Tuesday, January 8, 2019

DATELINE: MEXIFORNIA - A WELFARE COLONY OF MEXICO - LA RAZA DEM GAVIN NEWSOM'S FIRST ACT AS GOVERNOR IS MORE HEALTHCARE FOR ILLEGALS ON THE BACKS OF LEGALS

Can a Wall Pay for Itself?: An Update
A wall would have to prevent just 3 to 4 percent of illegal crossers

Washington, D.C. (January 8, 2018) – Ahead of President Trump's speech tonight, where he is expected to call for funding for border security, new analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies finds that a border wall would fund itself. This updated analysis indicates that to pay for the president's $5 billion wall request, a wall would have to prevent about 60,000 crossings — or 3 to 4 percent of expected illegal crossers in the next decade.

Steve Camarota, the Director of Research at the Center and the author of the analysis, said, "While it is true that more illegal immigrants come through overstayed visas than through our southern border, the reality is that even if a border wall reduced just a tiny fraction of illegal crossings, it would pay for itself. Like any investment, the wall’s costs must be measured against its returns. A border wall in areas where it is needed, combined with broadly popular enforcement measures such as E-Verify and the closing of asylum loopholes, would effectively curb illegal immigration and secure America’s porous borders.”

View the full analysis: https://www.cis.org/Camarota/Can-Wall-Pay-Itself-Update

Findings
  • In a prior analysis we took the likely education level of illegal border-crossers and applied fiscal estimates developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) for immigrants by education level — excluding their children. These estimates indicated an average lifetime net fiscal cost of $74,722 per illegal crosser — $82,191 in 2018 dollars.
  • Analysis by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) indicates that there are 1.95 to 2.28 apprehensions for every successful illegal crossing. This translates to about 170,000 to 200,000 successful illegal crossings in 2018, or 1.7 million to two million over the next 10 years, assuming this level continues.
  • The House passed a funding bill before Christmas with $5 billion for the wall, which means the wall would have to stop or deter 3 to 4 percent (60,000) of the future illegal crossers over the next decade to pay for itself.
  • If we make conservative alternative assumptions that illegal crossers cost half what we estimate, and we further assume the future flows will be only half the 2018 level, then the wall would have to stop or deter 12 to 14 percent of expected illegal border-crossers in the next decade.

Important Caveats
  • A large share of the net fiscal cost of illegal immigrants is at the state and local level, not the federal level. The costs of building the wall will be borne by the federal government.
  • These cost estimates, based on the NAS research, only include original illegal immigrants, not their children and grandchildren. In our prior analysis, we found that if the cost of descendants is included, then the net fiscal drain raises to $94,391 — $103,826 in 2018 dollars.
  • To create its long-term fiscal estimates for immigrants by education level, the NAS uses the concept of "net present value" (NPV). This concept, which is common in economics, has the effect of reducing the size of the net fiscal drain that less-educated immigrants, which describes most illegal immigrants, will create in the future. The NAS does this because costs or benefits years from now are valued less in economics relative to more immediate costs. If the actual net lifetime fiscal cost of illegal border-crossers were used it would likely roughly double the lifetime fiscal drain illegal crossers create. (We have a longer discussion of this issue in our original report. See the section "Do Net Present Values Make Sense?" The bottom line is that NPVs do make sense when thinking about the costs of a wall because the cost of a wall is immediate and with NPV the fiscal impact of illegal immigrants is also measured in current dollars.)

 THE STAGGERING COST OF THE WELFARE STATE MEXICO AND THE LA RAZA SUPREMACY DEMOCRAT PARTY HAVE BUILT BORDER to OPEN BORDER’

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s 2017 report, illegal immigrants, and their children, cost American taxpayers a net $116 billion annually -- roughly $7,000 per alien annually. While high, this number is not an outlier: a recent study by the Heritage Foundation found that low-skilled immigrants (including those here illegally) cost Americans trillions over the course of their lifetimes, and a study from the National Economics Editorial found that illegal immigration costs America over $140 billion annually. As it stands, illegal immigrants are a massive burden on American taxpayers.

