Wednesday, October 13, 2021

BIDENOMICS - FOLKS, WE'RE NOT WORRIED ABOUT YOU PAYING THROUGH THE NOSE! - WE'VE GOT TO THINK OF OUR DEM VOTING ILLEGALS FIRST! THAT MEANS KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED FOR OUR CRONIES

Hannity reveals why 'Let's go Brandon' chants are breaking out nationwide

DEMOCRAT SANCTUARY STATES IN ECONOMIC MELTDOWN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJuVkO2sFuU

FNC’s Carlson: Inflation Caused by ‘Decades of Policy that Have Enriched a Few and Impoverished the Many’

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Tuesday on FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson warned how Federal Reserve monetary policy is responsible for the inflation that is plaguing the American economy.

Carlson said that inflation is a product of long-standing monetary policy, which benefiting the rich while hurting others.

Transcript as follows:

CARLSON: There’s probably no institution in American life that has more effect on how you live but that we talk about less than the Federal Reserve. People don’t care to talk about the Federal Reserve because it seems very complex, and a lot of what it does is, in fact, complex unless you have a grounding in monetary policy, it is hard to know exactly what’s going on.

But the basics aren’t that complicated, actually, and here are a few of them.

The Federal Reserve was created way back in 1913 by an act of Congress, and it had really two main goals: Maximize employment and keep prices stable. Keep inflation under control. Those are virtuous goals, but it may be a measure of the way that bureaucracies work that over time, the Federal Reserve has actively undermined both of those objectives. It’s the classic story of the fireman turned arsonist, or for that matter the COVID czar who helped create COVID — irony of ironies, it seems like we read a lot of those lately.

In the case of the Federal Reserve, consider something called quantitative easing. That’s the main thing the Fed has been doing since the financial crisis of 2008. Every month, Federal Reserve officials print more than $100 billion new in American currency, and then they inject those dollars into our financial system by buying assets like bonds and securities.

This is not a normal thing to do, it’s a radical thing to do, and it was supposed to be temporary. It was in response to a crisis. In medical terms, quantitative easing is like chemotherapy. There are times when it can save your life, but fundamentally it’s poison. If you keep taking it, it will kill you. Pretty much everyone agrees on that. And pretty much everyone understands that ultimately quantitative easing causes horrible inflation, and it’s easy to understand why. You don’t need to be an expert.

The more money you print, the less that money is worth. It is supply and demand. You buy diamonds by the karat, but you buy dirt by the yard. Overabundance decreases value.

So every new dollar you print buys less. If you keep printing them, you wind up devaluing your own currency. That’s one thing a responsible government should never do. It may enrich banks and a tiny number of big investors who give to the Democratic Party, but devaluing your currency screws everyone who works and who saves, and that’s immoral.

Those are exactly the people that a legitimate government ought to be trying to help as its core mission, and yet they’re not. All these years later, quantitative easing continues. They are still doing it.

On Wall Street, they joke about how it is going to go on forever. They call it QE-infinity. It’s an incredibly reckless policy and everybody knows it, very much including the people who are getting rich from it.

So, for the better part of a year, Fed officials have been promising they are going to stop doing this. They have sworn they will get sober. They have vowed to begin a process called tapering, that means they’ll start to gradually slow the money they print.

At a Fed meeting in April, officials said they would start to do this very soon, they would taper, but they never did. They made the same promise throughout this summer, but again they didn’t. The binge continued.

This morning, the Vice Chairman of the Fed, Richard Clarida once again insisted that tapering is almost here, we’re about to do it. The conditions to begin detox, he said, have all but been met. And yet as of tonight, the Fed is still partying with your currency like this is the richest country in the world and always will be.

So what are the effects on our country of this? Well, in the short term as with vodka, it makes everybody feel pretty good. It’s 3:00 a.m., your lips are numb, and you can barely see and yet somehow, the breakfast meeting downtown you’ve got in five hours, the one you’re going to have to give a detailed presentation to your boss seems like no problem at all. You’ve got this.

Except you don’t have it at all. Morning always comes. It is always worse than you think.

America’s quantitative easing hangover is going to be ugly. Beneath the manufactured euphoria of our top-line economic numbers — Google is killing it, record profits for Amazon, says CNBC — beneath all of that garbage, the actual American economy is in trouble and there are many signs of it.

Labor markets are tight right now because a lot of Americans have simply dropped out of the labor force, 4.3 million people walked off the job last month, some of them were forced out by Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates.

