The Howling About Separating Illegal Immigrants From Their Kids Is Just An Attack On Enforcing Immigration Laws

Leftist liars are treasonous and dishonest. And so are so many so called "Conservatives" here:

"The Trump administration is currently under attack by people from both sides of the political aisle for trying to actually administer federal law as written by Congress. The law, of course, is federal immigration law and the problem is that an alliance of administrations, Republican and Democrat, decided, for different reasons, that ignoring illegal immigration, or making a show of enforcing it for us rubes who are concerned about it, was preferable in every way to actually enforcing the law of the land.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration seems set on carrying out President Trump’s campaign promises and that is causing angst everywhere. And predictable hyperbole.
This is, as I see it, the situation. It really isn’t complicated. It is a very basic exercise is what in military operations is known as “branches and sequels.” (Keep in mind that persons following the law and presenting themselves at border crossing points and declaring they are seeking asylum are not separated from their children. This is solely about illegal immigrants.) Actions take place that lead to either alternative steps or next steps.

When people cross and they are apprehended, what do you do? Do you send them back across the border, if they are Mexican, and let them try again at some other place? If they are other than Mexican (OTM), do you detain them or do you cite them an let them go? Or do you, as has been our policy since April 18, detain all crossers, charge them with a misdemeanor offense, get a guilty plea, and deport them?

If you are asking why anyone would bother showing up for a hearing that will result in their deportation rather than simply disappearing, then you have just identified the key reason why we are unable to control illegal immigration.

If you want to detain illegals then you have to decide what to do with them. Unaccompanied adults isn’t a problem. Unaccompanied children, like those who swamped the border during the last couple of years of the Obama administration, really aren’t a problem either. The problem is minors accompanied by adults, who may or may not be related to them, which are classified as “families.”

When a “family” is apprehended crossing illegally you have a whole new range of problems. The adults are going to be charged and processed and deported. What do you do with the children while this happens? You have three options. You can parole the children to relatives already residing in the US legally. This brings with it another array of issues. Before the government can do that, it has to do at least a cursory background check on the “relatives” to ensure they are related to the children and that the home is suitable. So you still have the “what do we do with them now?” problem. You could, in theory, establish “family” detention centers. This, of course, brings its own difficulties.

We know a non-trivial number of the adult members of these family groups aren’t actually related to the children, they are smugglers. Statistically, a certain number of the adults will be criminals. How do you run a co-ed (“mothers” and “fathers” will be detained here) facility with children and protect the vulnerable from being assaulted, sexually or otherwise? What about those cases, which exist, of children being brought across in sex trafficking operations? Do you want to house them with their captor?

This leads us to the obvious solution in which the paramount concern is the safety of the child. Your options are either a pre-certified foster care facility or a more industrial scale mass detention facility. In both cases, “families are ripped apart.”

At one time, we conservatives mocked liberals for trying to make policy based on feelings. And yet, in this case, that is exactly what is happening. If you read Laura Bush’s op-ed today, it is a triumph of feelings over reality. At no point in the op-ed does Mrs. Bush pose a solution..other than returning to the status quo ante where crossing into the US with children was a get-out-of-jail-free card if you were apprehended. What the Trump administration is doing is correct. If Congress doesn’t like the optics, Congress should act. We should not make people who drag their kids across the border into martyrs of government oppression. These people have exactly one person to blame for their kids being taken away for a few days. Themselves.

Placing adults of unknown background and children in a detention facility together is going to lead to a lot of very bad things happening. This will lead to another outcry about the inhumanity of detaining “families” altogether. This will lead to the return of the catch-and-release policy. This creates more DREAMers. And makes crossing into the US with children the preferred method of travel. 

It is difficult to view this debate, and who is saying what, and not come to the conclusion that this is more of a reaction to the Trump administration’s attempt to be serious about protecting our borders than it is about anything to do with separating children from alleged parents. It is much more about preventing the Border Patrol and Immigration from doing their job than it is about any kind of humanitarian impulse."

I don't miss George W. Bush anymore

Juliette "Baldilocks" Ochieng says it better than I can:

"A few days ago, Former President George W. Bush said this:

Americans don’t want to pick cotton at 105 degrees, but there are people who want to put food on their family’s tables and are willing to do that. We should thank them.

This brought to my mind the old slave-owner justification for black slavery. I’m not alone.

Bush put a 21st-century spin on 19th-century plantation owners’ pleas that they needed imported chattel African labor because American workers were neither acclimatized to heat nor inexpensive enough to pick cotton in scorching Southern temperatures.

Additionally, gentleman-farmer Hanson points out that there is more than one area in which the former president demonstrated his cluelessness.

To wit, cotton picking (which I used to do as a child in the 1960s on my father’s small 40-acre cotton allotment) has been widely mechanized for over 50 years. And agriculture now only accounts for about 10-20 percent of illegal alien labor. 

Mechanization has revolutionized farming, even in crops once deemed impossible to automate such as nuts, olives, raisins, and delicate Napa Valley wine grapes. New computerized and laser-calibrated breakthroughs will likely mean that even soft fruit and vegetables will soon be mechanically picked, matching ongoing labor reduction in weeding and irrigation.

Read the whole thing.

Bush’s defense of illegal aliens – essentially a criticism of Donald Trump – wasn’t a surprise to me, though his location while doing it, in Dubai, was(!) After all, as president, he advocated the proposed Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, which put many of his defenders in near revolt, including me.

Also, I remember when neither the former president nor most of his representatives would even try to rebut the Liberal/Leftist attacks on that administration and its policies. They left that up to the New Media: conservative bloggers. Stupid us.

After Barack H. Obama became president, GWB remained silent about his successor, even when the former repeatedly blamed him for bad things that happened from 2009 to 2017. I understood GWB’s stance at the time, and it also made me think that he was being consistent; he had little to say about his own predecessor, one William J. Clinton, even in the wake of the horror in 2001 which, in my own opinion, was the crowning achievement that rested on the many Islamic terror attacks on the US which occurred during the Clinton Administration and went unanswered by it. (That opinion is why I voted for George W. Bush in 2000.)

The silence during his own administration and the silence during the Obama Administration seemed characteristic of GWB. He let his actions do the talking, or so it seemed.

But now Trump's presidency seems to have loosened GWB’s tongue.

Bush's criticism of President Trump itself isn't the point; it’s where he did it, his own hypocrisy, and most importantly, what his criticism is.

I have blogged here about how hard it is to get a steady job here in the sanctuary state that is California even with skills and experience. (I’m pondering a possible 2019 escape.) What about the other Americans citizens here who don’t have skills and experience – especially the very young? I guess they don't matter.

George W. Bush thinks we should all thank the illegal aliens for picking the fruit and vegetables that I can barely afford, does he? (I’m a huge berry fan. Strawberries run over $3 a pound. But if I wanted to eat shit, literally and figuratively, pennies.)

