The amount of fentanyl seized in July 2022 is equivalent to 469 million lethal doses.
Washington, D.C. — The Federation for American Immigration Reform issued the following statement, as well as a deeper dive into the growing border crisis, based on data quietly released yesterday by the Biden administration:
Earlier this month, President Biden took credit for the July inflation rate being “only” 8.5 percent. Now that July border numbers are finally public, the White House may take credit for the fact that “only” 199,976 illegal aliens crossed our border, down from 207,416 in June. A minor drop in border encounters is not encouraging. Traditionally, numbers drop in the hottest summer months, and last month’s figures actually represent a 325 percent increase over the average number of July apprehensions under the Trump administration. More significantly, July numbers bring the total of illegal aliens crossing our borders since President Biden took office to 4.9 million, including some 900,000 “gotaways” who eluded apprehension and have since disappeared into American communities.
“Roughly the equivalent of the entire population of Ireland has illegally entered the United States in the 18 months President Biden has been in office, with many being released into American communities. In that time, the Biden administration has blamed an unprecedented surge of illegal immigration on all sorts of external factors, except their own sabotage of our nation’s immigration laws. The endless flow of illegal aliens and the incursion of lethal narcotics pouring across our border will not end until this administration demonstrates a willingness to enforce our laws,” said Dan Stein, president of FAIR.
FAIR Border Snapshot for July 2022
Since President Biden took office, nearly 4.9 million illegal aliens have crossed our borders.
This includes the 3.9 million nationwide total reported by CBP – which includes a whopping 3.4 million at our Southwest border – as well as approximately 900,000 gotaways who have entered the country undetected per agency sources.
CBP had 199,976 encounters at the Southwest border in July 2022, including 134,362 single adults, 51,822 family units, and 13,299 unaccompanied minors.
This is a 325 percent increase from the average number of July apprehensions under President Trump.
CBP has encountered more illegal aliens in just 10 months of FY 2022 than in the entirety of FY 2021.
July was the 17th straight month with more than 150,000 encounters.
CBP reports that 10 individuals on the FBI’s terror watchlist were apprehended between ports of entry at the Southwest border in July, bringing the total for the current fiscal year to 66.
The Biden administration continues its crusade to end the Title 42 public health authority, despite extending other COVID-related national emergencies.
In July, CBP expelled only 37 percent of illegal aliens using Title 42, a 7 percent drop compared to last month.
2,071 pounds of fentanyl and 12,989 pounds of methamphetamine were seized at the southern border in July, with much more getting through because Border Patrol agents are busy processing illegal aliens.
The amount of fentanyl seized in July is equivalent to 469 million lethal doses.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Federation for American Immigration Reformhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFederation for American Immigration Reform2022-08-17 06:41:382022-08-17 06:41:38Analysis: 4.9 Million Illegal Aliens Have Crossed U.S. Borders Since President Biden Took Office
It is time for NYC to end deadly “Sanctuary Policies.”
Out of obvious frustration with the current immigration crisis along the U.S./Mexican border Texas Governor Greg Abbott has resorted to sending busloads of illegal aliens caught entering the United States illegally in his state along the Mexican border, to New York City, Washington, DC and other cities far from the southern border to publicize the situation that Texans face because of Biden’s immigration policies.
The back and forth is steeped in political tensions as the Republican governor — running for reelection and considered a potential presidential candidate — tries to show that Democratic mayors are not as sympathetic to the plight of migrants as their party claims to be. Abbott’s critics have said he is using migrants as pawns in a cynical plot that does little to actually solve border problems.
Caught in the middle is President Joe Biden, who Abbott has long blamed for the border situation. Bowser has turned to the administration for help, asking last month for the Department of Defense to deploy the National Guard to her city. CNN reported Friday morning that the Pentagon has denied Bowser’s request.
New York also still wants help from the federal government.
“NYC will continue to welcome asylum seekers w/ open arms, as we have always done, but we still need support from DC,” Levy, the Adams spokesperson, said on Twitter.
Abbott sent a letter Monday to Adams and Bowser inviting them to the border region to “see firsthand the dire situation.” In rebuffing Abbott’s invitation, a spokesperson for Adams said Abbott should focus on helping “asylum seekers in Texas as we have been hard at work doing in New York City.”
It is incredible, that according this this report, that President Joe Biden is “caught in the middle.” Biden’s actions and lack of actions are a principle cause of this disaster. In reality, America and Americans are actually “caught in the middle!”
Remarkably, New York Mayor Adams is incensed that several bus loads of illegal aliens have been sent to his city by Governor Abbott but has been notably silent about the The Midnight Flights of the Biden Administration.
It is also worth noting that Adams reefers to these illegal aliens as “asylum seekers.” While it is true that many have filed applications for asylum, the vast majority of those applications have no merit and will be denied. Most of these illegal aliens are not political refugees but are simply fleeing poverty and crime in their home countries. Political asylum is only granted to aliens who can prove Credible Fear that because of their race, religion, ethnicity, political ideology or other such factors face persecution, or worse in their home countries. Once again Adams has opted to use language to obfuscate the truth about illegal immigration and provide illegal aliens with a level of legitimacy to which they are not truly entitled.
This is the equivalent of describing a homeless person with no job and no means of support as “An aspiring millionaire” because he/she purchased a lottery ticket!
Some of the reporters who are covering the “crisis on the Southern Border,” created and exacerbated by the Biden Administration, have breathlessly declared, “Now every border is a border state!”
The reality is that I have been making that point for decades I stated that “every state is a border state,” but for far different reasons.
Every state is indeed a border state, but not simply because aliens who run our southern border and enter without inspection make their way to cities and states across our nation, but rather because while most “journalists” are fixated on the dangerous 2,000 mile U.S./Mexican border they ignore the northern border of the United States that is roughly twice as long as the Mexican border. They ignore the more than 1,500 miles that separates Alaska from Canada and they ignore the 95,000 miles of coastline that encircles the United States. Finally, they ignore the international airports that are scattered across the United States in virtually every state.
Furthermore it is an absurdity to think that if it were not for Governor Abbott there would be no illegal aliens in the Big Apple. In reality, the impact of sending busloads of illegal aliens to NYC is a bit like sending a couple of truckloads of sand to the beach!
By far the biggest unauthorized immigrant populations in 2016 were in the New York (1.1 million) and Los Angeles metro areas (925,000). Both metros had unauthorized immigrant populations that exceeded the statewide total in every state except California and Texas. No other metro area approached a million. Meanwhile, the smallest unauthorized immigrant populations among the top 20 areas were in Austin and Charlotte (100,000 each).
Where “Border States” are concerned, New York State hits the “Trifecta”- it borders on Canada to the north and has a number of international airports, seaports and an extensive coastline.
