system’s complete subordination of human safety to the interests of private profit. In a
state with the second highest concentration of billionaires in the country, the
administration of Democratic Governor Brown has made sure that only a piddling
amount will be spent on future fire prevention efforts, and only a fraction of that will
be used to make past victims whole."
AS
WALL STREET PLUNDERS: A Nation of One Million Homeless and Overrun By Mexico’s
Export of “cheap labor”!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/04/wall-street-plunders-ceo-pay-banksters.html
“But
a series of reports on CEO pay, bank profits and corporate cash released over
the past week reveal that corporate America and the financial oligarchy are
wallowing in record levels of wealth.”
MASSIVE TRANSFER OF
WEALTH TO THE RICH: YOUR DEMOCRAT PARTY AT WORK…. for Wall Street, Banksters,
Billionaires and LA RAZA.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-democrat-party-for-billionaires.html
“But
a series of reports on CEO pay, bank profits and corporate cash released over
the past week reveal that corporate America and the financial oligarchy are
wallowing in record levels of wealth.”
State
of California reeling from record high temperatures, early wildfire season
By Dan Conway
9 July 2018
An extreme
high-pressure region led to record setting high temperatures last weekend
across the state of California. The high temperatures led to mass power outages
along with a series of devastating wildfires.
All-time
record temperatures were recorded in the Los Angeles area in particular. Van
Nuys regional airport recorded a temperature of 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47.2
degrees Celsius), while the University of California Los Angeles recorded a
temperature of 111 degrees Fahrenheit (43.9 degrees Celsius).
The record
high temperatures led to peak electrical usage as well. According to the Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), energy demand in Los Angeles
reached an all-time July high of 6,256 megawatts on Friday, breaking the
previous record set in 2006 of 6,165 megawatts.
According to
DWP, more than 32,800 households were without power on Friday, while 20,000 of
those remained without power into Saturday. Southern California Edison reported
that 18,000 of their customers were without power due to the heat wave.
Most
significantly, the hot temperatures led to a series of wildfires across the
state.
In the area
of San Bernardino, a two-hour drive east of Los Angeles, the Valley Fire has
burned through more than 1,000 acres after it started on Friday afternoon. The
fire forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 residents in the small community
of Forest Falls and is only about 5 percent contained as of Sunday.
The West
Fire burning in the Cuyamaca Mountains near San Diego tore through 504 acres
and destroyed several homes; 2,400 residents were forced to evacuate the area.
Cooler weather on Sunday, however, brought the fire to 81 percent containment
and many of the residents have begun to return.
The largest
of the weekend fires was the Klamathon Fire near the border of Oregon. That
fire is now responsible for at least one death, and as of Saturday had burned
through 22,000 acres. The fire is now 20 percent contained.
Mandatory
evacuations were in effect in the city of Burbank due to a multi-acre fire
there, while wildfires have once again brought disaster to the coastal area of
Santa Barbara.
The Holiday
Fire in the Santa Barbara community of Goleta was nearly impossible for
firefighters to contain Friday night, prompting thousands to evacuate. In
addition to high temperatures, the high-pressure front brought hot, dry, gale
force winds, a regional weather phenomenon known as “sundowner” winds. These
winds were so strong that helicopters and planes were unable to fly over and
deliver water and fire retardant chemicals to the blazes.
Improved
conditions led to 80 percent containment in Goleta by Saturday evening,
however, with most of the 2,500 evacuees being allowed to return to their
homes. While fire officials are still taking stock of the damage, it is
believed that at least 20 homes were destroyed as a result of the fire.
Last
December, the Santa Barbara region fell victim to the Thomas Fire, the largest
single wildfire in the state’s recorded history. Before full containment, it
burned through 281,893 acres, destroyed 1,063 homes and other structures and
damaged 280 others. The fire caused more than $2.176 billion in damages.
BLOG: THE NAPA FIRE WAS CAUSED BY AN ILLEGAL!
