Government of, by, and for the banks.. Feinstein and Obama and their looting banksers...
25 May 2013
Five
years since the 2008 financial meltdown, the speculation and fraud that caused
the crash are back in full force in the United States. Flush with the $85
billion in cash printed up and handed to the banks every month by the Federal
Reserve, business at the Wall Street casino is booming. Stock values are at
record levels and so are bank profits, amidst declining wages and mass poverty.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/05/obama-and-his-criminal-banksters-their.html
*
HER NAME IS SYNOMOUS WITH CORRUPTION AND SELF-ENRICHMENT OFF
ELECTED OFFICE.
OBAMA DONOR AND BUSH WAR PROFITEER DIANNE FEINSTEIN IS ONE
OF THE MOST CORRUPT POLITICIANS IN AMERICAN HISTORY.
IF YOU WONDERED WHY HER BIG MOUTH NEVER OPENS ABOUT THE FORECLOSURE
CRISIS, IT IS BECAUSE TWO OF THE BIGGEST CRIMINAL CULPRITS ARE HER DONORS WELLS
FARGO and BANK of AMERICA.
HER HUSBAND FOLLOWS FEINSTEIN SNIFFING OUT DEALS THAT PUT
MILLIONS INTO THIS WHITE COLLAR CRIME DUALS’S BOTTOMLESS POCKETS.
BUT THEY DO SHARE THE LOOT. FEINSTEIN’S HUSBAND RICHARD BLUM
HANDS OUT CAMPAGN BRIBES TO DEMS ALL OVER THE NATION SO THEY KEEP THEIR MOUTHS
SHUT ABOUT FEINSTEIN’S CORRUPTION, CONFLICTS OF INTERESTS AND WAR PROFITEERING.
Sen. Feinstein's Husband Cashes In on
Crisis Ethical? Ethnics never enter into a deal Feinstein is pushing in
Congress! FEINSTEIN IS A MAJOR OBAMA DONOR. SHE MAKES SIGNIFICATN
"CONTRIBUTIONS" TO DEMS ALL OVER THE NATION SO THEY KEEP THEIR MOUTH
SHUT ABOUT HER LOOTING OFF ELECTED OFFICE.
TWO OF
FEINSTEIN’S BIGGEST DONORS ARE CRIMINAL BANKSTERS WELLS FARGO and BANK of
AMERICA. SHE FRONTS FOR THESE BANKS IN THE SENATE LIKE SHE DOES RED CHINA! BOTH
BANKS ARE AT THE TOP OF THE LIST FOR THE FORECLOSURE DEBACLE THEY ARE NOW
PROFITEERING FROM.
On
the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced
legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that
had just awarded her husband's real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell
foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms, the
Washington Times reported on Tuesday.
Mrs. Feinstein's intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
was unusual: the California Democrat isn't a member of the Senate Committee on
Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency
is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments -
not direct federal dollars.
OBAMA'S LA RAZA PARTNERS for AMNESTY:
SENS. BARBARA BOXER and DIANNE FEINSTEIN - THEIR BRIBES, LOOTING and STAGGERING
CORRUPTION
FEINSTEIN IS ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT POLITICIANS IN AMERICAN
HISTORY. SHE’S GOTTEN RICH WHILE CA BURNED!
SHE TAKES HER BRIBES AND SALTS THEM AWAY AS
“CONSULTANT FEES” TO HER SON, OAKLAND LAWYER, DOUG BOXER.
ONE OF BOXER’S BIGGEST BRIBSTERS IS
FEINSTEIN’S PIMP HUSBAND’S, RICHARD C. BLUM. HE LIKES THE FACT BOXER VOTES FOR
ANYTHING THAT FEINSTEIN IS PUSHING IN THE SENATE THAT WILL PUT MORE MONEY IN
BLUM’S POCKETS!
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D‑Calif.), for example, paid her son
Douglas $320,409.17 in campaign donations through his company Douglas Boxer and
Associates from 2001 to 2006, CREW found. Douglas Boxer is a lawyer and a 10‑year
veteran of her political team, a Boxer spokesman said.
BUSH WAR PROFITEER AND MAJOR OBAMA DONOR, SEN. DIANNE
FEINSTEIN LOOTS MEDICARE. THERE’S NOT MUCH THAT HAPPENS IN WASHINGTON THAT
FEINSTEIN AND HER PIMP HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM DON’T PROFITEER FROM.
FEINSTEIN, ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT POLITICIANS IN AMERICAN
HISTORY, HAS AMASSED A STAGGERING FORTUNE FROM DEALS HER HUSBAND COOKS UP AND
FEINSTEIN AND BARBARA BOXER PUSH IN THE SENATE.
FEINSTEIN HAS LONG HIRED “CHEAP” LABOR ILLEGALS AT HER S.F.
HOTEL, ONLY MILES FROM HER $16 MILLION DOLLAR WAR PROFITS WHORE MANSION.
http://californiainmeltdown.blogspot.com/2013/02/war-profiteer-and-obama-donor-sen.htm
Husband's investments entangle Feinstein
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LATEST FLAP OVER MEDICARE
PAYMENT DENIALS
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By David WhitneyMcClatchy
NewspapersSan Jose Mercury News
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WASHINGTON - California lawmakers are questioning whether an auditing
company in which San Francisco investor Richard Blum, the husband of Sen.
Dianne Feinstein, has a major financial stake is rejecting Medicare claims at
California rehabilitation hospitals in order to reap millions of dollars in
profits at the expense of patient care.
The company, PRG-Schultz
International, has a contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services, the overseer of the Medicare program, to check payments in
California for mistakes. Its only pay is a bounty of up to 30 percent on the
"overcharges" it identifies.
The California Hospital
Association first raised concerns in November that PRG-Schultz was targeting
rehabilitation hospitals that cared for Medicare patients after knee or hip
replacement surgery. The hospital association said PRG-Schultz has reviewed
thousands of cases dating as far back as 2002 and has rejected nearly all as
medically unnecessary. Melinda
Staveley, president of the 38-bed Rehabilitation Institute at Santa Barbara,
said more than 100 such cases from her non-profit institution had been
rejected. The facility could face having to repay more than $2 million.
Elderly patients
As difficult as that would
be financially for a small hospital with a $12 million annual budget, she
said the bigger concern is future patient care. The frail and elderly surgery
patients with compound medical problems no longer will have access to
rehabilitation hospitals and will have to rely on home or outpatient
services.
"This is
devastating," Staveley said of the audits.
Her husband's business
interests in PRG-Schultz have proved awkward for Feinstein, the state's
Democratic senior senator, as the hospital association turns to Congress for
relief.
This is not the first time
Blum's business interests have collided with his wife's job. Blum Capital
Partners is a major investor in Northwest Airlines, which in 1995 won the
first contract by an American air carrier to fly to Beijing. Feinstein had
been friends with a former Chinese political leader since she was mayor of
San Francisco.
