Not once in the article
below did the stenographer suggest that illegal aliens abide by the laws
Congress writes. It never seems to enter journalists'
minds. Journalists, activists, and other Democrats tell illegal
aliens how to break the law and ignore the law but not that they should follow
the law.
Yet every day we hear
lectures from the complicit media in collusion with other Democrats about how
no one should be above the law in the United States. Do sanctuary city and
state politicians recognize that the public can tell they are encouraging
lawbreaking?
When we hear stories
about the homelessness in California and elsewhere, why don't we hear how
illegal aliens contribute to the problem? They take jobs and
affordable housing, yet instead of discouraging illegal aliens from breaking
the law, politicians encourage them to come by lavishing free stuff on them
with confiscated dollars from this and future generations.
Sophia Tareen of the
Associated Press writes:
Ceci Garcia believes
that if her husband had a better understanding of his rights, he would have
avoided deportation to Mexico after telling a suburban Chicago police officer
during a 2012 traffic stop that he was living in the U.S. illegally.
"He failed to
remain silent," said the U.S. citizen mother of five. "He proceeded
and told the truth."
From Los Angeles to
Atlanta, advocates and attorneys have brought "know-your-rights"
workshops to schools, churches, storefronts and consulates, tailoring their
efforts on what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows up at home
or on the road. They've role-played interactions, handed out pocket guides,
provided hotlines, hosted webinars and offered scripts. The result, advocates
argue, is more savvy immigrants who are increasingly refusing to open their
doors or provide information, something they hope will blunt any impact of any
operation.
"It's more about
making sure that people feel like they have some power over what is happening
in their lives," said Katarina Ramos, a National Immigrant Justice Center
staff attorney. "And that they have some control over what is inherently a
very scary situation."
Whether it's the
American Civil Liberties Union or a neighborhood nonprofit, the trainings focus
on the same ideas: the right to remain silent; refusing officers entry into a
home; not signing anything without legal representation; and asking for
paperwork from agents. They are rights attorneys say apply to everyone
regardless of citizenship status.
There is another story
out by the AP about supposed Trump sexual abuse over twenty years ago.
This story has a lot in
common with a significant amount of garbage that supposed journalists pollute
the public with on a daily basis. There is zero evidence that the
incident occurred, only an allegation. So why does the story hit the
papers? The answer is to make the public believe that it
happened. As long as it fits the Democrat agenda of destroying
Trump, the story is printed.
The Russian collusion
story goes on even though there was never any evidence that it happened.
The false story about
what Trump said in Charlottesville is still out there.
There was never any
evidence that the Jussie Smollett story was true.
The media set out to
destroy white Christian boys even though it was clear that the story that they
were racists was false from the start.
One of the most
despicable examples of false stories when the media helped gin up racial hate,
violence, and hate of cops was the false "hands up, don't shoot"
narrative.
The examples of the
media pushing the Democrat agenda with talking points or anonymous sources
instead of facts run on and on.
Isn't it time that the
media cared about facts and the law? Is there any wonder why most of
the public doesn't trust them?
EYE
ON THE NEWS
An Addiction
Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis
Opioids are fueling homelessness on the West Coast.
June 14, 2019
The Social Order
California
By latest count, some 109,089 men and
women are sleeping on the streets of major cities in California, Oregon, and Washington. The
homelessness crisis in these cities has generated headlines and
speculation about “root causes.” Progressive political activists allege that
tech companies have inflated housing costs and forced middle-class people onto
the streets. Declaring that “no two people living on Skid Row . . . ended up
there for the same reasons,” Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, for his part, blames
a housing shortage, stagnant wages, cuts to mental health services, domestic
and sexual abuse, shortcomings in criminal justice, and a lack of resources for
veterans. These factors may all have played a role, but the most pervasive
cause of West Coast homelessness is clear: heroin, fentanyl, and synthetic
opioids.
Homelessness is an addiction crisis
disguised as a housing crisis. In Seattle, prosecutors and law enforcement
recently estimated that the
majority of the region’s homeless population is hooked on opioids, including
heroin and fentanyl. If this figure holds constant throughout the West Coast,
then at least 11,000
homeless opioid addicts live in Washington, 7,000 live in Oregon, and 65,000 live
in California (concentrated mostly in San Francisco and Los Angeles). For the
unsheltered population inhabiting tents, cars, and RVs, the opioid-addiction
percentages are even higher—the City of Seattle’s homeless-outreach team
estimates that 80 percent of the unsheltered population has a substance-abuse disorder.
Officers must clean up used needles in almost all the homeless encampments.
For drug
cartels and low-level street dealers, the
business of
supplying homeless addicts with
heroin,
fentanyl, and other synthetic opioids is
extremely
lucrative. According to
the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the average heavy-opioid user consumes $1,834 in drugs per month. Holding rates
constant, we can project that the total business of supplying heroin and other
opioids to the West Coast’s homeless population is more than $1.8 billion per
year. In effect, Mexican cartels, Chinese fentanyl suppliers, and local
criminal networks profit off the misery of the homeless and offload the
consequences onto local governments struggling to get people off the streets.
West Coast cities are seeing a crime spike associated
with homeless opioid addicts. In Seattle, police busted two sophisticated criminal rings engaged in “predatory drug dealing” in
homeless encampments (they were found in possession of $20,000 in cash, heroin,
firearms, knives, machetes, and a sword). Police believe that
“apartments were serving as a base of operations that supplied drugs to the
streets, and facilitated the collection and resale of stolen property.” In
other words, drug dealers were exploiting homeless addicts and using the city’s
maze of illegal encampments as distribution centers. In my own Fremont
neighborhood, where property crime has surged 57 percent over the
past two years, local business owners have formed a group to monitor a network
of RVs that circulate around the area to deal heroin, fentanyl, and
methamphetamines. Dealers have become brazen—one recently hung up a spray-painted sign on the side of his RV with the message: “Buy Drugs Here!”
