Tag: Kathy Weppner

How Did Kathy Weppner Warn Us About ISIS in 2013?

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Rus Thompson at the Tea Party

Weppner with Costumed Pal

Remember how morally depraved Kathy “Infected Poors” Weppner tried reprehensibly and crassly to fundraise over the severed heads of American journalists murdered by “ISIS”?  She’s tried to make this into an issue, but as with most things she touches, she inadvertently reveals her own fundamental ignorance about everything.

This is why you don’t give WBEN callers attention, or run them for office. 

In a radio spot airing now, which sounds like the rapid-fire disclaimer at the tail-end of a used car commercial, Weppner claims that if you want to “defeat ISIS” you have to “change your congressman”; i.e., replace Higgins with Weppner. 

which sounds like the rapid-fire disclaimer at the tail-end of a used car commercial

She argues that Higgins, as a member of the foreign relations committee, was briefed numerous times about ISIS over the past year, and nothing was done. The idiocy is HUUUGE-AH. Here’s why:  

1. Higgins is a minority member of the foreign relations committee.  It is led by – its agenda set by – Republicans (specifically, Ed Royce R-CA). If there is blame, it rests not with Higgins, but with the whole of the GOP-led committee.  

2. There is no guarantee that, if she were to win, Weppner would be appointed to the same committees as Higgins. Her entire argument about “change your congressman” is premised on that misconception. Is she ignorant about how Congress works, or is she assuming that you are? 

3. What did Weppner have to say about Syria and ISIS in 2013 on her radio show, or on her blog? Ha ha! Sorry, suckers! You’ll never know, because she deleted all of it from the internet. 

4. You could, of course, opt to “change your congressman” and hire the woman who can’t properly format a document, and who thinks there’s a country called “Cypress”, or thinks ISIS is a “caliphate move”; that “caliphate” is an adjective, not a noun. 

5. Back in the summer of 2013, the President was proposing to launch air strikes against Syria in opposition to the regime and in support of the rebels. That never came to a vote because a deal was cut whereby Assad promised to dismantle and give up his chemical weapons. However, in the run-up to that potential vote on a resolution to authorize military action in Syria, almost all Republicans in Congress opposed any such action. There is absolutely no proof that Weppner would buck the GOP, especially as a freshman backbencher. Her entire argument is ludicrous. 

Has it come time yet to demand that the Republican Committees distance themselves from this ignorant and morally profane freakshow? Is it too early to demand that Republicans not only reject – but condemn – her use of American martyrs as campaign props and fundraising totems? 

Cognitive Weppner Dissonance

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The big news Tuesday afternoon was that the first case of Ebola was diagnosed Stateside, down in Texas. By the late afternoon, we knew that the afflicted man had flown from Liberia (a former American colony) to Texas to visit relatives. 

Around 4:45 pm, walking, talking insult to your intelligence Kathy Weppner tweeted and posted this to the Bookface: 

I enjoy the anti-vaxxer weighing in with his idiot opinion, but I actually can’t fault Weppner here. We should deal with it medically and not politicize a disease, and we should be ensuring that the disease is not spread. The CDC worked last night to remind people that you can only catch Ebola by coming into contact with the bodily fluids of someone who has the disease. 

Yet just 30 minutes later – at 5:16 pm – Weppner asked this question on social media: 

Wait a cotton-pickin’ minute. I thought we were supposed to deal with this medically, not politically! But here we are, worrying not about containing the spread of this virus, but how much it’s going to cost and whether the person is here “illegally”.  

I’m guessing the fact that the person had traveled to a place other than Ireland, they must be – according to Klownshoes Kathy – likely illegals. Of course, when someone flies to the United States from Liberia, they need to apply for a visa, their passport is checked prior to departure and their identity transmitted to the US authorities to ensure that they’re not on any list. Upon arrival, the traveler must go through passport control at the port of entry, as well as a customs check. Just like any of the other millions of travelers who come to the U.S. annually from non-visa-waiver countries. 

But, you know, all brown people are probably illegals.

Weppner also inadvertently makes the case for Obamacare or some other universal coverage construct – who’s going to pay?! Who knows? Who the hell cares? Who paid for the American volunteers in Africa who caught Ebola and were flown on private jets back to the States to get treatment? I don’t give a crap, and neither should you.  I’m just glad they’re ok. Likewise, I hope our Liberian visitor gets the medical care he needs so that he can enjoy his family and go home healthy and safe. One Ebola Liberian isn’t going to bankrupt the Republic. 

If the person was Texan and didn’t have insurance, that means they’re either in violation of the Affordable Care Act’s coverage mandate, and possibly that they fell into the gap left by indictee-cum-Texas Governor Rick Perry’s refusal to expand Medicaid in the U.S. State with the lowest rate of people with health insurance. Texas refused federal money to ensure that people who make too much for Medicaid, but too much for Obamacare subsidies to render private insurance affordable for their incomes. It was a deliberate, political choice to do harm to the most vulnerable people in Texas society. Perry is the person who was feted last night by local thug Carl Paladino and the tone-deaf Erie County Republicans and fusion Conservatives. 

So, yes, Kathy – we should treat the Ebola patient with medical care, and not politicize it at all. 

