Croom Station Signal

41 Per Cent of the U.S. Uninsured are Foreign-Born

On June 15, the National Council of La Raza, a powerful open borders advocacy group, issued a statement calling upon Congress to ensure that illegal aliens are given health benefits if and when Congress considers health care reform.

 

In 2006 the U.S. Census Bureau calculated that at least 47 million people in the U.S. did not have health insurance. This figure includes persons who were uninsured at any point in the year, even if only for a few days.  The calculation included 12.6 million foreign-born persons, 10.2 million of whom are not U.S. citizens.

 

The Pew Hispanic Center in 2005 estimated that 59 per cent of illegal aliens have no health insurance, while the RAND Corporation put the rate at 68 percent.  FAIR conservatively estimates the illegal alien population in the U.S. at 13 million, meaning approximately 7.7 to 8.8 million illegal aliens in the U.S. lack health insurance. A study by the Center for Immigration Studies, using census data, calculated in 2007 that immigrants and their U.S.-born children accounted for 71 percent of the increase in the uninsured since 1989.

But even that enormous number significantly under-estimates the impact of illegal immigration is having on America’s healthcare system, because it does not include children born in the U.S. to illegal alien parents, who are eligible for all public medical benefits.

 

The true impact of government subsidy of medical services for households headed by illegal aliens is even more disturbing, because the 47 million total uninsured figure includes two populations of US citizens, low-income Americans who already qualify for existing welfare-funded medical services, but have not used them, and higher-income Americans who can afford, but chose not use private insurance.  These populations have been estimated at 6 and 10 million Americans respectively.

 

This leaves an estimated 31 million inhabitants who cannot access medical insurance, of which 12.6 million --or a staggering 41 per cent-- are foreign born, while between 25 and 28 PER CENT ARE ILLEGAL ALIENS.

 

The logic of these numbers is powerful and inescapable: The true taxpayer cost of subsidizing medical insurance for the uninsured in America cannot be accurately estimated until there is a comprehensive plan put forward by either Congress or the Obama administration.  Determining the true cost of such a plan depends on whether it covers uninsured Americans, or every “body” in America without health insurance.

 

Source:  Federation for American Immigration Reform

Hoyer and Beltway Porkers Seek Millions for "Post-Mortem" Policing to Coddle Illegal Alien Gangsters in Maryland

Once again, Brad Botwin of Help Save Maryland has raised the alarm about immigration law corruption in Maryland. In a July 5 bulletin for HSM activists, Botwin highlights the wasteful hypocrisy in the recent "anti-gang" programs being touted by the Three Beltway Porkers, Representatives Steny Hoyer, Donna Edwards, and Chris Van Hollen.

Brad writes, "These funds are yet another misguided appropriation for counseling and mentoring centers as the solution for the growing tide of gang-related crime and violence."

"Like a deranged firemen who purposely starts a fire and then later declares himself a hero for extinguishing it, Maryland's Democratic House leadership are more the problem than the solution when it comes to gang violence in Maryland."  
 
Botwin points out that instead of focusing on the core problem of illegal immigration, which provides the number recruiting pool for the ultra-degenerate and violent MS-13, 18th Street and other Hispanic gangs in Maryland, Hoyer, Edwards and Van Hollen are working behind the scenses to divert our tax dollars into what are really welfare programs for alien thugs.  

Their PC-cutie grant titles like Latin American Youth Centers, Day Laborer Centers, Family Justice Centers, Latino Mentoring Programs, Multicultural Centers, Primary Care Clinics, Naturalization Services are a sham. To bypass anti-corruption protections in federal contracting law, Hoyer and Van Hollen are filtering federal funds through illegal alien support groups like CASA of Maryland, Catholic Charities and Identity Inc.  These programs make Maryland a magnet for illegal immigration. 
 
Botwin has raised the alarm about Van Hollen's recently published House of Representatives "Fiscal Year 2010 Project Funding Requests", which "reads like the Who's Who of aiding and abetting illegal immigration and their support groups."  

In contrast, the Porker Troika "is nowhere to be found when it comes to funding for enforcing immigration laws, providing training for local police and sheriff departments to screen all arrested for immigration status or even increasing law enforcement manpower and jail space to hold the burgeoning number of criminal illegal aliens."

Instead of "build- ing trust" in so-called immigrant communities, our representatives directly erode the quality of life for the majority of Maryland's citizens. 
 
The HSM leader really put his finger on the core problem when he writes, "Do Hoyer, Edwards and Van Hollen actually believe that the ten male and female members of the 18th Street Gang, all illegal aliens and recently arrested for stabbing to death (72 times) a 15 year-old in Gaithersburg, would have flourished from the counseling and mentoring services offered at these multicultural centers? Or would a strong dose of law and order have done a more effective job at a fraction of the cost?"

Mr. Botwin's last word is right on the money: "Fortunately the 2010 elections are right around the corner." 

Visit www.helpsavemaryland.org  to learn more. 

