Immigration Issue In Germany, Tent Cities

Posted on July 31, 2015July 31, 2015 by Denise Simon

Failed foreign policy and failed nations have immediate consequences and cause future financial destruction not only for America but for many Western nations, like Germany.

Germany Announces Crackdown on Immigrant ‘Welfare Abuse’

By Chris Köver

August 28, 2014

Germany has announced plans to curb access to welfare for immigrants from other European Union countries, in an attempt to clamp down on the abuse it claims has been a growing problem over the past year. Under a proposal agreed by the cabinet on Wednesday, Germany could expel EU citizens who have not found work in the country after six months, or who are found to have abused the welfare system. The move comes as other member states such as Britain toughen up social security rules in a bid to curb the so-called “welfare tourism” they say has resulted from EU enlargement. The plan would also tighten access to child benefit, which would only be given to those with a tax identification number, in an effort to stop families from claiming child support in several countries or for children they don’t have. Those convicted of benefits fraud, for example by forging documents or claiming payments while self-employed, could be banned from reentering the country for five years. Opposition politicians say such an entry ban would put it on a collision course with the EU, which maintains strict rules on freedom of movement within the bloc.

Tent Cities Test Germany’s Resolve to Support Swell of Refugees Germany is resorting to tent cities to house a flood of refugees led by Syrians fleeing civil war as soaring costs test the country’s willingness to accept newcomers. The government expects the number of asylum seekers entering the country this year to more than double to 450,000. Caring for them will run as high as 6 billion euros ($6.6 billion), the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported this week, citing data collected from the interior ministries of Germany’s 16 states.

The influx presents challenges for Chancellor Angela Merkel and her government, with a majority of the public now favoring stricter immigration rules. Merkel herself was personally caught up in the debate earlier this month when she drove a Palestinian girl to tears after telling her that not all asylum seekers will get to stay.

“Migrants have become the No. 1 topic for German voters, replacing the old concerns about unemployment and the economy,” Joerg Forbrig, a senior program director at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. in Berlin, said by phone. “This issue is the gravitational center and the political magnet for every German election.” While Merkel’s government is giving the states more money to pay for asylum and added staff to shorten the processing time of applications, the sheer number has left them stretched and resorting to tents to house people. Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, has put up 23 army tents to house 280 people — a temporary solution that can only be used as long as the weather remains warm enough.

Mounting Backlog

“Tent accommodations aren’t the exception — the problems are massive,” said Bernd Mesovic, deputy managing director of refugee rights group Pro Asyl, adding that he worries Germany will soon have a backlog of 260,000 undecided asylum cases. Some politicians are pushing for laws that would more clearly identify who can stay and help speed up the deportation of people from countries such as the Balkan states who have little chance of being granted asylum. In Bavaria, Prime Minister Horst Seehofer said this month that he plans to take matters into his own hands and implement “rigorous” measures to more quickly send home rejected asylum seekers. In the poll released Thursday by broadcaster ARD, 63 percent of Germans want a new immigration law, while 27 percent said that’s not necessary. A total of 62 percent of those surveyed in a Bild newspaper poll this week said they support faster expulsion for people who don’t come from war zones.

Tearful Exchange

Uncertainty about her future in Germany left a 14-year-old Palestinian girl in tears at a Merkel town-hall meeting in the northern city of Rostock this month. The girl said her parents came to the country from a refugee camp in Lebanon and were still waiting for a decision on their asylum application four years later — prompting the chancellor to say that “some will have to go back.” The exchange caused a stir on social media and in the German press. This year there has already been 173 arson and other attacks, mainly on uninhabited buildings planned for refugees, in several towns and cities, according to news magazine Der Spiegel. That compares with 175 such attacks in all of 2014. In Troeglitz, located about 200 kilometers (124 miles) southwest of Berlin in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, a building that was to house immigrants was firebombed in April. The town’s mayor quit after receiving threats from neo-Nazis. The issue has become a political topic in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where Green party premier Winfried Kretschmann is facing a re-election bid in eight months. Kretschmann’s own party refused his plan to declare more southeastern European countries as safe places of origin, which would have limited the number of those eligible for asylum. Opponents have seized on the matter.

