What President Trump Will Mean for California’s Economy

December 24, 2016 By Todd Royal 6 Comments

donald-trump-3Since Trump’s election we’ve seen a national rebound in consumer, small business and large corporate confidence. The American business and worker class seem to be saying what Californians don’t want to hear: We want an economy not stifled by environmental and tax regulations. We want a president that understands, “It’s the economy, stupid!” California once had that type of mentality, but now with an economy that mostly produces temporary, low paying, service sector jobs where are the positives for the California economy?

The answer is everywhere. Progressive policies were a great idea over a hundred years ago when they were meant to curb female abuse at the hands of alcoholic husbands, child labor in Chicago meatpacking sweatshops epitomized in Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle, and breaking down corporate monopolies. Former President Theodore Roosevelt led that charge for the working man and woman.

That day has passed, and now gentrified environmental billionaires such as Tom Steyer and his legislative lackeys tow the global warming line for coastal elites. Unfortunately, most of California – and even wealthy Los Angeles – suffer the policies of leaders such as Senate Pro Tem Kevin de Leon’s job killer bill like SB32 and the boosting of AB32 into further restrictions on economic growth.

There isn’t a green economy that comes close to what Trump is proposing to do for energy exploration on public and private lands. Factually, there isn’t such a thing as the California green economy. It doesn’t exist. Nor does it produce anything resembling large-scale economic progress the way oil and gas exploration produces millions of jobs, and billions of tax revenues.

This is what President Trump will pursue when it comes fossil fuel extraction as a nationwide policy. And this will include California, especially if Trump does away with the moratoriums on deep water drilling for oil and natural gas off the California coastlines.

California has billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. The tax revenue produced by this could turn California into an economy that could reach the second largest in the world. If California would turn their back on the fallacy of the green economy and embrace sensible exploration our public schools could be the envy of the U.S., our infrastructure needs taken care of without tax increases, and a true, thriving middle class. Not the progressive haves and have-nots currently seen in California.

This is what Trump has in mind for the U.S., and dare it seems California could be on his radar to expand American energy opportunities.

Trump’s cabinet picks have all indicated economic growth will be their number one priority, and re-establishing America’s preeminence in the world through a larger blue water navy. What this means for California is hard to understand, but one thing is certain, the tech sector will see growth supplying the U.S. Navy with state of the art software. But China’s recent belligerence could be a bellwether of things to come for California’s economy; if the Chinese begin to make their markets even tougher to enter, this doesn’t bode well for California exports.

Sanctuary cities in California could also see a hit with cheaper labor on the downturn if Trump keeps his campaign promises and begins deporting illegals that are criminals, and not allowing the DREAM Act to continue through executive action. The rush for asylum could see Trump’s Justice Department and I.C.E. taking on Gov. Brown and the California Legislature.

Does California have the stomach for federal funds being cut off? Trump doesn’t need California, more than California needs the president-elect, and the federal dollars he is soon to control. The politics of this issue could be a harbinger for the legal fights and strength of the federal government California will be dealing with in 2017. What happens when Trump appoints the next Supreme Court justice, and then could go after the special status of illegal aliens/undocumented immigrants. California will lose. It’s hard to imagine Brown and the Legislature along with the Congressional delegation negotiating sensibly with Trump and his administration.

Special status will be reserved for California’s fixation on global warming led by Gov. Brown and coastal elites in San Francisco and the west side of Los Angeles. When Trump and his cabinet increase energy, but not necessarily renewables, California laws – AB32 and SB32 – won’t have the ability to make much of a difference. Though they don’t really work as intended anyway.

And with economic growth taking precedence over Paris Climate Agreements and the Clean Power Plan the rest of the U.S. will need cheaper energy that oil, natural gas and coal provide. Further, California’s dream of electric vehicles, solar panels and windmills powering California will not grow and the bullet train will be dead on arrival for the incoming administration and Congress.

California will also not be able, or allowed, to stop shipments of coal that the Obama administration encouraged and certainly didn’t stop. Not to mention the legality of the issue. California again will run into a juggernaut of federal laws, regulations and a hostile federal government if coal shipments are not allowed through California ports to reach an energy hungry China, India and the rest of Asia. Those are American jobs, and votes for Trump’s re-election that he more than likely won’t allow California environmental policy to dictate how and where coal is shipped from our ports. Global warming won’t be high on Trump’s vision of American growth, and it was misguided policy by the Obama administration that hurt Americans of all economic stripes.

