DELEITURAS

President Donald Trump’s administration is pushing back on a media report that claimed no new walls had been built along the southern border with Mexico.

The Daily Mail published a story on Thursday that said the Trump has built “ZERO new walls despite claiming otherwise for months,” citing a statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesman Roger Maier.

Maier told the British publication that the “first new wall project, where no barrier currently exists, is anticipated to start in April.”

A senior administration official took issue with the Daily Mail’s framing. Building walls where there were gaps or only small or ineffective non-wall barriers before is, by definition, building new walls, that official told The Daily Caller News Foundation on Friday.

Maier also released a statement to TheDCNF on Friday, stating that the administration has built “new border wall,” where non-wall barriers had previously existed.

“CBP has built and continues to build new border wall along the Southwest border. To date, CBP has built 38 miles of new border wall system in San Diego and Calexico, California, Santa Teresa, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas,” Maier said.

“This new wall provides new capability by replacing ineffective or dilapidated infrastructure, such as Normandy-style barriers designed only to stop vehicles, not people on foot. This ongoing construction is part of about 115 miles of new border wall system underway using FY2017 and FY2018 funding. FY19 funding also provides for about 55 miles of new border wall,” added Maier.

The disconnect between the Daily Mail’s story and the Trump administration’s position hinges on whether replacing non-wall barriers with walls counts as “new wall.”

TheDCNF has reached out to Daily Mail reporter David Martosko, the author of the story in question, for comment.

CBP released a video on Monday showing that the agency had built two miles of “bollard wall” in CBP’s El Centro Sector in California, “immediately west of the Calexico Port of Entry.” That project replaced old fencing with the “bollard wall.”

 

by Evie Fordham

Roughly 60 percent of all packages shipped into the U.S. come from China, but that could change if the Trump administration completes the process it began Wednesday to leave a 144-year-old multilateral shipping treaty.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) treaty sets shipping rates that let Chinese companies shipping to the U.S. pay approximately one-fifth the amount that U.S. shippers must pay to ship domestically, reported USA Today.

The U.S. could renegotiate the rates, but it will start the approximately year-long exit process from the UPU Wednesday, unnamed “senior officials” said according to USA Today.

“People are getting hurt in this country by an unfair system,” one official told reporters on a conference call according to CNBC.

Critics of the treaty are excited to see the U.S. so close to withdrawing.

The treaty “contributes significantly to the flood of counterfeit goods and dangerous drugs that enter the country from China,” the National Association of Manufacturers said according to CNBC.

The withdrawal talks are another step in the U.S. and China’s trade war. Tensions have been escalating since July, when the Trump administration levied tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods. China did the same to U.S. goods.

The UPU’s imbalanced rates were meant to help businesses in Asia and Africa grow but have let Chinese businesses flood the U.S. with goods that are often shipped free, reported The New York Times. The UPU was established in 1874 and has 192 member countries.

Companies like San Francisco-based Wish.com could suffer if the U.S. withdraws. People in the U.S. can buy ultra-cheap goods — like $4 bikinis, $29 camera drones and $1 spoons — directly from Chinese sellers and manufacturers through Wish, reported The Atlantic. Wish earned its $8.5 billion valuation through its ability to ship Chinese goods to the U.S. on the cheap.

The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will allow President Donald Trump to temporarily enforce an order barring transgender individuals from serving in the military.

As is typical of orders of this nature, the Court gave no reason for its decision, though Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan noted their dissent.

The Trump administration first petitioned the Supreme Court to decide directly on the legality of the trans-soldiers ban, after federal trial judges in California, Washington, D.C. and Washington state issued orders prohibiting its enforcement. The plaintiffs in those lawsuits argue the policy violates a range of constitutional rights including the First Amendment, equal protection, and due process.

The government said the Court’s intervention was necessary because the lower court decision “require the military to maintain a policy that, in its own professional judgment, risks undermining readiness, disrupting unit cohesion, and weakening military effectiveness and lethality.”

Subsequent to that request, the Department of Justice filed a second petition proposing an alternative: in the event the Court denied the first request, the administration suggested that the justices allow enforcement of the ban while litigation continues in the lower courts. The Court granted that request Tuesday.

The president abruptly announced on Twitter that the military would not permit trans personnel to serve in the military. Thereafter, former Defense Secretary James Mattis convened a panel of military experts to conduct an independent review of the subject. Their findings served as the basis of Mattis’ February 2018 memo which implemented Trump’s request.

