illegal immigration – Page 2

Checking the southern front

Today I went Somerset County way to check out two events, one I had planned for awhile and one I had not until yesterday morning.

So at 9:00 this morning I found myself in a restaurant called Peaky’s eating breakfast with a man who wants to be Maryland’s next Senator.

Richard Douglas alerted me to his visit a couple days ago as we have kept in occasional touch since his last run in 2012; a primary that he lost to Dan Bongino. (Douglas still believes Bongino “ran a terrific race,” but Douglas won eleven counties as well.)

In fact, in his remarks Douglas revealed that his second try for the Senate came out of “watching this Iran trainwreck,” an agreement he called “on par with the Munich Agreement” between Hitler and Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Douglas remarked that Iran wasn’t the Westernized nation they try to portray but instead their people “want to kill Americans and British.” A Senate that approves an agreement with such a nation will tolerate anything, Richard added, noting the Senate is “such (that) it will not heal itself.”

With a significant part of his career being spent in the Senate, Douglas had knowledge of how the game worked, often picking up the volume which contains the Senate rules to make a point. He categorized his era in the Senate as being one with Republicans who had more backbone, such as his old boss Senator Jesse Helms. Regarding his time there, Douglas termed that the one of the “best moments” in the Senate was the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed in 2002. Passed as a bipartisan measure, Douglas wistfully noted that the Democrats were “back on the attack” a year later. Douglas also played up his experience with the Justice Department under President Bush as well as his service in the Navy during the Cold War.

Another of Richard’s passionate subjects is Cuba, as he predicted the island nation will open up – just not under the Castro regime. He also predicted that Barack Obama would make some lame duck pardons of several American criminals seeking refuge in Cuba, particularly cop-killer Joanne Chesimard. But opening up Cuba now in the way Obama has is already costing Americans their jobs, as Douglas cited an Alabama company which will move some operations there. “The Senate let it happen,” said Douglas.

In Richard’s opinion, a good Senator needed three things: discernment, a knowledge of procedure, and backbone. “If you’re missing backbone, the other two don’t matter,” said Richard. He continued the point by saying he was willing to deny unanimous consent if he judged a bill or amendment would be bad for Maryland or for the nation at large. “Alarm bells go off” when that happens, said Douglas, and leadership doesn’t like it. Senators “hate to vote,” said Douglas, because they’re put on the record.

Unfortunately, the Senate he’s trying to enter is one that enacted the Obama agenda instead of stopping it as promised. “They’re afraid of looking obstructionist,” said Douglas, “Instead, they look weak.” He would “take issues hostage” because it only takes one Senator to stop the train and start the bargaining.

Most of what Douglas said in his remarks dealt with procedure and foreign policy, but he made sure to mention that there are thousands of voters who don’t care about that because they are struggling economically. It’s “a problem on par with national security,” said Richard, and he stressed that he wanted to work with Governor Hogan to create an economic environment more like that of South Carolina, Georgia, or Texas. In visiting minority neighborhoods, Douglas revealed that “lots of African-American voters” were ready to vote Republican, in part due to Donald Trump. But Douglas called both Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards “eminently beatable.”

There were a number of questions laid out for Douglas, with one being just how far he would take the withholding of unanimous consent when it could cost the state on another bill. That aspect was “part of the calculus,” said Richard, but he vowed to “help when I can and resist when I must.”

Regarding illegal immigration, Douglas said the current laws were fine, just not being enforced. One area of concern for Richard was work permits, and he vowed to “put American workers first again,” trying to tilt the playing field back in our favor. Related to that was the refugee issue, on which Douglas pointed out America was once the “loudest voice” for refugees until Obama destroyed our credibility.

One thing that Douglas noted with regard to the Second Amendment was that Maryland has a “gap” in their state constitution. (He was referring to Article 28: “That a well regulated Militia is the proper and natural defence of a free Government.” It does not give Marylanders the right to bear arms.) But he thought firearms should be in the hands of law-abiding citizens and they shouldn’t face hurdles such as the fee prescribed by the state to secure a handgun permit.

To sum up, while Douglas believes “a weak Senate is bad for America” and has insider knowledge, he does not consider himself an insider. His insider knowledge would be used “for the good of the state.”

I should also note that the Somerset County Republicans have a monthly straw poll and this month Ted Cruz emerged the big winner with 14 votes of 22 cast. John Kasich received 6 and Donald Trump just 2. (More on him in a few paragraphs.) If I read their chart correctly, Cruz and Trump were tied last month but now fortunes have shifted dramatically. (As a caveat, the sample fluctuates each month, I’m sure. For example, they had me as an “extra” Cruz vote this month.)

As a housekeeping note and favor to those who may wish to enjoy breakfast with the Somerset County club (it was quite good), they voted to not have their meeting May 14 because it conflicts with the state GOP convention and several Central Committee members would be absent.

Those absent people must have also planned to show up at the event I was set on attending in the first place. Not a single Somerset County voter came out to Congressional challenger Michael Smigiel’s townhall meeting held at the library in Princess Anne. As a concerned voter who honestly hasn’t made up my mind in the race, it was great to have a 40-minute or so conversation with Mike, but as a blogger it was not very good because carrying on a conversation keeps you from taking notes and I didn’t bring a recorder. So I won’t be chock full of quotes here, and you can take the lack of attendance as you will – of all the counties in the First District, Somerset has the second-smallest number of Republicans. (Kent County, the second leg of Smigiel’s town hall tour today and the last of Smigiel’s planned twelve county stops overall, is the smallest by about 300 voters – both are shy of 5,000. But Smigiel comes from neighboring Cecil County.)

I was given two new pieces of literature today. While both make their good points about Smigiel, the message on the palm card is that “Harris Sold Us Out,” with the flyer adding “Harris Promised All The Right Things And Did All The Wrong Things.” Obviously those with long memories may recall that Harris ran a similar campaign against Wayne Gilchrest to secure the GOP Congressional nomination in 2008, and Smigiel uses some of that literature on his flyer. When I asked him whether he was basing his campaign on one vote Harris took (the CRomnibus bill of 2014) he replied it was more like eight.

A couple other contentions I made regarded Harris’s role in building the party as well as his seniority in Congress. It’s no secret that several local candidates were recipients of Harris money – you can call it buying support, but I would argue that the Congressman was out to build a conservative farm team in this part of the state. Smigiel countered that Harris was also the recipient of money from Exelon, which led to a Harris vote allowing the federal government the authority to override Maryland’s demand for a water quality permit for the Conowingo Dam. Mike also intoned that Somerset residents were unhappy with Harris for a vote against Hurricane Sandy cleanup funds, which is the linchpin for Jim Ireton’s Democratic campaign.

And I didn’t even bring up the Harris votes for Speaker with the former Delegate.

Overall, I felt bad for Mike that no one else showed up. Compare this with his stop in Salisbury that Cathy Keim covered for me while I was away, which had a fair number of people.

The question for all of us regarding this race is simple: Andy Harris is not a perfect Congressman, but then it’s possible no one would be. Is Mike Smigiel running a campaign to convince voters he would be a better alternative? I really didn’t get an answer to that question within our conversation, but it will come as a judgment call for me based on something Richard Douglas said: who has the better backbone to stand up for the people and do what’s right, not just for the First District, but America as a whole?

Someone who’s not convinced me he will do what’s right for America has nevertheless secured a headquarters here.

