Thursday, October 5, 2017

WHICH BURNS MORE PEOPLE ALIVE? THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS ON AMERICA'S OPEN BORDERS OR MUSLIMS OVER THERE?

JUDICIAL WATCH:


“The greatest criminal threat to the daily lives of 

American citizens are the Mexican drug cartels.”



“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist threat to America. Militant Islamists have the goal of destroying the United States. Mexican drug cartels are now accomplishing that mission – from within, every day, in virtually every community across this country.” JUDICIAL WATCH

EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: 

Another Clandestine Cartel Crematorium Discovered near Texas Border



REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — Mexican authorities continue looking into the discovery of a clandestine human incineration operation where the Gulf Cartel burned the bodies of their victims.

The discovery occurred when neighbors of the Revolucion Obrera neighborhood complained of weird smells and the suspicion that a house was being used to burn bodies. Authorities arrived at the location and found that regular home was a cartel crematorium.
Inside the house, forensic investigators with the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office discovered various corpses and body parts in stages of incineration and decomposition. Some of the human remains were only superficially incinerated, while others were mostly turned into charred ashes.
The discovery comes as two rival factions of the Gulf Cartel continue fighting for control of this city. Since early May, the factions carried out hundreds of kidnappings, drive-by attacks, and more than 190 confirmed murders; however, the real numbers could actually be much higher. 
One of the strategies used by both factions of the Gulf Cartel involves the kidnapping of lookouts, foot soldiers, and street-level dealers. As Breitbart Texas has reported, these victims are often tortured and murdered with their bodies either being dumped in shallow, clandestine grave sites or are incinerated.
Known as “cocinar” or “guiso”, the practice involves the use of 55-gallon drums that are filled with wood, old tires, and fuel to keep the flames burning while cartel members throw human remains into the fire. As Breitbart Texas reported, the practice is used by the Gulf Cartel in the rural areas around Reynosa. The most recent discovery appears to be unique in nature since it is the first time that a “cocina” was discovered inside the city.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities.  The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “A.C. Del Angel” from Tamaulipas. 

