Monday, December 24, 2018

LAWSUITS AND INVESTIGATIONS PILE UP ON SWAMP KEEPER DONALD TRUMP AND HIS PARASITIC FAMILY

‘Lawfare’ Used to Tie Down and Punish President Trump, Conservatives Say


December 23, 2018 Updated: December 23, 2018
The huge array of legal proceedings and investigations now being undertaken against President Donald Trump, his campaign, his transition team, and associates is a carefully orchestrated effort to drive him from office, according to conservatives interviewed by The Epoch Times.
The seemingly endless parade of legal actions against Trump is the legal equivalent of throwing darts at a bulletin board or spinning a roulette wheel. Trump’s enemies will take anything they can get in order to end his presidency, conservatives say.
This white-hot explosion of litigiousness is what is known as “lawfare,” a neologism that is a portmanteau of the words “law” and “warfare.” One online source defines lawfare as “a form of war consisting of the use of the legal system against an enemy, such as by damaging or delegitimizing them, tying up their time or winning a public relations victory.”

Organized Resistance

The current lawfare effort is an extension in the nation’s legal system of the organized resistance to Trump that left-wing activists, nonprofits, and well-heeled foundations launched immediately after the Republican unexpectedly triumphed over the heavily favored Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton in November 2016.
“This is a full frontal attack on Trump World,” writes William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection. Jacobson is a clinical professor of law and director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School. “And it’s just a continuation of the refusal to accept the results of the election with a Lilliputian strategy to tie down the giant. The sheer breadth of investigations is the point.”
This well-funded legal conspiracy, as it has been characterized by some Trump defenders, is vast, far-reaching, and subsidized by taxpayers. Most, but not all of the players are Democrats. Some of the federal prosecutors involved were appointed by Trump. But all have come under pressure from Democrats and left-wing activists.

17 Investigations

Garrett M. Graff of Wired magazine put together a list of 17 known investigations that target “President Trump’s world from various federal, state, and local prosecutors.” There are sources known to be cooperating with investigators in nearly all of these open cases, Graff said.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Russian meddling in U.S. elections, WikiLeaks, Middle Eastern influence on the Trump campaign, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, the abandoned Trump Tower Moscow project, Trump-campaign and transition-team contacts with Russia, and obstruction of justice.
Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, is investigating campaign conspiracies and Trump Organization finances, inauguration funding, Trump super PAC funding, and foreign lobbying.
Jessie K. Liu, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, is investigating alleged Russian spy Maria Butina and the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, is investigating Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, allegedly chief accountant of the Internet Research Agency, who was previously indicted.
Turkish influence on Trump and his circle also is being investigated. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s plea agreement provides some details of the allegations. Flynn is cooperating with authorities.
Democratic-controlled New York City and New York state, as well as attorneys general from other largely Democratic states, are investigating various tax-related allegations. A New York Times report claims Trump “benefited from more than $400 million in tax schemes, [and] city officials said they were investigating Trump’s tax payments, as did the New York State Tax Department.”
The attorneys general for the District of Columbia and Maryland, respectively Karl A. Racine (D) and Brian Frosh (D), issued subpoenas this month for Trump Organization and hotel financial records related to the almost-impossible-to-prove-allegation that the president is in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The clause forbids government officials from receiving gifts from foreign states and monarchies without the consent of Congress in the hope of shielding the “small-R” republican character of the United States from corrupting foreign influences.
Finally, there is a mysterious investigation originating from an unknown office, according to Graff. An investigation referenced in the Flynn case could “represent another as-yet-unknown unfolding criminal case or could be a counterintelligence investigation that will never become public.”

Tying Down the President

Of course, it is possible that the president or his associates could be guilty of wrongdoing not yet unearthed or made public, but conservatives contacted by The Epoch Times say the sheer volume of the allegations suggest both prosecutorial overkill and a concerted effort to tie down the president by means of litigation.
Robert Weissberg, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said Democrats are using the courts to try to bring down Trump because they are bereft of ideas.
“This litigation madness reflects the collapse of viable policy alternatives among Democrats, particularly those on the far left,” Weissberg said.
“If you list the major problems facing America—immigration, failing schools, health care, drug addiction, collapsing infrastructure, a permanent urban (black) underclass, among others—there are no obvious solutions. Especially solutions that could unite the Democratic Party. We’ve become a fractured nation.
“Rather than hash out a politically workable solution, the Dems wander off into controversies and investigations.
“This is very different from, say, 50 years ago when Dems still believed in their solutions. Yes, they insisted, Head Start would do the trick and inner-city blacks could become middle class if we just enforced the anti-discrimination laws. What we now see, to be glib, is the end of policy debate.
“The entire Russia thing is a distraction.”

Hush-Money Payments

Donny Ferguson, president of Americans for a Better Economy, an Alexandria, Virginia-based nonprofit organization, said there is no evidence Trump personally colluded with Russia to sway the 2016 election, but that doesn’t mean all the investigations are completely meritless.
“Right now, it appears the Mueller investigation is what we always knew it was—several Trump associates not disclosing business ties with Russia,” Ferguson, said. “The only campaign collusion with Russia appears to be from the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.”
Ferguson said Trump’s hush-money payments to women he allegedly had affairs with will continue to cause legal problems for him. When former presidential candidate and Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) went on trial years ago, both the judge and jury agreed that payments made to a mistress for silence during a campaign were campaign expenses.
“The prosecution in the Edwards case had no evidence showing it was Edwards himself who convinced two other people to make payments from accounts they controlled,” Ferguson said.
“In Trump’s case, he’s on tape directing the payments from accounts he controlled. They appeared to be corporate accounts, creating another apparent violation.
“The question is whether such violations are impeachable offenses, and that’s far from clear.”

‘Weaponizing the Power of Government’

Robert Henneke, director of the Center for the American Future at the Austin-based Texas Public Policy Foundation, suggested those going after Trump have bad motives.
“You’re weaponizing the power of government in most of these situations involving criminal penalties and criminal prosecutions, where a driving factor seems to be a person or a specific target, or there is a partisan shade to it,” said Henneke, who was on the winning legal team in a lawsuit that led to the striking down of Obamacare by federal Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas on Dec. 14.
“I think certainly with respect to the Mueller investigation, it has questionable legitimacy as it’s way far afield from what the original intent was supposed to be.”
The plea that Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, entered after being investigated by Mueller is “questionable,” Henneke said. It isn’t at all clear that “what he pled to is a violation of federal election laws.”
This fast-and-loose approach to enforcing the law can also be used against government officials, he said.
“Where there is a will to do so, you can probably figure out a reason to prosecute any federal official. If you look hard enough, you can interpret campaign finance laws in a way that would result in there being an offense,” Henneke said.
When the administrative state “gets so big and so broad that nobody really knows what is really a crime or not” when you couple that with “politically driven prosecutions for government action, that should be concerning for all Americans.”
Prosecutors in his home state of Texas have abused their powers before, Henneke noted.
Former U.S. House Majority Leaders Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Dick Armey (R-Texas), and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), who is a now a Trump cabinet member, were hounded for years by prosecutors who ended up having little to show for their efforts, he said.
And this kind of the-ends-justify-the-means mentality leads to frightening results, Henneke said, citing the recent example of in-your-face New York Attorney General-elect Letitia James (D).
“James said more or less that ‘I’m getting elected to take away Trump’s money and to go after his businesses,’” he said. “I mean that’s completely contrary to the notion of justice. You don’t want to have a government that picks a target first and then figures out what for afterward.”

Demoralizing Voters

Tina Trent, a former candidate for District 26 of the Georgia General Assembly, said the bevy of lawsuits is best understood as one way of demoralizing potential Trump voters and suppressing turnout in the 2020 presidential election.
What’s in the lawsuits, which should be viewed more “as a protest movement than serious legal inquiry,” matters less than their quantity, she said.
“This is Trump derangement syndrome via litigation by a thousand cuts: they are providing left-wing media and their audiences with a steady stream of ‘breaking news’ on alleged new legal scandals, and they really don’t care about the success or even the credibility of any single investigation,” Trent said.
The lawsuits amount to propaganda, she said.
“Propaganda works by overwhelming the senses and crowding out rational debate. The mainstream media in America has been a propaganda mouthpiece for the Left for so long in America that we’ve grown used to seeing bias in news reports, but there is still something new and frightening in watching media personalities ranting hysterically over these Trump investigations in every cranny of social media, late-night talk shows, and even the sections of magazines that are supposed to be about fashion and lifestyle,” Trent said.
Every aspect of Trump’s daily life in the White House is actually being put on display every minute of every day, from the way the first lady decorated their Christmas trees to the allegedly toxic effect Trump is having on individual holiday family gatherings, she explained.
Trump is being accused “of ruining Christmas family gatherings and blighting dating scenes for single adults looking for love” as he is “bitterly and hatefully charged by important media figures with literally destroying everything good in the world and causing everything bad,” Trent added.
An attorney and historian, who asked not to be identified, disagreed somewhat with the other conservatives interviewed.
“It’s a mistake to see this as coming from ‘Democrats,’” he said.
The assault on Trump “comes from inside the Washington bureaucracy, what some people are calling the ‘deep state’ or the ‘swamp.’ It’s a big mistake to associate these people solely with the Democrat Party. They are part of something much larger and more important than the Democrat Party, and the Republican Party apparatus is mostly just as captive to them.”
“But the real reason the intelligence/federal law enforcement people are going after Trump is, in my opinion, that he is capturing the attention of people who are true nationalists, people who understand and are spreading the message that our government is being held captive and would like to do something about it. So, he must be destroyed. Not beaten in an election. That isn’t nearly enough punishment to send the message that they want to send,” he said.


TRUMPS INFORMS NARCOMEX:

THE PACT BETWEEN MEXICO AND TRUMP… NO WALL, NO REAL ENFORCEMENT.

