by Arnold Ahlert:  “They are undocumented aliens. … They’re paying taxes. It’s in everybody’s interest to have them pay the taxes they owe.” —former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, Senate Finance Committee meeting, Apr. 12, 2016

          Nothing epitomizes the phrase, “boob bait for the masses” better than any assertion by government officials that this nation is genuinely committed to cracking down on illegal alien employees, or the employers who hire them. Koskinen’s above statement was his response to a question by Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN), who had discovered the IRS ignored evidence that illegal aliens were using fraudulent Social Security Numbers and that the IRS was continuing to process W-2s — and issue refunds to many of those illegals.
          No doubt those who champion amnesty, often based on the notion that simply entering the country illegally shouldn’t be enough to warrant deportation, are equally sanguine when those same illegals commit forgery, Social Security fraud, identity theft, and perjury, even though those crimes are felonies.
          Rampant numbers of felonies. According to the Social Security Administration, approximately 75%of illegal aliens have fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers (SSNs).
          Moreover, the idea that these are victimless crimes is an abject lie. Since the vast majority of illegals purchase SSNs from fraudulent document dealers, chances are 50-50 a made up SNN actually belongs to an American or legal resident, including children. Even unborn Americans may end up victimized by being issued a number that has already been stolen.
          As a result, legitimate SNN owners can have their credit history ruined, applications for Medicaid denied, medical records corrupted, jobs or student loans denied due to failed background checks, and liens for unpaid taxes issued, all arising from fraudulent or criminal behavior attached to SSNs used by illegals.
          And government not only abides this wholesale criminality, it keeps Americans in the dark about it: an IRS Inspector General’s report released in 2016 revealed the agency knew that more than one million Americans had their SSNs stolen — but never bothered to tell the taxpayers themselves.
          And SSN abuse is not the only scam perpetrated by illegals with the apparent blessing of the government. Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) are nine-digit tax-processing numbers assigned by the IRS to individuals obligated to file a federal tax return, but who lack, or are ineligible, for an SSN typically required to file taxes. As of last June, at least 2.4 million illegals had an ITIN, which they used in conjunction with a fraudulent SSN to file taxes. As The Washington Times revealed, a whopping 87% of forms filed online and more than half of forms filed by paper contained fraudulent numbers.
          Americans might be forgiven for wondering why the use of an ITIN in conjunction with an SSN wouldn’t make it relatively easy for government to track down illegals and deport them. The answer is as simple as it is infuriating: Current law prohibits the IRS from communicating with the Department of Homeland Security. In other words, the agency who knows where the illegals are can’t tell the agency tasked with deporting them. And just as infuriating, Congress refuses to change the law.
          Another equally pernicious fraud perpetrated by the feds is the promotion of E-Verify as a panacea for all that ails a nation rife with illegal alien employees. “If you are found to be breaking the law, you will be held accountable,” warned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Tom Homan following ICE raids at several 7-Eleven stores around the nation earlier this month.
          Not exactly. As columnist Tatiana Sanchez explains, “Questions have begun to resurface about the effectiveness of E-Verify, a 21-year-old electronic program designed to filter out undocumented immigrants who apply for jobs. Many Americans wonder how millions of them slip through the system.”
          Sanchez tell us how, explaining the system is little more than “a political fig leaf, with so many significant flaws and loopholes that it allows employers to continue to knowingly hire undocumented workers with few repercussions.”
          Why? According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which administers E-Verify, the system is used by more than 700,000 employers at more than 1.9 million hiring sites across the nation. Yet there are more than 18 million businesses currently in operation in the U.S. — meaning E-Verify is used by less than 4% of the nation’s employers.
          The reasons for such a low participation rate? Despite the promises about crackdowns first made in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, E-Verify remains a voluntary program in most states, and only businesses with a history of hiring illegals are required to use it.
          Moreover, Barack liar-nObama’s pro-amnesty administration had its proverbial thumb on the scale. In eight years, the highest number of annual ICE business audits was 3,127 firms, with most years’ audits coming in well below that total. Thus, the odds of getting audited were virtually non-existent.
          Congress could make the system mandatory nationwide, but that idea is broadly opposed by legislators.
          Why? Because members of Congress “know it will work,” asserts  Rosemary Jenks, Director of Government Relations at NumbersUSA, an organization that advocates reducing illegal and legal immigration. She explains, Democrats “know it will discourage illegal immigration, which will discourage the push for the next amnesty,” and “establishment Republicans don’t want it because they know it will be effective and eliminate their cheap labor pools.”
          Unsurprisingly, money is at the root of both parties’ machinations. “All of the money is behind mass immigration, and then, there’s the American people on the other side. That’s the problem we have had,” Jenks explains. “That’s why we haven’t controlled immigration in the last five decades.”
          Haven’t controlled it? Blatantly encouraged is more like it. And no one made it clearer than an apparently semi-comatose U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose failure to react to California AG Xavier Becerra’s threat to prosecute employers who comply with federal immigration law, is the epitome of surrender. California’s recently passed “Immigrant Worker Protection Act,” could engender fines as high as $10,000 on employers who volunteer to assist federal immigration authorities with an illegal employee crackdown.
          Sessions should have insisted that any attempt to prosecute anyone under that secessionist-tinged statute would elicit obstruction of justice charges — against Becerra himself.
          That he didn’t? Yet another indication among many that the globalist agenda of pretend crackdowns on American businesses — along with pretend border security — remains the order of the day, and that a reprise of the 1986 debacle, replete with the same phony promises, will ultimately prevail.
          Once again, it will be sold as a “reasonable compromise,” with any resistance labeled as bigotry and nativism. And once again, in the not-too-distant future, it will likely precipitate the same exponential increase in illegal immigration the failure to enforce the 1986 law did. And once again, another subset of young illegals brought here “through no fault of their own” will demand amnesty.
          Moreover, Americans should understand this orchestrated sellout of our sovereignty, language, customs and culture will occur as often as the “fundamental transformation of the United States of America” requires.
          The globalist agenda demands nothing less.  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53683-a-de-facto-federal-government-illegal-alien-alliance

