Weekend reading guaranteed to make you smarter

Amnesty lies revealed

Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell is a favorite for a reason. His brilliant mind clarifies and distills issues that have been analyzed and debated ad infinitum. Here’s Sowell’s take on “Comprehensive” immigration reform, which he argues “serves the interests of politicians who like to be on both sides of a controversial issue, and it serves the interests of those foreigners who want to game the system in the United States, at the expense of the American people. But it does not serve the interests of American society.”

On the issue of anchor babies, Sowell minces no words: “If nothing else, putting a legal end to the “anchor baby” racket might suggest to the American public that they were regarded in Congress as something more than expendable suckers who can be mollified with rhetoric.”

Today’s recommended reading is the incisive, icing-on-the-amnesty-cake commentary Immigration Sophistry to bring you up to speed on the truth behind what we are being sold by the disreputable “Gang of 8.”  Sowell hits all the glib distortions being fed as facts to the American people. For additional background, read Immigration Gambles: Part II and Immigration Gambles.  

Here in the border state of Arizona, we are particularly vulnerable — even more so since two of the gangsters are Arizona senators. The deceptive John McCain is leading this massive sham as well as the ultimate destruction of the Republican Party, along with his open-borders protégé Jeff Flake.

Amnesty’s actual costs skyrocket to $6.3 trillion

Jeff Flake, when given clear choices, sides with far left

What a surprise! The Soros-backed “Media Matters” is running interference for the McCain/Flake Amnesty Gang. 

Media Matters (MM), a reliable arm of the Obama regime, with far reaching tentacles in every aspect of the left-wing MSM, goes to the mat attempting to undercut a new study by the conservative policy group Heritage Foundation which details the enormous costs — $6.3 trillion — associated with the implementation of the latest version of amnesty for those in our country illegally.

The radically liberal group (MM) then claims the report “has been repeatedly debunked, even by conservatives, and is a revision of a 2007 study that utilized “fatally flawed” methodology.” 

This blatant deception is an interesting position for Media Matters, which manipulates news by placing its talking points into the eagerly colluding hands of the liberal press. The group even orchestrated the pressuring of advertisers to drop their sponsorship of Glenn Beck’s former show on Fox News.

So why is this liberally biased site the go-to for Arizona’s junior senator Jeff Flake who professes to be a Republican? Here’s Flake, outfitted in his amnesty cloak offering his obnoxious tweet.

For the facts on amnesty’s unsustainable costs, check in with the Heritage Foundation and read the just released findings in the new report by scholars Robert Rector and Jason Richwine, Ph.D.: The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer.

Pay attention to Heritage President Jim DeMint’s analysis of this dire situation:

The $6.3 trillion number is the cost to taxpayers of supporting illegal aliens under amnesty, including any taxes they would pay into the system versus the amount of government benefits and services they would take out.

On an individual level, the number is just as stunning. The study by Heritage reveals, “the average adult unlawful immigrant would receive $592,000 more in government benefits over the course of his remaining lifetime than he would pay in taxes.”

With amnesty, unlawful immigrants become lawful — and eligible for ObamaCare benefits, Social Security, welfare, and Medicare. The study addresses the massive costs after the Gang of Eight’s 13-year waiting period for benefits. As a result, government spending and fiscal deficits would increase dramatically – clearly not a concern to the deceptive “Gang of 8” gangsters, including Arizona Sen. John McCain and his open-borders seatmate protégé Jeff Flake. These nominal Republicans will also be opening the floodgates for millions of new Democrats, ensuring a path to oblivion for the GOP.

Obama’s Marxist redistribution plan is underway

The Washington Post runs a 5-page report on the efforts undertaken by food stamp recruiters to coax people into signing up for taxpayer financed benefits. Potential recipients are lured with free food, gift packages for themselves and even their pets, and told “you deserve it.” Some states host SNAP-themed bingo games, others distribute fliers that read: “Be a patriot. Bring your food stamp money home.” Still other states throw food stamp parties where new recipients sign up en masse at the gift giveaway tables. Recruiters, functioning as commission sales reps, actually have quotas to fill — at least 150 new people a month. It matters not that one Florida husband and wife, just completing  nine holes of golf — clubs still on their cart — showed up and were signed up.