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/did-trump-promise-mexico-no-pardon-for.html

 CRIMINAL GLOBALIST BANKSTERS AND THE POLITICIANS THEY BOUGHT:

The Story of Goldman Sachs and Clinton, Obama and Trump corruption.
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores, and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s OBAMANOMICS TO SERVE THE RICH AND GLOBALIST BILLIONAIRES.
 THE TRUMP FAMILY FOUNDATION SLUSH FUND…. Will they see jail?
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!.... We know where they live!
“Underwood is a Democrat and is seeking millions of dollars in penalties. She wants Trump and his eldest children barred from running other charities.”
FIGHTING THE RICH, DEMOCRAT AND GOP POLS FOR OUR JOBS AND BORDERS.
Amnesty is all about keeping wages depressed and passing the true cost along to what is left of the America middle-class.
The huge inflow of migrants and asylum seekers forced officials to issue 400,000 work permits in 2017. That is roughly one new migrant worker for every 10 Americans who entered the workforce that year. The huge inflow has also jammed the immigration courts, ensuring that new migrants can work for a few years before a judge decides their case.
The inflow of asylum-seeking migrants, nonetheless, is far smaller than the inflow of legal immigrants and temporary visa-workers, which added roughly 2 workers in 2017 for every four Americans who entered the workforce.
Nationwide, the U.S. establishment’s economic policy of using legal migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white collar and blue collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor that blue collar and white collar employees.
The cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high tech careers, and sidelines at least five million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.
Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that investment flow drives up coastal real-estate prices, pricing poor U.S. Latinos and blacks out of prosperous cities, such as Berkeley and Oakland. NEIL MUNRO

FED SPENT MORE DOLLARS IN ONE MONTH ON FOOD STAMPS THAN TRUMP WANTS FOR WALL AGAINST NARCOMEX

Feds Spent More in 1 Month on Food Stamps Than Trump Wants for Year on Wall




By Terence P. Jeffrey | December 21, 2018 | 2:54 PM EST


Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. (Getty Images/Bill Pugliano)
(CNSNews.com) - The federal government spent more money on the food stamp program in October, which was the first month of fiscal 2019, than President Donald Trump now wants the Congress to approve for the border wall for the entirety of fiscal 2019.
In October, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement, the federal government spent $5,892,000,000 on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is also known as the food stamp program.
In November, according to the statement for that month, the federal government spent another $5,428,000,000 on the food stamp program, bringing the total so far for fiscal 2019 (after only two months) to $11,320,000,000—or an average of $5,660,000,000 per month.
In fiscal 2018, which ran through September, the federal government spent $68,493,000,000 on the food stamp program.
By contrast, the continuing resolution passed yesterday by the House of Representatives, which includes the money Trump wants for the wall, provides $5,710,357,000 for that purpose.
That is $181,643,000 less than the federal government spent on the food stamp program in the month of October alone and about one twelfth (or 8.3 percent) of the amount the government spent on the food stamp program for all of fiscal 2018.
The $5,710,357,000 that the continuing resolution passed by the House provides for the border wall is for fiscal 2019 but stipulates that it is “to remain available until September 30, 2019.”
On the Senate floor on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) said that $5 billion for the wall is “exorbitant.
“[T]he president held out for $5 billion for his wall, at the exorbitant cost of $31 million per mile, straight from the American taxpayer’s pocket,” said Schumer.


The Schumer & Pelosi show



Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the twin nutters of Congress, were certain they could beat Trump at his own game, but have made fools of themselves, as usual.  The stand-off is not over but with each passing day, the Democrats reveal more of their anti-American, pro-illegal immigration agenda.  Conservatives have been sounding the alarm for years: Democrats do not care about American citizens!  
We are an annoying inconvenience, especially those of us who do not buy what they are selling.  We vote against them, which makes them angry.  They lash out at us, call us names, impugn our intelligence with fervor.  All of the late-night comics, the Bill Mahers of the comedy branch of the entertainment industry, are especially venal.  Jimmy Kimmel has decried those who have contributed to the GoFundMe page to fund the border wall as meth addicts.  It was begun by a Vet, Brad Kolfage, who lost three limbs and it's raised nearly $15m.  
It appears that Democratic members of Congress are as snowflakey as millennials on our university campuses. They assume that anyone who opposes their ridiculous socialist, genderless, climate-alarmist, virtue-signaling directives is a Neanderthal, unfit to have an opinion.  It is then thoroughly acceptable to malign such people, those of us who oppose every aspect of their anti-America-as-founded agenda, in any and every  disgusting manner they can devise. 
The left is all about identity politics.  They assign all of us to a group -- racial, class, and/or all of their fabricated gender categories.  The right is all about individuals, their character, their talent, their contributions to society.  We do not care about skin color, economic class or sexual orientation.  We do care about good vs. evil, right vs. wrong.  This makes us quite villainous in the eyes of the left for whom everything is relative. For example, we do not think poverty causes crime, unlearned values of Western Civilization do.  Try to steal an election? It is moral if it takes out an opponent.  We are, it appears, the left vs. the right, very different on a neurological level. 
Schumer and Pelosi have armed guards whenever they are amongst the public.  But they are both fervent in their quest to deny us the right to bear arms and to prevent a wall on the southern border to protect us from the flood of lethal drugs that flow into the US.  They are impervious to the crimes of the barbaric gangs like MS13, no matter how many innocent Americans they kill.  They do not give a thought to the many illegals from terrorist nations that also seek to enter the country on a daily basis.  Schumer, Pelosi and their willing subjects in Congress ignore completely the horrific hazards that cross the border every day.  They want cheap labor, no matter how many Americans are left jobless, and they want, more than anything, a dependent underclass whom they mean to give the right to vote.  They already vote anyway, thanks to the Left's rejection of Common-sense voter ID.
If there were a television program based on Schumer and Pelosi, it would have to be a comedy; the two of them are so inept, so childish. They would be  Dumb and Dumber redux.  Each of them seems to believe they run the country and can dictate to the president how he will govern. They demand that Trump abandon the wall.  They have no intention of compromising; they only want to deny Trump and his supporters what they want -- border security that works.  So enraged, so benighted, by Trump's presidency, they would rather see us overrun by migrants from third-world nations, like those who have destroyed the UK, Germany, Sweden, and the rest of Europe, than protect America as a sovereign nation.
The "government shutdown" is just a ploy, many times overused by now, relatively meaningless to the lives of most Americans. The Schumer & Pelosi show will do everything they can to hype it as a disaster, but we all know it is nothing of the kind.  Trump must hold out for funding of the wall.  
While there have been some bad actors in our government in the past, Schumer and Pelosi are the worst of the worst.  They are equally arrogant, each thoroughly ignorant of reality beyond the bubble of wealth and privilege they inhabit.  They both believe themselves to be smarter than the rest of us, when in fact they are both really dim bulbs, long past their sell-by date.  Yes, Pelosi is good at raising money; how and why is a mystery.  That each of them is repeatedly re-elected does not say much for their constituents' familiarity with the Constitution, the law, American history or the facts in their own communities.  
San Francisco, Pelosi's district is now a hell-hole but for her walled compound.  New York too, like California, is a state that residents are fleeing as fast as they can.  Both states have been destroyed by moonbatty leftists; high taxes, dumbing down of education for political purposes, and the sacrifice of common sense to global warming alarmists.  Schumer and Pelosi have for years been on board with every silly attempt to restructure, to transform, American society.  They both jumped on the Obama bandwagon the moment he was elected.  Along with Obama, they are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the eight years of that administration.  While their constant appearances on television are so often humorous (Pelosi's silly, practiced hand gestures and Schumer's relentless badgering of Trump),  they are not one bit funny.  They are just loathsome.
Photo credit: U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Marianique Santos



The Gospel According to Nancy: No Borders, Kill Babies (UNLESS THEY'RE LA RAZA ANCHOR BABIES!)



Tucker Carlson pointed out a few days ago how the already insufferable leader of the Congressional Democrats has recently been "ordained….an archbishop in the church of progressive sanctimony."  For a while now, Nancy Pelosi's been the country's expert on morality (e.g., border wall: immoral; abortion on demand: moral).  She's now taken to telling the country how much she prays, and she's urging others to do it, too – at least that old sinner, Donald Trump.  After last Thursday's televised squabble in the Oval Office, Pelosi shared with reporters how she told Trump she was praying for him and urged the president (whom she also called a "skunk" while ridiculing his manhood) to accept the Democrats' budget proposal with no funding for a border wall.  "In fact," she said with stomach-turning piety, "I asked him to pray over it."
When a smug person ends an argument by telling you to "pray over it," she's really saying, "Ask God.  He knows I'm right!"
Summarizing her and Chuck Schumer's meeting with Trump, she told the media, "I myself thought we should open the meeting with a prayer, which I did.  I told him about King Solomon, when he was to become king of the Jews, he prayed to God, he said: 'I need you to give me great understanding and wisdom, Lord.'"
King Solomon is Pelosi's favorite Bible character, especially because he proposed solving a problem by cutting a baby in half. 
Now Sister Nancy's praying for Trump to keep the government open so federal employees can finish their Christmas shopping.
It's an axiom that if a conservative says his faith informs his political decisions, he'll be condemned for establishing a state religion, while liberals get to veer back and forth over the church-state centerline as freely as those motorists who love to text while driving.  Right now the liberal media are applauding the way Pelosi "schooled President Donald Trump about the Bible," but it's not clear why.  It's not as if they're suddenly in favor of anyone being schooled in the Bible, especially anyone in a public classroom
Pelosi never bats an eye without a political motive.  This Saint Nancy act might be her attempt to occupy the spiritual high ground that, obviously, Donald Trump has shown no interest in occupying himself.  Pelosi wouldn't dare try this with a president like George W. Bush, who, while he didn't boast about his piety on TV, was recognized as genuine in his Christian faith – prompting the left's usual reaction: Ross Douthat wrote in 2006 that "the fear of theocracy has become a defining panic of the Bush era."
Theology was less of an issue for liberals during the Obama years; he was their messiah, and they just worshiped him.  Meantime, Obama conspicuously dissed orthodox Christians with everything from calculated snubs and criticism to gratuitously tormenting the Little Sisters of the Poor, all the while devotedly celebrating the unblemished virtues of Islam.  In 2015, Hillary bluntly stated that "[d]eep-seated ... religious beliefs ... have to be changed" to accommodate the unlimited abortion license.  Then, last year, Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez said it is "not negotiable" that "[e]very Democrat" support abortion.  Pelosi tried to mitigate Perez's remarks by saying "of course" there's room for pro-lifers in the Democratic Party, but try to find one who's not actually voting Perez-style.
This year, Pelosi watched the Democrats lurch wildly to the extreme left.  For decades before that, they were trusted allies in the left's war on conventional morality and religion (except Islam!) for being repressive, patriarchal, and counterrevolutionary.  It may be that, alarmed that the Democrat brand has become too materialistic, amoral, and atheist, she thinks she can give it religion.  Maybe she can draw an unfavorable comparison between the reprobate and undisciplined Donald Trump and herself: the "ardent, practicing Catholic," who exhorts the President to beg for "the great understanding and wisdom" that she (and Chuck Schumer?) have already been granted by God.  Haven't Republicans marched under the banner of morality and Christian values long enough?  Now that they've elected the unholy Trump, why can't the Democrats seize that banner for themselves?
For one thing, because no evangelical or conservative Catholic would ever buy it.  Sure, the Democratic Party is crowded with Catholics, but the serious ones left years ago.  The leading unserious Catholic is Pelosi herself, who professes her devotion to the faith but does it while living in open, willful defiance of the Church's crystal-clear teaching against abortion: "It is the teaching of the Catholic Church from the very beginning that the killing of an unborn child is always intrinsically evil and can never be justified."
When her duplicity threatened to become an issue in 2004, Pelosi pretended that, moved by her "ardent" devotion to the Church, she had been studying the Church's teaching on the beginning of life "a long time," and she stated falsely to Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press that the Church has never defined it.  Asked when human life begins, she replied, "We don't know," and that "[t]he point is, that it shouldn't have an impact on the woman's right to choose" – the "it" being when a human life begins, which shouldn't have an impact on the decision to get an abortion.  Easy mistake to make when your catechism is Roe v. Wade.
Later, when a reporter mentioned the Gosnell infanticides and challenged her own support for partial-birth abortion, an agitated Pelosi snarled back that "[a]s a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this[.] ... This shouldn't have anything to do with politics."  But as a politician, she never stops talking about it, and the sacred ground she was talking about wasn't human life, but the exercise of a mother's "free will" to terminate her child.  In response, New York's Cardinal Egan said, "Anyone who dares to defend that [the unborn] may be legitimately killed because another human being 'chooses' to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name."  Her own bishop reluctantly corrected her misstatements in a public letter, necessitated by "the widespread consternation among Catholics" of her deliberate distortions of  Catholic doctrine.  Pope Benedict counseled her, in person, on the Church's express teaching, "which enjoins all Catholics, and especially legislators," to protect "human life at all stages of its development."  Pelosi, " the respectful Catholic" who presumed to tell Trump to pray for wisdom, emerged from thatmeeting no wiser for it, obtusely extolling the "Church's leadership in fighting poverty, hunger and global warming." 
Jesus warned against hypocrites who make a public display of praying "that they may be seen by men."  The way Pelosi pretends to exemplify "prayerful" politics, and the way she told Trump "in private" that she's praying for him – and immediately announced it in a televised press conference – is pure Pelosi: cynical, addlebrained, phony.  If it might hurt Trump, she'll pontificate how every MS-13 killer retains a "spark of divinity," then goes right back to her life's work snuffing out that spark from 60 million innocents and counting.  The Bible never says it's intrinsically evil to build a wall or protect a border, but it's still got that commandment against murder. 
Let the Democrats canonize this Pharisee if they need a patron saint.  Her feast day can fall on January 22.
T.R. Clancy looks at the world from Dearborn, Michigan.  You can email him at trclancy@yahoo.com.


