TYSON HAS LONG BEEN IDENTIFED WITH THE DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.
Tyson Foods Faces Boycott After Firing 1,200 Americans, ‘Would Like to Employ’ 42,000 Migrants - AND BIDEN - MAYORKAS - SCHUMER HAVE USHERED OVER THE BORDER 15 MILLION TO PICK FROM.
Laura Ingraham’s ‘Billionaire at the Barricades’ Gives Conservative-Populists Playbook for Advancing America-First Agenda, Crushing Globalist Saboteurs
Laura Ingraham was one of the few people who saw Donald Trump’s shocking victory coming. More importantly, as a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan who saw firsthand how viciously the Bush-aligned establishment despised Reagan’s working-class voters, Ingraham understands how powerful the conservative-populist movement is and why the elites in the permanent political class have spent gazillions and worked overtime for three decades to thwart it.
Billionaire at the Barricades is a must-read because Ingraham, who still gets chills when she sees footage of the crowd at Kemper Arena in 1976 realizing they had nominated the wrong man in Gerald Ford, takes readers on a fast-paced journey through the 2016 campaign cycle and shows how everyone who was blindsided by Trump’s rise should have seen it coming, especially after Dave Brat’s shocking primary victory over then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) in 2014.
But the book is worth keeping on bookshelves and Kindles because it explains the timeless tenets of the “conservative-populist movement that powered” Reagan to historic landslide victories that reemerged with Trump’s 2016 win and why Trump’s supporters must fight for the America-first agenda against the permanent political class of both parties whose business models are threatened by it.
During Brat’s campaign against Cantor in which amnesty was the primary issue that galvanized voters, it seemed like it was Breitbart News, Ingraham, who appeared at a seminal campaign event for Brat, and Mark Levin against the world. Brat’s improbable win, writes Ingraham, “was cataclysmic—and gave encouragement to conservative-populist activists coast to coast” who finally had proof that “the Establishment doesn’t always win.”
Two years later, Trump won the White House “because his message of economic nationalism and a less-interventionist foreign policy” reflected the will of the people in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Voters “didn’t care about his rough language,” Ingraham writes. Instead, “they cared about saving their country and knew the only way to do it was to elect a renegade—a disruptor—someone who owed the Old Guard nothing.”
Ingraham saw that very Old Guard cringing at Trump’s inauguration and says it was “surreal” seeing George W. Bush, Michelle Obama, and Hillary Clinton “sitting so close to witness the swearing in of a man they loathed.” Dubya was apparently “so unnerved by Trump’s remarks, when the light rain began, he temporarily forgot how to put a poncho over his head.” Michelle Obama “scowled and eye-rolled her way through the entire speech.” And Hillary, according to Ingraham, “looked like she had eaten a bad clam. All in all, a great day.”
Trump’s opponents on the both sides of the aisle, though, did not pout for too long. They immediately went into overdrive to oppose Trump’s agenda, especially his border wall. A source told Ingraham that during a private meeting with GOP Senators, they all “laughed out loud at the idea that Trump’s border wall would ever be built.”
Ingraham points out that this is a “reminder that the populist movement that delivered Trump into office must remain vigilant and keep the heat on the GOP Establishment” and reminds Trump that he must build the wall if he does not want to turn into George H.W. Bush.
“Mark these words: If a wall—a physical wall—is not erected along our southern border, the president and his party will pay a severe political price,” she writes. “Like George Bush’s promise to ‘Read [his] lips: no new taxes,’ the promise of a border wall was a searing pledge to the American people. To renege on it, or in any way get around it, will be considered a breach of faith in the minds of voters, and they will not forget at election time. Neither will the president’s opponents.”
Ingraham points out that “Democrats and NeverTrumpers know that defeating Trump’s border wall would deliver a crushing and demoralizing blow to his base” and that is why they are “going to do everything in their power to stop it.”
“Trump’s victory was only the beginning. The forces he overcame during the campaign have now created a barricade to block his—and the people’s—agenda permanently,” Ingraham warns. “Choreographed and well-funded protests, endless investigations, and a slow-walking of his agenda on Capitol Hill have reinforced the barricades to real reform. To overcome this, the president will have to avoid the mistakes of his predecessors and remain close to the principles and people that got him elected.”
Elites give off the impression that Trump’s populism on the campaign trail was something they had never seen before when, in fact, every candidate who has won the presidency in the television age has been the one who was the most populist. As Ingraham writes, “presidential candidates invoke the populist style because it connects with working people.”
But she notes that “except for Reagan, all modern presidents of both parties campaigned as populists but governed as globalists.”
Conservatism and populism, according to Ingraham, “overlap in their opposition to ‘big things’—big government, big international organizations, big media, big business cronyism.”
Reagan understood that “these distant, uncaring entities rob people of decision making and ignore their interests,” and Ingraham notes that “Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump summarized conservative populism best when each vowed to put ‘America first.’”
“Conservative populists tend to support a policy of economic nationalism—people-centered economic policies that put the nation and its workers first. They oppose a massive national debt because it weakens America and makes its citizens beholden to lenders,” she continues. “They also believe high taxes are bad because they sap workers’ wages and economic freedom. Similarly, they are against huge trade deals and international organizations like the World Trade Organization because they take power out of the hands of voters and give it to a far-away and often hostile global elite.”
When it comes to foreign policy, Ingraham explains that “conservative populists oppose broad military interventionism and believe military force should only be used when American interests are threatened.” She slams populism’s critics who foolishly toss around “the term ‘isolationism’ to dismiss populist foreign policy,” even though that label does not describe any populist she has ever known.
Ingraham points out that “throughout the Cold War, populists were among the strongest voices opposing Soviet communism.” In addition, populists have always believed that “squandering the nation’s wealth and blood on un-winnable wars and nation-building is unwise. Instead, they support a pragmatic foreign policy based on achieving ‘peace through strength’ by maintaining a strong military and using it prudently.”
All of this sounds familiar “because conservative-populist Ronald Reagan remade American politics with his two landslide presidential victories in 1980 and 1984.”
Unfortunately, as Ingraham details, “some conservatives took a dangerous detour” and “thrust us into a bizarre world of globalization, wars based on idealism and nation-building, and intense hatred toward the very voters who accounted for the Reagan coalition in the first place.”
The betrayal started almost immediately after George H.W. Bush won Reagan’s third term. The Bush administration purged Reaganites, and Ingraham recalls that Margaret Tutwiler told Reaganite Ed Rollins at a party that “there are a lot of us who had to suffer during the eight years of Reagan, and now it’s our turn.”
“We were Reagan people. They were Bush people. We all knew what the differences were,” Ingraham writes. “Many of the GOP Establishment types who behind closed doors scoffed at Reagan as a dim-witted former actor with an’“ultraconservative’ outlook were now working in the Bush administration. They thought it was time to return the Republican Party to what they believed was its more genteel, respectable roots. In effect, it meant the return to power of the Rockefeller Republicans who had worked to deny Reagan the presidency in 1976.”
She adds that “this antagonistic dynamic between the populist, small government conservatism of Reagan, versus the more idealistic, big government conservatism of the Bushes, would continue to surface in Republican politics over the three decades that followed.”
Bush’s Office of Management and Budget Director Richard Darman convinced Bush to infamously abandon his “read my lips” pledge not to raise taxes, and, in the end, Ingraham argues that “George H. W. Bush stalled the conservative-populist engine that powered Reaganism.” As Rollins said, “George Bush was the beneficiary of the greatest baton pass in presidential history in 1988, and he and his people tossed it away.”
After the Bush crowd pissed off the Reaganites and Ross Perot got the support of working-class Reagan Democrats due to his opposition to NAFTA, America would get eight years of Bill Clinton and globalism on steroids.
“Globalism is fundamentally anti-American because it aims to raze American sovereignty by atrophying our ability to take independent actions that are in our nation’s best interests,” Ingraham writes, pointing out that globalists do not understand that “because of the enormous anti-American sentiment around the world, it’s almost impossible to create a multinational organization where U.S. interests don’t become compromised or harmed.”
Just like his father, George W. Bush campaigned as a populist but governed as a globalist. Ingraham blames “Bush’s decision to aggressively pursue amnesty after his unpopular war” for insulting the “millions of conservative-populists who had worked so hard to put him in power.”
“Because of Bush, conservatives lost everything,” she continues. “We lost the House. We lost the Senate. And we lost the White House.”
Bush’s embrace of the amnesty bill that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) crafted with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) just added more fuel to the populist revolt that would end up destroying Bushism in 2016. Ingraham was on the front lines opposing Bush’s amnesty push, and the Bush White House was apparently not too thrilled. In fact, Ingraham recalls that the “pettiest of the Bush snubs occurred during the 2008 papal visit to the White House” when “someone in the West Wing” removed Ingraham’s name from the list of invitees.
“Very Christian of them,” she jabs.
In 2014, Cantor’s “cozy relationship with K Street and his overall disregard of the concerns of his constituents” reminded voters of everything they hated about the George W. Bush years. Cantor, Ingraham observes, “had become everything that the Tea Party and other grassroots conservatives hated about the GOP.”
