Category Archives: Health Disease

How About that Immigration Slush Fund?

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How about using $1.3 BILLION to fix just one home country first?

First, you need some background on the Department of Homeland Security and how they not only publish crap but how they justify it and then ask for their annual budgetary requirements with glowing accomplishments. So to help you out, click this link and head on over to the Janet Napolitano DHS operations on page 121 and read on if you can stomach the task.

Now, let us move on to the slush fund shall we?

Hat tip to Senator Jeff Sessions, he held a subcommittee meeting in March and discovered a $1.3 billion dollar slush fund and lots of nefarious actions with that money. I watch this stuff on C-Span and report:

“USCIS has been hoarding fees paid by legal immigrants to subsidize the planned new executive amnesty for an estimated five million illegal aliens and failing to screen applicants adequately to prevent criminal aliens from obtaining benefits. In addition, the agency has created a pathway to citizenship for many of these illegal aliens.”

There is more.

“USCIS has accumulated a “reserve fund” of unexpended revenues that now totals $1.2 billion (with a “B”). The agency has a policy to maintain a reserve balance of $600 million to help it manage in the event of revenue fluctuations, but USCIS is using these funds to launch the new executive amnesty programs (without any statutory authorization). One cannot help but wonder how this reserve fund got so big over the years, because by law USCIS is supposed to charge fees that reflect the exact cost of processing the benefits. Did they overcharge millions of legal applicants or cut corners on the processing of benefits? Both?

Sen. Tom Tillis (R-N.C.) asked why USCIS has not used its huge cash reserves to reduce the processing backlogs for legal applicants instead of setting up unconstitutional work permit programs for illegal aliens.

USCIS had already spent $11 million getting ready for the new executive amnesty until it was blocked by a federal judge in mid-February. About $7 million was spent to lease office space in Crystal City, Va., and those rent payments still need to be made whether the program goes forward or not. The total cost of the processing facility alone is estimated to be $26.2 million.

Before the program was stopped, USCIS had hired “one or two” people to work on the program and had made job offers to 360 others, which are now on hold. The plan is for the amnesty applications to be adjudicated by 700-800 brand-new employees, with no experience in evaluating immigration applications.”

You can actually get a few more details here.

Yippee for Senator Cruz, he has introduced  A BILL

To eliminate the offsetting accounts that are currently available

for use by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

This is great in action but gaining real traction is slim to none. This is why you need to apply pressure to your respective lawmakers.

Now, USCIS has a website, where a full welcoming and kindly layout encourages anyone into the United States and helps them find a way to do it.

Okay, so remember now that was $1.8 BILLION and that is not including the budget at DHS for 2015. You see, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employs more than 13,000 people and in 2012, there were 72,000 refugee applications and 29,000 asylum applications. Add that to the unknown quantity coming across the border and we have no clue what language we will be required to speak to keep our job.

On page 133 of this latest document:

USCIS ensures that information and decisions on citizenship and immigration benefits are provided to customers in a timely, accurate, consistent, courteous, and professional manner, while also working to safeguard our national security. More than 50 different types of citizenship and immigration benefit applications
are processed by USCIS. Every case is unique and requires specialized attention from experienced USCIS immigration officers. USCIS is also responsible for enhancing the integrity of our country’s legal immigration system by deterring, detecting, and pursuing immigration-related fraud, combating the unauthorized practice of immigration law, and helping to combat unauthorized employment in the workplace.
Each day, USCIS employees work to fulfill the USCIS mission of enhancing both national security and the integrity of the legal immigration system by: (1) identifying threats to national security and public safety posed by those seeking immigration benefits; (2) deterring, detecting, and pursuing, immigration benefit fraud; (3) identifying and removing systemic vulnerabilities in the legal immigration system; and (4) promoting information sharing and collaboration with other governmental agencies.
In addition, USCIS extends humanitarian protection to refugees, both within and outside of the United States, in accordance with U.S. law and international obligations.

There are these 2 samples of how DHS states their accomplishments:

  • Collaborated in the effort to respond to the April 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings including the establishment of Task Force 1 as a centralized hub for fielding requests from interagency partners.
    • Interviewed and performed security checks for approximately 72,000 refugee applicants in more than 66 countries to support the admission of 69,930 refugees to the United States; interviewed, performed security checks, and completed more than 29,000 affirmative asylum applications; and performed more than 43,000 asylum screenings for reasonable and credible fear.

