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August 2023

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Why is US sending 3,000 Navy, Marines force to Persian Gulf? The Pentagon has not yet specified the Marines’ role in deterring Iran from interfering with commercial shipping and threatening neighboring Arab states. Jared Szuba

By on August 10th, 2023

https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/08/why-us-sending-3000-navy-marines-force-persian-gulf

A contingent of more than 3,000 US Navy personnel and Marines sailed into the Suez Canal on Sunday as the Biden administration weighs options to deter Iran from seizing commercial tanker ships in the Persian Gulf region.

The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, along with sailors and Marines of an Amphibious Ready Group led by the USS Bataan and accompanied by the dock landing ship USS Carter Hall, will provide “greater flexibility and maritime capability” to the United States’ Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, the Navy announced today.

What that means: The Pentagon has remained mum on specifically how it intends to employ the Marines, but their arrival is part of a wider buildup of US forces in the region which defense officials described as a response to Iran’s renewed attempts to seize commercial tankers.

The deployment brings additional aircraft, helicopters and amphibious landing craft to join a dozen US F-35s, as well as F-16 and A-10 aircraft and Navy guided-missile destroyers that have already arrived in the region in recent weeks and months to ramp up joint patrols in and around the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has escalated its attempts to seize commercial ships in Gulf waterways in recent months following the US Justice Department’s confiscation of a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker, the Suez Rajan, carrying Iranian fuel to China in April. An Iranian navy vessel opened fire on a Chevron-chartered tanker in international waters off the coast of Oman last month after the civilian ship refused orders to stop.

Iran’s navy and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have harassed or seized control of at least 20 commercial shipping tankers in the region over the past two years, according to the US 5th Fleet’s numbers.

Iran’s moves have further driven a wedge into the United States’ strategic ties with Gulf states, as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates look to reduce their dependency on Washington for defense.

“It’s drawn Gulf states closer to Iran,” one American official told Al-Monitor last week. “It sends a signal to regional partners that in the absence of US forces, the US is not serious about security.”

Al-Monitor reported last week that senior Defense Department officials have been putting the finishing touches on proposals for wider legal authorities in coordination with the White House to enable the military to intervene more directly to prevent Iran’s seizures of commercial tankers.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Welcome To Biden’s Grand Illusion Of Prosperity

By on August 10th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/10/welcome-to-bidens-grand-illusion-of-prosperity/

‘You know, if you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give you an illusion of prosperity, too.”

That was then-Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen back in 1988 arguing that the Reagan boom was a myth because it was bought and paid for with deficit spending, then running about $200 billion a year. 

What would Bentsen say today about an economy that – instead of blasting ahead at more than 4% a year at it was in 1988 – is barely eking out gains and appears headed to a downturn … despite the fact that President Joe Biden is writing $200 billion in hot checks every two months. 

We know what Biden and his legions of sycophants in the “independent” media would say. The economy is doing great thanks to “Bidenomics.”

“The economy is growing and we’re lowering costs for families. That’s Bidenomics at work,” Biden said after the latest GDP numbers came out, which showed the economy growing 2.4% in the second quarter of this year. “This progress wasn’t inevitable or accidental — it is Bidenomics in action, growing the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down.”

One week later, Fitch downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+.

The lower rating, Fitch said, “reflects the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance relative to ‘AA’ and ‘AAA’-rated peers.”

Fiscal deterioration over the next three years and a high and growing debt burden? Is this “Bidenomics in action”?

Look at the numbers and you see why Fitch is worried.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Blue State Migrant Crisis New York City and Massachusetts shout for immigration help and work authorizations from a failing D.C.

By on August 10th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-blue-state-migrant-mess-721d823b?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The press mostly ignores the migrant crisis these days, but don’t tell New York City Mayor Eric Adams that it’s over. He’s shouting at the top of his lungs as the city expects to receive its 100,000th migrant shipped from the Mexican border this month.

The mayor held a press conference Wednesday to describe the migrant strain on the city’s budget, and ask Washington for more money. New York spent $1.45 billion on shelter services for migrants in fiscal 2023, and in June it approved $2.9 billion to fund new arrivals in 2024. But two months later it already knows that won’t be enough.

“Our new estimates have us spending nearly $5 billion on this crisis in the current fiscal year,” Mr. Adams said. That tops the combined cost of the city’s sanitation, parks and fire departments.

The city based its initial cost projections on the rate of migrants arriving between last year and this spring. That missed the hundreds of thousands of migrants who delayed their arrival until after the end of Title 42, a border enforcement policy that the federal government suspended in May. Thousands of them are making their way to the Big Apple.

The biggest source of growing costs is the share of asylum seekers still in the city’s shelter—more than 57,000. “We spend an average of $383 per night to provide shelter, food, medical care and social services,” Mr. Adams said of the cost per family. That’s $9.8 million a day across the shelter population.

The bulk of the blame goes to the Biden Administration for all but waving through hundreds of thousands of migrants into the U.S. if they claim asylum. Blame also goes to a 1996 federal law that mandates a five-month waiting period before asylum seekers can apply for work permits, leaving them no productive options when they arrive.

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