But even after Cantor’s primary loss heard around the world, Jeb! “Act of Love” Bush “and his wealthy enablers” and incompetent consultants like Mike Murphy who fleece the wealthy enablers never grasped that “conservatives were tired of the buddy-buddy Republican approach to governance” and “relished the idea of an outsider who fought for them more than the Super PAC donors.”
Trump, as Ingraham notes, was the fearless “pugilist who would enter the arena and stand strong.”
“The rise of Trump represented a total break with the old Bush order, which is precisely what grassroots Republicans had wanted for years,” Ingraham writes. “But what the pundits and consultants didn’t understand was that most GOP voters felt as if they had been callously ignored, lied to, and let down by Republican politicians and their policies.”
In her book, Ingraham also does not mince words for the Never Trump saboteurs. She begins by pointing out that though “we remember Ronald Reagan in almost mythic terms” today, “many of those who claim to have been with Reagan all along weren’t.” Libertarians and the GOP establishment tried to thwart Reagan on everything from trade to government spending to “cram unpopular and unwanted Donor Class–directed policies down our throats.”
Ingraham details why Trump threatened the NeverTrumpers’ consultancy scams and the so-called conservative intelligentsia and think thanks that for decades “had convinced rich donors that their white papers and conferences must be funded and that their money-losing publications must be subsidized so that their message could ‘shape the debate’ and ‘move the needle.’”
She rips National Review for its disastrous “Never Trump” issue and recalls the time the publication used a Canadian to smear American patriots Pat Buchanan and the late Bob Novak as “Unpatriotic Conservatives” for daring to ask legitimate questions about the Iraq War. Ingraham writes that the “real tragedy” was “the fact that by maintaining a country club–like air of exclusivity toward Trump’s working-class and populist supporters National Review created the impression that the tenets of Bushism had become an orthodoxy conservatives weren’t allowed to question.”
One man who was unafraid to battle the professional conservatives, the GOP establishment, the legacy media, the left, and Democrats was none other than Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon, who turned around Trump’s flailing campaign when he took over as chairman by ensuring that every day would be about hammering home the themes of economic nationalism.
Ingraham describes Bannon as “a true populist believer who came from a blue-collar, Catholic, working-class Virginia family.” Ingraham notes that “Bannon says it was watching the toll the 2008 financial collapse took on his father, Marty Bannon, that ignited his passion for combating the effects of globalism and big, unaccountable institutions on everyday Americans.”
Bannon’s dad had “accumulated AT&T stock during his lifelong career with the company” and lost $100,000 when he sold his shares during the financial crisis. Bannon embraced economic nationalism after “seeing his father lose so much so fast due to the recklessness of the big banks.”
Ingraham recalls how Bannon’s appointment triggered the political and media establishments that “rightly feared his hard-charging, take-no-prisoners style and penchant for populist policies.” Facts do not matter to these smug elites, who smeared Bannon as a “racist” even though everyone who knows Bannon is more than familiar with “Bannon’s professional reputation for hiring and mentoring minority journalists” and his insistence that economic nationalism is the key to uniting Americans of all races and backgrounds.
There are many blue-collar Americans of all races and backgrounds, including my father, who identify with Marty Bannon, and Ingraham realized that is why a lot of voters overlooked Trump’s indefensible Access Hollywood tape. Ingraham was scheduled to speak at an event in Bakersfield, California, right after the tape was released. Dr. Ben Carson, who was also at the event, said to her, “Never a dull moment.” Ingraham notes that Bakersfield is the home of two of her musical heroes—the late Buck Owens and Merle Haggard—and “one of the last conservative strongholds of California.”
It is worth pointing out as well that two of Reagan’s most influential advisers—Michael Deaver and Lyn Nofziger—were also from Bakersfield. The salt-of-earth folks in Bakersfield were “obviously not happy with Trump’s comments,” but “most chose to look past” them, Ingraham writes. She knew then that voters were so fed up with the permanent political class that the Access Hollywood tape would not be fatal.
These Trump supporters, many of whom had not been involved in politics for a long time because they did not want to go to the polls to vote for the lesser of two evils, “were maligned, sneered at, ridiculed, called ‘deplorable,’ and in some cases physically assaulted.” But “none of that stopped them” from “heading to the polls to vote in an election experts and elites guaranteed would be a landslide victory for Hillary Clinton.”
In order for Trump to now have the backs of those who had his during the 2016 election, Ingraham advises Trump to have more message discipline, trust his populist instincts over the advice of the Democrats and globalists in the White House, stop the incessant leaks, and adopt a new media strategy to help President Trump successfully get his message to Americans like candidate Trump did.
There are plenty of other nuggets in the book that make it compelling, riveting and fascinating. Ingraham writes about the first time she met Trump in 2002 and learned that he was, in fact, a germaphobe when he handed her disinfectant wipes to ensure she did not get sick in New York City before her next television appearance. Who knew Trump has something in common with germaphobe Bob Costas? Carly Fiorina asked Ingraham for her endorsement at a famous D.C. bar, but her “record as CEO of Hewlett Packard was difficult to defend,” Ingrham reveals. A sheepish Ted Cruz gave her a “quick awkward hug” when he ran into her at the Republican National Convention before Cruz got jeered for not endorsing Trump. Her convention speech was so impressive that she was urged to run for office herself and even amnesty advocate Jorge Ramos magnanimously praised it when he saw her at the convention.
After reading Ingraham’s Billionaire at the Barricades: The Populist Revolution from Reagan to Trump, two things become evident. Though she went to fancy schools (Dartmouth and University of Virginia School of Law), worked in the White House, socializes with power players, and is a wildly successful author and radio host, Ingraham, unlike many who share her background and experiences, has never sold out and always fights for working-class Americans on issues—like immigration—that matter to them. She has always has been “one of us.”
And battling for the Americans who have built this country and have always made it great comes naturally to Ingraham because she loves and is in awe of America and wants to ensure that it always remains “a place where where a girl from Glastonbury, Connecticut, the daughter of a waitress and carwash owner, could end up working at the White House.”
The establishment elites who hated Reagan and despise Trump want a country that favors the connected and their cronies. They will spend gazillions to thwart the will of working-class Americans. To bring more people into the economic nationalist movement, it is important to remember, as Ingraham writes, that “in his 1980 victory, Reagan converted Democrats not by adopting Democrat views but by convincing them that conservative-populist solutions offered the only hope for American renewal.”
“We need to do that same thing again,” she declares.
Billionaire at the Barricadesoffers the playbook for how to do so, and it is essential reading for those of all political stripes who just want to understand how Trump managed to get elected, everyone in the so-called silent majority who intend to keep their elected officials accountable, and anyone who is looking to run for office on an economic nationalist platform that vows to back the agenda that got Trump elected and put America—and her citizens—first.
WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Tom Homan confirmed on Thursday that a man arrested in connection with setting a fire in Sonoma County Wine Country is an illegal alien from Mexico who has been twice returned to his “home country.”
Homan also confirmed that ICE has issued detainer requests for Jesus Fabian Gonzalez five times now in the past year alone, including the one issued on October 16 in relation to his most recent arrest on suspicion of arson. All of the arrests were made “by Sonoma County on various felony and misdemeanor charges,” according to Homan.
Sonoma County is considered a sanctuary jurisdiction and does not fully cooperate with federal immigration officials. That includes not honoring ICE detainer requests. “ICE was never notified of Mr. Gonzalez’ various releases,” Homan wrote in the statement regarding Gonzalez.
There were several fires in the region, and it is not clear what role the fires Gonzales allegedly set played in the overall disaster.
Homan’s public statement highlights the lack of cooperation from Sonoma County officials and the devastating wildfires that have ravaged the region:
Once again, a non-cooperative jurisdiction has left their community vulnerable to dangerous individuals and preventable crimes. ICE lodged a detainer against Jesus Gonzalez with Sonoma County jail officials on October 16, following his arrest on felony charges for maliciously setting fire to a property. This is especially troubling in light of the massive wildfires already devastating the region. Over the past year, ICE has lodged detainers against Mr. Gonzalez after four separate arrests by Sonoma County on various felony and misdemeanor charges. ICE was never notified of Mr. Gonzalez’ various releases. Additionally, Mr. Gonzales has been returned to his home country of Mexico on two separate occasions. The residents of Sonoma County, and the state of California, deserve better than policies that expose them to avoidable dangers. Non-cooperation policies – now enshrined in California state law – ensure only one thing: criminals who would otherwise be deported will be released and left free to reoffend as they please.
California Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed into law a bill that makes California a sanctuary state.
One of the running complaints raised against opponents of border security is the proliferation of criminal illegal aliens who enter the United States repeatedly, are apprehended and then sent back to their home countries. That part of the formula would be fine were it not for the fact that so many of them keep crossing the border multiple times, only to be found committing additional crimes. In some of the worst cases, you wind up with a result along the lines of the murder of Kate Steinle. But less high profile situations clog the system on a regular basis.
