A very famous Chinese curse that I’m sure you heard before is “May you live in interesting times.” This is a curse of course, because it means may the times you live in be totally messed up. May the times you live in cause you anxiety and pain because of lack of stability and tranquility. May the times you live in ruin any security you thought you had and be politically nuts. We’re here.
I bring this up because President Steve Bannon has decided California is the enemy and must be squashed. President Bannon says his winning the election is the American people stating they hate California. President Bannon says there were 3-5 million votes cast for Hillary in California by “illegals” and that means he actually won the popular vote.
President Steve Bannon has threatened California with taking away all Federal Funds to the state starting with Sanctuary Cities and the University of California. He said this twice to Bill O’Reilly in the last week alone. Apparently President Bannon only does interviews with Hannity and O’Reilly. “If we have to, we’ll defund,” President Bannon said. “We give tremendous amounts of money to California. California in many ways is out of control, as you know.”
“Any pain the president wants to cause in California will ripple nationwide,” California Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de León said Monday. “Trump’s (i.e President Bannon’s) threat to weaponize federal funding is not only unconstitutional but emblematic of the cruelty he seeks to impose on our most vulnerable communities.”
“California has the most manufacturing jobs in the nation. We have not only balanced our budget, we have had surpluses and put money away for future economic downturns,” California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount, said Monday. “If this is what Donald Trump thinks is ‘out of control,’ I’d suggest other states should be more like us.”
note: italics above are from me
California has responded strongly. California is posed to make the entire state a “Sanctuary State.” Keep in mind Hispanics make up the largest percentage of citizens here, just edging out white folks which reminds me of something a lawyer from Omaha, NE told me a couple years back when I was vacationing in Mexico. He sues doctors for a living and was honest in saying over 50% of the cases were BS, but he’d always win anyway by making those Doctors and their malpractice insurance carriers experience living nightmares thus getting them to settle for big bucks just to make it stop. What did this man of “integrity” ask me when he found out I live in California? He asked, “How can you live in that cesspool? It’s full of Mexicans and Asians.” Keep in mind he said this to me in Mexico.
Governor Brown has even stated California will send up it’s own satellites if President Bannon simply shuts down NASA’s ability to study climate change with existing satellites. Our satellites would be ours and the Federal Government couldn’t do anything about it (unless they shot them out of the sky that is).
There may be a bit of a legal problem if President Bannon tries to simply cut off Federal Funds to California as outlined back in 2012 by Supreme Court Justice John Roberts regarding ObamaCare.
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote that the law had gone too far when it effectively threatened states with losing federal Medicaid funding if they didn’t expand their Medicaid programs to low-income adults.
“When . . . such conditions take the form of threats to terminate other significant independent grants, the conditions are properly viewed as a means of pressuring the states to accept policy changes,” Roberts wrote, adding that the financial conditions amounted to a “gun to the head.”
Here’s another problem President Steve Bannon could have in trying to take away all of California’s Federal Funds = California is a donor state. California could simply stop paying the Feds their cut and would make out better than we currently are. So called “red states” are addicted to Federal Funds. The worst of all states is South Carolina which gets $7.87 back for every $1.00 it pays in Federal taxes. Blue states are donor states with California only getting $0.77 back for every $1.00 it pays in Federal tax.
Can President Bannon do what he threatens? No one really knows. It hasn’t been done before in such a huge way. The Federal Government does stop paying funds to specific parts of state governments if they don’t comply by Federal Law. This puts pressure on to comply. In California’s case, President Bannon just doesn’t like our attitude (Dem controlled) and doesn’t like the University of California college system.
The Stop Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act, would block sanctuary cities or states from receiving Community Development Block Grants and other economic development funds. The 74 House of Representatives co-sponsors of the bill include California Republican Reps. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove (the chicken who ran away from his own town hall meeting last week) and Doug LaMalfa of Richvale (my House representative who also claims women who have abortions get breast cancer from doing so).
(note: things in italics are my comments)
Update: I was unaware I was using 2005 statistics regarding how much money California gets back from the Fed for every dollar we pay. It’s now about a wash as pointed out by exlrrp in a comment below.
What do you want to talk about in these interesting times?
THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY
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Women’s March, January 21, 2017, all across the nation!
Muslim Ban protest at major airports around the nation,
January 28th & 29th:
Kosmail navajo with any photos of YOU at your protest and we’ll include them here in CUA’s collection.
Meet-ups: