MEXIFORNIA
under LA RAZA SUPREMACY RULE: CA has the largest and most expensive prison
system in the nation. Half the inmates are Mexicans. Half the murders in CA are by Mexican gangs.
In Mexico’s second largest city of Los Angeles, 93% of the murders are by
Mexicans.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/03/california-under-la-raza-mexican.htm
"The
state of California and the sanctuary city laws that make it a safe-haven for
criminal illegal aliens is likely responsible for at least 5,000 crimes that
were committed by criminal illegal aliens released by local authorities rather
than being handed over to federal immigration officials."CALIFORNIA: MEXICO’S LOOTED WELFARE STATE
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/11/california-mexicos-looted-welfare-state.html
MEXICO’S BIGGEST EXPORT TO AMERICA… POVERTY, CRIMINALS, ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS FOR WELFARE and HEROIN
CHRISTIAN
SCIENCE MONITOR
“Mexico prefers to export
its poor, not uplift them.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0330/p09s02-coop.html
Adios, Sanctuary La Raza Welfare State of California
MEXICO’S BIGGEST EXPORT TO AMERICA… POVERTY, CRIMINALS, ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS FOR WELFARE and HEROIN
CHRISTIAN
SCIENCE MONITOR
“Mexico prefers to export
its poor, not uplift them.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0330/p09s02-coop.html
Adios, Sanctuary La Raza Welfare State of California
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing
economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
Blue
State Blues: Gavin Newsom, ‘Mister Me’
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/06/08/blue-state-blues-gavin-newsom-mister-me/
8 Jun 2018394
Gavin Newsom is ready for his close-up. For the Lieutenant Governor and
heir apparent, Tuesday’s California primary was a mere formality, a rite of
passage.
His hair was properly slicked back, his teeth impossibly white.
His awkward entrance to “California Love” by the late 2Pac (feat. Dr. Dre and
Roger Troutman) completed the “bar mitzvah” aesthetic of the whole event.
Newsom has passed eight breezy years in Jerry Brown’s shadow.
Now it is his turn.
The Lieutenant Governor’s job is, essentially, to stay out of
the way. And Newsom did that to perfection.
In two terms, he had one notable achievement, and it had nothing
to do with the responsibilities of his office: he pushed through a gun control
referendum in 2016 that requires Californians to obtain a license to buy
ammunition, not just the gun into which it is loaded.
It was, like many California laws, sentimental, burdensome, and
ineffective.
What was remarkable about that
referendum was that it competed with a legislative effort by then-State Senate
President pro Tem Kevin de Léon (D-Los Angeles). De Léon had been the state’s
chief gun-grabber until Newsom decided he wanted the spotlight. After much
infighting, De Léon surrendered.
Instead of gun control, De Léon championed “sanctuary state”
laws, painting himself into an ethnic corner from which he has struggled to
emerge.
And that is how Gavin Newsom rolls: it is all about him.
In the primary, his campaign supported efforts to back
Republican businessman John Cox, so he would not have to face former Los
Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in an expensive all-Democrat runoff.
Shutting Republicans out of the governor’s race would have been
helpful to Democrats’ efforts to win key congressional seats and take back the
U.S. House. But it was inconvenient for Newsom.
During his tenure as mayor of San Francisco, Newsom made his
national reputation by backing gay marriage when it was still illegal. He
became a hero to many gay activists. But the truth is that his actions prompted
the statewide referendum in 2008, Proposition 8, that enshrined traditional
marriage.
Gay marriage might still be illegal in California, thanks to
Newsom’s grandstanding, had the Supreme Court not intervened in a 5-4 decision
in 2015.
The city he left behind was once
America’s jewel, glittering in the prosperity of the tech boom. Today, almost
half of Bay Area residents want to leave, driven out by the high cost of living and a burgeoning homeless
population.
That is not entirely Newsom’s fault — his successors were no
better — but it is a testament to the folly of his style of governance, which
puts liberal social priorities first and disdains the tedious business of
keeping the city clean and safe.
Newsom radiates confidence. He believes in himself — but it is
not clear what else he believes.
He once showed rare political
courage in opposing California’s absurd high-speed rail project, which Gov.
Brown considers a legacy project. Then he flip-flopped, pleasing the special interests that have climbed aboard the
boondoggle to nowhere. Lately, he has glommed onto the idea of free health care
for everyone, though he has no plan to pay for it.
Cox’s apparent campaign strategy is to blame Newsom for all of
the Democratic Party’s failures in California — the high taxes, the crushing
regulations, the influx of illegal aliens, the exodus of the middle class. The
sad truth is that the with the exception of the gas tax, the majority of
California voters support Newsom’s agenda.
Newsom’s real weak spot is his focus on No. 1. He will have to
overcome a record of sacrificing others for his own gain.
He is “Mister Me.” Or, soon, “Governor Me.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior
Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the
co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of
a Revolution, which is available from
Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Kate
Steinle will not be voting for LA RAZA SUPREMACIST Gavin Newsom. She’s dead.
Murdered by a Mex who had been deported 5xs.
There
have been more than 3,000 Californians murdered by Mexicans who jumped back
over the open border to avoid prosecution!
Everyday
there are 12 Americans murdered and 8 children molested by Mexicans!
Steinle’s
murderer, Jose Zarate and been deported 5xs!
"While walking with her father on a pier
in San Francisco in 2015, Steinle was shot by the illegal alien. Steinle
pleaded with her father to not let her die, but she soon passed in her father’s
arms."
Will
Californians Prevail Against the Little Picture of Hell?
https://townhall.com/columnists/arthurschaper/2018/06/05/draft-n2487359
The state of California has descended into
a modern-day version of Dante’s Inferno, where treachery of all kinds occupies
the bottom circle. Public sector unions are running (or rather ruining) the
state into bankruptcy, betraying the public trust while charging the taxpayers
for the perverse privilege. Republicans collude with the supermajority of
Democrats to raise taxes, fees, and unrelenting regulatory burdens.
The public schools indoctrinate their
young charges to hate this country and the rule of law. Illegal aliens continue
overwhelming the state, draining California’s already depleted public services
while endangering our lives, the rule of law, and public safety for all
citizens. The federal government has filed lawsuits against Sanctuary
California, and ICE is rounding up illegals in their homes and in workplaces.
However, demonic pro-illegal forces still parade in the streets and cross our borders,
defying American sovereignty. Larger cities have more homeless than homes for
citizens.
The natural disasters are hitting crisis
level, too. The Bible depicts torturous flames with respite in hell without
respite, (Luke 16: 24). So too parched conditions have engulfed California.
Wildfires have become a year-round terror, yet the state’s leadership refuses
to prepare emergency water storage. This past week, two hundred firefighters
had to quell another massive conflagration in south Orange County, and summer
hasn’t even begun yet. To make matters legislation to make the current drastic
water rationing permanent!