This year that destructive pattern has finally begun to change, albeit slowly. With new laws on the books and a more aggressive Attorney General, prosecutions are on the rise and sentences are at least somewhat more appropriate for the perpetrators. One such case came through this week in Louisiana, where Juan Carlos Rigoberto-Martinez had been caught in the country illegally multiple times after committing multiple crimes. The citizen of Honduras encountered a different sort of reception this time and found himself in federal court where he was summarily sent up the river for more than a decade. (Justice.gov)
BATON ROUGE, LA – Acting United States Attorney Corey Amundson announced that yesterday U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles sentenced JUAN CARLOS RIGOBERTO-MARTINEZ, age 33, of Honduras, to serve 130 months in federal prison for illegally reentering the United States after removal. The defendant’s extensive criminal history, including his status as an aggravated felon, contributed significantly to the lengthy sentence.
Yesterday’s sentence stems from the defendant’s federal conviction on April 12, 2017, for illegally reentering the United States after removal. Immigration authorities first removed the defendant from the United States on January 7, 2008, after he completed a state prison sentence in Georgia for burglary and theft.
Several months later, on June 5, 2008, the U.S. Border Patrol found and arrested the defendant in Texas for illegally reentering the United States after removal. The defendant plead guilty to the offense, resulting in a 77-month federal prison sentence from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. On December 27, 2013, immigration authorities again removed the defendant from the United States following the completion of his prison term.
This is an encouraging development which will hopefully send a strong message to the illegal alien community. Too often in the past we’ve seen illegals who have been deported as many as seven times being brought in on charges and we essentially focus on the new crimes they have committed. If those are sufficiently “minor” in nature they are frequently given yet another free ride back to their homeland and the cycle begins anew.
Not so with Rigoberto-Martinez. He had done a short stretch in prison in Georgia for burglary in 2008 when he was deported back to Honduras. In a matter of months he was back in the United States illegally once again. This time he was arrested for multiple robberies in Baton Rouge. He was already found guilty on those counts, but this time there was a difference. In a separate trial, he was found guilty exclusively of reentering the country illegally after having been deported as a criminal illegal alien. That was the charge he was sent up on rather than the robberies. (For which he will serve a shorter, concurrent sentence.)
Even if all Rigoberto-Martinez had been convicted of was petty theft of a pack of gum at a convenience store, he could have been locked away for a good, long stretch for illegal reentry. It’s obvious that our prison system doesn’t need to be further strained with a deluge of these criminals, but the less welcoming of a place we make America for criminal illegal aliens, the lower the incentive will be to jump the fence and come here. The sentencing of Rigoberto-Martinez goes at least some way towards driving that message home among the illegal alien community.
Now if we can just make the E-Verify system mandatory across the board to decrease the incentive for illegal aliens looking to take paying jobs rather than stick-up jobs we might really have something going. But don’t get your hopes up, since that would involve Congress actually doing their jobs.
AND YET JERRY BROWN IS ON THE MEX BORDER TELLING LA RAZA THAT CA IS MEXICO'S SECOND HOME.
IT'S LEGALS SECOND HOME TOO!
Gov. Jerry Brown, on a trip to Mexico, seeks to position California as a more welcoming place for immigrants... $35 BILLION PER YEAR IN WELFARE NOT WELCOMING ENOUGH?!?
We’ve got an even more ominous enemy within our borders that promotes “Reconquista of Aztlan” or the reconquest of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas into the country of Mexico…. AND IT IS THE DEMOCRAT PARTY!
Wine Country Homeless Man Arrested on Suspicion of Arson
A homeless man, Jesus Fabian Gonzalez, was arrested Sunday afternoon in Wine Country on suspicion of arson after leaving a creek bed where a fire was burning in Sonoma County’s Maxwell Farms Regional Park.
Sonoma County Sheriff Sargent Spencer Crum told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat that a team of county probation officers patrolling the Maxwell Park area after a series of reports of ongoing fires in the region had observed Gonzalez, age 29, as he “walked out of the creek area and a plume of smoke behind him.”
Sheriff’s Deputy John Grohl responded to the probation officers’ call and confronted Gonzalez, who was wearing a trench coat. Gonzalez is well known to local law enforcement officials, and he reportedly usually is seen living under a nearby bridge. He told the law enforcement detail that “he started the fire because he was cold.”
Gonzales was arrested, and then transported to the Sonoma County Jail, where he was booked for suspected felony arson charges. Sonoma Valley Fire Protection District personnel put out the fire and district arson investigators went to the scene to gather evidence.
The Sonoma Timespublished an article in August about the rise of homelessness in the Wine Country. Local police chiefs try to keep track of the homeless, but enforcement is restricted because “social justice warriors” have been successful in California courts challenging anti-homeless ordinances as the modern-day equivalent of post-slavery Jim Crow and Depression era anti-Okie laws that dispersed “undesirables” after dark.
CalFire reported the grim statistics Sunday evening that there are still 33 fires still burning, with the Wine Country suffering the worst damage. There are at least 40 confirmed dead and 310 missing, and 75,000 of the 102,000 people that fled this weekend remain evacuated due to “Red Flag” fire conditions. The 15 largest Wine Country fires burned at least 217,566 acres in the four-county Wine Country over the last 7 days.
By concentrating 10,000 firefighters on the six major Wine Country fires, crews have achieved higher containment rates including: Sulfur Fire, 75 percent; Tubbs Fire, 60 percent; Atlas Fire, 56 percent; Reswood Fire, 35 percent; Nunns Fire, 25 percent; and Pocket Fire, 25 percent.
The new Oakmont Fire that started on Saturday in very rugged terrain is only 15 percent contained. Authorities would not comment regarding the cause of the new fire.
Although Wine Country temperatures are expected to hit 90 degrees on Monday, a cold Pacific Front moving down the Northwest caused the winds to drop from 35 to 45 miles per hour on Saturday night, and to 5-to-8 mile-per-hour gusts on Sunday. Temperatures will plunge to a high of 65 degrees on Thursday as a rainstorm moves in across the Wine Country. CalFire hopes to achieve containment of all major fires by next weekend.
Burned to the ground: Inside the Napa wineries gutted by raging wildfires that has devastated the $63billion industry and killed 40 people
The wildfires, the deadliest in California history, have claimed 40 lives so far and have destroyed an estimated 5,700 properties
More than 100,000 people have been evacuated in Sonoma, Napa, Santa Rosa and Calistoga
Entire neighborhoods have been leveled and 214,000 acres of land has been reduced to ash
Among the most high-profile victims of the disaster has been the area’s wine-making industry
In Napa County alone, the industry contributes $13bn to the local economy each year and $50bn to the national coffers
Nicholson’s Ranch winery in Sonoma and the Paras Vineyard on the flank of Mount Veeder sustained serious damage to properties
While wineries suffered property damage to buildings, the vineyards - the lifeblood of the industry - have largely been spared
Ninety per cent of the grape harvest in Sonoma and Napa Counties had already been picked when the fires ignited so smoke damage to fruit has been minimal
'I’m always trying to find a brighter side to it all – it could have been a lot worse for us,' said Ray Signorello, the owner of the Signorello Estate
It was late on Sunday evening when Ray Signorello realized something was wrong. His wife Tanya, had spotted flames coming down the hillside towards their Napa Valley wine estate.
The first warning came at 10.45pm - less than an hour later, the winery building containing the family home was on fire and the Signorellos had fled.
By Monday morning, nothing was left of the colonnaded winery building but a blackened heap of rubble dotted with exploded glass bottles, while a formerly picturesque stretch of olive trees on the hill behind had been badly burned.
‘The fire was fueled by 50mph winds so there wasn’t much to stop it,’ Signorello, 54, told DailyMail.com.
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Ray Signorello (above), 54, the owner of a winery in Napa Valley, fled his home last Sunday evening
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His wife Tanya, had spotted flames coming down the hillside towards their Napa Valley wine estate. The first warning came at 10.45pm - less than an hour later, the winery building containing the family home was on fire and the Signorellos had fled
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By Monday morning, nothing was left of the colonnaded winery building but a blackened heap of rubble dotted with exploded glass bottles, while a formerly picturesque stretch of olive trees on the hill behind had been badly burned
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‘Fortunately we didn’t have anybody injured here – that’s the most important thing,' he said
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The 40-year-old Signorello Estate, which produces between 5,000 and 6,000 cases of wine each year, is one of 16 wineries wrecked by the monster blazes that have ravaged northern California over the past week
‘Fortunately we didn’t have anybody injured here – that’s the most important thing.’
The 40-year-old Signorello Estate, which produces between 5,000 and 6,000 cases of wine each year, is one of 16 wineries wrecked by the monster blazes that have ravaged northern California over the past week.
The wildfires, the deadliest in California history, have claimed 40 lives so far and have destroyed an estimated 5,700 properties – including 2,800 homes in Santa Rosa.
More than 100,000 people have been evacuated in Sonoma, Napa, Santa Rosa and Calistoga, entire neighborhoods have been leveled and 214,000 acres of land has been reduced to ash.
