With a super majority in both houses in Sacramento, Newsom will be able to do anything he wants and the state's surviving Republicans won't be able to prevent California from becoming the Venezuela of North America - with open borders.
S.F IS HOME TO THE MOST CORRUPT AMNESTY DEMS IN THE COUNTRY INCLUDING FEINSTEIN, PELOSI, NEWSOM AND HITLERMALA HARRIS.
San Francisco: Now so bad, it'll make you cry
Twentieth-century San Francisco, Herb Caen's beloved Baghdad by the Bay, has ceased to exist. It has been replaced by a city where the sidewalks around Market Street are, in places, caked in feces, urine, and vomit. The stink as you emerge from the BART batters you like frozen sleet, shocking and overwhelming. The hordes of homeless, sprawled in doorways and sleeping on the sidewalks, are a bitterly eclectic mixture of the mentally deranged; burnt out druggies; dead-eyed hippies; con artists; pickpockets; and hundreds of simply lost, forgotten souls.
I had occasion to visit downtown San Francisco this afternoon, the first time in over seven years, though I reside only thirty miles away in the East Bay suburbs. During my working life, I have commuted to San Francisco as a bushy-tailed junior executive in the '70s, as a small business-owner in the early '80s, and as a corporate executive in the '90s. Thankfully, "Old" San Francisco really was a wonderful place to work, eat, and play.
As I walked the three blocks back to the BART, I was panhandled four times, plus two clumsy pickpocket attempts. I didn't see a single cop in a car or on foot. What could they do?
What finally broke my heart were the kids and women, also lying in the streets, drugged, shell-shocked, begging for food. I found an ATM, took out some cash, and bought twenty five-dollar "Arch Cards" from McDonald's and passed them out. The salty tears flowed gently down my face and onto my lips. My soul, my humanity was abused, sickened, and disgusted.
Today I observed a city that carefully and deliberately schemed to become an open sewer. This is far beyond simple incompetence. The magnitude and pervasiveness of this horror remains indescribable. No rational, thinking person, or board, or mayor could allow this societal abomination to continue unabated in a first-world country.
Yet it does.
San Francisco willingly hosts a malignant cancer that has metastasized and destroyed all aspects of a civilized, compassionate society.
While skyscrapers still fill the skyline, and tankers and giant container ships still prowl the bay, the City-by-the-Bay soul has begun its death rattle.
The Hollowing-Out of the California Dream
For minorities in the Golden State, opportunity and upward mobility are hard to come by.
July 26, 2018
California
Economy, finance, and budgets
Its political leaders and a credulous national media present California as the “woke” state, creating an economically just, post-racial reality. Yet in terms of opportunity, California is evolving into something more like apartheid South Africa or the pre-civil rights South. California simply does not measure up in delivering educational attainment, income growth, homeownership, and social mobility for traditionally disadvantaged minorities. All this bodes ill for a state already three-fifths non-white and trending further in that direction in the years ahead. In the past decade, the state has added 1.8 million Latinos, who will account by 2060 for almost half the state’s population. The black population has plateaued, while the number of white Californians is down some 700,000 over the past decade.
Minorities and immigrants have brought much entrepreneurial energy and a powerful work ethic to California. Yet, to a remarkable extent, their efforts have reaped only meager returns during California’s recent boom. California, suggests gubernatorial candidate and environmental activist Michael Shellenberger, is not “the most progressive state” but “the most racist” one. Chapman University reports that 28 percent of California’s blacks are impoverished, compared with 22 percent nationally. Fully one-third of California Latinos—now the state’s largest ethnic group—live in poverty, compared with 21 percent outside the state. Half of Latino households earn under $50,000 annually, which, in a high-cost state, means that they barely make enough to make ends meet. Over two-thirds of non-citizen Latinos, the group most loudly defended by the state’s progressive leadership, live at or below the poverty line, according to a recent United Way study.
This stagnation reflects the reality of the most recent California “miracle.” Historically, economic growth extended throughout the state, and produced many high-paying blue-collar jobs. In contrast, the post-2010 boom has been inordinately dependent on the high valuations of a handful of tech firms and coastal real estate speculation. Relatively few blacks or Latinos participate at the upper reaches of the tech economy—and a recent study suggests that their percentages in that sector are declining—and generally lack the family resources to compete in the real estate market. Instead, many are stuck with rents they can’t afford.
Even as incomes soared in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco after 2010, wages for African-Americans and Latinos in the Bay Area declined. The shift of employment from industrial to software industries, as well as the extraordinary presence—as much as 40 percent—of noncitizens in the tech industry, has meant fewer opportunities for assemblers and other blue-collar workers. Many nonwhite Americans labor in the service sector as security guards or janitors, making about $25,000 annually, working for contractors who offer no job security and only limited benefits. In high-priced Silicon Valley, these are essentially poverty wages. Some workers live in their cars, converted garages, or even on the streets, largely ignored by California’s famously enlightened oligarchs.
CityLab has described the Bay Area as “a region of segregated innovation.” TheGiving Code, which reports on charitable trends among the ultra-rich, found that between 2006 and 2013, 93 percent of all private foundation-giving in Silicon Valley went to causes outside of Silicon Valley. Better to be a whale, or a distressed child in Africa or Central America, than a worker living in his car outside Google headquarters.
