California Republicans have fighting chance to retake governorship ... if they can stop fighting each other
California's flag, with its Russian bear, little red star, and defiant 'CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC' written above the red bar at the bottom, isn't quite the work of commies, although these days it may seem so. It was just something created by early gold-rush pioneers with scraggy beards and maybe some whisky in flask who slapped together image that made sense at the time.
It does however reveal the quirky self-governance of the state, which right now, is a one-party state run by leftists whose political practices and results seem more redolent of 1970s Mexico's PRI than those of the world's seventh-largest economy. or whatever it has since fallen to under this bunch.
Not surprisingly, this much one-party-state rule has created conditions for a correction of course. Two Republicans are running in the upcoming governor's race and they actually have growing support. One is Travis Allen, a conservative assemblyman with a sunny demeanor, and the other is John Cox, an old Reagan guy with Jack Kemp-style free market ideas, but a very non-Kempian rough demeanor. Either of them would be a significant improvement as governor.
Together, they have the support of 34% of the voters (and I am sorry to say I can't find the link to the report from the political analyst who pointed this out). That's more than the support of any of the zoo-full of Democratic candidates trying to take the governor's spot, even put together.
Which means Republicans have it in the bag, right? Nope.
Back to California Republic's democracy (and yes, it goes as a democracy because anyone can gather petitiions to put to the voters to create actual law, which is why out-there laws get passed here). A few years ago, California instituted a runoff system. Top two vote-getters get on the final ballot for races such as governor (but also Senator, which is why we could not vote for a Republican in that one). While Cox and Allen together win hands down on the governor's race, apart, they lose even the chance to try. Two leftists will go on the ballot instead, probably former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, and former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The Sacramento Bee noted theproblem here:
The California GOP is at risk of something unprecedented this year: With two serious candidates for governor competing for ashrinking share of the electorate, there may be no Republican standard-bearer on the ballot in November.The distinct possibility has unnerved party officials and political consultants who worry that it could have severe consequences for down-ballot candidates in a year when Republicans are fighting to retain control of Congress and claw back from super-minority status in the Legislature."The first thing that people see when they open their ballot is the top-of-the-ticket race, and we don't want Republicans to be discouraged," said Dave Gilliard, who represents candidates in several House districts that national Democrats have targeted as prime pickup opportunities because voters chose Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
Seriously, imagine it. We Reagan-country Republicans have been voting Republican for years, knowing full well that our votes would probably just go into the ether as Democrats gerrymander things, and now we won't even have a chance to be counted as Republicans if two leftists make the top of the final ticket.
What Cox and Allen need to do is united behind one candidate, probably Cox, because he seems to have stronger support. He comes off as rough and aggressive, and perhaps Republicans are reading that as 'fighter.'
Last summer at the American Freedom Alliance's excellent conference on the state, titled 'From Gold to Dust,' I got to hear Cox and Allen speak. Allen came off as optimistic and sunny in his bid to run for California governor, and spoke of the well of support he had gathered, which was precisely what California voters might need to hear about to get motivated to vote. Cox spoke similarly but invoked a far sharper Reagan-Republican, Jack Kempian well of knowledge, conveyed more energy, and frustratingly, harshly attacked his opponent. It didn't seem to make sense to attack Allen at the time because the problem for those of us just paying attention was that the left was the problem and worse still, it had us under water. But it looks as though the method to his madness was that the GOP really did need to unite, and Cox seemed to be the stronger and more fighterly of the candidates, even if he came off slightly dinosaurish and using the templates of the past.
Bottom line here is that the Republicans do need to unite because the signs are out there that a red renaissance is possible. The local voters are upset about the illegals and polls show it, Just the fact that none of the Democratic candidates are bringing the matter up pretty well suggests they know it's an electric third rail that with their stances would cost them votes. Then there is the issue of the cities and counties rising up in rebellion at California's sanctuary state law. Again, another sign of a red revolution.
Now there's support for a Republican governor, an amazing thing, given the mess Arnold Schwarzenegger made durng his time as California governor, turning state almost seemingly permanently blue.
Democrats as I have noted here, have been very good at edging out unviable candidates from their primary lineups, that's what they do well as a well-oiled political machine with bad ideological ideas. Republicans, not so much. So now, we have this death-match, where the two candidates will only succeed in taking each other down. And here's another problem: The top Democrats in this race, Villaraigosa and Newsom, are coming off as friendly moderates. One, both have records of confronting leftist local lunatics and their mad schemes during their times as mayors, usually over fiscal discipline issues. That is going to help them. Two, both are genuinely nice people, and I say that from firsthand experience: Seriously, Tony Villar is a nice guy - he's always been extremely polite and respectful to me even though he knew I was a hard conservative editorialist who's written harsh things about him. If he's nice to me, you can bet he's nice to a lot of people. Newsom is very similar. This isn't to suggest that I would vote for either, only that they are capable of winning over wide swaths of the public, including dispirited Republicans, simply because they are not jerks.
That means the Republicans better get their act together, because either of these candidates will be a challenge. Victory is possible this time. But the Republicans have got to unite instead of take each other down like a couple of swamp things drowning in the deep.
California Goes Rogue
By Mark Krikorian
How the Golden State defies immigration law
‘I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach.” That was President Andrew Jackson’s response to South Carolina’s intention to prevent enforcement of a federal law within the state. Despite his admiration for Jackson, President Trump hasn’t yet threatened to start hanging California politicians. But that state’s “sanctuary” policies protecting illegal immigrants and obstructing enforcement of federal immigration law echo the long-ago fight over nullification and states’ rights.
The passage of three sanctuary bills last year by the state legislature in Sacramento is now the subject of a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice. It was the culmination of a decades-long process, as mass immigration transformed California’s politics from reddish purple to deep blue.
The first measure that could be described as a sanctuary provision was the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Order 40, enacted in 1979, which prohibited officers from arresting a person for the federal crime of illegal entry and, unless he was arrested for another crime, from even inquiring as to legal status. But that order merely instructed police to abstain from involving themselves in immigration enforcement. In the 1980s, a more proactive conception of illegal-alien sanctuary spread, as Central Americans fleeing war in their homelands snuck into the U.S. but did not qualify for asylum.
At first, only some pro-Sandinista churches postured as sanctuaries for these illegal aliens. But in late 1985, Mayor (now Senator) Dianne Feinstein signed a resolution declaring San Francisco a “city of refuge” for illegals. She ordered that “City Departments shall not discriminate against Salvadorans and Guatemalan refugees because of their immigration status, and shall not jeopardize the safety and welfare of law-abiding refugees by acting in a way that may cause their deportation.” The declaration was followed four years later by a city law formally prohibiting city employees from assisting federal immigration authorities.