by Thomas Gallatin:  In a desperate attempt to prevent the public release of a classified FISA memo that purports to show the FBI abused the surveillance program for political aims, Sen. Dianne Fein-stein (D-CA) sent a letter to the execs at Twitter and Facebook calling for them to investigate a supposed Russian social media effort pushing for the memo’s release. The letter states in part, “We are witnessing an ongoing attack by the Russian government through Kremlin-linked social media actors directly acting to intervene and influence our democratic process. This should be disconcerting to all Americans, but especially your companies as, once again, it appears the vast majority of their efforts are concentrated on your platforms. This latest example of Russian interference is in keeping with Moscow’s concerted, covert, and continued campaign to manipulate American public opinion and erode trust in our law enforcement and intelligence institutions.”

          In other words, Fein-stein has just declared that anyone who believes the FISA memo — a memo several Republican members of Congress describe as “alarming” and “disturbing” — should be released is essentially a puppet of Vladimir Putin, and that is quite simply asinine.
          First off, the Russians didn’t start the #ReleaseTheMemo campaign; it was Republicans who first called for the release of this memo, written by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. Secondly, was it not Fein-stein who mere weeks ago unilaterally released the entire closed-door testimony of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson’s testimony regarding the dubious Trump dossier? At the time, Fein-stein argued that the American public had a right to know: “The American people deserve the opportunity to see what [Glenn Simpson] said and judge for themselves.” She further explained her rationale, asserting, “The innuendo and misinformation circulating about the transcript are part of a deeply troubling effort to undermine the investigation into potential collusion and obstruction of justice. The only way to set the record straight is to make the transcript public.” But now she’s singing a different tune.
          Using Fein-stein’s logic, there currently is a lot of “innuendo” and probably “misinformation” flying around regarding exactly what the content of the FISA memo alleges. Why not release it to the public to “set the record straight”? Clearly, Fein-stein is engaging in political gamesmanship. When releasing the information plays well for her agenda, she pulls the “American people have a right to know” card, but when the information could prove damaging to her agenda, then the narrative is one of needing to “protect” the American people and its institutions from the Russians.
          A free society must have a government committed to transparency in order to hold to account those who have been entrusted by citizens with the power to lead. Hiding potential corruption from the American public will cause greater distrust of government institutions and agencies than revealing the truth, no matter how ugly it may be. Therefore we in our humble shop unequivocally call for the public release of the FISA memo.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53693-feinstein-blames-the-russians

by Louis DeBroux:  If the recent GOP tax cuts are truly “Armageddon,” as Nancy Pulosi and her socialist Democrat cohorts claim, then America’s response increasingly looks like an R.E.M. song title: “It’s The End of the World As We Know It, and I Feel Fine.”