More recently, concerns have
been raised in Republican circles about some of Blum's investments benefiting
from defense contracts at a time when the senator was serving on the Senate
military construction appropriations committee.
Feinstein's press aide,
Scott Gerber, said the senator played no role in the legislation creating the
auditing program and did not intervene with program administrators to help
PRG-Schultz get the three-year contract in 2005.
Serious concerns
“
On Thursday, after questions
from McClatchy Newspapers, Feinstein sent a letter to the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services that called the hospital association's
concerns "potentially serious." She asked program administrators to
investigate, saying the concerns are spreading beyond its determinations on
rehabilitation hospitals to other aspects of Medicare-financed
hospitalizations for the elderly, including short-stay hospital admissions.
Feinstein made no mention of
her husband's interest in PRG-Schultz, which she lists in her annual
financial disclosure reports. According to PRG-Schultz, Blum's investment
companies own 10.5 percent of its outstanding common stock, 53 percent of its
outstanding preferred stock and 28 percent of its notes and securities.
California House members
soon will follow with a joint letter of their own asking for an
investigation.
Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa
Barbara, is taking the lead among Democrats. Her press aide, Emily Kryder,
said 15 members - more than a quarter of the state's congressional delegation
- have agreed to sign the letter so far.
"The review and
collection practices of PRG-Schultz threaten access to rehabilitation
services in California," the letter said. "We urge you to examine
the actions taken by PRG-Schultz International, Inc."
The auditing program was set
up as a demonstration project initially focusing on the three highest-cost
Medicare states - California, New York and Florida. Separate contractors are
used for each state. PRG-Schultz is the only for-profit contractor among them,
and Medicare administrators believe it has been the most controversial
because it alone has been zeroing in on rehabilitation hospitals.
Highly lucrative
On the brink of financial
collapse when it won the contract two years ago, PRG-Schultz has found the
job to be enormously lucrative. Government figures indicate that it had
rejected $105 million in California Medicare overcharges as of Sept. 30, the
end of the 2006 fiscal year.
Medicare managers said they
could not release figures for how much PRG-Schultz was claiming as
commissions for finding the alleged overcharges, saying the information was
proprietary. But based on bounties of 28 percent that were used in
establishing the program, PRG-Schultz's entitlement could be as much as $29
million.
The California Hospital
Association said in a letter to Medicare administrators in November that
PRG-Schultz should be suspended for improperly applying Medicare rules and
using unqualified personnel.
PRG-Schultz declined to
comment. But officials of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
steadfastly defended PRG-Schultz, saying it's applying rules on medically
necessary admissions that probably have been ignored in California for years.
PRG-Schultz "coming to
town is probably the first real look at these hospitals in many, many
years," said Melanie Combs, senior technical adviser for the federal
program.
"These rules have been
on the books since 1985," Combs said. "Maybe it's possible some
have been overlooking them. Maybe there have been consultants out there
helping hospitals to, quote, maximize reimbursements. And maybe perhaps some
of that has entailed looking the other way."
A call to Blum Capital
Partners - of which Blum is board chairman - asking for comment was not
returned.
PRG-Schultz reported a
first-quarter profit this year of $1.5 million, compared to a $10 million
loss for the same period in 2006.
*
HE HAS WORKED HARD FOR HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS. HIS
ADMINISTRATION IS INFESTED WITH THEM. OBAMA HAS PROMISED THEM ENDLESS
NO-STRING BAILOUTS, MASSIVE BONUSES AS WELL AS NO PRISON TIME.
NOT ONE CRIMINAL BANKSTER HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH A CRIME OR
EVER WILL. AS IS ALWAYS THE CASE OF WALL STREET’S WAVE OF CRIMES, THERE WILL
BE A FEW PALTRY FINES, AND THESE WILL BE PAID OUT OF BAILOUT MONEY.
NEXT TO BANKSTERS, OBAMA WORKS HARD FOR HIS LA RAZA PARTY
BASE of ILLEGALS. NEXT TO BANKSTERS, HIS ADMIN IS INFESTED WITH LA RAZA SUPREMACIST.
CONGRESS AND OBAMA ARE NOW HANDING OVER OUR BORDERS TO
OPEN BORDERS ADVOCATE AND LA RAZA SUPREMACIST JANET NAPOLITANO. OBAMA HAS
SQUANDERED BILLIONS PROTECTING THE BORDERS OF MUSLIM DICTATORS OVER THERE,
WHILE PUSHING OUR BORDERS OPEN WIDER WITH NARCOMEX.
WIKILEAKS and ALIPAC HAVE EXPOSED OBAMA’S OPEN BORDERS
AGENDA… IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED.
OBAMA’S UNAUTHORIZED PRE-ELECTION GRINGO-PAID DREAM ACT
HANDED MILLIONS OF JOBS OVER TO ILLEGALS, AND COST AMERICANS HALF BILLION
DOLLARS. MORE TO COME… MUCH MORE! WE ARE MEXICO’S WELFARE, JOBS, PRISONS, AND
COLONY FOR LOOTING!
Published by the International
Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
White House zeros in on Medicare
4 February 2013
Both President Obama and a top economic adviser have confirmed
that Medicare, the federal program that underwrites the cost of health care
for more than 50 million elderly and disabled people in the United States, is
a prime target in the budget-cutting negotiations now going on behind the scenes
in Washington.
While talks continue on social program cuts that will affect
tens of millions and ultimately the majority of the American people, public
attention is being diverted to a serious of secondary issues, such as
prospective gun legislation. There was, for example, enormous media attention
given to a photograph of Obama shooting skeet with a shotgun at Camp David,
including a protracted debate over when the photograph was taken and whether
the president could be said to be a hunter.
The real business of the Democrats and Republicans, however, is
laid out in the Saturday radio addresses by Obama and a spokeswoman for the
congressional Republicans, both of them calling for substantial cuts in
domestic social spending.
Obama’s address repeated his empty claims of an economic
recovery. He failed to note the radical divergence between the boom in
business profits, stock prices and corporate CEO pay and the disastrous state
of the job market, with workers’ wages and benefits continuing to decline.
Obama then turned to the question of the deficit, with his usual
mixture of doubletalk and demagogy, declaring, “We all agree that it’s
critical to cut unnecessary spending. But we can’t just cut our way to
prosperity.”
In a passage from the brief address that was not quoted in media
accounts, Obama continued, “Already, Republicans and Democrats have worked
together to reduce our deficits by $2.5 trillion. That’s a good start. But to
get the rest of the way, we need a balanced set of reforms. For example, we
need to lower the cost of health care in programs like Medicare that are the
biggest drivers of our deficit, without just passing the burden off to
seniors.”
The last phrase is typical of Obama speechmaking, and of all the
declarations by big business politicians in Washington. First, you signal to
your corporate masters what you plan to do, i.e., make drastic cuts in
Medicare. Then you reassure the victims of this policy that they aren’t
really the target.
