Californians brag that their state is the world's fifth-largest economy. They talk as reverentially of Silicon Valley companies Apple, Facebook and Google as the ancient Greeks did of their Olympian gods.
Hollywood and universities such as Caltech, Stanford and Berkeley are cited as permanent proof of the intellectual, aesthetic and technological dominance of West Coast culture.
Californians also see their progressive, one-party state as a neo-socialist model for a nation moving hard to the left.
California's 40 million residents depend on less than one-percent of the state's taxpayers to pay nearly half of the state income tax, which for California's highest tier of earners tops out at the nation's highest rate of 13.3 percent.
In other words, California cannot afford to lose even a few thousand of its wealthiest individual taxpayers. But a new federal tax law now caps deductions for state and local taxes at $10,000 -- a radical change that promises to cost many high-earning taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.
If even a few thousand of the state's one-percent flee to nearby no-tax states such as Nevada or Texas, California could face a devastating shortfall in annual income.
During the 2011-16 California drought, politicians and experts claimed that global warming had permanently altered the climate, and that snow and rain would become increasingly rare in California. As a result, long-planned low-elevation reservoirs, designed to store water during exceptionally wet years, were considered all but useless and thus were never built.
Then, in 2016 and 2017, California received record snow and rainfall -- and the windfall of millions of acre-feet of runoff was mostly let out to sea. Nothing since has been learned.
California has again been experiencing rain and cold that could approach seasonal records. The state has been soaked by some 18 trillion gallons of rain in February alone. With still no effort to expand California's water-storage capacity, millions of acre-feet of runoff are once again cascading out to sea (and may be sorely missed next year).
The inability to build reservoirs is especially tragic given that the state's high-speed-rail project has gobbled up more than $5 billion in funds without a single foot of track laid. The total cost soared from an original $40 billion promise to a projected $77 billion. To his credit, newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom, fearing a budget catastrophe, canceled the statewide project while allowing a few miles of the quarter-built Central Valley "track to nowhere" to be finished.
For years, high-speed rail has drained the state budget of transportation funds that might have easily updated nightmarish stretches of the Central Valley's Highway 99, or ensured that the nearby ossified Amtrak line became a modern two-track line.
In sum, California has no margin for error.
Spiraling entitlements, unwieldy pension costs, money wasted on high-speed rail, inadequate water storage and delivery, and lax immigration policies were formerly tolerable only because about 150,000 Californians paid huge but federally deductible state income taxes.
No more. Californians may have once derided the state's one-percent as selfish rich people. Now, they are praying that these heavily burdened taxpayers stay put and are willing to pay far more than what they had paid before.
That is the only way California can continue to spend money on projects that have not led to safe roads, plentiful water, good schools and safe streets.
A California reckoning is on the horizon, and it may not be pretty.
CITY JOURNAL – CALIFORNIA’S POVERTY
FROM THE MAGAZINE
poor in the Golden State?
California
Economy, finance, and budgets
California—not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia—has the highest poverty rate in the United States. According to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure—which accounts for the cost of housing, food, utilities, and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income—nearly one out of four Californians is poor. Given robust job growth in the state and the prosperity generated by several industries, especially the supercharged tech sector, the question arises as to why California has so many poor people, especially when the state’s per-capita GDP increased roughly twice as much as the U.S. average over the five years ending in 2016 (12.5 percent, compared with 6.27 percent).
