ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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Why Is California a Hellhole? 1 in 8 Children Are Anchor Babies

Here illegally and we worry about giving them rights.

1 in 8 children in California schools have an undocumented parent

Posing significant challenges for educators, about 1 in 8 students in California schools has at least one parent who is undocumented, according to a new brief from the Education Trust-West.

Undocumented children as well as U.S. citizen children with undocumented relatives have experienced heightened anxieties for several years as a result of deportation policies begun under President George W. Bush and tightened ones under President Barack Obama.

But according to school officials, those anxieties have reached new heights since Donald Trump’s inauguration, with possible consequences on their ability to focus on school work, the willingness of parents to attend school events, or even to bring their children to school.

Education Trust-West, an advocacy organization in Oakland, estimates that 750,000 students in California’s preK-12 schools have an undocumented parent, out of a total enrollment of 6.2 million. Some of these students may be undocumented themselves, but the vast majority of K-12 children with undocumented parents are U.S. citizens.

According to the Ed-Trust West brief, only 240,000 children between 3 and 17-year-olds are undocumented.

These figures do not include most of the teenagers and young adults who have received temporary protection from deportation through the Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals program. By far the majority of the 214,000 young people who were approved are of college-going age.

Last week in an interview with The Associated Press, Trump said undocumented students who have received temporary relief from deportation through the DACA program could “rest easy.” “We are not after the Dreamers, we are after the criminals,” he said. “That is our policy.” The term “Dreamers” is used colloquially to refer to DACA students, who must be 15 years or older to qualify.

Over the weekend, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly also said that his department won’t target DACA recipients. These assurances, however, were undercut when Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ was asked on ABC’s This Week on Sunday whether Dreamers could “rest easy.” “Well, we’ll see. I believe that everyone who enters the country illegally is subject to being deported,” he responded.

In any case, DACA recipients make up a small proportion of undocumented immigrants, and anxieties among immigrant families and students are still running very high, according to several participants in the One Voice Assembly in Sacramento last week sponsored by the California Association of Latino Superintendents and Administrators. David Verdugo, the organization’s executive director, said the anxieties many Latino students are experiencing “is taking away from the academic focus we want to maintain throughout our respective districts.”

Other figures suggest that the number of public school students with undocumented parents could be even higher than those in the Ed Trust-West brief. A report issued last month by the Center for American Progress, in collaboration with the University of Southern California’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, estimated that over 1.9 million children under 18 years old in California live in a household with at least one undocumented family member. (These estimates are based on U.S. Census figures gathered through the American Community Survey between 2010 and 2014.)

Nearly 70 percent, or 1.3 million, of these children are likely to be of school-going age (between 5 and 17). But because some of their unauthorized household members may be relatives other than parents, such as siblings or aunts or uncles, it is hard to determine exactly how many of the 1.3 million children under these estimates have an undocumented parent.

But even deportation of family members other than parents, or the threat of deportation, is likely to raise a child’s anxieties, and have an impact on a child’s mental health and school performance.

“Deporting a family member, especially a parent, has serious detrimental impacts on children,” the Center for American Progress report stated.

“In addition to the loss of a parent and the immeasurable security that comes with having a stable family, deportations often leave children in the foster care system,” the authors of the report wrote. “Fathers, in many immigrant families, are often the bread winners and are more often detained or deported. Removals can, therefore, result in a large number of single mothers left behind to care and provide for the family.”

The report also pointed to research showing that “when their parents have been deported, children go through multiple negative experiences: They suffer from psychological trauma, especially when they witness a parent’s arrest; their family is separated; and they are likely to experience housing insecurity and economic instability.”

As a state, California provides a wide range of supports for undocumented students, but mostly for those attending, or wishing to attend, college. These include students being eligible for Cal-Grants to cover tuition costs, receiving fee waivers at the California Community Colleges, and having access to counseling and other services at Undocumented Student Centers at all UC campuses and some CSU and community college campuses.