In truth, that is exactly what the White House and congressional
Democrats and Republicans are planning. They will impose the burden of the
fiscal deficit on the backs of the most vulnerable sections of the working
class: the elderly, the disabled, young people and the poor.
There is, as Obama emphasizes, general agreement in ruling
circles that such cuts will be made. The only question—about which there is
heated debate—is what mechanism to use and how to disguise, as much as
possible, the real significance of the measures now being discussed behind
closed doors in the US capital.
Gene Sperling, head of the Obama’s National Economic Council,
underscored the centrality of Medicare cuts to the deficit-reduction process
in a speech Thursday to a health care group. Sperling began by declaring that
the administration was opposed to any cuts in Medicaid, the entitlement
program that underwrites health care for the poor and nursing home care for
millions of elderly people.
This is not out of any concern for the impact of such cuts on
the poorest Americans. Quite the opposite. Since extending Medicaid
eligibility is a central feature of the Obama health care overhaul, which
goes into full effect at the end of this year, it is necessary to keep
Medicaid afloat at least that long so as to sustain the fiction that health care
“reform” is aimed at expanding access to care and conceal its real purpose—to
cut the overall cost of health care for corporations and the government.
Moreover, most Medicaid cuts are implemented at the state level,
and state governments, led by Democratic as well as Republican governors,
have cut back on benefits and eligibility across the country.
“Medicaid cuts, from this president, from this administration,
are not on the table,” Sperling said. But since “we’ve made a tough choice”
to rule out Medicaid cuts, he continued, “It means we will have to look
harder for Medicare savings.”
Neither Sperling nor any other White House spokesman has spelled
out exactly what cuts in Medicare are envisioned. But the failed budget
agreement of 2011, reached by Obama and Republican House Speaker John
Boehner, gave a glimpse. It called for raising the age of eligibility for
Medicare from 65 to 67, which would force millions of retiring workers to pay
for private health insurance for those additional years. It also called for
increased means testing, a step towards turning Medicare into a welfare
program reserved for the poor, like Medicaid, and undermining its
universality.
The Washington consensus that entitlement program cuts are
unavoidable is justified on the grounds that, as countless big business
politicians declare, “There is no money.”
This is the mantra in the richest country on the planet from
representatives of a ruling elite that is gorging itself on speculation,
profit-gouging and outright swindling. The American financial aristocracy is
raking in trillions while begrudging every penny spent on retirement income
or health care for working people who have labored all their lives.
The claim that there is no money is a lie. The resources exist
in abundance, but the wealth produced by the labor of working people must be
taken out of the hands of the financial parasites and billionaires and the
major banks and corporations placed under democratic control and public
ownership.
Patrick Martin
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Three reasons Congress is broken
By
Robert G. Kaiser, Published: May 23
Robert G. Kaiser is
an associate editor of The Washington Post and the author of “Act of Congress:
How America’s Essential Institution Works, and How It Doesn’t,” published this
month.
Why is Congress so
helpless and so hopeless? We’ve heard all the fashionable explanations:
partisan gridlock; special interests and the impact of their campaign
contributions; gerrymandered House districts; an excessively partisan
president; a benighted Republican Party dominated by tea party know-nothings.
But the real cause is
deeper: Congress is a human institution with a distinct culture, and the modern
version of that culture is hostile to creative problem-solving. If we have a
mediocre Congress — even when it manages to accomplish something — it is
because of the people in it and the culture they have created.
The men and women who
now run for Congress have special features. Most of them are much wealthier
than their constituents. Surprisingly few have strong policy interests or
experience. Most are willing to spend a day or two or three each week asking
strangers for money on the telephone, a demeaning but obligatory exercise. Most
have internalized an ethical code that allows them to solicit campaign
contributions from people directly affected by legislation they vote on. This
is not rare or even unusual — it’s standard.
I’ve witnessed the
transformation of congressional culture over the past decades from a variety of
perches at The Washington Post, including two tours of duty as a reporter on
Capitol Hill. I’ve long been intrigued, and often baffled, by our legislative
branch. Then in 2009, I got lucky. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Sen. Chris
Dodd (D-Conn.) agreed to let me watch them produce what became the Dodd-Frank bill, which reordered the
regulation of America’s financial sector. They allowed their staffs to talk to
me regularly, on the record, over 19 months. I was able to gather a reporter’s
favorite commodity: the inside skinny. And I saw the culture of the modern
Congress at work.
The events I
witnessed were not exactly typical, because they produced a consequential
result. This was due to special circumstances: the large Democratic majorities
in the 111th Congress (2009-2011), elected in the midst of the worst financial
crisis since the Great Depression, and the effective leadership of two
experienced legislators who held key chairmanships: Dodd at the Senate Banking
Committee and Frank at the House Financial Services Committee.
Nevertheless, I saw
how Congress actively undermines the best of legislative practices. Consider
three aspects of that congressional culture that affected the course of
Dodd-Frank — and are even more influential today, when Congress appears
deadlocked on virtually all fronts.
Politics trumps
policy
The crash of 2008
posed an obvious policy question: How could regulation of the financial sector
be improved to prevent similar catastrophes? Most of the answers that
eventually made their way into the Dodd-Frank bill were provided not by
Congress but by the Obama administration.
Frank immediately accepted
the bill the administration wrote as the appropriate framework for reform. It
changed somewhat as it moved through the House, but not much. Dodd did offer
some new ideas: for example, unifying the four existing bank regulators into a
single new agency. But no other senator embraced Dodd’s plan, so he soon
abandoned it and accepted the administration’s approach. Overall, the big
policy questions were mostly settled by the administration.
Why? Because large,
bipartisan majorities in both chambers never understood the arcane financial
issues at the heart of regulatory reform, nor tried to master the subject.
Theoretically, the lawmakers had an opportunity to wield enormous power and
transform the biggest sector of the American economy. But very few were interested.
“This notion that members of Congress are power-hungry — absolutely the
opposite,” Frank observed at one point. “Most members like to duck tough
issues.”
The politics of
reform, by contrast, was a congressional preoccupation from the outset. Beginning
in early 2009, Frank was talking about political implications with House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who both
thought a strong bill would help Democrats. Emanuel repeatedly told Frank that
White House polls showed strong public support for reform. When pressure from
hometown bankers and financial industry lobbyists weakened some Democrats’
resolve in the summer of 2009, Frank warned them to hang tough. “If you kill
this bill now, you’ll get creamed,” he told the Democrats on his committee.
