902: Morally Obtuse

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:55

Refugee Resettlement: The lucrative business of serving immigrants

By James Simpson, Foundation Watch, July 2015 (PDF here)

Summary: Surveys of Americans show mixed views on immigration issues, and yet for the Left all immigration is good, no matter what laws or legislatures say. Major donors on the Left, which normally champion every kind of government regulation, support immigration without limits, and a number of large nonprofits reap not only private funding but millions of tax dollars in the resettlement business. Most Americans have never even heard of the programs that disburse these monies in their name. This report sketches the landscape and tracks the money flows.

Left-wing grant-makers have embarked on a campaign aimed at overwhelming America with unprecedented levels of immigration. These foundations underwrite a universe of liberal organizations that are devoted to bringing in ever more people from all over the world, and the organizations' motives include money. These groups, known as ''Volunteer Agencies'' (VOLAGs), don't just receive private dollars from liberal foundations; they also are richly rewarded with your tax dollars when they collaborate with federal government agencies.

Every year, the U.S. government allows approximately 1 million immigrants to establish legal permanent residence in the U.S. This includes people from countries that represent a national security threat to the U.S. About 140,000 emigrate lawfully from majority-Muslim countries and an even greater number do so from the communist countries that still remain ''including Cuba and China'' more than two decades after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Far more immigrants come to America illegally. Last year, almost 140,000 youths and families were welcomed into the U.S. after illegally entering the country through the Southwest border.

But these numbers aren't high enough to please the foundations that will be profiled in this study.

The Refugee ProgramThere is another category of newcomer that most Americans have overlooked while our country is distracted by the wave of illegal immigration. This group is having a profound impact on the complexion of our society and is rapidly rising to the level of national security threat.

The group to which I refer are refugees from countries with bloody conflicts. Approximately 3.9 million Syrians have fled civil war and are holed up in refugee camps in surrounding countries. To date, only 700 have been resettled in the U.S., but this may change. On May 21, 14 U.S. senators signed a letter urging President Obama to expand the refugee program to allow 65,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S. by the end of 2016. This would require either a dramatic increase in the current 70,000 annual cap on all refugees, or a policy decision that would force persons from other countries to take a back seat to Syrians.

Because of the chaos in Syria, it will be virtually impossible to vet these people, according to the FBI. How many will be members of ISIS or some other terrorist group? Since ISIS members may already be here; there is little doubt more will come.

A plethora of special programs allow persons into America outside the usual immigration process, including ''diversity'' visas, the refugee program, asylum seekers (asylees) and their families (''follow to join''). Refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan have their own special program, Special Immigrant Visas (SIV). The table on this page shows the latest data from these various programs.

Additionally, special programs allow about 20,000 Cubans and Haitians to emigrate to the U.S. annually, with the same benefits received by refugees and asylees. There is even a ''Rainbow Welcome Initiative'' that funds a nonprofit contractor (Heartland Alliance International, LLC) to meet the special needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) refugees and asylees. Government funds 87 percent of the $10 million nonprofit. CEO Sid Mohn makes $330,000 per year in pay and benefits according to Heartland's 2014 tax return. Combined, the top four officers receive about $850,000 per year'--almost all on the taxpayer.

Finally, in 1991, the government created ''Temporary Protected Status'' to grant legal status in the U.S. to Salvadoran illegal aliens and others fleeing war or natural disaster in Central America. Currently, over 300,000 TPS aliens in the U.S. are entitled to all the benefits of other legal permanent residents. While they are supposed to be ''temporary,'' TPS enrollees simply re-enroll when their status expires. Most have been here since the 1990s.

In December 2013, the Obama administration announced an in-country refugee program for Central American Minors (CAMs) that allows persons under 21 years of age from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador direct travel to the U.S. While those countries tragically suffer from high crime and poor economic conditions, merely being a member of an afflicted population does not raise a person to the definition of ''refugee.'' By offering this status, the Obama administration is deliberately expanding the definition, an action that has been called a ''rogue family reunification program.''

Major Foundation SupportersPrimary funding for the VOLAGs comes from the federal and state governments. But many secondary immigrant/refugee advocacy and assistance organizations are supported by wealthy state and national foundations whose assets total tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars. Most of these well-established foundations are the Left's primary source of support outside government. Below is a sampling of noteworthy radical-Left foundations supporting the immigrant/refugee effort.

Bauman Foundation: Grantees include a who's who of the radical Left. Director Patricia Bauman is a trust-fund leftist, also involved in other major radical left operations such as Catalist, which J. Christian Adams has called ''Obama's database for fundamentally transforming America,'' Democracy Alliance, and the Brennan Center for Justice. She also advises J Street, the Soros-created Astroturf pro-Palestinian ''Jewish'' group. (The Bauman Foundation had 2014 net assets of $84 million; for more, see Foundation Watch, December 2014.)

Ford Foundation: Financed creation of the open borders movement and multiculturalism in the 1960s. Funded creation and growth of the radical Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), which spawned the DREAM Act concept, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, which gave us Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor. It is credited with turning the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) from a conservative group that helped Hispanics assimilate into just another radical leftist Hispanic grievance group. Ford's impact on immigration activism cannot be overstated. (2013 net assets, $12.1 billion)

Gill Foundation: Founded by software billionaire Tom Gill, who along with Pat Stryker, another Colorado-based billionaire, provided most of the funding for the ''Colorado Miracle'' which turned the then-solidly Republican state Democrat blue in the 2004 and 2008 elections. Their effort was dubbed The Blueprint by authors Rob Witwer and Adam Schrager (who wrote a book with that name), and in 2005 it provided a template for the secretive left-wing funding cabal known as the Democracy Alliance. Gill supports Welcoming America organizations in Colorado, Tennessee, and Oregon. (2013 net assets, $234.4 million; for more on the Colorado Miracle, see Organization Trends, July 2013.)

Open Society Institute/Foundations: Through his philanthropies, anti-American hedge fund manager George Soros funds hundreds of radical nonprofits and causes. Soros is a major open borders advocate. From 2010 to 2013, Soros's Open Society Institute provided $1.7 million to the National Partnership for New Americans (OSI 2013 net assets, $953.7 million). Soros's Foundation to Promote Open Society had net assets $2.5 billion in 2013. The Soros Fund Charitable Foundation had 2013 net assets of $280 million. The Baltimore Open Society Institute (a.k.a. Alliance for Open Society International) had 2013 net assets of $2.4 million.

Public Welfare Foundation: A well-connected, long-established D.C.-based fund, PWF generously services a who's who of the radical Left, including the Tides Center, ACLU, Van Jones's Color of Change, the Marxist newspaper In These Times, the radical-left Economic Policy Institute, the Blue Green Alliance (which is the renamed Apollo Alliance, a shady group of labor, environment, Democratic Party representatives who wrote Obama's stimulus), the Center for American Progress, and many more. (2013 net assets, $488 million) PWF president Mary McClymont previously served as board chair for the Migration Policy Center, national director for legalization at the Migration and Refugee Services of the U.S. Catholic Conference, president and chief executive officer of InterAction, the largest alliance of U.S.-based international development and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (dedicated to the U.N.'s Sustainable Development agenda), various positions with the Ford Foundation, and trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. She is the co-founder of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees; chaired the board of the Migration Policy Institute; and served on the boards of Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty International, the Advisory Committee of Elma Philanthropies Services, and the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid, U.S. Agency for International Development. Currently, she serves on the board of the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers and the advisory board of New Perimeter, a global pro bono initiative of the law firm DLA Piper.

NEO Philanthropy: Formerly called Public Interest Projects, NEO spent $15.7 million in 2013 to ''promote strongly aligned and effective immigrant rights organizations working to advance immigration policy and reform; immigrant civil engagement and integration; and defense of immigrant rights.'' This includes Alabama Appleseed ($50,000), Arab Community Center ($100,000), Border Action Network ($125,000), Border Network for Human Rights ($390,000), CASA de Maryland ($270,000), Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition ($360,725), Comunidades Unidas ($15,000), Welcoming America ($89,000), TIRRC ($469,000), Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition ($210,000) and many others. Board member Patricia Bauman is the director of the Bauman Foundation. (NEO 2013 net assets, $19.6 million)

New World Foundation: Established in 1954, NWF operates as a national community foundation, bragging that ''our grantmaking programs have become collaborative funds.'' Its goal: ''build a progressive new majority for America'...'' Board member Don Hazenis is the former publisher of Mother Jones and the current editor of AlterNet and the Independent Media Institute, both far-Left media organizations. NWF president Colin Greer joined the secretive Soros machine, Democracy Alliance, in 2014. NWF board chairman Kent Wong is director of the UCLA Labor Center, vice president of the California Federation of Teachers, and a former SEIU attorney. Board member Sofia Campos, when a UCLA undergraduate, taught that school's first ''Undocumented Student Experience'' seminar and organized with the California DREAM Act, the federal DREAM Act, and the Right to Dream campaigns. She serves as board chair of United We Dream, ''the first and largest network of undocumented immigrant youth.'' (2013 NWF assets, $29 million)

Unbound Philanthropy: Claims it is dedicated to ''Welcoming newcomers. Strengthening communities.'' Its mission is to''transform long-standing but solvable barriers to the human rights of migrants and refugees and their integration into host societies.'...'' Grant recipients include the National Immigration Forum, National Immigration Law Center, American Immigration Council, Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, Media Matters, Tides Foundation, the radical-left Southern Poverty Law Center, and Hillary Clinton's favorite think tank: the Center for American Progress. Unbound financed the pro-refugee propaganda film Welcome to Shelbyville. Since 2008, Unbound has provided at least $2.4 million to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and its net assets in 2013 were $141 million.

Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program: Vanguard offers customers donor-advised funds, which allow customers to channel donations to organizations of the donor's choosing, although in practice directors of donor-advised funds often recommend organizations and initiatives to support. Donor-advised funds are also often used by foundations that wish to mask their money flows to controversial grantees. Thus Vanguard has been the conduit for extensive support of immigration ''reform'' groups like Welcoming America. It provided over $22 million to the International Rescue Committee between 2005 and 2013. (2014 net assets $4.5 billion)

Y&H Soda Foundation: Says its mission is to support ''nonprofit and Catholic organizations committed to the full participation and prosperity of the underserved in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties,'' which are located in eastern San Francisco Bay. Y&H Soda has provided $155,000 to welcoming projects in California since 2011; it has also funded numerous other local immigrant organizations, including the International Institute of the Bay Area (IIBA), which has its own ''Immigrant Voices'' program. The most prominent is East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, which claims to be ''the largest affirmative asylum program in the country,'' representing over 500 asylum applicants per year. Through the Tides Center, Y&H has supported the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. AROC provides legal and refugee/asylum application assistance to Bay area Muslims. Y&H donated about $500,000 in 2012 to its various immigration projects. (2013 net assets, $129 million)

Reynolds legacy: The Mary Reynolds-Babcock Foundation and the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation of North Carolina are legacies of the Reynolds Tobacco and Aluminum fortunes, and both fund radical-Left agendas and organizations throughout the U.S. The Babcock Foundation, for example, has provided funds for numerous Welcoming America sponsors. (2013 assets, $182.4 million; Z. Smith Reynolds was profiled in Foundation Watch, June 2013)

Tides Foundation: The notorious Tides is a pass-through fund which launders money for wealthy donors who want to support radical causes without being identified. R.J. Reynolds' granddaughter, Nancy Jane Lehman, co-founded Tides in San Francisco along with New Left organizer Drummond Pike (2013 net assets, $142.3 million). Its sister organization, the Tides Center, was directed for years by ACORN founder and director Wade Rathke (2013 nets assets, $68.2 million). Tides Center lists ''support to resettle displaced Iraqi refugees'' and to combat ''inhumane immigration policy'...'' among its 2013 activities. Related organizations include the Tides Network (2013 revenues, $13.7 million), Tides, Inc. (2013 net assets, $432,000), and Tides Two Rivers Fund.

Arca Foundation: This left-wing donor, based in Washington, D.C., features prominently in the radical Left's immigration agenda. Founded by Nancy Susan Reynolds, who was Nancy Jane Lehman's mother and R.J. Reynolds' youngest daughter, it funds such groups as the Tides Foundation, Center for American Progress, Demos, Media Matters for America, the Soros-created Jewish Astroturf organization J Street'--which poses as a Jewish group but advocates the Palestinian cause'--and the National Iranian American Council, which Robert Spencer calls ''the Mullah's Mouthpiece.'' (2013 net assets, $55.7 million; profiled in Foundation Watch, October 2011)

Refugee ContractorsThe federal government pays nine primary national contractors to resettle refugees and asylees. These voluntary agencies or VOLAGs are listed below with their initialisms:

CWS: Church World Service

ECDC: Ethiopian Community Development Council

HIAS: Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society

IRC: International Rescue Committee

LIRS: Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services

CC/USCCB: Catholic Charities/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

USCRI: U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants

EMM: Episcopal Migration Ministries

WRI: World Relief Inc.

There are 350 federal subcontractors in 190 cities, all affiliated with the nine main refugee VOLAGs, but cataloging them is beyond the scope of this paper.

Amounts awarded by the federal government to these 9 contractors since 2008 are shown in the table on page 5. These data are likely incomplete, because the contractors are often listed under more than one name or the name has been entered incorrectly.

Because they are non-governmental organizations (NGOs), they can and do lobby for advantageous changes to immigration law and build allies in Congress and the bureaucracy, all fertilized by an open spigot of taxpayer dollars. While six of the nine contractors are affiliated with religious groups, the false notion that they are charitable organizations just doing the Lord's work needs to be corrected. They are federal contractors, relying on the government for most, and sometimes all, of their income. This is big business. They do the government's bidding, whether it honors religious principles or not.

