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!
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.
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!
Study: More than 7-in-10 California Immigrant Households Are on Welfare
ANCHOR BABY (FOR WELFARE) AMERICA
“Through love of having children, we are going to take over.”
City Journal
Heather MacDonald
Hispanic Family Values?
Runaway illegitimacy is creating a new U.S. (DEMOCRAT VOTING) underclass.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/12/04/study-more-than-7-in-10-california-immigrant-households-are-on-welfare/
2:45
More than 7-in-10 households headed by immigrants in the state of California are on taxpayer-funded welfare, a new study reveals.
The latest Census Bureau data analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that about 72 percent of households headed by noncitizens and immigrants use one or more forms of taxpayer-funded welfare programs in California — the number one immigrant-receiving state in the U.S.
Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of households headed by native-born Americans use welfare in California.
All four states with the largest foreign-born populations, including California, have extremely high use of welfare by immigrant households. In Texas, for example, nearly 70 percent of households headed by immigrants use taxpayer-funded welfare. Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of native-born households in Texas are on welfare.
In New York and Florida, a majority of households headed by immigrants and noncitizens are on welfare. Overall, about 63 percent of immigrant households use welfare while only 35 percent of native-born households use welfare.
President Trump’s administration is looking to soon implement a policy that protects American taxpayers’ dollars from funding the mass importation of welfare-dependent foreign nationals by enforcing a “public charge” rule whereby legal immigrants would be less likely to secure a permanent residency in the U.S. if they have used any forms of welfare in the past, including using Obamacare, food stamps, and public housing.
The immigration controls would be a boon for American taxpayers in the form of an annual $57.4 billion tax cut — the amount taxpayers spend every year on paying for the welfare, crime, and schooling costs of the country’s mass importation of 1.5 million new, mostly low-skilled legal immigrants.
As Breitbart News reported, the majority of the more than 1.5 million foreign nationals entering the country every year use about 57 percent more food stamps than the average native-born American household. Overall, immigrant households consume 33 percent more cash welfare than American citizen households and 44 percent more in Medicaid dollars. This straining of public services by a booming 44 million foreign-born population translates to the average immigrant household costing American taxpayers $6,234 in federal welfare.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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.
Let’s Shrink Illegal Alien Population, Save Billions at Same Time
(Screenshot)
The usually discussed techniques for lowering the size of the illegal alien population are two in number:
- Reducing the inflow of illegals, such as by building a wall; and
- Mandating the departure of others through deportation.
There is a third variable, rarely discussed, that reaches the same goal without coercion and could be something that Democrats and Republicans might agree on: the subsidized and voluntary departure of some of the undocumented and other aging, low-income foreign-born. It probably would require an act of Congress.
I am thinking of a technique for selectively encouraging the emigration of those among the foreign-born who are most likely to become welfare users in the future. It would save billions and billions of federal dollars a year, and some state funds as well.
It is based on, among other things, the fact that most of the illegals are from warmer climates than our own, and reminds me of a conversation I had years ago on this subject with a Jamaica-born resident of the United States who told me of her fond memories of the warmth of that island: "Don't forget, old bones are cold bones."
Hence, the proposed Return to Warmth (RTW) program, which would directly subsidize the departure of numerous foreign-born persons, many of them here illegally, and would indirectly help the economies of the nations from which they migrated. That would be the genial face of the RTW program, which fits with its deliberately friendly name.
Meanwhile, it would prevent large numbers of these migrants from participating in our Medicare program and other (less expensive) income transfer programs, saving billions a year, and thus making RTW attractive to conservatives.
Let's look at some specifics.
In the following table, we show the roughly estimated 2017 per capita costs to the United States of the foreign-born Social Security beneficiaries while in the United States, and while in their home countries. It is drawn from government data easily available on the internet, such as the Medicare budget (which was $720 billion in 2017) and on similar sources for the numbers of beneficiaries.
The table is also based on the fact that many Social Security beneficiaries, including many of the foreign-born, can draw their checks in most of the rest of the world, but would not be able to participate in other programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and Supplemental Security Income. All four require residence in the United States.
Given the information above, one might assume that virtually no one would want to take their Social Security benefits abroad. That is not the case.
More than 650,000 Social Security checks are mailed overseas each month and this number (and the percentage of retirees who do this) is slowly but steadily increasing, according to various issues of the of the Social Security Administration's Annual Statistical Supplement. Here are the totals and the percentages of all beneficiaries for three recent years:
During the early 1990s the percentage was about 0.75 percent.
Clearly this is an arrangement that is, slowly, growing in popularity. My suggestion is that we deliberately increase its size.
The evidence, incidentally, suggests strongly that most of these checks are notgoing to wealthy people who have decided to retire to the Riviera rather than Boca Raton. Average annual payouts of Social Security benefits were $15,208 nationally in 2017, and only $8,178 for those getting their checks abroad. Thus, the overseas checks were only 54 percent of the national average, reflecting the substantially lower lifetime incomes of those who retired abroad. This is not a rich population.
While I cannot document it, I learned some years ago, in a conversation with a SSA staffer, that more than 90 percent of those getting checks overseas were not born in the United States.
