Francisco’s right down the street, and I get a rush every time I drive across the Golden Gate bridge. We’ll see.
- rob | 05/25/2011 @ 13:20
Here in Austin, nobody cares how anyone else votes, or what they think about the next election cycle

Whooooooooah. I gotta tell you, Sanskara, Austin must’ve changed a LOT since the last time I was there. Admittedly this was a decade or so ago — meaning BDS was at fever pitch — but it was wall-to-wall obnoxious leftist assholes back then. I’m talking the kind of prog-wads that make the Bay Area such a joy — hemp necklaces, Che t-shirts, Priuses with seventeen bumper stickers enjoining me to “Keep Austin Weird,” the works.

Maybe I was in a different part of town….?

The rest of the state seemed pretty cool though. And you can’t beat the no state income tax thing. I wonder if that has anything to do with Texas being one of the few states to add jobs in the last recession…..

Naahhh, can’t be.
- Severian | 05/25/2011 @ 14:49
It occurs to me that if you just push the zoom-control slider in a ways, you find I actually am taking sanskara‘s advice. We’re ensconced safely in Folsom where it doesn’t even take any balls to go walking around in a “One Big Ass Mistake America” tee shirt…in fact I get grins & thumbs’-up all the time. Haven’t been to San Francisco in the better part of a decade.

It also occurs to me that when you bring up a map of states that have no income tax, you see a perfect overlap with the map of places our chattering-class has managed to convince us are unsuitable as areas-of-origin for electable presidential candidates…by which I mean, yes Alaska is on there, but there are some others too. Texas is the only exception. Although, until another post-Bush candidate is offered from Texas and we see how the lefties react with their sputtering outrage, can it really be said that the Longhorn State is an exception?

Meanwhile, the other 41 states that dutifully penalize you for the crime of being productive…oh yes, absolutely you can come from there and become President. Perfectly natural. Illinois? No problem-o.

No, not thinking of being President. Just sayin’…the “abandon the submerged bow when the entire ship is sinking”…just seems like the wrong way to go. Seems like something that’s already been tried.
- mkfreeberg | 05/25/2011 @ 14:59

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

“Where Dreams Die”Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

“Where Dreams Die”
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011