GOP Rep Perfectly Explains Why Democrats Are So Eager To Have Open Borders

Due to the staunch refusal of Democrats to provide even a relatively paltry sum of requested border security funding to President Donald Trump, the federal government entered a partial shutdown prior to Christmas that’s extending into the new year — and a new Congress.

Of course, Democrats and their media allies have pointed the finger of blame for the shutdown toward Trump, while the White House and many Republicans have pointed the finger right back at Democrats and  House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi, who has refused to even pretend to negotiate a deal to end the shutdown, preferring to instead let it linger until her new Democratic majority takes over the House on Jan. 3.

Considering the shutdown essentially boils down to the Democrat’s refusal to fork over a meager $5 billion for border security — a fraction of a fraction of the $4 trillion plus annual budget — many Americans have wondered why the Democrats are so dead set against securing the nation’s southern border.

But Republican Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks thinks he knows exactly why Pelosi and the Democrats have refused to budge on this issue and he pulled no punches explaining it.

The Daily Wire reported that during an appearance on a local media program while home over the holidays, Brooks bluntly suggested that Democrats didn’t want to secure the nation’s borders because they need an open southern border to continue bringing in new potential voters who could dramatically alter the shape and leanings of the American electorate over time.

“It is a very tough position that the Democrats have put us in,” Brooks said. “On the one hand you have got thousands of Americans who are dead — each year — because of the Democrats’ refusal to secure our borders.

“Those Americans are dying, either because they have been murdered by illegal aliens, vehicular homicides by illegal aliens or the illegal narcotics that are shipped into the country by illegal aliens and their drug cartels, with the drug overdoses that are in the tens of thousands of lost American lives per year.

“So the question is going to be, how much blood — American blood — you have to have on the hands of the Democrats leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer before they will help us with border security?” Brooks said. “Or is their craving for power such that they are willing to accept the loss of American lives?”

One of the co-hosts brought up the proposed compromise from earlier in 2018 which had fallen apart — amnesty for illegal aliens in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in exchange for border wall funding — and asked if the president and Republicans would be willing offer such a compromise once again.

“I don’t know if the Democrats are willing to do it now; they were not willing to do it earlier this year,” Brooks replied. “Keeping in mind, on our side — those of us who care about border security, and care about the financial health, and actual health, of American citizens — we’ve already compromised a lot on this issue.”

“Twenty-five billion dollars is what we need to properly secure our border with a wall and we’re all the way down to $5 billion — that is a huge compromise where you are giving up 80 percent of what is needed to adequately protect the lives and safety of American citizens,” he continued.

Brooks then proceeded to lay out exactly why, in his view, the Democrats have been so intransigent on the border security issue — a need to import new potential voters who would be likely to support the party and its policies that are increasingly being rejected by the American people.

“Democrats have an open borders philosophy, they don’t believe in border security, they believe this is the way to change the American electorate in order to win elections,” Brooks explained.

Brooks also hinted during that discussion that President Trump could very well veto any bills that emerged from Congress that did not include his requested border security funding, and reiterated that while Democrats seemed to be seeking to expand the pool of potential voters, the president was focused on protecting American citizens and taxpayers.

Democrats and their media allies will fervently deny that there is any truth behind the assertion made by Brooks that Democrats favor open borders and want to import new voters, but they will also fail to provide any other sort of logical or reasonable explanation for why they refuse to provide funding for border security.

In all likelihood, Brooks’ assumption hits the nail on the head and perfectly explains the most plausible reason for the Democrats’ refusal to budge on border security … other than, of course, the left’s base need to obstinately obstruct every single thing done by Trump, up to and including securing the nation from the risks and threats it faces at the southern border.

SOURCE 

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Pulling Young Americans Back From the Brink

During the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton often delivered the line: “America is great, because she is good.” It was a feel-good line, deployed then as code for “America is too good to elect Donald Trump.”

Notwithstanding the thick irony of Clinton claiming to be the virtuous alternative, her statement on its own terms made sense: If a nation would be great, it must be morally upright—and America, despite all its flaws, is fundamentally good.

This view puts Clinton increasingly on the fringes within her own movement. In 2018, the prophets of wokeness are calling progressives to “wake up” to the reality that America, at its core, is racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and economically unjust. The system, they say, is “rigged.”

