When Biden took office, one of his first acts was the elimination of our border security. Like a power-hungry dictator, Biden simply decided to ignore our immigration laws. His catastrophic border policy resulted in untold millions of unidentified foreign citizens from around the world pouring into our country. Its impact is now being felt in cities across the country. The worst is yet to come. PETER LEMISKA - AND WE'RE ALREADY THERE!!!
The insurance commissioner for the state of Illinois announced that health insurance customers in the state will see premium increases average 35% in 2018.
The four insurers serving the individual market in Illinois are Celtic Insurance Company, CIGNA HealthCare of Illinois, Health Alliance Medical Plans (HAMP), and Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC). Humana has announced earlier this year it was leaving the Illinois exchange.
For Obamacare's lowest silver-plan, the four insurers are requesting a range of 15 to 43 percent in premium hikes, coming to an average of 35 percent.
A 21-year-old nonsmoker on the lowest cost silver-plan with Celtic Insurance can expect to see premiums of $315.33. For those with Cigna coverage, an individual in this category could expect to see a range of premiums of $448.97 to $344.23. Individuals with HAMP coverage can expect their premiums to go up from a range of $423.96 to $446.71. Those covered by HCSC can expect premiums to increase from a range of $358.46 to $520.94.
For those purchasing the second-lowest silver plan, the commissioner says many counties will see increases of more than 40 percent.
In October of last year, the Obama administration announced that premiums for 2017 would rise by double-digits. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, rate increases are a result of the increasing number of insurers experiencing losses on the exchanges.
"Years before the Trump administration came to office, Obamacare’s double-digit rate increases and onerous mandates have been squeezing the pocket books of the American people," a spokesperson at the Department of Health and Human Services said.
"Americans are once again facing skyrocketing costs and plummeting choices because of Obamacare’s fundamental failures," the spokesperson said. "Congress should bring relief to American families and end the Obamacare nightmare once and for all."
Are these rate increases going to be typical nationwide? Those states with more insurance companies selling policies will see smaller increases, while those states where consumers have fewer options will probably see increases higher than an average of 35%. The key, as in any market, is competition. It's not rocket science.
The Republican bill that Congress may vote on next week does not address the lack of competition in many states. And as the DHS spokesman points out, whatever uncertainty there is among insurance companies because Obamacare reform is up in the air pales in comparison to the fundamental and continuing flaws of Obamacare from the day it was implemented. The reason Obamacare continues to fail is that insurance companies can't make money selling Obamacare policies.
Until that issue is addressed, we will continue to see skyrocketing premium increases driving more and more people out of the market.
FOR 8 YEARS OBAMA SERVED HIS
BANKSTER CRONIES AND LA RAZA....
AND THAT'S ALL HE DID!
"What's more, they say they want to hold him "accountable" for not doing anything to better the lot of black people during his presidency, which is probably the real issue, and one that never got discussed at the time. Well, it's being discussed now, right in front of him, and it's not pretty."
President Obama was in for a surprise when he found that Chicago's denizens aren't as enamored of him as he thought they were.
He's running into heavy flak from the very people he used to community-organize for on the South Side of Chicago, taking incoming for not giving them a big enough slice of the pie in the establishment of his presidential library going up there. What's more, they say they want to hold him "accountable" for not doing anything to better the lot of black people during his presidency, which is probably the real issue, and one that never got discussed at the time. Well, it's being discussed now, right in front of him, and it's not pretty.
At a community forum Wednesday night, a discussion about the proposed agreement morphed into a shouting match over whether Obama actually loves black people. One man in the audience yelled, "No," while others said he wasn't necessarily "their brother."
Seems that when you hector people to stand up to "the man," you can't be surprised when they stand up when you are "the man."
The fight centers on a demand a group of community organizers calls "a community benefits agreement." As with unions, the shakedown calls for Obama to agree to dispense x number of jobs for local residents. Obama wants nothing to do with that with his presidential papers, so he's claiming he doesn't want to pit one group of community organizers against another.
Any other place, there'd be NIMBYs whining about zoning regulations, but on the South Side, where community organizers such as Obama have been active for years, you get mau-mauing for "jobs" and other political spoils from the locals, just as Tom Wolfe described in his essay about San Francisco welfare bureaucrats and their indigent charges energized by community organizers, called "Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers."
As fun as it is to see Obama finding himself on the sharp end of community organizing as he constructs his huge, windowless, cementy, prison-like presidential library on the South Side of Chicago, there's obviously truth in the charges that he hasn't done much of anything for black people.
For one thing, there's the Chicago murder rate, which is starting to rival that of Central American countries. Most of the victims are black. Meanwhile, race relations with whites and others are no great shakes, either, with polls showing they deteriorated rather than improved. Education was a loser, too, with Obama cutting net funds for black educational establishments as well as shutting down charter school vouchers in places like Washington, D.C. Under Obama, bad race relations expanded even as Obama billed himself as the centrist healer – they actually reached an all-time low, according to this poll.
Black incomes went down, the black unemployment rate went up, and blacks were thrown back to welfare programs such as food stamps just to survive.
With a record like that, it's downright tragic that black people did not speak out earlier. Now they're stuck with Obama in their neighborhood, and for once, they are just protesting the plutocrat. What do they have to lose?
BLACK LIVES MATTER???
American Blacks have run out of excuses!
LIFE DOES NOT MATTER TO GHETTO BLACKS ANYWHERE!
They’re the ones that murder each other when they’re not aborting!
THE ENTIRE OUR BORDERS ARE LEFT OPEN, NO ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS PROHIBITING EMPLOYMENT OF ILLEGALS AND NO E-VERIFY IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.
HERE'S THE RESULT:
"Significantly, he also adds that “while blacks
suffer” from premature death, “it is not just
an issue of racism.” He notes that “poverty
and income inequality perpetuated by
exploitative market capitalism are singular
agents of transmission of disease and early
death,” causing an alarming rise of death
among white working class Americans."
The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills
The “disease” of social inequality sends thousands to a premature death
By Benjamin Mateus and George Marlowe 25 September 2017
The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills by Dr. David Ansell, 2017.
Health care in America in the 21st century is a living nightmare for millions of American workers. The domination of health care by the giant insurance and pharmaceutical companies, as well as the demands of Wall Street and finance capital for greater profits, ensures that thousands of Americans are sent to an early grave.
The deadly impact of social inequality on health and life expectancy in the US is the subject of The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills by Dr. David Ansell. The book provides a first-hand look by the Chicago doctor into the myriad ways in which growing social inequality results in greater mortality rates for the poorest sections of the working class. Life expectancy between the wealthiest and the poorest in parts of the country can be as much as 35 years—what Ansell terms a “death gap.”
In his book, Ansell seeks to illuminate this disparity of life expectancy in the US and show how it can be fixed. He concludes that “inequality triggers so many causes of premature death that we need to treat inequality as a disease and eradicate it, just as we seek to halt any epidemic.” To the extent that Ansell conscientiously uncovers the social realities confronting wide swaths of the population, he provides a powerful indictment of the health care and social crisis in America.
Ansell is a social epidemiologist, author and physician in Chicago, Illinois. He draws on a wealth of previous experience gained from working 17 years at Cook County Hospital—Chicago’s main public hospital, which treated patients regardless of their ability to pay—where he often saw the worst diseases and injuries associated with poverty. Ansell’s first book, County: Life, Death, and Politics in Chicago’s Public Hospital, was a memoir of his experience at the public hospital and was aimed at exposing the disparities in health care.
Notably, Ansell mentions that he wrote TheDeath Gap in the spirit of Friedrich Engels and Rudolf Virchow, both of whom wrote about social and health conditions among workers during the revolutionary period of the 1840s in Europe. Virchow, known as the “father of social medicine,” examined how a typhus outbreak in the Silesian region of Prussia was caused by a lack of democracy—thereby showing that a proper response to the epidemic was political, not merely medical. Engels’ seminal work The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844) examined the social origins of the health crisis confronting workers. His work demonstrated that workers in Manchester and Liverpool were dying at far higher rates than their capitalist masters, due to their abject working and living conditions.
