California's three most powerful politicians -- House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Gavin Newsom -- are all
multimillionaires. Their lives, homes and privileges bear no
resemblance to those of other Californians living with the
consequences of their misguided policies and agendas.
Merchants of Revolution
California’s ethnic studies initiatives train children in Marxist theory—and opposition to the American system.April 13, 2021California public schools are embarking on a new experiment: education as social justice. Earlier this year, the state Department of Education approved an ethnic studies model curriculum, and individual school districts have begun to implement programs that advocate “decolonizing” the United States and “liberating” students from capitalism, patriarchy, and settler colonialism.
This will likely come as a surprise to most California residents, who may be familiar with the movement’s euphemisms—“ethnic studies,” “educational equity,” “culturally responsive teaching”—but do not understand the philosophical and political premises of these programs. As the state and many school districts begin to implement the state ethnic studies curriculum, however, details are emerging.
I have obtained documents from one such program, the Santa Clara County Office of Education’s Ethnic Studies Initiative, that paint a disturbing picture of the ethnic studies curriculum and the activists leading the charge. According to the documents and to sources within the district, the Office of Education held a series of teacher-training sessions on how to deploy ethnic studies in the classroom. The leaders, including district staff, an advisor for the state Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, and a professor from San Jose State University, encouraged teachers to inject left-wing politics into the classroom and to hide controversial materials from parents.
According to slides and contemporaneous notes from the session, the Santa Clara Office of Education began the presentation with a “land acknowledgement,” claiming that Santa Clara County and the public school system “occupy the unceded territory of the Muwekma Ohlone Nation, the sovereign nation and original people of the skies, land, and waters.” The premise of this ritual, which has become common in progressive organizations, is that the American government, founded by white settlers, is an illegitimate colonial power that should return the land to the Native American tribes.
Next, Jorge Pacheco, president of the California Latino School Boards Association and advisor for the state Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, presented the movement’s conceptual framework. Pacheco explained that the ethnic studies curriculum is based on the work of Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire, who invented the concept of the “pedagogy of the oppressed,” which holds that students must be educated to understand their oppression and develop the practical skills, or “praxis,” to challenge and eventually overthrow their oppressors. Pacheco acknowledged that the Marxist underpinnings to ethnic studies “scare people away” but insisted that teachers must be “grounded in the correct politics to educate students.”
Pacheco then argued that the United States is a political regime based on “settler colonialism,” which he describes as a “system of oppression” that “occupies and usurps land/labor/resources from one group of people for the benefit of another.” The settler colonialist regime, Pacheco continues, is “not just a vicious thing of the past, but [one that] exists as long as settlers are living on appropriated land.” The white colonialist regime of the United States is a “parasitic system” responsible for domestic violence, drug overdoses, and other social problems. In a related PowerPoint slide, Pacheco presented examples of this oppression, including “men exploiting women,” “white people exploiting people of color,” and “rich people exploiting poor people.”
What is the solution? Pacheco argues that teachers must “awaken [students] to the oppression” and lead them to “decodify” and eventually “destroy” the dominant political regime. The first step in this process is to help students “get into the mind of a white man” such as Christopher Columbus and analyze “what ideology led these white male settlers to be power and land hungry and justify stealing indigenous land through genocide.” Pacheco describes this process as transforming students into “activist intellectuals” who “decodify systems of oppression” into their component parts, including “white supremacy, patriarchy, classism, genocide, private property, and God.”
Teachers must be careful, though: Pacheco and the other panelists suggested that local educators hide this revolutionary pedagogy from administrators and families. “District guidelines and expectations are barriers,” said one panelist. “[We] have to be extra careful about what is being said, since we can’t just say something controversial now that we’re in people’s homes [because of remote learning].” In addition, teachers must acknowledge that they, too, can become oppressors in the classroom. “Inherently, [it is the] oppressor who sets the rules.” Teachers must “recognize [their] own privilege and [their] own bias” in order to align themselves with the oppressed and work toward dismantling systems of oppression.
The goal, according to the presenters, is to “develop, pilot, and refine an adaptable and scalable Ethnic Studies program design plan and curriculum that can serve as standalone courses or be integrated into core content areas.” This is already happening. Last month, the California Department of Education approved the statewide curriculum, which will bring the “pedagogy of the oppressed” to schools throughout the state. But for the movement’s leaders, the goal is to go further. At the end of the presentation in Santa Clara, Pacheco argued that schools should start transforming children into “activist intellectuals,” beginning in first grade. “[It’s] never too young,” he said, arguing that educators should be “cashing in on kids’ inherent empathy” in order to reshape their ideological foundations.
This is a dystopian project. As these pedagogical theories make their way into the classroom, California schools will be teaching millions of children to hate their own country. They will be oriented toward the work of “decolonizing,” “deconstructing,” and “dismantling” their own society. The ethnic studies activists grasp the destabilizing nature of their project—and believe that it provides them leverage for their broader political ends. During the Santa Clara presentation, Pacheco and the other instructors provided the audience with a handout quoting Freire: “Critical consciousness, they say, is anarchic. Others add that critical consciousness may lead to disorder. Some, however, confess: Why deny it? I was afraid of freedom. I am no longer afraid!” Though they are coy about their ultimate intention, the ethnic studies activists seek, at a minimum, a moral revolution—and, out of such tumults, political revolutions often follow.
California voters may not realize it, but they have installed a radical movement in the state educational bureaucracy.
Why I'm Leaving California
https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2020/09/30/why-im-leaving-california-n2577179
My family and my company are leaving California.
It's heartbreaking.
My parents moved to California four decades ago. I grew up here. For 33 of the 36 years I've spent on this planet, I've lived here. I was born at St. Joseph's in Burbank; I attended elementary school at Edison Elementary; I went to college at UCLA. I co-founded a major media company here, with 75 employees in Los Angeles. I met my wife here; all three of my kids are native Californians.