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Alan Ramey, 25, and his sister, Claire Ramey, 27, are part of a family-run winery which buys some of its grapes from nearby vineyards. Property on their winery has been destroyed, though it's too soon to tell just how bad the damage is because fires are still raging
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The Rameys buy their grapes from the Paras Vineyard on the flank of Mount Veeder. At Paras, the home of owner Jim Paras was totally destroyed with the property still unreachable almost a week later because of the Nuns Fire raging around it
Among the most high-profile victims of the disaster has been the area’s wine-making industry, which in Napa County alone contributes $13bn to the local economy each year and $50bn to the national coffers.
According to the Napa Winegrowers Association, 46,000 locals work in the wine business while in the US as a whole, 303,000 people make their living from Napa Valley vintages.
Signorello had been traveling in Canada with his two daughters, aged two and six, on the night of the blaze while wife Tanya was evacuated from the family home above the winery at 11pm.
Estate workers, including chief winemaker Pierre Birebent, 57, had battled to save the property; even using a garden hose in a desperate attempt to try and put out the flames.
But by the time Signorello finally made it back to his home on Wednesday afternoon, little was left but a charred heap of rubble.
He told DailyMail.com: ‘I didn’t believe it in the beginning but then when I saw the pictures my employees had taken on their phones, I knew it wasn’t here anymore.
‘You prepare yourself to see that; obviously when you get here in person, it’s dramatic. But I’m always trying to find a brighter side to it all – it could have been a lot worse for us. A lot worse.’
Much of the damage is to the land immediately behind the winery; a rugged olive grove dotted with California palms – now little more than blackened stumps.
California fires: Drone footage shows devastation of deadly blazes
A statue of the Virgin Mary, left close to the trees by a Mexican worker, was almost miraculously spared, with the blaze circling round each side but leaving the artwork untouched.
The vines, the lifeblood of the business, were also spared, as was a cellar holding barrels filled the 2016 vintage and the tanks containing this year’s harvest.
According to Signorello, the cost of repairing the main building likely to run into the millions of dollars and will take a minimum of 12 months to complete.
Nearby wineries such as the vast William Hill estate were also affected by the wildfires but did not suffer the same level of damage.
Others wrecked by the monster blazes include the Nicholson’s Ranch winery in Sonoma, where some structures were left blackened and charred, and the Paras Vineyard on the flank of Mount Veeder.
At Paras, the home of owner Jim Paras was totally destroyed with the property still unreachable almost a week later because of the Nuns Fire raging around it.
Alan Ramey, 25, whose family wine cellar buys some of its grapes from Paras, told DailyMail.com: ‘The house on the property was burned down.
‘It’s totally gone and we aren’t sure when we will be able to get there because the fire is still burning so we don’t know the full extent of the damage yet.’
His sister Claire, 27, added: ‘Jim Paras planted it a number of years back. He used to have his own wine label. We only buy old vine merlot from him.
‘What we’ve found is the merlot grown up on that part of Mount Veeder is really particularly dark, dense and beautiful.
‘We hope it can be brought back into shape fairly quickly but it could be too soon to say.’
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Nearby wineries such as the vast William Hill estate were also affected by the wildfires but did not suffer the same level of damage
Satellite imagines show wildfires raging in California
Like Signorello, the Rameys say they are grateful no one lost their life at Paras or at the 10 other vineyards that supplies the Ramey Wine Cellar with its grapes.
The business, which produces between 30,000 and 40,000 cases of wine per year, employs 16 people – none of whom were harmed, although some had to evacuate their homes.
Claire said: ‘We’ve been very lucky in that none of their homes had forced evacuations. We’ve had a couple in advisory evacuation areas but they’re still safe and well.
‘We’ve been doing half days where everyone takes care of the business for the first four hours, then goes and takes care of their families.’
With the employees and suppliers at both wineries confirmed safe, the Rameys and Signorello are now most worried for future of the vines themselves.
Ninety per cent of the grape harvest in Sonoma and Napa Counties had already been picked when the fires ignited so smoke damage to the fruit has been minimal.
But the vines, which take up to eight years to become productive after being planted, remain cause for concern.
‘If [the damage] goes down to the rootstock, it can take about two years for your crop to recover so you’re going to miss about two years of wine,’ Alan told DailyMail.com.
‘If it burns a good portion of the wood but still leaves some intact, you can possibly lose your next vintage.’
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Pierre Birebent, 57, is the chief winemaker at Signorello's estate. Birebent battled to save the property, even using a garden hose in a desperate attempt to try and put out the flames
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But by the time Signorello finally made it back to his home on Wednesday afternoon, little was left but a charred heap of rubble
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Birebent, who is originally from Corsica, France, added: ‘The vines are fine, they are not touched which is the most important thing. If we lose the vines, we lose the business for sure’
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‘As far as the business side goes, I can continue because I don’t have any interruption of product,’ Signorello told DailyMail.com
Signorello, whose vines are aged between 28 and 38 years old, said: ‘The vines were spared. We’re relieved we have our vineyards here.
‘It’s OK for this building [the winery] – I can probably get it back up and running in two years. But the vineyards, you plant them and it takes eight years before you even get a crop.
‘Our vines are between 28 and 38 years old and that’s what makes them special - with new vines, you wouldn’t have that.
‘I’m 54 years old and I don’t have another 38 years to wait for those vines to get that old again.’
Head winemaker Birebent, who is originally from Corsica, France, added: ‘The vines are fine, they are not touched which is the most important thing. If we lose the vines, we lose the business for sure.’
Because the vines remain intact, Signorello says he will be able to keep running the production side of the business while the winery building is rebuilt.
‘As far as the business side goes, I can continue because I don’t have any interruption of product,’ Signorello told DailyMail.com.
‘We will rebuild the building, we will have temporary space for the team offsite down in Napa, a little satellite trailer office on the property for the wine-making team and we’ll come back.
‘I’m looking to the bright side. There’s lots of people here in Napa and elsewhere that lost their lives and their homes. That’s obviously very, very dire so we were lucky.’
He added: ‘If people want to help, they can support Signorello by drinking my wines. Not just ours – wine from Napa Valley, Sonoma and the outlying valleys.
‘We see four million people a year here in Napa Valley. We’ll get the fires out soon and then this place will be back to normal.
‘We need to see the people back and so please don’t be afraid to come back and see us in Napa Valley soon.’
Why weren't residents warned about the Northern California fires?
By Rafael Azul and Eric London 16 October 2017
Over a week has passed since the most devastating fires in California history began in Northern California. The death toll is still climbing, reaching 40 as of Sunday night. One hundred and seventy two people are still missing in Sonoma County, the hardest hit of the four affected counties, and another 74 are unaccounted for in neighboring Napa County.
Neither Napa nor Sonoma counties alerted residents of the fires through Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) systems. Despite the fact that such technology is readily available, many of the dead and injured were caught sleeping, completely unprepared for what was coming. In some cases the victims did not hear horns or the desperate knocking of neighbors. Many rural residents beyond the reach of local police departments were left with no warning at all, their limited escape routes quickly engulfed by flames.
But the Washington Post reported yesterday that in neighboring Lake County, due north of Sonoma, local officials did send out an emergency blast that activated all cellphones, “turning them into the equivalent of squawking alarms.” Untold lives were saved by this activation of the WEA. Lake County is the only affected county that has reported zero fire deaths.
According to the Post:
“Of the four counties in Northern California where residents were killed in fires this week, two—Sonoma and Mendocino—had agreements in place with FEMA that enabled them to send alerts. Yuba and Napa counties did not, according to federal records.”
In Sonoma, local officials justified their failure to activate wireless notification on the grounds that it would produce mass panic and “because the warning is not targeted,” a county spokesperson said, adding, “to keep everyone safe we chose not to use a mass alert that would have reached areas not affected by the fire.”
The result was a nightmare. In Santa Rosa, the largest city in Sonoma County, the smoke and heat of approaching flames woke people in residential neighborhoods shortly after 1:00 AM. “Something told me, death, go, leave,” Julie Pilacelli, a resident of Santa Rosa’s Hemlock Street told the Los Angeles Times.
By 1:30 AM, most of the of Pilacelli’s neighbors were waking each other up and fleeing their homes. There had been no warning, no phone calls, no alarms. Eventually a lone patrol car with a megaphone but no alarm sound drove up Hemlock telling people to leave. “We were left high and dry,” said Jimmy Warren, also of Hemlock Street. “No one was there to help.”
County officials claim that warning the population would have clogged roads, but they have offered no explanation as to why emergency services did not have a county-wide evacuation plan in place to prepare for the inevitability of large fires, a common occurrence in rural and semi-rural parts of Northern California.
This week’s fires have far surpassed previous fires in death and destruction because unlike previous rural wildfires, these were able to approach densely populated urban areas. In this case, entire residential neighborhoods were left sleeping without warning as flames swept down from the hills despite the fact that they are situated right next to highways and would have been easy to evacuate with proper warning.
A FEMA spokesperson told CNN on Saturday that contrary to Sonoma County government claims, agencies sending emergency notifications do have “the option of providing geographic coordinates defining the area where the alert is to be targeted” with basic information like the location of cell phone towers.
In response, another Sonoma County spokesperson gave residents cold comfort then she told CNN on Sunday, “It’s something we’ll absolutely be looking into as part of our after-action plan.” Sonoma County already has WEA capabilities, unlike Napa, which has reportedly not used WEAs. Officials cite the existence of a separate warning system, for which residents needed to voluntarily sign up, as proof that the county did have a response in place.
