"But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by now." ---- Patricia McCarthy
Monday, March 28, 2016
BUYING HILLARY CLINTON - THE PHONY CLINTON FOUNDATION SUCKS IN THE BRIBES - Fundraising for US presidential campaign surpasses $1 billion
Fundraising for US presidential campaign surpasses $1 billion
By Joseph Kishore
25 March 2016
Financial contributions for Democratic and Republican candidates running in the US presidential elections surged past $1 billion by the end of last month, shattering comparable figures for previous elections. A huge proportion of this money has come from a handful of super-wealthy donors who have taken advantage of the elimination of restraints on donations to “Super PACs” associated with individual
campaigns.
According to data compiled by the Campaign Finance Institute and reported yesterday by USA Today,
the sums of money raised so far are more than twice the $402.7 million raised during the last presidential election in 2012, through the end of February. In 2008, the last year when both parties had contested primaries, election spending was at $812 million through the same period.
Super PACs, which are free to raise unlimited funds following the 2010 Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court, account for nearly 40 percent of fundraising, up from 22 percent in 2012.
According to USA Today, 108 individuals, companies and groups have contributed at least $1
million to super PACs, for a combined total of $232 million. That is, just over 100 individuals have contributed more than half of all donations to Super PACs and nearly a quarter of financing for the
election as a whole.
Separate data compiled by the Center forResponsive Politics shows that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has raised the most of any candidate through the first week of March, at $222.6 million. Of this, $62.7 million has gone to outside organizations associated with her campaign, primarily her Super PACPriorities USA Action, which has pulled in the most of any outside group.
Top donors for Clinton and her Super PAC include Soros Fund Management run by billionaire investor George Soros ($7 million), Euclidean Capital ($3.5 million), Pritzker Group ($2.8 million) and Saban Capital Group ($2.5 million).
PUSH 2 FOR ENGLISH?
Simply visit Mexifornia to see for yourself!
"Indeed,
Americans have been thanked and continue to be thanked by all sorts of
carriers of multiculturalism. The open southern border, an instrument of
forced multiculturalism, has brought us gangs, and criminals, and
drugs, and murderers, and cartels, all of which are simply part of the
cultures of the countries from which their carriers traveled to enrich
us with their superiority. The left so values these contributions,
including the senseless murders of Americans by repeat offenders who
prey on American citizens with the tacit permission of our government,
that they proudly tout their “sanctuary cities”, which aid and abet the
predators, while sacrificing the prey in the name of tolerance and smug
superiority."
AMERICAN THINKER
March 26, 2016
The Fruits of Multiculturalism, Abroad and at Home
Once
upon a time there were people who naively fantasized about how all the
incompatible cultures of the world were going to magically blend,
weaving a beautiful tapestry of colors and variations. They called this
“Multiculturalism”. Increasingly, the tapestry is made up of glass
shards and human remains. At what point do we begin to tally the lives
ruined or taken by members of all the “guest” cultures from members of
all the host cultures? Pretty soon, I hope, since that seems to be a
recurring element of multiculturalism. Wherever you see one, you see the
other.
Cultures
are either consciously abandoned, or consciously enforced. The theory
of multiculturalism has always been a tonic for simpletons, since it
celebrates the perpetuation and imposition of an incompatible culture,
still being practiced by those who carry it, upon a host culture with
which it is mutually exclusive. Multiculturalism is entirely subversive.
It is intended to force one or more cultures upon the hosts who do not
want or need them. Since both cultures cannot successfully coexist
within the host, which has its own successful working culture, the
purpose of the exercise has always been fraudulent. The “melting pot”
concept worked not because of the concept of multiculturalism, but as
testament against it. Those who came here in our parents’ and
grandparents’ generation consciously chose to abandon the cultures they
left in favor of the American culture. They became Americans, embracing
one culture.
If
one was being less generous than to call multiculturalism a tonic for
simpletons, it would be more accurate to say that modern leftist
multiculturalism is actually a weapon. Its purpose is not to enhance the
host, but to consume it. If the host’s culture is peaceful, it has no
use for malcontents who insist upon the dominance of their native
culture. Malcontents, in the form of angry and entitled guests, foment
chaos and disorder. And yet, the leftists insist that we demonstrate our
cultural superiority by abandoning the superiority of our own culture
and importing incompatible languages, traditions, practices, and
morals.
Europe
is being forced to account for its misguided multiculturalism on a
grand scale, as it is being invaded and conquered voluntarily by the
proponents and carriers of multiculturalism. Belgium, which prides
itself on its diversity and multiculturalism, has been duly thanked this
week by those it welcomed and upon whom it gifted its liberties and
freedoms. France has also recently been thanked. So too has been the UK,
Germany, Sweden, and all the rest, as their own cultures are being
swept aside to accommodate those who intend to assassinate the culture,
rather than assimilate.
Increasingly,
among the practitioners of aggressive multiculturalism, their gratitude
is often measured in lives destroyed and the quantity of blood spilled
to overwhelm the host. It is measured in rapes, and violent crimes, and
pedophilia, and human trafficking, and all of the niceties of the guest
cultures that have been blindly welcomed or ignored by the host, whose
tolerance was only exceeded by its stupidity.
Indeed,
Americans have been thanked and continue to be thanked by all sorts of
carriers of multiculturalism. The open southern border, an instrument of
forced multiculturalism, has brought us gangs, and criminals, and
drugs, and murderers, and cartels, all of which are simply part of the
cultures of the countries from which their carriers traveled to enrich
us with their superiority. The left so values these contributions,
including the senseless murders of Americans by repeat offenders who
prey on American citizens with the tacit permission of our government,
that they proudly tout their “sanctuary cities”, which aid and abet the
predators, while sacrificing the prey in the name of tolerance and smug
superiority.
We
have been similarly thanked by radical Islamists, who have bombed us,
shot us, and terrorized us for not surrendering to their culture, with
all the superiority that comes with honor killings, female mutilation,
subjugation of women, beheadings, throwing gays from rooftops, genocide
and hatred of everyone and everything that is incompatible with their
culture. Our government so approves of this that it facilitates the
“migration”/importation of even more carriers of such culture in the
form of Syrian Muslim immigrants whom it cannot vet, many of whom travel
on forged visas created by ISIS to permit them to enter target
countries undeterred.
Even
among Americans, who are free and have unlimited opportunities
available to them, we are beginning to understand the extent of the
anti-American subcultures that have arisen, and are working just as
diligently to defeat us. There is within our own borders a rising
culture of anti-Constitutional, anti-American aggression and fascism,
perpetrated upon Americans by other Americans who are so assured of
their own moral and intellectual superiority that they have no need of
laws that constrain their dominance over their fellow citizens. They are
smarter and better than the rest of us, because they say so.
At
the same time, we have a cultural movement embodied by innumerable
young adults, trained to be perpetual crybabies and losers, convinced of
their entitlement to steal the property and money of others, whom they
mindlessly hate for successes that they cannot fathom, animated by
puppeteers who themselves are paragons of failure. They think nothing of
employing violence against those whom they have never met and do not
know, but hate entirely.
Make
no mistake. The anti-American subculture growing in the United States
is surprisingly deeply rooted and has even more potential to destroy
this country than anything the left can import. They are carriers of
their pathology, and they use our politics and media to infect. Like the
other corrosive cultures, theirs celebrates lawlessness, injustice, and
violence because they advance the goals of fear and intimidation. The
extent of violence is the only remaining question mark, since most
anti-American culturalists have not yet engaged in open homicide of
their ideological enemies. The obvious exception is the Black Lives
Matter subculture, which long ago jumped over that line and was rewarded
by their allies with publicity and fake credibility.
Will
relative restraint continue if a candidate is nominated for president
who recognizes the cancer that the anti-American culturalists represent
to our national survival? Don’t count on it. These are the ideological
children of Bill Ayers. We will transition from a war of words to the
inevitable war of violence, because they will start it to survive,
confident they won’t be blamed. Watch what happens this summer in
Cleveland, by which time it will have begun, and how it is covered.
Either we win, or they do, but our cultures are mutually exclusive.
Four out of ten deportations of illegal immigrants and foreign criminals
from the UK were cancelled in 2014-15, largely because there were not
enough staff available to take them to the airport.
Almost 34,000 airline tickets had to be cancelled in one 18-month period, costing British taxpayers more than £1.4 million, a report by the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration has revealed.
A separate report suggests officials have lost track of thousands of foreign students whose visas have expired, the BBC reports.
The
first report explains that a “major constraint” on the deportation
process was a lack of security staff to accompany detainees out of the
country.
The
shocking failures occurred after the Home Office outsourced some of its
border and immigration functions to private contractors. The report
slammed the private firms as slow to resolve issues and reach agreement
on areas for improvement.
The
government, meanwhile, tried to absolve itself of responsibility by
claiming it had no control over the firms, which were being paid by the
taxpayer.
The report said: “The Home Office regarded some of the reasons for failed removals to be ‘out of [its] control’.
“While
this might be true in individual cases at the point of removal, it was
unclear what steps were being taken to identify lessons that might be
applied by the Home Office and others to reduce ‘out of control’
failures.”
However,
responding to the report, one of the private firms, Tascor, said it had
no contractual requirement to complete removals within a specified
timescale and also claimed not to be responsible because of legal
challenges.
“The
majority of the cancellations fall outside of Tascor’s control, largely
due to legal challenges or lack of emergency travel documents,” the
company said.
The
Home Office has now accepted the report’s recommendations, saying they
were looking for ways to reduce the cost of pre-departure accommodation
at a unit for families subject to enforced removal.
An official response seen by PA said:
“Work is already under way to address the recommendations relating to
ticketing and escorting and, as the report acknowledges, these issues
are being factored into the re-procurement exercise for both contracts
which began in 2015.”
Diversity: Four Illegals Held in Brutal Gang Rape in Massachusetts
Four Guatemala nationals who are in the U.S. illegally are accused of
brutally gang-raping a woman and beating her boyfriend in Massachusetts.
Federal Immigration officers are requesting so-called detainers on all four illegals. According to Customs Enforcement spokesman Shawn Neudauer, at least two of the suspects had been deported previously.
Police
report that brothers Elmer Diaz, 19, Arial Diaz, 24, and Adan Diaz, 32
and accomplice Marlon Josue Jarquin-Felipe, 27, were arrested and
charged with the brutal attacks. They faces charges including rape,
assault with a dangerous weapon, assault and battery, kidnapping,
witness intimidation and other charges.
Ariel Diaz has a record of violations such
as drunk driving, driving without a license, and driving without
insurance, disorderly conduct, and other charges. Additionally
Jarquin-Felipe had been deported back to Guatemala as late as April of
2014.
The
four were arrested after the attacks on a couple they were out for a
walk in their neighborhood. According to the police report, as the four
approached the couple, one of the illegals pulled out a condom and
motioned toward the woman.
She was then grabbed by the
hood of her jacket and slammed to the ground while two others started
beating the woman’s boyfriend. The woman was dragged into a nearby
apartment where several began to sexually molest her.
The
woman’s boyfriend followed them, forced his way into the apartment and
called 911. Police say he was then attacked again. At one point Ariel
Diaz came at the man with a chef’s kitchen knife. The victim was able to
wrest the knife away avoiding being stabbed in the process.
Eventually
the male victim was able to fight off the attackers and help free his
girlfriend. The two exited the apartment building and flagged down
police. Officers then arrested the four men finding some of the couples’
belongings in the apartment.
“I thought we were going
to die. I really did. And I didn’t care if I died as long as I could
save her and get her out of there, that’s all I cared about,” the male
victim told the Boston Herald.
“I’ve lived here my whole
life and I never imagined anything like this could happen just walking
down the street,” he added. “The worst part was I felt like I couldn’t
do anything.”
The victim noted that his girlfriend is traumatized and has yet to come to terms with her assault.
All
four of the illegals have pleaded not guilty but are being held pending
a determination on how dangerous they are to the community before being
released.
ICE officials say that they have no record
of being alerted by local police after any of the suspects were arrested
for past offenses.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
Border Surge Solution: Send ‘Em to Camp David! By Michelle Malkin
Human Events Online, February 17, 2016
. . .
As
Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council testified on Capitol
Hill recently: “The cartels understood that the unaccompanied minors
would force the Border Patrol to deploy Agents to these crossing areas
in order to take the minors into custody. I want to stress this point
because it has been completely overlooked by the press,” he told the
House Judiciary Committee. The unaccompanied minors could have walked
right up to the port of entry and requested asylum if they were truly
escaping political persecution or violence. “Why did the cartels drive
them to the middle of the desert and then have them cross over the Rio
Grande only to surrender to the first Border Patrol Agent they came
across?” Judd challenged.
“The reason is that it
completely tied up our manpower and allowed the cartels to smuggle
whatever they wanted across our border.”
Illegal Alien Who Murdered Woman Judicial Watch Corruption Chronicles,
February 18, 2016
. . .
