Month: September 2009

More on the strategy of flooding America with welfare recipients

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

While I was away this past week, reader Paul sent this link to a piece by John Fund in the Wall Street Journal.  I was reminded of it when I wrote the previous post in which I touched on this topic.   It looks like we all might have to get Wade Rathke’s new book—“Citizen Wealth.”   This is what Fund said:

Mr. Rathke now the chief organizer of a New Orleans-based local of the SEIU, a key Acorn ally is out with a new book, “Citizen Wealth,” in which he touts a vision of “maximum eligible participation” by Americans in welfare programs as a way to force radical social change.

Bring in the immigrants!  The more  the merrier when it comes to people on welfare.

See Rathke’s bio here.  See more juicy details here at Discover the Networks.

To Roy Beck: it is money and power driving the Religious Left

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  Here is an article I found shortly after writing this post that makes my point about money and political power ie. voters.

 

I just came across this article by Roy Beck at NumbersUSA from a few days ago. Beck says in his post that he has tried to reach out to the Religious Left (my label, not his) about his and his group’s perspective on immigration, but to no avail.

This week the Open Borders religious groups held a political event, calling it a prayer vigil to protest in support of amnesty for illegal aliens and to encourage more immigration to the US and to apparently denigrate opponents.

Here is what Mr. Beck said:

The immigration debate often brings out the worst in people, but it still is disappointing to see the sad display by a number of bishops and other religious leaders yesterday outside the Capitol. They used their prayer vigil to spew hatred at their fellow Christians and other Americans working to reduce immigration in order to help the most vulnerable members of our society. 

[…..]

I have tried for years to meet with the national religious leaders to discuss the principles involved in the immigration debate — and maybe even to find some common ground. But I have been continually rebuffed. Most of these national religious bodies have now passed resolutions supporting “comprehensive immigration reform” (amnesty and green card increases) without ever allowing themselves to hear our side of the issue. 

And now they have decided to accept the hateful rhetoric and smears of the Southern Poverty Law Center as gospel truth. It is clear that these religious leaders regard all of us immigration-reductionists as their enemy. But while Jesus taught that people should love their enemies, these religious leaders have decided to bear false witness against us.

Mr. Beck, I respectfully urge you to watch Glenn Beck if you aren’t already.  Just as ACORN* hid its corruption and political power agenda under a patina of humanitarianism, so too do most of the groups on the Religious Left.   Immigrants serve several purposes for organizations such as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops; they are a source of enormous federal funding for these “religious” groups and the immigrants  (something we have demonstrated many times on these pages) can generally be counted on to vote for far left candidates.  It is all about money and political power and that is why they don’t listen to your logical arguments about how their agenda shows no regard or charitable concern for Americans they hurt.

Far left (communist, socialist, statist, whatever you want to call them) political activists involved with foundations have long since infiltrated and indoctrinated religious groups.  I saw it years ago when for instance the Pew Charitable Trusts created its “Greening of the Churches” initiative.  It was a cynincal ploy to reach people using an issue that those with goals to change America and make it a socialist country knew would appeal to decent caring church-going people.  They use the same strategy with the immigration issue.

Glenn Beck has been bit by bit unraveling the deep tentacles of the Far Left.  One basic tenant of their agenda involves the flooding of America with welfare recipients in order to bring down our present form of government.  The thinking for this mechanism for ‘changing’ America comes from Columbia University sociology professors Cloward and Piven.  We recently discussed their strategy here.

My suggestion Mr. Beck is to stop worrying about reaching religious leaders on the Left.  You need to get past the phony Christian charity image they have carefully crafted, and you might better be able to reach their parishoners and the general public with your message by working to expose how taxpayer funds are going to promote the political agenda of these supposedly charitable religious groups.

*Follow-up post here.

Note on the Southern Poverty Law Center:  I’m told that yesterday Rush Limbaugh again mentioned Mark Potok of the SPLC and as a result we were flooded with visitors to this old post of mine from February about how Potok uses Alinsky’s rules to smear people.

Second anniversary of Hagerstown public meeting on refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Two years ago today a public meeting on refugees was held in our county seat, Hagerstown, MD.  We actually have a whole category for posts about it entitled September forum here (you may also need to use our search function for ‘Hagerstown’ to get the full story).    It was the culmination, as it turned out, of about a year of political turmoil about refugees brought to Hagerstown.   I’ve been thinking about that meeting recently as I prepare to give a talk about it at an upcoming meeting in Washington.

I’m not going to rehash the story except to say that the Virginia Council of Churches (VCC)  had quietly begun resettling refugees in our rural county, and our local political leaders had no clue about what was going on.  Some of us were initially open-minded, but wanted to understand how the program worked.  How was it that a non-profit group (from another state!) could just decide to add more poverty to the poverty we already had?  Who was going to take care of the refugees?  Where would they work?  Would the cost of adding to the schools fall on the county (unfunded mandates issue)?  Those were the sorts of questions we wanted to have answered.  So we supported the idea of holding a public meeting so that officials from Washington, the state of Maryland and the non-profit groups could explain it all.

The public meeting happened on September 19th, 2007.  The US State Department sent two women who run the program in DC, the Maryland office that handles refugee issues participated as did Church World Service (one of the top ten government contractors) as well as its subcontractor Virginia Council of Churches—a group almost entirely funded with tax dollars.  A couple hundred residents of Washington County attended.