This is the most beautiful state in the country. The climate is incredible. The scenery is amazing. The people are generally warm, and there's an enormous amount to do.
And we're leaving.
We're leaving because all the benefits of California have steadily eroded -- and then suddenly collapsed. Meanwhile, all the costs of California have steadily increased -- and then suddenly skyrocketed. It can be difficult to spot the incremental encroachment of a terrible disease, but once the final ravages set in, it becomes obvious that the illness is fatal. So, too, with California, where bad governance has turned a would-be paradise into a burgeoning dystopia.
When my family moved to North Hollywood, I was 11. We lived in a safe, clean suburb. Yes, Los Angeles had serious crime and homelessness problems, but those were problems relegated to pockets of the city -- problems that, with good governance, we thought could eventually be healed. Instead, the government allowed those problems to metastasize. As of 2011, Los Angeles County counted less than 40,000 homeless; as of 2020, that number had skyrocketed to 66,000. Suburban areas have become the sites of homeless encampments. Nearly every city underpass hosts a tent city; the city, in its kindness, has put out port-a-potties to reduce the possibility of COVID-19 spread.
Police are forbidden in most cases from either moving transients or even moving their garbage. Nearly every public space in Los Angeles has become a repository for open waste, needles and trash. The most beautiful areas of Los Angeles, from Santa Monica beach to my suburb, have become wrecks. My children have personally witnessed drug use, public urination and public nudity. Looters were allowed free reign in the middle of the city during the Black Lives Matter riots; Rodeo Drive was closed at 1 p.m., and citizens were curfewed at 6 p.m.
To combat these trends, local and state governments have gamed the statistics, reclassifying offenses and letting prisoners go free. Meanwhile, the police have become targets for public ire. In July, the city of Los Angeles slashed police funding, cutting the force to its lowest levels in over a decade.
At the same time, taxes have risen. California's top marginal income tax rate is now 13.3%; legislators want to raise it to 16.8%. California is also home to a 7.25% sales tax, a 50-cent gas tax and a bevy of other taxes that drain the wallet and burden business. California has the worst regulatory climate in America, according to CEO Magazine's survey of 650 CEOs. The public-sector unions essentially make public policy, running up the debt while providing fewer and fewer actual services. California's public education system is a massive failure, and even its once-great colleges are now burdened by the stupidities of political correctness, including an unwillingness to use standardized testing.
And still, the state legislature is dominated by Democrats. California is not on a trajectory toward recovery; it is on a trajectory toward oblivion. Taxpayers are moving out -- now including my family and my company. In 2019, before the pandemic and the widespread rioting and looting, outmigration jumped 38%, rising for the seventh straight year. That number will increase again this year.
I want my kids to grow up safe. I want them to grow up in a community with a future, with more freedom and safety than I grew up with. California makes that impossible. So, goodbye, Golden State. Thanks for the memories.
Ben Shapiro, 36, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller "The Right Side of History." He lives with his wife and three children in Los Angeles.
July 29, 2020
California
Economy, finance, and budgets
Politics and law
No state wears its multicultural veneer more ostentatiously than California. The Golden State’s leaders believe that they lead a progressive paradise, ushering in what theorists Laura Tyson and Lenny Mendonca call “a new progressive era.” Others see California as deserving of nationhood; it reflects, as a New York Times columnist put it, “the shared values of our increasingly tolerant and pluralistic society.”
In response to the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti announced plans to defund the police—a move applauded by Senator Kamala Harris, a prospective Democratic vice presidential candidate, despite the city’s steep rise in homicides. San Francisco mayor London Breed wants to do the same in her increasingly crime-ridden, disordered city. This follows state attorney general Xavier Becerra’s numerous immigration-related lawsuits against the Trump administration, even as his state has become a sanctuary for illegal immigrants—complete with driver’s licenses for some 1 million and free health care.
Despite these progressive intentions, Hispanics and African-Americans—some 45 percent of California’s total population—fare worse in the state than almost anywhere nationwide. Based on cost-of-living estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, 28 percent of California’s African-Americans live in poverty, compared with 22 percent nationally. Fully one-third of Latinos, now the state’s largest ethnic group, live in poverty, compared with 21 percent outside the state. “For Latinos,” notes longtime political consultant Mike Madrid, “the California Dream is becoming an unattainable fantasy.”
Since 1990, Los Angeles’s black share of the population has dropped in half. In San Francisco, blacks constitute barely 5 percent of the population, down from 13 percent four decades ago. As a recent University of California at Berkeley poll indicates, 58 percent of African-Americans express interest in leaving the state—more than any ethnic group—while 45 percent of Asians and Latinos are also considering moving out. These residents may appreciate California’s celebration of diversity, but they find the state increasingly inhospitable to their needs and those of their families.
More than 30 years ago, the Population Reference Bureau predicted that California was creating a two-tier economy, with a more affluent white and Asian population and a largely poor Latino and African-American class. Rather than find ways to increase opportunity for blue-collar workers, the state imposed strict business regulations that drove an exodus of the industries—notably, manufacturing and middle-management service jobs—that historically provided gateways to the middle class for minorities. As a recent Chapman University study reveals, California is the worst state in the U.S. when it comes to creating middle-class jobs; it tops the nation in creating below-average and low-paying jobs.
Following Floyd’s death, even environmental groups like the Sierra Club issued bold proclamations against racism, but they still push policies that, in the name of fighting climate change, only lead to higher energy and housing costs, which hurt the aspirational poor. Many businesses, including small firms, must convert from cheap natural gas to expensive, green-generated electricity, a policy adamantly opposed by the state’s African-American, Latino, and Asian-Pacific chambers of commerce.
Meantime, California’s strict Covid-19 lockdown policies, imposed by a well-compensated (and still-employed) public sector, have imperiled small firms. “There’s a sense that there was major discrimination against local small businesses,” said Armen Ross, who runs the 200-member Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce in South Los Angeles. “They allowed Target and Costco to stay open while they were closed. Many mom-and-pops may never come back.” Many restaurants—roughly 60 percent are minority-owned—may never recover, notes the California Restaurant Association.