It’s not as if California policymakers have neglected to wage war on poverty. Sacramento and local governments have spent massive amounts in the cause, for decades now. Myriad state and municipal benefit programs overlap with one another; in some cases, individuals with incomes 200 percent above the poverty line receive benefits, according to the California Policy Center. California state and local governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare programs, including cash-assistance payments, vendor payments, and “other public welfare,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Unfortunately, California, with 12 percent of the American population, is home today to roughly one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients. The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some states—principally Wisconsin, Michigan, and Virginia—initiated welfare reform, as did the federal government under President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress. The common thread of the reformed welfare programs was strong work requirements placed on aid recipients. These overhauls were widely recognized as a big success, as welfare rolls plummeted and millions of former aid recipients entered the workforce. The state and local bureaucracies that implement California’s antipoverty programs, however, have resisted pro-work reforms. In fact, California recipients of state aid receive a disproportionately large share of it in no-strings-attached cash disbursements. It’s as if welfare reform passed California by, leaving a dependency trap in place. Immigrants are falling into it: 55 percent of immigrant families in the state get some kind of means-tested benefits, compared with just 30 percent of natives, according to City Journal contributing editor Kay S. Hymowitz.
Self-interest in the social-services community may be at work here. If California’s poverty rate should ever be substantially reduced by getting the typical welfare client back into the workforce, many bureaucrats could lose their jobs. As economist William A. Niskanen explained back in 1971, public agencies seek to maximize their budgets, through which they acquire increased power, status, comfort, and job security. In order to keep growing its budget, and hence its power, a welfare bureaucracy has an incentive to expand its “customer” base—to ensure that the welfare rolls remain full and, ideally, growing. With 883,000 full-time-equivalent state and local employees in 2014, according to Governing, California has an enormous bureaucracy—a unionized, public-sector workforce that exercises tremendous power through voting and lobbying. Many work in social services.
Further contributing to the poverty problem is California’s housing crisis. Californians spent more than one-third of their incomes on housing in 2014, the third-highest rate in the country. A shortage of housing has driven prices ever higher, far above income increases. And that shortage is a direct outgrowth of misguided policies. “Counties and local governments have imposed restrictive land-use regulations that drove up the price of land and dwellings,” explains analyst Wendell Cox. “Middle income households have been forced to accept lower standards of living while the less fortunate have been driven into poverty by the high cost of housing.” The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), passed in 1971, is one example; it can add $1 million to the cost of completing a housing development, says Todd Williams, an Oakland attorney who chairs the Wendel Rosen Black & Dean land-use group. CEQA costs have been known to shut down entire home-building projects. CEQA reform would help increase housing supply, but there’s no real movement to change the law.
Extensive environmental regulations aimed at reducing carbon-dioxide emissions make energy more expensive, also hurting the poor. On some estimates, California energy costs are as much as 50 percent higher than the national average. Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics, author of a 2015 Manhattan Institute study, “Less Carbon, Higher Prices,” found that “in 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced ‘energy poverty’—defined as energy expenditures exceeding 10 percent of household income. In certain California counties, the rate of energy poverty was as high as 15 percent of all households.” A Pacific Research Institute study by Wayne Winegarden found that the rate could exceed 17 percent of median income in some areas. “The impacts on the poorest households are not only the largest,” states Winegarden. “They are clearly unaffordable.”
Looking to help poor and low-income residents, California lawmakers recently passed a measure raising the minimum wage from $10 an hour to $15 an hour by 2022—but a higher minimum wage will do nothing for the 60 percent of Californians who live in poverty and don’t have jobs, and studies suggest that it will likely cause many who do have jobs to lose them. A Harvard study found evidence that “higher minimum wages increase overall exit rates for restaurants” in the Bay Area, where more than a dozen cities and counties, including San Francisco, have changed their minimum-wage ordinances in the last five years. “Estimates suggest that a one-dollar increase in the minimum wage leads to a 14 percent increase in the likelihood of exit for a 3.5-star restaurant (which is the median rating),” the report says. These restaurants are a significant source of employment for low-skilled and entry-level workers.
Apparently content with futile poverty policies, Sacramento lawmakers can turn their attention to what historian Victor Davis Hanson aptly describes as a fixation on “remaking the world.” The political class wants to build a costly and needless high-speed rail system; talks of secession from a United States presided over by Donald Trump; hired former attorney general Eric Holder to “resist” Trump’s agenda; enacted the first state-level cap-and-trade regime; established California as a “sanctuary state” for illegal immigrants; banned plastic bags, threatening the jobs of thousands of workers involved in their manufacture; and is consumed by its dedication to “California values.” All this only reinforces the rest of America’s perception of an out-of-touch Left Coast, to the disservice of millions of Californians whose values are more traditional, including many of the state’s poor residents.