Furthermore, the denominations represented all promote left-wing policies. Many reflect the ''Social Gospel'' i.e. the effort to marry socialist ideas with Christian doctrine begun by ''Progressives'' at the turn of the last century. Many are directly or indirectly connected to communists and communist ideas like so-called ''liberation theology,'' which was a KGB creation according to former Romanian intelligence chief Ion Pacepa in his book Disinformation.

VOLAG Profiles

Church World Service: CWS is a subsidiary of the National Council of Churches, which was formed in 1950 from the Federal Council of Churches, which was often accused of being a communist front group. The Federal Council was one of the early promoters of social gospel. That tradition was carried forward by the National Council of Churches, where socialist ideology found a natural home.

NCC president Jim Winkler is a typical radical leftist. He called for impeachment of President Bush in 2006. He co-chaired the board of Healthcare Now! with Steelworkers' president Leo Gerard, who advocated violence against tea partiers, and the socialist Quentin Young. Young was Obama's personal physician for 20 years and his mentor on single-payer healthcare.

In addition to revenue streams from government, Church World Service has received funding from Soros, Ford, Tides, the Vanguard Fund, and many others.

Catholic Charities/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: These nominally Catholic organizations are the largest VOLAGs, with hundreds of offices spread throughout the country. They are prominent members of the open borders/amnesty movement. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) is ''the domestic anti-poverty program of the U.S. Catholic Bishops'' and a grant-making vehicle of the USCCB. It was founded in Chicago in 1969 with the help of radical organizer Saul Alinsky, specifically to fund Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. CCHD has been a radical leftist funding vehicle ever since, giving millions to ACORN, the radical training school Midwest Academy, and others. The Industrial Areas Foundation, where a young Barack Obama was trained in ''community organizing'' with financial support from the Chicago Archdiocese, receives the largest percentage of CCHD grants of any CCHD grantee.

President Obama had this to say about CCHD:

I got my start as a community organizer working with mostly Catholic parishes on the Southside of Chicago that were struggling because the steel plants had closed. The Campaign for Human Development helped fund the project and so, very early on, my career was intertwined with the belief in social justice that is so strong in the Church.

USCCB founded the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., a $7 million subsidiary which assists illegal aliens based on ''the Gospel value of welcoming the stranger.'' It aggressively promotes amnesty, believing that ''all goods of the earth belong to all people. When persons cannot find employment in their country of origin to support themselves and their families, they have a right to find work elsewhere in order to survive. Sovereign nations should provide ways to accommodate this right.'' USCCB has 270 field offices in 47 states. Board members include Donald D. Taylor, president of the extreme-left union UNITE HERE!

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society: HIAS describes itself as a ''major implementing partner of the United Nations Refugee Agency and the U.S. Department of State.'' HIAS claims to be the oldest refugee resettlement agency in the world. It provides pro bono legal services for asylum applications and removal hearings. Services include ''Filings with USCIS, Representation at Asylum Interviews (Credible Fear Interviews, Reasonable Fear Interviews), Representation before the Immigration Court, Representation before the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), and Federal court appeals.'' HIAS lists its values as ''Welcoming, Dignity and Respect, Empowerment, Excellence and Innovation, Collaboration and Teamwork, and Accountability.''

HIAS President Mark Hetfield is credited with transforming HIAS from a small agency focused on Jewish immigrants to ''a global agency assisting refugees of all faiths and ethnicities.'' Donors include Vanguard and Tides Foundation.

International Rescue Committee: IRC is run by British Labour Party politician, David Miliband. His brother, ''Red Ed'' Miliband, Labour's pick for prime minister, lost in the United Kingdom's most recent election. Miliband's father was a hardcore Marxist. While Miliband distanced himself from his father's extremist views, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. As environment minister in Tony Blair's Labour government, David Miliband turned global warming into a primary policy agenda, seeking to make all private homes ''carbon neutral'' and requiring nanny-state compliance inspections. He warned British citizens that having ''energy inefficient homes'' would become ''painful'' for them.

Miliband advocates raising the refugee cap above 70,000 and resettling 65,000 Syrians in the U.S., despite the impossible task of vetting them all for possible terrorist ties. Miliband earns a cool $500,000 for his ''rescue'' work.

IRC and Miliband have friends in George Soros, the Clintons, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. Among its other support, IRC has received $1.2 million from George Soros's philanthropies and $2 million from the Ford Foundation over the past decade.

World Relief Inc.: Initially founded in 1947 as War Relief of the National Association of Evangelicals to address humanitarian needs of post-war Europe, it was renamed World Relief in 1950. WRI is the largest evangelical refugee resettlement agency in America. It serves in ''education, health, child development, agriculture, food security, anti-trafficking, immigrant services, micro-enterprise, disaster response and refugee resettlement.'' In fiscal 2014, WRI dedicated about 62 percent of program revenues ($32 million) to resettling and providing extended services to 13,508 refugees and legal assistance to 11,000 immigrants. In keeping with Obama's ''Welcoming'' agenda, WRI has submitted its contribution in the form of a free PDF, ''Welcoming the Stranger.'' (It is available at http://welcomingthestranger.com.)

World Relief obtains 70 percent of its funding through government contracts. Private foundation supporters include the Vanguard Charitable Foundation, Mustard Seed Foundation, Soros Fund Charitable Foundation, Pfizer Foundation, Global Impact and many others.

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service: LIRS has been involved in refugee resettlement for decades. Its most recent publicly available IRS filing lists 17 Lutheran and many unrelated facilities nationwide receiving refugee resettlement grants from LIRS. Both HIAS and Catholic Charities are listed as grant recipients, so apparently these organizations cross-pollinate. In addition to refugee resettlement, LIRS has been actively involved in processing what the immigration industry calls UACs (unaccompanied alien children).

LIRS CEO Linda Hartke served as chief-of-staff to former U.S. Rep. Chester Atkins (D-Mass.) in the 1990s. She later took positions with Church World Service and on National Council of Church's board of directors. Her most recent post was director of the Geneva-based Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance. Hartke wants LIRS to help create ''communities of welcome'' for illegal immigrants and refugees. She earns $228,000 in pay and benefits, according to IRS filings.

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants: USCRI formed as the International Institute in 1911, a brainchild of the YWCA, and became a VOLAG in 1977. Today, USCRI has 29 partner offices in 23 states dedicated to the needs of refugees and immigrants. It receives about 90 percent of revenue from government contracts. USCRI takes credit for inspiring the Obama administration's new Central American Minors program.

President and chief executive officer Lavinia Lim"n typifies the revolving door among VOLAG leaders. Lim"n served as the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement during the Clinton administration. She then moved to the National Immigration Forum. Lim"n earns about $300,000 per year as CEO, according to USCRI tax filings.

Episcopal Migration Ministries: Officially known as the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church USA, EMM invokes the ''welcoming'' mantra by listing its first order of business as welcoming services. ''Episcopal Migration Ministries' affiliate partners provide refugees with the information and services they require to thrive in their new communities within just months after arriving.''

EMM does not provide nonprofit tax returns so the proportion of its budged received from government is not known, but since 2008, EMM has received $105.2 million from the federal government for its refugee/immigrant work.

Ethiopian Community Development Council: The smallest of the VOLAGs, ECDC received $16.3 million from government contracts in 2014, 93 percent of its total revenues. In addition, ECDC has received donations from the Open Society Institute, Komen Foundation, the United Way, Tides Foundation, even Citi Foundation (CitiBank), and others.

ECDC testified before Congress last year that the Unaccompanied Alien Children crisis could ''lead to the demise of the refugee resettlement program as we know it.'' This was primarily a funding concern, given that virtually all of ECDC's revenue comes from government contracts.

ECDC provides a wide variety of services to refugees, and is involved in other contractual services as well, for example Small Business Administration microloans for new minority businesses.

ConclusionAll these groups like to discuss issues of immigration in terms of pure altruism, generosity, and welcoming the stranger. For some reason, they rarely if ever mention the possibility that politicians may have self-interested motives for supporting high levels of immigration with little oversight. Much less do the groups mention that they themselves have found that by generously welcoming strangers to our land, they can receive bountiful subsidies of tax dollars that underwrite hefty salaries for persons who claim to act only from the most selfless motives.

James Simpson is an economist, businessman, and freelance writer. His writings have been published in Accuracy in Media, American Thinker, Big Government, Washington Times, WorldNetDaily, FrontPage Magazine, and elsewhere. This article was based on a short book by Simpson, The Red Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration and the Agenda to Erase America, published last month by Center for Security Policy Press.

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John Marks Templeton Jr. (1940 '' 2015)

''Dr. Jack Templeton spent his life building a legacy of freedom,'' observes Alejandro Chafuen, who serves as president at Atlas Network and also served as a member of the foundation Dr. Templeton led for two decades until his death this year from cancer.

What makes Dr. Templeton's achievement especially rare and admirable is the way he worked so hard to maintain the intent of the foundation's founder, his father. As Chafuen notes, at most foundations throughout American history, ''the second and especially third generations start to drift away from donor intent.'' And yet at the Templeton Foundation, many third-generation family members are ''contributing to the cause of freedom. The most prominent are his daughters, Jennifer and Heather. His wife Pi±a (for Josephine) also deserves the credit,'' because as Jennifer Templeton Simpson observes, her parents' ''whole life has been working together as a team.'' Pi±a ''changed the course of my life,'' Dr. Templeton said.

Their teamwork began when they worked together in medicine, he a children's surgeon and she a pediatric anesthesiologist. They spent years at the prestigious Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and became known for handling some of the most difficult cases, especially the separation of conjoined twins.

Templeton's passion for medicine began during a summer internship at a Presbyterian medical mission in Cameroon in 1960, and his faith would remain central throughout his life. He saw faith and virtue as critical supports for the free society that had allowed his father to rise and that the family's giving was meant to strengthen.

He pulled back from his successful medical career in 1987 to run the foundation, and during his tenure saw its assets rise from $28 million to $3.34 billion, with total giving now about to hit the $1 billion mark. He believed in both generous giving and also prudent stewardship, which explains why he wrote a book with the paradoxical title, Thrift and Generosity: The Joy of Giving. His friend Colin Hanna explained the source of the joy in his heart: ''It was filled with love'--love for God, love for his family, and love for his country.''

In his 2008 memoir, Dr. Templeton stressed another virtue important to him and his family's foundation: humility. He explained that with humility, ''you're much more likely to see ideas that others put forward but you have not thought of.'' His fellow Pennsylvania donor Tom Riley, writing an appreciation for the Philanthropy Roundtable, adds that Dr. Templeton believed ''any fellow person, from a cab driver to a member of the Royal Society, could be a source of knowledge or insight. Hence the pen and paper he always carried.'' He respected large and small charities, as well, not assuming that only big charities should receive the attention of large philanthropies and wealthy donors. His support for the Capital Research Center dates back to 1990.

The Wall Street Journal, in its own tribute to his legacy, observed, ''Too many scions of wealth squander it or betray the principles required to create it. Jack Templeton used his good fortune to spread those moral and economic principles for the benefit of all.''

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:14

UNHCR's Division of Emergency, Security and Supply (DESS) comprises the Procurement Service (PS), and the Supply Management and Logistics Service (SMLS). These are responsible for global supply chain management, operational support, planning and reporting on the use of resources. This includes the procurement of goods and services to support field operations and headquarter provision of logistical support to field operations, warehouse, stockpile, and fleet and asset management. The department oversees all supply aspects of the enterprise resource planning system and supports roll-out to the field. It also provides functional (supply chain management) training and support.

For more information, you can contact us at UNHCR Global Service Centre, N(C)pf¼rdő utca 22. Budapest, Hungary, 1138, Tel: +36 1 451 51 88, Fax: +36 1 450 52 97, E-mail: hqps@unhcr.org@unhcr.org. Mailing address: Ipoly Utca 5\b, c, d, 1133 Budapest, Hungary. Mailing address: Ipoly Utca 5\b, c, d, 1133 Budapest, Hungary.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:19

We are now witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record.

An unprecedented 65.3 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 21.3 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18.

There are also 10 million stateless people who have been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement.

In a world where nearly 34,000 people are forcibly displaced every day as a result of conflict or persecution, our work at UNHCR is more important than ever before.

How we gather our dataFull-time statisticians in UNHCR's Field Information and Coordination Section track the number of people forced to flee so that when a major displacement crisis erupts, we are able to predict how many people need help, how much help they need and how many staff we must deploy.

These figures are released every year in our Global Trends and Global Appeal reports.

Staff figuresOur staff are the backbone of UNHCR. As of 31 October 2016, we employ 10,700, of whom around 87 per cent are based in the field.

We work in 128 countries, with staff based in a mixture of regional and branch offices and sub and field offices. Our staff work hard to help the displaced, specializing in a wide range of disciplines, including legal protection, administration, community services, public affairs and health.

Financial figuresWe are funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions, with 86 per cent from governments and the European Union. Six per cent comes from other inter-governmental organizations and pooled funding mechanisms, while a further six per cent is from the private sector, including foundations, corporations and the public. Additionally, we receive a limited subsidy (two per cent) from the UN budget for administrative costs, and accept in-kind contributions, including items such as tents, medicines and trucks.

UNHCR was launched on a shoestring annual budget of US$ 300,000 in 1950. But as our work and size have grown, so too have the costs. Our annual budget rose to more than US$ 1 billion in the early 1990s and reached a new annual high of US$ 5.3 billion in 2013.

Our yearly budget includes programmes that support continuing operations and supplementary programmes to cover emergencies, such as the Syria crisis or large-scale repatriation operations.

