Monday, October 4, 2010

OBAMA COTINUES HIS ASSAULT ON AMERICANS

Why is not the media spalshing this video all over tv

"This is country belongs to Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in March of 2009!
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However LA RAZA does like the AMERICAN WELFARE SYSTEM. The welfare system in the country is so good that Mexico has dumped 38 million of their poor, illiterate , criminal and frequently pregnant over our border.
Did you know that radical immigrant groups – including the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) and the National Council of La Raza (La Raza) – not only share a revolutionary agenda of conquering America's southwest, but they also share common funding sources, notably the Ford and Rockefeller foundations?
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''California is going to be a Hispanic state," said Mario Obeldo, former head of MALDEF. "Anyone who does not like it should leave." And MEChA's goal is even more radical: an independent ''Aztlan,'' the collective name this organization gives to the seven states of the U.S. Southwest – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah. So why would the Rockefeller and Ford foundations support such groups? Joseph Farah tells the story in this issue of Whistleblower.


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Ariz. Border Sheriff: Obama’s ‘Got His Hands Wrapped Around Our Throat'
Friday, October 01, 2010
By Terence P. Jeffrey

Sheriff Larry Dever of Cochise County, Ariz. (Cochise County Sheriff's Department photo)
(CNSNews.com) - Sheriff Larry Dever of Cochise County, Ariz. told CNSNews.com that President Barack Obama has “got his hands wrapped around our throat” as his administration sues the state of Arizona for trying to enforce the immigration laws that the federal government itself will not enforce.
Dever also said he has “zero confidence” Obama will secure the border before his presidential term is up in two years and that the president is putting the people who live and work in Cochise County at risk by willfully failing to secure that border so that he can maintain political leverage for his goal of winning an amnesty for illegal aliens.
CNSNews.com videotaped an interview with Dever on Aug. 13, the same day Obama signed a $600 million bill to provide 1,000 additional Border Patrol agents. When asked whether he believes Obama actually wants to secure the border, Dever said that Obama did not want to do so.
“No. He’s as much as said so,” said Dever. “He’s playing the border security card, holding that, his trump card, to get immigration reform. And he’s basically said, you’re not going to get the kind of border enforcement you want, you’re asking for, unless you give me immigration reform.”
Cochise County is one of four counties in the state of Arizona that is contiguous with the Mexican border. Dever, a native of the county, was first elected sheriff in 1996 and has worked in local law enforcement in the county for three decades.
When CNSNews.com asked Dever if he was saying that President Obama was putting ranchers, other people in his county and the even Border Patrol agents who worked there at risk by holding off on securing the border while trying to win an amnesty for illegal aliens, Dever said: “If that’s what it seems like I’m saying, let me just make it perfectly clear, as the president likes to say: That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Asked how much confidence he has that President Obama will eventually secure the border before his term of office ends in two years, Dever said: “I have zero confidence in that.”
“While this new funding is welcome, it’s still far short,” Dever said of the bill the president signed that day. “It’s an improvement, and we welcome that. But what really irritates me, really irritates me, is that while throwing out all this money in the government, he’s suing us on the other hand.”
Dever was referring to the lawsuit brought against Arizona by the U.S. Justice Department seeking to block an Arizona law enacted earlier this year that requires local law enforcement officers in Arizona to determine the immigration status of someone they stop for another reason and then have a reasonable basis for suspecting may be an illegal alien. In July, a federal judge issued an injunction blocking enforcement of key provision of the Arizona law, and it is now on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
“So, he’s got his hands wrapped around our throat—to use a Gulf oil—his foot on our throat, to use a Gulf-oil-spill metaphor, and, holding out a few crumbs in his hand and saying eat this,” said Dever. “Lift the lawsuit, Mr. President, and drop that thing. Let Arizona take its leadership role like it’s willing to do. We’ll help. We’ll do more good with that than anything else that’s going on right now. Other states are getting on board. And then give us the resources we need