And, it’s a safe bet that the families of Katie Steinle, Jamiel Shaw II, Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens would have two words other than 'Thank You" to say to illegal aliens and to George W. Bush.

On the other hand, one of those words *is* probably ‘you.’ Co-sign.

Victor Davis Hanson: Goodnight, California

This bears repeating entirely. A once Golden State is slowly rotting. The Liberal coastal elites are still too pampered and don't see it, but those of us inland can see the warning signs all too well .....

* * * * *

I offer another chronicle, a 14-hour tour of the skeleton I once knew as California.

8:00 AM

I finally got around to retrieving the car seat that someone threw out in front of the vineyard near my mailbox. (Don’t try waiting dumpers out — as if it is not your responsibility to clean up California roadsides.)

An acquaintance had also emailed and reminded me that not far away there was a mound of used drip hose on the roadside. That mess proved to be quite large, maybe 1,000 feet of corroded and ripped up plastic hose. I suppose no scavenger thinks it can be recycled. I promise to haul it away this week. One must be prompt: even a small pile attracts dumpers like honey to bees. They are an ingenious and industrious lot (sort of like the cunning and work ethic of those who planted IEDs during the Iraq War). My cousin’s pile across the road has grown to Mt. Rushmore proportions. Do freelance dumpers make good money promising to take away their neighborhood’s mattresses and trash without paying the $20 or so county dumping fee? And does their success depend on fools like me, who are expected to keep roadsides tidy by cleaning up past trash to make room for future refuse?


9:00 AM

My relative has sold her 20 acres to a successful almond grower; that was the last parcel other than my own left of my great great grandmother’s farm. All that remains is the original house I live in and 40 acres. Almost all the small farming neighbors I grew up with — of Armenian, Punjabi, German, or Japanese descent — are long gone. Goodbye, diversity. And their children either sold the parcels and moved away (the poorer seem to head to the foothills, the middle class go out of state, the better off flee to the coast) or rent them out. Most of the surrounding countryside, piece-by-piece, is being reconstituted into vast almond groves. I plan to rent out mine next year for such conversion.

Almonds can net far more per acre than raisins and do not require much more water and require almost no labor. Tree fruit, given its expenses and risks, can lose your farm. The last vestiges of small, agrarian farming in these parts died sometime in the 1990s. Oddly, or perhaps predictably, the land to the naked eye looks better in the sense that the power of corporate capital and savvy scientific expertise has resulted in picture-perfect orchards. The old agrarian idea that 40 acres also grows a unique family, not just food, is — how do we say it? No longer operative?

10:00 AM

I drive on the 99 freeway past Kingsburg on the way to Visalia. It is a road-warrior maze of construction and detours. The construction hazards are of the sort that would earn any private contractor a lawsuit. (How do you sue Caltrans — and why is it that four or five men always seem to be standing around one who is working?) Only recently has the state decided to upgrade the fossilized two-lane 99 into an interstate freeway of three lanes. But the construction is slow and seemingly endless. Could we not have a simple state rule: “no high-speed rail corridors until the 101, 99, and I-5 are three-lane freeways, and the neglected Amtrak line achieves profitable ridership?” It is almost as if California answers back: “I am too bewildered by your premodern challenges, so I will take psychological refuge in my postmodern fantasies.”

12:00 Noon

I try to drive by the Reedley DMV on the way home to switch a car registration. Appointments take a long waiting period, but the line of the show-ups is still far out the door and well into the parking lot. I pass. The state announced that it was surprised that “unexpectedly” (the catch adverb of the Obama era) nearly 500,000 illegal aliens have already been processed with new driver’s licenses. The lines at the office suggest that many DMVs simply have transmogrified into illegal alien license-processing centers.

The last time I had visited the office, I noticed the customers were also dealing with fines, tickets, or fix-it citations as part of the process. I thought, how will they pay for all that, given that “living in the shadows” and ignoring summonses and threats is far easier than paying what the state wants? And then, presto, the governor just announced a wish that the poor should be given “ticket amnesty.” So much for Sacramento’s idea of fining California drivers into becoming a reliable revenue source for a broke state, given that it has affected far more drivers than the shrinking and hated middle class that could supposedly afford the new sky-high tickets.

It reminds me of Obamacare: after my accident last May, I had lots of procedures and hours in waiting rooms. I discovered something listening to the desk people deal with Obamacare signups: a vast number apparently have not regularly paid the monthly or quarterly premiums. An even larger group has no idea what a deductible is, or that it actually applies to themselves. And some had no notion of a copayment. The reality of all three sends many into a near frenzy, reminiscent of the idea that a driver’s license means keeping up with registration, smog rules, and paying outstanding warrants — until the state provides the expected amnesties.

2:00 PM

I’m at the local supermarket two miles away. Three observations: many of the shoppers seem to be here for the air conditioning (the forecast is for 105 degrees by 5 PM). No one in the Bay Area, whose green agenda has led to the highest power rates in the country, seems to have thought that all of California does not enjoy 65-75 degree coastal corridor weather. My latest PG&E bill reminds me to apply for income-adjusted reduced rates — if I qualify. I don’t, so keep the air conditioner off all day.

Obesity among the shoppers seems epidemic and no one is talking about it. It is striking how young the overweight are! Almost all our small towns now have new state/federal dialysis clinics. Is this not a state emergency? Cannot the state at least offer public health warnings to the immigrant community that while diabetes is alarming among the population at large, it is becoming epidemic among new arrivals from Latin America and Mexico?

Stories that 25 percent of all state hospital admittances suffer from high blood sugar levels circulate. I argue in a friendly way with a customer in line about the new “green” Coke. He claims it is diet, but tastes like regular Coke. I remind him that it is so only because the artificial sweetener has been energized by some cane sugar and it is not so diet after all. (He is buying eight six-packs in fear of shortages.)

I don’t understand the EBT system. How is it that customers ahead of me pull out not one, but often go through three or four cards before they cobble together enough plastic credit for the full tab? Where does one acquire multiple cards?

4:00 PM

I am talking ag pumps at home with some farmers. The water table here has gone from 40 feet in 2011 to 82 feet now — the result of four years of constant pumping combined with below-average rain and snow runoff, and the complete cut-off of contracted surface water from the Kings River watershed (don’t ask why). I lowered one 15-hp submersible to 100 feet (the well is only 160, which used to be called “deep” when the water table was 40 feet). “Lowering” means less water pumped, more energy costs, a waiting list for the pump people, and sky-high service charges. The renter promises to lower the other one, whose pump is pumping air, now well above the sinking water table. My house well is only 140 feet deep. I just lowered the pump to a 110-foot draw, and decided to get on the “waiting list” for a new domestic well. (Prices for drilling by the foot have increased fivefold, and are said to go up monthly).