Sheesh….How many questions need to be asked now? The first one is how is this fleecing of the American taxpayer a benefit and what is the threat matrix to our national security?

 

 

National Preparedness is up to YOU

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At no other time in American history has the United States been so vulnerable to national security threats. The text below is for you benefit, take is seriously and don’t rely on FEMA, you are your own best resource.

National Preparedness Report

Main Content

This page provides information on the 2015 National Preparedness Report, including the overarching findings on national issues, preparedness progress, and opportunities for improvement. This page is for anyone interested in seeing how preparedness can inform priorities and community actions.

National Preparedness Report

The 2015 National Preparedness Report marks the fourth iteration of this annual report. Required annually by Presidential Policy Directive 8: National Preparedness, the National Preparedness Report summarizes progress in building, sustaining, and delivering the 31 core capabilities described in the 2011 National Preparedness Goal (the Goal). Each year, the report presents an opportunity to assess gains that whole community partners—including all levels of government, private and nonprofit sectors, faith-based organizations, communities, and individuals—have made in preparedness, and to identify where challenges remain.

The intent of the National Preparedness Report is to provide the Nation with practical insights on preparedness that can inform decisions about program priorities, resource allocations, and community actions. The 2015 National Preparedness Report focuses primarily on preparedness activities undertaken or reported during 2014, and places particular emphasis on progress made in implementing the National Planning Frameworks (the Frameworks) across the Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery mission areas. The Frameworks describe how the whole community works together to achieve the goal of a secure and resilient Nation.

Overarching Findings on National Issues

In addition to key findings for each of the five preparedness mission areas, the 2015 NPR identifies overarching national trends that cut across multiple mission areas:

  • Incorporating Emergency Preparedness into Technology Platforms: Businesses and public-private partnerships are increasingly incorporating emergency preparedness into technology platforms, such as Internet and social media tools and services.
  • Challenges Assessing the Status of Corrective Actions: While Federal departments and agencies individually assess progress for corrective actions identified during national-level exercises and real-world incidents, challenges remain to comprehensively assess corrective actions with broad implications across the Federal Government.
  • Response Coordination Challenges for Events that Do Not Receive Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Stafford Act) Declarations: Recent events, including the epidemic of Ebola virus disease, have highlighted challenges with coordinating the response to and recovery from complex incidents that do not receive Stafford Act declarations.

The Nation Continues to Make Progress

The 2015 NPR identifies three new core capabilities – Environmental Response/Health and Safety, Intelligence and Information Sharing, and Operational Coordination – as meeting acceptable levels of performance but requiring sustained effort to maintain capability and meet emerging challenges. These capabilities join five others from the 2014 report that future National Preparedness Reports will revisit to determine if they are still meeting performance goals.

Opportunities for Improvement

The 2015 National Preparedness Report also highlights key preparedness challenges remaining for the Nation. Three core capabilities—Cybersecurity, Housing, and Infrastructure Systems—have persisted as areas for improvement across all four National Preparedness Reports. A fourth core capability, Long-term Vulnerability Reduction, repeats as an area for improvement from last year, due in part to questions surrounding the long-term solvency of the National Flood Insurance Program and nascent national efforts for climate change adaptation and green infrastructure. Preparedness data further revealed that the Federal Government, states, and territories are also struggling to build capacity for the Access Control and Identity Verification and Economic Recovery core capabilities. These areas for improvement are a reminder that preparedness gains are gradual and that solutions to complex challenges will not materialize without sustained support from the whole community.

Key Factors for Future Progress

The 2015 NPR represents the fourth opportunity for the Nation to reflect on progress in strengthening national preparedness and to identify where preparedness gaps remain. Looking across all five mission areas, the NPR provides a national perspective on critical preparedness trends for whole community partners to use to inform program priorities, to allocate resources, and to communicate with stakeholders about issues of shared concern.

Resources

Core Capabilities

Main Content

The National Preparedness Goal identified 31 core capabilities—these are the distinct critical elements needed to achieve the goal.

These capabilities are referenced in many national preparedness efforts, including the National Planning Frameworks. The Goal grouped the capabilities into five mission areas, based on where they most logically fit. Some fall into only one mission area, while some others apply to several mission areas.

Download the capabilities crosswalk to see how the legacy Target Capabilities List compares with the new core capabilities.

