Beth Barrett, LA Weely, January 28, 2009
With new data suggesting that a net 50,000 to 100,000 people left Los Angeles County last fiscal year, the San Fernando Valley is emerging as the poster child for middle-class flight—even as L.A. politicians try to spin an almost opposite tale.
The Valley was once America’s suburb, the nation’s most firmly rooted bastion of families holding jobs sufficient to pay for homes, cars, leisure and college tuition. Its more than 1 million people poured such a wealth of taxes into downtown’s municipal treasury—subsidizing other areas—that Valley secession was seen as an attack on L.A.’s fiscal health.
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L.A. grew in 2007-2008 due to high birth rates among the poor and working class, mostly Latinos, and due to illegal immigration. But since 2001, on the key measure of an area’s ability to attract the middle class, 901,426 more citizens have fled the county for other states than arrived from other states, and last year, they continued that flight.
One of the starkest changes is the collapse of the Valley’s middle class. U.S. Census figures we analyzed show that in 1970, 60 percent of Valley families could afford an average house and college costs, far outpacing other urban areas recently evaluated for the same era by the Pew Research Center. Even before the recession hit in late 2007, the Valley had lost a huge swath of middle-class workers, with just 43 percent of families by 2006 earning $50,000 to $149,000—the identical income group, corrected for inflation, that made up 60 percent in 1970.
Says California State University Northridge geography professor Eugene Turner, “It means exactly what we think it means: a growing population that’s not in that great middle class.”
Turner says the exodus accelerated in the 1990s as skilled, private-manufacturing jobs were replaced in L.A. with low-paying and increasingly unskilled work.
At the current rate, within 60 years, the Valley will have no discernible middle class. That’s not because the middle class is shrinking in the U.S. Instead, it’s relocating, fleeing in 2008 to the Carolinas, the Mountain West and Pacific Northwest, Texas and the South, and rejecting California, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Illinois. In March, more detailed Census data are expected to show that L.A. took much of California’s 2008 out-migration hit.
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The Valley’s iconographic standing as America’s biggest and most racially diverse suburb makes it a testing ground for the Obama administration’s promise to support the middle class. Daniel Flaming, president of the downtown Economic Roundtable, calls L.A.’s middle class “very thin,” adding, “what we’ve seen mostly is public-relations gestures and lack of ownership, lack of any strategic notion of how to address [the flight].”
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Thirty years ago, Reseda, cultural home of the “Karate Kid” and Tom Petty’s hit “Free Falling,” was 74 percent middle class. Almost everyone was a homeowner. But Reseda was targeted for a massive remaking, pushed by City Hall, that forcefully transformed it into a cluttered minicity of apartment complexes hampered by crime and gangs. The middle class bolted, by 2000 making up 41 percent of Reseda.
Reseda’s story was repeated, as planners wiped out Valley neighborhoods, approving a near-doubling in rental-housing construction from 1970 to 2000, from 130,000 to 240,000 apartment units. While every mayor from Tom Bradley to Villaraigosa has claimed that such remaking improves L.A.’s quality of life, each such mantra has backfired, worsening quality of life. Good jobs have fled—as have waves of white, black and Latino middle-class residents.
Original article
(Posted on February 2, 2009)
Comments
I live here in aztlan and can testify as to the veracity of this article.
“with just 43% of families earning between $50,000 and $149,000”
“…that forcefully transformed it into a cluttered minicity of apartment complexes…”
Oh, how very true this is…and these apartment complexes are ugly AND overpriced. I live in the Valley, and it’s changed drastically since I came here in ‘93. The difference must be even greater to native Southern Californians.
“Woodland Hills, West Hills and Granada Hills attract home buyers who increasingly are Latino, black or Asian — including East Indians who have inspired Fallbrook Mall’s Laemmle Theatres to offer fare from Bollywood.”
“Including” East Indians? No, no…Woodland Hills and West Hills (where I used to live) is largely Indian and Persian. And lots of Armenians (newly arrived), too. In other words, It’s foreign-occupied.
Neighboring Canoga Park is Latino, but it’s being Southeast Asianized (Filipinos, etc.).
California is lost.
The race of Nordic-Europeans who evolved in Northern Europe are a product of the cool four-season environment, inhospitable to the brown-skinned people of the equator.