Proposal
The U.S. should create a new program (RTW) to encourage these movements back to the home countries, providing a range of new benefits to stimulate such returns, but designing them in such a way that the returnees will tend to stay returned once they have left.
If the United States can save $17,000 a year on each of hundreds of thousands of people, and all of them will stop making the impact that the rest of us do on the environment, this country will be making major progress, without using any coercion at all. And the savings of some $17,000 a year, per capita, means that it would be appropriate to offer some really enticing rewards to those thinking about leaving the country.
Who Would Qualify? Since a major part of the motivation is to reduce the illegal alien population, such persons would not be disqualified. I would limit it to foreign-born persons who qualify now, or will soon, for Social Security retirement, of whatever civil status, from illegal to citizen. It would only apply to people wanting to return to their native lands, and might not apply to a comparative few whose homes are within, say, 300 miles of the U.S. borders. (These people would be tempted to live secretly in the United States while collecting abroad.)
Dependents of the beneficiary could qualify, at any age, but the principals would have to be 61 years of age or older.
The Reward Package. This has to be enticing enough to encourage Social Security beneficiaries to seek it, despite the basic math outlined above (which many of them might sense, even without knowing the details.) Such a package might include:
- Retirement benefits at the age of 61, instead of the usual 62;
- A 10 percent bonus on the Social Security benefit while the beneficiary is abroad;
- Free one-way plane tickets for the principal and the dependents; and
- Checks totaling $5,000, half on arrival in the home country, and the other half a year later, but only paid in person, at a U.S. consulate or embassy.
Holy cow, some might say, you are going to be giving some illegals 10 percent more in Social Security for the rest of their lives! Isn't that an extravagant waste?
The 10 percent increase, based on current Social Security data, would mean that the overseas individual would get an additional $818 a year. That would be more than balanced by the Medicare savings of $10,778 a year; maybe we should set the Social Security benefit increase at 25 percent or more.
The monthly checks would have to be cashed in the home country, in person, by the beneficiary, and within 60 days of their issuance. Further, such checks would need to be endorsed by the beneficiary along with a thumb print of that person, and a note on the back of the check indicating the name of the cashier who accepted the check, and the date thereof. Banks that showed a pattern of check abuse would be barred from depositing these checks in the future.
All receiving any part of the bonus package would have to agree in writing to not seek to return to the United States under any circumstances for three or five years; if they did (or their checks were cashed in the United States), the government would halve the future benefit checks until the bonuses had been repaid. If they came back to the United States twice within those years, the beneficiary would be no longer be eligible for SSA retirement checks unless, perhaps, they were citizens, in which case a milder penalty would be exacted. (No one using the RTW benefits would be eligible to apply for naturalization, or any other immigration benefit.)
The benefit package suggested above is not set in stone; it could be altered, but it would have to offer the foreign-born a substantial benefit. Provisions should be made to use tax funds to compensate the Social Security system for its additional costs.
The benefits should be made available to those in deportation hearings, if they were otherwise eligible, thus reducing the backlogs in the immigration courts.
Someone who had received the rewards described above could ask to be excused from the program by voluntarily returning the extra moneys; but this would be rare, and would be available to only those who had been in the United States legally at the time of retirement.
Other Advantages of RTW. Other advantages to the government of RTW would be lowering pressure on energy assistance plans for the poor; on public housing, which in many cities includes special housing for the elderly; and on non-public food banks and the like. In addition, there would be the less obvious advantages of a lower population and less wear and tear on the built environment.
In the specific instance of shutting down Temporary Protected Status for people from some nations, it would ease the departure of the older ones. Perhaps some TPS beneficiaries within a year or two of the RTW minimum age could be given special dispensations.
As for the returnees, the principal advantage to them would be the lower costs of living in the homelands, as opposed to those costs in the United States. There would also be the previously cited warmer weather (for most), the ease of returning to a situation where everyone uses one's native language, and for many, losing the fear of deportation. In short, a win-win situation.
This suggestion takes a long view of the question of migrant utilization of our income transfer programs and would impose some short-term costs on the government (the reward packages) in exchange for steady savings in the future. It certainly would be subject to attempted abuse, but in the long run it would start saving us $17,000 a year times hundreds of thousands of people.
It would be a quiet program, in contrast to the wall and border skirmishes, but it would inevitably lead to fewer illegal aliens in the nation, and lower welfare costs.
Why not try it for a while?
David North, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, has over 40 years of immigration policy experience.
Editor's Note: This piece was originally published by the Center for Immigration Studies.
NON-CITIZEN HOUSEHOLDS ALMOST TWICE AS LIKELY TO BE ON WELFARE
December 3, 2018
Some
truths are just basic and obvious. Yet the media insists on shoveling out
nonsense about how Elon Musk and Sergey Brin are representative of the average
immigrant. They're not. They used to be more representative before Ted Kennedy
decided to replicate the ideal political ecosystem of the Democrats across the
country. And so now here we are.
Skilled
immigration is tough to manage. Unskilled migration is everywhere. With the
inevitable results shown in his CIS study.
In 2014, 63 percent of households headed by a non-citizen
reported that they used at least one welfare program, compared to 35 percent of
native-headed households.
