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defense & war international affairs subsidy

Paid Invaders

“The United States is bankrolling its own ‘invasion,’” declares an Epoch Times article, “by funding the United Nations and its partners, which, in turn, give hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and aid to migrants who eventually cross the U.S. southern border illegally.”

Though it’s called “cash in envelopes” in the biz, actual payments to these immigrants on the road north from Ecuador usually take the form of debit cards, to the tune of $800 per month. This is funded partially from U.S. taxpayers through the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nation’s mass migration arm. Last year, courtesy of Biden Administration enthusiasm, the U.S. threw $1.3 billion at the IOM.

It doesn’t stop there. “The U.N.-orchestrated Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan update for 2024 calls for distributing $1.6 billion in 17 Latin American and Caribbean countries with the help of 248 partner agencies, which are also receiving U.S. grants.”

And it is not just the generous payments to individual trekkers northward. NGOs and foreign governments, in addition to the U.S. taxpayers, have organized help through every step of the long march. There is a break in the road, in Panama, where one must navigate  a jungle, or else go by sea. Quite a few organizations are making this leg of the journey doable for many.

And some wonder if the Chinese government isn’t supporting the massive surge — more than 50 times as many Chinese illegally crossing into the U.S. last year than just two years earlier.

Which is where the whole issue becomes scary.

Anthropologist Brett Weinstein — discussed here before for his ordeal at Evergreen University a few years ago — recently went down to Panama to see for himself what was going on. He calls the migrant hordes an invasion. He observed that the Chinese émigrés have separate housing, and exhibit radically different attitudes — and more wealth — than your standard economic migrant worker.

If the obvious danger doesn’t bother Americans … perhaps the fact that they are paying for it might?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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government transparency national politics & policies

Full Frontal Negotiations

Last week’s political circus reached a new level of Big Top.

Or three rings, as President Donald Trump hosted two Democratic leaders in the White House, debating border security and government shutdown — in public. House Minority Leader, soon-​to-​be Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D‑N.Y.) were somewhat uncomfortable with Donald Trump’s decision to hash out their differences in front of the cameras and the American people.

It was quite the comedy. Yet Vice President Mike Pence all but snored. While many pundits once again expressed their frustrations with a lack of solemn decorum from Trump, Pence provided not solemnity but somnolence.

The idea of government negotiations being done out in the open isn’t new. Transparency is good, if rarely practiced. But it did not take long for Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer to express alarm at this foray into Reality TV. 

“We’re here to have a conversation the careful way,” Pelosi informed the president, “so I don’t think we should have a debate in front of the press on this.”

Once upon a time, Dems promised transparency. Barack Obama campaigned on negotiating health care reform on C‑SPAN — only to renege on that pledge when the negotiations got going.

In olden days, Democrat President Grover Cleveland practiced political transparency when he was governor of New York (1883 – 1885), pointedly leaving the door to his office open whenever discussing any subject whatsoever with anyone.*

And let’s tip the hat to Mike Pence. Ridiculed when it came out that he would not meet in private with any woman not his wife, upon the arrival of #MeToo and the Kavanaugh hearings, Pence appeared genius.

If a sleepy one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* Cleveland was not so transparent when, during a crisis in his second presidency, he secretly had his jaw operated upon in a boat in international waters.

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