Yes, the Trump headquarters is at 229 East Main Street here in Salisbury, the former location of a print shop. They’ll be here for less than a month, as I’m told they have the space for a 30-day period. So the question is just what they will be doing in the building and how many people will stop by (it’s not on the beaten path and downtown parking can be a challenge during the day, when you have to feed a meter.) I suspect there may be some volunteers making phone calls from there and perhaps staging a later appearance from The Donald himself locally. That would be a hoot.

But I’ll stick with the choice of the Somerset County Republicans – #TrusTED Cruz.

Impressions on Maryland’s U.S. Senate GOP primary

Over the last couple weeks I have been trying to get a reading on who I would like to be my Senator from the great state of Maryland. (Spoiler alert: Donna Edwards and Chris Van Hollen ain’t going to cut it.) It’s been a process of trying to get questions answered, checking websites, and watching some of the debates in order to figure out who the best candidate for me would be.

There are 14 Republicans running for the Senate seat, a number which is unusually high. (In previous cycles, it was closer to 10 candidates.) Of course, with that many candidates in a statewide race it becomes apparent early on who has the most legitimate shot at winning. Granted, this has been helped somewhat by media perception, such as which hopefuls are invited to debates, but realistically only about half of those 14 candidates have any real shot – the rest are just ballot filler. In fact, when I asked the questions of candidates only 12 of the 14 had good e-mails, and two of those 12 have no website insofar as I can tell. (Another has a website with just a front page and no functionality). Sadly, the pair without websites are two of those who answered my questions – but the larger question is how you can beat someone who has $3.6 million in the bank like Chris Van Hollen does? You need money to get your message out.

By the time you separate the wheat from the chaff you get about a half-dozen somewhat serious candidates, with a couple on a lower tier that are running campaigns more suited to a Congressional level. Greg Holmes is one, with another being Anthony Seda, who has pointed out he’s not accepting contributions. Noble, but suicidal in the real world of politics. Let me repeat: you need money to get your message out.

So in my estimation, the race comes down to five: Richard Douglas, Joe Hooe, Chrys Kefalas, Kathy Szeliga, and Dave Wallace. In the last debate I watched there were only three participants as Hooe and Wallace were not invited. Another debate featured all but Wallace, while the Goucher College debate had Holmes, Hooe, and Wallace along with Douglas and Kefalas (Szeliga skipped this debate for a Maryland GOP event.)

So here is how I would categorize the contenders, in alphabetical order.

Richard Douglas is the only one of the five to have run a statewide campaign before, but I’m not seeing that pointed out as an advantage. He also has the benefit of experience working in the Senate, but in this topsy-turvy electoral year he’s forced to run more as an outsider because that’s the political mood. His campaign to me has been an intriguing concoction of a hawkish foreign policy combined with a populist economic outlook. He’s one of only two of the five who has answered my list of questions, and as one would expect I found his answers to be strongest on foreign policy, immigration, and to some extent the role of government. (I also know Richard has religious freedom bona fides.)

In 2012 when Richard ran for Senate and lost to Dan Bongino, I noted he would have been my 1A candidate after Bongino, who I endorsed. I would have been as comfortable with him winning as the eventual nominee, and at this point he’s done nothing to change that assessment given this field. Still, he speaks the language of an insider and that may hurt him.

Joe Hooe has made his key issue that of immigration, advocating for a paid guest worker program he claims will raise $80 billion. He claims it will make taxpayers out of illegal aliens, but my question is whether we could track such a program when we have no clue how many people are in the country illegally because they crossed the border and how many are illegal because they overstayed their visa. And if they refuse to pay to work, how will we enforce this new fee? If they are here illegally, then I doubt they’re suddenly going to have a “come to Jesus” moment and decide to follow a law that will cost them $1,000.

One thing I do like about Hooe is his advocacy for apprenticeship programs, but to me that is more of a state concern than a federal concern. Perhaps it’s the aspect of having to be elected by the people (which was not the original intent of the Founding Fathers) but I think all of these candidates conflate the roles of the federal and state governments to some degree. Education is one of many areas where there should be no government role.

Chrys Kefalas has a background that I think would serve him well, particularly since he’s involved with the manufacturing field. He does well on trade and job creation, but my question is whether he would be anything different than what we have now concerning the social issues leg of the Reaganesque three-legged conservative stool. Surely he (and some others) argue that Maryland has settled on its position regarding social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, but that doesn’t mean we should stop working toward Judeo-Christian values where life begins at conception and marriage is between one man and one woman. It’s not quite enough to keep me from voting for Chrys on a general election ballot but many thousands of voters realize a two-legged stool doesn’t work.

Maryland Republicans run into trouble when they try to out-liberal the Democrats on certain issues: if you’re a voter who’s going to vote based on the belief that the unborn is just a blob of tissue and no harm comes to society when anyone can marry anyone else they want – and why stop at one, right? – it’s not likely they’re going to be conservative everywhere else. Meanwhile, you just dispirit the percentage of GOP voters who have that passion for Judeo-Christian values. “I’m only voting for President,” they’ll say. It can be argued that Larry Hogan’s victory was an example of putting social issues on the back burner, but aside from Hogan getting the benefit of a depressed liberal Democrat turnout in 2014, ignoring social issues doesn’t play as well on a national race.

Kathy Szeliga is the “establishment” candidate trying desperately to portray herself as an everyday outsider. With the vast majority of Maryland’s General Assembly Republicans favoring her – mainly because she’s served as a Delegate for six years – she also has received the most attention and support in the race. Using my monoblogue Accountability Project as a guide, her lifetime score of 83 would put her in the upper third of those who have served with her over the years, although her score was more mediocre in 2015 (a 72 rating.) She’s also served as one of the faces of General Assembly Republicans – witness this video, one of a string she has done with fellow Delegate Susan Aumann:

Having said all that, there are two main things that disturb me about Szeliga’s campaign. For one, she has no “issues” page on her website, and I always subscribe to the theory that if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. (The same is true for Kefalas.) However, she is reasonably good about answering questions and participating in debates.

But on that point you can tell she is a professional politician. Most of Kathy’s answers seem to be empty platitudes about her life and experiences being a mom, business owner, etc. rather than substantive discussions of the issue at hand. (On the other hand, Richard Douglas has a tendency to talk over the level of the average voter.) Not to be patronizing, but I suspect someone is telling Kathy women voters who would normally be afraid to vote Republican need to be addressed in a non-threatening way – never mind the Democrat who survives the primary will try and paint Szeliga (or any of the others, including the more socially moderate Kefalas) as a stereotypical Republican anyhow.

Dave Wallace, out of the five candidates, seems to be the most conservative. Having read a lengthy treatise of his, most of what he has to say makes sense on a policy level and for that reason I’m leaning his way at this point.

Yet having said that, we also know that Dave lost to a likely opponent by 22 points in a district which is, admittedly based on registration, a D+23 district as it currently stands. In that respect, though, it’s not as bad as the state at large (which is D+32.) We have seen this movie before: Dan Bongino lost by 30 in a 3-way race in 2012, Eric Wargotz by 26 in 2010, Michael Steele by 10 in 2006, E.J. Pipkin by 31 points in 2004, and so forth. I really don’t want a 30-point loss again; unfortunately, too many Maryland voters are stubborn like a mule in voting against their self-interest. (If they “got it,” the most conservative candidate would always win.)

Dave seems like a nice guy and a policy wonk, which I like. But the question is whether he can be a bulldog and attack the Democratic candidate for the failure of the last seven years.

