Patterico's Pontifications

4/25/2017

Ted Cruz: Let’s Make El Chapo Pay For The Wall

Filed under: General — Dana @ 6:09 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Heh. A notorious drug lord paying for President Trump’s big, beautiful wall? Makes perfect sense says Sen. Ted Cruz. Just call it EL CHAPO: Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order:

“The U.S. Government is currently seeking the criminal forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits from El Chapo, the former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was recently extradited to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution for numerous alleged drug-related crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering,” Cruz stated.

“Fourteen billion dollars will go a long way toward building a wall that will keep Americans safe and hinder the illegal flow of drugs, weapons, and individuals across our southern border.”

Democrats have made it clear they will not vote to fund a border wall. So Republicans, who need the Democrats’ votes to prevent a looming shutdown, presented a new spending plan today with no money going toward the construction of any border wall:

In exchange for backing off the border funding request, Republicans insisted on increases in border security and defense spending, including an unspecified amount to repair existing fencing and new surveillance technology to patrol the nearly 2,000-mile border, according to multiple House and Senate aides familiar with the ongoing talks. Democrats have indicated that they would support such a plan so long as no money goes toward an actual wall.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

48 Responses to “Ted Cruz: Let’s Make El Chapo Pay For The Wall”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (023079)

  2. Hello, Dana.

    This being Breitbart, does our government actually have its hands on that $14 billion?

    nk (dbc370)

  3. I had a number of good sites linking to it, nk, and was going to go with another one, but this had a fuller quote by Cruz. Yes, it felt a little icky. No matter where the money is, I like Cruz’s flair and ingenuity.

    Dana (023079)

  4. The president cautions:

    Don’t let the fake media tell you that I have changed my position on the WALL. It will get built and help stop drugs, human trafficking etc.

    Dana (023079)

  5. Gather round while I sing you of Canadian Cruz,
    A man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience;
    Call him unprincipled for changing his views,
    “Principles,schminzables” coos Canadian Cruz

    Don’t say that he’s hypocritical,
    Say rather that he’s quite political;
    “Talk El Chapo and walls keeps my name in the news!
    Memories are short,” coos Canadian Cruz

    Some have harsh words for his bait-and-switch ruse,
    But some say their attitude should be one of gratitude;
    Like the wife and the father; their honor abused,
    So easily betrayed by Canadian Cruz

    “You become a conservative hero;
    Showing Texans you’ll stand up for zero;
    In Calgary ‘oder’ Houston, I have proved I can lose,
    And I’ll prove it again,” coos Canadian Cruz.

    With apologies to the great Tom Lehrer.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  6. Nothing wrong with earmarks. Every budget is full of them. Better than having it go for tanks for sanctuary city police departments.

    When they say they need Democrat votes, of course they mean Senate votes. The filibuster 60 still exists for spending bills. I hope, anyway. Don’t tell me that Ryan won’t be able to muster a Republican majority in the House?

    nk (dbc370)

  7. Chingon!

    ThOR (c9324e)

  8. The Supreme Court is going to have its hands full reversing Left Coast District Court and Ninth Circuit anti-Trump rants masquerading as court decisions, I think.

    nk (dbc370)

  9. Why do Republicans need Democratic votes to avoid a shutdown? Democrats don’t control the Senate or House.

    Dejectedhead (d3cff5)

  10. The filibuster still exists for spending bills and although McConnell has been coy about it in the past it’s likely to continue to exist.

    nk (dbc370)

  11. 7, That’s peanut money anyway, even the MSM was saying it was a chickenspit gambit by Sessions (Chicago’s loss was 2.3 MM, my cousin the tactical unit guy would eat it all with overtime and excessive force settlements).

    If Kevin M. Is out there, would your view of asset forfeiture change if it was employed against Chapo and paid for the wall (14 B is not the cost coast to coast, but it always should have been marketed as an Arizona-New Mexico wall.

    urbanleftbehind (33654c)

  12. Does he have many billions?

    Oh yes! Many billions.

    Would you say he has a plethora of billions?

    A what?

    A plethora.

    Oh yes, Senior Ted, he has a plethora.

    Jefe, what is a plethora?

    Why Senior Ted?

    papertiger (c8116c)

  13. #11. I thought the filibuster never applied to spending measures, I guess not for debt ceiling increases.

