John Kelly:
Catch-and-Release Laws Ensure Migration Crisis
Congress’s toleration of the nation’s
catch-and-release rules is responsible for the migration crisis, outgoing
Chief of Staff John Kelly told the Los Angeles
Times.
The newspaper said:
He blamed immigrants and lawmakers,
not the White House, for the tense situation at the border, where thousands of
Central Americans are stranded in Mexico — and two Guatemalan children have
died in Border Patrol custody in Texas and New Mexico this month.
“One of the reasons why it’s so
difficult to keep people from coming — obviously it’d be preferable for them to
stay in their own homeland but it’s difficult to do sometimes, where they live
— is a crazy, oftentimes conflicting series of loopholes in the law in the
United States that makes it extremely hard to turn people around and send them
home,” Kelly said.
“If we don’t fix the laws, then they
will keep coming,” he continued. “They have known, and they do know, that if
they can get here, they can, generally speaking, stay.”
The L.A.
Times report — like many other outlets — buried Kelly’s
condemnation of the House and Senate leaders’ passive support for the many
catch-and-release laws and rules which allow the cartels to profitably smuggle
workers up to many eager employers in the United States.
The L.A.
Times submerged Kelly’s judgment under 46 paragraphs and
numerous slams on President Donald Trump, including the claim that Trump’s
effort to enforce border law is a “harsh immigration” measure.
Kelly’s charge is being hidden even
as Democrats and establishment media outlets praise him for using his
power to muffle Trump’s pro-American policies, including his preference for a
lower level of overseas military activity.
The newspaper also tried to smear
Trump’s border defense push as a campaign scare while also admitting that
migration is rising amid congressional passivity:
Asked if there is a security crisis
at the Southern border, or whether Trump has drummed up fears of a migrant
“invasion” for political reasons, Kelly did not answer directly, but said, “We
do have an immigration problem.”
From the 1980s to the mid-2000s,
apprehensions at the border — the most common measure of illegal immigration —
routinely reached more than 1 millionmigrants
a year.
Today, they are near historical
lows. In the fiscal year that ended in September, border authorities apprehended 521,090
people.
Nationwide, the U.S. establishment’s
economic policy of using legal migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth
from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white collar
and blue collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor
of blue collar and white collar employees.
The cheap labor policy 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 five million marginalized Americans and their families,
including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.
Immigration also steers investment
and wealth away from towns in heartland states because
coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that
investment flow drives up coastal real-estate prices, pricing poor
U.S. Latinos and blacks out of prosperous cities, such as Berkeley and Oakland.
Save the Children, Build a Wall
The Democrats would rather see children die than build a wall.
By Daniel Greenfield
FrontPageMag.com
The dead children are not the victims of an overworked Border Patrol that has been deliberately starved of the resources to do its job, because its job would limit the ability of Democrats to steal elections. They are the victims of abusive parents or caretakers, who are willing to use the lives of their children as tickets to get inside the United States, not to escape persecution, but to double or triple their incomes.
The migrants are not refugees fleeing totalitarian regimes that are persecuting them for their beliefs. They are economic migrants who are willing to kill their children to earn more and get more free stuff. And they are every bit as guilty as the parents who leave their children to die in hot cars while they play slot machines. Any sane society would treat their murderous abuse of their children the same way.
Unfortunately we are not a sane society.
The flow of illegal migrants manufactures Democrat votes, not just through illegal voting, but through the far more pervasive problem of fake districts, boosted by illegal aliens and other non-citizens. The political machine that turned California into a Democrat one-party state where democracy is an alien concept, that has ravaged Virginia and has its gimlet eye on Texas, depends on illegal migration.
. . .
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272368/save-children-build-wall-daniel-greenfield
The Democrats would rather see children die than build a wall.
By Daniel Greenfield
FrontPageMag.com
The dead children are not the victims of an overworked Border Patrol that has been deliberately starved of the resources to do its job, because its job would limit the ability of Democrats to steal elections. They are the victims of abusive parents or caretakers, who are willing to use the lives of their children as tickets to get inside the United States, not to escape persecution, but to double or triple their incomes.
The migrants are not refugees fleeing totalitarian regimes that are persecuting them for their beliefs. They are economic migrants who are willing to kill their children to earn more and get more free stuff. And they are every bit as guilty as the parents who leave their children to die in hot cars while they play slot machines. Any sane society would treat their murderous abuse of their children the same way.
Unfortunately we are not a sane society.
The flow of illegal migrants manufactures Democrat votes, not just through illegal voting, but through the far more pervasive problem of fake districts, boosted by illegal aliens and other non-citizens. The political machine that turned California into a Democrat one-party state where democracy is an alien concept, that has ravaged Virginia and has its gimlet eye on Texas, depends on illegal migration.
. . .
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272368/save-children-build-wall-daniel-greenfield
Illegals and the American
Dream
When
talking about immigration, Democrats like to conflate illegal and legal
immigration, dropping the word “illegal” and spouting meaningless babble about
no human being illegal. They like to preach that illegal immigrants
commit crimes at a lower rate than American citizens, a
factoid that has been exposed as a lie.
The
murder of legal immigrant and Newman
Police Corporal Ronil Singh on Christmas night by an illegal
alien in the sanctuary state of California shows not only that the claims by
Chuck Schumer and the “bride of Chucky” Nancy Pelosi that the Democrats support
border security is a deadly and bald-faced lie. It highlights the difference
between legal and illegal immigrants, between those who love America and want
to be Americans and those who murder them.
Pelosi
and Schumer like to talk about the “Dreamers.” Well, Ronil
Singh had dreams, too:
Ronil
Singh came to the U.S. from his native Fiji to fulfill a lifelong dream of
becoming an officer, joining a small-town police force in California and
working to improve his English. The day after Christmas, he stopped another
immigrant, this one in the country illegally, who shot and killed the corporal,
authorities said Thursday…
"This
suspect is in our country illegally. He doesn't belong here. He is a
criminal," Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson, whose agency is
leading the investigation, told reporters.
Newman
Police Chief Randy Richardson fought back tears as he described Singh, a
33-year-old with a newborn son, as an "American patriot."
"He
came to America with one purpose, and that was to serve this country,"
Richardson said…
"He
was living the American dream," said Stanislaus County Sheriff's Deputy
Royjinder Singh, who is not related to the slain officer but knew him. "He
loved camping, loved hunting, loved fishing, loved his family."
And
now he is dead. The blood of Kate
Steinle, Mollie Tibbetts, and now Ronil Singh and others is on the
hands of open border advocates and the sanctuary city loons who provide no
sanctuary for the American citizen victims of illegal alien criminals.
Even
if it were true that illegal aliens commit crimes, including murder, at rates
lower than American citizens, that would be irrelevant. The murder rate for
illegal aliens should be zero because none of them should be here and the
indisputable fact is that Jamiel Shaw Jr., Kate Steinle, and Mollie Tibbetts
would be alive today if the illegal aliens who slew them were still staring at
the other side of a border wall liberals refuse to build.
Pelosi
has said that a border wall would be “immoral,
ineffective, and expensive” when it has been documented when
it has been demonstrated that none of that is true. The fact is that
walls are so effective they
have been built in scores of countries around the world and in
the U.S. places like San Diego and Yuma have demonstrated their effectiveness
as Pelosi and Schumer worry more about Syria’s borders than our own:
According
to Quebec University expert Elisabeth Vallet. there are65
completed or under construction border walls in the world
today.
One-third
of the world’s nations have border walls or barriers with their neighbors.
Pelosi
believes this is immoral.
Tell
that to Israel, Hungary, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, Spain, Greece,
Cyprus, Ireland, etc.
And
Nancy Pelosi has a wall around the backyard at her home in San Francisco.
What
is immoral is a policy endorsed by Pelosi and Schumer of sanctuary cities and
even states that allows such criminal aliens in our country to murder Americans
and a Democratic caucus that would abolish I.C.E. and those who risk their
lives daily to provide some semblance of border security. What is immoral
is politicians such as Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf not only refusing
to cooperate with I.C.E. butgiving
illegal aliens a heads-up when I.C.E. raids are imminent.
In
the wake of the Singh murder, Schaaf still insists that warning illegal aliens
about I.C.E. raids was and is the right thing to do, the lives of American
citizens she is sworn to protect be damned:
Oakland
Mayor Libby Schaaf -- who once warned Northern California residents about an
impending ICE raid -- said she has “no regrets” for her actions and said the
federal immigration agency “has gone astray.”
“I
have no regrets, none. The more time goes by, the more certain I feel that I
did the right thing in standing up for our community and pointing out our
values are not aligned with our laws,” Schaff toldBuzzFeed
in an interview. “That’s hopefully the message that is sent out.”
The
message Schaaf, Pelosi, and Schumer are sending out is one of callous disregard
for the lives of American citizens. Democrats are endangering their lives and
the lives of migrant children by
enticing caravans to drag young children a thousand miles with lies about easy
entry and waiting jobs:
The
father of an 8-year-old Guatemalan boy who died in U.S. custody took his son to
the border after hearing rumors that parents and their children would be
allowed to migrate to the United States and escape the poverty in their
homeland, the boy's stepsister told the Associated Press.
Felipe
Gomez Alonzo died Monday at a New Mexico hospital after suffering coughing,
vomiting and fever, authorities said. It was the second such death this month.
Another Guatemalan child, 7-year-old Jakelin Caal, died in U.S. custody on Dec.
8.
The
fact is that if we had a wall, or whatever the hair-splitters want to call it,
both these children would be alive today. And it is American kids are dying
too, killed and murdered by illegal aliens who have no right to be here. Just
ask the parents of Justin Lee, 14, who
was killed in a hit-and-run accident by an illegal alien:
An
illegal immigrant has pleaded guilty to a hit and run that killed a Wixom teen
in June.
Miguel
Ibarra-Cerda, 22, entered his plea Thursday, the day his trial was set to begin
before Judge Cheryl Matthews in Oakland County Circuit Court.
Ibarra-Cerda
is charged with failing to stop at the scene of an accident when at fault,
resulting in death, and reckless driving causing death for the collision which
killed Justin Lee, 14. Ibarra-Cerda faces up to 15 years in prison and a
$10,000 fine for the first charge and 15 years in prison and a $2,500-$10,000
fine on the second charge. Matthews will sentence him Dec. 20.
Or
ask the parents of 12-year-old Clinton Howell,
shot and killed shortly before Christmas by an illegal alien from Jamaica:
Police
in Connecticut have arrested an 18-year-old undocumented immigrant from Jamaica
on murder charges related to the shooting death of an innocent 12-year-old boy
a week before Christmas.
Bridgeport
Police Chief Armando Perez on Monday announced the charges against Tajay
Chambers stemming from the December 18 death of Clinton Howell outside his
family's home on Willow Street.
Chambers
has been charged with murder; murder with special circumstances; use of a
firearm during the commission of a felony; illegal possession of a firearm
without a permit; risk of injury to a child; reckless endangerment, and
larceny….
CTpost.com reported,
citing police sources, that earlier that evening, Chambers and his alleged
co-conspirators were driving in a stolen car when they got into an argument
with some people walking along Willow Street, among them Howell’s relative.
There have been many suggestions as to how to pay for the wall,
such as Sen.
Ted Cruz’s idea to apply drug asset forfeitures to wall construction or to tax
the billions of dollars aliens return to their home countries.. Pelosi certainly found no problem locating $3 billion for the
ineffective and absurd “Cash for Clunkers” program under Obama, didn’t she?
The
wall would in fact pay for itself, if only in the reduced cost of crimes that
would be eliminated, saving both dollars from overburdened social services and
the cost of illegal alien crimes, particularly the cost in human lives such as
that of Ronil Singh, who is survived by his wife and young son.
His
death, the death of a legal immigrant pursuing the American dream, and
countless other American citizens, including children, is on the hands of Nancy
Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Perhaps Pelosi can attend Singh’s funeral and explain
how his death and the deaths of others in the absence of a wall is all
President Trump’s fault and that not building the wall is the moral thing to
do.
Daniel
John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose
pieces have appeared inInvestor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the ChicagoSun-Times among other
publications.
Caught Again: Dangerous Gang Member Deported 10 Times Since 1993
Arrested in Tucson
The
United States Customs and Border Protection agency arrested a dangerous illegal
alien and member of the notorious "18th Street Gang" in Arizona on Tuesday
evening, according to a press release.
Arizona
CBP reports that "51-year-old Hector Gustavo Montoya, a member of the
dangerous 18th Street gang in Los Angeles," was apprehended this week near
Nogales while agents were patrolling the border. Montoya has been arrested by
American authorities on numerous occasions, "most recently in 2016 when he
was convicted for drug smuggling offenses. He served a 24-month prison sentence
for that conviction and was removed from the country after confinement."
Montoya
has an illustrious history with repeated illegal entry into the country. In
what some politicians may describe as "an act of love," the 18th street gang member has been deported from
America "more than 10 times for immigration violations dating back to
1993, as well as multiple arrests for crimes committed in California."
Montoya hails from Honduras and will be held in custody by federal
authorities.
CBP
has previously dealt with 18th Street gang members who use America's porous southern border as a means of
gaining access into the country. During July 2018, CBP arrested a thug from
this group who entered into the country separately while posing as a migrant
seeking refuge with his child. That same week of that arrest, agents also
caught a Salvadoran national crossing the border who also belonged to the
gang.
Montoya's
arrest comes as President Donald J. Trump and other Republicans continue to
demand funding for a border wall to impede the flow of violent illegal aliens.
December 22, 2018
Bienvenidos a Mexico:
California's ballot-harvesting, sure enough, is borrowed from Mexico
In an extraordinary investigative piece on
how ballot-harvesting works by Steve Miller, published on Real Clear
Investigations, we learn an amazing amount of information about how
ballot-harvesting works and why it's so closely connected to election fraud,
skewing elections in directions they normally wouldn't go. Themust-read
piece is focused on how Texas
is dealing with the seedy issue, enforcing the law, prosecuting more than twice as
many cases of electoral fraud as
California, even hampered as Texas is by weak penalties for violators. But a
little detail stands out much deeper into the piece: Ballot-harvesting, which
is at the root of considerable fraud of all kinds, is a practice specifically
borrowed from Latin America, with a very
impressive Latino analyst, K.B. Forbes, who
has electoral experience in both countries, citing Mexico. Here's the passage:
The practice
has its roots in Latin America, said K.B. Forbes, a political consultant
and Hispanic activist who has served as an elections observer in Sonora,
Mexico. “In the Latin culture, they have colonias, which is ‘little colony,’
literally,” he said. “In these, they sometimes have the equivalent of a
precinct boss, and that’s how people move up. The [politiqueras] deliver the
vote and when the candidate moves in, the theory is that they get a good post
inside the government.”
