Category Archives: Whistleblower

Welfare Use by Immigrant Households with Children

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Some studies speak for themselves. This one is chilling. It demonstrates failure, lack of control and management as well as a continued monetary magnet that wont soon or ever go away.

 

A Look at Cash, Medicaid, Housing, and Food Programs

by: The Center for Immigration Studies

Thirteen years after welfare reform, the share of immigrant-headed households (legal and illegal) with a child (under age 18) using at least one welfare program continues to be very high. This is partly due to the large share of immigrants with low levels of education and their resulting low incomes — not their legal status or an unwillingness to work. The major welfare programs examined in this report include cash assistance, food assistance, Medicaid, and public and subsidized housing.

Among the findings:

  • In 2009 (based on data collected in 2010), 57 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal and illegal) with children (under 18) used at least one welfare program, compared to 39 percent for native households with children.
  • Immigrant households’ use of welfare tends to be much higher than natives for food assistance programs and Medicaid. Their use of cash and housing programs tends to be similar to native households.
  • A large share of the welfare used by immigrant households with children is received on behalf of their U.S.-born children, who are American citizens. But even households with children comprised entirely of immigrants (no U.S.-born children) still had a welfare use rate of 56 percent in 2009.
  • Immigrant households with children used welfare programs at consistently higher rates than natives, even before the current recession. In 2001, 50 percent of all immigrant households with children used at least one welfare program, compared to 32 percent for natives.
  • Households with children with the highest welfare use rates are those headed by immigrants from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (75 percent), and Ecuador (70 percent). Those with the lowest use rates are from the United Kingdom (7 percent), India (19 percent), Canada (23 percent), and Korea (25 percent).
  • The states where immigrant households with children have the highest welfare use rates are Arizona (62 percent); Texas, California, and New York (61 percent); Pennsylvania (59 percent); Minnesota and Oregon (56 percent); and Colorado (55 percent).
  • We estimate that 52 percent of households with children headed by legal immigrants used at least one welfare program in 2009, compared to 71 percent for illegal immigrant households with children. Illegal immigrants generally receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children.
  • Illegal immigrant households with children primarily use food assistance and Medicaid, making almost no use of cash or housing assistance. In contrast, legal immigrant households tend to have relatively high use rates for every type of program.
  • High welfare use by immigrant-headed households with children is partly explained by the low education level of many immigrants. Of households headed by an immigrant who has not graduated high school, 80 percent access the welfare system, compared to 25 percent for those headed by an immigrant who has at least a bachelor’s degree.
  • An unwillingness to work is not the reason immigrant welfare use is high. The vast majority (95 percent) of immigrant households with children had at least one worker in 2009. But their low education levels mean that more than half of these working immigrant households with children still accessed the welfare system during 2009.
  • If we exclude the primary refugee-sending countries, the share of immigrant households with children using at least one welfare program is still 57 percent.
  • Welfare use tends to be high for both new arrivals and established residents. In 2009, 60 percent of households with children headed by an immigrant who arrived in 2000 or later used at least one welfare program; for households headed by immigrants who arrived before 2000 it was 55 percent.
  • For all households (those with and without children), the use rates were 37 percent for households headed by immigrants and 22 percent for those headed by natives.
  • Although most new legal immigrants are barred from using some welfare for the first five years, this provision has only a modest impact on household use rates because most immigrants have been in the United States for longer than five years; the ban only applies to some programs; some states provide welfare to new immigrants with their own money; by becoming citizens immigrants become eligible for all welfare programs; and perhaps most importantly, the U.S.-born children of immigrants (including those born to illegal immigrants) are automatically awarded American citizenship and are therefore eligible for all welfare programs at birth.
  • The eight major welfare programs examined in this report are SSI (Supplemental Security Income for low income elderly and disabled), TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), WIC (Women, Infants, and Children food program), free/reduced school lunch, food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), Medicaid (health insurance for those with low incomes), public housing, and rent subsidies.