On June 6, 1993 a dilapidated and vermin-infested boat, the Golden Venture ran aground in the Rockaways, a coastal neighborhood in Queens, New York. On board were some 300 illegal aliens from China who had paid alien smugglers thousands of dollars to enter the United States without inspection and they hoped, without detection.
On June 7, 2018 a local newspaper, The Rockaway Times, published a detailed report about that event, The Golden Venture: 25 Years Later.
For decades New York City and New York States implemented “Sanctuary Polices” that undermine national security and public safety and violate the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
Mayor Adams is now seeking financial assistance for the Biden Administration to help the city cope with the economic impact of illegal immigration. This actually something that I agree with- provided, of course that in exchange for such assistance he immediately end the dangerous “sanctuary policies” that for decades have drawn record numbers of illegal aliens to New York City. As for the costs, way back in December 2007 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a report, The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Governments that included this excerpt:
In a separate study, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that in 2004, more than 50 percent of those children who were them- selves unauthorized immigrants and almost 60 percent of adult unauthorized immigrants were uninsured. Moreover, 25 percent of those children who, by virtue of their birth, were U.S. citizens—but whose parents were unauthorized immigrants—also lacked health insurance. In terms of public education, unauthorized immigrants who are minors increase the overall number of students attending public schools, and they may also require more educational services than do native-born children because of a lack of proficiency in English. Analyses from several states indicate that the costs of educating students who did not speak English fluently were 20 percent to 40 percent higher than the costs incurred for native-born students.
In addition to differences in the types of services that federal, state, and local governments provide and the extent to which the unauthorized population participates in those programs, the income that unauthorized immigrants earn and the taxes they pay also contribute to their net impact on state and local budgets. Unauthorized immigrants typically earn less than do native-born citizens and other immigrant groups and, partly as a result . . .
Nearly 5 years ago I wrote about how NYC’s “Sanctuary” policies attract foreign drug traffickers, fugitives and terrorists in my article, New York City: Hub For The Deadly Drug Trade.
Sanctuary policies of New York and other cities and states provide a powerful magnet that draw aspiring illegal aliens from around the world to enter the United States, by whatever means possible. This simply adds more pressure to our borders and overwhelmed immigration system.
Adams is a former NYPD Captain and, I suspect this is why he won the election for Mayor. New York voters wanted a mayor who would truly be the “new sheriff” in town who would restore safety to our communities and end the pervasive violence and bloodshed in what had been “America’s safest big city” until the lunatic Left implemented bail reform and other measures that protect criminals and endanger law abiding residents.
It is time for Eric Adams to end his histrionics and actually seek to “serve and protect” New Yorkers and Americans!
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Michael Cutlerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMichael Cutler2022-08-17 06:30:102022-08-17 06:30:10NYC’s Mayor Adams’ Immigration Theater of the Absurd
WASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire/ — America First Political Committee today declared victory over RINO Liz Cheney in Wyoming. America First is now focused on removing RINO Carlos Gimenez from Congress in Florida’s 28th Congressional district.
RINO Carlos Gimenez has a long record of supporting radical socialist policy, dating back to his time as Miami-Dade Mayor.
RINO Gimenez locked down and destroyed Miami-Dade small businesses during Covid. Gimenez was also tainted with corruption and ethics accusations including unauthorized business dealings with Communist China.
In Congress, RINO Gimenez has voted with Nancy Pelosi and the radical leftists. Gimenez defended disgraced Liz Cheney after she voted in favor of the ‘Sham Impeachment’ against Donald Trump. Gimenez doubled down in defending Cheney after the Republican Caucus censored and removed Liz Cheney from Republican Party Leadership.
RINO Gimenez has openly voted with Nancy Pelosi and the radical Democrats in Congress on critical ‘Unconstitutional Issues’ far too many times and continues to support a socialist agenda:
RINO Gimenez openly supported and Voted forHillary Clinton and the Clinton Agenda in 2016;
RINO Gimenez also voted for the ‘January 6‘ Democrat ‘Witch Hunt’ against American Citizens and Republican voters;
RINO Gimenez voted withNancy Pelosiand the radical Democrats on H.R. 550, to allow the federal government to create a database, track unvaccinated Americans, who could be targeted, segregated, discriminated against, and forced to comply with vaccination mandates;
RINO Gimenez voted withNancy Pelosi and the radical Democrats on Anti-Second Amendment legislation HR-8, making it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to purchase, own, carry, and use a firearm;
RINO Gimenez voted withNancy Pelosi and the radical Democrats on H.R. 6 for ‘Open Borders and Amnesty’ to over 20 million criminal illegal aliens, which would permanently avoid deportation, obtain a pathway to citizenship, and full voting rights;
RINO Gimenez also voted withNancy Pelosi and the radical Democrats to strip Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of all Congressional Committee positions.
RINO Gimenez voted with Nancy Pelosiand the radical Democrats on the wasteful $1.5 Trillion wasteful socialist spending bill packed with billions in earmarks (Pork);
RINO Gimenez voted with Nancy Pelosi and the radical Democrats to codify homosexual marriage into federal law, overturning voter-approved measures in more than 30 states, including Florida, that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-08-17 06:18:122022-08-17 06:22:46America First After Defeating RINO Liz Cheney in Wyoming Targets RINO Carlos Gimenez in Florida Primary
Benjamin Franklin was dubbed “The First American” for a reason.
Americans remember Benjamin Franklin as one of our founders. That is fitting because he was not just our most famous citizen at our country’s birth, but he was also so much a central part of that birth that he has been called “The First American.”
As a member of the Second Continental Congress, Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence. As a member of the Constitutional Convention, he helped draft the Constitution. Both documents bear his signature.
He also signed the Treaty of Alliance with France, bringing the colonies French aid against the British, and the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War and recognized the independence of the United States. He was the only person, in fact, to sign all those key documents.
However, Franklin’s role in our founding has been eclipsed in modern memory by his many other accomplishments. He was a prolific inventor, from his trademark bifocals to the Franklin Stove and artificial fertilizer. He ran his own paper and published Poor Richard’s Almanac. He even published the first political cartoon in the colonies. He founded the University of Pennsylvania, as well as America’s first public library and hospital. His discoveries went far beyond his famous kite experiment, including the identification of lead poisoning and the charting of ocean currents.
Franklin’s Inspirational Words
Unfortunately, attention to what Franklin said about American liberty has often been crowded out by his other accomplishments. On his January 17 birthday, we should remember some of those inspirational words.
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God” (proposed by Franklin for the motto of the Great Seal of the United States).
“From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally the portion, it is still the birthright of all men.”
“Every man…is, of common right, and by the laws of God, a freeman, and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty.”
“All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual… is his natural right which none can justly deprive him of.”
“Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
“Our cause is the cause of all mankind…we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own.”
“[F]requent recurrence to fundamental principles…[is] absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty and keep a government free.”
“The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes, the greater the need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance and enable him to plunder at pleasure.”
“Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.”
“Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics…derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.”
