Saturday, July 6, 2019

AMERICA: HOME TO 40 MILLION LOOTING MEXICANS AND ONE MILLION HOMELESS LEGALS

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO AMERICA'S HOUSING CRISIS IF 40

 

MILLION LOOTING MEXICANS WERE SHIPPED BACK OVER THE

 

BORDER THEY INVADED?

We would also be ending the TRILLION DOLLAR ANCHOR BABY WELFARE STATE ON OUR BACKS


HOMELESS AMERICA’S HOUSING CRISIS as 40 million illegals have climbed U.S. open borders.

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/12/homeless-in-america-hundreds-of.html

 

EVERY AMERICAN (Legal) only one paycheck and one hundred illegals away from living in their cars.



LA HOMELESS CRISIS: "ACROSS FROM CITY HALL, A PREGNANT HEROIN ADDICT LEANED AGAINST A WALL"


The official mantra is that the homeless crisis in Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland and a number of other blue cities is caused by housing prices.
Some people no doubt have been displaced by the rising cost of housing and a lost job, but they're not the majority or the real problem. The real problem is a population of mentally ill people and drug addicts living on the street.
This is the reality that the media has mostly been denying. Until this LA Times story.
Across from City Hall, a pregnant heroin addict leaned against a wall near where a meth user gyrated and twisted,...
...
Take her story and multiply by the thousands. Addiction and all its consequences are on full display in Los Angeles County, where the latest sprawl is measured in tents rather than houses. Drugs are a booming underground economy with open-air visibility, and nearly a third of homeless people report having either a serious mental illness, a substance abuse issue or both.
On Thursday morning in downtown Los Angeles, a 26-year-old brunet walked into a needle exchange program asking for help. She said she had spent most of the previous several weeks living in a car.
“I came here because I want to get clean,” said the woman, who told me she uses heroin and methamphetamine and had nearly died several days earlier from a fentanyl overdose. “It’s exhausting, trying to make money to do drugs, and then do it again and then get sick.”
...
The woman at the needle exchange told me she feels irritable, shaky and bordering on psychotic at times, and $5 can buy another hit of meth, which fixes everything. Until it wears off in a few hours, and the psychosis creeps back up on her. Several people told me they use meth because it keeps them awake at night, so they can fend off robberies and assaults.
The focal point now is apparently meth. And the scale of its usage among the homeless population is huge.
Mark Casanova of Homeless Health Care Los Angeles said it used to be that about 70% of the agency’s drug-addicted clients used cocaine; now 70% use meth.
A meth high can mimic the symptoms of mental illness. Psychiatrist Brian Hurley, head of addiction medicine for L.A. County’s Department of Health Services, said he often can’t tell whether someone is mentally ill, high on meth or both.
Chief Moore said that while he tries to knock down the supply, he needs the public health side to step up efforts to address the demand. He said chronic addicts shouldn’t be criminalized, but when California lowered penalties for possession, courts lost an opportunity to offer rehab in place of incarceration
Decriminalization of drug possession helped worsen the scale of the homeless problem and enabled addicts to destroy their bodies and their lives.



BUILDING THE LA RAZA WELFARE STATE ON LEGALS’ BACKS!

Nolte: Dems Promise to Take Away Our Health Insurance and Give It to Illegal Aliens

"The California dream of taking care of everyone's needs is 

undermined by the California dream of open borders. State lawmakers were forced to choose between them, and they chose open borders.”  

Austin city council votes to allow homeless camping on sidewalks...except in front of city hall




Today's prize for lack of self-awareness goes to the Austin, Texas city council.  While it is fine and dandy for homeless people to camp out in front of people's homes and businesses, with all the problems of human waste, panhandling, mental illness, and open drug use that we in the Bay Area see whenever we venture to take a walk in San Francisco, the wise councilors exempted their own place of business from the such concerns.
Elizabeth Findell of the Austin Statesman writes:
After emotional testimony last week regarding homelessness in Austin, City Council members rescinded prohibitions on camping on public property. Starting Monday, so long as they are not presenting a hazard or danger, people will be able to sleep, lie and set up tents on city-owned sidewalks, plazas and vacant non-park space.
Except, not in front of City Hall itself.
Austin's mayor engaged in some epic double-talk trying to explain his way out of the obvious hypocrisy:
Mayor Steve Adler said Friday that he does not think the City Hall camping ban should be immediately rescinded. He said it should be reviewed as staffers seek to identify, by August, the places where people should and shouldn't be allowed to camp in Austin. Adler acknowledged that some business owners objected to the ordinance changes out of concern about the impact people camping in front of their businesses could have, but he said they shouldn't consider the City Hall ban to be hypocritical.
"I think the businesses in our community want staff to focus on the broader question in our community regarding where people can and can't camp," he said. "I'm sure included in that discussion will be city properties, properties along Congress and elsewhere in the city. We can't do everything all at once."
Adler would not say whether he thinks the City Hall plaza and amphitheater are appropriate for camping.
"You could come up with a list of 20 different locations and we could go through the list," he said. "The appropriateness of any locations really need to be understood in the context of all the locations."
Whole sidewalks everywhere but city hall are open to people appropriating public property for their own use.  The madness does not extend everywhere:
Other areas where camping remains banned include any city park space, under Austin Parks and Recreation rules. That includes downtown green spaces as well as trails and greenbelts such as along Barton Creek.
People who are unable to provide housing for themselves deserve our compassion and assistance, but they do not deserve to take for their own use whatever public spaces they desire.  I have long believed that campsites in rural locations, fenced in and featuring tents and basic food such as rice and beans, ought to be available to anyone who declares himself a pauper, indigent, and incapable of self-sufficiency.  Basic needs and nothing else are to be provided.  Nothing else, for there should be no incentive to let go of personal responsibility and depend on taking the product of others' hard work to live a life of leisure.
This would not be prison, even though there would be walls.  Leaving the camp would simply require a declaration of personal autonomy, meaning no need to depend on others for provision of life's necessities.
With that basic safety net in place, camping out on public property can then be banned.



