Congress Tries to Slip Immigration Into Must-Pass Defense Bill
By Joe Guzzardi
With a final vote soon to come on the must-pass fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), expansionists have filed a slew of immigration amendments unrelated to national security.
Backdoor immigration amendments that have no ties to defense spending are an annual distraction practiced by Republicans and Democrats alike. Time is running out for immigration advocates to get their pet legislation passed. The August recess is at hand, and after Congress returns, mid-term election campaigning will begin in earnest, which will minimize the chance of passing controversial immigration bills.
This year, two immigration amendments are front and center. The first is Rep. Deborah K. Ross’ (D-N.C.) that would grant amnesty to who she referred to as “documented Dreamers,” an estimated 200,000 young people who grew up in the U.S. as dependents on their parents’ employment visas. When DREAMers turn 21, they’re at risk for deportation. While Ross’ amendment has bipartisan support, and is said to be under Senate consideration, it hasn’t advanced in either chamber.
Ross’ proposal, if enacted, would send a message to smugglers and coyotes that Congress’ priority isn’t enforcement but to create more economic incentives for migrants and their families to risk their lives with dangerous border crossings. Congress’ urgency for deferred action for childhood arrivals must be to protect future young migrants from falling into the same immigration limbo status that has, for years, bedeviled current DREAMers. Such a plan would include mandatory E-Verify to eliminate the jobs magnet that lures illegal immigrants. Family-based chain migration should end. Adults shouldn’t be encouraged to use their minor children as anchors to keep them in the U.S. Since the White House has ceded operational control of the border to criminal cartels, strict enforcement laws are required to protect future migrants.
A second untimely and harmful amendment is Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s (D-Calif.) proposal to remove the numerical caps from certain science, technology, engineering and math degree holders (STEM) in national-security related fields. Lofgren, an immigration lawyer, chairs the House Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee. If Lofgren’s amendment is included in the 2023 NDAA, high-skilled immigrants would more quickly become lawful permanent residents and the labor force would expand significantly. A larger labor pool creates a more challenging employment market for U.S. tech workers with STEM degrees, including recent university graduates, to obtain the white-collar jobs they’re qualified to hold.
Ross and Lofgren’s wished-for amendments read as if they were drawn up by the donor-based elite and immigration lawyers, both categories of which would profit immensely if the proposals became law. With 54 million working-age (16-64) Americans neither working nor looking for work, and millions more who are underemployed workers – they hold part-time jobs, but want full-time employment – proposed immigration laws should benefit them, and not foreign-born nationals. The most adversely affected when immigration expands are those without a college diploma, most often blacks, Latinos and women, but also white males.
Increasing immigration is the dominant talking point in the roiling immigration reform debate and has reached the point where advocates maneuver to include amendments in a must-pass defense bill. Few in Congress, and no one participating in the NDAA hearings, speaks on behalf of the millions of Americans whose jobs and livelihoods increased legal immigration threatens. Scholars from the University of California, San Diego and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond found that the H-1B visa led to an Indian tech boom – in India! At the same time, U.S. tech workers at Disney, Southern California Edison,Met Life, Wal-Mart and myriad corporations have been displaced by mostly Indian H-1B visa workers.
Immigration doesn’t belong in the NDAA. Advocates like Ross, Lofgren and others can introduce stand-alone bills to advance their agendas, not slip amendments into must-pass legislation. Congress should always protect Americans from an overage of legal, employment-based visa workers, but especially during this period of open borders and high domestic unemployment.
Let us start by agreeing that transexuals, whether female-to-male or male-to-female, remain human beings and should retain the rights of all human beings. Not a radical concept, one would think.
However, all human beings, as children say many times “need to go bathroom”. Here is where the controversy begins, both here and internationally. The British and other controversies be covered later.
According to 34 Pa Code section 41.21: “The entrances of all retiring rooms for women shall be clearly marked. Men are not permitted to use or frequent a retiring room assigned to women …
This seems fairly clear-cut, except for this question: where does a male-to-female transexual fit in, especially one who is pre-op?
Well, we now have PA Senate Bill 613 and PA House Bill 613, which, it is to be hoped, will clear this up. While they don’t specifically use the term “bathroom”, both of these bills discuss “facilities” and “privilege”. The term “facilities” has been interpreted elsewhere to include restrooms; indeed, what else would it mean?
This information comes from PAfamily.org, which opposes men at any stage of transition entering women’s’ rest rooms.
It has occurred to me that I might be standing next to a female-to-male in the next stall, but I wouldn’t expect any problem, nor would I even know.