Pelosi's Stake in Illegal Immigration



The Minuteman Project, founded by Jim Gilchrist (who is also the co-author of the book Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America’s Borders), is made up of citizen volunteers who watch our border with Mexico and report illegal entry to the border patrol. For performing that thankless task in full compliance with the law, Gilchrist and his colleagues have been falsely maligned as fascists, racists, and even murderers. They have been driven off the speaker’s platform at Columbia University and vilified by Leftist politicians and their handmaidens in the liberal press.

So it was no surprise that the mainstream media chose to ignore a recent press release, issued by his publisher, in which Gilchrist asked the question about Nancy Pelosi’s ethics that should be on the minds of every law-abiding American – including those immigrants who are following the law to become citizens here the proper way: “Do we really need a House Speaker whose every action is calculated to enhance her own financial interests, instead of focusing on how porous borders will affect the security of everyday American citizens?”

Gilchrist did not stop there. He demanded an investigation into Pelosi’s “economic stake in just the kind of illegal alien exploitation that we deplore in Minutemen.” But you would never know it from the liberal media, who - while ignoring this demand - have had no compunctions in calling for Speaker Hastert’s head in the wake of the Foley page controversy.

Gilchrist was reacting to my report several weeks ago in FrontPage Magazine that Pelosi – who owns non-union vineyards in Napa Valley where grape-picking depends chiefly on the availability of cheap foreign labor – is doing everything she can to help open the floodgates to more illegal immigration. And she wants the American taxpayers to pay their way. As even more proof of this than I previously reported, Pelosi does not want employers like her to be required to pay the cost of illegal aliens’ hospital care. She voted against a bill that would make employers liable for the reimbursements if an undocumented employee seeks medical attention. And she voted in favor of rewarding illegal aliens from Mexico with Social Security benefits.

At the same time, Pelosi has led the Democratic opposition to any effective border controls or documentation requirements. She opposed the Secure Fence Act of 2006, signed into law by President Bush, and voted against final passage of a border security and enforcement bill in 2005 which required that all businesses must use an electronic system to check if all new hires have the legal right to work in this country. She voted against a bill to bar drivers' licenses for illegal aliens in 2005. This year she opposed legislation requiring presentation of a legitimate government-issued photo ID to prove eligibility to vote, claiming that “there is little evidence anywhere in the country of a significant problem with non-citizen voters.” She is dead wrong. For example, an accused terrorist by the name of Nuradin Abdi was just recently reported to have illegally registered to vote at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Nuradin Abdi was indicted earlier this year as part of a conspiracy to blow up the Columbus Mall.

How many other terrorist suspects may have slipped through the system because Leftists like Pelosi oppose any meaningful screens? Instead she continues to advocate our recognition of the flimsy, non-validated ID card that the Mexican consulates provide to illegal aliens before they cross over our border, called the “matricula consular”, which gives them phony documentation to set up bank accounts, apply for jobs, obtain social benefits, board airplanes, identify themselves to police, enter buildings that require IDs, obtain drivers’ licenses and then perhaps use those drivers’ licenses to try to illegally register to vote in our elections.

Pelosi also believes in giving sanctuary to illegal aliens. She opposed legislation to deny federal homeland security funding to state and local governments who refuse to share information they learn about an individual's immigration status with Federal immigration authorities. Pelosi’s hometown of San Francisco is one of the sanctuary cities she voted to protect for the benefit of illegal aliens. Pelosi even voted against strengthening our immigration law with regard to the deportability of alien terrorists.

Jim Gilchrist cut to the chase with this devastating observation that the mainstream media does not want you to read:

"As we’ve shown again and again in ‘Minutemen,’ the Democrats aren’t just hypocrites, but are working actively to subvert our legislative system to their own ends. Their only goal is votes, votes and more votes, no matter where they come from, no matter if they’re cast legally, no matter whether the person casting them is dead, alive, a citizen or an illegal alien."

Pelosi sees Jim Gilchrist’s Minutemen Project as a threat to her pro-illegal alien agenda. More illegal aliens mean more votes for the Democrats and more grape-pickers for Napa Valley vineyards like hers. So she even voted against a measure that would have cut off the use of U.S. taxpayers’ funds to tip off illegal aliens as to where the Minutemen citizen patrols may be located! She obviously wants to see the Minutemen put out of business – permanently. She can count on the liberal press to distort the work of the Minutemen and to keep out of the public eye Gilchrist’s pointed questions about her motivations for helping illegal aliens during the run-up to the mid-term elections that may make her the next Speaker of the House.

Gilchrist, of course, is accustomed to being vilified and prevented by the Left from getting his message out. In early October, he was prevented from finishing his speech at the "Minutemen Forum" sponsored by the Columbia College Republicans. Gilchrist had spoken for just a few minutes and managed to utter the words “I love the First Amendment” when a group of radical protestors took the stage and interrupted him, displaying a big banner saying "There are no illegals." More protestors then stormed the stage. Chaos erupted and the audience members who had come to hear Gilchrist speak never got the chance, which was precisely the protestors’ objective. As reported online by the staff of Columbia’s undergraduate newspaper, “a mosh pit of triumphal students and community members danced and chanted outside, "Asian, Black, Brown and White, we smashed the Minutemen tonight!" They also put out a statement declaring:

“The Minutemen are not a legitimate voice in the debate on immigration. They are a racist, armed militia who have declared open hunting season on immigrants, causing countless hate crimes and over 3000 deaths on the border. Why should exploitative corporations have free passes between nations, but individual people not? No human being is illegal.” (Emphasis added)

We have come to the point in this country where a bunch of radical protestors get to decide who is and who is not a legitimate voice in the debate on as critical a public policy issue as immigration. Such Leftists think that migration in a borderless world is a basic human right. They want no barriers, no guards, and no proof of lawful residency. They certainly do not want the Minutemen watching the border and reporting illegal entry to the authorities.

Leftist slogans like “no human being is illegal” are red herrings. It is not the human being who is illegal; it is what the human being does that may be illegal. One’s conduct is the test, not simply who one is. Immigrants who follow our rules are welcome here. Those who do not abide by our laws have no right to be here. A person who breaks into your house without your permission does not deserve room, board and a job as a reward, even if the intruder may be much poorer than you. He has broken the law and deserves to be punished for what he has done. Our country’s boundaries and rules for entry and residency similarly define who is permitted to be here and how we choose to protect ourselves. We are a land of immigrants, but we are also a land of laws with certain core values. Those seeking to enter our country and remain here must learn to accommodate to our laws and values, not the other way around. That is the way prior generations of immigrants did it, including those who passed through Ellis Island. Why should the law be thrown aside now?

What we are witnessing is a frontal challenge to our nation’s sovereignty. Mexico’s Foreign Secretary wants to drag us before the United Nations for intending to build a fence on our side of the border with our money to keep out aliens who seek to enter our country illegally. They will probably get a sympathetic ear as some UN bureaucrats believe there should be no such thing as “illegal” immigrants in the first place. For the first time in our history, Americans are being asked to cede the right to decide how we define ourselves as a nation and protect our own borders to a globalist governance body. Will Pelosi lead her liberal loyalists as House Speaker to support the UN against America’s right to control its own borders? Do we really want to risk finding out?


It is high time, as Jim Gilchrist demanded in the press release ignored by the mainstream media, that Pelosi come clean under oath as to her personal stake in the illegal immigration issue before she can do even more damage as House Speaker.

President Lopez-Obrador and the Wall



Over the last few years, I've had conversations with friends in Mexico.  We usually end up talking about the border.  For us, the border is illegal immigration.  For Mexicans, it's guns and cash corrupting a very fragile political system.
As a Mexican friend said recently, the cartels have the politicians in their pockets, especially in the small towns where many of these vans full of cash and guns drive through.
There are many reasons to build that border wall, as former Secretary of Education William Bennett said on Sunday:   
By weight, 86 percent of heroin that entered the United States in 2016 was of Mexican origin, according statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
"After 9/11 we shut down the border. When we shut down the border, drugs didn't come in," Bennett said. "If you shut down that border, if you close it off, if you build a wall, it can have a real and profound difference."
There is another reason, as any rational Mexican will tell you.
On a weekly basis, lots of cash and guns go south.  They are the profits and rewards of the drugs going north.  According to unofficial estimates:  
Officials in Mexico believe the tide of laundered money could be as high as $50bn per year, a sum equal to about three per cent of Mexico's legitimate economy -- more than all its oil exports or spending on key social programmes. Internationally, money laundering represents between two and five per cent of global GDP, or between $800bn and $2tn annually, according to the UNODC.
It would be more difficult for money or guns to go south if you had a wall on the border.  
So President Trump should pick up the phone and call President Lopez-Obrador.  He should thank him for keeping the caravans in Mexico and discuss the benefits of the border wall.  Why wouldn't the Mexican president support the wall?  I'm sure that the Mexican army and police would love to see that wall go up.
The lack of a stable border hurts both sides.
PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

300 Migrants Apprehended in Arizona Desert in 24 Hours


















Large group of aliens sitting down after being apprehended near the US-Mexico border in Arizona. (Photo: U.S. Border Patrol/Tucson Sector)
Photo: U.S. Border Patrol/Tucson Sector
2:35

Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended two large groups of Central American migrants who illegally crossed the Mexican border into Arizona. The groups consisted mostly of family units and unaccompanied minors. At least five of the migrants required medical assistance.

Agents assigned to the Ajo Border Patrol Station came upon a group of 242 migrants while they were patrolling the border on December 19 about 15 miles west of Lukeville, Arizona, according to information obtained by Breitbart News from U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. The following morning, Casa Grande Station agents came upon a group of 64 migrants while patrolling the border in the Tohono O’odham Nation.  Both groups of migrants surrendered to the agents without incident, officials stated.
The agents reported both groups consisted mainly of family units — including juveniles and pregnant women. The groups came to the U.S. mainly from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Officials did not say if these groups broke away from or were connected to the so-called caravan migrants.
Border Patrol agents carried out initial screenings with the migrants which included an interview to determine if any of the migrants were experiencing health of safety-related issues. During that screening process, agents identified five people — one pregnant woman and four juveniles who required immediate medical assistance. Agents arranged transportation for those file migrants to a hospital in Goodyear, Arizona. Doctors treated the migrants and released them to Ajo Station agents for processing.
Agents at the Tucson station identified nine additional juveniles displaying flu-like symptoms The juveniles who ranged in age from one to thirteen were taken to a local hospital for evaluation and treatment, officials reported.
“Border Patrol agents save people every year who are overcome by the elements, including people found suffering from dehydration, heat stroke, hypothermia, drowning in the river, injuries, and left for dead by smugglers in some of the most remote areas of the desert when they enter the country illegally,” Tucson Sector officials said.
Agents processed the remaining migrants for immigration violations according to Tucson Sector protocols.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for the Breitbart Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.


