OldSouth's 'Hey-Lookie-Here Award' Nominee: Arnold Schwarzenegger

Q. What are the final words of a redneck before he dies?

A. Hey, yall! Lookie here!!

What makes a hard-core redneck what he is, is his utter lack of a modicum of sober judgment. These are the guys who think they can cook them up a bunch of methamphetamine in the trailer (with children present), and that nothing bad will happen--to them, the children, or the trailer. Trailer blows up, children end up dead or injured for life, and Billy-Bob (Bubbah's second cousin, twice removed by three divorces) is memorialized on camera saying, 'Sheeut-fahr! I tode him this might happen, but he tode me he knew whut hee'z doin', so thar'-ye-go!' Billy-Bob has a better idea--he goes to a local motel to cook up his meth, thus rendering the property uninhabitable for anyone, and forcing the owners into bankruptcy. The owners end up fleeing the state, and the local bank president is left with twenty homeless people (residents of the motel) to care for. Really, it just happened here locally, this year.

Or the guy who burns his house down Thanksgiving Day, attempting to deep-fry a turkey on his wooden-deck back porch, using one of those liquid propane gas burners/fryers. Call goes out the local fire department, who show up in a jiffy, only to find the house gone, and discover that the owner and failed chef is the recently retired chief of their city fire department. Really, it happened! Can't make this up, it's just too stupid not to be true.

OS used to believe that redneck-dom, the state of being a redneck, was only confined to the American South, and perhaps parts of the Midwest. He has since taken a more expansive view, given events of the past couple of decades. Rednecks come in all shapes, sizes, colors, ages, income and education levels. There are rednecks walking around with Oxbridge and Ivy League degrees, ya'll! It's downright chilling to contemplate.

So, in honor of the phenomenon, OS has decided to launch a new competition: The 'OldSouth Hey-Lookie-Here Award', for outstandingly stupid behaviour by people in places of high responsibility who have every reason to know better, and every incentive to act better (not the least because their decisions mean life or death, survival or starvation for so many people they never meet).

Of course, for the 1990's, Bill Clinton wins hands down. 'Nuff said there.

George Bush takes the 'oughts', for starting a war with Iraq without a clue as to what he might do if the US actually won. Tens of thousands of deaths later, it occurs that perhaps it would be good to come up with some sort of plan.

This year's nominee list could go on forever, but Dominique Strauss-Kahn enters as the first nominee. (He gets the 'EeeewGross!' ribbon, in any case.)

Second nominee, and it may be hard to beat him, is Ahnuld (I'll be back!)Schwarzenegger, the Styrian stud, da Gubbernator, etc. etc. Turns out he fathered a child thirteen years ago with the housekeeper, under wife Maria's nose, and maintained the fiction all along that the child was fathered by the housekeeper's husband, while paying for support of the child.

Sweet. This is televangelist Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart sort of stuff. It's Jesse Jackson sort of stuff. It's an Eliot Spitzer moment, a Governor Paterson moment, it's a Ray Blanton episode (look it up, too long to detail). It's, it's, it's...well, words just fail after a while.

All this occurring while California was burning down, browning out, melting down, going broke, descending into fiscal and cultural chaos, with businesses fleeing the state to avoid the havoc. His wife was StandingByHerMan, and his legitimate children were being raised in the same house with the housekeeper who held the secret that could blow up their lives at any moment. This could be, well, a source of stress for someone attempting to govern Kuhlifornia. Why would one run for governor of one of the largest economies in the world with a skeleton like that in the closet? These things have a tendency to blow up on one's face. Just sayin'...

OS is not ranting about Ahnuld's sexual ethics, proclivities or misbehaviors. That stuff is just the tip of the iceberg, the symptoms of a deep, narcissistic stupidity, where the impact of one's behavior on the world around never occurs to a person like Ahnuld, or Dominique, or Bill, or George, or Jesse.

This is just as stupid as the redneck cooking meth in the motel, or frying the turkey on the back porch. Problem is, as tragic as the motel closure is, or the embarrassment of the destroyed house, at least that damage is localized.

People like Ahnuld create damage that reaches into the lives of millions.

Hey, lookie-here!

Victor Davis Hanson Rides His Bike Across Central California

This is sobering reading.

Hanson begins:

The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California. I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most lavish entitlements, the near-worst public schools (based on federal test scores), and the largest number of illegal aliens in the nation, along with an overregulated private sector, a stagnant and shrinking manufacturing base, and an elite environmental ethos that restricts commerce and productivity without curbing consumption.

During this unscientific experiment, three times a week I rode a bike on a 20-mile trip over various rural roads in southwestern Fresno County. I also drove my car over to the coast to work, on various routes through towns like San Joaquin, Mendota, and Firebaugh. And near my home I have been driving, shopping, and touring by intent the rather segregated and impoverished areas of Caruthers, Fowler, Laton, Orange Cove, Parlier, and Selma.

OS urges you to read the balance of the essay.

Recovery and renewal can come, but if California began tomorrow to do absolutely everything right, it will take ten years to turn things around in any significant manner. Judging by November's ballot, they still lack the will to do so. OS fears that the impending attempts to bail this state's culture out with cash will only increase the long-term pain.

As things now stand, California is an object lesson for the rest of us in WhatNotToDo.

Had To Confirm It Just To Make Certain: California Welfare Cash Cards Used In Casino ATM's

So, making our way through North Carolina to visit with friends, on the 'Never gonna drive through Atlanta ever again' route.

