Native born Americans have continued lagging behind foreign born workers in the United States’ workforce over the last decade, federal data finds.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data obtained by the Wall Street Journal reveals that while the foreign born workforce in the U.S. economy hits the highest level since 1996 because of the country’s mass legal immigration policy, foreign born workers also are far exceeding native born Americans in terms of labor market growth.
Over the last 10 years, the number of foreign born workers who entered the labor market increased 17.2 percent. At the same time, the number of native born Americans who entered the labor market increased by less than three percent. This indicates that in the last decade, the foreign born workforce in the U.S. economy grew more than six times the rate of the native born workforce.
As Breitbart News reported, legal immigration levels, where 1.2 million mostly low-skilled legal immigrants and hundreds of thousands of foreign visa workers are admitted to the country annually, have driven the number of foreign born workers in the U.S. to its highest level in more than two decades.
Today, foreign born workers make up 17.5 percent of the U.S. workforce and remain undercutting the wages of America’s native born working and middle class.
In 2018, foreign-born workers were cheaper to hire for employers, earning a median weekly salary of less than $760. At the same time, native born American workers’ median weekly salary was $910. The data, though, found that while native-born Americans’ wages have been largely stagnant, foreign-born workers have seen their wages rise.
Though there continue to be nearly 12 million Americans who want a full-time job but are unemployed, underemployed, or out of the labor force entirely, the U.S. has continued admitting more than a million legal immigrants a year to compete for working and middle class jobs against these sidelined Americans.
Extensive research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota reveals that the country’s current mass legal immigration system burdens U.S. taxpayers and America’s working and middle class while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth every year to major employers and newly arrived immigrants. Similarly, research has revealed how Americans’ wages are crushed by the country’s high immigration levels.
For every one-percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupations, their weekly wages are cut by about 0.5 percent, Camarota finds. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.75 percent since 17.5 percent of the workforce is foreign born.
In a state like Florida, where immigrants make up about 25.4 percent of the labor force, American workers have their weekly wages reduced by about 12.5 percent. In California, where immigrants make up 34 percent of the labor force, American workers’ weekly wages are reduced by potentially 17 percent.
Likewise, every one-percent increase in the immigrant portion of low-skilled U.S. occupations reduces wages by about 0.8 percent. Should 15 percent of low-skilled jobs be held by foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of native-born American workers by perhaps 12 percent.
At current legal immigration rates, about one-in-six U.S. residents will have been born outside of the country by 2060, the Census Bureau has found. The foreign-born population in the U.S. is expected to reach 69 million in the next four decades — a boon to Wall Street investors, real estate developers, and big business executives who increasingly profit from more consumers and cheaper workers.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Dr. Alveda King, director of Priests for Life’s Civil Rights for the Unborn project and the niece of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., told Breitbart News that the recently passed pro-life laws in states like Georgia and Alabama seek to grant “civil rights” to babies in the womb and protect women, not punish them.
King offered her remarks on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with Breitbart Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour.
LISTEN:
Mansour opened the interview by reflecting on how Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail could be read today in response to pro-life conservatives who are concerned that Alabama’s recently passed Human Life Protection Act could harm Republicans in the 2020 election.
“I hope it isn’t presumptuous of me for saying this, but when I was hearing people saying, ‘This is untimely and this is unwise,’ the first thing that came to my mind was your uncle’s famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Mansour said. “He makes a brilliant argument in that letter that the time to fight against injustice is always right now.”
King agreed and pointed to another famous quote from her uncle: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
“America is right to be concerned,” King said of the abortion debate around the nation, but she argued that the pro-life laws in states like Alabama and George “won’t hurt” Republicans in 2020.
“Now, people are saying, ‘They’re going to put women in jail.’ Absolutely not.,” King said. “But doctors who insist on continuing to abort little people in the womb will have to answer, because the doctors themselves medically know that that is a person. That is a human being. Ultrasound shows that to all of us, now, and science has caught up with us.”