For up-to-date information about how UNHCR is financed, visit our Global Focus website.

Statistics and operational dataOur accurate, relevant and timely data and statistics are crucial to refugee operations. This key resource is used by all partners to respond to the needs of refugee populations.

UNHCR's Statistics Database provides data, reports and other information essential for field operations. It also carries statistical reports on people of concern '' refugees, asylum seekers, returned refugees, the internally displaced and stateless people. Detailed information on country of asylum, place of origin, gender, age, location and legal status of refugees is available. Indicators on the quality of refugee protection and UNHCR operations are increasingly being collected.

For more information, please see our Statistical Yearbooks, mid-year trends and asylum trends.

More figures and data sources

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:22

Well, what do you know, some international criticism building because the US has not opened its arms (yet!) to mass numbers of Syrian refugees.

But, as I have pointed out on many occasions, Obama's name is never linked with the criticism as Bush's was always linked in media blasts every month for probably a year before the Bush Administration opened the spigot for Iraqi refugees (that are now coming in at a rate of over 20,000 a year!).

We have also been pointing out that the refugee resettlement contractors*** have been demanding 12,000-15,000 Syrians a year be admitted. They were getting geared up'--finding new towns in which to resettle them'--and then a few weeks ago the boom dropped when the FBI testified in the House Homeland Security Committee that there is no way they can properly screen the Syrians. Of course, there is no way to properly screen the over 800 Somalis entering the US every month now either!

Anne Richard Asst. Secretary of State with UNHCR Antonio Guterres: partners in deciding what third-worlders are coming to your town!

This is interesting news, despite the lifting of the ban on material support, the Obama Administration has yet to apply the lesser screening requirements to Syrians.

By the way, if you saw the record-breaking post on Spartanburg, SC you know that one group World Relief would like to settle in South Carolina is Syrians.

We have resettled around 500 Syrians so far. Approximately 87% are Muslims. See where they have been placed in the US in the first three months of FY2015, here.

There is one way to get around this worry over screening Muslims, don't bring Muslims! We could join Canada and say only Christians and other minorities are permitted entry into the US!

By continuing to select Syrians for America, the UN is putting political pressure on our Homeland Security Department to step it up. There will be much wailing that we couldn't possibly be so mean as to leave all these people waiting in line!

From The Guardian (emphasis below is mine):

The US is preparing to permanently resettle thousands of the millions of Syrians forced to flee their homes during the country's four-year civil war. But as the lengthy resettlement process speeds up, some human rights advocates are concerned that certain refugees are being unfairly excluded. [Once the pipeline is open, and even if the civil war comes to an end, the flow of permanent refugees from Syria will continue for years.'--ed]

So far, the US has accepted only tiny numbers of Syrians: 105 in the year to October 2014 and just 36 in the year before that, although it has stepped up admissions with 350 refugees in the past four months.

Last year officials eased the ''material support'' rule under US immigration law that was designed to prevent terrorist sympathisers from entering the US but instead acted as a dragnet, ensnaring Syrians with no real connection to terrorism. More than a year later, however, advocates say they still have not seen the exemptions applied to Syrian refugee cases.

''What this means is that a lot of people who need protections and who might fall under those 'material support' inclusions '' by no fault of their own '' aren't getting protection in the US,'' said Noah Gottschalk, senior humanitarian policy adviser for Oxfam America. ''And that means that a number of people who are among the most vulnerable in the world are being denied protections that they very much need.''

Representatives from a handful of refugee aid groups said they were still waiting for the the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to release guidelines on how to apply the rule change. Until then, they said, Syrian refugees applying for residence in the US were at risk of being denied entry for an act as small as selling sandwiches to rebel fighters. [This is a straw man argument, what refugee in his right mind is going to report on an application for admission to the US that he/she gave sandwiches to rebels?'--ed]

''Our main concern at this stage is the absence of that guidance,'' said Anna Greene, the policy and advocacy director for US programmes at the International Rescue Committee (IRC). [The IRC is a contractor looking for more paying ''clients'' to resettle.'--ed]

For those who don't believe it, here it is again. The UN is picking our refugees!The US State Department has received more than 11,000 resettlement applications from Syrian refugees in recent months, the vast majority of which are referrals from the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR).

Quick! US taxpayers, hide your wallets!Don't worry, terrorist men won't get in because we are only planning to bring economically needy women, children, senior citizens and sick and disabled people!Richard (Anne Richard, Asst. Secretary of State for PRM) said the US intended to accept thousands of Syrian refugees in 2015 and 2016. She said she did not anticipate security being an issue with the Syrians the UNHCR was referring to the US, as the majority were widows, women and children, elderly people and people with debilitating medical conditions.

Read it all.

*** The federal refugee contractors have been lobbying for up to 15,000 Syrians a year for the US.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:21

UNHCR prepares a Biennial Programme Budget, broken down into annual budgets based on globally assessed needs. The original programme budget is presented to UNHCR's main governing body, the Executive Committee (ExCom), prior to the start of the biennium. Needs are re-assessed during the biennium and a revised budget is presented to ExCom for approval in October of each year. The current budget may be adjusted for unforeseen needs that arise in the course of the year by means of supplementary budgets. The final budget from the previous year is presented to ExCom's Standing Committee at its June/July meeting each year.

The trends presented below highlight the increase in needs, as well as in contributions from donors, to UNHCR's programmes worldwide. Over the past few years, UNHCR has been hugely challenged to respond to the needs of record numbers of people forced to flee by a growing number of conflicts. By the third quarter of 2015, 33 UN appeals were only 42 per cent funded, and UNHCR's voluntary contributions stood at just 40 per cent of its current budget for 2015, including supplementary requirements. Never before has UNHCR had to manage its programmed operations with such a high funding gap between approved budgetary requirements and funds received.

The financial information displayed on this website is subject to frequent updates and may vary from the information published in governance documents presented to the Executive Committee and its Standing Committee at their formal meetings throughout the year.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:25

Posted by Ann Corcoran on March 29, 2014

We just mentioned earlier today that the public relations push was on to bring a large number of Syrians to the US so that federal contractors like the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) could be paid to locate them in your city or town. Never mind that there are few jobs for them, and even if the Syrian civil war ends, they will never go back to Syria.

Now here comes Melanie Nezer, VP for policy and advocacy at HIAS writing at the New York Daily News'--America open your arms!

The United States should commit to resettling at least half of the refugees identified by the UN Refugee Agency as needing resettlement '' or at least 15,000 each year over the next five years. This should be in addition to the 70,000 refugees the U.S. has committed to resettle who are survivors of conflicts elsewhere in the world. Other countries have already pledged*** to resettle thousands of Syrians and should be urged to take more.

We watched this very same campaign with Iraq and now we are approaching (or have already topped) 100,000 Iraqis resettled in the US.

It will be a media drumbeat from now on until they get their way. And, please take note there is no mention of persecuted Christians.

***Just for your information, here are the ''pledges'' received by the UN back in early February. Most countries will only take a few hundred, except for Germany which apparently has a death wish.

Addendum: I just had an afterthought! There is a lot of fresh territory for refugees in Wyoming!

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This entry was posted on March 29, 2014 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Changing the way we live, Community destabilization, Muslim refugees, Refugee Resettlement Program, Taxpayer goodies. Tagged: Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Syrian refugees. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:33

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President Bill Clinton appointed Lavinia Limon as director of ORR in 1993, a position she held until the end of his administration. After a brief interlude at the Center for New American Communities, a project of the left-leaning National Immigration Forum, Limon was named executive director of USCRI in August 2001, a position she still holds.

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In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Eskinder Negash, an Eritrean refugee on Limon's USCRI staff, as director of ORR. When Negash resigned abruptly in December 2014, he went back to USCRI, where he now serves as Vice President of Global Development.

Revenues at USCRI, his once and future employer, increased significantly while Negash served as director of the ORR. In FY 2006, USCRI revenues were $19 million. By 2015, they had grown to $50 million, more than 90 percent of which came from ''government grants.''

ORR's budget grew from $492 million in FY 2006 to $1.5 billion in 2014.

During his tenure at ORR, Negash's performance was spotty at best, particularly with regards to his failure to provide Congress with the statutorily required annual reports in a timely manner. As Ann Corcoran wrote at Refugee Resettlement Watch back in 2012, three years after Negash's arrival:

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), is in complete disarray as regards its legally mandated requirement to report to Congress every year on how refugees are doing and where the millions of tax dollars are going that run the program. The last (and most recent) annual report to be sent to Congress is the 2008 report'--so they are out of compliance for fiscal years 2009, 2010 and 2011. . . (The lack of reports for recent years signals either bureaucratic incompetence and disregard for the law, or, causes one to wonder if there is something ORR is hiding.)

To replace Negash as director of ORR, Obama selected another VOLAG executive, Bob Carey, Vice President of Resettlement and Migration Policy at the International Rescue Committee and ''chair of Refugee Council USA, a coalition of NGOs working on issues affecting refugees, asylum seekers, displaced persons, victims of trafficking and victims of torture,'' the Resettlement Industry's Lobbying Group.

The twenty members of Refugee Council USA include all of the top VOLAGs whose main source of revenue comes from ORR grants, including Church World Service/Immigration and Refugee Program, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Ethiopian Community Development Council, HIAS, International Catholic Migration Commission, International Rescue Committee, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops/Migration & Refugee Services, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, and World Relief.

Now the same lobbying group that Carey once chaired, Refugees Council USA, recently announced it wants to more than double the number of refugees allowed in to the United States in 2017'--to 200,000, from approximately 70,000 in FY 2015 and an Obama administration ''targeted level'' of 85,000 in FY 2016, with much of the increase driven by the hasty push to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees this year.

The budget impact of such an increase would be enormous, possibly doubling ORR expenditures from $1.5 billion in FY 2014 to $3 billion or more in FY 2017.

The International Rescue Committee, whose CEO is the former United Kingdom Foreign Secretary David Miliband, had worldwide revenues in 2015 of $691 million, a $138 million increase from its $563 million revenues in 2014.

Most of that revenue (82 percent in 2015'--or $572 million) came from ''grants and contracts,'' most from governments and related agencies around the world, including the federal government of the United States.

In contrast to the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations, George W. Bush's two appointed directors of ORR, Nguyen Van Nah and Martha E. Newton, did not participate in the revolving door back to lucrative employment at the VOLAGs they oversaw after they left ORR.

Van Nah, director from 2001 to 2006, became a professor of economics at Sacramento State University in California when he left ORR.

Newton, who succeeded Van Nah, went from ORR to become a consultant at her own firm, Health Strategies LLC.

Democratic appointees Limon, Negash, and Carey have worked tirelessly to expand both the budget of ORR and the party's far-left, pro-refugee agenda.

It was during Limon's tenure that the ''Wilson Fish alternative program'' was used as justification, without the corresponding statutory authority, to hire VOLAGS to operate resettlement programs in states that withdrew from the federal program. The enabling legislation made no mention of such a provision, but Limon and her colleagues pushed it through the HHS regulatory process without much public fanfare.

Currently, several USCRI operations''in Twin Falls, Idaho and Lowell, Massachusetts, for instance''are funded by ORR through this statutorily questionable Wilson Fish alternative program mechanism.

It was also during Limon's tenure at ORR that the mix of nations of origin for refugees shifted dramatically.

In 1992, the year before Limon was named ORR director, the Near East Asia countries of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, and the African countries of Angola, Burundi, Congo, Ethiopia,Liberia, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda '--many of them majority Muslim'--accounted for only nine percent of all resettled refugees.

But by 2001, Limon's last year at the helm of ORR, these African and and Near East Asia countries accounted for 46 percent of all resettled refugees.

Operationally, USCRI has had its share of problems under Limon's leadership.

In 2008, before Negash was named ORR director, USCRI's Waterbury, Connecticut field office had its resettlement contract there canceled:

The State Department has canceled its contract with the agency responsible for resettling 64 Burmese refugees to Waterbury. In response, Connecticut's congressional delegation has sent a letter of protest to the state department, asking it to give the International Institute of Connecticut more time to settle its problems.

This follows months of reports of poor housing, fractious relationships with volunteers, missed immunizations for students and insufficient assistance with daily tasks. The State Department brought the refugees here to escape the tyranny in their native Myanmar.

''I've heard of agencies being under investigation and there being a threat of canceling a contract, but this is the first time I've known about a particular case being canceled,'' said Stephanie J. Nawyn, a sociologist at Michigan State University who studies resettlement. ''I do think this is unusual.''

In Lowell, Massachusetts last month, a 13-year-old girl was allegedly sexually harassed by a recently arrived Syrian refugee:

A 22-year-old Syrian refugee is behind bars after only two months in the United States after he was accused Thursday night of inappropriately touching a 13-year-old girl at a state-run swimming pool in Lowell.

In Twin Falls, Idaho, USCRI's local subcontractor, the College of Southern Idaho, is dealing with a national controversy involving three refugees and the sexual assault of a five-year-old girl.

Chobani Yogurt, the company that owns and operates the largest yogurt manufacturing facility in the world in Twin Falls, thanks in part to $54 million in federal and state grants, relies heavily on refugees brought in by USCRI and the College of Southern Idaho as employees. In 2015, CNN reported that 600 of the company's 2,000 employees are refugees.

Even the far-left Michelle Goldberg, reporting at Slate, concedes, ''There had been an incident involving three boys, ages 7, 10, and 14, and a mentally disabled 5-year-old girl [in Twin Falls].''