And today’s young adults are heeding those voices and increasingly embracing their viewpoint.

A recent study showed that 1 out of 5 Americans under the age of 37 do not think Americans should be proud of their history. One out of 5 millennial Americans see the flag as a sign of intolerance and hatred, and 2 out of 5 said it’s OK to burn the flag.

Clinton’s generation, the baby boomers, were most likely to say America has been, is, and will continue to be great, with 70 percent saying so. But only half of Americans under the age of 37 agreed, and a full 14 percent of millennials said America was never a great country to begin with, and never will be.

The survey, which was conducted by the polling firm YouGov and commissioned by the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, a nonprofit devoted to restoring civics, showed that it’s not just younger Americans who have a dim view of our nation.

Fifty percent of respondents across all age groups said America is sexist, and 49 percent said it is racist.

The survey does give some reason for hope. Americans across the board remain patriotic in a general sense, and that includes millennials and Generation Z. But the data do show a clear fault line: Young people are more likely to be skeptical and critical of America than their parents and grandparents. This is a growing divide not just between the left and the right, but between the old left and new left.

In a recent op-ed, New York Times columnist David Brooks put it this way:

The older liberals are appalled by President Trump, alarmed by global warming, disgusted by widening income inequality, and so on, but are more likely to believe the structures of society are basically sound. You can make change by voting for the right candidates and passing the right laws. You can change individual minds through education and debate.

The militants are more likely to believe that the system itself is rotten and needs to be torn down. We live in a rape culture, with systemic racism and systems of oppression inextricably tied to our institutions. We live in a capitalist society, a neoliberal system of exploitation. A person’s ideology is determined by his or her status in the power structure.

This divide within the left is real, and it will inevitably impact the nation as a whole if things don’t change.

Clinton is 71 years old. Her views, though certainly liberal, reflect a strong confidence in the goodness of America and our system of government that is common among her generation.

Younger Americans increasingly part with that view—and we shouldn’t be surprised given what is increasingly taught in schools. Students are taught to “see through” inherited institutions and ways of doing things, and to view society in terms of an ongoing struggle between oppressor and oppressed.

This oppressor-oppressed lens doesn’t make much room for the way we’ve traditionally conceived of America. In a world where there are only oppressors and oppressed, there can be no free men and women, no genuine liberty, no real self-government, and no common good. There are only people seeking raw power according to their self-interest.

Such a one-dimensional outlook would leave anyone cynical about America, even life itself. And it has done just that.

Many students have become disillusioned about our society and our system of government, even pushed to despair. And despair turns them into revolutionaries ready to dismantle the system.

Of course, there is much to reject about “the system,” if by system we mean everything coming from Washington, D.C. Conservatives are quick to decry crony capitalism, the growth of the sprawling administrative state, and the misuse of power by life-appointed judges.

But these are corruptions that have grown up around the system, not integral defects within the Founders’ design. Our actual system of representative government, codified by the Constitution, remains fundamentally good. It is a testament to our forebears who slowly wrung liberty from the hands of autocratic rulers—a process dating all the way back to Magna Carta in 1215.

What younger Americans on the left need to appreciate is that our Constitution and political traditions are essential for achieving even their own liberal vision of justice.

This system has secured a host of gains that liberals often take for granted, from the abolition of slavery to the enfranchisement of women and the civil rights movement. Each of these hard-won advances was achieved through our system of representative government, and to this day they are preserved by the rule of law.

By design, our system makes it very difficult to change the law, but equally difficult to undo changes from the past. It turns out “the system” is actually your friend if you care about preserving past achievements.

This means every American who seeks to change policy—whether liberal or conservative—must take on the mindset of a reformer, not a radical. Before we even enter the policy arena, we must settle it in our minds that the system we are partaking in—the exquisite structure of republican government handed down from centuries past—is not up for debate.

This American project is an achievement of human civilization, and though it may fall short at times, it’s the best shot at justice we have. We tear it down at our own peril.

SOURCE 

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Chicago Residents Now Pay City Taxes For Using PlayStation

The city of Chicago, known far and wide as one of the murder capitals of America, also has some of the most exorbitant taxes in the country, with one that really seems outrageous: an amusement tax that now taxes PlayStation users.