EXCLUSIVE: Mexican Gulf Cartel Taunts Trump with Caricature on Dope Load


















Trump Pot
Breitbart Border / Cartel Chronicles
2:21

MCALLEN, Texas – Cartel drug smugglers moved a 900-pound shipment of marijuana bearing a cartoon of U.S. President Donald Trump into Texas. The cartoon appears to mock President Trump and his border security comments. Border Patrol agents seized the load, preventing its delivery into the U.S.

Smugglers marked some of the drug bundles with a caricature of President Trump to not only identify the drug shipment but also to mock the politician. The Gulf Cartel, the criminal organization that operates south of McAllen, Texas, has used several different images to identify their drug loads including scorpions and popular comic book heroes. It is not known if cartons of Donald Trump have been used in the past.
Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol agents seized the load this weekend in South McAllen after spotting several men on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande carrying bundles of marijuana towards the river, law enforcement sources working under the umbrella of U.S. Customs and Border Protection revealed to Breitbart News. Some of the men made their way to the U.S. side but swam back as soon as they spotted federal authorities. U.S. Border Patrol agents called Mexican authorities to request their help in capturing the men. Mexico responded, saying no one would be responding to the area.
An hour after the initial smuggling attempt, U.S. Border Patrol agents spotted a group of men in rafts trying to move several bundles of marijuana across the river. Federal agents responded to the scene and found nine men. The men quickly ran back to Mexico leaving behind a white SUV loaded with 40 bundles of marijuana.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon.  You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com. 
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.


Congressional Report Finds Millions of Opioids Sent to Small-Town Pharmacies in West Virginia

BY SARAH LE, EPOCH TIMES

Nearly nine million opioids were shipped to a single pharmacy in the small town of Kermit, West Virginia, population 406, in just two years, according to a Congressional report released on Dec. 19.
In 10 years, 20.8 million opioids were distributed to pharmacies in Williamson, with a population of 3,000 people. From 2007 and 2012, drug distributors sent a total of more than 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia.
More of these kinds of shocking examples can be found in the result of a bi-partisan investigation by the U.S. Energy and Commerce Committee into claims of “opioid-dumping,” or shipping large quantities of opioids from wholesale drug distributors to pharmacies in rural communities.
The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, led by Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.), spent more than 18 months investigating opioid-dumping in rural areas of West Virginia.
The state is “the epicenter of the nation’s opioid epidemic and the state with the highest drug overdose death rate in the country,” according to a statement by committee chairman Greg Walden and ranking member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) in a press release.























BREAKING: Committee oversight report details findings of 18-month long, bipartisan investigation into alleged opioid-dumping in West Virginia by major opioid distributors >> https://energycommerce.house.gov/news/press-release/committee-report-details-alleged-opioid-dumping-in-west-virginia/ 




The investigation, which began in May 2017, found that the sixth-largest company in the United States played a significant role in shipping massive amounts of opioids to small towns in West Virginia.
McKesson Corp. ranks 6th on the Fortune 500 list, and the company was found to have shipped an average of 9,650 hydrocodone pills a day to the Sav-Rite No. 1 pharmacy in the town of Kermit in 2007.
At a May 8, 2018 hearing, McKesson president and CEO John Hammergren said the company initially set a “reasonable monthly threshold” of 8,000 pills a month for these drugs under its Lifestyle Drug Monitoring Program. (p. 226)
The shipments of 9,650 pills per day were “36 times the threshold amount set by the Lifestyle Drug Monitoring Program,” stated the report. (page 16) “McKesson did not submit suspicious order reports to the DEA regarding orders placed by West Virginia pharmacies until August 1, 2013.”
From April 2006 to 2016, McKesson supplied almost 300 million doses of hydrocodone and oxycodone to West Virginia pharmacies.
In addition, the report called out companies AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and others for their actions.
“Our bipartisan investigation revealed systemic failures by both distributors and the DEA that contributed to—and failed to abate—the opioid crisis in West Virginia,” stated Walden and Pallone.
In a statement obtained by the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Cardinal Health said it was only an “intermediary” in the prescription drug supply chain, but the company would “continue to implement rigorous anti-diversion controls.”
AmerisourceBergen also released a statement saying, “The comparatively few examinations of AmerisourceBergen’s actions primarily focus on due diligence surrounding physicians. AmerisourceBergen has virtually no interaction with physicians and limited legal ability to gather information on their practices and prescribing behavior.”
The Gazette-Mail reported that McKesson did not respond to requests for comment.
The committee issued a number of recommendations: including that Congress should consider enacting additional suspicious order requirements; the DEA should establish a data platform with third-party experts to provide more real-time data; and distributors should perform, document, and maintain robust due diligence files for both prospective and existing customers.

Democrats: A plague on the nation




How as Americans do we explain the intransigence of the left when it comes to national security?  'Tis a mystery.  These people, these Democrats in Congress, are among the most privileged persons on the planet.  They have enjoyed, more than most, the blessings bequeathed by the Founders, the authors of the Constitution.  Yet they are determined, like Obama, to transform us into something this nation was never meant to be: a land without borders.  While all of them are on record supporting a border wall in the past, now that Donald Trump is president, they all oppose it with every fiber of their being.  They know that it will work, and they cannot abide Trump having a win.  These people – Schumer, Pelosi, Gutiérrez, etc. – are truly venal.  Governor Brown has effectively destroyed California, now benighted by rampant homelessness and the crime that accompanies a population of illiterate, drug-addicted, gang-affiliated, criminally inclined persons adrift on our streets.  And now another young officer has been killed by an illegal alien thanks to the left's obsession with protecting the throngs of migrants crossing the border into the U.S. 
It should be obvious to every American by now that our progressive left does not have the best interest of Americans at heart.  Quite the opposite.  They loathe those of us who put Trump in the White House and are determined to punish us.  They intend to raise our taxes to pay for the $100B illegal aliens cost us every year.  They need open borders to import future voters; millions of illegals voted in the 2018 election thanks to motor voter bills and states' refusal to require voter ID.  The Democrats know they cannot win without cheating.  They cheated in 2016 and are still stunned that their carefully calculated strategy did not work – thus, the cover-up, AKA the Mueller investigation, of their many crimes committed over the Obama years, many at the direction of Hillary Clinton with Obama's knowledge and approval.  Our once most revered institutions, the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA, have been thoroughly corrupted.  Mueller, a willing participant in that corruption, is up to his eyeballs in the cover-up.
Will any of these people at the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA, ever be held accountable?  To date, they have not been.  The power they have within the Deep State is beyond formidable; it is seemingly absolute.
It appears that America has become a sort of medieval oligarchy.  Trump, as the outsider he is, is a grave threat to all of those who believed they were in control in perpetuity.  They are ready and willing to do anything, no matter how illegal or immoral, to depose him, to expel him from office.
The Democrats in office today, and those about to take the majority in the House, are anti-Americans.  Of that you can be sure.  They care about keeping our borders open to all comers more than they care about keeping Americans safe.  They all supported a border wall when Clinton and Obama were in office.  Now they hate the president more than they love the country.  Of this there can be no doubt. 
The Democrats hate Trump so much that they want the economy to crash.  They are hoping for recession.  Is the Fed on board with the left?  It seems so since, that institution's raising the interest rate yet again is counterproductive to our thriving economy.  It is the Fed that whipsaws Wall Street, is it not?
It appears that the entirety of the left – the media, the Deep State, Wall Street, and the Democratic Party – is working in concert to bring Trump down, no matter the consequences to the country.  Meanwhile, the Republicans in the Congress, most but certainly not all, are as bendy as can be.  With notable exceptions – Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Tom Cotton, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert – they hate Trump, too.  He has ruffled their feathers, their comfortable position as go-alongs-to-get-alongs in D.C.  They have no real principles, no gumption, no fuel for a fight.  They are cowards all, pajama boys.  Paul Ryan is their poster boy.
The young policeman who died in California Christmas night will and should be a wake-up call for the Democrats.  They are 100% responsible for the presence of such criminals, protected by ridiculous sanctuary policies in our cities.  The media and the Democrats are in an uproar over the two migrant children who died at the hands of irresponsible parents who used them as a ticket to ride, yet they have nothing to say about the murder of the young policeman in Newman, Calif.  He is, to them, a casualty of politics, of their grand design to obliterate conservatives from the public realm forever.  They do not care about him, his widow, or his infant son.  They were happy to contribute to the odious Christine Blasey Ford's GoFundMe page, but not one of them will contribute to a GoFundMe page for Ronil Singh's family.  He is law enforcement, so they feel nothing. 
The Democratic Party of today is an abomination.  The assault on our constitutional republic began with Woodrow Wilson, and their long-range plan to overhaul what the Founders built is still operational.  The left has nothing but contempt for ordinary Americans, especially those who voted for Trump.
Leftists are dangerous when challenged, like a pack of jackals dismembering its prey.  They need to be defeated, indicted, arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned.  They are a scourge on the nation as founded.  They do not love this country; they seek to destroy all that was and is good within it.



“We arrest drivers all the time and they send new ones up from Mexico. They never go away.”




Exclusive – Immigration: The Hidden Driver of the Opioid Epidemic



opiod
File Photo: Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images
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3:54

More than 900 Americans died every week from opioid-related overdoses in 2017. Every American community, big or small, has experienced the epidemic’s merciless, corrosive advance across our cities and towns. It is human tragedy, a family tragedy, and a national crisis.
The issue is complicated by the fact that tens of thousands of Americans need prescription pain medications for legitimate medical reasons. Pharmaceutical companies have been innovative in creating potent opioid based medicines and they were, and remain, rewarded with successful sales.
Some patients, however, abuse legitimate drugs, lie to treating physicians, and illegally sell otherwise lawful drugs. But the real problem is not from frazzled doctors, bad patients or bad medicine. The overwhelming source of the problem is cheap but powerful drugs coming in from Mexico by way of China.
There is another core contributor to the problem that isn’t as widely known: the river of illegal aliens surging across our porous borders. As former LA Times reporter Sam Quinones’ award-winning book, Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opioid Epidemic recounts, just as standards for the prescription of oxycodone and other painkillers were being tightened, a group of largely illegal Mexican immigrants from Xalisco, in the Mexican state of Nayarit, pioneered a new model of heroin distribution. It was in essence Uber for drug dealers, involving small franchises, with a nonviolent approach, carrying small amounts of drugs directly to addicts in their homes and neighborhoods, using a customer-first mentality and lots and lots of delivery drivers.
From Dreamland, “The delivery drivers did tours of six months and then left. If they were arrested they were deported, not prosecuted, because they never carried large amounts of dope.” With hundreds of new illegal aliens from the state entering the country every day, the police could arrest as many street-level dealers as they liked. As a DEA agent tells Quinones in another part of the book, “We arrest drivers all the time and they send new ones up from Mexico. They never go away.” There would always be new dealers, and the model could continue. An essential part of the process was the dealers returning home, where their ill-gotten gains provided them with status in their rural, poor homeland.
Another law enforcement officer recounts to Quinones, “Their system is a simply thing, reall, and relies on cheap, illegal Mexican labor, just the way that any fast-food joint does.” That flow of dealers is the linchpin of the Nayarit model, which has since spread nationwide. Illegal immigration is the lynchpin of the flow of dealers. Stop illegal immigration, and you stop the flow.
The biggest contributor to illegal immigration are the loopholes in our laws, and our lack of southern border infrastructure. The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that in the last two years, because of loopholes, more than 250,000 illegal aliens have been caught at the border and released. If even one-tenth of one percent of those illegal aliens are drug dealers, the Border Patrol will have actually caught 600 traffickers and released them to wreak their havoc in our communities.
There is also, of course, the fact that a porous border allows drugs to flow across the border, but people are much easier to interdict than fentanyl. That is why we must also deliver on the president’s border wall–providing $5 billion in unrestricted funding this year, immediately. The funding bill is the last train leaving the station, to stop the flow of drugs and the illegal aliens that bring them from pouring into our communities. Nancy Pelosi will ensure when she takes over as Speaker of the House that nothing will be done.
More than 49,000 Americans died last year from heroin and opioid related overdoses. If open-borders liberal Democrats or weak-kneed establishment Republicans stop us from fixing the problem by closing the loopholes and building the wall, they will be accomplices to the next 49,000 deaths as much as the drug dealers of Xalisco.