King said, “In most instances, mothers have been either coerced — sometimes even [in the case of] rape or incest — and are forced into abortions, or at least confused and under stress and pressure. So we know we want to protect the baby and the mother.”
Alabama’s new abortion law “is not to punish women,” stated King, “but it is to stop and give the baby civil rights. So women won’t be hauled off to jail.”
King reflected on her own experiences with abortion in describing the pro-life movement’s commitment to protecting children and not punishing mothers.
“I had abortions years ago,” said King, “and I said, ‘If you really start jumping on the women, you’ll probably want to come after me, but he Lord has forgiven me.’ We’re not going on a headhunt for women with the law in Alabama.”
King affirmed that these pro-life laws are aimed at “making sure women and babies are protected.” But they are also about justice, she said.
“It’s a push for justice, not a rush for justice, because it’s been a long path from 1973 until now,” she said, referring to the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision on abortion.
“It’s a push for justice [and] a call for justice, not just for babies in the womb, but the mothers have been deceived, as well. I know I was deceived,” said King. “Now it’s causing the courts to have to reexamine some very bad laws.”
“Is the only objective overturn Roe v. Wade?” asked King. “No. The objective is to give the babies civil rights, to protect and to help the mothers, and then to strengthen the family. That is the goal. It’s not too harsh. It’s not too much. It’s not too extreme.”
King went on, “People say, ‘Well, what about rape?’ Well, two wrongs don’t make a right. You kill an innocent person and do further harm the woman, but you don’t deal with the person that did it. All of that has to be examined.”
“You need a compassionate community while all of this is going on. You need to be able to serve these mothers [and] serve these babies. If they actually cannot be ready to raise that child, then put that child into adoptive situations that are not going to abuse the children in these horrendous foster home kind of scenarios,” King said. “All of that has to be regulated, but you have to have a compassionate community that is ready to answer and to help.”
King explained how her own experiences with abortion left an indelible mark on her life.
“I had abortions in the 1970s,” recalled King. “One was coerced and done by my doctor — a D&C in the office — when abortion was still illegal. I had had a live birth in 1970. I became pregnant a little later and went back to ask for a pregnancy test, and he said, ‘You don’t need it, let’s see.’ Instead of doing the pregnancy test, he did a D&C in his office. He was playing God. We found out later he was affiliated with Planned Parenthood.”
King warned of the physical harm abortion procedures can cause women and described her own post-abortion medical complications.
“In 1973, that doctor sent me to Planned Parenthood,” King said. “They had changed their name from Birth Control League to Planned Parenthood, and [he said,] ‘They’ll be your friends. Don’t talk to the people in your church or your family. Just talk to them. They’ll tell you what to do.’ I tried a birth control method that left me vulnerable to problems with my breasts and my cervix.”
“I got pregnant again in ’73 and was kind of pressured to have an abortion, and so that was my second abortion, right after Roe v. Wade became legal,” King said. “Then I had a miscarriage later because of the damage done to my body.”
King shared, “Blessedly, in mid-70s, my grandfather who had told my mother when I was in my mother’s womb in 1950, she wanted to do a procedure for an exploration, which would have been a D&C to end my life. He said, ‘No, I saw her in a dream three years ago, and she has bright skin and bright red hair. She’s going to bless many people.’ So when I was about to get another abortion in the mid-1970s, I mentioned it to my granddaddy and he said, ‘You can’t abort that baby. That’s my great-grandchild.’ So these are the things I went through personally.”
“How can I think that abortion is wrong when I have actually had them?” asked King. “Because the abortions hurt me, and I don’t want to see other women hurt, and I don’t want to see other babies die.”
King touched on the pushback against the Georgia and Alabama laws coming from the Hollywood left.
“Many people in Hollywood are not shouting out the abortions they’re glad they had. For the ones who are, I would even dare to suggest that they have suppressed that pain so deeply that they don’t know it’s there.”
Mansour said, “Many in Planned Parenthood will say, ‘[It’s] because of the pro-life movement that people feel grief. If the pro-lifers weren’t there, they wouldn’t feel any grief.’”