Introduction

Concern that immigrants may become a burden on society has been a long-standing issue in the United States. As far back as colonial times there were restrictions on the arrival of people who might become a burden on the community. This report analyzes survey data collected by the Census Bureau from 2002 to 2009 to examine use of welfare programs by immigrant and native households, particularly those with children. The Current Population Survey (CPS) asks respondents about their use of welfare programs in the year prior to the survey,1 so we are examining self-reported welfare use rates from 2001 to 2009. The findings show that more than half of immigrant-headed households with children use at least one major welfare program, compared to about one-third of native-headed households. The primary reason immigrant households with children tend to have higher overall rates is their much higher use of food assistance programs and Medicaid; use of cash assistance and housing programs tends to be very similar to native households.

Why Study Immigrant Welfare Use?

Use of welfare programs by immigrants is important for two primary reasons. First, it is one measure of their impact on American society. If immigrants have high use rates it could be an indication that they are creating a net fiscal burden for the country. Welfare programs comprise a significant share of federal, and even state, expenditures. Total costs for the programs examined in this study were $517 billion in fiscal year 2008.2 Moreover, those who receive welfare tend to pay little or no income tax. If use of welfare programs is considered a problem and if immigrant use of those programs is thought to be high, then it is an indication that immigration or immigrant policy needs to be a adjusted. Immigration policy is concerned with the number of immigrants allowed into the country and the selection criteria used for admission. It is also concerned with the level of resources devoted to controlling illegal immigration. Immigrant policy, on the other hand, is concerned with how we treat immigrants who are legally admitted to the country, such as welfare eligibility, citizenship requirements, and assimilation efforts.

The second reason to examine welfare use is that it can provide insight into how immigrants are doing in the United States. Accessing welfare programs can be seen as an indication that immigrants are having a difficult time in the United States. Or perhaps that some immigrants are assimilating into the welfare system. Thus, welfare use is both a good way of measuring immigration’s impact on American society and immigrants’ adaptation to life in the United States.

Read on if you dare by clicking here.

Hillary DID have Accomplishments at State Dept

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Sheesh, it is true she did have many accomplishments but they are not the successes she would use for boasting.

She raised lots of money for the Clinton Foundation, she opened the pathway for Russia to control up to 50% of the uranium output of the United States and she was complicit is the death of four dead Americans.

Her best achievements at State was obstruction and cover-ups.

Sexual harassment complaints at State Department soar under Clinton, Kerry

In part from the Washington Times:

In a disclosure with political implications for 2016, the State Department’s chief watchdog reported Thursday that worker harassment complaints have nearly tripled inside the agency during the tenures of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry but the agency still doesn’t have mandatory training for all employees.

“A significant increase in reported harassment inquiries in the Department of State over the past few fiscal years supports the need for mandatory harassment training,” the department’s inspector general warned in a new oversight report that reviewed the agency’s civil rights office.

The report states that formal harassment claims rose from 88 cases in 2011 during Mrs. Clinton’s third year as America’s top diplomat, to 248 in 2014, Mr. Kerry’s second year as secretary. Hundreds more informal complaints were lodged during the same period.

Last year, 43 percent of the new complaints alleged harassment or unfair hirings or promotions while 38 percent raised sex discrimination or reprisals, the report said.

The report said some of the increases could be attributed to growing knowledge among employees about sexual harassment issues and the procedures for reporting it.

The inspector general said the Office of Civil Rights has made strides in improving the quality, speed and quantity of its work in recent years but that performance issues remains, such as a need to rebalance workloads, reassess positions and complete delinquent performance evaluations. The office has two civil rights complaints pending against itself, it added. More sordid details are here.

Hold on there is more….and personally I read the emails in Wikileaks a few years ago.

Records suggest Hillary chief of staff blocked probe of ambassador nominee

From the Washington Examiner:

 Top State Department staff under Hillary Clinton allegedly blocked an  investigation into the president’s nominee for ambassador to Iraq.

The ambassador-designate, Brett McGurk, was accused of engaging in inappropriate behavior with a reporter from the Wall Street Journal and funneling her information he was not authorized to disclose.

McGurk withdrew his name from consideration for the ambassadorship in the face of a growing scandal over emails that revealed his extra-marital affair with the reporter, Gina Chon. His relationship with the journalist prompted concerns among Republican lawmakers, although the extent of the internal cover-up of his conduct was not then known.