California’s de facto status as a one-party state lies at the heart of its poverty problem. With a permanent majority in the state senate and the assembly, a prolonged dominance in the executive branch, and a weak opposition, California Democrats have long been free to indulge blue-state ideology while paying little or no political price. The state’s poverty problem is unlikely to improve while policymakers remain unwilling to unleash the engines of economic prosperity that drove California to its golden years.
Kerry Jackson is the Pacific Research Institute’s fellow in California studie
ADD CHAIN MIGRATION WHEREBY THE ILLEGALS GET TO BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY AND THEN DO THE MATH!
Ready for the next 5 million illegals getting ready to enter the U.S. in 2019?
Gallup put out a poll last week, finding that five million Latin Americans plan to cross into the U.S. this year alone. And the total number who plan to enter the U.S., either this year, or later, is 42 million. The U.S. admits a million legal immigrants each year from all countries. This new survey shows that at least four million of that five million are planning to enter illegally, most likely by crossing the border. That's a human tide.
And the case for President Trump declaring an emergency and building a wall instead of bargaining with an unwilling Congress convinced there's no crisis has just gotten that much stronger.
Here's a good question about caravans: How many more are coming?
A whopping 27% said "yes."
So this means roughly 120 million would like to migrate somewhere.
The next question Gallup asked was, "Where would you like to move?"
Of those who want to leave their Latin American country permanently, 35% said they want to go to the United States.
The Gallup analytics estimate is that 42 million want to come to the U.S.
That is one hell of a big number, particularly since much of the data suggest that the U.S. already houses some 30 million illegal immigrants. Four or five million more will increase the illegal population by 12% to 17% in just one year, something that will make assimilation for migrants already here in migrant enclaves that much harder. Migrant enclaves already are at the top of the U.S. lists for bad places to live - 10 of the 50 worst places in America to live according to this list are in California, and all of them are famous for their illegal populations. The newcomers will need social services, given that most will not have the requisite language, education or skills to succeed here. Many will be unwed mothers, which ensures even here that they will be assimilating into the underclass. The cost to taxpayers to feed, house, educate, medically treat and jail the newcomers will run into billions.
And sure enough, the Border Patrol does say that illegal border crossings are up, way up, and hitting record numbers, according to the Washington Post. The human tide has started.
Gallup's CEO does ask an intelligent question in the wake of this new reality:
Most U.S. citizens like me just want to know the plan. What is the 10-year plan? How many, exactly whom and what skills will they bring? What do we want? Answer these questions, and the current discussion can be resolved.
Keep in mind that it's not only 330 million Americans who are wondering -- so are 42 million seekers from Latin America.
I can add that Latin America isn't the only place where people are contemplating entering the U.S. illegally. The African and Asian continents are also loaded with aspiring illegal immigrants.
Democrats, of course are never going to answer that question.
But it needs answering, because the human waves are coming.
Gallup didn't ask Latin Americans why they might be planning to come now in such great numbers this year, but it's pretty obvious that one answer is that there is an ongoing border wall debate, and the talk just keeps going.
So long as the U.S. is enmired in Democrats' blockage of any funds for a border wall, yet the talk goes on of building, the message to illegal migrants is to move. Get in before the wall gets built while the Democrats are still arguing. This is the window. Don't wait for the border wall to get built. Get in under the wire.
That very dynamic is a good argument for why President Trump should just skip the shenanigans with the Democrats, declare an emergency, and build the wall. The longer this drags on the more the human waves are going to build. And as Gallup reports, we're looking at a tsunami.
CALIFORNIA'S POPULATION TO DOUBLE from ILLEGALS along with their CRIME RATES!