It’s high time you asked Thug Paladino and the local Republicans and fusion Conservatives why they’re backing this abhorrent, repulsive candidate. 

Weppner and the Parenthetical Hitler

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Hey, the candidates are replying to questionnaires. Let’s take a look! 

Kathy Weppner appears to be the only candidate vain enough to list “Patriot” as a qualification-slash-experience for public office.  That’s just breathtaking. I mean, Harvard Shmarvard. Being a “Patriot” is basically a silent pre-requisite for running for any public office in the U.S., like “sentient being” or “has central nervous system” or “skeleton”. 

Let’s compare the candidates’ “community involvement”, and watch Higgins mop the floor with Weppner’s “hey, I show up when people ask me to” slacktivism. 

Well, well, well. There are so many issues that the government should be addressing, and Higgins focuses on some key ones that fit neatly within a Congressional backbencher’s wheelhouse. But Weppner – she identifies the debt as “our top challenge”, and that if interest rates – that the Fed sets – go up, we won’t make the payments? The US has never defaulted, even in the 80s under Reagan’s debt and double-digit interest rates. People like Weppner who conflate public debt with family debt don’t really understand what they’re talking about. 

First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.

Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves…

…It’s true that foreigners now hold large claims on the United States, including a fair amount of government debt. But every dollar’s worth of foreign claims on America is matched by 89 cents’ worth of U.S. claims on foreigners. And because foreigners tend to put their U.S. investments into safe, low-yield assets, America actually earns morefrom its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors. If your image is of a nation that’s already deep in hock to the Chinese, you’ve been misinformed. Nor are we heading rapidly in that direction.

Now, the fact that federal debt isn’t at all like a mortgage on America’s future doesn’t mean that the debt is harmless. Taxes must be levied to pay the interest, and you don’t have to be a right-wing ideologue to concede that taxes impose some cost on the economy, if nothing else by causing a diversion of resources away from productive activities into tax avoidance and evasion. But these costs are a lot less dramatic than the analogy with an overindebted family might suggest.

I don’t know what Congress is going to do about “leadership” in a “dangerous world”, but whatever. She’s running a chain-email campaign. 

Now, on to income inequality. If you haven’t, you should read Monday’s Krugman, and then look at this: 

Every time an increase in the minimum wage is proposed, the wealthy egotists who think themselves ‘job creators” and their minions whine about how the jobs will all be lost! They do this, of course, while simultaneously denigrating the jobs and their occupants as losers, slackers, teens, or all of the above.

But the loss of jobs doesn’t happen. At all. If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation over the last 40 years, it would be $10.90/hour.  Instead, the federal rate is $7.25. No one’s talking about making everyone earn the same – this isn’t some Stalinist march to the kolkhoz, but ensuring that people who work earn enough to live, and that we halt policies that disproportionately enrich the already rich at the expense of the poor and middle class. You know, to stop this: 

But note the rhetoric about how “immigrants…started with nothing, did anything, and ended up great! About that…

So, on the one hand, immigrants do just great! But on the other hand, they’re all lawbreaking terrorist welfare queens who want to bankrupt the republic. 

See? It’s your own fault that we don’t know who’s funding campaigns. The word salad that Weppner sharts out here is utter nonsense. 

LOLWUT? First of all, I’d like someone to ask Weppner about the science of global climate change and see if she says the same thing. She completely fails to answer the question posed in any meaningful way, and just punts, adding that we like totally really need to be able to transport her phantom resources “based on science”. 

Common Core is not a federal program, isn’t administered or run from Washington, and was not a federal government initiative. Other than that, awesome!

So, on the one hand, she brings up a separation of powers issue that’s been pretty much resolved for some time – the Commander in Chief does not need a declaration of war to commit US troops. But the last time Congress declared war was World War 2, to combat, among others, Hitler – who appears here parenthetically.

We didn’t fight Hitler because of his crimes against humanity – we fought him because he declared war on the US on Pearl Harbor Day, and because the Nazis had overrun Europe and North Africa. Germany, Italy, and Japan were imposing militarist fascist totalitarian dictatorships all over the place, and we fought Nazi Germany because it had to be done. Weppner alludes to ISIS and its vicious reign of terror, but why isn’t the beheading and crucifixion of adults also a “crime against humanity” justifying American action? 

“Why do we deliver humanitarian food and shelter when humanity is threatened but we do not see the same need when life itself is threatened”.  What on Earth does that mean? We fought crimes against humanity in Bosnia and Kosovo in the last 20 years. What is she saying? 

She started her recent career as a caller to ultra-right-wing hate radio. She graduated from there to being a host on ultra-right-wing hate radio. Now, she feels entitled to a title, and in so doing is simply regurgitating nonsense she hears on ultra-right-wing hate radio. She’ll be lucky to hit 20% because the vast majority of WNY voters are not fascist idiots.

Things Worse than #LatteSalute

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Eliminationist radio station WBEN spent an entire day Wednesday lamenting / concern-trolling the President’s apparently impeachable offense of saluting Marines with a coffee cup in his hand.  Of course, because he’s Obama, it was a latte. But while Tim Wenger’s obsession du jour was n0bummer’s epic disrespect of every troop and all troops everywhere, what sort of thing has WBEN (and the rest of the local media, for that matter), completely ignored? 

