Sunday, June 16, 2019

BLACK TERRORISM IN AMERICA - JATAVEON DASHAWN, 19, HOME INVADED BUT RAN INTO A MACHETE

North Carolina man, 19, who 'broke into a house where he was fought off by an 11-year-old with a machete' is arrested after two days on the run

  • Jataveon Dashawn Hall, 19, was arrested around 2.30pm on Sunday
  • He was a suspect for a home break-in on Friday and evaded police for two days
  • On Friday he allegedly broke into a Mebane, North Carolina home trying to steal electronics with two accomplices
  • A brave 11-year-old in the home hit him in the head with a machete, causing Hall to bleed, drop the electronics, and flee the home  
  • He went to a hospital emergency room for treatment and after he was bandaged for his head wounds he fled still in his hospital gown to evade police 
  • Police say the hospital failed to notify them that the suspect had left the ER 
  • He's facing charges including breaking and entering, kidnapping, assault on a child younger than 12 and interfering with emergency communications
House invasion suspect Jataveon Dashawn Hall, 19, was arrested around 2.30pm on Sunday
House invasion suspect Jataveon Dashawn Hall, 19, was arrested around 2.30pm on Sunday
A North Carolina home invasion suspect is finally in custody after being on the run for two days in connection to a break-in where he was fought off by an 11-year-old boy with a machete. 
Jataveon Dashawn Hall, 19, was taken into Burlington Police custody on Sunday just before 2.30pm.
Hall allegedly broke into a home in Mebane and tried to steal electronics along with two accomplices on Friday. 
He was thwarted by 11-year-old Braydon Smith, who was home alone. Smith hit Hall in the head with a machete, causing him to bleed and flee the home. 
Later on Friday Hall arrived to the emergency department at the UNC Hospital in Hillsborough for treatment for his head wounds and was transferred to UNC-Chapel Hill hospital.  There was an arrest warrant out for him for the home invasion at the time. 
After receiving treatment, Hall fled the hospital on Friday evening. 
Surveillance footage at the hospital also shows him leaving still in his hospital gown and holding what appears to be a cup of water around 8pm. 
Hall broke into a home in Mebane and tried to steal the electronics inside along with two accomplices on Friday. He was thwarted by 11-year-old Braydon Smith (above) in the home who hit him in the head with a machete, causing Hall to bleed and flee the home
Hall broke into a home in Mebane and tried to steal the electronics inside along with two accomplices on Friday. He was thwarted by 11-year-old Braydon Smith (above) in the home who hit him in the head with a machete, causing Hall to bleed and flee the home
Hall and two accomplices targeted this home in Mebane, North Carolina
Hall and two accomplices targeted this home in Mebane, North Carolina 
UNC Health Care says Hall was not under guard while hospitalized. 
He's facing charges including breaking and entering, kidnapping, assault on a child younger than 12 and interfering with emergency communications. 
Orange County authorities said the hospital neglected to alert police that Hall was discharged, even though authorities provided area hospital with a description of the suspect and Hall was immediately connected to the case upon walking in.  
'When Hall left the hospital Friday evening against medical advice, we certainly should have been notified,' Orange County Chief Deputy Jamison Sykes said in a statement. 'But most concerning of all is that hospital police did not even know Hall had left the premises almost 10 hours prior. Indeed, Hall's absence was only discovered when we placed a phone call to them.'
'This patient was admitted to the ED, but was in the legal custody of the Orange County Sheriff's Department which did not place an officer with him,' UNC Health are said in a statement. 'In similar situations, hospital staff will often alert law enforcement personnel when a suspect patient is discharged, but they remain the legal responsibility of law enforcement.'
'It is the responsibility of law enforcement to closely monitor the status of suspects in their custody while those patients are receiving medical treatment,' the statement added. 
In Friday's break-in a woman rang the doorbell of a Mebane home around 11am, as Hall broke in through the window of the home and another man waited by a car in front of the home .
Young Braydon Smith, described by the sheriff's office as a 'star baseball player', was home alone at the time. 
Hall entered the home grabbed a pellet gun inside the home and forced the boy into a bedroom closet. 
'When he came in the room, he pointed the gun at me and he told me to sit down on the ground and get in my closet. And I did that,' Smith said to CBS17.  
Instead of staying put, the boy grabbed a machete and struck Hall in the head. 
'He found my phone on the counter and he took the phone but he dropped it, and that’s when I picked up my machete and hit him in the back of the head,' Smith said.   
On Friday Hall arrived to the emergency department at the UNC Hospital in Hillsborough for treatment for his head wounds and was transferred to UNC-Chapel Hill hospital (above). There was an arrest warrant out for him for the home invasion at the time
On Friday Hall arrived to the emergency department at the UNC Hospital in Hillsborough for treatment for his head wounds and was transferred to UNC-Chapel Hill hospital (above). There was an arrest warrant out for him for the home invasion at the time
Hall kicked the boy in the stomach and the side of the head before grabbing a PlayStation and TV. When he realized he was bleeding from the head he dropped the electronics and fled, according to WRAL
'And if I didn’t do anything about it, he could’ve taken me with him. He could have done anything,' Smith added. 
'This is a very tough kid who kept his wits about him,' the Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood said. 
'At the same time, I want to reflect that this youngster, his family and indeed this community, are very lucky this event did not have a tragic ending for the child,' he added.  
Anyone with information on this crime, or any other crime are urged to contact the OCSO at (919) 245-2900 or call 911 immediately 

GAVIN NEWSOM DECLARES THAT CALIFORNIA IS THE WORLD'S WELFARE OFFICE... Come and get it! Just fill out your voter registration card first


THE GOLDEN STATE THAT IS NOW THE DUMPSTER STATE

When California raises taxes to pay for foreigners' healthcare, it weighs down on the federal budget because state and local taxes are partly deductible from federal income taxes. The rest of the country must subsidize more than $100 billion of spending by the Utopians in Sacramento.

When the Golden State's finances deteriorate, watch for Sacramento to beg for a bailout. Even before then, the rest of America must foot the bill for California’s overstuffed classrooms, decaying infrastructure, and everything else funded federally.

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. One must hope that one day the state's voters choose different lawmakers.


Should We Invade Mexico? - Americans forget is that the U.S. is located next to a failed state that is promising to descend even further into chaos – not California, the other one. And the Mexicans, having reached the bottom of the hole they have dug for themselves, just elected a president who wants to surrender to the cartels and thinks Mexicans have  a “human right” to sneak into the United States and reconquer it. - KURT SCHLICHTER

 


GAVIN NEWSOM HEADS TO EL SALVADOR TO AID THE SALVADORIAN INVASION OF THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE OF CALIFORNIA… It’s your Democrat Politician at work… FOR ILLEGALS!
Last year in fact, that game was going full speed. El Salvador's remittances hit arecord $5.47 billion. Literally one out of six Salvadorans now lives in the U.S., and 680,000 of those make their home in benefit-rich California. Salvadoran politicians actually campaign for office in California, owing to the sizable number of Salvadoran voters, many of whom are here illegally., signaling that there's a lot of work to be had for the newest (and least likely to be legal) migrants in the states now, most of which is coming from California.