McGurk is presently one of President Obama’s key advisers on the Islamic State, having survived the scandal in 2012 with the help of higher-ups in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

“There were rumors inside the State Department that the investigation into McGurk’s actions in Iraq was squashed at the very highest levels,” Van Buren told the Washington Examiner.

Van Buren retired from the State Department in 2012 after a lengthy legal battle with the State Department over whistleblower disclosures he made in a book about his time in Iraq with the agency from 2009 to 2010.

During his nearly quarter-century at the State Department, Van Buren said he saw a variety of management styles from the secretary’s office as agency leadership shifted.

“I think what a lot of State Department people felt was that previous secretaries were focused more on protecting the institution and, by extension, themselves,” he said. “Whereas the Clinton people were 90 percent concerned about protecting Hillary and maybe 10 percent concerned about protecting the institution.”

Although the investigation was eventually closed in July 2013, speculation that he was about to be named to another high-level position involving Iraq began swirling months earlier.

McGurk is presently Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.

His high-profile role puts him at the forefront of the conflict with the Islamic State. For example, he appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday to announce the government’s intention to equip tribal fighters in Iraq to support their fight against the Islamic State.

McGurk’s affair with Chon, to whom he is now married, became the subject of public scrutiny after a 2012 “computer hacking incident” in Baghdad resulted in the publication of racy emails back and forth between the two while he was in line to be the next ambassador to Iraq.

The leaked emails suggested at the time the two had a sexual relationship. But they also suggested the ambassador-designate may have given sensitive information to the reporter.

The communications show McGurk asked Chon to text him on his Blackberry because texting was a “better way to engage in sensitive deliberations” than emailing from his government address.

Several messages between McGurk and the Journal reporter suggested he used his position to provide Chon with access to Iraqi sources. Yes, there are more details on this one too.

In case that is not enough on the details of Iraq, Blackberry phones, emails and more….click here.

 

 

 

 

The Inner Circle of the Hillary Cover-Up Machine

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When it comes to Hillary’s claim on classified material in her emails, her honesty is now being challenged in earnest. Particular emails of interest are found here.

American Bridge has operatives that are dispatched to follow any and all republicans around the country, regardless of who they are to track each word spoken by the politician and the locations as well. Then American Bridge hooks up with Media Matters and other liberal online media sources and publishes twisted versions of events. It is interesting to note that Rodell Mollineau is the treasurer of American Bridge and :

Rodell Mollineau past relationships:
American Bridge 21st Century – president
Mark L. Pryor – communications director
Harry Reid – staff director
Tom Vilsack – communications director
David Brock
Sidney Blumenthal
Then there is ‘Correct the Record’ a website launched by Hillary supporters. Correct the Record is an inside mission launched by American Bridge where the point people include Burns Strider, a top Clinton donor as well as Susie Tompkins.
This is all especially noteworthy based on the recent 8 hour testimony that Sidney Blumenthal just gave to the Trey Gowdy led committee on Benghazi.
For an insightful read on the follow the money doctrine for clues and the continued intrigue, Politico has a breaking summary.

Benghazi panel probes Sidney Blumenthal’s work for David Brock

Republican members of a special congressional committee spent hours on Tuesday grilling Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal about the inner workings of the Clinton’s philanthropic and political operations, going well beyond the 2012 Benghazi attacks that the committee is charged with investigating, according to sources familiar with the hearing.

A particular focus during Tuesday’s closed-door deposition was a network of groups founded by Clinton enforcer David Brock that — POLITICO has learned — paid Blumenthal more than $10,000 a month as they defended Hillary Clinton against conservative attacks, first while she was secretary of state and then as she prepared for and ultimately entered the presidential campaign.

While still secretary of state, Clinton emailed back and forth with Blumenthal about efforts by one of the groups, Media Matters, to neutralize criticism of her handling of the deadly assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, sources tell POLITICO.

“Got all this done. Complete refutation on Libya smear,” Blumenthal wrote to Clinton in an Oct. 10, 2012, email into which he had pasted links to four Media Matters posts criticizing Fox News and Republicans for politicizing the Benghazi attacks and challenging claims of lax security around the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, according to a source who has reviewed the email exchange. Blumenthal signed off the email to Clinton by suggesting that one of her top aides, Philippe Reines, “can circulate these links,” according to the source.