Uncontrolled

“There’s uncontrolled immigration at the moment that exceeds our capacities,” said Joerg Meuthen, the top candidate in the state from the anti-euro party Alternative for Germany. Of the 114,060 applications processed in the first half, 36 percent were granted asylum or protected by a deportation ban, while the rest were refused, according to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. At 20 percent, Syrians made up the biggest share of asylum seekers, followed by 18 percent from Kosovo and 14 percent from Albania. “This is a tragedy foretold,” said Shada Islam, director of policy at the Friends of Europe advisory group in Brussels. “When the EU borders states that are at war or broken — and we don’t help them — then anyone could have seen this coming as people flock to a pole of prosperity for a better life.”

Berger to Hillary to Obama and Back to ’67 Lines

Posted on July 31, 2015July 31, 2015 by Denise Simon

We have enough issues with our own emails but to read the incremental releases of Hillary Clinton’s email while she was Secretary of State deserves combat pay.

In Washington DC, the media brings America the front line people, like those at the White House and cabinet secretaries, but no one pays much attention to those behind the powerbrokers of government, the real hidden workers that have the conversations, write the press releases, write the speeches, write the cables and emails and sit on the chairs lining the walls of governmental meetings. Those hidden people take the notes, measure the responses, slip notes back and forth, do the legwork, make the calls, read the legislation, scour the global media and countless other housekeeping (literally) items.

Nothing is more clear to validate the above assessment than the process of reading Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Hillary was a user of people, she exploited them for the sake of her objectives and to set diplomatic policy which rose to meetings at the White House level.

Many of those ‘staff’ types get re-cycled from administration to lobby outfits and then re-cycled again to the next campaign and administration.

Now for a key email, which proves the clues to the machinations of politics and how we and others get blindsided.

Sandy Berger urged Hillary to portray Bibi as obstacle to peace

By Philip Klein:

Sandy Berger, a former national security adviser for President Bill Clinton who pled guilty to stealing and destroying classified documents, advised Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state on how to portray Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the obstacle to peace and how to make his political life “uneasy.”

The revelations came in a new batch of Clinton’s emails released on Friday by the State Department.

In the emails, Berger, who chairs the global business advisory firm Albright Stonebridge Group (along with former Bill Clinton Secretary of State Madeline Albright), outlined a strategy to turn the tables on Netanyahu diplomatically in negotiations with Palestinians.

“The objective is to try shift the fulcrum of our current relations with Bibi from settlements — where he thinks he has the upper hand — to ground where there is greater understanding in Israel of the American position and where we can make him uneasy about incurring our displeasure,” Berger wrote on Sept. 19. 2009, days ahead of a speech to President Obama at the United Nations.

Berger wrote, “Ironically, his intransigence over 67 borders may offer us that possibility — to turn his position against him.”

He argued, “Assuming Bibi will accept no formulation that includes 67 borders, it suggests that Bibi is the obstacle to progress and backtracking on his part on an issue that previous Israeli governments have accepted. It begins shifting the discussion from settlements to the more fundamental issue of ultimate territorial outcome.”

Three days later, he wrote, “Going forward, if Bibi continues to be the obstacle, you will need to find the ground from which you can make his politics uneasy.”

On that same day, Sept. 22, Obama addressed the United Nations General Assembly, calling for, “a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967.”

Clinton emailed Berger that afternoon, asking, “Let me know how you think today played.”

The fact that Clinton was soliciting advice from Berger while secretary of state is part of a pattern of her taking guidance from former loyal soldiers of her husband’s administration with sketchy histories, as she also was in close contact with political operative Sidney Blumenthal — asking for intelligence on Libya as he did consulting work related to the nation.