Here’s
what we already know from local media reports in Norwich, the city of
about 40,000 residents where the murder occurred; the DHS agency
responsible for deporting illegal immigrants, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), failed to remove Jacques at least three times dating
back to 2002. As if this weren’t atrocious enough, Jacques spent 17
years in prison for attempted murder before authorities released
him—instead of deporting him—in January of 2015, the Norwich Bulletin
reports. Six months later the 41-year-old illegal alien convict stabbed
25-year-old Casey Chadwick to death. Police said Chadwick died of sharp
forced injuries to the head and neck. Jacques is being held on a $1
million bond.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated
case. In the last few years illegal immigrants with lengthy criminal
histories have been allowed to remain in the U.S. despite being repeat
offenders. Judicial Watch has investigated several of the cases and
obtained public records from the government. For instance, back in 2008
JW launched a California public records request with the San Francisco
Sheriff’s Department to obtain he arrest and booking information on
Edwin Ramos, an illegal alien from El Salvador who murdered three
innocent American citizens. Ramos was a member of a renowned violent
street gang and had been convicted of two felonies as a juvenile (a
gang-related assault on a bus passenger and the attempted robbery of a
pregnant woman) yet he was allowed to remain in the country.
. . . http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2016/02/u-s-failed-3-times-to-deport-illegal-alien-who-murdered-woman/
Dozens of Homicides Committed by Criminal Aliens After Being Released by ICE
By Mark Krikorian
The Corner at National Review Online, March 14, 2016
The
federal government shares responsibility when any illegal alien commits
murder — it failed to keep him out in the first place. And when a
sanctuary city releases a deportable criminal, Washington shares the
blame for any subsequent crimes because it’s not cracking down on such
rogue jurisdictions nullifying federal law.
But
federal responsibility is greatest when ICE actually has the criminal
aliens in its custody, and then releases them to go and kill some more.
Needless to say, the Obama administration doesn’t advertise when that
happens.
But
the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded the information from ICE, which
my colleague Jessica Vaughan has summarized. The most outrageous find:
Since 2010, 124 criminal aliens who were in ICEs custody and then
released went on to be charged with 135 new homicides.
The
Judiciary Committee also asked about criminal aliens released by ICE
more than once. Since 2013, there have been 156 such criminal aliens,
who racked up between them a total of 243 additional convictions after
being let go.
None
of these statistics include criminal aliens released by sanctuary
cities or those whom ICE simply refused to pick up from local jails in
the first place. These are only those who were in ICE’s hands, and then
let go.
Many
of these non-citizen criminals were released with ICE’s affirmative
consent. A significant number were ordered released by the Justice
Department, pursuant to a Supreme Court decision, because their home
countries wouldn’t take them back. But even here, the administration is
culpable. The Secretary of State is required by law to suspend the
issuance of visas in any country that won’t take back its own citizens.
The Obama administration has never — not once — complied with this legal
requirement.
Here’s the list of countries ICE has identified as refusing to take back their deportable citizens:
Afghanistan,
Algeria, Burundi, Cape Verde, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana,
Guinea, India, Iran, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Libya, Mali,
Mauritania, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, and Zimbabwe.
Afghanistan and Iraq?
We let our colonies refuse to accept their deportable citizens, so they
can stay here and commit more crimes? Who, then, is the colonizer and
who the colonized? And how about Cuba? The administration has made clear
that the issue of deportees wasn’t — and still isn’t — even on the
table in discussion of normalizing relations. And the idea that
pipsqueak countries like Gambia or Cape Verde can freely defy us
suggests that “superpower” doesn’t mean what people think.
Politicians
have no business even suggesting things like amnesty or increased
immigration and guestworkers until outrages like this are banished.
THE MEXICAN CRIME TIDAL WAVE IN LA RAZA-OCCUPIED MEXIFORNIA
Half of all murders are now committed by MEX gangs!
CA has the largest and most expensive prison system in the nation. Half the inmates are MEX.
Of the top 200 most wanted criminals in La Raza-occupied Los Angeles, 186 are MEX.
There have been more than 2,000 Californians murdered by Mexicans who fled back over the border to avoid prosecution.
WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE?
"View the report and graphics showing crimes by state: http://cis.org/vaughan/Map-124-criminal-aliens-released-obama-policies-charged-homicide-2010 “The
Obama administration appears to be indifferent to the harm its policies
are inflicting in American communities,” says CIS Director of Policy
Studies Jessica Vaughan, who reviewed the ICE documents provided to the
Senate committee."
WASHINGTON, DC (March 14, 2016) —
New information released to the Senate Judiciary Committee quantifies
the public safety impact of the Obama administration's lenient approach
to immigration enforcement, in which thousands of criminal aliens are
allowed to remain at large each year instead of detained and processed
for prompt deportation. Criminal aliens released by ICE
between 2010 and 2015 have been charged
with 124 new homicides and thousands of
other crimes that harm citizens and degrade
thequality of life in American communities.
The
Center for Immigration Studies reports that only a tiny percentage of
the released criminals have been removed. Only 3 percent of the criminal
aliens released in 2014 have been removed, with most receiving the most
generous forms of due process available, and are allowed to remain at
large, without supervision, while they await drawn-out immigration
hearings.
The vast majority (124) of these criminal
aliens were released in California. In addition, 16 were released in
Arizona, six in Texas, three in Florida, two in Georgia, and one each in
North Carolina, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Washington, and Oregon.
View the report and graphics showing crimes by state: http://cis.org/vaughan/Map-124-criminal-aliens-released-obama-policies-charged-homicide-2010 “The
Obama administration appears to be indifferent to the harm its policies
are inflicting in American communities,” says CIS Director of Policy
Studies Jessica Vaughan, who reviewed the ICE documents provided to the
Senate committee. “Many of these releases could be prevented.
Instead, the administration allows funded detention space to go unused,
declines to use efficient forms of due process for criminals, and shifts
millions of dollars that Congress provided for enforcement to other
purposes. In addition, they have failed to take action against
recalcitrant countries that won’t accept the return of their deported
citizens.”
Inexplicably,
ICE is choosing to release some criminal aliens multiple times. Two of
them had homicide-related convictions even before they were released.
These aliens had 464 criminal convictions prior to release by ICE,
ranging from drug crimes to DUI and other driving offenses to larceny
and theft.
This tally does not include aliens who were released by sanctuary jurisdictions,
nor those aliens that were released by local law enforcement agencies
after ICE declined to take them into custody due to Obama
administration prioritization policies. This list includes only those aliens that ICE arrested and then released.
ICE
reported that there are 156 criminal aliens who were released at least
twice by ICE since 2013. Between them, these criminals had 1,776
convictions before their first release in 2013, with burglary, larceny, and drug possession listed most frequently.
Without
the congressional inquiry into criminal alien crime, the public would
not have this Immigration status information from ICE, which should be
reported on a routine basis by all law enforcement agencies. Legislation
has been introduced by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) that would remedy this problem.
MURDERING MEXICANS: WHEN THEY'RE NOT LOOTING ANCHOR BABY WELFARE, VOTING DEM FOR MORE, THEY'RE MURDERING LEGALS!
CALIFORNIA UNDER LA RAZA-OCCUPATION:
1. CA has the largest and most expensive prison system in the nation. HALF THE INMATES ARE ILLEGALS FROM NARCOMEX.
2. Los Angeles is a Mex-occupied city. 90% of all murders are committed by Mexicans.
3. Of the top 200 most wanted criminals by L.A. police, 186 are Mexicans.
4. According to CA AG KAMALA HARRIS, herself a La Raza Dem, nearly half of all murders in CA are now by Mex gangs.
Man accused of killing five people in Kansas and Missouri was in U.S. illegally
A
Mexican man accused of killing five people in the Midwest this week was
a convicted felon living in the U.S. illegally, and he had not been
deported despite being arrested at least twice in recent years, federal
officials said.
Pablo Antonio Serrano-Vitorino, 40, of
Kansas City, Kan., was captured in rural eastern Missouri early
Wednesday morning after going missing from Kansas on Monday and then
sparking a 17-hour manhunt in Missouri on Tuesday once his truck was
spotted along an interstate.
Officials, who had
previously warned Serrano-Vitorino might be armed with an AK-47, said he
was found with a rifle, but wouldn't say what kind.
Serrano-Vitorino
faces five counts of murder and other charges on suspicion of killing
four men on Monday night in Kansas City, Kan., and then going on the run
and killing another man almost 200 miles to the east in New Florence,
Mo. Officials have not given a motive.
The
case could have political implications, given Serrano-Vitorino's
immigration status and his criminal history, which includes a felony
conviction in Los Angeles County from 2003. Serrano-Vitorino was
deported to Mexico in 2004 but illegally returned to the U.S. sometime
later, officials said.Missouri's primary presidential election is next
week, and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and other
immigration critics have cited the death of Kathryn Steinle --
who was shot in San Francisco in July by a felon from Mexico living in
the U.S. illegally -- to call for harsher measures to control illegal
immigration.
Three Illegal Alien Convicted Rapists Arrested Sneaking Back into Texas
MCALLEN, Texas — Over
a period of three days, three illegal aliens from El Salvador with
criminal records as rapists are facing immigration charges after getting
arrested near the Rio Grande Valley of the Texas border with Mexico.
The
most recent arrest took place on Wednesday in the border city of
Hidalgo when U.S. Border Patrol agents found 28-year-old Manuel
Alexander Chicas Contreras. Details of how the arrest took place are not
listed in the criminal complaint obtained by Breitbart Texas. Once in
custody however, the agents requested a records check on Chicas and
learned that he had previously been deported.
Chicas
was deported on December 5, 2014 after he was released from prison for
having “sexual intercourse with a child over the age of 15”. For that
crime, Chicas was sentenced to 12 months in prison and had six months
from his sentence suspended prior to his deportation. On Thursday,
Chicas went before U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Ormsby who formally
charged him with one count of illegal re-entry and ordered he be held
without bond.
In
the second case, U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested 42-year-old
Salvador Antonio Coreas Rodriguez on Tuesday near the border city of
Hidalgo, court records from his arrest revealed. Rodriguez told agents
had crossed the Rio Grande into Texas on Sunday. When authorities ran a
records check on him they learned that Coreas-Rodriguez was convicted in
on May 2011 on the charges related to having the rape of a victim under
the age of 15. After serving part of his sentence he was deported to El
Salvador on September 2013. On Thursday, Coreas- Rodriguez went before
U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Ormsby who formally charged him with one
count of illegal re-entry and ordered he be held without bond.
The
third case involved 34-year-old Denis Antonio Polanco who went before
U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Ormsby, also on Tuesday. The judge formally
charged him with one count of illegal re-entry and ordered he be held
without bond. Polanco’s arrest took place on Sunday near the border city
of Roma when Border Patrol agents found him. During a records check,
agents learned that he had been deported in June 1999 following his 1998
conviction of rape, court records obtained by Breitbart Texas
revealed.
Sheriff Joe: 39 Percent of Illegals Turned Over to ICE Return Back to Maricopa Co Jails
Tuesday on Fox Business
Network’s “Mornings With Maria,” Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joe Arapaio
discussed the problems with illegal immigrants committing crimes in his
community and why he thinks Republican presidential front-runner Donald
Trump is the best one to deal with this problem.
Arpaio
also told host Maria Bartiromo of a statistic showing that over
one-third of all the illegal immigrants he has incarcerated and turned
over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement wind up back in his jails.
Partial transcript as follows:
BARTIROMO:
You are on the front lines, obviously, and your teams are on the front
lines and you’re seeing what’s going and coming through the border.
What’s your take on this most recent report? These people were in jail
and they were released from jail and then they were convicted of murder. ARPAIO:
Well, you know, that’s been out for a while, but I have more shocking
statistics that nobody will talk about except Neil Cavuto. He did bring
it out. BARTIROMO: Tell us about it. ARPAIO:
They are my statistics. I’ll tell you what it is, I also run the jails.
We average about 9,000 people in the jails every day and every month
they take statistics of those in our jails charged with all different
crimes, here in this country illegally, 8,600 have been turned over to
ICE for deportation and over 3000 keep coming back to the same jails
that I run. Now, think of that. They keep coming back. One guy came back
20 times. So, what’s going on? Are they going to the border and keep
hopping the fence or keep coming across or are they let out on the
streets of Maricopa County? I think- BARTIROMO: What do you think is happening? How is it possible that they were– that they’re coming back to your jails? ARPAIO:
Good question. I’ve written to the Homeland Security secretary, to
other officials. I get bureaucrat particular responses. I never get an
answer, but I got the facts. You’re talking about a hundred, that’s bad.
But what about just in my jails, 39 percent keep coming back to the
same jail and they are charged with many different crimes. So it’s very
disgusting. Something has to be done about this illegal immigration
problem. BARTIROMO:
What’s the answer though, sheriff? I mean, obviously, Donald Trump is
talking about this wall that he’s going to build. Is that going to be
enough? Is that going to be the solution or is there something else? I
mean, this is clearly the dividing issue right now within this country. ARPAIO:
It’s very simple, you deport them. You get them out of our country. Why
are they roaming the streets and keep coming back? They should be back
in the country that they came from illegally. So, that’s very simple.
