How the legalization of illegal migration and homelessness is leading to a new wave of disease outbreaks.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
The media recently reported that Los Angeles County’s ongoing typhus epidemic had infected Deputy City Attorney Liz Greenwood.
"Who gets typhus? It's a medieval disease that's caused by trash,” she wondered.
Greenwood is partially correct. The typhus outbreak, like the hepatitis outbreak, was directly caused by social justice policies that legalized public vagrancy, and leaving trash and human waste on sidewalks. The piles of trash, human waste and people combine to create horrifying diseased conditions. Before Greenwood, many Los Angeles patients who had been diagnosed with typhus were indeed homeless.
"There are rats in City Hall and City Hall East," she complained. "There are enormous rats and their tails are as long as their bodies."
The rats are a problem, but the fleas that carry the virus that Greenwood has can live on a variety of animals, including stray cats and possums. That’s why the typhus outbreak isn’t just happening in Skid Row, but has spread to Long Beach and Pasadena. And while the homeless encampments act as incubators for the disease, it’s not the only social justice policy spreading disease across America.
Or at least in California and Texas.
“It’s never been considered a very common disease,” Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, noted, “but we seem to see it more frequently. And it seems to be extending across from Southern California all along the Mexican border into southeastern Texas and then into the Gulf Coast in Florida.”
America never had much of a history of typhus, but Mexico did. And our brief episodes of typhus invariably involved immigrants and migrants carrying the disease from Europe or Mexico.
The first outbreak of the disease in this hemisphere occurred in Mexico back in the 17th century and there have been 22 major outbreaks since then, caused in part by refugees and crowded conditions. Typhus was so associated with Mexico that it was even known as Tabardillo or Mexican typhus fever. There was extensive debate as to whether Mexican typhus was different than European typhus.
The first case of typhus in southern California was linked to Mexican refugees.
Dr. L.M. Powers, a Los Angeles physician, was the first to spot it. "The first recognized and recorded cases of typhus fever in southern California occurred in the summer of 1916, when many Mexicans came to this section during a civil war in their own country," he wrote in a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The first victim of typhus had visited El Paso. Dr. Powers linked many other typhus cases in Los Angeles to Mexico. Historical records show that these cases involved migrants and Mexican railway workers.
In saner times, American authorities understood the problem and took common sense measures to fight the spread of the disease. The rise of typhus cases in California a century ago led to a campaign that included the delousing of anyone coming into the United States from certain parts of Mexico. Leftists have revisited this history in recent years to make obscene analogies to Holocaust gas chambers.
But despite the insistence that disinfection stations were motivated by racism, rather than real fear of the disease, the 67 typhus cases in El Paso make it very clear that there was a real problem.
El Paso’s efforts to keep out typhus were touched off by the death of Dr. W. C. Kluttz, who spotted the disease in the Mexican refugees that he was treating, before becoming infected and dying of it.
Dr. Kluttz was far from the only medical professional who lost his life to the disease. Dr. Howard Taylor Ricketts, the brilliant pathologist after whom Rickettsia, the genome that causes typhus is named, died while trying to isolate typhus in Mexico City at the request of the Mexican government.
At Dr. Kluttz's funeral, El Paso's Mayor Lea called for "a strong federally enforced quarantine here that would effectively stop the entrance into this country of disease-bearing persons from south of the Rio Grande."
The ambitious 2,000 mile quarantine ultimately proved to be a success, preventing Mexico’s typhus outbreaks from spreading into the United States. But it also claimed a toll with at least one inspector, David M. White, conducting disinfection procedures, contracting typhus and dying of the disease.
Illegal migrants seeking to bypass the quarantine however spread the disease in unlikely places.
A 1921 outbreak of typhus on a Navajo reservation was attributed to it being on a “pathway for itinerant laborers.” That particular outbreak appears to have killed 27 Navajo Indians.
The quarantine is history and typhus cases continue to rise in border states.
Texas saw a surge of typhus cases between 2008 and 2016. And the cases have been heavily concentrated in counties with high illegal populations. But officials insist on blaming ‘global warming’.
The number of typhus cases rose from 30 in 2003 to 519 in 2017. Hidalgo County had the highest incidence with 99 cases. Hidalgo County contains 6% of the state’s illegal alien population. Harris County has the second highest rate with 71 typhus cases and contains 24% of the state’s illegal alien population. Hidalgo has some of the youngest and newest illegal alien arrivals which may account for its high typhus infection rates.
Bexar County, with 59 typhus cases, the fourth highest rate of infections, hosts 4% of Texas illegals.
Typhus had fallen off the radar in the United States. It had been delisted by the CDC in 1994. And then it made a comeback in the middle nineties. Los Angeles saw a rise in the number of typhus cases in 1996 around the same time as futile efforts were being launched to fight the plague of illegal migration.
Now the situation has worsened. And it will only keep getting worse.
Like superstitious dark age types, leftists insist on blaming the typhus outbreaks on global warming, caused by an angry ‘Mother Earth’ rather than on the very real spread of disease by people. Instead of preventing the spread of disease, they insist that we must repent for our crimes against the environment, and recycle more, and then the earth will cool and the typhus outbreak will stop.
This denial of basic scientific facts is at the root of the typhus outbreak. Raising taxes in a bizarre scheme to change the weather is a bizarre folly that will do absolutely nothing to stop the spread of typhus.
The legalization of illegal migration and homelessness, is leading to a new wave of disease outbreaks.
Epidemiology shows us that typhus flares up in border counties and areas with large illegal alien populations. From there, it takes root in poor areas with bad hygiene. Fleas carried by rats, possums and cats can then pass on the disease to people who would have never expected to come down with it.
We know how to stop typhus. It begins with ending public vagrancy and illegal migration.
The Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney called typhus a “medieval disease”. Senator Kamala Harris of California ridiculed President Trump’s proposal for a border wall as “medieval”. California Rep. Harley Rouda urged Trump to “give up on the outdated notion of building a wall from medieval times.”
Rouda represents parts of Orange County. The O.C. had 15 typhus cases last year.
If you want to stop a medieval disease, you might want to start with a medieval wall.
This story also ran on The Atlantic. This story can be republished for free (details).
The doctor instructed his patient to stand in front of him. He cupped her crotch and inserted his fingers into her vagina through her clothes, moving his hand repeatedly to her rectal area. Then he squeezed her breasts, according to a formal accusation filed by the Medical Board of California.
The patient, accompanied to the appointment by her 4-year-old granddaughter, asked why that was necessary to diagnose a urinary tract infection, according to the documents. He told her to let him do his job.
In three other cases, the board alleged that the family doctor, Ramon Fakhoury of California’s Inland Empire, touched patients’ genitals for no medical reason. In 2016, the board handed him 35 months of administrative probation, requiring him, among other things, to have a chaperone when treating females.
Fakhoury did not admit to the allegations, according to his attorney, and criminal charges against him were dropped. If he successfully completes probation next year, he’ll be able to practice without restriction.
The Medical Board of California put family physician Ramon Fakhoury on 35 months of probation after several patients alleged he had touched their genitals for no medical reason. Until he completes probation, he must have a chaperone present when treating female patients. He did not admit to the allegations. Previously, he faced felony sexual abuse-related charges, which were dismissed after a jury deadlocked. (Courtesy of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department)
With a mission of patient protection and doctor rehabilitation — not punishment — California’s medical board and those in other states make decisions under laws and norms that can seem discordant in the #MeToo era.
California is often cited as one of the more rigorous states in overseeing doctors. But, according to the medical board, very few sexual misconduct complaints are reported to the board in the first place, historically under 200 a year. Even fewer result in a formal accusation against a doctor. And when discipline is found to be warranted — typically in fewer than 20 cases a year — the board tends toward leniency, sometimes granting a few years of probation even in instances of severe misconduct, according to a KHN analysis of medical board records.
More than a third of doctors sanctioned by California’s board in cases that alleged sexual misconduct received probation in the past 10 years — some more than once. The terms of probation — which is not a criminal court action but places conditions on a physician’s license — often required temporary chaperones, as well as psychotherapy and courses in “professional boundaries” and ethics. (Through probation, the medical board can only place conditions or restrictions on a doctor’s license in civil proceedings; it does not take criminal court actions.)
“They love giving second chances” to physicians, said Marian Hollingsworth of San Diego, a frequent critic of the California medical board. “It makes you wonder where their priorities are. … Their first loyalty is supposed to be patient safety and that doesn’t always happen.”
Nassar, accused of abuse by scores of girls and women under the guise of medical treatment, is now serving what amounts to a life sentence. Prosecutors are considering criminal charges against Tyndall in more than 50 cases, and the state medical board has suspended his license while seeking revocation. He has denied the allegations.
Larry Nassar sits in court on Feb. 5, in Charlotte, Mich., before being sentenced for three counts of criminal sexual assault. Nassar, accused of abuse by scores of girls and women under the guise of medical treatment, is now serving what amounts to a life sentence. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
And just last week, 17 women sued Columbia University and its affiliated hospitals, alleging that the facilities engaged in covering up decades of sexual abuse by one of its OB-GYNs.
Research has shown that many doctors who sexually exploit patients, like other perpetrators of abuse, don’t stop with one victim. They “perpetrate such behavior for years before being stopped,” said the authors of one study.
Against this backdrop, California Gov. Jerry Brown in September signed landmark patient protection legislation requiring doctors who are on probation for sexual and other serious misconduct to notify patients of their status and the terms under which they must practice. It will take effect next July. The bill had failed twice before.
“It’s time,” said the bill’s lead author, Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo). “The #Me Too movement has really made it very clear that there are individuals even in the most respected professions who abuse their authority.”
Even as sexual abuse complaints filed with the medical board rose significantly in the past year to coincide with the rise of #MeToo, board officials say they plan no major changes in how the board dispenses discipline in sexual misconduct cases.
The #MeToo movement “has not changed us,” said the board’s executive director, Kimberly Kirchmeyer. Cracking down on sexual misconduct has always been “one of the board’s top priorities,” she said.
Digging Into The Records
KHN examined all 135 cases of alleged sexual abuse investigated by the board that resulted in sanctions from July 2008 through June 2018. (The analysis did not include discipline based on proceedings in other states.)
More than a third of sanctions were for sexual misconduct with more than one victim, and the vast majority of alleged perpetrators were men accused of exploiting women.
Doctors’ licenses were revoked in 39 cases and voluntarily surrendered in 38. Several doctors received public reprimands — a minor sanction.
The largest share of sanctions — 49 cases, or more than a third — were for probation.
According to the board’s disciplinary guidelines, the minimum probation period is seven years for a doctor found to have engaged in sexual misconduct — whether it is a sexual relationship with a patient, sexualized touching during exams or inappropriate sexual conversation.
But those “minimums” were not applied in more than half of the probation cases, according to the KHN analysis. The guidelines allow exceptions based on “mitigating circumstances,” the age of cases, the quality of evidence and other factors.
Kirchmeyer noted that the board treats every case as unique and places a high value on a doctor’s remorse and acknowledgment of wrongdoing.
In eight cases, KHN found, a doctor sanctioned for sexual misconduct had previously been sanctioned for similar misconduct.
Dr. Patrick Mark Sutton, a Pasadena obstetrician-gynecologist, received probation twice — the first time for four years after investigators alleged sexual misconduct in 2002. In 2011, he was placed on probation again — this time for three years — following allegations that he improperly rubbed a patient’s thigh and engaged in inappropriate sexual conversation.
He denied all sexual misconduct allegations in 2002 and 2011, admitting only to medical record-keeping violations in both cases.
