Kamala Harris – Page 2

Will Kamala Harris Pay Reparations for HER Slave Owning Heritage?

April 10, 2019 By Stephen Frank 4 Comments

As we know, Sen. Kamala Harris is a real embarrassment to the people of California. Besides wanting higher taxes and more illegal aliens (the more the merrier), she wants to take away your freedom of choice for health care — government or no health care are her choices for you. She believes that there should be “reparations” for slavery.
Yet, her heritage and family background is in the OWNING of slaves in Jamaica. Not, not rumor — but in a little noted book written by her FATHER. This was written by HER FATHER:
“Harris doesn’t owe anyone in America, but does she have some mea culpas to make in Jamaica? Her father, Donald J. Harris, wrote an extensive essay about the family’s heritage in Jamaica at Jamaican Global Online in January, claiming to be the descendant of a famed slave owner.
“My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town) and to my maternal grandmother Miss Iris (née Iris Finegan, farmer and educator, from Aenon Town and Inverness, ancestry unknown to me). The Harris name comes from my paternal grandfather Joseph Alexander Harris, land-owner and agricultural “produce” exporter (mostly pimento or all-spice), who died in 1939 one year after I was born and is buried in the church yard of the magnificent Anglican Church which Hamilton Brown built in Brown’s Town (and where, as a child, I learned the catechism, was baptized and confirmed, and served as an acolyte).”
Hamilton Brown was born in 1776 in Ireland. He became a sugar plantation owner and founder of Brown’s Town in Jamaica, according to university papers, textbooks, and historical documents. Henry Whiteley wrote a pamphlet entitled “Three months in Jamaica in 1832, Comprising a Residence on a Sugar Plantation,” where he describes Brown’s views on his slaves.
Will she give reparations to the slaves owned by her family. My family did not come to this country until the 1880s — after slavery was ended, by Lincoln, over the objections of the Democrats. Why should I or other who did not own slaves be forced to pay? In her case, her own Father admits the family was based on owning slaves. Pay up Kamala and stop forcing those of us who never owned slaves to pay for the abuse your family gave to black people.

Reparations Time? Kamala Harris’ Father Says Family Descended from a Jamaican Slave Owner

By Megan Fox, PJ Media – 2/22/19

https://pjmedia.com/trending/kamala-harris-father-claims-family-descended-from-jamaican-slave-owner-will-she-be-writing-a-reparations-check/

Sen Kamala Harris (D-Calif) is on the record as backing “some form of reparations” for slavery. In a recent interview, Harris agreed with the host’s suggestion that government reparations for black Americans were necessary to address past discrimination. The 2020 presidential hopeful later “affirmed that support” in a statement to The New York Times.

“We have to be honest that people in this country do not start from the same place or have access to the same opportunities,” she said in an interview with “The Breakfast Club.”

Harris continued:

Well look, I think that we have got to address that again, it’s back to the inequities. There, through–look, America has a history of 200 years of slavery. We had Jim Crow. We had legal segregation in America for a very long time. The Voting Rights Act was only strong for 50 years and then they wiped it out with this United States Supreme Court in the Shelby decision, to the point that 22 states immediately thereafter put in place laws that one court found were crafted with surgical precision to have black people not be able to vote.
So we’ve got to recognize, back to that earlier point, people aren’t starting out on the same base, in terms of their ability to succeed and so we have got to recognize that and give people a lift up. And, there are a number of ways to do it. Part of my initiative again around the “Lift Act” is that same point–you lifting people up who are making less than a hundred thousand dollars a year. What I want to do about rent is the same thing. What we need to do around education and understanding disparities, what we need to do around HBCUs. But we have a history of racism in America.

Harris doesn’t owe anyone in America, but does she have some mea culpas to make in Jamaica? Her father, Donald J. Harris, wrote an extensive essay about the family’s heritage in Jamaica at Jamaican Global Online in January, claiming to be the descendant of a famed slave owner.

