Once upon a time in America...organized labor unions were a good thing; they brought us a 40 hr work week, protected children from unethical labor practices, and on and on. Now, however, they appear to have been taken over by greedy union "bosses" and socialists; read what Mark Mix has to say:
"Once again, it's all about power.
Big Labor has seized on the so-called "Occupy Wall Street" protests to push for more power over American workers and the economy.
"The challenge is, how do you transfer protest into power?" asked one Communications Workers of America (CWA) union boss, sensing an opportunity to turn up class warfare against job providers and force more workers into dues-paying ranks.
You see, despite the early media reports, "Occupy Wall Street" isn't just a reaction against the bank bailouts.
It's looking more and more like yet another excuse to demand bigger government, more spending, and higher taxes.
No wonder Big Labor is so eager to bus in protestors and subsidize the rallies -- all paid for by forced dues.
For instance, union officials are using the protests as the next phase in their corporate campaign against Verizon.
You may remember the recent ugly strike -- with hundreds of reports of sabotage and vandalism. Phone lines were cut, denying service to Verizon customers. Independent workers were subjected to harassment and even violence.
Now CWA union officials and "Occupiers" are working together on a boycott against Verizon products and services until Verizon gives in to the union hierarchy's demands.
Meanwhile, one widely circulated list of Occupiers' demands includes the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill.
As you may recall, that legislation would eliminate the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives and open workers up to harassment and intimidation by aggressive union organizers.
If the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters were truly concerned with special privileges and bailouts for a select few, they'd look no further than at their new allies at Big Labor.
Big Labor has received its own bailouts and sweetheart deals courtesy of the Obama Administration. The auto bailout, ObamaCare, and so-called "stimulus" all lined union-boss coffers.
Union bosses enjoy special privileges afforded to no other Americans, including the ability to seize dues or "fees" from unwilling workers and exemption from federal prosecution for acts of violence committed in the so-called "pursuit of legitimate union objectives."
(This is nothing short of "legalized crime")~Lordhawke
Big Labor's special privileges could prove to be even more destructive should the "Occupy Wall Street" protests turn violent.
Protest, of course, is a fundamental exercise of First Amendment rights to speech and association.
Let us not forget that compulsory unionism violates those very same principles." Mark Mix
As a side note, I saw the beginnings of this type of activity in 1959 (or 1960), when my Dad was Security Chief of Police at Kennecott Copper Corp. Chino Mines Division, and he and his men had to patrol company property for several long days during the Mine-Mill strike, to make sure nothing untoward happened to Kennecott property. Some of the union leaders seemed to be trying to stir up trouble by driving through the mining district towns with a pick-up truck mounted with a loudspeaker, broadcasting union propaganda, even though at that time, New Mexico was (and still is, I believe) a "right to work" State. ~Lordhawke
Showing posts with label SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS. Show all posts
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
SHEILA JACKSON LEE LEAVES US ALL SPEECHLESS.
From Redstate Briefing:
Recently, Congresswoman Shiela Jackson-Lee went on the air with Tavis Smiley of PBS. During her appearance she was kind enough to explain something to all those crazy conservative bloggers. “Shut up!” And while we’re all zipping the soup-coolers, we’re also supposed to lay off the racial politics.
For those of us hoping for greater detail, we are still unsure as to whether we should “Go to Hell” first, and then shut the yaps, or whether that works the other way around. However, she is handy with a totally non-racial and uncontroversial piece of advice for anyone who expects to do business with the Federal Government once Barack Obama’s new jobs bill has been passed.
No tribute to the intellectual firepower of Congresswoman Shiela Jackson-Lee would be complete without her famous visit to NASA JPL. She wanted to know if the Mars rover would have any footage of where the astronauts planted the flag before. She also drinks the other dark cola, because Pepsi, you see, has racist commercials.
Oh, and who could possibly forget….
At that juncture, I realized something. I couldn’t think of anything that would describe Shiela Jackson-Lee’s mental incapacity. Depleted Uranium is dense. So is the gravity field in the vicinity of a highly-complexioned hole.(The Congresswoman did tell me to stop playing the race card.) But nothing adequately serves as a metaphor for the hardness of Shiela Jackson-Lee’s head. It would score a 14 on The Moh Scale.
She wins, I have nothing left to say….
Recently, Congresswoman Shiela Jackson-Lee went on the air with Tavis Smiley of PBS. During her appearance she was kind enough to explain something to all those crazy conservative bloggers. “Shut up!” And while we’re all zipping the soup-coolers, we’re also supposed to lay off the racial politics.
For those of us hoping for greater detail, we are still unsure as to whether we should “Go to Hell” first, and then shut the yaps, or whether that works the other way around. However, she is handy with a totally non-racial and uncontroversial piece of advice for anyone who expects to do business with the Federal Government once Barack Obama’s new jobs bill has been passed.
She also said that if Obama’s jobs bill is passed, that contractors who “do not look like”* her need to make sure that if they get federal money, their workforce “better be reflective of those suffering double-digit unemployment.”Now before we all rush to judgment about members of Congress who are differently-able, it helps to review some prior public statements of Shiela Jackson-Lee. She claims that Venezuela is a friendly nation and a US ally soon after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called US President George W. Bush the devil. She seems enamored with the notion that the US succeeded in The Vietnam War. Gob-smacking historical ignorance follows below.
“I don’t consider it discrimination, I don’t consider it affirmative action,” she added.
She continued, “Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working. We may not agree with all that North Vietnam is doing, but they are living in peace. I would look for a better human rights record for North Vietnam, but they are living side by side.”(HT:CBS News)
No tribute to the intellectual firepower of Congresswoman Shiela Jackson-Lee would be complete without her famous visit to NASA JPL. She wanted to know if the Mars rover would have any footage of where the astronauts planted the flag before. She also drinks the other dark cola, because Pepsi, you see, has racist commercials.
Oh, and who could possibly forget….
One of Lee’s crusades as a Representative of subtropical Gulf Coast Houston has been to end what she calls the government policy of giving hurricanes “lily white” names. “All racial groups should be represented,” she told The Hill Magazine, adding that she hoped the weather establishment in the future “would try to be inclusive of African American names” such as “Keisha, Jamal and Deshawn.”
At that juncture, I realized something. I couldn’t think of anything that would describe Shiela Jackson-Lee’s mental incapacity. Depleted Uranium is dense. So is the gravity field in the vicinity of a highly-complexioned hole.(The Congresswoman did tell me to stop playing the race card.) But nothing adequately serves as a metaphor for the hardness of Shiela Jackson-Lee’s head. It would score a 14 on The Moh Scale.
She wins, I have nothing left to say….
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
County approves redistricting plan
Commissioners propose same tax rate as 2011
August 22, 2011 9:51 PM
The Ector County Commissioners Court showed Monday you can’t make everyone happy all of the time, but you can still get a unanimous vote.
Commissioners voted on revised redistricting plans for the county in response to objections raised by Commissioner Armando Rodriguez July 18 at what was supposed to be the redistricting task force’s final public hearing on the first map. Following a process that began in April, Rodriguez raised objections at that hearing about the distribution of minority voters.
Commissioners approved the new Plan A redistricting map, despite Rodriguez’s objections about minority distribution.
Rodriguez said some of the people who approached him did not believe minorities were represented well enough in Precinct 3, which caused quite a stir in previous redistricting meetings and was also the vehicle for the creation of a third map plan.
Rodriguez helped create Plan C with the county demographer, a plan that was sent to commissioners Wednesday.
That plan drew no support when Rodriguez made a motion to approve it, and commissioners instead approved Plan A, with Rodriguez voting for the plan as well.
Rodriguez said he wouldn’t be able to change the minds of the other commissioners, so he voted for it, despite his problems with the plan.
Plan A moves a total of 1,197 people of precinct 102, who will not be able to vote in the next election. Plan C would have moved more than 15,000 people from multiple precincts. Plan B, developed at the same time as Plan A, would also have moved more than 13,000 people.
Redistricting is necessitated by demographic changes measured by the U.S. census each decade. According to federal guidelines, to ensure each person’s vote has the same weight, the difference in population between the smallest and largest district can’t be more than 10 percent.
If some things are changing, others are likely to stay the same.
Ector County commissioners voted to propose a tax rate identical to last year, but a faint hope exists that it could be reduced after public hearings.
“There’s still a chance we can find a reduction in the rate,” Commissioner Greg Simmons said. “Had it not been for the (information technology costs), I would say we would have been in a position to lower the tax rate a little bit.”
But he said despite some hope, it’s not likely commissioners will be able to lower the tax rate. As proposed, the steady tax rate will actually increase taxes in the county because of a 5 percent appraised property value increase.
If the tax rate were lowered now, Simmons said it could end up causing commissioners to take too much out of the reserve fund. The proposed budget already is taking almost $3 million from the $8.7 million fund balance to cover costs, despite an increase in revenue.
Simmons said commissioners did not want to issue debt for the IT project as they have for past projects, and is hoping the county can spend less than it budgets and save that money for projects in the future.
Ector County Judge Susan Redford said she hopes taxpayers appreciate the work the court has done to cut the budget, including the trimming of an extra $500,000 in the past two weeks.
But she said she understands there may be some additional wants and needs addressed in the public hearings.
“We have a responsibility to the taxpayers to provide them with the best possible services we can,” Redford said. “But we do have to take into consideration that this is taxpayer money we are using and we have to look at what they want, too. It’s a difficult balancing act.”
She said the commissioners would have to take a look at reducing the tax rate if that’s what taxpayers want, but reinforced what Simmons said that the IT program would make that difficult, if not impossible.
IT renovations, which could cost the county as much as $10 million over the next five years, have been pegged as a necessity to overhaul aging hardware and connect systems throughout the entire county.
The meetings will take place at 10 a.m. Sept. 2 and 6 p.m. Sept. 6 at the Ector County Annex.
http://www.oaoa.com/articles/county-70803-plan-commissioners.html
August 22, 2011 9:51 PM
The Ector County Commissioners Court showed Monday you can’t make everyone happy all of the time, but you can still get a unanimous vote.
Commissioners voted on revised redistricting plans for the county in response to objections raised by Commissioner Armando Rodriguez July 18 at what was supposed to be the redistricting task force’s final public hearing on the first map. Following a process that began in April, Rodriguez raised objections at that hearing about the distribution of minority voters.
Commissioners approved the new Plan A redistricting map, despite Rodriguez’s objections about minority distribution.
Rodriguez said some of the people who approached him did not believe minorities were represented well enough in Precinct 3, which caused quite a stir in previous redistricting meetings and was also the vehicle for the creation of a third map plan.
Rodriguez helped create Plan C with the county demographer, a plan that was sent to commissioners Wednesday.
That plan drew no support when Rodriguez made a motion to approve it, and commissioners instead approved Plan A, with Rodriguez voting for the plan as well.
Rodriguez said he wouldn’t be able to change the minds of the other commissioners, so he voted for it, despite his problems with the plan.
Plan A moves a total of 1,197 people of precinct 102, who will not be able to vote in the next election. Plan C would have moved more than 15,000 people from multiple precincts. Plan B, developed at the same time as Plan A, would also have moved more than 13,000 people.
Redistricting is necessitated by demographic changes measured by the U.S. census each decade. According to federal guidelines, to ensure each person’s vote has the same weight, the difference in population between the smallest and largest district can’t be more than 10 percent.
If some things are changing, others are likely to stay the same.
Ector County commissioners voted to propose a tax rate identical to last year, but a faint hope exists that it could be reduced after public hearings.
“There’s still a chance we can find a reduction in the rate,” Commissioner Greg Simmons said. “Had it not been for the (information technology costs), I would say we would have been in a position to lower the tax rate a little bit.”
But he said despite some hope, it’s not likely commissioners will be able to lower the tax rate. As proposed, the steady tax rate will actually increase taxes in the county because of a 5 percent appraised property value increase.