“That’s not true. They hide it,” King replied, explaining that she spent years avoiding thinking about her own abortions. “When I did [think about them], unfortunately I would go have a drink of bourbon. I don’t drink anything like that now, except maybe the holidays, a nice kosher glass of wine or something like that. But before ’83, I couldn’t sleep without the alcohol.”
Elements of the “pro-choice” movement are “anti-life,” King said.
“They say pro-choice, but they’re anti-life and they’re anti-birth — they have been very clever for far too long, but thankfully there are those of us — we are not mean-spirited, we are not judgmental, we’re not accusing anybody — we just want to see people heal. That’s what ‘anti-abortion’ [and] ‘pro-life’ means.”
Opponents of abortion must be compassionate in engaging their detractors, King advised. She described the national consensus on abortion as changing.
“As we continue to assure and make opportunities for those who are vulnerable to talk without guilt or condemnation, [we must] have help available,” advised King. “So we are having these conversations. Many people who said they were totally pro-choice — which meant they were supporting abortion in every state of the life of baby in the womb and maybe even when it came out — are beginning to reverse that and change a little bit.”
King went on, “A lot of these post-abortive mothers are feeling a little safer discussing their experiences. So our fathers regret lost fatherhood. There are grandparents who are harmed. Society is harmed. Even down to the economy. Social security — the reason it’s at risk is because there are not enough people because many of them have been either aborted or put into jail and not working.”
“Too much damage has been done to our people here in America, and that’s from the womb to the tomb,” she said.
King implored pregnant women considering abortions to choose life: “We can love both of you. Neither you nor your baby has to lose your lives.”
King also responded to a hypothetical situation in which a 12-year-old girl might find herself pregnant from a rape or incest.
“I have to remind the person that you’ve got two innocent people here,” King said. “That 12-year-old is innocent. The baby in her womb is innocent. Two wrongs cannot make a right. If the baby is aborted, that will not heal the rape of the mother of that child. Also, in most cases, the perpetrator gets way when the abortion is done, because there’s no evidence of who the perpetrator was, either. So you’ve got two innocent people who’ve been terribly harmed, that’s the the 12-year-old girl and the child in her womb.”
King added, “If she’s unable to be that [child’s] mother — and she should not be forced nor required to — that child should have a safe adoption and that young mother should be allowed to heal, because we know there’s genuine scientific evidence that abortion harms the body of the mother. If an abortion is forced, it can deal with her mammary system, her reproductive health, her mental health and all of that.”
King concluded, “Two wrongs do not make a right. The death of the baby will not heal the wounds of the mother. We want to say there are two patients, here. There are two victims, here: the mother and the baby. The baby is a person, as well, an innocent person. … It’s two human beings.”
Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 weeknights from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern or 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific.
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) relationship with the former Soviet Union is not a revelation, especially including the fact that he and his wife Jane honeymooned there. But hours of video footage Politico viewed and reported on shows the presidential candidate’s connection to Russia has continued for more than 30 years.
Sanders’ recorded journey begins in 1988 when he and Jane traveled to the city of Yaroslavl.
Politico reported:
The mood is festive as the two bestow the items: A Beatles album, a red “Bernie for Burlington” button, “delicious Vermont candy” and a tape of tunes Sanders recorded himself with fellow artists from Vermont, among other goodies.
“I have met many fine mayors in the United States,” Sanders says, “but I want to say that one of the nicest mayors I’ve ever met is the mayor of Yaroslavl.”
At another point,a member of Sanders’ delegationhands a Russian woman a small American flag. “If you’re wondering what’s wrong with capitalism, it’s made in Hong Kong,” he jokes. “Sorry about that.”
Some of the footage has already gone viral after someone who works at Vermont’s Chittenden County Channel 17 posted a few minutes of video online.
“The clip featured a shirtless Sanders and other Americans singing ‘This Land Is Your Land’ to their hosts after relaxing in a sauna. A few minutes later, Sanders doled out the gifts to his Russian friends with a towel wrapped around his waist,” Politico reported.
