Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

Foreign Money Fundraisers to Obama Clinton DoJ Probe

Posted on by

$4000 bar tabs, meetings, bundling, foreign access, access, White House parties and advisory groups, it is all how the Obama elites roll.

Hat tip to FP and Bill Allison:

Elite Fundraiser for Obama and Clinton Linked to Justice Department Probe
n FP investigation shows that Imaad Zuberi, who has bundled hundreds of thousands of dollars for leading Democrats, failed to disclose the extent of his ties to a foreign government.

FPMagazine:

Imaad Zuberi, age 45, is a private equity fund manager, venture capitalist, and an elite political fundraiser. He was among the top tier of bundlers for Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, meaning he delivered $500,000 or more in contributions. He’s already among Clinton’s “Hillblazers,” bundling $100,000 for her presidential campaign in its first months.

Among the perks of delivering that much money to candidates is access to them, and advertising that access caught the eye of those who wanted some of it for themselves.

Bundlers

The Sri Lankan government, long under fire for official corruption and at a low point in its relations with Washington, did just that. Over a five-month period in 2014, it paid Zuberi $4.5 million directly — plus another $2 million to a company he co-owns — for consulting services which included influencing the U.S. government, according to documents obtained by Foreign Policy. Zuberi’s windfall was not disclosed to the Justice Department, as required under federal law, and the lobbying and public relations firms hired through his company to influence the U.S. government on Sri Lanka’s behalf have all received DOJ subpoenas, according to a senior government official. Justice is seeking public assets allegedly stolen from Sri Lanka. None of the firms is a target of the investigation, which is focused on members of the family of the country’s former president and has not been previously reported.

According to the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, paid representatives of foreign governments — even if they outsource the actual lobbying to other organizations — must disclose those relationships to Justice “within ten days” of acquiring a foreign client, according to the statute. WR Group, the company that held the contract with Sri Lanka, never registered with the Justice Department. Zuberi, who billed the government on May 5, 2014, for his services and received his first payment of $3.5 million from Sri Lanka on May 9, 2014, didn’t register as a consultant until Aug. 14 of that year, well beyond the 10-day deadline. Violating the act carries maximum penalties of a $10,000 fine and five years in prison.

“[W]e are not a lobbying firm, law firm, nor PR firm, therefore we do not engage in these activities because these are not our core competencies,” Zuberi wrote in response to detailed questions from FP. “I registered not as a lobbyist but as a consultant because that was the extent of my involvement.”

Zuberi’s Sri Lankan payments and the investigation they’ve spawned could raise troubling questions for Clinton’s candidacy. Not only is he a major fundraiser for her campaign, but he also donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which has already come under fire for accepting money from donors — many of them foreign — with interests before the U.S. government while she was secretary of state.

It’s another indication that when it comes to chasing donations for their political campaigns, the Clintons aren’t too careful about how they get the checks. In addition to the 1996 fundraising scandals of President Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign that included foreign contributions — illegal under U.S. law — Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign benefited from two fundraisers who ended up being convicted of violating election law. Both Sant Singh Chatwal, a New York hotelier, and Norman Hsu, whose investment fund turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, used “straw donors,” allowing them to contribute amounts far greater than the maximum contribution for an individual.

The Clinton campaign declined to comment, and the Clinton Foundation didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Zuberi “typifies how elite influencers operate today,” said Janine Wedel, a George Mason University professor who studies governance and corruption through the lens of social anthropology. “He plays overlapping roles, builds up his public image, and uses it to help others launder theirs.”

In May 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry visited Sri Lanka to pledge U.S. support for the administration of President Maithripala Sirisena, who came to power this past January, unseating former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose government is alleged to have stolen as much as $10 billion over the decade he was in power. In prepared remarks, Kerry promised assistance from U.S. investigators and prosecutors to find money transferred to the United States. According to a government official familiar with the case, the U.S. team sent to Sri Lanka noted the payments to Zuberi and WR Group; the subpoenas to the lobbying firms are part of the effort to trace money misappropriated by the Rajapaksa regime.

Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Sri Lankan authorities are conducting their own crackdown on corruption. The official who directed the U.S. lobbying campaign, Sajin de Vass Gunawardena, was arrested May 11, 2015, on unrelated charges of misusing state assets. Two law enforcement agencies there are examining a network of 28 companies for stealing state assets and money laundering, according to J.C. Weliamuna, a Sri Lankan attorney and anti-corruption activist who has led official investigations into that country’s public corruption.

This story is the result of dozens of interviews with government officials in Sri Lanka and the United States, lobbyists, campaign officials, and an analysis of documents filed with the Justice Department under FARA and from multiple agencies in Sri Lanka. FP also mined social media sites and analyzed campaign finance and lobbying data. Additionally, the reporting relied on the assistance of Namini Wijedasa, a journalist from the Sri Lanka Sunday Times, who secured documents from the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.

***

Even in the era following the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision that opened the door to million-dollar contributions to super PACs, bundlers like Zuberi remain critical to politicians. Under federal election law, candidates must still raise money for their campaigns from individuals in amounts of no more than $2,700. Bundlers induce members of their social and professional circles to write those $2,700 checks, turning them over to campaigns in “bundles” of anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 or more. By July 1, 2012, Zuberi had bundled $685,000 for Obama’s reelection campaign, according to an internal Democratic National Committee document. And in the first months of the 2016 presidential contest, Zuberi was among the 125 bundlers who’d already passed the $100,000 mark for Clinton’s campaign in its first three months.

