California's disconnected and ever-changing traditions

Listening to panelists of "City Life: The Manufactured West" at the L.A. Times Book Festival, we residents of the American Southwest are all New-Age pioneers on the crest of yet another makeover.

The noontime Saturday panel discussed California’s decentralized politics, the very central issues of immigration and globalization, the curious characteristics of the people who live here (resilient, conscionable and, more often than not, displaced), and the circumstances that propel and restrict our progress.

One issue is geography. Panelist Christina Binkley, author of “Winner Takes All: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman, and the Race to Own Las Vegas” and Wall Street Journal columnist, pointed out that California is really three states (moderator Patt Morrison quipped that their names were Logland, Fogland, and Smogland), all with disparate interests, making it difficult to develop policies that serve the entire population.

The conversation also touched on the idea that California is unbound by tradition and that the lack of familial ties and rigid class system (still present on the East Coast) allows ambitious people with industrious ideas the freedom to experiment. However, as panelist Abe Lowenthal, USC professor and author of “Global California: Rising to the Cosmopolitan Challenge,” pointed out: “The thing about California is that everything grows, but nothing connects.”

 A quick show of hands illustrated that over half of the audience members were not native Californians, a peculiarity that causes every new generation to be a “first generation” and more likely to, in Morrison’s words, “invest only in itself and never give back to the greater community.”

Even Binkley, originally from New York, admitted that she was more likely to donate to institutions back East to which she feels emotionally connected than to local organizations.

The quick turnover has its positive aspects too. Business columnist James Flanigan, author of “Smile Southern California! You’re the Center of the Universe,” noted that the evolution of industry — from the gold rush, to defense, through aerospace and housing speculation — has kept Southern California on its toes and in a constant state of reinvention. Lowenthal suspected that biotechnology, with 40% of the industry’s companies in the area, would be the next leader of the So Cal economy.

One of member of the audience asked, “When will California be established?”

Binkley’s definitive answer: “Two hundred years,” and then, “Never.”

--Heather Robertson

Photo: Little Lake, Calif. Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Brittanicus]

If America is expected to sustaining its living standards, we must start to conserve our environment and address the use of oil, water and energy. In these current decades we have all observed the deterioration of our highways, infrastructure with clogged traffic lanes that never seem to abate? The continuous requisite for land to build homes, and stretching, concrete pavement that once was farmland. Border states where water supplies are being rationed, because of years of drought. The desperate need for refineries, because of constant production, cannot keep up with demand. Our ailing national electrical grid that is unable to keep up with requirements, owing to the millions of illegal people who slip across our uneasy border and need services. America is growing smaller each day, just like the Amazon rain forests. We are daily encroaching on the wild animals of our lands, who we now find foraging for food in community suburbs--that was once a wilderness. Our President should not be contemplating Amnesty for an unknown number of illegal immigrants. Such would be the forthcoming harbinger of Overpopulation for future generations. According to the Census Bureau with the current immigration level our population will touch close to a half a billion by 2050.

More than 65 percent of that growth can be attributed to our current immigration rate and irrational polices. Without changing the direction of our current immigration policies, our population by the year 2100 and 2120 will attain the one billion mark. Is this what we want for our own?

If President Obama introduces a new Immigration policy, this would be a disaster for the new generations of our children? We already settle over 1.5 million new legal immigrants each year in this nation. This is more people than any other country in the world? What we need is an amendment to the 1986 Immigration Control and Reform Act. This would allow highly professional and skilled people, who would contribute in Engineering, Computer and Science technologies. Giving Potential legal newcomers that has something special to offer the American workplace, including education and other layers of future industry. We already have millions of low skilled, many uneducated American workers who remain jobless in this economic morass. If our politicians will restore funding for E-Verify now before it terminates. We can revise it, modify and append to its function, in removing foreign workers from the workplace. As illegal immigrants start their movement from our nation, wages, benefits should slowly start to rise, as employers will have no choice but to hire American workers, instead of cheap labor from foreign lands.