Is this woman the new Lois Lerner?

As some at the Federal Election Commission seek to broaden the power of the agency, critics are arguing that it's beginning to look increasingly like the Internal Revenue Service under Lois Lerner, who has been accused of using her office for partisan purposes.

They take special aim at the commission's Democratic chairwoman, Ann Ravel, who also served as chairwoman of California's equivalent to the FEC, the Fair Political Practices Commission, before coming to Washington in 2013. Ravel has lambasted the commission as "dysfunctional" because votes on enforcement issues have often resulted in ties, and she has said the commission should go beyond its role of enforcing election laws by doing more to get women and minorities elected to political office. She has complained that super PACs are "95 percent run by white men," and that as a result, "the people who get the money are generally also white men."

To remedy those problems, Ravel sponsored a forum at the FEC in June to talk about getting more women involved in the political process. She has also proposed broadening disclosure laws to diminish the role of outside spending, and suggested that the FEC should claim authority to regulate political content on the Web. She's also voiced support for eliminating one member of the commission in order to create a partisan majority that doesn't have tie votes, saying in an interview with Roll Call, "I think it would help."

Hans von Spakovsky, who served on the FEC from 2006-2008, takes issue with Ravel's effort to go beyond the traditional purview of the commission's functions. "The FEC has one duty, and one duty only — to enforce the existing campaign finance laws. It has no business trying to 'encourage' or 'discourage' folks to get involved in politics, no matter who they are, minority or otherwise," Spakovsky told theWashington Examiner.

Spakovsky also said it would be contrary to the function of the FEC to limit the number of commissioners. "The fact that any action by the FEC requires the votes of four commissioners, and thus bipartisan agreement, ensures that its investigations are based on enforcing the law evenly, without regard to the party a particular candidate is a member of. Ravel wants to end that, which would allow the FEC to be used for partisan political witch hunts," Spakovsky said.

Ravel did not respond to a request for comment.

The votes on which the commission ties often pertain to alleged violations by the third-party groups known as super political action committees. Super PACs have no contribution limit and no spending limit as long as they do not "coordinate" with the candidates for whom they are spending. The FEC defines this as "payment made in cooperation with, at the suggestion of, or per an understanding with a candidate." Critics of those groups say they often circumvent the law by straddling the definition of coordination.

Ravel co-signed a letter with fellow Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub in June, saying the spending that those groups engage in on behalf of candidates should count toward the spending limit for those candidates. "There is this basic notion that super PACs are supposed to be separate from the candidates," Weintraub has said. "[Voters] look at what's going on, and they say: 'This doesn't look separate. Where are the lines?'"

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board has compared Ravel to the IRS' Lerner, who's also been accused of using her office to push a political agenda. "We'll take our chances with donations freely given than with the arbitrary and partisan rulings of Lois Lerner at the IRS or Ann Ravel at the Federal Election Commission," the editorial board wrote.

Via: Washington Examiner

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10 States and Washington, D.C., Issue Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Immigrants

Ten states and the District of Columbia now issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants as of the summer of 2015, according to a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Vermont, and Washington, as well as Washington, D.C,, issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. The states are estimated to have an illegal immigrant population of 4,120,000 combined.

The report says that nearly 37 percent of illegal immigrants live in an area where they may obtain a license.

The decision to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses is made at the state level and debates about issuing licenses often address the impact on public safety, insurance, and accident rates.

For instance, many states reported that applicants had difficulty passing written tests and needed to take them several times before they did so.

Illegal immigrants are undocumented, which raises the specter of fraud; some holders might have used false identities, addresses, or documents to obtain their licenses.

In addition to public safety and fraud issues, there are also higher costs associated with offering these licenses.

“The number of potential applicants affects staffing and facility needs, license processing and issuance, and expected costs and revenue,” states Pew. “The cost of new personnel was the largest anticipated expense.” The report found that California, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, Colorado, Nevada, and the District of Columbia created an additional 1,039 positions because of the policy.

“California’s fiscal summary estimated costs of approximately $140 million to $220 million and application fee revenue of approximately $50 million over three years,” states Pew. “The state’s 2014-15 budget allocated $67.4 million to issue licenses to unauthorized immigrants and included a mechanism for increasing funding if the number of applicants proved unexpectedly high.”