Planning

  • Mission Areas: All
  • Description: Conduct a systematic process engaging the whole community as appropriate in the development of executable strategic, operational, and/or community-based approaches to meet defined objectives.

Public Information and Warning

  • Mission Areas: All
  • Description: Deliver coordinated, prompt, reliable, and actionable information to the whole community through the use of clear, consistent, accessible, and culturally and linguistically appropriate methods to effectively relay information regarding any threat or hazard, as well as the actions being taken and the assistance being made available, as appropriate.

Operational Coordination

  • Mission Areas: All
  • Description: Establish and maintain a unified and coordinated operational structure and process that appropriately integrates all critical stakeholders and supports the execution of core capabilities.

Forensics and Attribution

  • Mission Area: Prevention
  • Description: Conduct forensic analysis and attribute terrorist acts (including the means and methods of terrorism) to their source, to include forensic analysis as well as attribution for an attack and for the preparation for an attack in an effort to prevent initial or follow-on acts and/or swiftly develop counter-options.

Intelligence and Information Sharing

  • Mission Areas: Prevention, Protection
  • Description: Provide timely, accurate, and actionable information resulting from the planning, direction, collection, exploitation, processing, analysis, production, dissemination, evaluation, and feedback of available information concerning threats to the United States, its people, property, or interests; the development, proliferation, or use of WMDs; or any other matter bearing on U.S. national or homeland security by Federal, state, local, and other stakeholders. Information sharing is the ability to exchange intelligence, information, data, or knowledge among Federal, state, local, or private sector entities, as appropriate.

Interdiction and Disruption

  • Mission Areas: Prevention, Protection
  • Description: Delay, divert, intercept, halt, apprehend, or secure threats and/or hazards.

Screening, Search, and Detection

  • Mission Areas: Prevention, Protection
  • Description: Identify, discover, or locate threats and/or hazards through active and passive surveillance and search procedures. This may include the use of systematic examinations and assessments, sensor technologies, or physical investigation and intelligence.

Access Control and Identity Verification

  • Mission Area: Protection
  • Description: Apply a broad range of physical, technological, and cyber measures to control admittance to critical locations and systems, limiting access to authorized individuals to carry out legitimate activities.

Cybersecurity

  • Mission Area: Protection
  • Description: Protect against damage to, the unauthorized use of, and/or the exploitation of (and, if needed, the restoration of) electronic communications systems and services (and the information contained therein).

Physical Protective Measures

  • Mission Area: Protection
  • Description: Reduce or mitigate risks, including actions targeted at threats, vulnerabilities, and/or consequences, by controlling movement and protecting borders, critical infrastructure, and the homeland.

Risk Management for Protection Programs and Activities

  • Mission Area: Protection
  • Description: Identify, assess, and prioritize risks to inform Protection activities and investments.

Supply Chain Integrity and Security

  • Mission Area: Protection
  • Description: Strengthen the security and resilience of the supply chain.

Community Resilience

  • Mission Area: Mitigation
  • Description: Lead the integrated effort to recognize, understand, communicate, plan, and address risks so that the community can develop a set of actions to accomplish Mitigation and improve resilience.

Long-term Vulnerability Reduction

  • Mission Area: Mitigation
  • Description: Build and sustain resilient systems, communities, and critical infrastructure and key resources lifelines so as to reduce their vulnerability to natural, technological, and human-caused incidents by lessening the likelihood, severity, and duration of the adverse consequences related to these incidents.

Risk and Disaster Resilience Assessment

  • Mission Area: Mitigation
  • Description: Assess risk and disaster resilience so that decision makers, responders, and community members can take informed action to reduce their entity’s risk and increase their resilience.

Threats and Hazard Identification

  • Mission Area: Mitigation
  • Description: Identify the threats and hazards that occur in the geographic area; determine the frequency and magnitude; and incorporate this into analysis and planning processes so as to clearly understand the needs of a community or entity.

Critical Transportation

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Provide transportation (including infrastructure access and accessible transportation services) for response priority objectives, including the evacuation of people and animals, and the delivery of vital response personnel, equipment, and services into the affected areas.

Environmental Response/Health and Safety

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Ensure the availability of guidance and resources to address all hazards including hazardous materials, acts of terrorism, and natural disasters in support of the responder operations and the affected communities.