How about a former WBEN employee and current sponsor raising money off the severed heads of Americans slaughtered by ISIS? This isn’t the semi-informed lunatic ramblings of some online crank listener – this is an endorsed Republican candidate for Congress. Not once did anyone on WBEN spend a nanosecond condemning this. 

Or how about WBEN’s afternoon drive time shock jock dreaming – literally – of a military coup in Washington, and his idiot commenters trying to out-do each other with eliminationist wet dreams. (Helpful hint: the page is publicly viewable, so don’t whine to me about not blocking the names out. 

That’s some station Tim Wenger has molded into his own image. So, while it’s a daylong horror for Obama – a civilian – to salute Marines whilst holding a coffee cup, it’s perfectly ok to make political hay off American martyrs and to openly advocate for and dream of sedition, treason, and a coup d’etat. Clear? 

Kathy Weppner Gets Participation Award

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Now that the Erie County Democratic Committee’s biennial re-org shenanigans have devolved into Pigeon/Mazurek self-parody, let’s check up on Kathy Weppner, the very serious candidate for very serious congress. 

Ms. Weppner took to Twitter and Facebook to tout her 1st place award in the ArgleBargle olympics. Or something. 

She received some sort of press-release-only “award” from a school choice advocate in New Jersey.  For the uninitiated, New Jersey is quite far from here and not at all within the 26th Congressional District. Rabbi Israel Teitelbaum is the head of this “Alliance for Free Choice in Education”, which has one of the reddest, whitest, and bluest webpages in all of the world. 

Rabbi Teitelbaum’s cause is to force taxpayers to fund religious schools under the guise of “school choice”; a clear violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Under the Supreme Court’s test in Lemon v. Kurtzman, any alleged violation of the Establishment Clause will be determined through a three-prong test: (1) whether the government’s action has a secular or a religious purpose; (2) whether the primary effect of the government’s action is to advance or endorse religion; and (3) whether the government’s policy or practice fosters an excessive entanglement between government and religion.

Handing out taxpayer money to fund religious schools violates all three prongs of the Lemon test; to be unconstitutional, in need only violate one. As Kathy Weppner points out, if we don’t enforce the law, we’ll become a lawless society. 

So what does western New York’s most unintentionally hilarious candidate do? She accepts an award from a ersatz Constitutionalist group that advocates violating the Constitution. 

The Alliance for Free Choice in Education is pleased and proud to congratulate Kathy Weppner, Republican & Conservative candidate for the House of Representatives from New York’s 26th District, for leading the battle to restore Constitutional Government. She joined candidates from across the country who visited the new nonpartisan website [omitted], and took the pledge to do all she can in support of the Constitution, beginning with lower taxes, individual-controlled healthcare and parental choice in education.

So, in order to get this “congratulations”, all Weppner had to do was scour the internet for some cockamamie pledge to take – a pledge not to her putative constituents, but to a particular special interest group that seeks to starve the public schools and subsidize religion with taxpayer money. 

The site was recently developed by the New Jersey based Alliance to provide the ways and means for citizen candidates to identify themselves as champions of the Constitution, and where voters may meet them, vet them and support them.

While the site is nonpartisan, its mission is to restore Constitutional government by identifying and supporting those who are truly committed to the Constitution and its clearly-defined limited powers. Although most Americans profess to support the Constitution, and every public official takes an oath to do so, a plain reading of the Constitution’s opening paragraph – the Preamble – does not resemble twenty-first-century America.

What’s great about that passage is that the Preamble has absolutely no legal effect.  It’s an introduction.  

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Constitution has been our founding document for over 200 years, and some obscure Rabbi in New Jersey has declared that it bears no resemblance to contemporary American society, and Weppner touts this as totally cool.  So, what the hell are these people talking about? 

One-million-four-hundred-thousand gang members roaming the streets of American [sic], and a crime rate that impacts at least three percent of Americans annually, cannot be described as “domestic tranquility.” Open borders will not lead to “the common defense,” and the “blessings of liberty” are inconsistent with government financially coercing parents to send their children to substandard schools where they are subject to government indoctrination.                                                                                                                                            

Gosh, that doesn’t sound nice at all. Gang members roaming the streets! Remember back in 1787 when there was no crime at all? Remember how we committed genocide against the American Indians? Now that’s what I call “domestic tranquility”.  Also, the War of 1812, slavery, the Alien & Sedition Acts, the Burr/Hamilton duel in New Jersey – all of these things are ostensibly better examples of “domestic tranquility” and “liberty” than what idiots call “open borders” and public schools -an idea pioneered by Horace Mann.  

The United States was a product of the Enlightenment – not the middle ages. 

One need not be a Constitutional expert to recognize that we have veered far off the Constitutional track. In an attempt to turn the tide, masses turned out to vote in the most recent midterm election of 2010, and changed more seats than in any midterm election since 1938. Yet, the distance from our founding principles continues to grow more quickly than ever. It will take informed and activated voters to drive us back on track.

I thought this was a “nonpartisan” organization? 