For generations, California’s racial minorities, like their Caucasian counterparts, embraced the notion of an American Dream that included owning a house. Unlike kids from wealthy families—primarily white—who can afford elite educations and can sometimes purchase houses with parental help, Latinos and blacks, usually without much in the way of family resources, are increasingly priced out of the market. In California, Hispanics and blacks face housing prices that are approximately twice the national average, relative to income. Unsurprisingly, African-American and Hispanic homeownership rates have dropped considerably more than those of Asians and whites—four times the rate in the rest of the country. California’s white homeownership rate remains above 62 percent, but just 42 percent of all Latino households, and only 33 percent of all black households, own their own homes.
In contrast, African-Americans do far better, in terms of income and homeownership, in places like Dallas-Fort Worth or greater Houston than in socially enlightened locales such as Los Angeles or San Francisco. Houston and Dallas boast black homeownership rates of 40 to 50 percent; in deep blue but much costlier Los Angeles and New York, the rate is about 10 percentage points lower.
Rather than achieving upward class mobility, many minorities in California have fallen down the class ladder. This can be seen in California’s overcrowding rate, the nation’s second-worst. Of the 331 zip codes making up the top 1 percent of overcrowded zip codes in the U.S., 134 are found in Southern California, primarily in greater Los Angeles and San Diego, mostly concentrated around heavily Latino areas such as Pico-Union, East Los Angeles, and Santa Ana, in Orange County.
The lack of affordable housing and the disappearance of upward mobility could create a toxic racial environment for California. By the 2030s, large swaths of the state, particularly along the coast, could evolve into a geriatric belt, with an affluent, older boomer population served by a largely minority service-worker class. As white and Asian boomers age, California increasingly will have to depend on children from mainly poorer families with fewer educational resources, living in crowded and even unsanitary conditions, often far from their place of employment, to work for low wages.
Historically, education has been the lever that gives minorities and the poor access to opportunity. But in California, a state that often identifies itself as “smart,” the educational system is deeply flawed, especially for minority populations. Once a model of educational success, California now ranks 36th in the country in educational performance, according to a 2018 Education Weekreport. The state does have a strong sector of “gold and silver” public schools, mostly located in wealthy suburban locations such as Orange County, the interior East Bay, and across the San Francisco Peninsula. But the performance of schools in heavily minority, working-class areas is scandalously poor. The state’s powerful teachers’ union and the Democratic legislature have added $31.2 billion since 2013 in new school funding, but California’s poor students ranked 49th on National Assessment of Education Progress tests. In Silicon Valley, half of local public school students, and barely one in five blacks or Latinos, are proficient in basic math.
Clearly, California’s progressive ideology and spending priorities are not serving minority students well. High-poverty schools are so poorly run that disruptions from students and administrative interruptions, according to a UCLA study, account for 30 minutes a day of class time. Teachers in these schools often promote “progressive values,” spending much of their time, according to one writer, “discussing community problems and societal inequities.” Other priorities include transgender and other gender-relatededucation, from which parents, in some school districts, cannot opt out. This ideological instruction is doing little for minority youngsters. San Francisco, which the nonprofit journalism site Calmatters refers to as “a progressive enclave and beacon for technological innovation,” also had “the lowest black student achievement of any county in California,” as well as the highest gap between black and white scores.
Ultimately, any reversal of this pattern must come from minorities demanding a restoration of opportunity. Some now see the linkage between state policy and impoverishment, which has led some 200 civil rights leaders to sue the state Air Resources Board, the group that enforces the Greenhouse Gas edicts of the state bureaucracy. But perhaps the ultimate wakeup call will come from a slowing economy. After an extraordinary period of growth post-recession, California’s economy is clearly weakening, as companies and people move elsewhere. Texas and other states are now experiencing faster GDP growth than the Golden State. Perhaps more telling, the latest BEA numbers suggest that California—which created barely 800 jobs last month—is now experiencing far lower income growth than the national average, and scarcely half that of Texas, Colorado, Michigan, Arizona, Missouri, or Florida. Out-migration of skilled and younger workers, reacting to long commutes and high prices, seems to be accelerating, both in Southern California and the Bay Area.
One has to wonder what will happen when the California economy, burdened by regulations, high costs, and taxes, slows even more. Generous welfare benefits, made possible by taxing the rich, could be threatened; conversely, the Left might get traction by pushing to raise taxes even higher. The pain will be relatively minor in Palo Alto, Malibu, or Marin County, the habitations of the ruling gentry rich—but for those Californians who have already been left behind, and for a diminishing middle class, it might be just beginning.
CALIFORNIA DMV GIVES ILLEGAL VOTERS A SURGE
“New” and “underrepresented” voters could spell victory for leftist Democrats in November.
September 12, 2018
Last week California’s Department of Motor Vehicles sent 23,000 “erroneous” voter registrations to the office of Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who maintains the list of registered voters. The DMV blamed it technical errors and said none of the erroneous registrations involved undocumented immigrants. Padilla was “extremely disappointed and deeply frustrated” and the DMV assured him it wouldn’t happen again.
Legitimate voters have good reason to believe Padilla was not disappointed but delighted. The odds are strong that illegals make up most if not all of the newly registered voters. The registrations of illegals will be happening again, in greater numbers, as the November election approaches.
The day after the 23,000 registrations made news, it emerged that from late April to early August, the DMV registered 182,000 “new voters,” with the largest number, 112,000, choosing “no party.” Neither the DMV nor Padilla would explain the numbers but the trend is evident and all by design.