You deport them and then you try to do something at the border. BARTIROMO:
Yeah, but Dagen, is it that simple though, just to deport 11 million
people? I mean, this is the whole argument that we’re having right now.
How can you deport all the illegals in this country right now? ARPAIO:
Well, I tell you what, we did pretty good just my office, I think, they
accused me of 100,000 people leaving because of our crackdown during
the past years. But it’s very simple. You deport them and when you come
across those here committing other crimes, you lock them up and send
them back where they came from. And that can be done. So why should we
surrender the greatest country in the world, we can’t take care of this
problem? So I support Trump and by the way, if you look at all the
politicians here is what they say, ‘We must secure the border.’ Then
they say ‘first,’ and then we’ll look at the internal problem. No, what
about talking about those here illegally already? Why say secure the
border first, you know the border will never be completely secure. I’ve
been on both sides of that border as a top official. So, you can’t
surrender. I like what Trump says. I had
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
16%
’
wife in my tent city last night and she learned something about, she
didn’t like the tents. Her husband is here today in Phoenix, I’m sure
he’ll bad-mouth me, but that’s OK.
They're not even trying to hide their lack of enforcement of immigration law.
The
president of the National Border Control Council testified before
Congress that a top Homeland Security official told agents that the
Obama administration has "no intention of deporting" most illegal
aliens. This
"catch and release" policy amounts to a de facto amnesty for the tens
of thousands of illegals who jump the border every year.
DHS
claims that the policy is in place because immigration courts are
clogged up. So instead of expanding the number of judges and courts,
they simply give up and allow the illegals to disappear into the
underground.
Mr. Judd provided
his testimony in written answers released Monday by the House Judiciary
Committee, saying that even in some criminal cases, agents are ordered
to let illegal immigrants go without ever issuing them a Notice to
Appear, or NTA, which is what puts them into deportation proceedings.
Mr. Judd said they took their case directly to Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who told them not to bother.
“Deputy
Secretary Mayorkas told us that the Border Patrol needs to focus its
resources towards the worst of the worst. He said that by prioritizing
those we choose to deport, we will help alleviate the burden on an
already overburdened court system,” Mr. Judd recalled.
“He
further stated, ‘Why would we NTA those we have no intention of
deporting?’ He also stated, ‘We should not place someone in deportation
proceedings, when the courts already have a 3-6 year backlog,’” Mr. Juddrecounted.
“Since the day of this meeting, we have seen no improvements in our
enforcement efforts and the morale of the Border Patrol agents is one
of, if not the lowest in the entire federal government.”
Immigration
agents have complained for several years that Mr. Obama has tied their
hands, forcing them to release illegal immigrants who should have been
easy deportation cases.
Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees the Border Patrol, declined to comment on Mr. Judd’s testimony.
But CBP Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske, testifying to Congress earlier this month, brushed aside Mr. Judd’s comments, saying he didn’t believe agents were releasing people without putting them through the full process.
Mr. Kerlikowske said Mr. Judd was
“probably not the most knowledgeable organization about what’s actually
going on” in the field with Border Patrol agents, and he said agents
that object to Mr. Obama’s policies should quit.
The
backog of immigration court cases is meaningless. Seventy-five percent
of illegals fail to show up for their hearings anyway. And DHS has no
way to keep track of those they release under this policy.
President
Obama's policies have made it only more difficult to fix this broken
system. Adding to the problem by increasing the number of illegals is
irresponsible governance – which just about sums up the president's
terms in office.
...........................
Will Mexico elect America's next President? Didn't LA RAZA FASCIST
PARTY, which is funded by Barack Obama and operates out of the Obama
white house under Cecilia Munoz, reelect Obama???
DON'T BELIEVE THE LIES! IT'S ALL LA RAZA PROPAGANDA TO EXPAND MEXICO'S OCCUPATION! MILLIONS
OF MEXICANS HAVE MILLIONS OF AMERICAN JOBS WITH STOLEN IDENTITIES. THEY
ALSO DRIVE ILLEGALLY, CONTRACT ILLEGALLY AND SEND BACK TENS OF BILLIONS
IN DRUG PROFITS TO NARCOMEX. THE DEMOCRAT PARTY HAS LONG BEEN SABOTAGING STATES' ATTEMPT TO CURB LA RAZA FASCIST FROM VOTING. MEXICO KNOWS THAT THE 40 MILLION LOOTING MEXICANS DON'T HAVE TO BE "PERMANENT RESIDENTS" TO GO VOTE FOR MORE! HILLARY CLINTON HAS ALREADY PROMISED THE MEX OCCUPIERS 49 MORE MEXIFORNIAS!
March 21, 2016
Mexican government urging US immigrants to become citizens and vote
Mexican
consulates in the U.S. are hosting citizenship clinics across the
country, hoping to convince permanent residents from Mexico to become
U.S. citizens so they can vote against Donald Trump. The pious declaration from the Mexican government that they are not "interfering" in the U.S. election fails the smell test. Bloomberg:
Joel
Diaz doesn’t want to wait to see how it all turns out. The
Mexican-American, who has been a permanent resident of the U.S. for six
years, arrived at the Mexican consulate in Chicago on Saturday with his
wife and four adult sons to register all of them as U.S. citizens in
order to vote against Trump.
"We’re
very worried," Diaz, 47, an evangelical pastor, said. "If he wins there
will be a lot of damage against a lot of people here, and to us as
Hispanics, as Mexicans."
Laura
Espinosa, deputy consul in Mexico’s consulate in Las Vegas, said the
main goal of the program is citizenship, and while that includes the
right to vote, the government doesn’t press people to do so. "Those who
use this to vote, that’s up to each individual," said Espinosa, who
confirmed that most consulates have begun citizenship campaigns. "We
don’t have any opinion on that, because that would be totally
interfering in internal affairs of the country."
The
government in Mexico City is holding off on engaging the Trump campaign
directly until he becomes the nominee, said Francisco Guzman, chief of
staff to Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Speaking with reporters
on March 1, Guzman said the government plans to communicate with the
campaigns of the nominees once they’re chosen and try to dispel what it
considers misinformation about Mexico and Mexicans.
The
public-relations offensive now under way includes using news outlets
and social media to highlight the strides Mexicans have made in
business, the arts and academia in the U.S., said Paulo Carreno, the
former spokesman of Citigroup Inc.’s Mexico unit who oversees the
country’s international branding strategy.
Promoting
Mexico in the U.S., from its scholars to artists, is meant "not to
influence an election, but a whole generation and those that follow,"
Carreno said in an e-mailed response to questions. "The strategy will be
an important anchor in our consular network in the country."
It
should be noted that the chances of the Mexican government succeeding
in getting enough of their people to become U.S. citizens so that they
can make a difference in the 2016 election are low. But over a period
of years, that could change – especially if the Republicans continue to
refuse to compete for the Hispanic vote. Immigration issues are not the
end-all and be-all for Hispanics in the U.S. They have the same
concerns as any American about the economy and the culture.
Not
even trying to persuade Hispanics that the GOP's agenda would be better
for them than the Democrats will continue to make any national election
and uphill climb for the Republican candidate.
WASHINGTON, DC (March 16, 2016) — One of the most
critical issues in the immigration policy debate is the question of
immigration’s impact on the employment opportunities of native-born
workers after immigrants enter the labor market. With 61 million
immigrants and their young children living in the United States,
accounting for nearly one in five U.S. residents, the federal
immigration program has serious implications for the American worker.
Today the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National
Interest examined the impact of immigration on U.S. workers.
Dr. Steven Camarota, the Director of Research at the Center for
Immigration Studies, testified that “immigration does not confer
significant economic benefits on the native-born. Instead, immigration
tends to redistribute income from some American workers, often from the
poorest and least educated, to business owners and other American
workers.”
The U.S. welcomes over one million legal immigrants per year, which does
make the U.S. economy (GDP) significantly larger. But a larger GDP does
not necessarily result in a wealthier society. In fact, almost all of
this increase in GDP goes to the immigrants themselves as payment for
their labor.
When the employment analysis is expanded beyond the officially
unemployed, the situation for Americans looks grim. The number and share
of native-born Americans ages 16 to 65 who are not in the labor market
(not working or looking for work) is at or near a record level, with no
meaningful improvement in the last two years. Job growth has not come
close to matching new immigration and population increase; 17. 5 million
more working-age people were not working in 2015 than in 2000.
Dr. Camarota concluded, “Any suggestion that the nation needs
immigration because there is a shortage of labor is not supported by the
available data.”
Nearly one-third of US food stamp recipients rely on food pantries
By
Kate Randall
9 March 2016
Nearly one-third of US households on the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP) rely on food pantries to supplement their food
budget, according to data highlighted this week by the US Department of
Agriculture (USDA), which administers SNAP.
The USDA reports that
in 2014, 23 million American households received SNAP benefits,
formerly known as food stamps. Of those households receiving SNAP
benefits, 32 percent report they had visited a food pantry in the
previous 30 days.
Households receiving other government food
assistance also visited food pantries in significant numbers.
Twenty-three percent of households using the Women, Infants and Children
(WIC) program visited a pantry, as did 23 percent of households where
children are receiving free or reduced-price school lunches.
The
average SNAP benefit per person is about $125 per person a month,
according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The USDA data shows that
these paltry benefits are not enough to sustain many household food
budgets, leading families to seek assistance from food pantries.
Despite
these statistics, more than one million people across the US could lose
their SNAP benefits in 2016 due to the return in many areas of a
three-month limit on benefits for unemployed adults ages 18-49 who are
not disabled or raising minor children. The cutoffs began March 1 in 21
states, prompting food pantries and soup kitchens to gear up for an
influx of people seeking support.
Following the financial crisis
in 2008, virtually all US states qualified for a waiver from the
three-month limit for those classified as “Able-Bodied Adults Without
Dependents” (ABAWDs), imposed in 1996 under the welfare reform bill
signed into law by President Clinton. The harsh “work for food”
requirements are now being restored in the face of US Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) data that shows that more than a quarter of the 7.9
million US unemployed have been jobless for more than six months.
According
to the USDA, about 4.7 million SNAP recipients are deemed ABAWDs, and
only one in four of these has any income from a job. USDA data shows
these individuals have gross income averages of 17 percent of the
official poverty line, or only about $2,000 per year for a household of
one in 2015. If these individuals fail to demonstrate that they work,
volunteer, or attend job-training courses at least 80 hours a month,
they will be cut off SNAP.
The assault on SNAP benefits is a
bipartisan attack on the health and wellbeing of workers at a time when
the government’s own figures show hunger growing across America. In
2014, President Obama signed a bill that included $8.6 billion in cuts
to SNAP. The temporary 14 percent increase in benefits passed by
Congress in 2009 ended completely in November 2013.
Under these
crisis conditions, Obama’s fiscal year 2016 budget proposal included
only $83.692 billion for SNAP, which presently serves an average
caseload of 45.7 million Americans, almost 15 percent of the population.
This compares to the more than $600 billion a year officially expended
on the military. If all military-related expenses are added—including
from the CIA, Homeland Security, Energy, State departments, the Veterans
Administration and debt payments for previous wars—the real figure is
closer to $1.3 trillion a year.
A USDA study showed that 14
percent of households (17.4 million households) were food insecure in
2014, meaning they did not have consistent, dependable access to enough
food for an active, healthy life. In 2014, 5.6 percent of US households
(6.9 million households) had very low food security, meaning that the
food intake of some household members was reduced, and normal eating
patterns disrupted, due to limited resources at times during the year.
A
2013 study of 3,300 SNAP households by the USDA’s Food and Nutrition
Service found that “SNAP households experience … financial strain that
is eased but not alleviated by participation in the SNAP program.” The
study found that about 45 percent of SNAP clients limited food
consumption, usually by skipping meals, to make it through the month.
NPR
reports on other research that shows that hospital admissions for
hypoglycemia—low blood sugar, which can be treated with a healthful
diet—spike by 27 percent for low-income households during the last week
of the month, when many government benefits run out. High-income
households showed no similar trend.
A new review of 25 studies
published between 2003 and 2014 that looked at the food spending and
quality of diets of SNAP recipients showed that they ate on average
about the same number of calories as those not receiving benefits, but
consumed fewer fruits and vegetables and whole grains and more added
sugars.
Tatiana Andreyeva, the study’s lead author and researcher
at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of
Connecticut, said average food stamp recipients scored even worse than
the average American on the Healthy Eating Index, a measure of how well
diets meet the federal dietary guidelines.
While the average
American received a failing grade, scoring just 58 out of 100 on the
index, the average SNAP recipient scored just 47 out of 100 in one
study, and 51 out of 100 in another. The study also found that both
adults and children on SNAP were less likely to eat three meals a day
than higher-income people not receiving benefits.
