Please check out my post at Refugee Resettlement Watch today.
If you are not a regular reader of RRW you might not know that you are paying millions to two supposed ‘religious’ charities which are helping spread illegal migrants from the southern border throughout America.
The International Rescue Committee “[engaged] in collusive behavior and misconduct….”
(US Department of Justice)
The International Rescue Committee(IRC for short), one of nine refugee resettlement contractors*** that do business with the US State Department, has agreed to repay US taxpayers nearly $7 million to settle a fraud case.
The fraud, which occurred during the Obama administration, was discovered in its USAID program to supposedly help Syrian refugees in Turkey.
Seven million is peanuts for the IRC!
If you follow my other blog Refugee Resettlement Watch you know that this contractor, a fake non-profit refugee agency, is financially the richest of the nine contractors having received $440 million in one recent year from American taxpayers. See 2018 IRS Form 990.
Note on that IRS Form 990 that (moneybags) Miliband pulls down an annual salary and benefits package of nearly $1 million.
And, the IRC is a politically active refugee agency (as are all of the nine) having worked against the Trump administration and advocated for the election of Joe Biden.
The International Rescue Committee (“IRC”) Agrees to Pay $6.9 Million To Settle Allegations That It Performed Procurement Fraud by Engaging in Collusive Behavior and Misconduct on Programs Funded by the United States Agency for International Development
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department announced today that the International Rescue Committee (“IRC”) has agreed to pay $6.9 million to settle allegations under the False Claims Act related to United States Agency for International Development (“USAID”)-funded programming for beneficiaries affected by the conflict in Syria.
The settlement announced on March 16, 2021, is part of a civil resolution involving the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, USAID, and the USAID Office of Inspector General (OIG).
IRC is a global humanitarian aid, relief and development nongovernmental organization that provides emergency aid and long-term assistance to refugees. It is headquartered in New York, New York. In the early years of the conflict in Syria, IRC received USAID funding for humanitarian assistance programming, specifically to provide emergency cross-border humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons located within Syria.
USAID’s OIG conducted investigations in Turkey into allegations that IRC staff participated in a collusion and kickback scheme with a Turkish supply ring, which included bid-rigging activities in the selection of goods and services contracts for cross-border humanitarian relief into Syria. USAID OIG and the USAO-DC Civil Division also investigated allegations that IRC staff received kickbacks, steered bid procurement tenders, and allowed conflicts of interest between staff and suspect vendors. The investigation revealed that conduct by IRC staff resulted in the procurement of goods at unreasonably high prices, which were subsequently invoiced to USAID from October 2012 to December 2015.
USAO-DC Civil Division and USAID OIG thoroughly examined all source documents including contracts, proposals, contract terms, and invoices, in the lead-up to IRC’s agreement to pay the United States $6,934,500 to settle the False Claims Act allegations.
We are happy to bring this case to resolution and will continue to work with Offices of Inspectors General to ensure that humanitarian aid dollars that are targeted for humanitarian assistance for displaced persons are not compromised by lax oversight controls but are used appropriately to help those in dire need,” said Acting United States Attorney Channing D. Phillips.
Acting USAID Inspector General Thomas J. Ullom stated, “This settlement sends a strong message that USAID-funded implementers must have systems in place to detect, deter, and prevent fraud in humanitarian assistance programming. Aid organizations that lack proper monitoring and oversight controls over their procurement processes put taxpayer dollars at risk and compromise the delivery of critical assistance to those in need. USAID OIG’s global investigative operations will continue to shine a light on and drive consequences for fraud affecting USAID programming.”
Fraud is not rare in the refugee resettlement industry as we noted here last month.
***For New Readersthese are the nine federal refugee contractors who worked to put Biden and Harris in the White House; are lobbying for millions of illegal aliens to be transformed into legal voting citizens; and they have succeeded in getting the new administration to promise to raise the ceiling for refugee admissions to 125,000 for next year FY2022—that is the highest cap in 29 years.
The 62,500 cap you may have been hearing about is for the remainder of FY21. FY21 ends in less than 7 months. So far Biden is dragging his feeton signing necessary documents to open the spigot.
The contractors are in my opinion fake charities because they are largely paid by you, the taxpayer, for their work of changing America by changing the people, and in so doing, are putting struggling Americans last!
