Thursday, June 24, 2021

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Tua and LouLou Always Protect Their Daddy During A Storm




PETA Condemns China’s ‘Pandemic Petri Dishes’ as Yulin Dog Meat Festival Begins

AP Images for Humane Society International
AP Images for Humane Society International
7:20

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) condemned the Yulin Lychee and Dog Meat Festival – and the open-air slaughter of animals for food – in a statement to Breitbart News on Monday as “pandemic petri dishes” that perpetuate animal suffering and spread disease.

The notorious Yulin festival, believed to have begun in 2009, occurs every year in the eponymous Chinese city on Summer Solstice, which this year fell on Monday. It typically lasts for ten days and features a host of outdoor butchers offering live dogs for the slaughter, cooked and feasted on in a variety of ways. Lychees, a tropical Asian fruit, serves as a counterweight to the dog flesh to cool down in the summer heat. Animal rights groups have, with varying degrees of success, organized annual campaigns to condemn and outlaw the festival, resulting in the Chinese Communist Party distancing itself from the event, but few concrete measures to actually prevent it from happening.

The Yulin festival received renewed scrutiny last year in the face of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, which began in late 2019 in the central city of Wuhan, China. Chinese officials initially blamed an outdoor meat and vegetable market in Wuhan – commonly known as “wet markets” due to the water, blood, and other liquids soaking the ground there – for the initial coronavirus outbreak. A study released in June concluded that as many as 50,000 live animals were available to buy for consumption at the market in question at the initial onset of Wuhan’s coronavirus outbreak.

Beijing has since dropped that theory and claimed, without evidence, that the pandemic is the product of a safety failure at a U.S. Army laboratory, but the global scientific community nonetheless largely agrees that wet markets create ideal venues for the spread of infectious disease.

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.)’s official stance, as stated in a 120-page report published after investigators visited Wuhan, is that the likeliest scenario in which the Chinese coronavirus first spread to humans is through human interaction with an “intermediary” animal species first infected by the virus from its original host. The W.H.O. approved the reopening of wet markets in China in April 2020.

PETA confirmed to Breitbart News on Monday that, despite diminished discussion of the Yulin Dog Meat Festival on Chinese social media platforms, local sources say the event is indeed occurring.

“PETA wishes government pronouncements could always be relied on, but the regulations and the reality often don’t match. Locals have confirmed that the shameful Yulin festival will proceed this year,” PETA Asia Vice President Jason Baker confirmed, just as filthy ‘wet markets’ remain up and running and slaughterhouses continue their bloody business as usual, all because of consumer demand.”

“Only if people stop supporting such places will animals stop being killed in awful ways. We urge everyone to shun all these pandemic petri dishes and not to pay for profound animal suffering,” Baker said. “Dogs suffer beyond imagination in these markets, but we must never forget the pigs, chickens, cows, ducks and other individuals who also experience pain and fear just as we do.”

Sources within communist China have largely remained silent about the festival this year, but media from neighboring Hong Kong have confirmed PETA’s information regarding the continued existence of the event. Am730, a Cantonese-language Hong Kong newspaper, reported Monday the event is proceeding “as usual” but that prices for dog meat were slightly elevated. News18, an Indian media outlet, reported locals had documented at least eight live dog meat stands operating in the heart of the neighborhood hosting the festival, and another wet market with at least 18 live dog stands.

“Some netizens went to rural dog farms to directly attack the live dog trading situation, saying that on the eve of the dog meat festival, ‘business is booming, and the price of local dogs has been rising,'” Am370 reported, conceding that “there is much less news about the Yulin Dog Meat Festival on social platforms such as Weibo and WeChat in China than in previous years.”

Another Hong Kong newspaper, the pro-democracy publication Apple Dailyreported Monday that local Communist Party officials had suspended train service to the neighborhood typically hosting the festival in an attempt to prevent animal rights activists from engaging in what has become an annual tradition of intercepting illicit shipments of dogs and rescuing them from the slaughter.

“Unlike in previous years, animal rights activists from other parts of the country may find it difficult to flood in to rescue dogs, since train service to Yulin was recently halted, local residents said,” Apple Daily reported. “Officials reportedly gave no reason for halting the trains.”

Chinese government reports denied that the regime had suspended train service. Usage of mass transit in China relies on the Party’s “social credit” system, however – which awards scores to every citizen based on loyalty to the party – meaning that known animal rights activists may simply have their scores dropped too low to have the ability to purchase train tickets.

Animal rights groups have documented at least one successful rescue this year. Humane Society International confirmed the interception this week of 68 dogs on a truck heading into Yulin by local Chinese activists.

“Activists flagged down a truck packed with dogs on the way to Yulin’s slaughterhouses and convinced the driver to hand over the dogs. When the truck halted, the activists found 68 panting and exhausted dogs crammed tightly in rusty cages, suffering from extreme heat and without food or water,” the organization noted. ” As rescuers approached, the otherwise lethargic dogs began to show signs of typical household pets, such as reaching out their paws to shake hands. Most of them looked like dogs who were stolen from their families.”

