Friday, July 5, 2019

AMERICA CRUSHES MILLENNIALS TO GIVE MORE WELFARE AND JOBS TO "CHEAP" LABOR ILLEGALS

Report: Millennials Leaving Big Cities Due to Rising Costs

young man in city
iStock / Getty Images Plus
KATHERINE RODRIGUEZ
748
2:02

Millennials are leaving large cities and heading for the suburbs, all due to rising costs of homes in the area, according to a report.

Millennials, widely known as people between the ages of 23 and 38, are fleeing cities in favor of suburbs in their quest to find more affordable housing, the Wall Street Journalreported Monday.
City growth used to surpass growth in the suburbs due to the financial crisis, but that trend has “reversed” over the last five years because of increased living costs and more millennials choosing to get married and start families.
“The back-to-the-city trend has reversed,” William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution told the Journal.
Many millennials are flocking to areas in the South and Southwest because of the good weather and abundant supply of jobs.
Suburbs such as Apex, North Carolina, near Raleigh, are growing so quickly that schools are at capacity and traffic jams are more common in the area.
But despite the supposed exodus of millennials from cities to the suburbs, millennials are still struggling to buy homes.
A May 2019 analysis by real estate information company Zillow found that home buying for this generation will become more costly and more competitive over the next decade, making it harder for millennials to purchase homes.
Many millennials have had to put off home buying altogether due to massive student loan debt and rising rent payments, which makes saving up for that first down payment more difficult.
First-time buyers need at least another 1.5 years in savings to afford a down payment as opposed to 30 years ago, according to Zillow.
“A large set of them are going to find that almost impossible,” Skylar Olsen, Zillow’s director of economic research, told Fox Business in May. “So they’re going to linger in the rental market for longer, they’re going to continue to put pressure on the rental market, too.”


BUILDING THE LA RAZA WELFARE STATE ON LEGALS’ BACKS!

Nolte: Dems Promise to Take Away Our Health Insurance and Give It to Illegal Aliens

"The California dream of taking care of everyone's needs is 

undermined by the California dream of open borders. State lawmakers were forced to choose between them, and they chose open borders.”  

Austin city council votes to allow homeless camping on sidewalks...except in front of city hall




Today's prize for lack of self-awareness goes to the Austin, Texas city council.  While it is fine and dandy for homeless people to camp out in front of people's homes and businesses, with all the problems of human waste, panhandling, mental illness, and open drug use that we in the Bay Area see whenever we venture to take a walk in San Francisco, the wise councilors exempted their own place of business from the such concerns.
Elizabeth Findell of the Austin Statesman writes:
After emotional testimony last week regarding homelessness in Austin, City Council members rescinded prohibitions on camping on public property. Starting Monday, so long as they are not presenting a hazard or danger, people will be able to sleep, lie and set up tents on city-owned sidewalks, plazas and vacant non-park space.
Except, not in front of City Hall itself.
Austin's mayor engaged in some epic double-talk trying to explain his way out of the obvious hypocrisy:
Mayor Steve Adler said Friday that he does not think the City Hall camping ban should be immediately rescinded. He said it should be reviewed as staffers seek to identify, by August, the places where people should and shouldn't be allowed to camp in Austin. Adler acknowledged that some business owners objected to the ordinance changes out of concern about the impact people camping in front of their businesses could have, but he said they shouldn't consider the City Hall ban to be hypocritical.
"I think the businesses in our community want staff to focus on the broader question in our community regarding where people can and can't camp," he said. "I'm sure included in that discussion will be city properties, properties along Congress and elsewhere in the city. We can't do everything all at once."
Adler would not say whether he thinks the City Hall plaza and amphitheater are appropriate for camping.
"You could come up with a list of 20 different locations and we could go through the list," he said. "The appropriateness of any locations really need to be understood in the context of all the locations."
Whole sidewalks everywhere but city hall are open to people appropriating public property for their own use.  The madness does not extend everywhere:
Other areas where camping remains banned include any city park space, under Austin Parks and Recreation rules. That includes downtown green spaces as well as trails and greenbelts such as along Barton Creek.
People who are unable to provide housing for themselves deserve our compassion and assistance, but they do not deserve to take for their own use whatever public spaces they desire.  I have long believed that campsites in rural locations, fenced in and featuring tents and basic food such as rice and beans, ought to be available to anyone who declares himself a pauper, indigent, and incapable of self-sufficiency.  Basic needs and nothing else are to be provided.  Nothing else, for there should be no incentive to let go of personal responsibility and depend on taking the product of others' hard work to live a life of leisure.
This would not be prison, even though there would be walls.  Leaving the camp would simply require a declaration of personal autonomy, meaning no need to depend on others for provision of life's necessities.
With that basic safety net in place, camping out on public property can then be banned.



Democrats Circling the Electoral Drain




Democrats have convinced themselves that they represent the sentiments of a majority of Americans. Watching the recent Democrat presidential debates, one cannot help but conclude the opposite.
Rather than looking beyond their liberal coastal enclaves to the fruited plain filled with deplorables and bitter clingers, Democrats simply look in the mirror of CNN or the Washington Post to see complete agreement, believing that all of America is on board with their wrecking ball agenda.
The debates featured the 20 best candidates the Democrats could field to challenge the success and charisma of President Trump. Assuming a fifty-fifty political split in America, and the age requirement for the presidency, there should be 50-75 million potential Democrats to step up and challenge Trump. Yet these 20 candidates are the best out there?
We have nonagenarians who have been in government for decades with no accomplishments to their names other than getting elected. Most of the candidates are so far to the political left that they should be running as socialists, or better yet, communists. The only thing separating the candidates are their looks and personalities. They all sing the same tune.                                                                                   
Their favored constituencies are not Americans, but instead anyone outside America’s borders, invited into America to live at the expense of American taxpayers. Robert O’Rourke is even campaigning in Mexico, to be president, not of Mexico, but of the United States.
Democrats want to get rid of private health care insurance for Americans and instead provide free government health care to illegal immigrants. Non-Americans go to the front of the line while Americans can’t even join the line.
One candidate couldn’t even be bothered with policy specifics, instead channeling the Beatles “All you need is love” to solve the world’s problems.
What do those outside the beltway think? Are they on board with America going the way of California, as a detour to the ultimate destination of Cuba or Venezuela?
Rasmussen Reports on June 28 published survey results concluding, “Voters see most Democrat presidential hopefuls as more liberal, extreme.” This was a survey of likely voters, 80 percent of whom say they have “closely followed the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.”
These are real voters, not your typical man or woman on the street that many pollsters query, who when interviewed, don’t know if John Hickenlooper is a former Colorado governor or the name of a new brand of popcorn.
From the survey, “Nearly half (48%) of voters now feel it is accurate to describe the agenda of most of the Democratic presidential hopefuls as extreme.” Democrat voters, the base for the twenty candidates on the debate stage, are mostly on board with this lurch to the left, “57% of Democrats think it is accurate to describe the agenda of most of their presidential hopefuls as mainstream.”
What do the other 43 percent of Democrats think? How many might vote for Trump rather than someone wanting to Make America Soviet Again?
Independents, who will in large part decide the 2020 electoral winner, were not impressed with the two-evening clown show last week. “Fifty-eight percent (58%) of these so-called swing voters view most of the announced Democratic White House hopefuls as more liberal than they are, and by a 49% to 29% margin, they say the agenda of most of these candidates is extreme.”
For NBC debate moderators and hardcore Democrats, open borders, free healthcare for illegals, and trans-men having abortions is perfectly mainstream. Extremism to them is record low unemployment, three percent economic growth, and the American President visiting North Korea.
Here they are raising their hands in unison supporting healthcare for illegals.
For most Americans, extreme is when a journalist is attacked and beaten by Antifa thugs in Portland. But for rabid Democrats, it’s justified or deserved since the journalist is conservative, ignoring the fact that he is Asian and gay. Note the far different response when a gay black actor, Jussie Smollett, claimed to have been attacked in Chicago.
Despite Smollett’s story being full of holes, and quickly proven to be a hoax, the left came to his defense. Ngo’s attack was anything but a hoax, having been captured on video, yet only crickets from tolerant and inclusive Democrats. Will Democrat presidential candidates be asked to raise their hands to denounce Antifa, the new militant arm of their party? Not likely. How many voters want this type of extremism as the new norm in American cities?
Hard core leftists however think this is all just fine. Stephanie Wilkinson, owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia, who kicked out Sarah Sanders and her family, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post extolling the new leftist restaurant etiquette. “New rules apply. If you’re directly complicit in spreading hate or perpetuating suffering, maybe you should consider dining at home. For the rest, your table is waiting.”
In other words, if you support President Trump, stay home. You are not welcome at our lunch counters or restaurants. Sit in the back of the bus. Democrats are going back to their segregationist roots, discriminating now based on political belief rather than skin color. Unless of course you are Candace Owens or Ben Carson getting a double dose of discrimination.
Democrats believe this is a winning message. Agree with us or go away, voluntarily or forcefully, in Orwellian fashion. Joseph Stalin would be proud.
Democrats are pushing the issues important to MSNBC and the New York Times, but not to voters. Also from Rasmussen in mid-May, a survey of the most pressing issues for Congress. These don’t include Trump’s past tax returns or a rehash of the Mueller investigation, but instead 35 percent of likely voters “rate illegal immigration as the issue Congress should deal with first.”
Guess what Trump’s signatures issue is? Illegal immigration. Stopping it, not encouraging it by offering free healthcare to anyone who makes it across our border.
Next of importance for Congress, “Healthcare is in distant second with 19% support, closely followed by 16% who see Trump’s impeachment as first in importance.”
Voters want our healthcare system to be fixed, but not in the way of Democrats wanting to eliminate private insurance. Some Democrats in Congress are listening to voters’ third priority of impeachment, mostly Democrats, but the few voices of sanity in the Democrat party realize impeachment is a loser for them.
Democrat presidential candidates find themselves on the wrong side of almost every issue of concern to voters. Rather than acknowledging and correcting, they lurch further and further to the left, trying to be more socialist and woke than the other candidates, digging themselves into a deeper hole for the general election.
It’s a sight to behold as they continue to circle the electoral drain, oblivious to anything outside the beltway media and each other. Trump’s campaign commercials are writing themselves and upcoming Trump rallies and presidential debates will be most entertaining. Have your popcorn ready.
Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a Denver based physician and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in American Thinker, Daily Caller, and other publications. Follow him on Facebook LinkedIn and Twitter.



Eliseo Medina: Revolution Through Illegal Immigration

https://www.theepochtimes.com/eliseo-medina-revolution-through-illegal-immigration_2748588.html?ref=brief_Archives&utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=6432f3abd5-


 


 “Before immigration debates took place in Washington, I spoke with Eliseo Medina and SEIU members,” said then-Sen. Barack Obamaaddressing the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) at a stop for his 2008 presidential campaign.


Eliseo Medina, Obama’s informal immigration adviser, has dedicated his life to obtaining citizenship and voting rights for America’s illegal aliens—now at an estimated 22 million—with the expressed goal of transforming the United States into a one-party state.

As a Communist Party USA (CPUSA) supporter and former honorary chair of the largest Marxist organization in the United States, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Medina is undeniably the leader of today’s amnesty movement.

At the far-left “America’s Future Now!” conference in Washington on June 2, 2009, Medina, then SEIU’s international executive vice president, addressed attendees on the vital importance of “comprehensive immigration reform”—a code phrase for amnesty.

Medina failed to mention the plight of illegal aliens, focusing instead on how—if given amnesty—they would eventually vote for Democrats.


Speaking of Latino voting patterns in the 2008 election, Medina said:

“When they [Latinos] voted in November, they voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up.
“So, I think there’s two things that matter for the progressive community:
“Number one: If we are to expand this electorate to win, the progressive community needs to solidly be on the side of immigrants. That will solidify and expand the progressive coalition for the future.
“Number two: [If] we reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters. Can you imagine if we have—even the same ratio—two out of three?
“If we have 8 million new voters … we will create a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”
Medina’s “governing coalition” refers to Democrats having control of the federal government for the foreseeable future, “not just for an election cycle.”

Who Is Eliseo Medina?

Medina‘s road to power began in 1965 when, as a 19-year-old grape-picker, he participated in the United Farm Workers’ strike in Delano, California. Over the next 13 years, Medina worked alongside labor leader and beloved socialist Cesar Chavez, eventually surpassing his mentor as a skilled union organizer and political strategist. Medina met his future wife Liza Hirsch during this period.
Medina had met Chicago DSA comrades in the 1970s when he was in the Windy City organizing a grape boycott for Chavez. From 2004 until 2016, Medina served as an honorary chairman for the organization.
Like many DSA members, Medina also worked closely with the CPUSA.
Medina gave the keynote speech at the CPUSA publication’s People’s Weekly World (PWW) banquet in Berkeley, California, on Nov. 18, 2001.
The PWW quoted Medina praising the communist publication: “’Wherever workers are in struggle,’ Medina said, ‘they find the PWW regularly reporting issues and viewpoints that are seldom covered by the regular media. For us, the PWW has been and always will be the people’s voice.’”
In 2007, Medina personally endorsed the People’s World (by then renamed from People’s Weekly World).

Medina’s Wife and Flexible Socialist Ethics

Medina’s wife, Liza, is the daughter of Fred Hirsch, a self-described “communist plumber” and his even-more-radical wife, Virginia, known as Ginny. In the early 1960s, Ginny Hirsch left her husband and young children in San Jose while she drove to Guatemala with nearly a ton of smuggled ammunition destined for leftist rebels.
From the age of 12, Liza Hirsch was partially raised by Cesar Chavez and, at his personal request, committed herself at an early age to earning a law degree so she could serve as an attorney for the movement.
Though a sometimes-socialist himself, Chavez had no time for illegal aliens (who he dubbed “wet-backs”) fearing they would “scab” against his strikes and take jobs from his members. Chavez even launched an “Illegals Campaign”—an organized program to identify illegal alien workers in the fields and turn them in to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Hirsch was put in charge of this program. In 1974, just before she went to law school, she “distributed forms printed in triplicate to all union offices and directed staff members to document the presence of illegal immigrants in the fields and report them to the INS,” according to the book “The Crusades of Cesar Chavez” by Miriam Pawel.
Hirsch would later marry New York DSA member Paul Du Brul. After his untimely death, she married Medina, also a card-carrying DSA member by then.
Socialist ethics can be very flexible.

Changing the Democrat Position to Pro-Amnesty

 

Medina joined the SEIU in 1986, where he helped revive a local union in San Diego, building its membership from 1,700 to more than 10,000 in five years. Medina became international executive vice president of the 2.2 million-member SEIU in 1996.
The SEIU has a huge number of illegal alien workers in its ranks. Medina used that leverage to promote amnesty in the union movement, as well as in the organized left and in the Democratic Party.
In the mid-1990s, most unions were still hostile to illegal alien workers who worked at a much lower rate, taking jobs away from union members. But in 1994, several far-left union leaders led by DSA member John Sweeney took over the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), setting the stage for a major policy change for the unions—and ultimately for the Democrats.
Claiming U.S. immigration policy was “broken and [needed] to be fixed,” the AFL-CIO on Feb. 16, 2000, called for a new amnesty for millions of undocumented workers and the repeal of the 1986 legislation that criminalized hiring them.
According to the DSA website in 2004, Medina was “widely credited with playing a key role in the AFL-CIO’s decision to adopt a new policy on immigration a few years ago.”
From his union position, Medina reached across the labor movement into the social movements and the Catholic Church to create the widest possible pro-amnesty coalition.
According to the SEIU:
“Working to ensure the opportunity to pass comprehensive immigration reform does not slip away, Medina led the effort to unite the unions of the Change to Win federation and AFL-CIO around a comprehensive framework for reform. Serving as a leading voice in Washington, frequently testifying before Congress, Medina has also helped to build a strong, diverse coalition of community and national partners that have intensified the call for reform and cultivated necessary political capital to hold elected leaders accountable.
“Medina has also helped strengthen ties between the Roman Catholic Church and the labor movement to work on common concerns such as immigrant worker rights and access to health care.”
In August 2008, the Obama campaign announced the formation of its National Latino Advisory Council. The new body consisted of several Democratic Congress members, a Catholic bishop, a former ambassador, two former cabinet members, and Medina.
After the election, Medina became Obama’s informal adviser on issues concerning immigration and amnesty. The fact that a DSA member and CPUSA supporter was advising the U.S. president on issues of vital national security importance appeared to concern no one.
Eventually, Medina and his movement were able to get an amnesty bill passed through the U.S. Senate. If they could only pass a bill through the House, the United States would be set on an irreversible path to socialism.

Fortunately, Tea Party-aligned Republican Congress members refused to sell out their nation. They held the line against intense pressure, and no amnesty bill was passed through the House in Obama’s eight years in the White House.

