Confessions of a Job-Killing Poverty-Inducing Political Machine
by Andy Caldwell
Upward mobility has been described as climbing a ladder of success. Unfortunately, the middle rungs of that ladder have been sawn off (on purpose!), thereby creating perpetual poverty for a significant percentage of our population. To understand the local magnitude of this phenomenon, consider the “confession” by a former county official who stated, “the cost of preserving the high quality of life in Santa Barbara County includes limiting economic opportunities for others.”
Accordingly, county supervisors have gone to extraordinary lengths to hide the impacts of their policies on the “others.” When reporting poverty statistics, the supervisors mask the disparities between the north and south county by designating the Lompoc and the Santa Ynez valleys as “mid-county,” a made-up delineation.
Keeping the Poor, Poor
There are three primary programs administered by the county to poor people in our region: Medi-Cal (health benefits), CalFresh (formerly known as food stamps), and CalWorks (formerly known as welfare). The stunning statistics having to do with these programs is that upwards of 72% to 90% of all the recipients of these programs live in either the Lompoc valley (Lompoc had zero job growth between 2010 and 2020) or the greater Santa Maria valley (Santa Maria, Orcutt, Guadalupe and Casmalia). Specifically, of the 168,427 people who receive taxpayer-funded healthcare, 72 % of them live in the North County. That is an astounding 52% of the entire north county population.
Why is there so much poverty in the North County? It has to do with our blue-collar job base and the government policies that continue to destroy it. The largest industry in the north county is agriculture. Traditionally, a significant number of people working in this sector, most of whom are immigrants, would eventually transition to any number of better paying jobs, including manufacturing and industry, oil, trucking, and construction, the very job sectors that have been decimated by government policies.
Our county lost over 20,000 manufacturing and industrial jobs since the 1980s, many due to environmental overkill. The oil industry, whose workforce, in some instances, was comprised of 76% Hispanic workers has been shut down primarily due to climate change machinations. One of the largest trucking companies in the north county just closed its business. Trucking has been destroyed by the California diesel engine rule which required the purchase and use of brand-new diesel trucks (along with new heavy equipment in the construction and farming sectors) which was extremely cost-prohibitive. And now, this sector is being told they must replace their big rigs again by going all-electric, which is even more prohibitive considering costs and recharging logistics.
Project Labor Agreements Follies
The latest example of this economically disparate disconnect impacts the construction industry. On the same day county supervisors reviewed the aforementioned poverty statistics having to do with various welfare programs, they also approved plans to construct a new $55 million probation admin building in downtown Santa Barbara. However, supervisors limited the ability of non-union construction workers to work on this project by way of a “project labor agreement” with local unions. This, even though most construction workers, 85% to be exact, including most minority construction workers, don’t belong to a union. That is, while more than 50% of the construction workforce in California is Hispanic, only 36% of Hispanics belong to a union, and just 7.7% of construction union members are black.
An economist once informed county supervisors that they did not need to worry about job creation because there are virtually no jobs in the Carmel-Monterey area, and they are getting along just fine. He stated that our similarly wealthy neighborhoods generate property taxes and tourism, which generate sales taxes and bed taxes, and which can generate enough tax revenue to keep government afloat.
In essence, what serves to float the boat of wealthy communities serves to sink the North County economy.
The “solution” to this is supposed to be a centrally planned housing mandate, emanating from the socialists/ Marxists in Sacramento. Check out the Epoch Times article ( Tony Hall- The Big Con in the California Housing Mandate) from today. He describes the politics of mandating communities all over the state to somehow come up with a required number of new housing units. Whether they are deemed “ affordable” or not, they are going to have baked in the notions of minimizing automobile transportation, by inadequate parking allowances. Also watch for expensive all electric homes, designed to eliminate the supposedly climate change generating gas powered appliances. The elimination of capitalism and free market solutions is being fueled by the cycle of public/ private organizations benefiting from these schemes, who are funding the politicians who invent and mandate them.
Andy, another excellent informative article. There is little that can be done until the people running CAGOP are removed and replaced by more able and younger people and until the Republican party in California can become the party favored by the majority Hispanic community in both California and Santa Barbara County.
Demographics conquers all. And the GOP in California is at the bottom in age groups and overall numbers.