The emails were not included in documents originally turned over by the State Department. The Select Committee on Benghazi obtained the emails through subpoena. And the committee’s Republican members spent much of Tuesday’s nine-hour-session pressing Blumenthal about his role in producing the posts, and his tangled web of business and personal relationships in the Clintons’ orbit and beyond, according to sources.

In addition to Blumenthal’s role at Media Matters, he was involved with the Brock-founded groups American Bridge and Correct the Record, he worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and then afterward at the $2 billion Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation (which paid Blumenthal about $10,000 a month even as he was on Brock’s payroll). During this time, he also advised a pair of businesses seeking potentially lucrative contracts in Libya, while sharing intelligence on the country with Clinton while she was secretary of state.

Republicans privy to the Benghazi committee’s strategy say it’s important to map out Blumenthal’s many affiliations in order to understand the motivations for the counsel he provided to Clinton, and the degree to which she relied on it. But Democrats argue that Tuesday’s questioning shows that Republicans are conducting a politicized fishing expedition intended to damage Clinton’s presidential campaign and its supporters.

Brock, informed Wednesday by POLITICO of the committee’s line of questioning, called it ironic.

“The Republicans asked more about what our groups do to debunk their false claims about Benghazi than about the attacks in Benghazi? That sounds like a bizarre waste of time,” Brock said. “All our work is made public. And I’d be happy to give Chairman Gowdy a tour of our offices at his convenience,” Brock said, referring to Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who chairs the Benghazi committee.

A Republican congressional source defended the questioning. “Your background is always relevant: where you worked and who was paying you during that time period? So while he was sending information to Secretary Clinton … you have to ask: Who was paying your salary?” said the source. “He was at one point working for Media Matters, Correct the Record and American Bridge, and some of those entities have quite a bit to say about Benghazi.”

Under Republican questioning, Blumenthal suggested he was merely forwarding the Media Matters posts about Benghazi to Clinton but had no role in writing, editing or placing them.

And when Republicans asked him why he seemed to take credit for such posts in his email, he said he may have overstated his role, according to separate sources familiar with the questioning.

“So the next question is: What did you ‘get done’?” one source said, referring to Blumenthal’s own words from his email. “And he stumbled over that.”

Some of the Media Matters posts Blumenthal forwarded, which were published in the weeks after the attacks, criticize Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) for suggesting the Obama administration tried to cover up the events around the attack and for blaming the State Department for failing to implement sufficient security at the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

One post in particular accused Chaffetz of “fundamental hypocrisy” after he admitted in a CNN interview that he had previously voted to cut embassy security funding.

Chaffetz chairs an oversight committee that previously examined the attacks but ceded jurisdiction late last year to the select committee, so he was not present for Tuesday’s hearing. But during the hearing, sources said Gowdy, who is close friends with Chaffetz, suggested Media Matters’s scrutiny bothered the Utah Republican.

Another GOP select committee member asked whether Blumenthal wrote or edited a statement released Monday by Correct the Record that chided the committee for subpoenaing Blumenthal. The statement said Blumenthal “has not one thing to do with what happened in Benghazi or the government’s reaction to it,” and it called the committee “disgraceful” and “a political sideshow,” suggesting a more accurate name for it would be the “Select Committee to Destroy Hillary Clinton.”

Brock said that Blumenthal had no role in Monday’s release scolding Gowdy’s committee, but otherwise declined to comment on Blumenthal’s role.

Sources who have worked with Brock’s groups, however, say that Blumenthal offered high-level strategy and messaging advice on numerous subjects and participated in weekly strategy calls with Brock and other top group officials. The Benghazi debate almost certainly would have been discussed in those calls, said the sources, since it became a major focus of Brock’s groups, which in 2013 helped Brock pen a book called “The Benghazi Hoax.”

Blumenthal’s ideas for Brock’s groups would often be passed along to staff members and were sometimes greeted by eye rolls, said an operative who interacted with Brock and Blumenthal. But, the operative said, “Brock respects and trusts him a lot. And he surely feels he owes him a lot, as well.”

