Posted by
Steve on Tuesday, July 26, 2011 9:37:27 AM
It was good to go on vacation. We were out of contact with the entire electronic world for most of two weeks. That was great in many respects. It gave us a chance to unwind and enjoy nature. But, we also could not keep up with the news.
Our trip took us down almost the entire length of California. One thing I noticed was the signs notifying the public that fallow fields are a result of activities of politicians, not economics or conservation. That was mind opening. It is amazing that a little fish that lives in the salt marshes of the Sacramento River can have such a great impact all over California.
I do not remember the name of the fish. It lives in the salt marshes at the mouth of the Sacramento River. The salt marshes are primarily a result of the tides rising and falling, not the fresh water coming down stream. There needs to be fresh water, but the salt water from the San Francisco Bay is primarily what keeps the salt marshes alive. Environmentalists have convinced politicians that fresh water from the Sacramento River should be kept in the dams and not released for use in farming. This has resulted in thousands of prime farmland being taken out of production. Some of the water in the dams is needed by the fish, but most of the water can be used by farmers. Environmentalists (who, in my experience, do not want to protect the environment, they want to destroy agriculture and the economy) will not allow water to be released for agriculture no matter the tremendous impact on California.
California is in a tremendous economic disaster. It is the result of overspending on government programs and left wing boondoggles. But, the situation could be so much better if people were working instead of drawing unemployment checks. All it would take is to release water from the Sacramento River dams and some other northern California rivers to allow farming to start again.
The release of the water would immediately produce hundreds, if not thousands of agriculture jobs in California. Then, people would need to transport and process the crops before it got to the public in the form of food. That would mean additional thousands of people. It would not solve the economic crisis in California, but it would make a huge impact. The thousands of people taken off the unemployment and welfare rolls and put to work would reduce government costs. The income these people made could be taxed which would result in more money coming to the state. That would reduce the deficit even further.
The economic problems in California are so severe that this solution would not make a huge dent in the deficit. But it would help and it would make people feel better about working to solve the problem. Those are positive things. If you put enough of these kinds of things together, you just might have a solution to the problem. Right now, the state is looking at bankruptcy or default as their only option. They really hope that the federal government ignores the constitution and bails them out so they can continue overspending. As a taxpayer, I would hope that California looks to solutions that help solve the problem before they ask the federal government to ignore the constitution.