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Title: Meg-A-Death? Whitman’s Cowardly Approach To Immigration Spells Doom For GOP
Source:
VDARE
URL Source: http://www.vdare.com/misc/101026_cromer.htm
Published: Oct 26, 2010
Author: Mark Cromer
Post Date: 2010-10-28 03:00:11 by Big Meanie
Keywords: None
Views: 365
Comments: 26
The fall election campaign in now in the home stretch. The GOP is seemingly riding the crest of a national wave that will deliver it to sweeping gains across the country—and perhaps control of one or even both chambers of Congress. But in California, the last whimpering gasps of Meg Whitman’s soulless gubernatorial run are now fading quietly into the night. By almost every measure, it is a stunning defeat. In a political season that has seen the electorate slip Establishment Democrats the dreaded black spot from Boston to Las Vegas, Whitman’s bid for the Sacramento statehouse appeared to be a race that could safely be called early. After all, Whitman is a billionaire businesswoman with the moderate credentials that California Republicans (think Pete Wilson or Ed Zschau but with a bottomless purse) and who at 52-years-old faced this year’s archetypal political villain: Jerry Brown—a liberal retread pushing into his 70s that has never been weaned from the Golden State’s political tit. Indeed, Brown was running for office in California when Whitman was still in middle school. Brown was able preemptively to brush aside any challenge in the Democratic primary from the flashy mannequin mayors Antonio Villaraigosa (Los Angeles) and Gavin Newsom (San Francisco). But his general election showdown with Whitman initially looked like it might be as evenly matched as Richard Nixon and George McGovern’s 1972 match up. Yet with just days before election, Brown now leads Whitman by anywhere from five to eight percentage points in most polls—a spread that falls outside the margin of error even at its closest. The Los Angeles Times published a poll Sunday that gave Brown a 13-point lead among likely voters, a portent of an unmitigated election night blowout of the Republican. The curtain hasn’t yet dropped—six percent of voters polled in the last Rasmussen survey declared themselves undecided and the LAT has a long history of blending its liberal ideology into its news reporting. But Brown’s momentum seems undeniable. Barring some unforeseen late-breaking development, Whitman will have to sweep virtually all the undecided voters and peel away some of Brown’s soft support to eek out a come-from-behind victory. This in a state that is flat broke and facing a real unemployment rate of 20-percent. So let the post-mortem begin: how did this happen? How did a political ghost like Jerry Brown, who was once connected at the hip to perhaps the most widely despised liberal in the state’s history—the late Chief Justice Rose Bird—emerge from the Bay area fog in this Summer of the Tea Party to trounce a Republican that had little baggage and mountains of cash-on-hand? At its root essence, the fundamental answer is simple: immigration. The death spiral of the GOP in California can be traced back a generation to 1986, when George Deukmejian was governor, Ronald Reagan was in the White House and California was seen as the sun dappled redoubt of conservative success known simply as “"Reagan Country". No Democrat had carried the state in national elections between Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton— a literal generation of Democratic defeats. The polling booth defections of the white working and middle class, the so-called “Reagan Democrats”, appeared to be a terminal loss for the coalition that Franklin Roosevelt had first built. But who could have known then that it would be Reagan, with the stroke of his pen in 1986 on the Immigration Reform and Control Act, who would unwittingly place his signature on what effectively was the death warrant for the Republican Party in California? Though it was sold to an ambivalent public as a necessity that would help integrate about 900,000 illegal immigrants into American society, the measure ultimately granted a blanket amnesty to more than 3 million people—half of them in California—and rang a cattle bell throughout Mexico that triggered the longest sustained wave of mass illegal immigration in history—what VDARE.COM calls “The Mexodus”. The human tsunami that poured across the southern border smashed into California with a staggering force, overwhelming schools, hospitals, housing, public safety and social services. Working class blacks, whites and Latinos were driven from jobs they’d long-held in a wide range of industries just as Southern California was undergoing its post-Cold War makeover, shedding tens of thousands of skilled labor manufacturing jobs in defense-related sectors. Far from securing the border, Uncle Sam was AWOL as desperate California residents were reduced to symbolic acts like parking their cars on the border with their headlights pointed toward Mexico—illuminating the mass night crossings and pleading for help. Legal chain