| David Barton – 11/2002 |
| Thanksgiving in AmericaThe tradition of Thanksgiving as a time to focus on God and His blessings dates back almost four centuries in America. While such celebrations occurred at Cape Henry Virginia as early as 1607,[1] it is from the Pilgrims that we derive the current tradition of Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims set sail for America on September 6, 1620, and for two months braved the harsh elements of a storm-tossed sea. After disembarking at Plymouth Rock, they had a prayer service and began building hasty shelters, but unprepared for a harsh New England winter, nearly half died before spring.[2] Yet, persevering in prayer, and assisted by helpful Indians,[3] they reaped a bountiful harvest the following summer.[4] The grateful Pilgrims then declared a three-day feast in December 1621 to thank God and to celebrate with their Indian friends[5] America’s first Thanksgiving Festival. This began an annual tradition in the New England Colonies that slowly spread into other Colonies.[6] The first national Thanksgiving occurred in 1789. According to the Congressional Record for September 25 of that year, immediately after approving the Bill of Rights: Mr. [Elias] Boudinot said he could not think of letting the [congressional] session pass without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining with one voice in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings He had poured down upon them. With this view, therefore, he would move the following resolution: Resolved, That a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer. . . . Mr. Roger Sherman justified the practice of thanksgiving, on any single event, not only as a laudable one in itself but also as warranted by a number of precedents in Holy Writ. . . . This example he thought worthy of a Christian imitation on the present occasion.[7] The resolution was delivered to President George Washington, who heartily concurred with the congressional request, declaring: Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor. . . . Now, therefore, I do appoint Thursday, the 26th day of November 1789 . . . that we may all unite to render unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection.[8] National Thanksgiving Proclamations occurred sporadically following this one,[9] and most official Thanksgiving observances still occurred only at the State level. Much of the credit for the adoption of an annual national Thanksgiving may be attributed to Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. For over twenty years, she promoted the idea of a national Thanksgiving Day,[10] contacting President after President until Abraham Lincoln responded in 1863 by setting aside the last Thursday of November, declaring: We are prone to forget the Source from which [the blessings of fruitful years and healthful skies] come. . . . No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God. . . . I do, therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States . . . to observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father Who dwelleth in the heavens.[11] For the next seventy-five years, Presidents followed LincolnÌs precedent, annually declaring a national Thanksgiving Day. Then, in 1941, Congress permanently established the fourth Thursday of each November as a national holiday.[12] As you celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday this year, remember to retain the original gratefulness to God that has always been the spirit of this, the oldest of all American holidays. It is also recommended that during this Thanksgiving weekend of celebration, that some time to watch the movie ‘America’. Click here it is always streaming. [Congress] recommended [a day of] . . . thanksgiving and praise [so] that the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts and join . . . their supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ to forgive [our sins] and . . .to enlarge [His] kingdom which consisteth in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. (Continental Congress, 1777 – Written by Signers of the Declaration Samuel Adams and Richard Henry Lee)[13] [I] appoint . . . a day of public Thanksgiving to Almighty God. . . to [ask] Him that He would . . . pour out His Holy Spirit on all ministers of the Gospel; that He would . . . spread the light of Christian knowledge through the remotest corners of the earth; . . . and that He would establish these United States upon the basis of religion and virtue. (Governor Thomas Jefferson, 1779)[14]
[1] Benson Lossing, Our Country. A Household History of the United States (New York: James A. Bailey, 1895), Vol. 1, pp. 181-182; see also National Park Service, “Robert Hunt: Jamestown’s First Chaplain” (at http://www.nps.gov/archive/colo/Jthanout/RHunt.html). [2] William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1856), pp. 74, 78, 80, 91. [3] William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1856), p. 100. [4] William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1856), p. 105. [5] Ashbel Steele, Chief of the Pilgrims: Or the Life and Time of William Brewster (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co, 1857), pp. 269-270. [6] William DeLoss Love, Jr, The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England (Boston: Houghton,, Mifflin & Co, 1895), pp. 87-90. [7] The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United State (Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1834), Vol. I, pp. 949-950. [8]George Washington, Writings of George Washington, Jared Sparks, editor (Boston: Russell, Odiorne and Metcalf, 1838), Vol. XII, p. 119, Proclamation for a National Thanksgiving on October 3, 1789. [9] See, for example: H.S.J. Sickel, Thanksgiving: Its Source, Philosophy and History With All National Proclamations (Philadelphia: International Printing Co, 1940), pp. 154-155, “Thanksgiving