At any rate, this situation never seems to be addressed, probably because there’s not a power imbalance between men and other men.
Another observer to whom I was referred said, “The point is, these men were able to gain access to these spaces because of the idea that a man becomes a woman the instant he says, “I’m a woman”.
Regarding male-to-female transexuals, another viewpoint states that “We want the exact same thing that most of the other women want”. I urge you to read this article.
The following quotes are from people whom I know well, who want to remain anonymous, so fiery is the topic:
From a Springfield conservative on HB 300:
“Its proponents want to assign protections enjoyed by people with immutable characteristics (such as race, color, sex, national origin, handicap, or disability) to people with changeable behaviors and mental states”.
This seemed to be the best summation I ever heard of the conservative view.
A transexual friend now living in Vermont merely asks me to imagine having to avoid using bathrooms in public, due to fear of choosing the “wrong” one.
I just have to find one marked “men”. My life is simple by comparison.
Fanatics rule Islam now William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 7-16-22
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Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: Whether most Muslims are peaceable is irrelevant. The fact is that fanatics rule Islam now and act-out what the Qur’an truly says –maul, march, and murder every Infidel if they won’t convert!
Gary Patton
Fanatics rule Islam now William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 7-16-22
Dinosaur Republicans Backing Shapiro This November — The sagacious Dom Giordano’s July 13 column in Delaware Valley Journal notes that ancient Republicans are uniting with Democrats to try to keep Doug Mastriano from beating Josh Shapiro, Nov. 8, and becoming Pennsylvania’s next governor.
Former Bucks County Congressman Jim Greenwood and Craig Snyder, who had been the late Sen. Arlen Specter’s Chief of Staff have created the political action committee Republicans4Shapiro.
Also involved are Robert Jubelirer, who ruled the Republicans in the Pennsylvania State Senate between 1984 until his shocking primary defeat to John Eichelberger in 2006; Joe Conti, a former state rep and senator who would go on to become chief executive officer of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board; and several people who served in the Thornburgh Administration back in the 1980s.
Yes, the uniparty is again exposed. You seriously think Shapiro is a man-of-the-people Roosevelt Democrat? He was counsel at Stradley Ronon while he ruled the Montco Ds and it’s board of commissioners. He was buds with Val DiGiorgio while DiGiorgio chaired the Chesco Republicans and then state GOP.
Val chaired Stradley Ronon’s banking and public finance sections while he was standing in the sun albeit the lobbying law firm had to kick him to the curb after he fell from grace.
Bet your bippy that while Val may not have officially signed up for Republicans4Shapirio he is given them secret smiles and covert thumbs-up.
Uniparty-types do not care about minorities — and never did. They do not care about the working class. They do no care about the middle class. They don’t care about the elderly. They don’t care about kids. They care only about themselves, soft living and having you kiss their rings.
Anyway Dom writes about his interview with Greenwood who seemed to pine for the days when people in country clubs were taken seriously.
“After my interview with Greenwood, I’m convinced that his group is so deranged by Trump that they have embraced Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro without meeting with him and projecting what he would do as governor,” Dom writes. “Greenwood admitted this, but told me his group believes Shapiro to be ‘thoughtful.'”
Covid Truth And Reconciliation Broached At MIT Workshop — A workshop on Covid-19 Public Policies was held, May 16, at MIT, albeit it was not sponsored by the school. The organizers were Jayanta Bhattacharya, professor at the Stanford School of Medicine; Retsef Levi, professor of MIT Sloan School of Management; and Steve Kirsch, inventor and tech entrepreneur who is an MIT alumnus.
The six-hour workshop consisted of five panels: Efficacy of Non-Pharmaceutical Public Health Interventions (8:45-9:55 a.m.); COVID-19’s impact on Universities and Their Research andTeaching Missions (9:55 -10:45 a.m.; Vaccine Efficacy and Safety (11:15 a.m. -12:25 p.m.; The Effect of COVID-19 Policies on Trust in Science and Public Health (1:30-2:40 p.m.); and The Way Forward (3:10 – 4:15 p.m.)
An interesting point from Panel 1 was the claim (35 min) by Dr. Clare Craig, diagnostic pathologist, that as coronaviruses can travel hundreds of miles through the air the lockdowns did not work. She noted that outbreaks occurred at a Belgian Antarctic research station after two-weeks of isolation and on an Argentine fishing vessel after five weeks of isolation.