In order to get away from the brown hordes, whites must revisit an ancient survival directive: go North to a defensible area.
California is bankrupt and just might implode in the next couple of years.
If it does, we will know that true justice has finally begun. No state is more radically out in far left field than California, and it is home to Hollywood to boot. Be a shame if the present Hollywood execs lost their fortunes, wouldn’t it?
I was born in L.A. County and when I go back to my old city it is all Mexican and Koreans. You see Whites, but they look like Death is walking steps behind them. And I am only 30!
I was born in the San Fernando Valley and lived there until I married. Several years ago I was in L.A. and I went back to visit my old neighborhood. The house I grew up in looked like a crack house, with a security fence and bars on the windows. When I was a kid we didn’t even have deadbolts, and the windows were those glass louvers that opened with a crank. At the age of five, we knew how to remove the panes of glass so we could get in when we had locked ourselves out. We were far more secure back then in our White neighborhood than people are today with their alarms and private security forces. I’m sure that this is a familiar story to many posters. I am sickened when I read these people praising diversity, because I have personal knowledge of what it really means. I am trying to be polite here, but my real feelings are far from civil. I would be happy to read that a large riot coincided with a good Santa Ana wind storm and leveled the place. What stands there now is a desecration of everything my parents, grandparents, and their generations worked for.
I’m a resident of the Valley. I’ve seen it go from Paradise to Hell. And it’s all because of the Elephant in the Living Room that so many people won’t discuss…the illegal invasion. Everything from junk mail to stores’ PA announcements are in Spanish. Graffiti, trash, chickens in yards, and abandoned shopping carts everywhere. Mariachi music blasting all night long. Helicopters circling overhead at night. I live only six miles from my job and it takes me a half an hour to drive home. The traffic is horrendous. Every time someone has to go to a hospital emergency room, they have to wait at least eight or as many as eighteen hours. Rents are sky high, even for roach-infested, illegal alien-infested dumps. I could go on and on.
I recently found an old address book of mine from the ’70s and ’80s. I knew a lot of people who lived in Reseda, Canoga Park, Van Nuys, and North Hollywood. Many were young single women. Their neighborhoods were nice and safe, their rents were reasonable. All those cities are dumps now. You wouldn’t even drive though many parts of them. It’s no wonder people are fleeing. It’s just a danged rotten shame that so many areas of our country have been destroyed by illegal invaders. It infuriates me that this has been allowed to happen.
The exact same dynamics are in place on the other Coast, in Maryland’s Montgomery County. 25 years ago, white middle-class could enjoy top-quality schools & parks & excellent government services.
But low-income flocked here for the same reasons. Now, only the very rich and the very poor can afford to live here.
This is what is known as “Californication,” coming soon to a barrio near you.
Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac social engineering mortgage schemes placed ultra poor in wealthy neighborhoods for free. The scheme was to change the voting to Democrat and destroy the WHITE bastion. Its time WHITEs think retalliation.
Why does the middle class not stand up and fight?
Why does the middle class elect those that work against them?
In time there will be nowhere to run and hide.
There will come a time to fight and it has long past by 40 years.
The future is not pretty.
The L.A. Weekly is a Marxist rag, but even the Pinks get tired of lying to themselves, I guess. Click on the original article and read the comments.
This article is carefully written using ‘middle-class’ as a pc code phrase for ‘white’. As an interesting exercise, re-read the article and substitute ‘white middle class’ for ‘middle class’, and you’ll better understand the full impact of this crisis.
The white middle class is the backbone of this country. Its members got what they got through hard work based on merit, not affirmative action and quotas, which is why is it so stable and essential to the economic and moral health of this country. As the white middle class goes, so goes this country.
If there is any group that now needs special protections from the government, it is the white middle class, but don’t hold your breath waiting for a courageous politician to state this publicly.
We read of the activist groups TRYING TO MUZZLE FREE SPEECH on the O’Reilly Show, by Glen Beck and others… yet everything we see, hear and read from your posts, from newspapers, from TV newscasts indicates the truth… that immigrants are slowly destroying our country from within. With incessant crime, by turning vast swatches of cities and towns into instant slums. By driving our hospitals to the brink of bankruptcy.
