From Breitbart: “Full Measure” host Sharyl Attkisson said, “most Americans would be very surprised to hear how large the problem” of crimes committed by illegal immigrants is and “many in the media have self-censored the topic” on Friday’s “O’Reilly Factor” on the Fox News Channel.
Attkisson stated, “I think most Americans would be very surprised to hear how large the problem is, of illegal immigrants who come here, not talking about the law-abiding, deserving citizens we hear about a lot, but the ones who go on to commit felonies in the United States, and then the subset of tens of thousands who nonetheless are then rereleased back into the US where they go on to commit more serious crime, including thousands of murders — or hundreds of murders and thousands of rapes, over just a two year period.”
She added, “we discuss in the piece the theory on the part of victims’ families, that both Democrats and Republicans have a vested interest in the dysfunctional system as is, and because they are motivated by their interest and special interests, they are being told or asked not to address, even this subset of the population, the ones who commit serious crime.”
When asked what the Republican interest is, she responded, “The victims’ families believe they’re just bowing to special interests, because they don’t want to crack down on the problem at all, because they get cheap labor.”
Attkisson said she knows she’ll be accused of racism for running the story, but, “That’s why we’re doing the story. We know that this is a very important issue on the minds of many Americans, but that many in the media have self-censored the topic even though it’s significant for the public, and our show is all about bringing forth facts that others don’t want you to hear.”
Attkisson stated that while the show will air on CBS “in many markets,” she doubts that her former employer would have run the piece.
Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion
Extorting $2 Million from VA and Pleading the 5th
And so, once again, where is VA Secretary Robert McDonald? Oh, he only agreed to 5 recommendations and they are rather thin on solutions or substance. The shame continues, this agency needs to be turned over to the FBI for full agency wide investigations and a special prosecutor needs to be assigned.
The VA Deputy Secretary agreed to:
Review and make improvements to request and approval processes related to VA’s PCS Relocation program. Consult with the Office of General Counsel to determine whether bills of collection should be issued to VBA Senior Executives for improper relocation expense reimbursements and unjustified relocation incentives. Consult with the Office of General Counsel to determine what actions may be taken to hold the appropriate Senior Officials accountable for processing and approving payments of unjustified relocation incentive payments. Confer with the Office of Human Resources and Administration, the Office of Accountability Review, and the Office of General Counsel to determine the appropriate administrative action to take, if any, against several VBA Senior Executives.
The OIG’s results demonstrate a need for VA to strengthen controls and oversight over the use of these funds to improve the financial stewardship of taxpayer’s funds.
VA officials plead the 5th, refuse to testify
Ted Cruz Putting DC and IRS Scandal on Notice
Sen. Cruz Asks DOJ to Preserve All IRS-Related Documents
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch requesting that the Department of Justice (DOJ) preserve all Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents and information for investigation under the next administration. Sen. Cruz’s letter comes after the DOJ recently closed its investigation into improper targeting of conservative groups by the IRS.
“Make no mistake: the IRS’s targeting of ordinary citizens for their political viewpoints under this Administration is not a minor issue, and represents a significant breach of the public trust. Even a casual observer of the IRS targeting scandal could not help but come to the conclusion that there is a strong appearance that the IRS, under this Administration’s political leadership, used the coercive tools available to the tax collection agency to harass people with conservative viewpoints,” Sen. Cruz wrote. “It is important for you and other officials in this Administration to understand that this Administration’s decisions to neither continue this investigation nor appoint a special prosecutor do not represent the conclusion of this matter.”
Sen. Cruz’s letter can be read in its entirety below and here.
November 2, 2015
The Honorable Loretta E. Lynch
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530
Dear Attorney General Lynch:
I write today to strongly urge you, as head of the Department of Justice, to take specific steps to ensure that the Department preserves all of its Internal Revenue Service-related documents and information indefinitely. This Administration’s recent announcement that it does not intend to conduct or allow an appropriate criminal investigation of the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party and other conservative organizations has finally made it abundantly clear that the responsibility of ensuring a thorough, fair, and impartial investigation of IRS employees and their potential criminal conduct will fall to the next presidential administration, and relevant materials must be protected accordingly.