Day- 1795” by George Washington, pp. 156-157, “Thanksgiving Day -1798” by John Adams, pp. 158-159, “Thanksgiving Day-1799” by John Adams, p. 160, “Thanksgiving Day- 1814” by James Madison, p. 161, “Thanksgiving Day-1815” by James Madison. [10] Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, editors (New York: D. Appleton & Co, 1888), Vol. III, p. 35. [11] The Works of Abraham Lincoln, John H. Clifford & Marion M. Miller, editors (New York: University Society Inc, 1908), Vol. VI, pp. 160-161, Proclamation for Thanksgiving, October 3, 1863, The American Presidency Project, “Abraham Lincoln: Proclamation- Thanksgiving Day, 1863” (at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=69900&st=&st1=) [12] The National Archives, “Congress Establishes Thanksgiving” (at http://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/thanksgiving/); see also Pilgrim Hall Museum, “Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamations 1940-1949: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman” (at http://www.pilgrimhall.org/ThanxProc1940.htm), Proclamation 2571: Days of Prayer: Thanksgiving Day and New YearÌs Day, November 11, 1942, referring to a Ïjoint resolution of Congress approved December 26, 1941, which designates the fourth Thursday in November of each year as Thanksgiving Day. [13]Journals of the Continental Congress (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907), Vol. IX, p. 855, November 1, 1777. [14] The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Julian P. Boyd, editor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), Vol. 3, p. 178, Proclamation Appointing a Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer, November 11, 1779. [15] John Hancock: Proclamation for a Day of Public Thanksgiving (Boston, 1790), from an original in possession of the author. |
Category Archives: common core education
Putin, Oligarchs, Wealth and More
While there is so much going on globally, in recent weeks very little has been said about Russia, Putin and his aggressions.
Creating global wealth undercover to the masses does not go without recognition to many of the worldwide elite class and Russian collusion is no exception. You may very well know the names and locations. The list is fascinating.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has taken a jab at its U.S. counterpart by uploading a picture of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessors “digging out trenches of the Cold War.”
The loaded comment was made alongside a picture of the politicians holding spades at a construction site, taken last Thursday at a ceremony for a future museum at the U.S. Diplomacy Center in Washington.
“Let’s hope that this is not the mobilization of veterans on digging out trenches of the Cold War,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday on its Facebook account.
Also pictured in the photograph are former state secretaries Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, James Baker and Madeleine Albright.
Then comes Ukraine and why it has been rather easy for Putin’s aggressions going unchallenged by the West.
SPECIAL REPORT-Putin’s allies channelled billions to Ukraine oligarch
By Stephen Grey, Tom Bergin, Sevgil Musaieva and Roman Anin
MOSCOW/KIEV Nov 26 (Reuters) – In Russia, powerful friends helped him make a fortune. In the United States, officials want him extradited and put behind bars. In Austria, where he is currently free on bail of $155 million, authorities have yet to decide what to do with him.
He is Dmitry Firtash, a former fireman and soldier. In little more than a decade, the Ukrainian went from obscurity to wealth and renown, largely by buying gas from Russia and selling it in his home country. His success was built on remarkable sweetheart deals brokered by associates of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, at immense cost to Russian taxpayers, a Reuters investigation shows.
Russian government records reviewed for this article reveal for the first time the terms of recent deals between Firtash and Russia’s Gazprom, a giant gas company majority owned by the state.
According to Russian customs documents detailing the trades, Gazprom sold more than 20 billion cubic metres of gas well below market prices to Firtash over the past four years – about four times more than the Russian government has publicly acknowledged. The price Firtash paid was so low, Reuters calculates, that companies he controlled made more than $3 billion on the arrangement.
Over the same time period, other documents show, bankers close to Putin granted Firtash credit lines of up to $11 billion. That credit helped Firtash, who backed pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich’s successful 2010 bid to become Ukraine’s president, to buy a dominant position in the country’s chemical and fertiliser industry and expand his influence.
The Firtash story is more than one man’s grab for riches. It demonstrates how Putin uses Russian state assets to create streams of cash for political allies, and how he exported this model to Ukraine in an attempt to dominate his neighbour, which he sees as vital to Russia’s strategic interests. With the help of Firtash, Yanukovich won power and went on to rule Ukraine for four years. The relationship had great geopolitical value for Putin: Yanukovich ended up steering the nation of more than 44 million away from the West’s orbit and towards Moscow’s until he was overthrown in February.
“Firtash has always been an intermediary,” said Viktor Chumak, chairman of the anti-corruption committee in the previous Ukrainian parliament. “He is a political person representing Russia’s interests in Ukraine.”
A spokesman for Putin rejected claims that Firtash acted on behalf of Russia. “Firtash is an independent businessman and he pursues his own interests, I don’t believe he represents anyone else’s interests,” said Dmitry Peskov.