How Joe Vallario Fought for Maryland's Felons, Not for the Citizens and Crime Victims

Why would a judge turn a killer loose?  In an era when most citizens believe stiff sentences deter crime, Maryland operated a judicial scam in which the sentence handed down when the public is paying attention could be dramatically altered later. 

 

For more than 50 years until 2006, Maryland judges could reduce criminal sentences upon motion by the convict at any time for any reason—or for no reason at all.  There is no law that permits judges to do this.  Their authority derives from a procedural rule developed by judges without public debate.

 

Maryland Rule of Criminal Procedure 4-345, granting judges the power to reconsider sentences in a resentencing hearing, became a routine part of Maryland’s criminal justice system.  Defense attorneys asked Circuit Court judges to reconsider many of the tens of thousands of sentences they handed down each year, even sentences reached through plea bargain agreements.   

 

Every year, hundreds of criminal sentences were reduced, and dozens of felons released from prison on orders of a Maryland judge.  In many cases the reconsideration hearing was held years after the original trial, often without the victim’s knowledge.  Critics said some judges cynically imposed harsh sentences to pacify crime victims clamoring for long prison terms, intending all along to reduce the punishment later.

 

“It’s kind of the dirty little secret of the criminal justice system,” said Robert L. Dean, a former Montgomery County state’s attorney who also served as lead felony prosecutor in Prince George’s County, at the time.

 

For many years, the chief obstacle to closing down this “dirty little secret” was Delegate Joe Vallario, a leading PG County criminal and DUI defense attorney and Head Weasel on the House Judiciary Committee.

 

In 2000, Lt. Gov. (and then-Delegate) Anthony G. Brown introduced a bill that would have limited judicial reconsideration to one year after sentencing, except in extraordinary circumstances. Brown drafted the bill after reading about the early release from prison of Kenneth J. Lodowski, who was originally sentenced to die for the 1983 robbery-murder of an off-duty Prince George’s police officer, Carlton X. Fletcher, and a Greenbelt mini-mart clerk. Lodowski was released in January 2000 after serving 16 years for the two slayings.

 

But Vallario, Maryland judges and the state bar association all opposed Brown’s bill.  In mid-March, Vallario’s committee killed it on an 11 to 9 vote.

It was not until continuing citizen pressure, lead by public interest groups like the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center, forced the Maryland Assembly to change the  rule by statute, effective 2006, were Maryland courts required to provide notice to victims of “subsequent” sentencing proceedings, to act only in open court modify a sentence, and to allow each victim or victim’s representative an opportunity to be heard.

 

Even today, reports emerge of victims shocked to run into the person who robbed, raped beat or hurt them walking free a few years later on the streets of their town.  This is because in an uber-liberal state like Maryland, many members of the bar and government officials retain a self-interested suspicion about the entire concept of victims rights.

26th Anniversary of the Disappearance of Kim Mileo

June marks the 26th anniversary of Maryland’s only unsolved murder case where no body has ever been found.

 

Kimberly “Kim” Christine Mileo, born June 12, 1962, was last seen alive in Croom, Maryland on June 9, 1983. She was the daughter of Michael Mileo, and at the time lived with him and her step mother in Kettering, Maryland.  Kim had previously lived in Croom through Middle School.

 

Kim was white, 4 feet 11 inches tall, 98 pounds and slender build, and had light brown shoulder length hair. She was last seen wearing a white tube top, black shorts, white sandals, and was carrying a white wind breaker jacket.

Kim had spent Wednesday, June 8, 1983 at the home of her girl friend, Kim Easley, also 20 years old. The two girls had known each other since early childhood. The Easley family had obtained tickets to the upcoming Beach Boys Concert on the Fourth of July, and they planned to give them to Kim Mileo as a 21st birthday present at a party planned for the following weekend.

With them that early summer day was Kim Mileo's boyfriend, Dana Hudson, age 24, who lived with his parents only a mile up the road. The three of them spent part of the day sitting around the Easley pool and later all three went for a drive in the rural setting of Croom, all arriving back at the Easley home later that afternoon.

Easley remembered that Kim "had been fighting with Dana a little, but it was nothing serious." At 11:00 PM, Kim left with Dana to go to his parents' horse farm at 16411 Mount Calvert Road, in Croom.

 

Kim's last words to her friend Easley were, "Call me in the morning."

 

But when Easley called the Mileo home the next morning and asked for Kim, she was informed that Kim had not returned from her trip to Croom. Kim's father, Michael called the Hudson home and spoke with Dana Hudson. Dana claimed to have no knowledge of Kim's whereabouts, but did offer that she "seemed suicidal" to him the day before. Kim's parents reported her as missing to Prince George’s County Police later that same day, Thursday June 9, 1983.  Kim was never seen or heard from again.

Members of the Hudson family later stated that Kim was in their house with Dana that evening, and that she left for home at 2:30 AM. Dana's father, Mr. Donald Hudson, said that he was awakened at that time by the sound of her car's broken muffler. A search and investigation was begun.