What are local governments doing to
address this problem? To a large extent, they have adopted a strategy of
deflection, obfuscation, and denial. In her #SeattleForAll public
relations campaign, Mayor Jenny Durkan insists that only one in three homeless
people struggle with substance abuse, understating the figures of her own
police department as well as the city attorney, who has claimed that the real
numbers, just for opioid addiction, rise to 80 percent of the unsheltered.
The consequences of such denial have
proved disastrous: no city on the West Coast has a solution for homeless opioid
addicts. Los Angeles, which spent $619 million on homelessness last year, has
adopted a strategy of palliative care—keeping addicts alive through
distribution of the overdose drug naloxone—but fails to provide access to
on-demand detox, rehabilitation, and recovery programs that might help people
overcome their addictions. The city has been cursed, in this sense, with
temperate weather, compounded by permissive policies toward public camping and
drug consumption that have attracted 20,687
homeless individuals from outside Los Angeles County.
No matter how
much local governments pour into affordable-housing projects, homeless opioid
addicts—nearly all unemployed —will never be
able to afford the rent in expensive West Coast cities. The first step in
solving these intractable issues is to address the real problem: addiction is
the common denominator for most of the homeless and must be confronted honestly
if we have any hope of solving it.
‘Unbridled Immigration, Legal and Illegal,
Is Taking the Country Down’
“Through love of having children we're
going to take over." Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of
Brown Berets, militant para-military soldiers of Aztlan shouting at U.S.
citizens at an Independence Day rally in Los Angeles, 7/4/96
This annual income for
an impoverished American family is $10,000 less than the more than $34,500 in
federal funds which are spent on each unaccompanied minor border crosser.
A study by Tom
Wong of the University of California at San Diego discovered that more than 25
percent of DACA-enrolled illegal aliens in the program have anchor babies. That
totals about 200,000 anchor babies who are the children of DACA-enrolled
illegal aliens. This does not include the anchor babies of DACA-qualified
illegal aliens. JOHN BINDER
The Homeless, Illegals,
and the Politics of Virtue Signaling
We have no idea how many of
the homeless are illegal immigrants, but we do know that homeless shelters in
big cities will not cooperate with blanket ICE searches for illegals.
Shelter workers are trained
to request a warrant for a specific individual, and without that, they are told
to keep ICE at bay.
The extent to which the ACLU
and pro-illegal immigration organizations have gone to educate homeless
shelters about how to deal with ICE indicates that the presence of illegals in
these shelters is not insignificant.
Shelters are all-too-often
in lesser supply than the demand for accommodations, especially during winter
in brutal climes in places like Chicago.
Having walked the frigid
streets of that city going from shelter to shelter in search of a homeless
relative, I know something about the dynamics of how the homeless survive the
unforgiving cold where a place in a shelter can mean the difference between
freezing to death in the street or waking up alive.
Competition for safe harbor
is fierce. And the homeless line up and prance in the cold to stay warm long
before the shelters open.
American citizens -- even
veterans, mothers, and children -- compete equally with illegals. This is the
consequence of our so-called policy of “compassion” enunciated by open-border
billionaires like Beto O’Rourke and liberal virtue signalers.
O’Rourke would like to send $5 billion to
the failed states that have produced the immigration crisis. How many billions
would solve our own humanitarian crisis of homelessness?
Illegal immigrants do not
compete for resources or jobs with billionaires or smug middle-class
professionals who drip with compassion and want to bring them into America in
ever larger numbers.
But on the streets of our
cities, illegals compete with the most vulnerable people in our society, just
as decades ago when Cesar Chavez saw an unending supply of cheap illegal labor
being a threat to the wellbeing of his union members.
A CEO that I know speaks
insufferably of her support of “immigrants” and DACA, but she will never have
to face competition from anyone crossing the border illegally. Her well-paid
position in a Silicon Valley startup and her stock options are not at risk. But
America’s homeless sleeping on the streets and in shelters, just a mile from
her trendy townhouse in a gated San Francisco complex, will compete with these
people for the basics of survival.
To date, their cause is not
part of the 2020 Democrat political agenda. But an unceasing demand for more
resources for the illegals charging the border is. No one discusses a limit on
the resources to be allocated to illegals -- to feed, house, and clothe them.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D, Ca)
can grandstand before the klieg lights by grilling those responsible for
homeland security and immigration about conditions at the border, but she will
not seize the bully pulpit for the thousands of homeless living under the
Oakland maze not far from where she was born and a few miles down the street
from where she went to law school.
The conditions of both our
veterans and vulnerable youth living on the streets do not rise to be
considered as even talking points in the current conversations about how the
society is to be improved by a change of administration in 2020. The focus is
almost entirely on our compassion for the illegals overwhelming the border, the
vast number of whom are economic migrants, not refugees.
Oakland and Berkeley
representative Barbara Lee (D) has been in Congress since 1988. She is an
economic progressive, and she is strongly against deportation. But can you be
against deportation while advocating for social services for your own poor who
are living under highways?
Resources are finite.
Solving the problems of one’s own poor -- who have grown in number since 1988
when almost no one lived under the maze -- should take precedence over the impossible
task of rescuing the poor of Mexico and Central America, if not the world.
The truth is that the
illegals are the latest trend in virtue signaling. My CEO acquaintance can sit
with her friends in upscale San Francisco restaurants and talk about her
compassion for the homeless and her political work for DACA while ignoring the
plight of the people she practically steps over daily on Market Street.
