Are We Witnessing the Weirdest Moment in Economic History?

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It is an unfortunate reality that most people tend to be oblivious to massive sea changes in geopolitics and economics. You would think that these events would catch the immediate attention of everyone as they happen, but usually it is not until they realize that the microcosm of their personal lives is subject to the consequences of the macrocosm that they wake up and take notice.

There are, however, ways to train yourself to pick up on signals within the news cycle and within political and financial rhetoric; signals that indicate a great shift is perhaps on the way. Sometimes these initial signs are subtle, sometimes they are as subtle as a feminist slut-walk. I would point out that over the next few months there are dangerous correlations so numerous and blatant in the economic sphere that I would almost rather watch a marching gaggle of frumpy feminists wearing nothing but electrical tape than bear witness to the mayhem that is about to strike the unwitting public.

What am I talking about? Well, let’s go through the list…

Federal Reserve Meeting March 14-15th

As my readers know well, I have been warning since before the election that the Fed would use a Trump presidency as an opportunity to pull the plug on near-zero interest rates and remove a primary pillar supporting stock markets — stock buybacks made possible by free overnight loans to numerous banks and corporations. Without QE and low interest rates the equities bubble will inevitably implode.

Corporate earnings certainly aren’t holding up stocks, neither is GDP or consumer spending. The Fed is the only determining factor of the ongoing bull market. Anyone who claims otherwise is probably a mainstream analyst or overzealous day trader with a vested interest in keeping the illusion going.

It is not surprising to me at all that the “rate hike odds” for March have been increased by mainstream analysts to 90% in the span of a week. I don’t know why anyone uses these arbitrary odds as an indicator of anything. I’ve been receiving emails all month asking me if I still believe the Fed will hike rates while the odds are “so low.” Look, the Fed does not make decisions at these meetings. They make decisions months in advance and the meetings are window dressing.

Too many people operate under the delusion that the central bank wants to continue propping up stocks, which is why they cannot grasp why the Fed would raise rates. In reality, the stage has been perfectly set to allow the bubble to implode. When the elites have a perfect scapegoat, they use it, and conservative movements represent that perfect scapegoat today.

The important thing to remember, though, is the timing of this particular meeting…

U.S. Debt-Ceiling Suspension Ends March 15th

So, in case you weren’t tracking the economic situation two years ago, the U.S. government almost went bust (in a sense) in 2015. The debt ceiling sets limits on how much the government can borrow to fund itself, and that limit was hit hard under the Obama administration after he managed to nearly double the national debt during his tenure. Congress passed legislation to allow borrowing to continue until March 2017, and of course, much of that capital was “borrowed” from the Federal Reserve, which, of course, creates it out of thin air. With the return of the debt ceiling, the question is — will Congress be able to extend and delay again? With Trump running on a platform of fiscal responsibility, CAN they extend again? Do they even want to, or is this an engineered crisis event?

Once again, the timing of all this is a little odd. The Fed is raising rates into the first year of the Trump presidency leaving equities increasingly open to destabilization. In addition, the government might not be able to continue borrowing from them, or there will be a renewed extension but the costs of borrowing will run much higher. In either case, this month seems to pronounce the beginning of something; a considerable move away from the standard operating procedures that the elites have been using for the past several years. With such changes come consequences, always.

Formal Initiation Of Brexit On March 15th

The skeptics have been telling me for months that even though I was right about the Brexit vote victory the elites “would never allow” the British to leave the EU. Well, it doesn’t look that way to me so far. Theresa May plans to formally notify the EU of British exit on March 15th triggering two years of negotiations which will undoubtedly send economic shock waves throughout the globe on a regular basis.

Of course the Brexit will move forward! Why not? Globalists need a continuing atmosphere of crisis to distract the masses from their great global reset, and they need multiple scapegoats for the economic disaster that their reset will cause. Enter conservative movements in Europe; once again the perfect target to pin a crisis on.

French Elections Start April 23rd, End May 7th

Yet another election in which the EU hangs in the balance. Recent polls indicate that Marine Le Pen, the designated “populist” candidate, is falling behind. I have to ask, though, have we not learned our lesson yet on the meaninglessness of political polls? I think most of us have.

I believe Le Pen will be one of the final two candidates to move on to the election in May, and though I am not as certain as I was on Brexit and Trump, I am going to go ahead and predict a Le Pen win. If there is any sizable terrorist event in the next couple of months in the EU, or expanded Muslim riots, she is a guaranteed win. This brings up the very real prospect of a “Frexit” in the near future, and analysts should expect that a Le Pen win will be met with some panic in the financial world.