On Friday June 10, Dana Hudson was questioned by police. Later that day, Dana and a friend left town without telling anyone where they were going. When Dana returned two days later, he claimed to have driven to Ocean City, Maryland to look for Kim.

On Saturday May 11, Kim's car, a gray 1972 Chevrolet Vega, was found abandoned near 16301 Croom Road by Dana Hudson's brother Greg and/or a friend. That address is 9 miles south of the intersection of Croom Road and Mount Calvert Road - in the opposite direction that Kim would have taken to drive home.

When police began to question why the car had gone unnoticed for two days before Greg Hudson found it, another friend of the Hudson family came forth to state that he had seen it at 3:15 AM Thursday in the same place where it was later found by Greg Hudson. The car, when checked by police, was found to be locked. Kim's purse was inside and there were no apparent signs of a struggle or injury. It was in a working condition.

Police conducted a large scale search for the missing young woman in the area where the car was found, but it turned up no trace of Kim.

On Sunday, June 12, 1983, Dana Hudson was given a lie detector test, which he failed. He was then aggressively interrogated, but would not admit any guilt or responsibility in Kim's disappearance.

The Hudson family had initially responded helpfully toward the police, but as soon as Dana Hudson became a chief suspect, they ceased cooperation entirely.  On June 30, 1983, Dana's younger brother, Todd was picked up by police and interrogated for several hours before being released at 4:00 AM on July 1. Since that day, the Hudson family has refused any interviews or assistance in the case. The family hired a lawyer and refused to speak to any police investigators, with the exception of an interview with a local reporter in which they criticized the county police and their investigation.

 

Kim Mileo's disappearance was officially classified as a homicide. But without a body, or other physical evidence, no one was charged and the case remains unsolved. 

 

''No, I don't think she's alive. She just wouldn't do this. It wasn't like her. She would never go anywhere by herself. She wouldn't even go to Ocean City by herself,'' said Louise Mileo, Kim's stepmother to the PG Journal newspaper in 1988. '' We just want to find her. We just want to know where she is.'' But Mileo's disappearance is the only one of its kind in the county; a presumed murder where no body has ever been found.

 

Kim Mileo disappeared about one year after another young woman from Croom, Stephanie Roper, was abducted, raped, tortured, murdered and mutilated. The men who had killed her were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to several life prison terms. But at sentencing, the Prince George’s County judge allowed the prison terms to run concurrently instead of consecutively. This mistake made the killers eligible for parole in as little as twelve years. However, St. Marys County prosecutors then charged the two with similar crimes in that jurisdiction, and this time the life sentences were set to run consecutively, effectively eliminating the possibility of parole.

The victims advocacy group called the Stephanie Roper Committee was founded after Stephanie's death and was in existence when Kim disappeared. Dana Hudson’s parents were reported to have been among the earliest supporters of that organization. 

 

The NCIC file number for Kimberley Christine Mileo is M-102855308.

Steny Hoyer Demands Total Amnesty + Massive Guestwork Program

House Majority “Leader” Steny Hoyer (D-Md) announced at his June 23 press briefing on that he is “united” with El Presidente del Mundo Obama and the Democratic leadership in both the House and Senate behind enacting comprehensive amnesty and a further loosening of restrictions on legal immigration.  Hoyer said that he hopes to move forward with legislation as early as fall 2009.

Hoyer told CNSNews.com that he supports Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) in his quest for a “comprehensive immigration reform package” that includes not only a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens—amnesty, as it is described by the middle class—but also a major expansion in guest worker programs for foreign workers. 

“Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he wants to move a comprehensive immigration reform bill through the Senate that includes a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens and a guest worker program,” CNSNews.com asked Hoyer. “Do you want to move a similar bill--with a pathway to citizenship and guest worker program--through the House?”

At a time of historic unemployment and economic distress, Steny the Porker wants to give your job and your children’s job opportunities to foreigners. And he wants you to pay for their training and social services with your tax dollars.  Do you get it? 

At the same “press opportunity”,  Hoyer  also claimed that Congress “specifically authorized” the Obama administration to bail out the auto industry—thus legally justifying the government takeover of General Motors--even though the hotly debated auto bailout bill that Congress considered in December 2008 was defeated when it could not overcome a filibuster in the Senate.  That kind of arrogance should make the ex-GM car dealers and ruined bondholders in Southern Maryland livid.

 

For Juneteenth: 'Cheap Labor' by Frederick Douglass

“How vast and bottomless is the abyss of meanness, cruelty, and crime sometimes concealed under fair-seeming phrases.... Ostensibly the demand for cheap labor is made in the interest of improvement and general civilization. It tells of increased wealth and of marvelous transformations of the old and the worthless into the new and valuable. It speaks of splendid cities built, and flourishing towns multiplied; of rich mines developed, of amply cultivated fields at home; in a word, it speaks of national prosperity.

 

 

Alas! however, this is but the outside of the cup and the platter--the beautiful marble without, with its dead men's bones within. Cheap Labor, is a phrase that has no cheering music for the masses. Those who demand it, and seek to acquire it, have but little sympathy with common humanity. It is the cry of the few against the many.