This may not necessarily apply to Dave, although I’m using his space, but I don’t like talk about bipartisanship from any Republican hopeful because Democrats at a national level will nearly always take the hand you reach out to them with, twist your arm off, and proceed to beat you with it. Anyone remember “read my lips?” One of the reasons the bulk of Republicans are fed up with the political system is the lack of intestinal fortitude they see from the politicians they sent to Washington with the message “it’s always been done this way” is not cutting it anymore.

When the TEA Party wave in 2010 put the GOP back in charge of the House, the excuse was “we only control one half of one-third of the government.” Indeed, a do-nothing Senate was a problem. But when the do-nothing Senate was flipped to Republican control in 2014, we still heard excuses about why we couldn’t get anything done. If you want a reason for the rise of Donald Trump, you don’t need to look much further. (Never mind Trump’s not conservative and the bulk of his policy statements have the depth of a cookie sheet. He talks tough.)

If I were to rank my choices in this horserace at the moment, it would go Wallace and Douglas fairly close going into the final turn, with Kefalas a neck ahead of Szeliga for third on the outside and Hooe bringing up the rear. (The rest are chewing hay in the infield.) As it stands now, I will make my endorsement the second Sunday before the primary (April 17.)

In the coming days I will rank the three contenders for the First District Congressional seat. [Yes, there are four Republicans on the ballot but Jonathan Goff is such a strong Trump supporter that he is disqualified. (#NeverTrump strikes again.)] That race is a little different because the incumbent is a Republican so the question becomes whether we want a more straight-ahead conservative or someone who has the reputation of being more liberty-minded? I’ll do some research and hear from one of the three candidates in person in the coming days to help me decide.

Update: Want more? Here you go.

WCRC meeting – March 2016

It was double-barreled action at last night’s Wicomico County Republican Club meeting, perhaps appropriate because one of the speakers was Second Amendment advocate and Congressional hopeful Mike Smigiel. He was joined by a fellow challenger seeking the open United States Senate seat from Maryland, Dave Wallace.

Because we had out-of-town speakers, we quickly went through the usual business of reciting the Lord’s Prayer, Pledge of Allegiance, and introducing the elected officials and distinguished guests among us. I noted the February minutes were online, and treasurer-elect Muir Boda gave us a financial update.

Because Wallace was the first to arrive, he spoke first.

As an opening statement, Wallace vowed to represent all of Maryland “for the first time in 30 years.” He pointed out that “we’ve been going (in) the wrong direction,” so it was time to “alter our course until you get it just right.” Instead of the government’s favored cure of increasing taxes and regulations, Wallace advocated for what he termed a “maximum wage” that government can’t supply.

Wallace spoke at length about the Reagan years in his remarks, adding that he knew a number of his associates and opining in response to a question that we “needed a Jack Kemp model” for a Senator. He contrasted himself with prospective opponent Chris Van Hollen, who Wallace challenged for Congress in 2014, calling Van Hollen the “superfailure” of the supercommittee that, among other things, cut the defense budget. Echoing Reagan on the topic, Dave noted he believed in peace through strength.

Yet one topic Wallace expounded more at length on was a subject where I think Reagan erred, immigration. Dave stated his belief that the situation at the border now contributed to the drug problem; moreover, Wallace stated that up to 15% of the Syrian refugees were embedded by ISIS, and added that on his website was a petition calling on Congress to confront the refugee problem. If immigration wasn’t dealt with, said Wallace, we’ll end up with an America where we won’t want to raise our kids – this was a problem of culture and values.

On topics brought up by the audience, Wallace established his limited-government argument with a call to reduce the federal involvement in education, vowing to eliminate the Department of Education and saying “Common Core has got to go.” He thought that it’s not the role of the federal government to enforce the rules of education, but rightfully was that of the states. Additionally, rather than the “apple” that represents the preferred politicians of the teachers’ unions, Wallace believed candidates on the conservative side should use a school bus as their logo.

Shifting gears to the oversight responsibility of Congress, Wallace chided the body for not doing that job. He called for the heads of all 180 welfare programs to be brought before Congress to justify their programs’ existence.

Wallace concluded that Maryland needs someone in the Senate who will partner with Larry Hogan, and rather than the supply-side economics associated with Reagan conservatism Wallace envisioned a model based on production and ability to work that would lift our economy.

Later, when the conversation turned to a bill regarding forced unionization in Maryland, Dave added that he supported a federal right-to-work bill and would sponsor it in the next Congress. Dave believed that in right-to-work states, “unions were more concerned and responsive.”

The winner of an award for “upholding the Constitution,” Mike Smigiel spent 12 years in the Maryland House of Delegates, including the creation of the TEA Party Caucus. In his last four, Smigiel remarked, he shared office space and a desk in the chamber with local Delegate Mike McDermott, with whom he made “a pretty strong team.”

Yet the reason Smigiel sought the Congressional seat was his disgust with the voting record of the incumbent. Calling it a vote for funding Obamacare, executive amnesty, and abortion, Mike blasted the Republican leadership and Andy Harris for supporting the CRomnibus bill in 2014. He remarked that Democrats don’t settle or think they can’t accomplish their goals, but Republicans in Congress give up their principles far too easily.

Other bills that Smigiel hammered Harris about were an in-state tuition for illegal immigrants bill both voted on in the Maryland General Assembly as well as a bill regarding country of origin labeling – Harris backed a bill that allowed companies to not label for country of origin, about which Smigiel asked if you wouldn’t like to know if your chicken you thought was locally produced was instead imported from China.

(While the bill seems to be anti-consumer, it is worth noting that it is a response to a WTO complaint from Canada.)

Other Harris measures that angered Smigiel was a bill which he alleged became part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, and Harris’s support of a bill opposed by state regulators who want Exelon Energy to meet certain conditions before their permit to operate the Conowingo Dam is renewed for over 40 years.

On the other hand, during the eight years of the O’Malley administration Mike sued them three times for actions he considered unconstitutional. In one case regarding a $1.5 billion budget item, the state court ruled against him quickly but took five years to render their formal opinion because the “question is too political.” When it comes to matters such as these, “you stand on principle and you fight,” said Smigiel.

Those principles are embodied in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, copies of which Smigiel passed out before he began speaking. But Congress was seeing its authority usurped by “a potentate President,” added Mike, who said he would be the guy to shout out “you lie!” His principle was that of “the Constitution first, always.” We needed to have the government run in accordance with the Constitution; to that end, Smigiel advocated for single-subject bills that would make legislating easier to understand.

I asked him a question which addressed a tactic the presumptive Democratic nominee for the seat, Jim Ireton, was using of painting Harris as a do-nothing Congressman. Smigiel reminded us that he had worked across the aisle with Heather Mizeur on a pre-natal care bill that got mothers care they needed while saving thousands of abortions, as well as decriminalization of marijuana legislation.

That ended the speaking portion of the program, although both Wallace and Smigiel stuck around to talk with the voters once we finished our business.

In his Central Committee report, Mark McIver announced we were still seeking applicants for the Board of Education seats opening up later this summer. He also distributed a proof copy of a mailing to be sent out to unaffiliated and certain Democrat voters reminding them that they can still change their voter registration until April 5th. The mailing is a joint effort between the Central Committee and Republican Club.

Updating us on the Ted Cruz campaign, Julie Brewington assessed that “things are going pretty well.” They are looking for volunteers to make phone calls as well as some local sign locations. Dave Wallace chimed in to say he was also looking for the same thing locally. He had brought a few yard signs and shirts as well.

(Unfortunately, the ones on the bottom left didn’t end up in the garbage. #NeverTrump.)