Even wealthy coastal elites have found
that the cost of living in California is slowly exceeding its value. Money
can’t create water, and financial gain provided nothing for West Los Angeles
socialites when a few homeless transients set a blaze along the 405 Freeway
overpass along the Santa Monica mountains.
All of this is a testimony to the damage
wrought by progressive policies which have transformed California into a
picture of hell. That’s precisely what Evangelical preacher Franklin Graham
called California … or at least that’s what he called the sanctuary cities.
During an interview on the Todd Starnes Show, Graham
commented:
"People are leaving the state. The
tax base is eroding. They are turning their once beautiful cities into
sanctuary cities, which are just a little picture of Hell," Graham said.
"Just go to San Francisco and go to this once-beautiful city and see what
has happened to it."
But why did the son of the renowned
Reverend Billy Graham take time to comment on the harrowing horrors of
California? For his latest Gospel Crusade, he visited ten cities in the
once-Golden State. Starting on May 20 in Escondido (one of several cities to
challenge SB 54, aka the Sanctuary State law over the past three month), Graham
is bringing the message of the Good News to the dispirited wasteland along the
Left Coast.
Returning to Pastor Graham’s signature
statement from the Starnes interview, finally a pastor of stature and renown is
condemning sanctuary city policies, and a welcome response from the
all-too-quiet church leadership in California and across the country. Pastors
should be the first to denounce this misnamed, misleading agenda. The concept
of sanctuary comes from the Bible, better known as “cities of refuge” (cf.
Numbers 35:11-28), locations reserved for those who had accidentally killed
someone. To avoid retribution, they would flee to those cities.
In California, sanctuary policies bar
local and state law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration
officials to arrest and deport illegal aliens. These cities are not
safeguarding otherwise innocent people, but are protecting criminals who have
broken into the United States and reside illegally to this day. Pundits left
and right contend that these policies actually protect otherwise law-abiding
residents to seek help and report crimes. Nothing could be further from the
truth.
However, is it fair to tie the long list
of hellish outcomes from these left-wing enclaves to their refusal to enforce
federal immigration laws?
Yes.
What has happened to sanctuary city San Francisco,
for example? The progressivism that made God nothing and man’s “ideas”
everything created the s***-hole dystopia that resides there today. It’s an
overpriced progressive utopia, to put it charitably. For the vast-majority of
residents, even for those who can afford it, a salary of $100,000 a year barely
pays the rent. Roommates doubling up is the norm, especially among the Big Tech
interns who take the bus to Silicon Valley to work all day on the latest app
for the Google, Facebook, EBay overlords.
For the price they pay to live in the
city, San Franciscans aren’t getting their money’s worth. Intravenous drug
needles litter the streets everywhere. Homelessness is more common than
homeownership. “S***hole” better describes the streets of the city, where the
feces piles have so overwhelmed the streets, that visitors receive maps on how
best to navigate away from the crap and corruption. Street fights among
transients and the mentally ill have exploded, rampant moral decline has
overshadowed the once great city. Tourists find enough to see, then flee.
Freedom of speech and freedom of religion
have lost their place, even though Graham’s latest crusades have succeeded in
otherwise unfriendly territory, like Berkeley. Last year, the Patriot Prayer
movement, headed by Joey Gibson, attempted to throw two rallies for freedom of
speech and thought. The elected officials of San Francisco (including Nancy
Pelosi) and the now-deceased mayor Ed Lee, smeared the peaceful program as a
“White supremacy rally.” Gibson is half Japanese, by the way.
Where Gibson had tried and failed,
Graham’s message of hope accomplished peaceful gatherings with a call to action
to California’s Christians. And I say it’s about time. There have been flickers
of hope in spite of the deranged left-wing agenda ravaging my home state.
Californians in general, and Christians in particular, need to step up. They
are called to be light in a dark, hellish world, but nothing good will happen
if they don’t vote for their values, then educate the public how to fight
against the devilish lawlessness foisted upon us by our political leaders and
the cultural elites running—or rather ruining—the state.
June 5, 2018
The one topic Democrats
don't dare bring up in today's SoCal primary
The airwaves in Southern
California are flooded with Democratic candidate ads, with most openly touting
extremely loony far-left positions – promises of free health care for all, free
college for all, beefed up public funding for Planned Parenthood, full gun
control, pretty much the full Bernie Sanders plate of pie-in-the-sky
goodies. Democrats, whether in the House, Senate, governor, or
assembly races, are all openly offering all the free stuff on the far left's
wish list, not holding back at all. Fiscal discipline isn't in
fashion with this bunch. If I had to speculate, I'd say it's because
at the time these platforms were formulated, Democrats were convinced that a blue
wave was upon them. In a crowded field, and at primary time, where
only the most committed voters show up, extremism seems to be the way to stand
out and get ahead of the pack.
There's one topic among
these offerings that isn't being touched – not even in one campaign ad:
Illegal immigration.
As the sign says:
"Caution."
We all know that Democrats
favor open borders, given the potential for muscling mendicant votes in the
state's poorest cities from their well oiled political machines. Democrats
favor DACA, DAPA for the parents, amnesty, state benefits for illegals – from
driver's licenses to free health care – an end to deportations, and no border
wall, let alone National Guardsmen at the borders. You can find
vague admissions of these stances on candidates' websites, buried deep.
But somehow, this topic
isn't one they want to bring up in the heat of the primaries, at least not in
ads, where they have an overcrowded slate of candidates on the June ballot, and
face the real prospect of seeing no Democrats making it to the slate in
November.
Illegal immigration seems to
be the electric third rail.
That says a lot about the
sentiment of the voters in illegal alien-filled California, which houses one
quarter of the nation's illegals. Nobody's brought up the Democratic
plan for free health care for illegals, now wending its way through the
California statehouse. Nobody's asked Gavin Newsom, the frontrunner
for the Democratic nomination for governor, what he thinks of the state's
inundation of illegals, and he's certainly said nothing to the broad public
about it in his ads. The costs of illegal
immigration are being carefully
hidden by Democrats.
Meanwhile, city after city
and county after county in Southern California has joined the lawsuit against
the state for its "sanctuary state" laws, which require them to house
and feed illegals instead of turn them over to the feds for breaking the
law. It's probably significant that increasingly blue San
Diego and Orange Counties, the two areas Democrats have placed all
their hopes and cash on for winning the House back, have joined this movement.
It all suggests that this
topic is dry tinder among voters, the internal polls look bad for Democrats on
their free everything for illegals, and the Democratic Party line is far more
unpopular than anyone on the left is willing to admit.
President Trump should have
a field day enacting his orderly immigration agenda, even in California, when
crunch time comes at the November midterms.