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The Administration's Phantom Immigration Enforcement Policy
According to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the department.
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While the official unemployment rate has climbed from 7.6 percent when President Obama took office in January to 10 percent today, the administration’s worksite enforcement strategy has amounted to a bureaucratic game of musical chairs. The administration has all but ended worksite enforcement actions and replaced them with paperwork audits. When the audits determine that illegal aliens are on the payroll, employers are given the opportunity to fire them with little or no adverse consequence to the company, while no action is taken to remove the illegal workers from the country. The illegal workers simply acquire a new set of fraudulent documents and move on to the next employer seeking workers willing to accept substandard wages.
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FAIRUS.org
FEDERATION FOR AMERICAN IMMIGRATION REFORM
FAIR CHARACTERIZES THE OBAMA, AND LA RAZA DEMS PLAN FOR AMNESTY AS FOLLOWS:
That's why, throughout 2009 FAIR has been tracking every move the administration and Congress has made to undermine our immigration laws, reward illegal aliens and burden taxpayers.
• Foot-dragging on proven methods of immigration law enforcement including border structures and E-Verify.
• Appointment of several illegal alien advocates to important administration posts.
• Watering down of the 287(g) program to limit local law in their own jurisdictions.
• Health care reform that mandates a “public option” for newly-arrived legal immigrants as well as illegal aliens.
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OBAMA STACKS HIS ADMINISTRATION WITH LA RAZA FASCIST PARTY MEMBERS!
Immigration will be Obama's Waterloo. We now know Obama is a closet leftist radical who has a tin ear when it comes to listening to the American people. Obama has appointed immigration radicals to high positions in his Administration such as Hilda Solis (Secretary of Labor), Senior White House Advisor Celia Munoz (former Sr. Vice President of La Raza), and ICE’s William Hurtt. These actions stand in stark contrast to the clearly expressed will of the vast majority of American people, who want our existing immigration laws enforced, our border brought under control, and no grant of amnesty to millions of law breaking illegal aliens who are wreaking havoc on our society -- and who cost taxpaying Americans a lot of money. The American public will not permit mass amnesty to be granted to illegal aliens -- before or after November. Too many American citizens and legal residents understand the enormous stakes at play (including the very future of this country). Obama sees 12-20 million new voter registration cards – and he does not care if they are submitted by people who have no right to be in our country, whose first act coming here was to break our laws, and who if granted amnesty will literally bankrupt us.


“The president's straddling can work for the time being. But unless he wants to end up in the sawdust, acrobat Obama will eventually have to hop on one horse and lead the way. That would have to be the horse named "Enforcement First." CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
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“What's needed to discourage illegal immigration into the United States has been known for years: Enforce existing law.” ….. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR


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WHILE BARACK OBAMA GIVES HIMSELF A B+ (HIS BANKSTERS GAVE HIM THE GRADE) JUDICIAL WATCH’S GRADE IS A BIT MORE REALISTIC:
JUDICIAL WATCH.org
With trillion dollar bailouts, government-run healthcare, banks and car companies, ACORN corruption, attacks on conservative media, illegal alien amnesty, unprecedented and dangerous new rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors—this is the Obama legacy—and we haven't even gotten through the first year of his presidency!
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OBAMA’S LONG HISTORY OF HISPANDERING….
Lou Dobbs Tonight
CNN -- July 27 Pilgrim: Well presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama voiced support for yesterday's court ruling that struck down Hazleton's illegal immigration law. Senator Obama called the federal court ruling a victory for all Americans. The senator said comprehensive reform is needed so local communities do not continue to take matters into their own hands. Senator Obama was a supporter of the Senate's failed immigration bill, which would have given amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney took a strong stand against chain migration today....
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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon started his crackdown on drug cartels and corrupt law enforcement two years ago, more than 4,000 people have been killed. The death toll among law
enforcement has topped 500. Kidnappings and violence are spreading across the border, and now the AP reports Mexican cartels have green-lighted hits against targets in the U.S. We’ll talk to Phoenix police about becoming the kidnapping capital of the nation and the rapid increase in other crimes linked to Mexico the city is coping with.
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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, June 16, 2008
Tonight, we’ll have all the latest on the devastating floods in the Midwest and all the day’s news from the campaign trail. The massive corporate mouthpiece the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is holding a “North American Forum” to lay out its “shared vision” for the United States, Canada and Mexico – which is to say a borderless, pro-business super-state in which U.S. sovereignty will be dissolved. Undercover investigators have found incredibly lax security and enforcement at U.S. border crossings, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. This report comes on the heels of a separate report by U.C. San Diego that shows tougher border security efforts aren’t deterring illegal entries to the United States.
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CNN RECENTLY REPORTED THAT THE NUMBER OF MEX GANG MEMBERS EXCEEDS ONE MILLION!

