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Most of California just got declared a disaster area -- again. This time floods were the agency of disaster. Before that, wildfires. Every so often, a big earthquake. This is getting to be a habit, sort of like the biblical plagues of Egypt, and you wonder when they'll repent.
What should they repent of? Hypocrisy, for starters. No
one is more eloquent than California's current pharaoh,
Pete Wilson, when it is time to denounce the federal
government for unfunded mandates
like motor-voter
registration or educating immigrant children.
Wilson has a point. But he's the wrong guy to be making it, because he goes to Washington to beg for disaster relief after every calamity.
Does he believe that California is a quasi-sovereign entity, able to take care of itself and its own? He seems to think so when he's denouncing unfunded mandate -- national problems should not be California problems.
Or does he believe that California is part of a national commonwealth, sharing its gains and losses with its partners? Wilson seems to think that California is part of the commonwealth when he's begging for disaster aid -- California's problems become our problems.
But it's hard to see how California can have it both ways.
That's just the tip of the problem America has with
California. Look at its pernicious influence on national
politics. If you're a rabid conservative, you hate the
Warren Court
-- named for Chief Justice Earl Warren,
a California product. If you're liberal, there's Ronald
Reagan, another former California governor, as well as
Richard Nixon.
Or consider its political innovations: mud-slinging media politics, invented there 50 years ago, and government routinely dominated by petition, initiative and referendum.
California's wealth and power can mislead people who should know better. Consider that the entertainment industry, based in Southern California, is a major funding source for the Democratic party.
Now observe the Clinton administration in its dealings with China. Did it matter that Chinese exports were being produced in prison sweatshops? Not really. Just some talk about how it was better to maintain relationships with China so that these issues could be someday resolved, and meanwhile it would retain its Most Favored Nation trading status. So much for human rights and living wages.
But when China showed possibilities of hurting our entertainment industry with mass-produced bootlegs of music and movies, our state department suddenly found some principles and grew a spine. The administration was perfectly willing to go to the mat, risking an all-out trade war.
The list of problems and distortions that California causes could continue indefinitely. But it's time to be constructive and offer solutions.
Let us go back 150 years, when a young lieutenant in the
U.S. Army was fighting to take California from Mexico. He
later wrote that I do not think there was ever a more
wicked war than that waged by the United States against
Mexico.
U.S. Grant later became president, and was vexed by corruption in the territorial government of another part of the territory gained in that war. He suggested that the United States go to war with Mexico again -- to force it to take New Mexico back.
There's a solution -- ask Mexico to take California back (perhaps there's a flaw in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo), and if Mexico refuses, then call out the troops.
There are risks. Mexico might want not just California, but all that it lost in 1848: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Colorado south and west of the Arkansas.
But look at the benefits. No more Proposition 187 problems in the Golden State, as all Californians would be Mexican citizens. No more California money, techniques and politicians polluting American policies and politics. America could go back to being its sober, industrious self, untroubled by self-esteem enhancement, rolfing, channelers, chakras, tanning salons and like decadence.
However, putting California back into Mexico wouldn't solve the financial problem of supporting California whenever it runs into trouble, since Mexico just came to the U.S. Treasury for $40 billion when it ran into trouble.
Actually, though, it wasn't Mexico. It was Wall Street, which had put serious money in investments which paid off in pesos. When the peso fell, so did the value of those investments.
And then the leaders of American capitalism, supposedly bold plungers who can take risks and reap rewards, came begging to Washington because their risks had gone sour. They want us to cover their losses, but they sure complain at tax time when it's time for them to share their rewards.
Which sounds a lot like Pete Wilson in California. While
we're at it, maybe we should go to war with the Dutch to
get them to take back New Amsterdam. Combine that with full
independence for the District of Columbia, and the
remaining America might prove that small is
beautiful.
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