Shelli Neal, who was speaking for Jackie Wellfonder on behalf of Senate candidate Kathy Szeliga, announced they would be knocking on doors soon.

In club news, Woody Willing announced our scholarship winners had been selected and would be introduced next month. Jim Jester told us that he would be coordinating this year’s Crab Feast, for which we needed to nail down the date and location.

Finally. John Palmer from the Board of Education revealed that Dr. Donna Hanlon would be the new Wicomico County superintendent of schools. and one of her first challenges would be redistricting.

So the candidates said their piece, the audience got their questions in, and we will roll along up to next month’s meeting on April 25 with a speaker to be determined. Chances are this will be our legislative wrapup meeting.

Immigration: where are the Cinderella Men?

By Cathy Keim

Editor’s note: This piece began life as a comment to the Refugee Resettlement Watch blog which eventually became a post there. Cathy has taken this opportunity to revise and extend her remarks, adding it to her occasional series on immigration.

The (slightly reworked) title comes from Refugee Resettlement Watch‘s Ann Corcoran.

When I talk to people about the hit that American citizens are taking by companies hiring immigrants, both legal and illegal, they always come back with the statement that the American citizens do not want to work, have a poor work ethic, are not dependable, etc. My guess is that this might well be the case because we have paid people to not work, making it an option with no stigma attached.

In the past, it was terrible to be on welfare or unemployment. Remember the movie “Cinderella Man”? The lead character, heavyweight boxing champion James J. Braddock, returned to the government office and paid back the welfare money when he could finally earn enough money to feed his family. That was during the Great Depression less than one hundred years ago.

My fear is that the government has done such a good job of destroying the working class family by introducing welfare which required that the man not be in the household that we now have a deeply embedded culture of single parent families, drifting children, and no concept of a work ethic. The result is employers using the lack of work ethic as an excuse to not hire Americans, but to go for hard-working foreigners.

Remember that the employers have tax benefits involved in hiring foreigners. Also, the foreigners cannot argue with the employer because if they lose their job, then they must go home if they are here on the H-1B or H-2B visas. If they are illegal, they have no recourse. This makes for a diligent, compliant workforce.

The employer doesn’t have to pay higher wages, so the taxpayer picks up the additional social costs due to low-paying jobs. The schools have to educate in many languages, the hospital ER takes care of the sick, and subsidized housing is swamped. The costs of absorbing huge numbers of foreign workers are not small.

When a school system has to hire scores of ESL teachers to handle the influx of non-English speaking children, the taxpayer is paying for that. When the hospital has to hire translators to be able to understand their patients, then the citizen absorbs that cost. When the city zoning codes are overwhelmed with twenty or more unrelated people living in a house, then the neighborhood suffers. When remittances are sent back to the homeland to the tune of millions of dollars, then our economy suffers.

When Mexico and other countries send us their poorest, they remove the pressure to improve their own society by exporting their problems to us.

In addition to all of these problems, the local community suffers the double hit of paying unemployment/welfare to their own citizens and all the social costs associated with reducing people to a dependent class.

The employer pockets the extra earnings gained by paying lower wages and collecting tax benefits. In the case of hiring refugees, the employer gets to feel good about himself for helping people fleeing oppression. Perhaps some of our employers should try to feel good about helping fellow Americans have a job that will enable them to break out of the cycle of dependence.

We can thank our elites in DC for the many bad decisions that have led to this disaster that has taken several generations to reach its current epic proportions. A final blow is that the lack of worth that comes with being a non-working dependent class leads to additional social problems.

My hypothesis is that the current heroin epidemic that the government is trying to stem can be linked back to the broken family and jobless lifestyle of our formerly working-class citizens. I know that heroin is ravaging children from all classes, but it is particularly bad on the people that have no hope and see no way out.

Being hungry is a powerful motivator to work. Our Pilgrim forefathers tried to use the community approach when they first arrived in the New World. They almost starved. Once they switched to each family having their own land and raising their own crops, they were much more successful.

I realize that the switch to using our own citizens to work instead of being unemployed would be a painful transition for the employers and the employed. The government would have to remove itself from the process and let people in the local community work this out.

The minimum wage laws forced upon us by the government reduce the entry-level jobs that teenagers once used to learn how to work. In fact, we are going to lose more fast food entry-level jobs as the industry moves to automated ordering to bypass the minimum wage laws.

The H-2B visa workers have reduced the summer jobs for our teens. Something as simple as starting school after Labor Day weekend could enable more teens to fill the summer job needs of the tourist industry.

We have sedentary teens that could use some lawn work to build muscle and slim down. Instead, we import foreigners to cut grass.

The short-term benefits are obviously working as we increase our visa limits and bring in more refugees, despite not being able to vet them for safety issues. But what are the long term issues?

We should be preaching the joys of independence, not depending on the government to support us. We should be encouraging our youth to work hard rather than think that college is going to provide a cushy job. That expensive degree is more likely to be a weight around their neck due to the loans they took out than to help them have access to a good job.

The need for limited government intervention is never more obvious than in our current skewed employment numbers. Crony capitalism is not free enterprise. The UN choosing refugees for us and big business depending on cheap labor that is essentially a new form of indentured servitude is not what America needs.

The easy fix of importing cheap labor may seem like a good idea, but the price we are paying as a nation is not cheap and not easy. It is time for a moratorium on immigration across the board while we sort out these issues.

Report: immigrant share outstripping population growth

A fascinating study from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) came across my e-mail the other day.

We all know there has been a massive influx of immigrants (both legal and illegal) in recent decades, but the numbers CIS reports are astounding: approximately 61 million immigrants and their young American-born children now live in the United States. Of that group, 45 million are legal immigrants and their children.

CIS took the data set back to 1970 to find that the share of immigrants and their children in this country has increased from 13 million to 61 million in that timeframe. As a percentage of population, this group has surged from 6.6% to 18.9%, although you may notice CIS concedes there may be an undercount in the number of immigrants.

While CIS has valid reasoning to exclude more recent census counts (because they did not ask about place of birth), 1970 is also a good demarcation line because it came shortly after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 went into effect. Prior to that, immigration had been limited for four decades so the 1970 census was the nadir for immigrants’ share of the population.

A key cultural difference, however, seems to permeate the most recent wave of immigration. My ancestors came over in the late 19th century, along with millions of others, in order to better their lives with the opportunities America provided for them. But they also chose to be part of a “melting pot” where, if the initial immigrants didn’t assimilate, their children were eager to conform with American culture.

Now we have more of what is described as a “salad bowl” mentality where we are supposed to honor whatever culture comes along – good, bad, or indifferent. This more recent wave of immigrants, at least anecdotally, is content to live as they did in the old country and raise their children as foreigners. Granted, American culture still has its pull but as time goes on we seem to be losing that which makes us exceptional.

CIS asks a number of valid questions:

While the national debate has focused on illegal immigration, the enormous impact of immigration is largely the result of those brought in legally. These numbers raise profound questions that are seldom asked: What number of immigrants can be assimilated? What is the absorption capacity of our nation’s schools, health care system, infrastructure, and, perhaps most importantly, its labor market? What is the impact on the environment and quality of life from significantly increasing the nation’s population size and density? With some 45 million legal immigrants and their young children already here, should we continue to admit a million new legal permanent immigrants every year?

It’s a series of questions that can’t just be answered with a wall, whether Mexico pays for it or not. Border security can be part of the solution, but 40% to 50% of the illegal immigrants had permission to be here initially – they chose to overstay their visas. That’s a challenge a wall won’t address.

