Category: Comments worth noting/guest posts

Comment worth noting: ‘Mad in Maine’ wants to know what she can do

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In response to my post this morning about another immigrant food stamp scam, this one in Utica, NY, here.    Frustrated ‘Mad in Maine,’ a lady we met a few days ago (here), is asking what she can do.

Back again and getting Madder in Maine.

We’ll pay for public defenders and use tax dollars to keep them in jail/prison. Our tax dollars are probably the money they’re going to use to bail out as well. I say send them home. If they can’t follow the rules here, they shouldn’t be here. I have to follow the rules.

This is another thing that’s really grating my cheese today. I have to budget $100 for our weekly shopping trip that will include groceries for the next week (and hopefully a few things I can put in the freezer for upcoming meals), toiletries, paper products (toilet paper, as I refuse to use leaves even in Maine) and cleaning and maintenance products. I’ve heard of some refugees (of all nationalities) using food stamps to buy grocery items that they then turn over to the resturants and shops their families/friends/neighbors own, to ultimately sell back to us!!

Mortgage payment due, car insurance due, electric bill due…I still haven’t turned the furnace on though.
And I’m about to lose another part on my old car…hopefully it will hold out until next payday.

I guess I have a really big question: Is there anything I can do to help put a stop to all of this?

Mad in Maine

First, I don’t think any one person can stop all this, look at ACORN for example, people have been investigating the fraud there for years and finally it took one daring effort by a couple of brave young people to finally push the whole issue into the mainstream.  Few of us are going to become James O’keefes or Hannah Giles, but we can do our  little bit within the framework of our lives.   My first admonition to ‘Mad’ and everyone else, is to find your role and focus like a laser on it.   I don’t know you, ‘Mad in Maine’, or what sort of person you are or how much time you have so these suggestions are for you and all of our other angry and frustrated readers to think about.

1) Write a blog.  Don’t just run your mouth with your opinions, but pick a topic and become an expert on the topic (you can still throw out your opinions!).  Research and provide a service to your readers.  Eventually, if you are patient, what you do will have an impact.  You could for instance write a blog about welfare/food stamp/home health care fraud in Maine, or the whole US.  Or, write a blog about immigration issues in Maine.  There is enough material out there for that for sure!  And, there are very few real investigative reporters anymore, so this is a sorely needed job.

Don’t be deterred by computer technology.  Blogs like this one are really simple and free.  Oh, and one more thing.  To fit blogging into your life, you can write posts as often as your schedule allows.

2)  Get involved in local and state politics.  Goodness knows you have a couple of US Senators in Maine who need their backbones stiffened from time to time.   I don’t know what city you live in, or are near, but you could get involved there too.

3)  Write letters to the editor.  I was at a meeting this past weekend and a few people told me they set google alerts for some topic (like illegal immigration) and then when they see an article, even in another state, they write a letter to the editor in response.

4)  Join a group that is fighting for the same things you are, and become involved enough to run a local chapter.  Maybe a local Tea Party, Beck’s 9/12 Project, Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA and so forth.

5)  I know some people who have built e-mail lists and they send out articles daily to their lists on given topics.

6)  Here is a suggestion for the ‘skulker’ personality.  Pick a subject that you are personally passionate about.  I’m thinking more about local type issues.   Dig into documents, use the Freedom of Information Act or your states open government laws, attend meetings of groups you oppose or are promoting what you object to, and basically gather information to make a case someday to expose the whole corrupt business–whatever it is.

7)  If you are someone most comfortable in a circle of local people, get together with others who have the same concerns and jointly make a plan for what you can do.

Those are just a few ideas.  But, I need to emphasize again, don’t get frustrated if you can’t work at this every minute of the day. Don’t be a gadfly either.  Pick your project, focus and know that you are doing your little piece to save America.  I hope that helps!

Comment worth noting: Johnny Simpson answers my question

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In my post last night on the “Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees” I said I found it annoying that whenever I read about persecuted homosexuals in the Middle East rarely is the source of the persecution linked to Islamic ideology.  Mr. Simpson, the author of the article about Mr. Parsi, reminds me here that one doesn’t always need a shotgun to make one’s point.   I had to laugh, because I do tend to be a shotgun type of person rather than one who might choose a fine stilleto as a weapon.