We can restore Constitutional government, provided we not only vote, but also vote for those who stand for the Constitution and its essential principles of liberty, limited government and equal opportunity under the law. Ideally, we need to meet the candidates and vet them, just as we would do if we were hiring an employee. Alternatively, we may rely on those who have done so. Modern technology now makes it possible for this to be facilitated online.

The ways and means to restore our nation back onto its Constitutional track are now available. It’s now up to every American to do what it takes to turn our government onto the right track. We are most grateful to Kathy Weppner, of New York’s 26thCongressional District, for her courage, fortitude and tireless efforts on behalf of us all. 

TL;DR: Phony Constitutionalist Kathy Weppner gets a “thank you” from an obscure New Jersey crank who doesn’t understand the Constitution. 

Kathy Weppner’s Moral Depravity

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There is depraved, and then there is Kathy Weppner depraved. 

Leave it to WNY’s most delusional and intellectually malignant political clown to fundraise and recruit volunteers over the severed heads of brave American victims of genocidal terrorists. 

Weppner is busy accusing Brian Higgins – a minority member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs – for bringing ISIS/ISIL about.  The Committee is chaired by a California Republican. Weppner isn’t just insinuating, but stating in her commercials, that to defeat ISIS you have to “change your congressman”. What self-important and ridiculous nonsense. Is Weppner assuming that she would ascend to the same committee if elected, as if by noble right? What is it, precisely, that she would or could do differently from anyone else on the issue of the ISIS lunatics? 

Also note that Weppner’s commercial is in direct and obvious violation of federal law requiring ads for federal office to indicate that Weppner “approves this message”.  Pursuant to 2 USC §441d(d)(1)(A), any radio communication “shall include, in addition to the requirements of that paragraph, an audio statement by the candidate that identifies the candidate and states that the candidate has approved the communication.”

What part of “shall include” do you not understand? 

So, in one breath, Kathy Weppner, the endorsed Republican candidate for NY’s 26th Congressional District, has outrageously accused Brian Higgins of enabling the rise of ISIS, has disgustingly tried to raise money and recruit volunteers over the murders of two American journalists, and violated federal law. 

That’s pretty good for Wingnut Wednesday. 

Shorter Weppner: #BlameTheHelp

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In regard to “infected poors”, our intrepid candidate dons a new pair of clownshoes: 

You may remember Laura Yingling from a few weeks ago. Weppner chided Yingling  for soliciting photographs of blighted parts of the NY-26 district to “use against Brian Higgins on Twitter and Facebook”. 

Now, we’re meant to believe that the “infected poor” – actually, it read “infected poors” – Tweet from Weppner’s own Twitter account was actually published “accidentally” because Yingling thought it came from the Heritage Foundation.  

In other words, referring to unaccompanied minor refugee human beings as “infected poors” is ok, so long as the Heritage Foundation does it first?

Weppner then goes on to write about her love of Mexico, despite the fact that the unaccompanied minors at issue are not coming from Mexico, but through it, from places like Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Weppner does, however regale us with pictures of her and her husband enjoying Mexico, apropos of just about not a goddamn thing. Except perhaps to transmit the message, ‘some of our best friends are brown and speak Spanish.’ 

“Mariachi Kathy” Via Facebook

Unbelievable is that this is the third or fourth major embarrassment for the Weppner campaign.  First it was the Jerry Zremski piece in the Buffalo News where all of Kathy’s wild and wacky conspiracy theories came to the fore. She subsequently – quickly – scrubbed all evidence of her former, WBEN-cultivated self from the internet. Next, Weppner chided Yingling for the solicitation of blight photos, and now this. 

I went back to the article Weppner/Yingling linked to, and although a bunch of quite hateful people wrote shit about “extortion”, nowhere did I see the words “infected” or “poors”.  I call bullshit. 

For someone running for a serious federal legislative office, this is beyond bush league. I expect better from school board candidates, much less congressional ones. Why on Earth would someone vote for a person whose campaign stumbles from embarrassment to embarrassment, with the staff taking the fall for it? Why would you want to elect someone who makes “careless errors” that are vicious and insulting about young kids coming here for a better life? 

Hell, even though Weppner writes that Yingling tendered her resignation, we don’t know if it was accepted or what. Presumably, Yingling is still in charge of bravely re-Tweeting hateful bullshit she pulls out of the deepest depths of the ultra-right blogosphere under her candidate’s name. 

That “infected poors” Tweet went out because someone affirmatively cut it, pasted it, and hit the publish button. See below – they went so far as to add two hashtags to it, including #NY26. One would suspect that the person who did it bothered to read it first. One would expect that a candidate would have her name on a Google Alert, and find out that the “infected poors” thing was the subject of a post and might be problematic. 

Make no mistake – the “infected poors” Tweet was sent because someone liked it and agreed with it.  It was not a careless error – it was the deliberate and thoughtful endorsement of its sentiment. 

UPDATE: It looks like this is from where Yingling / Weppner got the “infected poors” line: 

Beats me how someone is too dim to figure out that “Populo Iratus” isn’t the same thing as the Heritage Foundation. 