As Brittany Hunter writes for the Foundation for Economic Education, a tax imposed by the city of Chicago targets PlayStation users. It was added to the amusement tax that had put a 5% on activities such as an evening at the theater, concert, sports event or a movie.

In mid-November, PlayStation 4 users in Chicago received a message from Sony indicating that as of November 14, 2018, a 9% “amusement tax” would be imposed for PlayStation subscriptions such as PlayStation Now, PlayStation Plus, PlayStation Music. As Hunter notes:

The tax is specifically related to streaming services, so the PlayStation games themselves will not be subject to the 9 percent tax. But in today’s subscription-heavy economy, many users purchase these consoles as a medium to stream videos and music rather than using them solely to play games. Not to mention, the tax will still include subscription services that allow Playstation users to connect and play with other users around the globe. So if you own a PlayStation in Chicago, it is unlikely that you will be able to fully avoid this tax.

Americans for Tax Reform reported of the city’s implementation in 2015 of a “cloud tax” to add to the already existing amusement tax, “The new policy is predicted to generate an extra $12 million in annual revenue for the city, and is seen by many as a feeble attempt to quench the city’s $430 million budget deficit, and the $530 million in increased payments to police and fire fighter pension funds for 2016 … Chicago already has one of the highest sales tax rates in the country at 9.25%. Now, the tax collector can literally infiltrate the living room.’

Hunter points out that although Sony just announced its policy regarding the tax, Xbox and Nintendo users have been paying it for years. She surmises that Sony capitulated because of implicit threats from government. She adds, “A spokesman for the city’s Law Department, Bill McCaffrey, recently said, ‘If a business is not collecting the tax where we believe it applies, the city takes the necessary steps and works with the company to ensure compliance with the law.’”

The Liberty Justice Center fought against the implementation of the 2015 tax in Labell vs. The City of Chicago but the court ruled for the city, permitting it to institute the tax because it was simply a reinterpretation of the existing law.

Jeffrey Schwab of the Liberty Justice Center commented, “We plan to appeal this decision because it has far broader implications than this single attempt to tax online entertainment. Cloud-based entertainment isn’t unique to Chicago, and people take this entertainment in and out of city limits all the time. Therein lies one of the biggest problems with this tax: The city is taxing activity outside its borders because the tax applies regardless of whether a customer actually uses a service in Chicago. If today’s decision is allowed to stand, then local governments across Illinois could tax activity that occurs outside their borders. We will continue to fight for taxpayers against the city’s expansion of its taxing power.”

Apple joined the fight against the “cloud tax,” arguing it violated the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) of 1998, which banned “state and local governments from taxing Internet access, or imposing multiple or discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce.” Apple also claims the new tax violated the Illinois constitution. Hunter quotes DigitalMusicNews.com’s Daniel Sanchez, who writes:

Under Illinois law, all home-rule ordinances must fall within the limits of the unit. So, a "home-rule unit" – in this case, Chicago – "may exercise any power and perform any function pertaining to its government and affairs. There’s just one problem. Chicago city officials have imposed the Amusement Tax on citizens streaming music when outside the "home-rule unit." By creating an "extraterritorial effect," the company argues, the city has "subjected Apple to collection requirements even for activities that take place primarily outside" Chicago. In addition, the city has extraterritorially expanded its taxing and regulatory jurisdiction to transaction and business activities outside of Chicago.

SOURCE 

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High School Photos Come Back To Haunt Ocasio-Cortez, She Went By A DIFFERENT Name

New York Democratic Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come under fire for claiming to be a “girl from the Bronx” when she actually grew up in a wealthy suburb in upstate New York.

And now it appears that she may have gone by a completely different name when she was in high school.

In an exclusive to The Gateway Pundit, old yearbook photographs of Ocasio-Cortez not only show that she went to a fancy high school, she also appears to have gone by a different name.

TGP reports that an “anonymous classmate” reached out to them and provided photos of Ocasio-Cortez from high school.

Ocasio-Cortez graduated in 2007 from Yorktown Heights, which is a middle-to-upper class area in Westchester County in upstate New York City.

According to Trulia, the average price of a home in Yorktown goes for $477,000. That’s almost half a million dollars for a home, which signifies how nice of an area she grew up in.

It also appears that she went by the name “Sandy Ocasio” in high school and not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

More HERE 

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