The Real Cost of California’s ‘Woke’ Politics

Back in 2018, Forbes magazine ran a feature with the alluring headline, “The Top Four Reasons California Is Unsustainable.” In it, the author pointed out the ultimate paradox of America’s most abundant state: that California possesses the greatest natural and human resources any state in the union and yet, it’s somehow spiraled into bankruptcy, with an uncontrollable cost of living, and embarrassingly boasts the largest number of residents fleeing its borders in the nation.

How could this be in the land of milk and honey? How did this Democratic government make California unsustainable?

For some, the answer to that question may be a hard pill to swallow. More than anything, it has to do with politics and ideology.

As the numbers reveal, the ideology of the political left has translated into more – not less – poverty and opportunity for the very minority groups which its perennial Democratic leadership claims to be the champion of.

Writer Joel Kotkin of City Journal reports…

No state wears its multicultural veneer more ostentatiously than California. The Golden State’s leaders believe that they lead a progressive paradise, ushering in what theorists Laura Tyson and Lenny Mendonca call “a new progressive era.” Others see California as deserving of nationhood; it reflects, as a New York Times columnist put it, “the shared values of our increasingly tolerant and pluralistic society.”

In response to the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti announced plans to defund the police—a move applauded by Senator Kamala Harris, a prospective Democratic vice presidential candidate, despite the city’s steep rise in homicides. San Francisco mayor London Breed wants to do the same in her increasingly crime-ridden, disordered city. This follows state attorney general Xavier Becerra’s numerous immigration-related lawsuits against the Trump administration, even as his state has become a sanctuary for illegal immigrants—complete with driver’s licenses for some 1 million and free health care.

Despite these progressive intentions, Hispanics and African-Americans—some 45 percent of California’s total population—fare worse in the state than almost anywhere nationwide. Based on cost-of-living estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, 28 percent of California’s African-Americans live in poverty, compared with 22 percent nationally. Fully one-third of Latinos, now the state’s largest ethnic group, live in poverty, compared with 21 percent outside the state. “For Latinos,” notes longtime political consultant Mike Madrid, “the California Dream is becoming an unattainable fantasy.”

Since 1990, Los Angeles’s black share of the population has dropped in half. In San Francisco, blacks constitute barely 5 percent of the population, down from 13 percent four decades ago. As a recent University of California at Berkeley poll indicates, 58 percent of African-Americans express interest in leaving the state—more than any ethnic group—while 45 percent of Asians and Latinos are also considering moving out. These residents may appreciate California’s celebration of diversity, but they find the state increasingly inhospitable to their needs and those of their families.

https://21stcenturywire.com/2020/08/03/the-real-cost-of-californias-woke-politics/

UN Report Claims DPRK ‘Probably’ Developed Miniature Nuclear Devices for Ballistic Missiles

A new report submitted on Monday by an independent, 15-member panel of experts on the United Nations Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea claims that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is violating sanctions and is likely developing miniature nuclear devices that attach to ballistic missile warheads.

“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is continuing its nuclear program, including the production of highly enriched uranium and construction of an experimental light water reactor. A Member State assessed that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is continuing production of nuclear weapons,” the confidential report observed by Reuters reportedly read.

The interim report also detailed that several countries believe Pyongyang has “probably developed miniaturized nuclear devices to fit into the warheads of its ballistic missiles.”

Furthermore, the document reportedly revealed that many unnamed countries in the UN believe that North Korea’s past six nuclear tests have been tied to an effort to develop those miniature nuclear devices.

One country, which also went unnamed in the report, assessed that the DPRK “may seek to further develop miniaturization in order to allow incorporation of technological improvements such as penetration aid packages or, potentially, to develop multiple warhead systems.”

Just last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un asserted that nuclear weapons function as a “reliable, effective” deterrent against “high-intensity pressure and military threats and blackmailing by imperialistic reactionaries and hostile forces.”

However, the UN report detailed that North Korea is not stopping at nuclear development and has continued to violate sanctions “through illicit maritime exports of coal, though it suspended these temporarily between late January and early March 2020.”

The UN experts went on to accuse Pyongyang of continued cyberattacks and online criminal initiatives.

“The Panel continues to assess that virtual asset service providers and virtual assets will continue to remain lucrative targets for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to generate revenue, as well as mining cryptocurrencies,” the report read.

The experts’ report comes a few weeks after Japan released its annual defense white paper, which not only expressed that Beijing was a continued threat to the island nation, but also that Pyongyang poses “a grave and imminent threat to the security of Japan.”

The white paper detailed that the DPRK has been making strides in its ballistic missile technology at “an extremely rapid pace” and could use a low-trajectory ballistic missile to deliver a nuclear weapon to Japan.

https://sputniknews.com/asia/202008041080051195-un-report-claims-dprk-probably-developed-miniature-nuclear-devices-for-ballistic-missiles/