REPORT: Self-Proclaimed Hezbollah Terrorist Arrested at Border in Texas
A Lebanese migrant apprehended near El Paso, Texas, reportedly claims to be a Hezbollah terrorist. The Lebanese national claimed to be headed to New York and said he wanted to make a bomb.
Border Patrol agents arrested 22-year-old Basel Bassel Ebbadi, a Lebanese national, after he illegally entered the United States from Mexico near El Paso. “I’m going to try to make a bomb,” Ebbadi told Border Patrol agents when asked why he came to the U.S., according to an exclusive report by the New York Post.
Agents captured Ebbadi on March 9 after he crossed the border from Mexico into Texas. The agents transported the Lebanese man to the El Paso hardened facility for processing and investigation. Two days later, Ebbadi told the agents he was going to make a bomb. The agents moved the man to isolation and contacted the Tactical Terrorism Response Team to conduct an interview.
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During the interview on March 12, agents Mirandized the man who later admitted to being a member of a foreign terrorist organization.
Ebbadi also reportedly admitted he trained with Hezbollah for seven years and served as an active member for an additional four years. His duties included guarding weapons locations.
During the first four months of Fiscal Year 24, which began on October 1, 2023, nearly 60 migrants illegally entering the United States have been identified as being on the terror watch list. Approximately 270 more were apprehended in the prior two fiscal years — shattering prior records.
Bob Price is the Breitbart Texas-Border team’s associate editor and senior news contributor. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday morning talk show. He also serves as president of Blue Wonder Gun Care Products.
Forecast: Another record 3.2 illegals to illegally cross into the U.S. in 2024
If you thought 2023 was a record year for illegals crossing into the U.S, think again.
A new forecast holds that the U.S. is on track for a record additional 3.2 million illegal aliens coming into the states.
According to the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard:
A record 3.2 million migrants are expected to cross into the United States this year, 1 million more than during past spikes in the Reagan and Clinton eras, according to a new outlook.
“We forecast U.S. southwest border encounters by Customs and Border Patrol at 2.7 million for FY 2024, based on the last three months of data, adjusted seasonally. Apprehensions look to come in just a hair above 2023 levels. Inadmissibles, those presenting at official crossing points without appropriate documentation, are slated to rise by almost 200,000,” Princeton Policy Advisors said in its latest analysis.
Which points to the biggest problem with Joe Biden's open borders crisis: It's not stopping.
There is no end in sight to each year being a record year for illegal aliens rolling into the U.S. despite Biden's claims to have taken measures to stop the illegal flow and get it all under control.
He's expanded and spread out the numbers of ways foreign nationals can get into the U.S. without authorization -- from the CBPOne border app to take asylum applications and set a port of entry date, to expanded asylum admissions for Nicaraguans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Cubans, supposedly vetted and with sponsors in the U.S., which is already falling apart as a claim.
He visited the border, never mind that it was a non-busy stretch of the border. Bedard noted that he neglected to talk with communities in the U.S. most affected by the crisis and ignored going to the funeral of a Border Patrol agent killed on the job.
Biden sent his men to Mexico City to work out a deal with the Mexicans to stop the flow, and even went himself, too, last year. The flow is now bigger.
Investigative reporter Todd Bensmann reported that there was even evidence of a secret "dirty border deal" between Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to tamp down the flow of illegals until election day in the states in order to help both men's chances either for re-election or their party's reelection in each country.
But this was to no avail -- the border crossings are now higher than ever. Three million this year, four million next year, five million the year after. There is no end in sight so long as Democfrat policies remain in place.
And that shouldn't surprise anyone.
According to a Gallup poll taken in 2021, 900 million people worldwide would like to migrate, most of them to the U.S. The supply of migrants who want to come to the U.S., legally or not, is 16% of the world's population. The demand for residence in the U.S. on any terms is not going down down.
Bedard continued:
“Undocumented entry has exploded under the Biden administration’s Open Borders policy, rising from an estimated 1.1 million in 2021 to our forecast of 3.2 million for 2024,” the report said.
President Steven Kopits added in his report that at 3.2 million, the flood of illegal immigrants will likely swamp new job openings, creating preelection tension from blue-collar and low-wage workers over President Joe Biden’s open border policies.
“We forecast that undocumented entry will exceed U.S. job growth in 2024. Thus, the resentments seen last year will likely become exacerbated as the U.S. economy is unable to fully absorb arriving migrants. For President Biden and Democrats, this represents a huge risk. The path to defeat in November is not principally through disaffected independents and moderate Republicans, but rather through low-wage blacks and Hispanics who will turn to Trump in fear that another four years of Open Borders will gut their wages,” Kopits said in his report shared with Secrets.