Times Staff Writers
July 10, 2007
Over the next half-century, California's population will explode by nearly 75%, and Riverside will surpass its bigger neighbors to become the second most populous county after Los Angeles, according to state Department of Finance projections released Monday. California will near the 60-million mark in 2050, the study found, raising questions about how the state will look and function and where all the people and their cars will go. Dueling visions pit the iconic California building block of ranch house, big yard and two-car garage against more dense, high-rise development. But whether sprawl or skyscrapers win the day, the Golden State will probably be a far different and more complex place than it is today, as people live longer and Latinos become the dominant ethnic group, eclipsing all others combined. Some critics forecast disaster if gridlock and environmental impacts are not averted. Others see a possible economic boon, particularly for retailers and service industries with an eye on the state as a burgeoning market. "It's opportunity with baggage," said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., in "a country masquerading as a state. "Other demographers argue that the huge population increase the state predicts will occur only if officials complete major improvements to roads and other public infrastructure. Without that investment, they say, some Californians would flee the state. If the finance department's calculations hold, California's population will rise from 34.1 million in 2000 to 59.5 million at the mid-century point, about the same number of people as Italy has today. And its projected growth rate in those 50 years will outstrip the national rate — nearly 75% compared with less than 50% projected by the federal government. That could translate to increased political clout in Washington, D.C. Southern California's population is projected to grow at a rate of more than 60%, according to the new state figures, reaching 31.6 million by mid-century. That's an increase of 12.1 million over just seven counties. L.A. County alone will top 13 million by 2050, an increase of almost 3.5 million residents. And Riverside County — long among the fastest-growing in the state — will triple in population to 4.7 million by mid-century. Riverside County will add 3.1 million people, according to the new state figures, eclipsing Orange and San Diego to become the second most populous in the state. With less expensive housing than the coast, Riverside County has grown by more than 472,000 residents since 2000, according to state estimates. No matter how much local governments build in the way of public works and how many new jobs are attracted to the region — minimizing the need for long commutes — Housing figures that growth will still overwhelm the area's roads. USC Professor Genevieve Giuliano, an expert on land use and transportation, would probably agree. Such massive growth, if it occurs, she said, will require huge investment in the state's highways, schools, and energy and sewer systems at a "very formidable cost."If those things aren't built, Giuliano questioned whether the projected population increases will occur. "Sooner or later, the region will not be competitive and the growth is not going to happen," she said.If major problems like traffic congestion and housing costs aren't addressed, Giuliano warned, the middle class is going to exit California, leaving behind very high-income and very low-income residents. "It's a political question," said Martin Wachs, a transportation expert at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica. "Do we have the will, the consensus, the willingness to pay? If we did, I think we could manage the growth. "The numbers released Monday underscore most demographers' view that the state's population is pushing east, from both Los Angeles and the Bay Area, to counties such as Riverside and San Bernardino as well as half a dozen or so smaller Central Valley counties. Sutter County, for example, is expected to be the fastest-growing on a percentage basis between 2000 and 2050, jumping 255% to a population of 282,894 , the state said. Kern County is expected to see its population more than triple to 2.1 million by mid-century. In Southern California, San Diego County is projected to grow by almost 1.7 million residents and Orange County by 1.1 million. Even Ventura County — where voters have imposed some limits on urban sprawl — will see its population jump 62% to more than 1.2 million if the projections hold. The Department of Finance releases long-term population projections every three years. Between the last two reports, number crunchers have taken a more detailed look at California's statistics and taken into account the likelihood that people will live longer, said chief demographer Mary Heim. The result? The latest numbers figure the state will be much more crowded than earlier estimates (by nearly 5 million) and that it will take a bit longer than previously thought for Latinos to become the majority of California's population: 2042, not 2038. The figures show that the majority
of California's growth will be in the Latino population, said
Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography
at USC, adding that "68% of the growth this decade will be
Latino, 75% next and 80% after that."That should be a wake-up call for voting Californians, Myers said, pointing out a critical disparity. Though the state's growth is young and Latino, the majority of voters will be older and white — at least for the next decade." The future of the state is Latino growth," Myers said. "We'd sure better invest in them and get them up to speed. Older white voters don't see it that way. They don't realize that someone has to replace them in the work force, pay for their benefits and buy their house."