Here come Big Daddy, the California 
governor, the gringo who's already laid out a 
banquet of goodies for Salvadorans  
in California, from free health care to free 
education, to sanctuary state protections to 
enable illegals to work, coming 
there supposedly to find out how he can offer
 ... even more goodies to Salvador's 
uneducated lower middle classes. The idea of
course is to get even more of them to come 
over. Big Daddy comes down with the Santa 
sack full of goodies. MONICA SHOWALTER

3 Key Facts About California’s ‘Medicare for Illegals’ Plan


Gavin Newsom (Justin Sullivan / Getty)
Justin Sullivan / Getty
JOEL B. POLLAK
 218
2:28

The State of California is about to pass a new healthcare plan that attempts to support and expand Obamacare, partly by providing free health care to some adult illegal aliens.

The new plan is covered in a budget passed last week, as Politico reported Sunday. It has been the top priority of the new government of Governor Gavin Newson, whose first act as governor was to propose using Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, to cover “young undocumented adults.”
There are three things to know about the forthcoming plan.
1. California will become the first state to provide free health care to illegal alien adults. California already provides Medi-Cal to the children of illegal aliens up to age 19. The new plan is estimated to cover 90,000 people at a cost of $98 million annually. The new benefits create a new incentive for illegal aliens to come to the country and to California in particular, which already has nearly a quarter of the nation’s illegal alien population (but only 12% of the total population).
2. California will restore the individual mandate in Obamacare. Californians will face a penalty if they fail to purchase health insurance — the same penalty that President Donald Trump and the GOP eliminated in their tax reform of 2017. As Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association told Politico, that means legal residents will be forced to subsidize illegal aliens.
3. Even California can’t afford “Medicare for All.” The California plan is ambitious: as Fox News reported, “Families of four earning as much as $150,500 a year would get help paying monthly health insurance premiums.” But even far-left California does not go as far as providing “Medicare for All,” despite the fact that Democrats want such a plan (and even passed one in the California State Senate in 2017). The problem: even California cannot figure out how to pay for the proposal.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. 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.


Paying for illegals' 'free' health care by fining Californians who can't afford Obamacare



The leftists running California's one-party state have done it again. They've rolled out a $312 billion budget that includes $98 million for free health care for illegal immigrants under the age of 26. That's a dinner triangle to all able-bodied foreign nationals working off the books that the free ride is about to arrive.
According to the Sacramento Bee:
The expansion will take effect Jan. 1, 2020 and cost $98 million in the upcoming fiscal year. It will make California the first state to allow undocumented adults to sign up for state-funded health coverage.
The budget includes a fine on people who don’t buy health insurance known as an individual mandate. The fines were initially implemented as part of the federal Affordable Care Act law known as Obamacare, but Republicans acted in 2017 to roll them back. Newsom and legislative leaders say re-imposing the penalty at the state level will shore up the state’s health insurance marketplace and keep premiums from rising dramatically.
As if that $98 million is really going to cover it as migrants from Central America and beyond surge into the U.S. in record numbers, and five million from Latin America alone planning to enter the U.S. with or without papers.
California, remember, was quite convinced $39 billion would cover the cost of its famed bullet train up and down the state in 2008. The price tag now, with just a tiny portion of it out in the Central Valley to be built? $98 billion.
Given the incompetence of those numbers, you can bet the surplus that the money is about to be taken from is ... not going to remain a surplus.
All this, while the burned-out city of Paradise remains un-rebuilt due to all the state's environmental concerns. Priorities, see...
But it's not just that which makes the measure so objectionable. 
The free health care - and Medi-Cal is very, very, free, with no deductibles for anything - is going to be paid for out of a new program of fines for California citizens who don't qualify for free health care, yet can't afford Obamacare - quite possibly due to the high cost they are paying for keeping a roof over their heads, for one. 
The Associated Press reports that the few Republican legislators remaining have tried to make exactly that point in their objections:
Republicans on the legislative committee negotiating the budget voted against the proposal, arguing it was not fair to give health benefits to people who are in the country illegally while taxing people who are here legally for not purchasing health insurance.
A subsidy program is going into place, supposedly to "help" them, but you can bet it won't cover the average Californian who can't afford Obamacare. As for the illegals, well, when you work off the books, you can pretty well claim anything as your income, so rest assured that all those who want the free health care, no matter what they earn, are going to be able to get it.
 So what we are about to see now is the fining of Californians trapped in the high cost of living brought on by leftist policies, in order to bankroll the state's abundant illegal immigrant population, which now stands at a quarter of the nation's count.
And the little claim at the bottom of that last cited paragraph from the Sacramento Bee suggests even more trouble on the horizon for Californians who can just barely pay those gargantuan Obamacare premiums: "keep premiums from rising dramatically."
What's the takeaway on that? That bankrolling illegals is going to make premiums rise on Californians who are stuck in the individual market, but rest assured, the hikes won't be dramatic.
Sound like a recipe for flight from the state? You would be insane if you didn't think so, and the state already is bleeding people. Fifty-three percent of the state's citizens, according to one poll, want to leave, and more than one report shows that the state lost more people than it gained, even with the border surge bringing new supplicants in. Voters know their votes don't count in a state where ballot-harvesting by illegal immigrants is routinely done now, so any discontent is virtually impossible to telegraph at the ballot box, and the leftist mafia running the state insists that this is what Californians want. Color me skeptical on all fronts.
The one thing worth watching for in this is not the cost overruns, though that should be an interesting topic. It's whether Californians will finally switch their voting patterns in sufficient numbers to finally get this crew out. The odds are against them with ballot-harvesting, yet still, still, one expects something to eventually blow. Maybe this will be what does it.

 

CALIFORNIA UNDER MEXICAN OCCUPATION: Private hospitals are forced to provide more than $1.5 BILLION in “free” healthcare at emergency rooms. You wondered why you were billed $80 dollars for an aspirin you last hospital visit?

 

Taxing Americans To Give Illegal Aliens Subsidized Health Care

 By SPENCER RALEY  

California is likely bringing back a version of the “individual healthcare mandate” in order to help pay for the healthcare of low-income illegal aliens who are under 26 years old. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and state Democrats have agreed on a budget that would institute a new tax on those who do not have health insurance in order to help cover the nearly $100 million in additional costs. The budget must still be approved by the state legislature, but it is expected to pass by a wide margin.
The Golden State is home to more illegal aliens than any other state. It is estimated that 90,000 of the state’s 2.6 million illegal aliens will immediately become eligible to receive taxpayer-subsidized healthcare once the new budget takes effect. There is already discussion about expanding the provision in the future.
Illegal immigrants and their U.S.-born children already cost California taxpayers more than $23 billion every year. That amounts to approximately $1,800 per household, annually, or $150 per month. For the average Californian – or anyone for that matter – losing that much of your monthly budget to help subsidize public services for illegal aliens is already a major financial setback. These taxpayers deserve better than to have more piled on to this fiscal burden.
There is already an alarming crisis at the southern border. Last month, more than 144,000 migrants were apprehended or deemed inadmissible at the United States’ southwest border with Mexico – a nearly three-fold increase from last year. Reckless actions by California and other states offering free or subsidized benefits to illegal aliens are only going to make this crisis worse.