“Sell not…liberty to purchase power.”
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
“This Constitution…can only end in despotism…when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”
“I hope…that all mankind will at length…have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats.”
“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes!”
“Ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation to the prejudice and oppression of another is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy…An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy.”
Benjamin Franklin expressed the goal of America’s experiment in liberty when he said, “God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: This is my country.”
As we reflect on current political developments, we should consider how far we are from that goal and how to rekindle America’s liberty.
Gary M. Galles is a Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University and a member of the Foundation for Economic Education faculty network. In addition to his new book, Pathways to Policy Failures (2020), his books include Lines of Liberty (2016), Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies (2014), and Apostle of Peace (2013).
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-08-16 14:20:572022-08-16 14:22:0917 Benjamin Franklin Quotes on Tyranny, Liberty, and Rights
What are we, medieval peasants? Of course we will hack our showerheads.
Showerheads used to be easy to hack. And never doubt the need to do so. What do we want out of a shower? We want fantastic amounts of water pouring down on our heads, ideally like the waterfall we see in movies and art. At very least, this requires pulling out the government-mandated flow stopper after the purchase and before the installation.
In recent years, these stoppers have become more difficult to remove. Some are downright impossible. A few years ago, I bought an expensive showerhead and spent Saturday afternoon with hammers, ice picks, drills, and the experience ended in total frustration.
So yesterday, I decided to settle the issue once and for all. I sprung for 5 different showerheads – purchased based on what I perceived to be their hackability – and tried it out on each one. I’m astounded and thrilled at the results. It turns out to be ridiculously easy and cheap to bypass the bureaucrats and enjoy a decent shower.
The Background
Bad showers by government mandate are one symptom of a larger problem. Beginning in the 1970s, and in the most stealthy way, government at all levels began to unravel the gains civilization had made over the century in household management. Through regulations, bans, restrictions, and controls, essential domestic functions have been seriously compromised.
Think of all the great advances: indoor plumbing, showers and baths, washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators, and flush toilets. What would life be like without them? None of us can even imagine. But the government apparently can imagine it because its regulatory apparatus is gradually taking them all away.
To be sure, government once pretended to do good things for us like build parks, boost income, bring electricity to rural areas, and the like. Today, it is the opposite. It sees its role as restricting and tearing down what the private sector creates — for our own good. This is why it is constantly telling us that it must curb our lifestyles. The regulators restrict what we consume, control what we do, crack down on our ability to live a good life.
If some activity is going well, some new item is making life better, some food or gadget is newly popular, you can be sure that some bureaucrat is plotting to restrict its use or ban it. Politicians on both the left and the right imagine that their main role is thinking of ways to control how we live, direct how we spend what money we make, and take away freedoms and rights once taken for granted.
A glorious morning shower is one casualty of this regulatory invasion.
The Showerhead
If you head to the Delta Faucet site, you will see a notice about flow restrictors in their showerheads. “While it is possible to remove flow restrictors from showerheads, we strongly advise against it for several reasons. Flow restrictors for faucets are an integral part of most aerators and it is generally not possible or desirable to remove them.”
Is that so? Of course it is not so. Showers in the old days were fantastic. They covered us with water — hot water — and kept us clean. Then government got involved to regulate how much water the bureaucrats think we should be using. The result was the mandate that every showerhead had to be deliberately degraded. The words on the Delta website reflect fear of government and have nothing to do with reality.
Today smaller manufacturers have found profits in advertising showerheads with “removable” flow restrictors. These are best but you can also remove them from the parts you get at the big-box hardware stores. Once I had to actually take a drill to the thing to make it happen but it can be done. And it must be done or else you find yourself running around in the shower trying to get yourself covered with the pathetic trickle that the government has mandated for us.
You might have some vague memory from childhood, and perhaps it returns when visiting someone who lives in an old home. You turn on the shower and the water washes over your whole self as if you are standing under a warm-spring waterfall. It is generous and therapeutic. The spray is heavy and hard, enough even to work muscle cramps out of your back, enough to wash the conditioner out of your hair, enough to leave you feeling wholly renewed — enough to get you completely clean.
I was just in Brazil, a socialist country. Many terrible things are happening in this country but one great thing never changes. The showers are amazing. Amazing, I tell you! Go to Brazil and take a shower and you will never readapt to the terrible American ones.
Somehow, these days, it seems nearly impossible to recreate this in your new home. You go to the hardware store to find dozens and dozens of choices of shower heads. They have 3, 5, 7, even 9 settings from spray to massage to rainfall. Some have long necks. They glisten and look amazing. Masterful design!
Some you can hold in your hand. Some are huge like the lid to a pot and promise buckets of rainfall. The options seem endless. But you buy and buy, and in the end, they disappoint. It’s just water, and it never seems like enough.
Why do we believe that a showerhead can magically cause us to have better showers? The head part is only as good as the flow, and the flow needs to be as unimpeded as possible. It’s pretty simple if you think about it. All the rest is just marketing.
Regulatory Bite
Here is one example of why your showerhead cannot be good, from the Santa Cruz City Water Conservation Office: “If you purchased and installed a new showerhead in the last ten years, it will be a 2.5 gpm [gallons-per-minute] model, since all showerheads sold in California were low consumption models beginning in 1992.”
And it is not just crazy California. The Federal Energy Policy Act of 1992 mandates that “all faucet fixtures manufactured in the United States restrict maximum water flow at or below 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm) at 80 pounds per square inch (psi) of water pressure or 2.2 gpm at 60 psi.”
Or as the Department of Energy itself declares to all consumers and manufacturers: “Federal regulations mandate that new showerhead flow rates can’t exceed more than 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm) at a water pressure of 80 pounds per square inch (psi).”
As with all regulations, the restriction on how much water can pour over you at once while standing in a shower is ultimately enforced at the point of a gun. Manufacturers must adhere to these regulations under penalty of law, and to be on the safe side and adjust for high-water pressure systems, they typically undershoot. If you try your showers right now, you will probably find that they dispense water at 2 gallons per minute or even less.
Together with other regulations concerning water pressure, your shower could fall to as low as 1.5 gallons per minute! This is not a modern shower. This is medieval peasantry. Poverty. Pathetic, state-of-nature stuff.
Sign of Prosperity, Gone
A rotten shower creates a rather serious problem for nearly everyone in the country. In the post-war period, Americans fell in love with luxurious showers, just because we could. A long shower with a blasting spray is a sign of prosperity, individualism, and good health. Popular lore holds that Americans are some of the most showered people in the world. If so, part of the reason is that we had great showerheads.
Clearly, the regulators, who regard it as their job to crush luxury and convenience whenever possible, wanted to put a stop to this. That’s the reason for the flow restrictors. Forget all that talk about saving water: these restrictions have a negligible effect on overall water use. In any case, whether we use more or less water should be governed by market forces.