China nominally banned the breeding of dogs as livestock last year by publishing a list of designated legal species to breed for food and excluding dogs. At the time, PETA explained in a statement to Breitbart News that the legality of eating dog meat remained “unclear” because “the government official making the announcement explicitly stated that the livestock list will not affect the dog-meat trade.”

The technical outlawing of dog breeding for food also appears to have fueled the mass theft of dogs from their families in homes where they were kept as pets. The Humane Society noted that the dogs rescued this week exhibited behaviors, like handing out a paw to humans, that indicated they were house pets and not strays. Apple Daily reported on Tuesday of the arrest of at least one individual in Sichuan province, that had suspicious meat in his freezer and live dogs at home, apparently to sell at the festival. At least one of those dogs was wearing a collar, a sign he or she was stolen from their family. The man, identified as Zhang Jiu, was reportedly suspected of preparing to sell the dogs as meat at the Yulin festival. Zhang reportedly had 56 dogs on his property at the time of his arrest.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

The Two Chinas

One wants to kill democracy and freedom.

  37 comments

It’s a little-known fact that there are two Chinas.

One China unleashed a pandemic on the world that killed close to 4 million people and has the World Health Organization in its back pocket. The other isn’t even allowed to join WHO.

One China is a destabilizing force, poised to start World War III. The other wants only peaceful relations with its neighbors and the rest of the world.

One China is ruled by a totalitarian regime that crushes dissent, suppresses religious and ethnic minorities and even tries to regulate births. The other is a thriving democracy where civil liberties are protected.

One China spies on us, arms rogue states like Iran, and threatens our security. The other was our ally in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

One is the hilariously misnamed People’s Republic of China, where the only role the people play is as hostages. The other is the Republic of China on Taiwan, the official name of the nation of 23 million, on the other side of the Taiwan Straits, that the PRC claims as its own.

Beijing calls Taiwan a breakaway province. That’s rich. Since the end of the First Sino-Japanese War (1895), Taiwan has been ruled by the mainland for at most half a dozen years – never by the Chinese Communist Party. One might as well say that America is a breakaway province from Britain.

It’s difficult to describe the systematic brutality and massive human rights violations that go on every day in the Peoples Detention Camp of China.

Since 2014, Beijing has systemically suppressed the Muslim Uyghurs. It’s estimated that more than a million are held in camps where torture, rape and forced sterilization are commonplace. The treatment of the Uyghurs been described as the largest, most systematic imprisonment of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II.

Last week, security forces raided the offices of the Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong, arresting five journalists and executives for telling the truth. (The official charge is “collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security.”)

This is only the latest violation of the commitments made to Britain when the city was handed over to China in 1997. Under “one country, two systems,” Hong Kong was promised a “high degree of autonomy, rights and freedom for 50 years.”

Since then, the PRC has moved rapidly to give the residents of Hong Kong the same degree of freedom as the rest of China.  One country, one system.

Following massive pro-democracy protests, in 2020, a national security law was promulgated to give Hong Kong’s puppet government new powers to suppress and punish dissent. Communists who lie? Fancy that.

Now, guess which China we have diplomatic relations with, and which we do not? Aw, come on, someone told you. Only 14 nations have official relations with Taipei. The rest have given in to Beijing’s bullying.

With the 23rd highest nominal GDP in the world, countries should be falling all over each other to have diplomatic ties to Taiwan. But when Beijing says jump, the world politely inquires as to the altitude.

Communist China’s actions toward Taiwan are psychotic. In a 72-hour period earlier this month, 36 Chinese military planes flew over Taiwan’s air space, the most ever.

It’s just the latest aggressive move to signal to the Taiwanese and the rest of the world, that Beijing intends to incorporate the island into its evil empire sooner or later. 

China builds its military, including its blue water navy, with singlemindedness. We are turning ours into a woke laboratory, where a majority of the population is taught to hate itself.

It’s not enough for the international community to send signals, like the recent communique by the G7 leaders that stressed the “importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.” Translation: “It would be really cool if China didn’t start a war in pursuit of its territorial ambitions.”

Talk is cheap. Everything shows Beijing that it can get away with anything – the Wuhan lab leak, genocide against the Uyghurs, Gestapo tactics in Hong Kong and ongoing espionage. (FBI Director Christopher Wray says the Bureau opens a new investigation every 10 hours into illegal activities by the Peoples Republic in the United States.)

It’s reminiscent of the prelude to World War II in Europe. The Rhineland was remilitarized, and nothing happened. The Anschluss took place – and nothing happened. Kristallnacht (a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust) occurred – same thing. The surrender of the Sudetenland – the West colluded in that one.  The world pays a terrible price for the betrayal of little countries.

Like sleepwalkers, we stumbled into a World War that left an estimated 75 million dead. Then we said never again. Did a slogan ever have more of a hollow ring?

Now, it’s still not too late. Nothing is the most dangerous thing we can do.

The 7th Fleet can become more assertive. The U.S. and its allies can push for Taiwan’s inclusion in international bodies. More delegations can visit the island, like the three members of the U.S. Senate who were there in early June.