Spencer joined the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in 2015. He conducts research, and writes content for FAIR’s publications and website. He brings previous experience in state politics, gubernatorial and district campaigns, and D.C. political non-profits. Spencer holds a B.A. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin.

///





POLITICIANS MUST FACE CONSEQUENCES FOR CRIMES THEY ENABLE

Malfeasant politicians must find no “sanctuary.”

June 12, 2019

Michael Cutler

The phrase, Failure is Not An Option served as the title of the book written by Gene Kranz, Flight Director for NASA who helped create the U.S. manned space program and was instrumental in successfully returning the crew of Apollo 13 to the earth after their spacecraft suffered a catastrophic explosion half-way to the moon.
In most professions, especially where lives are on the line, failure to do the job is not an option.  This is particularly true where law enforcement and the military are concerned.  
Politicians, not unlike members of the military and law enforcement officers, take oaths of office where they swear (affirm) that they will enforce our laws and defend the Constitution.  While law enforcement officers and members of the armed forces may face dire consequences for violating their oaths of office, politicians generally do not.
Their oaths of office do not provide an “escape clause” whereby they may opt to ignore any of the laws that are not to their liking.
Unlike the entries on the menu of a restaurant where the patrons order the food that they find palatable or where they may substitute one item on the menu for another, their oaths of office demand that those who take that oath agree to enforce all laws and honor and defend all of the provisions of our Constitution.
Dereliction of duty is a serious offense for members of the armed forces and for law enforcement officers and one that carries significant consequences.
We will not delve in the specifics of this ongoing case, but it is important to note that the deputy sheriff in this case has been charged with multiple crimes, some of which are felonies, all emanating from his alleged failures to act to protect the children who were killed in that school.
Contrast how that deputy is being prosecuted for alleged failures to act with the politicians who, with impunity, demand that law enforcement officers not act to cooperate with immigration law enforcement personnel - even when those actions result in the death of innocent victims.
The outrageous assertions that “Sanctuary” policies protect immigrants from immigration law enforcement are blatant lies.  Law abiding aliens, immigrants and non-immigrants alike, need no protection from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents..
Aliens who violate our immigration laws, however, pose a threat to national security and public safety.  The 9/11 Commission was crystal clear that the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and other such attacks conducted by aliens in the United States were only possible because of multiple failures of the immigration system.
In fact, I would argue that violations of our borders and immigration laws must be seen as violations of our Constitution.
Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution provides:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.
Invasion is defined, in part, as an incursion by a large number of people or things into a place or sphere of activity or an unwelcome intrusion into another's domain.
My recent article, Sanctuary Policies Kill, included a link to a May 21, 2019 ICE press release, ICE seeks custody of teen murder suspects for a second timeLocal jurisdiction failed to honor previous detainers which began with this excerpt:
BALTIMORE – Following the recent arrest of two unlawfully present teens suspected in the violent murder of a young girl in Maryland, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers in Baltimore are again seeking to take custody of the illegal aliens through the ICE detainer process following the Prince George’s County Detention Center’s (PGCDC) failure to cooperate.
Josue Rafael Fuentes-Ponce and Joel Ernesto Escobar, both Salvadoran nationals, were previously arrested on May 11, 2018 when they were arrested by Prince George’s County Police Department (PGCPD) for attempted first-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, participation in gang activity, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted robbery, and other related charges. ICE officers lodged a detainer with PGCDC, however both were released on an unknown date and time without notification to ICE.
On May 16, 2019, PGCPD arrested the same individuals and charged them with first-degree murder.
That girl who was killed was stabbed and bludgeoned to death was just 14 years old, roughly the same age as some of the children who were shot to death at the Parkland school massacre.
She is no less dead than are the victims of the school shooting in Florida and her life is no less valuable.
Had the officials of Prince George’s County honored the ICE detainer, that young girl would still be alive today.
Tragically and infuriatingly, this is not an isolated case.  This refusal by “Sanctuary” jurisdictions to cooperate with ICE occurs across the United States with sickening regularity and all too frequently with innocent people being killed.
Malfeasance has been defined as the performance by a public official of an act that is legally unjustified, harmful, or contrary to law.
It would certainly appear that the promulgation of “Sanctuary” policies constitutes malfeasance.
Furthermore, when the political leaders of a jurisdiction order law enforcement officers who are under their command to ignore immigration laws, they are inducing/coercing malfeasance by those sworn law enforcement officers.
Our nation’s borders and our nation’s immigration laws make no distinction about race, religion or ethnicity.  They were enacted to prevent the entry and continued presence of aliens who pose a threat to public safety, national security and the lives and livelihoods of Americans.
A review of one of the sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S. Code § 1182 that enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded from entering the United States dispels any doubts about the nature of our immigration laws.
Additionally, multiple failures of the House and Senate to fund a border wall, provide funding for enhancing the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of, and provide legal remedies to failure of the immigration laws particularly where political asylum and the Flores Decision are concerned, further exacerbates the immigration crisis.
Adding fuel to the blazing fire that is the obvious crisis along the border, the Democrat-controlled Congress just passed a new version of the DREAM Act, as reported by CBS News on June 5, 2019, House passes latest DREAM Act, hoping to place millions of immigrants on path to citizenship.


Rather than deter illegal immigration, these legislative actions incentivize illegal immigration.
A section of the INA, 8 U.S. Code § 1324, establishes crimes that relate to the smuggling of aliens into the United States as well as the harboring, shielding such aliens from detection.  
That section of law also deems it to be a crime to encourage or induce aliens to enter the United States illegally or remain in the United States illegally or otherwise aids or abets these crimes or crimes relating to conspiracies to commit these crimes.
This law seemingly only applies to “mere” citizens but not to our political elites.
Either through litigation and/or elections, those politicians who obstruct immigration law enforcement and thus fail to adhere to their oaths of office and Constitutional responsibilities, must be made accountable.
///

Kamala Harris: Medicare for All Includes Illegal Aliens

Harris, a guest on CNN's "State of the Union," said "I support Medicare for all. It is my preferred policy." She said she supports the bill introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Rising US “deaths of despair” driven by health care costs, lack of access to care

A new report reveals that most US states are losing ground on key measures related to life expectancy, which has declined in each of the last three years. The Commonwealth Fund’s “2019 Scorecard on State Health System Performance” shows that “deaths of despair”—premature deaths from suicide, alcohol abuse and drug overdoses—continue to rise in nearly every state. The report further shows that these deaths are tied to rising healthcare costs that are placing an increasing financial burden on families across the country.
The Commonwealth Fund’s Scorecard assessed “deaths of despair” in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as ranked states on 47 measures of access to health care, quality of care, health care usage, health outcomes and income-based health care disparities. The report found that Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act has been a central factor leading to meaningful gains in access to health care.
The reasons behind the decision of a person to take his or her own life, to take drugs resulting in a fatal overdose, or to drink alcohol in excess leading to health problems and death, are complex. But this new study shows that one of the major underlying causes of such tragedies is social inequality, in particular lack of access to health care and the associated financial struggles.