This September, after he had completed mandated ethics and “boundaries” courses, the medical board filed a new accusation against Sutton, saying that he had called a patient “hairy” and asked the patient, who was naked from the waist down under a drape and in stirrups exposing her genitals: “Do you enjoy orgasms? You are a very beautiful woman,” according to the documents. That case is pending.
Sutton’s lawyer, Gary Wittenberg, said in an emailed statement that “the allegations in the pending Accusation are untrue and we will prove that in court.”
In several cases, the board granted probation knowing the doctor had been convicted of misdemeanor criminal charges stemming from sexual abuse investigations.
Fakhoury, the Inland Empire doctor, had faced felony sexual abuse-related charges but was not convicted due to a hung jury, according to San Bernardino County Superior Court records.
His lawyer, Courtney Pilchman, told Kaiser Health News that the criminal charges were dismissed afterward and that the doctor “did not stipulate” to — or admit to — the medical board accusation.
By contrast, Ohio’s medical board, upon learning of California’s sanction, in 2012 revoked his state license.
The number of disciplinary actions taken over the decade is strikingly small given the size of California’s practicing physician population of more than 100,000. Alleged victims of sexual abuse by physicians are significantly less likely to come forward than sexual abuse victims in general, some research indicates.
However, numbers provided by the medical board suggest that many of the complaints that are filed — whether by victims themselves or other sources — do not result in formal accusations against doctors. From October 2013 through June 2018, 838 complaints were designated by the board as possible sexual misconduct. During that same period, 74 accusations were filed. (Multiple complaints could be filed about one doctor.)
Experts and lawyers familiar with the board offered various explanations: Some complaints may be false. Doctor sexual misconduct can be hard to prove by “clear and convincing evidence,” as required in medical board cases. Accused physicians often hire experienced lawyers who aggressively fight back, leading to delays and deals. Victims may decline to testify or present poorly as witnesses.
Some victims, for instance, have psychiatric disorders or believe that they were engaging in a “consensual” relationship, according to medical board documents.
Board staff have worked hard to treat alleged victims sensitively, Kirchmeyer said. Expert reviewers are instructed to read complaints as if the person is telling the truth, she said, and the board plans weeklong training sessions to help investigators work better with alleged victims and prepare them for testifying.
The cases often drag on. It can take years for victims to come forward in the first place — and more time for cases to wind their way through the state’s complex bureaucracy. Evidence can go stale.
“Physicians have to have due process,” Kirchmeyer said. “Anyone can make a complaint about anyone at any time.”
Tracy Lystra at her home in Aguanga, Calif. (Heidi de Marco/KHN)
‘Slap In My Face’
Facing what they see as an uphill battle, lawyers from the state Department of Justice, who handle administrative hearings, will sometimes pre-emptively recommend probation — even in serious sexual misconduct accusations — to avoid the possibility a doctor will get no sanction at all from a judge, said Laura Sweet, a former deputy director who retired in 2015.
Sweet, who worked for the medical board for 23 years, said the legal process focuses on the doctors and does not always give sufficient weight to the pain of alleged victims. “You’re sending a message that’s potentially minimizing what the victim endured.”
That’s how Tracy Lystra sees it, too. In 2013, Lystra sued her Fallbrook, Calif., OB-GYN, Anthony S. Bianchi, alleging that he harassed her with comments about her body and how she aroused him, whispering into her ear as she lay on a gurney before surgery that she looked like a “sexy librarian.” She said the case, which also alleged medical negligence, was settled for $150,000 in 2016. Bianchi, who could not be reached for comment, denied the allegations in court documents.
Through her attorney, Lystra filed a complaint to the medical board shortly after settling with Bianchi. This past July, she received a letter from the board saying it would not be able “establish grounds for discipline” against Bianchi in her case, “considering all the evidence and mitigating factors.”
Ultimately, she learned that the board had received complaints from other women.
In 2014, Bianchi had been put on five years’ probation after the board accused him of making inappropriate sexual remarks to two patients, telling one he dreamed of having oral sex with her and couldn’t stop staring at her breasts. After learning of these cases, another woman came forward, alleging Bianchi several years earlier had blocked his office door with a chair, inserted his fingers into her vagina, exposed his penis and asked her for sex.
The board’s penalty was another five years’ probation. But the two probation terms overlap — and Bianchi, who agreed not to contest the allegations as part of the settlements in each case, could go back to work as an OB-GYN without restrictions in 2021. In the meantime, he is not allowed to treat female patients.
Learning that Bianchi received such a light punishment — and that the board would not take action on her own complaint — was crushing, Lystra said, noting that it had been so difficult to get anyone, including her family, to believe her.
“I really wanted him stopped. It was so disappointing when medical board responded the way it did,” Lystra said.“It was a slap in my face.”
Methodology
In its analysis, KHN requested every sanction for sexual misconduct issued by the Medical Board of California over the past 10 years, the name of each doctor involved and his or her license number. The board responded with 181 actions against 175 doctors from fiscal year 2008-09, beginning in July, through fiscal year 2017-2018, ending in June. (The records were designated by the board as primarily for sexual misconduct but often included other allegations.)
KHN used the board’s document lookup search on its website to review its available public records on each doctor. KHN mentioned sanctions outside the 10-year period when records showed the doctors were repeat offenders.
The analysis excluded cases in which the board took action in response to sanctions issued by other states’ medical boards for sexual misconduct outside California.
For each sanction, KHN determined the number of alleged victims identified in the board’s accusations, their gender, type of sanction, length and terms of probation, type of alleged sexual misconduct and whether the board took note of any previous or concurrent criminal proceedings.
KHN also requested the number of complaints the board received alleging sexual misconduct, and how many formal accusations the board filed each year after the allegations were investigated and merited disciplinary action. The board did not have data for all 10 years, but provided the number of complaints received and the number of accusations filed from October 2013 through the end of the 2017-18 fiscal year.