If the tax rate were lowered now, Simmons said it could end up causing commissioners to take too much out of the reserve fund. The proposed budget already is taking almost $3 million from the $8.7 million fund balance to cover costs, despite an increase in revenue.
Simmons said commissioners did not want to issue debt for the IT project as they have for past projects, and is hoping the county can spend less than it budgets and save that money for projects in the future.
Ector County Judge Susan Redford said she hopes taxpayers appreciate the work the court has done to cut the budget, including the trimming of an extra $500,000 in the past two weeks.
But she said she understands there may be some additional wants and needs addressed in the public hearings.
“We have a responsibility to the taxpayers to provide them with the best possible services we can,” Redford said. “But we do have to take into consideration that this is taxpayer money we are using and we have to look at what they want, too. It’s a difficult balancing act.”
She said the commissioners would have to take a look at reducing the tax rate if that’s what taxpayers want, but reinforced what Simmons said that the IT program would make that difficult, if not impossible.
IT renovations, which could cost the county as much as $10 million over the next five years, have been pegged as a necessity to overhaul aging hardware and connect systems throughout the entire county.
The meetings will take place at 10 a.m. Sept. 2 and 6 p.m. Sept. 6 at the Ector County Annex.
http://www.oaoa.com/articles/county-70803-plan-commissioners.html
Friday, August 19, 2011
Obama to America: Drop Dead
Obama to America: Drop Dead - San Francisco Immigration
By Rick Oltman
In the most anti-American act of his administration that showed complete contempt for America and Americans, President Barack Hussein Obama amnestied over 30 million illegal aliens on Thursday. There was no legislation, no debate and no consideration for American citizens.
Cecilia Munoz, formerly of the racist group La Raza, posted on the White House Blog that under the president’s direction an amnesty was declared for illegal aliens in America.
Oh, it wasn’t called amnesty, of course. In classic Orwellian Newspeak she said, “Today, (DHS) announced that they are strengthening their ability to target criminals even further by making sure they are not focusing our resources on deporting people who are low priorities for deportation.”
But it’s an amnesty.
Read the rest of the story at Examiner.com .
****
Make your thoughts known - call the President's comment line about this: 1-202-456-1111 - Email him at http://www.whitehouse.gov/. ~ Jean Towell
******
Well, NCLR wasn't satisfied with all the high level governmental appointments Obama paid them in return for their help in getting him elected. They've now twisted his arm by threatening to withdraw their support in 2012 and by actively encouraging him to be a dictator that he has now become a dictator, throwing the Balance of Power, our Constitution, and our laws out the window. Here's some on Cecilia Munoz. I have never liked her since she was on some committee that was discussing how many people from each country we would allow in as legal immigrants. She said something to the effect that she (although she phrased it as "we") didn't want to let too many black people in. Wish I'd kept that. I remember copying it as a comment on some posting on ALIPAC but I haven't been able to find it... that was back when I first started looking at this mess and wasn't familiar with saving things. Anyway, here's Cecilia.
I do believe that is incontestable evidence that the White House knows what the Balance of Powers is, what our Constitution and laws mean and that they have blatantly disregarded all of what this country was founded upon in favor of their own agendas. Our Congress needs to get off their duffs, do their job and reign this president and his entourage in. ~ Faye
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Immigrants plead for end to fingerprint sharing
By AMY TAXIN
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Immigrants who say they were hauled into jail for selling ice cream without a permit and for reporting being the victim of domestic violence had one message for a federal government task force assigned to review an information-sharing effort that gives immigration authorities access to the fingerprints of arrestees.
End the program.
More than 200 people, many wearing signs reading "Terminate Secure Communities" and carrying flags from countries including Mexico and Brazil, packed a conference room in Los Angeles Monday night to recount their experiences with a program they say is making immigrants reluctant to report crime to police out of fear of getting deported.
"Every day I live the nightmare of this program," said Blanca Perez, 38, who said she was arrested in February for street vending without a permit. "Now I am facing deportation for the simple act of selling ice cream in the street."
The meeting was one of the first public discussions of the so-called Secure Communities program since Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Aug. 5 terminated agreements signed with states to jumpstart the effort and said that state approval isn't required to share fingerprints.
The program touted by immigration authorities as an information-sharing effort has become a headache for the Obama administration, which has plowed ahead with it despite vocal opposition from Latino and immigrant rights groups the president counts on for support.
Immigrant advocates say the program lands immigrants arrested for investigation of minor violations in detention and erodes their trust in police. They have also criticized the administration for giving the impression that local governments could choose whether to participate when it is in fact mandatory.
States including Illinois and Massachusetts had decided to opt out of the program, only to be told that they couldn't.
At the at-times boisterous meeting in Los Angeles, several dozen people spoke out against Secure Communities - and the bulk of the crowd walked out halfway in protest after a speaker challenged the two task force members leading the session to resign. But a handful of people gave the program praise, saying more, not less, immigration enforcement is needed.
"Contrary to what you have heard, Secure Communities does not seek out hardworking, law abiding immigrants for removal," said Anna Pembedjian, public safety deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich. "Rather, it seeks out those who prey on them and others in our community,"
On Monday, immigrant rights groups urged members of the task force to call on ICE to end the program and questioned whether any real change would come from the meetings held last week in Dallas and scheduled this week in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Immigrant advocates are planning to hold protests Tuesday against Secure Communities in cities across the country.
Retired Sacramento police chief Arturo Venegas Jr., one of the two task force members overseeing the Los Angeles meeting, said he isn't going to quit.
"We have the opportunity to give voice to you in those halls of government where in the past, in reality we haven't had it," he told the smaller crowd that remained after the walkout in Spanish. "If we leave now, the work will continue, and they will make recommendations without our voice."
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it has recently developed additional training for local law enforcement along with a new policy to protect domestic violence victims. It also said it created the task force to make recommendations for other changes, recognizing "that there is room for improvement in the operation of the program."
ICE is currently running the program in 44 states and plans to achieve nationwide coverage in 2013.
Local law enforcement agencies routinely send fingerprints to the FBI for criminal background checks when an individual is arrested. Under Secure Communities, the FBI shares the fingerprints with Homeland Security to look for potentially deportable immigrants.
An ongoing source of debate is who is getting identified through this fingerprint sharing. Since 2008, about 121,000 immigrants have been deported after being flagged under Secure Communities, ICE statistics show.
About 6 percent had no prior record with immigration officials or law enforcement; roughly 28 percent had no criminal history, the statistics show.
That has led some immigrant advocates to clamor for changes, such as screening people after they are convicted of a crime instead of when they are arrested. Groups in favor of stricter limits on immigration counter that it's not feasible to wait for a conviction and the sole opportunity for consistent screening is during the booking process.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IMMIGRATION_ENFORCEMENT_FINGERPRINTS?SITE=TXODE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Immigrants who say they were hauled into jail for selling ice cream without a permit and for reporting being the victim of domestic violence had one message for a federal government task force assigned to review an information-sharing effort that gives immigration authorities access to the fingerprints of arrestees.
End the program.
More than 200 people, many wearing signs reading "Terminate Secure Communities" and carrying flags from countries including Mexico and Brazil, packed a conference room in Los Angeles Monday night to recount their experiences with a program they say is making immigrants reluctant to report crime to police out of fear of getting deported.
"Every day I live the nightmare of this program," said Blanca Perez, 38, who said she was arrested in February for street vending without a permit. "Now I am facing deportation for the simple act of selling ice cream in the street."
The meeting was one of the first public discussions of the so-called Secure Communities program since Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Aug. 5 terminated agreements signed with states to jumpstart the effort and said that state approval isn't required to share fingerprints.
The program touted by immigration authorities as an information-sharing effort has become a headache for the Obama administration, which has plowed ahead with it despite vocal opposition from Latino and immigrant rights groups the president counts on for support.
Immigrant advocates say the program lands immigrants arrested for investigation of minor violations in detention and erodes their trust in police. They have also criticized the administration for giving the impression that local governments could choose whether to participate when it is in fact mandatory.
States including Illinois and Massachusetts had decided to opt out of the program, only to be told that they couldn't.
At the at-times boisterous meeting in Los Angeles, several dozen people spoke out against Secure Communities - and the bulk of the crowd walked out halfway in protest after a speaker challenged the two task force members leading the session to resign. But a handful of people gave the program praise, saying more, not less, immigration enforcement is needed.
"Contrary to what you have heard, Secure Communities does not seek out hardworking, law abiding immigrants for removal," said Anna Pembedjian, public safety deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich. "Rather, it seeks out those who prey on them and others in our community,"
On Monday, immigrant rights groups urged members of the task force to call on ICE to end the program and questioned whether any real change would come from the meetings held last week in Dallas and scheduled this week in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Immigrant advocates are planning to hold protests Tuesday against Secure Communities in cities across the country.
Retired Sacramento police chief Arturo Venegas Jr., one of the two task force members overseeing the Los Angeles meeting, said he isn't going to quit.
"We have the opportunity to give voice to you in those halls of government where in the past, in reality we haven't had it," he told the smaller crowd that remained after the walkout in Spanish. "If we leave now, the work will continue, and they will make recommendations without our voice."
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it has recently developed additional training for local law enforcement along with a new policy to protect domestic violence victims. It also said it created the task force to make recommendations for other changes, recognizing "that there is room for improvement in the operation of the program."
ICE is currently running the program in 44 states and plans to achieve nationwide coverage in 2013.
Local law enforcement agencies routinely send fingerprints to the FBI for criminal background checks when an individual is arrested. Under Secure Communities, the FBI shares the fingerprints with Homeland Security to look for potentially deportable immigrants.
An ongoing source of debate is who is getting identified through this fingerprint sharing. Since 2008, about 121,000 immigrants have been deported after being flagged under Secure Communities, ICE statistics show.
About 6 percent had no prior record with immigration officials or law enforcement; roughly 28 percent had no criminal history, the statistics show.
That has led some immigrant advocates to clamor for changes, such as screening people after they are convicted of a crime instead of when they are arrested. Groups in favor of stricter limits on immigration counter that it's not feasible to wait for a conviction and the sole opportunity for consistent screening is during the booking process.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IMMIGRATION_ENFORCEMENT_FINGERPRINTS?SITE=TXODE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Friday, August 5, 2011
Congress Asked To Pledge Respect To Latinos
.Last Updated: Wed, 03/23/2011 - 11:07am
Amid heated immigration debates, members of Congress are being asked to sign a pledge acknowledging the economic, civic and cultural contributions of Latinos and opposing “irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric” that “dehumanizes” them.
The contract is part of the “Pledge for Respect” campaign launched this month by the politically-connected National Council of La Raza (NCLR), which bills itself as the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. The influential Mexican group receives millions of federal tax dollars annually to promote its leftist, open-borders agenda and has hundreds of branches throughout the nation.
NCLR leaders regularly attend congressional hearings as well as White House meetings and President Obama hired one of the group’s top officials (Cecilia Munoz) to serve in his administration. The commander-in-chief even violated his own lobbyist ban to make Munoz director of intergovernmental affairs even though she supervised all legislative and advocacy activities on the state and local levels for the NCLR, which is headquartered in Washington D.C.
With that said, this isn’t merely a publicity stunt for the powerful NCLR, which is pushing the respect campaign as part of this year’s National Latino Advocacy Days. The idea is to reinforce that the Hispanic community is an integral part of the fabric of America, according to the group, which is also using the opportunity to denounce politicians who use Latinos to exploit xenophobia for political gain.
The contract also forces members of Congress to promise that they’ll meet with advocates and leaders from the Hispanic nonprofit (that would include the NCLR) and business communities to hear their perspective on the “issues.” That way they could find a common ground based on “shared values and interests.”
