Category: The Opposition

Valerie Jarrett: Obamacare and Immigration Reform will bring fundamental change to America

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editors note:  I posted this today at Potomac Tea Party Report and have slightly modified the introduction.

We know how detrimental these two laws (of course one is not yet a law) will be to America, so how come the ruling class Republicans don’t get it!

At Potomac Tea Party Report I’ve called Jarrett the “Rasputin” of the Obama Administration and have many posts, click here, on who she is and how she operates.

Valerie ‘Rasputin’ Jarrett: Obamacare and Immigration Reform will be OUR crowning achievements!

We haven’t heard much from her lately.  There was some speculation that she was calling the shots that terrible night in Benghazi and so she has been hiding out ever since.

Here she is front and center making it very clear that ‘Comprehensive immigration reform’ is an Obama plan (so hey, McCain, Graham, Rubio, Ryan and Boehner why hand him this victory?).

From the Daily Caller:

Valerie Jarrett, one of President Barack Obama’s top deputies, said Tuesday that immigration reform would be as important to the country’s future as Obamacare.

“It will be a landmark piece of legislation,” she told a videotaped meeting of progressive allies in a building alongside the White House.

“Together with the Affordable Care Act — two major pieces of legislation — that when we look back 50 years from now, I think we will all just be extremely proud,” said Jarrett.

Jarrett’s close relationship to Obama was underlined by her repeated use of the first-person plural. “We are confident that with everybody making [immigration] a priority, it will in fact pass, and we will sign it into law,” she said.

Jarrett’s pairing of Obamacare and immigration echoes her critics, who say the immigration rewrite is an effort by Democrats to gain political supremacy by adding tens of millions of Democrat-leaning immigrants to election rolls after 2020.

“Politically, pairing them in her mind suggests that the administration sees both pieces of administration as transformative,” said Mark Krikorian, a noted critic of immigration and the director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

It is fundamental transformation alright!

Obamacare and increased immigration are “ways of fundamentally changing the United States so that it will not be like our country before Obama was elected, which has always been his goal,” he said.

So Paul Ryan and others, what the hell are you thinking!

The Daily Caller continued:

Jarrett’s pairing of the two bills also contradicts efforts by Republicans to focus the GOP’s base on the existing Obamacare law, and to divert the base away from the closed-door, bipartisan efforts to pass an immigration rewrite, Krikorian said.

“Without realizing it [Jarrett] is probably doing a favor to opponents of amnesty because [Rep.] Paul Ryan and other other Republicans are trying to distract attention from immigration by focusing attention on Obamacare,” said Krikorian.

“Valerie is bringing everyone back to the connection of the two,” Krikorian said.

Go to all of our coverage of S.744, here, to see how the new “comprehensive” immigration bill will increase the number of refugees/asylees in the US and how the contractors will be raking in the taxpayer cash.

US Catholic Bishops begin massive lobbying campaign for amnesty

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a good article at Breitbart, but like most other news outlets they assume that the Catholic Church’s campaign for amnesty is being driven by its desire to add Hispanics to its dwindling flocks (and to show that they are good Christians), but few ever look at the fact that the Bishops are being funded by massive amounts of taxpayer dollars and the so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill that passed the Senate will give them gobs of more money!

Right now the Bishops are over 98% funded by tax dollars* and they are being paid to get refugees and asylees hooked up with social services.  S. 744 contains a slush fund for the Bishops and others of the religious Left to do that same work for the newly legalized—help them do their paperwork, find jobs, find welfare, sign them up for Obamacare, and supposedly get them English lessons.

I’m a fallen-away Catholic and the main reason is this:  I want no politics mixed with my religious worship, and the Church will have to really make sure they get the Hispanics because hearing a Leftwing political message (as is planned for September 8th) from the pulpit will only serve to drive more conservative-minded people from the Church.

Kevin Appleby, USCCB lobbyist pushing amnesty for money!

Breitbart (hat tip: Cathy):

If you attend Mass on September 8th, it is likely the priest’s homily will be less about spiritual matters and more about the political imperative of passing an amnesty law for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants. Last week, the Catholic Church announced a massive, coordinated effort to press Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship. Catholics make up the largest single religious group in Congress.

“We want to try to pull out all the stops,” Kevin Appleby, the director of migration policy at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the New York Times. Appleby said the immigration issue was at a now-or-never moment. “They have to hear the message that we want this done, and if you’re not successful during the summer, you’re not going to win by the end of the year.”