In the same spirit, Ansell asks: how do existing policies and laws contribute to the multi-generational poverty and high death rates that exist in various communities in the United States?
Ansell’s book examines how inequality reduces life expectancy in a city like Chicago, where he has worked and confronted these issues for more than four decades. While he examines the disparities of health outcomes in Chicago’s richest and poorest neighborhoods, he also notes that these contrasts are a nationwide phenomenon. He surveys these issues of health inequality in the US through a wide array of lenses—from quality of hospital care for the poorest to housing policies, the effects of incarceration, lack of jobs and more.
In his preface, “One Street, Two Worlds,” he highlights the class divide along just one street in Chicago, Ogden Avenue, where a “twenty-minute commute exposes a near twenty-year life expectancy gap.” Along this street are two different hospitals (Rush University Medical Center and Cook County Hospital) that also highlight the extremes of health care: one a beautiful institution maintained with heavy capital investment and the finest care provided to its higher-income patients; and another, more dilapidated, struggling to provide care to the poorest.
The right insurance card at Rush University Medical Center can provide world-class health care, but a wrong one denies you access to doctors and services. By contrast, the county-run John H. Stroger Hospital provides treatment regardless of ability to pay, but is chronically underfunded, which means that many important services are unavailable and wait times are exorbitantly long. The trauma centers for the poor are so busy people end up dying, thus making their organs available to the rich at other medical centers, where they can benefit from a life-saving transplant procedure. Ansell notes that in his 27 years at Mount Sinai Hospital, on Chicago’s South Side, and at Cook County Hospital, no poor patient ever received such a procedure.
Right nearby both hospitals is Lawndale, a neighborhood with concentrated poverty, whose history, Ansell states, is “the story of rising inequality and premature death in America’s abandoned neighborhoods.” It is a neighborhood which was primarily populated by working class African Americans migrating from the South in search of employment in the middle of the 20th century.
However, following the dismantling of much of the US manufacturing capacity in the 1970s and 1980s as part of the economic changes due to capitalist globalization, large employers like Sears Roebuck and Western Electric fled Lawndale and shuttered their buildings and factories, leaving thousands in the area jobless. The community imploded, with those remaining facing misery and worsening poverty. Incomes plummeted, the number of uninsured grew and life expectancy dropped, leaving a “near twenty-year life expectancy” gap. This is a process seen across the country.
The idea of the “death gap” was formed when Ansell and his friend, Dr. Steve Whitman, observed that 3,200 more African-Americans were dying each year in Chicago as compared to whites. He attributed this to the highly segregated nature of the city, with large numbers of black workers living in much poorer neighborhoods and living in conditions of high-exploitation and extreme social distress. These neighborhoods lack the infrastructure for education, recreation, leisure activities or access to healthy affordable foods, all of which are important contributors to overall health and wellness.
While Ansell at various points states that the “death gap” is due to the “structural violence” and racism of American society—it is clear the themes that emerge over and over in his book are fundamentally issues of class and social inequality. While it is undeniable that racism has played a significant role in the structuring of American capitalist society and in the criminally low life expectancy of working class African Americans, he acknowledges that “the death gaps between high socioeconomic groups and low socioeconomic groups have grown in the past three decades” and that the “rocketing death rate among young white adults and steadily falling death rates among young black adults overall have shrunk the death gap between these two groups.”
Ansell makes important observations about the rise in income, wealth, and social inequality since 1975 that have contributed to the policies that have devastated the poorest layers of the American working class. Specifically, he notes that changes in tax policies, economic deregulation and draconian law-and-order measures by the Clinton administration in the 1990s accelerated the social and health crisis. Life expectancy, he observes, becomes a “barometer” of the impact of the attacks on health care carried out by the political establishment.
Ansell emphatically stresses that the game is rigged against the working class and provides a detailed examination of the nature of social processes that impact individual lives. His analysis affords a valuable insight into the oppression in the daily life of working and poor families through the lens of health care. “We speak of America as a democracy,” he notes, “but it has become a plutocracy where members of a small minority dictate the shape of life and death in the nation through their grip on wealth.” The unequal wealth distribution has greatly contributed to unequal health distribution, placing the US at the bottom of the world’s developed countries in life expectancy.
Echoing Engels’ concept of “social murder,” Ansell says these inequities are an expression of social and “structural violence” perpetrated by the rich against the working class and poor. According to him, the “deadliest and most thoroughgoing kind of violence is woven into the fabric of American society. It exists when groups have more access to goods, resources, and opportunities than other groups, including health and life itself.” He also examines places like Chicago, New Orleans, Flint, Appalachia, Native American Reservations and the impact of geography and income inequality on mortality.
Throughout the book he highlights various striking facts and analyses on health inequality that bear mentioning. For instance, in a city like Chicago, he notes the primary cause of death is not gun violence, as is often portrayed in the media. Rather, more than half of premature deaths in the city are caused by heart disease and cancer—both of which can be prevented with early detection and other forms of treatment.
Significantly, he also adds that “while blacks suffer” from premature death, “it is not just an issue of racism.” He notes that “poverty and income inequality perpetuated by exploitative market capitalism are singular agents of transmission of disease and early death,” causing an alarming rise of death among white working class Americans. While poor white men and women have a greater chance of living to the age of 65, they too experience significant death gaps relative to their wealthier counterparts. White men in McDowell County, West Virginia—an economically depressed former coal mining region—have only a slightly better life expectancy than poor Haitians, and many in Appalachian towns live on average 20 years less than more affluent white men in Washington, DC.
Ansell stresses that while many in the medical community are trained to examine the “proximate causes” of disease, such as individual high-risk behaviors or biological considerations, he adds there are deeper, more structural and “chronic” causes of health disease—social and economic causes that are measured in decades not days. He notes that the “chain of causation can be long, complicated and incomplete,” with socioeconomic factors left out of many epidemiological studies in the US.
In contrast to such approaches, Ansell explains, “Health inequity is not shaped by a simple relationship between an exposure and a disease but by a series of exposures over a lifetime or, when experienced intra-utero, across generations … the greater the power and resource inequality in society, the more prevalent the disease outcome, the greater the absolute disease burden on those with less power.”
Even one’s DNA is affected by social inequality. Ansell cites one study by Nobel Prize-winning biologist Elizabeth Blackburn on the effects of long-term stress on telomere length. Telomeres are found on the tips of chromosomes in every cell in the body and they protect the cell’s genetic stability by “capping” the ends of chromosomes and preventing degeneration. Poor black women between 49 and 55 are biologically 7.5 years older, with stress and poverty accounting for more than 30 percent of the death gap. Chronic stress caused by social inequality therefore results in shortened telomeres that cause “biological weathering,” premature aging, diseases and early death.
In the final sections of the book, Ansell examines the glaring inequality in health care treatment, and provides a critical assessment of the health insurance debacle known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), implemented by President Obama and the Democratic Party. Ansell notes that the lack of insurance is the tenth most common cause of death in the United States. Even if a person obtains insurance, it is no guarantee for adequate assessment and treatment. Hospitals that predominantly treat minority and poor patients also have higher mortality rates. These are attributable to the paucity of critical subspecialty services, lack of funding to organize and have provisions in stock, doctors that are less likely to be board certified, and low capital investment for hospitals in poor areas that could reverse chronic shortages and quality of resources.
It is significant that Ansell condemns the Affordable Care Act as a failure, confirming the analysis made by the WSWS from 2010 onwards that it was part of the social counterrevolution against the working class, wiping out gains made by workers in the 20th century. He makes it clear that the ACA is “neither universal nor equitable.” Moreover, he notes that it was from the start a “sweet deal for insurance companies,” a de facto bailout for these giant insurance companies by the government.
Ansell also adds that while premiums are rising at staggering levels—even for those with employer-sponsored health care—wages remain stagnant, pushing families into difficult choices, such as delaying or avoiding medical care for themselves. Part of the ACA also involves the use of Medicaid expansion, but he makes clear that more than one-third of doctors refuse to take Medicaid, and many states have blocked this expansion.