The video footage also shows Bernie sitting with his U.S. delegation at a table beneath a portrait of Vladimir Lenin, a ruthless dictator responsible for the deaths of millions of his people.
Politico reported Sanders’ goal was to develop a “sister city” relationship between Burlington, Vermont, where he was mayor, and Yarolavl, a city on the edge of the Volga River.
“By encouraging citizen-to-citizen exchanges — of young people, artists and musicians, business people, public officials, and just plain ordinary citizens,” Sanders said in a speech, “we can break down the barriers and stereotypes which exist between the Soviet Union and the United States.”
“The video also paints a fuller picture of why Sanders ventured to the land of America’s No. 1 enemy in the midst of the Cold War, the anti-war idealism that fueled his journey, and what he found when he got there,” Politico reported, which said Sanders was worried about the nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia.
The news outlet reported the video includes images of “shrines to Lenin” and shows scenes of the poverty in Russia, including people waiting in food lines and shabby housing.
Over the years, the exchange program has included “mayors, business people, firefighters, jazz musicians, youth orchestras, mural painters, high school students, medical students, nurses, librarians, and the Yaroslavl Torpedoes ice hockey team,” according to Burlington’s city government.”
“A delegation traveled there as recently as 2016,” according to Politico.
You can view videos of Sanders’ local television programs here.
On Sunday, Chick-fil-A was the victim of another left-stream media smear over its Christian convictions. Outsports, a propaganda blog for all things LGBTQ, demeaned Chick-fil-A as "the nation’s favorite purveyors of fast food chicken and faith-based discrimination" for donating money to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
In April President Donald Trump tweeted out a stunning report by former CIA analyst Larry Johnson on OANN. Johnson accused the United Kingdom of helping the Obama administration spy on the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.
Trump tweeted this out:
“Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson accuses United Kingdom Intelligence of helping Obama Administration Spy on the 2016 Trump Presidential Campaign.” @OANN WOW! It is now just a question of time before the truth comes out, and when it does, it will be a beauty!
This is exactly what The Gateway Pundit reported back in May 2018………
As Joe Hoft at The Gateway Pundit reported —- There is solid evidence that proves a foreign government meddled in the 2016 US Election. But that government was the UK, not Russia!
After more than two years of the Mueller investigation, millions of dollars and the mainstream media’s relentless attack on President Trump, what do we have? Nothing really.
President Trump tweeted in February 2018 that if the goal of Russia was to create discord in the US then they have succeeded. “They are laughing their asses off in Moscow. Get smart America!”
If it was the GOAL of Russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the U.S. then, with all of the Committee Hearings, Investigations and Party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They are laughing their asses off in Moscow. Get smart America!
Since this tweet, the Russia fairy tale has fallen apart! Corrupt Mueller and his team of conflicted, biased and corrupt and angry Democrat investigators and attorneys have found nothing related to their target, President Trump, and now their indictments are unraveling.
As the Russia meddling into the 2016 US election unwinds, the meddling by the UK, is becoming more and more apparent.
Christopher Steel
We’ve known for over a year that the Clinton campaign and the FBI worked with former UK MI6 spy Christopher Steele, who authored a dossier of salacious statements about President Trump. Steele was reportedly paid by Fusion GPS for the document.
Steele was paid $168,000 by Glenn Simpson’s company Fusion GPS for the series of memos containing information that was selectively briefed to journalists approved by Simpson and used by the FBI.
The Steele dossier was never verified and is suspected of being a total fiction. This act alone by a spy from the UK is troubling enough, but that is not it.
Joseph Mifsud
George Papadopoulos, the lower level campaign worker for the Trump campaign, appears to have been targeted by three individuals with ties to British and/or U.S. Intelligence: Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer and Stefan Halper.
Mifsud and Papadopoulos obtained positions at an organization named the Centre for International Energy and Natural Resources Law & Security. Papadopoulos was a ‘nobody’ and the Centre sketchy at best. Mifsud vanished in early November 2017, shortly after Papadopoulos was in the news and indicted. His whereabouts are still unknown.
