Goodbye Sweden

Reblogged from http://swedenreport.org/

June 2, 2015 Economy, Immigration, Politics Economy, Immigration, Politics

  
This is the last post on this blog. I am leaving Sweden for good shortly, and will no longer be following its descent from what was once the third most prosperous country in the world. Frankly, it’s just too damn depressing. 

I was born and raised in Sweden, which leaves a cultural mark even though I moved to USA in the 1990s and have spent the better part of my adult life as an American. Coming back for a few years has been a shocking experience.

When I was a child, Sweden was a dull yet very safe place to live. Yes, there was a heavy blanket of socialism and collectivist values covering everything, but there was a core of pragmatism beneath the redness. The intention and goal was always to benefit the citizens, even though they went about things in a backwards manner. 
 
Prime minister Löfven 
Today, it’s as if the inmates are running the asylum. The politicians are participating in a chicken race of “goodness” where everybody tries to one-up each other in caring for the citizens of OTHER countries while Swedish retirees, school children, handicapped and other vulnerable categories of people are thorougly ignored. Violence is exploding. Jihadist Trojan horses are flowing through the porous border along with the tens of thousands ID-less refugees. 
But what makes me the most pessimistic about Sweden’s future is how the social fabric itself has been undermined. 

Now, to be clear, it is my opinion that modest immigration is healthy for society and beneficial for trade, cultural development and so forth. Protectionism as a concept is counter-productive, while free trade and the ability for skilled labor to go where they’re in demand is beneficial for everyone.
Having said that, what Sweden is doing is something completely different. The once homogenous population has been forever altered by a rapid and massive addition of people from vastly different cultures and value-systems. 26,8% of the population is now foreign-born or with at least one foreign-born parent, and the national census bureau estimates that some 150 000 per year will arrive to the country of just 9,8 million residents.

There simply is no possible way to absorb and assimilate such volumes of people, period. Then you are merely creating ethnic enclaves, which due to incompatible language, culture and job skills become ghettos, which in turns brews crime, misery and extremism. Once the inflow has exceeded the capacity for absorbtion, further immigration only makes the problem worse. 

It’s like someone having read that a cup of green tea per day is healthy, so they make it a policy to chug four gallons per day, every day. It’s a good thing overdone to the extreme until it becomes toxic.
Then you have the Swedish school system. There really is no nice way to put it; it’s a complete disaster. The minister of education is a man-boy who spends his time making Youtube-videos showing heart-signs with his hands to boost school results, while university-level students can’t read and comprehend the course literature. 
   Education minister Gustav Fridolin
Since there is a delay in the changes in the school system, it is only in recent years the full impact of the knowledge-averse “progressive” school system is starting to be felt. Hard facts are largely irrelevant; the important thing is to sit in a group and discuss things until a consensus is reached. But with no hard facts to base the conclusions on, it becomes an exercise in futility because it’s all random assumptions and opinions. As a university-level history student (!) was quoted as saying in newspaper Svenska Dagbladet the other day: “Why would all these dates matter? Who cares in what order things happened?”

That’s not exactly fertile soil for creating the researchers and engineers of the future.
Financially, Sweden is an oddity in that it never had its real estate correction when Lehman Bros went belly-up and the housing market everywhere in the West crashed. Sweden just kept steaming ahead, which means housing is ridiculously overinflated. In Stockholm, the real estate prices increased 19% and in Gothenburg 24% in the last 12 months alone — from an already sky-high level. 
   Tear-down abandoned house from 1932 with small, unremarkable lot in the outskirts of Stockholm. Current bid: 7,5 million SEK, or close to $900,000.

As a result, personal debt of the Swedish population is at an all-time high. To keep all this afloat the normal mortgage interest rates are at 2% with central bank Riksbanken at -0,25%, and yet a significant portion of the borrowers are hanging by a thread. If and when foreign banks and investors decide it’s time to turn their backs on Sweden (as happened in the early 1990s) there’s going to be a lot of pain.

Then you have the financial obligations going forward. Like much of the western world, there is a demographic change where fewer tax-paying adults are to support a glut of retirees. What makes it especially dire for Sweden is that in addition to the old Swedes, there’s also a ton of elderly immigrants that are granted “family visas” based on younger relatives having been granted asylum. They’ve never paid a dime in taxes, yet enter the system with full benefits from day one. In theory, this would be made up for by the younger relatives working and paying taxes. Sadly, this is not the case; while ethnical Swedes have a 82% employment rate, immigrants only have 57% with non-Europeans coming in at just 51%.

If Sweden was a person, it’d be like the guy with three mortgages, seven maxed-out credit cards and four collection agencies chasing him that just signed a lease for a brand new BMW X6. Simply put, there’s a lot of red ink in the future; it just hasn’t been fully realized yet.

Finally, there’s the sorry state of the Swedish defense. After decades of constant slashing of the defense budget, the extent of Swedish ambition is to stall an invader for a week in a limited area. This with war raging in Europe, Russian missiles pointed at Sweden in Kaliningrad, and Russian submarines and bomber jets openly thumbing their nose at Sweden as they intrude on Swedish territory on a regular basis. The power vacuum in Scandinavia is so tangible you can almost hear a sucking sound as you fly over it. This, too, will require massive investments when the penny finally drops amongst Swedish politicians.