Lou Dobbs Tonight
And there are some 800,000 gang members in this country: That’s more than the combined number of troops in our Army and Marine Corps. These gangs have become one of the principle ways to import and distribute drugs in the United States. Congressman David Reichert joins Lou to tell us why those gangs are growing larger and stronger, and why he’s introduced legislation to eliminate the top three international drug gangs.

ILLEAGALS BANKRUPT CALIFORNIA, Mexico's Welfare State

Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, February 11, 2008
In California, League of United Latin American Citizens has adopted a resolution to declare "California Del Norte" a sanctuary zone for immigrants. The declaration urges the Mexican government to invoke its rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo "to seek third nation neutral arbitration of ....disputes concerning immigration laws and their enforcement." We’ll have the story.
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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Gov. Schwarzenegger said California is facing “financial Armageddon”. He is making drastic cuts in the budget for education, health care and services. But there is one place he isn’t making cuts… services for illegal immigrants. These services are estimated to cost the state four to five billion dollars a year. Schwarzenegger said he is “happy” to offer these services. We will have a full report tonight.
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CALIFORNIA OPERATES DEFICITS OF $20 BILLION A YEAR, EVEN WHILE IT HANDS OUT $2 BILLION A YEAR TO ILLEGALS IN WELFARE!
OBAMA, AND HIS HAREM OF LA RAZA DEMS, BOXER, FEINSTEIN, PELOSI, ESHOO, LOFGREN, LA RAZA PARTY FASCIST FOR MEX SUPREMACY, Reps. BECERRA, SANCHEZ SISTERS, AND BACA…. has assaulted legals in Arizona, sabotaged E-VERIFY, refused to enforce laws prohibiting the employment of illegals, has turned our homeland security into the LA RAZA HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY to CITIZENSHIP, and lied to us endlessly about border security!

