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The other problem for the Progressives and Uniparty types is that most of America and a fair number of Haitians agree. Haiti is a shithole. I\u2019m not going into that debate, I\u2019m going to discuss an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times titled, \u201cWhy is liberal California the poverty capital of America<\/b><\/a>?<\/a>\u201d The title is the standard politically correct way of the LA Times asking \u201cWhy is California a shithole?\u201d<\/p>\n Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country? Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor. That\u2019s according to the Census Bureau\u2019s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income. <\/b><\/p>\n Oh, I know the answer, and anyone with the capacity for logical thought knows it as well, but lets see what the LA Times comes up with for an answer. First, the Times throws some numbers out there showing how much has been spent \u201cHelping the poor\u201d remain poor.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not as though California policymakers have neglected to wage war on poverty. Sacramento and local governments have spent massive amounts in the cause. Several state and municipal benefit programs overlap with one another; in some cases, individuals with incomes 200% above the poverty line receive benefits. California state and local governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare programs, including cash-assistance payments, vendor payments and \u201cother public welfare,\u201d according to the Census Bureau. California, with 12% of the American population, is home today to about one in three of the nation\u2019s welfare recipients. <\/b><\/p>\n That\u2019s a lot of money and it has achieved…nothing.<\/p>\n The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse. <\/b><\/p>\n In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some states \u2014 principally Wisconsin, Michigan, and Virginia \u2014 initiated welfare reform, as did the federal government under President Clinton and a Republican Congress. Tied together by a common thread of strong work requirements, these overhauls were a big success: Welfare rolls plummeted and millions of former aid recipients entered the labor force. <\/b><\/p>\n Funny how that worked out, isn\u2019t it? Make people actually earn the money instead of sending them a check each month. Pity California didn\u2019t go that route.<\/p>\n The state and local bureaucracies that implement California\u2019s antipoverty programs, however, resisted pro-work reforms. In fact, California recipients of state aid receive a disproportionately large share of it in no-strings-attached cash disbursements. It\u2019s as though welfare reform passed California by, leaving a dependency trap in place. Immigrants are falling into it: 55% of immigrant families in the state get some kind of means-tested benefits, compared with just 30% of natives. <\/b><\/p>\n An aside here. When I went through the immigration process to bring the former Mrs. Webmaster to the United States, one of the things I had to agree to was that she would not be a burden on the United States taxpayer. In other words, she wouldn\u2019t get any welfare. Would someone please explain to me how more then half the immigrant families in California are on the dole? My second question is even more relevant. How many of them are actually in the United States legally?<\/p>\n Self-interest in the social-services community may be at fault. As economist William A. Niskanen explained back in 1971, public agencies seek to maximize their budgets, through which they acquire increased power, status, comfort and security. To keep growing its budget, and hence its power, a welfare bureaucracy has an incentive to expand its \u201ccustomer\u201d base. With 883,000 full-time-equivalent state and local employees in 2014, California has an enormous bureaucracy. Many work in social services, and many would lose their jobs if the typical welfare client were to move off the welfare rolls. <\/b><\/p>\n One of the problems with all this bureaucratic empire building in California is their pension system. It\u2019s collapsing. The unfunded liability is massive and they also have a problem with Progressives wanting to use it for political purposes. The California pension system invests it\u2019s funds in ways that are supposed to generate the maximum return possible with the smallest amount of risk.<\/p>\n The Social Justice Warriors would rather use that system to make political points. The results? Eventually, the money will run out. I won\u2019t eve bother going into just how gold plated the whole government pension system is.<\/p>\n Further contributing to the poverty problem is California\u2019s housing crisis. More than four in 10 households spent more than 30% of their income on housing in 2015. A shortage of available units has driven prices ever higher, far above income increases. And that shortage is a direct outgrowth of misguided policies. <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cCounties and local governments have imposed restrictive land-use regulations that drove up the price of land and dwellings,\u201d explains analyst Wendell Cox. \u201cMiddle-income households have been forced to accept lower standards of living while the less fortunate have been driven into poverty by the high cost of housing.\u201d The California Environmental Quality Act, passed in 1971, is one example; it can add $1 million to the cost of completing a housing development, says Todd Williams, an Oakland attorney who chairs the Wendel Rosen Black & Dean land-use group. CEQA costs have been known to shut down entire homebuilding projects. CEQA reform would help increase housing supply, but there\u2019s no real movement to change the law. <\/b><\/p>\n Of course not. In the socialist workers paradise that California is becoming, people owning property is a bad thing. The California housing shortages and the resulting ridiculously high prices are a direct result of Progressives policies. There used to be a joke that a listing for a house as a \u201cFixer upper\u201d usually meant you were spending a million dollars for a concrete slab and a stack of lumber. People don\u2019t find that funny anymore. Then we have the notorious California energy costs.