In the concluding chapters, Ansell provides what he deems are his solutions, and this is the weakest element of the book. The doctor’s proposed social cures include various forms of institutional self-reforms of the for-profit health care and hospital systems, pleas for an expansion of “empathy” by the very rich towards the poor, and other forms of political reforms by the ruling class coupled with various types of community activism.
Ansell proposes a single-payer “Medicare for all” system instead of the current for-profit system, stating that health care is a social right. However, even if a single-payer insurance system were to be implemented, it would be woefully inadequate to meet the needs of the working class. As it stands, Medicare has been significantly privatized and eroded with recipients forced to seek out expensive supplemental insurance plans to pay for medical services and prescription drugs.
While Bernie Sanders has cynically proposed such a piece of legislation recently, it has no
chance of being passed in a Republican- controlled Congress. Moreover, the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, which bankroll both Democrats and Republicans, fiercely oppose such measures.
Such pleas for reform fall on deaf ears with the decline of US imperialism today and the enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of a financial oligarchy, which accumulates its riches largely through looting society and destroying the social reforms of the past. There can be no solution to the massive crisis of health care facing millions of people today outside of a struggle against the capitalist system. The giant health care and banking institutions must be expropriated and put under the control of the working class, freeing up those resources to meet the urgent health care and social crisis faced by millions today. The fight for a universal health care system, guaranteeing health care as a social right, requires the fight for socialism and a workers government, in opposition to both Democrats and Republicans.
Notwithstanding the limitations in terms of Ansell’s proposed cures, The Death Gap is a significant and important work by a practicing medical doctor who provides a searing portrait of the social and health crisis in the United States. It deserves to be widely read.
Chicago Mayor: City Is Now A 'Trump-Free Zone' After DACA Decision
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel had a clear message to send to the city’s illegal aliens: the Windy City is your home, and that they have nothing to fear. Concerning schools and other aspects of the city infrastructure, Emanuel declared them “Trump-free zones” (via The Hill):
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) said Tuesday that the Windy City will continue to welcome "Dreamers" despite President Trump’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
“To all the Dreamers that are here in this room, and in the city of Chicago, you are welcomed in the city of Chicago. This is your home and you have nothing to worry about,” Emanuel said in a prepared statement.
The comments come just hours after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the DACA program, which deferred deportation for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as minors and allows them to apply for work permits, would be phased out.
“Chicago, our schools, our neighborhoods, our city, as it relates to what President Trump said, will be a Trump-free zone. You have nothing to worry about,” Emanuel continued.
This announcement comes after the Trump White House decided to gradually phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The Obama-era program has been constitutionally questionable since then-President Obama announced it as a stopgap measure. Now, around 800,000 illegal aliens benefit from the program that shields them from deportation if they met certain requirements. DACA recipients are illegal aliens that were minors when they entered the country illegally. The decision to nix the program and place it in Congress’ hands, which should have happened in the first place, has the Left going insane.
Federal Judge to Sessions: Attorney General Can't Withhold Money From Sanctuary Cities
The election of Donald J. Trump meant a new sheriff was in town on immigration. It was seen with Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to withhold grant money from cities that have adopted sanctuary city status for illegal aliens. A legal fight was inevitable. In Texas, a federal judge blocked Republican Gov. Greg Abbott from cracking down on such cities. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he would sue the Department of Justice. Now, a federal judge has granted the city’s request for a nationwide injunction (via Associated Press):
A federal judge has ruled Attorney General Jeff Sessions cannot follow through with his threat to withhold public safety grant money to Chicago and other so-called sanctuary cities for refusing his order to impose tough immigration policies.
U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber on Friday granted Chicago’s request for a temporary “nationwide” injunction. That means the Justice Department can’t deny requests for the grant money until Chicago’s lawsuit against the agency is concluded. He wrote that Chicago has shown a “likelihood of success” in its arguments that Sessions overstepped his authority with the requirements.
Sanctuary city ordinances, which are reportedly meant to offer illegals protection from deportation if they report crimes, became a focal point when Kate Steinle was killed by an illegal alien, who had been deported multiple times, in San Francisco. More family members of those who have had loved ones lost to illegal alien homicides also came forward to denounce the policy. Even America’s sheriffs noted that illegals don’t report crimes.
Nightmare: DACA Amnesty DREAM Act Will Cost $115 Billion Thanks to Obamacare
Taxpayers in the United States will face a steep bill if the Trump administration signs legislation to extend legal status to so-called “Dreamers,” the illegal aliens who arrived as children and are now protected under the Obama-holdover unlawful executive order known as DACA.
The cost of a legislation to legalize childhood arrivals is likely to be far higher than earlier attempts because of Obamacare’s health insurance subsidies. The Affordable Care Act subsidizes the costs of health insurance for millions of Americans and would likely foot the bill for many of those whose residency in the U.S. would be legalized by the DREAM Act.
The numbers are striking. The DREAM Act of 2017, the most likely vehicle for extending DACA protections and making them permanent, would raise federal outlays by $115 billion dollars, according to a Breitbart News analysis. Nearly all of that would be paid for by additional deficit spending.
That may come as a surprise to lawmakers. The last time the DREAM Act was seriously considered, the Congressional Budget Office said that the bill would reduce budget deficits by about $1.4 billion over the following decade. But that bill prohibited those it legalized from receiving subsidies toward health insurance until they became permanent legal residents after ten years, while the current version of the bill does not.
The DREAM Act of 2017, sponsored by Democrat Senator Dick Durbin and Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, would extend legal residency and a path to citizenship for at least 3.3 million people, according to the Migration Policy Institute. These include 1.8 million illegal aliens who would be immediately eligible, plus 1.5 billion who would become eligible in the near future by doing things such as enrolling in school.
Unlike the Senate DREAM bill from 2010 and Obama’s DACA executive order, the current DREAM Act does not exclude those who benefit from the new immigration status from receiving health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Absent a specific exclusion, by granting so-called Dreamers status as “lawfully present” in the United States, the new DREAM Act would make millions both subject to the individual mandate to buy health insurance and potential beneficiaries of the subsidies available to pay for insurance.
This is a very expensive proposition. The individual mandate will be a powerful incentive for the newly legalized immigrants to obtain health insurance, and many will do so through the subsidized Obamacare marketplaces. The experience of California suggests that something like 79 percent of those getting the new legal status will turn to the subsidized individual market for insurance, with only 21 percent receiving health insurance from an employer.
Obamacare includes a health insurance premium tax credit available to households with income from one to four times the official federal poverty level. This means that the tax credit subsidies are available to individuals earning between $12,060 and $48,240. A family of four is eligible obtain tax credits if its income is below $98,000. It’s likely that this means substantially all those legalized by the DREAM Act are eligible for subsidies. According to U.S. Berkeley’s Labor Center, 68 percent of DACA program enrollees in California were low-income and eligible for California’s state-run medical insurance subsidies.
The median annual income of current DACA aliens is $32,000, according to an August 2017 survey by Tom Wong of UC San Diego (undertaken for the liberal think tank Center for American Progress and other immigration advocacy groups). The median age is estimated to be around 25- years-old. Around a quarter of DACA aliens have a child born in the U.S.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a single person living in San Jose, California with an income of $32,000 would be eligible to receive a premium tax credit of $1,048 in 2017. The numbers vary by geography because health insurance costs vary widely by geography. A single person in Brooklyn with $32,000 of income would be eligible for an annual tax credit of around $2,666. But San Jose is likely more representative due to the high concentration of DACA aliens in California. Using the San Jose figure, current DACA aliens alone would likely be immediately eligible for around $838.4 million in Obamacare subsidies this year.
Of course, not all the DACA aliens turned Dreamers would wind up on in the Obamacare marketplace. Some would receive employer provided health insurance. According to a study by the UC Berkeley Labor Center, 21 percent of those granted DACA status obtained private health insurance, most likely through their employers. Subtracting those would produce $663.3 million of Obamacare subsidies.
