Daily Archives: February 2, 2016
Obama to Evict Thousands, Julian and Hillary?
Obama administration considering evictions of thousands from low-income housing
WashingtonTimes:The Department of Housing and Urban development announced Tuesday that it would consider evicting tens of thousands of public housing residents who earn too much money to qualify for public housing.
The announcement comes in response to a July audit from the department’s Office of Inspector General that revealed over 25,000 families had an income that exceeded the maximum level to qualify for government-assisted housing. At least one tenant had roughly nearly $1 million in assets.
Now the department will reexamine tenant’s public housing needs in an effort to root out “over-income” tenants occupying low-income housing that is desperately needed by poorer families.
“Some of those families significantly exceeded the income limits,” HUD wrote in the Federal Register, warning that “scarce public resources must be provided to those most in need of affordable housing.”
Currently, federal law does not prohibit over-income families from continuing to live in low-income housing as long as they met the income requirements when they moved in.
Now HUD is grappling with whether to evict over-income tenants and how long to give them to find new homes.
“An increase in income is a good and welcomed event for families, and when a family’s income steadily rises, it may be an indication that the family is on its way to self-sufficiency,” HUD wrote.
“Any changes that would require the termination of tenancy for over-income families should be enacted with caution so as not to impede a family’s progress,” the agency continued.
The department will seek comment from the public on what to do about over-income families over the next 30 days.
The House is expected to vote Tuesday on an Amendment proposed by Rep. Vern Buchanan, Florida Republican, to tighten income asset verification requirements for public housing applicants.
“It is outrageous that taxpayers are footing the bill for millionaires’ housing,” Mr. Buchanan said in a statement. “This type of abuse hurts truly needy families and erodes faith in government. Holding HUD to the same standards used for other federal benefits will provide much-needed oversight on taxpayer funds and help create consistency across the vast array of assistance programs.”
*** HUD is corrupt and the Secretary of HUD, Julian Castro is just as corrupt. But as a sidebar, he is earnestly jockeying for sharing the presidential ticket with Hillary Clinton.
HUD Secretary Julian Castro attends Maine fundraiser for Clinton
He headlines the private event at the law offices of Preti Flaherty in Portland.
Julian Castro, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary and a rising star in the Democratic Party, was in Portland Monday morning for a private fundraiser for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The event at the law offices of Preti Flaherty in downtown Portland included U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree and longtime Maine lobbyist and attorney Tony Buxton.
According to an invitation provided by Hillary for America, Castro’s visit was billed as “coffee and conversation.” It was closed to the public and to the media.
Castro arrived at the fundraiser with Pingree and his twin brother, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas. After the event, Julian Castro said the crowd was enthusiastic and looking forward to seeing Clinton win the nomination.
When asked if he would accept if Clinton wins the nomination and asks him to run for vice president, he would say only that he is focused on his work with HUD and campaigning for Clinton.
“Both Joaquin and I are happy to help her out,” he said.
Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, was tabbed by President Obama in 2014 to serve as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. His ethnic background – Mexican American – makes him a powerful surrogate for Clinton, who will likely need strong support from Hispanic voters, both in the Democratic primaries and in the general election, if she becomes the nominee.
During an interview Monday morning on the “Ken & Mike” show on WGAN, the Castro brothers said they have long supported Clinton, whom they described as a tenacious and strong leader.
When asked by the radio hosts if he would accept an invitation to be Clinton’s running mate if she wins the nomination, Julian Castro said he feels “it’s not going to happen.”
“That’s flattering, but I doubt that,” he said. “I fully expect a year from now to be back in Texas.”
So you voters for Hillary, here is some more facts, Julian is a radical, a Marxist.
Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio, who will be giving the keynote address tonight, is, according to some, the next Obama. But while Obama’s radicalism may have escaped the notice of the DNC in 2004, Castro’s views are bit more transparent.