If the drought continues, one will see two unimaginable things by next spring: thousands of abandoned older homes out in the countryside from Merced to Bakersfield, and tens of thousands of acres on the West Side (water table ca. 1,000 feet and dropping) will go fallow if they are row-crops. And if orchards and vineyards, a mass die-off will follow of trees and vines. (Note that Silicon Valley’s Crystal Springs reservoir on freeway 280 is “full.” No Bay Area green activist is arguing either that the deliveries through massive conduits should be stopped at the San Joaquin River to be diverted for fish restoration, or that the entire project is unnatural and a scar on Yosemite Park, warranting shutting down the huge transfer system in favor of recycling waste water for showers and gardens.)

5:00 PM

I’m on a PG&E off-peak rate schedule, so I’m waiting until evening to turn on the air conditioner. It is 104 degrees outside and 96 degrees inside the house. As a youth, we used a tiny window, inefficient air conditioner far more in the 1960s and 1970s than I ever do now with central air. Given power rates, the idea of a cool home in the valley is so 1970s.

6:00 PM

I take another walk around the farm. Good — no one has yet shot the majestic pair of red tail hawks yet, who greet me on their accustomed pole. But I do notice someone has forced open the cyclone fence around the neighbor’s vacant house. It was put up to stop the serial vandalizing. (What do you do after stealing copper wire? Go for the sheet rock? Pipes? Windows? Shingles?)

7:00 PM

A friend calls and mentions that local JCs had a spate of car vandalizations. This time targets are catalytic converters (for precious metal salvage?). I get the impression that today’s Gothic looter and Vandal is more ingenious than the state’s work force. Note the new California: the citizen is responsible for picking up trash or keeping a car running clean with a converter. The idea that a bankrupt state would create a task force to go after such thievery is absurd. I appreciate California logic: don’t dare suggest that massive new commitments to ensure social parity for millions of new arrivals through increased state legal, medical, criminal justice, and educational programs ever come at the expense of investments in roads, bridges, reservoirs, airports, or public facilities — or even the accustomed state services that one took for granted in 1970. To do so is nativist, racist, and xenophobic. What an illiberal state we’ve become.

8:00 PM

I’m on the upstairs balcony looking out over miles of lush countryside. It’s quite scenic, something in between verdant Tuscany and the aridness of Sicily. I can hear the ag pumps of the surrounding farms everywhere churning 24/7. In a normal year they would never be turned on, as river water irrigated the fields and recharged the water table.

Then come two sirens. Will the power go off? Quite often, someone after too much to drink goes airborne and hits a power pole on these rural roads. I got back inside in case things go dark to review the mail. The local irrigation district has not delivered water in four years (what do ditch tenders do when canals and ditches are empty?) and now wants a tax hike to keep up with increased expenses. In fact, half the mail seems to be drought information from various agencies. What was so awful about building just two or three one million acre-foot reservoirs, or raising Shasta Dam? We could begin today. When the taps at Facebook or the Google toilets go dry, will the state again invest in water storage?

10:00 PM

I turn on the local news and channel surf for 10 minutes. How well we take refuge in the absurd. This litany blares out: Bruce Jenner’s new sexual identity, the latest racial controversy, this time over the crashing of a private pool party and the police reaction, the Obama’s new stretch Air Force One jumbo jet, Marco Rubio’s one ticket every four years, Miley Cyrus’s bisexuality. I suppose if one cannot grasp, much less deal with, $19 trillion in debt, a foreign policy in shambles, the largest state in the union on the cusp of a disastrous drought, a Potemkin health care system, zero interest on passbook savings, and the end of all federal immigration law, then the trivial must become existential.

Goodnight, once great state…

Black Democrat Smear on Immigration Backfires

Karen Bass (pictured) is a black congresswoman who held a townhall in Los Angeles. She made sure to attack Steve King, and accuse those Republicans who refuse to back the farce of "Comprehensive immigration reform" of being secretly racist:

But it turns out her own constituents aren't happy:

About 300 people attended the meeting, and despite Los Angeles' deeply liberal bent, the crowd was sharply divided over what should be done with the millions of people who are living in this country illegally.
(....)
Several spoke out against a pathway to legalization, saying it would reward those who broke the law by entering the country illegally. Others pointed to the economy and unemployment and argued that the job prospects of Americans — particularly African Americans — would be harmed.

Keith Hardiner, 57, said he is the descendant of slaves.

"They were separated from their families, but we had to fight and struggle," said the Silver Lake resident. "And now I feel like we are being set back and the country is being kind of stolen from us."

In 1994, when Pete Wilson *tripled* the share of votes he and other Republicans usually get from African Americans becuse of their stance on the illegal alien issue, did anyone in the GOP Establishment pay attention? Or, like the Wall Street Journal, they so want their cheap maids and gardeners they have to do everything to smear border patriots?

How to REALLY win Hispanic votes

Allan Wall nails it:

OK, here's an interesting result from a California State Senate special election in a district that is 60% Hispanic, in which Republican Andy Vidak beat Hispanic Democrat Leticia Perez.

According to Breitbart, "Vidak, a working class candidate, resonated with working class Hispanics in the district who also saw how coastal California elites were not putting their bread-and-butter interests first." 

Breitbart also reported that: "Vidak ran broadly on "the bifurcation of California: the coastal liberal elites versus the Valley folks." On a more local level, Vidak's theme of "fish versus farmer" resonated with Democrats in a District where the unemployment rate is 15% and as high as 30% in some communities in the District." 

Rather than allowing hysteria about the Hispanic vote to provoke them to pander to the leftist Hispanic establishment, some astute Republicans might be able to use local issues to win elections. They could at least try to campaign against amnesty on the grounds that it hurts employment prospects among American citizens. It's worth a try.

THIS is how the GOP wins Hispanic votes.

Not by "Hispandering" amnesties that import a larger underclass that will vote Commiecrat, but by engaging those Mexican Americans who actually *run businesses*--as farmers, as restaurateurs, as contractors, as oil and gas drillers, as truckers, as "Jose' the Plumber". All of whom are being hurt--badly--by the Eco-Fiend Left in this state.

The "Green" Demunists in California have been shutting down agribusiness, "fracking" for oil and natural gas, road improvements, irrigation water and hydro power.

Wake up, GOP, and turn the "Brown Businesses" against the "Green" Eco-Fiends, who are really "Watermelons", "Green" outside, but Pinko Red inside.

How is allowing more illegal aliens in going to help the actual Mexican American and other Latin American CITIZENS who have always been here?

Update (08/02/13): Maybe not. Vidak is already pandering, too.

San Joaquin Valley's New Crime Wave

From the local TV news: "Thieves Make Off With Vineyard's Irrigation System":

MODESTO (CBS13) — Thieves crushed a grape crop when they took off with the tools that help a local vineyard to grow.