A few months
earlier, wildfires ripped through Napa and Sonoma counties in Northern
California, burning more than 200,000 acres and killing 44 people. These fires
caused more than $9.4 billion in damages.
The Thomas
Fire, for its part, had created optimal conditions for horrific flash flooding
and mudslides in the coastal city of Montecito. One hundred homes were
destroyed and more than 21 people lost their lives in the flooding. Fire
officials are now warning of flash floods as a result of the latest fires and
have advised residents to stay out of low-lying areas.
Considering
the extreme weather conditions over the past weekend, it is remarkable that
there has been relatively little loss of life and property. California,
however, is once more in the midst of drought conditions and the fires
themselves have begun two months in advance of the official fire season.
As is always
the case, the damages caused by the fires are attributable to the capitalist
system’s complete subordination of human safety to the interests of private
profit. In a state with the second highest concentration of billionaires in the
country, the administration of Democratic Governor Brown has made sure that
only a piddling amount will be spent on future fire prevention efforts, and
only a fraction of that will be used to make past victims whole.
The state’s
2018-19 fiscal year budget includes only $35 million in recovery costs for the
Northern California wildfires. Only $1.765 billion is allocated for fire
suppression and recovery in general, an amount even less than the damages caused
by the Thomas Fire alone.
While
Brown’s term as governor will soon come to an end, both gubernatorial
frontrunners have thus far said nothing about the latest wave of fires
devastating the state. Democrat Gavin Newsom’s campaign website contains no
mention of the heat wave or the fires as of Sunday and the same can be said of
his main Republican opponent John Cox.
The series
of fires at the Camp Pendleton Marine Base north of San Diego received
comparably little media attention over the weekend. The Marine Corps website
currently lists the base’s fire danger as category “Red-Extreme,” referring to
fires that are “practically impossible to extinguish and usually continue until
danger rating conditions improve or fire conditions burn themselves out.”
Dozens of
acres have burned through the base training grounds over the weekend and
according to Camp Pendleton emergency services officials, an average of 185
wildland fires break out across the 125,000-acre military installation each
year.
Camp
Pendleton is a planned site for a tent encampment that would house more than
47,000 immigrants under the Trump administration’s zero tolerance immigration
policy.
More Than 130 Homes and 170 Square Miles Burned Due to Wildfire Allegedly Started by Illegal Alien
A wildfire that has been raging for over a week near Fort Garland, Colorado, has become the third largest in state history. More than 130 homes and nearly 170 square miles have been scorched in a blaze that never should have started. As of July 9, the fire is still only 55 percent contained.
Jesper Joergensen, a Danish national who is in the country illegally, has been arrested on arson charges in relation to the fire. He apparently overstayed his visa, and lived largely off the grid in southern Colorado. His Facebook page included a large amount of anti-government sentiment, and repeated use of the hashtag “anarchy2018.”
Joergensen changed his story several times after being arrested, first claiming he was trying to burn trash, and eventually claiming that the fire spread from an open pit grill. No matter how the fire actually started, Joergensen shouldn’t have been in the country to start it.
Despite illegal immigration playing a major factor in rapid population growth in the United States, as well being the source for wide-spread pollution along the U.S.-Mexico border and multiple wildfires, environmental organizations have remained largely silent on the issue. Open borders proponents have been driving donations to environmental groups for decades now, so these groups avoid the issue.
More than 600,000 visitors to the United States overstayed their visas in Fiscal Year 2016. Legitimately enforcing our immigration laws, along with enacting reforms such as a biometric entry-exit screening system and E-Verify, would help federal law enforcement prevent tragedies like this from ever having the chance to occur. Without reform, unchecked immigration, both lawful and illegal, will continue to harm the United States’ environment and wildlands.
California Gets ‘F’ Grade from ‘Truth in Accounting’
The non-partisan “Truth in Accounting”
project, which analyzes government financial reports, has awarded California an
“F” grade for claiming surpluses instead of a $269.9 billion deficit.
