Conservatives are fond of attributing all manner of perceived evil on the nearest liberal or Democrat who happens to be handy. The blame game reaches epic levels of absurdity at times with right-wing accusations that gays are responsible for hurricanes and that the poor caused the banking collapse and Great Recession of 2008.

However, the competition for the the most ludicrous assignment of liability for society’s ills is heating up with the charges brought by an organization called “Californians for Population Stabilization” (CAPS). This group pretends to have an environmental mission that consists of reducing population in order to save natural resources. But its real goal is to lobby against immigration, particularly from our neighbors to the south. Their allegedly environmental activities have spanned everything from opposing drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants to overturning the Constitution’s provisions for birthright citizenship. A real “back to nature” outfit.

The Los Angeles Times is now reporting that CAPS has launched a television campaign that asks the question on everyone’s mind, “If Californians are having fewer children, why isn’t there enough water?” They answer this question by asserting that immigrants, legal and otherwise, are the reason that the state is running dry. Of course, it’s so obvious. Among their allegations is that “Every newcomer to California adds 140 gallons of water demand per day.” There is no explanation for how they arrived at that ridiculous figure.

A saner analysis would recognize that the number of immigrants in California have little impact on the availability of water. The state’s problems were not the result of overuse, they are the result of an historic years-long drought that has depleted the snowpack and drained reservoirs throughout the state. What’s more, residential water consumers are hardly the main draw for these resources. Agriculture is consumes the majority of water in the state by far.

But mere facts are not sufficient to blunt the accusations of such determined racists. For evidence of the underlying motives of the Folks at CAPS you need only look into their funding. The group is supported almost entirely by grants from the uber-rightist Scaife family. And the projects they bankroll have included the notoriously anti-Latino activists at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and NumbersUSA. Additionally, at least three organizations deemed hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center have benefited from CAPS grants, including the vile bigots of VDARE.

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So just when you thought you’d heard it all, a pseudo-environmental nativist enterprise pops up to blame a major drought on the presence of immigrants. What must they think of Texas right about now, where there is also a large immigrant population, but they are suffering from torrential rains and flooding? I suppose they are just waiting for the frogs and locusts so they can declare this the Apocalypse and get it over with.