California Wants to Secede? Let's Help Them!
California is a part of America. But it’s no longer American. It is a foreign state. It is a fugitive state. The U.S. Constitution and the rule of law no longer apply in California. Call it, “The People’s Socialist Republic of California.” It’s a state without a country. But it’s certainly no longer American in any way.
Liberals in California want to secede. They are trying to put it on the ballot. They call it “Calexit.” I say, “Glory Hallelujah." Let’s help make it happen. I propose 63 million Trump voters join the team. Let's work 24/7 to turn their dream into a reality!
Millions of illegal aliens live in California; drive in California with official state-issued drivers’ licenses; and of course, use those licenses to vote in California. Millions. That’s precisely how Hillary won California by over 4 million votes.
California supports illegal aliens over legal, law-abiding American citizens. They support illegals getting free college tuition, while children of native-born Americans pay full fare. They support illegals over police and ICE. Many liberals in California want to abolish ICE. They want no borders and no immigration law.
The Attorney General of California has warned any business owner who cooperates with ICE will face prosecution by the state of California. You heard correctly. California will put the business owner in prison, for cooperating with federal law, to protect the criminal breaking the law.
The Mayor of Oakland famously played Paul Revere to warn illegal felons “ICE is coming. ICE is coming.” The Feds report over 800 felons evaded arrest because of that stunt. How many legal, law-abiding, native-born Americans will be robbed, raped, or murdered in the coming weeks because of that act of sedition?
A California judge just sided with the ACLU and barred LA County from enforcing gang restrictions that dramatically lowered crime. California has once again sided with hoodlums and gang-bangers over the law-abiding taxpayers.
In Oakland, a coffee shop prohibits employees from serving police, in order to create a “safe space” for their customers. Californians hate and distrust police more than illegal felons and thugs who speak no English and wear gang tattoos. Really.
All of this is sheer madness. But California has taken it to a whole new level.
Just this week the California Senate appointed the first-ever illegal alien to an official statewide post. Lizbeth Mateo, a 33-year old illegal alien-turned-attorney, will serve on the official state committee that doles out money to illegals attending college. In California, illegals now decide how taxpayer money is spent.
President Trump loves to brand (see "Crooked Hillary"). Let’s brand California. It’s not a “Sanctuary State.” It’s a “Fugitive State.” It’s a place that chooses to let felons and fugitives run free. It’s a place where the rights of criminals are far more important than protecting legal, law-abiding American citizens who pay taxes. We are the second class citizens in California.
Here’s the way to fix the problem. Liberal Californians want to secede. I'm joining the movement. How about you?
Conservatives should beg California to secede. We should make it easy for them. We should help pay for it. Pass the hat. Every conservative should chip in $20. I’ll throw $1000 to get the ball rolling.
Just think of elections. Without California, Trump and all future Republican presidential candidates would win, without breaking a sweat. Without California, we’d easily win the popular vote. And we'd win the electoral vote by a landslide.
Next think of Congress. California has 53 House seats. Democrats lead 39-14, for a net gain of 25 seats. Send California packing and the GOP gains a 25 House seat lead. We would dominate the House for decades to come.
And of course, the GOP would gain an automatic two seats in the Senate through the subtraction of California. As it stands now, those two U.S. Senate seats are deep blue Democrat forever. But if California secedes a 51-49 GOP lead instantly moves to 51-47.
If 63 million Trump voters just gave an average of $20 each to the "Calexit movement" that’s over $1.2 billion dollars. That’s enough money to help California secede, with enough left over as a down payment on building a wall…
with California.
Gavin Newsom’s First Act as California Governor: More Healthcare for Illegal Aliens
Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press
2:32
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s first act in office was to propose extending state healthcare benefits to more illegal aliens.