The opioid crisis, suicide and alcohol-related deaths

While the study finds that deaths from suicide and alcohol and drug abuse are a national crisis, it notes that states and regions are affected in different ways. Opioid use disorder has fueled a rise in drug overdose deaths with tragic outcomes for families across the country. The emergence of highly lethal synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, in the illicit drug supply has contributed to this national crisis.
The opioid epidemic has hit states in New England, the Mid-Atlantic and several Southeastern states particularly hard. West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Delaware and New Hampshire have the highest death rates from drug overdoses.
In Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio, death rates from drug overdose were at least five times higher than from alcohol abuse and about three times higher than suicide rates. In Montana, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Oregon and Wyoming, death rates from suicide and alcohol were greater than those from drugs.
Source: Commonwealth Fund. Data from National Vital Statistics System
West Virginia has been the state hardest hit by the opioid crisis, with 58.7 deaths per 100,000 residents—a staggering two-and-a-half times the national average. This was 25 percent more than the state with the next highest rate of opioid deaths, Ohio, which had 46.3 deaths per 100,000 residents. Opioid-related deaths in West Virginia increased fivefold in 12 years—rising from 10.5 deaths per 100,000 in 2005 to 57.8 in 2017.
The rate of death from drug overdose more than doubled across the US between 2005 and 2017. These deaths surged by 10 percent just between 2016 and 2017.
Suicide rates nationally have risen by nearly 30 percent since 2005. Parallel to the sharp rise in the death rate from drug overdose, the national suicide death rate rose more sharply between 2016 and 2017 than during any other one-year period in recent history. Similarly, the alcohol-related death rate rose by about 2 percent per year between 2005 and 2012 but increased by about 4 percent per year between 2013 and 2017.

Health insurance, access to care, cost

The Commonwealth Fund notes that the reductions in the uninsured population following the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) expansion of health coverage in 2014 have now stalled or even begun to erode in some states.
The ACA, commonly known as Obamacare, while expanding some access to health care coverage, has never challenged the domination of the for-profit health care industry. It required that individuals without insurance from their employer or a government program purchase insurance from a private insurance company.
Nearly all states saw substantial reductions in uninsured rates between 2013 and 2017 with the opening of the ACA’s insurance marketplaces, with fewer people citing cost as a barrier to receiving health care.
As the ACA was written, Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor jointly administered by the federal government and the states, was to be expanded to cover all US citizens and legal residents with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty line. However, the US Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that it was up to the states whether or not to expand their Medicaid programs.
Almost all those states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA saw a reduction in rates of uninsured through 2015. However, after 2015 any progress in reducing the rates of uninsured had stalled in most states. From 2016 to 2017, more than half of states were simply treading water. Sixteen states saw a rise of 1 percent in the uninsured rate, including both those that did and did not expand Medicaid.
States that adopted Medicaid expansion have seen lower rates of the uninsured. As of January 1, 2017, Massachusetts had the lowest rate of uninsured, at 4 percent. The states with the highest rates of uninsured—Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas—were among the 19 states that had not expanded Medicaid as of January 1, 2017. In Texas, 24 percent—nearly a quarter of all residents—were uninsured.
Uninsured rates were particularly high in states with large African-American and Hispanic populations. In Florida, George and Texas, about 20 percent of black adults were uninsured in 2017, compared to the US average of about 14 percent. In Texas, more than a third of Hispanic adults were uninsured in 2017. Undoubtedly contributing to the uninsured among Hispanics is the denial of Medicaid and access to the ACA marketplace for undocumented immigrants.

Health care costs

In addition to the lack of health insurance, the high cost of coverage for those who are insured is contributing to the crisis in accessing health care. The report notes that as of the end of 2018, 30 million adults remained uninsured and an estimated 44 million people had insurance but were considered “underinsured” due to the high out-of-pocket costs for health care in relation to their income.
People with individual-market plans under the ACA were insured at the highest rates. However, the cost of private, employer-sponsored health care plans is rising, exposing workers and their families to increasingly higher deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. In most states, the amount that employees contribute to their employer coverage is rising faster than median income.
A key contributing factor to the uninsured and underinsured rates is the overall rate of growth in US health care costs compared to the slow growth in US median income. Workers face rising costs as insurers increase deductibles and other cost-sharing for enrollees. As workers in both ACA and employee plans are covered by the insurance industry, these private companies raise costs for the insured to boost their bottom lines.
The Commonwealth Fund’s report explodes the myth that people’s use of health care services is the primary driver of cost and premium growth. The report notes that there is growing evidence that the prices paid by private insurers to health care providers, particularly hospitals, are responsible for this growth.
The report notes, according to the Health Care Cost Institute, that “between 2013 and 2017 prices for inpatient services paid by private insurers climbed by 16 percent while utilization fell by 5 percent. The analysis found similar patterns for outpatient and professional services as well as prescription drugs.”
In other words, while workers and their families are struggling to obtain decent health care and to pay for it, the entire system of health care delivery in America is geared toward enriching the hospitals, pharmaceuticals and insurance companies. Those succumbing to “deaths of despair” are the victims of a health care system and a society that values capitalist profit over the health and very lives of its citizens.

SUICIDE IN AMERICA
May 29, 2019 
The Social Order
Kay Hymowitz joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss a challenge facing aging populations in wealthy nations across the world: loneliness. Her essay in the Spring 2019 issue, “Alone,” will be released online this Sunday.
“Americans are suffering from a bad case of loneliness,” Hymowitz writes. “Foundering social trust, collapsing heartland communities, an opioid epidemic, and rising numbers of ‘deaths of despair’ suggest a profound, collective discontent.”
Evidence of the loneliness epidemic is dramatic in other countries, too. Japan, for example, has seen a troubling rise in “lonely deaths.” The challenge, Hymowitz says, is to teach younger generations the importance of family and community before they make decisions that will further isolate them.