Read our exchange of comments at the original post.  I appreciate Mr. Simpson’s point but do still maintain that he could work one sentence into his original article to clarify why homosexuals are persecuted (executed even!) in some Muslim countries.   It is unlikely that the audience he reaches with this story are regular readers of Jihad Watch or Atlas Shrugs for instance; and it might serve to illuminate for some why we must guard against radical Islamic thinking entering the US.

Here then is Mr. Simpson’s excellent and informative comment:

Ann, Thank you for your thoughtful response. I do share your concerns. To give you a much clearer idea of the monumental stands I have taken against radical Islam and other extremist ideologies, allow me to provide links to two of the more powerful and popular stories I have written for Digital Journal and Breitbart’s Big Hollywood blogs. I’ll start with one you may appreciate most of all:
From Digital Journal, March 29th, 2008:
RIOTING IN KARACHI, DEATH THREATS AT LIVELEAK, FITNA PULLED
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/252351

A preface on the next one. Andy Breitbart recruited me from Digital Journal in March after I went nuclear over Team Hollywood’s Tea With Ahmadinejad soiree to Iran, especially given all that was going on there. I spent most of March and April ripping AMPAS new ones at Big Hollywood and Digital Journal, and I’m an optioned screenwriter, okay? I could have just shut up and let it ride like everyone else in Hollywood, but I couldn’t keep silent in good conscience. Here is a piece that addresses President Obama’s lame handling of our nation’s worst enemies. Lotsa links to my previous pieces, FYI:
HOLLYWOOD DIPLOMACY ALL AROUND (April 11, 2009)
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jtsimpson/2009/04/11/hollywood-diplomacy-all-around/

You tell me I’m not speaking out as I should. Many times with shotgun blasts as with these two, but in many other cases like my Arsham Parsi/IRQR interview, I focus like a laser on the human stories and tragedies, if you’ll pardon the Bill Clinton paraphrase.

Lastly, I wish to be crystal clear here. You may note from the FITNA piece above, and even since 9/11, that my perceptions of Muslims were not happy ones. Yet as I have been reporting all this time, I have met many fine and sane Muslims, mostly Iranian emigres, who are as sick of the terror, bloodletting and murder by the psycho Islamists as we are. Don’t forget that it is mostly innocent Muslims being mowed down in the streets of Tehran by the basiji, or suffering the worst of terror attacks all over the Middle East.

In WWII, many brave Germans risked their lives to fight the Nazis. They weren’t all SS. Decorated German war hero Field Marshall Erwin Rommel risked and lost his life to try to rid the world of Hitler. We have to be careful not to paint all Muslims with the same bloody brush. If all the one billion-plus Muslims on this earth were megalomaniacs like Osama bin Laden, this world would be a wasteland from top to bottom. They don’t want to see their children blown up by terrorists any more than we do.

Is the Middle Eastern Islamic world f*ed? You bet! Millions, as in Iran and Saudi Arabia, are basically living in the 7th Century. But I can guarantee you most would choose freedom over theocratic slavery and persecution. That said, we have to keep the Islamist killers in our sights and wipe them off the face of the earth if there is ever to be any peace on this planet.

If, for whatever reason, you may think I’m being soft on the subject, read my pieces first. I do not equivocate. I condemn the hateful as surely as I defend the innocent, be it in Iran or right here in the US. The problem with any belief system, religious or political, is extremism. Stalin was an atheist. So was Hitler. When the bodies start piling up, the belief system behind it is irrelevant, be it Atheistic Communism or radical theocratic Islam. The end results are always the same. Don’t make the same mistake they do in seeing all of us as the enemy.

’nuff said. I hope this all answers your questions and concerns. A bit winded perhaps, but you made some very thoughtful points, and I tried to respond in kind. I believe we are mostly in agreement. If radical Islamist extremists move here and kick up sh*t in the West, send ‘em back I say. And isn’t it the extremism of the Left I rant about in my FITNA piece right where you are?

Best, Johnny Simpson.

