Federal Land Grabbed, Now the Oceans, Stroke of the Pen

Obama creates largest ocean reserve, takes heat for new federal decrees

FNC: President Obama, with the stroke of a pen, created the world’s largest ocean reserve on Friday off Hawaii, days after designating a massive federal monument in Maine – moves that have angered local lawmakers who accuse the president of disregarding the impact on residents.

A green sea turtle is seen off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii.

A green sea turtle is seen off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. (Reuters)

Obama used a presidential proclamation to expand the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument off the coast of Hawaii by over 400,000 square miles. The preserve now stretches 582,578 square miles, the world’s largest marine protected area.

“The expansion provides critical protections for more than 7,000 marine species … [and] will allow scientists to monitor and explore the impacts of climate change on these fragile ecosystems,” the White House said in a statement, citing the support of Sen. Brian Schatz and “prominent Native Hawaiian leaders.”

But the decision drew sharp criticism from the fishing industry and even fellow Democrats, as it will drastically expand the area where commercial fishing and drilling is banned.

Former Democratic Gov. George Ariyoshi said at a rally last month that it came down to the question of who actually owned the ocean.

“The ocean belongs to us,” Ariyoshi reportedly said. “We ought to be the ones who decide what kind of use to make of the ocean.”

Representatives from the fishing industry warn the move will increase prices and imports, The Honolulu Star Advertiser reported. All commercial extraction activities will be prohibited within the area, though non-commercial fishing is allowed by permit.

The regional council that manages U.S. waters in the Pacific Islands said the decision “serves a political legacy” rather than a conservation benefit.

“Closing 60 percent of Hawaii’s waters to commercial fishing, when science is telling us that it will not lead to more productive local fisheries, makes no sense,” said Edwin Ebiusi Jr., chairman of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council. “Today is a sad day in the history of Hawaii’s fisheries and a negative blow to our local food security.”

 The land grab began: On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill that mandated the agency “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”[5] Mather became the first director of the newly formed NPS.[6] Wikipedia

*****

Celebrate National Parks’ 100th birthday by joining Obama on a (virtual) tour of Yosemite

2014: Through legislation, Congress has provided varying authorities for acquiring and disposing of

land to the federal agencies.31 With regard to acquiring land, the BLM has relatively broad

authority, the FWS has various authorities, and the FS authority is mostly limited to lands within

or contiguous to the boundaries of a national forest. DOD also has authority for acquisitions.32 By

contrast, the NPS has no general authority to acquire land to create new park units. Condemnation

for acquiring land is feasible, but rarely is used by any of the agencies and its potential use has

been controversial. The primary funding mechanism for federal land acquisition, for the four

major federal land management agencies, has been appropriations from the Land and Water

Conservation Fund (LWCF).33 For the FWS, the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund (supported

by sales of Duck Stamps and import taxes on arms and ammunition) provides a significant

additional source of mandatory spending for land acquisition. Funding for acquisitions by DOD is

provided in Department of Defense appropriations laws.

With regard to disposal, the NPS and FWS have virtually no authority to dispose of the lands they

administer, and the FS disposal authorities are restricted. The BLM has broader authority under §

203 of FLPMA. DOD lands that are excess to military needs can be disposed of under the surplus

property process administered by the General Services Administration.34 Further, it is not

uncommon for Congress to enact legislation providing for the acquisition or disposal of land

where an agency does not have standing authority to do so or providing particular procedures for

specified land transactions.

Ownership Changes, 1990-2013

Since 1990, total federal lands have generally declined. There have been many disposals of areas

of federal lands. At the same time, the federal government has acquired many new parcels of land

and there have been numerous new federal land designations, including wilderness areas, wild

and scenic rivers, and national park units. Through the numerous individual acquisitions and

disposals since 1990, the total federal land ownership has declined by 23.5 million acres, or 3.6%

of the total of the five agencies, as shown in Table 3. BLM lands declined by 24.8 million acres

(9.1%)35 while DOD lands declined by 6.1 million acres (29.8%). In contrast, the NPS, FWS, and

FS expanded their acreage during the period, with the NPS having the largest increase in both

acreage and percent growth3.5 million acres (4.6%). In some cases, a decrease in one agency’s

acreage was tied to an increase in acreage owned by another agency.36  Read more here.