A Clinton loyalist who first earned the family’s trust as an aggressive combatant in the political battles that buffeted Bill Clinton’s presidency, Blumenthal helped recruit Brock to the cause in the late 1990s. After spending much of the decade as a self-proclaimed right-wing hit man and Clinton antagonist, Brock publicly renounced the right and reinvented himself as a liberal crusader against conservative attacks. Brock is now close to the Clintons, and he and his groups are central players in a constellation of big-money outfits supporting Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“It was Sid who basically made David’s current life possible, in many ways,” the operative said.

Blumenthal remains a paid consultant for Media Matters and American Bridge. Since about 2010, the groups have combined to pay Blumenthal more than $10,000 a month, though the payments are impossible to track since they’re made almost entirely through arms of the groups that do not disclose detailed information.

That income was supplemented by the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which began paying him about $10,000 a month starting in 2009 — not long after he stopped working for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. That arrangement, which ended in March of this year, came at the behest of former president Bill Clinton, for whom Blumenthal had worked in the White House. It appears to have taken shape after Hillary Clinton’s effort to hire Blumenthal at the State Department was rebuffed by top aides to President Barack Obama.

The reason Blumenthal initially came into the select committee’s sights was the Libyan intelligence he emailed to Clinton while she was secretary of state. On Tuesday, he testified that he received the intelligence from a business contact and wasn’t being paid to pass it along to Clinton, according to sources.

But scrutinizing Blumenthal’s work for Brock’s groups and the foundation allows the Benghazi committee a lens into the Clinton political and philanthropic operations, which could provide fodder for campaign trail attacks. Democrats argue that’s the committee’s real motive.

After Tuesday’s hearing, Blumenthal chafed at the committee’s focus on his political work.

“It seems obvious that my appearance before this committee was for one reason and one reason only … politics,” he said. The panel spent “hours asking me questions about things that had nothing to do with Benghazi,” he said, adding, “I hope I have cleared up the series of misconceptions some members of the committee may have held. … My testimony has shed no light on the events of Benghazi — nor could it, because I have no firsthand knowledge.”

 

 

 

Paying Too Much for United Nations Failures

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The summary failure of the United Nations in regard to the Congo. There more recently there is the admitted inability to stop the atrocities in Syria.

In 1945, the United Nations Charter, which was adopted and signed on June 26, 1945, is now effective and ready to be enforced.

The United Nations was born of perceived necessity, as a means of better arbitrating international conflict and negotiating peace than was provided for by the old League of Nations. The growing Second World War became the real impetus for the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union to begin formulating the original U.N. Declaration, signed by 26 nations in January 1942, as a formal act of opposition to Germany, Italy, and Japan, the Axis Powers.

The principles of the U.N. Charter were first formulated at the San Francisco Conference, which convened on April 25, 1945. It was presided over by President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, and attended by representatives of 50 nations, including 9 continental European states, 21 North, Central, and South American republics, 7 Middle Eastern states, 5 British Commonwealth nations, 2 Soviet republics (in addition to the USSR itself), 2 East Asian nations, and 3 African states. The conference laid out a structure for a new international organization that was to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,…to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights,…to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”

Today, the United Nations is a failed global operation and the United States pays the largest share of the financial freight. All of it is too much.

By: Brett D. Schaefer is the Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs at Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.

America, we pay way too much for the United Nations

‘Each year the United States gives approximately $8 billion in mandatory payments and voluntary contributions to the United Nations and its affiliated organizations. The biggest portion of this money – about $3 billion this year – goes to the U.N.’s regular and peacekeeping budgets.

If that seems like a lot, it is—far more than anyone else pays And it’s also, in some cases, bad value for money.

The U.N. system for calculating member nations’ “fair share” payment toward its regular and peacekeeping budgets has increasingly shifted the burden away from the vast majority of the 193 members and onto a relative handful of high-income nations, especially the U.S. Indeed some nations pay next to nothing.

Over the last six decades, the share of the U.N. expenses borne by poor or small member states has steadily ratcheted downward to near- microscopic levels. From 1974 to 1998, the minimum mandatory payment for the regular budget for example, fell from 0.04 percent to 0.001 percent. For the peacekeeping budget, the minimum is 0.0001 percent.

