Recall Davis Campaign

American Patrol Report
Friday, December 10, 1999
Broadcast on KIEV Radio, 870 AM and on the Web at www.kiev870.com, Glendale, California

Opening music: “American Patrol” by Glenn Miller

This is Glenn Spencer with the American Patrol Report, a production of Voice of Citizens Together.

On August 19, 1999, California Governor Gray Davis was served with a notice on intent to recall him. It was signed by 74 citizens. This American Patrol report focuses on that recall.

It is estimated there are more than more than 2,000,000 illegal aliens in California and more than 400,000 illegal aliens in our schools. The cost to California taxpayers exceeds $4 billion annually, or about $2,000 per illegal alien. That’s not surprising considering the fact that it costs about $7,000 for each non-English speaking student in our schools.

In 1994, after one of the most debated issues in our history, the people of California approved Proposition 187. They did so by an overwhelming 6 to 4 margin.

Proposition 187 barred illegal aliens from receiving any taxpayer-paid benefits and services, including schools and colleges, and it directed state agencies to cooperate with federal law enforcement in enforcing immigration laws.

Proposition 187 was immediately challenged as unconstitutional by advocacy groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, The League of Latin American Citizens, the ACLU and well known lawyer Peter Schey.

Peter Schey is an interesting fellow. Listen to this clip from a TV interview.

TV NEWS CLIP KABC TV, Los Angeles (1995)

Bob Navarro:
“Our guest today is Peter Schey who is founder and director of the Human Rights and Constitutional Law Center, leading the court battle against Proposition 187. Plyler versus Doe, Plyler versus the Board of Education, that is the landmark case. you were involved in that.”

Peter Schey:
“Yes I was.”

Yes he was. We’ll talk about Plyler v. Doe later and when we do, remember that Peter Schey argued the Plyler v. Doe case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Also remember that Schey, a South African native, is a member of the National Lawyers Guild, once described by Congress as the legal bulwark of the Communist Party in America. At its 40th Convention in 1978, they passed the following resolution:

“The National Lawyer’s Guild further resolves:

1. To support the movement for full democratic rights for all non-citizens and an end to all deportations and manipulations of the borders carried out in the interests of capitalism….”

Schey is closely aligned with the movement to grant amnesty to illegal aliens and has described Proposition 187 as the end of Manifest Destiny. This fellow is really out after the sovereignty of the United States.

But back to Proposition 187

187 was drafted with the aid of the late Alan Nelson former Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Peter Nuñez, a former United States Attorney. These lawyers knew it would be tested before the Supreme Court, especially the provision which barred illegal aliens from California school, but they were confident of ultimate victory.

After a delay of nearly four years, Federal District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer finally ruled, to no one’s surprise, that Proposition 187 unconstitutional. She said that, among other things, it violated a 1982 Supreme Court decision, Plyler versus Doe.

Let’s look at this Supreme Court Decision

In Plyler versus Doe, the court decided that the state of Texas had to pay for the education of illegal aliens because of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. The court said the 14th amendment gave illegal aliens the same protection under the law as legal residents. Plyler versus Doe was a split decision with five Justices saying Texas must pay for illegals and four saying they shouldn’t have to.

The four justices who said they shouldn’t included Chief Justice Burger, the current Chief Justice Rhenquist and Justice Sandra Day O’conner, who sits on the court today.

This is some of what they said in their dissenting opinion.

“The failure of enforcement of the immigration laws over more than a decade and the inherent difficulty and expense of sealing our vast borders have combined to create a grave socioeconomic dilemma. It is a dilemma that has not yet even been fully assessed, let alone addressed.”

“…it simply is not ‘irrational’ for a state to conclude that it does not have the same responsibility to provide benefits for persons whose very presence in the state and this country is illegal as it does to provide for persons lawfully present.”

“While regulation of immigration is an exclusively federal function, a state may take steps,
consistent with federal immigration policy, to protect its economy and ability to provide governmental services from the ‘deleterious effects’ of a massive influx of illegal immigrants.”