Zuberi was born in Albany, New York; his father was Pakistani, and his mother is Indian. He studied finance and business economics as an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, then took a job with Transamerica in 1996. He stayed with the insurance and investment firm holding company after it was acquired by the Dutch conglomerate Aegon in 1999. Zuberi invested in insurance firms in Asia and the Middle East, and earned an MBA from Stanford University in 2006. He also kept up with the Pakistani community in Los Angeles, his home base, and as early as 2004 was raising money from them for John Kerry’s presidential campaign that year, to which he made his first contribution, a modest $1,000 donation.

“When he likes someone, he likes them,” said Waqar Khan, the founder and chairman of the Pakistan American Chamber of Commerce, who first met Zuberi during his 2004 fundraising forays into the Los Angeles Pakistani community.

Warm and expansive, Zuberi’s conversation ricochets from references to family — he’s married and has a 3-month-old son — to high-level analysis of the finances of companies like Uber, to the names of his powerful friends, including sitting members of Congress and other movers and shakers in the world of politics. But these displays are reserved for those he’s courting. Khan, who wasn’t active in politics in 2004, was a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in 2008, and Zuberi kept his distance: “He was close to me when he needed my services.”

That’s because in January 2007, Zuberi joined the fledgling Obama presidential campaign, getting in on the ground floor of a phenomenal fundraising operation that was the first to forgo federal matching funds in a general election since Richard Nixon’s 1972 effort.

Though he personally raised less than $50,000 in the 2008 campaign, Zuberi ranked among the top 100 suppliers of political contributions during Obama’s 2012 reelection effort. That group’s members also included studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg, fashion editor Anna Wintour, and Chicago Cubs co-owner Laura Ricketts. Zuberi became a big donor in his own right, contributing $106,000 to candidates and party committees. He tripled that amount for the 2014 congressional midterm elections after the Supreme Court removed the aggregate limit individuals can contribute to federal campaigns, parties, and PACs in a single election.

 

Zuberi also had a new job outside of politics. After leaving Aegon, he launched Avenue Ventures, a boutique private equity and venture capital fund that, according to his biography on LinkedIn, manages money for sovereign wealth funds, Fortune 500 firms, and startups. Unlike other major players in the world of private equity, like Bain Capital, Elliott Management, or Goldman Sachs, neither Avenue Ventures nor Zuberi is registered as an investment advisor with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Most of Zuberi’s investing is done abroad, including a $700 million investment in a luxury resort in Bahrain.

With his high-dollar fundraising, he became a frequent visitor to the White House, publicly released visitor logs show. His very first visit was in December 2011, when he had about two minutes to get his picture taken with Obama before joining 586 other guests at a White House holiday party. Since the 2012 election, Zuberi has visited the White House 13 times at both large receptions and meetings in small groups.

When Obama for America, the president’s campaign committee, morphed in 2013 into a nonprofit organization that advocates for the president’s agenda, Zuberi was named to its advisory board. He’s also a donor to the group, called Organizing for Action, and has given it $240,000 since its launch. He serves on the executive committee of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces; in April 2013, Avenue Ventures planned to set up a fund to aid in the reconstruction of Syria once the regime of Bashar al-Assad had fallen.

***

In addition to the photographs Zuberi posts of himself side by side with Washington’s powerful, he frequently uses Facebook to map his far-flung travels. The venture capitalist and private equity fund manager trots the globe, meeting with the likes of retired Gen. Wesley Clark in Geneva; dining with the House Republican leadership in New York; watching sports with Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe in London; and walking the corridors of power in Washington. Zuberi’s Facebook postings also show that he was in Sri Lanka from April 1 to April 7, 2014. He had a meeting at Beira Lake, the swanky business district of the capital Colombo, a meeting at the U.S. Embassy, and then toured the country.

“We focus on emerging markets and frontier markets,” Zuberi wrote to FP. “The country’s GDP was growing at a decent clip and we had some ideas such as resorts, tea plantation, refinery project, real estate development, [and an] IT outsourcing/call center.”

At the time of his visit, the government of then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa was facing a low point in its relations with Washington. The United States won a vote in the U.N. Human Rights Council on Feb. 5, 2015, calling for an independent investigation into possible crimes against humanity committed during the government’s bloody suppression of the Tamil Tigers, a violent separatist movement that was finally defeated in 2009. Two of Rajapaksa’s brothers, both government ministers, are among those suspected of ordering the killing of as many as 70,000 unarmed civilians. Additionally, the country was mired in allegations of official corruption, with journalists exposing scandals involving public money siphoned off in offshore accounts or pilfered through inflated contracts and kickbacks in everything from the procurement of MiG fighter jets to the management of the national cricket team. Rajapaksa and his ministers were in need of someone with access to the highest levels of the U.S. government to improve their standing.

Enter Zuberi. A month after his trip to Sri Lanka, Avenue Ventures issued a May 5, 2014, invoice on company letterhead, requesting a $3.5 million payment for a single line item: the “Sri Lanka project May 2014 invoice per contract.” The invoice included a Bank of America account number and specified the recipient of the funds: Imaad Zuberi. Four days later, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka wired the money to Zuberi’s account.

