Day: September 9, 2016

Don't get suckered again by failed Freedom Caucus ploy from last year on Syrian refugee 'pause'

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!

Do they think we are that stupid!

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http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/freedom-caucus-koch-club-growth-214973

Before you read on, see my previous post about how these Continuing Budget Resolutions have perverted Constitutional government. The Republicans have been complicit in this travesty.
News earlier this week indicated that the House ‘Freedom Caucus’ is thinking about pushing the leadership for the add-on of a bill to the ‘continuing budget resolution’ (CR) to supposedly pause the flow of Syrians to the US!
(Their plans may already have changed, since this Politico story is a couple of days old).
It failed last year because Speaker Ryan knew it wouldn’t pass the Senate.
Here is  the gist of it:

The House Freedom Caucus is targeting must-pass spending legislation as a potential bargaining chip to halt the Obama administration’s Syrian refugee resettlement program — a move sure to complicate GOP leaders’ hopes of heading off any government shut-down talk by quickly passing a stop-gap measure.

[….]

The Freedom Caucus, meanwhile, stopped short of adopting a formal strategy on the so-called continuing resolution. Many expected the caucus to vote on Tuesday to oppose a short-term stopgap spending measure that runs out in December. Several of their conservative allies off the Hill have asked leadership to punt any major budget decisions into spring of 2017.

But rather than flat-out opposing the short-term CR, the group of conservative lawmakers instead hashed out a preliminary plan to play hardball during its weekly meeting at Hunan Dynasty on Capitol Hill Tuesday evening.

They’re planning to tell leadership they will back a short-term funding package if they can tuck in a bill by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) to stop the resettlement program until the administration “can assure no terrorists or individuals with radical sympathies or views will be admitted,” according to a summary of the bill.

So, what do they think Obama will say? He will assure them in a nanosecond!

Politico continued:

While not an outright refusal to support a short-term CR, their demands could still spark a major legislative battle that gums up appropriations: While the refugees matter passed the House early this year, it died in the Senate, which needs Democratic votes to send anything to the president’s desk. Obama, likewise, is almost certain to reject a spending bill that includes such a provision.

“There was some discussion about doing a shorter-term CR if we had a commitment from leadership to attach and keep attached a pause on Syrian Refugees coming in until we have a better vetting system to identity the terrorists,” said one Freedom Caucus member who asked not to be identified. “We haven’t taken a formal position, but there was a lot of discussion about that and many of the members felt that was a reasonable request.”

They know you are angry as hell! This is really just a sop to you.
All they really need to do is CUT THE FUNDING ACROSS THE BOARD FOR THE PROGRAM TO WHATEVER LEVEL THEY HAVE THE GUTS TO FIGHT FOR!  (Remember there are other concerns with the refugee program besides the Syrian flood, Somalis have proven to be a problematic group as well!).

Now, for a good laugh!

A meaningless show vote!

See what World Net Daily reported LAST year about this same failed strategy:

House Speaker Paul Ryan is lining up a showdown vote for Thursday on President Obama’s plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States.

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Throwing a  bone! Speaker Ryan knew that the Syrian ‘pause’ would go no where in the Senate

But conservatives on Capitol Hill who want to see the refugee program halted are warning that Ryan’s plan is nothing but a smokescreen designed to give lip-service while refusing to defund the program.

Ryan likely has no intention of cutting off the flow of Muslim refugees into the U.S., nor does he plan to ensure Syria’s persecuted Christian minority gets rescued from the clutches of ISIS, sources told WND.

But WND has learned from insiders on Capitol Hill that Ryan’s end objective is not to close down a program that has delivered more than 1.5 million Muslim refugees to American cities and towns since 1990 under a law authored in 1980 by then-Sen. Joe Biden and the late Teddy Kennedy.

A conservative Capitol Hill aide told WND, “Paul Ryan is setting us up for a meaningless show vote on Syrian refugees so the White House can continue the influx of Muslim refugees this year and all the years to follow as it always has.

“Putting Ryan in charge of a fight to block refugees would be like putting (Nancy) Pelosi in charge of fight to repeal Obamacare,” the staffer said. “No one loves mass immigration more than Ryan, so how exactly is he going to make a public argument against it? He can’t and won’t, leaving Democrats unharmed, unscathed and unafraid.”

