Joel Kotkin grossly misleads about California's problems

At Forbes, Joel Kotkin offers "Who Killed California's Economy? /There are five suspects, from the governor to the constituents themselves" (link).

I left the comment below. More could be said about the gross dishonesty he exhibits in the article, and I suggest going there and leaving a comment (quick, free registration required).

Comment follows:

This article is beyond dishonest: it completely fails to note the role that massive illegal immigration played in CA's problems. That lead to increased spending and to a large part of the middle class fleeing the state. Not only that, but it built up a power base for the far-left legislators, and they used that to push for more spending.

Without the massive immigration that hacks like Joel Kotkin support, the far-left wouldn't have as much power as they do.

Kotkin misleads about the problem the CA GOP has. It isn't because they're seen as "anti-tax and anti-immigration zealots", but because a) they tend to be socially conservative in a state that generally isn't, and b) they're generally stupid and have a habit of making unforced errors.

Kotkin fails to note that a good portion of the farm-related unemployed are here illegally, and the situation could be lessened if we enforced our laws.

You just can't trust what Joel Kotkin tells you. For a discussion of something else he wrote earlier this year, see this.

UPDATE: Apparently Jay Leno isn't returning his calls, so Kotkin appeared in a segment of "InstaVision" with Glenn Reynolds of Pajamas Media (pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/81569). Seriously, at 16 minutes you'd have to pay me serious money to watch it; I made it through four minutes but that's all I could take. So, I'm calling for volunteers who'll watch segments of it. Convert your last name's initial letter into a number based on its alphabetic ordering and then multiply that number by 8/16. Watch that minute, then report whether Kotkin mentioned illegal immigration's role or not.

Tue, 07/07/2009 - 09:32 · · Importance: 4