This is what happens when a terrible, ignorant tea party candidate retaining the free services of an ignorant tea party activist. Hilarity would ensue, if it wasn’t all such a sad example of inhumanity. 

Are you an immigrant who sought refuge in America from violence or oppression? How about your ancestors? Denigrating foreigners as diseased subhumans is all too common throughout our history. Kathy from Williamsville is just letting you know how she really feels. 

Amateur-Hour Weppner can’t mariachi her way out of this one. 

Second-Generation Americans Against Refugees

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Once again, Tony Fracasso from the long-running broad-comedy show “SpeakupWNY” weighed in, this time on immigration, in my most recent Kathy from Williamsville thread. 

So Alan,

Do you support mass migration of people from other countries to the USA? Yes or No.

Do realize this cost the net tax payers tens of millions of dollars?

80 years ago when people immigrated to the USA they still followed the rules on the books plus we didn’t have the costly social programs we have today.

Like Derek Noakes loves animal videos on YouTube, Fracasso loves to demand “yes or no” answers and to use the phrase “net tax payers”. My response: 

Do I support “mass migration of people from other countries to the USA”? Absolutely. Immigrants like the Fracasso family helped make this country what it is today. Never mind that Italian immigrants found it hard to assimilate, were discriminated against, subjected to hatred and bigotry, and tended to live amongst each other in homogeneous neighborhoods, now Italians are considered to be just like our WASP founders.

Of course, it’s also a complete lie that immigrants are a net drain on the economy. For instance,

Via Buffalo Niagara Partnership

Immigration grows the economy and helps enhance local cultural vitality. Immigrants also create jobs for native Americans here in WNY:

Via Buffalo Niagara Partnership

So, if you’ll notice above, I pointed out to Fracasso that, 100 years ago, Italians were treated rather horribly by native-born Americans, and like new immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries, they found it tough to assimilate and kept to themselves in insular communities. Fracasso responds, 

That was then and this is now. To different scenarios. When are families came over a 100 years ago the country was in a different economic state. We also didn’t have the social programs we have now compared to 100 years ago. This has nothing to do with bigotry or hatred. Is that a tactic in the Democratic Playbook? When someone doesn’t agree with you call them a hater or a bigot?

I’m also rather sure the mass of immigrants that came over 100 years ago came into the states by following the laws.

Why do we have borders and laws Alan?

So, here’s my response: 

Right. YOUR playbook is to shout about how YOUR ancestors came here “legally” at a time when immigration from Europe was essentially unrestricted, save for the “not an anarchist” box that needed to be ticked before you could get tested for syphilis on your way through Ellis Island.

But when it comes to brown, Spanish-speaking tweens from Central America who are escaping social, economic, and political problems that are not dissimilar from, say, turn-of-the-century Italy, all of a sudden it’s an “invasion”. Yet you want to sit there and tell me that’s not bigotry or hatred – or that the bigotry and hatred that was hurled at Italian and Irish immigrants 110 years ago was not just as disgusting and sordid.

We do have borders, Tony. When was the last time you actually crossed the southern border? Have you ever crossed the Rio Grande or taken a day trip to TJ? Ever? Have you ever witnessed the interminable lines, super-tight security, and state-of-the-art anti-drug and human trafficking measures put in place at even remote crossings in the desert Southwest? Have you seen the miles and miles of barren wasteland out that way?

Yes, we have borders and they are reasonably protected, and here’s the reason why this is all about bigoted hysteria and not at all about facts:

While illegal immigration of kids 12 and under has shot up by 117%, theoverall number of people of any age crossing illegally is at a 40 year low, and even the number of kids crossing has dropped.

Most of the anti-immigrant hysteria stems from a conscious or unconscious belief that Obama is a foreign Manchurian candidate who is here to destroy America as we know it. If you don’t believe me, just look at Weppner’s own birtherite hysterics.

Furthermore, the kids are mostly from Honduras: “The fact that Hondurans represent the highest percentage [27%], followed by Salvadorans, makes clear that the major push factors are violence,” said Susan Terrio, an anthropology professor at Georgetown University who has interviewed dozens of unaccompanied immigrant children.”

“Invaders” my ass.

Yes, we do have borders and they’re being reasonably defended, and we also have laws. I don’t know why you’d so quickly invalidate your own argument, but the law states that undocumented unaccompanied minors cannot be deported before they have a court hearing – due process.

What you’re really saying is, “why won’t Obama disobey the law?

Here is a Forbes list of 7 myths about immigration: 

Myth 1: There are more immigrants than ever and these immigrants break the mold of previous waves.

Between 1860 and 1920, fourteen percent of the population was foreign-born. The average for the 20th century is 10-plus percent. The proportion is not different today—about 13 percent. Until the 1880s immigration originated in northern and western Europe but in subsequent decades they came from southern, central and eastern Europe, which was culturally, politically and economically different. Not to mention Asians, who arrived in significant numbers.

The difference seems to be national origin, not numbers. 

Myth 4: Present-day immigrants do not assimilate, unlike previous waves.

