NPR
@NPR
· Jan 19
The pricetag for President Trump's border wall has topped $11 billion — or nearly $20 million a mile. That makes it the most expensive wall of its kind anywhere in the world. https://trib.al/8HVWbzZ
No problem. Mexico is going to pay for it. Trump promised.
According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report published in October 2007, the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion by 2017 including interest.
Makes that wall a drop in the ocean, really.
0 Replies
coldjoint
-2
Sat 25 Jan, 2020 05:28 pm
Look at it like Trump singing to America
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glitterbag
3
Sat 25 Jan, 2020 05:36 pm
@Setanta,
I just wish it was a satire, waiting for my copy to arrive.
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InfraBlue
3
Sat 25 Jan, 2020 05:59 pm
@coldjoint,
coldjoint wrote:
Quote:
No problem. Mexico is going to pay for it. Trump promised.
The new trade deal has Mexico and Canada paying for it.
And as I have said since you are commenting on what I said, I am right here.
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neptuneblue
3
Sat 25 Jan, 2020 09:45 pm
Building the Wall Using Eminent Domain Hurts Americans
By David Bier
This article appeared in the Inside Sources on November 6, 2019.
President Trump is hiring attorneys to carry out his mission to build a border wall with Mexico. No, these lawyers will not be tasked with welding steel together or digging holes. Instead, they will focus on filing lawsuits to take private property from Americans who own the land where the president wants to build the wall. This is a misallocation of public resources and a violation of the rights of Americans.
The reason is that the border wall will not be constructed on the physical border with Mexico. Border Patrol will build it wherever it is most convenient for its purposes. Indeed, some Americans actually live on the “Mexican” side of the wall, even though their home is located on U.S. soil. They need to pass through the “gate” every day to get to work or school.
American taxpayers (not Mexican ones, as was promised) should not pay to steal private property from Americans to help the re‐election prospects of one politician.
In Texas, the entire “border” is actually in a body of water: the Rio Grande, meaning it is physically impossible for the government to build a border wall on the actual border line with Mexico. Due to flooding, it is also generally impossible for it to place the fence anywhere near the banks of the river either. The end result is that the government needs to build as far as mile inland.
Land along the Rio Grande in Texas is almost entirely privately owned. Indeed, a third of the border is under non‐federal ownership. This means that those lawyers that Trump is hiring will be busy, filing hundreds or thousands of actions to pull land away from Americans who live where it will place his wall. In Texas, there are 4,900 parcels of property within 500 feet of the border. Those parcels may have multiple owners — each of which will lose out from Trump’s wall.
Eminent domain not only deprives the person of the value of the land taken — which could be minimal in some cases; in other cases, it could be everything — but also the value of the rest of the property owner’s land. For example, the Bush administration built a fence effectively putting a golf course in “Mexico,” which put it out of business in 2015.
All the people living “in Mexico” don’t get compensation unless they actually lose their land for the fence. The fact that they now have to knock to enter their own country isn’t worth a dime. Likewise, a 10‐foot fence built a foot from your property doesn’t count either.
The entire process of “eminent domain” — the legal term for government taking private property — along the border makes a sham of the Constitution’s requirement that “private property (not) be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Border Patrol can send a letter requesting that the owner “voluntarily” give up the land in exchange for some minor amount, not based on an appraisal of its value.
If they don’t believe that’s “just compensation,” the government will just stick the money in an escrow account and take the land anyway. They can build a huge wall through your house, while you fight for what you think is fair in court. Of the land already taken, wealthy property owners fought and won settlement triple what the government offered, while poor ones took whatever the government offered. That’s a mockery of the Constitution, and multiple bills would fix the issue.
The Constitution also requires that taking be done for “public use.” Obviously, a border wall based on legitimate security analysis would qualify as a public use, but no independent authority has ever concluded that a border wall will significantly affect illegal crossings. The Congressional Research Service concluded that a single‐layer “fence, by itself, did not have a discernible effect on the influx of unauthorized aliens coming across the border in San Diego.”
The reason that the president is so adamant about building a border wall is not because it is in the public interest, but because it is in his private interest, since he made it the central promise of his campaign in 2016. Building a border wall solely to satisfy a political campaign promise would also render the words of the Constitution a laughingstock. American taxpayers (not Mexican ones, as was also promised) should not pay to steal private property from Americans to help the re‐election prospects of one politician.
Building the Wall Using Eminent Domain Hurts Americans
That is not killing them like illegals do.
0 Replies
Setanta
3
Sat 25 Jan, 2020 10:22 pm
@izzythepush,
The final settlement was drawn up by an aged Arthur Balfour, and his young assistant--Winston Churchill. It was not possible for him to allocate all of the oil rich areas to British protectorates, but he did his damnedest, and succeeded pretty well.
I recommend to you The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf. It is a relatively short read which does not require an academic education in history to read and understand.
Consider Trump’s impeachment from some other angles.
Quote:
What if it were President Barack Obama who was the subject of the Senate impeachment trial? How would we feel then?
Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School, suggests a question along those lines in his book “Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide.” It’s one of several thought experiments that I suggest in order to step back from the hurly-burly in the Senate and interrogate our own principles and motivations.