You can read all about what happened in the posts in the September forum category, but the gist of what happened is that many of us felt we did not hear straight answers and the worst part was that the citizens were treated to a condescending tone from several speakers who felt the need to waste time and remind us that we were all immigrants once.   The sort of questions I wanted answered are listed in this post.  These questions were ones I wanted our local paper, the Herald Mail, to answer for the public.  They didn’t, so we have been writing this blog ever since.

The refugee resettlement program of the US State Department needs to be reformed.  We will just keep hammering away until it is.  I’m not saying there is corruption in the program as deep and profound as the one now being exposed with ACORN, but I believe very strongly that when non-profit groups continue to reach into the pockets of taxpayers there is a very real possibility that waste, fraud and abuse (abuse possibly even of the refugees themselves) is going to happen. 

I encourage all of you in communities receiving refugees or about to receive refugees to do research, ask questions and demand a public meeting so that officials can inform everyone of what is happening to your community.  If it’s a good program it will stand up to public scrutiny!

So, what happened in Hagerstown after that public meeting where many citizens went away even more annoyed?  Ten days later the announcement was made that the Virginia Council of Churches would be returning to Virginia and more refugees would not be brought to Hagerstown.  Their parting shot to our city was that we were “unwelcoming.”    But, there was a lot more to the story and it’s my contention that the State Department and Church World Service were unhappy with how VCC didn’t take very good care of the refugees they brought to Hagerstown in the first place and that they had royally screwed up the public relations aspect of the program.

Again, the moral of the story is, if refugee resettlement is good for your town or city those promoting it must tell the public ALL THE FACTS and then let the citizens decide, afterall that is how good government is supposed to work!

Obama: Give illegal aliens amnesty so they can get health care

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a story that you will see everywhere today.  I got it from Drudge.   Ten days ago I predicted this in a post on how illegal aliens would be eligible for health care under the house bill HR3200.   This is what I said on September 8th:

Of course, the Administration is also figuring on getting amnesty through this coming year and all this would be moot—illegals would be magically transformed to legals over night, and a whole new wave of immigrants would be flowing across the border.

This is what Obama said this week:

President Obama said this week that his health care plan won’t cover illegal immigrants, but argued that’s all the more reason to legalize them and ensure they eventually do get coverage.

He also staked out a position that anyone in the country legally should be covered – a major break with the 1996 welfare reform bill, which limited most federal public assistance programs only to citizens and longtime immigrants. 

“Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don’t simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. “That’s why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else. 

Mr. Obama added, “If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all.”

So, what did I tell you above, Obama just figures the issue of whether health care reform covers illegals or not will be moot once he gets amnesty.

However, my question still remains, what is to stop new illegals and phony asylum seekers from coming across the border the very next day and creating a new wave of immigrants looking to become legal.

For a list of Obama Administration Amnesty supporters go here.

UN releases budget: plenty for all, especially Palestinian “refugees”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A column by George Russell, executive editor of Fox News, gives a detailed account of the UN budget and explains all the accounting tricks that make it so difficult to know what the UN actually spends. The headline says the budget is $13.9 billion, but the first paragraph says it is $4.9 billion. It takes most of the article to explain all the additions and tricks that get the total from the lower figure to the higher. Let’s just say that UN bureaucrats are experienced and skilled at presenting one thing to the public and another to each other.

Even the $13.9 figure is low:

“It’s easier to work your way through the U.S. budget — which is immensely bigger — than through the U.N. budget,” observes Brett Shaefer, a U.N. expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who has just edited a new book on U.N. reform entitled ConUNdrum: The Limits of the United Nations and the Search for Alternatives. “What you see is the U.N. doing a bit of sleight of hand.”

Nor does the sleight of hand end there. Even the $13.9 billion number does not include the cost of some of the U.N.’s biggest and most sprawling organizations, which submit their own budgets to separate panels of U.N. member states, even as their programs increasingly intertwine and overlap.

Here’s the relevant section on refugees:

Among other things, a substantial portion of the extra-budgetary increase, Ban’s report notes, has gone to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees — $282.2 million — and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) — $186.9 million.

(As it happens, Ban’s initial budget report for 2008-2009 said very similar things, noting that big increases from hikes in extra-budgetary resources went to UNHCR — $423.3 million — and UNWRA — 122.9 million.)

That is simply obscene. There are more than 12 million refugees worldwide. The number of so-called refugees in Gaza and the West Bank number well under 2 million. And the vast majority of these have nothing in common with real refugees. They live in houses in cities and towns in defined territories governed by their own elected governments. Yet the Palestinian’s refugee agency gets two-thirds of what the real refugee agency gets. And the Palestinians get lots and lots of aid from governments as well.

The United States gave $900 million for Palestinian aid in 2009. As far as I can tell (Ann will correct me if I’m wrong), our government spent about  “$809 million for basic life-sustaining support and protection of refugees, conflict victims, and internally displaced persons overseas,” and about the same for refugee resettlement in the U.S.  These numbers are almost as slippery as the UN ones — you can’t really find all the spending, either abroad or at home, because it’s often split among different agencies and budget line items. The point is that the Palestinians receive enormous amounts of aid. And as we’ve reported, much of the aid goes right to Hamas, a terrorist group and America’s declared enemy. 

If the UN and the U.S. shifted their money from the Palestinians to real refugees, many more people would have better lives. See more about UNRWA here, and in other articles in our “Israel and refugees” category.

Addendum, September 19: I want to add a link to a great post by David Horowitz on his great new blog, Newsreal.  It’s called The UN Is a Morally Disgusting Institution and a Global Menace.