Bedard also points out that there's a such thing as "full up" in the states, too.
In other words, the migrants entering now will not actually be able to find jobs, as jobs created in the U.S. are well below the numbers of migrants entering. That's just hard numbers.
The informal economy, such as we see in the bedlam taking over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's district, with illegals selling stolen goods, donated goods, any goods, as well as their bodies, on the streets is also exploding.
There is also that emerging 'colonia' on the outskirts of Houston that is largely populated by illegals, an emerging shantytown if there ever was one.
A society that once had a taxed, rule-of-law economy with title deed and property rights, is now rapdily moving towards a third-world "informal" economy, where no taxes are paid and any "order" that exists is made and enforced by gangsters. You see that all over in the world's shantytowns.
How exactly, does that transformation service the interests of the U.S.?
More to the point, the majority of new jobs filled during the Biden administration have been filled by immigrants, legal and illegal. Biden's "great American jobs comeback" is not exactly about employing Americans. The data show that American workers are being shut out of these jobs in favor of immigration, meaning the urban and rural working classes of all colors aren't getting these jobs, and if they are, their wages are being down by the migrants.
As for Mexico and other countries that ship large numbers of migrants -- those wages American workers would have made --- have become migrant remittances to the home countries. Mexico and several other of these countries have seen record remittances since Biden's open borders policies, repurposed from the wages of U.S. workers.
As for housing, schooling and medical care -- there's already a shortage of those, too. Bedard didn't bring it up, but where are all these millions of migrants flowing in without cessation actually going to live and obtain the services they require?
The question goes unanswered though we are hearing from blue-city mayors warning about going bankrupt on the cost of migrant services if the migrant flow is not stopped.
It's not stopping.
Let's not even get into the high cost from crime and terrorism that also come of letting in all comers. The U.S. will soon become the headquarters of every illegal criminal organization in the world as criminals roll in. Nor the nations denuded of their workforces such as we see among Central American states, nor the nations that are falling into chaos in places like northern Mexico and Haiti as a result of the empowerment of gangs made rich on migrant "fees."
It's not going to stop under Joe Biden. And the consequences of that will be a tranformed America that is indistinguishable from the third world. Like bankruptcy, it happens gradually then suddenly.
One better hope and pray that President Trump is re-elected in 2024 to put a stop to it. We are staring down an abyss now.
Image: Screen shot from WPLG Local10 video, via YouTube
A Course in Biden Budgetology
After President Biden’s award-winning SOTU speech on March 7, 2024, it was time, on Monday 11, 2024, for the President’s FY2025 Budget, which is now up and running on usgovernmentspending.com. Hey, nothing to see here. Deficits of $1.5 trillion as far as the eye can see:
President Biden says that he’s cut the deficit by a trillion dollars. Yeah, Big Guy, and I got a bridge…
It all adds up to sharply higher federal spending:
And how about that Gross Federal Debt, budgeted at $44 trillion by 2029:
How can this be? In The Budget Message of the President he proudly tells us that the budget is “CUTTING THE DEFICIT BY EXPANDING AMERICA’S PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY AND PROMOTING TAX FAIRNESS”.
I don’t know about you, but I say that $1.5 trillion deficits as far as the eye can see is not “cutting.” Okay, you “fact checkers,” your turn. Hello “fact checkers!” Anybody there?
For a start the president states that the budget
...would cut wasteful subsidies to Big Oil and other special interests; and it would introduce a minimum tax on billionaires, which alone would raise $500 billion for the American people.
Don’t worry. There’s more. The budget “Ensures Corporations Pay Their Fair Share” and “Denies Corporations Deductions for All Compensation Over $1 million Per Employee” and “Stops the Race to the Bottom in International Corporate Tax and Ends Tax Breaks for Offshoring” and “Quadruples the Stock Buybacks Tax” and “Repeals Tax Cuts for the Wealthy and Reforms Capital Gains Tax to Ensure the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share” and “Closes Tax Loopholes” and “Cracks Down on Wealthy Tax Cheats” and “Addresses Expiring Tax Cuts after 2025.”
Of course, over at the Epoch Times, Heritage Foundation analyst Preston Brashers writes that all this tax gluttony is going to tank the economy. That’s because “small and big businesses, entrepreneurs, investors, and job and wealth creators” would pay more. Unfortunately, he writes,
Middle-class workers and consumers would be devastated by the economic collateral damage.