Because DACA aliens have children and some are married, that figure does not fully account for the cost of their DREAM Act Obamacare subsidies. Add in one child for every four DACA enrolled aliens and the cost rises to $1.16 billion in tax credits. Even if we add a spouse to each DACA parent earning the same $32,000 of income (a very generous assumption), the immediate cost of Obamacare subsidies to DACA aliens is still around $1.16 billion. If you assume that all those spouses were already Obamacare eligible (that is, are legal residents), the net increase is around $835.6 million. (Again, that’s a very generous assumption; a disproportionate share of spouses of DACA aliens are likely not legal residents who could sponsor their spouse’s legal residency).
Over time DACA workers will see their pay rise, more will get married, and they will have more children. For purposes of forecasting the cost of amnesty, assume a fairly representative DACA household would be in San Jose, have $64,000 of income that rises a healthy three percent each year, and include two adults and two children. Nearly 80 percent will seek health insurance through the Obamacare marketplace, and Obamacare subsidies for these households would be around $7,073 per household in the first year.
Each year, household income will likely rise but not as quickly as the cost of health insurance and therefore the cost of subsidies. According to the estimates of the Congressional Budget Office, the cost of subsidies will rise an average of around seven percent each year over the cost of the next ten years, producing a cumulative rise of 84 percent. So after 10 years, the representative household would earn $83,500 and be eligible to receive an Obamacare subsidy of $8,230. Even if the cost of health insurance subsidies remained level, after 10 years, this same family of four would receive $4,477 of subsidies after ten years. To be conservative, let’s put the average cost of annual subsidies at the average of the two figures: $6,354. Multiplied across 800,000 DACA households less the 21 percent expected to receive employer-based health care, the annual federal budgetary cost is around $4 billion or $40 billion over 10 years.
The Dream Act of 2017, however, extends legal residency to far more aliens than the current DACA program. If we include 79 percent of the 1.8 million immediately eligible, the cost would rise to $91.5 billion over a decade. Including that share of the larger 3.3 million figure would push the 10 year cost of Obamacare subsidies to the DREAM households to around $167 billion.
Of course, some of that would be offset by taxes paid by the legalized workers. When the CBO looked at the 2010 Dream Act, it estimated that 1.1 million authorized residents would increase federal revenues $2.3 billion in the 2011 through 2020 period. Let’s generously double that for the increased number of workers we’re estimating and say they would add $5 billion. The CBO said refundable tax credits (not including Obamacare) would increase by $961 million, which we can double to $1.8 billion. Social Security and Medicare outlays would rise by a combined total of around $100 million over the period, the CBO forecast. Summing it all up, the new Dream Act would result in a net increase of federal revenue of around $400 million over the decade.
This means we’re looking at a budgetary cost of around $165 billion over 10 years, almost all of which would be added to federal debt. Subtract roughly $50 billion for non-immigrant spouses who would have been covered by Obamacare anyway. That leaves us with $115 billion of federal debt over a decade from the DREAM Act.
This analysis probably underestimates the budgetary cost of combining the DREAM Act with Obamacare. Under the likely scenario that DREAMer incomes are lower than those of DACA aliens, for instance, the costs would go higher. If the assumption of three percent income growth is overly generous, the costs will go higher. If DREAMer households have more than two children on average, the costs would go higher. If the cost of health insurance rises more quickly than assumed, the costs will be higher. And, most importantly, if far more aliens obtain legal status than the 3.1 million used in this analysis, costs would go higher.
They might call it the DREAM Act, but in terms of the federal budget, it is a nightmare.
Should President Trump follow through on a deal where nearly 800,000 illegal aliens are allowed to remain in the United States and eventually obtain U.S. citizenship, research shows it would create a flood of four to six million chain migrants coming to the United States.
Trump, who adamantly opposed the amnesty for illegal aliens protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, is now defending the recipients of the program, as well as leveraging a deal where the foreign nationals could seek a pathway to citizenship through legal status, as Breitbart News reported.
Today, Trump signaled to his supporters that he opposed any sort of chain migration that would follow a DACA amnesty deal, though the deals the White House and Congress are reviewing would all cause such an immigration crisis:
Latest data from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) shows that 618,342 illegal aliens from Mexico currently have DACA status. If they were amnestied into the U.S., it would give them the opportunity to bring adult parents and relatives to the U.S.
“There will be chain migration. There always has been in amnesties,” Center for Immigration Studies Policy Director Jessica Vaughan told Breitbart News.
According to Princeton University researchers Stacie Carr and Marta Tienda, for every one new Mexican immigrant to the U.S., an additional 6.38 Mexican nationals come to the U.S. through family-chain migration.
Based on the Princeton research, the 618, 342 illegal aliens from Mexico who are coveredby DACA would be able to bring upwards of four million additional relatives and family members to the U.S. in the years to come.
If the remaining estimated 180,000 DACA recipients brought in three family members each after being amnestied, it would result in additional 540,000 immigrants. Should the remaining 180,000 DACA recipients bring four family members each to the U.S., it would result in more than 700,000 new immigrants.
But if the remaining roughly 180,000 DACA recipients were to bring the same number of family members as Mexican DACA recipients are expected to bring to the U.S., it would result in nearly 1.2 million more legal family-based immigrants coming to the country.
On top of the legal chain migration that could occur following a DACA amnesty by Trump, there is also the potential for a massive border surge, like the one that occurred following former President Obama’s creation of the DACA program.
As the Migration Policy Institute has chronicled, previous border surges from amnesty programs have brought hundreds of thousands across the U.S.-Mexico border:
While the flow of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) has been climbing steadily since 2012, a dramatic surge has taken place in the last six months, with the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas as the principal place of entry. The Border Patrol there has converted entire stations to house unaccompanied minors and families.
According to the Border Patrol, apprehensions of unaccompanied children increased from 16,067 in fiscal year (FY) 2011 to 24,481 in FY 2012 and 38,833 in FY 2013. During the first eight months of FY 2014, 47,017 such children were apprehended by the Border Patrol. If the influx continues apace—and it shows no signs of slowing—the administration predicts that by the end of the fiscal year on September 30, totals could reach 90,000.
Ninety-eight percent of unaccompanied minors currently arriving at the border are from Honduras (28 percent), Mexico (25 percent), Guatemala (24 percent), and El Salvador (21 percent). This breakdown represents a significant shift: prior to 2012, more than 75 percent of UACs were from Mexico.
“There’s one thing for sure: it’s not going to be 800,000 illegal aliens amnestied,” Vaughan said, alluding to the fact that an amnesty would surge both legal and illegal immigration.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Since President Trump’s reversal on an Obama-created temporary amnesty program and his reported permanent amnesty deal-making with Democrats on the issue, the administration is now touting the success of those illegal aliens.
Via Twitter, Trump praised the almost 800,000 illegal alien recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, saying they are “good, educated and accomplished young people,” but failing to mention some of the key points on the issue that he often brought to light during the 2016 presidential election.
Now, Trump seems to be buying into a handful of untruths about DACA, amnesty for illegal aliens and his working-class, middle-class voter base.
1. All DACA recipients are innocent young people
There have been 2,139 DACA recipients, deemed “DREAMers” by the open borders lobby, who have had their temporary protected status revoked due to crimes, including: “A felony criminal conviction; a significant misdemeanor conviction; multiple misdemeanor convictions; gang affiliation; or arrest of any crime in which there is deemed to be a public safety concern,” according to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency, as Breitbart News reported.
The majority of crimes by DACA recipients include: “Alien smuggling, assaultive offenses, domestic violence, drug offenses, DUI, larceny and thefts, criminal trespass and burglary, sexual offenses with minors, other sex offenses and weapons offenses,” USCIS has stated.
2. Signing the DREAM Act will make Trump more popular and expand his coalition
A possible untruth being told to Trump by his pro-DACA advisers is that Hispanic illegal aliens protected by DACA will eventually become supporters of the President’s if they are given amnesty. But, as Pew Research has shown, Hispanics vote overwhelmingly with Democrats.
More than 30 percent of Hispanics “identify” with the Democratic Party and another 23 percent said they “lean towards” the Democrats. Meanwhile, a tiny four percent said they identify with Republicans, and only 15 percent said they lean towards the GOP.
3. The Trump base will forget about an amnesty
There seems to be a misconception that the Trump base of supporters will simply move on from an amnesty for DACA recipients. This seems incredibly unlikely, as Pew Researchshows 79 percent of Trump supporters have said the issue is “very important” to them.
