ADD TO THESE FIGURES THE STAGGERING COST OF THE MEXICAN
CRIME TIDAL WAVE! ACCORDING TO CA ATTORNEY GEN. KAMALA HARRIS, NEARLY HALF OF ALL MURDERS IN CA ARE BY MEXICAN
GANGS!
CA HAS THE LARGEST AND MOST EXPENSIVE PRISON SYSTEM. HALF
THE INMATES ARE MEXICANS.
OF THE TOP 200 MOST WANTED CRIMINALS IN LOS ANGELES, 183 ARE
MEXICANS, AND MOST OF THE REST ARE RUSSIANS.
*
WILL MEXICO
BANKRUPT AMERICA LIKE IT HAS MEXIFORNIA?
BOOK: Mexifornia: SHATTERING OF AN
AMERICAN DREAM (illegals call it their DREAM ACT)
Calif.
Hospitals Spend $1.25 Bil On Illegal Immigrants
July 05, 2011
While
the Obama Administration halts deportations to work on its secret amnesty plan, hospitals across the
U.S. are getting stuck with the exorbitant tab of medically treating illegal
immigrants and some are finally demanding compensation from the federal
government.The group that represents most of the nation’s hospitals and medical
providers recently urged President Obama to work with Congress to reimburse
them for the monstrous cost of treating illegal immigrants. Federal law
requires facilities to “treat and stabilize individuals” regardless of their
immigration status, but federal support for the services remains “virtually nonexistent,” according to a letter
submitted by the American Hospital Association to the president.This week
officials in California, the state with the largest concentration of illegal
immigrants, joined the call for federal compensation after revealing that
hospitals there spend about $1.25 billion annually to care for illegal
aliens. The figure skyrocketed from $1.05 billion in 2007, according to
California Hospital Association figures quoted in a local news report.The
problem will only get worst, according to officials, who say the $1.25 billion
for 2010 could actually be higher. They complain that federal law forces them
to treat patients in emergency rooms regardless of immigration status yet they
get stuck with the financial burden. This has forced many hospitals to curtail
services or close beds and could ultimately compromise healthcare. Nationwide,
U.S. taxpayers spend tens of billions of dollars annually to provide free
medical care for illegal immigrants with states that border Mexico taking the biggest
hit. Adding to the problem is the fact that Mexico, the country that provides
the largest amount of illegal immigrants in the U.S., has long promoted
America’s generous public health centers. It even operates a Spanish-language program (Ventanillas de Salud,
Health Windows) in about a dozen U.S. cities that refers its nationals—living
in the country illegally—to publicly funded health centers where they can get
free medical care without being turned over to immigration authorities.
*
Lloyd Billingsley
The DREAM and the Nightmare
In California, students are better off being illegal immigrants than legal.
30 March 2012
The DREAM and the Nightmare
In California, students are better off being illegal immigrants than legal.
30 March 2012
Last
year, Governor Jerry Brown signed the California DREAM Act, which makes
students in the country illegally eligible for grants and waivers to attend one
of the state’s public colleges or universities. The students must have attended
school in the state for three years, “affirm that they are in the process of
applying to legalize their immigration status,” and show both financial need
and academic achievement. Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, the Los Angeles Democrat who
authored the DREAM Act, hails the legislation as a victory for those “in the
country through no fault of their own.” Opponents such as Republican
assemblyman Tim Donnelly—a first-term legislator not given to
understatement—called Cedillo’s legislation the “California Nightmare Act,” said it is “morally wrong,” and would create “a new entitlement that is going to cause tens of thousands of people
to come here illegally from all over the world.”
Poster
children for the DREAM Act abound. Mandeep Chahal, for example, was six years
old when her parents brought her to the United States from India. Chahal wants
to be a doctor; her fellow students at Los Altos High School near Palo Alto
voted her the person “Most Likely to Save the World.” That’s a tall order, but
to deny such a person the opportunity seems unreasonable. “Many parents of
these children pay taxes for many services they cannot get,” argues Cedillo.