Potential Italian Election Move On April 30th

The Italian political process is a little confusing to me, but what I can tell you is that this spring or early summer you will probably be hearing a lot more about it. Former Italian prime minister and current Italian Democratic Party leader Matteo Renzi is set to decide on a the date for a leadership vote, which may come as early as April 30th. The outcome of this vote will likely decide how soon the next official Italian election will take place.

The election is required to be held before May 2018, but there is increasing pressure to hold elections in 2017, perhaps even this coming summer. I would not be at all shocked to see a surprise announcement of an early Italian election after the leadership vote is held.

Why should anyone care? The consensus is that Renzi’s party will be overrun by anti-EU factions and that this may result in a kind of “Italiexit.” The outcome of Italy’s series of votes and political restructuring will have wide reaching effects on the psychology of the markets for many months to come.

German Federal Election Held September 24th

Yes, even Germany is quaking this year in the wake of a potential “populist” tsunami. Angela Merkel is exceedingly unloved by her own people lately as her approval ratings collapse. Once-silent sovereignty champions in the country are becoming more and more vocal about Merkel’s rather insane open immigration policies which were the key element that drew millions of Muslims into the EU. It was the German government’s promise of endless entitlement programs that created the incentive for the mass migration in the first place, and now, finally, the German people are fed up with the complete lack of cultural assimilation and what many see as the destruction of Western values.

I do not think that Germany will abandon the supranational concept of the EU regardless of the outcome of the election, but the removal of Merkel would signal a less agreeable Germany, which would exacerbate the already tottering European Union. Meaning more economic uncertainty in 2017.

If You Thought 2016 Was Weird…

If you thought 2016 was weird, I suggest you get comfortable with the surreal because it is not going away anytime soon. 2017 is a veritable treasure trove of falling elevators, and I haven’t even covered half of the issues facing the economy this year. But what about the macro-analysis?

To summarize, it seems to me that many of these events, stacked so closely together, are not coincidental in their timing. As I have noted in articles such as “The Economic End Game Explained,” globalists have been openly planning for decades to set in motion a vast financial overhaul and the launch of a single global economy and currency (the seeds being planted starting in 2018). If this is still their timeline, then it would follow that they would need a series of fiscal earthquakes designed to shake up the “old world order” to make way for a “new world order.”

Perhaps each of these events will result in a “stable” outcome and there is nothing to be concerned about. That said, I don’t believe in chance. Most geopolitical outcomes are influenced by internationalist players, which makes the outcomes of these events predictable. This is what made the Brexit predictable, and it is what made Trump’s victory predictable. Everything about the confluence of political and economic events in 2017 suggests to me a festering crisis atmosphere.

As I have always said, economic collapse is a process, not a singular moment in time. This process lulls the masses into complacency. You can show them warning sign after warning sign, but most of them have no concept of what a collapse is. They are waiting for a cinematic moment of revelation, a financial explosion, when really, the whole disaster is happening in slow motion right under their noses. Economies do not explode, they drown as the water rises one inch at a time. (For more from the author of “Are We Witnessing the Weirdest Moment in Economic History?” please click HERE)

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The Horrendous Visa Program Forcing Tech Workers to ‘Dig Their Own Graves’

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Leo Perrero still remembers the humiliation of losing his job.

“All of you in this room will be losing your jobs in the next 90 days,” he was told, later recalling the experience before Congress.

“Later that same day,” he added, “I remember very clearly going to the local church pumpkin sale and having to tell the kids that we could not buy any because my job was going over to a foreign worker.”

Disney replaced Perrero using a little-known and oft overlooked provision of immigration law that allows big tech companies to replace their employees with foreign workers under extremely questionable circumstances.

In an upcoming episode of “Michelle Malkin Investigates” — “H-1B Hell: The Sellout of America’s Best and Brightest Workers” — Malkin delves into how the H-1B worker visa program has been putting people like Leo Perrero and countless others out of work since 1990.

On location at UC San Francisco, where 79 IT workers recently lost their jobs to an outsourcing firm and user of H-1B visa workers, Malkin spoke to some of tech workers laid off by the university.

“I was shocked Monday when I showed up at work and my boss was standing there with a letter,” said Greg Lennon, one such former UCSF employee.

“Every single one of my evaluations for 15 years said ‘meets and exceeds expectations,’ and that was from three different managers,” Lennon said. “I was working between 60 and 70 hours per week.”