About forty percent of newcomers speak reasonable English anyway, but the three-generation pattern echoes that of previous immigrants: the second generation is bilingual but speaks English better and the third generation speaks only English. By the third generation, out-marriage is strong among immigrants. A century ago, seventeen percent of second-generation Italian immigrants married non-Italians while 20 percent of second-generation Mexicans marry non-Hispanics today (even though, given the numbers, it is easier for them to marry another Mexican.) Second-generation immigrants do better than their parents, as in the past.

That proves my point about Italians, supra. 

Myth 5: Low-skilled workers take away jobs, lower salaries and hurt the economy.

As producers and consumers, illegal immigrants enlarge the economic pie by at least $36 billion a year. That number would triple if they were legal—various studies point to a $1 trillion impact on GDP in ten years. Low-skilled workers fulfill a need by taking jobs others do not want, letting natives move up the scale. Without them employers would need to pay higher salaries, making those products and services more expensive. They have a tiny negative effect on wages at the lowest end that is offset by a rise in the wages of those who move up—the net effect is a 1.8% rise.

That’s right – even undocumented immigrants help to grow the economy. 

Myth 7: Immigrants don´t pay taxes and cost more than they contribute. 

Immigrants pay many local and state levies, including real estate and sales taxes, and about $7 billion in Social Security taxes. Between the 1970s and the 1990s they represented $25 billion more in government revenue than what they cost. They would contribute much more if they were documented. Most immigrant children have at least one parent who is a citizen, so counting all of them as part of the cost of immigration is deceptive. The welfare state was never a “pull” factor: until after World War II immigrants were not entitled to relief programs. Immigrants did not cause government spending to grow by a factor of 50 in one century.

These myths are further confirmed and expanded upon in this Washington Post article, and this article from the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

If people like Fracasso are so concerned about facts and the law, then it would likely behoove them to educate themselves not only about the facts about immigration – legal and not – and what laws apply. 

Immigrants do not harm or destroy America – they make America stronger. 

Kathy Weppner and the “Infected Poors”

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM_rgudSHug] 

On Tuesday, western New York’s most unintentionally hilarious congressional candidate left her mic’s windscreen at home, and held a press conference near the Peace Bridge to draw attention to things she’s largely made up about America’s southern border.

The entire unseemly episode can be summed up in this Tweet, which is an actual thing put out by an actual candidate for Congress, whom the county’s Republican committee has actually endorsed: 

Again – to clarify – Kathy Weppner is not someone on the nativist fascist fringe of American right wing anti-immigrant agitation polity. She is in the mainstream of contemporary Republican “thought”. 

Here’s a picture that Weppner posted to Facebook and Twitter, showing one reporter – poor Mike Desmond from WBFO had to tread through this manure – and the optics are as stupid as the underlying message. The Peace Bridge has nothing to do with the problem on the southern border, and the influx of Central American tweens isn’t affecting western New York (here’s my article on the subject from a few weeks ago). 

Via Facebook

If you go to the article that Weppner tweeted, it’s from something called the “Daily Signal”.  Never heard of it. It’s apparently the ultra-right wing Heritage Foundation’s “Komsomolskaya Pravda” – the official organ of a powerful PAC and so-called “think tank”. It’s one big right-wing hissy fit, set down in pixels.

Nevertheless, if you read the article, it merely says that Guatemala argues that more American investment and aid would help to stem the country’s economic and social crises, and refugees would be less inclined to go North. A reasonable counterargument would be to point out the concomitant Central American political corruption and graft that renders such aid unhelpful. But there’s no ultimatum there – there is no Guatemalan threat to send more quote-unquote “infected poors” to the US if we don’t pony up $2BN. It takes a special type of horrible reading comprehension to read this article and reach the infected-poors-ultimatum conclusion. 

Here are the words that she strung together and shat from her mouth: 

Seventy percent of our border agents have been pulled off our borders and reassigned to do paperwork processing.  We know this because a border patrol agent is speaking out.

She actually cited a source – “Fox Nation” via Sean Hannity, which is neither news nor legitimate.  There’s absolutely no data or objective evidence to support the allegation, but this ostensibly serious candidate takes it on face value because Fox/Hannity.  

If the breakdown in the rule of law has created societies that are dangerous, and has caused parents throughout Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to send their juveniles away, we should take note of this. We should not become a lawless country.

What does this even mean? What does she mean by “take note of this”? Why the pivot to the “lawless country” crack? 

Of particular importance is the rise of gangs in these lawless countries which bring kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, drugs and gun violence to every community as their societies break down.

I’m starting to think that she is referring to the influx of Central American tween refugees will cause a breakdown in the US, and render it “lawless”. 

In 2012 there were 20,000 gang members in El Salvador, 12,000 in Honduras, and 22,000 in Guatemala.  According to the FBI in 2011 the United States had 1.4 million gang members.  That was three years ago.  So we have far more gang members in the United States than all of these countries combined.  Why are we perceived to be a safer nation?  We follow laws.  Our country follows laws. Our police officers enforce laws.  When police officers don’t obey the laws they are usually investigated and charged and tried and put in jail.

What we are doing now is lawless and if we continue down this path we will have a society that, over time, will begin to look exactly like these other countries.  We have immigration laws.  The President has decided not to follow them.