WE CAN’T SAVE OUR STATE BY RE-ELECTING THE SAME LYING ACTORS.
OTHER THAN FEINSTEIN, THERE IS NO ONE MORE CORRUPT THAN BOXER. THERE IS A REASON WHY OBAMA AND THE SPECIAL INTERESTS THAT DON’T WANT TO PAY LIVING WAGES, WANT THIS WOMAN RE-ELECTED! IN A WORD: amnesty!
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New austerity budget in California
By Olivier Richards
4 October 2010
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders said they had reached an agreement Friday evening to end the state’s budget stalemate by slashing social spending. A vote on the new budget will be held on Thursday.
California is currently entering into its fourth month without a budget, making this the longest stalemate in the state’s history. California currently faces a projected deficit of $19 billion, equivalent to 22 percent of the state’s $84.5 billion budget last year.
State lawmakers refused to provide any details of the agreement that was reached after hours of closed-door meetings in the governor’s office, stating that information on the deal would not come out until Wednesday. Their aim is to force through a quick vote to prevent any public discussion on what will no doubt be further devastating cuts in social programs.
The two main components of the budget, however, are clear: further cuts to social programs (on top of several years of record cuts) and an attack on pensions for state workers. Politicians of both parties agreed to reject any measures that increase taxes on the wealthy or corporations.
Anonymous sources report that the deal will involve $7.5 billion in cuts. Both Republicans and Democrats have agreed not to introduce any broad new taxes. The remainder of the budget deficit is said to consist mainly of accounting manipulations and rosy predictions of future economic growth and aid from the federal government. This means that further cuts in social programs will come with the next round of negotiations.
Republican lawmakers had been aiming to cut around $12 billion from the budget, including eliminating the state’s main welfare program and day care for 140,000 children in low-income families. As part of the agreement, Republicans also allowed a corporate tax break to be suspended for two years, but this was in exchange for a permanent tax break that will primarily benefit corporate giants like Comcast and Microsoft.
In enforcing this attack on California workers, state lawmakers are relying on the support of the trade unions. In particular, the budget deal assumes that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and other unions will get their members to accept rollbacks of public employee benefits that were granted 11 years ago.
The 90,500 member SEIU Local 1000 represents nine of the fifteen bargaining units that currently do not have a contract. Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers are counting on SEIU pushing through these pension cuts, with the other bargaining units following suit.
Schwarzenegger’s press secretary Aaron McLear said that the governor “came to an agreement on pension reform with the Legislature. [Schwarzenegger has] said since January that he won't sign a budget that doesn't include comprehensive pension reform. That remains the case."
The budget has been negotiated under increasing pressure from bond markets, with state officials warning of dire circumstances if a budget is not passed this week. The state controller, John Chiang, has said that without a budget he would have to start handing out IOUs again, for the third time since the Great Depression.
California is the largest issuer of bonds in the US municipal debt market. During last year’s budget standoff, IOUs were issued in order to maintain cash reserves to pay investors in the debt market. However, investors are beginning to become concerned about the bonds, and California may face yet another cut to its already low credit rating.
Since the state has not passed a budget before the end of the first fiscal quarter, US Bank can suspend the state’s CalCard and Voyager credit cards—used for buying supplies, routine purchases, and gasoline for the state’s fleet—for nonpayment.
More critically, without a state budget, the state cannot seek $10 billion in tax revenue anticipation notes, and then pursue the $7 billion in general obligation bonds. The latter are necessary to fund the construction of highways, schools, courthouses, and flood levees for this fall.
“You can look at the calendar and see that’s getting tight,” Joe Deanda, spokesman for Treasurer Bill Lockyer, said last week. “If nothing happens by next week, it’s really going to make it difficult for our office to access the market. We really risk shutting down all the infrastructure projects and the public works projects and all the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are associated with that.”
The budget stalemate has further exacerbated the funding crisis for education and other public services. The state owes community colleges $840 million, K-12 schools are scrambling for funds, and state employees continue to face furloughs.
Although Californians continue to face record levels of unemployment and social services are needed more than ever, the Republicans and Democrats of the state legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger speak with a single voice on the need to cut spending.
Regardless of the outcome of the upcoming November elections, the political establishment in California, and nationwide, is moving to the right. The trade unions are rallying behind the gubernatorial campaign of current Attorney General Jerry Brown, a Democrat. Brown has repeatedly insisted on his budget cutting credentials. In addition to promising to “do things that that labor doesn’t like,” Brown has asserted, “If you’re looking for frugality, I’m your man.”
Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate, has pledged that one of her first acts would be to lay off at least 20,000 state workers. As if to underscore the lack of difference between the two candidates, the headline of the Sacramento Bee the day after the first debate read, “What would they cut?”
Behind these state politicians stands the Obama administration, which has repeatedly rejected federal aid to the states, and in particular to California. After bailing out the banks with trillions of dollars, the universal call throughout the country, and indeed internationally, is for austerity. California is leading the way.
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“THE AMNESTY ALONE WILL BE THE LARGEST EXPANSION OF THE WELFARE SYSTEM IN THE LAST 25 YEARS” Heritage Foundation
"The amnesty alone will be the largest expansion of the welfare system in the last 25 years," says Robert Rector, a senior analyst at the Heritage Foundation, and a witness at a House Judiciary Committee field hearing in San Diego Aug. 2. "Welfare costs will begin to hit their peak around 2021, because there are delays in citizenship. The very narrow time horizon [the CBO is] using is misleading," he adds. "If even a small fraction of those who come into the country stay and get on Medicaid, you're looking at costs of $20 billion or $30 billion per year." (SOCIAL SERVICES TO ILLEGALS IN CALIFORNIA ALONE ARE NOT UP TO $20 BILLION PER YEAR. WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS IN NEVADA, NOW 25% ILLEGAL, IS SOARING!)