That brings up California, where
ballot-harvesting is perfectly legal, and normal voters have to wonder how the
heck that happened. Ballot-harvesting has been a disaster for Republicans in
California, with all conservatives now shut out from any representation in
once-red Orange County. Most congressional elections there showed Republican
candidates in the lead on election night in the last midterm, but all of them
flipped to Democrats as the Democrat-led ballot-harvesting brought in votes and
votes and votes from supposed precincts, harvested by their political
operatives, until the result went the other way. (This by the way, didn't
happen in districts where Democrats held a small lead, nothing flipped in their
cases and ballots did not keep rolling in).
If ballot harvesting is a practice
imported from Mexican politics, what does that say about California politics,
whose legislators would embrace Mexican electoral practices over the U.S.
standard? As I mentioned earlier, Mexico has been called "a perfect
dicatorship" by none other than
Nobel Prize-winning literary lion Mario Vargas Llosa, owing to the continuous
power of the Mexican Partido Revolucionario Institucional (or P.R.I.), which up under a decade or two ago, had a
hammerlock monopoly on Mexican politics, winning every single election in what
was then a one-party state. That's a system so bad people emigrated illegally
from that country to get away from it. Now, the cultural practice is right
there waiting for them in California, albeit, virtually nowhere else.
And like the P.R.I.'s Mexican electoral
practice of ballot-harvesting, it's noteworthy that the ruling Democrats of
California also are famous for doling out the goodies to the loyal voters.
They've promised amazing things to California's illegal immigrant population,
with the latest thing free heath care. California's insurance commissioner, the
respected non-partisan Steve Poizner, was, conveniently, ballot-harvested out
of office after an election-night lead several days after midterm by utterly
leftist Democrat Ricardo Lara who openly declared his support and big plans for
free health care for illegals. He's tried it before in the legislator and now
he's going to do it this time through the executive. California's incoming
governor, of course, is all in for the goody-slinging. In Mexico, they used to
pass out bags of beans for votes. In California, the prizes are considerably
higher, and they go well beyond free health care. I've already noted the
weird similarities to how California is run, and P.R.I-style politics here.
Any wonder California is going way out of
its way to welcome illegal immigrants? "You're all welcome here," as
Gov. Jerry Brown famously said. California already hosts a quarter of the
nation's illegals, and with middle class families now moving out due to high
living costs and punitive taxation, the California P.R.I. likes new bodies
coming in who have a lot of needs, which keeps the congressional seats numerous
and the federal funds flowing.
It all makes a normal person wonder about
the weird closeness of California officials and their Mexican counterparts,
too. Newsom has already paid a visit to Mexico to discuss the caravan with the
Mexican government in Mexico City (not Tijuana, where he would have gotten a
earful from the generally conservative and more dissident-oriented Tijuana
locals), and he has declared he plans to withdraw National Guard troops from
the U.S. border. With his party now embracing the P.R.I's style of governance
and having some unnaturally close ties to Mexican officials (I've seen it
myself at Los Angeles functions as a guest of the Mexican government), it looks
like a growing merger of Mexican and California politics.
Mexico knows how bad the system is, and
its citizens did rebel against it with a Trump-like leftist president, Andres
Manuel Lopez-Obrador, who won on a vow to end corruption. One can safely take
that as a sign that Mexicans are trying to move away from that kind of
politics, which of course would include ballot harvesting. California, on the
other hand, is moving toward it, embracing what Mexico is trying to reject.
That speaks pretty poorly for the sorry state of affairs in California. It's
only great for the rulers and those they patronize, until the money runs out.
Until then, clarification about
California's Mexico borrowings need to stand as an incentive to other states
about what not to do.
CALIFORNIA ICE CAPADES
Crackdown
on sheriffs, comfort for criminal illegals.
In California’s capital, sheriff Scott
Jones has been under fire for allegedly resisting oversight. This week the
Sacramento County sheriff revealed the real reason for the campaign against
him.
“It’s no secret,” he told county
supervisors, “I give ICE unfettered access to our jails and our databases.” That was a problem because
county supervisors voted in July to cancel the sheriff’s contract with ICE, and
it also raised issues of compliance with Senate Bill 54, the state’s sanctuary
law.
“I’ve been portrayed horribly, like I
split up families and like I’m a Trump guy, and we’re all buddies,” Jones told reporters last year. So he brought ICE director Thomas Homan to a
Sacramento forum to explain “factual information” about federal policy. Jones
had no problem with immigrants but explained, “it’s the people in the jail, the
people that choose a career of crime, we have to get rid of those folks.”
In 2015, Jones told Fox News that “by ICE’s own numbers, 95 percent of the people
they used to arrest, that they’ve already identified, that they want to take
custody of, are getting out of jail before they can get to them. And that’s
scary, because they’re criminals. They’ve demonstrated a propensity for
criminal behavior.” The real back story to Jones’ concern came in October of
2014.
Repeat deportee Luis Bracamontes, gunned down Sacramento deputy Danny Oliver and detective Michael Davis. The murder of two police
officers prompted no statement from California governor Jerry Brown or Kamala
Harris, attorney general at the time. Both failed to lament the “gun violence”
on display in the case.
In court, with relatives of the victims
present, Bracamontes said “I wish I had killed more of the motherfuckers.” Also
present was Anthony Holmes, whom Bracamontes had shot five times when he
refused to give up his car. Bracamontes called Holmes a “nigger,” and yelled
“black lives don’t matter!” at the jury. As it happens, Danny Oliver’s
wife Susan is also African American.
Jones fulfilled a promise to her by making
a video urging the president to secure the borders. That didn’t happen and Jones got no support from California’s
political and judicial establishments. They showed more interested in
protecting illegals, even violent, racist criminals like Bracamontes, who was
not supposed to be in the United States in the first place.
Last year, California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye wrote a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and
Homeland Secretary John Kelly stating: “As Chief Justice of California
responsible for the safe and fair delivery of justice in our state, I am deeply
concerned about reports from some of our trial courts that immigration agents
appear to be stalking undocumented immigrants in our courthouses to make
arrests. Our courthouses serve as a vital forum for ensuring access to justice
and protecting public safety. Courthouses should not be used as bait in the
necessary enforcement of our country’s immigration laws.”
Sessions and Kelly replied that “stalking”
has “specific legal meaning in American law,” and it was “criminal activity.”
On the other hand, “the arrest of persons in a public place based on probable
cause has long been upheld by the United States Supreme Court,” as U.S. v. Watson confirmed. Federal statutes authorize arrests where probable
cause exists to believe that “such aliens are in violation of immigration
laws.” Courthouses are not only public places, but visitors are screened for
weapons, Sessions and Kelly wrote, therefore “the safety risks for the
arresting officers are substantially decreased.”
This was hardly the only lapse of judgment
by California’s Chief Justice, a 2009 selection of Republican governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger. Cantil-Sakauye has now given up her Republican Party
Registration in favor of “no party.” The reason, she explained last week, was Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Cantil-Sakauye wondered why Republicans
would bring in female prosecutor Rachel Mitchell to question Christine Blasey
Ford. This was to determine if Blasey Ford’s charge that a drunken Kavanaugh
sexually assaulted her in 1982 was true or false.
Tani Cantil-Sakauye doesn’t get that, so
Californians have cause to wonder if she believes that accusation equals guilt
and women are always to be believed, regardless of the facts. That is a strange
position for any lawyer or judge, much less the Chief Justice of the California
Supreme Court. On the other hand, this Chief Justice keeps quiet when criminal
illegals murder police officers and denounces federal ICE agents as stalkers.
In California’s ICE Capades, sheriffs like
Scott Jones get criticism and illegals get special treatment. As Newsweek reports, “the California city of Sacramento dedicated $300,000 last year
to helping undocumented immigrants with everything from legal services to fight
deportations to assistance in applying for citizenship and visas.”
The money “went toward helping 28
undocumented immigrants facing deportation receive legal aid in their bid to
stay in the U.S., as well as helping residents in encounters with U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.” In addition, the city funds
a response network “which includes a 24-hour hotline that people can call to
report ICE activity within the Sacramento area.”
Least-Educated
State: California No. 1 in Percentage of Residents 25 and Older Who Never
Finished 9th Grade; No. 50 in High School Graduates
California Gov. Jerry Brown and
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) outside the U.S. Capitol, March
22, 2017. (Getty Images/Alex Wong)
(CNSNews.com) - California ranks
No. 1 among the 50 states for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who
have never completed ninth grade and 50th for the percentage who have graduated
from high school, according to new data from the Census Bureau.
Texas ranks No. 2 for the
percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed ninth grade
and 49th for the percentage who have graduated from high school.
9.7 percent of California
residents 25 and older, the Census Bureau says, never completed ninth grade. Only 82.5 percent graduated from
high school.
8.7 percent of Texas residents 25 and older never completed ninth grade, and only 82.8 percent
graduated from high school.
California
and Texas—while having the highest percentages of residents 25 and older who
never finished ninth grade and the lowest percentages who graduated from high
school—are the nation’s two most populous states.
In
fact, the 2,510,370 California residents 25 and older who, according to the
Census Bureau, never finished ninth grade outnumber the entire populations of 15 other states.
In
California, children are required to attend school from six years of age until
they are 18. “California’s compulsory education laws require children between
six and eighteen years of age to attend school, with a limited number of
exceptions,” says the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, an agency of the California
state government. (The National Center for Education Statistics also indicates that children in California
are compelled by law to attend school from 6 to 18 years of age.)
Massachusetts
ranks No. 1 for the percentage of its residents 25 and older—42.1 percent--who
have earned at least a bachelor’s degree.
These
rankings are based on data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey
5-year estimates, which were released this month.
In
the survey, the Census Bureau asks respondents to specify the level of
educational attainment for each individual in their household. The question is:
“What is the highest degree or level of school this person has COMPLETED. Mark
(X) ONE box. If currently enrolled, mark the previous grade or highest degree
received.”
The
survey form then offers the respondent multiple options ranging from “no
schooling completed” to “professional degree” or “doctorate degree.” If an
individual has not earned a high school degree, the respondent is asked to
specify the highest grade the individual actually completed—ranging from
“nursery school” through “12th grade—NO DIPLOMA.”
The
Census Bureau’s American Community Survey queries a random sample of more than
3.5 million U.S. households each year and publishes a one-year estimate for
each year. The five-year estimate, the bureau says, “is a weighted average of
the five one-year estimates.” The newly released five-year estimates are for
the period from 2013 through 2017.
Nationwide,
5.4 percent of residents 25 and older have never finished ninth grade,
according to the latest five-year estimates.
Ten
states exceeded the nationwide level of residents 25 and older who have never
finished ninth grade. These include: California (9.7 percent), Texas (8.7
percent), New York (6.5 percent), New Mexico (6.5 percent), Kentucky (6.1
percent), Nevada (5.9 percent), Arizona (5.9 percent), Mississippi (5.6 percent),
Rhode Island (5.5 percent), and Louisiana (5.4 percent).
Wyoming—with
1.8 percent—had nation’s smallest percentage of residents 25 and older who
never finished ninth grade.
In
seventeen states, the percentage of residents 25 and older who at least graduated
from high school was less than the nationwide percentage of 87.3 percent.
These
seventeen states included: California (82.5 percent), Texas (82.8 percent),
Mississippi (83.4 percent), Louisiana (84.3 percent), New Mexico (85 percent), Kentucky
(85.2 percent), Alabama (85.3 percent), Arkansas (85.6 percent), Nevada (85.8
percent), West Virginia (85.9 percent), New York (86.1 percent), Georgia (86.3
percent), Tennessee (86.5 percent), South Carolina (86.5 percent), Arizona
(86.5 percent), North Carolina (86.9 percent), and Rhode Island (87.3 percent).
Nationwide,
30.9 percent of residents 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
In
nineteen states, the percentage with a bachelor’s degree or higher exceeds the
national percentage. These nineteen states include both No. 14 California
(32.6) and No. 9 New York (35.3), which respectively ranked No.1 and No. 3 for
the percentage of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade.
The
ten states with the highest percentage of residents 25 and older who earned a
bachelor’s degree or higher are: Massachusetts (42.1 percent), Colorado (39.4
percent), Maryland (39 percent), Connecticut (38.4 percent), New Jersey (38.1
percent), Virginia (37.6 percent), Vermont (36.8 percent), New Hampshire (36
percent), New York (35.3 percent), and Minnesota (34.8 percent).
West
Virginia—at 19.9 percent—has the lowest percentage of residents with a
bachelor’s degree or higher.
In
another seven states, the percentage of residents who have a bachelor’s degree
or higher is less than 25 percent. They are: Mississippi (21.3 percent),
Arkansas (22 percent), Kentucky (23.2 percent), Louisiana (23.4 percent),
Nevada (23.7 percent), Alabama (24.5 percent) and Oklahoma (24.8 percent).
In
California, according to the Census Bureau’s five-year estimates, the resident population 25 and
older was 25,950,818. Of those individuals, 2,510,370—or 9.7 percent--never
completed ninth grade.
Another
2,033,160 California residents 25 and older completed the ninth, tenth,
eleventh or twelfth grade—but did not earn a high school diploma. Thus, a total
of 4,543,530 California residents 25 and older—or a nation-leading 17.5
percent--have never graduated from high school.
Those
2,510,370 individuals 25 and older in California who never finished 9th grade
outnumber the entire populations of 15 other states, according to the Census Bureau’s latest population
estimates.
These include: Alaska (737,438), Delaware (967,171), Hawaii (1,420,491), Idaho
(1,754,208), Maine (1,338,404), Montana (1,062,305), Nebraska (1,929,268), New
Hampshire (1,356,458), New Mexico (2,095,428), North Dakota (760,077), Rhode
Island (1,057,315), South Dakota (882,235), Vermont (626,299), West Virginia
(1,805,832), and Wyoming (577,737).
In Texas, the resident population 25 and older was 17,454,431. Of those individuals, 1,513,995—or 8.7 percent—never completed
ninth grade. That outnumbers the populations of 11 states.
CALIFORNIA RUNNING OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE'S
MONEY TO TAX
December
13, 2018
To paraphrase a Thatcher paraphrase, socialism works until you run
out of other people's money. And then you start taxing Netflix and text
messages. On its way to bankruptcy, Chicago managed to do impose some ingenious
taxes. Now California is following suit.
A California
regulator's plan to tax texts in order to fund cellphones for the poor hit a
snag Wednesday after a Federal Communications Commission ruled text messages
aren't subject to the utility agency's authority.
The decision by
the FCC, which categorized text messages as "information services" on
par with emails and not "telecommunications services," came in an
effort to combat robo-texts and spam messages. The California Public Utilities
Commission now faces an uphill battle ahead of a scheduled vote on the
measure next month.
Those opposed to the
planned tax hailed the FCC decision a victory.
“We hope that the CPUC
recognizes that taxing text messages is bad for consumers,” Jamie Hastings,
senior vice president of external and state affairs for CTIA, which represents
the U.S. wireless communications industry, told The Mercury News. “Taxing
this service would burden those who rely on and use this service each and every
day.”