Kamala Harris will demand
more diapers and wipes for the children at the border while ignoring America’s
own homeless under California’s freeways. Barbara Lee will tout
her progressive credentials at the next election, but whatever her progressive
ideology has done for Oakland and Berkeley’s impoverished, it seems neither to
have touched the growing street population nor to have abated it.
Politics is not about
finding solutions. It is about gesturing toward policies that will provide what
the mass public thinks are solutions while mobilizing their votes.
If you want to see a
meaningful change in both immigration and homeless policies, start inviting
millions of middle-class professionals into America and give them quick
licenses as doctors, lawyers, and accountants to compete with middle-class
virtue signalers. Don’t invite poor people who will end up competing with
America’s homeless for a warm grate on a pitiless Chicago winter night.
Abraham H. Miller is an
emeritus professor of political science and a distinguished fellow with the
Haym Salomon Center.
Paying
for illegals' 'free' health care by fining Californians who can't afford
Obamacare
The leftists
running California's one-party state have done it again. They've rolled
out a $312 billion budget that includes $98 million for free
health care for illegal immigrants under the age of 26. That's a dinner
triangle to all able-bodied foreign nationals working off the books that
the free ride is about to arrive.
The expansion
will take effect Jan. 1, 2020 and cost $98 million in the upcoming fiscal year.
It will make California the first state to allow undocumented adults to sign up
for state-funded health coverage.
The budget includes a fine on people who don’t buy health insurance known
as an individual mandate. The fines were initially implemented as part of the
federal Affordable Care Act law known as Obamacare, but Republicans acted in
2017 to roll them back. Newsom and legislative leaders say re-imposing the
penalty at the state level will shore up the state’s health insurance
marketplace and keep premiums from rising dramatically.
As if that $98
million is really going to cover it as migrants from Central America and beyond
surge into the U.S. in record numbers, and five million from Latin America alone planning to enter the U.S. with or
without papers.
California,
remember, was quite convinced $39 billion would cover the cost of its famed bullet train up and down
the state in 2008. The price tag now, with just a tiny portion of it out
in the Central Valley to be built? $98 billion .
Given the
incompetence of those numbers, you can bet the surplus that the money is
about to be taken from is ... not going to remain a surplus.
All this, while
the burned-out city of Paradise remains un-rebuilt due to all the state's environmental concerns. Priorities,
see...
But it's not just
that which makes the measure so objectionable.
The free health
care - and Medi-Cal is very, very, free, with no deductibles for anything - is
going to be paid for out of a new program of fines for California citizens who
don't qualify for free health care, yet can't afford Obamacare - quite possibly
due to the high cost they are paying for keeping a roof over their heads, for
one.
The Associated
Press reports that the few Republican legislators remaining have tried to
make exactly that point in their objections :
Republicans
on the legislative committee negotiating the budget voted against the proposal,
arguing it was not fair to give health benefits to people who are in the
country illegally while taxing people who are here legally for not purchasing
health insurance.
A subsidy program
is going into place, supposedly to "help" them, but you can bet it
won't cover the average Californian who can't afford Obamacare. As for the
illegals, well, when you work off the books, you can pretty well claim anything
as your income, so rest assured that all those who want the free health care,
no matter what they earn, are going to be able to get it.
So what we
are about to see now is the fining of Californians trapped in the high cost of
living brought on by leftist policies, in order to bankroll the state's
abundant illegal immigrant population, which now stands at a quarter of the
nation's count.
And the little
claim at the bottom of that last cited paragraph from the Sacramento Bee
suggests even more trouble on the horizon for Californians who can just barely
pay those gargantuan Obamacare premiums: "keep premiums from rising
dramatically."
What's the
takeaway on that? That bankrolling illegals is going to make
premiums rise on Californians who are stuck in the individual market, but rest
assured, the hikes won't be dramatic.
Sound like a
recipe for flight from the state? You would be insane if you didn't think
so, and the state already is bleeding people. Fifty-three percent of the
state's citizens, according to one poll , want to leave, and more than one report shows that the
state lost more people than it gained , even with the border surge bringing new
supplicants in. Voters know their votes don't count in a state where ballot-harvesting by illegal immigrants is
routinely done now, so any discontent is virtually impossible to telegraph
at the ballot box, and the leftist mafia running the state insists that
this is what Californians want. Color me skeptical on all fronts.
The one thing
worth watching for in this is not the cost overruns, though that should be an
interesting topic. It's whether Californians will finally switch their voting
patterns in sufficient numbers to finally get this crew out. The odds are
against them with ballot-harvesting, yet still, still, one expects something to
eventually blow. Maybe this will be what does it.
How do we deal with America's mental illness crisis?
Before Ronald Reagan became
President Reagan in 1981, the old Soviet Union (dominated by today's Russia)
imprisoned political opponents in psychiatric hospitals. In later
years, many of those former inmates recalled that the very fact of being
confined among people who were truly mentally ill, was so stressful as to
induce a degree of that illness in the sanest of people. Being
forcibly injected with psychotropic drugs increased that tendency.
The communist Soviet leaders
hoped that imprisoning people in that manner would provide their government
with a plausible cover of compassion. It enabled them to deny that
they were punishing dissidents, rather claiming that they were "helping"
them. It also insinuated that only crazy people oppose
communism. The forced hospitalization policy did in fact work to
suppress some political dissent, because everyone knew that it was an
insidiously cruel punishment.
President Reagan, ardently
anti-communist, successfully promoted the release of mentally ill patients in
the U.S. by reducing funding for their care. Thousands who had been
involuntarily confined were turned out into the streets. Most of
them became homeless and hopeless. Unemployable, all too many turned
to drugs and crime. Their death rate was high.