‘Fast for Families’

In November 2013, Medina, along with Cristian Avila of amnesty advocacy group Mi Familia Vota and Dae Jung Yoon of the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (a hard-left group that supports communist North Korea), started a 22-day “fast for families” in front of Capitol Hill “to demand Congress approve comprehensive immigration reform,” according to People’s World.
The staged protest gained worldwide media attention. Several Democratic members of Congress dropped by to offer support, along with then-President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden.
Still, House Republicans did not budge.
On May 17, 2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign announced that long-time DSA activist Dolores Huerta and Medina would join the team as senior advisers in California.
“Huerta and Medina will build on the campaign’s robust outreach to the Latino community in California and work with the campaign’s senior team to organize and engage Californians in conversations about Hillary Clinton’s plans to break down barriers and help move the country forward.
“’We are thrilled to be joined by two incredibly accomplished and admired leaders in the Latino, immigrant and labor communities, Dolores Huerta and Eliseo Medina,’ said Buffy Wicks, State Director for Hillary for California. ‘Their advocacy and leadership … will go a long way in continuing the important work of reaching every California voter in advance of the June 7 primary.’”
Clinton promised to introduce a “pathway to full and equal citizenship” to legalize and grant voting rights to every illegal alien in the country “within 100 days of taking office” if she were to be elected president.
Had President Donald Trump not won his shocking victory on Nov. 6, 2016, Medina’s dream of a permanent, unbeatable progressive “governing coalition” would today be a reality, making it virtually impossible to elect another Republican president.
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.


With Democrats drunkenly denying a border crisis, NYT attempts an intervention




For alcoholics, the first step to recovery is to admit they have a problem.
The New York Times is trying to get Democrats to admit they have a problem on the U.S.'s southern border and is now calling for funds to be appropriated for detention beds.
It wrote this unusual editorial to that end:
President Trump is right: There is a crisis at the southern border. Just not the one he rants about.
There is no pressing national security threat — no invasion of murderers, drug cartels or terrorists. No matter how often Mr. Trump delivers such warnings, they bear little resemblance to the truth.
But as record numbers of Central American families flee violence and poverty in their homelands, they are overwhelming United States border systems, fueling a humanitarian crisis of overcrowding, disease and chaos. The Border Patrol is now averaging 1,200 daily arrests, with many migrants arriving exhausted and sick. Last week, a teenage boy from Guatemala died in government custody, the third death of a minor since December. As resources are strained and the system buckles, the misery grows.
Something needs to be done. Soon. Unfortunately, political gamesmanship once again threatens to hold up desperately needed resources.
Needs, indeed.  After all, about a third of Guatemala would like to come here and are planning accordingly.  The paper of record likes to be a little ahead of the news.
And what's more, as a de facto partisan arm of the Democratic Party most of the time, it probably sees the proverbial writing on the 2020 wall, given that there's no real wall right now.
I'm a bit less willing to praise the paper for the particulars of its stance.  The authors are calling for cash for better detention facilities to accommodate all the illegal border-crossers, which sounds like a downwind patch-up solution to the far more effective ones that House Democrats could do without appropriating any money — such as by reducing the incentives to emigrate illegally by reforming loopholes in U.S. asylum law.  How about: 'If you can't be bothered to apply legally to enter the U.S., then back you go.'  Or: 'If you refuse to apply for asylum at a U.S. port of entry because you want instant customer service, then back of the line, pal.'  Exceptions can be carved out for nationals seeking asylum from places that do not permit free travel, such as North Korea, the nationals of whom our current asylum laws were written for.  The Times' call for more comfortable accommodations for foreigners crossing into the U.S. without authorization sounds like yet another incentive to come here illegally, though it could give border agents some time to sort out who's a professional criminal, or who's renting a kid to get let out of detention early, and who isn't.
Even a wall would be a better solution than the weak tea of better detention cells for migrants the Times calls for.
And as Laura Ingraham notes here — the Times is wrong about the unvetted migration headed to the U.S. containing few or no criminals.


I’m at border with @CBP agents now—they just said @nytimes 100 percent wrong that there’s “There is no pressing nat’l security threat — no invasion of murderers, drug cartels or terrorists.“ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/05/opinion/trump-border-crisis-funding.html 

Opinion | Congress, Give Trump His Border Money



Border Patrol agents say they're seeing the crooks all over — criminals, of course, don't do things legally.
That said, the Times editorial is still pretty revolutionary.  Democrats have been denying for years that there's any crisis at the border, growing ever more shrill and irrational the more the evidence piles up — from crime wages by illegal aliens to welfare and other state costs to the specter of illegal immigrants openly ballot-harvesting in California to flip the House to the Democrats and their champions on the Left fighting in courts an innocuous census question about citizenship.
Illegals are a source of power for Democrats.  They have a political interest in denying a crisis.  For them, it's a party, and nobody had better take away that punch bowl...
But there really is a crisis — and the Times has noticed.  And its reporters on the ground probably also notice that the issue could cost Democrats the entire election in 2020.  With the Times serving as the Democratic Party's narrative-master, this looks like an intervention.  Now maybe the Democratic drunks at the illegals table will be forced to take the first step toward sobriety — by admitting a problem.

 

 

Democrats on Border Crisis: Help Migrants, Not American Wage-Earners

NEIL MUNRO

Border agencies should provide even more help to Central American migrants, top Democrats said in response to the White House’s emergency funding request to manage the migration inflow.

The support for migrants came after the White House asked for $4.5 billion to help process the growing flood of economic migrants from Central America.
“As a country, we must do more to meet the needs of migrants – especially children and families – who are arriving in increasing numbers,” said a statement by Rep. Nita Lowey, chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee. She urged the administration to speed up the release of the migrants:
However, the Trump administration appears to want much of this $4.5 billion emergency supplemental request to double down on cruel and ill-conceived policies, including bailing out ICE for overspending on detention beds and expanding family detention. Locking up people who pose no threat to the community for ever-longer periods of time is not a solution to the problems at the border.
“This crisis is one largely of the Trump Administration’s own making,” claimed Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. His statement also urged the border agencies to release the migrants at a faster pace into the U.S. labor market:
We will not appropriate more funds that will add to the chaos and make the problem worse … this request holds a number of non-starters – such as doubling down on the Administration’s cruel and failed policies including mass detention. There is no reason to lock up thousands who pose no threat, especially in an already-strained system.
Thompson said Democrats were ready to provide more aid to the foreign migrants: “House Democrats understand that there is a humanitarian crisis at the border, and we stand ready and willing to provide necessary resources to help fix this challenge and alleviate the suffering of thousands.”
Lowey declared Democrats as guardians of the nation’s values. “House Democrats take seriously our responsibility to uphold our values and secure our borders,” Lowey said.
The growing wave of migrants is forcing down Americans’ wages in U.S. blue-collar workplaces and is weakening education for Americans kids in blue-collar schools.
The Democrats’ opposition to border security reflects the pro-migration views of their coalition, which includes wealthy progressives and poor, government-dependent families.

 

Why are Democrats opposing Americans in every way?

https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2019/01/20/why-are-democrats-opposing-americans-in-every-way-n2539333

 

With the rejection of President Trump’s latest border security compromise Democrats have rejected security for Americans on many different levels.
This set of rejections adds to the growing list of recent weeks in which nearly every decision they make works against the citizens of the United States.
Even after repeated compromises (President Trump moving to a “steel slat” and away from a “wall”) and self-admissions of a barrier’s effectiveness (House Majority Leader Hoyer confessing “well of course walls work,”) they continue to harbor anti-American values and sentiment in their approach towards the current crisis.
Thus far they have rejected the number one demand of the voters in 2016 to reinforce our southern border with a permanent barrier.
They have decided that in order to ensure that they prevent such a barrier from being built that they would prefer to starve government workers merely to spite the American people.
They also decided to attempt to block the President’s lawful right to update the American people on the progress of the nation and what his administration intends to accomplish in 2109.
All three of these moves intentionally hurts Americans, leaves them less safe, and attempts to leave them uninformed in a nation that guarantees transparency.
In rejecting President Trump’s offer on Saturday they went a few steps further.
Besides the paltry sum of $5.7 billion he is requesting for the border barrier (paltry because the Democrats approved $40 billion during the Obama administration for identical purposes) they also rejected a few other key points.
A key point they are now rejecting (that they previously begged for—though this is the third time the President has offered it) is an extension of protections on nearly 700,000 “dreamers” (non-citizens who entered the country illegally but of no fault of their own due to ages at the time.) Rejecting these protections now for a third time, DACA kids really should ask themselves, “Who in this debate is honestly thinking about what’s best for me?”
An additional offer from the President would extend protections for 300,000 additional persons whose home countries are too dangerous to guarantee a safe return. The TPS offer when coupled with the DACA kids provides protections for nearly 1,000,000 non-citizens that evidently the Democrats for all their big talk of compassion don’t appear to give two hoots about.
His offer also includes close to a billion dollars in updated drug detection technology to be placed exclusively at ports of entry to obviously bring to a halt the flow of more than 90% of the heroin entering the country. This heroin is killing upwards of 300 of our children per week.
His proposal also wants to offer more Americans jobs, increasing the ranks of our border agents by more than 2700. He also pledged more law enforcement to assist the border agents for necessary manpower to actually secure the border and shut down illegal activity and persons attempting to harm America.
And for all those who are deeply concerned about the legitimate asylum seekers trying to eke out a better life in America, his program would provide 75 additional immigration judges to specifically lessen the wait times and backlog of asylum seekers.
Beyond this specific package he even dangled the willingness to bring to the table comprehensive immigration reform in short order.
So now Democrats aren’t merely opposing (with great hostility) the supporters of the President, the Republicans in Congress and the Senate, conservatives across the nation and at least half of the American voters.
Now they are also punishing 800,000 government workers (who largely voted for them.) 
They are punishing the families whose lives have been and will be impacted by the continuing flow of heroin into our communities, along with the 300 families every week (15,000+ annually) whose children are dying from it.
They have now thrice rejected protections for a million seeking safe haven in America including 700,000 children who found themselves here through no choice that they made.
And they are preventing from the future security of thousands of asylum seekers, and most significantly the citizens of the nation itself with a truly secured border.
The Democrats are opposing Americans, those who wish to be Americans, and those that find themselves stuck somewhere in between.
The important question that each American should ask...
Is why?
  

OPEN BORDERS FACILITATE AMERICA’S RACE TO THE BOTTOM



“Cheap labor” is anything but cheap.

January 2, 2019

For decades the United States government, on all levels, has betrayed its own citizens, promoting open borders policies that have come to undermine national security, public safety, public health, and jobs and wages for American workers.
The massive influx of alien children who lack English language proficiency also has a profound impact on the education of American kids.  Increasingly schools across the United States are forced to provide costly ESL (English as a Second Language) services draining funds that could and should be used to provide quality education for American children.  Additionally, as autism rates soar and with it the growing need for special services and early intervention for such learning challenged children, money that should be spent on those vital programs that could help so many of those children live better and more productive lives is being used, instead, to fund those ESL programs for illegal aliens and frequently the children of illegal aliens who do not speak English in their homes.
When early intervention is withheld from at-risk students, the results are frequently catastrophic, yet with all of the emotional arguments posed by the immigration anarchists who call for compassion for illegal aliens, their calls for compassion utterly disregard the plight of American children. 
Open borders policies permit huge numbers of foreign workers to enter the United States and displace American workers, not because American’s “won’t do these jobs” as claimed by the duplicitous politicians, but because these foreign workers are willing to accept lower wages and worse conditions than would the American workers whom they displace.
We can all think back to the days when we were growing up and sought our very first jobs to provide us with some spending money, enabling us to put our foot on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
We often encountered the conundrum of not being able to get a job without a reference.  In order to get a reference we had to have a previous employer vouch for us.  This made getting that very first job all the more difficult and, at the same time, all the more important.
I remember my first job, when I was 14 yeas old, working during my summer vacation in a Kosher delicatessen, a short bike ride from home in Brooklyn where I washed dishes, fried potatoes and served hot dogs at the counter, waited on tables and delivered sandwiches to the women who spent hours at the nearby beauty parlors.
It was exciting and empowering to be earning money instead of asking my parents for an allowance.  Although I didn’t realize it at the time, that job also provided me with an education in life lessons, teaching me to be responsible, punctual and take instructions from an employer.  That job also taught me the value of money, I was far less likely to squander money when I had to work so hard to earn it.
Finally, that job provided me with that important first reference that helped me get other jobs in the future as I climbed the economic ladder to a successful life.
Many of my friends also worked in nearby restaurants. Brooklyn has no shortage of great places to eat, often small “mom and pop” restaurants and everyone of those establishments routinely hired teenagers and college students who were desperate to earn money.
Today most of those jobs in all too many local restaurants and other businesses are not taken by teenage American kids, but but illegal aliens, thereby shutting out Americans.
Consequently, these American kids are often unable to get that first job that would mean so much to them and provide them with important life lessons including a sense of self-worth and empowerment.
Unable to find legitimate employment, some kids, particularly in the poor neighborhoods, resort to committing crimes to get their hands on some money to take a girl on a date or make purchases.  This often puts these teenagers on a trajectory that does not end well for them or for their communities, or for America.
Illegal alien day laborers often displace construction workers, resulting in massive unemployment for American and lawful immigrant workers, boosting the profits of their employers who hire them “off the books” and pay them extremely low wages.
The open-borders/immigration anarchists are quick to invoke arguments about the need for compassion.  The reality is that there’s no compassion in the exploitation of vulnerable foreign workers nor is there compassion in the destruction of wages and jobs for Americans.
Now with the legalization of marijuana in many cities and states across the United States the issue not being raised in the media is that inasmuch as many companies test their employees for illegal drugs, it is likely that those who are encouraged to smoke marijuana will lose their jobs, perhaps leading to the globalists claiming that not only are lazy Americans not willing to take physically demanding jobs, and too dumb to take hi-tech jobs but are now too stoned to take any jobs.
The displacement of American workers is not limited to the economic bottom rung jobs.  America has been increasingly importing computer programmers and other hi-tech workers from India and other countries to displace Americans.
The Democratic Party used to act in the interests of American workers and, as a part of their efforts to protect the jobs and wages of Americans, opposed the importation of foreign workers.  Today, the Democratic Party no longer represents American workers and, in fact, has come to betray American workers and their families.  Today’s Democratic Party insists on raising the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour to achieve “wage equality.”  This works out to an annual wage of slightly more than $30,000.  The question that is never asked, particularly by the mainstream media is: “with whom would these workers become equal?”
It would be one thing if they insisted on a $15.00 minimum wage to help America’s working poor.  But to tout that wage as a means of achieving “wage equality” should give all Americans cause for pause.
As I noted in an article I once wrote about the veiled attack on the middle class,
The Wage Equality Deception, Alan Greenspan the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, invoked the notion of wage equality way back on April 30, 2009 when he testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship that was, at that time, chaired by Chuck Schumer.
The subject of the hearing was “Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?”  Greenspan's prepared testimony included this assertion:
But there is little doubt that unauthorized, that is, illegal, immigration has made a significant contribution to the growth of our economy. Between 2000 and 2007, for example, it accounted for more than a sixth of the increase in our total civilian labor force. The illegal part of the civilian labor force diminished last year as the economy slowed, though illegals still comprised an estimated 5% of our total civilian labor force. Unauthorized immigrants serve as a flexible component of our workforce, often a safety valve when demand is pressing and among the first to be discharged when the economy falters.
Some evidence suggests that unskilled illegal immigrants (almost all from Latin America) marginally suppress wage levels of native-born Americans without a high school diploma, and impose significant costs on some state and local governments.
Greenspan must not have gotten the memo- when America’s poorest workers suffer wage suppression they are likely to become homeless and, indeed, across the United States, homelessness has increased dramatically.  This not only creates chaos in the lives of the homeless and their children, but imposes severe economic burdens on cities that have to cope with this disaster.
Greenspan went on to state the United States must accede to Bill Gates’ demand for more H-1B visas as Gates noted in his testimony at a previous hearing, that we are "driving away the world's best and brightest precisely when we need them most." 
Where I come from, “the world’s best and brightest” are AMERICANS!  This is what is commonly referred to as “American Exceptionalism.”
Greenspan supported his infuriating call for many more H-1B visas by the following “benefits” for America and, as you will see, the last sentence of his outrageous paragraph addresses the notion of reducing “wage inequality” by lowering wages of middle class, highly educated Americans whom Greenspan had the chutzpah to refer to as “the privileged elite”!
Consider this excerpt from his testimony:
First, skilled workers and their families form new households. They will, of necessity, move into vacant housing units, the current glut of which is depressing prices of American homes. And, of course, house price declines are a major factor in mortgage foreclosures and the plunge in value of the vast quantity of U.S. mortgage-backed securities that has contributed substantially to the disabling of our banking system. The second bonus would address the increasing concentration of income in this country. Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums of skilled over lesser skilled. Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process, we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at noncompetitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income inequality.
Generally, the prospect of high-paying jobs incentivized American students to go on to college and acquire costly and time-consuming educations to be qualified to take those exciting and well-paying jobs.  If wages for high-tech professionals are slashed, those jobs will no longer be attractive to Americans.
Greenspan, Schumer and their cohorts are determined to create a $15.00 per hour “standard wage” to be paid to all workers irrespective of education or the nature of their jobs.  This is called Communism! 
Many have said that the Democrats want to import immigrants who will vote for their candidates.
What is often overlooked is that the downward economic spiral caused by the massive influx of cheap alien labor pushes ever more beleaguered Americans to vote for the Democrats who promise to help the hapless, financially strapped Americans for whom, no matter how hard they may strive, the “American Dream” has become an unattainable dream.