PELOSI’S OPEN BORDERS FOR MORE CHEAP LABOR

The Mexican Army made two seizures in Ensenada on August 17 (1,036 pounds of meth, heroin, and fentanyl) and August 18 (1,653 pounds of meth, fentanyl, and marijuana).

The Mexican Army discovered an active drug lab on August 25 in Tecate and seized four tons of methamphetamine.

The Mexican Federal Police seized 350 pounds of methamphetamine in an active drug lab in Tijuana on August 26.
The Mexican Federal Police seized 20,000 fentanyl pills in an active lab in Mexicali on September 10.

The Mexican Federal Police seized 550 pounds of methamphetamine in Tijuana on September 12.

The Mexican Army seized 1,055 pounds of methamphetamine near the Arizona border on September 14.

A.G. JEFF SESSIONS DEFENDS U.S. BORDERS AGAINST THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND MEXICO’S INVASION.

"Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens. Yet in cities where the crime these aliens commit is highest, the police cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them: their immigration status. In Los Angeles, for example, dozens of members of a ruthless Salvadoran prison gang have sneaked back into town after having been deported for such crimes as murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and drug trafficking." HEATHER MAC DONALD

 “Heroin is not produced in the United States. Every gram of heroin present in the United States provides unequivocal evidence of a failure of border security because every gram of heroin was smuggled into the United States. Indeed, this is precisely a point that Attorney General Jeff Sessions made during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on October 18, 2017 when he again raised the need to secure the U.S./Mexican border to protect American lives.” Michael Cutler …..FrontPageMag.com 

A.G. JEFF SESSIONS DEFENDS U.S. BORDERS AGAINST THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND MEXICO’S INVASION.
"Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens. Yet in cities where the crime these aliens commit is highest, the police cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them: their immigration status. In Los Angeles, for example, dozens of members of a ruthless Salvadoran prison gang have sneaked back into town after having been deported for such crimes as murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and drug trafficking." HEATHER MAC DONALD
 “Heroin is not produced in the United States. Every gram of heroin present in the United States provides unequivocal evidence of a failure of border security because every gram of heroin was smuggled into the United States. Indeed, this is precisely a point that Attorney General Jeff Sessions made during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on October 18, 2017 when he again raised the need to secure the U.S./Mexican border to protect American lives.” Michael Cutler …..FrontPageMag.com 

CJNG is one of the most powerful cartels in Mexico and the Department of Justice considers it to be one of the five most dangerous transnational criminal organizations in the world — responsible for trafficking tons of cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl-laced heroin into the United States.
BEHEADINGS LONG U.S. OPEN BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX: The La Raza Heroin Cartels Take the Border and Leave Heads

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/05/highly-graphic-la-raza-heroin-cartels.html

AMERICA: MEXICO’S WELFARE STATE

… and in exchange we get 40 million Mexican flag wavers, homelessness, a housing crisis, heroin & opioid crisis and jobs for legals crisis…. ALL THANKS TO THE DEMOCRAT PARTY

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-cheap-is-staggering-cost-of-mexicos.html

“Thirteen years after welfare reform, the share of immigrant-headed households (legal and illegal) with a child (under age 18) using at least one welfare program continues to be very high. This is partly due to the large share of immigrants with low levels of education and their resulting low incomes — not their legal status or an unwillingness to work. The major welfare programs examined in this report include cash assistance, food assistance, Medicaid, and public and subsidized housing.”  Steven A. Camarota


THE LA RAZA MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS REMIND AMERICANS (Legals) THAT THERE IS NO (REAL) BORDER WITH NARCOMEX!

SHOCKING IMAGES OF CARTELS ON U.S. BORDERS:
“Heroin is not produced in the United States. Every gram of heroin present in the United States provides unequivocal evidence of a failure of border security because every gram of heroin was smuggled into the United States. Indeed, this is precisely a point that Attorney General Jeff Sessions made during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on October 18, 2017 when he again raised the need to secure the U.S./Mexican border to protect American lives.” Michael Cutler …..FrontPageMag.com


LOS ANGELES – GATEWAY FOR THE LA RAZA MEX DRUG CARTELS

NARCOMEX in LA RAZA-OCCUPIED LOS ANGELES – Western gateway for the MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS and MEXICO’S SECOND LARGEST CITY.


Federal agents raided Q.T Fashion and numerous other businesses in the downtown fashion district Wednesday, cracking down on a scheme that cartels are increasingly relying on to get their profits — from drug sales, kidnappings and other illegal activities — back to Mexico, authorities said.

Nine people were arrested in raids targeting 75 locations, and $90 million was seized — $70 million in cash. In one condo, agents found $35 million stuffed in banker boxes. At a mansion in Bel-Air, they discovered $10 million in duffel bags.

"Los Angeles has become the epicenter of narco-dollar money laundering with couriers regularly bringing duffel bags and suitcases full of cash to many businesses," said Robert E. Dugdale, the assistant U.S. attorney in charge of federal criminal prosecutions in Los Angeles.



LOS ANGELES: MEXICO’S SECOND LARGEST CITY AND  GATEWAY FOR THE LA RAZA HEROIN CARTELS          




Every CEO in every company sees the business opportunity: Will I earn higher profits by replacing my American staff with cheaper H-1B workers? The answer is an obvious yes.
The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with foreign labor. That process spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. The policy also drives up real estate priceswidens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.

A NATION DIES OF OPIOID ADDICTION
AMERICAN BIG PHARMA, RED CHINA and NARCOMEX PARTNER FOR THE BIG BUCKS
“The drug epidemic is the product of capitalism and the policies of the capitalist parties, both Democrats and Republicans. There is, first of all, the role of the pharmaceutical companies, which have amassed huge profits from the deceptive marketing of opioid pain killers, which they claimed were not addictive. Prescriptions for opioids such as Percocet, Oxycontin and Vicodin skyrocketed from 76 million in 1991 to nearly 259 million in 2012. What are the numbers and profits now?

OPIOID AMERICA: CHINA AND MEXICO PARTNER TO ADDICT AMERICA

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-opioid-war-on-america-chin

 

PRINCETON REPORT:
American middle-class is addicted, poor, jobless and suicidal…. Thank the corrupt government for surrendering our borders to 40 million looting Mexicans and then handing the bills to middle America?

OPIOID MURDERS BY BIG PHARMA

“While drug distributors have paid a total of $400 million in fines over the past 10 years, their combined revenue during this same period was over $5 trillion.”

“Opioids have ravaged families and devastated communities across the country. Encouraging their open use undermines the rule of law and will do nothing to quell their continued abuse, let alone the problems underlying mass addiction.”

THE LA RAZA INVASION:


The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration floods the market with foreign laborspikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate priceswidens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.   NEIL MUNRO


Opioid Nation

Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic (Expanded and Updated Edition)