How much longer are we going to put up with this outrage? When, PLEASE WHEN, is that promised CWII coming? If it does come in my lifetime, count me in. I’d rather die fighting, than dying a slow death by watching my America turning into another Mexican crime-riddled, drug-pushing, squallid slum.
““with just 43% of families earning between $50,000 and $149,000”
If she earns ten times that, why is she shopping at Wal-Mart?
“why is she shopping at Wal-mart”
California really was the Golden State from 1945-1976. It had everything: great weather, beaches, mountains, full employment, top notch schools, laid-back lifestyle. Now it’s all gone— ruined by uncontrolled Third World immigration. It is one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century. It’s surprising the number of posters on AR who were originally from this old California. Alas, it only exists now in your dreams.
I live in Burbank in the East San Fernando Valley. It’s about 72 percent White. Crime is very low. The schools are some of the best in the L.A. County. Police here are like the Gestapo. The dream is still somewhat alive in Burbank as far as I can tell. However, the barrios of Sun Valley, Arleta, Pacoima, Panorama City, etc. are only a short stroll away. All we can do is remain politically aware and stay active in the governance of the remaining fine enclaves of the Valley and make sure they stay the same. Politically aware and, more importantly, ACTIVE!
Through years of criminal leadership negligence, California has mismanaged itself into an irretrievable moral and ecomonic bankruptcy.
The genuine danger now is that as California sinks into a statewide chaotic, anarchistic network of street rioting, it will, through socialist (Democrat) treasury bailouts, inevitably pull the entire country down to the same contemptible bankrupt level.
…They say the coast of Spain is surprisingly inexpensive and very quiet, peaceful, and beautiful.
I think someone either “exaggerated” or plain outright LIED, friend Anonymous. I caught that Wal-Mart shopping too. Then again maybe the poster was flying on something… and I don’t mean Continental Airlines.
I urge EVERY AmRen reader to do his/her best to make other Americans aware of what the TRUTH regards illegal immigration and its never-ending costs and problems mean to us all. We need to, we MUST get the truth out to our fellow Americans. Get enough people motivated and outraged enough to DEMAND CHANGE from the political whores infesting Congress.
“Graffiti, trash, chickens in yards, and abandoned shopping carts everywhere. Mariachi music blasting all night long. Helicopters circling overhead at night. I live only six miles from my job and it takes me a half an hour to drive home.”
Speaking of chickens, how about the dead roosters with their throats slit surrounded by voodoo artifacts tied to street signs and phone poles?
As far as the commute goes, I live exactly 2 miles from work. Unless there is an absolute downpour rain storm, I walk to and fro because it takes me a bit less time to walk than take the bus. Of course my bus route is mostly the Westwood blvd parking lot. So I prefer walking. It is a bit faster and more pleasant. Also, I can control the time. If I take the bus, I never know how late it will be and I have to punch a time clock.
I have noticed some obvious LA refugee Blacks and Hispanics up here, but they seem to bring the very crime they have supposedly fled, according to this article.
The Mexicanization of California does more then anything else to explain its increasing bankruptcy.
There are Whites moving into the San Fernando Valley, but they are mostly immigrant Russians, Armenians, Afghanis, Persians, Yugoslavs and Jewish — not the Old Stock WASP.
All of the WASPS have fled to Santa Clarita, Simi Valley, Moorpark, Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Ventura, Santa Barbara, Bakersfield and Orange County.
About 1962, they started building apartments across the street from Reseda Park, at Etiwanda and Kittridge. Instant White slum. Some of the kids who lived there were the first thieves I remember knowing. It was not improved by replacing them with Mexicans, I’m sure. I felt sorry for a friend of mine who lived across from the apartments, who once had a huge vacant lot to play in across from his house. When I was older I felt sorrier for his father, who’d gotten stuck with owning a house across the street from Reseda’s first bario.
I have also tried without much success to help her realize that IT IS SHE who has the most to lose from importing tens of millions of people that are dirt poor and come from countries with a history of violence…She never admits she is wrong…
Forgive me for saying so, but you may want to consider finding a new girlfriend who shares your values.
In the meantime, ask her if she would like to live in Africa, Mexico, or Columbia with no White people around her. If she says, “no”, ask her why. Then, connect the dots with for her by citing the FBI’s UCR stats, CDC stats, welfare stats, etc. Show her the numerous articles that appear daily about the brutal Black and White crime. Ask her why we rarely see White on Black crime.