The Los Angeles Daily Journal is the newspaper of the legal profession in Los Angeles. On December. On December 18, 1995, it carried an article entitled “A Decision Under Fire.” It was written by Allan Favish, Attorney At Law. In it, Favish attacks the decision by United States District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer was unconstitutional.

On December 9, 1999, I spoke with Allan Favish and asked him why he disagreed with Judge Pfaelzer.

PHONE CONVERSTATION BETWEEN SPENCER AND FAVISH- 12/9/99

Allan Favish (rhymes with lavish)
“Well, her main mistake, and she made several, but her main mistake was in holding that the Plyler versus Doe decision prohibits a state from denying taxpayer financed public education from children who are illegally here. Yet when you closely read the Plyler decision, it doesn’t say that.

What is says is that there is a difference between being legally here and being here illegally. And although the equal protection clause [of the 14th amendment] directs that persons similarly circumstanced, as the court said, shall be treated alike, the clause does not require things which are different to be treated in law as though they were the same. And the court recognized that children who are legally here are not similarly situated with children who are illegal aliens, because the later are in violation of federal law, a distinction that the court itself says is not a constitutional irrelevancy.

And then the court went on to analyze what the state of Texas was doing in prohibiting illegal aliens from attending public schools. And this is one of the more bizarre aspects of Plyler, and this is a 1982 case. The courts said that there is no evidence in the record suggesting that illegal entrants imposed any significant burden on the state’s economy.
Which is rather incredible that Texas failed to make that showing. And, as you know, California will be able to make that showing.

There was an analysis back in 1994 when Proposition 187 was on the ballot that the State Legislative Analyst said that the provision of Prop. 187 denying public education to illegal aliens could save the state up to one point two billion dollars, billion with a “b”, billion dollars annually. And governor Pete Wilson had a study that said that the figure was higher, one point five billion. And that was followed up by a government accounting office analysis that basically supported Wilson’s higher figure.

So under Plyler versus Doe, if a state can show that it’s costing a lot of money to educate people who are illegally here, then that is a good enough reason to deny them that benefit.

Glenn Spencer:
Well it’s interesting, then, if we listen to Schey and what he had to say on that. May I play that for you?

Allan Favish:
Sure.

AUDIO CLIP(From 1995 Navarro Show):
Peter Schey:
“There wasn’t any difference from the situation in Texas ten years ago. Factually I think the situations are virtually identical. The numbers, the impacts are probably virtually the same.

Glenn Spencer:
How’s that?

Allan Favish:
He’s just wrong because, again, if you read the decision itself – I’m talking about the majority opinion, not a dissent or concurring opinion, the majority opinion, it actually says, quote the record in no way supports the claim that exclusion of undocumented children is likely to improve the overall quality of education in the state. That’s on 229. And the decision also says, quote, the claim that the educational resources of the state are so direly limited, close quote, that the exclusion is a reasonable solution is not supported by the record. That’s page 229.

And then, like I said earlier, they actually said, quote, there is no evidence in the record suggesting that illegal entrants impose any significant burden on the state’s economy, close quote, at page 228. So for some bizarre reason, the state of Texas did not introduce factual evidence showing the huge cost involved in educating illegal aliens. But California has that evidence, it’s at least 1.2 billion dollars, that they could have shown apparently, and was prevented from doing that by Judge Pfaelzer.

Glenn Spencer:
Well certainly, I think that California has a problem which is probably an order of magnitude greater than Texas

Allan Favish:
I haven’t studied that closely.

Glenn Spencer
Oh, it is much more significant. Texas has nowhere near the problem that California has.

Allan Favish:
Yes, but in any case the important thing about the decision is that for some reason Texas failed to make the factual showing that it needed to make and for Peter Schey to say that the cases are identical is just a blatant falsehood because California was in a position to document over a billion dollars in money that is being spent to educate illegal aliens here in this state. And that would be enough, under the Plyler versus Doe decision, to allow the state to prohibit educating those illegals

Glenn Spencer:
So you’re pretty confident that, had it reached the Supreme Court, it would have met with a favorable outcome.