To launch its respect campaign the NCLR enlisted a Los Angeles hip-hop band named after the Aztec astrological symbol of the monkey (Ozomatli). In a public service ad, members of the musical group claim that some candidates for public office have called for landmines on the U.S.-Mexico border and microchips to be implanted in undocumented immigrants. Others have used “stereotypical and menacing images of Latinos in their campaign ads.”
The message goes on to say that elected officials and states have fashioned “extreme draconian” proposals against the immigrant and Latino communities, including the elimination of ethnic studies programs in public schools, forcing publicly-funded hospitals to ask for patients’ immigration status and stripping U.S. citizenship from children born to illegal aliens. “It’s time to tell Congress that we won’t stand for this anymore. We need to know who is with us and who is against us! “
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/mar/congress-asked-pledge-respect-latinos
La Raza Group Teams Up With Feds To Push Govt. Aid In Spanish
Last Updated: Fri, 07/08/2011 - 2:03pm
President Obama’s favorite La Raza group has teamed up with a federal agency to promote one of the administration’s many government cash giveaways with Spanish ads encouraging Latinos—possibly illegal immigrants—to apply for free U.S. taxpayer dollars.
The new campaign warns Hispanics that time is running out to get up to “$50,000 in help” from Uncle Sam to pay their mortgage, past due charges, taxes, insurance and even legal fees associated with their home. The money is being disbursed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as part of a billion-dollar Emergency Homeowner Loan Program (EHLP).
In 2008 the agency revealed that some 5 million fraudulent or defaulted home mortgages were in the hands of illegal immigrants, who obtained the loans from banks that were pressured by the government to offer them. In fact, the agency in charge of preserving and promoting public confidence in the nation’s financial system, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), began pushing banks to offer services to illegal aliens years earlier and many still do today.
It’s logical to assume that the involvement of the nation’s most powerful open borders group, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), in promoting government-funded mortgage aid is geared, at least in part, towards undocumented immigrants. The EHLP expired but recently got extended amid record-high unemployment to help people keep their homes. The NCLR, which has seen its federal funding skyrocket since one of its top officials got a job in Obama’s White House, wants to make sure Latinos get a piece of the pie. This week it launched a Spanish-language public service campaign to highlight the program’s “fast-approaching” deadline.
“The biggest challenge now is ensuring that people know about this opportunity and take advantage of it during the short period that it is available,” according to the NCLR director who announced the campaign that will help Latinos “seize” an “opportunity.” In the ad HUD Assistant Secretary Mercedes Marquez alerts Hispanics of the imminent deadline to get their government cash and directs them to a Spanish HUD website that assures the money will be disbursed in a “fair and impartial manner.”
Last year Marquez , a strong ally of the open borders movement, awarded an NCLR affiliate known as Chicanos Por la Causa nearly $40 million in grants to “stabilize neighborhoods and rebuild economies.” The money came from a Neighborhood Stabilization Program that has doled out $2 billion to community groups to combat the negative effects of “vacant and abandoned homes.”
Just a few weeks ago a Judicial Watch investigation revealed that federal funding for the NCLR, which for years has raked in millions of taxpayer dollars, has catapulted since Obama hired its senior vice president (Cecilia Muñoz) to be his director of intergovernmental affairs. In fact, the government cash more than doubled the year Muñoz joined the White House, from $4.1 million to $11 million. Additionally, NCLR affiliates nationwide raked in tens of millions of government grant and recovery dollars last year thanks to the Muñoz factor.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/jul/la-raza-group-teams-feds-push-govt-aid-spanish
Funding Liberalism With Blue-Chip Profits
by David Hogberg and Sarah Haney
08/23/2006
Liberal blogger David R. Mark recently wrote, “Those that call themselves ‘compassionate conservatives’ would never think to touch their fat-cat supporters. It’s much easier to spin the ‘economic benefits’ of helping huge corporations fatten their bottom lines.” Liberal academic Thomas Frank, in his book What’s The Matter With Kansas?, claims that the corporate world “wields the Republican Party as its personal political sidearm.” Both Mark and Frank express a common view that corporations are major funders of the political right, and that when corporations make contributions to nonprofit advocacy groups they give to groups on the right because those groups are pro-business.
On its face, this makes sense. After all, conservatives generally support lower taxes, less government regulation, and freer trade, public policies that are supposed to coincide with the interests of corporations. Why wouldn’t corporations eagerly fund their political supporters? In a Washington Examiner editorial, Professor Thomas F. Schaller lamented the “‘infrastructure gap’ that persists between the well-funded and highly organized Republican right and the relatively underfunded and generally disorganized Democratic left.”
Of course, the conventional wisdom admits some high-profile exceptions. Certainly New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D.) was one of the most liberal members of the U.S. Senate, consistently achieving scores of 90% and higher on the legislative scorecard of the left-wing activist group, Americans for Democratic Action. Yet before he entered politics, Corzine was head of Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banks in the world. Nonetheless, the popular assumption is that groups on the political right should have their coffers filled with corporate money. By contrast, the political left, because it is thought to favor policies inimical to business interests, ought to have scant corporate support.
We decided to test this hypothesis by examining giving by the charitable foundations of the top 100 corporations on this year’s Fortune 500 list. For this analysis, we defined the terms “political right” and “political left” broadly but with some specificity. Nonprofit public interest and advocacy groups on the political right favor lower taxes, less government regulation, and less government spending on social programs but more on defense programs. We also put on the right groups that defend traditional values, the right to bear arms, stricter immigration laws and tougher criminal laws.
We put on the political left nonprofit groups that advocate higher taxes, more government regulation, more spending on social programs and less on defense, and groups promoting more liberal values, more gun control and relaxed immigration and criminal laws. We looked at grants to groups across the political spectrum including advocacy organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Right to Life Committee, think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and Brookings Institution, and public interest law firms such as the Institute for Justice and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
If the political right and major corporations are as closely aligned as popular perception suggests, then the corporate foundations examined in this report ought to be more generous to groups on the political right than those on the political left. That’s not what we found.
Common Perception Wrong
In this analysis, we examined only those Fortune 100 companies that operated nonprofit charitable foundations that made grants to groups we identified as on either the political right or left. That reduced the number to 53 corporate foundations. (See page 20.) We examined the most recent tax- return filings for these foundations (IRS Form 990) and compiled the dollar values for grants and matching gifts to left-wing groups and right-wing groups.
The results are the exact opposite of the common perception. The Fortune 100 foundations gave more money to the political left. In fact, the grant-making was lopsided: The political left received nearly $59 million, while the political right received only about $4 million, a ratio of 14.5 to 1.
The Wildlife Conservation Society, which took in a huge $35-million grant from the Goldman Sachs Foundation, was the top beneficiary on the political left of Fortune 100 foundation giving. It was followed by the Conservation International Foundation ($4.5 million), the National Council of La Raza ($2.9 million) and the Nature Conservancy ($1.9 million).
The American Enterprise Institute received $575,000, which was the largest single Fortune 100 grant to a group on the right, followed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute ($325,000) and the Employment Policies Institute ($275,000).
Competitive Advantage
Why do they do it? To understand why corporations give more money to the political left than to the political right, it is critical to understand that businesses are not inherently “pro-market.” Indeed, some business leaders may support tax increases and more government regulation because they believe it gives them an advantage over competitors. Many are not averse to more government spending if it boosts their profits.
Using government to gain advantage over the competition may explain some of the grants made by the corporate foundations. For example, the IRS Form 990 for the corporate foundation of General Motors shows that it gave grants of $50,000 to Resources for the Future and $10,000 to the World Resources Institute, both supportive of energy policies favoring ethanol production and use. Would GM have made the grants had it not made a major investment in a fleet of E85 vehicles that are designed to run on fuel that is 85% ethanol?
Similarly, the foundations of the timber giants International Paper and Weyerhaeuser fund many groups that support the Endangered Species Act, which has imposed drastic restrictions on the use of forests claimed to be the habitat of allegedly endangered species. International Paper Foundation’s latest tax return shows it made grants of $10,000 to the American Forest Foundation, $30,000 to the Conservation Fund, and $3,000 to the Nature Conservancy. The Weyerhaeuser Foundation gave money to the American Forest Foundation ($201,180), the Conservation Fund ($30,000), and the Nature Conservancy ($74,500).
Restrictive forest-use policies hurt small timber companies far more because they cannot pay what it takes to fight a government regulatory onslaught abetted by environmental advocacy groups. Is it so far-fetched to suggest that International Paper and Weyerhaeuser understand that they gain more than they lose by supporting political groups that back the Endangered Species Act?
Liberal CEOs
But competitive advantage is only one possible explanation for why Fortune 100 giving leans leftward. Another reason is personal political preference. Besides Jon Corzine, many other corporate leaders support left-of-center causes and candidates. For instance, James Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has made political contributions to high-profile Democratic lawmakers and candidates, including Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (Mo.), Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.), unsuccessful North Carolina Senate candidate Erskine Bowles, Sen. Ken Salazar (Colo.), former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.), Rep. Harold Ford (Tenn.), and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Dimon has also given to Republican Senators Mike DeWine (Ohio) and Richard Shelby (Ala).
Robert Benmosche, who until last year was CEO of MetLife, is another left-leaning corporate chief. His list of contributions includes Democrats Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chris Dodd (Conn.), Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Rep. Charles Rangel (N.Y.), and the New York State Democratic Committee.
Not surprisingly, JP Morgan Chase Foundation donated just less than $1.2 million to groups on the left, but no money to groups on the right. It gave more than $31,000 to the NAACP, more than $59,000 to Planned Parenthood, and $1,000,000 to the far-left Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The MetLife Foundation followed a similar pattern. While it did donate $40,000 to groups on the political right in 2004, it gave more than $1.2 million to groups on the political left, including the Children’s Defense Fund ($5,000), the Economic Policy Institute ($275,000), and the National Council of La Raza ($180,000).
Charity as Investment
“Strategic giving” is another explanation for the Fortune 100 foundations’ giving patterns. Giving to charity is a form of investment strategy, in which donations advance the company by increasing market share, keeping employees happy, or creating good public relations.
The need for good PR may help explain corporate gifts to environmental groups such as the Keystone Center ($459,610), the Nature Conservancy ($1,903,388), the Trust for Public Land ($670,034), the Wilderness Society ($104,790), and the World Wildlife Fund ($680,637). Some corporations, such as Johnson & Johnson, which produces medical supplies, and Pfizer, which makes pharmaceuticals, would seem to have little reason to placate environmentalists. But perhaps they understand that few terms confer more saintly status than the moniker “environmentalist.”
What better way to credibly claim the environmental mantle than to give to environmental groups? In 2004, Johnson & Johnson gave more than $100,000 each to the Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and the Wilderness Society, and $450,000 to the World Wildlife Fund. Pfizer gave more than $250,000 to the Keystone Center and more than $130,000 to the Nature Conservancy.
The charity-as-investment strategy may also account for grants to left-of-center minority organizations. Corporate foundations may reason, for example, that grants to groups identifying with Hispanics, the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, will help them tap the Hispanic consumer market. Bank of America is a case in point. It has engaged in extensive efforts to tap into the Hispanic market, including launching Spanish-language ads in 2003 in the Hispanic-heavy states of Texas and California. In 2004, Bank of America Foundation donated $40,000 to the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation and $31,000 to the Mexican-American League Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF).
Ford Motor Company also has commercial reasons for reaching Hispanics. It’s likely that Ford believed donating to leftist groups that represent themselves as spokesmen for the Hispanic community was one way to do more business. In 2001 the Ford Motor Company Foundation donated more than $200,000 to the National Council of La Raza, $50,000 to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, $15,000 to MALDEF, and $4,500 to the Michigan chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Extortion and Indifference
The final two explanations for why big corporations give to the left are perhaps the most exasperating: Corporations hope to make trouble go away, and they don’t know the nature of the groups they fund.
Left-wing groups are far more likely than groups on the right to organize boycotts and protests to embarrass corporations into caving into activists’ demands. Some groups, such as the radical Rainforest Action Network, use so-called “civil disobedience” to disrupt corporate meetings and operations. Instead of stiffening corporate resistance, their tactics frequently help open company checkbooks.