So while I can’t claim to be any kind of authority on macroeconomics or social predictive models, I see red lights across the board. 
In some ways, I’d compare the country to a farm. Previously, Sweden acted like a sensible farmer and planted wheat here, carrots there, potatoes over there et cetera, by implementing free schooling, sound infrastructure investments, state-financed research and so forth. A few decades later, they reaped the rewards and climbed the prosperity ladder.

In the late 1960s, this pragmatic line was abandoned as leftist idealist Olof Palme took over. But there was plenty to harvest from previous years, so Sweden continued to be the land of milk and honey for a good long while. Then things started drying up, and the process has been one of gradual erosion and decline since the 1990s. 

The famous Swedish health care system is a good example. 120 000 hospital beds in the late 1960s became 20 000 today. Cancer patients are put on waiting lists for months. Entire emergency wards shut down for summer. The crumbling Swedish railroad system is another symptom I examined in-depth last year. The aforementioned defense that now consist of about three fat generals and a rusty rifle (bullets withheld for budgetary reasons).

A sensible farmer would see the problems for what they are and hurry to plant new seeds, so as to return to bountiful harvests of wheat, carrots, potatoes etc. Instead, the Swedish politicians goes by dogma and plants what they think SHOULD grow. So they plant M & Ms, hot dogs and pretzels. The results won’t be fully evident for a few years yet, but as the last reserves of the old harvests are depleted, things will get… Interesting.

From what I can see, there simply is no plausible scenario where these social tensions and future financial committments will not lead to a downward spiral of hardship and strife. I hope I’m wrong. I really do, because I have friends and family I care about that will remain here to see it all play out. 
But I won’t. I’ll be back in the US being mad at Obama for being a lying scumbag. Every country has its problems. USA has its corrupt yokel in office, just as Sweden has Stefan Löfven. 

I’d like to thank you for having followed this blog and your many insightful comments. It’s been a wild ride at times with heated debates, but it’s been fun — even when I got hatemail from both left-wingers and right-wingers over the same article. :)

So thank you, and good luck whereever you are.
  

79 Comments

What is Jade Helm 15?

Reblogged from Rapture Ready

By Patrick Wyett

Officially, Jade Helm 15 is the name given to a massive military training exercise scheduled to take place across several US states starting July 15. Some are claiming that the start date has been moved up to June 15. Whichever, the exercise is scheduled to conclude on September 15. The impetus for this operation, we’re told, is that Special Forces and supporting units need this training to help prepare for future overseas missions.

States officially involved are Southern California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, with southern California, Utah and Texas being designated hostile areas for purposes of this exercise. It’s been reported that Colorado has been removed from the exercise boundaries though current activities there indicate otherwise. “Raider Focus,” the largest war game in Colorado since WW II, is being conducted right now.

It’s also been reported that many other states are unofficially part of Jade Helm 15.

The type of training will involve inserting Special Forces teams into unfamiliar areas (code for civilian-populated areas) for the purpose of enemy leadership extraction and detainment. Or in real world operations, possibly killing those high priority targets.

This type of training takes place overnight, often via helicopter though not exclusively. We’re also told that some troops will be practicing “blending in” in some areas; seeing if they can operate in an information-gathering capacity without being noticed by the local citizenry.

Federal, state and local law enforcement will be involved in various capacities.

I’ll admit that I’m a bit jaded about the stated rationale for Jade Helm 15. Yes, I question the honesty, integrity and motivations of the same government that brought us Fast and Furious, The Arab Spring, Benghazi, and the IRS targeting of Christian and conservative groups. The same liars who continually tell us how well our dying economy is doing.

The mainstream media assures us there’s nothing to be concerned about Jade Helm 15. If you believe anything else, you’re a conspiracy theorist. Even Fox News will tell you that. The term “conspiracy theory” was coined by the CIA in 1967 to ridicule those who question or disagree with government policy. It’s an effective psychological operations tool that avoids discussion of a given issue by discrediting the dissenter by insinuation.

Indeed, your mind is expected to shut down at the mention of “conspiracy theory.” With a chuckle and head shake you’re supposed to go back to whatever self-indulgence keeps you preoccupied. For illusions’ sake, please don’t think on your own.

Let the newscasters, broadcasters and spin masters do your thinking for you; the same people who told you that Barry Soetoro, aka Barack Hussein Obama, was the chosen one for president. The very collective entity that covers for him and his destroying agenda.

Let’s do a logic check.

Training on US soil amongst the civilian population simulates what potential foreign battlefield? The Middle East? Afghanistan? No, not even remotely. How about Russia or North Korea? Nope. Keep in mind that it’s a primary military doctrine; train in the closest conditions to which you’ll fight.