Even worse, the employees were told to “dig their own graves” as it were, being forced to train their foreign replacements in exchange for their severance pay.

“It’s kind of insulting,” said one of Lennon’s co-workers – a married father of two – when asked about the situation. “[It’s] a slap in the face.”

Such experiences are, unfortunately, not uncommon. Over the past few years alone, similar stories have emerged elsewhere in the tech sector, most notably from Disney and Microsoft.

“The H-1B program essentially handed the keys to our immigration system to corporations with a lot of influence and with ulterior motives,” Conservative Review Senior Editor Daniel Horowitz tells MMI. “Their motive is to bring in as many cheap workers as possible, which is understandable; you always want to cut costs.” But the unintended consequences are far-reaching, he added.

“Why should IBM or Disney be deciding our future voting population?” Horowitz asks. “That needs to be decided by our general immigration system, not those looking to save $15,000 or $20,000 on their labor costs.” (For more from the author of “The Horrendous Visa Program Forcing Tech Workers to ‘Dig Their Own Graves'” please click HERE)

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GOP Should Look up the Definition of ‘Obamacare’ Before Claiming to Repeal It

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The reason why Republicans are able to perpetuate the lie that they are repealing Obamacare is because they have obfuscated the definition of Obamacare.

The regulations are everything

At its core, Obamacare is the imposition of actuarially insolvent regulations, which spike the cost of premiums and chase out choice, competition, and innovation (which further raises costs). This, in turn, engenders a need for mass subsidization, which in itself is not only costly to the government (taxpayers), but further distorts the insurance market.

That is because insurers now negotiate with government within the confines of regulations and subsidies to box out competition rather than working directly with market demand of consumers, unencumbered by price-hiking regulations and artificially inflated demand from subsidies.
This is also why the customer service of insurance companies has been horrible; there is no ability or incentive to work with consumers. Either way they are regulated. Either way they get subsidized.

That is the definition of Obamacare’s most destructive element. That is the part of Obamacare that is not repealed at all before 2020 and only tweaked after 2020 in the GOP leadership plan. Prices will not come down. Worse, the subsidies — which will be geared more toward middle-income and upper-middle income families — will create an even greater market distortion than Obamacare’s subsidies primarily for lower-income groups already have.

Thus, when Republicans say they are repealing Obamacare, but then proceed to talk about the repeal of the individual and employer mandates and tax increases, they are lying to you. The mandates and the taxes are not Obamacare — they are the funding mechanisms for Obamacare. By repealing the mandates and taxes without repealing the regulations, exchanges, and subsidies will cause adverse selection whereby younger, healthier individuals will leave the system.

Republicans will own a more precipitous Obamacare death spiral than the existing turmoil under current law. Ironically, it will be blamed on the “repeal and replace” bill, even though it is in fact the non-repealed version (regulations and subsidies) exacerbated by the repeal of the funding mechanism (mandates and taxes) that will cause the system to collapse.

The result will be either single-payer or a massive insurance bailout, even before the “reforms” are put in place in 2020. The number of people flooding the Medicaid expansion before the partial freeze in 2020 will further blow a hole in the system, and at a higher price.

Taxes and mandates are bad, but are not the source of the problem

Don’t get me wrong — I hate tax hikes and mandates as much as anyone else. But they are not the source of the destruction in the insurance market. In fact, the individual and employer mandates are necessary once you agree to the premise of regulated and subsidized health care (a doctrine enshrined by this RINOcare legislation). Otherwise, there aren’t enough people paying into the system to keep the Ponzi scheme afloat for even a few years.

Tax hikes are always bad for economic growth, but they were not responsible for the skyrocketing premiums, lack of choice and competition, limited physician networks, and horrible customer service. Most of the tax revenue comes from a 3.8 percent surtax on investment income and an increase in payroll taxes on upper-income earners.

Those are onerous and anti-growth taxes, but are not the source of the health care problems. The few tax hikes directly levied on health insurance are either small in scope, have only been implemented recently, or, in the case of the “Cadillac” tax, has been indefinitely delayed.

The magical reason the insurance market, which was never fully free market, suddenly became like Venezuela after Obamacare was passed is not due to the tax increases.

It’s the regulations, stupid.

The Congressional Research Service lists 24 Obamacare regulations that are almost solely responsible for the high prices and lack of competition. Refusal to repeal the regulations, along with the self-fulfilling subsidies, is the full retention of Obamacare. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying to you.

