Category Archives: Treasury

IAEA Obstructed from Reporting Iran Violations

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 Hey  you have a call holding on line 3.

IAEA: Iran Nuke Deal Limits Public Reporting on Possible Violations

Nuclear watchdog says deal limits agency oversight

FreeBeacon: The head of the international community’s nuclear watchdog organization disclosed Monday that certain agreements reached under the Iran nuclear deal limit inspectors from publicly reporting on potential violations by the Islamic Republic.

Yukiya Amano, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, which is responsible for ensuring Iran complies with the agreement, told reporters that his agency is no longer permitted to release details about Iran’s nuclear program and compliance with the deal.

Amano’s remarks come on the heels of a February IAEA oversight report that omitted many details and figures related to Iran’s nuclear program. The report sparked questions from outside nuclear experts and accusations from critics that the IAEA was not being transparent with its findings.

Amano disclosed in response to questions from reporters that the last report was intentionally vague because the nuclear agreement prohibits the IAEA from publishing critical data about Iran’s program that had been disclosed by the agency in the past.

“The misunderstanding is that the basis of reporting is different,” Amano said. “In the previous reports, the bases were the previous [United Nations] Security Council Resolutions and Board of Governors. But now they are terminated. They are gone.”

Most U.N. measures pertaining to Iran—including its military buildup and illicit work on nuclear technology—were removed following the nuclear agreement, which essentially rewrote the organization’s overall approach to the country.

The IAEA, which operates under the U.N. umbrella, must now follow the new resolutions governing the implementation of the nuclear pact, Amano said.

“These two resolutions and the other resolutions of the Security Council and Board are very different,” he said. “And as the basis is different, the consequences are different.”

Amano said that going forward, the agency would only release reports that are consistent with the most recent Security Council resolutions on Iran, meaning that future reports are likely to impact the international community’s ability to determine if Iran is fully complying with its end of the agreement.

Last month’s report was viewed as particularly significant because it allowed the nuclear agreement to proceed to its implementation stage. However, the dearth of information in it has angered some experts.

The latest report “provides insufficient details on important verification and monitoring issues,” Olli Heinonen, the IAEA’s former deputy director general, stated in a policy brief.

“The report does not list inventories of nuclear materials and equipment or the status of key sites and facilities,” Heinonen said in his analysis, which was published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Without detailed reporting, the international community cannot be sure that Iran is upholding its commitments under the nuclear deal.”

The IAEA’s latest report also failed to disclose information about Iran’s stockpiles of low-enriched uranium, which is supposed to be significantly reduced as part of the nuclear deal.

Additional information about Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, the machines responsible for enriching uranium, also was withheld by the IAEA.

Other critics accused the Obama administration of misleading Congress during negotiations over the deal. White House officials maintained at the time that the agreement would provide increased transparency into Iran’s nuclear endeavors.

“When nuclear negotiations began in late 2013, the administration asked Congress to stand down on pressuring the Iranians, and promised to force the Iranians to dismantle significant parts of their nuclear program if Congress gave negotiators space,” Omri Ceren, an official with The Israel Project, which works with Congress on the Iran issue, wrote in an analysis sent to reporters on Monday.

“U.S. negotiators eventually caved on any demands that would have required the destruction of Iran’s uranium infrastructure, and instead went all-in on verification and transparency: Yes, the Iranians would get to keep what they’d built, and yes, their program would eventually be fully legal, but the international community would have full transparency into everything from uranium mining to centrifuge production to enriched stockpiles,” Ceren explained.

However, “now Amano has revealed that the nuclear deal gutted the ability of journalists and the public to have insight into Iran’s nuclear activities,” he said. “In critical areas, it’s not even clear that the IAEA has been granted the promised access.”

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What else does Kerry know about Iran and their history?

Fresh evidence emerging of Iran’s deadly nuclear and terror ties to Argentina

Amb. Noriega: Last week, an Argentine intelligence official testified that Iran sought nuclear technology from that South American country and that a prosecutor investigating suspected Hezbollah bombings in Buenos Aires had been murdered for attempting to expose Tehran’s dangerous plot.

This fresh testimony supports reports I published in July 2011 regarding suspicious nuclear diplomacy in 2007 and a massive cash transfer in 2010 involving then Iranian and Argentine leaders, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Nestor Kirchner, respectively. Despite congressional inquiries and mounting evidence, the State Department has chosen to ignore this blind spot in strategy for containing Iran’s illicit nuclear program.