Grape grower Frank Rashid was on track for a record-breaking year.

“See how beautiful?” said Rashid, gesturing toward his grapes.

But in an instant, thieves crippled all of his hard work.

“A lot of trouble for me, [and] the grapes; I can lose the crop, you know,” said Rashid.

Bad guys stole the grape irrigation system worth more than $10,000. And now, his petite syrah grapes are starting to shrivel away.

Rashid says someone walked on to the 14-acre family vineyard over the weekend and went straight for the pair of tanks.

Each tank has a pump.

“And we have here a flush controller,” said Rashid.

A valve and a motor, and that’s not all.

“These parts would hold the filter pressure pump, and they took it out,” said Rashid.

In his 12 years of growing grapes, Rashid has never been hit by thieves. He believes the criminals will cash in his equipment as scrap metal. He plans to install a fence — and even cameras — to protect his crop.

“It’s not just hurting me, it’s hurting the winery, everybody,” said Rashid.

With his livelihood and his business on the line, Rashid hopes to replace the irrigation system by the end of the week. If it’s not installed in time, he fears the crop will be completely destroyed in one week.

If illegal aliens are “doing the jobs Americans won’t do”, so we are told ad nauseum, they are also stealing the pumps Americans won’t steal.

Of course the liberal Demunist Commiecrats and their media apparatchiks will claim it is "racism" to claim illegal aliens, or their former anchor baby now teenage children, did this. But who else besides Mr. Rashid would know about his irrigration system? It would likely be young men without authority in their lives, and it would have to be someone who knows someone working the property, and black inner city youth didn't drive out there, and white or asian suburbanites didn't either.White rural youth? Possibly, but they would be too busy working on, or guarding, their own family farms. Think about who the thieves might be, and how they got there.

And President Obama mocks those who want more sensible border policies with tales of moats and alligators.

And this sort of theft has increased up and down the San Joaquin Valley. What has changed over time? A "multicultural" education system that condones this crime, and an influx of rootless single men, who are the most likely to engage in thieving. Victor Davis Hanson explains:

...readying oneself for the next break-in — so our inland “California Corridor” has become (a way of life for farmers) from Bakersfield to Sacramento.

More specifically, I have been on the lookout around my farm for a predatory, nearly new, grey/silver Toyota truck that drives in and then speeds out — always a day or so before the nocturnal theft. He’s clever, this caser — and audacious too, like a wily Sherman tank prowling through the hedgerows. (Why, if poor, is he not home growing a tomato garden or scouring the roadside for the ubiquitous tossed aluminum cans and plastic bottles?)

On three separate occasions from June to August, I have had copper wire stripped out of pumps, the barn ransacked, and the two locks pried off the shop and various things stolen. (Why did they steal buckets of 1900 antique bolts and square nails and leave alone a drill press and grinder? Ease of recycling? Ignorance?)

When Metal Grows Legs

One of the stranger things in the California Corridor is to periodically walk around a barnyard and notice: “Hmm, that set of rusted furrowers is gone? Hmmm, what happened to those sections of 2-inch pipe? Hmmm, didn’t I have an old compressor next to the shed? Have I got dementia, or wasn’t there once upon a time three metal ladders leaning against the shop?” It is as if they became animate, grew legs, and quietly walked off in the sunset.

Hippo Regius

Twice I ran into the barnyard to see the truck, with its two gangbanger youths, peel off in clouds of dust. (And, yes, as a CSU ex-professor, I know the party line: the dominant culture neglects/exploits/oppresses/fill in the blanks the “other” to such a degree that he sometimes must lash out, or, on occasion, to find validation, might just do something illegal like steal buckets of antique nails, or illogical, like in poverty buying a new truck, and thus so disturbs/finally wins the attention of those with privilege and their self-constructed norms. Been there and heard that for thirty years).

The Toyota is always around when theft occurs, and always speeding off when anyone spots it. Rural California is also like North Africa circa 420 AD: the few family farms left are mostly fenced or walled, the dogs large, the owners armed — trying to survive against organized Vandal attacks. All we need are mosaics in the courtyard portraying happier times as a testament to future archeologists. Maybe a “Cave Canem!” on the doorstep.

I know of no neighboring farm that has not been broken into or fought/scared off such intruders. 

(...)

Then and Now

So it is that in 1935 poor people scraped and saved to cast a bronze plaque for their Depression-era new city hall, and in 2011 rather more affluent people ripped it off to melt it down for a layaway payment on some chrome rims or another round of meth.
(...)
Jaws on Wheels

Seven days ago, I left to teach here at Hillsdale for my month vacation. My son, back home on the farm — he often rushes out armed when trucks come into the driveway at night — called. He mentioned in passing that the Toyota was back, Jaws-like circling around the farm in short bursts of speed to see if anyone was there. (The modus operandi (for these thieves) in the rural California hinterlands is to drive into a farm, check if anyone comes out, if so, either peel out or even stay put to “inquire” about a “rental” or “work.” If no one comes out, then break a window, grab a TV or computer and speed off. Also: Please do not suggest, “call the sheriff”; I have, and even “filled out a report” over the phone, no less. Enough said. And yes, I probably should sell the 140-year-old farm and move away, but also probably won’t. Why leave and give in to barbarism? There are still far more good than lawless people in the valley.)

Stealing Up For a Truck?

My point in this long excursus? Note the description “late-model Toyota.” I think it is a Tacoma, maybe 2009-11, so not a cheap truck by any means.

Earlier another youth drove in without seeing me mowing the lawn. I ran up; startled he stammered, “Hey, mister, I’m only looking for scrap metal to buy.” (What is it with the national epidemic with good wire or scrap metal?)

Obamunist inflation in commodity prices, partly.

I’ll pass on his shoulder to finger sleeve tattoos, the ink drops under the eyes, the shaved head, wife-beater T-shirt, the inked-in but impressive religious icon tattooed on the neck, and the whole nine yards. As I wrote earlier, I immediately noticed brand new hot-water tanks, still in their labeled cardboard containers, in the bed of his truck. They seemed very “metal” to me, but not very “scrap.” Words were exchanged and he backed out.

Here’s the point: he too drove a brand new truck, this one a custom-painted fire-engine red Dodge, hopped up, with an expensive stereo blaring.

Chrome-rimmed Poverty?

Where are we going with this?

Yes, I confess once more to the same destination as the flash mobs and the London riots. What we think in the West now as too little is far too much. Both these thieves could trade in their multi-thousand-dollar trucks for cash to buy food, rather than steal the property of others and cause mayhem to make their payments. Heck, the rims alone are worth $1000.