Even measures such as this, which were adopted by other big cities over the years, were of largely local interest until a new system, developed at the end of the Bush administration and completed in 2013, went online. The fingerprints of every person booked by police throughout the country have long been sent to the FBI. But under the new system, dubbed Secure Communities, those fingerprints now also go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). So while in the past the feds didn’t necessarily know whether cops in San Francisco arrested an illegal alien for, say, a drug offense, now they do. Every time.
There will still be some illegal aliens who elude detection if ICE has no record of them because they’ve never interacted with the immigration authorities. But if police arrest anyone who’s in the Department of Homeland Security database — who was deported previously, got turned down for asylum, was picked up by the Border Patrol, overstayed a visa, or appeared before an immigration judge — ICE learns about it.
There are only so many hours in the day, so not every arrested illegal alien can be taken into custody. But if ICE wants the alien because, for instance, he has previously been deported or is a fugitive from a deportation order, it notifies the local authorities to hold him, as they would for any other state or federal law-enforcement agency, up to 48 hours after they would otherwise have released him, so that agents can collect and deport him.
With this new fingerprint-matching system in place, instead of receiving the occasional hold notice, or “detainer,” cities and counties with large numbers of immigrants started hearing from ICE constantly. In some states where large-scale immigration was a recent development, the political culture had not yet shifted to the left to such a degree that this new level of cooperation with ICE met objections. But immigration, legal and illegal, has transformed California’s population and political culture so profoundly that the pushback there was inevitable.
Of California’s 40 million people, about 15 million are in immigrant households (immigrants and their children under 18), accounting for more than 37 percent of the state’s population. Not only is that by far the highest percentage in any state, but the increase in people in immigrant households in California from 1970 to today — just the increase — is nearly twice as large as today’s total population in immigrant households in Texas, the state in second place.
Survey after survey shows that immigrants are disproportionately big-government liberals. As one overview of the data concluded, “solid and persistent majorities of Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their children share the policy preferences of the modern American Left.” As a result, as University of Maryland political scientist James Gimpel has demonstrated, in the nation’s largest counties (which are where immigrants tend to settle), “Republicans have lost 0.58 percentage points in presidential elections for every one percentage-point increase in the size of the local immigrant population.”
The results in California are plain to see. There hasn’t been a Republican in statewide or federal office since Arnold Schwarzenegger (and he was only nominally Republican). Only 13 of 40 state senators and 25 of 80 state assemblymen are Republicans. This has enabled leftist maximalism on a wide range of issues, including immigration.
Even in this environment, the effects of Secure Communities in identifying deportable aliens were blunted for a time by the Obama administration’s lax policies. Despite the anti-borders Left and its kabuki protests that Obama was the deporter in chief, his administration effectively exempted most of the resident illegal population from immigration law. Even though ICE continued to be notified of arrested illegals, administration policy was to ignore all but the worst cases. In the words of John Sandweg, who headed ICE during part of Obama’s term, “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero — it’s just highly unlikely to happen.”
Then came Donald Trump.
It wasn’t just that Trump pledged tough immigration enforcement in his raw and often coarse manner. It wasn’t just that Hillary Clinton, who said publicly that she would not deport anyone who hadn’t first been convicted of a violent felony, won California by 30 points. It was the whiplash from Obama to Trump that supercharged the sanctuary push in the state legislature. Democratic politicians, their activist allies, and illegal aliens themselves had gotten used to Obama’s arrangements and had come to think that was the way things were going to be from now on. Trump’s reversal of Obama’s laxity fell on them like a bucket of ice water.
The state took a variety of steps in response to the return of immigration enforcement. Lawmakers appropriated $45 million for a fund to help illegals fight deportation. And the state senate appointed an illegal alien to a state education commission.
But most consequential were three laws designed to limit the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration law. The best known is Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act, the most sweeping measure of its kind in the nation, making the entire state a sanctuary for illegal aliens. It prohibits state and local law enforcement from complying with ICE detainers in most cases. It prohibits notification to ICE about an alien unless in the past 15 years he’s been convicted of one of a list of the most serious crimes. It prohibits state and local authorities from allowing ICE to use space in their jails and from providing ICE any non-public information on suspects. It restricts state and local participation in any multi-agency task force that includes ICE.
The second of the three measures attempts to impose state oversight on any facility ICE uses to detain deportable aliens. And the final law seeks to shield illegal-alien workers from detection by, among other things, prohibiting private employers from voluntarily allowing ICE agents into any non-public area of their business.
The Trump administration has pushed back. The first step was to threaten to cut off certain Justice Department grants to sanctuary jurisdictions nationwide; longstanding doctrine limiting the withholding of federal funds to coerce states makes a broader cutoff unlikely. A few jurisdictions outside California have changed their sanctuary policies in response to the funding threat, but the administration’s initiative is tied up in litigation and, in any case, is unlikely to hurt sufficiently to persuade hard cases such as California to mend their ways.
That’s why in March the Justice Department filed suit against California to strike down all or parts of the three sanctuary laws, claiming that they were preempted by federal law and that they violate the supremacy clause of the Constitution. (Interestingly, the complaint cites, among other things, the Supreme Court ruling overturning parts of Arizona’s SB 1070, which was intended to assist in enforcement of federal immigration laws, on the same grounds of federal preemption.) But it will be a long time before the case reaches the Supreme Court; the defendants no doubt hope to drag things out long enough that President Maxine Waters or Dennis Kucinich can reverse the policy.
But change may come sooner than that. The legislature’s overreach has sparked a rebellion of communities seeking sanctuary from the sanctuary law. The small Orange County city of Los Alamitos got things rolling by voting to opt out of SB 54 and join the federal lawsuit. A growing list of other cities has joined the suit as well, as have Orange and San Diego counties. More cities and counties are likely to join them.
In an attempt to harness this political energy, two people whose children were killed by illegal aliens have launched a ballot initiative to repeal the sanctuary laws. Don Rosenberg, one of the parents, told the Washington Times , “This will be David versus Goliath. We’re clearly David on this side. But there are millions of Davids here.”
While the steady stream of preventable crimes by illegal immigrants protected by sanctuary policies keeps the issue before the public, the very extremism of the Left may supply the five smooth stones this army of Davids will need to slay the sanctuary Goliath. In February, for example, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf warned illegals that an ICE raid was planned for the Bay Area. Such brazen acts delegitimize sanctuary policies in the eyes even of moderate voters.