An example of this comes from past US efforts in Iraq. US forces going into Iraq would first train in northern Kuwait at Camp Buehring to acclimate to the climate and terrain before heading north. I’ll also note that the type of training Jade Helm 15 is supposed to supply has been amply provided by the last 12 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the height of our activities there, no such training was conducted in civilian areas of the US. Why now?

So what battlefield do US towns and cities best simulate? US towns and cities.

Do US military personnel need practice in “blending in” in their own country? One wouldn’t think so. But foreign troops, who’ll also be participating in Jade Helm 15, do.

Are they blending in temporarily or are they being pre-positioned for something other than just a military training exercise?

Another related question. If you train like you’ll fight, in what overseas operation will another nation’s local and national law enforcement aid our troops? Such elements are integral to Jade Helm 15, how will that component be filled in a foreign, hostile country? The obvious answer is, it couldn’t be. Big red flag.

Jade Helm 15 is not training designed to engage another military force, its practice to control a civilian population and eliminate opposition. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is heavily involved.

Did you know that the former head of East Germany’s Stasi, Markus Wolf, was paid millions of dollars to set up the organizational structure of DHS? Stasi has been described as one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies to have ever existed.

What a foundation to build on.
The American public has been and is being conditioned to accept military equipment and personnel on our streets, “for our own good.” The distinction between law enforcement and military is rapidly becoming irrelevant. Practically speaking, when you’re on the receiving end it doesn’t matter what uniform is being worn; body armor is body armor, Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) are APCs and weapons are weapons.

Contrary to the perception that Jade Helm 15 is the start of a broad-ranging military exercise in CONUS (CONtinental United States), I submit to you that it is not a start, but a continuation, possibly the culmination, of years of planning, logistics and training. Dare we ask, toward what end?

In recent years the US military has been drastically downsized, demoralized and spread thin across the globe; bogged down and bled in Muslim countries with no will or strategy for victory. Barry’s entrenched regime has purged over 270 top officers that they didn’t trust to violate their oath to defend the constitution, part of the ongoing effort to eliminate Christianity, morality and honor from the ranks of the Armed Forces.

What’s wanted are blindly obedient order-takers, unrestrained by ethics.

How bad have things gotten? Consider that a Muslim Jihadist captured on the battlefield, a terrorist, is sent to Guantanamo Bay. There he’s provided a Quran, issued a prayer rug, can pray towards Mecca five times a day, is served Halal (Muslim approved and prepared) food, has a library of Muslim literature and videos at his disposal, and Muslim clerics to preach to him in Arabic.

These barbarians are not only allowed to continue to practice the false religion that demands they kill infidels, (which is exactly what they were doing to get them sent there in the first place), they are encouraged to do so, and at US taxpayer expense.

Contrast this to Marine Lance Corporal Monifa Sterling, who was court-martialed for refusing to remove a modified Bible verse from her computer. The verse read, “No weapon formed against me shall prosper” paraphrased from Isaiah 54:17. You read that right. In Barry’s world, the satanic cult of Islam is acceptable but don’t let a Marine have a Bible verse on her computer.

Know why? The military court determined that the Bible verse in question “could easily be seen as contrary to good order and discipline.” Really. But mandating that homosexuals must be allowed in the Armed Forces, even favored, isn’t contrary to good order and discipline?

Oh, how our wickedness cries out for God’s judgment!

Meanwhile various agencies under DHS jurisdiction have been busily arming and training.

For what?

To whom are the over 2 billion rounds of ammo for? What is the domestic need for 2700 armored personnel carriers? Why the purchase of “no hesitation” targets that look like every day American citizens?

Remember what Barry said as a presidential candidate in 2008?
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

What national security objectives that he’s set can’t our military be trusted to accomplish? I’ll remind you, a civilian national security force doesn’t fight foreign powers. They operate at home. Just like the Stasi.

Is it coincidence that five Walmarts in the Jade Helm 15 area of operations have shut down due to “plumbing problems?” No work permits have been applied for, no plumbing contractors have been contacted for bids. These reported six month closings are estimated to cost Walmart over one hundred million dollars.

You and I both have witnessed entire large store renovations take place without the store ever closing.

Hypothetically speaking, these closed Walmarts would make excellent military supply points, detainee processing centers, even detention facilities, during a martial law declaration. 

By all indications, something big is being anticipated. Military exercises of unprecedented scope and frequency are taking place worldwide. Operation Maple Resolve, similar to Jade Helm 15, recently ran in Canada from April 20 to May 23. NATO in Europe is staging drills and positioning assets.

Russia appears to be accelerating toward war preparation with multiple war game exercises, including nuclear. China and Russia are conducting first ever joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean Sea. In the South China Sea, China is militarizing islands it’s annexed in a disputed area.

Nations are on edge.
Many financial disasters take place in the late summer/early fall timeframe. Economists understand this cycle but are puzzled as to the “why”. If you’d like a Bible-based explanation, I suggest you check out Jonathan Cahn’s “Mystery of the Shemitah” for reference.

Many in law enforcement and the military are in the dark about Jade Helm 15. Military training is by nature compartmentalized. You only know what you need to know. Most who are participating view it as another training exercise; a chance to practice with equipment and hone tactics without anyone actually shooting at you.