In the past, poor Californians, whether from the Deep South, Mexico, or the Dust Bowl, could look to the education system to help them advance. But California now ranks 49th nationally in the performance of poor, largely minority, students. San Francisco, the epicenter of California’s woke culture, has the worst scores for black students of any county statewide. Yet educators, particularly in minority districts, often seem more interested in political indoctrination than in improving scholastic results. Half of California’s high school students can barely read, but the educational establishment has implemented ethnic-studies courses designed to promote a progressive, even anticapitalist, and race-centered agenda. Unless the education system changes, California’s black and Hispanic students face an uncertain future. A woke consciousness or deeper ethnic identification won’t lead to successful careers. One can’t operate a high-tech lathe, manage logistics, or engineer space programs with ideology.
California’s failure to improve conditions for Latinos and blacks was evident even before the lockdowns and recent unrest. What the state’s minorities need is not less policing, or systematic looting of upscale neighborhoods, or steps to reimpose affirmative action, or kneeling politicians; they require policies that empower working-class citizens of all races to ascend into the middle class.
The state’s leaders should prioritize improving middle-class jobs and opportunities, replacing indoctrination with skills acquisition, and encouraging local businesses. Considering the nature of California politics, this can happen only if minority Californians demand something different. That could happen if enough of these residents realize that the state’s ruling progressive class is interested in their votes—but apparently not in improving their lives.
Joel Kotkin is the presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His new book is The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class.
California's three most powerful politicians -- House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Gavin Newsom -- are all
multimillionaires. Their lives, homes and privileges bear no
resemblance to those of other Californians living with the
consequences of their misguided policies and agendas.
Is California Becoming Premodern?
More than 2 million Californians were recently left without power after the state's largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric -- which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year -- preemptively shut down transmission lines in fear that they might spark fires during periods of high autumn winds.
Consumers blame the state for not cleaning up dead trees and brush, along with the utility companies for not updating their ossified equipment. The power companies in turn fault the state for so over-regulating utilities that they had no resources to modernize their grids.
Californians know that having tens of thousands of homeless in their major cities is untenable. In some places, municipal sidewalks have become open sewers of garbage, used needles, rodents and infectious diseases. Yet no one dares question progressive orthodoxy by enforcing drug and vagrancy laws, moving the homeless out of cities to suburban or rural facilities, or increasing the number of mental hospitals.
Taxpayers in California, whose basket of sales, gasoline and income taxes is the highest in the nation, quietly seethe while immobile on antiquated freeways that are crowded, dangerous and under nonstop makeshift repair.
Gas prices of $4 to $5 a gallon -- the result of high taxes, hyper-regulation and green mandates -- add insult to the injury of stalled commuters. Gas tax increases ostensibly intended to fund freeway expansion and repair continue to be diverted to the state's failing high-speed rail project.
Residents shrug that the state's public schools are
among the weakest in the nation, often ranking in
the bottom quadrant in standardized test scores.
Elites publicly oppose charter schools but often put their own kids in private academies.
Californians know that to venture into a typical municipal emergency room is to descend into a modern Dante's Inferno. Medical facilities are overcrowded. They can be as unpleasant as they are bankrupting to the vanishing middle class that must face exorbitant charges to bring in an injured or sick child.
No one would dare to connect the crumbling infrastructure, poor schools and failing public health care with the non-enforcement of immigration laws, which has led to a massive influx of undocumented immigrants from the poorest regions of the world, who often arrive without fluency in English or a high-school education.
Stores are occasionally hit by swarming looters. Such Wild West criminals know how to keep their thefts under $950, ensuring that such "misdemeanors" do not warrant police attention. California's permissive laws have decriminalized thefts and break-ins. The result is that San Francisco now has the highest property crime rate per capita in the nation.
Has California become premodern?
Millions of fed-up middle-class taxpayers have fled the state. Their presence as a stabilizing influence is sorely missed. About one-third of the nation's welfare recipients live in California. Millions of poor newcomers require enormously expensive state health, housing, education, legal and law-enforcement services.
California is now a one-party state. Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the legislature. Only seven of the state's 53 congressional seats are held by Republicans. The result is that there is no credible check on a mostly coastal majority.
Huge global wealth in high-tech, finance, trade and academia poured into the coastal corridor, creating a new nobility with unprecedented riches. Unfortunately, the new aristocracy adopted mindsets antithetical to the general welfare of Californians living outside their coastal enclaves. The nobodies have struggled to buy high-priced gas, pay exorbitant power bills and deal with shoddy infrastructure -- all of which resulted from the policies of the distant somebodies.
California's three most powerful politicians -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Gavin Newsom -- are all multimillionaires. Their lives, homes and privileges bear no resemblance to those of other Californians living with the consequences of their misguided policies and agendas.
The state's elite took revolving-door entries and exits for granted. They assumed that California was so naturally rich, beautiful and well-endowed that there would always be thousands of newcomers who would queue up for the weather, the shore, the mountains and the hip culture.
Yet California is nearing the logical limits of progressive adventurism in policy and politics.
Residents carefully plan long highway trips as if they were ancient explorers charting dangerous routes. Tourists warily enter downtown Los Angeles or San Francisco as if visiting a politically unstable nation.
Insatiable state tax collectors and agencies are viewed by the public as if they were corrupt officials of Third World countries seeking bribes. Californians flip their switches unsure of whether the lights will go on. Many are careful about what they say, terrified of progressive thought police who seem more worried about critics than criminals.
Our resolute ancestors took a century to turn a wilderness into California. Our irresolute generation in just a decade or two has been turning California into a wilderness.
Pew Research: Vast Majority of Illegals, 4-in-9 Legal Immigrants, Not English Proficient
Associated Press
JOHN BINDER
28 May 2019539
2:28
The vast majority of illegal aliens and a sizeable portion of legal immigrants living in the United States are not proficient in the English language, a survey finds.
