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| COLAB: The Colition of Labor Agriculture and Labor |
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| Postcards from Brazil? No Thanks! May 16, 2002 - A bunch of local environmental do-gooders masquerading as urban planning professionals are on their way back from a field trip to Brazil. Ostensibly, they traveled to Brazil in order to glean tips on solving problems related to urban congestion. This is yet another example of misplaced priorities among the elitists of our community. In actuality, only 4% of Santa Barbara County is developed for urban use. Congestion problems in our community don't arise from the fact that we have too many people living here. Our problems arise from the fact that we suffer from poor planning priorities. It sounds like an oxymoron, but what drives the planning process in this community is the desire to prevent growth. The problems we have from urban congestion have to do with the mistaken notion that making improvements to our urban infrastructure is growth inducing and/or will somehow permanently damage our quality of life. Let me expound on this issue of mistaken priorities. The distinguishing characteristic of most third world nations, such as Brazil, is the fact that there is no middle class. You have the very rich and you have the ultra poor, with few people in between and fewer still that are upwardly mobile. California in general, and Santa Barbara in particular, is in the midst of creating its own permanent urban underclass. But instead of dealing with this very real social/economic crisis, instead these self-appointed community leaders continue to ignore the real crisis of our community as much as they ignored the real problems of Brazil during their visit. Consider the following statistics that come from official county documents with respect to life in Santa Barbara County for what will soon be the majority of students in our county schools: * Latinos have the lowest enrollment rates of any ethnic group in math and science courses in grades 11 and 12. * Hispanic males are the least likely to graduate high school on time. More than one-third of the boys who start the ninth grade will not graduate from high school. * Of the students passing the high school exit exam, Hispanics have the lowest pass rates of any ethnic group in this county. If you put all of these statistics together you come to the conclusion that Hispanics in Santa Barbara County are least likely to get good paying jobs as adults. In fact, only the people who graduate from college can typically get good paying jobs in this town. That is because our county and city governments have done everything they can to destroy blue collar manufacturing and the very best farming jobs in this community. Blue collar manufacturing jobs and permanent full time farming jobs have typically and historically provided upward mobility to the working class in our nation's economy. But these job opportunities are being discouraged! Why? Creating new jobs is considered "growth inducing", which in turn will create the need for more housing... You get the picture? |