The findings are the latest in a Reuters examination of how elites favoured by the Kremlin profit from the state in the Putin era. In the wild years after the fall of the Soviet Union, state assets were seized or bought cheaply by the well connected. Today, resources and cash flows from public enterprises are diverted to private individuals with links to Putin, whether in Russia or abroad.
Putin’s system of comrade capitalism has had huge costs for the ordinary people of Russia: By granting special cheap deals to Firtash, Gazprom missed out on about $2 billion in revenue it could have made by selling that gas at market prices, according to European gas price data collected by Reuters. Four industry analysts said that Gazprom could have sold the gas at substantially higher prices to other customers in Europe.
At the same time, the citizens of both Russia and Ukraine have seen unelected oligarchs wield political influence.
Firtash, whose main company, Group DF, describes him as one of Ukraine’s leading entrepreneurs and philanthropists, was arrested in Austria on March 12 at the request of U.S. authorities. The Americans accuse him of bribery over a business deal in India unrelated to events examined in this article. Firtash denies those allegations and is currently free on bail.
Firtash imported the cheap Russian gas through a Cypriot company of which he is sole director, and a Swiss one set up by Group DF. He and Group DF declined to answer questions about those two companies and their gas dealings. A spokesman said Firtash was not available to discuss his business operations, and that Group DF did not wish to comment on “any of the questions you put forth.”
The Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Putin has met Firtash but that they are not close acquaintances. He said Russia supplied gas at “lower prices” to Ukraine because Yanukovich had asked for it and Russia wanted to help Ukraine’s petrochemical industry. Peskov said the deals were arranged through Firtash because “the Ukrainian government asked for it to be that way.”
Yanukovich, who fled to Russia in February after mass demonstrations against his government, could not be reached for comment.
THE MIDDLEMAN
From the moment he first became Russia’s president, Putin moved to take control of his country’s most valuable resource: natural gas. After assuming power in 2000, he replaced the management of Gazprom, put trusted allies in charge, and ensured the Russian state controlled more than half the shares.
The corporate behemoth now supplies about a third of Europe’s gas, generating vital revenue for Russia and giving Putin a powerful economic lever. “Gazprom is very much a tool of Russian foreign policy,” says Rem Korteweg, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. Every major deal that Gazprom signs is approved by Putin, people in the energy industry say.
Putin’s spokesman rejected such assertions: Gazprom, he said, “is a commercial, public company, which has international shareholders. It acts in the interests of its shareholders, which also include the Russian state.”
In normal times, Gazprom’s second biggest customer in Europe is Ukraine; Russian gas was piped directly across the border between the two countries until Russia cut off supplies earlier this year.
In the 2000s, though, Gazprom decided to sell gas not directly to Ukraine’s state gas company Naftogaz, but to intermediaries – in particular Firtash, an international gas dealer who had risen from humble origins.
Firtash grew up in west Ukraine, where his father worked in education and his mother in a sugar factory, according to an account Firtash gave during a meeting with the U.S. ambassador in Kiev in 2008. Both his parents disdained communism and lacked the contacts needed to get their son into university, he said.
He joined the army in 1986, then trained to be a fireman. When the Soviet Union collapsed, leading to Ukraine’s independence in 1991, Firtash found himself having to make a living in an uncertain world, according to his account to the ambassador. With his first wife, he set up a business in west Ukraine shipping canned goods to Uzbekistan, according to local media reports researched by the U.S. embassy.
A U.S. diplomatic cable, which summarised Firtash’s discussion with the ambassador, drily noted: “Due to his commodities business, (Firtash) became acquainted with several powerful business figures from the former Soviet Union.”
According to the cable, Firtash told the U.S. ambassador he had been forced to deal with suspected criminals because at that time it was impossible to do business in Ukraine cleanly. He said he had needed and received permission from a man named Semion Mogilevich to establish various businesses. Mogilevich, an alleged boss of organised crime in eastern Europe, is wanted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation for an alleged multi-million-dollar fraud in the 1990s involving a company headquartered in the United States. He was indicted in 2003, and described by the FBI in 2009 as having an “extensive international criminal network.”
Firtash has repeatedly denied having any close relationship with Mogilevich. Mogilevich could not be contacted for comment. He has previously denied any wrongdoing or any connection to the gas trade in Ukraine.
By 2002, a company called Eural Trans Gas, registered in Hungary, was transporting gas from Turkmenistan through Russia to Ukraine. Its ownership was unclear, but Firtash represented it. In July 2004, a new company, RosUkrEnergo, became the intermediary for gas deals between Russia and Ukraine. The owners of RUE were unknown at first, but it later emerged that nearly all of the company was owned by Firtash and Gazprom.