Democrats Circling the Electoral Drain




Democrats have convinced themselves that they represent the sentiments of a majority of Americans. Watching the recent Democrat presidential debates, one cannot help but conclude the opposite.
Rather than looking beyond their liberal coastal enclaves to the fruited plain filled with deplorables and bitter clingers, Democrats simply look in the mirror of CNN or the Washington Post to see complete agreement, believing that all of America is on board with their wrecking ball agenda.
The debates featured the 20 best candidates the Democrats could field to challenge the success and charisma of President Trump. Assuming a fifty-fifty political split in America, and the age requirement for the presidency, there should be 50-75 million potential Democrats to step up and challenge Trump. Yet these 20 candidates are the best out there?
We have nonagenarians who have been in government for decades with no accomplishments to their names other than getting elected. Most of the candidates are so far to the political left that they should be running as socialists, or better yet, communists. The only thing separating the candidates are their looks and personalities. They all sing the same tune.                                                                                   
Their favored constituencies are not Americans, but instead anyone outside America’s borders, invited into America to live at the expense of American taxpayers. Robert O’Rourke is even campaigning in Mexico, to be president, not of Mexico, but of the United States.
Democrats want to get rid of private health care insurance for Americans and instead provide free government health care to illegal immigrants. Non-Americans go to the front of the line while Americans can’t even join the line.
One candidate couldn’t even be bothered with policy specifics, instead channeling the Beatles “All you need is love” to solve the world’s problems.
What do those outside the beltway think? Are they on board with America going the way of California, as a detour to the ultimate destination of Cuba or Venezuela?
Rasmussen Reports on June 28 published survey results concluding, “Voters see most Democrat presidential hopefuls as more liberal, extreme.” This was a survey of likely voters, 80 percent of whom say they have “closely followed the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.”
These are real voters, not your typical man or woman on the street that many pollsters query, who when interviewed, don’t know if John Hickenlooper is a former Colorado governor or the name of a new brand of popcorn.
From the survey, “Nearly half (48%) of voters now feel it is accurate to describe the agenda of most of the Democratic presidential hopefuls as extreme.” Democrat voters, the base for the twenty candidates on the debate stage, are mostly on board with this lurch to the left, “57% of Democrats think it is accurate to describe the agenda of most of their presidential hopefuls as mainstream.”
What do the other 43 percent of Democrats think? How many might vote for Trump rather than someone wanting to Make America Soviet Again?
Independents, who will in large part decide the 2020 electoral winner, were not impressed with the two-evening clown show last week. “Fifty-eight percent (58%) of these so-called swing voters view most of the announced Democratic White House hopefuls as more liberal than they are, and by a 49% to 29% margin, they say the agenda of most of these candidates is extreme.”
For NBC debate moderators and hardcore Democrats, open borders, free healthcare for illegals, and trans-men having abortions is perfectly mainstream. Extremism to them is record low unemployment, three percent economic growth, and the American President visiting North Korea.
Here they are raising their hands in unison supporting healthcare for illegals.
For most Americans, extreme is when a journalist is attacked and beaten by Antifa thugs in Portland. But for rabid Democrats, it’s justified or deserved since the journalist is conservative, ignoring the fact that he is Asian and gay. Note the far different response when a gay black actor, Jussie Smollett, claimed to have been attacked in Chicago.
Despite Smollett’s story being full of holes, and quickly proven to be a hoax, the left came to his defense. Ngo’s attack was anything but a hoax, having been captured on video, yet only crickets from tolerant and inclusive Democrats. Will Democrat presidential candidates be asked to raise their hands to denounce Antifa, the new militant arm of their party? Not likely. How many voters want this type of extremism as the new norm in American cities?
Hard core leftists however think this is all just fine. Stephanie Wilkinson, owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia, who kicked out Sarah Sanders and her family, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post extolling the new leftist restaurant etiquette. “New rules apply. If you’re directly complicit in spreading hate or perpetuating suffering, maybe you should consider dining at home. For the rest, your table is waiting.”
In other words, if you support President Trump, stay home. You are not welcome at our lunch counters or restaurants. Sit in the back of the bus. Democrats are going back to their segregationist roots, discriminating now based on political belief rather than skin color. Unless of course you are Candace Owens or Ben Carson getting a double dose of discrimination.
Democrats believe this is a winning message. Agree with us or go away, voluntarily or forcefully, in Orwellian fashion. Joseph Stalin would be proud.
Democrats are pushing the issues important to MSNBC and the New York Times, but not to voters. Also from Rasmussen in mid-May, a survey of the most pressing issues for Congress. These don’t include Trump’s past tax returns or a rehash of the Mueller investigation, but instead 35 percent of likely voters “rate illegal immigration as the issue Congress should deal with first.”
Guess what Trump’s signatures issue is? Illegal immigration. Stopping it, not encouraging it by offering free healthcare to anyone who makes it across our border.
Next of importance for Congress, “Healthcare is in distant second with 19% support, closely followed by 16% who see Trump’s impeachment as first in importance.”
Voters want our healthcare system to be fixed, but not in the way of Democrats wanting to eliminate private insurance. Some Democrats in Congress are listening to voters’ third priority of impeachment, mostly Democrats, but the few voices of sanity in the Democrat party realize impeachment is a loser for them.
Democrat presidential candidates find themselves on the wrong side of almost every issue of concern to voters. Rather than acknowledging and correcting, they lurch further and further to the left, trying to be more socialist and woke than the other candidates, digging themselves into a deeper hole for the general election.
It’s a sight to behold as they continue to circle the electoral drain, oblivious to anything outside the beltway media and each other. Trump’s campaign commercials are writing themselves and upcoming Trump rallies and presidential debates will be most entertaining. Have your popcorn ready.
Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a Denver based physician and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in American Thinker, Daily Caller, and other publications. Follow him on Facebook LinkedIn and Twitter.



Eliseo Medina: Revolution Through Illegal Immigration

https://www.theepochtimes.com/eliseo-medina-revolution-through-illegal-immigration_2748588.html?ref=brief_Archives&utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=6432f3abd5-


 


 “Before immigration debates took place in Washington, I spoke with Eliseo Medina and SEIU members,” said then-Sen. Barack Obamaaddressing the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) at a stop for his 2008 presidential campaign.


Eliseo Medina, Obama’s informal immigration adviser, has dedicated his life to obtaining citizenship and voting rights for America’s illegal aliens—now at an estimated 22 million—with the expressed goal of transforming the United States into a one-party state.

As a Communist Party USA (CPUSA) supporter and former honorary chair of the largest Marxist organization in the United States, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Medina is undeniably the leader of today’s amnesty movement.

At the far-left “America’s Future Now!” conference in Washington on June 2, 2009, Medina, then SEIU’s international executive vice president, addressed attendees on the vital importance of “comprehensive immigration reform”—a code phrase for amnesty.

Medina failed to mention the plight of illegal aliens, focusing instead on how—if given amnesty—they would eventually vote for Democrats.


Speaking of Latino voting patterns in the 2008 election, Medina said:

“When they [Latinos] voted in November, they voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up.

“So, I think there’s two things that matter for the progressive community:
“Number one: If we are to expand this electorate to win, the progressive community needs to solidly be on the side of immigrants. That will solidify and expand the progressive coalition for the future.
“Number two: [If] we reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters. Can you imagine if we have—even the same ratio—two out of three?
“If we have 8 million new voters … we will create a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”
Medina’s “governing coalition” refers to Democrats having control of the federal government for the foreseeable future, “not just for an election cycle.”

Who Is Eliseo Medina?

Medina‘s road to power began in 1965 when, as a 19-year-old grape-picker, he participated in the United Farm Workers’ strike in Delano, California. Over the next 13 years, Medina worked alongside labor leader and beloved socialist Cesar Chavez, eventually surpassing his mentor as a skilled union organizer and political strategist. Medina met his future wife Liza Hirsch during this period.
Medina had met Chicago DSA comrades in the 1970s when he was in the Windy City organizing a grape boycott for Chavez. From 2004 until 2016, Medina served as an honorary chairman for the organization.
Like many DSA members, Medina also worked closely with the CPUSA.
Medina gave the keynote speech at the CPUSA publication’s People’s Weekly World (PWW) banquet in Berkeley, California, on Nov. 18, 2001.
The PWW quoted Medina praising the communist publication: “’Wherever workers are in struggle,’ Medina said, ‘they find the PWW regularly reporting issues and viewpoints that are seldom covered by the regular media. For us, the PWW has been and always will be the people’s voice.’”
In 2007, Medina personally endorsed the People’s World (by then renamed from People’s Weekly World).

Medina’s Wife and Flexible Socialist Ethics

Medina’s wife, Liza, is the daughter of Fred Hirsch, a self-described “communist plumber” and his even-more-radical wife, Virginia, known as Ginny. In the early 1960s, Ginny Hirsch left her husband and young children in San Jose while she drove to Guatemala with nearly a ton of smuggled ammunition destined for leftist rebels.
From the age of 12, Liza Hirsch was partially raised by Cesar Chavez and, at his personal request, committed herself at an early age to earning a law degree so she could serve as an attorney for the movement.
Though a sometimes-socialist himself, Chavez had no time for illegal aliens (who he dubbed “wet-backs”) fearing they would “scab” against his strikes and take jobs from his members. Chavez even launched an “Illegals Campaign”—an organized program to identify illegal alien workers in the fields and turn them in to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Hirsch was put in charge of this program. In 1974, just before she went to law school, she “distributed forms printed in triplicate to all union offices and directed staff members to document the presence of illegal immigrants in the fields and report them to the INS,” according to the book “The Crusades of Cesar Chavez” by Miriam Pawel.
Hirsch would later marry New York DSA member Paul Du Brul. After his untimely death, she married Medina, also a card-carrying DSA member by then.
Socialist ethics can be very flexible.

