Month: June 2019

Is there something new happening within the border surge? The American Mirror has a Border Patrol video showing illegal immigrants now towing huge suitcases, along with kids (who might even be rented as entry tickets), writing:

Groups of hundreds of Africans, Haitians and others from Central and South America continue to trudge across the U.S.- Mexico border in record numbers, despite promises from Mexico to help stop the massive migration.

Footage from the Del Rio Sector of the border in Texas shows scores are making their way in mini-caravans, with many arriving well-dressed in designer clothes, toting luggage and backpacks with their children in tow.

 

#USBP Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended 2 large groups of over 100 in 2 days. Total of 3 large groups this fiscal year. More info: https://t.co/sojY5Xy8NN pic.twitter.com/eYGo1sKUO9

— CBP South Texas (@CBPSouthTexas) June 27, 2019

 

These aren’t the desperate people of media lore and sob stories, these are clearly the middle classes of the developing world, bringing their goods with them. We’ve already seen quite a bit of this – in the designer-accessories of Lady Frijoles in her Instagram posts as well as her appalled shock at being served what she haughtily called ‘pig food’ which was basic Mexican beans and tortillas, and in the expensive abandoned strollers of the caravan migrants. The most recent story is that migrants are now emptying out the Texas Western Unions based on the huge amounts of money they have access to and can withdraw out. And with migrants now rolling in from distant Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South America – it’s clear they’ve got money for costly voyages to the U.S. border … to enter with suitcases.

I think there’s too little information about whether the Mexican border efforts to help stave the flow are ineffective, or if these people were already in the pipeline when the Mexican effort started.

But we can conclude that the threshhold for immigrating to the states has begun to reach the richer classes of would-be illegals, based on word getting out about what a great deal the lower classes in these countries are getting. Better deal, zero-consequences for illegal entry, more migration.

This isn’t a good development. These aren’t poor people. These are the middle classes moving in now based on the largely Democrat Congress’s failure to do anything about asylum system abuse or loopholes in U.S. immigration law. As a result, they’re coming…

Image credit: Montage by Monica Showalter from public domain sources.

Is there something new happening within the border surge? The American Mirror has a Border Patrol video showing illegal immigrants now towing huge suitcases, along with kids (who might even be rented as entry tickets), writing:

Groups of hundreds of Africans, Haitians and others from Central and South America continue to trudge across the U.S.- Mexico border in record numbers, despite promises from Mexico to help stop the massive migration.

Footage from the Del Rio Sector of the border in Texas shows scores are making their way in mini-caravans, with many arriving well-dressed in designer clothes, toting luggage and backpacks with their children in tow.

 

#USBP Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended 2 large groups of over 100 in 2 days. Total of 3 large groups this fiscal year. More info: https://t.co/sojY5Xy8NN pic.twitter.com/eYGo1sKUO9

— CBP South Texas (@CBPSouthTexas) June 27, 2019

 

These aren’t the desperate people of media lore and sob stories, these are clearly the middle classes of the developing world, bringing their goods with them. We’ve already seen quite a bit of this – in the designer-accessories of Lady Frijoles in her Instagram posts as well as her appalled shock at being served what she haughtily called ‘pig food’ which was basic Mexican beans and tortillas, and in the expensive abandoned strollers of the caravan migrants. The most recent story is that migrants are now emptying out the Texas Western Unions based on the huge amounts of money they have access to and can withdraw out. And with migrants now rolling in from distant Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South America – it’s clear they’ve got money for costly voyages to the U.S. border … to enter with suitcases.

I think there’s too little information about whether the Mexican border efforts to help stave the flow are ineffective, or if these people were already in the pipeline when the Mexican effort started.

But we can conclude that the threshhold for immigrating to the states has begun to reach the richer classes of would-be illegals, based on word getting out about what a great deal the lower classes in these countries are getting. Better deal, zero-consequences for illegal entry, more migration.

This isn’t a good development. These aren’t poor people. These are the middle classes moving in now based on the largely Democrat Congress’s failure to do anything about asylum system abuse or loopholes in U.S. immigration law. As a result, they’re coming…

Image credit: Montage by Monica Showalter from public domain sources.