 

A moment's thought will show that cheap labor in the mouths of those who seek it, means not cheap labor, but the opposite.

 

 

It means not cheap labor, but dear labor. Not abundant labor, but scarce labor; not more work, but more workmen.

 

It means that condition of things in which the laborers shall be so largely in excess of the work needed to be done, that the capitalist shall be able to command all the laborers he wants, at prices only enough to keep the laborer above the point of starvation.

 

The former slave owners of the South want cheap labor; they want it from Germany and from Ireland; they want it from China and Japan; they want it from anywhere in the world, but from Africa. They want to be independent of their former slaves, and bring their noses to the grindstone. The African slave trade with all its train of horrors, was instituted and carried on to supply the landholding inhabitants of this country with cheap labor; and the same lust for gain, which originated that infernal traffic, discloses itself in the modern cry for cheap labor and the fair-seeming schemes for supplying the demand. So rapidly does one evil succeed another.

 

Last week we took occasion to say a word of the 'Coolie Trade' now prosecuted in the interest of cheap labor, and as kindred in character and results to the African slave trade of other days. Our reading shows the points of resemblance between the two schemes to be more striking than they at that time appeared, and the coolie trade but little behind its predecessor in every species of baseness and cruelty.

 

 

The trade of the slave-trader across the sea was a track of blood. The slaves were literally stowed between decks, without regard to health, comfort, or decency. The great thought of captains, owners, consignees, and others, was to make the most money they could in the shortest possible time.

 

 

Human nature is the same now as then. The rights of a Coolie in California, in Peru, in Jamaica, in Trinidad, are scarcely more guarded than were those of the Negro slaves brought to our shores a century ago. The sufferings of these people are almost as heart-rending as any that attended the African slave trade.”

 

 

Excerpted from Frederick Douglass, Cheap Labor, The National Era, August 17, 1871.

Witch Way Outta Here? Jack Johnson's Sordid African Trade Partner

 

A savage African despot, who considers P.G. County Executive Jack Johnson as “brother,” “friend”, and business partner, was recently condemned by Amnesty International for hiring witch doctors to terrorize the tiny West African nation of Gambia.

 

The UK Guardian and the New York Times have recently reported that up to 1,000 Gambians were kidnapped by witch doctors hired by Gambian President Alhaji Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh and forced to drink hallucinogenic potions concocted from poisonous herbs at secret government detention centers.  Several victims died and hundreds of people fled in terror to neighboring Senegal.Police, army officers and members of Jammeh's presidential guard, known as the "Green Boys", accompanied the witch hunters from village to village in this backward West African nation, previously known best as the colonial-era slave entrepot where Kunta Kinte of Roots was kidnapped and sold to into bondage.

 

Reports indicate the alleged witches, many of them elderly, were abducted for up to five days. Made to drink unknown hallucinogenic substances, they were then forced to confess to witchcraft. Some were also severely beaten. “I experienced and witnessed such abuse and humiliation. I cannot believe that this type of treatment is taking place in Gambia. It is from the dark ages,” one victim told Amnesty International.

 

The witch hunters are reported to have arrived in Gambia from Guinea follow- ing the death of Jammeh's aunt.   Jammeh is said to believe that witch craft was used to kill her.

 

 

Belief in witchcraft is not uncommon in parts of rural Africa, and other heads of state such as Idi Amin of Uganda, Mobutu of Zaire, and “Emperor” Bokassa of the Central African Republic have been accused of employing or fearing the dark arts.  In this hemisphere, Haitian President for Life “Papa Doc” Duvalier gave voodoo, a witchcraft-based religion indigenous to the slave-exporting regions of West Africa, a prominent role in his repressive and ruinous regime.

 

Jammeh's crackdown is consistent with his prior misrule of the tiny West African state since a military coup in 1994.  In 2007, the 43-year-old president announced that he had found separate herbal cures for HIV, asthma and high blood pressure, and personally administered his treatment to patients. The UNDP representative was expelled from Gambia in 2008 after she expressed doubts about the superstitious claims. That year, the Muslim leader also gave an interview to Hezbollah TV in which he endorsed Iran’s nuclear weapons program. After the witch hunt was over, he imprisoned opposition leader Halifa Sallah on spying charges, for visiting villages where witch hunting had occurred.

 

Jammeh’s ties to Prince George’s County came about thanks to the naive prejudices of County Executive Johnson.  Johnson lead a Prince George’s County trade mission to Gambia in February 2005, and Gambian “officials” returned the visit in June 2005 and December 2006. Kwasi Holman, Johnson’s appointee as head of the Prince George’s economic development agency, emphasized that the County’s ties to the Jammeh regime were “a direct result of a trade relationship cultivated through the county executive's outreach to the African continent.”  Jammeh has previously been appointed Honorary Admiral of the Alabama State Navy by the Governor of that state, and awarded the Grand Order of Bravery by Libyan dictator Gadaffi.

