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Monday, August 13, 2012

Discriminating Against Californians

I'm used to hearing tales of hostility towards Californians.  In the 1960s, Oregonians were notorious for giving the cold shoulder to Californians moving in.  After A River Runs Through It, some parts of Montana developed serious hostility to Californians who would arrive, drive up housing prices with their ridiculous home equity from selling a shack in California, but not spend enough money to drive up wages for the locals--who were now priced out of the housing market.  I'm told that a bumper sticker was popular for a while in some parts of Montana, "Gut-shoot them at the border."

But this is a twist: Instapundit links to this Inside Higher Ed article about discrimination against Californians by public universities in California.  As you may be aware, most public universities charge out of state residents roughly the real cost of college.  Residents get a very subsidized rate, typically 35-40% of the actual costs.  The rationalization is that residents (or at least their parents) have been paying property taxes, income taxes, and sales taxes for a very long time towards that public university.

I must say, if there is anything that should make Californians upset with the clowns that they elect, it is that they have reached the point where California can afford high speed rail projects that make no sense, massive subsidies for illegal aliens--but preferred admissions for those who don't actually live there.  But that would require Californians to be paying enough attention.

3 comments:

  1. British universities have to cope with students coming from dumbed-down schools, and with government griping about too few of their intake coming from the worst of those schools.

    One way to reduce the problem is to accept fewer British students and take in more from elsewhere in the EU. Their schools have typically been less fouled up by the Forces of Progress, and nobody gives a hoot about what sort of school they attended or their parents' social class.

    Such students are even entitled to a Student Loan from the British government - though the government has just started to notice that they are disinclined to pay it back!

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  2. Not sure if told this before, but at the MK Rail shop,now called Motive Power over on Apple Street in East Boise near I84, in early 1991 when I worked there in the men's room over the urinal was a hand drawn map of Idaho showing a drain from it to California and an admonition to users of the urinal to be sure and flush because CA needs Idaho's water.

    The don't "Californicate Idaho" was a bumper sticker in Boise in the late 80's/early 90's as well.

    Needless to say as someone who is 3rd generation from CA with granddad born in Contra Costa in 1894 and as one who left CA because I was tired of being homeless and could not stand the foreign invasion of CA (not just from south of the border and southeast asia but also from the left coast) I also shared in the negative sentiments of the Golden State but kept my mouth shut about being an escapee/refugee of that place.

    Do wish I could have staid there and attended college in the early 80's when I would have been of the age for doing that when the school would have been doable and affordable. My Dad losing our house in Garden Grove thanks to the mafia and a crooked savings-and-loan ,and me dropping out of high school in part because of becoming homeless didn't help with the going to college down there much and yes I know that story probably sounds far-fetched---It's a long story!

    Quite of bit of the SW Idaho housing bubble was driven by speculators from CA which is another reason to have hard feelings as I struggle to hold on to my under-water mortgage which has a huge bulk of my retirement into it.

    Seems like the CA stupidity only gets worse ever year. I'm left wondering how long before it goes back to Mexico. I will likely be buried in Whittier someday (plot was bought 40 years ago and the corporation won't let us sell it) assuming that's before the ceremonial return to Mexico.

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  3. I heard directly from SSU administrators perhaps 3 years ago, the proposal, at least as a talking / scare point, to increase the fraction of out-of-state and foreign admittees.

    The last time that I looked, the effective subsidy from the state for each in-state CSU undergraduate student, was around $8800/year.

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