According to the Argentine daily newspaper, Clarin, a former Argentine senior intelligence official, Antonio Stiuso, confirmed in two days of testimony before a judge that the former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, interceded with Nestor Kirchner to resume nuclear cooperation with Iran, which had been suspended in 1991. Also, according to Stiuso’s testimony, Ahmadinejad was interested in using Argentina’s technology to produce plutonium bombs, which he characterized as more sophisticated than the ones Iran was trying to make with enriched uranium.

Stiuso noted that Venezuela did not possess the technical knowledge to make use of the nuclear technology sought by Chávez from Argentina. Instead, because Iran’s nuclear plans were designed by Argentines in the 1960s, Stiuso’s theory is that Tehran was the ultimate beneficiary of such nuclear cooperation.

 

Stiuso also testified that the former prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, was murdered for refusing an order from former president Cristina Kirchner to cease investigating Iran’s role in the 1992 and 1994 bombings and its corrupt dealings with Argentine officials. In a draft criminal complaint discovered after the prosecutor was found dead last year in an apparently staged suicide, Nisman accused Cristina Kirchner of covering up the involvement of five Iranians who have been charged with planning the 1994 terrorist attack against the Jewish Community Center in the heart of Argentina’s capital city.

In a separate development, last Thursday, Nisman’s family disclosed a written statement by a prosecutor from Argentina’s federal appeals court saying that scientific tests failed to find evidence that he fired the pistol found near his body. This is the first formal statement by a government official confirming suspicions that Nisman was the victim of a homicide.

From the US side, the Obama State Department has systematically neglected the dangerous liaisons among Venezuela, Argentina, and Iran. As dramatic evidence of Iran’s deadly provocations in our own neighborhood continues to come to light, it is fair to ask whether its cluelessness was by accident or design. … Much more here.

 

Trump and the Phony “Job-Creating” EB-5 Scam

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Thank you Michelle, I hope those dedicated researchers that did all that grand work on Obama, too late in the game, don’t do it a second time….

Malkin: Ugh: Trump and the Phony “Job-Creating” EB-5 Green Card Racket

By: Michelle Malkin

CR: Whelp. It appears that one of Donald Trump’s projects helped make America great… by soliciting an estimated $50 million from Chinese investors using the fraud-riddled EB-5 green card program for politically connected cronies.

This is the same racket exploited by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, lobbied for by Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and DHS official Alejandro Mayorkas, and embraced by South Dakota Republican officials. It’s a scam I’ve reported on for years.

Bloomberg News has the new story on how EB-5 funded a Trump-branded tower in New Jersey. In a nutshell:

Trump Bay Street is a 50-story luxury rental apartment building being built by Kushner Companies, whose chief executive officer, Jared Kushner, is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka. It will have an outdoor pool, indoor golf simulator and sweeping views of Lower Manhattan; it adjoins an existing high rise condo, Trump Plaza Residence. The firm that was hired to seek investors, US Immigration Fund, is run by Florida developer Nicholas Mastroianni, who announced a partnership last year with a Trump golf course in Jupiter, Florida.

The visa program is known as EB-5. In exchange for investing at least $500,000 in a project promising to create jobs, foreigners receive a two-year visa with a good chance of obtaining permanent residency for them and their families. In 2014, the most recent year for which records are available, the U.S. issued 10,692 of these visas — 85% to people from China.

The Jersey City project has raised $50 million, about a quarter of its funding, from loans obtained through EB-5, according to a slide presentation by US Immigration Fund. Mark Giresi, general counsel of US Immigration Fund, said he believed nearly all of the EB-5 investors in the Trump project were from China.

A Trump spokesperson said the presidential candidate was not a partner in the financing deal. A Kushner flack told Bloomberg News the project was “entirely legal and creating jobs.”

But in my longtime investigations and in Sold Out, my book with John Miano, the evidence is clear: EB-5’s job creation claims are as phony and manufactured as fuzzy porkulus math, H-1B lobbyists’ math, and corporate welfare/economic development subsidies math.

Since 2001, I’ve warned about the systemic and bipartisan corruption of America’s EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. The program puts America up for sale to the most politically connected bidders.