The Chicago-based organization
has been providing in-depth accounting reviews of the audited financial
statements for America’s fifty states, as well as most major counties and major
cities, in the United States since 2002.
The group’s mission is to educate
and empower citizens with understandable, reliable, and transparent government
financial information.
California received the lowest score
of “F” on Truth in Accounting’s grading scale because despite Gov.
Jerry Brown touting several years of surpluses, California actually faces a
$269.9 billion shortfall in terms of its overall obligations, which equates to
$22,000 burden for each of the 12.3 million taxpayers in the state.
California’s financial burden is
primarily associated with the rapidly deteriorating condition of the state’s
current $461.3 billion in promised public employee retirement benefits –which
are $102.5 billion under-funded by the pension plan — and $107 billion for
unfunded retiree health care benefits.
The State of California faced a near
financial death experience in Great Recession, when the average taxpayer burden
jumped from $15,000 to $23,500. Newly elected Gov. Brown, facing a $25 billion
deficit in 2011, passed an array of income and sales tax hikes, including a 29
percent increase for Californians with taxable income over $1 million.
Gov. Brown has touted the
“California Comeback.” But the data demonstrate that despite the gusher of tax
revenue the flooded into Sacramento from the economic recovery and the
substantially higher tax rates Gov. Brown passed, the state’s taxpayer burden
only fell modestly to $20,900 by 2015. The taxpayer burden rose to $21,600 in 2016
and hit $22,000 in 2017, the second-highest in the history of the state.
Truth in Accounting Founder Sheila
Weinberg warns that
California is a giant “Sinkhole Sate.” Ms. Weinberg is especially critical of
Gov. Brown claiming an $8.8 billion surplus this year, while avoiding the
fact that California has only $100.1 billion in available assets to pay $369.9
billion worth of bills.
Weinberg emphasized to Breitbart
News that California’s rising “taxpayer burden” is only for net state
liabilities. Her organization intends to begin publishing consolidated reports
this summer for all the states that will also capture the liabilities of
counties and cities. Ms. Weinberg expects that the combined taxpayer burden for
California to be a much higher number.
June 16, 2018
Skyrocketing crime rate in
California called 'good progress' after jails emptied
Here's a thought experiment: what happens if you release
criminals, a lot of them, from jail?
If you asked a liberal in California, he would tell you these criminals
were unjustly jailed in the first place (think racism on the part of liberal
inner-city judges, juries, and prosecutors) and that these unjustly imprisoned
would return to become productive parts of society.
Imagine their surprise to learn, then, that after reducing or
eliminating sentences for certain property crimes, the rate of property
crimes has
only increased!
California voters' decision to reduce penalties for drug and
property crimes in 2014 contributed to a jump in car burglaries, shoplifting
and other theft, researchers reported.
Larcenies increased about 9% by 2016, or about 135 more thefts per
100,000 residents than if tougher penalties had remained, according to results
of a study by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California released
Tuesday.
Thefts from motor vehicles accounted for about three-quarters of
the increase. San Francisco alone recorded more than 30,000 auto burglaries
last year, which authorities largely blamed on gangs.
Proposition 47 lowered criminal sentences for drug possession,
theft, shoplifting, identity theft, receiving stolen property, writing bad
checks and check forgery from felonies that can carry prison terms to
misdemeanors that often bring minimal jail sentences.
Do you think liberals have learned anything from
this? Think again:
California still has historically low crime rates despite recent
changes in the criminal justice system aimed at reducing mass incarceration and
increasing rehabilitation and treatment programs, said Lenore Anderson, the
executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice and a leader in the
drive to pass Proposition 47.
"This report shows we are making progress," she said in
a statement calling for less spending on prisons and more on programs to help
reduce the cycle of crime.
The ballot measure led to the lowest arrest rate in state history
in 2015 as experts said police frequently ignored crimes that brought minimal
punishment.