Cedillo’s
point implies that illegal immigrants are the only ones subject to this
dynamic. But consider: my taxes subsidize the Medi-Cal system, which provides
medical care for low-income state residents, but I couldn’t “get” health care
that way, even in the year my income was so low that my daughter qualified for
a Pell Grant. Likewise, the taxes of, say, a California welder help pay for
top-drawer pensions and benefits for state
government employees, but he can’t enjoy those benefits himself. Neither is he
entitled to get a government job merely because his taxes help pay the salaries
and benefits of workers at the Department of Motor Vehicles, CalTrans, the
California Air Resources Board, the Franchise Tax Board, California’s
Department of Education, the State Board of Equalization, the Coastal
Commission, and on and on.
The
taxes of a fast-food worker help subsidize the University of California at
Berkeley, but nothing guarantees that taxpayer admission to Berkeley. The
state’s Master Plan for Higher Education does
guarantee everyone a place in the system, whether at a community college, a
state university, or within the UC system. But no one is promised a place at
the top, and the system grants no special favors to legal immigrants. When I
came to the United States, legally, in 1977, I had been studying at the
University of Windsor, a four-year school in my hometown of Windsor, Ontario. I
wanted to continue my studies at San Diego State University but was not allowed
to transfer because I hadn’t attended high school in California. SDSU
administrators suggested I try the state’s community college system, which
seemed a step down from what I had in mind. But eventually, I put two children
through San Diego State. They’re now working in productive careers, a tax
burden to no one. No legislation rewards parents for that achievement or for
coming to the United States with proper documents.
Cedillo’s law, by contrast,
rewards those who came to California illegally. Will the law, therefore,
encourage more people to enter the state illegally, as Donnelly and other
critics assert?
(IN FACT THERE ARE MORE THAN
11 MILLION ILLEGALS IN SOUTHERN CA ALONE! NOW NEARLY 40% OF CA ARE ILLEGALS,
33% OF NEVADA AND 24% OF COLORADO. MOST
NON LA RAZA PROPAGANDA SOURCES BUT THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS AT 40 MILLION
AND BREEDING LIKE BUNNIES!)
Recall
how Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform
and Control Act of 1986, which gave amnesty to several million undocumented
immigrants. A quarter of a century later, the number of illegal immigrants
stands at 11.5 million. It seems clear
that the 1986 act didn’t discourage foreign nationals from entering the United
States without signing the guest book. One of those who obtained
citizenship under the Act was Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, who made his way
through UC Berkeley and Harvard Medical School and is now associate professor
of neurosurgery and oncology at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in
Baltimore. Quinones-Hinojosa and others who have spoken out in support of the
DREAM Act often give the impression that their cases are typical of illegal
aliens. Not exactly. Amnesty measures, however well-intentioned, usually bring
unintended consequences.
THE REALITY OF LA RAZA’S LOOTING OF CA:
Consider Ignacio Mesa Viera,
subject of a recent front-page story in the Sacramento Bee.
He came to the United States illegally in 1979 to work and help his family, as
he explained, but was convicted on a drug offense in 1995. He was deported but
returned to the United States, whereupon he was busted for another drug offense
in 2008. Before his recent deportation, the U.S. government was paying for
Viera’s kidney dialysis, a treatment that can cost more than $60,000 a year. “I
imagine that the reason they don’t want to let me stay in this country,” Viera
told the Bee, “is they don’t want to be paying for this.”
Cedillo
and his colleagues need to know that everybody’s taxes pay for services they
and their children “cannot get”—including kidney dialysis and other expensive
medical treatments courtesy of the federal government. Meantime, as a University of California report noted last year, tens of
thousands of middle-class, taxpaying legal residents are being squeezed out of
an affordable college education even as the legislature contrives to provide
scholarships for the children of illegal aliens. The lawmakers’ solution is to create yet another
entitlement in the form of a new $1 billion scholarship program for students
whose families earn less than $150,000 a year. Such is life in the Golden
State, even with a DREAM Act in place.
Lloyd
Billingsley is the author of Hollywood Party:
How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s and the former editorial
director of the Pacific Research Institute.
*
OBAMA
HAS PROMISED HIS LA RAZA “THE RACE” PARTY BASE of ILLEGALS AMNESTY, NO
E-VERIFY, NO I.D. FOR REQUIRED OF ILLEGALS VOTING… OR AT LEAST CONTINUED
NON-ENFORCEMENT!
OBAMA
HANDS MASSIVE WELFARE TO ILLEGALS, ALONG WITH OUR JOBS TO BUY THE ILLEGALS'
ILLEGAL VOTES!