Although the common story is that Mifsud is a Russian Agent, many ties seem to lead [him] back to UK Intelligence. Julian Assange put out a Twitter Thread noting the connection between Mifsud and UK Intelligence.
Alexander Downer
Although, not a Brit, Alexander Downer is the Australian individual who apparently overheard Papadopoulos talk about Trump and Russia in a bar which alerted the FBI to the story and their eventual spy program on Trump. This story has been refuted for months.
The Papadopoulos/Downer meeting has been portrayed as a chance encounter in a bar. That does not appear to be the case….Downer has direct ties to UK Intelligence firm Hakluyt where he served on the Advisory Board from 2008-2014.
Shortly after the Papadopoulos and Downer chance encounter, Peter Strzok was in London per texts released by the FBI. “Strzok texts suggest he was in London on August 3, 2016.” The corrupt FBI’s investigation into Trump officially started a few days earlier.
Stefan Halper
One individual all over the Internet and social media by the name of Stefan Halper has been identified as a potential FBI spy into the Trump campaign. (Note that some believe that Obama may have had more than one spy on the Trump campaign). The most intriguing individual related to Papadopoulos is Halper.
My guess is Papadopoulos never knew what hit him. A young man, suddenly thrust into a position beyond his experience, Papadopoulos made for an easy intelligence target.
Carter Page almost certainly discussed the just completed Moscow trip with his host, Stefan Halper, during the London symposium.
It’s now being reported that Devin Nunes has learned the identity of a “top secret intelligence source” that was part of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Investigation.
I think there’s a decent chance that source is Stefan Halper.
Halper had contact with both Papadopulos and Carter Page. Halper has connections to UK Intelligence and US Intelligence. Halper met with Carter Page just days after Page’s Moscow trip.
Other Internet sleuths tied Halper to the Obama team of crooks. Halper was paid more than $400,000 in 2016 for his efforts to set Papadopulos up and get him to sing to the Australia diplomat about Hillary’s emails being held by Russia. Halper and others planted this information on Papadopulos before he shared this with the Aussie in a drunken London pub discussion.
Additional research shows that Halper was a classmate of impeached President Bill Clinton. Halper apparently knew Bill Clinton well in their days at Oxford. He later worked as an Advisor to the Clinton Administration.
His sudden resignation – he informed staff just hours before making this decision public – prompted speculation that it might be related to British concerns over shared intelligence with the US in the wake of Donald Trump becoming president.
But the GCHQ press release stressed his decision was exclusively for family reasons. As well as his ill wife, Hannigan has two elderly parents to look after. He will remain in post until a successor is appointed.
It’s still not known, what, if any connection to the Trump – Russia collusion fantasy, Hannigan may have had.
In May 2018 reporter Paul Sperry posted more evidence of the UK was meddling in the 2016 election.
The British Deep State feared Donald Trump like they feared Brexit.
#SpyGate was a transatlantic plot to stop Trump. The British Deep State feared Trump like they feared Brexit. They were part of the same movement, and both posed a threat to the political ruling class on both sides of the pond.https://t.co/y0ctgsrmts
And all of the Deep State hacks took turns traveling to the UK during the election “for business.”
Priestap, Strzok, Page, McCabe & Michael Gaeta (FBI agent from Rome) all traveled to London during the campaign…Brennan also made trips…Congressional oversight demands a full accounting of who they met with, and whether British intelligence also spied on Page,other US citizens
Based on information to date, the UK had more to do with interfering with the US 2016 Presidential election than Russia. The Obama team and the Clinton campaign spied on the Trump Administration and used the entire government apparatus, including the CIA, FBI, the DOJ and others, to do so. It appears, they also had help from the UK.
These crooks were willing to risk World War III with Russia rather than face a Trump Presidency. This all leads to the question – What is so damn damning that these many individuals would go to such brazen lengths to remove President Trump from office?
On Friday Al-Jazeera’s AJ+ Arabic channel posted a shocking anti-Semitic video which called into question the “truth of the Holocaust.”