immigration and the current birthright citizenship policy served as potent accelerants in the rapid and radical remaking of California. By 1994 a fed-up electorate in California passed Proposition 187 in a landslide. The measure targeted a range of social services that acted as pull factors for illegal immigrants. While nationally the GOP had virtually no interest in securing the border or enforcing immigration laws, the reelection campaign of Gov. Pete Wilson saw the grassroots rage in California as a movement he ignored at his peril. Wilson embraced Prop. 187 and proceeded to annihilate Kathleen Brown (Jerry’s younger sister) at the polls, rolling up a 1.25 million vote (15-percent) margin in the election, carrying 51 of California’s 58 counties, including the entire vote-rich southern counties. But that triumph of the popular will was short-lived. Latino racial demagogues intent on maintaining their demographic momentum litigated Prop. 187 to death, with help from a Clinton-appointed federal judge and Democratic governor Gray Davis, while illegal immigration continued apace—as did the erosion of the middleclass tax base in California as families fled the state. Rather than mount a vigorous grassroots defense of Prop. 187 and rallying the multiethnic majority to the defense of their state, Establishment Republicans equivocated, offering little more than tepid denials to the rabid charges of racism that the Democratic leadership and Latino activists cynically heaped upon supporters of the measure. The GOP had won a strategic battle in California—and then promptly surrendered the field. That exposed a bitter truth to the coalition of voters that passed Prop. 187: the Republican elite’s heart has never been in the fight against illegal immigration. That the corporate suits of the GOP were merely along for the electoral ride shouldn’t have been much of a shocker, given the business interests that profit handsomely from the illicit importation of exploitable cheap labor that drives wages down and reduces worksite rights. And for whatever passionless overtures they have occasionally made for securing the border and enforcing immigration laws, the Republican elite sugared them for business by demanding more legal immigration into the U.S., more replacement workers for citizens still clinging to jobs that couldn’t be outsourced offshore. In the vacuum produced by the GOP leadership’s paralysis, a surreal narrative emerged from the hyper-politicized newsrooms around the state, a feverish storyline that held while Wilson’s embrace of Prop. 187 may have delivered him a landslide, it also alienated and energized a previously lethargic Latino electorate. That voting bloc would arise as an ethnically-motivated monolith—the story goes—that would draw no distinction between the third-generation Chicano citizen and an illegal immigrant from Michoacan that arrived a week ago. And so the fabled “Latino vote” in California was born. In the 16 years that have passed since Prop. 187, that chimerical narrative has gone from a counter-intuitive Democratic pipedream to a largely Republican propagated semi-reality in California. With each passing election cycle, the GOP candidates have indulged a bizarre ritual of decrying illegal immigration during the primary—and then pathetically hedging during the general election campaign. Whitman is the epitome of the GOP’s suicidal double-talk on immigration. Since fending off a primary challenge from Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, who after some hesitation made illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, Whitman has slipped into something more comfortable: the milquetoast vernacular of the GOP elite when it comes to immigration. Whitman maintains a straight face as she declares she is "100% opposed to any form of amnesty" while simultaneously stating that she supports a “comprehensive federal immigration solution”—which of course will include the largest mass amnesty in the history of nation states. Whitman declared that “English is America’s national language” and demanded that immigrants be required to learn it—all while spending millions of dollars on courting Latino voters (whom are all presumably citizens that speak English) with Spanish language ads. When asked pointblank if she supported or opposed drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, Whitman launched into an obfuscating blather about jobs, a Stepford Wife smile fixed across her cherubic face, terrified of verbally acknowledging that she—like most other Californians—opposes giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses. The cherry was placed on top of Whitman’s long con game in late September, when illegal immigrant Nicandra Diaz Santillan played her own blatant scam by stepping in front of the microphones to declare she had been used by Whitman for nearly a decade before being discarded like so much “garbage”. [Lawyer: Whitman knew for years her housekeeper was illegal immigrant, San Jose Mercury News, September 30, 2010] On cue, Whitman feigned shock that Diaz Santillan