According TO NEWSOM:

February 22, 2023

California’s Gavin Newsom notices his pockets are empty for illegals

By Monica Showalter at American Thinker:

California is depopulating, with some 500,000 taxpayers fleeing the one-party socialist state in search of lower taxes, less onerous business regulations, and a friendlier government that views them as assets, not ATMs.

So not surprisingly, the state has found itself in a $22 billion hole. 

This doesn’t seem to bother the state’s insular ruling class, which blames the pandemic, President Trump, and a host of other factors for the flight, secure in the sense that those taxpayers can always be replaced by newcomers.

Illegal immigrants fit that bill nicely, given the massive benefit packages the state doles out to court them.

Now reality is biting.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune:

But now, as the liberal-leaning state confronts a projected $22.5 billion deficit, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state can no longer afford to contribute to the [Migrant COVID testing] centers, which also receive federal and local grants. The Democratic governor in January proposed phasing out state aid for some medical services in the next few months, and eventually scaling back the migrant assistance program unless President Joe Biden and Congress step in with help.

The U-T, which never bothers to disguise its left-wing political orientation anymore, notes that conditions have changed as the pandemic is phasing out, so perhaps these services will not be necessary anyway.

Several other news outlets have zeroed in on the COVID testing centers alone, as “some medical services.”

But the fine print in the U-T piece says that the entire “migrant assistance program” is on the block as the state goes into the red.

Last June, the state legislature, in a law signed by Newsom, voted to guarantee “free” health care to all illegal immigrants over the age of 50 in the state even as California’s taxpayers shoulder some of the highest health care costs in the nation. 

According to Reuters:

LOS ANGELES, July 27 (Reuters) – California’s governor on Tuesday signed into law a major expansion of the state’s Medicaid coverage to all low-income residents aged 50 and up regardless of their immigration status, extending eligibility to some 235,000 undocumented people.

Governor Gavin Newsom, a first-term Democrat facing a Republican-led recall election in September, said the bill is a key milestone in efforts to bring universal healthcare to the nation’s most populous state.

California leads all 50 U.S. states in the number of unauthorized immigrants – roughly 2.9 million in 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, though other estimates put the figure closer to 2.2 million.

That comes on top of a state measure to hand out free health care to all illegals under the age of 26.

According to the New York Times:

In a budget plan unveiled this week, Newsom proposed allowing undocumented immigrants to sign up for Medi-Cal, the state’s health program for low-income Californians. (This is distinct from an ongoing effort to create a single-payer health care system in the state.)

The state already allows undocumented Californians under 26 to join Medi-Cal, and those 50 and over will become eligible in the spring. Opening up Medi-Cal to the remaining undocumented population — approximately 700,000 people — would cost $2.2 billion annually, Newsom said.

“We are positioned with this budget to be able to deliver on what we’ve been promoting: universal health care for all,” Newsom said at a news briefing on Tuesday. “I’m proud to be here — I hope we see this replicated across the country.”

 It was a getaround from federal rules prohibiting illegals from accessing federally funded free health care for the indigent.

Now that Newsom has offered it to illegals, and has found that he can’t pay for it, he wants the feds to pay for it. According to the U-T:

Though the White House declined to comment and no federal legislation has advanced, Newsom said he was optimistic that federal funding will come through, citing “some remarkably good conversations” with the Biden administration.

…from, who else, FEMA:

Already, one potential pot of federal money has been identified. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a statement to KHN noting that local governments and nongovernmental providers will soon be able to tap into an additional $800 million in federal funds through a shelter and services grant program. FEMA did not answer KHN’s questions about how much the agency spends serving migrants.

That would be the same FEMA that initially denied East Palestine, Ohio, any aid whatsoever to its residents who fled a toxic engulfment from a train wreck this month. 

It did seem that ridiculous denial may have been premised on not having much money left in its coffers. If FEMA has been shelling out for illegals in these past months, as five million surged across the border, suddenly things are pretty clear as to what’s going on here.

It’s important to note that Congress forbade illegals from accessing federal health care dollars for a reason — that it was costly, and it was unconscionable, given that Americans pay inflated health care rates under Obamacare, which is compulsory. California ignored that reason, and insisted on its own on handing out free health care to illegals, and suddenly found itself out of money. Instead of recognizing reality, it wants Uncle Sam to pay, even though federal legislation says it’s not to pay. Don’t count on Joe Biden to respect that. For him, it’s another getaround to import more Democrats.

But even Biden seems to be getting the hard reality message that Newsom has gotten: He’s rolled out new asylum restrictions from country-shopping migrants who go from country to country in search of the best benefit package, prohibiting migrants from claiming asylum if they’ve crossed more than one border to hit the states and make their claims. That’s a big one, it dates from the Trump era and it’s fully compliant with established U.S. and international law. If a Haitian has been granted asylum in a place like Brazil or Chile, he can’t toss his passport and come to the states claiming persecution in Haiti. Asylees under international law get one time to the asylum well, the first country of safety in fact.

Biden is going to be taking tremendous flak from the open-borders left on this restriction, but apparently he has no choice. He’s being howled at by blue state mayors angry at their gargantuan municipal bills for their champagne welcomes to illegal aliens, such as we see in New York, calling for bailouts. He’s being blasted by blue-state governors as well for the migrant surge. The red state governors have gotten the ball rolling by offering free transport to illegal aliens to the blue sanctuary cities of their choice, and the result has finally moved mountains as the blue mayors and governors pressure the feds to pick up the tab now.

Biden doesn’t have the political capital, let alone the goodwill to ram legislation through to pay for the full fare of five million illegals plus unknown numbers of gotaways. He’s out of money and out of ideas, and the public is angry, leaving him just the Trump solution to embrace, which has got to be bitter stuff.

Newsom’s got his hand out though, because he, too, has run out of money.

What an amazing picture we see unfolding now. Red state governors such as Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis got this ball rolling, running desirable states that taxpayers are fleeing to, and then refusing to pay for the illegals invited in by the blue state hypocrites and their senile president. 

Now reality is hitting and illegals are starting to see their free ride slowly fade away, forcing them to pay for their own services and make decisions about their best options accordingly. Many will return to their homelands.

“Biden is treating Putin today the way Chamberlain treated Stalin in 1938-1939”.

Biden’s Failed Diplomacy: ‘China and Russia Are As Close As Ever’

By Francis P. Sempa at RealClearDefense:
February 22, 2023

Creative Commons

“Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting,” said Winston Churchill on October 5, 1938, in assessing the diplomacy of Neville Chamberlain’s government. Chamberlain’s greatest failure was his unwillingness to cooperate with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to geopolitically balance the greater and more menacing power of Nazi Germany. “I must confess to the most profound distrust of Russia,” Chamberlain admitted. “I distrust her motives, which seem to me to have little connection with our ideals,” he wrote in March 1939. Five months later, the Nazi-Soviet Pact made war in Europe inevitable. Chamberlain’s failed diplomacy pushed Stalin into the arms of his fellow autocrat Hitler and plunged the world into its most destructive war. The Biden administration is making the same mistake today by focusing on trying to help Ukraine defeat Russia instead of urging a negotiated resolution of the war.

Chamberlain’s diplomacy failed because he allowed values to trump geopolitics. Chamberlain was right that Stalin did not share Britain’s “ideas of liberty,” but Stalin’s Soviet Union controlled the geopolitical heartland of Eurasia and was the only continental power that could counterbalance Germany in the east. More than 80 years later, Biden is repeating Chamberlain’s diplomatic error by pushing Russia further into the arms of Xi Jinping’s China, which like Hitler in 1938-1939, presents the greater and more menacing threat to American national security. As CNN reports, “China and Russia are as close as ever since their leaders declared a ‘no limits’ friendship a year ago–partly driven by their shared animosity toward the United States.”

To be fair, the failed U.S. diplomacy in this regard predates the Biden administration. It can be traced back at least to the Clinton presidency which in a fit of diplomatic hubris began the post-Cold War expansion of NATO–a process that continued and accelerated through each successive presidential administration until NATO’s reach approached most of Russia’s western border. NATO expansion revived Russia’s historical insecurities and its aggressive nationalism, just as George Kennan, among others, predicted. Russia signaled this in its diplomacy and its actions–especially Vladimir Putin’s aggressive moves in Georgia in 2008, and in Ukraine in 2014. Meanwhile, China was rising economically and militarily, and that rise was fueled in part by U.S. trade and investments.