The Church is planning advertising, phone calls and marches targeting 60 Catholic House Republicans. Over 130 members of the House are Catholic, including Speaker John Boehner.

The Bishops are working harder on amnesty then on Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate and abortion!

The Church’s effort in support of amnesty seems broader and more coordinated than its actions against an ObamaCare mandate requiring coverage of contraception. In recent years, the Church has been more vocal in its criticism of abortion, but even that seems muted in comparison with current plans on immigration reform.

The Bishop’s lobbyist Appleby (Director of Migration Policy) will be pimping for amnesty and giving out marching orders in Minneapolis on September 4th.  If you live in the area you might want to drop in on this meeting.   After all, you help pay Appleby’s salary.

*The USCCB and YOUR money

Now check out the USCCB’s migration fund 2012 annual report (pdf here) and note on page 11 their income and expenses (I’ve rounded the numbers for easier reading).

Out of a revenue stream of $71 million, federal grants and contracts (that is you the taxpayer!) gave them $66 million.  They also received $3.6 million from refugee travel loans.  Your tax dollars pay for refugees to fly to America and then they are supposed to reimburse the government, but in fact a big chunk of whatever the refugee contractor extracts from the poor refugees, the contractor gets to keep—in the Bishops case, in 2012, that is $3.6 million that does not go back to the US Treasury.

Taking Caesar’s money!  98% of their budget is paid by the US taxpayer!

So, the USCCB only received $1.4 million from private sources of money (parishioners), but they paid salaries of $8 million!

The USCCB would wither on the vine and not be able to lobby if you, the taxpayer, weren’t funding them!

So, come on Breitbart!  Let’s go a little deeper with your reporting!

Update:  Here is an old story, but related.  Catholic Charities in Memphis, TN dropped its refugee program in favor of spending more time and money on Hispanics.   They will be well-placed for the newly amnestied!

Tennessee legislators want answers about fiscal impact of refugee resettlement

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a report from Bobbie Patray of the Tennessee Eagle Forum about the first meeting of a select committee of the Tennessee legislature to address  the 10th Amendment of the Constitution and the encroachment by the federal government on states’ rights in regards to the resettlement of migrants in the state by Catholic Charities (through the US State Department).

Holly Johnson, Catholic Charities TN, with her Idaho counterpart at 2010 Refugee meeting. In Tennessee, Catholic Charities calls the shots on resettlement.

See our earlier coverage here.  (You will find links there for reports from The Tennessean and Nashville Public Radio.)

Patray:

It was an exciting day to be at Legislative Plaza and see history being made yesterday.  The first official meeting of the Joint Legislative Advisory Committee was convened. This creation of and mission of this committee grew out of the increasing concern of both legislators and grassroots activists about the ongoing encroachment of the federal government on the constitutional rights of the sovereign states.

Members of the committee are: Rep. Judd Matheny, Chairman, Rep. John Ragan, Rep. Joe Carr, Rep. Josh Evans, Rep. Mike Turner, Sen. Mike Bell, Sen. Janice Bowling, Sen. Ferrell Haile, Sen. Thelma Harper, Sen. Jim Summerville.  All members were present except Sen. Harper.

There was enough interest in this important issue that other legislators attended: Rep. Jeremy Faison, Rep. G.A. Hardaway, Rep. David Alexander, Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver, Rep. Shelia Butt, Sen. Mark Green, M.D., Sen. Frank Niceley.

It was that concern that drove the motive for taking up the first issue of this committee:  The Federal Cost Shifting of the Refugee Resettlement program.

As one article stated: “A newly-created legislative committee met for the first time Wednesday to investigate the indirect fiscal impact of refugee resettlements. They were given an unsatisfying answer: no one is keeping track.”

That is the problem.   Each year, lawmakers are responsible for passing a budget and certainly have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer to know where these dollars are going.  Except….in this case…they don’t!!!

Chairman Judd Matheny CLEARLY laid out the parameters of the discussion:  It was ONLY about the COST SHIFTING to the states.  It was NOT about the value of the refugee resettlement program, it was NOT about what the refugees bring to this state, it was NOT about the work that the providers or participants do.