(Thieves and gangbangers create a climate of general fear; they ruin the sense of tranquility, and they betray 150 years of collective labor of the now dead to create civilization from near nothing. Shame on them. Americans should not need to have armored rural mail boxes.) To suggest that they could do without the trucks or go without the dole, is not — channeling the president’s most recent speech warning against anti-government zealots — the same as wanting children to suffer from mercury poisoning or to render us helpless against the healthcare industry or to destroy government and want to start over from scratch.

(...)

Subsidizing Stasis

Maybe it is a fine and noble thing that the Obama administration vastly extended unemployment insurance. And, bravo, that nearly 50 million are now on food stamps. But a tragic voice from the past warns us that the more we diminish human incentives and guarantee a sort of cushioned permanent poverty, two things result: one, fewer people scramble to find productive work; and, two, envy sharpens as they begin to turn on their benefactors as being cheap, or mean-spirited in never giving quite enough to ensure parity with “them.” A cherry-red new truck or silver Toyota is never quite what others might have.

Epitaph

The problem with those who invaded my farm this summer was not poverty, but too much — at least in the sense of driving late-model trucks as they sought to destroy the lives and tranquility of others to get things that, by the very fact of their mode of transportation, they did not need. For the last two years, I have witnessed two constants: late-model cars in the valley shopping centers, an epidemic of obesity apparent to the naked eye, majorities on plastic food stamp debt cards, without apparent work in mid-morning, and a general unhappiness in the check-out lines that the government, state, city, etc. is not doing enough for them. All that is coupled with a media message of a cruel, heartless society that needs to do more for its oppressed — and a popular culture that damns any so witless and heartless for pointing the contradictions out.

Welfare on Top and Bottom

The welfare state, aside from being broke, is eroding initiative and warping reality — both for the elite at the top, like the executives who just milked a half-trillion dollars in sweetheart loans from some idiotic “green” bureaucrat, to the late-model truck drivers robbing productive farms to pay for their stereos and hydraulic-lifters.

It's a "DREAM "Act, all right....

A dream come true for the Commiecrats. And California circles the drain...From the LA Times. Mandating "Gay Studies" was bad enough, and now this?

Following through on a campaign promise, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law Monday easing access to privately funded financial aid for undocumented college students. He also signaled that he was likely to back a more controversial measure allowing those students to seek state-funded tuition aid in the future.
(...)
"Obviously it falls into a different realm when the money is coming out of private pockets than it does when it's coming out of taxpayers' pockets," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates halting illegal immigration, "but nevertheless, foundations and other institutions that get tax exemptions should not be promoting policies that encourage people to remain illegally in the United States."

But sadder still, too many Republicans are in dreamland too, dreaming of Hispandering to voters who will vote against them 2/3 of the time no matter what:

“I ask you, what is wrong with thousands of Latino and Hispanic students graduating from California’s higher educational systems, acquiring an education immersed in English, American government and constitutional core curriculum?”

What is wrong, for starters, is that the school system, especially at university level, has been taken over by “multicultural” (multicommunist) and “politically correct” (politically communist) lies and distortions. If anything, those Mexican Non-Americans (Anti-Americans?) who go through it are more likely to become Reconquista or “Brown Beret” traitors and terrorists. The last things we need are more Bogus Ethnic Studies “students”.

And even where the students are serious academically, which White or Asian or Black or Native American or LEGAL Mexican American students are crowded out, shoved aside, and having scarce financial aid taken away fromthem? Because that is what is happening, like it or not. Eric Hogue nees to be honest with himself about THAT before giving us sermons like this:

Republican members, leaders and voters need to be honest with themselves; the GOP must begin to represent our core principles without alienating or disenfranchising the Latino community.

Given the poison of identity politics, “multiculturalism” and “political correctness” that has infected our academics and our politics, Republicans CAN’T represent our core principles without “alienating or disenfranchising the Latino community.” You can’t win a Hispandering contest, Eric, stop trying.

“A recent survey of California Latinos reported that there was ‘some hope’ for the GOP winning the support of Latino voters. The instrument found that 69-precent of Latino voters ‘will likely consider’ Republicans who “ensure all children the chance to a first rate education.””

Big deal. Empty platitudes. We promise a little educational welfare, the Democrats promise more and the Demunist Commiecrats appeal to the ugly identity politics and separatism of the future Brown Berets and Reconquista traitors. And the GOP becomes even more of a minority party. Self fullfilling prophecy.

“Now that we’ve seen the 2010 census results, there can be no denying the immigrant shift in group identity is away from Republicans, and toward Democrats.”

Gee, self fulfilling prophecies tend to turn out that way, don’t they? Pete Wilson was right, and the Wall Street Journal cheap labor greedheads and Bush/Rove immigration romanticizers were wrong. And they have made it worse for the rest of us in the GOP.

Moreover, WHICH immigrants? There is no group more opposed to their attending college than the Asian American population. Those people will reward Republicans if college attendance is ended for those here illegally. Also it will open the doors for disadvantaged African Americans. Enrollments were cut by 30,000 and you want illegal student attendance. Our focus should be on educating U.S.A. Citzens first, then legal resident aliens, then legal foreign students.

And punting and blaming this mess on the feds is pointless. Arizona and other states are showing the way and acting where the corrupt and/or out of touch feds will not. And by taking action, Republicans WILL win elections. Heck, even a near majority of *legal* Mexican Americans are happy with Governor Brewer.

Illegal aliens: The REAL racism

Some time ago, supporters of open borders lost the debate. The majority of Americans want them closed — now! We are sick of the utterly dishonest slurs that we are "anti-immigrant," "racist," "protectionist" and "nativist." And noisy communist-inspired May Day parades with Mexican flags, American flags turned upside down or defaced, and treasonous rhetoric from the National Council of La Raza ("The Race") only turn more people off.


It doesn't do any good, either, for a Mexican government functionary to cry about how "mean-spirited" we are to want a secure border with Mexico. Most Americans also tuned that out long ago.

We know instead that Mexico cares mostly about sending north those it won't or can't feed and house — so it can skim off from them billions in remittances once they arrive in the United States.

Mexico's kleptocrat rulers, of course, could reform the country's corrupt laws and economy that is punitive to Mexican entrepreneurs whenever it wants. But it changes only enough to draw in tourists or Americans looking to buy vacation homes, not to better the lives of millions of its mestizo poor in the heartland.

And just who *are* the real racists? The Reconquista traitors, and those who want more of their own race imported, regardless of what is good for America as a whole.

Nowadays, worry about illegal immigration is just as likely to mean that African-Americans are terrified of racist alien gangs in Los Angeles, who have even begun randomly shooting African Americans.

There is an undeclared brown on black war going on, in the Los Angeles and Oakland high schools, which increasingly are nothing but preparation for the prison system for the youths involved, where the same race war goes on behind bars.

Meanwhile, Asian-Americans are frustrated that their relatives with doctorate degrees wait years to emigrate legally, while thousands of illiterates without grade school education, let alone high-school diplomas, simply break the law to enter the United States across the Mexican border.