Jesse Jackson is the master of the corporate shakedown. His tactics are tried and true. Jackson first fires off a letter to a corporation criticizing it for not hiring enough minorities. He demands a meeting. If the corporation defends itself and rejects the demands, Jackson publicly accuses it of racial insensitivity, announces a protest and calls for a boycott. Since corporations recoil at charges of racism, they usually attempt to appease Jackson and agree to a meeting. The upshot is that Jackson can claim a historic breakthrough that also produces a corporate contribution to Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition.
It is worthwhile to note that many corporate foundations have programs that match donations made by company employees. Corporations sometimes observe that they can hardly be expected to monitor small employee gifts that they match. For instance, on the Bank of America Foundation tax return we found a matching $300 gift to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and a $50 gift to the Progress Unity Fund. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society maintains a fleet of ships that sink fishing vessels. The Progress Unity Fund is the parent organization for International Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.),which is best known for organizing protests against the War on Terror. In fact, the group’s leaders support the communist dictatorships of Cuba and North Korea. Nicole Nastacie explained that Bank of America does not pass judgment on employees’ personal philanthropy. “We respect our associates’ individual charitable giving choices by matching associate gifts to all eligible 501(c)(3) organizations,” she said.
If the Fortune 100 represents corporate America, then the belief that corporate America is more generous to public interest and advocacy groups on the right is clearly wrong. Unfortunately, that misperception is embedded in American consciousness. How often are groups on the left derided as “corporate lackeys”?
Will the pattern change? Corporate foundations could make a start by better monitoring their matching grants. But real change requires that they commit themselves to free-market principles that are the basis for the liberty that lets enterprise grow and prosper. If corporations use their foundations to stifle competition and buy off opponents, there is little hope that they will be bulwarks of freedom—no matter what liberal commentators believe.
This article is reproduced from the August 2006 edition of Foundation Watch, a Capital Research Center publication.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16588
08/23/2006
Liberal blogger David R. Mark recently wrote, “Those that call themselves ‘compassionate conservatives’ would never think to touch their fat-cat supporters. It’s much easier to spin the ‘economic benefits’ of helping huge corporations fatten their bottom lines.” Liberal academic Thomas Frank, in his book What’s The Matter With Kansas?, claims that the corporate world “wields the Republican Party as its personal political sidearm.” Both Mark and Frank express a common view that corporations are major funders of the political right, and that when corporations make contributions to nonprofit advocacy groups they give to groups on the right because those groups are pro-business.
On its face, this makes sense. After all, conservatives generally support lower taxes, less government regulation, and freer trade, public policies that are supposed to coincide with the interests of corporations. Why wouldn’t corporations eagerly fund their political supporters? In a Washington Examiner editorial, Professor Thomas F. Schaller lamented the “‘infrastructure gap’ that persists between the well-funded and highly organized Republican right and the relatively underfunded and generally disorganized Democratic left.”
Of course, the conventional wisdom admits some high-profile exceptions. Certainly New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D.) was one of the most liberal members of the U.S. Senate, consistently achieving scores of 90% and higher on the legislative scorecard of the left-wing activist group, Americans for Democratic Action. Yet before he entered politics, Corzine was head of Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banks in the world. Nonetheless, the popular assumption is that groups on the political right should have their coffers filled with corporate money. By contrast, the political left, because it is thought to favor policies inimical to business interests, ought to have scant corporate support.
We decided to test this hypothesis by examining giving by the charitable foundations of the top 100 corporations on this year’s Fortune 500 list. For this analysis, we defined the terms “political right” and “political left” broadly but with some specificity. Nonprofit public interest and advocacy groups on the political right favor lower taxes, less government regulation, and less government spending on social programs but more on defense programs. We also put on the right groups that defend traditional values, the right to bear arms, stricter immigration laws and tougher criminal laws.
We put on the political left nonprofit groups that advocate higher taxes, more government regulation, more spending on social programs and less on defense, and groups promoting more liberal values, more gun control and relaxed immigration and criminal laws. We looked at grants to groups across the political spectrum including advocacy organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Right to Life Committee, think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and Brookings Institution, and public interest law firms such as the Institute for Justice and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
If the political right and major corporations are as closely aligned as popular perception suggests, then the corporate foundations examined in this report ought to be more generous to groups on the political right than those on the political left. That’s not what we found.
Common Perception Wrong
In this analysis, we examined only those Fortune 100 companies that operated nonprofit charitable foundations that made grants to groups we identified as on either the political right or left. That reduced the number to 53 corporate foundations. (See page 20.) We examined the most recent tax- return filings for these foundations (IRS Form 990) and compiled the dollar values for grants and matching gifts to left-wing groups and right-wing groups.
The results are the exact opposite of the common perception. The Fortune 100 foundations gave more money to the political left. In fact, the grant-making was lopsided: The political left received nearly $59 million, while the political right received only about $4 million, a ratio of 14.5 to 1.
The Wildlife Conservation Society, which took in a huge $35-million grant from the Goldman Sachs Foundation, was the top beneficiary on the political left of Fortune 100 foundation giving. It was followed by the Conservation International Foundation ($4.5 million), the National Council of La Raza ($2.9 million) and the Nature Conservancy ($1.9 million).
The American Enterprise Institute received $575,000, which was the largest single Fortune 100 grant to a group on the right, followed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute ($325,000) and the Employment Policies Institute ($275,000).
Competitive Advantage
Why do they do it? To understand why corporations give more money to the political left than to the political right, it is critical to understand that businesses are not inherently “pro-market.” Indeed, some business leaders may support tax increases and more government regulation because they believe it gives them an advantage over competitors. Many are not averse to more government spending if it boosts their profits.
Using government to gain advantage over the competition may explain some of the grants made by the corporate foundations. For example, the IRS Form 990 for the corporate foundation of General Motors shows that it gave grants of $50,000 to Resources for the Future and $10,000 to the World Resources Institute, both supportive of energy policies favoring ethanol production and use. Would GM have made the grants had it not made a major investment in a fleet of E85 vehicles that are designed to run on fuel that is 85% ethanol?
Similarly, the foundations of the timber giants International Paper and Weyerhaeuser fund many groups that support the Endangered Species Act, which has imposed drastic restrictions on the use of forests claimed to be the habitat of allegedly endangered species. International Paper Foundation’s latest tax return shows it made grants of $10,000 to the American Forest Foundation, $30,000 to the Conservation Fund, and $3,000 to the Nature Conservancy. The Weyerhaeuser Foundation gave money to the American Forest Foundation ($201,180), the Conservation Fund ($30,000), and the Nature Conservancy ($74,500).
Restrictive forest-use policies hurt small timber companies far more because they cannot pay what it takes to fight a government regulatory onslaught abetted by environmental advocacy groups. Is it so far-fetched to suggest that International Paper and Weyerhaeuser understand that they gain more than they lose by supporting political groups that back the Endangered Species Act?
Liberal CEOs
But competitive advantage is only one possible explanation for why Fortune 100 giving leans leftward. Another reason is personal political preference. Besides Jon Corzine, many other corporate leaders support left-of-center causes and candidates. For instance, James Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has made political contributions to high-profile Democratic lawmakers and candidates, including Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (Mo.), Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.), unsuccessful North Carolina Senate candidate Erskine Bowles, Sen. Ken Salazar (Colo.), former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.), Rep. Harold Ford (Tenn.), and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Dimon has also given to Republican Senators Mike DeWine (Ohio) and Richard Shelby (Ala).
Robert Benmosche, who until last year was CEO of MetLife, is another left-leaning corporate chief. His list of contributions includes Democrats Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chris Dodd (Conn.), Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Rep. Charles Rangel (N.Y.), and the New York State Democratic Committee.
Not surprisingly, JP Morgan Chase Foundation donated just less than $1.2 million to groups on the left, but no money to groups on the right. It gave more than $31,000 to the NAACP, more than $59,000 to Planned Parenthood, and $1,000,000 to the far-left Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The MetLife Foundation followed a similar pattern. While it did donate $40,000 to groups on the political right in 2004, it gave more than $1.2 million to groups on the political left, including the Children’s Defense Fund ($5,000), the Economic Policy Institute ($275,000), and the National Council of La Raza ($180,000).
Charity as Investment
“Strategic giving” is another explanation for the Fortune 100 foundations’ giving patterns. Giving to charity is a form of investment strategy, in which donations advance the company by increasing market share, keeping employees happy, or creating good public relations.
The need for good PR may help explain corporate gifts to environmental groups such as the Keystone Center ($459,610), the Nature Conservancy ($1,903,388), the Trust for Public Land ($670,034), the Wilderness Society ($104,790), and the World Wildlife Fund ($680,637). Some corporations, such as Johnson & Johnson, which produces medical supplies, and Pfizer, which makes pharmaceuticals, would seem to have little reason to placate environmentalists. But perhaps they understand that few terms confer more saintly status than the moniker “environmentalist.”
What better way to credibly claim the environmental mantle than to give to environmental groups? In 2004, Johnson & Johnson gave more than $100,000 each to the Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and the Wilderness Society, and $450,000 to the World Wildlife Fund. Pfizer gave more than $250,000 to the Keystone Center and more than $130,000 to the Nature Conservancy.
The charity-as-investment strategy may also account for grants to left-of-center minority organizations. Corporate foundations may reason, for example, that grants to groups identifying with Hispanics, the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, will help them tap the Hispanic consumer market. Bank of America is a case in point. It has engaged in extensive efforts to tap into the Hispanic market, including launching Spanish-language ads in 2003 in the Hispanic-heavy states of Texas and California. In 2004, Bank of America Foundation donated $40,000 to the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation and $31,000 to the Mexican-American League Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF).
Ford Motor Company also has commercial reasons for reaching Hispanics. It’s likely that Ford believed donating to leftist groups that represent themselves as spokesmen for the Hispanic community was one way to do more business. In 2001 the Ford Motor Company Foundation donated more than $200,000 to the National Council of La Raza, $50,000 to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, $15,000 to MALDEF, and $4,500 to the Michigan chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Extortion and Indifference
The final two explanations for why big corporations give to the left are perhaps the most exasperating: Corporations hope to make trouble go away, and they don’t know the nature of the groups they fund.
Left-wing groups are far more likely than groups on the right to organize boycotts and protests to embarrass corporations into caving into activists’ demands. Some groups, such as the radical Rainforest Action Network, use so-called “civil disobedience” to disrupt corporate meetings and operations. Instead of stiffening corporate resistance, their tactics frequently help open company checkbooks.
Jesse Jackson is the master of the corporate shakedown. His tactics are tried and true. Jackson first fires off a letter to a corporation criticizing it for not hiring enough minorities. He demands a meeting. If the corporation defends itself and rejects the demands, Jackson publicly accuses it of racial insensitivity, announces a protest and calls for a boycott. Since corporations recoil at charges of racism, they usually attempt to appease Jackson and agree to a meeting. The upshot is that Jackson can claim a historic breakthrough that also produces a corporate contribution to Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition.
It is worthwhile to note that many corporate foundations have programs that match donations made by company employees. Corporations sometimes observe that they can hardly be expected to monitor small employee gifts that they match. For instance, on the Bank of America Foundation tax return we found a matching $300 gift to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and a $50 gift to the Progress Unity Fund. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society maintains a fleet of ships that sink fishing vessels. The Progress Unity Fund is the parent organization for International Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.),which is best known for organizing protests against the War on Terror. In fact, the group’s leaders support the communist dictatorships of Cuba and North Korea. Nicole Nastacie explained that Bank of America does not pass judgment on employees’ personal philanthropy. “We respect our associates’ individual charitable giving choices by matching associate gifts to all eligible 501(c)(3) organizations,” she said.
