Obama Unleashed New Regulations, with the Pecan Pie

Posted on November 24, 2015November 24, 2015 by Denise Simon

While you are working in the kitchen and setting the table, the Obama administration has just released thousands of new regulations hoping no one would really notice.

Obama Quietly Releases Plans For 2,224 Regs Ahead Of Turkey Day

Michael Bastasch on November 23, 2015

DCF: While millions of Americans prepare to stuff themselves with Turkey and pie, the Obama administration quietly released its plans for 2,224 federal rules Friday — a preview of just how many more regulations the president is attempting to issue before he leaves office.

President Barack Obama’s Unified Agenda for Fall 2015 is his administration’s regulatory road map and lays out thousands of regulations being finalized in the coming months. Obama has developed a habit of releasing the agenda late on Friday before a major holiday.

Indeed, Obama’s Spring 2015 agenda detailing the status of more than 2,300 regulations was released the eve of Memorial Day weekend. Obama’s Fall 2014 agenda featuring more than 3,400 regulations was also released the Friday before Thanksgiving.

While Obama’s latest release features fewer regulations than the last two, it shows the administration is determined to churn out as many rules as it can before the end of 2016. This includes major energy and environmental regulations coming down the pipe, like new rules for coal mines and rules banning common pesticides.

Obama has already put out several major environmental regulations this year, including limits on carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, more federal control over U.S. waterways, new hydraulic fracturing regulations and stricter smog rules.

In the last week alone, the Obama administration imposed $1.8 billion in regulatory costs, according to a new report by the right-leaning American Action Forum (AAF). This brings the total cost of regulation in 2015 to a whopping $183 billion — about half from final rules and the other from proposed rules.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new smog limits turned out to be some of the costliest ever proposed by a federal agency.

The EPA says tighter smog, or ground-level ozone, limits would only cost $1.4 billion and yield much more in health benefits from less pollution. But AAF found that the EPA’s smog rule could end up costing 40 times more than the agency predicted based on the experience of counties not in compliance with older agency smog rules.

“Observed nonattainment counties experienced losses of $56.5 billion in total wage earnings, $690 in pay per worker, and 242,000 jobs between 2008 and 2013,” according to AAF policy experts.

*** There is also the matter of popcorn and corporate food chains

NYT’s WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration announced sweeping rules on Tuesday that will require chain restaurants, movie theaters and pizza parlors across the country to post calorie counts on their menus. Health experts said the new requirements would help combat the country’s obesity epidemic by showing Americans just how many calories lurk in their favorite foods.

The rules will have broad implications for public health. As much as a third of the calories that Americans consume come from outside the home, and many health experts believe that increasingly large portion sizes and unhealthy ingredients have been significant contributors to obesity in the United States.

“This is one of the most important public health nutrition policies ever to be passed nationally,” said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “Right now, you are totally guessing at what you are getting. This rule will change that.”

The rules are far broader than consumer health advocates had expected, covering food in vending machines and amusement parks, as well as certain prepared foods in supermarkets. They apply to food establishments with 20 or more outlets, including fast-food chains like KFC and Subway and sit-down restaurants like Applebee’s and The Cheesecake Factory. Much more here.

Latin America to U.S. the New Route for Refugees

Posted on November 24, 2015November 24, 2015 by Denise Simon

The additional burden on USSCOM and diplomatic relations has yet to be realized or measured.

Global refugees take long detours through Latin America to reach the US

Policemen escort five Syrian men after they were detained at Toncontin international airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Guardian: Recent events involving Syrian refugees arriving at North American borders have brought to light the increased global traffic along the continent’s migrant routes

When eight Syrians handed themselves in to immigration authorities on the Texas-Mexico border last week, the incident was held up by conservative politicians as a troubling reflection of the new threats facing the US after the Paris terror attacks.

Similarly, news that five Syrian men had been detained in Honduras with false Greek passports was presented as a novel – and potentially sinister – development.

But both groups are most likely part of a steady stream of migrants from around the world, who have in recent years quietly started to follow the well-trodden routes used by Latin Americans to reach the United States.

As well as Syrians, migrants from Nepal, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Pakistan now regularly make the long detour through Latin America, joining the flood of Central American migrants seeking refuge from violence.