Immigration Truths the Democrats Deny

By Laura Ingraham


But the Democrats are determined to block Trump's efforts to fortify the border. You can see them recoil at any border wall talk. Here are the facts. The Democrats are willing to sell out the country, law and order be damned, in order to deny Trump a victory over the wall.

A few years ago, they were all for fortifying the border but not now. Of course, if we had a media that publicized actual facts on illegal immigration and other immigration issues, rather than obsessing 24/7 about Michael Cohen or focusing on a few really sympathetic people in Tijuana, we would have a lot more Democrats feeling the pressure on this issue from the voters.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/laura-ingraham-immigration-truths-the-democrats-deny


Pelosi and Schumer Show Their Colors

By David Limbaugh

How can anyone believe that the Democrats support border security -- wall or no wall -- when they have repeatedly broken their promises to work with Republicans on it, when they demonize all opponents of illegal immigration and amnesty as racists, when they oppose all reasonable measures to guard the border, and when many of them actually advocate the elimination of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement?

https://townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/2018/12/14/pelosi-and-schumer-show-their-colors-n2537458

 

  

Democrats can't stand the thought of protecting Americans



Democrats and their cheerleaders in the mainstream media tout themselves as concerned for those addicted to drugs and regularly support increased spending money for therapy.  But they refuse to fund building the wall and for border security on the Mexican border.
The wall would significantly stop the flow of illegal drugs through the Mexican border to the USA, which would reduce the supply of illegal drugs that cause addiction and deaths by overdose.  The Democrats and media support spending money to deal with the effects of drugs smuggled across the border but refuse to spend money to stop the smuggling.
There is no doubt that illegal drugs and most heroin come across the Mexican border.  And now we have fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 80-100 times stronger than morphine.  According to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), "[c]landestinely-produced fentanyl is primarily manufactured in Mexico.

The Mexican cartels are producing fentanyl and also receive it from China to smuggle it to the USA.  It is very profitable for the cartels.

In 2017, more than 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, with at least 30,000 attributed to fentanyl.
President Trump has called for a border wall to stop illegal immigration and to reduce the flow of illegal drugs, such as heroin and fentanyl.  It is common sense and logical that building a wall and fully securing the southern border would reduce the flow of such drugs, reducing deaths and addiction.
Yet the Democrats refuse to fund the border wall and border security.
Senator Schumer and Speaker-Elect Pelosi agree to spend $1.5 billion for "border security" but not for a wall.  President Trump is asking for only $5 billion.  It is estimated that $27 to $40 billion is needed to fully fund the wall.
It is time to fully fund the border wall.  The Trump Shutdown should focus on the record number of Americans who die due to drugs smuggled from Mexico.  The focus should be on the Democrats and media that ignore the danger to Americans.  This debate should be coupled with the number of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens.
Democrats and their media will quibble about the exact number of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens.  But the point is that such crimes are avoidable if the border is secured.
President Trump must be supported to shut down the federal government to finally force funding the wall to  protect Americans.  The issue is protecting Americans.
Iran is the principal state sponsor and supporter of terrorism.  Iran has promised to destroy Israel.  Iran's Parliament chanted "death to America" while burning our flag.  The Dems and their media supported giving $150 billion to Iran but, they refuse to spend more than $1.5 billion to protect Americans, when they know that spending $27 to $40 billion would save thousands of Americans from death and addiction.
The bottom line is that the Dems and their media do not care about the security and safety of Americans.

  

PRAGER U VIDEO: ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: IT'S ABOUT POWER

What really lies behind the Left's support for 'open borders.'



December 6, 2018

Historically, Democrats supported strong borders because they knew American workers could never compete with illegal immigrants. Now, they regularly support “open borders.” So why the drastic change? Tucker Carlson, host of Tucker Carlson Tonight, explains.

WAR ON THE AMERICA WORKER: FEINSTEIN, PELOSI, OBAMA, HITLERMALA HARRIS and the CLINTON CRIME DUAL

“Senator Dianne Feinstein warned, at the time, they had to solve this crisis now—of immigrants coming in illegally and getting these jobs.”

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/05/senator-dianne-feinstein-looking-to-buy.html

“The Democrats had abandoned their working-class base to chase what they pretended was a racial group when what they were actually chasing was the momentum of unlimited migration”.  DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE 

(WHAT DOES MEXICO DO TO THEIR ILLEGALS?)

AS MEXICO EXPORTS THEIR POOR, CRIMINAL AND ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS ALONG WITH HEROIN, WHAT DO THEY DO WITH THEIR ILLEGALS???

 

THEY DEPORT THEM ON THE SPOT!!!

 

Mexico has a single, streamlined law that ensures that foreign visitors and immigrants are:
1.) in the country legally;
2.)  have the means to sustain themselves economically;
3.) not destined to be burdens on society;
4.)  of economic and social benefit to society;
5.)  of good character and have no criminal records; and
6.)  contributors to the general well-being of the nation.
The law also ensures that:
7.)  immigration authorities have a record of each foreign visitor;
8.)  foreign visitors do not violate their visa status;
9.)  foreign visitors are banned from interfering in the country’s internal politics;
10.)  foreign visitors who enter under false pretenses are imprisoned or deported;
11.)  foreign visitors violating the terms of their entry are imprisoned or deported;

NOTE THIS:
12.)  those who aid in illegal immigration will be sent to prison.

 

 

THE CONSPIRACY TO SABOTAGE HOMELAND SECURITY

The Democrat Party’s secret agenda for wider open borders, more welfare for invading illegals, more jobs and free anything they illegally vote for…. All to destroy the two-party system and build the GLOBALISTS’ DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR WIDER OPEN BORDERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/11/frontpage-hidden-agenda-of-pueblo-sin.html

 

Demonstrably and irrefutably the Democrat Party  became the party whose principle objective is to thoroughly transform the nature of the American electorate by means of open borders and the mass, unchecked importation of illiterate third world peasants who will vote in overwhelming numbers for Democrats and their La Raza welfare state. FRONTPAGE MAG

Seattle's Homelessness Issue Could Push Progressives To Vote Conservative


Source: AP Photo/Elaine Thompson





Seattle's homelessness issue has created such a problem, after years of big government spending on the issue to the tune of nearly $1 billion per year for the greater Seattle area, that some voters who once thought of themselves as solidly Democratic now may support the conservative city council candidate Ari Hoffman, who has more or less declared his race a one-issue campaign.
According to The Seattle Times, voters like Christi Muoneke, an immigrant from Nigeria, is tired of politicians who have made many promises but failed to actually solve the issue. 
“I’m pretty sure 99% of people in Seattle feel compassion for the homeless. We don’t think they should be thrown into the ocean,” Muoneke told The Seattle Times. “My frustration is that so many decisions in Seattle today are driven by ideology rather than the desire to get results.”
But for Muoneke, the lack of results has hit closer to home than she would prefer. In fact, it truly forced her to pay attention to politics:
Until a few years ago, Christi Muoneke didn’t pay much attention to Seattle politics. “I couldn’t even tell you who my council member was,” she said.
That changed when the streetsides around her Beacon Hill home were lined with tents and vehicles occupied by homeless people.
Around the same time, Muoneke and her family had bikes stolen and cars broken into, she says. Her mother-in-law stopped taking walks. Trash piled up in the traffic circle on their corner. Repeated calls to the police about the camping made no lasting impact.
As a result, "The 55-year-old mother of two says she may vote for Ari Hoffman, a conservative candidate who has appeared on Fox News and NRA TV." 
“I’m a Democrat. I used to consider myself liberal,” she told the paper. “But I’m a single-issue voter this time around.”
Likewise, she also says that social justice warriors like the socialist Councilmember Ksahama Sawant have adopted condescending attitudes towards folks like her who simply want to solve homelessness. 
Muoneke, who is staunchly anti-Trump, says, “I’m not anti-homeless. I’m just anti-people who commit crimes and are given a pass because they’re homeless,” she said. “Everybody is entitled to safety and security. All humans want that.” 
However, the Seattle Times article also notes that other progressive individuals are simply becoming more extreme, using Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a role model. There are currently about 12,000 homeless individuals in Seattle, and socialists and leftists alike think the answer is more government spending. 
But, in a truly in-depth report by the City-Journal, Christopher Rufo argues the only way to end the homeless is to break up the "homelessness industrial complex" and drastically stop the public assistance promoted by city leaders. He says this does nothing to solve the problem and instead just lines public officials' wallets. 
Via Rufo:
With more than $1 billion spent on homelessness in Seattle every year, one should keep in mind Vladimir Lenin’s famous question: Who stands to gain? In the world of Seattle homelessness, the big “winners” are social-services providers like the Seattle Housing and Resource Effort (SHARE), the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), and the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), which constitute what I call the city’s homeless-industrial complex. For the executive leadership of these organizations, homelessness is a lucrative business. In the most recent federal filings, the executive director of LIHI, Sharon Lee, earned $187,209 in annual compensation, putting her in the top 3 percent of income earners nationwide. In my estimation, the executive director of DESC, Daniel Malone, has received at least $2 million in total compensation during his extended career in the misery business.
As for when Muoenke will have to decide if she supports Hoffman's city council race, "the primary election is Aug. 6, and the two candidates with the most votes in each district will advance to the Nov. 5 general election." 





Report: Millennials Leaving Big Cities Due to Rising Costs

young man in city
iStock / Getty Images Plus
KATHERINE RODRIGUEZ
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2:02

Millennials are leaving large cities and heading for the suburbs, all due to rising costs of homes in the area, according to a report.

Millennials, widely known as people between the ages of 23 and 38, are fleeing cities in favor of suburbs in their quest to find more affordable housing, the Wall Street Journalreported Monday.
City growth used to surpass growth in the suburbs due to the financial crisis, but that trend has “reversed” over the last five years because of increased living costs and more millennials choosing to get married and start families.
“The back-to-the-city trend has reversed,” William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution told the Journal.
Many millennials are flocking to areas in the South and Southwest because of the good weather and abundant supply of jobs.
Suburbs such as Apex, North Carolina, near Raleigh, are growing so quickly that schools are at capacity and traffic jams are more common in the area.
But despite the supposed exodus of millennials from cities to the suburbs, millennials are still struggling to buy homes.
A May 2019 analysis by real estate information company Zillow found that home buying for this generation will become more costly and more competitive over the next decade, making it harder for millennials to purchase homes.
Many millennials have had to put off home buying altogether due to massive student loan debt and rising rent payments, which makes saving up for that first down payment more difficult.
First-time buyers need at least another 1.5 years in savings to afford a down payment as opposed to 30 years ago, according to Zillow.
“A large set of them are going to find that almost impossible,” Skylar Olsen, Zillow’s director of economic research, told Fox Business in May. “So they’re going to linger in the rental market for longer, they’re going to continue to put pressure on the rental market, too.”





Homelessness Strains New York’s Libraries

10 Blocks podcast
July 3, 2019
New York
The Social Order
Stephen Eide joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss how homeless services are putting pressure on one of New York City’s most valued cultural institutions: the New York Public Library. Eide describes the situation in “Disorder in the Stacks,” his story in the Spring 2019 Issue of City Journal.
Homelessness has been a challenge for every New York City mayor since the 1970s. Prior to the city’s revitalization, the homeless were mostly concentrated in destitute neighborhoods of Manhattan. But today, homeless single adults are an increasingly visible presence in parks, subway stations, and libraries around the city.
“All urban library systems have found themselves in the homeless-services business, with varying degrees of enthusiasm,” Eide writes. The New York Public Library spends $12 million annually on security, including training for staff in dealing with potentially threatening patrons. The city needs a comprehensive strategy for dealing with a worsening crisis.

