Is this the America you love? Is this the America you want? Trump is telling you exactly what he plans to do. Believe him.
Palm Beach Sun Sentinel
Gestapo in the Streets. Trump’s America
ELECTION 2024Trump leans into mass deportationsEx-president asserts plan would target up to 20 million people
By Stephen Groves Associated PressWASHINGTON — “Mass Deportation Now!” declared the signs at the Republican National Convention, giving a full embrace to Donald Trump’s pledge to expel millions of migrants in the largest deportation program in American history.
Some Republicans aren’t quite ready for that.
Lauren B. Peña, a Republican activist from Texas, said that hearing Trump’s calls for mass deportations, as well as terms like “illegals” and “invasion” thrown around at the convention, made her feel uncomfortable.
Like some Republicans in Congress who have advanced balanced approaches to immigration, she hopes Trump is just blustering.
Families into boxcars. Trump’s America
“He’s not meaning to go and deport every family that crosses the border, he means deport the criminals and the sex offenders,” Peña, 33, said.
But Trump and his advisers have other plans.
He is putting immigration at the heart of his campaign to retake the White House and pushing the Republican Party toward a bellicose strategy that hearkens back to the 1950s when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched a deportation policy known by a racial slur — “Operation Wetback.”
Trump, when pressed for specifics on his plan in an interview with Time Magazine this year, suggested he would use the National Guard, and possibly even the military, to target 15 million to 20 million people — though the government estimated in 2022 there were 11 million migrants living in the U.S. without permanent legal permission.
His plans have raised the stakes of this year’s election beyond fortifying the southern border, a longtime conservative priority, to the question of whether America should make a fundamental change in its approach to immigration.
After the southern border saw a historic number of crossings during the Biden administration, Democrats have also moved rightward on the issue, often leading with promises of border security before talking about relief for the immigrants who are already in the country.
Latino voters could be pivotal in many swing states.
Trump won 35% of Hispanic voters in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, and support for stronger border enforcement measures has grown among Hispanic voters.
But an AP analysis of two consecutive polls conducted in June by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that about half of Hispanic Americans have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Trump.
Dragged from Homes. Trump’s America
GOP lawmakers have largely embraced Trump’s plans.
“It’s needed,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at a July interview at the conservative Hudson Institute.
Some, however, have shown tacit skepticism by suggesting more modest goals.
Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, pointed to over 1 million people who have already received a final order of removal from an immigration judge and said, “There’s a difference between those that are in the process right now and those that are finished with the process.”
Mass deportation to concentration camps. Trump’s America
Are we as ignorant as the Germans and Italians were when Hitler and Mussolini told them what would happen?
Even Hitler didn’t round up 15-20 million people. During the war, Nazi military forces rounded up 11 million victims.
Trump says he will outdo that.
Is this the America you want?
Hitler had Heinrich Himmler. Trump has Stephen Miller. Himmler/Miller, odd how similar the names are.
Trump entered office in 2016 with similar promises of mass deportation but “only” succeeded in deporting about 1.5 million people.
This time, though, there’s a plan.
Trump has worked with Stephen Miller, a former top aide who is expected to take a senior role in the White House if Trump wins.
Miller describes a Trump administration that will work with “utter determination” to accomplish two goals: “Seal the border. Deport all the illegals.”
To accomplish that, Trump would revive travel bans from countries deemed undesirable, such as majority-Muslim countries.
The banal faces of evil
He would launch a sweeping operation by deputizing the National Guard to round up immigrants, hold them in massive camps and put them on deportation flights before they could make legal appeals.
Beyond that, Trump has also pledged to end birthright citizenship— a 125-year-old right in the United States.
Trump even would deport many children who were born in America.
And several of his top advisers have laid out a sweeping policy vision through the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 that would choke off other forms of legal migration.
“Hold them in camps.” Trump’s America.
The Trump administration, under those plans, could also grind to a halt temporary programs for over 1 million migrants, including recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Ukrainians and Afghans who fled recent conflicts as well as others who receive temporary protection due to unrest in their home country.
The policies would have far-reaching disruptions in major industries like housing and agriculture.
“If the 75,000-plus immigrants who perform the hardest of work in Wisconsin’s dairy and agriculture were gone tomorrow, the state economy would tank,” said Jorge Franco, the CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, Democrats feel Trump’s threats are motivating Latino voters.