Most Illegal
Immigrant Families Collect Welfare
April 05, 2011
Surprise,
surprise; Census Bureau data reveals that most U.S. families headed by illegal
immigrants use taxpayer-funded welfare programs on behalf of their
American-born anchor babies. Even before the recession, immigrant households
with children used welfare programs at consistently higher rates than natives,
according to the extensive census data collected and analyzed by a nonpartisan Washington
D.C. group dedicated to researching legal and illegal immigration in the U.S.
The results, published this month in a lengthy report,
are hardly surprising. Basically, the majority of households across the country
benefitting from publicly-funded welfare programs are headed by immigrants,
both legal and illegal. States where immigrant households with children have
the highest welfare use rates are Arizona (62%), Texas, California and New York
with 61% each and Pennsylvania(59%).The study focused on eight major welfare
programs that cost the government $517 billion the year they were examined.
They include Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for the disabled, Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), a nutritional program known as Women,
Infants and Children (WIC), food stamps, free/reduced school lunch, public
housing and health insurance for the poor (Medicaid).Food assistance and
Medicaid are the programs most commonly used by illegal immigrants, mainly on
behalf of their American-born children who get automatic citizenship. On the
other hand, legal immigrant households take advantage of every available
welfare program, according to the study, which attributes it to low education
level and resulting low income. The highest rate of welfare recipients come
from the Dominican Republic (82 %), Mexico and Guatemala (75%) and Ecuador
(70%), according to the report, which says welfare use tends to be high for
both new arrivals and established residents.
*
CA
UNDER MEX OCCUPATION OPERATES $16 BILLION IN DEFICITS, WHILE PUTTING OUT $20
BILLION IN SOCIAL SERVICES TO ILLEGALS. THESE ARE STATE COSTS. ADD WHAT THE
COUNTIES ARE FORCED TO PAY OUT AND THEN THE AMOUNT PRIVATE HOSPITALS MUST PAY
FOR MEXICO’S “FREE” MEDICAL ($1.3 BILLION YEARLY!).
WILL
MEXICO BANKRUPT AMERICA? OR JUST TAKE ALL OUR JOBS?
*
LOS ANGELES ANCHOR BABY WELFARE PROGRAM:
THESE FIGURES ON WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY ARE DATED. IT NOT EXCEEDS $600 MILLION PER YEAR!!! (source: Los Angeles County & JUDICIAL WATCH)
California
spending annually $22 billion to support illegals
Going To the Top!
By Susan Tully
I've been at the immigration reform and enforcement table for about 20 years. I've worked with activists during all those years. But last week, in Los Angeles, I had a first-time-ever experience at an activist brain storming session.
Gathered for an update on Stop AB131, the petition drive to gather signatures to force a ballot initiative as to whether the California taxpayers should fund college grants to illegal aliens, I asked the top activist leaders from Southern California how the signature drive was going.
They started updating me with the positive response from California residents who signed the petitions, but then admitted about 500,000 more signatures were still needed. When I said there was only a little more than three weeks to go to meet the January 5th deadline, suddenly their faces dropped at once, and the room went completely silent.
It was easy to read on each of their faces; the task was nearly impossible! Without big money to pay signature gatherers or a tsunami of petitions flooding in, the taxpayers of California will be forced to give grant money to illegal aliens for college, on top of the $22 billion they are spending annually in California to support the illegal alien population.
While all of our minds were racing and searching for suggestions as to how to accomplish this daunting task of gathering signatures, Lupe Moreno, long time Hispanic leader from Santa Ana, said "Can we have a prayer?" Everyone agreed to pray.
As the prayer went around the table, people expressed their sorrow for the lack of leadership in the State of California and in the nation to protect the interest of American citizens, and asked for divine guidance in helping them understand the harm their policies are inflicting on millions of innocent people in the state. In all the years I have worked on this issue, I had not witnessed the sort of sincere emotion that was expressed in that room.
(THE FASTEST GROWING POLITICAL PARTY IN AMERICA IS THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA! AND WE ARE FORCED TO FUND IT!)
You see, the politicians in California are happy to give money the state doesn't have to illegal aliens to attend college, while they cut the budgets and slash programs for public safety, right and left. The American citizen's interests and safety are simply collateral damage for seeking and appealing to the illegal alien lobby.