Allan Favish:
If California would have been allowed to present its factual record showing this outlay of over a billion dollars in educating illegals in the lower court, I’m confident that the Supreme Court would have upheld that section of 187, and they could do this without overruling Plyler versus Doe.

Plyler versus Doe would have allowed that, it’s just that Texas failed to make the factual showing. So you don’t even have to overrule Plyler versus Doe for Prop 187 to survive. However I think there are some good reasons for overruling a lot of the language of Plyler versus Doe but it is not necessary in order to have a successful vindication of Proposition 187.

Glenn Spencer:
We know that in the August 1 issue of La Opinion, Carlos Holguin, who is a lawyer who works for Peter Schey, spilled the beans about the mediation process. This is a direct quote. It’s a translation by a professional translator. It says:

“Carlos Holguin, the Human Rights and Constitutional Law Center’s Attorney, said that the process of negotiating that the litigating parties followed to reach this conclusion avoided a greater risk that the case would go to the Supreme Court and the right to education of the undocumented would be lost. “

So they were frightened that you were right.

Allan Favish:
Well, it sounds that way. Again, it’s very clear, you have to read the decision closely, again the majority opinion was written in a very dishonest way and they tried to hide the fact that it would be perfectly legal for a state to deny public education to illegals, but you have to read it very closely to see the points that I have made is that the only reason that Texas lost was that they just didn’t provide enough of a factual record showing the enormous cost involved in educating illegals.

Glenn Spencer
But of course, I have the evidence that even had they done that, the situation is California is so different…they said they hadn’t shown it, we certainly could show it here.

Allan Favish:
Yes, exactly, you can show it. You have the General Accounting Office study, you have the governor’s study, you have the State Legislative Analysts report, all showing, and this was back in 1994, showing more than one billion dollars and if they did the studies today, who knows how high that would be.

Glenn Spencer:
I appreciate it.
END OF PHONE CONVERSATION

The court said that there was no indication that the presence of illegal aliens affected the overall quality of education in Texas. The Los Angeles Unified School District is more than 70% Hispanic, due mainly to illegal immigration, past and present.

Listen to Los Angeles School Board member Tokofsky as he spoke last summer .

(Clip of Tokofsky speaking at official school board function, July 1, 1999)

“Our dropout rates approximating fifty percent, or the fact that less than thirty percent of third graders read at grade level, the public’s confidence in our abilities is extremely low. Families have left our public schools, our district, our city and our state to pursue quality schools and safe neighborhoods.”

The five million Californians who voted for Proposition 187 knew what they were doing. They knew that illegal immigration was an economic burden and they knew it was destroying California schools. But powerful forces went to work to stop them.

SOUND FROM NEWS VIDEO CLIP dated April 15, 1999:
Gray Davis:
“If this were a piece of legislation, I would veto it. But it is not.

Reporter:
It is an initiative Governor Davis personally opposes. A divisive initiative passed by nearly sixty percent of California voters.

Gray Davis:
“In a process specifically designed to go over the heads of the governor and the legislature.”

Gray Davis said that Proposition 187 was passed by the people in a process designed to go over the head of governors like himself. He said that as a governor he is not a judge and he promised to uphold laws passed by the people. People interpreted that as saying he would support Proposition 187 and defend it.

Proposition 187 was scheduled to be heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals at the about the same time Gray Davis became governor. Instead of allowing it to proceed through the appeals process on the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Davis, according to recall advocates, devised a scheme to derail it. He performed what some are calling a partial birth abortion on Proposition 187. He called it mediation.

Mediation is designed to bring two sides of an issue together to try to reach an out of court settlement, thus saving everyone time and money. In this mediation, however, only opponents of Proposition 187 were invited.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times on May 6, 1999, Norman Brand a San Francisco based mediator observed

“Whoever suggested to Gov. Gray Davis that he mediate the constitutionality of Proposition 187 badly misunderstands mediation’s role in our democracy and in dispute resolution. And if the mediation goes forward, both constitutional law and mediation are at risk.”