A Pew Research Center study finds that an overwhelming majority of the 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. do not define themselves as being proficient in English. Despite a slight uptick in the number of illegal aliens who claim they are English proficient, still only about 34 percent said they are proficient in English.
Likewise, only about 57 percent of legal immigrants — that is, legal foreign-born residents whom the federal government has admitted to the country — are proficient in English, according to the Pew Research study.
Illegal aliens arriving to the U.S. from Mexico, Northern Triangle countries, and other parts of Latin America have exceptionally low English proficiency rates. For example, only about 25 percent of illegal aliens from Mexico said they were English proficient.
Similarly, only 22 percent of illegal aliens from the Northern Triangle said they were proficient in English, as well a minority of 43 percent of illegal aliens from other Latin American countries.
Overall, Pew Research estimates that only about 3.4 million illegal aliens of the entire illegal alien population said they were English proficient.
As Breitbart News has chronicled, foreign language-speakers have increasingly made up the U.S. population, forcing Americans to adapt in their day-to-day lives and work environment to non-English atmospheres.
For example, nearly half of all residents in the country’s biggest cities speak a foreign language at home, according to research by the Center for Immigration Studies.
Every year, a new flow of illegal aliens either cross the U.S.-Mexico border or overstay their visas and compete against the majority of working and middle class Americans for oftentimes entry-level and generally lower wage jobs. Americans are not only subjected to this illegal labor market competition but also must compete against an additional 1.2 million legal immigrants who are admitted to the U.S. annually.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
“We would benefit greatly if budgets were spent on minds instead of mines”
30,000 march for public education in North and South Carolina
Tens of thousands of educators and their supporters marched in Raleigh, North Carolina and Columbia, South Carolina yesterday to protest low wages and abysmal public-school funding in the two states. North Carolina educators have seen a decline of 9.4 percent in real wages since 2009, and the state ranks 39th in the nation in per pupil funding. South Carolina ranks 38th in teacher pay and 31st in funding.
Organizers estimated that more than 20,000 marched in North Carolina and 10,000 in South Carolina. So many teachers, counselors, school bus drivers and other school support staff in North Carolina called off Wednesday that classes were cancelled for more than 850,000 of the state’s 1.5 million public school students.
Inspired by teachers in the neighboring state and organized on social media in less than two weeks, the South Carolina protests, one of the largest in the state capital in recent memory, forced seven school districts to cancel classes due to a lack of substitute teachers.
Marchers in Raleigh, North Carolina
The mass protests in the Carolinas are part of a continuing wave of teacher struggles that began last year with wildcat strikes in West Virginia and continued with walkouts in Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, and Denver this year. More than a 100 charter school teachers walked out of four schools in Chicago yesterday, and teachers in the California capital of Sacramento are set to carry out a one-day strike on May 22.
US educators are fighting austerity and inequality along with their counterparts around the world. Thousands of striking teachers in Honduras have gone on a national strike along with doctors to oppose government measures that could lead to mass layoffs. Last week, contract teachers in the North African country of Morocco, who are fighting for permanent jobs, protested in the capital city of Rabat and were attacked with water cannon and batons. Over the last year, teacher strikes have spread across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.
A sea of red shirts covered the capitol district in Raleigh on May Day. Educators carried homemade signs with their demands, including for improved pay, funding for teachers to complete master’s programs, increases in Medicaid funding to help low-income students and increased hiring and pay for support staff, including librarians, psychologists, social workers, counselors, nurses and other health professionals.
In South Carolina, teachers demanded a 10 percent raise, a halt to threats against teachers for making public policy statements and the hiring of more mental health counselors.
Laureen and Denise, a teacher and a custodian from nearby Durham, North Carolina
Shannon has been teaching elementary school for eleven years in Robeson County, one of the poorest areas in North Carolina, with a child poverty rate above 70 percent. The county seat of Lumberton flooded badly in both 2016 and 2018 when hurricanes overwhelmed poorly maintained infrastructure .
Describing the effect of widespread poverty on her students, Shannon said, “Many of our students come to school hungry, lacking sleep, lacking [school] supplies, and it’s not that they leave them at home. They literally do not have them.” She explained that teachers regularly pay out of their own pockets to buy classroom supplies to “make sure my classroom is funded and that my kids have the supplies they need.”
A teacher from the Raleigh area, Mr. Grayson, said he was marching because “we wanted to be a part of the increasing voice in general for collective bargaining and for rights of workers to have a voice in their legislature.” He acknowledged that if he was a “betting man,” he would say the legislature would continue to ignore teachers, but “there is strength in numbers and as many people as possible are needed for our voices to be heard.”
Mr. Grayson and Mr. Noteboom
Asked what changes needed to happen, Grayson said, “We need increased spending within the school system, not necessarily per teacher, though that would be nice. But I think a major focus should simply be to provide more teachers, to be more equitable in how budgets are spent, more towards education and less toward militaristic means. We would benefit greatly if budgets were spent on minds instead of mines.”
Teachers have received widespread public support in North Carolina, with a poll from Public Policy Polling showing 71 percent in favor of the statewide protests.
The militant mood of the demonstrators contrasted sharply with the bankrupt policy advanced by the North Carolina Association of Educators, whose leaders like president Mark Jewell urged teachers to appeal to the Republicans and Democrats in the state legislature to hear their demands. Democratic Governor Roy Cooper was brought onto the stage to issue empty platitudes.
After state legislators ignored the demands of teachers in a mass rally of 20,000 last May, the NCAE called for teachers to campaign for the election of Democrats to end the Republican super-majority in the General Assembly. Cooper and the Democrats, like their counterparts across the country, have collaborated with the Republicans to starve public schools of funding while providing an endless flow of tax cuts to big business and the wealthy.