Officials say that the nationalities using the migrant routes vary as humanitarian or political crises flare up around the world: the number of Syrians started to increase since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011, and has ballooned as the civil war has worsened; more Cubans have sought to reach the US since Havana began to reestablish diplomatic relations with Washington.

“Over the past decade, Latin America has definitely become a route of entry to the US for Asian and African migrants, said Ernesto Rodríguez, a migration expert at Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology (ITAM).

That shift is becoming a serious concern in the region, prompting authorities from transit countries to call an emergency meeting on “extra-territorial” migrants in Costa Rica on Tuesday.

Immigrants from Central America, Nepal and Bangladesh are seen in a trailer truck after being detected by police X-ray equipment in Mexico.

Colombia is an attractive route because it is not a crime to have entered the country irregularly. The worst that can happen is that migrants get deported back to their point of entry.

But Ecuador will not accept deportees who are not nationals of that country. “All we can do is drop them off at the bridge at the border and walk away,” says one Colombian official.

Most often, smugglers tell migrants that if they are caught they should request refugee status. Once asylum is requested, authorities grant them a safe conduct pass for five days to present their case to the foreign ministry. Most never show. They use the reprieve to continue their journey northward.

In Colombia, 68 Syrians have been detained since 2012, as well as 372 Somalis, 132 Pakistanis and 18 Eritreans, according to figures from Migración Colombia.

In Mexico over 300 Nepalese were apprehended between January and September this year – more than quadruple the number in 2014, while the number of Indians detained has more than doubled to 310. Seven Iraqis were detained in Mexico the first nine months of 2015, compared to a total of five in the previous three years. And at least 40 Syrians have been apprehended trying to make it to the US since the outbreak of civil war in 2011.

The number of migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa pale in comparison to Cubans who have chosen to take the land route to the United States rather than the traditional sea journey toward the Florida coast. The number of Cubans entering the US has surged since President Obama announced a renewal of diplomatic ties with the Caribbean country last December following more than 50 years as cold war enemies.

This recent exodus is promoted by fears that the so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy – which fast-tracks legal residency for undocumented Cubans in the US as long as they arrive by air or overland – could soon come to an end.

Almost 27,300 Cubans entered the US in the first nine months of this year – a 78% rise on the same period last year, according to the Pew Research Centre. Two-thirds of those travelled overland through Mexico and entered the US at the Texas border. Many others have been stopped along the way; Mexico detained 6,447 Cubans in the first nine months of 2015, and more than 4,000 were apprehended in Colombia in the first eight months of the year.

According to the Asssociated Press, 2015 may witness the biggest outflow of Cubans since the 1980 Mariel boatlift that brought 125,000 people across the Florida Straits.

Many of those are likely to head south before they head north, said Rodríguez. “Smugglers are always looking for easier routes, which is why we’ve seen the increase flow through Latin America.”

DHS Knew Illegals Made False Claims for Asylum

Posted on November 23, 2015November 23, 2015 by Denise Simon

Fire the bastard, Jeh Johnson, recall him, prosecute him and dis-BAR him….and the rest of his staff that are complicit in this scam.

JudicialWatch: The Obama administration let hundreds of illegal immigrants stay in the U.S. even though federal authorities knew in advance that an open borders group coached them to falsely claim “credible fear” to get asylum, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The operation was part of a scam conducted by an immigrant rights organization called the National Immigrant Youth Alliance (NITA), which in recent years has coordinated demonstrations along the Southwest border in Texas and Arizona. In mid-2014 the group orchestrated a racket seeking to bring 250 illegal aliens into the U.S. through the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in San Diego, California. To assure the migrants were allowed to stay in the U.S., the group had them falsely claim that they had a “credible fear” of returning to their native country. Foreigners can claim asylum under five categories, based on fear of persecution over race, religion, nationality, political opinions or membership in a specific social group

In this particular case, the DHS agency charged with guarding the border—Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—actually admits knowing about the ploy in advance but allows the illegal aliens to stay anyways. Here’s an excerpt from the records obtained by JW through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA): “BACKGROUND: The National Immigrant Youth Alliance (NITA) activists have coordinated previous demonstrations along the Southwest Border (Laredo, Texas and Nogales, Arizona). During this iteration, NIYA seek to bring 250 people to the Otay Mesa Port of Entry where they will request entry to the U.S. Previous CBP reporting of these events indicate the individuals applying for entry will have no entitlements to enter, pass through or remain in the United States and will summarily claim Credible Fear (CF).”