Under a 2015 voter registration law, the DMV automatically registered to vote those who obtain or renew a California driver’s license. As Padilla told the Los Angeles Times, “We’ve built the protocols and the firewalls to not register people that aren’t eligible. We’re going to keep those firewalls in place.” The Democrats’ Secretary of State did not explain how the firewalls worked and if any ineligibles had managed to vote.
After the 2016 election in which Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, Padilla refused to release any voter information to a federal probe that he claimed “has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally.” California’s participation, Padilla said in a statement, “would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the president.”
Governor Jerry Brown, who three times ran for president, calls Californians “the citizens of the fifth largest economy in the world,” and the sanctuary state law protects even violent criminal illegals. The ruling Democrats protect illegals while promising them “free” health care and other benefits. In return, the illegals vote for Democrats.
“Palestinian-Mexican American” candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar, is the grandson of Black September terrorist Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar, who masterminded the murder and mutilation of 11 Israelis at the Munich Olympics in 1972. The Democrat, 29, is depending on “underrepresented voters,” to unseat Rep. Duncan Hunter in San Diego.
Legitimate voters have good reason to consider “underrepresented” as code for “ineligible” or “illegal.” For their part, legal citizens and immigrants might wonder how the Munichian candidate’s father managed to enter the United States and what the family was doing in Gaza for several years. Ammar isn’t telling and establishment journalists look the other way.
Senate boss Kevin de León, whose name on his birth certificate voter rolls is Kevin Alexander Leon, claims his father is a Chinese cook born in Guatemala. The author of the state’s sanctuary law spent time on both sides of the border and “identifies strongly with Mexican culture.” The story defies belief but as with Najjar the establishment media mounted no investigation.
Back in 1996 in Orange County, 442 illegals voted for Loretta Sanchez, the Democrat who narrowly defeated Republican Robert Dornan. He was the target of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional founder Bert Corona, a violent Stalinist who opposed Dornan’s strong anti-Communist stance.
Despite Democrat denials, voter fraud was going strong in California long before the DMV registered more than one million false-documented illegals. It’s a safe bet that most if not all those ineligibles will be showing up at the polls in November.
The Once 'Golden State' Is Badly Tarnished
With crime soaring, rampant homelessness, sanctuary state status attracting the highest illegal immigrant population in the country and its “worst state in the U.S. to do business” ranking for more than a decade, California and its expansive, debt-ridden, progressive government is devolving into a third-world country. In cities such as San Francisco, public defecation is legal, drug use is flagrant, and tent cities are designated biohazards. In once pristine San Diego, contractors have been spraying down homeless encampments with household bleach to stave off a hepatitis A epidemic. The so-called “Golden State,” which now has the highest poverty rate in the nation, is tarnished beyond recognition with such serious problems that the sublime climate and striking coastline may no longer be enough to sustain its reputation and cachet. With laws that benefit criminals and illegals, big government that endeavors to control every aspect of residents’ lives from plastic bags to straws; sanctioned street, tent, and vehicle dwelling; and an unaffordable overhyped bullet train boondoggle that will cost taxpayers almost $100 billion, California is headed for economic disaster.
Rising Crime
In the past few years, California has instituted criminal justice reform legislation and initiatives, ostensibly to reduce budget expenditures and prison overcrowding, which has led invariably to the release of more criminals into the state’s population.
- Proposition 47, a referendum passed in 2014, reclassified certain drug possession felonies to misdemeanors and required misdemeanor sentencing for theft when the amount involved is $950 or less. Drug possession for personal use is now considered a misdemeanor.
- Proposition 57, a statewide ballot proposition passed in 2016, changed parole policies for those convicted of nonviolent felonies. But the proposition failed to define “nonviolent crimes”. The result was that those committing “nonviolent” crimes such as rape of an unconscious or intoxicated person, assault of a police office, domestic violence, hostage taking, drive-by shootings, and human trafficking of a child became eligible for early parole based on a paper review in lieu of a parole hearing.
- Assembly Bill 1448 and Assembly Bill 1308 allow for the early release of prisoners who are 60 years or older who have served at least 25 years of their sentence and prisoners who committed crimes at least 25 years or younger who have served at least 15 years, respectively. Both were signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in 2017.
- In June this year, Gov. Brown signed into law AB 1810, that gives defendants a chance to have their charges dismissed and evidence of their arrest erased from the record if they can convince a judge that they suffer from a treatable mental disorder. Such defendants could be offered a pretrial diversion of two years to undergo mental health treatment.
As may have been expected with lenient policies, violent crime and property crime rates in the state increased and will mostly likely soar in the aftermath of some of the newly implemented measures. An FBI study of crime rates from 2014 to 2015 found that 48 California cities saw overall increases with 24 experiencing increases in the double digits for property crime, an increase directly attributable to Prop. 47, according to Marc Debbaudt, past president of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys.
Homelessness
As of 2017, California had a homeless population of over 134,000, or one quarter of the nation’s homeless. UCLA researcherWilliam Yu notedthat 26% of California’s homeless are severely mentally ill, 18% are chronic drug abusers, 9% are veterans and 24% are victims of domestic abuse. Orange County Supervisor, Tod Spitzer attributes much of the problem to legislation signed by Governor Jerry Brown over the past few years that markedly decreased the penalties for drug use, possession, and petty crimes, thereby reducing arrests and eliminating mandatory treatment for drug abuse and mental health treatment.