They say a conservative is a liberal who has been
mugged. If that's true, then it must also be true in California that
a liberal is a liberal who has had his car or home broken
into. Indeed, people in San Francisco have had their cars broken
into so frequently that they think this is the "new normal," and
people talk laughingly to each other about how often their cars have been
broken into, as if it's a subject of conversation as common as the doings of
the local sports team.
Reality will never intrude on a liberal's ideology. An
illegal alien could shoot a woman dead on Fisherman's Wharf, and liberals would
still never see a problem with sanctuary cities. Homeless people can
roam the streets like swarms of giant rats, leaving fetid excrement and bloody
hypodermic needles in their wake, and people would accept it, because it is
part of their ideology.
That's how they can call this abomination "progress."
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.
Maybe if California and New York Cared as Much about the Middle Class as
They Do About Illegal Alien…
TWEET
Economists Arthur Laffer (the guy with the famous curve) and Stephen Moore, a leading libertarian voice for mass
immigration, predict that some 800,000 people will pack up and leave California and New York over the next three years. The
reason they cite for the exodus in their Wall Street Journal op-ed is that the new federal tax law, which eliminates
deductions for state income taxes, will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Implicit in their assignment of blame to the federal tax
overhaul is that the people who will be leaving are the ones who pay taxes –
the sort of folks that state and local governments rely to provide a revenue
stream. As such, one would think that these would be the people whose concerns
would get a lot of interest in Sacramento and Albany. But clearly that is not
the case.
For the privilege of living in places like the Bay Area, Los
Angeles, or New York City, you must bear some of the most ridiculous housing
costs in the nation, along with crushing state and local taxes. In California, be prepared to turn over as much as 13.3
percent of your income to the state. High-earning New Yorkers fork over a more
modest 8.82 percent, but if you live in the five boroughs you can tack on an
additional 3.87 percent in city income taxes. California and New York also have some of the highest sales tax rates in the country at 8.54 percent and 8.49 percent
respectively (and higher in many cities). And now, as Laffer and Moore point
out, you can’t even deduct those costs on your federal taxes.
One might also think that for all these state and local taxes,
residents could expect the most modern infrastructure, efficient public
transportation, world class public schools, affordable housing, and other
amenities. Ha. No, in Sacramento and Albany they prioritize an ever-growing
list of public benefits and services to immigration law violators; subsidies
and grants to go to college, and legal aid for illegal aliens in deportation
proceedings. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is even threatening to sue the federal government (with taxpayer money, of course) for even trying to
enforce immigration laws.
Some $23 billion of California taxpayers’ money and $7.5
billion of New York taxpayers’ money is expended on illegal aliens and their dependent
children. For the benefit of the trolls at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the problems of California and New York cannot entirely be
blamed on illegal aliens. Many, many factors have led to the middle class
flight from these states. But one has to wonder why states wouldn’t want to do
as much to woo their tax base into staying as they are doing to attract,
protect, and reward illegal aliens.
Cutting back on benefits and protections for illegal aliens
would not solve all of these states’ problems, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.
In the meantime, every U-Haul packing up a middle or upper-middle class family
headed out of California and New York represents a loss of vital revenue
necessary to address myriad needs of both citizens and legal immigrants.
Steinle’s
murderer, Jose Zarate and been deported 5xs!
California Goes Rogue
By Mark Krikorian
National Review
Online, April 26, 2018
How the Golden State defies immigration law
‘I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach.” That was President Andrew Jackson’s response to South Carolina’s intention to prevent enforcement of a federal law within the state. Despite his admiration for Jackson, President Trump hasn’t yet threatened to start hanging California politicians. But that state’s “sanctuary” policies protecting illegal immigrants and obstructing enforcement of federal immigration law echo the long-ago fight over nullification and states’ rights.
