Los Angeles is making two items on the progressive agenda — defunding the police and guaranteed income — a reality with a new government program: BIG:LEAP.
The city is encouraging individuals making under $22,000/year and who have children to apply for the program. Those who do are entered into a lottery, in which the winners take home a “free” $12,000 a year. The money, of course, comes from taxpayers, with a third of the funds made available thanks to the city’s reduction in budget for the Los Angeles Police Department.
BIG:LEAP is currently in its pilot phase, under which it will dole out cash to 3,000 households for one year. This nearly $40 million program is the biggest guaranteed income program in the United States.
“Its name perfectly captures what we’re doing here in L.A. because we’re taking a big leap forward in our generational fight to end poverty, to break the back of our addiction to poverty here in America,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said of BIG:LEAP.
Someone would do well to remind Mayor Garcetti of Mao Tse-tung’s “Great Leap Forward,” the campaign to transform China into a communist economy that caused 55 million people to starve to death from 1958 to 1962.
Besides having at least one child and an income below the federal poverty line, applicants must affirm that they experienced hardship due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Applicants must also fill out an extensive survey that asks personal questions about finances, lifestyle, and health. This includes questions about ethnicity, gender (i.e., male, female, “non-binary,” “agender,” or “gender fluid”), and sexual orientation.
The program states: “While no single program can reverse decades of economic and racial inequality that marginalize low-income people of color, BIG:LEAP can point the way towards a more equitable and prosperous future.”
California already offers a number of social programs, from CalWORKs (aid program for adults with children) to Cal Fresh (food stamps) to WIC (women, infants, and children) benefits and MediCal.
The difference, the BIG:LEAP proudly says, is that the new program places “no restrictions on how the money can be spent.”
Garcetti argued that giving the city’s poor this money will help them secure well-paying full-time jobs.
ABC 7 Los Angeles notes:
Garcetti said officials looked at data from a smaller GPI program in Stockton while developing the pilot, and studies showed that the 125 Stockton residents who received $500 per month were more than twice as likely to secure full-time jobs as people in a control group.
“They landed full-time employment because they could afford to take that job interview that before they couldn’t. Maybe instead of two jobs, they could have one, and they were able to get full-time employment more than twice the rate of non-recipients,” Garcetti said, citing findings by Stacia West of the University of Tennessee’s College of Social Work and Amy Castro Baker of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
Garcetti is part of a network called “Mayors for Guaranteed Income,” a coalition “interested in determining how cash — with no strings attached — can assist households in need.”
While the Left defunds the police, they are simultaneously working to replace what’s left of law enforcement with progressive ideologues.
As The New American recently reported, advocates of the Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police movements have recently been getting their ideologues elected to judgeships and district attorneys offices and now aim to capture sheriffs’ offices.
Politico notes:
More than two dozen progressive-minded prosecutors have managed to win elections in that time, including Kim Foxx in Cook County, Illinois (home to Chicago); Rachael Rollins in Boston; Larry Krasner in Philadelphia; and Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. Although these prosecutors have faced challenges once in office, their elections alone signaled a change.
One race to watch is the sheriff’s race in New Orleans. The results of Saturday’s election resulted in a run-off that will be settled in December.
The race pits incumbent Sheriff Marlin Gusman against challenger Susan Hutson, a progessive activist who has never worked in law enforcement but who is running on a platform to “reform” the local prison system and other perceived abuses in the parish’s policing.
