Oh Mexico II

If voters in Mexico elect Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), Mexico will decline for lack of critical infrastructure needed to expand their economy and this will keep the poor, poor. The Southern half of Mexico is a third world country.

This is what Venezuela did and it’s a bad model. If Chavez had borrowed $50 billion to invest in the government oil business instead of giveaways and monuments, Venezuela wouldn’t be broken.

The Drug Gangs are controlling the US/ Mexican border and Obrador is not interested in disturbing them. Most of the Mexican government is on the Drug Gang payroll and the rest are being quiet and trying to stay alive.

Obrador already knows how much money illegal migrants in the US are sending back to their families in Mexico and he doesn’t want that money flow to stop.  He already knows how much bribe money the Drug Gangs are paying to members of the Mexican government and he doesn’t want that to stop either.

If Obrador thinks Mexican voters are dumb enough to elect him on his promise for “free stuff”, then Mexico is headed down the same road as Venezuela.

US companies with manufacturing plants in the Northern part of Mexico, especially just over the border, have got to be considering coming back to the US.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Oh Mexico

The Enemy South: Next Mexican President Says Invading U.S. is a “Human Right”, by Selwyn Duke, 6/25/18, New American.

Should Mexico be declared an enemy nation? This question is more valid than ever now that our southern neighbor’s presumptive next president has declared that invading the United States — i.e., mass, uncontrolled migration — is a “human right.”

As the Daily Caller reported Friday: Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) declared mass immigration to the United States a “human right” for all North Americans during a speech Tuesday.“And soon, very soon — after the victory of our movement — we will defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world,” Obrador said, adding that immigrants “must leave their towns and find a life in the United States.”

He then declared migration “a human right we will defend,” eluniversal.com reports.

While the election is not until July 1, Obrador is by far the frontrunner.

While this may be the most brazen invasion-USA pronouncement by a Mexican politician to date, Mexico already has a track record of encouraging border jumping. As National Review wrote last March, “In December 2004, the Mexican government distributed 1.5 million copies of a pamphlet titled ‘Guide for the Mexican Migrant,’ unabashedly advising its citizens on ways to illegally migrate to the United States…. The literature went as far as recommending what type of clothes to wear when crossing a river, and explaining how to stay hydrated when crossing a desert.”

“Now, Mexico’s ministry of foreign affairs has published ‘Recommendations in Case of Immigration Detention,’ an infographic video advising illegal immigrants in the United States on ways to avoid deportation when approached by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents,” the magazine continued.

Of course, hypocritical Mexico doesn’t apply this open-borders standard to itself. Not only is its immigration law strict, but under the Mexican constitution, a naturalized citizen can never enjoy the full rights of citizenship — they’re reserved for the native-born.

Unfortunately, Obrador (shown) and the rest of America’s enemies, including our own immigrationists, are thus far winning this battle. Owing to the latest propaganda involving “separating families” (something most migrants do themselves when leaving their families to come here), a monkey wrench has been thrown into border enforcement.

As Politico writes: President Donald Trump may not admit it but, practically speaking, his administration’s “zero-tolerance” border strategy is dead. Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that reality at a meeting Thursday afternoon, according to a former department official with knowledge of the meeting.

“It’s going to be ‘catch and release’ because they don’t have the detention beds for them,” the former official said.

That same message was delivered by Brandon Judd, president of a union for Border Patrol agents, who told CNN Thursday that the executive order Trump signed Wednesday requiring families caught at the border to be detained together simply left his agency no choice.

“We’re going to have to release them,” he said.

Chalk up another one for the swamp.

It’s said that Obrador has encouraged the invasion partially as a protest against the Trump administration, and in this border battle he has a distinct advantage: a fifth column within the United States comprising a whole major political party, part of another, big-money business interests, and a good percentage of the population.

These entities all have common cause. What’s Mexico’s motivation? Obrador has admitted that his nation’s economy is dependent on remittances sent to Mexico from the United States. And as Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson put it in segment last Thursday (video below), Mexico sends “their poorest people here because it’s cheaper than taking care of them there. America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class.” It’s also a good deal for our business class, which wants cheap labor. This is why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pro-migration and why the Republicans it donates to are wobbly on the issue.

Then there’s the big motivation: Since the 1965 immigration act took effect in ’68, 85 to 90 percent of our immigrants have come from the Third World and Asia, and 70 to 90 percent of them support Democrats upon being naturalized. Knowing this, the Democrats want to import as many future voters as possible as quickly as possible, by hook or by crook.