Welfare use drops to 58 percent for non-citizen households and 30
percent for native households if cash payments from the Earned Income Tax
Credit (EITC) are not counted as welfare. EITC recipients pay no federal income
tax. Like other welfare, the EITC is a means-tested, anti-poverty program, but
unlike other programs one has to work to receive it.
Compared to native households, non-citizen households have much
higher use of food programs (45 percent vs. 21 percent for natives) and
Medicaid (50 percent vs. 23 percent for natives).
Including the EITC, 31 percent of non-citizen-headed households
receive cash welfare, compared to 19 percent of native households. If the EITC
is not included, then cash receipt by non-citizen households is slightly lower
than natives (6 percent vs. 8 percent).
Mass
migration, of the kind that the Left champions, is dangerous and destructive.
It's also hideously expensive. As unskilled migration continues, American
competitiveness declines to match those countries where the migrants originate
from.
We're
losing our work ethic, our skill sets and our reputation for innovation.
And
meanwhile we sink ever deeper into a welfare state of the kind that the
Democrats can always run and win on.
ABOUT DANIEL GREENFIELD
Daniel Greenfield, a
Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative
journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
A sign in a market window advertises this store accepts food
stamps in New York, on Oct. 7, 2010. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Majority of Non-Citizen
Households in US Access Welfare Programs, Report Finds
https://www.theepochtimes.com/nearly-two-thirds-of-non-citizens-access-welfare-programs-report-finds_2729720.html?ref=brief_News&utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=6d
BY ALYSIA E. GARRISON
December 3, 2018 Updated: December 4, 2018
Almost 2 out of 3 non-citizen
households in the United States receive some form of welfare, according to a
report released by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
The report, released Dec. 2,
found 63 percent of non-citizen households in the United States tap at least
one welfare program, compared with 35 percent of native households. The
findings are based on the Census Bureau’s latest 2014 Survey of Income and
Program Participation.
Non-citizen households are using
welfare food programs and Medicaid at twice the rate of native households, the
study found. There are a total of 4.68 million non-citizen households receiving
some form of welfare and the numbers don’t improve over time. For non-citizens
who remain in the country for more than 10 years, the percentage of welfare
recipients rises to 70 percent.
In this study, non-citizens are
defined as long-term temporary visitors, such as guest workers and foreign
students, permanent residents who haven’t yet naturalized (so-called green card
holders), and illegal immigrants.
“Of non-citizens in the Census
Bureau data, roughly half are in the country illegally,” the CIS estimates.
The new analysis supports
President Donald Trump’s worry that immigrants—both legal and illegal—impose
tremendous fiscal costs on the nation.
Legal immigrants are initially
barred from many, but not all, welfare programs; after a period of time in the
United States, they are able to qualify. Today, most legal immigrants have
lived in the U.S. long enough to qualify for many welfare programs. Some states
provide welfare to new immigrants independent of the federal government.
The biggest avenue non-citizens
use to access welfare is through their children.
“Non-citizens (including illegal
immigrants) can receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children who are
awarded U.S. citizenship and full welfare eligibility at birth,” the CIS notes.
Although a number of programs
were examined in the report, no single program accounts for the discrepancy in
the use of welfare programs between citizens and non-citizens. For example, the
CIS said when “not counting school lunch and breakfast, welfare use is still 61
percent for non-citizen households, compared with 33 percent for natives. Not
counting Medicaid, welfare use is 55 percent for immigrants compared with 30
percent for natives.”
The CIS report suggests that a
lack of education is the primary cause of immigrants’ high rate of welfare use.
“A much larger share of
non-citizens have [a] modest level of education,” CIS says, and therefore “they
often earn low wages and qualify for welfare at higher rates.”
To support this claim, the CIS
said 58 percent of all non-citizen households are headed by immigrants with no
more than a high school education, compared with 36 percent of native
households. Of these non-citizen households with no more than a high school
education, 81 percent access one or more welfare programs, versus only 28
percent of non-citizen households headed by a college graduate.
In an effort to reduce the rate
of welfare use among future immigrants, the Trump administration has issued new
“public charge” laws. These laws expand the list of programs that are
considered welfare, so that receiving these benefits may prevent prospective
immigrants from receiving a green card. However, these changes “do not include
all the benefits that non-citizens receive on behalf of their children and many
welfare programs are not included in the new rules,” according to CIS.
The CIS recommends using
education levels and potential future income to determine the likelihood of
future welfare use for potential green-card applicants, to reduce welfare use
among non-citizens.
Bad
News From California
https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelreagan/2018/12/01/bad-news-from-california-n2536778
|
Posted: Dec 01, 2018 12:01 AM
The opinions
expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of
Townhall.com.
Once
again California is at the top of the national news every day.
The
apocalyptic images of massive wildfires and destroyed towns like Paradise are
gone.
Now the
whole country is watching scenes of tear gas being used against the thousands
of illegal immigrants from Central America who are trying to force their way
into the United States near San Diego.
I hope
the people complaining about how Donald Trump is handling this invasion of our
southern border are paying attention to the news.
They
might learn something most of us Californians already know.
Unlike
most Americans, many of us have been to the U.S.-Mexican border.