Where other states have successfully instituted welfare-to-work programs, California’s liberal government has resisted pro-work reforms and retained a system of cash disbursements with no strings attached. This has led to a state bureaucracy that continues to grow and expand its budget, staffing, and client base. Inordinately high housing prices, somewhat driven by restrictive land use and environmental regulations, have exacerbated the problem.
Civil rights organizations such as the ACLU have made the homelessness issue a difficult one to tackle. In 2003, the ACLU filed a lawsuit, Jones v. City of Los Angeles, on behalf of homeless people who were ticketed and arrested for sleeping on public sidewalks at night. In 2006, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the lawsuit by striking down the Los Angeles ordinance that made it a crime for homeless people to sleep on the streets when no shelter is available. Not only is it permissible to pitch a tent in many areas in the state but also vehicle dwelling is allowed in Los Angeles residential areas from 6:00 a.m. to 9 p.m. and in business and industrial areas from 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.
Illegal Immigration
California, a sanctuary state, is home to at least 4 million illegal immigrants and their children. National Economics Editorial, a website that covers economic issues, has estimated that those in the state illegally contribute $3.5 billion in taxes while costing California approximately $30.3 billion annually, or 17.7% of the state budget. According to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), more than half are unskilled, uneducated, and lack English proficiency.
Services to illegals include welfare, food stamps, meal programs, free immunizations, low-cost housing and in-state tuition rates. In addition, children of illegals make up 18% of the public-school population, straining the already burdened school system by increasing student-to-teacher ratios and by impeding the learning process with supplemental, English-language instruction.
Unchecked illegal immigration comes with a marked increase in crime rates. Those who have broken the law to come to the United States are overrepresented in murder charges, drug trafficking, and gang violence. Increased policing, court, and incarceration costs put additional strain on the justice syste. In 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that illegal immigrants committed over 13% of all U.S. crime, and a particularly high level of violent and drug-related crimes, according to criminologist and law enforcement expert Ron Martinelli. A substantial illegal immigrant population coupled with a policy signed by Governor Jerry Brown in 2014 that protects criminal illegal immigrants by reducing their sentences to fall below federal standards for deportation further aggravates the problem. This, at a time when59% of Californians want to increase deportations of illegals.
No Justice for Taxpaying Americans
By Howie Carr
The Boston Herald, August 08, 2018 But the real double standard kicks in when the undocumented Democrat gets to the courtroom. A taxpaying American can only dream of the kid-gloves treatment these Third World fiends get.
Here’s a 2016 headline: “If Springfield market owner illegally cashing food stamps had been U.S. citizen punishment would have been greater, judge says.”
This one involved a 56-year-old Dominican bodega owner who was running an EBT-card scam for illegal immigrants in Springfield — stop me if you’ve heard this one before. He stole $38,000 and didn’t do a day in jail. As Judge Tina Page said, “Had he been a citizen of the U.S. he would in all likelihood be serving a substantial sentence.”
But if he’d been imprisoned he’d have been deported, and God knows we don’t want to deport Dominican welfare fraudsters — or Dominican heroin dealers.
Freeing Dominican heroin dealers (and future cop killers) is the specialty of Superior Court Judge Timothy Feeley, who cut loose a Dominican heroin dealer with no prison time, as the prosecutor put it, “to help him avoid deportation.”
Are you starting to notice a pattern here? Sometimes law-abiding taxpayers get murdered because of this double standard of justice for welfare-collecting noncitizens.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/howie_carr/2018/08/carr_no_justice_for_taxpaying_americans
Get rid of 40 million looting Mexicans and we resolve our housing and jobs crisis and end the $150 billion Mex welfare state in our open borders!
Our government is too busy easing illegals over the borders!
THE NEW PRIVILEGED CLASS: Illegals!
This is why you work From Jan - May paying taxes to the government ....with the rest of the calendar year is money for you and your family.
Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children. He takes a job for
$5.00 or 6.00/hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, with his fake Social Security number, he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200..... free.
He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent.
He qualifies for food stamps.
He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care.
His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school.
He requires bilingual teachers and books.
He qualifies for relief from high energy bills.
If they are or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI.
Once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare. All of this is at (our) taxpayer's expense.
He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance.
Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed material.
He and his family receive the equivalent of $20.00 to $30.00/hour in benefits.
Working Americans are lucky to have $5.00 or $6.00/hour left after Paying their bills and his.
The American taxpayers also pay for increased crime, graffiti and trash clean-up.
Cheap labor? YEAH RIGHT! Wake up people!
U.S. Election Meddling: Nationwide Voter Fraud, Importation of 15M Foreign-Born Voters
Shelby Lum, Richmond Times-Dispatch via The Associated Press
19 Jul 2018Washington, D.C.
As the establishment media, GOP, and Democrats fret over the influence foreign countries have on U.S. elections, the leading threats to the American electorate remain nationwide voter fraud and mass immigration.
Though President Trump’s administration sought to thoroughly investigate voter fraud through the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity, the board was handed off to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in order to bypass obstruction from national Democrats who refused to turn over voter data.
Voter Fraud
The number of convictions against voter fraud continues to rise, with now nearly 940 criminal convictions on the books across the U.S., according to the latest data from the Heritage Foundation.