Projections for GDP growth just dropped from six percent to one and a half percent. Small businesses across the country are dying. And maybe most ominous of all, inflation is here. It’s not just a temporary problem caused by COVID disrupted supply chains, it is absolutely real.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): The American economy is starting to sizzle once again as it emerges from the pandemic and workers’ paychecks are, too with businesses practically begging for help.

But there’s a flip side to all the raises and that’s inflation. Prices rising at the fastest rate since 2008, everything from washing machines, up almost 30 percent, to furniture, up 11 percent and television sets up eight percent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So it’s happening throughout the economy, it’s not just washing machines and television sets, consumer electronics. It is everything including the big things. Try to buy a house, it’s now more expensive to buy a home than it has ever been at any time in American history.

The median existing-home price last year was $310,000.00. It is now over $356,000.00 and a lot more in the zip codes you might want to live in. Part of the reason is the cost of building materials. They are completely out of control.

Last October, lumber went for about $580.00 per thousand board feet. As of last week, it was $712.00.

Last August, used cars which you might need were selling for an average price of $21,000.00. This August, a year later they were almost $28,000.00. Same car, seven grand more.

Over the same period by the way, as you well know, the price of gas jumped a full dollar a gallon and a lot more than that in some places.

Been to the grocery lately? The cost of a pound of steak is up by two bucks, a pound of bacon costs over seven dollars right now. And suddenly, everything costs more. Eggs, milk, coffee, mustard, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. These are not luxury items. This is not a trip to St. Bart’s. These are things you buy every week and you have to buy.

The question is, are your wages rising as fast as your costs? Well, let’s see. Vegetable oil is up 60 percent, so probably not, and that means you’re getting poorer whether you realize it or not. But that’s what inflation does, it causes poverty.

So because we can prove that the population of the United States is getting poorer by the day, you’d think the Biden administration would be actively concerned about this and working to make it better, but they’re doing the opposite. They are actively making it much worse.

And here’s how they’re doing it: By spending.

No government in the history of the world has ever spent more money than Joe Biden is spending right now. That is a fact.

In fiscal year 2019, just the other day, the entire Federal government spent $6.6 trillion, then COVID hit the following year and those numbers went up, they went up by 40 percent. Federal spending in 2020 jumped to $9.1 trillion. Was that too much? Of course, it was. What do we get for it? Not enough.

But here’s the shocking thing. Under Joe Biden, as COVID recedes, it’s going up even higher, because they’re no longer using COVID as a pretext.

Through the end of this August, which is to say a month and a half ago, the Federal government has already spent more in 2021 than it did over the entire calendar years of 2019 and 2018.

So all of this drives inflation to scary levels, but they’re not scary to everyone.

If you’re a massively leveraged financial institution that owes a lot of money to a lot of people and that’s how you’re making your money, this is not necessarily bad news. If money is worth less, that means that your debt service costs less. You don’t fear inflation, inflation helps you. The problem is it crushes the American middle class.

Now in a normal country, this would be a huge concern, but because the people who make our policy don’t care about the middle class, this is a bargain well worth making.

Bloomberg News just published a piece with this headline which we’re not making up. They’re celebrating the disaster, quote: “America needs higher longer-lasting inflation.” If you can even imagine writing something like this. Does America need more emphysema, too? It’s grotesque.

Now, most people may not know this is happening, normal people don’t read Bloomberg News, they may be unaware that these attitudes even exist in what they assumed was their country and the Biden administration would like to keep it that way. They’d like to keep the population from finding out what’s happening.

So here is the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. She is the reptile who once ran the Federal Reserve and is, therefore, more responsible than any single living person for your growing poverty. Here she is assuring you that seven-dollar bacon isn’t actually a problem. That’s not really inflation, it’s something called transitory inflation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JANET YELLEN, U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY: I don’t believe that we’re at risk of hyperinflation. We’ve had several months of high inflation that most economists including me believe will be transitory as our economy gets back in full swing after the pandemic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It’s just transitory, it’s the price of progress, seven-dollar bacon. Yes, but look what you’re getting in return. Aren’t things great?

Until just a few hours ago, that was the official line in Washington, along with those Southwest delays were caused by weather, and our withdrawal from Afghanistan was actually a huge success. What are you talking about? That’s what they were telling us.

And then the President of the Atlanta Fed, a man called Raphael Bostic admitted what was very obvious to anyone who goes to the grocery store. This actually is inflation, it is real inflation. It is not transitory inflation and it’s going to be here for a long time.

What he didn’t say was that this is not an Act of God. This isn’t a hurricane, it’s not an earthquake, it’s not something we can’t control. This is the result of decades of policy that have enriched a few and impoverished the many.


Bidenflation: Prices Soar for Hamburgers, Bacon, Ribs, Chicken, Baby Food, and Peanut Butter

US President Joe Biden gestures to the media after arriving on Airforce One at Chicago OHare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois on October 7, 2021. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP) (Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images
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Putting food on the kitchen table got more challenging for American households in September, inflation data released Wednesday showed.

The price of food at home jumped 1.2 percent in September, a historically huge gain for a single month and three times the inflation rate recorded in August. Compared with a year ago, the price of food at home is up 4.6 percent, the Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index indicates.

The price hikes are not a reflection of what Fed officials have referred to as “base effects,” meaning data showing a large price jump due to depressed prices in the past. A year ago, prices were also rising quickly, with food at home showing a 4.1 percent increase. Compared with September of 2019, before the pandemic struck, prices of food at home are up 8.8 percent.

The price hikes were spread throughout the aisles of the grocery store, with all six major food group categories registering higher prices. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs rose 2.2 percent over the past month and 10.5 percent compared with a year ago.  The index for fruits and vegetables rose 0.6 percent in September, a larger increase than the 0.2-percent increase reported in August, and is up three percent compared with a year ago. The index for cereals and bakery products rose 1.1 percent over the month and 2.7 percent over the past year.

Some of the biggest jumps on an annual basis:

  • Ground beef: + 10.6 percent.
  • Steaks: +22.1 percent.
  • Bacon: +19.3 percent.
  • Pork roasts, ribs, steaks: +19.2 percent.
  • Chickens: +17.1 percent.
  • Fresh fish: +10.7 percent.
  • Eggs: +12.6 percent.
  • Peanut Butter: +6.2 percent.
  • Apples: + 7.8 percent.
  • Ham: +7 percent.
  • Baby food: +4.4 percent.

Taking the family out to eat also got more expensive. The indexes for restaurant meals, including full-service and fast-food eateries, rose 0.6 percent in September. The prices of full-service meals are up 5.2 percent compared with a year ago, while prices of limited-service meals—fast food places—are up 6.7 percent.

 

Yellen: ‘There May Be Isolated Shortages of Goods and Services in the Coming Months’

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During a portion of an interview broadcast on Tuesday’s edition of “CBS Evening News,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen cautioned that, due to the U.S. economy being in a state of recovery, “there may be isolated shortages of goods and services in the coming months.”

Yellen stated that America has an “economy that’s recovering.” And “So, there may be isolated shortages of goods and services in the coming months. But there is an ample supply of goods, and I think there’s no reason for consumers to panic about the absence of goods that they’re going to want to acquire at Christmas.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

THESE TRAITORS WILL DO ANYTHING TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED!


Watch: Smugglers Move Hundreds of Migrants Through South Texas Ranch

Breitbart Texas
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Nearly 100 miles from the border in Texas, one rancher is alarmed by the level of migrant traffic traversing her property almost daily. The rancher, afraid of retaliation from human smugglers, prefers to remain anonymous. The rancher says the events filmed on the property show migrants circumventing a nearby Border Patrol checkpoint.

The video shows a steady stream of smugglers guiding migrants in the darkness through the ranch. The ranch owner says things have changed dramatically this year. “The coyotes and illegals have created a new ‘highway’ right through our ranch in Sarita. They have come through the same location every other night except Saturdays. Just this morning, two came up to one of our houses,” the rancher told Breitbart Texas.

The rancher says in the last seven days they have counted 200 on one game camera. In this case, the camera serves more as a security measure to warn them of the presence of migrants and the smugglers on the property.

The rancher says the Border Patrol is notified of the incursions, but at times they are just too busy to respond in a timely manner. On some occasions, they are unable to respond at all. Like in other areas, the Border Patrol agents spend most of their time processing and caring for migrants in their custody. She also relies on Kenedy County Sheriff’s deputies for emergency needs.

The rancher says the sheriff’s office has advised her to make sure she is armed and able to protect her family. The rancher says she understands the migrants are seeking freedom and a new life, but also knows the traffic is benefiting the “coyotes.” In recent days, she says smugglers have destroyed Border Patrol security cameras on the ranch.

Randy Clark
 is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol.  Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.

As reported by Breitbart Texas, nearly $6 million per day was exhausted on the paused border wall projects along the southwest border. The money was spent on materials, idled equipment, and make-safe job site activities. The 60-day pause to reach a final determination on the projects, initiated immediately after President Joe Biden took office, has lingered on for nearly nine months at significant expense to the taxpayer.