This is downright outrageous and has been going on for years, though we’ve never seen written evidence that the feds were complicit in a specific “credible fear” scam. In 2013 JW wrote about a San Diego news report that said droves of illegal aliens were flooding the Otay crossing claiming “credible fear” of Mexican drug cartels. In just one day 199 migrants had entered through Otay, the story revealed. The piece quoted a Border Patrol agent saying this: “They are being told if they come across, when they come up to the border and they say certain words, they will be allowed into the country.”

Credible fear asylum in the U.S. has become so popular that illegal aliens are hearing about it on Facebook and federal immigration authorities are overwhelmed with applications. In the last few years the number of foreigners, including large numbers from terrorist countries, asserting credible fear to gain asylum in this country has skyrocketed. During congressional testimony a few years ago, the heads of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and CBP confirmed that the percentage of individuals expressing a fear to remain in the U.S. has risen tremendously in the last few years.

The figures are incredibly alarming. In the last five years the number of “credible fear” asylum applications made at the border has increased sevenfold, from less than 5,000 to more than 36,000, a former Department of Justice (DOJ) and federal immigration official told Congress during a hearing earlier this year. Now a law professor at a prominent university, the official told lawmakers that statistics from USCIS Asylum Division show an approval rate of 92% for credible fear claims before the 2014 border surge. “Unfortunately the high approval rate for credible fear claims, and the resulting backlog in the immigration court system, have meant that in practice ‘credible fear’ has served to screen into the United States undocumented aliens wishing to make asylum claims,” the professor, Jan C. Ting told Congress. “That explains why many illegal border crossers don’t run from the U.S. Border Patrol, but instead seek them out to make asylum claims subject only to the low threshold of credible fear.”

Today, the backlog of credible fear cases pending in federal immigration courts is an astounding 450,000, according to a news report published this month. This could create huge national security risks because often asylum seekers are released from custody to await a court hearing. Just last week eight Syrian refugees turned themselves into U.S. immigration authorities along the U.S.-Mexico border. They are asking for asylum because the fear returning to their war-torn, terrorist-infested nation, but U.S. authorities have no reliable way to vet them.

Obama Orders ISIS Intel Report Investigations

Posted on November 23, 2015November 23, 2015 by Denise Simon

Great, now the White House deflects blame and places it on the intelligence community. This is also coming from a commander in chief that misses 59% of the daily presidential briefings. Imagine what we know by virtue of watching any of the news, by doing individual research or listening to testimony before Congress. Perhaps Barack Obama should watch C-Span if he refuses and wants intelligence reports altered to fit his political narrative. Further, imagine what more troubling the intelligence facts and estimates can be outside of the scope what is in the public domain.

Barack Obama is being highly criticized by the domestic media, world leaders, the Pentagon, Centcom and the intelligence community for his lack of attention and ‘will’ to engage in defeating terror in the Middle East and Europe. Heck, his campaign on fighting terror is perfect as he tells us and all others are wrong, so he blames the analysts. Further, how about all those personal phone calls the White House has with other world leaders? What is Susan Rice, his top National Security Council advisor and director of this war on ISIS telling her boss?

But one should ask what is in the evidence like White House emails on the topic.

Tampa: Speaking at a news conference before leaving Malaysia to return home at the end of a 10-day overseas trip, Obama said he expected the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate allegations that significant changes were made to reports from analysts at the U.S. Central Command, which is based at Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base.

“I don’t know what we’ll discover with respect to what was going on in CentCom,” Obama said. “What I do know is my expectation — which is the highest fidelity to facts, data, the truth.”

Emails show DOD analysts told to ‘cut it out’ on ISIS warnings; IG probe expands

FNC: Analysts at U.S. Central Command were pressured to ease off negative assessments about the Islamic State threat and were even told in an email to “cut it out,” Fox News has learned – as an investigation expands into whether intelligence reports were altered to present a more positive picture.

Fox News is told by a source close to the CENTCOM analysts that the pressure on them included at least two emails saying they needed to “cut it out” and “toe the line.”

