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Why is liberal California the poverty capital of the US?

Kerry Jackson
LA Times
Sun, 14 Jan 2018 17:05 UTC
Demonstrators and homeless advocates rally in Anaheim, Calif
© Los Angeles Times
Demonstrators and homeless advocates rally in solidarity with those experiencing homelessness and Disneyland workers struggling with poverty wages outside the theme park in Anaheim, Calif. on July 14.
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's according to the Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes non cash government assistance as a form of income.

Given robust job growth and the prosperity generated by several industries, it's worth asking why California has fallen behind, especially when the state's per-capita GDP increased approximately twice as much as the U.S. average over the five years ending in 2016 (12.5%, compared with 6.27%).
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Better Earth

Why "open borders" is a bad idea and multicultural utopia a fantasy

George Gallatin
Quillette
Sat, 03 Feb 2018 17:40 UTC
globe
A decade before he fell to esophageal cancer Christopher Hitchens gave a series of riveting speeches on George Orwell. In them Hitchens argued that Orwell was an intellectual of such tremendous consequence because he got the "three great dramas" of the 20th century right. These were: the moral unsustainability of imperialism, the rising danger of Fascism, and the soulless cruelty of Communism. Most today agree that Orwell was a singularly perceptive observer of that barbaric century.

So in the opening decades of the new century, what are the great dramas bearing down on us? The danger of climate change is surely high on most lists. The promise and peril of artificial superintelligence? Or genetic engineering? Perhaps the danger lurks most in the threats we have slowly adjusted to and may be complacent about such as nuclear and biological weapons proliferation.

From my point-of-view, mass migration is the singular challenge of the 21st century. This is because it is a meta-issue that will affect our response to every other challenge. This is due to the fact that as mass migrations change demography, they may also affect changes in host nations' cultures and political economies. The specifics of these changes are exceedingly difficult to forecast, because they hinge on dozens of variables specific to the migrants, the host nation, and the scale and rate of the movements. While we do not yet know the vector, the titanic, high velocity migration the West is currently experiencing will cause profound changes.

Comment: See also: And be sure to check out Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind.

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Chart Pie

Making Islam great again? Polling Europe's Muslim migrant population

Judith Bergman
Gatestone Institute
Sat, 03 Feb 2018 17:16 UTC
City Hall, Graz, Austria.
© Tamirhassan/Wikimedia Commons
City Hall, Graz, Austria
  • In Germany, 47% of Muslims believe Sharia is more important than German law. In Sweden, 52% of Muslims believe that Sharia is more important than Swedish law.
  • The studies are supported by European intelligence reports. In Germany, intelligence agencies warned in the early fall of 2015 that, "We are importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other peoples, as well as a different understanding of society and law."
  • A recent Belgian study, in which 4,734 Belgians were polled, showed that two-thirds of Belgians feel that their nation is being "increasingly invaded".
"We cannot and will never be able to stop migration", wrote the EU's Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos recently. "At the end of the day, we all need to be ready to accept migration, mobility and diversity as the new norm and tailor our policies accordingly".

Given that such people would have us believe that migration has become such a categorical and seemingly incontestable policy of the EU -- "Migration is deeply intertwined with our policies on economics, trade, education and employment", Avramapolous also wrote -- it is crucial to analyze what kind of "diversity" the EU is inviting to make its home on the European continent.

Professor Ednan Aslan, Professor of Islamic Religious Education at the University of Vienna, recently interviewed a sample of 288 of the approximately 4,000 predominantly Afghan asylum seekers in the Austrian city of Graz, on behalf of the city's integration department. Members of the department understandably wanted to know the views of the Muslim newcomers there. The results were published in a study, "Religiöse und Ethische Orientierungen von Muslimischen Flüchtlingen in Graz" ("Religious and ethical orientations of Muslim refugees in Graz").

Comment: It's past time that liberals realize that their utopic visions of multicultural rainbows and unicorns will never actually be a reality. That's not the way human groups are wired. "Tolerant" policies inevitably lead to intolerance between groups (it's a two-way street). Without a shared group identity, there is anomie and distrust, and intergroup conflict. And the only way to change that in a "multicultural" "society" is through hardline authoritarianism. Remember what happened the last time Europe experienced a group that was perceived as unable and unwilling to integrate? The so-called Jewish problem resulted in the deaths of millions of Jews. State-enforced "tolerance" can lead to a major and violent reaction like the Holocaust, or a takeover such as Palestine experienced with illegal Jewish immigration. That is, unless European politicians can get their act together and try to reverse their idiotic migration policies. Good luck with that...

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Bad Guys

UK to use 'full force of government' to target wealthy Russian residents


RT
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:08 UTC
wealthy Russians

Cars are seen parked on a street in Knightsbridge in London
Rich Russians suspected of corruption will be forced to explain their luxury lifestyles in the UK as part of a crackdown on organized crime, British security minister Ben Wallace said.

He told the Times that he wanted the "full force of the government" to bear down on criminals and corrupt politicians using Britain as a playground and haven. "We will come for you, for your assets, and we will make the environment you live in difficult," he warned.

According to the British government's estimates, around £90 billion ($127 billion) of illegal cash is laundered in the UK each year. Under so-called 'unexplained wealth orders,' which came into force last month as part of the Criminal Finance Act, wealthy people will be forced to explain the source of their assets if there is reason to suspect corruption. Officials could seize suspicious assets worth more than £50,000 ($70,565).

Comment: Profiling is okay as long as it targets those evil-natured Russians.