While Reagan is vilified for
this policy, the fact is that after he left the presidency, no subsequent
president, nor any Congress, reinstituted the pre-Reagan
policy. They could have but did not. Today, involuntary
confinement to mental institutions for prolonged periods is difficult to
achieve.
That is as it should
be. The danger of a Soviet-style policy by a future
socialist-oriented U.S. government is by no means out of the
question. After all, it could be asked by leftists, what truly same
person would actually wish to own a lethal weapon? Who in his right
mind could possibly support the Second Amendment? At least that is
what the radical left would ask, and you know what the answer would be.
California is no longer the
paradise it was under Governor Reagan. Radical leftism has taken
root. It is all but a separate country in many ways. It
has its own immigration policy, illegal under federal law. At one
point, its governor even floated the idea that the state should produce its own
virtual currency in the form of accounting tricks, an action uncomfortably
close to secession.
Radical leftist policies in
California have put on public display the embarrassing appearance of a
third-world hell-hole. Swathes of the state, mostly in big cities,
are heavily populated by semi-conscious (or even unconscious) drug addicts, and
entire city blocks seem to be covered in garbage and human
feces. The problem is getting worse. A harsh comedian
suggested that conditions are so bad that illegal aliens might return to their
native countries as refugees from America.
As a proposed solution ,
"Officials in San Francisco decided ... to back a plan allowing the city
to force some people with serious mental illness and drug addiction issues into
treatment."
Among progressives, this is
a formula for internecine warfare. Leftist philosophy is socially
libertarian when it comes to drug abuse, but it is also authoritarian when it
comes to political expedience. These two do not mix.
The policy presently proposed by
San Francisco is timid, so much so as to be ineffective. It would
involuntarily commit very few. "Only about five people could be
forced into treatment in San Francisco under the newly-passed plan. ... But
Wiener's new bill could bump that up to 55, which is the number of people who
now fit the definition for at least involuntary holds. San
Francisco's health department has identified an additional 48 people on the
fringe who have been involuntarily detained six or seven times."
As you see, this is by no
means a clean sweep of the streets, but only a symbolic gesture. It
is not the numbers; it is the principle that is of significance. Its
portents could be enormous.
Small government and
personal accountability are vital principles of
conservatism. Involuntary commitment to mental institutions poses a
threat to those principles — but so does illegal public
disorder. What policy, then, will solve the problem without
endangering personal liberty?
President Reagan told us
there are no easy solutions, but there are simple ones. The simple
solution is to enact constitutional laws and properly enforce
them. This cannot be done in isolation. It cannot be done
by local governments that flout federal immigration laws, nor by policies that
regard public defecation as a human right.
The debauchment of
California did not occur overnight, nor will the "simple" solution be
"easy." A policy directed only at cosmetic measures is not
the answer.
I am not optimistic that
those presently in power in California (and in other states with similar
problems) will look inward and admit that their political and social(ist)
philosophies caused the problems. I admit to being entirely cynical
in the matter. Leftist politicians serve themselves, and no one
else, at whatever cost to the public.
Neither am I optimistic that
the general electorate in the affected regions will re-evaluate their political
opinions. As Sir Winston Churchill said, "The best argument
against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
The temptation to enact
draconian anti-drug laws is powerful, and in some limited instances, such
policies could be useful. The specter of a police state should,
however, moderate any authoritarian impulses we might entertain.
Not all social ills are
remediable by government. Some might not be remediable at
all. To some extent, tough love, the abandonment of the incorrigible
to their chosen fate, might be the best policy. No delight can be
taken in that, but reality can be unpleasant.
Subjecting the majority to
the depredations of the intransigent will cause only further harm.
Los
Angeles Homelessness Surges 12 Percent: 59,000 Now on the Streets
Frederic J.
Brown/AFP/Getty Images
4 Jun 20191,633
1:46
The number of
homeless people in Los Angeles County jumped 12 percent over the last year to
nearly 59,000 living on the streets, according to a report released
Tuesday.
The newly
released data revealed that nearly three-fourths of the homeless population,
which includes 58,936 people, are sleeping in cars, tents, and other make-do
shelters.
Released by
the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to the Board of Supervisors,
the data found that the majority of homeless people were residing in the city
of Los Angeles, which saw an increase of 16 percent to 36,300.
Officials
claim the data show economic stress placed on the thousands that are on the
streets and said that they have worked to provide permanent housing for some
21,631 people over the year.
The report
revealed more than 3,800 of the total homeless population are veterans, 2,866
of which are unsheltered and “not in family units.”
The total of
unaccompanied minors who are “not included in family units” and are homeless
totaled 66, with 45 of those without shelter.
In a tweet
issued to his account last week, Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted
that “California’s what happens when rights are respected.”
California’s what happens when rights are respected. When
work is rewarded. When nature’s protected. When diversity is celebrated and
free markets are fair markets.
We are nothing less than the progressive answer to a
transgressive President. #CADEM19
“California’s
what happens when rights are respected,” Newsom stated. “When work is rewarded.
When nature’s protected. When diversity is celebrated and free markets are fair
markets.”
He
added, “We are nothing less than the progressive answer to a transgressive
President.”
MEXICO WILL DOUBLE AMERICA'S POPULATION AND FINISH OFF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS
AS THEY CREATE THE WORST HOUSING AND HOMELESS CRISIS EVER SEEN!
HOMELESS IN SANCTUARY
CITY SAN FRANCISCO…
Ever heard pro-amnesty
and wider open border advocates SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN and KAMALA HARRIS, NANCY
PELOSI OR GOV GAVIN NEWSOM TALK ABOUT THE STAGGERING NUMBER OF HOMELESS IN
MEXIFORNIA?