by Barry Meier
Random House, 223 pp., $27.00

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America

by Beth Macy
Little, Brown, 376 pp., $28.00

American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts

by Chris McGreal
PublicAffairs, 316 pp., $27.00

American Fix: Inside the Opioid Addiction Crisis—and How to End It

by Ryan Hampton, with Claire Rudy Foster
All Points, 290 pp., $27.99
Jerome Sessini/Magnum Photos
A man who has just taken heroin, Philadelphia, April 2018
The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2017, up from some 64,000 the previous year and 52,000 the year before that—a staggering increase with no end in sight. Most involved opioids.
A few definitions are in order. The term opioid is now used to include opiates, which are derivatives of the opium poppy, and opioids, which originally referred only to synthesized drugs that act in the same way as opiates do. Opium, the sap from the poppy, has been used throughout the world for thousands of years to treat pain and shortness of breath, suppress cough and diarrhea, and, maybe most often, simply for its tranquilizing effect. The active constituent of opium, morphine, was not identified until 1806. Soon a variety of morphine tinctures became readily available without any social opprobrium, used, in some accounts, to combat the travails and boredom of Victorian women. (Thomas Jefferson was also an enthusiast of laudanum, one of the morphine tinctures.) Heroin, a stronger opiate made from morphine, entered the market later in the nineteenth century. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that synthetic or partially synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, methadone, oxycodone (Percocet), hydrocodone (Vicodin), and hydromorphone (Dilaudid), were developed.
In 1996 a new form of oxycodone called OxyContin came on the market, and three recent books—Beth Macy’s Dopesick, Chris McGreal’s American Overdose, and Barry Meier’s Pain Killer—blame the opioid epidemic almost entirely on its maker, Purdue Pharma. OxyContin is formulated to be released more slowly and therefore lasts longer. The company claimed that the drug’s slow release would make it less addictive than ordinary oxycodone, since the initial euphoria—the high—would be muted. Based on this theory and little else, the FDA permitted OxyContin to contain twice the usual dose of oxycodone and carry on the label this statement: “Delayed absorption, as provided by OxyContin tablets, is believed to reduce the abuse liability of a drug.” (The FDAofficial who oversaw OxyContin’s approval later got a plum job at Purdue Pharma.)
The company launched an extraordinarily aggressive and successful marketing campaign to convince physicians that they had the holy grail of a nonaddictive opioid. It sent hundreds of sales representatives to doctors’ offices to tout OxyContin, and offered doctors dinners and trips to meetings at luxury resorts. And it paid more than five thousand doctors, pharmacists, and nurses to train as speakers to tour the country promoting OxyContin. But like all opioids, OxyContin is addictive. And soon enough, users found that they could crush the pills or dissolve the coating, then snort the drug like cocaine or inject it like heroin. Each pill would then become essentially an instantaneous double dose of oxycodone.
OxyContin almost immediately became a blockbuster—that is, a prescription drug with annual sales of more than $1 billion. It was widely used not just by those for whom the prescriptions were written, but by their relatives and friends. The pills were also sold or stolen or otherwise diverted to street use. In addition, “pill mills” sprang up, where unethical physicians wrote innumerable prescriptions for OxyContin and refilled them automatically without ever seeing the patient. McGreal describes “one of the most productive pill mills in the country,” which operated in the small town of Williamson, West Virginia—known locally as “Pilliamson.” The town, he says, “was awash in pills,” and people came by car and bus to line up at the clinic and cooperating drugstores. “Investigators calculated that in 2009 alone, the clinic pulled in $4.6 million in a town with a population of little more than three thousand people.”
It’s impossible to know how many new prescriptions were obtained in each of these ways, but one way or another, OxyContin addiction grew into an epidemic. The epicenter was central Appalachia, and its victims were mainly white people in small, economically depressed coal-mining communities in southern West Virginia and parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, and southwestern Virginia.1
The three books that focus on Purdue Pharma are in a sense the same book. Barry Meier first published Pain Killer in 2003. The new edition (released by a different publisher) is much the same, with some updating and re-arrangements. The two new books, Dopesick and American Overdose, cover the same story as it unfolded in the same region of the country. Both Macy and McGreal refer to the 2003 edition of Meier’s book (but not the new edition, probably because they could not have known of it at the time their books were written). All three books are gripping and well written, with detailed accounts, one after another (perhaps too many), of families decimated by the epidemic. And they all tell the story of Art Van Zee, a physician in southwestern Virginia, who in 2000 became aware of the growing epidemic of OxyContin there and tried heroically to get Purdue Pharma and the FDA to take responsibility for it.
Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family that founded it are very hard to defend. By aggressively marketing OxyContin, even after they knew it was being widely abused, the family became enormously wealthy. But the FDA was also guilty. It permitted OxyContin to be sold as a relatively nonaddictive opioid without good evidence to support that claim, and it should have been obvious that the pills might be crushed or dissolved to make them even more addictive. Van Zee, along with Beth Davies, a nun who ran the local substance abuse clinic, saw Lee County, Virginia, blanketed with OxyContin prescriptions and watched the deaths mount, particularly among young people. They informed Purdue, which simply stonewalled. Over the following year, Van Zee devoted himself completely to the cause, meeting with company and FDAofficials and testifying before a Senate committee, trying to get Purdue to reformulate the drug or even withdraw it from the market.
In 2007 Purdue pled guilty to criminal charges of fraudulently marketing OxyContin and settled for $600 million in fines and penalties. Three executives pled guilty to misdemeanor charges and were sentenced to four hundred hours of community service and lesser fines. The company’s fine was trivial in comparison with its profits from OxyContin. In fact, almost every other major pharmaceutical company has had to settle both civil and criminal charges of fraudulent marketing for much more (the record settlement is now GlaxoSmithKline’s $3 billion, for a variety of violations, including falsely promoting drugs and failing to report safety data). These kinds of fines are just the cost of doing business. And so it was for Purdue Pharma, although the fraudulent marketing stopped and a warning was added to the label.
The problem with these three books, and it’s a big one, is that they treat the Purdue story as though it were the whole story of the opioid epidemic. But OxyContin did not give rise to opioid addiction, although it jump-started the current epidemic. Heroin has been a common street drug ever since it was banned in 1924. Morphine has also been widely abused.
Nor would taking OxyContin off the market end the epidemic. The overwhelming majority of opioid deaths are caused not by OxyContin but by combinations of fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine, often brought in from China via Mexican cartels, and frequently taken along with benzodiazepines (such as Valium or Xanax) and alcohol. These drugs are cheaper and stronger, particularly fentanyl. Fentanyl was first synthesized in 1960, and soon became widely used as an anesthetic and powerful painkiller. It is legally manufactured and highly effective when used appropriately, often for short medical procedures such as colonoscopies. The illicit production and street use is relatively new, but it is now the main cause of most opioid-related deaths (nearly 90 percent in Massachusetts).
The steady increase in opioid deaths after OxyContin came on the market has been supplanted by a much faster increase starting around 2013, when heroin and fentanyl use increased dramatically. We now have two epidemics—the overuse of prescription drugs and the much more deadly and now largely unrelated epidemic of street drugs. By concentrating on the first, we are closing the barn door after the horse is long gone.
Efforts to deal with the epidemic have been all over the map—literally. Possession of illegal drugs (and legal drugs illicitly used) is still a federal crime, and prisons are still full of people whose only crime was that. But many states, counties, and cities have begun to regard opioid addiction as a public health issue, not a police issue. They are opening centers in which people who seek help are shifted to less powerful opioids like methadone and buprenorphine (Subutex)—a method known as “medication-assisted treatment,” or MAT. Naloxone (Narcan), the antidote for an opioid overdose, is now sold over the counter in almost all states. If used immediately, it can prevent an otherwise inevitable death from a drug overdose. And drug courts, which may drop criminal charges in return for an agreement to submit to treatment and monitoring, are becoming more common.
Nan Goldin/Marian Goodman Gallery
Nan Goldin: Withdrawal/Quicksand, Berlin/NY, February 2016, 2016
Most controversial are facilities called “safe injection sites,” or SIFs, where drug users can come to use drugs without fear of arrest. The staff provides clean needles to reduce the risk of HIV and hepatitis C infections, and is prepared to resuscitate addicts who overdose. This approach is called “harm reduction.” The problem is that addicts must still buy drugs illegally, and it’s almost impossible to know exactly what is in them.
In a recent New York Times Op-Ed, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, came down hard on SIFs. He warned that “it is a federal felony to maintain any location for the purpose of facilitating illicit drug use,” and that “cities and counties should expect the Department of Justice to meet the opening of any injection site with swift and aggressive action.” He was referring to plans to operate SIFs in San Francisco, New York City, and Seattle, and similar options now being considered by Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Later in the same article, however, he softened, saying we should “help drug users get treatment and aggressively prosecute criminals who supply the deadly poison,” suggesting that perhaps he doesn’t believe simple possession is so bad, after all.
But the proposed solutions to this epidemic range from the extreme of “lock ’em up” to “drug abuse is no less a disease than cancer or diabetes” and should therefore be met with the same solicitude. Ryan Hampton exemplifies the latter view in his angry book, American Fix. A former drug user himself and now an impassioned advocate and activist, he insists that drug abuse should be regarded like other diseases. He doesn’t acknowledge that for most users there was a moment of choice in becoming addicted that is not the case for people with cancer or diabetes. After receiving Dilaudid for a painful ankle, Hampton decided to ask for more, and then more. I think one can make the argument for sympathy with drug users and for understanding how the quest for drugs ceases to be under their control without claiming an analogy to diseases like cancer or diabetes.
Hampton paints a vivid picture of the downward spiral of addiction. When he “leveled up to IV heroin,” he explains, “it was cheaper than pills, easier to get hold of, and a quarter the cost. More important, nobody was tracking us in a database.”
Where Hampton is at his best is in his exposure of the profiteering and corruption in the burgeoning addiction industry—what he calls “the treatment industry swamp.” In the swamp, he found
lack of effective treatment, exorbitant costs, and ridiculous twenty-eight-day vacations disguised as medical help, fed by patient brokers who run a completely legal, high-end human trafficking cartel to push tens of thousands of patients through the broken system.
He was referring to the panoply of treatment centers, both residential and outpatient, and detox facilities, where users are supposed to be weaned from drugs before entering “sober living houses.” As in so much of American medicine, even nonprofit insurers like Medicaid outsource the actual delivery of care to for-profit companies that charge whatever the market will bear. According to Hampton, “one of the most expensive treatment centers in America, Passages Malibu, costs more than $60,000 per month.” Costs are settled by a crazy quilt of payers, including state and local governments, Medicaid, other federal programs, private insurers, and often by desperate families. Not surprisingly, only a minority of users are ever treated.
In 2017 the Aspen Institute’s Health Strategy Group, led by two former secretaries of health and human services, Tommy Thompson and Kathleen Sebelius, and consisting of twenty-four members from various health-related fields (I am among them), met for three days to examine the opioid epidemic. The deliberations were preceded by four presentations by experts in the field. In the final broad and comprehensive report, the group made a strong case for decriminalizing drug addiction and instead regarding it as a public health issue. Among the five major recommendations was a call for more research into nearly all aspects of the epidemic. It’s startling how little we know, given the immensity of the problem and the media attention it receives.2
We need to know, for instance, how effective opioids are for different kinds of pain, including long-term treatment for chronic pain. We need to know how opioids compare in effectiveness and side effects with acetaminophen (which can cause liver failure) and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen (which can cause gastrointestinal bleeding). We need to know how the death rate in the opioid epidemic compares with the rate of use. We know the death rate is soaring, but does that mean the rate of use is, too, or is it simply a result of the lethality of the drug mixtures obtained on the street? We need to know how much diversion there is now from legitimate treatment to abuse. That includes diversion of methadone and buprenorphine, which are also opioids and can be sold on the street or added to the user’s illicit intake. According to Macy, “Buprenorphine is the third-most-diverted opioid in the country, after oxycodone and hydrocodone.”
We need to know how many addicts want to quit, since most don’t seek treatment. Why don’t they? And finally, we need to know the best approach to treatment. There is concern, for example, that detox might be dangerous, because the first dose after a relapse can be deadly if the user is no longer tolerant to the drug’s effects. Is providing methadone or buprenorphine indefinitely, even for life, the best treatment among bad choices? There is plenty of speculation about all of these questions, and suggestive findings about some of them, but little solid evidence.
We also need to remember an essential and crucial fact: opioids do have a legitimate purpose, and it’s an enormously important one. They treat severe pain, often when no other treatment is effective. Patients suffering from cancer are sometimes completely dependent on opioids for relief, as are some patients with other forms of severe pain. As the authors of the books acknowledge, pain was systematically undertreated throughout most of the twentieth century. After centuries of free and easy use of opioids, there was a sudden reaction in the United States at the start of the twentieth century, which had much to do with anti-immigrant sentiment, particularly animus toward Chinese immigrants who were widely assumed to be opium addicts. (It also paralleled the growing reaction against alcohol that resulted in Prohibition.) The 1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act imposed strict regulations on the use of opioids; they had to be prescribed by physicians, and then only for patients not already taking them. Prohibition lasted for only thirteen years, but the dread of opioid addiction stayed with us until the 1980s and caused cruel suffering for generations of patients.
Even in hospitals where cancer patients lay dying in agony, opioids were administered reluctantly, in small doses, and at infrequent intervals. When I was in training in a teaching hospital in the 1960s, there was an awful ritual to it. The drugs were administered according to a pro re nata (prn) regimen (ostensibly “as needed”) that required the patient to wait out a four-hour interval, no matter how severe the pain, and then request the next dose. Those who badly wanted the drug had to keep track of the time and have the strength and endurance to summon a nurse if one was nearby. Patients were sometimes inhibited in asking for the next dose by a desire to please the medical staff and not be a nuisance, or by their own belief that taking morphine was somehow wrong or reflected weakness. The extent to which nurses and physicians shared the common fears of addiction influenced their readiness to respond. Desperate patients would count the minutes toward the end of the interval, hoping they could flag down a nurse. Many doctors and nurses interpreted the anxiety and clock-watching as a sign of growing addiction, not inadequate pain relief. These patients were labeled “drug-seeking” and often punished for it by being denied the very help they needed.
During the 1980s there was a welcome change in that attitude, partly due to the hospice movement that had begun in the United Kingdom. The prn system became more flexible, or was eliminated altogether. There was a realization that because pain is entirely subjective, there is no way to measure or verify it, and even patients with the same condition could differ in their experience of pain. Instead of having to flag down nurses, patients were asked at shorter intervals whether they needed pain relief, and how much. In 2001 the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations proclaimed pain the fifth vital sign, to be assessed in every patient, along with heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, and blood pressure. Although the motivation for this move was laudable, it presented problems, since, unlike the other four vital signs, pain can’t be objectively quantified.
The authors of the books under review recognize the history of inadequate treatment of pain throughout most of the twentieth century, but they don’t give it its due. They concentrate instead on the reaction of the 1980s, which they consider excessive and an underlying cause of the opioid epidemic. In 1982 I wrote an editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine, which began, “Few things a doctor does are more important than relieving pain.” I still believe that. I ended with these words: “Pain is soul-destroying. No patients should have to endure intense pain unnecessarily. The quality of mercy is essential to the practice of medicine; here, of all places, it should not be strained.”
The opioid epidemic, while horrifying, is still outweighed by alcohol deaths, which are also increasing, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Hampton writes, “If my first drug of choice came with a prescription, the second one, alcohol, was culturally embedded and used to celebrate at every turn of events.” In 2016, when there were 64,000 deaths in the US from the drug epidemic, there were 90,000 from alcohol (including accidents and homicides caused by inebriated people, as well as direct effects, mainly cirrhosis of the liver). Cigarette smoking is estimated to cause 480,000 deaths a year. I do not intend to minimize the opioid epidemic. Far from it. What I want to underscore is the differences in these three epidemics. Alcohol and cigarettes have no medical or practical uses of any kind. Yet we permit their use if regulated. In contrast, opioids do have medical uses, and they are important.
The opioid epidemic is usually seen as a supply problem. If we can interdict the supply of prescription opioids, the thinking goes, we can stanch the epidemic. But that is unlikely to work for two reasons. First, as I pointed out, this is no longer mainly an epidemic of prescription drugs but of street drugs. And second, it creates an onerous obstacle for doctors and outpatients who require pain treatment. More and more, they have to satisfy regulations expressly designed to restrict access to prescription opioids. Some make sense. For example, it’s reasonable to monitor opioid prescriptions to detect pill mills. It’s also reasonable to flag users who “doctor-shop,” that is, see several doctors at once to try to get multiple doses of opioids.
But other requirements are meant simply to inconvenience both doctors and patients until they give up. For example, in Massachusetts doctors must limit their first-time opioid prescriptions to seven days. That can be more than an inconvenience for ill patients in pain. Macy quotes a letter from a friend with severe back pain from scoliosis. “‘My life is not less important than that of an addict,’ my friend wrote,…explaining that her new practitioner requires her to submit to pill counts, lower-dose prescriptions, and more frequent visits for refills, which increase her out-of-pocket expense.” Even more serious is a new shortage of opioids for injection in cancer centers.
For physicians, who are already weighed down by innumerable bureaucratic requirements, these restrictions present one more hoop to jump through, and many simply won’t do it. Instead, they’ll send the patient away with some Advil and hope it does the trick, even though they know it probably won’t. The regulations are having their intended effect. In Massachusetts, opioid prescribing has decreased by 30 percent. Meanwhile, the epidemic of street drugs continues apace. McGreal raises the possibility that reducing access to prescription opioids might feed the demand for heroin. Macy quotes an addiction specialist who laments that “our wacky culture can’t seem to do anything in a nuanced way.”
I believe the modern opioid epidemic is now more a demand problem than a supply problem. Three years ago, the Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton published an explosive paper about the surprising rise in mortality, starting at the turn of this century, among middle-aged white non-Hispanic men and women. The increase was greater in women than in men. They found three main causes: drug and alcohol overdoses, suicide, and alcohol-associated liver disease. They later called these “deaths of despair,” because they were most common among workers in tenuous jobs, with only a high school education or less, who were struggling to stay afloat in isolated regions of the country. Dragged down by these deaths, in the past three years overall life expectancy in the United States has started to drop.
It’s not hard to see reasons for the despair. Most working-class Americans have not benefited from our booming economy, the fruits of which have gone almost entirely to the richest 10 percent. For the bottom half of the population, income has scarcely budged since the 1970s, while expenses for necessities like housing, health care, education, and child care have skyrocketed. In Appalachia, where the opioid epidemic first took hold, many coal miners were unemployed and would probably remain so. People expected they wouldn’t live as well as their parents had, and had little hope for their children. It is true that African-Americans still have higher overall mortality rates than whites, but that gap is closing rapidly for people under the age of sixty-five, particularly for women. By 2027, white women will have higher mortality rates than African-American women. Mortality for African-American men is falling even faster than for African-American women; it is projected to be equal to that of white men by 2030. But the epidemic has extended to all parts of the country and to all ethnic groups, so it’s unclear how the effects will be distributed in the future.
By the middle of this decade, the grotesque inequality in this country began to get the attention it deserves. And the growing awareness of that inequality fed the populist passion that, when twisted and distorted, produced the election of Donald J. Trump. It’s probably not coincidental, then, that the opioid epidemic got its second wind at about that time. It certainly marks the time when the opioids of choice changed from prescription drugs to the witches’ brew of street drugs. Did the epidemic explode because people were becoming aware that the American Dream was no longer theirs to dream?
As long as this country tolerates the chasm between the rich and the poor, and fails even to pretend to provide for the most basic needs of our citizens, such as health care, education, and child care, some people will want to use drugs to escape. This increasingly seems to me not a legal or medical problem, nor even a public health problem. It’s a political problem. We need a government dedicated to policies that will narrow the gap between the rich and the poor and ensure basic services for everyone. To end the epidemic of deaths of despair, we need to target the sources of the despair.