We've
seen what happens when the sun goes down. We've seen the invasion of illegals
that comes across into the U.S. - every single night.
We don't
like it and we understand very well how much it has cost our state.
The
national liberal media are, as usual, irresponsibly unfair and unbalanced in
their coverage of events at the border.
They can't
stop showing video footage of tear gas being used to turn back the immigrants
as they rush the California border.
In their
never-ending effort to make Trump and conservatives look as mean and rotten as
possible, the electronic media have made it seem like tear gas is some new and
terrible weapon.
It's not.
Tear gas
is the weapon border patrol agents use when they're trying to stop a rushing
mob of illegal immigrants.
Critics
of President Trump's policy and the media should be applauding the border
patrol's use of non-lethal weapons like tear gas and pepper spray, not decrying
it.
They
should also point out that he's following the lead of previous presidents like
Barack Obama, who now pretends to be appalled by Trump even though tear gas was
deployed at the same border crossing during his administration.
Though
you'd never hear it if from the liberal media, many of California's Latinos,
who now make up 39 percent of its population, are also unhappy with the
invasion of illegal immigrants.
But few
Latinos who support Trump's immigration policy will dare to say so because they
fear a backlash in their own community.
The
Latino laborers and gardeners who work for rich white liberals also are afraid
to say anything positive about Trump for fear of losing their jobs.
They keep
mum - and the liberal media ignore them.
When the
media reporters do their immigration stories for TV, they interview liberals
and Democrats to show how compassionate they are toward the poor illegals.
They also
interview conservatives and Republicans to show how they aren't compassionate.
Somehow
they never manage to find those everyday Latino workers - many of them here
legally - who are worried about losing their jobs to new immigrants.
The only
Latino I remember being interviewed about the serious problems caused by the
arrival of thousands of Honduran migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border crossing
was the mayor of Tijuana.
He told
the immigrants of the caravan the hard truth no one in California could say
without being branded a racist, "We don't want you here in Tijuana. Get
the hell out."
It's too
late to save California with a tougher immigration policy or a higher border
wall.
Decades
of liberal Democrats have already wrecked the Golden State with their high
taxes, bad regulations, transit boondoggles and over-generous social programs
for citizens and non-citizens alike.
Now we
have a newly elected Democrat governor, Gavin Newsom, who is for open borders
and things like universal "free" health care.
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.
CALIFORNIA IN MELTDOWN
July 26, 2018
California
Economy, finance, and budgets
Progressives praise California as
the harbinger of the political future, the home of a new, enlightened,
multicultural America. Missouri Senator Claire McCaskillhas identified California
Senator Kamala Harris as the party leader on issues of immigration and race.
Harris wants a moratorium on construction of new
immigration-detention facilities in favor of the old
“catch and release” policy for illegal
aliens, and has urged a shutdown of the government rather than compromise on
mass amnesty.
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.”
Back in 2015, Padilla told the Los Angeles Times,
“At the latest, for the 2018 election cycle, I expect millions of new voters on
the rolls in the state of California.” True to form, by March, 2018, more than one million “undocumented” immigrants received
licenses.
The DMV has been under fire for incompetence, with wait times up
to six hours and retention of state employees who sleep on the job. Legislators resisted calls for an audit and gave DMV boss
Jean Shiomoto another $16 million to hire new employees. Thus equipped, the massive state agency is cranking out “new
voters” for November. The DMV claim that “none” of them is ineligible fits the
pattern of leading Democrats who believe everybody in the state is a legal
resident.
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.
Kevin Alexander Leon seeks to replace Dianne Feinstein in the U.S.
Senate. He has narrowed Feinstein’s lead to single digits and that stream of “new” voters from the DMV could push him
over the line.
POTUS 44 has endorsed Campa-Najjar, who worked on his reelection
campaign in 2012. The president formerly known as Barry Soetoro has been
campaigning openly for Democrat Gil Cedillo, who is running for Congress in
California’s 39th district. Cedillo has been accused of sexual harassment by fellow
Democrat and documentary filmmaker Melissa Fazli. That does not trouble the former president, and Cedillo could
also benefit from those “new” voters.
As a State Department investigation discovered, false-documented illegals have been voting in local,
state and federal elections for decades. That may explain how a state that twice voted for Ronald Reagan
and booted out three of Jerry Brown’s state supreme court
picks, including chief justice Rose Bird, became a Democrat stronghold.
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
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.
In a measure that would add to costs and
incentivize illegal entry, California gubernatorial candidate, Gavin Newsom,
plans to issue an Executive Order to grant universal healthcare, if elected.
Former governor Pete
Wilson warns that a system that
removes all market-based competition could produce annual budget shortfalls of
$40 billion, add six million illegals to the healthcare rolls, encourage
medical tourism, and restrict the range of care and increase waiting times for
California citizens. The resulting elimination of competitive private sector
health care options would mean that more businesses and sources of tax revenue
will leave the state.