<\/p>\n Extensive environmental regulations aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions make energy more expensive, also hurting the poor. By some estimates, California energy costs are as much as 50% higher than the national average. Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics, author of a 2015 Manhattan Institute study, \u201cLess Carbon, Higher Prices,\u201d found that \u201cin 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced \u2026 energy expenditures exceeding 10% of household income. In certain California counties, the rate of energy poverty was as high as 15% of all households.\u201d A Pacific Research Institute study by Wayne Winegarden found that the rate could exceed 17% of median income in some areas. <\/b><\/p>\n It gets worse. Thanks to California\u2019s idiocy, refineries find it easier to manufacture fuels that meet California standards and then force the other regions to use it. Those fuel standards raise the costs of manufacturing fuel for actual little gain. But it makes the Progressives feel good that they are doing something.<\/p>\n The next great progressive idea was raising the minimum wage to $15 dollars an hour. The results have gone about as you would expect. Businesses close to the margin either closed their doors or laid off workers and automated as much as they could. The Progressives, most of whom have never held a real job in their lives, never mind made a payroll, see businesses as nothing more then piggy banks that they can raid. It shocks them when these same businesses either close down or lay off workers to cut costs mandated by the ever so caring Progressive Social Justice Warriors. The results? Higher unemployment and more poverty.<\/p>\n Then we have all the Moonbat projects that the Progressives waste money on, such as Governor Brown\u2019s personal full scale model train set. The High Speed rail debacle, and that\u2019s all it can be called, went over-budget 10 minutes after approvals to build it were completed. Federal funding is, the last time I bothered to look, gone. This hasn\u2019t stopped Governor Choo Choo and the moonbats.<\/p>\n Apparently content with futile poverty policies, Sacramento lawmakers can turn their attention to what historian Victor Davis Hanson aptly describes as a fixation on \u201cremaking the world.\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n The political class wants to build a costly and needless high-speed rail system; talks of secession from a United States presided over by Donald Trump; hired former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. to \u201cresist\u201d Trump\u2019s agenda; enacted the first state-level cap-and-trade regime; established California as a \u201csanctuary state\u201d for illegal immigrants; banned plastic bags, threatening the jobs of thousands of workers involved in their manufacture; and is consumed by its dedication to \u201cCalifornia values.\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cCalifornia Values\u201d can be summed up rather simply. \u201cAll for one and I\u2019m the one!\u201d California is a shining example of what happens when narcissistic Progressives who spent their formative years sucking on a crack pipe manage to get into positions of power. They take the goose that lays the golden eggs, release it so that it can \u201cRun free!\u201d and then wonder what happened when all the gold eggs they had been counting on stop appearing in the goose\u2019s old nest. As for the goose? She\u2019s moved to Arizona or Texas and is laying more gold eggs then ever before, all the while, enjoying some BBQ.<\/p>\n All this only reinforces the rest of America\u2019s perception of an out-of-touch Left Coast, to the disservice of millions of Californians whose values are more traditional, including many of the state\u2019s poor residents. <\/b><\/p>\n With a permanent majority in the state Senate and the Assembly, a prolonged dominance in the executive branch and a weak opposition, California Democrats have long been free to indulge blue-state ideology while paying little or no political price. The state\u2019s poverty problem is unlikely to improve while policymakers remain unwilling to unleash the engines of economic prosperity that drove California to its golden years. <\/b><\/p>\n It\u2019s to late for California. The state is dead, it just hasn\u2019t fallen over yet. After President Trump won the election, much to the horror of the Progressive California Moonbats, they started talking about \u201cCalexit.\u201d The name came from \u201cBrexit\u201d which was Great Britain decision to leave the European Union. In point of fact, the moonbats were talking about seceding from the United States.<\/p>\n The \u201cPolitical scholars\u201d in the rest of the country generally remarked that \u201cThis idea was tried and it was determined that it wasn\u2019t allowed.\u201d The rest of the country has been saying, \u201cAre you assholes still here? When the Hell are you leaving already?\u201d With regards to secession, it\u2019s gotten even more interesting of late.<\/p>\n Recently, there has been talk of splitting the state in two. One part, primarily the coastal \u201cBlue\u201d progressive areas, along with Sacramento, would be one state, and the remaining two thirds would be a new 51st<\/sup> state. The people pushing this idea want to use the creation of West Virginia as a template. Will it go anywhere? Doubtful.<\/p>\n What may end up happening is the Moonbats running the state, (Right into the ground), will do something that triggers the Federal government to come in and clean house. With California\u2019s government flat out saying it was going to put illegal aliens ahead of American citizens and lawful resident aliens, and would protect them from ICE, things may be coming to a head.<\/p>\n ICE, (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), is about to start rounding up illegals in the Sanctuary cities and states. The Progressive politicians have stated flat out that they will not cooperate. The head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, has asked the Department of Justice if they can file criminal charges against city governments for violating federal statutes regarding illegal immigration. If a few mayors, some state legislators and the governor are criminally charged, and convicted…<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n