Fatality Management Services

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Provide fatality management services, including body recovery and victim identification, working with state and local authorities to provide temporary mortuary solutions, sharing information with mass care services for the purpose of reunifying family members and caregivers with missing persons/remains, and providing counseling to the bereaved.

Infrastructure Systems

  • Mission Area: Response, Recovery
  • Description: Stabilize critical infrastructure functions, minimize health and safety threats, and efficiently restore and revitalize systems and services to support a viable, resilient community.

Mass Care Services

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Provide life-sustaining services to the affected population with a focus on hydration, feeding, and sheltering to those who have the most need, as well as support for reunifying families.

Mass Search and Rescue Operations

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Deliver traditional and atypical search and rescue capabilities, including personnel, services, animals, and assets to survivors in need, with the goal of saving the greatest number of endangered lives in the shortest time possible.

On-scene Security and Protection

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Ensure a safe and secure environment through law enforcement and related security and protection operations for people and communities located within affected areas and also for all traditional and atypical response personnel engaged in lifesaving and life-sustaining operations.

Operational Communications

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Ensure the capacity for timely communications in support of security, situational awareness, and operations by any and all means available, among and between affected communities in the impact area and all response forces.

Public and Private Services and Resources

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Provide essential public and private services and resources to the affected population and surrounding communities, to include emergency power to critical facilities, fuel support for emergency responders, and access to community staples (e.g., grocery stores, pharmacies, and banks) and fire and other first response services.

Public Health and Medical Services

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Provide lifesaving medical treatment via emergency medical services and related operations and avoid additional disease and injury by providing targeted public health and medical support and products to all people in need within the affected area.

Situational Assessment

  • Mission Area: Response
  • Description: Provide all decision makers with decision-relevant information regarding the nature and extent of the hazard, any cascading effects, and the status of the response.

Economic Recovery

  • Mission Area: Recovery
  • Description: Return economic and business activities (including food and agriculture) to a healthy state and develop new business and employment opportunities that result in a sustainable and economically viable community.

Health and Social Services

  • Mission Area: Recovery
  • Description: Restore and improve health and social services networks to promote the resilience, independence, health (including behavioral health), and well-being of the whole community.

Housing

  • Mission Area: Recovery
  • Description: Implement housing solutions that effectively support the needs of the whole community and contribute to its sustainability and resilience.

Natural and Cultural Resources

  • Mission Area: Recovery
  • Description: Protect natural and cultural resources and historic properties through appropriate planning, mitigation, response, and recovery actions to preserve, conserve, rehabilitate, and restore them consistent with post-disaster community priorities and best practices and in compliance with appropriate environmental and historical preservation laws and executive orders.

UN Report: Sex Exploitations in Haiti

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In June of 2004, the United Nations created a Stabilization Mission in Haiti. This was due in part to the armed conflict when Bertrand Aristide departed the country.

In January of 2010, a devastating earthquake struck and an estimated death rate as pegged at 220,000. The UN deployed 96 peacekeepers.

What came next is disgusting.

UN: Sex exploitation by peacekeepers strongly underreported

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Members of a U.N. peacekeeping mission engaged in “transactional sex” with more than 225 Haitian women who said they needed to do so to obtain things like food and medication, a sign that sexual exploitation remains significantly underreported in such missions, according to a new report obtained by The Associated Press.

 

The draft by the Office of Internal Oversight Services looks at the way U.N. peacekeeping, which has about 125,000 people in some of the world’s most troubled areas, deals with the persistent problem of sexual abuse and exploitation.

The report, expected to be released this month, says major challenges remain a decade after a groundbreaking U.N. report first tackled the issue.

Among its findings: About a third of alleged sexual abuse involves minors under 18. Assistance to victims is “severely deficient.” The average investigation by OIOS, which says it prioritizes cases involving minors or rape, takes more than a year.

And widespread confusion remains on the ground about consensual sex and exploitation. To help demonstrate that, investigators headed to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

A year ago, the report says, investigators interviewed 231 people in Haiti who said they’d had transactional sexual relationships with U.N. peacekeepers. “For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication and household items were frequently cited as the ‘triggering need,'” the report says. Urban and suburban women received “church shoes,’ cell phones, laptops and perfume, as well as money.

“In cases of non-payment, some women withheld the badges of peacekeepers and threatened to reveal their infidelity via social media,” the report says. “Only seven interviewees knew about the United Nations policy prohibiting sexual exploitation and abuse.” None knew about the mission’s hotline to report it.