RUE bought gas cheaply and sold it on at a higher price in Ukraine and Europe. This arrangement guaranteed profits for RUE and was hugely controversial among Ukrainians who saw RUE as an unnecessary intermediary. Another U.S. diplomatic cable, from March 2009, described RUE as a “cash cow” and a “serious source of … political patronage.” In a website posting, RUE said that in 2007 it sold nearly $10 billion worth of gas and had net income of $795 million.
After Yulia Tymoshenko, herself a former gas trader, became prime minister of Ukraine in 2008, she reacted to public anger about the gas trade and moved to cut Firtash and RUE out of the business. She struck her own gas deal with Putin in 2009.
By that time, Firtash was rich. In the country’s 2010 presidential election, Firtash, by his own admission, aided the pro-Russian Yanukovich. A U.S. diplomatic cable described Firtash as a “major financial backer” of Yanukovich.
“Firtash supported Yanukovich in various ways,” said Vadym Karasiov, an aide to Viktor Yuschenko, Ukraine’s president from 2005 to 2010, in an interview. Karasiov said the mogul used his influence in the media to promote Yanukovich. In April 2010, in the aftermath of the election, Karasiov told the Kiev Post: “Without Dmitry Firtash there wouldn’t have been a (Yanukovich) victory.”
With Yanukovich president, Tymoshenko stepped down as prime minister. Business associates of Firtash were appointed to influential positions in the new administration. He had allies in the corridors of power, and ambitious plans to expand his business empire and get back into the gas trade. His friends in Russia were happy to help him.
THE LOANS
Tucked away in Nicosia, Cyprus, a bundle of tattered papers wrapped in string records Russian credit agreements made to Firtash companies. The documents, reviewed by Reuters, detail a series of financing deals worth billions of dollars.
The deals were arranged by a Russian lender called Gazprombank. Despite its name, the bank is not controlled by Gazprom, which holds only a minority stake. It is a separate business, overseen by people linked to Putin. They include Yuri Kovalchuk, a banker who until March 2014 controlled an investment firm that manages a majority stake in Gazprombank.
In a statement, Gazprombank said: “We do not receive any instructions from the Kremlin … The strategy of the bank is developed by its management board and approved by the board of directors. No other influence is possible.”
Asked whether Putin had any role in issuing the loans to Firtash companies, Kremlin spokesman Peskov said: “Putin, as president, does not have anything to do with this.”
Gazprombank began lending money to Firtash companies soon after Yanukovich took power in Ukraine in February 2010.
In June that year, Firtash established a company called Ostchem Investments in Cyprus. A month later, Gazprombank registered a credit line to the company of $815 million, according to the Cyprus documents. In September, Ostchem Investments bought a 90 percent stake in the Stirol fertiliser plant in Ukraine. It was perfect synergy: Firtash knew the gas business, and natural gas is a major feedstock for making fertiliser.
Further loans and deals with Firtash companies followed.
Reuters found that by March 2011, Gazprombank had registered credit lines of up to $11.15 billion to Firtash companies. The companies may not have borrowed that whole sum, but the documents indicate that loans up to that amount were available, according to Cyprus lawyers.
In the space of seven months in 2011 alone, Firtash acquired control of two more fertiliser plants in Ukraine, Severodonetsk Azot and Rivne Azot. He also bought the Nika Tera sea port, through which fertiliser and other dry bulk goods are shipped. He acquired a lender called Nadra Bank and invested in the titanium processing industry.
Such was his expansion that Firtash became the fifth largest fertiliser producer in Europe. Being a large employer brought not just potential profits but also political clout, he boasted. “We have relations with MPs,” Firtash told Die Presse in Austria in May. “We are big employers in the regions that they represent. Entire cities live on our factories. Election candidates seek our support.”
When asked in 2011 where the money came from to pay for his acquisitions, Firtash was coy. At a press conference called to announce his purchase of the Severdonetsk plant, he declined to name his major lenders. “It’s a secret,” he told Ukrainian journalists.
But a Gazprombank manager told Reuters that the Russian bank had led a consortium of lenders which in 2011 agreed to lend about $7 billion to Firtash. The official said Gazprombank itself lent Firtash $2.2 billion, and that Firtash still owed the bank $2.08 billion. The official declined to name other lenders in the consortium.
A $2.2 billion loan was a big commitment for Gazprombank: It amounted to nearly a quarter of the bank’s total capital, the maximum loan allowed by Russian banking rules for any single client or group. Based on regulatory filings, the loan facility made Firtash the biggest single borrower from Gazprombank.
