The presidential contest in California is looking more and more like a three-way race, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders at the top — and far ahead of home-state Sen. Kamala Harris — a new poll released Wednesday found.
The front-runners are neck-and-neck, with Warren at 23 percent, Biden at 22 percent and Sanders at 21 percent among likely Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters in California, according to the poll conducted last month by the Public Policy Institute of California. Those totals are well within the poll’s margin of error, suggesting that the Golden State is a tossup with five months to go.
According to the poll, Harris was at 8 percent, followed by South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 6 percent, entrepreneur Andrew Yang at 3 percent and Sen. Cory Booker and former housing secretary Julián Castro at 2 percent. Several other candidates, including San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, were at 1 percent.
But the race is still unsettled — just over half of the respondents who’ve chosen a candidate say they would consider backing someone else.
And the survey was conducted before Sanders underwent an unscheduled heart procedure this week, so the impact of that news on California voters is unknown.
Californians will go to the polls on March 3, making the Golden State and its massive trove of more than 400 pledged delegates the top prize of Super Tuesday. That early position in the primary calendar has led to increased attention from the campaigns and a flurry of candidate visits.
The poll is the latest bad news for Harris, who has seen falling numbers across the board over the last few months. In the last PPIC poll in July — conducted soon after her star turn in the first primary debate — Harris was in the lead with 19 percent.
“A few months ago, it was a four-way race,” said Mark Baldassare, the PPIC president and poll director. “We’re seeing that Harris doesn’t have much of a home-state advantage, compared with national polls.”
The California Senator is moving to shake up her top campaign staff, Politico reported this week, and has refocused on Iowa — in the hope that a strong showing in the first caucus state will prompt more voters to give her a chance.
But Californians will begin receiving mail-in ballots a month early, the same day Iowans go to caucus, so the candidates also will feel pressure to focus on voters here.
Warren has a broader lead in the Bay Area with 30 percent support, followed by Biden at 20 percent, Sanders at 19 percent and Harris at 9 percent. She’s also ahead with liberals, while Biden is top among moderate and conservative voters.
Sanders continues to appeal to a younger demographic, with 38 percent support among young voters and 39 percent among Latino voters.
The Vermont senator was scheduled to travel to several college campuses in Southern California and the Central Valley this week to highlight his support from young Latino voters. But that swing was cancelled Wednesday after Sanders experienced chest pains during an event in Las Vegas on Tuesday night and underwent an operation to put two stents to open a blocked artery, his campaign said.
The poll results come as the campaigns have started to announce their third-quarter fundraising totals, which will be highly scrutinized progress reports for the White House hopefuls. Sanders led among the candidates who’ve released their totals so far, raking in $25.3 million over the last three months. Buttigieg took in $19.1 million, Harris took in $11.6 million, Sen. Cory Booker got $6 million and — most surprisingly — Yang got $10 million.
Warren and Biden have yet to release their totals. And the Democrats were eclipsed by President Trump, who raised $125 million between his campaign and the Republican National Committee. All of the candidates’ fundraising reports must be filed with the Federal Election Commission by Oct. 15.
In addition to the presidential horse race, the PPIC poll found mixed support for other measures that likely will be on Californians’ ballot next year. A $15 billion school construction bond that was passed by the legislature gets the nod from 66 percent of California adults, but only 54 percent of likely voters support it. Another bond to fund water infrastructure is favored by 68 percent of adults and 57 percent of likely voters.
And a highly-watched proposal to shake up Proposition 13 and raise taxes on commercial properties also is looking close, with the support of 57 percent of adults and 47 percent of likely voters.
Just over two-thirds of Californians say they favor stricter gun laws in the wake of the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting and several other mass shootings — a slight increase over a poll conducted last year. Nearly four in 10 respondents say they are very concerned about mass shootings taking place in their communities, up from 28 percent in a January 2016 poll.
More Californians named homelessness the state’s top issue, while housing costs and availability was the top concern in the Bay Area. And half of Californians say they also worry someone they know could be deported — with 29 percent saying they worry a lot.
The poll, which interviewed 1,705 Californians between September 16 and 25, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percent. The question about the Democratic primary covered 692 likely voters and had a margin of 4.9 percent.

Poll: Gavin Newsom Underwater in California
Gavin Newsom
Getty Images/Frederic J. Brown
2:21

California voters appear to have turned against Gov. Gavin Newsom in the most recent Public Policy Institute of California poll, which has the first-year governor “underwater,” with 44% of likely voters disapproving and 43% approving.

That is a reversal from the positive ratings voters gave Newsom’s predecessor, Jerry Brown, for the last several years of his tenure in office — and, the poll notes, is entirely due to rising disapproval over the last nine months.
Trump mocked Newsom as a “do-nothing” governor in statements to the press on Wednesday.
Residents — not just likely voters — identified homelessness as the number one problem facing the state — with more than one in five likely voters in both Los Angeles and San Francisco saying it was the worst problem. Newsom and other state and local officials have struggled to address the issue — as President Donald Trump has made a habit of pointing out recently.
In the 2020 presidential race, the poll found a three-way contest at the top — with some room for change:
Likely voters identifying as registered Democrats or as Democratic-leaning independents support Elizabeth Warren (23%), Joe Biden (22%), and Bernie Sanders (21%) at levels well above Kamala Harris (8%) and Pete Buttigieg (6%). No other candidate is preferred by more than 3 percent, and 9 percent say they don’t know which candidate they prefer. However, among voters with a candidate preference, more than half (53%) would consider supporting another candidate.
The poll surveyed over 1700 adults and over 1000 likely voters, the latter producing a margin of error of 4.2% in the 95% confidence interval.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.





OTHER FACTS ON MEXICO’S SECOND LARGEST CITY OF LOS ANGELES:

 

93% OF THE MURDERS ARE BY MEXICANS.

 

THE TAX-FREE UNDERGROUND ECONOMY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY IS ESTIMATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2 BILLION YEARLY.