South Carolina eventually repealed its Ordinance of Nullification. The state’s subsequent acts of resistance against legitimate federal authority also failed. It’s too early to tell whether California will succeed where South Carolina did not.
California’s Rich May Leave to Avoid $12 Billion in SALT Tax Hit
President Donald Trump’s new tax cut, which limiting state and local
tax deductions, will cost rich Californians $12 billion more in federal taxes,
with $9 billion coming from those making $1 million or more.
Is California Governor
Jerry Brown Mentally Ill?
Meanwhile,
leftists are ignoring glaring reasons to question the sanity of California's
governor, Jerry Brown. The entire country is talking about the
collapse of California due to decades of insane liberal
policies. And what is Governor Brown's response? He
implemented hundreds more destructive liberal rules, regulations, and giveaways
to illegals. An article listing the top ten
stupidest new California laws includes "Single-User Restrooms,"
"Controlling Cow Flatulence," "Legalizing Child
Prostitution," and "Felons Voting."
By Wayne Allyn Root
Zuckerberg’s
Investor Group Pushes for Pre-Election Amnesty
http://www.breitbart.com/2018-elections/2018/04/19/zuckerberg-lobby-joins-pre-election-amnesty-push/
Silicon Valley investors, including Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg, are
joining the Koch network’s push for a quick amnesty that would also keep the
issue of cheap-labor immigration out of the November election.
Steinle’s
murderer, Jose Zarate and been deported 5xs!
California Goes Rogue
By Mark Krikorian
National Review
Online, April 26, 2018
How the Golden State defies immigration law
‘I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach.” That was President Andrew Jackson’s response to South Carolina’s intention to prevent enforcement of a federal law within the state. Despite his admiration for Jackson, President Trump hasn’t yet threatened to start hanging California politicians. But that state’s “sanctuary” policies protecting illegal immigrants and obstructing enforcement of federal immigration law echo the long-ago fight over nullification and states’ rights.
The passage of three sanctuary bills last year by the state legislature in Sacramento is now the subject of a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice. It was the culmination of a decades-long process, as mass immigration transformed California’s politics from reddish purple to deep blue.
The first measure that could be described as a sanctuary provision was the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Order 40, enacted in 1979, which prohibited officers from arresting a person for the federal crime of illegal entry and, unless he was arrested for another crime, from even inquiring as to legal status. But that order merely instructed police to abstain from involving themselves in immigration enforcement. In the 1980s, a more proactive conception of illegal-alien sanctuary spread, as Central Americans fleeing war in their homelands snuck into the U.S. but did not qualify for asylum.
At first, only some pro-Sandinista churches postured as sanctuaries for these illegal aliens. But in late 1985, Mayor (now Senator) Dianne Feinstein signed a resolution declaring San Francisco a “city of refuge” for illegals. She ordered that “City Departments shall not discriminate against Salvadorans and Guatemalan refugees because of their immigration status, and shall not jeopardize the safety and welfare of law-abiding refugees by acting in a way that may cause their deportation.” The declaration was followed four years later by a city law formally prohibiting city employees from assisting federal immigration authorities.
Even measures such as this, which were adopted by other big cities over the years, were of largely local interest until a new system, developed at the end of the Bush administration and completed in 2013, went online. The fingerprints of every person booked by police throughout the country have long been sent to the FBI. But under the new system, dubbed Secure Communities, those fingerprints now also go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). So while in the past the feds didn’t necessarily know whether cops in San Francisco arrested an illegal alien for, say, a drug offense, now they do. Every time.
There will still be some illegal aliens who elude detection if ICE has no record of them because they’ve never interacted with the immigration authorities. But if police arrest anyone who’s in the Department of Homeland Security database — who was deported previously, got turned down for asylum, was picked up by the Border Patrol, overstayed a visa, or appeared before an immigration judge — ICE learns about it.
There are only so many hours in the day, so not every arrested illegal alien can be taken into custody. But if ICE wants the alien because, for instance, he has previously been deported or is a fugitive from a deportation order, it notifies the local authorities to hold him, as they would for any other state or federal law-enforcement agency, up to 48 hours after they would otherwise have released him, so that agents can collect and deport him.
With this new fingerprint-matching system in place, instead of receiving the occasional hold notice, or “detainer,” cities and counties with large numbers of immigrants started hearing from ICE constantly. In some states where large-scale immigration was a recent development, the political culture had not yet shifted to the left to such a degree that this new level of cooperation with ICE met objections. But immigration, legal and illegal, has transformed California’s population and political culture so profoundly that the pushback there was inevitable.
Of California’s 40 million people, about 15 million are in immigrant households (immigrants and their children under 18), accounting for more than 37 percent of the state’s population. Not only is that by far the highest percentage in any state, but the increase in people in immigrant households in California from 1970 to today — just the increase — is nearly twice as large as today’s total population in immigrant households in Texas, the state in second place.
Survey after survey shows that immigrants are disproportionately big-government liberals. As one overview of the data concluded, “solid and persistent majorities of Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their children share the policy preferences of the modern American Left.” As a result, as University of Maryland political scientist James Gimpel has demonstrated, in the nation’s largest counties (which are where immigrants tend to settle), “Republicans have lost 0.58 percentage points in presidential elections for every one percentage-point increase in the size of the local immigrant population.”
The results in California are plain to see. There hasn’t been a Republican in statewide or federal office since Arnold Schwarzenegger (and he was only nominally Republican). Only 13 of 40 state senators and 25 of 80 state assemblymen are Republicans. This has enabled leftist maximalism on a wide range of issues, including immigration.
Even in this environment, the effects of Secure Communities in identifying deportable aliens were blunted for a time by the Obama administration’s lax policies. Despite the anti-borders Left and its kabuki protests that Obama was the deporter in chief, his administration effectively exempted most of the resident illegal population from immigration law. Even though ICE continued to be notified of arrested illegals, administration policy was to ignore all but the worst cases. In the words of John Sandweg, who headed ICE during part of Obama’s term, “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero — it’s just highly unlikely to happen.”
Then came Donald Trump.
It wasn’t just that Trump pledged tough immigration enforcement in his raw and often coarse manner. It wasn’t just that Hillary Clinton, who said publicly that she would not deport anyone who hadn’t first been convicted of a violent felony, won California by 30 points. It was the whiplash from Obama to Trump that supercharged the sanctuary push in the state legislature. Democratic politicians, their activist allies, and illegal aliens themselves had gotten used to Obama’s arrangements and had come to think that was the way things were going to be from now on. Trump’s reversal of Obama’s laxity fell on them like a bucket of ice water.