On Friday, October 23, the Department stated that it would end its investigation of the IRS and the personnel who were part of the agency’s well-documented targeting efforts, including the former director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Unit, Lois Lerner, who invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate herself during a 2013 congressional oversight hearing. Presumably, this latest decision to abandon the investigation required your approval. This decision also comes in the wake of at least two formal rejections by President Obama’s former Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., of requests for the appointment of a special prosecutor to handle the investigation.
Bluntly stated, your decision is disappointing but also not surprising, and only confirms suspicions that the current Department is equipped to neither handle an appropriate investigation nor make appropriate judgments regarding existing conflicts of interest, based on its failure to appoint a special prosecutor. Despite numerous requests for a fair and impartial process, you, your predecessor, and this Administration generally have been dismissive of congressional and other calls for an appropriate accounting of the IRS’s abusive behavior.
Make no mistake: the IRS’s targeting of ordinary citizens for their political viewpoints under this Administration is not a minor issue, and represents a significant breach of the public trust. Even a casual observer of the IRS targeting scandal could not help but come to the conclusion that there is a strong appearance that the IRS, under this Administration’s political leadership, used the coercive tools available to the tax collection agency to harass people with conservative viewpoints. The little information that is available in the public domain about what happened at the IRS also makes it appear that laws, including criminal laws, may have been broken.
That said, as an attorney and former state law enforcement official, I am keenly aware that the facts of a case require objective, non-political review. That is why I and others have been adamant about the need for the appointment of a special prosecutor, who would be appointed by the Administration in accordance with federal law and afforded the freedom and resources to conduct a thorough, fair, and impartial investigation and, if necessary, prosecution.
It is important for you and other officials in this Administration to understand that this Administration’s decisions to neither continue this investigation nor appoint a special prosecutor do not represent the conclusion of this matter. Given this Administration’s refusal to conduct itself appropriately, or take the issue of the potential illegal conduct of IRS employees seriously, any subsequent administration should reserve the right to reopen the matter, conduct its own investigation, or appoint a special prosecutor to conduct an investigation.
With that in mind, it is imperative that you, as Attorney General, take extraordinary steps to see to it that the Department preserves all the documents and materials in its possession in relation to its evaluation of the IRS’s targeting efforts, as well as everything in its possession used to evaluate the potential criminal activity of IRS employees. This request for extraordinary preservation steps is unfortunately necessary, given this Administration’s poor track record for recordkeeping.
I will also take this moment to remind you, your fellow political appointees within the Department, and any other Department employees, advisors, or contractors that destruction of any of the requested documents or information could subject those responsible for such destruction to criminal prosecution in the future. I have previously warned Treasury and IRS officials that such consequences could also result for any such destruction of records within their control, and those warnings stand. One’s position as a past or present federal employee does not afford immunity from the federal criminal justice system. It is my hope that a future administration would pursue justified prosecutions with all due energy.
In accordance with the above, I would request that the Department engage in the following preservation efforts, effective immediately:
1.Preserve all paper-based documents, e-mail-based communications, e-mail-based calendar appointments, electronic documents, electronic communications (including voicemails, SMS (i.e., text) messages, and instant messages), and all other electronic data regardless of format, created since January 1, 2010, that:
a. Are records, regardless of content, that were originally produced or possessed by the IRS or any of its employees, contractors, subcontractors, grantees, subgrantees, or consultants;
b. Are communications, regardless of author, source, or content, that in any way address the IRS or any of its past or current employees; and
c. Include or reference the names Douglas Shulman, John Koskinen, Lois Lerner, William Wilkins, Holly Paz, Judy Kindell, and/or Carter Hull, or any versions of these names, including initials or nicknames.
For the purposes of this request, “preserve” means taking any and all reasonable steps to prevent the partial or full destruction, alteration, overwriting, formatting, deletion, shredding, incineration, wiping, relocation, migration, theft, revision, or mutation of electronic and non-electronic documents, records, and logs, as well as negligent or intentional handling that would make such records incomplete or inaccessible.
2. Exercise any and all reasonable efforts to identify and notify former Department employees, contractors, subcontractors, grantees, subgrantees, and consultants who may have access to such electronic or non-electronic records that these records are also to be preserved.
3. If it is a practice of the Department, any Department component, any federal employee, any contract employee, any grantee or subgrantee, or any consultant to destroy or otherwise alter such electronic or non-electronic records, either halt such practices immediately, or arrange for the preservation of complete and accurate duplicates or copies of such records, suitable for production if requested.