To quote the Beatles, "If you drive a car, I'll tax the
street, If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat. If you get too cold
I'll tax the heat, If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet."
Study: More than 7-in-10 California Immigrant Households Are on
Welfare
US Customs and Border Patrol
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.
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.
October 19, 2018
Flight to Florida: Can the
Sunshine State Survive?
In 2011, the publication 24/7 Wall St.
compiled the following list of
the ten states doing the "most" and the "least" to
"spread the wealth." A migration
study compiled from 2016 to 2017 by the U.S. Census provides
some thought-provoking data on these 20 states:
Table 1: 2017 Relocation
Data on States that Differ in Spreading
the Wealth
States doing the most in 2011
|
Migration per 1000
|
Alaska
|
-13.4
|
California
|
-3.5
|
Connecticut
|
-6.2
|
Hawaii
|
-6.2
|
Massachusetts
|
-3.4
|
Minnesota
|
1.4
|
New Jersey
|
-6.4
|
New York
|
-9.6
|
Pennsylvania
|
-2
|
Rhode Island
|
-3.6
|
average
|
-5.6
|
States doing
the least in 2011
|
Migration per
1000
|
Alabama
|
0.8
|
Arizona
|
9.1
|
Arkansas
|
1.6
|
Florida
|
7.8
|
Idaho
|
14.6
|
Indiana
|
-0.1
|
Oklahoma
|
-2.7
|
South
Carolina
|
9.9
|
Tennessee
|
6.1
|
Texas
|
2.8
|
average
|
5.0
|
If
social spending improves the overall quality of life, why are so many Americans
relocating away from the states on the left?
Based on data gathered by the Sacramento Bee from 2005 to 2015,
California "exports
its poor to Texas and other
states while wealthier people move in." This
pattern is not limited to California. According to the National
Center for Higher Education Management Systems, nearly 9,000 working-age adults
with only high school diplomas moved
out of New York in 2007 while 10,000 with college degrees moved
in. The NCHEMS documented a similar relocation pattern in Rhode
Island where non-college graduates moved out while people with graduate and
professional degrees moved in. Why are adults who are presumed to
benefit the most from income redistribution leaving these states?
Table 2: 2015 Unemployment
by Race in States that Differ in Spreading
the Wealth*
States doing the most in 2011
|
White unem.
|
Black unem.
|
Latino unem.
|
California
|
6.0%
|
11.0%
|
7.6%
|
Connecticut
|
4.5%
|
13.2%
|
11.3%
|
Massachusetts
|
4.4%
|
10.6%
|
11.0%
|
Minnesota
|
2.9%
|
14.1%
|
3.8%
|
New Jersey
|
5.2%
|
10.0%
|
7.6%
|
New York
|
4.5%
|
8.2%
|
6.7%
|
Pennsylvania
|
4.5%
|
10.5%
|
7.7%
|
Rhode Island
|
5.2%
|
12.2%
|
9.1%
|
average★
|
4.7%
|
11.2%
|
8.1%
|
States doing
the least in 2011
|
White unem.
|
Black unem.
|
Latino unem.
|
Alabama
|
4.3%
|
10.6%
|
6.5%
|
Arizona
|
5.7%
|
9.1%
|
8.3%
|
Arkansas
|
4.3%
|
10.3%
|
6.7%
|
Florida
|
4.6%
|
9.0%
|
5.8%
|
Indiana
|
4.5%
|
7.0%
|
5.6%
|
Oklahoma
|
3.8%
|
8.8%
|
4.8%
|
South
Carolina
|
4.1%
|
10.7%
|
6.2%
|
Tennessee
|
5.1%
|
7.5%
|
4.0%
|
Texas
|
4.1%
|
7.5%
|
4.9%
|
average★
|
4.5%
|
8.9%
|
5.8%
|
*
To provide more realistic data on minority communities, the table excludes data
from states where blacks make up less than 5% of the state population.
★Based on a
one-tailed T-test, overall black and Latino unemployment is significantly
higher in states on the left column (p = 0.01). There is no
significant difference for white unemployment between the states in the left
and right columns (p = 0.30).
According
to the Department of Labor, these minorities rely much more on
blue-collar jobs than whites, and even though the employment
numbers for New York seem respectable, Forbes listed this state as one
of the laggards for growth in high-paying blue-collar jobs in 2014.
Blue-collar
jobs are more vulnerable to outsourcing, and data
compiled by Forbesshow why adults without college degrees are likely
to struggle to find high-paying jobs in states on the left:
Table
3: 2017 Forbes
Business Regulatory Environment Ranking on States that Differ in Spreading
the Wealth
States doing the most in 2011
|
Regulatory Environment
|
Alaska
|
29
|
California
|
47
|
Connecticut
|
42
|
Hawaii
|
46
|
Massachusetts
|
35
|
Minnesota
|
22
|
New Jersey
|
45
|
New York
|
27
|
Pennsylvania
|
36
|
Rhode Island
|
48
|
average rank
|
37.7
|
States doing
the least in 2011
|
Regulatory
Environment
|
Alabama
|
17
|
Arizona
|
25
|
Arkansas
|
23
|
Florida
|
5
|
Idaho
|
15
|
Indiana
|
1
|
Oklahoma
|
14
|
South
Carolina
|
6
|
Tennessee
|
8
|
Texas
|
21
|
average rank
|
13.5
|
Note that half the states on the left
rank among the "10 worst" for regulations, while nearly half of the
states on the right are among the "10 best."
Progressives believe that you can diminish
poverty by growing the government. Maybe they have a point: when you
undermine free enterprise, you eliminate a large number of blue-collar
jobs. When working-class adults relocate to other states in search
of jobs, the demographic profile of the state becomes more
"gentrified." Data
compiled in 2015 by the U.S. Census show that the states on the
left do have significantly more college graduates:
Table 4: 2015 Percent
Adults with College Degrees in States that Differ
in Spreading the Wealth
States doing the most in 2011
|
Adults with College Degrees
|
Alaska
|
28%
|
California
|
31%
|
Connecticut
|
38%
|
Hawaii
|
31%
|
Massachusetts
|
41%
|
Minnesota
|
34%
|
New Jersey
|
37%
|
New York
|
34%
|
Pennsylvania
|
29%
|
Rhode Island
|
32%
|
average
|
34%
|
States doing
the least in 2011
|
% Adults with
College Degrees
|
Alabama
|
24%
|
Arizona
|
28%
|
Arkansas
|
21%
|
Florida
|
27%
|
Idaho
|
26%
|
Indiana
|
24%
|
Oklahoma
|
24%
|
South
Carolina
|
26%
|
Tennessee
|
25%
|
Texas
|
28%
|
average
|
25%
|
Does having more college graduates
result in the election of people with "better expertise" to run the
government? The late William F. Buckley said, "I would rather
entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in
the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard
University." Data gathered by the Mercatus
Center concurs with Buckley's premise that colleges do not
teach wisdom:
Table 5: 2018 Mercatus
Center Rankings on States that Differ in Spreading
the Wealth
States doing the most in 2011
|
Fiscal Rankings
|
Alaska
|
11
|
California
|
42
|
Connecticut
|
49
|
Hawaii
|
38
|
Massachusetts
|
47
|
Minnesota
|
24
|
New Jersey
|
48
|
New York
|
41
|
Pennsylvania
|
35
|
Rhode Island
|
40
|
average rank
|
38
|
States doing
the least in 2011
|
Fiscal
Rankings
|
Alabama
|
14
|
Arizona
|
27
|
Arkansas
|
25
|
Florida
|
4
|
Idaho
|
7
|
Indiana
|
21
|
Oklahoma
|
5
|
South
Carolina
|
20
|
Tennessee
|
3
|
Texas
|
22
|
average rank
|
15
|
The Mercatus fiscal rankings use five
components of "state solvency" to estimate the ability of each state
to pay its bills. Note that the three states with the highest
percentage of college graduates (Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey)
are the worst in fiscal solvency.
What does all this have to do with
Florida? According to NCHEMS, Florida and Texas were the top two
destinations for adults without college degrees in 2007. Some of
them may have moved out of states on the left. It is to their credit
that they relocated in search of employment instead of handouts, but how many
of them voted for the policies that made the states they fled so
unbearable? How many of them will continue voting this way in
Florida? This could determine whether or not Florida joins the
states on the left column after November.
Self-righteous liberals who lecture
conservatives with biblical verses such as "love your neighbor as
yourself" overlook the Bible's role in teaching wisdom, and anyone who has
raised children knows that love in the absence of wisdom has devastating consequences. Good
intentions pave the road to Hell, in part because people who take pride in
their good intentions feel morally superior. This is why the Florida
gubernatorial candidate, Andrew Gillum, shamelessly plays the race card against
his opponent and deflects questions on financing his health care plan by blaming
Republicans. And why not? When your intentions
are "noble" and the merits of your ideas are
"self-evident," you are liberated from conventional rules of
discourse and honesty.
Gillum may win because voting against
wealth redistribution requires moral restraint, especially from people who are
down on their luck. Those who fled states on the left should
remember how the Hebrews in the Book of Exodus undervalued their newly won
freedom and expressed a longing for the Egyptian "security" every
time they faced a new difficulty. Jews celebrate the Exodus with unleavened
bread to remember how their ancestors sacrificed their comfort to strike out on
their own.
From Caracas to Athens,
people who trade economic freedom to muscle in on other people's wealth always
end up losing both. Blue-collar workers have the most to lose
regardless of whether or not they vote to grow the government. College
graduates who are unaffected by these policies have a moral obligation to stop
relying on feel-good talking points about "spreading the wealth" and
study the cold hard facts. If you are not bothered by the yawning
gap between white and minority unemployment in progressive states, then any
concern you express over the imaginary "racism" of the Republican
candidate Ron DeSantis is nothing more than virtue-signaling.
S.F IS HOME TO THE MOST
CORRUPT AMNESTY DEMS IN THE COUNTRY INCLUDING FEINSTEIN, PELOSI, NEWSOM AND
HITLERMALA HARRIS.
San Francisco: Now so bad,
it'll make you cry
Twentieth-century San Francisco, Herb Caen's beloved Baghdad by
the Bay, has ceased to exist. It has been replaced by a city where
the sidewalks around Market Street are, in places, caked in feces, urine, and
vomit. The stink as you emerge from the BART batters you like frozen
sleet, shocking and overwhelming. The
hordes of homeless, sprawled in doorways and sleeping on the sidewalks, are a
bitterly eclectic mixture of the mentally deranged; burnt out druggies;
dead-eyed hippies; con artists; pickpockets; and hundreds of simply lost,
forgotten souls.
I had occasion to visit downtown San Francisco this afternoon, the
first time in over seven years, though I reside only thirty miles away in the
East Bay suburbs. During my working life, I have commuted to San
Francisco as a bushy-tailed junior executive in the '70s, as a small
business-owner in the early '80s, and as a corporate executive in the
'90s. Thankfully, "Old" San Francisco really was a
wonderful place to work, eat, and play.
As I walked the three blocks back to the BART, I was panhandled
four times, plus two clumsy pickpocket attempts. I didn't see a
single cop in a car or on foot. What could they do?
What finally broke my heart were the kids and women, also lying in
the streets, drugged, shell-shocked, begging for food. I found an
ATM, took out some cash, and bought twenty five-dollar "Arch Cards"
from McDonald's and passed them out. The salty tears flowed gently
down my face and onto my lips. My soul, my humanity was abused,
sickened, and disgusted.
Today I observed a city that carefully and deliberately schemed to
become an open sewer. This is far beyond simple
incompetence. The magnitude and pervasiveness of this horror remains
indescribable. No rational, thinking person, or board, or mayor
could allow this societal abomination to continue unabated in a first-world
country.
Yet it does.
San Francisco willingly hosts a malignant cancer that has
metastasized and destroyed all aspects of a civilized, compassionate society.
While skyscrapers still fill the skyline, and tankers and giant
container ships still prowl the bay, the City-by-the-Bay soul has begun its
death rattle.
The Hollowing-Out of the California Dream
For minorities in the Golden State, opportunity and upward
mobility are hard to come by.
July 26, 2018
California
Economy, finance, and budgets
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.
Joel Kotkin serves as Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman
University and executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (COU).
*
*
In California County With
Highest Murder Rate, a City Confronts a Mass Killing
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/us/bakersfield-shooting-gunman-victims.html
age
A Kern County sheriff’s deputy near one of the shooting victims on
Wednesday in Bakersfield.CreditCreditFelix Adamo/The Bakersfield
Californian, via Associated Press
By Tim Arango
·
Sept. 13, 2018
BAKERSFIELD,
Calif. — First two people were shot dead outside a trucking company on the
southeast edge of the city. Then another was killed in front of a sporting
goods store whose shelves are stocked with guns, and where on Thursday morning
the only sign of what happened was a bullet hole in the wall and a faint drop of
blood on the sidewalk. Finally, two more people were killed at a house not far
away, before the gunman shot himself in the stomach.
Even by
the grim standards of the place with the highest murder rate in California, the
shooting spree that killed five on Wednesday night in Bakersfield, sparked by a
domestic dispute, has shaken this industrial community.
“We have
a lot of homicides, up and down the Central Valley,” the Kern County sheriff,
Donny Youngblood, said.
Mr. Youngblood placed the shootings in the context
of the nation’s epidemic of mass shootings, calling it, “our new norm.”
“Now it’s
our turn,” he said.
Unlike
many of the recent mass shootings across the United States that have drawn so
much attention, this appeared to have started as a domestic dispute between a
husband and his recently divorced wife, according to police officers.
The
killings punctuated a deadly time for this city, which sits in the agricultural
region of California’s central valley and also counts oil production as another
important industry.
The authorities here blame the increase in
the murder rate on killings involving gangs and drugs — part of the county is a
border between two rival gang territories, said Lt. Mark King with the
sheriff’s department.
The Kern County District Attorney, Lisa
Green, said she had seen instances of domestic violence increase in recent
years, as well as gang murders. She puts much of the blame for her county’s
murder outbreak on California’s moves to reduce its prison population.
“I definitely believe the criminal justice reforms
have released dangerous criminals who should be incarcerated,” she said. Mr.
King agreed with that assessment and said that many in law enforcement did too.
Criminal justice activists dispute that there’s a connection.
The
region, about 115 miles north of Los Angeles, has missed out on the economic
boom of California’s coastal areas. Even
as the area’s farms feed the rest of the state, and the oil wells account for
about 70 percent of California’s production, it is
economically depressed: the county’s unemployment rate is over 8 percent, almost twice that of
the state, and residents say gangs and drug use are rampant.
The
killings on Wednesday began in a desolate section of southeast Bakersfield, an
important city on trucking routes through the Central Valley, whose businesses
cater to those passing through: auto body shops, truck stops, fast-food
restaurants, self-storage.