          Chicken Little Democrats claimed tax cuts — specifically cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% — would be a disaster for the American worker, but reality begs to differ. Following the passage of the GOP tax cuts, more than 200 American corporations have given or announced wage increases and bonuses of between $1,000 and $2,500 for their workers.
          Walmart — the epitome of capitalistic evil to American progressives — announced it is investing a portion of its tax savings into a wage increase for employees, raising its corporate minimum wage to $11/hour, more than 52% higher than the federal minimum wage. Dozens of other corporations have announced they are expanding and creating new jobs due to the tax cuts.
          Maybe nowhere are the effects of the tax cuts more noteworthy than with Apple, the proudly “liberal,” Donald Trump-hating corporation adored for its “wokeness” by idealistic progressives nationwide. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, announced that, due to the lower corporate tax rate, Apple is repatriating $250 BILLION dollars into the U.S. economy, in the process paying a $38 billion tax bill. Additionally, Apple is handing out $2,500 in stock grants to employees, and is investing an additional $350 billion in the U.S., creating 20,000 new jobs.
          This economic windfall for American workers is what Pulosi calls “pathetic,” “insignificant” and “crumbs.”
          To be fair, the tax bill is a disaster for progressive Democrats, who rely on suffering and envy to stay in power. Democrats need people to be dependent on government, and the tax bill is an incredible catalyst for economic prosperity, making Americans masters of their own fate, which is horrible for Democrats.
          Multiple articles this week, including one from The New York Times, dismiss any correlation between the tax cuts and the bonuses and raises. Of course, one might ask why these bonuses and raises never materialized during the Barack liar-nObama years, and only came to pass after a year of Trump’s pro-growth, pro-business, regulation-slashing agenda.
          NYT writer Jim Tankersleyjan grouses that the majority of the corporate tax savings are being invested in capital upgrades, or higher dividend payments to shareholders, rather than directly going to rank-and-file workers. Apparently, Tankersleyjan doesn’t understand that higher dividend payments increase stock values. You know who holds huge quantities of stock, and will benefit from higher stock prices? Tens of millions of American workers with 401(k) retirement accounts.
          He also seems ignorant of the fact that capital investments drive increased productivity, which in turn drives higher wages. Though this process is not instantaneous, the fact that workers ultimately see the majority of the benefits from a tax cut is historically proven.
          Maybe the greatest irony is that, with his last line, the author proves what every conservative has argued for decades; namely, that it is competition that drives economic gains, not redistribution. Tankersleyjan writes that workers may see wage increases coming soon, but if they do, it is “Not because companies are dying to share their tax spoils with workers. But because they have to, or those workers will take a job with another company that will.” Yes! Exactly so!
          Though envious, high-tax, socialist redistributionists constantly attack the so-called “trickle down” theory of economic growth, no such school of thought exists. That moniker was a pejorative used to attack Ronald Reagan’s supply-side economic policies, which sought to stimulate business growth through lower corporate and capital gains taxes and reduced regulation. Job and wage growth was a beneficial and predictable result.
          In other words, the American worker wins either way in a low-tax environment. Even if every corporation is not a Hobby Lobby (operating on Christian principles, paying a minimum $10/hour as a moral imperative), low corporate taxes lead to business growth. Business growth drives job creation. Job creation reduces available labor, which creates competition for that labor, which drives up wages.
          So even if a CEO is the most heartless, greedy jerk on Earth, in a pro-growth business climate he is forced to increase wages to compete for labor. And that is a good thing.
          For the leftists who dispute this, a question: If you say higher taxes on labor and capital have no negative impact on job and wage growth, then please explain why you support huge taxes on cigarettes and sugary drinks, with the stated goal of reducing their consumption. Corporations have fixed costs, and when you raise those costs they are forced to either raise prices and lose customers, or slash costs and hire fewer workers. High taxes hurt the very people leftists claim to be helping.
          History proves this empirically. Higher tax rates resulted in higher unemployment and lower tax revenues. Lower taxes led to an economic boom, with the end result that the rich paid a lower rate, but higher total taxes and a greater proportion of all taxes.
          Keep that in mind the next time progressive Democrat politicians and Leftmedia talkingheads repeatedly make utter fools of themselves, like they did by claiming the average worker would see no benefits from the GOP’s tax cuts.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53653-dems-look-foolish-as-tax-reform-brings-prosperity

by Lewis Morris:  Trade negotiators from the U.S., Canada and Mexico are meeting in Montreal this week for the latest round of NAFTA talks. The big question remains whether President Donald Trump will stay in or pull out of the 24-year-old agreement, which he claims is a terrible deal for the United States.