 

Democrats Can Fund the World, but Not the Wall




There is nothing like a government shutdown to illustrate clearly the priorities of the two opposing sides to the standoff.  On one side is President Trump, keeping a campaign promise to build a wall, to keep crime, sex-trafficking, drugs, and terrorism, not to mention the unfunded burden of illegal aliens, out of America.
On the other side are the Democrats, hell-bent on keeping 25 percent of the government closed for business rather than funding border security, a concept they wholeheartedly supported a decade ago.
Who's winning and who's losing the battle?  If you watch cable news, it's clear that the president is on the ropes, having backed himself into a corner.  Reality sings a different tune.  How did we get here?
Donald Trump, announcing his candidacy for president in June 2015, rode down the escalator at Trump Tower and said, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best."  He went on, "They're bringing drugs.  They're bringing crime.  They're rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people."
These were among his first pronouncements that day and have been a constant theme of his rallies and tweets since then – including this tweet from a few days ago.
Democrats were once in favor of border security, too.  Many, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006.  This provided for, "Operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States."
Now, because it's 2019 and Trump is president, Democrats are conveniently against border security.  This is a common theme of Democrats, frequently for something before they are against it.  Remember John Kerry and the Iraq War?
The current fight is over a mere $5 billion in funding for a wall – or a "fence" if the term "wall" is offensive, but a physical barrier between two nations, controlling who and what traipses from one country to the other.  The federal budget is $4.4 trillion, meaning wall funding represents about a tenth of a percent of the budget, a rounding error.  What else are Nancy Pelosi and colleagues spending money on?  How about foreign aid?
The 2019 federal budget requests nearly $27 billion in foreign aid for economic development, health, humanitarian assistance, peace and security, and other objectives.  This is over half the cost of securing "[t]he entire international land and maritime borders of the United States" something Democrats were keen about in 2006.
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 budgeted $50 billion over 25 years to control America's borders.  Unfortunately, Congress appropriated only $1.4 billion and forgot about the rest.  The foreign aid request above was for one single year.  Two years of the foreign aid budget spent instead on U.S. border security would create the type of physical borders so common in the countries we are generously supporting.
Fund the world, but not America.
It's instructive to compare the current administration to the past one, since the media treat the last administration as the Second Coming and the current administration as the Fourth Reich.
In 2012, Congress appropriated $40 billion in foreign aid, a billion more than what was requested.  In 2013, the amount went up to $43 billion appropriated.  The following year, 2014, $42 billion was appropriated.
Let's look at what was actually spent on foreign aid in Barack Obama's final year of 2016: $31 billion total – more than half of what America needs to insure its own "peace and security."
Countries receiving American taxpayer largess include Pakistan, $687 million, the same country that provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.  Seven point two billion dollars went to Afghanistan, with not much to show for it other than its opium products finding their way through our unsecure southern border.
Five hundred seventy million went to Syria, a country where I thought Obama was calling for regime change.  Even China received $20 million.  I thought China was our geopolitical and economic adversary!  A few hundred million each went to most African countries, quickly adding up to the grand total of $31 billion.
This is not to say that all foreign aid is bad, as clearly, it is not.  America is the most generous nation in the world.  Much of our foreign aid is lifesaving. Much of it is also wasted or filling the Swiss bank accounts of foreign thug leaders – or worse, finding its way into the bank accounts of those who appropriated the money from the U.S. Treasury.
How else to explain members of Congress living in multimillion-dollar mansions or having net worths in the tens of millions while earning a congressional salary of under $200,000 per year?
An old proverb says, "Charity begins at home."  Even the Bible reinforces the idea in 1 Timothy 5:8: "Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."
American taxpayers are footing the bill not only for foreign aid, but also for illegal immigration, which costs U.S. taxpayers $115 billion a year.
Then there is the human toll, from Kate Steinle to police officer Ronil Singh.  Or the previously deported illegal alien who viciously raped a woman in New York.  Or another previously deported illegal who raped a child in Philadelphia.
Don't forget illegal drugs.  Heroin and cocaine aren't produced domestically and instead transit our southern border.  How much Chinese fentanyl is arriving through Mexico?
The United States gives about a million dollars a year in aid to Hungary, the same country that was able to fund the construction of "a second fence on the border with Serbia to keep migrants out."
Congress is happy to give money to countries to secure their borders, but House Democrats refuse to spend a dime for the same security measures in their own country.
Shameful, but the shutdown is illustrating Democrat priorities, especially for Pelosi-Schumer Democrats.  Let's have the debate.  Where do taxpayers want their hard-earned money to go?  To foreign countries so they can secure their borders and protect their citizens?  Or should some of that money stay here, providing safety and security for Americans?
Trump will get his wall, either through an eventual budget deal or via the military on the basis of national security.  The shutdown may simply be Trump's way of exposing Democrat priorities, which are not for those they are elected to represent or the constitution they swore to support and defend.
Democrats may believe that the shutdown is a way to insulate themselves against exposure of their real priorities, but the longer the shutdown goes on, the more their insulation melts away.
Brian C Joondeph, M.D., MPS is a Denver-based physician and writer.  Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn and Twitter.