But those who did sign up for the alerts often received notice several hours after the flames had enveloped their neighborhoods. A reader of the World Socialist Web Site reported that his family in Sonoma County was only alerted of approaching fires by a call from a neighbor and barely made it out alive. Three hours after the family evacuated, they received their cell phone evacuation notice from the county.
Many elderly people were evacuated from residential nursing homes with just minutes to spare and without public warning. The San Francisco Chronicle’s growing list of the dead includes many elderly or infirm people who may have been able to survive had they been warned and evacuated in a timely manner.
Different levels of local and state government have responded with a blame game. Governor Jerry Brown also has the capacity to activate the warning system, but administration officials sought to pass the buck on to local officials: “From the state level we wouldn’t do that,” said Kelly Houston, deputy director of the governor’s Office of Emergency Services. “Alerts and warnings happen on a local level…They decide what are the appropriate alerts for their population.”
Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano in turn blamed residents for failing to sign up for the second, voluntary alert system that sends out texts in emergencies. “If you don’t sign your cellphone up, you don’t get that service,” Giordano said. “So the message is, sign up for SoCoAlerts if you live in this county.”
On Friday, a Sonoma County spokesman said that only 2 percent of the county’s 500,000 residents signed up for the emergency warning system, an indication of how little was done by the government to advertise the system.
Lake County officials explained their decision to activate the WEA system was simple: “We had folks that were in immediate danger, and wanting to notify them of the situation,” Police Lt. Corey Paulich said. Lake County regularly sends out WEAs for weather and criminal alerts. The county also uses an app called CodeRed which notifies residents of impending disasters. In short text messages, Lake County residents were told where the fire was and where their assigned evacuation center was located.
According to the federal government’s Ready.gov emergency preparedness website, WEAs “look like text messages, but are designed to get your attention and alert you with a unique sound and vibration.” They “are no more than 90 characters, and will include the type and time of the alert, any action you should take, as well as the agency issuing the alert.” They are simple, cheap, and effective, often used to send “Amber alerts”, warning drivers to be on the lookout for child abductors.
Sonoma County’s decision not to activate the WEA for fear of causing panic is not a justified “spur of the moment” judgment call. It betrays the government’s incompetence and its lack of confidence in its own evacuation emergency plans. Moreover, the county’s fears of causing panic indicate that county officials and police feared that social tensions in the county—and particularly in the working class and immigrant neighborhoods of Santa Rosa—have reached the point that a panic would produce riots or looting.
There is no telling how many lives would have been saved had the county governments flicked the switch and activated their warning systems. There is a telling difference between the lack of emergency preparations for natural disasters and the massive degree of government preparation in response to peaceful demonstrations against police violence, for example.
As in Houston after Hurricane Harvey, the task of saving lives and property falls to the working class. Thousands of firefighters have converged from all over the country in a veritable army that is combatting the flames in multi-day shifts. These firefighters continue to risk their lives to control the flames and have contained several of the fires. Despite their best efforts, high winds Saturday whipped up new fires like the large one that has now engulfed the Mayacamas mountain range, threatening the small towns of Kenwood, Glen Ellen, and Oakmont.
Reports indicate that up to one-third of all those fighting the flames are prisoners, paid just $1 per hour for the extremely dangerous job. Residents of the affected towns greet firefighters with massive rounds of applause wherever they are sighted in public and have even gathered to insure quiet in areas where firefighters are sleeping. Fire departments have had to issue public statements asking that the public cease donations of food and drink on account of the already overwhelming showing of popular support.
CALIFORNIA UNDER MEXICAN OCCUPATION:
XAVIER BECERRA and the rise of Mexican fascism in the LA RAZA welfare state that was California
California’s erstwhile secession movement has been inspired by Catalonia’s fight for independence, believing that California’s secession will be even easier.
The movement has splintered in recent months—known as CalExit and Yes, California alternatively—but the lead campaign is now headed up by the California Freedom Coalition, who believe there are lessons to be learned from Catalonia’s experience.
But the big difference, according to the Sacramento Bee;
[t]hey believe California has more legal tools at its disposal, creating an easier path to secession – if that’s what Californians decide they want.
“There are definitely similarities in the fiscal situation – we both give more than we get back,” said Dave Marin, director of research and policy for the California Freedom Coalition. “But there’s more flexibility in the U.S. Constitution for secession than there is in the Spanish one. California has more tools available to it.”
The Catalan Parliament, together with President of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont, approved in September a binding referendum to make Catalonia an “independent and sovereign state.” Spain’s constitutional court suspended the process, but Catalan authorities continued with the vote on Oct. 1, prompting violence between voters and Spanish security forces tasked with shutting it down.
After a majority who voted in the referendum cast ballots for independence, Puigdemont issued a symbolic declaration of independence from Spain on Tuesday, but immediately suspended it to ease negotiations with the Madrid government…
Even though Catalonia succeeded in its attempt to vote for secession, it now must decide if it’s willing to risk the wrath of a spurned powerful centralized government crackdown. Things could get even more violent—and not surprisingly: all break-ups are painful, but try to “break up” with a huge, all-powerful government that can crush the life out of you by sending in its army.
Actions like what Catalonia did this week are almost always precursors to armed confrontation and civil war.
Commentator John Stossel exposes what’s behind question facing secessionists worldwide in an opinion piece for Fox News:
Recently, people in Catalonia voted to break away from Spain — not to declare war on Spain or refuse to trade with Spain, just to control their own affairs.
The Spanish government said they must not even vote. They sent police to shut down polling places and beat protestors into staying off the streets.
Governments never want to give up power.
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The powerful prefer one big central government. Some want the whole world to answer to one government.
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But central authorities aren’t the best way to solve our problems. Competition is.
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As California tortures businesses, Californians move to Arizona and Texas.
The more governments from which you can choose, the easier it is to benefit from competition between them.
All Americans, however, must obey rules set by Washington, D.C.
But what if most people in a state reject those rules and demand the right to govern themselves?
There have been several secession movements in California — a plan to break California up into smaller states, a push to make Northern California a breakaway state called Jefferson, and now the “Yes California” movement that wants to make California a separate country.
Calexit’s proponents say Californians shouldn’t have to answer to that evil President Trump.
If Calexit ever happened, I suppose conservative parts of the state would vote to separate from the leftists who dominate Sacramento. Maybe we’d end up with three countries where there used to be one.
Secessionists in California aren’t planning to give up their cause anytime soon, even though polls show their cause is popular with only a third of voters–even after Trump was elected.
“We’re not strictly saying secession right now,” Marin told the Bee. “But if that number gets into the high 40s or 50s, it makes sense to consider. And then we have a few more tools to pursue it than Catalonia.”
Thousands of undocumented immigrants among those affected by Northern California wild fires
By Rafael Azul 14 October 2017
Among the victims of the fires that have ripped through California’s wine country this week are thousands of undocumented workers, who make up the work force of vineyards, wineries and in tourism.
Different from other crops, vineyards depend on a year-round work force, as do the wineries. As a result, many undocumented immigrants and their families have established roots in the area. One Sonoma County official estimated that 20,000 undocumented workers live and work in the county.
Federal immigration agents have reportedly suspended their activities in Northern California because of the fire emergency according to ICE spokesperson James Schwab. He did not indicate when that suspension would end. Still, many immigrants are being extra cautious and hesitate to seek aid or refuge in shelters provided by the state.
The Sacramento Bee spoke to Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins who was checking out reports of caravans of immigrant workers and their families heading toward the Pacific Coast: “I saw dozens of families,” she said. “They are traumatized. They lost homes. It is cold out there. But they are afraid that they will be targeted by ICE, if they go to shelters.”
Sonoma County officials have vouched for the safety of immigrants in county shelters and the Sonoma County Sheriff also tried to assure immigrant workers. According to the Sacramento Bee: “There’s a rumor out there that people are checking immigration status in shelters and that is not true. Shelters are asking for names because they want to identify the people who are coming into the shelter. Immigration status will not be asked of you…”
Once they return back to their homes, undocumented workers may not be allowed through checkpoints, however, since police officials will demand government issued IDs. However safe immigrant families may feel in shelters, it is certain that they will be excluded from long term federal emergency help.
As of Friday morning, forest, field and brush fires continued their devastation in Northern California.
The series of fires sweeping through wine country have obliterated 3,500 homes and businesses, including historic wineries and more than 90,000 businesses and homes have been left without power. Since the wild fires hit last Sunday night authorities have been busy carrying out mass evacuations, barely staying ahead of the spreading flames, including all 3,500 residents of the city of Calistoga.
So far at least 31 people have died and 600 have been reported missing in the northern counties of Sonoma, Mendocino, Napa and Yuba. Most impacted have been the elderly—the average age of the victims is 79, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
One of the most tragic deaths took place on Thursday in Mendocino County. Kai Shepherd, a 14-year-old youth, died as his family was escaping the Red Wood Valley. The family was fleeing together in a car when it was engulfed in flames. His sister Kressa, 17, survived but lost her legs; both she and her parents will require skin grafts.