China’s rise resulted in the U.S. “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific–at least rhetorically. The emergence of a new peer competitor, however, did not cause U.S. policymakers to adjust their mostly hostile approach to Russia. Putin, like Stalin in the late 1930s, did not and does not share American ideas of liberty so we grouped Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China as our enemies in a value-laden struggle between democracy and autocracy, and like Chamberlain’s government in the 1930s we overlooked or ignored the geopolitical danger of a hostile Eurasian-based great power alliance.

Presidents Obama and Trump seemed to recognize the danger of a renewed Sino-Russian bloc. Obama reacted sensibly to Putin’s invasion of Crimea, noting that Russia has much greater interests in Ukraine than we do. Trump initially attempted to mend fences with Russia, but the phoney “Russiagate” investigations and media frenzy made that impossible. But both Obama and Trump continued the seemingly relentless expansion of NATO. And Russia and China grew ever closer.

The Biden administration has increased the amount of arms and training provided to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, including supplying tanks, missiles, and artillery platforms, and there is talk of providing fighter aircraft. President Biden’s visit to Kyiv on February 20^th–where he announced a half-billion dollars more aid to Ukraine and delivered a value-laden speech about the struggle between freedom and autocracy–occurred simultaneously with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Moscow in the context of reports that China will soon provide “lethal” assistance to Putin’s government. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned China that it will face “serious consequences” if it provides lethal aid to Russia. And this comes on the heels of China’s military exercises near Taiwan and several incursions into Taiwan’s air defense zone.

Biden is treating Putin today the way Chamberlain treated Stalin in 1938-1939. Perhaps a British-Soviet pact in 1938 might have deterred Hitler (possibly leading to his overthrow by German generals). And while it is true that Stalin in 1938-1939 had not yet invaded another country the way Putin did in 2014 and 2022, both Britain and the United States allied with Stalin even after he invaded Poland, the Baltic Republics and Finland in order to defeat Germany. Chamberlain’s failed diplomacy led to the Nazi-Soviet Pact and World War II. Because of Biden’s failed diplomacy, China and Russia, in CNN’s words, “are as close as ever.”

Francis P. Sempa is the author of Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21^stCentury, America’s Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics and War, and Somewhere in France, Somewhere in Germany: A Combat Soldier’s Journey through the Second World War.

“Permit the children of the stock of Abraham to approach you with the most cordial affection and esteem for your person and merits”

FEBRUARY 22, 2023 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at Power Line:

REMEMBERING THE INDISPENSABLE MAN

Today we celebrate the anniversary of the birth of George Washington. Of all the great men of the revolutionary era to whom we owe our freedom, Washington’s greatness was the rarest and the most needed. At this remove in time, it is also the hardest to comprehend.

Take, for example, Washington’s contribution to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Washington’s mere presence lent the undertaking and its handiwork the legitimacy that resulted in success. The convention’s first order of business was the election of a presiding officer. Washington was the delegates’ unanimous choice.

Presiding over the convention during that fateful summer, Washington said virtually nothing. In his excellent book on Washington, Richard Brookhiser notes: “The esteem in which Washington was held affected his fellow delegates first of all…Washington did not wield the power he possessed by speaking. Apart from his lecture on secrecy, Washington did not address the Convention between the first day and the last.”

The esteem in which he was held by his fellow citizens was similarly crucial to the implementation of the Constitution during his presidency. In 1790 Rhode Island became the thirteenth state to ratify the Constitution. To mark the occasion, President Washington made a ceremonial visit to Newport when Congress recessed in August. Newport welcomed Washington with open arms. In Newport on August 18, according to James Thomas Flexner, Washington “completely fatigued the company” by briskly walking, fortified by the wine and punch served in four different houses along his route, from nine in the morning until one in the afternoon.