Created under an obscure section of the expansionist Immigration Act of 1990, EB-5 promised bountiful economic development for the U.S. in exchange for granting permanent residency (and eventual American citizenship) to foreign investors. The law allows 10,000 alien entrepreneurs a year to obtain green cards by investing between $500,000 and $1 million in new commercial enterprises or troubled businesses. After two years, foreign investors, their spouses, and their children can receive “conditional permanent resident” status for two years and a gateway to permanent U.S. citizenship.

Originally, the law required individual investments in commercial enterprises to directly generate at least 10 new full-time jobs. Investors were expected to manage the businesses themselves and dedicate some of the newly-created jobs to exports. Failure would mean loss of their money and their business. In 1992, Congress created the “Immigrant Investor Pilot Program” and established government-approved EB-5 “regional centers” — specially selected business groups and corporate entities designated to administer EB-5 investments and oversee a much more relaxed definition of job creation.

The idea was to pool investor funds in a defined industry and targeted region to promote economic growth. Under this loan model, the regional center would recruit and collect funding from a group of foreign investors, then turn around and lend the money to selected projects at a low interest rate. The project would then pay off the loan over an agreed period of time. In targeted areas of high unemployment, the threshold for investment was lowered.

There are currently 614 such regional centers approved by the feds. Participation in the program has risen from 5,748 visa winners in 2008 to 22,444 in 2014. EB-5 participants in these joint ventures can fulfill job-creation requirements if they “create or preserve” either direct jobs or “indirect” jobs shown to be “created collaterally or as a result of capital invested in a commercial enterprise affiliated with a regional center by an EB-5 investor.” The five-year “pilot program,” which has been reauthorized routinely since its inception, was extended last year until September 2016.

As John and I reported, early EB-5 boosters used various theoretical multipliers to hype the program’s benefits, predicting that “4 million millionaire investors along with family members, would sign up, bringing in $4 billion in new investments and creating 40,000 jobs [annually].” In 2011, President Obama’s Council on Job Competitiveness regurgitated the same, old figures in its call to “radically expand” the program:

If the EB-5 program reaches maximum capacity, it could result annually in the creation of approximately 4,000 new businesses, $2 billion to $4 billion of foreign investment capital, and create 40,000 jobs.

But in practice, like so many of the Beltway’s immigration programs, EB-5’s ever-evolving regulations are Byzantine and arbitrary. Fraud and abuse are rampant. Unsurprisingly, the purported economic benefits of EB-5 are woefully dubious. One sensible journalist, Charles Lane, put the EB-5 promoters’ claims in proper perspective:

“Sounds impressive,” he explained, “until you realize that foreign investment in the United States totals $2.5 trillion and that the program’s fuzzy job-creation count includes jobs ‘indirectly’ attributable to the investment. EB-5 would be dubious policy even if it could claim five times that impact. Simply put, it is corporate welfare — yet another attempt to subsidize the flow of capital into politically favored channels.”

Center for Immigration Studies analyst David North adds that “foreign investment comes to the United States routinely, in large volume, with minuscule help from EB-5.” In 2010, he observed, total foreign investment in the United States increased by $1.9 trillion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Based on the investors’ green card applications filed two years after the first investment, North estimated that “EB-5 investment that year was about $191 million, and that was a well above-average year for the program. So, for every $100 of increased foreign investment that year, the EB-5 program contributed about one penny [emphasis added].”

Beltway cronyism was embedded in EB-5’s DNA from the get-go. The original Democratic House sponsor and his spokesman went on to establish for-profit companies that marketed the program and provided consulting services. Former federal immigration officials from the George H.W. Bush administration formed lucrative limited partnerships to cash in on their access and EB-5 expertise.

Key supporters of the original immigrant investor visa program included Democrat Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Paul Simon, D-Ill. Big Government Republicans embraced it, too. Prescott Bush, George W. Bush’s uncle, was on the board of American Immigration Services, one of the leading EB-5 visa vendors. So was former President Bush’s Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner, Gene McNeary. GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell worked closely with the woman who was instrumental in drafting the EB-5 law: Maria Hsia.