Bloomberg reporter Sahil Kapur pointed out after Trump’s initial caving on DACA that there was an immediate flaw in the President’s strategy, as immigration remains a key tenant to supporters of the “America First” agenda.
Additionally, the least likely of the Trump base to forget about an amnesty deal would be the “Angel Moms'”and “Angel Dads” who have had their children killed by illegal aliens and DACA recipients.
Maureen Laquerre, whose brother was murderd by an illegal alien, told Breitbart News:
If Trump’s trying to make a deal he needs to sit down and talk to us about it because he more than once looked us in the eye and told us that our family members didn’t die in vain. The DACA children aren’t children anymore and they’ve had enough time to work on getting citizenship if that’s what they really wanted. I’m not into let’s make a deal, this isn’t a game show here.
4. Legalizing DACA is not amnesty
In statements today, Trump suggested that allowing DACA recipients to remain in the U.S. was not amnesty, as Breitbart News reported.
“We’re looking at allowing people to stay here,” Trump said. “We’re not looking at citizenship, we’re not looking at amnesty.”
5. DACA recipients are not taking U.S. jobs away from Americans
As a study by the pro-immigration group FWD.us revealed, an amnesty to DACA recipients would mean the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants currently holding jobs in the U.S. would be able to remain at those jobs, rather than those opportunities potentially opening up for American workers.
An ultimate end to the DACA program has the potential to open nearly 720,000 U.S. jobs for Americans, with the potential of more jobs in the future.
6. DACA recipients are highly-educated
Though DACA has been touted by Trump as being a program for highly-educated illegal aliens, research by the Migration Policy Institute shows this is not the case and that a minority of DACA recipients have college degrees:
For example, one-third of the people in the study sample who are older than age 25 hold four-year college bachelors’ degrees or better. In contrast, an August 2013 report by the pro-amnesty Migration Policy Institute showed that only 7.5 percent of the 800,000 DACA-qualified illegals who were 18 or older had four-year college degrees or better. An August 2017 study by the MPI showed only 5 percent of 832,000 DACA illegals who were older than 18 had four-year college qualifications.
7. DACA recipients are not looking to take advantage of the immigration system
Though Trump now appears supportive of DACA, he has yet to address the concerns regarding thousands of DACA recipients who have schemed and used an advanced parole program loophole, allowing them to obtain Green Cards and U.S. citizenship.
45,447 DACA recipients have been approved for advance parole
59,778 DACA recipients have applied for Lawful Permanent Resident, known as a “Green Card”
39,514 DACA recipients have been approved for a Green Card
Of the DACA recipients with Green Cards, 2,181 have applied for U.S. citizenship
Of the DACA recipients with Green Cards, 1,056 have become U.S. citizens
8. Amnesty for DACA recipients will have no impact on illegal and legal immigration
Pro-American immigration reformers have told Breitbart News that an amnesty could lead to massive surges of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as surges in legal immigration, as DACA recipients become eligible to bring their foreign relatives to the U.S.
For example, when former President Obama enacted DACA, U.S. Border Patrol saw an unprecedented surge of illegal alien children and families, as the Migration Policy Institute documented in 2014:
The phenomenon of unaccompanied children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, typically after an arduous and often dangerous journey through Central America and Mexico, has reached a crisis proportion, with a 90 percent spike in arrivals from last year and predictions of future increases ahead. While the immediate humanitarian situation has galvanized the attention of the Obama administration, policymakers, and the country at large, it is painfully clear that there are no simple solutions, whether in the short or medium term, to address the complex set of push and pull factors driving the rise in arrivals of unaccompanied alien children (UACs).
9. Amnesty will lead to pro-American immigration reforms
There is the possibility that the Trump administration believes that leading with an amnesty for illegal aliens could eventually lead to successful, pro-American immigration reforms that the President promised to enact.
But, as Rep. Steve King (R-IA) pointed out in a single tweet, history shows amnesty is not a winner in the long run for immigration policy in the national interest.
In fact, the very opposite is likely to happen if Trump signs an amnesty bill for illegal aliens. The open borders lobby and corporate interests are likely to push a full-fledged amnesty for all 12 to 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. should Trump sign a DACA amnesty.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Rising: 30,567 Aliens Apprehended or Deemed Inadmissible on SW Border Last Month
By Susan Jones | September 14, 2017 | 10:31 AM EDT
(Chart: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol)
(CNSNews.com) - Since April, the number of illegal aliens trying to get into the United States along the Southwest border has been steadily rising, reaching a total of 30,567 in August, a 22.5 percent increase from July and almost twice the 15,771 recorded in April, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.
Of those 30,567 detained in August, 22,293 individuals were apprehended between ports of entry. That's up from 18,190 in July; 16,087 in June; 14,520 in May; and 11,125 in April.
Another 8,283 individuals were deemed inadmissible at ports of entry in August, including illegal aliens who turned themselves in to Border Patrol agents. By comparison, the number of inadmissibles was 6,835 in July; 5,570 in June; 5,425 in May; and 4,646 in April.
With one month to go in Fiscal Year 2017 (Oct. 1, 2016-Sept. 30 2017), a total of 281,390 individuals have been apprehended between ports of entry on the Southwest Border, and 102,692 have been deemed inadmissible at ports of entry, for a grand total of 384,082 individuals either detained or turned away.
That's still well below the 559,695 apprehensions/inadmissibles identified on the Southwest border in Fiscal 2016; the 445,819 recorded in FY 2015; and the 569,972 in FY 2014.
As the CBP chart shows, the total number of illegal aliens either detained or deemed inadmissible reached 66,712 in the month of October 2016, the first month of Fiscal 2017. The number further declined in November, the month Donald Trump was elected president, and it continued dropping through April, before rising again in May-August.
The majority of illegal aliens apprehended between ports of entry are coming from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
President Trump campaigned on a promise to build a "big, beautiful" wall on the Southwest Border, and he also promised to send illegal aliens out of the country.
At a rally in Kentucky in March, President Trump bragged, "Since the day of my election, we've already cut illegal immigration at the southern border by 61 percent. Think of that, 61 percent! And we haven't started."
But it appears that times have changed.
President Trump on Thursday said he is working with congressional Democrats on a "plan" to keep hundreds of thousands of dreamers in this country. Trump insisted there's no deal yet, and in exchange for an agreement on dreamers, he wants "very, very powerful border security."
But that apparently does not mean a new, high, prefab concrete wall, as Trump described it on the campaign trail.
Trump tweeted on Thursday: "The WALL, which is already under construction in the form of new renovation of old and existing fences and walls, will continue to be built."
Speaking later Thursday morning in Florida, Trump repeated that "What we want, we have to have a wall. If the wall is going to be obstructed when we need the funds at a little bit later date, when we are determining how much we need, then we're not doing anything."
Sanctuary City Murder: Teen Illegal Immigrant Kills with Cop’s Stolen Gun, Police Say
An illegal immigrant being monitored by immigration officials is now accused of murder in the sanctuary city of San Francisco, California.
Erick Garcia-Pineda, 18, wore an ankle monitor placed by immigration officials when he allegedly murdered 23-year-old Abel Ezquivel, according to NBC Bay Area.
Four days before the murder, Pineda allegedly stole a San Francisco Police officer’s service pistol from a police vehicle. Days later, the illegal immigrant allegedly used the gun to murder Ezquivel.
Following the murder, Pineda was later arrested and detained for unrelated battery charges. Police say they noticed the illegal immigrant’s monitoring bracelet and used it to link Pineda to several other crimes, including five robberies and two other shooting incidents.
Pineda, according to NBC, was attempting to obtain asylum in the U.S., claiming he was under threat of the MS-13 gang.
It remains unclear why Pineda was wearing an ankle monitor by immigration officials, but was not previously arrested for his illegal status.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Report: DACA Amnesty May Trigger Flood of 4-6M Foreign Nationals, Not 800K
Should President Trump follow through on a deal where nearly 800,000 illegal aliens are allowed to remain in the United States and eventually obtain U.S. citizenship, research shows it would create a flood of four to six million chain migrants coming to the United States.
