Hello Pack. Sorry my column has been absent, I have been swamped with a book Dan commissioned me to write about portable homesteading and caught a nasty bug my family kept passing around.
I am going to delve into preparedness from a political perspective this week, something you loyal followers often do from an intellectual and patriotic point of view in the comments section. What our public servants (yes, public servants and not ‘our leaders’ – Tucker Carlson you know better than to refer to DC politicians this way!) are doing or not doing in Washington has a drastic impact on the security and economic health of our great republic.
Alright, I have to insert a second pet peeve rant here. The United States of America is a republic and not a democracy. Hearing both the people we send to office and even the few real journalists left on news shows label our form of government incorrectly is maddening. It is no wonder far too many Americans think Hillary Clinton should have won the presidential race if they cannot grasp the difference between a republic and a democracy and understand why, in their infinite wisdom, our Founding Fathers established the electoral college.
Rant over, there are too many important national security and economic collapse concerns on my mind this morning to continue preaching to the choir.
Border Security Is National Security
We must secure the border – period amen. It is an obvious national security threat. There are numerous national security threats posed by a country without finite boundaries. They have all been debated at length on the news, in press conferences, and around kitchen tables all across the country.
I could type thousands of words and spend several hours rehashing them all, but we can boil them down to one simple fact: (ah, facts, wasn’t it so nice when that was what we got a dose of when watching the news instead of the opinions of talking heads and the furtherance of a biased political agendas?) If radical Islamic terrorists can train and thrive in their native harsh environments, how easy is it for them to make the same trek tens of thousands of children have, to get from one Central American country or another, to the United States and Mexico border?
Border Security And Economic Security
Now, I will get to the meat of what irritated me so much while watching the news this morning – how an insecure border can bring about economic collapse. One of Nancy Pelosi’s minions was arguing with a talking head about how the American economy cannot survive without the cheap domestic and field labor offered by illegal immigrants.
The talking head did not call the minion out on how that labor would no longer be cheap if the $15 per hour minimum wage he also supported, came to pass. How a public – private partnership for college students and revamping of taxpayer funded government programs could allow the working poor the ability to get some on the job training and not lose the food stamp money they rely upon the in process, could fix this problem, is a lengthy topic for another article.
What the interview did not touch upon in any way is the same illegal immigrant and border refugee topic that is never, ever, discussed in any meaningful way with concrete facts – the financial burden absorbing millions of border crossers has on the American taxpayer. The Cloward and Piven strategy of overwhelming the system is unfolding right before our eyes, and being soundly ignored.
I am going to give you the actual facts, based upon the most up to date and reliable government statistics available, so you can do the math for yourself. Once you tally up all of the numbers, I would love to hear in the comments section just how long you think the unsustainable policies related to illegal immigration, an unsecure border, and the increased trend of claiming refugee status when crossing the border, will take to cause an economic collapse and quality of life decay of epic proportion.
Illegal Immigration Facts And Figures
By the government’s best estimate (these are only an estimate based upon requests for refugee status, captured illegal aliens at the border, and those individuals who filled out a census form and did so truthfully) there are approximately 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.
There are also approximately 40,000 unaccompanied minors crossing the Mexican border annually.
There are 100 shelters for unaccompanied children or illegal border crossing families in 14 states. The operation of those shelters is not free folks, it is all being paid for by you. At each of these shelters there is electricity, running water, probably air conditioning, medical care, food, and basic needs items like clothing, bedding, toys, etc.
Various charities donate to the shelter, but make no mistake about who is footing the bulk of the bill. Southwest Key Incorporated operates 26 illegal immigrant children’s shelters in California, Texas, and Arizona. Seventeen of those shelters are in Texas. The non-profit agency received $1.5 billion of American taxpayer money to operate the shelters over the course of the last decade, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Department records – Southwest Key Inc. is based in Austin.
Without a secure border the need for additional shelters will only grow. Do not fool yourself into thinking you do not live in a border state so this will not affect you. Every state in the union is now a border state.