Changing the Democrat Position to Pro-Amnesty

 

Medina joined the SEIU in 1986, where he helped revive a local union in San Diego, building its membership from 1,700 to more than 10,000 in five years. Medina became international executive vice president of the 2.2 million-member SEIU in 1996.
The SEIU has a huge number of illegal alien workers in its ranks. Medina used that leverage to promote amnesty in the union movement, as well as in the organized left and in the Democratic Party.
In the mid-1990s, most unions were still hostile to illegal alien workers who worked at a much lower rate, taking jobs away from union members. But in 1994, several far-left union leaders led by DSA member John Sweeney took over the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), setting the stage for a major policy change for the unions—and ultimately for the Democrats.
Claiming U.S. immigration policy was “broken and [needed] to be fixed,” the AFL-CIO on Feb. 16, 2000, called for a new amnesty for millions of undocumented workers and the repeal of the 1986 legislation that criminalized hiring them.
According to the DSA website in 2004, Medina was “widely credited with playing a key role in the AFL-CIO’s decision to adopt a new policy on immigration a few years ago.”
From his union position, Medina reached across the labor movement into the social movements and the Catholic Church to create the widest possible pro-amnesty coalition.
According to the SEIU:
“Working to ensure the opportunity to pass comprehensive immigration reform does not slip away, Medina led the effort to unite the unions of the Change to Win federation and AFL-CIO around a comprehensive framework for reform. Serving as a leading voice in Washington, frequently testifying before Congress, Medina has also helped to build a strong, diverse coalition of community and national partners that have intensified the call for reform and cultivated necessary political capital to hold elected leaders accountable.
“Medina has also helped strengthen ties between the Roman Catholic Church and the labor movement to work on common concerns such as immigrant worker rights and access to health care.”
In August 2008, the Obama campaign announced the formation of its National Latino Advisory Council. The new body consisted of several Democratic Congress members, a Catholic bishop, a former ambassador, two former cabinet members, and Medina.
After the election, Medina became Obama’s informal adviser on issues concerning immigration and amnesty. The fact that a DSA member and CPUSA supporter was advising the U.S. president on issues of vital national security importance appeared to concern no one.
Eventually, Medina and his movement were able to get an amnesty bill passed through the U.S. Senate. If they could only pass a bill through the House, the United States would be set on an irreversible path to socialism.

Fortunately, Tea Party-aligned Republican Congress members refused to sell out their nation. They held the line against intense pressure, and no amnesty bill was passed through the House in Obama’s eight years in the White House.

‘Fast for Families’

In November 2013, Medina, along with Cristian Avila of amnesty advocacy group Mi Familia Vota and Dae Jung Yoon of the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (a hard-left group that supports communist North Korea), started a 22-day “fast for families” in front of Capitol Hill “to demand Congress approve comprehensive immigration reform,” according to People’s World.
The staged protest gained worldwide media attention. Several Democratic members of Congress dropped by to offer support, along with then-President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden.
Still, House Republicans did not budge.
On May 17, 2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign announced that long-time DSA activist Dolores Huerta and Medina would join the team as senior advisers in California.
“Huerta and Medina will build on the campaign’s robust outreach to the Latino community in California and work with the campaign’s senior team to organize and engage Californians in conversations about Hillary Clinton’s plans to break down barriers and help move the country forward.
“’We are thrilled to be joined by two incredibly accomplished and admired leaders in the Latino, immigrant and labor communities, Dolores Huerta and Eliseo Medina,’ said Buffy Wicks, State Director for Hillary for California. ‘Their advocacy and leadership … will go a long way in continuing the important work of reaching every California voter in advance of the June 7 primary.’”
Clinton promised to introduce a “pathway to full and equal citizenship” to legalize and grant voting rights to every illegal alien in the country “within 100 days of taking office” if she were to be elected president.
Had President Donald Trump not won his shocking victory on Nov. 6, 2016, Medina’s dream of a permanent, unbeatable progressive “governing coalition” would today be a reality, making it virtually impossible to elect another Republican president.
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.


With Democrats drunkenly denying a border crisis, NYT attempts an intervention




For alcoholics, the first step to recovery is to admit they have a problem.
The New York Times is trying to get Democrats to admit they have a problem on the U.S.'s southern border and is now calling for funds to be appropriated for detention beds.
It wrote this unusual editorial to that end:
President Trump is right: There is a crisis at the southern border. Just not the one he rants about.
There is no pressing national security threat — no invasion of murderers, drug cartels or terrorists. No matter how often Mr. Trump delivers such warnings, they bear little resemblance to the truth.
But as record numbers of Central American families flee violence and poverty in their homelands, they are overwhelming United States border systems, fueling a humanitarian crisis of overcrowding, disease and chaos. The Border Patrol is now averaging 1,200 daily arrests, with many migrants arriving exhausted and sick. Last week, a teenage boy from Guatemala died in government custody, the third death of a minor since December. As resources are strained and the system buckles, the misery grows.
Something needs to be done. Soon. Unfortunately, political gamesmanship once again threatens to hold up desperately needed resources.
Needs, indeed.  After all, about a third of Guatemala would like to come here and are planning accordingly.  The paper of record likes to be a little ahead of the news.
And what's more, as a de facto partisan arm of the Democratic Party most of the time, it probably sees the proverbial writing on the 2020 wall, given that there's no real wall right now.
I'm a bit less willing to praise the paper for the particulars of its stance.  The authors are calling for cash for better detention facilities to accommodate all the illegal border-crossers, which sounds like a downwind patch-up solution to the far more effective ones that House Democrats could do without appropriating any money — such as by reducing the incentives to emigrate illegally by reforming loopholes in U.S. asylum law.  How about: 'If you can't be bothered to apply legally to enter the U.S., then back you go.'  Or: 'If you refuse to apply for asylum at a U.S. port of entry because you want instant customer service, then back of the line, pal.'  Exceptions can be carved out for nationals seeking asylum from places that do not permit free travel, such as North Korea, the nationals of whom our current asylum laws were written for.  The Times' call for more comfortable accommodations for foreigners crossing into the U.S. without authorization sounds like yet another incentive to come here illegally, though it could give border agents some time to sort out who's a professional criminal, or who's renting a kid to get let out of detention early, and who isn't.
Even a wall would be a better solution than the weak tea of better detention cells for migrants the Times calls for.
And as Laura Ingraham notes here — the Times is wrong about the unvetted migration headed to the U.S. containing few or no criminals.


I’m at border with @CBP agents now—they just said @nytimes 100 percent wrong that there’s “There is no pressing nat’l security threat — no invasion of murderers, drug cartels or terrorists.“ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/05/opinion/trump-border-crisis-funding.html 

Opinion | Congress, Give Trump His Border Money



Border Patrol agents say they're seeing the crooks all over — criminals, of course, don't do things legally.
That said, the Times editorial is still pretty revolutionary.  Democrats have been denying for years that there's any crisis at the border, growing ever more shrill and irrational the more the evidence piles up — from crime wages by illegal aliens to welfare and other state costs to the specter of illegal immigrants openly ballot-harvesting in California to flip the House to the Democrats and their champions on the Left fighting in courts an innocuous census question about citizenship.
Illegals are a source of power for Democrats.  They have a political interest in denying a crisis.  For them, it's a party, and nobody had better take away that punch bowl...
But there really is a crisis — and the Times has noticed.  And its reporters on the ground probably also notice that the issue could cost Democrats the entire election in 2020.  With the Times serving as the Democratic Party's narrative-master, this looks like an intervention.  Now maybe the Democratic drunks at the illegals table will be forced to take the first step toward sobriety — by admitting a problem.

 

 

Democrats on Border Crisis: Help Migrants, Not American Wage-Earners

NEIL MUNRO

Border agencies should provide even more help to Central American migrants, top Democrats said in response to the White House’s emergency funding request to manage the migration inflow.

The support for migrants came after the White House asked for $4.5 billion to help process the growing flood of economic migrants from Central America.
“As a country, we must do more to meet the needs of migrants – especially children and families – who are arriving in increasing numbers,” said a statement by Rep. Nita Lowey, chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee. She urged the administration to speed up the release of the migrants:
However, the Trump administration appears to want much of this $4.5 billion emergency supplemental request to double down on cruel and ill-conceived policies, including bailing out ICE for overspending on detention beds and expanding family detention. Locking up people who pose no threat to the community for ever-longer periods of time is not a solution to the problems at the border.
“This crisis is one largely of the Trump Administration’s own making,” claimed Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. His statement also urged the border agencies to release the migrants at a faster pace into the U.S. labor market:
We will not appropriate more funds that will add to the chaos and make the problem worse … this request holds a number of non-starters – such as doubling down on the Administration’s cruel and failed policies including mass detention. There is no reason to lock up thousands who pose no threat, especially in an already-strained system.
Thompson said Democrats were ready to provide more aid to the foreign migrants: “House Democrats understand that there is a humanitarian crisis at the border, and we stand ready and willing to provide necessary resources to help fix this challenge and alleviate the suffering of thousands.”
Lowey declared Democrats as guardians of the nation’s values. “House Democrats take seriously our responsibility to uphold our values and secure our borders,” Lowey said.
The growing wave of migrants is forcing down Americans’ wages in U.S. blue-collar workplaces and is weakening education for Americans kids in blue-collar schools.
The Democrats’ opposition to border security reflects the pro-migration views of their coalition, which includes wealthy progressives and poor, government-dependent families.