The
sheriff’s department identified the gunman as Javier Casarez, 54. The
authorities said Mr. Casarez drove his wife to a trucking business near Highway
58, where he confronted another man, quickly killing him and then his wife.
Emily
Meza, who owns an auto body shop next to the trucking company, was in her
office when the shootings began. “I was in here with a customer and one of the
workers ran in and said, ‘Lock the doors,’” she said.
Just as
the shooting started, car alarms in the parking lot began wailing. “Then he did
a U-turn and left,” she said. “He drove off.”
She was back at work Thursday morning, almost as
if nothing happened. “You know, it’s just the adrenaline of the moment,” she
said.
A third man was killed near the trucking company, and then Mr.
Casarez, the authorities say, drove to a nearby home and killed two more
people, a 31-year-old woman named Laura Garcia, and her father Eliseo Cazares,
57.
Mr. Casarez turned his gun on himself in the parking lot of an
auto body shop, as a sheriff’s deputy ordered him to “put the gun down!,”
according to body camera footage that the sheriff’s department made public. It all lasted about a half-hour, and when
it was over six bodies, including Mr. Casarez’s, lay at multiple crime scenes.
“These cases are without a doubt overwhelming,” Mr. Youngblood
said. “Multiple crime scenes. We had all hands on deck last night.”
He said the gunman used a .50-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun
— which he described as, “one of the largest handguns that are made.” Mr.
Youngblood said they have not determined whether Mr. Casarez owned the gun
legally.
Mr. Youngblood said investigators were still trying to piece
together the relationships between the victims and the gunman, and said the
final explanation may go beyond domestic violence.
“We don’t know that yet,” he said.
Last year, Kern
County set a record with 101 murders, according to a tally kept by KGET, a local
television station, even as murders dropped across California. And according to statistics released by the state Attorney General, Kern County last
year had the highest per-capita murder rate in the state, with almost 10
murders per 100,000 people.
Jose Sanchez, who
lives next door to one of the murder scenes, said he knew his neighbors well,
and was shocked. Mr. Sanchez, 43, an immigrant from Mexico who once worked the
farm fields but now owns three trucks, said he has taken notice of the rise in
murders here, but always felt a distance from them.
“There’s murders, but in my opinion they are mostly gangs and
drugs,” he said.
*
In California County With Highest
Murder Rate, a City Confronts a Mass Killing
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/us/bakersfield-shooting-gunman-victims.html
A Kern County sheriff’s deputy near one of the shooting victims on
Wednesday in Bakersfield.CreditCreditFelix Adamo/The Bakersfield Californian,
via Associated Press
By Tim Arango
• Sept. 13, 2018
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — First two people were shot dead outside a trucking
company on the southeast edge of the city. Then another was killed in front of
a sporting goods store whose shelves are stocked with guns, and where on
Thursday morning the only sign of what happened was a bullet hole in the wall
and a faint drop of blood on the sidewalk. Finally, two more people were killed
at a house not far away, before the gunman shot himself in the stomach.
Even by the grim standards of the place with the highest murder rate in
California, the shooting spree that killed five on Wednesday night in
Bakersfield, sparked by a domestic dispute, has shaken this industrial
community.
“We have a lot of homicides, up and down the Central Valley,” the Kern
County sheriff, Donny Youngblood, said.
Mr. Youngblood placed the shootings in the context of the nation’s
epidemic of mass shootings, calling it, “our new norm.”
“Now it’s our turn,” he said.
Unlike many of the recent mass shootings across the United States that
have drawn so much attention, this appeared to have started as a domestic
dispute between a husband and his recently divorced wife, according to police
officers.
The killings punctuated a deadly time for this city, which sits in the
agricultural region of California’s central valley and also counts oil
production as another important industry.
The authorities here blame the increase in the murder rate on killings
involving gangs and drugs — part of the county is a border between two rival
gang territories, said Lt. Mark King with the sheriff’s department.
The Kern County District Attorney, Lisa Green, said she had seen
instances of domestic violence increase in recent years, as well as gang
murders. She puts much of the blame for her county’s murder outbreak on
California’s moves to reduce its prison population.
“I definitely believe the criminal justice reforms have released
dangerous criminals who should be incarcerated,” she said. Mr. King agreed with
that assessment and said that many in law enforcement did too. Criminal justice
activists dispute that there’s a connection.
The region, about 115 miles north of Los Angeles, has missed out on the
economic boom of California’s coastal areas. Even as the area’s farms feed the
rest of the state, and the oil wells account for about 70 percent of
California’s production, it is economically depressed: the county’s
unemployment rate is over 8 percent, almost twice that of the state, and
residents say gangs and drug use are rampant.
The killings on Wednesday began in a desolate section of southeast
Bakersfield, an important city on trucking routes through the Central Valley,
whose businesses cater to those passing through: auto body shops, truck stops,
fast-food restaurants, self-storage.
The sheriff’s department identified the gunman as Javier Casarez, 54. The
authorities said Mr. Casarez drove his wife to a trucking business near Highway
58, where he confronted another man, quickly killing him and then his wife.
Emily Meza, who owns an auto body shop next to the trucking company, was
in her office when the shootings began. “I was in here with a customer and one
of the workers ran in and said, ‘Lock the doors,’” she said.
Just as the shooting started, car alarms in the parking lot began
wailing. “Then he did a U-turn and left,” she said. “He drove off.”
She was back at work Thursday morning, almost as if nothing happened.
“You know, it’s just the adrenaline of the moment,” she said.
A third man was killed near the trucking company, and then Mr. Casarez,
the authorities say, drove to a nearby home and killed two more people, a
31-year-old woman named Laura Garcia, and her father Eliseo Cazares, 57.
Mr. Casarez turned his gun on himself in the parking lot of an auto body
shop, as a sheriff’s deputy ordered him to “put the gun down!,” according to
body camera footage that the sheriff’s department made public. It all lasted
about a half-hour, and when it was over six bodies, including Mr. Casarez’s,
lay at multiple crime scenes.
“These cases are without a doubt overwhelming,” Mr. Youngblood said.
“Multiple crime scenes. We had all hands on deck last night.”
He said the gunman used a .50-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun — which
he described as, “one of the largest handguns that are made.” Mr. Youngblood
said they have not determined whether Mr. Casarez owned the gun legally.
Mr. Youngblood said investigators were still trying to piece together the
relationships between the victims and the gunman, and said the final
explanation may go beyond domestic violence.
“We don’t know that yet,” he said.
Last year, Kern County set a record with 101 murders, according to a
tally kept by KGET, a local television station, even as murders dropped across
California. And according to statistics released by the state Attorney General,
Kern County last year had the highest per-capita murder rate in the state, with
almost 10 murders per 100,000 people.
Jose Sanchez, who lives next door to one of the murder scenes, said he
knew his neighbors well, and was shocked. Mr. Sanchez, 43, an immigrant from
Mexico who once worked the farm fields but now owns three trucks, said he has
taken notice of the rise in murders here, but always felt a distance from them.
“There’s murders, but in my opinion they are mostly gangs and drugs,” he
said.
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.”
No
Justice for Taxpaying Americans
By Howie Carr
The Boston Herald, August 08, 2018
But the real double standard kicks in when the undocumented Democrat gets to the courtroom. A taxpaying American can only dream of the kid-gloves treatment these Third World fiends get.
By Howie Carr
The Boston Herald, August 08, 2018
But the real double standard kicks in when the undocumented Democrat gets to the courtroom. A taxpaying American can only dream of the kid-gloves treatment these Third World fiends get.
Here’s a 2016 headline: “If Springfield market owner illegally cashing food stamps had been U.S. citizen punishment would have been greater, judge says.”
This one involved a 56-year-old Dominican bodega owner who was running an EBT-card scam for illegal immigrants in Springfield — stop me if you’ve heard this one before. He stole $38,000 and didn’t do a day in jail. As Judge Tina Page said, “Had he been a citizen of the U.S. he would in all likelihood be serving a substantial sentence.”
But if he’d been imprisoned he’d have been deported, and God knows we don’t want to deport Dominican welfare fraudsters — or Dominican heroin dealers.
Freeing Dominican heroin dealers (and future cop killers) is the specialty of Superior Court Judge Timothy Feeley, who cut loose a Dominican heroin dealer with no prison time, as the prosecutor put it, “to help him avoid deportation.”
Are you starting to notice a pattern here? Sometimes law-abiding taxpayers get murdered because of this double standard of justice for welfare-collecting noncitizens.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/howie_carr/2018/08/carr_no_justice_for_taxpaying_americans
Get rid of 40 million looting Mexicans and we resolve our
housing and jobs crisis and end the $150 billion Mex welfare state in our open
borders!
Our government is too busy easing illegals over the borders!
THE NEW PRIVILEGED CLASS: Illegals!
This is why you work From Jan - May paying taxes to the government
....with the rest of the calendar year is money for you and your family.
Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children.
He takes a job for
$5.00 or 6.00/hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no
income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, with
his fake Social Security number, he gets an "earned income credit" of
up to $3,200..... free.
He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent.
He qualifies for food stamps.
He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health
care.
His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school.
He requires bilingual teachers and books.
He qualifies for relief from high energy bills.
If they are or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for
SSI.
Once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare. All of this
is at (our) taxpayer's expense.
He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or
homeowners insurance.
Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed
material.
He and his family receive the equivalent of $20.00 to $30.00/hour
in benefits.
Working Americans are lucky to have $5.00 or $6.00/hour left after
Paying their bills and his.
The American taxpayers also pay for increased crime, graffiti and
trash clean-up.
Cheap labor? YEAH RIGHT! Wake up people!
July 27,
2018
The Blue-State Housing
Bubble
Another housing bubble is beginning to
burst. Its financial characteristics are different from the 2007-8
housing bubble but it shares one thing in common -- that it is caused by
government policies.
The 2007 bubble was caused by the Federal
government insisting on home loan qualification standards changes. Buyers
who were not qualified to obtain traditional home loans were encouraged and
even subsidized to get loans in states such as IL, CA, NJ, PA, and all other
areas. The details of these changes were documented by Pinto and Wallison.
The bubble burst because the easy money
home loan qualification changes created two prongs of financial instability: 1)
persons who were not qualified were allowed to obtain mortgages and 2) the easy
money policies rapidly escalated home prices and placed many mortgage holders
underwater when the artificially high housing prices crashed.
This bubble now being created in the
biggest Blue states, while being driven by government policy, has a completely
different financial dynamic. This dynamic is best understood by looking
at the financial condition of Illinois.
The financial insolvency of Illinois is
directly linked to its public-sector pension system. The unfunded public
pension liability of the state is $251
billion. But that one fact is
only part of the story. In addition to having this unfunded pension
liability, the state now dedicates one-fourth of its annual state budget to
pension costs. In order to finance the ongoing demands of the public pension
system (Illinois has 650 pension plans throughout the state) the state seizes
state grant money and state funds lawfully appropriated to pay for public
services throughout the state and puts those into the pension fund located
in the state capital, Springfield. Since there are 4.8 million
households in Illinois the average household owes $52,269 to the unfunded
pension costs, and these go up every hour. And in addition to that
one-fourth of the Illinois state budget goes to pensions.
The amount of money the state has seized
from public services can be seen by the fact that in 2016 the state owed
vendors $15.9 billion and another $2.8
billionwas seized from funds
allocated to pay for health care vendors. This means the state literally
seizes lawfully appropriated funds from state-mandated health care programs such
as nursing homes and medication and places them in its pension fund.
Illinois has two state
statutes that allow the state to
seize both state grant money passed by the General Assembly allocated for state
grants and another statute that allows the pension fund to seize state
funds.
In addition to these seized state funds,
the Illinois Policy Institute, a watchdog group in Illinois, audited all
110-plus cities of Illinois and found that in the ten biggest cities, including
Chicago, all the property taxes people pay go only to pay pensions, not to fund
public services such as water and sewer, police and fire protection, and other
essential services.
The core issue then is whether the demand
for property-tax revenue made by the public pension plans will have an effect
on housing values, and if this effect will be strong enough to create a housing
bubble.
The best illustration of the current
housing bubble can be seen with a specific example. I know a person on
the northwest side of Chicago, a middle-class neighborhood, who recently
received, in his July 2018 property tax bill, a raise of $10,000 on his annual
tax payment. This was not a raise in the assessed value of his house,
this was a raise in the tax that is due. The house is 2,200 square feet and
since the owner now wants to sell the house, it was recently assessed as having
a fair market value of $348,000. Before this $10K property tax increase,
the property tax bill of the house was already at $13,800. So if anyone
wants to buy a house worth $348,000 they have to pay $1,983 per month in
property taxes. The mortgage will be about $1,350. per month, so the
total payment will be $3,333 a month for a house worth $348K. And each
year the property tax will only go up.
What this means is that anyone who buys this
house will already be paying a 7% property tax rate on the market value of the
house. That monthly property tax bill normally is for a house worth $1.2
million dollars at a 2% property tax rate. No matter how one looks at
this, it is foolish for a person to pay a property tax bill for a $348K house
when at a 2% tax rate they could have a house worth $1.2 million. While
this is a quick back-of-the-envelope financial analysis, the trend is clear:
Illinois has the highest tax burden of any state.
The Chicago
Federal Reserve bank should be
doing a precise analysis of this impending housing crisis, but instead recently
suggested a 43%
property tax hike.
This is the bubble: homeowners are losing
most, if not all, of the equity they have in their homes. And once again
it is being done by government. This time it is not the federal
government that is changing home mortgage loan lending standards but the Illinois
state pension fund that is literally seizing home equity value to pay their
pension demands. And while this is happening, Illinois wastes over one
billion dollars on
interest needed to service what
they've borrowed.
To understand how great the demand for tax
revenue is in Illinois consider the fact that the largest pensions go to
retirees from SURS the State University Retirement System. The actual
facts from Taxpayers
United show that of the 200 top
pensions going to university retirees, the lowest is $199,000 per year and the highest is
$581,000 a year. This is not a projection, this is the information from 2017.
To finance these pensions, young people who take out student loans are also
seeing a drop in their long-term incomes. The Illinois Policy Institute
reported that in Illinois public universities, half of the tuition
goes to pensions. So when
students graduate from an Illinois public university, half their monthly
student loan payment will go to extravagant pensions, and the voters of
Illinois have no say in these pensions.
This means these graduates have less money
to purchase a home. As a result, the young people in Illinois are the
largest age group that is fleeing the state. They see the writing on the wall
and cannot imagine they could ever afford a home and family in Illinois. More
than 80%
of Illinois counties saw population
losses in 2017.
The bubble is bursting right now in
Illinois and in CA, PA, MA, CT, NJ, NY, and all other big Blue states.
California alone has a half-trillion-dollar unfunded pension
liability. The financial mechanics are the same and cannot be stopped.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.