It Pays to be Illegal in California
It
certainly is a good time to be an illegal alien in California. Democratic State
Sen. Ricardo Lara last week pitched a bill to permit illegal immigrants to
serve on all state and local boards and commissions. This week, lawmakers
unveiled a $1 billion health care plan that would include spending
$250 million to extend health care coverage to all illegal alien adults.
“Currently,
undocumented adults are explicitly and unjustly locked out of healthcare due to
their immigration status. In a matter of weeks, California legislators will
have a decisive opportunity to reverse that cruel and counterproductive fact,”
Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula said in Monday’s Sacramento Bee.
His legislation, Assembly Bill 2965, would give as many as 114,000
uninsured illegal aliens access to Medi-Cal programs. A companion bill has been
sponsored by State Sen. Richard Lara.
But that
could just be a drop in the bucket. The Democrats’ plan covers more than
100,000 illegal aliens with annual incomes bless than $25,000, however an
estimated 1.3 million might be eligible based on their earnings.
In
addition, it is estimated that 20 percent of those living in California
illegally are uninsured – the $250 million covers just 11 percent.
So, will
politicians soon be asking California taxpayers once again to dip into their
pockets to pay for the remaining 9 percent?
Before
they ask for more, Democrats have to win the approval of Gov. Jerry Brown, who
cautioned against spending away the state’s surplus when he introduced his $190 billion budget
proposal in January.
Given
Brown’s openness to expanding Medi-Cal expansions in recent years, not to
mention his proclivity for blindly supporting any measure benefitting
lawbreaking immigrants, the latest fiscal irresponsibility may win approval.
And if he
takes a pass, the two Democrats most likely to succeed Brown – Lt. Gov. Gavin
Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – favor excessive social spending and are actively courting
illegal immigrant support.
Adios, Sanctuary La Raza Welfare State of California
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
BLOG:
MANY DISPUTE CALIFORNIA’S EXPENDITURES FOR THE LA RAZA WELFARE STATE IN
MEXIFORNIA JUST AS THEY DISPUTE THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS. APPROXIMATELY HALF THE
POPULATION OF CA IS NOW MEXICAN AND BREEDING ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE LIKE
BUNNIES. THE $22 BILLION IS STATE EXPENDITURE ONLY. COUNTIES PAY OUT MORE WITH
LOS ANGELES COUNTY LEADING AT OVER A BILLION DOLLARS PAID OUT YEARLY TO
MEXICO’S ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS. NOW MULTIPLY THAT BY THE NUMBER OF COUNTIES IN
CA AND YOU START TO GET AN IDEA OF THE STAGGERING WELFARE STATE MEXICO AND THE
DEMOCRAT PARTY HAVE ERECTED SANS ANY LEGALS VOTES. ADD TO THIS THE FREE ENTERPRISE
HOSPITAL AND CLINIC COST FOR LA RAZA’S “FREE” MEDICAL WHICH IS ESTIMATED TO BE
ABOUT $1.5 BILLION PER YEAR.
Liberals
claim they more than make that up with taxes paid, but that’s simply not true.
It’s not even close. FAIR estimates illegal aliens in California contribute
only $1.21 billion in tax revenue, which means they cost California $20.6
billion, or at least $1,800 per household.
Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
"If the racist "Sensenbrenner
Legislation" passes the US Senate, there is no doubt that a massive civil
disobedience movement will emerge. Eventually labor union power can merge with
the immigrant civil rights and "Immigrant
Sanctuary" movements to enable us to either form a new political
party or to do heavy duty reforming of the existing Democratic Party. The next
and final steps would follow and that is to elect our own governors of all the
states within Aztlan."
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.
If Immigration Creates
Wealth, Why Is California America's Poverty Capital?
California
used to be home to America's largest and most affluent middle
class. Today, it is America's poverty
capital. What went wrong? In a word:
immigration. According to the U.S. Census Bureau'...: The Golden State is peddling fool's gold lately.
California used to be
home to America's largest and most affluent middle class. Today, it
is America's poverty capital. What went wrong? In a
word: immigration.
According to the U.S. Census
Bureau's Official
Poverty Measure, California's poverty rate hovers around 15
percent. But this figure is misleading: the Census Bureau measures
poverty relative to a uniform national standard, which doesn't account for
differences in living costs between states – the cost of taxes, housing, and
health care are higher in California than in Oklahoma, for example. Accounting
for these differences reveals that California's
real poverty rate is 20.6 percent – the highest in America, and
nearly twice the national average of 12.7 percent.
Likewise, income
inequality in California is the second-highest in America, behind
only New York. In fact, if California were an independent country,
it would be the 17th most unequal country on Earth, nestled comfortably between
Honduras and Guatemala. Mexico is slightly more
egalitarian. California is far more unequal than the "social
democracies" it emulates: Canada is the 111th most unequal nation,
while Norway is far down the list at number 153 (out of 176
countries). In terms of income inequality, California has more in
common with banana republics than other "social democracies."
More Government, More Poverty
High taxes, excessive regulations,
and a lavish welfare state – these are the standard explanations for
California's poverty epidemic. They have some merit. For
example, California has both the highest personal income tax rate and the
highest sales tax in America, according to Politifact.
Not only are California's taxes high,
but successive "progressive" governments have swamped the state in a
sea of red tape. Onerous regulations cripple small businesses and
retard economic growth. Kerry Jackson, a fellow with the Pacific
Research Institute, gives a few specific examples of how excessive government
regulation hurts California's poor. He writes in a recent op-ed for
the Los
Angeles Times:
Extensive environmental regulations
aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions make energy more expensive, also
hurting the poor. By some estimates, California energy costs are as
much as 50% higher than the national average. Jonathan A. Lesser of
Continental Economics ... found that "in 2012, nearly 1 million California
households faced ... energy expenditures exceeding 10% of household
income."
Some government regulation is
necessary and desirable, but most of California's is not. There is
virtue in governing with a "light touch."
Finally, California's welfare state
is, perhaps paradoxically, a source of poverty in the
state. The Orange
Country Register reports that California's social safety net is
comparable in scale to those found in Europe:
In California a mother
with two children under the age of 5 who participates in these major welfare
programs – Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (food stamps), housing assistance, home energy assistance,
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children – would
receive a benefits package worth $30,828 per year.
... [Similar] benefits
in Europe ranged from $38,588 per year in Denmark to just $1,112 in
Romania. The California benefits package is higher than in
well-known welfare states as France ($17,324), Germany ($23,257) and even
Sweden ($22,111).
Although welfare states ideally help the poor, reality
is messy. There are three main problems with the welfare
state. First, it incentivizes poverty by rewardingthe poor with government
handouts that are often far more valuable than a job. This can be
ameliorated to some degree by imposing work requirements on welfare recipients,
but in practice, such requirements are rarely imposed. Second,
welfare states are expensive. This means
higher taxes and therefore slower economic growth and fewer job opportunities
for everyone – including the poor.