It is not just Tennessee lawmakers that  have these concerns.  Two years ago, the National Governors Association stated: “The federal government’s unwillingness to provide adequate funding for costs attributable to migration and resettlement services has resulted in a dramatic shift of program costs from the federal government to state and local taxpayers.”

The first speaker, Kasar Abdulla,  started telling her personal story, which, of course, was compelling. However, as was stated earlier, the value of the program was NOT the subject of the hearing.  Chairman Matheny asked her a couple of time to please stick to the topic, but she did not and, in fact, clearly was not prepared to do that.  So the Chairman called for the next speaker, Holly Johnson, State Refugee Coordinator, Tennessee Office for Refugees, Catholic Charities of TN, Inc.  After Miss Johnson spoke, Don Barnett and Joanne Bregman, Esq.  addressed the committee.  Bregman’s testimony was incredible as she revealed the cold, hard facts and figures.  The last speaker  Stephen Fotopulos, with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition was totally out of line with his testimony.

Just as a snapshot, Sen. Mark Green, M.D., observed that using the two numbers provided in the testimonies, the refugee program would be costing TennCare between $7.2million  and $12.1million over a four year period.  This is the kind of information that is desperately needed for budget purposes and that we have not been able to get hard figures on.  The committee passed a motion to ask the Fiscal Review Committee to do a comprehensive study of all aspects of this program with emphasis on any cost shifting, expenses incurred, what enabling legislation they are acting under, including a proportionality of refugees coming to TN versus other states to present at the November 12 meeting.

Click here to watch the proceedings.  For more on Tennessee and refugees, click here.

Photo is from this story about a Wilson-Fish (Office of Refugee Resettlement) meeting in Washington, here.  When you click that W-F link you can see if your state refugee program is now being run by a non-governmental agency.

Oops!  Depending on your screen size, in an earlier version of this post, the TEF logo blocks Johnson’s face… should have checked that first!

Springfield, MA: Mayor wants help lobbying for more funding from state and feds for refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  You might want to see what Tennessee is doing—-a Legislative Committee wants to know what refugee resettlement costs the state taxpayer, here yesterday.

You knew this was coming!  Democrat Mayor Sarno of Springfield has figured out how to be politically correct while complaining about the overload of impoverished third worlders being dropped off in his city—just join forces with the contractors and tell the taxpayers they need to pony-up more of their hard earned cash to help refugees.

When resettling the refugees’ extended family members they are required to be placed within a hundred miles of the contractor’s office, so you can see how handy Springfield is to get spillovers from other hot resettlement sites like Boston, Hartford, Providence and Albany.

Sarno says the median income of Springfielders is $32,124, but get this!  If you haven’t seen the news about the CATO study everyone was looking at yesterday, then you don’t know that Massachusetts is in the top five states in the nation where it pays more to be on welfare than to work!   Here is the Wall Street Journal:

Refugees and Asylees are entitled to all of this!  (See our fact sheet, here, for more goodies!)

WSJ:

The state-by-state estimates are based on a hypothetical family participating in about seven of the 126 federal anti-poverty programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; the Women, Infants and Children program; Medicaid; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; and receiving help on housing and utilities.

In Hawaii, that translates into a 2013 package of $49,175 — up $7,265 from an inflation-adjusted $41,910 in 1995. Rounding out the top five areas for welfare benefits, along with their 2013 amounts, were: the District of Columbia ($43,099), Massachusetts ($42,515), Connecticut ($38,761) and New Jersey ($38,728).

So how much more do Sarno and the contractors (who launder tax dollars through their supposed non-profit groups) want from you?

Here is the latest from Springfield about a meeting next Wednesday.  Concerned taxpayers should show up in mass!

In a letter to refugee support agencies, Mayor Domenic J. Sarno unveiled a four-point proposal that would call for more state and federal funding to extend assistance services and improve immigrant housing and neighborhoods.

In preparation for an Aug. 28 meeting designed to discuss concerns about refugees in Springfield, Sarno sent a request to officials at the Jewish Family Service of Western Massachusetts, Lutheran Social Services and the Catholic Charities Agency requesting a variety of data about refugees settled in the city and the services they receive.   [Let’s see if they are more forthcoming with data than their compatriots elsewhere in the US!—ed]

The meeting was scheduled after Sarno released a letter he sent to the U.S. State Department asking that requests for future resettlement of refugees in the city be denied. It was met with strong criticism from the three agencies and other social service organizations in Springfield.  [Again, these agencies are invested in Springfield.  They have offices and staff members and receive their taxpayer dole by being paid by the head to resettle refugees—no refugees no payola!—ed]

More money please!