U.S. Election Meddling: Nationwide Voter Fraud, Importation of 15M
Foreign-Born Voters
Shelby Lum, Richmond
Times-Dispatch via The Associated Press
19 Jul 2018Washington, D.C.
As
the establishment media, GOP, and Democrats fret over the influence foreign
countries have on U.S. elections, the leading threats to the American
electorate remain nationwide voter fraud and mass immigration.
Though President Trump’s administration sought to thoroughly investigate
voter fraud through the
Presidential Commission on Election Integrity, the board
was handed off to the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in order to bypass obstruction from
national Democrats who refused to turn over voter data.
Voter Fraud
The number of convictions against voter fraud continues to rise, with now
nearly 940 criminal convictions on the books across the U.S., according to the
latest data from the
Heritage Foundation.
Likewise, the
number of cases of voter fraud has risen. Heritage’s Voter Fraud Database now
features 1,071 cases of voter fraud that spans across 47 states.
In the most recent study by the
Government Accountability Institute (GAI) on voter fraud, the think tank
found 8,471 high likely cases of double voting. About 7,271 of those
cases were inter-state double voting, while the remaining 1,200 cases were
of intra-state double voting.
“The
probability of correctly matching two records with the same name, birthdate,
and social security number is close to 100 percent,” the GAI report noted.
Kansas Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate
Kris Kobach is fighting in his state to enforce voting laws that would mandate
voters prove their U.S. citizenship. This effort has currently been
halted by the left-wing ACLU organization and a circuit judge who recently
claimed that it was unconstitutional for a state to demand voters provide
their U.S. citizenship records. Years ago, proof of citizenship voting laws
were upheld as fully constitutional.
“Compare
[Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential campaigns] to the kind of foreign
influence in the actual election numbers in foreign nationals voting,” Kobach
told Breitbart News. “That’s real and much more consequential and it’s
happening all over the country.”
Kobach said
his expert witness in the suit with the ACLU over the proof of citizenship law
revealed that as many as 33,000 foreign nationals are on the voter rolls in
Kansas. For states like California, with the largest foreign-born population in
the country, the number of foreign nationals on the voter rolls is likely in
the hundreds of thousands or even the millions, Kobach says.
Mass Immigration
Similarly, mass legal and illegal immigration to the U.S. continues to be
the largest driver of population increases and demographic shifts in the
country. Every year, more than 1.5 million immigrants are admitted to the
country. The U.S. has imported more than ten million immigrants in the
last decade.
The vast
majority of foreign nationals arrive through the process known as “chain
migration,” where newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of
foreign relatives to the U.S. Every two new immigrants to the country bring an
additional seven foreign relatives with them.
As Breitbart News has extensively reported, the U.S. is
on track to import about 15 million foreign-born voters by the year 2038. That
is nearly quadruple the size of the annual number of U.S. births; about
four million American babies are born every year.
Through chain
migration alone, the U.S. will import about eight million foreign-born voters
in the next two decades.
The country’s
continued mass immigration policies are likely to hand over electoral dominance
to Democrats in statewide and national elections, Breitbart News has noted.
Analysis
conducted by Axios’s Chris Canipe and Andrew Witherspoon shows the
overwhelming trend of foreign-born populations voting Democrats into office
over Republicans.
The victory of
socialist Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York’s 14th District is the
latest case where a booming foreign-born voting population pushed the far-left
activist over the edge to beat out establishment, high ranking Democrat Rep.
Joe Crowley.
Ocasio-Cortez’s district is close to 50 percent foreign-born, a drastic
shift of an area that was once populated primarily by native-born Americans.
Ocasio-Cortez ran her congressional campaign on abolishing all
immigration enforcement across the U.S.
In California,
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is facing a challenge from State Senator
Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), and the California Democratic Party has
endorsed León. The far-left challenger was the key proponent of
California’s sanctuary state law that protects criminal illegal aliens from being
deported.
University of Maryland, College Park researcher James Gimpel
has found in
recent years that more immigrants to the U.S. inevitably means more Democrat
voters and thus, increasing electoral victories for the Democratic Party.
In 2014,
Gimpel’s research concluded with three major findings:
·
Immigrants, particularly Hispanics and Asians, have policy preferences
when it comes to the size and scope of government that are more closely aligned
with progressives than with conservatives. As a result, survey data show a
two-to-one party identification with Democrats over Republicans.
·
By increasing income inequality and adding to the low-income population
(e.g. immigrants and their minor children account for one-fourth of those in
poverty and one-third of the uninsured) immigration likely makes all voters
more supportive of redistributive policies championed by Democrats to support
disadvantaged populations.
·
There is evidence that immigration may cause more Republican-oriented
voters to move away from areas of high immigrant settlement leaving behind a
more lopsided Democrat majority.
Years ago,
only a handful of elected Democrats would mention how the demographic shift
spurred by mass immigration was a benefit to Democrats electorally. Today, it
is a widely used talking point of elected Democrats.
Take San
Antonio, Texas Mayor Julian Castro, for example. Months ago, Castro admitted
that immigration could potentially turn the state of Texas, Florida, and
Arizona into Democrat strongholds, like California.
✔
The
Hispanic vote in Texas will continue to increase. By 2024 Democrats can win
Texas, Arizona and Florida. A big blue wall of 78 electoral votes.
✔
10:28 PM -
Jan 22, 2018
Twitter Ads
info and privacy
“The Democrats
have now become very open about what they are doing and they state it very
clearly,” Kobach said of the Democrats’ use of immigration for shifting the
electorate.
“Now, multiple
Democrats are saying their plan is to import new voters to change elections,”
Kobach said.
In an analysis from Georgetown University, the
University of California, and Banque de France, researchers discovered
that immigration to the country continuously increases Democrats’ chances of
winning elections:
On average across election types,
immigration to the U.S. has a significant and negative impact on the Republican
vote share, consistent with the typical view of political analysts in the U.S.
[Emphasis added]
This average effect – which is driven by elections in the House – works
through two main channels. The impact of immigration on
Republican votes in the House is negative when the share of naturalized
migrants in the voting population increases. Yet, it can be
positive when the share of non-citizen migrants out of the population goes up
and the size of migration makes it a salient policy issue in voters’ minds.
[Emphasis added]
These results are consistent with
naturalized migrants being less likely to vote for the Republican Party than
native voters and with native voters’ political preferences moving towards the
Republican Party because of high immigration of non-citizens. This second
effect, however, is significant only for very high levels of immigrant
presence. [Emphasis added]
In 2016, the legal and illegal immigrant population reached a record high
of 44 million. By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant
population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S.
population.
Mexico has the
largest group of legal and illegal foreign nationals in the U.S., with 1.1
million immigrants from the country arriving in the U.S. between 2010 and 2016.
Mexican nationals make up roughly one in eight new arrivals to the U.S. On
average, every one Mexican immigrant brings six foreign relatives with them to
the country through chain migration.
CRIMINALS WIN BIG IN CALIFORNIA
SANCTUARY RULING
Bush appointee
upholds protections for false-documented illegals.
July
9, 2018
“California beats Trump in sanctuary state battle’s first
round,” read the
page-one Sacramento Bee headline last Friday. As readers
discovered, it was actually a split decision and Trump scored a big hit.
U.S. District Court Judge John Mendez, an
appointee of George W. Bush, ruled that the state could not prevent private
employers from denying federal immigration authorities from worksites. Mendez
found that AB 450 “which imposes monetary penalties on an employer solely
because that employer voluntarily consents to federal immigration enforcement’s
entry into nonpublic areas of their place of business or access to their
employment records impermissibly discriminates against those who choose to deal
with the federal government.”
On the other hand, Mendez upheld the law’s
requirement that companies inform workers within 72 hours of any federal
request to examine employment records. So in the style of Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf, employers can still provide lookout services for
false-documented illegals.
Mendez denied the federal request against
SB 54, the state’s sanctuary law. As author Kevin de Leon told reporters,
“today, a federal judge made clear what I’ve known all along, that SB 54, the
California Values Act is constitutional and does not conflict with federal law.
California is under no obligation to assist Trump tear apart families. We
cannot stop his mean-spirited immigration policies, but we don’t have to help
him, and we won’t.”
As Mendez ruled, “refusing to help is not
the same as impeding.” The federal judge also upheld AB 103, allowing the state
attorney general to inspect detention facilities. Current attorney general
Xavier Becerra, once on Hillary Clinton’s short list as a running mate and a key player in the Democrats’ IT scandal, proclaimed, “The Constitution gives the people of California,
not the Trump Administration, the power to decide how we will provide for our
public safety and general welfare.”
Californians had a right to wonder about
the “safety” part. In this 2-1 split decision the biggest winners are criminal
illegals.
Senate Bill 54, the Bee report
noted, “has eliminated much of the discretionary power that local law
enforcement previously had to privately share information with federal
immigration agents about people who have been arrested and put in county
jails.” So despite the protestations of hereditary, recurring governor Jerry
Brown, California is protecting criminal illegals. With that in mind,
legitimate citizens might look ahead to the November election.
Brown, a three-time presidential loser,
recently signed off on a budget that spends tens of millions of dollars to help
illegals fight efforts to deport them. This includes some $45 million in legal
services steered to state colleges, and $10 million to help younger illegals,
including “undocumented migrants.” This outlandish spending is hardly the state’s
only way to privilege false-document illegals.
A 2015 law, “streamlines” the process of
voter registration and kicks in when someone gets a driver’s license at the
DMV. As of March, 2018, more than one million illegals have received licenses.
Secretary of state Alex Padilla touts “firewall” protections against ineligible
voters. This is the same official who refused to cooperate with a federal
probe of voter fraud, so legal residents and taxpayers have good reason to
wonder what he is hiding.
Senate boss Kevin de Leon, author of SB
54, is on record that half his family would be eligible for deportation under
Trump’s executive order because they used false Social Security cards and other
bogus identification. In his own case, as Christopher Cadelago of the Sacramento Bee explains, “The name on his birth certificate isn’t Kevin de León.”
On his birth certificate and voter rolls,
“the 50-year-old politician is Kevin Alexander Leon,” born on December 10, 1966
at California Hospital on South Hope Street in Los Angeles. The birth
certificate “describes his father, Andres Leon, as a 40-year-old cook whose
race was Chinese and whose birthplace was Guatemala. De León’s mother, Carmen
Osorio, was also born in Guatemala, the document states.” As a child, “de León
spent time on both sides of the border,” but he “identifies strongly with
Mexican culture.”
Around Sacramento many found the story
incredible but it now takes on new significance. Senate boss de Leon
spearheaded the smackdown of Sen. Janet Nguyen’s free-speech rights and ordered the Republican, a refugee from Communist
Vietnam, carted off the senate floor. The senate boss also appointed a false-documented Mexican national to a state position, a violation of Proposition 209, a voter-approved law that forbids racial and ethnic preferences in state
employment, education and contracting.
The public never voted on de Leon’s
sanctuary bill, but the author is now on the November ballot contending with fellow Democrat
Dianne Feinstein for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Republicans are again shut out of the senate race because in
California primaries the top two vote-getters advance regardless of
party.
As a State Department investigation
confirms, false-documented illegals have been voting in local,
state and federal elections for decades. Legitimate citizens and legal immigrants now have a stronger
case for ID checks on voters and candidates alike. Under the Mendez ruling many
more illegals, including criminals, will be seeking protected, privileged
status in California.
California Gets ‘F’ Grade from ‘Truth in Accounting’
The non-partisan “Truth in Accounting”
project, which analyzes government financial reports, has awarded California an
“F” grade for claiming surpluses instead of a $269.9 billion deficit.
The Chicago-based organization
has been providing in-depth accounting reviews of the audited financial
statements for America’s fifty states, as well as most major counties and major
cities, in the United States since 2002.
The group’s mission is to educate
and empower citizens with understandable, reliable, and transparent government
financial information.
California received the lowest score
of “F” on Truth in Accounting’s grading scale because despite Gov.
Jerry Brown touting several years of surpluses, California actually faces a
$269.9 billion shortfall in terms of its overall obligations, which equates to
$22,000 burden for each of the 12.3 million taxpayers in the state.
California’s financial burden is
primarily associated with the rapidly deteriorating condition of the state’s
current $461.3 billion in promised public employee retirement benefits –which
are $102.5 billion under-funded by the pension plan — and $107 billion for
unfunded retiree health care benefits.
The State of California faced a near
financial death experience in Great Recession, when the average taxpayer burden
jumped from $15,000 to $23,500. Newly elected Gov. Brown, facing a $25 billion
deficit in 2011, passed an array of income and sales tax hikes, including a 29
percent increase for Californians with taxable income over $1 million.
Gov. Brown has touted the
“California Comeback.” But the data demonstrate that despite the gusher of tax
revenue the flooded into Sacramento from the economic recovery and the
substantially higher tax rates Gov. Brown passed, the state’s taxpayer burden
only fell modestly to $20,900 by 2015. The taxpayer burden rose to $21,600 in
2016 and hit $22,000 in 2017, the second-highest in the history of the state.
Truth in Accounting Founder Sheila
Weinberg warns that
California is a giant “Sinkhole Sate.” Ms. Weinberg is especially critical of
Gov. Brown claiming an $8.8 billion surplus this year, while avoiding the
fact that California has only $100.1 billion in available assets to pay $369.9
billion worth of bills.
Weinberg emphasized to Breitbart
News that California’s rising “taxpayer burden” is only for net state
liabilities. Her organization intends to begin publishing consolidated reports
this summer for all the states that will also capture the liabilities of
counties and cities. Ms. Weinberg expects that the combined taxpayer burden for
California to be a much higher number.
June 16, 2018
Skyrocketing crime rate in
California called 'good progress' after jails emptied
Here's a thought experiment: what happens if you release
criminals, a lot of them, from jail?
If you asked a liberal in California, he would tell you these
criminals were unjustly jailed in the first place (think racism on the part of
liberal inner-city judges, juries, and prosecutors) and that these unjustly
imprisoned would return to become productive parts of society.
Imagine their surprise to learn, then, that after reducing or
eliminating sentences for certain property crimes, the rate of property
crimes has
only increased!
California voters' decision to reduce penalties for drug and
property crimes in 2014 contributed to a jump in car burglaries, shoplifting
and other theft, researchers reported.
Larcenies increased about 9% by 2016, or about 135 more thefts per
100,000 residents than if tougher penalties had remained, according to results
of a study by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California released
Tuesday.
Thefts from motor vehicles accounted for about three-quarters of
the increase. San Francisco alone recorded more than 30,000 auto
burglaries last year, which authorities largely blamed on gangs.
Proposition 47 lowered criminal sentences for drug possession,
theft, shoplifting, identity theft, receiving stolen property, writing bad
checks and check forgery from felonies that can carry prison terms to
misdemeanors that often bring minimal jail sentences.