Immigration cuts salaries of Americans $2,470 a year:
The nation's unending appetite for new and low-wage immigrant workers,
now about about 1 million a year, is slashing the incomes of native-born
Americans by $2,470 while boosting corporate profits, according to a
new report on the cost of legal and illegal immigration.
The U.S. is literally importing poverty, said the new report from the
group Negative Population Growth Inc.
Critics of immigration and the administration's expansion of the green
card worker program have long charged that native American workers have
had to accept lower wages just to compete with cheap imported labor and
the new report from Ed Rubenstein, president of ESR Research, bolsters
those charges.
"There are the billions of taxpayer dollars used to subsidize illegal
immigrants' health care and education. There's the revenue we lose out
on when illegal immigrants don't pay income taxes. And there's a less
recognized pot of billions — the billions of dollars of earnings that
illegal immigrants wire out of the United States with no tax or penalty."
BLOG:
THE MEX LA RAZA - DEM PARTY AMNESTY: KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED AND
PASSING ALONG THEIR WELFARE AND CRIME TIDAL WAVE COST TO WHAT IS LEFT OF
THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS. BLOG: THERE IS A REASON WHY MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS TO THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA. GOOGLE IT! The nation's unending appetite for new and low-wage immigrant
workers, now about about 1 million a year, is slashing the incomes of
native-born Americans by $2,470 while boosting corporate profits,
according to a new report on the cost of legal and illegal immigration.
Critics of immigration and the administration's expansion of the
green card worker program have long charged that native American
workers have had to accept lower wages just to compete with cheap
imported labor and the new report from Ed Rubenstein, president of ESR Research, bolsters those charges.
He found that while in past decades adding immigrant workers
helped to increase wages and GDP, the flood that followed the 1986
immigration reform reversed that trend. The reason, he said, is that too
much of the workforce is now immigrant labor, rising from 10 percent in
1996 to nearly 17 percent today.
TIME TO END MEXICO'S LOOTING?
"As alarming as those numbers are, it's gotten a whole lot worse.
It's the reason why in both 2013 and 2015 I introduced legislation, the
"Remittance Status Verification Act," to fix this. I call this the
"Wire Act" for short."
"My bill would require a fee on remittances for customers who
wire money to another country but cannot prove that they are in the
United States legally. The fee would be used to enhance border security.
Basically, we would be able to dramatically improve border security
while making illegal immigrants pay for it."
"We also have evidence that many of those illegals who are remitting
money are more likely to be illegal immigrant households receiving
Social Security, health care benefits, unemployment insurance and/or
stimulus money. Is it really fair for those individuals to live off our
tax dollars but send untaxed, under-the-table money abroad?"
ON TOP OF THESE FIGURES ADD THE TENS OF BILLIONS HANDED TO INVADING MEXICANS IN THE FORM OF WELFARE. ON THE STATE LEVEL ALONE, MEXIFORNIA HANDS LA RAZA $30 BILLION IN SOCIAL SERVICES. THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES CHIPS IN ANOTHER BILLION FOR THE LA RAZA ANCHOR BABY BREEDING FOR GRINGO WELFARE PROGRAM. NOW..... HOW MUCH DOES THE MEX DRUG CARTELS HAUL BACK? SOME ESTIMATES PUT THE NUMBER AT $40 - $60 BILLION! BLOG: IT IS ESTIMATED THAT THE COUNTY OF LOS
ANGELES HAS A MEXICAN TAX-FREE UNDERGROUND
ECONOMY CALCULATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2
BILLION PER YEAR! There are the billions of taxpayer dollars used to subsidize illegal
immigrants' health care and education. There's the revenue we lose out
on when illegal immigrants don't pay income taxes. And there's a less
recognized pot of billions — the billions of dollars of earnings that
illegal immigrants wire out of the United States with no tax or penalty.
DURING THE EIGHT YEARS OF OBAMA'S "HOPE AND NO CHANGE", TWO -THIRDS OF ALL JOBS WENT TO FOREIGN BORN, BOTH LEGALS AND ILLEGALS. THE
MILLIONS OF AMERICAN THAT SUNK INTO POVERTY HAS SOARED, JUST AS THE
CRIMES AND PROFITS OF OBAMA - CLINTON CRONIES ON WALL STREET!
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: Serve the Rich, Obama's Crony
Banksters, and the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA to
keep wages depressed and corporate profits even greater!
CAN WE REALLY AFFORD ANOTHER WALL STREET-OWNED PRESIDENCY THAT CLINTON 2 WOULD ESTABLISH???
Independent news at its best. If it's blacked-out, covered-up or censored, you can find it here!
March 23, 2016
Statistic of the Week:The amount of assets/wealth the average adult has in each country:
Belgium - $150,348
UK - $126,472
Norway - $119,634
Japan - $96,071
France - $86,156
Canada - $74,750
Netherlands - $74,659
USA - $49,787
-from Credit Suisse via Institute for Policy Studies
IT WAS BILL CLINTON WHO UNLEASHED WALL STREET'S BIGGEST CRIMINAL BANKSTERS ON US. IT WAS BILL CLINTON WHO HANDED PARDONS TO NUMEROUS CRIMINAL BILLIONAIRES. IT
IS BILL CLINTON THAT OPERATES THE PHONY CLINTON FOUNDATION WHICH IS
FUNDED BY CRIMINAL CRONY BILLIONAIRES, DICTATORS AND BANKSTERS THAT OWN
HILLARY!
Unless the political establishment is willing to
learn from the anger felt by millions of Americans who feel left
behind, this will not end in November. (Photo: istockphoto)
The Washington political establishment has hit the panic button.
Not because they are afraid of any one individual or candidate, but
because they are afraid of losing their own political power.
The Washington political establishment
has hit the panic button.
This town is filled with well intentioned people who believe they are
doing the right thing, but far too many have lost their way after years
in Washington. Politicians pay more attention to special interests
groups and powerful lobbyists writing checks to their next campaigns
than listening to the people back home who sent them here in the first
place.
This dangerous power vacuum has fueled frustration and
created an
entirely new breed of disenfranchised voters who
are fed up with the
status quo. These are real people, their
anger is palpable, and it’s not
going away anytime soon.
The Daily Signal is the multimedia news
organization of The Heritage Foundation. We’ll respect your inbox and
keep you informed.
A recent survey of likely Republican primary voters showed that 86
percent believe that “people like me don’t have any say about what the
government does.” Another recent exit poll in my home state of Georgia
showed that six in ten Republicans felt “betrayed” by their political
party. >>> To Read More on This, See Conservatives Win When They Run on Conservative Ideas. This sentiment is something I heard
countless times during my campaign for the United States Senate just
over a short year ago. It is what pulled me to get involved personally
to try and make a difference. But this is not just happening in Georgia.
People across America are angry, frustrated, and scared because they
feel as though Washington is not listening to them.
A growing number of Americans are more motivated by this feeling of frustration than any individual political ideology.
A growing number of Americans are more motivated by this feeling of
frustration than any individual political ideology. The rise of career
politicians has completely shifted the political paradigm from just
liberal versus conservative. There is now a disconnect between the
Washington political class and everybody else—the insiders versus the
outsiders.
When most Americans look at the federal government, all
they see
is years of failed policies that have made life harder
for them and
their families, and a political class that is well
connected and
uninterested in giving them a say in how to
right the ship.
People are still hurting, and they are weary of Washington’s penchant
for business as usual.
Georgians sent me—someone who had never run for
elected office—to the United States Senate to try and do something about
it and change the system. In state after state this year, voters have
voiced support for presidential candidates who are not part of the
political class.
This is a growing movement, and it is bigger than any one candidate
or election victory. Unless the political establishment is willing to
learn from the anger felt by millions of Americans who feel left behind,
this will not end in November.
True to form, though, political elites prefer tearing down
individuals to understanding what created this movement. This movement
of Americans wants nothing to do with Washington, and neither
endorsements nor criticisms are going to change that.
No matter who our Republican presidential nominee is at the end of
this process, one thing is clear: We cannot allow Democrats to double
down on the failed policies of the last seven years.
A better course of action would be a candid examination of what can
be done to regain the trust of the American people. Let’s start with
simply listening to them.
"Let’s start with
simply listening to them"
BLOG: EVEN
WITH POLLS DOCUMENTING THAT
ONLY 9% OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
APPROVE OF
CONGRESS, IT IS BUSINESS AS USUAL;
ENDLESS LOOTING FOR THEIR PAYMASTERS
ON WALL
STREET AND SURRENDERING MORE OF OUR BORDERS,
JOBS AND WELFARE TO
INVADING MEXICANS!
HILLARY CLINTON SAYS MILLIONS MORE VOTING
ILLEGAL SHOULD BE HANDED OBAMACARE! CLINTON'S PLATFORM IS SIMPLE: BUILD THE MEX
WELFARE STATE ON AMERICA'S BACK TO BUY THEIR
ILLEGAL VOTES. THEY ALREADY GET MILLIONS OF OUR JOBS AND
NO ONE SERVES HIS PAYMASTERS ON WALL STREET MORE THAN
BARACK OBAMA!
HE SMELLS THOSE SPEECH FEE BRIBES ALREADY!
AND HILLARY IS OBAMA'S CLONE!
Drug
prices have also been a theme in the presidential campaign. The
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, for example, released a campaign
advertisement earlier this month attacking the “predatory pricing” of
Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Like the congressional hearing, this is all for
show. Of
all the presidential candidates, Clinton is the top recipient of
donations from the pharmaceutical and health products industry,
taking
in $410,460 according to data from the Center for Responsive
Politics.
US drug prices doubled since 2011
By Brad Dixon 18 March 2016
According to a new report by
the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts, the average price of
brand-name drugs increased by 16.2 percent last year. Between 2011 and
2015, branded prescription drug prices have nearly doubled, rising 98.2
percent. Since 2008, the prices have increased by a whopping 164
percent.
Drug spending rose by 5.2 percent in 2015.
This was about half the increase seen in 2014, the year of the largest
hike since 2003.
The report is based upon prescription
use data for members with drug coverage provided by Express Scripts plan
sponsors. In assessing changes in plan costs, the report distinguishes
between the relative contributions from changes in patient utilization
(e.g. more patients being prescribed the drug) and changes in the unit
price of the drug (e.g., price hikes).
In the late
1980s and early 1990s, most drug spending was on traditional drugs
(small-molecule, solid drugs) to treat conditions such as heartburn,
depression and diabetes. The recent trend has been a shift to specialty
drugs. Still, within traditional therapy categories there were
significant increases in spending on medications to treat diabetes,
heartburn and ulcers, and skin conditions.
Diabetes
medications remain the most expensive of the traditional drug
categories. Drug spending in this category increased by 14 percent, with
the hike being equally influenced by increased utilization of the drugs
and rise in unit cost. Three diabetes treatments—Lantus, Januvia and
Humalog—were among the top five drugs in terms of spending across all
traditional therapy classes.
Although not discussed in the report, an investigation by Bloomberg News last year found evidence
of “shadow pricing” by drug manufacturers, where companies raise their
prices immediately after their competitors do so. The investigation
found that the prices of diabetes drugs Lantus and Lemivir had increased
in tandem 13 times since 2009, and evidence of similar shadow pricing
for the drugs Humalog and Novolog.
Heartburn and ulcer
drugs saw a 35.6 percent increase in spending, almost solely due to the
rise in unit cost. Although 92.3 percent of the medications filled in
this category were generic, the price unit trend was heavily influenced
by the increase in prices of branded drugs such as Nexium, Dexilant and
Prevacid.
Treatments for skin conditions also saw a
significant increase of 27.8 percent in spending, again due almost
completely to rises in the unit costs of the medications. The report
notes that these increases occurred for both generic and branded
therapies, largely due to industry consolidation through mergers and
acquisitions leading to less competition in the market. While 86.3
percent of the drugs filled were generic, many of the generic versions
saw sharp increases in unit cost, including the two most widely used
corticosteroids, clobetasol (96.2 percent) and triamcinolone (28
percent).
While the overall spending increase for
traditional therapy classes was nominal (0.6 percent), the primary
factor for the increase in spending came from specialty medications.
Specialty medications require special education and close patient
monitoring, such as drugs to treat cancer, multiple sclerosis or cystic
fibrosis. Spending on specialty drugs rose by 17.8 percent in 2015. The
report found that 37.7 percent of drug spending was for specialty drugs
in 2015, and the figure is expected to rise to 50 percent by 2018.
Spending
in this category was topped by inflammatory conditions—such as
rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases and psoriasis—which
rose by 25 percent, driven by a 10.3 percent increase in utilization and
14.7 percent rise in unit cost. The average cost per prescription in
2015 was $3,035.95. The medications Humira Pen and Enbrel, which
captured more than 66 percent of the market share for this class, saw
unit cost increases of more than 17 percent.
