launchkits Debate

Undemocratic Democrats

Editors:

The same folks “all in” on Vice President Harris as the best Democrat to run against Donald Trump are the same insiders, and so-called journalists who for months assured us that President Biden was physically and mentally fit to serve four more years as POTUS. I’m still puzzled at how democracy is not questioned when 14 million Biden votes and millions in donations for him just magically flow to Harris and her campaign? Dean Phillips, Jason Palmer and Robert Kennedy Jr. cannot be all that happy.

--Rich Corbett

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About Kamala & the Wall

By Stephen Macaulay

The Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, the result of some rare Senatorial bipartisan activities (lead Republican on the bill, James Lankford of Oklahoma, said, “It doesn’t have everything in it I wanted, it doesn’t have everything in it my Democratic colleagues wanted. But it definitely makes a difference), was torpedoed by primarily Republicans who were acting in fealty to the dictates of their Dear Leader Donald Trump. After all, if the bill passed, then he’d lose what is his primary criticism of the Biden Administration (that and some bizarre “crime family” trope).

According to factcheck.org:

“It included money to build more border barriers, to greatly expand detention facilities, and to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents, asylum officers and immigration judges to reduce the years-long backlog in cases to determine asylum eligibility. It sought to expedite the asylum process, essentially ending — in most cases — the so-called ‘catch and release’ policy whereby migrants are released into the U.S. pending asylum hearings. And it would have increased the standard of evidence needed to win asylum status.

“The bill also would have supplied more funding to interdict fentanyl and human trafficking. . . .”

So what do we have here?

  • Walls
  • More enforcement personnel
  • Expedited handling of illegal aliens
  • Reduced amounts of fentanyl coming over the border

One of the things that is going to be thrown at, with some vigor, Kamala Harris is that she was supposed to take care of the border and, well, the border continues to be a mess.

But what is the role of our elected legislators?

That bill, as Lankford pointed out, didn’t have absolutely everything for everyone.

But it was better than what we now have. Far better. But the bill was spiked.

According to the official Republican 2024 platform, which seems to have been written by someone who doesn’t exactly have a grasp of when words should be capitalized: 

“We must secure our Southern Border by completing the Border Wall that President Trump started. Hundreds of miles have already been built and work magnificently. The remaining Wall construction can be completed quickly, effectively, and inexpensively.”

Let’s take a look at the “Border Wall that President Trump started.”

Turns out that during FOUR YEARS (if you’re going to use caps, use them):

  • 52 miles of new primary wall systems were built
  • 33 miles of new secondary wall systems were built
  • 351 miles of existing primary barriers were replaced
  • 22 miles of existing secondary barriers were replaced

So giving him the benefit of the doubt, there were a whopping 85 miles of new wall built.

The length of a wall (or Wall) would need to be 1,933 miles to completely stretch along the border. Right now, there are 403 miles of primary structures, 52 of which are wall.

That means 1,530 miles of border need wall (Wall!).

At the rate the Trump Administration performed construction during his first term, 21.25 miles per year, it would require 72 years to finish the job. That’s nearly as long as Trump has been on the planet.

It is estimated that the Trump Administration spent $15 billion on The Wall. Of that, some $10 billion was taken from the Department of Defense.

Fifteen billion dollars. 

This means that if there were 458 miles of something built or replaced or reinforced or otherwise Wall, it cost US taxpayers — NOT Mexico (remember that?) -- $32,751,092 per mile.

So in order to build the remaining 1,530 miles of Wall it would cost $50,109,170,760 — OK, let’s say there’s a volume discount and we’ll call it a cool $50 billion.

Somehow what Kamala Harris did or didn’t do on the border is trivial compared to all of this.