October 4, 2017

Illegal Immigration: An Economic Poison Pill


The conversation surrounding illegal immigration is deeply personal for many people -- it is emotionally-charged and politically divisive. Debates often devolve into mud-slinging contests, and arguments morph into feigned outrage, even violent protests. But from an economic perspective the question is settled science: illegal aliens cost taxpayers billions, impoverish American workers, and are completely unnecessary for America’s economic success.
To begin with, illegal immigrants are expensive. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s 2017 report, illegal immigrants, and their children, cost American taxpayers a net $116 billion annually -- roughly $7,000 per alien annually. While high, this number is not an outlier: a recent study by theHeritage Foundation found that low-skilled immigrants (including those here illegally) cost Americans trillions over the course of their lifetimes, and a study from the National Economics Editorial found that illegal immigration costs America over $140 billion annually. As it stands, illegal immigrants are a massive burden on American taxpayers.
Although border control is a federal responsibility, state and local governments shoulder two-thirds of the costs associated with illegal immigration. Unsurprisingly, this costs California more than any other state: California spends$30.3 billion on illegal aliens annually -- 17.7 percent of the state budget. Texas is next: illegal immigration costs the State of Texas $12.4 billion annually, or roughly 10 percent of the state's budget. In third place is New York, which spends $7.4 billion on illegal immigration.
Of course, the tax burden is only part of the story: illegal immigration also distorts the labor market, hurting American workers. Ever hear of the law of supply and demand? It is how the free market determines prices: when demand increases, prices increase (more people bid-up the price); conversely, when supply increases, prices decrease (less scarcity means less urgency), and vice versa. Supply and demand underpins the price of everything from gasoline, to apples, to the value of a person’s labor -- surgeons command high prices because there is a limited supply of surgeons, whereas store clerks make minimum wage because anyone can be a store clerk.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEi1RrqZim6c4orewJ-sKBV2LkpHfkaGDgzE8KfBipdJ3RuzWJcLMILPTNNM0r-ZrH2I4HdUyo9vGEC4j_WylpKqgENCuvW66OO5qardGL4CVNj5LBytghzcKVIxH6gz_lqTBfve5EheAUG1xdadw8xnkaezV4agHVFAH5A3LD9l8eis63c=According to Pew Research, illegal immigration has flooded America’s labor market with at least 12 million new workers. This has dramatically, and rapidly increased the labor supply and therefore decreased wages for American workers. Ample evidence supports this claim. For example, before Hurricane Harvey, President Trump’s crackdown on illegal aliens had already caused wages for construction workers to rise by 30 percent in Texas (half of Texas’ construction workers were illegal aliens). Likewise,businesses in Maine were forced to hire American workers after the availability of visas for temporary foreign workers were restricted. As a result, unemployment decreased, wages increased, and working conditions improved in order to attract American workers. Illegal labor has distorted America’s labor markets, and hurt American workers in the process.
Finally, America’s economy will not collapse without easy access to illegal labor.
The standard refrain can be summed up as: “we need illegals to do the jobs Americans won’t do.” This is nonsense for two reasons. First, the claim is predicated upon the false assumption that America’s labor market is saturated and requires more workers to continue growing. This could not be further from the truth: right now fewer that 150 million Americans (out of 320 million) are employed, likewise there are 23 million Americans currently looking for work -- twice the number of illegal aliens in the country. Even assuming that every illegal aliens was employed, replacing them with American workers would still leave 11 million Americans unemployed.
Second, the claim is undermined by actual labor statistics. According to theBureau of Labor Statistics, millions of Americans -- of all races -- currently work as janitors, laborers, and agricultural workers. In fact, only four percent of American agricultural workers are illegal aliens, according to a report in theNational Review, putting to bed the myth that we would starve without illegal laborers. Clearly Americans are willing to work any job, provided they are compensated at fair market value -- this is not currently happening precisely because many illegals work under-the-table.
Believe it or not, states without illegal immigrants, like Montana or Ohio, are not economic backwaters with exorbitantly high costs of living -- people in Idaho can still afford McDonald’s and Starbucks, they just pay teenagers to work the drive-thrus. In fact, the cost of living in said states is often cheaper, because their governments do not require high taxes to subsidize legions of illegal aliens.
It is also worth mentioning that America is the only developed nation, until very recently, that imports millions of illegal immigrants to work in its service sector -- other rich nations like Japan and Canada, do not. Yet despite this, the GDP per capita of Japan has actually grown faster than America’s during the same period. The same is true of Canada and Australia. If illegal immigration is such an economic bonanza, why are Americans being left behind by nations without this “advantage”?
University professors, Silicon Valley CEOs, and politicians are not losing their jobs to illegals -- ordinary folk are. Illegal immigration is a contentious issue, but it remains important to couch policy discussions in facts -- not just abstract principles.

GRAPHIC: Cartel Kidnaps, Incinerates Mexican Border Congresswoman’s Son


MONTERREY, Nuevo Leon — A group of gunmen presumably with the Gulf Cartel kidnapped and incinerated the son of a former Mexican congresswoman from this border state.

