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California More Like a Banana Republic?

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The French are not the only nation to have doubts about the wisdom of its government. Brexit at its core is about the Brits doubting that Brussels know best. Even the U.S. has its own version, William McGurn reminds readers in the WSJ.

War on Poverty and the Devastation of the Black Family

Until recently Exhibit A was the war America lost—the “war on poverty.” More than 50 years and trillions of dollars after Lyndon B. Johnson launched it with the best of intentions, all we have to show for it is the devastation of the black family and the dysfunctions of our inner cities.

California Has Highest Overall Poverty Rate in the U.S.

Today, however, the crisis of good intentions is manifested most dramatically in the green movement, particularly in California.

In a recent article for the Orange County Register, Chapman University’s Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky write that “California is creating a feudalized society characterized by the ultra-rich, a diminishing middle class and a large, rising segment of the population that is in or near poverty.”

California now has the highest overall poverty rate in the nation, they write, and suffers from a level of inequality “closer to that of Central American banana republics.”

California Hasn’t Reached French Levels of Rebellion –Yet

A coalition of more than 200 prominent civil-rights leaders filed suit against the California Air Resources Board. California’s greenhouse gas policies, they argue, are disproportionately raising housing, transportation and electricity costs for Latinos and African-Americans. The suit contests California’s claims that it has a “clean and green” economy is a “fiction.”

The climate regime, the suit notes, is imperious. Though Los Angeles and the Bay Area already rank among the worst in the nation for traffic congestion, the suit contends California’s climate leaders “have decided to intentionally increase traffic congestion” in the hope of getting more people to opt for public transport. In other words, California’s greens are willing to inconvenience the poor to get them to do what their feudal lords want them to do.

(W)hen progressives squeeze the American worker with high taxes, green agendas and failed government programs, where are the headlines about the crisis of good intentions?

Read more here.

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Debbie Young

Debbie, editor-in-chief of Richardcyoung.com, has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over three decades. When not in Key West, Debbie spends her free time researching and writing in and about Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, and practicing yoga.