That memo provides that individuals with a history of gender dysphoria — a clinical term referring to anxiety triggered by the conflict between one’s biological sex and the gender with which they identify — may enlist provided they are willing to serve in their biological sex and have not suffered gender dysphoria for a continuous three year period prior to recruitment. Active personnel who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria may continue to serve provided they do so in their biological sex.

This is breaking news. This post will be updated

A pair of U.S. congressmen from Florida are making a renewed bipartisan push for carbon tax legislation that failed to gain traction in 2018, The Washington Examiner reported.

Reps. Ted Deutch, a Democrat, and Francis Rooney, a Republican, are planning to reintroduce a bill Thursday that would place a $15-per-ton tax on carbon emissions in 2019. The tax would rise by $10-a-year increments until it hits nearly $100 per ton.

“I am supportive of a carbon fee as a non-regulatory, revenue-neutral and market-driven incentive to move toward natural gas and away from coal, and to support emerging alternate sources of energy,” Rooney told The Washington Examiner. “This bill provides a method of ensuring that any fees are rebated back to the public.”

The pair of legislators, who co-chair the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, partnered with other lawmakers to introduce an earlier version of the same bill in November 2018. That bill did not come up for a vote and died after the new session of Congress began.

The proposal is revenue neutral, or does not create another source of tax revenue for the federal government to tap into and divert for other causes. The money collected through the proposed carbon tax would be redistributed in equal amounts back to American families.

The tax would hit large carbon producers hardest, such as coal mines and oil refineries, and trickle down to manufacturers, automakers and other industries. It would also hit Americans in the form of higher energy costs and more expensive goods. The carbon tax rebate received by families is supposed to counter the increased price of energy.

Carbon tax proposals suffered a string of defeats last year at the national and state levels. Several carbon tax bills in the House and Senate failed to gain significant support and a carbon tax ballot measure in Washington state, meant to test the popularity of similar climate change tools, failed despite significant environmental and political backing.

Carlos Curbelo, a former U.S. representative from Florida, lost his bid for re-election in 2018 after leading the push to take up carbon tax legislation.

Carbon taxes, as a policy tool, sit in limbo between the general agendas of Republicans and Democrats. Conservatives say the policy hits impoverished and low-income families hardest by making goods more expensive while failing to effect any significant change. Environmentalists and Democrats usually tend to support government mandates to combat climate change.

Justice League topped global ticket sales this weekend for the second time with $112.9 million bringing its running total to $481.3 million. Disney/Pixar’s Coco debuted at number one in the U.S. with $40.7 million but has been playing globally for about a month during which it has pulled in $153.4 million.

The top 12 worldwide films, by ticket sales:

1. Justice League – Warner Bros. – $112.9M
2. Coco – Disney – $79.7M
3. Murder On The Orient Express – 20th Century Fox – $30.2M
4. Thor: Ragnarok – Disney – $27.8M
5. Daddy’s Home 2 – Paramount Pictures – $27.1M
6. Wonder – Multiple – $23.6M
7. Manhunt – Multiple – $11.6M
8. Swindlers, The – Showbox / Mediaplex Inc. – $10.5M
9. Paddington 2 – Multiple – $9.1M
10. Bad Moms Christmas, A – STX Entertainment – $9.0M
11. Star, The – Sony – $6.9M
12. Explosion (Yin Bao Zhe) – Multiple – $4.9M

Top 12 U.S. films, by ticket sales:

1. Coco – Disney – $49.0M
2. Justice League – Warner Bros. – $40.7M
3. Wonder – Lionsgate – $22.3M
4. Thor: Ragnarok – Disney – $16.8M
5. Daddy’s Home 2 – Paramount – $13.2M
6. Murder On The Orient Express – 20th Century Fox – $13.0M
7. Star, The – Sony – $6.9M
8. Bad Moms Christmas, A – STX Entertainment – $5.0M
9. Roman J. Israel, Esq. – Sony – $4.5M
10. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri – Fox Searchlight – $4.4M
11. Lady Bird – A24 – $4.0M
12. Man Who Invented Christmas, The – Bleecker Street – $1.3M

Aaron Alexis was allowed to walk into a Navy Shipyard last week and systematically execute 12 people because his prior arrests for gun possession were never prosecuted and his cries for mental help were never addressed.

Instead of prosecuting Aaron Alexis on two separate crimes involving a firearm our politically correct judicial system instead issued him two get out of jail free cards. In addition, the mental health professionals who were supposed to recognize the warning signs instead gave him the benefit of the doubt and never shared their findings with the appropriate agencies who could have determined his mental status.

