The next couple of posts will cover facts demonstrating that there is no crisis at the border that is not of the Republican President Donald Trump’s own doing.

Logic, evidence, studies are of little use to this president when implementing policies. The building of his wall is no exception. During his numerous campaign rallies, he frequently referred to his wall, as he appealed to that part of the US population who live in fear of immigrants either taking away their jobs, keeping wages lower or threatening their way of life.

That this fear is not fair, right or even real, is immaterial to the president and his base of voters.

But we have to start somewhere. Maybe by repeating the facts over and over again, this will be an antidote to the president’s numerous lies about the need for his wall because there is a crisis at the SW border that has to be addressed immediately; and that the president is right to shut down the US government starting December 22, 2019, harming 100s of thousands American workers who have been forced to forgo or have their pay checks delayed because the president decided late in the game that he needed to get the funding for $5.7 billion dollars to construct his wall for a set amount of miles. He made this demand after the 18th of December when the US senators had already voted on an agreement which included funding for $1.6 billion dollars for his wall and which had the prior approval of the president, to where after voting, many senators had left town to celebrate the holidays.

In the meantime,  there were FOX TV pundits who were whispering in the president’s ear that this time frame would be his last chance to demand adequate funding to construct his wall, as the republican majority in the US House would become the democratic majority after the 3rd of January 2019.

As per the 12/20/18/Hill report, “Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh said Thursday he’d received a message that Trump would not sign a bill that did not include $5 billion for the wall. It wasn’t clear who the message came from though Limbaugh suggested it was from Trump’s circle.”

“You tell Rush that if there’s no money in this, it’s getting vetoed. If there’s no money — if there’s no money for a wall — I’m vetoing this, plain and simple,” Limbaugh said in relaying the message.”

So the president acted, accordingly. He refused to sign off on any bill or continuing resolution to keep the government operational unless Congress gave into his demands. The government shutdown was the inevitable result.

But for me, there’s never been a satisfactory explanation as to why President Trump submitted his budget for the year 2019, with the requested spending at $1.6 billion dollars for his wall, if this wasn’t a satisfactory solution . This presidential budget was made public in February 2018 which gave him ample time to make adjustments if he had bothered to read it.

Here’s the requested budget appropriation for the fiscal year of 2019 regarding the wall on page 57, made public in February 2018.

“Critical investments include $1.6 billion for construction of the border wall and $782 million to hire and support 2,750 additional law enforcement officers and agents at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Budget also requests $2.5 billion for detaining up to 47,000 illegal aliens on a daily basis.”

In addition, I have no idea as to how the president arrived at his current demand for $5.7 billion dollars as the estimated cost to build his wall starts at $20 billion dollars, Plus why is he acting now by having a hissy fit over his wall when for the 2 past years, he could have pushed for the funding for his wall with much greater chances for success because both houses in the US Congress had republican majorities. But even with these republican majorities, President Trump had been threatening to order a government shutdown if he didn’t get enough funding to build his wall, since May of 2017.

Then the republicans with their talking points are publicly blaming Democrats for not wanting to negotiate on a spending bill on this basis.

Here is the rest of the story…

On January 10, 2019, Fareed Zakaria for the Washington Post penned the following report, “Trump has conjured a crisis out of thin air. That should worry us all.”

Excerpts:

“Watching the struggle over funding for a border wall, I am struck by the way in which, in one sense, President Trump has already achieved success. He has been able to conjure up a crisis out of thin air, elevate this manufactured emergency to national attention, paralyze the government and perhaps even invoke warlike authority and bypass Congress. He may still fail, but it should worry us that a president — any president — can do what Trump has done.”

“Let’s be clear: There’s no crisis. The number of undocumented immigrants in the US has been declining for a decade. The number of people caught trying to sneak across the southern border has been on a downward trend for almost 20 years and is lower than it was in 1973.”

“As has often been pointed out, far more people are coming to the U.S. legally and then overstaying their visas than are crossing the southern border illegally. But it’s important to put these numbers in context. More than 52 million foreigners entered the U.S. legally in fiscal year 2017. Of this cohort, 98.7 percent left on time and in accordance with their visas. A large portion of those remaining left after a brief overstay, and the best government estimate is that maybe 0.8 percent of those who entered the country in 2017 had stayed on by mid-2018.”

“As for terrorism, the Cato Institute has found that, from 1975 to 2017, “there have been zero people murdered or injured in terror attacks committed by illegal border crossers on U.S. soil.”

“As for drugs, the greatest danger comes from fentanyl and fentanyl-like substances, which are at the heart of the opioid crisis. Most of this comes from China, either shipped directly to the US or smuggled through Canada or Mexico. Trump has addressed the root of this problem by pressing the Chinese government to crack down on fentanyl exports, a far more effective strategy than building a physical barrier along the Mexican border.”

“Even the Drug Enforcement Administration acknowledged in a report last year that while the southern border is the conduit for most of the heroin entering the US, the drug typically comes through legal points of entry, hidden in cars or mixed in with other goods in tractor-trailers. A wall would do little to stanch the flow.”

“And yet, the power of the presidency is such that Trump has been able to place this issue center-stage, shut down the government, force television networks to run an error-ridden, scaremongering Oval Office address, and now perhaps invoke emergency powers. This sounds like something that would be done by Presidents Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, not the head of the world’s leading constitutional republic.”

“When the U.S. government has created this sense of emergency and crisis in the past, it has almost always been to frighten people, expand presidential powers and muzzle opposition. From the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Red Scare to warnings about Saddam Hussein’s arsenal, the US has experienced periods of paranoia and foolishness. We look back on them and recognize that the problems were not nearly as grave, the enemy was not nearly as strong and the US was actually far more secure. The actions taken — suspending civil rights, interning U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent, taking the nation to war — were always terrible mistakes, often with disastrous long-term consequences.”

Link to article: washingtonpost.com/opinion…