America in Free Fall

Image credit: Barbara Kelley

 

Before the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), where Philip II of Macedon prevailed over a common Greek alliance, the city-states had been weakened by years of social and economic turmoil. To read the classical speeches in the Athenian assembly is to learn of the democracy’s constant struggles with declining revenues, insolvency, and expanding entitlements. Rome between the First Triumvirate (59 BC) and the ascension of Caesar Augustus’s autocracy (27 BC) was mostly defined by gang violence, chaos, and civil war, the common theme being a loss of trust in republican values. Russia was in a revolutionary spiral for nearly twenty years between 1905 and the final victory of the Bolsheviks in 1922, ending up with a cure worse than the disease. And Europe between 1930 and 1939 saw most of its democracies erode as fascists and communists gained power—eventually leading to the greater disaster of the outbreak of World War II.

The United States has seen periods of near fatal internal chaos—in the late 1850s leading up to the carnage of the Civil War, during the decade of the Great Depression between 1929 and 1939, and in the chaotic 1960s. Something similar is starting to plague America today on a variety of political, economic, social, and cultural fronts.

Why the California water crisis will lead to a housing collapse, municipal bankruptcies and a mass exodus of climate refugees

(NaturalNews) The only proof you need that many Californians are still living in a water fairy tale is the fact that California real estate prices haven’t yet collapsed. Even as the California Governor has declared a state of emergency — and emergency water rationing is under way — there are still people purchasing commercial and residential real estate in precisely the areas that will be hardest hit by that rationing.

What is the value of a home or business that has no functioning connection to a water system? Essentially ZERO.

How many California homes and businesses are headed for a zero-water future? Many millions.

California governor orders mandatory water restrictions

This is only the beginning of a ‘mega drought‘, say experts. The worst in a thousand years.

California has no backup plans whatsoever and Nevada has struggled with the issue for years already.

 

ECHO LAKE, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Jerry Brown ordered officials Wednesday to impose statewide mandatory water restrictions for the first time in history as surveyors found the lowest snow level in the Sierra Nevada snowpack in 65 years of record-keeping.

Standing in dry, brown grass at a site that normally would be snow-covered this time of year, Brown announced he had signed an executive order requiring the State Water Resources Control Board to implement measures in cities and towns to cut the state’s overall water usage by 25 percent compared with 2013 levels.

The move will affect residents, businesses, farmers and other users.