LA Anchor Baby Welfare Tab…$600 Million

Welfare Tab for Children of Illegal Immigrants Estimated at $600M in L.A. County

Reuters

Welfare benefits for the children of illegal immigrants cost America's largest county more than $600 million last year, according to a local official keeping tabs on the cost.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich released new statistics this week showing social spending for those families in his county rose to $53 million in November, putting the county government on track to spend more than $600 million on related costs for the year -- up from $570 million in 2009.

Antonovich arrived at the estimate by factoring in the cost of food stamps and welfare-style benefits through a state program known as CalWORKS. Combined with public safety costs and health care costs, the official claimed the "total cost for illegal immigrants to county taxpayers" was more than $1.6 billion in 2010.

"Not including the hundreds of millions of dollars for education," he said in a statement.

Antonovich's figures, though, center on costs generated by American-born children of illegal immigrants. Isabel Alegria, communications director at the California Immigrant Policy Center, said it's "unfair" to roll together costs associated with both illegal immigrants and U.S.-born citizens.

"Those children are U.S. citizens, children eligible for those programs," Alegria said.

She also questioned the authenticity of Antonovich's numbers regarding health care and public safety -- though for the welfare program statistics, Antonovich cited numbers from the county's Department of Public Social Services.

Antonovich acknowledges that the children whose benefits he's focusing on are U.S.-born. But he argues that the money is collected by the illegal immigrant parents, putting a painful burden on taxpayers, including those who are legal immigrants.

"The problem is illegal immigration. ... Their parents evidently immigrated here in order to get on social services," Antonovich spokesman Tony Bell said. "We can no longer afford to be HMO to the world."

He said the state should cut back on these social benefits. According to the November statistics, that cost accounted for 22 percent of all food stamp and CalWORKS spending in the county.

Over the summer, the Federation for American Immigration Reform also looked at these kinds of costs nationwide to get an idea of the burden to local governments at a time when many are grappling with budget deficits.

The organization reported that the cost of illegal immigration stands at about $113 billion a year. Nearly half of that amount went toward education costs, according to the study. Costs were naturally higher in states with large illegal immigrant populations -- in California, the total annual cost was pegged at $21.8 billion.

Source:  Fox News

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Mystery Obama/Joker Poster Appears In L.A. - Updated

(Editor's Note: This story has attracted a lot of attention and we believe we've found the source of the original Photoshopped image. See the update added below.)

Los Angeles, April 25, 2009

A poster of Barack Obama in Heath Ledger-style Joker make-up with the legend 'Socialism' beneath it has been popping up recently on surfaces around L.A. It does not appear to be in the same category as the many benign take-offs on the Shepard Fairey 'Hope' poster, such as the one by Australian James Lillis (more of a straightforward spoof that merely substituted a Shepardized image of Heath Ledger as Joker on the Obama poster).

James Lillis, "Joke"

No. This clearly appears to be a political statement (albeit a confused one) -- a sort of negative version of artist Ron English's Lincoln/Obama poster. But is it serious? We'd like to know who the artist is and whether this is the sort of provocative guerilla public art that is intended to encourage people to think (although about what, we're not sure).

Ron English, "Lincoln/Obama"

We suspect not. The Joker white-face imposed on Obama's visage has a sort of malicious, racist, Jim Crow quailty to it that prompts us to ask, as Stephen Colbert puts it, "vomit, come on up."

UPDATE: The image was apparently created by Firas Khateeb, a student living in Chicago. However, whoever adapted it as a poster and added the legend, "socialism," is still a mystery.

photoshop image by Firas Khateeb

See www.flickr.com/photos/khateeb88/

Send us an email or add a comment below if you know anything about the artist or the campaign.

--Jonathan Jerald, Editor - BedlamMagazine.com

Source: Tweet from Andy Levy of Redeye

Obama "Joker" Artist is Unmasked

Guess what? He is a 20-year-old college student, Firas Alkhateeb, from Chicago and is a Dennis Kucinich supporter. So much for the theory the Obama "Joker" posters were racist.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

When cryptic posters portraying President Obama as the Joker from "Batman" began popping up around Los Angeles and other cities, the question many asked was, Who is behind the image?

Was it an ultra-conservative grassroots group or a disgruntled street artist going against the grain?

Nope, it turns out, just a 20-year-old college student from Chicago.

Bored during his winter school break, Firas Alkhateeb, a senior history major at the University of Illinois, crafted the picture of Obama with the recognizable clown makeup using Adobe's Photoshop software.

"After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," Alkhateeb said. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him."

"I abstained from voting in November," he wrote in an e-mail. "Living in Illinois, my vote means close to nothing as there was no chance Obama would not win the state." If he had to choose a politician to support, Alkhateeb said, it would be Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich.