Category Archives: Choke Point

Talking Points Against the Obama Immigrant Policy

Posted on by

Cost of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Just in 2012

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the largest investigative agency in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). With more than 20,000 employees worldwide, ICE is a key component of the DHS layered defense approach to protecting the United States. ICE has requested an annual budget of more than $5.8 billion for FY 2012, with budget figures in key categories detailed below.

Salaries and Expenses

Homeland Security Investigations

ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) enforces trade and immigration laws through the investigation of activities, persons and events that may pose a threat to the safety or security of the United States and its citizens.

HSI’s Domestic Investigations investigates illegal trafficking in weapons (including weapons of mass destruction), the smuggling of narcotics and other contraband, human smuggling and trafficking, money laundering and other financial crimes, fraudulent trade practices, identity and benefit fraud, child pornography, child sex tourism, employers that hire illegal and undocumented workers, and health and public safety dangers.

HSI’s Office of International Investigations conducts investigative efforts in 69 Attaché offices in 47 foreign locations. The office works with foreign counterparts to identify and combat criminal organizations before they can adversely impact the United States, including the Visa Security Program, which focuses on high-risk visa-issuance locations to identify and interdict potential threats before they enter the United States.

Cost of Detention

Back in 2013: Keeping illegal immigrants behind bars costs $120 a day per inmate, or $2 billion a year. Congress has twice rebuffed White House budget requests to cut the quota so ICE can turn to less costly measures, such as ankle bracelets, to keep tabs on the immigrants it’s trying to deport. It’s “artificial,” Janet Napolitano, former secretary of Homeland Security, said at an April hearing. Without the mandate the agency could free low-risk offenders and put them on supervised release to ensure that detainees show up in court for deportation hearings, she said. “We ought to be detaining according to our priorities, according to public-safety threats, level of offense, and the like,” she said.

Getting Released

They are convicted rapists, child molesters, and kidnappers — among “the worst of the worst,” as one law enforcement agency put it. Yet the Globe found that immigration officials have released them without making sure they register with local authorities as sex offenders.

And once US Immigration and Customs Enforcement frees them, agency officials often lose track of the criminals, despite outstanding deportation orders against them. The Globe determined that Hernandez Carrera and several other offenders had failed to register as sex offenders, a crime. By law, police are supposed to investigate if such offenders fail to update their address within days of their release. But local officials said they did not learn that ICE had released the offenders until after the Globe inquired about their cases.

The following are some of the thousands of convicted criminals released by ICE in the US in recent years because their homelands refused to take them back.

“It’s chilling,” said Thomas H. Dupree Jr., a former deputy assistant US attorney general who led a 2008 federal court battle to keep Hernandez Carrera locked up. “These are dangerous and predatory individuals who should not be prowling the streets. In fact, they should not be in the United States at all.” Many more details here.

Street Protests and Fights

From the Daily Caller: A manhunt is underway in Fargo, N.D. after two separate groups of immigrants from unknown countries began waging what is being described as a “street war” against each other earlier this week.

According to Valley News Live, police are currently searching for Luke Goodrich and Isaac Nyemah for their involvement in an alleged armed home invasion that took place Wednesday morning.

The Fargo Police Department is asking for your assistance in locating two individuals of interest that are believed to…

Posted by Fargo Police Department on Wednesday, June 10, 2015

It is unclear how, but the two men are allegedly involved in trouble that began Sunday at a birthday party in a Fargo park.

A group of 70 people were gathered when an altercation of some sort ensued. Men affiliated with one immigrant group smashed out the window of a car with a crowbar. The same men vandalized another vehicle shortly after. Police were initially called to the park because a DJ had been hired and party-goers were drinking alcohol, in violation of park rules.

 

 

 

EPA to Destroy the Entire Transportation Industry

Posted on by

The White House climate change, greenhouse emissions and clean air act is about to be completely out of control. The question is where is the Congress and where are you? Remember Barack Obama said in his commencement speech that climate change was the top threat to national security.

Washington (CNN)The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday it will propose a declaration that says carbon emissions from commercial planes contribute to climate change and hurt human health.

EPA also said it was working with the International Civil Aviation Organization, which includes 191 member states, to develop carbon dioxide standards for planes that would impact airlines in the U.S. and across the world.

“The EPA administrator is proposing to find that (greenhouse gas) emissions from certain classes of engines used primarily in commercial aircraft contribute to the air pollution that causes climate change and endangers public health and welfare,” the agency said in a statement, announcing an Aug. 11 hearing on the proposal and a 60-day window for the public to weigh in.

