The demographics of Ceres were presented recently at a City Council meeting and it shows some interesting facts.
Ceres is 61 percent Hispanic/Latino and 24 percent non-Hispanic white and seven percent Asian. I guess technically we should quit calling Hispanics as minorities. White, black and Asian people are now the minority in Ceres.
Ceres remains a fairly young town with 18 percent aged 5-15 and 32 percent aged 15-34. Twenty-five percent of Ceres residents are aged 35-54, and 25 percent are aged 55 and older.
According to the statistics supplied by the city of Ceres, 24 percent of Ceres residents are disabled!
The poverty rate in Ceres is 15.3 percent.
This is also interesting. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Modesto is the 107th largest geographic area in the USA at 218,069 residents. Turlock is ranked 512th largest. Ceres is not rated as it falls under 50,000 with a population of 48,386.
However, we do know that Ceres is the 186th largest city in California out of 1,418 cities and towns.
If Gavin Newsom keeps messing up the state, Ceres and the rest of California will continue to lose population. If you remember, in May it was reported that Ceres lost 376 residents to drop to 48,386. Turlock also saw a decrease – 203 fewer residents to bring Turlock’s population to 71,531, as of Jan. 1, 2022. Ceres’ immediate neighbor, Modesto lost 865 residents to drop to 217,880.
Newsom thinks his leadership has been stellar but as Ron DeSantis pointed out in the recent debate, people vote with their feet. Florida and Texas are growing and California is shrinking.
As of Jan. 1, California’s population was recorded as 38,940,231. We were at 39,185,605 people as of Jan. 1, 2022. California had 39,538,245 residents on Jan. 1, 2021 and on Jan. 1, 2020 we had 39,538,245. So California lost 598,014 residents in three years.
Things are so bad in California that when I asked Stanislaus County Supervisor Channce Condit what the biggest problem was facing the county, he replied the state of California. In case you missed that Q&A in last week’s Courier, Condit said: “The state is the problem for anybody in California, just dealing with the bureaucracy of the state to not being able to build anything. Just the CEQA regulations that they put on us. Then you can go into our water being at threat constantly.
“I think we are roughly 27,000 (housing) units short in this county. Every hoop and hurdle they put us through is costing us jobs and driving up the cost and then you add inflation on top of it.
“I would absolutely say that the state is obviously our biggest obstacle because you have to deal with the regulations that stop responsible growth.”
So I would like to ask the logical thinking voter, isn’t it time to vote out the party in charge and try some new leadership?
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Last week I picked up a copy of the Amazon catalogue. A box on one page flagged my attention. It was a call to support black owned business owners.
When I buy products I buy them because I want them. I have no idea of the color of the business owner and if I did it wouldn’t influence my decision on what to buy. To borrow the thinking of Martin Luther King, I judge a product by the content of its quality and not by the color of the skin from the one who made it or the company owner.
Of course, Amazon is playing the ESG scoring game, just as all the other companies who make an effort to highlight minorities and LGBT community and push climate change.
ESG stands for Environmental, social and governance (ESG). Anti-ESG Republicans say big financial firms are abusing their power to advance a liberal agenda on issues like diversity, social justice and, especially, climate change.
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The national AMBER Alert was put in place since 1996 after nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was kidnapped and brutally murdered near Arlington, Texas. The public outrage prompted law enforcement agencies and the Texas Association of Radio Managers to develop an emergency alert plan to help recover future abducted children.
California followed Texas’ lead. In 2002, California Assembly Bill 415 was signed into law and mandated that AMBER Alert plans be implemented statewide and charged the California Highway Patrol as the statewide coordinator for all AMBER Alerts. Since that time the AMBER Alert has been activated over 320 times, involving over 380 victims. With the public’s help, 97 percent of those children have been safely recovered.
I thought Amber Alerts were for children of all color, silly me, but one of the new laws taking effect on Jan. 1 will be what’s called an Ebony Alert, which focusses exclusively on black children and black women between the ages of 12 and 25. As far I can make out the Ebony Alert sets different criteria, offering a service to persons solely based on skin color. This bill “will ensure that vital resources and attention are given so we can bring home missing black children and women in the same way we search for any missing child and missing person, according to the bill’s author state Senator Steven Bradford, a Democrat. I suppose Bradford felt the system wasn’t caring about black folks reported as missing but to me this is a blue state type of law that seeks to cater to minorities.
Police in California are obliged to take missing persons reports regardless of color or age.
Bradford said it’s “heartbreaking and painful” that black children and young women are disproportionately represented on the lists of missing persons.
We all want all children, women and children of any color to be safe. Bradford needs to ask why black children and young women are “disproportionately represented on the lists of missing persons. What is it about the black family and culture where this is occurring?
If Bradford really wanted to make a difference he could be the voice to get black men to step up to their responsibilities. Liberals dismiss the notion that most of what ails the black community is rooted in fathers who’ve abandoned their children and baby mamas but the facts cannot be disputed. Fatherlessness is bad for all children but is especially a worse problem in black America. This tidbit is from the Pew Research Center: “Fathers’ living arrangements are strongly correlated with race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status as measured by educational attainment. Black fathers are more than twice as likely as white fathers to live apart from their children (44% vs. 21%), while Hispanic fathers fall in the middle (35%). Among fathers who never completed high school, 40% live apart from their children. This compares with only 7% of fathers who graduated from college.”
Also, from Pew: “Black biological fathers are far less likely than white biological fathers to be married to the mother of their children. Some 36% of blacks are in this situation, compared with 59% of whites. Among Hispanic biological fathers, this share is 50%.”
The studies go on about how only 10% of non-co-residential fathers helped with or inquired about the homework of their children at least several times a week, 15% helped out or inquired at least some time, and 75% did not help or check on homework in the four weeks preceding the interview.
Children who grow up without an involved dad in the house are more likely to be poor, drop out of school, have children out of wedlock and go to jail or prison.
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I’m not saying I am a perfect driver but in watching how folks drive it’s a wonder more people aren’t killed or killing others.
Last week’s massive 17-vehicle pile-up north of the Mitchell Road Bridge illustrates the need to slow down during foggy conditions. Fortunately nobody died and injuries were minor. According to the California Highway Patrol, the cause of the crash appears to be unsafe speed for foggy conditions. It should be basic common sense but it seems be lacking of the roads out there. The Modesto CHP office advised folks to:
• Lower your speed and increase your following distance.
• Utilize a high visual horizon by looking down the road instead on the front of your car.
• Use low beams only.
• Exercise proper time management. Motorists are likely to take risks when they are running late…speeding, unsafe passing, etc.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