I honestly think some people are actually afraid to consider the truth; Perhaps even subconciously terrified.
…If you get the chance to meet some of the super rich you will find many are hard working individuals who started out middle class but discovered or invented the “golden egg.” Their values remain solidly middle class…
Posted by Anonymous at 10:54 AM on February 3
I met an old lady who donated $1,000,000 to a flood relief charity, and she looked and acted just like my grandma who lives frugally on her railroad pension. This wealthy woman lived in the same modest, middle-class house for 40 years. It was the house they bought BEFORE her husband built up his business, and none of her middle-class neighbors knew just how wealthy they’d become. Her generous donation came with only one condition - anonymity [I was involved with the charity].
And yes, she was white, as were the other midwestern wealthy people I’m thinking of. So was a multi-millionaire oil company executive I met (while working at a bank), who dropped off a large cashiers check while wearing incredibly beat-up loafers without socks. Those shoes were probably 20 years old, and the rest of his clothing looked like it was from Target. The true rich usually don’t walk around wasting money and wearing bling-bling all day!
This due to the fact that whites did not protect their borders. Border Patrol has always been looking for people to fill in their ranks. Instead Hispanics stepped up to the plate. People here speak ill of blacks while their own people are not doing what is neccassary to keep their country safe.
The reason why they wont get up and fight back is because the illegals are here and also their to self absorbed and lazy. I here people complaining about minorties yet what have you done to combat them. The border was left open because it’s too big and no one stepped up to the plate to guard it.
To rational thinker.
If you think the Border Patrol is a legitimate outfit run with the best intentions, then you have a lot to learn. It wouldn’t matter if it was mostly white, the government ties their hands at every turn. The border could be secure, the government just doesn’t want to do it.
I’ve read many of your previous posts, what exactly is your purpose here?
Americans did step up to the plate, they were called the Minute Men and they were disparaged by President Bush when he called them vigilantes and most stupid, lazy Americans trusted his judgment instead of thinking for themselves.
Euro-Whites came to America to have a land of their own. How we got the land should be a lesson to us but instead we allow others to come here using the same methods to take Our Country from us. Now that seems pretty stupid to me. what we did to the Native American is really nothing to be very proud of, in many ways BUT the NEW INVADERS are using the same tactics now, AGAINST US. At this point WE are still the MAJORITY and their only power is what we allow them to have. We Allow Our Elected Officials to treat us as THEIR servants (not the other way around) the way it should be and they spit in our face with the things they allow. WHOSE FAULT IS THAT? Theirs or OURS?
This article is absolutely true. I am originally from the San Fernando Valley. I left when I was 10 because they were bussing black and Mexican kids into the local schools and it was making them dangerous and lowering their standards. My parents wanted better for me, so we moved to a community outside the boundaries of the LAUSD. My mom grew up in Canoga Park. Back then it was almost all white, her high school yearbook is full of pictures of her white classmates. Today, her school is almost all Mexican. You go to the San Fernando Valley and today it’s full of poverty and gangs. Signs are in Spanish, Arabic and Farsi. It’s poor and run down.
Too bad this article fails to actually say that the “middle class flight” from the San Fernando Valley is really white flight. There are tons of San Fernando Valley refugees in overwhelmingly white places like Santa Clarita, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley.
“The reason why they wont get up and fight back is because the illegals are here and also their to self absorbed and lazy. I here people complaining about minorties yet what have you done to combat them. The border was left open because it’s too big and no one stepped up to the plate to guard it.”
Posted by rational thinker at 9:07 PM on February 3
Rational Thinker: It is illegal to hire a White American to work in a government agency such as the Border Patrol. This law is strictly enforced by a multitide of government agencies such as state fair employment agencies, the federal EEOC, the Justice department and other city, county, state and federal agencies.
In addition numerous racist anti white groups such as ADL, AJC, NOW, ACLU, SPLC, all funded by the federal government and the wealthiest people in the world constantly file lawsuits that result in judicial mandates that no whites, especially white men work for law enforcement agencies, especially the Border Patrol which has embarked on a program of hiring only hispanics with family ties to Northern Mexico.