These activists in California have already learned what the rest of the nation is about to learn. We the people. . . are the only ones looking out for the best interest of American citizens. With few exceptions, we have no national leadership on the issue of stopping the illegal migration flow into our nation.
American citizenship or the benefits thereof have become a commodity for politicians to pander and barter away. They will grant de facto citizenship through sanctuary policies, in-state tuition, non-compliance with Secure Communities, grants for college, etc., etc., etc. President Obama and most the Republican presidential hopefuls are peddling various versions of amnesty proposals if they are elected next year.
What do these politicians want in return? They are hoping to leverage enough votes in key states to put them over the top in 2012, no matter what it costs the American people. This is futures betting: The politicians are gambling the nation's future in hopes of winning the next election.
So while the state can't afford to pay its bills or provide decent services to citizens, these California activists watch their elected leaders lavish still more benefits for people who don't have a legal right to be in the country. And while their child might have to pay out-of-state tuition to go to college in another state, thousands of illegal aliens are going to college at in-state tuition rates in California that they are subsidizing.
In addition they know that millions of other illegal alien parents are receiving food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance and dozens of other state and local benefits for their American-born children, while they have to decide which bills will be paid this month and which will have to wait.
It's not hard to understand why the activist of California need all the help they can get. Please go to www.stopAB131.com and lend a hand to our friends and family and the people of California to do what needs to be done for the good of our children first.
Going To the Top!
By Susan Tully
I've been at the immigration reform and enforcement table for about 20 years. I've worked with activists during all those years. But last week, in Los Angeles, I had a first-time-ever experience at an activist brain storming session.
Gathered for an update on Stop AB131, the petition drive to gather signatures to force a ballot initiative as to whether the California taxpayers should fund college grants to illegal aliens, I asked the top activist leaders from Southern California how the signature drive was going.
They started updating me with the positive response from California residents who signed the petitions, but then admitted about 500,000 more signatures were still needed. When I said there was only a little more than three weeks to go to meet the January 5th deadline, suddenly their faces dropped at once, and the room went completely silent.
It was easy to read on each of their faces; the task was nearly impossible! Without big money to pay signature gatherers or a tsunami of petitions flooding in, the taxpayers of California will be forced to give grant money to illegal aliens for college, on top of the $22 billion they are spending annually in California to support the illegal alien population.
While all of our minds were racing and searching for suggestions as to how to accomplish this daunting task of gathering signatures, Lupe Moreno, long time Hispanic leader from Santa Ana, said "Can we have a prayer?" Everyone agreed to pray.
As the prayer went around the table, people expressed their sorrow for the lack of leadership in the State of California and in the nation to protect the interest of American citizens, and asked for divine guidance in helping them understand the harm their policies are inflicting on millions of innocent people in the state. In all the years I have worked on this issue, I had not witnessed the sort of sincere emotion that was expressed in that room.
(THE FASTEST GROWING POLITICAL PARTY IN AMERICA IS THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA! AND WE ARE FORCED TO FUND IT!)
You see, the politicians in California are happy to give money the state doesn't have to illegal aliens to attend college, while they cut the budgets and slash programs for public safety, right and left. The American citizen's interests and safety are simply collateral damage for seeking and appealing to the illegal alien lobby.
These activists in California have already learned what the rest of the nation is about to learn. We the people. . . are the only ones looking out for the best interest of American citizens. With few exceptions, we have no national leadership on the issue of stopping the illegal migration flow into our nation.
American citizenship or the benefits thereof have become a commodity for politicians to pander and barter away. They will grant de facto citizenship through sanctuary policies, in-state tuition, non-compliance with Secure Communities, grants for college, etc., etc., etc. President Obama and most the Republican presidential hopefuls are peddling various versions of amnesty proposals if they are elected next year.
What do these politicians want in return? They are hoping to leverage enough votes in key states to put them over the top in 2012, no matter what it costs the American people. This is futures betting: The politicians are gambling the nation's future in hopes of winning the next election.
So while the state can't afford to pay its bills or provide decent services to citizens, these California activists watch their elected leaders lavish still more benefits for people who don't have a legal right to be in the country. And while their child might have to pay out-of-state tuition to go to college in another state, thousands of illegal aliens are going to college at in-state tuition rates in California that they are subsidizing.
