We in the DC and Mid-Atlantic region are looking for Al Gore and his global warming.  We have so much snow that the snow equipment in our area is not able to keep up with demand.  There are snow drifts three to six feet in height and everyone is stranded, either at home or work.

Politicians should realize that they do not control the weather, but nature and God control the weather.  We are on this earth a small fraction of time and need to do our part as to conservation of our natural resources.  Higher taxes and golbal policies do not work.  We need government to be smaller and focus on its responsibilities such as snow removal from the streets and providing essential services for the public.

I am ready for Spring and Summer and saying good bye to Winter.

The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Marylanders

When the Governor and elected politicians ask us the tax-paying citizens to pay more taxes, to receive less state services, or pay more for a college education, why do they still spend our money on illegal aliens?
 
Maryland has a fast growing illegal alien population of about a quarter million persons, more than quadrupling since 2000. Between 2000 and 2008, the state's foreign-born population has grown by 34.6 percent while its native-born population has increased by 3.3 percent. . Public school enrollment of students who require special instruction in English has soared even more, rising by 93.5 percent from 2000 to 2008 while overall enrollment declined slightly.

This illegal alien population represents a major burden on the state budget and is borne by Maryland's taxpayers. The costs imposed on law-abiding Marylanders are unfair and unwelcome even in the best of times, but are especially burdensome at a time when the state has been cutting jobs and funding for schools and health care. Furthermore, the state is facing what the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute projects will be a $2 billion deficit in the 2010 budget.

In 2008, the foreign-born population in Maryland represented nearly one in every eight residents (12.4%), and illegal aliens constituted more than one-third of that immigrant population. This illegal immigrant population costs the state's taxpayers more than $1.4 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. The annual fiscal burden amounts to about $790 per Maryland household headed by a native-born resident.

In addition to the fiscal cost estimates in this study, there are additional burdens caused by illegal aliens, i.e., foreign remittances that they sent abroad constitute a major drain on the state's economy. The Inter-American Development Bank estimated that remittances from Maryland just to Latin America and the Caribbean amounted to $921 million in 2006.
 
If this amount had been earned by American workers, it would have been spent locally, and it would have generated sales, production and jobs in the state as well as increased tax collection.

The more than $1.4 billion dollars in costs incurred by Maryland taxpayers annually result from outlays in the following areas:

Education

Based on estimates of the illegal immigrant population in Maryland and documented costs of K-12 schooling, Marylanders spend more than $966 million annually on education for an estimated 80,800 children of illegal aliens. An additional amount of nearly $250 million is spent on providing special English instruction to an estimated 35,000 children of illegal aliens. About 9.6 percent of the K-12 public school students in Maryland are children of illegal aliens.

Health Care

Taxpayer-funded, unreimbursed medical outlays for health care provided to the state's illegal alien population amount to about $167 million a year.

Incarceration

The cost of incarcerating illegal aliens in Maryland's state and county prisons amounts to about $29 million a year not including related law enforcement and judicial expenses or the monetary costs of the crimes that led to the incarceration.

Some state and local taxes are received from illegal immigrants even from those working off the books. But, those same tax collections, or more likely an increased amount, would occur if the jobs were done by legal workers. So, unless it is illogically assumed that no legal U.S. or immigrant or foreign guestworker would do the jobs now done by illegal workers, it makes little sense to consider this a true offset to the tax burden. The estimated amount of the taxes currently collected from Maryland's illegal workers is about $204 million per year.

These fiscal costs would be considerably higher if other cost areas such as assistance programs for needy families or welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal alien workers or resulting from depressed wages were included in the calculation.

The current proposal to adopt an amnesty for the illegal aliens would not lessen the burden if enacted. Rather, it would increase the access of this population to additional social welfare benefits and allow them to legally apply for the state's reverse tax benefit known as the Earned Income Tax Credit.

These costs are not inevitable. State and local policymakers have several means at their disposal to discourage settlement of illegal aliens. Maryland and some local jurisdictions, on the other hand, are permissive towards illegal immigration. Marylanders concerned about the impact on their state and local communities should demand an end to those policies.

I have been writing and warning all Americans about the war on our southern border with Mexico.  We have a national crisis with drugs, gang members, and thousands of illegals streaming across our border every day.  This must stop and we will have to put our military on our southern border.   Elected officials must put the rule of law ahead of politics and new votes.

The U.S. Defense Department thinks Mexico's two most deadly drug cartels together have fielded more than 100,000 foot soldiers - an army that rivals Mexico's armed forces and threatens to turn the country into a narco-state.  "It's moving to crisis proportions," a senior U.S. defense official told The Washington Times. The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of his work, said the cartels' "foot soldiers" are on a par with Mexico's army of about 130,000.

The disclosure underlines the enormity of the challenge Mexico and the United States face as they struggle to contain what is increasingly looking like a civil war or an insurgency along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the past year, about 7,000 people have died - more than 1,000 in January alone. The conflict has become increasingly brutal, with victims beheaded and bodies dissolved in vats of acid.

The death toll dwarfs that in Afghanistan, where about 200 fatalities, including 29 U.S. troops, were reported in the first two months of 2009. About 400 people, including 31 U.S. military personnel, died in Iraq during the same period.  The biggest and most violent combatants are the Sinaloa cartel, known by U.S. and Mexican federal law enforcement officials as the "Federation" or "Golden Triangle," and its main rival, "Los Zetas" or the Gulf Cartel, whose territory runs along the Laredo,Texas, borderlands.

As a result, Mexico is behind only Pakistan and Iran as a top U.S. national security concern, ranking above Afghanistan and Iraq, the defense official added.  Michael V. Hayden, who left as CIA director in January, put Mexico second to Iran as a top national security threat to the United States. His successor, Leon E. Panetta, told reporters at his first news conference that the agency is "paying ... a lot of attention to" Mexico.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday that "the stakes are high for the safety of many, many citizens of Mexico and the stakes are high for the United States no doubt."  A State Department travel advisory last month seemed timed to caution U.S. students contemplating spring breaks south of the border.

When will the Obama administration acknowledge this crisis and meet this challenge with securing our borders?  Drugs, gangs, and illegal immigration are tearing our country apart and destroying American lives.  Our southern border is the most dangerous border in the world.

Iran continues to fund terrorists who are killing American soldiers.  We have been saying this for years, yet the current administration will do nothing about it.  Again, border security is key to keeping these forces out of Iraq.   Sen. Joseph Lieberman termed Iran's training of Iraqi insurgents "an act of war" in a Florida appearance Wednesday.