Poor Business Climate
In 2014, Chief Executive magazine quoted
CEO comments like “California
goes out of its way to be anti-business,” “California continues to lead in
disincentives for growth businesses to stay,” and “The regulatory, tax and
political environment are crushing.” California’s reputation as the worst state
to do business has a lot to do with its high tax rates. In addition to
having the highest
state income tax in the nation, it
has the highest
sales tax rate, the 9th highest corporate
income tax rate, one of the
highest property tax rates and the highest gasoline
tax rate. Yet, with a shortfall
of $612 billion when future
pensions, bond repayments and other debts are added to the budget shortfall,
the state is drowning in debt, more than twice as much debt as any other state.
In addition, the cost of living is 36% higher than the national rate, and, at 23.4%,
California has the highest poverty rate in the nation, according to former California Assemblyman Steve
Baldwin.
California, a world leader in technology,
entertainment, agriculture, and a past global trendsetter in culture and
innovation, has been dominated for decades by a government made up of far-left
ideologues. These so-called "progressives" have supported an
ever-growing and onerous regulatory climate that effectively redistributes
wealth by adding to an already burdensome rate of taxation and expanding
entitlement programs. Given the current business environment and policies on
crime, homelessness, and illegal entry that are likely to continue, the once
“Golden State” could become a failed state in short order if left
unchecked. In the words of Steve Baldwin, “A state cannot chase away the producers and attract the takers
year after year without economic consequences.”
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.
Will
Californians Prevail Against the Little Picture of Hell?
https://townhall.com/columnists/arthurschaper/2018/06/05/draft-n2487359
The state of California has descended into
a modern-day version of Dante’s Inferno, where treachery of all kinds occupies
the bottom circle. Public sector unions are running (or rather ruining) the
state into bankruptcy, betraying the public trust while charging the taxpayers
for the perverse privilege. Republicans collude with the supermajority of
Democrats to raise taxes, fees, and unrelenting regulatory burdens.
The public schools indoctrinate their
young charges to hate this country and the rule of law. Illegal aliens continue overwhelming the state, draining California’s
already depleted public services while endangering our lives, the rule of law,
and public safety for all citizens. The federal government has filed
lawsuits against Sanctuary California, and ICE is rounding up illegals in their
homes and in workplaces. However, demonic pro-illegal forces still parade in
the streets and cross our borders, defying American sovereignty. Larger cities
have more homeless than homes for citizens.
The natural disasters are hitting crisis
level, too. The Bible depicts torturous flames with respite in hell without
respite, (Luke 16: 24). So too parched conditions have engulfed California.
Wildfires have become a year-round terror, yet the state’s leadership refuses
to prepare emergency water storage. This past week, two hundred firefighters
had to quell another massive conflagration in south Orange County, and summer
hasn’t even begun yet. To make matters legislation to make the current drastic
water rationing permanent!
Even wealthy coastal elites have found
that the cost of living in California is slowly exceeding its value. Money
can’t create water, and financial gain provided nothing for West Los Angeles
socialites when a few homeless transients set a blaze along the 405 Freeway
overpass along the Santa Monica mountains.
All of this is a testimony to the damage
wrought by progressive policies which have transformed California into a
picture of hell. That’s precisely what Evangelical preacher Franklin Graham
called California … or at least that’s what he called the sanctuary cities.
During an interview on the Todd Starnes Show, Graham
commented:
"People are leaving the state. The
tax base is eroding. They are turning their once beautiful cities into
sanctuary cities, which are just a little picture of Hell," Graham said.
"Just go to San Francisco and go to this once-beautiful city and see what
has happened to it."
But why did the son of the renowned
Reverend Billy Graham take time to comment on the harrowing horrors of
California? For his latest Gospel Crusade, he visited ten cities in the
once-Golden State. Starting on May 20 in Escondido (one of several cities to
challenge SB 54, aka the Sanctuary State law over the past three month), Graham
is bringing the message of the Good News to the dispirited wasteland along the
Left Coast.
Returning to Pastor Graham’s signature
statement from the Starnes interview, finally a pastor of stature and renown is
condemning sanctuary city policies, and a welcome response from the
all-too-quiet church leadership in California and across the country. Pastors
should be the first to denounce this misnamed, misleading agenda. The concept
of sanctuary comes from the Bible, better known as “cities of refuge” (cf.
Numbers 35:11-28), locations reserved for those who had accidentally killed
someone. To avoid retribution, they would flee to those cities.
In California, sanctuary policies bar
local and state law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration
officials to arrest and deport illegal aliens. These cities are not
safeguarding otherwise innocent people, but are protecting criminals who have
broken into the United States and reside illegally to this day. Pundits left
and right contend that these policies actually protect otherwise law-abiding
residents to seek help and report crimes. Nothing could be further from the
truth.
However, is it fair to tie the long list
of hellish outcomes from these left-wing enclaves to their refusal to enforce
federal immigration laws?
Yes.
What has happened to sanctuary city San
Francisco, for example? The progressivism that made God nothing and man’s
“ideas” everything created the s***-hole dystopia that resides there today.
It’s an overpriced progressive utopia, to put it charitably. For the
vast-majority of residents, even for those who can afford it, a salary of
$100,000 a year barely pays the rent. Roommates doubling up is the norm,
especially among the Big Tech interns who take the bus to Silicon Valley to
work all day on the latest app for the Google, Facebook, EBay overlords.
