Tag: border

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crime and punishment folly national politics & policies

Don’t Fence Me In?

Joe Biden, border wall, immigration, NIMBY

“The Biden administration on Thursday said it would expand former President Donald Trump’s wall,” informs The Gray Lady, with a stiff upper lip. 

And do it lickety-split: “Biden criticized for waiving 26 laws in Texas to allow border wall construction,” the UK Guardian headlines its report. 

In fiscal 2023, government data shows 245,000 people entered the United States from this Rio Grande Valley sector.

“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated in the federal registry.

“Well, Mexico didn’t pay for the wall,” quipped the American Economic Liberties Project’s Matt Stoller, “Biden did.”

“There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration,” the president had promised to the contrary during the 2020 campaign. Now Sleepy Joe’s administration has so awakened to the need for action on immigration that it argues for fencing off the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Endangered Species Act from getting in the way . . . 

. . . of building that wall. 

Fast!

The New York Times notes “intensifying” complaints coming from “Democratic leaders in New York, Chicago and elsewhere who say the influx is overwhelming their ability to house and feed the migrants.” 

Want a nimble response to the border crisis? 

Instead, we see a NIMBY response — from big-city politicians, as the buses arrive from down south.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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defense & war international affairs

New Red Map

China, map, borders, aggression

“China warns US Has Crossed Red Line” began Newsweek’s headline to a report that the Chinese state-run Global Times threatens a “brewing and imminent storm of lethal consequences for Taiwan” in retribution for the U.S. recently providing $80 million in military assistance to the island nation. 

China claims Taiwan and its inhabitants, desiring their patriotic company so devoutly as to contemplate leveling much of the country in missile strikes, killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of Taiwanese to achieve that glorious “national rejuvenation.”

Of course, when the U.S. provides defensive weapons to protect against just such a murderous military invasion, the Butchers of Beijing holler it is “provocative!”

Speaking of . . . the Chinazis were kind enough last week to remind us that Taiwan is hardly the only land they’ve got their eyes on. 

The Communist Party just drew a new map. 

India noticed first that the CCP’s penmanship pinched Indian territory. Japan objected to China’s claim of its Senkaku Islands (under U.S. military protection). 

Countries bordering the South China Sea — Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam — have long complained of China’s ridiculous nine-dash-line, claiming roughly 90 percent of the Sea and building militarized islands in the exclusive economic zones of other countries. 

In recent weeks, Chinese ships have used water cannons to block Filipino vessels attempting to resupply their countrymen on an island that international courts have ruled belongs to the Philippines. Two Vietnamese fishermen were injured last week in yet another water cannon attack by the Chinese Coast Guard around the disputed Paracel Islands.

Last week, Vietnam and the United States reached agreement on a “comprehensive strategic partnership” — something Vietnam has with only four other countries, one being China. Why? The Vietnamese see it, analysts tell The Washington Post, as “necessary given how aggressively China is flexing its military muscle in the region.”

This isn’t U.S. saber-rattling, it’s China rattling its neighbors. 

The threat of war between China and the United States is real . . . and clearly, not just over Taiwan. The Chinazis marked red lines all over the map. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs national politics & policies

Not Just a Border-Line Case

China, wolves, border, invasion

Should the U.S. Government let soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) enter these United States through the southern border so that they’re in place if and when the Chinese government directs them to undertake sabotage against the United States (perhaps during a Chinese invasion of Taiwan)?

We are not talking about borderline cases of one or two Chinese soldiers a year. The U.S. Border Patrol now acknowledges 347 encounters with Chinese nationals in 2021; 1,987 in 2022; and a whopping 12,533 encounters so far this year!

In a piece for Gatestone Institute, Gordon Chang reports that although some Chinese migrants entering through the southern border are simply “seeking a better life for themselves and their children,” many “are coming to commit acts of sabotage.” These are PLA soldiers.

They can first go to a country like Ecuador, which permits entry without a visa. They can then make their way through jungle before catching a bus to the border. They are often then simply released into the U.S.

Representative Mark Greenn (R-Tenn.) says that he was told by a Border Patrol sector chief that some of the people coming across have “known ties to the PLA.”

Chang quotes war correspondent Michael Yon: “At the Darien Gap, I have seen countless packs of Chinese males of military age, unattached to family groups, and pretending not to understand English. They were all headed to the American border.”

This is consistent with the pattern of Chinese aggression.

So maybe we — and maybe the government whose job is to protect us — should pay attention to this.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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partisanship political challengers

Such Is Today’s Politics

land grab, eminent domain, theft, property, border,

“You do have a problem with a President demanding the federal government go ahead and seize private land and then promising to pardon those who seized the land,” challenged Joe Walsh, the former Illinois congressman running in the Republican Party primaries against Donald Trump. 

“Don’t you?”

Matt Welch, writing in the LA Times, quoted this Walsh tweet (three days after the Walsh2020 campaign announcement) to express alarm about where the GOP is heading. “We are accustomed to some ideological shape-shifting when the White House changes teams,” writes Welch. “But what’s so striking about this week’s slate of immigration-related controversies — including the one that supplanted the land-grab pardon: the administration’s new rules governing potential citizenship for the children of U.S. service people abroad — is that none of it should come as a surprise.”

Because Trump is doing (sorta) what he promised to do. Which includes taking land by eminent domain. 

Before his election, Trump had proclaimed his support for the Kelo decision that signed off on governments nabbing land to give to private developers. At issue now is condemning land to build The Wall — at least an arguably public use. 

While “private property rights used to be foundational to the conservative movement,” Welch bemoans that Trump “didn’t care. And that Republicans cared a hell of a lot less than they claimed to.”

Again, unsurprising. Republican pols did little to nothing for property rights or limited government pre-Trump. So these anti-leftist voters went for someone — anyone? — who could deliver something.

I doubt that candidate Walsh will convince many that he can deliver much of anything.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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land grab, eminent domain, theft, property, border,

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Accountability First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government

Dbl Standard Destruction Co.

Trump, border, wall, build, t-shirt, Donald J. Trump Border Wall Construction Co., Addison Barnes, Oregon

Addison Barnes has just won a court case against Liberty High School of Hillsboro, Oregon. The court ruled that the school acted wrongfully when, early this year, it suspended him for wearing a “disruptive” T-shirt heralding a “Donald J. Trump Border Wall Construction Co.” 

Addison was awarded $25,000 for legal expenses, and the school has apologized to him, sort of, for the suspension.

“I brought this case to stand up for myself and other students who might be afraid to express their right-of-center views,” Addison says. “Everyone knows that if a student wears an anti-Trump shirt to school, the teachers won’t think twice about it. But when I wore a pro-Trump shirt, I got suspended. That’s not right.”

No, it’s not.

The outcome is imperfect. The apology offered by Liberty High does not acknowledge the glaring injustice of the suspension. It simply asserts that the school got the “balancing act” wrong between making students feel welcome and making them feel safe. (Because it is “unsafe” per se for kids to peacefully express political disagreements?) Nor was the teacher who imposed the suspension obliged to apologize personally.

Ideally, all schools would be privately owned, privately run. Then they could openly promulgate whatever silly policies they wished about what students may display on T-shirts, if anything. Market pressures would tend to discourage indefensible rules. 

But today’s schooling system is not ideal.

Have you noticed?

Meantime, let’s hope that the court’s decision will discourage other schools from imposing similar double standards.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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