Harriet Blair Rowan: hrowan@kff.org, @HattieRowan Related Topics CaliforniaMental HealthDoctorsPatient SafetyWomen's Health Tracy Lystra at her home in Aguanga, Calif. In 2013, Lystra sued her Fallbrook, Calif., OB-GYN, Anthony S. Bianchi, alleging that he had sexually harassed her —which Bianchi denied. Lystra said the lawsuit was settled for $150,000 but that her attorney’s subsequent complaint about the doctor to the Medical Board of California was rejected based on a review of the evidence and “mitigating circumstances.” In the meantime, Bianchi received two probation terms for alleged sexual misconduct with three other women. (Heidi de Marco/KHN)
Back on election night, Republicans were heading for victories in California. Three weeks later, Paul Ryan lamented, “we lost every close race.” For the outgoing House Speaker, it “defies logic,” and quite possibly election law as well.
This year California legalized “ballot harvesting,” which empowers a third party to collect ballots and deliver them to election officials. The more than 250,000 election day vote-by-mail drop-offs were also the result of ballot harvesting. And the Election Integrity Project California found discrepancies in the totals of poll and mail ballots cited by the state and four counties in southern California.
“It shouldn’t ‘defy logic’ that elections officials are meticulous in counting every eligible ballot,” California secretary of state Alex Padilla told reporters. “California works to ensure every ballot is counted properly and every ballot is accounted for. In the most populous state in the nation — and the state with the largest number of registered voters — this takes time.”
According to Padilla, “in California, we believe in an inclusive and accessible democracy,” and
“provide voters as many opportunities as possible to cast their ballots.” These include “no-excuse vote by mail, automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, and early voting.”
Padilla talked up the “accuracy and integrity of our elections” but wasn’t about to allow any independent group to investigate the possibility of voter fraud. This was not a new development.
California’s 2015 “motor voter” law empowered the Department of Motor Vehicles automatically to register as voters those who get driver’s licenses. Secretary of State Alex Padilla claimed that protocols and “firewalls” would keep ineligibles from voting, but there was room for reasonable doubt. After the 2016 election, Padilla refused to release any information to a federal probe of voter fraud, which he called a “false and debunked” claim.
For the 2018 election, Padilla expected “millions of new voters on the rolls in the state of California.” True to form, by March, 2018, the DMV had issued licenses to more than one million illegals and from April to August registered 182,000 “new voters.” Padilla isn’t saying how many illegals actually voted or how many illegal ballots were among those “harvested” to flip close races for Democrats.
Instead of investigating, the state’s slavishly pro-Democrat establishment media pins the results on anti-Trump backlash. Politicians and pundits also ignore the state’s voting history. California voted for Ronald Reagan as governor and except for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Republican presidential candidates won California in every election from 1952-1988. That includes Reagan’s two victories and George H.W. Bush in 1988.
In 1986, California passed Proposition 63, the Official Language of California Amendment. This measure directs the state legislature to “preserve the role of English as the state’s common language” and refrain from “passing laws which diminish or ignore the role of English as the
state’s common language.” A full 73 percent of California voters approved the measure but state officials ignored it. English proficiency is required for citizenship but in 2016, the California voter guide came in English and six other languages: Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.
In 1996 voters passed Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, by a margin of 54 to 46 percent. This measure ended racial, ethnic, and gender preferences in college admissions, state employment, and state contracting. The worst offender had been the University of California and current UC president Janet Napolitano still gives preference to false-documented illegals, who get in-state tuition and even legal services.
In 1998, 60 percent of California voters passed Proposition 227, which barred bilingual education, which was really instruction entirely in Spanish for the children of illegals. By 2016, Democrats had enough votes to repeal the measure, and they looked to incoming illegals as their expanding electoral college.
According to an MIT study, the number of illegals in the United States is not 11 million but 22 million. Last year the Public Policy Institute of California pegged the number in the Golden State between 2.35 and 2.6 million, but the true figure, following the MIT model, is surely more than double.
California is a sanctuary state and offers illegals the most lavish benefits, including voter registration. That’s why the latest “caravan” is headed for California, the farthest place from Central America on the U.S.-Mexican border. Democrats are eager for a new shipment of voters. That’s why razaist attorney general Xavier Becerra threatens legal action against the Border Patrol, not the mobs of violent criminals who attack U.S. federal agents.
Meanwhile, secretary of state Alex Padilla claims accuracy and integrity in elections. On the other hand, Padilla refuses to cooperate with probes of voter fraud, declines to open up the voter rolls, and will not allow independent inspection of election results.
Without transparency, Paul Ryan has reason to doubt the results of the close races long after election night. Legitimate citizens and legal immigrants have good cause to suspect massive voter fraud, the best explanation for the electoral changes in California since the 1980s.
dailycaller Evie Fordham Sept 22/2018 Hospital systems are making secret contracts with insurers that are
keeping health care costs high, a Wall Street Journal report revealed,
prompting alternative health care advocates to point out the flawed
nature of the U.S. health care system.
“Health care is the only
industry I can think of where technology is used as an excuse for price
to go up and productivity to go down because of these perverse
incentives,” The Health Rosetta founder Dave Chase told The Daily Caller
News Foundation. “The perverse incentives at a high level are
generally, either directly or indirectly, the worse job [the hospitals]
do, the more they get paid.”
TheWSJ’s Tuesday report detailed
“dozens of contracts with terms that limit how insurers design plans”
so they cannot exclude powerful hospital systems, which when included in
health plans can drive up costs for employers and employees.
These
secret contracts often include clauses that mandate insurers steer
consumers away from less costly health care providers or give hospitals
the ability to “mask” their prices, according to TheWSJ. If plans did
not include these more costly health care systems, they could be up to
10 percent cheaper, the report stated.
