California city council unanimously votes to dole out $900/month basic income in transgender pilot program

Palm Springs wants to spend $200,000 on a universal basic income scheme, but there’s a catch—only the city’s nonbinary and transgender residents need apply.

The proposed pilot program is certainly a novel idea, even for California. On Thursday, the Palm Springs city council held a unanimous vote to enact the program, which is designed to pay out between $600 and $900 a month to 20 city residents over a trial period of two years. Christy Holstege, a city council member and an enthusiastic proponent of the scheme, didn’t hold back.

In a tweet, she gushed: “In the City of Palm Springs, we are proud to be a beacon of hope to the rest of the nation. We’ve worked hard to build an inclusive community. Our latest proposes a guaranteed income pilot program for trans and non-binary people.” 

And in an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Holstege declared that she was proud that Palm Springs was “on the right side of history and supporting our trans and nonbinary, gender-nonconforming community.”

But not everybody is exactly convinced the program will be successful. Even Lisa Middleton, the transgender mayor of Palm Springs (and first transgender mayor in the state of California,) expressed reservations, despite voting for the scheme.

My serious concern is the ability of these guaranteed income programs to scale up to the magnitude of the issues that are before us,” Middleton told The Los Angeles Times. “I have been wrong many times. I could be wrong again on this one.” 

But others who spoke at the Thursday city council meeting disagreed.

Jacob Rostovsky, the transgender chief executive of a non-profit called Queer Works, was enthusiastic about the program. “This is a chance to help individuals receive money that we can think of as a subsidy,” he said, “to subsidize the gap in income that the trans and nonbinary community faces due to having some of the highest levels of unemployment in this country.” 

He claimed that the nonbinary and transgender communities are uniquely vulnerable to homelessness, unemployment, assault, and other social ills. The program is expected to be at least partially funded by the state of California, which has a $35-million fund set aside for guaranteed basic income experiments.

In a segment discussing the initiative last night on his Fox News show, Tucker Carlson denounced the whole Palm Springs boondoggle as yet another indicator of late-stage liberalism and its inevitable decadence. “We are now in the final, self-parodic stage of American Neoliberalism,” Tucker explained, “where nothing makes sense, all is darkness, and the policies are just designed to hurt people. Another sign of this: Palm Springs, California, says it will pay you to be something called ‘non-binary.'”

Carlson then spoke to Seattle radio host Jason Rantz, who observed that even some of the city’s council members acknowledged the program was a scam. He then played a clip of Holstege herself saying: “The bureaucracies that we’ve set up to fund poverty programs and to staff them are probably much more expensive than giving the people the money who need it.” 

She even laughed at the absurdity of it.

Nevertheless, for the time being, it appears Palm Springs’ extremely woke and prejudicial guaranteed income pilot program will be enacted. Now the only question is how long before the Biden administration decides to make it federal law.

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27 thoughts on “California city council unanimously votes to dole out $900/month basic income in transgender pilot program

  1. Giving money to people that do not earn it promotes irresponsible behavior. Which appears to be their problem anyway

  2. These same moronic council people will be astounded when, in two years, the transgender population of Palm Springs quadruples! Of course, given the weak leftist brain they will consider this proof their program works and not and unintended consequence of their dum azz program.

  3. People say there’s no downside to smoking weed. I argue that smoking weed causes chemical imbalances that produce super liberals such as this lady councilperson.

  4. This is sexist, so is it not against Fed, State & local laws? To be chosen because of your sex/chosen sex? Reverse this – if these people were denied housing or a job because of their sexual proclivities, there’d be all kinds of hell to pay!!!

  5. Well…it looks like they should be happier than a faggot in a pecker tree…done with this deviant behavior…especially when they are going after…kidds….just..sayin’

  6. WOW….chicks with dicks get 900 bucks a month for pretending to be women? Where do I sign up?

  7. Well, if I had to wear a few pink items and put on a wig, I suppose I could for 900$/mo. payout.

  8. Insanity displays itself in many mysteries ways. This is one of the most bizzar.

  9. Wow so they will spend millions on supporting these folks, making them reliant on the government rather than being independent and supporting themselves. We’ve seen what this does to the poor welfare communities, it keeps them poor. These same communities won’t help veterans or other homeless people but want to be woke progressives and now they think they are magnificent politicians and supporters. Dems truly want to destroy this country.

  10. Well…I guess the question is….”are you willing to cut your ddiiick off for $900 a month.

  11. This is what happens when the lunatics are running the asylum.
    Very biased and discriminatory.
    Fight back taxpayers !

  12. Gonna establish homeless residency in PS and get me some $900 a month for being gender disfunctional to go with my $600 per month and $280 in food stamps for being homeless in San Fagcisco. On my way to being a millionaire without working.

  13. Great Now all the transgenders can move there from the rest of the country and can leave the rest of us alone to live in peace without you being here.

  14. Sounds like the discrimination the left tells us they oppose. Are they trying to drive every working taxpayer out of the state?

  15. You can’t make up this stuff. Shame on them. No decent person in the Palm Springs city council. AND IT IS RACIST.

  16. And, when this “program” leads to additional epic Left Coast budget failures, they’ll do what EVERY blue state has been doing, and scream for federal funds (the rest of the country’s taxpayers) to bail them out… And, depending who controls Congress, it may very well get slipped into another pork-filled omnibus bill…

  17. The definition of INSANITY. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. They comprise only 1% of the US population.

    1. One more reason to leave Californation and/or never return. Sad, sad state (pun intended) of affairs.

  18. There are no “non-binary” people. Even separating people into groups of “binary” or “non-binary”, is binary.

  19. That’s between palm springs and it’s taxpayers,,,if you don’t like it don’t vote for it,,,they will change once tourism drops to ZERO,,,I didn’t finish the article, too much BS…..FJB,,,,
    sympl1

    1. As if any city council member (or anybody in gubment) give two shoots what citizens like or don’t like. This is politics and we don’t count.

  20. Uh, Any of you taxpayers have anything to say ?

    Sounds a bit discriminatory to me, but hey, I’m just an old , white privileged , hard working , blue collar , homophobic , mysogynistic , systemic racist ! That’s what we are all called these days… really hurts my feelings….

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