“You’ll get primary opponents. It will be ‘the people against the banks,’ and
‘the Democrats caved in again.’ ”
Politics mattered for
Dodd, too, but in a different way. He believed that a big bill of this kind was
unlikely to be enacted without strong bipartisan support, which he pursued for
months. He discouraged Democrats who wanted to make regulatory reform a
partisan issue. But he also refused to vitiate the bill to satisfy Republicans
who wanted a lot less regulation than he did. Ultimately, he got a smidgen of
bipartisanship — just enough to get the bill through the Senate. Three
Republican senators voted for cloture, to cut off debate and allow a final
vote; four Republicans voted for the final bill.
Politics — and
ideology — dominated GOP attitudes toward reform. In the House, Republicans
ruled out any cooperation with Frank and the administration from the outset.
House Republicans produced an alternative plan to demonstrate that they could
agree on some response to the crash, but their proposal had no teeth and was
never seen as anything more than a public relations exercise. Senate
Republicans, meanwhile, never offered an alternative of their own.
Republican leaders in
both houses used financial reform as a fundraising tool. Mitch McConnell (Ky.),
the Senate Republican leader, and John Cornyn (Tex.), chairman of the National
Republican Senatorial Committee, traveled to Wall Street to persuade — with
considerable success — financiers to give more to Republicans. John Boehner
(Ohio), the Republican leader of the House, similarly sought to attract Wall
Street money by opposing the administration’s regulatory proposals.
Republicans, including McConnell, repeatedly attacked the Dodd-Frank bill for
provisions it did not contain and kept doing so when their errors were pointed
out.
Staffers do most of
the work
Ted Kennedy said as
much in his 2009 memoir. “Ninety-five percent of the nitty-gritty work of
drafting [bills] and even negotiating [their final form] is now done by staff,”
he wrote, marking “an enormous shift of responsibility over the past forty or
fifty years.”
In the case of
Dodd-Frank, 95 percent might understate staff members’ share of the work. After
Dodd and Frank themselves, the two most influential people in shaping the
legislation were unknown to most Washington cognescenti: Amy Friend, chief
counsel of the Senate Banking Committee, and Jeanne Roslanowick, staff director
of House Financial Services Committee. They and their staffs were responsible
for every aspect of producing the final legislation: writing provisions (most
based on Obama administration drafts), vetting the contents with interest
groups of all kinds, looking for glitches or omissions, and hearing out the
recommendations and complaints of hundreds of experts, lobbyists and affected
parties.
Very few lawmakers
left fingerprints on the legislation. Most of them voted for or against
Dodd-Frank — nearly all along party lines — without remotely understanding its
provisions.
Staffers can’t vote,
but lawmakers can’t legislate without the work done by staff. In some
circumstances this feature of the modern Congress can help rather than hinder
the House and Senate, because staff members tend to believe in compromise when
elected officials often do not. But a compromise reached by staff won’t work on
its own; lawmakers have to vote for it.
Issues, even the big
ones,
are no longer really debated
In the “world’s
greatest deliberative body,” there is little deliberation. The Senate Banking
Committee never held a proper markup of the Dodd-Frank legislation, and did not
debate its provisions or consider their impact. The House markup was
ritualistic and formalized; it did little to alter the bill, with one
interesting exception — an amendment exempting auto dealers from the purview of
the new consumer financial protection agency.
The final law has a
number of radical provisions that were not debated in either body. One example:
It created a Financial Stability Oversight Council consisting of the heads of
many regulatory agencies and chaired by the Treasury secretary. It can instruct
regulators to force firms to abandon practices it considers too risky and can
even shut down a firm it deems a threat to the stability of the financial
system. If, one fine day, the council uses that unprecedented power, the
consequences could be dramatic. But this was never really debated during the
legislative process that produced the bill.
Floor debates in both
houses consisted primarily of political posturing. Lawmakers did not engage in
a serious philosophical discussion about the proper role of regulation in the
financial sector or in a practical discussion of how regulation might make the
system safer. Instead, the two parties swapped slogans and catchwords. During
the floor debates on final passage in the House, the galleries were never full
and often empty.
Frank and Dodd were
both remarkable leaders, nurturing support, solving tactical problems and, in
Dodd’s case, finding just enough Republican allies to bring home a bill. They
were old-school legislators who loved the process and knew how to make it work.
Both have now retired
from Congress. Those filling their roles have neither their brainpower nor
their political skill. Too few senior lawmakers in Congress have comparable
talents. Bright, serious people who understand policy still do run for and
serve in the House and the Senate, but they are a small minority. Service in
Congress is losing its allure.
It is difficult to
imagine that the House and Senate giants of the recent past would run for those
jobs today. Would Everett McKinley Dirksen enjoy begging for money? Would
Howard Baker have put up with it? Or Philip Hart or Paul Douglas? Peter Rodino
or Lee Hamilton? Would any of them enjoy the life of a modern member of
Congress, working three- or four-day weeks in Washington and flying home every
weekend, flitting from subject to subject and mastering none? I doubt it.
The culture of Congress
is the problem. It took more than three decades for this culture to evolve, and
it is now deeply entrenched. That is why the current Congress is unable to
function. It is revealing that the only issue now offering any hope for
compromise is immigration — because many Republicans fear the political
consequences of failing to act. Once again, politics trumps policy.
This dysfunctional
culture won’t be altered in an election cycle or two. Because of it, our
Congress is broken.
kaiserr@washpost.com
Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington’s “Ten Most
Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2007
4. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA):
As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on military
construction, Feinstein reviewed military construction government contracts,
some of which were ultimately awarded to URS Corporation and Perini, companies
then owned by Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum. While the Pentagon ultimately
awards military contracts, there is a reason for the review process. The
Senate's subcommittee on Military Construction's approval carries weight. Sen.
Feinstein, therefore, likely had influence over the decision making
process. Senator Feinstein also attempted to undermine ethics reform in
2007, arguing in favor of a perk that allows members of Congress to book
multiple airline flights and then cancel them without financial penalty.
Judicial Watch’s investigation into this matter is ongoing.
*
“WHY HASN’T SHE EXPRESSED
OUTRAGE ABOUT SOME OF THE POTENTIAL CONFLICTS WITH PEOPLE IN OR CLOSE TO THE
BUSH ADMINISTRATION?... COULD IT BE THAT SHE HERSELF HAS SOME ENTANGLEMENTS?”
"Why hasn't she expressed outrage about
some of the potential conflicts with people in or close to the Bush
administration?" Lewis said. "Could it be that she herself has some
entanglements?"
Blum's firms win
multimillion-dollar defense contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan Phillip Matier,
Andrew Ross Sunday, April 27, 2003 When it comes to scoring mega-military-related
contracts, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's multimillionaire husband, Richard Blum, is
right in the thick of things.
