The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1474536
Biden's broken border is a gift to violent criminals Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced the ar rests of 24 sex of fenders, all in the countr y illegally. Some might actually get depor ted. How- ever, given President Joe Biden's porous-borders policy, there's a good chance those who are de- por ted will come back soon. T wo of the best ways to prevent crime are to keep known violent or repeat of fenders behind bars and to keep known foreign criminals out of the countr y. Unfor tunately, the Biden administration—aided and abetted by radical progres- sive prosecutors—is failing on both counts. Biden and the Left recently highlighted the rape of a 10-year- old girl to advance their views on abor tion. What they didn't men- tion was the fact that the crime was preventable. Gerson Fuentes, the alleged rapist, was in the coun- tr y illegally. Had the 27-year-old Guatemalan been stopped from crossing the Mexico-U.S. border, he never would have been living in the same house as the girl's mother. Fuentes's immigration status is not only relevant; it is the ver y enabling factor that placed a vulnerable child in danger and al- lowed the rape to happen. Under the Biden administra- tion, up to 70% of Border Patrol agents are of f the line and doing what essentially social work is: getting illegal crossers regis- tered, then ar ranging travel to their prefer red U.S. destination at taxpayer expense. This makes it easy for dangerous, recidivist criminals like Fuentes to cross the border and evade inspection. Criminal records checks required in visa applications would have prevented him from getting a visa or even boarding a flight out of Guatemala City, but coyotes from Mexican car tels would gladly have taken his $5,000 and gotten him safely into the U.S. overland. Fuentes is not alone. Thank- fully, despite being hobbled by Biden administration guidance, of ficers from ICE's Los Angeles of fice were still able to ar rest those 24 of fenders during a week- long operation. They all had prior criminal convictions, and some were registered sex of fenders. Several had previously been re- moved from the United States after ser ving their sentences. In theor y, those with charges out- standing could be prosecuted. But given the refusal of some big-city district attor neys to prosecute, who knows what will happen? The ICE announcement said those with criminal convictions will be "processed administrative- ly for removal from the United States." That used to mean they would be detained until removal so that they couldn't harm any more people. But Biden's CBP has already released 750,000 ille- gal crossers this year. What kind of people are we talking about? Those ar rested in the Los Ange- les operation include a Guatema- lan convicted of felony lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14, a Mexican convicted of felony sodomy by use of force/injur y, and a Philippine citizen convicted of felony sexual penetration of an unconscious victim, and others of similar ilk. Meanwhile, this last week alone, Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande sector ar rested an MS-13 gang member with a criminal his- tor y of aggravated homicide in El Salvador, a Honduran convicted of sexual batter y in Tennessee, a Mexican previously sentenced in Wisconsin to three years in prison for sexual assault, and five other known gang members. Just imagine what else the Bor- der Patrol could have found had they not been busy dealing with the latest massive group of ille- gal migrants who crossed the Rio Grande a few days ago. Biden and Homeland Security Secretar y Alejandro Mayorkas can pretend there is no cost to having an open border, but the news and numbers show other- wise. Until we can regain control over the flow, we will continue to admit many illegal aliens who present a clear, proven risk to Americans and others. Securing the border is not only desired by a majority of people. It's required by law. The Biden administration and prosecutors ever ywhere should star t doing their jobs. Simon Hankinson is a senior re- search fellow in the Border Securi- ty and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation. When billionaires leave, everyone loses Liberals are ver y good at chas- ing rich people out of their states. Blue states lose billions of tax dollars and many tens of thou- sands of jobs as a result of the migration of rich people leaving high-tax and high-crime states. It seems to happen nearly ever y day. Consider Elon Musk. He left Califor nia for Texas. He paid $11 billion in federal taxes last year, and the state of Califor nia will likely lose billions in tax revenues in his absence — and that doesn't include all the proper ty and sales taxes that his Tesla employees will now pay in Texas rather than the Golden State. Texas has no state income tax, of course. Then, there is the famous sto- r y of investor Paul T udor