Poverty Flats: Redding, California

My home town has become a study in the deadly stupidity of conservative economic thought.

When I was born in 1947 Redding was a Democratic town. Shasta Dam had recently been completed, beginning thirty years of a succession of reclamation projects, repairing the damage done to the environment and watershed caused by the Gold Rush.

Of course, nobody talked about these projects in those terms. The dams of Northern California were depicted as water conservation projects, saving rainwater for the great Sacramento Valley, aimed at creating an agricultural mother load. However, the damage done to the watershed over fifty years of mindless gold mining had also taken its toll, reducing the Sacramento River to a muddy killer ditch, that overflowed its banks every year, virtually destroying agriculture in a series of killer floods. The floods were caused by the disruption to the water shed due to unregulated mining.

But in the thirties things changed. The nation decided, on the verge of economic collapse, to invest in infrastructure, repair the damage caused by the last surge of frankly stupid, unregulated free enterprise (the gold rush destroyed more than watershed; thousands of native Americans were exterminated because they were in the way).

But the depression changed that. The United States looked over the cliff caused by free enterpriser's run amuck, and decided to change things. Cooperation, through government projects, was stressed to save the capitalist system.

Redding was called “Poverty Flats” at first. Shasta City was the county seat, and the hub of the economy in Shasta County because of the gold mining located there. As the mines panned out, and the streams were raped, people became “dirt farmers”, scratching out a living, waiting for the railroad to bring commerce to the area. My grandfather was one of those “sod busters” who lived hand to mouth, raising eight children barely on a small parcel of land.

Life was not very nice in Redding then. The copper industry, that also blighted the north state until the end of World War I, ended; leaving economic and ecological ruin in its path. The foothills north of Redding, where Shasta Dam is now, were denuded of vegetation, adding to the flood potential of the Sacramento River. So, Gold Mining, and Copper Mining, had poisoned the water, leaving no vegetation or gravel to regulate flooding, and reduced the Sacramento Valley to ruin. All this a direct product of mindless free enterprise economic theory, that dictated a laissez-faire approach, while destroying the natural flow of rivers and streams.

So the few citizens in Redding suffered. Most, when they could afford it, fled. The population dragged along, helped a little by the railroad’s coming, but not much.

The Great Depression dragged the area even further down. The poor got even poorer. My mother told stories of how “we didn’t know we were poor, everyone was poor”. My father, the son of a railroad worker, describes waiting in line for potato soup, since my grandfather had lost his job due to depression railroad layoffs.

Conventional wisdom dictated that government had to balance its budget, cut spending to get out of the depression. Hoover held to this philosophy creating a Hooverville of the United States.

In Redding, this resulted in even more misery. There simply was NO MONEY anywhere; a subsistence economy developed.

Then Shasta Dam came. Suddenly there was a payroll, and people with money. Redding began to recover. After World War II, the housing boom opened the logging industry to in Northern California. More dams were built to the east, as the water reclamation projects culminated over thirty years. Interstate 5 was completed, spanning two decades and providing hundreds of jobs for the local economy.

Redding prospered. Education and medical centers were erected as Redding became the hub of Northern California, eclipsing even Chico in importance.

Then came Proposition 13 and the tax cutting conservative reaction.... The Logging Industry stalled, due to the practice of clear cutting that rewarded sheer volume of timber and reduced old growth forests to practically nothing. Citizens did not blame the companies for their greed, but were fed by conservatives the nonsense that environmentalists were to blame.

Next, thanks to the Reagan Revolution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, many white Democrats swung to the right, alarmed by the blatant economic nonsense that Reagan spouted, and the manufactured outrage aimed at minorities (who practically did not exist in Redding) and revulsion toward the war protesters who were so annoying because they were right!

Redding began a slow slide into conservative obscurity. Progressive families either put up with the conservative crap, or moved to the Bay Area.

From 1963 when John Kennedy visited to dedicate Whiskeytown Dam, a month before he was assassinated, until 2008 when President Obama was elected, Shasta County trended from a blue county to a red county.

Meanwhile the economy trended downward at about the same rate as the conservative majority grew.

There is a large medical community in Redding that serves several rural counties. This medical elite have grown into an aristocracy, making hundreds of times more than the average citizen. ?Rich doctors and their corporations operate behind the scenes to spread the con influence.

Large government projects are gone. And, the ruling powers in Redding are convinced that small businesses without pesky government regulation, will create a economic recovery. Any innovative ideas, like solar panel production for example, are scared away by the repressive and short-sighted economic leadership.

Progressive businesses turn away from Redding now, because the political/economic climate is poisoned by the tea party that has practically taken over the city council.

The Tea Party is very large in Redding. Lately, a majority on the City Council has floated the notion that the city government change from a City Manager organization to a “Charter City” one. This will result in even more of a partisan city government, with high salaries paid to the mayor and the council; and repression of the public employee union.

It is noteworthy that those who most stand to gain from this, are two tea party members whose personal economic situations are tenuous at best. It is also important to note that parallel to the rightward slide in Redding, has been a matching slide of union membership. Redding used to be a union town, with decent middle class salaries. Redding is now an anti-union town, led by retired former union tea party members, who are driving to destroy all unions (public and private).

Today, our local paper published a story that Redding is dead last when compared to other like-sized Northern California and Nevada cities. Dead last!

A representative of economic development , made an inane statement that this is to be expected since Redding is transitioning from an agricultural base to a service one. This is hogwash, and is a perfect example of the mindlessness of the conservative majority in the town.

First, Redding transitioned from an agricultural based economy (dirt farming) to a logging and government project fed economy over sixty years ago. The cluelessness of the economic development representative says it all.

Second, the industrial park that is being pushed to create industry lies miles away from a rail line. The total disregard for the role railroads will play in the next 100 years of dwindling oil supplies is amazing.

Moreover, a council member is pushing for more urban sprawl, with the “idea” of building yet another mall along I-5; completely ignoring the fact that this will destroy downtown commerce, since consumers will stop just off the freeway and keep on going, bypassing downtown Redding completely.

Of course, this same council member was treated to a expense paid trip to Washington D.C. to seek a grant for the mall, by the mall’s developer! That’s right, payola is alive an well in our little town!

We have followed this corrupt, worthless conservative economic philosophy for over thirty years now.

Today, after a very brief relapse due to the election of President Obama, conservatives are again on the march, pushing for spending cuts at every level of government, screaming that government deficits will destroy us all, telling us layoffs of public workers and cuts of their pensions will fix the economy.

Nonsense! Redding is a perfect example of what happens when government spending is first introduced to an area bringing decades of prosperity, then shunned, bringing economic ruin.

When you cease making public investments in the future, your economy dies.

The present City Council is blindly cutting salaries and the workforce of the city, following the tea party goal of attacking and destroying the middle class.

And the result…DEAD LAST IN ECONOMIC GROWTH AND VITALITY.

There is no doubt that progressives have fled Redding in droves. There is no doubt that an aristocracy has grown with rich doctors hoarding their wealth in 7000 square foot houses, fighting tax increases and raising their fees. Redding has one of the highest uninsured population in the state, and a growing homeless population thanks to this huge disparity in wealth distribution.

Meanwhile the idiot tea partiers continue their propaganda as Redding slides into Poverty Flats again.