Members of the House Intelligence, Armed Services and Homeland Security panels will meet this week to come up with legislation the House will vote on by Thursday.

The “show vote” will likely occur on North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson’s American SAFE Act of 2105, the source said, a toothless bill that would allow Obama to continue the transfer of Middle Eastern refugees to the U.S. with certain assurances that they are being “certified” as having no connections to terrorism.

Babin bill has more teeth

A much stronger bill, the Resettlement Accountability National Security Act introduced by Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, is not being moved to a vote by Ryan. The Texas congressman’s bill would halt all resettlements until a full accounting of the program’s cost and risks to national security can be fully assessed.

And, of course Ryan still won’t move it this year!
Defund refugee resettlement!
I want to impress upon you how important this funding issue is.  The Refugee Industry understands it very well or else they wouldn’t be planning their big push on Congress during this next week and into the week of the 19th when Obama goes to the United Nations to guilt-trip America into ‘welcoming’ hundreds of thousands of impoverished people to America.  You must push back and do it now!
If you are reading RRW for the first time, see our tag ‘Where is Congress’ and read about what you need to be doing!
By the way if the CR is short term (until December), you might have a great opportunity in October when they are all home trying to get elected to really hammer them on defunding refugee resettlement.  But, you can’t count on that, so you must hit them before Obama goes to the United Nations!  Better still, hit them this next week before the refugee industry does its postcard drop on the 15th.
The Freedom Caucus members are listed here.  Does one of these members represent you?

The continuing budget resolution has destroyed Congress' power to limit government

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Neither the Democrats or the Republicans want to limit it!

Readers, you might prefer juicy and outrageous stories about immigrant and refugee crimes, about security screening, about what Trump and Hillary are doing today, about resettlement contractors rolling in your money, about immigrant fraud, about George Soros and his ilk, about progressives (Dems!) changing America by changing its people, but there is only one issue now, as boring as it might be, and that is that the Republican leadership in Congress has sold you out for more than two decades and it is they who are changing America by changing its people by not standing up for you and the US Constitution first!
This is the next installment in my recent civics lesson (I’m learning this too!) in what I hope is not a vain (time wasting) effort to focus your attention on the Republicans in Congress.

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https://www.amazon.com/Ruling-Class-Angelo-M-Codevilla-ebook/dp/B0040JHNZW

Below is an excellent (2013) explanation by author Angelo Codevilla about how Congressional leaders (Rs and Ds) have subverted the Constitution to advance permanent ruling class control over our government and your money! Hat tip: Richard at Blue Ridge Forum.
From Library of Law and Liberty (sorry to snip so much but please read this and then continue reading the whole article):

The current battle over whether the 2013 Continuing Appropriations Resolution (CR) should de-fund Obamacare or not [substitute this year’s battle over refugee funding—ed] is the latest instance in which the CR mechanism is being used on behalf of a big government program the demise of which would be certain were Congress to play its Constitutional role by following its “regular order” as the keeper of the people’s purse – a role fundamental to democracy.

Herewith, a brief explanation of how new the CR system of funding the US government is, and how radically subversive of republican government. Important to America as Obamacare’s fate may be, the current battle’s stake is nothing less than whether the people can control government through their representatives or whether government can define its own scope and powers.

Since the Middle Ages, the first and most basic restraint on arbitrary government has been the people’s power to decide how much money the government will spend, and for what purposes. The US Constitution puts it this way: “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of Appropriations made by law” (Art. I sect.9). Nowadays however our bipartisan ruling class limits the Congress’ opportunity to approve, disapprove, or modify what the government does, to voting on “Continuing Appropriations Resolutions” – single, all-inclusive bills crafted behind closed doors. Then it cynically asks the people’s representatives: “will you agree to laws no one has read, to programs on the continuation of which you have not voted, and to regulations that haven’t been written yet, or will you shut down the government?” This turns democracy into a choice between tyranny and anarchy.

Until circa 1990, Americans had taken seriously the relationship between appropriations and democracy. House and Senate used to divide the Executive departments’ requests for funds and programs into multiple categories and sub-categories. Then many committees and subcommittees held hearings on each item, followed by “mark-up” sessions in which each would be modified and voted on. Thereafter, the full House and Senate would debate, amend, approve or disapprove them, one by one. This was “regular order” – more or less as described in civics books.

