Category Archives: Industry Jobs Oil Economics

Welfare Funding Jihad Terror

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Countries that are too generous with welfare and social programs dole out millions of dollars to people that filed fraudulent applications all without so much as any investigation or concern by agencies. Does anyone care outside of the taxpayers themselves? Where is the outrage?

Thousands of Brits have traveled to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS. Money for travel and weapons for the jihadis comes from tax dollars. Australia, a country that has the most fighters in ISIS has the same issue and has worked to stop some welfare payments.

On the American home front, it is no different. Islamic Relief Worldwide, the same charity connected to the mayor of Baltimore, continues to fund terrorism, so why would they be able to keep their IRS tax-exempt status?

Yet when it comes to entitlement programs in the United States funding jihad, the cases number in the thousands. A sting operation in Alabama called Operation T-bone found 17 suspects using EBT cards to send money to Yemen, where the Houthis, an Iranian militia has taken control of the country. In Minnesota, two Somalia men used their college grant money to travel to the Middle East to join militant groups.

One of the more well known terrorists, the Tsarnaev brothers, otherwise known as the Boston bombers did the same thing.

‘The family of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon bomb attacks, received food stamps and welfare when the brothers were growing up, according to a letter from the state Department of Transitional Assistance that was obtained by the Globe.

In the letter, sent Thursday to the chairman of the House Post Audit and Oversight Committee, the department outlined the benefits that the brothers had received through their parents, Anzor and Zubeidat, as well as benefits Tamerlan Tsarnaev later received as a member of his wife’s household.

Anzor and Zubeidat received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, commonly known as food stamps, from October 2002 to November 2004, when Dzhokhar would have been about 8 to 10 years old and Tamerlan 15 to 17. The family also received them from August 2009 to December 2011, according to the letter.

Anzor was also a Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children grantee from January 2003 to March 2003, and again from August 2009 to June 2010.’

In 2014, there was yet another case of EBT fraud and synthetic marijuana in Davie, Florida where citizens themselves were the whistleblowers as the investigations found the money was going overseas to fund terrorism.

In Baltimore, 9 separate retailers and $7 million in food-stamp network has done the same thing.

The indictments allege that the defendants exchanged EBT benefits for cash, in violation of the food stamp program rules. The indictments allege that the defendants typically paid half the value of the EBT benefits in cash. To avoid detection, the defendants often debited the funds from the card in multiple transactions over a period of hours or days. As a result of unlawful cash transactions, the defendants obtained more than $6,898,000 in EBT deposits for transactions in which the stores did not provide food.

According to the indictments, the defendants listed below owned and/or operated stores in Baltimore that were authorized to accept SNAP. The defendants received instruction regarding the requirements and regulations of the food stamp program, including that only eligible food items could be exchanged for EBT benefits and that a retailer may never exchange EBT benefits for cash or non-food items.

Abdullah Aljaradi, age 51, of Baltimore: Second Obama Express and D&M Deli and Grocery, 901 Harlem Avenue, Suite A and B, respectively. From October 2010 through July 2013, Aljaradi allegedly obtained more than $2 million in payments for food sales that never occurred.
Dae Cho, age 66, and Hyung Cho, age 40, both of Catonsville: K&S Food Market, 3910 W. Belvedere Avenue. From November 2010 through July 2013, Dae Cho and her son Hyung Cho allegedly obtained more than $1.4 million in in payments for food sales that never occurred.
Abdo Mohamed Nagi, age 54, of Baltimore: New York Deli and Grocery 1207 West Baltimore Street. From February 2011 through May 2013, Nagi allegedly obtained more than $1.2 million in payments for food sales that never occurred.

None of this is new, cases were common going back to 2004, yet with ten years hence, why have this continued? The FBI and government agencies have the tools to track the fraud, money laundering and terror support structures. Where is the outrage?

 

CFR and Robina Foundation Behind Globalization

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All foreign policy is coordinated between the U.S. State Department and the United Nations. We cannot know all the details and methods, yet below a summary of a major donor and power of influence is but one of many when it comes to the globalization of America and loss of sovereignty. All government agencies are subservient to the White House and the State Department.

“International Institutions and Global Governance Program

World Order in the 21st Century

A New Initiative of the Council on Foreign Relations

“The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has launched a comprehensive five-year program on international institutions and global governance. The purpose of this cross-cutting initiative is to explore the institutional requirements for world order in the twenty-first century. The undertaking recognizes that the architecture of global governance—largely reflecting the world as it existed in 1945—has not kept pace with fundamental changes in the international system, including but not limited to globalization. Existing multilateral arrangements thus provide an inadequate foundation for addressing today’s most pressing threats and opportunities and for advancing U.S. national and broader global interests. The program seeks to identify critical weaknesses in current frameworks for multilateral cooperation; propose specific reforms tailored to new global circumstances; and promote constructive U.S. leadership in building the capacities of existing organizations and in sponsoring new, more effective regional and global institutions and partnerships. This program is made possible by a generous grant from the Robina Foundation.”