Jones. When he left Connecticut many years ago and took his business and ear nings to Florida, he sin- gle-handedly drilled a $40 million revenue hole in the state budget in Har tford. He never looked back. Jef f Yass is the owner of Susque- hanna Capital in Philadelphia. He is one of the richest residents of the state, and his hedge fund is one of the Keystone State's larg- est employers. He and his wife have donated tens of millions of dollars to education scholarships for mostly black, low-income children in the city. He is also a major donor to other charities in and around Pennsylvania. But re- cently, the Philadelphia Inquirer skewered Yass with false allega- tions that he doesn't pay his fair share of taxes. Are they tr ying to chase him out of the state? Billionaire Citadel Capital founder Ken Grif fin, one of the most philanthropic residents in the his- tor y of Illinois, has moved to — where else — Florida. Bloomberg wrote a superb, well-re- searched stor y on what Grif fin (age 53) has meant to the life and civil culture of Chicago. Grif fin has donated more than $600 mil- lion to organizations in the Windy City since coming to Chicago. His name hangs above a hall at the Ar t Institute of Chicago. The Museum of Science and Industr y plans to take on his name in 2024 thanks to his massive contributions. In June, Grif fin donated more than $130 million across 40 Chicago organizations before leaving. He has been a major donor to schools, churches, meal programs, Nor th- wester n Medicine, the Field Mu- seum, and the Chicago Sympho- ny. Many of these organizations told Bloomberg that they wor r y whether they can replace such a generous benefactor. Still, many of the class war fare advocates want to raise the state income tax so people like Grif fi! n will pay more. The state will lose about $200 million an- nually because of his depar ture. That is how much tax he paid in 2021 in state and local taxes. So instead of get- ting more money out of Grif fin, the state will collect way less. Be- cause Grif fin is moving to Florida, another state with no income tax, he will save hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes, though Grif fin insists his main reason for leaving is the crime wave in Chicago and his concer n about the safety of his family. The moral of these stories is that class war fare liberals can't seem to help themselves. They always kill the geese that lay the golden eggs. Pretty soon, blue- state America won't have any more rich geese to pluck. Stephen Moore is a senior fel- low at Freedom Works. He is also author of the new book: "Govzilla: How The Relentless Growth of Gov- ernment Is Devouring Our Econo- my." OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg Why are Blacks still on board with Biden? New polling from Pew Research and from NY Times/Siena College, released a few days apar t, cast sim- ilarly dismal pictures regarding the popularity of President Joe Biden. Overall approval for Biden from NY Times/Siena College stands at 33% and from Pew 37%. However, both polls show ap- proval for the president much stronger than the national average among minorities. The NY Times/Siena college poll shows Black approval for Biden at 62%, which, according to the Times, is higher than "any other race or ethnicity, age group or ed- ucation level." Per Pew, Black approval for Biden stands at 57%. However, Pew also shows a marked dif ference in approval for Biden from all minority groups, compared to white voters. White approval for Biden stands at 30%, Hispanic 47%, and Asian 45%. Why the dif ference between whites and minorities? One obvious answer is that the white figure includes a larger per- centage of Republican voters. But this still leaves a ver y im- por tant question that ever yone, cer tainly leaders in the Republican Par ty, should be asking. Why do minorities dispropor tionately lean Democrat? Current polling shows the issues most on the minds of voters are in- flation and the economy. Inflation is nondiscriminator y. Ever y American is being hit by the same price increases in the super- market, at the gas pump, in housing and across the board. Given that ev- er yone is concerned about our dis- mal economy, why should approval ratings for the per formance of our president be so dif ferent for whites and for minorities? Let's focus on Blacks because the dif ference is most pronounced here. According to sur vey data from the last few years compiled by my organization, CURE, there is a ver y large gap in attitudes among Blacks, compared with whites, re- garding the most basic functioning of the countr y. Many more Blacks than whites see racism still as a major problem. According to Gallup polling from last year, 84% of Blacks, compared with 59% of whites, believe racism is widespread. Only 31% of Blacks, compared with 62% of whites, believe that Blacks "have an equal chance of getting a job for which they are qualified." And, par ticularly telling, 74% of Blacks, compared