In response to a question about the $4.5 million in payments to his personal account, Zuberi wrote, “There were many pieces to the [Sri Lanka] project and various entities were involved. How to allocate what to whom may have been complex at the outset but if there were any errors they were corrected.”

While Sri Lankan procurement regulations show that consultants must be hired by cabinet members or their designated deputies, Zuberi’s agreement was with the office of the president. The Sri Lankan officials whose names appear on the payment documents are either being questioned, under investigation, or behind bars. Lalith Weeratunga, the secretary to the former president who authorized the payments, was questioned about 600 million Sri Lankan rupees, or roughly $4.5 million, in funds taken from the state telecommunications regulator. Ajith Cabraal, former head of the Central Bank, had to surrender his passport as his actions in a bond deal were probed.

Vass Gunawardena was a member of parliament in the inner circle of the president. He gave instructions to make at least one of the payments to Zuberi and directed the work of the U.S. lobbying and PR firms. His office was listed as their client. He has been in prison since May and under investigation for money laundering.

“Our work was for the government of Sri Lanka,” Zuberi wrote to FP, “not Mr. Vass Gunawardena as a person.”

As far as the Justice Department knew at the time, though, Zuberi wasn’t working for Sri Lanka either. He didn’t disclose the payments he received from the government. Neither did WR Group, which received the last two transfers of $1 million each from the Central Bank in July and September 2014.

While neither Zuberi nor WR Group registered under FARA, Mark Skarulis, a business associate of Zuberi, did. On May 23, 2014, Skarulis incorporated a firm, Beltway Government Strategies, in California; six days later, he filed a registration with the Justice Department listing Sri Lanka as its client.

Skarulis had accompanied Zuberi on his April trip there, but had little in the way of Washington connections in his own right. Unlike most lobbyists, he had no experience on Capitol Hill or in the executive branch. Nor was he a prodigious donor or fundraiser; he made his first political contributions in January 2014 to Royce.

“Mark’s forte — well, he didn’t have a political background,” Sean Tonner, president of the Denver office of R&R Partners, a large PR firm and one of the registered foreign agents for Sri Lanka, told FP. “That’s why they augmented with firms like ours.”

By the middle of June, Beltway Government Strategies had also hired PR and lobbying firms Burson-Marsteller, Madison Group, and Vigilant Worldwide Communications as subcontractors.

Skarulis declined to comment.

Beltway paid the firms it hired, while the Central Bank paid Zuberi. “As such deliverables have been performed by WR Group to the satisfaction of the Government of Sri Lanka,” one payment authorization dated June 11, 2014, reads, “I hereby authorize the payment of $1,000,000 to Imaad Zuberi.” Though WR Group did not receive its first payment until July 17, Beltway Government Strategies began issuing checks to the firms it hired on July 4. Sri Lanka Central Bank records show no payments to Beltway Government Strategies.

While he remained unregistered, the lobbyists hired by Beltway and initially funded by money sent to Zuberi set about the work of influencing Washington. They made hundreds of contacts with government officials, think tanks, and journalists, and arranged meetings on Capitol Hill when their client was in town. On July 14, 2014, for example, Vass Gunawardena and his delegation met with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) in the afternoon to discuss the U.S. relationship with Sri Lanka. A staffer in Tonko’s office said that they had a meet and greet with the Sri Lankan delegation and discussed the country’s strategic importance to U.S. policymakers.

That night Vass Gunawardena entertained members of Congress and staffers at Morton’s Steakhouse on Connecticut Avenue, which boasts that its patio “overlooks Washington’s infamous K Street Corridor, while the dining room caters to DC’s powerful elite.” Congressional ethics rules, which severely restrict the amount most outside interests can spend on food and drink for lawmakers and staff, exempt foreign embassies and their representatives — and the Sri Lankan official’s party of 15 made the most of it. They ordered 63 drinks — mixed, on the rocks, or straight up — plus two beers and three bottles of $150 wine, according to expense vouchers for the night obtained by FP. That included 40 Grey Goose vodkas on the rocks totaling some $520, two Grey Goose martinis, two tumblers of Johnnie Walker Black, and three Tanquerays with tonic. The final bill topped $4,000.

On Aug. 14, 2014 — 97 days after the Sri Lanka government paid him the initial installment of $3.5 million — Zuberi finally became a registered foreign agent for the country. Beltway filed on his behalf, listing his job as a consultant. The registration came just in time for him to use his access to arrange meetings between Vass Gunawardena’s delegation and members of Congress, as well as attend some of the lavish dinners the Sri Lankans had arranged.

“I registered for a short time because I was included in some conversations about the lobbying efforts,” Zuberi wrote to FP, “but I was not directly lobbying.”

Participating in a lobbying campaign without registering with the Justice Department carries legal peril. A former Republican member of Congress, Mark Siljander of Michigan, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison in 2012 for failing to register. In another case, Ben Israel, a Chicago man who shared $3.4 million in payments to provide public relations support to Zimbabwe, received a seven-month sentence in 2014.

On Sept. 10, 2014, Zuberi’s WR Group received its last $1 million payment for work done in August. According to a report filed with the Justice Department, Zuberi stopped working as a foreign agent for Vass Gunawardena and Sri Lanka on Sept. 30, 2014 — about six and a half weeks after he registered. Skarulis and Beltway listed that date as their last day as well.