Finally, welfare states are magnets
for the poor. Whether through domestic migration or foreign
immigration, poor people flock to places with generous welfare
states. This is logical from the immigrant's perspective, but it
makes little sense from the taxpayer's. This fact is why socialism
and open borders arefundamentally
incompatible.
Why Big Government?
Since 1960, California's population
exploded from 15.9 to 39 million people. The growth
was almost entirely due to immigration – many people came from other states,
but the majority came from abroad. The Public Policy
Institute of California estimates that 10 million immigrants
currently reside in California. This works out to 26 percent of the
state's population.
BLOG: COME TO
MEXIFORNIA! HALF OF LOS ANGELES 15 MILLION ARE ILLEGALS!
This figure includes
2.4 million illegal aliens, although a recent
study from Yale University suggests that the true number of aliens
is at least double that. Modifying the initial figure implies that nearly one in three Californians is an immigrant. This
is not to disparage California's immigrant population, but it is madness to
deny that such a large influx of people has changed California's society and
economy.
Importantly, immigrants vote
Democrat by a ratio higher than 2:1, according to a report from the Center
for Immigration Studies. In California, immigration has
increased the pool of likely Democrat voters by nearly 5 million people,
compared to just 2.4 million additional likely Republican
voters. Not only does this almost guarantee Democratic victories,
but it also shifts California's political midpoint to the left. This
means that to remain competitive in elections, the Republicans must abandon or soften many
conservative positions so as to cater to the center.
California became a
Democratic stronghold not because Californians became socialists, but because
millions of socialists moved there. Immigration turned California
blue, and immigration is ultimately to blame for California's high poverty
level.
REALITIES OF A STATE IN
MELTDOWN:
THE INVISIBLE CALIFORNIA
De facto apartheid world in the Golden State.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270265/invisible-california-bruce-thornton
In 1973, as I was going through customs in
New York, the customs agent rifling my bag looked at my passport and said, with
a Bronx sneer, “Bruce Thornton, huh. Must be one of them Hollywood names.”
Hearing that astonishing statement, I
realized for the first time that California is as much an idea as a place.
There were few regions in America more distant from Hollywood than the rural,
mostly poor, multiethnic San Joaquin Valley where my family lived and ranched.
Yet to this New Yorker, the Valley was invisible.
BLOG: FEINSTEIN & BOXER THREE TIMES
ATTEMPTED TO INSERT IN VARIOUS BILLS AN AMNESTY FOR FARM WORKERS TO REPAY THEIR
BIG AG BIG DONORS.
ONE-THIRD OF ALL FARM WORKERS END UP ON
WELFARE AS SOON AS THE ANCHOR BABIES START COMING
Coastal Californians are sometimes just as
blind to the world on the other side of the Coast Range, even though its farms,
orchards, vineyards, dairies, and ranches comprise more than half the
state’s $46
billion agriculture industry, which grows over 400 commodities, including over a third of the
country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts.
Granted, Silicon Valley is an economic
colossus compared to the ag industry, but agriculture’s importance can’t be
measured just in dollars and cents. Tech, movies, and every other industry
tends to forget that their lives and businesses, indeed civilization itself,
all rest on the shoulders of those who produce the food. You can live without
your iPhone or your Mac or the latest Marvel Studios blockbuster. But you can’t live without the food grown by the one out of a
100 people who work to feed the other 99.
A Politically Invisible Valley
Living in the most conservative counties
in the
deepest-blue state, Valley residents
constantly see
their concerns, beliefs, and needs
seldom taken
into account at the state or federal
level.
Registered Democrats in California
outnumber registered Republicans by over 19%, and the State Legislature seats about twice as many Democrats as
Republicans (California’s one of only eight states nationwide with a trifecta of a Democratic and two Democratic
controlled legislative bodies).
California’s Congressional delegation is
even more unbalanced: in the House of Representatives, currently there are
fourteen Republicans compared to thirty-nine House Democrats (at least half of
those GOP districts are in danger of turning blue this fall); half the Republicans represent Central Valley districts, none
bordering the Pacific Ocean. The last elected Republican US Senator left office
in 1991. The last Republican governor was the politically light-pink action-movie
star Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose second term ended in 2011.
This progressive dominance of the state
has led to policies and priorities that has damaged its agricultural economy
and seriously degraded the quality of life in the Valley.
Despite a long drought that has diminished
the run-off of snow from the Sierra Nevada, projects for dams and reservoirs
are on hold, seriously impacting the ag industry that relies on the snowmelt
for most of its water. Worse yet, since 2008, a period including the height of
the drought, 1.4 trillion gallons of water have been dumped into the Pacific
Ocean to protect the endangered Delta Smelt, a two-inch bait-fish. Thousands of agricultural jobs have been
lost and farmland left uncultivated, all to satisfy the sensibilities of
affluent urban environmentalists. And even after a few years of abundant rain,
Valley farmers this year are receiving just 20% of their South-of-the-Delta water allocation.
Or take California’s high-speed rail
project, currently moribund and $10 billion over budget just for construction of the easiest section, through the
flat center of the Valley. Meanwhile, State Highway 99, which bisects the
Valley from north to south for 500 miles, is pot-holed, inefficient, and
crammed with 18-wheel semis. It is the bloodiest highway in the country, in
dire need of widening and repair. Yet to
gratify our Democratic governor’s
high-tech green obsession, billions of
dollars are
being squandered to create an
unnecessary link
between the Bay Area and Los
Angeles. That’s $10 billion that could have been
spent building more reservoirs instead of dumping water into the ocean because
there’s no place to store it.
The common thread of these two examples
of
mismanagement and waste is the
romantic
environmentalism of the well-heeled
coastal left.
They serially support government
projects and
regulations that impact the poor and the
aged, who
are left to bear their costs.
The same idealized nature-love has led to
regulations and taxes on energy that have made California home of the
third-worst energy poverty in the country. In sweltering San Joaquin Valley
counties like Madera and Tulare, energy poverty rates are 15% compared to 3–4% in cool, deep-blue coastal enclaves.
Impoverished Kings County averages over $500 a month in electric bills, while
tony Marin Country, with an average income twice that of Kings County, averages
$200. Again, it’s the poor, aged, and working class who bear the brunt of these
costs, especially in the Valley where temperatures regularly reach triple
digits in the summer; unlike the coast, where the clement climate makes
expensive air-conditioning unnecessary.