In addition they know that millions of other illegal alien parents are receiving food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance and dozens of other state and local benefits for their American-born children, while they have to decide which bills will be paid this month and which will have to wait.
It's not hard to understand why the activist of California need all the help they can get. Please go to www.stopAB131.com and lend a hand to our friends and family and the people of California to do what needs to be done for the good of our children first.
*
LA RAZA DEMS BUILD THE "DREAM ACT" LIFE FOR LA RAZA OFF THE AMERICANS BACK! NOT ONE AMERICAN VOTED FOR ONE DREAM ACT HANDOUT!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/01/mexifornia-la-raza-supremacy-legals.html
The Great California Exodus: driving
the middle class out of the (Golden State)
The Great
California Exodus: driving the middle class out of the Golden State
Joel Kotkin: The Great California Exodus
A leading U.S. demographer and 'Truman Democrat' talks about what is driving the middle class out of the Golden State.
By ALLYSIA FINLEY
'California is God's best moment," says Joel Kotkin. "It's the best place in the world to live." Or at least it used to be.
Mr. Kotkin, one of the nation's premier demographers, left his native New York City in 1971 to enroll at the University of California, Berkeley. The state was a far-out paradise for hipsters who had grown up listening to the Mamas & the Papas' iconic "California Dreamin'" and the Beach Boys' "California Girls." But it also attracted young, ambitious people "who had a lot of dreams, wanted to build big companies." Think Intel, Apple and Hewlett-Packard.
Now, however, the Golden State's fastest-growing entity is government and its biggest product is red tape. The first thing that comes to many American minds when you mention California isn't Hollywood or tanned girls on a beach, but Greece. Many progressives in California take that as a compliment since Greeks are ostensibly happier. But as Mr. Kotkin notes, Californians are increasingly pursuing happiness elsewhere.
Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.
The scruffy-looking urban studies professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., has been studying and writing on demographic and geographic trends for 30 years. Part of California's dysfunction, he says, stems from state and local government restrictions on development. These policies have artificially limited housing supply and put a premium on real estate in coastal regions.
"Basically, if you don't own a piece of Facebook or Google and you haven't robbed a bank and don't have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak," says Mr. Kotkin.
While many middle-class families have moved inland, those regions don't have the same allure or amenities as the coast. People might as well move to Nevada or Texas, where housing and everything else is cheaper and there's no income tax.
And things will only get worse in the coming years as Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his green cadre implement their "smart growth" plans to cram the proletariat into high-density housing. "What I find reprehensible beyond belief is that the people pushing [high-density housing] themselves live in single-family homes and often drive very fancy cars, but want everyone else to live like my grandmother did in Brownsville in Brooklyn in the 1920s," Mr. Kotkin declares.
"The new regime"--his name for progressive apparatchiks who run California's government--"wants to destroy the essential reason why people move to California in order to protect their own lifestyles."
Housing is merely one front of what he calls the "progressive war on the middle class." Another is the cap-and-trade law AB32, which will raise the cost of energy and drive out manufacturing jobs without making even a dent in global carbon emissions. Then there are the renewable portfolio standards, which mandate that a third of the state's energy come from renewable sources like wind and the sun by 2020. California's electricity prices are already 50% higher than the national average.
Oh, and don't forget the $100 billion bullet train. Mr. Kotkin calls the runaway-cost train "classic California." "Where [Brown] with the state going bankrupt is even thinking about an expenditure like this is beyond comprehension. When the schools are falling apart, when the roads are falling apart, the bridges are unsafe, the state economy is in free fall. We're still doing much worse than the rest of the country, we've got this growing permanent welfare class, and high-speed rail is going to solve this?"
Mr. Kotkin describes himself as an old-fashioned Truman Democrat. In fact, he voted for Mr. Brown--who previously served as governor, secretary of state and attorney general--because he believed Mr. Brown "was interesting and thought outside the box."
But "Jerry's been a big disappointment," Mr. Kotkin says. "I've known Jerry for 35 years, and he's smart, but he just can't seem to be a paradigm breaker. And of course, it's because he really believes in this green stuff."