How come? Well, it all goes back to the science of marginal economics, invented in about 1870 by a Brit, an Austrian, and a Swiss. That was about ten years after Marx said the workers were all going to starve. Anyway, in the 1970s this guy, name of Art Laffer, started bothering powerful people in restaurants by drawing a Laffer Curve on a napkin to show that lowering tax rates -- marginal tax rates -- would increase revenue and boost the economy. So Ronald Reagan tried “supply-side” economics and Donald Trump said #MeToo, and the rest is history.
Democrats have all agreed since the 1980s -- and I am sure that the experts agree too -- that this is nothing but “trickle-down” economics. Who cares? Well, Biden does, because he declares that his budget is all about “rebuilding our economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down”. It says so, right there on page 1, as Lina Lamont would have said.
Earth to Uncle Joe. Here’s how the economy works. Some guy starts selling books online from a garage in the 1990s. The result in 2024 is a corporation, Amazon, today worth 1.8 trillion dollars. What do you say, President Biden? Is Amazon an example of supply-side, trickle down, middle out, or bottom up economics? Or is it a question of having the right idea at the right time and working your pants off? I wonder what experts agree.
Here’s the problem. Since Marx published his Kapital in 1860, all good lefties have known that the labor theory of value says the workers are going be “immiserated.” Since this truth had been carved in stone by Merlin before the 1870 marginal revolution, no lefty -- and I assume that goes for the kiddies at the Office of Management and Budget -- is aware that the labor theory of value was thrown upon the scrap heap of history 150 years ago.
But who is right? Well, on my usgsovernmentrevenue.com I have published a little chart on the income and income tax share of the Top One Percent of income earners.
You can see that the Top One Percent earns about 20 percent of income (in blue) and pays about 40 percent of federal income tax (in red). Interesting, isn’t it, that the share of income paid by the Top One Percent went up in the 1990s when today’s lefty tech billionaires were creating huge fortunes. Yes, but whatabout the years before 1986? Unfortunately, the IRS doesn’t publish numbers on that.
But never mind. Let’s just look at this chart, which shows Social Security, Medicare, and all the remaining federal spending.
Do you see what it shows? Yes, the entitlements are growing, but the big takeaway is that the jolt in spending in 2020 and 2021 has been baked in, and is never going away. What a surprise!
Government is all about the spending. And that is all.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.
Bidenomics after 37 Months: Six Charts the Media Don’t Want You to See
Liberal media are declaring Bidenomics a success – but, after three years, hard numbers tell a much different story, regardless of whether the measure is how much Americans are paying, earning or saving.
Gas prices:
While gas prices held steady under Pres. Donald Trump (down four cents a gallon), they’ve surged 38% in the first 37 months of Pres. Joe Biden’s term. From January 2021 to February of 2024, the average price of a gallon of gas (all grades) has increased from $2.42 to $3.33, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Real Wages:
After accounting for inflation, real wages earned by Americans have declined under Biden. In the first quarter of 2021, median weekly real earnings averaged $373. But, by the fourth quarter of 2023, average real earnings had fallen to $371.
Under Trump, however, real wages rose from $352 on January 1, 2017, to $373 on January 1. 2021.
Real wages are calculated using Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) median usual weekly earnings for full-time employees at least 16 years old and are represented in terms of quarterly 1982-84 Consumer Price Index (CPI) seasonally-adjusted dollars.
Mortgage Rates:
It’s also costing far more to finance a home purchase under the Biden Administration.
Mortgage rates today are more than twice the average rate home buyers paid when Trump left office, Freddie Mac data reveal. Under Biden’s predecessor, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell by a third, from 4.09% to 2.77%. But, by March 7, 2024, mortgage rates had more than doubled, to 6.9%.
Savings Rates:
With Americans having to spend more than their earnings increased, their average savings rate has declined under Biden.
From February 1, 2017 to February 1, 2021, the average personal savings rate increased 129%, from 5.6% to 12.8%. But, by January 1 of 2024, it had plunged to 3.8% - less than a third of its pre-Biden level – according to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED) calculations, incorporating BLS data.
Consumer Price Index:
Consumer prices rose 7.6% in the 48 months of the Trump Administration, from a CPI of 243.618 in January 2021 to one of 262.035 in December 2020.
In contrast, prices have already risen more than twice as much, 18.5%, in just 37 months under Biden. Three-fourths of the way through his term, the CPI has risen from 262.518 in January of 2021 to 311.054 last month (February 2024), putting it on pace to increase nearly three times as much as it did during Trump's full, four-year term. On a monthly basis, inflation averaged 1.9% under Trump, compared to 5.6% under Biden, thus far.
The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold.
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