Likewise, the number of cases of voter fraud has risen. Heritage’s Voter Fraud Database now features 1,071 cases of voter fraud that spans across 47 states.
In the most recent study by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) on voter fraud, the think tank found 8,471 high likely cases of double voting. About 7,271 of those cases were inter-state double voting, while the remaining 1,200 cases were of intra-state double voting.
“The probability of correctly matching two records with the same name, birthdate, and social security number is close to 100 percent,” the GAI report noted.
Kansas Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach is fighting in his state to enforce voting laws that would mandate voters prove their U.S. citizenship. This effort has currently been halted by the left-wing ACLU organization and a circuit judge who recently claimed that it was unconstitutional for a state to demand voters provide their U.S. citizenship records. Years ago, proof of citizenship voting laws were upheld as fully constitutional.
“Compare [Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential campaigns] to the kind of foreign influence in the actual election numbers in foreign nationals voting,” Kobach told Breitbart News. “That’s real and much more consequential and it’s happening all over the country.”
Kobach said his expert witness in the suit with the ACLU over the proof of citizenship law revealed that as many as 33,000 foreign nationals are on the voter rolls in Kansas. For states like California, with the largest foreign-born population in the country, the number of foreign nationals on the voter rolls is likely in the hundreds of thousands or even the millions, Kobach says.
Mass Immigration
Similarly, mass legal and illegal immigration to the U.S. continues to be the largest driver of population increases and demographic shifts in the country. Every year, more than 1.5 million immigrants are admitted to the country. The U.S. has imported more than ten million immigrants in the last decade.
The vast majority of foreign nationals arrive through the process known as “chain migration,” where newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. Every two new immigrants to the country bring an additional seven foreign relatives with them.
As Breitbart News has extensively reported, the U.S. is on track to import about 15 million foreign-born voters by the year 2038. That is nearly quadruple the size of the annual number of U.S. births; about four million American babies are born every year.
Through chain migration alone, the U.S. will import about eight million foreign-born voters in the next two decades.
The country’s continued mass immigration policies are likely to hand over electoral dominance to Democrats in statewide and national elections, Breitbart News has noted.
Analysis conducted by Axios’s Chris Canipe and Andrew Witherspoon shows the overwhelming trend of foreign-born populations voting Democrats into office over Republicans.
The victory of socialist Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York’s 14th District is the latest case where a booming foreign-born voting population pushed the far-left activist over the edge to beat out establishment, high ranking Democrat Rep. Joe Crowley.
Ocasio-Cortez’s district is close to 50 percent foreign-born, a drastic shift of an area that was once populated primarily by native-born Americans. Ocasio-Cortez ran her congressional campaign on abolishing all immigration enforcement across the U.S.
In California, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is facing a challenge from State Senator Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), and the California Democratic Party has endorsed León. The far-left challenger was the key proponent of California’s sanctuary state law that protects criminal illegal aliens from being deported.
University of Maryland, College Park researcher James Gimpel has found in recent years that more immigrants to the U.S. inevitably means more Democrat voters and thus, increasing electoral victories for the Democratic Party.
In 2014, Gimpel’s research concluded with three major findings:
· Immigrants, particularly Hispanics and Asians, have policy preferences when it comes to the size and scope of government that are more closely aligned with progressives than with conservatives. As a result, survey data show a two-to-one party identification with Democrats over Republicans.
· By increasing income inequality and adding to the low-income population (e.g. immigrants and their minor children account for one-fourth of those in poverty and one-third of the uninsured) immigration likely makes all voters more supportive of redistributive policies championed by Democrats to support disadvantaged populations.
· There is evidence that immigration may cause more Republican-oriented voters to move away from areas of high immigrant settlement leaving behind a more lopsided Democrat majority.
Years ago, only a handful of elected Democrats would mention how the demographic shift spurred by mass immigration was a benefit to Democrats electorally. Today, it is a widely used talking point of elected Democrats.
Take San Antonio, Texas Mayor Julian Castro, for example. Months ago, Castro admitted that immigration could potentially turn the state of Texas, Florida, and Arizona into Democrat strongholds, like California.
“The Democrats have now become very open about what they are doing and they state it very clearly,” Kobach said of the Democrats’ use of immigration for shifting the electorate.
“Now, multiple Democrats are saying their plan is to import new voters to change elections,” Kobach said.
In an analysis from Georgetown University, the University of California, and Banque de France, researchers discovered that immigration to the country continuously increases Democrats’ chances of winning elections:
On average across election types, immigration to the U.S. has a significant and negative impact on the Republican vote share, consistent with the typical view of political analysts in the U.S. [Emphasis added]
This average effect – which is driven by elections in the House – works through two main channels. The impact of immigration on Republican votes in the House is negative when the share of naturalized migrants in the voting population increases. Yet, it can be positive when the share of non-citizen migrants out of the population goes up and the size of migration makes it a salient policy issue in voters’ minds. [Emphasis added]
These results are consistent with naturalized migrants being less likely to vote for the Republican Party than native voters and with native voters’ political preferences moving towards the Republican Party because of high immigration of non-citizens. This second effect, however, is significant only for very high levels of immigrant presence. [Emphasis added]
In 2016, the legal and illegal immigrant population reached a record high of 44 million. By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population.