The move was the first step towards regulating air pollution from commercial airlines, but the ICAO standards aren’t expected to be adopted until early 2016. The earliest the EPA would be able to put out a notice of new standards would be in 2017, after President Barack Obama is out of office, and a final rule wouldn’t go into effect until at least 2018.

The future regulation would apply to commercial aircraft and business jets, but not military aircraft, which the EPA does not have jurisdiction over.

Wednesday’s announcement is the latest in a series of moves from the Obama administration geared at combating climate change, which Obama has characterized as an immediate national security threat.

*** WSJ: The Obama administration is planning a series of actions this summer to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions from wide swaths of the economy, including trucks, airplanes and power plants, kicking into high gear an ambitious climate agenda that the president sees as key to his legacy.

And in August, the agency will complete a suite of three regulations lowering carbon from the nation’s power plants—the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s climate-change agenda.

The proposals represent the biggest climate push by the administration since 2009, when the House passed a national cap-and-trade system proposed by the White House aimed at reducing carbon emissions.

Anticipating the rules, some of which have been telegraphed in advance, opponents of Mr. Obama’s regulatory efforts are moving to block them. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), is urging governors across the country to defy the EPA by not submitting plans to comply with its rule cutting power-plant emissions.

Nearly all Republicans and some Democrats representing states dependent on fossil fuels say the Obama administration is going beyond the boundary of the law and usurping the role of Congress by imposing regulations that amount to a national energy tax driven by ideological considerations.

“The Administration seems determined to double down on the type of deeply regressive regulatory policy we’ve already seen it try to impose on lower-and-middle-class families in every state,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement. “These Obama administration regulations share several things in common with the upcoming directives: they seem motivated more by ideology than science, and they’re likely to negatively affect the economy and hurt both the cost and reliability of energy for hard-working American families and small-business owners.”

Two factors are driving the timing of the push this summer. The administration wants to complete it ahead of December’s United Nations summit on climate change, where world leaders will meet in Paris to decide whether to agree on a global accord to cut carbon emissions. The EPA’s regulatory agenda represents nearly everything Mr. Obama is set to offer world leaders on what the U.S. is doing to address climate change.

Secondly, once the EPA rules on emissions by power plants become final, states will have a year to submit plans while lawsuits challenging the rule are expected to be heard by the courts. The administration wants to make sure that its officials can oversee as much of these two developments as possible instead of relying on the next president, especially if it is one of the GOP White House candidates who have expressed opposition to the EPA’s climate agenda altogether.

 

2009 White House FOIA Memo, Critical Today

Posted on by

Greg Craig, White House counsel drafted a memo to all agencies. That memo is found here. It is important as earlier this week there were two days of hearings on the Freedom of Information Act broken program that was revisited due in part to Hillary Clinton’s emails.

This was not the first hearing. A prior hearing was in March of 2012 with the same topic, introducing the issues of obstruction by the Department of Justice and the White House of the FOIA process.

‘Most transparent’ White House ever rewrote the FOIA to suppress politically sensitive docs

An April 15, 2009, memo from then-White House Counsel Greg Craig instructing the executive branch to let White House officials review any documents sought by FOIA requestors that involved “White House equities.”

That phrase is nowhere to be found in the FOIA, yet the Obama White House effectively amended the law to create a new exception to justify keeping public documents locked away from the public.

Forget making FOIA deadlines

The FOIA requires federal agencies to respond within 20 days of receiving a request, but the White House equities exception can make it impossible for an agency to meet that deadline.

In one case cited by Cause of Action, the response to a request from a Los Angeles Times reporter to the Department of the Interior for “communications between the White House and high-ranking Interior officials on various politically sensitive topics” was delayed at least two years by the equities review.

Jason Leopold, an investigative reporter gave his testimony this week. Of particular note is the Pentagon told him in written form to never file a FOIA request again. Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch told the congressional panel that his firm has had to sue the government 225 times to get it to comply to the FOIA law. Sharyl Attkisson a former investigative reporter for CBS explained in her testimony she in one case waited over 10 years for a FOIA response.

Human Rights Watch drafted a letter to the Oversight Committee explaining their exasperation with the delays and the unexplained redactions.