Reuters was unable to establish exactly how much in total the Gazprombank consortium lent to Firtash companies.
In a statement, Gazprombank said that “the aggregate amount of loans disbursed to Ostchem Group” was “several times lower” than $11 billion. “And all capital requirements and limitations of the Central Bank of Russia in respect of loans granted have always been complied with by Gazprombank, including loans to Ostchem Group,” the statement said.
The bank declined to give any further details, saying it had to protect client confidentiality. The central bank had no comment.
GAS PROFITS
Firtash now had money, political connections and businesses that relied on large supplies of gas. What he needed next was fuel.
In January 2011, Firtash signed an unpublished agreement, seen by Reuters, with Gazprom to buy gas through a company called Ostchem Holding in Cyprus, where he is the sole director listed.
The gas deal was later extended to include sales to Ostchem Gas Trading AG in Switzerland. It was also agreed by Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned gas firm, where Yanukovich had installed new senior management. Firtash needed Naftogaz’s sign-off because it controlled pipelines delivering gas and, until that point, had an exclusive deal to import gas from Gazprom.
Naftogaz’s decision to agree to the deal was an odd one. Not only did it mean Naftogaz would surrender its monopoly on Russian gas imports, but the deal could also potentially damage the state firm. Naftogaz had previously agreed with Gazprom to pay for a set amount of gas whether it could sell it in Ukraine or not. Firtash’s deal could leave the Ukrainian state firm buying gas it would struggle to sell.
Firtash’s return to importing gas became public knowledge after Yanukovich’s election victory. But the price he paid Moscow, and how much cheap gas he bought, remained unclear. An Ostchem spokesman told Reuters the price was “confidential information.”
Russian customs records seen by Reuters show that in 2012, Moscow sold the gas to Firtash for $230 per 1,000 cubic metres (the standard unit used in gas sales). In 2013 the average cost was $267 per unit. Those prices were at least one-third less than those paid by Ukraine’s Naftogaz.
Ukrainian customs documents and corporate filings show that Firtash’s Ostchem companies in Cyprus and Switzerland resold the gas to his chemical plants in Ukraine for $430 per unit. The prices and volumes suggest that the two offshore Ostchem companies made an operating profit of approximately $3.7 billion in two years.
Naftogaz’s current management is highly critical of the way in which Gazprom favoured Firtash’s companies. Aliona Osmolovska, chief of press relations, said: “These special deals for Ostchem were not in the interest of Ukraine.”
The real loser in the deal, though, was Gazprom. The arrangement, which Putin described during a press conference as having been made with the “input of the Russian leadership,” meant Russia sold its gas to Firtash for at least $100 per unit less than it could have made in Western Europe, according to Emily Stromquist, head of Russian energy analysis at Eurasia Group, a political risk research firm.
In addition, the profits from the subsequent resale of the gas were all reaped offshore by companies that did not benefit the Russian taxpayer. Those profits in 2012 and 2013 would have meant an additional $2 billion for Gazprom, whose ultimate majority owners are Russia’s citizens.
Gazprom declined to comment on its sales to Firtash’s companies.
Putin’s spokesman Peskov said Naftogaz agreed to Firtash receiving gas at low prices because the deal was intended to help Ukraine’s petrochemical industry. Asked why the gas was sold to companies in Cyprus and Switzerland, Peskov said: “Putin doesn’t need to approve this action. These operations are technical and were made by Gazprom according to the structures which are always used by its Ukrainian partners.”
Neither of the two Firtash companies that bought gas from Russia publishes accounts. Firtash declined to comment on the firms or their results.
UNEASY STANDOFF
The new government in Ukraine alleges that Yanukovich had allowed corruption to flourish and stolen millions of dollars. In the longer term, the new government says it wants to forge closer ties with the European Union and reduce its dependence on Russian gas.
In June, Moscow cut off supplies of gas to Kiev, claiming that it was owed billions of dollars by Ukraine’s state-owned Naftogaz. Late last month, the two countries struck a deal allowing supplies to resume, but the agreement runs only until March. Firtash retains large stocks of gas but has not imported new supplies since Yanukovich was ousted.
Firtash remains in Austria awaiting the outcome of extradition hearings. According to a U.S. indictment unsealed in April, he is suspected of a scheme to bribe Indian government officials to procure titanium. Two U.S. government officials said the American investigation into Firtash is continuing; they declined to give further details.
The Ukrainian oligarch has said the allegations are “without foundation” and has accused Washington of acting for “purely political reasons.” He has hired an all-star legal defence team. It includes Lanny Davis, who helped President Bill Clinton weather a series of White House scandals in the 1990s.
