Topic: Liberal Fascism
Once upon a time, California was America’s El Dorodo, the land of our dreams. The Golden State’s hold on the national imagination was such that in the Library of America was able to publish Writing Los Angeles, a literary anthology focused on California’s largest city and cultural capital. It runs to 880 pages.
That’s why it’s so sad to watch California’s progressive political establishment run the nation’s largest state into the ground. And of all the damaging policies with which they’ve burdened California’s economy, the worst are those relating to the environment.
In California, being green is a species of religious fundamentalism, as Joel Kotkin relates in this article for Forbes. And the consequences of green fanaticism have been dire for the state’s economy. Kotkin notes, for example:
California, still the nation’s third largest oil producer, should be riding the rise in commodity prices, but the state’s green politicians seem determined to drive this sector out of the state. In Richmond, east of San Francisco, onerous regulations pushed by a new Green-led city administration may drive a huge Chevron refinery, a major employer for blue collar workers, out of the city entirely. Roughly a thousand jobs are at stake, according to Chevron’s CEO, who also questioned whether the company would continue to make other investments inside the state.
Read the whole article—not only as the tale of a once-great state’s sad decline, but also as a preview of the future that Barack Obama desires for America. The policies he advocates for the nation are precisely the ones that are transforming the American El Dorado into a Third World theme park.