States also must factor in costs associated with changes to computer systems and programming to allow for this new policy. “Colorado reported that it undertook major programmatic and computer system changes to be able to accept new types of documents,” Pew states. “The state’s fiscal note estimated a one-time information technology cost of over $425,000 to reprogram its computer system.”

Via: WFB

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State Dept.: Hey, we never issued a computer to Hillary

I guess this shouldn’t be surprising when you think about it. If Hillary was using a homebrew server for all her e-mails, she’d have to get State Department IT help to set up the account on a government-issued computer, right? We already know Hillary wasn’t too interested in getting government IT staff mixed up in her personal any type of her business. So why even bother to issue Hillary a computer when she wasn’t going to use it anyway? You think she was going to sit there and do work on it?

No way. Hillary was going to use her own device connected to her own server. You try to get away with that at your job and tell me how it goes, but we all know the rules don’t apply to America’s self-styled royalty:

As the guy from CNET explains, (video below) this only further exacerbates the security problems inherent in Hillary’s makeshift IT scheme. Anyone who’s ever used a work-issued computer understands this. Your employer orders the computer and has it prepared in certain ways to be compatible with what’s expected of you in your job. That will include the pre-loading of certain security software and possible blocking software. And in the case of the government, it apparently also includes a rather sophisticated process for marking classified material. In response to a recent column, reader UCrawford, who appears to have some knowledge about this, explained:

Classified and unclassified information are on separate servers entirely. Information classified as SECRET, for example, would never be processed on an unclassified system not rated to handle classification. You can move unclassified data up to a classified system through transferable media fairly easily (the media would have to be approved and scanned for viruses, malware, etc). But for classified data to move down to an unclassified system, it’s not just about removing markings and doing a virus scan on the thumbdrive…the data itself would have to be scrubbed of all classified references/sources/information, approved through a declassification authority, and transferred to an entirely different portable media (any unclassified thumb drive plugged into a TOP SECRET system, for example, would automatically be classified TOP SECRET and could never be plugged into an unclassified system again). It’s a cumbersome process and most requests to declassify current TS data (which she’s accused of having on her system) are automatically rejected because the chance of spillage is so great. And nobody would authorize TS data that hadn’t been scrubbed to go to a unclassified government system…and especially not a personal system. Would never happen.

If Clinton had multiple instances of TS data on her unencrypted personal server, there’s simply no way it was ever approved for transfer. Zero chance of that being a simple mistake or someone just deleting classification markings. They would have a) had to have been given access to a classified network (meaning they were briefed on proper procedure, thoroughly and repeatedly), b) put some kind of portable media into the network (illegal unless approved by the security officer…which is very unlikely), and c) downloaded classified data to it, removing the portion markings (highly illegal…and clearly explained as such to anyone with a clearance). Most people would be arrested and charged immediately for doing that if caught. In most cases, the server would be immediately seized as soon as it was recognized that classified data had been placed on it. And Clinton would have been briefed on proper procedure about classified as well, and is responsible for the behavior of all people operating under her instructions. There is zero chance she did not know that transferring data to her home server was illegal…procedure is spelled out in every single document she signed for her clearance and access.

Via: Canada Free Press

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[VIDEO] High-level federal employees used work Internet systems to join Ashley Madison

WASHINGTON –  Hundreds of U.S. government employees -- including some with sensitive jobs in the White House, Congress and law enforcement agencies -- used Internet connections in their federal offices to access and pay membership fees to the cheating website Ashley Madison, The Associated Press has learned.

The AP traced many of the accounts exposed by hackers back to federal workers. They included at least two assistant U.S. attorneys; an information technology administrator in the Executive Office of the President; a division chief, an investigator and a trial attorney in the Justice Department; a government hacker at the Homeland Security Department and another DHS employee who indicated he worked on a U.S. counterterrorism response team.

Few actually paid for their services with their government email accounts. But AP traced their government Internet connections -- logged by the website over five years -- and reviewed their credit-card transactions to identify them. They included workers at more than two dozen Obama administration agencies, including the departments of State, Defense, Justice, Energy, Treasury, Transportation and Homeland Security. Others came from House or Senate computer networks.

The AP is not naming the government subscribers it found because they are not elected officials or accused of a crime.

Hackers this week released detailed records on millions of people registered with the website one month after the break-in at Ashley Madison's parent company, Toronto-based Avid Life Media Inc. The website -- whose slogan is, "Life is short. Have an affair" -- is marketed to facilitate extramarital affairs.