To be sure, some companies have tried to get around the regulations by making models with multiple showerheads. This worked for a while because the regulations, if read literally, only regulate the amount of water a per-shower-head basis. But the companies that make double and triple-headed models have also faced investigation and harassment.
But then what can the government do about the length of showers? After all, there is no real way to regulate how much water we use and pay for. Maybe the shower heads have to have timers on them. And maybe the feds need to put up little monitors in our showers to make sure that we have stopped and started them.
You might say that water needs to be conserved. Yes, and so does every other scarce good. The peaceful way to do this is through the price system. But because municipal water systems have created artificial shortages, other means become necessary. One regulation piles on top of another, and the next thing you know, you have shower commissars telling you what you can or cannot do in the most private spaces.
You Pay for What You Use
And also consider this. According to the government’s own water usage statistic, domestic use constitutes only 1 percent of the total, and that includes all the water we use on our lawns. In other words, whether we use a lot or a little bit of water in our showers means absolutely nothing as regards our nation’s consumption of water. Why are they doing this to us then? Just to spread that sense of obedience and misery, I suppose. But has central planning ever been more ridiculous, intrusive, and self-defeating?
Most manufacturers adhere to the regulations, and the government has pushed them to make their products ever more useless. But savvy consumers know how to get around the problem. Many people now hack their showers — or customize them, if you prefer.
You can take your shower head down, pull the washer out with a screwdriver, and remove the offending intrusion that is restricting water flow. It can be a tiny second washer or it can be a hard plastic piece. Just pop it out and replace the washer. Sometimes it is necessary to trim it out using a pen knife.
Using such strategies, you can increase your water flow from 2 gallons per minute to 3 and even 4 gallons per minute. You can easily clock this using a stopwatch and a milk carton.
Using this method, I was easily able to expand my gallons per minute on each shower in my house to an average of 3.4 gpm, thereby recreating that childhood sense of gushes of water pouring down.
But Which One?
I headed over to Home Depot and checked out their selection. You have to be very careful. There are hundreds of products, ranging in price from $1.97 to this one for $4,249.69:
Fancy, huh? I can’t be sure but I’m guessing that you can’t hack it. It does no more to get water on you than the cheapest one. But it can be intimidating even just shopping. We all want a good shower, and most of us know that our showers are terrible. Surely spending more will improve our lot in life? Surely? Here is the shocking answer: no. It will not be better. It will be fancier but not better.
I bought 5 affordable ones, and hacked 4 of the 5 (the 5th one I destroyed and still couldn’t hack).
There was one showerhead that was the easier to hack. I pulled out the washer and pushed in long-nosed pliers. The flow stopper came right out. I put the washer back in and put it in the shower. The results are absolutely spectacular.
But here is the shock. The right showerhead is the cheapest one they offer. It costs $1.97. It is plastic. Light. Pretty. Easy to hack. Forget the supposed performance rating. Once hacked, this beauty is an 11.
You know the old rule that you get what you pay for? Maybe that is true in a pure free market. But in our regulated, truncated, tricked-up consumer marketplace, illusions abound. Sometimes you are just paying for what you think will be better but is actually not. This is the #1 example I’ve ever seen.
And you know what? I love that I’ve written this article, especially if you follow my advice. You will be thanking me every day for the rest of your life.
Here is my image post-hacking. I used the one tool pictured here and the offending flow-stopping was easily removed.
Conclusion
Government is often working to roll back the gains markets have made over the centuries and slowly unravel the resulting civilization, driving us back and back. Fortunately government is doing this more slowly than private markets are building civilization, which is why we continue to see progress all around us. It’s a race between them and us. How long can we keep outrunning them? I don’t know, but insofar as we are able, we must keep trying.
Hacking your showerhead is a great start. It is a way to be part of the solution. After all, it will only set you back $1.97 and about 10 seconds of your time.
You don’t even have to take the risks of dealing with a black-market showerhead dealers, as in this famous Seinfeld episode.
Think your rent is too damn high? Well, taking a look at the latest figures out of Manhattan might make you feel better by comparison.
In July, the average rent for a one-bedroom in Manhattan rose to $5,113, CBS News reports. That’s an astounding $1,000 more than a year ago and a new record high. These levels of rent are astronomical and impossible for all but the most affluent New Yorkers to afford.
But before you blame capitalism or greedy developers, let’s take a deeper look at how rents in New York City got so out of control.
The Basics of Rental Markets and Supply & Demand
How are rental prices determined in the first place? Well, in a free market, supply and demand interact to reach a price. If there’s far more demand for housing than there is supply in a given area, rents will be high, at first. But those high rents will encourage more developers to come in and build housing, increasing supply and ultimately bringing the price down.
Yet in places like New York City, local governments have made that adjustment impossible through restrictions on supply. The result of artificially-constrained housing supply in a high-demand area is as predictable as it is perilous: high prices and a housing crisis.
How Has NYC Restricted Supply?
There’s a long and complicated history of government meddling in New York City’s rental market. But here are a few of the biggest ways local officials have hindered the market’s ability to provide affordable housing.
1. Single-Family Zoning & Height Limits
Through zoning, the local government has declared that large swaths of the city’s property may only host single-family residences. This doesn’t make much sense in a city with millions of people.
According to the advocacy group Open New York, “Roughly 15% of New York City’s land area is still zoned as single-family-only land, banning apartments or multiple-unit dwellings of any size, including those with only two units.” These restrictions are highly inefficient and prevent the development of large-scale housing, like apartments, that could greatly increase the supply compared to a single home.
So, too, arbitrary restrictions on height limits remain in place on many NYC properties. These force landlords to provide fewer apartments per lot than they’d otherwise be able to, fueling the affordability crisis and pricing New Yorkers out of homes, often in the name of scenic beauty or protecting special interests.
2. Highly Restrictive Permitting Process
New York City’s government has made it very hard to get approval to build new housing.
“New York City housing permitting has cratered to lows not seen since the Great Recession, and it’s not for lack of demand,” housing policy expert Nolan Gray told me. “NYC [has] had some of the strictest zoning rules in the country, making it hard to legally build much of anything.”
Look, for example, at the below graph showing how much housing (relative to population) various cities have permitted in recent years. You’ll see New York City at the very bottom.
With the supply of new housing so blatantly throttled, it’s no surprise that rents have skyrocketed. It’s exactly what the laws of economics predicted, given the myriad government restrictions on NYC’s housing market.
But, unfortunately, many unknowing onlookers may look at the egregious $5,000+ rent rates popping up in Manhattan and blame the market, when, in fact, it is the government’s constraints on the free market that are to blame. They might even respond to the manifest injustice of this affordability crisis by supporting more of the nice-sounding, big-government policies that got us into this mess.