The prospect of a 225-bed
homeless shelter on the Embarcadero, one of San Francisco’s most scenic and
economically vital areas, took residents by surprise. Only eight days earlier,
the proposal had been unveiled to turn what is now a parking lot—Seawall Lot
330—into the largest homeless shelter of its type in the city. Neighbors
arrived en masse at the Port Commission hearing to express their views. It was
standing-room only, with people crowded on floors and in aisles, and spilling
out the door.
After a brief presentation
by Jeff Kositsky, executive director of the Department of Homelessness and
Supportive Housing, who touted the merits of the “Navigation Center”—as the new
shelters are called—local homeowners, renters, and workers were granted two
minutes each at the mic. All spoke passionately about their ties to the
neighborhood and how the shelter would erode safety and quality of life. They
worried that it would intensify drug use and other illegal activity and draw
additional homeless people onto their property, leaving more needles and feces
behind. Several described how their toddlers have already been poked by
discarded syringes and had to take HIV tests. A father explained that his baby
stroller was stolen as he was placing her in her car seat; a senior citizen
recounted being chased by “a crazy person.”
Their testimonies were
often agonizing. A few broke down as they pleaded with the commissioners to
reject the proposal. Many emphasized that the waterfront is a jewel of the
city. Placing an enormous homeless shelter in the center of it, in such close
proximity to the prized Ferry Building, is bizarre. The location, they pointed
out, is also a poor choice because few amenities like hospitals or grocery
stores are nearby, and police response time in the area is slow. With no
requirement for shelter residents to be sober, drug dealing, overdoses, and
crime would proliferate.
Port Commissioners
Kimberly Brandon, Willie Adams, and Doreen Woo Ho sat poker-faced. The Port of
San Francisco owns Lot 330, and the proposal depends on their consent, which
seems likely. Mayor London Breed supports the idea. The site itself was
likely chosen for expediency, because the Port of San Francisco oversees the
location, and commissioners are appointed by the mayor and approved by
the Board of Supervisors.
“The community is feeling
blindsided and shortchanged in regard to public process or a sincere desire for
public input,” says Jamie Whitaker, who lives a block away from the site. “They
cast us as millionaires who don’t care about the homeless, which is completely
wrong. We just do not have faith in the city to provide the right kind of place
for them and us. For example, there should be serious talk of building a mental
hospital. It’s clear we have schizophrenic people in this city and they need
help.”
After community members
expressed their objections, a small contingent of homeless-rights activists
spoke, trivializing their neighbors’ concerns as NIMBYism, and, predictably,
accusing them of hating the poor. Most of the residents, however expressed
compassion and praised the nearby Delancey Street Foundation , a self-supporting residential community for ex-convicts,
addicts, and homeless people, because it provides vocational and social skills
training in a drug and alcohol free setting. It’s a critical difference but the
activists are deaf to nuance and unconcerned about anyone with homes, children,
or businesses.
More crucial, though, is
the attitude of city leaders and the media. The San Francisco Chronicle ran an editorial headlined, “ San Francisco Neighbors are
Wrong to Fight A New Homeless Facility ,” dismissing the concerns of residents as “the magnetizing
fear of a homeless influx,” and implying that elitism fueled their protest. But
the Chronicle also
admitted that those living on the streets are “often struggling with addiction
or mental illness.” The proposed Navigation Centers are neither psychiatric
hospitals nor substance-abuse facilities, both of which the city desperately
needs.
Further, the Navigation
Centers have not reduced homelessness. At last count, approximately 7,500 people were living on the city’s
streets on any given night; shelters aren’t making a dent because so many
homeless people are “service-resistant.” No one is required to go or stay, and
many don’t. Tents and illegal activity mushroom around the shelters, despite
so-called good-neighbor policies that are supposed to maintain a modicum of
safety in the surrounding area.
The city, however, refuses
to guarantee that there will be no uptick in crime and vagrancy. “We feel
swindled,” says Wallace Lee, a retiree living in the area. “Something strange
is going on. I used to be a lawyer and how this city works is confusing even to
me. What I do know is that city officials don’t care about our concerns. I’ve
been coordinating people to show up at these meetings. We will challenge the
legislation. I’ve made this my full-time job, I stay up until midnight. I heard
from a lot of people who want to continue to fight and I’m encouraged.”
And now Mayor Breed claims
that she is “ ready for battle over housing,
homeless .” Her attitude
is making enemies of tens of thousands of San Franciscans. An us-versus-them
approach is counterproductive. At worst, she’ll get what she’s preparing for: a
war with the people who care most profoundly about the city. The commission
vote is expected on April 23.
Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Census
Bureau: Immigration Driving Half of U.S. Population Growth
28 Apr 2019398
2:43
Immigration to the United States is now driving nearly half of all
population growth in the country instead of increased birth rates, the U.S.
Census Bureau finds.
The latest
Census Bureau estimates on the U.S. population reveal that about 48.5 percent
of all population growth is driven by the country’s mass illegal and legal
immigration policy, where more than 1.5 million foreign nationals are admitted
to the country every year.
(Axios)
Axios analysis by Stef
Knight details the growing share to
which immigration is increasingly driving population growth across the U.S.
Since 2011, for example, the level to which immigration has accounted for
overall population growth has increased more than 13 percent.
According
to the Wall Street Journal analysis,
about nine percent of U.S. counties are growing solely
because of immigration. This concludes that about nine percent of counties have
regional birth rates that do not exceed the annual number of deaths in the
area.
Similarly,
the Wall Street Journal notes,
more than half of all population growth in states like Florida, Ohio, Virginia,
Kansas, and Michigan, among others, is because of immigration.