The first approach, as Sunstein puts it, is this:
“Suppose that a president engages in certain actions that seem to you very, very bad. Suppose that you are tempted to think that he should be impeached. You should immediately ask yourself: Would I think the same thing if I loved the president’s policies, and thought that he was otherwise doing a splendid job?”
Alternatively, if you oppose impeachment and removal, Sunstein suggests you ask yourself: “Would I think the same thing if I abhorred the president’s policies, and thought that he was otherwise doing a horrific job?”
In practical terms, this amounts to: What if it were Obama who had been caught in this Ukraine scandal?
My guess is that if it were Obama, Republicans would be demanding witnesses (as they did in the 1999 trial of Bill Clinton). Given how aggressively Republican members of Congress pursued the Benghazi events — multiple investigations, eventually finding no evidence of wrongdoing by either Obama or then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — I’m confident that the G.O.P. would be insisting that Obama be removed, with frequent chants of “lock him up.”
Yet I suspect that many Democrats would also switch sides, finding it easier to excuse misconduct by someone they admired — and seeing it as more important in that situation to preserve executive privilege and leave it to voters to decide the matter in the fall. That’s why we owe it to ourselves, as a matter of intellectual honesty, to think through how we would react if it were the other guy on trial.
(Progressives may be scoffing that this exercise is unrealistic: Obama was meticulous in avoiding scandal and ethical conflicts. He checked with the Justice Department before accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, and for him a “scandal” was something like wearing a tan suit. The Ukraine mess would have been out of character for Obama, while it is entirely in character for Trump. But Republicans will see this differently.)
The second thought experiment comes from another distinguished lawyer, Neal Katyal, in his new book “Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.”
“Imagine if it had worked,” Katyal suggests. “Imagine if our president had leveraged his role as commander in chief to convince a foreign power to open an investigation into his political opponent. Imagine if the president’s rival lost the primary because news broke that he was under investigation. Imagine if that meant the president faced a weaker candidate in November 2020 — and won re-election as a result.”
The foreign country could then blackmail our president by threatening to expose the corruption, gaining leverage over our foreign policy. Meanwhile, the president might abuse presidential power in other ways in the belief that impunity was complete. If all this eventually became public, and truth does have a way of trickling out, this would have devastating consequences for the legitimacy of American elections.
This thought experiment perhaps isn’t so far-fetched. We know now that Trump’s pressure on Ukraine caused alarm in the White House and the intelligence community, with National Security Adviser John Bolton likening it to a “drug deal.” Yet for all that uproar, it almost didn’t become public. It was only because of a whistle-blower that the information began to emerge, and the military aid to Ukraine was released only after the White House became aware of the whistle-blower and was being pressured by Congress.
In short, Trump’s plan almost succeeded — and in any case, he will get away with it in the sense that he is sure to be acquitted by the Senate. When Republicans suggest that Trump did nothing wrong, what message does that impunity send to Trump and to future presidents?
The third thought experiment is simple: What if Trump weren’t president, but was like almost any other person in America?
What if he were a high school vice principal who ensured that a police detective’s son would be accepted in advanced placement classes — and then added, “I’d like you to do us a favor, though.” The favor would be an investigation of the vice principal’s ex-wife before their upcoming child custody hearing, in hopes of tilting the outcome in his favor.
In that situation, the vice principal would be fired. We all recognize that no school official or other person in a government bureaucracy should use public power for private benefit.
So a last query: Shouldn’t we have as high a standard for the president of the United States as for a school vice principal?
[...]
It comes down to a question with no good answer: Is the president lying about his relationship with Parnas or is he prone to endorsing rash personnel changes based on unfounded assertions from strangers?
[...]
Given what we now know about where Parnas wound up and the extent to which he was involved in the eventually successful effort to oust Yovanovitch that picked up steam in early 2019, it’s worth asking: How does Parnas’s request fit into what we know about Yovanovitch’s firing?
[...]
One comment from Trump raises a question: How familiar was he with the aid being given to Ukraine?
[...]
No question, though, is more significant than this, at least for Republican senators: What other tapes might exist? ... ... ...
Recordings have, after all, submarined presidents before.
Iran has executed a drug kingpin nicknamed the "Crocodile of the Persian Gulf" and dismantled his smuggling ring, state media report.
The "crocodile" was arrested in the middle of transferring more than 100 tonnes of drugs in international waters, officials said.
The 36-year-old and an accomplice were killed following a years-long intelligence operation.
Iran executes hundreds of prisoners each year.
Amnesty International says the country executed at least 253 people in 2018. That represents a drop of 50% from the 507 executed the year before, credited to changes in the country's strict anti-narcotics laws.
But drug dealing on an international scale can still carry the death penalty.
"The 'Crocodile' was operating under different guises and aliases" Hormozgan province chief prosecutor Ali Salehi told ISNA news agency.
"He led one of the biggest and most vicious drug-trafficking networks in Iran and the region," he said.
Other members of the gang received prisons sentences of up to five years, or heavy fines, he said. The gang laundered money and used the proceeds of the drug trade to purchase real estate - some of which has now been seized by the government.
As for the true identity of "the crocodile", authorities declined to name him, giving only the initials "AZ" for the ringleader, and "MH" for his executed accomplice.