What happens if Jade Helm 15 goes live? Then those in uniform have an individual decision to make; kill and enslave their fellow citizens on the orders of tyrants or honor their oaths of duty and fight that tyranny alongside their fellow citizens.

One thing is for sure, Jade Helm 15 is putting people and assets in place. Whatever might be coming is not an accident or miscalculation. It’s planned. Keep that in mind. Nothing at this level occurs by chance.

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”  —Franklin D. Roosevelt

Possible scenarios include a worldwide economic collapse followed by martial law. A false flag attack or series of attacks on US soil to justify martial law. Or World War III. Whatever it is, the plans are set.

If martial law is the desired outcome, what would it entail? First and foremost, it signals the end of life and freedom as you know it. Some aspects of martial law includes curfew, travel restrictions, food and fuel rationing, forced relocation, confiscation of firearms and “excess” food and communications such as phone service and the internet terminated.

Certainly detaining declared enemies of the state would of primary importance; exactly what Jade Helm 15 is all about. With the massive surveillance state we live under, the lists are made. You should know by now who the undesirables are.

You may be thinking, I’ll just bury my guns and hide my food. Friend, they’ll be coming for you.

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!” – Patrick Henry

Maybe nothing of consequence will happen. Maybe late summer passes into fall and life as we know it stumbles on. We’ll find out soon enough. Rest assured though, the days are coming.

Are you ready? First, foremost and forever, be right with God. Commit or recommit your life to Him right now as your soul is stirred. You will need His strength and peace for what lies ahead.

Seek the Lord for discernment on what you should do. Not half-heartedly or with scraps of commitment. Seek Him earnestly with fear and trembling, as befits the King of Glory.

So what is Jade Helm 15? Is it conspiracy or conspiracy theory?

The individual is handicapped, by coming face-to-face, with a conspiracy so monstrous, he cannot believe it exists. The American mind, simply has not come to a realization of the evil, which has been introduced into our midst . . . It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy, which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent. —FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, 1956

Mr. Hoover is speaking to us, today. Are you listening?

Patrick
patrickwyett@excite.com

Part 2 With Tom Horn & Steve Quayle -- Are Things About To Get Crazy?

Note from this blogger: 
I firmly believe that the Lord God wants us to study and draw from the water of the Word both in the Old Testament as well as the same water found in the New Testament. First because God is eternal, he doesn´t change, his Word is Jesus who doesn´t change - he is Alpha and Omega - the One who, made flesh communicated to us humans, his will, his purpose for coming down to our level and revealing his Father´s love to us and the plan of redemption. 

We can see that the New Testaments writers quoted profusely from the Old Testaments King and Prophets. The Lord Jesus himself quoted from Genesis to Malachi, you can trust his Word, he is the originator of it through the Holy Spirit and the mind of the writers. 

When Steven Quayle writes about gates, I tend to believe him because I am a Berean and one of the principles that I used is to see if something that someone said in the New Testament exists contextually in the Old Testament. And concerning gates, I think I found it. The context  in Genesis 22:17-18 is faith and the father of faith, Abraham the patriarch of the Israelites and the father of all the ones who later on would come to faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through whom all the descendants of the earth, Gentiles and Jews would be blessed. 

If we look at Matthew 16: 18 we can see the same context of faith, the determinant factor in the salvation of the Christian by grace through faith. We know Peter was sent to the Jewish people and Paul to the Gentiles to proclaim the message of the Good News. 

To sum up let´s look at the contexts and the keys words In Genesis 22: 17, 18 and Matthew 16:18 to see if we can find some correspondence: 

Genesis 22:17-18 "indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the GATE of their enemies. 18“In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”
Matthew 16:18: "I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the GATES of Hades will not overpower it.

I found a further correlation in the word obedience that is directly linked to faith. According to Romans 1:5-6: ... through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name’s sake, 6 among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ;

One can only go through the GATE that leads to the invisible kingdom of God through obedience of Faith to the voice of Christ that commands "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." (Matthew 1:15).(Jesus is the only DOOR for its narrowness so that only one person can go through at a time). This is why Peter and the Apostles declare in Acts5:32,33:
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross. 31“He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. 32“And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.” 

Here the Apostles were talking about the promise to Abraham to bless his descendance through the Lord Jesus who would  baptize us into the family of faith. It is the same Peter who in this sermon to the crowd at Pentecost: Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do? 38And Peter'said unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him.

Peter should know this better than anyone from experience since he was delivered from jail by an angel that unshackled him from the wall and led him outside the GATE of the prison. He then testified about it to the other disciples. This is a living proof that the gates of hell could not prevail against the Church.