The entire lobbying campaign cost $850,000, a fraction of the $6.5 million Zuberi and his company received. Zuberi would not say how the rest of the money was spent, only that “WR’s work was economic development, business development and attracting U.S. businesses to [Sri Lanka]. Most of the money you refer to was allocated to these efforts.” In any event, the end of the lobbying contract coincided with the termination of WR Group’s contract to provide consulting services to Sri Lanka.

 

“When we realized we weren’t going to make any major impact we wound down and [the government of Sri Lanka] stopped paying for the project,” Zuberi wrote to FP, adding that Sri Lanka “did not keep their payment commitment. There are still outstanding invoices to be paid.”

Among those outstanding invoices is one from a Beltway subcontractor. Madison Group disclosed on its last filing with the Justice Department that “Beltway Government Strategies is 6 months of arrears in payments and is in breach of contract.”

Unfortunately for Beltway, Zuberi, and the other lobbyists, unpaid invoices aren’t the biggest problem they face. In July, the lobbyists involved in Zuberi’s Sri Lanka project were subpoenaed by the Justice Department. In addition to requesting each firm’s financial records, the subpoena asks for information on relatives of Rajapaksa, the former president, as well as the government of Sri Lanka and its embassy in Washington.

Asked about the subpoenas, Zuberi wrote, “It is our policy not to discuss any legal matters which might or might not be,” adding that he had no business with the Rajapaksas while in Sri Lanka.

“Perhaps we were lucky that we didn’t encounter corruption,” Zuberi wrote, “but we only explored opportunities and didn’t really make any investment.”

The Sri Lanka experience hasn’t deterred Zuberi from seeking new business abroad. He continues to post on Facebook pictures of himself side by side with the powerful, most recently with Hillary Clinton. He documents his far-flung meetings as well — Geneva in May, Istanbul in July. Zuberi has had contacts in Turkey for some time; he accompanied members of Musiad, a Turkish business association close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to a meeting with the director of the White House Business Council in 2014.

That meeting was more of a meet and greet than a substantial discussion, plus an opportunity to get their pictures taken.

“We are always looking [for] good investment opportunities,” he said.

 

Innovative Words Don’t Change the Global Refugee Crisis

Posted on by

The battle over the words used to describe migrants

BBC: The word migrant is defined in Oxford English Dictionary as “one who moves, either temporarily or permanently, from one place, area, or country of residence to another”.

It is used as a neutral term by many media organisations – including the BBC – but there has been criticism of that use.

News website al-Jazeera has decided it will not use migrant and “will instead, where appropriate, say refugee“. An online editor for the network wrote: “It has evolved from its dictionary definitions into a tool that dehumanises and distances, a blunt pejorative.” A Washington Post piece asked if it was time to ditch the word.

There are some who dislike the term because it implies something voluntary but that it is applied to people fleeing danger. A UN document suggests: “The term ‘migrant’… should be understood as covering all cases where the decision to migrate is taken freely by the individual concerned, for reasons of ‘personal convenience’ and without intervention of an external compelling factor.”

“Migrant used to have quite a neutral connotation,” explains Alexander Betts, director of the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University. “It says nothing about their entitlement to cross that border or whether they should be.” But some people believe that the word has recently developed a sour note. It is being used to mean “not a refugee”, argues Betts.

Online searches for migrant are at their highest since Google started collating this information in 2004. And in the past month (to 25 August using the Nexis database), the most commonly used term in UK national newspapers (excluding the Times, the Sun and the Financial Times) was migrant – with 2,541 instances. This was twice as popular as the next most frequently used word, refugee.

A refugee, according to the 1951 Refugee Convention, “is any person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his/her nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country”.

“Refugee implies that we have an obligation to people,” says Betts. “It implies that we have to let them on to our territory and give them the chance to seek asylum.”

But there would be many people who would be wary of labelling someone a refugee until that person has gone through the legal process of claiming asylum. In the UK, and other places, claims for “refugee status” are examined before being either granted or denied.

“The moment at which they can officially say whether they are refugees or economic migrants is the moment at which the EU state that is processing their claim makes its decision,” says Tim Stanley, historian and columnist for the Daily Telegraph. “I am not questioning the validity of their narrative, I am not saying that anyone was lying about it. I am saying that it is down to the state in which they have arrived to define what they are.”

Asylum seeker refers to someone who has applied for refugee status and is waiting to hear the result of their claim. But it is also often used about those trying to get to a particular country to make a claim. The word asylum is very old indeed having first been used in 1430 to refer to “a sanctuary or inviolable place of refuge and protection for criminals and debtors, from which they cannot be forcibly removed without sacrilege”.

The most common descriptor for asylum seeker in UK newspaper articles between 2010 to 2012 was the word failed.

But while the term failed asylum seeker describes someone who has gone through a well-defined process, there are less specifically applied terms.

One of the more controversial ones is illegal immigrant, along with illegal migrant.

A study by the Migration Observatory at Oxford University analysed 58,000 UK newspaper articles and found that illegal was the most common descriptor for the word immigrants.

“The term is dangerous,” argues Don Flynn, director of Migrants Rights Network. “It’s better to say irregular or undocumented migrants.” Calling someone an illegal immigrant associates them with criminal behaviour, he adds.

Other critics of the phrase say that it gives the impression that it’s the person that is illegal rather than their actions. “Once you’ve entered the UK and claimed asylum, you are not illegal. Even if your asylum claim is refused, you still can’t be an illegal migrant,” says Zoe Grumbridge from Refugee Action.