And many Mexican-Americans are probably tired of being expected to defend the indefensible of foreign nationals breaking immigration laws simply because they may share an ethnic heritage with illegal aliens.

Dishonest Democrat candidates can't really claim that redneck racists are rushing to the border to clash with poor campesinos just crossing to better their lives, because frankly many poor Democrat voters also resent how illegal labor drives down their own wages. It is mostly the American poor and middle class who worry about the sudden influx of thousands who don't speak English and often need public assistance.

It's beginning to look a lot like--Mexico....

.....In the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley "Interior Areas" of California.

Do diversity concerns, as in lack of diversity, work both ways? Over a hundred-mile stretch, when I stopped in San Joaquin for a bottled water, or drove through Orange Cove, or got gas in Parlier, or went to a corner market in southwestern Selma, my home town, I was the only non-Hispanic — there were no Asians, no blacks, no other whites. We may speak of the richness of “diversity,” but those who cherish that ideal simply have no idea that there are now countless inland communities that have become near-apartheid societies, where Spanish is the first language, the schools are not at all diverse, and the federal and state governments are either the main employers or at least the chief sources of income — whether through emergency rooms, rural health clinics, public schools, or social-service offices. An observer from Mars might conclude that our elites and masses have given up on the ideal of integration and assimilation, perhaps in the wake of the arrival of 11 to 15 million illegal aliens.

Again, I do not editorialize, but I note these vast transformations over the last 20 years that are the paradoxical wages of unchecked illegal immigration from Mexico, a vast expansion of California’s entitlements and taxes, the flight of the upper middle class out of state, the deliberate effort not to tap natural resources, the downsizing in manufacturing and agriculture, and the departure of whites, blacks, and Asians from many of these small towns....

 And that's not just the people, it's the nature of how the rule of law no longer applies across the board:

Many of the rural trailer-house compounds I saw appear to the naked eye no different from what I have seen in the Third World. There is a Caribbean look to the junked cars, electric wires crisscrossing between various outbuildings, plastic tarps substituting for replacement shingles, lean-tos cobbled together as auxiliary housing, pit bulls unleashed, and geese, goats, and chickens roaming around the yards. The public hears about all sorts of tough California regulations that stymie business — rigid zoning laws, strict building codes, constant inspections — but apparently none of that applies out here.

It is almost as if the more California regulates, the more it does not regulate. Its public employees prefer to go after misdemeanors in the upscale areas (like talking on your cell phone or too many trans fats in upscale restaurant food) to justify our expensive oversight industry, while ignoring the felonies in the downtrodden areas, which are becoming feral and beyond the ability of any inspector to do anything but feel irrelevant. But in the regulators’ defense, where would one get the money to redo an ad hoc trailer park with a spider web of illegal bare wires?

Many of the rented-out rural shacks and stationary Winnebagos are on former small farms — the vineyards overgrown with weeds, or torn out with the ground lying fallow. I pass on the cultural consequences to communities from the loss of thousands of small farming families. I don’t think I can remember another time when so many acres in the eastern part of the valley have gone out of production, even though farm prices have recently rebounded. Apparently it is simply not worth the gamble of investing $7,000 to $10,000 an acre in a new orchard or vineyard. What an anomaly — with suddenly soaring farm prices, still we have thousands of acres in the world’s richest agricultural belt, with available water on the east side of the valley and plentiful labor, gone idle or in disuse. Is credit frozen? Are there simply no more farmers? Are the schools so bad as to scare away potential agricultural entrepreneurs? Or are we all terrified by the national debt and uncertain future?

California coastal elites may worry about the oxygen content of water available to a three-inch smelt in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, but they seem to have no interest in the epidemic dumping of trash, furniture, and often toxic substances throughout California’s rural hinterland. Yesterday, for example, I rode my bike by a stopped van just as the occupants tossed seven plastic bags of raw refuse onto the side of the road. I rode up near their bumper and said in my broken Spanish not to throw garbage onto the public road. But there were three of them, and one of me. So I was lucky to be sworn at only. I note in passing that I would not drive into Mexico and, as a guest, dare to pull over and throw seven bags of trash into the environment of my host.

In fact, trash piles are commonplace out here — composed of everything from half-empty paint cans and children’s plastic toys to diapers and moldy food. I have never seen a rural sheriff cite a litterer, or witnessed state EPA workers cleaning up these unauthorized wastelands. So I would suggest to Bay Area scientists that the environment is taking a much harder beating down here in central California than it is in the Delta. Perhaps before we cut off more irrigation water to the west side of the valley, we might invest some green dollars into cleaning up the unsightly and sometimes dangerous garbage that now litters the outskirts of our rural communities.

We hear about the tough small-business regulations that have driven residents out of the state, at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a week. But from my unscientific observations these past weeks, (for the illegal aliens) it seems rather easy to open a small business in California without any oversight at all, or at least what I might call a “counter business.” I counted eleven mobile hot-kitchen trucks that simply park by the side of the road, spread about some plastic chairs, pull down a tarp canopy, and, presto, become mini-restaurants. There are no “facilities” such as toilets or washrooms. But I do frequently see lard trails on the isolated roads I bike on, where trucks apparently have simply opened their draining tanks and sped on, leaving a slick of cooking fats and oils. Crows and ground squirrels love them; they can be seen from a distance mysteriously occupied in the middle of the road.

At crossroads, (typically illegal alien) peddlers in a counter-California economy sell almost anything. Here is what I noticed at an intersection on the west side last week: shovels, rakes, hoes, gas pumps, lawnmowers, edgers, blowers, jackets, gloves, and caps. The merchandise was all new. I doubt whether in high-tax California sales taxes or income taxes were paid on any of these stop-and-go transactions.

Joel Kotkin: The Golden State's War On Itself

While Joel Kotkin does correctly skewer the "progressive" eco-fiend leftists who have stifled development and parasitic unions that have bled public coffers dry, he skips over the immigration problem.

The changes Mr. Kotkin recommends, including abolishing the idiotic climate change laws, pension reform and deficit reduction are allnecessary conditions for recovery.

But necessary conditions are not sufficient. As another commenter noted, it is cowardice to ignore the tremendous social and economic cost of mass immigration from Latin America.

From the NR article "Catching Up to Mexico" by Alex Alexiev,

"In short, we are witnessing a highly advanced and prosperous state, long endowed with superior human capital, turning into the exact opposite in just one generation. What can be done to stop this race to the bottom? The answer is simple: California and Washington need to enforce existing immigration law. Unfortunately, it is difficult to convince the public that this is necessary, so deeply entrenched are myths about illegal immigration.