Aaron Kheriaty, a psychiatrist who is a senior fellow and director of the Bioethics and American Democracy Program, said (48 min) that the usual modeling of pros and cons concerning the adoption of policies didn’t happen for “unexplained reasons” with regard to the Covid lockdowns. He said he became a early lockdown skeptic because he was seeing the effects of it in his clinic after only a few weeks.
“People literally thought the end of the world was near,” he said. “Not because they were manic or psychotic but just because they were so terrified by watching what was on the news.”
He said that 24 percent of 18-24-year-olds seriously contemplated suicide in June 2020.
24 percent of 18-24-year-olds seriously contemplated suicide in June 2020.
He said deaths related to drugs rose from 70,000 to 100,000 during the lock down and deaths related to alcohol went from 68,000 to 99,000.
Professor Bhattacharya called the lockdowns (56 min) the “biggest public health disaster in peacetime history” and noted that very large parts of the public health and science community committed themselves to lockdowns.
“The problem is that the people who . . . imposed the decision, they’re reputations are at stake,” he said. “To admit that they were wrong, means they made a catastrophic mistake. They moved society in a direction that actually, maybe led to the deaths of many people who would still be alive today.”
He said, however, criminalizing what happened would be a mistake and suggested a “truth and reconciliation committee” as was done in South Africa after apartheid.
Kheriaty noted (58:30) that economic forces drove many of these policies which had little to do with public health. He said the lockdowns were economically harmful but many benefited.
“What happened during lockdowns was the largest transfer of wealth upward in American history, probably world history, from the working class, middle class, not just to the upper class but to the very top of the pyramid, the wealthiest of the wealthy, the 1-percent of the 1-percent,” Kheriaty said.
He said Amazon lobbied West Coast states to lock down early and it wasn’t because Jeff Bezos was an expert in public health. Kheriaty pointed out that Bezos made a record $70 billion that year.
What happened during lockdowns was the largest transfer of wealth upward in American history, probably world history, from the working class, middle class, not just to the upper class but to the very top of the pyramid, the wealthiest of the wealthy, the 1-percent of the 1-percent
Aaron Kheriaty
“We have to be aware of non-scientific and non-public-health related factors that played a role in these policies,” Kheriaty said.
Dr. Robert Malone, who was not part of this panel, said (1:09:30) said that the scientific community was never in previous outbreaks subjected to the pressure applied during Covid-19.
Panel 2
Panel 2 concerned the response by universities to Covid. Retsef Levi of the MIT Sloan School of Management, said he felt the wide range of policies instituted during 2020 were understandable but became disturbed (1:51) when the vaccine mandates began. He said he was especially concerned that the mandates were on the young, relatively low-risk, students.
“To me that was were universities decided to be compliant, . . . protect themselves so that nobody could blame them if someone died on campus versus thinking . . . about what is the best thing for their students,” he said.
Nobody could cite a student or faculty death due to Covid.
Panel 3
Panel 3 concerned vaccines, namely the Covid one. Martin Kulldorff, Ph.d, Senior scholar, Brownstone Institute, said (2:26) he is so pro-vaccine that he was the only person to have ever been fired from the CDC for being too pro vaccine namely his insistence that Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine not been pulled from distribution in early 2021. Still, however, he said he does not support universal vaccination and claiming such is as bad as saying nobody should be vaccinated. Kulldorff said those who have recovered from Covid have excellent natural immunity which is likely better than immunity provided by the vax.
“To me the most stunning . . . part of this pandemic is the questioning or denial of natural immunity after having recovered from Covid,” he said. “We have known about immunity for at least . . . 2,500 years since the Athenian Plague of 430 B.C. . . . Suddenly in 2021, people forgot. I think it’s astonishing and amazing because when universities and hospitals require students and staff who have recovered from Covid to get the vaccine, when they mandate that, by doing so they are de facto denying immunity after recovering from disease. That is absolutely stunning that you have hospital presidents and university presidents who deny that . . . That would be like having the president of MIT question whether the Earth is round or flat.”
He said those who do so deserve ridicule. He noted that the CDC directer questioned immunity after Covid recovery in a piece she co-wrote for The Lancet.
“Nobody has done more damage to vaccine confidence than those who claim that everyone needs to get vaccinated,” he said.
Regarding the vax for those who haven’t had Covid, he says it’s rational to pass on it.
“Anybody can get Covid . . . but mortality for Covid varies a thousand-fold between the old and the young,” he says.
He said there is almost no risks to children from Covid but some from the vaccine.