had been in the country illegally. Most working Americans in California believe that a pair of conniving frauds like Whitman and Diaz Santillan deserve each other. But it is clear that the episode was yet another payment by a GOP Establishment that has been on an installment plan of betrayal, diligently selling out Americans as they work to build a state they are increasingly unlikely to ever win again in statewide and national elections. The political title to the state is about to be handed to the Democrats. If Ronald Reagan’s pen stroke graced the political death warrant for the California GOP in 1986, then it was George W. Bush that carried out the execution, sabotaging what little enforcement was being done and pushing hard for another amnesty that fueled even greater waves of illegal immigration across the southern border. In 1986 there were an estimated 1.5 million illegal immigrants in California. By 2008 there were an estimated 2 million illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County alone and perhaps more than triple that figure in the state altogether. Los Angeles County recently estimated it is shelling out more than $52 million-a-month in welfare payments through the CalWorks program to the children of illegal immigrants, all while the beleaguered taxpayers in the teeming county fork over another billion dollars every year to jail and provide healthcare for illegal immigrants directly. These numbers are all going up, not down. It’s now so late in the game that the Democratic leadership in California rarely bothers trying to conceal the fact that they have secured their political hegemony in the state largely by sheer ethno-demographic warfare, at the expense of the at-risk and in-need Americans in their traditional base. The Democratic leadership hasn’t just pushed working class blacks to the back of the bus again—they’ve thrown them under it, effectively stripping them of their hard-won political, economic and educational gains across the state. Meg Whitman’s failed campaign in California should serve as a final wake-up call to Republicans across the rest of the country, especially those that insist on parroting Karl Rove’s delusion that comprehensive immigration reform will somehow benefit their party. It won’t. Amnesty is an epic disaster for America and a death sentence for the Republican Party. And Meg Whitman is just the latest name chiseled onto their California tombstone. Mark Cromer (email him) is a journalist in Southern California, where he is a second-generation native. A lifelong Democrat who campaigned for liberal icon Sen. Alan Cranston in 1986, he left the party in 2006 and reregistered independent in response to the Democratic leadership’s continued support for illegal immigration and the devastating impact it has had on working and middle class communities.
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#1. To: All (#0)
To all Freedom4um members and lurkers from Commiefornia. Jerry Brown is a well known GUN GRABBER in the same league as the last Democratic Governor of the state, Gray Davis. The time has come to put our money where our mouth is on this issue and tell Jerry Brown by phone, email or snail mail that if he signs ONE more new "gun control" bill OF ANY KIND into law that we will proceeed to JURY NULLIFY ALL OF THE "GUN CONTROL" LAWS OF THE STATE PERIOD. There will be NO FURTHER COMPROMSE from us on this issue and we will use what ever Constitutional power and leverage we have left INCLUDING JURY NULLIFICATION to fully restore the Second Amendment rights of Californians regardless of your (Brown's) "Progressive" elitist opinions about the subject.
It is called justice. We stole California from Mexico; now they are taking it back.
when Ronald Reagan signed that legislation he also gave a speech about it. he said he'd sign the bill though it is hugely flawed. He said we should force employers to see if who they are hiring are illegal or not and not allow the employers to hire illegals. The wall street journal at the time reported that Republican leadership of the US Senate would not allow provisions in the legislation to force employers to hire legal people only. In fact the legislation was made with the intent of protecting employers who hire illegals. Ever since that 1986 legislation an employer must only photo-copy documents of new hires and has no other legal obligation to see if who they are hiring is legal or not. and if those photo-copies look like real documents, the employer is in the clear - even to this day that is exactly how it is. It was republicans in the US Senate who decided this in 1986. Ronald Reagan said he wished they would soon make legislation to correct this. In all this time we've never done that. The House in those days was dominated by Democrats. and the House was with Reagan, they wanted to force the employers to hire legal only. And the Senate never even voted on it, this was simply dictated by senate leadership who would not allow a vote on the bill if provisions were in it that forced employers to hire legal only.