On the day before the march, the state legislature proposed a budget with meager pay raises—ranging from 10 percent for school principals, to 4.6 percent for teachers and just one percent for supports staff. These insulting pay raises, which will no doubt be funded through the implementation of regressive taxes or cuts to other vitally needed social program, will do little to make up for the loss of real income over the last decade or to stop the exodus of teachers from the state.
Bonita a retired teacher
A WSWS Teacher Newsletter campaign team distributed 1,500 copies of the statement “The teachers’ revolt and the fight for social equality.” The statement called for educators to draw the lessons of the strikes of the last year, which were betrayed by the teacher unions, and build new organizations of struggle, independent of the unions and both big business parties.
The statement concludes:
“A fundamental change in society’s priorities will not be accomplished by appealing to the powers-that-be and their representatives in the Democratic and Republican parties to increase their taxes and create a more humane capitalism.
“The working class must build a powerful political movement against both corporate-controlled parties to fight for a workers’ government and the socialist reorganization of economic and political life. This will include the expropriation of the ill-gotten fortunes of the rich, a vast redistribution of the wealth, and an infusion of resources to raise the material and cultural level of the entire population.”
Immigration Is the Elephant in the Room in L.A. School Strike
https://www.cis.org/Camarota/Immigration-Elephant-Room-LA-School-Strike?utm_source=E-mail+Updates&utm_campaign=7503f20bde-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_27_04_17_COPY_01&utm_m
By Steven A. Camarota on January 25, 2019
The recently settled teachers' strike in the Los Angeles Unified School district was a bitter dispute about resources, with class size and lack of staff support taking center stage. The tables below show that immigration's impact on the school system is enormous. Immigration has added large numbers of students to the county, but at the same time a very large share of both legal and illegal immigrants have modest levels of education and almost certainly pay less in taxes than natives who have higher levels of education and incomes. Immigration has also added significantly to the number of public-school students in the county who live in poverty and speak a language other than English at home. Overall enrollment has not increased in the district in recent years, but immigration has reduced the proportion of students whose families pay sufficient taxes to cover education costs, creating the ongoing strains on the district budget.
Although it is not possible to use Census Bureau data to look at only residents of L.A. Unified, it is possible to examine Los Angeles County to gain insight into what's happening. We identify legal and illegal immigrants based on the methodology used in this report. The data comes from the public-use files of the Census Bureau's 2012 to 2016 American Community Survey.
Among the findings for L.A. County:
· Public-school students from immigrant-headed households comprise 58 percent of public-school students in Los Angeles County (Table 2).
· Of all students in the county, 22 percent are from illegal-headed households and 36 percent are from legal immigrant households (Table 2).
· The poverty rate for students from both legal and illegal immigrant households is more than 50 percent higher than that of those from native-headed households (Table 1).
· Of students in poverty, 70 percent are from immigrant households — 28 percent from illegal households and 42 percent from legal households (Table 2).
· Of students who speak a language other than English at home, 82 percent are from immigrant households — 35 percent from illegal households and 47 percent from legal households (Table 2).
· 47 percent of illegal-immigrant-headed households are headed by a person who did not graduate high school; the figure is 30 percent for legal-immigrant-headed households. This compares to 7 percent of native-headed households (Table 3).
· The average income of illegal-immigrant-headed households is only 58 percent that of native-headed households; for legal-immigrant-headed households it is 79 percent of native-headed households (Table 4).
· Illegal-immigrant-headed households have three times as many students in public school on average as native-headed households; for legal-immigrant-headed households it is 50 percent higher. (Table 4).
· Illegal immigrants (ages 25-64) are more likely to hold a job (76 percent) than natives (74 percent). The rate for legal immigrants is somewhat lower at 70 percent (Table 5).
Pollak: Educating Illegal Aliens and Their Children Costs L.A. Schools Hundreds of Millions Per Year
Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty
18 Jan 2019164
3:03
The ongoing strike by the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is about teacher pay, classroom size, support staff, and especially charter schools, which the union says take money away from the district.
Left unspoken, however, is the cost of educating illegal aliens, and their children — which could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year, if not billions, experts say.
Steven A. Camarota, director of research, at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News on Friday that “between one-fifth and one-fourth of the students in LAUSD are the children of illegal immigrants — though most of those were born in the U.S.” He said that a smaller percentage of the students (“in the single digits”) are illegal immigrants themselves.
With roughly 700,000 students in the district, at a cost of over $13,000 per student, that means the district could be spending about $1.8 billion annually on educating the children of illegal immigrants. The total annual expenses for the LAUSD in 2017-2018 amounted to $7.52 billion.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) put the cost of educating the children of illegal aliens statewide at over $12 billion in a 2014 study. A significant proportion of those students are served by the LAUSD.
Twenty years before, with a much lower population of illegal aliens, the U.S. General Accounting Office — in a study prepared for then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) estimated that California spent $1.6 billion on educating the children of illegal aliens. The cost has increased almost tenfold as the “undocumented” population has grown.
The exact numbers are elusive, but even a conservative estimate would put the costs of educating the children of illegal aliens in the LAUSD in the same ballpark as the costs of charter schools, which unions complain cost the district some $600 million per year in lost funding.
The U.S. Supreme Court held in Plyler v. Doe (1982) that students could not be denied a free public education on the basis of their immigration status.
However, the continued arrival of illegal aliens has arguably strained the public education system — and will continue to do so unless the country’s borders are secured.
Yet no one in L.A. seems to be discussing the problem.
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.
CALIFORNIA and the RISE OF THE LA RAZA MEXICAN FASCIST WELFARE STATE
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/08/they-invading-horde-waving-their.html
"The costs of illegal immigration are being carefully hidden by Democrats."
Accounting for these differences reveals that California's real poverty rate is 20.6 percent – the highest in America, and nearly twice the national average of 12.7 percent.
"The public schools indoctrinate their young charges to hate this country and the rule of law. Illegal aliens continue overwhelming the state, draining California’s already depleted public services while endangering our lives, the rule of law, and public safety for all citizens."