 

Why are Democrats opposing Americans in every way?

https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2019/01/20/why-are-democrats-opposing-americans-in-every-way-n2539333

 

With the rejection of President Trump’s latest border security compromise Democrats have rejected security for Americans on many different levels.
This set of rejections adds to the growing list of recent weeks in which nearly every decision they make works against the citizens of the United States.
Even after repeated compromises (President Trump moving to a “steel slat” and away from a “wall”) and self-admissions of a barrier’s effectiveness (House Majority Leader Hoyer confessing “well of course walls work,”) they continue to harbor anti-American values and sentiment in their approach towards the current crisis.
Thus far they have rejected the number one demand of the voters in 2016 to reinforce our southern border with a permanent barrier.
They have decided that in order to ensure that they prevent such a barrier from being built that they would prefer to starve government workers merely to spite the American people.
They also decided to attempt to block the President’s lawful right to update the American people on the progress of the nation and what his administration intends to accomplish in 2109.
All three of these moves intentionally hurts Americans, leaves them less safe, and attempts to leave them uninformed in a nation that guarantees transparency.
In rejecting President Trump’s offer on Saturday they went a few steps further.
Besides the paltry sum of $5.7 billion he is requesting for the border barrier (paltry because the Democrats approved $40 billion during the Obama administration for identical purposes) they also rejected a few other key points.
A key point they are now rejecting (that they previously begged for—though this is the third time the President has offered it) is an extension of protections on nearly 700,000 “dreamers” (non-citizens who entered the country illegally but of no fault of their own due to ages at the time.) Rejecting these protections now for a third time, DACA kids really should ask themselves, “Who in this debate is honestly thinking about what’s best for me?”
An additional offer from the President would extend protections for 300,000 additional persons whose home countries are too dangerous to guarantee a safe return. The TPS offer when coupled with the DACA kids provides protections for nearly 1,000,000 non-citizens that evidently the Democrats for all their big talk of compassion don’t appear to give two hoots about.
His offer also includes close to a billion dollars in updated drug detection technology to be placed exclusively at ports of entry to obviously bring to a halt the flow of more than 90% of the heroin entering the country. This heroin is killing upwards of 300 of our children per week.
His proposal also wants to offer more Americans jobs, increasing the ranks of our border agents by more than 2700. He also pledged more law enforcement to assist the border agents for necessary manpower to actually secure the border and shut down illegal activity and persons attempting to harm America.
And for all those who are deeply concerned about the legitimate asylum seekers trying to eke out a better life in America, his program would provide 75 additional immigration judges to specifically lessen the wait times and backlog of asylum seekers.
Beyond this specific package he even dangled the willingness to bring to the table comprehensive immigration reform in short order.
So now Democrats aren’t merely opposing (with great hostility) the supporters of the President, the Republicans in Congress and the Senate, conservatives across the nation and at least half of the American voters.
Now they are also punishing 800,000 government workers (who largely voted for them.) 
They are punishing the families whose lives have been and will be impacted by the continuing flow of heroin into our communities, along with the 300 families every week (15,000+ annually) whose children are dying from it.
They have now thrice rejected protections for a million seeking safe haven in America including 700,000 children who found themselves here through no choice that they made.
And they are preventing from the future security of thousands of asylum seekers, and most significantly the citizens of the nation itself with a truly secured border.
The Democrats are opposing Americans, those who wish to be Americans, and those that find themselves stuck somewhere in between.
The important question that each American should ask...
Is why?
  

OPEN BORDERS FACILITATE AMERICA’S RACE TO THE BOTTOM



“Cheap labor” is anything but cheap.

January 2, 2019

For decades the United States government, on all levels, has betrayed its own citizens, promoting open borders policies that have come to undermine national security, public safety, public health, and jobs and wages for American workers.
The massive influx of alien children who lack English language proficiency also has a profound impact on the education of American kids.  Increasingly schools across the United States are forced to provide costly ESL (English as a Second Language) services draining funds that could and should be used to provide quality education for American children.  Additionally, as autism rates soar and with it the growing need for special services and early intervention for such learning challenged children, money that should be spent on those vital programs that could help so many of those children live better and more productive lives is being used, instead, to fund those ESL programs for illegal aliens and frequently the children of illegal aliens who do not speak English in their homes.
When early intervention is withheld from at-risk students, the results are frequently catastrophic, yet with all of the emotional arguments posed by the immigration anarchists who call for compassion for illegal aliens, their calls for compassion utterly disregard the plight of American children. 
Open borders policies permit huge numbers of foreign workers to enter the United States and displace American workers, not because American’s “won’t do these jobs” as claimed by the duplicitous politicians, but because these foreign workers are willing to accept lower wages and worse conditions than would the American workers whom they displace.
We can all think back to the days when we were growing up and sought our very first jobs to provide us with some spending money, enabling us to put our foot on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
We often encountered the conundrum of not being able to get a job without a reference.  In order to get a reference we had to have a previous employer vouch for us.  This made getting that very first job all the more difficult and, at the same time, all the more important.
I remember my first job, when I was 14 yeas old, working during my summer vacation in a Kosher delicatessen, a short bike ride from home in Brooklyn where I washed dishes, fried potatoes and served hot dogs at the counter, waited on tables and delivered sandwiches to the women who spent hours at the nearby beauty parlors.
It was exciting and empowering to be earning money instead of asking my parents for an allowance.  Although I didn’t realize it at the time, that job also provided me with an education in life lessons, teaching me to be responsible, punctual and take instructions from an employer.  That job also taught me the value of money, I was far less likely to squander money when I had to work so hard to earn it.
Finally, that job provided me with that important first reference that helped me get other jobs in the future as I climbed the economic ladder to a successful life.
Many of my friends also worked in nearby restaurants. Brooklyn has no shortage of great places to eat, often small “mom and pop” restaurants and everyone of those establishments routinely hired teenagers and college students who were desperate to earn money.
Today most of those jobs in all too many local restaurants and other businesses are not taken by teenage American kids, but but illegal aliens, thereby shutting out Americans.
Consequently, these American kids are often unable to get that first job that would mean so much to them and provide them with important life lessons including a sense of self-worth and empowerment.
Unable to find legitimate employment, some kids, particularly in the poor neighborhoods, resort to committing crimes to get their hands on some money to take a girl on a date or make purchases.  This often puts these teenagers on a trajectory that does not end well for them or for their communities, or for America.
Illegal alien day laborers often displace construction workers, resulting in massive unemployment for American and lawful immigrant workers, boosting the profits of their employers who hire them “off the books” and pay them extremely low wages.
The open-borders/immigration anarchists are quick to invoke arguments about the need for compassion.  The reality is that there’s no compassion in the exploitation of vulnerable foreign workers nor is there compassion in the destruction of wages and jobs for Americans.
Now with the legalization of marijuana in many cities and states across the United States the issue not being raised in the media is that inasmuch as many companies test their employees for illegal drugs, it is likely that those who are encouraged to smoke marijuana will lose their jobs, perhaps leading to the globalists claiming that not only are lazy Americans not willing to take physically demanding jobs, and too dumb to take hi-tech jobs but are now too stoned to take any jobs.
The displacement of American workers is not limited to the economic bottom rung jobs.  America has been increasingly importing computer programmers and other hi-tech workers from India and other countries to displace Americans.
The Democratic Party used to act in the interests of American workers and, as a part of their efforts to protect the jobs and wages of Americans, opposed the importation of foreign workers.  Today, the Democratic Party no longer represents American workers and, in fact, has come to betray American workers and their families.  Today’s Democratic Party insists on raising the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour to achieve “wage equality.”  This works out to an annual wage of slightly more than $30,000.  The question that is never asked, particularly by the mainstream media is: “with whom would these workers become equal?”
It would be one thing if they insisted on a $15.00 minimum wage to help America’s working poor.  But to tout that wage as a means of achieving “wage equality” should give all Americans cause for pause.
As I noted in an article I once wrote about the veiled attack on the middle class,
The Wage Equality Deception, Alan Greenspan the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, invoked the notion of wage equality way back on April 30, 2009 when he testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship that was, at that time, chaired by Chuck Schumer.
The subject of the hearing was “Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?”  Greenspan's prepared testimony included this assertion:
But there is little doubt that unauthorized, that is, illegal, immigration has made a significant contribution to the growth of our economy. Between 2000 and 2007, for example, it accounted for more than a sixth of the increase in our total civilian labor force. The illegal part of the civilian labor force diminished last year as the economy slowed, though illegals still comprised an estimated 5% of our total civilian labor force. Unauthorized immigrants serve as a flexible component of our workforce, often a safety valve when demand is pressing and among the first to be discharged when the economy falters.
Some evidence suggests that unskilled illegal immigrants (almost all from Latin America) marginally suppress wage levels of native-born Americans without a high school diploma, and impose significant costs on some state and local governments.
Greenspan must not have gotten the memo- when America’s poorest workers suffer wage suppression they are likely to become homeless and, indeed, across the United States, homelessness has increased dramatically.  This not only creates chaos in the lives of the homeless and their children, but imposes severe economic burdens on cities that have to cope with this disaster.
Greenspan went on to state the United States must accede to Bill Gates’ demand for more H-1B visas as Gates noted in his testimony at a previous hearing, that we are "driving away the world's best and brightest precisely when we need them most." 
Where I come from, “the world’s best and brightest” are AMERICANS!  This is what is commonly referred to as “American Exceptionalism.”
Greenspan supported his infuriating call for many more H-1B visas by the following “benefits” for America and, as you will see, the last sentence of his outrageous paragraph addresses the notion of reducing “wage inequality” by lowering wages of middle class, highly educated Americans whom Greenspan had the chutzpah to refer to as “the privileged elite”!
Consider this excerpt from his testimony:
First, skilled workers and their families form new households. They will, of necessity, move into vacant housing units, the current glut of which is depressing prices of American homes. And, of course, house price declines are a major factor in mortgage foreclosures and the plunge in value of the vast quantity of U.S. mortgage-backed securities that has contributed substantially to the disabling of our banking system. The second bonus would address the increasing concentration of income in this country. Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums of skilled over lesser skilled. Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process, we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at noncompetitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income inequality.
Generally, the prospect of high-paying jobs incentivized American students to go on to college and acquire costly and time-consuming educations to be qualified to take those exciting and well-paying jobs.  If wages for high-tech professionals are slashed, those jobs will no longer be attractive to Americans.
Greenspan, Schumer and their cohorts are determined to create a $15.00 per hour “standard wage” to be paid to all workers irrespective of education or the nature of their jobs.  This is called Communism! 
Many have said that the Democrats want to import immigrants who will vote for their candidates.
What is often overlooked is that the downward economic spiral caused by the massive influx of cheap alien labor pushes ever more beleaguered Americans to vote for the Democrats who promise to help the hapless, financially strapped Americans for whom, no matter how hard they may strive, the “American Dream” has become an unattainable dream.