 

Los Angeles County Pays Over a Billion in Welfare to Illegal Aliens Over Two Years

 

In 2015 and 2016, Los Angeles County paid nearly $1.3 billion in welfare funds to illegal aliens and their families. That figure amounts to 25 percent of the total spent on the county’s entire needy population, according to Fox News.
The state of California is home to more illegal aliens than any other state in the country. Approximately one in five illegal aliens lives in California, Pew reported.
Approximately a quarter of California’s 4 million illegal immigrants reside in Los Angeles County. The county allows illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.
The welfare benefits data acquired by Fox News comes from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services and shows welfare and food stamp costs for the county’s entire population were $3.1 billion in 2015, $2.9 billion in 2016.
The data also shows that during the first five months of 2017, more than 60,000 families received a total of $181 million.
Over 58,000 families received a total of $602 million in benefits in 2015 and more than 64,000 families received a total of $675 million in 2016.
Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow who studies poverty and illegal immigration, told Fox the costs represent “the tip of the iceberg.”
“They get $3 in benefits for every $1 they spend,” Rector said. It can cost the government a total of $24,000 per year per family to pay for things like education, police, fire, medical, and subsidized housing.
In February of 2019, the Los Angeles city council signed a resolution making it a sanctuary city. The resolution did not provide any new legal protections to their immigrants, but instead solidified existing policies.
In October 2017, former California governor Jerry Brown signed SB 54 into law. This bill made California, in Brown’s own words, a “sanctuary state.” The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the State of California over the law. A federal judge dismissed that suit in July. SB 54 took effect on Jan. 1, 2018.
According to Center for Immigration Studies, “The new law does many things: It forbids all localities from cooperating with ICE detainer notices, it bars any law enforcement officer from participating in the popular 287(g) program, and it prevents state and local police from inquiring about individuals’ immigration status.”
Some counties in California have protested its implementation and joined the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the state.
California’s campaign to provide public services to illegal immigrants did not end with the exit of Jerry Brown. His successor, Gavin Newsom, is just as focused as Brown in funding programs for illegal residents at the expense of California taxpayers.
California’s budget earmarks millions of dollars annually to the One California program, which provides free legal assistance to all aliens, including those facing deportation, and makes California’s public universities easier for illegal-alien students to attend.
According to the Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers 2017 report, for the estimated 12.5 million illegal immigrants living in the country, the resulting cost is a $116 billion burden on the national economy and taxpayers each year, after deducting the $19 billion in taxes paid by some of those illegal immigrants.
BLOG: MOST FIGURES PUT THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS IN THE U.S. AT ABOUT 40 MILLION. WHEN THESE PEOPLE ARE HANDED AMNESTY, THEY ARE LEGALLY ENTITLED TO BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY EFFECTIVELY LEAVING MEXICO DESERTED.

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more than 22 million non-citizens now live in the United States.

The 50 most miserable cities in America

Business InsiderSeptember 28, 2019
158 Comments

East side of Detroit, Michigan.
Charles Ommanney / Getty

·         The most miserable city in the US is Gary, Indiana.
·          
·         The state with the most miserable cities is California with 10.
·          
·         New Jersey is close behind with nine, and Florida comes in third with six.
·         These cities have things in common — few opportunities, devastation from natural disasters, high crime and addiction rates, and often many abandoned houses.
Not the worst, just the most miserable.
We've identified the 50 most miserable cities in the US, using census data from 1,000 cities across the country, taking into consideration population change (because if people are leaving it's usually for a good reason), the percentage of people working, median household incomes, the percentage of people without healthcare, median commute times, and the number of people living in poverty.
Often, these cities have been devastated by natural disasters. They've had to deal with blight, and with high crime rates. Economies have struggled after industry has collapsed. These cities also tend to have high rates of addiction.
The state with the most miserable cities was California, with 10 in the top 50. New Jersey was second with nine, and Florida had six.

Here are the 50 most miserable cities in the US, based on US census data.

50. Lancaster, California


Wikimedia
Lancaster, a desert town, has almost 160,000 people, 51% of whom work, and 23% of whom live in poverty. It's had crime problems, both with meth addiction and neo-Nazis. But Mayor R. Rex Parris is doing what he can to kickstart the city, including looking to China for investment.

49. St Louis, Missouri


Colter Peterson / St Louis Post-Dispatch / TNS / Getty
St. Louis has almost 303,000 people, but it lost 5% between 2010 and 2018. Sixty-five percent of people work and one quarter are living in poverty.
The city has had struggled with crime and gun violence. In 2015, killings rose 33% from the year before to 159 deaths. The city has relatively relaxed gun laws, including allowing people to carry loaded guns in cars without permits. Then-Mayor Francis Slay said crime was the No. 1 priority for the city.

48. Pasadena, Texas


Chris Graythen / Getty
Pasadena has 153,000 people, 65% of whom are working, and one-fifth live in poverty. While the median income is $50,207, nearly 29% of people don't have health insurance.
Mostly working-class, the city is based near petrochemical plants, and is known for its race issues. It used to be home to the Texas headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan. Now, it's divided. In the north it's primarily made up of Latino people and to the south it's mostly white people.

47. Macon-Bibb County, Georgia


Grant Blankenship / Macon Telegraph / MCT / Getty
Macon-Bibb County has 153,000 people, but it lost 1.7% of its population between 2010 and 2018. Fifty-six percent are working, and 26% live in poverty.
One of Macon-Bibb County's biggest problems is blight. Across the city there are about 3,700 unoccupied buildings, including dilapidated homes and overgrown yards.

46. Danville, Virginia


Michael Williamson / The Washington Post / Getty
Danville has 40,000 people, but its population fell by 5.5% between 2010 and 2018. Fifty-five percent of people are working and 21% live in poverty.
It used to be one of the richest cities in the Piedmont area. But it's struggled since its tobacco and textile mills shut down. However, the city is fighting for a comeback. It's set up solar farms, and its downtown is in the midst of a rehabilitation to turn abandoned warehouses into mixed-use developments.