My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town) and to my maternal grandmother Miss Iris (née Iris Finegan, farmer and educator, from Aenon Town and Inverness, ancestry unknown to me). The Harris name comes from my paternal grandfather Joseph Alexander Harris, land-owner and agricultural “produce” exporter (mostly pimento or all-spice), who died in 1939 one year after I was born and is buried in the church yard of the magnificent Anglican Church which Hamilton Brown built in Brown’s Town (and where, as a child, I learned the catechism, was baptized and confirmed, and served as an acolyte).

Hamilton Brown was born in 1776 in Ireland. He became a sugar plantation owner and founder of Brown’s Town in Jamaica, according to university papers, textbooks, and historical documents. Henry Whiteley wrote a pamphlet entitled “Three months in Jamaica in 1832, Comprising a Residence on a Sugar Plantation,” where he describes Brown’s views on his slaves:

The same day I dined at St. Ann’s Bay, on board the vessel I arrived in, in the company with several colonists, among whom was Mr. Hamilton Brown, representative for the parish of St. Ann in the Colonial Assembly… I was rather startled to hear that gentleman swear by his Maker that that Order should never be adopted in Jamaica; nor would the planters of Jamaica, he said, permit the interference of the Home Government with their slaves in any shape. A great deal was said by him and others present about the happiness and comfort enjoyed by the slaves, and the many advantages possessed by them of which the poor in England were destitute. Among other circumstances mentioned in proof of this, Mr. Robinson, a wharfinger, stated that a slave in that town had sent out printed cards to invite a part of his negro acquaintance to a supper party. One of these cards was handed to Mr. Hamilton Brown, who said he would present it to the Governor, as a proof of the comfortable condition of the slave population.

But later that day, after he witnessed slaves being punished by Brown’s overseer, Whiteley wrote:

The first was a man of about thirty-five years of age. He was what is called a pen-keeper or cattle herd; and his offence was having suffered a mule to go astray. At the command of the overseer he proceeded to strip off part of his clothes, and laid himself flat on his belly, his back and buttocks being uncovered. One of the drivers then commenced flogging him with the cart whip. This whip is about ten feet long, with a short stout handle, and is an instrument of terrible power. It is whirled by the operator round his head, and then brought down with a rapid motion of the arm upon the recumbent victim, causing the blood to spring at every stroke. When I saw this spectacle now for the first time exhibited before my own eyes, with all its revolting accompaniments, and saw the degraded and mangled victim writhing and groaning under the infliction, I felt horror-struck. I trembled and turned sick; but being determined to see the whole to an end, I kept my station at the window. The sufferer, writhing like a wounded worm, every time the lash cut across his body, cried out, “Lord! Lord! Lord!” When he had received about twenty lashes, the driver stopped to pull up the poor man’s shirt (or rather smock frock), which had worked down upon his galled posteriors. The sufferer then cried, “Think me no man? Think me no man?” By that exclamation I understood him to say, “Think you I have not the feelings of a man?” The flogging was instantly recommenced and continued; the negro continuing to cry “Lord! Lord! Lord!” till thirty-nine lashes had been inflicted. When the man rose up from the ground, I perceived the blood oozing out from the lacerated and [illegible] parts where he had been flogged; and he appeared greatly exhausted. But he was instantly ordered off to his usual occupation.

Whiteley’s account goes on, describing one victim after the next, including women and young boys. It is truly sickening to read. Brown didn’t stop after the Jamaican slaves were freed. He attempted to make the Irish work on his plantation but failed when he was accused of trying to enslave more people. The historical accounts are so detailed that should Kamala Harris want to search out the families of the people her relative reportedly tortured, she would probably be able to find them.

Will she write a check to repair the damage her ancestor Hamilton Brown did to the slaves in Jamaica? Perhaps the media can do its job and ask her. Don Lemon might, as he seems concerned about her authentic blackness.

He may have a point. Not only is she not “African-American,” but she appears to be descended from violent slave owners.

It is possible Kamala Harris’ lineage came from Brown spreading his seed among his slaves through force, however, Donald Harris’ account is that Christiana Brown, his grandmother, carried the same name as Hamilton Brown and owned a general store in town while her sons worked the family farmland at Orange Hill. If they did descend from slaves, it appears they ended up owning and profiting from the land and business and family name. By the left’s standards, that would make Harris culpable for the suffering of the slaves who worked that plantation under Brown.