Not only are the regulations the culprit of higher premiums, they are responsible for an estimated $19 billion in lost wages, 10,000-plus fewer business establishments, nearly 300,000 lost jobs, and $51 billion in costs and more than 172 million hours of paperwork compliance, according to the American Action Forum.

The only way to bring down costs is to repeal the regulations. As Charles Blahous, a former Social Security trustee, pointed out, the CBO has already hinted to the fact that repealing the regulations would not only dramatically reduce prices, but also cover many more people than what the GOP “American Health Care Act” plans to do.

Simply put — you can’t offer lower prices and offer people better coverage without repealing Obamacare. (For more from the author of “GOP Should Look up the Definition of ‘Obamacare’ Before Claiming to Repeal It” please click HERE)

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Attorney General Seeks Resignations of 46 US Attorneys

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions is seeking the resignations of 46 United States attorneys who were appointed during the prior presidential administration, the Justice Department said Friday.

Many of the federal prosecutors who were nominated by former President Barack Obama have already left their positions, but the nearly four dozen who stayed on in the first weeks of the Trump administration have been asked to leave “in order to ensure a uniform transition,” Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said.

“Until the new U.S. attorneys are confirmed, the dedicated career prosecutors in our U.S. attorney’s offices will continue the great work of the department in investigating, prosecuting and deterring the most violent offenders,” she said in a statement. (Read more from “Attorney General Seeks Resignations of 46 US Attorneys” HERE)

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Hawaii Has No Case Against Revised Travel Executive Order

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The new lawsuit filed by Hawaii against President Donald Trump’s revised March 6 immigration executive order is just as unsound as the lawsuits filed by other states against the original order—despite what some courts have said about the original order or may say about the revised order.

Executive Order 13780, “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” imposes a 90-day suspension of entry from six terrorist safe havens in the Middle East and Africa until the administration is assured that our vetting procedures are sufficient to prevent dangerous aliens from getting into our country.

The order doesn’t apply to any foreigners who have already been granted a visa or permission to be in the country, such as permanent, resident aliens.

It also repeats the 120-day temporary suspension of refugee admissions for the same reason: to ensure we have sufficient vetting to stop what has happened in the past in the U.S. and has been happening in Europe in terms of terrorists successfully using the refugee process to get into the European Union.

Hawaii’s lawsuit consists almost entirely of policy arguments as opposed to legal claims, and the legal claims that are made are far-fetched.

There seems little doubt that the lawsuit was filed in Hawaii to take advantage of the generally liberal nature of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and its dominance by Democratic appointees. Seventy-two percent of the judges on that court were appointed by Democratic presidents, and at the district court level in Hawaii, the lawsuit has been assigned to Judge Derrick Watson, a President Barack Obama appointee.

The complaint attacks the president for issuing an order that prevents “immediate family members living in affected countries” from visiting their relatives in the United States, claiming that it will also prevent “universities, employers, and other institutions” from being able to “recruit or to welcome qualified individuals from the six designated countries.”

The basic legal flaw in all of this is that foreign aliens, whether they have family in the U.S. or not, have no constitutional right to enter the country. Neither universities, employers, nor other institutions have any constitutional right to recruit foreign aliens for jobs or positions except to the extent that Congress, which has plenary power over immigration, allows them to do so.

The complaint does at least acknowledge that Congress gave the president plenary power, in 8 U.S.C. §1182(f), to suspend the entry of any aliens into the country if he believes their entry would be “detrimental” to the United States. However, the complaint claims the president’s order “exceeds” his authority under this statute.

But given its broad grant of authority, it is hard to imagine how the president could possibly be exceeding his authority.

That is particularly true given the fact that the revised order explicitly states how the six designated countries are connected to the terrorism problem we face.

Three of the countries—Iran, Syria, and Sudan—are listed by the State Department as official sponsors of terrorism, while the other three—Libya, Somalia, and Yemen—were listed as “countries of concern” because of their terrorism problems by Jeh Johnson, homeland security secretary under Obama.

None of this matters to Hawaii, which claims that these countries were chosen only in order to discriminate against the Muslim religion, a claim that cannot be supported by the facts or the plain terms of the executive order.

After all, there are approximately 50 countries in the world with a majority Muslim population, yet entry from all of those countries with the exception of these six is not restricted or affected in any way by this revised executive order.

Instead of making rational, legal arguments, this complaint reads like a press release and makes outrageous claims, such as comparing this revised executive order to “the Chinese Exclusion acts and the imposition of martial law and Japanese internment after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.”

In fact, there are only seven pages of legal claims within the entire 38-page complaint.