Deteriorating Quality of Life
It’s no wonder then that Fresno, in the
heart of the
Valley, is the second most impoverished
city in the
poorest region of a state that has the
highest
poverty levels in the country and one of
the
highest rates of income inequality. Over
one-fifth
of its residents live below the poverty
line, and it
The greatest impact on the Valley’s
deteriorating quality of life, however,
has been
the influx of illegal aliens. Some are attracted by
plentiful agriculture and construction
work, and
others by California’s generous welfare
transfers
— California is home to one in three of
the
country’s welfare recipients— all
facilitated by
California’s status as a “sanctuary
state” that
regularly releases felons rather than
cooperate
with Immigration and Customs
Enforcement
(ICE). As a result, one-quarter of the
country’s
from underdeveloped regions of Mexico
and Latin
America that have different social and
cultural
mores and attitudes to the law and
civic
responsibility.
The consequences of these feckless
policies are
found throughout the state. But they
are
especially noticeable in rural California.
There
high levels of crime and daily disorder—from
murders, assaults, and drug trafficking,
to
driving without insurance, DUIs,
hit-and-runs,
and ignoring building and sanitation
codes—
have degraded or, in some cases, destroyed
the
once-orderly farming towns that used to
be
populated by earlier immigrants,
including
many legal immigrants from Mexico, who
over
a few generations of sometimes rocky
coexistence assimilated to American
culture
and society.
Marginalized Cultural Minorities
More broadly, the dominant cultures and
mores of the dot.com north and the Hollywood south are inimical to those of the
Valley. Whether it is gun-ownership, hunting, church-going, or military
service, many people in the San Joaquin Valley of all races are quickly
becoming cultural minorities marginalized by the increasingly radical positions
on issues such as abortion, guns, and religion.
Despite the liberal assumption that all
Hispanics favor progressive policies, many Latino immigrants and their children
find more in common with Valley farmers and natives with whom they live and
work than they do with distant urban elites.
Indeed, as a vocal conservative professor
in the local university (Fresno State), I have survived mainly because my
students, now more than half Latino and Mexican immigrants or children of
immigrants, are traditional and practical in a way that makes them impatient
with the patronizing victim-politics of more affluent professors. They have
more experience with physical labor, they are more religious and, like me, they
are often the first in their families to graduate from college. As I did with
the rural Mexican Americans I grew up with, I usually have more in common with
my students than I do with many of my colleagues.
And this is the great irony of the
invisibility of the “other” California: the blue-coast policies that suit the
prejudices and sensibilities of the affluent have damaged the prospects of the
“others of color” they claim they want to help. Over-
represented on the poverty and welfare
rolls, many
migrants both legal and illegal have seen
water
policies that destroy agricultural jobs,
building
restrictions that drive up the cost of
housing,
energy policies that increase their cost
of living, “sanctuary city” policies that put back on the
streets thugs and criminals who prey
mainly on
their ethnic fellows, and economic
policies that
favor the redistribution rather than the
creation of wealth and jobs.
Meanwhile, the coastal liberals who tout a
cosmetic diversity live in a de facto apartheid world, surrounded by those of similar
income, taste, and politics. Many look down on the people whom they view as
racists and xenophobes at worst, and intellectually challenged rubes at best.
This disdain has been evident in the way the media regularly sneer that House
Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes is a “former dairy-farmer” from Tulare
County, an origin that makes “the match between his backstory and his
prominence” seem “wholly incongruous,” per Roll Call's David Hawkings.
Finally, those of us who grew up and live
in the rural Valley did so among a genuine diversity, one that reflected the
more complex identities beyond the crude categories of “white” or “black” or
“Hispanic.”
Italians, Basques, Portuguese, Armenians,
Swedes, Mexicans, Filipinos, Southern blacks, Chinese, Japanese, Volga Germans,
Scotch-Irish Dust Bowl migrants—all migrated to the Valley to work the fields
and better their lives. Their children and grandchildren went to the same
schools, danced together and drank together, helped round up each other’s
animals when they got loose, were best friends or deadly enemies, dated and
intermarried, got drafted into the Army or joined the Marines—all of them
Americans who managed to honor their diverse heritages and faiths, but still be
a community. Their most important distinctions were not so much between races
and ethnicities, though those of course often collided, but between the
respectable people––those who obeyed the law, went to church, and raised their
kids right–– and those we all called “no damned good.” Skin-color or accents
couldn’t sort one from the other.
What most of us learned from living in
real diversity in the Valley is that being an American means taking people one
at a time.
That world still exists, but it is slowly
fading away—in part because of the policies and politics of those to our west,
who can see nothing on the other side of the Coast Range.
ABOUT BRUCE THORNTON
Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism
Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover
Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State
University. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical
culture and its influence on Western Civilization. His most recent book, Democracy's Dangers and Discontents (Hoover Institution Press), is now available for purchase.
Is California Governor
Jerry Brown Mentally Ill?
Leftists are relentlessly
selling their bogus narrative that Trump is insane. Here are samples
of leftists' headlines: "Lawmakers Met With Psychiatrist About Trump's
Mental Health," "President Trump's Mental State An 'Enormous Present
Danger,'" "The Awkward Debate Around Trump's Mental Fitness,"
"The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists Assess."
So what has Trump done to
convince leftists that he must be crazy? Unlike Republicans, Trump
fearlessly confronts fake news media, calling them out when they
lie. Unlike Obama's punish-evil-America-first presidency, Trump has
America's best interest at heart. Unlike leftists seeking to
dissolve our borders, Trump plans to build a wall to protect our people and our
economy. Insanely, leftists cheered when Obama allowed Ebola into America, claiming it was racist
and unfair for Americans not to be subjected to the disease. Unlike
Obama, Hillary, Democrats, and fake news media's war on Christianity (forcing a
100-year-old order of Catholic nuns to
fund contraception and forcing Christian businesses to service same-sex
ceremonies), Trump vows to defend religious liberty.
So I guess, according to
leftists' perverse way of thinking, that Trump must be crazy, along with the 63
million Americans who voted for him.
Governor Brown signed a
new law making California a sanctuary state, doubling down on his bizarre quest
to undermine American citizens. In essence, Brown gave federal law,
President Trump, and legal California residents his middle
finger. Numerous California families have suffered devastating
losses of family members killed by illegals with long felony records who have
been deported several times and welcomed back with open arms by
Brown. One mom whose son was killed by an illegal with two DUIs and
two felonies said Brown should
be arrested for treason. Isn't it reasonable to question
Brown's sanity?
Liberal governing has
transformed beautiful California into the poverty
capital of America with the worst quality of life. Crazy taxes, crazy high cost of living, and crazy overreaching regulations have crushed the
middle class, forcing the middle class to exit the Sunshine
State. All that is left in California are illegals feeding at the
breast of the state, rapidly growing massive
homeless tent cities, and the mega-rich. Would a sane governor take
pride in causing this to happen to his state?
Headline: "San Francisco Is A Literal [s-]hole, Public
Defecation Map Reveals." Can you imagine homeless
people pooping on the streets being so pervasive that an interactive map was
created to help citizens avoid the piles of poop? Human feces
carries infectious diseases. What kind of
irrational logic deems posing such health risks to constituents an act of
compassion? Is Governor Brown crazy?