The more we can do to create a diplomatic iron dome over Taiwan, the less likely Beijing will do something we’ll all regret. 

JOE BIDEN - WE CAN RESOLVE AMERICA'S HOMELESS CRISIS WITH AMNESTY AND WIDER OPEN BORDERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED

California’s budget earmarks millions of dollars annually to the One California program, which provides free legal assistance to all aliens, including those facing deportation, and makes California’s public universities easier for illegal-alien students to attend.

New Home Sales Unexpected Fall

Funny happy kids running into new house on moving day, excited children boy and girl play inside luxury big modern room while smiling parents entering own home, family mortgage and relocation concept
Getty Images

Sales of new U.S. single-family homes unexpectedly fell in May, falling to the lowest level in a year as supply constraints have pushed up prices.

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that new home sales tumbled 5.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 769,000 units last month, that is the first reading below 800,000 since May of 2020.

Economists polled by Econoday had forecast that new home sales would increase to a rate of 868,000 units in March. April’s sales figure was revised down to 817,000 from the preliminary 863,000.

New home sales make up just 12 percent or so of the market for homes. But these sales carry a large economic impact because house building is labor-intensive and new homes have to be outfitted with appliances and furniture.

 

THE DEMOCRAT PARTY IS FOR BANKSTER BAILOUTS. NO MATTER HOW MUCH RISK THE BANKSTERS TAKE ON, DEMS WILL REWARD THEM WITH BOTTOMLESS BAILOUTS AND IMPUNITY FROM PRISON TIME.

IT'S JUST AROUND THE CORNER WAITING!


Rental Nation: Depriving Americans of Home Ownership Could Be a Good Thing, Economist Says

suburban neighborhood
Getty Images
3:39

The American dream of home ownership should be replaced by corporate investors snapping up houses and turning them into rentals, one economist is proposing.

Karl W. Smith, an adjunct scholar with the Tax Foundation and Bloomberg columnist, believes that scenario could be positive, even if he doesn’t address the fact home ownership is the main way for the middle class to build wealth.

Smith argues “a nation of renters is not something to fear. In fact, it’s the opposite.”

Smith lays out his argument, including citing the troubling statistic that the 64.3 percent of Americans who owned home in 2016 is the lowest percentage since the U.S. Census Bureau starting keeping track of that data in 1984.

And Smith gave a nod to former President Donald Trump, saying homeownership rebounded during his tenure to 66 percent, “but that trend is likely to be arrested by a housing market that is desperately short on supply and seeing month-over-month price increases greater than they were in the frenzied market of 2006.”

Smith argues that single family homes have historically been an “extremely illiquid asset.”

And, Smith says, the housing landscape has changed:

Houses have typically traded with very little liquidity premium. That meant a relatively low purchase price compared to what it would cost to rent — the equivalent of the dividend from housing investment — and stable prices over time. These two factors made houses a good investment for moderate-income families who often lacked the cash and the risk tolerance for market investments. As investments went, single-family homes were cheap and slowly grew in value in both good times and bad.

In the early 21st century, automated appraisals and mortgage underwriting began to change that. Combined with the repackaging of subprime loans into presumably safer CDOs, they created a far more liquid market for housing. In response, housing prices soared — and became more sensitive to the vagaries of the markets. When investors pulled out of CDOs, buyer financing dried up and the whole housing market crashed.

It may have seemed at the time like a failed experiment. But financialization had changed the housing market forever. Houses are now more prone to be priced high relative to rents, and to see their prices fluctuate with the market. The very features that made home buying an affordable and stable investment are coming to an end.

Smith also blames the change on people who chose to live in single-family home neighborhoods where their families have privacy and security and oppose forced diversity accomplished by installing multi-family units — “existing homeowners are reluctant to agree to development with unknowable effects on the value of their most precious investments. The result is less development — and sky-high rents for any residents not lucky enough to own their own home.”

Smith, however, clearly believes in revising the meaning of the American dream. He thinks corporate investors will see the financial benefits of buying up homes and renting them. And Americans could be more mobile if not tied down with a mortgage.

So he advocates for a nation of renters.

“The U.S. is not quite there yet, and not just because too many people are chasing too few apartments,” Smith concludes. “To see the U.S. as a nation of renters requires a revision of the American Dream of homeownership. This country was always more about new frontiers than comfortable settlements, anyway.”


TAX PAYERS TO TAKE CARE OF PROPERTY INVESTORS EVEN AS CA HAS A MILLION HOMELESS.


California Will Use $5.2 Billion Federal Coronavirus Funds to Bail Out Delinquent Renters

Newsom
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
1:52

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) will use $5.2 billion of federal coronavirus stimulus aid to bail out California’s delinquent renters.

“That appears to be more than enough to cover all of the unpaid rent in the state, according to Jason Elliott, senior counselor to Newsom on housing and homelessness,” the Associated Press reported.

But California says it may not be able to compensate landlords with the sum of money before June 30, when state and federal eviction moratoriums will expire from coronavirus-related measures.