It’s a ridiculous supposition, of course, to hold anyone responsible for the actions of distant relatives hundreds of years ago. If we travel far enough back, most of us are likely related to slave owners at some point in history since selling people into slavery has always been a part of the human story across the globe. But since Harris has decided to embrace reparation theology, shouldn’t she lead by example?

If we had a curious or intellectually honest press, they would be lined up outside her door to find out if she’s going to send reparations checks to the descendants of her family’s slaves.

PJM reached out to Harris’ press office and Donald J. Harris for comment and received no response.

Filed Under: Stephen Frank's California Political News And Views Tagged With: Kamala Harris

Medicare expansion would make socialized health insurance inevitable

March 10, 2019 By Sally C. Pipes 4 Comments

Several lawmakers want to pull more people into Medicare. This would hurt anyone with private insurance, and it would inevitably lead to single-payer, government funded healthcare, which would deprive people of any choice over their healthcare.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., recently introduced S.470, a bill that would let any citizen or permanent resident between the ages of 50 and 64 buy into Medicare. It received broad support from her Democratic colleagues. Numerous 2020 presidential hopefuls, including Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., have co-sponsored the bill.

Lawmakers in the House of Representatives want to go even further. In December, Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., introduced a plan called Medicare for America. It would allow anyone in America, regardless of age, to buy into an expanded Medicare system that covers prescription drugs along with dental, vision, and hearing benefits. Those currently covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP would be shunted onto the new plan, as would anyone who buys policies on the individual market.

These proposals would cause prices for private plans to spike.

Medicare underpays for the services its beneficiaries receive. In 2017, hospitals only received 87 cents per dollar spent treating Medicare patients. That means Medicare underpaid hospitals by $53.9 billion.

As more patients shift to Medicare, providers will have to charge private insurers more to make up the difference. That will result in higher premiums for the privately insured.

In other words, Uncle Sam would charge people twice for Medicare, once through the IRS and again at the doctor’s office.

Gradually, people on private plans would get sick of high prices and start moving to Medicare. As people abandoned private plans, insurers would start going out of business. Before long, it would be easy to turn Medicare into an obligatory, single-payer program. That would leave patients with no insurance options.

Patients wouldn’t like that. More than seven in 10 folks with employer-sponsored health insurance are satisfied with their plans. Nearly 60 percent of people say they oppose Medicare for All if it comes at the expense of private insurance, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

Expanding Medicare is a bad deal. Lawmakers should abandon the idea.

This article was originally published by the Pacific Research Institute.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Health care, Kamala Harris, Medicare

Kamala Harris Enthusiastically Endorses Rent Control

March 7, 2019 By Christian Britschgi 8 Comments

Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris shored up her progressive bona fides this weekend by endorsing Oregon’s first-in-the-nation statewide rent control policy, which became law last week.

“Earlier this week, [Oregon Gov. Kate Brown] made it easier for families to stay in their neighborhoods by enacting statewide rent control,” Harris tweeted yesterday. “No one should ever have to choose between paying their rent each month or feeding their children,” the California senator added.

Oregon’s new law caps rent increases at 7 percent plus inflation per year, and it imposes new restrictions on landlords’ ability to kick out tenants.

The law resembles the rent control system in San Francisco, where Harris was once district attorney. There, the price controls on rental properties resulted in exactly what most economists warn will happen: The supply of rental housing fell, and rents increased citywide.

That’s according to a 2018 study from three Stanford economists who looked at an expansion of San Francisco’s rent control in 1994. That year the city expanded its already existing rent regulations—which, as in Oregon, capped annual rent increases at 7 percent per year—to owner-occupied rental properties with four or fewer units, which had previously been exempted.

Because this expansion did not cover buildings that were constructed after 1980, the researchers were able to measure the effects of rent control by comparing very similar sets of housing in the same city. What they found vindicated a lot of standard critiques of rent control.

The Stanford study found that pre-1980 rent-controlled small apartment buildings saw a 25 percent decline in the number of tenants living in them compared to post-1980, non-rent-controlled buildings—often driven by landlords buying out or evicting their tenants and then converting formerly rent-controlled units to condos they’re able to sell at a market price.