The actress in the video Muna Hawwa argues that Israel was the biggest winner from the Holocaust. Hawwa also claims that the number of Jewish Holocaust victims remains “one of the most prominent historical debates to this day.”
Wonder what happened in those years… Islamic extremist attacks in Europe increased 725% between 2007 and 2017. Read the @CSIS_Threats report on European terrorism: https://t.co/BaIUW98rFd pic.twitter.com/1afnxxAA4w — CSIS (@CSIS) May 19, 2019
The Heritage Foundation works every day to build a free and prosperous nation where all Americans have the opportunity to achieve their version of the American dream, reaching their full potential and creating the financial security to provide for themselves, their families, and their communities.
The federal budget is at the
core of our political system. Everything the federal government does, from
taxing, to regulating, to providing services, to protecting our very freedoms,
it does through the federal budget.
Despite promises to the
contrary, however, Congress continues to pass bills that spend more than the
government takes in each year, adding trillions of dollars of debt and putting
our entire economy in peril. This constant financial mismanagement is
bankrupting the country and robbing future generations of Americans to pay for
it.
This is why The Heritage Foundation produces the “Blueprint for Balance“: to demonstrate to the American people and our elected leaders an approach to the federal budget that reins in out-of-control spending, ensures that the government is funding its constitutionally mandated duties, and provides an environment where our prosperity as individuals and as a country grows.
In the blueprint, Heritage scholars dig deep into the federal budget to offer detailed solutions to reduce federal spending and eventually bring the annual budget into balance. They identify where there is waste, duplication of services, and fraud. They separate proper functions of the federal government, such as providing for our national defense and national infrastructure, from those areas where government has overstepped its bounds.
Our nation thrives most when
the federal government is focused on core national priorities while states and
localities are empowered to address issues that are closest to the people who
will be affected by those policies.
Additionally, the tax reform
and deregulation of the past few years have brought tremendous economic
gains—especially for lower-income Americans. Unemployment is the lowest it has
been in 50 years, and wages for the lowest-income workers are growing faster
than wages of any other level.
The blueprint paves the way to cement these successful policies to ensure that all Americans, including lower-wage workers, young people, women, minorities, and individuals with disabilities, will continue to share in the prosperity of a healthy economy.
Recognizing that America
will be strong only if she is on financially sound footing, our experts
recommend important reforms to the biggest government programs in the budget,
from Social Security to health care, to protect the most vulnerable, deliver
better services at lower cost, and return control of personal decisions from
the Washington bureaucracy to the American people.
Finally, we believe that
Washington should work as the rest of us do: When our income goes up, our
spending can too, and when our income shrinks, we have to make do with less.
The total amount the federal
government spends in a given year should be directly linked by law to a fixed
percentage of the nation’s wealth: our gross domestic product. The only way the
government could spend more is if the economy grew faster than government
spending over the long run.
Such a rule should be smart,
allowing for deficits during an economic downturn and ensuring that the
government has to cut back on spending when the private sector is strong.
These and many other ideas for bringing fiscal restraint to Washington are presented in great detail in this book. “Blueprint for Balance” presents Heritage’s extensive research that, when implemented, can lead to a freer, more prosperous America with opportunity for all.
It’s not too late to save
the incredible promise that is America, but first, we have to get our leaders
to make economic growth, job creation, and an end to runaway spending and debt
their highest priorities.
The name of a Navy veteran may be cleared after he was convicted, fined, and imprisoned for digging ponds in a wooded area near his Montana home, to supply water in case of fire.
The Supreme Court has vacated a lower court ruling against Joe Robertson, who was sent to federal prison and ordered to pay $130,000 in restitution through deductions from his Social Security checks.
Any definitive legal victory for Robertson would be posthumous, since he died March 18 at age 80.
But his lawyers describe the Supreme Court’s action as a “big win” for Robertson’s widow, Carrie, who plans to carry on the fight.
President Barack Obama’s Justice Department had prosecuted Robertson for digging in “navigable waters” without a permit, in violation of the Clean Water Act.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling against Robertson in November 2017 and denied him a rehearing in July 2018.