Far-Left ‘Netroots Nation’ Aligns with Mark Zuckerberg, George W. Bush, on Immigration

Facebook rolling out privacy choices under EU rules
AFP
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The far-left Netroots Nation progressive group has paired with Mark Zuckerberg’s corporate investors to rally progressives in favor of wage-cutting, rent-inflating, job-shifting migration and amnesty policies.

The pro-migration cooperation was displayed on October 7 when the group allocated time during its virtual annual conference to let one of Zuckerberg’s lobbyists tout amnesty with far-left Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO).

“It’s a commitment that I feel like binds your work and my work together, that we are committed to seeing relief for families, for immigrant communities who have suffered for far too long without any real solution,” said Marissa Molina, the state director for FWD.us, an advocacy group for Zuckerberg and other West Coast investors.

In response, Neguse lamented the growing unpopularity of the pro-migration goals shared by Zuckerberg’s group and some progressives:

There was a time not that long ago 15 years ago, 10 years ago, where there was general consensus about the principles that would undergird a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the United States Congress … What we’re really in need of is political will. And that’s it. I mean it.

The reality is what has changed from 2006 when Senator [Ted] Kennedy and Senator [John] McCain worked on their immigration bill with President [George W.] Bush, to 2013 when the Gang of Eight worked on their bill with President [Barack] Obama … [is that] the general contours were very clear. What has changed from then to today is we now unfortunately have political figures that use immigration to demonize and dehumanize, and I think, to create a political issue in order to win an election … absent political will, it’s tough to see a pathway to getting it done.

Neguse is the child of immigrants. He is also a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, which has quietly split over immigration policy.

In response to Neguse’s comments, the investor lobbyist, Molina, urged the progressives to help her employers:

We don’t just need bold action from Congress. We need bold action from everyone who is joining us and who is part of that Netroots Nation. We need to make sure that folks are engaged, that we continue to ask our representatives to deliver on these solutions, because the time to do so is now.

Molina’s boss, Alida Garcia at FWD.us, tweeted the conversation, saying “So proud of @MarisaMo!”

Netroots Nation started in 2004 as a reaction against President George W. Bush. But Bush is now working alongside the Koch network, Netroots Nation, and Zuckerberg’s group to push for cheap labor and more migration.

Supporters hold modified Robin Hood faces of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) while waiting for the start of the Netroots Nation 2015 Presidential Town Hall in the Phoenix Convention Center July 18, 2015 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Charlie Leight/Getty Images)

The 2021 conference was sponsored by Facebook, Google’s YouTube, plus the FWD-funded I Stand With Immigrants Initiative.

Molina is an experienced lobbyist for the FWD.us investors. In 2021, for example, she worked with Garcia to persuade Colorado’s Democratic establishment to let illegal migrants take blue-collar jobs that require professional licenses. The wage-cutting law passed while one in sixteen Colorado residents were unemployed.

Zuckerberg’s lobbyists have tried and succeeded in passing similar laws in many additional states, with only ineffective opposition from once-powerful unions.

FWD.us has also worked with many progressive groups, such as Make the Road New York, to help extract more people from poor countries so they can work and consume in the U.S. economy.

In June 2019, for example, FWD.us helped to persuade the New York legislature to grant drivers’ licenses to illegal migrants in the state. Breitbart News reported:

“I’m so honored to be part of the @GreenLightNYDT coalition,” said a tweet from Eddie Taveras, a Latino progressive activist and lobbyist for the billionaire-funded FWD.us advocacy group. “We fought for this bill every step of the way via a grassroots movement centered on inclusion & transparency,” said Tavernas, whose FWD.us employers include numerous wealthy West Cost investors, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Matt Cohler, a partner at the Benchmark Capital investment firm.

In 2011, Cohler helped launch Uber Technologies with an $11 million investment for 11 percent of the company’s shares. That investment is now worth almost $8 billion. Cohler sits on Uber’s board and helped launch FWD.us. Cohler’s Benchmark firm also invested in another food delivery firm, Grubhub.

The 2021 push for amnesty and more migration in the $3.5 trillion spending bill is being led by Zuckerberg’s FWD.us network of coastal investors. They stand to gain financially from the government’s delivery of more cheap labor, government-aided consumers, and urban renters.

The network has funded many astroturf campaigns, urged Democrats to not talk about the economic impact of migration, and manipulated coverage by the TV networks and the print media.