[Twin Falls county prosecutor Grant] Loebs described it to me as a ''very serious felony.'' On June 2, an 89-year-old neighbor discovered the children in the laundry room at the Fawnbrook Apartments, a low-income housing complex. The youngest boy is from Iraq while the older ones, brothers, are from an Eritrean family that passed through Sudanese refugee camps. (Most news reports have identified the older boys as Sudanese.) Only the youngest boy, Loebs said, is alleged to have touched the girl, though investigators suspect the 10-year-old might have as well; the elder boys reportedly made a video.

Because everyone involved in the case is a minor, the records were sealed. Nevertheless, on the evening of June 20, Twin Falls Police Chief Craig Kingsbury appeared at the weekly City Council meeting to update the anxious public as best he could. He announced that police had arrested the two older boys the previous Friday and that they were being held in juvenile detention. (Loebs later told me that the 7-year-old was also charged with a felony but wasn't taken into custody because of his age.)

Despite these operational problems, Limon's hold on the reins of USCRI appears to be secure.

Her job security, as well as her status within the politically powerful refugee resettlement industry, is undoubtedly enhanced by her ties with the Clinton and Obama administrations, which run long and deep.

In 2015, Limon attended an event sponsored by the Clinton Global Initiative, where she served on the same panel as Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder and CEO of Chobani Yogurt.

Limon appears to have done well from her life time career advancing refugee rights.

A 1972 graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, with a degree in sociology, Limon served as director of the International Institute of Los Angeles prior to being picked by Bill Clinton to head up the ORR in 1993.

In 2012, the last year for which such data is readily available, Limon received over $289,000 in compensation for her job as executive director of USCRI.

Peter Limon, who appears to be Limon's brother, is also employed by USCRI as director of Business Development.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:28

Readers, in honor of World Refugee Day, today June 20th, 2013, I am happy to report we have a new fact sheet!Since we first posted a fact sheet in 2007 and updated it again in 2010 we have had 31,236 visitors access this post.

Please help spread the word on the new 2013 Fact Sheet a collaborative effort between RRW and others!

1. Since 1975, the U.S. has resettled over 3 million refugees, with annual admissions figures ranging from a high of 207,000 in 1980 to a low of 27,110 in 2002 (in the aftermath of 911) .

The average number of refugees admitted annually since 1980 is about 98,000. Additionally, in recent years, another 40,000 or more per year come in as asylum seekers and Cuban/Haitian entrants '' all with the same rights and entitlements as refugees.

All these flows detonate their own chain migration flows in addition to the refugee influx. These follow-on flows have easily multiplied the original admission numbers by a factor of 4 or more.

The quota for 2013 is 70,000 and it looks like it will be met this year. There is strong political pressure to get refugee numbers back to over 100,000.

2. The U.S. takes more than twice as many refugees as all countries from the rest of the industrialized world combined.

3. One of the operative assumptions of those in the refugee industry is that, since the U.S. is behind most of the chaos in the world '' Syria, here we come!, it is morally obligated to take the lead in resettling the world's refugees. Yet, for 2012 the leading countries, in order of numbers of refugees sent to the U.S., were Bhutan, Burma, Iraq, Somalia, Cuba, Dem. Rep. Congo, Iran, Eritrea, Sudan. All America's fault? In very recent memory the MSM was celebrating Bhutan and suggesting the U.S. had something to learn from the Bhutanese concept of a ''Product of National Happiness''.

Ironically, the U.S. refugee program diverts resources from assistance on the ground to those very countries in the developing world which carry the main burden of refugee crises.

4. In recent years up to 95% of the refugees coming to the U.S. were referred by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or were the relatives of UN-picked refugees.ã Until the late 90's the U.S. picked the large majority of refugees for resettlement in the U.S.

Considering that the refugee influx causes increases in all legal and illegal immigration as family and social networks are established in the U.S., the U.N. is effectively dictating much of U.S. immigration policy.

5. NIMBYists gone wild: As a Senator, Sam Brownback harshly rejected the resettlement of Somali Bantu in his own state even though he was a major advocate among evangelicals for increased refugee immigration to the U.S..

The state of Delaware has resettled less than 10 refugees annually in recent years even though then Sen. Joe Biden was a sponsor of the 1980 Refugee Act '' the bill which defines the refugee program we have today.

Upon entry, a network of private, ''nonprofit'' agencies (so-called ''voluntary agencies'') selects the communities where refugees will live. The agencies are either headquartered in Washington DC or have lobbying offices there.

Washington DC took less than 200 refugees between 2007 and 2012.

6. According to a July 2012 GAO report (Refugee Resettlement:

Greater Consultation with Community Stakeholders Could Strengthen Program: ''most public entities such as public schools and health departments generally said that voluntary agencies notified them of the number of refugees expected to arrive in the coming year, but did not consult them regarding the number of refugees they could serve''.

7. This same GAO report quotes a state official who notes ''that local affiliate funding is based on the number of refugees they serve, so affiliates (private contractors) have an incentive to maintain or increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing the number to decrease.''

8. Refugee resettlement is a self-perpetuating global enterprise. Staff and management of the hundreds of taxpayer supported U.S. contractors are largely refugees or immigrants whose purpose is to gain entry for more refugees, usually for their co-ethnics.

9. According to David Robinson, a former acting director of the State Department's refugee bureau, writing about the refugee contractors: ''the federal government provides about ninety percent of its collective budget'' and its lobbying umbrella ''wields enormous influence over the Administration's refugee admissions policy. It lobbies the Hill effectively to increase the number of refugees admitted for permanent resettlement each year '....If there is a conflict of interest, it is never mentioned'.... The solution its members offer to every refugee crisis is simplistic and the same: increase the number of admissions to the United States without regard to budgets'...'' How Public Opinion Shaped Refugee Policy in Kosovo, 2000, David M. Robinson, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA432218

We hesitate to quibble with an authoritative source on the percentage of federal money floating the refugee industry, but from an accountant's perspective that percentage is actually over 100 % given the amount of money the industry is able to pocket without any proof that it was spent on refugees.

10. According to Ken Tota, Deputy Director at HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, Congress has never in his 25-year tenure questioned the refugee quota proposed by the administration. By law, Congress is supposed to consent to the annual quota but obviously refuses to take this role seriously.

11. Refugee ''self-sufficiency'' is an important measure of success and a basis for assigning refugees to agencies in future contracts. The definition of ''self-sufficiency'' has been steadily defined downward and today is virtually meaningless. A refugee can be considered ''self-sufficient'' while using all of the programs listed in item 16 below with the exception of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

12. Assimilation is no longer a goal for any agency involved in refugee resettlement '' government or private contractor. The private contractors' engagement with the refugee is so short '' less than 4 months in most cases, that nothing approaching assimilation could even be considered. The term ''assimilation'' is no longer a part of government lexicon and does not even occur in dozens of recent reports and papers generated about refugee resettlement. The operative term in vogue now is ''integration'' with its clear intent of maintenance of ethnic identity.

13. A refugee or an asylum seeker must show a ''well-founded'' fear of persecution on account of a political view or membership in a racial, ethnic, religious or social group. The definition of a refugee has been widely stretched by all 3 branches of the government '' the Judiciary, the Congress and the Administration.

In fact, Congress can name whatever group it wants to be a refugee or asylum seeker. For instance Congress passed a law declaring China's one-child policy to be an example of persecution based upon a political view. Not surprising: China now heads up the list of successful asylum seekers.

People may seek asylum in the U.S. based upon domestic abuse, FGM and even lack of services for the disabled.

The government does not publicize rates of admission by category so it is not possible to tell, for instance, if the vague and easy to fake 'social group' category is more commonly used than the vague and easy to fake 'political group' category.

Because of the privacy rights accorded the new arrivals, we have no idea which category was used by Tamerlane Tsarnaev's parents to gain admission to the world's most generous immigration program.

14. The Obama administration has placed a priority on LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees. This has resulted in an upsurge of asylum requests on this basis '' even from countries like England! Since the State Department does not keep data about numbers admitted by reason for admission, we can't obtain exact numbers of those admitted on the basis of LBGTQI persecution, but one private refugee agency has set up an office in Nairobi, Kenya to assist intending LBGTQI refugees. This office also advises about how to get into the refugee pipeline. In other words, a private contractor is recruiting refugees who will eventually become the contractor's profit-generating clients. At the 2012 conference of refugee contractors sponsored by the DHHS Office of Refugee resettlement a refugee contractor demanded that Medicaid pay for sex change operations if needed by newly arrived refugees.

15. The program has gradually shifted towards the resettlement of refugees from Muslim countries. Some individuals from Muslim countries are Christians or other minorities, but most are Muslims. In the early 90's the percentage of Muslim refugees was near 0; by 2000 the program was 44% Muslim. The Muslim component decreased after 911, but today is back up to about 40% and is set to rise from here.

Membership in a U.S.-registered Islamic terrorist group is not a bar to entry on the program as long as the refugee was not a ''direct participant'' in ''terrorist'' activity.

16. Refugees, successful asylum seekers, trafficking victim visa holders, ''Cuban-Haitian Entrants'' (which are mostly Cuban), S.I.V's (for Iraqis and Afghanis) and other smaller humanitarian admission groups are eligible for ALL federal, state and local welfare programs 30 days after arrival.

Refugee access to welfare on the same basis as a U.S. citizen has made the program a global magnet.

The federal programs available to them include:

' Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) formerly known as AFDC' Medicaid' Food Stamps' Public Housing' Supplemental Security Income (SSI)' Social Security Disability Insurance' Administration on Developmental Disabilities (ADD) (direct services only)' Child Care and Development Fund' Independent Living Program' Job Opportunities for Low Income Individuals (JOLI)' Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)' Postsecondary Education Loans and Grants' Refugee Assistance Programs' Title IV Foster Care and Adoption Assistance Payments (if parents are 'Πqualified immigrants '' refugees, asylees, etc)' Title XX Social Services Block Grant Funds

17. Welfare use is staggering among refugees. Welfare usage is never counted by officials as part of the cost of the program. Yet, when it is included, the total cost of the refugee program soars to at least 10-20 billion a year.

As some Americans are pushed off of time-limited welfare programs many refugees are going on to life-time cash assistance programs. For instance, 12.7% of refugees are on SSI '' a lifetime entitlement to a monthly check / Medicaid for elderly or disabled. This rate of usage is at least 4 times higher than the rate of usage for SSI among the native-born population and is reportedly rising from these already very high levels.

Permanent and intergenerational welfare dependence has been allowed to take hold to a significant degree in some refugee groups.

Find latest welfare usage among refugees here (latest data available is from 2009): https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/orr/fy_2009_annual_report_to_congress.pdf

Find table TABLE II-14: Public Assistance Utilization Among refugees who arrived during the 5 years previous to the survey 57.7% are on government medical assistance such as Medicaid, about 25% have no health insurance at all, 70.2% are receiving food stamps, 31.6% are in public housing (an additional percentage is on a public housing waiting list), and 38.3 % are getting cash assistance such as TANF or SSI.

The figure of 57.7% dependent upon government medical assistance is actually an undercount since it excludes children under 16.

18. Medium size towns, such as Bowling Green, KY, Nashville, TN, Ft. Wayne, IN, Boise, ID and Manchester, NH, are serving as the main reception centers for the refugee program.

19. Refugees are not tested for many diseases, such as HIV. Refugees are a major contributing factor to TB rates among the foreign-born. TB among the foreign-born now accounts for about half of the TB in America.

20. The money the U.S. spends bringing one refugee to the U.S. could have helped 500 individuals overseas in countries where they currently reside.

21. It has never been reported in the U.S. that 47% of loans made to refugees for transportation to the U.S. are unpaid leaving an unpaid balance of $450 million. This amount '' slightly out of date, does not include interest or an unknown amount that has been written off. We will announce the new balance as soon as it is available.

22. Refugee resettlement is profitable to the organizations involved in it. They receive money from the federal government for each refugee they bring over. They have almost no real responsibilities for these refugees. After 4 months the ''sponsoring'' organization is not even required to know where the refugee lives.

There are 9 main major refugee resettlement organizations (Volags from ''Voluntary Agency'') with approximately 450 affiliated organizations throughout the country; many are run by former refugees. Below are the 9 Volags that operate today:

US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB),Lutheran Immigrant Aid Society (LIRS),International Rescue Committee (IRC),World Relief Corporation,Immigrant and Refugee Services of America (IRSA),Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS),Church World Service (CWS),Domestic and Foreign Missionary Service of the Episcopal Church of the USA,Ethiopian Community Development Center (ECDC),

Below are some of the sources of income for Volags:

a. $1,850 per refugee (including children) from the State Department.

b. Up to $2,200 for each refugee by participating in a U.S. DHHS program known as Matching Grant. To get the $2,200, the Volag need only show it spent $200 and gave away $800 worth of donated clothes, furniture or cars.

c. The Volag pockets 25% of every transportation loan it collects from refugees it ''sponsors''.

d. All Volag expenses and overhead in the Washington, DC HQ are paid by the U.S. government.

e. For their refugee programs, Volags collect money from all federal grant programs '' ''Marriage Initiative'', ''Faith-based'', ''Ownership Society'', etc., as well as from various state and local grants.

The program is so lucrative that in some towns the Catholic Church has lessened support for traditional charity works to put more effort into resettlement. It uses collection offerings to promote the refugee resettlement program.

23. Despite their rhetoric, refugee agencies have steadfastly refused to use their own resources to maintain the U.S. refugee resettlement program. Public money has thoroughly driven out private money.

A program known as the Private Sector Initiative allowed sponsoring agencies to bring over refugees if the agencies were willing to cover costs of resettlement and support. It was discontinued for lack of use in the mid-1990s. Today the agencies are on record as opposed to diverting more federal refugee dollars to overseas refugee assistance (where each dollar will go further in helping refugees) because it might mean fewer dollars for them!