Some major health care systems with insurer contract clauses that could be driving up health plan costs reportedly include:
Hospital systems have increased their leverage with insurers through mergers and takeovers,
often becoming the only providers in certain areas. There was “the
highest number recorded in recent history” in 2017 with 115 of these
types of deals, a 13-percent increase from 2016, according to a report by health care forecasting firm Kaufman Hall.
“It’s the insurers that retain the greatest leverage,” Melinda Hatton of the American Hospital Association told TheWSJ.
Many
in the hospital industry maintain that insurers have controlled the
game for a long time, and these secret contracts are just a way to gain a
little bit of control back. But hospitals are already “the largest
single component of health-care spending in the U.S.” at over $1
trillion each year, TheWSJ reported.
“The
insurance industry gets its justification to exist by selling the idea
that only it can help make those mysterious health care costs
affordable,” Novak wrote. “If the bean counters figure out a way that
hospitals can do better without the private insurers around, it’s hard
to see why they wouldn’t simply sweep them away faster than Amazon put
an end to your local book store.” Follow Evie on Twitter @eviefordham. Send tips to evie@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
California has escalating crime, cities teaming with homeless people, clogged and crumbling roads, massive unpaid bills, some of America’s highest taxes, and some of its worst public school systems.
So what’s the plan by Gavin Newsom, the Democratic Party’s candidate for governor, to improve the situation? On Tuesday he suggested giving free health care to illegal immigrants.
Speaking on a left-wing podcast, the former mayor of San Francisco said: “I did universal health care when I was mayor, fully implemented, regardless of pre-existing condition, ability to pay, and regardless of your immigration status. I’d like to see that extended to the rest of the state. San Francisco is the only universal health-care plan for all undocumented residents in America.”
Thus continues California progressives’ war on the state’s law-abiding and productive residents, especially its middle class. If Newsom becomes governor, they may get to pay for health care for people who don’t even belong in the country and can’t or won’t pull their own weight.
It’s unclear if Newsom and his progressive allies understand that dispensing a growing list of government benefits to groups of people creates an unwanted magnet effect. In 2016, Los Angeles voters approved a bond initiative throwing an extra $1.2 billion at the spiraling homeless problem – on top of existing programs. The result: more homeless people and more crime.
frontpagemag Bruce Thornton Aug 17, 2018 The Left Coast is burning. Oregon is fighting 13 wildfires encompassing 185,000 acres. California is battling 19 fires, including tornados of fire called "fire whirls," which have gobbled up 577,000 acres and left eight dead. A good progressive who never lets a crisis go to waste, Governor Jerry Brown told Californians, “With climate change, some scientists are saying that Southern California is literally burning up.” He warned that man-made global warming created a “new normal,” and that “more serious predictions of warming and fires to occur later in the century, 2040 or 2050, [are] now occurring in real time.”
A few days later Brown had a tweet-duel with President Trump, who in contrast claimed, “California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws,” like those against thinning and clearing forests: “Tree clear to stop fire spreading!” Seems like on this issue, the allegedly doltish Trump has the better argument than the Berkeley and Yale-trained Brown.
Indeed, doctor of environmental science and forester Bob Zybach for years has been the Cassandra warning about misguided policies on forest management. According to Zybach, wildfires began to increase in the late 70’s, at the same time policies moved away from active management of forests to a more hands-off “natural” approach. In the past, “Mostly fuels were removed through logging, active management — which they [the Feds] stopped– and grazing,” Zybach said in an interview. “You take away logging, grazing, and maintenance, and you get firebombs.”
In other words, leaving the forests to “nature,” and protecting the endangered Spotted Owl created denser forests––300-400 trees per acre rather than 50-80–– with more fuel from the 129 million diseased and dead trees that create more intense and destructive fires. Yet California spends more than ten times as much money on electric vehicle subsidies ($335 million) than on reducing fuel in a mere 60,000 of 33 million acres of forests ($30 million).
Once again, global warming “science” is a camouflage for political ideology and gratifying myths about nature and human interactions with it. On the one hand, progressives seek “crises” that justify more government regulation and intrusion that limit citizen autonomy and increase government power. On the other, well-nourished moderns protected by technology from nature’s cruel indifference to all life can afford to indulge myths that give them psychic gratification at little cost to their daily lives.
As usual, bad cultural ideas lie behind these policies and attitudes. Most important is the modern fantasy that before civilization human beings lived in harmony and balance with nature. The rise of cities and agriculture began the rupture with the environment, “disenchanting” nature and reducing it to mere resources to be exploited for profit. In the early 19thcentury, the growth of science that led to the industrial revolution inspired the Romantic movement to contrast industrialism’s “Satanic mills” and the “shades of the prison-house,” with a superior natural world and its “beauteous forms.” In an increasingly secular age, nature now became the Garden of Eden, and technology and science the signs of the fall that has banished us from the paradise enjoyed by humanity before civilization.
These old ideas lie behind much of what passes itself off as “environmental science.” Salvation from our ancient sin of creating science and technology will come from restoring that ruptured bond with a benevolent nature. Keeping the environment pristine and “natural” by closing it off to development or recreation becomes government policy, one ruthlessly enforced by the aptly named Environmental Protection Agency, rather than the more practical environmental management agency. Bounties of resources like oil and natural gas are left undeveloped to “protect the environment,” and forests are banned from logging or even thinning. Carbon-based energy is proscribed, and billions in pork is distributed to “clean energy” alternatives. Starting in kindergarten, school curricula are crammed with the environmental gospel and its rituals like recycling, and its holy days like Earth Day. And “natural,” “organic,” and “green” have become potent marketing lures for attracting consumers.