Many federal customers appeared to use non-government email addresses with handles such as "sexlessmarriage," "soontobesingle" or "latinlovers." Some Justice Department employees appeared to use pre-paid credit cards to help preserve their anonymity but connected to the service from their office computers.

"I was doing some things I shouldn't have been doing," a Justice Department investigator told the AP. Asked about the threat of blackmail, the investigator said if prompted he would reveal his actions to his family and employer to prevent it. "I've worked too hard all my life to be a victim of blackmail. That wouldn't happen," he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was deeply embarrassed and not authorized by the government to speak to reporters using his name.

The AP's analysis also found hundreds of transactions associated with Department of Defense networks, either at the Pentagon or from armed services connections elsewhere.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter confirmed the Pentagon was looking into the list of people who used military email addresses. Adultery can be a criminal offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Via: Fox News

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Making College More Affordable (and Less PC)

Outside of the 50 or so top schools, American higher education is troubled. This is especially true as tuition soars and students receive diplomas of questionable value. In 2014, for example, the average bill at a private college for tuition plus room and board was $42,419; at a public school the tab was $18,943. And the long-term trend is for even larger increases. Meanwhile, in 2013 students typically graduated with $28,400 in debt they can scarcely pay back while many have difficulty finding decent jobs thanks to “expertise” in gender studies and similar empty calorie majors.  

Fear not, however, Hillary Clinton has a rescue plan. The gist of her solution is a $350 billion ten year infusion of federal funds for both public universities and students struggling to pay off loans (they could only re-finance the loans). About $175 billion would go to states to free students from having to borrow to finance their education. In exchange for the infusion, recipient states would be obligated to boost their higher ed spending and (somehow) slow the rate of tuition increases. Funding would come from capping the value of itemized tax deductions of the wealthy. Tougher rules would be imposed on for-profit institutions while schools that serve low-income and minority students would receive financial assistance. Lastly, there would be greater transparency regarding graduation rates. All and all, open the flood gates for ever more college education, though the value of the degree is increasingly being questioned.

This plan is doomed even if Hillary is elected. It fails to address the meager employment prospects of many of today’s graduates and it is hard to imagine Republicans in Congress voting for a tax-the-rich scheme that so obviously rewards a major Democratic constituency. Hillary is just pandering and ineptly so.

But the good news is that many of the cost problems bedeviling our colleges are reversible if there is sufficient political will.

Let’s start with soaring tuition. This cannot be fixed by handing out yet more Washington subsidies. After all, tuition has climbed as federal funds to college students similarly climbed. A far better solution is to cut tuition cost and this is hardly rocket science; hundreds of profitable corporations regularly slash costs and these lessons can be applied to universities.

Think of students as consumers over-charged for a shoddy degree. Fortunately, such excesses have long been covered by consumer protection laws. Just as the government now regulates telecommunication fees, it should enact legislation requiring schools to disaggregate their services so financially hard-pressed students, like Verizon customers, can buy a barebones “education only” plans. Outside cost accountants can determine the price of this “academic only” option and thus free students from forcibly subsidizing dormitory housing, meal plans, recreational facilities, activity fees (including expensive speaker fees), healthcare, and all of today’s university mandated social engineering (e.g., mandated workshops on the joys of diversity). My guess is that few students want these imposed frills and left to their own, would save thousands per year while the PC infrastructure would go into the dustbin of history.  

Then schools should be required to hire an experienced corporate cost cutter (see here) and perhaps pay them a commission for eliminating waste. For example, many schools supply expensive remedial education to their troubled admittees. What about requiring youngsters pay for their previous sloth but now permit outside firms to bid on these services? So, rather than State U tutoring semi-literate John, he will buy his literacy lessons via the Internet from a low-cost private provider (and out-of-pocket payments might even motivate him to learn). Meanwhile, students would no longer be required to buy expensive dead tree textbooks thanks to having all books available as e-books (schools might have to subsidize publisher royalties but think of the money saved by scaling back college bookstores). A once $75 chemistry book could now go for $5. Actually, this is already happening and many books are free. Similarly, the school’s library can be drastically slimmed down by developing networks for costly reference books, specialized research librarians and Google Books.

What about giving students first crack at campus jobs? Surely they can mow lawns or flip burgers. Berea College has long used this no-brainer policy and students pay zero tuition.