But there are far fewer formal supports for undocumented children attending preK-12 public schools, or for U.S. citizen children with undocumented parents. That is in part because school officials may not even know who these children are. School districts are not required to collect information on a student’s immigration status, according to the Association of California School Administrators.

In fact, the California School Boards Association encourages them not to do so. “Any such inquiry may violate federal law, and may put the school in a position of being challenged by federal agents to release such information if collected,” the association wrote in a legal guide it issued earlier this year. As a result of the 1982 Plyler v. Doe U.S. Supreme Court ruling, undocumented children have a constitutional right to attend U.S. schools. School districts that do anything to discourage them from doing so could run afoul of the law, Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, told EdSource last week.

In recent months, a growing number of school districts have declared themselves “safe havens” for immigrant students or passed other resolutions to reassure immigrant students. But so far only about 60 districts and county offices of education, out of more than 1,000 statewide, have adopted such resolutions, according to the California Department of Education.

The San Francisco-based Immigrant Legal Resource Center says that schools can do a lot to help children and families in immigrant communities cope with immigration fears bordering on “panic.” “As a trusted institution in immigrant families’ lives, schools can play a critical role in ensuring immigrant families have access to important information and resources,” the center wrote in its “guidance for schools” brief.

The organization said schools should go out of their way to reassure students and families that undocumented children have the right to attend public schools, encourage families to find out about their rights and options, host community events at schools and at the same time encourage families to prepare for the worst.

“Without creating panic, it is important that immigrant families prepare for potentially harsh new immigration policies,” the center advised. “They should have child care and an emergency plan in place if parents are taken into immigration custody.”

http://www.dailynews.com/social-affairs/20170429/1-in-8-children-in-california-schools-have-an-undocumented-parent

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Investigate Maxine Waters For Giving $650k to Daughter, Damit!

Investigate Trump? Investigate this ghetto queen and where she got $650k to give away

Maxine Waters Slated to Pay Daughter Another $108K From Campaign Funds

Karen Waters already collected nearly $650,000 to run the operation

Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) is slated to pay her daughter another $108,000 for running a lucrative campaign operation that pulls in hundreds of thousands of dollars each election cycle, FEC filings show.

Karen Waters, the daughter of Rep. Waters, collected nearly $650,000 to date for running the operation for her mother’s campaign.

Karen is in charge of a “slate mailer” operation for Citizens for Waters, Rep. Waters’ federal campaign committee. Slate mailers, or endorsement mailers, involve a candidate or political group paying for the endorsement of another politician.

A candidate pays Citizens for Waters from their own political committees for her endorsement. If a candidate that she endorses does not directly pay her campaign committee, they must credit their own committee with in-kind contributions from Waters.

The mailers are sent to nearly 200,000 residents in South Central Los Angeles, an area where Waters holds considerable clout. The mailers contain an “official sample ballot” and brief quotes from Waters about the candidates and measures that she supports.

During the 2016 election cycle, Waters’ campaign committee hauled in nearly $300,000 from more than 20 payments for slate mailer endorsements.

Kamala Harris, the former Democratic attorney general of California who last November won a seat in the U.S. Senate, gave Citizens for Waters $30,000 to appear on the endorsement mailers this past election cycle. Harris previously paid Waters’ campaign committee $28,000 in 2010 to appear on the mailers as she was running for attorney general.

The Democratic State Central Committee of California and Yes on Measure M, a group that pushed for an interconnected transportation system in Los Angeles, which was ultimately approved with 70 percent of the vote, each paid Citizens for Waters $35,000 to appear on the mailers.

A number of judges and California ballot measures additionally paid to appear on the slate mailers.

Karen Waters collected $65,287 throughout the 2016 cycle to run the slate mailer operation. Karen, along with her firm Progressive Connections, has received nearly $650,000 in payments from Citizens for Waters since 2006.

Waters’ most recent filings to the Federal Election Commission show that an outstanding balance of $108,952.15 is owed to Karen Waters. When Karen is paid the money that she is owed, she will have pocketed around $750,000 for running the mailers for the campaign since 2006.