with 48% of whites, think "government should do more to solve problems." Responses in the new Pew Re- search polling about what's caus- ing this latest round of price in- creases show how little so many Americans understand about how our economy functions. Most do not understand that in- flation is caused by government spending and printing excessive amounts of money. Most, 49%, said it is business taking advantage of the current economic situation to raise prices. Bottom line is that in order for the Republican Par ty to attract more minority voters, Republicans need to do a much better job go- ing into minority communities and educating these voters about what is actually going on in the countr y and what it means to them. Low-income Americans are dis- propor tionately minority Amer- icans. They need an economy that functions properly, an econ- omy where prices are stable and an economy that is growing at a healthy pace. They must understand that eco- nomic oppor tunity comes from economic growth, not from gov- ernment programs. Minorities must understand that limited gov- ernment, not bloated government, allows robust growth. As I recently wrote, the latest round of Supreme Cour t decisions Where's the beef? How can it be that with so much cattle in America, we sometimes can't buy meat? At the beginning of the pandem- ic, Costco, Wegmans and Kroger limited purchases of beef. Hun- dreds of Wendy's outlets ran out of hamburgers. "How the hell can this be?" says Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., in my new video. "They (Wendy's) were out of hamburger, yet you could see cattle from the drive-through!" It happens because of stupid govern- ment r ules. Massie owns a small farm in Ken- tucky. "I'd rather deal with cattle than congressmen," he jokes. "At least (cattle) exhibit learned behav- ior." But politicians often don't. "You're born with the right to eat what you want," says Massie. "Why is the government getting in the middle and saying, 'No, you can't buy that'?" "To keep you safe," I push back. "They're not keeping you safe," Massie responds. "They're keeping you away from good, healthy food." American meat regulation began after activist Upton Sinclair worked undercover at a meatpacking plant and then wrote the book The Jungle. It became a huge bestseller. Sin- clair's goal was to advance social- ism. But his book became famous for exposing unsanitar y conditions, like rat infestations and rotting meat carcasses, at packing plants. The outcr y over that led Con- gress in 1906 to declare that any meat sold must get a stamp of ap- proval from the United States De- par tment of Agriculture. What did the inspection entail? An absurd technique called "poke and snif f." To find tainted meat, fed- eral bureaucrats stuck little spikes into carcasses and then smelled the spikes. If they smelled something spoiled, they ordered that meat discarded. The process was ridicu- lous. The inspectors used the same spikes over and over, plunging them into multiple animals. Pok- ing and sniffing sometimes made things worse by spreading disease from one carcass to the next. Of course, governments often do ridiculous things, and regula- tors, once they star t doing them, keep doing them. The feds didn't stop "poke and snif f" until the late 1990s. Today, USDA inspectors do a better job. They test for bacteria. But the inspection process is so cumbersome and expensive, many small companies can't af ford it. The result, complained Pres- ident Joe Biden recently, is too much market concentration: "Four big corporations control more than half the markets in beef, pork and poultr y!" His remedy, sadly, is to give your tax money to some smaller meat packers. Of course, such subsidies and regulations increase market con- centration. "The bigger the government, the bigger the corporations," Massie points out. "People who don't like big corporations haven't figured that out." During the beginning of the pan- demic, it was that market concen- tration that caused meat shor tages when a few big meat processing plants shut down due to COVID in- fections. "We made our food supply brit- tle," says Massie. "One small dis- r uption throws the whole thing of f." When the processors shut down, some ranchers who couldn't get to a federally approved slaughter- house ended up killing their own animals. If only they'd been able to go to a local processor. Massie takes his cattle to one. There, he can see the conditions himself. His local slaughterhouse meets state inspection standards. But since it is not USDA-cer ti- fied, Massie and other ranchers who have their cattle processed there may not sell you a steak. He can, however, give it to you or eat it himself. But he may not sell it. To fix that, Massie proposes a new law: the PRIME Act, which would let farmers sell meat pro- Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, July 27, 2022 C-3 Heritage Viewpoint By Simon Hankinson See R ACE on page 4 See BEEF on page 4