Via: American Thinker

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BOBBY JINDAL PLAYS PLANNED PARENTHOOD VIDEOS ON MASSIVE SCREEN OUTSIDE GOVERNOR’S MANSION

Bobby Jindal is showing once more he’s making the biggest play of any 2016 candidate for the pro-life vote.

This afternoon, while abortion supporters protested outside the Governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge, Jindal set up a huge movie screen and speakers and played on a continuous loop all of the videos released in recent weeks showing the brutality of Planned Parenthood’s baby-parts business.

One of the problems faced by the Center for Medical Progress is that many people are refusing the watch the grisly undercover videos where Planned Parenthood personneldiscuss dissecting aborted babies in order to sell their eyes, lungs, livers, hearts, and evenbrains.

Among the handful of states that have either started investigations or defunded Planned Parenthood altogether is Jindal’s Louisiana. Supporters of Planned Parenthood are protesting Jindal’s moves against Planned Parenthood funding. Earlier this month, Jindal ended the state’s Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood’s Louisiana state director Melissa Flournoy said today, “Governor Jindal isn’t even in Louisiana today, but he’s made sure to prove that he’s always ready to put politics before Louisianan’s health.” She called his screening of the videos “a stunt”, which is certainly is, and certainly one to get under the skin of the protesters.

Flournoy said Planned Parenthood serves 5,000 women a year. What she did not say is that Planned Parenthood has only two clinics in the entire state and that the state has 67 Title X clinics who do much more for women’s health than Planned Parenthood except perhaps sell the body parts of aborted babies.

“Planned Parenthood has a right to protest today, but Governor Jindal’s office will ensure that anyone who shows up will have to witness first-hand the offensive actions of the organization they are supporting,” the Governor’s office said this morning.

The most recent video, released yesterday, shows a whistleblower describing how a Planned Parenthood medical technician laughingly restarted the heart of a nearly fully developed baby boy and then proceeded to cut through his face with scissors to retrieve his intact brain, which was then sold to StemExpress for medical experimentation.

Jindal is working hard to appeal to the social conservative base of the GOP. Earlier this year, in the wake of corporations forcing Indiana Governor Mike Pence to overturn religious freedom protections for businesses objecting to gay marriage, Jindal dared the corporations to mess with him and Louisiana.

Follow Austin Ruse on Twitter @austinruse

Via: Breitbart

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Foreign Criminals Who Could Be Shipped Home Cost Taxpayers Millions

Taxpayers are shelling out millions each year to house an increasing number of foreign criminals in U.S. federal prisons because their home countries won’t take them back.

Federal prisons are housing more than 40,000 non-U.S. citizens from 79 countries that participate in the International Prison Transfer Program, in which eligible and willing inmates can serve out the rest of their time behind bars in their homeland.

Used correctly, the treaty should ease prison overcrowding and save taxpayers millions of dollars, the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General said in a report made public Thursday.

Treaty nations refused to take 959 transfer-approved foreign inmates from 2011 to 2013, costing U.S. taxpayers $26 million.

Federal inmates from the 97 treaty nations number roughly 43,000, and account for one in five federal prisoners, according to the IG. That number is on the rise. Federal prisons housed 10,000 fewer inmates from treaty nations a decade ago. Less than one percent of those inmates from transfer treaty nations — 0.6 percent — go home, partly because nations like Canada and Mexico in particular often refuse to take their criminals back.

“It really comes down to a question of numbers,” DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in a statement. “Transferring more foreign national prisoners to serve the remainder of their sentence in their home country would not only help reduce overcrowding in the federal prison system, but also lower costs.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Relax, we're about to hit the bottom in stocks: Jeffrey Saut

U.S. stock investors take a breather, the market is nearing its bottom, Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James, said Friday.

"Our timing models call for a low between Aug. 13 and Aug. 18, with a plus-or–minus three-day margin of error, so today it feels like capitulation," Saut said in an interview on CNBC's " Squawk Box."

Saut made his remarks after U.S. equities recorded their worst trading day in about a year and a half. The Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 360 points, while the S&P 500 turned negative for the year, as a massive fall in oil and global growth concerns weighed on investor sentiment.

Read MoreS&P, Dow just had worst day of the year

"We're nearing the bottom. We knifed through the July support yesterday. It was pretty ugly. You would look for some kind of bottom either sometime today or the middle of next week," Saut added. 

"I've been in this business for over 45 years and I've seen this act before," he said. "It's kind of like pornography. You know it when you see it."