Spending
on oncology therapies increased by 23.7 percent, due to both increased
use (9.3 percent) and increased unit cost (14.4 percent). New cancer
therapies average $8,000 per prescription and the average cancer regimen
is around $150,000 per patient. Between 2005 and 2015, the anti-cancer
drug Gleevec, manufactured exclusively by Novartis, has seen its price
more than triple, with an annual cost of $92,000. In 2015, the year
prior to the drug’s patent expiration, Novartis increased the unit cost
of the drug by 19.3 percent. This is a common practice for companies
facing patent expiration.
Drug spending on cystic fibrosis
treatments rose by a significant 53.4 percent, largely based on
increases in unit cost (40.9 percent vs. 13.3 percent from patient
utilization). This rise was largely due to use of the new oral
combination therapy, Orkambi, which became available in mid-2015. The
drug costs more than $20,000 per month.
The report
forecasts that between 2016 and 2018 spending will increase annually by
7-8 percent for traditional drugs and around 17 percent for specialty
drugs.
The prices of generic drugs have on average
decreased, although there are notable exceptions. Pharmaceutical
companies like Horizon Pharma, Turing Pharmaceuticals, and Valeant
Pharmaceuticals have purchased generic drugs and then significantly
hiked their prices.
The report notes the emergence of
“captive pharmacies” in 2015 as another factor responsible for higher
drug spending. Captive pharmacies are owned or operated by
pharmaceutical manufacturers and tend to promote their manufacturer’s
drugs, rather than generic or other low-cost alternatives. The report
gives as examples the arrangements between Valeant Pharmaceuticals and
Philidor Rx Services, and between Horizon Pharma and Linden Care
Pharmacy.
The Express Scripts data matches the findings
released earlier this year by the Truveris OneRx National Drug Index,
which found that branded drugs rose by 14.8 percent in 2015.
Despite
the widespread media publicity of the notorious drug price hikes by
companies like Turing and Valeant, pharmaceutical companies have
continued to inflate prices in 2016, with Pfizer leading the way with an average price hike of 10.6 percent for 60 of its branded drugs.
Workers
are rightly outraged at the skyrocketing price of drugs. A Kaiser
Family Foundation poll conducted last year found that 74 percent of
respondents felt that the drug companies put profits before people.
The
political establishment, however, has sought both to exploit this anger
for electoral support and to direct it into safe channels that do not
disrupt the status quo.
A congressional hearing held in January placed a spotlight on the price-gouging practices of HYPERLINK Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Turing Pharmaceuticals, whose dubious activities were highlighted in a pair of congressional memos.
The purpose of the hearing, however, was not probe the underlying
causes of the sharp rise in drug prices. Instead, legislators sought to
safeguard the profits of the pharmaceutical industry as a whole through a
verbal lambasting of the industry’s most notorious culprits.
Drug
prices have also been a theme in the presidential campaign.
The
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, for example, released
a campaign
advertisement earlier this month attacking the
“predatory pricing” of
Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Like the
congressional hearing, this is all for
show. Of all the presidential
candidates, Clinton is the top recipient
of donations from the
pharmaceutical and health products industry,
taking in $410,460
according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
Clinton’s
rival, Bernie Sanders, who has stated that he will support Clinton if
he loses the Democratic nomination, received $82,094 in donations from
the industry. Sanders has proposed a series of minor reforms to address
drug prices, such as the re-importation of drugs from Canada, allowing
Medicare to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers, and decreasing the
patent life of branded drugs.
None of the candidates, including
the “democratic socialist” Sanders, challenge the private ownership of
the pharmaceutical industry in which everything from research and
development and clinical testing to drug pricing and promotion are
subordinated to the profit interests of corporations.
..............
what would have happened to this once great nation if
instead of
handing billions in welfare to criminal banksters, and
millions of our
jobs to illegals.... we handed free education to
America's youth. but then we wouldn't need to import boatloads of educated people
to take our tech jobs!!! OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:
TRANSFERRING THE NATION'S
WEALTH TO THE 1%, JOBS AND WELFARE TO
ILLEGALS
TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND BUILD THE DEM
PARTY BASE WITH MEX
FLAG WAVERS “My
greatest worry is working all my life, constantly chasing debt
and
never being to own a house or have children,” writes a
millennial named
“Gemma” in a section of the series entitled
Incomes for young people born
between 1980 and 1994 have hit unprecedented low levels in the
aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse, according to a recent
investigative series conducted by the UK’s Guardian publication titled “Millenials: The Trials of Generation Y.”
The study draws on income statistics from eight of the world’s 15 most
advanced economies, including the US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia,
France, Italy, Spain and Germany to paint a picture of dimming social
prospects for young people throughout the developed world.
The Guardian cites
as contributing factors “a combination of debt, joblessness,
globalization, demographics and rising house prices” which “have grave
implications for everything from social cohesion to family formation.”
Whereas during the 1970s and 1980s people in their 20s averaged more
than the national income, the study found that young couples and
families in five of the eight countries listed made 20 percent less than
the rest of the population today.
“It is
likely to be the first time in industrialized history, save for periods
of war or natural disaster, that the incomes of young adults have
fallen so far when compared with the rest of society,” the British
newspaper states.
In the US and Italy, incomes were
lower in actual figures than they were a generation ago, with Americans
averaging a yearly salary of $27,757 in 2010 compared to $29,638 in
1979. The study notes that young US workers currently make less than
those in retirement. In France, households headed by individuals under
the age of 50 made less disposable income than recent retirees. In
Italy, an 80-year-old pensioner possesses more income than someone under
the age of 35.
In many cases, the 2008 financial
collapse simply accelerated trends that were already underway. Housing
prices in Great Britain and Australia are among the most expensive in
the developed world. The average price for a home in Sydney, Australia,
is $1 million in Australian dollars, more than 12 times the median
household income in the city. The average home loan for first-time
buyers in New South Wales is A$424,000. This figure has increased by 43
percent in the past four years alone.
According to the Australian
Bureau of Statistics, housing prices have increased more sharply and for
a longer period in the past 20 years than at any time since 1880. The Guardian notes
that housing costs in the UK and Australia have been increasing at a
“neck and neck” pace ahead of the average household income. “We’re
heading for a world where rates of home ownership among young people are
below 50 percent for the first time,” states Alan Milburn of the Social
Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, adding that the UK is heading
toward becoming “a society that is permanently divided.” Income for
those in their late 20s in the UK remain below levels seen in 2004-2005.
A
recent survey by British polling firm Ipsos Mori found that 54 percent
of those questioned thought the next generation was or would be worse
off than the previous. “It’s the highest we’ve measured—it’s completely
flipped around from April 2003,” stated Bobby Duffy, managing director
of Ipsos Mori’s Social Research Institute of the findings.
In
addition, more than a quarter of individuals in this age group live
with their parents. An average woman in this age group today waits 7.1
years longer to become married than in 1981; and the average age of
childbirth for young families is nearly four years later than those in
1974.
“My
greatest worry is working all my life, constantly chasing debt and
never being to own a house or have children,” writes a millennial named
“Gemma” in a section of the series entitled “#Itsnotjustyou: Millenials share their secret fears.”
Continuing, she states: “The cost of renting privately is rising, the
cost of travelling is rising, the cost of living is rising and yet the
salaries don’t reflect this rise. … I am worried that capitalism is
pushing this and creating a greater wealth inequality gap. It seems
unsustainable and to be driving people apart—a recent example is the
demonization of our own NHS service and the junior doctors.” Many others share similar nightmares.
The
study comes amid other findings revealing similar declines in living
standards for youth in the developed world. A 2013 Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report found nearly 30
million youth in the developed capitalist countries without a job or an
education, the basic requirements for functioning in society.
The
circumstances faced by young people throughout the world speak to a
systemic breakdown of the social order in both the so-called developing
and advanced countries, which has been compounded by war and militarism,
consecutive attacks on living standards and cuts to social programs,
which invariably hit the youngest and most vulnerable the hardest.
Though not covered by the study, European nations such as Greece have
been reduced to conditions unseen in the developed world, with youth
unemployment at over 60 percent due to attacks on living standards
demanded by the European Union and enforced by consecutive governments,
both right and “left,” under Syriza.
The authors of the Guardian investigation,
in an effort to divert rising anger away from the social system
responsible for the poverty, destruction of living standards and
attendant social misery, single out the relatively-better off living
conditions of retirees in order to make a case for attacking pensions
and other benefits accruing to the older generation. The publication
quotes a recently published interview with Mario Draghi, head of the
European Central Bank (ECB), who states “in many countries the labor
market is set up to protect older ‘insiders’—people with permanent,
high-paid contracts and shielded by strong labor laws. … The side-effect
is that young people are stuck with lower-paid, temporary contracts and
get fired first in crisis times.”
Rather
than receiving expanded employment, pay and
access to better living
conditions, it is proposed that the
young and the old fight over the
rapidly diminishing
resources made available by bourgeois public
officials and
the wealthy.While Draghi advocates
attacking the pay and benefits of older workers, the ECB head has
funneled billions into the hands of European banking institutions;
recently upping the monthly total of cash infusions to €80 billion from
€60 billion previously and adding to the wealth of the financial elite.
The
fate of retirement benefits and wages under the profit-system is
pointed to when the newspaper notes “pensioners’ incomes are likely to
rise for at least the next decade, after which future generations will
be unlikely to benefit [due to] a drop in home ownership, weaker private
sector pension schemes and the expectation that state pensions will be
less generous in the future.”
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: SERVE THE
RICH, WALL STREET CRONIES AND LA
RAZA, THE MEX FASCIST PARTY of
AMERICA....
Then
hand what is left of the American middle
class the tax bills for
bailouts and Mexico's
crime wave in our open borders and LA
RAZA "The
Race" welfare state on our backs! "The
Clinton family charities have outsourced many U.S. white-collar jobs to
foreign college graduates instead of hiring American college
graduates."
March 11, 2016
Oops! Clinton Foundation outsourced tech jobs to H-1B visa holders
The
Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which does “wonderful
work” (if you ask Hillary), also has sought to hire a lot of foreign
tech workers brought to the country under the H-1B visa program to fill
jobs Americans supposedly can’t be found to perform. Breitbart reports:
The
Clinton family charities have outsourced many U.S. white-collar jobs to
foreign college graduates instead of hiring American college graduates. The
outsourcing started in 2004 and it continues to this year. When asked
if the foundation is still hiring foreign white-collar workers via the
controversial H-1B visa program, Vena Cooper, one of the foundation’s
personnel officers, responded “We do.” The
foundations declined to answer questions from Breitbart News, but
available data shows they sought to hire up to 130 foreign graduates.
That’s roughly half the number of 250 jobs outsourced by Disney last
October, which has reignited political criticism of the middle-class
outsourcing program. The
130 foreign graduates sought by the Clinton’s foundations were and are
not immigrants. Instead, they’re temporary “guest” workers who fill
outsourced professional jobs for up to six years. The
Clintons’ foreign graduates have been hired via the H-1B visa program
that also is used by Disney and U.S. corporations and universities to
employ a population of roughly 650,000 young and cheap foreign
professionals in business, design, healthcare, software, science, education, p.r. and media and pharmaceutical jobs. After their six years in the United States, most H-1Bs return home with the work-experience and connections that help them compete against U.S. professionals in the global marketplace. The
young foreign H-1B professionals are also used to push down average
salaries earned by experienced and older American professionals. In
turn, those salary cuts boost profit margins and company values on Wall
Street.
Hey,
those private jets and 5-star luxury hotels favored by the traveling
Clintons don’t come cheap, so they’ve got to pinch pennies wherever they
can. And besides, a lot of their money comes from foreign sources, so they’re just returning it to some of the home countries.
President Barack Obama seized on
the February employment report, released Friday morning by the Labor
Department, to tout the supposed “success” of his economic policies and
paint a picture of a thriving US economy. The report, which showed a
larger-than-predicted growth in private nonfarm payrolls of 242,000
jobs, confirmed that the US economy was “the envy of the world,” Obama
told reporters at a White House appearance.
“The fact
of the matter is that the plans that we have put in place to grow the
economy have worked,” he boasted.” He derided “an alternative reality
out there from some of the political folks that America is down in the
dumps.” He countered, “America is pretty darn great right now.”
He
did not attempt to explain why the “alternative reality,” which his
labor secretary, Thomas Perez, attributed to “fear-mongers and
fact-deniers,” is believed by tens of millions of Americans, whose anger
over economic injustice is dramatically reflected in the current
election campaign.
One does not have to look too
closely at the Labor Department’s report, however, to get an idea of
what is fueling the social indignation of working people in the eighth
and final year of the Obama administration. Behind the top-line number
for new jobs and the quasi-fictional official unemployment rate of only
4.9 percent, ongoing trends with disastrous consequences for the working
class are evident. They account for two other important indices in the
report: a decline in average earnings from the previous month of 3
cents, or 0.1 percent, to $25.35, bringing the increase for the year
down to just 2.2 percent, and a fall in the average private-sector
workweek of 0.2 hours to 34.4 hours, a two-year low.