Berger became infamous in 2003 when, ahead of testimony before the Sept. 11 Commission, he stole highly classified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration by stuffing them in his pants, and destroyed some of them.

Though he initially claimed it was an “honest mistake,” he later pled guilty to removing them intentionally, triggering a $50,000 fine, and 100-hour community service requirement.

That wasn’t Berger’s first brush with the law. In 1997, while serving as national security adviser for Bill Clinton, Berger had to pay a $23,000 penalty for failing to sell stock as directed by the White House, leading to a conflict of interest.

The checkered past didn’t stop Hillary Clinton from making Berger one of her national security advisers in her 2008 campaign, nor, evidently, did it prevent her from being in contact with him at the State Department.

Clinton had a contentious relationship with Netanyahu, famously boasting that she was the administration’s “designated yeller” at the Israeli prime minister.

In May 2011, Obama caused an uproar when he called for a two-state solution based borders that existed before Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six Day War. Israel considers those borders indefensible, because they are as narrow as nine miles.

The Push Pull of Illegal Immigration

Posted on July 31, 2015July 31, 2015 by Denise Simon

By Daniel Horowitz:

In part: This week, Rep. Babin introduced the Resettlement Accountability National Security Act (H.R. 3314), which places an immediate moratorium on the refugee resettlement program until Congress reauthorizes it with a joint resolution. The idea behind this legislation is to give the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the legislative arm of Congress, time to research the cost and scope of the program so that the people’s representatives can finally audit this unaccountable, costly, and security-challenged program.

America has served as a beacon of freedom for millions of people who have come as refugees since World War II to escape tyranny and seek the American dream. In the past, refugees from Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Southeast Asia – just to name a few – have contributed immensely to our culture and economy.

the refugee resettlement program has become an insidious tool used by the elites to remake American society and burden the states with a huge fiscal drain.

But in recent years, much like the rest of our immigration system, the refugee resettlement program has become an insidious tool used by the elites to remake American society and burden the states with a huge fiscal drain. Worse, it has in many ways become a refugee resettlement program for thousands of national security risks from predominantly Muslim countries from volatile parts of the world without a proper vetting system in place. With Obama seeking to fundamentally remake America during his final 18 months in office, and with the increasing pressure to bring in more Muslim refugees from Syria, Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) has stepped up to the plate by introducing the first piece of legislation to reinsert the people’s voice into the refugee process. Much more here.

Illegal immigration prevention spending in Central America backfires, entices migrants

Money squandered as confusing and lenient policies encourage border crossings

The U.S. government paid for a classroom full of computers in El Salvador, but the Salvadoran government never bothered to hire a teacher, investigators said Wednesday — one of a series of bungles in the Obama administration’s plan to flood Central America with U.S. money to try to stem another surge of illegal immigration.

In an expansive report on last summer’s surge, the Government Accountability Office said confusing and lenient U.S. policies pushed illegal immigrants to make the crossing, and even cited administration officials who said President Obama’s 2012 deportation amnesty for so-called Dreamers did entice some of the surge.

Trying to get a handle on the flood, Mr. Obama has requested hundreds of millions of dollars to try to bolster society in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, the three countries chiefly responsible for the surge, but GAO investigators said corruption or incompetence among the Central American governments may hinder those efforts.

In the U.S., meanwhile, Homeland Security officials poured money into public relations campaigns to try to warn would-be crossers against attempting it, but the government has no idea if those efforts worked, the GAO said.

“Carrying out ineffective campaigns could lead to higher levels of migration to the United States, which is not only potentially costly in terms of U.S. taxpayer resources but costly and dangerous to the migrants and their families,” the GAO said in its report.

Both the State Department and Homeland Security admitted they need to do a better job collecting information and evaluating what they’re doing.

The report comes a year after the surge of illegal immigrant children and families reshaped the immigration debate, drawing attention to a still-porous border and helping sidetrack President Obama’s hopes of getting Congress to approve a bill legalizing illegal immigrants already in the country.