Separately, a former Pentagon official told Fox News there apparently was an attempt to destroy the communications. The Pentagon official said the email warnings were “not well received” by the analysts.

Those emails, among others, are now in the possession of the Pentagon inspector general. The IG’s probe is expanding into whether intelligence assessments were changed to give a more positive picture of the anti-ISIS campaign.

The former Pentagon official said there were “multiple assessments” from military intelligence and the CIA regarding the “rapid rise” of ISIS in Iraq and North Africa in the year leading up to the group’s territory grab in 2014.

Similar intelligence was included in the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB – the intelligence community’s most authoritative product — during the same time period. Yet the official, who was part of the White House discussions, said the administration kept “kicking the can down the road.” The official said there was no discussion of the military involvement needed to make a difference.

The IG probe started earlier this year amid complaints that information was changed to make ISIS look more degraded than it really was.

Among the complaints is that after the U.S. air campaign started in August 2014, the metrics to measure progress changed. They were modified to use measures such as the number of sorties and body counts — a metric not used since the Vietnam War — to paint a more positive picture.

Critics say this “activity-based approach” to tracking the effectiveness of strikes does not paint a comprehensive picture of whether ISIS is being degraded and contained.

The New York Times first reported on Sunday that the IG investigation was expanding and adding more investigators, and that the office had taken possession of a trove of documents and emails as part of that probe.

Asked about the report, House intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said Sunday that his committee and others are involved in the investigation.

“We heard from a lot of whistle-blowers and other informants who have given us information. And not just … related strictly to the latest allegations,” Nunes said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Citing the renewed focus on ISIS after the Paris terror attacks, he added: “So the president to have a successful strategy is going to admit that they’ve got it wrong and they need to relook at a larger strategy that deals with north Africa, the Middle East, all the way over to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and then work closely with our NATO allies with what appears to be a command and control structure that ISIS has created successfully in Europe.”

President Obama, speaking at a press conference in Malaysia over the weekend, said he expects to “get to the bottom” of whether ISIS intelligence reports were altered – and has told his top military officials as much.

“One of the things I insisted on the day I walked into the Oval Office was that I don’t want intelligence shaded by politics. I don’t want it shaded by the desire to tell a feel-good story,” Obama said Sunday. “I believe that the Department of Defense and all those who head up our intelligence agencies understand that, and that I have made it repeatedly clear to all my top national security advisors that I never want them to hold back, even if the intelligence or their opinions about the intelligence, their analysis or interpretations of the data contradict current policy.”

At the same time, he said, “As a consumer of this intelligence, it’s not as if I’ve been receiving wonderfully rosy, glowing portraits of what’s been happening in Iraq and Syria over the last year and a half. … [I]t feels to me like, at my level at least, we’ve had a pretty clear-eyed, sober assessment.”

The president’s call for a thorough investigation was greeted with cynicism by those involved in the 2014 intelligence assessments, since the administration did not act on the earlier raw intelligence that painted a dire picture of developments, especially in Iraq.

The Vatican, the White House, the Migrants, Millions

Posted on November 21, 2015November 21, 2015 by Denise Simon

Catholic Bishops Financial statement (see page 10 for description summary)

In an NTEB Special Report, we have recently received information that the Catholic Church received payments totalling $79,590,512.00 to facilitate the flow of undocumented and illegal immigrants into the United States in 2014. This is six million dollars more than they were paid in 2013. Now y0u know why Pope Francis is so eager to push Obama’s insane flood of illegal migrants, he’s getting paid millions to do it!

In the face of President Obama’s veto threat, the House passed a bill to slow Syrian refugees. But the Republican Congress also has the power to hold hearings into the millions of taxpayer dollars being funneled through Catholic and other church groupsto bring them here. Many Catholics and non-Catholics alike would like to know how “religious compassion,” using federal money, is increasing the potential terrorist threat to America.

You may recall that Pope Francis promoted the Obama administration’s pro-immigration policies during his visit to the U.S. Left unsaid was the fact that the American branch of the Roman Catholic Church is getting millions of taxpayer dollars to settle refugees. According to their financial statement for 2014, the latest year for which figures are available, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops received over $79 million in government grants to provide benefits to refugees.