Add to this how a large segment of America has been brainwashed with diversity-über-alles dogma, and it’s a perfect storm of treasonous spirit: money over country, ideology over country, party over country.

Meanwhile, as Obrador preaches to us, his dysfunctional nation is coming apart at the seams. Eighteen mayoral candidates have been assassinated in the run-up to its July 1 elections, two alone in a recent 24-hour period. Despite this, in the past he has proposed pardoning those who likely murdered them, the drug cartels.

Of course, if we won’t even secure our borders — especially with what’s clearly an enemy nation — how much less dysfunctional are we?

https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/north-america/item/29360-the-enemy-south-next-mexican-president-says-invading-us-is-a-human-right#

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Terrorists in Mali N. Africa

US council on Foreign Relations reports on terrorists in Mali.

Concerns are growing that terrorist groups in Mali are increasing in numbers and strength.

Since the November 2015 kidnapping and mass shooting at a luxury hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, attacks have expanded to neighboring countries. In March 2016, a shooting at a beach resort in Ivory Coast killed nineteen civilians. In June 2017, there was yet another attack on a tourist resort outside of Bamako.

Jihadist groups such as al-Mourabitoun, a branch of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) that primarily comprises northern Malians and ethnic Tuaregs, have tried to derail the June 2015 peace agreement between the Coordination of Azawad Movements, the Malian government, and a coalition of Tuareg rebel groups.

As a result of the deteriorating security situation, the U.S. Department of State first warned its citizens in December 2015 against traveling to Mali and authorized the departure of nonemergency personnel from the U.S. embassy.

In September 2016, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita warned the United Nations that terrorism and crime was spreading from the northern part of the country to the center, and due to the slow implementation of the peace deal, groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State were at risk of expanding.  

Background  - After gaining independence from France in 1960, Mali endured thirty years of sporadic fighting and political coups. While the majority of the population resides in the southern region, numerous militant groups including the Tuareg, AQIM, and Ansar Dine—a militant Islamist group—continue to assert territorial claims in the northern part of the country, undermining the government and threatening to destabilize neighboring countries.

The Tuareg, a primarily Berber ethnic group, have rebelled against the government and clashed with other groups several times in an attempt to gain autonomy for the region they call Azawad.

The first Tuareg rebellion began in 1963, lasting less than a year before it was brutally suppressed by government forces. Divisions between Tuareg clans hindered their ability to fight together against the government. In the decades that followed the first rebellion, government policies tended to neglect northern Mali, which was already fragile due to a series of droughts.

Many Tuareg moved into aid camps in the south or crossed into neighboring countries to find work. Hundreds of Tuareg moved to Libya, where they fought abroad on behalf of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi’s Islamic Legion. After Qaddafi’s Islamic Legion was disbanded in the late 1980’s many Tuareg began to return to northern Mali.

The different Tuareg clans decided to consolidate their efforts in the fight against the government and in June 1990 launched a second rebellion. In 1992, Mali country held its first democratic and multiparty election. Despite apparent political progress, the fight in the north between the Tuareg and the military dragged on. Several peace accords were signed in an effort to stabilize relations between the Tuareg and Arab groups, but none were implemented successfully.

In 2012, a military coup carried out by the Malian army created a power vacuum that allowed militant groups such as Ansar Dine, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, and AQIM to gain territory in northern Mali. A pro-autonomy Tuareg group—the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA)—initially allied with radical Islamist organizations in order to establish control in the north, but violence soon erupted within this short-lived alliance as each group competed for territory. In August 2013, sixteen months after the military coup and a month after yet another peace deal was brokered with the Tuareg, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was voted into the presidency in an election that was ultimately praised for its transparency by the EU and African Union.

The UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali and military missions led by G5 Sahel countries—Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, and Niger—were deployed to combat extremism in the region in April 2013. France has taken the lead in this fight in Mali through Operation Barkhane, which deployed roughly sixteen hundred French soldiers to protect civilians and aid local military efforts.

Over thirteen thousand peacekeepers are working in Mali on what has been called the United Nation’s most dangerous mission due to the high number of attacks on peacekeepers.

Despite increased foreign involvement, some militant groups still maintain control of areas in northern Mali. Other militant groups have been driven across borders to territory outside of the G5 Sahel mission’s mandate. 

Concerns - The United States has long supported economic and social programs in Mali, but funding to the central government was cut off after the 2012 coup. In support of the French-led mission to combat extremism, the United States established a drone base in neighboring Niger in March 2013 to provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to France and other partners in the region.