The surge, which totaled nearly 70,000 children traveling without a parent in fiscal year 2014, plus more than 60,000 children and parents traveling together, overwhelmed the Obama administration, which was left struggling for answers.

Initially officials blamed dangerous and economically depressed conditions in three key Central American nations for pushing illegal immigrants north, but eventually Homeland Security officials admitted that confusing and lenient policies — at least as far as illegal immigrants were concerned — were serving as a magnet to draw illegal immigrants.

In Wednesday’s report, State Department officials in Guatemala said folks there believed that if they could get to the U.S. they could qualify for Mr. Obama’s 2012 deportation amnesty — known officially as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. In reality, that amnesty only applied to illegal immigrants who had been in the U.S. for some time already, though Mr. Obama has already announced a major expansion of the amnesty.

In Honduras, meanwhile, American officials said residents believed the U.S. would allow pregnant women and mothers traveling with children to stay.

To try to counter those impressions, Homeland Security and State Department officials mounted a massive information campaign warning of the dangers of the journey and telling illegal immigrants they wouldn’t qualify for Mr. Obama’s deportation amnesty. And here at home, the administration opened new detention space to hold the families crossing the border in an effort to ship them back home sooner and deter other would-be crossers.

But GAO investigators said the surge had already begun to ease by the time the anti-crossing public relations campaign began, suggesting that tactic didn’t help.

The story continues by clicking here.

Obama’s Conference Call Gathering his Armies for Iran Deal

Posted on July 31, 2015July 31, 2015 by Denise Simon

Several names and organizations you may know, but Barack Obama and his anti-Israel pro-Iran keeps them close and calls on them often.

Some key items first however.

In part from IranWatch: While Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities were not considered a core issue in the nuclear talks, the language of the new U.N. resolution and the terms of the JCPOA have consequences for the future of Iran’s ballistic missile program:

The U.N. resolution removes the existing ban on Iranian activity related to nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, including launches.

The U.N. restrictions on sales of missile technology to Iran are extended for up-to eight years, but missile imports will be less strictly controlled than nuclear imports, relying primarily on reporting from Iran and due diligence by its suppliers.

The agreement does not appear to allow the “snapback” of sanctions in response to illicit missile procurement.

Sanctions will be lifted early next year on several banks that have facilitated illicit missile-related transactions in the past.

Iran’s efforts to advance its nuclear-capable ballistic missile program – through test launches, production, and illicit procurement – will be made easier, while attempts to punish or deter Iran’s ballistic missile activity and illicit procurement will be made more difficult.

***

That IAEA side deal discovered by 2 members of Congress that flew to Vienna to meet with the IAEA membership of which Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Council Advisor Susan Rice both say they have not read but have been briefed on, is found here.

During a hearing of which I personally watched, John Kerry was questioned about going beyond the law to over-ride a Congressional vote, Kerry deferred and replied, you need to ask the President. What??? Well a Democrat from California took notice to the Kerry response.

***

From TWS: Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who has been one of the more skeptical Democrats on the agreement, said that Obama appeared ready to ignore Congress, even if lawmakers vote to kill the deal and then marshal the two-thirds majorities to override a White House veto.

“The main meat of what he said is, ‘If Congress overrides my veto, you do not get a U.S. foreign policy that reflects that vote. What you get is you pass this law and I, as president, will do everything possible to go in the other direction,’” Sherman told reporters off the House floor after the meeting.

“He’s with the deal — he’s not with Congress,” Sherman added. “At least to the fullest extent allowed by law, and possibly beyond what’s allowed by law.”

Sherman suggested that Obama could refuse to enforce the law and could actively seek to undermine congressional action in other countries, if Capitol Hill insists on stymieing the plan.

***

So, the entire Obama regime wants this deal as much or if not more than he did on Obamacare, so a conference call was place today.