Google Ramos and Compean. They are 2 Mexican American Border Patrol officers who were sentenced to 10 years in prison for shooting and lightly wounding a known illegal alien drug smuggler. After Ramos and Compean were arrested, the drug smuggler was arrested on American soil driving a truck containing 750 pounds of marijuana.
He was not charged and released back to Mexico so he could appear as witness in Ramos and Compean’s trial. One of the Border Patrol Officers was viciously stomped by a gang of illegal alien prisoners his first month in prison. He spent the rest of the time in solitary confinement. His wife had to get a court order to allow him just one book, a bible for him to read so he would have something to do while in solitary confinement.
The arrest and conviction of Ramos and Compean was obviously a clear and blatant message to all Border Patrol Officers by President Bush and prosecutor United States attorney Sutton
The message was; “don’t do your job, don’t interfere, you are there simply as a symbol, take your pay, be happy you don’t have to do anything, ride around in your jeep all day but above all, don’t stop the invasion.”
To repeat rational thinker, our own government uses judicial ordered affirmative action, threats and even arrest and imprisonment of Border Patrol officers to prevent whites or anybody, from defending our country.
You think white men don’t apply to the Border Patrol? You think white men didn’t organize the Minutemen, Borders USA, VDARE and other anti invasion forces? White men did but both our financial elites and government united to stop white men from defending our country.
Been through an airport since 9/11? Have you seen any American security guards around? I haven’t, all I’ve seen is third world invaders herding Americans around the metal detectors.
You seem to be totally unaware of anything rational thinker. You are especially unaware of how our government has turned against whites as Hitler’s government turned against German Jews.
Our government wants us gone.
Opening the borders to the third world invasion is just one of their methods. The horrendous black on white murder rate is another. I could be wrong, but ever since the Zebra killings revealations I think that the black on white murder rate is not just an unintended effect of uncontrollable black crime.
Having observed black on white homicide and our government and media elites encouragement and facilitation of black on white homicide and rape, I am convinced, by scientific observation and conclusion that the black on white murder rate is part of a conscious plan by blacks and our government to exterminate whites.
I’ve responded to your ignorant nonsense many times rational thinker. I won’t any more. Youe comments reveal absolute ignorance of anything. I doubt you even live in America or have ever visited. Your comments remind me of Europeans who know nothing of America but marxist propaganda.
You are so ignorant of reality it’s not worth the time to respond.
The SFV is now is full of people who are counted as white in the census but who are not from Europe.
>>>The house I grew up in looked like a crack house, with a security fence and bars on the windows.
It really is a toss-up, which race, collectively, is worse on the evolutionary scale: Africans (Afro-Amricans included) or Mexicans. Blacks and Mexicans seem to vie for which racial group can turn their neighborhood to a slum faster. Which race can commit more crimes than the other race. Which race can be more ignorant, more disdainful of actually becoming productive citizens, rather than parasites hanging on the wallets of American taxpayers.
“rational thinker”, I think I have you figured out. You are a white kid, about 18 or so. You recently graduated from a largely black high school. Because of your overwhelming exposure to and friendships with blacks, you identify with them more than you do whites.
You received a PC Marxist education and think whites are historically bad people and blacks just act up because whites haven’t helped them enough. You do admire whites who join the military, which is good of you. I’m not sure what you think of the mestizo invasion, except you feel whites are too lazy to guard the borders. I am curious: Do you admire mestizos as much as you admire blacks?
All of your opinions are based on personal experiences, a PC Marxist education, and the brashness of youth. You may not totally know your own views because your opinions often don’t make sense.
As the years go by you will begin to understand that Western governments and Marxist social engineers are actively trying to disempower whites. We are the only racial group not allowed to organize for our own self-interest. Doesn’t that concern you?
Once the last middle-class residents have sold their homes while they could still get more than a greasy bowl of menudo and some bathtub cheese for them, the ethnic cleansers who drove them out will be wondering why the schools there are so lousy and why the neighborhoods are so unsafe.