The investors at FWD.us have also pushed hard for the passage of immigration legislation that would vastly expand their companies’ ability to discard outspoken American professionals. In September, Breitbart News reported :

Democrat leaders “are blowing away all the numerical limits” on employers offering green cards to [college graduate] employees, said Rosemary Jenks, policy director for NumbersUSA. “There’s no limit anywhere.”

The pending bill would allow U.S. investors and executives to import and pay an unlimited number of foreign workers with the dangled reward of citizenship. That citizenship-for-work law would minimize executives’ need to recruit Americans or even offer good salaries.

The bill was revealed Friday, and on Monday, was quickly rushed through the House judiciary committee without C-SPAN coverage. Mark Zuckerberg’s astroturf empire is marketing it as a relief bill for deserving illegal migrants — but it boosts investors by dramatically expanding the flow of cheap workers, government-funded consumers, and room-sharing renters into the U.S. economy. Democrat leaders hope to squeeze the bill through the Senate via the 50-vote reconciliation process.

The expanded foreign worker pipeline will remain open until at least September 2031, even though many millions of Americans will need jobs during the next ten years after they graduate with debts and degrees in health care, accounting, teaching, business, design, science, technology, or engineering. “If you’re in the pipeline by September 30, 2031, you’re in [the 2021 amnesty bill],” Jenks added.

“The young [pro-migration] activists who are out there pushing for this to be a [multi-]trillion dollar bill are actually the ones who are going to have their futures taken away first,” said one Hill source. “It is the lambs leaving the lambs to the slaughter.”

Nationwide, migration is deeply unpopular because of its economic impact. It damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, raises their rents, curbs their productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gaps, and wrecks their democratic, equality-promoting civic culture.

For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This pocketbook opposition is multiracialcross-sexnon-racistclass-basedbipartisan,  rationalpersistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.

The donor-funded GOP leaders, including Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Rep. John Katko (R-NY) — and their staff — have downplayed the pocketbook impact of migration on Americans’ communities. One reason for this policy is to avoid making any campaign promises on immigration that would be opposed by the donors. Instead, the GOP tries to spin up the turnout of its base voters by spotlighting the non-economic aspects of the migration problem, including crime by migrants, border chaos, and drug smuggling.

 

EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: Texas’ Border Wall Construction Moving at Full Steam

Border area cleared for construction of Texas-funded border wall. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)
Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas
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EAGLE PASS, Texas — As the Biden Administration announces it will cancel all remaining border wall projects in South Texas, the State of Texas is pushing toward with completion of its own border barriers at a rapid pace. This border wall project, funded by the State of Texas, is Governor Greg Abbott’s answer to the migrant crisis facing his state.

Breitbart Texas witnessed a flurry of construction activity on a substantial project in Eagle Pass, Texas on Friday. The project is unlike fencing on private property the State has installed in other areas. The barrier will bear more resemblance to the Trump border wall in size and scope.

Construction crews gather materials to build Texas-funded border wall. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

Construction crews gather materials to build a Texas-funded border wall. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

The project spans a two-mile stretch of the busiest illegal migrant crossings near the Eagle Pass Ports of Entry. The barrier, which will consist of a concrete wall, topped with a steel structure is being built on a state-owned right of way for Texas Loop 480. The loop parallels the Rio Grande for several miles and is notorious for migrant traffic.

Steel stockpiled for Texas-funded border wall. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

Steel stockpiled for Texas-funded border wall. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

A temporary chain-link fence separates the river from the final project footprint and protects the materials awaiting installation. A portable concrete plant churns out materials for the footing of the wall and site preparation throughout the project’s path has been completed.

Construction crews ready a temporary concrete factory near border. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

Construction crews ready a temporary concrete factory near border. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

Discarded clothing littering the worksite serves as evidence of the significant number of migrants traversing the area. As reported by Breitbart Texas, the area sees hundreds of migrant crossings each day — mostly Venezuelan and Cuban nationals.

Piles of discarded clothing reveal evidence of large-scale illegal border crossings near Eagle Pass, Texas. (Construction crews ready a temporary concrete factory near border. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

Piles of discarded clothing reveal evidence of large-scale illegal border crossings near Eagle Pass, Texas. (Construction crews ready a temporary concrete factory near border. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

As the construction of the Texas border wall moves ahead, DHS announced on Friday it will cancel all remaining federally funded border wall projects in Texas that began under the Trump administration. The move will likely push more states along the southwest border to seek solutions to the current migrant crisis as the federal government distances itself from the issue.