The passage of three sanctuary bills last year by the state legislature in Sacramento is now the subject of a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice. It was the culmination of a decades-long process, as mass immigration transformed California’s politics from reddish purple to deep blue.
The first measure that could be described as a sanctuary provision was the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Order 40, enacted in 1979, which prohibited officers from arresting a person for the federal crime of illegal entry and, unless he was arrested for another crime, from even inquiring as to legal status. But that order merely instructed police to abstain from involving themselves in immigration enforcement. In the 1980s, a more proactive conception of illegal-alien sanctuary spread, as Central Americans fleeing war in their homelands snuck into the U.S. but did not qualify for asylum.
At first, only some pro-Sandinista churches postured as sanctuaries for these illegal aliens. But in late 1985, Mayor (now Senator) Dianne Feinstein signed a resolution declaring San Francisco a “city of refuge” for illegals. She ordered that “City Departments shall not discriminate against Salvadorans and Guatemalan refugees because of their immigration status, and shall not jeopardize the safety and welfare of law-abiding refugees by acting in a way that may cause their deportation.” The declaration was followed four years later by a city law formally prohibiting city employees from assisting federal immigration authorities.
Even measures such as this, which were adopted by other big cities over the years, were of largely local interest until a new system, developed at the end of the Bush administration and completed in 2013, went online. The fingerprints of every person booked by police throughout the country have long been sent to the FBI. But under the new system, dubbed Secure Communities, those fingerprints now also go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). So while in the past the feds didn’t necessarily know whether cops in San Francisco arrested an illegal alien for, say, a drug offense, now they do. Every time.
There will still be some illegal aliens who elude detection if ICE has no record of them because they’ve never interacted with the immigration authorities. But if police arrest anyone who’s in the Department of Homeland Security database — who was deported previously, got turned down for asylum, was picked up by the Border Patrol, overstayed a visa, or appeared before an immigration judge — ICE learns about it.
There are only so many hours in the day, so not every arrested illegal alien can be taken into custody. But if ICE wants the alien because, for instance, he has previously been deported or is a fugitive from a deportation order, it notifies the local authorities to hold him, as they would for any other state or federal law-enforcement agency, up to 48 hours after they would otherwise have released him, so that agents can collect and deport him.
With this new fingerprint-matching system in place, instead of receiving the occasional hold notice, or “detainer,” cities and counties with large numbers of immigrants started hearing from ICE constantly. In some states where large-scale immigration was a recent development, the political culture had not yet shifted to the left to such a degree that this new level of cooperation with ICE met objections. But immigration, legal and illegal, has transformed California’s population and political culture so profoundly that the pushback there was inevitable.
Of California’s 40 million people, about 15 million are in immigrant households (immigrants and their children under 18), accounting for more than 37 percent of the state’s population. Not only is that by far the highest percentage in any state, but the increase in people in immigrant households in California from 1970 to today — just the increase — is nearly twice as large as today’s total population in immigrant households in Texas, the state in second place.
Survey after survey shows that immigrants are disproportionately big-government liberals. As one overview of the data concluded, “solid and persistent majorities of Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their children share the policy preferences of the modern American Left.” As a result, as University of Maryland political scientist James Gimpel has demonstrated, in the nation’s largest counties (which are where immigrants tend to settle), “Republicans have lost 0.58 percentage points in presidential elections for every one percentage-point increase in the size of the local immigrant population.”
The results in California are plain to see. There hasn’t been a Republican in statewide or federal office since Arnold Schwarzenegger (and he was only nominally Republican). Only 13 of 40 state senators and 25 of 80 state assemblymen are Republicans. This has enabled leftist maximalism on a wide range of issues, including immigration.
Even in this environment, the effects of Secure Communities in identifying deportable aliens were blunted for a time by the Obama administration’s lax policies. Despite the anti-borders Left and its kabuki protests that Obama was the deporter in chief, his administration effectively exempted most of the resident illegal population from immigration law. Even though ICE continued to be notified of arrested illegals, administration policy was to ignore all but the worst cases. In the words of John Sandweg, who headed ICE during part of Obama’s term, “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero — it’s just highly unlikely to happen.”
