Category Archives: Immigration

Stock in Concrete Companies?

Posted on April 27, 2017 by | 6 Comments

Cross-posted from RestoreReason.com.

As a leader in the military, I learned a long time ago that if something was easy to fix, someone would have already fixed it. President Trump evidently hadn’t learned that prior to his election, but since then, has time and again realized that uh, YEAH, this shit is hard!

Take the border wall for example. It might have been good “red meat” for his supporters, but there are three good reasons why there is not a finished border wall along our southern border: 1) it is a very complicated endeavor, 2) it is really, really expensive, and 3) it won’t solve the problem of illegal immigration. I mean, get real! Trump isn’t the first politician to try to make hay with this issue, but the rhetoric always slams into reality eventually.

I knew for example in 2011, that Arizona Senator Steve Smith wasn’t going to get anywhere with his “www.BuildTheBorderFence.com” initiative and I was right. Smith promised to raise some $50 million to build a 15 foot fence at busy border-crossing points and erect fences where there were no federal fences. After three years however, the project had only raise $265,000, not even one-tenth of the $2.8 million needed to build the first mile of fencing. As for the $265,000, last I could find the advisory committee assigned to do something with the funding were asking sheriffs how they would use it. Continue reading →

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Posted in Immigration, Mexico Border

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Federal judge issues nationwide preliminary inunction against Trump’s ‘sanctuary cities’ executive order

Posted on April 25, 2017 by | 4 Comments

Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and President Donald J. Trump believe Richard Nixon’s formulation that “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”.

Even a child with a fifth grade civics education knows that this is not true.

Today U.S. District Judge William Orrick III of San Francisco issued a nationwide preliminary injunction (.pdf) against Trump’s recent executive order seeking to coerce punish “sanctuary cites.”

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The Trump administration is now “oh for” in repeated immigration executive orders because they keep violating the constitution. Add this to his “100 days” list of failures.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports, Judge says Trump can’t punish cities over sanctuary city policies:

President Trump can’t coerce “sanctuary cities” like San Francisco to cooperate with immigration officers by withdrawing all of their federal funds, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

In the first legal test of an executive order Trump issued five days after taking office, U.S. District Judge William Orrick III of San Francisco said the president was exceeding his constitutional authority by trying to punish local governments that disagreed with his immigration policies.

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Posted in Activism, AZBlueMeanie, Constitution, Courts, Immigration, Justice, Law Enforcement, Party Politics, President, Racism

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Trump backs off hostage demand because GOP fears blame for a government shutdown

Posted on April 25, 2017 by | 1 Comment

With a federal government shutdown looming on Friday at midnight unless a continuing resolution (CR) spending bill is passed before then, last week Donald Trump resorted to hostage taking to try to get his way for funds for his border wall and undermining “Obamacare” for millions of Americans. Trump to Democrats: Pay for My Wall, or Obamacare Gets It! This was followed by this ridiculous hostage demand:

[B]udget chief Mick Mulvaney explained in an interview with Bloomberg Friday, the administration is offering $1 of funding for Obamacare’s crucial cost-sharing reduction subsidies for every $1 of money Democrats pony up for the wall. Here’s the full quote:

We’ve finally boiled this negotiation down to something that we want very badly, that the Democrats really don’t like, and that’s the border wall. At the same time there’s something they want very badly that we don’t like very much, which are these cost sharing reductions, the Obamacare payments. Ordinarily, in a properly functioning Washington, D.C., as in any business, this would be the basis upon which a negotiated resolution could be achieved. The question is how much of our stuff do we have to get, how much of their stuff are they willing to take, and that’s the way it should work. That’s the way that we hope that it works. We offer them $1 of CSR payments for $1 of wall payments. Right now, that’s the offer that we’ve given to our Democratic colleagues. That should form the fundamental understading that gets us to a bipartisan agreement.

The implicit threat here is that, if Democrats reject this deal, the White House will cease making the subsidy payments, and likely bring Obamacare crashing down. It is not especially credible. Democratic leaders are already responding with snark: Before, Mexico was supposed to pay for the border wall. Now, Trump’s threatening the health care of millions to get taxpayers to cover it.