My cohort Cathy Keim proposed a pause on immigration last year, which would address some of the problem. Although her point was more with bringing a halt to Syrian refugees and accepting student visas from particular nations, hopefully the mess that is the current system will be among the first things addressed by a new administration.

America is, as always, a welcoming nation. But it’s up to those who come here not to wear out their welcome by insisting that things be just like where they came from – otherwise, what was the point in coming here?

What is The Donald’s attraction?

By Cathy Keim

Editor’s note: Since I had my say on Trump yesterday Cathy decided to follow up.

I think that a lot of people are missing a primary reason many voters are flocking to Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign. They’re concerned about immigration, but not just illegal immigration as in Mexicans and Central Americans flooding our southern border. They also seek answers on legal immigration.

Our country has been bringing in immigrants legally in huge numbers from primarily Muslim countries for years. There are 57 Muslim states in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), but every time there is a clash and Muslims “need” to be resettled, they are directed not to another OIC country where they could be expected to fit in more easily, but to the West, and by the largest numbers to America.

I have written on the Refugee Resettlement program and its problems, highlighted most recently by the Syrian refugee issues, but that is only one of the vast array of immigration vehicles that our government has been using to flood our country with Muslim immigrants. There are student visas, work visas, tourist visas and the lottery system.

The USA does not have an exit visa tracking system. Once the immigrants arrive, even if it is supposedly only for a ninety-day tourist visit or as a student, no one ever checks to see if they leave!

According to this Breitbart summary of a report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS):

Overall, the report notes, immigrants made up 13.3 percent of the population in the U.S. in 2014, the highest percentage in more than a century. CIS compared that level to immigrants’ 6.2 percent share of the population in 1980. The Census Bureau projects that the immigrant share of the population will reach its highest level in history in 2023, at 14.8 percent and continue to increase through 2060 if current admissions levels continue.

(snip)

As of 2010, the countries of origin with the highest percentage increase in the number of immigrants in the U.S. were Saudi Arabia, which saw an increase of 93 percent. Bangladeshi immigrants increased 37 percent, Iraqi increased 36 percent, Egypt was up 25 percent and Pakistan, India, and Ethiopia all increased by 24 percent.

The immigrant population is over 42.4 million people out of about 322 million Americans according to best estimates. People are seeing this in their local communities and their schools. Americans are not xenophobic or racists, but they are concerned about the changing landscape around them. The social costs of bringing in so many people so rapidly are staggering.

Many of these immigrants are from Third World countries and are not equipped to function in a modern society. The stress that this causes for the immigrant families and for the community where they live is enormous. Instead of honestly looking at the problems associated with the rapid rate of immigration without time or effort to assimilate them, the elites just label anyone who questions the influx as racist.

Further, most of the immigrants are from countries that have big government and would be heavily inclined to vote for more of the same. This fact makes them an attractive demographic for the Democrats who are building their bloc of “safe” votes while preening publicly as the “nice people” who are concerned for the downtrodden.

The Republicans are no less guilty in keeping the numbers up as they bring in cheap labor, but they are less insightful as they are undermining their own voting base. They are not called the Stupid Party for nothing.

So where does Donald Trump come in?

For all his shrill rhetoric, I have no idea whether Donald Trump will actually do anything about legal or illegal immigration because I have no confidence that anybody can be sure what he will do if elected. He is not running on principles, but on his fame as a celebrity. However, he is the only candidate to bring up the immigration issue initially. If he had not done so, then it would not have been the topic of discussion that it has been.

Trump has addressed directly the problem of Muslim immigration:

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” he said, adding the word “hell” for emphasis this time.

I believe that this is the primary reason that many of his supporters are going to stick with him no matter how many reckless or crude statements he makes. If you understand the concept of civilizational jihad by hijra, then you just may decide the Donald is worth taking a risk on since he is the only one that is willing to touch the problem.

Monica Crowley writes:

Hijra is a core part of jihad going back to the Prophet Muhammad that involves Islamic conquest through migration. The objective is to overwhelm non-Muslim territories with Muslim populations until they achieve domination through sheer numbers. No weapons necessary — until they gain enough control.

She continues regarding the flood of people arriving in Europe:

Let’s be clear: Some of them may be fleeing war and persecution, but most are not. In fact, only about 10 percent of the new arrivals are from Syria; the other 90 percent are from elsewhere in the Middle East, North Africa and countries like Pakistan and Indonesia who are using the European Union’s open doors-open borders policy to reach the West for social welfare and the longer-term goal of spreading Islam.

The USA has been bringing in floods of people from Muslim countries with no thought to the practice of hijra. Instead of restricting Muslim immigration after 9/11, we have opened the floodgates.

Many thoughtful people see this as cultural suicide and they are willing to risk the Donald to stop this from happening. I acknowledge that this is not the only reason people are supporting Trump, but it is the reason why some exceedingly thoughtful, intelligent people are choosing him.

Next time you speak to a politician about immigration do not let them get away with the meme: Illegal immigration bad/legal immigration good. This is a cheap and easy way to dodge the difficult issues that face our country. Our leaders need to get serious about the problems that are before us and are growing larger with each new immigrant that arrives, whether Muslim or not. If they are not coming here because they want to share in the ideas that made us Americans, then perhaps they should not come.

If immigrants want to come for civilizational jihad or for our generous welfare benefits, then why should we allow that? America is a great country because of the ideas that it was founded upon: Liberty and freedom as God-given rights. We cannot continue to be America if we do not embrace these principles. A desire for big government benefits or for sharia law are not consistent with our Constitution.

Alas, that is why we are in trouble, not just with a potential Trump presidency, but also because half of our population is considering a full-blown socialist candidate in Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton due to their desire for big government.

But that will have to be dealt with in another post.

Mounting frustration in some quarters

Last night I wrote a lengthy piece for the Patriot Post that served as a preview for tomorrow’s South Carolina primary but also speculated a little bit about what could happen if Donald Trump was the GOP nominee. (Go on and read it, I’ll wait.)

All set? Let’s look at a couple things here.

First of all, just on a personal level, I’m getting about as tired of Donald Trump as I am of Barack Obama – and Obama’s been in office seven-plus years, plus a year or so of campaigning beforehand. Let’s consider the arguable point that Trump is conservative on immigration – you do know he has what’s considered a “touchback” policy for illegal aliens, right? As Mark Thiessen wrote last September:

So if you get past Trump’s bluster, the plan he is proposing is so liberal that it earned the support of the New York Times and the opposition of National Review.

The reason is simple: Trump’s plan is in fact a form of amnesty — you just have to leave the country briefly to get it.

So when Trump says of illegal immigrants “they all have to go,” don’t forget that under his plan almost all would be able to immediately return.

That must be the “big, beautiful door” in Trump’s Mexican Maginot Line. (Look back in history to see how the original fared.) I think I’m just worn out on how Trump can talk out of both sides of his mouth, so one truly has to ask if that’s the best the Republicans have to offer?

On the other hand, a few weeks back I assisted four voters in switching their party registration to Republican, presumably to vote for Trump. One later said she would switch back to Democrat after the primary, but also said “I vote for the best man for the job.” (If so, she should have been Republican all along. But I digress.)

Trump seems to be expanding the Republican base, though. Turnout for the Iowa Republican caucus smashed the old record, and also exceeded expectations in New Hampshire. South Carolina is expected to follow suit. So it appears Trump may be expanding the tent for the Republican Party – but what kind of platform will this GOP have? Writing at The Resurgent, Bill Blankschaen compares Trump’s campaign to a WWE pay-per-view event, and I don’t think Bill is too far off. I will grant Trump doesn’t have a record of political accomplishments because he’s never held public office, but there are few issues where he has expressed a conservative direction. Ronald Reagan he’s not.