There was a time that conservatives looked to the Heritage Foundationas a bulwark against the Leftists’ drive to change America as they say they advise Congress on important legislative priorities.
But, in my view their reputation has been seriously tarnished in recent years as frankly they seem to have become just one more swamp dweller with little regard for the ‘deplorables’ including those now in Trump’s America First base!
Heritage’s latest President Kaye Coles James pulls down an annual salary of over a HALF A MILLION DOLLARS!
My first experience with them was back in the late ’80s and early ’90s when hundreds of landowners, ranchers and farmers had come together to form a national property rights grassroots organization to push back against the federal taking of our land.
I was deeply involved in the movement (I mentioned it here recently) and so I went to Washington to see if I could get the Heritage Foundation to give the fledgling grassroots movement some backing (support, not funding!). They simply brushed us off as if they didn’t understand what grassroots activists could do, or were doing, on a core conservative issue—property rights—as Congress was working to take more of our rights through draconian environmental laws.
Their fate was sealed in my eyes when in 2017 they took a position in FAVOR of more refugee resettlement to America. Here is one postI wrote at the time, but there are several more in 2017.
An aside: maybe Heritage might want to take a look at recent pollthat shows how unhappy Americans are with Biden’s plan to bring in 125,000 refugees in the coming year. On that issue Heritage is apparently on the side of business and the likes of the Chamber of Commerce and not on the side the people!
Earlier, in 2016, a reader suggested I join Heritage’s Sentinelgrassroots outreach, but I very quickly learned that they were never going to involve themselves with restricting immigration. Why? I suspect it has to do with big business donors always on the hunt for more cheap labor.
Here is the news about Pence comfortably ensconced (big salary?) at the Heritage Foundation until he can emerge as a Presidential candidate in 2024 (not a chance in hell in my view).
Perhaps one of Trump’s greatest failings as President was that he followed the advice of swamp dwellers, like Heritage, and chose staffers who were in many cases not loyal to him and his America First message.
Mike Pence Joins Other Trump Administration Alumni At Heritage Foundation Post-VP
Mike Pence will be joining the Heritage Foundation as a distinguished fellow, the organization announced Thursday, making the former vice president the latest member of the Trump administration to migrate to the conservative think tank.
The Heritage Foundation announced Pence’s new position in a Thursday statement, explaining the former VP’s duties will include advising on and giving speeches about public policy issues, and contributing to a monthly column for the think tank’s multimedia news outlet, The Daily Signal.
“He will also work with Heritage to lead the conservative movement into the future…”
…read the announcement, touting Pence’s “allegiance to the Constitution and commitment to advancing a conservative policy agenda.”
In addition to his work at Heritage, Pence—who is widely expected to run for president in 2024—will focus on helping the GOP in the 2022 midterms, and reportedly plans to launch a policy-related fundraising committee.
Pence is not the only displaced member of the Trump administration to land at the Heritage Foundation. The think tank announced in late January that it had brought on three former Trump administration homeland security officials as fellows: Chad Wolf, who served as acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) before departing in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, former deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli and former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
KEY BACKGROUND
The D.C.-based think tank, which is nearly 50 years old, played a subtle—yet substantial—role in the staffing of the Trump administration.
[….]
Among the names put forward by the Heritage Foundation include Betsy DeVos, Scott Pruitt, Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry and Jeff Sessions.
Don’t send your money to the Heritage Foundation!
If Heritage is just a place to park Pence and other RINOs for a few years, let Liz Cheney and Mitch McConnell fund them! Hey, and maybe the Lincoln Project has a few millions to spare.
Put your hard-earned money directly into the hands of America First! office holders and candidates.
You are basically funding some huge salaries for the upper echelons and affording a bunch of has-been professional politicians a place to park their butts so they might ‘think.’
In that Form 990 we learned that the Heritage Foundation think tank took in around $75 million. See on Page 10 that the vast majority of their expenses were for things like salaries and employee benefits, office expenses, travel, fundraising etc.
Notice also on page 2 that their revenue has been steadily and precipitously declining over the previous years.
Almost a $20 million drop in revenue from 2014 to 2018. I guess that means that some of you have wised up.
And, the best part is the salary pages! They are a charitable non-profit organization and have every right to pay huge salaries, but you have a right to know where their money goes before you give them yours.