Mexico has the largest group of legal and illegal foreign nationals in the U.S., with 1.1 million immigrants from the country arriving in the U.S. between 2010 and 2016. Mexican nationals make up roughly one in eight new arrivals to the U.S. On average, every one Mexican immigrant brings six foreign relatives with them to the country through chain migration.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder
CRIMINALS WIN BIG IN CALIFORNIA SANCTUARY RULING
Bush appointee upholds protections for false-documented illegals.
July 9, 2018
U.S. District Court Judge John Mendez, an appointee of George W. Bush, ruled that the state could not prevent private employers from denying federal immigration authorities from worksites. Mendez found that AB 450 “which imposes monetary penalties on an employer solely because that employer voluntarily consents to federal immigration enforcement’s entry into nonpublic areas of their place of business or access to their employment records impermissibly discriminates against those who choose to deal with the federal government.”
On the other hand, Mendez upheld the law’s requirement that companies inform workers within 72 hours of any federal request to examine employment records. So in the style of Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf, employers can still provide lookout services for false-documented illegals.
Mendez denied the federal request against SB 54, the state’s sanctuary law. As author Kevin de Leon told reporters, “today, a federal judge made clear what I’ve known all along, that SB 54, the California Values Act is constitutional and does not conflict with federal law. California is under no obligation to assist Trump tear apart families. We cannot stop his mean-spirited immigration policies, but we don’t have to help him, and we won’t.”
As Mendez ruled, “refusing to help is not the same as impeding.” The federal judge also upheld AB 103, allowing the state attorney general to inspect detention facilities. Current attorney general Xavier Becerra, once on Hillary Clinton’s short list as a running mate and a key player in the Democrats’ IT scandal, proclaimed, “The Constitution gives the people of California, not the Trump Administration, the power to decide how we will provide for our public safety and general welfare.”
Californians had a right to wonder about the “safety” part. In this 2-1 split decision the biggest winners are criminal illegals.
Senate Bill 54, the Bee report noted, “has eliminated much of the discretionary power that local law enforcement previously had to privately share information with federal immigration agents about people who have been arrested and put in county jails.” So despite the protestations of hereditary, recurring governor Jerry Brown, California is protecting criminal illegals. With that in mind, legitimate citizens might look ahead to the November election.
Brown, a three-time presidential loser, recently signed off on a budget that spends tens of millions of dollars to help illegals fight efforts to deport them. This includes some $45 million in legal services steered to state colleges, and $10 million to help younger illegals, including “undocumented migrants.” This outlandish spending is hardly the state’s only way to privilege false-document illegals.
A 2015 law, “streamlines” the process of voter registration and kicks in when someone gets a driver’s license at the DMV. As of March, 2018, more than one million illegals have received licenses. Secretary of state Alex Padilla touts “firewall” protections against ineligible voters. This is the same official who refused to cooperate with a federal probe of voter fraud, so legal residents and taxpayers have good reason to wonder what he is hiding.
Senate boss Kevin de Leon, author of SB 54, is on record that half his family would be eligible for deportation under Trump’s executive order because they used false Social Security cards and other bogus identification. In his own case, as Christopher Cadelago of the Sacramento Bee explains, “The name on his birth certificate isn’t Kevin de León.”
On his birth certificate and voter rolls, “the 50-year-old politician is Kevin Alexander Leon,” born on December 10, 1966 at California Hospital on South Hope Street in Los Angeles. The birth certificate “describes his father, Andres Leon, as a 40-year-old cook whose race was Chinese and whose birthplace was Guatemala. De León’s mother, Carmen Osorio, was also born in Guatemala, the document states.” As a child, “de León spent time on both sides of the border,” but he “identifies strongly with Mexican culture.”
California Gets ‘F’ Grade from ‘Truth in Accounting’
19 Jun 2018
Newport Beach, CA18
The non-partisan “Truth in Accounting” project, which analyzes government financial reports, has awarded California an “F” grade for claiming surpluses instead of a $269.9 billion deficit.
The Chicago-based organization has been providing in-depth accounting reviews of the audited financial statements for America’s fifty states, as well as most major counties and major cities, in the United States since 2002.
The group’s mission is to educate and empower citizens with understandable, reliable, and transparent government financial information.
California received the lowest score of “F” on Truth in Accounting’s grading scale because despite Gov. Jerry Brown touting several years of surpluses, California actually faces a $269.9 billion shortfall in terms of its overall obligations, which equates to $22,000 burden for each of the 12.3 million taxpayers in the state.
California’s financial burden is primarily associated with the rapidly deteriorating condition of the state’s current $461.3 billion in promised public employee retirement benefits –which are $102.5 billion under-funded by the pension plan — and $107 billion for unfunded retiree health care benefits.
The State of California faced a near financial death experience in Great Recession, when the average taxpayer burden jumped from $15,000 to $23,500. Newly elected Gov. Brown, facing a $25 billion deficit in 2011, passed an array of income and sales tax hikes, including a 29 percent increase for Californians with taxable income over $1 million.
Gov. Brown has touted the “California Comeback.” But the data demonstrate that despite the gusher of tax revenue the flooded into Sacramento from the economic recovery and the substantially higher tax rates Gov. Brown passed, the state’s taxpayer burden only fell modestly to $20,900 by 2015. The taxpayer burden rose to $21,600 in 2016 and hit $22,000 in 2017, the second-highest in the history of the state.