A possible debt with the cartel appears to have been the reason for the kidnapping and murder. Law enforcement sources in Nuevo Leon revealed to Breitbart Texas that the case began when police officers in the town of Santa Catarina received a call about an incinerated man left in a rural field along the highway to Saltillo.
When authorities arrived, they discovered the body of 38-year-old Victor Ibarra Martinez–who has been identified in a preliminary fashion as the son of the former congresswoman Margarita Martinez. Authorities were not able to formally identify the body since the remains were badly burned. Nuevo Leon law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart Texas that Ibarra Martinez was considered kidnapped since September 26.
The son of the Mexican politician ran a bar in the Cumbres neighborhood of Monterrey prior to his kidnapping and one of the working theories points to a possible debt to organized crime. Another another scenario indicates the motive had been a kidnapping to pressure the victim’s mother to pay $5 million pesos ($270,000 USD). Next to the victim, the cartel gunmen left a poster board with the following message: “To the ex-congresswoman Margarita Martinez, from Escobedo: you preferred to let your son die rather than spend your money, Atte. CDG”.
Law enforcement sources revealed that the body showed signs of having been tied up with his leg chewed by animals.
During Margarita Martinez’s term as mayor of Escobedo, Nuevo Leon, she was forced to use armored vehicles after receiving threats from Los Zetas. Later, several municipal employees, including those from her public safety department, were arrested for working with organized crime.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities.  The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by Tony Aranda from Nuevo Leon. 

MEXIFORNIA IS NOW LEGALLY A SANCTUARY STATE WHERE ILLEGALS ARE ABOVE THE LAW




They already drive illegally, contract illegally, and vote illegally.... so what's new?





CATASTROPHIC CRIME SURGE IN MEX-

OCCUPIED CALIFORNIA


Half the murders in Mexifornia are now by Mex gangs!

JUDICIAL WATCH:

ILLEGALS VOTING IN MASSIVE NUMBERS IN MEX-OCCUPIED CA




''California is going to be a Hispanic state," said Mario Obeldo, former head of MALDEF. "Anyone who does not like it should leave."

California Becomes ‘Sanctuary State’ with Gov. Brown Signature




California officially became a sanctuary state for illegal aliens on Thursday with the stroke of Gov. Jerry Brown’s pen.

Senate Bill 54 will go into effect in January 2018. Brown signed the bill entitled the “California Values Act” and released a signing statement. Brown explained what the bill does and does not do.
The bill prohibits local law enforcement from asking about immigration status in the course of routine interactions and prohibits them from complying with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer requests.
“The bill further directs our Attorney General to promulgate model policies for local and state health, education, labor and judiciary officials to follow when they deal with immigration matters,” wrote Brown.
“This bill does not prevent or prohibit Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Department of Homeland Security from doing their own work in any way,” said Brown in the signing letter.
According to Brown, “The bill does not prohibit sheriffs from granting immigration authorities access to California jails to conduct routine interviews, nor does it prevent cooperation in deportation proceedings for anyone in state prison or for those in local jails for any of the hundreds of serious offenses listed in the TRUST Act.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders responded to questions about the bill during Thursday’s press briefing, “I hope that California will push back on their Governor’s, I think, irresponsible decision moving forward.”
Brown signed several other immigration-related bills into law on Thursday: AB 21, AB 291, AB 299, AB 343, AB 450, AB 699, SB 29, SB 68, SB 156, and SB 257. A statement from the Governor’s office touted Brown’s signing of legislation to fund legal services for illegal aliens “seeking naturalization and deportation defense,” to provide health coverage for illegal aliens, the “California Dream Act” and a law to provide California driver licenses to illegal aliens. Brown also signed legislation giving $30 million in financial aid and legal services to “immigrant students” and those who fall under the soon-to-be-discontinued federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana 



WE CAN'T HELP OUR OWN AND YET WE HAND MILLIONS OF JOBS AND BILLIONS IN WELFARE TO BORDER JUMPERS!

JOE LEGAL v LA RAZA JOSE ILLEGAL
Here’s how it breaks down; will make you want to be an illegal!