45. Shreveport, Louisiana


Deputy Josh Cagle / Bossier Sheriff's Office / Handout / Reuters
Shreveport has about 189,000 people, and lost nearly 6% of its population between 2010 and 2018. Fifty-eight percent of people work, and 26% are living in poverty.
In 2015, it struggled with floods from the Red River. Its murder rate also doubled from 2015 to 2016, up to 42 murders, and the city also had an increase in other crimes, like rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

44. Hemet, California


Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times / Getty
Hemet has a population of 85,000 people and between 2010 and 2018, it grew by 8.5%. However, it's struggled since the 2008 recession. Twenty-three percent of people live in poverty, and crime rates are high. In 2016, 623 cars were stolen, 170 robberies were reported, and police logged 398 aggravated assaults — the most this century.

43. Mansfield, Ohio


Eric Thayer / Reuters
Mansfield has 46,000 residents, but lost 2.7% between 2010 and 2018. Forty-eight percent of people are working, and 24% are living in poverty.
It used to have lots of industrial work, with people making things like steel, machinery, and stoves, but that dried up in the 1970s and 1980s. More recently, in 2010, a GM factory closed its doors, leading to more job losses. It's also had a surge in crime, and between 2012 and 2017, violent crimes rose by 37%.

42. San Bernardino, California


AP Photo/Reed Saxon
Of San Bernardino's 216,000 residents, 57% are employed, and 30% live in poverty.
It's 60 miles east of Los Angeles, and has an interesting history. It's where McDonalds began, as well as the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. Along with a tough recession, it had a steel plant and an Air Force base close down, meaning even fewer jobs.

41. Compton, California


Mario Anzuoni / Reuters
Compton has 96,000 people, 40% of whom aren't working, and 23% live in poverty.
The city struggles with poverty and unemployment. But it's no longer as dangerous as the way it was portrayed in the film "Straight Outta Compton." In 1991 there were 87 murders, and in 2014, it was down to 17.

40. Montebello, California


Frederick J. Brown / AFP / Getty
Of Montebello's 62,632 people, 60% are working, and 14% live in poverty. The average commute time is 33 minutes, and 19% of people don't have health insurance.
A big issue is affordable housing. A home-ownership counselor told the New York Times in 2019 that prospects for first-time buyers weren't good, and that opportunities to live there weren't growing.

39. Harlingen, Texas


Wikimedia
Harlingen has 65,000 residents; 56% are working, and 30% live in poverty.
It's a hot city, with little rainfall, although recently, it's been dealing with flooding. It's also one of three cities where 2,000 immigrants were released in 2019, putting pressure on the city to help them.

38. Reading, Pennsylvania


Michael Williamson / The Washington Post / Getty
Reading has 88,495 residents, where almost 62% of people are working, and 36% live in poverty. In 2011, The New York Times said it was the poorest city in the US.
Its economy struggled after factories closed down or downsized, laying people off. An estimated 44% of households are on food stamps, among the most in the country.

37. Hallandale Beach, Florida


Wikimedia
Hallandale Beach has about 40,000 people, 60% of whom are working; 20% live in poverty. More than 29% of people are without health insurance.
Halfway between Miami beach and Fort Lauderdale, it's been called a "once scruffy beach town," by the Wall Street Journal. It also has plenty of strip clubs and has been nicknamed "Hound-ale Beach."

36. Palmdale, California


Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times / Getty
Palmdale has 156,667 people — 59% are in the workforce, and 19% live in poverty.
It also has a median commute time of 42.7 minutes, which is the highest on the list. It was at one point called "the foreclosure capital of California."

35. Anderson, Indiana


Wikimedia
Anderson has 55,000 residents, but lost 2% between 2010 and 2018. Fifty-six percent of people are employed, and one-quarter live in poverty.
Formerly a thriving GM city with 24 factories, things deteriorated when the carmaker closed factories and 23,000 people lost their jobs. It's also been a city that has been dealing with blight. In 2015, the city was given $2.8 million to tear down 100 abandoned homes, and there were hundreds more that could have qualified.

34. Fort Pierce, Florida


Michael S. Williamson / The Washington Post / Getty
Fort Pierce has 46,000 people, and grew by almost 10% between 2010 and 2018. Just over half of people there are employed, and almost 36% of people in poverty.
This city used to have an economy based around citrus farming, but struggled with diseases and the effects of trade deals. It also has to replenish the sand on its beaches every few years, because of ocean erosion.

33. North Miami Beach, Florida


Wikimedia
North Miami Beach has almost 46,000 people; 65% are working, and just under 20% are living in poverty. But 32% of residents don't have healthcare, and the average commute time is 31 minutes.
Another issue for living in this area could be the tumultuous politics — two recent mayors have faced criminal charges for their spending.

32. Jackson, Mississippi


Jonathon Bachman / Reuters
Jackson has almost 165,000 residents, but between 2010 and 2018 it lost more than 5% of its population. Sixty-two percent of the population is working, and almost 29% live in poverty.
In February, the city threatened to cut off water for 20,000 people, because $45 million worth of bills hadn't been paid. Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, elected in 2017, said his goal was to make the city the "most radical" on Earth, by taking on issues like poverty in new ways.

31. Saginaw, Michigan


Wikimedia
Saginaw has 48,000 people, and between 2010 and 2018 it lost 6% of its population. Fifty-five percent of people are working and nearly 34% are living in poverty.
Like many other cities on this list, it used to have a lot of manufacturing jobs — at one point around 25,000 with General Motors. But they didn't last.
Some locals reportedly refer to the city as "sag-nasty" because of its issues with crime. In May 2019, violent crime had fallen in the city, with 16 shootings to date, compared to 30 at that point in 2018.

30. Plainfield, New Jersey


Wikimedia
Plainfield has 50,693 people, 70% of whom are working, and one-fifth of whom live in poverty. Nearly one-third are without health insurance, and the median commute time is 31 minutes.
It used to be a violent city — in 1990 there were 719 violent crimes, but since then things have improved, although in 2016 there were 12 murders.

29. West New York, New Jersey


Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
West New York has nearly 53,000 people, and it grew by 6.6% between 2010 and 2018. Almost 70% are working, and 22% are living in poverty.
Cleanliness and parking are meant to be two of the biggest issues for its new mayor. The median commute time is 37 minutes.

28. Miami Gardens, Florida


Joe Skipper / Reuters
Miami Gardens has 113,000 people — 60% are working, while about 22% live in poverty.
In 2014, it was called the "stop and frisk capital of America," after an investigation showed nearly 57,000 people had been frisked since 2008.
Another issue in the area is the cost of water. Because it comes from a plant owned by the City of North Miami Beach, the cost of living is a little bit higher. In March, the city was suing to fight the extra 25% surcharge.