The AP reported California’s “Department Housing and Community Development showed that of the $490 million in requests for rental assistance through May 31, just $32 million has been paid.”

“That doesn’t include the 12 cities and 10 counties that run their own rental assistance programs,” it continued.

State leaders are mulling how to allocate the $5.2 billion with the June 30 deadline approaching.

Meanwhile, property manager Keith Becker told the AP his “14 tenants are more than $100,000 behind in rent payments,” placing large financial strain on him to continue to pay the mortgage so the delinquent tenets have a roof over their heads.

“We should do our best to get back to the starting point where we were in December of 2019. Anything other than that is taking advantage of a crisis,” he said.

San Francisco Democrat and chairman of the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee Assemblyman, David Chiu, told the AP, “It’s challenging to set up a new, big program overnight.”

“It has been challenging to educate millions of struggling tenants and landlords on what the law is,” he added.


Texas’s Camping Bans Will Help the Homeless

Large urban encampments are unsafe for everyone.June 21, 2021 
Texas
The Social Order
Public safety

Many Americans think that homelessness is a problem confined to coastal states, but the issue is becoming prominent in Texas as well. Since 2017, the number of people in the state living outside—the “unsheltered homeless”—has increased by 50 percent. About 10,500 Texans now live, and all too often die, on the streets. One reason why: many Texas cities have condoned, or even encouraged, street camping and sleeping.

Voters from both parties find this unacceptable. A large, bipartisan majority of Austin residents reinstated the city’s camping and sleeping ban last month. The Texas legislature just passed a statewide ban on camping with overwhelming majorities.

Most homeless advocates oppose camping bans. They argue that the government should provide every homeless person with permanent housing before forcing anyone off the streets. But the evidence shows that there’s no reason to delay: camping bans improve the lives of the homeless by helping them find the shelters and services they need.

After Los Angeles cleared its notorious Skid Row in 2006, the number of street deaths and overdoses dropped by more than half. A 2010 study by Richard Berk and John MacDonald showed that the campaign also led to a 40 percent reduction in violent crime, with no spillover effects into other communities.

We know that enforcing camping bans encourages more people to get their lives together. When Colorado Springs enacted a camping ban in 2010, the city had about 600 homeless people on the streets. By the end of the ban’s first year, about 160 homeless individuals had been reunited with their families, 35 had been encouraged to go into rehabilitation programs for drugs and alcohol, 80 had moved into subsidized housing, and 150 had found jobs. Robert Holmes, head of the local nonprofit Homeward Pikes Peak, called the ban “an absolute success” because “we decreased chronic homelessness by two-thirds in seven-and-a-half months. . . . Four hundred and thirty-five people became self-sufficient.”

It’s also clear what happens when cities repeal camping bans. When L.A. changed its mind and ended its ban in 2014, the city saw homeless deaths more than double, to about 1,400 a year. After Austin repealed its ban in 2019, the city saw a 45 percent increase in unsheltered homelessness. Though some advocates claimed that the homeless were just more visible, they did not explain why the number of homeless in shelters dropped by 20 percent during the same period. The only reasonable conclusion is that people were leaving safe environments for dangerous streets.

Nothing good came from the movement from shelters to the street. The number of deaths among Austin’s homeless was 77 just a decade ago but rose to 184 in 2019, the year the camping ban ended, and to 256 in 2020 (almost none of which was Covid-related). After 2019, the city also endured double-digit increases in violent crimes in which both the criminal and victim were homeless.

The sad truth is that individuals on the street simply aren’t in any condition to seek help on their own. A recent UCLA study confirmed what most people already know: namely, that 75 percent of unsheltered homeless have a severe mental disorder, and 75 percent have an alcohol or drug addiction; the majority have both. Allowing people suffering a mental-health crisis or debilitating addiction to live on the street almost ensures their eventual arrest or death.

Most people working in homeless services agree that large percentages of the unsheltered are what they call “service resistant,” and the data bear them out. Surveys of homeless-encampment residents found that up to 75 percent said they would not go willingly into shelters. Larger percentages said that if the camps were closed, they would just move away.

Yet Austin doesn’t seem to be taking votes on camping bans seriously. The city won’t begin enforcing the ban until August. A recent city proposal also suggested 45 places that could accommodate sanctioned camps, including many public parks—a practice now illegal under state law. In fact, the Esperanza Community, a state-sanctioned camping site set up near the city, shows that one large site, appropriately distanced from residential areas, would be sufficient after illegal camping places have been cleared. Though such sanctioned camping is not ideal, it’s better than allowing unsanctioned camping everywhere.

While politicians are reluctant to enforce camping bans, voters everywhere support them. Even San Francisco, home to some of America’s most left-wing voters, approved a camping ban in a 2016 referendum, though lawsuits and city council opposition have prevented the city from enforcing it. When Denver held a public referendum on a camping ban in 2018, 85 percent of voters supported it. Residents know that in dense urban areas, allowing individuals to use public space however they choose is a recipe for disaster.

