Arizona governor Jan Brewer blocks welfare payments for illegal immigrants

From The Blaze.

Excerpt:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Wednesday ordered state agencies to deny driver’s licenses and other public benefits to young illegal immigrants who obtain work authorizations under a new Obama administration policy.

In an executive order, Brewer said she was reaffirming the intent of current Arizona law denying taxpayer-funded public benefits and state identification to illegal immigrants.

Young illegal immigrants around the nation on Wednesday began the process of applying for federal work permits under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

The federal policy defers deportations for that group if they meet certain criteria, including arrival in the United States before they turned 16 and no convictions for certain crimes.

After President Barack Obama announced the policy change in June, Brewer labeled it “backdoor amnesty” and political pandering by the Democratic president.

The governor’s action is a response to the Obama administration declaration of amnesty for 1.8 million illegal immigrants under the so called “DREAM Act”. The declaration of amnesty is a transparent attempt to buy votes from Hispanic voters while passing the costs on to the law-abiding taxpayers.

I favor more green cards for skilled legal immigrants with marketable skills who are able to avoid crime for a period of a few years.

Filed under: News, Amnesty, Arizona, Crime, DREAM Act, Emergency Room, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, Jan Brewer, Public Schools, Vote Buying, Welfare

Democrat Steny Hoyer: unemployment checks and food stamps stimulate the economy

Why are we in a recession? Maybe it’s because the people running the country believe that unemployment checks and welfare are better than earned paychecks for “stimulating” the economy.

Here’s CNS News to explain what Democrats are trying to achieve:

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that food stamps and unemployment insurance are the two “most stimulative” things you can do for the economy.

During a pen and pad briefing with reporters on Capitol Hill, Hoyer was asked if any Democrats are “reconsidering the wisdom” of letting the Bush tax cuts expire at year’s end for the top income earners given the still struggling U.S. economy.

“I haven’t talked to any who are of that mind,” said Hoyer. “If you talk to economists, they will tell you there are two things that are the most stimulative that you can do — one’s unemployment insurance, the other’s food stamps, okay?”

“Why is that?” he said.  “Because those folks who receive those resources must spend them. And they’ll spend them almost upon receipt. Most economists with whom I talk believe that those with significant discretionary income, that that’s not the case.”

Unless action is taken by Congress, the Bush tax cuts will expire on Jan. 1, 2013.  Originally enacted in 2001 and 2003, President Barack Obama and Congress renewed the cuts for all income-brackets for two years in 2010.

[...]The Congressional Budget Office (CBO has projected that if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire at the end of 2012, coupled with the defense cut sequester, it will lead to a 1.3 percent contraction in GDP after Jan. 1, 2013.

If the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, it is expected that 710,000 people will lose their jobs. This will achieve the Democrats goal of “stimulating the economy” with higher unemployment and more food stamps. This continues the Democrat plan of increasing the record number of people on welfare and food stamps. They will pay for this “stimulus” by adding more debt to the $8 trillion they have already run up since January 2007. The debt will be paid by young people and children. The real plan behind making millions of people dependent on government is, of course, to be able to buy their votes and to control them. Democrats are the anti-freedom party. You have too much freedom when you have a job. It leads to “inequality”. If everyone received their daily bread from the government, and rode on mass transit to labor camps instead of driving in cars, and slept in identical apartments with identical furniture and identical television programs to watch, then the world would be more equal. And equality is what Democrats want most.

So what is the Republican alternative plan for the economy? To let job creating businesses keep their own money and hire people to do work. Republicans want to stop taxing and regulating job creating businesses so that people can be put back to work, and have the confidence to spend money. That’s how you stimulate the economy – we know this because it has worked for Reagan and Bush before. Obama’s approach has never worked. The Democrats have been running the show since January 2007. And that’s why we are down 5 million jobs since Steny Hoyer became the House Whip in January of 2007. This is not going to end until the Democrats are voted out.

Filed under: News, Business, Debt, Dependence, Dependency, Dignity of Labor, Economics, Economy, Employer, Food Stamp President, Food Stamps, Independence, Job, Jobless, Joblessness, Jobs, Small Business, Spending, Steny Hoyer, Stimulative, Stimulus, Tax Hikes, Tax Increases, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Unemployment Rate, Vote Buying, Welfare, Work, Worker

Haitian man who could not be deported kills three people in Florida

From the Miami Herald.

Excerpt:

When burglar Kesler Dufrene became a twice-convicted felon in 2006, a Bradenton judge shipped him to prison for five years. And because of his convictions, an immigration judge ordered Dufrene deported to his native Haiti.

That never happened.

Instead, when Dufrene’s state prison term was up, Miami immigration authorities in October 2010 released him from custody. Two months later, North Miami police say, he slaughtered three people, including a 15-year-old girl in a murder case that remains as baffling today as it did the afternoon the bodies were discovered.

DNA on a rifle found inside the house and cellphone tracking technology later linked Dufrene to the Jan. 2, 2011, slayings.

But North Miami detectives never got to interrogate him. Just 18 days after the murders, Dufrene shot and killed himself when he was cornered by Manatee County sheriff’s deputies in Bradenton after an unrelated break-in and shooting there.

The episode is a black eye for U.S. authorities, who by law could not detain Dufrene indefinitely after the Obama administration ordered a temporary halt of deportations to the island nation. 

[...]The failure to deport Dufrene infuriates the victims’ family members. “This guy shouldn’t have been in America,” said Audrey Hansack, 37, who moved back to her native Nicaragua after the murder of her daughter Ashley Chow. “I’m so upset with the whole situation. Because of immigration, my daughter is not alive.”