That final name should ring a bell. Hsia was a Simon and McConnell donor identified by the House Governmental Affairs Committee as “an agent of the Chinese government.” In 2000, she was found guilty by a federal jury of laundering more than $100,000 in illegal donations to the Democratic National Committee through the infamous Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in California. At the time, Funny Money Honey Hsia was working for McConnell and others on the 1990 immigration bill, she also worked for a campaign fund-raising group called the Pacific Leadership Council. Hsia co-founded the PLC with Lippo Bank officials John Huang and James Riady, the chief figures in the Clinton-Gore Donorgate scandal convicted of campaign-finance crimes. At least six Lippo Bank officials reportedly benefited from the EB-5 law. Hsia partnered with former Democratic Rep. Bruce A. Morrison of Connecticut, an immigration lawyer, author of the 1990 Immigration Act in the House, and main sponsor of EB-5. After leaving Congress to run (unsuccessfully) for governor in Connecticut, Morrison formed a business to market the investor visa program.

An entire side industry of economic book-cookers has arisen to supply analyses of the “job creation” benefits of EB-5 projects and to gerrymander Census employment data to fit the program’s definition of “targeted employment areas” in order to qualify for lower investment thresholds (as was done in New York City’s Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park EB-5 deal).

Think Solyndra and federal stimulus math on steroids.

How does Trump respond to the debunking of the bogus job-creation math upon which the entire cash-for-citizenship swindle rests? Have any other Trump projects been subsidized by EB-5 China money? Where are the other GOP candidates on the issue and will they join Capitol Hill calls to kill the program?

If the RNC-organized, corporate media-controlled GOP debates weren’t such clown shows, maybe American voters could get some answers.

 

 

 

Not 11 Million but 15.7 Million

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Gang of Eight Legislation Includes Amnesty and Massive Increases to Legal Immigration and Guest-Worker Programs

The outline also details significant changes to the legal immigration process that will likely result in millions of additional green cards over the first 10 years. The bill will clear the current backlog of foreign nationals that have been approved for a green card but are years away from receiving them because of annual limits or per-country caps. The goal is to issue green cards to the 4.5 million individuals waiting in line within the first 10 years, so the Gang of Eight can claim that those in the “legal” line will get their green cards before the illegal aliens become eligible.

The bill will also create a new merit-based green cards category where temporary visa holders can earn points based on certain criteria. Visa holders with the most amount of points will receive a green card. The plan calls for up to 250,000 new green cards each year through the merit-based program.

Illegal aliens that are adjusted to RPI status will be allowed to apply for a green card through the merit-based program after 10 years if certain “triggers” are met, however, illegal aliens that qualify for the DREAM Act can receive instant citizenship after 5 years and illegal aliens that work a required number of hours in agriculture can receive a green card in 5 years.

Green cards for the rest of the illegal-alien population will be granted after 10 years if all employers use E-Verify, DHS has completed the entry/exit system at sea and air ports (land ports are excluded), and if DHS is apprehending 90% of illegal border crossers in high risk border sectors.

The bill also creates a new temporary, low-skilled guest-worker program, expands the annual number of H-1B visas issued to high-skilled immigrants, and creates a new guest-worker program for farmers. All temporary visa holders will be eligible for green cards through the new merit-based green card category.

The bill also lifts the annual green card caps on extraordinary workers, multinational executives, and doctoral degree holders in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  Much more here.

Record 61 million immigrants in U.S., 15.7 million illegally

WashingtonExaminer: There are a record 61 million immigrants and their American-born children in the United States, including an estimated 15.7 million illegally here, according to a new analysis of 2015 U.S. Census data.

The estimated number of undocumented immigrants is one of the highest ever.

The analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies found that 45.3 million, or three-fourths of the 61 million, are legal immigrants and their children. The report out Monday notes that the so-called “Gang of Eight” immigration bill supported by GOP presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio would have doubled that number of legal immigrants.

“These numbers raise profound questions that are seldom even asked: What number of immigrants can be assimilated? What is the absorption capacity of our schools, health care system, infrastructure, and labor market? What is the effect on the environment and quality of life from significantly increasing the nation’s population density?” wrote Steven Camarota, the Center’s director of Research.

“With 45 million legal immigrants and their young children already here, does it make sense to continue admitting more than one million new legal permanent immigrants every year?” he added.

His report found that the normal pattern of immigration to the United States changed after 1970. At that time, there were 13.5 million immigrants, or about one in 15 U.S. residents.

But since 2000, the number of immigrants has increased 18.4 million, and now nearly one of every five U.S. residents are immigrants.