How did this man pass multiple background checks and evade multiple arrests involving firearm use and possession? Why did Aaron Alexis choose the Navy Ship Yard to perpetrate his crime? What drove this young man to commit this heinous act?

The Democratic Party will have you believe that this shooting was a result of too many guns in too many hands. They will have you believe that a complete ban on guns is the only answer to preventing these acts. They will blame it on Right Wing Extremists, the Second Amendment, and the National Rifle Association. They will give you every single excuse under the sun except for their own failed liberal policies.

What they won’t tell you is the truth.

In 1993 former president Bill Clinton issued an order forbidding members of the military and their civilian contractors from carrying their own personal firearms on military bases. Since this ruling at least 25 military personnel have been murdered as a result of this policy. I bet you never heard this on ABC, NBC, CBS, or CNN did you?

Since 1950, almost every single public shooting in the United States in which more than three people have been killed have taken place in what are commonly known as “gun free” zones. The main reason this tragedy occurred was due to Bill Clinton’s 1993 draconian policy on gun control.

Let’s take a look at some mass shootings that took place in gun free zones.

The last mass shooting on a military base happened only four short years ago. Nidal Hasan shot 13 people to death in Fort Hood, Texas in what is the worst mass shooting on a military base in history. Once again, Fort Hood was a gun free zone.

Last December Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and shot to death 26 people, including 20 children. Once again, there were no faculty armed on school grounds essentially making the school another easy target in a gun free zone.

James Holmes, who shot to death 12 people last year in a Colorado movie theatre did so by seeking out the one theatre out of seven in the metropolitan Denver area that was in a gun free zone.

In 2007 Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho shot to death 32 students in the worst mass shooting in United States history. Once again, Virginia Tech was a gun free campus with a complete ban on firearms on school property even for security guards and those that possessed a legal concealed weapons permit.

In 1999 two students who attended gun free zone Columbine High School in Colorado murdered 12 of their fellow classmates before turning their guns on themselves.

There are many other incidents of mass shootings that took place in gun free zones but for sake of time I can’t list them all. The fact is that gun free zones kill innocent victims. The people that commit these crimes are well aware that they will not meet an armed resistance which is exactly why these cowards choose these locations.

If military personnel were allowed to carry personal firearms on base these shooters would have thought twice about committing these crimes. If colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools, elementary schools, and even movie theatres were not in gun free zones than most of these tragedies would not have occurred.

The reality is not all shootings can be prevented. But allowing more law abiding citizens to carry firearms will decrease the amount of mass shootings. If plain clothed officers were allowed to patrol schools and carry a firearm it will make these places less of an attractive target. We need more guns in school not less guns in school. We need more guns on military bases not less guns on military bases. We need more armed citizens at movies theatres, restaurants, shopping malls, etc.

The biggest deterrent to fighting crime is not creating the environment that entices it. Most criminals will take the path of least resistance which is why gun free zones are so deadly. If more law abiding citizens were armed there would actually be less mass shootings. As Robert A. Heinlein once said, “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his or her acts with their life.”

If you like this article you will love my radio show. Please tune into the The Grit and Grace Show live every Tuesday and Thursday nights from 8-10pm CST or anytime right here: www.blogtalkradio.com/gritgraceradio

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The Navy will commission its newest Independence-variant littoral combat ship (LCS), the future USS Charleston (LCS 18), during a 10 a.m. ceremony Saturday, March 2, at Columbus Street Terminal in Charleston, South Carolina.

U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina will deliver the commissioning ceremony’s principal address. Charlotte Riley, wife of former Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, is the ship’s sponsor. The ceremony will be highlighted by a time-honored Navy tradition when Mrs. Riley gives the first order to “man our ship and bring her to life!”

“The future USS Charleston is proof of what the teamwork of all of our people – civilian, contractor and military – can accomplish together,” said Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer. “This ship will extend the maneuverability and lethality of our fleet to confront the many challenges of a complex world, from maintaining the sea lanes to countering instability to maintaining our edge against renewed great power competition.”

The name Charleston has a long and storied history in the U.S. Navy. The first Navy ship to bear the name Charleston was a row galley that defended the coast of South Carolina during the Quasi-War with France. The second Charleston (C-2) was a protected cruiser that received the surrender of Guam during the Spanish-American War. The third Charleston (C-22) was a St. Louis-class protected cruiser that performed escort and troop transport duties in World War I. The next Charleston (PG-51) was an Erie-class patrol gunboat that earned the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one battle star for her service in the northern Pacific during World War II. The fifth Charleston (AKA-113/LKA-113) was an amphibious cargo ship that served during the Vietnam War.