Yet, hopefully, people can look deeper and see the real root causes at play here. Because New Yorkers will continue to suffer until policymakers wake up—and finally free the rental market once and for all.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-08-16 13:59:202022-08-16 14:00:29Rents for One-Bedroom Apartments in Manhattan Hit a Record High of $5,100 in July. Here’s Why
Below matches what our great candidates for school boards across Florida like Jill Sessions, Rick Nolte, Terry Clark and Justin Sharpless on Polk County have been emphasizing along with Parent’s Rights.
The current Polk County School Board and Superintendent Heid just doesn’t get it as illustrated by their decision to support an OPT-OUT rather than an OPT-IN policy when it comes to age inappropriate and, in some cases, pornographic books in the PCPS media centers; gay pride month proclamations and refusal to put out a written policy that software available to teachers and students called Nearpod would not contain any access to Critical Race Theory.
It is a myth that some Politically Correct teachers are not referring to gender identity pronouns or CRT.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has issued a tweet listing the types of subjects schools should, and should not, be teaching — the governor declared that Sunshine State schools will educate, rather than indoctrinate, students.
“As students head back to their classrooms this fall, I’m happy to clear up any ‘confusion’ the media may have about appropriate curriculum,” DeSantis tweeted, listing “Math, Reading, Writing” as approved subjects, but critical race theory, “Sexualized Content,” and “Transgender Ideology” as disapproved topics. “Florida schools will educate children, not indoctrinate them,” he added.
The tweet earned plaudits from many on social media.
Responding to the governor’s post, Parents Defending Education founder and president Nicki Neily tweeted that “this is EXACTLY what parents want.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Royal A. Brown IIIhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngRoyal A. Brown III2022-08-16 13:30:132022-08-16 13:30:28Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, ‘Sunshine State Schools Will Educate Not Indoctrinate’
It’s been a bad stretch for the phony climate change narrative, lately.
A new report shows 96 percent of NOAA’s temperature stations don’t meet the agency’s own placement standards. They are deliberately placed near urban areas in order to overstate average temperatures, leading to the now-routine bogus claims we’re having the ‘hottest year on record’.
Someone pointed out the inconvenient truth that NASA has recognized over the years that the biggest factor affecting temperature and climate is the sun, specifically, variations in the earth’s solar orbit. Fly too close to the sun, and things get a little warmer, whodathunkit.
Those disappearing coral reefs in Australia? Well, guess what – they’ve rebounded to record levels. Environmentalists routinely tell you the sky is falling and the coral reefs are disappearing, but neither is true.
The climatistas prattle on about extreme weather events, but the fact of the matter is that the number of climate-related deaths has dropped by 99 percent since 1920 and is now approaching zero – except for storm chasers, of course. Oh, by the way, the number of tropical cyclones has dropped 13 percent since pre-industrial times, a new study found. Sorry to rain on your anti-growth parade.
The climate change crowd is deceiving you when it claims extreme weather is increasing and climate change is to blame. It turns out that the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – IPCC – recently changed its methods, producing an increase in extreme weather events on paper but not in the real world. “(T)he latest IPCC report has introduced novel ‘attribution’ statistics and now insists that things are getting worse. It’s yet another case of scientists trying to scare the public into compliance,” a recent paper said.
So-called experts say sea levels are rising, but photos show they’re not, and the satellite data underlying the sea level rise claim has not been vetted for satellite altitude which makes all the difference in the method used.
Greenies hyperventilate about the water level at Lake Powell being down 94 feet since 2000 and blame evaporation from hotter temperatures, but it is government policies that produced the drop. The original plan was to hold back water in wet years to make up for dry years, but the government now releases more water than originally planned in wet years, leaving no cushion. You can’t blame that on climate change – or maybe you can, if you’re dishonest.
Similarly, it is government policies that are producing the increasing wildfire problem in the West. Litigation under environmental laws and environmental reviews have delayed thinning and controlled burns. Some controlled burns are being done, stupidly, in windy conditions. So look to forest management, not climate change, if you’re sincerely interested in finding the culprit instead of just demagoguing the issue.
California and Germany are finding out that alternative energy isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. Faced with electricity shortages from pursuing green energy policies, both are moving toward increasing reliance on their fossil fuel and nuclear power plants.
If you’re pinning your hopes the planet won’t burn up on the new climate bill Joe Biden is signing today, you might want to reconsider. If you use U.N. climate models and everything in the bill goes swimmingly, the average temperature of the earth in the year 2100 will be 61.972 degrees instead of 62.0 degrees, best case. I’m so relieved, and I’m so glad we’re spending $739 billion dollars to achieve a drop of 0.028 degrees. Lollipop, anyone?
This would certainly explain it. These corrupt, politicized agents of the Democrat Party were acting to protect themselves, and to keep the truth about their coup against Donald Trump from being fully known. The party that waxes so tremendously self-righteous about “insurrection” and their need to protect “our democracy” is actually the party that is threatening to destroy our free republic altogether. They are the party of the oligarchy of corporations and elites, the party of the rich getting richer and expanding their hegemony, the party of exclusion and hatred masquerading as the party of inclusion and tolerance. They lie constantly; if they’re telling the truth about the raid on Mar-a-Lago, that would be the biggest bombshell of all.
Agents who were behind the FBI’s raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago are under investigation for abusing their power in Special Counsel John Durham’s Russia Hoax probe, according to reports.
Investigative reporter Paul Sperry has revealed that the FBI may have had a personal stake in the raid on Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida residence.
According to Sperry, agents may have been searching for classified documents related to the Obama-era Spygate operation.
Earlier this week, Sperry was suspended by Twitter for sharing the new findings related to the raid.
“DEVELOPING: Investigators reportedly met back in June w Trump & his lawyers in Mar-a-Lago storage rm to survey docs & things seemed copasetic but then FBI raids weeks later,” Sperry tweeted before his account was suspended.
“Speculation on Hill FBI had PERSONAL stake & searching for classified docs related to its #Spygate scandal.”
On Saturday, Sperry followed up with more bombshell information regarding the FBI agents involved in the raid.
According to Paul Sperry, the federal agents involved in the Mar-a-Lago raid are under investigation by Durham for their possible role in the anti-Trump Russia Hoax.
In a social media post on Saturday, Sperry said:
Developing: Sources say the FBI agents and officials who were involved in the raid on former President Trump’s home work in the same Counterintelligence Division of the FBI that investigated Trump in the Russiagate hoax and are actively under criminal investigation by Special Counsel John Durham for potentially abusing their power investigating Trump in the Russian fraud and therefore have a potential conflict of interest and should have been RECUSED from participating in this supposed ‘espionage’ investigation at Mar-a-Lago….
It appears the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to seize documents that likely implicated the bureau’s own agents.
Yet, it now appears that they’re claiming the records were related to nuclear weapons to justify the raid.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-08-16 09:10:262022-08-16 09:12:43FBI Raided Mar-a-Lago to Seize Documents that Likely Implicated the Bureau’s own Agents in Russia Hoax
A doctor at Boston Children’s Hospital put out a video selling “gender affirming hysterectomies” for children with gender dysphoria.