When I send my articles in to Nate, my Patriot Post editor, I often have a sentence or two I add just as a personal sentiment about what I wrote. On this one I said:

I tell you, I wasn’t a big Mitt Romney fan and I had to pinch my nose really tight to vote for John McCain. (Really, I voted for Sarah Palin and a timely demise from McCain.) But if Trump wins, you may not be able to find a clothespin tight enough for my nose.

With unfavorable ratings north of 50 percent for The Donald, I would guess I’m not the only one who feels this way. So I think it’s time for some of the pretenders to step aside and put their weight behind someone to be the anti-Trump and keep the Republican Party as the conservative vehicle. It may not run well and definitely needs a tuneup, but in the political arena the GOP is all we have to win with.

A hidden perk

By Cathy Keim

Editor’s note: Cathy will be delivering the content this weekend while I take a little personal time off. By the way, Sunday will be her first anniversary as a co-author.

I received a “Help Save Maryland” newsletter from Brad Botwin the other day. I read through it and one comment about the illegal immigrant population caught my eye. Most people that worry about voter integrity are concerned that illegal immigrants are voting in our elections. But what if the illegal immigrant population decides the next presidential election without even casting individual votes?

Let’s go back to a quick review of the Electoral College. The Electoral College was put into place to keep the more heavily populated areas in the country from dominating the more rural areas.

Each state receives their number of electoral votes based on their representation in Congress; thus, every state receives two electoral votes for their two Senators. The remainder of their electoral votes are determined by the number of Congressmen they have, which means the minimum number of electoral votes that a state receives is three: two for its Senators and at least one for its Congressman. Being a small state, our neighbors to the north in Delaware only have one at-large Congressman so they get three votes.

Additionally, the District of Columbia is guaranteed the same number as the least populous state (Wyoming in the 2010 census) so the District gets three electoral votes, too.

Every state has two Senators for 100 electoral votes and the District of Columbia receives three electoral votes, so the remaining 435 electoral votes are based on Congressional seats. Every ten years after the census, the Congressional seats are apportioned according to population; however, this is not based on legal population or citizens’ population. The census counts everybody.

So illegal immigrants are counted in the census and their population is then used to apportion Congressional seats. Those Congressional seats each come with one Electoral College vote.

The 435 Congressional districts plus 100 Senators plus three for DC equals the 538 total electoral votes which will decide our next President. The winner will need a majority, or 270 Electoral College votes.

Because of the way the census is conducted, the states with larger numbers of illegal immigrants gain extra seats in Congress at the expense of the states with fewer illegal immigrants. If you were to remove the illegal immigrants from the census and only count citizens, then states like California would lose congressional seats and those seats would be reapportioned to other states. Paul Goldman and Mark J. Rozell noted this last year in Politico:

This math gives strongly Democratic states an unfair edge in the Electoral College. Using citizen-only population statistics, American University scholar Leonard Steinhorn projects California would lose five House seats and therefore five electoral votes. New York and Washington would lose one seat, and thus one electoral vote apiece. These three states, which have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats over the latest six presidential elections, would lose seven electoral votes altogether. The GOP’s path to victory, by contrast, depends on states that would lose a mere three electoral votes in total. Republican stronghold Texas would lose two House seats and therefore two electoral votes. Florida, which Republicans must win to reclaim the presidency, loses one seat and thus one electoral vote.

But that leaves the electoral math only half done. The 10 House seats taken away from these states would then need to be reallocated to states with relatively small numbers of noncitizens. The following ten states, the bulk of which lean Republican, would likely gain one House seat and thus one additional electoral vote: Iowa, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

Once all the accounting is done, the authors state that the GOP would gain a net four electoral votes if the illegal immigrants were not counted in the census. Remember that Al Gore lost the presidency in 2000 by only three electoral votes despite having the most votes.

The Politico article goes on to consider whether getting rid of the Electoral College is the remedy for this problem, although that could not be done before the election this year. Perhaps a better solution would be to not have millions of illegal immigrants residing in the USA.

The fact that we do have millions of illegal immigrants here points to the fact that our government has chosen to allow this for reasons which they decline to reveal to the American citizen. We can deduce that cheap labor is one of the obvious reasons. Another could be that there is always a push to legalize them and then they would be added onto the voting rolls and mostly on the Democrat side. Even if they never achieve citizenship, their children which are born here are citizens and they have also been shown to predominately lean Democrat.

You might say that the Electoral College advantage is just one more built in perk to a corrupted immigration system that favors the Democrat Party.

Conservatives against Trump (and his hucksters)

In an attempt to tip the scales a little bit, and arguably give itself a little relevance in this current campaign, National Review gathered nearly two dozen prominent conservatives to make their case why nominating (and worse, electing) Donald Trump would be a mistake and a setback for the conservative movement. For the most part their reasons echoed a lot of what I said when I did my “dossier” series a few months back. Simply put, Donald Trump is not a conservative.

Had National Review asked me, my case would be made from the idea that Trump is a populist rather than a conservative, with ideas that sound great in a broad sense but when implemented evoke the old saying “the devil is in the details.” On immigration I share Trump’s concerns, and for the most part I think he has a sound approach to the issue. (This is in contrast to some at NR that would embrace immigration reform.) But in other areas such as taxation Trump works in a more steeply progressive, populist direction. Low-income wage-earners may get to send in a tax form that says “I win” but eventually we will all lose because the precedents will be set in punishing certain businesses. Talking tough with China is one thing, but putting the policies into practice another.

I don’t want to go through a complete rehash of what I said the other day when Trump got the Sarah Palin endorsement, but so far in the 2016 campaign – one which had the promise of a good, conservative candidate who could win on a message of rolling back the excesses of the Obama administration – we have instead seen the candidate whose campaign has most resembled the brashness and bravado of a WWE event reach the top of the polls and stay there despite the best efforts of several candidates to knock him off the perch. The argument that he’s not conservative enough seems to fall on deaf ears because people believe Trump can make America great again for some reason. It makes me wonder if the TEA Party was more of a cry for limited-government solutions or just a reaction to a President who was going too far too fast in a direction they didn’t expect.

To that end, there are now TEA Party people who want to cash in on the Trump name. Case in point: Amy Kremer, formerly of the TEA Party Express. I apologize in advance for the long blockquote, but you have to get a load of this fundraising appeal:

Dear Patriot,

Are you sick and tired of seeing America lose?

Are you fed up with Washington Elites and the liberal media screwing up, weakening our country and running us into the ground?

Do you think we need less mindless political correctness and more old-fashioned common sense?

And, do you think we need a bold, proven leader to win the Presidency and Make America Great Again?

Well I do too! And I am wholeheartedly supporting Donald Trump!

My name is Amy Kremer and I am one of the founders of the modern day tea party movement.

As Chairman of the Tea Party Express, I worked alongside millions of Americans just like you and we helped lead a revolution in American politics. I was just middle class mother who was fed up and spoke out, but together, we made a difference.

Now, America needs us again. We have to come together and elect Donald J. Trump President of the United States!

That is why I have founded TrumPAC, a brand new organization dedicated to supporting Donald Trump. And, I am going to need your help, BIG Time.