Least-Educated State: California No. 1 in Percentage of Residents 25 and Older Who Never Finished 9th Grade; No. 50 in High School Graduates
By Terence P. Jeffrey | December 19, 2018 | 12:49 PM EST
California Gov. Jerry Brown and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) outside the U.S. Capitol, March 22, 2017. (Getty Images/Alex Wong)
(CNSNews.com) - California ranks No. 1 among the 50 states for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed ninth grade and 50th for the percentage who have graduated from high school, according to new data from the Census Bureau.
Texas ranks No. 2 for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed ninth grade and 49th for the percentage who have graduated from high school.
9.7 percent of California residents 25 and older, the Census Bureau says, never completed ninth grade. Only 82.5 percent graduated from high school.
8.7 percent of Texas residents 25 and older never completed ninth grade, and only 82.8 percent graduated from high school.
California and Texas—while having the highest percentages of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade and the lowest percentages who graduated from high school—are the nation’s two most populous states.
In fact, the 2,510,370 California residents 25 and older who, according to the Census Bureau, never finished ninth grade outnumber the entire populations of 15 other states.
In California, children are required to attend school from six years of age until they are 18. “California’s compulsory education laws require children between six and eighteen years of age to attend school, with a limited number of exceptions,” says the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, an agency of the California state government. (The National Center for Education Statistics also indicates that children in California are compelled by law to attend school from 6 to 18 years of age.)
Massachusetts ranks No. 1 for the percentage of its residents 25 and older—42.1 percent--who have earned at least a bachelor’s degree.
These rankings are based on data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 5-year estimates, which were released this month.
In the survey, the Census Bureau asks respondents to specify the level of educational attainment for each individual in their household. The question is: “What is the highest degree or level of school this person has COMPLETED. Mark (X) ONE box. If currently enrolled, mark the previous grade or highest degree received.”
The survey form then offers the respondent multiple options ranging from “no schooling completed” to “professional degree” or “doctorate degree.” If an individual has not earned a high school degree, the respondent is asked to specify the highest grade the individual actually completed—ranging from “nursery school” through “12th grade—NO DIPLOMA.”
The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey queries a random sample of more than 3.5 million U.S. households each year and publishes a one-year estimate for each year. The five-year estimate, the bureau says, “is a weighted average of the five one-year estimates.” The newly released five-year estimates are for the period from 2013 through 2017.
Nationwide, 5.4 percent of residents 25 and older have never finished ninth grade, according to the latest five-year estimates.
Ten states exceeded the nationwide level of residents 25 and older who have never finished ninth grade. These include: California (9.7 percent), Texas (8.7 percent), New York (6.5 percent), New Mexico (6.5 percent), Kentucky (6.1 percent), Nevada (5.9 percent), Arizona (5.9 percent), Mississippi (5.6 percent), Rhode Island (5.5 percent), and Louisiana (5.4 percent).
Wyoming—with 1.8 percent—had nation’s smallest percentage of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade.
In seventeen states, the percentage of residents 25 and older who at least graduated from high school was less than the nationwide percentage of 87.3 percent.
These seventeen states included: California (82.5 percent), Texas (82.8 percent), Mississippi (83.4 percent), Louisiana (84.3 percent), New Mexico (85 percent), Kentucky (85.2 percent), Alabama (85.3 percent), Arkansas (85.6 percent), Nevada (85.8 percent), West Virginia (85.9 percent), New York (86.1 percent), Georgia (86.3 percent), Tennessee (86.5 percent), South Carolina (86.5 percent), Arizona (86.5 percent), North Carolina (86.9 percent), and Rhode Island (87.3 percent).
Nationwide, 30.9 percent of residents 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
In nineteen states, the percentage with a bachelor’s degree or higher exceeds the national percentage. These nineteen states include both No. 14 California (32.6) and No. 9 New York (35.3), which respectively ranked No.1 and No. 3 for the percentage of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade.
The ten states with the highest percentage of residents 25 and older who earned a bachelor’s degree or higher are: Massachusetts (42.1 percent), Colorado (39.4 percent), Maryland (39 percent), Connecticut (38.4 percent), New Jersey (38.1 percent), Virginia (37.6 percent), Vermont (36.8 percent), New Hampshire (36 percent), New York (35.3 percent), and Minnesota (34.8 percent).
West Virginia—at 19.9 percent—has the lowest percentage of residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
In another seven states, the percentage of residents who have a bachelor’s degree or higher is less than 25 percent. They are: Mississippi (21.3 percent), Arkansas (22 percent), Kentucky (23.2 percent), Louisiana (23.4 percent), Nevada (23.7 percent), Alabama (24.5 percent) and Oklahoma (24.8 percent).
In California, according to the Census Bureau’s five-year estimates, the resident population 25 and older was 25,950,818. Of those individuals, 2,510,370—or 9.7 percent--never completed ninth grade.
Another 2,033,160 California residents 25 and older completed the ninth, tenth, eleventh or twelfth grade—but did not earn a high school diploma. Thus, a total of 4,543,530 California residents 25 and older—or a nation-leading 17.5 percent--have never graduated from high school.
Those 2,510,370 individuals 25 and older in California who never finished 9th grade outnumber the entire populations of 15 other states, according to the Census Bureau’s latest population estimates. These include: Alaska (737,438), Delaware (967,171), Hawaii (1,420,491), Idaho (1,754,208), Maine (1,338,404), Montana (1,062,305), Nebraska (1,929,268), New Hampshire (1,356,458), New Mexico (2,095,428), North Dakota (760,077), Rhode Island (1,057,315), South Dakota (882,235), Vermont (626,299), West Virginia (1,805,832), and Wyoming (577,737).
In Texas, the resident population 25 and older was 17,454,431. Of those individuals, 1,513,995—or 8.7 percent—never completed ninth grade. That outnumbers the populations of 11 states.
