*Worth Studying: *(Even if he does get the colors reversed.) Joel
Kotkin on the blue states "meltdown"
<http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-blue-state-meltdown-and-the-collapse-of-the-chicago-model>.
On the surface this should be the moment the Blue Man basks in
glory. The most urbane president since John Kennedy sits in the
White House. A San Francisco liberal runs the House of
Representatives while the key committees are controlled by
representatives of Boston, Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and the Bay
Area---bastions of the gentry.
Despite his famous
no-blue-states-no-red-states-just-the-United-States statement, more
than 90 percent of the top 300 administration officials come from
states carried last year by President Obama. The inner
cabinet---the key officials---hail almost entirely from a handful of
cities, starting with Chicago but also including New York, Los
Angeles, and the San Francisco area.
This administration shares all the basic prejudices of the Blue Man
including his instinctive distaste for "sprawl," cars, and
factories. In contrast, policy is tilting to favor all the basic
blue-state economic food groups---public employees, university
researchers, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street, and the major
urban land interests.
Yet despite all this, the blue states appear to be continuing their
decades-long meltdown.
Because, as Kotkin explains, they have been following the policies that
the Obama administration is trying to impose on the entire country.
One of the worst examples comes from California:
Perhaps the most searing disaster is unfolding in the rich Central
Valley. Large areas are about to be returned to desert---due less
to a mild drought than to regulations designed to save obscure fish
species in the state's delta. Over 450,000 acres have been allowed
to go fallow. Nearly 30,000 agriculture jobs---mostly held by
Latinos---were lost just in May. Unemployment, 17 percent across
the Central Valley, reaches to more than 40 percent in some towns
such as Mendota.
"We are getting the sense some people want us to die," notes native
son Tim Stearns, a professor of entrepreneurship at California State
University at Fresno. "It's kind of like they like the status quo
and what happens in the Central Valley doesn't matter. These are
just a bunch of crummy towns to them."
(Crummy towns in areas that raise a very large proportion of America's
food --- but that doesn't seem to matter to those who run California.)
Though the mistakes made by Michigan's Governor Granholm may provide an
even clearer example of what won't work, economically.
Kotkin thinks there is hope, even for some of our most Democratic
states, because voters in them, especially taxpayers, are beginning to
catch on. I agree, and expect to see Republican gains, starting, most
likely, in New Jersey, where the Republican candidate, Chris Christie,
now has a double digit lead in most polls
<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2009/governor/nj/new_jersey_governor_corzine_vs_christie-1051.html>
over incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine.
By way of the Instapundit <http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/82342/>,
who has a video interview of Kotkin.
- 12:49 PM, 22 July 2009 [link]
<http://www.seanet.com/%7Ejimxc/Politics/July2009_3.html#jrm7648>
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