Governor Abbott meets with nine Republican governors for a border briefing in Mission, Texas. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

Governor Abbott meets with nine Republican governors for a border briefing in Mission, Texas. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

On Wednesday, Governor Abbott joined nine other GOP state governors to discuss the impact the migrant and drug-smuggling crisis is having on their states. The governors were briefed by Texas Department of Public Safety Director, Colonel Steve McCraw, along with Texas National Guard General Monie R. Ulis, and National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd.

At the conclusion of the event, the governor’s highlighted a ten-point plan to combat “Biden’s border crisis”. Within the plan, the governors called for the Biden administration to finish securing the border.

Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol.  Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.

Biden to Cancel Border Wall Projects in Texas

The Department of Homeland Security plans to terminate all remaining border wall projects in the Border Patrol’s Laredo and Rio Grande Valley Sectors. The projects have been paused since January as the agency pondered a final determination to cancel the projects or allow some to continue. The decision brings finality …
Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas
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The Department of Homeland Security plans to terminate all remaining border wall projects in the Border Patrol’s Laredo and Rio Grande Valley Sectors. The projects have been paused since January as the agency pondered a final determination to cancel the projects or allow some to continue. The decision brings finality to all remaining projects in South Texas.

In the Friday announcement, DHS will begin initial preparations to conduct environmental site work and stakeholder outreach on other Congressionally approved border wall projects that the administration cannot cancel unilaterally. The administration promises not to construct any new border barrier systems or execute permanent land acquisition related to these projects.

Gap in a border wall construction project. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

Gap in a border wall construction project. (Photo: Randy Clark/Breitbart Texas)

According to the statement:

Environmental planning activities will cover projects funded with DHS’s Fiscal Year 2018-2021 barrier system appropriations where construction had not started.  These activities include additional biological, cultural, and natural resource surveys for project areas where no data have been previously collected. CBP will also conduct comprehensive and targeted outreach with interested stakeholders, including impacted landowners, tribes, state and local elected officials, and federal agencies.

These activities will not involve any construction of new border barrier or permanent land acquisition.

The Biden administration is calling for Congress to cancel the remaining border wall funding appropriated during the Trump administration and instead fund “smarter border security measures,” such as technology and modernization of land ports of entry. Unless Congress cancels the funding, the administration is obligated to exhaust the appropriated funds towards the border barrier projects already funded.

As reported by Breitbart Texas, nearly $6 million per day was exhausted on the paused border wall projects along the southwest border. The money was spent on materials, idled equipment, and make-safe job site activities. The 60-day pause to reach a final determination on the projects, initiated immediately after President Joe Biden took office, has lingered on for nearly nine months at significant expense to the taxpayer.

The administration, obligated to pursue previously funded border barrier projects, will likely slow-roll the environmental process and stakeholder engagement efforts. This delay will likely add to the cost borne by taxpayer projects the current administration has no intention of completing.

Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol.  Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.


Jim Banks Reveals the ‘Mind-Blowingly Corrupt’ Carveouts in $3.5 Trillion Infrastructure Bill

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 27: U.S. Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) (C) speaks as House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) (L) listens during a news conference in front of the U.S. Capitol July 27, 2021 in Washington, DC. Leader McCarthy held a news conference to discuss the Jan 6th Committee. …
Alex Wong/Getty Images
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Rep. Jim Banks (R-SC), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), detailed many of the most radical aspects of the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill.

Biden has gambled his legislative majority on passing two infrastructure bills, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the $3.5 trillion reconciliation infrastructure bill, otherwise known as the Build Back Better Act.

Democrats hope to pass their mammoth, $3.5 trillion legislation through reconciliation, which allows the Senate to pass legislation with only a simple majority.

Although Democrats have not agreed to the final tenets of the legislation, Americans can see the tentative details of the Democrats’ marquee legislation.

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), released an exhaustive list of some of the most radical aspects of the Democrats’ “socialist takeover bill.”

Banks’ press release hopes to serve as messaging House Republicans can use to rally against Biden’s marquee bill.

The RSC contended in a press release Tuesday that Democrats plans to hide the bill text to prevent Americans from knowing how radical the bill is.

“They’ve played ‘hide the ball’ with the bill text so as not to tip off the public as to what they’re putting in their bills. Then, they bring it to the floor and tout some poll numbers and scare their members into voting for it,” the RSC wrote.