But that didn’t stop Gray Davis and the mediation process continued.

On May 19, 1999, the President of Mexico visited Los Angeles. The following is from a TV report of the visit. Gray Davis can be seen sitting next to the President of Mexico.

FROM TV NEWS CLIP (KMEX TV)
Reporter
“President Zedillo says he has a commitment from the governor.”
Zedillo (translation):
“I have a commitment from the governor that he will do whatever he can so that these catastrophic effects which were foreseen with Proposition 187 several years ago will not come to pass.”

So Gray Davis made a commitment to the President of Mexico to stop Proposition 187.

TV NEWSCLIP (Spanish language TV – May 19, 1999)

Reporter:
…Gobernador Gray Davis dijo
Gray Davis:
“In the near future, people will look upon California and Mexico and one magnificent region.”

Writing in the San Francisco Examiner on July 8, David Stirling of the Pacific Legal Foundation observed:

“It will be no surprise if the mediator comes out from behind closed doors after July 16 and announce to the people of California that ‘by agreement of the parties, the appeal of Prop. 187 is being dismissed.'”

And that is exactly what happened. On July 26, Governor Gray Davis announced that the mediators had decided not to appeal Proposition 187. He had killed it. Some called it assassination by mediation

According to one of the lawyers who sat in on the mediation, Gray Davis killed proposition 187 because he feared it would be found constitutional by the Supreme Court.

Carlos Holguin, the man who spilled the frijoles, works for National Lawyers Guild member Peter Schey, the man who, according to some, has dedicated himself to the destruction of the United States of America. The man who sat down with Gray Davis to decide the future of California.

On August 4, 1999, the front page of the Los Angeles Times carried a color photograph of Assembly speaker Antonio Villaraigosa with Mexican President Zedillo applauding the defeat of Proposition 187. In the accompanying story, Villaraigosa is quoted as follows:

“As leader of the state Assembly, I say President Zedillo had great impact in defeating Proposition 187,” he said that Zedillo’s visit to Los Angeles, “pushed the process” that eventually invalidated most of the measure.

Villaraigosa failed to pass the California bar examination three times. He is not a lawyer.

TV NEWS CLIP: KABC TV, Los Angeles, July 29, 1999
Reporter:
What happens to the will of the people?

Antonio Villaraigosa:
“Well, the will of the people is something all of us have to respect, but when the will of the people is unconstitutional, the will of the people is null and void.”

Who is this man who says the will on the people is null and void?

Antonio Villaraigosa was once head of a chapter of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan or MEChA, a separatist Chicano organization that believes the Southwest, a place they call Aztlan, was stolen from Mexico. He was once the head of the Southern California ACLU.

He has worked to get driver’s licenses for illegal aliens.

SOUND FROM VIDEO CLIP from American Patrol tape of a meeting of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project Meeting

Antonio Villaraigosa
“Because you know what? It’s not enough to elect to elect Latino leadership. If they’re supporting legislation that denies the undocumented driver’s licenses, they don’t belong in office friends.”

AUDIO CLIP: KIEV Radio – Larry Marino Show – October 20, 1999
“This is the morning magazine on AM 870 KIEV. My name is Larry Marino. In studio is Antonio Villaraigosa. He would like to be L.A.’s next mayor.”

“That’s right. The man who worked with the President of Mexico to kill Proposition 187, the man who wants to give driver’s licensees to illegal aliens, wants to be mayor of Los Angeles.”

AUDIO CLIP: KIEV Radio – Larry Marino Show – October 20, 1999.
Caller (Glenn Spencer)
“You know Mariana Pfaelzer also ruled that local police officers cannot enforce our immigration laws. She was overturned by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and about a week ago the U.S. Supreme Court sustained that decision. They overruled the same judge who found 187 unconstitutional.”