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FAIRUS.org
U.S. Taxpayers Spend $113 Billion Annually on Illegal Aliens
America has never been able to afford the costs of illegal immigration. With rising unemployment and skyrocketing deficits, federal and state lawmakers are now facing the results of failed policies. A new, groundbreaking report from FAIR, The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on U.S. Taxpayers, takes a comprehensive look at the estimated fiscal costs resulting from federal, state and local expenditures on illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children.
Expanding upon the series of state studies done in the past, FAIR has estimated the annual cost of illegal immigration to be $113 billion, with much of the cost — $84.2 billon — coming at the state and local level.

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The Administration's Phantom Immigration Enforcement Policy
According to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the department.
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While the official unemployment rate has climbed from 7.6 percent when President Obama took office in January to 10 percent today, the administration’s worksite enforcement strategy has amounted to a bureaucratic game of musical chairs. The administration has all but ended worksite enforcement actions and replaced them with paperwork audits. When the audits determine that illegal aliens are on the payroll, employers are given the opportunity to fire them with little or no adverse consequence to the company, while no action is taken to remove the illegal workers from the country. The illegal workers simply acquire a new set of fraudulent documents and move on to the next employer seeking workers willing to accept substandard wages.
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THE ENTIRE REASON THE BORDERS ARE LEFT OPEN IS TO CUT WAGES!

“We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers,” said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. “President Obama is on the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws.”
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Illegal Aliens Cause Massive Cuts For US Seniors (THESE ARE DATED FIGURES. CALIFORNIA ALONE PUTS OUT NEARLY $20 BILLION. LOS ANGELES COUNTY ALONE PAYS OUT $600 MILLION IN WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS, WHILE IT’S SCHOOLS ARE IN MELTDOWN AND MEXICAN GANGS FLOURISH!)
1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year in California alone!
Welfare for illegals in “sanctuary city” Los Angeles County is $600 million per year (source: JudicalWatch.org).
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2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
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3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
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4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
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5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies. 1 in 5 births in Los Angeles are by Mexicans that crossed our borders for “free” birthing and then 18 years of welfare. 1 in 10 the rest of the country!
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6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens. In California alone ONE BILLION IS SPENT BY STATE PRISONS to maintain illegals, many of whom are still operating their gang and drug operations. In sanctuary city Los Angeles, approximately $300 million per year is spent on jails to incarcerate illegals
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7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
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8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and Social Services by the American taxpayers.
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9. $300-$400 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
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10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US. In sanctuary County of Los Angeles, there are 500 – 1,000 murders by Mexican illegals. They cost the county nearly one million dollars each to prosecute. Over 90% of all warrants for homicide is for a Mexican illegal! Of Los Angeles’ TOP 200 MOST WANTED CRIMINALS, 176 ARE MEXICANS! There have been 2,000 Californians murdered by illegals that fled back to Mexico to avoid prosecution. The rate for re-arrests of illegals is staggering.
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11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
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12. The National Policy Institute, estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.
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13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. Banks such as La Raza donors Wells Fargo and Bank of America, both illegal open bank accounts for illegals, and handed millions in mortgages to illegals with stolen I.D.
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14. 'The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States Total cost is a whoopin'... $338.3