Audio Transcript

Brian Anderson: Welcome back to the 10 Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Coming up on the show today, one of our contributing editors, Stephen Eide, joins me to discuss his recent essay for the magazine "Disorder in the Stacks," which looks at homelessness and the problems it's posing for New York's public libraries. Homelessness has been a challenge for every mayor in New York since the 70s, but today we'll talk about how the city's struggle to deal with it is creating new problems for one of our most valued institutions, the New York Public Library. Stephen's been a guest on the show before and I know you'll enjoy the discussion. Our conversation will begin after this.
Hello again everyone. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Joining us now in the studio is Stephen Eide. Stephen is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal. His recent essay for the magazine "Disorder in the Stacks" details how services for the homeless are putting a strain on library resources throughout the city. Stephen, thanks for joining us.
Stephen Eide: Hi Brian. Thanks for having me.
Brian Anderson: Homelessness, as we mentioned at the beginning, has been a challenge for every mayor in New York, really since the 70s. But for this piece, you spend a lot of time visiting different branches of the New York Public Library. What you found was a significant number of homeless people sitting in the library rooms charging their phones, streaming Netflix, browsing social media, playing video games. It seems that the public libraries in Midtown Manhattan are morphing into an extension of the city's homeless shelter system. Why is this happening, in your view, and what has been the reaction of library patrons to this?
Stephen Eide: Well, this burden is falling on the public library system because it's falling on many service systems in this city. In terms of the core homeless services system, meaning mostly the network of emergency shelters, New York City already spends $3 billion. But that sum doesn't take into account the burden homelessness places on the cops, on the school system to deal with problems related to homeless children, and also the library is another service system that gets roped into this task. It certainly has a financial burden in terms of spending on security and staffing on hours, but it also has implications for just the library's sense of purpose, it's mission. What does the library do? There's a lot of debate about that, but when you visit many of these branches— and I visited around 50 branches for this article, several of them more than once— what it seems that a library does in many cases, is function as a daytime homeless shelter.
Brian Anderson: Some of the numbers from your piece are quite eye-opening— you just mention the security cost; the public library's now spending I think $12 million annually, you say in the essay, which is a number not all that far from the amount it spends on books and other resources. How exactly are those security costs being spent, and what kind of security do you need for a public library full of homeless people?
Stephen Eide: Well, it's a delicate issue for the library to talk about. The library needs to go hat in hand to the city council every year for its budget request. It doesn't want to dramatize, it believes, the problem of homelessness, but it's clearly internally a big issue. They have to debate where they put these security guards. There aren't security guards at every branch in the system, but the branches where you see a large concentration of security guards are not, coincidentally, these branches that have a very large number of homeless people. Places like the Bronx Library Center, the SIBL— Science Industry and Business Library— in Midtown Manhattan, these are places where you might have, on a cold day, a few dozen homeless people sitting there all day long. And there you're going to have a significant concentration of security guards just so that any non-homeless person who happens to be using that branch for any reason is going to feel comfortable. Of course the larger point to make there is that you won't see that many non-homeless people using libraries if you have large concentrations of homeless people. If you go out to suburban library systems or quasi-suburban branches in the NPL system, like on Staten Island, which I did, or the northern Bronx, you see older retirees or young professionals— certain types of cohorts that you just don't see so much in these Midtown branches and elsewhere, which have a high concentration of homeless people. We've talked about this many times in terms of how you manage public spaces, be it streets or parks. You try to maximize the number of ordinary people going about their daily business and try to minimize the people who are contributing to concerns about disorder. And at this point, the balance is clearly more toward the homeless side of the ledger than the non-homeless side of ledger at many, many branches in New York City.
Brian Anderson: So it is having an effect on the patrons? They're not showing up to the degree they would have been absent this problem?
Stephen Eide: Yeah. People don't feel comfortable settling in for a couple hours. Around Midtown Manhattan, it's not like you have an overabundance of quiet, pleasant places to just go sit for a couple of hours. The library could be serving that function, but a lot of people don't feel comfortable just sitting, opening up their laptop, or opening up a book and spending a few hours in a place where they're surrounded by a bunch of people who are clearly homeless and they don't know— maybe they're behaving erratically.
Brian Anderson: They're not going to feel safe bringing kids there.
Stephen Eide: Yeah. There are children's sections, but they delineate those boundaries very clearly between the children's and the adults' sections at all these branches, but it's especially rare to see, relatively speaking, non-homeless adults using the library for the purpose that we would think we have libraries for. The New York Public Library's favorite word is inclusiveness, inclusivity. This is an institution that serves all New Yorkers— that's its commitment, as it says over and over again. But it's not inclusive in a de facto way because you don't see all New Yorkers at public library branches; in many of them, you only see certain kinds of New Yorkers.
Brian Anderson: You mention disorder, and certainly the presence of a large number of homeless people in a branch is a sign of disorder. Has there been any kind of uptick in crime or property damage?
Stephen Eide: The library does keep security incident data. They're higher than I would say they should be, in terms of the number of emotionally disturbed persons, security incidents. They were only able to give me four years of data. I wanted to be very cautious in how I interpreted that rather than to say that we're seeing a big increase, but just in terms of the way that library officials talk about this on and off the record, clearly they're concerned that this is a rising problem for them. They're open about that. If a homeless person attacks somebody, then that homeless person is going to be promptly taken out of the facility and dealt with, and committed to a psychiatric hospital or jail. But people can create an uncomfortable environment without being floridly psychotic, and that's, I think, the more typical case you'll find in many of these library facilities.
Brian Anderson: Now, you raise a number of legal issues in the essay. Libraries are in many ways a public space— they certainly advertise themselves as such, as you've just indicated— but courts have traditionally given leeway to libraries, just as they have in public spaces, with regulating disorderly behavior. So how does that work in practice? Can library security remove a homeless person from a library? Can it regulate this in any way?
Stephen Eide: Yeah, panhandling is prohibited, very bad B.O. is prohibited— that has been held up in court, not in cases related to New York, but outside of New York, in New Jersey. There is an understanding that a library has a more specific sense of purpose than a street or a sidewalk, and in order to fulfill that sense of purpose, it needs to have more stringent regulations on behavior. Courts have held that up. Cities have a lot of difficulty regulating the behavior of homeless people outside of transit systems, outside of libraries, but within certain types of systems you can do more to regulate behavior. But there's still important limits in terms of whether or not you can remove somebody who's not assaulting anybody.
Brian Anderson: Has there been any kind of advocacy at work in this area of pushing for the rights of homeless people to occupy these spaces?
Stephen Eide: Well, I did look at a few systems outside of New York City, and I think in any progressive jurisdiction there are going to be legal advocates who want to push things as far as they can in terms of using the courts. The larger question for me is, what are the library systems themselves doing? Because library systems themselves— because they want to be seen as progressive, because they want to be seen as doing the right thing relative to the city politicians who control the budget strings— are in some ways embracing the role of homeless service provider. Every major urban public library system, this is the role that they find themselves in, but it's a question of whether you leap to it or you do it with great reluctance. I would say the San Francisco Public Library System not only goes further than other library systems in terms of what it offers for homeless patrons. You see article upon article about the San Francisco Public Library System's creative ideas about homeless services. New York Public Library is really more in the reluctant camp, at the moment. Its service offerings are quite modest and, according to what the library officials said, that's where they're likely to remain. They don't want to go in the San Francisco route, at least for now.
Brian Anderson: In San Francisco— and we had Erica Sandberg on last week, who's situated out there in that city, talking about the broader problem of public order breakdown— but as you argue in your piece, San Francisco has probably gone the furthest in this idea of transforming the library system's mission into becoming a homeless services provider. Is that a fair thing to say?
Stephen Eide: Yes, absolutely. They have social workers, they have peers— that is former homeless and people dealing with mental illness challenges who do outreach work to other homeless patrons— they establish partnerships with organizations that come around and bring shower services and things to the library system. And again, they really do a lot to promote these efforts. Obviously they're very proud of it. So there is a difference in the way you engage in the spirit of the thing between San Francisco and other public library systems, and New York, at the moment, is in the middle, I would say.
Brian Anderson: Now, this is a broader question just about homelessness in general in New York City. I imagine easing the situation for the libraries would entail improving the homeless crisis situation more broadly, right? In the city, and in your view, what do we need to do to get closer to that?
Stephen Eide: Well, yes. There are going to have to be legal changes, policy changes. If you break out the mental health component of it— somewhere between a quarter and a third of homeless people usually are estimated to have a serious mental illness— we need to talk about inpatient psychiatric care for some of those people, improved outpatient psychiatric care, better focus of resources on that population as opposed to other people who claim to have mental disorders. Homelessness certainly is a housing problem. The serious lack of low rent housing is an enormous problem in San Francisco and New York City; we dug ourselves a very deep hole in that respect. But in terms of the legal challenges, these cities— San Francisco and New York— you can't say that they're not doing anything, that they're not responding. They're spending tons and tons of resources on these homeless challenges. That should give them more legal flexibility to do more in terms of quality of life ordinances than they are at the moment. There's a legal question in terms of what courts will let you do; there's also a political question in terms of how far you want to push the limits in terms of what you want to do, and I don't think that politicians in New York and San Francisco are going that far at the moment to see how far they can go in terms of quality of life ordinances.
Brian Anderson: You've written for the magazine about the library system before. You have a great affection for it, right?
Stephen Eide: Yeah, for me, the public library in New York or in any community— in affluent suburbs, in rust belt cities, in California— it's a cultural institution. It's a public good. We support libraries because we want to make it easier for people, for strivers, for people who have a penchant for self-education, who view their public education as incomplete, who want to continue to pursue intellectual endeavors on their own. This was Andrew Carnegie's vision back when he bankrolled over a thousand libraries across the nation. And I still think that that vision has a lot to say for itself. And l think all of us like the idea of public libraries— we are not shutting down libraries; we believe libraries are valid public goods. But if a library is really more in the social services business than the cultural institution business, then that raises a lot of questions of whether or not the library knows anything about what it's doing in the social services business. Do we need social service providers? Sure. We need people to be connecting people with treatment for their serious mental illness, to be helping them get back on their feet in terms of employment, and there are many social service providers who do a decent job with those tasks. But in all this literature about all these great, innovative things that libraries are supposedly doing to help the homeless, I've never seen any serious reckoning in terms of how you evaluate whether or not libraries are any good at helping us reduce the amount of homelessness or improve our policy response to homelessness. Yes, they're doing something vis-à-vis homelessness. Are they any good at homeless services? I have a lot of doubts about that.
Brian Anderson: For a deeper look into how homelessness is affecting the New York Public Library system, read Stephen Eide's essay "Disorder in the Stacks." It's in City Journal, it's on our website. You can find City Journal on Twitter, @cityjournal and on Instagram @cityjournal_mi. If you've enjoyed today's show, please be sure to rate us on iTunes. Thanks for listening and thank you for joining us, Stephen.
Stephen Eide: Thanks for having me.

Over 20 percent of homeless residents in Chicago are employed, with many holding a college degree

The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) annual study released in July found that an astonishing number of homeless people in Chicago are employed and many have a college education. Using the most current census data, the CCH found that 86,324 Chicago residents were homeless in 2017. Of this number, 13,929 or 21 percent of homeless adults over 18 have a job, and 28 percent hold an associate’s or bachelor’s degree.
The total number of homeless people in Chicago has risen significantly over the past several years. CCH found a total of 80,384 Chicago residents were homeless in 2016, and 82,212 in 2015. The 2017 numbers also reveal that the number of employed homeless residents has increased over the past two years, from 14 percent in 2015.
Homeless man in Chicago
The numbers blow apart the myth that by working hard and earning a college degree, workers in the US can prosper under capitalism. Furthermore, it tears apart the political fiction fed to the US working class that the Democratic Party is more aligned with its interests than its counterpart in the Republican Party.
How has the number of employed homeless workers increased in the US’s third-largest city, while the media and main political parties have declared that the US economy has been supposedly “recovering” since the official end of the economic recession, which began with the stock market crash of 2008?
As in other states, crushing student loan debt in the state of Illinois has led to extreme financial insecurity for many college graduates in the state. The average student loan debt load for a college graduate in the state was more than $29,000 in 2017, rising 63 percent over a decade from 2006.
The cost of housing in the city of Chicago is significantly higher than for the entire state of Illinois, which ranks 19th-highest for housing costs among all 50 states in the US. In Chicago and the five counties surrounding the city proper, a worker must earn $23.31 per hour during a 40-hour workweek to afford a 2-bedroom apartment for $1,212 per month, or 30 percent of total monthly income. For the state, the affordable housing wage is $20.85 per hour for a 40-hour workweek to afford a 2-bedroom unit at $1,084 per month.
Although the minimum wage for the city of Chicago increased to $13 per hour in July, this is far below the hourly wage needed for a full-time worker to be able to afford housing in the city and surrounding area. Many jobs in Chicago still pay well below the official estimates of the city’s living wage. Even if the minimum wage were to be increased to $15 per hour, as advocated by “progressive” Democratic Party officials in the city, housing would remain unaffordable for large sections of the city’s working class.
Chicago’s lack of affordable units is a mounting crisis. Between 2012 and 2017, the number of affordable housing units in the city has steadily declined, leaving about two-thirds of the city with a net loss of affordable units. The majority of these areas have seen decreases anywhere from five to more than ten percent.
The Democrats, and their political lackeys in the trade unions, bear the responsibility for the housing crisis in the city of Chicago. In 2000, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) applied to join the Clinton administration’s Moving-to-Work Program (MTW), aimed at forcing low-income workers out of affordable rental units in order to reduce costs. Under Democratic Mayor Richard M. Daley, the CHA further engaged in housing privatization schemes, turning public housing into “mixed-use” developments which were targeted toward higher-income renters with the aim of transferring public funds to private developers.
Under Democratic President Barack Obama, the requirement imposed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that public housing authorities like CHA give out 90 percent of affordable housing vouchers was eliminated, giving it free rein to continue diverting funds from its low-income housing voucher program—which subsidized a portion of low-income families’ rent—into its own financial schemes to build up reserves and spend down debt payments, all things that were allowed under the MTW Program.
Homeless woman in Chicago
Over the years, the CHA’s financial manipulation has created a crisis with long wait lists for vouchers—some families have waited for decades—and an overall population decline as lower-income residents leave the city for more affordable options outside of the area. This process was especially accelerated under Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
While politicians such as former corporate lawyer and Chicago’s recently inaugurated Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, posture as advocates of the expansion of affordable housing and rent control, they cannot be believed. Reviewing the development of the affordable housing crisis in Chicago, it is plain to see that as Democrats they will carry out the interests of the ruling capitalist class and have nothing to offer to workers struggling with or on the brink of homelessness.
The attitude of the ruling class towards the crisis of homelessness in the United States—the richest country in the world and home to more billionaires than any nation on earth—was summed up in an interview that President Donald Trump gave with Fox News host Tucker Carlson during his visit to Japan for the G20 Summit last week.
Trump declared homelessness to be “disgraceful” and that he was “looking at it very seriously,” singling out Los Angeles and San Francisco. He went on to disparage victims of homelessness and blame them for their own fate, stating that “Some of them have mental problems and don’t even know that they’re living that way. They can’t do that. We cannot ruin our cities...We may intercede. We may do something to get the whole thing cleaned up.”
Los Angeles and San Francisco are two of the most socially unequal cities not just in the United States, but in the world. On Monday, Uber cofounder Garrett Camp purchased a Beverly Hills mansion with his partner for $75.2 million, widely believed to be the largest sale ever of a home in the history of the ultra-rich neighborhood. Camp’s over $4 billion personal fortune comes from the exploitation of the labor of a worldwide network of low-wage contract drivers for the ridesharing company, who organized a global strike to protest their low wages and abysmal working conditions earlier this year.
Trump’s fascistic threats to “intercede” to “clean up” cities’ homeless populations are a warning to the working class. If such plans are carried out, his administration could potentially throw thousands of homeless people into concentration camps like those used to detain migrant workers and their children who are seeking refuge from violence and poverty across the border. Setting a precedent, these law-and-order tactics could be used against countless other sections of workers: those who suffer from mental illness and drug addiction; the intellectually disabled and physically handicapped; striking workers; workers who protest against attacks on democratic rights and war.
These diseased ramblings are not simply the product of the mind of Donald Trump. They are an expression of the political crisis of a ruling class moving far to the right, under conditions of such extreme levels of inequality that the contradictions cannot be resolved through any other means but militarism and massive repression on one hand, or social revolution on the other. The ruling class sees the mounting anger of the working class against conditions of inequality as a threat to its rule that must be put down at any cost.
It is up to the working class to intervene with its own political program if it is ever to free itself from the crisis of capitalism, pushing all sections of the working class further into desperation and threatening more with homelessness as a small layer of the ultra-rich hoards all of society’s wealth. In order to expropriate the wealth which it creates with its labor, the working class needs to fight under the banner of its own independent, socialist program. To do this requires that workers break with the Democratic Party, the trade unions, and all other representatives of the capitalist class, and form a leadership capable of fighting for their own interests, which include the right to affordable, safe housing and high-paying jobs for all workers.




Expert: Healthcare for Illegal Aliens Would Drive Migration of Foreigners ‘with Serious Health Problems’ to U.S.

Sick Migrant Farm Worker John MooreGettyImages
John Moore/GettyImages
JOHN BINDER
 489
3:21

A plan endorsed by nearly every Democrat running for president that would give free taxpayer-funded healthcare to all illegal aliens would drive a migration of “people with serious health problems” to the United States, a health insurance expert tells the New York Times.

As Breitbart News has chronicled, a majority of the 24 Democrats running for their party’s presidential nomination confirmed that their healthcare plans would provide free health care to all illegal aliens at the expense of American taxpayers — including former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ).
Health insurance expert Linda Blumberg with the Urban Institute admitted to the Timesthat a single-payer healthcare policy, like Sanders’ plan, which provides free, taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal aliens, would drive a migration of sick foreign nationals to the U.S.
The Times reported:
But Linda J. Blumberg, a health policy fellow at the Urban Institute, argued that a single- payer system, such as the one proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, could indeed create “strong incentives for people with serious health problems to enter the country or remain longer than their visas allow in order to get government-funded care.” [Emphasis added]
The Times also admitted that should the U.S. provide healthcare to all 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living throughout the country, it would be nearly the only nation in the world to do so.
“If the United States were to begin providing comprehensive health coverage to undocumented immigrants, it would be an outlier, health policy experts say,” the Timesreported. “Even countries with universal, government-run coverage like Norway place tough restrictions on health care for undocumented immigrants. Most immigrants can get emergency care but have to pay other costs.”
Though it is unclear the magnitude of a mass migration of sick foreign nationals that could be spurred by offering free healthcare to illegal aliens in the U.S., Breitbart News has projected that such a plan would cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars every decade.


A reasonable estimate of health care for each illegal alien, Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarotta told Breitbart News, is about $3,000 — about half the average $6,600 that it currently costs annually for each Medicaid recipient. This assumes that a number of illegal aliens already have health insurance through employers and are afforded free health care today when they arrive at emergency rooms.
Based on this estimate, should the full 22 million illegal aliens be living in the U.S. that Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have estimated there to be, providing health care for the total illegal population could cost American taxpayers about $66 billion a year.
Over a decade, based on the Yale estimate of the illegal population and assuming all sign up for free health care, this would cost American taxpayers about $660 billion.
Today, Americans are forced to subsidize about $18.5 billion worth of yearly medical costs for illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.



Who's coming in and getting that instant customer service legal immigrants don't get? Well, people like Mirian Zelaya Gomez, a single mom with two kids and a fondness for Instagram luxury-life glamour shots who got her name in the news as "Lady Frijoles," the Honduran caravan migrant who disdained donated Mexican food in Tijuana, and who told the press she was migrating to the states to get free medical care for her kids. She's since been arrested for assaulting a relative who had given her housing in Dallas. Here she was, being booked:
When California raises taxes to pay for foreigners' healthcare, it weighs down on the federal budget because state and local taxes are partly deductible from federal income taxes. The rest of the country must subsidize more than $100 billion of spending by the Utopians in Sacramento.

Though it is unclear the magnitude of a mass migration of sick foreign nationals that could be spurred by offering free healthcare to illegal aliens in the U.S., Breitbart News has projected that such a plan would cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars

 

The promise of unlimited free stuff from the government isn't just an unfunded liability. It’s also a magnet for illegal immigration. California already faces a border catastrophe. In the past year, its San Diego and El Centro border sectors have seen respective increases of 611% and 345% in family unit apprehensions. MediCal expansion creates incentives that will make that problem much worse.
California has covered illegal immigrant children since 2016 under MediCal, the state’s version of Medicaid, at a cost of some $360 million. Now Gov. Gavin Newsom has agreed with state lawmakers to add another $98 million to California's spending by expanding coverage to young adults.

The California dream of taking care of everyone's needs is undermined by the California dream of open borders. State lawmakers were forced to choose between them, and they chose open borders. One must hope that one day the state's voters choose different lawmakers.

"Eligibility would be determined by the same rules of Medicaid,

based on annual income. As many young illegals are working

off the books, for cash, they will have no official reported

income regardless of how much they actually earn, insuring their

eligibility for Medi-Cal." BRIAN C. JOONEPH

 

 

 

Watch: All Democratic Presidential Candidates Say They Would Give Health Insurance to Illegal Aliens


By Craig Bannister | June 27, 2019 | 10:01 PM EDT

The 10 Democrat candidates participating in Thursday night’s presidential debate were unanimous in their response when asked to raise their hands if their government-run health care plan would cover illegal aliens.
Every candidate on stage raised his or her hand when asked:
“A lot of you have been talking about government health care plans you proposed in one form or another. This is a show of hands question and hold them up so people can see. Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants.”
The 10 Democrats participating in Thursday's debate were:
  • Joe Biden,
  • Rep. Eric Swalwell,
  • Sen. Michael Bennet,
  • Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand,
  • Sen. Kamala Harris,
  • Sen. Bernie Sanders,
  • Mayor Pete Buttigieg,
  • Andrew Yang,
  • John Hickenlooper,
  • Marianne Williamson

 

Free Health Care for Illegal Aliens Could Cost American Taxpayers up to $660B a Decade

AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee
JOHN BINDER
 28 Jun 20196,634
3:35

Providing free health care for all illegal aliens living in the United States could cost American taxpayers an additional $660 billion every decade in expenses.

