The Trump Administration continues its #CounterResistance to California’s illegal immigration promoting polices with a move targeting the state’s “birth tourism” industry.
Federal Homeland Security agents raided 20 alleged “maternity hotels” in Southern California where pregnant Chinese women pay tens of thousands of dollars to live to ensure a “made in America” baby, reports said.The feds raided locations in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties on Tuesday, targeting three competing birth-tourism schemes, officials told NBC News, which was on the scene of one of the raids.
None of the expecting women were arrested, as the raids were targeting the entrepreneurs who were in charge of the maternity establishments.
None of the women were arrested; they are being treated as material witnesses, and paramedics were on hand in case any of them went into labor during the sweep.Instead, the investigation was aimed at ringleaders who pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars tax-free to help Chinese nationals obtain visas and then pamper them until they delivered in an American hospital at a discount, court papers show.
Meanwhile, the California senate’s proposal to evade Trumps new tax plan is facing scrutiny. Readers may recall that 2018 rules no longer allow deductions of certain state and local taxes, so the politicos are attempting to enable Californians to direct money to a state fund designated as a “charity” and then take the federal charitable deduction.
Tax experts note that it creates a complex system of calculations the only benefit the wealthy.
“The scramble to restore the uncapped state and local tax deduction in high-tax states is in some ways a curious political exercise, as it largely involves elected officials who have championed progressive taxation contemplating intricate, almost Rube Goldberg-esque ways to make the federal tax code less progressive for wealthy taxpayers in their states,” wrote Jared Walczak, a senior policy analyst at the right-leaning Tax Foundation, in a critique of the legislation.Beyond practical considerations, Walczak wrote, it’s unlikely the Internal Revenue Service would allow the effort because charitable deductions must have a public purpose under the law, and simply trying to sidestep federal tax liabilities wouldn’t qualify.
Meanwhile, our Lieutenant Governor and leading candidate in the 2018 gubernatorial race is demanding that President Trump resign over his alleged, but not proven, vulgarity.
California Lieutenant Governor and 2018 gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom called on President Donald Trump to resign in the wake of the president’s controversial “shithole countries” comment.”You’re a joke and a racist, President Donald J. Trump,” Newsom wrote on Facebook. The former mayor of San Francisco concluded with one word: “Resign.”
I will simply point out that we now have 17 dead Californians in the wake of mudslides, and over 40 who died in December from wildfires. The fact that Newsom is channeling his inner Victorian prude instead of focusing on serious matters, such as infrastructure or emergency planning, makes me worry that our choices for the next governor be limited to those with Trump Derangement Syndrome.
[Featured image via YouTube]
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