Page 4 - Dinuba Sentinal 3-29-18 E-edition

Opinion
It never fails that whenever one feels that politicians and their big money donors have broken
through the threshold of “worst ever” they manage to surpass anything done before. Wonder what it took to bring me to this conclusion? I just watched the President sign the “Omnibus
Bill” which is a budget that betrays everyone who voted for a Republican majority in government.
Democrats are the big winners
in this mess! They got virtually everything they want and they're
the minority party. Why should we waste our votes on vacant promises by Republicans? At least we know what liberal Democrats are going to do. They might as well have written this budget with little or no resistance from weak-kneed Republicans and their sorry excuse for leadership in both the House and the Senate!
Granted the President got the money which was so sorely needed
to build our military to pre-Obama levels. Since the primary objective
of our Federal government is to protect the people the Administration delivered on his campaign promise but fell pitifully short on his promise to construct a wall across our Southwest border to stem the flow of illegals and drugs into our country. Thanks to both political parties that border was essentially left open.
Between 1970 and 2014, 44.5 million babies were aborted in America chiefly through the publicly funded Planned Parenthood which
is nothing more than an abortion mill. The unnecessary death of over 44 million children is a stain on any civilized society. How and why can such an obvious misuse of taxpayer money become the very heartbeat of Democrat candidates? Although the rate of such occurrences are down, the last reporting year indicated there were well over 700,000 children who will never be allowed to enjoy the American life.
Although a tremendous tragedy, how can the deaths of 17 children in
Guest Column
Fred Hall
Florida raise such a public furor when compared to millions of babies who receive no attention whatsoever? Remember, thanks to this new budget Planned Parenthood received additional funding to do their
A4 | Thursday, March 29, 2018
Fred Hall - Publisher
In My Opinion
Omnibus Bill betrays Republican voters
sordid work.
As long as it's legal under a newly
found right of privacy under the Constitution it appears there is little we can do to stop such idiocy but we shouldn't be called upon to pay for it.
Increased social programs, championed by Democrats and accepted by their Republicans in
the deep state should not be used to pay for legal defense, social security and health benefits for illegals. Nor should funding continue to flow into sanctuary cities to provide cover
for illegal criminals and certainly it should not come from the toil of hard working, taxpaying American citizens.
With a budget that exceeds 2,000 pages, which obviously no one read, it's impossible in such a small about of space to truly justice to all the prolific spending contained therein especially when it calls for a $1.3 trillion deficit. We did note, however, with only lip service being paid to border security
in our own country, this bunch of “rocket scientists” we elected to govern managed to include copious amounts of money for walls and border security in Middle Eastern countries. Don't
ask why. Congress just seems able to do as they please and get away with
it. Anyway it makes them feel better because it's their way of showing Trump who's the boss. Our President should have vetoed the mess and made Congress come back to the cesspool of their creation and fix the mess!
But, as always, that's only one man's opinion.
Fred Hall is the publisher of the Sentinel.
Guest Column
Fifteen years after the Iraq invasion, what are the costs?
T
effects of war, such as malnutrition, environmental degradation, and deteriorated infrastructure.
Since the 2003 invasion, for instance, Iraqi health care has plummeted — with hospitals and clinics bombed, supplies of medicine and electricity jeopardized, and thousands of physicians and healthcare workers fleeing the country.
Meanwhile, the war continues to spread, no longer limited to
his March marked the 15th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
In 2003, President George W. Bush and his advisers based their case for war on the idea that Saddam Hussein, then dictator of Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction — weapons that have never been found. Nevertheless, all these years later, Bush’s “Global War on Terror” continues — in Iraq and in many other countries.
It’s a good time to reflect on what this war — the longest in U.S. history — has cost Americans and others around the world.
First, the economic costs: According to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the war on terror has cost Americans a staggering $5.6 trillion since 2001, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
$5.6 trillion. This figure includes not just the Pentagon’s war fund, but also future obligations such as social services for an ever-growing number of post-9/11 veterans.
It’s hard for most of us to even begin to grasp such an enormous number.
It means Americans spend $32 million per hour, according to a counter by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Put another way: Since 2001, every American taxpayer has spent almost $24,000 on the wars — equal to the average down payment on a house, a new Honda Accord, or a year at a public university.
