Friday News Roundup
What is left unsaid by Mainstream Media is often the most important conclusions.
Here is a collection of stories in the media that caught my attention this week. Something one notices after a while is the constant narrative shaping employed by these major news publications. What is not discussed or is obscured reveals what elephants are in the room for these topics.
Arizona, the Southwest, and the looming water wars of the 21st century
This article from The New York Times describes the precarious situation a water-deficient state with an arid climate finds itself when unfettered population growth and reckless water management collide. However, putting the dominant focus on climate change and a 23-year drought as the main driver for the current condition is disingenuous at best.
A cursory search of Arizona’s population growth over the last 100 years shows a 2040% increase-from 334K in 1920, to 7.1 million in 2020. The explosion in population extends to the other states that rely on the Colorado River as a water source. The article briefly acknowledges that the Colorado River supplies water to the seven-state Southwest Region to 40 million people. These include the states of California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Excluding Colorado, the Southwest region increased by 1500% in the 20th century.
“The announcement is the latest example of how climate change is reshaping the American Southwest. A 23-year drought and rising temperatures have lowered the level of the Colorado River, threatening the 40 million Americans in Arizona and six other states who rely on it — including residents of Phoenix, which gets water from the Colorado by aqueduct.
“The county uses some 2.2 billion gallons of water a day — more than twice as much as New York City, despite having half as many people.”
This line obscures the overuse of water for agriculture purposes, especially the number of crops that require expansive amounts to successfully grow in the desert.
“When Arizona created its groundwater rules more than 40 years ago, Queen Creek was still mostly peach and citrus groves and expansive farmland. Today, it is one of the fastest-growing places in Arizona, where families go fishing at an “oasis” lake fed by recycled wastewater. The town’s population of 75,000 is projected to grow to 175,000 by the time it is built out decades from now. But to do any of that, the town needs to find more water.
“We’re in search of about 30,000-acre feet,” or about 9.8 billion gallons per year, said Paul Gardner, Queen Creek’s utility director.”
Where is the discussion on population sustainability? The current model of forever expansion is not feasible, nor desired. Making the hard but correct choices now will prevent even harder choices being made for this region in the future by nature.
The problem of a dwindling Colorado River is not new. For decades, state officials and environmental experts pointed to the diminishing levels in reservoirs and groundwater sources. The pictures below show the stark drop of Lake Mead, a major reservoir for the Nevada city of Las Vegas1 and surrounding communities.
The L.A. Times on Immigration and the 2024 Presidential Election
This Op-Ed begins cheerfully:
“Donald Trump was the most anti-immigrant U.S. president in nearly 100 years. He oversaw a family separation policy at the border that traumatized countless children and lost track of hundreds of parents; slashed refugee admissions to record lows; gutted access to asylum; and much more.
But for some of the most influential U.S. nativists and white nationalists — people Republican presidential candidates have decided they need to court during and after the primary season — Trump’s crackdowns were not enough. Some see greater potential in his top rival for the 2024 nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.”
This framing that anyone who might have concerns that the pace of immigration, legal and illegal, are simply nativists and white nationalists is a well-worn trend for mainstream media Progressive pundits. Labeling those who do not fall in lockstep with the idea that the country should have never-ending population growth as “badthink2”, automatically creates the moral framework for how the narrative should be perceived according to the media. Rarely brought up are valid concerns regarding the cultural, environmental, or economic impact that these policies will have on the nation.
“DeSantis recently signed Senate Bill 1718, which turned Florida into the most anti-immigrant state in the nation. It makes it a felony to give undocumented people rides, jobs or shelter; requires employers to verify workers’ immigration statuses and invalidates certain out-of-state driver’s licenses for undocumented people. DeSantis also banned sanctuary cities in his state.”
Notice how any complexity or nuance are discarded in favor of disseminating the immigration issue into a ‘Pro’ or ‘Anti’ stance.
Some of DeSantis’ actions were on the wish list of Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller, whose ideas were shaped by Krikorian’s Center for Immigration Studies and other groups created by John Tanton — a well-connected white supremacist who fathered the modern nativist movement.
“Those two guys are in a white nationalist arms race,” Chris Newman, legal director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told me.”