For the price they pay to live in the
city, San Franciscans aren’t getting their money’s worth. Intravenous drug
needles litter the streets everywhere. Homelessness is more common than
homeownership. “S***hole” better describes the streets of the city, where the
feces piles have so overwhelmed the streets, that visitors receive maps on how
best to navigate away from the crap and corruption. Street fights among
transients and the mentally ill have exploded, rampant moral decline has
overshadowed the once great city. Tourists find enough to see, then flee.
Freedom of speech and freedom of religion
have lost their place, even though Graham’s latest crusades have succeeded in
otherwise unfriendly territory, like Berkeley. Last year, the Patriot Prayer
movement, headed by Joey Gibson, attempted to throw two rallies for freedom of
speech and thought. The elected officials of San Francisco (including Nancy
Pelosi) and the now-deceased mayor Ed Lee, smeared the peaceful program as a
“White supremacy rally.” Gibson is half Japanese, by the way.
Where Gibson had tried and failed,
Graham’s message of hope accomplished peaceful gatherings with a call to action
to California’s Christians. And I say it’s about time. There have been flickers
of hope in spite of the deranged left-wing agenda ravaging my home state.
Californians in general, and Christians in particular, need to step up. They
are called to be light in a dark, hellish world, but nothing good will happen
if they don’t vote for their values, then educate the public how to fight
against the devilish lawlessness foisted upon us by our political leaders and
the cultural elites running—or rather ruining—the state.
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.
Steinle’s murderer, Jose Zarate and been deported 5xs!
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.
HOME
TO DIANNE FEINSTEIN, NANCY PELOSI, KAMALA HARRIS AND GAVIN NEWSOM
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.
https://spectator.org/adios-california/?utm_source=American+Spectator+Emails&utm_campaign=6e1b467cf4
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.
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.
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.
THE INVISIBLE CALIFORNIA
De facto apartheid world in the Golden State.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270265/invisible-california-bruce-thornton
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
gratify our Democratic governor’s high-tech green obsession, billions of
dollars are being squandered to create an unnecessary link between
the Bay Area and Los Angeles. That’s $10
billion that could have been spent building more reservoirs instead of dumping
water into the ocean because there’s no place to store it.
The common thread of these two examples
of mismanagement and waste is the romantic environmentalism of the
well-heeled coastal left. They serially support government projects
and regulations that impact the poor and the aged, who
are left to bear their costs.
The same idealized nature-love has led to
regulations and taxes on energy that have made California home of the
third-worst energy poverty in the country. In sweltering San Joaquin Valley
counties like Madera and Tulare, energy poverty rates are 15% compared to 3–4% in cool, deep-blue coastal enclaves.
Impoverished Kings County averages over $500 a month in electric bills, while
tony Marin Country, with an average income twice that of Kings County, averages
$200. Again, it’s the poor, aged, and working class who bear the brunt of these
costs, especially in the Valley where temperatures regularly reach triple
digits in the summer; unlike the coast, where the clement climate makes
expensive air-conditioning unnecessary.
Deteriorating Quality of Life
It’s
no wonder then that Fresno, in the heart of the Valley, is the second most
impoverished city in the poorest region of a state that has the highest poverty
levels in the country and one of the highest rates of income inequality. Over
one-fifth of its residents live below the poverty line, and it has the worst child poverty in California.
The greatest impact on the Valley’s deteriorating
quality of life, however, has been the influx of illegal aliens. Some are attracted by plentiful
agriculture and construction work, and others by California’s generous
welfare transfers— California is home to one in three of the country’s
welfare recipients— all facilitated by California’s status as a “sanctuary
state” that regularly releases felons rather than cooperate with
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As a result, one-quarter of the
country’s
illegal alien population lives
in California, many from
underdeveloped regions of Mexico and Latin America that have different social
and cultural mores and attitudes to the law and civic responsibility.
The consequences of these feckless
policies are found throughout the state. But they are especially
noticeable in rural California. There high levels of crime and daily
disorder—from murders, assaults, and drug trafficking, to
driving without insurance, DUIs, hit-and-runs, and
ignoring building and sanitation codes—have degraded or, in some cases,
destroyed the once-orderly farming towns that used to be populated by
earlier immigrants, including many legal immigrants from Mexico, who
over a few generations of sometimes rocky coexistence assimilated to
American culture and society.
Marginalized Cultural Minorities
More broadly, the dominant cultures and
mores of the dot.com north and the Hollywood south are inimical to those of the
Valley. Whether it is gun-ownership, hunting, church-going, or military
service, many people in the San Joaquin Valley of all races are quickly
becoming cultural minorities marginalized by the increasingly radical positions
on issues such as abortion, guns, and religion.
Despite the liberal assumption that all
Hispanics favor progressive policies, many Latino immigrants and their children
find more in common with Valley farmers and natives with whom they live and
work than they do with distant urban elites.
Indeed, as a vocal conservative professor
in the local university (Fresno State), I have survived mainly because my
students, now more than half Latino and Mexican immigrants or children of
immigrants, are traditional and practical in a way that makes them impatient
with the patronizing victim-politics of more affluent professors. They have
more experience with physical labor, they are more religious and, like me, they
are often the first in their families to graduate from college. As I did with
the rural Mexican Americans I grew up with, I usually have more in common with
my students than I do with many of my colleagues.