A true prophetic word is always validated and confirmed by the reality of the fulfillment.
          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Court Rules Living ‘Off The Grid’ Is Illegal

Reblogged from tangofoxtrot.net  via servehiminwaiting.com

Posted by deacon303 on June 3, 2015

For many it’s a life long dream to get “off the grid” and live self-sufficiently. But unplugging from municipal services has been ruled illegal by a court in Cape Coral, Florida.
Special Magistrate Harold S. Eskin ruled that Robin Speronis is not allowed to live on her own private property without being hooked up to the city’s water system.
He admitted that she had the right to live without utility power, but said that her alternative power sources must always first be approved by the city.
Speronis has been taking a stand for years not against the city of Cape Coral. Back in November of 2013 a code enforcement officer attempted to evict her for “living without utilities.”
The city’s argument is that the International Property Maintenance Code was “violated” by her reliance on rain water rather than paying the city for water. The IPMC also would make it a crime for her to use solar panels instead of being tied into the electric grid.
“It was a mental fistfight,” Todd Allen, Speronis’ attorney said regarding Eskin’s review of the case. “There’s an inherent conflict in the code.”
Allen says that at this point the argument is just that Speronis must “hook up” to the grid, even if she doesn’t use utilities from it.
Speronis explains that she has won on two of three counts already, but there is still a big fight ahead of her.

Court Rules Living ‘Off The Grid’ Is Illegal | Liberty First.

Republican legislative candidate in South Dakota faces 24 years in prison for petition signature mistakes

Via  servehiminthewaiting.com

Posted by deacon303 on June 3, 2015

The hardened criminal you see in the photo above lulls you into a false sense of security via her status as a wife, mother of three and professional physician. Don’t be fooled. She’s a danger to society. In fact, she’s a felon times twelve. No joke. If the South Dakota justice system metes out the full force of the law, innocent South Dakotans will soon be able to sleep peacefully once again – knowing that Dr. Annette Bosworth is behind bars and can no longer threaten them with nominating petition mistakes.

Oh, did I mention that she’s a conservative Republican and a Christian? You know those monsters. They go on about morality and “family values” while exposing their hypocrisy by messing up campaign paperwork. You have to have a lot of nerve going overseas to provide free medical care to poor people when election bureaucrats expect you to be witnessing petition signatures.

And yes, this is really happening. Because of such esoteric mistakes, Bosworth has really been convicted of 12 felonies and is really looking at the possibility – although not the likelihood – of 24 years in prison:

Bosworth said during the trial that she never intended to mislead anyone when she attested to signatures on campaign documents that she didn’t actually witness. She was out of the country on a medical mission trip at the time. Bosworth also has admitted that she didn’t personally gather some signatures, despite attesting on documents that she had witnessed people signing petitions.

Under state law, the person circulating petitions must witness the signings from registered voters.
Although Bosworth argued that the prosecution was politically motivated, her defense largely relied on her argument that she received bad advice from her attorney and political consultant during the 2014 campaign, Joel Arends. Bosworth’s trial lawyer portrayed her as a neophyte candidate who knew much more about medicine than about the political process.

Arends denied the allegation, testifying that Bosworth “absolutely and definitely” knew the proper way to fill out a nominating petition. He called it “a lie” that he had advised her she didn’t need to witness signatures.

“This verdict is very significant in that the jury sends the message that our electoral process is very sacred and the integrity of the process has to be protected,” Deputy Attorney General Robert Mayer told reporters after the verdict.

Testifying in her own defense earlier in the trial, Bosworth said her actions were “careless.”
“I was doing everything possible to get it right,” Bosworth testified last week. “I felt like I did a very good job trying. Clearly, I’m sitting here because we screwed up.”
Bosworth’s attorneys said she thought she could properly call herself the petitions’ “circulator” because they were circulated under her direction.
Her medical license could be jeopardized. She faces a maximum punishment of 24 years in prison and $48,000 in fines.

Now look, Bosworth clearly messed this up. She admits that. But it’s just as clear that she didn’t intend to do anything wrong, and she certainly didn’t do anything serious enough for anyone to treat it as a felony. This is a classic case of election officials and prosecutors taking their own inside games just a little too seriously. It’s important that the nominating process be conducted with integrity, and if Bosworth attested to her witnessing of signatures that she didn’t really witness – that’s a serious mistake whether or not it amounted to an intentional deception. It’s probably deserving of a nominal fine – something that I bet could be handled administratively.

Politics: Republican legislative candidate in South Dakota faces 24 years in prison for petition signature mistakes | Best of Cain.
Huh. We actually had something similar happen in my town a few years back. We had a city council member who was charged because she “tried to vote twice” and I think she dropped off (didn’t assist) absentee ballots for some residents who were too sick to get to the polls. I can’t remember the entire thing, but I do remember her trying to vote twice. Whatever it was with the ballots, she didn’t realize it was illegal, but it was apparently a felony.
Side note, here’s what happened with the ballots according to the local news:

Five absentee ballots had to be thrown out after voters told elections officials that —– was the signed witness on their ballots and that she took possession of the ballots after voters filled them out, Poucher said.
It is a felony to even touch a ballot belonging to anyone but a close relative.