    I wouldn’t mind if the government shut down anyways.

    Dejectedhead (d3cff5)

  14. Reconciliation? I’ve never understood how it works.

    nk (dbc370)

  15. Greetings:

    Donde esta El Chapo ???

    El Chapo no esta aqui.

    Donde esta el dinero Del Chapo ???

    El dinero Del Chapo no esta aqui.

    Ay, que Onda !!!

    Ay, que dolor !!!

    11B40 (6abb5c)

  16. 3 – “I had a number of good sites linking to it, nk, and was going to go with another one, but this had a fuller quote by Cruz. Yes, it felt a little icky.”

    You felt icky citing someone who did a better job?

    harkin (dbcc1e)

  17. #15. Yeah, reconciliation. Plus it was the reason Paul Ryan gave for how he constructed the AHCA bill he was pushing.

    Dejectedhead (d3cff5)

  18. i love how barack has spent the past eight years railing against money in politics as well as against ceo salaries and golden parachutes, yet a week after spending a month on the World’s Most Expensive Yacht in french polynesia, he’s going to accept $400K from cantor fitzgerald to speak for an hour at a health care symposium

    if they want to get their money’s worth, they better get bill ayers to write the speech
    and they better make sure the teleprompter is in working order
    if barack had a sense of humor, he’d begin his speech by tweaking himself for cowardly dodging rick warren’s abortion question during the 2008 campaign by saying, this is definitely not above my pay grade!

    Cruz Supporter (102c9a)

  19. Mr. Cruz seems to be the only republican who wants President Trump succeeding during his presidency. A true American, am proud to have worked for the man. Ryan and the republican party will take the heat for being unipartiers. Trump on the other hand keeps hiring jebby booosh retreads. WTF are you azzwipes in d.c.doing? The mid-term election hopefully the voters will drain the swamp.

    mg (31009b)

  20. he’s going to accept $400K from cantor fitzgerald to speak for an hour at a health care symposium

    Just think, if he did this 9 times, he could pay for a single Trump golf trip.

    Davethulhu (9c83d7)

  21. still laying on top of your sister, SFB Davethulhu?
    what a pathetic pos you be

    mg (31009b)

  22. Remember when Trump insulted Cruz’s wife and father, and Cruz took it like the cuck he is? Now that’s a pathetic pos.

    Davethulhu (9c83d7)

  23. The way I heard it they could just use animatronic Obama, standing there waving a sign at the door, and get the same effect.

    papertiger (c8116c)

  24. Time to play chicken with the Nuclear Option.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  25. If Kevin M. Is out there, would your view of asset forfeiture change if it was employed against Chapo and paid for the wall (14 B is not the cost coast to coast, but it always should have been marketed as an Arizona-New Mexico wall.

    My problem is not with “asset forfeiture” as such, but the misuse of civil courts, default judgements, rigged hearings and your general tax-farming tactics to obtain people’s property without a criminal conviction.

    You CONVICT someone of the crime in which the ill-gotten gains were obtained, and I have no problem with it. But someone driving down the road with $12,000 of their own money shouldn’t have to PROVE it wasn’t used (or going to BE used) in a drug deal.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  26. The Supreme Court is going to have its hands full reversing Left Coast District Court and Ninth Circuit anti-Trump rants masquerading as court decisions, I think.

    There was a time when the 9th District was fighting the death penalty tooth and nail, until one execution that had come 2 or 3 times to the Supreme Court in a week, with crazier reasons for a stay. The Court actually sent them a cease & desist order.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  27. The mid-term election hopefully the voters will drain the swamp.

    The Dems are terrified that they will lose 5-10 more Senate seats in 2018. Their play, though, is to stonewall Trump on everything. Nothing will pass the Senate that doesn’t absolutely have to. Nyet, nyet and nyet. Trump must be made to look like a loudmouthed failure. The prolem is that it might not play well outside their base, and they could lose even more than that. 13 seats is the magic number for impeaching.

    Of course, the House majority is so fractured that the Senate may not have to block much.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  28. dave, you always react with a non-sequitir whenever we point out the vulnerabilities of barack or hillary

    eventually, we hope you’ll recover from hillary’s defeat
    hang in there

    Cruz Supporter (102c9a)

  29. If you’ll forgive a serious post, the SC will not reverse the ruling. Obama had a similar case blocked by the SC when he threatened to withdraw all Medicaid funding from Arizona because they didn’t expand Medicaid as part of ACA.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Dole

    Specifically the 5 conditions of constitutionality:

    The spending must promote “the general welfare.”
    The condition must be unambiguous.
    The condition should relate “to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs.”
    The condition imposed on the states must not, in itself, be unconstitutional.
    The condition must not be coercive.

    Davethulhu (9c83d7)

  30. Remember how when Trump won the election, the tree leaves and butterflies got 2 shades brighter?

    papertiger (c8116c)

  31. How will we make bricks without coke straws?

    Pinandpuller (40545b)

  32. The Wall has become for DJT, the “No New Taxes” pledge for Bush 41. The Dems back then didn’t care that the tax increase agreed to was so small. All they had to have was a tax increase of any sort. Today, if they can stave off any new finding for the Wall, they will clean up in 2018 and DJT will never recover. Heck, it might even result in a new right-of-center party.

    Why is it, I wonder, that the GOP does not insist on a comprehensive approach to border security? That’s the new buzzword, right? Why is it not applied here?

    Duh. They really do not want the wall.

    Ed from SFV (3400a5)

  33. funding, not finding*

    Ed from SFV (3400a5)

  34. I wish Trump would get verbally abusive with all the rinos. Put them on display as no good drunk, lazy, lying sons of biotches. If your not going to get anything done, Donno, put the blame where it belongs, directly on the republicans heads.

    mg (31009b)

  35. You felt icky citing someone who did a better job?
    harkin (dbcc1e) — 4/25/2017 @ 8:57 pm

    We might differ on the definition of “better”. The Breitbart article leaves the impression that the government already has its hands on the $14 billion and it’s only a question of how it will be spent once the forfeiture is final. Which is not the reality. Because El Chapo was turned over to us by the Mexicans who already had him in custody, the U.S. government has not seized even a pair of his old underwear. It can forfeit the Mexican prison suit, I suppose. Does he have any gold inlays in his teeth? A diamond front tooth?

    nk (dbc370)

  36. LePen taking my advice, though I imagine this is aimed at their equivalent of NeverTrump more than the larger pure commie bloc http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/26/le-pen-dodges-questions-on-euro-secession/

    urbanleftbehind (c0690b)

  37. 36. – “The Breitbart article leaves the impression that the government already has its hands on the $14 billion…..”

    Only if you don’t understand the phrase “currently seeking”.

    harkin (dbcc1e)

  38. Really?

    “The U.S. Government is currently seeking the criminal forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits from El Chapo”.

    Criminal forfeiture is a judicial action. At least in non-alt.rechtssprechen.

    nk (dbc370)

  39. If El Chapo pays for the wall that would mean that Mexico was paying for the wall. Cruz had out-Trumped Trump.

    Of course the money isn’t real. It’s his estimated total profits over his career, and a very generous estimate.

    Jan 25, 2017: https://www.forbes.com/sites/doliaestevez/2017/01/25/does-mexican-drug-lord-el-chapo-guzman-have-the-14-billion-the-u-s-wants-from-him/#15a04a9b669b

    The $14 billion amount is by far the highest dollar figure ever associated with Guzmán’s criminal activities. In 2009, FORBES estimated Guzmán’s net worth at $1 billion. But in 2013, at a time when Guzmán’s whereabouts were unknown and his likely access to those assets limited, FORBES removed him from the billionaires rankings because it decided his assets were too difficult to verify….

    …Bruce M. Bagley, an expert on Mexico’s drug cartels at the University of Miami, told me that the $14 billion figure is “too high.” “The drug business may earn Mexican drug lords up to $20 billion or so a year. Much of that money goes into operations and protection. El Chapo probably makes well below a billion per year.” The government’s amount, which Bagley describes as a “cumulative calculation,” does not take into account “operating expenses” such as bribes to public officials and profit sharing among cartel members.

    However, Bagley said El Chapo is most likely still a billionaire. “…Expenses are running high, his lieutenants are increasingly greedy and disloyal. His children now control his wealth and split it among themselves. Nonetheless, I have no doubt that he is still a billionaire as of 2016,” Bagley said. “Guesstimate: $2-$4 billion at most.”

    But Alejandro Hope, a security expert in Mexico City, was adamant, calling the $14 billion sum a “fabrication.” Hope claims that “no one knows with minimal precision” how much drugs the U.S. consumed last year, much less in the past three decades. Likewise, he said, “no one knows how much of those drugs” passed through the hands of El Chapo and his associates. “What we have is rough estimates,” Hope said.

    And also this is all done without reference to any bank accounts, or cash, or houses or land.

    This could be a way for Donald Trump to back out of his pledge. If there is any money, it would better be spent on trying to help heroin addicts. Also, if the idea is measure for measure, you would not want a wall oing up, but a wall going down many feet deep in the earth.

    Sammy Finkelman (6f9f42)

  40. Even the Federalist Society…http://thefederalist.com/2017/04/26/sanctuary-cities-ruling-much-ado-nothing/

    Yes an underground wall, natch, a waterway along the lines of the St. Lawrence Seaway with sharks and crocs (for the drier climates of the desert SW)/alligators, would do it.

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  41. The point is not the legality, like mua’dib, to speak it is a killing word.

    narciso (d1f714)

  42. Sammy,

    Your personal preference on not building a wall is not fact. Ask Israel if a wall is effective or not. Ask Hungary.

    NJRob (acb8af)

  43. There are two walls in Israel. One, in the West Bank area, “works” because it makes travel more time consuming, and that’s all maybe you need. It doesn’t actually work to keep out workers. The one on the Egyptian border may not be doing too much – the presence of ISIS on the other side may be more important in keeping out Eritreans, and ISIS right now doesn’t want to tangle with Israel.

    The wall in Hungary, which isn’t much of a wall, simply diverts people, and if all you want to do is divert people, a itttle wall can work.

    On the Arizona and New Mexico border with Mexico there is an Indian reservation that straddles the border that Indians (but only Indians from that tribe) have a right to cross without going through customs or immigration that would take an Act of Congress to revoke which isn’t going to happen. The Indians agreed to put barriers to prevent cars from going over and tey are there. Putting a wall everywhere else would divert people to the Indian reservation. I supposed you could wall the Indian reservation on both sides of the border.

    Donald Trump now seems to be saying he wants a wall to keep out drugs. Well, you actuall;uy don’t need to build a wall that goes 60 feet deep underground all across the a line drawn from California to Texas to prevent the building of tunnels.

    Sean Hannity today seemed to think the $14 billion actually existed, and had even already been collected. Score 1 for Ted Cruz in fooling some of the people some of the time.

    Sammy Finkelman (6f9f42)

  44. The rest of the story:

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447058/trump-administration-sanctuary-city-executive-order-activist-liberal-judge-william-h-orrick?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202017-04-26&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

    narciso (d1f714) — 4/26/2017 @ 2:34 pm

    Here’s the part that the article writer thinks is important:

    “the Attorney General and the Secretary, in their discretion and to the extent consistent with law, shall ensure that jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373 (sanctuary jurisdictions) are not eligible to receive Federal grants.”

    Here’s what the judge says:

    The defunding provision is entirely inconsistent with law in its stated purpose and directives because it instructs the Attorney General and the Secretary to do something that only Congress has the authority to do–place new conditions on federal funds.

    If you take the Trump admin lawyers at their word, this EO is incapable of affecting funding in sanctuary cities at all. The “extent consistent with law” is zero. Did Trump actually intend to write an EO that would have no effect?

    Davethulhu (fab944)

  45. Davethulhu (fab944) — 4/26/2017 @ 3:32 pm

    If you take the Trump admin lawyers at their word, this EO is incapable of affecting funding in sanctuary cities at all. The “extent consistent with law” is zero. Did Trump actually intend to write an EO that would have no effect?

    They didn’t say zero.

    There are some discretionary funds, but the Roberts Obamacare decision on Medicaid says not too much can be tied to continuing to receive money – the law is actually unsettled on this question. The Trump administration lawyers said they weren’t actually removing very much if anything. Obviously, it depends on politics and the composition of Congress.

    Sammy Finkelman (592d97)

  46. Why link Breitbart- can’t find it anywhere else?

    Anyway, Cruz’s ‘idea’ is a Trump-ish publicity stunt- and corny.

    There’s never going to be any wall.

    Reaganite Republican (d13897)


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