Truth in Accounting Founder Sheila Weinberg warns that California is a giant “Sinkhole Sate.” Ms. Weinberg is especially critical of Gov. Brown claiming an $8.8 billion surplus this year, while avoiding the fact that California has only $100.1 billion in available assets to pay $369.9 billion worth of bills.
Weinberg emphasized to Breitbart News that California’s rising “taxpayer burden” is only for net state liabilities. Her organization intends to begin publishing consolidated reports this summer for all the states that will also capture the liabilities of counties and cities. Ms. Weinberg expects that the combined taxpayer burden for California to be a much higher number.
June 16, 2018
Skyrocketing crime rate in California called 'good progress' after jails emptied
Here's a thought experiment: what happens if you release criminals, a lot of them, from jail?
If you asked a liberal in California, he would tell you these criminals were unjustly jailed in the first place (think racism on the part of liberal inner-city judges, juries, and prosecutors) and that these unjustly imprisoned would return to become productive parts of society.
Imagine their surprise to learn, then, that after reducing or eliminating sentences for certain property crimes, the rate of property crimes has only increased!
California voters' decision to reduce penalties for drug and property crimes in 2014 contributed to a jump in car burglaries, shoplifting and other theft, researchers reported.
Larcenies increased about 9% by 2016, or about 135 more thefts per 100,000 residents than if tougher penalties had remained, according to results of a study by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California released Tuesday.
Thefts from motor vehicles accounted for about three-quarters of the increase. San Francisco alone recorded more than 30,000 auto burglaries last year, which authorities largely blamed on gangs.
Proposition 47 lowered criminal sentences for drug possession, theft, shoplifting, identity theft, receiving stolen property, writing bad checks and check forgery from felonies that can carry prison terms to misdemeanors that often bring minimal jail sentences.
Do you think liberals have learned anything from this? Think again:
California still has historically low crime rates despite recent changes in the criminal justice system aimed at reducing mass incarceration and increasing rehabilitation and treatment programs, said Lenore Anderson, the executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice and a leader in the drive to pass Proposition 47.
"This report shows we are making progress," she said in a statement calling for less spending on prisons and more on programs to help reduce the cycle of crime.
The ballot measure led to the lowest arrest rate in state history in 2015 as experts said police frequently ignored crimes that brought minimal punishment.
They say a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. If that's true, then it must also be true in California that a liberal is a liberal who has had his car or home broken into. Indeed, people in San Francisco have had their cars broken into so frequently that they think this is the "new normal," and people talk laughingly to each other about how often their cars have been broken into, as if it's a subject of conversation as common as the doings of the local sports team.
Reality will never intrude on a liberal's ideology. An illegal alien could shoot a woman dead on Fisherman's Wharf, and liberals would still never see a problem with sanctuary cities. Homeless people can roam the streets like swarms of giant rats, leaving fetid excrement and bloody hypodermic needles in their wake, and people would accept it, because it is part of their ideology.
That's how they can call this abomination "progress."
The one topic Democrats don't dare bring up
The airwaves in Southern California are flooded with Democratic candidate ads, with most openly touting extremely loony far-left positions – promises of free health care for all, free college for all, beefed up public funding for Planned Parenthood, full gun control, pretty much the full Bernie Sanders plate of pie-in-the-sky goodies. Democrats, whether in the House, Senate, governor, or assembly races, are all openly offering all the free stuff on the far left's wish list, not holding back at all. Fiscal discipline isn't in fashion with this bunch. If I had to speculate, I'd say it's because at the time these platforms were formulated, Democrats were convinced that a blue wave was upon them. In a crowded field, and at primary time, where only the most committed voters show up, extremism seems to be the way to stand out and get ahead of the pack.
There's one topic among these offerings that isn't being touched – not even in one campaign ad:
Illegal immigration.
As the sign says: "Caution."
We all know that Democrats favor open borders, given the potential for muscling mendicant votes in the state's poorest cities from their well oiled political machines. Democrats favor DACA, DAPA for the parents, amnesty, state benefits for illegals – from driver's licenses to free health care – an end to deportations, and no border wall, let alone National Guardsmen at the borders. You can find vague admissions of these stances on candidates' websites, buried deep.
But somehow, this topic isn't one they want to bring up in the heat of the primaries, at least not in ads, where they have an overcrowded slate of candidates on the June ballot, and face the real prospect of seeing no Democrats making it to the slate in November.
Illegal immigration seems to be the electric third rail.
That says a lot about the sentiment of the voters in illegal alien-filled California, which houses one quarter of the nation's illegals. Nobody's brought up the Democratic plan for free health care for illegals, now wending its way through the California statehouse. Nobody's asked Gavin Newsom, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for governor, what he thinks of the state's inundation of illegals, and he's certainly said nothing to the broad public about it in his ads. The costs of illegal immigration are being carefully hidden by Democrats.
Meanwhile, city after city and county after county in Southern California has joined the lawsuit against the state for its "sanctuary state" laws, which require them to house and feed illegals instead of turn them over to the feds for breaking the law. It's probably significant that increasingly blue San Diego and Orange Counties, the two areas Democrats have placed all their hopes and cash on for winning the House back, have joined this movement.
It all suggests that this topic is dry tinder among voters, the internal polls look bad for Democrats on their free everything for illegals, and the Democratic Party line is far more unpopular than anyone on the left is willing to admit.