These
two figures arise from the fact that the vast bulk of new jobs created
in February were low-wage and a huge percentage were part-time. The
low-paying service sector—retail, bars and restaurants, health
care—accounted for 245,000 jobs. The reality of recession in basic
production was reflected in a 16,000 decline in manufacturing and the
loss of another 19,000 mining jobs, bringing to 171,000 the total
decline in mining since September 2014. The only better-paying
industrial sector that saw an increase was construction, which recorded a
gain of 19,000.
Another figure highlights the hollow
and socially regressive character of Obama’s so-called “recovery.” The
financial cable network CNBC pointed out that according to the Labor
Department’s household survey, which is the basis for the unemployment
rate figure (the figure on payroll growth is derived from a separate
survey of business establishments), full-time jobs increased in February
by only 65,000, while part-time positions increased by 489,000. This
means that a mere 11.7 percent of new jobs in February were full-time!
These
statistics point to the fact that the American ruling class, through
its instrument, the Obama administration, has utilized the financial
crash of 2008, for which it was responsible, to fundamentally reorganize
the US economy, transforming it into a low-wage system. The millions of
decent-paying jobs that were destroyed have been largely replaced by
poverty-wage, part-time and temporary jobs.
The median
household income has fallen sharply. Pensions and health benefits have
been gutted, schools closed by the thousands, teachers and other public
workers laid off by the millions. At the other end, the Federal Reserve
and the US Treasury have pumped trillions of dollars into the financial
markets, driving up the stock market and bringing the concentration of
wealth at the very top to unprecedented levels. This is what Obama lauds
as “success.”
Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain
mired in long-term unemployment. The number of long-term unemployed,
defined as without work for 27 weeks or more, was essentially unchanged
at 2.2 million in February. This number has not shifted significantly
since last June. The long-term jobless accounted last month for 27.7
percent of the unemployed, a far higher percentage than in any previous
period categorized as an economic recovery.
A broader
measure of unemployment that includes people working part-time but
wanting full-time work and those too discouraged to seek employment
registered 9.7 percent last month, nearly double the official jobless
rate. There are, in addition, millions of people who have dropped out of
the labor market and are not even counted in government employment
reports.
While the employment-to-population ratio edged
up to 59.8 percent and the labor force participation rate rose slightly
to 62.9 percent, both measures remain extraordinarily low by historical
standards.
The impact of soaring social inequality and falling
living standards for broad sections of the population is reflected in a
growing crisis in the retail sector. This week, sporting goods chain The
Sports Authority filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and
announced it was closing at least 140 of its 463 stores and laying off
3,400 of its 13,000 employees. This follows recent announcements by
Walmart, Sears/Kmart and Macy’s of hundreds of store closures and
thousands of layoffs.
Hillary
Clinton repeatedly claims that she is the champion of the little guy.
It has always been a risible claim, but if any of her supporters
(including at the Post) are actually paying attention to the scoundrel,
this latest gambit ought to disabuse them of the notion.
Samuel
Johnson’s aphorism that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel
doesn’t apply to Hillary Clinton in her email scandal, because nobody –
not even her die-hard supporters – would believe her if she said that
she set up the private email server in the interests of the United
States. Rather, the last refuge of this scoundrel is to blame everybody
else she dealt with at the State Department, in the process impugning
not only her own close aides, but career diplomats and other
nonpolitical professionals who deserve better.
This
strategy is reflected in the campaign’s current mantra that
“everybody,” including former secretaries Colin Powell and Condoleezza
Rice, at one time or another sent emails that were later determined to
be classified. A recent Washington Post analysis of Hillary’s released
classified emails demonstrates that she directly sent at least 104 to
various aides and officials, and that they too, including the current
secretary of state, John Kerry, occasionally sent out emails through
nonsecure servers that were later deemed classified. However, what the
analysis also shows is that these government officials, when they did
use unsecured servers, at least used government accounts, which provide a
measure of security, not a private home-brewed server like Mrs.
Clinton’s. The
Post’s news editors must be popping a lot of Thorazine, because their
coverage of Clinton is increasingly schizophrenic. As longtime readers
of the paper know, the news operation is considerably more left-leaning
than the editorial side (which occasionally takes a more centrist
view). News stories are routinely slanted to present the most favorable
liberal perspective and mock or demean opposing outlooks. This
tendency is apparent in the Clinton case as well. The Post has broken
some important stories in the email scandal, like the recent revelation that the Justice Department granted former Clinton I.T. aide Bryan Pagliano immunity. And the Post’s most heroic figures, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein,
have separately suggested that the Clinton scandal is the real thing.
But since Hillary is the Post’s gal, they seeded the Pagliano report
with expert liberal analysis that suggested that the immunity deal is
either nothing to get excited about (a weird way to promote a scoop) or
actually a good thing for Clinton, while omitting contrary interpretations.
The
Post’s analysis of her emails follows the same pattern. On the one
hand, the news that Clinton herself personally authored over 100
classified items cuts against her chosen narrative that she got a lot of
emails and that she can hardly have been expected to actually read and
analyze them all for security issues as she received them or passed them
on. On the other hand, the article goes out of its way to suggest that
this was an endemic problem at State. And strangely again, the
explanation is rather contradictory. We are told that the sending and
receipt of classified information was the result of poor security
procedures that preceded Clinton’s arrival. But we are also told (in
line with claims made by Clinton and her campaign) that there is a
culture of “over-classification” in the government. So which is it?
Were officials at State too lax about security procedures or too anal?
If nothing else, one thing this controversy demonstrates is that the
Clinton State Department was pretty much a mess.
But
besides the country itself, which is now enduring yet more Clintonian
malfeasance in the midst of a critical election, are many individuals
that Clinton is cold-bloodily demeaning in an attempt to exonerate
herself with the “everybody did it” canard. This rests on the weak
premise that other government officials – aides, ambassadors, career
officials – occasionally misidentified information as innocuous or
insufficiently sensitive to merit security classification. There is
little doubt this happened, and continues to happen, as government
employees do their best to protect sensitive information but not bog the
government down in layers of unnecessary security protocol. But none
of the officials identified in the Post analysis did this deliberately
by establishing a private home-brewed email system to avoid State
Department classification procedures entirely – and this no less, by the
head of the State Department itself.
The
Post article anonymously quotes one poor soul (identified as a former
senior official) whose good name has now been impugned as a careless
operator: “I resent the fact that we are in this situation – and we’re
in this situation because of Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a private
email server.”
Hillary
Clinton repeatedly claims that she is the
champion of the little guy.
It has always been a
risible claim, but if any of her supporters
(including at the Post) are actually paying
attention to the scoundrel,
this latest gambit ought
BACKED
CLINTON ADMINISTRATION! OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: SERVE THE RICH, CRONY BANKSTERS, AND ILLEGALS.... cash in on speech fee bribes for services well rendered to the 1%.
TO
KEEP PROFITS SOARING, THE DEMOCRAT PARTY IN COLLUSION WITH THE GOP AND
WALL STREET, MUST STICK IT TO WHAT IS LEFT OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS.
THAT MEANS ENDLESS HORDES OF ILLEGALS JUMPING OUR BORDERS, JOBS AND
WELFARE OFFICES!
New study says entire regions of US will remain in slump until the 2020s
By
Jerry White
21 March 2016
A new study by a University of California-Berkeley economist says
that at current sluggish levels of job growth, entire regions of the
United States, which were hit hardest by the Great Recession will not
return to “normal” employment levels until the 2020s. This amounts, to
“more than a ‘lost decade’ of depressed employment” for “half of the
country,” wrote economist Danny Yagan.
The new study is one of many showing that the fall of the official
unemployment rate, touted by the Obama administration and the news media
as proof of a robust economic recovery, if not a return to “full
employment,” is largely based on the fact that millions of workers fell
out of the labor force in the years preceding and following the 2008
financial crash.
The labor-force participation rate fell to a 38-year low of 62.4
percent last fall, and only climbed up to 62.9 percent in February.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, February’s official jobless
rate of 4.9 percent—the lowest since the pre-recession level of 4.7
percent in November 2007—would really be 6.3 percent if the country’s
“missing workers” were included. These include 2.4 million workers who
have given up actively looking for work.
Yagan based his findings on a detailed study of some 2 million,
similarly paid workers in the retail industry in order to calculate
employment patterns across different local areas and to account for
occupations that might have been particularly hard hit in one region.
He found that the areas hardest hit by the recession, which began in
December 2007 and officially ended in June 2009, continued to have high
levels of joblessness in 2014. His map of these distressed areas
includes all of Florida and parts of Arizona, Nevada, California,
Colorado, New Mexico, the Dakotas, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Georgia,
Connecticut, New Hampshire and other states.
While different areas of the country are often hit differently by an economic downturn, an article in the Wall Street Journal
on Yagan’s study noted, these economically distressed areas generally
return to normal levels of employment chiefly because workers move to
find work in areas with a higher demand for labor. In the case of the
“Great Recession,” however, the mass layoffs resulted in “muted
migration,” according to other studies cited by the Journal, and workers simply fell out of the labor market.
“Unlike the aftermath of the 1980s and 1990s recessions,” Yagan
wrote, “employment in hard-hit areas remains very depressed relative to
the rest of the country.” Living in areas like Phoenix, Arizona, or Las
Vegas, Nevada means confronting “enduring joblessness and exacerbated
inequality,” Yagan wrote. “If the latest convergence speed continues,
employment differences across the United States are estimated to return
to normal in the 2020s—more than a decade after the Great Recession.”
The lack of decent job opportunities in large swathes of the country
has created a reserve army of unemployed and underemployed workers who
are competing for a shrinking number of jobs in areas that are more or
less permanently distressed. Last month’s Labor Department employment
report noted that the average annual unemployment rate in 36 states,
plus Washington, D.C. was higher in 2015 than the average unemployment
rate for those states in 2007.
The majority of unemployed people in the US do not receive
unemployment insurance benefits, according to the National Employment
Law Project, with just over one in four jobless workers (27 percent), a
record low, receiving such benefits in 2015.
The details of these studies will come as no surprise for tens of
millions of workers across the United States who face unprecedented
levels of economic insecurity, ongoing mass layoffs, and more than a
decade of stagnating or falling real wages. This has fueled the growth
of enormous discontent and the initial stirrings of class struggle by
American workers, which the trade unions and both big business parties
have sought to channel in the direction of economic nationalism and
hostility to workers in China, Mexico and other countries.
In fact, US workers are being subjected to the same attacks as
workers around the world. The reports on the employment situation in the
US coincide with a continual massacre of jobs in the world’s steel, oil
and mining industries, with 1.2 million steel and coal mining jobs
targeted for destruction in China alone.
Continual layoffs in the US have been driven by the plunging price of
steel, petroleum, coal and other commodities, which has been generated
in large measure by the fall in demand from China and other so-called
emerging economies. Last week, St. Louis, Missouri-based Peabody Energy,
the largest coal mining company in the world, announced it could soon
file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, after its share values fell 46 percent
over the last six months.
Peabody has already cut 20 percent of its global workforce since
2012, while spinning off large sections of its operations in order to
cheat retirees out of their pensions. The company’s announcement follows
bankruptcy filings by both Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources and a
similar threat from coal mining giant Foresight Energy. In its press
release, Peabody pointed to the collapse in the coal market, where the
price per ton has fallen to $40 from $200 in 2008.
The steel industry continues to wipe out jobs, with 12,000
steelworkers already laid off or facing imminent job cuts. The largest
US steelmaker, US Steel, has slashed thousands of jobs in Texas,
Illinois, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania. The aluminum giant Alcoa is
just weeks away from closing its smelter in Warrick County, Indiana,
wiping out another 600 jobs. Meanwhile, the United Steelworkers (USW)
union is pushing for protectionist measures against China, Brazil,
Russia and other countries, even as it pushes through concession-laden
contracts at US Steel, Allegheny Technologies and now ArcelorMittal.
Early last year, the USW betrayed the strike by thousands of oil
refinery workers, blocking any struggle against the brutal restructuring
of the industry that is now underway. The plunging of oil prices
triggered more than 258,000 layoffs in the global energy industry in
2015—with the number of active oil and gas rigs in the US falling 61
percent. Analysts anticipate a new round of job cuts and bankruptcies in
early 2016.
Texas has lost 60,000 energy-related jobs alone, or one-fifth of the
workforce in that sector in the state, with North Dakota and
Pennsylvania also being hard hit. The current US unemployment rate for
the oil, gas and mining sector is 8.5 percent, but could top 10 percent
by February, double the national jobless rate.
Last month, the air conditioner maker Carrier announced it was
eliminating 1,400 jobs at its Indianapolis plant and a nearby facility,
and shipping production to Monterrey, Mexico where wages are
approximately $6 an hour. A video shot by a worker, capturing the
explosive anger at a meeting of plant workers when a manager makes the
announcement, has been viewed millions of times.
Far from organizing any resistance to the closure of the factory and
destruction of jobs, however, the USW is collaborating with United
Technologies Carrier management to carry out an orderly shutdown and the
retraining of displaced workers for lower-paying jobs.