First up: a contract announced last week
between the Army and URS Corp., the San Francisco planning and engineering
company that specializes in defense work -- and that happens to be partly owned
by Blum's investment firm. The contract -- which could grow to $600 million --
is to help with troop mobilization, weapons systems training and anti-terrorism
methods. That's on top of a $3.1 billion Army contract that URS snared back in
February for weapons systems and homeland defense. Next up: Perini Corp., which
qualified earlier this month for as much as $100 million of defense work in
Iraq and elsewhere. The Massachusetts-based company is already busy building
barracks and other facilities for the new Afghan army -- a separate contract
worth $28 million. Blum's investment firm controls about 20 percent of Perini's
shares, with the majority held by a group of investors led by company chairman
Ron Tutor. Some of Perini's stock is also held by Tutor's West Coast
construction company, Tutor-Saliba -- the firm that built the Los Angeles
subway system, rebuilt the Oakland Coliseum and put BART into San Francisco
International Airport. Tutor-Saliba also oversaw construction of SFO's new
international terminal - - work that is under investigation by the city
attorney's office for alleged overbilling. But it's Blum's ties to URS -- in
which he controls about a quarter of the stock -- that are certain to raise the
most questions. In July, URS acquired defense contractor EG&G (the
technical services branch that won the $600 million contract) from the Carlyle
Group investment firm. That's the outfit that boasts ex-President George H.W. Bush,
former Secretary of State James Baker and ex-British Prime Minister John Major
as advisers. In exchange, Carlyle received cash and a chunk of URS stock worth
a total of $500 million. What's more, a top Carlyle manager now sits alongside
Blum on URS' board of directors. Celia Wexler, research director for Common
Cause in Washington, D.C., says all the defense and homeland security deals
involving Blum-connected companies raise concern of political hanky-panky --
especially with talk of the United States spending $100 billion to rebuild
Iraq. "You don't want this process to be tainted by the possibility that
there is any favoritism involved -- whether it's to the husband of a powerful
Democratic senator or someone close to the Bush administration," Wexler
said. "In the end, you want a process that is competitive, accountable and
open. It's the only way there will be confidence the process is not larded by
cronyism or inside deals." Both Blum and Feinstein -- along with
representatives of both URS and Perini -- said all the deals have been on the
up and up. "Sen. Feinstein has no say or involvement whatsoever in how
(Defense Department) contracts are awarded," said Blum spokesman Owen
Blicksilver. He added that URS -- with 27,000 employees worldwide -- is "a
big public company that bids on dozens of public contracts . . . and as a
matter of policy, the board of directors -- of which Mr. Blum is a member -- is
never told what the company is bidding on." As for Blum's Perini
involvement, Blicksilver said that Blum doesn't serve on the board and that the
company represents less than 1 percent of his overall investments. "So his
benefit from any contract to Perini is (minuscule)," Blicksilver said.
Feinstein spokesman Howard Gantman similarly dismissed any ethics concerns,
saying none of the contracts is voted on by the Senate. "We have checked
with the Ethics Committee to make sure there is no conflict of interest, and
have been told there are no conflicts," Gantman said. By the way, we
questioned the office of Rep. Henry Waxman, the Los Angeles Democrat and House
Government Reform Committee member whose protest recently halted the awarding
of a defense contract to Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton.
"That's a fundamentally different situation," said Waxman's chief of
staff, Phil Schiliro. His boss objected to a Halliburton subsidiary being
awarded a no-bid contract to repair Iraqi oil fields because the firm had just
paid $2 million to settle a claim that it had overcharged the government on an
earlier contract, Schiliro said. "The government didn't allow any other
bidders to compete for the contract, and gave Kellogg Brown & Root (the
Halliburton subsidiary) the kind of contract it had just abused," Schiliro
said. Charles Lewis, executive of the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity
watchdog group in Washington, says that "regardless of whether there is a
direct conflict of interest, it's useful to know that the spouse of a sitting
senator is getting richer because of what's going on in the world."
“WHY HASN’T SHE EXPRESSED
OUTRAGE ABOUT SOME OF THE POTENTIAL CONFLICTS WITH PEOPLE IN OR CLOSE TO THE
BUSH ADMINISTRATION?... COULD IT BE THAT SHE HERSELF HAS SOME ENTANGLEMENTS?”
"Why hasn't she expressed outrage about some of the potential conflicts
with people in or close to the Bush administration?" Lewis said.
"Could it be that she herself has some entanglements?"
March 1, 2006 The Democrats' Daddy
Warbucks
Feinstein family war profits, part
II
Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband,
Richard Blum, could well be called the Democrats' Daddy Warbucks. He's scored
bundles from war contracts. He has recently purchased a $16.5 million crib in
San Francisco and along with his wife has handed hundreds of thousands of
dollars over to fellow Democrats. Since the 2000 election cycle, Blum has
contributed over $75,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Committee, and thousands
more to individual Democrats, including John Kerry, Robert Byrd, Joe Lieberman,
Ted Kennedy, and Barbara Boxer. Richard Blum's history as an entrepreneur began
at the ripe age of 23 when he began to work for the San Francisco brokerage
firm Sutro & Company. Blum quickly climbed the ranks and became a partner
by the age of 30. According the San Francisco Chronicle, "Blum proved that
he had an eye for fixer-upper properties when he led a partnership that
acquired the struggling Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for $8
million – then sold it to Mattel Inc. four years later for $40 million."
In 1975, Blum went out on his own and formed a brokerage agency. Today, Blum's
lofty firm, Blum Capital, holds positions in more than 20 companies, including
real estate giants, credit bureaus, and yes, even military contractors. Blum
sees himself as an altruistic capitalist, claims one of his ex-employees:
"He likes to go after companies that are down and out, and bring their
stock back to life. He thinks he's doing good." Blum shares a large stake
in Perini, a civil construction company that is happily employed in Iraq and
Afghanistan. But not all of Blum's war profits come from Perini. In 1975, his
venture capital firm went after fledging construction and design company URS
when the business was about to be bought out by another corporation. Since
then, Blum has increased his stock in URS, capitalizing on its recent military
contracts. Unlike Blum's dabbling with Barnum & Bailey, his current profits
aren't so safe for child consumption. Here are the basics to date: Blum
currently holds over 111,000 shares of stock in URS Corporation, which is now
one of the top defense contractors in the United States. Blum is an acting
director of URS, which bought EG&G, a leading provider of technical
services and management to the U.S. military, from The Carlyle Group in 2002.
Carlyle's trusty advisers, past and present, include former President George
H.W. Bush, James Baker, and ex-SEC Commissioner Arthur Levitt, among other
prominent neoconservatives and Washington power brokers. URS and Blum have
since banked on the Iraq war, scoring a phat $600 million contract through
EG&G. As a result, URS has seen its stock price more than triple since the
war began in March 2003. Blum has cashed in over $2 million on this venture
alone and another $100 million for his investment firm. "As part of
EG&G's sale price," reports the San Francisco Chronicle, "Carlyle
acquired a 21.74 percent stake in URS – second only to the 23.7 percent of
shares controlled by Blum Capital." The Carlyle Group has long been
accused of exploiting its political connections to turn a profit. And if
Carlyle can come under the microscope for its government ties and war
profiteering, as it did in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, than surely Blum's
URS ought to be subject to the same scrutiny.