This changed at first gradually in the 1980s, when Democrats (and Republicans) who were resisting the Reagan Administration’s efforts to trim government figured out that individual appropriations bills delayed until the end of the fiscal year could be rolled together into “omnibus” bills. These could be advertised as merely “continuing” the current year’s programs and spending levels. In reality, these all-in-one bills 1) protected current programs from scrutiny, amendment, or repeal 2) were stuffed with new favors, programs, provisions and priorities that could not have survived an open process.

[….]

…. the Republican leadership, by acquiescing in the practice of funding the government by Continuing Resolutions rather than by individual appropriations has emasculated the most virile means by which mankind has ever limited government.

Continue reading here.

And, so here we are again, in the fall of 2016, and Congress is doing the same damn thing!

If you are saying, it is too late this year (maybe next year will be a better year if Trump is President) and these mostly globalists we have elected are never going to rein-in (in our case) the out of control spending for the US Refugee Admissions Program, then quit reading right now.

But, I say that even if we have not even a snowball’s chance in hell of slowing the flow of our money to this program, we must still let everyone of our Congressmen and US Senators know we are mad as hell about it and we aren’t going to forget what they are doing to America!

At this point I should be linking contact information for you to contact your Washington ‘lawmakers,’ but I won’t because if you don’t know by now how to find them you are part of the problem. Tell them to shut it down now!
Next, more on the House Freedom Caucus and how you are being played!
See my tag ‘Where is Congress’ for more on funding refugee resettlement.  Forget Obama and forget the Dems, the power is in the hands of the Republicans in the House and Senate!
Update: Be sure to see what the Refugee Council USA (the lobbying arm of the refugee industry) is saying about contacting Congress, here. Remember they mention RRW in their toolkit.

ORR snubs Michigan elected official, says it is his duty to find out about quarterly meetings

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have reported on the legally required quarterly ‘stakeholder’ meetings that are held (or should be held) in every community being seeded with refugees.  Those meetings are largely secretive with few (if any) being announced in local newspaper public notices.  (Here is what we said in May 2015, and in October 2015 about the quarterly consultations).  LOL! they have only been holding the legally required consultations since 2013 as you will see in my October 2015 post.

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This is Bob Carey, the Director of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). ORR is in Health and Human Services. Carey was formerly a VP at the federal contractor International Rescue Committee. Where is Congress, couldn’t they disallow this revolving door between government agency and contractor (and back again!)?

We assume that the resettlement contractors only want to include ‘their’ people and the fewest number possible representing impacted agencies in the community, thus the secrecy.
From Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart:

Robert Carey, the Obama administration’s director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), recently told Oakland County, Michigan that the agency he directs has no intention of complying with the Refugee Act of 1980‘s requirement that it “consult regularly …with local governments concerning the sponsorship process and the intended distribution among the States and localities before their placement in those States and localities.”

[….]

Carey places the burden for finding out about these “consultation” meetings and attending them on Oakland County. The Refugee Act of 1980, however, requires both the director of ORR and “the federal agency administering the program,” which could mean an employee of ORR, to consult with the locality prior to the placement of refugees there. The statute does not include any provision to accomplish this consultation through the State Refugee Coordinator, who actually is an employee of the state government, not a representative of the federal bureaucracy.

Continue reading here to see the exchange between Carey and local elected government officials in Oakland County.

Now you should call Carey out on his assertion that the State Refugee Coordinators are the ones to call to get invited to the quarterly consultations. 

Here is the list of State Refugee Coordinators.  Get on the phone today and tell yours that you are a stakeholder (a taxpayer footing the bill) and you want to be notified of the next quarterly meeting near where you live. There will likely be one in September.
If you get snubbed, or get no response….
Then take the next step and call or write to your elected officials in Washington (your Member of Congress and US Senators) and complain and tell them you want the budget cut for refugee resettlement for FY2017 as well! Nothing short of cutting off the taxpayer spigot will stop the invasion and the Republicans in Congress control the flow of money!
Our complete Michigan archive is here.  And, don’t miss Leahy this week as well about how Michigan health officials are hiding information on the health status of refugees resettled to the state.

Visit Secure Michigan!  This is a model for what you should be doing where you live—publish a state blog on the refugee program.  It does no good if you do all sorts of research and then not share the information you find with a growing number of concerned citizens in your state!