27. Cleveland, Ohio


Benjamin Lowy / Getty
Cleveland, sometimes called the "mistake by the lake", has 384,000 people. Its population fell 3% between 2010 and 2018. Nearly 59% of the population is working, and 35% live in poverty. An August 2019 report found that half of those living in poverty are working.
The city has struggled for years since losing the bulk of its manufacturing industry. In 2010, Forbes said it was the most miserable city in the US. It also had a bad year for gun violence in 2015, with 85 gun homicides.

26. Youngstown, Ohio


Brian Snyder / Reuters
Youngstown has about 65,000 people, and lost 3% of its population between 2010 and 2018. Just over half of its population is working and nearly 37% of people live in poverty.
It used to have a population of 170,000, and was the third biggest steel producer in the United States, until the factory began downsizing from 1977 onward. It was also recorded as having some of the worst air pollution in Ohio in 2017.

25. North Miami, Florida


Carlo Allegri / Reuters
North Miami has about 63,000 people, 65% of whom are working, while 23% in poverty.
One of the big issues it faces is flooding, even when it doesn't rain. Sometimes, all that's necessary for flooding is a full moon. It is also facing problems around septic tanks (the city has 2,780) that soon might not be able to operate properly, because of rising sea levels. This could result in wastewater ending up in yards and other places it's not meant to be.

24. Huntington, West Virginia


Lexi Browning / Reuters
Huntington has 46,000 people, and it lost 6.4% of its population between 2010 and 2018. Just over half are working, and about a third live in poverty.
Formerly a thriving coal mining town with 90,000 people in 1950, it has since fallen on harder times. In 2008, the city was described as the unhealthiest in America. The severe opioid crisis has led Huntington to be named America's overdose capital. But overdoses have fallen since 2017.

23. Hammond, Indiana


Scott Olson / Getty
Hammond has about 76,000 people, and  its population fell by 6.2% between 2010 and 2018, Sixty-one percent of people are in the labor force, and 22% live in poverty.
A 2014 study found the city was one of the most industrial in the state, and as a result had problems with air and water pollutionLead contamination has been a particular concern for residents.

22. El Monte, California


Wikimedia
El Monte has 115,000 residents; 58% of its population is working, and 22% live in poverty. The average commute time is a half hour.
The city, which is located near two freeways and close to Los Angeles, had a lot of revenue coming in from car dealerships, but struggled during the recession, when three dealerships closed, and the city's tax revenue fell. It's continued to have issues with finances, and the city is now divided over the future of marijuana production — one large facility in particular.

21. Lynwood, California


Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times / Getty
Lynwood has 70,500 residents — 60% work and 23% are impoverished. It was once called "the best place to live best." But things didn't stay that way.
The construction of Interstate 105, which cut right through the city, caused many to leave their homes, and 1,000 homes and businesses to be knocked down. More recently, officials have struggled to manage the city's finances, resulting in losses that could have been used to help the city.

20. Huntsville, Texas


Richard Carson / Reuters
Huntsville has 41,500 residents; 39% of its people are working, and almost 35% live in poverty. However, the low employment is in part because those living in prisons are counted in the city's population.
The Department of Criminal Justice is the city's biggest employer, providing nearly 7,000 jobs. Since 1999, Texas' executions have been done exclusively out of Huntsville.

19. Paterson, New Jersey


Eric Thayer / Reuters
Paterson has 145,000 residents, 57.5% of its population is working, and 29% live in poverty.
It used to produce silk in the 19th century, but it's since struggled. In a cruel twist of fate, the Great Falls, which was used to power factories, ended up flooding the city after Hurricane Irene in 2011.
Between 2009 and 2016, the city's tax revenue fell by 38%. It's also had problems with blight — at one point it had 1,250 abandoned homes, but that dropped to 770 in 2016.

18. Albany, Georgia


Tami Chappell / Reuters
Nicknamed "the good life city," Albany has 75,000 people, although its population fell by almost 3% between 2010 and 2018. Nearly 58% of the population is working, and a third live in poverty.
Along with poverty and crime, it also has been dealing with severe damage and ruined crops from a severe tornado and Hurricane Irma in the last few years.

17. Trenton, New Jersey


Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
Trenton has a population of 84,000. Almost 60% of people are working, and 27% are living in poverty.
It used to be an industrial city with a catchphrase, "Trenton makes, the world takes," but has since fallen on harder times. Its violent crime isn't increasing, but neighborhood gangs have been known to fight each other, and gun violence is a problem.

16. Cicero, Illinois


Scott Olson / Getty
Cicero has 81,500 residents, but that fell by 3% between 2010 and 2018. Two-thirds of people are working and just under 20% live in poverty. The median commute time is 31 minutes.
It's known for being Al Capone's "private playground" back in the 1920s, and since then, the city has fought the nickname and crime. In 1999, the city even voted to make gang members leave within 60 days, or face a daily $500 fine.

15. Union City, New Jersey


Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
Union City has 68,500 residents, almost 70% are working, while 23% live in poverty. The average commute time is 33 minutes long.
The city is known by some as "Havana on the Hudson," due to 80% of its residents identifying as Hispanic, many of whom fled from Cuba. It's only 1.28 square miles, making it one of the most densely populated areas in the US.

14. Bell Gardens, California


Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times / Getty
Bell Gardens has 42,300 residents; 63% of people working, and almost 30% are living in poverty.
According to a city official in 1991, the problem with the city was too many people. The city has had to depend on a casino for much of its tax revenue — in 2002, it provided more than half.

13. Hialeah, Florida


C. M. Guerrero / Miami Herald / TNS / Getty
Hialeah has 239,000 residents — 56% of whom are working, while almost 26% live in poverty. Nearly 31% don't have health insurance.
With a primarily Hispanic population, it's one of the least diverse cities in the country. It's also been rated as the worst city in the US for having an active lifestyle.