This week, half of the 24 Democrats running for their party’s presidential nomination confirmed that their healthcare plans would provide free health care to all illegal aliens at the expense of American taxpayers — including former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).
Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarotta told Breitbart News that only rough estimates are available for what health care for illegal aliens will cost American taxpayers, and though a comprehensive study has yet to be conducted on this specific issue, taxpayers can expect to pay a “significant” amount.
“If we offered Medicaid for illegal immigrants, it is possible the costs could be over tens of billions of dollars,” Camarotta said. “However, it would depend on eligibility criteria as well as how many illegal immigrants actually sign up for program once it was offered. So while the actual costs are uncertain, the size would be significant for taxpayers.”





8


Every 2020 Dem in Second Debate Supports Healthcare for Illegal Aliens




A reasonable estimate of health care for each illegal alien, Camarotta said, is about $3,000 — about half the average $6,600 that it currently costs annually for each Medicaid recipient. This assumes that a number of illegal aliens already have health insurance through employers and are afforded free health care today when they arrive to emergency rooms.
Based on this estimate, should the full 22 million illegal aliens be living in the U.S. that Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have estimated there to be, providing health care for the total illegal population could cost American taxpayers about $66 billion a year.
Over a decade, based on the Yale estimate of the illegal population and assuming all sign up for free health care, this would cost American taxpayers about $660 billion.
Even if there are only 11 million illegal aliens living in the U.S., as the Pew Research Center and other analysts routinely estimate, American taxpayers would still have to pay a yearly bill of $33 billion a year to provide them all with free, subsidized health care.
Should only half of the illegal population get health care, it would cost American taxpayers about $16.5 billion a year — almost the price of what it currently costs taxpayers to provide subsidized health care to illegal aliens.
Today, Americans are forced to subsidize about $18.5 billion worth of yearly medical costs for illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
Nearly every Democrat running for their party’s presidential nomination has endorsed having American taxpayers pay for free health care for illegal aliens. Those who have endorsed the plan include Biden, Sanders, Gillibrand, Buttigieg, and Harris, along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), author Marianne Williamson, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), entrepreneur Andrew Yang, and Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-CO).
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

 

 

California’s $215 Billion Budget Includes Health Care for Illegal Aliens

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
KATHERINE RODRIGUEZ
29 Jun 2019109
1:42

California’s Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a $215 billion budget on Thursday, which includes taxpayer-funded health care for illegal aliens.

Newsom signed the massive $214.8 billion funding bill into law, which includes a provision that would expand health care for people who are illegally in the U.S. and penalizes people who do not purchase health insurance, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The California Democrat had proposed expanding health care for illegal aliens long before he took office.
In an August 2018 interview, Newsom said he would use an executive order to give universal health care to those residing in the U.S. illegally. Once Newsom took office in January, he proposed expanding Medi-Cal, the state version of Medicaid, to illegal aliens up to 26 years old.
The plan sailed through California’s Democrat-controlled legislature, although there were concerns over how much money the state should provide for expanding Medi-Cal for low-income illegal aliens.
Newsom proposed that $98 million in the budget should go to expanding taxpayer-funded health care for illegal aliens between 19 and 25 years old, but one state Assembly bill proposed setting aside $3.4 billion to cover all illegal aliens over 19 years old.
The bill is Newsom’s first budget since he took office in January, largely helped along by a $21.5 billion surplus carrying over from his fellow Democrat, former Gov. Jerry Brown’s, administration.

 

New York Post Cover on Democrats Promising Illegal Aliens Free Health Care: ‘Who Wants to Lose the Election?’Drew Angerer/Getty Images

KYLE MORRIS
27 Jun 2019408
1:27

The Friday cover of the New York Post mocks 2020 Democrat presidential hopefuls who vowed to give free, taxpayer-funded health care to illegal immigrants.

The New York Post cover title, which features five of the presidential hopefuls raising their hands at the second night of the first Democrat presidential debate, reads: “Who wants to lose the election?”
The cover’s subtitle reads, “All major Dem candidates raise hand in favor of free health care for illegal immigs.”
Featured from left to right on the cover are South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).
As reported by Breitbart News’s John Binder, “During the second Democrat presidential primary debate on Thursday, every Democrat candidate said they supported giving American taxpayer-funded health care to all 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States.”
Binder also reported, “Americans pay about $116 billion to subsidize illegal aliens living in the U.S. — providing them with free education, free healthcare, and public benefits.”
Follow Kyle on Twitter @RealKyleMorris and Facebook.

 

Nolte: Dems Promise to Take Away Our Health Insurance and Give It to Illegal Aliens

JOHN NOLTE
28 Jun 20198,096
3:54

We will have to wait and see how and if the debates move the needle within the Democrat primary. But what these last two nights have done is clarify a Democrat Party that is bound and determined to confiscate our guns, our money and our health insurance. Oh, and then Democrats are going to decriminalize illegal immigration and give our health insurance to illegal aliens.

That is my long way of saying President Trump was the winner of the Democrat debates, because he is the only person standing between us and this:
  • Tax increases.
  • Gun confiscations.
  • Slave reparations
  • Decriminalize illegal immigration.
  • No more deporting of illegal immigrants.
  • Abolish the private health insurance currently held by over 150 million Americans.
  • Give free health insurance to illegal immigrants.
Three of the four Democrat front-runners, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders have committed to abolishing our private health insurance plans.
Almost all of the candidates, including those listed above, support forcing law-abiding taxpayers to pay slave reparations.
Every single candidate raised their hand Thursday night, including Joe Biden, when asked if they would offer free health care to illegal aliens.
And all of them, every one of them, promised to stop deportations, this includes Biden — who is supposed to be the sanest of the bunch.
“Should someone who is here without documents, and that is his only offense, should that person be deported?” Diaz-Balart asked Biden.
Biden’s answer was clear, “That person should not be the focus of deportation. We should fundamentally change the way we deal with things.”
Harris was even more strident: “Absolutely not, they should not be deported.”
Buttigieg: “That criminalization, that is the basis for family separation. You do away with that, it’s no longer possible. Of course it wouldn’t be possible anyway in my presidency, because it is dead wrong.”
Man alive.
Oh, and then there is legalizing abortion right up until birth at taxpayer’s expense — which the sane one, Biden, also supports.
This kind of “take” is now something of a cliché, but how did President Trump not win last night’s debate, when he will almost certainly be up against a Democrat who has promised to raise taxes, open the border, give illegal aliens he will not deport free welfare benefits for life, and decriminalize entering the country illegally while criminalizing gun ownership?
Not to belabor this point, but Biden is supposed to be the sane one, correct? And yet, he went on the record Thursday night promising to outlaw every gun that is not a smart gun, meaning every gun that only operates when it reads the owner’s handprints, meaning every single gun being sold today.
“No gun should be able to be sold unless your biometric measure could pull that trigger. It’s within our right to do that. We can do that. Our enemy is the gun manufacturers, not the NRA, the gun manufacturers,” Biden said.
So much for that housewife being able to fire off a couple of shotgun blasts to scare away an intruder. If her husband or son owns that gun, she will have to use it as a club.
The Democrat Party’s vision for America, and I say this without exaggeration, is one where floods of illegal aliens can legally enter our country to enjoy free health and welfare benefits for life while American citizens are stripped of their health insurance, not allowed to defend themselves, forced to pay slave reparations, and hit with massive tax increases to pay for other people’s student loans.
How will our hospitals, doctors, and schools handle this influx of millions of illegals?
Only Trump stands between us and this madness.
While it is true that not many people are paying attention right now, what is also true is that these video clips, quotes, and positions will live on forever, are now cemented in the 2020 election.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNCFollow his Facebook Page here.

 

 

Fact Check: U.S. Taxpayers Pay $18.5B a Year for Healthcare for Illegal Aliens

AFP/Getty Images
JOHN BINDER
27 Jun 20193,321
3:05

As 2020 Democrat presidential primary candidates advocate having American taxpayers provide free health care for illegal aliens, U.S. citizens are already paying billions every year for the expenditure.

During the second night of debates for the 2020 Democrat presidential primary candidates, every Democrat — including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg — said they supported having American taxpayers pay for free health care for all 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the country.
The latest research by Chris Conover from the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University reveals that every year, American taxpayers pay nearly $20 billion for healthcare for illegal aliens.
Conover wrote the analysis in Forbes:
Current federal policy is to prohibit federal tax funding of health care to unauthorized immigrants through either Medicaid or Obamacare. Nevertheless, rough estimates suggest that the nation’s 3.9 million uninsured immigrants who are unauthorized likely receive about $4.6 billion in health services paid for by federal taxes, $2.8 billion in health services financed by state and local taxpayers, another $3.0 bankrolled through “cost-shifting” i.e., higher payments by insured patients to cover hospital uncompensated care losses, and roughly $1.5 billion in physician charity care. [Emphasis added]
In addition to these amounts, unauthorized immigrants likely benefit from at least $0.9 billion in implicit federal subsidies due to the tax exemption for nonprofit hospitals and another $5.7 billion in tax expenditures from the employer tax exclusion. [Emphasis added]
All told, Americans cross-subsidize health care for unauthorized immigrants to the tune of $18.5 billion a year. Of this total, federal taxpayers provided $11.2 billion in subsidized care to unauthorized immigrants in 2016. [Emphasis added]
Analysis conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) finds that American taxpayers are forced to federally subsidize about $17.14 billion every year in free medical coverage for illegal aliens and about $12.17 billion in state medical costs for illegal aliens.
On the federal level, Americans pay about $1.2 billion for illegal alien births through Medicaid, about $3.4 billion for annual Medicaid fraud by illegal aliens, and about $4.2 billion for Medicaid births by the U.S-born children of illegal aliens.
Every year, Americans are forced to pay about $116 billion in total expenses for the millions of illegal aliens living in the U.S.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

 

 

Republican Lawmakers React to $100 Million Budget Towards Medi-Cal for Illegal Aliens



California Governor Gavin Newsom’s first budget, estimated at $213 billion, has set aside nearly $100 million for illegal immigrants residing in the state, ages 19-25, to receive Medi-Cal coverage.
The Medi-Cal extension will make California the first state to provide health insurance for illegal aliens.
Supporters of the move, such as president and CEO of the non-profit organization California Health Care Foundation, Sandra R. Hernandez, MD, said it was only one small step in a vast progressive movement to provide health care to all Californians.
“While today is surely a moment worth celebrating, we must also acknowledge the work ahead,” said Hernandez in a statement. “We must find a way to cover all Californians, including the low-income undocumented adults and seniors who remain ineligible for Medi-Cal.”
Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake), California Assemblyman for the 33rd District and vice chair of the Budget Committee told The Epoch Times that he’s not in favor of using Californians’ tax dollars in this way.
“The big problem with the expansion of Medi-Cal is that we are already failing in our commitment to the Californians who are on that program,” he said.
“I represent a fairly rural part of the state. [Many of] my constituents are unable to access Medi-Cal when they are ill. So many physicians in my district are unable to accept the low reimbursement rates that are provided under Medi-Cal. You need a very large practice as a doctor to accept those reimbursement rates, and I don’t have many physicians [in my district] that are able to. When my constituents get sick, even though technically they’re covered, they can’t see a doctor.”
Obernolte argued that the state has an obligation to fix these problems before addressing healthcare for illegal aliens.
“We are trying to do what’s best, from a public policy standpoint for the people who already live here,” he said.
While Obernolte voiced his disagreement with the legislature’s passage of this provision, he did point out that many liberal lawmakers did not get everything they wanted.
“They were seeking to expand Medi-Cal eligibility to senior undocumented immigrants and that is something that the governor did not agree to,” he said.
When asked how his constituents felt about the budget allocations, Obernolte said they were overwhelmingly opposed to it.
“People [are] concerned about the overall costs, and [there are] constituents that are unconvinced that providing services to people who aren’t here legally is a good use of taxpayer resources,” he said.
The state budget, which also includes an individual mandate on health insurance, would obligate residents in the state to purchase health insurance. This measure was enacted as a means of countering Congressional Republicans’ removal of the national individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Revenue from this statewide mandate would be used to fund insurance premium subsidies for middle income people, including illegal aliens residing in the state.
State Senator John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa) also weighed in on the controversial budget proposal.
“I am an immigrant,” he told The Epoch Times. “I came here in 1960 from the Netherlands. I am one of those legislators that tend to get a little offended when those that have not come through the front door are receiving benefits from the state.”
Moorlach further weighed in on the costs to the taxpayer as a result of this provision being enacted.
“The federal government has failed miserably at controlling our borders and now we have [these individuals] here and they are in our hospitals, in our emergency rooms. We have an industry that has been [weighed down] by subsidizing undocumented individuals. I understand maybe helping out a hospital association, but I think it’s a little offensive to most citizens that this is the approach that the governor wants to take.”
When asked about whether this allocation of Medi-Cal would attract more illegal immigration, Moorlach believed it possibly would.
“The question is Governor Newsom doing this out of exasperation or is he doing this [to try and] be hospitable to anybody that walks through the door? I tend to think it’s the latter, and that’s why it’s frustrating to my constituents. We’ve been getting a lot of calls from constituents arguing against medical benefits for undocumented immigrants.”
When asked as to whether this provision would add to the debt, Senator Moorlach pointed out that Betty Yee, the state’s Controller, highlighted the significant increase in the state deficit for this fiscal year.
“In the middle of the budget conference committee meetings, the State Controller, Betty Yee, released the comprehensive annual financial reportfor the year end of June 30th 2018. It was finally completed in the middle of June, a year later. [The report] will show you that the retiree medical liability for health benefits for state employees has increased by $44 billion and our unrestricted net deficit went up from $169.5 billion to $213 billion. The state not only this last week approved the largest budget in its history, but it’s also been notified that its unrestricted net deficit is also the largest in its history as well,” he said.
Moorlach also shed light on the statewide individual mandate and as to whether the penalty citizens will have to pay for not being insured will go towards paying for illegal aliens’ insurance.
“Ironically that seems to be the case,” he responded.
Senator Moorlach suggested that instead of being obstructive towards D.C., Sacramento should try to find the middle ground on this issue. “I think what the Governor should really be focused on is not just being antagonistic to the President, but maybe sending a blue-ribbon committee to work with D.C. to figure out how to get a pathway to citizenship.”
Governor Newsom’s budget was passed on June 13, sending it to Newsom for his signature. The Senate vote was 29-11, and the Assembly approved it 60-15, largely along party lines.

 

 

 

Bill Cassidy Proposes to Prevent Americans from Subsidizing Health Care for Illegal Aliens


SEAN MORAN
16 Jun 20196,195
4:02

As California remains poised to adopt a bill that would give full Medicaid benefits to illegal immigrants, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and other Senate Republicans proposed legislation to block leftist states from forcing Americans to subsidize programs that expand benefits to illegal immigrants.

The bill would offer illegal aliens full Medicaid benefits as part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to create a universal healthcare system.
Sens. Cassidy, John Barrasso (R-WY), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), David Perdue (R-GA), and Roger Wicker (R-MS) introduced the Protect Medicaid Act (S. 131) to ensure that leftist states cannot bilk Medicaid to subsidize programs that expand Medicaid benefits to illegal immigrants.
Federal law prevents illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid; however, states such as California exploit a loophole by using state funds to extend Medicaid benefits to illegal aliens. Newsom’s plan could allow up to 90,000 illegal immigrants to receive Medicaid coverage. California plans to use an exploit to offset the new expansion using Medicaid — roughly $24 million of the
$98 million in the first year will be offset in the first year.
Sen. Cassidy’s Protect Medicaid Act prohibits states from using federal money to administer state Medicaid benefits, paid for by Americans citizens, to illegal immigrants. If a state such as California chooses to give Medicaid benefits to illegal aliens, the Lousiana senator’s bill stipulates that the state does so on its budget.
Sen Cassidy said in a statement Sunday:
Governor Newsom’s plan is a giant magnet for more illegal immigration, and it will hurt California citizens who depend on Medicaid. Simple math says you can’t add the entire population of another country to Medicaid and still take care of the American citizens who need it. In addition, the plan is unfair to vulnerable Americans and it’s not fair to middle-class families paying taxes—taking care of them should be our priority. Compassion that cannot be sustained is not compassion.
Sen. Cassidy’s legislation also requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) to review and report on:
  • How states that provide Medicaid benefits to illegal immigrants keep federal and state dollars separate.
  • Whether states providing health benefits to illegal aliens use budget gimmicks to bilk the federal government, such as provider taxes and intergovernmental transfers, to launder federal dollars to offset the cost of providing benefits to this population.
  • Whether illegal immigrants benefit from covered outpatient drugs purchased under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program and the 340B program, and whether this impacts the prices American citizens pay.
“Tennesseans and the American people do not want their tax dollars subsidizing Medicaid for illegal immigrants,” Sen. Blackburn said. “At a time when Medicaid is being stretched to the breaking point, the last thing we need are liberal states like California circumventing federal law to give those dollars to illegals at the expense of vulnerable American citizens.”
“This is absolutely outrageous and only underscores the fact that California continues to put politics over the safety and security of American citizens,” said Sen. Perdue. “Ultimately, this kind of abuse of entitlement programs contributes to our $21 trillion debt crisis. We will not stand idly by and watch California and other sanctuary states skirt federal law to dole out taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens.”
“Medicaid is an important program for millions of patients,” said Sen. Barrasso. “Congress must focus on improving care for Americans in need. Taxpayers need to know that their hard-earned money is not expanding health care for illegal immigrants.”
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.

