Conservative Blogger
Friday, October 30, 2015
Grounded: New Mexico driver's licenses fail feds' test, thanks to illegal immigrant policy
Driver's licenses issued by New Mexico are about to become a lot less useful, and residents can blame the state's insistence on issuing the IDs to illegal immigrants.
The federal Department of Homeland Security informed state officials last week that a two-year effort to reconcile tough federal ID requirements with the granting of licenses to illegal immigrants based on dubious documents failed. Beginning on Jan. 10, state driver’s licenses will no longer be accepted at federal facilities, and eventually, state IDs won’t be enough to get bearers on board commercial flights.
"Although DHS recognizes the State of New Mexico's efforts to enhance the security of its driver's licenses and identification cards, New Mexico has not provided adequate justification for continued noncompliance with the REAL ID standards that would warrant granting your request for another extension," read the DHS letter sent to the state Department of Taxation. "As a result, federal agencies may not accept New Mexico driver's licenses and identification cards for official purposes in accordance with the phased enforcement schedule announced on December 20, 2013."
"With this letter, the feds are saying that they are fed up that the Legislature continues to allow the dangerous practice of giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants."In addition to New Mexico, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, Utah and Vermont, Washington, and Washington, D.C., issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Washington and New Mexico are the only states that do not require proof of legal presence in the U.S. to get a state license or ID, while the others give restricted licenses to people who can't prove they are in the U.S. legally.
- Demesia Padilla, New Mexico Department of Taxation and Revenue
But New Mexico is in worse shape than Washington, which offers enhanced driver's licenses and IDs that require proof of U.S. citizenship. Those are valid under the federal law, but the standard IDs issued for years don't pass federal muster. Since 2007, more than 500,000 Washington residents have gotten an enhanced driver's license or enhanced ID card. There are about 5.4 million people with standard licenses, and about 600,000 with regular ID cards.
The REAL ID Act requires proof of legal U.S. residency for holders of government-issued identification cards who want to use them to access certain areas of federal buildings. New Mexico state law allows immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally to obtain driver’s licenses, a policy current Republican Gov. Susana Martinez has tried to get repealed. But with the policy entrenched, and officials unable to guarantee to the satisfaction of federal authorities that IDs are secure, no New Mexico-issued licenses will be recognized.
"With this letter, the feds are saying that they are fed up that the Legislature continues to allow the dangerous practice of giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants," said Demesia Padilla, secretary of the New Mexico Department of Taxation and Revenue. "An overwhelming majority of New Mexicans have been very clear on this issue, and the Legislature should start listening to them before it begins to affect the daily lives of New Mexicans."
The feds have granted New Mexico two years' worth of extensions to comply with the REAL ID Act, but has denied any further delay. The federal crackdown will extend to military bases and federal facilities such as courts, but the aspect likely to have the widest effect is air travel. Without a new solution in the coming months, New Mexico residents will likely be forced to show passports in order to board even domestic flights.
The REAL ID Act, was passed by Congress in 2005, enacted the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that the Federal Government “set standards for the issuance of sources of identification, such as driver's licenses.”
At the core of DHS's decision is a 2003 policy implemented by then- Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants who were allowed to present the Matricular Consular card issued by Mexican consulates, as an official form of identification.
Richardson had hoped the policy would bring unlicensed drivers out of the shadows and at least have them go through the licensing process to bolster the number of insured drivers in the state.
In March, the state Senate approved a two-tiered bill that would have continued to allow licenses to be issued to illegal immigrants while taking steps to ensure security, but the measure died in the house.
Despite being the first Latina governor in U.S. history, Martinez, a former prosecutor, sees the policy as a catalyst for criminal fraud which occurred almost immediately after the policy went into place.
In 2014, Hai Gan, 57, a legal, permanent resident from China who resides in The Colony, Texas, was sentenced in federal court to 41 months in federal prison and will be deported after he completes his prison sentence for attempting to fraudulently obtain driver's licenses for 51 illegal immigrants.
Senate passes budget and debt deal, sends measure to Obama
In a rare late-night session, the Senate gave final approval to an ambitious budget and debt deal early Friday, sending it to President Barack Obama to sign.
The final vote on passage was 64-35, as Democrats joined forces with Republican defense hawks over the objections of GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio, all of whom voted against the deal. The bill is aimed at averting a debt default, avoiding a partial government shutdown and setting spending priorities for the next two years.
Earlier in Friday's session, the Senate voted 63-35 to end debate on the measure. The vote to approve the bill was taken just after 3 a.m. EDT.
Obama negotiated the accord with Republican and Democratic leaders who were intent on steering Congress away from the brinkmanship and shutdown threats that have haunted lawmakers for years. Former Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, felt a particular urgency days before leaving Congress, while lawmakers looked ahead to presidential and congressional elections next year.
