Hi MM,
Ken's likely new at the job. Pretty much everyone else in the Trump administration is. He may not know yet that border apprehensions run up and down pretty cyclical throughout the year.
Here's a graph showing the last 18 years and as one can pretty clearly see, every year apprehensions head down about April/May until the end of the year and then suddenly pop back up around the end of the year. Trust me, (or not) Ken's new at his post. He hasn't seen this fairly regular phenomenon occur each year and so he thinks that it's something magical that his great white leader has done.
It has leveled off these last 5-6 years, but the trend is still there for even most of those years. 2017 the drop occurred a bit earlier in the year. 2018 was a fairly steady increase and that's likely because of Trump's impetus to curb immigration that caused a lot of immigrants to decide that it's possibly now or never to make it to the U.S. border.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/resi...aws.com/public/RV4MIENBX42FZHLTW5MKK2NTQQ.png
With President Trump I'm always thinking that we should wait 6 months or so to see if any trend attributed to him is really because of anything that he did. Some issues do take longer than others to surface, however. Like the gun control work that he now seems to be backing away from that some were cheering for a couple of weeks ago.
President Trump was handed a fairly robust economy from his predecessor and things continued along pretty well, but now the effects of his changes are beginning to be felt. His tax giveway is costing us a fortune in federal revenues at a time that we ought to be working to balance the budget because of our booming economy. Instead, he has chosen to give away the farm and, while he's lately been wishy washy on the idea, he seems to be thinking that another tax cut will goose the economy at least through his re-election.
Evidence shows that no, the increase in production and profits with businesses has not made up near what he's giving away in reduced taxes. Even though he assured us that's what would happen. No, Mexico is not paying for the wall and China is not paying for the $16B in funds that he's having to give to farmers so they don't go broke while he does whatever it is that he thinks he's doing in this tariff war. No, we don't have any better trade agreements with a single nation at this point. So far the only benefit to the U.S. is that Canada is now accepting 'some' of our dairy production.
Trust me, (or not) President Trump is not the 'get 'er done' leader that some seem to think that he is. Or at least hasn't shown any evidence of it yet.
God bless,
In Christ, ted