Insanely, three fourths
of California's taxpayer dollars – more than $30 billion – is spent on
illegal aliens. Meanwhile, despite the highest taxes in the nation,
California is $1.3 trillion in debt – unemployment is at a staggering
11%. California's wacko giveaways to illegals include in-state
tuition, amounting to $25 million of financial aid. Nearly a million
illegals have California driver's licenses. L.A. County has 144% more registered voters than there are
residents of legal voting age. Clearly, illegals are illegally voting.
Get this, folks:
Americans are spending almost a billion dollars a year on auto insurance for
illegals. Brown is gifting illegals billions in welfare and housing
while his constituents cannot find a place to live.
Ten years ago, a buddy of
mine excitedly moved his family from Maryland to California to accept the
highest-paying job of his career. Despite his lucrative salary, he
was forced to move back east due to the outrageously high cost of
living. My buddy said if he were an illegal, practically everything
would be free. His story inspired me to write and record a Beach
Boys-style song titled "Can't
Afford the Sunshine."
Once again, I ask you,
folks: would a rational governor do what Brown is doing to his constituents? Is
Governor Jerry Brown mentally ill?
Laura Ingraham: ‘California Is Almost Acting Like It’s a Separate Country’
Earlier this week
on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham slammed
California and its leaders for its sanctuary city policies and its open
defiance of the federal government seeking to uphold existing immigration law.
Transcript as follows:
INGRAHAM: The radical takeover of California, that’s the focus
of tonight’s ANGLE.
I still remember the first time I traveled to Southern
California, it was the summer of 1984 and Los Angeles is hosting the Olympics.
Reagan was president and Republican George (inaudible) was the state’s
governor. Now, he was a moderate conservative, a law and order kind of guy.
The whole place, to me at least, felt like a Beach Boy song, the
weather, the people, the lifestyle was all, you know, beautiful stuff. But
today, the sunshine not with understanding, California is a very different
place. It’s now a place where state officials actively thwart federal
authorities trying to stop violent criminal offenders.
Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, went so far as to issue a warning
to immigrant communities that an ICE raid was forthcoming. Well, the president
sounded off on that today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What the mayor of
Oakland did the other day was a disgrace where they had close to 1,000 people
ready to be gotten, ready to be taken off the streets. Many of them, they say
85 percent of them were criminals and had criminal records, and the mayor of
Oakland went out and she went out and warned them all, scatter.
So instead of taking in a thousand, they took in a fraction of
that. She said get out of here. She is telling that to criminals and it’s
certainly something that we are looking at with respect to her individually.
What she did is incredible and very dangerous from the standpoint of ICE and
Border Patrol, very dangerous. She really made law enforcement much more
dangerous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Now, for her part, Mayor Schaaf is deflecting that
criticism and she is going straight to the r-word.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR LIBBY SCHAAF, OAKLAND: The attorney general is trying to
distract the American people from a failed immigration system by painting a
racist, broad brush of our immigrant community as dangerous criminals.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Now who is mentioning skin color or ethnicity or where
people are from. That’s just pathetic. California, the way you see this playing
out, is almost acting like it’s a separate country all together, not a separate
state. Well, I think Attorney General Jeff Sessions was 100 percent correct
yesterday when he labeled state officials radical extremists for perpetuating
the lawlessness.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JFFF SESSIONS, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Federal law determines
immigration policy. State of California is not entitled to block that activity.
Somebody needs to stand up and say no, you’ve gone too far. You cannot do this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: But California AG Javier Becerra shot back. He argued
that the state sanctuary laws are constitutional adding our folks are very busy
doing public safety around the state. We don’t have to do the immigration work
for immigration officials. Excuse me. Public safety?
Well, that’s what we are supposed to believe when your own
Oakland mayor warned the illegal aliens ahead of time when she got wind of the
ice raid that was about to happen? Today, the White House released a partial
list of the crimes committed set free despite the lawful request of immigration
authorities. Check it out.
There is a Guatemalan citizen who was arrested last august for
injuring his spouse. While the Sonoma County jail provided ice with a whopping
24 minutes in the before it released the alien. A few weeks later, the Santa
Rosa Police Department in California arrested that same individual as a suspect
in the murder of his girlfriend.
Another Guatemalan, an alleged gang member was arrested by the
San Francisco police more than 10 times between 2013 and 2017 for charges
including rape, domestic battery, second degree robbery, assault, vehicle
theft, and on each occasion, what happened was ice requested notification of
his release so then ice could take him into custody.
Each time ICE’s request was declined by California. And then a
citizen of Mexico was arrested by Santa Clara County for drug possession on
January 11th, 2017. He was later convicted of child cruelty, felony possession
purchase of controlled substances and, of course, possession of marijuana. He
was released from local custody.
The list goes on and on. And we could literally do an entire
show just on the myriad ways that California sanctuary policies have endangered
the lives of innocent, law abiding citizens. And, of course, law enforcement
and, of course, legal immigrants.
California AG Becerra and Governor Moon Beam Brown are living in
alternative universe. They deny that they even have sanctuary laws in place.
Yet, here’s what their new statutes stipulate. In violation of federal
statutes, local officials cannot tell the feds when illegals in custody are
about to be released.
And they are banned under this law from transferring criminal
immigrants to federal officials. Now, we are talking about undocumented
criminals here. And the state of California is also so concerned about the
welfare of the illegal immigrants, that they imposed a state-run inspection of
immigrants detained by the federal government.
So, basically, they are trying to regulate federal immigration
detention and, perhaps most outrageously, one California law now requires
private business owners to — they can’t voluntarily cooperate with ICE agents.
Now, in fact, they have to notify illegal employees before any workplace
inspections take place or those private business owners face heavy fines.
Now, you cannot get more radical and rapidly open borders than
that. Though California officials are triggered over the sessions’ lawsuit, it
may be, may be the beginning of restoring some sanity to this state.
Republicans, let’s face it, largely have been shut out of
California politics now for years u and we are a very long way from the days
when Pete Wilson was governor back in the 1990s. Permissive liberal social
welfare policies and the embrace of illegal immigrants have plunged the state
into a spiral of homelessness.
It’s now at a crisis point declared by San Francisco and Los
Angeles and even Orange County. We reported on this before is grappling with
homeless encampments and the crime and health issues that come along with them.
This is not what the people of California want. How do I know that?
Well, a UC Berkeley poll just found that 74 percent of Californians
wanted to end sanctuary cities including 55 percent of Hispanics, and 73
percent of Democrats. Now, if that’s not a cry for sanity or a cry for help, I
do not know what is.