One myth is that because America is a country of immigrants and has successfully absorbed waves of immigration in the past, it can absorb this wave. But the argument neglects two key differences between past waves and the current influx. First, the immigrant population is more than double today what it was following the most massive previous immigration wave (that of the late 19th century). Second, and much more important, as scholars from the Manhattan Institute have shown, earlier immigrants were much more likely to bring with them useful skills. Some Hispanic immigrants certainly do integrate, but most do not. Research has shown that even after 20 years in the country, most illegal aliens (the overwhelming majority of whom are Hispanic) and their children remain poor, unskilled, and culturally isolated — they constitute a new permanent underclass."

Obama's Immigration Speech: Empty Platitudes

President Obama *could* be cutting through the red tape that is halting oil spill cleanup and plugging efforts in the Gulf of Mexico. But what is he making a speech for now? Amnesty for illegal aliens! Oh, I mean, "An Earned Path To Citizenship."

Like illegal aliens, who saw how they were allowed to stay anyway, will bother to comply with an "earned path to citizenship"? Especially when ACORN and other liberal groups will register them to vote anyway, and when bilingualism allows them not to learn English anyway, and when President Obama will allow the "unscrupulous employers" he talks about to get away with hiring them anyway?

And if they don't comply and don't earn their path, what then? Is any advocate of 'legalization' suggesting jail or deportation? Ineligibility for benefits and educational opportunities? A fine for not paying the fine? A sternly worded letter? What incentive is there for current criminals to take this magical yellow brick road of legalization? We've already been told that any sort of incarceration and then deportation is inhumane. And we've been told that enforcement of existing laws is impossible. But if this new, new monstrosity is passed, magically this will be enforceable?

Drew M. at AOSHQ nails it:

Obama just said something to the effect of 'illegal immigration makes a mockery of those going through the legal process'. Um, so the answer is to jump the illegals ahead of those playing by the rules? I guess my pants aren't sufficiently creased to understand that thinking.

Remember when Obama was considered a great orator? Why was that again?

My God, this is a speech filled with warmed over ideas, straw-men and catchphrases. At least it's being delivered in a low energy, stumbling manner.

I can only hope that this is Obama's "Malaise" speech, revealing the inept policies and empty rhetoric of this Administration. It certainly abounds with enough Obamunist Straw Men.

He says we're missing out on more Einsteins with our current laws. Yeah, that's what we're getting on the southern border. Millions of Alberto Einsteins. Of course, the liberal dupes will call the previous statement "hate speech". Like I am supposed to pretend that at this very minute, a truckload of people, each carrying a knife and a couple pounds of cocaine, are *not* making their way somewhere across the Mexican border.

I suppose he could be talking about the H-1B indentured servants for the tech industries. These are skilled and far better than illiterates (often in Spanish, let alone English) from south of the border.

However, what is happening in technology industries is the upper-class and white-collar version of what is happening in construction and agribusiness. In the tech field, the discouraged mostly white middle class workers have their potential wages bid down by H-1B's and so they leave technology and go work in accounting, finance, business, or now, given the liberal expansion, governmental bureaucracy. New immigrants from Asia, not culturally fluent in Americanisms or well spoken in English, can't follow them there.

In construction, manufacturing and agribusiness, the discouraged mostly black lower class workers have their potential wages bid down by illegals and so they leave that work and head off to welfare and drug dealing.

"Crime along the border is down", the Obamunist says. "It's more secure today than 20 years ago." Wow, news to those of us who live in Cali, let alone Arizona. All that was missing after that statement was a sitcom audience laugh track.

"Illegal immigration makes a mockery of those going through the legal process." Yes it does--and the answer is to make a further mockery of the legal process???

And then he brings up Straw Woman Emma Lazarus. Let us paraphrase it for the 21st century liberals:

Give me your criminals, your pushers, your huddled slavers yearning to run brothels, the wretched refuse of your failed state. I'll give them welfare checks!

In the absence of sensible border controls, that's exactly what we will be getting.

And, speaking of Emma Lazarus, let's remember what Ellis Island -- the Temple of the Immigrant -- really was. It was a processing center, holding facility, temporary jail, and quarantine. If you didn't qualify, you got sent home. Your name was processed through a bureaucrat who only spoke English. If you had any number of diseases, you were locked up until they could either send you home, you died, or you were no longer communicable. Ditto for Angel Island here on the West Coast.

And the biggest straw man of all -- "doing the jobs we won't"! The Obamunist actually has a self-fulfilling point here. If you go to Oak Park or Del Paso Heights around Sacramento here, or any other California ghetto for that matter, and offer the able-bodied high-school dropouts minimum wage plus room, board, and transportation to and from the farms and fruit orchards of "Apple Hill", let alone the orange groves in the San Joaquin Valley for the season, away from the drive by shootings and the violence, they're going to sneer at you. They already get room, board, and some spending money (as well as any drug money they can hustle) for sitting around with their friends and family. They're making a rational economic decision. And you can thank the very same Barack Obama and his fellow travelers for that.

The problem I have with those who spout off about "jobs spoiled Americans won't do" is that when they say that, they are sneering at those of us who *have* worked to get skills and/or education to do more than pick fruit. If they really *believed* that rhetoric, they would be changing welfare benefits and shaming the ghetto underclass so that their rational economic decision is not to sit around the ghetto getting high all day.

(And of course, it's called "racist" to ask able bodied African American Oak Park dwellers to move a short drive out of town to pick fruit, but it's somehow not racist to expect illegally-entrant Mexicans to move a thousand miles or more to pick said fruit).

With the liberals here, the game is "heads they win, tails we lose". They carp about the need for "a living wage", and then they import a massive underclass to drive the wages down. And to vote for more liberal Democrats.

Hysteria about the Arizona Immigration Law

Let's get real. The law requires police to check with federal authorities on a person's immigration status, but if, and only if, officers have stopped that person for some *other* legitimate reason and come to suspect that he or she might be in the U.S. illegally. The heart of the law is this provision:

"For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency...where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person..."

Critics have focused on the term "reasonable suspicion", but what fewer people have noticed is the phrase "lawful contact," which defines what must be going on before police even think about checking immigration status. That means the officer is already engaged in some detention of an individual because s/he's already violated some other law. So this law would come into play in a traffic stop, or a burglary, or a robbery, or some other arrest.

As far as "reasonable suspicion" is concerned, there is a great deal of case law dealing with the idea, but in immigration matters, it means a combination of circumstances that, taken together, cause the officer to suspect lawbreaking.

For example: human smuggling. An officer stops a group of people in a car that is speeding. The car is overloaded. Nobody had identification. The driver acts evasively. They are on a known smuggling corridor. That is a not uncommon occurrence in Arizona, and any officer would reasonably suspect that the people in the car were illegal.

But what if the driver of the car had shown the officer his driver's license? The law clearly says that if someone produces a valid Arizona driver's license, or other state-issued identification, they are presumed to be here legally and the lawman can go no further. An overcrowded car out on a joyride does not equal illegal alien trafficking in that case.