(snip)

The Elites are going crazy! They cannot stand the idea of President Trump, they are running scared, and as they quiver in their Ivory Towers, they plan to throw every thing they can at Mr. Trump to try and stop him, including the kitchen sink! No smear will be left in the bag or underhanded dirty trick will go un-played.

Their desperation is disgusting, but we know it’s coming. And we need to stop them!

That’s why we need you today, right now, to help Donald Trump weather the course. Mr. Trump has strong shoulders, and if we get his back and show the World that there is a movement behind him, ready to propel him all the way the Oval Office, nothing will stop us!

(snip)

Donate today and we’ll send $5 dollars directly to Mr. Trumps campaign so YOUR name will be on his FEC Report – we’ll handle the paperwork and even cover the credit card processing fees so every penny goes to the Trump campaign.

(snip)

AND BEST OF ALL – when his January finance report comes out, Your name will be on it, telling the world where you stand. You see, normally only big donations show up on finance reports, but because it came through us, just $5 will get your name counted too.

Mr. Trump will get a shot in the arm to see all of our names going on the record for him. Plus, his campaign will know how to follow up with you and get you involved when it’s time to vote in your state.

(snip)

I hope I can I count on you to chip in with a contribution and help reach our goal so we can get our winning message out to voters across the country.

Just $20 will help reach about 5,000 people through robocalls, social media, and Internet ads.

$35 will help reach about 13,000 individuals.

$100 will help reach nearly 36,910 folks. $150 reaches nearly 51,000 people.

Just $200 allows us to contact nearly 68,000 folks over social media and the Internet.

Whatever amount you can afford, your contribution will help us reach out and convince more voters that Donald Trump is what America needs!

So I send Amy Kremer $25 (which is the default amount on their fundraising appeal) and Trump gets five bucks? What a bargain! Not only that, the other $20 will “reach about 5,000 people through robocalls, social media, and Internet ads.” (Damn, I’d love to know where they are spending their $20 because I have a website I’d like to promote.) On that point, it looks like we have diminishing returns at some points so I’m wondering where this lady got her numbers. Math may not be her strong suit?

It’s interesting because when Kremer left the TEA Party Express in 2014 her plans were for “engaging in competitive Senate primaries and supporting fiscal conservatives in the coming weeks.” There must not have been enough money in that part of the political world so it was time to glom on to the most populist candidate we’ve seen since Barack Obama to be a moneymaker.

And people wonder why those of us in the heartland are so cynical about politics. It’s why we shouldn’t attach ourselves to a person but a philosophy, and mine is that of limited-government conservatism. Out of all the remaining candidates in the 2016 race, it’s a sad commentary to know that Donald Trump is the farthest from that ideal, yet many who call themselves conservative support him and apparently making money off his name is just peachy.

Update: Still need more evidence Trump isn’t a limited government conservative? Federally-controlled land is just fine with him.

Trump plays the Palin card

You know, I used to like Sarah Palin.

Actually I still do, but I’m also trying to figure out how a political figure who has been an integral part of the TEA Party movement since the beginning could give her imprimatur to the Republican in the field who is arguably the least conservative in the overall scheme of things. In Trump’s world, aside from immigration and perhaps global trade, we won’t deal with the excesses of government in any meaningful way. He’s pledged to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, despite the fact that both entitlements are going bankrupt. As a complete suck-up to the ethanol industry in Iowa, Trump is calling for more ethanol to be blended into our gasoline as well. Neither of those positions scream “limited-government conservative” to me.

In reading the reaction over the last day or so, people either seem to be shooting the messenger by panning the speech or the various foibles of Palin family members, or they are assuming that Palin has sold out once again for the almighty buck trying to extend her fifteen minutes of fame, or they believe she’s got a deal to secure a Cabinet post in a Trump administration. Some even believe it will be a Trump/Palin ticket. We haven’t seen as much of the “mama grizzly” lately so maybe she needed to be back in the limelight again. Meanwhile, as Erick Erickson argues, Trump is trying to pick up the win in Iowa to shut out Ted Cruz in the first few states as Trump has huge leads in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida. Byron York saw it as a way to get Iowans torn between Trump and Cruz off the fence.

To me, it’s just another part of the ongoing struggle between limited-government conservatism and the big-government populism that Trump seems to be cornering with every vague promise to make things great again, played out in the Republican primary. Unfortunately, by espousing government-based solutions Trump is just serving to perpetuate the policies that have messed things up in the first place.

Yet if you ask a Trump supporter why they support him, the answer tends to be in the realm of being an outsider with a record of getting things done. We have a problem with illegal aliens? Build a wall and make Mexico pay for it! And we can’t trust those Muslims, so we just won’t let them in! Once The Donald says it will happen, by golly it’s going to occur.

Okay, fair enough. It may work very well in an autonomous corporation where whatever The Donald says is law, but may not translate nearly as well when you need a majority of the 535 members of Congress to assist you in getting things accomplished the proper way. Sure, Trump can go the executive order route on a lot of things but isn’t that our major complaint about the Obama regime? Just because it’s a guy on “our” side doesn’t make it any more Constitutional to govern by dictate, with the probable exception of rescinding previous orders. (I would rather Congress do that heavy work, though.)

So it comes back to what Palin saw in Trump. In the brief release from the Trump campaign, the reason stated for Palin to back Trump is his “leadership and unparalleled ability to speak the truth and produce real results.” I would categorize it as saying what people want to hear (for example, he stated his new-found position on ethanol in front of a lobbying group) with the results being oodles of press coverage. Admittedly, Trump has helped make immigration a key issue with his remarks, but I think that discussion was going to occur anyway.

The other “real result” seems to be that of finally erasing the line between politician and celebrity. Ronald Reagan was known to the public as an actor, so he had some amount of recognition from those who weren’t political junkies. (Unlike Trump, though, Reagan had a political resume as governor of California.) Bill Clinton tried to portray himself as hip by frequent appearances on mainstream entertainment shows, and that trend has continued with both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Having been a reality TV star, Trump takes this cultural recognition to a new level, which may expand the universe of possible voters but brings us much closer to the undesirable aspects of governance by popularity rather than ability.

If Sarah Palin was looking to improve her brand recognition, she did well by endorsing Trump. But if she’s looking to improve America…well, maybe not so much.

Immigration: “The issue is never the issue.”

By Cathy Keim

Editor’s note: Once again, Cathy is combining her series on immigration with more coverage of the Turning the Tides conference earlier this month.

James (Jim) Simpson, an investigative journalist, followed Clare Lopez’s talk with equally distressing information. He has a short book called The Red-Green Axis Refugees, Immigration and the Agenda to Erase America, which is available online for free.

Simpson began with the statement, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” The issue only matters as a means to advance the Left’s true agenda. This hit me as particularly eye-opening for those who could not connect the dots between the continual, never-ending string of social ills which we have been forced to endure for the last fifty years. The attack on the family through no-fault divorce, the sexual revolution, women’s lib, and abortion has morphed into the gay issue and then transgender concerns. Never satisfied with the concessions wrung from an exhausted public, the issues just keep on coming, ever weakening and degrading our culture.

Now the issue is immigration. Adhering to the quote, it is easy to see that the elites are not pushing through immigration because they care about the people. They care about how immigrants further the elites’ quest for power and wealth.

Jim listed six ways that refugee resettlement and immigration undermine us.

Dilutes American culture
Undermines the rule of law
Sucks up welfare resources
Creates chaos: racial/ethnic tension, fiscal stress, unemployment
Cultivates loyal voters for leftist politicians seeking permanent majority
Refugee Resettlement is a vehicle for Hijra

A new fact that I had not heard before was that the UN at the 1976 Conference on Human Settlements laid the groundwork for Agenda 21.