Steve Kirsch (2:35) noted he was an M.I.T grad and the school’s Kirsch Auditorium is named in his honor. He said said he left his successful business career after getting doubly vaccinated and then started hearing from friends who bad reactions to the vax including one who had three healthy relatives die a week after taking it.
He said after doing a “ton of research” he began crusading against the shots begetting him the label of “misinformation spreader”.
He says he is officially the “number 1 misinformation spreader on Substack” and has been recognized by his alma mater as a “misinformation superspreader”.
Kirsch defines the phrase as: A person who speaks out publicly when the official government mainstream narrative fails to match the reality in plain sight.
Kirsch says the vaccines are killing more people than they save. He says his research indicates that the vaccine has killed more than 500,000 in the United States while saving but 25,000. He points out that even if his death toll is off by an order of two magnitudes, the vax is still killing more than saving.
“In VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) alone, there is 12,000 deaths, even at an under-reporting factor of two, which would be extremely conservative, this vaccine makes no sense. This is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about,” he said. “This is why nobody in the world will debate me, not even for a million dollars. I offered the people at the CDC and FDA — the outside committee members — here’s a million dollars. Come talk with me; chat with me for just four hours for a million dollars. And they wouldn’t do it. So I raised it. I said fine. Name your price. No what happened? They weren’t interested in that offer either. . . But misinformation is supposed to be the greatest danger to public health. Why wouldn’t they show me up. This was their opportunity to discredit me. They chose not show up at the debate table and that, my friends, tells you everything you need to know.”
Why wouldn’t they show me up. This was their opportunity to discredit me. They chose not show up at the debate table and that, my friends, tells you everything you need to know.
Steve Kirsch
He said the vax should be stopped for everyone.
He also said early treatment with cheap repurposed drug combos prevent long-Covid and deaths nearly 100 percent.
He said Medicare data obtained from a whistleblower showed all-cause mortality spiking for each vax and booster.
Joe Fraiman of LSU Lallie Kemp Regional Medical Center (2:44) said determining the efficacy of the vaccines is based on observational data and it has never been proved in a randomized controlled trial that it reduced hospitalizations.
He did note that for a Pfizer study of all-cause serious adverse events those receiving the vaccine suffered 103 while those getting a placebo, 81.
Neeraj Snood, professor of public policy at University of Southern California, buttressed (2:49) Fraiman’s point that the clinical trials provided little insight about the harms and benefits of the vaccines.
On the other hand, due to the rate of mutation by the virus, clinical trials won’t provide answers, hence observational studies will have to be relied upon, he said.
He said the scientific community must help people make more informed decisions about vaccines.
“Even with a Ph.d, I find that decision very difficult,” he said.
He said this is due to the uncertainty about the benefits and harms of COVID-19 vaccines, the challenge of evaluating low probability events and fear of the disease increasing the chance of a decision being made on emotion rather than reason.
He also said the community must also help governments make informed public decision about vaccines. He said unintended consequences must be considered. Did mandates increase vaccine hesitancy? Did they increase labor shortages in nursing homes due to nurses refusing to be vaxed?
Snood said the vaccine rollouts, however, appeared to reduce anxiety and depression, especially among those unable to work from home.
Retsef Levi (2:58) said the boosters are not adapted to current variants. He also said the boosters fundamentally change the risk-benefits considerations of the vaccines.
“The premise at the beginning was that you get vaccinated and you are never going to get infected again and you’re going to be safe from all the bad things Covid brings, ” he said. “. . .Now we are talking about taking a repeated risk of a vaccine, ever six to eight months, and you still have the chance to get infected and potentially have some of the consequences of Covid.”
Levi said that in Israel — which has the world’s highest Covid mortality rate — and the United States twelve-year-olds are recommended to take a booster of 30mg. He said that in Pfizer trials that dose was deemed toxic for children 5 to 11.
Kulldorff agreed to debate Kirsch, and without the million dollars.
Panel 4
Panel 4 concerned the effect of COVID-19 policies on trust in science and public health.
“Washington removed the naive part of me and America is in serious crisis,” said Scott Atlas, (3:50) the panel’s moderator. Atlas was an advisor to President Trump and is Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in Health Policy, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
He said the “credentialed class” whose credentials give it automatic respect and authority has been exposed as incapable of critical thinking and without ethical constraint. He said the social contract has been broken with the vulnerable: the elderly, the low-income people and, especially ,the children. He said free speech has been suppressed but maybe far more frightening is the unprecedented denial of fact by scientific and public health institutions.