To help enroll more seniors, the government has even published an outreach guide instructing on “blending compassion with sales techniques,” generating some — but not enough —  protests in Congress. The guide teaches recruiters how to “overcome the word ‘no,’” even suggesting answers for likely hesitations:

Welfare stigma: “You worked hard and the taxes you paid helped create SNAP.” 

Embarrassment: “Everyone needs help now and then.”

Sense of failure: “Lots of people, young and old, are having financial difficulties.”

Today, nearly 50 million Americans now rely on what was previously known as food stamps, now going by the snappy acronym of SNAP for ‘Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.’ In Florida alone, enrollment has risen from 1.45 million people in 2008 to 3.35 million in 2012.

As the Obama regime furloughs FAA traffic controllers and cancels school childrens’ planned  trips to the White House under the politically machinated sequestration strategy, ask yourself why taxpayer’s dollars are paying recruiters to expand programs that are already costing more than the economy can bear?

It was disgusting to read that the Boston Marathon bombers — whose next target was to be New York’s Times Square — and their families received welfare benefits, among the one in six Americans currently on the dole. In Britain, most terrorists turn out to be welfare recipients. Being unemployed, they have time on their hands to become radicalized and plan acts of violence. One U.K. extremist Islamic imam, who praises terror attacks, urged his followers to think of welfare benefits as a form of the jizya tax non-believers are supposed to pay Muslims – or, as he put it, “a Jihad Seeker’s Allowance.”  Human Events reports here.

Redistribution has always been part of Obama’s Marxist mindset. Speaking at a conference at Loyola University in 1998, he admits, “I actually believe in redistribution.” Now as president, he is implementing that which was so near and dear to the hearts of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their Communist Manifesto, as they advocated the incentive busting, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

American Thinker clearly defines what the phrase “redistribution of wealth” actually means to the future of America.

McCain, Flake, gangsters, take absurd PR border tour

In a newscast nearly as vacuous as Arizona’s amnesty twins John McCain and Jeff McFlake, reporter Navideh Forghani glowingly describes the scene at the Arizona-Mexico border where “this kid” hopped the fence  The Republicrats took a couple of their “Gang of 8” Dem cohorts for a stroll along the border yesterday afternoon. Chuck Schumer (NY) and Michael Bennet (Colo.) got an eyeful as they watched illegals jumping the fence that is woefully inadequate in providing security.

Forghani said, “One of the key tools these senators want to do is provide agents with the right technology to help them patrol the vast border along Mexico. And it’s technology like that tower,” she said pointing off in the distance, “that the senators are talking about, and they tell me that technology will pay for itself because they’ll be charging those hi-tech companies to be a part of border security.”

Doesn’t it seem they should be paying for the services instead of charging the providers?

As if on cue, the reporter pronounced that these wizards are “90 percent complete with the proposed immigration reform.”

New Yorker Schumer who can return to his home 3,000 miles away from the porous border, inanely stated, “Secure the border, and once the border is secured by specific metrics, then people can become citizens.” He said, “What I learned today is we have adequate manpower, but not adequate technology. Technology will work.”

Schumer must have been asleep five years ago when former Homeland Insecurity Chief Michael Chertoff promised the $20 million technology newly put in place was “looking good.” But the “virtual fence” turned out to be a virtual flop. Two months after completion, the feds announced plans to replace the highly touted “virtual fence” with new towers, radars, cameras and computer software, scrapping the brand-new and costly system because it didn’t work.

McCain and Schumer promised this overhaul would pay for itself, while cautioning that their proposed border security package would be costly. “Nobody is going to be totally happy with this legislation, no one will be because we have to make compromises,” John McMaverick said.

Bennet added the Gang of Eight are opposed to double-sided fences along the length of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Makes sense. That might be more difficult to navigate.

In his most sincere tone, Flake opined: “It is difficult sometimes to get a good picture of where we are. We just know we aren’t there yet. We have to do more, but we’ve come a long way.”

Indeed.

McCain colludes with Dems: Pushes gun restrictions

Registry rankles gun owners; Bloomberg tries to “buy America”

In another of his seemingly endless conspiracies with the far left, Sen. John McCain has again emerged as a key player in advancing the passage of gun control legislation intended to expand background checks on all private sales of firearms.

The Senate is expected to vote on a comprehensive (there’s that McWord again) gun control bill when lawmakers return from Easter recess in April. Republicans involved in the negotiations objected to measures they felt could lead to the creation of a federal database of gun owners and language which could impede the transfer of weapons between family members or friends.