The same study found that tenants in rent-controlled housing were more likely to be living at the same address ten years later, and that they saved anywhere from $2,300 to $6,600 a year on rent, adding up to some $2.9 billion in savings during the period examined in the study. That sounds like fodder for rent-control fans—except that the $2.9 billion saved by tenants in rent-controlled units was matched by a 5.1 percent increase in citywide rents, which cost tenants in non-rent-controlled buildings $2.9 billion.

San Francisco today is one of the most expensive places in the country to rent, with the average one-bedroom rent going as high as $3,000 a month. It also has a persistent and worsening homelessness crisis.

Harris’ enthusiastic endorsement of a policy that has failed so miserably in her own backyard is concerning, particularly as the senator has tried to present herself as a bold housing reformer.

Last summer, she introduced the Rent Relief Act, which promised refundable tax credits to folks earning as much as $125,000 per year and paying more than 30 percent of their monthly income in rent. As many pointed out at the time, this would if anything make housing more expensive by essentially subsidizing landlords for increasing rents without actually increasing the supply of rental housing.

There’s a broad consensus that high housing costs in and around many of America’s urban areas are the result of restrictions on new construction, and the best way of bringing prices down is to get rid of some of those restrictions. Instead, Harris is doubling down on counterproductive measures like poorly designed rent subsidies and price controls.

There’s not a lot any president can do about local restrictions on new housing supply. Land use decisions are almost entirely the province of state and local governments. But there is a lot that the feds could do to make America’s housing affordability problems worse. If a presidential candidate endorses statewide rent control, it’s not a good sign.

Christian Britschgi is an associate editor at Reason.

This article was originally published by Reason.com.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Kamala Harris, Rent control

Can California Afford to Provide Universal Health Care Coverage?

February 1, 2019 By David Kersten 14 Comments

Perhaps no issue looms larger on both the state and national political stage than the question of universal health care coverage.

U.S. Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris (D) sent a shockwave through the national health care debate on Monday Jan. 28^th by nonchalantly stating that she would eliminate private insurers as a necessary part of implementing “Medicare-for-all,” according to a CNN report.

Due to a firestorm of attention, most of it negative, the next day the Harris campaign walked back the previous day’s remarks in large part by stating that the candidate would also be open to more moderate health reform plans, which would preserve the private industry, according to the CNN report.

Newly elected California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) campaigned on the issue of single-payer health care and on his very first day in office unveiled a comprehensive package of reform proposals aimed at expanding state health care coverage subsidies and lowering its costs, which includes extending Medi-Cal to undocumented immigrants, according to a report by the LA Times.

In an interview, Gov. Newsom told the LA Times “These are not just symbolic gestures…We’re hoping to ignite a new conversation. It’s a moral imperative, not just economic,” states the LA Time report.

But as many experts, including Gov. Newsom, have pointed out, big systemic reform to the system, such as a move to a single-payer health system, would require the unlikely support of the Trump Administration.

Newsom has done a good job of tempering expectations for single-payer health care and his proposed coverage expansions and prescription cost controls demonstrate to the his supporters and the public that he is serious about expanding coverage as well containing costs.

But the 800-pound guerilla in the universal health care conversation is where will all the money come from to provide guaranteed government financed coverage to every Californian and everyone who likely to come to California once universal health care is guaranteed by the state?

“Where do you get the extra money? This is the whole question…I don’t even get it…how do you do that?,” said former California Governor Jerry Brown (D) following a universal healthcare discussion in Washington, D.C. in a 2017 interview with the LA Times.

At the time, Gov. Brown pointed out that the overall cost of medical care in California is equal to 18% of the state’s gross domestic product, which would be about $450 billion.

“You take a problem and say I’m going to solve it by something that’s an even bigger problem, which makes no sense,” then Governor Brown said at the time, according to the LA Times report.

Gov. Newsom developed some questionable rhetoric during the 2018 campaign, where he said that the State of California cannot afford not to move to a single-payer system because health care has become such a big expense in the state.