Do you think liberals have learned anything from
this? Think again:
California still has historically low crime rates despite recent
changes in the criminal justice system aimed at reducing mass incarceration and
increasing rehabilitation and treatment programs, said Lenore Anderson, the
executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice and a leader in the
drive to pass Proposition 47.
"This report shows we are making progress," she said in
a statement calling for less spending on prisons and more on programs to help
reduce the cycle of crime.
The ballot measure led to the lowest arrest rate in state history
in 2015 as experts said police frequently ignored crimes that brought minimal
punishment.
They say a conservative is a liberal who has been
mugged. If that's true, then it must also be true in California that
a liberal is a liberal who has had his car or home broken
into. Indeed, people in San Francisco have had their cars broken
into so frequently that they think this is the "new normal," and
people talk laughingly to each other about how often their cars have been
broken into, as if it's a subject of conversation as common as the doings of
the local sports team.
Reality will never intrude on a liberal's ideology. An
illegal alien could shoot a woman dead on Fisherman's Wharf, and liberals would
still never see a problem with sanctuary cities. Homeless people can
roam the streets like swarms of giant rats, leaving fetid excrement and bloody
hypodermic needles in their wake, and people would accept it, because it is
part of their ideology.
That's how they can call this abomination "progress."
Cal 3: ‘Three Californias’ Referendum to Appear on November 2018
Ballot
12 Jun 2018485
“Cal 3,” a proposal to split California into three states will likely
appear on the November 2018 ballot after gathering far more than the minimum
number of signatures required, organizers announced Tuesday.
“Thanks to
Californians from every corner of the state, the Cal 3 initiative will be on
the statewide ballot this November for the first time ever,” read a statement
on the initiative’s website.
As Los
Angeles ABC News affiliate KABC-7 reported Tuesday evening, the campaign, led by
Silicon Valley billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper, turned in 600,000
signatures, nearly twice the 365,000 that were required.
The three new
states would consist of Northern California, extending from the San Francisco
Bay Area north to the Oregon border and east to the Nevada border; California,
including Los Angeles County and extending northwest along the Central Coast;
and Southern California, including San Diego and the rest of the southern part
of the state.
This is not
Draper’s first attempt to break up the Golden State. In 2016, he produced an
even more ambitious plan called “Six Californias.” However, it failed to gain enough signatures to qualify for
the ballot that year.
Draper
believes that California has become virtually ungovernable, with a state
government that is too remote from its citizens.
Similar
sentiments have fueled the “State of Jefferson” movement in the
conservative northeast portion of California. However, some conservatives fear
that the state has become so liberal that breaking it up into new states would
simply elect more Democrats to the U.S. Senate.
Regardless,
the “Three Californias” referendum could boost turnout — especially among
Republicans — in November, making the state more competitive.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior
Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most
influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from
Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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.
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.
Look how the
liberal drug culture has destroyed Eureka, California
In
normal circumstances, Eureka, California, would be a paradise. It's
situated in northern California on the Pacific Coast and is simply beautiful,
sandwiched between rugged redwood forests and an implacable open
sea. The weather is perfect, constantly between 50 and 75 degrees
year round. It's isolated from other major cities, but some find
value in the quiet of a more secluded lifestyle.
Unfortunately,
Eureka, in Humboldt County, is in the center of a narco-state where marijuana
is grown industrial-scale and drug use is rampant. The situation has
gotten so bad that even tourists avoid it. Here's one telling
review from TripAdvisor. It's a little long but well worth the read:
Just back from 5 days in Eureka CA. Had not been
there for a few years so decided to visit north coast area, see some redwoods,
great coastal scenery and victorian homes along the way. We were quite
impressed that someone is trying to make Eureka a tourist destination (murals,
town gazebo, festival, arts and a wonderful visitors center),. At the same
time, we witnessed what appeared to be several dozen (at least!!) drunken
and/or drugged human beings lying on curbs, in doorways, against fences, behind
stores, camping out in parking lots, stumbling onto HWY 101 etc etc. Old motels
(The Serenity for one) were overflowing with people outside at all hours of the
day and night. A poor pit bull was chained to a fence next to highway all day Saturday
w/ cops driving back and forth. Drug deals appeared to be taking place right
out in the open within sight of traffic on 101. We stopped to take a picture of
a cute mural downtown and a wild-eyed woman came screaming out of the
shrubs-screaming at us for "taking her picture". She had something in
her raised hand and we got out of there fast. This was across the street from
the jail and near an area of lovely victorian homes on 3rd. Doesn't really
matter where in town it was because it was all over. Mixed in with great
businesses, lovely scenery, restaurants and historic places, we dodged crazies
screaming at the top of their lungs. Panhandlers followed people around from
store to store. We were in one cafe when a man sat down in filthy urine soaked
clothes and reeking of alcohol. He wasn't ordering anything but just came to
talk-however, most of the other customers had to get up and leave as the smell
was so overpowering. And although we felt bad that these people have such
problems...well...Eureka has a big problem too. A split-image.
Later, at [a bookrestore] in the Bayshore Mall,
we found several prominent displays on growing and/or manufacturing drugs.
Umm...from the looks of Eureka's streets, that information has already been put
to use. I hope that this once lovely town can come to grips with this problem.
The
above review is a few years old, but be assured that nothing has changed for
the better in Eureka, as The New York Times reports:
California's North Coast is known for its natural
beauty and magnificent redwoods, but Eureka, the Humboldt County seat, is
increasingly known for something else: the prevalence of dirty needles
littering parks and public areas, crude remains of a heroin scourge that is
afflicting the region.
Drug use in Humboldt County has many
layers. Meth has been a scourge in rural California for many years,
and because it is often shot intravenously, the transition to heroin has been
too easy for many. Eureka's large homeless population has been
especially vulnerable to addiction in recent years.
Discarded syringes have become a significant
concern for the town's residents, who worry that the needles pose a threat to
children and tourists.
OK, so why do so many people here use drugs?
Theories abound, with the most common explanations tending to involve the
marijuana industry and its associated culture of permissiveness and
experimentation. Michael Goldsby [an addiction studies instructor at College of
the Redwoods since 1987] thinks that theory makes sense.
"Risk factors for drug problems include availability
of drugs, positive peer attitudes towards drug use [and] community norms that
accept drug misuse," he explained. "Drug and alcohol use is accepted
and even encouraged in our community."
Legalized
drug use has destroyed some of the most beautiful places in California and is
now doing the same in Colorado and elsewhere, where "harmless"
marijuana, the gateway to even worse narcotics, has been
legalized. It's just a shame that immorality seems to go hand in
hand with some of the prettiest places in America.
"Particularly since the 2008
economic crisis,
the ruling class and its two
parties have slashed
social spending while cutting taxes
for
corporations and the rich."
"Between 2005 and 2015, the
total payroll cost for the top 10 percent of UC wages grew from 22 to 31
percent, while that of the bottom 50 percent dropped from 24 to 22
percent."
More than 50,000 UC workers on
strike
For a political movement of the entire working class against
inequality and capitalism!
By David Moore
9 May 2018
David Moore is
the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for senate in the California June 5
mid-term elections. You can find out more and get involved in the campaign at socialequality.com/2018.
Tens of
thousands of service workers at the University of California (UC) are
concluding their three-day strike against deteriorating pay and conditions today.
The
widespread support for the strike of services workers, including from nurses
and technical workers who have engaged in sympathy strikes, is part of a
growing wave of opposition from workers throughout the United States and
internationally. However, the unions involved have worked to limit and contain
the struggle and ensure its defeat.
In April,
the UC system unilaterally imposed a contract on service workers that increased
the retirement age by five years, included a paltry two percent wage increase,
and allowed the university to outsource more jobs as well as raise health care
premiums.
The UC
system is the state’s third largest employer, and the conditions there are
immediately familiar to workers across the country. Just in the past two months
there have been strikes of public school teachers and support staff in West
Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona.
In each of
these strikes, the role of the unions—the American Federation of Teachers and
the National Education Association—was to smother opposition and shut it
down. The strikes were not initiated by the unions, but by
rank-and-file teachers. The unions intervened to end the strikes and prevent
them from developing into a nationwide movement against the Democratic and
Republican parties and the capitalist system.
The teachers
unions were operating under the principle articulated by a lawyer for the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in the
pending case of Janus vs. AFSCME on
union agency fees: “Union security is the tradeoff for no strikes.” The AFSMCE
lawyer was telling the high court justices: You need us, because without us
there will be “an untold specter of labor unrest throughout the country.”
The main
union involved in the UC strike is AFSCME, and it—along with the University
Professional and Technical Employees and California Nurses Association—is
putting this statement into practice. The three-day strike is intended to let
off steam, while doing nothing to resolve the conditions facing service and
other workers in the UC system.
AFSCME has a
long history of calling short-term strikes and making empty strike threats to
demoralize members and force through sellout contracts. In 2014, it cancelled
planned strikes of two different sections of workers and imposed contracts that
included increases in pension contributions from workers. In this strike,
AFSCME is seeking to block widespread opposition to the bipartisan attack on
public education and workers compensation by focusing almost entirely on racial
and gender pay discrepancies that they claim can be fixed at the university
level.
The unions
want to prevent any discussion of the political background to the conditions
facing UC workers. Particularly since the 2008 economic crisis, the
ruling class and its two parties have slashed social spending while cutting
taxes for corporations and the rich.
BLOG: CA
IS A STATE THAT HANDS OUT $30 BILLION FOR SOCIAL SERVICES AND WELFARE FOR
ILLEGALS BUT CUTS EVERYTHING HAVING TO DO WITH LEGALS!
Within
California, the UC system’s budget has been cut by Democratic Governor Jerry
Brown and the former Republican Governor Schwarzenegger.
In 2017
the state of California provided nearly two-thirds less in per pupil funding
than it did in 1990, from $19,100 down to $7,160, after inflation. State
funding now only accounts for roughly 10 percent of the UC budget. More than
three times that amount comes from UC-run medical centers.
Those cuts
have increasingly shaped every aspect of work and study in the UC system.
Custodians, groundskeepers and office staff workers are overworked, and their
departments are understaffed. University lecturers find
themselves on food stamps with no prospect of advancement. Students have seen
their tuition and debts soar.
As part of
the UC’s transformation from being funded by the state to making profits from
medical and research businesses, well-heeled administrators were brought
in. Between 2005 and 2015, the total payroll cost for the top 10
percent of UC wages grew from 22 to 31 percent, while that of the bottom 50
percent dropped from 24 to 22 percent.
UC workers
in the medical centers are doubly squeezed by the attacks on health care that
were carried out under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare. Hailed by
the unions and Democrats as a great reform, the ACA has provided record profits
to insurance companies while forcing low-income workers to ration their care in
overpriced plans with prohibitively high deductibles and co-pays.
Within the
medical centers and hospitals, health care workers have been subjected to
particularly sharp understaffing and speedup.
These
attacks on the working class have been combined with tax breaks, bailouts and
giveaways to the ultra-rich. Nationwide, the three richest billionaires have as
much wealth as the poorest half of Americans combined. This immense social gulf
grew precipitously under the Obama administration and continues to accelerate
with the Trump tax cuts.
BLOG: THE
ENTIRE REASON FOR OPEN BORDERS IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED. THERE IS NO
BILLIONAIRE THAT DOES NOT PUSH FOR WIDER OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY and NO E-VERIFY!
Both parties
of big business have worked closely to funnel money from the working class to
the rich. While being run by Democrats from top to bottom, California has
grown to be the fourth most unequal state in the US, with the largest number of
billionaires and the largest homeless population. When the
cost of living is taken into account, California has the highest poverty rate
in the country, at just over 20 percent.
The unions
promote the lie that Democrats are allies of workers. Yet the Democrats voted
for a record $700 billion military budget, found room in the budget for Trump’s
border wall and bailed out the banks in 2008, but claim there is no money for
education, health care and retirement.
The
three-day strike will resolve nothing. I call on UC workers to form
rank-and-file committees, independent of the unions, to unite their fight for
wages and benefits with the struggles of the entire working class against
inequality and war. The conditions facing striking workers are the same as
those facing teachers, auto workers, Amazon workers, telecommunication workers,
and all sections of the working class—in the United States and internationally.
The building
of rank-and-file factory and workplace committees must be connected to a
political counteroffensive against the two big-business parties and the entire
capitalist system. The resources exist to ensure everyone the right to a
high-paying job, quality health care and a secure retirement. The problem is
capitalism, a social and economic system based on the exploitation of the
working class to secure the profits of the ruling class.
Maybe if California and New York Cared as
Much about the Middle Class as They Do About Illegal Alien…
TWEET
Economists Arthur
Laffer (the guy with the famous curve) and Stephen Moore, a leading
libertarian voice for mass immigration, predict that some 800,000 people will pack up and
leave California and New York over the next three years. The
reason they cite for the exodus in their Wall Street Journal op-ed is that the new federal
tax law, which eliminates deductions for state income taxes, will be the straw
that breaks the camel’s back.
Implicit in their
assignment of blame to the federal tax overhaul is that the people who will be
leaving are the ones who pay taxes – the sort of folks that state and local
governments rely to provide a revenue stream. As such, one would think that these
would be the people whose concerns would get a lot of interest in Sacramento
and Albany. But clearly that is not the case.
For the privilege
of living in places like the Bay Area, Los Angeles, or New York City, you must
bear some of the most ridiculous housing costs in the nation, along with crushing state and local taxes. In California, be prepared to
turn over as much as 13.3 percent of your income to the state. High-earning New
Yorkers fork over a more modest 8.82 percent, but if you live in the five
boroughs you can tack on an additional 3.87 percent in city income
taxes. California and New York also have some of the highest sales tax rates in the country at 8.54
percent and 8.49 percent respectively (and higher in many cities). And now, as
Laffer and Moore point out, you can’t even deduct those costs on your federal
taxes.
One might also
think that for all these state and local taxes, residents could expect the most
modern infrastructure, efficient public transportation, world class public
schools, affordable housing, and other amenities. Ha. No, in Sacramento and
Albany they prioritize an ever-growing list of public benefits and services to
immigration law violators; subsidies and grants to go to college, and legal aid
for illegal aliens in deportation proceedings. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo
is even threatening to sue the federal
government (with taxpayer money, of course) for even trying to
enforce immigration laws.
Some $23 billion of California
taxpayers’ money and $7.5 billion of New York taxpayers’ money is expended on illegal
aliens and their dependent children. For the benefit of the trolls at the Southern Poverty
Law Center, the problems of California and New York cannot entirely be
blamed on illegal aliens. Many, many factors have led to the middle class
flight from these states. But one has to wonder why states wouldn’t want to do
as much to woo their tax base into staying as they are doing to attract,
protect, and reward illegal aliens.
Cutting back on
benefits and protections for illegal aliens would not solve all of these
states’ problems, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt. In the meantime, every U-Haul
packing up a middle or upper-middle class family headed out of California and
New York represents a loss of vital revenue necessary to address myriad needs
of both citizens and legal immigrants.