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Posted in Arizona Congressional Delegation, AZBlueMeanie, Budgets, Congress, Economics, GOP War On..., Healthcare, Immigration, Legislation, Mexico Border, Party Politics, President, Taxes

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President Trump’s border policy creates uncertainty

Posted on April 16, 2017 by | 7 Comments

For the year 2016, Arizona’s exports to Mexico totaled $8.3 billion, down from the $9.1 billion recorded in 2015. Arizona ranked fifth among the states exporting to Mexico in 2016, behind Texas, California, Michigan, and Illinois. The American economy is forecast to grow 2.3% in 2017. Economists have downgraded Mexico’s projected economic growth rate from approximately 2.5% to 1.5% mainly due to the uncertainty generated by the Trump administration’s anticipated policies. Since Mexico’s economic wellness depends in large part on its relations with the U.S., the country’s economic future looks a bit cloudy at this time.

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Posted in Economics, Immigration, International, Karl Reiner, Mexico Border

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III visits Nogales, controversy ensues

Posted on April 11, 2017 by | 3 Comments

Charles Pierce at Esquire covers this story in the way only he can, so let him tell this story. This Is What America Means to Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III:

We’re going to have to make a semi-regular daily feature on the doings of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, presently the Attorney General and the only man in America who thinks Birth of a Nation was a documentary.

On Tuesday, he visited the Arizona-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona, with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and, by way of encouraging the law-enforcement types gathered there, according to Tiger Beat On The Potomac, these were his prepared remarks:

“Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings,” he said. “It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth.”

Nobody I know is in favor of depravity and violence—at least outside the studios of Fox News, anyway—nor is anyone I know in favor of machete attacks and/or beheadings, although some of our staunch allies elsewhere are rather high on the latter. But when you’ve got the attorney general of the United States planning to refer to other human beings, no matter how criminal they are, as “filth,” you’ve got the Department of Justice descending into the status of a Breitbart comment thread, and that is never good for anyone. When it came time for the speech, Sessions ultimately did not say “filth” out loud, but the Department of Justice doubled down on the word in a statement:

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the departure from prepared remarks, but said:

“As the Attorney General said in his statement, we must take a stand against filth like MS-13 and the cartels that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent people, and that profit by trafficking in drugs and people. It is unfortunate that there are misinformed people that think that we need to treat such violent criminals as if they deserve anything but the worse kind of condemnation.”

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Posted in AZBlueMeanie, Civil Rights, Constitution, Corruption, Courts, Crime, Drug Policy, Ethics, GOP War On..., Governor, Immigration, International, Justice, Law Enforcement, Mexico Border, Party Politics, President, Racism, Scandals

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A looming government shutdown over a border wall and defunding Planned Parenthood

Posted on March 30, 2017 by | 8 Comments

Mark your calendars for April 29. The current funding of the federal government expires on April 28, and Congress is set for a two-week recess just before that deadline.

The Tea-Publican “Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” fresh off their “Obamacare repeal” clusterfuck last week, now have a month to figure out how to avoid yet another GOP government shutdown.

Good luck with that.

Remember, the Septuagenarian Ninja Turtle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, vowed: No more government shutdowns while he runs the Senate. But the Turtle Man does not run the House, where the GOP’s alleged boy genius, “the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin” and Ayn Rand fanboy Paul Ryan — the architect of the “Obamacare repeal” clusterfuck last week — is in charge. Boy genius just realized last week that “doing big things is hard.” No shit Sherlock. Ryan proved that he cannot herd cats in his own caucus, i.e., the GOP House Freedom Caucus. This is not likely to turn out well.

The New York Times reports, Congress Is Headed to Another Government Funding Showdown:

Ten legislative days before funding would run out, Congress is heading toward another government shutdown showdown. Democrats and many Republicans are likely to refuse to go along with President Trump’s request for money for a border wall financed in part by outsize cuts to medical research. And the specter of another fight over Planned Parenthood funding is also in the offing.

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Posted in AZBlueMeanie, Budgets, Congress, Constitution, Corruption, Economics, Ethics, GOP War On..., Healthcare, Immigration, Legislation, Party Politics, President, Scandals, Taxes

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