Trump, who adamantly opposed the amnesty for illegal aliens protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, is now defending the recipients of the program, as well as leveraging a deal where the foreign nationals could seek a pathway to citizenship through legal status, as Breitbart News reported.
Today, Trump signaled to his supporters that he opposed any sort of chain migration that would follow a DACA amnesty deal, though the deals the White House and Congress are reviewing would all cause such an immigration crisis:
Latest data from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) shows that 618,342 illegal aliens from Mexico currently have DACA status. If they were amnestied into the U.S., it would give them the opportunity to bring adult parents and relatives to the U.S.
“There will be chain migration. There always has been in amnesties,” Center for Immigration Studies Policy Director Jessica Vaughan told Breitbart News.
According to Princeton University researchers Stacie Carr and Marta Tienda, for every one new Mexican immigrant to the U.S., an additional 6.38 Mexican nationals come to the U.S. through family-chain migration.
Based on the Princeton research, the 618, 342 illegal aliens from Mexico who are coveredby DACA would be able to bring upwards of four million additional relatives and family members to the U.S. in the years to come.
If the remaining estimated 180,000 DACA recipients brought in three family members each after being amnestied, it would result in additional 540,000 immigrants. Should the remaining 180,000 DACA recipients bring four family members each to the U.S., it would result in more than 700,000 new immigrants.
But if the remaining roughly 180,000 DACA recipients were to bring the same number of family members as Mexican DACA recipients are expected to bring to the U.S., it would result in nearly 1.2 million more legal family-based immigrants coming to the country.
On top of the legal chain migration that could occur following a DACA amnesty by Trump, there is also the potential for a massive border surge, like the one that occurred following former President Obama’s creation of the DACA program.
As the Migration Policy Institute has chronicled, previous border surges from amnesty programs have brought hundreds of thousands across the U.S.-Mexico border:
While the flow of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) has been climbing steadily since 2012, a dramatic surge has taken place in the last six months, with the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas as the principal place of entry. The Border Patrol there has converted entire stations to house unaccompanied minors and families.
According to the Border Patrol, apprehensions of unaccompanied children increased from 16,067 in fiscal year (FY) 2011 to 24,481 in FY 2012 and 38,833 in FY 2013. During the first eight months of FY 2014, 47,017 such children were apprehended by the Border Patrol. If the influx continues apace—and it shows no signs of slowing—the administration predicts that by the end of the fiscal year on September 30, totals could reach 90,000.
Ninety-eight percent of unaccompanied minors currently arriving at the border are from Honduras (28 percent), Mexico (25 percent), Guatemala (24 percent), and El Salvador (21 percent). This breakdown represents a significant shift: prior to 2012, more than 75 percent of UACs were from Mexico.
“There’s one thing for sure: it’s not going to be 800,000 illegal aliens amnestied,” Vaughan said, alluding to the fact that an amnesty would surge both legal and illegal immigration.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.'
Immigration Hawks Licking Their Wounds After Trump's About-Face
"At this point, who DOESN'T want Trump impeached?" -- Ann Coulter tweet, 7:05 a.m., September 14, 2017.
"If reports true 100%. I blame R's. They caused this. They wanted him to fail and now pushed him into arms of political suicide -- IF TRUE." -- Sean Hannity tweet, 12:11 a.m., September 14, 2017.
"Flounder, you can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You (fouled) up... you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it!" -- Eric "Otter" Stratton, "Animal House," 1978.
Before I continue, let me answer Ann Coulter's question: Me. I don't want Trump impeached, at least not until he does something clearly impeachable. Impeaching him for policies you don't like or even for political malpractice would simply be a time-wasting tantrum. And I say that as a consistent critic of Donald Trump, going back to his flirtation with running on the Reform Party ticket in 2000.
That said, Coulter's reaction is understandable and even a little praiseworthy. After all, she wrote a book -- a whole book! -- in 2016 called "In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!" But unlike a lot of her compatriots in the Trump Army, Coulter was driven by a policy position, not an infatuation. Or perhaps she was infatuated, but her commitment to the policy was greater than her commitment to the man.
The policy in question: immigration. To wit, Coulter thinks we've had enough of it. That goes for the children brought here by illegal immigrants, commonly referred to as "Dreamers." President Obama created a program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that unconstitutionally (according to most conservatives, including the attorney general) granted a kind of de facto amnesty to the Dreamers, giving them work permits and legal residence.
On Wednesday night, Trump had dinner with the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer. These two famously partisan Democrats came out of the dinner announcing that they had struck a deal with the president to make DACA permanent without providing any funding for Trump's cherished border wall.
Trump, witnessing the blowback, which included the new nickname "Amnesty Don" in a headline at Breitbart News (which until recently had been the Pravda of MAGAland), insisted in a tweet that no deal had yet been made. But then he went on to sing the praises of DACA in a series of tweets, making it clear to all that he wants the Dreamers to be legalized and the DACA program made permanent.
In other words, he threw his biggest supporters under the Trump train.
Now I should say, I think Trump is right on the policy. It would be stupid and cruel to deport a bunch of people who came here as little kids and have since assimilated into the only country they've ever known. A large majority of Americans, including a majority of Trump voters, agree with Trump (and Schumer and Pelosi) on the policy. A poll this week found that only 12 percent of registered voters want these people deported. Coulter and former Trump adviser (and current Breitbart publisher) Steve Bannon speak for that 12 percent.
The majority of immigration hawks, however, considered DACA to be the president's most valuable negotiating chip. He could have gotten funding for the wall -- or perhaps E-Verify, or portions of Sen. Tom Cotton's immigration reform legislation, the RAISE Act -- passed in exchange for making DACA permanent. Instead, the author of "The Art of the Deal" essentially tossed his best chip into the pot as if it were the ante.
This poses a crisis for two different kinds of Trump true believers. The "nationalists" honestly believed he was one of them. Meanwhile, the super-fans honestly believed Trump was the greatest negotiator and strategist the world had ever seen. Both of these notions were delusions. Oh, I'm sure Trump believes much of his America First talk, but that's talk. What really matters to him is praise. It was only a matter of time before the moth flew to glow of public opinion.
The sad thing is that both delusions were obvious from the moment he descended his golden escalator at Trump Tower. It will be interesting to see how the true believers follow Otter's advice and make the best of their foul-up.
FOR 8 YEARS BARACK OBAMA DID NADA FOR BLACK AMERICAN EVEN AS HE FUNDED AND OPERATED OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE THE MEX FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA.
"Still, black America remains steadfastly loyal to a party that supports the endless importation of workers who compete directly for jobs with them and their families. Writes Kaus, "The median hourly wage (of DACA recipients) is only $15.34, meaning that many are competing with hard-pressed, lower-skilled Americans."
President Donald J. Trump participates a Hurricane Irma briefing call with FEMA Administrator William "Brock" Long, Monday, Sept. 11, 2017, joined by White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly, left; Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism Adviser Thomas Bossert, right, and Deputy Homeland Security Adviser John J. Daly, seated, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C. ( Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
"Having cut a deal with Democrats for help with the debt ceiling, will Trump seek a deal with Democrats on amnesty for the 'Dreamers' in return for funding for border security?"
The answer to that question, raised in my column a week ago, is in. Last night, President Donald Trump cut a deal with "Chuck and Nancy" for amnesty for 800,000 recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program who came here illegally as youngsters, in return for Democratic votes for more money for border security.
According to preening Minority Leader Pelosi, the agreement contains not a dime for Trump's Wall, and the "Dreamers" are to be put on a long glide "path to U.S. citizenship."
Trump denies this is amnesty, and says the Wall comes later.
Fallout? Among the most enthusiastic of Trump backers, disbelief, disillusionment and wonderment at where we go from here.
Trump's debt-ceiling deal cut the legs out from under the GOP budget hawks. But amnesty would pull the rug out from under all the folks at those rallies who cheered Trump's promise to preserve the country they grew up in from this endless Third World invasion.