          Scrapping the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was one of Trump’s campaign promises although congressional Republicans and many members of the business community caution against such a move. An open letter to Trump from over 300 state and local chambers of commerce last October pointed out that NAFTA is responsible for 14 million jobs and $3.3 billion in trade on a daily basis.
          The auto industry alone could face the loss of over 50,000 jobs if the U.S. were to walk away from NAFTA. As it stands now, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer wants to tighten the rules of origin provision for autos, requiring that cars crossing the borders duty-free be 85% NAFTA made, up from the current 62.5%. He also wants to add a clause that requires these cars to be 50% U.S. made. Neither Mexico nor Canada are likely to agree to this change, which is likely a Trump-style “overreaching” negotiating chip.
          Agriculture is another area that could be hard hit by a U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA. Farm products sent to Mexico and Canada have quadrupled since the beginning of NAFTA, and they currently account for a third of all U.S. farm exports. Leaving the agreement would bring a sharp rise in duties on American poultry and wheat, among other items. Farmers in states like Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin and Indiana would be hard hit.
          These states were key to Trump’s 2016 victory, and they will figure large in the 2018 midterms. Republican lawmakers from these states reminded Trump of this fact in the days leading up to the Montreal talks.
          Trump makes the case that NAFTA has had a negative impact on America’s manufacturing sector, which has not grown as fast as the services sector since the agreement went into effect. So, while Lighthizer’s proposal to tighten the rules of origin provision might be considered extreme, manufacturing may need to be addressed — though with a caveat: U.S. manufacturing production has doubled since before NAFTA and is at a near-record high, albeit with fewer workers.
          Technology is another area that needs to be addressed. Internet commerce didn’t even exist when NAFTA first went into effect, but now America’s most valuable companies are tech giants such as Apple, Facebook and others. Intellectual property and digital commerce will now need to be part of the conversation.
          The American economy has grown significantly under Trump, but much of that progress could be undone by walking away from NAFTA or by altering it too much. Uncertainty about how the negotiations will shake out could also unsettle American markets. This is why the idea of adding a five-year sunset provision to NAFTA as proposed by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was not well received. Such a move would keep NAFTA in a perpetual state of negotiation, making it difficult for U.S. businesses to make long-term plans based on predictable and established rules.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53667-nafta-negotiations-bear-watching

by Political Editors:  Attorney General Jeff Sessions was interviewed last week for several hours by Robert Mueller’s special council investigation into the Donald Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy. And now Mueller is reportedly seeking an interview with President Trump, which several of the president’s advisers legitimately fear is a perjury trap. Perhaps Mueller wants to catch Trump in a lie in order to charge him with obstruction. It’s a roundabout way to get Trump, since the Russian collusion conspiracy has thus far proven to be nothing more than tantalizing fiction. Trump has yet to agree to the interview, but his lawyers have been seeking to work out ground rules for any potential meeting.

          The Mueller team reportedly is looking into Trump’s firing of both former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and former FBI Director James Comey in order to ascertain if there is a “pattern” of obstructionist behavior. However, if Mueller is intent on investigating obstruction, he’s barking up the wrong tree. What was the actual crime for which Trump is being investigated? So far there’s nothing beyond innuendoes, much of which were based on the dubious opposition research “dossier” created by Fusion GPS and funded by liar-Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
          It was liar-Hillary who actually did break the law and who was “investigated” by the FBI. We hedge that word because all indications are the FBI had been indirectly, if not directly, instructed to let her off the hook. This is where the real investigation into obstruction should be focused. liar-Clinton’s illegal email setup was known by Barack liar-nObama, who corresponded with her at her private address using a pseudonym himself. If she had been charged, it would have pulled him into the investigation, implicating him for likewise being “grossly negligent” in handling classified material. He had to prevent that from occurring, ergo the public declarations that he was confident liar-Clinton would be cleared. Meanwhile, his Attorney General Loretta Lynch was behind the scenes making sure the FBI’s findings agreed with liar-nObama’s public statements. As we have learned, months before liar-Hillary sat for the FBI interview, she knew she was in the clear. She had no fears of incriminating herself because she knew the fix was in — and that liar-Obama was the fixer.
          Trump is facing a deck that is stacked against him. If he pleads his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination and refuses the Mueller interview, the Leftmedia will scream that it’s evidence of his obstruction. If he takes the interview, unlike liar-Hillary, he risks being caught in a lie, no matter how insignificant, hence the perjury and obstruction trap.
          With the recent revelations of a “secret society” within liar-nObama’s Justice Department and the FBI, coupled with the all-too-convenient loss of months of text messages between key FBI officials and the aforementioned investigation fixing, this deep state corruption is starting to look more and more like Watergate on steroids.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53668-the-real-obstruction-conspiracy

by Jordan Candler:  This week, solar industry imports were dealt a heavy blow with Donald Trump’s decision to impose a 30% tariff. The Associated Press reports that among those advocating for the tariff on solar panels was the U.S. International Trade Commission. According to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, “The president’s action makes clear again that the Trump administration will always defend American workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses in this regard.”

          China’s Commerce Ministry was angered by the tariff, responding: “The U.S. side once again abused its trade remedy measures. China expresses its strong dissatisfaction with this.” Mexico is also rattled. The nation’s Economy Department shot back, “Mexico will use all available legal resources in response to the U.S. decision to apply protections on Mexican washing machines and solar panels.”
          These complaints are to be expected given where they’re coming from. Nevertheless, was this a wise decision? As Heritage Foundation analyst Katie Tubb explains, not exactly. She writes: “The case involves two failing manufacturing companies — Suniva and SolarWorld — which have petitioned the government for globally applicable tariffs on inexpensive imports of solar cells and panels. That petition has run the gauntlet of comments, hearings, and analysis from the U.S. International Trade Commission. Since then, organizations across the political spectrum, including the Solar Energy Industries Association, have made the case for why the requested tariffs would be harmful for the solar industry writ large.”
          Tubb lists three justifications for “why rejecting the request for sweeping tariffs would be consistent with Trump’s campaign trail ideals and policy vision for energy dominance.” It begins with innovation. As Tubb explains, “There is almost no better way to fossilize an industry than by guaranteeing prices and knocking out the competitors of a select few companies. The only innovation that this spurs is creative ways to lobby the government for new ways to interfere in energy markets.” Moreover, “[Government] intervention would also punish competitive American solar companies in order to keep two failing ones afloat.”
          Secondly, tariffs handcuff competition. “Trump should protect competition, not specific competitors,” says Tudd. “The solar industry in America can provide customers the best, most affordable service to Americans when it is able to access components from the most competitive companies around the globe. The proposed tariffs block this access. In essence, they are a massive regulatory subsidy for Suniva and SolarWorld — at the expense of the rest of the solar industry.”
          And finally, there’s the issue of fostering a healthy job market. Tudd notes: “Suniva and SolarWorld argue that global tariffs are essential to their survival and will create thousands of jobs. Using the force of government to eliminate a company’s competitors will almost certainly preserve those company jobs.” However, “There will be negative implications for the rest of the industry and the indirect jobs it creates if the administration bends over backward to shore up two failing companies. The federal government shouldn’t be the arbiter of whose job is more valuable.”
          National Taxpayer Union’s Free Trade Initiative director Bryan Riley makes yet another shrewd point: “Because the government provides a whopping 30 percent tax credit for the installation of solar energy systems, a big chunk of increased costs generated by the new trade restrictions will be paid for by the federal government. That doesn’t seem like an ‘America First’ policy.”
          In essence, Trump’s decision, unfortunately, continues the government’s proclivity for picking winners and losers. Furthermore, the Associated Press reports, “Sen. Ben Sasse … said Republicans need to understand that tariffs are a tax on consumers.” He’s right. There’s no doubt any of this was the administration’s intent — Trump, after all, once pledged, “We will get the bureaucracy out of the way of innovation, so we can pursue all forms of energy” — but nevertheless, the decision was made without taking these issues into account. Imposing tariffs on the solar industry wasn’t one of Trump’s brightest decisions.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53641-trump-misses-the-mark-with-solar-tariffs