October 4, 2017

Illegal Immigration: An Economic Poison Pill

The conversation surrounding illegal immigration is deeply personal for many people -- it is emotionally-charged and politically divisive. Debates often devolve into mud-slinging contests, and arguments morph into feigned outrage, even violent protests. But from an economic perspective the question is settled science: illegal aliens cost taxpayers billions, impoverish American workers, and are completely unnecessary for America’s economic success.
To begin with, illegal immigrants are expensive. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s 2017 report, illegal immigrants, and their children, cost American taxpayers a net $116 billion annually -- roughly $7,000 per alien annually. While high, this number is not an outlier: a recent study by theHeritage Foundation found that low-skilled immigrants (including those here illegally) cost Americans trillions over the course of their lifetimes, and a study from the National Economics Editorial found that illegal immigration costs America over $140 billion annually. As it stands, illegal immigrants are a massive burden on American taxpayers.
Although border control is a federal responsibility, state and local governments shoulder two-thirds of the costs associated with illegal immigration. Unsurprisingly, this costs California more than any other state: California spends$30.3 billion on illegal aliens annually -- 17.7 percent of the state budget. Texas is next: illegal immigration costs the State of Texas $12.4 billion annually, or roughly 10 percent of the state's budget. In third place is New York, which spends $7.4 billion on illegal immigration.
Of course, the tax burden is only part of the story: illegal immigration also distorts the labor market, hurting American workers. Ever hear of the law of supply and demand? It is how the free market determines prices: when demand increases, prices increase (more people bid-up the price); conversely, when supply increases, prices decrease (less scarcity means less urgency), and vice versa. Supply and demand underpins the price of everything from gasoline, to apples, to the value of a person’s labor -- surgeons command high prices because there is a limited supply of surgeons, whereas store clerks make minimum wage because anyone can be a store clerk.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEi1RrqZim6c4orewJ-sKBV2LkpHfkaGDgzE8KfBipdJ3RuzWJcLMILPTNNM0r-ZrH2I4HdUyo9vGEC4j_WylpKqgENCuvW66OO5qardGL4CVNj5LBytghzcKVIxH6gz_lqTBfve5EheAUG1xdadw8xnkaezV4agHVFAH5A3LD9l8eis63c=According to Pew Research, illegal immigration has flooded America’s labor market with at least 12 million new workers. This has dramatically, and rapidly increased the labor supply and therefore decreased wages for American workers. Ample evidence supports this claim. For example, before Hurricane Harvey, President Trump’s crackdown on illegal aliens had already caused wages for construction workers to rise by 30 percent in Texas (half of Texas’ construction workers were illegal aliens). Likewise,businesses in Maine were forced to hire American workers after the availability of visas for temporary foreign workers were restricted. As a result, unemployment decreased, wages increased, and working conditions improved in order to attract American workers. Illegal labor has distorted America’s labor markets, and hurt American workers in the process.
Finally, America’s economy will not collapse without easy access to illegal labor.
The standard refrain can be summed up as: “we need illegals to do the jobs Americans won’t do.” This is nonsense for two reasons. First, the claim is predicated upon the false assumption that America’s labor market is saturated and requires more workers to continue growing. This could not be further from the truth: right now fewer that 150 million Americans (out of 320 million) are employed, likewise there are 23 million Americans currently looking for work -- twice the number of illegal aliens in the country. Even assuming that every illegal aliens was employed, replacing them with American workers would still leave 11 million Americans unemployed.
Second, the claim is undermined by actual labor statistics. According to theBureau of Labor Statistics, millions of Americans -- of all races -- currently work as janitors, laborers, and agricultural workers. In fact, only four percent of American agricultural workers are illegal aliens, according to a report in theNational Review, putting to bed the myth that we would starve without illegal laborers. Clearly Americans are willing to work any job, provided they are compensated at fair market value -- this is not currently happening precisely because many illegals work under-the-table.
Believe it or not, states without illegal immigrants, like Montana or Ohio, are not economic backwaters with exorbitantly high costs of living -- people in Idaho can still afford McDonald’s and Starbucks, they just pay teenagers to work the drive-thrus. In fact, the cost of living in said states is often cheaper, because their governments do not require high taxes to subsidize legions of illegal aliens.
It is also worth mentioning that America is the only developed nation, until very recently, that imports millions of illegal immigrants to work in its service sector -- other rich nations like Japan and Canada, do not. Yet despite this, the GDP per capita of Japan has actually grown faster than America’s during the same period. The same is true of Canada and Australia. If illegal immigration is such an economic bonanza, why are Americans being left behind by nations without this “advantage”?
University professors, Silicon Valley CEOs, and politicians are not losing their jobs to illegals -- ordinary folk are. Illegal immigration is a contentious issue, but it remains important to couch policy discussions in facts -- not just abstract principles.