The RSC noted the bill would:

  1. Perpetuates labor shortage: Continues welfare benefits without work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents at a time where there are 10.1 million job openings—more openings than there are people looking for work.
  2. Commissions a climate police: Democrats stuffed $8 billion into the bill to commission a cabal of federally funded climate police called the Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) who will conduct progressive activism on taxpayers’ dime (pages 821, and 926).
  3. Pushes Green New Deal in our public schools: Requires funding for school construction be used largely on enrollment diversity and Green New Deal agenda items (page 55).
  4. Pushes Green New Deal in our universities: Democrats include a $10 billion “environmental justice” higher education slush fund to indoctrinate college students and advance Green New Deal policies (page 1,935).
  5. Forces faith-based child care providers out: The bill blocks the ability of many faith-based providers from participating in the childcare system and will lead to many of their closures (page 280).
  6. Hurts small and in-home daycares: Requires pre-K staff to have a college degree. (page 303)
  7. Includes new incentives for illegal immigration: Illegal immigrants will be eligible to take advantage of Democrats’ new ‘free’ college entitlement (page 92) as well be eligible for additional student aid (page 147) and the enhanced child tax credit (page 1,946).
  8. Includes legislative hull for Biden’s vaccine mandate: Increases OSHA penalties on businesses that fail to implement the mandate up to $700,000 per violation and includes $2.6 billion in funding for the Department of Labor to increase enforcement of these penalties (page 168).
  9. Gives unions near-total control: The bill includes insane prohibitions that would bind employers’ hands in union disputes and dangerously tilt the balance of power, subjecting employers to penalties that exempt union bosses and officials… among other things this bill would prevent employers from permanently replacing striking workers (page 175). It coerces businesses to meet union boss demands by increasing Fair Labor Standards Act penalties by an astronomical 900% (page 168).
  10. Makes unions bigger and more powerful: The bill would subsidize union dues that would only serve to strengthen the influence of union bosses and not American workers (page 2323).
  11. Pushes Democrats’ wasteful and confusing school lunch agenda: $643 million for, among other things, “procuring…culturally appropriate foods” (page 333).
  12. Furthers radical abortion agenda: Does not include the Hyde amendment and would mandate taxpayers pay for abortions (page 198) & (page 336).
  13. Drives up costs on Americans’ utility bills: Issues a punitive methane tax (page 367) and includes a tax on natural gas up to $1,500 per ton that could cost the American economy up to $9.1 billion and cost 90,000 Americans their jobs (page 368).
  14. Includes dangerous & deadly green energy mandate: Effectively forces Americans to get 40% of their energy from wind, solar and other unreliable forms of energy within 8 years (page 392). Reliance on these energy sources has proven deadly.
  15. Includes kickbacks for the Left’s green energy special interest network: $5 billion for “environmental and climate justice block grants” (page 377) and another $100 billion in green energy special interest subsidies, loans and other carve outs.
  16. Gives wealthy Americans tax credits: $222 billion in “green energy” tax credits will be given to those who can afford expensive electric vehicles and other “green” innovative products (page 1832).
  17. Furthers Democrats’ social justice agenda: Includes “equity” initiatives throughout the bill and, in one instance, Democrats inserted “equity” language into a title which should have been focusing on the maintenance of the United States’ cyber security efforts (page 897).
  18. Grants amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants: House Democrats have included in their reconciliation bill a plan to grant amnesty to around 8 million illegal immigrants at a cost of around $100 billion over ten years that would largely be spent on welfare and other entitlements (page 901). Trillions more would be spent long term on their Social Security and Medicare.
  19. Opens border even wider: The bill would waive many grounds for immigration inadmissibility, including infection or lack of vaccination status during a Pandemic, failure to attend removal proceedings in previous immigration cases, and the previous renouncement of American citizenship. DHS may also waive  previous convictions for human trafficking, narcotics violations, and illegal voting (page 903).
  20. Increases visa limit: At least 226,000 family-preference visas would be administered each year (page 905).
  21. Grants fast-tracked green cards for those seeking middle-class careers in America: Language included in the bill exempts certain aliens from the annual green card statutory limits and has been described as a  “hidden pipeline for U.S. employers to flood more cheap foreign graduates into millions of middle-class careers needed by American graduates” (page 910).
  22. Includes pork for Nancy Pelosi: $200 million is earmarked for the Presidio Trust in Speaker Pelosi’s congressional district (page 933).
  23. Increases energy dependence on OPEC, Russia and China: The bill prohibits several mineral and energy withdrawals (page 979). It overturns provisions included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that authorized energy production in the Arctic that will result in 130,000 Americans losing their jobs and $440 billion in lost federal revenue (page 983) and the mineral withdrawals it prohibits would, ironically, include minerals necessary for renewable energy sources (pages 934940943).