And this is the great irony of the
invisibility of the “other” California: the blue-coast policies that suit the
prejudices and sensibilities of the affluent have damaged the prospects of the
“others of color” they claim they want to help. Over-
represented on the poverty and welfare
rolls, many migrants both legal and
illegal have seen water policies that destroy agricultural jobs,
building restrictions that drive up the cost of housing, energy
policies that increase their cost of living, “sanctuary city” policies
that put back on the streets thugs and criminals who prey mainly on their
ethnic fellows, and economic policies that favor the redistribution rather
than the creation of wealth and jobs.
Meanwhile, the coastal liberals who tout a
cosmetic diversity live in a de facto apartheid world, surrounded by those of
similar income, taste, and politics. Many look down on the people whom they
view as racists and xenophobes at worst, and intellectually challenged rubes at
best. This disdain has been evident in the way the media regularly sneer that
House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes is a “former dairy-farmer” from
Tulare County, an origin that makes “the match between his backstory and his
prominence” seem “wholly incongruous,” per Roll Call's David Hawkings.
Finally, those of us who grew up and live
in the rural Valley did so among a genuine diversity, one that reflected the
more complex identities beyond the crude categories of “white” or “black” or
“Hispanic.”
Italians, Basques, Portuguese, Armenians,
Swedes, Mexicans, Filipinos, Southern blacks, Chinese, Japanese, Volga Germans,
Scotch-Irish Dust Bowl migrants—all migrated to the Valley to work the fields
and better their lives. Their children and grandchildren went to the same
schools, danced together and drank together, helped round up each other’s
animals when they got loose, were best friends or deadly enemies, dated and
intermarried, got drafted into the Army or joined the Marines—all of them
Americans who managed to honor their diverse heritages and faiths, but still be
a community. Their most important distinctions were not so much between races and
ethnicities, though those of course often collided, but between the respectable
people––those who obeyed the law, went to church, and raised their kids right––
and those we all called “no damned good.” Skin-color or accents couldn’t sort
one from the other.
What most of us learned from living in
real diversity in the Valley is that being an American means taking people one
at a time.
That world still exists, but it is slowly
fading away—in part because of the policies and politics of those to our west,
who can see nothing on the other side of the Coast Range.
ABOUT BRUCE THORNTON
Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism
Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover
Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State
University. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical
culture and its influence on Western Civilization. His most recent book, Democracy's Dangers and Discontents (Hoover Institution Press), is now available for purchase.
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.
A sign in a market window advertises this store accepts food stamps in New York, on Oct. 7, 2010. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Majority of Non-Citizen Households in US Access Welfare Programs, Report Finds
Almost 2 out of 3 non-citizen households in the United States receive some form of welfare, according to a report released by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
The report, released Dec. 2, found 63 percent of non-citizen households in the United States tap at least one welfare program, compared with 35 percent of native households. The findings are based on the Census Bureau’s latest 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation.
Non-citizen households are using welfare food programs and Medicaid at twice the rate of native households, the study found. There are a total of 4.68 million non-citizen households receiving some form of welfare and the numbers don’t improve over time. For non-citizens who remain in the country for more than 10 years, the percentage of welfare recipients rises to 70 percent.
In this study, non-citizens are defined as long-term temporary visitors, such as guest workers and foreign students, permanent residents who haven’t yet naturalized (so-called green card holders), and illegal immigrants.
“Of non-citizens in the Census Bureau data, roughly half are in the country illegally,” the CIS estimates.
The new analysis supports President Donald Trump’s worry that immigrants—both legal and illegal—impose tremendous fiscal costs on the nation.
Legal immigrants are initially barred from many, but not all, welfare programs; after a period of time in the United States, they are able to qualify. Today, most legal immigrants have lived in the U.S. long enough to qualify for many welfare programs. Some states provide welfare to new immigrants independent of the federal government.
The biggest avenue non-citizens use to access welfare is through their children.
“Non-citizens (including illegal immigrants) can receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children who are awarded U.S. citizenship and full welfare eligibility at birth,” the CIS notes.
Although a number of programs were examined in the report, no single program accounts for the discrepancy in the use of welfare programs between citizens and non-citizens. For example, the CIS said when “not counting school lunch and breakfast, welfare use is still 61 percent for non-citizen households, compared with 33 percent for natives. Not counting Medicaid, welfare use is 55 percent for immigrants compared with 30 percent for natives.”
The CIS report suggests that a lack of education is the primary cause of immigrants’ high rate of welfare use.
“A much larger share of non-citizens have [a] modest level of education,” CIS says, and therefore “they often earn low wages and qualify for welfare at higher rates.”
To support this claim, the CIS said 58 percent of all non-citizen households are headed by immigrants with no more than a high school education, compared with 36 percent of native households. Of these non-citizen households with no more than a high school education, 81 percent access one or more welfare programs, versus only 28 percent of non-citizen households headed by a college graduate.