The UN and the EU parliament have called for an end to the phrase. Some people have also criticised the use of clandestine. In 2013, the Associated Press news agency and the Los Angeles Times both changed their style guides and recommended against using the phrase “illegal immigrant” to describe someone without a valid visa.

But others disagree, saying that the phrase can be a useful description. “If you are coming into a country without permission and you do it outside the law, that is illegal,” says Alp Mehmet, vice chairman of MigrationWatch UK. “If they haven’t entered yet, they are not illegal immigrants, although potentially they are migrating using illegal means.”

Clearly there are those who want to make a distinction between people using the accepted legal channel to enter a country and those who are entering by other methods.

“I understand why people are uncomfortable with that term but it is accurate when you are talking about someone who has broken the law to enter the country or who has been told to leave the country and is breaking the law by staying,” says Stanley.

Another criticism of the term immigrant, with or without the word illegal added on to it, is that it is less likely to be used to describe people from Western countries. Some commentators have suggested that Europeans tend to be referred to as expats.

“Very often when we talk about British people who migrate,” says Emma Briant, author of the book Bad News for Refugees, “we tend to talk of them as expats or expatriates. They are not immigrants.” There has been some satirical commentary about the differences between the terms.

But the shift towards the neutral blanket term migrant has been pronounced. To again use UK national newspapers as a measurement, 15 years ago, in the month to 25 August, the terms refugee, asylum seeker and illegal immigrant were all used more often than migrants.

And many disagree that migrant is in any way offensive. “It’s a proper description for anyone who has moved across a border,” says Don Flynn from the Migrants Rights Network.

Judith Vonberg, a freelance journalist who has written for the Migrants’ Rights Network about the issue, goes further. She says that ditching the word could “actually reinforce the dichotomy that we’ve got between the idea of the good refugee and the bad migrant”.

Alp Mehmet, from Migration Watch, also believes that migrant should be used but because it is an easy word to understand. “Everyone… knows exactly what we mean by migrants.”

Some people also believe that migrant is an appropriate phrase to use when a group of people could include both refugees and economic migrants. Tim Stanley argues that it does accurately reflect a significant number of people who are making the crossing into Europe. “It is why the UNHCR is absolutely right to describe that group of people as both migrants and refugees,” he says.

The use of the term economic migrant has been much debated. Home Secretary Theresa May used it in May to describe migration into Europe. She said that there were large numbers of people coming from countries such as Nigeria and Somalia who were “economic migrants who’ve paid criminal gangs to take them across the Mediterranean”.

The term economic migrant is “being used to imply choice rather than coercion”, says Betts. “It’s used to imply that it’s voluntary reasons for movement rather than forced movement.”

Some words have fallen almost completely out of favour. Alien was used regularly in the UK press before World War Two, says Panikos Panayi, professor of European history at De Montfort University. “The first major immigration act [in the UK] was called the Aliens Act 1905,” he says.

But in the US, alien remains official terminology for any person who is not a citizen or national.

The Obama administration proposed Dreamers as a new positive way – with its reference to the American Dream – of describing undocumented young people who met the conditions of the Dream act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors).

There is another word with positive connotations that is not used much anymore. “Exile has gone out of credit,” says Betts, since the end of the Cold War. “It had a slightly sort of dignified and noble connotation,” he argues.

It was used to describe someone who had been forced out of their country but was still politically engaged with it and was planning on going back one day. “I think that today, many Syrians are in that position,” says Betts.

The shifting language of migration might seem petty to some but to those involved in the debate there is no doubt of its importance. “Words matter in the migration debate,” says Rob McNeil from the Migration Observatory.

 

Legitimate Voting is up to YOU at the Local Level

Posted on by

The most precious duty real citizens have is to vote, but must be an informed voter, where the vote is good for the country. Ensuring votes are made in a legitimate location, not duplicated, not under fraudulent names and with validated identification must be task undertaken by every citizen at the local level. Understand the laws, challenge the voter rolls and volunteer.

Voter Fraud across the country in past elections has been noted and reported with little consequence and this is where demands for investigations and prosecutions come into play.

Fraud cases below:

North Carolina

Florida

Maryland

Ohio

Need more?

300 cases investigated by the Heritage Foundation

The Heritage Foundation’s list of nearly 300 documented cases of voter fraud in the United States continues to grow.

Recent additions reveal that voter fraud is not just an individual or isolated crime; in some counties and communities, election fraud is almost a way of life.

These additions again reinforce the need for measures such as voter ID laws and procedures designed to verify the accuracy of voter registration information are needed to prevent these crimes in the first place.

Take East Chicago, Ind., for example, a town made infamous by the extensive voter fraud that occurred there in the 2003 Democratic mayoral primary election. More details here.

At the County level:

 

Election Group: 141 U.S. Counties Have More Registered Voters Than People

Firm says they’ll bring lawsuits if voter rolls are not purged

FreeBeacon: A public interest law firm is threatening to bring lawsuits against more than 100 counties across the United States that appear to have more registered voters than living residents.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a law firm dedicated to election integrity based in Indiana, recently sent statutory notice letters to election officials in 141 counties putting them on notice of their discoveries. The group says if action is not taken to correct the questionable voter rolls, they will bring lawsuits against every single county on the list.

