Today President Trump announced that there is a “national emergency” on the US-Mexican border:
President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on Friday in an effort to circumvent Congress and fund the wall he promised to build along the U.S. border with Mexico.
“We’re talking about an invasion of our country with drugs, with human traffickers with all types of criminals and gangs,” Trump said in remarks delivered in the White House Rose Garden just before he issued the order.
But he seemed to undercut the theme of urgency when he took questions later, telling NBC’s Peter Alexander that the move wasn’t really necessary.
“I could do the wall over a longer period of time,” he said. “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.”
The controversial executive action — which Trump acknowledged would draw lawsuits — came the day after Congress cleared a bill for his signature that prevents a second government shutdown in two months and provides just under $1.4 billion for 55 miles of new fencing along the border. Trump has indicated he will sign the bill, which passed with veto-proof majorities in both chambers, despite pressure from some conservatives to veto it because of its limitations on the type and length of barrier that can be built.
“The current situation at the southern border presents a border security and humanitarian crisis that threatens core national security interests and constitutes a national emergency. The southern border is a major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics,” Trump said in the proclamation, released later in the afternoon, when he also signed the appropriations measures. “Because of the gravity of the current emergency situation, it is necessary for the Armed Forces to provide additional support to address the crisis.”
Trump addressed the voices of dissent on his right flank in his Friday morning remarks, saying that conservative commentator and sometime critic of his approach Ann Coulter is “off the reservation.” He also said that allies like Fox’s Sean Hannity and radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh have his ear but “they don’t decide policy.”
The emergency declaration could allow him to spend money on barriers from a variety of accounts, including the $1.4 billion in the appropriations bill, if his actions clear legal hurdles.
Democratic leaders in Congress quickly vowed to fight Trump on what they said was an overstep of his authority.
“The president’s actions clearly violate the Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, which our Founders enshrined in the Constitution,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a joint statement. “The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities in the Congress, in the Courts, and in the public, using every remedy available.”
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, told NBC Thursday night that he planned to introduce a joint resolution terminating the national emergency, but that would not take effect unless both chambers of Congress passed it and either the president signed it or Congress overrode a veto. (source, source)
Something in this speech caught my attention, as was highlighted above. Namely, that there is not a national emergency by President Trump’s own admission, simply a desire to “get done” something to his liking.
This is an open admission that there is no emergency, and that Trump’s declaration was ostensibly issued under false pretenses.
CBS News did an excellent writeup about the presidential emergency declarations issued since 1979 (see here and here). While one should not say there is not an emergency on the border in terms of the threats from drug cartel terrorists, the fact is that the presence or lack of a wall is not going to stop problems on the border region because of economic and political concerns which are directly advanced by our government.
I did a full analysis of this in March 2018, and I encourage you to read it. Put simply, the border issue is a problem that the US could solve but is one that she chooses not to, and many times chooses to worsen for her own benefit. Economically speaking, the people who are coming into the US are not only doing so mostly through ports of entry- this includes legal as well as illegal entry -but they are coming for work and are directly supported by the agricultural manufacturing sector. This is because the US foreign policy uses food as a weapon of political control and “bread and circuses” in the US for domestic control of the people. In order to do this, it necessarily requires a labor base that is not subject to or can be easily denied most of the labor rights requirements made of employers today. Since wages for most people in all of Central America are extremely low, what is well below “minimum wage” in the US is more money than they ever could dream of earning and is in their minds a “golden ticket” to help their families in their native lands.
But it is not just the agricultural industry. The manufacturing sector makes frequent use of illegal or significantly low-paying labor for difficult or miserable jobs. Contrary to the idea promulgated by people that “illegals are taking high-paying construction jobs,” if one spends any time in a manufacturing facility or construction site that employs such people, one will find that almost all of them are working in the most miserable and low paying of the available occupations. In construction, for example, such people will be found in drywall hanging because it is a job that most construction workers do not want to do because it is time-consuming, dangerous, carries a heavy potential liability, and does not pay much. It is not just “cheaper” to contract out to a “company” made of “illegals,” but often times is the only way to complete that aspect of construction within available budget constrains, let alone being under budget.