The strengthening of militant groups in Mali or their spread to neighboring countries could allow AQIM to establish a safe haven and destabilize the region through militancy and terrorism. Northern Mali has become a central transit point for young migrants from all over western Africa looking to travel to Algeria or Libya with the ultimate goal of reaching Europe.

The weak economy and lack of job prospects in northern Mali has led many to turn to the trafficking and smuggling of migrants and drugs as a primary source of income. This crisis is both a humanitarian and security concern as militant groups in the Sahel region often tax the trafficking and smuggling routes to fund their violent campaigns.

https://www.cfr.org/interactives/global-conflict-tracker?co=C042701#!/conflict/destabilization-of-mali

Mali borders Algeria and Mauritania in the North African West Sahara.  Land area 478,800 square miles, Population 19 million. In 2017 GDP was $40.1 billion and per capita GDP was $2200. Labor Force was 6.447 million with 80% working in agriculture including cotton, millet, rice, corn, vegetables, peanuts; cattle, sheep, goats. Unemployment was 8.1% and poverty rate was 36.1%.

In 2017 Exports were $3 billion with 80% in gold and cotton and 20% in phosphate and other agricultural products

2017 Imports were $3.9 billion including petroleum, machinery and equipment, construction materials, foodstuffs, textiles from Senegal 12.2%, China 12.2%, France 10.3%, Benin 8.6%, Ivory Coast 8.4% (2016)

Government debt was 28% of GDP. Revenue was $3 billion. Spending was $3.6 billion.

https://theodora.com/wfbcurrent/mali/mali_economy.html

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Conservatism Explained

Jordan Peterson and Conservatism’s Rebirth, by Yoram Hazony, 6/15/18, WSJ.

The psychologist and YouTube star has brought the concepts of order and tradition back to our intellectual discourse. 

Jordan Peterson doesn’t seem to think of himself as a conservative. Yet there he is, standing in the space once inhabited by conservative thinkers such as G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr. and Irving Kristol. Addressing a public that seems incapable of discussing anything but freedom, Mr. Peterson presents himself unmistakably as a philosophical advocate of order. His bestselling book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,” makes sense of ideas like the “hierarchy of place, position and authority,” as well as people’s most basic attachments to “tribe, religion, hearth, home and country” and “the flag of the nation.” The startling success of his elevated arguments for the importance of order has made him the most significant conservative thinker to appear in the English-speaking world in a generation. 

Mr. Peterson, 56, is a University of Toronto professor and a clinical psychologist. Over the past two years he has rocketed to fame, especially online and in contentious TV interviews. To his detractors, he might as well be Donald Trump. He has been criticized for the supposed banality of his theories, for his rambling and provocative rhetoric, and for his association with online self-help products. He has suffered, too, the familiar accusations of sexism and racism. From what I have seen, these charges are baseless. But even if Mr. Peterson is imperfect, that shouldn’t distract from the important argument he has advanced—or from its implications for a possible revival in conservative thought.

The place to begin, as his publishing house will no doubt be pleased to hear, is with “12 Rules for Life,” which is a worthy and worthwhile introduction to his philosophy.

Departing from the prevailing Marxist and liberal doctrines, Mr. Peterson relentlessly maintains that the hierarchical structure of society is hard-wired into human nature and therefore inevitable: “The dominance hierarchy, however social or cultural it might appear, has been around for some half a billion years. It’s permanent.”

Moreover, young men and women (but especially men) tend to be healthy and productive only when they have found their place working their way up a hierarchy they respect. When they fail to do so, they become rudderless and sick, worthless to those around them, sometimes aimlessly violent. In viewing political and social hierarchies as inevitable,

Mr. Peterson may seem to be defending whoever happens to be powerful. But he’s doing nothing of the kind. He rejects the Marxist claim that traditional hierarchies are only about the self-interested pursuit of power. Human beings like having power, Mr. Peterson acknowledges. Yet the desire for it also drives them to develop the kinds of abilities their societies’ value. In a well-ordered society, high status often is a reward conferred for doing things that actually need to be done and done well: defending the state, producing things people need, enlarging the sphere of knowledge. 

Mr. Peterson does not deny the Marxist charge that society oppresses individuals. “Culture is an oppressive structure,” he writes. “It’s always been that way. It’s a fundamental, universal existential reality.” But he breaks with prevailing political thought when he argues that the suffering involved in conforming to tradition may be worth it.

When a father disciplines his son, he interferes with the boy’s freedom, painfully forcing him into accepted patterns of behavior and thought. “But if the father does not take such action,” Mr. Peterson says, “he merely lets his son remain Peter Pan, the eternal Boy, King of the Lost Boys, Ruler of the non-existent Neverland.”

