Category: Obama

Can Americans stay this great?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I came across this awesome collection of photos of the North Dakota flood and have to share it. Many of the photos are of volunteers filling sandbags and transporting them to where they are needed, building levees, pumping water — the things that need to be done. Some of the workers are standing in freezing water; many are mud-splattered. The governor is in one photo, on the ground in a blizzard.

Our esteemed Congress and President think it’s a good idea to encourage volunteering by issuing government edicts and creating and enlarging programs that pay people to “volunteer.” We know that the president and first lady believe that people who go into “public service” as opposed to private business are the good people.  

I’ll bet that almost all of the volunteers in the North Dakota have regular jobs. They are not professional volunteers. They are just acting as Americans have traditionally acted — taking care of their communities and their neighbors in need. The pictures warm my heart. The government is there too in the form of the National Guard. But without the hard work of all those other people, the damage would have been far worse.

Many countries do not have such traditions of self-help. Fewer and fewer, as their governments take over more functions (in industrialized countries) or traditional social structures are disrupted as countries develop. It is something that Toqueville noted in his visit to America in the early 1800s — our tendency to develop organizations to take care of our local needs. Two things now threaten this tradition.

One is the ever-increasing encroachment of government. Where people are accustomed to being taken care of by the benevolent state, that is what they expect in their time of need. Look at New Orleans. President Obama wants to help this process along by, for example, reducing the tax-deductibility of charitable contributions. By crippling charitable organizations, the government can step in to take over more and more of what used to be private.

The other is the decreasing assimilation of immigrants, the lack of attention paid to teaching them American customs and culture, and the tendency for some immigrants to cluster in their own groups with little desire to become part of the country where they have settled. I hope I am wrong about this. I hope that if there were a group of Somali refugees living in Fargo, their neighbors would ask them to join the groups filling sandbags and they would willingly agree. But I am pessimistic. 

Our tradition of volunteering to help each other, of taking care of our needs with as little government involvement as possible needs to be kept alive. And it needs to be taught to new Americans. It’s not a genetic characteristic, it’s cultural. It could be lost. Or it could be passed on to every immigrant who makes his new home here.

Addendum: I forgot to link to Ann’s post, Refugees flowing into Fargo, when I wrote this.

Update: The answer is yes, some of the refugees have pitched in.

Obama is likely to release Gitmo prisoners into US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Not all of them, but at least a batch of 20 men(up from17) is being considered for release.  We just can’t drop them on the streets.  No, of course not, probably as we speak one of the top ten volags (federal refugee contractors) is busy finding them a home.   But, where?     Hat tip:  Blulitspecial.

President Barack Obama’s intelligence chief confirmed Thursday that some Guantanamo inmates may be released on US soil and receive assistance to return to society.

“If we are to release them in the United States, we need some sort of assistance for them to start a new life,” said National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair at his first press conference.

“You can’t just put them on the street,” he added. “All that is work in progress.”

For our previous posts on Guantanamo Bay go here.

Obama “heartbroken” over homeless…..

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..then why are we bringing more people here to make them homeless? 

Here is an AP report on something Obama said Tuesday evening at that boring press conference.

WASHINGTON (AP) – At a time when millions of Americans are losing their jobs and their homes, President Barack Obama says he’s “heartbroken” that any children are without a roof over their heads.

Obama says the “most important thing” that he can do for those children is make sure that their parents have jobs. And he again pointed to his plan to save or create 3.5 million jobs through his economic stimulus package.

[….]

And the president told reporters at a Tuesday evening news conference that there needs to be a “change in attitude” in the country, so that it isn’t seen as “acceptable” for children and families to be homeless.

Honest to goodness, would someone please tell me then why we are bringing more immigrants and refugees to the US  and making them homeless?   Only two days ago we told you about an Iraqi family that became homeless and decided to return to Syria.   Then there was a discussion in Boise, ID of possible tent cities for homeless refugees.  Or, how about the refugee in Dallas worried that he would soon be living under the bridge.

I’ll answer my own question, I think there are political powers in this country that want people to be homeless and living in poverty because those poor people continue to fuel the Alinsky battle of the ‘have nots’ vs. the ‘haves.’   If people are content they do not demand change (see our category on Community Destabilization here on how that works).  The change Obama is after is to make more people dependent on government and thus bring about socialism.    And, since we were running out of our own poor and angry people, we import them.

By the way, check out this American Thinker article that Judy sent to me yesterday entitled, “What kind of President thrives on chaos?”

I don’t believe Obama is at all “heartbroken.”

Assistant Secretary for refugees job might soon be filled

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The ‘In the Loop’ column in the Washington Post predicted yesterday that Eric Schwartz is a likely choice to be Assistant Secretary for Refugees, Population and Migration (PRM for short).  PRM is the US State Department branch that is responsible for admitting third world refugees into the US.   No surprise that he is a Clintonista.

Also at Foggy Bottom, chatter is that Eric Schwartz, former Clinton administration National Security Council senior director for humanitarian aid and a top U.N. human rights official, is the leading candidate to be assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration.

PRM has been without a politically appointed leader since the term of our former Maryland politician, Ellen Sauerbrey’s expired.  Sauerbrey had been chosen by that ‘bad’ Bush but soon got high praise for working right along with the volags to bring more refugees to the US.  Sauerbrey was responsible for negotiating a deal that will bring 60,000 Bhutanese from camps in Nepal to the US over the next few years.

I asked this when I wrote, more than a year ago, about  Sauerbrey’s “warm send-off” where she was praised by the refugee industry for increasing refugee numbers and helping them bypass security hurdles.

Kind of makes you shake your head, how did we get to the point of praising a conservative for bringing more refugees to America while lessening the security procedures?