Gavin Newsom’s First Act as California Governor: More Healthcare for Illegal Aliens



Gavin Newsom swearng in (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press
2:32

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s first act in office was to propose extending state healthcare benefits to more illegal aliens.

On Tuesday, shortly after being sworn in, Newsom — who ran on the proposal of providing healthcare to everyone in California, though he struggled to explain how he would pay for it — signed an executive order taking steps in that direction.
In his first executive order, Newsom directed the state to create a single government purchaser for prescription drugs to increase negotiating leverage with pharmaceutical companies. Alongside the order, Newsom proposed extending Medi-Cal — the state’s version of Medicaid — to illegal aliens up to the age of 26, rather than 19.
The governor’s forthcoming budget, his office said, “will make California the first state in the nation to cover young undocumented adults through a state Medicaid program.”
That would cover 138,000 “young people in the country illegally,” according to the Associated Press.
“Undocumented young adults should not have to worry about losing their health coverage when they turn 19,” the governor’s office added, saying that the budget proposals, to be presented later this week, would defend Obamacare from “recent federal attacks” and “bring the state closer toward the goal of health care for all.”
In his inaugural address, Newsom promised “sanctuary to all who seek it” — a reference to California’s status as a “sanctuary state” for illegal aliens that refuses to help enforce federal immigration law.
That policy continues to be a lightning rod for national criticism after the murder last month of Corporal Ronil Singh, a legal immigrant and police officer who was allegedly shot and killed by an illegal alien during a traffic stop.
In addition, Newsom’s new budget “proposes increasing the size of the subsidies for families who already receive it, and it would make California the first state to make subsidies available to middle income families,” his office said.
To pay for the expansion of those benefits, Newsom is proposing that California restore the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, which was canceled by President Donald Trump at the federal level.
Schumer also sent a letter to President Trump and to congressional leaders asking for legislative changes that he argues would make it easier for states, including California, to develop a single-payer healthcare system.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.


Sheriff David Clarke (Ret.)

Enabling Criminal Aliens

Source: AP Photo/Noah Berger
  
The murder of Newman California Police Corporal Ronil Singh allegedly by an illegal alien with a criminal past is the latest high-profile killing of an American citizen that contains nearly every element in our illegal immigration discourse.