As stupefying as those numbers are, the budgetary costs pale in comparison with the human toll.
As of 2015, when the Costs of War project made its latest tallies, up to 165,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a direct consequence of U.S. war, plus around 8,000 U.S. soldiers and military contractors in Iraq.
Those numbers have only continued to rise. Up to 6,000 civilians were killed by U.S.-led strikes in Iraq and Syria in 2017 –– more civilians than in any previous year, according to the watchdog group AirWars.
In addition to those direct deaths, at least four times as many people in Iraq have died from the side
Stephanie Savell
Don’t make the border a
wasteland
Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria, as many Americans think. Indeed, the U.S. military is escalating a shadowy network of anti-terror operations all across the world — in at least 76 nations, or 40 percent of countries on the planet.
Last October, news about four Green Berets killed by an Islamic State affiliate in the West African nation of Niger gave Americans a glimpse of just how broad this network is. And along with it comes all the devastating consequences of militarism for the people of these countries.
We must ask: Are these astounding costs worth it? Is the U.S. accomplishing anything close to its goal of diminishing the global terrorist threat?
The answer is, resoundingly, no.
U.S. activity in Iraq and the Middle East has only spurred greater political upheaval and unrest. The U.S.- led coalition is seen not as a liberating force, but as an aggressor. This has fomented insurgent recruitment, and there are now more terrorist groups in the Middle East than ever before.
Until a broad swath of the American public gets engaged to call for an end to the war on terror, these mushrooming costs — economic, human, social, and political — will just continue to grow.
Stephanie Savell co-directs the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Distributed by OtherWords.org.
Some Americans think of the U.S.-Mexico border as a wasteland. In fact,
the mountains and deserts of our borderlands are teeming with wildlife.
Here you’ll find large cats like the jaguar, the subject of my research.
Jaguar sightings have been reported in New Mexico and Arizona for over a century, even as far north as the Grand Canyon. Their presence is a stamp of approval — they mean healthy habitats, prey populations, and the connection of critical wildlife corridors across the border.
Humans, after all, aren’t the only animals that cross the border. And they aren’t the only ones whose lives will be disrupted if a border wall slices through cross-border wildlife corridors like Big Bend National Park in Texas and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona.
Unfortunately, a federal court recently approved waivers for dozens of environmental and health safeguards in these border regions — all so that wall can go up.
That means the border communities who oppose this
wall and fear its destruction of
the surrounding lands will have
to swallow a wall with no public process. It means there will be
no comment period, no baseline research on impact, and a lack of monitoring throughout the building process. And the worst part is, there will be no way to hold the government accountable.
It started when Congress passed the Real ID Act. Though it was billed as an immigration security measure, it gave the government the power to waive the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Wilderness Act, and even the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, among others.
Since then, miles of border infrastructure have been built along the California, Arizona, and Texas border despite a majority of people in those states opposing the wall. So far, the Trump administration alone has
Sergio Avila
waived 37 laws
in San Diego,
28 in Calexico, California, and 23 in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.
Protected areas on both sides of the border are the stepping stones for jaguars to move through
and reach new territories. Without legal protection, the wall will destroy their habitat — forever risking their future in the region.
Human communities are at risk, too.
This waiver power resulted in extreme flooding that led to at least two deaths in Nogales, Arizona. According to Harvard researchers, the blockage of underground drainage and natural water routes through Arizona’s border created an effect like a burst dam after strong summer storms.
Other waivers threaten to pollute air and watersheds for hundreds of miles into the borderlands.
This is more than a red flag. It’s a human rights issue.
The Government Accountability Office has failed to provide any conclusions about the benefits of this mission to “protect” the border at all costs. But those of us who actually live in the borderlands have to live with its consequences.
It means the dangers of contaminated water sources, the destruction of our lands, the deaths of our brothers and sisters, and the evisceration of treasured local species like the jaguar.
We — and our public lands in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas — are the ones paying the highest price for this unchecked and unnecessary power.
Sergio Avila is an Outdoors Coordinator for the Sierra Club in the Southwest region. He’s studied the impacts of border infrastructure for over 14 years. Distributed by OtherWords.org.
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