The Byrne Report Hawk Tale By Peter
Byrne ON JAN. 18,
California senator Dianne Feinstein
introduced Dr. Condoleezza Rice at a Senate nomination hearing for Secretary of
State in terms so saccharine that molasses seemed to ooze out of her mouth. She
was a precocious child, Feinstein purred. She has skill, judgment and poise.
She loves football. Bush loves her. "The problems we face abroad are
complex and sizable. If Dr. Rice's past performance is any indication, though,
we can rest easy." That very same day, Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum,
took advantage of a spike in the price of his URS Corporation stock. He sold a
third of his holdings in the defense contractor for $57 million, according to
filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. With Rice confirmed,
the business of death and occupation looks rosy as hell for Feinstein,
who--let's get real--benefits tremendously from sharing community property with
Blum. URS' largest customer is the U.S. Army, which accounted for 17 percent
($587 million) of its cash revenue in 2004. In 2001, URS enjoyed a mere $169
million in defense contracts. Now, its war contracts total more than $2
billion. According to its annual report, the San Francisco based URS
anticipates that profits will rocket up in 2005, because "operations in
the Middle East are expected to generate increased work related to the
development of weapons systems, the training of military pilots and the
maintenance, upgrade and repair of military vehicles."
Provided, of course, that our hawkish
leadership remains as poised and lovable as the new Secretary of State.
Feinstein, who sits on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, is an advocate
of first-strike warfare, even though it flouts international law and the standards
of common decency. Interestingly, her Financial Disclosure Report for 2003 was
more than three times the size of her 2002 disclosure (Feinstein's 2003
disclosure numbers 133 pages, compared to Sen. Barbara Boxer's six-page
report). The Feinstein-Blum portfolio is crammed with multimillion dollar
investments in the military-industrial-financial complex and corporations that
heavily exploit Third World peoples.
The senator has a lot to lose
should the neoconservative war machine falter. Hubby holds a controlling
interest in another engineering firm, Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass.
Perini ranks No. 6 by dollar amount in war-related government contracts in the
Middle East. According to its annual report, "Perini proudly supports the
U.S. government with global rapid response capabilities for defense,
reconstruction and security." Perini builds military facilities and roads
in Afghanistan, electrical infrastructure in Iraq and U.S. embassies around the
world. After the Senate, Feinstein included, approved Bush's war plans in 2002,
Perini's defense contract awards soared from negligible to $2.52 billion. But,
as with many of the sole-source, open-ended contracts awarded to politically
connected firms, there are problems with accountability. Last summer,
Department of Defense auditors determined that Perini could not adequately
justify its costs in Iraq as fair and reasonable. That's government-speak for:
They're gouging the #!$% out of us. Perini is heavily engaged in military and
municipal public works projects inside the United States; at least two are also
under investigation for contract fraud. For example, the city of San Francisco
has sued general contractor Perini--which was in a joint venture with the
Tutor-Saliba construction firm--for $100 million in cost overruns at a San
Francisco International Airport project. The lawsuit alleges that the joint
venture engaged in "a sophisticated pattern of fraud," including
inflating costs, fabricating delays and setting up minority front companies to
exploit affirmative-action preferences. The attorney general of Massachusetts
is looking into alleged false claims made by a Perini joint venture in the
"Big Dig" urban highway construction boondoggle in Boston. Ron Tutor,
owner of Tutor-Saliba and CEO of Perini, bought into the latter company, along
with Blum, as it teetered on the edge of solvency in the mid- 1990s due to a
bad real estate investment. It rebounded, thanks to the firm's sudden ability
to obtain lucrative U.S. military and government contracts, which, of course,
had nothing to do with the fact that Blum's powerful wife has her hands on the
military's purse strings. Remarkably, Perini grossed $1.37 billion in 2003, up
27 percent from the previous year, before the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Perini attributes its rocketing profits to "increased volume of work in
Iraq and Afghanistan." As a risk factor, the firm notes that continued
demand for its military services depends upon "the political situation in
Iraq," which, logically, means that it desires the bloody war and useless
occupation to continue indefinitely--a wish that hawktails with the foreign
policy positions of Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and Feinstein. I almost forgot: Perini
Corp. is the nation's most active builder of Indian-fronted casinos. That
explains a few things about Sen. Feinstein and the politics of gambling, soon
to be revealed in greater detail in this space.
IN AMERICAN HISTORY, THERE HAVE BEEN FEW, IF ANY
LOOTERS OFF ELECTED OFFICE THAT RAKED IN MORE THAN OBAMA DONOR SEN. DIANNE
FEINSTEIN AND HER HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM.
WHERE FEINSTEIN FORAGES AND VOTES, BLUM FILLS HIS
POCKETS WITH HER LOOT.
THEIR S.F.WAR PROFITEER’S MANSION ALONE COST $16
MILLION
“We need to provide our farms
a legal way to hire workers that they rely on, and a path for those workers to
earn legal status. And our laws should respect families following the rules —
reuniting them more quickly instead of splitting them apart,” Mr.
Obama said in a major speech
on the subject in El Paso, Texas, in 2011.
Lou Dobbs Tonight Friday, May 16, 2008
(FEINSTEIN IS THE BIGGEST WAR PROFITEER IN AMERICAN HISTORY. SHE HAS VOTED FOR ANY AND ALL WARS SHE COULD)
Some in Congress are once again trying to push piecemeal
immigration reform through the back door. Sen. Diane Feinstein of California
attached a farm worker program to the multibillion dollar Iraq war funding bill
yesterday which would grant temporary amnesty to 1.3 million farm workers and
their families over the next five years.
A CASE STUDY
OF WHAT BEING MEXICO’S “FREE” BIRTHING CENTER COSTS:
Jose Herria emigrated illegally from Mexico to Stockton,
Calif., in 1997 to work as a fruit picker. He brought with him his wife,
Felipa, and three children, 19, 12 and 8 – all illegals. When Felipa gave birth
to her fourth child, daughter Flor, the family had what is referred to as an
"anchor baby" – an American citizen by birth who provided the entire
Silverio clan a ticket to remain in the U.S. permanently. But Flor was born
premature, spent three months in the neonatal incubator and cost the San
Joaquin Hospital more than $300,000. Meanwhile, oldest daughter Lourdes married
an illegal alien gave birth to a daughter, too. Her name is Esmeralda. And
Felipa had yet another child, Cristian. The two Silverio anchor babies generate
$1,000 per month in public welfare funding for the family. Flor gets $600 a
month for asthma. Healthy Cristian gets $400. While the Silverios earned
$18,000 last year picking fruit, they picked up another $12,000 for their two "anchor
babies." While President Bush says the U.S. needs more "cheap
labor" from south of the border to do jobs Americans aren't willing to do,
the case of the Silverios shows there are indeed uncalculated costs involved in
the importation of such labor – public support and uninsured medical costs. In
fact, the increasing number of illegal aliens coming into the United States is
forcing the closure of hospitals, spreading previously vanquished diseases and
threatening to destroy America's prized health-care system, says a report in
the spring issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. "The
influx of illegal aliens has serious hidden medical consequences," writes
Madeleine Pelner Cosman, author of the report. "We judge reality primarily
by what we see. But what we do not see can be more dangerous, more expensive,
and more deadly than what is seen." According to her study, 84 California
hospitals are closing their doors as a direct result of the rising number of
illegal aliens and their non-reimbursed tax on the system. "Anchor
babies," the author writes, "born to illegal aliens instantly qualify
as Disability Income."citizens for welfare benefits and have caused
enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security
Income and
*
OBAMA
HANDS MASSIVE WELFARE TO ILLEGALS, ALONG WITH OUR JOBS TO BUY THE ILLEGALS'
ILLEGAL VOTES!