 

FBI is Holding Internet Class, Who Will Be There?

Related reading: Child Predators The Online Threat Continues to Grow

Take the Safe Online Surfing Internet Challenge

Available Soon for 2016-2017 School Year

What do more than 870,000 students across the nation have in common?

Since 2012, they have all completed the FBI’s Safe Online Surfing (SOS) Internet Challenge. Available through a free website at https://sos.fbi.gov, this initiative promotes cyber citizenship by teaching students in third through eighth grades how to recognize and respond to online dangers through a series of fun, interactive activities.

Anyone can visit the website and learn all about cyber safety, but teachers must sign up their school to enable their students to take the exam and participate in the national competition. Once enrolled, teachers are given access to a secure webpage to enroll their students (anonymously, by numeric test keys) and request their test scores. E-mail customer support is also provided. Top-scoring schools each month are recognized by their local FBI field office when possible. All public, private, and home schools with at least five students are welcome to participate.

Now entering its fifth season, the FBI-SOS program has seen increased participation each year. From September 2015 through May 2016, nearly a half-million students nationwide finished the activities and took the exam. We look forward to even more young people completing the program in the school year ahead. The challenge begins September 1.

Kids Gathered around laptop for Safe Online Surfing Challenge.

The FBI’s Safe Online Surfing (SOS) Internet Challenge for students in third through eighth grades is available at https://sos.fbi.gov.

 

ChicagoTribune: The smartphone is the teen’s conduit to the digital world. But it’s a conduit that runs both directions. Smartphones give bad people unfiltered access to good kids. Sexual predators, pornographers, cyberbullies and scammers can reach out to children without fear of parent intervention, because teens rarely tell their parents who they are talking to or what they are doing online.

But parents are no longer helpless to defend against these digital dangers. Over one million parents have turned to TeenSafe to help them monitor their child’s cell phone activity – without their child even knowing it. Now you can know if your child has been contacted by a sexual predator or has been duped into sexting. Here are five ways that TeenSafe can help you protect your children from digital dangers.

  1. Monitor their text messages – even deleted messages. TeenSafe allows you to read all sent, received and deleted SMS and iMessages without touching your teen’s phone. Just log into your TeenSafe account to access your child’s data.
  2. Track their incoming and outgoing calls. Your TeenSafe subscription gives you access to your teen’s call logs, including contact name, number, date and duration of the call.
  3. Monitor their social media. View your teen’s Instagram posts, read comments and see who’s following your teen with TeenSafe. You can also view their activity on Whatsapp, Kik and Tinder.
  4. Review their browser history. TeenSafe makes it easy for you to see what sites your teen has visited, which ones they’ve bookmarked and who their contacts are.
  5. Follow their phone. TeenSafe can help you monitor your teen in the real world as well as the digital world. You can see the cell phone’s current location on a map, as well as a history of the phone’s location.

USA Today is an advocate of TeenSafe, reporting that “TeenSafe has kept teens out of dangerous situations.” The Memphis affiliate of NBC calls TeenSafe “the ultimate app for preventing cyberbullying.” The TeenSafe app can be downloaded directly to your phone, and is free with your subscription.

Short of taking away your teen’s smartphone, TeenSafe is the best way for parents to protect their children from a growing number of digital dangers.

Report: Terror in Canada and Ease of Access to America

See the 32 page report here.

TORONTO — Canada’s “principal terrorist threat” comes from those inspired by extremist ideologies to conduct attacks, the government said Thursday in its latest update on the security challenges facing the country.