Some of the names you know like MoveOn.org, happily and earnestly funded by the spooky dude, George Soros. In a previous post on this blog site, we already know about Global Zero enlisting Hollywood.

But we cannot overlook yet another outfit close to the White House, one known as The Truman Project. Here such elitists include:

Madeleine Albright, General James Cartwright, Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth, now running for U.S. Senate from Illinois, Michele Flournoy, who was on the short list to replace Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel until she turned it down, Leslie Gelb the president of the Council of Foreign Relations, Janet Napolitano, the President of the California University system and former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and last but certainly not least, Kamala Harris, Attorney General for California who just gained the temporary restraining order on the group filming those Planned Parenthood videos.

Obama in call to arms: Stop big money from quashing nuke deal

President tells supporters of accord the agreement with Tehran is not ‘the best of bad alternatives but actually a very good deal’

TimesofIsrael: President Barack Obama rallied supporters of the Iran nuclear deal in a conference call Thursday evening, urging them to make their voices heard in the effort to convince Congress to ratify the agreement.

According to participants in the call, the president warned listeners, which included members of a number of progressive and anti-proliferation organizations, that they were battling $20 million in ads intended to sway Congress against the deal.

White House organizers listed a number of groups whose supporters participated in the conference call, including Americans United for Change and MoveOn.org, and the Truman Project, although there were a number of other organizations participating, including J Street.

In the conversation, Obama repeatedly drew parallels between the current Congressional review of the Iran deal and the run-up to the highly unpopular US involvement in Iraq, saying “some of the same forces that got us into Iraq” were now actively campaigning to quash the controversial deal. Obama told listeners that one of his key goals as president, alongside non-proliferation, was to “end the war in Iraq but also to end the mindset that got us into the war.”

The president talked up the deal itself, arguing that “I am absolutely convinced that this is not just the best in a series of bad alternatives but actually a very good deal that we should be proud of and that achieves critical security objectives not just for the US but for our allies and the world, including Israel.”

But while Obama devoted time to the administration’s talking points, explaining why the deal was effective — and reinforcing his commitment to Israel’s security — his final message was more of a call to arms.

The president told activists to challenge those who oppose the deal by asking what they would have done better or differently, while casting doubt on the motivations of those leading the opposition to his landmark foreign policy initiative.

“Every argument that has been put forth with this deal is inaccurate or presupposes that what we should be doing if we were to negotiate is to get a deal in which Iran forgoes any peaceful ability to get nuclear power,” Obama stated, saying that such a deal only existed “in dreams.”

“There is no expert who suggests that Iran would have agreed to that,” he argued. “In the real world, this is a deal that gets the job done.”

“What you have to say is that Iran would not do that, and the only way to do that effectively is if we were to go to war,” he added.

Obama warned that Congress might be swayed by the “$20 million dollars of advertising paid for by lobbyists” — a monetary figure he repeated throughout the conversation. The figure is identical to the amount that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was believed to be prepared to devote to its effort to oppose the deal during the period of Congressional review.

J Street recently said that it would up its budget in support of the deal, but the total amount represents less than 20% of AIPAC’s reported budget for opposing it.

Congress is expected to vote in September on either a resolution of approval or disapproval of the nuclear deal. Obama has vowed to veto any disapproval, and the White House must ensure that at least a third of the members of one of the two Houses vote in favor of the deal in order to sustain a presidential veto.

Obama criticized “columnists and former administration officials that were responsible for us getting in the Iraq war and were making these same claims in 2002-2003 with respect to Iraq.”

The same theme was used repeatedly to rally listeners to action.

“You are going to see the same forces that got us into the Iraq war leading us away from an opportunity for a diplomatic solution,” Obama warned again.

He urged the participants to call members of Congress and make their support for the deal known, implying that right now the loudest voices being heard were those who oppose the deal. “One of the frustrations I’ve always had about the Iraq war is everybody got really loud and really active after it was too late,” he said.