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.
Coming soon: Mass exodus from NY, CA due to high taxes
Arthur Laffer and Steven
Moore have penned an interesting article in the Wall
Street Journal that gauges the impact of the cap on state tax deductions in
high tax states.
Their conclusions should
frighten high-tax, big-spending liberals in blue states across the country.
In
the years to come, millions of people, thousands of businesses, and tens of
billions of dollars of net income will flee high-tax blue states for low-tax
red states. This migration has been happening for
years. But the Trump tax bill's cap on the deduction for state and
local taxes, or SALT, will accelerate the pace. The losers will be
most of the Northeast, along with California. The winners are likely
to be states like Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.
For
years blue states have exported a third or more of their tax burden to
residents of other states. In places like California, where the top
income-tax rate exceeds 13%, that tax could be deducted on a federal
return. Now that deduction for state and local taxes will be capped
at $10,000 per family.
Consider
what this means if you're a high-income earner in Silicon Valley or
Hollywood. The top tax rate that you actually pay just jumped from
about 8.5% to 13%. Similar figures hold if you live in Manhattan,
once New York City's income tax is factored in. If you earn $10
million or more, your taxes might increase a whopping 50%.
About
90% of taxpayers are unaffected by the change. But high earners in
places with hefty income taxes – not just California and New York, but also
Minnesota and New Jersey – will bear more of the true cost of their state
government. Also in big trouble are Connecticut and Illinois, where
the overall state and local tax burden (especially property taxes) is so
onerous that high-income residents will feel the burn now that they can't deduct
these costs on their federal returns. On the other side are nine
states – including Florida, Nevada, Texas and Washington – that impose no tax
at all on earned income.
The authors put their finger
on the real meaning of SALT: it prevents the rest of us from subsidizing the
blue state model. By making rich taxpayers in blue states bear the
true cost of all those goodies given out by their state governments, those
living in low-tax red states will no longer subsidize the irresponsible spending
habits in blue states.
Now
that the SALT subsidy is gone, how bad will it get for high-tax blue
states? Very bad. We estimate, based on the historical
relationship between tax rates and migration patterns, that both California and
New York will lose on net about 800,000 residents over the next three years –
roughly twice the number that left from 2014-16. Our calculations
suggest that Connecticut, New Jersey and Minnesota combined will hemorrhage
another roughly 500,000 people in the same period.
Red
states ought to brace themselves: The Yankees are coming, and they are bringing
their money with them. Meanwhile, the exodus could puncture large
and unexpected holes in blue-state budgets. Lawmakers in Hartford
and Trenton have gotten a small taste of this in recent years as billionaire
financiers have flown the coop and relocated to Florida. As the
migration speeds up, it will raise real-estate values in low-tax states and
hurt them in high-tax states.
We are the most mobile
society in the history of industrialized civilization. The fact that we
are a federal republic with fifty individual state governments makes choosing a
place to live more than just a preference for climate or
scenery. High taxes generally bring with them a higher cost of living,
urban decay, crime, and a lack of economic opportunity.
So Americans are voting with
their feet. And in this competition, it's no contest.
California’s Rich May Leave to Avoid $12 Billion in SALT Tax Hit
President Donald Trump’s new tax cut, which
limiting state and local tax deductions, will cost rich Californians $12
billion more in federal taxes, with $9 billion coming from those making $1
million or more.
Recently, the California Department
of Finance reported good news for Sacramento politicians: thanks largely to
having the top state income tax bracket in the nation at 13.3 percent,
California collected about $3.3 billion more in state taxes than forecast in
the first three months of 2018, with 67 percent coming from higher than
expected personal income taxes.
But the California Franchise Tax
Board also warned that
the Trump tax cut, which
limits state and local tax (SALT) deductions to a maximum of $10,000, will cost
same high income earners $12 billion a year more in federal tax.
The bigger tax bite could also be
strong motivation for California’s highest income earners to vote with their
feet and leave California to save big bucks in a low tax state.
Maine is second to California with a
top income tax rate of 10.15 percent, followed by Oregon’s 9.9 percent. But
Nevada, Washington, Texas and Florida have no state income tax.
Only about 61,000 households, or 0.4
percent, of the 16 million households in California reported an income of more
than $1 million in 2014. But the CalMatters blog commented
that of the 40 million residents in California, the top 150,000 that are in
the top 1 percent of income earners pay about half of all state income
taxes.
California taxpayers may already be
voting with their feet, according to an analysis by
CNBC. The business news team found that from 2016 to 2017, California saw a net
138,000 people leave the state, while Texas grew by 79,000 people, Arizona
added 63,000 residents, and Nevada saw a 38,000 gain.
The Republican Governors’
Association was quick to observe: “California
Democrats imposing massive tax hikes on middle-class families, driving up their
state’s cost of living, residents are packing their bags and leaving for states
run by GOP governors like Arizona, Nevada, and Texas with lower tax burdens and
friendlier business climates.”
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.
California used to be
home to America's largest and most affluent middle class. Today, it
is America's poverty capital. What went wrong? In a
word: immigration.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Official Poverty Measure, California's poverty rate hovers
around 15 percent. But this figure is misleading: the Census Bureau
measures poverty relative to a uniform national standard, which doesn't account
for differences in living costs between states – the cost of taxes, housing,
and health care are higher in California than in Oklahoma, for
example. Accounting for these differences reveals that California's real poverty rate is
20.6 percent –
the highest in America, and nearly twice the national average of 12.7
percent.
Likewise, income inequality in California is
the second-highest in America,
behind only New York. In fact, if California were an independent
country, it would be the 17th most unequal country on Earth, nestled
comfortably between Honduras and Guatemala. Mexico is slightly more
egalitarian. California is far more unequal than the "social
democracies" it emulates: Canada is the 111th most unequal nation,
while Norway is far down the list at number 153 (out of 176
countries). In terms of income inequality, California has more in
common with banana republics than other "social democracies."
More Government, More Poverty
High taxes, excessive regulations,
and a lavish welfare state – these are the standard explanations for
California's poverty epidemic. They have some merit. For
example, California has both the highest personal income tax rate and the
highest sales tax in America, according to Politifact.
Not only are California's taxes high,
but successive "progressive" governments have swamped the state in a
sea of red tape. Onerous regulations cripple small businesses and
retard economic growth. Kerry Jackson, a fellow with the Pacific
Research Institute, gives a few specific examples of how excessive government
regulation hurts California's poor. He writes in a recent op-ed for
the Los Angeles Times:
Extensive environmental regulations
aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions make energy more expensive, also
hurting the poor. By some estimates, California energy costs are as
much as 50% higher than the national average. Jonathan A. Lesser of
Continental Economics ... found that "in 2012, nearly 1 million California
households faced ... energy expenditures exceeding 10% of household income."
Some government regulation is
necessary and desirable, but most of California's is not. There is
virtue in governing with a "light touch."
Finally, California's welfare state
is, perhaps paradoxically, a source of poverty in the
state. The Orange Country Register reports that California's
social safety net is comparable in scale to those found in Europe:
In California a mother
with two children under the age of 5 who participates in these major welfare
programs – Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (food stamps), housing assistance, home energy assistance,
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children – would
receive a benefits package worth $30,828 per year.
... [Similar] benefits
in Europe ranged from $38,588 per year in Denmark to just $1,112 in
Romania. The California benefits package is higher than in
well-known welfare states as France ($17,324), Germany ($23,257) and even
Sweden ($22,111).
Although welfare states ideally help
the poor, reality is messy. There are three main problems with the
welfare state. First, it incentivizes poverty by rewardingthe
poor with government handouts that are often far more valuable than a
job. This can be ameliorated to some degree by imposing work
requirements on welfare recipients, but in practice, such requirements are
rarely imposed. Second, welfare states are expensive. This means higher taxes and therefore slower economic
growth and fewer job opportunities for everyone – including the poor.
Finally, welfare states are magnets
for the poor. Whether through domestic migration or foreign
immigration, poor people flock to places with generous welfare
states. This is logical from the immigrant's perspective, but it
makes little sense from the taxpayer's. This fact is why socialism
and open borders arefundamentally incompatible.
Why
Big Government?
Since
1960, California's population
exploded from 15.9 to 39 million people. The growth
was almost entirely due to immigration – many people came from other states,
but the majority came from abroad. The Public Policy
Institute of California estimates that 10 million immigrants
currently reside in California. This works out to 26 percent of the
state's population.
This figure includes
2.4 million illegal aliens, although a recent study from Yale University suggests that the
true number of aliens is at least double that. Modifying the initial
figure implies that nearly one in three Californians is an immigrant. This
is not to disparage California's immigrant population, but it is madness to
deny that such a large influx of people has changed California's society and
economy.
Importantly,
immigrants vote Democrat by a ratio higher than 2:1, according to a report
from the Center
for Immigration Studies. In California, immigration has
increased the pool of likely Democrat voters by nearly 5 million people,
compared to just 2.4 million additional likely Republican
voters. Not only does this almost guarantee Democratic victories,
but it also shifts California's political midpoint to the left. This
means that to remain competitive in elections, the Republicans must abandon
or soften many conservative positions so as to cater to the center.
California became a Democratic stronghold not because Californians
became socialists, but because millions of socialists moved
there. Immigration turned California blue, and immigration is
ultimately to blame for California's high poverty level.
REALITIES OF A STATE IN
MELTDOWN:
THE INVISIBLE CALIFORNIA
De facto apartheid world in the Golden State.
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.
March 23, 2018
Is California Governor
Jerry Brown Mentally Ill?
Leftists are relentlessly
selling their bogus narrative that Trump is insane. Here are samples
of leftists' headlines: "Lawmakers Met With Psychiatrist About Trump's
Mental Health," "President Trump's Mental State An 'Enormous Present
Danger,'" "The Awkward Debate Around Trump's Mental Fitness,"
"The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists Assess."
So what has Trump done to
convince leftists that he must be crazy? Unlike Republicans, Trump
fearlessly confronts fake news media, calling them out when they
lie. Unlike Obama's punish-evil-America-first presidency, Trump has
America's best interest at heart. Unlike leftists seeking to
dissolve our borders, Trump plans to build a wall to protect our people and our
economy. Insanely, leftists cheered when Obama allowed Ebola into America, claiming it was racist
and unfair for Americans not to be subjected to the disease. Unlike
Obama, Hillary, Democrats, and fake news media's war on Christianity (forcing a
100-year-old order of Catholic nuns to
fund contraception and forcing Christian businesses to service same-sex
ceremonies), Trump vows to defend religious liberty.
So I guess, according to
leftists' perverse way of thinking, that Trump must be crazy, along with the 63
million Americans who voted for him.
Governor Brown signed a
new law making California a sanctuary state, doubling down on his bizarre quest
to undermine American citizens. In essence, Brown gave federal law,
President Trump, and legal California residents his middle
finger. Numerous California families have suffered devastating
losses of family members killed by illegals with long felony records who have
been deported several times and welcomed back with open arms by
Brown. One mom whose son was killed by an illegal with two DUIs and
two felonies said Brown should
be arrested for treason. Isn't it reasonable to question
Brown's sanity?
Liberal
governing has transformed beautiful California into the poverty capital of America with
the worst quality of life. Crazy taxes, crazy high cost of living, and crazy overreaching
regulations have crushed the
middle class, forcing the middle class to exit the Sunshine State. All
that is left in California are illegals feeding at the breast of the state,
rapidly growing massive homeless tent cities, and the mega-rich. Would a sane governor take
pride in causing this to happen to his state?
Headline: "San Francisco Is A Literal [s-]hole, Public
Defecation Map Reveals." Can you imagine homeless
people pooping on the streets being so pervasive that an interactive map was
created to help citizens avoid the piles of poop? Human feces
carries infectious diseases. What kind of
irrational logic deems posing such health risks to constituents an act of
compassion? Is Governor Brown crazy?
Insanely, three fourths
of California's taxpayer dollars – more than $30 billion – is spent on
illegal aliens. Meanwhile, despite the highest taxes in the nation,
California is $1.3 trillion in debt – unemployment is at a staggering
11%. California's wacko giveaways to illegals include in-state
tuition, amounting to $25 million of financial aid. Nearly a million
illegals have California driver's licenses. L.A. County has 144% more
registered voters than there are residents of legal voting
age. Clearly, illegals are illegally voting.
Get this, folks: Americans are spending almost a billion
dollars a year on auto insurance for illegals. Brown is gifting
illegals billions in welfare and housing while his constituents cannot find a
place to live.
Ten years ago, a buddy of
mine excitedly moved his family from Maryland to California to accept the
highest-paying job of his career. Despite his lucrative salary, he
was forced to move back east due to the outrageously high cost of living. My
buddy said if he were an illegal, practically everything would be
free. His story inspired me to write and record a Beach Boys-style
song titled "Can't Afford the Sunshine."
Once again, I ask you,
folks: would a rational governor do what Brown is doing to his
constituents? Is Governor Jerry Brown mentally ill?
Laura Ingraham: ‘California Is Almost Acting Like It’s a Separate Country’
Earlier this
week on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham slammed
California and its leaders for its sanctuary city policies and its open
defiance of the federal government seeking to uphold existing immigration law.
Transcript as follows:
INGRAHAM: The radical takeover of California, that’s the focus
of tonight’s ANGLE.
I still remember the first time I traveled to Southern
California, it was the summer of 1984 and Los Angeles is hosting the Olympics.
Reagan was president and Republican George (inaudible) was the state’s
governor. Now, he was a moderate conservative, a law and order kind of guy.
The whole place, to me at least, felt like a Beach Boy song, the
weather, the people, the lifestyle was all, you know, beautiful stuff. But
today, the sunshine not with understanding, California is a very different
place. It’s now a place where state officials actively thwart federal
authorities trying to stop violent criminal offenders.
Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, went so far as to issue a warning
to immigrant communities that an ICE raid was forthcoming. Well, the president
sounded off on that today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What the mayor of
Oakland did the other day was a disgrace where they had close to 1,000 people
ready to be gotten, ready to be taken off the streets. Many of them, they say
85 percent of them were criminals and had criminal records, and the mayor of
Oakland went out and she went out and warned them all, scatter.
So instead of taking in a thousand, they took in a fraction of
that. She said get out of here. She is telling that to criminals and it’s
certainly something that we are looking at with respect to her individually.
What she did is incredible and very dangerous from the standpoint of ICE and
Border Patrol, very dangerous. She really made law enforcement much more
dangerous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Now, for her part, Mayor Schaaf is deflecting that
criticism and she is going straight to the r-word.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR LIBBY SCHAAF, OAKLAND: The attorney general is trying to
distract the American people from a failed immigration system by painting a
racist, broad brush of our immigrant community as dangerous criminals.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Now who is mentioning skin color or ethnicity or where
people are from. That’s just pathetic. California, the way you see this playing
out, is almost acting like it’s a separate country all together, not a separate
state. Well, I think Attorney General Jeff Sessions was 100 percent correct
yesterday when he labeled state officials radical extremists for perpetuating
the lawlessness.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JFFF SESSIONS, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Federal law determines
immigration policy. State of California is not entitled to block that activity.