Audio Transcript

Brian Anderson: Welcome back to the 10 Blogs podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Joining me on the show today is Kay Hymowitz, the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a longtime contributing editor at the magazine. Her latest piece in City Journal is called “Alone: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness.” That's the subtitle. It's one of the great pieces she's ever written in City Journal and I encourage you to find it on our website. Lastly, just one more announcement. We created a new email address for the show, so if listeners want to get in touch and drop a comment or share an idea, you can now email us at podcast@city-journal.org. That's podcast@city-journal.org. That's it for the introduction. We'll take a quick break and we'll be back with Kay Hymowitz.
Brian Anderson: Hello again everyone. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal and joining us in the studio now is Kay Hymowitz. She's a contributing editor at City Journal and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. You can follow her on Twitter @KayHymowitz. And she's the author of many books, most recently the New Brooklyn: What It Takes to Bring a City Back, which came out in 2017. And prior to that, Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys, which came out in 2011. We're here today though to talk about her latest piece in City Journal called Alone. Kay, thanks very much for joining us.
Kay Hymowitz: I'm happy to be here, Brian.
Brian Anderson: So let's just start off. What made you want to write about the topic of loneliness, and what is the state of loneliness in America?
Kay Hymowitz: Well, let me start by saying I didn't actually set out to write about loneliness. I knew it was a great topic, but I wasn't exactly sure how to approach it. And I stumbled across an article that inspired me by two social scientists, I think they're demographers. And they described something called a rise of kinlessness, that is a rise in the number of people who have no kin, older people who have no kin. And it was very eye opening and I began to see that the breakdown of the family that I've been studying for maybe 15 years now and that I had mostly talked about in relation to its impact on children was also having quite an impact on older people, particularly aging adults. And that some of the despair that we were hearing about, the deaths of despair, the opioid crisis and so on so forth, are actually disproportionately made up of divorced and single, well, of men, in particular. So I realized that we're looking at something big here in terms of the family breakdown and its ultimate impact is something that I hadn't quite foreseen or thought of.
Brian Anderson: It's probably worth rehearsing some of the numbers in terms of this breakdown in family. Divorce rates for married couples, I think, are probably double what they were back in the 50s.
Kay Hymowitz: They are indeed.
Brian Anderson: But in some ways the picture's even darker. You have a 40% of kids, I think, are born to unmarried mothers now. That's up from 5% in 1960. And strikingly the rate of women who don't give birth at all, I think, has doubled or is much higher. Yeah. And you could go on and on in this vein. This is obviously the core of your argument that's having a big impact on loneliness and kinlessness and this whole phenomenon. So say a bit more about that and what do you think is driving it?
Kay Hymowitz: Well, I think that a lot of what's happening is due to a change in our understanding of what the family is, what its purpose is. I talk a lot in the article about the beginnings of what I see is the unraveling of the family, or shall we say, a kind of assault on, on the traditional family. I want to clarify that as we go on. I see the beginnings of it in something that demographers call the Second Demographic Transition. We sometimes talk about the, in ordinary parlance, we talk about the 60s or the Sexual Revolution. But those were actually an American reflection of something that has, as I said, demographers have been studying. The second demographic transition they believe is partly the result of affluence as he, as the societies in the west in particular, but also over time Japan and others, as they got richer, families were not as essential to mere survival as they had one been. Now this was intensified this fact by the introduction of the birth control pill, obviously because you could control sexual reproduction without worrying about whether you're married or not. And what the theory is that this would introduce a different set of values, anti-authoritarian, and little bit of anti-tradition. Individualistic. As people began to see they could be freer to find other ways of living than to depend entirely on family or depend mostly on their families. And in fact, following the second demographic transition, um, there was a huge increase as you, just as you just pointed out in your numbers in the percentage of divorces, the percentage of non-marital births. And this by the way, is not just true in the United States, but in other developed countries. Not all of them, but many. And also of fatherlessness. So I think that these ideas that emerged with affluence and the second demographic transition made it possible for people to think very differently about how they were going to live. And I should say now, because I'll be talking about the downsides of this, what followed from the second demographic transition. But it did really give people a lot of freedom. And there's no question that there were many people for relieved from very miserable and even violent marriages. As a result of the second demographic transition. There were many different ways to think about letting the people, it was possible to not be married if you really didn't want to. Which I think has worked nicely for some individuals. And of course it opened up the door to gay marriage, for much more freedom for gays and lesbians. So there is a tremendous upside and I don't want to discount that. But what I try to do in this article or show that there's some real downsides that we haven't quite understood.
Brian Anderson: What are some of those downsides? Why is it a problem for society that people are increasingly alone? And what are some of the manifestations of that that are negative?
Kay Hymowitz: Right. So one of the things that I try to do in the article is to remind people that kinship, those close family relations, blood and marital relations, have been kind of the linchpin of societies practically since we came out of the caves. It is absolutely fundamental to every society. The relationship between kin and what it does is... Those relationships define certain kinds of obligations. We tend to be more protective of kin and to understand our roles better when in relation to kin. Everything else, all of our other relationships may be very important to us, but we're making those up pretty much as we go along. And the kinship... As we've sort of gotten rid of that basic building block, or we've sort of undermined it through the divorce revolution, the sexual revolution in the second demographic transition, we've undermined the way kin work. So one point I make is that there's been a huge rise in cohabitation and particularly among less educated and lower income people. Cohabitation has become a kind of substitute for marriage. And the hope among, social scientists and sociologists and economists was always that gradually people would realize that you could cohabit, but you really ought to stay together. That it would be a kind of it, that it would be a kind of marriage or marriage light. But in fact, that's not what's happened. What's happened is that the, the norm of cohabitation is much more transitory, impermanent, fragile, and unpredictable. And those couples who were cohabitating and do not go onto marry tend to break up much, much more quickly.
Brian Anderson: This is even true when they have children?
Kay Hymowitz: Oh yes, definitely. The children of cohabiting couples are having a very, very different upbringing than the children of married couples. Now, it's true. we do have higher rates of divorce than we used to, although it's stabilized. And one of the reasons it's stabilized is that so many people are not getting married anymore, they are cohabiting. The upshot is that there are an awful lot of children, as I've pointed out many times before growing up in very unstable environments, but then an awful lot of parents, particularly men, who are losing direct contact with their kids. Now most men, after a divorce or after a child out of marriage, try to maintain some contact. But that tends to, it's not always true, that tends to fade out over time. Remember a lot of the people who are cohabiting, having children as their cohabiting are young, and understandably if that relationship doesn't work out, that go on and seek out another one. Well, what often happens is that there is a new family that develops out of that second union and possibly even a third or forth. So the child is faced with a, and fathers too, are faced with this rolling cast of people, none of whom have quite the connection of the kin of the old fashioned can relationships so that those men are frequently on their own as they get older. And if I could just add a little personal observation here that some people might not agree with, men just don't make homes or, you know make even make friends quite the way that women do. And we do have some data on this as well.
Brian Anderson: Looking around the world, and you noted this earlier, we know that the US isn't the only country facing problems of loneliness. One of the most striking examples in your story is Japan, which was seen just an incredible rise in what they call "lonely deaths." Maybe you could describe a little bit the situation there and how Japan is dealing with it?
Kay Hymowitz: Japan is an interesting contrast. to the United States in some ways in other western countries because non marital childbearing, single motherhood is relatively rare, unlike here. And also divorce is, relatively rare. It's getting, it's getting more common. What's happening instead is that an awful lot of people are not having children, so therefore their fertility rates are very, very low.
Brian Anderson: Well below replacement rate, I believe?