The latest impetus for the imposition of gun restrictions was the horrific mass murder of young school children in Newtown, Connecticut. Yet those guns were legally purchased with a background check. The bill being considered would have had no impact on the perpetrator. The state in which the tragedy took place has among the most stringent gun control laws in the nation. Ironically, the pro-gun-control Brady Campaign scorecard proclaims, “Connecticut has strong gun laws that help combat the illegal gun market, prevent the sale of most guns without background checks and reduce risks to children.”

Included in the bill is a measure introduced by Democrat Sen. Charles Schumer to implement universal background checks on all private firearm sales. Semi-automatic firearms, politically reconfigured by use of the incendiary term “assault weapons,” have currently been dropped from the Senate‘s bill.

Meanwhile Liberal New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, co-chairman of “Mayors Against Illegal Guns,” pompously opined Sunday that it’s his responsibility to provide advocates for stricter gun control with a national voice that counteracts the NRA’s powerful influence. Reputed as having over $27 billion in personal wealth, Bloomberg is personally funding a massive $12 million advertising campaign aimed at ginning up support for tighter gun restrictions in the states of 13 key senators, facing a vote on several gun control measures. McCain’s sycophantic junior senate cohort Jeff Flake is among those targeted. Apparently he hasn’t gotten his marching orders from McMaverick.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” the NRA‘s Wayne LaPierre countered Bloomberg‘s efforts, “He can’t spend enough of his $27 billion to try to impose his will on the American public. He can’t buy America.” 

The video can also be seen here.

H/T Commenter Doc

ObamaCare: Gang of 8 implodes on illegals eligibility

The illegals benefits cat is outta the bag

Arizona’s squishy Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake are integral to the bi-partisan Gang of Eight that has been singing the kumbaya song of amnesty with Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham. The foursome have been working hand-in-glove with their Democrat Senate gangster cohorts Dick Durbin, Bob Menendez, Chuck Schumer and Michael Bennet. 

But a fracture occurred in the love fest Saturday morning as Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking member on the senate budget committee, put forth an amendment to a budget resolution that would have put the Senate on record as opposing ObamaCare for the over 25 million illegal aliens upon whom the gangsters want to bestow legal status. The vote went along party lines, splintering the gang.

The expansion of benefits scheme shoots a hole in the often repeated argument that we need to bring in new workers to bolster our sagging economy. Uneducated people who entered the United States in utter disregard for our laws and culture, are not optimum high wage earners who will be paying the kind of taxes needed to provide such reinforcement. They will be taking from the system and the gangsters know it. Real immigrants enter the U.S. legally and contribute rather than exploit. Their benefits scheme also flies in the face of American citizens who are struggling in this still brutal economy — many underemployed or working two jobs to make ends meet. Competition for those jobs is the last thing they need.

In previous amnesty efforts conservative Sen. Sessions has been a vocal critic, leading the defeat of such McCain sponsored bills in 2007 and 2008.  He has voted against guest worker plans which include a path to citizenship, though supporting visas for skilled workers. He has supported the construction of a fence along the Mexican border.

At the recent CPAC convention, Ann Coulter blasted what she called “suicidal policies” being grasped at by “panicked Republicans, demoralized after the last election. If amnesty goes through, America becomes California and no Republican will ever win another national election,” Coulter said, adding: “I can see why Democrats would want amnesty, but why on earth are Marco Rubio and these endless Bushes supporting it?”

Today is a good time to reacquaint yourself with her excellent commentary, Hispanicked GOP Elite: They’ll Respect us in the Morning.  Coulter exposes the fallacies of McCain’s gangsters, refuting the canard about Hispanics being “natural conservatives.”  She writes “it comes from the same cliché machine that gave us the one about blacks being ‘natural conservatives.’ At least blacks really are social conservatives — they just vote Democratic, anyway.”

Coulter continues, “As Charles Murray has pointed out, Hispanics are less likely to go to church or be employed than non-Hispanics. They are less opposed to gay marriage than everyone else — 44 percent compared to 50 percent. (By contrast, 55 percent of blacks oppose gay marriage, according to a 2012 Washington Post/ABC poll — even more, according to how they vote.)