Though
pundits have claimed that the country’s admittance of 1.2 million legal
immigrants a year is necessary to increase birth rates, researchers have found
that the growth of the immigrant population has little impact on birth rates.
Center
for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarota discovered in his
latest study this year that “immigrant fertility has only a small impact on the
nation’s overall birth rate,” citing that immigrants in the U.S. raise the
nation’s birth rate for all women by two births per 1,000 women.
“Immigration
has a minor impact because the difference between immigrant and native
fertility is too small to significantly change the nation’s overall birth
rate,” Camarota noted in the study.
At
current legal immigration levels, the U.S. population is set to hit
an unprecedented 404 million residents by 2060 — including a foreign-born
population of 69 million.
The
U.S. does not have to rapidly increase its total resident population and
foreign-born population, as legal immigration moratoriums have been implemented in the
past to give time for new arrivals to properly assimilate to American life.
Halting all immigration to the country would stabilize the population to a
comfortable 329 million residents in the next four decades.
John
Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
Nolte:
Punk Legend Johnny Rotten Sounds Alarm over L.A. Homeless Epidemic
Michael
Loccisano/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival
29 Apr 2019422
3:13
Sex Pistols
frontman Johnny Rotten isn’t afraid to buck the establishment and sound the
alarm over L.A.’s homeless epidemic, which has literally landed at his front door.
The 63-year-old lives in Venice Beach where there has been a
surge of homeless vagrants that have vandalized his multi-million dollar home
and spoiled the beaches with “poo” and “needles.”
“A couple of weeks ago I had a problem,” he said. “They came
over the gate and put their tent inside, right in front of the front door. It’s
like . . . the audacity. And if you complain, what are you? Oh, one of the
establishment elite? No, I’m a bloke that’s worked hard for his money and I
expect to be able to use my own front door.”
He added that his wife Nora, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, isn’t
able to cope with bums trying to “steal the iron bars off the windows” for the
scrap metal and bricks coming through his windows.
“My wife’s ill and she can’t cope with this. But at 2 a.m. last
week, a brick whizzed through the top floor window, the bedroom. Sorry, Mr.
Policeman. I need your help.”
“The vagrants
moved in en masse . . .
[in] tent cities. They’re all young; they’re all like 24,” he said, adding
that, “They’re aggressive, and because there’s an awful lot of them together
they’re gang-y.”
They have also spoiled beach life: “And the heroin spikes . . .
You can’t take anyone to the beach because there’s jabs just waiting for young
kids to put their feet in — and poo all over the sand.”
This might sound like hypocrisy coming from a punk rocker, but
it’s really not. The whole ethos of ’70s and ’80s punk rock is live and let
live. No rules … at least until you interfere with me living the life I want to
live, which is exactly what is happening to Rotten.
If you want
to know what an actual punk rock sellout looks like, I give you Henry Rollins,
the Vandals legend who endorsed … Obamacare.
In fact, Rotten (whose real name is John Lydon) is bucking an
establishment that treats these vagrants as sacred cows while at the same time
pretending they do not exist because their rising numbers reflect badly on the
Democrat-run strongholds that cannot manage the growing problem.
The media and the left-wing political establishment want us to
see the homeless as victims of a cruel American capitalism that allows good
people to fall through society’s cracks. Naturally, the only solution to this
problem is big government socialism.
But the truth
is that American capitalism licked poverty decades ago. The so-called “poor” in
this country now have cable TV, central heat, air conditioning, videogames,
microwave ovens, iPhones, and struggle with over eating. The homeless are an altogether
different problem.
Certainly, good people slip through the cracks temporarily. No
question. But there are all kinds of avenues to help those who are sincere
about getting back on their feet. The homeless epidemic is actually an epidemic
of mental illness, addiction, and tolerance.
City’s that tolerate poopy beaches and sidewalks, hypodermic
needles, and aggressive panhandling only end up attracting even bigger problems
and making the lives of their normal citizens miserable.
Johnny Rotten
complaining about one of the most sacred of sacred cows is as punk as it gets,
and so is his support of Trump and Brexit .
Follow
John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC . Follow his Facebook Page here .
Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as
impoverished Americans wait
Want some perspective on why so many blue
sanctuary cities have so many homeless encampments hovering around?
Try the reality that illegal immigrants
are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that
they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now
importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as
millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that
the original law was intended to help.
Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence,
the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded
with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New
York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at.
The Trump administration's Department of
Housing and Urban Development is finally trying to put a stop to it as 1.5 million
illegals prepare to enter the U.S. this year, and one can only wonder why they
didn't do it yesterday.
The plan
would scrap Clinton-era regulations that allowed illegal immigrants to sign up
for assistance without having to disclose their status.
Under the
new Trump rules,
not only would the leaseholder using public housing have to be an eligible U.S.
person, but the government would verify all applicants through the Systematic
Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, a federal system that’s
used to weed illegal immigrants out of other welfare programs.
Those already
getting HUD assistance
would have to go through a new verification, though it would be over a period
of time and wouldn’t all come at once.
“We’ve got
our own people to house and need to take care of our citizens,” an
administration official told The Washington Times. “Because of past loopholes
in HUD guidance,
illegal aliens were able to live in free public housing desperately needed by
so many of our own citizens. As illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders,
we’re sending the message that you can’t live off of American welfare on the
taxpayers’ dime.”
The Times notes that the rules are
confusingly contradictary, and some illegal immigrant families are getting full
rides based on just one member being born in the U.S. The pregnant caravaner who calculatingly
slipped across the U.S. in San Diego late last year, only to have her baby the
next day, now, along with her entire family, gets that free ride on
government housing. Plus lots of cheesy news coverage about how heartwarming it all is. That's a lot
cheaper than any housing she's going to find back in Tegucigalpa.