Psalms 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
what an irony! And the other irony is that Reagan's approach to illegal immigration is considered extremely liberal on today's standards. Because he did favor amnesty. At first he didn't, but as he looked at the issue and realized that there were many people in America who had been here for years and were integral to their communities, he favored amnesty for them. Reagan signed a law giving them amnesty and only had the hope of fixing the thing with the employers to force them not to bring in more. Reagan did his part, he spoke to the nation and warned them about the illegal immigration and said it had to be fixed. Reagan rejected the idea that the american work force should be split up into free citizens and non-free citizens. He wanted everybody to play on the same field. Illegal immigrants are compromised people as they don't have legal status. It is bad for our society to have that in our work-force. It is corrosive, causes racial tension, alienation and drives wages down. Better to have free citizens. The guest worker idea of today's republicans I am sure Reagan would reject. how much the republicans have changed because today's republicans are not concerned with freedom of the workers, they're concerned with acquiring slaves for the employers. that is what the 'guest worker' idea is. But at this time in Reagan's presidency he was coming under the cloud of dementia. His own party's people (bush and the dogs) could influence him due to this dementia condition. Some speculate he was given drugs to put him in that state. but his 2'nd term was clouded by dementia.
Psalms 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
it is very naive and stupid to think that you can just 'secure the border'. You can make the border more secure, but to actually stop smuggling things and people across the border is easier said than done. they have tunnels underneath that borders. Lots of tunnels. It is a very big business to go across the border. Idiot republicans - if they want to keep illegal immigrants out, then you must audit the employers and see who they have hired that is illegal and penalize the employers. This is the only way that will work. It is no accident that in our mass media this solution is never mentioned. Ronald Reagan even in a demented state knew this was the answer. A few weeks ago there was a meat-packing plant in Phoenix raided by Sheriff Arpaio. And he found that one third of the employees at the meat packing plant were illegals. They were deported. The other 2/3's of the employees were legal. If Republicans have their way all of those legals will lose their jobs and be excluded from work opportunities. Because Republicans will dangle in front of every employer the opportunity to hire guest workers. Employers will find that very tempting. They will hire lawyers who will prove that americans won't work and then they will import their semi-slaves. People who vote Republican are foolish to think the Republicans will protect those workers who are the majority at the meat packing plants and even the farms where crops are harvested who are legal residents. Republicans only care about getting semi-slaves for employers. Our huge back-log of adults not working means nothing to Republicans. There is no ridicule or scorn that is too much concerning the Republicans - because of what they've done to our country on the illegal immigrant front.
Psalms 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
The Republican desires to let illegal immigrants work in our country has caused a lot of racism and racial division in our country. If you support racism, then vote Republican. If you support slavery, then vote republican. because republicans really love those things. Republicans today don't want to eliminate illegal immigrants from our work force. that is a huge myth. Republicans are the ones who paved the way for the illegals. They don't care how much damage they do to our country, they only care about giving the employers a new group of semi-slaves to drive wages down and make employers feel good about themselves. Republicans, if you will read what they want on this issue, want to turn the illegals into guest workers and then they want a permanent stream of guest workers available to all employers in America. Republicans want the illegal immigrant phenomenon to be essentially permanent. and on top of that they want an expensive police state type presence on the border. Shouldn't we really be concerned about prosperity for our population?
Psalms 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
Republicans love racism. Because they inflame it as best they can. By letting in tons of illegals with no significant penalties at all to employers who hire illegals and at the same time complaining loudly about illegals, the republicans are fanning the flames of racism in a huge way in our country. I guess some people love to hate other groups and that is why they support bringing them in so they can have something to complain about. Several states have been divided up along racial division over this. California, Arizona, etc. These are big states. Why is it good for our people to live in an atmosphere of racial division and racial persecution? The original indentured servant programs of the 1600's were the same. They imported people who were compromised people because they did not have legal rights. Their labor was owned by an employer, just like a guest worker. and this caused huge racial division and conflict in our nation over time. Republicans today are the exact same as the king of england in the early 1600's who gave us indentured servants and then slavery.
Psalms 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
that is so true. You should hear these latino democrat politicians talk. To them it is about racism and racial revenge. They have listened to the idiot impotent republican jack-asses talk about illegal immigrants even while they were allowed to come here in large numbers and work. They have built up a rage. and the people of So-Cal and Arizona and other locations now must tolerate their extreme racism. Thank-you Republican assholes for giving this to us. Think of today's idiot American that votes Republican over the illegal immigrant issue. How will our country be better off when employers can hire guest workers and bypass American labor all-together? that will only lead to even more lack of opportunity for Americans, lower wages, destruction of the economy even while we flood our country with people, and racial division in the future. Americans are absolutely determined to become a small and hated minority in their own country.