FIGHTING THE RICH, DEMOCRAT AND GOP POLS FOR OUR JOBS AND BORDERS.
Amnesty is all about keeping wages depressed and passing the true cost along to what is left of the America middle-class.
The huge inflow of migrants and asylum seekers forced officials to issue 400,000 work permits in 2017. That is roughly one new migrant worker for every 10 Americans who entered the workforce that year. The huge inflow has also jammed the immigration courts, ensuring that new migrants can work for a few years before a judge decides their case.
The inflow of asylum-seeking migrants, nonetheless, is far smaller than the inflow of legal immigrants and temporary visa-workers, which added roughly 2 workers in 2017 for every four Americans who entered the workforce.
Nationwide, the U.S. establishment’s economic policy of using legal migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white collar and blue collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor that blue collar and white collar employees.
The cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high tech careers, and sidelines at least five million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.
Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that investment flow drives up coastal real-estate prices, pricing poor U.S. Latinos and blacks out of prosperous cities, such as Berkeley and Oakland. NEIL MUNRO


















Juárez Forced to Re-Deploy Military as Cartel War Rages on Border


Juarez El Paso
AP Photo
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2:57


































The border city of Ciudad Juárez, abutting El Paso, Texas, announced the gradual re-deployment of joint police and military patrols to quell cartel violence and enhance local security.

The implementation of joint patrols involving elements of state, federal, and municipal police in conjunction with the Mexican Army was announced by Ciudad Juárez Mayor Héctor Armando Cabada and State Security Director Oscar Aparicio, according to local reporting. The joint operation was initiated this week and includes a plan to map out cartel hotspots.
The joint patrols were initially deployed in late October after police personnel suffered 10 attacks from cartel gunmen in less than one month–leaving two officers dead and several wounded. After the surge, violence began to trend downward until recently. During the months of September and October, homicides were significantly down compared to the summer, but attacks against security personnel spiked at an alarming rate.
The most recent violence is attributed to splits between street gangs aligned with warring cartels as they fight for methamphetamine street sales. The “Mexicles” and “Artistas Asesinos” were previously aligned with the Sinaloa Cartel, yet are now at war with each other after a faction of Mexicles re-aligned with “La Línea” and “Los Aztecas,” the deadly rivals of the Sinaloa gangs. In another area of Ciudad Juárez, an “Old Guard” faction of Los Aztecas is warring with a newer faction of “Los Aztecas.” These splits are contributingto numerous homicides and attacks against official personnel.
On Tuesday, the municipal police arrested three gang members belonging to a faction of the Sinaloa-aligned Los Mexicles after police found nearly 56 pounds of methamphetamine inside their vehicle, according to local reporting.
The all-time homicide record for Ciudad Juárez was set in 2010 with 3,075 officially recorded. The 2018 unofficial count exceeds 1,200, according to local media and statistics compiled from the state attorney general’s office.
Robert Arce is a retired Phoenix Police detective with extensive experience working Mexican organized crime and street gangs. Arce has worked in the Balkans, Iraq, Haiti, and recently completed a three-year assignment in Monterrey, Mexico, working out of the Consulate for the United States Department of State, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Program, where he was the Regional Program Manager for Northeast Mexico (Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Durango, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas.) You can follow him on Twitter. He can be reached at robertrarce@gmail.com


This will crack you up!



Mexican Presidents Deny They Took Bribes from El Chapo






  14 Nov 201898

Two former Mexican presidents publicly denied taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. The statements came after the legal defense for Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera made contrary claims this week.

The drug lord is facing several money laundering and drug trafficking charges at a federal trial in New York. In his opening statement, defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman spoke of bribes “including the very top, the current president of Mexico and the former.”
Soon after the statements became public, Mexico’s government issued a statement denying the allegations. Eduardo Sanchez, the spokesman for current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said the statements were false and “defamatory.”

El gobierno de @EPN persiguió, capturó y extraditó al criminal Joaquín Guzmán Loera. Las afirmaciones atribuidas a su abogado son completamente falsas y difamatorias
— Eduardo Sánchez H. (@ESanchezHdz) November 13, 2018
Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon took to social media to personally deny the allegations, claiming that neither El Chapo or the Sinaloa Cartel paid him bribes.

Son absolutamente falsas y temerarias las afirmaciones que se dice realizó el abogado de Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán. Ni él, ni el cártel de Sinaloa ni ningún otro realizó pagos a mi persona.
— Felipe Calderón (@FelipeCalderon) November 13, 2018
Under Guzman’s leadership, the Sinaloa Cartel became the largest drug trafficking organization in the world with influence in every major U.S. city.
The allegations against Pena Nieto are not new. In 2016, Breitbart News reported on an investigation by Mexican journalists which revealed how Juarez Cartel operators funneled money into the 2012 presidential campaign. The investigation was carried out by Mexican award-winning journalist Carmen Aristegui and her team. The subsequent scandal became known as “Monexgate” for the cash cards that were given out during Peña Nieto’s campaign. The allegations against Pena Nieto went largely unreported by U.S. news outlets.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon.  You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.