12. Brownsville, Texas


Sergio Flores / AFP / Getty
Brownsville has 183,000 residents, 56% of people are working, and more than 31% of people are living in poverty. More than 35% don't have health insurance.
The city is on the Mexican border, and often has unauthorized immigrants passing through, making it one of the most patrolled places in the country. According to locals, three different types of helicopter fly overhead. Concern around immigration has also made it difficult for some residents to sell their properties.

11. New Brunswick, New Jersey


Wikimedia
New Brunswick has 56,000 residents, 54% of people are working, and 35% are living in poverty. It has had problems with crime – In 2017, the city's assaults with guns rose 64%.

10. Huntington Park, California


Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times / Getty
Huntington Park, the 10th most miserable city in the US, has 58,000 residents, 63% of people are working, and 28% of people live in poverty. The median commute time is 31 minutes.
It has a checkered history with waste management. A former waste disposal facility situated in the community is being cleaned up, but work was suspended after residents complained about dust and the smell.

9. Warren, Ohio


Alan Freed / Reuters
Warren has 38,000 residents, and its population fell by 7.7% between 2010 and 2018. About half of people are working, and two-thirds live in poverty.
It's had a slow economy for a while, but things weren't helped when General Motors announced in 2018 it would stop work in a plant nearby, meaning people had to leave the city to find work. Along with Youngstown, Warren has the second highest rate of people struggling to find enough food in the country.

8. Camden, New Jersey


Spencer Platt / Getty
Camden has 74,000 residents, and its population fell by 4% between 2010 and 2018. Nearly 57% of people are in the work force, and 37% live in poverty. The average household income is $26,105 — the lowest on this list.
It used to be a manufacturing city, but that fell to pieces between the 1950s and 1970s. It's had a high crime rate and been known as one of the most dangerous cities in the country, but it is improving. In 2017, there were 22 murders, which was the lowest number since 1987, thanks in part to new police procedures.

7. Flint, Michigan


Rebecca Cook / Reuters
Flint has 96,000 residents, and it's fallen by 6% between 2010 and 2018. Just over half of people are working, and 41% of people are living in poverty — the highest on this list.
The city has struggled with a decline in manufacturing. By 1990, General Motors had downsized in the area, leaving many without jobs.
Flint is perhaps best-known for the water crisis it's been facing since 2014, where residents were being poisoned with lead. On top of that, it's got 20,000 abandoned properties to deal with, a consistently high murder rate, and an opioid problem.

6. Pine Bluff, Arkansas


Wikimedia.
Pine Bluff has 42,000 residents, and between 2010 and 2018, it lost nearly 14% of its population — the biggest loss on this list. Fifty-two percent of people are working, and 30% are living in poverty.
People have been leaving due to the state losing almost 3,000 manufacturing jobs between 2016 and 2017. In 2019, things deteriorated further when the Arkansas River flooded the city.

5. Newark, New Jersey


Kathy Willens/AP Photo
Newark has 282,000 residents, 62% are working, and 28% are living in poverty. The median commute time is over 35 minutes long.
Like Flint, it's had problems with lead poisoning its water supply. The city has also struggled with race relations, which bubbled up in violent riots in 1967, and has it's fair share of violent crimes, particularly in 2013.

4. Passaic, New Jersey


Mark Makela / Getty
Passaic has 70,000 residents — 58% of people working, and a third are living in poverty.

3. Detroit, Michigan

Joshua Lott / Reuters
Detroit has 672,000 people, and between 2010 and 2018, it lost nearly 6%. While 54% of people are working, 38% live in poverty. The median household income is $27,838.
The city already lost many of its residents between 1950 and 1980, when 600,000 people left after the manufacturing industry collapsed. With 43,000 abandoned homes, it's been struggling with blight, and is considered one of the most dangerous cities in the United States.

2. Port Arthur, Texas

Michael S. Williamson / The Washington Post / Getty
Port Arthur, a city surrounded by oil refineries, has 55,000 residents. Fifty-three percent are working and 30% are living in poverty.
The city was hit by hurricanes in 2005, 2008, and 2017. Harvey, the latest, caused $1.3 billion in damage. Officials fear that if people keep leaving, Port Arthur will fall below 50,000 people and make it ineligible for federal grants.

1. Gary, Indiana

Eric Thayer / Reuters
Gary has 75,000 residents, but lost 6% between 2010 and 2018. Just over half of the population works, and 36% live in poverty. The most miserable city in the US was once a manufacturing mecca, but those days are over.
A drug enforcement agent who grew up in the area told The Guardian in 2017: "We used to be the murder capital of the US, but there is hardly anybody left to kill. We used to be the drug capital of the US, but for that you need money, and there aren't jobs or things to steal here."
When the jobs dried up, most white people left, and now 84% of people living in Gary are African American. The city is experimenting with number of plans to try and revitalize the area, including selling abandoned homes for $1.

Leaving California to the Homeless

Donald Trump visited enemy territory this week.
He came out here to the deep blue state of California to raise a few million bucks at private fundraisers in Silicon Valley and Beverly Hills.
He also went down to the border with Mexico to inspect the wall the federal government is building to stop illegal immigration and protect what no longer deserves to be called the Golden State.
What the president couldn't see while he was out here were all the wealthy and productive Californians who are leaving this state in droves.
They are the people who are tired of being tortured by high state taxes and bad laws like the ones that prevent low-income housing from being built, or that make their electricity and gasoline so expensive.
They are the people who've watched the sidewalks of their great cities being turned into permanent tent communities for the poor, the homeless, the drugged and the mentally disturbed.
They are the tax base that has been footing the bill for the social welfare benefits and government services that are bestowed so generously on state citizens and illegal immigrants.
They have seen the grim future of their formerly great state and said to themselves, "We're outta' here."
But millions of Californians like me can't leave. We have kids and grandkids here.
We love the state and its people. We love the weather, the beaches, the deserts and the mountains.
What we don't love is what the Democrat Party and its policies have been doing for decades to harm California and its big cities.
The Democrats running this state almost act like they hate it. All they seem to want is more illegal immigrants, more crippling environmental laws and higher prices for everything.
The shocking TV images of huge homeless communities living in tents in Los Angeles and San Francisco are the most glaring sign of the Democrats' failure.
Even Democrats like Gov. Gavin Newsom agree that it has been state policies like strict building laws and environmental regulations that have created tens of thousands of homeless people.
Only let's please not call them "homeless people." It's a misnomer.
Most of the thousands of people you see on TV living in tents and sleeping bags are homeless by choice.
They're mostly drug addicts. Or mentally ill. Or bums or vagrants who've chosen to live on the street amid their own garbage, used drug needles and human waste.
They're also mostly males.
There are lots of genuinely homeless people in California who need assistance from government or private social agencies.
But they're usually women and children and they're usually living in shelters where they can get the help they need.
Shelters have rules you have to follow and homeless mothers and their kids will abide by them. Men won't.
We keep hearing that we need to build more low-income housing units for the homeless.
But the truth is, most of the men on the sidewalks of downtown L.A. wouldn't stay in a shelter if it was located in the penthouse of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel.
Half of the country's unsheltered homeless people live in California. LA Mayor Eric Garcetti wants President Trump to solve the state's homeless crisis.
But it's the responsibility of the Democrat-controlled state government, the Democrat governor and the Democrat mayors - the ones who created the crisis in the first place.
For California natives like me, it's a crying shame.
The most beautiful state in the U.S. has been wrecked by Democrats and it's only going to get worse as more illegal immigrants arrive from Mexico and Central America.
I'm afraid it's only a matter of time before the state runs out of money and the productive people who provide it. -