 

Johnson then hosted a “State Dinner” for President Jammeh in College Park. “Our people are your people and the waters have not divided us,”Johnson gushed during the VIP reception.  Jammeh responded, “We are your brothers, sisters, and your friend.”  At the celebration, it was reported that both men expressed their love for small towns.  “I'm uncomfortable in the city. I'm a village man,” declared Jammeh. Johnson said, “I go to a little island in South Carolina” to contemplate “the future of the world's wealthiest majority-Black county.”   Uh oh…

The Elevation of Perversion as Presidential Policy

On June 2, President Obama signed a White House proclamation to officially designate June as "Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transvestite Pride Month."  President Bush had refused to dance in that gutter, saying repeatedly that the White House shouldn't "politicize people's sexual orientation." But his successor makes no secret about the elevation of perversion as Presidential policy:

"I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homo-sexuality around the world. Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans. These measures include enhancing hate crimes laws, supporting civil unions, and ending the existing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.”

LGBT-American. That degenerate hyphenism means that in the govern ment's view of civil rights, practicing sodomy is equivalent to being African-American.

The Administration is promoting the infusion of therapeutic child molestation into public school curricula. At Obama's urging, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has nominated Kevin Jennings, the  creepy founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), to be Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools despite his endorsement of the book "Queering Elementary Education" (Jennings wrote the foreword.)

"Queering" focuses on "re-educating parents" who object to teaching children about homosexual families, "affirming 'sissy boys,'" and barring schools from recognizing Mother's Day and Father's Day, presumably as dangerous vestiges of Christian civilization.  According to the Family Research Council, other chapters encourage the use of music to indoctrinate kids (with pro-homosexual songs like "Mama, What's a Dyke?"), and the drive to include gay-friendly literature in grade school, particularly the type that "affirms the comfortable friendships between young boys and adult homosexual men."

Mark my words – in the brave new world of 2010, they will make defending the sanctity of the family a hate crime, and defending the privileges of citizenship will expose you to suspicion as a domestic terrorist.

America: The Tragedy of the Bastards

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 1.4 million babies were born to unmarried women in 2004  --doubling the number from 1980. Four years later in 2008, the number has spiked to 1.7 million babies born to unwed women in their 20s and 30s. To put things in perspective, four of every 10 American babies are now born to single mothers.

Experts cite plenty of reasons for the surge, but the war on marriage and the family is the most serious. As more men retreat from responsibility, women are delaying marriage or foregoing it altogether. That's bad news both for children and for Americans hoping for a return to limited government. As American families wither and collapse, Washington is busy promoting postmodern alternatives. The nomenklatura presently in control of government believe that Washington can do a better job of raising children. Instead of policies that strengthen families, the White House wants programs to expand the government's role in them.

Fiscal conservatives have ignored marriage as a policy issue. They fail to realize that it is a vital economic institution that has enormous implications for the role of the federal government. Every year, state and federal governments transfer over $280 billion in welfare, food stamps, and other anti-poverty programs to subsidize "diverse" (read dysfunctional and broken) families. That means that in one decade, the sabotage of marriage has taken $3 trillion out of taxpayers' pockets.

Pervert marriage in New England will provide a roadmap of misery for Maryland.  The perverts will upend the traditional paradigm of stable biological families voluntarily assuming the great majority of child and social welfare needs, and provoke an unsustainable wave of state subsidies for the onanist indulgences of irresponsible boomer and x-er sybarites.  As the perverts, despite all their frankensteinish technologies, fail to produce a sustainable population of citizens, the demand for tax-subsidized cheap foreign labor will surge. It matters little that many immigrant parents hope to maintain the tribal traditions of the old country, as a public education will ensure that their children learn to despise both traditional American institutions and old world family customs.   Defining deviancy down is the path to national suicide.

Obama: Maximizing Dependency Through Lawlessness

Democratically-controlled California is literally facing bankruptcy. But it is very likely that the five tax-raising ballot initiatives proposed by RINO Gov. Schwarzenegger will all be defeated by a furious electorate.

The state tried to make some very, very modest cuts in welfare services. But George Wills reports in his May 14 column that this has enraged the SEIU, the Mexican-style cheap labor labor union, and its many welfare program govenment workers.  So it is not surprisingly that Obama has warned California that it will lose billions in stimulus funds if the cuts are not rescinded.

The Obama administration is using the TARP program -- the $700 billion "stimulus" program passed in a panic by a spineless Vichyist Congress-- as an executive branch slush fund to fuel its agenda of maximizing dependency of people and institutions on the federal government.  Mr. Will accurately describes the scam as "political favoritism cloaked in the rhetoric of economic planning and social justice that somehow produces results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail."  This is not just susceptible to corruption, it is corruption itself.

As a 1980s-era refugee from LA myself, the similarities between the disastrous tax and spend culture in the Fools Golden State and those in Maryland are frightening.  And Maryland is far more dependent on the federal tit 'n trough than California.