My niece-in-law is a school teacher in Las Vegas. About 90 percent of her class can barely speak English – which is probably why the vast majority of school teachers do not send their own children to public school.
When I was the editor of our Ohio county’s newspaper and a new school building was being constructed, I went for several progress tours before it opened. The construction superintendent shook his head in great frustration during one of the tours after trying to communicate something about a lift fixture to a worker who did not speak any English. The work he was doing had been farmed out by the contractor with the winning bid.
Shame our local guys and gals who are skilled in the construction trade didn’t get a chance to help create the building their tax dollars were paying for and where their own children would attend.
Border Security Math
Nancy and Chuck claim $5 billion is just too much money to spend on President Trump’s border security plan. Let’s take a look at the cost of caring for illegal immigrant children and families to see how those figures total up in comparison.
Illegal immigrant children, as well as those waiting for their family’s deportation and asylum hearings are being educated in public schools – or in some cases, at a shelter.
Public schools are funded by the taxpayers, whether the funding comes from property taxes, state funds, or federal funds. You do not have to be a property owner to accrue some of this expense, landlords incorporate their insurance and property tax expenses into the rent they charge.
Each public school district in America receives funding per pupil each school year. This is why some districts do not encourage students take advantage of earning college credit while still in high school, such programs include the cost of books – because a portion of the allotted local, state, and federal funds, follow the student to the college they enroll in.
The amount of funding schools are given on a per student basis varies not only by state, but by county because local funding is based upon property taxes.
- Currently, the lowest school funding allotment per student by state is a little more than $7 thousand in Indiana.
- In the District of Columbia $21,159 is spent by taxpayers on each student.
- In New York $23,384 is spent per pupil on an annual basis.
- Each Alaskan public school student has $23,005 spent on their education on an annual basis.
- In Utah $6,986 is spent each school year on every student in pubic districts.
- Texas spends $10,456 per public school students annually.
- California receives $10,329 in per student spending.
- Vermont spends $21,263 per student annually.
- A total of $7,143 is received per student in Arizona
School Lunch Spending
Children from low-income families also receive free or reduced breakfast and lunch at public school. Illegal immigrant children and those awaiting status hearings, are eligible to enroll in these programs.
The amount the government reimburses each school district for providing the food to the students varies by state. On the low end, public school districts received 31 cents per meal and on the high end, 61 cents per meal reimbursement courtesy of American taxpayers.
Food Stamps And WIC Spending
Whether or not illegal immigrants can garner access to food stamps and WIC is also a topic that often sparks heated debate. There is no way to know how many illegal immigrants with fake identification have applied and been granted access to these taxpayer funded programs. But, the rules of the programs are clear, all individuals with pending refugee or asylum claims can apply for such benefits with no wait period.
In fiscal year 2018, American taxpayers spent $60,609,401,339 on the food stamps given to the 40,324,454 people enrolled in the program.
WIC program funding is broken down by state and region by the administering agency.
- In fiscal year 2018 Texas received $501,841,328 in grants for food and formula as part of the Women Infants and Children program.
- California received $944,557,857 in taxpayer funds to provide grants for baby formula and food for WIC participants.
- Arizona received $111,106,384 for WIC participants in the state.
Nationally, a grand total of $5,888,688,170 was spent on WIC grants in our 50 states and territories. Now, a lot of this money went to help struggling Americans, but it would be impossible to believe some of it did not also provide aid to families that crossed the border illegally or made asylum claims when stopped by border patrol agents.
Especially since states that are at geographically border states, are among consistently spending the most to provide food and diapers for pregnant women and young children.
Housing Of Illegal Immigrants
Illegal immigrants who are awaiting a decision on asylum or refugee status are eligible for HUD housing benefits. Households with at least one income qualifying non-citizen, meaning they have some type of temporary or permanent legal status to be in the United States, can apply for housing waivers.
Medical Care For Illegal Immigrants
It is against federal policy to use taxpayer funds to cover health care costs of illegal immigrants via either Obamacare or Medicaid, but the people who are crossing the border illegally or to claim asylum are still being treated for medical and mental health issues.