“Corrupted voter rolls provide the perfect environment for voter fraud,” said J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of PILF. “Close elections tainted by voter fraud turned control of the United States Senate in 2009. Too much is at stake in 2016 to allow that to happen again.”

The statutory notice letters argue the counties are violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and urge them to correct the issue, claiming their voter rolls contain a substantially high amount of ineligible voters. The group used federally produced data to come to their conclusions.

“Voter rolls across America have been discovered that contain substantial numbers of ineligible voters, resulting in the possible disenfranchisement of legally eligible voters via ballot dilution that threatens to subvert the nation’s electoral process,” a sample letter sent to the counties reads.

“Based on our comparison of publicly available information published by the U.S. Census Bureau and the federal Election Assistance Commission, your county is failing to comply with Section 8 of the NVRA,” it continues. “Federal law requires election officials to conduct a reasonable effort to maintain voter registration lists free of dead voters, ineligible voters and voters who have moved away.”

“In short, your county has significantly more voters on the registration rolls than it has eligible live voters and is thus not reasonably maintaining the rolls.”

According to PILF, the 141 counties targeted for their suspicious voter rolls span across 21 states and include: Michigan (24 counties), Kentucky (18), Illinois (17), Indiana (11), Alabama (10), Colorado (10), Texas (9), Nebraska (7), New Mexico (5), South Dakota (5), Kansas (4), Mississippi (4), Louisiana (3), West Virginia (3), Georgia (2), Iowa (2), Montana (2), and North Carolina (2), as well as Arizona, Missouri, and New York (1 each).

Data provided by the group also shows that some counties have voter registration rates that exceed 150 percent.

Franklin County, located in Illinois, contains the highest voter registration rate of any county on the list at 190 percent. Franklin is followed by Pulaski County, also located in Illinois. Pulaski boasts a 176 percent voter registration rate, according to the group.

Adams said former Attorney General Eric Holder and current AG Loretta Lynch refused to enforce the law because they don’t have a problem with corrupted voter rolls.

“Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch have deliberately refused to enforce this law because they have no problem with corrupted voter rolls,” Christian Adams told the Washington Free Beacon in an email statement. “They don’t like the law, so they don’t enforce it. It’s a pattern that has come to characterize this Justice Department.”

 

 

14th Amendment Does Not Give Birthright Citizenship

Posted on by
It is about time that this matter gets full attention and debate.
The most important word is but 2 letters: We the People OF meaning loyalty, honor and duty.

He unabashedly wades into politically dangerous territory and yet continues to be rewarded by favorable poll results. He has clearly tapped into a reserve of public resentment for inside-the-Beltway politics. How far this resentment will carry him is anyone’s guess, but the Republican establishment is worried. His latest proposal to end birthright citizenship has set off alarm bells in the Republican party.

The leadership worries that Trump will derail the party’s plans to appeal to the Latino vote. Establishment Republicans believe that the future of the party depends on being able to capture a larger share of this rapidly expanding electorate. Trump’s plan, however, may appeal to the most rapidly expanding electorate, senior citizens, and may have an even greater appeal to the millions of Republicans who stayed away from the polls in 2012 as well as the ethnic and blue-collar Democrats who crossed party lines to vote Republican in the congressional elections of 2014. All of these voters outnumber any increase in the Latino vote that Republicans could possibly hope to gain from a population that has consistently voted Democratic by a two-thirds majority and shows little inclination to change.

And Nothing Odd About Supporting Such a Reading Critics say that Trump’s plan is unrealistic, that it would require a constitutional amendment because the 14th Amendment mandates birthright citizenship and that the Supreme Court has upheld this requirement ever since its passage in 1868. The critics are wrong. A correct understanding of the intent of the framers of the 14th Amendment and legislation passed by Congress in the late 19th century and in 1923 extending citizenship to American Indians provide ample proof that Congress has constitutional power to define who is within the “jurisdiction of the United States” and therefore eligible for citizenship. Simple legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president would be constitutional under the 14th Amendment.

Birthright citizenship is the policy whereby the children of illegal aliens born within the geographical limits of the U.S. are entitled to American citizenship — and, as Trump says, it is a great magnet for illegal immigration. Many of Trump’s critics believe that this policy is an explicit command of the Constitution, consistent with the British common-law system. This is simply not true. Congress has constitutional power to define who is within the “jurisdiction of the United States” and therefore eligible for citizenship. Although the Constitution of 1787 mentioned citizens, it did not define citizenship. It was in 1868 that a definition of citizenship entered the Constitution with the ratification of the 14th Amendment. Here is the familiar language: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Thus there are two components to American citizenship: birth or naturalization in the U.S. and being subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S.

Today, we somehow have come to believe that anyone born within the geographical limits of the U.S. is automatically subject to its jurisdiction; but this renders the jurisdiction clause utterly superfluous. If this had been the intention of the framers of the 14th Amendment, presumably they would have said simply that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. are thereby citizens.

Indeed, during debate over the amendment, Senator Jacob Howard, the author of the citizenship clause, attempted to assure skeptical colleagues that the language was not intended to make Indians citizens of the United States. Indians, Howard conceded, were born within the nation’s geographical limits, but he steadfastly maintained that they were not subject to its jurisdiction because they owed allegiance to their tribes and not to the U.S. Senator Lyman Trumbull, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, supported this view, arguing that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” meant “not owing allegiance to anybody else and being subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States.”