Even worse, all this propaganda is passed off as “environmental science.” But at its heart lies the old nature myths founded on an erroneous assumption: that humans are natural creatures whose most fulfilling happiness comes from restoring that lost bond with the simpler, more authentic natural world. In fact, humans are not natural creatures. Our bodies come from nature, but our humanity comes from our minds and free will. Everything in nature is determined by the laws of physics, and has no intrinsic value or worth, no beauty or meaning other than what humans give it. As French philosopher, Luc Ferry writes, man:
Is indetermination par excellence: he is so oblivious to nature that it can cost him his life. Man is free enough to die of freedom . . . His humanity resides in his freedom, in the fact that he is undefined, that his nature is to have no nature but to possess the capacity to distance himself from any code within which one may seek to imprison him.
Human freedom and consciousness make man literally unnatural, his choices and actions often spontaneous and uniquely capable of being creative and destructive.
The untouched nature glorified by romantic environmentalism, then, is not our home. Ever since the cave men, humans have altered nature to make it more conducive to human survival and flourishing. After the retreat of the ice sheets changed the environment and animal species on which people had depended for food, humans in at least four different regions of the world independently invented agriculture to better manage the food supply. Nor did the American Indians, for example, live “lightly on the land” in a pristine “forest primeval.” They used fire to shape their environment for their own benefit. They burned forests to clear land for cultivation, to create pathways to control the migration of bison and other game, and to promote the growth of trees more useful for them.
And today we continue to improve cultivation techniques and foods to make them more reliable, abundant, and nutritious, not to mention more various and safe. We have been so successful at managing our food supply that today one person out of ten provides food that used to require nine out of ten, obesity has become the plague of poverty, and famines result from political dysfunction rather than nature.
That’s why untouched nature, the wild forests filled with predators, has not been our home. The cultivated nature improved by our creative minds has. True environmentalism is not nature love, but nature management: applying skill and technique to make nature more useful for humans, at the same time conserving resources so that those who come after us will be able to survive. Managing resources and exploiting them for our benefit without destroying them is how we should approach the natural world. We should not squander resources or degrade them, not because of nature, but because when we do so, we are endangering the well-being of ourselves and future generations.
The great irony is that our current indulgence in worn-out myths is made possible by the technologies that protect us from nature’s cruel indifference to our existence. Freed from the drudgery of agricultural work, where nature’s famines and droughts were a constant reminder of its inhumanity, we can demonize the very science and technology that have created the material paradise in which we in the West live. Only the well-fed and comfortable have the luxury of seeking psychic solace from the dream of an untouched mother nature and the supposedly simple, more authentic life she once provided our ancestors.
Using nature for therapeutic solace by visiting national parks or watching Disney movies like Bambi or Pocahontas is not a problem. But turning a taste in recreation or entertainment into public policy, and then claiming the policy is based on science and so is unquestionable, endangers the well-being of other human beings less affluent than us. Demonizing genetically modified foods or carbon-based energy on dodgy science worsens the lives of billions of people across the globe. Such behavior bespeaks the selfish rich, who enjoy the comforts of coal-fired electric plants and abundant, nutritious food. It also reveals something else uniquely human: moral idiocy.
As the current wildfires incinerating the West Coast show, indulgence in myth sometimes endangers us too. Rather than idealizing nature to soothe the anxieties that attend the benefits of our high-tech urban civilization, we need to go back to what humans have been doing since the Stone Age: managing and conserving nature’s resources so that they provide benefits for humans now and in the future. After all, nature’s value doesn’t even exist without the human beings who give it that value, whether as resources to develop, or beauty to admire.
You expected something cogent from this former SF City Attorney? dailycaller benny johnson 7/5/18
Even though the Fourth of July is seen as a holiday of unity for all
Americans, there were still some in the political world who chose to use
the holiday to send a partisan message. In particular,
Democratic Senator and potential 2020 candidate Kamala Harris tweeted
odd political commentary on Wednesday’s holiday, erroneously claiming
that “eight immigrants” signed the Declaration of Independence.
A reminder this Fourth of July: it was eight immigrants who signed the Declaration of Independence. Happy Independence Day.
It
is a historical fact that of the 56 people signed the document, the
vast majority of which were American-born. The point is also strange
because America was not an independent nation at the time and therefore
had no immigration laws of its own yet. It is safe to say the internet
reacted badly to the Democrat Senator’s tweet.
56
people signed it. 48 were born in the American colonies. 2 were born in
England, 2 in Ireland, 2 in Scotland, 1 in Wales, 1 in Northern
Ireland. https://t.co/JlEyHTxwRd
Since
there was no country at the time, they endorsed no immigration laws.
Once they founded a country, they instituted immigration laws. https://t.co/WyUI6W1asd
Forty-eight
of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence were born in
America. The other 8 were British or Dutch, same as our entire
colony/country for about 200 years. https://t.co/tzswX9ovgx
California is poised to become the first state in the nation to offer full health coverage to undocumented adults even as the Trump administration intensifies its crackdown by separating families at the border.
The proposal — which would build on Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2015 decision to extend health coverage to all children, regardless of immigration status — is one of the most daring examples yet of blue-state Democrats thumbing their nose at President Donald Trump as they pursue diametrically opposed policies, whether on immigration, climate change, legalized marijuana or health care.
“California has never waited for the federal government, or for a political climate, to be able to take leadership on a whole host of issues,” state Sen. Ricardo Lara, author of the state Senate bill to extend Medicaid coverage to all adults, told POLITICO.
But at a time when Trump is already attempting to re-energize state Republican voters — he met with California conservatives at the White House last week to strategize against the state’s sanctuary policies — the initiative might be risky. For starters, it will be costly: The annual price tag to expand Medicaid benefits to poor adult immigrants without legal status is projected at $3 billion annually. Some also worry that extending health coverage could make California a magnet for undocumented immigrants from other states.
“It would give Republicans relevance in California they would never have before,” said David McCuan, a political analyst and political science professor at Sonoma State University. He suggested the proposal would energize Republican voters, who make up a quarter of the electorate, as well as conservative-leaning unaffiliated voters.