While I wish doctors worked for free (thanks to Obamacare our premium would be $1,200 a month with a $12,500 deductible, if we could still afford insurance – and few doctors that will accept it – including anyone we had ever been to before losing our quality and affordable insurance, but that rant is for another topic on another day) and medicine did not cost a dime, that just is not how the world works.
Uninsured illegal immigrants receive approximately $4.6 billion in health service at the federal level paid for by, you guessed it, the American taxpayer – according to a Forbes report. At the state level, another $2.8 billion on illegal immigrant health services is financed by hard-working Americans, according to the same report. Unfortunately, the tally does not end there.
The report goes on to note more than $6 billion more dollars used to cover the cost of illegal immigrant health services via federal subsidies, “cost-shifting,” and expenditures from employer tax exclusion. All together, the Forbes researchers who ran the available figures estimate We the People spend around $18.5 billion a year, on the health needs of illegal immigrants.
American AID To Countries Where The Vast Majority Of Illegal Immigrants Once Called Home
Politicians in Washington D.C. annually spend hundreds of millions of our dollars trying to help fix the problems that exist in countries that have the highest illegal immigrant populations claiming doing so will improve conditions there and thus curtail illegal immigration into the United States…it’s not working folks.
United States Foreign Aid Fiscal Year 2017
- Mexico – $290 million
- Guatemala – $257 million
- Honduras – $181 million
- Colombia – $518 million
- Costa Rica – $18 million
- Nicaragua – $44 million
- El Salvador – $118 million
- Dominican Republic – $61 million
- Panama – $27 million
- Venezuela – $14 million
- Bolivia – $2.3 million
- Ecuador – $18 million
- Argentina – $2.9 million
Grab a calculator and do the math. If you still think President Trump’s border security plan is too expensive, it is time to take a remedial arithmetic course at your local elementary school. You might find it difficult to once again fit in those tiny desks, but teachers in many states might be kind enough to bring you a more suitable desk, grateful that at least their newest pupil is a native English speaker.
Securing our border is both a national security and an economic security matter. This type of runaway spending is simply not sustainable and will ultimately lead to an economic collapse.
Americans cannot continue to absorb such a massive financial burden and keep our own lights on and our own kitchens stocked with groceries.
Save this article so the next time some career politician tries to convince you that paying more in taxes is your patriotic duty and oh so necessary, you can send it to him or her after you highlight a few places they are welcome to pull some money from…other than your pocket.
Tara Dodrill is a homesteading and survival journalist and author. She lives on a small ranch with her family in Appalachia. She has been both a host and frequent guest on preparedness radio shows. In addition to the publication of her first book, ‘Power Grid Down: How to Prepare, Survive, and Thrive after the Lights go Out’, Dodrill also travels to offer prepping tips and hands-on training and survival camps and expos.
Zulu 3-6,
What is really said to me is that even school teachers don’t always have the grammar and diction they should have in order to teach the subject. When I hear a teacher say “we was” instead of “we were” or pronounce “etc.” as Eksetera”, it’s akin to nails on the chalkboard. I grew up in the 1950’s & 1960’s living next door to my maternal grandfather who taught high school math and English. English back then included proper grammar and spelling and in my household, ”ain’t” was a forbidden 4 letter word. I often come across as obsessed with grammar, but I think writing and speaking clearly with proper spelling and grammar is important, and I often wonder about those who are careless with the language, potentially being careless with other aspects of their life and relationships.
TOP,
Using my Ex as an example again, she was trying to get her degree in education. The other students in her classes, particularly the minority types, regularly cheated on assignments and exams. They didn’t particularly try to hide it. When my Ex reported their activities to the faculty, they were not interested in pursuing cheaters. These cheating college students were going to be the teachers our children were supposedly going to learn from.
Essentially, these colleges of education were producing only facsimiles of teachers, not a true educator.