My neighborhood has experienced this disaster. In the short time since I moved to South Austin, a homeless encampment has sprouted in the park directly behind my house. Five individuals—David, Linda, Richard, Kaylee, and Adam—lived there at one point. (One of the campers reports that Adam recently got arrested, for a second time, for holding a large quantity of drugs, and he has not returned. His fiancé Kaylee has followed.) I talk to them regularly, since they can hear me from my back porch, and vice versa. I have never been uncivil and have tried to help them. Yet their campsite has fires, human waste, garbage, and unleashed dogs. They have chopped down trees and bushes in the park. Between them, they have seven tents, three of which are “storage tents,” as they call them, to keep ever-accumulating piles of dangerous and unsanitary material, including a chain saw, piles of empty paint cans, and propane tanks. Before the camping-ban vote, a representative of the park service said that the city couldn’t do anything about the camp until America solved its “housing and addiction crises.” Another city official said that the campers were permitted to light fires “for warmth and cooking,” despite the obvious risk.

Encouraging people to camp in public places is not healthy for them or for their communities. Texas and its voters have a right to demand that the norms of civilization be enforced in public spaces and streets. If local city councils, for whatever reason, refuse to enforce these norms, the state and its voters can make them do so. Getting homeless Texans off the streets and into shelters is in the best interest of these cities and of the homeless themselves.

Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/another_line_they_cut_into_illegals_get_free_public_housing_as_impoverished_americans_wait.html

 

By Monica Showalter

Want some perspective on why so many blue sanctuary cities have so many homeless encampments hovering around?

Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.

Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at.


Homeless crisis continues in Seattle, across Pacific Northwest

There were an estimated 11,751 individuals experiencing homelessness in Seattle-King County, according to the official one-night count in January 2020. Forty-seven percent of these persons were unsheltered, the third highest homeless population in the country after New York City and Los Angeles.

Citing the risk of COVID-19, Seattle will not be doing its annual unsheltered homeless population census this year. Outdoor camps have proliferated throughout the last year as shelters have been forced to downsize and create social distancing. But without an official count, the region will not know how many more people are living on the street until mid-2022.

Such conditions are echoed elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest. In Portland, Oregon, there were at least 4,000 people experiencing homelessness at the end of 2019, a count which has not been updated in part thanks to the pandemic. Oregon as a whole has an estimated 14,600 homeless people, while Washington has more than 22,300.

Homeless campers in Seattle. (David Lee, Flickr Creative Commons)

Amid this escalating social crisis, a group of businesses has focused on forcing Seattle to further crack down on the homeless population under the nameplate of the organization Compassion Seattle.

The primary goal of Compassion Seattle in changing the city of Seattle’s charter, whatever the claimed aims of its defenders, is to enshrine sweeps in the city charter with an official declaration that “there is no right to camp in any particular public space.” Efforts are ongoing to get an amendment to that effect, Charter Amendment 29 (CA29), on the ballot for Seattle’s November elections.

If adopted, the amendment would be catastrophic for the city’s homeless community. By declaring there is “no right” to eke out a meager existence where they can, it would mandate the city and its police forces to clear out homeless encampments wherever they are found on a regular basis. In a city which only has shelters for about half its homeless population, thousands would essentially be forced to live on the run or move out of the city altogether.

Little else is laid out concretely by Compassion Seattle. It calls for 2,000 units of permanent or emergency housing within one year but says nothing about how that will be funded. The only funding the amendment actually requires would come from Seattle’s $1.6 billion general fund (the discretionary portion of the city’s $6 billion budget). Under the amendment, Seattle would need to allocate 12 percent of that to a new “Human Services Fund,” which is actually only a small increase from the 11.2 percent of Seattle’s general fund already allocated toward homeless services.

Moreover, such an increase would likely require cuts in other areas of city services aside from the Parks and Recreation Department’s budget, which the amendment specifically separates from homeless services to keep the parks clear of encampments.

Compassion Seattle was originally proposed by former City Council member Tim Burgess, who has a history of promoting criminalization of homelessness. In an email to the local alternative media publication The Stranger, Burgess addressed the resource issue, saying that the mayor and council could redirect existing revenues and suggested they could use “the new JumpStart tax revenue that will begin flowing next year if the tax survives the legal challenge.” Burgess is openly opposed to Seattle's JumpStart tax on the incomes of the wealthy, which just survived a lawsuit against it by the Chamber of Commerce. If it survives appeals, collections will begin next year.

Another top-tier supporter of CA29 is George Petrie, CEO of real estate mogul John Goodman’s Goodman Real Estate. Goodman has done battle with his low-income tenants, doubling their rents and serving evictions without informing them of their right to Tenant Relocation Assistance, resulting in tenants protesting outside his yacht marina in 2014. Goodman also invested in defeating a pro-affordable housing city council candidate in 2015.

Seattle Mayor Democrat Jenny Durkan has always been a promoter of sweeping encampments, essentially chasing homeless people across the city, even after the CDC stated that ceasing this practice could help lower the risk of COVID-19 transmission. King County has to date suffered more than 111,000 cases of the pandemic and at least 1,600 deaths.