If the Fortune 100 represents corporate America, then the belief that corporate America is more generous to public interest and advocacy groups on the right is clearly wrong. Unfortunately, that misperception is embedded in American consciousness. How often are groups on the left derided as “corporate lackeys”?
Will the pattern change? Corporate foundations could make a start by better monitoring their matching grants. But real change requires that they commit themselves to free-market principles that are the basis for the liberty that lets enterprise grow and prosper. If corporations use their foundations to stifle competition and buy off opponents, there is little hope that they will be bulwarks of freedom—no matter what liberal commentators believe.
This article is reproduced from the August 2006 edition of Foundation Watch, a Capital Research Center publication.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16588
Obama’s NLRB Uses Weight Of Fed Govt To Protect Illegal Immigrants
Posted by tomtflorida
Saturday, June 18th at 9:14AM EDT
Federal Resources Also Re-Directed To Further La Raza, Other Far Left Causes
When the National Labor Relations Board is not adding to our economic woes by suing American corporations and doing the bidding of the labor unions, it’s strenuously working to protect illegal immigrants.Judicial Watch reports that the Obama Labor Department has entered formal agreements with two foreign countries vowing to preserve the rights of their migrants.
Signed this week by the U.S., Guatemala and Nicaragua, the declaration will make it easier to protect the rights of migrants from those Central American countries who work in the United States. Under the decree, Labor Department regional offices will team up with local Guatemalan and Nicaraguan embassies and consulates to distribute information to their citizens about their “rights” in the U.S.
It’s part of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’s plan to help illegal aliens, who she refers to as “vulnerable” and “underpaid.”
Judicial Watch also reports that the National Council of La Raza got a big boost in federally funded grants and contracts after President Obama appointed Cecilla Munoz, the National Council of La Raza’s senior vice president, as his director of inter-governmental affairs. In fact, the government cash more than doubled the year Muñoz joined the White House, from $4.1 million to $11 million.
The inter-governmental affairs job is among the most powerful in a presidential administration in terms of its occupant being able to direct or influence the awarding of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal grants in aid and contracts.
There are frequent claims that Obama has accomplished little in his first three years, however, when looking at just how thoroughly he has transformed the federal government through the appointment of radical left-wingers at all levels and how successful he’s been in redirecting the weight and finances of these federal agencies to further the far left agenda, those claims are very short sighted.
And with the ‘ends justifies the means‘ mentality of the far left, it’s unfathomable to grasp just how completely the public treasury is being raided.
It also further emphasizes just how critical the 2012 election is for the future of this country. As it stands, it will take years to root out the far left extremists that now permeate federal government. Another four years under the Obama Administration and the odds are that the damage may very well be irreversible.
http://www.redstate.com/tomtflorida/2011/06/18/obama%e2%80%99s-nlrb-uses-weight-of-fed-govt-to-protect-illegal-immigrants/
Hillary Hires Illegal Alien Advocate
Old news but pertinent ~ Faye
by Amanda B. Carpenter — 04-12-2007 @ 11:54 AM Reader Comments (12) Hillary Clinton once said that she was "adamantly against illegal aliens" in a 2003 interview with WABC Radio, but has now given a high-profile illegal alien advocate a prime place in her presidential campaign.
The Associated Press reported that Raul Yzaguirre, who was president of the National Council of La Raza had signed on as co-chair to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
La Raza is the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy organization. It has opposed the REAL ID Act, which would have prevented states from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens and the CLEAR Act, which would grant state and local law enforcement agencies that wish to do so, the authority to enforce federal immigration laws.
The late Rep. Charlie Norwood wrote an excellent article for Human Events in April 2006 that explained the La Raza's close ties with Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA).
He wrote:
"Behind the respectable front of the National Council of La Raza lies the real agenda of the La Raza movement, the agenda that led to those thousands of illegal immigrants in the streets of American cities, waving Mexican flags, brazenly defying our laws, and demanding concessions.
Key among the secondary organizations is the radical racist group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West."
http://www.humanevents.com/rightangle/index.php?id=22012&title=hillary_hires_illegal_alien_advocate&c=1
Welcome to Maywood, Mexico
Boasting a population that is 97% Hispanic, more than half foreign born, and 40% illegal, the Los Angeles County, Calif., incorporated city of Maywood has achieved the Reconquista goal. It is now as lawless and chaotic as any place in Mexico. Maywood is a warning to every city and town in America.
The Maywood City Council announced this week that after years of radical policies, corruption and scandal, the city was broke and all city employees would be laid off and essential city services contracted out to neighboring cities or to L.A. County government.
How did this happen? Until recently, Maywood was the model for "brown power" politics.
Maywood was the first California city with an elected Hispanic City Council, one of the first "sanctuary" cities for illegal aliens, the first city to pass a resolution calling for a boycott of Arizona after that state passed a law to enforce federal immigration laws, the first California city to order its police department not to enforce state laws requiring drivers to have licenses to drive, the first American city to call on Congress to grant amnesty to all illegals.
Council meetings were conducted in Spanish. Maywood was the leader in the peaceful, democratic achievement of the La Raza goal to take power in the U.S.
The City of Maywood started out quite differently. Back after World War II, Maywood was a booming blue-collar town with good jobs, a multi-ethnic suburb of Los Angeles.
On the 25th anniversary in 1949 of Maywood's incorporation as a city, the town celebrated with a beard-growing contest, a rodeo, and wrestling matches in City Park. Chrysler operated an assembly plant there until 1971.
But the early 1970s saw these industrial jobs in aerospace, auto and furniture manufacturing, and food processing evaporate under the pressure of higher taxes, increased local and state regulation, and the attraction of cheaper land and cheaper labor elsewhere.
The multi-ethnic Maywood of the post-war years was transformed in the ’80s and ’90s by wave after wave of Hispanic immigrants, many of them illegal.
In August 2006, a "Save Our State" anti-illegal immigration rally in Maywood drew hundreds of protesters—but a larger number of defenders of illegal immigration. The pro-illegal protesters carried signs which read "We are Indigenous ! The ONLY owners of this Continent!" and "Racist Pilgrims Go Home" and "All Europeans are Illegal Here."
According to newspaper reports at the time, objectors to illegal aliens were subject to physical attacks. A 70-year-old man was "slashed," a woman attacked, and cars vandalized. Pro-illegal demonstrators raised the Mexican flag at the U.S. Post Office.
The illegal population and their sympathizers became increasingly radicalized. Elections to the City Council saw "assimilationist" incumbent Hispanic council members ousted by La Raza supporting radical challengers.
For years, the Maywood City Council authorized police checkpoints to stop drunk driving. Drivers without licenses had their cars impounded. Illegals in California cannot get drivers licenses. By 2005, the number of such impounds were in the hundreds. A community campaign was launched forcing the City Council to suspend the checkpoints.
Cars were still being impounded whenever a police traffic-violation stop resulted in a driver without a license. Felipe Aguirre, a community activist with Comite Pro-Uno, an "immigration service center," coordinated a new campaign against any impounds. He was elected in 2005 to the City Council. He is the mayor of Maywood today.
Aguirre and a new majority of the council dismantled the Traffic Department. Illegals were given overnight-parking permits and impounds stopped. You didn't need a license to drive in Maywood. The Los Angeles Times wrote glowingly of this "progress" in a story entitled "Welcome to Maywood, Where Roads Open Up For Immigrants".
The Maywood Police Department was restructured by the new council. A new chief and new officers were hired. Later it turned out that many of the new officers had previously been fired from other law enforcement agencies for a variety of infractions. The Maywood P.D. was known as the "Department of Second Chances."
Among those hired was a former L.A. Sheriff's deputy terminated for abusing jail inmates; a former LAPD officer fired for intimidating a witness; and an ex-Huntington Park officer charged with negligently discharging a handgun and driving drunk.
Even the L.A. Times called the Maywood Police Department a "haven for misfit cops." Their story alleged that a veteran officer was extorting sex from relatives of a criminal fugitive; that another officer tried to run over the president of the Maywood Police Commission; and that another officer has impregnated a teenage police-explorer scout.
Charges of corruption and favoritism led to one recall of city council members and threats of more recalls are heard to this day.
Maywood is represented in the state Senate by Democrat "One Bill" Gil Cedillo. He earned the nickname by introducing every year in the state legislature a bill to grant drivers licenses to illegals. Maywood is represented in Congress by Democrat Lucille Roybal-Allard, a staunch advocate of amnesty for illegals.
Today, Maywood is broke. Its police department dismantled along with all other city departments and personnel. Only the city council remains and a city manager to manage the contracts with other agencies for city services in Maywood.
Maywood is the warning of what happens when illegal immigrants, resisting assimilation as Americans, bring with their growing numbers the corruption and the radical politics of their home countries. Add the radical home-grown anti-Americanism of Hispanic "leaders" and groups like La Raza and you get schools where learning is replaced with indoctrination, business and jobs replaced by welfare and gangs, and a poisonous stew of entitlement politics.
In too many American communities, this sad tale is all too familiar.
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Roger Hedgecock is a nationally-syndicated talk show host.
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by Roger Hedgecock
06/25/2010
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37671
Outrage! US Government Funding La Raza with Your Tax Dollars
by Mike Piccione
03/11/2011
The United States government is funding the National Council of La Raza with our tax dollars. La Raza, which literally means in Spanish “The Race,” is a radical organization that advocates open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens. I pulled and analyzed the tax return Form 990, the form filed by 501(c) 3 organizations to the IRS, and here is what was reported:
Government Grants (contributions) to the National Council of La Raza
2008 Tax Returns, (October 1 2008 to September 30, 2009) $5,136,535
2007 Tax Returns $3,458,351
2006 Tax Returns $3,353,319
Three Year Total $11,948,205
What do people get paid at La Raza?
According to the 2008 tax returns seventeen people listed as officers, directors, trustees, key employees and highest compensated employees of the National Council of La Raza have an income ranging from $119,675 to $378,446, the latter of which goes to Janet Murguia, president and CEO.
To put that income figure in perspective a rank and file United States Senator makes $174,000. A United States Marine Sergeant with five years of service earns a base salary of $29,376, including the raise received for 2011.
Lobbying:
Part II, Section 1b indicates lobbying expenditures to influence a legislative body amounted to $550,787.
Section 1g indicates lobbying expenditures to “Grassroots nontaxable amount” of $250,000.
Here is the quick analysis: The US government pays La Raza to lobby the US government for money.
The United States of America is facing a multitude of critical issues. Two of those issues are wasteful government spending and illegal immigration. Cutting funding for the National Council of La Raza would begin to help in both of those issues.
Now you sound off. Should the United States taxpayer be funding the National Council of La Raza?
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Mike Piccione is founding editor of Guns & Patriots and is now an executive at U.S. Concealed Carry. A long time shooter, hunter and writer, Piccione is a Marine veteran, a NRA Marketing Manager and a member of the Fairfax County, VA, Community Emergency Response Team.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=42237
Sotomayor’s La Raza Uses Taxpayer Money for Radical Agenda
by Robert M. Engstrom
06/15/2009
If a group of United States citizens trekked to another country, formed an organization called “The Race,” which demanded open borders, unfettered immigration and citizenship, billions of dollars for bilingual education, health care, housing, job and wage guarantees, and anti-discrimination protection, they would likely soon be jailed or deported in a display of righteous sovereign indignation. But the National Council of La Raza engages in all these activities in the United States, and it receives taxpayer dollars to help promote its radical views.
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a member of La Raza. That membership and her own statements have led to many challenges to her suitability for the High Court. Critics of the organization and its goals have frequently been labeled as racists, but that didn’t stop former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.) from calling La Raza a leftist radical group “a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses.”
La Raza, founded in 1968 by Raul Yzaguirre, takes its name from “La Raza Cosmica,” a phrase coined by Mexican scholar Jose Vasconcelos. The English translation, and the first definition found in Spanish/English dictionaries, for “la raza” is “the race.” Contrary to La Raza’s contention that the phrase means “the people,” or “the community,” the Spanish for those phrases are “la gente,” and “la comunidad.”