As with other government-dependent industries there is a revolving door between the refugee industry and the federal government which pays its bills.

24. To give an idea of the staying power of the refugee program:

When we began taking Southeast Asian refugees in the late 70's, the refugee agencies hired temporary workers, thinking the program would only go for a few months. More than 37 years after the last American left Vietnam we are still taking refugees from South East Asia. At least 1.5 million have come in as refugees alone. As well, it has detonated chain migration of non-refugee immigrants.

25. The program is rife with fraud and corruption at all levels. UN personnel often sell access to the program and once here refugees make false claims of family relationship in order to facilitate wider immigration. Government grant fraud is common among local refugee service providers.

26. The refugee program has a significant impact on U.S. foreign policy. It also affects internal and foreign policies of other nations by allowing them to rid themselves of unwanted minorities or close their borders to asylum seekers in the knowledge that the U.S. will take them in.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:35

GENE DEFELICECHAIRMr. DeFelice is an experienced General Counsel with a wealth of experience in a range of areas including technology, business management, compliance, and corporate governance. He currently is the Senior Vice President & General Counsel of Rackspace, a public leader in managed cloud technology services. He has served as the General Counsel and executive leader for a number of technology and healthcare companies. Gene has also held leadership positions in sales and marketing, as well as general management roles. He has a broad range of expertise, including in operations and business. Mr. DeFelice graduated from Rutgers University, received his doctorate of Law degree from Seton Hall University and a master's of Business Administration with distinction from Webster University in Geneva, Switzerland. He previously served as a member of the Board of the International Institute of St. Louis and a member of the Board's Executive Committee.

KATHARINE CROSTVICE CHAIRKatharine I. Crost is a partner in the New York office of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. Ms. Crost has extensive experience with the securitization of a variety of assets, including mortgages, tax liens, tobacco litigation settlement funds, and utility stranded costs. Recently, Ms. Crost has been involved in advising clients on a number of innovative transactions that address issues arising from the financial crisis and housing and financial regulatory reform. Ms. Crost has served on Orrick's Executive Committee, as Chair of their Women's Initiative and as Practice Group Leader. She is a member in good standing of the New York bar and a volunteer at USCRI's Albany field office.

LAWRENCE M. ROSENTHALTREASURERMr. Rosenthal is a real estate developer and venture capitalist. He is a member of a number of corporate boards and is also Chair of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of GTL, Inc. His business activities have required him to spend substantial time in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Mr. Rosenthal resides in New Marlborough, Massachusetts.

SCOTT WUSECRETARYMr. Wu has nearly 20 years of private equity and investment banking experience. He is a co-founder of Blue Horizon Equity, a middle market investment firm based in San Francisco. Prior to Blue Horizon, Mr. Wu was on the investment team of a fund focused on private equity investments in public securities, and an advisor to a family office on cleantech strategy. Prior to this, he was a co-founder of Financial Technology Ventures, a private equity firm with over $1 billion of capital to invest. In addition, Mr. Wu has worked at Montgomery Securities, Morgan Stanley & Co., and A.T. Kearney, Inc. Mr. Wu has been actively involved for over a decade as a Director of several local and national non-profit organizations. He has been the President of Aim High for the past eight years, an educational organization focused on inner-city, disadvantaged children. He was a co-founder of a Gates Foundation-funded middle school, and formerly was Director of the International Institute of San Francisco. Mr. Wu received a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from Harvard University. Mr. Wu resides in San Francisco, California.

KENNETH BLACKMANMr. Blackman is a corporate partner resident in the New York office of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver, & Jacobson, LLP. He joined the firm in 1966 and became a partner in 1973. Mr. Blackman has a wide-ranging practice that includes representing domestic and international clients in a variety of corporate transactions. His areas of expertise include the representation of Canadian companies in connection with cross-border financing, as well as merger and acquisition transactions and other matters involving the application of U.S. securities laws to foreign issuers.

Mr. Blackman received his LLB, cum laude, from Columbia University Law School where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and his M.B.A. from Columbia Business School. He received his AB, magna cum laude, from Brown University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Mr. Blackman resides and is barred in New York.

DIANN DAWSON, JD, MSWDiann Dawson is President and CEO of DDA & Associates. She enjoyed a distinguished public service career with more than 38 years in federal and state governments. She continues her service in the private sector as a national and global advocate for children and family strengthening initiatives.

Prior to her retirement, she served as the Director of the Office of Regional Operations within the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As principal advisor to the Assistant Secretary regarding field operations, she provided executive leadership and directions to ACF's ten regional offices on the integration and coordination of more than 65 human services programs to promote the well-being of children, families and communities.

She serves as a director on several non-profit boards and was re-elected as President of the Potomac Valley Section of the National Council of Negro Women for 2016-2018. Ms. Dawson holds a BA from Bennett College, MSW from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and JD from the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law and is admitted to the DC and MD bars. She resides in Silver Spring, MD.

EARL S. JOHNSONEarl Johnson was appointed by the White House to serve as the Director of the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) with the Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families (HHS/OFA). In this position Earl oversaw an annual budget of $17.8 billion. In this role, he was the principle policy and administrative manager for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. He was the one of the leaders within the Administration and ACF on promoting responsible fatherhood and economic security issues related to men and boys of color.

Earl has a longstanding relationship with California, the Bay Area and in Philanthropy. Before accepting his current position, he was the Senior Policy Advisor and Interim Workforce Investment Board Director for the City of Oakland and Mayor Ron Dellums. Prior to that he was the Senior Program Officer for the California Endowment and the Associate Director for the Rockefeller Foundation's Working Communities Division. He also served as the Associate Secretary for Planning and Evaluation for the California Health and Human Services Agency under the Davis Administration.

Earl has a Ph.D. from UCLA's School of Social Work and Public Policy. He holds an MA from the University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy and a BA in Political Science from the American University in Washington, D.C. Earl also recently completed Harvard University's Executive Management Program on Negotiation.

JOHN MONAHANMr. Monahan has joined Georgetown University as advisor to President John J.DeGioia. Until April he was the U.S. Department of State's special adviser for global health partnerships. He works closely with organizations in the global health sphere and, in particular, coordinates engagement with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

LILY O'BOYLEMrs. O'Boyle is President of Acacia Book Company, a boutique publishing company in Connecticut. Originally from the Philippines, where she distinguished herself as an actress, she is the author of numerous books on the Philippines including the most recent Tropical Gardens of the Philippines. She is a SEATO scholar and a recipient of the John D. Rockefeller 111 Fund grant for Drama. Mrs. O'Boyle has served on the boards of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York and the US Committee for UNICEF. She presently serves on the boards of the Children's Orchestra Society of New York, The Center for Art and Thought, and the UNESCO Philippine International Theater Institute. She is a graduate of St. Paul College of Manila and received her Master's in Drama from New York University. She currently resides in Connecticut.

WILLIAM SHUEYWilliam (Bill) Shuey served for 24 years as Executive Director of the International Institute of Rhode Island (IIRI)'--a USCRI partner agency. Before retiring in December 2012, he orchestrated a merger of IIRI with Dorcas Place Adult Literacy Center, now known as Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island. Mr. Shuey has served on numerous boards and task forces at the local, state, and national levels and is the founder of the International Charter School, a dual language immersion K-5 elementary school in Pawtucket, RI. He has 30 years of experience working with immigrants and refugees. Over the years he has made several site visits to refugee camps in Thailand, Eritrea, Hong Kong, and Ethiopia and has also traveled to/lived in several countries in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa.

Mr. Shuey was Executive Director of Project Persona and oversaw its transition to the International Institute in 1984. In 2000, he became an inaugural fellow of the Rhode Island Foundation Non-Profit Fellowship program. He received an MA in Teaching from the Harvard Graduate School of Education; an AB in Literature from Claremont McKenna College; and completed graduate work in English literature at New York University. He taught English as a Second Language both while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey and back in Providence, RI. Mr. Shuey speaks, reads, and writes Spanish and is comfortable reading and speaking French and German, as well as some Turkish. Mr. Shuey currently resides in Providence, RI and West Yarmouth, MA with his wife.

SAM UDANISince 1999, Mr. Udani has served as publisher at ILW.COM, a website with over 25,000 pages of information on immigration law that receives 150,000 unique visitors per month. Mr. Udani pioneered the regular use of telephone seminars in immigration law and serves as Master of Ceremonies for three such seminars each month. He regularly speaks and writes on labor certification matters for immigration lawyers. Mr. Udani previously co-founded Adnet Advertising Agency in New York, NY. He currently resides in New York.

JAMES HATHAWAYEMERITUS, COUNSEL ON INTERNATIONAL PROTECTIONJames C. Hathaway, the James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law and Director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at the University of Michigan since 1998, is a leading authority on international refugee law whose work is regularly cited by the most senior courts of the common law world. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Refugee Law at the University of Amsterdam, Professorial Fellow of the University of Melbourne, Senior Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University's Refugee Studies Programme, and President of the Cuenca Colloquium on International Refugee Law.

From 2008 until 2010 Hathaway was on leave from the University of Michigan to serve as the Dean of Law and William Hearn Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, where he established Australia's first all-graduate legal education program. He previously held positions as Professor of Law and Associate Dean of the Osgoode Hall Law School, Canada (1984-1998), Counsel on Special Legal Assistance for the Disadvantaged to the Government of Canada (1983-1984), and Professeur adjoint de droit at the Universit(C) de Moncton, Canada (1980-1983). He has been appointed a visiting professor at the American University in Cairo, and at the Universities of California, Macerata, Tokyo, and Toronto.

Hathaway's publications include more than seventy journal articles, a leading treatise on the refugee definition (The Law of Refugee Status, 1991, republished in both Japanese and Russian), an interdisciplinary study of models for refugee law reform (Reconceiving International Refugee Law, 1997) and, most recently, The Rights of Refugees under International Law (2005) '' the first comprehensive analysis of the human rights of refugees set by the UN Refugee Convention. He is Founding Patron and Honorary Director of Asylum Access, a non-profit organization committed to delivering innovative legal aid to refugees in the global South. Hathaway also sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Refugee Studies and the Immigration and Nationality Law Reports and directs the Refugee Caselaw Site (www.refugeecaselaw.org), a website that collects, indexes, and publishes leading judgments on refugee law. Professor Hathaway regularly advises and provides training on refugee law to academic, non-governmental, and official audiences around the world.

JEFF FAHEYGLOBAL AMBASSADORJeff Fahey joins USCRI as Global Ambassador. An accomplished actor, most recently known for his role on the hit television series LOST, Mr. Fahey is a dedicated advocate for refugee rights. He became passionate about protecting the world's most vulnerable people when he witnessed the plight of the Sahrawi languishing in refugee camps in Algeria for more than thirty years.

Mr. Fahey grew up in Olean and Buffalo, New York. After graduating from high school, he spent several years traveling in Alaska, Europe, Israel, India, and Afghanistan. At the age of twenty-five, he won a full scholarship to dance with the Joffrey Ballet School in New York City. His acting r(C)sum(C) includes a long list of films and television shows, including One Life to Live, Silverado, Miami Vice, The Marshal, and LOST.

Mr. Fahey recently returned to Afghanistan to help establish the American University of Afghanistan, support women's rights, and launch a project to assist orphaned kids in Kabul. In September, Mr. Fahey and a group of celebrity friends, including Ken Leung and Elizabeth Avellan, traveled to the Western Sahara with USCRI representatives to visit Sahrawi people who have recently escaped the Tindouf refugee camp and are in the process of restarting their lives. As Global Ambassador, Mr. Fahey will join forces with USCRI to help protect the rights of millions of people around the world who have endured war and genocide and now find themselves trapped in limbo as they await durable solutions.

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We advance the rights and lives of those who have been forcibly or voluntarily uprooted. For over 100 years, the unwavering commitment of our leadership, team, network of service providers, and advocates has helped redirect the destiny of countless vulnerable lives.

OUR VISIONImmigrants, refugees, and uprooted people will live dignified lives withtheir rights respected and protected in communities of opportunity.

OUR MISSIONTo protect the rights and address the needs of persons in forced orvoluntary migration worldwide and support their transition to a dignified life.

LeadershipLAVINIA LIM'NPRESIDENT AND CEOLavinia has more than 30 years of experience working on behalf of refugees and immigrants. Prior to joining USCRI in August of 2001, Ms. Lim"n was Director of the Center for the New American Community, a project of the National Immigration Forum. During the Clinton Administration, Ms. Lim"n served as the Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Department of Health and Human Services, designing and implementing programs to assist newly arriving refugees in achieving economic and social self-sufficiency. She served simultaneously as the Director of the Office of Family Assistance for four years, helping to devise policies and strategies for implementing national welfare reform.

ESKINDER NEGASHSENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR GLOBAL ENGAGEMENTEskinder is a recognized Senior Executive leader and brings over 35 years of proven not-for-profit management experience working on behalf of refugees and immigrants and managing non-profit social service agencies. He served as Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), the largest government funded refugee resettlement organization in the world, from 2009 '' 2015. With a budget of over 1.5 billion, the ORR plays a critical role in providing essential services to a wide range of vulnerable people through the Resettlement Program, Rescue & Restore anti-trafficking campaign, and the Unaccompanied Children's Program. Under his leadership, ORR has served more than 850,000 people in six years. Prior to his appointment by the Obama Administration, he served as the vice president and chief operating officer of USCRI.