Is California the next Detroit?
http://humanevents.com/2013/08/28/is-california-the-next-detroit/
Robert J. Cristano Ph.D | Wednesday Aug 28, 2013 10:50 AM
This article was originally published by watchdog.org
Most Californians live within about 50 miles of its majestic coastline — for good reason. The California coastline is blessed with arguably the most desirable climate on Earth, magnificent beaches, a backdrop of snow-capped mountains and natural harbors in San Diego, Long Beach and San Francisco. There is no mystery why California’s population and economy boomed after the Second World War.
The Golden State was aptly named. Its Gold Rush of 1849 was followed a century later by massive growth in the 1950s and 60s. Education in California became the envy of the world. Stanford became the Harvard of the West. A college education at the University of California and California State University systems was inexpensive. The Community College system that fed its universities was ostensibly free.
California’s public school system led the nation in innovation and almost all of its classrooms were new. The highway system that moved California’s automobile-driven commerce eliminated the need for public transportation systems like New York and Chicago. The fertile soil of the Central Valley became the breadbasket of the world.
The next golden wave in the 1980s grew from former orchards south of San Francisco known as Silicon Valley. Intel and other companies led the world’s computer and software revolution. In the 1990s, the dot-com revolution brought immense wealth to more Californians. Its innovators, Google, Apple and others, ushered in the Internet Era. The 2000s brought the greatest housing and mortgage boom in the nation’s history, with innovation centered in Orange County. California was truly the Golden State.
Why then would the author have the temerity to ask, “When did Californians become Stupid?” And: Is California the next Detroit?
Unique oblivion
Californians, due to their golden history, live in unique oblivion. When the Tea Party movement caused a political tsunami that swept more than 60 incumbents from political office in 2010, the wave petered out at California’s state line. There was no effect on the 2010 election that saw Democrats take every elected office in the state.
California voters rejected Meg Whitman, the billionaire founder of Ebay, in favor of Jerry Brown. Gov. Brown signed into law a “high-speed rail” bill that will spend $6 billion (the state does not have) to build a train between Fresno and Bakersfield — not Los Angeles and San Francisco, as promised. There was little outcry.
California has a $16 billion deficit that no one seems to notice. Brown’s budget “assumes” that California voters will pass massive tax increases on themselves. If they do not, the 2013 deficit becomes a mind-numbing $20 billion. The budget, mandated to balance by the Calfornia Constitution, has been billions in the red for 10 straight years. How could Californians re-elect the same politicians year after year that produce budgets with multi-billion dollar deficits?
To protect the endangered Delta Smelt, a fish known better as bait, water has been diverted from the Central Valley to the Pacific Ocean. Orchards in the Central Valley have been allowed to wither and die, resulting in unemployment in the Central Valley as high as 40 percent. Imagine Californians living in what was the breadbasket of American now living on food stamps. California voters rejected Republican Carly Fiorina for U.S. Senator in 2010. She ran Hewlett Packard. Instead, they re-elected Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer ,who vowed to protect the Delta Smelt at the expense of the Central Valley.
California has 519 state agencies, like the state Blueberry Commission, that pay each of their commissioners more than $100,000 per year. State politicians, when asked to make cuts, fire teachers and fire fighters to inflict maximum pain on its citizens, while leaving these patronage commissions intact. State politicians have elevator operators in the state capital to push the buttons for them. Their solution for the overcrowding of the state’s prisons is to release inmates or transfer them to local facilities in already bankrupt cities. Yet, they are re-elected by California voters in numbers consistently higher than the old Soviet Politburo.
California’s public education system, once the envy of the world, now ranks 49th in the nation. Its business climate, according to 650 CEOs measured by Chief Executive Magazine, ranked dead last. Apple will take 3,600 new jobs to Austin, Tex. at its $280,000,000 new facility. Texas ranked first in the same survey.
California unemployment is consistently higher than 10 percent of its workforce, but it’s under-employed, according to a Gallup poll, is 20 percent. There are few jobs for college students who graduate with as much as $100,000 in student loans. Despite the overwhelming evidence that bad public policy is chasing away jobs, the same state politicians are sent back to Sacramento every two years.
In the last two months, three California cities have declared bankruptcy. Compton is next. More will follow. Some cities will simply cease to exist due to $500 million in unfunded pension obligations they simply cannot meet.
The unfunded pension obligations, now swamping California cities, were approved by these same politicians whose re-elections are financed by the unions they serve. Nine years ago, outraged Californians recalled Gov. Gray Davis from office for excessive spending and crony capitalism. Nothing has changed a decade later. Its residents believe the golden state will be golden forever. It may not be the case.
Detroit
History has an unpleasant precedent known as Detroit. In the 1950s, Detroit was a major American city with a dynamic labor force built on the manufacturing miracle that won World War II. Its factories quickly converted tanks, planes and artillery shells into trucks, automobiles and refrigerators that baby boom families demanded. Everyone had a good paying job. Detroit Iron had no competition. Its burgeoning middle class was the model of the world with excellent public schools and universities. It was the 4th largest city in America with 2 million inhabitants, with the world’s most dominant industry — the automobile.
Detroit in 2012 is a shadow of that once great metropolis. Its population has shrunk to 714,000. There are 200,000 abandoned buildings in the derelict city. The average price of a home has fallen to $5,700, unthinkable in California terms. Unemployment stands at 28.9 percent. It has a $300 million deficit. Its public education system, in receivership, is a disgrace, producing more inmates than graduates. The jobs have long ago abandoned Detroit for places like South Carolina and Alabama, far hungrier than Detroit’s leaders who believed the gravy train would never end.
In 2006, the teacher’s union forced the politicians to reject a $200 million offer from a Detroit philanthropist to build 15 new charter schools. The mayor has proposed razing 40 square miles of the 138 square miles of this once great American city, returning it to farmland. Even such a draconian plan may not be enough to save the city from itself.
If a hurricane hit Detroit, more of us would know of this tragedy in our midst, but this fate was man-made and not wrought by nature. Detroit has had one party rule for more than 50 years. Louis C. Miriani served from September 12, 1957 to January 2, 1962 as Detroit’s last Republican mayor. Since that time, the Democrats have ruled the Motor City.