When we moved to Florida from Michigan in 2000, we enrolled our two youngest kids in a private parochial school. All of the teachers were former public school teachers who quit, took a pay loss, but were allowed to actually teach kids. My #2 daughter was completely turned around at that school and she loved her teachers. She hated her Michigan teachers. My son only went to pre-school there, but he also loved his teachers and was an excellent student. #1 daughter finished her last two-years of high school at a public school. She thought it was OK, but wasn’t really impressed.
Sadly, when we moved from Orlando, the kids went back to public schools and things declined again. #2 daughter was able to get through the BS and did OK. My son, did fine in K through 3rd grade, but things went downhill from there. He ended up begging me to homeschool him when he was in 9th grade. I did. He had to re-start 9th grade and got through high school with me just fine. We used a computer based program to help us.
It upset me that I still had to pay property taxes to the school district to do nothing other than spend my money on refurbishing the district office building and hiring more “administrators” to do who knows what. I am a firm advocate for vouchers.
Zulu 3-6,
I think some of this goes clear back to the late 1960’s and the Vietnam War with its draft lottery system. I was in college with a student deferment from 1969-1973 pursuing engineering degrees I had been preparing for since Junior High school, by taking all of the math and science that was offered. I took physics, and chemistry (including organic) and math up through calculus, all of which made the engineering curriculum in college much easier. There were however, a lot of guys who took general classes with the plan of working at the local factory, mil, etc. That was their plan until they drew a low lottery number and were in line to be drafted. Some were drafted and served, some joined the service of their choice if they had the credentials and education to do so, some went to Canada, and some ended up going to college, even though they had not even thought about doing so nor had prepared to do so. I ran into some of these guys who took the only curriculum they were qualified for which unfortunately included education and journalism. To extend their student deferments, many pursued higher degrees and thus became what Roger Kimball later called ”Tenured Radicals” in his book by the same name.
My daughter attended our local rural public school system; but, when she hit kindergarten, I started attending school board meetings and worked to seek out and help select the best teachers for her, while my DW started volunteering in the class rooms. She had previously been a paid teacher’s aid in a MR DD school, and had the credentials to continue with normal children. We supplemented our DD’s education and I was not afraid to go in and have frank discussions with teachers and administrators of the schools. She ended up graduating as class valedictorian and was the first National merit Scholar the school system had seen in nearly 20 years. You simply have to make the schools do what they are required to do; but, that will take some effort and time.
As it turns out, when you have a smart kid who works hard and parents who care and get involved, there are quite a few teachers who will step up to the plate and help, once you let them know what you expect from your child and the school system.
Sometimes the teachers get frustrated by both the children and the parents. In one teacher conference with a math teacher, I was told that he caught a kid cheating and when he informed the father of the cheating and the sneaky way the child was doing it, the response was, I didn’t know my kid was clever enough to cheat like that. No lesson learned by the child in this case.
This is why we used the public school and demanded that they do their jobs. As for vouchers, I still think it’s the teachers unions who advocate for the teachers and not the children. The all caring, tolerant hypocritical democrat politicians are also more interested in union money and votes than the children they profess to be protecting. Children are only important when they can be used as a blunt force weapon against an opponent, like separating children from their so called families at the southern border.
Best I stop my rant now, LOL.
The whole draft deferment always galled me, what you were doing was considered more important than the career building I was doing. All those with low numbers (13 for me) should have went and did their duty then returned to collage.
Public Servants?
When I think of this I think of the twilight zone episode “To Serve Man” Based on the story “To Serve Man” by Damon Knight.
Earth is visited by aliens who tell is their plans to help us grow as a population; however, at the very end, their book is finally translated and revealed that ”It’s a cookbook” I suspect that many of us feel like we’re just on someone’s menu.
As for democracy & the Electoral College, I blame much of this on the teachers unions, whose job is not to educate our youth; but, to keep teachers employed, as well paid as possible, and allow them to have a nice retirement, while sending part of their dues to the politicians who serve their needs.. These unions fight against home schooling, charter schools, and especially vouchers, where the parent can vote with their feet and drop their children from the poorly performing schools.