It appears that one of the major points of disagreement between former Gov. Brown and now Governor Gavin Newsom is the question of whether the State of California can afford to move to a universal health care system, specifically a single-payer system?

More recently, other high-profile liberal Democrats have come out against single-payer health care with former Mayor of New York City and billionaire Michael Bloomberg stating that Medicare-for-all “would bankrupt us for a very long time,” according to a CNN report.

“I think we could never afford that,” Bloomberg said, addressing pin factory employees in New Hampshire. “We are talking about trillions of dollars.”

“I think you could have Medicare-for-all people who are uncovered, but that’s a smaller group,” Bloomberg said.

“But to replace the entire private system where companies provide health care for their employees would bankrupt us for a very long time,” said Bloomberg according to the CNN report, which noted that Bloomberg made the comments in response to Sen. Kamala Harris calling for an end to the private health care market.

So what does all this mean for the current universal health care debate in California?

It means that California Democrats might want to heed the advice of two of the county’s most prominent liberal Democrats—former Gov. Jerry Brown and Michael Bloomberg—and proceed with great caution regarding the feasibility of California going it alone on universal health care.

There is no question that the state could choose to enact a single-payer or Obamacare-type universal health care system, but the million dollar question, or trillion dollar question rather in this case, is would such a system work and be fiscally sustainable over the long-term?

As a long-time analyst of fiscal issues in California, I believe that former Gov. Jerry Brown and Michael Bloomberg are correct to point out the major challenges and risks of moving to a universal health care system—both at the state level and the federal level.

David Kersten is an independent political consultant who lives in the Bay Area. Kersten is also an adjunct professor of public budgeting at the University of San Francisco.

This article was originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Gavin Newsom, Health care, Jerry Brown, Kamala Harris

Kavanaugh Hearing Shines Light on CA Senate Contest

October 2, 2018 By Joel Fox 14 Comments

In any normal election cycle, the state’s race for governor would be in the spotlight for California’s voters and media. But, this is not a traditional political era we are living through, and the dramatic, emotional hearings over confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court has made California’s senators the center of the political world.

The different styles of California’s U.S. Senators were on display at the confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Before the compromise that delayed the nomination vote for a week, California senator Kamala Harris walked out of the proceedings. Senior senator and ranking minority member Dianne Feinstein remained in her chair.

Harris’s walk out had as much to do with her presidential aspiration as it did with her objections to the committee’s direction. As the San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier & Ross reported, Harris has been busy using the Kavanaugh hearing as a tool to build lists of potential supporters around the country.

Feinstein on the other hand was the center of the Kavanaugh confirmation storm charged by Republican colleagues with engineering a strategic political hit against the nominee by holding Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusatory letter of sexual assault until right before a final vote on Kavanaugh. Feinstein denied any skullduggery and advocated for the ultimate compromise to bring in the FBI investigators.

Watching from across the country, California voters have the opportunity to endorse the Feinstein approach or kick her out of office with someone more in the Harris mold.

Feinstein’s opponent in the senate contest, State Senator Kevin de Leon, assuredly would have walked out of the meeting with Harris. In fact, if you listen to his rhetoric, he would not have been in the meeting at all but would have been out in the hallway with anti-Kavanaugh protestors.

De Leon’s campaign highlighted the recent PPIC poll that has him now 11 percent behind Feinstein, half of what he trailed her by in the previous poll.

One interesting aspect of the poll is that about a quarter of Republican voters queried said they did not intend to vote in this Democrat vs. Democrat contest. However, of those Republicans who did name a preference, the state senator who has put out an agenda far to the left of Feinstein actually had a small lead among Republicans.

Much of de Leon’s standing with Republicans reflects their lack of knowledge for his policies and familiarity with the long-servicing Democratic U.S. Senator.

Oddly, the turn of events in Washington could continue to help de Leon if some Republican and conservative voters who plan to sit on their hands instead of voting decide that Feinstein is culpable in the attack on Kavanaugh—especially if, in the end, he is rejected as a court nominee. Retribution could come in the form of a vote for de Leon.

On the other hand, Feinstein’s actions, if given credit by liberal voters for sinking Kavanaugh, could strengthen her hand with a segment of the Democratic Party voters.