Indeed, he, along with his twin, Joaquin, currently running for Congress, learned their politics on their mother’s knee and in the streets of San Antonio. Their mother, Rosie helped found a radical, anti-white, socialist Chicano party called La Raza Unida (literally “The Race United”) that sought to create a separate country–Aztlan–in the Southwest.
Today she helps manage her sons’ political careers, after a storied career of her own as a community activist and a stint as San Antonio Housing Authority ombudsman.
Far from denouncing his mother’s controversial politics, Castro sees them as his inspiration. As a student at Stanford Castro penned an essay for Writing for Change: A Community Reader (1994) in which he praised his mother’s accomplishments and cited them as an inspiration for his own future political involvement.
“[My mother] sees political activism as an opportunity to change people’s lives for the better. Perhaps that is because of her outspoken nature or because Chicanos in the early 1970s (and, of course, for many years before) had no other option. To make themselves heard Chicanos needed the opportunity that the political system provided. In any event, my mother’s fervor for activism affected the first years of my life, as it touches it today.
Castro wrote fondly of those early days and basked in the slogans of the day. “‘Viva La Raza!’ ‘Black and Brown United!’ ‘Accept me for who I am–Chicano.’ These and many other powerful slogans rang in my ears like war cries.” These war cries, Castro believes, advanced the interests of their political community. He sees her rabble-rousing as the cause for Latino successes, not the individual successes of those hard-working men and women who persevered despite some wrinkles in the American meritocracy.
[My mother] insisted that things were changing because of political activism, participation in the system. Maria del Rosario Castro has never held a political office. Her name is seldom mentioned in a San Antonio newspaper. However, today, years later, I read the newspapers, and I see that more Valdezes are sitting on school boards, that a greater number of Garcias are now doctors, lawyers, engineers, and, of course, teachers. And I look around me and see a few other brown faces in the crowd at [Stanford]. I also see in me a product of my mother’s diligence and her friends’ hard work. Twenty years ago I would not have been here…. My opportunities are not the gift of the majority; they are the result of a lifetime of struggle and commitment by adetermined minority. My mother is one of these persons. And each year I realize more and more how much easier my life has been made by the toil of past generations. I wonder what form my service will take, since I am expected by those who know my mother to continue the family tradition. [Emphasis Castro’s]
Rendition for Edward Snowden?
Edward Snowden did perform a duty and that was to expose the NSA programs and the associated intrusions. However, stealing documents and sharing them with roque nations and adversarial countries is best described as high crimes and misdemeanors. Would planning a rendition operation be altogether misguided?
Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace ‘to capture Snowden’
TheNational: THE UK GOVERNMENT is facing demands to reveal the details of a secret flight through Scottish airspace which was at the centre of a plot to capture whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The plane, which passed above the Outer Hebrides, the Highlands and Aberdeenshire, was dispatched from the American east coast on June 24 2013, the day after Snowden left Hong Kong for Moscow. The craft was used in controversial US ‘rendition’ missions.
Reports by Scottish journalist Duncan Campbell claim the flight, travelling well above the standard aviation height at 45,000 feet and without a filed flight plan, was part of a mission to capture Snowden following his release of documents revealing mass surveillance by US and UK secret services.
That the flight passed over Scotland, airspace regulated by the UK, has raised questions over UK complicity in a covert mission to arrest Snowden and whether any police, aviation or political authorities in Scotland were made aware of the flight path.
Alex Salmond, the SNP foreign affairs spokesman and Scotland’s First Minister when the flight took place, has called for full transparency from the UK Government over the case.
He said: “As a matter of course and courtesy, any country, particularly an ally, should be open about the purposes of a flight and the use of foreign airspace or indeed airports.”
“What we need to know now is, was this information given to the UK Government at the time. If so, then why did they give permission? If not, then why not? As a minimum requirement, the UK authorities should not allow any activity in breach of international law in either its airspace or its airports.