On Tuesday, shortly after being sworn in, Newsom — who ran on the proposal of providing healthcare to everyone in California, though he struggled to explain how he would pay for it — signed an executive order taking steps in that direction.
In his first executive order, Newsom directed the state to create a single government purchaser for prescription drugs to increase negotiating leverage with pharmaceutical companies. Alongside the order, Newsom proposed extending Medi-Cal — the state’s version of Medicaid — to illegal aliens up to the age of 26, rather than 19.
Breitbart TV
The governor’s forthcoming budget, his office said, “will make California the first state in the nation to cover young undocumented adults through a state Medicaid program.”
That would cover 138,000 “young people in the country illegally,” according to the Associated Press.
“Undocumented young adults should not have to worry about losing their health coverage when they turn 19,” the governor’s office added, saying that the budget proposals, to be presented later this week, would defend Obamacare from “recent federal attacks” and “bring the state closer toward the goal of health care for all.”
In his inaugural address, Newsom promised “sanctuary to all who seek it” — a reference to California’s status as a “sanctuary state” for illegal aliens that refuses to help enforce federal immigration law.
That policy continues to be a lightning rod for national criticism after the murder last month of Corporal Ronil Singh, a legal immigrant and police officer who was allegedly shot and killed by an illegal alien during a traffic stop.
In addition, Newsom’s new budget “proposes increasing the size of the subsidies for families who already receive it, and it would make California the first state to make subsidies available to middle income families,” his office said.
To pay for the expansion of those benefits, Newsom is proposing that California restore the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, which was canceled by President Donald Trump at the federal level.
Schumer also sent a letter to President Trump and to congressional leaders asking for legislative changes that he argues would make it easier for states, including California, to develop a single-payer healthcare system.
HALF THE MURDERS IN MEXIFORNIA ARE NOW BY MEX GANGS - MORE THAN 90% OF THE MURDERS IN MEXICO’S SECOND LARGEST CITY ARE BY MEXICANS!
Sheriff David Clarke (Ret.)
Enabling Criminal Aliens
Source: AP Photo/Noah Berger
The murder of Newman California Police Corporal Ronil Singh allegedly by an illegal alien with a criminal past is the latest high-profile killing of an American citizen that contains nearly every element in our illegal immigration discourse.
Singh, 33, legally immigrated to the United States, became a U.S. citizen, and then became one of Newman’s finest citizens serving as a police officer for twelve years. Singh’s legal entry into the U.S. added value to our country. Sadly, this husband and father of a 5-month-old son was allegedly murdered by an illegal criminal alien gang member on Christmas Eve.
This tragedy was preventable.
Singh’s suspected murderer had “prior criminal activity that should have been reported to ICE,” Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson had said. “Law enforcement was prohibited because of sanctuary laws and that led to the encounter with (Cpl.) Singh… the outcome could have been different if law enforcement wasn’t restricted or had their hands tied because of political interference.”
California is a state that provides a safe harbor for people illegally in the country. California boasts its status as a sanctuary state in violation of federal law and the supremacy clause in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. California cities have passed laws prohibiting local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with law enforcement officers from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with the apprehension of illegal immigrants even after they have committed a crime. Many of these illegal criminals continue on to murder, rape and rob U.S. citizens post-release from a local jail under the catch-and-release policies before notifying ICE officials.
Currently, the threshold for immediate deportation proceedings is set too low. Catch-and-release instead of being detained pending an immigration hearing is like unleashing a dangerous animal into a public space. Eventually, we’ll be dealing with an avoidable catastrophe.
Typically the definition to detain involves only crimes such as murder, rape, and armed robbery. That’s about it. Serious drug dealing or gun possessions are not considered crimes of violence under this strict definition. Neither does burglary or the severe crime of driving under the influence of alcohol. As we have seen over and over through the cost of American lives, many additional crimes pose equally great risks to our communities should these illegal criminal aliens be released without detaining for ICE.