Some additional facts coming out of the two day hearings include, in 2014 there were over 700,000 FOIA requests. The majority of those requests went to the Department of Homeland Security asking for immigration documents. In all of government, there are an estimated 3000 people that fulfill the requests, yet no one explained who was responsible for redactions. Could that be decided at the White House? What is worse, a committee at the Department of Justice actually receives reports from all agencies on production of FOIA requests and scores them in a final report to congress. The most recent report to the success of the FOIA program scored all FOIA production processes received perfect scores.

There were many questions when it came to Hillary Clinton’s emails as she did not use any government email platform but rather by exclusive choice a private server and a series of private alias email addresses. Those opposing the investigation into Hillary, pressed several questions with regard to the email use of Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice. The response was no one has filed FOIA requests for their respective emails.

In summary, the White House has a team that asserts final decision-making with regard to FOIA requests and how and when they are fulfilled including those at the IRS.

Information is controlled by the White House and no so transparent at…ALL.

U.S. Healthcare, a Manufactured Crisis

Posted on by

Is Our Healthcare Crisis Man-Made?

by: Juliette Fildes

The media would have us believe that the healthcare crisis is us something that mysteriously arose out of a number of factors, including periods of economic crisis and an ever-growing deficit, yet what if the crisis was actually manufactured?

Americans are forced to buy insurance that doesn’t really protect them against their greatest health risks at all. There are many factors that reveal that insurance companies are favored, as are the pharmaceutical and medical industries. In the past, charity hospitals existed to attend to medical emergencies but over the past few decades, federal law has ensured that Americans can no longer receive unfunded care.

Healthcare should be about protecting the consumer, but as long as the medical industry is permitted to charge whatever price they deem fit for a procedure, there is little chance that Americans will pay the significantly lower prices paid by patients in other countries.

We must fight for the establishment of affordable alternatives to current hospitals and clinics; without a free market, it will be difficult for the situation to change for the better. Read about how the man-made health care crisis came about and discover how we can put an end to it.    

Understanding U.S. Healthcare Costs

Infographic provided by Calculators.org

Further Reading

 

What is Missing from the TPP? Reward Offered

Posted on by

If The TPP is Such a Great Idea, Why Keep it a Secret?

The Obama Administration has been pressuring members of Congress to pass the bill that will give President Obama the “fast track”  authority to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership(TPP) agreement without any debate in Congress.  Fast track authority would not allow for any amendments and the bill would remain secret until just before it is voted on.

“President Obama is currently pressing members of Congress to pass Fast-Track authority for a trade and investment agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). If Fast Track passes, it means that Congress must approve or deny the TPP with minimal debate and no amendments. Astonishingly, our lawmakers have not seen the agreement they are being asked to expedite.” Nation of Change

This trade agreement, like previous international trade agreements, like NAFTA, is not a partisan issue.  On just about every other piece of legislation that the Obama Administration has introduced to Congress, the Republican majority has stood fast against it.  However, in this instance, Congress appears to be strangely united in its efforts to pass a secret bill that they have not even been allowed to read.  More important details here.

WikiLeaks issues call for $100,000 bounty on monster trade treaty

Today WikiLeaks has launched a campaign to crowd-source a $100,000 reward for America’s Most Wanted Secret: the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). One chapter is found here.

Over the last two years WikiLeaks has published three chapters of this super-secret global deal, despite unprecedented efforts by negotiating governments to keep it under wraps. US Senator Elizabeth Warren has said

“[They] can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.”

The remaining 26 chapters of the deal are closely held by negotiators and the big corporations that have been given privilleged access. Today, WikiLeaks is taking steps to bring about the public’s rightful access to the missing chapters of this monster trade pact.

The TPP is the largest agreement of its kind in history: a multi-trillion dollar international treaty being negotiated in secret by the US, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia and 7 other countries. The treaty aims to create a new international legal regime that will allow transnational corporations to bypass domestic courts, evade environmental protections, police the internet on behalf of the content industry, limit the availability of affordable generic medicines, and drastically curtail each country’s legislative sovereignty.

The TPP bounty also heralds the launch of WikiLeaks new competition system, which allows the public to pledge prizes towards each of the world’s most wanted leaks. For example, members of the public can now pledge on the missing chapters of the TPP.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said,

“The transparency clock has run out on the TPP. No more secrecy. No more excuses. Let’s open the TPP once and for all.”

Note: The TPP is also noteworthy as the icebreaker agreement for the giant proposed ’T-treaty triad’ of TPP-TISA-TTIP which extends TPP style rules to 53 nations, 1.6 billion people and 2/3rds of the global economy.

See https://wikileaks.org/pledge/