Boston Children’s Hospital (@BostonChildrens) says that toddlers can know they are transgender. Some signs are refusing a haircut or playing with the opposite gender toys. pic.twitter.com/bEoWt1wI1l
Related procedures, like double mastectomies, are available at the Hospital to minors as young as 15 without parental consent. Not to be outdone, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh is putting out videos promoting puberty blockers for kids. Ca-ching, ca-ching.
The institutionalization of transgenderism is occurring, not only in children’s hospitals, but in the federal government and world medical societies. The Biden administration spent one and a half million dollars to develop feel-good programs for transgender inmates. It is also proposing a new rule to force private insurers to pay for children’s sex change drugs and surgery. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health lowered its recommended age for transgender drugs by two years to age 14 and by one year for some surgeries to age 15. Adults making choices in these matters is one thing, but there is a rush on to push life-altering transgenderism on kids who aren’t even legally competent to consent to a car loan.
That way lies trouble. The FDA placed a warning label on certain puberty blockers after reports of tumor-like masses in the brain, high blood pressure, and eye paralysis. Transgender advocates are trying to get to confused kids online, just like child sex predators, and telling kids how to get sex change drugs without their parents’ knowing about it. Stories are piling up about how transgenderism is separating parents from their children. Transgenderism is also ruining lives. More and more stories are piling up about young people who regret going down the road with sex change drugs and surgery, many of whom now want to detransition. [More here and here.]
Meanwhile, the transgender narrative keeps getting crazier and crazier. Germany is weighing a plan to let people change their gender declarations annually for government purposes. Transgender activists are pushing anthropologists not to identify ancient human remains as male or female. A blood donor was turned away because he refused to answer the question whether he had ever been pregnant. This insanity is getting institutionalized. The dictionary definition of ‘female’ is now those who identify as the ‘opposite of male’.
But the institutionalization of transgenderism is not inevitable. It’s possible to fight back and win. Britain will shut down its only gender clinic for minors after an investigation found doctors there were skipping all the normal case assessments and rushing even 10-year-olds into sex change drugs. We need a few investigations here. I suggest we start with Boston Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Ca-ching, ca-ching.
Brigham Young University stopped offering voice-coaching services for transgender clients at its speech clinic. But it’s really Florida that’s showing the way. Florida will prohibit Medicaid coverage for sex change surgeries and drugs, starting August 21st. The Florida medical board is moving to prohibit doctors in the state from providing sex change drugs and surgery to minors under 18. Victories like these are possible in your state. If you don’t know how to organize, contact me at tips@liberato.us and I’ll put you in touch with people who do.
Would you willingly spend $2,000 to buy an iPhone that today costs a grand? That’s how much veteran analyst Tim Bajarin tells me it would cost Apple to retail if it made iPhones in the United States.
Why shouldn’t Apple makes iPhones here? Well, here’s the problem. It’s not just money. Yes, there’s way lower labor costs involved. Skilled workers in China make about $100 a week, way less than we offer. There’s also the availability of parts in Asia and the lack of suitable manufacturing facilities here.
Think about the parts dilemma for a second. Remember that Apple makes more than 200 million iPhones yearly and has to come up with OLED screens, camera sensors, solid state storage drives and the like to put into every one of them.
These are all made-in-Asia products. “We lost manufacturing to Asia, Southeast Asia, India and Mexico two to three decades ago, and it’s never coming back,” Bajarin told me recently. Apple’s not alone. Cameras have been made in Asia for decades, Samsung creates its Galaxy phones in South Korea, Vietnam and India, Amazon gets Echo speakers made in China and Google gets the Pixel phone made in South Korea.
And from National Public Radio’s Marketplace‘s Stacey Vanek Smith’s 2014 report when the iPhone 5 cost between $650-$850 retail:
Labor’s not the most significant financial advantage to manufacturing the iPhone in China, where Apple has been able to create enormous iPhone-assembling villages. “They have these special regions, like Shenzhen, which is an industrial region,” explains Rene Ritchie, editor-in-chief of iMore, a publication about Apple products. “Anything you need is just a couple of buildings away, and the ability to keep everything so close together has incredible logistic advantages for Apple.”
Ritchie says it would be almost impossible to re-create that in the U.S., which would mean longer assembly times, less efficient assembly and lots of micro-shipments. “It’s an incredibly complicated process to build one of these devices and you’d have to move that entire culture of production to the U.S. in order for it to work,” says Ritchie.
“For almost every component that goes into the device, there may be as many as two or three sources,” says Andrew Rassweilier, Senior Director of Materials and Cost Benchmarking at IHS technology. “Then if you were to dig down another layer into some of the components, such as the display, the touch screen, the batteries. Those are also assemblies that are comprised of multiple components coming from, potentially, multiple counties.”
Rassweiler says making all of the iPhone’s parts in the U.S. would push the price of the iPhone’s components from $190 to around $600. “If the materials alone are costing $600,” says Rassweilier, “it stands to reason, that same iPhone could cost, perhaps, $2,000 at retail.”
That’s right. $2,000 for an iPhone. And it wouldn’t even earn political goodwill from most of its customers.
The U.S. only brings in 6 percent of profits from iPhone sales. “Two out of three Apple customers aren’t in the USA anymore,” says the Yankee Group’s Carl Howe. “That’s quite a change from many years ago when most of Apple’s customers were in the US.”
In addition to not understanding the basic economic principles of international trade, the Mercantilist-in-Chief also apparently doesn’t understand very well the business principles and dynamics of international production activities that are driven by complex, intricate, cross-border, global supply and value chains that have taken decades to develop. And it’s those global supply chains that are at work with the ultimate goal of producing products most efficiently to provide maximum value for global consumers. The Apple iPhone is a perfect example of a globally produced product for global consumers, with two-thirds of those consumers living outside the USA.
Apple, Inc. has a responsibility to its shareholders and consumers to produce and sell its products at the lowest price in a hyper-competitive global marketplace. Large multi-national corporations like Apple, although many are headquartered in the USA, operate in global marketplaces for inputs, parts, production, and sales and have to operate with a global mindset to be competitive and remain in business. To force those global companies like Apple to operate within Trump’s nationalistic and mercantilist view of the global economy is a sure formula for impoverishing America and its multi-national corporations, not a formula for any kind of American greatness.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-08-16 07:30:432022-08-16 07:30:43A ‘Made in America’ iPhone Would Cost $2,000, Studies Show
In each of these cities, inflation is higher than 10 percent.
My wife and I recently were out for our morning walk and she commented on how weird inflation is. Some prices are sky high, she observed, while others have barely budged.
A carton of eggs is up 33 percent over the last year, while tomatoes haven’t changed at all. Airline flights are through the roof, but the cabin we rented on our last vacation was several hundred dollars less than in previous years. Our electric bill is soaring, but her personal care products and my son’s new sneakers were about the same (or less) than what she had previously paid.