In the governor's dreams, green jobs will replace all of the "tangible jobs" that the state's losing in agriculture, manufacturing, warehousing and construction. But "green energy doesn't create enough energy!" Mr. Kotkin exclaims. "And it drives up the price of energy, which then drives out other things." Notwithstanding all of the subsidies the state lavishes on renewables, green jobs only make up about 2% of California's private-sector work force--no more than they do in Texas.
Of course, there are plenty of jobs to be had in energy, just not the type the new California regime wants. An estimated 25 billion barrels of oil are sitting untapped in the vast Monterey and Bakersfield shale deposits. "You see the great tragedy of California is that we have all this oil and gas, we won't use it," Mr. Kotkin says. "We have the richest farm land in the world, and we're trying to strangle it." He's referring to how water restrictions aimed at protecting the delta smelt fish are endangering Central Valley farmers.
Meanwhile, taxes are harming the private economy. According to the Tax Foundation, California has the 48th-worst business tax climate. Its income tax is steeply progressive. Millionaires pay a top rate of 10.3%, the third-highest in the country. But middle-class workers--those who earn more than $48,000--pay a top rate of 9.3%, which is higher than what millionaires pay in 47 states.
And Democrats want to raise taxes even more. Mind you, the November ballot initiative that Mr. Brown is spearheading would primarily hit those whom Democrats call "millionaires" (i.e., people who make more than $250,000 a year). Some Republicans have warned that it will cause a millionaire march out of the state, but Mr. Kotkin says that "people who are at the very high end of the food chain, they're still going to be in Napa. They're still going to be in Silicon Valley. They're still going to be in West L.A."
That said, "It's really going to hit the small business owners and the young family that's trying to accumulate enough to raise a family, maybe send their kids to private school. It'll kick them in the teeth."
A worker in Wichita might not consider those earning $250,000 a year middle class, but "if you're a guy working for a Silicon Valley company and you're married and you're thinking about having your first kid, and your family makes 250-k a year, you can't buy a closet in the Bay Area," Mr. Kotkin says. "But for 250-k a year, you can live pretty damn well in Salt Lake City. And you might be able to send your kids to public schools and own a three-bedroom, four-bath house."
According to Mr. Kotkin, these upwardly mobile families are fleeing in droves. As a result, California is turning into a two-and-a-half-class society. On top are the "entrenched incumbents" who inherited their wealth or came to California early and made their money. Then there's a shrunken middle class of public employees and, miles below, a permanent welfare class. As it stands today, about 40% of Californians don't pay any income tax and a quarter are on Medicaid.
It's "a very scary political dynamic," he says. "One day somebody's going to put on the ballot, let's take every penny over $100,000 a year, and you'll get it through because there's no real restraint. What you've done by exempting people from paying taxes is that they feel no responsibility. That's certainly a big part of it.
And the welfare recipients, he emphasizes, "aren't leaving. Why would they? They get much better benefits in California or New York than if they go to Texas. In Texas the expectation is that people work."
California used to be more like Texas--a jobs magnet. What happened? For one, says the demographer, Californians are now voting more based on social issues and less on fiscal ones than they did when Ronald Reagan was governor 40 years ago. Environmentalists are also more powerful than they used to be. And Mr. Brown facilitated the public-union takeover of the statehouse by allowing state workers to collectively bargain during his first stint as governor in 1977.
Mr. Kotkin also notes that demographic changes are playing a role. As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California's politics become even more left-wing. It's a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, "the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees."
So if California's no longer the Golden land of opportunity for middle-class dreamers, what is?
Mr. Kotkin lists four "growth corridors": the Gulf Coast, the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, and the Southeast. All of these regions have lower costs of living, lower taxes, relatively relaxed regulatory environments, and critical natural resources such as oil and natural gas.
Take Salt Lake City. "Almost all of the major tech companies have moved stuff to Salt Lake City." That includes Twitter, Adobe, eBay and Oracle.
Then there's Texas, which is on a mission to steal California's tech hegemony. Apple just announced that it's building a $304 million campus and adding 3,600 jobs in Austin. Facebook established operations there last year, and eBay plans to add 1,000 new jobs there too.
Even Hollywood is doing more of its filming on the Gulf Coast. "New Orleans is supposedly going to pass New York as the second-largest film center. They have great incentives, and New Orleans is the best bargain for urban living in the United States. It's got great food, great music, and it's inexpensive."