“The number of immigrants and their young children grew six times faster than the nation’s total population from 1970 to 2015 — 353 percent vs. 59 percent,” he added.

Camarota dug deep into Census Current Population Survey and other data to determine his estimate of 15.7 million illegals in the United States.

“Our best estimate is that in 2015 there were 5.1 million children with at least one illegal immigrant parent. Taken together, the best available evidence indicates that there were a total of 15.7 million illegal immigrants and their U.S.-born children in the adjusted December 2015 CPS, accounting for 25.7 percent of the 61 million immigrants and their children in the country,” he said.

He broke the figures down state by state and Camarota said that “the number of immigrants and their minor children from 1970 to 2015 has been nothing short of astonishing.” Some examples:

— In Georgia, this population grew 3,058 percent (from 55,000 to 1.75 million), 25 times faster than the overall state population.

— In Nevada, this population grew 3,002 percent (from 26,000 to 821,000), six times faster than the overall state population.

— In North Carolina, this population grew 2,937 percent (from 47,000 to 1.43 million), 30 times faster than the overall state population.

*** In all fairness, Rubio is not the only Senator to hold exclusive blame. Imagine the true negotiations and what was omitted.

Back in 2013: 

Morning Bell:10 Problems with the Gang of Eight Immigration Bill, DailySignal:

10Probs_immig_v3

Evidence: Middle East Money in Arizona

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Arizona Atty. Gen. Finds Money Trail Between Middle East, Mexican Smugglers

Months after six Middle Eastern men who entered the U.S. illegally through Mexico were arrested in Arizona state authorities have uncovered an extensive money trail between the Middle East and Mexico. This includes more than a dozen wire transfers sent from the Middle East to known Mexican smugglers in at least two different regions of the Latin American nation, according to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.

A report issued by the AG exposes the disturbing money trail between Mexico and terrorist nations in the Middle East as well as evidence of smuggling routes tying the region to America’s southern border. An excerpt of the AG’s findings was obtained by a local media outlet that published it this week. It states that the Mexican city of Tapachula, a known human smuggling hub located near the Guatemalan border in the state of Chiapas, was the top destination of Middle Eastern money transfers. Nogales, which is situated adjacent to the Arizona border, is the second destination, the investigation found. “Agents conducted a comprehensive geographic analysis of possible terrorist related transactions and/or money transfers involving human smuggling networks,” the state report says.

Officials launched the probe shortly after six men—one from Afghanistan, five from Pakistan—were arrested in Patagonia, a quaint ranch town that sits 20 miles north of Nogales, on November 17. Judicial Watch investigated the matter as part of an ongoing probe on the dire national security issues created by the famously porous southern border. Special Agent Kurt Remus in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Phoenix headquarters told JW that the agency’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces vetted and interviewed the six men and determined that there were “no obvious signs of terrorism” so they were returned to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.

But a few days later, in a story reported exclusively by JW, five young Middle Eastern men were apprehended in the nearby Arizona town of Amado, which is located about 30 miles from the Mexican border. Two of the Middle Eastern men were carrying stainless steel cylinders in backpacks, law enforcement and other sources told JW, alarming Border Patrol officials enough to call the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for backup. Only three of the men’s names were entered in the Border Patrol’s E3 reporting system, which is used by the agency to track apprehensions, detention hearings and removals of illegal immigrants. E3 also collects and transmits biographic and biometric data including fingerprints for identification and verification of individuals encountered at the border. The other two men were listed as “unknown subjects,” which is unheard of, according to a JW federal law enforcement source. “In all my years I’ve never seen that before,” a veteran federal law enforcement agent told JW.

The money trail exposed by Arizona officials in the aftermath of these two major incidents is extremely troublesome. The AG’s Financial Crimes Task Force quickly identified suspicious wire transfers sent from Middle Eastern and African nations by people with Middle Eastern names to Mexico. In 2015, one human smuggler in Mexico received 70 money transfers from 69 senders, the task force found. “All of the 69 sender names appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin,” the AG writes in its report. This seems to confirm JW’s reporting in the last few years on the dangerous alliance between Mexican smugglers and Middle Eastern extremists who want to attack the U.S.