Jurisdiction understood as allegiance, Senator Howard explained, excludes not only Indians but “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.” Thus, “subject to the jurisdiction” does not simply mean, as is commonly thought today, subject to American laws or courts. It means owing exclusive political allegiance to the U.S. Furthermore, there has never been an explicit holding by the Supreme Court that the children of illegal aliens are automatically accorded birthright citizenship. In the case of Wong Kim Ark (1898) the Court ruled that a child born in the U.S. of legal aliens was entitled to “birthright citizenship” under the 14th Amendment. This was a 5–4 opinion which provoked the dissent of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who argued that, contrary to the reasoning of the majority’s holding, the 14th Amendment did not in fact adopt the common-law understanding of birthright citizenship.
The framers of the Constitution were, of course, well-versed in the British common law, having learned its essential principles from William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. As such, they knew that the very concept of citizenship was unknown in British common law. Blackstone speaks only of “birthright subjectship” or “birthright allegiance,” never using the terms “citizen” or “citizenship.” The idea of birthright subjectship, as Blackstone admitted, was derived from feudal law. It is the relation of master and servant: All who are born within the protection of the king owed perpetual allegiance as a “debt of gratitude.” According to Blackstone, this debt is “intrinsic” and “cannot be forfeited, cancelled, or altered.” Birthright subjectship under common law is the doctrine of perpetual allegiance. America’s Founders rejected this doctrine. The Declaration of Independence, after all, solemnly proclaims that “the good People of these Colonies . . . are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.” So, the common law — the feudal doctrine of perpetual allegiance — could not possibly serve as the ground of American citizenship. Indeed, the idea is too preposterous to entertain.
For All GOP Candidates Consider as well that, in 1868, Congress passed the Expatriation Act. This permitted American citizens to renounce their allegiance and alienate their citizenship. This piece of legislation was supported by Senator Howard and other leading architects of the 14th Amendment, and characterized the right of expatriation as “a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Like the idea of citizenship, this right of expatriation is wholly incompatible with the common-law understanding of perpetual allegiance and subjectship. One member of the House expressed the general sense of Congress when he proclaimed: “The old feudal doctrine stated by Blackstone and adopted as part of the common law of England . . . is not only at war with the theory of our institutions, but is equally at war with every principle of justice and of sound public policy.” The notion of birthright citizenship was characterized by another member as an “indefensible doctrine of indefeasible allegiance,” a feudal doctrine wholly at odds with republican government. Nor was this the only legislation concerning birthright citizenship that Congress passed following the ratification of the 14th Amendment. As mentioned above, there was almost unanimous agreement among its framers that the amendment did not extend citizenship to Indians. Although born in the U.S., they were not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Beginning in 1870, however, Congress began to pass legislation offering citizenship to Indians on a tribe-by-tribe basis.
Finally, in 1923, there was a universal offer to all tribes. Any Indian who consented could become a citizen. Thus Congress used its legislative authority under Section Five of the 14th Amendment to determine who was within the jurisdiction of the U.S. It could make a similar determination today, based on this legislative precedent, that children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. A constitutional amendment is no more required today than it was in 1923. A nation that cannot determine who becomes citizens or believes that it must allow the children of those who defy its laws to become citizens is no longer a sovereign nation. Legislation to end birthright citizenship has been circulating in Congress since the mid ’90s and such a bill is circulating in both houses today. It will, of course, not pass Congress, and if it did pass it would be vetoed. But if birthright citizenship becomes an election issue and a Republican is elected president, then who knows what the future might hold. It is difficult to imagine that the framers of the 14th Amendment intended to confer the boon of citizenship on the children of illegal aliens when they explicitly denied that boon to Indians who had been born in the United States. Those who defy the laws of the U.S. should not be allowed to confer such an advantage on their children. This would not be visiting the sins of the parents on the children, as is often claimed, since the children of illegal aliens born in the U.S. would not be denied anything to which they otherwise would have a right. Their allegiance should follow that of their parents during their minority. A nation that cannot determine who becomes citizens or believes that it must allow the children of those who defy its laws to become citizens is no longer a sovereign nation. No one is advocating that those who have been granted birthright citizenship be stripped of their citizenship. Equal protection considerations would counsel that citizenship once granted is vested and cannot be revoked; this, I believe, is eminently just. The proposal to end birthright citizenship is prospective only.
Political pundits believe that Trump should not press such divisive issues as immigration and citizenship. It is clear, however, that he has struck a popular chord — and touched an important issue that should be debated no matter how divisive. Both the Republican party and the Democratic party want to avoid the issue because, while both parties advocate some kind of reform, neither party has much interest in curbing illegal immigration: Republicans want cheap and exploitable labor and Democrats want future voters. Who will get the best of the bargain I will leave for others to decide.
*** For more reading and to see who are in this fight…
Further, Jeb Bush was actually correct too when it comes to the Chinese and their operation to gain birthright citizenship.

 

More Signatures on Letters Opposing Iran deal

Posted on by

As posted on this website, there is big money for ‘YES’ votes when it comes to U.S. Senators. Yet, there is a robust movement compelling the termination of the Iran Deal. Note the letters below and those signatures.

Over 1000 U.S. Rabbis Sign Letter Urging Congress to Reject Iran Nuclear Deal TEXT OF LETTER-PETITION FROM 1000 US RABBIS Zionist Organization of America Thursday, August 27, 2015

 

We, the undersigned rabbis, write as a unified voice across religious denominations to express our concerns with the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran.  

