Ever wonder how a farm worker lives? It’s hard, because their wages are low, despite back-breaking work. They make do, although life is far from lavish.
These pictures show the life of farm workers in California: Carlos in Salinas, Lucio in Monterey, Betsy in Oxnard, and Vivaldo in Madera.
It seems to me that these people who are so important to our families’ nutrition should not have to live like this.
I don’t like outsiders coming into California and telling me what’s wrong with my state, especially when they haven’t done their homework. I’m galled by Donald Trump’s telling us how bad the violent crime is in California and attributing it to our immigrants.
According to the CATO Institute’s Immigration and Crime–What the Research Says, “Between years 2000 and 2005, California cities with large inflows of recent immigrants tended have lower violent crimes rates [emphasis mine] and the findings are statistically significant. During the same time period, there is no statistically significant relationship between immigration and property crime.”
The American Immigration Council says this in The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States: “For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime [emphasis mine]. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education.”
CNN reported in Immigrants and Crime–Crunching the Numbers that “numerous studies going back more than a century have shown that immigrants—regardless of nationality or legal status—are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or to be incarcerated. A new report from the Immigration Policy Center notes that while the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. more than tripled between 1990 and 2013 to more than 11.2 million, ‘FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48%—which included falling rates of aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41%, including declining rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary.’”
A GAO (U.S. Government Accountability Office) report shows an increase in immigrants arrested, but for immigration violations, traffic violations, and drugs, not for violent crimes. “Based on our random sample, GAO estimates that the criminal aliens had an average of 7 arrests, 65 percent were arrested at least once for an immigration offense, and about 50 percent were arrested at least once for a drug offense. Immigration, drugs, and traffic violations accounted for about 50 percent of arrest offenses. About 90 percent of the criminal aliens sentenced in federal court in fiscal year 2009 (the most recently available data) were convicted of immigration and drug-related offenses.”
I did my own bit of homework, all by myself. Trump and others like him have teams of people to do it for them. But they don’t care about the truth; they care only about sound-bites and riling us up against each other so they can jump in and say, “Trust me. I’ll save you.”
Go away and leave California alone. We don’t need your type of “saving”!
No, I’m not talking about Grandma’s home, which, thanks to Prop. 13, is secure even though she’s on limited income. I’m talking about how corporations are benefiting from that 1978 proposition while small businesses and the rest of us are suffering with greatly decreased public services, including education.
Robert Reich has a short, yet clear, explanation of what is happening. It’s worth the three minutes it will take you to view it.
Do you have a statute like California’w Proposition 13 in your state?
Go to Make It Fair California —
(https://www.facebook.com/MakeItFairCA/videos/1641088839470558).
Yesterday I wrote about a free ride for CA legislators. Today I’m again unhappy with my normally beloved state.
We’ve put in a lot of time, energy, and money to solve a problem: executions. We haven’t had any for 9 years, and 170 people currently sit on Death Row, 17 of whom have no appeals left to them.
After hassling with the Supreme Court for some time, our corrections department has come up with a new form of execution. Will it succeed where the electric chair, gas chamber, and 3-drug injections failed? And will “success” be measured in a population of 0 on Death Row?
I can’t help wondering if all the time, effort, research, and money put into devising this new killing system were put into repairing our biased, unequally applied, wealth-driven, often wrong legal system, if maybe we’d reach 0 population on Death Row naturally, through death-by-old-age or morally, by equal application of capital punishment and release of people who, thanks to that equal application and advances in science, should never have been there in the first place.
Interest groups are writing our laws. It surprised me to learn that a Capitol Tracking study of CA bills introduced during the 2011-12 session found that 27% were written by interest groups. Lawmakers simply added their names to them, and thy’re not required to acknowledge who actually wrote the bill. The bills that the governor signed into law during that time–60% were sponsored by interest groups and 30% by legislators. That means that lobbyists–non-elected individuals–are essentially making our laws.
In defense of our elected officials, term limits ensures that most are new to the job. It takes much of their terms of office to learn a little about a lot of issues and a lot about a few issues. Then they’re out of a job and new people take over. They have to depend on someone, then, to advise them. That’s the lobbyist’s task, and we can only hope that our best interest is being put forward along with whatever it is that the lobbyist is promoting.
Are you happy with the laws being proposed and passed? In January,Senator David Vitter (R-LA) introduced a Constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Congress. If you think that all Californians are getting fair treatment and protections under our system, support Vitter’s proposal. If not, let your discomfort with the idea be known to your Congress-member right now.
“No, Your Honor, I couldn’t have raped her because she wasn’t married.” In California, this is a valid defense, thanks to an old 1872 law. Julio Morales admitted that he’s sneaked into a woman’s bed, pretended to be her boyfriend, and had sex with her until the light hit his face and she realized it was not her boyfriend. She shoved him off of her and reported the incident to the police. As his defense, he cited that old law. He never impersonated her husband, he said, just her boyfriend. The judge agreed and dismissed the charges. Apparently, only married women can be raped in our fine state.
To be honest, this is a vast oversimplification. But it goes without saying that it’s well past time to change this law.