New column: A dive into exactly how President Trump is breaking the "deep state," the permanent government bureaucracy that has been able to block the policies of elected officials without accountability to anybody.

How long has everybody in government known that the Treasury was sending out tens of billions of dollars per year to people without their own Social Security numbers? A long time. Here's a column from 2019: They already know the answer to citizenship question By SUSAN SHELLEY | opinion@scng.com | Orange County Register PUBLISHED: March 10, 2019 at 12:38 PM PDT In April, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether the 2020 census can include a question on citizenship, but it doesn’t really matter which way the justices rule. It turns out that the government doesn’t have to ask the question, because it already knows the answer. On Thursday, the Census Bureau issued a statement in response to news reports about a new agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to share information. It’s just routine, the agency said. The Census Bureau supplements its surveys with files from other federal agencies, including the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. Under federal law, it must strip all identifiable personal information before releasing any data, even inside the government. The new agreement will give the Census Bureau access to Homeland Security files that include immigrants’ citizenship status, addresses, birth dates and Social Security numbers. The people who filed lawsuits to stop the citizenship question may find that unsettling, but there isn’t too much they can do about it. Their lawsuits argued that the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, is required by federal law to determine whether the information it’s seeking is already available in federal files before adding a question to the census. That’s exactly what the Commerce Department is doing. The Census Bureau will soon know how many U.S. residents are legal immigrants with Social Security numbers, and where they reside. When the 2020 census is complete, the population data will be used to draw congressional districts and state legislative districts for elections beginning in 2022. For purposes of redistricting, it doesn’t matter whether residents are citizens or not, but only citizens can legally register to vote. By 2022, publicly available census data will reveal the population of citizens in every voting district. That will allow election integrity researchers to compare those numbers with voter registration data. If there are more registered voters than citizens, there likely will be lawsuits. People who filed lawsuits over the citizenship question, and the staff of the Census Bureau itself, made the argument that asking about citizenship would frighten some households out of participating in the decennial survey, leading to an undercount that would cheat some cities or states out of their fair share of hundreds of billions of federal dollars that are allocated based on census population data. While rarely stated directly, it’s obvious that the concern relates to undocumented immigrants. There’s no reason for legal immigrants with Social Security numbers to be more frightened by a census taker than anybody else would be. So the next question is whether the Department of Homeland Security has files on illegal immigrants and plans to share them with the Census Bureau. Maybe not, but there’s another federal agency that shares data with the Census Bureau, one that happens to have files containing the names, addresses and dependents of undocumented immigrants who reside and work in the United States. That agency is the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS issues Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to people who file tax returns but can’t get a Social Security number. That includes foreign-born residents who qualify for tax benefits under various tax treaties that the U.S. has with other nations. It also includes people who are filing tax returns even though they do not have legal authorization to work in the U.S. The same people who are said to be afraid to talk to a census taker are filing tax returns that tell the government they’re working in the country illegally, and also list the names and addresses of their dependents. Why? Because the federal government provides refundable tax credits, which are paid out as tax refunds even if no income tax is withheld or paid. People who are working in the country illegally are eligible to receive some of these credits. For example, the Additional Child Tax Credit can be worth thousands of dollars per year to income-qualifying taxpayers with qualifying children, regardless of whether they filed their tax return with a Social Security number or an ITIN. As of December 2016, the IRS had issued more than 23 million ITINs, over 624,000 in 2016 alone. In 2015, Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act (PATH Act), which included a requirement for the IRS to study the effectiveness of the ITIN application process and seek methods of reducing fraud in the program, as well as the improper payments to ITIN holders as a result. The PATH Act also required an audit of the ITIN program every two years by the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). In January 2018, TIGTA released a report on “incomplete and fraudulent applications” for ITINs. It reveals that the IRS has resisted making changes that would improve verification of identity and documents. As one example, 54,294 ITINs that had been issued for the purpose of claiming tax treaty benefits were used on tax returns between 2014 and 2016, but only 2,869, 5.3 percent, were used to claim tax treaty benefits. When TIGTA recommended that the IRS implement a process to ensure that ITINs for tax treaty benefits were used solely for that purpose, the IRS refused. “We are concerned,” the auditors wrote, “because this action is needed to comply with the law.” And if you think that’s bad, you should read TIGTA’s reports on refundable tax credits. “Although refundable credits provide benefits to individuals, the unintended consequence of these credits is that they can result in the issuance of improper payments and can be the targets of unscrupulous individuals who file erroneous claims,” states a 2017 report to the U.S. Senate on waste and fraud in federal programs. “They pose a significant risk as an avenue for those seeking to defraud the government.” But fraud aside, millions of people are legally filing tax returns and collecting tax refunds without having Social Security numbers or legal authorization to work in the United States. The IRS has their names and addresses and knows how many people are in their families. If the IRS shares those files with the Census Bureau, and the Census Bureau strips the identifiable personal information and releases the data publicly, we will know, for the first time, how many people are in the country illegally and where they live. The government already knows the answer to that question. Maybe it’s time it told everybody. Susan Shelley is an editorial writer and columnist for the Southern California News Group. Susan@SusanShelley.com. Twitter: @Susan_Shelley.

The absolute scam of "renewable energy" mandates is stealing your tax dollars and raising your utility bills. Another story of California idiocy, in this column for the Southern California News Group:

I have a feeling everybody's about to find out.

RT @RichardGrenell: He’s getting paid $500,000 for 3 months of work? And they call this a charity. Gross. Offensive. I’m getting paid $…

Newsom approves $25 million to pay lawyers to sue (or defend against legal action initiated by) the Trump administration and $25 million for lawyers to defend criminal illegal immigrants from ICE and deportation. Plus $500K for a website full of "narratives."

RT @hamill_law: @lancelands And read my letter to arm yourself with legal knowledge.

RT @lancelands: I've talked to dozens of school board members over the last week alone who are trying to figure out how to navigate Preside…

Watch.

@txbelle729 You must be new here!

RT @DOGE: In the past 48 hours, HHS canceled 62 contract worth $182 million. These contracts were entirely for administrative expenses – no…

Of all the federal agencies to defend, Brad Sherman has chosen to go to the mat for FEMA. Maybe when @DOGE gets into the building, we'll know more.

@mikejt1954

Is Gavin Newsom ignoring Ventura County?

RT @Jim_Jordan: Democrat reactions to cutting government waste: “We are at war!” “Fight!” “We will bring the fire!” “Blow this place up…

RT @jk_rowling: This 'why do you care about a tiny fraction of the population?' line is, and always was, utterly ridiculous. Gender ideol…

@TermiNaderCA As long as you don't need more than 10 hours of electricity per day for more than four months of the year, renewable energy is perfect. Get the confetti.

RT @BillMelugin_: The FCC is investigating Soros-backed San Francisco radio station @KCBSRadio after it revealed the live, exact locations…

RT @C__Herridge: NEW: “Senior IRS management who refused to do their job, rolled over for political corruption at DOJ, and targeted the (IR…