Those same “public servants” also bug me, and once at a meet & greet I mentioned that a senatorial candidate was running for congress, only to be corrected that he was running for the “Senate”. When I pointed out that the U.S. Constitution establishes a Congress consisting of two bodies, the ”House” and the ”Senate”, so both house and Senate were members of congress, he begrudgingly admitted that I was right; but, the mindset seems to remain.
Border Security Is National Security
As long as the opposing sides are more intent on winning than serving the public and protecting the country, this will be an issue; but, I fully expect the current Administration to use emergency authority should the Chuck & Nancy show continue their intransigence.
Border Security And Economic Security
Let us not forget the real agenda. Once these illegal immigrants are established with drivers licenses, they end up voting (who cares if it’s legal) and the democrat party plans to keep them on the dole to purchase their future votes.
Here locally I know two family dairy farmers who are having trouble competing with several mega dairies, running hundreds of cows, cared for by illegal alien workers. There is even a sort of illegal job shop, like Man Power or Adecco, that hires the illegal’s and takes any heat from I.N.S./ICE, while the mega dairies pay a daily rate for a person and pretend they don’t know what’s going on.
Keep in mind that just recently a seizure of enough fentanyl to kill 50,000,000 people was made on our southern border; but, who knows how much makes it into the country.
This is mostly true; but, here in Ohio some districts, including the one in which I live, bases it on income tax. Our local School District income tax is 1% of adjusted gross income, so every year I fill out a Federal 1040, a state IT-1040, and a school SD-1040.
While this burden on the taxpayer is heavy, I don’t think it will cause an economic collapse; since the real problem is a congress that can raise the limit on its own credit card, and use the money to purchase votes. Our on the books debt is around $21,000,000,000,000 (that’s a lot of zeros) and that doesn’t include debt like social security (trust fund my A$$).
My Obamacare premiums were $1400.00 per month with an $8,000.00 deductible for the DW, the DD, and I. What saved our bacon were the DW and I turning 65 and going on Medicare, and the DD graduating from college and getting a job with benefits. As it is, we’re still paying back quite a bit to medical providers @ 0% interest, since most have decided that monthly payments over time is better than forcing someone into bankruptcy and getting nothing.
The Romans had it right on getting to the root of any problem:
‘Qui bono’…’who benefits’…’follow the money’ etc.
Since the president of Mexico was on El Chapo’s payroll for 100 million…
…is it a stretch to believe that some dems/repubs, especially in border states…
…are on the payrolls of the cartels?
joe tentpeg,
Not a stretch at all. In fact, I fully believe it is happening still even with El Chapo in jail and on trial.
Zulu 3-6,
If you mean bribing the Mexican politicians I would agree; but, still don’t find it credible that U.S. national pols are on the take at that level. El Chapo did after all manage to tunnel out of a Mexican prison and no one does what he did without a large infrastructure and organization that I suspect is still in place with tons of cash to continue doing what they do.
TOP,
I think corruption has gone that deep in the US political system. Perhaps Nancy doesn’t personally need big bucks from a criminal organization, but she will take the money for the Democrat Party. Look at what has been going on with Hillary and Bill. Hillary is greedy for money and power. Nancy is definitely greedy for power. They aren’t the only ones.
joe tentpeg,
Actually I think it is a stretch, and don’t think corruption has hit that deep into all aspects of national politics, since punishment would be harsh; however, corruption at the level of ego and power seems to be normal. Congresscritters like 78 year old 17 term, Nancy Pelosi seem to know that her constituents will continue to elect herm no matter how far off the deep end she seems to travel. She is the poster child for term limits; but, under our current system needs no payoff from cartels, since she gets to control people and be self important.
Tara- I tried to comment earlier but the software kept asking me to type a post. Trying to see if I have access now.
Since I am “in” so to speak, kudos on the post. I appreciate the facts presented. For students motivated to learn, our public school system has many flaws.
The liberals in my family cannot understand my support for building a wall. But I live in an area with many immigrants and those here legally share my feelings about those here illegally.