El Salvador has 6.3 million residents. Guatemala has 15.4 million. Honduras has 8 million residents. The United States, by contrast, has 317 million people.  These Central American countries are also significantly smaller in area, suffer crippling poverty with non-existent social services, and a history of corruption, dysfunction, and terrible infrastructure. The ways in which these poor countries are different from ours are many – to break it down for even a Weppner, they’re the third world, the US is the first world. 

Weppner is saying that accepting refugee children from these three countries will make the US become a third world corrupt backwater like them. That’s astonishing – look how little faith she has in the American system, and in our country’s 300+ year experience absorbing immigrants from all around the world. 

We have a Constitution that tells us how laws are supposed to be made and a President that puts his hand on a Bible and swears an oath to uphold our laws.  Our President is breaking that oath and our Congress is letting him.  Our Congress is the  body that has standing to stop the President from doing what he is doing on immigration. Selective enforcement of our laws is not allowed in our Constitution.

Actually, it is allowed, up to a point. But here, the President and Congress are enforcing the law that requires that refugees from non-border countries be detained and processed through our court system to ensure that they are not victims of human trafficking. This is the law, and it’s being enforced. 

The gang Los Zetes [sic] is now migrant smuggling as part of its day to day operations.  Coyotes will promise three attempts to smuggle family members with families taking mortgages out on their homes to pay for it.  When the coyotes fail they gain the deeds to the homes either themselves or for the criminal enterprise they work for. This leaves families and children homeless in their countries. Minors are abandoned on their journey or thrown off moving trains when they cannot pay increased demands.  Many girls are raped and abused.   

Horrible. But what’s your point?  Also, is anyone as astonished as I with the 6th grade book report prose?   

We have heard much about the unaccompanied minors.  In 2013 90% were teenagers and in 2014, in the first 8 months 84% were also.  My grandfather was 16 when he got on the boat in Cork, Ireland by himself and came to the United States.  Legally.

I don’t know what year her grandfather came to this country, but if it was before the mid-1960s, it’s ridiculous to compare today’s immigration laws to prior years. 

Of the 51,000 unaccompanied minors 88% have already left HHS custody and  are no longer tracked and free to roam our country.  How will we know if they go to school?  How will we know if they are immunized before they are sitting next to our children?

This is just sheer racism and rank ignorance. 

Immunization rates in El Salvador and in Guatemala are above 90% of children, just like the USA.  In Honduras, it’s right around 90%.  

In 2014   55,000 entire family units have come here illegally and there is still five more months left this year. 

Now the white house has requested emergency funds and Congress may vote on that before recess.  The problem is that emergency funds must meet criteria.  We have laws.  They must be used for sudden, unforseen and temporary problems.  We have known about this problem since 2012 when non governmental agencies and church organizations began reporting this. Texas Governor Rick Perry wrote to President Obama reporting a 90% increase in minors arriving in Texas in 2012. We have had two years to address this and have done nothing.  In 2012 the White House negotiated for temporary housing at Lackland Air Force Base but did nothing to stem the tide.  This is obviously not unforeseen, sudden or temporary.

What would she have us do differently? 

Each person coming here illegally will get taxpayer funded lawyers and have hearings with immigration judges appointed by the President and paid for by us.

“We have laws.” 

Seventy-one percent of households headed by illegal immigrants receive at least one welfare program.  57% of all immigrant families receive at least one welfare program. How will we afford this?

They receive an entire welfare program?! Weppner cites an anti-immigrant group for this statistic. You guessed it – it’s bullshit. From this list: 

MYTH #3: The nation spends billions of dollars on welfare for undocumented immigrants.

FACTS: To the contrary, undocumented immigrants are not eligible to receive any “welfare” benefits and even legal immigrants are severely restricted in the benefits they can receive.

As the Congressional Research Service points out in a 2007 report, undocumented immigrants, who comprise nearly one-third of all immigrants in the country, are not eligible to receive public “welfare” benefits — ever.

Legal permanent residents (LPRs) must pay into the Social Security and Medicare systems for approximately 10 years

before they are eligible to receive benefits when they retire. In most cases, LPRs can not receive SSI, which is available only to U.S. citizens, and are not eligible for means-tested public benefits until 5 years after receiving their green cards.

A 2007 analysis of welfare data by researchers at the Urban Institute reveals that less than 1 percent of households headed by undocumented immigrants receive cash assistance for needy families, compared to 5 percent of households headed by native-born U.S. citizens.

A 2007 analysis of U.S. Census data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities makes clear that it is the U.S.-born, U.S.-citizen children of undocumented immigrants who are eligible for programs such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program

(SCHIP). The analysis found that, between 1995 and 2005, the share of low-income, non- citizen immigrant children (either undocumented or legally present) who received Medicaid or SCHIP dropped from 36 percent to 30 percent.

Weppner continues: 

They will all be qualified for Obamacare through a loophole that Brian Higgins voted for in HR 3962.

This Obama economy is contracting.  Despite what you read in your newspaper, employment participation is at an all time low at 62.8 %.  Unemployment rates may appear to be lower but it is because people have dropped out of the workforce and no longer plan on working.  If we do not get Americans working again we will not be able to pay the interest on our debt of over 17 trillion dollars.  Last year our Federal Government needed to borrow 680 billion dollars to pay bills and it continues to spend.  How will we pay for all of these new welfare recipients?  