Singh, 33, legally immigrated to the United States, became a U.S. citizen, and then became one of Newman’s finest citizens serving as a police officer for twelve years. Singh’s legal entry into the U.S. added value to our country. Sadly, this husband and father of a 5-month-old son was allegedly murdered by an illegal criminal alien gang member on Christmas Eve.
This tragedy was preventable. 
Singh’s suspected murderer had “prior criminal activity that should have been reported to ICE,” Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson had said. “Law enforcement was prohibited because of sanctuary laws and that led to the encounter with (Cpl.) Singh… the outcome could have been different if law enforcement wasn’t restricted or had their hands tied because of political interference.”
California is a state that provides a safe harbor for people illegally in the country. California boasts its status as a sanctuary state in violation of federal law and the supremacy clause in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. California cities have passed laws prohibiting local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with law enforcement officers from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with the apprehension of illegal immigrants even after they have committed a crime. Many of these illegal criminals continue on to murder, rape and rob U.S. citizens post-release from a local jail under the catch-and-release policies before notifying ICE officials.
Currently, the threshold for immediate deportation proceedings is set too low. Catch-and-release instead of being detained pending an immigration hearing is like unleashing a dangerous animal into a public space. Eventually, we’ll be dealing with an avoidable catastrophe.
Typically the definition to detain involves only crimes such as murder, rape, and armed robbery. That’s about it. Serious drug dealing or gun possessions are not considered crimes of violence under this strict definition. Neither does burglary or the severe crime of driving under the influence of alcohol. As we have seen over and over through the cost of American lives, many additional crimes pose equally great risks to our communities should these illegal criminal aliens be released without detaining for ICE.
Burglary is a felony and as far as I am concerned a crime of violence. It’s not merely a property crime that results in minor victimization. It involves forced entry. It is a category Part I crime by FBI statistics. Part I crimes are serious felonies. Anybody whose home has been broken into suffers a traumatic mental experience. I have seen it when investigating burglaries. People who once felt safe in their homes lose that sense of security after their home is burglarized. Their kids have nightmares; adults sleep with one eye open and every little noise in the house startles them. It takes a long time to heal. Burglary costs Americans an estimated 4 billion in property loss every year, but this does not include the psychological damage. The fact that many states allow residents to use deadly force to stop intruders means that a burglary could end violently for the intruder. It will if it happens at my home and I am there.
Another offense that is marginalized by sympathetic lawmakers is driving under the influence. It is not merely a traffic offense. Tens of thousands of people are killed and maimed by impaired drivers every year. I have arrived on the scene of crashes involving impaired drivers. Seeing lifeless and mutilated bodies is not pretty. This is why most states take it so seriously that a first offense is a crime punishable by imprisonment. Many make a second and third offense a felony. It’s worth mentioning that the illegal alien who allegedly murdered Cpl. Singh had two prior arrests for DUI and was being stopped by Cpl. Singh for suspected driving under the influence again.
A recent Pew Research study on crimes committed by illegal aliens indicates it’s time to take this seriously. The study shows that the bulk of those arrested in 2016 and 2017 had prior criminal convictions. It indicates that in 2017 illegal immigrants with past criminal convictions accounted for 74% of all arrests made by ICE which is a 30% increase from the year before. The study points out that those with no previous conviction increased by 146% compared to a 12% increase of those with a past criminal conviction. They have demonstrated a propensity to victimize. This conviction rate includes nearly 60,000 arrested for drunk driving and approximately 58,000 arrested for dangerous drug dealing (opioids). The other classification of convictions are as follows:
Assaults: 48,454
Larceny: 20,356
General Crimes: 17,325
Obstructing Police: 14,616
Burglary: 12,836
These numbers are not insignificant. Nobody takes the time to point out to the criminal alien apologists that the cost associated with these crimes include police and court costs, incarceration costs, property loss and damage, medical costs, psychological trauma, lost work time and increased insurance rates adding up to billions of dollars. Therefore, the policy on when to deport and for what reasons also needs to reflect these costs to the American people. The time to deport is before they go on to serious offenses, not after. 
Redefining what constitutes deporting a criminal alien is needed. By changing the definition from what is considered a ‘violent act’ to a ‘serious act’ would be more inclusive of the dangerous crimes I have highlighted in this article. Our laws need to reflect the protection of the American people not sympathy for criminal aliens.
Is it not asking too much for people in the country illegally to obey all of our laws, not just a select few? Neither you nor I would be granted this courtesy if we were even lawfully in a foreign country with a valid passport and committed a misdemeanor crime not involving violence. Deportation would be certain and swift with no release pending a deportation hearing.
It is time for U.S. policy to change. The American people should not have to accept such great risks when they don’t have to. They should not have to stand by idly before a criminal illegal alien victimizes another American citizen.
It is bad enough that our criminal justice system is soft on crime when it comes to people legally in the country but when that same leniency is granted to criminal aliens it’s a problem, and it’s time to recalculate our generosity.
The position of most politicians in Washington D.C., except for a few Democrats who are sympathetic to all illegal migrants, is that concerning deportations we should deal with the criminal aliens first. An overwhelming majority of Americans agree. Nobody wants to be victimized by a criminal, nonetheless, ones who should have been deported.
When we water down the standard for what is criminal behavior, we are heading toward a very dark place. Crime is crime. Period. This should be the standard for automatic deportation for criminal aliens.
Once we get the criminal illegals out, a wall is required to prevent these thugs from running back in and continuing to victimize Americans like Cpl. Singh who hours before his death stopped home to visit his family on Christmas Eve, kissing his wife and child for the last time. The picture of him with his family taken just hours before his death should serve as a grave reminder to all who want to hug a criminal illegal alien that at any moment they can lash out and kill an American, and that it could have been avoided if Congress had its priorities straight and put politics aside to do what’s right.