Karen ran the operation from a state committee called LA Vote prior to the 2006 cycle. The FEC issued an advisory opinion in 2004 that allowed Waters to run the operation from her federal campaign committee.

Waters’ office did not return a request for comment on the payments by press time.

 

http://freebeacon.com/politics/maxine-waters-slated-pay-daughter-another-108k-campaign-funds-lucrative-operation/

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Executions in Arkansas Called ‘Death by Torture’

Poor baby. This murderer choked as he died.

Coughing, convulsing and calls for probe after Arkansas execution

(Reuters) – A lawyer for an executed Arkansas death row inmate asked the state on Friday to investigate why his client coughed and convulsed on a death chamber gurney, saying a lethal injection drug may have been the cause.

A separate group of lawyers for Arkansas death row inmates asked a federal court to preserve evidence in the four executions Arkansas held over eight days this month, saying in a lawsuit that the state’s protocols “did not prevent an execution by torture.”

Arkansas, which had not held an execution in 12 years, concluded its executions series by putting to death Kenneth Williams on Thursday night. Accounts of his execution raised fresh concerns about whether the sedative midazolam, a Valium-like drug, is effective in lethal injection mixes.

Witnesses said Williams, who admitted to killing four people, jerked and gasped for air for about 30 seconds a few minutes after his execution began. The state said it was a routine execution lasting about 15 minutes, but critics said something was amiss.

“It is not a normal reaction to therapeutic doses of midazolam,” said Jonathan Groner, a professor of surgery at the Ohio State University College of Medicine who has testified against the drug’s use in executions.

“Was the drug doing what the state intended it to do or was the person being chemically waterboarded on the way to being killed?” he asked in an interview when talking about execution mixes.

Shawn Nolan, a lawyer for Williams, on Friday asked Arkansas to investigate his execution.

The lawsuit filed in a U.S. district court in Little Rock said: “If the midazolam fails to keep the prisoner under anesthesia, the prisoner would be awake and aware but unable to move or speak or even open his eyes, so he would then look completely serene despite being in agony.”

Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson, who set the hurried execution schedule because the state’s supply of midazolam expires at the end of April, told reporters there was no need for an investigation and all the executions were carried out within Arkansas’ protocols.

The United Nations’ human rights office voiced deep concern on Friday, saying the state’s rush to carry out the executions before a drug expired added to the “arbitrariness and cruelty” of the process.

Midazolam is supposed to render inmates unconscious but critics say it has failed in some cases, leaving them to feel the effects of a paralytic that halts breathing and another drug that stops the heart while causing an excruciating burning sensation.

Major pharmaceutical companies began a sales ban on lethal injections drugs about six years ago to death penalty prison systems due to ethical concerns.

Several states then turned to new mixes that included midazolam. The drug was used in troubled executions in Oklahoma and Arizona where witnesses said inmates twisted in pain on death chamber gurneys.

Death penalty supporters have said some pain in executions is warranted given the brutality of the murders the condemned typically commit and the harm they have inflicted on victim’s families.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/coughing-convulsing-calls-probe-arkansas-execution-190046453.html

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Sessions Threatens MS-13 “We Are Coming After You”

Time to go the fuck back to your hellhole

On Long Island, Sessions Vows to Eradicate MS-13 Gang

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — The attorney general of the United States, Jeff Sessions, came on Friday to this Long Island area besieged by the transnational gang known as MS-13, and in a 20-minute speech to local police commissioners and sheriffs vowed to eradicate the gang by cracking down on illegal immigration.

Mr. Sessions said the gang, which is linked to El Salvador, carries a threat similar to the Colombian cartels and the mafia. He said it smuggled gang members across the United States border and recruited young immigrants.

His message was familiar, and it bore the wishes of President Trump, who Mr. Sessions said was “particularly alert to” the violence affecting Suffolk County, where the bodies of four young men who had been brutally killed were found near a park on April 13.

The authorities contend the killings had the markings of MS-13, which would bring the gang’s body count to 15 in Suffolk County since the beginning of 2016, the most violent stretch since MS-13 took hold on Long Island in the late 1990s.