Similarly, Mr. Peterson insists it is “necessary and desirable for religions to have a dogmatic element.” This provides a stable worldview that allows a young person to become “a properly disciplined person” and “a well-forged tool.” Yet this is not, for Mr. Peterson, the highest human aspiration. It is merely the first necessary step along a path toward maturity, toward an ever more refined uniqueness and individuality.

The individuality he describes emerges over decades from an original personality forged through painful discipline. The alternative, he writes, is to remain “an adult two-year old” who goes to pieces in the face of any adversity and for whom “softness and harmlessness become the only consciously acceptable virtues.”

Like other conservative thinkers before him, Mr. Peterson’s interest in tradition flows from an appreciation of the weakness of the individual’s capacity for reason. We all think we understand a great deal, he tells his readers, but this is an illusion. What we perceive instead is a “radical, functional, unconscious simplification of the world—and it’s almost impossible for us not to mistake it for the world itself.” Given the unreliability of our own thinking, Mr. Peterson recommends beginning with tried and tested ideas: “It is reasonable to do what other people have always done, unless we have a very good reason not to.”

Maturity demands that we set out to “rediscover the values of our culture—veiled from us by our ignorance, hidden in the dusty treasure-trove of the past—rescue them, and integrate them into our own lives.” In Western countries, that effort at rediscovery leads to one place. “The Bible,” Mr. Peterson writes, “is, for better or worse, the foundational document of Western civilization.” It is the ultimate source of our understanding of good and evil. Its appearance uprooted the ancient view that the powerful had the right simply to take ownership of the weak, a change that was “nothing short of a miracle.” The Bible challenged, and eventually defeated, a world in which the murder of human beings for entertainment, infanticide, slavery and prostitution were simply the way things had to be.

As many readers have pointed out, Nietzsche’s critique of Enlightenment philosophy—he once called Kant “that catastrophic spider”—is everywhere in Mr. Peterson’s thought, even in his writing style. It is felt in his calls to “step forward to take your place in the dominance hierarchy,” and to “dare to be dangerous.” It is felt in risqué pronouncements such as this: “Men have to toughen up. Men demand it, and women want it.”

A famous passage from Nietzsche describes the destruction of the belief in God as the greatest cataclysm mankind has ever faced: “What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?”

Mr. Peterson chronicles the misery of individuals now drifting through this “infinite nothing.” But he rejects Nietzsche’s atheism, along with the conclusion that we can make our own values. In telling readers to return to the Bible, Mr. Peterson seeks to rechain the earth to its sun. That seems impossible. Yet a vast audience has demonstrated a willingness, at least, to try.

For Mr. Peterson, the death of God was followed inevitably by a quick descent into hell. During the “terrible twentieth century,” as he calls it, “we discovered something worse, much worse, than the aristocracy and corrupt religious beliefs that communism and fascism sought so rationally to supplant.”

The Holocaust and the gulag, he argues, are sufficient to define evil for us, and “the good is whatever stops such things from happening.” That is perfectly good Old Testament-style reasoning. Mr. Peterson adds Christian tropes such as the need for an “act of faith,” an “irrational commitment to the essential goodness” of things, a recognition that although “life is suffering,” sacrificing ourselves, as if on the cross, is pleasing to God. 

Mr. Peterson’s intellectual framework has its weaknesses. He invokes recent social science (and its jargon) with a confidence that is at times naive. His often brilliant “12 Rules for Life” is littered with Heideggerian rubbish about “the betterment of Being,” in places where a thinker of Mr. Peterson’s abilities should have seen the need for a more disciplined effort to understand God. He lacks Nietzsche’s alertness to the ways in which the great religious traditions contradict one another, leading their adherents toward very different lives. Thus while Mr. Peterson is quite a good reader of the Bible, it is at times maddening to watch him import alien ideas into scripture—for instance, that the chaos preceding the creation was “female”—so as to fill out a supposed archetypal symmetry. 

Nonetheless, what Mr. Peterson has achieved is impressive. In his writings and public appearances, he has made a formidable case that order—and not just freedom—is a fundamental human need, one now foolishly neglected. He is compelling in arguing that the order today’s deconstructed society so desperately lacks can be reintroduced, even now, through a renewed engagement with the Bible and inherited religious tradition. 

Before Mr. Peterson, there was no solid evidence that a broad public would ever again be interested in an argument for political order. For more than a generation, Western political discourse has been roughly divided into two camps. Marxists are sharply aware of the status hierarchies that make up society, but they are ideologically committed to overthrowing them.