The state took a variety of steps in response to the return of immigration enforcement. Lawmakers appropriated $45 million for a fund to help illegals fight deportation. And the state senate appointed an illegal alien to a state education commission.
But most consequential were three laws designed to limit the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration law. The best known is Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act, the most sweeping measure of its kind in the nation, making the entire state a sanctuary for illegal aliens. It prohibits state and local law enforcement from complying with ICE detainers in most cases. It prohibits notification to ICE about an alien unless in the past 15 years he’s been convicted of one of a list of the most serious crimes. It prohibits state and local authorities from allowing ICE to use space in their jails and from providing ICE any non-public information on suspects. It restricts state and local participation in any multi-agency task force that includes ICE.
The second of the three measures attempts to impose state oversight on any facility ICE uses to detain deportable aliens. And the final law seeks to shield illegal-alien workers from detection by, among other things, prohibiting private employers from voluntarily allowing ICE agents into any non-public area of their business.
The Trump administration has pushed back. The first step was to threaten to cut off certain Justice Department grants to sanctuary jurisdictions nationwide; longstanding doctrine limiting the withholding of federal funds to coerce states makes a broader cutoff unlikely. A few jurisdictions outside California have changed their sanctuary policies in response to the funding threat, but the administration’s initiative is tied up in litigation and, in any case, is unlikely to hurt sufficiently to persuade hard cases such as California to mend their ways.
That’s why in March the Justice Department filed suit against California to strike down all or parts of the three sanctuary laws, claiming that they were preempted by federal law and that they violate the supremacy clause of the Constitution. (Interestingly, the complaint cites, among other things, the Supreme Court ruling overturning parts of Arizona’s SB 1070, which was intended to assist in enforcement of federal immigration laws, on the same grounds of federal preemption.) But it will be a long time before the case reaches the Supreme Court; the defendants no doubt hope to drag things out long enough that President Maxine Waters or Dennis Kucinich can reverse the policy.
But change may come sooner than that. The legislature’s overreach has sparked a rebellion of communities seeking sanctuary from the sanctuary law. The small Orange County city of Los Alamitos got things rolling by voting to opt out of SB 54 and join the federal lawsuit. A growing list of other cities has joined the suit as well, as have Orange and San Diego counties. More cities and counties are likely to join them.
In an attempt to harness this political energy, two people whose children were killed by illegal aliens have launched a ballot initiative to repeal the sanctuary laws. Don Rosenberg, one of the parents, told the Washington Times , “This will be David versus Goliath. We’re clearly David on this side. But there are millions of Davids here.”
While the steady stream of preventable crimes by illegal immigrants protected by sanctuary policies keeps the issue before the public, the very extremism of the Left may supply the five smooth stones this army of Davids will need to slay the sanctuary Goliath. In February, for example, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf warned illegals that an ICE raid was planned for the Bay Area. Such brazen acts delegitimize sanctuary policies in the eyes even of moderate voters.
South Carolina eventually repealed its Ordinance of Nullification. The state’s subsequent acts of resistance against legitimate federal authority also failed. It’s too early to tell whether California will succeed where South Carolina did not.
Coming soon: Mass exodus from NY, CA due to high taxes
Arthur Laffer and Steven
Moore have penned an interesting article in the Wall Street
Journal that gauges the impact of the cap on state tax deductions in
high tax states.
Their conclusions should
frighten high-tax, big-spending liberals in blue states across the country.
In
the years to come, millions of people, thousands of businesses, and tens of
billions of dollars of net income will flee high-tax blue states for low-tax
red states. This migration has been happening for
years. But the Trump tax bill's cap on the deduction for state and
local taxes, or SALT, will accelerate the pace. The losers will be
most of the Northeast, along with California. The winners are likely
to be states like Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.
For
years blue states have exported a third or more of their tax burden to
residents of other states. In places like California, where the top
income-tax rate exceeds 13%, that tax could be deducted on a federal
return. Now that deduction for state and local taxes will be capped
at $10,000 per family.
Consider
what this means if you're a high-income earner in Silicon Valley or
Hollywood. The top tax rate that you actually pay just jumped from
about 8.5% to 13%. Similar figures hold if you live in Manhattan,
once New York City's income tax is factored in. If you earn $10
million or more, your taxes might increase a whopping 50%.
About
90% of taxpayers are unaffected by the change. But high earners in
places with hefty income taxes – not just California and New York, but also
Minnesota and New Jersey – will bear more of the true cost of their state
government. Also in big trouble are Connecticut and Illinois, where
the overall state and local tax burden (especially property taxes) is so
onerous that high-income residents will feel the burn now that they can't
deduct these costs on their federal returns. On the other side are
nine states – including Florida, Nevada, Texas and Washington – that impose no
tax at all on earned income.
The authors put their finger
on the real meaning of SALT: it prevents the rest of us from subsidizing the
blue state model. By making rich taxpayers in blue states bear the
true cost of all those goodies given out by their state governments, those
living in low-tax red states will no longer subsidize the irresponsible
spending habits in blue states.
Now
that the SALT subsidy is gone, how bad will it get for high-tax blue
states? Very bad. We estimate, based on the historical
relationship between tax rates and migration patterns, that both California and
New York will lose on net about 800,000 residents over the next three years –
roughly twice the number that left from 2014-16. Our calculations
suggest that Connecticut, New Jersey and Minnesota combined will hemorrhage
another roughly 500,000 people in the same period.
Red
states ought to brace themselves: The Yankees are coming, and they are bringing
their money with them. Meanwhile, the exodus could puncture large
and unexpected holes in blue-state budgets. Lawmakers in Hartford
and Trenton have gotten a small taste of this in recent years as billionaire
financiers have flown the coop and relocated to Florida. As the
migration speeds up, it will raise real-estate values in low-tax states and
hurt them in high-tax states.
We are the most mobile
society in the history of industrialized civilization. The fact that we
are a federal republic with fifty individual state governments makes choosing a
place to live more than just a preference for climate or
scenery. High taxes generally bring with them a higher cost of
living, urban decay, crime, and a lack of economic opportunity.
So Americans are voting with
their feet. And in this competition, it's no contest.
California’s Rich May Leave to Avoid $12 Billion in SALT Tax Hit
President Donald Trump’s new tax cut, which limiting state and local
tax deductions, will cost rich Californians $12 billion more in federal taxes,
with $9 billion coming from those making $1 million or more.
Recently,
the California Department of Finance reported good news for Sacramento
politicians: thanks largely to having the top state income tax bracket in the
nation at 13.3 percent, California collected about $3.3 billion more in state
taxes than forecast in the first three months of 2018, with 67 percent coming
from higher than expected personal income taxes.