“The MS-13 motto is kill, rape and control,” Mr. Sessions said at the United States Courthouse here. “Our motto is justice for victims and consequences for criminals. That’s how simple it is. Prosecute them, and after they’ve been convicted, if they’re not here lawfully, they’re going to be deported.”

Mr. Sessions talked tough, declaring that “this is the Trump era,” when the federal government would back law enforcement. He said that he would add prosecutors to the Eastern District of New York. On Wednesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York had come to the area to announce that he would add 25 State Police officers to the gang-fighting efforts.

Mr. Sessions did not, however, offer assurances to the sizable immigrant community that its members could report crime to the police without worrying about their immigration status.

That has been a concern for local law enforcement officials, who fear that the Trump administration’s promise to crack down on undocumented immigrants will destroy trust in the community and hamper investigations. In presentations throughout the county, the Suffolk County police commissioner, Timothy Sini, said that if crime victims or witnesses came forward, the police would not ask about their immigration status.

Mr. Sessions called the notion of strict immigration enforcement eroding trust an “exaggerated argument” and said that people could still call 911 anonymously to report crime.

He said that prosecuting immigrants who had entered the country illegally and committed crimes was still the federal government’s priority, and that the government was not “out seeking witnesses to crimes to deport.” But he added, “It cannot be that the attorney general grants immunity contrary to law for people who violate the laws of the United States.”

Mr. Sessions then met with law enforcement officials from Suffolk County, Nassau County and the State Police to discuss ways to best fight a gang whose hallmark weapon is the machete.

Before Mr. Sessions arrived, about 200 protesters gathered in the early morning outside the courthouse, across the lawn from the armored cars and Homeland Security guards.

“I’m concerned that his response is anti-immigrant, which would lead to racial profiling Latinos, African-Americans,” said the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, the president of the State University of New York at Old Westbury.

But Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from the Second District of New York, which includes Central Islip and neighboring Brentwood, was visibly angered by the protesters. He had invited Mr. Sessions to Long Island to meet with law enforcement officials to help solve the problem, and attended a news conference after Mr. Sessions’s speech.

“They should be on their knees thanking him, not out there protesting,” Mr. King said at the news conference. “It’s shameful, it’s disgraceful that leaders in the community would criticize the attorney general.”

Mr. Sessions said the first step to combating criminal groups like MS-13 was to secure the border and restore “a lawful system of immigration.” He noted that the administration was adding immigration judges at the border to expedite deportations, and criticized the “lawless practice” of sanctuary cities that do not cooperate with immigration authorities. (Though, in a reversal, he said that he was “a big admirer” of the New York Police Department for leading the way in community-based procedures, and proving that “broken-windows strategies work,” referring to aggressively policing minor violations to prevent more serious crimes.)

“We cannot continue with this transporting across our border illegal immigrants who have not been properly vetted and actually are part of criminal organizations,” Mr. Sessions said.

He did not elaborate on how MS-13 smuggles gang members into places like Long Island, but last week, Mr. Sini did.

“There is no question that MS-13 members who have immigrated illegally here have recruited individuals coming over,” he said. Mr. Sini added that intelligence showed that MS-13 was threatening local families to become legal guardians for gang members.

The numbers, he said, are indicative of this trend: seven of the 13 MS-13 gang members indicted in a sweep by the United States attorney’s office in March had entered the country as unaccompanied minors. Ten of those indicted were undocumented immigrants.

About 4,000 unaccompanied minors have settled in the county in the last several years after fleeing the violence-racked countries of Central America, and gang members have preyed on them. About 400 children who entered the country unaccompanied and relocated to Brentwood are now enrolled in the school district, Levi McIntyre, the superintendent, said last week.

“The best way to tackle the problem is to convince young people to stay away from the gangs,” Mr. Sessions said. During a news conference, he would not commit to providing financial resources to Suffolk County for intervention or prevention programs.