Nor, unfortunately, do Hispanic immigrants become more Republican the longer they’ve been here, as some Republicans claim without bothering to see if it’s true.  To the contrary, they get more liberal. Cubans used to vote Republican nearly as reliably as Mormons. In 2012, 49 percent of Cubans voted for Obama.”

Meanwhile the racist National Council of La Raza, threatened they will be monitoring what they consider to be any “anti-immigrant” votes and put members of both parties on notice that their votes will be remembered on Election Day.

Shudder.

VP Biden: Domestic violence vs. “garden-variety slap across the face”

Biden differentiates between types of domestic violence

Joe Biden, America’s gaffe-prone Vice President joined with USAG Eric Holder to announce the allocation of 12 federal grants totaling $2.3 million, intended to aid local governments reduce domestic violence.

“We’ve learned that certain behaviors on the part of an abuser portend much more danger than other behaviors,“ Biden declared. “For example, if an abuser has attempted to strangle his victim, if he has threatened to shoot her, if he has sexually assaulted her, and there’s a number of other signs, about eight others,” he rambled. “These are tell-tale signs to say this isn’t your garden-variety slap across the face……”

Yes. He actually said that.

In an obvious example of hypocritical, liberal double standards, Team Obama — including blunder-king Biden — dropping hints about his own 2016 presidential aspirations — ridiculed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for explaining his meticulous policy of recruitment of women for cabinet positions while governor of Massachusetts.

AZ AG Horne victory: Judge upholds ethnic studies ban

Sanity prevails

Federal District Court Judge A. Wallace Tashima has ruled on Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) appeal of the ban on the ethnocentric Mexican American Studies (MAS) Program, upholding the ban. The law was held to be constitutional, with one minor exception, Section (A)(3).

Judge Tashima said objections did not “meet the high threshold to establish a constitutional violation.” The 31-page ruling can be read here.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, was formerly the two-term elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction when this issue arose. Horne, who personally argued the case in U.S. District Court in Tucson, issued this statement after the decision was announced: “This is a victory for ensuring that public education is not held captive to radical, political elements and that students treat each other as individuals — not on the basis of the race they were born into.”  His complete statement can be read here. The order was enforced the last day of Horne’s term and enacted by incoming Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal, whose name appears on the ruling. A search of his website lacked any press release regarding this defining issue for his office.

As Superintendent, Horne protested the program and was instrumental in passage of HB 2281 which “prohibits a school district or charter school from including courses or classes that either promote the overthrow of the United States government or promote resentment toward a race or class of people.” (Complete bill information here).

Interestingly, Horne had an unlikely ally in his efforts: The Arizona Republic.  On Jan. 4, 2011, the newspaper ran an editorial rightfully calling the data used to buttress the claims “repeated constantly by [the program’s] defenders that students perform better academically as a result of taking ethnic studies classes and that they go on to college more often” — “academically unsupportable.” Further the newspaper stated that officials who make such claims “are acting irresponsibly in doing so.” The editorial goes so far as to say the results “appear rigged.”

Enforcement of the law resulted in cancellation of TUSD’s racially discriminatory Mexican-American Studies Program after an independent Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) found that the program presented material in a “biased, political, and emotionally charged manner.” The ALJ also stated: “Teaching in such a manner promotes social or political activism against white people, promotes racial resentment, and advocates ethnic solidarity instead of treating people as individuals.”

Readers can refresh their memories regarding this ongoing and radical saga here.  Horne was killed in effigy by students as a thuggish mob of La Raza Studies supporters tried to shout down the Attorney General.

ASU’s Crow backs lower tuition for illegals — again

Co$tly deception abounds

ASU President Michael Crow is back to his old tricks of dropping tuition rates for illegal alien students. We wrote this back in 2007, pointing out that Crow was skirting the provisions of Prop 300, a voter-approved law that, among other matters, requires such students pay higher, out-of-state tuition rates. The law passed overwhelmingly 1,060,444 to 423,994.

Fast forward to March 6, 2013. The amnesty-supporting Periódico de la República de Arizona (Arizona Republic) headline cheers the news: “Crow backs lower migrant tuition.” The daily newspaper is keen on cunningly using imprecise words such as “migrant” and “undocumented“ to describe illegals. “Migrants” sound deceptively akin to the swallows, making their yearly journey each March 19 to California’s Mission San Juan Capistrano, and departing for their home in Argentina the following October 23. Our “migrants” come here in violation of our laws and national sovereignty and never leave.