Daniel Berlant, California Fire Assistant Deputy Director declared that, collectively, these are the deadliest fires in the state’s history. “We haven’t seen anything like this in Northern California,” said Governor Jerry Brown, who has declared states of emergency in nine counties. Brown warned on Thursday that the efforts to combat the fires is “not in any way finished.” There is great concern of further destruction since the fires have already hit urban areas.
Daniel Swain, a climate specialist from UCLA, in an interview with the BBC network, described the extraordinary climate events that combined to create these catastrophic fires—a combination of a wet winter, which triggered the growth of underbrush, a hot summer that dried it out, and hot and dry desert westerly winds that occur every autumn. “Unfortunately, all the conditions are present for an unprecedented event,” declared Swain.
As if all that were not enough, the strong winds have significantly degraded the air quality in the San Francisco Bay Area, affecting people suffering from pulmonary conditions, and forcing the cancellation of outdoor events this weekend. A local air quality official said that the air in the Bay Area on Thursday and Friday was the worst ever, and comparable to the highly polluted air in Beijing. Oakland, 45 miles (72 km) south of the fire, has been covered in smoke.
There is more optimism in Southern California where fires broke out in the hills and suburbs south of Los Angeles earlier this week. Lower wind activity on Wednesday allowed firefighters to gradually gain control and set a perimeter around the Canyon Fire 2. It is estimated that 65 percent of the fire is now under control. Barring a surge of wind activity, Orange County officials hope that the fire will be fully contained by Saturday, meaning that there will be minimal possibility that the fire would jump out of its perimeter.
Since it began on Monday morning, the Canyon Fire 2 has consumed 10,000 acres of land. It has destroyed 25 structures in the cities of Anaheim, Orange and Tustin, including 15 homes, while 48 other structures were damaged.
LOS ANGELES: MEXICO'S ANCHOR BABY BREEDING FACTORY FOR 18 YEARS OF WELFARE. JUMP THE BORDERS, GET YOUR CHECK IN THE MAIL THE NEXT DAY!
"La Voz de Aztlan has produced a video in honor of the millions of babies that have been born as US citizens to Mexican undocumented parents. These babies are destined to transform America. The nativist CNN reporter Lou Dobbs estimates that there are over 200,000 (dated) "Anchor Babies" born every year whereas George Putnam, a radio reporter, says the figure is closer to 300,000 (dated).La Voz de Aztlan believes that the number is aproximately 500,000 (dated)"Anchor Babies" born every year."
In the state of California, of which Los Angeles is a large part, most payouts to illegals go first to educate them, and then to jail them after they commit crimes, and then to pay for their medical care as they clog up emergency rooms and help themselves to Medi-Cal benefits from funds they never paid into. Welfare itself rates a distant fourth.
The LA RAZA ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS FOR WELFARE
MEXICO WILL DOUBLE AMERICA’S POPULATION
IMMIGRANT SHARE OF ADULTS QUADRUPLED IN 232 COUNTIES
''California is going to be a Hispanic state," said Mario Obeldo, former head of MALDEF. "Anyone who does not like it should leave."
And M.E.Ch.A's goal is even more radical: an independent ''Aztlan,'' the collective name this organization gives to the seven states of the U.S. Southwest – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah."
JOE LEGAL v LA RAZA JOSE ILLEGAL
Here’s how it breaks down; will make you want to be an illegal!
“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist threat to America. Militant Islamists have the goal of destroying the United States.Mexican drug cartels are now accomplishing that mission – from within, every day, in virtually every community across this country.” JUDICIALWATCH
Overall, in the 2017 Fiscal Year, officials revealed that a record-breaking 455,000 pounds plus of drugs had already been seized. In 2016, that number amounted to 443,000 pounds. The 2017 haul is worth an estimated $6.1 billion – BREITBART – JEFF SESSION’S DRUG BUST ON SAN DIEGO
Mexicans abroad sent home nearly $2.4 billion in transfers in November, 24.7 percent higher than a year earlier, marking their fastest pace of expansion since March 2006, according to Mexican central bank data on Monday…
ILLEGALS & WELFARE
70% OF ILLEGALS GET WELFARE!
“According to the Centers for Immigration Studies, April '11, at least 70% of Mexican illegal alien families receive some type of welfare in the US!!! cis.org”
So when cities across the country declare that they will NOT be sanctuary, guess where ALL the illegals, criminals, gang members fleeing ICE will go???? straight to your welcoming city. So ironically the people fighting for sanctuary city status, may have an unprecedented crime wave to deal with along with the additional expense.
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$17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
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$12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English.
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$22 billion is spent on (AFDC) welfare to illegal aliens each year.
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$2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as (SNAP) food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
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$3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens. Does not include local jails and State Prisons.
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2012 illegal aliens sent home $62 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. This is why Mexico is getting involved in our politics.
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$200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
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Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States.
Disaster! U.S. Economy Lost 33,000 Jobs in September as Hurricanes Hit Hard
The economy shrunk by 33,000 jobs in September while unemployment fell to 4.2 percent, according to closely-watched data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It was the first payroll contraction since September 2010.
The numbers were much worse than expected. Economists had expected payrolls to grow by 100,000 and unemployment rate to hold steady. September was the first employment report to register the effects of hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Over the past 12 months, the economy has added an average of 172,000 jobs each month.
The storms’ effects are easy to detect in the underlying figures. Bars and restaurants lost 105,000 jobs, for example. These had been adding around 24,000 each month over the past year. Insurance companies added 11,000 jobs, largely reflecting hurricane-recovery efforts.
Prior jobs reports were revised for August and July, showing that the economy added 38,000 fewer jobs in those two months combined than previously reported.
Stock markets futures declined following the release of the report.
OPEN BORDERS:
IT'S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED AND PASSING ALONG
THE ILLEGALS' WELFARE AND CRIME COSTS TO THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS!
The conversation surrounding illegal immigration is deeply personal for many people -- it is emotionally-charged and politically divisive. Debates often devolve into mud-slinging contests, and arguments morph into feigned outrage, even violent protests. But from an economic perspective the question is settled science: illegal aliens cost taxpayers billions, impoverish American workers, and are completely unnecessary for America’s economic success.
To begin with, illegal immigrants are expensive. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s 2017 report, illegal immigrants, and their children, cost American taxpayers a net $116 billion annually -- roughly $7,000 per alien annually. While high, this number is not an outlier: a recent study by theHeritage Foundation found that low-skilled immigrants (including those here illegally) cost Americans trillions over the course of their lifetimes, and a study from the National Economics Editorial found that illegal immigration costs America over $140 billion annually. As it stands, illegal immigrants are a massive burden on American taxpayers.
Although border control is a federal responsibility, state and local governments shoulder two-thirds of the costs associated with illegal immigration. Unsurprisingly, this costs California more than any other state: California spends$30.3 billion on illegal aliens annually -- 17.7 percent of the state budget. Texas is next: illegal immigration costs the State of Texas $12.4 billion annually, or roughly 10 percent of the state's budget. In third place is New York, which spends $7.4 billion on illegal immigration.
Of course, the tax burden is only part of the story: illegal immigration also distorts the labor market, hurting American workers. Ever hear of the law of supply and demand? It is how the free market determines prices: when demand increases, prices increase (more people bid-up the price); conversely, when supply increases, prices decrease (less scarcity means less urgency), and vice versa. Supply and demand underpins the price of everything from gasoline, to apples, to the value of a person’s labor -- surgeons command high prices because there is a limited supply of surgeons, whereas store clerks make minimum wage because anyone can be a store clerk.
According to Pew Research, illegal immigration has flooded America’s labor market with at least 12 million new workers. This has dramatically, and rapidly increased the labor supply and therefore decreased wages for American workers. Ample evidence supports this claim. For example, before Hurricane Harvey, President Trump’s crackdown on illegal aliens had already caused wages for construction workers to rise by 30 percent in Texas (half of Texas’ construction workers were illegal aliens). Likewise,businesses in Maine were forced to hire American workers after the availability of visas for temporary foreign workers were restricted. As a result, unemployment decreased, wages increased, and working conditions improved in order to attract American workers. Illegal labor has distorted America’s labor markets, and hurt American workers in the process.
Finally, America’s economy will not collapse without easy access to illegal labor.
The standard refrain can be summed up as: “we need illegals to do the jobs Americans won’t do.” This is nonsense for two reasons. First, the claim is predicated upon the false assumption that America’s labor market is saturated and requires more workers to continue growing. This could not be further from the truth: right now fewer that 150 million Americans (out of 320 million) are employed, likewise there are 23 million Americans currently looking for work -- twice the number of illegal aliens in the country. Even assuming that every illegal aliens was employed, replacing them with American workers would still leave 11 million Americans unemployed.
Second, the claim is undermined by actual labor statistics. According to theBureau of Labor Statistics, millions of Americans -- of all races -- currently work as janitors, laborers, and agricultural workers. In fact, only four percent of American agricultural workers are illegal aliens, according to a report in theNational Review, putting to bed the myth that we would starve without illegal laborers. Clearly Americans are willing to work any job, provided they are compensated at fair market value -- this is not currently happening precisely because many illegals work under-the-table.