Somebody needs to stand up and say no, you’ve gone too far. You cannot do this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: But California AG Javier Becerra shot back. He argued
that the state sanctuary laws are constitutional adding our folks are very busy
doing public safety around the state. We don’t have to do the immigration work
for immigration officials. Excuse me. Public safety?
Well, that’s what we are supposed to believe when your own
Oakland mayor warned the illegal aliens ahead of time when she got wind of the
ice raid that was about to happen? Today, the White House released a partial
list of the crimes committed set free despite the lawful request of immigration
authorities. Check it out.
There is a Guatemalan citizen who was arrested last august for
injuring his spouse. While the Sonoma County jail provided ice with a whopping
24 minutes in the before it released the alien. A few weeks later, the Santa
Rosa Police Department in California arrested that same individual as a suspect
in the murder of his girlfriend.
Another Guatemalan, an alleged gang member was arrested by the
San Francisco police more than 10 times between 2013 and 2017 for charges
including rape, domestic battery, second degree robbery, assault, vehicle
theft, and on each occasion, what happened was ice requested notification of
his release so then ice could take him into custody.
Each time ICE’s request was declined by California. And then a
citizen of Mexico was arrested by Santa Clara County for drug possession on
January 11th, 2017. He was later convicted of child cruelty, felony possession
purchase of controlled substances and, of course, possession of marijuana. He
was released from local custody.
The list goes on and on. And we could literally do an entire
show just on the myriad ways that California sanctuary policies have endangered
the lives of innocent, law abiding citizens. And, of course, law enforcement
and, of course, legal immigrants.
California AG Becerra and Governor Moon Beam Brown are living in
alternative universe. They deny that they even have sanctuary laws in place.
Yet, here’s what their new statutes stipulate. In violation of federal
statutes, local officials cannot tell the feds when illegals in custody are
about to be released.
And they are banned under this law from transferring criminal
immigrants to federal officials. Now, we are talking about undocumented
criminals here. And the state of California is also so concerned about the
welfare of the illegal immigrants, that they imposed a state-run inspection of
immigrants detained by the federal government.
So, basically, they are trying to regulate federal immigration detention
and, perhaps most outrageously, one California law now requires private
business owners to — they can’t voluntarily cooperate with ICE agents. Now, in
fact, they have to notify illegal employees before any workplace inspections
take place or those private business owners face heavy fines.
Now, you cannot get more radical and rapidly open borders than
that. Though California officials are triggered over the sessions’ lawsuit, it
may be, may be the beginning of restoring some sanity to this state.
Republicans, let’s face it, largely have been shut out of
California politics now for years u and we are a very long way from the days
when Pete Wilson was governor back in the 1990s. Permissive liberal social
welfare policies and the embrace of illegal immigrants have plunged the state
into a spiral of homelessness.
It’s now at a crisis point declared by San Francisco and Los
Angeles and even Orange County. We reported on this before is grappling with
homeless encampments and the crime and health issues that come along with them.
This is not what the people of California want. How do I know that?
Well, a UC Berkeley poll just found that 74 percent of
Californians wanted to end sanctuary cities including 55 percent of Hispanics,
and 73 percent of Democrats. Now, if that’s not a cry for sanity or a cry for
help, I do not know what is.
Sessions and the Trump administration are throwing the golden
state a lifeline with these sanctuary lawsuits because if they’re successful,
perhaps the good vibrations, political and otherwise, can roll through
California once again. And that’s THE ANGLE.
California,
the Shithole State and Getting Worse by the Day.
By Wayne Allyn Root
Gateway Pundit,
California is Exhibit A. It’s filled with
immigrants. Ten million to be exact. Many of them illegal. Guess which state
has the highest poverty rate in the country? Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or
West Virginia, but California- where nearly one out of five residents is poor.
That’s according to the Census Bureau.
While California accounts for 12% of America’s population, it accounts for one third of America’s welfare checks. California leads the country in food stamp use. California has more people on welfare than most countries around the world.
. . .
If immigration is so great for our country and illegal aliens “contribute a net positive” to society…how do you explain what’s happening in California?
I haven’t even gotten to the taxes. The income taxes, business taxes, sales taxes and gas taxes are all the highest in the nation. Why do you think that is? To pay the enormous costs of illegal immigration. To pay for the education costs, healthcare costs, police, courts, lawyers, prisons, and hundreds of different welfare programs for millions of California’s illegal aliens and struggling legal immigrants too.
But you haven’t heard the worst yet. California- the immigrant capital of America- is filthy. Perhaps the filthiest place on earth. Filthier than the slums of Calcutta. Filthier than the poorest slums of Brazil and Africa.
NBC journalists recently conducted a survey of San Francisco. They found piles of smelly garbage on the streets, used needles, gallons of urine and piles of feces- all near famous tourist attractions, fancy hotels, government buildings and children’s playgrounds.
While California accounts for 12% of America’s population, it accounts for one third of America’s welfare checks. California leads the country in food stamp use. California has more people on welfare than most countries around the world.
. . .
If immigration is so great for our country and illegal aliens “contribute a net positive” to society…how do you explain what’s happening in California?
I haven’t even gotten to the taxes. The income taxes, business taxes, sales taxes and gas taxes are all the highest in the nation. Why do you think that is? To pay the enormous costs of illegal immigration. To pay for the education costs, healthcare costs, police, courts, lawyers, prisons, and hundreds of different welfare programs for millions of California’s illegal aliens and struggling legal immigrants too.
But you haven’t heard the worst yet. California- the immigrant capital of America- is filthy. Perhaps the filthiest place on earth. Filthier than the slums of Calcutta. Filthier than the poorest slums of Brazil and Africa.
NBC journalists recently conducted a survey of San Francisco. They found piles of smelly garbage on the streets, used needles, gallons of urine and piles of feces- all near famous tourist attractions, fancy hotels, government buildings and children’s playgrounds.
Zuckerberg’s
Investor Group Pushes for Pre-Election Amnesty
http://www.breitbart.com/2018-elections/2018/04/19/zuckerberg-lobby-joins-pre-election-amnesty-push/
Getty/Saul Loeb
Silicon Valley investors, including Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg, are
joining the Koch network’s push for a quick amnesty that would also keep the
issue of cheap-labor immigration out of the November election.
But the push by Zuckerberg’s FWD.us investor group quickly hit a
roadblock Thursday when Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy denounced the
“discharge petition” amnesty plan, which is fronted by California GOP Rep. Jeff
Denham.
“I don’t believe discharge petitions are
the way to legislate,” McCarthy said to The Hill. “I don’t believe members
in the [GOP] conference believe that, either.”
McCarthy’s opposition — and the growing
pressure for a quick exit by retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan — opens up
room for GOP legislators to make the November election all about rising
wages vs. cheap-labor immigration. Numerous polls show that more
than 70 percent of
Americans want companies to hire Americans before importing more
cheap-labor immigrants, and numerous business groups say they need more
imported labor as wages begin to rise.
But a quick Zuckerberg amnesty would prevent
President Donald Trump or GOP leaders from running on an immigration reform
platform in November — and would also deflate economic pressure that is
delivering higher wages before the 2018 election. “It would
be the dumbest thing possible for Republicans to do coming election which they
already think they may lose — they would for sure lose with this,”
said Rosemary Jenks, the director of governmental affairs at NumbersUSA.
She continued:
I don’t think they will [shift to immigration,
but] … it would be a surefire way to keep the majority. People in Washington
talk about [election-winning] ’70 percent issues’ … [and] this is it, this is
the 70 percent issue.
Backed
by Zuckerberg’s FWD.us, Denham is collecting GOP signatures for a resolution
that would urge a so-called “Queen of the Hill” debate on the House floor.
In that very rare form of debate, legislators could
debate several alternative immigration bills, and the most popular
proposal would be sent to the Senate
Those
rules would almost guarantee a big win for Zuckerberg and his allies because
nearly all Democrats and many business-first Republicans — including many who
are retiring this year — will support a no-strings “Clean Dream Act” amnesty
for at least 1.8 million younger ‘DACA’ illegals.
Denham claims to have 50 GOP
legislators backing his resolution, but those GOP members have not signed
the needed “discharge petition” which allows 218 cooperating legislators to
force the debate despite opposition from the Speaker of the House. Many of Denham’s
supporters don’t recognize the impact of Denham’s plan, said Jenks, and “when they find out, they are not going to be happy and will
certainly not sign the discharge.”’
Denham’s
office did not respond to questions from Breitbart News.
McCarthy’s
quick opposition to Denham’s push is critical because he is the likely
replacement for exiting House Speaker Paul Ryan. Without McCarthy’s
support for the immigration push, few of the GOP legislators on Denham’s
resolution will sign the needed discharge petition — even though many will use
their support for the resolution to ingratiate themselves with their donors and
pro-amnesty voters.
Denham’s resolution is getting expensive
media support from the various donors who are working under cover of the Koch advocacy network,
which has at least 550 business donors.
On April 17. Daniel Garza, the president of the Koch-funded LIBRE
Initiative, told Business
Insider:
The
American people deserve a government that is effective and efficient in solving
our nation’s problems.
Congress
and the White House have spent a lot of time talking about DACA, but today our
elected officials have yet to approve a permanent legislative
solution. The Dreamers are among our best and brightest. They are students,
workers, and men and women risking their lives in the Armed
Forces. Washington must come together and approve a bipartisan solution
that provides certainty for Dreamers and security improvements along our
border.
Zuckerberg’s FWD.us advocacy group is also
providing direct support for the Denham push, and it touted Wednesday’s
press conference where Denham was flanked by a few other cheap-labor
Republicans — Texas Rep. Will Hurd, Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman and
California Rep. David Valadao – as
well as the Democratic head of the Hispanic ethnic lobby, new Mexico
Democrat Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
NOW and NEW: 50 Republicans join over
180 Republicans for the “Queen of the Hill” Rule to try to force a
debate/series of votes for Dreamers.
Zuckerberg’s FWD.us group was founded a by
a slew of information-technology investors
who gain from cheap white-collar labor.
The group has endorsed multiple bills and amnesties which
would raise the supply of white-collar labor and
also block Donald Trump’s populist “Buy American, Hire American” policies, all
of which will tend to raise Americans’ blue-collar wages and white-collar
salaries. In February, FWD.us joined with many other business groups to help
the Senate block Trump’s popular immigration reforms.
Since Trump’s election, the FWD.us group
has used the relatively few college-grad ‘DACA’
illegals to shift the political focus from Trump’s very popular
wages-for-Americans pitch. That diversionary tactic has worked, partly because
most establishment reporters prefer to focus on the concerns of foreign
migrants rather than the concerns of fellow Americans.
However, Republicans are facing a tough 2018
election and may decide to pick up the issue up the popular issue of
immigration and wages, especially if McCarthy replacesHouse Speaker
Paul Ryan before the
election.
That shift to wages and immigration is
made likelier by the spreading benefits of Trump’s anti-amnesty policies which
is delivering higher wages and overtime to
many employees, including black bakers in
Chicago, Latino restaurant workers in
Monterey, Calif., disabled people in
Missouri, high-schoolers, the construction industry, Superbowl workers,
the garment industry,
and workers employed at small businesses.
Higher wages are strongly resisted by
business groups, partly because they threaten to lower investors’ returns and stock values on
Wall Street, including the founders of
FWD.us.
Zuckerberg’s group has funded polls which tout
the supposed popularity of immigration. These “Nation of Immigrants”
polls pressure Americans to say they welcome migrants.
In contrast, polls which ask people to
pick a priority, or to
decide which options are fair, show that
voters in the polling booth put a high priority on
helping their families and fellow nationals get
decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy.
Also, a series of 2018 polls and surveys
show that GOP voters believe the immigration issue is far more important than
celebrating tax cuts.
Four
million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free
market. But the federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually
accepting roughly 1.1 million new legal immigrants, by providing
work-permits to roughly 3 million resident foreigners, and by doing little to
block the employment of roughly 8 million illegal immigrants.
The Washington-imposed economic policy of
economic growth via mass-immigration shifts wealth from young people towards
older people, it floods the
market with foreign labor, spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for
manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It
also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps,
reduces high-tech investment,
increases state and local tax burdens,
hurts kids’ schools and college education,
pushes Americans away from high-tech careers,
and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and
their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.
HALF THE POPULATION OF CALIFORNIA WAS
BORN IN MEXICO!
California
Passes UK to Become World’s 5th Largest Economy
California zipped
past the United Kingdom to become the 5thlargest economy in the world in 2017.
The U.S. Commerce Department
reported that California with a population of 39.54 million has a larger Gross
State Product at $2.75 trillion, versus the United Kingdom with a population of
65.64 million and a Gross Domestic Product of $2.62 trillion.
A big advantage California enjoys is
having a surface area of 163,696 square miles, compared to the UK with just
93,628 square miles of area. Although almost a third of California is uninhabited, about the same one-third of the UK is uninhabited.
Setting a new all-time highest
ranking versus the world is a huge change from 2012 when huge swaths of
California real estate was getting foreclosed and thousands of cars were
getting repossessed. This knocked the not-so-golden state to a world economic
ranking of #10.
But California’s Gross State Product
jump by $700 billion and created 2 million jobs in the last six years. A huge
piece of that recovery has been due to globalism, with the U.S. Commerce
Department reporting that
California exported $171.9 billion to 229 foreign economies in 2017.
Outstanding performing export
sectors were Silicon Valley which passed $30 billion, Hollywood entertainment hitting about $16 billion, and the state’s agricultural sector recording a
near-record $20 billion in exports.
The chief economist at the
California Department of Finance Irena Asmundson told the
Associated Press that California’s economy since the lows in 2012 hit new highs
in 2017 that included $26 billion for financial services and real estate; $20
billion for the information sector; and a decade-high $10 billion in
manufacturing.
Asmundson added that during the
five-year period, California with 12 percent of the U.S. population created 16
percent of all new domestic jobs and the state’s share of U.S. Gross Domestic
Product grew from 12.8 percent to 14.2 percent.
California’s unemployment rate was
at a 17-year low of 4.8 percent in 2017 and has steadily declined to 4.3 percent at the end of March to set a 38-year low, according to the
state’s Employment Development Department.
But not everything is great for all
Californians, with Breitbart News reporting that Silicon Valley has the highest
income inequality in the nation and the U.S. News & World Report naming California as the worst state for “quality of life,” due
to the high cost of living.
If California was a nation, the only
countries left to pass would be Germany with a GDP of $3.69 trillion, Japan
with a GDP of $4.87 trillion and China with a GDP of $12.02 trillion. Then the
Golden State could try to pass United States that has a GDP of $16.64 trillion,
without California.
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