The unprecedented wave of economic sanctions imposed on Iran by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is “on track” to reduce Tehran’s coffers by “$50 billion” in oil revenue alone, the American special representative for the Islamic Republic told reporters on Friday.

Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya quotes the U.S. Department of State (DOS) diplomat Brian Hook as telling reporters in London on Friday:

We will intensify sanctions on Iran until it decides to be a normal state. … We will sanction any illicit purchases of Iranian crude oil. We are on track to deny Iran $50 billion in oil revenue alone. Iran does have a history of using front companies to evade sanctions and enrich the regime and fund its foreign adventurism.

Radio Farda, a component of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), notes that “since the imposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran in 2018, daily oil exports have dropped from more than two million barrels a day to around 300,000.”

In a Bahrain-based interview with Al Arabiya, published on Wednesday, Hook also said Iran’s proxies in the region, including terrorist groups Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas as well as Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, “are experiencing a financial strain they never experienced before” as Iran feels the crunch from the sanctions.

Hook’s comments echoed testimony he gave before a U.S. House panel on June 19. The top diplomat told lawmakers the Trump restrictions are forcing Hezbollah to beg for spare change and place “piggy banks” in stores.

Hook said the sanctions are “working,” noting that it has hindered Iran’s ability to expand its military capabilities and fund terrorist groups.

“Today by nearly every metric the regime and its proxies are weaker than when our pressure began. … Our pressure campaign is working. It is making Iran’s violent and expansionist foreign policy cost prohibitive,” he told the House panel.

The State official did concede that Tehran still poses an asymmetric warfare threat.

“Iran still, even with very little revenue has asymmetric capabilities that terrorists have,” he testified, noting that Tehran has responded to the sanctions with violence.

Hook pointed out that Tehran pays for 75 percent (about $700 million) of Hezbollah’s budget every year. Nevertheless, he said the U.S. has been able to reduce Iran’s ability to fund terror. Iran and Hezbollah maintain a substantial presence in the United States’ backyard, Latin America.

Iran has routinely gloated about its ability to dodge U.S. sanctions, particularly on its oil exports, saying the United States is unable to prevent the Islamic Republic from selling its oil.

President Trump took the United States out of the controversial 2015 Iran nuclear deal, arguing that the pact was not tough enough on the Islamic Republic. The Trump administration reimposed the sanctions suspended under the accord as part of an unprecedented wave of economic restrictions imposed on Iran’s energy, banking, and shipping sectors, among others.

U.S.-Iran tensions have intensified amid the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign. The tense relationship reached a boiling point when Iran shot down an American drone last week. In the wake of the incident, President Trump imposed new sanctions on Iran, including the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Thursday’s Democrat presidential debate showcased a “California credo” that has wrought “Road Warrior” conditions in parts of the Golden State, remarked Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University.

Hanson offered his comments on Thursday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host John Hayward.

Hanson described California as “America’s first Third-World state” in a June-published column at National Review Online:

Third World symptomologies are predictably corrupt government, unequal or nonexistent applicability of the law, two rather than three classes, and the return of medieval diseases. Third World nations suffer from high taxes and poor social services, premodern infrastructure and utilities, poor transportation, tribalism, gangs, and lack of security.

Another chief characteristic of a Third World society is the official denial of all of the above, and a vindictive, almost hysterical state response to anyone who points out those obvious tragedies. Another is massive out-migration. Residents prefer almost any country other than their own. Think Somalia, Venezuela, Cuba, Libya, or Guatemala.

“California, I think, might be our first third world state, depending on where you go in California,” said Hanson.

LISTEN:

Hanson reflected on changes in California he has observed across his lifetime residency in the coastal state.

“I used to mow lawns in Palo Alto when I was a graduate student,” recalled Hanson, “and I never saw people defecate on the street as I have on University Avenue. When I was there, I never saw the types of warnings about hepatitis A or tuberculosis. My spouse teaches at community college, and she’s had two warnings that students in her class have tuberculosis. I don’t remember that growing up in California.”