In anticipation of Washington’s visit to Newport, the members of America’s oldest Jewish congregation prepared a letter welcoming Washington for presentation to him at a public event on the morning of August 18. The letter was authorized by the congregation’s board and signed by its president, Moses Seixas. It is Washington’s magnificent letter responding to Seixas that that has become famous as one of the classic statements of religious toleration in America.

The congregation’s letter to Washington is not so well known, although the most prominent line in Washington’s letter echoes that letter. By far the most striking feature of the congregation’s letter is its expression of sheer gratitude to Washington himself and to America for the freedom and equal rights the congregants had attained as American citizens. Here is the congregation’s letter:

Permit the children of the stock of Abraham to approach you with the most cordial affection and esteem for your person and merits ~~ and to join with our fellow citizens in welcoming you to NewPort.

With pleasure we reflect on those days ~~ those days of difficulty, and danger, when the God of Israel, who delivered David from the peril of the sword, ~~ shielded Your head in the day of battle: ~~ and we rejoice to think, that the same Spirit, who rested in the Bosom of the greatly beloved Daniel enabling him to preside over the Provinces of the Babylonish Empire, rests and ever will rest, upon you, enabling you to discharge the arduous duties of Chief Magistrate in these States.

Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People ~~ a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance ~~ but generously affording to all Liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: ~~ deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language equal parts of the great governmental Machine: ~~ This so ample and extensive Federal Union whose basis is Philanthropy, Mutual confidence and Public Virtue, we cannot but acknowledge to be the work of the Great God, who ruleth in the Armies of Heaven, and among the Inhabitants of the Earth, doing whatever seemeth him good.

For all these Blessings of civil and religious liberty which we enjoy under an equal benign administration, we desire to send up our thanks to the Ancient of Days, the great preserver of Men ~~ beseeching him, that the Angel who conducted our forefathers through the wilderness into the promised Land, may graciously conduct you through all the difficulties and dangers of this mortal life: ~~ And, when, like Joshua full of days and full of honour, you are gathered to your Fathers, may you be admitted into the Heavenly Paradise to partake of the water of life, and the tree of immortality.

Done and Signed by order of the Hebrew Congregation in NewPort, Rhode Island August 17th 1790.

Moses Seixas, Warden

Today, as we contend with the contemporary equivalent of “the Babylonish empire,” let us send up our thanks to the Ancient of Days for this indispensable man. (First posted February 2006.)

That Pelosi And Swalwell Gang In Action!

February 21, 2023

Hey, big spender: Swalwell spent more campaign cash on luxuries than even Nancy Pelosi

By Monica Showalter at American Thinker:

Eric Swalwell kept up his big spending practices from his campaign cash coffers all through the year 2022.

That’s what Fox News found, noting that his luxury expenses exceeded those of even the Imelda-like spending habits of House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell spent more campaign cash on travel and luxury accommodations than Rep. Nancy Pelosi during the last two years, according to a Fox News Digital review of Federal Election Commission records.

Swalwell’s campaign spent nearly $583,000 on travel expenses during the 2022 elections, the filings show. Pelosi, by contrast, finished the cycle by putting $434,000 into reported travel expenses, according to a review of her records.

Swalwell has consistently used donor funds on limousines, flights, yachts, and posh hotels, including internationally. The spending came as Americans in both his district and around the country faced rising inflation that drove food, fuel, and energy costs through the roof.

Seems there’s always a need for a trip to the Ritz for campaign purposes, whether the one in Paris or the one in Half Moon Bay, both of which Swalwell has spent copiously on, even though neither city is in his district. 

 Throughout the 2022 elections, its largest travel expense was $20,240 to the Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay, where his wife was the sales director until 2019, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Didn’t President Trump endure screams from the left for hosting summits at his hotels in the wayback? Seems conflicts of interest only apply to Republicans.

Meanwhile, the details of the Swalwell spending sprees are pretty astonishing: 

Swalwell’s committee also burned through thousands of dollars in Paris, France, including $1,800 early last May at the five-star Hotel La Maison Champs-Elysées, where nightly rooms run from around $1,000 to $1,200 per night. 