 

NY Times: ’40-Year’ Flood of Immigration Turns Orange County Blue



Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images
2 Jan 20191,184
4:50

The New York Times admits a “40-year rise in the number of immigrants” living in Orange County, California has transformed the region from a “fortress of conservative Republicanism” to a Democrat electoral sweep.

The Times notes in a piece titled “In Orange County, a Republican Fortress Turns Democratic” that the rapid demographic changes of the county — which now has a more than 30 percent foreign-born population — has swiftly handed the region over to Democrats. 
Breitbart News reported that Orange County’s booming foreign-born populations of mostly Asian immigrants and migrants from Central America coincided with Democrats sweeping the midterm elections in an area that gave birth to President Richard Nixon.

The Times now acknowledges the demographic changes are at least partially responsible for the diminishing Republican representation in Orange County:
There was a steady decrease in white voters in the seven congressional districts that are in and around Orange County between 1980 and 2017, according to census data. In 1980, whites made up 75 percent of the population in the district where Mr. Cisneros won. By 2017, that number dropped to 30 percent. [Emphasis added]
The county’s immigrant population grew five times as fast as the general population between 1980 and 2000, and while the pace of immigration has slowed, the Latino and Asian populations continues to increase, driven by the children of immigrant families born in the United States. [Emphasis added]
“You went from a solid Republican county to one in which Republicans were just barely the majority, and it fell pretty quickly in the past two years,” said Ms. Godwin. “You have had continued demographic changes. This is a county that went from majority-white to having a majority that are Latino and Asian-American. So that has gone hand-in-hand — particularly with the rising Asian-American population — to voting more Democratic.” [Emphasis added]
In a series of charts, Times reporters Robert Gebeloff and Jasmine C. Lee. reveal that while Orange County has become less and less Republican, the foreign-born population has grown significantly, the share of college graduates has peaked, and the white American population has fallen drastically.



HOME TO DIANNE FEINSTEIN, NANCY PELOSI, KAMALA HARRIS AND GAVIN NEWSOM
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. 
                                                                                          
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.
"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.
https://spectator.org/adios-california/?utm_source=American+Spectator+Emails&utm_campaign=6e1b467cf4



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'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.

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.



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.





Bienvenidos a Mexico: California's ballot-harvesting, sure enough, is borrowed from Mexico