Just to be clear, the policy of the Obama administration is a backdoor amnesty.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration is taking steps to grant what amounts to amnesty to as many as 300,000 illegal aliens.

In a recent announcement on a sleepy August Friday in Washington, D.C., the Department of Homeland Security directed immigration enforcement officials to start dropping cases against as many deportable alien lawbreakers as possible.

The administration is clearing out removal cases wholesale.  Despite insisting that it will give them case-by-case treatment, an interagency committee is charged with finding all the cases it can to grant relief.

This backdoor amnesty broadens and encourages use of “prosecutorial discretion” on behalf of foreigners who face removal orders.  Not only will potentially thousands of illegals be allowed to remain in the United States, but the administration has also confirmed that those aliens can obtain work permits.

Democrats are soft on crime, and they favor amnesty for illegal immigrants. And this is the result of their views. Three dead people in Florida.

Filed under: News, Amnesty, Backdoor Amnesty, Ban, Barack Obama, Crime, Criminal, Deportation, Eric Holder, Florida, Halt, Hispanic, Homeland Security, Illegal Alien, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, Janet Napolitano, Law, Law and Order, Left, Leftism, National Security, Obama, Victims, Vote Buying

Canada waking up to the threat of Islamic terrorism

Political Map of Canada

Check out this column from the Ottawa Citizen. (H/T The Binks)

Excerpt:

This is your future. That was my wretched thought on behalf of Canadians as I watched Thursday’s Project Samossa news conference.

Samossa was the major national security investigation that erupted this week in counterterrorism raids and the arrest of four Muslim-Canadians. The government’s charges against three of them imply a wealth of evidence that will shock the conscience of Canadians.

These charges and limited revelations suggest that we could be front-row witnesses to the most vile of manifestations of the Islamist jihad in this country. The allegation is that people living among us and enjoying the immense privileges of Canadian citizenship, are siding with enemy forces aiming to kill and maim our boys and girls serving in Afghanistan — and maybe residents of Ottawa and other Canadian centres, too.

[...]To understand this in the context of Islamic radicalism is to account properly for the main sources of Canada’s escalating extremism. These sources are immigration and refugee influxes, and the homegrown extremist phenomenon.

Liberal politicians long ago turned immigration and refugee streams into vote-importing mechanisms. Conservatives continue to do so at the expense of Canadians’ safety and tens of billions in net per annum immigration costs, plus attendant and overwhelming security costs. So pronounced is the pathology that not even a terrible recession could prevent Immigration Minister Jason Kenney from hiking immigration and refugee levels from what were already roughly the highest per capita in the world. These levels are too great to allow for reliable vetting in a world where war and ideological struggles rage, and we are a target.

The cause of all of these problems is the left-wing political parties (Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois). These left-wing parties hope to import “refugees” and unskilled immigrants and give them the right to vote as full citizens, thus ensuring a fresh supply of votes for socialism.

Consider this recent article from Ezra Levant showing 71% of Tamil “refugees” from Sri Lanka return to Sri Lanka for vacations. Muslims  immigrate to Canada and then claim welfare for up to four of their wives. Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla is attempting to buy votes by reducing the residency requirement from 10 years to 3 years for Old Age Security OR Guaranteed Income Supplement money. That means that an immigrant can bring a non-working relative aged 62 into Canada and then let them stay there for 3 years and then they will be eligible for a full pension funded by other working Canadians.

Filed under: News, Bob Rae, C-428, Canada, Crime, Criminal, Dhimmi, Government Spending, Green Party, Greens, Immigration, Islam, Left, Liberal, Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff, Multi-culturalism, Muslim, National Security, NDP, New Democrats, Ottawa, Radical Islam, Ruby Dhalla, Social Programs, Terrorism, Terrorist, Vote Buying, Welfare

Veronique de Rugy shows that stimulus money was allocated for political gain

Veronique de Rugy

Story here on National Review. (H/T The Other McCain via ECM)

Excerpt:

As it turns out, when controlling for state capitals and a host of other potentially relevant variables, we find that the original findings still hold. We learn a few other things, too:

• First, how and where the money is spent doesn’t seem to be related to unemployment or decline in employment in the district where it is spent.
• Second, the district’s party affiliation matters in where the money is spent. (We still don’t know how much it matters compared to other factors.) The average Democratic district receives 81 percent more than the average Republican district. Even after taking out the money spent through state capitals, the average Democratic district receives at least 30 percent more than the average Republican district.
• Third, whether a district has part of a state capital in it is an important factor in how stimulus money is spent. However, controlling for this factor, or even taking the money going to state capitals out altogether, doesn’t negate the finding that the district’s party affiliation matters in where the money is spent.
• Finally, how long the district’s representative has been in office seems to have a small but significant impact on how the money is spent (this is a new finding, as well).

There is still much more to learn on the question “How are stimulus funds being spent and why?”

The more I dig into this, the more important the question seems.

George Mason University is a pretty moderate school, but they boast a fine conservative economics department. Jennifer Roback Morse used to teach there, and Walter Williams still does. It’s probably the best place for a conservative or libertarian student to do an economics degree.

Now seems like a good time to re-post Michele Bachmann’s denunciation of gangster government, too.

Michelle Malkin calls them Corruptocrats. It fits.

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• Michele Bachmann goes nuclear against gangster government
• Are Obama’s bailouts just pay-offs to left-wing special interest groups?

Filed under: News, Bribe, Corruption, Democrat, Economics, Economist, George Mason, George Mason University, Government, Libertarian, Politics, Pork, Pork Barrel, Porkulus, Reward, Spendulus, Stimulus, Veronique de Rugy, Vote Buying, Waste