In the case of manufacturing, in June 2017 I told a story about an illegal immigrant I knew from Guatemala who lived in the US for five years while working in the miserable occupation as a line twister for a major carpet company. To get an idea for what line twisting looks like, one can see a video below from 8:20 to 9:20:
The video here is from Shaw, which is using higher quality machines and techniques than are employed in most cases. In the case of the facility where this employee worked, the machines were very old and frequently broke. Working in such a position necessitates monitoring a minimum of 200 stations at any given time, and this is for new hires. The average person works between 600 to 800 machines, all of which he must monitor on his feet during a 12 hour shift. The only break given is for one hour, which is the only time most employees are able to sit down as they are frequently not allowed to sit by their supervisors’ order. Most people are frequently exhausted within an hour or two, and by the end of their shift can scarcely keep up. The schedules for not only this facility, but all carpet manufacturing facilities in the area (and most likely in the video above) run on an alternating day 12 hour schedule, where a person works three days for one week and the next week works on the four days he did not work the past week. This schedule makes it impossible for a person to go back to school, have any regular activities, or even go to church on Sunday as many force their employees to work alternating Sundays. Any objection to such a schedule results in a person being terminated and another hired in his place.
The job at the facility where this employee worked had a constant flow of new employees coming in because most people either could not keep up with the work or once they found a better job they would leave because it was so physically and mentally taxing. The only people who stayed to work were either illegals or drug addicts, and they all knew they were being legally exploited through what could be described as seldom more than legal slavery, but this was all they had or could get, and their labor was what allowed this company to sell their carpet at the prices they did. Many of the above described persons were happy to work at a capacity which was obviously detrimental to their health because they were simply grateful to have work.
This one illegal I spoke with would run anywhere between 8 and 12 machines at a time. He worked for many years until he saved up enough to return to Guatemala and purchase his own hacienda where he could live out the rest of his days as a wealthy man.
This kind of labor, which is the modern equivalent of slavery with a legal coating, has always existed and is what drives much of the gears of modern society. That is the main reason why it will never disappear, because if it did, then American life as it is known today would cease to exist, as well as all of the business investments tied directly to it. Certainly these investors are not going to let a wall get in their way- they would knock it down themselves before allowing it to interfere with their profits.
The same must be said about the drug cartels. It is a known fact that the US government has been heavily involved in Central America for decades, and that drugs and weapons running are ways of earning money “off the books” so they can fund black operations. It is why that in spite of the comments about “banning cash,” the US is not going to get rid of cash until they can find a sufficient substitute or the CIA does not believe that the cash-to-drugs trade is going to be as profitable for funding their operations. To reiterate, this does not mean the government will not “abolish” cash, but not until they have already secured and tested another way of funding black operations that works with equal or greater efficiency.
The drug cartels do not operate on their own, nor did they blossom ex nihlo, and curiously as alluded to above, they appeared in Central America at the same time that CIA operations directly increased, which has again been well-documented by many. They are a variant of the same practices done in Europe with the “stay-behind” groups of Operation Gladio, and whose wealth is made with the willing knowledge and assistance of the same government who will declare to the public a “war on drugs” against her own supply. It is controlling both the “problem” and the “solution” so that there will be no actual solution, but only the continuation of the status quo.
Trump began 2019 with the phony “government shutdown” whose purpose was to do what Trump is a proven expert at doing, and that is to perform on reality television. He is doing the same thing again with this border wall fiasco, and by intentionally making such a statement as the above saying that he does not have to do this- indeed, statements from a president are always made for a reason -he has opened up the way for his own orders to be undermined, which will likely be intentionally exploited by the Democrats, who as I have stated appear to be intentionally throwing the 2020 election, in order for Trump to say “See, look at those evil Democrats, I tried to use Executive Orders to fund the wall and they are illegally stopping me, look how unamerican they are and this is why you must vote for me.”
It’s a political charade. There is no national emergency going on now or before. There is no controversy, just a poorly done soap opera that makes even the worst acting in the lowest budget Mexican telenovela look good.
The best advice that one can learn from this is to stop paying attention to the charade. Stop watching it and focus one’s energies elsewhere. Do not put one’s trust in these political leaders, and perhaps consider making personal improvements because the leaders of a nation are reflections of the character of her people, and this is shown to be true throughout history and cultures around the world.
As I have continually stated, look at the current year as though it were 2003. Few people predicted a year such as 2008 and those which came after, yet even now looking back, one can see that if one payed attention to previous patterns, such was bound to happen as it did.
The Internet has changed this, enabling people to have a view of history and events in real-time and to actively compare them against each other. It is for the prudent man to use this to his advantage, knowing that not only will the current situation likely not change, but because it will likely worsen in the coming years, to prepare oneself to be able to benefit and help oneself and those near him. It is also time to ignore useless distractions, such as declarations with no value other than to rile the emotions of people, including the one made by President Trump today.
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