Self-Destruction in the Golden State

 

Written by  John F. McManus

Relocating to California was once the goal of many Americans. But in recent years, the luster of living in the “Golden State” has dimmed considerably. Those who still desire to move to what was once widely viewed as a semi-paradise on the West Coast might want to assess what they’ll find before pulling up stakes and heading there.
The Los Angeles Times has surveyed and published some unnerving California developments. In the area served by this newspaper, Times investigators discovered what certainly should be termed failing grades if the region were an educational institution. It’s not, of course, but over recent months, the hard truths they found include:
• 95 percent of warrants for murder in Los Angeles and 75 percent of those on the “most wanted” list contain the names of illegal immigrants.
• Over two/thirds of the births in L.A. County are from illegal immigrant parentage and are paid for by taxpayers.
• Nearly 35 percent of inmates in the state’s detention centers are illegal immigrants.
• According to the FBI, half of the gang members in Los Angeles are illegal immigrants from south of the state’s border.
• In Los Angeles County, 5.1 million people speak only English and 3.1 million speak only Spanish.
This information came from the mass-circulation newspaper known for its liberal stance on almost all issues. Featuring information about the effects of illegal immigration isn’t its usual practice. The numbers we have cited didn’t appear in a single article. The bad news compiled in this column was spread out over time. The bad news has led many Californians to relocate themselves and their businesses to other parts of the Golden State, even to other states.
Rather than simply accept the conclusions reached above, I decided to ask a close friend who lives in Los Angeles County if all of it was verifiable. He responded: “Yes it is. But there are bigger problems that weren’t mentioned.” For instance, he pointed to the growing number of vagrants living — and defecating — in the streets. He said the water at the beaches is becoming hazardous to health and dangerous for swimming. He told of business owners who have to get their sidewalks cleaned each morning. And he reported that rats and disease-carrying insects have proliferated. Los Angeles, he assured me, is filled with tents and absolute filth.
He then added the following:
Illegals are registered to vote. Many are without a driver’s license and they get around in dilapidated autos without insurance. A large number of these individuals find jobs and demand to be paid only in cash. That way, there are no taxes paid or reported. While many illegals are hard-working and otherwise model citizens, they are encouraged to skirt the laws that everyone is supposed to obey. Even they would confirm what the LA Times reported.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has responded to the situation by calling for the imposition of a new “windfall tax” on retirement incomes and stock market gains. She wants to distribute the funds to unemployed illegal immigrants. Wasn’t it Karl Marx who suggested this as the way to solve such problems (“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”)?
Pelosi regularly scoffs at President Trump’s plan to build a wall at the border. She never airs the most important reason for her opposition to keeping illegals from simply walking into the United States. But her reason for such a stance is obvious: She expects that the illegals who have already arrived and those who continue to cross into the United States will vote for Democrats. And she’ll do whatever she can to care for them, protect them, and urge their relatives to cross the border as well. Illegal immigrants, like many legal immigrants and native-born Americans, are overwhelmingly ignorant of limitations on government that made America great. As soon as they are given the privilege of voting, they will speed the conversion of California and the entire United States into a duplicate of Venezuela or Cuba where central governments have total power.
Sad to state, California isn’t alone in suffering from these problems. Pelosi’s home city of San Francisco is close behind Los Angeles in its degradation. Other cities are close behind. The entire nation seems determined to commit suicide. Illegal immigration must be eliminated.

John F. McManus is president emeritus of The John Birch Society.

“MORE THAN 10 MILLION” ILLEGALS IN CALIFORNIA ALONE

 

Xavier Becerra breaks the news, files suit against Trump administration public-charge rule.

August 19, 2019

More than 22 million people are illegally present in the United States, according to a recent study by scholars at MIT and Yale. Pew Research pegged the figure at 11 million, and for years it stood as the official count for media and government. It now emerges that 11 million is more like the number illegally present in California alone.
“California is home to over 10 million immigrants,” reads a chart displayed by California attorney general Xavier Becerra and governor Gavin Newsom as they announced a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s public-charge rule. “Immigrants,” is California code for “illegals,” a term the state’s ruling class has banned. As Rachel Bovard notes at American Greatness, even a legal immigrant’s ability “to stay off the welfare system must be taken into account when considering qualifications for a green card.”  
California heaps welfare benefits on those illegally present, including nearly $100 million for health care in the recent budget. Many of those 10 million illegals came to California specifically to get those taxpayer-funded benefits. It disturbs Becerra and Newsom that this disqualifies the recipients from any future legal status, but there’s more to it. As attorney Madison Gesiotto explains in The Hill, voting must also be taken into account. 
“Voting as an illegal alien in federal elections is a crime punishable by fine, imprisonment, deportation, or inadmissibility.” According to a State Department investigation, false-documented illegals have been voting in federal, state and local elections for decades. In 1996, illegals cast 784 votes against Republican Robert Dornan in a congressional race Democrat Loretta Sanchez won by only 984 votes.
If Newsom and Becerra are certain that more than 10 million people illegally reside in the state, they doubtless know how many voted in 2016. Trouble is, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla refused to release any voter information to a federal voter-fraud probe.
Back in 2015, Padilla told the Los Angeles Times, “At the latest, for the 2018 election cycle, I expect millions of new voters on the rolls in the state of California,” with “new voters” code for ineligible voters. True to form, by March, 2018, more than one million “undocumented” immigrants received driver’s licenses from the state Department of Motor Vehicles, which automatically registered them to vote under the “Motor Voter” program.
Padilla is now claiming that only six “California residents” were erroneously added to voter rolls for 2018, that it was all due to DMV errors, and that none was guilty of “fraudulently voting or attempting to vote.” To paraphrase John Goodman in The Big Lebowski, this is what happens when the governor’s own department of finance, not the official state auditor, investigates the DMV.
In reality, California officials know full well how many non-citizens voted in 2016 and 2018. With more than 10 million illegals in the state, the ballpark figure of one million illegal voters is probably low. In California, illegals are the Democrats’ electoral college, and the Democrats reward them with welfare benefits and protection from deportation through sanctuary laws. This raises another issue.
Illegals’ use of welfare benefits and practice of voting in federal elections disqualifies them from legal residency and citizenship. This makes for a permanent group of more than 10 million foreign nationals in California alone. In these conditions, Congress should start pushing back.
Public officials who apportion taxpayer-funded benefits for foreign nationals should be required to register as agents of the governments of those foreign nationals. The primary candidates would be the governments of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, which Gavin Newsom visited before he had even toured his own state.
State and federal governments should also bill the foreign governments for welfare, medical, education and incarceration costs. Some of this could be alleviated by a tax on remissions, such as the 33.4 billion Mexicans abroad sent back last year. That amount is impossible without massive inputs from U.S. taxpayers. Legitimate citizens and legal immigrants have no obligation to relieve foreign governments of responsibility for their own citizens.
Meanwhile, as Rachel Bovard also notes, the Trump administration’s new rule only updates a 1996 law proclaiming “inadmissible” those aliens likely to become a public charge. The law was supported by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden and other leading Democrats.  The Trump administration measure gives more definition to what constitutes a welfare benefit, food stamps, Medicaid, public housing assistance and such. Those benefits are all for legitimate citizens and legal immigrants but Bovard cites Census data showing that 63 percent of non-citizens use the welfare system.
Those who thought there were only 11 million illegals nationwide were mistaken. Thanks to Jerry Brown crony Gavin Newsom, and Xavier Becerra, once on Hillary Clinton’s short list as a running mate, Americans now understand that “more than 10 million” illegally reside in California alone, and that might understate the figure.
The MIT-Yale estimate ranges as high as 29.1 million nationwide, more than the population of Australia, with 25,088,636 and a veritable occupation. To all but the willfully blind, politicians have abandoned the rule of law, and made false-documented illegals a protected, privileged class.
This is how a nation loses its sovereignty. 

Census Bureau: 

 

Immigration Driving Half of 

 

U.S. Population Growth


JOHN BINDER

  

2:43

Immigration to the United States is now driving nearly half of all population growth in the country instead of increased birth rates, the U.S. Census Bureau finds.

The latest Census Bureau estimates on the U.S. population reveal that about 48.5 percent of all population growth is driven by the country’s mass illegal and legal immigration policy, where more than 1.5 million foreign nationals are admitted to the country every year.
(Axios)

Axios analysis by Stef Knight details the growing share to which immigration is increasingly driving population growth across the U.S. Since 2011, for example, the level to which immigration has accounted for overall population growth has increased more than 13 percent.

According to the Wall Street Journal analysis, about nine percent of U.S. counties are growing solely because of immigration. This concludes that about nine percent of counties have regional birth rates that do not exceed the annual number of deaths in the area.
Similarly, the Wall Street Journal notes, more than half of all population growth in states like Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Kansas, and Michigan, among others, is because of immigration.

Though pundits have claimed that the country’s admittance of 1.2 million legal immigrants a year is necessary to increase birth rates, researchers have found that the growth of the immigrant population has little impact on birth rates.

Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarota discovered in his latest study this year that “immigrant fertility has only a small impact on the nation’s overall birth rate,” citing that immigrants in the U.S. raise the nation’s birth rate for all women by two births per 1,000 women.

“Immigration has a minor impact because the difference between immigrant and native fertility is too small to significantly change the nation’s overall birth rate,” Camarota noted in the study.
At current legal immigration levels, the U.S. 

population is 
set to hit an unprecedented 404 

million residents by 2060 — including a foreign-

born population of 69 million.

The U.S. does not have to rapidly increase its total

resident population and foreign-born population, 

as legal immigration moratoriums have 

been 
implemented in the past to give time for new

arrivals to properly assimilate to American life. 

Halting all immigration to the country would 

stabilize the population to a comfortable 329 

million residents in the next four decades.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder


OF COURSE, THEY REALLY HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY HAVE JUMPED OUR BORDERS!

“Between 2005 and 2017, chain migration, alone, brought nearly 10 million foreign nationals to the U.S.”


DOJ: Federal Arrests of Foreigners More than Tripled in Last 20 Years

DOJ: Federal Arrests of Foreigners More Than Tripled in Last 20 Years



As Breitbart News reported, though non-U.S. citizens represent just seven percent of the total U.S. population, they accounted for 15 percent of all federal arrests and 15 percent of all prosecutions for non-immigration related crimes in 2018. This indicates that non-U.S. citizens were about 2.3 times as likely to be arrested or prosecuted for non-immigration related crimes.
For non-immigration offenses, the total of federal arrests for non-U.S. citizens between 1998 and 2018 increased nearly eight percent, and between 2017 and 2018 rose almost ten percent.
Non-U.S. citizens were most likely to be prosecuted for illegal re-entry, that is illegal aliens who have been previously deported, drugs, fraud, alien smuggling, and misuse of visas.
A 2018 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report discovered nearly all illegal and legal immigrants in U.S. federal prisons are from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and Guatemala.
Between 2010 and 2015, the average annual cost to incarcerate criminal illegal and legal immigrants slightly decreased — as the criminal alien population slightly decreased as well — from $1.56 billion to about $1.42 billion. That cost is paid for by American taxpayers who are forced to offset the costs of mass immigration to the country.
Every year, the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million foreign nationals, with the overwhelming majority arriving through the process known as “chain migration,” whereby newly naturalized are able to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country. Between 2005 and 2017, chain migration, alone, brought nearly 10 million foreign nationals to the U.S.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. 