In his time of trouble Firtash has not been deserted by the Russians. Since his arrest he has received another loan in order to pay his bail: $155 million from Vasily Anisimov, the billionaire who heads the Russian Judo Federation, the governing body in Russia of Putin’s beloved sport.
“I have known Mr. Firtash for a number of years, though he is neither my friend nor business partner,” Anisimov told Reuters in an email. “I confirm that I loaned 125 million euros to him. This was a purely business transaction.” (Additional reporting by Michele Kambas in Cyprus, Elizabeth Piper and Jason Bush in Moscow, Oleksandr Akymenko and Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, Jack Stubbs in London, Warren Strobel in Washington and Michele Martin in Berlin; Edited by Richard Woods and Michael Williams)
Behind Obama’s Executive Order on Immigration
Some key items are coming to the surface with regard to the executive order on immigration. Preferential treatment of chosen classes and conditions are targets of the White House while others are going to pay monetarily.
But off script, Obama admitted this past week that he DID change the law on immigration.
Fast forward to Tuesday, when Obama was speaking on immigration reform to a group in Chicago. When protesters began yelling at Obama to stop all deportations, the president became frustrated and answered: “There have been significant numbers of deportations. That’s true. But what you’re not paying attention to is the fact that I just took action to change the law.”
Rather than employing U.S. citizens that already have high tech skills and work history or rather than training U.S. citizens for employment in the technology sector, the White House has chosen foreigners to first priority.
Opportunities for Tech Workers, Firms in Obama’s Immigration Order
With Washington and much of the country abuzz about the politics and legality of President Barack Obama‘s executive order on immigration, it is useful to recognize the economic benefits of certain overlooked features of that order–things that, to a modest degree, enhance work opportunities for skilled immigrants.
For example, as immigration expert Vivek Wadhwa has highlighted, the president’s order makes the temporary (six-year) H-1B visa for technical workers portable.
H-1B visas, currently capped at 65,000 per year, are loved by the tech industry, and why not? They give employers market power over visa holders. Making it easier for these skilled immigrants to move to other employers benefits not only them but potentially many new or young companies in need of tech talent. While “coding academies” are springing up around the U.S. to train Americans of all ages on software coding, the tech market could still use a lot more talent, even if some of it comes from abroad.
The president’s order also could allow as many as 10,000 additional immigrant entrepreneurs to remain in the U.S. This step is significant in light of evidence compiled by Mr. Wadwha and his research colleagues that immigrants punch well above their weight in forming successful tech companies: They accounted for 25% of successful tech enterprises from 1995 to 2005, almost double the share of the U.S. population born elsewhere (13%). These successful immigrant-founded companies generate jobs for native-born Americans and are clearly a win for the U.S. economy. Read more here.
But it gets worse. There is a money component, and collusion enters the White House plan.
Hiring Illegal Immigrants Will Earn Businesses $3,000 Per Employee Under President’s Plan
Hiring illegal immigrants used to come with a hefty punishment if a business owner was found out, but now under President Obama’s plan announced through executive action last week, job creators will be rewarded.
The president’s call to offer undocumented workers a path to citizenship will come with a $3,000 per employee financial incentive to any business that wants to hire these workers.
Fox News points out that because of a “kink” in the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), “businesses will not face a penalty for not providing illegal immigrants health care.” Furthermore, these workers will not be eligible for public benefits “such as buying insurance on ObamaCare’s health exchanges.”
“If it is true that the president’s actions give employers a $3,000 incentive to hire those who came here illegally, he has added insult to injury,” Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, commented to The Washington Times. “The president’s actions would have just moved those who came here illegally to the front of the line, ahead of unemployed and underemployed Americans.”
President Obama doesn’t believe that bringing undocumented workers into the workforce is a bad thing, as he stated in recent comments on the executive action.
“Immigrants are good for the economy. We keep on hearing that they’re bad, but a report by my Council of Economic Advisers put out last week shows how the actions we’re taking will grow our economy for everybody,” he said.
John Husing, chief economist for the Inland Empire Economic Partnership in California, one of the most immigrant-heavy states in the nation, agreed that President Obama’s plan was a good thing in comments to the Pasadena Star News.
“Most of those people are probably already working anyway,” Husing said. “And when you talk to any demographer they will tell you that one of the biggest problems we have as a society is that our labor force is getting very old. Most of the undocumented people who are here tend to be younger and they would add to the available workforce in the age group that employers need.”
In the same publication, California Republican assemblyman Tim Donnelly disagreed.
“If you introduce 5 million individuals into the labor force — and I think that’s a really low figure — it will have a dramatic impact on those who are already seeking work…. It will especially have an effect on people who are working at lower income levels where any change in the labor market has the effect of lowering wages. This could depress wages. That’s a real concern.”