Last summer JW broke a story about a Mexican drug cartel operation that smuggles foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso. They use remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude the Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers, according to sources on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border. The foreigners are then transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. In 2015 JW also reported that the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is operating camps near the U.S. border in areas known as Anapra and Puerto Palomas west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. That information came from high-level sources just months after JW exposed an ISIS plot orchestrated from Ciudad Juárez to attack the U.S. with car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED). As a result of JW’s reporting Ft. Bliss, the U.S. Army base in El Paso, increased security. The threat was imminent enough to place agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies on alert. As far back as 2014 JW reported that four ISIS terrorists were arrested by federal authorities and the Texas Department of Public Safety in McAllen and Pharr.

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According to a 2010 report, “Close to home: Hezbollah terrorists are plotting right on the U.S. border,” which appeared in the NY Daily News:

Mexican authorities have rolled up a Hezbollah network being built in Tijuana … closer to American homes than the terrorist hideouts in the Bekaa Valley are to Israel. Its goal, according to a Kuwaiti newspaper that reported on the investigation: to strike targets in Israel and the West. Over the years, Hezbollah—rich with Iranian oil money and narcocash—has generated revenue by cozying up with Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs and people into theU.S. In this, it has shadowed the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Tehran, which has been forging close ties with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who in turn supports the narcoterrorist organization FARC, which wreaks all kinds of havoc throughout the region.

Another 2010 article appearing in the Washington Times asserts that, “with fresh evidence of Hezbollah activity just south of the border [in Mexico], and numerous reports of Muslims from various countries posing as Mexicans and crossing into the United States from Mexico, our porous southern border is a national security nightmare waiting to happen.” This is in keeping with a recent study done by Georgetown University, which revealed that the number of immigrants from Lebanon and Syria living in Mexico exceeds 200,000. Syria, along with Iran, is one of Hezbollah’s strongest financial and political supporters, and Lebanon is the immigrants’ country of origin. Just like only 19 jihadists were necessary to cause the devastation of September 11, 2001, only a handful of these 200,000 are necessary to wreak havoc north of the border.

A jihadist cell in Mexico was recently found to have a weapons cache of 100 M-16 assault rifles, 100 AR-15 rifles, 2,500 hand grenades, C4 explosives and antitank munitions. The weapons, it turned out, had been smuggled by Muslims from Iraq. According to this report, “obvious concerns have arisen concerning Hezbollah’s presence in Mexico and possible ties to Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTO’s) operating along the U.S.-Mexico border.”

*** Chicago?

TheBlaze: The city may be nearly 2,000 miles from Mexico, but the country’s drug cartels are so deeply embedded in Chicago that local and federal law enforcement are forced to operate as if they are “on the border,” according to Jack Riley, special agent in charge for the Chicago Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

 

Because of Chicago’s location in the heart of the United States, its large Mexican population and its abundance of street gang activity, drug cartels have designated the city as one of its main hubs of operation in America, Riley told TheBlaze in an exclusive interview. Inevitably, the increasing presence of cartels has also contributed to the Windy City’s skyrocketing violent crime rates, the DEA boss revealed.

“My opinion is, right now, a number of the Mexican cartels are probably the most organized, well-funded, vicious criminal organizations that we’ve ever seen,” said Riley.

Right now, at least three major Mexican cartels are fighting for control of billions of dollars worth of marijuana, cocaine and heroin in Chicago. That includes the ruthless Zetas and the powerful Sinaloa cartel, run by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, arguably the most wanted man in North America, and perhaps the entire world.

However, the influence of drug cartels is seemingly overlooked repeatedly by the media when it reports on Chicago’s crime rate and rampant drug-related violence.

The Plan: Five for Freedom

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Bringing government spending under control.

NRO: At the last Republican presidential debate, I presented the Simple Flat Tax — which, for a family of four, exempts the first $36,000 from all income tax, and above that amount collects one low rate of 10 percent for all Americans. It eliminates the death tax, the payroll tax, the corporate income tax, and the Obamacare taxes; ends the corporate carve-outs and loopholes; and requires every business to pay the same simple business flat tax of 16 percent.

That plan will unleash unprecedented growth, create millions of new jobs, raise after-tax incomes for all income levels by double-digit percentages — and abolish the IRS as we know it. But eliminating the IRS is only the first step in my plan to break apart the federal leviathan that has ruled Washington and crept into our lives. We can’t stop there. In addition to eliminating the IRS, a Cruz administration will abolish four cabinet agencies. And we will sharply reduce the alphabet soup of government entities, beginning with the ABCs that should not exist in the first place: The Agencies, Bureaus, Commissions, and other programs that are constitutionally illegitimate and harmful to American households and businesses. It’s time to return to a federal government that abides by our constitutional framework and strips power from unelected bureaucrats.