I am actually friends with the city council member (I have no idea of her political party, but knowing her views as I do, I am going to say she at least leans left, although, as I said, I don’t know what her declared party is or if she is independent. They don’t have to disclose that here for city council). And I was heading in to vote when she was coming out from her “attempt at a second vote.” She came up to me, laughing, because she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten she had submitted an absentee ballot. With everything she had been doing getting ready for election night, she just completely forgot and ran in to vote. Yes, I believe her.
Thankfully she was not charged with a felony for the attempt at the second vote.

But the above story makes me wonder. How do people like my friend and Dr. Bosworth not know these laws? Isn’t this something that should be made clear when they go up to officially throw their hat in the ring? Yes, I agree, they should be looking into these laws themselves. But I am thinking that maybe these laws needs to be handed over to anyone trying to run and they should be written in English, not legalese. It seems to me a lot of this was ignorance but also an honest mistake. In the case of my friend, the ballot issue was ignorance, and seeing as how she was running for the third time she should have known that law, so I won’t let her off the hook for that one. But the attempt at the second vote – which is what the media focused on the most and was the only thing they put in their headlines – was an honest mistake. In the case of Dr. Bosworth, I think it was a case of it being a combination of the two. And she’s going to have her life ruined because of it.

And we wonder why we can’t get “average people” to run for office. Aside from you and me not being able to afford to – the mayoral election in my town cost the candidates over $2 million a piece, and this is a ten mile by ten mile town suffering from out of control growth – we don’t know all the laws and can’t translate the lawyer speak.

U.S. Pushback Against Muslim Refugees ‘Growing’

Reblogged from https://shariaunveiled.wordpress.com via servehiminwaiting.com

Posted by sharia unveiled on June 3, 2015

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: America, Christian, Immigration, Islam, islamic, Jewish, Jihad, Koran, Muhammad, muslim, Obama, Persecution, Qur'an, Refugees, Sharia Law, terrorism, Texas, Women. Leave a comment

by, Leo Hohmann | WND

WND has discovered what amounts to the government playbook for countering the rising “backlash” against the secret planting of Muslim refugees into cities and towns across America.

The 2013 report anticipated two years ago that resistance would increase to the seeding of communities with Muslim refugees if counter measures were not undertaken.

The report was prophetic.

Last year, WND reported how the mayor of Athens, Georgia, requested the federal government not send any refugees to her town until she could get a handle on the costs. Earlier this year, another high-profile case of pushback emerged in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in Rep. Trey Gowdy’s district, a story WND first reported in April.

In Wyoming, the only state that does not have a refugee resettlement agreement with the U.S. State Department, Gov. Matt Mead was “exploring” whether he should start such a program. But after stories in the local media and on WND, Mead dropped the plan.

Now, WND has learned the government and its contractors have a stock plan on how to deal with what they call “backlash” to refugee resettlement in American cities.

Titled “Resettlement at Risk: Meeting Emerging Challenges to Refugee Resettlement in Local Communities,” the report by one of the federal government’s top resettlement contractors admits that communities “across the country” are pushing back against the refugee program, especially when it involves the infusion of Muslims into their city or town.

In the wake of the report, the Obama administration has handed out millions of dollars in grants to organizations like Welcoming America, which works to “educate” elected officials and the public in “receiving communities” before refugees arrive. Welcoming America was started in 2010 with seed money from George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

The U.S. State Department, working with the United Nations, accepts about 70,000 foreign refugees for permanent resettlement in the United States each year, distributing them to more than 190 cities and towns across America. (See list of 190 office locations in every state)

Dealing with uncooperative elected leaders

The report lays out a strategy for dealing with uncooperative politicians who insist on representing the concerns of their constituents as opposed to the interests of the refugee industry.

The report calls for “new tools to fight back against a determined legislator or governor who has decided to challenge resettlement for political or other reasons.”

One of those tools is Obama-supporter David Lubell’s Welcoming America. The group is dispatched to areas where native-born Americans are not sufficiently “welcoming” and runs advertising campaigns on TV, radio and billboards touting the economic contributions of refugees and other “new Americans.”

The 2013 report, authored by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and financed by a wealthy New York family foundation, cites three examples of push back – in Georgia, Tennessee and New Hampshire.

Tamping down an uprising in Georgia

In Georgia, Gov. Nathan Deal in 2011 ordered a hold on federal money flowing to refugee resettlement contractors until a review of the program could be completed.

A group of residents and at least one elected official in the city of Clarkston complained that the city was being overwhelmed by refugees and the governor wanted to investigate.

“Although the governor’s office offered no reason for the review, it is believed that an elected official from Clarkston, a small city east of Atlanta, complained to the governor on behalf of a constituent,” the report states. “The official, who in 2003 had introduced legislation to require resettlement agencies to notify local government officials if 10 or more refugees would be resettled in a community at one time, told the governor’s office that Clarkston was at ‘capacity.’”

That prompted an army of refugee advocates and lobbyists to leap into action.

“Facing the prospect of staff layoffs and the disruption of critical services for refugees, the network of agencies providing services to refugees created an informal coalition to advocate for the release of the federal funds,” the report says. “The coalition worked to gather information and educate elected officials, influential supporters of the governor, as well as police chiefs and school officials, about the economic benefits of refugee resettlement in Georgia.”

