Month: October 2011

Catholic Bishops lose anti-trafficking grant, blame it on their anti-abortion stance

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 14th:  More boohooing from the Bishops on losing some of their cut of your money, here.  And, more here!

According to Catholic News Service the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has lost a LUCRATIVE federal grant for their CHARITABLE WORK to help victims of human trafficking.

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Since 2006, the U.S. Catholic bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services has helped more than 2,700 victims of human trafficking obtain food, clothing and access to medical care.

That service came to an abrupt halt when the agency recently learned that it would no longer receive a federal grant for this work from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.

MRS officials had no immediate comment on the contract’s discontinuation.

Mercy Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Catholic News Service Oct. 11 that she hoped the Catholic Church’s “position against abortion, sterilization and artificial contraception has not entered into this decision, especially since this administration has said it stands fully behind freedom of conscience.”

She noted that the MRS’s anti-trafficking program “ran quite well without these services” and said it would be “tragic if abortion politics harmed the men, women and children already at risk because of the crime and scandal of human trafficking.”

$5 Million dollars per year per group!

Three groups were awarded federal grants for anti-trafficking programs. The groups are Tapestri, based in Atlanta, Heartland Human Care Services in Chicago and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants based in Washington. The groups have each been awarded $5 million contracts per year with the possibility of adding two additional years.

By the way there are critics of this program who contend this is just one more racket for non-profits to get taxpayer dollars, that there aren’t even that many people being trafficked in the US!  But, that is a story for another time.

Here is an idea for the Catholic Bishops!

Maybe if you did your charitable good works WITHOUT A FEDERAL GRANT then the federal government would in no way have its hooks in you, your conscience and your good people.   Wasn’t there something I recall from the old days—something about Caesar and taxes and not mixing government and God—who said that?  Of course, rendering unto Caesar was about paying taxes, but I suspect that the church taking peoples’ money indirectly by taking taxes from the unwilling might be viewed similarly.

New readers should know that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops gets many millions of dollars from taxpayers every year and then uses the money, not just for refugees, but to promote their many political agenda items.  Here is just one of many posts on the subject.

Seattle Somalis suspended by Hertz for praying on company time…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..and the Somali spokesman is paid for by you—the taxpayer!  What a racket!

Hertz had an agreement with the EEOC that Muslims would clock out to pray, but many refused.   Always pushing, pushing, pushing—that is the stealth jihad.  BTW, seventy per cent of Hertz shuttle-bus drivers at the Seattle-Tacoma airport are Somali Muslims (silly Hertz, really silly!).

From the Seattle Times:

In the three years she’s worked as a shuttle driver for Hertz at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Zainab Aweis, had always taken time out of her shift each day to pray.

An observant Muslim, she prays five times a day — with one, sometimes two of those prayer times falling during her shift.

“That was the one benefit of the job,” the 20-year-old*** said.

On Friday, she and 33 other drivers — all of them Somali Muslims — were suspended indefinitely from their jobs after they took religious breaks to pray while at work without first clocking out.

A spokesman for Teamsters Local 117, which represents the workers, said it is trying to get the workers back on the job.

Both the company and the union late Thursday said they were waiting to hear back from the other.

While the drivers were allowed two, 10-minute breaks during their work shifts during which they could pray, Teamsters officials said managers had agreed in negotiations that workers would not have to clock out and in, though the contract itself does not address the matter.

And the workers and their union said Hertz had previously not required that workers clock out for prayer. The union said it has filed an unfair-labor-practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Hertz for failing to notify the union in advance of what it called a policy change.

But Hertz said the rules aren’t new; that it had been trying for some time to enforce the terms of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission settlement it reached with the workers two years ago that required them to clock out.

A Hertz spokesman said the workers had been repeatedly told they needed to clock out and that the 34 suspended workers had not complied.

To add insult to injury, you pay the salary of the Somali mouthpieces.

Mohamed Hassan, of the Somali Community Services Coalition, said the workers cannot afford to be away from their jobs. “They need to pay rent and buy food for their children.”

I’ve reported previously about Ethnic Community Based Organizations (they are called ECBOs in government mumbo-jumbo language)—-we have a whole category on ECBOs here.   You can think of these organizations as mini-ACORNs geared specifically to particular ethnic groups.  The Somali Community Services Coalition is an ECBO.  They are funded almost exclusively by you!  Then they teach their people how to access social service benefits and get jobs and if a political issue arises the mainstream media runs to them first for comment (as they have done here).

I just checked the Somali Community Services Coalition’s most recent Form 990, here.  Although the IRS has changed the forms making it extremely hard sometimes to find the government share of an organizations income, it appears that this ECBO had an income of $282,830 that comes from government grants (federal for sure and probably some local or state grants).   They paid out $193,363 in salaries ($40,000 plus of that went to an EX-director) and another $22,500 in some sort of contractor payment and $46,389 in rent (probably some inside deal with a landlord there too!).

Note that over $100,000 of their income in 2009 came from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, here.

So what did you pay for?  You paid for a political mouthpiece organization.

*** Check out the strict driving requirements for teen drivers in Washington State, here.  How on earth has she been driving a shuttle bus for three years if she is only 20 now?

That Muslim spring thing—ain’t it great!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend we learned that Salafist (read extremist) Muslims were clashing with minority Christians in Egypt and scores have died or were injured.  By the way, Wade Rathke and his commie union boys went to Egypt the week before last (and missed all the killing this week!) to see about “community organizing” the “democracy movement” there—how’d that work out?  (More later).

From Reuters:

In the worst violence since Hosni Mubarak was ousted, armored vehicles sped into a crowd late on Sunday to crack down on a protest near Cairo’s state television.