But
the California Franchise Tax Board also warned that
the Trump tax cut, which
limits state and local tax (SALT) deductions to a maximum of $10,000, will cost
same high income earners $12 billion a year more in federal tax.
The
bigger tax bite could also be strong motivation for California’s highest income
earners to vote with their feet and leave California to save big bucks in a low
tax state.
Maine
is second to California with a top income tax rate of 10.15 percent, followed
by Oregon’s 9.9 percent. But Nevada, Washington, Texas and Florida have no
state income tax.
Only
about 61,000 households, or 0.4 percent, of the 16 million households in
California reported an income of more than $1 million in 2014. But the
CalMatters blog commented
that of the 40 million residents in California, the top 150,000 that are in
the top 1 percent of income earners pay about half of all state income
taxes.
California
taxpayers may already be voting with their feet, according to an analysis by
CNBC. The business news team found that from 2016 to 2017, California saw a net
138,000 people leave the state, while Texas grew by 79,000 people, Arizona
added 63,000 residents, and Nevada saw a 38,000 gain.
The
Republican Governors’ Association was quick to observe: “California
Democrats imposing massive tax hikes on middle-class families, driving up their
state’s cost of living, residents are packing their bags and leaving for states
run by GOP governors like Arizona, Nevada, and Texas with lower tax burdens and
friendlier business climates.”
Adios, Sanctuary La Raza Welfare State of California
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
BLOG:
MANY DISPUTE CALIFORNIA’S EXPENDITURES FOR THE LA RAZA WELFARE STATE IN
MEXIFORNIA JUST AS THEY DISPUTE THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS. APPROXIMATELY HALF THE
POPULATION OF CA IS NOW MEXICAN AND BREEDING ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE LIKE
BUNNIES. THE $22 BILLION IS STATE EXPENDITURE ONLY. COUNTIES PAY OUT MORE WITH
LOS ANGELES COUNTY LEADING AT OVER A BILLION DOLLARS PAID OUT YEARLY TO
MEXICO’S ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS. NOW MULTIPLY THAT BY THE NUMBER OF COUNTIES IN CA
AND YOU START TO GET AN IDEA OF THE STAGGERING WELFARE STATE MEXICO AND THE
DEMOCRAT PARTY HAVE ERECTED SANS ANY LEGALS VOTES. ADD TO THIS THE FREE
ENTERPRISE HOSPITAL AND CLINIC COST FOR LA RAZA’S “FREE” MEDICAL WHICH IS
ESTIMATED TO BE ABOUT $1.5 BILLION PER YEAR.
Liberals
claim they more than make that up with taxes paid, but that’s simply not true.
It’s not even close. FAIR estimates illegal aliens in California contribute
only $1.21 billion in tax revenue, which means they cost California $20.6 billion,
or at least $1,800 per household.
Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
"If the racist "Sensenbrenner
Legislation" passes the US Senate, there is no doubt that a massive civil
disobedience movement will emerge. Eventually labor union power can merge with the
immigrant civil rights and "Immigrant Sanctuary" movements
to enable us to either form a new political party or to do heavy duty reforming
of the existing Democratic Party. The next and final steps would follow and
that is to elect our own governors of all the states within Aztlan."
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.
If Immigration Creates
Wealth, Why Is California America's Poverty Capital?
California used to be home to America's
largest and most affluent middle class. Today, it is
America's poverty capital. What went
wrong? In a word: immigration. According to the
U.S. Census Bureau'...: The
Golden State is peddling fool's gold lately.
California used to be
home to America's largest and most affluent middle class. Today, it
is America's poverty capital. What went wrong? In a
word: immigration.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Official Poverty Measure, California's poverty rate hovers
around 15 percent. But this figure is misleading: the Census Bureau
measures poverty relative to a uniform national standard, which doesn't account
for differences in living costs between states – the cost of taxes, housing,
and health care are higher in California than in Oklahoma, for
example. Accounting for these differences reveals that California's real poverty rate is
20.6 percent –
the highest in America, and nearly twice the national average of 12.7
percent.
Likewise, income inequality in California is
the second-highest in America, behind only New York. In fact, if California
were an independent country, it would be the 17th most unequal country on
Earth, nestled comfortably between Honduras and Guatemala. Mexico is
slightly more egalitarian. California is far more unequal than the
"social democracies" it emulates: Canada is the 111th most
unequal nation, while Norway is far down the list at number 153 (out of 176
countries). In terms of income inequality, California has more in
common with banana republics than other "social democracies."
More Government, More Poverty
High taxes, excessive regulations,
and a lavish welfare state – these are the standard explanations for
California's poverty epidemic. They have some merit. For
example, California has both the highest personal income tax rate and the
highest sales tax in America, according to Politifact.
Not only are California's taxes high,
but successive "progressive" governments have swamped the state in a
sea of red tape. Onerous regulations cripple small businesses and
retard economic growth. Kerry Jackson, a fellow with the Pacific
Research Institute, gives a few specific examples of how excessive government
regulation hurts California's poor. He writes in a recent op-ed for
the Los Angeles Times:
Extensive environmental regulations
aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions make energy more expensive, also
hurting the poor. By some estimates, California energy costs are as
much as 50% higher than the national average. Jonathan A. Lesser of
Continental Economics ... found that "in 2012, nearly 1 million California
households faced ... energy expenditures exceeding 10% of household
income."
Some government regulation is
necessary and desirable, but most of California's is not. There is
virtue in governing with a "light touch."
Finally, California's welfare state
is, perhaps paradoxically, a source of poverty in the
state. The Orange Country Register reports that California's
social safety net is comparable in scale to those found in Europe:
In California a mother
with two children under the age of 5 who participates in these major welfare
programs – Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (food stamps), housing assistance, home energy assistance,
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children – would
receive a benefits package worth $30,828 per year.
... [Similar] benefits
in Europe ranged from $38,588 per year in Denmark to just $1,112 in
Romania. The California benefits package is higher than in
well-known welfare states as France ($17,324), Germany ($23,257) and even
Sweden ($22,111).
Although welfare states ideally help the poor, reality
is messy. There are three main problems with the welfare
state. First, it incentivizes poverty by rewardingthe poor with government
handouts that are often far more valuable than a job. This can be
ameliorated to some degree by imposing work requirements on welfare recipients,
but in practice, such requirements are rarely imposed. Second,
welfare states are expensive. This means
higher taxes and therefore slower economic growth and fewer job opportunities
for everyone – including the poor.