John Dingell, Democrat congressman for the 15th District outside Detroit, has served since 1956. His father was the congressman there from 1930 to 1956. Despite the disastrous decline of their city, Detroit voters send him back to Congress every two years.
One-party rule
Similarly, California now has one-party rule. The Democrats of California did not need a single Republican vote to pass their budget. They now own the Golden State’s fate. The politicians’ plan to address the nation’s largest deficit is to raise taxes instead of cutting spending. If the Proposition 30 tax increase passes, the deficit would drop from $20 billion to a mere $12 billion.
Democrats have done nothing to cure the systemic problems of a bloated bureaucracy. Brown, referring to the state’s highway system, once said, “If we do not build it, they will not come.” Caltrans stopped building highways under Brown, but the people kept coming. Now 37 million Californians are locked in traffic jams each day.
Brown was rewarded for such prescience with re-election as Governor. California’s egotistical politicians passed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act in 2006. Dan Sperling, an appointee to the California Air Resources Board, and a professor of engineering and environmental science at UC Davis, is the lead advocate on the board for a “low carbon fuel standard.” The powerful state agency charged with implementing AB 32 and other climate control measures claims the low carbon fuel standard will “only” raise gasoline prices $.30 gallon in 2013. But The California Political Review reported implementation of these the policies will raise prices by $1.00 per gallon.
Detroit was once the most prosperous manufacturing city in the world. Will California follow Detroit down a tragic path to ruin? In 1950, no one fathomed the Detroit of 2010. In 1970, when foreign imports started to make a foothold, the unions and their bought and paid for politicians resisted any change.
In the 1990’s, as manufacturers fled to Alabama and South Carolina, the unions and their political lackeys held firm even as good jobs slipped away. No one in Detroit envisioned their future, even as schools declined, the jobs withered and the once proud city deteriorated in front of their own eyes.
No longer golden
California was once the Golden State. Today, it is no longer so golden. Its schools are in decline. Its business climate is equally dismal. Its cities are facing economic ruin, with exploding pension obligations and a declining tax base. Housing prices have fallen 30 to 60 percent across the state, evaporating trillions of dollars of equity. Unemployment remains stubbornly high and under-employment is rife. The Central Valley is in a depression, with 40 percent unemployment. Do our politicians need any more signs?
Brown’s budget will first slash money to schools and raise tuition on its students, while leaving all 519 state agencies intact. He apparently will protect political patronage at all costs. Jobs, and job creators, are fleeing the state. Intel, Apple, Google and others are expanding out of the state. The best and brightest minds are leaving for Texas and North Carolina. The signs are everywhere. State revenues are declining during many years. Meanwhile, the voters sleep and blindly send the same cast of misfits back to Sacramento each year — just as Detroit did before them.
The beaches are still beautiful. The mountains are still snow capped and the climate is still the envy of the world. Detroit never had that. But will California’s physical attributes be enough? If the people of California want to glimpse their future, they need look no farther than once proud City of Detroit. It can happen here.
Robert J Cristiano, Ph.D., is the Real Estate Professional in Residence at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. and a Senior Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco.
California's Accelerating Demise
The end is nearing, and it's not that far away anymore. Oh, make no mistake, California will still be here, but very shortly, it won't be much like anything that people who have lived here for awhile have known.
The culture, the quality of life, pristine environment, and enviable public school systems are rapidly being segregated into ever-shrinking areas of affluence.
Anyone who has read this blog knows that the focus here is on illegal immigration. Is the presence of people who are unlawfully in the country the only thing that has led to the Golden State's desperate financial and demographic situation, however? Clearly, no. There's been plenty of irresponsible spending by California politicians that is, at most, only marginally related to the millions of the undocumented who have set up house here.
Still, you can't escape the facts; facts that are so plain and obvious that one doesn't need to hold an MBA degree to see that much of California's economic ruin has resulted from nearly unfettered unlawful immigration from Latin America. We're rapidly absorbing the poorest and least educated that countries in that area of the world gladly send north, and the bills for having done this are coming due. California's illegal alien and anchor baby population is well over twice the size of any other state's, and not surprisingly, our state's budget deficit is also over twice the size of any other state's.
When you lack money, you borrow. California certainly has, out the yin yang. In fact, California is so far in debt that its credit rating is the lowest of all 50 states. And when you can't borrow anymore, you do without. California is ...
Because we have been so busy building public
schools (among other things) to keep up with an
exploding Hispanic population, and repeatedly
raising public school teachers' compensation to
convince educators to work in dreary academic
conditions surrounded by limited-English learners
and street criminals, we essentially stopped
constructing prisons. Well the illegal alien
children, and the offspring of current and former
illegal aliens, who now make up the bulk of public
school students here, have been graduating at rates
below 50%.
Where does a person with little education, who has been raised in a family where skirting laws is everyday conduct, commonly wind up? You guessed it. Over half of the people in California jails and prisons are current and former illegal aliens, and their children. In fact, we have so many illegals and anchor babies that our "gray bar hotels" are stuffed. Jam-packed to the degree that the Supreme Court recently ruled they violate 8th Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment OK, so just build more prisons, right? Sure ... with what money? We already spent it on teachers, free public school breakfasts and lunches, new grade school campuses, discounted college tuition for illegal aliens, and prison guards who watch over our growing population of people who didn't seem to benefit from the money we've been laying out to educate/babysit them.
The bottom line: California will be releasing tens
of thousands of convicts because government
officials don't have any other choice.
Therefore, when we say the Golden State "won't be much like anything that people who have lived here for awhile have known," that isn't hyperbole or agenda motivated exaggeration. It's simply reality. The most basic function of government is to protect people and property. California's government increasingly can't because the money is all gone, and so are many of the citizen taxpayers who never wanted any part of this grand liberal immigration experiment and politically correct nonsense, to begin with.
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