In an extraordinary investigative piece on how ballot-harvesting works by Steve Miller, published on Real Clear Investigations, we learn an amazing amount of information about how ballot-harvesting works and why it's so closely connected to election fraud, skewing elections in directions they normally wouldn't go. Themust-read piece is focused on how Texas is dealing with the seedy issue, enforcing the law, prosecuting more than twice as many cases of electoral fraud as California, even hampered as Texas is by weak penalties for violators. But a little detail stands out much deeper into the piece: Ballot-harvesting, which is at the root of considerable fraud of all kinds, is a practice specifically borrowed from Latin America, with a very impressive Latino analyst, K.B. Forbes, who has electoral experience in both countries, citing Mexico. Here's the passage:
The practice has its roots in Latin America, said K.B. Forbes, a political consultant and Hispanic activist who has served as an elections observer in Sonora, Mexico. “In the Latin culture, they have colonias, which is ‘little colony,’ literally,” he said. “In these, they sometimes have the equivalent of a precinct boss, and that’s how people move up. The [politiqueras] deliver the vote and when the candidate moves in, the theory is that they get a good post inside the government.”
That brings up California, where ballot-harvesting is perfectly legal, and normal voters have to wonder how the heck that happened. Ballot-harvesting has been a disaster for Republicans in California, with all conservatives now shut out from any representation in once-red Orange County. Most congressional elections there showed Republican candidates in the lead on election night in the last midterm, but all of them flipped to Democrats as the Democrat-led ballot-harvesting brought in votes and votes and votes from supposed precincts, harvested by their political operatives, until the result went the other way. (This by the way, didn't happen in districts where Democrats held a small lead, nothing flipped in their cases and ballots did not keep rolling in).
If ballot harvesting is a practice imported from Mexican politics, what does that say about California politics, whose legislators would embrace Mexican electoral practices over the U.S. standard? As I mentioned earlier, Mexico has been called "a perfect dicatorship" by none other than Nobel Prize-winning literary lion Mario Vargas Llosa, owing to the continuous power of the Mexican Partido Revolucionario Institucional (or P.R.I.), which up under a decade or two ago, had a hammerlock monopoly on Mexican politics, winning every single election in what was then a one-party state. That's a system so bad people emigrated illegally from that country to get away from it. Now, the cultural practice is right there waiting for them in California, albeit, virtually nowhere else.
And like the P.R.I.'s Mexican electoral practice of ballot-harvesting, it's noteworthy that the ruling Democrats of California also are famous for doling out the goodies to the loyal voters. They've promised amazing things to California's illegal immigrant population, with the latest thing free heath care. California's insurance commissioner, the respected non-partisan Steve Poizner, was, conveniently, ballot-harvested out of office after an election-night lead several days after midterm by utterly leftist Democrat Ricardo Lara who openly declared his support and big plans for free health care for illegals. He's tried it before in the legislator and now he's going to do it this time through the executive. California's incoming governor, of course, is all in for the goody-slinging. In Mexico, they used to pass out bags of beans for votes. In California, the prizes are considerably higher, and they go well beyond free health care.  I've already noted the weird similarities to how California is run, and P.R.I-style politics here.
Any wonder California is going way out of its way to welcome illegal immigrants? "You're all welcome here," as Gov. Jerry Brown famously said. California already hosts a quarter of the nation's illegals, and with middle class families now moving out due to high living costs and punitive taxation, the California P.R.I. likes new bodies coming in who have a lot of needs, which keeps the congressional seats numerous and the federal funds flowing.
It all makes a normal person wonder about the weird closeness of California officials and their Mexican counterparts, too. Newsom has already paid a visit to Mexico to discuss the caravan with the Mexican government in Mexico City (not Tijuana, where he would have gotten a earful from the generally conservative and more dissident-oriented Tijuana locals), and he has declared he plans to withdraw National Guard troops from the U.S. border. With his party now embracing the P.R.I's style of governance and having some unnaturally close ties to Mexican officials (I've seen it myself at Los Angeles functions as a guest of the Mexican government), it looks like a growing merger of Mexican and California politics.
Mexico knows how bad the system is, and its citizens did rebel against it with a Trump-like leftist president, Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador, who won on a vow to end corruption. One can safely take that as a sign that Mexicans are trying to move away from that kind of politics, which of course would include ballot harvesting. California, on the other hand, is moving toward it, embracing what Mexico is trying to reject. That speaks pretty poorly for the sorry state of affairs in California. It's only great for the rulers and those they patronize, until the money runs out.
 Until then, clarification about California's Mexico borrowings need to stand as an incentive to other states about what not to do.

 


It Pays to be Illegal in California

 By JENNIFER G. HICKEY  May 10, 2018 
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.

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