Finally, welfare states are magnets
for the poor. Whether through domestic migration or foreign
immigration, poor people flock to places with generous welfare
states. This is logical from the immigrant's perspective, but it
makes little sense from the taxpayer's. This fact is why socialism
and open borders arefundamentally incompatible.
Why Big Government?
Since 1960, California's population exploded from 15.9 to 39 million
people. The growth was almost entirely due to immigration – many
people came from other states, but the majority came from
abroad. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that 10 million immigrants
currently reside in California. This works out to 26 percent of the
state's population.
BLOG: COME TO
MEXIFORNIA! HALF OF LOS ANGELES 15 MILLION ARE ILLEGALS!
This figure includes
2.4 million illegal aliens, although a recent study from Yale University suggests that the
true number of aliens is at least double that. Modifying the initial figure implies that
nearly one in three Californians is an immigrant. This
is not to disparage California's immigrant population, but it is madness to
deny that such a large influx of people has changed California's society and
economy.
Importantly, immigrants vote
Democrat by a ratio higher than 2:1, according to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies. In California,
immigration has increased the pool of likely Democrat voters by nearly 5
million people, compared to just 2.4 million additional likely Republican
voters. Not only does this almost guarantee Democratic victories,
but it also shifts California's political midpoint to the left. This
means that to remain competitive in elections, the Republicans must abandon or soften many
conservative positions so as to cater to the center.
California became a
Democratic stronghold not because Californians became socialists, but because
millions of socialists moved there. Immigration turned California
blue, and immigration is ultimately to blame for California's high poverty
level.
March 23, 2018
Is California Governor
Jerry Brown Mentally Ill?
Leftists are relentlessly
selling their bogus narrative that Trump is insane. Here are samples
of leftists' headlines: "Lawmakers Met With Psychiatrist About Trump's
Mental Health," "President Trump's Mental State An 'Enormous Present
Danger,'" "The Awkward Debate Around Trump's Mental Fitness,"
"The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists Assess."
So what has Trump done to
convince leftists that he must be crazy? Unlike Republicans, Trump
fearlessly confronts fake news media, calling them out when they
lie. Unlike Obama's punish-evil-America-first presidency, Trump has
America's best interest at heart. Unlike leftists seeking to
dissolve our borders, Trump plans to build a wall to protect our people and our
economy. Insanely, leftists cheered when Obama allowed
Ebola into America, claiming it was racist and unfair for Americans not to be
subjected to the disease. Unlike Obama, Hillary, Democrats, and fake
news media's war on Christianity (forcing a 100-year-old order of Catholic
nuns to fund contraception and forcing Christian businesses to service
same-sex ceremonies), Trump vows to defend religious liberty.
So I guess, according to
leftists' perverse way of thinking, that Trump must be crazy, along with the 63
million Americans who voted for him.
Governor Brown signed a
new law making California a sanctuary state, doubling down on his bizarre quest
to undermine American citizens. In essence, Brown gave federal law,
President Trump, and legal California residents his middle
finger. Numerous California families have suffered devastating
losses of family members killed by illegals with long felony records who have
been deported several times and welcomed back with open arms by
Brown. One mom whose son was killed by an illegal with two DUIs and
two felonies said Brown should be arrested for treason. Isn't it
reasonable to question Brown's sanity?
Liberal governing has
transformed beautiful California into the poverty
capital of America with the worst quality of life. Crazy
taxes,
crazy high cost of living, and crazy overreaching
regulations have crushed the middle class, forcing the middle class to
exit the Sunshine State. All that is left in California are illegals
feeding at the breast of the state, rapidly growing massive
homeless tent cities, and the mega-rich. Would a sane governor take pride
in causing this to happen to his state?
Headline: "San
Francisco Is A Literal [s-]hole, Public Defecation Map Reveals." Can
you imagine homeless people pooping on the streets being so pervasive that an
interactive map was created to help citizens avoid the piles of
poop? Human feces carries infectious
diseases. What
kind of irrational logic deems posing such health risks to constituents an act
of compassion? Is Governor Brown crazy?
Insanely, three fourths
of California's taxpayer dollars – more than $30 billion – is spent on
illegal aliens. Meanwhile, despite the highest taxes in the nation,
California is $1.3 trillion in debt – unemployment is at a staggering
11%. California's wacko giveaways to illegals include in-state
tuition, amounting to $25 million of financial aid. Nearly a million
illegals have California driver's licenses. L.A. County has 144% more registered voters than there are
residents of legal voting age. Clearly, illegals are illegally
voting.
Get this, folks:
Americans are spending almost a billion dollars a year on auto insurance for
illegals. Brown is gifting illegals billions in welfare and housing
while his constituents cannot find a place to live.
Ten years ago, a buddy of
mine excitedly moved his family from Maryland to California to accept the
highest-paying job of his career. Despite his lucrative salary, he
was forced to move back east due to the outrageously high cost of living. My
buddy said if he were an illegal, practically everything would be
free. His story inspired me to write and record a Beach Boys-style
song titled "Can't Afford the Sunshine."
Once again, I ask you,
folks: would a rational governor do what Brown is doing to his
constituents? Is Governor Jerry Brown mentally ill?
Laura Ingraham: ‘California Is Almost Acting Like It’s a Separate Country’
Earlier this
week on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham slammed
California and its leaders for its sanctuary city policies and its open
defiance of the federal government seeking to uphold existing immigration law.
Transcript as follows:
INGRAHAM: The radical takeover of California, that’s the focus
of tonight’s ANGLE.
I still remember the first time I traveled to Southern
California, it was the summer of 1984 and Los Angeles is hosting the Olympics.
Reagan was president and Republican George (inaudible) was the state’s
governor. Now, he was a moderate conservative, a law and order kind of guy.
The whole place, to me at least, felt like a Beach Boy song, the
weather, the people, the lifestyle was all, you know, beautiful stuff. But
today, the sunshine not with understanding, California is a very different
place. It’s now a place where state officials actively thwart federal
authorities trying to stop violent criminal offenders.
Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, went so far as to issue a warning
to immigrant communities that an ICE raid was forthcoming. Well, the president
sounded off on that today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What the mayor of
Oakland did the other day was a disgrace where they had close to 1,000 people
ready to be gotten, ready to be taken off the streets. Many of them, they say
85 percent of them were criminals and had criminal records, and the mayor of
Oakland went out and she went out and warned them all, scatter.
So instead of taking in a thousand, they took in a fraction of
that. She said get out of here. She is telling that to criminals and it’s
certainly something that we are looking at with respect to her individually.