Most Illegal Immigrant Families Collect Welfare
April 05, 2011
Surprise, surprise;
Census Bureau data reveals that most U.S. families headed by illegal immigrants
use taxpayer-funded welfare programs on behalf of their American-born anchor
babies.
Even before the recession, immigrant households with children used welfare
programs at consistently higher rates than natives, according to the extensive
census data collected and analyzed by a nonpartisan Washington D.C. group
dedicated to researching legal and illegal immigration in the U.S. The results,
published this month in a lengthy report,
are hardly surprising. Basically, the majority of households across the country
benefitting from publicly-funded welfare programs are headed by immigrants,
both legal and illegal. States where immigrant households with children have
the highest welfare use rates are Arizona (62%), Texas, California and New York
with 61% each and Pennsylvania(59%).
WELFARE
FOR ILLEGALS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY ALONE IS UP TO $600 MILLION PER YEAR… HOW
MUCH OF THAT DOES MEXICO PAY US BACK ON?
JUDICIAL
WATCH
SANCTUARY COUNTY LOS ANGELES SPENDS
$600 MILLION ON WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS
County Spends $600 Mil On Welfare
For Illegal Immigrants
Last
Updated: Thu, 03/11/2010 - 3:14pm
For
the second consecutive year taxpayers in a single U.S. county will dish out
more than half a billion dollars just to cover the welfare and food-stamp costs
of illegal immigrants.
Los
Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, may be in the midst of a dire
financial crisis but somehow there are plenty of funds for illegal aliens. In
January alone, anchor babies born to the county’s illegal immigrants collected
more than $50 million in welfare benefits. At that
rate the cash-strapped county will pay around $600 million this year to provide
illegal aliens’ offspring with food stamps and other welfare perks.
The
exorbitant figure, revealed this week by a county supervisor, doesn’t even
include the enormous cost of educating, medically treating or incarcerating
illegal aliens in the sprawling county of about 10 million residents. Los
Angeles County annually spends more than $1 billion for those combined
services, including $500 million for healthcare and $350 million for public
safety.
About
a quarter of the county’s welfare and food stamp issuances go to parents who
reside in the United States illegally and collect benefits for their anchor
babies, according to the figures from the county’s Department of Social
Services. In 2009 the tab ran $570 million and this year’s figure is expected
to increase by several million dollars.
Illegal
immigration continues to have a “catastrophic
impact on Los Angeles County taxpayers,” the veteran county supervisor (Michael Antonovich)
who revealed the information has said. The former fifth-grade history teacher
has repeatedly come under fire from his liberal counterparts for publicizing
statistics that confirm the devastation illegal immigration has had on the
region. Antonovich, who has served on the board for nearly three decades,
represents a portion of the county that is roughly twice the size of Rhode
Island and has about 2 million residents.
His
district is simply a snippet of a larger crisis. Nationwide, Americans pay
around $22 billion annually to provide illegal immigrants with welfare benefits
that include food assistance programs such as free school lunches in public
schools, food stamps and a nutritional program (known as WIC)
for low-income women and their children. Tens of billions more are spent on
other social services, medical care, public education and legal costs such as
incarceration and public defenders.
*
Anchor Babies Grab One
Quarter of Welfare Dollars in LA Co
The anchor baby scam has proven lucrative for illegal aliens in Los Angeles
County, at considerable cost to our own poor and downtrodden legal citizenry.
The numbers show that more than $50 million in CalWORKS benefits and food
stamps for January went to children born in the United States whose parents are
in the country without documentation. This represents approximately 23 percent
of the total benefits under the state welfare and food stamp programs,
Antonovich said.
"When you add this to $350 million for public safety and nearly $500
million for health care, the total cost for illegal immigrants to county
taxpayers far exceeds $1 billion a year -- not including the millions of
dollars for education," Antonovich said.
I love children and I'm all for compassion -- smart, teach-them-to-fish
compassion. But when laws, the Constitution, and enforcement allow illegal
aliens (the operative word here being "illegal") to insinuate
themselves into our nation and bleed us of our precious financial resources, then
laws, the Constitution and enforcement need to be changed.
ANCHOR BABIES BORN IN OUR
BORDERS ARE STILL CITIZENS OF MEXICO!
"Remember 187 -- the Proposition to deny taxpayer funds for services to
non-citizens -- was the last gasp of white America in California."
---Art Torres, Chairman of the California Democratic Party
Anchor Baby Power
La Voz de Aztlan
has produced a video in honor of the millions of babies that have been born as
US citizens to Mexican undocumented parents. These babies are destined to
transform America. The nativist CNN reporter Lou Dobbs estimates that there are
over 200,000 "Anchor Babies" born every year whereas George Putnam, a
radio reporter, says the figure is closer to 300,000. La Voz de Aztlan believes
that the number is approximately 500,000 "Anchor Babies" born every
year.
The
video below depicts the many faces of the "Anchor Baby Generation".
The video includes a fascinating segment showing a group of elementary school
children in Santa Ana, California confronting the Minutemen vigilantes. The
video ends with a now famous statement by Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez of the
University of Texas at Austin.
NOTE
THIS CLOWN SAY’S “HAVING CHILDREN” not carry for them once they are bred!
“Through love of having
children, we are going to take over.”
AUGUSTIN CEBADA, BROWN BERETS, THE LA RAZA FASCIST PARTY
JUDICIAL WATCH.org
County’s Monthly Welfare Tab For Illegal
Aliens $52 Million
09/07/2010
As the mainstream media focuses on a
study that reveals a sharp decline in the nation’s illegal immigrant
population, monthly welfare payments to children of undocumented aliens
increased to $52 million in one U.S. county alone.
The hoopla surrounding last week’s
news that the annual flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. dropped by two-thirds in the past decade
overlooked an important matter; the cost of educating, incarcerating and
medically treating illegal aliens hasn’t decreased along with it, but rather
skyrocketed to the tune of tens of billions of dollars annually.