And around that same time, the campaign expended $3,538.94 at France’s “iconic” Ritz Paris, a posh hotel with several upscale bars and reservation rooms.
He also splashed out for some Miami Beach luxury accommodations. Apparently, he couldn’t campaign without them.
It’s actually not the first time Fox has reported this news about Swalwell’s copious spending practices. They did last July here and I wrote up some commentary here. 
According to Fox Digital from July:
The California Democrat’s campaign has consistently dropped cash into high-end items, such as limousine services, flights and posh accommodations. His latest filings show the trend has spilled over into this year’s second quarter. 
Swalwell’s campaign, comprised of just two paid staffers, reported spending nearly $38,000 on travel expenses between May 19 and June 30, including $3,538.94 in late May for catering for a fundraising event at France’s “iconic” Ritz Paris, a posh hotel that features several upscale bars and reservation rooms.
As I noted at the time, this likely isn’t a victimless crime, or a crime where only his donors are stiffed. Cash flung around like this for emoluments are easy vehicles for disguised bribery from foreign sources and Swalwell is no stranger to being a creature of hostile foreign interest, as his affair with a suspected Chinese spy, Fang Fang, demonstrated.
That the scandal was reported once and Swalwell didn’t try to lay low or “be good” for awhile, suggests that this is one brazen big spender. He ought to be answering questions in the House for this, given that an intelligence operative who suddenly started living high on the hog would be a prime suspect for espionage. One wonders if this high spending on questionable campaign luxuries and emoluments might just be evidence of his being bought off by some foreign power or some unethical moneybags campaign donor.
The amount of money here exceeds that spent by Pelosi, so there’s something funny going on.
It’s probably not high on the list for the investigators to investigate, given how much other corruption there is in the White House, but Swalwell’s spending continues to go strong, meaning, he sees no reasonm to change his ways.
Is this legal? Isn’t this the same thing that got Rep. Duncan Hunter a trip to the hoosegow? Why is Swalwell still brazenly getting away with it? Who vets these things and why hasn’t Swalwell been called in for questioning?

“American universities have handed over their curricula to enemies of America, beginning with Stalinist Russia and extending on to Castro’s Cuba, Communist China, and terrorist Iran”.

FEBRUARY 21, 2023 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

ACADEMIA IS A CANCER

David Horowitz comments on the recent mayhem in Austin, Texas:

In the news reports about the anti-police mayhem by young people in Austin Texas, one common element is missing: the obvious fact that Austin is a college town, home to one of America’s once-great educational institutions.

This fact is not peripheral to the outbreak of lawlessness that tore apart Austin that night but central. Like virtually every major academic institution in America, the University of Texas is a bastion of anti-American, anti-police, anti-white hatreds, and has been so since conservatives were purged from its liberal arts faculties beginning in the 1970s, to be replaced by ideologues rather than scholars, whose agendas were and remain not scholarly but political.

Having written five volumes describing the transformation of American universities into institutions hostile to America and its constitutional foundations, it is apparent to me that the source of our current ills – the lawlessness in our streets, the destruction of our borders, the racist “equity” policies of the Democrat Party, the “woke” derelictions of our military leaders, can all be traced to the indoctrination of our educated classes in hatreds spawned by cultural Marxism. Marxism is a creed that has resulted in more than 100 million deaths in peacetime, and continent-wide suffering on a scale unprecedented in the annals of human history.

Just as the universities in Germany were the first institutions to join the Nazi cause, so American universities have handed over their curricula to enemies of America, beginning with Stalinist Russia and extending on to Castro’s Cuba, Communist China, and terrorist Iran. They have even given their institutional support to a Palestinian movement which sided with Hitler during World War II, and which today promises to finish the job that Hitler started by destroying Israel – the only liberal democracy in the Middle East – and making it “Jew-free.”

I am not alone in thinking that curing this cancer in our midst is essential to restoring the constitutional republic that America once was by reviving the principles and values that made it a beacon to the world. The path to achieving this result begins with recognizing that our premier universities have in their liberal arts programs become one-party states ruled by ignorance and bigotry, and thus breeding grounds for civic and racial hatreds and lawlessness. To remedy this state of affairs Americans must press for the de-funding of these institutions, withholding the federal and state monies that help to spread their hatreds until such time as their faculties represent the true intellectual diversity of America, and eliminate one-sided political indoctrination courses from their curricula.