In an effort to reduce the rate of welfare use among future immigrants, the Trump administration has issued new “public charge” laws. These laws expand the list of programs that are considered welfare, so that receiving these benefits may prevent prospective immigrants from receiving a green card. However, these changes “do not include all the benefits that non-citizens receive on behalf of their children and many welfare programs are not included in the new rules,” according to CIS.
The CIS recommends using education levels and potential future income to determine the likelihood of future welfare use for potential green-card applicants, to reduce welfare use among non-citizens.
AMERICA: NO DAMNED LEGAL NEED APPLY!!!
“Part of the problem, Santorum said, has
been the arrival of millions of unskilled immigrants — legal and illegal — in
the United States. "American workers deserve a shot at [good] jobs,"
Santorum said. "Over the last 20 years, we have brought into this country,
legally and illegally, 35 MILLION mostly unskilled workers. And the
result, over that same period of time, workers' wages and family incomes have
flatlined." SEN. RICK SANTORUM
Census Confirms: 63 Percent of ‘Non-Citizens’ on Welfare, 4.6 Million Households
By Paul Bedard
Washington Examiner
“Concern over immigrant welfare use is justified, as households headed by non-citizens use means-tested welfare at high rates. Non-citizens in the data include illegal immigrants, long-term temporary visitors like guest workers, and permanent residents who have not naturalized. While barriers to welfare use exist for these groups, it has not prevented them from making extensive use of the welfare system, often receiving benefits on behalf of U.S.-born children,” added the Washington-based immigration think tank.
The numbers are huge. The report said that there are 4,684,784 million non-citizen households receiving welfare.
. . .
Their key findings in the analysis:
* In 2014, 63 percent of households headed by a non-citizen reported that they used at least one welfare program, compared to 35 percent of native-headed households.
*Compared to native households, non-citizen households have much higher use of food programs (45 percent vs. 21 percent for natives) and Medicaid (50 percent vs. 23 percent for natives).
. . .
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/census-confirms-63-percent-of-non-citizens-on-welfare-4-6-million-households
By Paul Bedard
Washington Examiner
“Concern over immigrant welfare use is justified, as households headed by non-citizens use means-tested welfare at high rates. Non-citizens in the data include illegal immigrants, long-term temporary visitors like guest workers, and permanent residents who have not naturalized. While barriers to welfare use exist for these groups, it has not prevented them from making extensive use of the welfare system, often receiving benefits on behalf of U.S.-born children,” added the Washington-based immigration think tank.
The numbers are huge. The report said that there are 4,684,784 million non-citizen households receiving welfare.
. . .
Their key findings in the analysis:
* In 2014, 63 percent of households headed by a non-citizen reported that they used at least one welfare program, compared to 35 percent of native-headed households.
*Compared to native households, non-citizen households have much higher use of food programs (45 percent vs. 21 percent for natives) and Medicaid (50 percent vs. 23 percent for natives).
. . .
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/census-confirms-63-percent-of-non-citizens-on-welfare-4-6-million-households
Democrats can't stand the thought of protecting Americans
Democrats and their cheerleaders in the mainstream media tout themselves as concerned for those addicted to drugs and regularly support increased spending money for therapy. But they refuse to fund building the wall and for border security on the Mexican border.
The wall would significantly stop the flow of illegal drugs through the Mexican border to the USA, which would reduce the supply of illegal drugs that cause addiction and deaths by overdose. The Democrats and media support spending money to deal with the effects of drugs smuggled across the border but refuse to spend money to stop the smuggling.
There is no doubt that illegal drugs and most heroin come across the Mexican border. And now we have fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 80-100 times stronger than morphine. According to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), "[c]landestinely-produced fentanyl is primarily manufactured in Mexico.
The Mexican cartels are producing fentanyl and also receive it from China to smuggle it to the USA. It is very profitable for the cartels.
In 2017, more than 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, with at least 30,000 attributed to fentanyl.
President Trump has called for a border wall to stop illegal immigration and to reduce the flow of illegal drugs, such as heroin and fentanyl. It is common sense and logical that building a wall and fully securing the southern border would reduce the flow of such drugs, reducing deaths and addiction.
Yet the Democrats refuse to fund the border wall and border security.
Senator Schumer and Speaker-Elect Pelosi agree to spend $1.5 billion for "border security" but not for a wall. President Trump is asking for only $5 billion. It is estimated that $27 to $40 billion is needed to fully fund the wall.
It is time to fully fund the border wall. The Trump Shutdown should focus on the record number of Americans who die due to drugs smuggled from Mexico. The focus should be on the Democrats and media that ignore the danger to Americans. This debate should be coupled with the number of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens.
Democrats and their media will quibble about the exact number of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens. But the point is that such crimes are avoidable if the border is secured.
President Trump must be supported to shut down the federal government to finally force funding the wall to protect Americans. The issue is protecting Americans.
Iran is the principal state sponsor and supporter of terrorism. Iran has promised to destroy Israel. Iran's Parliament chanted "death to America" while burning our flag. The Dems and their media supported giving $150 billion to Iran but, they refuse to spend more than $1.5 billion to protect Americans, when they know that spending $27 to $40 billion would save thousands of Americans from death and addiction.
The bottom line is that the Dems and their media do not care about the security and safety of Americans.
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