Liberals (both the progressive and classical varieties) tend to be altogether oblivious to the hierarchical and tribal character of political life. They know they’re supposed to praise “civil society,” but the Enlightenment concepts they use to think about the individual and the state prevent them from recognizing the basic structures of the political order, what purposes they serve, and how they must be maintained. In short, modern political discourse is noteworthy for the gaping hollow where there ought to be conservatives—institutions and public figures with something important to teach about political order and how to build it up for everyone’s benefit. Into this opening Mr. Peterson has ventured.

Perhaps without fully intending to do so, he has given the dynamic duo of Marxism and liberalism a hard shove, while shining a light on the devastation these utopian theories are wreaking in Western countries. He has demarcated a large area in which only conservative political and social thought can help.

His efforts have provided reason to believe that a significant demand for conservative ideas still lives under the frozen wastes of our intellectual landscape. If so, then Mr. Peterson’s appearance may be the harbinger of a broader rebirth. His book is a natural complement to important recent works such as Ryszard Legutko’s “The Demon in Democracy,” Patrick Deneen’s “Why Liberalism Failed” and Amy Chua’s “Political Tribes.” Representing divergent political perspectives, these works nevertheless share Mr. Peterson’s project of getting past the Marxist and liberal frameworks and confronting our trained incapacity to see human beings and human societies for what they really are.

As the long-awaited revival of conservative political thought finally gets under way, there may be much more of this to come. Mr. Hazony is author of “The Virtue of Nationalism,” forthcoming Sept. 4 from Basic.Appeared in the June 16, 2018, print edition.

Comments

The threat Liberalism poses is real.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Fake News Poll

Democrats Are The Only Group Left That Believes The Mainstream Media, by Tyler Durden, 06/27/18, Zerohedge.
 

In what looks like a validation of the growing public expressions of anger directed at members of the media, a new Axios poll found that nearly all (a staggering 92%) of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe that mainstream media organizations knowingly report false or misleading stories, at least occasionally. And while Democrats proved to be the most credulous group, a majority still doubt that US media organizations are 100% credible.

When asked “How often do you think news sources report news they know to be fake, false or purposely misleading, Republicans say 92%, Independents say 79%, Democrats say 53%.

All told, 72% of respondents said they believe mainstream media organizations to be knowingly misleading. Other studies from Gallup and Pew Research Center have drawn similar conclusions, with Democrats, unsurprisingly, revealed as the only group that still has any substantial level of trust in the media. Back in the 1970s, trust in media rose as high as 74% during the aftermath of Watergate.

The poll also found that 43% of Democrats say they utilize "Fact-Checking" resources like Snopes and FactCheck.org, while only 30% of Republicans and Independents do the same.

President Trump regularly lashes out at the "Fake News" media during his rallies and tweets. But most recently, it was Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin who took the media to task for sloppy reporting, rebutting a Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg scoop about the administration's plans to block investment by Chinese firms. According to Mnuchin, the story got important details about the administration's strategy wrong, including its focus on China. Mnuchin shared finalized details about the policy earlier this morning.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-27/democrats-are-only-group-left-believes-mainstream-media

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Oh DHS

UAC is the office of Unaccompanied Alien Children and is part of the ORR, office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

In the NGO salary sweeps, Juan Sanchez, CEO of UAC has David Miliband beat by a mile! by Ann Corcoran 6/26/18.

As I mentioned the other day, the issue of the border crossing kids is one I discussed back in the Obama days rather extensively, but the ‘children,’ the mostly unaccompanied teenage boys crossing our borders, are not refugees and so the issue isn’t at the top of my radar screen right now. 

And, the subject is ably covered by so many others.

That said, I do get some pleasure out of demonstrating that Leftwing do-gooders, whose hearts bleed for the children, also happen to be raking in big government bucks from you—the US taxpayer—for their good works.

Southwest Key Programs is one example.  You can read more about it here at Wikipedia .  It is largely funded with government grants and contracts.

Reader Mary alerted me to the huge taxpayer-funded salary its President and CEO Juan Sanchez is pulling down.  CNN says it is now at $1.5 million.

I find it amusing that now that Trump is in office these outrageous taxpayer supported NGO salaries are suddenly newsworthy.

David Miliband (CEO of another federal contractor—-The International Rescue Committee) is a piker at $671,749.

The most recent Form 990 I could find (tax year ending in August 2016) for Southwest Key Programs is this one from Obama’s time in office—clearly the Obama ORR was shelling out big bucks to care for detained children.