“That is what an independent Scotland should insist on. Of course, since no rendition actually took place in this instance, it is a moot point as to whether intention can constitute a breach of human rights. However, we are entitled to ask what the UK Government knew and when did they know it.”
The flight took place after US federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Snowden on June 14. Regular meetings with the FBI and CIA, convened by US Homeland Security adviser Lisa Monaco, then planned Snowden’s arrest for alleged breaches of the Espionage Act, according to The Washington Post.
New documents, revealed by Danish media group Denfri, confirm that the N977GA plane was held at a Copenhagen airport for “state purposes of a non-commercial nature”. Two days later Danish authorities received an “urgent notification” from the US Department of Justice to cooperate in arresting Snowden.
N977GA was previously identified by Dave Willis in Air Force Monthly as an aircraft used for CIA rendition flights of US prisoners. This included the extradition of cleric Abu Hamza from the UK. Snowden accused the Danish Government of conspiring in his arrest. In response to flight reports, he said: “Remember when the Prime Minister Rasmussen said Denmark shouldn’t respect asylum law in my case? Turns out he had a secret.”
Snowden was behind the largest leak of classified information in history, revealing spying activities that were later deemed illegal on both sides of the Atlantic. He was elected rector at the University of Glasgow in February 2014, yet is unable to fully carry out his duties.
Patrick Harvie, co-convener of the Scottish Green Party, echoed calls for an inquiry into the flight: “It will certainly raise suspicions that an aircraft previously identified as involved in rendition flew through UK airspace at that time. We have a right to know what UK and Scottish authorities knew about this flight given it is implicated in the US response to whistleblowing about global surveillance.”
ATTEMPTS to arrest Snowden have failed as Russian authorities refused to comply. However, pressure from US authorities made it dangerous for Snowden to travel from Russia to Latin America, where Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela have all offered him asylum.
The presidential plane of Bolivian leader Evo Morales was forced to ground in Vienna, after four EU nations refused airspace access on the mistaken belief that Snowden was hidden on board.
In 2013 Police Scotland launched an investigation into whether other US rendition flights – where prisoners were taken to blacklist torture sites – used Scottish airports or airspace.
In 2006 aviation expert Chris Yates said it was likely that a US rendition flight had passed through Scottish airspace to Syria, in a case where the prisoner, Maher Arar, said he was tortured.
In 2008 then foreign secretary David Miliband admitted that UK airports had been used for US rendition flights and apologised for previous government denials.
American politics lecturer John MacDonald, director of foreign policy group the Scottish Global Forum, said: “Given the constitutional arrangements, there are a number of areas in which the Scottish Government may well have interests or concerns but will be excluded because security arrangements with the US are deemed ‘out of bounds’ for Scotland.
“However, if you take serious the supposition that all responsible governments have a moral and legal obligation to raise questions about flights which may be involved in dubious security and intelligence activities, then the Scottish Government may well have an interest in – or even be obliged to –raise questions.
“Questions have already been raised about the nature of military and intelligence air traffic through Scotland and if this activity is raising concerns within Scottish civil society – and it seems to be – then it is surely incumbent upon the Scottish Government to raise the issue with London.”
National Air Traffic Control Systems (Nats), who control flight access to UK airspace, said rendition flights are an issue for the UK Government. In response to questions, the UK Government refused to provide details on attempts to arrest Snowden or on the passage of the N977GA flight.
The Scottish Government also avoided a direct statement on the case on legal grounds. A spokesman said: “There is already an ongoing Police Scotland investigation, directed by the Lord Advocate. This investigation will seek to gather all available evidence of rendition flights using Scottish airports. As this is a live investigation it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
During his two and a half years in Moscow, Snowden has caused diplomatic ruptures and a worldwide debate on privacy and state security. In October 2015 the European Parliament voted narrowly, in a non-binding motion, to drop charges against him in recognition of “his status as [a] whistle-blower and international human rights defender”.