The need is urgent.

The total federal debt currently stands at $18.6 trillion, larger than our entire economy. That is up 75 percent since the current president took office, and by the end of his tenure, he is expected to have added almost as much to the national debt as all past presidents combined. And what does the Obama administration have to show for its uncontrolled spending? A stagnant economy, lagging job creation, and the lowest labor-force participation since the Carter administration. The Obama economy has burdened each American household with the equivalent of $57,000 of federal debt. Under such stifling circumstances, it’s no wonder that 84 percent of college graduates do not have a job lined up after graduation, and 13.2 percent of young adults are out of work. The current level of spending is not only irresponsible, but immoral and unjust to future generations.

It is time for bold change. Change that stops Washington from squandering Americans’ money; that creates jobs and restores growth with a single, fair, low rate for everyone; that reins in Washington’s costly regulations; that honors the people’s work with the dignity it deserves; and that finally gets the government out of our pockets and off our backs. Of course, because entitlements constitute roughly two-thirds of federal spending, no government spending plan is complete without addressing entitlement reform. And in the coming months, I will be laying out a detailed plan to do just that, to strengthen and preserve Social Security and Medicare and to ensure their fiscal strength for decades to come. But we should start with federal discretionary spending.
First, to begin the process of reducing the scope and cost of government, I have identified the Five for Freedom: During my first year as president, I will fight to abolish the IRS, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. To do that, I will press Congress relentlessly. And I will appoint heads of each of those agencies whose central charge will be to lead the effort to wind them down and determine whether any of their programs need to be preserved elsewhere because they fall within the proper purview of the federal government. I do not anticipate the lists to be long. The IRS and these cabinet agencies are unnecessary and will be shuttered for the following reasons:
Internal Revenue Service – to dramatically simplify the tax code and enable everyone to fill out their taxes on a postcard or smartphone app. Department of Education – to return education to those who know our students best: parents, teachers, local communities, and states. And to block-grant education funding to the states.
Department of Energy – to cut off the Washington cartel, stop picking winners and losers, and unleash the energy renaissance.
Department of Commerce – to close the “congressional cookie jar” and promote free enterprise and free trade for every business.
Department of Housing and Urban Development – to offer real solutions that lift people out of hardship, rather than trapping families in a cycle of poverty, and to empower hurting Americans by reforming most of the remaining programs, such as Section 8 housing. Second, besides these unnecessary cabinet agencies and the IRS, we will sharply reduce the agencies, bureaus, commissions, and other programs that are harming American households and businesses — including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Together with the four departments and the IRS, our conservative estimate of the effects of these eliminations and reductions is a savings of over $500 billion over ten years. And that’s just a start. The true savings — of scaling down the scope of the federal government, of restoring to the states their rightful authority, and of unleashing the people’s ingenuity — cannot be measured by a number. We are uprooting the centralized power that we have lived under for far too long. Third, we will bring back a proven approach from the prosperous days of the Reagan administration: a private-sector panel to assess federal spending levels and evaluate areas of waste and fraud for removal. At President Reagan’s behest, the Grace Commission recommended 2,478 “cost-cutting, revenue-enhancing” suggestions, without raising taxes, weakening defense, or harming social welfare. It was a major success among other policies that created a great economic boom, and it deserves a reprise. Fourth, we will hold Congress accountable; it too often delegates its authority to unelected bureaucrats. We will enact a strong Balanced Budget Amendment. And, by enacting the REINS Act, we will require that a majority of members approve any major, cost-inducing regulations. Fifth, we will put in place a hiring freeze of federal civilian employees across the executive branch. For those agencies in which it is determined that a vacant position needs to be filled, I will authorize the hiring of a maximum ratio of one person for every three who leave. And rather than automatically increasing federal workers’ pay annually, workers will have more opportunities for merit-based pay increases.
The full details of this plan can be found at www.tedcruz.org. It’s past time to dramatically reduce the size of government and restore congressional accountability to the people. Doing so, along with instituting fundamental tax reform and regulatory reform, will reignite the promise that has made this the freest and most prosperous nation in the world.