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Георгиевская ленточка

Russia will not pursue mirror-like response to 'Kremlin list', action will be asymmetrical


RT
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:22 UTC
Russia United States embassy
© Maksim Blinov / Sputnik
A worker near the building of the US Consulate in Moscow
Russia's deputy foreign minister says the only reason behind the so-called 'Kremlin List' was a desire by the US to pressure Russia. He added that the planned reciprocal action would be asymmetrical.

"We have said it before and we are saying now that there can be only one political explanation for everything that is going on and this is Washington's desire to pressure Russia. Therefore, in this situation we are not pursuing exact mirror-like reciprocity and we will not act in a way that could harm ourselves," Sergey Ryabkov said in an interview published on Monday in Izvestia daily. He was answering a question about plans to respond to the Kremlin List's release by the US Treasury Department.

"We will answer when and if our president and other senior officials estimate the complexity of factors and come to the conclusion that the moment has come," he added.
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Bad Guys

Switzerland ranked as world's most corrupt country, followed by United States


RT
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:08 UTC
Switzerland Swiss flag
© Denis Balibouse / Reuters
A new study from advocacy group Tax Justice Network reveals that Switzerland is the world's most-corrupt country, with a "high secrecy score of 76." It's followed by the US and the Cayman Islands.

"Switzerland is the grandfather of the world's tax havens, one of the world's largest offshore financial centers, and one of the world's biggest secrecy jurisdictions or tax havens," said the group's report 'Financial Secrecy Index - 2018 Results'.

It explained that "the Swiss will exchange information with rich countries if they have to, but will continue offering citizens of poorer countries the opportunity to evade their taxpaying responsibilities.

Comment: It's worth noting that corruption in this index is defined by the avoidance of taxes, which is relatively tame compared to the damage caused by other other forms of corruption. If corrupt power was measured on the global chess board, the United States would blow all competition out of the water.

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Christmas Tree

Time to decriminalize cannabis & create a regulated market for marijuana - German police group


RT
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 16:11 UTC
Cannabis
© Nancy Honey / Getty
A German police officers group has called for the decriminalization of cannabis, arguing that "there has never been a society without drug use in human history, you just have to accept that."

Head of the Association of German Detectives (BDK) André Schulz spoke out in favor of ending the "arbitrary" ban on cannabis and creating a regulated market for marijuana.

"The prohibition of cannabis has historically been arbitrary and until today neither intelligent nor purposeful," Schulz wrote in the German newspaper Hamburger Morgenpost.

Comment: See also: San Francisco to expunge thousands of marijuana convictions which will "right so many wrongs"

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Attention

British court rules against extradition of hacker Lauri Love to US


RT
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:45 UTC
Laurie Love
© Tolga Akmen / Gloval Look Press
The UK's Lord Chief Justice says that British 'hacker' Lauri Love should not be extradited to the US to stand trial. He has been accused of hacking the secure networks of the Federal Reserve, NASA and the FBI.

An order to extradite him should be quashed, the Lord Chief Justice added. The court erupted in applause when the judgment was handed down.

Love, who suffers from Asperger syndrome, eczema, asthma, and depression, had his appeal case heard at the Royal Courts of Justice in London in November.
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Chart Pie

China: America's excessive sorghum 'dumping' is ruining farmers' livelihoods


RT
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:35 UTC
Taiwan farming
© Pichi Chuang / Reuters
A farmer sets off firecrackers to scare off birds in a sorghum field in Kinmen county, Taiwan
US President Donald Trump is not the only one unhappy about US-China trade. A Beijing investigation into US agricultural exports to China has found that America is dumping its produce.

Chinese authorities announced Sunday they would check US subsidies on the export of sorghum, a crop used to feed livestock and make a liquor known as maotai that is very popular with Chinese drinkers

According to China's Commerce Ministry, a preliminary investigation revealed "extensive dumping" of sorghum, causing "material injury" to Chinese farmers.

"The surging amount of imports from the US since 2013 has dragged down market prices, damaging China's grain sorghum sector," Wang Hejun, the head of the ministry's trade remedy and investigation bureau, said in a separate statement, as quoted by Bloomberg.
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Heart - Black

Nomadland: Many older Americans are living a desperate life in RVs

Richard Eisenberg
Market Watch
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 07:48 UTC
Many older Americans are living a desperate, nomadic life
© Getty
In her powerful new book, "Nomadland," award-winning journalist Jessica Bruder reveals the dark, depressing and sometimes physically painful life of a tribe of men and women in their 50s and 60s who are - as the subtitle says - "surviving America in the twenty-first century." Not quite homeless, they are "houseless," living in secondhand RVs, trailers and vans and driving from one location to another to pick up seasonal low-wage jobs, if they can get them, with little or no benefits.

The "workamper" jobs range from helping harvest sugar beets to flipping burgers at baseball spring training games to Amazon's "CamperForce," seasonal employees who can walk the equivalent of 15 miles a day during Christmas season pulling items off warehouse shelves and then returning to frigid campgrounds at night. Living on less than $1,000 a month, in certain cases, some have no hot showers. As Bruder writes, these are "people who never imagined being nomads." Many saw their savings wiped out during the Great Recession or were foreclosure victims and, writes Bruder, "felt they'd spent too long losing a rigged game." Some were laid off from high-paying professional jobs. Few have chosen this life. Few think they can find a way out of it. They're downwardly mobile older Americans in mobile homes.

Comment: America's failing infrastructure: Three fatal AMTRAK crashes in 49 days

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