P.S. Pajamas Media CEO and founder Roger Simon requested a PJTV interview with me and Arsham Parsi by email last night after reading the IRQR post you linked here. We can knock ‘em down one at a time too, you know

Comment worth noting: Mad in Maine!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 5th:  Mad in Maine is back with a good comment and some questions, here.

I don’t know ‘Mad in Maine,’ but I’m glad she took time to write to us today.  We set up the category—comments worth noting— some time ago so that comments like this one wouldn’t get lost tacked onto the end of a post most readers wouldn’t see in a few days.  ‘Mad’ is commenting to my post this morning questioning why “immigrant concerns” are on a higher moral plane then concerns for our own people.  My contention is that the political Leftwing is using the immigrants/refugees as pawns for a larger political agenda and they have studied Alinsky well and know that their agenda (to destabilize communities and bring socialism) cannot succeed unless they wrap it in morally superior badgering of the rest of us to keep us silent.

“Mad’ tells us something about the growing sentiment in states with large and ever-expanding immigrant populations.   And, it isn’t just the immigrants, the government at all levels seems to have been taken over by Radicals!

This whole thing is making me crazy. I’ve been reading the posts on this site for months and my anger and frustration continues to grow.

I’m seeing more and more refugees coming into Maine, accessing state funded services, having more and more children and I’m paying for it all. I won’t even start on the home care fraud issue.

I like to think I’m educated. I’m a licensed professional and have first hand knowledge of how the refugees effect the financial stability of any community.

We have 25% of our income taken out for required deductions that help fund programs that I will NEVER GET TO ACCESS!!! I can’t afford medical insurance. My husband is a diabetic and it’s cheaper for me to pay out of pocket for his medical expenses than to pay for the insurance benefits; which, by the way, only seem to “benefit” the insurance company. I haven’t seen a doctor myself in 5 years. I can’t even begin to discuss dental needs.

We’re barely making ends meet, but I do have a house that I can say is mine (actually the bank still owns it for another 10 years, so I shouldn’t shake the cage). We have to use CASH to buy groceries and pay the utilities. We drive older cars because we can’t afford new ones, and do most of any necessary repairs ourselves. I won’t run the furnace until the very last minute because I have to pay CASH for heating fuel.

Our children are now all over 18, but because they’re not homeless, not pregnant, but are trying to find work or go to college, they can’t even access Mainecare as a Maine resident. I’m told that they are my responsibility until they’re at least 23 years old.

But the refugees keep coming. They have Mainecare, they get food stamps, they get subsidized housing and I’ve heard, only second hand information, don’t bite my head off, that many of them are getting full funding to attend college. They continue to have more and more children, although we stopped with 3 because that’s all we could support. Now our tax dollars are supporting their children, not ours. If you can’t find a job here, go to another state where you might find one. If you can’t find one there, move on. I’ll have to if the time comes.

I’m paying taxes on everything in this state. I’m sure they’re even going to find a way to tax the air that I breath.

Unfortunately, I’ll keep paying and paying and paying and when the time comes for me to “retire”, probably at age 104 the way the economy is going, there will be none of MY contributed money left and I’ll be living in a card board box under a bridge in Bangor.

I’m not racist. I don’t care what color you are or where you come from. I love that the world is made up of many different types of people. I don’t care what religion a person is, but when my own children can’t hang a Christmas decoration at school while some of the refugees are getting access to seperate boy/girl gyms and special prayer rooms and the school children are being asked to limit what they bring for lunch…enough. Assimilate. Have your religion in your home or church, not in the school my taxes pay for.

I’m tired. I’m frustrated. The government seems to be going to hell and there doesn’t seem to be anything that can make it right.

This current administration is acting like a teenage girl who got daddy’s credit card. Enough. Enough. Enough.
Let’s start helping ourselves before we reach out to help others.

Mad In Maine

I had just now finished watching Glenn Beck.  He had on “Moms” who are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore and I came to the computer to check out a new website Asamom.org when I saw ‘Mad’s’ comment.  If you are feeling like ‘Mad’ check it out and know that you are not alone.  These women are connecting on-line nationally and in their communities too—-that will be the first step in taking our towns and cities back from the Radicals.