Regardless, how this comes down, already political expectations have been turned upside down when the state’s governor’s race now playing second fiddle to the U.S. Senate contest.

Joel Fox is editor and co-publisher of Fox and Hounds Daily.

This article was originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Brett Kavanaugh, Dianne Feinstein, Kamala Harris

The Hollowing-Out of the California Dream

July 31, 2018 By Joel Kotkin 8 Comments

Progressives praise California as the harbinger of the political future, the home of a new, enlightened, multicultural America. Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill has identified California Senator Kamala Harris as the party leader on issues of immigration and race. Harris wants a moratorium on construction of new immigration-detention facilities in favor of the old “catch and release” policy for illegal aliens, and has urged a shutdown of the government rather than compromise on mass amnesty.

Its political leaders and a credulous national media present California as the “woke” state, creating an economically just, post-racial reality. Yet in terms of opportunity, California is evolving into something more like apartheid South Africa or the pre-civil rights South. California simply does not measure up in delivering educational attainment, income growth, homeownership, and social mobility for traditionally disadvantaged minorities. All this bodes ill for a state already three-fifths non-white and trending further in that direction in the years ahead. In the past decade, the state has added 1.8 million Latinos, who will account by 2060 for almost half the state’s population. The black population has plateaued, while the number of white Californians is down some 700,000 over the past decade.

Minorities and immigrants have brought much entrepreneurial energy and a powerful work ethic to California. Yet, to a remarkable extent, their efforts have reaped only meager returns during California’s recent boom. California, suggests gubernatorial candidate and environmental activist Michael Shellenberger, is not “the most progressive state” but “the most racist” one. Chapman University reports that 28 percent of California’s blacks are impoverished, compared with 22 percent nationally. Fully one-third of California Latinos—now the state’s largest ethnic group—live in poverty, compared with 21 percent outside the state. Half of Latino households earn under $50,000 annually, which, in a high-cost state, means that they barely make enough to make ends meet. Over two-thirds of non-citizen Latinos, the group most loudly defended by the state’s progressive leadership, live at or below the poverty line, according to a recent United Way study.

This stagnation reflects the reality of the most recent California “miracle.” Historically, economic growth extended throughout the state, and produced many high-paying blue-collar jobs. In contrast, the post-2010 boom has been inordinately dependent on the high valuations of a handful of tech firms and coastal real estate speculation. Relatively few blacks or Latinos participate at the upper reaches of the tech economy—and a recent study suggests that their percentages in that sector are declining—and generally lack the family resources to compete in the real estate market. Instead, many are stuck with rents they can’t afford.

Even as incomes soared in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco after 2010, wages for African-Americans and Latinos in the Bay Area declined. The shift of employment from industrial to software industries, as well as the extraordinary presence—as much as 40 percent—of noncitizens in the tech industry, has meant fewer opportunities for assemblers and other blue-collar workers. Many nonwhite Americans labor in the service sector as security guards or janitors, making about $25,000 annually, working for contractors who offer no job security and only limited benefits. In high-priced Silicon Valley, these are essentially poverty wages. Some workers live in their cars, converted garages, or even on the streets, largely ignored by California’s famously enlightened oligarchs.

CityLab has described the Bay Area as “a region of segregated innovation.” TheGiving Code, which reports on charitable trends among the ultra-rich, found that between 2006 and 2013, 93 percent of all private foundation-giving in Silicon Valley went to causes outside of Silicon Valley. Better to be a whale, or a distressed child in Africa or Central America, than a worker living in his car outside Google headquarters.

For generations, California’s racial minorities, like their Caucasian counterparts, embraced the notion of an American Dream that included owning a house. Unlike kids from wealthy families—primarily white—who can afford elite educations and can sometimes purchase houses with parental help, Latinos and blacks, usually without much in the way of family resources, are increasingly priced out of the market. In California, Hispanics and blacks face housing prices that are approximately twice the national average, relative to income. Unsurprisingly, African-American and Hispanic homeownership rates have dropped considerably more than those of Asians and whites—four times the rate in the rest of the country. California’s white homeownership rate remains above 62 percent, but just 42 percent of all Latino households, and only 33 percent of all black households, own their own homes.