The coalition got U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., along with the Clarkston mayor, to write a letter to the governor in support of refugee resettlement.

In December 2011 Deal relented and released federal funds for the resettlements to continue in Georgia.

The resettlement contractor did, however, agree to decrease the number of refugees being sent to Georgia the following year by 20 percent.

Muslim refugees spark concerns about terrorism

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is one of nine government contractors who do the resettlement work in more than 190 cities and towns across the U.S. These contractors subcontract with more than 350 smaller agencies and church groups to get the refugees settled into subsidized housing, get their children enrolled in school and families signed up for Medicaid. Among the other nine major contractors are the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Church World Services, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, Episcopal Migration Service, World Relief and the International Rescue Committee. These agencies describe themselves as nonprofit “charitable” organizations but they have the majority of their budgets covered by government grants.

Hebrew Immigrant Aid’s 30-page report says the danger of push back is exacerbated when Muslims are part of the equation. Americans have been less receptive to Muslim refugees than those coming from a Christian or other religious background.

Hebrew Immigrant Aid cited fear of terrorism as one of the primary concerns that residents have with Muslim refugees settling in their communities.

“…although cases of refugees connected to terrorism have been rare and refugees are among the most highly scrutinized and vetted immigrants in the U.S., anti-immigrant groups have suggested that the program is a gateway for terrorists. The recruitment of young Somalis by terrorist cells and the arrest of two resettled Iraqi refugees in Kentucky on terrorism charges have provided fuel for these allegations,” the report says.

Since the report was written in February 2013, scores more Somali refugees have been arrested for providing material support for overseas Islamic terror groups such as al-Shabab. Still others have left the country to fight for ISIS and al-Shabab.

Just last month six Somalis from Minnesota were arrested for trying repeatedly to fly to Turkey and join ISIS, leading U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger to proclaim, “We have a terror recruitment problem in Minnesota,” WND reported.

Shifting the blame to Americans

But the report blames the backlash not on any failure of the government to properly vet refugees but on “anti-Muslim views” held by native-born Americans. The report also points a finger at refugee watchdog Ann Corcoran, who started the Refugee Resettlement Watch blog in 2007 after she learned that Muslim refugees were arriving in her rural farm community in western Maryland.

Watch Ann Corcoran tell her personal story of how she got interested in the refugee movement and became the nation’s leading watchdog of refugee “contractors” posing as charitable organizations.

 

Video courtesy of: securefreedom and Leo Hohmann

“Online forums such as Refugee Resettlement Watch have emerged for individuals critical of the resettlement program to share their concerns. Many of the posts express disdain for the refugee resettlement program, particularly the resettlement of Muslim refugees, along with anti-Muslim views,” the report states.

Corcoran has repeatedly stated that she is not against legitimate refugees but she does want the program to be halted until it can be “cleaned up.” She believes it is plagued by secrecy and lack of accountability and that public hearings should be held prior to any city being chosen as a “receiving community.” She says a complete impact study should be conducted and shared with local residents to remove the mystery that surrounds the program.

Countering the ‘resistance’

Besides Georgia and Maryland, major statewide resistance has occurred in New Hampshire and Tennessee, according to the report.

“Tennessee, New Hampshire, and Georgia are the only states that have recently attempted to stop refugee resettlement at the legislative or executive level,” the report states. “Resistance to resettlement has emerged in other communities across the country as well, although those states have not pursued statewide measures to stop resettlement.”

A culture of secrecy

But the report was written before the emergence in March of a grassroots fight in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where World Relief has opened a resettlement office and decided to place 60 refugees from Syria, Congo and other countries over the next year. Once a resettlement office opens in a city, the deliveries of refugees continue year after year, Corcoran said.

Spartanburg residents led by Christina Jeffrey, the former historian of the U.S. House of Representatives, approached their congressman, Gowdy, and started asking questions.

How many were coming, when were they coming, from what countries, and what would the impact be on local services and the economy? Where would the refugees find jobs in a city already plagued by high unemployment and poverty?

Gowdy said he did not know all of the answers, so he fired off a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry asking for details on how cities are selected, who is contacted for input on the local level, and many other pieces of information that are normally kept hidden from local communities.

Kerry responded to Gowdy’s first letter on April 30, but Gowdy said the answers were vague and incomplete so he sent a second letter in early May demanding more precise information.

“I think Spartanburg is the Waterloo, the watershed, where all of the pieces are coming together,” said Corcoran. “Activists there are going to stay in the fight no matter how heated it gets.”

Not allowed to evangelize Muslims

Jason Lee, a local pastor and director of World Relief Spartanburg, spoke at a meeting last Monday of the Spartanburg County Council. One of the arguments he made was that it was good that some of the refugees coming to South Carolina were non-Christians.

“He said one of the advantages of the program is we can spread the gospel,” Jeffrey said. “One of the holes in that argument is that the money is coming from the federal government and it cannot be used to spread the gospel. They have a contract which they must sign obligating them not to evangelize, and if he doesn’t know that, he should know it, because he is the director of World Relief in Spartanburg.”