Immigration Truths the Democrats Deny

By Laura Ingraham


But the Democrats are determined to block Trump's efforts to fortify the border. You can see them recoil at any border wall talk. Here are the facts. The Democrats are willing to sell out the country, law and order be damned, in order to deny Trump a victory over the wall.

A few years ago, they were all for fortifying the border but not now. Of course, if we had a media that publicized actual facts on illegal immigration and other immigration issues, rather than obsessing 24/7 about Michael Cohen or focusing on a few really sympathetic people in Tijuana, we would have a lot more Democrats feeling the pressure on this issue from the voters.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/laura-ingraham-immigration-truths-the-democrats-deny


Pelosi and Schumer Show Their Colors

By David Limbaugh

How can anyone believe that the Democrats support border security -- wall or no wall -- when they have repeatedly broken their promises to work with Republicans on it, when they demonize all opponents of illegal immigration and amnesty as racists, when they oppose all reasonable measures to guard the border, and when many of them actually advocate the elimination of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement?

https://townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/2018/12/14/pelosi-and-schumer-show-their-colors-n2537458

 

  

Democrats can't stand the thought of protecting Americans



Democrats and their cheerleaders in the mainstream media tout themselves as concerned for those addicted to drugs and regularly support increased spending money for therapy.  But they refuse to fund building the wall and for border security on the Mexican border.
The wall would significantly stop the flow of illegal drugs through the Mexican border to the USA, which would reduce the supply of illegal drugs that cause addiction and deaths by overdose.  The Democrats and media support spending money to deal with the effects of drugs smuggled across the border but refuse to spend money to stop the smuggling.
There is no doubt that illegal drugs and most heroin come across the Mexican border.  And now we have fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 80-100 times stronger than morphine.  According to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), "[c]landestinely-produced fentanyl is primarily manufactured in Mexico.

The Mexican cartels are producing fentanyl and also receive it from China to smuggle it to the USA.  It is very profitable for the cartels.

In 2017, more than 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, with at least 30,000 attributed to fentanyl.
President Trump has called for a border wall to stop illegal immigration and to reduce the flow of illegal drugs, such as heroin and fentanyl.  It is common sense and logical that building a wall and fully securing the southern border would reduce the flow of such drugs, reducing deaths and addiction.
Yet the Democrats refuse to fund the border wall and border security.
Senator Schumer and Speaker-Elect Pelosi agree to spend $1.5 billion for "border security" but not for a wall.  President Trump is asking for only $5 billion.  It is estimated that $27 to $40 billion is needed to fully fund the wall.
It is time to fully fund the border wall.  The Trump Shutdown should focus on the record number of Americans who die due to drugs smuggled from Mexico.  The focus should be on the Democrats and media that ignore the danger to Americans.  This debate should be coupled with the number of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens.
Democrats and their media will quibble about the exact number of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens.  But the point is that such crimes are avoidable if the border is secured.
President Trump must be supported to shut down the federal government to finally force funding the wall to  protect Americans.  The issue is protecting Americans.
Iran is the principal state sponsor and supporter of terrorism.  Iran has promised to destroy Israel.  Iran's Parliament chanted "death to America" while burning our flag.  The Dems and their media supported giving $150 billion to Iran but, they refuse to spend more than $1.5 billion to protect Americans, when they know that spending $27 to $40 billion would save thousands of Americans from death and addiction.
The bottom line is that the Dems and their media do not care about the security and safety of Americans.

  

PRAGER U VIDEO: ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: IT'S ABOUT POWER

What really lies behind the Left's support for 'open borders.'



December 6, 2018

Historically, Democrats supported strong borders because they knew American workers could never compete with illegal immigrants. Now, they regularly support “open borders.” So why the drastic change? Tucker Carlson, host of Tucker Carlson Tonight, explains.

WAR ON THE AMERICA WORKER: FEINSTEIN, PELOSI, OBAMA, HITLERMALA HARRIS and the CLINTON CRIME DUAL

“Senator Dianne Feinstein warned, at the time, they had to solve this crisis now—of immigrants coming in illegally and getting these jobs.”

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/05/senator-dianne-feinstein-looking-to-buy.html

“The Democrats had abandoned their working-class base to chase what they pretended was a racial group when what they were actually chasing was the momentum of unlimited migration”.  DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE 

(WHAT DOES MEXICO DO TO THEIR ILLEGALS?)

AS MEXICO EXPORTS THEIR POOR, CRIMINAL AND ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS ALONG WITH HEROIN, WHAT DO THEY DO WITH THEIR ILLEGALS???

 

THEY DEPORT THEM ON THE SPOT!!!

 

Mexico has a single, streamlined law that ensures that foreign visitors and immigrants are:
1.) in the country legally;
2.)  have the means to sustain themselves economically;
3.) not destined to be burdens on society;
4.)  of economic and social benefit to society;
5.)  of good character and have no criminal records; and
6.)  contributors to the general well-being of the nation.
The law also ensures that:
7.)  immigration authorities have a record of each foreign visitor;
8.)  foreign visitors do not violate their visa status;
9.)  foreign visitors are banned from interfering in the country’s internal politics;
10.)  foreign visitors who enter under false pretenses are imprisoned or deported;
11.)  foreign visitors violating the terms of their entry are imprisoned or deported;

NOTE THIS:
12.)  those who aid in illegal immigration will be sent to prison.

 

 

THE CONSPIRACY TO SABOTAGE HOMELAND SECURITY

The Democrat Party’s secret agenda for wider open borders, more welfare for invading illegals, more jobs and free anything they illegally vote for…. All to destroy the two-party system and build the GLOBALISTS’ DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR WIDER OPEN BORDERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/11/frontpage-hidden-agenda-of-pueblo-sin.html

 

Demonstrably and irrefutably the Democrat Party  became the party whose principle objective is to thoroughly transform the nature of the American electorate by means of open borders and the mass, unchecked importation of illiterate third world peasants who will vote in overwhelming numbers for Democrats and their La Raza welfare state. FRONTPAGE MAG

Seattle's Homelessness Issue Could Push Progressives To Vote Conservative


Source: AP Photo/Elaine Thompson






Seattle's homelessness issue has created such a problem, after years of big government spending on the issue to the tune of nearly $1 billion per year for the greater Seattle area, that some voters who once thought of themselves as solidly Democratic now may support the conservative city council candidate Ari Hoffman, who has more or less declared his race a one-issue campaign.
According to The Seattle Times, voters like Christi Muoneke, an immigrant from Nigeria, is tired of politicians who have made many promises but failed to actually solve the issue. 
“I’m pretty sure 99% of people in Seattle feel compassion for the homeless. We don’t think they should be thrown into the ocean,” Muoneke told The Seattle Times. “My frustration is that so many decisions in Seattle today are driven by ideology rather than the desire to get results.”
But for Muoneke, the lack of results has hit closer to home than she would prefer. In fact, it truly forced her to pay attention to politics:
Until a few years ago, Christi Muoneke didn’t pay much attention to Seattle politics. “I couldn’t even tell you who my council member was,” she said.
That changed when the streetsides around her Beacon Hill home were lined with tents and vehicles occupied by homeless people.
Around the same time, Muoneke and her family had bikes stolen and cars broken into, she says. Her mother-in-law stopped taking walks. Trash piled up in the traffic circle on their corner. Repeated calls to the police about the camping made no lasting impact.
As a result, "The 55-year-old mother of two says she may vote for Ari Hoffman, a conservative candidate who has appeared on Fox News and NRA TV." 
“I’m a Democrat. I used to consider myself liberal,” she told the paper. “But I’m a single-issue voter this time around.”
Likewise, she also says that social justice warriors like the socialist Councilmember Ksahama Sawant have adopted condescending attitudes towards folks like her who simply want to solve homelessness. 
Muoneke, who is staunchly anti-Trump, says, “I’m not anti-homeless. I’m just anti-people who commit crimes and are given a pass because they’re homeless,” she said. “Everybody is entitled to safety and security. All humans want that.” 
However, the Seattle Times article also notes that other progressive individuals are simply becoming more extreme, using Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a role model. There are currently about 12,000 homeless individuals in Seattle, and socialists and leftists alike think the answer is more government spending. 
But, in a truly in-depth report by the City-Journal, Christopher Rufo argues the only way to end the homeless is to break up the "homelessness industrial complex" and drastically stop the public assistance promoted by city leaders. He says this does nothing to solve the problem and instead just lines public officials' wallets. 
Via Rufo:
With more than $1 billion spent on homelessness in Seattle every year, one should keep in mind Vladimir Lenin’s famous question: Who stands to gain? In the world of Seattle homelessness, the big “winners” are social-services providers like the Seattle Housing and Resource Effort (SHARE), the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), and the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), which constitute what I call the city’s homeless-industrial complex. For the executive leadership of these organizations, homelessness is a lucrative business. In the most recent federal filings, the executive director of LIHI, Sharon Lee, earned $187,209 in annual compensation, putting her in the top 3 percent of income earners nationwide. In my estimation, the executive director of DESC, Daniel Malone, has received at least $2 million in total compensation during his extended career in the misery business.
As for when Muoenke will have to decide if she supports Hoffman's city council race, "the primary election is Aug. 6, and the two candidates with the most votes in each district will advance to the Nov. 5 general election." 






Report: Millennials Leaving Big Cities Due to Rising Costs

young man in city
iStock / Getty Images Plus
KATHERINE RODRIGUEZ
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2:02

Millennials are leaving large cities and heading for the suburbs, all due to rising costs of homes in the area, according to a report.

Millennials, widely known as people between the ages of 23 and 38, are fleeing cities in favor of suburbs in their quest to find more affordable housing, the Wall Street Journalreported Monday.
City growth used to surpass growth in the suburbs due to the financial crisis, but that trend has “reversed” over the last five years because of increased living costs and more millennials choosing to get married and start families.
“The back-to-the-city trend has reversed,” William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution told the Journal.
Many millennials are flocking to areas in the South and Southwest because of the good weather and abundant supply of jobs.
Suburbs such as Apex, North Carolina, near Raleigh, are growing so quickly that schools are at capacity and traffic jams are more common in the area.
But despite the supposed exodus of millennials from cities to the suburbs, millennials are still struggling to buy homes.
A May 2019 analysis by real estate information company Zillow found that home buying for this generation will become more costly and more competitive over the next decade, making it harder for millennials to purchase homes.
Many millennials have had to put off home buying altogether due to massive student loan debt and rising rent payments, which makes saving up for that first down payment more difficult.
First-time buyers need at least another 1.5 years in savings to afford a down payment as opposed to 30 years ago, according to Zillow.
“A large set of them are going to find that almost impossible,” Skylar Olsen, Zillow’s director of economic research, told Fox Business in May. “So they’re going to linger in the rental market for longer, they’re going to continue to put pressure on the rental market, too.”






Homelessness Strains New York’s Libraries

10 Blocks podcast
July 3, 2019
New York
The Social Order
Stephen Eide joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss how homeless services are putting pressure on one of New York City’s most valued cultural institutions: the New York Public Library. Eide describes the situation in “Disorder in the Stacks,” his story in the Spring 2019 Issue of City Journal.
Homelessness has been a challenge for every New York City mayor since the 1970s. Prior to the city’s revitalization, the homeless were mostly concentrated in destitute neighborhoods of Manhattan. But today, homeless single adults are an increasingly visible presence in parks, subway stations, and libraries around the city.
“All urban library systems have found themselves in the homeless-services business, with varying degrees of enthusiasm,” Eide writes. The New York Public Library spends $12 million annually on security, including training for staff in dealing with potentially threatening patrons. The city needs a comprehensive strategy for dealing with a worsening crisis.