The universal goals were to abolish private property, seek “equitable” distribution of land, resources, and populations worldwide, and a foundation for open borders agenda.

Jim traced out the sanctuary movement from from its beginning when radical leftists were assisting Salvadorans fleeing civil war to the tragic death of Kate Steinle in San Francisco last year. In addition, Simpson researched and came up with the following crime statistics about aliens:

22% of U.S. prison population in 2009 were aliens.
The annual incarceration costs were approximately $6 billion.
Between 2004 – 2008 249,000 aliens were convicted: 25,064 for murder, 69,929 for sex crimes, 14,788 for kidnapping, and 213,047 assaults.
In North Carolina in 2014: 752 illegals arrested on a total of 3,696 sex crime charges against children.

Jim pointed out that while attention is on the Syrian refugee issue right now, there are many other programs such as Temporary Protected Status, asylum seekers, parole, and visa waivers adding up to more than 100,000 Syrians here since 2012.

He then listed the Volunteer Agencies (VOLAGs) that are government contractors to bring in the refugees. He contends that radical leftists infiltrated the VOLAGS. They are not Christians despite their names, they are not religious, and they are not charitable, Simpson added.

I agree with Jim on this. The VOLAGs bring in refugees and deposit them in inner-city slums where they are left to shift for themselves. They often place warring groups next door to each other with no regard for safety. Added to the mix is the fact that the people that already live there are struggling for jobs without being undercut by cheap immigrant labor. Many times the refugees don’t even know how to use indoor plumbing, electricity, or a modern kitchen. The VOLAGs are paid by the head so they are only interested in bringing in as many people as they can, not in helping the ones already here to acclimate.

Jim listed some of the refugee problems that the communities that host them must address. Manchester, NH, has 82 languages. Amarillo, TX, has 911 calls in 36 languages. In Minnesota the Somali unemployment rate is 21%. In Texas, 25% of skin tests are positive for TB. Then add in gangs, drugs, and terrorism to this troubling mix.

The White House Task Force on New Americans pushes “Welcoming Communities and Fully Integrating Immigrants and Refugees” where the “welcoming” goal is to force Americans to accept mass immigration and the welcoming method is “Culture Shaping” where we “recognize the role everyone must play in furthering the integration of recent immigrants.”

(I wrote a piece on the White House Task Force on New Americans back in March.)

Jim Simpson ate lunch at my table, so I was able to question him further on some of his ideas. He pointed out that the communists have always used proxies to fight their wars when they could. He felt that the jihadists are the new proxies for the communists in the current situation, and made a compelling case for his theory.

It certainly explains why the leftists in our government are so eager to join sides with the Muslim Brotherhood and its numerous affiliates despite the rather glaring disparity between the progressives’ rhetoric and the Muslim Brotherhood’s anti-feminist, anti-gay agenda. How can the feminists swallow their vociferous promotion for equal rights and not peep about the horrors of female genital mutilation, honor killings, women being treated as property by men, and as being less than equal in worth to a man? Or how can progressives not complain about gay rights in Muslim controlled areas?

We go back to the quote that Jim started with, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” The progressives believe that they will use the Islamists to destroy America and then they, the progressives, will be in charge.

I am not so sure that the Islamists agree with that conclusion, but it is undeniable that the progressives in our country are working hand in hand with the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, and numerous other entities to undermine our country.

I will close with a quote from Frank Gaffney and remind you that you can read Jim’s book online. The final chapter is especially helpful in listing ideas of how to respond to this threat.

Center for Security Policy President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. states:

Jim Simpson has done a characteristically exacting investigation of the extent to which the red-green axis – the radical left, with its activists, contractors, philanthropies and friends in the Obama administration, and Islamic supremacists – have joined forces to use U.S. refugee resettlement programs as a prime means to achieve the ‘fundamental transformation’ of America. His expose is particularly timely against the backdrop of the government sponsored effort to ‘Welcome New Americans’ and suppress those who understand the imperative of “resisting” the migration to and colonization of this country, or hijra, that Shariah-adherent Muslim believed they are required to undertake.

Odds and ends number 78

Here I go again, producing those little dribs and drabs of information that I need a sentence to a couple paragraphs to discuss.

For example, I don’t need to give much more than an “attaboy” to Ted Cruz for continuing to stand against ethanol subsidies yet succeed in Iowa, as Leon Wolf pointed out recently at RedState. Such a stance may not make me a lot of friends among the corn farmers locally, but I’ll bet the chicken producers would love to see a decrease in the price for a bushel and I suspect once the Renewable Fuel Standard is pulled it will give them a break. Let’s hope Cruz (or some other GOP candidate) follows through on this common sense. After all, according to my friend Rick Manning at Americans for Limited Government, the deficit last year was $677 billion so putting ethanol subsidies on the chopping block would make fiscal sense as well.

As Richard Falknor at Blue Ridge Forum points out, though, we have a large number of gutless wonders in our House of Representatives who don’t care that the latest omnibus was a budget-buster. Maybe they just need to read some advice from my Patriot Post cohort Mark Alexander, who reminded us of what our Founding Fathers said 240 years ago. We really do need a revival of the Spirit of ’76. (I’m old enough to remember the Bicentennial, by the way.) As Alexander writes about the current GOP crop:

Patriots, in this presidential election year, I invoke this timeless wisdom from George Washington’s farewell address (1796): “Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” Indeed, there are among even the ranks of Republican presidential contenders some pretenders. Caveat Emptor! The future of Liberty hinges on the ability and willingness of grassroots Patriots to distinguish between the genuine article and the false prophets.

Yet while Ted Cruz seems to be one of the few who is standing up for conservative principles in Congress, as Erick Erickson adds at his new website, The Resurgent, the Establishment has decided to throw its lot in with Donald Trump to stop Cruz’s polling advances. Yes, politics makes strange bedfellows.

None may be stranger than those in the state of South Dakota where the drive for non-partisan elections I told you about a few weeks ago made the ballot. Local talk radio host Rick Knobe is spearheading the effort:

For too long, both political parties have been shouting over each other at the expense of the voters, and now have an opportunity to do something about it. Just look at the growing number of registered Independents, which now numbers over 100,000 in South Dakota. That number is growing here and across the country. When this measure passes, those 100,000 South Dakotans will have the opportunity to fully participate in the election process.

The state as a whole had 521,017 registered voters as of the 2014 elections so it appears about 20-25% are not affiliated. If it is adopted in this election, the state will move to a non-partisan primary for 2018. I suspect the two major parties will lose a significant amount of their support should this happen, so this is something to watch as it develops.

Immigration is one of the issues that has thoroughly disgusted a number of former Republicans who bolted the party when the elites adopted a pro-amnesty stance. Recently many Republicans (including the aforementioned Ted Cruz and our Congressman Andy Harris) supported a major expansion of H-1B visas despite a claim from the Center for Immigration Studies that found no evidence of a labor shortage in those occupations. One has to question how many semi-skilled workers are idle in this area due to the H-1B visa.

Finally, I’m going to circle back to Erick Erickson. I’ve been impressed with his new website, one which I can read without being overrun by annoying pop-up ads and false story breaks that only serve to increase page view count (in order to extort more money from would-be advertisers.) On Thursday he had a candid assessment of how his website was doing and so far he seems to be successful. Good news for those of us who value content over clickbait.

So ends another (hopefully) clickbait-free edition of odds and ends. Now my mailboxes are empty once again.