Almost completely government funded….the statement shows that Juan Sanchez, CEO of UAC was paid $770,860 in 2015 and the agency received $240.2 million in US federal funding

These are salaries you pay for care of the illegal alien children until they are released in to America when sponsors are found, or upon turning 18!

Go here for all of my posts on the UACs.  Some of our usual refugee contractors are also on this gravy train.

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2018/06/26/in-the-ngo-salary-sweeps-juan-sanchez-has-david-miliband-beat-by-a-mile/

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Travel Ban Protest

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society urges followers to take to the streets in wake of Supreme Court decision, by Ann Corcoran 6/27/18.

The Trump Administration has been an unrelenting 17 month assault against America’s values as a nation welcoming of immigrants and refugees.

You all know what happened in the Supreme Court yesterday.  In a nutshell, the court affirmed that the President of the US has the power to limit immigration.

However, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society one of the primary groups that sued the Administration from day one about the so-called Muslim ban isn’t giving up and is urging its followers to participate in anti-Trump rallies coordinated by Linda Sarsour’s group MPower!

That is HIAS ‘Refugees Welcome’ banner as they protested with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) against the President in January of this year.   

Sure, they should have free speech, but not on the taxpayer’s dime! The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) is one of nine federal contractors that the feds pay to place refugees in your towns and cities and it has been my contention that federal refugee contractors should be constrained, maybe not by law, but they should at least use good judgement and refrain from virulent name-calling and public protests against those who pay their salaries—us!

Of course Congress could cut them off the federal gravy train!

Here is what Mark Hetfield, CEO of HIAS, said in an e-mail alert to followers yesterday: (Since that is a screenshot above, the links are not hot.) I wanted to know who was organizing the rallies. It is MPower Change—Muslim Grassroots Movement headed by Linda Sarsour!

Here is their rally schedule, most were yesterday. Did you even see any where you live?

And this is Mark Hetfield’s comment on the decision:

“The Muslim Ban is not simply an exercise in executive authority, it’s the Trump Administration’s official license to discriminate on the basis of religion and nationality.

HIAS is disappointed in the Supreme Court’s affirmation of these policies of religious discrimination, fear and tribalism, which have permeated nearly every aspect of America’s tradition of welcome. From the crackdown on people legally seeking asylum to the dramatic diminishment of the life-saving refugee resettlement program, the Trump Administration has been an unrelenting 17 month assault against America’s values as a nation welcoming of immigrants and refugees.

“As one of the first organizations to challenge the refugee and Muslim bans in court last year, HIAS will continue to work with local partners and the Jewish community to uphold the legacy of what America can and should be as a country.

Together, we will continue fighting to ensure that this period is merely another short, dark chapter temporarily interrupting America’s history as a nation that accepts people without judging them by faith or national origin. HIAS and the American Jewish community have seen such discrimination trap members of our own community, and we will not stand by silently as it happens to others.”

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society would be a mere shell of its former self if its federal funding dried up.

From HIAS 2016 Form 990: shows that HIAS received $24.5 million in 2016 from the US government. HIAS recieves 59% of its revenue from you, the taxpayer!

It is maddening to consider that we pay a large portion of these salaries! (Not as bad as Southwest Key or the International Rescue Committee, but still outrageous considering this bunch below are in-your-face political agitators working with Islamic supremacists like Sarsour!).

Form 990 - 2016 Chart shows salaries for 10 HIAS officers range from $144,000 to $316,500.

Doing well by doing good! Go here to see if HIAS is placing refugees where you live.

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2018/06/27/hebrew-immigrant-aid-society-urges-followers-to-take-to-the-streets-in-wake-of-supreme-court-decision/

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Labor Union Post-Mortem

If you don’t value individual initiative, you won’t get much of it. If you overpay employees to do the minimum, you are ignoring the laws of economics. Labor is a commodity that needs to pay for itself. A Dental Hygienist can make $40 per hour, but can produce revenue of $100 per hour. Unions chose to ignore this.

Unions are paid by the head, so they wanted as many dues paying members as they could get. They therefore fought any technical innovations that would improve efficiency. They also inundated member’s homes with anti-company propaganda and damaged employee relations to justify their own existence.

Unions became the largest special interest group our politicians had to contend with. As their numbers dwindled, multiple liberal special interest groups joined in to play “victim politics”. In the US, we didn’t call it Communism, but it was.