The Board members of Robina are chilling. One such board member is SUSAN V. BERRESFORD, formerly of the Ford Foundation. Remember Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother worked at the Ford Foundation.

The mission of the Council of Foreign Relations in paid cooperation with the Robina Foundation, reads as such:

The International Institutions and Global Governance (IIGG) Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is supported by a generous grant from the Robina Foundation. It aims to identify the institutional requirements for effective multilateral cooperation in the twenty-first century. The program is motivated by recognition that the architecture of global governance-largely reflecting the world as it existed in 1945-has not kept pace with fundamental changes in the international system. These shifts include the spread of transnational challenges, the rise of new powers, and the mounting influence of nonstate actors. Existing multilateral arrangements thus provide an inadequate foundation for addressing many of today’s most pressing threats and opportunities and for advancing U.S. national and broader global interests.

Given these trends, U.S. policymakers and other interested actors require rigorous, independent analysis of current structures of multilateral cooperation, and of the promises and pitfalls of alternative institutional arrangements. The IIGG program meets these needs by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of existing multilateral institutions and proposing reforms tailored to new international circumstances.

Robina Foundation Awards CFR $10.3 Million Grant

to Expand Global Governance Program

January 20, 2012

The Robina Foundation has awarded the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) a five-year, $10.3 million grant to expand its activities on international cooperation. This award is one of the largest operating grants in CFR’s history and will support its International Institutions and Global Governance (IIGG) Program.

The IIGG Program was founded in 2008 with a generous grant from Robina with the recognition that existing multilateral arrangements are inadequate to address the transnational challenges facing the United States. The program and its scholars’ work focuses on the institutional requirements needed for effective cooperation in the twenty-first century. “The Robina Foundation’s generous commitment to IIGG will allow CFR to deepen and strengthen its work examining multilateral institutions, and what they can do to enhance the world’s ability to contend with the most pressing global issues,” says CFR President Richard N. Haass.

In its first three years, the IIGG Program has tracked and mapped the landscape of international organizations through its multimedia interactive, the Global Governance Monitor. IIGG has also produced over twenty reports on priorities for institutional reform, and provided policymakers with concrete recommendations for more effective management of the world’s most pressing problems.

From Hillary Clinton herself, she reveals that the Council of Foreign Relations not only provides the government policy but CFR also controls most often media relating to foreign policy.

Obama Not Stopping Russia

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Putin Aggression:

There are several people in the Ukraine that are hunting down Soviet loyalist soldiers and providing evidence of Putin’s continued aggression towards Ukraine. They are using social media, photos, tracing steps and following Russian troops footsteps.

The United States needs to take new steps to respond to the Ukraine conflict because economic sanctions and other Western actions have failed to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to reverse course, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said June 5.

Carter, speaking after conferring with U.S. diplomats and military officers in Stuttgart, Germany, said the Pentagon was concerned about “further things happening” after the worst upsurge in fighting in months broke out this week in eastern Ukraine.

Carter’s warning comes after NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg accused Moscow of sending sophisticated new weapons to Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, including artillery and anti-aircraft systems.

“What’s clear is that sanctions are working on the Russian economy,” causing considerable hardship for ordinary Russians and a deep recession this year, Carter told reporters on his plane back to Washington.

“What is not apparent is that that effect on his economy is deterring Putin from following the course that was evidenced in Crimea last year,” when Moscow annexed the Ukrainian territory, he said. Read more here.

Then without any warning or briefing from the State Department, a Russian violation has not been corrected as it relates to intermediate ranged ground launched missiles from a 1987 arms deal.

WASHINGTON — The State Department reported on Friday that Russia had failed to correct a violation of a landmark arms control accord between Washington and Moscow that prohibits intermediate-range ground-launched missiles.

At issue is the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as the I.N.F. Treaty, which the Obama administration says the Russians breached by testing a cruise missile. But American officials have made no discernible headway in persuading the Russians to acknowledge the compliance problem, let alone resolve it.

In December, the Pentagon told Congress that it had developed a range of military options to pressure Russia to remedy the violation or neutralize any advantages it might gain if the diplomatic efforts fail. But no Pentagon countermeasures have been announced.

The American allegation was outlined in the State Department’s annual report on compliance with arms control agreements. It comes as the Obama administration has sought to identify new areas for potential cooperation with Russia, including the crisis in Syria, even as it has continued to object to Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine.

The State Department did nothing to draw attention to the report. An unclassified version of it was posted on the agency’s website late on Friday afternoon with no advance notice, and no officials were made available to discuss it. (A classified version of the report was provided to Congress earlier this week.)

Representative Mac Thornberry, the Texas Republican who is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said that the Obama administration had not been forceful enough in pressing Moscow to comply with the agreement.

“Russia’s development of intermediate-range nuclear platforms is designed to hold our interests at risk and enable Putin’s expansionist policies,” Mr. Thornberry said in a statement, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin. “It is not a situation we should accommodate for two years running. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has proposed meaningful military options to deal with Russia’s I.N.F. violations. The president should order their implementation without delay.”