Then came Donald Trump.
It wasn’t just that Trump pledged tough immigration enforcement in his raw and often coarse manner. It wasn’t just that Hillary Clinton, who said publicly that she would not deport anyone who hadn’t first been convicted of a violent felony, won California by 30 points. It was the whiplash from Obama to Trump that supercharged the sanctuary push in the state legislature. Democratic politicians, their activist allies, and illegal aliens themselves had gotten used to Obama’s arrangements and had come to think that was the way things were going to be from now on. Trump’s reversal of Obama’s laxity fell on them like a bucket of ice water.
The state took a variety of steps in response to the return of immigration enforcement. Lawmakers appropriated $45 million for a fund to help illegals fight deportation. And the state senate appointed an illegal alien to a state education commission.
But most consequential were three laws designed to limit the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration law. The best known is Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act, the most sweeping measure of its kind in the nation, making the entire state a sanctuary for illegal aliens. It prohibits state and local law enforcement from complying with ICE detainers in most cases. It prohibits notification to ICE about an alien unless in the past 15 years he’s been convicted of one of a list of the most serious crimes. It prohibits state and local authorities from allowing ICE to use space in their jails and from providing ICE any non-public information on suspects. It restricts state and local participation in any multi-agency task force that includes ICE.
The second of the three measures attempts to impose state oversight on any facility ICE uses to detain deportable aliens. And the final law seeks to shield illegal-alien workers from detection by, among other things, prohibiting private employers from voluntarily allowing ICE agents into any non-public area of their business.
The Trump administration has pushed back. The first step was to threaten to cut off certain Justice Department grants to sanctuary jurisdictions nationwide; longstanding doctrine limiting the withholding of federal funds to coerce states makes a broader cutoff unlikely. A few jurisdictions outside California have changed their sanctuary policies in response to the funding threat, but the administration’s initiative is tied up in litigation and, in any case, is unlikely to hurt sufficiently to persuade hard cases such as California to mend their ways.
That’s why in March the Justice Department filed suit against California to strike down all or parts of the three sanctuary laws, claiming that they were preempted by federal law and that they violate the supremacy clause of the Constitution. (Interestingly, the complaint cites, among other things, the Supreme Court ruling overturning parts of Arizona’s SB 1070, which was intended to assist in enforcement of federal immigration laws, on the same grounds of federal preemption.) But it will be a long time before the case reaches the Supreme Court; the defendants no doubt hope to drag things out long enough that President Maxine Waters or Dennis Kucinich can reverse the policy.
But change may come sooner than that. The legislature’s overreach has sparked a rebellion of communities seeking sanctuary from the sanctuary law. The small Orange County city of Los Alamitos got things rolling by voting to opt out of SB 54 and join the federal lawsuit. A growing list of other cities has joined the suit as well, as have Orange and San Diego counties. More cities and counties are likely to join them.
In an attempt to harness this political energy, two people whose children were killed by illegal aliens have launched a ballot initiative to repeal the sanctuary laws. Don Rosenberg, one of the parents, told the Washington Times , “This will be David versus Goliath. We’re clearly David on this side. But there are millions of Davids here.”
While the steady stream of preventable crimes by illegal immigrants protected by sanctuary policies keeps the issue before the public, the very extremism of the Left may supply the five smooth stones this army of Davids will need to slay the sanctuary Goliath. In February, for example, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf warned illegals that an ICE raid was planned for the Bay Area. Such brazen acts delegitimize sanctuary policies in the eyes even of moderate voters.
South Carolina eventually repealed its Ordinance of Nullification. The state’s subsequent acts of resistance against legitimate federal authority also failed. It’s too early to tell whether California will succeed where South Carolina did not.
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.
March 23, 2018
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.
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