Is having to produce a driver's license too burdensome? These days, natural-born U.S. citizens, and everybody else, too, are required to show a driver's license to get on an airplane, to check into a hotel, even to purchase some over-the-counter allergy medicines out of fear they may be making meth. If it's a burden, it's a burden on everyone.

Meanwhile, a funny parody, because only the truth is really funny.

And our ever objective lamestream media coverage....

Growing the dope Americans won't grow

Trashing and burning the National Forests Americans won't trash and burn.

Underclass children will sink California

Months too late, California finally has a budget deal, through accounting maneuvers and budget cuts (including the release of convicted felons). But California's budget is toast—whether or not the economy turns around.

The cause: Millions of low-income, unskilled immigrants (and not just illegals) with lots of children have moved in. And lots of high- and middle-income Americans have moved out, even back to the states of their "Okie" and "Arkie" ancestors.

Immigration's highest cost is the public education of the immigrants' children. That falls on state and local taxpayers—not on federal taxpayers. Therefore, states with the largest number of poorer immigrant and poorer immigrant-descended students pay the most for over-immigration—although it is the result of failed federal policies.

In the fall, schools across America report average daily attendance (ADA) which is a measure of classroom hours of instruction. In the spring, schools collect data for students by race and ethnicity. The National Center for Educational Statistics data shows race and ethnicity as a percentage of students. For the tables below, ADA is multiplied by percentage of students by race and ethnicity:

U.S.	Total	White	Black	Hispanic	Asian/PI	Native Am
1986	36,863,867	25,952,162	5,935,083	3,649,523	1,032,188	331,775
2006	45,931,617	25,951,364	7,854,307	9,415,981	2,158,786	551,179
Change	9,067,750	(799)	1,919,224	5,766,459	1,126,598	219,405

Source: National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES).

Overall, in twenty years, the increase in Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander children in the U.S. made up three quarters of the enrollment increase for U.S schools.

In California in the same period, enrollment of White and Black children declined by 1.4 million. But enrollment of Hispanic and Asian students increased by 2.5 million students. Therefore, the increase in Hispanic and Asian students in California made up 132 percent of California's enrollment increase (and an incredible 28 percent of the enrollment increase for the entire country).

California	Total	White	Black	Hispanic	Asian/PI	Native Am
1986	4,429,792	3,118,5774	713,197	1,218,193	124,034	39,868
2006	6,349,270	1,917,480	495,243	3,142,889	742,865	50,794
Increase	1,919,478	(1,201,094)	(217,953)	1,924,696	618,830	10,926

Now am I saying these Hispanic and Asian children are bad children? Not at all. However, most of the Hispanic and even a percentage of the Asian children (Hmongs, for example) are from an impoverished underclass background and will be net takers of public services.

In most of the country, K-12 education is funded by local governments. But in California, K-12 education is funded directly by the state government. Reason: In 1978, voters passed Proposition 13 which capped assessed property values and limited the rate at which property taxes could rise. When a property sells, the assessed valuation rises to the sales price and the rate of growth is then capped again. This is not as much as a problem as opponents claim, because most properties have changed hands.

Of course, elite liberal opinion dislikes voters interfering in government's taxation plans . The London Economist reflected this consensus recently when it disparaged California's initiative system as "the crack cocaine of democracy".

But California voters, who are overwhelmingly homeowners, will never overturn the Proposition 13 initiative that capped property tax increases. And Proposition 13 is not the problem anyway. The state of California raises quite enough money through its increased income taxes. The tax burden that California imposes on its citizen is among the highest for the U.S. state governments. (Those interested in more detail can visit the website of the Tax Foundation in Washington, D.C.)

California has a very high and progressive income tax, among states the highest in the nation. The top marginal income tax rate of 9.55% starts at incomes over $47,055, which is a very low level for a top margin by U.S. standards. (There is a higher tax bracket on incomes over $1 million, but it is dedicated only to mental health funding. An initiative to divert that to the state general fund failed in May.)

Government budgets are made up of revenue and expenditures, just like budgets for everyone else. If expenses are too high, that is a problem. On an individual level, we respond by trying to cut expenses to balance our budgets. Right now, California's expenses are indeed too high. It has to do the same. But it won't.

California needs a two-thirds legislative majority to increase taxes, which means the Republican minority can still block new taxes. But In 1988, California voters passed Proposition 98, which guarantees school funding at 40 percent of the state general fund. And, behind that, the powerful California Teachers Union stands ready to fight any and all any cuts in education spenders, a.k.a. teachers' future pensions.

As every parent knows, children are a joy (mostly) but they are very expensive. The same can be said for the public cost of educating them. We care about our kids, but educating them is very expensive. We cannot put them up for adoption to other states.

We could, however, stop importing impoverished ones from other countries.

So, how does this all work out in California?

In fiscal year 2007-2008—the latest available—income taxes ($55.7 billion) and sales taxes ($27.1 billion) made up 81 percent of the general fund tax revenue ($102 billion) in California. The state sales tax does not apply to food and services. As required by Proposition 98, 40 percent of expenditures went to K-12 education ($41.billion). (Governor Schwarzenegger tried to suspend Proposition 98 but failed. And that would only be "kicking the can down the road" as the Terminator likes to say, because the immigrant poverty population continues to grow.)

Tax revenue is down. But when (and if) it goes up, the problem will not be fixed—because new poor people (and their children) arrive every day.

Since 1986, California added almost two million students, all (and more than all) because of immigration—see above. State tax revenue did not raise enough to cover the costs of the added children. Consequently, the California state budget deficit is $26 billion.

Most immigrants (illegal and legal) simply do not pay enough in taxes to support their public costs.

Education is the poster student for this basic fiscal truth. But it extends to all transfer programs.

According to California Franchise Tax Board figures for 2005, California income tax-payers earning over $70,000 claimed only 31 percent of dependents but paid 85 percent of income taxes collected. (www.ftb.ca.gov). The top 1 percent of taxpayers generated 47.5% of income taxes.

In contrast, the bottom 80% of taxpayers in California had 76% of all dependents but generated only 11.2% of state income tax revenue.

And that's not counting the many California residents with dependents who do not file taxes because their incomes are too low—or they are being paid off the books.

According to California state department of education figures, half (49.7%) of students participate in the federal lunch program. That means they are poor. Half (51.5%) of California students attend schools which get Compensatory Education funding (Federal Title 1 and State Impact Assistance Grant) for underachieving, low income students. Half of California's students are Hispanic and 11 percent are Asian/Pacific Islander. Of the English-language learners, 85 percent are Hispanic and of the Hispanic students 43% are non-English speaking.

But the legislators are talking only about tax revenues— not about all the poor immigrants.