Migrants would be almost fools not to take
the offering.
The problem of course is that Americans
who paid into these programs, and the subset who find themselves in dire
circumstances, are in fact being shut out.
The fill-the-pews Catholic archbishops may
love to tout the virtues of illegal immigrants and wave signs about
getting 'justice" for them, but the hard fact here is that these
foreign nationals are stealing from others as they take this housing
benefit under legal technicalities. That's not a good thing under anyone's
theological law. But hypocrisy is comfortable ground for the entire open
borders lobby as they shamelessly celebrate lawbreaking at the
border, leaving the impoverished of the U.S. out cold.
The Trump administration is trying
to have this outrage fixed by summer. But don't imagine it won't be
without the open-borders lawsuits, the media sob stories, the leftist judges,
and the scolding clerics.
///
The Trump Administration Is Cracking Down On Illegal Aliens'
Housing
Source: AP Photo/Pablo
Martinez Monsivais
The
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plans to crack down on
illegal aliens who are taking advantage of public house assistance
programs, The
Daily Caller reported. As it currently stands,
illegal aliens are now allowed to receive financial housing assistance. They
often skirt this rule by living with family members who are U.S. citizens and
receive their assistance from HUD.
The new rule would prevent illegal aliens from living in homes
that receive HUD funding, even if they're not the ones actually receiving the
assistance. Those who are caught with illegal aliens living in their homes will
have to comply with the new rule or move to a different non-HUD location.
To determine whether or not a household is complying with the
program, families will be screened through the "SAVE" program, which
stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements.
HUD estimates that there are tens of thousands of illegal aliens
who are skirting the requirement process by living in these "mixed
families." As of now, millions of Americans are on the HUD waitlist
because there isn't enough money to assist everyone.
“This proposal gets to the whole point Cher was making in her
tweet that the President retweeted. We’ve got our own people to house and we
need to take care of our citizens,” a HUD official told The Daily Caller .
“Because of past loopholes in HUD guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in
free public housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens. As
illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you
can’t live off of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”
Recommended
Matt
Vespa
This crackdown is said to be part of President Donald Trump's
"America First" push.
///
Sanctuary
Cities Welcome Illegal Aliens with ‘Open Arms’ While 38K American Veterans
Remain Homeless
14 Apr 2019
Sanctuary cities across the United States are
responding to President Donald Trump’s threat to bus border crossers and
illegal aliens to their jurisdictions, saying they plan to welcome all illegal
immigration with “open arms” despite soaring homelessness problems.
Last week, Trump threatened to bus border
crossers and illegal aliens into sanctuary cities and states, like
California and New York City, if the country’s asylum laws were not changed.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Sunday confirmed that the
White House is considering the plan.
“The USA has the absolute legal
right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities,”
Trump posted on Twitter over the weekend. “We hereby demand that they be taken
care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is
well known or it’s poor management & high taxes!”
Just
out: The USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal
immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities. We hereby demand that they be taken
care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is
well known or its poor management & high taxes!
Sanctuary city mayors like Oakland,
California, Mayor Libby Schaaf have responded to Trump’s threat by saying they
plan to welcome any and all illegal aliens to their cities — even those cities
that are struggling with rising homelessness. Currently, there are nearly 38,000 homeless
American veterans across the country.
“Oakland welcomes all, no matter
where you came from or how you got here,” Schaaf wrote on Twitter.
As of 2017, there were more
than 2,700 Oakland residents who
were homeless — an increase of 25 percent when compared to two years before. In
all of Alameda County, there are about 5,630 homeless residents. In
all of California, there are nearly 130,000 homeless
residents, including nearly 11,000 homeless American Veterans.
Sanctuary city New York City’s Mayor
Bill de Blasio originally blasted Trump for the plan, claiming the president
was using illegal aliens as “chess pieces,” but he then advocated for giving
illegal aliens driver’s licenses in order to attract more illegal aliens to the
state.
“Undocumented immigrants are our
neighbors and part of the backbone of our economy,” de Blasio wrote online.
“It’s mind-boggling that they aren’t allowed to have driver’s licenses in New
York State.”
New York City homelessness has
reached the highest levels since the 1930s when the country struggled through
the Great Depression. Today, there are nearly 64,000 homeless
residents in New York City, including more than 15,000 homeless families with
almost 23,000 homeless children. This is the largest metro area homeless
population in the country. There are more than 1,200 homeless American veterans
living in New York state.
In interviews with
the Daily Beast ,
sanctuary city mayors from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; and
Cambridge, Massachusetts, said their jurisdictions would be happy to welcome
all illegal aliens.
Philadelphia, Chicago, and Cambridge
have a combined homeless population of at least 12,000 residents. In the state
of Massachusetts, alone, there are now more than 20,000 homeless residents,
including almost 1,000 homeless American veterans.
“The city would be prepared to
welcome these immigrants just as we have embraced our immigrant communities for
decades,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said.
“As a welcoming city, we would
welcome these migrants with open arms, just as we welcomed Syrian refugees,
just as we welcomed Puerto Ricans displaced by Hurricane Maria and just as we
welcome Rohingya refugees fleeing genocide in Myanmar,” Chicago Mayor Rahm
Emanuel said.
Burlington, Vermont, Mayor Miro
Weinberger said in a statement that
illegal aliens were vital to making his city “more prosperous” and “more
diverse.”
“We know from decades of experience
that newcomers to Burlington will make us more prosperous, more diverse and
stronger, just as generations of past immigrants have driven our past growth
and success,” Weinberger said.