The complaint also makes another basic error: It tries to fault the administration and claim some nefarious purpose behind the fact that these six countries were chosen and not other countries “whose nationals have perpetrated fatal terrorist attacks in the United States.”

But these six countries were chosen because they are either state sponsors of terrorism (and whose information on visa applicants can therefore not be trusted) or failing governments (like Libya) whose information cannot be trusted for similar reasons.

That stands in contrast to the working relationships we have with the government, military, and intelligence services of other countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which makes vetting their citizens more reliable.

By the way, given all of the concern that Hawaii expresses in this complaint for visitors, immigrants, and refugees, it is ironic to note that according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Hawaii only took in a grand total of seven refugees in fiscal year 2015 out of the almost 70,000 taken into the U.S.

None were from the six countries affected by the executive order. Only the very liberal and “compassionate” District of Columbia took in fewer refugees—five—that year.

In addition to the state of Hawaii, the complaint was filed on behalf of Ismail Elshikh, the imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii. His main claim is that because of the executive order, his mother, who is a Syrian national, will be prevented from “obtaining a visa to visit or reunite with her family in Hawaii.”

Yet the complaint admits that the last time she visited was in 2005. Given that, it seems contrived to base a claim of constitutional harm on an application for a visa being possibly delayed for another 90 days after a 12-year absence.

And, of course, the revised executive order does allow for case-by-case waivers by the secretary of state and the secretary of homeland security in appropriate circumstances, including when a “foreign national seeks to enter the United States to visit or reside with a close family member … ”

There are a series of cases upholding the authority of the federal government to suspend visa entry. These include Knauff v. Shaughnessy (1950), in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the exclusion without a hearing or any other form of due process of the alien war bride of an American citizen because her entry was considered detrimental to the interests of the U.S.

Not only was this held to be constitutional, but the Supreme Court said that it was not within the province of any court “to review the determination of the political branch of the Government to exclude a given alien.”

Moreover, the admission of aliens into this country is not a right, but a privilege. The supposed “due process” rights of any such alien are limited to the “procedures authorized by Congress.”

The complaint even raises the First Amendment, claiming that Trump’s order violates the Establishment Clause. The facts don’t support that claim since this executive order does not discriminate on the basis of religion.

But more importantly, the Supreme Court said in 1972 in Kleindienst v. Mandel, an alien exclusion case, that it would not review the reasons for the executive’s determination “nor test it by balancing its justification against the First Amendment.”

This lawsuit appears to be a public relations exercise masquerading as a legal claim. If the Hawaii District Court or the 9th Circuit rule against this order, it will be another example of the courts ignoring the law and prior precedent.

Trump’s revised executive order is both legal and reasonable. It balances the need for national security and protecting the safety of the American public with the compassion we show in our welcoming of immigrants and visitors from all over the world. (For more from the author of “Hawaii Has No Case Against Revised Travel Executive Order” please click HERE)

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Trump Halfway to First 100 Days

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President Donald Trump this week threw his support behind a House Republican plan aimed at repealing and replacing Obamacare. While it’s not yet to the liking of everyone in his party, a health care proposal was a key pledge candidate Trump said would be part of his first 100 days in office.

Now, at the halfway mark of this critical period on Friday—the president has moved at a quick pace addressing the bulk of promised executive actions and proposals—such as taking early steps on border security and increased vetting of immigrants and refugees from Middle Eastern countries.

But there are still significant actions left to make and measures that haven’t been proposed in Congress in this crucial 100-day timeline.

The president has championed an “America First” agenda in the first 50 days, said Helen Aguirre Ferre, White House director of media affairs.

“He was very clear in his joint address to Congress, he’s not the president of the world, he’s the president of the United States of America, and he’s really shown it in the first 50 days as far as where his priorities are,” Ferre told The Daily Signal in a Facebook Live interview at the White House Friday.

Here’s a look at Trump’s promises at the halfway point.

Draining the Swamp

Trump promised six measures in the first 100 days to “clean up corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, D.C.”

The first measure on the list is unfulfilled, which is the one that requires the most effort.

Trump has not proposed—or at least hasn’t backed an existing proposal—for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress. Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, have backed term limit proposals, but the White House hasn’t thrown its weight behind the proposition yet. A constitutional amendment requires the vote of two-thirds of Congress to pass then must be ratified by three-quarters of the states before becoming law.

Trump’s other measures to clean up Washington only required executive actions, which he moved on.