The Navy veteran’s initial trial at the district court level resulted in a hung jury and a mistrial. He then was convicted after a second district court trial.
Robertson was 78 when he was sentenced in 2016; he completed his 18 months behind bars in late 2017. At the time of his death, he was supposed to be on parole for another 20 months.
In November, he had petitioned the Supreme Court to review his case.
Prior to his conviction, Robertson operated a business that supplied water trucks to Montana firefighters. Because he himself resided in a “fire-prone landscape,” he was concerned for his safety and that of his property, according to his petition to the Supreme Court.
In 2013 and 2014, Robertson had dug a series of ponds close to an unnamed channel near his home, to store water in case of fire. The foot-wide, foot-deep channel carried the equivalent of two to three garden hoses of water flow, his petition explains.
Robertson argued that he didn’t violate the Clean Water Act because digging the ponds did not discharge any soil into “navigable waters,” since the water flow in the channel didn’t amount to that. The ponds are more than 40 miles away from “the nearest actual navigable water body,” the Jefferson River, the petition says.
On April 15, the Supreme Court vacated the 9th Circuit ruling in response to Robertson’s petition and said his widow, Carrie, could pursue his case and represent his estate. The high court also ordered the 9th Circuit to determine whether the estate may continue to contest the $130,000 in restitution.
Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit, public interest law firm specializing in property rights, represented Robertson in his legal dispute with federal officials.
Tony Francois, a senior attorney with the firm, told The Daily Signal in an email that if the 9th Circuit decides to leave the fine against Robertson’s estate in place in one form or another, the Supreme Court possibly could review long-standing concerns over how the government applies the Clean Water Act.
Robertson’s petition makes the point that some Supreme Court justices have expressed concern over the “vagueness” attached to the term “navigable waters,” and that the dispute over the veteran’s ponds in Montana “offers an ideal vehicle” to resolve uncertainty over the definition of navigable waters. The petition also suggests that the court could void the term.
“The Supreme Court vacated the 9th Circuit’s decision in Joe’s case because of his death,” Francois told The Daily Signal. “It is the usual practice when a criminal defendant dies before his appeal is final for the federal courts to vacate the conviction and dismiss the indictment, regardless of the merits. There is some disagreement among the lower courts how this applies to restitution orders, including amounts paid prior to death.”
Francois added:
Because of Joe’s death, the Supreme Court ordered the 9th Circuit to consider whether the case is moot. We think this means that the court of appeals will have to consider whether all of his restitution obligation should be abated.
If they decide that to be the case, including return of the amount he paid before he died, then that would likely fully resolve the case and it would likely be moot. Joe’s estate would have no further obligations and would get back what he has paid to date.
If the 9th Circuit decides that any of the restitution remains due, including allowing the government to keep the amount he already paid, then we would likely return to the Supreme Court to ask for a substantive review of his convictions. It seems likely that only in that case would the Supreme Court address the Clean Water Act issues.
Congress initially passed the Clean Water Act in 1948, but lawmakers greatly altered and expanded it into the current form with amendments in 1972.
The law “establishes the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s website.
Under the 1972 amendments, it is illegal to discharge any pollutant from a point source into navigable waters without a permit from the EPA. The Army Corps of Engineers oversees the permitting process and shares enforcement authority with the EPA.
In 2015, the Obama administration implemented its Clean Water Rule, widely known as the Waters of the United States rule or WOTUS rule, which expanded the ability of the EPA and the Corps to regulate bodies of water throughout the country.
The Trump administration has taken steps to withdraw the Obama administration’s rule and replace it with a new one that limits the regulatory reach of federal agencies.
The Daily Signal sought comment for this report from both the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers. Neither agency had responded as of publication time.
Daren Bakst, senior research fellow for agriculture policy at The Heritage Foundation, submitted comments last month to the EPA and the Corps expressing concern that “vague and subjective definitions” attached to the Clean Water Act affect how those agencies enforce the law.
Those imprecise definitions also create great uncertainty for average citizens who must comply with regulations, Bakst said.