Psalms 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
Meg Whitman is a dog. She wants to treat illegal immigrants like garbage and hire them at the same time. She's a billionaire they say, couldn't find an American to work. Had to hire an illegal foreigner. and at the same time won't give them driver's licenses. She's just like a slave owner. and that is exactly how these employers who hire illegals should be spoken of. We should heap derision on them. Unfortunately, all our mass media supports the agenda of those who rule us and the agenda is more guest workers. We have experience with slavery in our country. A very small minority of our population chose to own slaves as the law allowed. and this caused huge problems for our country. Republicans learned nothing from it.
Psalms 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
there is no historical record of the Mexico City government collecting taxes from people who lived in California, Arizona or many other western states. In the 1830's there was a rebellion in California led by people of Mexican descent who lived in the Los Angeles area. Mexico tried to collect taxes from them. Their response was war. The people who lived in California and were of mexican descent preferred to use the word 'californian' to describe themselves. They successfully rebelled from mexico and then voluntarily became a part of the United States. Perhaps you've been educated in publik skools. I take great offense at what you said. The mexicans never did have control of these western states. Just because the spanish had a map and it showed certain parts of the US as being part of Mexico does not make it so. The mexicans took over the mexican government from spain and claimed the spanish empire in north america as their own. Doesn't make it theirs'. Russians had maps that showed California was part of Russia. The Russians also had a settlement in northern California. This doesn't make California Russian. The English, french, spanish all claimed most of what is now the US as theirs'. doesn't make it theirs'. The reason mexicans are taking part of our country is not because they owned it centuries ago. Centuries ago the mexicans lived in mexico, they've been moving north ever since. At the time of the mexican-american war of 1846-1848 only 5% of ethnic mexicans lived north of the current border. and those people preferred not to be a part of mexico. In the rebellions of both California and Texas in the 1830's many ethnic mexicans participated in the rebellion. The reason mexicans are taking part of our country is because so many americans are extremely stupid on these issues and we have anti-American leadership.
Psalms 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
None of the United States ever belonged to Mexico. Learn your history.
"If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable." - Thomas Jefferson
The Mexicans/Spanish stole it from the Indians with a genocidal campaign that would have warmed the heart of George Armstrong Custer.
"One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order." K.M. Heaton, The National Educator
She had/has more than sufficient money to afford American help. That she chose to hire an illegal does say a lot about her character. She wanted a slave not a housekeeper.
"One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order." K.M. Heaton, The National Educator
If Meg Whitman wanted to be a real American leader, then she would schedule for herself a speech to a chamber of commerce in California. and she would before that audience ridicule and demonize employers who hire illegal immigrants. She would equate these people to slave owners of the old south and speak of them as dividing our country up along race and cheating the system to push down wages for the sake of their own greed. She should publicly ask these people to simply leave the country if they think they cannot find american employees. Calvin Coolidge went to Alabama in 1925 to speak against the KKK. If Meg Whitman did what I said, then this would be similar. She should pledge that California will audit all its employers and punish them for hiring illegals. She should tell the president to do his job and that if he takes California to court over this, then she'll welcome the conflict with him. and she should use such opportunities to destroy the president's reputation. that is what a real American leader would do. We don't have such people. Such people will be undermined by the real rulers and not allowed to participate. The Americans are so stupid they don't even care.
Psalms 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
The USA certainly doesn't own California. The native Americans and their close kin folk the Mexicans didn't sell it to us. And in no way form or fashion can white Americans claim they own California with any justification.
Just wow.
See what I mean? Somebody forgot to flush.
"The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor" - Ronald Reagan
Oh I see, and it is noted. The big "Ls", and other erstwhile KooKs are emerging on cue.
That is not worthy of comment. No country on earth has
ever been "purchased" into perpetuity by anyone. All such entities exist and
are maintained by force of arms.
lol.......ditto!!! Eyes rolling over here.
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." Edward Bernays, Father of Public Relations
:) I'd love to hear his rationale....never mind.....it's Sunday and football is on.
Makes you wonder how long the E.U. is going to last. Once the U.S. economy completely collapses, the U.S. will not be able to provide a military defense for Europe.