Kshama Sawant, a leader of Socialist Alternative and member of the Seattle City Council, professes to oppose the sweeps, and recently stated, “Compassion Seattle is presenting the billionaires way to fight homelessness.” But she has proven her willingness to work closely with the Democratic Party in Seattle throughout her tenure on the Seattle City Council and welcomed the endorsement of local Democrats in 2019. She is also now a member of the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America, a faction of the Democratic Party, the same party to which Burgess and others victimizing the homeless belong.

Much of the ongoing housing crisis in Seattle, even before the pandemic, has been caused by a sharp rise in mortgage and rent prices that have far outpaced rises in income. Moreover, according to a pro bono study by consulting firm McKinsey & Company presented to the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, since 2010, King County has lost a total of 112,000 housing units affordable to households earning below 80 percent of the area’s median income.

The study also noted how little it would take to end homelessness in the city. “Using a conservative set of assumptions, ending the homelessness crisis in King County would therefore cost between $4.5 billion and $11 billion over ten years, or between $450 million and $1.1 billion each year for the next ten years. To put it another way, ending homelessness in King County would require spending three to five times the approximately $260 million currently spent locally on homelessness and [extremely low-income households] housing in the region.”

Or rather, this would be less than 6 percent of the net wealth of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Seattle-based Amazon.

The Compassion Seattle amendment should also be seen as a warning to workers across the country. In less than two weeks, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mandated moratoriums on evictions is set to end on June 30, which will put approximately 11 million renters nationwide at risk of eviction, many of whom are facing the prospect of homelessness. If Seattle’s Charter Amendment 29 passes, those homeless people forced out of Seattle will be facing increased police repression, and homeless people everywhere else in the country will face the same threat as cities across the country follow Seattle’s example.

Such dangers clearly show that no section of the ruling class can realistically present a serious effort to address the housing crisis in Seattle or anywhere else. While the resources exist within society to provide everyone with a home and a decent standard of living, this can only be achieved through an independent struggle of the working class against the capitalist politicians and the corporate interests they serve, and for the socialist reorganization of society.

Some California counties winding down hotels for homeless

 

AP

Some California counties are pushing ahead with plans to wind down a program that’s housed homeless people in hotel rooms amid the coronavirus pandemic

Some California counties winding down hotels for homelessBy JANIE HARAssociated PressThe Associated PressSAN FRANCISCO

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Some California counties are pushing ahead with plans to wind down a program that’s moved homeless people into hotel rooms amid the coronavirus pandemic despite an emergency cash infusion from the state aimed at preventing people from returning to the streets in colder weather as the virus surges.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced $62 million for counties to move hotel guests into permanent housing or to extend hotel leases that were part of “Project Roomkey,” which he rolled out this spring as a way to protect some people experiencing homelessness from the virus. The Federal Emergency Management Agency agreed to pick up 75% of the cost.

But counties say that with federal relief funding expiring soon, it’s time to transition residents from expensive hotel rooms to cheaper, more stable housing. Officials hope to offer a place to every resident leaving a hotel, though they acknowledge not everyone will accept it and affordable housing is difficult to find.

California is one of several states, including Washington, that turned to hotels to shelter homeless people as the virus took hold. Homelessness has soared nationwide during the pandemic, and it was already at a crisis level in California because of an expensive housing market and a shortage of affordable options. The nation’s most populated state has by far the highest number of people on the streets, though other places have a higher per capita rate.

In San Francisco, advocacy groups and some officials are outraged by the mayor’s plan to start moving hundreds of people out of hotels around the holidays. They say it’s ridiculous when thousands of people are still sleeping on sidewalks and in cars, and they don’t believe the city can find enough virus-safe housing for 2,300 people living in more than two dozen hotels.

“It makes absolute zero sense. It is outrageous, it’s irresponsible, and it basically tells people experiencing homelessness that you’re not a priority for the city,” Supervisor Hillary Ronen said as she and other leaders announced proposed legislation to slow the move and ensure every resident is offered alternative housing.

The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said in a statement that money from the state will provide “more flexibility and time” but would not say if San Francisco had changed its timeline. The department has said it plans to move homeless people out of all 29 hotels by June.

“We will continue to work with city staff and our service providers to deliver on our commitment to get people housed and ensure no one in our hotels gets moved back on the streets,” the statement said.

An estimated 150,000 people experiencing homelessness live in California, and there are signs that number will only increase with an economy ravaged by the pandemic. Newsom has awarded $800 million to cities and counties to buy hotels and other properties to convert into housing, saying he didn’t want to squander an opportunity to get more people indoors.

At times, connecting homeless people to shelter, work, medical care and social services boils down to finding them in time, and the hotels have been a huge help, advocates say. They say hotel residents have flourished with regular checkups and meals.

“If this were to be taken away from us at this time, it really would be like having a carpet pulled out from under us in a really major way,” said hotel resident Nicholas Garrett, who appeared with the San Francisco supervisors.