Addressing the Trump administration’s proposed rule revising the definition of “waters of the United States,” Bakst wrote:
In 2004, the General Accounting Office (GAO) highlighted the Corps’ inconsistent enforcement across districts and even asserted that definitions were intentionally left vague. If experts within the agencies are unable to agree if a water is a ‘waters of the United States,’ it is unreasonable to think that a lay person will be able to know that a water is a jurisdictional water.
In fact, if definitions are extremely vague and subjective, and enforcement is inconsistent, there is no way for anyone to know whether some waters are jurisdictional because the answers to those questions depend on the subjective whim of whatever government officials have decided to answer the questions …
Bakst told The Daily Signal in an email that the Robertson case “is a clear and horrifying example of how the vagueness problem with the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ is a major problem.”
“This vagueness problem is just one of the many reasons why the EPA and Corps need to develop a new definition of ‘waters of the United States,’” the Heritage research fellow said. “The definition should be clear and objective, and not allow the agencies to make subjective, after-the-fact determinations as to whether a specific water is regulated.”
Although the Robertson case is far from finished, the Pacific Legal Foundation in a blog describes the Supreme Court’s order moving the case back to the 9th Circuit as a “big win” for the veteran’s widow, Carrie.
“The high court’s decision came via summary disposition, which means it did not issue a written opinion,” the blog says. “But clearly the justices felt the 9th Circuit’s decision was erroneous, or they wouldn’t have granted Joe’s petition, or vacated the 9th Circuit’s decision, after his untimely death.”
As a woman who has experienced abortion, I would like to share
the truth of what abortion does and counter the arguments of the pro-abort/pro-choice
community who are so enraged at the new Alabama abortion law, which makes it a
felony for doctors to perform abortions in most circumstances.
Each time I see a woman entering an abortion facility, my
heart breaks because I walked through those doors … twice.
I was scared, confused, and felt I had no other options. I fell for the pro-abort rhetoric that it was my body, my choice, and that I was doing the right thing.
Nobody told me the truth.
Nobody told me there would be a lack of compassion as I laid
on that table … no one held my hand or offered any comfort at all. Instead it
was treated like it was no big deal. It was as if I was going in to have a
splinter removed. The only smile I got
was when I handed over the money.
Nobody told me I would eventually realize what I destroyed
was not tissue or a clump of cells, but my children … or that guilt and shame would follow me for
decades.
Nobody told me that abortion could lead to alcoholism and
drug abuse. I’ve now been sober for twenty years, but for over twenty-five
years, I was a raging alcoholic. Why? Because I had to do something to forget
what I had done and to numb the pain.
Nobody told me that abortion leads to unsavory behavior, such
as promiscuity. I’m embarrassed to say I
reached out everywhere else for love because I could no longer love myself.
Moreover, when I tried to settle down, nobody told me I
would sabotage those relationships. I
had two failed marriages because I couldn’t allow myself to be happy.
Nobody told me that abortion leads to depression. The same alcohol I used to forget the
abortions and numb the pain contributed to my hurting everyone I loved, leaving
me in self-imposed isolation, shrouded in darkness.
I became suicidal and ended up in a psychiatric
hospital. When asked why I wanted to
die, I told the admitting psychiatrist I was already dead inside and just
wanted to finish the job.
Nobody told me abortion results in other life-altering
decisions. I lost the chance of experiencing the miracle of carrying and bearing
a child by convincing a doctor to give me a tubal ligation at the age of 30
because I didn’t deserve to be a mother
Those who claim that not having access to abortion hurts women and also claim that having a choice on continuing a pregnancy is empowering could not be further from the truth in their assertions.
Abortion hurts women.
Not only does it kill an innocent baby, but it also ends the normalcy of
a woman’s life, as indicated in my story as well as the stories of countless
others.
Moreover, as to choice being empowering, that’s just another lie. Empowerment allows a woman to be comfortable in her skin, confident and at peace. Once a woman has an abortion, empowerment slowly slips away, leaving nothing but a gaping wound in her soul only to be backfilled with pain, self-hatred, guilt, shame, and remorse.