What about the Midwest and the Rust Belt? Can they recover from their manufacturing losses?
"What those areas have is they've got a good work ethic," Mr. Kotkin says. "There's an established skill base for industry. They're very affordable, and they've got some nice places to live. Indianapolis has become a very nice city." He concedes that such places will have a hard time eclipsing California or Texas because they're not as well endowed by nature. But as the Golden State is proving, natural endowments do not guarantee permanent prosperity.
Joel Kotkin: The Great California Exodus
A leading U.S. demographer and 'Truman Democrat' talks about what is driving the middle class out of the Golden State.
By ALLYSIA FINLEY
'California is God's best moment," says Joel Kotkin. "It's the best place in the world to live." Or at least it used to be.
Mr. Kotkin, one of the nation's premier demographers, left his native New York City in 1971 to enroll at the University of California, Berkeley. The state was a far-out paradise for hipsters who had grown up listening to the Mamas & the Papas' iconic "California Dreamin'" and the Beach Boys' "California Girls." But it also attracted young, ambitious people "who had a lot of dreams, wanted to build big companies." Think Intel, Apple and Hewlett-Packard.
Now, however, the Golden State's fastest-growing entity is government and its biggest product is red tape. The first thing that comes to many American minds when you mention California isn't Hollywood or tanned girls on a beach, but Greece. Many progressives in California take that as a compliment since Greeks are ostensibly happier. But as Mr. Kotkin notes, Californians are increasingly pursuing happiness elsewhere.
Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.
The scruffy-looking urban studies professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., has been studying and writing on demographic and geographic trends for 30 years. Part of California's dysfunction, he says, stems from state and local government restrictions on development. These policies have artificially limited housing supply and put a premium on real estate in coastal regions.
"Basically, if you don't own a piece of Facebook or Google and you haven't robbed a bank and don't have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak," says Mr. Kotkin.
While many middle-class families have moved inland, those regions don't have the same allure or amenities as the coast. People might as well move to Nevada or Texas, where housing and everything else is cheaper and there's no income tax.
And things will only get worse in the coming years as Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his green cadre implement their "smart growth" plans to cram the proletariat into high-density housing. "What I find reprehensible beyond belief is that the people pushing [high-density housing] themselves live in single-family homes and often drive very fancy cars, but want everyone else to live like my grandmother did in Brownsville in Brooklyn in the 1920s," Mr. Kotkin declares.
"The new regime"--his name for progressive apparatchiks who run California's government--"wants to destroy the essential reason why people move to California in order to protect their own lifestyles."
Housing is merely one front of what he calls the "progressive war on the middle class." Another is the cap-and-trade law AB32, which will raise the cost of energy and drive out manufacturing jobs without making even a dent in global carbon emissions. Then there are the renewable portfolio standards, which mandate that a third of the state's energy come from renewable sources like wind and the sun by 2020. California's electricity prices are already 50% higher than the national average.
Oh, and don't forget the $100 billion bullet train. Mr. Kotkin calls the runaway-cost train "classic California." "Where [Brown] with the state going bankrupt is even thinking about an expenditure like this is beyond comprehension. When the schools are falling apart, when the roads are falling apart, the bridges are unsafe, the state economy is in free fall. We're still doing much worse than the rest of the country, we've got this growing permanent welfare class, and high-speed rail is going to solve this?"
Mr. Kotkin describes himself as an old-fashioned Truman Democrat. In fact, he voted for Mr. Brown--who previously served as governor, secretary of state and attorney general--because he believed Mr. Brown "was interesting and thought outside the box."
But "Jerry's been a big disappointment," Mr. Kotkin says. "I've known Jerry for 35 years, and he's smart, but he just can't seem to be a paradigm breaker. And of course, it's because he really believes in this green stuff."
In the governor's dreams, green jobs will replace all of the "tangible jobs" that the state's losing in agriculture, manufacturing, warehousing and construction. But "green energy doesn't create enough energy!" Mr. Kotkin exclaims. "And it drives up the price of energy, which then drives out other things." Notwithstanding all of the subsidies the state lavishes on renewables, green jobs only make up about 2% of California's private-sector work force--no more than they do in Texas.