Corcoran said the resettlement industry compiles an “enemies list” in local communities where resettlements encounter resistance.

“They do research and develop a list of enemies and potential enemies,” she said.

And that’s not all.

“We recently learned that instructions have gone out nationwide to give citizens no information when they call a resettlement agency to ask for the abstract describing plans for their town,” Corcoran said. “It just further enhances their reputation for being secretive.

“I had a lady email me from Connecticut recently who called her local Catholic Charities office to ask for their abstract, and they wrote back and said ‘who are you?’ before they would give her any information. She said she’d like that abstract.”

The “abstract” is the document describing the number of refugees planned for a given city, where they will come from and the expected impact on social services, schools and the job market.

“We’ve recently been given word that citizens who seek these abstracts are being denied those documents and it appears to be a concerted national effort to shut down the flow of information from resettlement agencies to the local concerned citizens,” Corcoran said.

“What you have here are rich foundations joining forces with the government and working against the regular hard-working Americans who just want to find out what is happening in their town,” Corcoran added.

Resistance is also more likely when refugees are sent to a smaller city or town, as opposed to a traditional gateway city like Chicago, L.A., Philadelphia, Boston or New York, according to the report.

And if the city is in the midst of “economic distress,” which many smaller cities are, it is even more likely to push back against the planting of refugees because of the costs associated with integrating refugees into schools, housing, and healthcare services, the report says.

The report says refugees tend to stand out in smaller communities where their “visibility” is accentuated.

Kaplan Fund director has ties to Soros

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was granted $35,000 to write the report by the New York City-based J.M. Kaplan Fund, whose migration program is directed by Suzette Brooks-Masters, a former corporate and environmental lawyer.

According to her LinkedIn page, Brooks Masters once worked for Soros’s Open Society as a researcher on the “Forced Migrations Project.”

She was mentioned as a “friend” by immigration activists at a Washington press conference last month in which Obama rolled out his plan to create more “welcoming communities” for new immigrants and refugees. The newly formed White House Task Force on New Americans is making a concerted national effort to turn the immigrants into “new Americans” by removing barriers to citizenship.

Brooks Masters says on her LinkedIn page that she is “launching the Receiving Communities Initiative with Welcoming America, and the creation of the Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education based at Westchester Community College and IMPRINT (a national collaboration to foster immigrant professional integration in the US workforce).”

She says she is also working to finance the integration of unaccompanied alien children from Central America into U.S. communities.

“I am also funding work on the local reception of unaccompanied minors and trying to improve the integration outcomes for refugees,” she said on her site.

Use locals to fight resistance

In its recommendations, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid report says the work of countering backlash should be coordinated at the national level while using local people at the grassroots level to debunk and counter the claims of those in the resistance.

The report also calls for Congress to increase funding of the refugee program, which currently costs taxpayers nearly $1.5 billion per year, not including the social welfare benefits handed out to refugees. Unlike most other categories of immigrants, refugees immediately qualify for food stamps, public housing, Medicaid, Social Security disability and TANF, a monthly cash assistance program for poor families with children.

The resettlement agencies claim that most refugees are “self-sufficient” within three to six months. But, Corcoran says, that does not mean they are earning their own living and paying their own way.

“That only means that they have been set up on government welfare and the resettlement agencies are no longer helping them,” she said.

Senators pushing for ‘dramatically more’ Syrian refugees

Last week WND reported that 14 Democratic senators wrote a letter to Obama requesting that he “dramatically increase” the number of refugees allowed into the country from Syria. That country’s 5-year-old civil war has produced more than 3.5 million refugees and the senators said the U.S. should grant the request of the main lobbying arm of the nine refugee contractors, Refugee Council USA, and accept 65,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016. As for the 843 Syrians allowed to resettle in the U.S. since the civil war started, 92 percent have been Muslim. Less than 7 percent have been Christian.

WND also reported last week that Angela Davis, the late-1960s radical and former leader of the Communist Party USA who went on to lead the feminist studies program at the University of California at Santa Barbara, appeared at a rally in Berlin, Germany, May 14-15, in which she said “the refugee movement is the movement of the 21st century” for radical community organizers.

Read the entire Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society report on countering “backlash.” The report ends with six recommendations on how to counter backlash, among them being:

• Get organized. Launch a funded, productive, organized initiative, coordinated nationally but strongly rooted in local action to raise awareness about the benefits of resettlement and “proactivity.”

• Develop a rapid-response team plan that can respond to backlash quickly in communities facing or at risk of facing rising anti-refugee sentiment.

• Conduct research on local anti-refugee leaders. The national refugee agencies should partner with groups such as the Center for New Community and the Southern Poverty Law Center to learn more about individuals and groups leading local efforts to resist resettlement, to determine if they belong to organized anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim organizations or networks.

• Monitor state legislatures for anti-refugee bills and lobby accordingly.

• The federal government should create national benchmarks for refugee integration and measure progress toward success.