Via: CNBC

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Ex-Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell can't remain free during appeal, court rules

May 12, 2015: Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell navigates a group of cameras as he leaves the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a hearing the appeal of his corruption conviction in Richmond, Va. (AP)

RICHMOND, Va. –  A federal appeals court on Thursday refused to allow former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to remain free while he appeals his public corruption convictions to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision means McDonnell will probably have to report to prison within the next several weeks. Meanwhile, he has 90 days to ask the Supreme Court to review his case.

McDonnell said in a statement that he was "saddened by the court's decision today to deny me freedom while I pursue vindication."

"I am innocent of these charges and will petition the U.S. Supreme Court for a grant of bond," McDonnell said.

McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were convicted of doing favors for a wealthy businessman in exchange for more than $165,000 in gifts and loans. Bob McDonnell was sentenced to two years in prison; his wife to one year and one day. They have remained free on bond while they pursued separate appeals in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The appeals court last week refused to reconsider a three-judge panel's unanimous ruling upholding Bob McDonnell's convictions but said nothing about his bond status. McDonnell asked the court to state in writing that he can remain free while he seeks Supreme Court review. Prosecutors opposed the request, arguing that McDonnell should begin serving his term now that the appeals court has finished with the case.

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who closely follows the Richmond-based appeals court, said he doubts the Supreme Court will allow McDonnell to remain free.

"I think there's a chance, but it's probably a longshot," Tobias said Thursday.

Legal experts say that once the appeals court completes its review and a conviction is final, the federal probation office compiles information about the defendant's case and background and forwards it to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. The agency analyzes the information and determines what type of programs the defendant might need — substance abuse counseling or high school equivalency courses, for example — and determines the appropriate security level and designates a prison. The agency then sends a certified letter to the defendant telling him where and when to report to prison.

The process can take a few weeks.

When the former governor was sentenced in January, his lawyers asked U.S. District Judge James Spencer to recommend that McDonnell be sent to the low-security federal prison camp in Petersburg, Virginia. The Bureau of Prisons considers judges' recommendations along with other factors, such as available space.

McDonnell's lawyers weren't immediately available for comment Thursday afternoon.

McDonnell was convicted on 11 public corruption charges. The case derailed the career of a rising Republican star who had been viewed as a possible running mate to presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.

The appeals court will hear arguments in Maureen McDonnell's case in late October. Late Wednesday, she filed a brief saying the recent appeals court decision in her husband's case shouldn't mean her own appeal suffers the same fate.

Via: Fox News

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[OPINION] David Sarasohn: Uncle Sam's failed mortgage-relief program

At the end of January 2009, less than a month in the Senate and a brand-new member of the Senate banking and housing committee, Jeff Merkley saw a problem in how the Obama administration was planning to deal with the Great Recession's mortgage crisis.

"Folks in key positions at the top of the Obama financial team," he cautioned, "are more oriented to Wall Street than families."

Despite Merkley's concerns, the administration proceeded with its Home Affordable Refinance Program and Home Affordable Modification Program, promising to adjust 4 million mortgages to keep families in their homes. Endangered homeowners would get in touch with their mortgage holders, get their payments reduced with the help of $50 billion in federal money set aside for the purpose, and both families and neighborhoods would be stabilized.

By that summer, the phones in government offices — and some at The Oregonian/OregonLive — were swamped by calls from applicants complaining about banks losing applications and documents, repeatedly asking applicants for the same information, telling homeowners not to make mortgage payments because they were applying for modification and then telling them they were in foreclosure because they hadn't made payments. By the end of 2009, Merkley warned, "There are some incredibly telling signs that this is not going well. The program is, so far, a huge disappointment."

By the end of the next year, the program that had promised to modify 4 million mortgages had totaled just over half a million. To the House financial services committee, Jack Schakett, Bank of America's executive for credit-loss-mitigation strategies, conceded "ineffective communications with customers, shortcomings in document maintenance, misunderstandings about program requirements and the inability to comply by some borrowers."

In 2011, Merkley introduced a bill to require banks to provide a single contact for applicants, to allow homeowners to refinance with different providers and to let bankruptcy judges modify the terms of mortgages, as they can with other debts. By then, Republicans had taken the House, and the issue was dead.