For more than 20 months, our communities have kept keen eyes on the nuclear negotiations overseas. As our diplomats from Washington worked tirelessly to reach a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear challenge-we have hoped, and believed, that a good deal was possible.  

Unfortunately, that hope is not yet realized.  

We have weighed the various implications of supporting-or opposing-this agreement. Together, we are deeply troubled by the proposed deal, and believe this agreement will harm the short-term and long-term interests of both the United States and our allies, particularly Israel.  

Collectively, we feel we must do better.  

If this agreement is implemented, Iran will receive as much as 150 billion dollars, without any commitment to changing its nefarious behavior.  

The Iranian regime denies basic human rights to its citizens, publicly calls for America’s downfall and Israel’s annihilation, and openly denies the Holocaust. This dangerous regime-the leading state sponsor of terrorism-could now be given the financial freedom to sow even more violence throughout the world.  

But what do we get in return?  

Even after flooding Iran with an influx of funds, this deal will not subject Iran to an airtight, comprehensive inspections structure-granting the regime the means to violate the agreement and develop a covert nuclear program.  

The deal would also lift key arms embargos, so that in eight years Iran will be given international legitimacy to arm terror groups with conventional weapons and ballistic missiles.  

The agreement also entitles Iran to develop advanced centrifuges after 10 years-all-but paving Iran’s path to a nuclear weapons capability with virtually zero “breakout time.”  

We fear the world we will leave our children if this deal is approved. And we fear having to someday bear the responsibility for Iran becoming wealthier, further empowered and better equipped to produce nuclear bombs when we had the chance to stop it.  

For these reasons, we agree with the assessments of leaders and experts in the United States, along with virtually all Israeli voices across the political spectrum, that we can, and must, do better.  

We call upon our Senators and Representatives to consider the dangers that this agreement poses to the United States and our allies, and to vote in opposition to this deal.  

Furthermore, we strongly support and heed the call to action of many Jewish organizations to express our collective opposition to this dangerous agreement.  

At this historic moment, with so much at stake, we have a critical responsibility to shape the world we pass on to our children. With no less than the safety of future generations hanging in the balance, we must insist on a better deal.  

We hope and pray that God will assist us in ushering in for the entire world a time promised by Isaiah (2:4) when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they engage in war anymore,” when peace will prevail.

Until then, we simply cannot afford to empower and enrich a regime that continues to lift its sword without mercy towards so many who stand for good, freedom and peace.

 

TEXT OF LETTER FROM 200 RETIRED GENERALS/ADMIRALS

 

Dear Representatives Boehner and Pelosi and Senators McConnell and Reid:

 

As you know, on July 14, 2015, the United States and five other nations announced that a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has been reached with Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. In our judgment as former senior military officers, the agreement will not have that effect.

Removing sanctions on Iran and releasing billions of dollars to its regime over the next ten years is inimical to the security of Israel and the Middle East. There is no credibility within JCPOA’s inspection process or the ability to snap back sanctions once lifted, should Iran violate the agreement. In this and other respects, the JCPOA would threaten the national security and vital interests of the United States and, therefore, should be disapproved by the Congress.  

The agreement as constructed does not “cut off every pathway” for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. To the contrary, it actually provides Iran with a legitimate path to doing that simply by abiding by the deal. JCPOA allows all the infrastructure the Iranians need for a nuclear bomb to be preserved and enhanced. Notably, Iran is allowed to: continue to enrich uranium; develop and test advanced centrifuges; and continue work on its Arak heavy-water plutonium reactor. Collectively, these concessions afford the Iranians, at worst, a ready breakout option and, at best, an incipient nuclear weapons capability a decade from now.  

The agreement is unverifiable. Under the terms of the JCPOA and a secret side deal (to which the United States is not privy), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be responsible for inspections under such severe limitations as to prevent them from reliably detecting Iranian cheating. For example, if Iran and the inspectors are unable to reach an accommodation with respect to a given site, the result could be at least a 24-day delay in IAEA access. The agreement also requires inspectors to inform Iran in writing as to the basis for its concerns about an undeclared site, thus further delaying access. Most importantly, these inspections do not allow access to Iranian military facilities, the most likely location of their nuclear weapons development efforts. In the JCPOA process, there is substantial risk of U.S. intelligence being compromised, since the IAEA often relies on our sensitive data with respect to suspicious and/or prohibited activity.  

While failing to assure prevention of Iran’s nuclear weapons development capabilities, the agreement provides by some estimates $150 billion dollars or more to Iran in the form of sanctions relief. As military officers, we find it unconscionable that such a windfall could be given to a regime that even the Obama administration has acknowledged will use a portion of such funds to continue to support terrorism in Israel, throughout the Middle East and globally, whether directly or through proxies. These actions will be made all the more deadly since the JCPOA will lift international embargoes on Iran’s access to advanced conventional weapons and ballistic missile technology.  

In summary, this agreement will enable Iran to become far more dangerous, render the Mideast still more unstable and introduce new threats to American interests as well as our allies. In our professional opinion, far from being an alternative to war, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action makes it likely that the war the Iranian regime has waged against us since 1979 will continue, with far higher risks to our national security interests.

Accordingly, we urge the Congress to reject this defective accord.  

Sincerely,