It’s clear that prices are a complicated business, and not just because value is subjective. The cost of producing and distributing goods in an economy is incredibly complex, something no single person can possibly understand, let alone calculate.
While the basic economics of inflation tend to be simple—increase the money supply and, all else equal, money becomes less valuable—the specifics of inflation can be complex and difficult to understand, because economies are complex and difficult to understand.
We see this not just in the fact that some products and services are impacted by inflation more than others. We also see it by the fact that inflation is rising in some places more than others.
While recent data released by the Labor Department show that inflation slowed down in July (8.5 percent annualized), it remains hot, especially in certain places. A recent report by WalletHub found that in many US cities, prices are 10 percent higher than a year ago.
Below is a list of the five cities where inflation is the highest, according to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data.
Anchorage, Alaska: 12.4%
Phoenix, Arizona: 12.3%
Atlanta, Georgia: 11.5%
Tampa Bay, Florida: 11.2%
Baltimore, Maryland: 10.6%
‘Largely a History of Inflation’?
Following the release of the government’s inflation numbers on Wednesday, many suggested the US economy may be at an inflation “turning point.” Hopefully this is true, but it is far from certain.
An abundance of historical evidence shows that governments are far better at creating inflation than curbing inflation, a phenomenon that has plagued (and even destroyed) civilizations ranging from the Roman Empire to 20th Century China and beyond.
“I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek once observed.
This is why Hayek saw it as imperative to take the control of money “out of the hands of government.” History shows that those in power spend beyond their means, and these debts eventually come due. When they do, rulers turn to money printing or other forms of currency debasement, eroding its value (sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly).
The US is a long way from the hyperinflation that crippled Weimar Germany—where in 1923 a single US dollar was worth a trillion marks—and plagues Venezuela even today, but inflation is a patient killer. Over time, it eats away at retirement accounts, pensions, wages, and savings, and as my colleague Peter Jacobsen noted last year, working-class and poorer Americans are the ones least able to protect themselves from inflation and most likely to feel the difference.
Most Americans don’t need an economist or politician to point out the harms of inflation, especially those living in Anchorage, Phoenix, Atlanta, Tampa, and Baltimore.
What they need is sound money, but it’s clear that is something they will not get as long as the government controls it.
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-08-16 07:19:092022-08-17 10:17:19The 5 Cities With the Highest Inflation in America
Biden’s catastrophically botched withdrawal from Afghanistan was bad enough in itself, diminishing America’s standing in the world and projecting an image of weakness that has encouraged and emboldened enemies of our nation worldwide. The fallout from it, however, could be incalculably worse. A Defense Department (DoD) whistleblower has revealed that 324 of the Afghans whom U.S. forces brought to the United States as the disaster in Afghanistan was unfolding appeared on the department’s Biometrically Enabled Watchlist (BEWL), which includes terrorists, and yet were admitted into the country without being vetted. No one who has been watching the spreading dumpster fire that is the Biden administration could possibly be surprised.
Senators Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) have called upon the DoD to investigate. On Thursday, they wrote to DoD Acting Inspector General Sean O’Donnell about their “concern over new allegations raised by a Department of Defense (DoD) whistleblower. This information may show the Biden Administration’s failure to vet those evacuated from Afghanistan was even worse than the public was led to believe. The following allegations demand an immediate investigation by your office.” There should indeed be an investigation, but in these days of the hyper-politicization of everything and concomitant wokeification of the government bureaucracy, a genuinely illuminating investigation is about as likely to happen as Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis getting the Democrat nomination for president in 2024.
Epoch Times reported Friday that “the BEWL identifies individuals whose biometrics have been collected and determined by analysts to be threats or potential threats to national security, including known suspected terrorists.” But instead of stopping those who appeared on this watchlist, the whistleblower contents that “White House and DoD officials instructed agency personnel to ‘cut corners’ and not conduct full fingerprint tests on the evacuees at staging bases in Europe, ‘in order to promote the rushed evacuation from Afghanistan.’”
The whistleblower also charges that “Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staff were authorized to delete old biometric data at their discretion.” Really, what could possibly go wrong? Hawley and Johnson point out, with admirable understatement, that this is a “troubling development that could threaten national security and public safety.”
Yeah, it could. And as it was all initially unfolding, Joe Biden was doing what he does best: lying. Sensitive to criticism arising from the importation of unvetted Afghans in the U.S., Biden declared in September 2021 that “planes taking off from Kabul are not flying directly to the United States. They’re landing at U.S. military bases and transit centers around the world. At these sites where they are landing, we are conducting thorough scrutiny — security screenings for everyone who is not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident.” State Department spokesman Ned Price added: “Before anyone who is evacuated from Afghanistan comes to this country, they undergo a rigorous vet. Unless and until they complete that vet they will not be in a position to come to the U.S.”
In reality, however, there appeared to be a concerted effort to bring unvetted Afghans into the United States. At least 82,000 Afghans were brought to the U.S. without being vetted. In October 2021, Senate Republicans noted in a memo, accordingto the Washington Examiner, “senior officials across the departments of Homeland Security, Defense, State, and Justice described a disastrous screening and vetting process.” Immigration officials accepted uncritically what Afghans said about who they were, without making any effort to check their stories. According to the Examiner, “the large majority of people, approximately 75%, evacuated were not American citizens, green card holders, Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders, or applicants for the visa.”
Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) had been given to Afghans who aided U.S. forces in Afghanistan. In September 2021, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas revealed that “of the 60,000 Afghans who have entered the U.S., nearly 8,000 are either U.S. citizens or residents, while about 1,800 are SIV holders, having obtained visas after assisting the U.S. military.” That meant that 52,000 of the 60,000 Afghans who had come into the country were not U.S. citizens or SIV holders. In November 2021, Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) stated that only 700 of the 82,000 Afghans now in the U.S. were SIV holders.
The Examiner noted that Biden’s reception of these Afghans “violated long-standing U.S. government policies for handling refugees.” This was a deliberate decision: “Refugees are to be screened and vetted before being admitted to the U.S. through an extensive process that includes multiple interrogations. Rather than follow the protocol, the Biden administration instructed federal law enforcement and military officials handling the evacuations and processing to adhere to less stringent standards.”
Hawley confronted FBI director Christopher Wray about all this Thursday. According to Epoch Times, “Wray wasn’t able to give a clear answer about the FBI’s efforts to track down and interview the 324 Afghan evacuees.” Once again, no one should be surprised. Clearly this is all going the way the Leftist elites want it to go.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Center For Security Policyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCenter For Security Policy2022-08-16 07:08:282022-08-16 07:08:28Biden’s Handlers Released 324 Unvetted Afghan Evacuees on Terror Watchlist into the U.S.
The Democrats will prosecute their way to victory.