Each of those instances of transactional sex, the report says, would be considered prohibited conduct, “thus demonstrating significant underreporting.” It was not clear how many peacekeepers were involved.

For all of last year, the total number of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation against members of all U.N. peacekeeping missions was 51, down from 66 the year before, according to the secretary-general’s latest annual report on the issue.

The draft report doesn’t say over what time frame the “transactional sex” in Haiti occurred. The peacekeeping mission there was first authorized in 2004 and, as of the end of March, had more than 7,000 uniformed troops. It is one of four peacekeeping missions that have accounted for the most allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation in recent years, along with those in Congo, Liberia and South Sudan.

One of the U.N. staffers who produced the report would not comment Tuesday, saying it was better to wait until it was released publicly. A spokesman for the peacekeeping office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.N. doesn’t have a standing army and relies on troops contributed by member states. The states are responsible for investigating alleged misconduct by their troops, though the U.N. can step in if there’s no action.

In their response to the report’s findings, which is included in the draft, U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous and field support chief Atul Khare point out that while the number of peacekeepers has increased dramatically over the past decade, the number of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation have gone down.

The U.N. prohibits “exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex,” and it strongly discourages sexual relationships between U.N. staff and people who receive their assistance, saying they are “based on inherently unequal power dynamics” and undermine the world body’s credibility.

But that has led to some confusion on the ground, the new report says, with some members of peacekeeping missions seeing that guidance as a ban on all sexual relationships with local people. The report says the guidelines need to be clarified.

“Staff with long mission experience states that was a ‘general view that people should have romantic rights’ and raised the issue of sexuality as a human right,” the report says.

Let the investigation begin:

The U.N. has been shaken by revelations that a year after staffers first heard children’s accounts of sexual abuse by French soldiers supporting a U.N. peacekeeping mission, no one has been punished. Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday ordered an external inquiry into how that was handled. French authorities last month opened a formal judicial inquiry into the allegations.

Ban raised the earlier allegations Thursday with Gen. Pierre de Villiers, France’s chief of defense staff, in a meeting that Ban’s spokesman said France had requested. Spokesman Stephane Dujarric told The Associated Press that Ban brought up the issue during a wider conversation about peacekeeping operations and told the general that he hopes “the French investigation will be completed as soon as possible.”

 

The Carnage and Weapons in Sudan, UN Ignores

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If there is an historical failure by the United Nations, it is Sudan. The global body publishes a report demonstrating the destruction. It is not a new condition, so one must ask where was Susan Rice when she was the UN ambassador? Where was Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State and where is now John Kerry? How about the White House who is so concerned with human rights? Or, is the matter of rogue nations need weapons and Sudan is the source?

Syrian rebels, frustrated by the West’s reluctance to provide arms, have found a supplier in an unlikely source: Sudan, a country that has been under international arms embargoes and maintains close ties with a stalwart backer of the Syrian government, Iran.

In deals that have not been publicly acknowledged, Western officials and Syrian rebels say, Sudan’s government sold Sudanese- and Chinese-made arms to Qatar, which arranged delivery through Turkey to the rebels.

The shipments included antiaircraft missiles and newly manufactured small-arms cartridges, which were seen on the battlefield in Syria — all of which have helped the rebels combat the Syrian government’s better-armed forces and loyalist militias.

Emerging evidence that Sudan has fed the secret arms pipeline to rebels adds to a growing body of knowledge about where the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is getting its military equipment, often paid for by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia or other sympathetic donors.

Map of the Day: Hungry and Displaced in South Sudan

This map, from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, succinctly shows the number people displaced by fighting in South Sudan and where they have fled.

Screen Shot 2015-06-10 at 10.20.32 AM

There is a deeper story to this map.

Over the last four weeks, fighting has intensified in South Sudan. Over 100,000 people have been displaced in this newest round of fighting. The prospect of mass starvation is very real. The International Committee for the Red Cross warned today that unless “urgent action” is taken, thousands of people may soon starve.

What is that ‘urgent action?’ Mostly, it’s securing more funding for the humanitarian relief effort. The ICRC needs an additional $23 million to provide food aid and help subsistence farmers make it through the lean season while also providing them seeds for the next planting season.