Texas alone will spend 12 million dollars a month on its’ [sic] National Guard effort to try to secure its’ [sic] borders.

We must decide whether we are going to be a country of laws.  If we have no borders then we are not a country. 

A rote regurgitation of fascistic nativist anti-immigrant rhetoric, and let’s throw in a bunch of other nonsense into the stew of words. I’m surprised #Benghazi didn’t make a guest appearance. 

Our Constitution gives Congress the duty in section 8 of our Constitution to “Provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.”   If you watch the nightly news, you  know that there is an invasion going on in our country. A mass migration that we are not ready for and will have devastating effects on our country.

We don’t have a militia anymore. We have a standing army and National Guard. This is not an invasion, because it’s not a foreign army attacking the United States. It’s frightened, poor kids looking for a job and a better life. Just like Weppner’s grandfather. 

Brian Higgins is on the wrong side of this issue.  He has voted against funding for a border fence in HR 60-61, and HR 26-38.   Mr. Higgins has voted in favor of sanctuary cities in House Amendment 294, and other sanctuary policies in House Amendment 288 to HR 28-62.  He voted for the e-verify system and then voted against an amendment to fund the e-verify system so employers could ensure they are hiring people who are legally in our country, HR 54-41.  Mr. Higgins voted against the amendment to require implementation  of the entry exit system, HR 44-37, and voted against authorizing the use of military to assist in border functions in HR  1815 . He voted for amnesty in HR 24-14.  All of these votes have setup [sic] the problems we face today. This is not even a complete list.

Right. It’s Brian Higgins’ fault that three third-world countries are awful and kids are trying to escape them. 

If violence in your home country is the deciding factor in whether this president allows you to freely come across our border illegally, without consequence, then we need to send a message to every Christian living in a Muslim country to come on ahead, because they are being slaughtered as we speak.   How does one group win the Obama lottery of immigration and another does not?  What about the violence in our inner cities that continues to be ignored? What about our children here in Buffalo who are being gunned down in our streets? 

Well, actually, if a Christian from the Middle East can get on a plane and arrive in this country and seek refugee status, they’re welcome to do so.  In fact, anyone who can establish that they’re the victim of religious or political persecution is welcome to apply for refugee status. It’s even easier in Canada, and they have free medical. So, yeah. 

I wonder what Weppner’s glorious solution to inner city violence is? 

The latest insanity is that we will have a program that will cost 47 million dollars over the next two years, and we will go to Honduras and process juveniles there to give them refugee status and transport them to this country.  This status allows them to go on public assistance immediately.  This doesn’t even make sense in a country that cannot meet its’ [sic] bills. 

If that program is successful we will expand it to the other two countries.  So the President , as a policy, will bring the illegal immigrants here under his orders.  He is breaking his oath of office. 

Doesn’t it make sense to pre-process refugee claims at our consulates abroad, rather than burden the Border Patrol with this? Doesn’t it make sense to issue refugee visas to people who qualify for that status before they get to this country, rather than spending millions to detain and process them in our courts, after the fact? 

We are in a very dangerous time in the history of our country and sitting back and hoping the next two years go by quickly is not going to cut it.  

As Americans we need to have laws that keep America strong and safe and free.

We need to have secure borders.  We need more processing staff so our border patrol agents can do their jobs.   We need to process people quickly that are coming across our borders illegally so they can be returned to their home countries where they can fill out the paperwork to apply for legal entry into the United States.  We need to decide on a number.  Currently it is around a million immigrants that legally enter our country each year.  If we decide on two million we must require self-sufficiency from those immigrants so that we are not adding to the burden of the American taxpayer.  We need to treat all humanely while they are briefly here. 

 Word salad. 

God Bless you,

God Bless Western New York

And God bless the United States of America.

May she be a beacon of freedom and strength for all the world to see.

Except for you “infected” brown “poors”. You all can just stay home and die, for all she cares.  

By the way, since this is a 2 year-old issue, what did Kathy Weppner have to say about the Central American kids seeking refugee status back in 2012 on her WBEN radio show? 

Oh, right. 

She scrubbed from the internet all existence of her radio show, and anything she wrote prior to March 2014. 

I’ll bet there was a lot of this, though: 

 

UPDATE: WELCOME, WONKETTE READERS!

 

Weppner Disavows 912 Blight Exploitation Strategy

4 comments

Last week, I posted about 912 activist and Kathy Weppner volunteer  Laura Yingling’s search for pictures of blight that she could “use against Brian Higgins on Twitter and Facebook”. 

Evidently, Weppner is not completely shameless! She sent the following, and Yingling forwarded it to her Glenn Beck fan site. 

Well, to be specific, Weppner didn’t instruct Yingling to tell her dummy battalion to not take pictures of blight to use against Congressman Higgins – she merely asked Yingling to make it clear that Weppner didn’t ask for it and isn’t part of Weppner’s “campaign plans”. 

You see, Weppner is too busy running a “dignified” campaign on “issues” like universal firearms access and scrubbing all evidence of her pre-2014 internet existence. 

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