In Los Angeles, gang violence has gotten so bad that the city council wants to raise taxes in order to fight it. Overall, the crime rate is down, but LA suffered 267 gang-related homicides last year and a 14% increase in gang crime citywide. Councilwoman Janice Hahn advocates a $72 annual parcel tax to raise $50 million to fund more ineffective social intervention programs. The city already spends $82 million on touchy-feely gang outreach, with little result.

Much of the current outrage comes from the December 15 murder of Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old black girl who was killed simply for being present on turf claimed by hispanic gangs near her home. The photo shows mother Charlene Lovett holding a picture of Cheryl.

Desperate to stem the rise of gang violence in Los Angeles, the City Council agreed Tuesday to draft a ballot measure that would impose a parcel tax to raise $50 million or more annually for intervention and prevention programs.

However, council members said it was unlikely the proposal would go onto the ballot until next year, skipping the municipal election in May.
[Tax to fight gangs set for ballot, LA Times1/24/07]

LA’s gang violence has a strong racial component. Of an estimated 39,000 gang members, about 56 percent are in Latino gangs and 40 percent are in black gangs. Many hispanic gang-bangers are illegal aliens. Increasingly, Hispanic gang members kill random blacks to drive them out of the area — ethnic cleansing, in other words. Interestingly, even the hacks at the Southern Poverty Law Center, who have attacked the Minutemen and other friends of borders, have noticed the purposeful, racist attacks on black Americans by Hispanics.

Instead of enacting another immigration tax, the city should end Special Order 40, the sanctuary law that protects illegal aliens from normal police inquiries and is quite a boon to non-American gang members.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before–no, don’t bother, I’m going to quote it again:

“IN AMERICA, WE have a two-party system,” a Republican congressional staffer is supposed to have told a visiting group of Russian legislators some years ago.

“There is the stupid party. And there is the evil party. I am proud to be a member of the stupid party.”

He added: “Periodically, the two parties get together and do something that is both stupid and evil. This is called—bipartisanship.”VDARE - Immigration policy stupid, evil and hurting Americans, by Peter Brimelow, December 4, 1999

Democrats know that if they were the only pro-immigration party, they’d get badly beaten. Now they’re asking Bush to deliver Republican Congressional votes for amnesty, so it can’t be used against them in the next election:

Democrats Demand Bush Deliver Republican Votes on Immigration

By James Rowley

Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) — Democrats are demanding President George W. Bush deliver significant support — likely more than a quarter of all House Republicans — to ensure passage of a bipartisan overhaul of U.S. immigration law.

Democrats say they won’t shoulder the responsibility alone for any comprehensive and politically sensitive plan that includes Bush’s proposals to give 12 million illegal aliens a chance at citizenship and to create a guest-worker program. The president made his latest pitch for the plan in his State of the Union address this week.

Patrick Cleburne asked a while back Is GOP House Leadership the new Third Party? In fact, all they have to do is act like a second party to gain the support of the overwhelming majority of the American people.