JULIAN CASTRO – Page 4

By Victor Skinner

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Obama’s former Housing and Urban Development secretary Julian Castro wants to be America’s next president, and he has some bold new ideas on how to fix the problems plaguing the country.

Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio and youngest member of Obama’s cabinet from 2014 to 2017, announced his intent to run for POTUS in 2020 on Saturday.

The grandson of a Mexican immigrant, Castro told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” he would take a different approach than the Trump administration to folks crossing the southern border illegally, though he’s apparently unaware that his bright idea is already in use.

“What I believe we could do and what the Obama administration did do, I believe, toward the end of its tenure, was to look at things like ankle monitors so that you’re able to monitor where people are in the country,” he told the news station, according to the Washington Examiner.

Rather than detain those who break the law, Castro would treat them as probationers and reward those who cooperate with citizenship.

“We also need to be serious about recognizing the right of people to seek asylum, and the president is playing games with this, blocking people’s right to seek asylum. I would change that,” he said. “I would make sure that we push as hard as possible for comprehensive immigration reform, so that for people who are already here, if they’ve been law abiding, if they pay a fine, that they can get an earned path to citizenship.”

The problem is, ankle monitors aren’t a bold or new idea, and apparently they don’t work.

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The Associated Press reported in August that the federal government is issuing thousands of ankle monitors to illegal immigrants and the devices work great to get people to show up to court, until deportation proceedings begin.

After that, many illegal immigrants ditch the devices and run.

According to the AP:

As of early July, there were nearly 84,500 active participants in ICE’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, or alternatives to detention — more than triple the number in November 2014. Around 45 percent of those were issued GPS monitors.

ICE spokesman Matthew Bourke said immigration court attendance is strong for immigrants in intensive supervision, but that ankle monitors and other measures are “not an effective tool” after deportation orders are issued. There isn’t reliable information on the number of ankle monitor recipients who remove them and flee, but many say it’s high.

“People can just cut those things off if they want to,” said Sara Ramey, a San Antonio immigration attorney whose asylum-seeking clients are routinely assigned ankle monitors.

Apparently unsatisfied with the suggestion of fellow Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that wealthy Americans should be forced into a 60-70% tax rate, likely 2020 presidential candidate Julian Castro, who served as the Obama Administration’s Housing and Urban Development secretary, seemed to speculate on Sunday about the possibility of raising Ocasio-Cortez’s bid to 90%.

Appearing on ABC News’ “This Week,” Castro remarked that he could support Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion, adding, “Oh, I can support folks at the top paying their fair share … There was a time in this country where the top marginal tax rate was over 90%, even during Reagan’s era in the 1980s it was around 50%.”

Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, urged “that we get more serious about making sure the corporations pay their fair share. He continued, “During this campaign, if I run, I’m going to be very up front with the American people on how we would do that because I think that they are owed that, but it is worth it. It is worth it in this country for us to do that,” he said, vowing not to be “a single issue candidate.”

In 2015, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, never averse to raising taxes, also brought up the Eisenhower tax rates during the Iowa presidential debate. Sanders was asked about tax rates, “Well, let’s get specific, how high would you go? You’ve said before you’d go above 50 percent. How high?” He responded, “We haven’t come up with an exact number yet, but it will not be as high as the number under Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was 90%.”

But as the Tax Foundation explained in 2017, it is true that the top federal income tax rate was 91% for most of the the 1950’s, but the top 1% of taxpayers in the 1950s only paid about 42% of their income in taxes. The Tax Foundation explains that the 91% bracket of 1950 only applied to households with income over $200,000, the equivalent of roughly $2 million today. Additionally, the high tax rate only applied to income above $200,000, not to every single dollar earned.

An article in Forbes from 2015 estimated that $200,000 in the 1950’s would be equivalent to $1.7 million now, then added, “But general living standards have risen considerably over the past 60 years. Well more than doubled in fact more like four times … To be similarly high up the totem pole of relative incomes, assuming no change in inequality, you’d actually need that $8.9 million to live as large. And this is about right: living standards have risen some eight times since around 1900. That’s for everyone, not just the super rich … So, while $8.9 million might be equal to the general rise in incomes over the period, given the way that the very tippy top incomes have soared away, this only puts you in the relative income position of that $4.4 million to equate to the $200k. That is, $8.9 million isn’t as close to the top as $200k was then.”

Video below:

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2020 Dem candidate Julian Castro proposes releasing illegals into America with ankle monitors

Obama’s former Housing and Urban Development secretary Julian Castro wants to be America’s next president, and he has some bold new ideas on how to fix the problems plaguing the country.

WATCH: This Likely 2020 Dem Presidential Candidate Ups The Ante: Speaks Of 90% Tax Rate