I am also requesting that the Department make additional arrangements with both the Department’s Inspector General and the Archivist of the United States for them to receive copies of all such records.
Please provide a detailed update regarding your efforts to coordinate with the Inspector General and the Archivist no later than 5:00 p.m. on Monday, November 9, 2015.
I look forward to your cooperation. Please contact Committee staff at (202) 224-5225 if you have any additional questions about these requirements.
Sincerely,
Ted Cruz
Chairman
Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action,
Federal Rights and Federal Courts
Cc:
The Honorable Charles E. Grassley
Chairman
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy
Ranking Member
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
The Honorable Christopher A. Coons
Ranking Member
Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action,
Federal Rights and Federal Courts
The Honorable James Comey
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
U.S. Department of Justice
The Honorable Michael E. Horowitz
Inspector General
Office of the Inspector General
U.S. Department of Justice
The Honorable David S. Ferriero
Archivist of the United States
National Archives and Records Administration
Gary M. Stern
General Counsel
National Archives and Records Administration
The Honorable Jack Lew<
Secretary
U.S. Department of the Treasury
The Honorable John Koskinen
Commissioner
Internal Revenue Service
Obama’s New Executive Action: Ban the Box
In part from Officer.com: The federal Bureau of Prisons plans to release 6,000 prisoners at the end of October, implementing a decision last year to slash the number of incarcerated drug offenders by nearly half.
Officials said the nationwide releases over four days starting Oct. 30 will be the largest in U.S. history.
Last year, in line with a concerted effort by the Obama administration to reduce the number of drug offenders in U.S. prisons, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to cut drug sentences by an average of two years, potentially affecting as many as 46,000 of 100,000 cases.
In the coming year, an additional 8,550 prisoners will be eligible for release, according to Sentencing Commission spokesman Matt Osterrieder, though he said that not all of them will be approved.
What are employers supposed to do to vet applicants especially in positions where a clean background is required, something like banking, retail or any position for that matter where integrity and morality is centric to employment? Well…there is always Facebook, where employers are presently using social media platforms to determine history, friends, associates and even political bias.
Further, presidential executive orders are designed for exclusive use of operating government, yet with Barack Obama and this mission of his, he is injecting his policies into private enterprise. There must be legal challenges to this new ‘protected class’ operation which is common in the Obama administration, as we clearly know foreign illegals are a proven protected class.
HuffPo:WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Monday will announce a series of measures designed to reduce obstacles facing former prisoners reintegrating into society, including an executive action directing federal employers to delay asking questions about a job applicant’s criminal history until later in the application process.
Many states, cities and private employers have already taken steps to “ban the box,” which refers to the checkbox on employment applications asking if the applicant has ever been convicted of a crime. However, some federal employers and contractors still ask the question. Obama’s executive action will apply to federal employers, but not to contractors.
Hillary joins Barack Obama on this same objective calling it ‘racial profiling’. This is all yet another misguided social engineering plan to reform the criminal justice system, where law enforcement, district attorneys and judges don’t seem to get any opportunity to voice their respective positions.
Obama to announce executive actions to help prisoners rejoin society
Barack Obama will announce a series of executive actions to help current and former prisoners re-enter society on Monday, as the president continues his campaign to wind down the war on drugs and reform a “broken” system.
Obama’s plans include millions of dollars in education grants for current prisoners, new policies to help former inmates find housing, a “clean slate clearing house” to help former prisoners clear their records where possible, and a call to Congress to “ban the box” – the space on a job application that asks about criminal backgrounds.
Obama is expected to unveil the plans at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, the hometown of Democratic senator Cory Booker, one of the leaders of a bipartisan push for criminal justice reform.
The president has for months toured the nation in a loose campaign for reform, visiting police in Chicago, the NAACP in Philadelphia, and inmates in Oklahoma. On Saturday, he again raised the issue in his weekly address, saying: “We know that having millions of people in the criminal justice system, without any ability to find a job after release, is unsustainable.”
There are 2.2m people incarcerated in federal and state prisons around the US, roughly 20% of the world’s total number of imprisoned people. The number ballooned in the decades of the “war on drugs”, in particular due to “tough on crime” laws enacted during the 1990s.
Obama’s latest push for reform coincides with the early release of several thousand federal prisoners this past weekend. About 6,000 drug offenders were granted early releases thanks to policy changes by the US Sentencing Commission, which made the revisions retroactive last year. Judges then reviewed tens of thousands of applications, with the 6,000 federal prisoners the first to receive early release.
But despite the push for reducing mandatory minimum sentences – often seen as a major cause of mass incarceration over minor crimes – reform advocates around the country have called for more attention for former prisoners. About 650,000 inmates are released every year, and many return to an alien, hostile America facing bars to housing and employment and with little to their names. More here.
Refugees in America Before those in Europe
We watch in horror the refugee crisis in Europe and the stories are terrifying but for a deeper argument, it has been going on here in America for decades so the slow flow of migrants is not a robust as that currently in Europe.
What is more, global leaders are in full discussion on several tracks including how to find housing, medical care, schools, jobs, transportation and more. Additionally, big talks are underway to create a safe zone for Syrians in their home country. Well, the argument can be made there are at least two of them in Jordan and Turkey now….creating one in Syria? How about creating zones in respective countries in Central America?
Refugee crisis grows in Central America as women ‘run for their lives’
Thousands of women flee their homes in parts of Central America and Mexico each year to escape armed gangs and domestic violence and seek refuge in the United States, a flow that is becoming a refugee crisis, the UN refugee agency says.
The number of women, some with children, fleeing rampant gang violence in parts of Mexico, and the Northern Triangle region of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, is rising, the UNHCR said in a report published on Wednesday.
More than 66,000 children travelled with their families or alone from the Northern Triangle region – which has the world’s highest murder rates – to the United States in 2014.
More unaccompanied children from the Northern Triangle and Mexico reached the United States in August than in the same month last year, the US government said.
“With authorities often unable to curb the violence and provide redress, many vulnerable women are left with no choice but to run for their lives,” Antonio Guterres, head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), said in the report.
While attention is focused on the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing to Europe from countries such as Syria and Iraq, a new refugee crisis is taking shape in Central America, the UNHCR warned.
“The dramatic refugee crises we are witnessing in the world today are not confined to the Middle East or Africa,” Guterres said in a statement. “We are seeing another refugee situation unfolding in the Americas.“
The UNHCR said it had recorded a nearly five-fold increase in asylum seekers arriving in the United States from the Northern Triangle since 2008. In 2014, 40,000 people from these countries and Mexico applied for asylum in the United States.
The UNHCR report includes 160 interviews with women who had fled their homes in the Northern Triangle region and Mexico and travelled to the United States. After crossing the border illegally, they were detained and placed in detention centres.
All the women interviewed had either been recognised as refugees or been screened by US authorities, “and determined to have a credible or reasonable fear of persecution or torture”, the report said.
One 17-year-old Salvadorean girl called Norma says she was gang raped by three members of the notorious M18 gang in a cemetery in late 2014. She said she was targeted because she was married to a police officer.
“They took their turns … they tied me by the hands. They stuffed my mouth so I would not scream,” Norma is quoted as saying in the report. Then “they threw me in the trash”.
Nearly two-thirds of the women said threats and attacks by armed criminal gangs, including rape, killings, forced recruitment of their children and extortion payments, were among the main reasons why they left their home countries.
“The increasing reach of criminal armed groups, often amounting to de facto control over territory and people, has surpassed the capacity of governments in the region to respond,” the report said.
US government figures show that 82% of 16,077 women from the Northern Triangle region and Mexico interviewed by US authorities in the last year were found to have a credible fear of persecution or torture and were allowed to pursue their claims for asylum in the United States.
Violence at the hands of abusive husbands and partners, including rape and beatings with baseball bats, was another key reason why women were fleeing their homes.
“Unable to secure state protection, many women cited domestic violence as a reason for flight, fearing severe harm or death if they stayed,” the report said.
More than three-quarters of the women interviewed said they knew the journey overland to the United States was dangerous, but it was a risk worth taking.
Some said they took birth control pills before starting their journey to avoid getting pregnant as a result of rape by human traffickers or gangs, the report said.
“Coming here [to the United States] was like having hope that you will come out alive,” the report quoted Sara, who fled Honduras and sought asylum in the United States, as saying.