A report issued at the end of last month by Christy L. Romero, special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, explained just how the program — which after six years has modified 887,000 mortgages, instead of 4 million — ended up as less profit than loss. With participation voluntary for the banks, all banks rejected the majority of applications — led by Citibank with 87 percent — and roadblocks in the process led virtually all applicants to be rejected the first time around. The report told of homeowners improperly rejected four times before finally, with legal help, getting approved.

"We are constantly seeing problems," Romero told The New York Times, "with the way servicers are treating homeowners and not following the rules. I don't understand why there hasn't been a stronger policing from Treasury on servicers."

To Merkley, his six-year-old doubts and objections about the program have all been painfully confirmed.

"The program was and is poorly defined," the senator said this month, and he holds to his diagnosis of the basic problem: Obama's economic advisers — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers — "were more concerned about strengthening the banks than helping families."

Partly as a result, the ultimate decisions were all made by the mortgage holders, often distracted by their collecting fees on overdue payments.

"There were fundamental conflicts of interest and poor design," concluded Merkley. "There is an incentive to prolong the process. The only point when it's in the interest of the banks (to complete the modification) is when a family is just about to go under."

Which, not occasionally, was too late.

The bail-out programs have now been extended through 2016, but nobody expects them to make much progress toward 4 million modifications, or in fact to make much progress at all. Merkley reports his office now gets only about one call a month on modifications — most of the people who needed help having found another approach or, more likely, having left their house.

Instead, Merkley thinks about what could have been the effect of the 3 million mortgage modifications that were promised but never achieved.

"That's a lot of families not relocated, of kids staying in their schools, of marital tensions that would have been directly reduced," he says. "It would have had a strengthening effect on the economy. It would have been a real win-win."

Instead, with the design and operation of the program, and how hard it was for homeowners to get help, the recovery didn't move as much.

But a lot of American families did.

•

David Sarasohn's column appears on Wednesdays and Sundays. He blogs at davidsarasohn.com.

Via: Oregon Live

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STONEWALLED: FEDS HIDE FISCAL DETAILS ABOUT VAST OPERATION TO RESETTLE ILLEGAL ALIEN MINORS

Illegal aliens who show up at the border have been resettled all across United States of America instead of being detained and deported, as Donald Trump recently called for in his new immigration plan.

According to data from the Justice Department obtained by Breitbart News, 96 percent of Central Americans caught illegally crossing into the country last summer are still in the United States. Now Breitbart News has learned exclusively that a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from a pro-security group about the cost of this operation is being stonewalled.

In January of 2015, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, on behalf of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), filed a FOIA request to discover the cost of accommodating the tens of thousands of illegal unaccompanied minors who came across the border encouraged by President Obama’s 2012 executive amnesty for illegal youths.

The FOIA letter made five requests of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency: that the federal agency detail (1) the costs of building of family detention centers; (2) the costs of apprehending, processing and detaining unaccompanied minors; (3) the costs transporting, transferring, removing and repatriating unaccompanied minors; (4) the costs related to ICE’s representation of government in removal procedures involving unaccompanied minors; and (5) the number of instances where objections to the return of unaccompanied minors were raised by the governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

The federal agency, however, refused to answer many of these questions– instead only partially answering two of the five requests. The agency provided only the costs of transporting, transferring and removing illegal minors, as well as the costs of the man-hours such tasks required. Those costs totaled $58.2 million—quadrupling ICE’s costs of $15.6 million in the year previous.

FAIR told Breitbart News that the agency did not provide clear documentation nor explanation as to how it arrived at this estimation.

FAIR asserts that, “The failure to provide most of the cost information related to the surge of [unaccompanied minors] indicates that the government has either failed to properly document those costs, or is refusing to reveal them.”

Because this FOIA request only inquired into the fiscal impact on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency– it does not at all take into account the cost incurred by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) nor the public education system. Because most of the unaccompanied minors were turned over to HHS following their apprehension, FAIR notes that HHS’ costs “for providing shelter, food, education, health care and other services, likely vastly exceed additional costs incurred by ICE.”

The flood of minors has also placed fiscal strains on our public education system. FAIR notes that, “68,541 [unaccompanied minors] were apprehended entering the U.S. Virtually all of them have been allowed to remain in the U.S., at least temporarily.”

Because federal law dictates that all children are entitled to an education regardless of their immigration status, the fiscal burden of educating these students has fallen onto our public education system.