Trump almost immediately made good on a pledge to impose a hiring freeze on federal employees to reduce the federal workforce through attrition.

The president also signed an executive order requiring that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated.

He placed a five-year ban on White House officials from becoming lobbyists after they left government service and a lifetime ban on White House officials from lobbying for a foreign government. However, it would take an act of Congress to prohibit congressional staffers from lobbying.

Protecting American Workers

Trump made seven promises about protecting the jobs of American workers—which was a central focus of his campaign.

He has withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal President Barack Obama entered with 11 countries, but one that was never approved by Congress.

Trump pledged to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. While there hasn’t been an executive order to that effect, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said talks about NAFTA will launch later this year.

Ferre said she doesn’t have a timetable for every item that was part of the campaign’s 100-day plan. But, she said the president will address trade issues. Ferre added:

The president is bullish on trade, he wants to promote trade, but through bilateral trade agreements to make sure that we are getting a better bang for the buck. NAFTA for example, yes, let’s have good, robust trade with Mexico, but let’s make sure that this treaty that was negotiated over 20 years ago is still where it needs to be to address the needs of the American voters in 2017. I don’t know if it will necessarily be within the next 50 days, but the president has been very clear this is one of the trade issues that needs to be addressed. He took out the Pacific trade agreement because it was one that didn’t benefit American workers and really put some other countries at a greater advantage than American workers.

Trump has not yet directed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to label China a currency manipulator, and according to a news report, might be less likely to do so. Mnuchin said in late February that the U.S. will continue to use the existing criteria for judging whether China manipulates its currency.

Trump has also promised to lift restrictions on the production of American energy reserves. The White House has put this forward as part of its broader energy goals, but the White House hasn’t passed an executive order or formally backed legislation to this effect. Trump also has not moved to cancel payments to the United Nations climate change programs.

Trump signed an executive order to approve construction of the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. Authorizing Keystone construction was part of his 100-day plan.

On the same day as the two pipeline memorandums, Trump also issued an executive order “expediting environmental reviews and approvals for high priority infrastructure projects.”

In another presidential memorandum, Trump directed departments and agencies to support expanded manufacturing through streamlining permitting reviews and reducing regulations.

Restoring Security and Rule of Law

Trump vowed to “cancel every unconstitutional executive action” by Obama. He hasn’t moved back every Obama executive action yet, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a program that shields children of illegal immigrants from deportation.

Trump did nominate 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the seat of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. During the campaign, Trump pledged to begin the process of replacing Scalia with a constitutionalist.

On Jan. 25, Trump signed a series of executive orders regarding immigration, his signature issue during the campaign. One order called for “immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border, monitored and supported by adequate personnel so as to prevent illegal immigration, drug and human trafficking, and acts of terrorism.”

He also signed an order scaling back funding for “sanctuary cities,” the term for municipalities that refuse to cooperate with federal officials in enforcing immigration law.

The most controversial Trump initiative has been suspending immigration from seven Middle Eastern countries that have been designated hotbeds for terrorism. The first executive order, issued on Jan. 27, was struck down by a Washington state U.S. district judge, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling.

Trump issued a second executive order that identifies only six countries and clarifies other aspects of the first order regarding visas and dual citizenship. On Thursday, Hawaii became the first state to sue over the revised executive order. The Trump administration said it will continue to defend the original executive order.

Legislative Agenda

Trump promised to promote an economic plan to grow the economy by 4 percent per year, adding 25 million new jobs, according to his 100-day plan. That would include an across-the-board tax cut. Under his plan, the middle-class earners would get a 35 percent tax cut, while the number of tax brackets would be reduced from seven to three. Trump proposed lowering the business tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said tax reform is unlikely before the August recess. However, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday he believed Congress could pass a package by the August deadline.

Trump hasn’t yet pushed a formal proposal to allow Americans to deduct child and elderly care from their taxes.

Meanwhile, Trump administration officials seem open to a border adjustment tax to prevent companies from laying off American workers for overseas tax breaks, then selling their products back into the United States. However, the “End Offshoring Act” named in his plan hasn’t been formally proposed.

Trump’s budget blueprint also addressed other legislative proposals included in the 100-day plan, such as rebuilding the military. The fiscal plan calls for a $54 billion hike in military spending, to be paid for by cuts to discretionary spending and foreign aid.

During his address to a joint session of Congress, Trump also talked about his proposal for a $1 trillion infrastructure program to be funded through federal and private sector money.