Adapted from "Tincture of Lawlessness: Obama's Overreaching Economic Policies" by George F. Will.

 

Montgomery County: Alien Criminal Gang Haven

Faced with updated crime stats, Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger admits there has been an increase in gang violence from Hispanic gangs like MS-13 and the Latin Kings. A great majority of these gang members are illegal aliens.  See the Center for Immigration Studies report, “Taking Back the Streets.”

Chief Manger reports that incidences of murder, rape, assault, burglary, and robbery increased in Maryland in 2008, much of it attributable to gangs.

The FBI believes that gangs are responsible for up to 80 percent of all U.S. crime. Aaron Escorza, chief of the FBI’s MS-13 National Gang Task Force, says that gangs “know what law enforcement is doing. Word of mouth spreads quickly.” Criminal alien gangs are clearly spreading the word that Maryland is becoming part of the “wild wild East,” like Mexico, and El Salvador.

Maryland’s gang violence should not be surprising. Virginia has been cracking down on illegal alien gangs – and illegal immigration in general – since 9/11. New anti-gang legislation, increased police cooperation with federal immigration authorities, and tightening of drivers license policies, for example, have made Virginia less welcoming for violent criminal aliens.

Maryland on the other hand is one of the most corrupt states in the nation regarding immigration law compliance. Maryland’s sanctuary cities, taxpayer-subsidized day labor centers, support for non-citizen voting, and lax drivers license laws are a magnet for illegal immigration and immigrant gangs. Virginia’s immigrant gangs have naturally begun relocating here.

Maryland’s status as a neo-confederate sanctuary bastion is simply not sustainable. Maryland legislators have a choice – be part of the solution by following Virginia’s lead, or answer to the citizens for the increased crime, corruption, and suffering caused by kowtowing to apologists for violent criminal aliens.

Adapted from Maryland: Gang Haven, by Jon Feere of the Center for Immigration Studies, www.cis.org.

The Sustainability Crisis

    21 months ago, two Bear Stearns hedge funds defaulted and set off events which have led to the gravest economic crisis since the Depression. No one expected the financial meltdown to hit this hard. The failures froze the secondary mortgage market where loans are repackaged into securities and sold to investors. That market is now completely paralyzed.  Its failure has forced financial institutions to curtail their off-balance sheet operations. Like millions of homeowners who have seen their home equity vanish and their retirement savings slashed in half, the banks are now praying they can outlast the deflationary storm ahead.

 

    Deteriorating economic conditions have forced businesses to lay off unneeded employees. The system is bursting with overcapacity and demand is falling faster than any time since the 1930s. Foreign trade has slowed to a crawl, auto sales are down by 40 percent, and unemployment is rising at 650,000 per month. Obama has pushed through a $800 billion stimulus plan, but it won't be nearly enough to stop the race downward.

 

    Treasury Secretary Geithner and Fed Chief Bernanke have committed a staggering $13 trillion trying to keep the financial system functioning, but have only managed to plug a few holes and avoid a system-wide collapse. The problems go beyond toxic assets or complex derivatives. The system is plagued with stagnation, overcapacity and redundancy.

 

    Economic forecasters over-estimated the strength of the real economy and failed to take into account the extent of its dependence upon a buildup of debt that relied on asset price bubbles. In the 2001-2007 U.S. business “boom,” GDP growth was by far the slowest of the postwar epoch. Private sector employment and real wages were flat. The increase in plants and equipment was a postwar low. Median family income did not increase, for the first time since World War II. Economic growth was driven entirely by personal consumption and residential investment, fueled by easy credit and rising house prices.

 

    The economy is now in a downward spiral. Overextended financial institutions are shedding assets at fire sale prices to meet margin calls. Asset deflation is ongoing. Price declines in housing have reached 30 percent and are accelerating downwards. This is the nightmare scenario that Bernanke hoped to avoid.  Before we hit bottom, nearly half of homeowners will be underwater and owe more on their mortgages than the current value of their homes.

 

    The main economic indicators all point to a long period of retrenchment. The slowdown in global trade has hit Europe and most of Asia particularly hard. Export-driven growth has suffered a major setback, and capital is fleeing the country. Financial protectionism has triggered the repatriation of foreign investment, causing a sharp drop in the purchase of US sovereign debt. 

 

    The looming threat: most of the 2009 U.S.fiscal deficit will need to be financed domestically. However,the US does not have the reserves to finance its massive deficits, which will soar to $1.9 trillion by the end of 2009. The Fed will have to increase its purchases of US Treasuries and monetize the debt. Foreign holders of the $5 trillion in dollar-backed assets overseas will be watching as Bernanke revs up the printing presses.   China, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran have already called for a change in the world's reserve currency.

 

    The prospects for a quick recovery are poor because the fundamentals are weak. Corporate profits are down, GDP is negative 6 percent, housing is a shambles, and the banking system broken. The Fed has increased the money supply by 22 percent, but economic activity is at a standstill.  The IMF is suggesting that toxic debts racked up by banks and insurers could spiral to $4 trillion.