Dr. Danielle Alkov spoke of one of her patients, a transgender woman who has blossomed after being brought indoors. But her hotel is scheduled to be among the first to close.

“She’s thriving, she’s engaged in medical care, she’s very future-thinking for probably the first time in a long time, thinking about her career goals, her educational goals,” Alkov said. “The idea of her not having a stable place to go, and losing all the progress that she’s made, would be devastating.”

In Los Angeles, the Homeless Services Authority said nearly 600 people have moved out of hotel rooms and into interim housing, with 62 others in permanent housing. About 3,400 people remain in hotel rooms, and while the agency has received funding from the city to extend leases at several hotels, it will keep moving people into other housing, spokesman Christopher Yee said.

Alameda County, which includes Oakland, hopes to use state money for rental subsidies and to extend leases on hotel rooms but will continue with plans to close five of nine hotels between December and February. Over 1,000 people are in hotels there.

It’s much more cost-effective to use the money “for permanent housing with leases than to continue the hotel program indefinitely,” said Kerry Abbott, director of the county’s Office of Homeless Care and Coordination. And while some people have chosen to return to a shelter, “our goal is to make sure everyone has a housing offer. Most people will take a housing offer.”

The hotels won’t go away entirely. Abbott said the county plans to operate a 98-room quarantine and isolation hotel for six months next year and keep an additional 240 hotel rooms open through 2021 for residents who require the extra care.

By year’s end, Sacramento County plans to close trailers housing 46 people either recovering from the virus or awaiting test results. But county spokeswoman Janna Haynes said shelter hotels will stay open through early next year and nobody will be forced to leave without a place to go.

Even though the program is ending, Abbott, of Alameda County, says people have benefited deeply, with some able to start addressing issues that have kept them out of stable housing.

“Many people have been inside for the first time in a decade or longer, and have stayed inside, and have benefited from a place to stay, the services and the food and even the community our providers have put in place,” she said.

Trump Campaign: Democrats Give Housing to Illegal Migrants, Penalizing Black Americans

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

NEIL MUNRO

President Donald Trump’s campaign used the issue of illegal immigration on Thursday to seek votes from working-class blacks.

A short video released by the Trump campaign Twitter account highlighted the president’s record on improving public housing in New York and other cities.

“My name is Judy Smith,” said one black woman, who continued:

I live in New York City public housing. I’m grateful for the spotlight that President Trump is putting on New York City public housing. I think it’s wrong that the Democrats put illegal immigrants before black Americans. How is it that we have people waiting on the waiting lists for New York City public housing for 10 years or more, but yet we have illegal immigrants living here? Something is wrong with that picture.

President Trump is bringing real solutions to real problems.#RNC2020 pic.twitter.com/3Q7s2ZEchE

— Team Trump (Text VOTE to 88022) (@TeamTrump) August 28, 2020

The comments were likely aimed at working-class blacks in many swing states, including several Midwest states.

“Working-class African Americans are significantly more supportive of policies that seek to: decrease the number of immigrants coming to the United States, increase the federal role in verifying the employment status of immigrants, and attempts to amend the Constitution’s citizenship provisions,” said a 2013 peer-reviewed study by Tatishe Nteta, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The study continued:

For African Americans who lost a job to an immigrant, working-class membership resulted in a 13 percentage point increase in the probability of support for an increased federal role in workplace oversight [against employment of illegal immigrants] when compared to middle-class African Americans who experienced a similar loss.

Numerous polls show that blacks — like all other groups — say they wish to welcome migrants, but strongly prefer that Americans get jobs before companies import more migrants.

Nationwide, the expanded supply of new migrants also cuts Americans’ disposable wages by inflating their housing costs. That reality is recognized by investor groups who are urging more immigration. For example, the Economic Innovation Group says, “The relationship between population growth and housing demand is clear. More people means more demand for housing, and fewer people means less demand.”

Mike Bloomberg’s pro-migration advocacy group, New American Economy, pushed the same argument:

The research shows that an increase in the absolute number of immigrants in a particular county from 2000–2010 results in corresponding economic gains—increased demand for locally produced goods and services, a corresponding inflow of U.S.-born individuals—that are reflected in the housing market.

The video also included comments from other blacks in New York:

My name is Manuel Martinez … Under the Trump administration, New York City Housing Authority has received an influx of cash that it has not seen since 1997.

My name is Claudia Perez  I’m the resident council president of Washington Houses, which is in Spanish Harlem. [New York Mayor] Bill de Blasio and the way he has dealt with public housing residents is disgraceful. President Trump administration has opened their ears and has listened … [and] is bringing real solutions to real problems.

The video ends with the claim, “More Funding: Better Housing: Promise Made: Promise Kept.”

Donald Trump's labor & immigration promises for a 2nd term are vague but useful.
They are also better for ordinary Americans than Joe Biden's business-backed, open-ended inflow of wage-cutting & rent-raising blue-collar workers & college-graduates. https://t.co/OmE4tRPf4T

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 26, 2020

 

 

Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/another_line_they_cut_into_illegals_get_free_public_housing_as_impoverished_americans_wait.html

 

By Monica Showalter

Want some perspective on why so many blue sanctuary cities have so many homeless encampments hovering around?

Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.

Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at.

The Trump administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development is finally trying to put a stop to it as 1.5 million illegals prepare to enter the U.S. this year, and one can only wonder why they didn't do it yesterday.

According to a report in the Washington Times:

The plan would scrap Clinton-era regulations that allowed illegal immigrants to sign up for assistance without having to disclose their status.

Under the new Trump rules, not only would the leaseholder using public housing have to be an eligible U.S. person, but the government would verify all applicants through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, a federal system that’s used to weed illegal immigrants out of other welfare programs.

Those already getting HUD assistance would have to go through a new verification, though it would be over a period of time and wouldn’t all come at once.

“We’ve got our own people to house and need to take care of our citizens,” an administration official told The Washington Times. “Because of past loopholes in HUD guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in free public housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens. As illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you can’t live off of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”

The Times notes that the rules are confusingly contradictary, and some illegal immigrant families are getting full rides based on just one member being born in the U.S. The pregnant caravaner who calculatingly slipped across the U.S. in San Diego late last year, only to have her baby the next day, now, along with her entire family, gets that free ride on government housing. Plus lots of cheesy news coverage about how heartwarming it all is. That's a lot cheaper than any housing she's going to find back in Tegucigalpa.

Migrants would be almost fools not to take the offering.

The problem of course is that Americans who paid into these programs, and the subset who find themselves in dire circumstances, are in fact being shut out.

The fill-the-pews Catholic archbishops may love to tout the virtues of illegal immigrants and wave signs about getting 'justice" for them, but the hard fact here is that these foreign nationals are stealing from others as they take this housing benefit under legal technicalities. That's not a good thing under anyone's theological law. But hypocrisy is comfortable ground for the entire open borders lobby as they shamelessly celebrate lawbreaking at the border, leaving the impoverished of the U.S. out cold.

The Trump administration is trying to have this outrage fixed by summer. But don't imagine it won't be without the open-borders lawsuits, the media sob stories, the leftist judges, and the scolding clerics.

 

Los Angeles County Pays Over a Billion in Welfare to Illegal Aliens Over Two Years

 

BY MASOOMA HAQ

In 2015 and 2016, Los Angeles County paid nearly $1.3 billion in welfare funds to illegal aliens and their families. That figure amounts to 25 percent of the total spent on the county’s entire needy population, according to Fox News.

The state of California is home to more illegal aliens than any other state in the country. Approximately one in five illegal aliens lives in California, Pew reported.

Approximately a quarter of California’s 4 million illegal immigrants reside in Los Angeles County. The county allows illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.

The welfare benefits data acquired by Fox News comes from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services and shows welfare and food stamp costs for the county’s entire population were $3.1 billion in 2015, $2.9 billion in 2016.

The data also shows that during the first five months of 2017, more than 60,000 families received a total of $181 million.

Over 58,000 families received a total of $602 million in benefits in 2015 and more than 64,000 families received a total of $675 million in 2016.

Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow who studies poverty and illegal immigration, told Fox the costs represent “the tip of the iceberg.”

“They get $3 in benefits for every $1 they spend,” Rector said. It can cost the government a total of $24,000 per year per family to pay for things like education, police, fire, medical, and subsidized housing.

In February of 2019, the Los Angeles city council signed a resolution making it a sanctuary city. The resolution did not provide any new legal protections to their immigrants, but instead solidified existing policies.

In October 2017, former California governor Jerry Brown signed SB 54 into law. This bill made California, in Brown’s own words, a “sanctuary state.” The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the State of California over the law. A federal judge dismissed that suit in July. SB 54 took effect on Jan. 1, 2018.

According to Center for Immigration Studies, “The new law does many things: It forbids all localities from cooperating with ICE detainer notices, it bars any law enforcement officer from participating in the popular 287(g) program, and it prevents state and local police from inquiring about individuals’ immigration status.”

Some counties in California have protested its implementation and joined the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the state.

California’s campaign to provide public services to illegal immigrants did not end with the exit of Jerry Brown. His successor, Gavin Newsom, is just as focused as Brown in funding programs for illegal residents at the expense of California taxpayers.

California’s budget earmarks millions of dollars annually to the One California program, which provides free legal assistance to all aliens, including those facing deportation, and makes California’s public universities easier for illegal-alien students to attend.

According to the Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers 2017 report, for the estimated 12.5 million illegal immigrants living in the country, the resulting cost is a $116 billion burden on the national economy and taxpayers each year, after deducting the $19 billion in taxes paid by some of those illegal immigrants.

BLOG: MOST FIGURES PUT THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS IN THE U.S. AT ABOUT 40 MILLION. WHEN THESE PEOPLE ARE HANDED AMNESTY, THEY ARE LEGALLY ENTITLED TO BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY EFFECTIVELY LEAVING MEXICO DESERTED.

 

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more than 22 million non-citizens now live in the United States.