Acquaint yourself with the severe restrictions imposed by Mexico’s Constitution on foreign-born, naturalized Mexican citizens. Those who enter Mexico illegally are not even this fortunate.

Tuition and fee increases were the order of the day for Arizona’s three universities going into the 2011-12 school year as the Arizona Board of Regents provided the double-digit increases the schools requested.  ASU freshmen received a 20 percent hike, to $9,716 a year. UA undergraduates stared wide-eyed at a 22 percent increase, and  NAU students found themselves facing an 11 percent increase. At the time, only two of the nine regents voted against the increases. Room-and-board costs can add an additional $10,000.

It’s doubtful these real-world issues factor with the over-paid Crow. Crow’s wife Sybil Francis is also on the ASU payroll as a six-figure ‘senior advisor.’ (Her precise salary is well hidden.) Here’s a review worth checking out: Crow’s annual salary of $475,000 plus benefits comes in at $742,500. There’s that $50,000 housing allowance to assist in maintaining their exclusive $1,250,000 Paradise Valley digs, and a nifty $10,000 yearly car allowance. The ASU Foundation on which his wife serves as a “senior advisor” to the group advocating her husband’s pay increases, kicks in an additional $100,000 annually in compensation. His yearly $85,500 pension and $22,000 in retirement, would round it all out nicely…but then there are the proposed yearly crank-up bonuses: 2013: Up to $40,000, 2014: Up to $40,000, and the major step-up in 2015: Up to $180,000 for exceeding benchmarks for freshman retention, research revenue, bachelor’s degrees awarded and transfer students.

Living high, Michael Crow doesn’t quite get the plight of struggling students. The faltering economy is not on his radar screen.  He and his wife are clearly not in danger of losing their Paradise Valley mansion to foreclosure.

The crushingly large tuition hikes were frozen going into 2012-2013 for the first time in 20 years. Given Michael Crow’s grand scale generosity to foreign national students, expect tuition and fees to soar again for Arizona‘s citizen students. The money will have to come from somewhere.

SSM Political Correctness reigns: Where’s Johnny Mc?

An amicus brief, or friend-of-the-court, has been filed with the U. S. Supreme Court, deceptively arguing that same-sex marriage (SSM) promotes family values by allowing children raised by such couples to grow up in two-parent homes, and that it advances conservative values of “limited government and maximizing individual freedom.”

As of Tuesday, 75 Republicans signed on, petitioning the Supreme Court to grant constitutional protections to SSM. Hollingsworth v. Perry is the appeal by proponents of California’s Proposition 8, which upholds the state‘s Defense of Marriage Act.  This is the amicus brief filed in support of the traditional definition of marriage by faith-based organizations.

In 2008, Arizona voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 102, the Marriage Protection Amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, by a vote of 56-44 percent. At the time, the crafty word-twisters at the Arizona Republic, defined the issue as the “Gay Marriage Ban.”

Yet, sticking a finger in the eye of Arizonans, in 2010, while their husband and father was a candidate, both Cindy and Meghan McCain signed on as poster women (scroll down for their photos) with the NOH8 campaign (No Hate, get it?) promoting the very issue that had been voted down in their home state.

In making the brief’s argument that SSM bans are discriminatory, the signatories are at odds with the House Republican leadership, which has authorized the defense of  the 1996 marriage law. Federal law defines marriage as a legal union of a man and a woman. As expected, Barack Obama has weighed in, urging the overturning of the law.

Proposition 8, the Defense of Marriage Act,  was passed by California voters in Nov. 2008, overturning a ruling by the California Supreme Court which had authorized same-sex unions.

Oral arguments in ” Hollingsworth v. Perry are scheduled for March 26.

Jon Huntsman, former Utah Governor and unable-to-gain-traction presidential candidate, doing his best imitation of an anything-goes guy, writes of his acceptance of SSM, illogically calling the issue a conservative cause: “The party of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan has now lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. The marketplace of ideas will render us irrelevant, and soon, if we are not honest about our time and place in history,”  Huntsman says.

The Roman Empire collapsed in large measure due to the breakdown of economic, cultural and social institutions — in effect decaying from within. Huntsman and the Republicans who have abandoned their reason at the altar of political correctness, need to reacquaint themselves with the Judeo-Christian, biblical-based values that define the greatness of this nation.