Ben Carson Warns of Potential ‘Epidemic’ Among Homeless in California Cities

Joel Pollak / Breitbart News
 18 Sep 2019173
2:50

LOS ANGELES, California — Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson warned that conditions among homeless people in many California cities were so bad they could “foster an epidemic, if we’re not careful.”

Carson spoke to reporters after touring the Union Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter and non-profit organization on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, at the core of the city’s homeless population of almost 60,000 individuals.
The streets surrounding the mission are lined with tents and trash. Homeless families sat on the sidewalks, some in chairs, as cars struggled to navigate the chaos: a homeless pair of lovers quarreled in the middle of an intersection.
Union Rescue Mission, Skid Row, Los Angeles (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
Homeless couple, L.A. Skid Row (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
Last year, Los Angeles suffered a typhus outbreak that spread from the homeless population to City Hall. Some, including Dr. Drew Pinsky, are now warning that L.A. could see an outbreak of bubonic plague, which is endemic.
The secretary focused his remarks on partnerships between the federal, state, and local governments, as well as the private sector, in urging Americans to cooperate to find housing solutions for those who had fallen on hard times.
But Carson also address the ongoing homeless crisis in California — a crisis that has led President Donald Trump, who is visiting the state, to suggest emergency federal intervention, overriding state and local government authority.
The president could invoke the National Emergencies Act of 1976 and the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988 to intervene. Federal officials reportedly visited the state last week to look at facilities that could be used to house homeless people after they had been relocated from the center of the city.
“My preference, obviously, is to work with the state,” Carson said. “But what we’re concerned about are the conditions. And these are conditions that … can foster an epidemic, if we’re not careful. And then, after that occurs, what will everybody be saying? How come you guys didn’t do anything? You knew all this was going on?”
Carson also addressed questions about the eviction of illegal aliens from public housing, telling reporters that the law not only barred illegal aliens from living in public housing, but those giving shelter to illegal aliens. The only solution, he said, was an act of Congress, which could change the law with “comprehensive immigration reform.”
Update: Secretary Carson also rejected requests for additional federal funds to the state, arguing that state and local authorities had to revise zoning regulations that discouraged the building of additional affordable housing units.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.



Self-Destruction in the Golden State

 

Written by  John F. McManus

Relocating to California was once the goal of many Americans. But in recent years, the luster of living in the “Golden State” has dimmed considerably. Those who still desire to move to what was once widely viewed as a semi-paradise on the West Coast might want to assess what they’ll find before pulling up stakes and heading there.
The Los Angeles Times has surveyed and published some unnerving California developments. In the area served by this newspaper, Times investigators discovered what certainly should be termed failing grades if the region were an educational institution. It’s not, of course, but over recent months, the hard truths they found include:
• 95 percent of warrants for murder in Los Angeles and 75 percent of those on the “most wanted” list contain the names of illegal immigrants.
• Over two/thirds of the births in L.A. County are from illegal immigrant parentage and are paid for by taxpayers.
• Nearly 35 percent of inmates in the state’s detention centers are illegal immigrants.
• According to the FBI, half of the gang members in Los Angeles are illegal immigrants from south of the state’s border.
• In Los Angeles County, 5.1 million people speak only English and 3.1 million speak only Spanish.
This information came from the mass-circulation newspaper known for its liberal stance on almost all issues. Featuring information about the effects of illegal immigration isn’t its usual practice. The numbers we have cited didn’t appear in a single article. The bad news compiled in this column was spread out over time. The bad news has led many Californians to relocate themselves and their businesses to other parts of the Golden State, even to other states.
Rather than simply accept the conclusions reached above, I decided to ask a close friend who lives in Los Angeles County if all of it was verifiable. He responded: “Yes it is. But there are bigger problems that weren’t mentioned.” For instance, he pointed to the growing number of vagrants living — and defecating — in the streets. He said the water at the beaches is becoming hazardous to health and dangerous for swimming. He told of business owners who have to get their sidewalks cleaned each morning. And he reported that rats and disease-carrying insects have proliferated. Los Angeles, he assured me, is filled with tents and absolute filth.
He then added the following:
Illegals are registered to vote. Many are without a driver’s license and they get around in dilapidated autos without insurance. A large number of these individuals find jobs and demand to be paid only in cash. That way, there are no taxes paid or reported. While many illegals are hard-working and otherwise model citizens, they are encouraged to skirt the laws that everyone is supposed to obey. Even they would confirm what the LA Times reported.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has responded to the situation by calling for the imposition of a new “windfall tax” on retirement incomes and stock market gains. She wants to distribute the funds to unemployed illegal immigrants. Wasn’t it Karl Marx who suggested this as the way to solve such problems (“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”)?
Pelosi regularly scoffs at President Trump’s plan to build a wall at the border. She never airs the most important reason for her opposition to keeping illegals from simply walking into the United States. But her reason for such a stance is obvious: She expects that the illegals who have already arrived and those who continue to cross into the United States will vote for Democrats. And she’ll do whatever she can to care for them, protect them, and urge their relatives to cross the border as well. Illegal immigrants, like many legal immigrants and native-born Americans, are overwhelmingly ignorant of limitations on government that made America great. As soon as they are given the privilege of voting, they will speed the conversion of California and the entire United States into a duplicate of Venezuela or Cuba where central governments have total power.
Sad to state, California isn’t alone in suffering from these problems. Pelosi’s home city of San Francisco is close behind Los Angeles in its degradation. Other cities are close behind. The entire nation seems determined to commit suicide. Illegal immigration must be eliminated.

John F. McManus is president emeritus of The John Birch Society.