Burglary is a felony and as far as I am concerned a crime of violence. It’s not merely a property crime that results in minor victimization. It involves forced entry. It is a category Part I crime by FBI statistics. Part I crimes are serious felonies. Anybody whose home has been broken into suffers a traumatic mental experience. I have seen it when investigating burglaries. People who once felt safe in their homes lose that sense of security after their home is burglarized. Their kids have nightmares; adults sleep with one eye open and every little noise in the house startles them. It takes a long time to heal. Burglary costs Americans an estimated 4 billion in property loss every year, but this does not include the psychological damage. The fact that many states allow residents to use deadly force to stop intruders means that a burglary could end violently for the intruder. It will if it happens at my home and I am there.
Another offense that is marginalized by sympathetic lawmakers is driving under the influence. It is not merely a traffic offense. Tens of thousands of people are killed and maimed by impaired drivers every year. I have arrived on the scene of crashes involving impaired drivers. Seeing lifeless and mutilated bodies is not pretty. This is why most states take it so seriously that a first offense is a crime punishable by imprisonment. Many make a second and third offense a felony. It’s worth mentioning that the illegal alien who allegedly murdered Cpl. Singh had two prior arrests for DUI and was being stopped by Cpl. Singh for suspected driving under the influence again.
A recent Pew Research study on crimes committed by illegal aliens indicates it’s time to take this seriously. The study shows that the bulk of those arrested in 2016 and 2017 had prior criminal convictions. It indicates that in 2017 illegal immigrants with past criminal convictions accounted for 74% of all arrests made by ICE which is a 30% increase from the year before. The study points out that those with no previous conviction increased by 146% compared to a 12% increase of those with a past criminal conviction. They have demonstrated a propensity to victimize. This conviction rate includes nearly 60,000 arrested for drunk driving and approximately 58,000 arrested for dangerous drug dealing (opioids). The other classification of convictions are as follows:
Assaults: 48,454
Larceny: 20,356
General Crimes: 17,325
Obstructing Police: 14,616
Burglary: 12,836
These numbers are not insignificant. Nobody takes the time to point out to the criminal alien apologists that the cost associated with these crimes include police and court costs, incarceration costs, property loss and damage, medical costs, psychological trauma, lost work time and increased insurance rates adding up to billions of dollars. Therefore, the policy on when to deport and for what reasons also needs to reflect these costs to the American people. The time to deport is before they go on to serious offenses, not after.
Redefining what constitutes deporting a criminal alien is needed. By changing the definition from what is considered a ‘violent act’ to a ‘serious act’ would be more inclusive of the dangerous crimes I have highlighted in this article. Our laws need to reflect the protection of the American people not sympathy for criminal aliens.
Is it not asking too much for people in the country illegally to obey all of our laws, not just a select few? Neither you nor I would be granted this courtesy if we were even lawfully in a foreign country with a valid passport and committed a misdemeanor crime not involving violence. Deportation would be certain and swift with no release pending a deportation hearing.
It is time for U.S. policy to change. The American people should not have to accept such great risks when they don’t have to. They should not have to stand by idly before a criminal illegal alien victimizes another American citizen.
It is bad enough that our criminal justice system is soft on crime when it comes to people legally in the country but when that same leniency is granted to criminal aliens it’s a problem, and it’s time to recalculate our generosity.
The position of most politicians in Washington D.C., except for a few Democrats who are sympathetic to all illegal migrants, is that concerning deportations we should deal with the criminal aliens first. An overwhelming majority of Americans agree. Nobody wants to be victimized by a criminal, nonetheless, ones who should have been deported.
When we water down the standard for what is criminal behavior, we are heading toward a very dark place. Crime is crime. Period. This should be the standard for automatic deportation for criminal aliens.
Once we get the criminal illegals out, a wall is required to prevent these thugs from running back in and continuing to victimize Americans like Cpl. Singh who hours before his death stopped home to visit his family on Christmas Eve, kissing his wife and child for the last time. The picture of him with his family taken just hours before his death should serve as a grave reminder to all who want to hug a criminal illegal alien that at any moment they can lash out and kill an American, and that it could have been avoided if Congress had its priorities straight and put politics aside to do what’s right.