For make no mistake. If amnesty is granted for the 800,000, that will be but the first wave. "There are reasons no country has a rule that if you sneak in as a minor you're a citizen," writes Mickey Kaus, author of "The End of Equality," in The Washington Post.
"We'd be inviting the world. ... (An amnesty) would have a knock-on effect. Under 'chain migration' rules established in 1965 ... new citizens can bring in their siblings and adult children, who can bring in their siblings and in-laws until whole villages have moved to the United States.
"(T)oday's 690,000 dreamers would quickly become millions of newcomers who may well be low-skilled and who would almost certainly include the parents who brought them — the ones who in theory are at fault."
Trump is risking a breach in the dam. If the populists who provided him with decisive margins in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania feel betrayed, it's hard to blame them.
Why did Trump do it? Clearly, he relished the cheers he got for the debt ceiling deal and wanted another such victory. And with the rampant accusations of a lack of "compassion" for his cancellation of the temporary Obama administration amnesty, he decided he had had enough heat.
It is not easy to stand up for long to the gale force winds of hostile commentary that blow constantly through this city.
Trump's capitulation, if that is what turns out to be, calls to mind George H. W. Bush's decision in 1990 to raise the Reagan tax rates in a deal engineered for him by a White House-Hill coalition, that made a mockery of his "Read my lips! No new taxes!" pledge of 1988.
For agreeing to feed the beast of Big Government, rather than cut its rations as Reagan sought to do, Bush was called a statesman.
By the fall of '92, the cheering had stopped.
Can Trump not know that those congratulating him for his newfound flexibility will be rejoicing, should Bob Mueller indict his family and his friends, and recommend his impeachment down the road?
What makes pre-emptive amnesty particularly disheartening is that the Trump policy of securing the border and returning illegal immigrants to their home countries appears, from a Census Bureau report this week, to be precisely the prescription America needs.
In 2016, paychecks for U.S. households reached an average of $59,039, up 3.2 percent from 2015, a year when they had surged.
U.S. median household income is now at its highest ever.
Yet there are inequalities. Where the median family income of Asian-Americans is above $81,400, and more than $65,000 for white Americans, the median family income of Hispanic families is $47,675, and that of African-American households far less, $39,490.
Consider. Though black Americans are predominantly native-born, while high percentages of Hispanics and Asians are immigrants, from the Census numbers, Hispanics earn more and Asians enjoy twice the median family income of blacks, which is below where it was in 2000.
Still, black America remains steadfastly loyal to a party that supports the endless importation of workers who compete directly for jobs with them and their families. Writes Kaus, "The median hourly wage (of DACA recipients) is only $15.34, meaning that many are competing with hard-pressed, lower-skilled Americans."
Looking closer at the Census Bureau figures, Trumpian economic nationalism would appear to have its greatest appeal to the American working class, a huge slice of which is native-born, black and Hispanic.
The elements of that policy?
Secure the border. Halt the invasion of low-wage workers, here legally and illegally, from the Third World. Tighten the labor market to force employers to raise wages in our full-employment economy. Provide tax incentives to companies who site factories in the USA. Impose border taxes on the products of companies who move plants abroad.
Put America and American workers first.
Will any amnesty of undocumented workers do that?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US
history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty.
AMERICA UNRAVELS:
Millions of children go hungry as the super- rich gorge themselves and ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE!
*
"The top 10 percent of Americans now own roughly three-quarters of all household wealth."
"While telling workers there is “not enough money” for wage increases, or to fund social programs, both parties hailed the recent construction of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, a massive aircraft carrier that cost $13 billion to build, stuffing the pockets of numerous contractors and war profiteers."
US Census report shows increasing social inequality
By Eric London 15 September 2017
US Census data from 2016 released on Tuesday shows increasing social inequality amid a small gain in household income that is offset by a massive growth of personal debt and rising living costs.
The data tracks the ongoing redistribution of wealth from the working class to the wealthy as a result of the pro-Wall Street policies of both the Republican and Democratic parties. It substantiates the oligarchic character of the United States.
Social inequality
The Gini index, used to measure social inequality, with higher figures indicating a wider economic divide, rose slightly from 2015 (.479) to 2016 (.481). The 2016 figure, according to rankings in the CIA World Factbook, makes the US slightly more equal than Madagascar and less equal than Mexico.
In terms of aggregate income share, the shift from 2015 to 2016 is as follows:
The growth in inequality is even starker when traced from 2007, the year before the Wall Street crisis.
The data reflects income and not wealth, thereby providing an incomplete and conservative indication of the scale of inequality. Even within the highest quintile, the income share increased only for the top 10 percent, and, in particular, the top 5 percent.
Household income
The corporate media has portrayed the report as a sign of positive income growth, since it shows a slight rise in median income of 3.2 percent from 2015 to 2016.
But according to the Census data, the earnings of “full-time, year-round workers” remained stagnant. For men in this category, a total of 63.9 million people, earnings declined by 0.4 percent, from $51,859 in 2015 to $51,640 in 2016. For women in this category, 47.2 million people, there was a minor increase, 0.7 percent, from $41,257 in 2015 to $41,554 in 2016. In other words, families with 2 adults working full-time saw a paltry $78 increase in their yearly earnings from 2015 to 2016.
Claims of rising incomes mask the growth of inequality. The Census data shows that the household income of the 90th percentile (the 100th being the highest) was 12.53 times higher than the household income of the 10th percentile in 2016, up from 12.23 times higher in 2015 and 11.18 times higher in 2007. The degree to which income is concentrated in the richest 10 percent of the population is exemplified by the fact that the 5th percentile boasted a household income 3.82 times higher than the 50th percentile in 2016, up from 3.79 times in 2015 and 3.52 in 2007.
As Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, “Since 2007, average inflation-adjusted income has climbed more than 10 percent for households in the highest fifth of the earnings distribution, and it’s fallen 3.2 percent for the bottom quintile. Incomes of the top 5 percent jumped 12.8 percent over the period.”
For the working class, any income increase was transferred to the corporate elite in the form of rising debt payments and increasing living expenses, especially for health care.
According to figures from eHealth, a large private health exchange, average deductibles for families rose 5 percent from 2016 to 2017 (a year after the period covered by the Census report) and average individual premiums rose 22 percent over the same period.
The rising cost of student debt alone largely erases income increases seen by some young people. According to the Census, those aged 15 to 24 saw an income increase of 13.9 percent, from $36,564 in 2015 to $41,655 in 2016, while incomes for young people aged 25 to 34 rose 4.9 percent, from $58,091 to $60,932, nearly double the percentage increase for older age groups.
However, in 2016, student debt rose to an average of $30,000 per young person, up 4 percent from 2015, eliminating over 80 percent of the income rise for 25-34 year olds. For 15 to 24 year olds, the $4,000 increase in median income would hardly cover one sixth of the average debt payment, let alone make up for the fact that young people face a future in which they are unlikely to receive a pension, Social Security or Medicare.
Rising debt levels are not a phenomenon limited to young people. A Bloomberg report from August 10 notes that credit card defaults increased from the beginning of 2015—when roughly 2.5 percent of debt holders defaulted—to the end of 2016, when the total hit 3 percent. This figure subsequently climbed in 2017 to reach 3.49 percent.
Bloomberg notes: “After deleveraging in the aftermath of the last US recession, Americans have once again taken on record debt loads that risk holding back the world’s largest economy... Household debt outstanding--everything from mortgages to credit cards to car loans--reached $12.7 trillion in the first quarter [2017], surpassing the previous peak in 2008 before the effect of the housing market collapse took its toll, Federal Reserve Bank of New York data show.”
“For most Americans,” the report continues, “whose median household income, adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was at its peak in 1999, borrowing has been the answer to maintaining their standard of living. The increase in debt helps explain why the economy’s main source of fuel is providing less of a boost than in the past. Personal spending growth has averaged 2.4 percent since the recession ended in 2009, less than the 3 percent of the previous expansion and 4.3 percent from 1982-90.”
The Bloomberg report explains that income from wages minus household debt trended downward in 2015, meaning that debt is rising faster than wages, causing a loss of roughly $500 billion across the US economy in the space of just one year.