Any meaningful opposition could slow the plan’s progress through the state Legislature despite its strong backing from Democrats, providers and advocates for the poor.
California is a diverse, populous state full of potential. Yet for residents in twenty-one counties in Northern California—and they are particular about their truly northern status compared to San Francisco—they feel left out. I learned first-hand about the struggles for these rugged salt-of-the earth conservatives during a three-day visit to the region. I gave two speeches on conservative activism and to recruit help for the fight against California’s increasingly unpopular sanctuary state law, SB 54.
“North State” is so far north, the closest airport is in Medford, Oregon. The region stretches from California’s northwesternmost county, Del Norte, to the northeastern corner of Modoc County, down to Tuolumne County (which just opted out of SB 54). The citizens want more than respect. They want to form their own new state: Jefferson. The namesake comes from President Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a free republic emerging in the Pacific Northwest and a desire for more regional autonomy.
“To the rest of the state, we don’t exist” says Louis Gliatto, the head of the Yreka (not Eureka) Tea Party and Siskiyou County Committee member for “Citizens for Fair Representation.” To prove how out of touch the Rest of California (ROC) has become, Tehama and Siskiyou counties were the first jurisdictions to opt out of SB 54, one month before Los Alamitos passed its own Constitution Compliance ordinance. The two North State counties openly declared that they would comply with federal law. How could the press have missed this? A county of 44,000 residents deserves to be recognized for taking that bold step. This new state project is not new, yet few know about it. In the late 1870’s, the state legislature was limited to 120 representatives, but the state population has skyrocketed. Only until the 1930s did legislative districts account for size and population for representation in Sacramento. In 1941, this spread-out conservative community of ranchers, loggers, and farmers initiated the movement to break away, frustrated by the growing disconnect and lack of representation from Sacramento. Today, three state senators and six assembly members must compete with the dominant LA and Bay Area delegations.
The Jefferson movement faded away quickly in the wake of World War II, but California’s reckless escalation of progressive policies has revived the Jefferson movement for the last five years. In northern cities and along the roads, Jefferson signs and flags (a green field featuring a gold prospector’s pan with two Xs’s to represent the sense of being double-crossed by the rest of California) gently stand out or wave under many of the American flags, all on proud display throughout the region. Despite the left-wing tilt of Mendocino, Sonoma, and Marin counties, Jefferson residents are down-to-earth entrepreneurs, engineers, and invested farmers. They laugh about the differences between Humboldt County, with its commercial kush and tie-dyed shirts; and Siskiyou County, where lush, verdant pastures match the unofficial banner, and colorful sunsets greet the peaceful homesteaders. Jeffersonians vocally oppose commercial marijuana, too, as its illegal cultivation and distribution (despite the passage of pro-pot initiative Prop 64 in 2016) has caused violent crime and corruption to spike.
Hosted at the Bacigalupi Ranch—owned by husband Jerry and wife Donna with their daughter Debbie—I witnessed a new world in the same state, and I connected with hard-working conservative activists in their own right. I discovered that I wasn’t the only town mouse in a land that would please a country heart. Many Siskiyou County residents relocated to escape the expensive busyness of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Another woman relocated for health reasons. Other residents owned thriving businesses in the Bay Area, but they couldn’t stand the liberal politics any longer.
Republican leaders in the region joked that they had come to Northern California for an easy retirement, but now they face a new set of political fights. Bringing wealth and prosperity to Jefferson, they still chafe under the progressive tyranny of Sacramento, and it shows. Democratic Party micromanaging has wiped out a once-thriving timber industry. City markers from thirty years ago represent once-bustling communities which have all but disappeared or gone dormant. Welfarism and drug abuse have grown rapidly because of economic stagnation and political persecution. Jefferson farms feed the state and country, but in return the political class feeds off their money, work, and property. The Democratic leaders are now targeting their dams for full removal (read “destruction”), which would ruin farms, homes, and businesses along the Klamath River. All the “Damn the Dams!” talk has forced down property values and diminished hopes of relief within Jefferson.
Taking a tour of the Bacigalupi ranch, I learned directly about California’s burdens on the region’s ranchers. Jerry wanted to expand a man-made lake on his own property. He put off the project for one decade, then found out that project’s fee ballooned from $800 to $5000 a year. Frustrated, Jerry abandoned his development plans for his own property. Fortunately, Jeffersonians don’t take the government’s abuse lightly. Mark Baird, one of the leaders of the Jefferson movement, recounted how they defend their property. When Fish and Wildlife employees threatened any kind of overreach against his property, Baird responded: “Bring your gun. You’re going to need it.” Those officials never came back. This story inspired me as to how Jefferson residents can increase their autonomy. “Why not enact sanctuary for gun owners as Illinois has? Demand that your county supervisors pass a constitutional carry ordinance to counter Sacramento’s gun grabbing.” The residents liked the idea.
The best idea, of course, has been the Jefferson movement. With standing committees in twenty-one widespread counties, plus a pending federal lawsuit, the State of Jefferson is alive and kicking, reminding us of the eternal promises outlined in the Declaration of Independence: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” Considering their efforts and successes, the name “Jefferson” is all the more fitting for this active, conservative region of California.
Thank You Mr Schaper and Townhall. Wishing these Jefferson Staters all the best but considering how hell-bent Moonbeam and Co. are on flipping off Federal Law it's doubtful even President Trump can bring them to heel. Might take the 2nd coming of Abe Lincoln.
To everyone in Ca. with a job and any hope of bettering your life and your family's life, . . . . get out while you can still Afford to hire a moving truck.
These days, when the federal government turns in one direction, California veers in the other — and in the case of health care, it’s a sharp swerve.