 

    Obama Treasury Secretary Geithner has concocted a rescue plan which will provide 94 percent funding from the FDIC for the purchase bad assets. The program is designed to keep asset prices artificially high while transferring the bulk of the losses to the taxpayer.

 

    The causes of the Great Depression are still debated, but it appears that both the Great Depression and the current crisis had their origins in excessive consumer debt -- especially mortgage debt -- that was transmitted into the financial sector during a sharp downturn.  In 2009, manufacturing, industrial production, foreign trade, capital flows, consumer confidence, housing, and even stocks are falling faster than after the crash of 1929. So far, Bernanke's monetary band-aids have prevented the wholesale collapse of the financial system, but that could change.

 

Edited from: Economic Crisis - No End In Sight Worse Than The Great Depression, by Mike Whitney.

Posted on http://www.rense.com/general85/econn.htm

The Way to Grow Poor vs The Way to Grow Rich

Just to keep things in a healthy perspective, this wonderful old print reminds us that, when it comes to delusional greed, there is nothing new under the sun.

PG Democrats Fantasy Economy Spells Ruin for All

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on January 9^th that the national unemployment rate surged to the highest in nearly 16 years in December, as employers cut more than half a million jobs. The unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 percent, the highest since January 1993, from 6.8 percent in November, the BLS reported.

The U.S. economy lost a devastating 1.9 million jobs in the past four months alone, marking the biggest drop in employment in more than a half century.  In all of 2008, 2.6 million people lost their jobs, the largest slump since a 2.75 million drop in 1945, when wartime industries shut down after V-Day—and the biggest crash in my lifetime.

The slump was driven by massive layoffs in all major sectors except government, education and health. The means that although unemployment numbers in Maryland and Prince George's County have nearly doubled since a year ago, (to 5.3 percent in PG County in November 2008), the worst is clearly yet to come. 

The delay in shrinkage in government payrolls means the bloodletting will just be starting in 2009, as property and business tax revenues collapse, busting the pork and patronage-heavy budgets of the People’s Republic of Maryland, and dragging our beloved beltwaystan down with it. Watch out for the state and local statistics for December, which won’t be issued until January 27^th. 

So what’s fearless leader Jack “Brainiac” Johnson doing?  For one thing, he’s making sure that his existing coterie of “consultants” (read: cronies) are producing more b.s. for each tax-dollar misspent. Remember his “Envision Prince George’s” economic forum last fall at UMD College Park?  The Democratic “creative class” were out in full force, all babbling on about how “human creativity” has replaced physical resources as the basis for the American economy. Yep, folks, this is gonna be a change “as big as the Industrial revolution.”  Planning Board sachem Samuel Parker explained that in PG County, economic creativity means an increased focus on “undeveloped land.”  Environmentalists call this “cornucopia”-ism,” the cult-like belief that the laws of physical science and the traditions of American society are irrelevant to prosperity and limitless growth in the 21^st century. “Now is the time. Everything is changing too fast to wait,” Parker burbled.

So, as the tax base collapses, leading to a permanent budget crisis, the Democrat’s solution is to encourage “creative thinkers” to move to PG County by weakening planning standards to build more tract homes and commercail sprawl on "undeveloped land."  The new sprawl will of course require a massive taxpayer investment in new roads, schools, hospitals, etc. Does it matter that we are decades behind on providing infrastructure and basic services for the “less creative” class –those dummies like you and I who are already living here? Naw.

Remember the great Jack Johnson-Jesse Jackson “partnership” to save young black males, announced at Central High School back in 2007?  Naw, we can build these new developments with illegal aliens from Langley Park, who are “hard working” and “do the jobs Americans won’t do” – Americans in this case being – you guessed it—young black American males.

I suppose the most “creative” aspect of the Democratic Cornucopia 2009 program is make those thousands of foreclosed homes in PG County--the ones that were “sold” to illegal aliens and “uncreative” poor African-Americans, by that unholy alliance of affordable housing pimps and greedy financiers--just disappear from the equation.  "I think some of us just overbought into the American dream," said Stan Brown, a Largo real estate lawyer and Johnson crony who serves as “people’s zoning counsel” told the Post in 2007. Pardonnez my French, but that is just b.s. The “creative class” – players like Brown and Parker and Johnson -- have put stupid greed, blind ambition, and multi-culti hubris first for years.

If you don’t think “creative class” Democrats are capable of destroying the modest economic base and quality of life of Prince George’s County, just remember what they did to the public school system over the past half-century.  //Sources – Reuters, PG Sentinel, Washngton Post//

Fred Thompson's Holiday Message on the Economy

I'm proud to say I voted for Fred.   The outlook for our economy and our children is indeed grim.  Fred points out the utter folly of the Bush-Obama bailout "plan" with a Tennessee chuckle:

My bailout plan letter to Cardin, Hoyer and Mikulski

I just wrote Rep. Hoyer, Sen. Mikulski and Sen. Cardin about the "bailout":

 

Dear Representative Hoyer,

 

I am deeply troubled by the proposed financial bailout program because it does not address the real problem -- government mandated granting of subprime mortgages to poor credit risks, many of whom were illegal aliens.  Until that irresponsible, politically motivated and corrupt policy is ended, our mortgage markets cannot be stabilized and our entire financial system (and thus the world financial system) is at risk.