Passenger Aircraft Emergency Landing with Major Blast
Plane Forced to Land After Apparent Blast Causes Hole in Aircraft
ABCNews: A passenger plane bound for Djibouti was forced to make an emergency landing today, minutes after taking off from Mogadishu, due to a hole opening up in the plane after an apparent explosion, according to aviation experts.
On its Facebook page, Daallo Airlines, the national airline of Somalia, said in a statement that an Airbus 321 had “experienced an incident shortly after takeoff” from the airport in Mogadishu, Somalia.
“The aircraft landed safely and all our passengers were evacuated safely,” the statement said. “A thorough investigation is being conducted by Somalia Civil Aviation Authority.”
The hole in the plane’s fuselage reached from the ceiling to the floor, according to photos of the damage. The aircraft was carrying 74 passengers and crew, authorities said. A Somali aviation official said that two passengers had been slightly injured in the incident, according to the Associated Press.
The official, however, wouldn’t provide any other details regarding injuries and did not confirm reports that an explosion may have triggered the fire.
Passengers aboard the Airbus 321 said they heard a loud bang and then saw smoke. As the cabin depressurized, oxygen masks deployed. Some of the 74 passengers were forced to move to the back of the jetliner as the plane descended, according to the AP.
“I don’t know if it was a bomb or an electric shock — but we heard a bang inside the plane,” said passenger Mohamed Ali, according to the AP.
“The thing that’s most interesting to me is that if you look at the outside of the airplane, some force from within the airplane pushed the sides of the aircraft open. You can see how it’s peeled back and you can actually see the streaking from soot down the back side, which would suggest quite definitively that this was a bomb of some kind, probably something about a hand-grenade size that would have made this hole in the side of the airplane,” said ABC News aviation consultant ret. Col. Steve Ganyard.
In 2015: not necessarily related but in country:
Al-Shabaab Is a Known Terror Group
Heavy, in part: Al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab recruits walk down a street on March 5, 2012 in the Deniile district of Somalian capital, Mogadishu, following their graduation. (Mohamed Abdiwahab/AFP/Getty Images)
Heavy, in part: Al-Shabaab has been identified as a terrorist group, and has claimed responsibility for several attacks since the Somali Council of Islamic Courts took over most of southern Somalia in 2006.
According to the National Counter Terrorism Center:
The group was likely responsible for a wave of five coordinated suicide car bombings in October 2008 that simultaneously hit targets in two cities in northern Somalia, killing at least 26 people.
The group also claimed credit for the 2013 attack on a Kenyan mall that killed 68 over the course of a two-day hostage crisis. Read more here.
Hillary Lawsuits, Her Lawyers, Back Channel Operations
Text messages, dinners, dropping documents and negotiations. Ever wonder who is tied to whom and what goes on in DC? Here is a peek while lawsuits are flying.
Bill Press hired by Bernie Sanders: Press put together two dinners for Sanders with about a dozen people at his house on Capitol Hill. One was in April, the other in November.
Among those who attended one or both: Susan McCue, a former chief of staff for Senate Democratic leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.); Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.); Brad Woodhouse, a former Democratic National Committee spokesman who now heads the liberal super PAC American Bridge 21st Century; Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.); and Alyssa Mastromonaco, former deputy chief of staff in the Obama White House who had answered phones in Sanders’s congressional office back when she was a college student in Vermont.
At the first dinner, “Bernie gave his ideas. We all kicked it around,” Press said. “The main thing that came out of the first meeting was there was a possibility and a need for somebody to raise those issues, but if he ran, he should definitely run as a Democrat.”
Devine led the discussion at the second dinner, and “basically laid out a plan of how to get from here to there,” Press said. “It was much more focused and much more real. Bernie took that, and off he goes. It was only a matter of when, not if, he announced.”
As Hillary advances in her bid for president: The opening months of her presidential campaign were a deluge of bad news for Clinton.