Audio Transcript

Brian Anderson: Welcome back to the 10 Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Coming up on the show today, one of our contributing editors, Stephen Eide, joins me to discuss his recent essay for the magazine "Disorder in the Stacks," which looks at homelessness and the problems it's posing for New York's public libraries. Homelessness has been a challenge for every mayor in New York since the 70s, but today we'll talk about how the city's struggle to deal with it is creating new problems for one of our most valued institutions, the New York Public Library. Stephen's been a guest on the show before and I know you'll enjoy the discussion. Our conversation will begin after this.
Hello again everyone. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Joining us now in the studio is Stephen Eide. Stephen is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal. His recent essay for the magazine "Disorder in the Stacks" details how services for the homeless are putting a strain on library resources throughout the city. Stephen, thanks for joining us.
Stephen Eide: Hi Brian. Thanks for having me.
Brian Anderson: Homelessness, as we mentioned at the beginning, has been a challenge for every mayor in New York, really since the 70s. But for this piece, you spend a lot of time visiting different branches of the New York Public Library. What you found was a significant number of homeless people sitting in the library rooms charging their phones, streaming Netflix, browsing social media, playing video games. It seems that the public libraries in Midtown Manhattan are morphing into an extension of the city's homeless shelter system. Why is this happening, in your view, and what has been the reaction of library patrons to this?
Stephen Eide: Well, this burden is falling on the public library system because it's falling on many service systems in this city. In terms of the core homeless services system, meaning mostly the network of emergency shelters, New York City already spends $3 billion. But that sum doesn't take into account the burden homelessness places on the cops, on the school system to deal with problems related to homeless children, and also the library is another service system that gets roped into this task. It certainly has a financial burden in terms of spending on security and staffing on hours, but it also has implications for just the library's sense of purpose, it's mission. What does the library do? There's a lot of debate about that, but when you visit many of these branches— and I visited around 50 branches for this article, several of them more than once— what it seems that a library does in many cases, is function as a daytime homeless shelter.
Brian Anderson: Some of the numbers from your piece are quite eye-opening— you just mention the security cost; the public library's now spending I think $12 million annually, you say in the essay, which is a number not all that far from the amount it spends on books and other resources. How exactly are those security costs being spent, and what kind of security do you need for a public library full of homeless people?
Stephen Eide: Well, it's a delicate issue for the library to talk about. The library needs to go hat in hand to the city council every year for its budget request. It doesn't want to dramatize, it believes, the problem of homelessness, but it's clearly internally a big issue. They have to debate where they put these security guards. There aren't security guards at every branch in the system, but the branches where you see a large concentration of security guards are not, coincidentally, these branches that have a very large number of homeless people. Places like the Bronx Library Center, the SIBL— Science Industry and Business Library— in Midtown Manhattan, these are places where you might have, on a cold day, a few dozen homeless people sitting there all day long. And there you're going to have a significant concentration of security guards just so that any non-homeless person who happens to be using that branch for any reason is going to feel comfortable. Of course the larger point to make there is that you won't see that many non-homeless people using libraries if you have large concentrations of homeless people. If you go out to suburban library systems or quasi-suburban branches in the NPL system, like on Staten Island, which I did, or the northern Bronx, you see older retirees or young professionals— certain types of cohorts that you just don't see so much in these Midtown branches and elsewhere, which have a high concentration of homeless people. We've talked about this many times in terms of how you manage public spaces, be it streets or parks. You try to maximize the number of ordinary people going about their daily business and try to minimize the people who are contributing to concerns about disorder. And at this point, the balance is clearly more toward the homeless side of the ledger than the non-homeless side of ledger at many, many branches in New York City.
Brian Anderson: So it is having an effect on the patrons? They're not showing up to the degree they would have been absent this problem?
Stephen Eide: Yeah. People don't feel comfortable settling in for a couple hours. Around Midtown Manhattan, it's not like you have an overabundance of quiet, pleasant places to just go sit for a couple of hours. The library could be serving that function, but a lot of people don't feel comfortable just sitting, opening up their laptop, or opening up a book and spending a few hours in a place where they're surrounded by a bunch of people who are clearly homeless and they don't know— maybe they're behaving erratically.
Brian Anderson: They're not going to feel safe bringing kids there.
Stephen Eide: Yeah. There are children's sections, but they delineate those boundaries very clearly between the children's and the adults' sections at all these branches, but it's especially rare to see, relatively speaking, non-homeless adults using the library for the purpose that we would think we have libraries for. The New York Public Library's favorite word is inclusiveness, inclusivity. This is an institution that serves all New Yorkers— that's its commitment, as it says over and over again. But it's not inclusive in a de facto way because you don't see all New Yorkers at public library branches; in many of them, you only see certain kinds of New Yorkers.
Brian Anderson: You mention disorder, and certainly the presence of a large number of homeless people in a branch is a sign of disorder. Has there been any kind of uptick in crime or property damage?
Stephen Eide: The library does keep security incident data. They're higher than I would say they should be, in terms of the number of emotionally disturbed persons, security incidents. They were only able to give me four years of data. I wanted to be very cautious in how I interpreted that rather than to say that we're seeing a big increase, but just in terms of the way that library officials talk about this on and off the record, clearly they're concerned that this is a rising problem for them. They're open about that. If a homeless person attacks somebody, then that homeless person is going to be promptly taken out of the facility and dealt with, and committed to a psychiatric hospital or jail. But people can create an uncomfortable environment without being floridly psychotic, and that's, I think, the more typical case you'll find in many of these library facilities.
Brian Anderson: Now, you raise a number of legal issues in the essay. Libraries are in many ways a public space— they certainly advertise themselves as such, as you've just indicated— but courts have traditionally given leeway to libraries, just as they have in public spaces, with regulating disorderly behavior. So how does that work in practice? Can library security remove a homeless person from a library? Can it regulate this in any way?
Stephen Eide: Yeah, panhandling is prohibited, very bad B.O. is prohibited— that has been held up in court, not in cases related to New York, but outside of New York, in New Jersey. There is an understanding that a library has a more specific sense of purpose than a street or a sidewalk, and in order to fulfill that sense of purpose, it needs to have more stringent regulations on behavior. Courts have held that up. Cities have a lot of difficulty regulating the behavior of homeless people outside of transit systems, outside of libraries, but within certain types of systems you can do more to regulate behavior. But there's still important limits in terms of whether or not you can remove somebody who's not assaulting anybody.
Brian Anderson: Has there been any kind of advocacy at work in this area of pushing for the rights of homeless people to occupy these spaces?
Stephen Eide: Well, I did look at a few systems outside of New York City, and I think in any progressive jurisdiction there are going to be legal advocates who want to push things as far as they can in terms of using the courts. The larger question for me is, what are the library systems themselves doing? Because library systems themselves— because they want to be seen as progressive, because they want to be seen as doing the right thing relative to the city politicians who control the budget strings— are in some ways embracing the role of homeless service provider. Every major urban public library system, this is the role that they find themselves in, but it's a question of whether you leap to it or you do it with great reluctance. I would say the San Francisco Public Library System not only goes further than other library systems in terms of what it offers for homeless patrons. You see article upon article about the San Francisco Public Library System's creative ideas about homeless services. New York Public Library is really more in the reluctant camp, at the moment. Its service offerings are quite modest and, according to what the library officials said, that's where they're likely to remain. They don't want to go in the San Francisco route, at least for now.
Brian Anderson: In San Francisco— and we had Erica Sandberg on last week, who's situated out there in that city, talking about the broader problem of public order breakdown— but as you argue in your piece, San Francisco has probably gone the furthest in this idea of transforming the library system's mission into becoming a homeless services provider. Is that a fair thing to say?
Stephen Eide: Yes, absolutely. They have social workers, they have peers— that is former homeless and people dealing with mental illness challenges who do outreach work to other homeless patrons— they establish partnerships with organizations that come around and bring shower services and things to the library system. And again, they really do a lot to promote these efforts. Obviously they're very proud of it. So there is a difference in the way you engage in the spirit of the thing between San Francisco and other public library systems, and New York, at the moment, is in the middle, I would say.
Brian Anderson: Now, this is a broader question just about homelessness in general in New York City. I imagine easing the situation for the libraries would entail improving the homeless crisis situation more broadly, right? In the city, and in your view, what do we need to do to get closer to that?
Stephen Eide: Well, yes. There are going to have to be legal changes, policy changes. If you break out the mental health component of it— somewhere between a quarter and a third of homeless people usually are estimated to have a serious mental illness— we need to talk about inpatient psychiatric care for some of those people, improved outpatient psychiatric care, better focus of resources on that population as opposed to other people who claim to have mental disorders. Homelessness certainly is a housing problem. The serious lack of low rent housing is an enormous problem in San Francisco and New York City; we dug ourselves a very deep hole in that respect. But in terms of the legal challenges, these cities— San Francisco and New York— you can't say that they're not doing anything, that they're not responding. They're spending tons and tons of resources on these homeless challenges. That should give them more legal flexibility to do more in terms of quality of life ordinances than they are at the moment. There's a legal question in terms of what courts will let you do; there's also a political question in terms of how far you want to push the limits in terms of what you want to do, and I don't think that politicians in New York and San Francisco are going that far at the moment to see how far they can go in terms of quality of life ordinances.
Brian Anderson: You've written for the magazine about the library system before. You have a great affection for it, right?
Stephen Eide: Yeah, for me, the public library in New York or in any community— in affluent suburbs, in rust belt cities, in California— it's a cultural institution. It's a public good. We support libraries because we want to make it easier for people, for strivers, for people who have a penchant for self-education, who view their public education as incomplete, who want to continue to pursue intellectual endeavors on their own. This was Andrew Carnegie's vision back when he bankrolled over a thousand libraries across the nation. And I still think that that vision has a lot to say for itself. And l think all of us like the idea of public libraries— we are not shutting down libraries; we believe libraries are valid public goods. But if a library is really more in the social services business than the cultural institution business, then that raises a lot of questions of whether or not the library knows anything about what it's doing in the social services business. Do we need social service providers? Sure. We need people to be connecting people with treatment for their serious mental illness, to be helping them get back on their feet in terms of employment, and there are many social service providers who do a decent job with those tasks. But in all this literature about all these great, innovative things that libraries are supposedly doing to help the homeless, I've never seen any serious reckoning in terms of how you evaluate whether or not libraries are any good at helping us reduce the amount of homelessness or improve our policy response to homelessness. Yes, they're doing something vis-à-vis homelessness. Are they any good at homeless services? I have a lot of doubts about that.
Brian Anderson: For a deeper look into how homelessness is affecting the New York Public Library system, read Stephen Eide's essay "Disorder in the Stacks." It's in City Journal, it's on our website. You can find City Journal on Twitter, @cityjournal and on Instagram @cityjournal_mi. If you've enjoyed today's show, please be sure to rate us on iTunes. Thanks for listening and thank you for joining us, Stephen.
Stephen Eide: Thanks for having me.