Sessions and the Trump administration are throwing the golden
state a lifeline with these sanctuary lawsuits because if they’re successful,
perhaps the good vibrations, political and otherwise, can roll through
California once again. And that’s THE ANGLE.
California,
the Shithole State and Getting Worse by the Day.
By Wayne Allyn Root
Gateway Pundit,
California
is Exhibit A. It’s filled with immigrants. Ten million to be exact. Many of
them illegal. Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country?
Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California- where nearly one
out of five residents is poor. That’s according to the Census Bureau.
While California accounts for 12% of America’s population, it accounts for one third of America’s welfare checks. California leads the country in food stamp use. California has more people on welfare than most countries around the world.
. . .
If immigration is so great for our country and illegal aliens “contribute a net positive” to society…how do you explain what’s happening in California?
I haven’t even gotten to the taxes. The income taxes, business taxes, sales taxes and gas taxes are all the highest in the nation. Why do you think that is? To pay the enormous costs of illegal immigration. To pay for the education costs, healthcare costs, police, courts, lawyers, prisons, and hundreds of different welfare programs for millions of California’s illegal aliens and struggling legal immigrants too.
But you haven’t heard the worst yet. California- the immigrant capital of America- is filthy. Perhaps the filthiest place on earth. Filthier than the slums of Calcutta. Filthier than the poorest slums of Brazil and Africa.
NBC journalists recently conducted a survey of San Francisco. They found piles of smelly garbage on the streets, used needles, gallons of urine and piles of feces- all near famous tourist attractions, fancy hotels, government buildings and children’s playgrounds.
While California accounts for 12% of America’s population, it accounts for one third of America’s welfare checks. California leads the country in food stamp use. California has more people on welfare than most countries around the world.
. . .
If immigration is so great for our country and illegal aliens “contribute a net positive” to society…how do you explain what’s happening in California?
I haven’t even gotten to the taxes. The income taxes, business taxes, sales taxes and gas taxes are all the highest in the nation. Why do you think that is? To pay the enormous costs of illegal immigration. To pay for the education costs, healthcare costs, police, courts, lawyers, prisons, and hundreds of different welfare programs for millions of California’s illegal aliens and struggling legal immigrants too.
But you haven’t heard the worst yet. California- the immigrant capital of America- is filthy. Perhaps the filthiest place on earth. Filthier than the slums of Calcutta. Filthier than the poorest slums of Brazil and Africa.
NBC journalists recently conducted a survey of San Francisco. They found piles of smelly garbage on the streets, used needles, gallons of urine and piles of feces- all near famous tourist attractions, fancy hotels, government buildings and children’s playgrounds.
Zuckerberg’s
Investor Group Pushes for Pre-Election Amnesty
http://www.breitbart.com/2018-elections/2018/04/19/zuckerberg-lobby-joins-pre-election-amnesty-push/
Getty/Saul Loeb
Silicon Valley investors, including Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg, are
joining the Koch network’s push for a quick amnesty that would also keep the
issue of cheap-labor immigration out of the November election.
CITY JOURNAL
CALIFORNIA’S DISMAL
FUTURE….. And so goes the Nation???
But the state’s boom shows signs of leveling
off: after growing much faster than the national average for several years, the
economy, notes a recent report by the Los Angeles Economic Development
Corporation, has now fallen to around the national average; the state is no
longer generating income faster than its prime rivals such as Texas, Washington
State, Oregon, or Utah. California Lutheran University forecaster Matthew
Fienup suggests that the state’s economic growth could fall below national
norms if current trends continue.
The growth that so impressed over the past five
years has masked a multitude of policy sins, and as California’s economic
engine slows down, the underlying problems are becoming harder to deny. People
are moving out in greater numbers than they’re moving in. Rates of job
creation—and the types of jobs being created—vary widely according to
geography. The high-tech hubs of San Francisco and Silicon Valley have added
tens of thousands of well-paying jobs during Brown’s tenure, but the rest of
the state hasn’t done nearly as well.
Brown has put California on a fiscally
unsustainable path. A disproportionate share of the funds paying for his
ever-expanding progressive agenda derive from Silicon Valley’s capital-gains
tax revenues and inflation of the state’s coastal real-estate prices. Any
slowdown in the tech money machine or drop-off in property values could prove
disastrous for Sacramento’s budget—California gets half its revenue from its top 1
percent of earners. According to Pew, this makes it the major American state with the
most volatile finances. Both U.S. News & World Report and
the Mercatus Center ranked California 43rd among the states in fiscal health.
And that was during an economic boom.
Brown’s departure will also remove the last (if
only partial) restraint on progressives in the state legislature, who largely
do the bidding of California’s powerful public-employee unions and the green
lobby. These forces will pressure the next governor to ram through even
stricter environmental laws, more onerous labor regulations, and a single-payer
health-care system. California’s teachers are even pushing for an exemption
from state income taxes.
California was once ground zero for upward
mobility. No more. During the new millennium, the Golden State has become
increasingly bifurcated between a small but growing cadre of elite workers and
a far larger pool of poorer families barely scraping by. Wide disparities have
opened up between the ultra-rich and a fading middle class. The Brown
administration has largely ignored the state’s poor and struggling rural areas
as it pursues its agenda of remaking California into a progressive paradise.
The bill—socially, economically, and fiscally—is coming due.
Throughout much of the twentieth century,
California was a population magnet, growing ever more economically vibrant as
it attracted the ambitious and the entrepreneurial from other American states
and from around the world. Now the state’s long-running population growth is
leveling off. During the last decade, high taxes, rising housing costs, and
constrained economic opportunity have sent many California residents in search
of greener pastures. Domestic economic migrants are pursuing their American dreams
in low-tax, pro-growth states like Arizona, Nevada, and Texas.
With fertility rates already below replacement,
the state’s population growth fell below the national average for the first
time last year. Only four states—Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Illinois—are
attracting fewer newcomers per capita. Immigration won’t solve that problem—new
arrivals from foreign countries have trended down over the past decade. Since
2010, Florida attracted international immigrants at a per-capita rate nearly 70
percent greater than California’s. Net domestic out-migration, which declined
in the early years of the Great Recession, tripled between 2014 and 2017.
Worse, according to a recent UC Berkeley study, more than a quarter of
Californians are considering picking up stakes, with the strongest proclivity
found among people under 50.
California is aging, too. The state’s crude
birthrate (live births per 1,000 population) is at its lowest since 1907. Los
Angeles and San Francisco ranked among the bottom ten in birthrates among the
53 major metropolitan areas in 2015. Between 2000 and 2016, San
Francisco–Oakland and San Jose ranked 34th and 47th in terms of millennial
growth among the country’s 53 largest metro areas. A dearth of young people
would pose particular problems for an economy like California’s, long dependent
on innovation, traditionally the province of younger workers and entrepreneurs.