What do you think about giving employers financial incentives to hire illegal immigrants — good move, or will it depress the job hunt for native workers?
Schumer Breaks Ranks on Obamacare
Obamacare Will Cost 2.9 Million or More Jobs a Year
- The law cuts an estimated $716 billion from Medicare over ten years. However, these “savings” are not set aside to preserve Medicare’s future, instead they are used to fund new spending created by the law.
- Nearly one-third of all seniors rely on Medicare Advantage, the private health care option in Medicare. Despite the program’s growing enrollment and beneficiary satisfaction, Obamacare makes deep cuts to the program that jeopardize its viability in coming years.
- In addition to payment cuts, Obamacare imposes new taxes on drug companies and medical device makers, and new regulations that will make health care more costly for seniors.
So, what is the real reason that Senator Chuck Schumer now opposes Obamacare?
Chuck Schumer Flip-Flops on the Politics of Obamacare
2:20 PM, Nov 25, 2014 • By JOHN MCCORMACK
Chuck Schumer, the high-ranking Democratic senator from New York, gave a speech today at the National Press Club in which he said that it “made no political sense” for Democrats to focus on passing the Affordable Care Act. The New York Times reports:
“Unfortunately, Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them,” Mr. Schumer said, according to his prepared remarks. “We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem – health care reform.”
Mr. Schumer’s calculus could seem coldly political. He points out that only a third of the uninsured population is even registered to vote. “To aim a huge change in mandate at such a small percentage of the electorate made no political sense,” he said. “So when Democrats focused on health care, the average middle-class person thought ‘the Democrats are not paying enough attention to me.’”
Back when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, Schumer was singing a different tune. The weekend after the law was enacted, Schumer claimed on Meet the Press that it “really does deliver for the middle class” and confidently predicted that by November 2010 “those who voted for health care will find it an asset, those who voted against it will find it a liability.”
“I think as people learn about the bill, and now that the bill is enacted, it’s going to become more and more popular,” Schumer said. “The lies that have been spread, they vanish because you see what’s in the bill. We had ‘death panels’ in the summer. People are going to see there are no death panels. ‘Illegal immigrants are going to get health care,” it’s clear that’s not true in the bill. And the number one lie that bothers people is ‘You’ll lose your insurance if you have it now and you’re pretty happy with it.'”
Of course, Democrats were blown out in 2010 after the bill passed and again in 2014 after it was implemented and millions of Americans learned that what Schumer called “the number one lie that bothers people” was actually true.
When Schumer was asked during his 2010 Meet the Press appearance about polling that showed the middle-class opposed the Affordable Care Act, he replied:
Well, it really does deliver for the middle class. But, as I said, there are lots of, lots of misinformation. That firefighter in Rockville Centre, and you could repeat that with tens of millions of families, are worried. People ask themselves, particularly at a time of recession, “How is it going to affect me?” They’ve been told by special interests that are against the bill that they will lose their coverage. People who have coverage now, whether through an employer or Medicare, will keep it and it will get better, actually, because the waste and the duplication will, will be cut back greatly. They’ll keep it longer, they’ll keep it better, they’ll pay less. So this is a bill aimed at the middle class. And my point being, if you look at a snapshot poll today, some of them show–there was one that was 49-40 in favor of health care, this one’s against it. But I would predict to you, and I feel very, very strongly about this and firmly about this, that as people learn what’s actually in the bill, that six months from now, by election time, this is going to be a plus because the parade of horribles, particularly the worry that the average middle-class person has that this is going to affect them negatively.
That Schumer, arguably the Democrats’ top political strategist in Congress, would now publicly admit that the politics of Obamacare has been terrible for Democrats is remarkable. It should send chills down the spines of the law’s supporters.
Prisons, Cells for Terrorism
On March 10, 2003, Senator Charles Schumer wrote a letter to the OIG requesting that we examine the BOP’s process for selecting Muslim chaplains based on concerns that the BOP relies solely on two Islamic groups to endorse its Muslim chaplains, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS). Schumer noted that the ISNA and the GSISS allegedly are connected to terrorism and promote Wahhabism, which some consider an exclusionary and extreme form of Islam. In addition to Senator Schumer, Senators Jon Kyl and Dianne Feinstein expressed similar concerns and asked the OIG to examine these issues as they relate to the BOP.
OIG interviewed the BOP’s ten Muslim chaplains, the BOP detailee to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Joint Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF), and officials at BOP Headquarters who are responsible for religious services providers, including the Chief of the Chaplaincy Services Branch and the Senior Deputy Assistant Director (SDAD) of the Correctional Programs Division. We also interviewed FBI counterterrorism officials and representatives of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom at the U.S. Department of State (Commission). Read more here.