The USW is hostile to any fight to unite American workers with their
brothers and sisters in Mexico, who have been engaging in growing
resistance to the exploitation by the transnational corporations. USW
officials are telling workers to rely on the Democratic Party to
implement protectionist trade measures to “save jobs” and “take our
country back.” Local and regional union officials have had nothing but
kind words about Donald Trump’s efforts to swindle workers with economic
nationalist appeals.
The unions have long used economic nationalism to undermine the
class-consciousness of workers and to promote the corporatist outlook of
“labor-management partnership.” In the name of making the corporations
“competitive,” the USW and other unions have suppressed every struggle
against plant closings, job cuts and the destruction of wages and
benefits.
This has coincided with the political subordination of workers to the
Democratic Party, which under the Obama administration has spearheaded
the attack on workers’ jobs and wages and the historic transfer of
wealth from the bottom to the top.
USW Local 1999, which claims to represent Carrier workers, is urging
them to support Democrat John Gregg for Indiana governor. A former land
agent for Peabody Coal and lobbyist for Amax Coal Company, Gregg served
as the honorary chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign in Indiana, and
was a proponent of austerity and corporate tax cuts while Speaker of
the state Legislature.
The Hillary Clinton emails: A record of imperialist crimes
By Tom Hall
7 March 2016
Last Monday, the US State
Department published the last batch of declassified emails from a
private, unsecured server used by Democratic
presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state. This
latest release draws to a close a year-long review by US intelligence
agencies of 52,000 pages of Clinton emails, ostensibly motivated by
concerns over possible leaks of classified material.
To
date, more than 30,000 emails dating from Clinton’s four-year tenure as
secretary of state have been released to the public. Clinton played a
central role in the prosecution of aggressive wars in Afghanistan, Syria
and Libya as well as the carrying out of drone assassinations and other
illegal
actions in a number of additional countries, including Pakistan, Yemen
and Somalia. Yet in its extensive reporting of the email scandal, the
American media has virtually ignored the actual content of these emails,
which contain a wealth of information about the day-to-day functioning
of the Clinton State Department.
A review of even a
small sampling of the emails, which are available on the State
Department’s web site, reveals the reason why: the emails are a damning
indictment of the criminal activities of not only Hillary Clinton
herself, but the entire imperialist state apparatus, with the
corporate-controlled media in tow. The emails could easily serve as
evidence in future war crimes trials of Clinton and other top US
officials.
One particularly revealing email from 2010, cited by the Interceptn web
site but not picked up by the national media, recounts the experiences
of former ambassador Joseph Wilson (whose CIA agent wife
Valerie
Plame was outed by the Bush administration in retaliation for his
criticisms of the war in Iraq) during a recent trip to Iraq in his
capacity as an executive for a US engineering firm. The Obama
administration,
elected by exploiting mass anti-war sentiment, continued the US
occupation of Iraq for three years during Obama’s first term in office,
when Clinton was secretary of state, prolonging a conflict that claimed
more than 1 million lives. Since then, US troops have returned to Iraq,
ostensibly to fight ISIS, as part of the US war for regime-change in
neighboring Syria.
Wilson’s email begins: “My trip to Baghdad (September 6-11) has left me slack jawed. I have
struggled
to find the correct historical analogy to describe a
vibrant,historically important Middle Eastern city being slowly bled to
death.Berlin and Dresden in World War II were devastated, but they and
their populations were not subjected to seven years of occupation.”
Describing
the rampant racism and sadism among US occupation troops, Wilson
writes, “Shirts with mushroom clouds [for sale at a gift shop on a US
military base at the Baghdad airport] conveyed the Baghdad weather as
32,000 degrees and partly cloudy. Others referred to Arabs as camel
jockeys
and those were the least offensive… The service people don’t see
themselves there to bring peace, light, joy or even democracy to Iraq.
They are there to kill the ‘camel jockeys.’”
Hundreds more emails deal with the US-led proxy war in Libya, in which Clinton played a
leading role. As a recent series of articles in the New York Times confirmed,
Clinton was the leading advocate in the White House for the clandestine
arming of “rebel” militias comprised largely of Islamic
fundamentalists, which comprised the main fighting force against the
regime of Muammar Gaddafi.
One email from February
2011, written by a veteran diplomat before the launching of the US-NATO
war that ended with the murder of Gaddafi, lays out proposals for the
construction of a future “post-Gaddafi” political order in Libya. The
memo recommends the use of the United Nations to lend political
legitimacy to the imperialist carve-up of the country.
“A
UN ‘hat’ for multinational/international assistance efforts could be
effective,” the author states bluntly. However, the extensive
involvement of Italy, whose participation in the war marked a return to
the scene of its bloody colonial occupation, should, the author
recommends, be “kept relatively low-profile.” Another email chain
discusses how to disburse the tens of billions of dollars of frozen
Libyan assets stolen by the imperialist powers during the regime-change
operation.
Many other emails concern the organization
and coordination of the Obama administration's drone assassination
program, which has killed thousands in Afghanistan and Pakistan alone.
“Twenty-two of the emails on Mrs. Clinton’s server have now been
classified as ‘top secret’ at the demand
of the CIA because they
discuss the program to hunt and kill terrorist suspects using drone
strikes, as well as other intelligence operations and sources,” the New York Times noted two weeks ago, prior to
the
latest release. “The emails [also] contain direct and indirect
references to secret programs,” the newspaper added obliquely.
One
such secret program was the bribing of high-ranking officials in the
Afghan government by the CIA. “[The US embassy in Afghanistan's] line
has been and will be the standard approach--that we refrain from comment
on stories discussing intelligence matters,” one embassy official
writes in a 2010 email, in response to an impending New York Times story
revealing that Muhammad Zia Salehi, head of the Afghan National
Security Council, was on the CIA payroll. Later reports by the Times revealed that former President Hamid Karzai for years received shopping bags full of cash from the CIA on a regular basis.
Dozens
of emails document the collusion between the corporate-controlled media
and the State Department in containing the fallout from the release of
US diplomatic cables by Wikileaks. In one
2010 exchange, Washington Post writer
Craig Whitlock reaches out to the State Department to request “a
mechanism to receive [the] State [Department's] input” before running a
series of articles based on cables revealing the existence of a secret
US drone base in the Seychelles Islands, off the coast of Somalia.
The exchange demonstrates that the major newspapers, including the Washington Post and the New York Times,
provided the State Department with advance printed copies of every
cable about which they planned to write, along with drafts to the White
House, to be redacted or censored at their discretion. In a conversation
between Whitlock’s State Department handlers, they note approvingly
that
the practice “was extremely helpful in preparing our redaction
requests, as well as anticipating what damage control we’d need to do in
diplomatic channels.” Another email describes an editorial by the Washington Post calling for the prosecution of Wikileaks editor Julian Assange and
Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning as “helpful,” adding, “We’ll try and get pickup in [the] international media.”
Clinton also received hundreds of emails via her private server from Sidney Blumenthal, a
former
advisor in the Bill Clinton administration, who served as the head of
Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign. Blumenthal, then an employee of
the Clinton Family Foundation, functioned as a de facto back channel
intelligence gatherer and advisor for Clinton, despite not
officially
being a member of her staff. It was Blumenthal’s 2015 testimony to the
House Select Committee on Benghazi, the Republican-controlled body set
up for the purpose of torpedoing the
likely presidential run of Clinton, which revealed the existence of Clinton’s private email server.
Blumenthal sent Clinton a wide array of intelligence reports from foreign countries targeted by US
imperialism.
In one email, he passes on concerns that Islamist militias in Libya
might retaliate against the assassination of Osama bin Laden,using
weapons obtained from the United States. In another, he recounts the
furtive dealings between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian
military to smother the Egyptian revolution, writing that the two will
“continue to work together secretly in an effort to establish a stable
government” and create “a secure environment throughout the country” for
investment.
In
another email, Blumenthal advises Clinton on how to orchestrate the
cover-up of the circumstances surrounding the assassination of bin Laden
in a cross-border raid into Pakistan by US Special Forces. As a report
by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh later made clear, the official
version of bin Laden’s death was a collection of lies from start to
finish.
“Show [the pictures of bin Laden’s body] to members of Congress in a special secure room,
something
like when members were permitted to view Abu Ghraib pictures,”
Blumenthal writes. “Each of them will emerge speaking to the national
and local press on what they have seen… Having members of Congress
testify to the reality of the photos will suppress any potential
‘Deather’ movement, that the administration has either fabricated the
event or suppressed some aspect of it.”
What the ultimate out come of the Clinton email scandal will be is not yet clear. An FBI criminal
investigation
into the emails is ongoing, with signs that the case might be headed to
a grand jury. On Wednesday, a former employee of Clinton’s 2008
presidential campaign, Bryan Pagliano, who set up the private email
server in Clinton’s home, was granted immunity by federal investigators
as part of the investigation.
TIME TO END MEXICO'S LOOTING? "As
alarming as those numbers are, it's gotten a whole lot worse.
It's the
reason why in both 2013 and 2015 I introduced legislation,
the
"Remittance Status Verification Act," to fix this. I call this the
"Wire
Act" for short."
"My
bill would require a fee on remittances for customers who
wire money to
another country but cannot prove that they are in the
United States
legally. The fee would be used to enhance border
security. Basically, we
would be able to dramatically improve
border security while making
illegal immigrants pay for it." "We
also have evidence that many of those illegals who are
remitting money
are more likely to be illegal immigrant
households receiving Social
Security, health care benefits,
unemployment insurance and/or stimulus
money. Is it really fair for
those individuals to live off our tax
dollars but send untaxed, under-
the-table money abroad?" ON TOP OF THESE FIGURES ADD THE TENS OF BILLIONS HANDED TO INVADING MEXICANS IN THE FORM OF WELFARE. ON THE STATE LEVEL ALONE, MEXIFORNIA HANDS LA RAZA $30 BILLION IN SOCIAL SERVICES. THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES CHIPS IN ANOTHER BILLION FOR THE LA RAZA ANCHOR BABY BREEDING FOR GRINGO WELFARE PROGRAM. NOW..... HOW MUCH DOES THE MEX DRUG CARTELS HAUL BACK? SOME ESTIMATES PUT THE NUMBER AT $40 - $60 BILLION! BLOG: IT IS ESTIMATED THAT THE COUNTY OF LOS
ANGELES HAS A MEXICAN TAX-FREE UNDERGROUND
ECONOMY CALCULATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2
BILLION PER YEAR! There
are the billions of taxpayer dollars used to
subsidize illegal
immigrants' health care and education.
There's the revenue we lose out
on when illegal
immigrants don't pay income taxes. And there's a less
recognized pot of billions — the billions of dollars of
earnings that
illegal immigrants wire out of the United
Senator
Cruz and Rubio will argue a lot about amnesty in the next few days. I
guess that standing against amnesty has become the new flag that every
GOP candidate wants to carry.
Yet who is actually calling for amnesty? Or something like what President Reagan did in 1986? Have they changed the definition of the word amnesty? According to the dictionary, amnesty is "the act of an authority (as a government) by which pardon is granted to a large group of individuals."
Who is pardoning any group or letting people stay here without consequences?
The
GOP should be for an immigration solution that enforces the law against
employers and protects the border. At the same time, what is wrong
with offering some of those here a chance to stay here? It would go
like this:
BLOG: THAT JOB THAT "ALREADY EXISTS" BELONGS
TO AN UNEMPLOYED LEGAL!
1)
The illegal immigrant would be given a chance to apply for a work visa
supported by an employer's letter that a job actually exists.
BLOG: LET US REVIEW OBAMA'S SABOTAGE OF OUR LAWS AND PROMISE OF NON-ENFORCEMENT!
2)
He or she would undergo a full criminal background check including
fingerprints. We will also check with the home country to verify that
the applicant is not married here and back home.
BLOG: LET US REVIEW OBAMA'S SABOTAGE OF
OUR LAWS AND PROMISE OF NON-ENFORCEMENT!
3) The applicant will pay a fine for violating the law and or not filing tax returns.
BLOG: MEXICANS ARE A CRIME TIDAL WAVE AND OBAMA LETS THEM LOSE ON US WEEKLY!
4) He or she will be under a period of probation where the person could be deported in case of any violation of law.
5) No path to citizenship or green card will be available to this person.
BLOG: UNDER OBAMA AND HISPANDERING
HOLDER, THE DEMS HAVE SABOTAGED E-VERIFY
NATIONWIDE. AMNESTY IS ALL ABOUT KEEPING
WAGES DEPRESSED AND BUYING THE ILLEGALS'
VOTES WITH OUR JOBS AND BILLIONS IN
WELFARE!
6) Employers will be harshly punished, including jail time, for hiring someone without papers.
How is that amnesty? Who is getting off free for violating the law?
BLOG: "HUMAN ENFORCEMENT" HALF THE
MURDERS IN LA RAZA-OCCUPIED MEXIFORNIA ARE
BY MEXICANS! THERE HAVE BEEN MORE THAN 2,000
CALIFORNIANS MURDERED BY MEXICANS WHO FLED
BACK OVER THE BOARD TO AVOID
PROSECUTION. WE
WILL NOT HEAR FROM THE PRO-AMNESTY GROUPS
ABOUT THE VIOLENCE OF THE OCCUPYING
MEXICANS!