“Your comments remind me of Europeans who no nothing of America but marxist propaganda.” margaret at 6:37PM on February 4
Margaret, your comments are often so profound, that they need rereading and repeating. How right you are about so many Europeans. I have traveled to Western Europe, often, and talked with people in Vienna, Berlin, Zurich, Frankfurt, Copenhagen,etc. They were all well educated people who spoke English fluently. However, the one thing that made a lasting impression on me was the political views that most of them held. This is where your above comment was so correct. They all seem to have been the victims of leftist propaganda. One individual in Vienna asked me why we still had the death penalty and stated that Tookie Williams didn’t deserve to be executed. When I told her that he cold bloodedly killed 3 people, blowing one young womens face half off, all I received was a blank stare and the comment that it’s still not right to have executed poor Tookie. Yes Margaret, you couldn’t be more right about so many Western Europeans. They have really had a number done on them. Their general high level of intelligence and education, didn’t at all make them immune to the communist-leftists brainwashing of them. I always enjoy your deep insights.
Margaret, having shown my agreement with your points made against Rational Thinkers arguments, doesn’t however, make me disagree entirely with his arguments. Especially those about whites not having taken charge of OUR nation for so long. Why have whites allowed laws to be made that discriminate against them, so blatantly, why have whites voted in, almost sado-masochistically, the same traitors over and over and over. Do they like emotinal abuse? One example would be the recent victory of South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, who for the last two years has been putting down Americans and South Carolinians, calling them racists, nativists, etc., because of their immigration stance. After he just won, I heard him again talk about comprehensive immigration reform. He literally is spitting at his constituents, as I see it. How did McCain, who has spent his time doing the same denigrating of the white population with regards to illegal immgration even have a chance to run against Obama. Why is he still even in a position of power, rather than having been run out of office? Just recently, he has been advising Obama on “immigration reform”. You have to admit Margaret, most supposedly concerned Americans get an F, where being proactive towards their own best interests goes.
This just in: A “exotic dancer” was doused with a flammable liquid and set afire outside the Babes and Beer sports bar, in the San Fernando Valley. The victim, a mother of two, has been burned over 60 % of her body and is in critical condition. The suspects are Rianne Celine Theriault-Odom and Nathaniel Marquis Petrillo, a Black woman and a Hispanic man. If you’re old enough to remember when the Los Angeles Daily News was still called the Valley News and Green Sheet, you’re old enough to recall a time when the Valley was so boring that a car crash was front page news. Not any more.
>>>we got the land should be a lesson to us but instead we allow others to come here using the same methods to take Our Country from us.
Oh, please. I am sick and tired of that line of marxist propaganda… how evil White Europeans came to the Americas and promptly exterminated the Indians. How about a little historical TRUTH, instead?
That the Indians were nomadic tribes, favorite sport being warring with other tribes. Delighting in torturing captives to a brutal and bloody death with everyone participating in inflicting pain on the hapless captive victim. That Indians often attacked settlers without provocation. (Yes, the reverse of that also happened, I’ll concede.) Nor were Indians above killing their infirm and elderly during lean times, to put less stress on the available food supply.
A review of history shows that stronger groups often pushed weaker groups out of coveted areas. Not necessarily moral or justifiable… but a human trait (Manifest Destiny, you might recall.) Nor were Indians all that honorable and decent as the popular myth goes. That hackneyed phrase encountered in old books and movies comes to mind: “Thieving injuns”. A trait our illegal Mexican invaders also appear to share with their Indian ancestors.
With respect to “rational thinker”, he is either a Black (judging by the tone of his rants), or possibly a marxist under-educated White fancying himself another sociology genius. I’ve challenged him to defend some of his baseless rants in the past, but of course he was unable to substantiate, much less respond to mine and other challenges.
This just in: A “exotic dancer” was doused with a flammable liquid and set afire outside the Babes and Beer sports bar, in the San Fernando Valley. The victim, a mother of two, has been burned over 60 % of her body and is in critical condition. The suspects are Rianne Celine Theriault-Odom and Nathaniel Marquis Petrillo, a Black woman and a Hispanic man.
To bad these two can’t be treated as the Russians in WWII treated German flame thrower teams.
One example would be the recent victory of South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, who for the last two years has been putting down Americans and South Carolinians, calling them racists, nativists, etc.,
I live in South Caroling and have been trying to e-mail Graham time and time again and the E comes back unable to deliver!!! seems he was getting a lot of e-mail against his recent voting tendencies.