(As a point of comparison, rank and file Members of Congress and US Senators make $174,000 a year.)
“When Trump a few weeks ago began saying he wouldn’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power, that’s when I decided I needed to do it.”
(Lisa Graustein)
Yes, this group of community organizers is planning to go to the streets at election time because they believe Trump will not leave office if he loses. They think that Donald Trump is planning a coup. Nevermind that Obama and his entire inner circle has been trying to illegally overthrow Trump for over four years.
They make it sound like they are going to bodily remove the President on November 4th, but no matter what happens, he is President until inauguration day in January (LOL! do they know that!).
This is a prime example of how the media (granted BuzzFeed “leans left”) carries the water for the Progressive Left and obviously is enjoying hyping the size of the Trump opposition.
The ‘star’ of this story is a humble former “public school teacher” who has been moved by the words of that meany in the White House to get politically active this year and has selected a group called Choose Democracy where she is putting in time as a volunteer (two hours a day!).
This Is How Thousands Of Americans Are Preparing To Take On Trump If He Refuses To Leave Office
One day late last month, longtime activist George Lakey was yet again training people on how to peacefully resist a coup. But this time, he was not in Moscow or Bangkok or one of the many other far-off places where he has traveled over his 70-year career as a sociologist and writer promoting democracy and nonviolent forms of protest. He was in the United States, at his home in suburban Philadelphia.
On the other end of Lakey’s Zoom webinar were around 1,000 American voters — 500 more, he noted, than had shown up the week before — from around the country who were glued to their screens, taking careful notes.
As President Donald Trump has spent the last few months planting seeds of doubt about the integrity of the US’s electoral process and urging his supporters to “go into the polls and watch very carefully,” dozens of advocacy groups, mostly progressive, have been hard at work trying to organize and train everyday Americans for what to do if their democracy appears to fall apart before their eyes.
“When Trump a few weeks ago began saying he wouldn’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power, that’s when I decided I needed to do it,” said Lisa Graustein, a 45-year-old former public school teacher in Boston, of her decision to give up two hours of her day to partake in a training on the finer points of mass demonstrations, peaceful sit-ins, and putting public pressure on elected officials.
Lisa Graustein
Graustein, who now runs a food distribution center [see packing Goya beans photo–must have been before Goya CEO came out for Trump!—ed], said she had been “semi active” in local political and activist causes in the past.
Still, that was a far cry from pondering the questions Lakey asked in the training, such as: Are you a person who will stand up to authority and be a voice for others? Or hearing Lakey assure the group that dictatorships fall when the masses rise up and that nonviolent resistance — like in Argentina in 1987 and the Soviet Union in 1991 — could be used to defeat a possible power grab by Trump.
But Graustein said she and all her friends and work colleagues are anxious about the election. “People not active in previous elections are active now,” she said. And so when someone in her Quaker community told her about the training, she signed up.
The idea behind the effort was to “actually help prevent” the possibility of a coup, explained Eileen Flanagan, who moderated the training with Lakey.
The training was organized by Choose Democracy, a Washington, DC–based group that describes itself as a “crew of organizers, activists, trainers, academics, and concerned citizens preparing for the scenario of a coup in 2020.”
So BuzzFeedreporter, Ukrainian-based Christopher Miller, wants you to believe that Lisa the food bank worker, just a typical American middle-aged woman, is motivated for the first time to go to the streets to throw ‘orange man’ from the White House.
But, hold on a second!
“Someone in her Quaker community” told her about Choose Democracy? She didn’t know Daddy was its primary funder?
I checked Open Secretson Choose Democracy and it seems that in mid September, someone with the same last name, Graustein, was the primary donorto the PAC Choose Democracy.
Related to Lisa Graustein? Sure looks like it.
Check out the Graustein Memorial Fund(these family trusts are where wealthy people can legally park money and then direct it at their pet causes.)
It seems that the fund has taken a “new direction” over the years helped along by William’s daughter Lisa.See here.
Here is Lisa’s bio. Oh, and her teaching job was at a public charter school, not at a “public school” in the traditional sense.
LISA GRAUSTEIN
Lisa is a public school teacher, gay rights activist, artist, and member of our Board of Trustees. She is a facilitator with Beyond Diversity 101, which offers workshops that expose, stimulate and transform the dynamics of diversity at the root level. Learn more about BD101 here.