A Case Against Barack Obama - BANKSTER OWNED HISPANDERER

OBAMA: Bush in Drag!
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The culmination of this process was the installation of Barack Obama in the White House. The first African-American president is carrying out the dictates of the banks and billionaires in both domestic and foreign policy. From his escalation of the war in Afghanistan to his escalation of the attacks on democratic rights at home, Obama is the personification of the program of American imperialism: reaction all down the line.
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THE DISASTER OF BARACK OBAMA
There was no criticism of the Obama administration by name, even by speakers who criticized some of the policies for which the Democratic president is responsible. One of the first speakers at the rally, the Reverend Al Sharpton declared, “We bailed out the banks. We bailed out the insurance companies. Now it’s time to bail out the American people.”
The bank bailout was Obama’s first act in office. The healthcare “reform” was certainly a bailout of insurance companies. But Sharpton did not identify either action with Obama, and presented his applause line as though such an appeal would receive a ready hearing from the administration.
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Pro-Democratic Party rally shows bankruptcy of US unions
By Patrick Martin
4 October 2010
Saturday’s rally in Washington to support the Democratic Party in the November 2 congressional elections was a demonstration of the political bankruptcy of the AFL-CIO and the other unions that organized the event and supplied most of the participants.
While called under the slogans of “Jobs, Peace and Justice,” there was no criticism of the Obama administration for continuing the rightwing policies of the Bush administration and presiding over the worst economic slump since the Great Depression, escalating the war in Afghanistan and intensifying the attacks on democratic rights. Instead, the speakers called for a vote for the Democrats to prevent the Republican Party from gaining control of Congress.
The rally drew several tens of thousands, nearly all of them union officials and their periphery. There was no significant turnout of the rank-and-file workers who remain trapped in the old labor organizations, and no representation at all of the unorganized workers who make up the vast majority of the working class, or of the tens of millions of unemployed and young people hardest hit by the economic crisis.
While every press release promoting the demonstration, and much of the press coverage after the event, mentioned the “more than 400 organizations” sponsoring the rally, the initiative came primarily from the AFL-CIO and allied groups like the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
Six major unions supplied the vast majority of the demonstrators—the United Auto Workers, the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, the Communications Workers of America, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
Not only did the union delegations, each identified by color-coded t-shirts, dominate the rally, but the leaders of five of the six unions, along with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, gave the main speeches, joining black and Hispanic Democratic politicians like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Congressman Luis Gutierrez.
This made the October 2 rally unusual, in that the union executives acted as the main spokesmen for their political positions, rather than ceding that role to others more skilled at demagogic tub-thumping. The result was a series of banal and tedious remarks that only underscored the political dead end of support for the Democratic Party and the capitalist system.
Nearly every speaker combined warnings of the consequences of a Republican victory in the November 2 election with appeals to those attending the rally to spend the next month in all-out campaigning for a Democratic Party victory. There was no examination of the actual policies of the Democrats, still less of the relatively insignificant differences between the two big business parties.
There was no criticism of the Obama administration by name, even by speakers who criticized some of the policies for which the Democratic president is responsible. One of the first speakers at the rally, the Reverend Al Sharpton declared, “We bailed out the banks. We bailed out the insurance companies. Now it’s time to bail out the American people.”
The bank bailout was Obama’s first act in office. The healthcare “reform” was certainly a bailout of insurance companies. But Sharpton did not identify either action with Obama, and presented his applause line as though such an appeal would receive a ready hearing from the administration.
Jesse Jackson, another featured speaker, characterized the situation in America as “midday in politics, midnight in the economy,” an attempt to separate the Obama administration from the economic debacle that its policies have reinforced.
He declared that Obama was “on the right side of history,” although the only action he could cite was the president’s signing of legislation outlawing hate crimes against gays and lesbians. He concluded with an appeal to register and vote November 2, adding, “The president can’t bear this cross alone.”
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka criticized rightwing TV commentators and Tea Party activists who he said were “full of hate” and who sought to mobilize “the forces of fear and hatred.” He called for “bold action to rebuild schools, roads, bridges” and other infrastructure, without explaining why the Obama administration in its nearly two years in office has opposed any significant expansion of public works to create jobs.
UAW President Bob King was the last major speaker, by which time nearly the entire crowd, including several thousand UAW members brought in chartered buses from Detroit, Flint and other cities, had departed.
King warned that the United States “is at a crossroad,” claiming there were two opposed visions of the country, embodied in the two major parties. One, presumably the Republicans, sought to “divide by race, religion, national origin, gender, age, and exploit people’s fear by singling out an ‘other’ to be afraid of.” He continued, “We don’t believe in division. Those marching today believe in community and common humanity against divisions.”
Similar empty appeals for “unity” and against “division” and “hate” characterized many of the other speeches, most of which were brief and vacuous. There are two political considerations involved in such appeals.
The union executives chose the “One Nation” slogan under which the rally was held in a bid to gather support from those involved in various forms of identity politics, who largely comprise the active “base” of the Democratic Party. Official after official pronounced himself or herself opposed to discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, immigration status or sexual orientation.
At the same time, the warnings against “division” reflect the nervousness of the privileged bureaucracy, which feels itself increasingly isolated and despised by the workers, including the great majority of union members. As the working class enters into struggles to defend jobs, living standards and democratic rights, these officials will denounce every attempt to break from the straitjacket of the unions and the Democratic Party as “divisive,” “splitting,” even “rightwing.” Workers who fight back against the Obama administration will no doubt be branded “racist.”
One of the union speakers, CWA President Larry Cohen, made an unusual admission in the course of his remarks. He noted that in the 47 years since the 1963 civil rights march led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., held on the same spot, there had been significant gains in democratic rights for blacks, Hispanics, women and gays. During that same time, he said, “Workers’ rights have been all but crushed.”
This contradiction deserves consideration. There were definite concessions made by the ruling class, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, to the demands for equality and democratic rights made by women and minorities. But these concessions became the basis not for any fundamental change in the structure of capitalism, but for the recruitment of a thin layer of blacks, women, etc. into the exploiting class.
The culmination of this process was the installation of Barack Obama in the White House. The first African-American president is carrying out the dictates of the banks and billionaires in both domestic and foreign policy. From his escalation of the war in Afghanistan to his escalation of the attacks on democratic rights at home, Obama is the personification of the program of American imperialism: reaction all down the line.
The increased—and extremely limited—“diversity” in the ruling class has not produced any lessening of social tensions in the United States. On the contrary, the social and economic gulf is wider than ever between the working class, the vast majority of the population, and the financial aristocracy.
During the same period, the trade unions, which were built by mass struggles of the working class and served for a time as defensive organizations, were completely transformed. The unions today, tied to the corporations and the Democratic Party, function as instruments for the disruption, misdirection and outright repression of any movement from below.
The Socialist Equality Party intervened at the rally with a leaflet calling for a rebellion by the working class against the old, outlived organizations, and for “the formation of committees of action—genuinely democratic organs of working people independent of the trade unions and the two big business parties—at factories and other work locations, in schools and colleges and in working class communities to fight layoffs, home foreclosures, utility shutoffs, school closures, cuts in social services and all of the other social crimes committed against the people by the capitalist elite.” (See, “Break with Obama, the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO: Build a socialist movement against mass unemployment, war and repression”.)
The rally was a confirmation of the political perspective outlined in this leaflet. It demonstrated that the unions function not as workers’ organizations, but as instruments of the corporate-financial aristocracy to suppress the struggles of working people.