Mexico: Where Is Your Shame?
At a demonstration Wednesday in Mexico City against Arizona's law.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Immigration: Mexico's government gloated triumphantly after a federal judge's injunction blocked Arizona's immigration law. But it's no victory for Mexico. In fact, Mexico's leaders ought to be mortified.
As radical immigration activists crowed with glee and the Obama administration claimed victory, Mexico's government joined the applause. 
Calling Judge Susan Bolton's injunction Wednesday "a step in the right direction," Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa declared: "The government of Mexico would like to express its recognition for the determination demonstrated by the federal government of the United States and the actions of the civil organizations that organized lawsuits against the SB 1070 law."
In reality, it ought to be ashamed. Supposedly framed as an issue of federal power pre-empting state power, it's hardly Mexico's business. But Mexico made a big show of saying its interest was in protecting its nationals from the dreadful racism of Arizona that its own citizens, curiously enough, keep fleeing to.
Espinosa said her government was busy collecting data on civil rights violations and her department had issued an all-out travel warning to Mexican nationals about Arizona. 
That's where Mexico's hypocrisy is just too much.
First, Mexico encourages illegal immigration to the U.S. Oh, it says it doesn't, but it prints comic book guides for would-be illegal immigrants and provides ID cards for illegals once they get here. In Arizona alone, Mexico keeps five consulates busy.
 That's not out of love for its own citizens, but because Mexicans send cash back to Mexico that helps finance the government.
Instead of selling its wasteful state-owned oil company or getting rid of red tape to create jobs in Mexico, Mexico spends the hard currency from remittances. It fails to look at why its citizens leave.
According to the Heritage Foundation-Wall Street Journal 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, Mexico's big problem is — no shock — government corruption, where it ranks below the world average.
That's where Mexico's cartels come in.
Mexico's encouragement of illegal immigration undercuts its valiant war against its smuggling cartels. The cartels' prowess and firepower have made them the only ones who can smuggle effectively across the border. U.S. law enforcers say they now control human-smuggling on our southern border.
Feed them immigrants and they grow more cash-rich — and right now, immigrant smuggling is about a third of the cartels' income.
Mass graves and car bombings are signs of criminal organizations getting bigger, and more powerful. Juarez, which has lost 5,000 people this year, bleeds because cartels fight over not just who gets the drug routes, but who gets the illegal-immigrant smuggling routes, too.
Aside from the cartel mayhem in Mexico, the bodies are piling up in the Arizona desert and U.S. Border Patrol rescues of abandoned illegals left to die have risen. 
 It's not the desert's fault, and it's certainly not Uncle Sam's fault, as activists claim. No, it's the fact that Mexicans are encouraged to emigrate. Criminal cartels don't fear abandoning their human cargo in the desert, as long as Mexico does nothing and blames Uncle Sam.
Hearing Mexico's government now cheer the Arizona ruling, which will only encourage more illegal immigration, gives the country's regime a pretty inhuman face. 
If Mexico had any decency, it would do all it could to discourage illegal immigration and keep a respectful silence about Arizona.
It needs U.S. support for its war on cartels. Instead of insulting American citizens, Mexico should confront directly the reasons why its people are so desperate to leave, and do all in its power to destroy the cartels that are slowly killing the nation. That includes defunding the murderous gangs by halting illegal immigration.





Billionaire Class Enjoys 15X the Wage Growth of American Working Class




cash-in-hand
AFP
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The billionaire class — the country’s top 0.01 percent of earners — have enjoyed more than 15 times as much wage growth as America’s working and middle class since 1979, new wage data reveals.

Between 1979 and 2017, the wages of the bottom 90 percent — the country’s working and lower middle class — have grown by only about 22 percent, Economic Policy Institute (EPI) researchers find.
Compare that small wage increase over nearly four decades to the booming wage growth of America’s top one percent, who have seen their wages grow more than 155 percent during the same period.
The top 0.01 percent — the country’s billionaire class — saw their wages grow by more than 343 percent in the last four decades, more than 15 times the wage growth of the bottom 90 percent of Americans.
In 1979, America’s working class was earning on average about $29,600 a year. Fast forward to 2017, and the same bottom 90 percent of Americans are earning only about $6,600 more annually.
The almost four decades of wage stagnation among the country’s working and middle class comes as the national immigration policy has allowed for the admission of more than 1.5 million mostly low-skilled immigrants every year.

(Public Citizen)
In the last decade, alone, the U.S. admitted ten million legal immigrants, forcing American workers to compete against a growing population of low-wage workers. Meanwhile, employers are able to reduce wages and drive up their profit margins thanks to the annual low-skilled immigration scheme.
The Washington, DC-imposed mass immigration policy is a boon to corporate executives, Wall Street, big business, and multinational conglomerates as every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of an occupation’s labor force reduces Americans’ hourly wages by 0.4 percent. Every one percent increase in the immigrant workforce reduces Americans’ overall wages by 0.8 percent.
Mass immigration has come at the expense of America’s working and middle class, which has suffered from poor job growth, stagnant wages, and increased public costs to offset the importation of millions of low-skilled foreign nationals.
Four million young Americans enter the workforce every year, but their job opportunities are further diminished as the U.S. imports roughly two new foreign workers for every four American workers who enter the workforce. Even though researchers say 30 percent of the workforce could lose their jobs due to automation by 2030, the U.S. has not stopped importing more than a million foreign nationals every year.
For blue-collar American workers, mass immigration has not only kept wages down but in many cases decreased wages, as Breitbart News reported. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues importing more foreign nationals with whom working-class Americans are forced to compete. In 2016, the U.S. brought in about 1.8 million mostly low-skilled immigrants.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

WILL WE EVER GET THE TRUTH ON OBAMA-HOLDERS’S ARMING OF THE MEX DRUG CARTELS???

ICYMI: Feds Want to Keep Any Mention of 'Fast And Furious' Out of El Chapo's Drug Trafficking Trial

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2018/12/23/icymi-feds-want-to-keep-any-mention-of-fast-and-furious-out-of-el-chapos-drug-n2537990

 

One of the most disgusting things to come out of the Obama administration was "Operation Fast and Furious," where members of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed illegal gun sales to go through – commonly referred to as "gun walking" – in order to track buyers and sellers they believed were connected to the Mexican drug cartels. Nearly 2,000 firearms were sold and were eventually found throughout the United States and Mexico. Two of them were used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. 
According to the New York Daily NewsBrooklyn prosecutors are doing everything in their power to keep any questions relating to "Fast and Furious" from being mentioned during witness testimony. In fact, they're asking a federal judge to block defense attorneys from asking questions relating to the highly-publicized botched campaign.
"The defense strategy is transparent. Given the substantial number of articles that have been written about the Operation, many of which criticize the government’s handling of the movement of weapons from the United States into Mexico, the defense is attempting to use the well-known operation to place the government on trial," United States Attorney Richard Donoghue said in a letter to the court. "While the government wil lseek to introduce at trial seized weapons that had been identified by ATF agents within the scope of the Operation, any details about the Operation itself are completely irrelevant to the issues at trial under Rule 401 of the Federal Rules of Evidence and should be excluded on those grounds alone."
Judge Brian Cogan has yet to rule on the request.
According to witness testimony from former trafficker Tirso Martinez Sanchez, he ran El Chapo's train operation from 2000 to 2003 and made roughly $20 million. During that time, trains would pull into special warehouses in Mexico. Workers would fill hidden compartments with kilos of cocaine and then add oil to the train to throw off bomb-sniffing dogs at the border. This technique also discouraged border patrol agents from conducting physical searches.
Sanchez estimated that between 30 and 50 tons of cocaine, with a value of upwards of $800 million, was smuggled into the United States. Between seven to eight shipments a day made their way on the train lines to New York City. 
The trains would drop off the smuggled drugs at a warehouse in New Jersey. Trucks would then come to transport the drugs to various distribution locations between Queens and Brooklyn.
Various kilo packages were hidden in secret compartments of cars and trucks. They were then distributed at different meetings at fast food locations.
"He testified about three seizures – one at a train warehouse in Queens and one involving two tons of cocaine seized at a Brooklyn warehouse in 2002 – and said the heat they generated made him reconsider his career choice," the Daily News reported. "He was arrested in Mexico in early 2014 and extradited to the U.S. a year later. He pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and distribution and is facing 10 years to life."

Democrats: A plague on the nation




How as Americans do we explain the intransigence of the left when it comes to national security?  'Tis a mystery.  These people, these Democrats in Congress, are among the most privileged persons on the planet.  They have enjoyed, more than most, the blessings bequeathed by the Founders, the authors of the Constitution.  Yet they are determined, like Obama, to transform us into something this nation was never meant to be: a land without borders.  While all of them are on record supporting a border wall in the past, now that Donald Trump is president, they all oppose it with every fiber of their being.  They know that it will work, and they cannot abide Trump having a win.  These people – Schumer, Pelosi, Gutiérrez, etc. – are truly venal.  Governor Brown has effectively destroyed California, now benighted by rampant homelessness and the crime that accompanies a population of illiterate, drug-addicted, gang-affiliated, criminally inclined persons adrift on our streets.  And now another young officer has been killed by an illegal alien thanks to the left's obsession with protecting the throngs of migrants crossing the border into the U.S. 
It should be obvious to every American by now that our progressive left does not have the best interest of Americans at heart.  Quite the opposite.  They loathe those of us who put Trump in the White House and are determined to punish us.  They intend to raise our taxes to pay for the $100B illegal aliens cost us every year.  They need open borders to import future voters; millions of illegals voted in the 2018 election thanks to motor voter bills and states' refusal to require voter ID.  The Democrats know they cannot win without cheating.  They cheated in 2016 and are still stunned that their carefully calculated strategy did not work – thus, the cover-up, AKA the Mueller investigation, of their many crimes committed over the Obama years, many at the direction of Hillary Clinton with Obama's knowledge and approval.  Our once most revered institutions, the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA, have been thoroughly corrupted.  Mueller, a willing participant in that corruption, is up to his eyeballs in the cover-up.
Will any of these people at the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA, ever be held accountable?  To date, they have not been.  The power they have within the Deep State is beyond formidable; it is seemingly absolute.
It appears that America has become a sort of medieval oligarchy.  Trump, as the outsider he is, is a grave threat to all of those who believed they were in control in perpetuity.  They are ready and willing to do anything, no matter how illegal or immoral, to depose him, to expel him from office.
The Democrats in office today, and those about to take the majority in the House, are anti-Americans.  Of that you can be sure.  They care about keeping our borders open to all comers more than they care about keeping Americans safe.  They all supported a border wall when Clinton and Obama were in office.  Now they hate the president more than they love the country.  Of this there can be no doubt. 
The Democrats hate Trump so much that they want the economy to crash.  They are hoping for recession.  Is the Fed on board with the left?  It seems so since, that institution's raising the interest rate yet again is counterproductive to our thriving economy.  It is the Fed that whipsaws Wall Street, is it not?
It appears that the entirety of the left – the media, the Deep State, Wall Street, and the Democratic Party – is working in concert to bring Trump down, no matter the consequences to the country.  Meanwhile, the Republicans in the Congress, most but certainly not all, are as bendy as can be.  With notable exceptions – Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Tom Cotton, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert – they hate Trump, too.  He has ruffled their feathers, their comfortable position as go-alongs-to-get-alongs in D.C.  They have no real principles, no gumption, no fuel for a fight.  They are cowards all, pajama boys.  Paul Ryan is their poster boy.
The young policeman who died in California Christmas night will and should be a wake-up call for the Democrats.  They are 100% responsible for the presence of such criminals, protected by ridiculous sanctuary policies in our cities.  The media and the Democrats are in an uproar over the two migrant children who died at the hands of irresponsible parents who used them as a ticket to ride, yet they have nothing to say about the murder of the young policeman in Newman, Calif.  He is, to them, a casualty of politics, of their grand design to obliterate conservatives from the public realm forever.  They do not care about him, his widow, or his infant son.  They were happy to contribute to the odious Christine Blasey Ford's GoFundMe page, but not one of them will contribute to a GoFundMe page for Ronil Singh's family.  He is law enforcement, so they feel nothing. 
The Democratic Party of today is an abomination.  The assault on our constitutional republic began with Woodrow Wilson, and their long-range plan to overhaul what the Founders built is still operational.  The left has nothing but contempt for ordinary Americans, especially those who voted for Trump.
Leftists are dangerous when challenged, like a pack of jackals dismembering its prey.  They need to be defeated, indicted, arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned.  They are a scourge on the nation as founded.  They do not love this country; they seek to destroy all that was and is good within it.