Of course, there are plenty of jobs to be had in energy, just not the type the new California regime wants. An estimated 25 billion barrels of oil are sitting untapped in the vast Monterey and Bakersfield shale deposits. "You see the great tragedy of California is that we have all this oil and gas, we won't use it," Mr. Kotkin says. "We have the richest farm land in the world, and we're trying to strangle it." He's referring to how water restrictions aimed at protecting the delta smelt fish are endangering Central Valley farmers.
Meanwhile, taxes are harming the private economy. According to the Tax Foundation, California has the 48th-worst business tax climate. Its income tax is steeply progressive. Millionaires pay a top rate of 10.3%, the third-highest in the country. But middle-class workers--those who earn more than $48,000--pay a top rate of 9.3%, which is higher than what millionaires pay in 47 states.
And Democrats want to raise taxes even more. Mind you, the November ballot initiative that Mr. Brown is spearheading would primarily hit those whom Democrats call "millionaires" (i.e., people who make more than $250,000 a year). Some Republicans have warned that it will cause a millionaire march out of the state, but Mr. Kotkin says that "people who are at the very high end of the food chain, they're still going to be in Napa. They're still going to be in Silicon Valley. They're still going to be in West L.A."
That said, "It's really going to hit the small business owners and the young family that's trying to accumulate enough to raise a family, maybe send their kids to private school. It'll kick them in the teeth."
A worker in Wichita might not consider those earning $250,000 a year middle class, but "if you're a guy working for a Silicon Valley company and you're married and you're thinking about having your first kid, and your family makes 250-k a year, you can't buy a closet in the Bay Area," Mr. Kotkin says. "But for 250-k a year, you can live pretty damn well in Salt Lake City. And you might be able to send your kids to public schools and own a three-bedroom, four-bath house."
According to Mr. Kotkin, these upwardly mobile families are fleeing in droves. As a result, California is turning into a two-and-a-half-class society. On top are the "entrenched incumbents" who inherited their wealth or came to California early and made their money. Then there's a shrunken middle class of public employees and, miles below, a permanent welfare class. As it stands today, about 40% of Californians don't pay any income tax and a quarter are on Medicaid.
It's "a very scary political dynamic," he says. "One day somebody's going to put on the ballot, let's take every penny over $100,000 a year, and you'll get it through because there's no real restraint. What you've done by exempting people from paying taxes is that they feel no responsibility. That's certainly a big part of it.
And the welfare recipients, he emphasizes, "aren't leaving. Why would they? They get much better benefits in California or New York than if they go to Texas. In Texas the expectation is that people work."
California used to be more like Texas--a jobs magnet. What happened? For one, says the demographer, Californians are now voting more based on social issues and less on fiscal ones than they did when Ronald Reagan was governor 40 years ago. Environmentalists are also more powerful than they used to be. And Mr. Brown facilitated the public-union takeover of the statehouse by allowing state workers to collectively bargain during his first stint as governor in 1977.
Mr. Kotkin also notes that demographic changes are playing a role. As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California's politics become even more left-wing. It's a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, "the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees."
So if California's no longer the Golden land of opportunity for middle-class dreamers, what is?
Mr. Kotkin lists four "growth corridors": the Gulf Coast, the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, and the Southeast. All of these regions have lower costs of living, lower taxes, relatively relaxed regulatory environments, and critical natural resources such as oil and natural gas.
Take Salt Lake City. "Almost all of the major tech companies have moved stuff to Salt Lake City." That includes Twitter, Adobe, eBay and Oracle.
Then there's Texas, which is on a mission to steal California's tech hegemony. Apple just announced that it's building a $304 million campus and adding 3,600 jobs in Austin. Facebook established operations there last year, and eBay plans to add 1,000 new jobs there too.
Even Hollywood is doing more of its filming on the Gulf Coast. "New Orleans is supposedly going to pass New York as the second-largest film center. They have great incentives, and New Orleans is the best bargain for urban living in the United States. It's got great food, great music, and it's inexpensive."
What about the Midwest and the Rust Belt? Can they recover from their manufacturing losses?
"What those areas have is they've got a good work ethic," Mr. Kotkin says. "There's an established skill base for industry. They're very affordable, and they've got some nice places to live. Indianapolis has become a very nice city." He concedes that such places will have a hard time eclipsing California or Texas because they're not as well endowed by nature. But as the Golden State is proving, natural endowments do not guarantee permanent prosperity.
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