The Trump campaign also listed the “Restoring Community Safety Act,” as a legislative goal, to boost resources for federal law enforcement. While a bill hasn’t come forward, Trump took actions on two priorities of the proposal in executive actions.

He issued an executive order directing the attorney general to establish a task force on reducing crime and increasing public safety, and issued another executive order to “strengthen enforcement of federal law to thwart transnational criminal organizations” such as gangs, cartels, and racketeers. (For more from the author of “Trump Halfway to First 100 Days” please click HERE)

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Whistleblowers vs. The State

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Immediately after WikiLeaks released thousands of documents revealing the extent of CIA surveillance and hacking practices, the government was calling for an investigation — not into why the CIA has amassed so much power, but rather, into who exposed their invasive policies.

“A federal criminal investigation is being opened into WikiLeaks’ publication of documents detailing alleged CIA hacking operations, several US officials,” reportedly told CNN.

According to USA Today:

The inquiry, the official said, will seek to determine whether the disclosure represented a breach from the outside or a leak from inside the organization. A separate review will attempt to assess the damage caused by such a disclosure, the official said.

Even Democratic representative Ted Lieu, who has been urging whistleblowers to come forward to expose wrongdoing within the Trump administration, has turned his focus away from what the documents exposed and toward determining how it could have possibly happened.

“I am deeply disturbed by the allegation that the CIA lost its arsenal of hacking tools,” he said while calling for an investigation. “The ramifications could be devastating. I am calling for an immediate congressional investigation. We need to know if the CIA lost control of its hacking tools, who may have those tools, and how do we now protect the privacy of Americans.”

According to Lieu’s statements, the problem isn’t necessarily that the CIA is spying on Americans and invading innocent people’s technology without consent. It’s that the CIA mishandled their spying tools, and in doing so, endangered Americans’ privacy by exposing the tools to presumably ‘bad actors.’ The problem isn’t the corrupt agency violating basic privacy rights, but that they weren’t skillful enough to keep their corruption under wraps.

So goes the familiar whistleblower narrative in the United States. Whistleblowers step forward to expose wrongdoing on the part of government — something the government claims to support — and immediately, establishment institutions and the media bend the conversation away from the wrongdoing in order to focus on the unlawful release of secrets.

Putting aside the fact that, according to popular American mythology breaking the law is a patriotic duty, the government and politicians’ reactions are both hypocritical and habitual.

When Chelsea Manning revealed damning evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, including soldiers directly targeting Reuters news staff, the response was not to investigate who allowed those crimes (in fact, a later Pentagon manual went on to describe instances in which it’s permissible to kill journalists; that version was later retracted after outcry from reporters). Rather, Manning was subject to a military tribunal and issued multiple life sentences, a cruel and unusual punishment reversed only in President Obama’s last days in office amid his attempts to salvage his abysmal human rights, transparency, and whistleblower record.

When Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the NSA’s warrantless mass surveillance of American citizens and millions of others around the world, the government’s response was not to investigate why those programs existed in the first place. Rather, they thrashed and flailed around the world, ordering the plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales to be grounded in the hopes of catching the whistleblower. Congress later passed the deceptive “USA Freedom Act,” which codified continued surveillance.

Edward Snowden remains in exile, and establishment politicians repeatedly call him a traitor for exposing the crimes of his government. Some, including Trump’s CIA Director Mike Pompeo, have called for his execution. Mass surveillance continues, and the president himself is seeking to retain those powers as he condemns former President Obama for allegedly spying on him.

And so on and so forth. The same was true for John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Jeffrey Sterling. The government is exposed for wrongdoing, and rather than prove themselves to be representatives of the people by remedying those transgressions, they point fingers and divert, all the while refusing to relinquish the unjust power any given agency is exposed for having.

Many people are already aware that the government does little to actually serve them (Americans’ trust in political leaders and government, in general, is abysmally low). Rather, government agents and agencies operate to advance and concentrate their own interests and power. This is why penalties against killing government employees are more stringent than killing civilians. It is why stealing from the government is perceived as more outrageous to the State than stealing from a civilian. The government considers “crimes” committed against itself to carry the utmost offense, yet often fails to deliver justice to the people who provide their financial foundation.

s a result, the State does not even try to show remorse for its violative policies, even when they are exposed and splattered across social media for the world to see. Instead, with the help of corporate media, the debate is shifted to whether or not WikiLeaks is a criminal organization, or whether or not Edward Snowden is a traitor.

As White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said of the leaks:

This is the kind of disclosure that undermines our country, our security. This alleged leak should concern every American for its impact on national security. … Anybody who leaks classified information will be held accountable to the maximum extent of the law.