Comment worth noting: Muslim countries need to take care of their own refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Below is a comment from a reader in Denmark with further clarification on the issue of Iraqi asylum seekers being deported to Iraq, an issue we posted on here two days ago.

From Universalgeni:

I live in Denmark and have followed the cases about these Iraqis very closely. The fact of the matter is that the Iraqis in issue here have had their applications for official refugee status reviewed over and over and over again by the authorities. And none of them are in any danger what so ever. No one is persecuting them and they were and still will be perfectly safe in Iraq.

That’s basically the case: they want to immigrate and are trying to use fraud, lies and false refugee applications to get into our country.

The leftish Danish press continue to name these illegal immigrants refugees or asylum seekers. And claim that the occasional bomb explosions in Iraq should be grounds for asylum.

But the Danish laws says no. And I agree. We can’t continue to let so many foreigners in. Here’s a choker: 20 percent of what we pay in tax is used to cover expenses directly connected to immigration. One in every five Danish tax krone’s is spent on primarily immigrant muslims. People can’t afford children of their own because we have to pay for theirs via taxes. Most of the muslim immigrants are impossible to get off public welfare payments and into the labor market.

It’s enough. The muslim world should start handling the refugee situation themselves. They should go to other muslim countries. Not Europe. Period!

We have made this same point repeatedly, Muslim countries must begin to take care of Muslim refugees and asylum seekers.

Comment worth noting: How the Sierra Club became an advocate for open borders

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s only in the last couple of weeks, thanks to Glenn Beck’s research, that I have come to understand what happened to the environmental movement that I left in the late 1970’s.  I knew then that many of the leaders of the movement were changing and that concern for the environment and a love of the outdoors and nature’s beauty was no longer the driving concern—the movement had become a radical leftwing movement that was using people’s genuine concern for open space and clean air and water as a club to gather more control at the federal government level and taking away property rights as well.  Power and money seemed to be the twin engines that drove the movement.

(I wrote about the connection between immigration and environmentalists here earlier in the summer.  Note the Tides Foundation involvement.)

Now, we see in coalitions like the Apollo Alliance the melding of radical leftists and assorted socialist and communist political activists including union leaders with mainstream environmental groups, most notably the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) . See the Apollo Alliance board here (and listed below*) 

You are judged by the friends you keep.

By joining forces with the likes of the American Center for Progress (which wants to airlift over 100,000 Iraqis to the US this year) and SEIU (looking for immigrant dues-paying members and organizing Somalis),the Sierra Club cannot claim a neutral position on immigration. 

To “change” America into the kind of country Alinskyite Obama wants, one must import millions of poor immigrants to fuel the crisis which in turn brings “change.”  The Sierra Club and NRDC have joined forces with groups advocating open borders, the redistribution of wealth and one-world governance.   Do their nature-loving members really want that?  I doubt it.

Any thoughtful person knows that the greatest threat to the quality of life we have experienced in America is uncontrolled immigration.  See the NumbersUSA clip here and read the CIS report here, if you don’t believe me.   The majority of population growth in the US will be from immigrants between now and 2050 and they will need homes, schools, roads, cars and water among other things—all will strain an already overloaded environmental carrying capacity.

The other day I wrote about how the Sierra Club is part of the Open Borders movement and reader Paul Nachman tells us how that came about in a comment to that post.

From Mr. Nachman:

Inspired by this RRW entry, on 8/30/09 I left Mr. Green the following questions, mentioning that I’ve been a Sierra Club member continuously from 1975:

“In March, 2009 you wrote: ‘The simplest answer to your question about the Sierra Club’s immigration policy is that the Club’s members voted overwhelmingly some time ago to remain neutral on this issue.’ So how about a disquisition by you on how the Club violated its own bylaws in conducting that 1998 election? Then segue over to a review about the implications and consequences of Gelbaum’s $100-million donation.”

 

Of course, I could supply the answers myself. I just want to see how Mr. Green responds, if he responds at all.