Kay Hymowitz: Well below replacement. Ours are low, but this is lower. I read one a social Japanese social scientists who said that the basic concept of the family in Japan is dead. So there's an awful lot of elderly people on their own, living alone. And by the way, dependent on the state to support them because they don't have any family to speak of. Or their family has moved away, or is extremely busy with work. We know that the Japanese are workaholics. But they started to see this rise in lonely deaths, which, we're beginning to see here too. And it became such a phenomenon in Japan that the newspapers started to cover, local newspapers would start to cover these stories that were happening very frequently. And in addition, this was the part that kind of, caused me to sit up and wonder. There are businesses now, there are cleanup companies, to take care of apartments after a lonely death because what happens is that when somebody dies and they're alone and nobody's really watching out for them, they often die in their apartment. Nobody knows they're dead. Nobody finds them until the telltale smell of decaying body. And it makes a huge mess for building owners or landlords. So they've started these companies, these cleanup companies. And I believe I mentioned the name of one of them, which is kind of grim. It's called Next.
Brian Anderson: Yeah.
Kay Hymowitz: But these companies, there are a fair number of them and they've become an essential, essential part of Japanese life.
Brian Anderson: It's a very, very grim reality. I've been reading a book by Cal Newport called Digital Minimalism, and it's an argument against being immersed in social media and other forms of technologically driven distraction. He says, we need to set more time for our sanity sake to be alone or at least off of the Internet and this constant bombardment of, of connection with other people. In other words, he's saying technology is making us constantly exposed to other people in ways that can harm us. At least if it goes too far. How does social media and the constant judgment that people sometimes feel themselves under through social media if they're participating in it, how does that intersect with the argument that you're making?
Kay Hymowitz: Well social media, I'm thinking of Facebook in particular was supposed to bring us all together. Right? It was the social network. We were going to create all these new social networks and you know, I think some people have been able to use it that way. I have ordered up to make contact with old high school friends or whatever, but it has also added to a sense of anxiety as people post pictures of their happy family occasions. They can look like things are just so wonderful and peachy keen for everybody else while you're feeling down in the dumps. So what does that expression, "fomo," fear of missing out? You're missing parties that you might've been invited to... People are taking wonderful trips that you, you know, don't have anybody to travel with or whatever. So I think it can exacerbate loneliness in that way because you're constantly comparing yourself to other people at their peak moments because that's when people post their pictures. And there is something about, aside from the fomo, aside from that, the kinds of connections you make through social media don't seem to be the same as those should make in real life. I haven't seen wonderful research on this yet, but it seems to me an area ripe for exploration. It seems so clear somehow that you can be online, communicating, even playing games with people, from all over the world, and seemingly making new friends and still feel quite lonely and be lonely because you turn off the computer or walk into another room and you're alone.
Brian Anderson: A lot's been written, especially since the election of Donald Trump, about the state of rust belt communities. The opioid crisis, which you mentioned earlier. How much in your view is the family breakdown you're describing having an impact on those communities? And is it part of what's causing the problem or is it an outgrowth of the breakdown in those communities? Economic breakdown.
Kay Hymowitz: Yeah, there's no question that family breakdown exacerbates and intensifies the loss of these communities, or rather the jobs, the factories that have left. If you lose your job and you lose your wife or husband because to opioids, or they've just left, then you've got real trouble. You don't have anybody to support you through difficult times. One of the things I argue in that piece is that the breakdown in the family has not affected educated and well off people anywhere near to the extent that it has... well, blacks, and also now the white working class that came a little bit later. And I think what we underestimated, we who lived through the second demographic transition and played a role in pushing it actually because I was in college in the 1960s when a lot of these ideas were being tested out and promulgated. If the educated classes, the more well to do classes, were able to figure out a way to maintain their families, what they didn't anticipate, or that none of us anticipated, was that it would be much harder for people who were living more on the edge, who had evictions to worry about or layoffs or a factory closing. You need, in those cases, a culture that really supports, a cultural environment, that really supports the idea of the family and of kinship as people... as people that are there for you in hard times.
Brian Anderson: Providing a network of support...
Kay Hymowitz: That's right. That's right. And in those communities instead, we saw a more and more of a collapse of the family. Now was it possible that, we could have, in a different cultural environment, it could have been different? Maybe, maybe. It's very hard to disentangle the cause and effect here, but there's no question that they go hand... the loss of the working class or the manufacturing jobs, has definitely been related to the breakdown of the family in the working class. Now I should mention that one of the things that's happened as a result, well, related again to the breakdown of the family in those communities, is this opioid crisis. Opioids, as you may know, is now killing more people than traffic accidents, than car accidents. And I was amazed to see in a recent study that the victims or the people who die of opioid death are much more likely to be single, unmarried or divorced men. And that speaks of exactly what I've been trying to describe. I think that women are better at creating their own social networks. This was something that the sociologist, Eric Klinenberg, who wrote a book called Going Solo, about people living alone. It's something he noticed as he started to interview people who were living alone. Even among the elderly women were more likely to want to live alone. They didn't want to remarry if there were widowed or divorced. But who kept fairly rich lives, they were still able to... they volunteered. They had friends, networks of friends that they could go out with, and that sort of thing. So, and if there were children, they were closer to the kids than a single father. So they had all those supports. Men seem to suffer much more loneliness than women. And you know, we can debate from here to eternity why that is. But there it is.
Brian Anderson: Well, to ask a final question, and it's how you conclude your piece: What might be necessary to start re-knitting the social fabric in a way that might address this problem. You mentioned Tom Wolfe's idea of a "Great Re-learning." Say a little bit about that?
Kay Hymowitz: Well first, I should say that there are a lot of government programs for seniors, a lot of, on the federal level and the city and local level. There are all kinds of ways that civil society jumps in. Seniors Helping Seniors is one group, Meals on Wheels, organizations like that. They are absolutely essential and beneficial and I don't want to knock them at all, but they don't begin to address the loss that a lot of people are feeling, or the loneliness. So one of the things that struck me in thinking about all this was how much joy and pleasure so many of my friends, and I should say I'm 70 years old, so many of my friends now with grandchildren, would mostly worry when their kids were growing up about their careers. They would focus so much on their education. Starting from early on, we were the beginning of helicopter parents, not quite as bad as today, but it did begin quite a while ago. But never talking about this other, what I consider to be the other big goal in life: to find a spouse, a kind and reliable and giving spouse who will make a good mother or father for your children. Because most people are going to want children. And society's depend on them wanting children. Those parents didn't talk to their kids about these things. And yet here I was going to weddings and watching these grandchildren being born and the parents were going nuts. I thought, well, why wouldn't they ever talk about the joy of this stage of life and of the connection that we now have with our children. And this is one lovely thing of the that has followed the second demographic transition is, I think, there's a much, much less of a generation gap between me and my kids then there was between me and my own parents because,
Brian Anderson: Yeah, I think that's true.
Kay Hymowitz: And there's a kind of companionship and friendship that I didn't see in my day so much. We have that, and it's a source of great comfort and pleasure. I think for most of the people that are able to experience it. So I note all that because I want readers to realize that this is something we don't talk about to our kids very much. And so we have another generation, growing up, who have never heard those words or any of those concepts from their parents or from anybody.
Brian Anderson: Well maybe it's a time for a different kind of conversation. In any case, don't forget to check out Kay's brilliant essay in City Journal, it's called Alone. It's in our latest issue you can find it on our website and we will link to it in the description. You can follow Kay on Twitter @KayHymowitz. You can also find City Journal on Twitter, @CityJournal and on Instagram @CityJournal_MI, and always, if you like what you've heard on the podcast, give us a nice rating on iTunes. Thanks for listening, and thanks, Kay Hymowitz, for joining us.