  24. Exacerbates the chip shortage: The bill would mandate the conversion of the entire federal vehicle fleet from internal combustion engines to electric engines at a time when there is a global microchip shortage and crippled supply chains (page 1,043).
  25. Democrats’ feckless China bill is included: Concepts from the insanely weak Endless Frontier Act included, including $11 billion in research funding that will likely result in American intellectual property going to China (page 1079 – 1081).
  26. Chases green energy pipe dreams: $264 million to the EPA to conduct research with left-wing environmental justice groups on how to transition away from fossil fuels (page 1063).
  27. Fixes “racist” roads and bridges: Adds a nearly $4 billion slush fund that would help left-wing grassroots organizations that, among other things, want to tear down and rebuild or otherwise alter infrastructure deemed “racist” (page 1183).
  28. Punishes red states for failing to adopt Green New Deal provisions: Mandates “consequences” for conservative states that don’t meet the radical Left’s “green” climate standards while at the same time adding nearly $4 billion for “Community Climate Incentive Grants” for cooperating states (page 1179).
  29. Includes new massive, bankrupting entitlement: The new paid leave entitlement would mandate workers get 12 weeks of paid leave and would cost $500 billion over ten years according to the CBO (page 1245). It would apply to those making up to half a million dollars a year (page 1254).
  30. Advances a totalitarian and paternalistic view of the federal government: Includes grants for organizations to treat individuals suffering from “loneliness” and “social isolation.”
  31. Further detaches individuals from employment and more reliant on government handouts: The bill spends $835 billion on welfare through manipulating the tax code [not including the expansions of Obamacare subsidies] (page 1943).
  32. Tax benefits for the top 1%: The bill will possibly lift the SALT deduction cap meaning many of the top 1% wealthiest Americans would pay less in taxes.
  33. Tax credit for wealthy donors who give to woke universities: The bill creates a new tax credit program that gives tax credits worth 40% of cash contribution that are made to university research programs (page 2094).
  34. Expands worst parts of Obamacare: Obamacare’s job-killing employer mandate will become more severe by adjusting the definition of “affordable coverage” to mean coverage that costs no more than 8.5 percent of income rather than current law’s 9.5 percent of income (page 2041).
  35. Increases taxes on Americans at every income level: $2 trillion in tax hikes will fall on those making under $400,000 per year, contrary to what the White House says. Individuals at all income levels will be affected (Ways and Means GOP).
  36. Lowers wages for working families: The corporate tax rate will increase by 5.5%, meaning American companies will face one of the highest tax burdens in the world. According to analysis, two-thirds of this tax hike will fall on lower- and middle-income taxpayers (page 2110).
  37. Penalizes marriage: The bill would permanently double the EITC’s marriage penalty on childless worker benefits (page 2036).
  38. Imposes crushing taxes on small business: Guts the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act small business deductions that reduced pass-through entity taxes to keep them comparable to taxes imposed on corporations (page 2235) as well as hammer small businesses that file as individual tax earners with the 39.6% rate (page 2221) and Obamacare’s 3.8% tax on net investment income.
  39. Crushes family businesses and farms: The bill would impose a 25% capital gains rate  (page 2226) and makes alterations to the Death Tax including cutting the Death Tax exemption in half (page 2240).
  40. Violates Americans’ financial privacy: $80 billion slush fund to hire an 87,000-IRS-agent army to carry out the Biden administration’s plan to review every account above a $600 balance or with more than $600 of transactions in a year. (page 2283).
  41. Increases out of pocket costs for those who rely on prescription drugs: The bill repeals the Trump-era Rebate Rule which passes through rebates directly to consumers at the point of sale (page 2465).
  42. Imports policies from countries with socialized medicine: The bill includes healthcare policies imported from systems in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom—all countries that have government-run healthcare systems (page 2349).

The bill also has other lesser-known provisions, including:

  • $5 million per year for the Small Business Administration for an entrepreneurial program for formerly incarcerated individuals.
  • $2.5 billion for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to award competitive grants or contracts to local governments, community-based organizations, and other groups to support “intervention strategies” to reduce community violence.

“Each of these 42 bullets is enough to vote against the bill. Taken together—it’s mind-blowingly corrupt. We need to loudly oppose it,” Banks charged in the release.

He added, “Democrats are scattered. The Biden agenda is in question. It’s the perfect opportunity to build public sentiment against this bill. The American people need us to be the vanguard against the Left’s radical plans.”

“It’s not an understatement to say this bill, if passed, will fundamentally change our country forever—Americans will wake up in a few years and wonder what happened to their freedom. We can’t let that happen, Banks concluded.

Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.

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