Thread: IS CALIFORNIA POORER THAN MISSISSIPPI?

IS CALIFORNIA POORER THAN MISSISSIPPI?



By: Steven Greenhut
10/10/2013 09:39 AM

SACRAMENTO — Driving through the Mississippi delta from Tunica-area casinos to Jackson a few months ago, I saw few signs of the grinding poverty that was ubiquitous during my first visit there in the ‘80s. The shacks and “sugar ditch” — an infamous open sewer that highlighted the area’s plight — were gone, but the Magnolia State still looks poor by California standards.
Yet California’s real poverty rate is a nation’s-worst 22 percent, according to a new report by researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. Can this be true?
That’s not where the counterintuitive conclusions end. Many inland California cities are well-known bastions of joblessness and despair. But the use of a new California Poverty Measure (CPM) rather than traditional Census standards concludes the poorest spots are in California’s coastal metropolises.
Because CPM adjusts for cost-of-living factors, it leads to some strange outcomes. By most accounts, Imperial County is Ground Zero for high poverty. The report argues that Imperial County’s poverty rate of 22.1 percent is lower than San Diego County’s rate of 22.7 percent. That’s shocking, even with a high margin of error.
Likewise, the CPM suggests that Los Angeles County is the state’s poorest, and that San Bernardino County, the not-so-tony area that sprawls from Fontana to Needles, has a far lower poverty rate than glitzy Orange County.
We’ve all seen dubious research over the years touting, say, rates of hunger that put the United States on par with Zimbabwe. By contrast, the research here seems serious, and echoes a new alternate measure used by the Census Bureau. It does raise more questions than it answers.
Obviously, it costs far more to live in San Francisco or La Jolla than Clarksdale or Vicksburg, so it makes some sense to factor in cost of living. The CPM also looks at the amount of government assistance families receive and at expenses such as commuting costs.
Maybe the formula has gotten so complex that it no longer is measuring poverty, but is emphasizing what any reasonable person already knows: It’s painfully expensive for anyone to live in California’s coastal metropolises.
The study also seems to have a political agenda that promotes more social spending. “The CPM illuminates the important role of the social safety net — specifically, CalFresh, CalWORKS, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and other means-tested programs — in moderating poverty,” according to its summary. A Los Angeles Times article argues that the study “could add pressure” for increased aid from the feds.
One could just as easily argue that the high tax rates needed to sustain more social spending mean lower overall incomes. California’s high tax rates also are a disincentive for job creation, according to California’s main business groups.
Everyone — Right and Left — agrees that a growing economy with good-paying jobs is the best antidote to poverty. Broad agreement probably ends there. For instance, California’s high poverty rates are most pronounced in areas with high populations of unauthorized immigrants. In response to the findings, some liberal commentators have called for expanded services for them, while conservatives have called for tighter immigration rules.
Immigration strikes me as a diversion from the bigger issue. If poverty rates are exacerbated by a high cost of living, as the study suggests, then policy makers should — first and foremost — target policies that unnecessarily drive up prices. Inordinately high impact fees and land-use restrictions reduce the supply of housing and ratchet up their prices. And the study pinpoints housing costs as the main culprit in urban poverty.
Despite the study’s alarmist numbers, we know that San Diego is not Clarksdale, Miss. It’s not Brawley or El Centro, either. But the CPM does spotlight a problem that’s a touchstone for many of California’s most significant debates.
The new poverty numbers provide fodder for those who call for more anti-poverty aid, but they also bolster those who argue that the government is a barrier to home building and job creation. And those will always be the foundations of a middle-class life.

Steven Greenhut is the California columnist for U-T San Diego. Write to him at steven.greenhut@utsandiego.com.


http://www.humanevents.com/2013/10/1...n-mississippi/

Sanctuary Insanity: California Senate Passes “Anti-Arizona” Bill to Protect Illegal Aliens

By John Hill on July 6, 2012 in Blog, News, Opinion





It’s no contest. It’s not even close. California is America’s undisputed “Sanctuary State” for illegal aliens.
And now, in their hysteria over the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the central provision of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 – that requires police officers to check the immigration status of people they stop – California legislators are setting new lows in contempt for the rule of law.
The California Senate on Thursday passed a bill supporters dub the “anti-Arizona” law, which seeks to “shield illegal immigrants from status checks by local police” and which even welcomes in illegals from states such as Arizona.
The Democrat-led state Senate voted 21 to 13 for the California Trust Act, which blocks local police from referring a detainee to immigration officials for deportation unless that person has been convicted of a violent or serious felony.
The bill had already passed the state Assembly in a 47-26 vote before the Senate passage. It will go back to the Assembly for a concurrence vote following the summer recess before heading to Governor Jerry Brown, who would no doubt sign it.

Reuters reports:
“The measure seeks to create a national model to counter what backers say is racial profiling inherent in the part of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law allowed to stand by the U.S. Supreme Court last week. It also seeks to push back against a federal program called Secure Communities, which shares the same principles as Arizona’s law, supporters say.”

“Today’s vote signals to the nation that California cannot afford to be another Arizona,” Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a Democrat who sponsored the measure, said in a statement. ”The bill also limits unjust and onerous detentions for deportation in local jails of community members who do not pose a threat to public safety,” he added.
The problem is….well, ok there are several problems with this insane bill. First we have a state with by far the largest population of undocumented immigrants in the United States, with nearly 2.6 million at the start of 2010 – which is now welcoming in even more illegals. California is nearly broke, with much of it caused by that same mass of illegals – pushing hospitals, schools and social services to the breaking point or beyond. For example, 84 hospitals in California have entered bankruptcy or closed due to illegal aliens, as unpaid medical bills from illegals now cost state hospitals a staggering $1.25 BILLION annually (2010).
Secondly, we have legislators relying on radical pro-amnesty activists for actual data! For instance, they cited in the Senate record a “statistic” from Angela Chan, a senior staff attorney with the “Asian Law Caucus” that “seven of the 10 people deported under (Secure Communities) have no criminal convictions.” But an ICE spokeswoman, however, disputed that statistic, saying the actual numbers are reversed — that nearly 75 percent of people deported through Secure Communities have one or more criminal convictions – an inconvenient fact that Senate Democrats simply ignored in their mad rush to pass this sanctuary bill.
But most critically, the bill is a clear violation of Federal immigration law – which the Supreme Court ruling on S.B. 1070 makes even more stark. As the California State Sheriff’s Association, which opposes the bill, argued, state and local authorities cannot opt out of the Secure Communities program.
In addition, as legal scholar and national radio talk show host Mark Levin has argued, if – as the Court’s opinion striking down parts of S.B. 1070 clearly said - if states can no longer set policies dealing with someone’s immigration status in conflict with Federal immigration law, then the California Trust Act is clearly unlawful, and should lead to lawsuits challenging it, which Levin has encouraged:

“If this case stands for the point that only the federal government has power in the area of immigration, then let me suggest that sanctuary cities and sanctuary states are unconstitutional because they exist to defy federal immigration law,” Levin said. “That’s number one. So folks out there that have standing, sue your cities, sue your states if they have declared themselves to be sanctuary cities or states because they do not have the constitutional authority to declare butkus. So turn this law against them.” – Mark Levin

Sounds good to us! Bring it on California…not only will illegals flock to your state if you make this bill a law, but you will get your arses handed to you in Federal Court before you know it.
How long will the sane people left in the Sanctuary State continue to permit this Sacramento insanity to go on? Or have they left already?

http://standwitharizona.com/blog/201...llegal-aliens/

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