In contrast, African-Americans do far better, in terms of income and homeownership, in places like Dallas-Fort Worth or greater Houston than in socially enlightened locales such as Los Angeles or San Francisco. Houston and Dallas boast black homeownership rates of 40 to 50 percent; in deep blue but much costlier Los Angeles and New York, the rate is about 10 percentage points lower.

Rather than achieving upward class mobility, many minorities in California have fallen down the class ladder. This can be seen in California’s overcrowding rate, the nation’s second-worst. Of the 331 zip codes making up the top 1 percent of overcrowded zip codes in the U.S., 134 are found in Southern California, primarily in greater Los Angeles and San Diego, mostly concentrated around heavily Latino areas such as Pico-Union, East Los Angeles, and Santa Ana, in Orange County.

The lack of affordable housing and the disappearance of upward mobility could create a toxic racial environment for California. By the 2030s, large swaths of the state, particularly along the coast, could evolve into a geriatric belt, with an affluent, older boomer population served by a largely minority service-worker class. As white and Asian boomers age, California increasingly will have to depend on children from mainly poorer families with fewer educational resources, living in crowded and even unsanitary conditions, often far from their place of employment, to work for low wages.

Historically, education has been the lever that gives minorities and the poor access to opportunity. But in California, a state that often identifies itself as “smart,” the educational system is deeply flawed, especially for minority populations. Once a model of educational success, California now ranks 36th in the country in educational performance, according to a 2018 Education Weekreport. The state does have a strong sector of “gold and silver” public schools, mostly located in wealthy suburban locations such as Orange County, the interior East Bay, and across the San Francisco Peninsula. But the performance of schools in heavily minority, working-class areas is scandalously poor. The state’s powerful teachers’ union and the Democratic legislature have added $31.2 billion since 2013 in new school funding, but California’s poor students ranked 49th on National Assessment of Education Progress tests. In Silicon Valley, half of local public school students, and barely one in five blacks or Latinos, are proficient in basic math.

Clearly, California’s progressive ideology and spending priorities are not serving minority students well. High-poverty schools are so poorly run that disruptions from students and administrative interruptions, according to a UCLA study, account for 30 minutes a day of class time. Teachers in these schools often promote “progressive values,” spending much of their time, according to one writer, “discussing community problems and societal inequities.” Other priorities include transgender and other gender-relatededucation, from which parents, in some school districts, cannot opt out. This ideological instruction is doing little for minority youngsters. San Francisco, which the nonprofit journalism site Calmatters refers to as “a progressive enclave and beacon for technological innovation,” also had “the lowest black student achievement of any county in California,” as well as the highest gap between black and white scores.

Ultimately, any reversal of this pattern must come from minorities demanding a restoration of opportunity. Some now see the linkage between state policy and impoverishment, which has led some 200 civil rights leaders to sue the state Air Resources Board, the group that enforces the Greenhouse Gas edicts of the state bureaucracy. But perhaps the ultimate wakeup call will come from a slowing economy. After an extraordinary period of growth post-recession, California’s economy is clearly weakening, as companies and people move elsewhere. Texas and other states are now experiencing faster GDP growth than the Golden State. Perhaps more telling, the latest BEA numbers suggest that California—which created barely 800 jobs last month—is now experiencing far lower income growth than the national average, and scarcely half that of Texas, Colorado, Michigan, Arizona, Missouri, or Florida. Out-migration of skilled and younger workers, reacting to long commutes and high prices, seems to be accelerating, both in Southern California and the Bay Area.

One has to wonder what will happen when the California economy, burdened by regulations, high costs, and taxes, slows even more. Generous welfare benefits, made possible by taxing the rich, could be threatened; conversely, the Left might get traction by pushing to raise taxes even higher. The pain will be relatively minor in Palo Alto, Malibu, or Marin County, the habitations of the ruling gentry rich—but for those Californians who have already been left behind, and for a diminishing middle class, it might be just beginning.

Joel Kotkin serves as Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (COU).

This article was originally published by City Journal Online

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Dream, Homeownership, Kamala Harris