Over 20 percent of homeless residents in Chicago are employed, with many holding a college degree

The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) annual study released in July found that an astonishing number of homeless people in Chicago are employed and many have a college education. Using the most current census data, the CCH found that 86,324 Chicago residents were homeless in 2017. Of this number, 13,929 or 21 percent of homeless adults over 18 have a job, and 28 percent hold an associate’s or bachelor’s degree.
The total number of homeless people in Chicago has risen significantly over the past several years. CCH found a total of 80,384 Chicago residents were homeless in 2016, and 82,212 in 2015. The 2017 numbers also reveal that the number of employed homeless residents has increased over the past two years, from 14 percent in 2015.
Homeless man in Chicago
The numbers blow apart the myth that by working hard and earning a college degree, workers in the US can prosper under capitalism. Furthermore, it tears apart the political fiction fed to the US working class that the Democratic Party is more aligned with its interests than its counterpart in the Republican Party.
How has the number of employed homeless workers increased in the US’s third-largest city, while the media and main political parties have declared that the US economy has been supposedly “recovering” since the official end of the economic recession, which began with the stock market crash of 2008?
As in other states, crushing student loan debt in the state of Illinois has led to extreme financial insecurity for many college graduates in the state. The average student loan debt load for a college graduate in the state was more than $29,000 in 2017, rising 63 percent over a decade from 2006.
The cost of housing in the city of Chicago is significantly higher than for the entire state of Illinois, which ranks 19th-highest for housing costs among all 50 states in the US. In Chicago and the five counties surrounding the city proper, a worker must earn $23.31 per hour during a 40-hour workweek to afford a 2-bedroom apartment for $1,212 per month, or 30 percent of total monthly income. For the state, the affordable housing wage is $20.85 per hour for a 40-hour workweek to afford a 2-bedroom unit at $1,084 per month.
Although the minimum wage for the city of Chicago increased to $13 per hour in July, this is far below the hourly wage needed for a full-time worker to be able to afford housing in the city and surrounding area. Many jobs in Chicago still pay well below the official estimates of the city’s living wage. Even if the minimum wage were to be increased to $15 per hour, as advocated by “progressive” Democratic Party officials in the city, housing would remain unaffordable for large sections of the city’s working class.
Chicago’s lack of affordable units is a mounting crisis. Between 2012 and 2017, the number of affordable housing units in the city has steadily declined, leaving about two-thirds of the city with a net loss of affordable units. The majority of these areas have seen decreases anywhere from five to more than ten percent.
The Democrats, and their political lackeys in the trade unions, bear the responsibility for the housing crisis in the city of Chicago. In 2000, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) applied to join the Clinton administration’s Moving-to-Work Program (MTW), aimed at forcing low-income workers out of affordable rental units in order to reduce costs. Under Democratic Mayor Richard M. Daley, the CHA further engaged in housing privatization schemes, turning public housing into “mixed-use” developments which were targeted toward higher-income renters with the aim of transferring public funds to private developers.
Under Democratic President Barack Obama, the requirement imposed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that public housing authorities like CHA give out 90 percent of affordable housing vouchers was eliminated, giving it free rein to continue diverting funds from its low-income housing voucher program—which subsidized a portion of low-income families’ rent—into its own financial schemes to build up reserves and spend down debt payments, all things that were allowed under the MTW Program.
Homeless woman in Chicago
Over the years, the CHA’s financial manipulation has created a crisis with long wait lists for vouchers—some families have waited for decades—and an overall population decline as lower-income residents leave the city for more affordable options outside of the area. This process was especially accelerated under Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
While politicians such as former corporate lawyer and Chicago’s recently inaugurated Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, posture as advocates of the expansion of affordable housing and rent control, they cannot be believed. Reviewing the development of the affordable housing crisis in Chicago, it is plain to see that as Democrats they will carry out the interests of the ruling capitalist class and have nothing to offer to workers struggling with or on the brink of homelessness.
The attitude of the ruling class towards the crisis of homelessness in the United States—the richest country in the world and home to more billionaires than any nation on earth—was summed up in an interview that President Donald Trump gave with Fox News host Tucker Carlson during his visit to Japan for the G20 Summit last week.
Trump declared homelessness to be “disgraceful” and that he was “looking at it very seriously,” singling out Los Angeles and San Francisco. He went on to disparage victims of homelessness and blame them for their own fate, stating that “Some of them have mental problems and don’t even know that they’re living that way. They can’t do that. We cannot ruin our cities...We may intercede. We may do something to get the whole thing cleaned up.”
Los Angeles and San Francisco are two of the most socially unequal cities not just in the United States, but in the world. On Monday, Uber cofounder Garrett Camp purchased a Beverly Hills mansion with his partner for $75.2 million, widely believed to be the largest sale ever of a home in the history of the ultra-rich neighborhood. Camp’s over $4 billion personal fortune comes from the exploitation of the labor of a worldwide network of low-wage contract drivers for the ridesharing company, who organized a global strike to protest their low wages and abysmal working conditions earlier this year.
Trump’s fascistic threats to “intercede” to “clean up” cities’ homeless populations are a warning to the working class. If such plans are carried out, his administration could potentially throw thousands of homeless people into concentration camps like those used to detain migrant workers and their children who are seeking refuge from violence and poverty across the border. Setting a precedent, these law-and-order tactics could be used against countless other sections of workers: those who suffer from mental illness and drug addiction; the intellectually disabled and physically handicapped; striking workers; workers who protest against attacks on democratic rights and war.
These diseased ramblings are not simply the product of the mind of Donald Trump. They are an expression of the political crisis of a ruling class moving far to the right, under conditions of such extreme levels of inequality that the contradictions cannot be resolved through any other means but militarism and massive repression on one hand, or social revolution on the other. The ruling class sees the mounting anger of the working class against conditions of inequality as a threat to its rule that must be put down at any cost.
It is up to the working class to intervene with its own political program if it is ever to free itself from the crisis of capitalism, pushing all sections of the working class further into desperation and threatening more with homelessness as a small layer of the ultra-rich hoards all of society’s wealth. In order to expropriate the wealth which it creates with its labor, the working class needs to fight under the banner of its own independent, socialist program. To do this requires that workers break with the Democratic Party, the trade unions, and all other representatives of the capitalist class, and form a leadership capable of fighting for their own interests, which include the right to affordable, safe housing and high-paying jobs for all workers.

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