President Trump should have a field day enacting his orderly immigration agenda, even in California, when crunch time comes at the November midterms.
It Pays to be Illegal in California
It certainly is a good time to be an illegal alien in California. Democratic State Sen. Ricardo Lara last week pitched a bill to permit illegal immigrants to serve on all state and local boards and commissions. This week, lawmakers unveiled a $1 billion health care plan that would include spending $250 million to extend health care coverage to all illegal alien adults.
“Currently, undocumented adults are explicitly and unjustly locked out of healthcare due to their immigration status. In a matter of weeks, California legislators will have a decisive opportunity to reverse that cruel and counterproductive fact,” Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula said in Monday’s Sacramento Bee.
His legislation, Assembly Bill 2965, would give as many as 114,000 uninsured illegal aliens access to Medi-Cal programs. A companion bill has been sponsored by State Sen. Richard Lara.
But that could just be a drop in the bucket. The Democrats’ plan covers more than 100,000 illegal aliens with annual incomes bless than $25,000, however an estimated 1.3 million might be eligible based on their earnings.
In addition, it is estimated that 20 percent of those living in California illegally are uninsured – the $250 million covers just 11 percent.
So, will politicians soon be asking California taxpayers once again to dip into their pockets to pay for the remaining 9 percent?
Before they ask for more, Democrats have to win the approval of Gov. Jerry Brown, who cautioned against spending away the state’s surplus when he introduced his $190 billion budget proposal in January.
Given Brown’s openness to expanding Medi-Cal expansions in recent years, not to mention his proclivity for blindly supporting any measure benefitting lawbreaking immigrants, the latest fiscal irresponsibility may win approval.
And if he takes a pass, the two Democrats most likely to succeed Brown – Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – favor excessive social spending and are actively courting illegal immigrant support.
Zuckerberg’s Investor Group Pushes for Pre-Election Amnesty
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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'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.
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.
REALITIES OF A STATE IN MELTDOWN:
THE INVISIBLE CALIFORNIA
De facto apartheid world in the Golden State.
In 1973, as I was going through customs in New York, the customs agent rifling my bag looked at my passport and said, with a Bronx sneer, “Bruce Thornton, huh. Must be one of them Hollywood names.”
Hearing that astonishing statement, I realized for the first time that California is as much an idea as a place. There were few regions in America more distant from Hollywood than the rural, mostly poor, multiethnic San Joaquin Valley where my family lived and ranched. Yet to this New Yorker, the Valley was invisible.
BLOG: FEINSTEIN & BOXER THREE TIMES ATTEMPTED TO INSERT IN VARIOUS BILLS AN AMNESTY FOR FARM WORKERS TO REPAY THEIR BIG AG BIG DONORS.
ONE-THIRD OF ALL FARM WORKERS END UP ON WELFARE AS SOON AS THE ANCHOR BABIES START COMING
Coastal Californians are sometimes just as blind to the world on the other side of the Coast Range, even though its farms, orchards, vineyards, dairies, and ranches comprise more than half the state’s $46 billion agriculture industry, which grows over 400 commodities, including over a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts.
Granted, Silicon Valley is an economic colossus compared to the ag industry, but agriculture’s importance can’t be measured just in dollars and cents. Tech, movies, and every other industry tends to forget that their lives and businesses, indeed civilization itself, all rest on the shoulders of those who produce the food. You can live without your iPhone or your Mac or the latest Marvel Studios blockbuster. But you can’t live without the food grown by the one out of a 100 people who work to feed the other 99.
A Politically Invisible Valley
Living in the most conservative counties in the
deepest-blue state, Valley residents constantly see
their concerns, beliefs, and needs seldom taken
into account at the state or federal level.
Registered Democrats in California outnumber registered Republicans by over 19%, and the State Legislature seats about twice as many Democrats as Republicans (California’s one of only eight states nationwide with a trifecta of a Democratic and two Democratic controlled legislative bodies).
California’s Congressional delegation is even more unbalanced: in the House of Representatives, currently there are fourteen Republicans compared to thirty-nine House Democrats (at least half of those GOP districts are in danger of turning blue this fall); half the Republicans represent Central Valley districts, none bordering the Pacific Ocean. The last elected Republican US Senator left office in 1991. The last Republican governor was the politically light-pink action-movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose second term ended in 2011.
This progressive dominance of the state has led to policies and priorities that has damaged its agricultural economy and seriously degraded the quality of life in the Valley.
Despite a long drought that has diminished the run-off of snow from the Sierra Nevada, projects for dams and reservoirs are on hold, seriously impacting the ag industry that relies on the snowmelt for most of its water. Worse yet, since 2008, a period including the height of the drought, 1.4 trillion gallons of water have been dumped into the Pacific Ocean to protect the endangered Delta Smelt, a two-inch bait-fish. Thousands of agricultural jobs have been lost and farmland left uncultivated, all to satisfy the sensibilities of affluent urban environmentalists. And even after a few years of abundant rain, Valley farmers this year are receiving just 20% of their South-of-the-Delta water allocation.
Or take California’s high-speed rail project, currently moribund and $10 billion over budget just for construction of the easiest section, through the flat center of the Valley. Meanwhile, State Highway 99, which bisects the Valley from north to south for 500 miles, is pot-holed, inefficient, and crammed with 18-wheel semis. It is the bloodiest highway in the country, in dire need of widening and repair. Yet to
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