Hanson added, “I rode a bike not too long ago and I was bitten, and I don’t remember all the dogs on my venue — I live in southwest Fresno County — having no licenses and no vaccinations, and the owners don’t speak English. That’s something that didn’t occur. We had large numbers of people from Mexico, but they came here legally. They spoke English. They were assimilated and integrated. So in a lot of ways we’re going backwards, and yet that’s called progress. I don’t see it as progress.”

A deteriorating quality of life resulting from poor governance has driven an exodus of millions of Californians to other states, noted Hanson.

“We have the highest income tax rates,” said Hanson of California. “We have the highest gas tax rates. We have among the highest sales tax. Our schools [and] our infrastructure is in the bottom ten percent. I don’t remember one out of every three people being admitted to a hospital suffering from diabetes in California. When I was growing up we didn’t have two or three dialysis clinics in every single little town. We have an epidemic of health problems and yet the money to address that is such that we can’t spend it on infrastructure.”

As Californians flee profligate politicians’ parasitism to other states, California’s Democrat-run state government reacts with amplified taxation and control, explained Hanson. About 115,000 Californians supply about half of the state’s income tax revenues, he added, with approximately five to six million Californians having left the state in recent years.

Hanson described Democrats’ prerogative of “diversity” as increasing social fragmentation in California. “When you have 27 percent of the state that was not born in the United States, it’s not necessarily ‘diversity is our strength,’” he commented. “The strength of the country is unity, and it’s very hard to have unity if [immigrants] are getting an opposite message that your host country that accepted everybody is somehow racist, sexist, nativist, homophobic – you name it — and owes the immigrant something. We’ve reversed the traditional calculus that makes the melting pot work. I’m not optimistic.”

California’s politicians are disconnected and contemptuous of those they rule, stated Hanson.

“If I tell them that the high school I used to go has metal detectors and you can get killed there, they don’t want to talk about it,” said Hanson of California’s political and social elites. “They do not want to discuss unionization [or] the curriculum. They do not want to discuss vouchers or charter schools because their kids are all in prep schools in the Bay Area.”

Hanson went on, “When I hear somebody like Nancy Pelosi or Gavin Newsom or Dianne Feinstein or any of those Bay Area politicians lecture me on being illiberal, and all the things that they think are great for California, I know that they’re not telling the truth because they never put their kids in public schools. I put all three of mine [in public schools]. They live behind walls. They don’t want to be around the other. They don’t want to associate with them unless they’re maids or gardeners. They don’t live with them. They don’t go to PTA with them. They don’t work side-to-side with them. They don’t treat them as equal. Yet in a weird psychological mechanism, they blast this middle class — the deplorables, the bitter clingers, the irredeemables — as racists, or white supremacists, or whatever, and these people have had enough and they’re leaving.”

“A lot of middle-class Mexican-American people are getting really angry [and] leaving,” added Hanson. They don’t like being patronized.”

Mansour and Hanson discussed the latest Democrat presidential debate. “I was watching the Democratic debate tonight, and what you hear up on that stage is pretty much the California credo.”

“People are leaving California to get away from the craziness,” noted Mansour. “It starts out here and moves its way east. We are the petri dish in California. We’re like the Democratic Party’s petri dish. What we’re hearing in that 2020 debate among the Democrats is basically the California agenda, the Californization of the entire Democratic Party: free health care for illegal aliens, totally open borders, completely decriminalized immigration, green politics run amok, high taxes, confiscatory gun laws, did I miss anything? This is the agenda they want for the whole country.”

“Not only do they like private jets, they have no care what the 99 freeway is like between Delano and Visalia because they’ve never been on it,” said Hanson of California’s Democrat leadership. “If they would go over there tonight they would see that there are only two lanes in each direction. It’s unchanged from 1960, and it’s Road Warrior. It’s deadly. It’s the most deadly highway in the United Sates per mile driven, and that’s in California. It could be easily solved, but their solution for that is high-speed rail. That’s because they’re not conversant with what most people’s lives are like, and you saw that in the debate with this progressive doctrine.”

Hanson concluded, “The Democratic Party in California is a party of the very, very rich and the very, very poor. They romanticize the poor that are never around, and they despise the middle class. They despise the consumer-capitalist caste of the middle class. They despise their supposed lack of culture, and it’s really a weird group of progressive elites that we’ve created in the state.”

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.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.