Poverty rate
Though the Census report shows that the poverty rate declined from 13.5 percent of households in 2015 to 12.7 percent in 2016, this figure is substantially higher than the 11.3 percent level that prevailed in 2000. In reality, individuals and families must make 2.5 to 3 times the official poverty rate of $12,000 for an individual, $15,500 for a married couple and $25,000 for a family of four just to make ends meet.
What the data really shows is that the poorest half of the country--over 150 million people--is in a desperate financial position, with the next poorest 40 percent facing constant financial strain and a declining share of the national income. In regard to poverty, the Census Bureau maintains figures that go up only to 200 percent of the official poverty level. The latest report shows that 95 million people—29.8 percent of the population—fall into this category. The share of those under the age of 18 in this category is much higher--39.1 percent.
This is the context for the drive by the Trump administration and both big business parties to slash corporate taxes, impose a health care “reform” that will increase costs for millions of people, and accelerate the transfer of wealth from the working class to the financial aristocracy.
Census Bureau: Mens’ Wages Remain Below 1973 Levels
Americans’ median pay packets have been flat since 1973, even though the vastly expanded federal government has justified its own salaries and its many massive spending and policy programs as a sure-fire way to boost education, productivity, and wages.
The colossal 44-year failure of the federal government to help grow American men’s wages — or even to reduce poverty rates — is laid bare in the latest report from the Census Bureau, “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2016.”
The dense report includes myriad detailed tables of data around one shocking chart, which reveals no growth in men’s wages for the past 44 years, or since President Richard Nixon was beginning his second term in office.
Median earning of full-time, year-round workers, 15 years and older, 1960 to 2016.
The sudden flatline followed a 31 percent rise in all men’s median wages from 1960 to 1972.
During the 44-year period since 1973, income among women grew by roughly 30 percent as more skilled and trained women entered the market, gained experience, and were promoted to better-paying jobs. Those opportunities and contributions are good news — but they do not change the reality that men’s income has been flat for 44 years.
In fact, the report notes that “the real median earnings of full-time, year-round working men were 1.1 percent lower in 2016 than in 2007.”
There are many explanations for the flat income, such as the massive growth in the labor supply when 30 million additional American women and roughly 30 million immigrants joined in the marketplace competition for good jobs. For example, a pro-immigration panel at the prestigious National Academies of Science estimated in 2016 that the huge government-imposed inflow of immigrants since 1965 has imposed a hidden 5 percent “immigration tax” on Americans’ pay packets.
Technology has made many individuals workers more productive but also sidelined many others, such as newspaper printers and steelworkers. Peaceful international trade has allowed men to sell more products overseas but also allowed employers to hire foreign workers instead of Americans. Whatever the combinations of reasons, the mid-point for men’s income has been flat for 43 years, according to the Census Bureau.
The flat-earnings chart needs some explanation:
It shows only inflation-adjusted, pre-tax pay packets, so it excludes the impact of inflation, taxes and government benefits, such as food-stamps and tax-breaks for children, or of Obamacare’s subsidies and spending obligations.
It shows median income, which is the midpoint of the income scale. Half the people earn above the line, half the people earn below the line. Average income would be higher, but less revealing, because a higher share of income is going to the highest earners, compared to back in the 1970s.
The chart shows the income of year-round, full-time workers, excluding part-workers or seasonal workers, or those who work on-and-off under contracts. The chart does not make distinctions by race.
The chart shows individuals’ income, not the income of households, which has fluctuated as the average number of children or adults has declined.
The chart only shows income, but not the quality of goods in the stores, such as Starbucks coffee, cheap products imported from China, high-tech music players, improved autos or better health-care. That rise in product quality from competing companies — not claimed policy improvements from federal agencies — has provided the vast majority of material gains for Americans amid flat incomes.
The details are provided on Table A-4, on page 49 of this PDF.
The median earnings for all men employed year-round was $51,640 in 2016, which is still far below the $54,030 earned by full-time men in 1973. It is also below the $51,938 earned in the 2000 Internet boom, or the $52,222 earned in the 2007 property bubble when large-scale legal and illegal immigration provided employers with millions of alternative imported workers.
The post-1973 reality of flat income is a huge contrast to the rapid growth from 1960 up to the 1973 oil shock and the reopened inflow of immigrant labor after 1965. During the twelves years 1960 to 1972, the median average wages for all males — including minorities, seasonal workers, and contract workers — rose from by 31 percent, from $31,926 to $41,013.
When the income of all men is gauged, the Bureau concluded that all men’s median income in 1973 was $41,935. It dropped after 1973 and rose back up to $43,360 in 1999 as companies competed for the few unemployed workers during the first Internet boom. Income crashed in 2008 to a depression-low of $39,636 in 2012 once the federal government’s real-estate bubble burst. Since then, income has slowly climbed back to $42,220 in 2016 amid the continuous public protest against the federal government’s cheap-labor economic strategy, which is exemplified by the bipartisan 2013 “Gang of Eight” amnesty legislation.
Other data in the report shows that the nation’s poverty rates have barely budged since the 1960s, although many people in the United States are wealthier than many people n Europe. For example, the percentage of American said to be in poverty was 11.1 percent in 1973 and 12.7 percent in 2016.
That national poverty rate climbed, in part, because of the population of Latinos spiked from 10.8 million in 1973 to 57.6 million in 2016. Poverty among Latinos was 19 percent in 2016, little changed from 1973.
The report also noted that:
The official poverty rate decreased by 0.8 percentage points between 2015 and 2016. At 12.7 percent, the 2016 poverty rate is not statistically different from 2007 (12.5 percent), the year before the most recent recession.
In real terms, median earnings of full-time, year-round working women in 2016 were 2.3 percent higher than their 2007 median, the year before the most recent recession. The real median earnings of full-time, year-round working men were 1.1 percent lower in 2016 than in 2007.
In 2017, the number and percentage of shared households remained higher than in 2007, the year before the most recent recession. In 2007, 17.0 percent of all households were shared households, totaling 19.7 million households. In 2017, 19.4 percent of all households were shared households, totaling 24.6 million households.Read it all here.
THE HOUSTON FLOOD - CRONY CAPITALIST LICK THEIR LIPS OVER REBUILDING.... FIRST, LIKE KATRINA, CUT WAGES AND INVITE HORDES MORE ILLEGALS IN TO WORK CHEAP!
"Like Katrina, Hurricane Harvey has lifted the lid on the ugly reality of American society, exposing colossal levels of social inequality, pervasive poverty and ruling class criminality."
"The reason why these warnings have been ignored is not hard to fathom. They have been resolutely opposed by corporate interests, including the real estate industry, Wall Street and Big Oil. Their ability, operating through bribed politicians of both parties, to veto and block elementary measures to protect the American people, exemplifies the complete subordination of all social needs under capitalism to the selfish drive of a corporate-financial oligarchy to accumulate ever greater levels of personal wealth and profit."
THEY INVADE OVER AND UNDER OUR BORDERS… and do so by invitation of the Democrat Party.
Lawmen are worried that the cartel tunnel builders on the Mexican border are now using their engineered concoctions to smuggle illegals, not merely drugs.
That's what the Daily Caller has found, describing the new anxiety as one was discovered over the weekend, catching about 30 illegals coming in from Mexico and China. MONICA SHOWALTER – AMERICAN THINKER.com
"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty.
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS to serve the filthy rich
The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the 1920s.
“This study follows reports released over the past several months documenting rising mortality rates among US workers due to drug addiction and suicide, high rates of infant mortality, an overall leveling off of life expectancy, and a growing gap between the life expectancy of the bottom rung of income earners compared to those at the top.”
"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty.
"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty.
AMERICA UNRAVELS:
Millions of children go hungry as the super- rich gorge themselves and ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE!
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"The top 10 percent of Americans now own roughly three-quarters of all household wealth."
"While telling workers there is “not enough money” for wage increases, or to fund social programs, both parties hailed the recent construction of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, a massive aircraft carrier that cost $13 billion to build, stuffing the pockets of numerous contractors and war profiteers."
By Patrick J. Buchanan | September 15, 2017 | 4:38 AM EDT
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