On Thursday, FBI Director Christopher Wray cut short his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee to fly the FBI’s private jet to his family’s vacation home. At the hearing, Wray had admitted that disciplinary action against FBI personnel involved in Russiagate abuses had been “slowed down” and refused to call Russiagate a “hoax”.
On Monday, President Trump revealed that Mar-a-Lago had been raided by “a large group of FBI agents”. Any warrant for such a raid would have been signed off on by Attorney General Merrick Garland and his associates in the Biden administration which expects to face the former president in the next election. Wray, who quietly listened to complaints about the politicization of the FBI from Senator Grassley and Cruz, among others, would have known what was coming.
The New York Times reported that, “according to two people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, after he left the White House.”
Back in May, the paper revealed that a federal grand jury investigation had been convened over boxes of “government documents, mementos, gifts and letters” taken to Mar-a-Lago. There was no federal investigation when the Clintons left the White House with $190,000 worth of “china, flatware, rugs, televisions, sofas and other gifts”. The FBI didn’t come knocking at Chappaqua.
This isn’t about the documents. Just as Russiagate was not about the Russians. It’s not about the 15 boxes of documents, letters and assorted presidential records and gifts that were hurriedly packed up and sent off to Mar-a-Lago, most of which were later returned when the National Archives requested them, this is about the 2024 presidential election.
The assorted Trump investigations were not motivated by concerns about national security, political norms and they’re certainly not driven by sudden worries about mishandling classified documents. And yet the same media which spent years explaining why mishandling classified documents was no big deal when the Clintons did it will explain why it’s a big deal now.
While the FBI handed out immunity agreements to Hillary Clinton staffers who mishandled classified documents and erased their devices, expect any Trump staffers to be hit with the highest possible charges and penalties, and for any information seized from them to be used to develop cases against Trump and other administration figures. That’s what this is really about.
The Mar-a-Lago raid is a more aggressive version of the same Russiagate tactics which were aimed at busting and flipping Trump associates, while gathering any materials that can be spun off into related or entirely unrelated investigations. The FBI raid will not result in charges against Trump, but will probably be used to hit staffers and aides with security violations. This has the dual purpose of keeping them from serving in any future administration and putting them through the wringer, running up massive legal bills and getting them to testify against Trump.
And it’s only happening because the Democrats expect to run against Trump in 2024.
There’s no coincidence that Trump investigations have once again ramped up, after quieting down, as the former president began sending signals that he intends to run again. If Trump had announced that he was formally retiring, there would be no FBI agents at Mar-a-Lago. Instead they would be headed to the homes of any of the potential conservative frontrunners who would suddenly be facing subpoenas, entrapment and wiretapping run out of D.C.
Biden’s abysmal polling makes it impossible for him to win by any means short of this. And the Democrats have no popular candidates waiting in the wings. Anyone else they run, from Kamala to Buttigieg to Bernie to Newsom to Hillary stands no chance of winning over the public.
All that’s left is this.
The Obama administration used the Justice Department to rig the 2016 election. The Biden administration began the same process early on. It has weaponized the DOJ in previously unprecedented ways to shape the voting map, to rally its base and investigate its enemies.
It will get worse as the apparatchiks of a lame duck administration truly get desperate.
As President Trump pointed out, “Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 E-mail AFTER they were subpoenaed by Congress. Absolutely nothing happened to hold her accountable.”
The FBI handed out immunity agreements to top Hillary aides in exchange for access to their devices and then went on to destroy laptops even though Congress wanted access to them.
Over 2,000 emails on Hillary’s server were found to be classified. 37 pages were deemed top secret. Senator Grassley listed 588 security violations. Hillary’s unconvincing defense of mishandling classified information was that she didn’t know what a “C” stood for.
From the removal of boxes of documents from Vince Foster’s office after his suicide to Bill’s National Security Advisor Sandy Berger stuffing classified documents from the National Archives into his pants and socks, the Clintons have made document theft their specialty.
And it’s all too typical for Trump to be accused of the crimes that the Clintons committed.
But the alleged crimes in a political investigation don’t matter. What does matter is the strong signal from the Biden administration that what the Obama administration did quietly, it will do loudly, aggressively targeting a prospective political opponent with a series of politically motivated investigations using the full force and authority of the Justice Department.
That is a constitutional crisis.
The allegations and investigations will continue to shift as they have since Day 1. Whether it’s the Russians, the Ukrainians, Jan 6, and now classified document handling procedures, and whatever they come up with tomorrow, Biden’s DOJ intends to win by indicting his opponents.
The Democrats have given up winning the 2024 presidential campaign at the polls and intend to win it at the hands of their prosecutors and judges.
Instead of winning over the public, they want to prosecute their way to victory.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-08-16 06:49:332022-08-16 06:57:56The Mar-a-Lago Raid is a Preview of a Rigged 2024 Election
The Atlantic continues to ignore and deny jihad violence.
Can you even imagine The Atlantic writing about any aspect of Islamic piety in remotely militaristic terms? They’d sooner close their doors forever than publish something so “Islamophobic” about a religion whose holy texts actually teach and sanction violence against unbelievers. But this? No problem.
by Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart, August 15, 2022:
ROME — The Atlantic has likened the rosary to an AR-15 assault weapon in an incendiary attack Sunday on conservative Catholics.
“Just as the AR-15 rifle has become a sacred object for Christian nationalists in general, the rosary has acquired a militaristic meaning for radical-traditional (or ‘rad trad’) Catholics,” writes Toronto-based Daniel Panneton in an Atlantic article released the day before the Catholic feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (August 15).
Never mind that the highest-profile rosary-wielding U.S. Catholic is President Joe Biden, Panneton powers forward, alleging darkly that armed radical traditionalists “have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into something dangerously literal.”
The writer cites progressive Church historian and commentator Massimo Faggioli in describing conservative Catholic bloggers as a “Catholic cyber-militia” that actively campaigns against LGBTQ acceptance in the Church and for whom “rosary-as-weapon memes represent a social-media diffusion of such messaging.”
Panneton goes on to assert that “the far right’s constellations of violent, racist, and homophobic online milieus are well documented for providing a pathway to radicalization and real-world terrorist attacks.”
“Militia culture, a fetishism of Western civilization, and masculinist anxieties have become mainstays of the far right in the U.S.—and rad-trad Catholics have now taken up residence in this company,” he declares.
One Catholic online store goes so far as to sell “replicas of the rosaries issued to American soldiers during the First World War as ‘combat rosaries,’” he warns, to which can be added a “concealed carry” permit a storage box “resembling an ammunition can.”
This dangerous alliance between prayer and warfare seems to have penetrated the highest levels of the Church and Panneton writes that in 2016, “the pontifical Swiss Guard accepted a donation of combat rosaries” and during a ceremony at the Vatican, their commander described the gift as “the most powerful weapon that exists on the market.”…