Here are my answers:

1. The Club violated its own bylaws in 1998 by refusing to give our ballot question, which said something like “Should the Club return to its prior-to-1996 policy position that the U.S. should reduce both immigration and natural fertility?” a straight up or down vote.  According to the bylaws, every such question should be presented to the membership in the form of a “Yes” or “No” vote. Instead, the Club paired our question with one of the “leadership’s” own devising to the effect, “Let’s keep the post-1996 policy, which forbids anyone in the Club even talking (while speaking for the Club) about immigration as an environmental issue.” And the ballot simply gave members a choice between those two questions. So, for example, if you disliked **both** approaches, you couldn’t indicate that by voting “No” on each one. This violation of the bylaws wasn’t a close call, either. It’s black and white.

Endorsers for the position that the Club should resume talking about immigration as an environmental problem included world-class luminaries with great enviro credentials, such as David Brower, Brock Evans, Galen Rowell, Gaylord Nelson, and George F. Kennan. Endorsers for the “leadership’s” position included, besides the nonentities on the Club’s national board of directors, anonymities like the head of the Club’s Nebraska chapter, etc.

In the vote, we “insurgents” lost 40% to 60%, a margin narrow enough that it apparently terrified the Club’s “leadership.” So they pulled out all stops in several following Club national elections between 1999 and 2004 to absolutely smear the insurgent candidates who ran for the board. People like Dick Lamm (former Colorado governor, founding member of the NAACP chapter at Berkeley, …) and Prof. Frank Morris (one-time director of the Congressional Black Caucus) were mercilessly smeared as racists, nativists, xenophobes … probably mother- and father-rapers in some circles, too.

2. During the 2004 campaign wherein he ran for the Club’s national board, Dick Lamm (who’d served several terms in the Colorado state senate and three as governor) said that he’d never experienced such a dirty campaign, and he wondered what was behind it — like a lot of money? Turns out, his intuition was dead on. Investor David Gelbaum had promised, around 1995, to donate about $100 million to the Sierra Club, but only if they stopped talking about immigration: “I did tell Carl Pope [Club executive director] in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.” If you want to read more about this, start here.   The “funny” thing [ha ha] was that the Club capitulated to a demand made for reasons that had nothing to do with the environment. Gelbaum just said that restricting immigration would dishonor the memory of his immigrant grandfather. How could environmental concerns stand up against a bedrock principle like that?

In fact, with $100 million on the line, the Club can certainly be persuaded to ignore environmental concerns! After all, the organization’s primary mission obviously takes a back seat to the organization’s indefinite perpetuation (the first law of bureaucracies).

Sierra Club motto: “Think globally, and do nothing.”

More on Gelbaum

David Gelbaum gave $33,100 to the Obama Victory Fund in 2008 here.  No surprise!

Then here is a link to an article about Carl Pope stepping down as Executive Director of the Sierra Club but becoming its chairman. It’s the comments to this article that are so interesting– many about the Club being more concerned about raking in the dough then taking care of the environment, with good links for further study.

Learn more about David Gelbaum and his “secretive” Quercus Trust, here.  You will see why someone like Gelbaum would benefit greatly from the Obama Administration and its “green” tecnology.  Gelbaum likely supports the work of the Apollo Alliance—it’s all about money and power afterall.

* Apollo Alliance Board of Directors as of September 1st.  Please note that Van Jones was on this Board until March of this year, here.  So, Sierra Club and NRDC head honchos hang with avowed communist revolutionaries—interesting isn’t it?

Chairman
Phil Angelides, Chairman, Canyon Johnson Urban Communities Fund
Members
Frances Beinecke, President, Natural Resources Defense Council (see Discover the Networks on the Prospect Hill Foundation, here)
Robert Borosage, President, Institute for America’s Future
Leo Gerard, International President, United Steelworkers Union
Gerald Hudson, International Executive Vice President, Service Employees International Union
Mindy Lubber, President, CERES
Nancy McFadden, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs for PG&E Corporation
Kathleen McGinty, former Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
Terence M. O’Sullivan, General President, Laborers’ International Union of North America
Ellen Pao, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers
Michael Peck, Principal, MAPA Incorporated
John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress
Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club
Dan W. Reicher, Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives, Google
Joel Rogers, Director, Center on Wisconsin Strategy