There was an article in the Santa Barbara Newspress that exposed Santa Barbara County, a place where our political leaders do whatever it takes to retain the title of “Capital of Social Justice.” Apparently via a progressive, lead by example, no green regulation, effective or not, duplicative or not, can ever go too far agenda, as being the apartheidic economy that it really is. In other words, the article I shared talked about Santa Barbara County now earning the dubious distinction of being the county in California with the third highest percentage of families living in poverty. Spoiler alert: the overwhelming majority of these families are Latino. Indeed, Latino’s comprise 44% of the county’s population but comprise a majority (54%) of the families living in poverty. Social justice indeed! How about a little economic justice?
So what does the Board of Supervisor’s do the day after this devastating report is released? If you guessed pass a resolution committing the County to a comprehensive programmatic approach to more economic development to help lift Latino families, as well as others out of chronic poverty, well, you’d be wrong.
No, what they did do was pass a resolution celebrating open borders (see attached). Oh they’ll tell you it’s a resolution in support of comprehensive immigration reform, racial solidarity, unity, resiliency, diversity, and equality, and that it is also intended as a powerful statement of opposition to repression, racism, xenophobia, blah, blah, blah. And I’m certain that for Supervisor Lavagnino, who co-sponsored the resolution, that is exactly what it is. But, what it really, really is, especially and certainly for those who hijacked his well-intentioned resolution, is a partisan political statement in support of unfettered immigration and ultimately open borders. And all of this, of course, is meant to troll the Trump Administration, and to also further the insufferably disingenuous, and morally exhausted canard that they really, really care about the plight of Latino families…especially downtrodden Latino families. And in Santa Barbara County to say downtrodden Latino families is increasingly to repeat yourself.
If I owned a newspaper, I’d have published a story today with this headline: Board of Supervisors to Families in Latin America “Don’t Be Poor Down There, Be Poor Up Here!” Or, better still, maybe a more focused and elongated message to the millions of destitute Latino families suffering in Venezuela would make sense. I’m just spit-balling, but something like Dear Venezuelans, why suffer in a communist country rich in oil when you can suffer in an increasingly socialist county that is also rich in oil? And have no fear because in Santa Barbara County we won’t steal your oil to make our regime wealthy at your expense, we just force local oil companies to leave the oil in the ground, so that we can pander to the environmentalists at your expense. So come to Santa Barbara where instead of curing your poverty with a good job, we’ll treat your poverty with government assistance…so instead of dying from starvation, and a lack of shelter, we can keep you poor in an unaffordable shelter for the rest of your life. Ok, I jest. Or am I?
Now you might be saying to yourself, come on Joe, what’s wrong with the Board of Supervisors showboating, I mean showing solidarity with illegal immigrant parents who are suffering the penalty of breaking America’s laws when those laws are really, really mean? Nothing. Absolutely nothing is wrong with our elected officials using their political, taxpayer-funded government trappings to wax eloquent about perceived legal injustices in this world. They were elected fair and square, and as my friend Congressman Tom McClintock likes to say, we get the elected officials other people vote for. In other words, it’s not a violation of any government rule, or law, or brown act protocol to pose for the cameras and demonstrate your manufactured compassion and concern for a few minutes before getting back to their real work of government which is to over-tax, over-spend, over-regulate, and over-prevaricate. All of this is fine, I suppose, as long as the politicians retain a modicum of shame while they’re doing it. Come on, Das, just a little bit of shame?
Look, I’ve said it before, and obviously, I need to say it again. Recessions, and therefore the common economic manifestations of recessions, aren’t caused by immaculate conception. High unemployment or under-employment, housing shortages, inflation, etc., are the result of wrongheaded, and often well-intended but misguided policies. And so I’ll even be charitable and suggest the reason so many Latino families in Santa Barbara County live near or below the poverty level is due to the unintended consequences of the bad policies that so many politicians in California adhere to and relentlessly impose on us. The point is…unless and until our well-meaning, and shamelessly disingenuous politicians in Santa Barbara County figure out how to forge a local economy that works for everybody and not just those with inherited wealth, or a government job, perhaps passing meaningless, but self-congratulatory resolutions that expose a level of obliviousness to the real world conditions on the ground, here and abroad, will be interpreted for what it really is, a pathetic attempt to be politically relevant and sufficiently self-righteous.