The only subtlety contained in this Op-Ed is the underlying suggestion if the reader believes in legislation to curb or slow down legal and illegal immigration, they should feel lumped in with the author’s list of boogeymen. The Sophist Rhetoric and hyperbole almost leap from the article in neon lettering.
At the core of the GOP’s ever-expanding multiverse of scapegoats are immigrant communities, who represent a real threat to white male minority rule. The GOP has proved it’s just getting started with persecution of them. Whether it’s a Trump or DeSantis White House, it’ll be worse than anything that came before.
No, what will be worse are the eventual outcomes and results that will be forced upon a society if the question of unfettered immigration is left to its own devices.
The L.A. Times and California Reparations
“After almost two years of meetings, California’s Reparations Task Force decided last month to recommend that the state issue a formal apology for the pervasive harms of slavery and discrimination and potentially provide billions of dollars in cash payments in a historic effort to make amends.”
California, a free state that entered the union in 1850, is engaged in the political kabuki theater of reparations for the American Slave trade.
Aside from the irrational idea that Group A should compensate Group B for actions committed by Group C to Group D, as if there is an archaic blood debt, this article displays something not discussed: The cruelty of giving misplaced hope. It is easy to forget how many downtrodden people believe what these Progressive politicians and liberal academics in California are promising them with the idea of reparations.
Despite polling and more importantly the budget numbers that show how unfeasible the idea, they cling to this hope that loldollars will be dispersed in the future from the state.
Oh sure, a much-watered down collection of policies will eventually be proposed to sait the masses, and those same politicians will talk as if these measures are going to narrow the racial income and wealth gaps…somehow. But the hard truth remains that it is cruel to dangle shiny objects and food in front of desperate people who feel they are owed something. More problems are sure to be created from these Progressive political stunts.
“Peters remembers the Black-owned banks, restaurants and storefronts that were forced to close in the wake of the 1992 civil unrest, which reshaped the character of her neighborhood in South Los Angeles.”
“I really think if we’re going to talk about helping people with reparations, we have to think about the riots and the lot of Black businesses that lost their business because they weren’t able to get the loans to make repairs,” Peters said. “How much better off would we be if we had that money to stand on?”
No mention in the article on the plight of numerous businesses that have been destroyed by rioting in the 21st century, notably from 2014 and up during the Ferguson, Missouri riots, as well as the summer of 2020 George Floyd unrests. Amazing how the Progressives at the time gave empty platitudes to business owners how it was “just property” and that damages are covered by insurance-a lot of which were not, and people lost their entire investment and livelihoods.
“Nearby at her family’s restaurant Ackee Bamboo Jamaican Cuisine in Leimert Park, Melissa Beckford echoed the wish for Black residents to build a foundation for a better future — even though reparations are off limits for Beckford’s family because her parents emigrated here from Jamaica in their teens.
They realized their dream of owning a restaurant, but their path to success wasn’t easy. Beckford, busy busing tables and taking orders at the Leimert Park storefront this week, was surprised to learn that her family would not qualify for reparations under the recommendations put forth by California’s task force.” (Bold Italics added)
Left out of the discussion is the level of grievance and resentment that continue to build up within the population by even entertaining the reparation concept. The Pandora’s Box opened would possibly shred any remaining semblance AINO3 has left in her. This, sadly, may be the point.
Links:
Arizona Limits Construction Around Phoenix as Its Water Supply Dwindles
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/climate/arizona-phoenix-permits-housing-water.html
Arizona Population 1860-2020
https://en.Arizona Population 1860-2020
Population Growth of the Southwest United States, 1900-1990
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona#Demographics
‘The brink of disaster’: 2023 is a critical year for the Colorado River as reservoirs sink toward ‘dead pool’
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/30/us/colorado-river-lake-mead-drought-2023-climate/index.html
DeSantis and Trump compete to take the most extreme stance on immigration
Question of reparations raises skepticism and hope among Black L.A. residents
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-06-01/for-many-black-californians-skepticism-hope-over-reparations-task-force
-Las Vegas, a metropolis which has no logical reason for existing. With no natural water source or rational purpose, it truly is a symbol of human obstinance.
-In the marketplace of ideas, some shops are forever boycotted as badthink-while the illusion of intellectual freedom of ideas is maintained.
-America in Name Only