Years later, prisons are in fact terror cells and no solution is in sight.
U.S. Prisons Churning Out Thousands Of Radicalized Inmates
Joy Brighton published a profound piece.
Back in 2006, then FBI director Robert Mueller prophetically described the radical Islamist conversion machine operating throughout U.S. prisons, to a Senate committee. He said that prisons were a “fertile ground” for Islamic extremists, and that they targeted inmates for introduction to the militant Wahhabi and Salafist strains of Islam.
The recent so-called “lone wolf” terrorist attacks in Oklahoma City, New York, and just over our northern border in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, may be the product of such radicalization.
In April 2010, Larry James murdered his mother, pregnant wife, 7-month-old son, 3-year-old niece and 16-year-old niece for refusing to convert to Islam. James converted in 2007, while in a U.S. prison.
Then two months ago Colleen Hufford, a 54-year-old grandmother and factory worker in Oklahoma, was beheaded with a produce knife by Alton Nolen who likely converted to Islam in a U.S. prison. Nolen is being charged with workplace violence.
Last month NYPD officer Kenneth Healey, 25, was axed to death with a hatchet to the side of the head. He was not attacked by a “lone wolf,” but by ex-con Zale Thompson. New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton has called it a terrorist attack, and the NYPD might want to look at Thompson’s record in California where he did two brief terms in California prisons.
The statistics are staggering, and woefully out of date. One out of three African-American inmates in U.S. prisons convert to Islam while incarcerated.
This statistic is no longer limited to African-Americans in prison. The Huffington Post reported an estimated 35,000 – 40,000 inmates convert to Islam each year, and that 15 percent of the total U.S. prison population or 350,000 inmates are Muslim.
This is more than 18 times the national representation of Muslims in America, reported to be 0.8 percent. Prisons are churning out converts to Islam who are taught they are righteously entitled to control the religion, speech, and dress of family, co-workers and strangers.
The key to conversion success is clear. Our government has been contracting and paying Muslim Brotherhood front groups, such as GSISS (The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences) and ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) to screen and assign Muslim prison chaplains for at least 8 years.
While Egypt and Saudi Arabia have banned the Muslim Brotherhood, classifying it as a terror group, the White House, U.S. prisons, and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security continue to work with Muslim Brotherhood groups.
For example, Paul Pitts served 14 years in prison for murder, where he converted to Islam and became Imam Abdu-Shahid. He was paroled in 2001 and hired as a prison chaplain in 2007 with an annual salary of $49,471. In Feb 2010, he was caught trying to bring scissors and razor blades into the Manhattan Detention Complex.
A New York City corrections department source told the New York Post: “It’s a disgrace that taxpayers are funding Muslim chaplains who not only have criminal records, but also are promoting violence.”
Abdu-Shahid’s boss – head chaplain Umar Abdul-Jalil – was hired at an annual salary of $76, 602 even though he served 14 years for dealing drugs. In 2006, he was suspended for two weeks without pay after declaring that “the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House.” He continues to oversee 40 prison chaplains.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Wallace Gene Marks converted under Imam Umar while in prison for weapon possession. He was hired as a one of the first paid Muslim chaplains in 1975 and has hired nearly 45 chaplains. Imam Umar says that prison “is the perfect recruitment and training grounds for radicalism and the Islamic religion” and that 9/11 hijackers should be honored as martyrs. “Funded by the Saudi government he traveled often to Saudi Arabia and brought that country’s harsh form of Islam to New York’s expanding ranks of Muslim prisoners.”
Just after 9/11, Aminah Akbar, a veteran female Muslim chaplain, told a crowd of 100 inmates at the Albion Correctional Facility for women that Osama bin Laden “is a soldier of Allah,” and added, “I am not an American, and I just live here.”
A New York City Corrections source told the New York Post: ”It’s a disgrace that taxpayers are funding Muslim chaplains who not only have criminal records, but also are promoting violence. “Ignoring these red flags under the aegis of political correctness is literally killing us.”
We must demand that the religion of Islam be separated from the totalitarian politics of Sharia-ism. Sharia-ism, like Soviet Communism and Nazism is bent on global control by silencing criticism and working within an unsuspecting political system to eventually overthrow it. Our taxpayer funded prisons have been co-opted by the leaders of Sharia-ism in America, the Muslim Brotherhood. More silence will likely mean the death of more innocent Americans.
Joy Brighton is author of Sharia-ism is Here: The Battle to Control Women and Everyone Else.