In 2005, La Raza received $15.2 million in federal grant money for charter schools and get-out-the-vote campaigns and in 2006 got another $4 million in congressional earmarks for housing reform. The organization’s financial statements for 2008 show that it received another $5.1 million in federal grants, and holds assets worth $97.4 million. La Raza has received more than $30 million from the federal government since 1996.
The Council of La Raza arranged to have its voice included in congressional hearings by House and Senate leaders and garnered an extra $4 million in federal tax funds earmarked by an anonymous senator in 2007 while continuing to lobby for open borders, driver’s licenses for illegals, and amnesty leading to citizenship for all illegal immigrants in the country.
Many of Mexico’s leading politicians encourage the takeover of sovereign U.S. property, and La Raza encourages those statements, while offering advice about avoiding the terms “illegals” and “amnesty.” Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon told Mexicans in a state of the nation address that “Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.” In 1995, President Ernesto Zedillo told a group of U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent in Dallas that “You are Mexicans, Mexicans who live North of the border,” suggesting they owed a higher allegiance to Mexico than the United States. Zedillo brought a 1997 La Raza gathering in Chicago to its feet in applause when he said that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders. All those statements accord with the accusations of the colonialism that the U.S. is constantly accused of pursuing by its enemies.
La Raza endorsed the 2007 Citizenship Promotion Act, introduced by then-Sen. Barack Obama. The purpose of this act was to limit the costs of applying to become a citizen of the United States, but another provision of the bill would have distributed $80 million to pro-illegal immigration organizations, some of which are suspected of having links to the Mexican government.
In the name of diversity, La Raza encourages Latinos to cling to the language and customs of their home country after becoming citizens of the U.S. Those not “brown enough” are derided, as was Linda Chavez when she was considered for the position of Labor secretary under President George W. Bush. Rather than taking pride in the accomplishments of a female of Hispanic descent, critics mocked her as “the Hispanic who doesn’t speak Spanish.” While Chavez was under fire, the National Hispanic Leadership Association, an umbrella group representing 40 different Hispanic groups, including La Raza, condemned the federal Office of Personnel Management for failing to promote and hire Hispanics.
Obama laid claim to the Hispanic vote in a 2007 speech before the La Raza Council in which he said, “Find out how many senators appeared before an immigration rally last year. Who was talking the talk, and who walked the walk -- because I walked.” Obama characterized the 2007 Senate debate on immigration as “ugly and racist” and promised to make amnesty a priority of his presidency.
In the 2006 demonstrations Obama marched in, protestors carried signs reading, “Gringo Go Home,” and “This Is Our Land, Not Yours.” American flags were burned and desecrated by Hispanics wearing Che Guevara T-shirts and carrying Mexican flags while waving Communist and anarchist banners. La Raza advised the organizers of the 2007 demonstrations held in 40-plus cities to keep such incendiary symbols to a minimum.
To gain Hispanic support for his presidential bid, in 2007 Obama voted against amendments that would have facilitated the deportation of illegal immigrant gang members, convicted criminals, and terrorists. He also voted against legislation to enable state and local law enforcement officers to inquire about a person’s immigration status, then twice co-sponsored, but failed to get passage of, La Raza-backed legislation that would have granted citizenship and education benefits to minor illegal aliens and amnesty for their extended families. The border, national security and immigration policies that La Raza and Obama support, along with the healthcare and social welfare programs needed to accommodate the increase in immigration they are promoting, would mean spending and tax hikes that critics predict could bankrupt the American middle class. Spending on undocumented immigrants in the four states bordering Mexico now totals more than $200 million each year.
La Raza, through a network of 300 affiliates in 41 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, says that it “advocates on behalf of the entire Latino population regardless of immigration status.”
Much has already been said about the Sotomayor’s much-quoted statement about “a wise Latina woman” being better qualified to serve as a judge. President Barak Obama and his staff have downplayed Sotomayor’s statement, its meaning and context, but few have focused on her opening remarks in that same speech in which she said: “I intend tonight to touch upon the themes that this conference will be discussing this weekend and to talk to you about my Latina identity, where it came from, and the influence I perceive it has on my presence on the bench.”
The White House characterized Sotomayor’s comments as an off-the-cuff misstatement that has been taken out of context, but the prepared text of the full speech makes a mockery of that attempt to spin attention away from the meaning and intent of her words. The speech was written for and delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law’s Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture and later printed in the La Raza Law Journal for a symposium on “Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation.”
Sotomayor has also served on the board of directors of the Latino Justice/Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund which, like La Raza, also opposes enforcing immigration laws, securing the border and supports amnesty for those already in this country illegally.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32277
Tom Tancredo: Por La Raza Nada
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| Tom Tancredo |
While virtually all President Obama will talk about is the debt ceiling, he took a short break to give an address before the National Council of La Raza on Monday. Calling the audience his “Hermanos y hermanas,” he trumpeted his support of the DREAM Act amnesty, stated his opposition to Arizona’s SB 1070 and all state level immigration laws, and touted his Hispanic appointments—citing Ambassador to the Dominican Republic Raul Yzaguirre, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Obama did not mention one other Hispanic appointment, former La Raza vice president Cecilia Munoz who serves as his Director of Intergovernmental Affairs and his public liaison to Hispanics. In appointing Munoz, Obama violated his own pledge not to allow former lobbyists positions where they control money they formerly controlled, and gave Munoz a special waiver.
While our nation is going broke, the National Council of La Raza is doing just fine. Since Obama and Munoz took up the white house, they have seen their funding skyrocket, nearly tripling from 4.5 to 11 million dollars in 2010. Judicial Watch also found out that the La Raza affiliate, Chicanos por la Causa received over 18 million dollars of tax dollars. That group was the primary plaintiff against Arizona’s law against illegal employers.
And it is not as if La Raza is lacking funds. Between their various sister organizations, they have over 200 million dollars in assets, much of it paid for by corporate America, and Chicanos por la Causa have nearly 100 million dollars.
Although some of La Raza’s government funding was earmarked by congress, virtually all of it was doled out by the Obama administration. Sixty percent of La Raza's take came from the Department of Labor—run by Hilda Solis. They lobbied hard for her appointment and honored her with an award. She paid them back—with millions of our tax dollars.
Even if we were running trillion dollar surpluses, there is no reason why La Raza should get a dime of taxpayer dollars. Here are just a few reasons why.
“La Raza” means “The Race,” specifically the Latino race. Could you imagine if the government were giving millions of dollars to a group called “The National Council of the White Race”?
La Raza counts the pro-reconquista Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán) as an affiliate and helps fund the organization. MeCHA’s slogan is "Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada," meaning “For the Race everything, outside the Race nothing.”
La Raza opposes free speech and has tried to get Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, and other opponents of illegal immigration kicked off the air. Their president Janet Murguia said “when free speech transforms into hate speech, we've got to draw that line.” La Raza has said calling illegal aliens “criminals” is “hate speech.”
La Raza has lobbied for every single amnesty, against immigration enforcement, for Obamacare, and against English as an official language
Barack Obama managed to address the issue of the debt briefly during his talk to La Raza. He stated, “Every day, NCLR and your affiliates hear from families figuring out how to stretch every dollar a little bit further, what sacrifices they’ve got to make, how they're going to budget only what’s truly important. So they should expect the same thing from Washington.”
While 11 million dollars is a tiny fraction of our trillion dollar a year deficit, funding this pro-amnesty propaganda outfit is not “truly important.”
Republicans in the House have passed legislation to defund left wing groups such as Planned Parenthood and ACORN. The National Council of La Raza should be be next. To slightly alter their MeCHA pals' slogan, when it comes to our tax dollars: “Por La Raza, Nada!”
http://townhall.com/columnists/tomtancredo/2011/07/29/por_la_raza,_nada
Immigrant group sues to uphold Dream Act
Doubts petition validity
An immigrant advocacy group filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to uphold a recently enacted Maryland law that would allow some illegal immigrants to receive tuition breaks.
Casa de Maryland filed suit in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court against the State Board of Elections, alleging elections officials erroneously validated thousands of signatures that helped send the state’s Dream Act to a November 2012 referendum.
The group also argues that the law - which would allow in-state tuition for many college-aged illegal immigrants - addresses state spending and is therefore not subject to referendum. The lawsuit has been endorsed by the Maryland State Education Association and the Service Employees International Union Local 1199.
“This law was approved by our elected representatives and is not the type of law subject to referendum,” said Joseph Sandler, a lawyer with Sandler, Reiff, Young and Lamb - one of two firms representing Casa de Maryland, along with Arnold and Porter LLP.
Mr. Sandler said attorneys and volunteers conducted a “painstaking line-by-line” review of signatures and found they “fell far short.”
The Dream Act narrowly passed the Democrat-controlled General Assembly in April. Opponents then mounted a two-month petition drive that netted nearly 109,000 valid voter signatures, as determined by elections officials.
That nearly doubled the 55,736 signatures needed to force a statewide vote.
Dream Act supporters for several months have questioned the methods of petitioners, including their use of a website, mdpetitions.com, that allowed residents to print and circulate their own copies of the petition.
Nearly one-third of all of the approved signatures were on petitions obtained from the website.
The plaintiffs allege the site violated state petition laws by using online voter records to automatically fill in some personal information for visitors attempting to download the petition.
They argue that it violates the requirement that all petition signers personally provide all of their own information. The Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union threatened in June to sue the state for the same reason but is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Monday.
Mr. Sandler said volunteers and lawyers reviewed 47,000 signatures that were approved in June and found more than half should have been invalid for various reasons. He used the rate of failure to project 58,000 of the nearly 109,000 approved signatures should be invalidated, which would leave the petition drive about 4,000 signatures short of its requirement.
He also argued that thousands of approved signatures were written to petition copies that did not contain a required summary of the text of the law and that the Dream Act is an appropriations law - making it not subject to a petition drive.
According to the state, laws that establish new spending cannot be challenged to referendum, unless the spending exceeds the previous year’s approved allotment.
Delegate Patrick L. McDonough, Baltimore County Republican and honorary chairman of the petition drive, refuted the claim, saying the Dream Act should be considered a policy law because it does not set spending within the state budget and was not reviewed by the House Appropriations or Senate Budget and Taxation committees.
Story Continues →
An immigrant advocacy group filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to uphold a recently enacted Maryland law that would allow some illegal immigrants to receive tuition breaks.
Casa de Maryland filed suit in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court against the State Board of Elections, alleging elections officials erroneously validated thousands of signatures that helped send the state’s Dream Act to a November 2012 referendum.
The group also argues that the law - which would allow in-state tuition for many college-aged illegal immigrants - addresses state spending and is therefore not subject to referendum. The lawsuit has been endorsed by the Maryland State Education Association and the Service Employees International Union Local 1199.
“This law was approved by our elected representatives and is not the type of law subject to referendum,” said Joseph Sandler, a lawyer with Sandler, Reiff, Young and Lamb - one of two firms representing Casa de Maryland, along with Arnold and Porter LLP.
Mr. Sandler said attorneys and volunteers conducted a “painstaking line-by-line” review of signatures and found they “fell far short.”
The Dream Act narrowly passed the Democrat-controlled General Assembly in April. Opponents then mounted a two-month petition drive that netted nearly 109,000 valid voter signatures, as determined by elections officials.
That nearly doubled the 55,736 signatures needed to force a statewide vote.
Dream Act supporters for several months have questioned the methods of petitioners, including their use of a website, mdpetitions.com, that allowed residents to print and circulate their own copies of the petition.
Nearly one-third of all of the approved signatures were on petitions obtained from the website.
The plaintiffs allege the site violated state petition laws by using online voter records to automatically fill in some personal information for visitors attempting to download the petition.