That is geopolitics... My short opinion. When WW3 breaks out, the majority of EU, especially Western Europe, will desert us in a heartbeat. Most will withdraw into their own little back yard, hoping the bad man will stay away. They will not fight, they will take their chances of letting us go under if they can save themselves. That was readily apparent in WW2 as a history lesson.
Are you as ignorant as you appear to be? Indians hate Mexicans. They are not "kin" at all. And none of the United States ever belonged to Mexico. Not one square inch. Learn your history before you spout off.
"If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable." - Thomas Jefferson
Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America; The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans. Large, settled populations lived on the coast and hunted sea mammals, fished for salmon and gathered shellfish; groups in the interior hunted terrestrial game, and gathered nuts, acorns and berries. California groups also were diverse in their political organization with bands, tribes, villages, and on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash, Pomo and Salinan. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups. The first European to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was the Portuguese João Rodrigues Cabrilho, in 1542, sailing for the Spanish Empire. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila Galleons on their return trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565. Sebastián Vizcaíno explored and mapped the coast of California in 1602 for New Spain. Spanish missionaries began setting up 21 California Missions along the coast of what became known as Alta California (Upper California), together with small towns and presidios. In 1821 the Mexican War of Independence gave Mexico (including California) independence from Spain; for the next 25 years, Alta California remained a remote northern province of the nation of Mexico. Cattle ranches, or ranchos, emerged as the dominant institutions of Mexican California. After Mexican independence from Spain, the chain of missions became the property of the Mexican government and were secularized by 1832. The ranchos developed under ownership by Californios (Spanish-speaking Californians) who had received land grants, and traded cowhides and tallow with Boston merchants. Beginning in the 1820s, trappers and settlers from the U.S. and Canada began to arrive in Northern California, harbingers of the great changes that would later sweep the Mexican territory. These new arrivals used the Siskiyou Trail, California Trail, Oregon Trail and Old Spanish Trail to cross the rugged mountains and harsh deserts surrounding California. In this period, Imperial Russia explored the California coast and established a trading post at Fort Ross. The Bear Flag of the Republic of CaliforniaIn 1846 settlers rebelled against Mexican rule during the Bear Flag Revolt. Afterwards, rebels raised the Bear Flag (featuring a bear, a star, a red stripe and the words "California Republic") at Sonoma. “[We] overthrow a Government which has seized upon the property of the Missions for its individual aggrandizement; which has ruined and shamefully oppressed the laboring people of California.” —William Ide, Declaration from the Bear Flag Revolt The Republic's first and only president was William B. Ide,[27] who played a pivotal role during the Bear Flag Revolt. His term lasted 22 days and concluded when California was occupied by U.S. forces during the Mexican-American War. The California Republic was short lived. The same year marked the outbreak of the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). When Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into Monterey Bay and began the military occupation of California by the United States. Northern California capitulated in less than a month to the U.S. forces. After a series of defensive battles in Southern California, including The Siege of Los Angeles, the Battle of Dominguez Rancho, the Battle of San Pasqual, the Battle of Rio San Gabriel and the Battle of La Mesa, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the Californios on January 13, 1847, securing American control in California. Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the war, the region was divided between Mexico and the U.S.; the western territory of Alta California, was to become the U.S. state of California, and Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah became U.S. Territories, while the lower region of California, Baja California, remained in the possession of Mexico. San Francisco harbor c. 1850. Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.In 1848 the non-native population of California was estimated to be no more than 15,000. But after gold was discovered, the population burgeoned with U.S. citizens, Europeans and other immigrants during the great California Gold Rush. By 1854 over 300,000 settlers had come.[28] On September 9, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, California was admitted to the United States as a free state (one in which slavery was prohibited). The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule was located at Monterey from 1777 until 1835, when Mexican authorities abandoned California, leaving their missions and military forts behind.[29] In 1849 the Constitutional Convention was first held there. Among the duties was the task of determining the location for the new state capital. The first legislative sessions were held in San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included Vallejo (1852–1853), and nearby Benicia (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in Sacramento since 1854[30] with only a short break in 1861 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to flooding in Sacramento. The intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue in Hollywood 1907. In less than two decades, Hollywood would become an international center of the entertainment industry.Travel between California and the central and eastern parts of the U.S. was time consuming and dangerous. A more direct connection came in 1869 with the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad through Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains. After this rail link was established, hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens came west, where new Californians were discovering that land in the state, if irrigated during the dry summer months, was extremely well-suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops, cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere. During the early-20th century, migration to California accelerated with the completion of major transcontinental highways like the Lincoln Highway and Route 66. In the period from 1900 to 1965 the population grew from fewer than one million to become the most populous state in the Union. The state is regarded as a world center of technology and engineering businesses, of the entertainment and music industries, and as the U.S. center of agricultural production.
