The spending for migrants in Denver has hit about $7900 per person. Cutting through the noise on crime in Aurora.
The spending for migrants in Denver has hit about $7900 per person.
The Center Square article below discusses migrants in Denver and so, of course, it mentions Mayor Johnston's wrongheaded mention of standing up at the county line to defy the Feds along with Trump's potential new border Czar Homan's response.
I'm less interested in that than I am in the numbers here. Staggering numbers.
Quoting the story with the link left intact:
"According to CSI’s previous update from May, the city received federal funding for migrant response from the Head Start Program ($13 million), Federal Emergency Management Agency ($8.6 million), U.S. Department of Local Affairs ($1.5 million), and the National Board for the Emergency Food and Shelter Program ($909,000). Overall spending was estimated to be up to $340 million in May."
To give you a visual, the image attached is $1 M in $20 bills at the Chicago Fed Money Museum. So far about 350 such domes of tax money have been spent on Denver's migrants.
And, when you divide that sum by the estimated 40K-odd people, you arrive at the $7900 per capita figure above.
My God, and Denver's but one of many cities which have been hit hard (whether by proximity to the border, by being a drop off location as chosen by the current administration, or by welcoming them).
https://www.thecentersquare.com/colorado/article_af0c1b62-ae45-11ef-a45e-1335938bbf3e.html
Cutting through the noise on crime in Aurora.
I don't know about you, but finding firm ground to stand on with regard to Venezuelan gangs and Aurora has been a challenge.
I don't know that I believe everything from the right. This includes right-wing media.
I don't know that I believe everything from the left. This includes left-wing media.
The best I've been able to do really has been to "average out" the bias by watching and reading both and figuring the actual truth would be found by adding them together and dividing by two.
Code violations and crappy apartments with some good people living there? Yeah.
A landlord eager to hide the terrible building being rented out? Yeah.
Gangs living there and intimidating others? Yeah.
More so in Aurora and Denver than in other places due to policy and policing policy? Yeah.
The video below (a discussion with Caldara and Douglas County Sheriff Darren Weekly) covers a wide range of topics but the beginning of the video was the most compelling to me. I thought I'd share.
Perhaps it's because I have heard similar from friends in and around law enforcement in the Front Range, perhaps it's based on nothing more than (admittedly unreliable) intuition, but I found what Sheriff Weekly says about the Venezuelan gang situation pretty credible.
If you too have struggled, give it a watch. See what you think. If you feel like commenting on it, please do. Civil comment, even comment which says I'm off target in my belief, is welcome.
Related:
Regardless of the actual real truth of the Venezuelan Gang/Aurora thing is, here's something that I think voters all over Colorado spoke up on: crime and policing in general.
I join the Gazette in hoping that those that (depsite Republican gains) actually run this state take heed.
More below.