LEE WILLIAMSVICE PRESIDENT & CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICERLee Williams has direct management responsibilities for USCRI's domestic Refugee, anti-Trafficking and Unaccompanied Children programs, Field Office operations, Business Development, MIS and Finance/Accounting teams. Prior to joining USCRI, he was the Executive Director of the International Institute of Akron, a USCRI partner agency serving the refugee and immigrant communities of northeast Ohio. Mr. Williams' early career was in financial services in the U.S. and Europe. Mr. Williams holds a Graduate Certificate of Non-Profit Management from Case Western Reserve University, a Master's degree in International Management from The Thunderbird School of Global Management, and a Bs.L. in Arabic from Georgetown University.

ALISON SEILERDIRECTOR OF ADMINISTRATIONAlison implements the personnel policies as well as the overall administration of the agency and serves as assistant to the President. A naturalized American of British birth, she has served as an administrative professional worldwide, beginning her career with the British Foreign Office and working for the United Nations and International Finance Corporation. She speaks French and German fluently.

DirectorsSABA BERHANEDIRECTOR OF PROGRAMSSaba oversees USCRI's national programs that provide support and new beginnings across the United States to refugees, asylees, Iraqi and Afghan Special Immigrants, victims of severe forms of trafficking, and unaccompanied immigrant children. Prior to joining USCRI, Ms. Berhane served as the Senior Program Associate with Ethiopian Community Development Council in Virginia, coordinating an annual national conference on African refugees; public education and outreach on refugee issues; and providing grants management and technical assistance to community-based organizations and resettlement sites. She has fifteen years of experience working on behalf of refugees and immigrants.

MICHAEL WILESDIRECTOR OF FINANCE AND COMPLIANCEMichael is responsible for the Finance and IOM departments. He has more than 15 years of experience working as a government contractor, as well as in the corporate and not-for-profit sectors. He is a graduate of North Carolina Central University and a licensed CPA and CGMA.

PETER LIM'NDIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTPeter is responsible for the creation and operation of Unite Languages, USCRI's national Interpretation Program. This program links USCRI's Partner Agencies via an online reservation system and adds a dynamic audio/visual component to the face-to-face and audio only services currently provided. Mr. Lim"n's eclectic business background includes experience in several domestic industries including investment banking, financial services, telecommunications, and customer service. He has managed multiple telecommunications business projects in Africa, South America, and Asia. In that capacity, Mr. Limon frequently met with government ministers and influential business people in developing countries. Mr. Lim"n also owned and operated two businesses including a financial services company offering investment banking, retirement planning, insurance services and a successful restaurant in San Clemente, California.

WONY PAKDIRECTOR OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMSWony plans, coordinates, directs, and designs all operational activities of the MIS department, as well as provides high availability and security solutions that enhance mission-critical business operations and continuity. He has over 22 years of information technology experience in both the private and nonprofit sectors. Prior to joining USCRI, Mr. Pak worked as a Network Engineer and System Integrator at various companies including Technology Automation Management Inc., Comstor Inc., and RHI. He completed Local Area Network study at Computer Learning Center and has achieved various IT training and certifications including CNE, MCSE, and CCSA. Mr. Pak holds B.A. in Music Composition at the University of New Orleans.

STACIE BLAKEDIRECTOR OF GOVERNMENT AND COMMUNITY RELATIONSStacie rejoined USCRI in 2014 after having previously led the USCRI Vermont field office from 2002-2005. A passion for justice guides her career in this sector with leadership positions at the state and national level in Vermont, Florida, and now DC. Prior to rejoining USCRI, she led a Florida program to end discrimination and the Florida Center for Survivors of Torture where she developed and launched the National Partnership for Community Training, a research based collaborative to share best practices for communities with torture survivors. Ms. Blake holds two degrees from the University of Vermont and was elected twice as a member of the Mount Mansfield Union School District. She is a graduate of the Vermont Leadership Institute and Leadership Florida.

ESSEY WORKIEDIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNINGAs the Director of Planning and Development, Essey manages USCRI's strategic partnerships and fundraising activities. A compassionate, analytical and creative leader in the human services sector, Essey brings over 17 years of professional experience to USCRI, including executive leadership, international programming, and nonprofit fundraising. Essey is a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the recipient of numerous awards, including Social Worker of the Year (Southeast Pennsylvania divisions of the National Association of Social Workers) and the Assistant Secretary's Excellence Award (from the Administration for Children and Families). Essey has Level Two certification for the Strength Deployment Inventory and is a graduate of the Brookings Executive Education for Executive Leadership for America.

SERBAN POPESCUDIRECTOR OF FIELD OFFICESSerban has management and operational oversight of USCRI's field offices. He joined USCRI in October 2007 and has supported the organization in a variety of roles, including providing program management, monitoring and evaluation, training and technical assistance, and financial analysis and forecast of program operations. Serban holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and an M.A. in Nationalism Studies, both from Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. He enjoys dabbling in political analysis, coding, video editing, color grading, and VFX.

AMILA MERDZANOVICDIRECTOR, COLCHESTER, VT OFFICEAmila came to Vermont in 1995 as a refugee from Bosnia and Herzegovina and is the first former refugee leading the USCRI Vermont field office. She brings over 10 years of experience working in refugee resettlement providing direct services, program management, and advocacy on behalf of refugees and asylees in Vermont. Most recently, she graduated from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University with a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy. She holds an undergraduate degree in International Relations from Mount Holyoke College. Her interests span across disciplines including forced migration, human rights, and conflict resolution. Amila is fluent in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and has basic knowledge of Russian.

SCOTT PHILLIPSDIRECTOR, RALEIGH, NC OFFICEScott is a native North Carolinian who joined the USCRI North Carolina Field Office as Director in November 2015. Before taking on this role, Dr. Phillips has worked in the fields of Community Development, Civil Rights, and Advocacy for about 15 years. His experiences include serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine, carrying out research on marginalized groups in Jordan, Israel and the UK, and promoting greater civic engagement at Duke University. He brings a wide ranging set of skills and experiences to the office of Director. Dr. Phillips, received his Ph.D. in Ethnic Relations from the University of Warwick (Coventry UK), a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Duke University, a Master's in Political Science and a B.A. in Anthropology, both from Appalachian State University.

JILL PECKENPAUGHDIRECTOR, ALBANY, NY OFFICEJill is the Director of USCRI's field office in Albany, NY, which resettles refugees arriving from Burma, Iraq, Bhutan, Afghanistan, and various African nations. She is has over twenty years of experience in organizational development, specializing in multicultural populations in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. Prior to joining USCRI Albany, Jill was the Director of Program Management at Cross-Cultural Solutions, an international volunteering organization. She holds an M.S. in Training and Development from Lesley University and a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

DYLANNA JACKSONDIRECTOR, ERIE, PA OFFICEAn expert in the field of refugee resettlement, Dylanna has spent more than 17 years working to help refugees and immigrants throughout the Midwest. Prior to joining the International Institute of Erie in April 2012, Dylanna served as the Director of Community Assistance and Refugee Resettlement for the Northern Area Multi-Service Center (NAMS) and as Director of Refugee Resettlement and Educational Programs at the International Institute of Akron (IIA). Experienced in a variety of direct service and administrative functions, including grant-writing, curriculum design, teaching, program evaluation, fiscal management, volunteer management, and program development, Dylanna combines her commitment to refugees and immigrants with her superpower of simplifying complexity to create strong client-centered programming that works. Dylanna earned her B.A. in English from Kent State University, where she also received certification in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), as well as her Master of Science in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution from Creighton University.

TAWFIK ALAZEMDIRECTOR, DEARBORN, MI OFFICEIn July 2007, Tawfik joined USCRI as the Director of USCRI's Detroit, Michigan field office in Dearborn. Since that time, Mr. Alazem has been responsible for the operational and personnel management of the field office. Mr. Alazem administers the Reception and Placement, Matching Grant, Healthy Marriage & Relationship Education, and Preventive Health programs. He also oversees office operations and programs delivery to immigrants and refugees who settle in the greater Detroit, Michigan area. Before joining USCRI, Mr. Alazem held several management positions in finance, marketing, sales, and general business management. Mr. Alazem holds a Bachelor of Science degree and is fluent in Arabic.

CARLY ROSSDIRECTOR, DES MOINES, IA OFFICEA native Iowan, Carly has over fifteen years of overseas experience in Europe, East and West Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America. She holds a B.A. from Carleton College and a graduate degree in International Development and Forced Migration from the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand. Carly worked as a resettlement case manager for Lutheran Services in Iowa, overseeing family literacy and refugee medical programs. Carly then served as a staff member for Refugee Support Center Africa (RSC) based in Nairobi, Kenya and for International Organization for Migration (IOM), traveling to refugee camps in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda to conduct screenings under the United States Refugee Admissions Program. A proven leader, Carly owned small business for over six years before joining USCRI as Des Moines Field Office Director in 2014. She is committed to building an inclusive community of opportunity for new Iowans.

Associate DirectorsARTELIA DAVISASSOCIATE DIRECTOR '' HUMAN RESOURCESArtelia is responsible for managing various human resources functions along with regulatory and legal compliance. Ms. Davis previously worked for Illume Communications as Project Coordinator, American Friends Service Committee as Program Assistant, and The Dalai Group in business development. Ms. Davis received a Master of Arts in Non-Profit Management from Notre Dame of Maryland University and a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies from Towson University in Maryland. She has studied in Guanajuato, Mexico and is proficient in Spanish.

Lorie DavidsonASSOCIATE DIRECTOR '' CHILDREN SERVICESLorie is responsible for the oversight of USCRI's Children's Programs including Post Release and Home Study Services for Unaccompanied Minors. These programs connect children who have arrived in the United States without their parents or guardians to vital services to assist in successful integration into their communities. These services, which include ensuring the children have access to medical care, mental health services, educational opportunities, and legal representation, are delivered through a network of case managers at 10 sites across the country. A passion for working with vulnerable children has guided Lorie's career in the non-profit sector. Prior to working with Unaccompanied Children, Lorie was the Clinical Director at Covenant House Georgia where she oversaw case management, mental health, and substance abuse services for homeless youth. Lorie has a Master's Degree in Human and Organizational Leadership from Vanderbilt University where she specialized in non-profit development. Lorie has also served as the Director of Academy Nine at the Steppingstone Foundation in Boston, MA. There she implemented programs that prepare first generation schoolchildren for educational opportunities that lead to success and helped close the opportunity divide by overseeing the preparation, placement and support services for at-risk youth and their families.

MEGAN BRACYASSOCIATE DIRECTOR '' COMMUNITY INTEGRATIONMegan manages five federal grants: Matching Grant, Preferred Communities, Iranian Refugee Parolee, AmeriCorps, and Refugee Marriage Strengthening Programs. She has over ten years of non-profit experience working with refugees and immigrants, and Master's level education in Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Organizational Management from the School for International Training. Prior to working at USCRI, she served as the Resettlement Director at the International Institute of New Hampshire. She has extensive knowledge of issues and trends in refugee resettlement, trauma-informed approaches to case management, women's empowerment, and workforce development. Megan is fully committed to USCRI's mission and is passionate about supporting USCRI partner agencies in their efforts to effectively support refugees on the path to integration. Originally from New Hampshire, Megan has worked at USCRI since 2009.

MELISSA SEGUNDO-MORENOASSOCIATE DIRECTOR '' HUMAN TRAFFICKING VICTIMS ASSISTANCE PROGRAMMelissa has a diverse background in law, with a concentration on human trafficking and related crime victim assistance pertaining to immigrant populations and unaccompanied immigrant children. She is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Trafficking Victim Assistance Program (TVAP) through a robust national network of service provider partnerships across the country that supports the complex and acute needs of survivors of trafficking and their family members.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:58

During his college years at Brown University, Magaziner was one of the two architects of the "New Curriculum," a liberal academic approach which eliminates core requirements outside of the concentration the student pursues. Magaziner excelled academically at Brown and in 1969 was named valedictorian of his class.

During the 1968 black student walkout at the University, Magaziner held rallies in support of their demands, and as president of the Undergraduate Council of Students, he negotiated with the administration on the terms of their return. His valedictory address at graduation was featured in a 1969 Life magazine special on student leaders'--a special which also included a story about a recent Wellesley College graduate, future First Lady, New York Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham. After his address, Magaziner led the students in turning their backs on Henry Kissinger, who was receiving an honorary degree. Magaziner also organized Brown's "spring weekend" concerts and festivities.[2]

He was named a Rhodes Scholar upon graduation and studied political philosophy and economics under Isaiah Berlin at Balliol College of the University of Oxford. While studying at Oxford, Magaziner met Bill Clinton, also a Rhodes Scholar, who would become a close friend and eventually boss in the 1990s. After two years, Magaziner left the program without earning a degree to organize protest rallies against the Vietnam War'--at one point in cooperation with actress Vanessa Redgrave.

After Oxford, Magaziner and a group of former Brown students attempted to implement social democratic reforms in the city of Brockton, Massachusetts. These reforms included starting an agricultural cooperative, supporting liberal candidates for city council, strengthening the union movement, and printing a progressive town newspaper. Magaziner soon abandoned the project, after the group recognized that the effects of foreign business competition on the local manufacturing base would undercut their efforts. He then determined that a greater understanding of business was necessary to promote broad-based social and economic reforms.

Magaziner went on to work for the Boston Consulting Group in Boston, London and Tokyo from 1973 to 1979. He founded Telesis in 1979 and built it into a respected international firm[citation needed] with offices in the U.S., France, Japan and Australia. Magaziner sold Telesis in 1986 to Towers Perrin Inc. and managed the U.S. strategy practice for Towers Perrin from 1986 to 1989. Throughout his consulting career, Magaziner's client list has included General Electric, Corning Glass, the Governments of Ireland and Sweden and other high-tech manufacturing and health care companies.