The U.N. system for calculating member nations’ “fair share” payment toward its regular and peacekeeping budgets has increasingly shifted the burden away from the vast majority of the 193 members and onto a relative handful of high-income nations, especially the U.S. Indeed, some nations pay next to nothing.

In addition, over three quarters of the total U.N. membership get additional discounts, with the cost also shifted to wealthier countries.

The end result is a hugely skewed bill for U.N. expenses.

In 2015, 35 countries will be charged the minimum regular budget assessment of 0.001 percent which works out to approximately$28,269 each. Twenty countries will be charged the minimum peacekeeping assessment of 0.0001 percent or approximately $8,470 apiece.

By contrast, the U.S. is assessed 22 percent of the regular budget (approximately $622 million) and over 28 percent of the peacekeeping budget (approximately $2.402 billion).

Put another way, the U.S. will be assessed more than 176 other member states combined for the regular budget and more than 185 countries combined for the peacekeeping budget. Who says America isn’t exceptional!

This is more than a complaint about dollars. It’s also about the value received for those outsized contributions. Consider:

· An independent academic study assessing best and worst practices among aid agencies ranked U.N. organizations among the worst.

·Numerous reports, audits, and investigations have revealed mismanagement, fraud and corruption in procurement for U.N. peacekeeping.

· Studies and reports have identified U.N. peacekeepers as the source of the cholera outbreak that ravaged Haiti starting in 2010, leaving more than 8,000 dead and more than 600,000 seriously sickened.

· A 2014 study of eight of the nine U.N. peacekeeping operations with a mandate to protect civilians found that peacekeepers “did not report responding to 406 (80 per cent) of [the 570] incidents where civilians were attacked.”

· U.N. personnel have been accused of sexual exploitation and abuse in Bosnia, Burundi, Cambodia, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Kosovo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Sudan. Recent news stories from the Central African Republic and Haiti indicate the problem is still far too common and the U.N. is more interested in concealing the issue than in confronting it

· Atop all that, U.N. employees enjoy extremely generous benefits and salaries—over 32 percent higher than U.S. civil servants of equivalent rank.

Moreover, the U.N. and its employees enjoy broad protections and immunities and cannot be sued in national courts, arrested, or prosecuted for actions related to their official duties unless those immunities are waived. This places an extremely heavy responsibility on the U.N. to self-police, correct, and punish wrongdoing by the organization and its employees.

Unfortunately, oversight and accountability at the U.N. have historically been weak. And on the rare occasion when internal watchdogs bite, the organization moves to defang them.

Take the case of the Procurement Task Force (PTF) , a special U.N. unit that went to work in 2006  to root out corruption.   It uncovered fraud, waste, and mismanagement involving contracts valued at more than $630 million. It led to misconduct findings and convictions of U.N. officials.

Unfortunately the PTF was eliminated in 2008—at the behest of countries angry about PTF actions against their nationals holding U.N. staff positions. The U.N. has not completed any major corruption cases since the PTF was eliminated.

Poor oversight is made worse by U.N. hostility toward its own whistleblowers. Only a few weeks ago, nine staffers from various U.N. organizations sent a letter to the Secretary-General asserting that the U.N. affords “little to no measure of real or meaningful protection for whistleblowers.”

The U.N. badly needs reform, but the U.S., despite the mammoth checks it writes, can’t reform the U.N. alone. In the one-nation, one-vote world of the U.N., it needs support from other nations. Unfortunately, many of them remain blasé about U.N. budget increases, corruption, and inefficiencies because the financial impact on them is miniscule.

To change the institution, the first thing that needs to change is the thumb-on-the-scales system that makes the U.S. the biggest bill-payer, but just one of 193 voting members when it comes to demanding honesty, efficiency and effectiveness in return for its over-generous payments.

Congress and the Obama administration have both said they want the United Nations to be more transparent and accountable and to use its resources more effectively. To make that happen, major donors must have a greater say in budgetary decisions, and smaller donors must assume financial responsibilities that lead them to undertake budgetary decisions and conduct serious oversight.

Every three years the U.N. General Assembly approves adjustment to its scale of assessments: 2015 is one of those years. The U.S. should not let this opportunity slip away to get more for its money—and make other nations actually try to make the U.N. live up to the image that the organization likes to show the world.’

