Month: February 2010

Michigan county to decide if they will do health screening for refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a local issue, but it caught my attention because obviously this county government, Washtenaw County where Ann Arbor is located,  isn’t even fully aware that refugees are being resettled in their county—until now anyway.   A Michigan state office and a resettlement agency want the county to take on refugee health screening and the state is offering a measly $7,800 as payment for what is going to amount to ultimately tens of thousands of dollars in expenses. 

Just ask the Allen County Health Department located in Ft. Wayne, IN how much all this will cost in the end!  Seriously, County Commissioners, call Ft. Wayne!

Here is the full story from the Ann Arbor Chronicle:

Commissioners voiced several concerns over a new refugee health program, funded with $7,800 from the state Dept. of Community Health’s Office of Refugee Services. The program would pay for health screenings at the county health department’s clinic at 555 Towner St. in Ypsilanti.

In briefing the commissioners, Joanna Bidlack of the county administrator’s office reported that about 50-100 refugees settle in Washtenaw County each year, primarily in the Ypsilanti area. Currently they get health screenings from a clinic in Dearborn. The county was approached about this program by the state and the Jewish Family Services nonprofit, which serves as a refugee resettlement agency.

According to a cover memo on the resolution, the proposed medical screenings are designed to identify people with communicable diseases, or whose health conditions may impact resettlement – by affecting their ability to get a job or attend school, for example. The screenings would also identify conditions that might be grounds for exclusion (affecting their refugee status) or that would be significant enough to alert authorities at the relevant consulate.

The county health department currently provides some services to refugees – including tuberculosis screening and immunizations – without reimbursement.

In discussing the program, Wes Prater asked if these refugees are illegal immigrants. “I think we need to know if they’re illegals,” he said. Ken Schwartz said the status of “refugee” was a legal designation. His concern was whether they’d be bringing communicable diseases into the county.

Barbara Bergman raised another issue – if the screenings turned up a medical condition that needed treatment, then what? Who would pay for treatment?

Bidlack said she’d follow up, prior to their March 3 meeting, on the issues raised by commissioners.

The Commissioners have some good questions, but again I am struck by the fact that resettlement is going on in their county and they have apparently not been briefed (as required by law!) by the State refugee coordinator about what refugee resettlement means for them—costs of medical care, welfare payments, school expenses and the list goes on.  We had the same problem in the county where Judy and I live—the local government had no idea in 2007 what refugee resettlement meant for the community.

Reforms needed!

I’ll bet the supposed “reform” of the refugee program going on at the White House isn’t addressing the transparency issue for local governments.

NC Rep. Sue Myrick tries to have a dialogue with her growing Muslim constituency

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update March 1st:  Charlotte Islamic leader and Myrick critic connected to terror-funding group, here!

We have mentioned Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) on a couple of occasions at RRW (here and here), and Judy and I heard her speak in Washington a few years ago.  We were glad that someone in Washington was speaking as forcefully as she was about Islamic supremacism. 

However, this week she held a townhall meeting in her hometown of Charlotte, NC that turned contentious at times.   There are dozens of stories about this meeting you can find with a search on the internet, but here is just one I chose from the local paper, the Charlotte Observer.   I understand her desire to try to build bridges, but she will be attacked and continue to be attacked whenever she links terrorism to Islam no matter how truthful a point she makes.   This whole initiative, urging a public meeting, demonstrates a clever Muslim community (likely with Far Left backers) has targeted her for defeat in her re-election bid.  I don’t see where doing a public meeting benefited her at all and it looks to me that she was politically out-maneuvered. 

In a testy two-hour town hall meeting, U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick argued Thursday night that the threat of homegrown Islamist terrorism is real and defended herself against charges by local Muslims that she was spreading fear about their religion

Using charts, maps, handouts and even a video slamming a Charlotte TV station, the Charlotte Republican told the crowd of about 175 people, most of them Muslims, that she has never condemned Islam or linked moderate Muslims with terrorism.

“I’m talking about the sympathizers and supporters of a radical agenda,” she said. “It’s not that all Muslims are bad or all Muslims are trying to do this.”

Hoping to repair her relations with a Muslim community that has taken her comments over the years as inflaming hatred, Myrick said she agreed to the town hall meeting to “build bridges” with her Muslim constituents. She invited them to join her in opposing those who she said were “trying to hijack” Islam.

Several Muslim speakers at the Government Center in uptown Charlotte commended Myrick for sponsoring the beginning of a dialogue, and invited her to follow-up sessions at mosques around town.