What she did is incredible and very dangerous from the standpoint of ICE and
Border Patrol, very dangerous. She really made law enforcement much more
dangerous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Now, for her part, Mayor Schaaf is deflecting that
criticism and she is going straight to the r-word.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR LIBBY SCHAAF, OAKLAND: The attorney general is trying to
distract the American people from a failed immigration system by painting a
racist, broad brush of our immigrant community as dangerous criminals.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Now who is mentioning skin color or ethnicity or where
people are from. That’s just pathetic. California, the way you see this playing
out, is almost acting like it’s a separate country all together, not a separate
state. Well, I think Attorney General Jeff Sessions was 100 percent correct
yesterday when he labeled state officials radical extremists for perpetuating
the lawlessness.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JFFF SESSIONS, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Federal law determines
immigration policy. State of California is not entitled to block that activity.
Somebody needs to stand up and say no, you’ve gone too far. You cannot do this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: But California AG Javier Becerra shot back. He argued
that the state sanctuary laws are constitutional adding our folks are very busy
doing public safety around the state. We don’t have to do the immigration work
for immigration officials. Excuse me. Public safety?
Well, that’s what we are supposed to believe when your own
Oakland mayor warned the illegal aliens ahead of time when she got wind of the
ice raid that was about to happen? Today, the White House released a partial
list of the crimes committed set free despite the lawful request of immigration
authorities. Check it out.
There is a Guatemalan citizen who was arrested last august for
injuring his spouse. While the Sonoma County jail provided ice with a whopping
24 minutes in the before it released the alien. A few weeks later, the Santa
Rosa Police Department in California arrested that same individual as a suspect
in the murder of his girlfriend.
Another Guatemalan, an alleged gang member was arrested by the
San Francisco police more than 10 times between 2013 and 2017 for charges
including rape, domestic battery, second degree robbery, assault, vehicle
theft, and on each occasion, what happened was ice requested notification of
his release so then ice could take him into custody.
Each time ICE’s request was declined by California. And then a
citizen of Mexico was arrested by Santa Clara County for drug possession on
January 11th, 2017. He was later convicted of child cruelty, felony possession
purchase of controlled substances and, of course, possession of marijuana. He
was released from local custody.
The list goes on and on. And we could literally do an entire
show just on the myriad ways that California sanctuary policies have endangered
the lives of innocent, law abiding citizens. And, of course, law enforcement
and, of course, legal immigrants.
California AG Becerra and Governor Moon Beam Brown are living in
alternative universe. They deny that they even have sanctuary laws in place.
Yet, here’s what their new statutes stipulate. In violation of federal
statutes, local officials cannot tell the feds when illegals in custody are
about to be released.
And they are banned under this law from transferring criminal
immigrants to federal officials. Now, we are talking about undocumented
criminals here. And the state of California is also so concerned about the
welfare of the illegal immigrants, that they imposed a state-run inspection of
immigrants detained by the federal government.
So, basically, they are trying to regulate federal immigration
detention and, perhaps most outrageously, one California law now requires
private business owners to — they can’t voluntarily cooperate with ICE agents.
Now, in fact, they have to notify illegal employees before any workplace
inspections take place or those private business owners face heavy fines.
Now, you cannot get more radical and rapidly open borders than
that. Though California officials are triggered over the sessions’ lawsuit, it
may be, may be the beginning of restoring some sanity to this state.
Republicans, let’s face it, largely have been shut out of
California politics now for years u and we are a very long way from the days
when Pete Wilson was governor back in the 1990s. Permissive liberal social
welfare policies and the embrace of illegal immigrants have plunged the state
into a spiral of homelessness.
It’s now at a crisis point declared by San Francisco and Los
Angeles and even Orange County. We reported on this before is grappling with
homeless encampments and the crime and health issues that come along with them.
This is not what the people of California want. How do I know that?
Well, a UC Berkeley poll just found that 74 percent of
Californians wanted to end sanctuary cities including 55 percent of Hispanics,
and 73 percent of Democrats. Now, if that’s not a cry for sanity or a cry for
help, I do not know what is.
Sessions and the Trump administration are throwing the golden
state a lifeline with these sanctuary lawsuits because if they’re successful,
perhaps the good vibrations, political and otherwise, can roll through
California once again. And that’s THE ANGLE.
California. Sh*thole.
By Wayne Allyn Root
Gateway Pundit,
California
is Exhibit A. It’s filled with immigrants. Ten million to be exact. Many of
them illegal. Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country?
Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California- where nearly one
out of five residents is poor. That’s according to the Census Bureau.
While California accounts for 12% of America’s population, it accounts for one third of America’s welfare checks. California leads the country in food stamp use. California has more people on welfare than most countries around the world.
. . .
If immigration is so great for our country and illegal aliens “contribute a net positive” to society…how do you explain what’s happening in California?
I haven’t even gotten to the taxes. The income taxes, business taxes, sales taxes and gas taxes are all the highest in the nation. Why do you think that is? To pay the enormous costs of illegal immigration. To pay for the education costs, healthcare costs, police, courts, lawyers, prisons, and hundreds of different welfare programs for millions of California’s illegal aliens and struggling legal immigrants too.
But you haven’t heard the worst yet. California- the immigrant capital of America- is filthy. Perhaps the filthiest place on earth. Filthier than the slums of Calcutta. Filthier than the poorest slums of Brazil and Africa.
NBC journalists recently conducted a survey of San Francisco. They found piles of smelly garbage on the streets, used needles, gallons of urine and piles of feces- all near famous tourist attractions, fancy hotels, government buildings and children’s playgrounds.
While California accounts for 12% of America’s population, it accounts for one third of America’s welfare checks. California leads the country in food stamp use. California has more people on welfare than most countries around the world.
. . .
If immigration is so great for our country and illegal aliens “contribute a net positive” to society…how do you explain what’s happening in California?
I haven’t even gotten to the taxes. The income taxes, business taxes, sales taxes and gas taxes are all the highest in the nation. Why do you think that is? To pay the enormous costs of illegal immigration. To pay for the education costs, healthcare costs, police, courts, lawyers, prisons, and hundreds of different welfare programs for millions of California’s illegal aliens and struggling legal immigrants too.
But you haven’t heard the worst yet. California- the immigrant capital of America- is filthy. Perhaps the filthiest place on earth. Filthier than the slums of Calcutta. Filthier than the poorest slums of Brazil and Africa.
NBC journalists recently conducted a survey of San Francisco. They found piles of smelly garbage on the streets, used needles, gallons of urine and piles of feces- all near famous tourist attractions, fancy hotels, government buildings and children’s playgrounds.