We
have been arguing about immigration for too long. It's time to fix the
problem rather than just shout at each other. As Newt Gingrich said in 2012:
And
I'm prepared to take the heat for saying, let's be humane in enforcing
the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create
legality so that they are not separated from their families.
So let's stop shouting about immigration, settle the issue, and move to other topics, like ISIS and the U.S. economy. P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
Gang of Eight? What Gang of Eight?
By Mark Krikorian
The Corner at National Review Online, February 16, 2016
Marco
Rubio’s excuse du jour for his central role in passing the monstrous
Gang of Eight amnesty/immigration-surge bill is the most shameless yet:
“Rubio: Gang of 8 Bill Never Intended to Become Law“. Coulda fooled me!
The Hill wryly noted “This represents a sharp departure for Rubio.”
I’ll
say. In his final speech on the Senate floor before voting on S.744,
Rubio concluded, “Here in America, generations of unfulfilled dreams
will finally come to pass. And that’s why I support this reform.” Not
sure how much clearer you can get.
Rubio’s latest
excuse would have fooled Harry Reid too; he dedicated the bill to Ted
Kennedy and said, when it passed, “And while I am sad that Senator
Kennedy isn’t here to see history made, I know he is looking at us
proudly and loudly.” Whatever that means, it sure doesn’t sound like he
didn’t intend the Gang of Eight bill to become law.
Or Lindsey Graham, after the bill got 68 votes: “This is overwhelming support for the bill … This is incredibly pleasing.”
Pat
Leahy didn’t seem to think the bill was just for show either: “Today is
another historic day in the Senate. This legislation will reunite
families. It will bring millions of people out of the shadows and into
our legal system. It will spur job growth and reduce our deficit. And it
will make us safer.”
Or Chuck Schumer: “The bill has generated a level of support that we believe will be impossible for the House to ignore.”
If
I may steal a line from one of my Twitter followers, next thing you
know Rubio will tell us it was really just the Gang of Seven all along.
SQUANDERING BILLIONS TO PROTECT
US FROM TERRORIST EVEN AS OUR
BORDERS ARE WIDE OPEN FOR THE
MEX INVADERS AND THEIR DRUG
CARTELS!
TSA Airport Credentialing Process
Overlooks Terrorists, Criminals, and Illegal
Aliens on a Large Scale
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, February 16, 2016
. . .
Calculating
those figures, it means that more than 16 percent of the individuals
who were subjected to these secondary inquiries (which represent only a
small fraction of the workforce) — and, as Roth notes, already
recipients of airport clearances — were illegal aliens with no right to
work. What's more, Roth also notes that airport authorities routinely
fail to annotate their security credentials with the expiration date of
aliens' employment authorization documents, meaning that such persons
are routinely employed in sterile areas long past their legally
authorized right to work.
Which raises the question:
Why have rules not been written that simply preclude individuals with
limited time authorizations on their work permits or, better yet, who
are not legally authorized to live in the United States on a permanent
basis, from being employed in secure areas of airports? Is this so
onerous, given the importance of securing the safety of the traveling
public?
But back to the immediate issue of TSA and its
oversight of airport authorities doing the credentialing. There is
obviously something seriously amiss.
By John Wahala
CIS Immigration Blog, February 19, 2016
. . .
Given
the obstacles they face, the poor academic performance of immigrant
students is not surprising and has been well documented.
English-language fluency, test scores, and graduation rates lag far
behind. Some researchers have even called the situation a crisis that
threatens democracy itself. But more troubling than slow academic
progress is the way mass immigration is shifting the educators' focus.
When resources and time are diverted from teaching, the quality of
education deteriorates. Learning becomes secondary when teachers are
trying to keep children safe and well-adjusted.
. . . http://www.cis.org/wahala/schools-undergo-comprehensive-immigration-reform
Border Surge Solution: Send ‘Em to Camp
David!
By Michelle Malkin
Human Events Online, February 17, 2016
. . .
As
Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council testified on Capitol
Hill recently: “The cartels understood that the unaccompanied minors
would force the Border Patrol to deploy Agents to these crossing areas
in order to take the minors into custody. I want to stress this point
because it has been completely overlooked by the press,” he told the
House Judiciary Committee. The unaccompanied minors could have walked
right up to the port of entry and requested asylum if they were truly
escaping political persecution or violence. “Why did the cartels drive
them to the middle of the desert and then have them cross over the Rio
Grande only to surrender to the first Border Patrol Agent they came
across?” Judd challenged.
“The reason is that it
completely tied up our manpower and allowed the cartels to smuggle
whatever they wanted across our border.”
This is just
another maddening example of Obama’s warped priorities at work. Instead
of building effective walls and enforcing our borders to prevent the
coming illegal immigration waves manufactured by criminal racketeers,
this administration rushes to build welcome center magnets that shelter
the next generation of Democrat voters.
. . . http://humanevents.com/2016/02/17/border-surge-solution-send-em-to-camp-david/
U.S. Failed Three Times to Deport Illegal
Alien Who Murdered Woman Judicial Watch Corruption Chronicles,
February 18, 2016
. . .
Here’s
what we already know from local media reports in Norwich, the city of
about 40,000 residents where the murder occurred; the DHS agency
responsible for deporting illegal immigrants, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), failed to remove Jacques at least three times dating
back to 2002. As if this weren’t atrocious enough, Jacques spent 17
years in prison for attempted murder before authorities released
him—instead of deporting him—in January of 2015, the Norwich Bulletin
reports. Six months later the 41-year-old illegal alien convict stabbed
25-year-old Casey Chadwick to death. Police said Chadwick died of sharp
forced injuries to the head and neck. Jacques is being held on a $1
million bond.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated
case. In the last few years illegal immigrants with lengthy criminal
histories have been allowed to remain in the U.S. despite being repeat
offenders. Judicial Watch has investigated several of the cases and
obtained public records from the government. For instance, back in 2008
JW launched a California public records request with the San Francisco
Sheriff’s Department to obtain he arrest and booking information on
Edwin Ramos, an illegal alien from El Salvador who murdered three
innocent American citizens. Ramos was a member of a renowned violent
street gang and had been convicted of two felonies as a juvenile (a
gang-related assault on a bus passenger and the attempted robbery of a
pregnant woman) yet he was allowed to remain in the country.
. . . http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2016/02/u-s-failed-3-times-to-deport-illegal-alien-who-murdered-woman/ UNIVISION: MOUTHPEICE FOR LA RAZA "The Race" FASCISM Univision News Howls 'Anti-Immigrant' at Proposed Wisconsin Laws
By Jorge Bonilla
NewsBusters.org, February 12, 2016
Univision
News' national broadcast continues to howl at any legislative attempt
to protect local communities by enforing our immigration laws. The
latest instance comes from efforts in Wisconsin.
Wednesday
evening's newscast featured a story about two enforcement proposals
recently filed in Wisconsin: one to ban sanctuary city policies, and the
other to ban local governments from issuing official alternate ID's to
illegal immigrants.
Anchor MarÃa Elena Salinas'
introduction to the story was less incendiary than her late-night
counterpart, which we covered last week. The "anti-immigrant" framing
was presented indirectly ("activists say"...), as opposed to Ilia
Calderón's direct indictment of Florida's HB675 (which overwhelmingly
passed the House but seems destined to die in the Senate). Nonetheless,
the screengrab above (which reads "anti-immigrant proposals") reflects a
reversion to classic form.
. . . http://newsbusters.org/blogs/latino/jorge-bonilla/2016/02/12/univision-news-howls-anti-immigrant-proposed-wisconsin-laws
Largest Civil Disobedience Action of the Century isn’t Anti-Trump, It’s Pro-Democracy
In an article published
here Wednesday, Aaron Klein wrongly characterized Democracy Spring as
an “Anti-Trump” campaign organized by “radicals…involved in shutting
down Donald Trump’s Chicago rally.”
We
want to set the record straight, make it clear where we stand on Trump,
and reach out to the all the conservatives who agree with us that big
money is corrupting our political system.
First,
setting aside any opinions on it, the assertion that the Chicago
disruption was the work of Democracy Spring is simply untrue. Over 100
organizations have endorsed Democracy Spring. Their independent actions
(and funders – George Soros hasn’t given us a dime) are distinct from
our collective effort.
Second,
while the leaders, organizations, and the vast majority of
participants in Democracy Spring have profound and severe disagreements
with Donald Trump, our nonviolent, non-partisan campaign is not a
response to him.
Nor
is it a response to any single candidate, party, or election. Democracy
Spring is a response to the corruption of our entire political system, a
system dominated by big money and inaccessible to many Americans who
face growing barriers to the ballot box.
No
matter who you support for president this year, surely we can all agree
that our elected officials should work for all of us – not just wealthy
special interests and big campaign contributors. In fact, we know many
voters support Trump because he calls out this corrupt system and claims
to stand outside of it as a self-financing candidate.
To this, we say: we hear you. The
system is corrupt. The economy is rigged. Big
campaign contributors do pull the strings in
Washington. Working people are right to be
angry about trade policy and the betrayal of
the middle class, working families, and the
poor by an elite establishment that profits
from the status quo.
But
we also challenge Trump supporters to consider a few things. Our
corrupt campaign finance system goes far beyond presidential races and
will not change by simply electing a president who supposedly can’t be
bought. Without serious policy solutions, whoever we elect
Commander-in-Chief will still have to deal with 435 members of Congress
who are more eager to appease their donors than their own constituents.
Trump
has yet to propose any solutions that would ensure every member of
Congress and candidate for local and state office in America are elected
in a way that makes them, as James Madison wrote, “solely dependent
upon the People as whole – not the rich more than the poor.” If our
system only allows us to choose between candidates who are bought by
billionaires and billionaires themselves, then it is not a democracy. It
is plutocracy.
That
is why more than 2,600 American patriots have pledged to risk arrest in
Democracy Spring, a massive nonviolent sit-in at the U.S. Capitol this
April. The campaign will force Congress to choose between putting
hundreds of peaceful defenders of the republic in handcuffs, or simply
doing their job and passing reforms to fix our broken system.
It’s
true Democracy Spring is led by many organizations associated with the
left. But there’s no reason it must remain that way. We are a
nonpartisan campaign open to all. And conservatives and liberals agree
when it comes to the urgent need for solutions to rebalance the system.
Last year, John Pudner, the political strategist who helped lead
Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA)
100%
’s 2014 upset over former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, launched Take Back our Republic to
advance conservative solutions to the problem of money in politics. For
example, Take Back supports tax credits for small donations to
political candidates to encourage more people to become involved in the
political process. The group also supports more disclosure of large
donors to ensure voters’ right to know who is trying to influence their
vote and their lawmakers.
In a recent column,
Richard Painter, President George W. Bush’s chief White House ethics
lawyer, explained why the current system fails to address the needs and
concerns of conservatives. He wrote, “campaign contributions drive
spending on earmarks and other wasteful programs — bridges to nowhere,
contracts for equipment the military does not need, solar energy
companies that go bankrupt on the government’s dime and for-profit
educational institutions that don’t educate.” Moreover, he writes,
“campaign contributions breed more regulation” as companies use campaign
cash to win special legal advantages over their competitors.
Progressives
would disagree on public funding to spur clean energy innovation and
the characterization of more regulations as necessarily bad, but we
stand fully with Painter on his core point: “[Today’s] system is a
betrayal of the vision of participatory democracy embraced by the
founders of our country.”
Indeed,
there is an opportunity today for progressives and conservatives to
stand together to defend our republic and win reform that will let us
settle our other differences on an even, open playing field where the
best ideas and the broadest support are what count – not the backing of a
moneyed elite.
Yet
– and allegiance to the values that truly make America a great country
demand that we make this crystal clear – Donald Trump’s candidacy is
making this kind of unity across differences incredibly difficult. We
are a nonpartisan campaign but not an amoral one. We are compelled to
speak (and I am confident that I can speak for us all) when I say that
Trump’s statements, proposed policies, and threats of violence
concerning undocumented immigrants, Muslims, the KKK, protesters
exercising their First Amendment rights, and others have crossed a very
serious line into the territory of fascism and hate speech.
America is better than this. Conservatives are better than this.
Democracy
Spring is a nonviolent campaign and, in the tradition of the civil
rights movement, will strive to reach out to our most bitter opponents.
We will seek unity with all who agree that every American deserves an
equal voice and a government of, by, and for the people. Rather than
letting our differences divide us, conservatives and progressives of
conscience should come together on this common ground and renew our
republic.
Politicians
from both parties broke the system. It’s going to take voters from both
parties — and independents committed to neither — to force our
representatives to fix it.
It’s time to demand that Congress listen to the people and pass common-sense solutions to return our government to us all.
Kai Newkirk is lead organizer of Democracy Spring.
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