Meanwhile, we’re supposed to accept the government’s investigation of itself, which (surprise!) usually finds little or no wrongdoing on their own behalf and often consolidates and extends the very same power whistleblowers exposed in the first place. (For more from the author of “Whistleblowers vs. The State” please click HERE)

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Border Crossings PLUMMET as Trump Remains Tough on Illegal Immigration

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President Trump’s approach to illegal immigration appears to be working so far, if early numbers are any indication.

A story published Wednesday at the Washington Times highlights Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly’s announcement the same day that, only a month into Trump’s new administration, illegal border crossings are plummeting at an “unprecedented” rate:

All told, 23,589 people were caught trying to enter without permission at the border in February. That was the lowest number for the month in years and a 40 percent drop from the 42,504 caught in January.

In fact, it’s the lowest number for any month dating back at least to 2012, when monthly statistics were first released.

Additionally, the numbers are also surprisingly low for a winter month, when desert border crossings are typically higher than the warmer months. The decrease in overland passage has, however, led to increased prices for black market coyote crossings, according to the same statement.

“The early results show that enforcement matters, deterrence matters, and that comprehensive immigration enforcement can make an impact,” Kelly went on, explaining the numbers drop. He echoed Obama critics’ objections to the previous administration’s laissez faire demeanor on immigration enforcement.

It would appear that enforcing the law while making it know that the law will be enforced actually deters people from breaking it. Who knew?!

The numbers are just from the first few weeks of President Trump’s term, but they serve as a stark rebuke to critics of the Trump’s strong public stance on illegal immigration during and after the campaign.

They also serve to counter the protests of Obama boosters who held up the former president’s deportation stats as evidence of a viable policy to combat illegal immigration.

Sure, he sent millions back; but by failing to effectively communicate anything serious about immigration to his citizens and those that sought to enter the country without consent, he may as well have left out a great welcome mat along the southern border, begging people the world over to disregard our laws and our sovereignty.

If people think they can get away with breaking a law and benefit from it, some (many) are going to do it. It’s that simple. In this specific instance, failing to enforce immigration policy in word perversely encourages people to put their lives and wellbeing at risk to cross a desert, all the while ticking people off and costing people national elections. The law has to be enforced, not only in deed, but in word.

For all the flak that Trump has gotten from the open borders Left about his tough talk on immigration, the numbers just don’t lie. Republican legislators, take note. (For more from the author of “Border Crossings PLUMMET as Trump Remains Tough on Illegal Immigration” please click HERE)

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Mark Levin: There Is Something Horribly Immoral About RINOcare

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Thursday on the radio, Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin gave the rundown on the press conference of Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. (F, 51%), in which Ryan tried to give the hard sell to Americans on the Republican American Health Care Act “reform” plan.

Levin called Ryan’s proposal “repeal in name only.” Or, if you will, “RINOcare,” because the GOP plan keeps the core of Obamacare in place.

Listen:

Levin had a “number of questions” for the speaker, questions that so far remain unanswered.

“Now, here’s my question Mr. Ryan,” Levin said. “How much will the average American’s deduction go up, or down?”

Further, Levin asked, how much will the federal government be spending on subsidies for certain individuals? Will individuals be able to see the doctors they want? The specialists they need? Will individuals be able to go to the hospital of their choice? Will they be able to get the medicines they need to get?

At the end of the day, the problem with RINOcare, Levin explained, is it embraces the Left’s assumption that government involvement is needed to make health insurance affordable. It embraces progressivism; it embraces centralization.

“Republicans have blown it,” Levin said. “There is something horribly immoral about RINOcare.” (For more from the author of “Mark Levin: There Is Something Horribly Immoral About RINOcare” please click HERE)

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Air Force Says Words Like ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’ Could Be Offensive

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The Air Force fears that words like boy, girl, colonial and blacklist might offend people, according to an email sent to Airmen at Joint Base San Antonio.

An outraged Airman sent me a copy of the email — as evidence the military is still infected with Obama-era political correctness. The email included an attachment that listed a number of words and phrases that might be construed as offensive.

Now, to be fair there were some legitimately offensive and racially charged words and phrases on the list. But also included on the list were the words boy and girl.

The email was written by a senior Air Force leader and was sent to an untold number of personnel at Lackland Air Force Base. Airmen were advised to study a list of words and phrases that “may be construed offensive.” (Read more from “Air Force Says Words Like ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’ Could Be Offensive” HERE)

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