Released by Pubic Safety Minister Ralph Goodale just over two weeks after a failed ISIL-inspired suicide bombing in Ontario, the report said ISIL and its sibling al-Qaida “continue to appeal to certain individuals in Canada.”

Some promote violence online, radicalize their peers, recruit and fundraise, it said. “Others may consider travelling abroad to join a terrorist group or conducting terrorist attacks themselves,” said the 2016 Public Report on the Terrorist Threat to Canada.

As of the end of 2015, about 180 “individuals with a nexus to Canada” were suspected of participating in terrorist activities overseas, up from 130 the previous year, it said. More than half were thought to be in Turkey, Iraq or Syria.

About 20 per cent of Canada’s extremist travellers were women, the report said, adding that in Syria the women were not only serving as brides but were also training and fighting in some cases. Some have brought their children with them.

The report again raised questions about how authorities are dealing with the dozens of returnees — those who are back in Canada after taking part in overseas terrorism. The government was aware of about 60 such people.

It said they could use their “skills, experience and relationships” to recruit or plan attacks in Canada, noting that the recent terror killings in Paris and Brussels were carried out by former ISIL fighters who had returned to Europe.

But while the report said returnees could cause “serious security concerns for their home countries,” none of those who have come back to Canada from Syria and Iraq have been charged with terrorism offences. One who returned to Canada after being injured went back to fight with ISIL once he had healed in Windsor, Ont.

“Canadians can be assured that the RCMP is carefully monitoring these individuals who have returned to Canada as it is a top priority,” said Scott Bardsley, Goodale’s press secretary. He said the government was using “a number of tools,” including passport revocations.

The Canadian government has been struggling to deal with ex-foreign fighters since the conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980s and ’90s, said Larry Brooks, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service counter-terrorism official.

The central problem is proving to the satisfaction of a Canadian judge that someone had engaged in terrorism in a foreign country, particularly the lawless ones where terrorist groups like al-Qaida and ISIL are based, he said.

“It’s tremendously difficult to collect credible evidence that would satisfy a Canadian court for prosecution,” said Brooks, who was the operational manager of the CSIS investigation of the Toronto 18. “The challenges are significant.”

He said Crown attorneys were also reluctant to prosecute. “Nobody likes to lose a case but federal prosecutors seem to be loath to do anything but an open and shut, iron case.” But he also said prosecution might not be the best option for some returnees.

Canada is fundamentally a safe and peaceful nation, but we are not naive about the security issues that dominate the world’s attention

Twenty people have been convicted of terrorism offences since 2002, the report said. Another 21 have been charged and are either awaiting trial or are wanted on outstanding warrants. Several of those wanted are believed to be dead.

Militant video via AP

Militant video via APFoued Mohammed-Aggad, a Frenchman who was among the Islamic State fighters to attack Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, appears in an undated propaganda video. He had been among a group of 10 men from Strasbourg who joined the extremists in 2013, most of them acknowledging they knew little about Islamic Shariah law.

The annual public update on terrorist threats was launched by the previous Conservatives but no report was issued last year, and this was the first under the Trudeau government. Goodale has been under pressure to reassure Canadians on his government’s response to terrorism since the Aug. 10 police killing of an ISIL supporter in Strathroy, Ont.

Although he was the subject of a terrorism peace bond, Aaron Driver built a homemade bomb and recorded a martyrdom video saying his planned attack was a response to ISIL’s call for “jihadi in the lands of the crusaders.”

The FBI notified the RCMP about the video and Driver was quickly put under surveillance. Confronted by a police tactical team after he got into a taxi outside his house, the 24-year-old tried to detonate a bomb in his backpack and was shot dead.

“Canada is fundamentally a safe and peaceful nation, but we are not naive about the security issues that dominate the world’s attention,” Goodale said in a foreword to the report. Canada’s threat level is at medium, meaning an attack “could occur.”