We’ve already seen how Trump has dictated new water policies to California that doesn’t involve climate change, or EPA policies curbing manufacturing, but instead showed how water enhancement can assist farmers and development in the Central Valley. Anything that grows the economy will be at the forefront of the Trump administration, and not the reduction of greenhouse gases. These were all economic harbingers shunned by California and the Obama administration’s Commerce, Interior and Energy Departments along with his EPA. That won’t be the case with President Trump.

Economic opportunity will rule the next four years, and because California supported President Obama’s use of executive orders, and his famous, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” form of governance, California can expect the same. The expansion of federal powers under Obama will be stretched to block California progressive laws that don’t coincide with Trump’s presidency.

A Republican House and Senate will thumb their nose at California’s economic and social gains seen under Obama that will be hard to stop if Trump decides he’s had enough of our voter’s malfeasance towards him. The problem with supporting Obama’s way he governed by executive fiat won’t be able to counter Trump is moving beyond the Constitution since that is what Obama has done for eight years with California supporters cheering his every step.

California was certain that Trump would lose and Clinton would expand every social whim most of America finds disdainful. Economic reality will be coming to California and our environmental laws, because Trump can ignore this state for his entire presidency. If you take away California’s bloated vote totals then he won the popular vote by over 1.6 million. We better understand a new dawn is arising, or our economy could be left behind in more ways than we can imagine.

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Many Dream Act Scholarships for Undocumented Students Go Unused

June 5, 2016 By Larry Gordon 2 Comments

Dream Act 2Undocumented college students are leaving a wealth of unspent aid money on the table five years after the passage of the landmark California law that provides those immigrants grants for higher education.

The California Dream Act made them eligible for several kinds of grants to attend community colleges, California State Universities, the University of California and some private campuses. But the euphoria among advocates that accompanied the law’s passage has been dampened by the reality that the state-funded Cal Grant portion of the aid is reaching far fewer undocumented students than originally envisioned, particularly at community colleges.

A variety of bureaucratic hurdles, along with students’ personal money problems, confusion about rules and fears of government, are causing students to not tap their Dream Act Cal Grants, according to officials and students.

About a third of the overall awards went unused last year, even after careful vetting of applicants for low income, high school grades and other eligibility factors. Making matters worse, nearly half of the Cal Grants awarded for community college costs were left on the table, as millions of state dollars earmarked for immigrant students went unspent. UC and CSU had better records.

Lupita Cortez Alcalá, executive director of the California Student Aid Commission, said she was “not comfortable” with the participation rates in the Dreamer grants at community colleges in particular. “Of course we are concerned about those numbers,” she said, “and we want more students who are awarded those grants to use them for their higher education.”

She said efforts are underway to reach out to more to students and community colleges to learn why young people — many of whom were brought to the U.S. as small children — are bypassing the aid. The agency, which administers Cal Grants, wants to solve any communication and payment problems, she said.

One contributing factor is that these undocumented students are not eligible for federal grants and loans; so the California aid — even bolstered by waivers of community college fees and other grants for UC and Cal State students — may not be enough to cover total expenses including food, housing and books. As a result, some students abandon college and instead take full-time jobs, forgoing the Cal grants, which range for full-time students from $1,656 a year at community colleges to $12,240 at UC.

A recent survey by the California Student Aid Commission found that some students who did not take the aid blamed high costs of living in the state. In other cases, the reason was less about hardship than communication: many students in the survey reported they had not known of the Cal Grant offers despite what commission officials say were numerous attempts to contact them. A significant number enrolled at community colleges anyway, getting fee waivers but not the Cal Grants, which require more information to qualify, such as high school grades. The colleges contend that shows that they are helping these students as much as possible and that the commission’s statewide rules for verifying and distributing the Cal Grants are partly at fault for the low number of takers.

Some students say some community colleges are themselves confused about how to administer the program, and put up needless barriers. Problems arise as schools seek to verify data in some applications as required by the aid commission.

David Rojas Torres, who is in his second year at Santa Monica College, said he was unable to get his Cal Grant funds because the college wanted, among other things, copies of his parents’ tax returns. His parents are undocumented themselves and filed late. They then became nervous that handing over the paperwork might trigger an immigration status review or even deportation, even though the Student Aid Commission insists that no information is shared with immigration authorities.

“I was a little bit frightened. What if I was doing something wrong? What would happen to me and my parents?” recalled Rojas Torres, who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico at age 2 and has temporary protection from deportation under the Obama administration’s federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. So while he wound up getting the separate fee waiver, he stopped pursuing the $1,656 Cal Grant and took a cashier job to pay for books and other expenses.

The work, he said, “is cutting down on my study time.” He said he thinks that some other students were so exasperated by bureaucracy that they decided to drop out.

But Rojas Torres, who studies business administration, received help recently from a college counselor and expects to receive the Cal Grant next year at Santa Monica and later transfer to Cal State Long Beach.

Federal privacy rules bar colleges from publicly discussing individuals’ aid cases, according to Teresita Rodriguez, Santa Monica’s vice president of enrollment development, and officials at other colleges statewide. But Rodriguez said her school works hard with counseling and workshops to encourage Dreamers to obtain all the grants.

“We put a lot of emphasis and resources in trying to get the money in the hands of these students,” she said.

About 30,700 students met the application deadline for Dream Act funds for the 2015-16 school year, yet many were eliminated for not having the requisite high school grade point average — a 2.0 for community college and a 3.0 for others — or for having family income above the $47,600 cutoff for community colleges. After vetting, 8,274 Dream Act Cal Grants were offered statewide and their usage rate varied widely among the education systems, Aid Commission statistics show. By April, only 47 percent of the 4,003 community college awards were paid to students. That contrasts sharply with 84 percent of the 1,170 at UC and 68 percent of the 2,847 offered at Cal States, according to aid commission statistics.

Student Aid Commission officials said the percentages for Cal Grant usage during the current school year will grow as some late spring quarter enrollments are added. They expect the final tally to be about the same as last year’s levels: 67 percent overall, 54 percent at community colleges, 91 percent at UC and 75 percent at Cal State campuses.

 

Since the undocumented are banned from submitting the regular federal financial aid form, the Dream application can be used to access other California aid as well. Low-income community college students often receive a separate waiver from paying all tuition costs; many are eligible as well for up to $1,656 in a Cal Grant for such costs as books, transportation and housing (the amount is pro-rated for less than full-time studies). At UC and Cal State schools, the Cal Grants cover all of tuition; additional aid from the schools often pays for dorms and other costs.

The author of the California Dream Act, former state Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, said government and nonprofit organizations should work harder to convince undocumented families that no information they provide will be shared with immigration services. In addition, Cedillo, who is now a Los Angeles city councilman, said in an email that he has heard from many eligible students about “challenges they had with their school’s financial aid office.” He said schools in more politically conservative areas “refused to inform” students about how to get the aid, a contention that the statewide chancellor’s office said seems unlikely to be occurring in deliberate ways since that information is widely available online.

A large number of U.S. citizens also wind up not using their regular Cal Grants, but those students can receive substantial federal grants and loans – while undocumented students are ineligible for both. And, in contrast to the Dreamers, some U.S. citizens had no intention of seeking Cal Grants but were automatically offered them, along with federal aid, simply by filling out the federal aid application; those citizens also are more likely to attend out-of-state schools and forfeit their Cal Grants.

Tim Bonnel, a financial aid specialist at the California Community Colleges system headquarters, said he was “not aware” of colleges purposefully blocking grants or incorrectly applying rules. “Most colleges understand the law is the law,” he said. Yet he added that some community college financial aid offices are short-staffed compared with Cal State or UC and that might “unfortunately lead to students falling between the cracks.”

“We need to help them get what they qualify for,” he said.

Amiel Lopez was brought to the United States from Mexico at age 5 and now is a student at San Diego City College. When she started college last year, she was not able to receive her Cal Grant because of issues related to her parents’ marital and income tax filing status, she said. (Many undocumented residents pay taxes by using an alternative to a Social Security number.) Lopez said she incorrectly had reported her parents as married when, to her surprise, it turned out that they are not. Her parents, who are undocumented, then were reluctant to provide the paperwork that would have cleared up the confusion. Lopez, who has DACA protection, got a bank loan to help cover some costs.