Obama noted that unlike in the run-up to the Iraq war, “the advantage is that now we have a president in the oval office who is on your side,” but added a warning: “As big as a bully pulpit as I have, it’s not enough.”

“When you have a bunch of folks who are big check writers to political campaigns, and billionaires who give to super PACS…this opportunity could slip away.”

On Planned Parenthood, Anyone Remember Anita Dunn or Ann Richards?

Posted on July 30, 2015July 30, 2015 by Denise Simon

Maybe we should be checking Hillary’s emails for several other items.

Ann Richards was the 45th Governor of Texas and the one who famously said at the 1988 Democratic Convention ” Poor George, he cant help it, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Well, Ann has a daughter, Cecile Richards who is the president of Planned Parenthood, which at the very moment I type this, the Planned Parenthood website is down for maintenance. Riiiiiight.

There is more:

A crisis management company called SKDKnickerbocker has been hired to begin the Planned Parenthood damage control mission. The managing director of SKDKnickerbocker is none other than Anita Dunn, of Mao Tse Tung fame.

Yes, there is more. Anita Dunn is married to Robert Bauer, Obama’s inside and personal White House lawyer.

So, for a summary fro Politico, but Politico DID leave out a few details, yet they are provided above. But hat-tip to Politico, they did include a few others.

Clinton’s Planned Parenthood ties run deep

The fetal-tissue scandal presents questions and opportunities for the Democratic front-runner.

Hillary Clinton is friends with Planned Parenthood’s president and took a rare pause from her duties as secretary of state to keynote a Planned Parenthood gala, while her family foundation has worked with the group to promote birth control.

So when Planned Parenthood found itself in the middle of a major scandal last week when anti-abortion activists released graphic undercover videos of executives discussing the alleged sale of aborted fetal tissue, Clinton’s support for the group was not so much a choice as a foregone conclusion — Planned Parenthood’s problem was Clinton’s problem, too.

Story Continued Below

“I have seen pictures from them and obviously find them disturbing,” Clinton said in an interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader Tuesday, distancing herself from the content in the videos. But she was quick to reiterate her support for Planned Parenthood as an organization, saying, “Planned Parenthood for more than a century has done a lot of really good work for women: cancer screenings, family planning, all kinds of health services.”

And while Republicans seized on the scandal to attack Clinton — demanding that she return the group’s campaign contributions — some Democrats were quick to see some silver linings. A full-throated defense of Planned Parenthood helps shore up Clinton’s support among wavering liberals, while the GOP’s efforts to defund the family-planning group allow Clinton to make the case that her election would be a bulwark against efforts to roll back women’s rights.

“The first job is to become the nominee, and the best route is to speak to the ideological base,” explained Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. “Their basic language is protecting choice and that is what Planned Parenthood symbolizes. Those who don’t agree are likely not voting for her anyway, and if she is the Democratic Party nominee, will not be voting for her in the fall of 2016.”

Indeed, when the scandal began to spread last week, Clinton was quick to put it in the context of years of attacks on an organization synonymous with support for abortion rights.

Planned Parenthood has been “the object of such a concerted attack for so many years, and it’s really an attack against a woman’s right to choose, to make the most personal difficult decisions that any woman would face,” Clinton said at a campaign appearance in South Carolina.

But Clinton’s relationship with Planned Parenthood goes beyond a shared belief in a woman’s right to choose. The group is interwoven with a network of women’s organizations that are among her strongest backers, and Planned Parenthood leaders and activists are among her personal friends, including President Cecile Richards.

When Clinton announced her candidacy for President last April, Richards tweeted that “there has never been a presidential candidate with as strong a commitment to women’s health & rights” and called the moment #Historic. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund noted in a news release at the time that Clinton had a 100 percent congressional scorecard every year she served in the Senate, during which the fund tracked 16 votes.