 

 

Gavin Newsom: GOP Headed ‘Into the Waste Bin of History’

JOSHUA CAPLAN
 17 Jun 20191,421
2:40

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), one of the most progressive governors in the country, predicts the Republican Party is headed “into the waste bin of history.”

In an interview released Monday with Politico, Newsom drew comparisons between the GOP in California during the 1990s and the national Republican Party today, saying that the latter will soon see its power evaporate as it did in the Golden State in the last twenty years.
Republicans “are into the politics of what California was into in the 1990s… and they’ll go the same direction — into the waste bin of history, the way Republicans of the ’90s have gone. That’s exactly what will happen to this crop of national Republicans,” Newsom said.
“America in 2019 is California in the 1990s,” the governor continued. “The xenophobia, the nativism, the fear of ‘the other.’ Scapegoating. Talking down or past people. The hysteria. And so, we’re not going to put up with that. We are going to push back.”
Newsom reaffirmed his support for Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) in the 2020 Democrat presidential primary, though when asked if plans to hit the campaign on her behalf, he tersely replied: “I’m campaigning for her right now, it sounds like.”
According to the California governor, Harris has “consistently been in the top five, that’s an extraordinary achievement with eight months to go before the first vote is cast.’’ Newsome said he believes the senator “has shown a successful ability to navigate the white waters…and continue to be part of the conversation against powerhouses — Sanders, Biden, and some of the most well-known brands in American politics.”
During the course of the interview, the California Democrat attacked President Donald Trump on multiple occasions, while dishing out praise for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). “What’s so remarkable about someone with the experience and temperament of Speaker Pelosi is that she’s seen a lot of movies,’’ said Newsom. “She’s been there. She’s got a better sense than a lot of folks. So I think we should stay the course. What we’re doing is working … I think Democrats are winning right now.”
His remarks come as California’s Democrat-led legislature voted to move forward with a $213 billion plan to use taxpayer dollars to fund free healthcare for illegal aliens. Under the plan, illegals with an annual income of $17,000 between ages 19 and 25 years are eligible to join the state’s Medicaid program

Who's coming in and getting that instant customer service legal immigrants don't get? Well, people like Mirian Zelaya Gomez, a single mom with two kids and a fondness for Instagram luxury-life glamour shots who got her name in the news as "Lady Frijoles," the Honduran caravan migrant who disdained donated Mexican food in Tijuana, and who told the press she was migrating to the states to get free medical care for her kids. She's since been arrested for assaulting a relative who had given her housing in Dallas. Here she was, being booked:
Where To Go When Your Local Emergency Room Goes Bankrupt?"
*                                      
During the past ten years 84 California hospitals have declared bankruptcy and closed their Emergency Rooms forever.  Financially crippled by legislative and judicial mandates to treat illegal aliens have bankrupted hospitals!   In 2010, in Los Angeles County alone, over 2 million illegal aliens recorded visits to county emergency rooms for both routine and emergency care.  Per official figures, the cost is $1,000 dollars for every taxpayer in Los Angeles County.  

(LA RAZA, DEM INVASION)

 

THE CONSPIRACY TO SABOTAGE HOMELAND SECURITY

The Democrat Party’s secret agenda for wider open borders, more welfare for invading illegals, more jobs and free anything they illegally vote for…. All to destroy the two-party system and build the GLOBALISTS’ DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR WIDER OPEN BORDERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/11/frontpage-hidden-agenda-of-pueblo-sin.html

 

Demonstrably and irrefutably the Democrat Party became the party whose principle objective is to thoroughly transform the nature of the American electorate by means of open borders and the mass, unchecked importation of illiterate third world peasants who will vote in overwhelming numbers for Democrats and their La Raza welfare state. FRONTPAGE MAG

 

3 Key Facts About California’s ‘Medicare for Illegals’ Plan


Justin Sullivan / Getty
JOEL B. POLLAK
16 Jun 2019218
2:28

The State of California is about to pass a new healthcare plan that attempts to support and expand Obamacare, partly by providing free health care to some adult illegal aliens.

The new plan is covered in a budget passed last week, as Politico reported Sunday. It has been the top priority of the new government of Governor Gavin Newson, whose first act as governor was to propose using Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, to cover “young undocumented adults.”
There are three things to know about the forthcoming plan.
1. California will become the first state to provide free health care to illegal alien adults. California already provides Medi-Cal to the children of illegal aliens up to age 19. The new plan is estimated to cover 90,000 people at a cost of $98 million annually. The new benefits create a new incentive for illegal aliens to come to the country and to California in particular, which already has nearly a quarter of the nation’s illegal alien population (but only 12% of the total population).
2. California will restore the individual mandate in Obamacare. Californians will face a penalty if they fail to purchase health insurance — the same penalty that President Donald Trump and the GOP eliminated in their tax reform of 2017. As Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association told Politico, that means legal residents will be forced to subsidize illegal aliens.
3. Even California can’t afford “Medicare for All.” The California plan is ambitious: as Fox News reported, “Families of four earning as much as $150,500 a year would get help paying monthly health insurance premiums.” But even far-left California does not go as far as providing “Medicare for All,” despite the fact that Democrats want such a plan (and even passed one in the California State Senate in 2017). The problem: even California cannot figure out how to pay for the proposal.
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.

 

 

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.
According to the Sacramento Bee:
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.

 

CALIFORNIA UNDER MEXICAN OCCUPATION: Private hospitals are forced to provide more than $1.5 BILLION in “free” healthcare at emergency rooms. You wondered why you were billed $80 dollars for an aspirin you last hospital visit?

 

Taxing Americans To Give Illegal Aliens Subsidized Health Care

 By SPENCER RALEY  

California is likely bringing back a version of the “individual healthcare mandate” in order to help pay for the healthcare of low-income illegal aliens who are under 26 years old. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and state Democrats have agreed on a budget that would institute a new tax on those who do not have health insurance in order to help cover the nearly $100 million in additional costs. The budget must still be approved by the state legislature, but it is expected to pass by a wide margin.
The Golden State is home to more illegal aliens than any other state. It is estimated that 90,000 of the state’s 2.6 million illegal aliens will immediately become eligible to receive taxpayer-subsidized healthcare once the new budget takes effect. There is already discussion about expanding the provision in the future.
Illegal immigrants and their U.S.-born children already cost California taxpayers more than $23 billion every year. That amounts to approximately $1,800 per household, annually, or $150 per month. For the average Californian – or anyone for that matter – losing that much of your monthly budget to help subsidize public services for illegal aliens is already a major financial setback. These taxpayers deserve better than to have more piled on to this fiscal burden.
There is already an alarming crisis at the southern border. Last month, more than 144,000 migrants were apprehended or deemed inadmissible at the United States’ southwest border with Mexico – a nearly three-fold increase from last year. Reckless actions by California and other states offering free or subsidized benefits to illegal aliens are only going to make this crisis worse.

Spencer joined the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in 2015. He conducts research, and writes content for FAIR’s publications and website. He brings previous experience in state politics, gubernatorial and district campaigns, and D.C. political non-profits. Spencer holds a B.A. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin.

///


POLITICIANS MUST FACE CONSEQUENCES FOR CRIMES THEY ENABLE

Malfeasant politicians must find no “sanctuary.”

June 12, 2019

Michael Cutler

The phrase, Failure is Not An Option served as the title of the book written by Gene Kranz, Flight Director for NASA who helped create the U.S. manned space program and was instrumental in successfully returning the crew of Apollo 13 to the earth after their spacecraft suffered a catastrophic explosion half-way to the moon.
In most professions, especially where lives are on the line, failure to do the job is not an option.  This is particularly true where law enforcement and the military are concerned.  
Politicians, not unlike members of the military and law enforcement officers, take oaths of office where they swear (affirm) that they will enforce our laws and defend the Constitution.  While law enforcement officers and members of the armed forces may face dire consequences for violating their oaths of office, politicians generally do not.
Their oaths of office do not provide an “escape clause” whereby they may opt to ignore any of the laws that are not to their liking.
Unlike the entries on the menu of a restaurant where the patrons order the food that they find palatable or where they may substitute one item on the menu for another, their oaths of office demand that those who take that oath agree to enforce all laws and honor and defend all of the provisions of our Constitution.
Dereliction of duty is a serious offense for members of the armed forces and for law enforcement officers and one that carries significant consequences.
We will not delve in the specifics of this ongoing case, but it is important to note that the deputy sheriff in this case has been charged with multiple crimes, some of which are felonies, all emanating from his alleged failures to act to protect the children who were killed in that school.
Contrast how that deputy is being prosecuted for alleged failures to act with the politicians who, with impunity, demand that law enforcement officers not act to cooperate with immigration law enforcement personnel - even when those actions result in the death of innocent victims.
The outrageous assertions that “Sanctuary” policies protect immigrants from immigration law enforcement are blatant lies.  Law abiding aliens, immigrants and non-immigrants alike, need no protection from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents..
Aliens who violate our immigration laws, however, pose a threat to national security and public safety.  The 9/11 Commission was crystal clear that the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and other such attacks conducted by aliens in the United States were only possible because of multiple failures of the immigration system.
In fact, I would argue that violations of our borders and immigration laws must be seen as violations of our Constitution.
Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution provides:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.
Invasion is defined, in part, as an incursion by a large number of people or things into a place or sphere of activity or an unwelcome intrusion into another's domain.
My recent article, Sanctuary Policies Kill, included a link to a May 21, 2019 ICE press release, ICE seeks custody of teen murder suspects for a second timeLocal jurisdiction failed to honor previous detainers which began with this excerpt:
BALTIMORE – Following the recent arrest of two unlawfully present teens suspected in the violent murder of a young girl in Maryland, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers in Baltimore are again seeking to take custody of the illegal aliens through the ICE detainer process following the Prince George’s County Detention Center’s (PGCDC) failure to cooperate.
Josue Rafael Fuentes-Ponce and Joel Ernesto Escobar, both Salvadoran nationals, were previously arrested on May 11, 2018 when they were arrested by Prince George’s County Police Department (PGCPD) for attempted first-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, participation in gang activity, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted robbery, and other related charges. ICE officers lodged a detainer with PGCDC, however both were released on an unknown date and time without notification to ICE.
On May 16, 2019, PGCPD arrested the same individuals and charged them with first-degree murder.
That girl who was killed was stabbed and bludgeoned to death was just 14 years old, roughly the same age as some of the children who were shot to death at the Parkland school massacre.
She is no less dead than are the victims of the school shooting in Florida and her life is no less valuable.
Had the officials of Prince George’s County honored the ICE detainer, that young girl would still be alive today.
Tragically and infuriatingly, this is not an isolated case.  This refusal by “Sanctuary” jurisdictions to cooperate with ICE occurs across the United States with sickening regularity and all too frequently with innocent people being killed.
Malfeasance has been defined as the performance by a public official of an act that is legally unjustified, harmful, or contrary to law.
It would certainly appear that the promulgation of “Sanctuary” policies constitutes malfeasance.
Furthermore, when the political leaders of a jurisdiction order law enforcement officers who are under their command to ignore immigration laws, they are inducing/coercing malfeasance by those sworn law enforcement officers.
Our nation’s borders and our nation’s immigration laws make no distinction about race, religion or ethnicity.  They were enacted to prevent the entry and continued presence of aliens who pose a threat to public safety, national security and the lives and livelihoods of Americans.
A review of one of the sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S. Code § 1182 that enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded from entering the United States dispels any doubts about the nature of our immigration laws.
Additionally, multiple failures of the House and Senate to fund a border wall, provide funding for enhancing the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of, and provide legal remedies to failure of the immigration laws particularly where political asylum and the Flores Decision are concerned, further exacerbates the immigration crisis.
Adding fuel to the blazing fire that is the obvious crisis along the border, the Democrat-controlled Congress just passed a new version of the DREAM Act, as reported by CBS News on June 5, 2019, House passes latest DREAM Act, hoping to place millions of immigrants on path to citizenship.


Rather than deter illegal immigration, these legislative actions incentivize illegal immigration.
A section of the INA, 8 U.S. Code § 1324, establishes crimes that relate to the smuggling of aliens into the United States as well as the harboring, shielding such aliens from detection.  
That section of law also deems it to be a crime to encourage or induce aliens to enter the United States illegally or remain in the United States illegally or otherwise aids or abets these crimes or crimes relating to conspiracies to commit these crimes.
This law seemingly only applies to “mere” citizens but not to our political elites.
Either through litigation and/or elections, those politicians who obstruct immigration law enforcement and thus fail to adhere to their oaths of office and Constitutional responsibilities, must be made accountable.
///

Kamala Harris: Medicare for All Includes Illegal Aliens

Harris, a guest on CNN's "State of the Union," said "I support Medicare for all. It is my preferred policy." She said she supports the bill introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Rising US “deaths of despair” driven by health care costs, lack of access to care

A new report reveals that most US states are losing ground on key measures related to life expectancy, which has declined in each of the last three years. The Commonwealth Fund’s “2019 Scorecard on State Health System Performance” shows that “deaths of despair”—premature deaths from suicide, alcohol abuse and drug overdoses—continue to rise in nearly every state. The report further shows that these deaths are tied to rising healthcare costs that are placing an increasing financial burden on families across the country.
The Commonwealth Fund’s Scorecard assessed “deaths of despair” in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as ranked states on 47 measures of access to health care, quality of care, health care usage, health outcomes and income-based health care disparities. The report found that Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act has been a central factor leading to meaningful gains in access to health care.
The reasons behind the decision of a person to take his or her own life, to take drugs resulting in a fatal overdose, or to drink alcohol in excess leading to health problems and death, are complex. But this new study shows that one of the major underlying causes of such tragedies is social inequality, in particular lack of access to health care and the associated financial struggles.

The opioid crisis, suicide and alcohol-related deaths

While the study finds that deaths from suicide and alcohol and drug abuse are a national crisis, it notes that states and regions are affected in different ways. Opioid use disorder has fueled a rise in drug overdose deaths with tragic outcomes for families across the country. The emergence of highly lethal synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, in the illicit drug supply has contributed to this national crisis.
The opioid epidemic has hit states in New England, the Mid-Atlantic and several Southeastern states particularly hard. West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Delaware and New Hampshire have the highest death rates from drug overdoses.
In Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio, death rates from drug overdose were at least five times higher than from alcohol abuse and about three times higher than suicide rates. In Montana, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Oregon and Wyoming, death rates from suicide and alcohol were greater than those from drugs.
Source: Commonwealth Fund. Data from National Vital Statistics System
West Virginia has been the state hardest hit by the opioid crisis, with 58.7 deaths per 100,000 residents—a staggering two-and-a-half times the national average. This was 25 percent more than the state with the next highest rate of opioid deaths, Ohio, which had 46.3 deaths per 100,000 residents. Opioid-related deaths in West Virginia increased fivefold in 12 years—rising from 10.5 deaths per 100,000 in 2005 to 57.8 in 2017.
The rate of death from drug overdose more than doubled across the US between 2005 and 2017. These deaths surged by 10 percent just between 2016 and 2017.
Suicide rates nationally have risen by nearly 30 percent since 2005. Parallel to the sharp rise in the death rate from drug overdose, the national suicide death rate rose more sharply between 2016 and 2017 than during any other one-year period in recent history. Similarly, the alcohol-related death rate rose by about 2 percent per year between 2005 and 2012 but increased by about 4 percent per year between 2013 and 2017.

Health insurance, access to care, cost

The Commonwealth Fund notes that the reductions in the uninsured population following the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) expansion of health coverage in 2014 have now stalled or even begun to erode in some states.
The ACA, commonly known as Obamacare, while expanding some access to health care coverage, has never challenged the domination of the for-profit health care industry. It required that individuals without insurance from their employer or a government program purchase insurance from a private insurance company.
Nearly all states saw substantial reductions in uninsured rates between 2013 and 2017 with the opening of the ACA’s insurance marketplaces, with fewer people citing cost as a barrier to receiving health care.
As the ACA was written, Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor jointly administered by the federal government and the states, was to be expanded to cover all US citizens and legal residents with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty line. However, the US Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that it was up to the states whether or not to expand their Medicaid programs.
Almost all those states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA saw a reduction in rates of uninsured through 2015. However, after 2015 any progress in reducing the rates of uninsured had stalled in most states. From 2016 to 2017, more than half of states were simply treading water. Sixteen states saw a rise of 1 percent in the uninsured rate, including both those that did and did not expand Medicaid.
States that adopted Medicaid expansion have seen lower rates of the uninsured. As of January 1, 2017, Massachusetts had the lowest rate of uninsured, at 4 percent. The states with the highest rates of uninsured—Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas—were among the 19 states that had not expanded Medicaid as of January 1, 2017. In Texas, 24 percent—nearly a quarter of all residents—were uninsured.
Uninsured rates were particularly high in states with large African-American and Hispanic populations. In Florida, George and Texas, about 20 percent of black adults were uninsured in 2017, compared to the US average of about 14 percent. In Texas, more than a third of Hispanic adults were uninsured in 2017. Undoubtedly contributing to the uninsured among Hispanics is the denial of Medicaid and access to the ACA marketplace for undocumented immigrants.