This year, after straightening things out, she was delighted to receive her full awards. For most U.S. citizens seeking financial aid, “it’s easier and there are a lot more opportunities for them,” she said. In contrast, undocumented students “have to make that extra step and put in a lot more effort.”

“We have to prove that these things cannot put us down.”

Other undocumented students say they are pleased to have received the grants without any hassles or delays. For example, at UC Berkeley, third-year student Paola Mora said she knows older students who had to take off alternate years from school to work so they could afford tuition before the California Dream Act was enacted. “I’m really grateful I don’t have to go through that and I can just focus on school for the four or five years I’m here. I work on the side but I don’t necessarily depend on that work to sustain me here at school,” said Mora, who came from Mexico as a small child and now receives the grants plus wages from a work-study job on campus. The aid “has changed my experience compared to people in the past.”

Originally published by EdSource.org

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CA churches and schools protect illegal immigrants from deportation

February 19, 2016 By James Poulos 10 Comments

from the L.A. Times

Amid a fresh wave of immigration enforcement crackdowns, several powerful organizations in California have flexed their muscle to protect or benefit those present in the state illegally.

The city of Los Angeles has become a focal point for several different efforts, triggered by raids last month that “swept up more than 100 people from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras who entered the country and stayed illegally,” as the Los Angeles times noted.

“The seizures motivated church leaders nationwide who say they feel compelled to offer physical protection on their premises even if it violates federal law,” as the paper added, with at least three L.A.-area churches “vowing in recent weeks to offer refuge to Central Americans with deportation orders[.]” It is the Obama administration that has taken heat for the roundups:

“Lutherans, Methodists, Catholics and other Christian leaders across the country say they are outraged with the Obama administration’s actions, said Noel Andersen, a grass-roots coordinator with the Church World Service group for refugees. The group has built a network of sanctuaries for Central Americans targeted by ICE.”

Sanctuary schools

At the same time that California churches have shifted toward the approach that defined the state’s so-called “sanctuary cities,” schools and universities have also advanced complementary new policies. Los Angeles Unified Schools, for instance, have declared themselves to be ICE-free zones. “The school board has banned Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from setting foot on any campus without the district’s permission,” according to Fox 11 Los Angeles. Not only must the Superintendent of Schools approve any ICE presence, by the terms of the new vote, but LAUSD lawyers must as well:

“ICE claims that they do not come to schools looking for students, but parents fear sending their kids to school after information they received of ICE agents conducting a series of raids across the U.S. in January targeting Central American immigrants.”

Simultaneously, administrators in the UC system have forged ahead with plans to extend so-called DREAM loans to students who could potentially be deported. “Officials at California’s four-year public universities are reaching out to an estimated 10,000 undergraduate students who might qualify for a special loan aimed at reducing their tuition,” as U-T San Diego reported, “a program that further distinguishes the state as a national trendsetter in providing services to unauthorized immigrants.”

“The California DREAM loan program’s initial $7 million allotment — $5 million for the UC and $2 million for CSU — will be distributed to eligible applicants in the following weeks,” the paper noted. “The state provided half of the sum and the two university systems covered the other half. The loans are for the 2015-16 academic year, and they’re retroactive to last fall.”

Driving policy

As the public education establishment has come to the aid of would-be deportees, the state of California itself has continued to reward those who go public in some fashion with their legal status. California’s program to extend slightly modified drivers license privileges to otherwise undocumented immigrants far outpaced predicted demand. “Under the new law, 605,000 undocumented residents received licenses, accounting for 40 percent of all of the licenses issued last year,” the International Business Times reported. “Exceeding expectations, even more attempted to obtain a license: Around 830,000 undocumented immigrants have applied for a license since Jan. 2, 2015, the first day of the new policy at the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

The state’s aggressive action on normalizing residents who immigrated unlawfully has been rooted in two realities — first, the relatively vast and stable population of long-time residents crossing over from Mexico and Central America, and, second, the prevailing political agenda of Democrats wielding near one-party control over state policy for years on end. “California is among 12 states that now allow immigrants in the country illegally to obtain driver’s licenses, areas covering an estimated 37 percent of that population,” the Times observed, citing a recent Pew report. But California has also surpassed all other states in its percentage of unlawful residents eligible for a license, according to the report.

Originally published by CalWatchdog.com

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