“Let me ask you this. The Supreme Court has said local police officers can enforce our immigration laws. If you were elected mayor of Los Angeles would you see to it that the LAPD enforced our immigration laws?”

Villaraigosa:
I, I, I agree uhhh, that uuhhh ummm, as I said earlier that we have a right to enforce our immigration laws. We have uhhh, that’s a federal responsibility. We have enough in the way of uuhhh, uhhh, crime in this city. Uhhhh, that, uuhhhh, our law enforcement officers have their hands full.

Marino:
“So you would not.”

Villagaraigosa:
“So from my vantage point, uhhh, they need to focus on, uhhh, violent crime, and on the crime that, that, that uuhhhh, I think that violates the uhhhh that that that rule that thou shall not hurt me.”

Marino
“How about the sovereignty of the country, the sovereignty of the nation and violating that? Taking taxpayer dollars?”

Villaraigosa is right about crime in Los Angeles. Between 1979 and 1994 there 7,288 gang killings in Los Angeles, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

When he killed Proposition 187, Gray Davis also killed a provision which would have required local police, to cooperate with the INS and the Border Patrol.

Proponents of the move to recall Gray Davis claim that his decision to kill proposition 187 threatens the California initiative process.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times on May 24, 1999, Dave Stirling of the Pacific Legal Foundation said that it was “entirely possible that the voters will lose the privilege of controlling their destiny through the initiative process.”

The backers of the initiative to recall Gray Davis were well aware of the facts which surrounded his decision to kill 187. They knew the legal issues and that the players such as Peter Schey and Antonio Villaraigosa were really antagonistic toward America’s sovereignty.

Proponents of the recall say that armed with these facts and knowing that Gray Davis had joined foreign power which is antagonistic toward the United States to deprive California voters the rule of law, they had no choice but to challenge him and to seek his recall.

Gray Davis was served with the Notice of Intent to recall him on August 19, 1999. According to state law he had the option of filing an answer which would have to appear on the petition. Most said he wouldn’t dignify the recall effort with an answer.

They were wrong. Gray Davis dignified the recall effort and filed an answer with the California Secretary of State on September 2. 1999. His answer begins as follows:

“The sponsors of this initiative are trying to deceive California voters into believing that illegal aliens are receiving taxpayer paid benefits. That is not true.”

Estimates of the costs of illegal immigration to California taxpayers range from 3.4 billion to more than $7 billion per year. As a former controller of the state, Gray Davis is well aware of these figures. What is most puzzling however, is the fact that Gray Davis himself signed a bill, AB 1107, which specifically provides taxpayer paid benefits to illegal aliens.

With overwhelming facts to the contrary which are known to most Californians, Davis’ answer to the notice to recall him can only be describe using an ugly word: It is a lie.

Backers of the recall effort say Davis’ egregious disqualify him from holding the office of governor of California.

They say these acts include:

1. The misuse of the mediation process, thus threatening mediation and the constitution;
2. Collaborating with a foreign power to deprive the people of California enforcement of the rule of law and access to the US Supreme Court;
3. Failing in his duty to see that the laws are faithfully executed;
4. Lying to taxpayers about the cost of providing services to illegal aliens;
5. Replacing the California initiative process with dictatorial fiat and
6. Threatening the sovereignty of the United States.

The Recall Davis Committee has until February 23, 2000 to collect one million six thousand signatures. Right now they have about 300,000. If they succeed a recall election will be held in May or June, 2000 to decide whether the governor should be recalled and who should replace him.
If you believe the governor should be recalled, you can obtain a petition by calling 1-800-600-8642. That’s 1-800-600-8642 or by logging on to www.recalldavis.com. That’s recalldavis.com

We’re glad you joined us for this American Patrol Report. We hope to be making more such reports in the future. American Patrol may be reached by calling 818-501-2061 or by logging on to www.americanpatrol.com. That’s 818-501-2061 or americanpatrol.com.

This is Glenn Spencer saying good-bye for American Patrol and thanks for listening.