Thanks for the info.
The Fed EXPOSED!!! The FARO RESERVE BANK!!!
#2. To: Big Meanie (#0)
#3. To: Big Meanie (#0)
But who could have known then that it would be Reagan, with the stroke of his pen in 1986 on the Immigration Reform and Control Act, who would unwittingly place his signature on what effectively was the death warrant for the Republican Party in California?
#4. To: Big Meanie (#0)
have known then that it would be Reagan, with the stroke of his pen in 1986 on the Immigration Reform and Control Act, who would unwittingly place his signature on what effectively was the death warrant for the Republican Party in California?
#5. To: Big Meanie (#0)
Far from securing the border
#6. To: Big Meanie (#0)
Latino racial demagogues
#7. To: Big Meanie (#0)
In the vacuum produced by the GOP leadership’s paralysis, a surreal narrative emerged from the hyper-politicized newsrooms around the state, a feverish storyline that held while Wilson’s embrace of Prop. 187 may have delivered him a landslide, it also alienated and energized a previously lethargic Latino electorate. That voting bloc would arise as an ethnically-motivated monolith—the story goes—that would draw no distinction between the third-generation Chicano citizen and an illegal immigrant from Michoacan that arrived a week ago.
#8. To: Big Meanie (#0)
the Democratic leadership in California rarely bothers trying to conceal the fact that they have secured their political hegemony in the state largely by sheer ethno-demographic warfare,
#9. To: Big Meanie (#0)
When asked pointblank if she supported or opposed drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, Whitman launched into an obfuscating blather about jobs, a Stepford Wife smile fixed across her cherubic face, terrified of verbally acknowledging that she—like most other Californians—opposes giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses.
#10. To: DWornock (#2)
We stole California from Mexico;
#11. To: DWornock (#2)
We stole California from Mexico; now they are taking it back.
#12. To: DWornock (#2)
It is called justice. We stole California from Mexico; now they are taking it back.
#13. To: Red Jones (#9)
(Edited)
Meg Whitman is a dog. She wants to treat illegal immigrants like garbage and hire them at the same time.
#14. To: Original_Intent (#13)
#15. To: Red Jones, Turtle (#10)
Russians had maps that showed California was part of Russia. The Russians also had a settlement in northern California. This doesn't make California Russian.
#16. To: DWornock, Cynicom, Turtle, Flintlock, 4, *White guilt* (#15)
The USA certainly doesn't own California. The native Americans and their close kin folk the Mexicans didn't sell it to us. And in no way form or fashion can white Americans claim they own California with any justification.
#17. To: Jethro Tull (#16)
Just wow.
#18. To: Flintlock (#17)
#19. To: DWornock, Jethro Tull (#15)
(Edited)
The USA certainly doesn't own California. The native Americans
and their close kin folk the Mexicans didn't sell it to us. And in no way form
or fashion can white Americans claim they own California with any justification.
#20. To: Jethro Tull (#16)
Just wow.
#21. To: abraxas (#20)
#22. To: Cynicom (#19)
All such entities exist and are maintained by force of arms.
#23. To: PaulCJ, Jethro tull, all (#22)
Makes you wonder how long the E.U. is going to last. Once the U.S. economy completely collapses, the U.S. will not be able to provide a military defense for Europe.
#24. To: DWornock (#15)
The USA certainly doesn't own California. The native Americans and their close kin folk the Mexicans didn't sell it to us. And in no way form or fashion can white Americans claim they own California with any justification.
#25. To: DWornock (#15)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California#History
#26. To: christine (#25)
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