 

The policy of subsidizing mortgages for illegal aliens is based on flawed reasoning.  On the one hand we pretend to want to help the poor achieve "the American Dream" so badly that we are willing to coerce the mortgage banking system into making high risk loans.  On the other we support massive immigration, including illegal immigration, which harshly undermines the income of virtually all Americans, but particularly the poor.  The government encouraged fraud by allowing illegal aliens to obtain mortgages without social security numbers, proof of employment, or proof of legal residence, all of which are required of poor US citizen borrowers.

 

Washington Mutual's Last Press Release.... Before Going Belly Up

WaMu Recognized as Top Diverse Employer- Again Company ranks in top ten of Hispanic Business’ Diversity Elite and earns perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index...

SEATTLE, WA (September 24, 2008) Washington Mutual, Inc. (NYSE:WM), [uh, make that formerly] one of the nation’s leading banks for consumers and small businesses, has once again been recognized as a top employer by Hispanic Business magazine and the Human Rights Campaign.

Hispanic Business magazine recently ranked WaMu sixth in its annual Diversity Elite list, which names the top 60 companies for Hispanics. The company was honored specifically for its efforts to recruit Hispanic employees, reach out to Hispanic consumers and support Hispanic communities and organizations.

The Human Rights Campaign, the largest national gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) civil rights organization, also awarded WaMu its second consecutive 100 percent score in the organization’s 2009 Corporate Equality Index (CEI), which measures progress in attaining equal rights for GLBT employees and consumers. 

These two recent honors build upon diversity recognitions WaMu received earlier in 2008. WaMu was named one of 25 Noteworthy Companies by Diversity Inc magazine and one of the Top 50 Corporations for Supplier Diversity by Hispanic Enterprise magazine.

Excerpted from: http://newsroom.wamu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=189529&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1201788&highlight=

"There's A War On the Middle Class"

I'm posting this rousing (& slightly edgy) music video ....

... in honor of the brave citizens of Help Save Maryland who were out on the streets of Monkey County on Saturday June 21, protesting the neo-slave (aka day labor) centers run by the Chavista hate group Central American Solidarity Association (aka CASA) in Silver Spring and Derwood, with subsidies from venal County Executive Ike Leggett.   

Maryland's own Eddie Becker Band and the Immigration Watchdog have captured the wonderful spirit of patriots like Ted Hayes, out on the streets doing the "jobs Americans have to do" to safeguard the land of the free and home of the brave for all citizens. 

Thank you, HSM!  

Currie Scandal: Citizens Need a Maryland False Claims Act

The ongoing news reports about search warrants and subpoenas to obtain documents from the offices of State Senator Ulysses Currie, a long-time protege of Senator for Life Mike 'Puddinhead' Miller, has highlighted a glaring deficiency in Maryland law:  Maryland is one of a dwindling number of states that has failed to enact a state False Claims Act to protect the citizens against politicians and government contractors who steal from taxpayer funds.

The federal False Claims Act was enacted shortly after the Civil War, reacting to public revulsion at the widespread wartime procurment corruption which lead to the deaths of thousands of Union soldiers.  Today whisteblower cases brought under the FCA recover literally billions of dollars in fraudulent claims every year.

The success of the federal FCA has lead states with clean government lobbies to adopt similar state measures. One of the more recent is the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (Virginia Code 8.01-216.1 et seq.) The VFATA creates a cause of action providing for civil penalties, treble damages, and attorney's fees against 'any person' who submits false claims for payment to the Commonwealth.  In just its first year in force, VFATA whistleblowers recovered $117 million for the Virginia state treasury.

Maryland has a very limited FCA-type statute that only covers false claims against the state medicaid system.  The ongoing scandals in our one-party state underline the need for a law to empower the citizens to protect themselves from the waste, fraud and abuse that is far too prevalent in Maryland state and county government.

The Big Trains Roll Thorugh Croom Station...

I've stumbled across a wonderful website that is entirely devoted to the Popes Creek Line railroad that runs through Croom Station (Milepost 17.4).  I know these blue and gold behemoths pretty well, as about 28 coal trains a week rumble through our crossroads, 14 up and 14 down, half going to the Morgantown Power Plant on the Potomac, half to the Chalk Point Plant on the Patuxent.

The URL is http://www.traingod.railfan.net/.  According to its proprietor, this is a shot of one of the boogies from the big derailment in Croom in January 2005. That was quite a mess.  I'm the grandson of a Clinchfield engineer and district superintendent, so I don't mind the trains rolling by. What does annoy me is the way CSX allows its ROW to be used a dumping ground, especially by its Maintenance of Way contractors.