Magaziner also has had significant influence in Rhode Island. Working alongside Governor J. Joseph Garrahy, he devised a state economic plan, known as the "Greenhouse Compact", which, upon approval by the voters, aimed to resolve several key economic issues in the state, to create several business "incubators", and to stimulate state exports. While initially popular among state legislators, and some civic and business leaders, it was ultimately voted down by referendum.[3] Magaziner and his family continue to support prominent Democratic Rhode Island politicians and other social causes, including the Rhode Island Food Bank.

Magaziner has authored two books on business strategy and industrial policy: Minding America's Business and The Silent War. The former, co-authored with future Clinton Secretary of LaborRobert Reich, laid out a plan for U.S. industrial policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and received critical acclaim. Emphasis was placed on eliminating subsidies for inefficient American industries, and applying fiscal and industrial policy strategies to stimulate growth in sectors for which the U.S. had "cost-advantage." The Silent War, co-authored with Providence Journal columnist Mark Patinkin, tells the story of international business competition in the early 1990s, and Magaziner's experiences in dealing with different countries' relationships to their corporate base.

Magaziner is best known for leading, along with Hillary Clinton, the failed Task Force to Reform Health Care in the early Clinton administration, which aimed to implement a managed competition regime for the health insurance industry, and to establish community rated insurance pools to cut costs for small businesses and the uninsured. The plan was widely criticized for being too complex. Pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies waged a broad-based ad-campaign against the plan, which included the famous "Harry and Louise" ads. Despite the attacks by Republicans and industry associations, Magaziner did little to respond. People within the administration criticized Magaziner's blunt and domineering approach, attacking critics who disagreed instead of trying to build consensus. The Democratic congressional staff began calling him "Hillary's Rasputin".[4]

Brad DeLong, Deputy Treasury Secretary for the Clinton administration at the time, argues that Magaziner's failures stemmed from having a background in management consulting instead of policy: "A management consultant's principal goal is to win a debate in front of his employer ... by making intellectual arguments, controlling the flow of information..., [and] walling-off potential adversaries from the process ... You develop a policy by forming a large coalition ... Then you have a large group of people who are enthusiastic about the proposal: they will go out and make your arguments for you."[4]

Despite its political failings, the substance of the Clinton Health Plan has echoes in current reform plans for the US Health System. For instance, almost all of the 2008 Democratic candidates' plans call for employer mandates, cooperative insurance pools, and managed competition between health plans with a minimum benefits package. Of his Health Plan, President Clinton often says that it was politics that undermined Magaziner's efforts, not policy. It should be noted, however, that these are all Democratic endorsements.

Magaziner was court ordered to pay $285,864 to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons,[5] in 1997 by a federal judge for lying about whether the Task Force to Reform Health Care hired non-governmental employees and therefore had to release documents from their strategic deliberations upon public request. Under a 1972 federal law, government meetings could not be private if they include non-Government people. The fine, however, was later overturned on appeal on August 25, 1999.[6]

Following the controversy, Magaziner stayed in the administration and worked to develop an E-Commerce policy initiative with OSTP staff and industry advisors. That initiative evolved to include a facilitative role in the formation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to assume Internet administrative activities previously maintained by the US DARPA. Magaziner's White House office also oversaw the development of policies to increase American exports, and drafted legislation for American involvement in international health, including the development of "compulsory licensing" for developing countries facing health crises.

Magaziner is now the Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chairman of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), which works to save lives in low and middle income countries by helping people gain access to essential medicines and health services. Magaziner also manages certain projects of the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI), which seeks to cut costs for renewable and energy efficient technologies.

Simultaneously, Magaziner is CEO of SJS advisors, a consulting firm, which currently advises a number of private companies.

Magaziner lives in Bristol, Rhode Island with his wife Suzanne. He has three children: Seth, Jonathan and Sarah.

^"Ira Magaziner Profile". NNDB. Retrieved 2006-10-12. ^Sternlight, Judy, ed. (2014). "Talkin' bout my generation". The Brown Reader. Simon & Schuster. ^Feldman, Allan. (1984) Rhode Island: Sunset for Industrial Policy. Policy Review No. 30(Fall 1984):84-86. pdf version^ abGrasping Reality with Both Hands: Economist Brad DeLong's Fair, Balanced, and Reality-Based Semi-Daily Journal^Judge Rules Government Covered Up Lies on Panel, NY Times, December 19, 1997 [1]^Court Clears Clinton Aide In Lying Case, NY Times, August 25, 1999

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:41

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2. Where are your candidates from?Our candidates are from all over the world, primarily Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

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3. How or why did your candidates immigrate to the U.S.?They immigrated for a variety of reasons as have so many immigrant Americans before them. Some are refugees, having escaped war or political upheaval. Others sought asylum in the U.S. to escape persecution. Some won the diversity lottery in their home country and some came through the U.S.'s family reunification program to join family members already here. No matter what the circumstances, they came seeking a better life for themselves and their families and want to contribute their professional skills in their new home.

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4. Are your candidates fluent in English?Yes, everyone we work with is fluent in English and almost always bilingual. Many are multilingual.

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5. Are your candidates experienced professionals?Yes, everyone we work with is university educated and has a minimum of 2 years professional work experience. On average, our candidates have 7 years of professional experience.

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6. Does Upwardly Global specialize in certain professions?We work with individuals from all professions, including: healthcare, engineering, IT, accounting, marketing, management, law, nonprofit, education, science, and many more.

We are developing specializations in the technology, healthcare and engineering sectors, particularly with employers that have a current talent shortage and/or anticipate a near term talent shortage.

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7. Are your candidates available in my city?Upwardly Global has offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco Bay Area, and Silver Spring, MD but works with candidates across the country, many of whom are open to relocation.

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8. How can my company become engaged with Upwardly Global?Upwardly Global customizes partnerships for companies, including talent sourcing, corporate engagement events, cross-cultural communication workshops, upskilling and internships programs and more. Learn more about employer partnerships.

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Archived Version

Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:36

APPROACH AND METHODOLOGYUpwardly Global and Welcome Back Initiative will aim to help 1,600 marginalized, underemployed foreign-trained New Americans by 2014 by building on their existing models. Since 2001, the WBI has been working with immigrant health professionals to assist them through the necessary steps to enter the US health workforce. The model of service integrates four key components: participant recruitment, educational case management, collaborative relationships, and curriculum development.In the continuum of service needed to integrate this population with the appropriate opportunities, WBI clients become Upwardly Global's job seekers. Since 2002, Upwardly Global has been training foreign educated professionals across industries in the communication and soft skills needed to best present themselves to American employers. They simultaneously work with employers in industries and regions in need of talent to create a pipeline of our job seekers to meet their ongoing needs.To expand on this work, Upwardly Global will:- Develop an online learning platform for the recruitment and remote service of jobseekers, alumni, employers and mentors throughout the country- Develop key industry 'Centers of Excellence' to meet employer demand in health care and engineering and strategically add 2-3 new sitesIn addition, Welcome Back will:- Refine and enhance its materials to provide training and technical assistance to prospective new Welcome Back Centers in 1-2 cities- Continue to work with regulators, educators, and employers to remove artificial barriers to licensure for foreign-trained health professionals, and develop accelerated training programsTo capitalize on the synergies achieved between the two organizations' activities, Upwardly Global and Welcome Back will:- Develop profession-specific internship opportunities for healthcare participants in positions in critical need in the US- Engage regulators, educators, and employers to develop accelerated pathway for dental hygienists and physician assistants- Adapt Upwardly Global's existing all-industry curriculum to health care sector acculturation and job search training needs- Create a pipeline for placements of 136 healthcare professionals in Northeast OH and Southeast MI to fill critical employer and regional need annually- Evaluate opportunities in 1-2 cities to co-launch- Create asset map of two organizations and find opportunities to align for improved outcomes or efficienciesFinally, in partnership with our Imprint partners we will:- Educate and advocate to increase recognition of the field of high skilled immigrant workforce integration (problem, solutions, benefits of integration) among policy and private sector decision-makers, subject matter experts, and direct service providers with the goal of raising awareness and attracting investment that can create a multiplier effect on numbers of skilled immigrants receiving targeted services and attaining professional placements- Offer information and technical assistance to service providers not specialized in this population- Pursue a systems change agenda that can increasingly engage existing infrastructures, which see skilled immigrants: refugee resettlement system, community colleges, and Workforce Investment Act-funded employment centersIMPLEMENTATION, TIMELINE, AND DELIVERABLESNote: item ownership is designated using UG for Upwardly Global, WBI for Welcome Back Initiative and IM for ImprintYear OneDevelop an online learning platform for the recruitment and remote service of immigrant health professionals, jobseekers, alumni of our programs, employers and mentors throughout the country- UG - Outline needed functionality for powerful e-learning platform and best practices of e-learning- UG/WBI - Secure resources to finalize technology upgrade- UG/WBI - Design customized curriculum to enhance job seeking and interview skills for health professionals- UG/WBI - Conduct monthly webinars- UG/WBI - Track resultsDevelop key industry 'Centers of Excellence' to meet employer demand in health care and engineering- UG/WBI - Establish placement relationships with NOHSIC in Ohio and identify employer(s) in Michigan in healthcare and/or engineering- UG - Secure funding for expansion to these cities- UG/WBI - Pilot with three hospitals with goal of 24 placements- UG/WBI - Conduct asset-mapping exercise to determine recommendations for streamlined UG/WBI joint services in Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, and SeattleDevelop profession-specific internship opportunities for immigrant health professionals- UG/WBI - Evaluation of best practices for re-licensing of foreign trained physicians- UG/WBI - Share with prospective federal, state, and private fundersEngage regulators, educators, and employers to develop accelerated pathway for dental hygienists and physician assistants- Work with Imprint partners to identify key stakeholders to support systems changeStrategic national activities via Imprint- IM - Create joint education/advocacy materials and website with sign-up- IM - Formal launch of initiative- IM - Thought leadership pieces (whitepaper, webinars) on proven interventions that secure jobs for immigrant professionals and engage employers and other systems- IM - Identify 50 key influencers for relationship building and specialized 'asks' to increase visibility, leverage, and dedicated resourcesYear TwoDevelop an online learning platform for the recruitment and remote service of immigrant health professionals, jobseekers, alumni of our programs, employers and mentors throughout the country- UG/WBI - Develop relationship with 8-10 referral agencies for healthcare and engineering job seekers- UG - Gather feedback on e-learning and virtual services- UG - Add discussion boards for industry groupsDevelop key industry 'Centers of Excellence' to meet employer demand in health care and engineering- UG - Expand relationships with NOHSIC from three to four hospitals- UG/WBI - Grow from 24 to 40 placements- UG/WBI - Begin expansion in one new city as partners, implementing Year 1 streamlining recommendationsDevelop profession-specific internship opportunities for healthcare participants- UG/WBI - Launch replication pilot for re-licensing of physiciansEngage regulators, educators, and employers to develop accelerated pathway for dental hygienists and physician assistants- UG/WBI - Cultivate key stakeholders to make case for advanced standing curricula- UG/WBI - Engage educational partner to put forth suggested advanced standing curriculaStrategic national activities via Imprint- IM - Begin joint biannual reporting of economic impact data of member activities- IM - Intentional development of online constituency including implementing outgoing communications (e.g. sharing tools, calls to action) in support of Imprint agenda (goal: 800 sign-ups)- IM - Though leadership: create and disseminate recommendations for extension of proven interventions out to non-specialized providersYear ThreeDevelop an online learning platform for the recruitment and remote service of immigrant health professionals, jobseekers, alumni of our programs, employers and mentors throughout the country- UG - Seek investment for v2.0 improvements to training site and for advertising campaign to increase reach of siteDevelop key industry 'Centers of Excellence' to meet employer demand in health care and engineering- UG/WBI - evaluation and reporting on Centers of Excellence outcomes, with recommendations for improvement- UG - begin campaign to increase program sustainability through employer fund commitment- UG/WBI - capital campaign for expansion- UG/WBI - evaluate merits of continued partnership through joint site build outs

Skills gaps in the US economyWell-documented and fast-approaching challenges threaten the economic competitiveness of the United States - declining high school graduation rates, decreased fertility rates, and the impending retirement of the baby boomer generation are hastening a skills gap in our workforce that will leave tens of thousands of jobs unfilled. In many industries, this problem is already acute: despite the economic downturn, today companies in healthcare and engineering struggle to find the talent they need to perform and grow. Another demographic phenomenon creating service gaps in the US economy is the need for culturally and linguistically competent service to our increasingly diverse consumer population.The example of US healthcareThe US healthcare sector acutely reflects these issues: the addition of 35 million Americans to insurance rolls via the Affordable Care Act is expected to create a demand for over 200,000 new physicians and over one million new nurses by 2020, with critical shortages extending also to the areas of mental health, oral health, laboratory sciences and allied health professions. Additionally, acknowledgment of the need to resolve the cultural chasm in health care delivery to improve quality, patient satisfaction, health outcomes and health equity in minority and underserved populations is leading government agencies, universities, and health care organizations to assess a variety of new strategies.A Hidden Talent PoolCurrent responses to skills gaps leave an extremely valuable group at the margins, underserved and overlooked: a hidden talent pool of fully work authorized foreign-educated immigrants and refugees living in the U.S. currently.Today 1.5 million immigrants in the United States are college-educated and unemployed or working in unskilled jobs, making less than $20,000 per year. Combined with highly skilled but working in semi-skilled jobs, the number is 2.7 million, or two in every five foreign educated professionals. (Batalova, J. & Fix, M.: Uneven Progress: The Employment Pathways of Skilled Immigrants in the United States; Migration Policy Institute, 2008 and 2010). Many are health professionals, but the pool reflects all professional careers, including teachers, business managers, engineers, IT and nonprofit professionals. Still, few specialized services exist to connect this group to the programs that will lead them into skill-appropriate opportunities with US employers and communities in need. Traditional workforce development programs and refugee resettlement agencies do not address these unique needs including credential evaluation, exploration of academic options and alternatives, communication, cultural orientation to the US professional job search, and building of local professional networks.Welcome Back Initiative and Upwardly Global see this state of affairs as an untapped opportunity and seek to draw attention both to the issues around the underutilization of immigrant professionals and to the interventions proven to integrate this population into the US professional workforce.The opportunity and need for Welcome Back and Upwardly Global continues to grow. In the last 18 months alone, the organizations have been contacted by 14 major cities and metropolitan areas asking for its program services and technical assistance to both help meet the urgent need for trained professionals in key industries and to address the needs of this growing local population of skilled immigrants.