THIS FIGURE DOES NOT
INCLUDE EXTRA MILLIONS PAID FOR ANCHOR BABIES
Those figures don’t even include the
extra millions that local municipalities dish out on welfare payments to the
U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, commonly known as anchor babies. In
Los Angeles County alone that figure increased by nearly $4 million in the last
year, sticking taxpayers with a whopping $52 million tab to provide illegal immigrants’
offspring with food stamps and other welfare benefits for just one month.
That means the nation’s most
populous county, in the midst of a dire financial crisis, will spend more than
$600 million this year to provide families headed by illegal immigrants with
welfare benefits. In each of the past two years Los Angeles County taxpayers
have spent about half a billion dollars just to cover the welfare and
food-stamp costs of illegal immigrants. Additionally,
the county spends $550 million on public safety and nearly $500 million on
healthcare for illegal aliens.
About a quarter of the county’s
welfare and food stamp issuances go to parents who reside in the United States
illegally and collect benefits for their anchor babies, according to the
figures from L.A. County’s Department of Social Services. Nationwide, Americans
pay around $22 billion annually to provide illegal immigrants with welfare
perks that include food assistance programs such as free school lunches in
public schools, food stamps and a nutritional program (known as WIC) for
low-income women and their children.
BOOK: Mexifornia: SHATTERING OF AN
AMERICAN DREAM (illegals call it their DREAM ACT)
Calif.
Hospitals Spend $1.25 Bil On Illegal Immigrants
July 05, 2011
While the
Obama Administration halts deportations to work on its secret amnesty plan, hospitals across the U.S. are
getting stuck with the exorbitant tab of medically treating illegal immigrants
and some are finally demanding compensation from the federal government.The
group that represents most of the nation’s hospitals and medical providers
recently urged President Obama to work with Congress to reimburse them for the
monstrous cost of treating illegal immigrants. Federal law requires facilities
to “treat and stabilize individuals” regardless of their immigration status, but
federal support for the services remains “virtually nonexistent,” according to a letter submitted by
the American Hospital Association to the president.This week officials in
California, the state with the largest concentration of illegal immigrants,
joined the call for federal compensation after revealing that hospitals there
spend about $1.25 billion annually to care for illegal
aliens. The figure skyrocketed from $1.05 billion in 2007, according to
California Hospital Association figures quoted in a local news report.The
problem will only get worst, according to officials, who say the $1.25 billion
for 2010 could actually be higher. They complain that federal law forces them
to treat patients in emergency rooms regardless of immigration status yet they
get stuck with the financial burden. This has forced many hospitals to curtail
services or close beds and could ultimately compromise healthcare. Nationwide,
U.S. taxpayers spend tens of billions of dollars annually to provide free
medical care for illegal immigrants with states that border Mexico taking the
biggest hit. Adding to the problem is the fact that Mexico, the country that
provides the largest amount of illegal immigrants in the U.S., has long
promoted America’s generous public health centers. It even operates a Spanish-language program (Ventanillas de Salud, Health
Windows) in about a dozen U.S. cities that refers its nationals—living in the
country illegally—to publicly funded health centers where they can get free
medical care without being turned over to immigration authorities.
*
LOS ANGELES ANCHOR BABY WELFARE PROGRAM:
THESE FIGURES ON WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY ARE DATED. IT NOT
EXCEEDS $600 MILLION PER YEAR!!! (source: Los Angeles County & JUDICIAL
WATCH)
California
spending annually $22 billion to support illegals
Going To the Top!
By Susan Tully
I've been at the immigration reform and enforcement table for about 20 years.
I've worked with activists during all those years. But last week, in Los
Angeles, I had a first-time-ever experience at an activist brain storming
session.
Gathered for an update on Stop AB131, the petition drive to gather signatures
to force a ballot initiative as to whether the California taxpayers should fund
college grants to illegal aliens, I asked the top activist leaders from
Southern California how the signature drive was going.
They started updating me with the positive response from California residents
who signed the petitions, but then admitted about 500,000 more signatures were
still needed. When I said there was only a little more than three weeks to go
to meet the January 5th deadline, suddenly their faces dropped at once, and the
room went completely silent.
It was easy to read on each of their
faces; the task was nearly impossible! Without big money to pay signature
gatherers or a tsunami of petitions flooding in, the taxpayers of California
will be forced to give grant money to illegal aliens for college, on top of the
$22 billion they are spending annually in California to support the illegal
alien population.
While all of our minds were racing and searching for suggestions as to how to
accomplish this daunting task of gathering signatures, Lupe Moreno, long time
Hispanic leader from Santa Ana, said "Can we have a prayer?" Everyone
agreed to pray.
As the prayer went around the table, people expressed their sorrow for the lack
of leadership in the State of California and in the nation to protect the
interest of American citizens, and asked for divine guidance in helping them
understand the harm their policies are inflicting on millions of innocent
people in the state. In all the years I have worked on this issue, I had not
witnessed the sort of sincere emotion that was expressed in that room.
(THE FASTEST GROWING POLITICAL PARTY IN AMERICA IS THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of
LA RAZA! AND WE ARE FORCED TO FUND IT!)
You see, the politicians in California are happy to give money the state
doesn't have to illegal aliens to attend college, while they cut the budgets
and slash programs for public safety, right and left. The American citizen's
interests and safety are simply collateral damage for seeking and appealing to
the illegal alien lobby.
These activists in California have already learned what the rest of the nation
is about to learn. We the people. . . are the only ones looking out for the
best interest of American citizens. With few exceptions, we have no national
leadership on the issue of stopping the illegal migration flow into our nation.
American citizenship or the benefits thereof have become a commodity for
politicians to pander and barter away. They will grant de facto citizenship
through sanctuary policies, in-state tuition, non-compliance with Secure Communities,
grants for college, etc., etc., etc. President Obama and most the Republican
presidential hopefuls are peddling various versions of amnesty proposals if
they are elected next year.
What do these politicians want in return? They are hoping to leverage enough
votes in key states to put them over the top in 2012, no matter what it costs
the American people. This is futures betting: The politicians are gambling the
nation's future in hopes of winning the next election.
So while the state can't afford to pay its bills or provide
decent services to citizens, these California activists watch their elected
leaders lavish still more benefits for people who don't have a legal right to
be in the country. And while their child might have to pay out-of-state tuition
to go to college in another state, thousands of illegal aliens are going to
college at in-state tuition rates in California that they are subsidizing.
In addition they know that millions of other illegal alien parents are
receiving food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance and dozens of other state
and local benefits for their American-born children, while they have to decide
which bills will be paid this month and which will have to wait.
It's not hard to understand why the activist of California need all the help
they can get. Please go to www.stopAB131.com and lend a hand to our friends and
family and the people of California to do what needs to be done for the good of
our children first.