The future USS Charleston is a fast, agile, focused-mission platform designed for operation in near-shore environments yet capable of open-ocean operation. It is designed to defeat asymmetric “anti-access” threats such as mines, quiet diesel submarines and fast surface craft. The ship will be homeported in San Diego, Calif.

The LCS class consists of two variants, the Freedom variant and the Independence variant, designed and built by two industry teams. The Freedom variant team is led by Lockheed Martin, Marinette, Wis., (for the odd-numbered hulls). The Independence variant team is led by Austal USA, Mobile, Ala., (for LCS 6 and the subsequent even-numbered hulls).

The ceremony, using hashtag #USSCharleston, can be viewed Saturday morning on the Navy Live blog.

Despite a drop in numbers across much of the United States since the recession, vacant and abandoned properties continue to dog struggling postindustrial cities, tearing apart neighborhoods with growing intensity, according to a report published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Since the 1990s, vacancies have become more widespread in cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, and St. Louis, former industrial powerhouses known as legacy cities, researcher Alan Mallach writes in the Policy Focus Report The Empty House Next Door: Understanding and Reducing Vacancy and Hypervacancy in the United States. These vacancies are driving property values down, hurting cities’ financial health, and contributing to higher crime rates. At the same time, cities have had some success with strategies to rehabilitate, selectively demolish, and reuse vacant properties as new housing or green space.

The report analyzes U.S. Census and Postal Service data for 15 legacy cities — ten large and five small — as well as for magnet cities such as San Francisco and Boston, and Sunbelt cities such as Phoenix and Dallas. The report focuses especially on two indicators: hypervacancy, the condition in which at least one in five properties sits vacant, and so-called “other vacancies,” a Census term for properties sitting unused and not for sale or rent — effectively abandoned.

A few decades ago, hypervacancy was limited to a handful of neighborhoods but now characterizes large swaths of many cities. In 2015, more than 49 percent of Census tracts in Flint, Michigan, 46 percent of tracts in Detroit, and 42 percent of tracts in Gary, Indiana, suffered from extreme hypervacancy, with more than a quarter of units vacant in each tract.

At such levels of vacancy, “the market effectively ceases to function,” Mallach writes in the report. “Houses sell, if they sell at all, only to investors at rock bottom prices while the neighborhoods become areas of concentrated poverty, unemployment, and health problems.”

Meanwhile, the number of units that are effectively abandoned has increased by 2.1 million units nationally, from 3.7 million in 2005 to 5.8 million in 2016, an increase roughly equal to five times the entire housing stock of San Francisco. These properties represent less than a third of all vacant properties in magnet and Sunbelt cities, but about half of all vacancies in large legacy cities and roughly two-thirds of vacancies in the smaller legacy cities, which face the greatest economic challenges, as detailed in the report Revitalizing America’s Smaller Legacy Cities.

The Empty House Next Door describes barriers to addressing vacancies, including cumbersome property tax foreclosure processes, and state laws and bank practices that lead to thousands of properties being stuck in foreclosure limbo.  Legal tools including “spot blight” eminent domain, vacant property receivership, and land banking have helped communities gain control of abandoned properties in some cities, but are unavailable or under-utilized in others.

Some cities have pursued strategies to promote reuse of vacant property. In Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio, collaborative public-private efforts have combined strategic demolition with rehabilitation to make refurbished homes available to new buyers at affordable prices. Baltimore uses receivership to place vacant properties in the hands of for-profit and nonprofit developers in targeted areas with market potential, putting 1,300 units back to use since 2010.

In neighborhoods with less redevelopment potential, cities have converted vacant properties into green space. Cleveland, for example, published a catalog of potential green uses for vacant land and worked with a nonprofit partner to make $500,000 in grants to 56 small parks, rain gardens, and agricultural projects. In Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has pioneered an inexpensive, low-maintenance approach to greening more than 7,000 vacant lots.

With inspiration from these successes, the report recommends that cities collect better data on vacancies, remove legal impediments to reuse, adopt and use strong legal tools, use public strategies to overcome obstacles to market-driven reuse, make greening a long-term strategy, and balance demolition with rehabilitation as part of a larger strategy for revival.

You know those hippy throwbacks who think it would be cool if everyone was “equal” like the Constitution guarantees? Just a heads up, the guarantee is for equal access to succeed, not a guarantee for equal success.

This president can’t seem to grasp that truth. He has a hard time grasping many truths. And now, he’s given illegals, yes, the people who came here by breaking the law, a leg up over hard-working, tax-paying Americans.