Believe it or not, states without illegal immigrants, like Montana or Ohio, are not economic backwaters with exorbitantly high costs of living -- people in Idaho can still afford McDonald’s and Starbucks, they just pay teenagers to work the drive-thrus. In fact, the cost of living in said states is often cheaper, because their governments do not require high taxes to subsidize legions of illegal aliens.
It is also worth mentioning that America is the only developed nation, until very recently, that imports millions of illegal immigrants to work in its service sector -- other rich nations like Japan and Canada, do not. Yet despite this, the GDP per capita of Japan has actually grown faster than America’s during the same period. The same is true of Canada and Australia. If illegal immigration is such an economic bonanza, why are Americans being left behind by nations without this “advantage”?
University professors, Silicon Valley CEOs, and politicians are not losing their jobs to illegals -- ordinary folk are. Illegal immigration is a contentious issue, but it remains important to couch policy discussions in facts -- not just abstract principles.
The Cost of Illegal Immigration to Taxpayers is Growing at an Unsustainable Pace
By Spencer Raley
The Hill, September 28, 2017
The majority of the costs to taxpayers, $89 billion (66 percent), are borne at the local and state level. This means that American taxpayers are forced to bear the costs of the federal government’s failure to secure our borders every time they pay school taxes, local tolls, sales and excise taxes. It also means that illegal migrants get a lot of benefits that they don’t pay for.
Conversely, by a 5-to-1 ratio, the taxes paid by illegal immigrants wind up in federal coffers. Despite states bearing most of the costs associated with illegal immigration, the federal government receives 15.4 billion of their tax receipts, compared to $3.5 billion received by states and localities.
“According to the Centers for Immigration Studies, April '11, at least 70% of Mexican illegal alien families receive some type of welfare in the US!!! cis.org”
On his Fox News show last week, Tucker Carlson took on the illegal immigrants who shouted down House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi at her press conference, saying most are “benefiting in a lot of ways from U.S. society, which is the richest in the world.”
“I never hear a single person say thank you. Why not?” he asked his guest, an illegal immigrant activist.
DACA renewal deadline looms; concerns linger
WESH - Orlando, FL
On a Facebook page called DACA Dreamers Only, several young adults who are in DACA insist they’ve worked for everything they’ve gotten, and haven’t received any government handouts.
“All day long I hear ppl say 'illegals get free health insurance, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare.' Anyone's state gives out free welfare services? I know mine don't," one person wrote.
“It is common knowledge that we can’t take advantage of many of the programs such as welfare and Medicare, yet many believe that we do. We are not taking advantage of anyone and all we want is a chance,” another one wrote.
But illegal immigrants do get several kinds of welfare, much of it through their U.S.-born children, and a study by the Center for Immigration Studies showed that 62 percent of households headed by an illegal immigrant received some type of welfare. In addition, U.S. taxpayers have spent billions of dollars a year for K-12 education for illegal immigrants, about 690,000 of whom have qualified for DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The Trump administration rescinded the DACA program this month, but with a six-month wind-down period to give Congress a chance to pass a version of the DREAM Act, which would give legal status to all those eligible for DACA and other illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria, and allow them to apply to become citizens after a few years.
But how much have U.S. taxpayers spent on the DACA beneficiaries so far? How many benefits have DACA people collected while in the U.S. illegally?
The biggest benefit illegal immigrants in DACA have gotten by far is a K-12 education in American schools, with extra services provided to them for ELL (English Language Learner) programs, and other programs offered through schools that include school lunch, school breakfast, in many places, summer meals, and reduced or free after-care and summer camp. The total school-related benefits amount to the year-round care and feeding of hundreds of thousands of children whose parents are living and working in the country illegally.
The average per pupil cost of K-12 education in public schools in America is over $12,000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But more is spent, on average, on immigrant children.
According to the Federation for American Immigration Enforcement, the cost to educate ELL students who have limited English-language ability is, on average, 20 percent higher than for regular students. In some school districts, it’s as much as 50 percent higher.
ELL costs nationwide totaled 59.8 billion in 2016.
“The brunt of these costs consist of providing salaries, benefits and/or training to hundreds of thousands of LEP teachers and programs, followed by additional funding for tutoring, bilingual textbooks and material, additional administrative tasks and facility enlargement/enhancement needed to incorporate the increased number of students,” wrote the authors of the 2016 FAIR report “Elephant in the Classroom: Mass Immigration’s Impact on Public Education."
As of September 4, there are 689,800 people in DACA. They are between the ages of 15 and 36. The largest group of them — 253,000 — are between the ages of 21 and 25, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. A total of 65 percent of DACA recipients are 25 or under. The great majority are originally from Mexico.
To qualify for DACA, a person had to have resided in the U.S. continuously since 2007, and had to be enrolled in either school or a training program or have graduated from high school.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 253,100 DACA recipients are 21 to 25 years old, and would have therefore attended four years at an American high school. Another 196,500 DAC recipients are now 16-20 years old and therefore would have gone to an American school for at least eight years. An additional 2,000 DAC recipients are under 16, and would have spent at least 10 years in American schools. Multiplying the numbers by $12,000 per pupil per year brings the cost to about $31.25 billion — which is the most conservative estimate — and is likely to be underestimating the amount that U.S. taxpayers have paid for schooling for DACA recipients.
Government Benefits Collected by DACA Recipients
K-12 Education
$31.25 billion
School lunches
$20 billion
Welfare
$30 billion
Source: LifeZette
This is not counting free school meals.
Harvard University researcher Roberto Gonzales found in a study of DACA recipients that 73 percent qualified for free lunch in high school, based on their low family income.
In 2016 the U.S. spent $18 billion on the school lunch program, double the $7.5 billion that it had spent in 2000. The dramatic increase is thought to be due largely to the increase in the number of children in U.S. schools where are either illegal immigrants or the children of illegal immigrants.
Another huge benefit the illegal aliens now in DACA have collected is in-state tuition at public universities and colleges in the 21 states that now offer in-state tuition for undocumented students.
DACA recipients might not consider that a benefit — but on average, people paying in-state tuition are only paying about a third of the total cost of their education, with the rest paid for by the state.
“If you’re only covering about a third of the tuition yourself, then somebody else is paying for the rest. Taxpayers,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for FAIR.
“It’s a huge government benefit,” he told LifeZette. “Most government benefits don’t come in the form of a check with your name on it.”
And setting aside education, a lot of illegal immigrants are receiving actual welfare, often through their children. But not always.
WIC, the food program that provides coupons for free food to women and their children, does not require a person to be a U.S. citizen to qualify.
A study by Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies showed that 62 percent of all households headed by an illegal immigrant got some kind of welfare. Almost 23 percent of them got WIC and more than 22 percent of them got food stamps (EBT) — most through their U.S.-born children.
In addition, almost all pre-natal care and births by illegal immigrants in the U.S. are covered by Medicaid, as the beneficiary is considered to be the future U.S. citizen who is to be born.
Jason Richwine and Robert Rector estimated in a 2013 report for the Heritage Foundation that in 2010, the average household headed by an illegal immigrant household received close to $25,000 in government benefits and paid, on average, about $10,00 in taxes, a deficit of about $14,000 per household.
So how much have DACA recipients collected in welfare and other benefits paid for by U.S. taxpayers? Likely more than $100 billion in benefits, including K-12 education, school lunches and actual welfare (WIC, food stamps, Medicaid, etc.).
But as government numbers are not available, it is almost impossible to know exactly how much illegal immigrants who now have DACA have benefited from being in the U.S. illegally.
“They should be looking at it, but they’re not,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, referring to the federal government.
An email query to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for information about government expenditures on DACA recipients was not answered on Monday.
(photo credit, homepage and article images: Molly Adams,
More than 52 million Americans live in economically distressed communities
By Sandy English 28 September 2017
A new analysis of Census data shows that the so-called economic recovery under the Obama administration was an unmitigated catastrophe for the 20 percent of the American population that live in the poorest areas of the United States and that gains of jobs and income have gone overwhelming to the top 20 percent richest areas.
“The 2017 Distressed Communities Report,” published by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), analyzes the census data for 2011-2015 for people living in each of the nearly 7,500 American zip codes according to several criteria.
The EIG’s Distressed Communities Index (DCI) considers the percentage of the population without a high school diploma, the percentage of housing vacancies, the percentage of adults working, the percentage of the population in poverty, the median income ratio (the percentage of median income that a zip code has for its state), the change in employment from 2011 to 2015, and the change in the number of businesses in the same period.
The report divides the findings for zip codes into five quintiles based on these indicators, rated from worst- to best-performing: distressed, at risk, mid-tier, comfortable, and prosperous.
The results show that distressed communities—52.3 million people or 17 percent of the American population—experienced an average 6 percent drop in the number of adults working and a 6.3 percent average drop in the number of business establishments.
“Far from achieving even anemic growth from 2011 to 2015,” the report notes, “distressed communities instead experienced what amounts to a deep ongoing recession.”