NY Times: ’40-Year’ Flood of Immigration Turns Orange County Blue
Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images
4:50
The New York Times admits a “40-year rise in the number of immigrants” living in Orange County, California has transformed the region from a “fortress of conservative Republicanism” to a Democrat electoral sweep.
The Times notes in a piece titled “In Orange County, a Republican Fortress Turns Democratic” that the rapid demographic changes of the county — which now has a more than 30 percent foreign-born population — has swiftly handed the region over to Democrats.
Breitbart News reported that Orange County’s booming foreign-born populations of mostly Asian immigrants and migrants from Central America coincided with Democrats sweeping the midterm elections in an area that gave birth to President Richard Nixon.
The Times now acknowledges the demographic changes are at least partially responsible for the diminishing Republican representation in Orange County:
There was a steady decrease in white voters in the seven congressional districts that are in and around Orange County between 1980 and 2017, according to census data. In 1980, whites made up 75 percent of the population in the district where Mr. Cisneros won. By 2017, that number dropped to 30 percent. [Emphasis added]
The county’s immigrant population grew five times as fast as the general population between 1980 and 2000, and while the pace of immigration has slowed, the Latino and Asian populations continues to increase, driven by the children of immigrant families born in the United States. [Emphasis added]
…
“You went from a solid Republican county to one in which Republicans were just barely the majority, and it fell pretty quickly in the past two years,” said Ms. Godwin. “You have had continued demographic changes. This is a county that went from majority-white to having a majority that are Latino and Asian-American. So that has gone hand-in-hand — particularly with the rising Asian-American population — to voting more Democratic.” [Emphasis added]
In a series of charts, Times reporters Robert Gebeloff and Jasmine C. Lee. reveal that while Orange County has become less and less Republican, the foreign-born population has grown significantly, the share of college graduates has peaked, and the white American population has fallen drastically.
(Screenshot via the New York Times)
Months ago, Breitbart News reported the district-by-district breakdown of Orange County’s enormous foreign-born populations, which have aided the Democrats’ electoral sweep in the region.
California’s 46th District, already a Democrat-held congressional seat, has a foreign-born population that is now reaching 40 percent with four-out-of-ten residents being born outside the United States.
The other Democrat-held congressional seat in Orange County, California’s 47th District, has a foreign-born population of nearly 30 percent.
Three of Orange County’s four Republican districts that have flipped to Democrat have foreign-born populations that make up 25 percent or more of the region. For example, California’s 39th District — where Democrat Gil Cisneros won over Republican Young Kim — has a 34.1 percent foreign-born population.
In the 45th District, where Rep. Mimi Walters (R-CA) has conceded to Democrat Katie Porter, the foreign-born population makes up nearly 30 percent of the district.
Similarly, in the state’s 48th District, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) — the former speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan — lost to Democrat Harley Rouda after serving in the seat since 2013. That district’s foreign-born population is now near 25 percent.
Even in the 49th District, where the foreign-born population remains below 20 percent, Democrat Mike Levin beat out Republican Diane Harkey. The district has anywhere between an 18 to 19 percent foreign-born population with about 55 percent of foreign-born residents arriving from Latin America and nearly 30 percent coming from Asia.
Democrats have increasingly swept congressional districts whose demographics have been quickly changed due to the country’s policy of mass legal and illegal immigration.
The process known as “chain migration,” for instance — whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. with them — has imported more than nine million foreign nationals since 2005.
As Breitbart News reported, if chain migration is not ended — as President Donald Trump has demanded — the U.S. electorate will forever be changed, with between seven to eight million new foreign-born individuals being eligible to vote because of chain migration, and overall, an additional 15 million new foreign-born voters.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
John Kelly: Catch-and-Release Laws Ensure Migration Crisis
3:16
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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