“The mass deportation put a lot of people on high alert,” said María Teresa Kumar, the CEO of Voto Latino, a leading voter registration organization that is backing Democrat Kamala Harris.
If you ever have flown a foreign airline and compared it to an American airline, you noticed a marked difference.
Foreign air carriers like ANA, Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, and Qatar Airways offer better food options, and more comfortable seating, better in-flight entertainment, and superior amenities.
Many foreign airlines operate newer and more modern aircraft with lie-flat seats in business class, advanced in-flight entertainment systems, and luxurious first-class suites.
Why the difference?
I ask because of a recent experience my daughter had flying United Airlines, first class, from Chicago to Denver.
It was a two-hour and 43-minute flight that took off at 11:02AM Central time and landed at 12:45PM Mountain time.
Here is a photo of the “meal” she was served in First Class during that 2 hours and 45 minutes (Coach got nothing):
This is United Airlines’s lunch in first class.
Yes, that’s right. In “First Class,” i.e. United Airlines version of “First Class,” this nearly three-hour flight warranted a 1 oz. bag of gummies for lunch.
The “explanation,” if you can call it that, was “We don’t offer meals on all our flights.”
I guess that sitting in a plane for nearly three hours during lunchtime doesn’t qualify for a meal on United Airlines, not even when you pay sky-high First Class rates.
And if that isn’t a disgusting enough example of United Airlines service, my daughter, who had a round-trip First Class ticket, was bumped from the return flight and had to take a later coach flight.
(Did I mention that my daughter is a transplant recipient who flies first class because her immune system is compromised, so she tries to keep whatever seating distance she can from other travelers?)
So, aside from the inconvenience of being bumped and the tighter seating,
Eventually she will get her $500+ refund for the difference between coach and First Class if she files paperwork, argues on the phone, and jumps through whatever other hoops United demands.
How does United Airlines get away with this awful service? Government restrictions on competition:
Once other air travelers have experienced the impressive service some foreign airlines offer, they often wonder: Why can’t they do business in the USA?
Of course, international airlines do operate in this country, but the government forbids them from flying point-to-point destinations domestically.
These laws, meant to protect American consumers and jobs, are having the exact opposite effect. Eliminating — or at least partially lifting — outdated restrictions could significantly increase competition and improve customer service.
Industry watchers say that banning foreign carriers from offering domestic flights might have made sense a generation ago when the American airline industry was tightly regulated by the federal government. But today, with only a few megacarriers remaining and the security concerns of the Cold War a distant memory, it’s harder to justify the laws.
“Foreign airline competition and capital investment in U.S. airlines could quickly improve passenger service, lower fares, result in new start-up airlines, and relieve overcrowding,” says Paul Hudson, president of FlyersRights.org.
When trying to protect U.S. businesses, the federal government has two alternatives: Supportthe domestic industry to provide better quality and service or punish and restrict the foreign business so it can’t provide better quality and service.
Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Singapore Airlines are examples of the former approach. These airlines benefit from significant state backing, enabling them to offer high-end services.
The result is a better overall flying experience for those who can access these airlines.
Our Monetarily Sovereign government could do the same.
Levying import duties and restricting foreign businesses are examples of the “punish-and-restrict” approach.
This results in higher prices and poorer quality of service for Americans.
Expressing fear of federal deficits and so-called “socialism.” the U.S. government invariably uses the “punish and restrict” foreigners, so Americans are the ones punished and restricted.
Inflation is a general increase in prices. The most common reason why prices increase is scarcity.
The current inflation was caused by COVID-related scarcities of oil, food, shipping, computer chips, metals, lumber, labor, and other commodities.
How the fed puts out a fire,
The cure for this inflation is to cure the scarcities that caused the inflation, oil and food being the most important.
The Federal Reserve wrongly believes inflation is caused by too-low interest rates and can be cured by raising them. However, interest is a business cost—a cost for manufacturers, sellers, and buyers.
It should be obvious that raising manufacturing, selling, and buying costs will not cure inflation.
All interest rate increases do is raise costs, slow the economy, and eventually cause a recession.
We repeatedly have written that raising costs via interest rate increases is a terrible way to lower prices.
The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
(Ever wonder why federal spending cuts demanded by debt nuts are designed to widen the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest, while the few federal spending increases they want are designed to reward and protect the rich?)
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 