Still, many of the questions and comments from Muslims showed an anger that has simmered for years over often-provocative comments by Myrick, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

In 2003, for instance, she seemed to suggest that convenience stores run by Muslims might be havens for homegrown terrorists.

Read the whole article and note how this convenience store statement in 2003 was used against her.

On this point about convenience stores, Myrick’s staff needs to do some research so that she can answer this criticism more thoroughly because she is correct as we have reported many times on these pages (search ‘food stamp fraud’).  The federal government is raiding mostly Muslim-run or owned convenience stores in many states because of widespread food stamp fraud and in many of those cases the charges involve sending money overseas.   Here is one in her home state of North Carolina.  It doesn’t say the money is going to terrorist activity but you can bet the seed money to start these stores in many immigrant cities isn’t the result of some poor immigrant schlub scraping his few dollars together.  This scam is obviously a well-orchestrated and funded strategy to rip off American dhimmis initiated abroad.

I hope she had a comeback on the Timothy McVeigh comment as well, but the Charlotte Observer doesn’t mention one.

She would have also been wise to mention that one of 5 states where the 270 Illegal Somalis (possibly linked to the terror group Al-Shabaab) have been reportedly dispersed is North Carolina.  Why North Carolina?  It’s my guess that since North Carolina is being flooded with refugees by the US State Department (NC is in the top ten refugee receiving states), it becomes a good state in which to hide illegal aliens.  And, for some reason North Carolina is growing a large Muslim population and this is not happening by chance.  They need to get rid of Myrick (make sure she is not re-elected)  in order to move forward with their plans for a stealth jihad in North Carolina.

Catholic Charities criticised for treatment of gay Iraqi refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is not clear which Catholic Charities neglected this gay couple, but it looks like Nashville Catholic Charities is one of the agencies that did not follow the Operational Guidance required by the US State Department as part of their contract with the government.   Here is the gist of the story from the Dallas Voice:

Two gay Iraqi refugees who are living in Houston came to Dallas for the Creating Change conference earlier this month seeking assistance.

After being kidnapped, raped, robbed and stabbed in Baghdad, Yousif Ali and Nawfal Muhamed escaped to Syria and were given refugee status by the United Nations. The United States granted them asylum.

But after arriving in the United States, Catholic Charities, which administers many of the federally funded programs for refugees, provided only limited assistance.

Other refugees are given furnished apartments. Ali and Muhamed were sent to different cities.

On his own, Muhamed made it to Houston from Nashville where Ali had been given a bare apartment and left to sleep on the floor. [This is a State Department no-no but we keep hearing the same story—bare apartment, no beds—from many cities in the US.]

They were housed near other Iraqis where they remained in danger and continued to be abused because of their sexual orientation.*

The Unitarian Universalist office at the United Nations, the only faith-based U.N. office with an LGBT refugee program, brought the pair to the Dallas conference hoping to find some help.

* In some Muslim countries homosexuals are even killed because of their sexual orientation.  Coincidentally we only last month heard a professor from Vanderbilt Univ. in Nashville confirm the Islamic prohibition about homosexuality.  When choosing a neighborhood in which to place refugees, Catholic Charities in Nashville should have been more knowledgeable about that Muslim prejudice and the Islamic (Shariah law) requirement that gays be killed.   Watch the film from Vanderbilt, here, at Jihad Watch.

That tired old epithet “Racist!” doesn’t work anymore

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We’ve said it a lot around here, to call someone a “racist” has no meaning anymore. We know that for decades Liberals have called anyone who questions immigration policies and programs “racists” only to silence any serious intellectual discussion, so when I saw this article by Adam Baldwin at Big Hollywood tonight, I decided to post some excerpts from it.

‘Racist!’, the political epithet, has rapidly lost credibility and political sting recently thanks to clumsy overuse by grievance-mongering thugs. The slur is a tactical viewpoint discrimination launched as a means to stifle intellectual diversity, rational discussion, and to shame people that diverge from race-hustling orthodoxy.

‘Race hustlers’ are commonly known as shakedown artists and/or smear merchants who expertly deploy the “R-word”, and it has somehow garnered them credibility to preach the gospel of social justice — and reap the ill-gotten gains of equality-of-outcome Statism — to the intellectual wreckage left below them.

The words bigot, homophobe, xenophobe and islamophobe have all gone the same way as racist and have lost their power to hurt.  In truth the hurler of those invectives makes himself look weak and mean.