In 1848, Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto. He was troubled by working conditions in England during the Industrial Revolution. He called for a “political solution” to what he saw as a “political struggle” and recommended Communism as a cure. Anti-Capitalist intellectuals everywhere took up the cause without considering the “unintended consequences” of revoking private property rights.

The Industrial Revolution in the US was a tough place for workers, because it was a dangerous race. We were creating infrastructure with our bare hands and manufacturing processes were in transition. Workplace accidents were common and business managers were autocratic.  It was a perfect storm.

Labor Unions in the US began to form in late 1800s and the US government eventually sided with the Unions to avoid the threat of full-on Communism. The US government turned on US industry in 1890 with the passage of the Sherman Act and finished it off in 1913 with the Inheritance Tax. This was aimed at the “Captains of Industry” who created the Industrial Revolution in the US.  No good deed goes unpunished.

Also in 1913, Congress created the Federal Reserve to implement a “managed economy” take-over of the “free-market economy”. This would result in unconstitutional government subsidies and government take-overs of entire industries. This removed price control from consumers and created unsustainable government spending and debt.

Four Reasons For The Decline In Union Membership, by Perry Heidecker, 4/24/13.

Simply put, American workers now see the unions as part of the problem, not part of the solution. There are a number of reasons that account for this negative perception.

1. Unions often seem irrelevant. In good times, workers don’t need unions to secure increases in wages and benefits because everybody profits from economic prosperity. In bad times, unions can’t protect their members from layoffs, wage and benefit reductions and tougher working conditions. In fact, union contracts often seem to make things worse. The high cost of union labor is often cited as a contributing factor to the demise of many companies. Whole industries have fled the United States, attracted by the lure of cheap foreign labor. Other industries struggle to remain competitive.

2. Unions have a poor public image as being bloated, inefficient and often downright corrupt. Stories about labor racketeering, mob influence and trials of union officials for embezzlement and bribery are common fare on the evening news. Employers are often able to use this aura of greed and corruption to blunt union organizing campaigns.

3. Workers are often “out of sync” with union politics. The labor movement is perceived as being a vassal the Democratic Party and a champion of liberal causes. These most recently include immigration reform and national healthcare. Vast amounts of money and manpower have devoted to support labor-approved candidates and issues. Yet many workers, particularly in the South, are deeply conservative and simply do not support these causes. They do not want their union dues going to support issues and politicians with which they disagree.

4. Most Americans now turn to government, not unions, for basic protections. Workers rely on the government for pensions, healthcare, protection against discrimination and a whole variety of other benefits that were formerly provided exclusively by unions.

Unless the labor movement finds a way to reverse its long-standing decline, unions run the danger of their membership shrinking into irrelevance.

Unless the labor movement finds a way to reverse its long-standing decline, unions run the danger of their membership shrinking into irrelevance.

The percentage of workers in the private sector who belong to labor unions has shrunk to 6.9 percent. Labor historians report that this is the lowest rate of union membership in America since 1910. Despite the expenditure of vast amounts of money, effort and government influence by the labor movement, this trend shows every prospect of continuing. How did union membership decline so much?

https://www.cleanlink.com/cp/article/Four-Reasons-For-The-Decline-In-Union-Membership--15514

There are several citizen grievances with government unions. The first is excessive pension cost, the next is undo influence over state legislatures, next the excessive pay of government employees and finally the limited value of what government employees are paid to do.

There are lots of complaints about government of the government, by the government and for the government in ways that state legislatures allow municipalities and government agencies to tax, spend and borrow whatever they want for things voters don’t need and with no voter input.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Union Decline Ahead

The Supreme Court made union dues optional by 5 to 4 in 23 Non-Right-To-Work States. There were already 28 States that had passed Right-To-Work laws.

Under right-to-work laws, states have the authority to determine whether workers can be required to join a labor union to get or keep a job.

Union membership dropped after 1983 in the private sector, but was partially made up by the public sector.

The number of employed union members has declined by 2.9 million since 1983. During the same time, the number of all wage and salary workers grew from 88.3 million to 133.7 million. Consequently, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent in 1983 and declined to 11.1 percent in 2015. In 2009, there was a sharp decline in the number of workers overall and in the number of union members. The number of wage and salary workers declined by 4.9 million from 2008 to 2009, and the number of employed union members fell by 771,000. However, the union membership rate was 12.3 percent in 2009, essentially unchanged from 12.4 percent in 2008.

Number of union members about evenly split between the private and public sector in 2015. Through the years, there has been a long term decline in the number of union members in the private sector. In 2015, there were 7.6 million union members in the private sector, 4.4 million fewer than in 1983. Public-sector union membership, however, has remained fairly constant over time; in 2015, there were 7.2 million public-sector union members, 1.5 million more than in 1983.