In an added sign of bonhomie between Clinton and the top Planned Parenthood executive, Richards’ daughter, former Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Lily Adams, signed up last spring with the Clinton campaign as Iowa press secretary, a high-profile portfolio for a campaign eager to shore up support in the important early state that rejected Clinton in 2008.

Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the group’s federal political action committee, gave $8,000 to Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, and $1,837 to her presidential committee in the 2008 cycle, records show. Many of Planned Parenthood’s PAC biggest donors are also longtime Clinton donors, some of whom supported the Ready For Hillary PAC as early as 2013, and have maxed out with $2,700 contributions to her primary campaign this year.

Longtime Democratic donor and proponent of women candidates Barbara Lee, for example, was one of the top 20 Planned Parenthood Action Committee donors in the 2012 cycle. She also donated $7,000 to Ready For Hillary in 2013. And other major Planned Parenthood donors like Susan Mandel, Democratic bundler Naomi Aberly and major Democratic donor Amber Mostyn, have all maxed-out for Clinton with $2,700 donations.

Clinton’s relationship with Planned Parenthood also extends to the Clinton Global Initiative. For the past two years Planned Parenthood has been a member of CGI and in 2012 committed to train “youth peer providers” in Latin America, Africa and the U.S. on ways to promote birth control.

Additionally, Planned Parenthood will sponsor two global youth fellowship programs and create a national youth organizing strategy to help push for increased investment in access to reproductive health care, according to CGI’s website. Planned Parenthood does not contribute money to CGI, according to sources familiar with the organizations.

Clinton and Planned Parenthood also share consultants and allies.

Planned Parenthood has enlisted Democratic consultant SKDKnickerbocker’s Hilary Rosen, another close Clinton ally, to help with the current public relations crisis. And Planned Parenthood Action Fund hired Democratic pollster Geoff Garin — who is also the pollster on the Clinton super PAC Priorities USA and served as a chief strategist of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign — to conduct a poll about attitudes toward the organization.

Emily’s List, which has been leading the movement to stand with Planned Parenthood, raising money off the most recent defunding threats while collecting 22,000 signatures from its members standing with Planned Parenthood, is a major backer of Clinton’s campaign. It’s president, Stephanie Schriock, was a short-lister for Clinton’s campaign manager.

“Planned Parenthood is something that women and families rely on all over the country,” said Emily’s List spokeswoman Jess McIntosh. “Hillary has such a strong record of understanding the realities of women that of course she understands that, too.”

Some of Clinton’s Republican rivals are eager to tar her with the most recent scandal.

“Hillary Clinton in particular should be made to answer if she is proud to have received such enthusiastic support from Planned Parenthood while they are under investigation for multiple felonies,” Sen. Ted Cruz told POLITICO Wednesday in the Capitol. “I think Hillary Clinton should be made to answer if she supports an organization that buys and sells the body parts of unborn children in direct violation of federal law. [She] ought to be asked: Do you share those values? Does that reflect the core values of your campaign?”

At an anti-abortion rally earlier in the week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another 2016 GOP hopeful, called on Clinton to refund Planned Parenthood contributions.

“Hillary Clinton’s hands are stained by accepting this money,” Paul said. “She needs to immediately return every red cent she has received from Planned Parenthood employees.”

Cruz and Paul’s attacks on Clinton may be aimed at rallying support among the Republican base, but they are also what many Democratic strategists said they are hoping for — that Republicans will get mired in fighting Clinton on social issues, rather than fiscal or economic issues.

“Both Democrats and independents overwhelmingly support continued support for Planned Parenthood, and women voters in particular look at Planned Parenthood as a trusted source of health care,” said Garin, who conducted a recent poll on the issue for Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “In political terms, it’s very clear that Hillary Clinton is on the right side of public opinion. The Republicans who have a mania against Planned Parenthood are digging a deep hole for themselves with general election voters.”

A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood did not respond to requests for comment. <— Maybe they are too busy working on their broken/downed website.