The Cost of Illegal Immigration to 

Taxpayers is Growing at an Unsustainable 

Pace

By Spencer Raley

The Hill, September 28, 2017

The majority of the costs to taxpayers, $89 billion (66 percent), are borne at the local and state level. This means that American taxpayers are forced to bear the costs of the federal government’s failure to secure our borders every time they pay school taxes, local tolls, sales and excise taxes. It also means that illegal migrants get a lot of benefits that they don’t pay for.

Conversely, by a 5-to-1 ratio, the taxes paid by illegal immigrants wind up in federal coffers. Despite states bearing most of the costs associated with illegal immigration, the federal government receives 15.4 billion of their tax receipts, compared to $3.5 billion received by states and localities.




U.S. Taxpayers Have Spent More Than $80 Billion on ‘Dreamers’


http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/shock-us-taxpayers-have-spent-more-than-100-billion-on-schooling-welfare-for-daca-immigrants/


ILLEGALS & WELFARE
70% OF ILLEGALS GET WELFARE!
“According to the Centers for Immigration Studies, April '11, at least 70% of Mexican illegal alien families receive some type of welfare in the US!!! cis.org”
CIS


K-12 education, WIC, Medicaid for illegal 

immigrants brought as children adds up to 

large price tag

by Margaret Menge | Updated 26 Sep 2017 at 6:31 AM
On his Fox News show last week, Tucker Carlson took on the illegal immigrants who shouted down House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi at her press conference, saying most are “benefiting in a lot of ways from U.S. society, which is the richest in the world.”
“I never hear a single person say thank you. Why not?” he asked his guest, an illegal immigrant activist.