As FAIR notes, educating 68,541 illegal immigrant children at “an average annual cost of $12,401 per child enrolled in K-12 education, the annual cost to local schools is at least $850 million. However, since virtually all of the [unaccompanied minors] are non-English proficient, the actual costs are likely substantially greater.”

The increased costs and difficulties associated with educating illegal minors from poor and developing countries has been well-documented. As Fox News Latino reported in June of this year, the border surge has left many “schools struggling with influx of unaccompanied minors.” While the federal government’s policy of releasing illegal minors into American communities imposes burdens all across our nation’s education system, it will perhaps hurt minority American students most profoundly, by straining the educational resources needed in their communities.

For instance, New York’s Hempstead School District, which is a 96 percent black and Hispanic district, had about 6,700 students dispersed amongst its 10 schools and usually receives an average of a couple hundred new students every year. “However, last summer’s enrollment skyrocketed to about 1,500 new kids – most of them undocumented immigrants.” Fox News Latino writes, “The crush of new enrollees left the district scrambling, forcing it to dip into its emergency reserves to shell out more than $6 million to hire more English as a Second Language teachers and additional staff to alleviate overcrowded classrooms. Still, it has not been enough. The average classroom in the district now has about 40 to 50 children and [as one teacher explained is] posing a safety issue… ‘You have to understand,’ [one teacher said], ‘many of the children are not even proficient in their native language, Spanish, and now we have to teach them how to speak English. That can be very difficult.’”

Deporting instead of resettling illegal immigrants would save taxpayer dollars in two ways.

First, by deterring future border crossings, it would reduce the amount of illegal immigration in the future. As FAIR explains, refusing to implement immigration law has only encouraged more illegal immigrants to unlawfully enter the United States: “In July 2015, the Government Accountability Office confirmed that President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] program played a substantial role in triggering the surge of [unaccompanied minors] in 2014.”

Second, deporting rather than resettling illegal immigrants would save the costs of feeding, clothing, housing, educating, hospitalizing, and caring for illegal immigrants and their relatives. A previous study conducted by FAIR documented that illegal immigrants cost U.S. taxpayers about $113 billion every year. After FAIR explains that by comparison, “The estimated cost of deporting an illegal alien is $8,318. Using just the partial enumerated $58.2 million costs to ICE and the conservative $850 million estimate for education of [unaccompanied minors] resettled in the U.S., the amount of taxpayer money spent on dealing with unaccompanied minors would have paid for the removal of an additional 109,000 illegal aliens.”

Via: Breitbart

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[EDITORIAL] Our Officers at Risk

With the second wave of Ferguson protests marking the anniversary of the police shooting of a black teen — who assaulted and robbed a store clerk and then assaulted an officer when he attempted to detain him — there’s been a renewed, and ongoing, focus on the actions of police in such situations.

Police continue to be under the microscope — and on cellphone video — but many allegations of police brutality are absolutely absurd, and some tales are fabricated.

We’re not saying all cops are saints and their actions under stress are always correct.

Certainly there are bad apples in police departments, just like there are bad doctors, lawyers, even journalists.

And like all of us, they’re human and make mistakes.

But for the most part, based on our experiences dealing with police for many decades, the majority are sincere in their jobs to “serve and protect” citizens and property.

The fact is that police, deputies and other law enforcement officers daily face the risk that they will be assaulted, and wounded as they go about their job of investigating crimes and apprehending criminals. Sometimes they face danger in responding to routine calls.

It happened last week in Franklin County when a deputy encountered a suspect while investigating an armed robbery at a Villa Ridge business.

After hours of searching, a deputy answered reports of a suspicious man in a subdivision not far from the business. He approached the man who at first appeared cooperative.

Then the situation quickly changed and the deputy found himself looking down the barrel of a handgun the suspect pulled from his waistband.

In that instant, with his life on the line, he took action and charged the suspect. During an ensuing scuffle over the deputy’s gun, the suspect was shot in the head, but was not seriously wounded.

It turned out that the suspect has a long history of violent crimes in several states and was free on parole after serving a number of years in a federal prison. He now is facing new charges in Franklin County.

That is just one dramatic example of the dangers deputies face each day.

Over the weekend, a man who was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend on a float trip on the Meramec River fought deputies when they tried to take him into custody. He had to be stunned with a taser gun.

It’s another example of the risks that officers undertake to provide a peaceful society for all of us.

Like others, we’re fed up with all the jabs, both verbal and physical, being taken at police!

Via: Emissourian

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