NPR on the radio, 'cuz country radio is like fingernails on a chalkboard these days.

Floating up through the speakers, a constant flow of polite talk on innocuous subjects, competing with the road noise, and suddenly we hear someone being interviewed about State of California cash cards issued to welfare recipients being used to withdraw cash in the ATMs of over half the casinos in California.

What???!!! Mrs. Os and her stunned husband listen in disbelief as Jack Dolan of the Los Angeles Times calmly (and wittily) tells the tale of what he found by checking the publicly available records.

Of course, the Guhvernator is all over it, by gosh and by golly.

Turns out, 1.8 million dollars flew out California's door via these ATM's since October 2009.

Now, given the fact that California hands out some 6.6 billion dollars in cash assistance every year, 1.8 million is really in the statistical realm of a rounding error. Or, one can contemplate the fact that 1.8 million is a drop in the bucket of the breathtaking 6.6 billion welfare tab that California spends every year.

Six billion six thousand million, heading out the door, most of the money borrowed from the rest of the world.

It's not about the money. It's about a culture where this sort of behavior is chatted about cheerily on NPR, in almost an amused tone of voice.

The days off in Florida were all too brief. It took two days just to begin to get caught up on sleep from the previous month's non-stop work. OS and the sainted Mrs. OS have spent the past twenty years working and parenting, parenting and working, and working and working and working...and paying taxes...and paying taxes...and see government at all levels spend more and more, and give the money we earned and the taxes we paid to people who take it to casinos for gambling.

The words to describe the feelings just won't line up tonight.

'These Cuts Affect Me'

 

Inside Higher Ed posted a breathless account of yesterday's student protests at UC Berkeley. 

Hmm...Stop the presses! 

Dog Bites Man!

Students Protest At Berkeley!

With the smell of burning sage and the occasional hint of weed in the air, an impassioned throng of students from the University of California’s Berkeley campus marched to Oakland (where the university system's headquarters are located) in opposition of budget cuts and tuition hikes they say are crippling one of the nation’s premier public institutions.

While the five-mile trek to Oakland proved largely peaceful, police arrested as many as 200 protesters once they reached freeways and tried to block them. The arrests mark the continuation of a what many describe as a troubling trend at the University of California, which has seen recent allegations of police brutality, racially motivated discord and an activist movement that at times appears intent on provoking law enforcement. 

Thsi demonstration was part of a larger effort across the country yesterday, with protests reported in other locations. Berkeley, however, seems to have been the most vocal.

OS does not think another 'Those spoiled college kids' rant is in order.  He has two of his own, neither of them spoiled, but both very cognizant that their opportunities have not come cheaply.  They use Pell Grants, one has taken on significant loans, both work their patooties off.  They don't talk of it often, but Dad hears the unease in their voices.

OS actually feels a bit of sympathy for the kids who went on their march in Berkeley yesterday. (The attempts to block the freeway, the windows smashed, etc., elicit no sympathy.)

They were raised in California, the land of milk and honey. Their folks likely went to UC, and prospered in their time. What could go wrong? Money grew on trees, and the state will always be there for the ed system. They were raised with that cultural assumption, which has proven to be fallacious.  That's painful and angering to kids in late adolescence, which is what college students are. Their ethical world is black and white, and their cause is inherently just and true, just because it's their cause.

Had they been born five years earlier, they would not have even been aware of the gathering storm, as they busily did what college students do.

The cultural assumption was fallacious. And erroneous assumptions, if embraced, bring terrible consequences, in both individual lives and the wider world.

There is good news here, though.  Some of these kids, in a more sober mood, will begin to read and think about what led to this day, and what it means.  These kids will have the opportunity to embrace some healthier assumptions, and transmit them to their children.

Maybe, in 2030, we won't be reading accounts of undergraduates trashing college campuses because their tuition bills spiked unexpectedly.

In the meantime, allow OS to recommend a college that has avoided so many of the traps that so many other institutions have encountered.

It's not the only one, by any means, but provides a great template as the educational system begins to reorganize.

Taxation In The Land Of Fruits And Nuts

Just picked this anecdote from a recent Mish post.  You may need to read it a couple of times, just to take it in:

Hi Mish

I just picked up tax documents from my CPA. California require me to pay 30% of my estimated tax for the year on 04/15/10 and another 50% by 06-15-10. The balance of 20% is due on 01-15-11.

They want 80% of my annual estimate after 6 months, taxing me on money I have yet to earn for the year.

'Taxing me on money I have yet to earn for the year....'

Siphoning off actual cash on profits that may or may not materialize.

Hmm...this should encourage business and job formation in California, whaddayathink?

Here's an idea: Have RBS open business lending offices out there on Planet Ahnuld, and use some of that UK taxpayer money to lend to start-ups.  What could go wrong?

And We Wonder Why Kuhlifornia Is In Bad Shape

On the way to somewhere else, I tripped across this nugget from ABC News, about the ready availability of marijauna in Los Angeles. (You'll need go to the bottom of the page, and click on 'High Times'.)

All perfectly legal, with a doctor's note.

And doctors perfectly willing to issue that note for any number of reasons.

In 1992, one of Bill Clinton's inside circle kept hammering home 'It's about the economy, Stupid!'.

He was wrong.

It's about the culture, always has been, always will be.