DACA renewal deadline looms; concerns linger
WESH - Orlando, FL
On a Facebook page called DACA Dreamers Only, several young adults who are in DACA insist they’ve worked for everything they’ve gotten, and haven’t received any government handouts.
“All day long I hear ppl say 'illegals get free health insurance, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare.' Anyone's state gives out free welfare services? I know mine don't," one person wrote.
“It is common knowledge that we can’t take advantage of many of the programs such as welfare and Medicare, yet many believe that we do. We are not taking advantage of anyone and all we want is a chance,” another one wrote.
But illegal immigrants do get several kinds of welfare, much of it through their U.S.-born children, and a study by the Center for Immigration Studies showed that 62 percent of households headed by an illegal immigrant received some type of welfare. In addition, U.S. taxpayers have spent billions of dollars a year for K-12 education for illegal immigrants, about 690,000 of whom have qualified for DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The Trump administration rescinded the DACA program this month, but with a six-month wind-down period to give Congress a chance to pass a version of the DREAM Act, which would give legal status to all those eligible for DACA and other illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria, and allow them to apply to become citizens after a few years.
But how much have U.S. taxpayers spent on the DACA beneficiaries so far? How many benefits have DACA people collected while in the U.S. illegally?
The biggest benefit illegal immigrants in DACA have gotten by far is a K-12 education in American schools, with extra services provided to them for ELL (English Language Learner) programs, and other programs offered through schools that include school lunch, school breakfast, in many places, summer meals, and reduced or free after-care and summer camp. The total school-related benefits amount to the year-round care and feeding of hundreds of thousands of children whose parents are living and working in the country illegally.
The average per pupil cost of K-12 education in public schools in America is over $12,000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But more is spent, on average, on immigrant children.
According to the Federation for American Immigration Enforcement, the cost to educate ELL students who have limited English-language ability is, on average, 20 percent higher than for regular students. In some school districts, it’s as much as 50 percent higher.
ELL costs nationwide totaled 59.8 billion in 2016.
“The brunt of these costs consist of providing salaries, benefits and/or training to hundreds of thousands of LEP teachers and programs, followed by additional funding for tutoring, bilingual textbooks and material, additional administrative tasks and facility enlargement/enhancement needed to incorporate the increased number of students,” wrote the authors of the 2016 FAIR report “Elephant in the Classroom: Mass Immigration’s Impact on Public Education."
As of September 4, there are 689,800 people in DACA. They are between the ages of 15 and 36. The largest group of them — 253,000 — are between the ages of 21 and 25, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. A total of 65 percent of DACA recipients are 25 or under. The great majority are originally from Mexico.
To qualify for DACA, a person had to have resided in the U.S. continuously since 2007, and had to be enrolled in either school or a training program or have graduated from high school.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 253,100 DACA recipients are 21 to 25 years old, and would have therefore attended four years at an American high school. Another 196,500 DAC recipients are now 16-20 years old and therefore would have gone to an American school for at least eight years. An additional 2,000 DAC recipients are under 16, and would have spent at least 10 years in American schools. Multiplying the numbers by $12,000 per pupil per year brings the cost to about $31.25 billion — which is the most conservative estimate — and is likely to be underestimating the amount that U.S. taxpayers have paid for schooling for DACA recipients.
Government Benefits Collected by DACA Recipients
K-12 Education$31.25 billion
School lunches$20 billion
Welfare$30 billion
Source: LifeZette
This is not counting free school meals.
Harvard University researcher Roberto Gonzales found in a study of DACA recipients that 73 percent qualified for free lunch in high school, based on their low family income.
In 2016 the U.S. spent $18 billion on the school lunch program, double the $7.5 billion that it had spent in 2000. The dramatic increase is thought to be due largely to the increase in the number of children in U.S. schools where are either illegal immigrants or the children of illegal immigrants.
Another huge benefit the illegal aliens now in DACA have collected is in-state tuition at public universities and colleges in the 21 states that now offer in-state tuition for undocumented students.
DACA recipients might not consider that a benefit — but on average, people paying in-state tuition are only paying about a third of the total cost of their education, with the rest paid for by the state.
“If you’re only covering about a third of the tuition yourself, then somebody else is paying for the rest. Taxpayers,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for FAIR.
“It’s a huge government benefit,” he told LifeZette. “Most government benefits don’t come in the form of a check with your name on it.”
And setting aside education, a lot of illegal immigrants are receiving actual welfare, often through their children. But not always.
WIC, the food program that provides coupons for free food to women and their children, does not require a person to be a U.S. citizen to qualify.
A study by Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies showed that 62 percent of all households headed by an illegal immigrant got some kind of welfare. Almost 23 percent of them got WIC and more than 22 percent of them got food stamps (EBT) — most through their U.S.-born children.
In addition, almost all pre-natal care and births by illegal immigrants in the U.S. are covered by Medicaid, as the beneficiary is considered to be the future U.S. citizen who is to be born.
Jason Richwine and Robert Rector estimated in a 2013 report for the Heritage Foundation that in 2010, the average household headed by an illegal immigrant household received close to $25,000 in government benefits and paid, on average, about $10,00 in taxes, a deficit of about $14,000 per household.










So how much have DACA recipients collected in welfare and other benefits paid for by U.S. taxpayers? Likely more than $100 billion in benefits, including K-12 education, school lunches and actual welfare (WIC, food stamps, Medicaid, etc.).
But as government numbers are not available, it is almost impossible to know exactly how much illegal immigrants who now have DACA have benefited from being in the U.S. illegally.
“They should be looking at it, but they’re not,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, referring to the federal government.
An email query to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for information about government expenditures on DACA recipients was not answered on Monday.
(photo credit, homepage and article images: Molly Adams,