One of the first in-your-face insults was him pushing states to give in-state tuition to illegals. And once again for clarity… these people are here illegally, breaking the law, and not paying taxes. It just shows his disdain for the American way of life. Veterans can’t even get the same privileges. They have to live in a state for the state’s designated residency period before they are considered a resident who qualifies for in state tuition. Maybe they should renounce their citizenship and run up from south of the border into the arms of California Governor Jerry Brown who recently told all illegals (and anyone thinking about coming to America illegally) to come to California they were welcome here! And Governor Brown won by big numbers in California, they deserve him!

Mr. Obama has opened previously closed military bases (remember, they were too costly to keep open). He flew in medical supplies with staff to treat the recent influx of Illegals coming across the border. This was a “humanitarian act” according to Mr. Obama. Wouldn’t it also have been a humanitarian act to reopen bases to help our vets? But it appears President Obama wouldn’t think of flying in medical personal to help our vets to shorten the time it takes them to get help because of the costs. Really Mr. President? Do you disrespect us that much? I guess you really do believe Americans are stupid.

Mr. Obama, you send Eric Holder into Ferguson to threateningly suggest that there is much more going on there behind the scenes with the police than actually is. How about you send him in to the VA with threats and a guarantee that many will lose their jobs if they don’t get their act together?

Remember when you told us that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) would not pay for abortions? Remember that? Remember you said there was no money in there for illegals to get healthcare? Not to mention all that “keep your doctor,” “cheaper rates,” “better policies,” you know the “Obama bucket-o-lies” bit.

So then we find that there actually is money for abortions in Obamacare in the form of the morning after pill, abortions for “emergency reasons,” “rape and incest.” Mr. Prez, I know you have a word problem, but abortion is abortion. And when the government pays for them that is taxpayer money not yours.

Now you have given 5+ million illegals the ability to take more American jobs and drain the system. Let’s do this at a Sesame Street level so you can understand. You see, once the “illegals” feel free to roam about the country, employers will be able to hire them, and still at a lesser rate than their American counterparts. The jobs they leave open will be back-filled by more people coming over the border because the president will not do anything to secure the borders any more than they are today.

He claims that Republicans wouldn’t sign an immigration bill that included the hiring of over 30 thousand more border patrol personnel. Nice try! Would you have given those new border patrol agents the same “rules of engagement” the current border patrol has? Because if that was the plan, then they would be just as useless as you’ve made the current border patrol. Our poor border patrol agents have their hands tied so badly that even they say they should just stay home.

The president’s claims on “deportation numbers” are bogus. He is counting only those that are caught and released at the border. His numbers are dismal for deporting those here in jail or living in the shadows.

Read more at TheRealSide

 

by Rob Shimshock

A leader of the #MeToo movement allegedly paid off her own sexual assault victim after accusing film producer Harvey Weinstein of a 1997 rape in October 2017.

Italian director and actress Asia Argento, one of Weinstein’s first public accusers, apparently paid actor and musician Jimmy Bennett $380,000 in exchange for his agreement not to sue her after she allegedly sexually assaulted him in 2013, The New York Times reported Sunday. Argento was 37 years old and Bennett was 17 years old at the time of the incident.

“We hope nothing like this ever happens to you again,” Argento’s lawyer, Carrie Goldberg, wrote in an April letter to Argento. “You are a powerful and inspiring creator and it is a miserable condition of life that you live among shitty individuals who’ve preyed on both your strengths and your weaknesses.”

Bennett’s own lawyer, Gordon Sattro, described a “sexual battery” perpetrated by Argento on Bennett that affected both the musician’s mental health and income, in a November letter he sent to lawyer Richard Hofstetter, who was then representing Argento.

Bennett asked Argento for $3.5 million in damages for lost wages, emotional distress, battery and assault. The actor had made over $2.7 million in the five years leading up to the alleged 2013 incident, but he has since earned an average of $60,000 per year.

Argento obtained the copyright for a May 9, 2013 photo from Bennett featuring the two of them lying in bed as part of the parties’ agreement. The New York Times obtained access to this photo via an encrypted email from an anonymous party.

Bennett cannot sue Argento for sexual assault, as per the parties’ agreement, however, Goldberg told Argento that the musician could publicly address the claims.

“In the coming days, Jimmy will continue doing what he has been doing over the past months and years, focusing on his music,” Sattro told The New York Times.

Argento did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The New York Times. Her late boyfriend, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, committed suicide in June.