"Eligibility would be determined by the same rules of Medicaid, based on annual income. As many young illegals are working off the books, for cash, they will have no official reported income regardless of how much they actually earn, insuring their eligibility for Medi-Cal." BRIAN C. JOONEPH

California Says: ‘Go West, Young Illegals, Go West’

 


Doctors and hospitals are in the gunsights of many Democrats who want Medicare-for-all as a draconian price control scheme by government over all medical care in the US. Hospitals are told they charge too much and doctors are vilified for earning too much.
What a relief that a sugar daddy has appeared, a rich boyfriend, a benefactor with a fat wallet, ready to bestow his financial largess on financially strapped healthcare providers.
This sugar daddy is named Gavin, tall and handsome with good hair. I speak of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who finalized a deal with the California legislature, “to provide full health benefits to low-income illegal immigrants under the age of 26.”
California is the first state to provide such benefits to illegal or undocumented immigrants, depending on which term you prefer. Specifically, this group of adults, age 19 to 25 will have access to the state’s Medi-Cal program, California’s version of Medicaid.
California anticipates providing coverage to 100,000 people. I’m not sure how they arrived at this number since I’ve always heard that illegal immigrants “live in the shadows,” meaning we really don’t know how many there are. And when word gets out to the rest of the country, expect that 100,000 number to grow exponentially just as it would if California announced it was giving away cars to this same group of people.

BLOG: THE MEXICAN TAX-FREE ECONOMY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY IS ESTIMATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2 BILLION YEARLY. THIS SAME COUNTY HANDS ILLEGAL ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS MORE THAN $1 BILLION  IN WELFARE!

Eligibility would be determined by the same rules of Medicaid, based on annual income. As many young illegals are working off the books, for cash, they will have no official reported income regardless of how much they actually earn, insuring their eligibility for Medi-Cal.
This scheme is to be funded by taxing those who do not have health insurance. Who might that be? Not the young illegals who how have free insurance. How about the small businessman who earns too much to qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford an Obamacare policy with massive premiums, copayments, and deductibles? Or the struggling wannabe actors and actresses in the same financial boat as the small businessman? Or the 60-year-old retiree, not yet eligible for Medicare but unable to afford private insurance given the higher premiums at her age?
How nice of California taxpayers, those American born or here legally, having their earnings confiscated to pay the medical bills of those not here legally. Who pays the medical bills of those Americans who can’t afford their medical care?
Interestingly undocumented elderly are not covered under this new plan. Sugar Daddy Newsom opposed this, preferring the young over the elderly, likely due to the much higher medical costs for those over age 65 compared to those under age 25.
This may have to do with voting preferences. It is unknown how many illegals vote, but younger voters tend to vote Democrat compared to older voters who lean Republican. Is this healthcare scheme a form of voter outreach?
Why are doctors and hospitals across America so grateful for their new sugar daddy?
Americans subsidize health care for illegal immigrants to the tune of $18.5 billion a year according to Forbes. Imagine being able to now offload some of this care to California?
Hospitals are required by law to render emergency care to everyone, regardless of a person’s ability to pay. A pregnant woman illegally enters the US, and when she goes into labor, the hospital is required to deliver the baby, caring for both baby and mother, at an average cost of $32,000.
What if the baby is born premature and needs a few weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, or is born with a heart or bowel defect, requiring additional surgery? The costs quickly escalate into 6-figure sums.
Labor and delivery is certainly common in the 19-25 age group. So are injuries that may require non-emergency treatment, such as a retinal detachment or a ligament tear in the knee. For the doctor, these patients are considered self-pay. Despite promises to pay all of their medical bills, some patients, once reasonably stable after surgery are gone with the wind, with no way to contact them, and no payment made for rendered services.
What if doctors and hospitals, when discussing costs of medical treatment, can now give the patient a map? A few hundred years ago, newspaper editor and author Horace Greeley advised the 19 to 25-year-olds of the day to “Go west young man”. The same phrase may become popular again, particularly in states adjacent to or close to California.
When faced with patients with non-emergent medical problems, direct these patients to the nearest east-west interstate, I-40, I-70, or I-80, and drive toward the setting sun until seeing the “Welcome to California” sign. Go west and allow generous California taxpayers to pick up the tab.
Hospitals won’t be stuck with bad debt and physicians won’t be stiffed after offering their time and expertise without compensation.
Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman said this about an open-border immigration policy. "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." Which is exactly what California offers, providing free healthcare to living in the state against the law.
While at the same time, California has an out of control homelessness problem, many of those homeless being American veterans. They are living legally in their own country yet living on the streets, in squalor, with rats and other vermin bringing back historic diseases like typhus and typhoid fever. Where is their sugar daddy governor? Busy pandering to those here illegally.
Down on their luck Americans are told to pound sand while illegals are lavished with drivers licenses, welfare benefits, and now healthcare. California cannot care for its own residents, but is opening its doors to the world, promising goodies that will do nothing but attract more of the world, regardless of laws.
When does it end? I’ve suggested that the Trump administration send refugees and illegals to sanctuary cities, so those cities have the opportunity to live with the consequences of their virtue signaling. Now doctors and hospitals can do the same. If California wants to be an open borders welfare state, it’s the least the rest of the country can do to help out by sending young undocumented immigrants to the land of milk and honey.
Instead of “the doctor will see you now”, expect to hear, “go west young man.”
Brian C Joondeph, MD, MPS, a Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn and Twitter.


California could use a management change





Over Sunday lunch, a friend was saying that he just got back from Los Angeles.  He added that he had not seen that much filth in some of the third-world countries that he visits for business regularly.  He looked at me and asked: " How do the voters put up with that?"

My answer was that voters have been voting with their feet for years.  In other words, they leave the Golden State.

California is a mess indeed, as Jim Bredo wrote:  

It has the worst ranking for homelessness, 8th worst for roads, and worst for teacher-to-student ratio. Its prisons are so crowded that the Supreme Court determined them to constitute cruel and unusual punishment, and it suffered the worst budget crisis of all the states during the Great Recession.
But residents are so mesmerized by the amazing weather and beauty of the place that they tend to overlook the quality of the services. And as a result, management does not change. The state has been under the same Democratic Party management for years. Their monopoly on power is so safe that they now hold supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature despite California’s worsening condition. Management has no incentive to change when it keeps getting re-elected.
Californians may not be voting out Democrats at the ballot box, but they have been voting with their feet. While California’s population has grown from 29 million to 39 million over the past 30 years, in each year during that period the state has seen a net loss in migration to other states.
So will things change?  I don't see any change for now, although the article points out that Latinos get more conservative as they get more prosperous.  
California will continue until they hit a financial wall or when the last taxpayer leaves the state.  In the meantime, be careful when you walk the streets of LA, and I'm not talking about thieves.
P.S.  You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

 

California Lawmakers Plan to Give Health Benefits to Illegal Immigrants


HANNAH BLEAU

Democrat state lawmakers in progressive California have agreed to a plan that would extend health benefits to qualifying illegal immigrants residing in the state.