Health care costs

In addition to the lack of health insurance, the high cost of coverage for those who are insured is contributing to the crisis in accessing health care. The report notes that as of the end of 2018, 30 million adults remained uninsured and an estimated 44 million people had insurance but were considered “underinsured” due to the high out-of-pocket costs for health care in relation to their income.
People with individual-market plans under the ACA were insured at the highest rates. However, the cost of private, employer-sponsored health care plans is rising, exposing workers and their families to increasingly higher deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. In most states, the amount that employees contribute to their employer coverage is rising faster than median income.
A key contributing factor to the uninsured and underinsured rates is the overall rate of growth in US health care costs compared to the slow growth in US median income. Workers face rising costs as insurers increase deductibles and other cost-sharing for enrollees. As workers in both ACA and employee plans are covered by the insurance industry, these private companies raise costs for the insured to boost their bottom lines.
The Commonwealth Fund’s report explodes the myth that people’s use of health care services is the primary driver of cost and premium growth. The report notes that there is growing evidence that the prices paid by private insurers to health care providers, particularly hospitals, are responsible for this growth.
The report notes, according to the Health Care Cost Institute, that “between 2013 and 2017 prices for inpatient services paid by private insurers climbed by 16 percent while utilization fell by 5 percent. The analysis found similar patterns for outpatient and professional services as well as prescription drugs.”
In other words, while workers and their families are struggling to obtain decent health care and to pay for it, the entire system of health care delivery in America is geared toward enriching the hospitals, pharmaceuticals and insurance companies. Those succumbing to “deaths of despair” are the victims of a health care system and a society that values capitalist profit over the health and very lives of its citizens.

SUICIDE IN AMERICA
May 29, 2019 
The Social Order
Kay Hymowitz joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss a challenge facing aging populations in wealthy nations across the world: loneliness. Her essay in the Spring 2019 issue, “Alone,” will be released online this Sunday.
“Americans are suffering from a bad case of loneliness,” Hymowitz writes. “Foundering social trust, collapsing heartland communities, an opioid epidemic, and rising numbers of ‘deaths of despair’ suggest a profound, collective discontent.”
Evidence of the loneliness epidemic is dramatic in other countries, too. Japan, for example, has seen a troubling rise in “lonely deaths.” The challenge, Hymowitz says, is to teach younger generations the importance of family and community before they make decisions that will further isolate them.

Audio Transcript

Brian Anderson: Welcome back to the 10 Blogs podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Joining me on the show today is Kay Hymowitz, the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a longtime contributing editor at the magazine. Her latest piece in City Journal is called “Alone: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness.” That's the subtitle. It's one of the great pieces she's ever written in City Journal and I encourage you to find it on our website. Lastly, just one more announcement. We created a new email address for the show, so if listeners want to get in touch and drop a comment or share an idea, you can now email us at podcast@city-journal.org. That's podcast@city-journal.org. That's it for the introduction. We'll take a quick break and we'll be back with Kay Hymowitz.
Brian Anderson: Hello again everyone. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal and joining us in the studio now is Kay Hymowitz. She's a contributing editor at City Journal and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. You can follow her on Twitter @KayHymowitz. And she's the author of many books, most recently the New Brooklyn: What It Takes to Bring a City Back, which came out in 2017. And prior to that, Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys, which came out in 2011. We're here today though to talk about her latest piece in City Journal called Alone. Kay, thanks very much for joining us.
Kay Hymowitz: I'm happy to be here, Brian.
Brian Anderson: So let's just start off. What made you want to write about the topic of loneliness, and what is the state of loneliness in America?
Kay Hymowitz: Well, let me start by saying I didn't actually set out to write about loneliness. I knew it was a great topic, but I wasn't exactly sure how to approach it. And I stumbled across an article that inspired me by two social scientists, I think they're demographers. And they described something called a rise of kinlessness, that is a rise in the number of people who have no kin, older people who have no kin. And it was very eye opening and I began to see that the breakdown of the family that I've been studying for maybe 15 years now and that I had mostly talked about in relation to its impact on children was also having quite an impact on older people, particularly aging adults. And that some of the despair that we were hearing about, the deaths of despair, the opioid crisis and so on so forth, are actually disproportionately made up of divorced and single, well, of men, in particular. So I realized that we're looking at something big here in terms of the family breakdown and its ultimate impact is something that I hadn't quite foreseen or thought of.
Brian Anderson: It's probably worth rehearsing some of the numbers in terms of this breakdown in family. Divorce rates for married couples, I think, are probably double what they were back in the 50s.
Kay Hymowitz: They are indeed.
Brian Anderson: But in some ways the picture's even darker. You have a 40% of kids, I think, are born to unmarried mothers now. That's up from 5% in 1960. And strikingly the rate of women who don't give birth at all, I think, has doubled or is much higher. Yeah. And you could go on and on in this vein. This is obviously the core of your argument that's having a big impact on loneliness and kinlessness and this whole phenomenon. So say a bit more about that and what do you think is driving it?
Kay Hymowitz: Well, I think that a lot of what's happening is due to a change in our understanding of what the family is, what its purpose is. I talk a lot in the article about the beginnings of what I see is the unraveling of the family, or shall we say, a kind of assault on, on the traditional family. I want to clarify that as we go on. I see the beginnings of it in something that demographers call the Second Demographic Transition. We sometimes talk about the, in ordinary parlance, we talk about the 60s or the Sexual Revolution. But those were actually an American reflection of something that has, as I said, demographers have been studying. The second demographic transition they believe is partly the result of affluence as he, as the societies in the west in particular, but also over time Japan and others, as they got richer, families were not as essential to mere survival as they had one been. Now this was intensified this fact by the introduction of the birth control pill, obviously because you could control sexual reproduction without worrying about whether you're married or not. And what the theory is that this would introduce a different set of values, anti-authoritarian, and little bit of anti-tradition. Individualistic. As people began to see they could be freer to find other ways of living than to depend entirely on family or depend mostly on their families. And in fact, following the second demographic transition, um, there was a huge increase as you, just as you just pointed out in your numbers in the percentage of divorces, the percentage of non-marital births. And this by the way, is not just true in the United States, but in other developed countries. Not all of them, but many. And also of fatherlessness. So I think that these ideas that emerged with affluence and the second demographic transition made it possible for people to think very differently about how they were going to live. And I should say now, because I'll be talking about the downsides of this, what followed from the second demographic transition. But it did really give people a lot of freedom. And there's no question that there were many people for relieved from very miserable and even violent marriages. As a result of the second demographic transition. There were many different ways to think about letting the people, it was possible to not be married if you really didn't want to. Which I think has worked nicely for some individuals. And of course it opened up the door to gay marriage, for much more freedom for gays and lesbians. So there is a tremendous upside and I don't want to discount that. But what I try to do in this article or show that there's some real downsides that we haven't quite understood.
Brian Anderson: What are some of those downsides? Why is it a problem for society that people are increasingly alone? And what are some of the manifestations of that that are negative?
Kay Hymowitz: Right. So one of the things that I try to do in the article is to remind people that kinship, those close family relations, blood and marital relations, have been kind of the linchpin of societies practically since we came out of the caves. It is absolutely fundamental to every society. The relationship between kin and what it does is... Those relationships define certain kinds of obligations. We tend to be more protective of kin and to understand our roles better when in relation to kin. Everything else, all of our other relationships may be very important to us, but we're making those up pretty much as we go along. And the kinship... As we've sort of gotten rid of that basic building block, or we've sort of undermined it through the divorce revolution, the sexual revolution in the second demographic transition, we've undermined the way kin work. So one point I make is that there's been a huge rise in cohabitation and particularly among less educated and lower income people. Cohabitation has become a kind of substitute for marriage. And the hope among, social scientists and sociologists and economists was always that gradually people would realize that you could cohabit, but you really ought to stay together. That it would be a kind of it, that it would be a kind of marriage or marriage light. But in fact, that's not what's happened. What's happened is that the, the norm of cohabitation is much more transitory, impermanent, fragile, and unpredictable. And those couples who were cohabitating and do not go onto marry tend to break up much, much more quickly.
Brian Anderson: This is even true when they have children?
Kay Hymowitz: Oh yes, definitely. The children of cohabiting couples are having a very, very different upbringing than the children of married couples. Now, it's true. we do have higher rates of divorce than we used to, although it's stabilized. And one of the reasons it's stabilized is that so many people are not getting married anymore, they are cohabiting. The upshot is that there are an awful lot of children, as I've pointed out many times before growing up in very unstable environments, but then an awful lot of parents, particularly men, who are losing direct contact with their kids. Now most men, after a divorce or after a child out of marriage, try to maintain some contact. But that tends to, it's not always true, that tends to fade out over time. Remember a lot of the people who are cohabiting, having children as their cohabiting are young, and understandably if that relationship doesn't work out, that go on and seek out another one. Well, what often happens is that there is a new family that develops out of that second union and possibly even a third or forth. So the child is faced with a, and fathers too, are faced with this rolling cast of people, none of whom have quite the connection of the kin of the old fashioned can relationships so that those men are frequently on their own as they get older. And if I could just add a little personal observation here that some people might not agree with, men just don't make homes or, you know make even make friends quite the way that women do. And we do have some data on this as well.
Brian Anderson: Looking around the world, and you noted this earlier, we know that the US isn't the only country facing problems of loneliness. One of the most striking examples in your story is Japan, which was seen just an incredible rise in what they call "lonely deaths." Maybe you could describe a little bit the situation there and how Japan is dealing with it?
Kay Hymowitz: Japan is an interesting contrast. to the United States in some ways in other western countries because non marital childbearing, single motherhood is relatively rare, unlike here. And also divorce is, relatively rare. It's getting, it's getting more common. What's happening instead is that an awful lot of people are not having children, so therefore their fertility rates are very, very low.
Brian Anderson: Well below replacement rate, I believe?
Kay Hymowitz: Well below replacement. Ours are low, but this is lower. I read one a social Japanese social scientists who said that the basic concept of the family in Japan is dead. So there's an awful lot of elderly people on their own, living alone. And by the way, dependent on the state to support them because they don't have any family to speak of. Or their family has moved away, or is extremely busy with work. We know that the Japanese are workaholics. But they started to see this rise in lonely deaths, which, we're beginning to see here too. And it became such a phenomenon in Japan that the newspapers started to cover, local newspapers would start to cover these stories that were happening very frequently. And in addition, this was the part that kind of, caused me to sit up and wonder. There are businesses now, there are cleanup companies, to take care of apartments after a lonely death because what happens is that when somebody dies and they're alone and nobody's really watching out for them, they often die in their apartment. Nobody knows they're dead. Nobody finds them until the telltale smell of decaying body. And it makes a huge mess for building owners or landlords. So they've started these companies, these cleanup companies. And I believe I mentioned the name of one of them, which is kind of grim. It's called Next.
Brian Anderson: Yeah.
Kay Hymowitz: But these companies, there are a fair number of them and they've become an essential, essential part of Japanese life.
Brian Anderson: It's a very, very grim reality. I've been reading a book by Cal Newport called Digital Minimalism, and it's an argument against being immersed in social media and other forms of technologically driven distraction. He says, we need to set more time for our sanity sake to be alone or at least off of the Internet and this constant bombardment of, of connection with other people. In other words, he's saying technology is making us constantly exposed to other people in ways that can harm us. At least if it goes too far. How does social media and the constant judgment that people sometimes feel themselves under through social media if they're participating in it, how does that intersect with the argument that you're making?
Kay Hymowitz: Well social media, I'm thinking of Facebook in particular was supposed to bring us all together. Right? It was the social network. We were going to create all these new social networks and you know, I think some people have been able to use it that way. I have ordered up to make contact with old high school friends or whatever, but it has also added to a sense of anxiety as people post pictures of their happy family occasions. They can look like things are just so wonderful and peachy keen for everybody else while you're feeling down in the dumps. So what does that expression, "fomo," fear of missing out? You're missing parties that you might've been invited to... People are taking wonderful trips that you, you know, don't have anybody to travel with or whatever. So I think it can exacerbate loneliness in that way because you're constantly comparing yourself to other people at their peak moments because that's when people post their pictures. And there is something about, aside from the fomo, aside from that, the kinds of connections you make through social media don't seem to be the same as those should make in real life. I haven't seen wonderful research on this yet, but it seems to me an area ripe for exploration. It seems so clear somehow that you can be online, communicating, even playing games with people, from all over the world, and seemingly making new friends and still feel quite lonely and be lonely because you turn off the computer or walk into another room and you're alone.
Brian Anderson: A lot's been written, especially since the election of Donald Trump, about the state of rust belt communities. The opioid crisis, which you mentioned earlier. How much in your view is the family breakdown you're describing having an impact on those communities? And is it part of what's causing the problem or is it an outgrowth of the breakdown in those communities? Economic breakdown.
Kay Hymowitz: Yeah, there's no question that family breakdown exacerbates and intensifies the loss of these communities, or rather the jobs, the factories that have left. If you lose your job and you lose your wife or husband because to opioids, or they've just left, then you've got real trouble. You don't have anybody to support you through difficult times. One of the things I argue in that piece is that the breakdown in the family has not affected educated and well off people anywhere near to the extent that it has... well, blacks, and also now the white working class that came a little bit later. And I think what we underestimated, we who lived through the second demographic transition and played a role in pushing it actually because I was in college in the 1960s when a lot of these ideas were being tested out and promulgated. If the educated classes, the more well to do classes, were able to figure out a way to maintain their families, what they didn't anticipate, or that none of us anticipated, was that it would be much harder for people who were living more on the edge, who had evictions to worry about or layoffs or a factory closing. You need, in those cases, a culture that really supports, a cultural environment, that really supports the idea of the family and of kinship as people... as people that are there for you in hard times.
Brian Anderson: Providing a network of support...
Kay Hymowitz: That's right. That's right. And in those communities instead, we saw a more and more of a collapse of the family. Now was it possible that, we could have, in a different cultural environment, it could have been different? Maybe, maybe. It's very hard to disentangle the cause and effect here, but there's no question that they go hand... the loss of the working class or the manufacturing jobs, has definitely been related to the breakdown of the family in the working class. Now I should mention that one of the things that's happened as a result, well, related again to the breakdown of the family in those communities, is this opioid crisis. Opioids, as you may know, is now killing more people than traffic accidents, than car accidents. And I was amazed to see in a recent study that the victims or the people who die of opioid death are much more likely to be single, unmarried or divorced men. And that speaks of exactly what I've been trying to describe. I think that women are better at creating their own social networks. This was something that the sociologist, Eric Klinenberg, who wrote a book called Going Solo, about people living alone. It's something he noticed as he started to interview people who were living alone. Even among the elderly women were more likely to want to live alone. They didn't want to remarry if there were widowed or divorced. But who kept fairly rich lives, they were still able to... they volunteered. They had friends, networks of friends that they could go out with, and that sort of thing. So, and if there were children, they were closer to the kids than a single father. So they had all those supports. Men seem to suffer much more loneliness than women. And you know, we can debate from here to eternity why that is. But there it is.
Brian Anderson: Well, to ask a final question, and it's how you conclude your piece: What might be necessary to start re-knitting the social fabric in a way that might address this problem. You mentioned Tom Wolfe's idea of a "Great Re-learning." Say a little bit about that?
Kay Hymowitz: Well first, I should say that there are a lot of government programs for seniors, a lot of, on the federal level and the city and local level. There are all kinds of ways that civil society jumps in. Seniors Helping Seniors is one group, Meals on Wheels, organizations like that. They are absolutely essential and beneficial and I don't want to knock them at all, but they don't begin to address the loss that a lot of people are feeling, or the loneliness. So one of the things that struck me in thinking about all this was how much joy and pleasure so many of my friends, and I should say I'm 70 years old, so many of my friends now with grandchildren, would mostly worry when their kids were growing up about their careers. They would focus so much on their education. Starting from early on, we were the beginning of helicopter parents, not quite as bad as today, but it did begin quite a while ago. But never talking about this other, what I consider to be the other big goal in life: to find a spouse, a kind and reliable and giving spouse who will make a good mother or father for your children. Because most people are going to want children. And society's depend on them wanting children. Those parents didn't talk to their kids about these things. And yet here I was going to weddings and watching these grandchildren being born and the parents were going nuts. I thought, well, why wouldn't they ever talk about the joy of this stage of life and of the connection that we now have with our children. And this is one lovely thing of the that has followed the second demographic transition is, I think, there's a much, much less of a generation gap between me and my kids then there was between me and my own parents because,
Brian Anderson: Yeah, I think that's true.
Kay Hymowitz: And there's a kind of companionship and friendship that I didn't see in my day so much. We have that, and it's a source of great comfort and pleasure. I think for most of the people that are able to experience it. So I note all that because I want readers to realize that this is something we don't talk about to our kids very much. And so we have another generation, growing up, who have never heard those words or any of those concepts from their parents or from anybody.
Brian Anderson: Well maybe it's a time for a different kind of conversation. In any case, don't forget to check out Kay's brilliant essay in City Journal, it's called Alone. It's in our latest issue you can find it on our website and we will link to it in the description. You can follow Kay on Twitter @KayHymowitz. You can also find City Journal on Twitter, @CityJournal and on Instagram @CityJournal_MI, and always, if you like what you've heard on the podcast, give us a nice rating on iTunes. Thanks for listening, and thanks, Kay Hymowitz, for joining us.