Atlas cited several lies told by the establishment institutions including Covid’s mortality rate being several orders of magnitude higher than the flu; everyone was at risk of death and capable of spreading the infection; no one had immunity; asymptomatic people were major drivers of the spread; lock downs would eliminate the virus; masks would stop the spread; and immunity only comes from a vaccine.
All this was known to be false by Spring 2020, Atlas said.
Atlas said that Deborah Birx, who was the White House Task Force Coordinator, wrote all official White House guidance to governors. Tony Fauci was the public face.
Atlas said their policies resulted in 1 million American deaths attributed to the virus and also caused massive deaths due to the lockdowns along with other harm.
Atlas said the alternative which he described as “targeted protection” was a known solution by March 2020.
So why did the public believe the lockdowners?
“We have a culture of trust,” Atlas said. “We trust people with credentials. That’s how we are raised in this country.”
He said fear was a factor and there were two types, that of the disease and that of criticizing the authorities. The power of the latter can’t be denied as those who spoke out were demonized by the media and political powers.
“We trusted completely inept public leaders,” Atlas said as he showed a slide of Fauci, Brix and former CDC head Robert Redfield. “How do I know? I was there. Not a single one of these three people brought a scientific paper to a task force meeting I was at.”
We trusted completely inept public leaders
Scott Atlas
Atlas said shame based on lies was a powerful tool He said the public was told that being against lockdowns meant they were were choosing the economy over lies, or that were for allowing the infection to spread without mitigation.
“Never once, did I hear anyone or myself say to President Trump or to anyone in the White House . . . nor was it ever discussed by anyone that the infection should be allowed to spread without mitigation,” Atlas said.
Panel 5
Panel 5 (5:02) was about how to get out ot the mess Covid left us.
Dr. Robert Malone, an inventor of the mRNA vaccine, praised (5:28) some of the suggestions from other panelists but noted that they were designed for the operational level. Malone said that based on his experience those at the operational level in public health would be amenable but they’d be constrained by those above them.
“We have the CDC’s own statements that they have been withholding information from public health and physicians all the way through this outbreak,” Malone said.
Malone said money has been pouring to the agencies and there is now a financial investment in infectious disease outbreaks.
“Infectious disease outbreaks, like wars, are very, very good for business,” he said. “They are also very useful politically.”
“What you’ll find is incredible naïveté and hocus pocus science,” Malone said. “. . .This is not a well thought-out treatise.”
Schwab is chairman of the World Economic Forum.
Malone said that there is multiple lines of evidence that the outbreak has been weaponized for political purposes.
“We have built a system and I’ve been part of the building that generates enormous revenue and has enormous vested interests in outbreaks,” Malone said. “Outbreaks are really good business.”
We have built a system and I’ve been part of the building that generates enormous revenue and has enormous vested interests in outbreaks. Outbreaks are really good business.
Dr. Robert Malone
He said this money has enabled the development of an incredibly powerful public health enterprise.
He said we have an inverse totalitarianism.
“We are in a situation in which entrenched government bureaucrats are the ones setting policy, not the ones we elected to set policy, and they are untouchable,” Malone said.
“These are not scientists, they are bureaucrats,” he said. “Tony Fauci, I’ve known him for decades. . . He is a very adroit Washington D.C. bureaucrat politician. He understands how to work the system. He has amassed massive power.”
Malone said a significant step in making things right would be to rescind the 2013 National Defense Act. He says it has enabled the intelligence community to gain influence over media and implement their propaganda.
He said this act allowed a billion dollars to be spent to attack those who questioned the official Covid narratives.
He also noted that federal agencies have a dual job in promoting and regulating American industries and the CDC gets five times the money to promote vaccines rather than regulate them.
He said an improved VAERS is ready to go but there is no interest in regulating it.
“We must break up this very large agencies,” he said.
He said the dual role of promotion and regulation must end and the public health agencies must be “put back in their box” as being mere advisers.
The entire 6-hour long workshop can be watched on Steve Kirsch’s Substack site.
Covid Truth And Reconciliation Broached At MIT Workshop
Covid Truth And Reconciliation Broached At MIT Workshop
Covid Truth And Reconciliation Broached At MIT Workshop
Covid Truth And Reconciliation Broached At MIT WorkshopCovid Truth And Reconciliation Broached At MIT Workshop Covid Truth And Reconciliation Broached At MIT Workshop Covid Truth And Reconciliation Broached At MIT WorkshopCovid Truth And Reconciliation Broached At MIT Workshop