Opposition was strong in the Senate, with Paul and Cruz both leaving the campaign trail to criticize the deal as excessive Washington spending.
In an hour-long speech that delayed the start of the final vote, Paul said Congress is "bad with money." He railed against increases in defense dollars supported by Republicans and domestic programs supported by Democrats.
Meanwhile, Cruz said the Republican majorities had given Obama a "diamond-encrusted, glow-in-the-dark Amex card" for government spending.
"It's a pretty nifty card," Cruz said. "You don't have to pay for it, you get to spend it and it's somebody else's problem."
The Democratic National Committee slammed Cruz, Paul and Rubio for their opposition to the deal, with chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz saying, "There is nothing presidential about failing to pay your bills and jeopardizing our standing in the world economy. It is completely unbelievable that these reckless politicians think they deserve a promotion to the presidency."
The agreement would raise the government debt ceiling until March 2017, removing the threat of an unprecedented national default Nov. 3. At the same time, it would set the budget of the government through the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years and ease spending caps by providing $80 billion more for military and domestic programs, paid for with a hodgepodge of spending cuts and revenue increases touching areas from tax compliance to spectrum auctions.
The deal would also avert a looming shortfall in the Social Security disability trust fund that threatened to slash benefits, and head off an unprecedented increase in Medicare premiums for outpatient care for about 15 million beneficiaries.
The promise of more money for the military ensured support from defense hawks like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, while additional funds for domestic programs pleased Democrats.
Obama and allies like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., were big winners in the talks, but GOP leaders cleared away political land mines confronting the party on the eve of 2016 campaigns to win back the White House and maintain its grip on the Senate.
The measure leaves a clean slate for new Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., as he begins his leadership of the House.
Obama had repeatedly said he would not negotiate budget concessions in exchange for increasing the debt limit, though he did agree to package the debt and budget provisions.
"I am as frustrated by the refusal of this administration to even engage on this (debt limit) issue," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "However, the president's refusal to be reasonable and do his job when it comes to our debt is no excuse for Congress failing to do its job and prevent a default."
The budget relief would lift caps on the appropriated spending passed by Congress each year by $50 billion in 2016 and $30 billion in 2017, evenly divided between defense and domestic. Another $16 billion or so would come each year in the form of inflated war spending, evenly split between the Defense and State departments.
The Appropriations committees will still have to write legislation to reflect the spending and Congress faces a Dec. 11 deadline to approve such a bill.
The cuts include curbs on Medicare payments for outpatient services provided by certain hospitals and an extension of a 2-percentage-point cut in Medicare payments to doctors through the end of a 10-year budget. There's also a drawdown from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and savings reaped from a Justice Department fund for crime victims that involves assets seized from criminals.
Taxpayer-backed solar plant actually a carbon polluter
Even as the Obama administration announces another $120 million in grants to boost solar energy, new reports indicate a centerpiece of the administration's green-energy effort is actually a carbon polluter.
Located in Southern California's Mojave Desert, the $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System benefited from a $1.6 billion Energy Department loan guarantee, and a $539 million Treasury Department stimulus grant to help pay off the loan.
Yet it is producing carbon emissions at nearly twice the amount that compels power plants and companies to participate in the state's cap-and-trade program.
That's because the plant relies on natural gas as a supplementary fuel.
According to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the plant burned enough natural gas in 2014 to emit 46,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. But Ivanpah, while in the cap-and-trade program, is still considered a renewable energy source because it technically produces most its energy from solar.
Built by BrightSource Energy Inc. and operated by NRG Energy, the Ivanpah project has been mired in controversy from the start.
Taxpayer advocates object to the federal support. Environmentalists say it would hurt the endangered desert tortoise and lament that 3,500 birds were "fried" by the heat produced by the plant in its first year.
But the natural gas factor raises the fundamental question of whether this plant -- and others -- are undercutting their own green energy gains by emitting carbon pollution in the process, while not producing anywhere near the level of electricity of a regular power plant.
"This is a prime example of when good intentions go bad," said H. Sterling Burnett, a research fellow at the Heartland Institute.
Solar and wind power plants typically require some form of supplemental fuel, to deal with weather changes.
Natural gas, used at several California operations, can be used during the evenings to help protect against overnight freezing and temperature changes that can hurt equipment.
Yet while natural gas is not as environmentally damaging as coal or oil, it is a fossil fuel generally not considered "green."
Ivanpah's original license allowed it to use millions of cubic feet of natural gas with the understanding the total would not exceed 5 percent of the energy the project gets from sunlight.
BrightSource originally estimated the plant's main auxiliary boilers would use the gas for an average of an hour per day.