"Eligibility would be determined by the same rules of Medicaid, based on annual income. As many young illegals are working off the books, for cash, they will have no official reported income regardless of how much they actually earn, insuring their eligibility for Medi-Cal." BRIAN C. JOONEPH

California Says: ‘Go West, Young Illegals, Go West’

 


Doctors and hospitals are in the gunsights of many Democrats who want Medicare-for-all as a draconian price control scheme by government over all medical care in the US. Hospitals are told they charge too much and doctors are vilified for earning too much.
What a relief that a sugar daddy has appeared, a rich boyfriend, a benefactor with a fat wallet, ready to bestow his financial largess on financially strapped healthcare providers.
This sugar daddy is named Gavin, tall and handsome with good hair. I speak of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who finalized a deal with the California legislature, “to provide full health benefits to low-income illegal immigrants under the age of 26.”
California is the first state to provide such benefits to illegal or undocumented immigrants, depending on which term you prefer. Specifically, this group of adults, age 19 to 25 will have access to the state’s Medi-Cal program, California’s version of Medicaid.
California anticipates providing coverage to 100,000 people. I’m not sure how they arrived at this number since I’ve always heard that illegal immigrants “live in the shadows,” meaning we really don’t know how many there are. And when word gets out to the rest of the country, expect that 100,000 number to grow exponentially just as it would if California announced it was giving away cars to this same group of people.

BLOG: THE MEXICAN TAX-FREE ECONOMY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY IS ESTIMATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2 BILLION YEARLY. THIS SAME COUNTY HANDS ILLEGAL ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS MORE THAN $1 BILLION  IN WELFARE!

Eligibility would be determined by the same rules of Medicaid, based on annual income. As many young illegals are working off the books, for cash, they will have no official reported income regardless of how much they actually earn, insuring their eligibility for Medi-Cal.
This scheme is to be funded by taxing those who do not have health insurance. Who might that be? Not the young illegals who how have free insurance. How about the small businessman who earns too much to qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford an Obamacare policy with massive premiums, copayments, and deductibles? Or the struggling wannabe actors and actresses in the same financial boat as the small businessman? Or the 60-year-old retiree, not yet eligible for Medicare but unable to afford private insurance given the higher premiums at her age?
How nice of California taxpayers, those American born or here legally, having their earnings confiscated to pay the medical bills of those not here legally. Who pays the medical bills of those Americans who can’t afford their medical care?
Interestingly undocumented elderly are not covered under this new plan. Sugar Daddy Newsom opposed this, preferring the young over the elderly, likely due to the much higher medical costs for those over age 65 compared to those under age 25.
This may have to do with voting preferences. It is unknown how many illegals vote, but younger voters tend to vote Democrat compared to older voters who lean Republican. Is this healthcare scheme a form of voter outreach?
Why are doctors and hospitals across America so grateful for their new sugar daddy?
Americans subsidize health care for illegal immigrants to the tune of $18.5 billion a year according to Forbes. Imagine being able to now offload some of this care to California?
Hospitals are required by law to render emergency care to everyone, regardless of a person’s ability to pay. A pregnant woman illegally enters the US, and when she goes into labor, the hospital is required to deliver the baby, caring for both baby and mother, at an average cost of $32,000.
What if the baby is born premature and needs a few weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, or is born with a heart or bowel defect, requiring additional surgery? The costs quickly escalate into 6-figure sums.
Labor and delivery is certainly common in the 19-25 age group. So are injuries that may require non-emergency treatment, such as a retinal detachment or a ligament tear in the knee. For the doctor, these patients are considered self-pay. Despite promises to pay all of their medical bills, some patients, once reasonably stable after surgery are gone with the wind, with no way to contact them, and no payment made for rendered services.
What if doctors and hospitals, when discussing costs of medical treatment, can now give the patient a map? A few hundred years ago, newspaper editor and author Horace Greeley advised the 19 to 25-year-olds of the day to “Go west young man”. The same phrase may become popular again, particularly in states adjacent to or close to California.
When faced with patients with non-emergent medical problems, direct these patients to the nearest east-west interstate, I-40, I-70, or I-80, and drive toward the setting sun until seeing the “Welcome to California” sign. Go west and allow generous California taxpayers to pick up the tab.
Hospitals won’t be stuck with bad debt and physicians won’t be stiffed after offering their time and expertise without compensation.
Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman said this about an open-border immigration policy. "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." Which is exactly what California offers, providing free healthcare to living in the state against the law.
While at the same time, California has an out of control homelessness problem, many of those homeless being American veterans. They are living legally in their own country yet living on the streets, in squalor, with rats and other vermin bringing back historic diseases like typhus and typhoid fever. Where is their sugar daddy governor? Busy pandering to those here illegally.
Down on their luck Americans are told to pound sand while illegals are lavished with drivers licenses, welfare benefits, and now healthcare. California cannot care for its own residents, but is opening its doors to the world, promising goodies that will do nothing but attract more of the world, regardless of laws.
When does it end? I’ve suggested that the Trump administration send refugees and illegals to sanctuary cities, so those cities have the opportunity to live with the consequences of their virtue signaling. Now doctors and hospitals can do the same. If California wants to be an open borders welfare state, it’s the least the rest of the country can do to help out by sending young undocumented immigrants to the land of milk and honey.

Instead of “the doctor will see you now”, expect to hear, “go west young man.”
Brian C Joondeph, MD, MPS, a Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn and Twitter.


California could use a management change





Over Sunday lunch, a friend was saying that he just got back from Los Angeles.  He added that he had not seen that much filth in some of the third-world countries that he visits for business regularly.  He looked at me and asked: " How do the voters put up with that?"

My answer was that voters have been voting with their feet for years.  In other words, they leave the Golden State.

California is a mess indeed, as Jim Bredo wrote:  

It has the worst ranking for homelessness, 8th worst for roads, and worst for teacher-to-student ratio. Its prisons are so crowded that the Supreme Court determined them to constitute cruel and unusual punishment, and it suffered the worst budget crisis of all the states during the Great Recession.
But residents are so mesmerized by the amazing weather and beauty of the place that they tend to overlook the quality of the services. And as a result, management does not change. The state has been under the same Democratic Party management for years. Their monopoly on power is so safe that they now hold supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature despite California’s worsening condition. Management has no incentive to change when it keeps getting re-elected.
Californians may not be voting out Democrats at the ballot box, but they have been voting with their feet. While California’s population has grown from 29 million to 39 million over the past 30 years, in each year during that period the state has seen a net loss in migration to other states.
So will things change?  I don't see any change for now, although the article points out that Latinos get more conservative as they get more prosperous.  
California will continue until they hit a financial wall or when the last taxpayer leaves the state.  In the meantime, be careful when you walk the streets of LA, and I'm not talking about thieves.
P.S.  You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

 

California Lawmakers Plan to Give Health Benefits to Illegal Immigrants

HANNAH BLEAU

Democrat state lawmakers in progressive California have agreed to a plan that would extend health benefits to qualifying illegal immigrants residing in the state.

The legislature has a June 15 deadline and is expected to approve the deal in the coming days. It essentially extends eligibility to California’s Medicaid program to young low-income illegal immigrants between the ages of 19 and 25. The move is part of a broader budget plan, which clocks in around $213 billion.
Expanding California’s Medicaid program to low-income illegals would cost the state about $98 million per year. According to the Associated Press, roughly 90,000 will qualify.
“California believes that health is a fundamental right,” State Sen. Holly Mitchell (D) said, according to the news outlet.
A number of Democrat state lawmakers wanted to take it a step further, offering coverage for all illegals in the state, but Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the proposal, citing rising costs.
The agreement also includes assistance for middle-income families. A family of four making $150,000 could qualify for a $100 a month subsidy from the government to help cover the cost of their insurance premium.
Democrats in the state plan to pay for the handouts, in part, by taxing those who do not have health insurance. This is, in essence, another version of Obamacare’s individual mandate penalty, which the Supreme Court upheld as a tax in a critical ruling in 2012. However, it has remained a point of contention in lower courts. Republicans in Congress worked with President Trump to scrap what they deemed to be the unconstitutional penalty in 2017.
California lawmakers say these moves are all part of the state’s wide-ranging effort to get everyone in the state – including those residing there unlawfully – covered. This comes at the time of a severe homelessness crisis in the state, particularly in Los Angeles County.
The number of homeless individuals on the streets of Los Angeles has skyrocketed during the last year.
As Breitbart News reported:
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.
About 3,800 are estimated to be veterans.

San Francisco’s homeless population has also experienced a spike, rising 17 percent in the last two years.

Tomi Lahren: Health care for illegal immigrants is here in California

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tomi-lahren-illegal-immigrant-health-care-is-here-in-california?utm_source=E-mail%20Updates&utm_campaign=2b91c1eed1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_06_14_02_35&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_7dc4c5d977-2b91c1eed1-45100901


Tomi Lahren: Illegal immigrant health care is here in California

California leadership is on the brink of signing a new piece of legislation that will put taxpayer dollars toward something Tomi has warned us about time and again: health care for illegal immigrants.
Well I warned you and here it is – California will become the first state to offer health care to illegal immigrants.
A lot of stupid legislation has come out of Sacramento, California in the last 10 years but this, THIS is a giant slap in the face to all hardworking Californians and LEGAL immigrantsbusting our butts to live and work in this state.
Meanwhile, our lawmakers are more concerned with doling out perks, brownie points, and benefits to people who have NO legal right to be here.
This is absolutely stomach-churning and yeah, I have some "First Thoughts."
Almost $100 million a year. That’s how much California lawmakers have set aside for illegal immigrant health care. If all goes as they planned, which it will, this will be set in stone come midnight on June 15th, and it will start January 1st of next year.
Do you want to know how we – the Golden State taxpayers – are going to pay for it? Partly through additional taxes on individuals who choose not to have health care.
Wait, I thought President Trump and Republicans reduced the individual mandate? Think again.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing for a state mandate to revive it.
We have over 130,000 homeless people in this state and yet, our lawmakers, our DEMOCRATIC lawmakers, have agreed on a plan to cover health insurance benefits for some 90,000 plus illegal immigrants.
Thanks to the Democrats in this state, illegal immigrants between the ages of 19-25 will now be eligible for the state’s Medicaid program.
California ALREADY covers illegals under age 19 and all pregnant women under Medical-Cal!
And you know what’s worse, some Democrats in the state legislature are unhappy this plan doesn’t cover ALL illegal immigrants in the state. That would cost us an estimated $3.4 billion but just you wait, that is where we are headed.
If you’re not a Californian you might not think this applies to you but be warned, this isn’t just the platform of the California Democratic Party, this is the platform of the Democratic Party, at large.
What is happening in California is just a prototype and pipe dream for the rest of the nation and if a Democrat wins in 2020, this is coming to you, to all of us, nationwide. Mark my words.
So if you don’t want your hard-earned tax dollars going to illegal immigrants, if you think incentivizing illegal immigration is downright un-American, if you believe Americans come first in our own country, get ready to fight to keep President Trump in office in 2020.
The truth is, he is our only hope. The Democratic Party along with the Democratic primary race has become little more than a try-out for the illegal immigrant cheerleading squad.
In recent months, we’ve averaged a little over 100,000 illegals flooding into our nation through our southwest border.
Sadly, The Republicans in Name Only or "RINOs" sitting in Congress don’t seem to care, either. If they did they wouldn’t have sat back for two years when we controlled Congress and did nothing.
No one in the swamp is bold enough to tackle this issue. No one except the Mr. Rooter of the Swamp, President Donald Trump.
Our elected representatives won't fix the immigration system and meanwhile, we have governors like Newsom and their respective Democratic legislatures dangling benefit carrots to entice even more people across our southern border.
This next election is bigger than 2016. It’s bigger than four years in the White House. The future of our country is at stake. Get ready to dig in and fight like you’ve never fought before.
Those are my "First Thoughts." From Los Angeles, God bless and take care.

///

What's the matter with California?

California wants to look after its people, so it keeps expanding its social safety net. It also wants to welcome all comers and so embraces illegal immigrants and protects them in sanctuary cities.
To see how this is working out, visit Skid Row in L.A. or neighborhoods in San Francisco or elsewhere where homeless camps are spreading.
Caring for all Californians is made harder by the state importing as many non-Americans as possible.
It's almost incredible, but also entirely characteristic, that California lawmakers have now decided to give healthcare free to nearly 100,000 illegal immigrants aged 19 to 25.
California has covered illegal immigrant children since 2016 under MediCal, the state’s version of Medicaid, at a cost of some $360 million. Now Gov. Gavin Newsom has agreed with state lawmakers to add another $98 million to California's spending by expanding coverage to young adults.
Just as California lacks enough homes to house its inhabitants, so it also lacks enough doctors to care for them. The additional budget bloat on healthcare will worsen that shortage.
The promise of unlimited free stuff from the government isn't just an unfunded liability. It’s also a magnet for illegal immigration. California already faces a border catastrophe. In the past year, its San Diego and El Centro border sectors have seen respective increases of 611% and 345% in family unit apprehensions. MediCal expansion creates incentives that will make that problem much worse.
If the damage were confined to California, one might be tempted to shrug and suggest that Californians choose themselves a better government. But the problem will spill over to the rest of the country, and to Americans who did not elect the irresponsible Sacramento government.
Border enforcement is mostly a federal responsibility, and we will all have to live with and deal with the consequences of an influx of illegal immigrants and a further strain on detention facilities' ability to cope.
When California raises taxes to pay for foreigners' healthcare, it weighs down on the federal budget because state and local taxes are partly deductible from federal income taxes. The rest of the country must subsidize more than $100 billion of spending by the Utopians in Sacramento.
When the Golden State's finances deteriorate, watch for Sacramento to beg for a bailout. Even before then, the rest of America must foot the bill for California’s overstuffed classrooms, decaying infrastructure, and everything else funded federally.
The California dream of taking care of everyone's needs is undermined by the California dream of open borders. State lawmakers were forced to choose between them, and they chose open borders. One must hope that one day the state's voters choose different lawmakers.

Expert: Healthcare for Illegal Aliens Would Drive Migration of Foreigners ‘with Serious Health Problems’ to U.S.



John Moore/GettyImages
JOHN BINDER

3:21

A plan endorsed by nearly every Democrat running for president that would give free taxpayer-funded healthcare to all illegal aliens would drive a migration of “people with serious health problems” to the United States, a health insurance expert tells the New York Times.

As Breitbart News has chronicled, a majority of the 24 Democrats running for their party’s presidential nomination confirmed that their healthcare plans would provide free health care to all illegal aliens at the expense of American taxpayers — including former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ).
Health insurance expert Linda Blumberg with the Urban Institute admitted to the Timesthat a single-payer healthcare policy, like Sanders’ plan, which provides free, taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal aliens, would drive a migration of sick foreign nationals to the U.S.
The Times reported:
But Linda J. Blumberg, a health policy fellow at the Urban Institute, argued that a single- payer system, such as the one proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, could indeed create “strong incentives for people with serious health problems to enter the country or remain longer than their visas allow in order to get government-funded care.” [Emphasis added]
The Times also admitted that should the U.S. provide healthcare to all 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living throughout the country, it would be nearly the only nation in the world to do so.
“If the United States were to begin providing comprehensive health coverage to undocumented immigrants, it would be an outlier, health policy experts say,” the Timesreported. “Even countries with universal, government-run coverage like Norway place tough restrictions on health care for undocumented immigrants. Most immigrants can get emergency care but have to pay other costs.”
Though it is unclear the magnitude of a mass migration of sick foreign nationals that could be spurred by offering free healthcare to illegal aliens in the U.S., Breitbart News has projected that such a plan would cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars every decade.


Free Health Care for Illegal Aliens Could Cost American Taxpayers up to $660B a Decadehttps://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/06/28/free-health-care-for-illegal-aliens-could-cost-american-taxpayers-decade/ 

Free Health Care for Illegals Could Cost Taxpayers Up to $660B a Decade



A reasonable estimate of health care for each illegal alien, Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarotta told Breitbart News, is about $3,000 — about half the average $6,600 that it currently costs annually for each Medicaid recipient. This assumes that a number of illegal aliens already have health insurance through employers and are afforded free health care today when they arrive at emergency rooms.
Based on this estimate, should the full 22 million illegal aliens be living in the U.S. that Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have estimated there to be, providing health care for the total illegal population could cost American taxpayers about $66 billion a year.
Over a decade, based on the Yale estimate of the illegal population and assuming all sign up for free health care, this would cost American taxpayers about $660 billion.
Today, Americans are forced to subsidize about $18.5 billion worth of yearly medical costs for illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.








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