That money, though, is simply not materializing. Yesterday, UNICEF warned that it would have to shut down most of its operations in South Sudan by the end of the month because they are running out of money.  

The acute needs of children in Sudan are huge and go far beyond the impact of the South Sudan crisis. More than 3.2 million children require humanitarian assistance. To date UNICEF in Sudan has received generous support from a wide range of donors. Unfortunately, the funding received covers only 16% of the 117 million USD required. By the end of June, UNICEF will no longer have funding available to support children affected by the war in South Sudan.

UNICEF and ICRC’s funding difficulties in South Sudan are symptomatic of a larger problem facing the international community. The world’s humanitarian system is on the brink of collapse right now, with several ongoing complex emergencies stretching donors and relief agencies thin.  Between Iraq, Syria, Nepal, CAR and Mali these emergencies are essentially competing for the same donor dollars and donors have so far been unable or unwilling to fully fund the relief operations of each of these emergencies. Unless donors step up in a big way, it would seem that relief operations in South Sudan may be the next to fall.

The war no one is fighting or winning. An highly researched 4 part series is found here.

An in-depth timeline for Sudan is found here, but since 2012:

2012 June – Week-long student protests in Khartoum against austerity measures spread from to the wider public after the government cuts fuel and other subsidies in response to the drop in oil revenue after the independence of South Sudan.

2012 August – Some 655,000 have been displaced or severely affected by fighting between the army and rebels in states bordering on South Sudan, the UN reports.

Sudan and South Sudan strike a last-minute deal on the South’s export of oil via Sudan’s pipelines.

2012 September – The presidents of Sudan and South Sudan agree on plans for a demilitarised buffer zone and resuming oil sales after days of talks in Ethiopia, but fail to resolve border issues, including Abyei.

Clashes with rebels in Darfur and South Kordofan region.

2012 October – Explosions destroy an arms factory in Khartoum. Sudan accuses Israel of the attack on what is believed to be an Iranian-run plant making weapons for Hamas in Gaza. Israel declines to comment.

2013 March – Sudan and South Sudan agree to resume pumping oil, ending a shutdown caused by a dispute over fees more than a year ago, and to withdraw troops from their borders to create a demilitarised zone.

2013 September – Wave of demonstrations across the country over the government’s decision to cut fuel subsidies. Scores of people die in clashes with police.

Ruling party splits

2013 October – Dissident members of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) announce plans for a breakaway party aimed at reaching out to secularists and leftists, in what is seen as the most serious split in the elite since Hassan al-Turabi went into opposition in 1999.

2013 December – President Bashir drops long-time ally and first vice president Ali Osman Taha from the cabinet in a major shake-up.

2014 May – A court in Khartoum prompts an international outcry by sentencing a pregnant woman born to a Muslim father but raised as a Christian to death for apostasy after failing to recant her Christianity.

2014 December – The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court halts investigations into war crimes in Darfur for lack of support from the UN Security Council.

2015 April – President Bashir is re-elected for another five year term. He wins nearly 95 percent of the vote in a poll marked by low turnout and boycotted by most opposition parties.

 

Obamacare = O’boondoggle

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Everything has a consequence and there are many attached to Obamacare, many not in the mainstream knowledge base. Jobs and innovation in the United States is the latest victim of the law. The Supreme Court will decide the fate of the law under the King vs. Burwell case at the end of the month. A description of the case is found here. There are some key facts on the case that need to be known as noted here. Additional destructive consequences still loom in the future.

ObamaCare’s Anti-Innovation Effect

by Scott W. Atlas

Of the many unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act, perhaps the least noticed is its threat to innovation. Although most discussions center on the law’s more immediate effects on hiring, insurance rates and access to doctors and care, attention should also be paid to its impact on U.S. research and development and health-care technology.

The overwhelming majority of the world’s health-care innovation occurs in the U.S. This includes ground-breaking drug treatments, surgical procedures, medical devices, patents, diagnostics and much more. Most of the funding for that innovation—about 71% of U.S. R&D investment—comes from private industry. A recent R&D Magazine survey of industry leaders in 63 countries ranked the U.S. No. 1 in the world for health-care innovation.

But that environment is changing. According to R&D Magazine and the research firm Battelle, growth of R&D spending in the U.S. from 2012 to 2014 averaged just 2.1%, down from an average of 6% over the previous 15 years. In that same 15-year period, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, India and the European Union saw faster R&D spending growth than the U.S. China’s grew on average 22% per year.