Check out Lisa’s presentation, From Genocide to Generational Continuity: Frames for Understanding and Transforming Education,on how the process of genocide – actual and symbolic – is woven into the fabric of our nation’s key institutions, including our education system. [Link appears to be dead!—ed]
Lakey is an oft-arrested Quaker
It seems pretty clear that Ms. Graustein is not a newbie to political agitation.
After all, she is a Quaker.
Most Americans don’t know that the ‘Friends’ (aka Quakers) are an extreme leftwing political group.
I wrote about them at RRWand elsewhere over the years because they have worked closely with pro-Palestinian and Islamic supremacist groups.
You will see at the Wall Street Journal that they are aggressively anti-Israel.
Be sure to read more of theBuzzFeed story that never mention’s Lisa Graustein’s connection to the source of money that is going to organizing spearheaded by an infamous community organizer, George Lakey.
One last thing….
I see at Open Secrets that Choose Democracy had not spent any of the Graustein’s money, or anyone else’s, through the end of September, so this PAC isn’t contributing to the Biden campaign, or any other campaign it seems.
Note again that 6 donors gave the vast majority of the funds Choose Democracy has available.
Makes me wonder if they are saving their bucks for street action—hiring agitators, covering their expenses, and buying ‘supplies’ as they plan to storm Washington, DC. and the Trump White House.
Don’t miss my post yesterdayon Leo Hohmann’s post in which he directs our attention to Shutdown DC.
Grants are “given to organizations that are advancing the cause of lasting change for our society.”
(Tyson press release, September 1, 2020)
If you have followed Refugee Resettlement Watch for the last decade you know that Tyson Foods is one of a handful of BIG MEAT companies with global reach that depends heavily on low-skilled migrant workers for a constantly overturning workforce.
And, while we are all focused on the election, the Chinese Virus and burning cities (as we should be!), pro-immigrant churches (the religious Left) and other non-profits are continuing their quiet work of changing America by changing the people.
For more than you ever wanted to know about Tyson Foods, go hereat RRW.
Immigrant Connection receives $1 million corporate donation
Tyson Foods announced on September 1 that Immigrant Connection (IC), a nonprofit affiliated with The Wesleyan Church, was one of five organizations “advancing the cause of lasting change for our society” awarded $1 million. The Equal Justice Initiative, The Executive Leadership Council, The National Urban League and The Smithsonian were the other four. IC was the only organization voted a recipient by Tyson Food team members.
Wow! Zach Szmara has a direct pipeline to God
“Apart from God, this is utterly unimaginable,” said Immigrant Connection Director Rev. Zach Szmara. “To even be in the same conversation as organizations like The National Urban League, The Executive Leadership Council, The Smithsonian and The Equal Justice Initiative is a witness to two profound truths I have learned — God has favorites, and immigrants are one of his ‘favorite four’ (the poor, the widow, the orphan and the foreigner living among us).
God absolutely loves seeing the marginalized lifted up in counter-cultural ways so he receives all the glory that he is due.”
An employee at Tyson Foods, which has a plant in Logansport, Indiana, where Szmara also pastors The Bridge Church [see photo above about the plant closure there—ed], relayed to Szmara that he has “never encountered anything like Immigrant Connection” — that IC is doing important work that is needed and is making a difference.
Twenty-one IC sites have been launched in Wesleyan churches within the U.S. since its inception in 2014. Two new locations are pending approval as IC sites with the U.S. Department of Justice.***
More than 8,000 immigrants from over 125 countries have been assisted through IC which has become the largest Protestant church-based immigrant legal aid organization in the United States.
***I did not know what this was about: “approval” from the DOJ? So I looked around and found that the US Department of Justice has an entire branch that helps immigrants connect with legal services, see here. I suspect there is federal grant money involved as well.
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department announced today that the International Rescue Committee (“IRC”) has agreed to pay $6.9 million to settle allegations under the False Claims Act related to United States Agency for International Development (“USAID”)-funded programming for beneficiaries affected by the conflict in Syria.
The Heritage Foundation announced Pence’s new position in a Thursday statement, explaining the former VP’s duties will include advising on and giving speeches about public policy issues, and contributing to a monthly column for the think tank’s multimedia news outlet, The Daily Signal.