The legislature has a June 15 deadline and is expected to approve the deal in the coming days. It essentially extends eligibility to California’s Medicaid program to young low-income illegal immigrants between the ages of 19 and 25. The move is part of a broader budget plan, which clocks in around $213 billion.
Expanding California’s Medicaid program to low-income illegals would cost the state about $98 million per year. According to the Associated Press, roughly 90,000 will qualify.
“California believes that health is a fundamental right,” State Sen. Holly Mitchell (D) said, according to the news outlet.
A number of Democrat state lawmakers wanted to take it a step further, offering coverage for all illegals in the state, but Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the proposal, citing rising costs.
The agreement also includes assistance for middle-income families. A family of four making $150,000 could qualify for a $100 a month subsidy from the government to help cover the cost of their insurance premium.
Democrats in the state plan to pay for the handouts, in part, by taxing those who do not have health insurance. This is, in essence, another version of Obamacare’s individual mandate penalty, which the Supreme Court upheld as a tax in a critical ruling in 2012. However, it has remained a point of contention in lower courts. Republicans in Congress worked with President Trump to scrap what they deemed to be the unconstitutional penalty in 2017.
California lawmakers say these moves are all part of the state’s wide-ranging effort to get everyone in the state – including those residing there unlawfully – covered. This comes at the time of a severe homelessness crisis in the state, particularly in Los Angeles County.
The number of homeless individuals on the streets of Los Angeles has skyrocketed during the last year.
As Breitbart News reported:
The newly released data revealed that nearly three-fourths of the homeless population, which includes 58,936 people, are sleeping in cars, tents, and other make-do shelters.
Released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to the Board of Supervisors, the data found that the majority of homeless people were residing in the city of Los Angeles, which saw an increase of 16 percent to 36,300.
About 3,800 are estimated to be veterans.

San Francisco’s homeless population has also experienced a spike, rising 17 percent in the last two years.

Tomi Lahren: Health care for illegal immigrants is here in California

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tomi-lahren-illegal-immigrant-health-care-is-here-in-california?utm_source=E-mail%20Updates&utm_campaign=2b91c1eed1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_06_14_02_35&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_7dc4c5d977-2b91c1eed1-45100901


Tomi Lahren: Illegal immigrant health care is here in California

California leadership is on the brink of signing a new piece of legislation that will put taxpayer dollars toward something Tomi has warned us about time and again: health care for illegal immigrants.
Well I warned you and here it is – California will become the first state to offer health care to illegal immigrants.
A lot of stupid legislation has come out of Sacramento, California in the last 10 years but this, THIS is a giant slap in the face to all hardworking Californians and LEGAL immigrantsbusting our butts to live and work in this state.
Meanwhile, our lawmakers are more concerned with doling out perks, brownie points, and benefits to people who have NO legal right to be here.
This is absolutely stomach-churning and yeah, I have some "First Thoughts."
Almost $100 million a year. That’s how much California lawmakers have set aside for illegal immigrant health care. If all goes as they planned, which it will, this will be set in stone come midnight on June 15th, and it will start January 1st of next year.
Do you want to know how we – the Golden State taxpayers – are going to pay for it? Partly through additional taxes on individuals who choose not to have health care.
Wait, I thought President Trump and Republicans reduced the individual mandate? Think again.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing for a state mandate to revive it.
We have over 130,000 homeless people in this state and yet, our lawmakers, our DEMOCRATIC lawmakers, have agreed on a plan to cover health insurance benefits for some 90,000 plus illegal immigrants.
Thanks to the Democrats in this state, illegal immigrants between the ages of 19-25 will now be eligible for the state’s Medicaid program.
California ALREADY covers illegals under age 19 and all pregnant women under Medical-Cal!
And you know what’s worse, some Democrats in the state legislature are unhappy this plan doesn’t cover ALL illegal immigrants in the state. That would cost us an estimated $3.4 billion but just you wait, that is where we are headed.
If you’re not a Californian you might not think this applies to you but be warned, this isn’t just the platform of the California Democratic Party, this is the platform of the Democratic Party, at large.
What is happening in California is just a prototype and pipe dream for the rest of the nation and if a Democrat wins in 2020, this is coming to you, to all of us, nationwide. Mark my words.
So if you don’t want your hard-earned tax dollars going to illegal immigrants, if you think incentivizing illegal immigration is downright un-American, if you believe Americans come first in our own country, get ready to fight to keep President Trump in office in 2020.
The truth is, he is our only hope. The Democratic Party along with the Democratic primary race has become little more than a try-out for the illegal immigrant cheerleading squad.
In recent months, we’ve averaged a little over 100,000 illegals flooding into our nation through our southwest border.
Sadly, The Republicans in Name Only or "RINOs" sitting in Congress don’t seem to care, either. If they did they wouldn’t have sat back for two years when we controlled Congress and did nothing.
No one in the swamp is bold enough to tackle this issue. No one except the Mr. Rooter of the Swamp, President Donald Trump.
Our elected representatives won't fix the immigration system and meanwhile, we have governors like Newsom and their respective Democratic legislatures dangling benefit carrots to entice even more people across our southern border.
This next election is bigger than 2016. It’s bigger than four years in the White House. The future of our country is at stake. Get ready to dig in and fight like you’ve never fought before.
Those are my "First Thoughts." From Los Angeles, God bless and take care.

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What's the matter with California?

California wants to look after its people, so it keeps expanding its social safety net. It also wants to welcome all comers and so embraces illegal immigrants and protects them in sanctuary cities.
To see how this is working out, visit Skid Row in L.A. or neighborhoods in San Francisco or elsewhere where homeless camps are spreading.
Caring for all Californians is made harder by the state importing as many non-Americans as possible.
It's almost incredible, but also entirely characteristic, that California lawmakers have now decided to give healthcare free to nearly 100,000 illegal immigrants aged 19 to 25.
California has covered illegal immigrant children since 2016 under MediCal, the state’s version of Medicaid, at a cost of some $360 million. Now Gov. Gavin Newsom has agreed with state lawmakers to add another $98 million to California's spending by expanding coverage to young adults.
Just as California lacks enough homes to house its inhabitants, so it also lacks enough doctors to care for them. The additional budget bloat on healthcare will worsen that shortage.
The promise of unlimited free stuff from the government isn't just an unfunded liability. It’s also a magnet for illegal immigration. California already faces a border catastrophe. In the past year, its San Diego and El Centro border sectors have seen respective increases of 611% and 345% in family unit apprehensions. MediCal expansion creates incentives that will make that problem much worse.
If the damage were confined to California, one might be tempted to shrug and suggest that Californians choose themselves a better government. But the problem will spill over to the rest of the country, and to Americans who did not elect the irresponsible Sacramento government.
Border enforcement is mostly a federal responsibility, and we will all have to live with and deal with the consequences of an influx of illegal immigrants and a further strain on detention facilities' ability to cope.
When California raises taxes to pay for foreigners' healthcare, it weighs down on the federal budget because state and local taxes are partly deductible from federal income taxes. The rest of the country must subsidize more than $100 billion of spending by the Utopians in Sacramento.
When the Golden State's finances deteriorate, watch for Sacramento to beg for a bailout. Even before then, the rest of America must foot the bill for California’s overstuffed classrooms, decaying infrastructure, and everything else funded federally.

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. One must hope that one day the state's voters choose different lawmakers.