First came the revelation that she had been using a private email account, rather than a government one, for conducting business as secretary of state. Then a spate of stories about the finances of the Clinton Foundation and her six-figure speaking fees. Then came the news that Vice President Biden was considering a late entry into the race — in part because some Democrats worried that Clinton was starting to look like a weak general election candidate.
In October, it was coming to a head, with the added tests of the first Democratic debate and her grilling before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
The day before she was to testify, Clinton and her aides were holding a prep session at her dining room table in Washington when communications direction Jennifer Palmieri got a text message telling her to turn on CNN. Biden was heading for the Rose Garden, with President Obama in tow. That choice of venue could mean only one thing, they knew: Biden was not running. One crisis was averted.
Hillary get ready for a daily crisis: Clinton was preparing to leave home for Capitol Hill, she got a jarring call from longtime aide Cheryl Mills. With just an hour to go before the start of the hearing, the Republicans had just dropped a binder full of hundreds of documents they intended to use in their questioning — documents that Clinton had not prepared for.
Among them, Clinton aides say, was an email she had sent to her daughter, Chelsea, on the night of the attacks in which the secretary blamed “an Al Q[a]eda-like group.” GOP lawmakers saw it as a smoking gun, evidence that the Obama administration knew the attack had been terrorism even though officials initially said the incident had been sparked by an anti-Muslim video.
Hillary, ‘where is David’?: Clinton lawyer David Kendall had negotiated to prevent something that could have been more damaging: a plan by committee Republicans to have Clinton raise her right hand and be sworn in at the opening of the hearing, which would have produced an image that would be a GOP admaker’s dream. Instead, Clinton signed an oath before the hearing started.
(The above snippets are from the Washington Post, to read the full article, click here).
Lawsuit Seeks Clinton Lawyer David Kendall’s Communications with State Dept.
Williams & Connolly lawyer represents Hillary Clinton.
NationalLawJournal: A government watchdog group is suing for emails and other communication between Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall and the U.S. Department of State about any confidential information stored on Clinton’s private email server.
Kendall, of counsel to Williams & Connolly, has served as the Clintons’ personal lawyer since the early 1990s. He is representing Hillary Clinton as she responds to demands for emails on the private server she used as secretary of State and for information about how the server was maintained.
In a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch on Jan. 29 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the group said it sent the State Department a request in September for all records of communications between Kendall and the State Department about confidential or potentially confidential information on Clinton’s server or any copies of the server.
The group filed suit after several months passed with no response besides a general acknowledgement that the State Department received the records request in October.
Kendall declined to comment Monday.
It’s not the first time that Kendall has been the subject of public-records requests related to the Clinton email controversy. In September, two lawsuits were filed in the D.C. federal district court—one by the James Madison Project and another by journalist David Brown—seeking records about the State Department’s decision to allow Kendall to keep a thumb drive in his office with copies of emails from Clinton’s server.
The James Madison Project, a government watchdog group, joined by journalist Shane Harris, explicitly asked for copies of communications between the State Department and Kendall about the thumb drive.
In both cases, the State Department told the court in December that it had identified thousands of pages of documents that might be responsive to the requests. The State Department was ordered to update the court on its progress by Feb. 12.
Kendall is also no stranger to Judicial Watch. Since the 1990s, court records show that he represented the Clintons as they defended against various lawsuits Judicial Watch filed.
The federal district court in Washington is handling dozens of public-records cases tied to Clinton’s email server. Some of the requests are for emails from the server, while others more broadly seek information about how Clinton and the State Department managed the server and the exchange of confidential information.
State Department officials have repeatedly told judges in these cases that they are understaffed and overwhelmed by the volume of requests, which has led to delays.
The State Department has been reviewing 55,000 pages of emails from Clinton’s server to release to the public under court order. The department was supposed to produce the last batch of emails—about 9,000 pages—by Jan. 29. The agency missed that deadline and instead produced 1,670 pages, according to news reports.