Sarno called for the state and local agencies to join him in advocating for more funding for services through the state and federal government.

We will be anxiously waiting to see an explanation of how the contractors (and the US State Department) pick their resettlement targets!

He also asked for an explanation of the transitional assistance offered to families including initial and long-term cash assistance, employment services, educational support for children, medical assistance, psychological counseling and housing support.

“I would like to obtain a copy of any documents indicating and corresponding to the applicable criteria used to select what communities refugees are placed in…and whether there is some attempt to measure the impact on the host community of the significant number of refugees living at or below the poverty line,” he wrote.

Here is how they do it!  They just put pins in a map, quietly resettle a bunch of refugees, and see if anyone squawks.  If they can keep any complaints out of the media, then that town or city becomes “welcoming” and the spigot is opened wide!  Once a “preferred” community is established (with contractor offices in town,etc.), it is very hard (virtually impossible) to dislodge them.

See all of our previous posts on Springfield by clicking here.

Big day in Nashville tomorrow; open-borders cabal furious; beat war drums

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As we reported earlier, tomorrow is the first meeting of a special committee of the Tennessee legislature to begin to address the state’s rights under the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution.  In terms everyone understands, the first order of business is to address the problem of the federal government and its private contractor (Catholic Charities in this case) dumping the cost of taking care of refugees on the backs of the taxpayers of Tennessee.

Avi Poster: Diversity of cultures (Somalis and Kurds) make Tennessee beautiful.

Now the Open Borders activists in the city of Nashville are coming out of the woodwork to try to drum-up opposition and rally their troops to battle for tomorrow’s first meeting of the committee.    Below is Avi Poster, a Chicago transplant and community organizer, with an action alert to his followers.

We first came across Poster in 2009 when RRW went to Nashville for a weekend conference on Islam and Poster’s sidekick, Tom Negri, who managed the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel broke the contract with the organizing group fearing violence, or so Negri said.  A few days after the conference was successfully held in a “welcoming” hotel (with no violence, I might add!), Negri and Poster held a press conference in support of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” here in the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel.

Avi Poster to his network about tomorrow:

 I hope this message finds you all well. I’ll be brief…

This Wednesday, state representatives will hold a public hearing on refugee resettlement in Tennessee. The hearing was organized by the same handful of anti-immigrant/anti-Muslim/anti-refugee state legislators we so often hear from during the legislative session (Rep. Joe Carr and Re. Judd Matheny to name a few). Their goal is to spread misinformation about the costs of refugee resettlement with the end goal of ending all refugee resettlement in Tennessee. The event is titled “Federal Cost Shifting of Refugee Resettlement.”

Last legislative session, some anti-refugee leaders introduced HB1326/SB1325, which would have required the Tennessee Office of Refugees and any refugee resettlement organization that receives federal funding to reimburse the state for the “cost” of refugees. It was mean-spirited and clearly an attack on refugee communities, and it went nowhere. The bill was sent to “summer study” to die, but has found new life in this public hearing which is lop-sided with anti-refugee advocates.

Helping people get back on their feet after they’ve escaped war or famine is one thing that makes our country, and this state, great. The refugees that have moved to Tennessee, from Kurdistan, Somalia, and elsewhere, are fully contributing members of our community – owning businesses, showing leadership in our neighborhoods, and adding to the diversity of cultures that makes Tennessee beautiful.

We need to fill the room on Wednesday and make our voice heard. Attacking people who are fleeing hard times is pretty low – we need to show these legislators we won’t stand for it. [Community organizers, like Poster, are one-trick ponies!  Demanding financial accountability is code for xenophobia, don’t you know!–ed]

Can you be there?

This Wednesday, August 21st at 9:00am. Room 16 Legislative Plaza. We are meeting outside security at 8:15am.
If you are able to go, email Eben Cathey at eben@tnimmigrant.org or call him at 615-775-1069.

Thanks,
Avi (and Eben)

Wish I could be there as Tennessee takes the lead in demanding accountability from the federal government.  Please let your friends know what Tennessee is doing!

See our category on Nashville, here, with 55 previous posts about the “cultural diversity” Catholic Charities and the US State Department have brought to Tennessee (on your dime!).