More than 52 million Americans live in 

economically distressed communities

By Sandy English
28 September 2017

A new analysis of Census data shows that the so-called economic recovery under the Obama administration was an unmitigated catastrophe for the 20 percent of the American population that live in the poorest areas of the United States and that gains of jobs and income have gone overwhelming to the top 20 percent richest areas.
The 2017 Distressed Communities Report,” published by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), analyzes the census data for 2011-2015 for people living in each of the nearly 7,500 American zip codes according to several criteria.
The EIG’s Distressed Communities Index (DCI) considers the percentage of the population without a high school diploma, the percentage of housing vacancies, the percentage of adults working, the percentage of the population in poverty, the median income ratio (the percentage of median income that a zip code has for its state), the change in employment from 2011 to 2015, and the change in the number of businesses in the same period.
The report divides the findings for zip codes into five quintiles based on these indicators, rated from worst- to best-performing: distressed, at risk, mid-tier, comfortable, and prosperous.
The results show that distressed communities—52.3 million people or 17 percent of the American population—experienced an average 6 percent drop in the number of adults working and a 6.3 percent average drop in the number of business establishments.
“Far from achieving even anemic growth from 2011 to 2015,” the report notes, “distressed communities instead experienced what amounts to a deep ongoing recession.”
Further, “fully one third of the approximately 44 million Americans receiving SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or food stamps) and other cash public assistance benefits (such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)) live in distressed communities.” The report notes that most distressed communities have seen zero net job growth since 2000.
Residents in these zip codes are five times more likely to die than those in prosperous zip codes. Deaths from cancer, pregnancy complications, suicide, and violence are even higher. “Mental and substance abuse disorders are 64 percent higher in distressed counties than prosperous ones, with major clusters in Appalachia and Native American communities where rates exceed four or five times the national average,” the report continues.
One other important and alarming fact which the report highlights is that over a third of the distressed zip codes contain so-called “brownfield” sites—areas which are polluted or contaminated in some way. Not only do these have impacts on real estate and business development, they present a whole array of health hazards to the very poorest Americans.
Distressed communities can be found all over the United States but are concentrated in the South: 43 percent of Mississippi’s zip codes are distressed, followed by Alabama, West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana. According to the report, [the South] “is home to a staggering 52 percent of all Americans living in distressed zip codes—far above its 37.5 percent share of the country’s total population.”
After this, the Southwest and Great Lakes region have the largest share. In the Northeast, most distressed communities tend to be found in urban areas and in the South, primarily in rural areas.
The biggest cities with the largest numbers of distressed zip codes are Cleveland, Ohio, Newark, New Jersey, Buffalo, New York, Detroit, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio. Mid-sized cities with the highest number of distressed zip codes include Youngstown, Ohio, Trenton, New Jersey, Camden, New Jersey, Gary, Indiana, Hartford, Connecticut and Flint, Michigan.
Urban counties with the highest number of distressed zip codes include Cook County in Illinois, with Chicago at its center, Los Angeles County in California, Harris County in Texas, with Houston at its center, and Wayne County in Michigan, encompassing Detroit. Most of these urban areas were once industrial centers and home to the industrial working class.
Distressed zip codes that have a majority of minorities living in them are more than twice as likely to be distressed as zip codes that are majority white. “In total,” the report notes, “45 percent of the country’s majority-minority zip codes are distressed and only 7 percent of them are prosperous.” At the same time there are numerous distressed communities that are almost completely white. A quarter of the total distressed population is under 18.
The report found that the economic benefits of the recovery after the 2008 recessions have gone to the top quintile of zip codes, where the wealthier layers of the population 
live, including not only the very rich but also the upper middle class.
These areas, which the DCI terms prosperous, and make up roughly 85 million Americans or 27 percent of the US population, have for the most part the economic wherewithal to finance higher levels of education, have the lowest housing vacancy, highest percentage of working adults, and have had the lion’s share of job and business expansion.
“The job growth rate in the top quintile was 2.6 times higher than nationally from 2011 to 2015, and business establishments proliferated three times faster than they did at the national level,” the report notes. “Prosperous zip codes stand worlds apart from their distressed counterparts, seemingly insulated from many of the challenges with which other communities must grapple. The poverty rate is more than 20 points lower in the average prosperous community than it is in the average distressed one.”
The report makes much less of an analysis of the other three, middle quintiles, the at risk, mid-tier, and comfortable categories, but it does note some trends that address the overall trends nation-wide. “A remarkably small proportion of places fuel national increases in jobs and businesses in today’s economy. High growth in these local economic powerhouses buoys national numbers while obscuring stagnant or declining economic activity in other parts of the country.”
One of the more telling aspects of the report is that extreme poverty in the US is presided over by both capitalist parties: Democratic and Republic politicians have equal numbers of distressed communities in their constituencies. Democrats, in fact, “represent six of the 10 most distressed congressional districts.”
Another observation from the voting data, and one of the few that looks at conditions beyond the bottom and top quintiles, is worth quoting in full:
“President Trump accumulated a 3.5 million vote lead in counties that fell into the bottom three quintiles of well-being (equivalent to 9.4 percent of all votes cast in these counties). A vast array of factors determined voting patterns in the 2016 election, but it stands that the ‘continuity’ candidate performed better in the places benefiting most from the status quo, while the ‘change’ candidate performed better in the places one would expect to find more dissatisfaction.”
Broader figures and the historical view of wealth distribution in the US—that one percent of the population control 40 percent of the wealth or the decades-long decline in the percentage of the national income that goes to the working class—is not brought out in the report but the data add to a complete picture of social conditions across the United States, the character and geographical distribution of social and economic conditions in a country of more than 320 million.
The portrait provided by the EIG report is not simply one of increasing misery and poverty for the bottom 20 percent, and not only one in which only a minority of Americans are achieving anything like “prosperity,” but of growing and explosive dissent among tens of millions.
It exposes as a bold-faced lie the claim that President Obama made at the end of his second term, that “things have never been better” in America.
