Zuckerberg’s
Investor Group Pushes for Pre-Election Amnesty
http://www.breitbart.com/2018-elections/2018/04/19/zuckerberg-lobby-joins-pre-election-amnesty-push/
Getty/Saul Loeb
Silicon Valley investors, including Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg, are
joining the Koch network’s push for a quick amnesty that would also keep the
issue of cheap-labor immigration out of the November election.
But
the push by Zuckerberg’s FWD.us investor group quickly hit a roadblock Thursday when Majority Leader
Rep. Kevin McCarthy denounced the “discharge petition” amnesty plan, which is
fronted by California GOP Rep. Jeff Denham.
“I
don’t believe discharge petitions are the way to legislate,” McCarthy said
to The Hill. “I don’t believe members in the [GOP] conference believe that,
either.”
McCarthy’s
opposition — and the growing pressure for a quick exit by retiring House
Speaker Paul Ryan — opens up room for GOP legislators to make the November
election all about rising wages vs. cheap-labor immigration. Numerous
polls show that more than 70 percent of Americans want
companies to hire Americans before importing more cheap-labor immigrants, and
numerous business groups say they need more imported labor as wages begin to
rise.
But
a quick Zuckerberg amnesty would prevent President Donald Trump or GOP leaders
from running on an immigration reform platform in November — and would
also deflate economic pressure that is delivering higher wages before the
2018 election. “It would be the dumbest thing possible for
Republicans to do coming election which they already think they may lose — they
would for sure lose with this,” said Rosemary Jenks, the director of
governmental affairs at NumbersUSA. She continued:
I
don’t think they will [shift to immigration, but] … it would be a surefire way
to keep the majority. People in Washington talk about [election-winning] ’70
percent issues’ … [and] this is it, this is the 70 percent issue.
Backed by Zuckerberg’s
FWD.us, Denham is collecting GOP signatures for a resolution that would urge a
so-called “Queen of the Hill” debate on the House floor. In that very rare
form of debate, legislators could debate several alternative
immigration bills, and the most popular proposal would be sent to the Senate
Those rules would almost
guarantee a big win for Zuckerberg and his allies because nearly all Democrats
and many business-first Republicans — including many who are retiring this year
— will support a no-strings “Clean Dream Act” amnesty for at least 1.8 million
younger ‘DACA’ illegals.
Denham
claims to have 50 GOP legislators backing his resolution, but those
GOP members have not signed the needed “discharge petition” which allows 218
cooperating legislators to force the debate despite opposition from the Speaker
of the House. Many of Denham’s supporters don’t recognize the impact of
Denham’s plan, said Jenks, and “when they find out, they are
not going to be happy and will certainly not sign the discharge.”’
Denham’s office did not
respond to questions from Breitbart News.
McCarthy’s quick opposition
to Denham’s push is critical because he is the likely replacement for
exiting House Speaker Paul Ryan. Without McCarthy’s support for the
immigration push, few of the GOP legislators on Denham’s resolution will
sign the needed discharge petition — even though many will use their support
for the resolution to ingratiate themselves with their donors and pro-amnesty
voters.
Denham’s
resolution is getting expensive media support from the various donors who are
working under cover of the Koch advocacy network, which has at least 550
business donors.
On April 17. Daniel Garza, the president of the Koch-funded LIBRE
Initiative, told Business Insider:
The American people deserve a
government that is effective and efficient in solving our nation’s problems.
Congress and the White House
have spent a lot of time talking about DACA, but today our elected officials
have yet to approve a permanent legislative solution. The Dreamers are
among our best and brightest. They are students, workers, and men and
women risking their lives in the Armed Forces. Washington must come
together and approve a bipartisan solution that provides certainty for
Dreamers and security improvements along our border.
Zuckerberg’s
FWD.us advocacy group is also providing direct support for the Denham
push, and it touted Wednesday’s press conference where Denham was flanked by a
few other cheap-labor Republicans — Texas Rep. Will Hurd, Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman and
California Rep. David Valadao – as
well as the Democratic head of the Hispanic ethnic lobby, new Mexico
Democrat Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
NOW and NEW: 50
Republicans join over 180 Republicans for the “Queen of the Hill” Rule to try
to force a debate/series of votes for Dreamers.
Zuckerberg’s FWD.us group was
founded a by a slew of information-technology investors who gain from cheap white-collar labor.
The
group has endorsed multiple bills and amnesties which would raise
the supply of white-collar labor and also block Donald
Trump’s populist “Buy American, Hire American” policies, all of which will tend
to raise Americans’ blue-collar wages and white-collar salaries. In February,
FWD.us joined with many other business groups to help the Senate block Trump’s
popular immigration reforms.
Since
Trump’s election, the FWD.us group has used the relatively few college-grad ‘DACA’ illegals to
shift the political focus from Trump’s very popular wages-for-Americans pitch.
That diversionary tactic has worked, partly because most establishment
reporters prefer to focus on the concerns of foreign migrants rather than the
concerns of fellow Americans.
However,
Republicans are facing a tough 2018 election and may decide to pick
up the issue up the popular issue of immigration and wages, especially if
McCarthy replacesHouse Speaker Paul Ryan before the election.
That
shift to wages and immigration is made likelier by the spreading benefits of
Trump’s anti-amnesty policies which is delivering higher wages and overtime to many employees,
including black bakers in Chicago, Latino restaurant workers in Monterey,
Calif., disabled people in Missouri, high-schoolers, the construction industry, Superbowl workers, the garment industry, and workers
employed at small businesses.
Higher
wages are strongly resisted by business groups,
partly because they threaten to lower investors’ returns and
stock values on
Wall Street, including the founders of FWD.us.
Zuckerberg’s
group has funded polls which tout the supposed
popularity of immigration. These “Nation of Immigrants” polls pressure Americans to
say they welcome migrants.
In
contrast, polls which ask people to pick a priority, or to decide which
options are fair, show that voters
in the polling booth put a high priority on helping their families and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a
high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy.
Also,
a series of 2018 polls and surveys show that GOP voters believe the immigration
issue is far more important than celebrating tax
cuts.
Four million Americans turn
18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market. But the
federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually accepting
roughly 1.1 million new legal immigrants, by providing work-permits to
roughly 3 million resident foreigners, and by doing little to block the
employment of roughly 8 million illegal immigrants.
The
Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration
shifts wealth from young people towards older people, it floods the market with foreign labor, spikes profits and Wall Street
values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled
labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives
up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least
5 million marginalized Americans and their families,
including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.
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