Aside from ISIL and al-Qaida, the report singled out Hezbollah as a particular threat to Canadian interests and noted the Lebanese terror group was “supported by” Iran and “remains one of the world’s most capable terrorist groups.”

“Hezbollah has networks around the world, including in Canada, and uses the networks for recruitment, fundraising and procurement. Hezbollah terrorist operations abroad represent a threat to Canadian interests.”

Another Taxpayer Funded Special Program for Refugees

  

Related reading: Seven Refugees With Active TB Sent to Idaho

Feds Spend $1 Million for Refugees to Become Farmers

Two new projects provide land leases to refugees

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending nearly $1 million to teach refugees how to farm.

FreeBeacon: New grants announced last week include two projects in Idaho and Kansas to “cultivate the next generation of farmers” by helping refugees get land leases to start their own farms.

The first project was awarded to Global Gardens, a Boise, Idaho-based organization that teaches refugees about farming and community gardening. The group will train refugees and Native Americans about organic vegetable farming.

“Global Gardens trains beginning farmers who have cultural, linguistic, or economic barriers to success which might prevent them from otherwise becoming successful farmers or accessing more mainstream farmer training programs,” the project grant states. “Our long-term goal is to create sustainable, profitable, independent small farm businesses.”

Project goals include assisting refugees in securing land leases on incubator farms, teaching refugees “financial literacy,” and providing nine paid internships on a farm.

“Expected outcomes include increases in knowledge of sustainable vegetable production, marketing, and financial literacy for participating farmers, establishment of new, refugee and Native-owned farms, and increased productivity and farm income for those already farming,” the grant said.

The project has received $597,867 and will continue through July 2019.

A second project titled “New Roots for Refugees” was awarded to Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas. The project will create an incubator farm for newly settled refugees.

“The long term goal is that refugees farm in Kansas City independently on land that they own or lease at a scale that they desire and manage,” according to the grant. “To reach this goal, we have identified the following objectives: Removal of Barriers to Marketing, Adapted and Increased Agricultural Skills, Financial Management and Farm Capitalization, and Whole Farm Planning.”

The Kansas project will also provide leases to refugees so they can “establish a path toward managing their own farm business.”

“The long term goal of New Roots for Refugees is that refugees will farm independently on owned land or through lease agreements at a scale that they desire, achieve, and manage,” the grant said.

The grant is worth $380,433, bringing the total cost for the two projects to $978,300.

Idaho has one of the highest refugee populations in the country, taking in 1,000 each year, the majority of which are resettled in Boise.

Kansas takes in roughly 350 refugees per year, mostly from Iraq, Bhutan, and Myanmar.

*****

The Office of Refugee Resettlement supports economic development for refugees through their Microenterprise Development, Microenterprise Development-Home Based Child Care, and Individual Development Account programs. These programs equip refugees with the skills and knowledge of the American financial system so that they can become and stay financially independent.

 

General Economic Development

Financial Literacy Resources
This page lists links to financial literacy and education resources.

Recertification/Re-credentialing of Refugee Professionals Overview
Recertification or re-credentialing will allow internationally trained refugee professionals to return to their career of interest upon resettling in the U.S.

U.S. Medical Licensing Process
This page discusses how international medical graduates, refugees, and immigrants, who want to enter an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) accredited residency must be certified by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG).

U.S. Registered Nursing Licensing Process
Nursing licensure standards and regulations for international and domestic nurses in the U.S. are established by individual states.

Microenterprise Development

Microenterprise Development Program Overview
The Microenterprise Development Program helps refugees develop, expand or maintain their own businesses and become financially independent.

Microenterprise Development Grants: Grantee Listing
List of awards and grantees for the Microenterprise Development Grants program.

Microenterprise Development – Home Based Child Care

Microenterprise Development –Home Based Childcare Program Overview
The Microenterprise Development – Home-Based Childcare Program provides business opportunities to refugee women, focusing on childcare mentoring programs that will facilitate their integration into U.S. cultural norms and State Childcare requirements, in a market where there is a shortage of childcare providers.

