Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

While Trump is in El Paso tonight stoking up hatred and racism, it's important to note that we already live in a country where Trump's immigration gestapo forces are freely conducting massive workplace raids looking for "illegals" to round up and deport.

Immigrant communities in North Carolina were rattled this weekend after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested an estimated 200 undocumented immigrants last week.

The rural town of Sanford was “like a ghost town” after nearly 30 employees at a manufacturing plant were taken into custody Tuesday morning as part of an “ongoing criminal investigation.”

“My godmother was here,” an 18-year-old man told local station ABC11.
“He was like, ‘yeah they took her and what they were doing is taking people to the breakroom, and if you didn’t have valid ID, they were taking them out.'”

The raid was filmed by 27-year-old local musician Christian Enrique Canales and showed ICE agents checking the identification of anyone trying to leave the property. Lee County officers took Canales into custody for “communicating threats” to law enforcement. Canales and immigration activist groups believe he was arrested in retaliation for documenting the raid.

“I’m telling you to be careful out there, they are arresting everybody,” Canales said in Spanish on the Facebook Live stream. “Do you know how many families I know right now that are going to be split up?”

In east Charlotte, an area that prides itself on its diversity, at least a dozen undocumented immigrants were arrested. Many were pulled over randomly by ICE, told to show proper identification, and subsequently handcuffed, according to local immigrant outreach organization Comunidad Collectivo.

These are test runs, guys.  More of these are coming and they will only get bigger with more ICE jackboots and larger cities and town being terrorized, and we're being told to expect this as the new normal.

And if you think this won't happen in red states, well...

ICE officials argued during a press conference that these sweeping raids are what happens when local sheriffs offices don’t cooperate with the agency, as a result of sanctuary city policies, which bar such cooperation. However, there are no official sanctuary cities in North Carolina.

“This is the direct conclusion of dangerous policies of not cooperating with ICE,” said Sean Gallagher, who oversees the agency’s operation in the Carolinas and Georgia. “This forces my officers to go out onto the street to conduct more enforcement.”

This is a war being fought right now.  ICE is saying that they reserve the right to come in and raid any city in America, demand identification, and round people up for non-compliance or even documenting the atrocities.

This is Trump's America in 2019.

A Border Line Insurrection

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has finally (and correctly) decided that the state's National Guard troops would be better stationed fighting wildfires and going after narco-trafficking than hanging out for show at the border with Mexico to further Trump's agenda.

Newsom said he will rescind authorization Monday for the deployment of the Guard troops, which Trump requested and then-Gov. Jerry Brown approved in April. Brown extended the deployment in September, and the state’s 360 Guard troops were scheduled to stay on the border through March.

Brown declared last year that “California National Guard will not be enforcing federal immigration laws.” Newsom’s office, however, said the troops were operating cameras along the border, doing vehicle maintenance and performing other jobs that would normally fall to federal agencies, freeing up resources for U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Voice of San Diego, an online news outlet, reported in August that in at least two cases, Border Patrol agents apprehended immigrants crossing into the state illegally after being notified by California National Guard troops.

Newsom’s withdrawal order comes one day before he delivers his first State of the State address at 11 a.m. Tuesday. According to excerpts of the speech released by his office, the governor will say that “the border ‘emergency’ is a manufactured crisis. And California will not be part of this political theater.

“Which is why I have given the National Guard a new mission. They will refocus on the real threats facing our state.”

Under the new order Newsom intends to sign, 110 Guard troops now at the border will be redeployed to help the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection with fire prevention efforts, and 100 troops will conduct antidrug trafficking intelligence operations, including screening cargo at points of entry.

Newsom will also request funding from the U.S. Defense Department to expand the state Guard’s antidrug task force by at least 150 members.

“This is our answer to the White House: No more division, xenophobia or nativism,” Newsom plans to say in his State of the State speech.

Good for Newsom, especially telling the feds "give us the people we need to do the real work and address the real problems we have" instead of not making any use of the National Guard that has been called up.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham did the same thing last week.  I hope Arizona and Texas will follow, but with both being Republicans (Doug Ducey and Ken Paxton) there's zero chance of sanity breaking out there.

Meanwhile, Trump will be in El Paso tonight, at one of his Anti-Immigrant Hate Klan Rallies, unwanted by the people there, and we all soldier on like this is normal.

The Trump Tax Time Tango

Millions of Americans are finding out the hard way doing their taxes this month that Trump's "middle-class tax cut" was a screw job, and that average Americans are footing the bill for massive tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

Millions of Americans filling out their 2018 taxes will probably be surprised to learn that their refunds will be less than expected or that they owe money to the Internal Revenue Service after years of receiving refunds.

People have already taken to social media, using the hashtag #GOPTaxScam, to vent their anger. Many blame President Trump and the Republicans for shrinking refunds. Some on Twitter even said they wouldn’t vote for Trump again after seeing their refunds slashed.

The uproar follows the passage of a major overhaul to the tax code in December 2017, which was enacted with only Republican votes and is considered the biggest legislative achievement of Trump’s first year. While the vast majority of Americans received a tax cut in 2018, refunds are a different matter. Some refunds have decreased because of changes in the law, such as a new limit on property and local income tax deductions, and some have decreased because of how the IRS has altered withholding in paychecks.

John Prugh of Ewing Township, N.J., was irate when he completed his 2018 tax return this month and discovered his refund would be $3,000 less than what he received last year. Prugh considers himself “solidly middle class.”

The 39-year-old is a manager at a Barnes & Noble bookstore, and his wife works for the state government. They have two children. Prugh said he had no reason to believe their tax situation would change this year because he and his wife have lived in the same house for years while their incomes have remained stable.

“It totally feels like a scam,” said Prugh, who did not vote for Trump. “I did still get a small refund, but compared to what I was expecting from previous years, it was shock.”

The average tax refund check is down 8 percent ($170) this year compared to last, the IRS reported Friday, and the number of people receiving a refund so far has dropped by almost a quarter.

And as the tax provisions in the 2017 GOP Tax Scam bill fade, the tax burden is only going to increase dramatically in the coming years on middle-class Americans, particularly homeowners who are used to deducting their state taxes from their federal taxes.

Of course, Democrats warned Americans that this was exactly what was going to happen back in 2017, and Republicans passed it anyway.  I sure hope voters remember directly who screwed them over when it comes to going to the polls in November 2020.

StupidiNews!

• North Carolina GOP Rep. Walter Jones died Sunday after his health declined due to a broken hip, Jones served in Congress for 25 years representing the Outer Banks.
• A new UC-Berkeley study on American wealth inequality finds that the nation's 400 wealthiest Americans now control more wealth than the bottom 150 million adults, or 60% of the country.
• The top US Army commander in the Middle East says plans to withdraw American troops from Syria could begin within "weeks", some equipment has already begun its trip back to the States.
• The British government will need tens of billions of pounds or several ministry departments face "years" of austerity budgets.
• A new Kaiser Health News analysis finds more than 40% of FDA-approved generic drugs aren't for sale in the US by drug companies in order to keep profits high and competition low.