But in March 2014, they petitioned the California Energy Commission for permission to increase that to roughly 4.5 hours per day. In the petition, they cited a need to protect equipment and "maximize solar electricity generation."
The company defended the plant operations.
"Less than 5 percent of electricity generated is attributed to natural gas, which ... qualifies 100 percent of the plant generation as renewable," NRG spokesman David Knox wrote in an email.
Michael Ward, information officer for the California Energy Commission which provided the emissions data, confirmed that Ivanpah indeed falls below the 5 percent mark.
But the 5 percent figure does not tell the whole story -- as California does not account for emissions produced when a power plant is not generating electricity, according to Ward.
So the actual percentage of natural gas use could well be higher.
"If it were any other energy industry besides solar, the plant never would not have been built," said David Lamfrom, director of California desert and national wildlife programs at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA).
Lamfrom said that "political pressure pushed this project through without proper input from the taxpayers and without them being adequately informed of exactly what kind of project this was."
He said officials "generated enough momentum to make this project happen in order to meet the [deadlines for] the stimulus funding."
According to Lamfrom, designers also erred in placing Ivanpah between the tallest mountains in the Mojave where there is significant cloud cover and dust which would interfere with the sunlight.
Burnett noted that low sunlight only increases the use of natural gas: "You can make solar power as cheap as you want. If the sun is not shining, or it is cloudy or rainy, it will require natural gas to ramp up [the plant] quickly when solar power goes offline. They say it is green, but that assumes that there is a power source without any environmental impact."
CNBC moderators get bipartisan drubbing for debate performance
Analysts across the political spectrum may be at odds over who won the third Republican presidential debate, but they seem to agree on one thing: the CNBC moderators had a very bad night.
The negative reaction to the debate questions and other factors has become a story unto itself, almost overshadowing the actual policy debates that broke out in between the candidate-moderator rancor Wednesday night.
The Republican candidates and observers complained the questions were demeaning, silly, and designed to provoke confrontation rather than genuine policy discussion. Others took aim at the debate format, and wondered about the moderators’ professionalism.
On several sites aggregating Twitter reaction, the moderators were declared the losers, “hands down.”
The Washington Post declared it “CNBC’s really bad debate night.”
“The moderators had a worse night than the New York Mets … this was a trainwreck,” Fox News' Howard Kurtz charged Thursday, referring to Game 2 of the World Series, and calling the debate questions “condescending, snide, hostile and borderline insulting.”
"While I was proud of our candidates and the way they handled tonight’s debate, the performance by the CNBC moderators was extremely disappointing and did a disservice to their network, our candidates, and voters,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement, calling the questioning “deeply unfortunate.”
CNBC’s John Harwood was blasted for asking Donald Trump whether he was running a "comic book" campaign, and asking Mike Huckabee if he thought Trump had “the moral authority” to be president -- a question Trump called "nasty." Moderator Carl Quintanilla later called Marco Rubio a “young man in a hurry” in reference to his age and his experience in the Senate.
Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, told Fox News Thursday morning that “it was very frustrating to be on stage.” He faulted the moderators for not sticking to the issues and promises to divvy time equally. “They lost control of the debate,” he said.
At varying times, the audience booed the moderators, giving the candidates space to draw together for the attack against what they said was their common enemy: the liberal media.
The criticism took off after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was asked whether his opposition to raising the debt ceiling indicates he may not be the “the kind of problem-solver American voters want.” Cruz unloaded on the moderators, blasting them for asking questions like, “Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain? Ben Carson, can you do math? John Kasich, will you insult two people over here? Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?” After the cheers for Cruz died down he suggested the moderators were Democrats.
“Nobody watching at home believes that any of the moderators has any intention of voting in a Republican primary,” he charged. Cruz used the debate to send out a fundraising letter to supporters afterward, “declaring war on the liberal media,” and went on to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight. As for the focus groups following the debate, the candidates who took on the media and the moderators directly -- namely Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie -- seemed to benefit the most.
“It was brutal takedown, and CNBC’s smarmy moderators had it coming. Cruz is far from the first conservative to rail against liberal media bias, but he did it about as effectively as it can be done in 30 seconds,” said the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby. “The clip of that moment will go viral.”
Even some in the entertainment world, like comedian Patton Oswalt, began agreeing with Cruz and others on stage by the end, in spite of their fundamental dislike for the GOP candidates.
Not everyone thought the moderators went too far. Some analysts argued the questions were par for the course for the debates. And Ohio Gov. John Kasich said he “thought they did a good job,” saying he was “very appreciative of how they did their job.” He felt he had time to speak and that it “wasn't a circus."
When asked over Twitter by The Blaze about the widespread criticism, Harwood said simply, "it comes with the job."
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