They argue that it violates the requirement that all petition signers personally provide all of their own information. The Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union threatened in June to sue the state for the same reason but is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Monday.
Mr. Sandler said volunteers and lawyers reviewed 47,000 signatures that were approved in June and found more than half should have been invalid for various reasons. He used the rate of failure to project 58,000 of the nearly 109,000 approved signatures should be invalidated, which would leave the petition drive about 4,000 signatures short of its requirement.
He also argued that thousands of approved signatures were written to petition copies that did not contain a required summary of the text of the law and that the Dream Act is an appropriations law - making it not subject to a petition drive.
According to the state, laws that establish new spending cannot be challenged to referendum, unless the spending exceeds the previous year’s approved allotment.
Delegate Patrick L. McDonough, Baltimore County Republican and honorary chairman of the petition drive, refuted the claim, saying the Dream Act should be considered a policy law because it does not set spending within the state budget and was not reviewed by the House Appropriations or Senate Budget and Taxation committees.
Story Continues →
The Real Reason for Yesterday’s Stock-Market Sell-Off
By Shah Gilani, Contributing Editor, Money Morning
On Aug. 11, 2010, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 265 points, or 2.5%.
This Tuesday - almost exactly one year later - the Dow dropped ... 265 points.
Those carbon-copy stock-market sell-offs weren't a coincidence. - as yesterday's (Thursday's) 512-point drop and further weakness will prove.
Although the Dow is more than 700 points higher than it was at this time a year ago, U.S. stock prices are currently following virtually the same trading pattern that they did in 2010: Last year and again so far this year the early-year gains came to a halt in May, and the markets then fell through August.
But here's where the story gets scary.
Last year, the U.S. Federal Reserve halted the stock market's summer swoon by opting for a second round of quantitative easing - an initiative most of us refer to as "QE2."
A year later, even after a week heavy with stock-market sell-offs, there's no guarantee we'll see another Fed rescue mission. And this time around, without a massive injection of quantitative easing - the much-ballyhooed QE3 - it could finally be all over for the stock market.
Where the Stimulus Really Went
Stocks have endured a real beating in recent days - yesterday's stock market sell-off was the worst one-day plunge in U.S. stock prices since December 2008.
When the Dow plunged 265 points on Tuesday, it was because of an unexpectedly large drop in the Institute for Supply Management's (ISM) Purchasing Manager's Index (PMI). The 265-point August 2010 sell-off was precipitated by the U.S. Federal Reserve's negative outlook on the American economy.
But both the August sell-offs were preceded by strong run-ups in stock prices. Those run-ups weren't sparked by an improved economic outlook - which is how it usually works.
Instead, the bull market that powered U.S. stocks off their March 2009 bear-market lows was the result of the massive monetary stimulus put in place by Washington and the U.S. Federal Reserve.
The U.S. monetary stimulus - hundreds of trillions of dollars worth- went into banks and other financial institutions - and not into the economy.
That's why stocks have benefited - even in the face of an economy in which growth has been lackluster, if not downright flat.
Generally, stock prices are a reflection of corporate profitability. Sometimes rising stock prices lead economic activity and sometimes price appreciation trails economic growth. But historically, stock prices don't rise if the economy isn't growing.
This time around, however, there was a "trickle-down" benefit that boosted stocks, but bypassed the economy.
The monetary stimulus trickled down from banks, where it was initially injected, onto corporate balance sheets. From there, thanks to a weakened U.S. dollar, the stimulus enhanced export-driven corporate profitability.
Lest you think this occurred by happenstance, let me assure you: This all happened by design.
The Ugly Truth About the American Banking System
Most U.S. banks were in dire straights and all of the too-big-to-fail banks (the largest banks in the U.S.) were insolvent as a result of the credit crisis that hit in 2008. Both the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve (which is run by bankers, essentially for banks) recognized that they had to save the banks at any and all costs - otherwise the U.S. economy and the global economy would collapse into a depression of catastrophic proportions.
Money was pumped into the financial system by means of several government and Federal Reserve programs. Interest rates were kept so low that the overnight rate that banks charge each other, which is engineered by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was, and still is, at historic lows in the range of 0.00% to 0.25%.
With money borrowed at essentially no cost, banks bought risk-free U.S. Treasuries. The banks used the Treasuries they bought as collateral to borrow more money in the short-term "repo" markets. And with those additional borrowed funds, the banks bought even more Treasuries.
The interest that the banks collect on the Treasuries (which you and I as taxpayers are essentially paying) created a profitable "interest-rate spread" - the difference between the interest they earned on the bonds they held and the almost-interest-free "loans" they took out in order to leverage their balance sheets.
Banks play a key role in the U.S. economy. By lending money to the private sector, they make it possible for new companies to be formed and existing ones to grow - all of which creates jobs and helps the economy grow.
But banks aren't lending to the public. Why should they? They make good, safe money on a risk-free basis running the Treasury-spread trade.
Besides, U.S. credit demand has been anemic.
Corporate America Joins the Party
Because interest rates are being held down at artificially low levels, corporations also turned to the bond market to borrow cheaply. In such a low-rate environment, fixed-income investors were forced to scramble for any additional yield they could get above that of U.S. Treasuries - meaning they were only too happy to oblige corporations by lending them money.
Corporate America was able to quickly retool its collective balance sheet, and now sits on about $2 trillion in "cash equivalents" - Treasury bills that companies use to make sure that they collect at least a tiny bit of interest.
The key direct consequence of this massive monetary stimulus has been a weak U.S. dollar. As the dollar falls in value, it makes U.S. exports cheaper on global markets.
That's why corporations with healthy balance sheets and substantial overseas sales have been reporting great earnings. And it's also why these corporate heavyweights - and many mid-sized companies, besides - have enjoyed a nice run-up in their share prices.
It doesn't end there, either. When such strong stock-price gains are posted in a couple of sectors, investors turn to "underperforming" sectors to ferret out bargains, hoping to get in ahead of the inevitable share-price rebounds that result from the money that floods in after investors "rotate" out of fully priced stocks into their undervalued brethren.
One Long Stock-Market Sell-Off?
The bottom line is that the stock and bond markets have been big beneficiaries of the trickle-down policies of the Fed and the Treasury. This is exactly what Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said he wanted to see happen in order to stem the threat of deflation. It has been an articulated policy (except for any admission that they wanted to knock the dollar down - which, of course, they knew would happen).
That brings us to the state of the U.S. economy.
By this time you've no doubt heard the term "The New Normal."
The New Normal - as espoused by PIMCO's Mohamed A. El-Erian - is pictured as an American economy with a chronically anemic growth rate of 1.0% to 2.5%, and structural unemployment in the 8% to 9% range.
It's not a pretty picture.
Already this year, first-quarter gross-domestic-product (GDP) growth was adjusted from an initial estimate of 1.9% all the way down to 0.4%. The second-quarter number just came in at 1.3% -well below the 1.9% rate analysts had been expecting.
It's not just the GDP numbers that have been all over the place and slipping dangerously. Many other economic indicators and data points are turning down.
Investor sentiment and consumer confidence are at multiyear lows. Unemployment remains stubbornly high and is likely to rise. Private-sector employment has been horrible and new deficit-reduction plans will lead to reductions in government spending and layoffs in the historically stable government-jobs sector.
It's no wonder, then, that when the Purchasing Manager's Index came out on Tuesday at 50.9% (its lowest level since October 2008, and its first contraction since June 2009), already-skittish markets plunged. And they've continued to fall - as we saw with yesterday's 4.78% plunge in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and 4.31% dive in the Dow.
Just like last August, if the economy continues to falter, the markets will pay more attention to economic reports than to company-earnings reports - no matter how good those earnings reports might be.
And unless we get another round of stimulus - in whatever form we're able to get it - the aborted stock-market sell-off of last August will come home to roost today.
As this week's stock-market sell-off underscores, last summer's QE2 rescue mission has only postponed the inevitable.
Investors better be defensive. The financial markets have been long overdue for a major correction. And without some new stimulus that actually makes sense for the economy - and doesn't just pump up asset prices - the protracted stock-market sell-off that will carry us through autumn will forever be remembered as "The Fall."
http://moneymorning.com/2011/08/05/the-real-reason-for-yesterday%E2%80%99s-stock-market-sell-off/
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Wednesday, August 3, 2011
What is CRUCIAL?
December 20, 2009 2:04 AM
ODESSA AMERICAN
Finding out much about the group that has propelled a great deal of change in ECISD through a desegregation lawsuit — with hopes for more change — is a challenge.
Members of the Committee for Redress, Unity, Concern and Integrity at All Levels (CRUCIAL), which is represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), have forced change in a number of things for the Ector County Independent School District and for students in the district.
From how gifted and talented students are identified to district boundary lines to how many minority teachers are hired — CRUCIAL has changed education in Odessa.
But getting to know who makes up CRUCIAL is another matter.
What is known is that Odessans Gene Collins and Marcia Cleaver are members. Cleaver is the CRUCIAL president, and Collins represents the group in the district’s Tri-Ethnic Committee meetings. What isn’t known publicly is who else belongs to the group — or just how many people actually are in the group that has brought such change to Ector County schools.
ECISD Superintendent Hector Mendez said he wasn’t sure either, but Mendez said Collins and Cleaver represented the group at the meetings that also had about a half-dozen or more Tri-Ethnic Committee members present in addition to district administration and a couple of board members.
Cleaver said more than 25 people belong to CRUCIAL, but she declined to provide a list of those names to the Odessa American citing privacy. Ector County Independent School District lawyer Mike Atkins said he wasn’t sure who all is in CRUCIAL, while MALDEF lawyer David Hinojosa went so far as to say that information was legally something MALDEF couldn’t give.
"We absolutely can’t divulge that information," he said. Hinojosa also told an OA reporter, "I hope you won’t ask that of them (CRUCIAL)."
Austin attorney Bill Aleshire, who works with the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas hot line, said CRUCIAL can keep information about the group private. However, CRUCIAL is not legally required to do so and could release its membership list if it chose to do so, Aleshire said.
As an unincorporated association, he said CRUCIAL has what the courts call "associational standing" to represent members in court without divulging the names of individual members.
Discussing the privacy behind its membership, Collins said many people affiliated with CRUCIAL prefer to be behind the scenes and don’t want their names public. Cleaver said members are all Odessans, and the group was started in 1980 specifically to bring together people concerned about how the district was responding to a federal desegregation order. At that time, the majority of minority students attended schools on the south side of town.
She said while the group doesn’t have hundreds of members, those who are in the group often serve on other committees and organizations in town, expanding its reach. The group sometimes discusses town issues not related to schools, but Cleaver said the group is still primarily concerned with the district’s progress on the consent agreement. Hinojosa said CRUCIAL is an unincorporated group with parents and community members.
Cleaver said members are all volunteers, and that no one involved with CRUCIAL receives financial benefit for their involvement. Dues aren’t paid either. The only qualification to become a member is an active interest in community issues, particularly the schools.
CRUCIAL doesn’t expect ECISD to be perfect, Cleaver said. However, she said she wants to see the district doing everything possible in all areas, and CRUCIAL members may differ in what they expect. She said it is hard to say specifically what would be enough for the group to drop its objections, but information on the district’s efforts will come under consideration.
Cleaver said MALDEF represents CRUCIAL, making CRUCIAL the primary driver in the desegregation case that started CRUCIAL’s involvement. Any financial compensation MALDEF receives doesn’t go to CRUCIAL and ultimately is decided by the courts. The federal government is a party to the case along with CRUCIAL, and Hinojosa said he doesn’t charge CRUCIAL for the services. However, that doesn’t mean MALDEF doesn’t seek payment.
Atkins said MALDEF has asked the district for attorney’s fees in the past and could seek additional money from ECISD as the case lingers. Since the 2006 consent agreement, MALDEF has received $63,488 from ECISD.
"I can only answer based on history, but they sought attorney’s fees before, and I would expect them to ask in the future," he said.
MALDEF doesn’t request enough fees to have lawsuits to make money, Hinojosa said. He said many other cases are ongoing, and he only wants to see the district uphold its responsibility to the consent decree. He said getting progress on areas was difficult.
"We tried desperately for three years," he said. "I do hope we can find real resolution to this case."
http://www.oaoa.com/articles/through-40653-finding-change.html
http://www.legacy.com/oaoa/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=98352142
Raul Guerrero
1945 - 2007
SAN ANTONIO Today, we celebrate the upward journey of Raul Guerrero. Raul proceeded into the Kingdom with our glorious Father on Monday, November 19, 2007. He is survived by his loving wife, Alicia, proud children, Emiliano, Alma, Linda, Adelita, and Vanessa, and admiring grandchildren, Donte, Jasmine, Gavin, Ava and Audrey.
Raul proudly served his country in the U.S. Army from 1962 to 1965. He was talented enough to play for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1965 and viciously defended Hispanic civil rights by founding the organization C.R.U.C.I.A.L. and his service with the Brown Berets in Odessa, Texas. For years, Raul silently endured the trials of his illness to continue on for his family.
Raul was 62, born in Pecos, Texas, in 1945, and also leaves behind his mother, stepfather, 2 brothers, 3 sisters, and 30 nieces and nephews. Rosary took place Wednesday, November 21st, at 7:00 p.m. at Sunset Northwest Funeral Home, with burial services on Friday at 9:30 a.m. at St. Luke's Catholic Church in San Antonio. Published in the Odessa American from 11/21/2007 - 11/22/2007.
http://www.gopetition.com.au/petitions/raul-guerrero-baseball-complex.html
Petition to Rename South Odessa Baseball fields:
Background (Preamble):
Raul Guerrero was a hispanic civil rights and community organizer in the 1970's, dedicated his life to the quality of life of West Texan's, founder of many organizations like,The Cinco de Mayo celebration, co-founder of Crucial, the annual Tejano super car show and many youth programs.
Raul was a US Army medic and played baseball with the traveling US team, he also played for the St Louis Cardinals and attended UTEP in El Paso. Rauls legacy must be preserved.
Petition:
We the undersigned request our city councilmen to support the naming of South Odessa baseball fields at Mckinney Park to 'Raul Guerrero Base Ball Complex'.
ODESSA AMERICAN
Finding out much about the group that has propelled a great deal of change in ECISD through a desegregation lawsuit — with hopes for more change — is a challenge.
Members of the Committee for Redress, Unity, Concern and Integrity at All Levels (CRUCIAL), which is represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), have forced change in a number of things for the Ector County Independent School District and for students in the district.
From how gifted and talented students are identified to district boundary lines to how many minority teachers are hired — CRUCIAL has changed education in Odessa.
But getting to know who makes up CRUCIAL is another matter.
What is known is that Odessans Gene Collins and Marcia Cleaver are members. Cleaver is the CRUCIAL president, and Collins represents the group in the district’s Tri-Ethnic Committee meetings. What isn’t known publicly is who else belongs to the group — or just how many people actually are in the group that has brought such change to Ector County schools.
ECISD Superintendent Hector Mendez said he wasn’t sure either, but Mendez said Collins and Cleaver represented the group at the meetings that also had about a half-dozen or more Tri-Ethnic Committee members present in addition to district administration and a couple of board members.
Cleaver said more than 25 people belong to CRUCIAL, but she declined to provide a list of those names to the Odessa American citing privacy. Ector County Independent School District lawyer Mike Atkins said he wasn’t sure who all is in CRUCIAL, while MALDEF lawyer David Hinojosa went so far as to say that information was legally something MALDEF couldn’t give.
"We absolutely can’t divulge that information," he said. Hinojosa also told an OA reporter, "I hope you won’t ask that of them (CRUCIAL)."
Austin attorney Bill Aleshire, who works with the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas hot line, said CRUCIAL can keep information about the group private. However, CRUCIAL is not legally required to do so and could release its membership list if it chose to do so, Aleshire said.
As an unincorporated association, he said CRUCIAL has what the courts call "associational standing" to represent members in court without divulging the names of individual members.
Discussing the privacy behind its membership, Collins said many people affiliated with CRUCIAL prefer to be behind the scenes and don’t want their names public. Cleaver said members are all Odessans, and the group was started in 1980 specifically to bring together people concerned about how the district was responding to a federal desegregation order. At that time, the majority of minority students attended schools on the south side of town.
She said while the group doesn’t have hundreds of members, those who are in the group often serve on other committees and organizations in town, expanding its reach. The group sometimes discusses town issues not related to schools, but Cleaver said the group is still primarily concerned with the district’s progress on the consent agreement. Hinojosa said CRUCIAL is an unincorporated group with parents and community members.
Cleaver said members are all volunteers, and that no one involved with CRUCIAL receives financial benefit for their involvement. Dues aren’t paid either. The only qualification to become a member is an active interest in community issues, particularly the schools.
CRUCIAL doesn’t expect ECISD to be perfect, Cleaver said. However, she said she wants to see the district doing everything possible in all areas, and CRUCIAL members may differ in what they expect. She said it is hard to say specifically what would be enough for the group to drop its objections, but information on the district’s efforts will come under consideration.
Cleaver said MALDEF represents CRUCIAL, making CRUCIAL the primary driver in the desegregation case that started CRUCIAL’s involvement. Any financial compensation MALDEF receives doesn’t go to CRUCIAL and ultimately is decided by the courts. The federal government is a party to the case along with CRUCIAL, and Hinojosa said he doesn’t charge CRUCIAL for the services. However, that doesn’t mean MALDEF doesn’t seek payment.
Atkins said MALDEF has asked the district for attorney’s fees in the past and could seek additional money from ECISD as the case lingers. Since the 2006 consent agreement, MALDEF has received $63,488 from ECISD.
"I can only answer based on history, but they sought attorney’s fees before, and I would expect them to ask in the future," he said.
MALDEF doesn’t request enough fees to have lawsuits to make money, Hinojosa said. He said many other cases are ongoing, and he only wants to see the district uphold its responsibility to the consent decree. He said getting progress on areas was difficult.
"We tried desperately for three years," he said. "I do hope we can find real resolution to this case."
http://www.oaoa.com/articles/through-40653-finding-change.html
http://www.legacy.com/oaoa/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=98352142
Raul Guerrero
1945 - 2007
SAN ANTONIO Today, we celebrate the upward journey of Raul Guerrero. Raul proceeded into the Kingdom with our glorious Father on Monday, November 19, 2007. He is survived by his loving wife, Alicia, proud children, Emiliano, Alma, Linda, Adelita, and Vanessa, and admiring grandchildren, Donte, Jasmine, Gavin, Ava and Audrey.
Raul proudly served his country in the U.S. Army from 1962 to 1965. He was talented enough to play for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1965 and viciously defended Hispanic civil rights by founding the organization C.R.U.C.I.A.L. and his service with the Brown Berets in Odessa, Texas. For years, Raul silently endured the trials of his illness to continue on for his family.
Raul was 62, born in Pecos, Texas, in 1945, and also leaves behind his mother, stepfather, 2 brothers, 3 sisters, and 30 nieces and nephews. Rosary took place Wednesday, November 21st, at 7:00 p.m. at Sunset Northwest Funeral Home, with burial services on Friday at 9:30 a.m. at St. Luke's Catholic Church in San Antonio. Published in the Odessa American from 11/21/2007 - 11/22/2007.
http://www.gopetition.com.au/petitions/raul-guerrero-baseball-complex.html
Petition to Rename South Odessa Baseball fields:
Background (Preamble):
Raul Guerrero was a hispanic civil rights and community organizer in the 1970's, dedicated his life to the quality of life of West Texan's, founder of many organizations like,The Cinco de Mayo celebration, co-founder of Crucial, the annual Tejano super car show and many youth programs.
Raul was a US Army medic and played baseball with the traveling US team, he also played for the St Louis Cardinals and attended UTEP in El Paso. Rauls legacy must be preserved.
Petition:
We the undersigned request our city councilmen to support the naming of South Odessa baseball fields at Mckinney Park to 'Raul Guerrero Base Ball Complex'.
A History of MEChA
By Joseph Fallon
Volume 11, Number 1 (Fall 2000)
Issue theme: "America's porous borders"
MEChA
Founded in 1969, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) is the youngest of the four 'Hispanic' organizations. It is also the most unabashedly racist and its pronouncements the most incendiary. Reconquista The Takeover of America, prepared and published by the California Coalition for Immigration Reform in 1997, documents the truth about MEChA by quoting what the founders and supporters of this organization have said.
The first chapter of MEChA, called 'El Plan de AZTLAN,' was established at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1969. Other chapters eventually were formed at other colleges and even at high schools. 'According to Miguel Carillo, a Chula Vista High School teacher, there are MEChA chapters at over 90% of the high schools in San Diego and Los Angeles.'
Money facilitated this rapid growth. Where did the money come from? As unbelievable as it sounds, according to Jacqueline Carrasco of UCLA, 'Most chapters get their budget from the (tax-funded) schools and sometimes from the associated students. Funds range from $100 to $8000 for larger schools such as Cal State Northrop.' (They also get it from NCLR which funds at least part of their schools ~Faye)
Among the demands MEChA has made are rescinding California Proposition 187 (ending welfare benefits to illegal aliens); rescinding all 'English Only laws; abolishing the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol; and open borders.
The goal of MEChA, however, is an independent 'Aztlan,' the collective name this organization gives to the seven States of the U.S. Southwest - Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. According Miguel Perez of MEChA, at Cal State Northridge 'When asked his preference of government, he replied, �Communism would be closest. Non-Chicanos would have to be expelled...opposition groups would be quashed because you have to keep the power.''
As one of MEChA's mission statements declares 'This is revolution at its basic level, moving the people ['Hispanics'] to confrontational politics...' At the November 1996 MEChA statewide conference, one thousand supporters assembled to condemn California Proposition 187 and Proposition 209 (ending bilingual education). According to Reconquista, California State University Professor, and MEChA advisor, Rodolfo Acu�a - who previously stated 'the (demise) of the Soviet Union was a tragedy for us' and 'Chicanos have to get a lot more militant about defending our rights' - proclaimed 'anyone who's supporting 209 is a racist and anybody who supports 187 is a racist... you are living in Nazi U.S. We can't let them take us to those intellectual ovens.' Not surprisingly four months after those and other incendiary statements were uttered, a MEChA representative during a rally in front of Los Angeles City Hall publicly declared; 'When the people in this building don't listen to the demands of our community, it's time to burn it down!'
This was not an empty threat. In 1993, in order to advance their demand for full department status for Chicano Studies at UCLA, MEChA spearheaded a riot that destroyed half a million dollars worth of campus property.
MEChA spreads its message of hate through campus newspapers such as El Popo, Aztlan News, Chispas, Gente de Aztlan (UCLA), Voz Fronteriza (UC at San Diego), La Voz Mestiza (UC at Irvine), and La Voz Berkeley. MEChA's hatred extends to any 'Hispanic'-American who is loyal to the United States. For example, the front page of the May 1995 issue of Voz Fronteriza carried a picture of Luis A. Santiago and the story of how this INS agent was killed in the line of duty defending the U.S.-Mexican border. The headlines read 'Luis A. Santiago Death Of A Migra Pig.'
In April 1997, MEChA held its national conference at Michigan State University and decided, in an apparent attempt to be more indigenous, to change the spelling of its name replacing the 'ch' with 'x.' 'MEChA' became 'MEXA' and 'Chicano' became 'Xicano.'
Unlike MALDEF, and La Raza, MEChA apparently does not receive funding from the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation or the Rockefeller Foundation.
Unlike LULAC, MALDEF, and La Raza, MEChA does not have a national headquarters. Instead, it has regional centers.
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1101/article_912.shtml
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