So, back to Schwartz.  I don’t know who he is except for some evidence readily available on the internet.  You can read about his plans for a new administration way back in August here.

Schwartz heads up an organization called Connect US Fund, that appears to be a front for a bunch of leftwing funders, here.   It’s the usual crowd—many of the same foundations that I learned long ago also called the shots in the environmental movement.   I know for a fact that these are the very same moneybags that locked up Alaska lands and prohibited oil drilling back in the 1970’s (but that’s another story).

The Connect U.S. Fund was created in 2004 and is supported by a donors’ collaborative which presently includes the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Atlantic Philanthropies and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The Connect U.S. Fund is managed by the Tides Foundation. The Connect U.S. Council provides policy and program guidance for the Connect U.S. initiative, and is comprised of representatives from each of the five supporting foundations.

And, if you need more evidence about where this group and Schwartz are headed, see this substantively and logically weak article they have posted on their website entitled, “The Economic Crisis Should Not Weaken Commitment to Resettling Refugees in the U.S.”   Bring more refugees it’s good for the economy, they say.

But the question remains. Can a new Administration and Congress make the case for increases in refugee resettlement assistance during an economic crisis? I would say that not only can the case be made, but that it can be made convincingly.

After making NO convincing case, the treatise ends with this.

An economic downturn, far from discouraging support for refugees, should encourage it.

Huh?

The theory here appears to be, that if you say something often enough and forcefully enough, it becomes true, at least in the minds of those who want to believe it.

Update a few hours later:   See the end of this post for a possible explanation of the seemingly illogical thesis that an economic downturn is good for refugee resettlement.

Chicago’s Heartland Alliance admits placing clients in slums

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Buried in the middle of a lengthy article in the Chicago Journal is mention of the Heartland Alliance, a subcontractor of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, placing its clients (presumably including its refugee clients) in buildings that by all accounts are horrific slums.

For years, residents have blamed a raft of buildings for causing havoc in the Edgewater neighborhood.

Drug dealing and other criminal activity were a weekly, if not daily occurrence at the three buildings located at 4940, 5718 and 6019 N. Winthrop. Now, it appears as if there finally may be some resolution to a long-time neighborhood headache.

Taxpayer supported housing called an “outrage.”

Touted as offering affordable low-income housing, the six buildings received a combined $410,962 in subsidies according to a first quarter 2008 report from the city’s Low Income Housing Trust Fund, a program in which building owners can apply for rental subsidies to reduce rent for the poorest of the poor.

Ald. Mary Ann Smith (48th Ward) called the Winthrop buildings an outrage. There is no reason, she said, that subsidized housing shouldn’t be extraordinary and accountable to the same laws for non-subsidized rental housing.

“This neighborhood has worked hard for 35 years to deal with bad buildings and bad landlords,” Smith said. “The people in these buildings cannot advocate for themselves, it’s an absolute outrage. I can’t imagine any of us who have a family member with challenges would want that person to be in a building with exposed wires and plumbing backups. Here, we have the public sector subsidizing bad buildings. We have to hold them accountable the same way we hold the private sector accountable.”

The building cases are winding through the court system.

According to inspection reports obtained from the Chicago Department of Buildings, city inspectors found 57 alleged code violations at 5718 N. Winthrop in 2008. The violations ranged from deteriorating exterior walls, a defective roof, damaged doors and windows, unsanitary plumbing fixtures, backed-up sewage in tubs and sinks, and exposed wiring and outlet boxes. The building was also cited for roaches and other insect infestations.

Forty-eight code violations were found at 6019 N. Winthrop and 11 at 4940 N. Winthrop in 2008. Both buildings are winding through the housing court system.

Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights admits placing clients (poor immigrants or poor Americans, it doesn’t matter)  in these buildings that have been a blight on the neighborhood for decades.

Andrew Geer, vice president and executive director of the affordable and supportive housing initiative for Heartland Alliance, acknowledged that some tenants who have identified themselves as Heartland clients have signed leases at 5718 ad 6019 N. Winthrop.

“We have rental subsidies in buildings and resident may or may not be receiving services,” Geer said. “We do inspections twice a year. Our response is to work collectively and collaboratively with the city and whoever is providing the subsidy to address housing issues.”

Geer said that issues surrounding certain building owners who receive subsidies highlight the lack of quality affordable housing for low-income residents throughout the city, who might otherwise find themselves homeless.

Huh?   What a bunch of double-talk!   How does that answer the question of why Heartland Alliance came to put clients into buildings that were known slums.

Here is what Heartland Alliance says on their website. Yeh, right!

We build and advocate for safe, high-quality housing and supportive services for people experiencing homelessness, poverty, or chronic illness.

Heartland Alliance has a past history of refugee neglect.

The Chicago Journal article doesn’t specifically say that Heartland Alliance has refugees in these buildings, just “clients,” but based on a report we did a year ago, here, the Heartland Alliance has a history of neglecting refugees and was accused in 2001 of putting refugees in dilapidated bug-infested apartments.   The State Department supposedly investigated and then did NOTHING!

Then here is more hypocrisy!

I thought Heartland Alliance sounded familiar from my research on Obama’s community organizing involvement and his time on the Woods Fund Board of Directors with former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.  So, I went to the most recent Woods Fund  Form 990 (2007)  (Ayers is still on the Board) to see if they were supporting Heartland Alliance.  Sure enough in a section of the 990 where grants are listed, in a section entitled, Intersection of Community Organizing and Public Policy (you gotta laugh) is a $40,000 grant to the Heartland Alliance.   So, is the money used for political “organizing” or for helping real people?

I guess the old expression, do as I say, not as I do, applies here.