Further, “fully one third of the approximately 44 million Americans receiving SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or food stamps) and other cash public assistance benefits (such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)) live in distressed communities.” The report notes that most distressed communities have seen zero net job growth since 2000.
Residents in these zip codes are five times more likely to die than those in prosperous zip codes. Deaths from cancer, pregnancy complications, suicide, and violence are even higher. “Mental and substance abuse disorders are 64 percent higher in distressed counties than prosperous ones, with major clusters in Appalachia and Native American communities where rates exceed four or five times the national average,” the report continues.
One other important and alarming fact which the report highlights is that over a third of the distressed zip codes contain so-called “brownfield” sites—areas which are polluted or contaminated in some way. Not only do these have impacts on real estate and business development, they present a whole array of health hazards to the very poorest Americans.
Distressed communities can be found all over the United States but are concentrated in the South: 43 percent of Mississippi’s zip codes are distressed, followed by Alabama, West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana. According to the report, [the South] “is home to a staggering 52 percent of all Americans living in distressed zip codes—far above its 37.5 percent share of the country’s total population.”
After this, the Southwest and Great Lakes region have the largest share. In the Northeast, most distressed communities tend to be found in urban areas and in the South, primarily in rural areas.
The biggest cities with the largest numbers of distressed zip codes are Cleveland, Ohio, Newark, New Jersey, Buffalo, New York, Detroit, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio. Mid-sized cities with the highest number of distressed zip codes include Youngstown, Ohio, Trenton, New Jersey, Camden, New Jersey, Gary, Indiana, Hartford, Connecticut and Flint, Michigan.
Urban counties with the highest number of distressed zip codes include Cook County in Illinois, with Chicago at its center, Los Angeles County in California, Harris County in Texas, with Houston at its center, and Wayne County in Michigan, encompassing Detroit. Most of these urban areas were once industrial centers and home to the industrial working class.
Distressed zip codes that have a majority of minorities living in them are more than twice as likely to be distressed as zip codes that are majority white. “In total,” the report notes, “45 percent of the country’s majority-minority zip codes are distressed and only 7 percent of them are prosperous.” At the same time there are numerous distressed communities that are almost completely white. A quarter of the total distressed population is under 18.
The report found that the economic benefits of the recovery after the 2008 recessions have gone to the top quintile of zip codes, where the wealthier layers of the population live, including not only the very rich but also the upper middle class.
These areas, which the DCI terms prosperous, and make up roughly 85 million Americans or 27 percent of the US population, have for the most part the economic wherewithal to finance higher levels of education, have the lowest housing vacancy, highest percentage of working adults, and have had the lion’s share of job and business expansion.
“The job growth rate in the top quintile was 2.6 times higher than nationally from 2011 to 2015, and business establishments proliferated three times faster than they did at the national level,” the report notes. “Prosperous zip codes stand worlds apart from their distressed counterparts, seemingly insulated from many of the challenges with which other communities must grapple. The poverty rate is more than 20 points lower in the average prosperous community than it is in the average distressed one.”
The report makes much less of an analysis of the other three, middle quintiles, the at risk, mid-tier, and comfortable categories, but it does note some trends that address the overall trends nation-wide. “A remarkably small proportion of places fuel national increases in jobs and businesses in today’s economy. High growth in these local economic powerhouses buoys national numbers while obscuring stagnant or declining economic activity in other parts of the country.”
One of the more telling aspects of the report is that extreme poverty in the US is presided over by both capitalist parties: Democratic and Republic politicians have equal numbers of distressed communities in their constituencies. Democrats, in fact, “represent six of the 10 most distressed congressional districts.”
Another observation from the voting data, and one of the few that looks at conditions beyond the bottom and top quintiles, is worth quoting in full:
“President Trump accumulated a 3.5 million vote lead in counties that fell into the bottom three quintiles of well-being (equivalent to 9.4 percent of all votes cast in these counties). A vast array of factors determined voting patterns in the 2016 election, but it stands that the ‘continuity’ candidate performed better in the places benefiting most from the status quo, while the ‘change’ candidate performed better in the places one would expect to find more dissatisfaction.”
Broader figures and the historical view of wealth distribution in the US—that one percent of the population control 40 percent of the wealth or the decades-long decline in the percentage of the national income that goes to the working class—is not brought out in the report but the data add to a complete picture of social conditions across the United States, the character and geographical distribution of social and economic conditions in a country of more than 320 million. The portrait provided by the EIG report is not simply one of increasing misery and poverty for the bottom 20 percent, and not only one in which only a minority of Americans are achieving anything like “prosperity,” but of growing and explosive dissent among tens of millions.
It exposes as a bold-faced lie the claim that President Obama made at the end of his second term, that “things have never been better” in America.
JUDICIAL WATCH:
“The greatest criminal threat to the daily lives of
“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist threat to America. Militant Islamists have the goal of destroying the United States.Mexican drug cartels are now accomplishing that mission – from within, every day, in virtually every community across this country.” JUDICIAL WATCH
EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS:
Another Clandestine Cartel Crematorium Discovered near Texas Border
REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — Mexican authorities continue looking into the discovery of a clandestine human incineration operation where the Gulf Cartel burned the bodies of their victims.
The discovery occurred when neighbors of the Revolucion Obrera neighborhood complained of weird smells and the suspicion that a house was being used to burn bodies. Authorities arrived at the location and found that regular home was a cartel crematorium.
Inside the house, forensic investigators with the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office discovered various corpses and body parts in stages of incineration and decomposition. Some of the human remains were only superficially incinerated, while others were mostly turned into charred ashes.
The discovery comes as two rival factions of the Gulf Cartel continue fighting for control of this city. Since early May, the factions carried out hundreds of kidnappings, drive-by attacks, and more than 190 confirmed murders; however, the real numbers could actually be much higher.
One of the strategies used by both factions of the Gulf Cartel involves the kidnapping of lookouts, foot soldiers, and street-level dealers. As Breitbart Texas has reported, these victims are often tortured and murdered with their bodies either being dumped in shallow, clandestine grave sites or are incinerated.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “A.C. Del Angel” from Tamaulipas.
AMERICA: NO LEGAL NEED APPLY
REPORT: The assault to finish off the American middle-class is NOT over
A Santa Monica class action law firm filed the first of what will probably be hundreds of lawsuits blaming the Wine Country firestorms on Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E).
Bill Robbins, as the managing partner of Robins Cloud LLP, filed a complaint against PG&E in the Superior Court of San Francisco on behalf of Jennifer and Wayne Harvell, who lost their Santa Rosa home during the fires. The lawsuit claims that California’s largest utility failed to properly maintain power lines and adequately clear brush as required by the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC).
Robbins was traveling Wednesday and unable to comment on the status of the litigation. But his office stated that he would be flying to the Wine Country and would be hosting a press conference regarding other clients that may soon join the suit.
Under CPUC rule General Order 95 – Rules 35 and 37: “Where overhead conductors traverse trees and vegetation, safety and reliability of service demand that certain vegetation management activities be performed in order to establish necessary and reasonable clearances.” The CPUC currently requires firebreaks of “not less than 10 feet in each direction from the outer edge” of any tower or electrical transmission line.
But tree trimming has become a controversial environmental issue for the Democrat majority in California’s legislature. “AB-2556: Electrical lines: trimming of trees,” was voted out of a State Assembly committee on a straight Democratic Party line and sent to the floor in 2012 to prohibit removing any tree “unless the tree is dead, rotten, or diseased.” The bill would also require 120-day public notice before tree removal.
The CPUC and all the state’s utilities opposed the bill, because it “would harm the CPUC’s objective of ensuring the safety and reliability of the overhead electric system.” The bill died on the Assembly floor, but utilities got the message to restrict tree trimming.
Breitbart News reported on October 14 that that Sonoma and Napa County emergency dispatchers sent crews last week to investigate reports of over a dozen downed powerlines and numerous exploding transformers. PG&E warned that its electrical lines are only rated up to handle 56-mile an hour winds, but had been hit with hurricane force gusts that exceeded 75-miles per hour.
Breitbart News also reported that the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) issued a detainer request on the Sonoma County Jail for Jesus Fabian Gonzalez, who was arrested Sunday on suspicion of arson in at least on Wine Country fire.
Although Sonoma County supervisors and the Santa Rosa City voted to be “sanctuaries” on February 6, 2017, Sonoma County Sheriffs arrested Jesus Fabian Gonzalez, 29, on suspicion of felony arson and booked him at the Sonoma County Jail on October 14, after a series of reports of ongoing fires in the region. Mr. Gonzalez was reportedly observed around 3:00 p.m. PDT wearing a jacket and walking “out of the creek area and a plume of smoke behind him.”
The Los Angeles Timesreported on October 18, “Some homeless people who knew Gonzalez said that he had a habit of setting fire to brush along the creek bed.” The Times quoted David Moreno, 29, who witnessed Jesus Fabian Gonzalez screaming at the sheriffs when he was arrested: ‘I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.”
The Sonoma County Jail told Breitbart News that Gonzalez is also subject to a $100,000 bench warrant issued in Ventura County. According to the Ventura County Courts’ website, $100,000 bail is for individuals that are alleged to have committed extremely serious crimes.