Rhetorically speaking, thank God that from now on when thought-terminating clichés such as “racist!,” “sexist!,” “bigot!,” “xenophobe!,” “homophobe!,” “hypocrite!,” “chicken-hawk!,” “Uncle Tom!,” “white supremacist!” etc. are hastily concocted (Max Blumenthal call your office), Americans are no longer intimidated by these divisive, intellectually-stifling smears.

Fearless rhetorical engagement in the modern cultural/political arena of ideas is a good and necessary component of our vigorous and successful Republic.

Turning Saul Alinsky* back on the Left!

Too often Modern Liberal arguments amount to nothing more than self-anointed moral rulings that certain people don’t at all have standing on various issues, especially race. These rulings are never ideologically neutral but, rather, are the notorious political weaponry of Saul Alinsky.

Once exclusively reserved for very effective use against unarmed conservatives, Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” is now self-defeating his radical ideological progeny. Now those are ‘chickens come home to roost’ that can benefit America!

Ridicule is, according to Alinsky, man’s most potent weapon.

Highly effective also is Andrew Breitbart’s approach of keeping the pressure on by freezing the target and making them live up to their own book of rules:

It’s time to hit back at these people — that these people keep calling you a racist… Instead of slinking into the corner and crying or saying ‘I don’t like that,’ you walk straight towards them and confront them; and they’re bullies, they’re just bullies and bullies crumble when you hit them back.

We’ve written a lot about Saul Alinsky and his tactics, see our category community destablization for background, or it might be easier just to search ‘Saul Alinsky.’

Another federal raid in Lewiston, ME, so what else is new!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

My first thought when I saw yet another federal raid (here is one last June) of a Somali business in Lewiston, ME is that I can’t wait for the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence to bring their everything-is-wonderful-in-Lewiston dog and pony show to Frederick, MD!  

For readers not familiar with that story, go here, where we learned that the ‘Hate Violence’ gang from Portland, ME got a federal grant to come and lecture citizens of Frederick, MD  (Manchester, NH, Boise, ID and Ft. Wayne, IN too) about how Lewiston was a showcase for immigrant assimilation!

Here then is the latest sensational story in the Sun Journal from ‘little Mogadishu’ Lewiston.  You will see it isn’t clear why agents raided the store, but it’s likely related to money transfer to Africa (to terrorists?).

LEWISTON — Federal agents raided a local grocer Friday, apparently serving the owner with a search warrant.

Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement converged on the Bartlett Street store and stayed for about four hours, arriving shortly before 10 a.m. and leaving shortly before 2 p.m.

Agents packed up about eight boxes of evidence from A & R Halal Market and hauled them out to the back seat of an unmarked car, a black Chevrolet Impala with Massachusetts license plates.

An agent whose windbreaker identified him as a member of the Criminal Investigation Division of the U.S. Department of the Treasury said he had driven to Lewiston on Thursday night and stayed overnight at a local hotel.

An unidentified federal agent carried a computer hard drive and printer to his unmarked Impala police car, also with Massachusetts plates, and drove away.

[….]

A woman who said she was planning to open an Ethiopian restaurant next door said the apparent owner of the market, identified by acquaintances as Ali Hassan Haji, had owned the business for about eight years. Calls to Haji’s phone were not returned.

Haji arrived at the store late morning and met with agents there before leaving for a local mosque. He returned to the store later in the day. The vehicle he drove, a black Nissan Xterra, was registered to Roda Abdi of Lewiston.

Abdi was referenced in Sun Journal stories as the owner of the market in 2003.

One of the many interesting comments was this one from Jo—a question I’ve been wondering about too!

I find it odd there are so many African stores, one right after the other, up and down Lisbon St, and other parts of the city. They all appear to sell the same things, as evidenced by the displays of cloth blocking the windows. How do they remain viable with so many of the same type of stores? Especially when WalMart appears to be the shopping place of choice. They all advertise the ability to wire money, though. It doesn’t make sense…at all.

Raids occured in Muslim wire transfer stores in Portland, home of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence gang, yesterday as well.

 To citizens of Maine:  If I lived in Maine I would be hounding Senator Susan Collins about all these money transfer businesses sending money to Africa. She sits on the Senate Homeland Security Committee and she should be concerned about this practice.

While you are at it, ask her how this Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence can get a federal grant to lecture other cities in the US about their immigrant populations using untruths about Lewiston as an example for other cities.

One more thing!  Ask her if IDA’s (federal grants/microloans for refugees) are being used to open these storefront Somali money transfer stores in Maine.  And, LOL!, tell her to thank Obama for the stepped up raids.  I think we are seeing more under the Obama Administration then we did under Bush!