Union membership rate highest in local government In 2015, public-sector workers had a union membership rate of 35.2 percent, more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.7 percent). While the unionization rate for the public sector has remained relatively steady over time, the rate for the private sector has declined from 16.8 percent in 1983 to 6.7 percent in 2015.

Within the public sector, local government had the highest union membership rate at 41.3 percent in 2015, followed by state government at 30.2 percent and federal government at 27.3 percent. Local government has a large number of union members working in highly unionized occupations such as teachers, police officers, and firefighters.

Industries with large numbers of union members experienced declining rates too In the private sector, five industries accounted for 81 percent of union members in 2015.

Of these industries, private education and health services had the largest number of union members at 1.9 million; this includes a large number of union members who work in private hospitals, like nurses, and private school employees (public schools and hospitals are excluded).

Manufacturing (1.4 million), transportation and utilities (1.1 million), construction (940,000), and wholesale and retail trade (871,000) also had relatively large numbers of union members in 2015. For comparison, the sixth largest industry, leisure and hospitality had 389,000 union members.

Transportation, which has a relatively high union membership rate, declined by 6.7 percentage points from 2000 to 2015. Union membership rates in construction, manufacturing, and wholesale and retail trade also declined. In contrast, the unionization rate in education and health services edged up by 0.8 percentage point. Industry data on a comparable basis are available back to 2000.

New York had highest union membership rate, South Carolina lowest, in 2015 Thirty states and the District of Columbia had union membership rates below that of the U.S. average, 11.1 percent, and 20 states had rates above it. In 2015, New York continued to have the highest union membership rate at 24.7 percent; Hawaii was the only other state to have a union membership rate above 20 percent in 2015, at 20.4 percent. Five states had union membership rates below 5.0 percent in 2015, with South Carolina having the lowest rate (2.1 percent). The next lowest rates were in North Carolina (3.0 percent) and Utah (3.9 percent).

https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2016/union-membership-in-the-united-states/pdf/union-membership-in-the-united-states.pdf

Right-To-Work Laws - Currently, 28 states and Guam have given workers a choice when it comes to union membership. Labor unions still operate in those states, but workers cannot be compelled to become members as a requirement of their job. Kentucky became the 27th right-to-work state when it enacted HB 1 on Jan. 9, 2017. Missouri became the 28th by enacting SB 19 on Feb. 2, 2017.

Right-to-Work States are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Wyoming.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/right-to-work-laws-and-bills.aspx

The 23 Non-Right to Work (Forced Unionism) states are:  Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey. New Mexico. New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Supreme Court Appointment Ahead

Justice Anthony Kennedy to Retire, By Nina Totenbert, 6/27/18, NPR.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement Wednesday, setting the stage for what promises to be an epic political battle over his replacement.

A Trump nominee is likely to be far more conservative than Kennedy, who, though appointed by President Reagan, voted with the court's liberals in some key cases.

Kennedy, who will turn 82 next month, made the announcement the same day the court handed down its last pending opinion for the 2017-18 term. He said he would continue to serve through July 31 of this year.

Speaking from the Oval Office soon after Kennedy's announcement, President Trump said Kennedy has "been a great justice of the Supreme Court." Trump also said the process to replace Kennedy will "begin immediately." The president pointed to a list of potential nominees he put together and made public previously. "It will be somebody from that list," Trump said, adding "hopefully we will pick someone who is just as outstanding [as Kennedy]."

Trump also told journalists Wednesday that Kennedy came to the White House to meet with him prior to making his announcement. The president met with the Supreme Court justice for about 30 minutes, Trump said. The president also said he asked Kennedy for any recommendations as to his replacement but Trump would not reveal who Kennedy suggested.

In a separate statement, the White House described Kennedy as "a tireless voice for individual rights and the Founders' enduring vision of limited government. His words have left an indelible mark not only on this generation, but on the fabric of American history."

Speaking on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said, "The Senate stands ready to fulfill its constitutional role by providing advice and consent on President Trump's nominee to fill this vacancy. We will vote to confirm Justice Kennedy's successor this fall."

A simple majority of 51 votes is required to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. Senate Republicans currently hold 51 seats. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has been away from Washington, D.C., while he battles brain cancer, but Vice President Pence could cast a tiebreaking vote if needed.

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/27/533997482/supreme-court-to-lose-its-swing-voter-justice-anthony-kennedy-to-retire

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader