One California State Senator has amended a bill to discriminate against any contractor who works on President Trump’s border wall—by banning them for life from being awarded any contracts with the state of California.
San Diego Tribune reports that State Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens has amended Senate Bill 30—initially a bill requiring state voter approval of any federally-funded infrastructure project built along “ California’s southern border”—which will now prohibit the state from contracting with any person or organization that provides any goods or services for the wall.
“It’s clear that President Trump intends to stick taxpayers with the cost of a border wall that will hurt California’s economy, environment and people,” Lara said in a statement according to the Tribune. “I introduced Senate Bill 30 to give our state a louder voice to say that building a wasteful and unnecessary wall would be a huge mistake.”
“Another wall will delay cargo delivery, slow down business and take away valuable jobs,” he wrote.
Lara is not the only California Democrat obsessed with Trump’s wall, but it seems to have clouded his judgement. This has nothing to do with saving money—Lara is the one who just proposed a California-based single-payer, universal health plan to include illegal aliens—which will cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Anyone familiar with the border knows that there are 25’ high walls topped with razor wire near San Diego’s largest port of entry for vehicles and cargo—and the only ‘cargo’ delayed would be cargo or persons entering the country illegally.
Building the border wall won’t ‘take away valuable jobs’ as Lara alleges—it will create badly-needed new jobs and protect Californians already employed by making illegal entry more difficult.
Since Trump’s election, state-sponsored hysteria has become the norm in California. Two San Francisco Supervisors are pushing an even tougher measure that would ban any company that bids on the border wall from consideration for city contracts.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “any company looking at President Trump’s proposed border wall between Mexico and the United States as a business opportunity may soon want to reconsider—if it wants to do business with San Francisco.” Two supervisors introduced a local measure last month that would “bar San Francisco from contracting with companies that seek a deal to work on the wall during the bidding period, regardless of whether the companies win a contract.”
“It is time to move beyond symbolism and use the power we have as a city to fight for the values we hold most dear,” Supervisor Hillary Ronen told the Chronicle in March, who is introducing the measure with Supervisor Aaron Peskin.
Not surprisingly, other Bay Area cities are following suit. The Berkeley City Council unanimously passed a resolution as well advising the city to divest from any company involved in any aspect of the project. Oakland is moving forward with a similar resolution.
Since most government contractors seek to foster strong relationships with elected officials, it’s no surprise that those with the most to lose—huge mega corporations and global conglomerates—are being silent.
Among them are two companies that have massive contracts with the city, according to the SF Chronicle: “Hensel Phelps Construction Co. in Oakland, which recently signed a $1.1 billion contract to help build a new terminal at San Francisco International Airport and Tutor Perini Corp. of Sylmar (Los Angeles County). The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has an $860 million contract with Tutor Perini to help construct the Central Subway,”—and Tutor Perini won the contract to build Jerry Brown’s High Speed Rail project.
Los Angeles Times reports that Mexico-based Cemex—one of the world’s largest suppliers of building materials—was considering a bid on the project, but spokesman Jorge Perez has since corrected the record. Not only will the company “not participate” in building the wall; it will also not supply materials to contractors working on the project.
Not everyone in San Francisco is supportive of the ban. One small contractor—who’s unlikely to meet the $25 million lead project experience requirement set out by Customs Border Protection to weed out smaller companies—spoke out against the ban in the Chronicle:
“My first reaction is why are taxpayer dollars being spent to hold committee meetings to boycott local companies that employ local workers? That’s a little on the radical side and basically, our taxpayer dollars are being used against us,” said James Flanagan, a San Francisco contractor.
California has long prided itself on being one of the ‘most tolerant’ states in the nation—and has passed hundreds of laws to prohibit discrimination in order to prove it.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if two words were added to the list of protected classes and then applied to every other anti-discrimination statute in the state—“Political Orientation” —and then further require every one of these “anti-discrimination” laws to apply to the California State government as well.
Now there’s an idea for a Republican member of the State Assembly or Senate—that is, if there are any left with the courage to expose the Democrat hypocrisy by introducing a new bill or an amendment requiring the state to “stop discriminating” against Californians on the basis of their “political beliefs or orientation.”
Tim Donnelly is a former California State Assemblyman and author who is doing a book tour for his new book: Patriot Not Politician: Win or Go Homeless. He ran for governor in 2014.
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/tim.donnelly.12/
Twitter: @PatriotNotPol
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