Another day, another wacko policy implemented by an insanely left-wing California city.
Officials in Palm Springs are fixing to hand out taxpayer money to all residents who are transgender or who identify as “non-binary,” according to Fox News, as part of a ‘universal basic income’ plan:
Transgender residents in Palm Springs, California are eligible to receive a UBI of up to $900 per month solely for identifying as transgender or nonbinary — no strings attached.
The new pilot program will have $200,000 set aside for allocation after a unanimous vote by the Palm Springs City Council last week.
Carl DeMaio, a Republican who served as the first openly gay member of the San Diego City Council, described the program as “outrageous and discriminatory.”
“We’re completely opposed to guaranteed or universal basic income programs because they ultimately cause inflation and raise the cost of living on everyone — they don’t work,” DeMaio noted in a statement.
“But at least some of them have minimum income requirements to qualify, whereas this one is no-strings-attached ‘woke’ virtue signaling to the LGBT community in a way that is not only offensive but discriminatory,” he continued.
Fox News adds;
Twenty transgender and nonbinary Palm Springs residents will receive the free money funded by the taxpayers for 18 months, with advocacy-based health center DAP Health and LGBT advocacy group Queer Works managing the program.
A six-month design period will be the precursor of the program’s implementation, in which the group Mayors for a Guaranteed Income will be involved providing guidance.
David Brinkman, the CEO of DAP Health, used a left-wing talking point when justifying the program to reporters, claiming that — in one of California’s most liberal cities — transgenders are still “one of the most marginalized populations…who face some of the highest levels of housing insecurity, joblessness, and discrimination.”
Queer Works CEO Jacob Rostowsky also claimed in a press release that transgender and nonbinary people “are highly marginalized in our society in general, especially economically,” while telling the Desert Sun that the city of Palm Springs would be matching any state funds.
Why it never occurs to any reporter to ask how that such supposedly abysmal treatment of transgenders is possible in a far-left community is in and of itself scandalous. But even if jokers like Brinkman were asked that question, the likelihood of getting an honest response, if you got one at all, is slim.
“Our project’s budget is estimated at about $1.8 million,” Rostowsky said. “And so when we look at what other [programs] that have been successfully funded have done, their local cities have provided nearly a match to that funding.”
Palm Springs Mayor Lisa Middleton, a transgender, referenced a transcript from the city council’s March 24 meeting in which she “expressed strong reservations in general to guaranteed income programs.”
“I specifically stated that I did not believe such programs could scale up to adequately respond to the over 37 million Americans living below the poverty line, the over 6 million Californians or the over 400,000 in the County of Riverside living below the poverty [line],” said Middleton in an email to Fox News, while nevertheless praising Brinkman for his work and expressing her “concern for the financial vulnerability of the transgender community.”
“Transgender Americans suffer extremely high rates of under and unemployment. Transgender Americans face enormous challenges living full and authentic lives,” the mayor said. “Those challenges have increased substantially in the past few years as transgender children and their families have been targeted by extremist legislators and governors.”
But her real problem with the program? It should be a “county, state and federal responsibility,” not a “municipal” one. Translated, that means, ‘I am in agreement with handing out taxpayer money, just not our taxpayer money.’
Our society simply cannot sustain this kind of lunacy.