American officials say that Russia began carrying out flight tests of the missile as early as 2008, and Rose Gottemoeller, the State Department’s senior arms control official, first raised the possibility of a violation with Russian officials two years ago.

Despite the allegation of a violation, the State Department report asserted that it was in the interest of the United States not to withdraw from the agreement, which it said “contributes to the security of our allies and to regional stability in Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region.” The accord bans American and Russian ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles that are able to fly 300 to 3,400 miles.

It is unclear what steps the Obama administration might take next. Ms. Gottemoeller told Congress in December that the development of ground-launched cruise missiles had proceeded far enough that Russia had “the capability to deploy it.”

Those concerns are not the only ones about Russian compliance with arms control accords. The State Department report asserted that Russia may have violated troop notification requirements under the Vienna Document, an agreement between the member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Russian forces who were massed near Ukraine last year, the State Department report said, “exceeded personnel and/or equipment levels intended to trigger notification requirements.” But when Russia was asked for additional information, “It failed to provide responsive replies.”

The report also faulted Russia’s adherence to the Open Skies Treaty, which seeks to reduce the risk of war by providing for unarmed observation flights.

In 2014, the report noted, Russia imposed new restrictions on such flights over Kaliningrad, a heavily militarized Russian enclave near the Baltic Sea.

“Russia continues to fail to meet treaty obligations to allow effective observation of its entire territory,” the report said.

Russia has leveled its own charges against the United States, including that the Aegis missile defense system that is being deployed in Europe is able to launch intermediate-range missiles.

The State Department report said that this system did not have any “offensive capability” and was allowed by the treaty.

U.S. Healthcare, a Manufactured Crisis

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Is Our Healthcare Crisis Man-Made?

by: Juliette Fildes

The media would have us believe that the healthcare crisis is us something that mysteriously arose out of a number of factors, including periods of economic crisis and an ever-growing deficit, yet what if the crisis was actually manufactured?

Americans are forced to buy insurance that doesn’t really protect them against their greatest health risks at all. There are many factors that reveal that insurance companies are favored, as are the pharmaceutical and medical industries. In the past, charity hospitals existed to attend to medical emergencies but over the past few decades, federal law has ensured that Americans can no longer receive unfunded care.

Healthcare should be about protecting the consumer, but as long as the medical industry is permitted to charge whatever price they deem fit for a procedure, there is little chance that Americans will pay the significantly lower prices paid by patients in other countries.

We must fight for the establishment of affordable alternatives to current hospitals and clinics; without a free market, it will be difficult for the situation to change for the better. Read about how the man-made health care crisis came about and discover how we can put an end to it.    

Understanding U.S. Healthcare Costs

Infographic provided by Calculators.org

Further Reading

 

Disneyworld Discriminates Against Americans

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October 2014 – Disney CEO Bob Iger is one of eight co-chairs of the Partnership for a New American Economy, a leading group advocating for an increase in the H-1B visa cap. Last Friday, this partnership was a sponsor of an H-1B briefing at the U.S. Capitol for congressional staffers. The briefing was closed to the press.

One of the briefing documents handed out at the congressional forum made this claim: “H-1B workers complement – instead of displace – U.S. Workers.” It explains that as employers use foreign workers to fill “more technical and low-level jobs, firms are able to expand” and allow U.S. workers “to assume managerial and leadership positions.”

The document was obtained by Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California at Davis and a longtime critic of the H-1B program. He posted it on his blog.
From the perspective of five laid-off Disney IT workers, all of whom agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, Disney cut well-paid and longtime staff members, some who had been previously singled out for excellence, as it shifted work to contractors. These contractors used foreign labor, mostly from India. The laid-off workers believe the primary motivation behind Disney’s action was cost-cutting.

“Some of these folks were literally flown in the day before to take over the exact same job I was doing,” said one of the IT workers who lost his job. He trained his replacement and is angry over the fact he had to train someone from India “on site, in our country.”

Disney officials promised new job opportunities as a result of the restructuring, and employees marked for termination were encouraged to apply for those positions. But  the workers interviewed said they knew of few co-workers who had landed one of the new jobs.

Employees said the original number of workers laid off back in October was more than several hundred. But the Disney source put that number lower, saying approximately 135 IT workers lost their jobs.

It gets worse.

Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacement
Disney executives said that the layoffs were part of a reorganization, and that the company opened more positions than it eliminated.

But the layoffs at Disney and at other companies, including the Southern California Edison power utility, are raising new questions about how businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary visas, known as H-1B, to place immigrants in technology jobs in the United States. These visas are at the center of a fierce debate in Congress over whether they complement American workers or displace them.

According to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when American workers with those skills cannot be found. Their use, the guidelines say, should not “adversely affect the wages and working conditions” of Americans. Because of legal loopholes, however, in practice, companies do not have to recruit American workers first or guarantee that Americans will not be displaced.

Too often, critics say, the visas are being used to bring in immigrants to do the work of Americans for less money, with laid-off American workers having to train their replacements.

Read much more here.