Individual Development Accounts

Individual Development Accounts Overview
Individual Development Accounts (IDA) are matched savings accounts designed to help refugees save for a specific purchase. Under the IDA program, the matching funds, together with the refugee’s own savings from their employment, are available for purchasing one (or more) of four savings goals.

Individual Development Accounts Grants Grantee Listing
List of awards and grantees for the Individual Development Accounts Grants program.

Sample Individual Development Account Program Operating Procedures Manual
This sample Individual Development Account program operating procedures manual includes such areas procedures as intake, orientation, reporting, terminations, and more.

 

Report: How Obama Took Apart Immigration Enforcement

President Obama’s Record of Dismantling Immigration Enforcement

FAIR:

The Obama administration’s strategy is to count on the fact that the public and the media will not take notice of each individual and incremental step they are taking to undermine immigration enforcement and grant de facto amnesty to as many illegal aliens as possible. This report exposes the strategy and the policy objectives behind it.

***

This report details how the Obama administration has carried out a policy of de facto amnesty for millions of illegal aliens through executive policy decisions. Since 2009, the Obama administration has systematically gutted effective immigration enforcement policies, moved aggressively against State and local governments that attempt to enforce immigration laws, and stretched the concept of “prosecutorial discretion” to a point where it has rendered many immigration laws meaningless. Remarkably, the administration has succeeded in doing all this without much protest from Congress.

Thus, despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution grants Congress plenary authority over immigration policy, the Executive Branch is now making immigration policy unconstrained by constitutional checks and balances.

This report chronologically highlights the process that has unfolded over Obama’s presidency. A review of the Obama administration’s record shows:

• The administration’s conscious effort to end policies that effectively enforce and deter illegal immigration. This includes the cessation of meaningful worksite enforcement against employers who hire illegal aliens and the removal of the illegal workers. It also includes ending effective partnership programs with state and local governments, such as the 287(g) program, that provide a structure through which state and local agencies may enforce immigration laws.

• The administration’s intimidation of State and local governments determined to enforce federal immigration laws. President Obama has turned the Department of Justice into the administration’s attack dog, filing lawsuits against states that pass their own immigration enforcement laws. When lawsuits fail, the Department’s Civil Rights division launches meritless investigations designed to harass local governments and officials who attempt to enforce the law.

The administration’s brazen efforts to grant amnesty to illegal aliens through executive fiat. First, ahead of his 2012 reelection bid, President Obama created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an amnesty program for so-called DREAMers that granted deferral from deportation and work authorization.

Then, after winning reelection, President Obama teamed up with the Gang of Eight to ram a mass amnesty guest worker bill through Congress despite the overwhelming objections from the American people. After that effort failed, President Obama claimed he had even more executive power—despite saying 22 times he did not—and expanded DACA and created the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), an executive amnesty program for the illegal alien parents of citizen children.

• The administration’s dependence on illegal alien advocates to make U.S. immigration policy for the Executive Branch. President Obama has placed strident amnesty advocates in key positions throughout his administration. These appointees have worked openly with advocacy groups to shape a series of policies that amount to backdoor amnesty.

• Outright deception on the part of the administration designed to convince the American public that immigration laws are being vigorously enforced. The Obama administration repeatedly engages in efforts to inflate its record of deporting illegal aliens. These deceptive practices include the release of data that is later exposed to be inaccurate. The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security carefully select data to claim that our “borders are more secure than ever,” even as violence along the southern border escalates to alarming proportions.

Continue here where the timeline begins in full summary. This 98 page report is comprehensive and is a stellar job by FAIR, The Federal for American Immigration Reform.

Explore the Videos  in this Series, by Topic
UAM BORDER SURGE
SUING THE STATES
FAILURE TO SECURE THE BORDER
DECLINE IN WORKSITE ENFORCEMENT
EXECUTIVE AMNESTY
DEPORTATION DECEPTION