Seventy-four percent of Bay Area millennials are considering a move out of the
region in the next five years. Since 2000, Los Angeles–Orange County has seen
some of the nation’s slowest growth of 25- to 34-year-old residents; since
2010, it has remained substantially below the national average on this measure.
The progressive narrative suggests that those leaving California are poor,
poorly educated, or both. Yet according to the Internal Revenue Service,
out-migrant households had a higher average income than those households that
stayed or moved in; even the Bay Area is experiencing growing out-migration
from increasingly affluent people. Though the new federal tax changes, which
will limit state tax deductions, will likely not affect the wealthiest
oligarchs and landowners, they could further accelerate the departure of the
merely somewhat affluent.
The current climate contrasts sharply with the
1950s and 1960s, when Jerry Brown’s father, the late Edmund G. “Pat” Brown,
pursued dynamic pro-development policies as California’s governor. During those
decades, the state constructed new infrastructure that sparked growth in fields
as diverse as high-tech, aerospace, fashion, agriculture, basic manufacturing,
and entertainment. What was then a model freeway system connected California’s
cities to new middle-income communities in the San Fernando Valley, the South
Bay of San Francisco, Orange County, and along the spine of the San Francisco
Peninsula, which morphed into what we now call Silicon Valley. Pat Brown’s
administrations modernized and extended the state’s water-supply system and
crafted a public university system that was the envy of the nation, if not the
world. Describing Brown’s leadership in transformational terms, biographer
Ethan Rarick called the twentieth century the “California century.”
These reforms sparked a long economic boom not
only on the California coast but also in the state’s massive interior. In those
days, the region had political clout, as Republicans and Democrats competed for
votes in Fresno, San Bernardino, and Kern Counties. Today, the California
heartland tilts Republican but has lost its influence, as political and
economic power has consolidated around deep-blue Silicon Valley and San
Francisco.
Like his father, Jerry Brown is a liberal
Democrat, yet he has worked overtime to undermine much of Pat Brown’s
pro-growth legacy. With the cooperation of a compliant state legislature dominated
by liberals, Brown has increased taxes, instituted polices making energy much
more expensive in California than in neighboring states, pursued regulations
causing housing costs to rise to unprecedented levels, and positioned
California as a safe space for illegal immigrants. Brown’s policies embrace
the values not of aspirational California but those of its wealthy coastline
residents. From water and energy regulations to a $15 minimum hourly wage,
Brown’s agenda reflects the ultraliberal political predilections of the Bay
Area. That’s where Brown
himself lives, as do many of the state’s political elite, including Lieutenant
Governor Gavin Newsom and U.S. senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala
Harris. The rest of the state has been pushed to the political margins
and keenly feels its powerlessness. “We don’t have seats at the table,”
laments Richard Chapman, president and CEO of the Kern County Economic
Development Corporation. “We are a flyover state within a state.”
Though widely praised by left-wing think tanks
and progressive foreign governments, Jerry Brown’s policies have unquestionably
exacerbated income inequality in California. According to the Social Science
Research Council, California now has the highest levels of income inequality in
the United States. In the last decade, according to the Brookings Institution,
inequality grew more rapidly in San Francisco than in any other large American
city; Sacramento ranked fourth on this measure. California is home to a disproportionate
share of the nation’s wealthiest people, including four of the 15 richest on
the planet. Yet more than 20 percent of Californians are considered poor,
adjusted for housing costs. That’s the highest percentage of any state,
including Mississippi. According to a recent United Way study, close to one in three
California families is barely able to pay its bills. Los Angeles, by far the
state’s largest metropolitan area, has the highest poverty rate of any large
region in the country. In the 4 million–strong Inland Empire, a population
nearly as large as metropolitan Boston suffers one of the highest poverty rates
among the nation’s 25 largest metro areas.
Between 2007 and 2016, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the Bay Area created 200,000 jobs paying better than $70,000 annually, but high-wage jobs dropped both in Southern California and statewide. The number of blue-collar jobs, some of which pay well, has dropped by 500,000 since 2000 and by more than 300,000 since the Great Recession. Minimum-wage or near-minimum-wage jobs accounted in 2015–16 for almost two-thirds of the state’s new job growth, according to the California Business Roundtable—and the new $15 minimum-wage law, set to phase in over the next half-decade, will hurt such entry-level employment, research suggests.
The number of high-paying business- and
professional-services jobs is now growing at a rate considerably lower in
Silicon Valley and San Francisco, moreover, than it is in rising boomtowns such
as Nashville, Dallas–Fort Worth, Austin, Orlando, San Antonio, Salt Lake City,
and Charlotte. Most other California metro areas, including Los Angeles, are
doing far worse when it comes to job growth in this area. The Inland Empire saw
a 7 percent loss of such jobs between 2015 and 2016. As for tech jobs, between
2015 and 2017, San Francisco and San Jose added 23,000 jobs in the science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, for a growth rate of 4
percent and 7 percent, respectively. But the greater Los Angeles area, by far
the state’s largest urban center, gained only 6,500 STEM jobs, for a growth
rate of just 2 percent, well below the national average. Even worse, the
Riverside–San Bernardino area added barely 900 STEM jobs, for a growth rate of
about 2 percent.
Blame some of this weakness on the Brown
administration, for putting the squeeze on the state’s business community.
Brown’s aggressive stance on energy and climate issues—unrealistic
renewable-energy mandates and reduction targets for fossil-fuel emissions—has
placed California at war with industries such as home building, agriculture,
and manufacturing, says economist John Husing. California’s industrial
electricity rates are, as a consequence, twice as high as those in Nevada,
Arizona, and Texas—the states that have emerged as California’s main
competitors for business and residents.
Much of California’s overall job growth—40
percent—during the last decade has been concentrated in the prosperous Silicon
Valley and Bay Area, which account for about 20 percent of the state’s
population. The majority of the state’s population lives outside the Bay Area
and, generally speaking, the farther you go from there, particularly inland,
the worse the economic situation gets. Among the nation’s 381 metropolitan
areas, notes a recent Pew study, four of the ten with the lowest share of
middle-class residents are Fresno, Bakersfield, Visalia–Porterville, and El
Centro. Three of the ten regions with the highest proportion of poor people
were also in California’s interior. Southern California has lagged its northern
rivals, too, leaving whole swaths of the region in poverty.
Many Californians living in the inland areas had
hoped that the coastal boom would spill eastward, as skilled workers headed out
in search of more affordable living. That’s how it had always worked before. In
the 1980s and 1990s, middle-class Californians flooded out of the costly
coastal urban centers and into the interior counties, running from Riverside to
the Central Valley adjacent to the Bay Area. That flood, though, has slowed to
a trickle. Prior to the 2008 housing crash, the Inland Empire annually gained
as many as 90,000 domestic migrants, largely from the coast; in 2017, a mere
15,000 relocated.
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