JUDICIAL WATCH:



“The greatest criminal threat to the daily lives of 

American citizens are the Mexican drug cartels.”



“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist threat to America. Militant Islamists have the goal of destroying the United States. Mexican drug cartels are now accomplishing that mission – from within, every day, in virtually every community across this country.” JUDICIAL WATCH

EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: 


Another Clandestine Cartel Crematorium Discovered near Texas Border



REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — Mexican authorities continue looking into the discovery of a clandestine human incineration operation where the Gulf Cartel burned the bodies of their victims.

The discovery occurred when neighbors of the Revolucion Obrera neighborhood complained of weird smells and the suspicion that a house was being used to burn bodies. Authorities arrived at the location and found that regular home was a cartel crematorium.
Inside the house, forensic investigators with the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office discovered various corpses and body parts in stages of incineration and decomposition. Some of the human remains were only superficially incinerated, while others were mostly turned into charred ashes.
The discovery comes as two rival factions of the Gulf Cartel continue fighting for control of this city. Since early May, the factions carried out hundreds of kidnappings, drive-by attacks, and more than 190 confirmed murders; however, the real numbers could actually be much higher. 
One of the strategies used by both factions of the Gulf Cartel involves the kidnapping of lookouts, foot soldiers, and street-level dealers. As Breitbart Texas has reported, these victims are often tortured and murdered with their bodies either being dumped in shallow, clandestine grave sites or are incinerated.
Known as “cocinar” or “guiso”, the practice involves the use of 55-gallon drums that are filled with wood, old tires, and fuel to keep the flames burning while cartel members throw human remains into the fire. As Breitbart Texas reported, the practice is used by the Gulf Cartel in the rural areas around Reynosa. The most recent discovery appears to be unique in nature since it is the first time that a “cocina” was discovered inside the city.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities.  The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “A.C. Del Angel” from Tamaulipas.