Online videos showed mangled bodies. Activists said some people were crushed by wheels.

Tension between Muslims and minority Coptic Christians has simmered for years but has worsened since the anti-Mubarak revolt, which gave freer rein to Salafist and other strict Islamist groups that the former president had repressed.

Then here is more of the good news for Africans in Libya thanks to NATO and the Obama Administration’s great “responsibility to protect” adventure.

Tripoli/Washington, D.C. – More than 600 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa are effectively stranded at a port just outside the Libyan capital, and have been left to fend for themselves by Libyan authorities. Despite repeated attacks, harassment, and arbitrary arrests by Libyan gangs over the course of four months, they have received no protection from the National Transitional Council (NTC). Refugees International calls on the NTC and all local authorities – including the civilian councils in Janzour and Tripoli, and the Tripoli Military Council – to intervene immediately to protect the population at Sidi Bilal port and ensure their safe relocation to a temporary site.

“The men in these camps are routinely harassed and accused of being pro-Gaddafi mercenaries, the women are targets of sexual abuse. All face intimidation by armed Libyan thugs who drive into the port at night firing guns into the air,” said Matt Pennington, an advocate for Refugees International currently in Libya. “Of course, many migrants told us they don’t really want to leave Libya – since they have nothing to return to in their home countries. But even for those who want to stay in Libya, their situation is becoming intolerable.”

Then we have the World Socialists complaining about the Italian government shutting down the refugee camp at Lampedusa after the “refugees” burned it down.  Now, surprise! the migrants are being deported back to Tunisia.

Here is the World Socialists web site’s spin on Lampedusa:

The Italian government is preparing to deport hundreds of North African refugees. According to an interior ministry report of October 2, more than 600 Tunisians were to be flown from Palermo in Sicily to Tunis over the past few days. The refugee camp on the Italian island of Lampedusa was completely cleared 10 days ago.

On September 20, some 800 refugees escaped from the camp following the outbreak of a large fire. They were then hunted by police throughout the whole island, rounded up, and eventually evacuated on ferries, naval vessels and air force planes within a few days.
Some 200 Tunisians were deported immediately, and the rest taken to other Italian refugee centres. For a whole week, 352 people were detained on two ships in Palermo harbour, without being allowed any contact with the outside world. The last of them have apparently now been deported.

These people, who had already suffered dire deprivations on their Mediterranean odyssey before reaching Lampedusa, have been held in refugee camps under inhumane conditions for weeks and even months.

The camp, located in a valley behind the town of Lampedusa, was initially completely closed off from the island’s community. No journalists were allowed entry, and Carabinieri stationed on the surrounding hills made escape over the fence impossible. The people spent their time mainly waiting in cramped conditions, where they were provided with very little food and extremely poor sanitary facilities.

The site, designed to hold up to a maximum of 850 people, had been hopelessly overcrowded for years; often as many as 3,000 were crammed into it.

I guess it remains to be seen whether all this Islamic chaos will produce a positive outcome for anyone but the Muslim Brotherhood, but it sure is good for creating more refugees in need of resettlement…..

Finns continue Somali terrror probe

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an update of the story I posted here at the end of last month.

From AP at ABC News:

Finnish police have released a Somali woman arrested on suspicion of financing terrorism but are holding a Somali man as they further probe allegations that he recruited potential terrorists, authorities said Friday.

The pair’s arrests Sept. 7 were the first known terror-linked arrests in the Nordic country. Police said the two are suspected of links to the Somali Islamist militant group al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaida.

Detective Inspector Kaj Bjorkvist said the 28-year-old woman, who is a student and arrived in Finland in late 2008, has been ordered not to leave the country.

“Our suspicions have not changed, but we no longer felt it necessary to keep her in custody,” Bjorkvist said. “The man asked to be released, but the police objected and he remains in detention.”

Bjorkvist declined to give more details about the suspects.

The National Bureau of Investigation said earlier that the 34-year-old male detainee is suspected of recruiting at least one person abroad to commit an act of terrorism, linked to al-Shabab, “in the direction of Somalia.” He has lived in Finland since 2005, has a residency permit and has held several jobs.

Read it all.

Sen. Rand Paul holding up benefits for refugees until audit of program is completed

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Most readers don’t know that we bring elderly refugees to the US and then give them Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

Apparently many senior refugees are not becoming citizens within the proscribed seven years, but refugee advocates want their Social Security extended anyway.

Here is an editorial at the New York Times ranting against Rand for placing a hold on an extension of benefits bill.  He first wants an audit of the Refugee Resettlement Program that allowed Iraqi alleged terrorists to be admitted through the program and resettled in his state.

The New York Times:

Here’s an addition to the file marked “Extreme Dysfunction: Congress Edition.” A bill that would extend life-saving cash assistance to 5,600 disabled and elderly refugees — a bill whose support is so broad that it includes Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a bill that would pay for itself and even raise a bit for deficit reduction — can’t get through the Senate.

The bill is stalled because Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has placed a hold on it. He is upset because a separate, unrelated refugee program gave benefits to two Iraqi men who were arrested in Kentucky on terrorism-related conspiracy charges. The two Iraqis never received any benefits under the program in question — Supplemental Security Income — and they were not old or sick. But Mr. Paul seems to have concluded that the country can’t give any aid to a small group of highly vulnerable refugees — including survivors of terrorist violence, torture, dictatorships and war — because of the off chance that some terrorists might get the help, too.

Mr. Schumer’s bill, which was expected to pass in a voice vote until Mr. Paul blocked it, is the latest extension of S.S.I. benefits to refugees who missed a deadline to become citizens.

Read it all!

Good for you Sen. Paul, the whole program is in need of a financial audit!