Dec 032011
SACRAMENTO, CA-Nearly 1 million undocumented immigrantscould live and work openly in California with little or no fear of deportation under an initiative unveiled Friday by a state legislator and others.
Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, a Democrat, is helping spearhead the measure, called the California Opportunity and Prosperity Act.
The proposal was filed Friday with the state Attorney General’s Office, marking a first step toward a drive to collect the 504,760 voter signatures needed to qualify for the ballot.
Fuentes called the measure a “moderate, common-sense approach” necessitated by the federal government’s inability to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
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Oct 082011
California Gov. Jerry Brown, right, signs AB 130 Dream Act bill on the back of Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, left, at the Mather Luther King Library at the Los Angeles City College Monday, July 25, 2011, in Los Angeles.
Illegal immigrants can now apply for state-funded scholarships and aid at state universities after Gov. Jerry Brown announced Saturday that he has signed the second half of a legislative package focused on such students.
AB131 by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, is the second half of the California Dream Act. Brown signed the first half of the package in July, which approved private scholarships and loans for students who are illegal immigrants.
Under current law, illegal immigrant students who have graduated from a California high school and can prove they’re on the path to legalize their immigration status can pay resident tuition rates. The bill would allow these students to apply for state aid.
The contentious second half of the package requires that immigrant students meet the same requirements as all other students applying for financial aid at state universities but specifies that they only qualify for financial aid after all the other legal residents have applied.
“The signing of now both parts of the California Dream Act will send a message across the country that California is prepared to lead the country with a positive and productive vision for how we approach challenging issues related to immigration,” Cedillo said.
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Aug 232011
California voters are in for quite a surprise when they head to the polls in 2012: competitive congressional elections and possibly unfamiliar names on the ballot.
A new electoral map drawn up by a panel of ordinary citizens and criticized as creating too many districts for minority representation has dramatically changed California’s political landscape. Members of Congress who’ve held their seats for years are now scrambling to figure out their political futures.
“We’re going to have more competitive elections in November than this state has seen, probably in two decades,” political expert Allen Hoffenblum told Fox News.
Hoffenblum says if the result of previous redistricting was that it protected incumbents, the error with the citizens’ map is that it is heavily skewed to racial demographics.
“We went from a political gerrymand to a racial gerrymand. That the commission became overly conscious of drawing seats on race. The Latino seats, the black seats, the Asian seats. And in the process of creating these districts based on race they divided counties, they divided cities and split cities.”
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Aug 082011
The Electoral College could be inching closer to extermination as California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill Monday that would award the state’s 55 electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote.
The bill would take effect only if the states that hold a majority of the 538 electoral votes approve similar legislation. With California’s addition, that total now stands at 132, almost 49 percent of the 270 needed.
Under the electoral college, people don’t actually vote for president. They vote for electors, who then vote for president. It was developed as a compromise between those who wanted Congress to elect the president and those who wanted the president elected by popular vote.
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Jun 302011
Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law California’s tax on Internet sales through affiliate advertising which will immediately cut small-business website revenue 20% to 30%, experts say.
The bill, AB 28X, takes effect immediately. The state Board of Equalization says the tax will raise $200 million a year, but critics claim it will raise nothing because online retailers will end their affiliate programs rather than collect the tax.
Amazon has already emailed its termination of its affiliate advertising program with 25,000 websites. The letter says, in part:
(The bill) specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers – including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you – even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.
We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.
The new law won’t affect customers, Amazon said, but added that the immediate termination of the affiliate program also applies to endless.com, myhabit.com and smallparts.com.
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Further reading: California tells online retailers to start collecting sales taxes from customers
May 092011
Federal officials are surprised that the man accused of shooting to death a Buckeye police officer this week was wrongly classified as a U.S. citizen.
According to Vince Picard with the Phoenix office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 27-year-old Cesar Tomas Quiroz-Leon was transferred to Arizona in 2009 after completing prison time in California.
“At one time, Quiroz-Leon was a legal, permanent resident with a green card,” Picard said, “but after serving a sentence for a felony, he should have been deported.”
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Dec 272010
Abandoned farms, Third World living conditions, pervasive public assistance — welcome to the once-thriving Central Valley
The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California. I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most lavish entitlements, the near-worst public schools (based on federal test scores), and the largest number of illegal aliens in the nation, along with an overregulated private sector, a stagnant and shrinking manufacturing base, and an elite environmental ethos that restricts commerce and productivity without curbing consumption.
During this unscientific experiment, three times a week I rode a bike on a 20-mile trip over various rural roads in southwestern Fresno County. I also drove my car over to the coast to work, on various routes through towns like San Joaquin, Mendota, and Firebaugh. And near my home I have been driving, shopping, and touring by intent the rather segregated and impoverished areas of Caruthers, Fowler, Laton, Orange Cove, Parlier, and Selma. My own farmhouse is now in an area of abject poverty and almost no ethnic diversity; the closest elementary school (my alma mater, two miles away) is 94 percent Hispanic and 1 percent white, and well below federal testing norms in math and English.
Here are some general observations about what I saw (other than that the rural roads of California are fast turning into rubble, poorly maintained and reverting to what I remember seeing long ago in the rural South). First, remember that these areas are the ground zero, so to speak, of 20 years of illegal immigration. There has been a general depression in farming – to such an extent that the 20- to-100-acre tree and vine farmer, the erstwhile backbone of the old rural California, for all practical purposes has ceased to exist.
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