If you agree that the United Nations should have funding cut, you’re in luck. Here is the link to sign the petition.

Mr. Weinstein is Dead, Hostages Could Have Been Saved

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Warren Weinstein is shown in a still from video released anonymously to reporters in Pakistan, Dec. 26, 2013.

Additional details and video of testimony is here.

Amerine received the Bronze Star with “V” for “Valor” device for his service in Afghanistan, where he led the Special Forces Operational Detachment-Alpha team that protected Hamid Karzai after 9/11 as the future Afghan president drummed up Pashtun tribal support to lead the country.
Now he joins critics of the failed U.S. hostage policy — currently under review by a former Army Delta Force commander at the National Counterterrorism Center — such as Diane and John Foley, whose son James Foley was a journalist beheaded by ISIS in Syria in a grisly video last August.
Amerine claims he led a highly-secret Pentagon team tasked with finding ways to recover Americans held captive in Pakistan’s tribal areas — until a “dysfunctional” bureaucracy bungled the mission on the verge of success.
“In early 2013, my office was asked to help get Sgt. Bergdahl home. We informally audited the recovery effort and determined that the reason the effort failed for four years was because our nation lacks an organization that can synchronize the efforts of all our government agencies to get our hostages home. We also realized that there were civilian hostages in Pakistan that nobody was trying to free so they were added to our mission,” Amerine said in his testimony.
“To get the hostages home, my team worked three lines of effort: Fix the coordination of the recovery, develop a viable trade and get the Taliban back to the negotiating table. My team was equipped to address the latter two of those tasks but fixing the government’s interagency process was beyond our capability,” Amerine said.

Bergdahl was freed in 2014 after five years of captivity in a highly controversial swap for five Taliban leaders held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Bergdahl now faces charges by the Army for deserting his post in Afghanistan and could wind up in prison for the rest of his life, if convicted.
Amerine said that he and his colleagues had designed a plan to trade an Afghan drug lord, Bashir Noorzai, for the American and Canadian hostages. Noorzai was lured to the U.S., Amerine said, where he was arrested and eventually sentenced to two life sentences on drug charges.
Amerine said his group got as far as working with Noorzai’s tribe and bringing the Taliban to the table about a deal for the drug lord, but then the State Department intervened and killed that deal in favor of the one that eventually freed Bergdahl for five Taliban fighters. Noorzai remains in a high-security prison in California.

The veteran Special Forces field-grade officer told the Senate committee that he, Amerine, also fell under criminal investigation by the Army because the FBI was irked over his criticism of how the Bureau and other agencies mismanaged the hostage crisis and for sharing his frustrations with Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee. He helped Hunter craft legislation to reform and streamline how government agencies should work jointly to handle hostage cases.
“The FBI formally complained to the Army that information I was sharing with Rep. Hunter was classified. It was not,” Amerine said in his testimony, noting that federal law protects military whistleblowers. “The FBI made serious allegations of misconduct to the Army in order to put me in my place and readily admitted that to a U.S. congressman.”
The Army deleted his retirement paperwork and cut off his pay temporarily recently, Amerine recounted.
“It’s utterly ridiculous in my mind,” Amerine said.
U.S. officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI did not immediately offer comment today regarding Amerine and his claims.
Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith said that while the service’s policy dictates that they cannot confirm the names of anyone who “may or may not be under investigation,” Smith noted that “both the law and Army policy would prohibit initiating an investigation based solely on a Soldier’s protected communications with Congress.”
A spokesperson for Hunter, in turn, said that the Army had confirmed to Hunter their investigation into Amerine for “potential unauthorized disclosures” to Congress.


“It’s a sad day for the Army, in its struggle to be truthful,” said Joe Kasper, Hunter’s spokesperson.
Amerine plans to tell the Committee today, “You, the Congress, were my last resort to recover the hostages. But now I am a whistleblower, a term that has become radioactive and derogatory.
“And let us not forget: Warren Weinstein is dead while Colin Rutherford, Josh Boyle, Caitlin Coleman, and her child remain prisoners. Who is fighting for them?”