Off-the-Books America

[Geee]

American Thinker:



We are becoming two Americas -- not the familiar complaint about the rich and the poor, but rather the regulated and the off-the-books Americas.

Last week, Victor Davis Hanson wrote about the hollowed-out society in the Central Valley around his native Fresno, California. He wrote:

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.

The elementary school that he attended as a child is now 94 percent Hispanic and well below standards in English and math. The rural roads are "fast turning into rubble." The irrigation cutoffs have idled tens of thousands of acres, and unemployment is 15 to 20 percent.

There are many rural "trailer-house compounds" filled with junked cars, lean-tos, and trash, but for some reason, the regulatory state does not reach out and regulate them.