The California Agriculture Fraud
The focus of this paper was originally threefold. I wanted to synthesize my thoughts on California’s inhuman style of agriculture, corporate (agribusiness) welfare, and America’s pandering do-nothing congress OF the special interests, BY the special interests, and FOR the special interests. I intended to intersperse discussions of these topics with many historical agriculture/legislation facts and events. Unfortunately my research time was greatly curtailed by my need to find employment ASAP this summer (student financial aid eligibility expired two quarters early from taking too many courses and now I’ve maxed out a handful of credit cards). So I found myself unable to complete this paper as intended…
In January 2002 after more than 23 years in Nebraska and a year stint teaching/traveling in China, I finally finished my undergraduate studies at the University of Nebraska and promptly fled the Great Plains for the Elusive Eden. After the light shock of difficult parking, high traffic, and idiotic housing prices I fell in love with my strange new home in the Bay Area. My first big California surprise was not the preponderance of far out community activists and ridiculous law proposals: Reading up on Berkeley prepared me for that. Nor was I very alarmed by the fatal shooting a few blocks from my apartment on Alcatraz Ave that first month. Instead my surprise came months later on a summer late night road trip to Los Angeles with my visiting brothers. After spending the day with my old China roommate at his home near Chico, my two younger brothers and I began our long journey south not long after sunset. We finally passed Sacramento around 11pm. I can best describe the eeriness of the next six hours of travel observations using sci-fi geek terms: I witnessed a reverse Dave Bowman experience. If you may recall the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 1960s film of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: The Space Odyssey, stranded astronaut David Bowman encountered a massive black
In January 2002 after more than 23 years in Nebraska and a year stint teaching/traveling in China, I finally finished my undergraduate studies at the University of Nebraska and promptly fled the Great Plains for the Elusive Eden. After the light shock of difficult parking, high traffic, and idiotic housing prices I fell in love with my strange new home in the Bay Area. My first big California surprise was not the preponderance of far out community activists and ridiculous law proposals: Reading up on Berkeley prepared me for that. Nor was I very alarmed by the fatal shooting a few blocks from my apartment on Alcatraz Ave that first month. Instead my surprise came months later on a summer late night road trip to Los Angeles with my visiting brothers. After spending the day with my old China roommate at his home near Chico, my two younger brothers and I began our long journey south not long after sunset. We finally passed Sacramento around 11pm. I can best describe the eeriness of the next six hours of travel observations using sci-fi geek terms: I witnessed a reverse Dave Bowman experience. If you may recall the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 1960s film of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: The Space Odyssey, stranded astronaut David Bowman encountered a massive black