The recent slowdown in R&D spending in the U.S. is in part caused by weak economic growth since the 2008 financial crisis. But the economy’s weakness itself has been exacerbated by the negative impact of new taxes and regulations under ObamaCare. According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the new health-care law will levy more than $500 billion in new taxes over its first 10 years to help pay for insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion. These new taxes include significant levies on key health-care industries, such as manufacturers of medical devices and drugs, and their investors.

As a result, small and large U.S. health-care technology companies are moving R&D centers and jobs overseas. The CEO of one of the largest health-care companies in America recently told me that the device tax his company paid last year exceeded his company’s entire R&D budget. Already a long list of companies—including Boston Scientific , Stryker and Cook Medical—have announced job cuts and plans to open new centers for R&D, manufacturing and clinical trials overseas.

The bureaucrats at the Food and Drug Administration are also hindering medical-technology and drug development. According to a 2010 survey of more than 200 medical-device companies by medical professor and entrepreneur Josh Makower and his colleagues at Stanford University, delays of approvals for new medical devices are now far longer in the U.S. than in many other developed countries. In the European Union—not exactly known for cutting through red tape—it takes on average seven months to gain approval for low- to moderate-risk devices. In the U.S., FDA approval for similar devices takes on average 31 months.

The 2011 PricewaterhouseCoopers Medical Technology Innovation Scorecard found that “the gap between innovation leaders and emerging economies is rapidly narrowing.” And that “although the United States will hold its lead, the country will continue to lose ground during the next decade.” It goes on to say that “China, India, and Brazil will experience the strongest gains during the next 10 years.”

Since the signing of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, private-equity investment in new U.S. health-care startups has also diminished. Annual capital investment has decreased to $41 billion in 2013 from $61 billion in 2011, according to quarterly reports by the accounting and audit firm McGladrey LLP. Similarly, the Silicon Valley-based law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati reported in its semiannual Life Sciences Reports decreases from the first half of 2010 through the second half of 2013 in deal closings and capital raised for startups in biopharmaceuticals, medical devices and equipment, and diagnostics, with only a slight uptick in health-information systems investment.

Meanwhile, many of the best and brightest who come to the U.S. to study science, technology, engineering and math—the STEM subjects that are so crucial to innovation—are choosing to return to their home countries upon graduation. In 2008, a survey conducted by Vivek Wadhwa and his team of researchers at Duke, Harvard and the University of California found that only 6% of Indian, 10% of Chinese and 15% of European students expected to make America their permanent home. Much of this is Congress’s fault. Lawmakers have been slow to increase limits on H-1B visas for high-skill foreign workers. Pressure has been brought to bear on Congress to take action, but it may be too late for an increase in the visas to have much effect in health care, given the decline in R&D spending that would make use of their talents.

What can be done to reverse these damaging trends? First, strip back the heavy tax burdens that currently inhibit innovation, starting with repealing the Affordable Care Act’s $29 billion medical-device excise tax and the $80 billion tax on brand-name drugs. Change the tax code to add incentives for investment in early-stage medical technology and life-science companies, as well as for philanthropic gifts to academic institutions that promote tech entrepreneurs.

And finally, simplify processes for new device and drug approvals, so that the FDA becomes a favorable rather than an obstructionist environment for these life-saving and cost-saving discoveries. It’s a tall order, especially in today’s Washington. But America’s health—and wealth—depend on it.

*** Obama’s ‘King v. Burwell’ Speech Displayed The Very Ideological Fervor That Led Him To Break The Law

In a case called King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court will soon decide whether it agrees with two lower courts that President Obama is breaking the law by subjecting 57 million employers and individuals to illegal taxes, and spending the illegal proceeds to hide the cost of HealthCare.gov coverage from 6.5 million enrollees. Today the president delivered a speech designed to cow the Supremes into turning a blind eye to the law. Instead, he offered what for some is the missing piece of the King v. Burwell puzzle. He displayed the very ideological fervor that leads powerful people to break the rules.

“We have an obligation to put ourselves in our neighbor’s shoes, and to see the common humanity in each other,” the president said. Yet the president of the United States has an even more important obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”  It’s right there in Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which President Obama swore to uphold. King v. Burwell is about his failure to meet that obligation.