In the nation’s most populous state, lawmakers and other policymakers seemingly are not content simply to resist Republican efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. They are fighting to expand health coverage with a series of steps they hope will culminate in universal coverage for all Californians — regardless of immigration status and despite potentially monumental price tags.
The Golden State embraced the health care law early and eagerly, and has more to lose than any other state if the ACA is dismantled: About 1.5 million Californians purchase coverage through the state’s Obamacare exchange, Covered California, and 3.8 million have signed up for Medicaid as a result of the program’s expansion under the law.
While other states are making efforts to preserve the ACA and expand coverage, California stands out by virtue of its ambition and size, economic clout, massive immigrant population and liberal bent.
Its health care resistance movement is broad and includes Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who has made a sport of suing the Trump administration. He is currently leading a coalition of 15 states, plus the District of Columbia, against a Texas-based lawsuit that seeks to strike down the ACA.
Even Covered California, the ACA marketplace, has jabbed at the feds. During the most recent enrollment period, which ended in January, it preserved its three-month sign-up window while the federal government cut the enrollment period in half for states that rely on the healthcare.gov exchange. Covered California also deployed a monster advertising budget of $45 million to encourage enrollment, while the federal government slashed its ad dollars to $10 million.
California’s activism could be contagious, said Linda Blumberg, a fellow at the nonprofit research institution the Urban Institute.
“California has been in the forefront” on a lot of health policy issues, she said. To the extent that it is successful, she said, “that helps not only the state of California itself but other states as well.”
Since last year, the federal government has allowed some states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients; promoted temporary health plans that have fewer consumer protections than Obamacare insurance; and, most recently, adopted a rule allowing states to lower the percentage of premium dollars that insurers are required to spend on medical care.
“Look at what we’ve done in women’s issues, climate change, protecting immigrants. … That’s just the kind of thing we do. Health is no different,” said state Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina), the head of the Senate Health Committee and author of several proposals.
Four pending bills in California would provide some consumers with state-funded financial help to supplement federal subsidies created by Obamacare. One such proposal could cost the state about $500 million initially.
“We continue to move forward and push the envelope, now more than ever,” state Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) told a room full of physicians recently in Sacramento. Lara, a candidate for state insurance commissioner, is carrying a bill that would offer full Medicaid benefits to a group that’s never been covered before: adults who are in the country illegally.
“We not only play defense, but we want to make sure we’re more proactive,” he said.
California’s efforts to cover unauthorized immigrants under Medi-Cal predate the Trump administration. Achieving it now would represent not only a significant expansion of coverage within the state, but also a direct challenge to the federal government, which has made a point of cracking down on immigrants.
Critics point out that this spirit of defiance does not represent all Californians.
“We have some crazy things happening here,” said Sally Pipes, president of the conservative Pacific Research Institute. “Nobody talks about how to pay for these. Well, you pay for it in increased taxes.”
Sara Rosenbaum, a professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, said it’s no secret that President Donald Trump doesn’t like California — and that the feeling is mutual.
While she believes his administration might try to punish the state for its defiance, California will nonetheless persist in its campaign to defend the ACA and expand coverage.
“I’m sure [federal officials] can try to do a million things to make the state’s life miserable,” she said. “They can jerk it around on the federal Medicaid payments. … But I just think this, too, shall pass.”
It’s not clear whether the pending legislative proposals will succeed. Assuming any of the bills make it through the legislature, their fate lies with Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat known for fiscal conservatism.
“If the past is any indication, it seems unlikely that bills with sizable and uncertain ongoing costs will move forward,” said Shannon McConville, a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California.
California is not alone in resisting health care policies put forth by the Trump administration. Other states, including Maryland and New Jersey, may establish state-based penalties for not having insurance — a response to Congress’ decision to kill the federal Obamacare penalty starting in 2019.
But California’s approach, characteristically, is different.
“Rather than use the stick, use the carrot,” said Hernandez. His bill would target $500 million from the state’s general fund to help some income-eligible Californians pay their premiums or out-of-pocket medical costs. This assistance would supplement the federal financial aid for those on the Covered California exchange.
The Senate Health Committee approved the bill last week.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that about 4 million people nationwide will become uninsured when the tax penalty for not having insurance goes away. In California, the number would be about 378,000, according to a recent Harvard University study.
Three other bills would offer state-based financial aid to different groups of consumers, including those who make too much money to qualify for federal tax credits but still struggle to pay their premiums.
The biggest potential budget-buster of them all is a proposal to establish a single-payer health system, which was pulled from consideration last year, largely because of its eye-popping price tag: $400 billion annually.
Advocates for universal health care aren’t giving up, though some have shifted their strategy to moving piecemeal toward universal health care in lieu of a massive single-payer bill.
“There are individual steps that we can still take to expand coverage to various populations that are falling through the cracks,” said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
One of those populations, and a large one, is immigrants living without authorization in the country.
Lara is not the only legislator with a proposal to extend full Medi-Cal coverage to income-eligible adult immigrants without legal status. State Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula (D-Fresno) has introduced a separate bill that would do the same. Arambula’s measure made it through the Assembly Health Committee on Tuesday, and Lara’s bill passed the Senate Health Committee earlier this month.
Of the nearly 3 million Californians without insurance, about 58 percent are currently ineligible for full Medi-Cal benefits or Covered California insurance because they’re not in the country legally.
California must “lead the nation in bold and inclusive polices” that support the health of all communities, said Arambula, who is an emergency room doctor.
In 2016, the state extended full Medi-Cal benefits to all children, and now more than 200,000 undocumented kids are enrolled. It’s not clear how much it would cost to cover undocumented adults, but last year, the state budgeted $279.5 million for the children. Adults are generally more expensive to cover.
All of these measures, successful or not, add up to a campaign of defiance.
“It’s a signal that California is willing to fight very hard, on multiple fronts … to protect certain values and policies,” McConville said. “This shows we’re not willing to go backwards on that.”