In total, there are more than
550,000 American residents who are homeless nationwide. Meanwhile, the U.S.
admits more than 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants every year — the
overwhelming majority of which are low skilled workers who compete for jobs
against America’s poor, working, and middle class. The Washington, DC-imposed
mass immigration policy drives housing costs
up for Americans, economists have found.
John
Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
*
Cher: Los Angeles ‘Can’t Take Care of Its Own, How Can It Take Care of’ More
Immigrants
AP
Photo/Carolyn Kaster
14 Apr 201952,590
2:23
Pop icon Cher said Sunday that Los Angeles, California, “can’t
take care of its own” residents, much less newly arrived illegal and legal
immigrants.
Cher
said she failed to understand how the city of Los Angeles in the sanctuary
state of California could afford to admit and take care of any more immigrants
when city officials have failed to care for homeless, veterans, and
poverty-stricken Americans.
“I Understand
Helping struggling Immigrants,but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS
OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW
POVERTY LINE,& HUNGRY? If My State Can’t Take Care of Its Own(Many Are
VETS)How Can it Take Care Of More,” Cher said.
I Understand Helping struggling
Immigrants,but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE
50,000+
Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY
LINE,& HUNGRY? If My State Can’t Take Care of Its Own(Many Are VETS)How Can
it Take Care Of More
The
post came after President Trump threatened to bus
border crossers and illegal aliens into sanctuary cities and states, like
California, if the country’s asylum laws were not changed. White House Press
Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that
the White House is considering the plan.
In
response, Democrat
mayors across the country — like New York City Mayor Bill de
Blasio and Oakland, California Mayor Libby
Schaaf — have welcomed bringing illegal aliens and border
crossers to their cities.
While
left-wing mayors say they will continue to admit any and all illegal and legal
immigrants, Los Angeles is home to the second
largest homeless population in the country, second to only New
York City. About 50,000 residents of Los Angeles are homeless and about 7.5
percent of California’s American Veteran population is homeless.
As
the city remains crippled by homelessness and skyrocketing housing costs, Los
Angeles metro area is also home to the second largest illegal alien population
— with nearly a million illegal aliens living in the region, according to Pew
Research Center.
Last
year, economists at Deakin University found that
immigration — both illegal and legal — drives up housing prices on average,
with the researchers writing “we find no evidence that house prices sink as a
result of immigration.”
John
Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
Slum
by The Bay
The opinions expressed by
columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
San Francisco is one of the richest cities
it the world. It's given us music, technology and elegant architecture.
Now it gives us filthy homeless
encampments.
One urban planner told me, "I just
returned from the Tenderloin (a section of San Francisco). It's worse than
slums of India, Haiti, Africa!"
So I went to San Francisco to make a video
about that.
I've never seen slums in Africa, but I've
seen them in Haiti and India.
What I saw in San Francisco looked similar.
As one local resident put it, "There's shit everywhere. It's just a mess
out here."
There's also lots of mental illness. One
man told us, "Vampires are real. I'm paranoid as hell." San Francisco
authorities mostly leave the mentally ill to fend for themselves on the street.
Other vagrants complain about them.
"They make it bad for people like us that hang out with a sign," one
beggar told us.
San Francisco is a pretty good place to
"hang out with a sign." People are rarely arrested for vagrancy,
aggressive panhandling or going to the bathroom in front of people's homes. In
2015, there were 60,491 complaints to police, but only 125 people were
arrested.
Public drug use is generally ignored. One
woman told us, "It's nasty seeing people shoot up --
right in front of you. Police don't do anything about it! They'll get somebody
for drinking a beer but walk right past people using needles."
Each day in San Francisco, an average of 85
cars are broken into.
"Inside Edition" ran a test to
see how long stereo equipment would last in a parked car. Their test car was
quickly broken into. Then the camera crew discovered that their own car had
been busted into as well.
Some store owners hire private police to
protect their stores. But San Francisco's police union has complained about the
competition. Now there are only a dozen private cops left, and street people
dominate neighborhoods.
We followed one private cop, who asked
street people, "Do you need any type of homeless outreach services?"
Most say no. "They love the freedom of
not having to follow the rules," said the cop.
And San Francisco is generous. It offers
street people food stamps, free shelter, train tickets and $70 a month in cash.
"They're always offering
resources," one man dressed as Santa told us. "San Francisco's just a
good place to hang out."
So every week, new people arrive.
Some residents want the city to get tougher
with people living on the streets.
"Get them to the point where they have
to make a decision between jail and rehab," one told us. "Other
cities do it, but for some reason, San Francisco doesn't have the political
will."
For decades, San Francisco's politicians
promised to fix the homeless problem.
When Sen. Dianne Feinstein was mayor, she
proudly announced that she was putting the homeless in hotels: "A thousand
units, right here in the Tenderloin!"
When California Governor Gavin Newsom was
mayor of San Francisco, he bragged, "We have already moved 6,860 human
beings."
Last year, former Mayor Mark Farrell said,
"We need to fund programs like Homeward Bound."
But the extra funding hasn't worked.
One reason is that even if someone did want
to get off the street and rent an apartment, there aren't many available.
San Francisco is filled with two- and
three-story buildings, and in most neighborhoods, putting up a taller building
is illegal. Even where zoning laws allow it, California regulations make
construction so difficult that many builders won't even try.
For years, developer John Dennis has been
trying to convert an old meatpacking plant into an apartment building -- but it
has taken him four years just to get permission to build.
"And all that time, we're paying
property taxes and paying for maintenance," says Dennis. "I will do
no more projects in San Francisco."
People in San Francisco often claim to be concerned
about helping the poor. But their many laws make life much tougher for the
poor.
John Stossel is author of "No They
Can't! Why Government Fails -- But Individuals Succeed."
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