Later, when he met with the families of two teenage girls from Brentwood who were killed in September, he did make that promise, said Evelyn Rodriguez, the mother of one of the girls, Kayla Cuevas, 16.

“He told me, ‘Rest assured that this is going to be spoken about, talked about, and there will be more resources and programs to our community and schools,’” Ms. Rodriguez said. “I’m happy that he did come out and hear our concerns.”

La Mara Salvatrucha, shortened to MS-13, originated as a street gang in Los Angeles in the 1980s, with members who were refugees from El Salvador. It developed into a transnational organization. Mr. Sessions said he was told that the gang had headquarters in the jails of El Salvador and had 30,000 members, 10,000 of them in the United States.

On paper, the Suffolk police seemed to make progress after the killings of Ms. Cuevas and the other girl, Nisa Mickens, 15, arresting 170 gang members. Then came the deaths of the four young men. Two of them were immigrants from Honduras who had escaped gangs there.

“I have a message for the gangs that target our young people: We are targeting you,” Mr. Sessions said. “We are coming after you.”

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Fat Ass is Cremated and Catches Funeral Home on Fire

Or, maybe it was Michael Moore. Is he dead yet?

CINCINNATI — A “freak accident” started an unscheduled fire Wednesday night at the Hillside Chapel Crematory in Cincinnati, owner Don Catchen said.

“My operator was in the process of cremating remains and (the body) was overly obese and apparently it got a little hotter than the unit is supposed to get,” Catchen said. “One of the cremation containers that we had close got caught on fire and that’s what burnt.”

Cincinnati Fire Chief Michael Washington said the fire started with a business-as-usual cremation.

When fat in the body burned at a higher temperature than usual, the too-hot flames spread to nearby containers and parts of the surrounding room, he said.

“We believe there were some combustible storage boxes that were too close to the ovens,” Washington said.

The fire began at about 9:40 p.m. It took District 3 first responders about two hours to douse the flames. Catchen said his business at 525 Martin Luther King Drive is “fine” and there was no serious damage.

“The containers that we use — that we have to place the remains in to cremate them — that’s the only thing that’s burnt,” he said.

Fortunately, crematoriums are highly fireproof; no other bodies or parts of the building were damaged by the fire, Catchen said.

The danger of fires when cremating obese bodies isn’t an entirely unknown issue for the funeral service profession: “As you may realize, when a morbidly obese person is cremated, there’s a danger of what can only be called (in layman’s terms) a ‘grease fire,'” according to Caleb Wilde, a licensed professional who runs the blog Confessions of a Funeral Director.

In October 2014, a Virginia facility caught fire while cremating a 500-pound body. Fire investigators there said excessive heat ignited rubber roofing near the crematorium’s smoke stack. Another fire, two years earlier in Austria, left firefighters “covered with a layer of sooty grease.”

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/cremation-turns-into-uncontrolled-fire-at-funeral-home

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Maxine Waters Brain Farts Again

Maxine Waters, the quarter-century member of Congress who has new-found stardom as an attack dog for the left, suffered a brain freeze during an interview today when she was ranting about Donald Trump’s handling of the North Korea threat.

Speaking with Yahoo News, Waters was talking about China’s role in containing North Korea, and momentarily appeared confused about what she was discussing.

“Those in China have a great trading relationship, they sell an awful lot of stuff to North Korea,” she said.

“And so (the Chinese) president is warning Trump, ‘okay, don’t start talking about preemptive strikes. We want a diplomatic solution,’” Waters said, speculating about China’s conversations with Trump.

The 78-year-old continued, “‘We do not want war in, uh, uh, uh, North Korea — North, uh, um, um, Korea at all,’” struggling to complete her thought.

It’s not the first time Waters has been stymied by Korea.

Speaking to reporters with other House Democrats in February, Waters attempted to build the case for why Democrats “may” push for impeachment.

“And the fact that he is wrapping his arms around Putin while Putin is continuing to advance into Korea.”

She meant Crimea.

 

VIDEO: Maxine Waters suffers brain freeze during rant on North Korea