Upwardly Global is seeking funding and implementation partners within new geographies that have large or growing immigrant populations and who seek to effectively integrate skilled immigrants into the local workforce. UpGlo is open to exploratory conversations to explore alignment in goals and desired outcomes.

Upwardly Global has built successful programs and an online training platform that can be leveraged by formal partners within new regions. Additionally, Upwardly Global can provide technical assistance within a number of different areas including employer engagement, diversity/inclusion training, immigrant professional licensing guides, and volunteer programs, just to name a few.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:39

weGlo is ouronline learning portal that houses free training courses,materials,and communityforums forUpGlojob seekers. It includesnetworks specially designed for refugees'' thatwill helplearners connectwith one another, access mentors and volunteers, andidentify opportunities for professionalgrowth

Watch anoverview ofweGlo, here, and come join more than 500 job seekers who are part of our refugee network

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 05:50

Also Known As: UPGLO582 Market St Ste 1207San Francisco, CA 94104This organization is a 501(c)(3) Public CharityThis organization is required to file an IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ.Financial information in this report is derived from the organization's December 31, 2015 Form 990.GENERAL INFORMATIONEIN:94-3346127Contact:Mr. Lievin MwambaYear Founded:Information not availableRuling Year:2000Fiscal Year :December 31, 2015Assets:$3,433,548(from Dec 31, 2015 Form 990)Income:$4,408,599(from Dec 31, 2015 Form 990)No. of Board Members:No. of Full-Time Employees:29No. of Part-Time Employees:6No. of Volunteers:750Mission and ProgramsMissionUpwardly Global's mission is to eliminate all barriers to professional workplace entry for highly skilled - yet poor and marginalized - immigrants, refugees, and asylees.

ProgramsProgram:Job Seeker Services ProgramsBudget:NaNCategory:Job Search & PlacementPopulation Served:Immigrants/Newcomers/RefugeesProgram Description:Jobseeker Services Programs: Rebuilding Careers Upwardly Global helps unemployed and underemployed refugees and immigrants find growth positions that match their education, skills and experience. We offer our immigrant job seekers a full range of career services, including individualized career placement and counseling, a series of 5 workshops, connections to American professional peers for networking and mentoring, assistance with foreign degree/credential evaluation and re-licensing, and free access to career-related information and technology. We have worked with jobseekers from more than 94 developing countries. Nearly all of our jobseekers are parents with independent children. 40% are refugees and asylees who fled their homelands due to persecution. Employer Partnership Program Upwardly Global partners with Fortune 1000 companies to develop and implement strategies to address talent and global diversity needs. Upwardly Global utilizes a holistic approach, which includes Education, Employee Engagement, and Employment, to build the internal capacity needed to bring strategic diversity initiatives to the next level.

FINANCIAL DATARevenues and Expenses: Fiscal Year Ending December 31, 2015

REVENUEContributions$1,253,782Government Grants$0Program Services$80,672Investments$1,099Special Events$0Sales$0Other$0Total Revenue$1,335,553EXPENSESProgram Services$769,799Administration$42,788Other$90,830Total Expenses$903,417Net Gain/Loss$432,136Balance Sheet Fiscal Year Ending December 31, 2015Note: The balance sheet gives a snapshot of the financial health of an organization at a particular point in time. An organization's total assets should generally exceed its total liabilities, or it cannot survive long, but the types of assets and liabilities also must be considered. For instance, an organization's current assets (cash, receivables, securities, etc.) should be sufficient to cover its current liabilities (payables, deferred revenue, current year loan, and note payments). Otherwise, the organization may face solvency problems. On the other hand, an organization whose cash and equivalents greatly exceed its current liabilities might not be putting its money to best use.

ASSETSJanuary 1, 2007December 31, 2015ChangeCash Equivalent$398,067$773,648$375,581Accounts Receivable$0$0$0Pledges Grants Receivable$90,563$451,929$361,366Receivable / Other$0$0$0Inventories for Sale or Use$0$0$0Investment/Securities$0$0$0Investment/Other$0$0$0Fixed Assets$12,071$7,863($4,208)Other$16,739$20,344$3,605Total Assets$517,440$1,253,784$736,344LIABILITIESJanuary 1, 2007December 31, 2015ChangeAccounts Payable$25,781$22,905($2,876)Grants Payable$0$0$0Deferred Revenue$0$307,084$307,084Loans and Notes$0$0$0Tax-Exempt Bond Liabilities$0$0$0Other$0$0$0Total Liabilities$25,781$329,989$304,208FUND BALANCE$491,659$923,795$432,136FORM 990 AND EDOCS

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Mon, 06 Feb 2017 16:20

More than a dozen lawsuits and counting have been filed against President Donald Trump's executive order that temporarily blocks visas from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. Looking beyond the handful of emotional personal stories that are gaining the media's sympathy, there is a more predictable political power dynamic at play. The lawsuits largely stem from organizations bankrolled by billionaire leftist George Soros and Democratic state attorneys general.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who has carried out a political vendetta against Trump, led 15 other state attorneys general in a joint statement condemning what they called an ''unconstitutional, un-American and unlawful executive order.'' The Democratic AGs also said, ''Religious liberty has been, and always will be, a bedrock principle of our country and no president can change that truth,'' a curious statement from the party that targeted the Little Sisters of the Poor.

''It shouldn't surprise anyone that pressure groups funded by George Soros are litigating to keep U.S. ports-of-entry wide open to terrorists and other people who hate America '... Soros has said he wants to bring America down.''

Last August, George Soros' son, Alex Soros, posted a picture of himself with Schneiderman on Instagram, and wrote, ''Great to meet with #newyork attorney general @ericschneiderman who recognized that @realdonaldtrump was a fraud way before many and has courageously taken him on!''

Schneiderman, as well as Democratic attorneys general in Virginia and Massachusetts, intervened in existing lawsuits. The lawsuit brought by Washington State Attorney General Robert Ferguson has achieved the most success, bringing the case that blocked the order nationwide.

The lawsuit convinced a federal judge of the state's standing on the claim the order is ''separating Washington families, harming thousands of Washington residents, damaging Washington's economy, hurting Washington-based companies and undermining Washington's sovereign interest in remaining a welcoming place for immigrants and refugees.''

Democrats are even raising money off the lawsuits. In a Facebook post, the Democratic Attorneys General Association said, "Stand with Attorney General Bob Ferguson and all Democratic State Attorneys General fighting for what's right!" It added, "Chip in to support Democratic AGs fighting for progressive rights and freedoms."

Outside of the politicians, Soros' Open Society Foundations, which advocates for open borders, is financing several advocacy groups that initiated litigation against the order.

Leading the way in these lawsuits in several states is the American Civil Liberties Union, which has gotten at least $35.5 million from the Open Society Foundations, according to the Capital Research Center, a Washington think tank that investigates nonprofits.

Soros also gave $4.6 million to the National Immigration Law Center, which has been involved in litigation, according to the CRC; and $621,000 to the Urban Justice Center, which has an appendage known as the International Refugee Assistance Project that has jumped into the lawsuits, according to the CRC.

"It shouldn't surprise anyone that pressure groups funded by George Soros are litigating to keep U.S. ports-of-entry wide open to terrorists and other people who hate America," Matthew Vadum, senior vice president of the CRC, told LifeZette. "Soros has said he wants to bring America down. Flooding the country with Muslim aliens who won't assimilate is one way to do that."

In a Seattle suit, separate from the Washington State case, ABC News reported the American Immigration Council, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild filed a class action complaint on behalf of lawful permanent residents that want their immediate family members that are citizens of the seven countries be able to enter the United States.

Soros' Open Society Foundations gave $425,000 to the American Immigration Council from 2011 through 2013, according to the CRC, which shows Soros' group also gave at least $50,000 to the National Lawyers Guild.

The fact that a lawsuit is politically motivated doesn't mean it lacks legal merits. Republican attorneys general and conservative groups challenged the Obama administration's executive actions. But as the media plays up emotional stories, no one should try to divorce politics from these legal maneuvers.

#DemocratsDonald TrumpExecutive OrderGeorge SorosimmigrationOpen Societytravel banYou might also like...Bill Targets Countries Refusing to Take Back Criminalssoros-fingerprints-all-over-anti-trump-lawsuits

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Archived Version

Source: The Last Refuge

Mon, 06 Feb 2017 11:30

The White House says it expects the courts to restore President Donald Trump's temporary ban on Syrian refugees and 90-day suspended visa status for travelers from seven countries, via an executive order founded on a claim of national security.

Despite the initial 9th circuit denial of the Trump administration's request to immediately set aside a Seattle judge's ruling that put a hold on the executive order nationwide, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (the most liberal and overturned appellate court in the nation) requested legal briefs from both sides by 6:00 pm EST today / 3:00 pm PST.

(Via AP) [4:30am EST] Lawyers for Washington state and Minnesota have told a federal appellate court it would ''unleash chaos again'' if it lifted an order temporarily halting President Donald Trump's ban on refugees and travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States.

In briefs filed early Monday morning with the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Washington state and Minnesota said Trump's travel ban harmed residents, businesses and universities and was unconstitutional.

['...] Dozens of tech companies, including giants like Apple, Google, and Uber, are siding with Washington state as it fights President Donald Trump's ban on refugees and travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States.

The companies filed briefs late Sunday with a federal appellate court saying the Trump executive order hurts their businesses by making it harder to recruit employees. The companies also said the travel ban would prompt businesses to build operations outside the United States (read more)

According to the Washington Times, Byron York, the White House has already filed the appellate brief sometime on Sunday.

Byron York ['...] Now the government has answered [Judge] Robart, and unlike the judge, Justice Department lawyers have produced a point-by-point demolition of Washington State's claims. Indeed, for all except the most partisan, it is likely impossible to read the Washington State lawsuit, plus Robart's brief comments and writing on the matter, plus the Justice Department's response, and not come away with the conclusion that the Trump order is on sound legal and constitutional ground.

Beginning with the big picture, the Justice Department argued that Robart's restraining order violates the separation of powers, encroaches on the president's constitutional and legal authority in the areas of foreign affairs, national security, and immigration, and ''second-guesses the president's national security judgment'' about risks faced by the United States. (read more)

['...] Despite the overwhelming strength of the administration's argument, what happens next '-- as the case is argued in a liberal circuit and then possibly moves on to a Supreme Court divided evenly, 4 to 4, among liberal and conservative justices '-- is impossible to predict. But strength of the case does not assure victory. As Laura Ingraham, the conservative radio host who also served as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, tweeted on Sunday: ''The law is on Donald Trump's side. Doesn't mean that the courts will follow it.'' (more)

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Tue, 07 Feb 2017 13:12

The devastating ''Saturday Night Live'' caricature of Sean Spicer that aired over the weekend, played by Melissa McCarthy, did not go over well internally at a White House where looks matter. | POLITICO Screen grab

As the press secretary for a president who's obsessed with how things play on cable TV, Sean Spicer's real audience during his daily televised press briefings has always been an audience of one.

And the devastating ''Saturday Night Live'' caricature of Spicer that aired over the weekend '-- in which a belligerent Spicer was spoofed by a gum-chomping, super soaker-wielding Melissa McCarthy in drag '-- did not go over well internally at a White House in which looks matter.

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More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts, it was Spicer's portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president's eyes, according to sources close to him. And the unflattering send-up by a female comedian was not considered helpful for Spicer's longevity in the grueling, high-profile job in which he has struggled to strike the right balance between representing an administration that considers the media the "opposition party," and developing a functional relationship with the press.

"Trump doesn't like his people to look weak," added a top Trump donor.

Trump's uncharacteristic Twitter silence over the weekend about the ''Saturday Night Live'' sketch was seen internally as a sign of how uncomfortable it made the White House feel. Sources said the caricature of Spicer by McCarthy struck a nerve and was upsetting to the press secretary and to his allies, who immediately saw how damaging it could be in Trump world.

Spicer on Monday was traveling aboard Air Force One from Florida to Washington, D.C., and gamely shrugged off the spoof that was playing in loops on cable news throughout the day.

McCarthy ''needs to slow down on the gum chewing; way too many pieces in there,'' he joked in an interview with Extra.

And on Monday, Spicer's allies were trying to put a happy face on the incident. "He takes the job seriously but doesn't take himself that seriously," said a person close to Spicer, who said he also understood the instant-viral skit helped him reach a new level of fame. "He knows that put him up on the stratosphere of recognition on a level," this person said. "You've got to embrace it."

But on Tuesday, Spicer has the uncomfortable task of facing reporters once again in the briefing room '-- where the elephant in the room will be the unflattering McCarthy caricature.

White House sources said they expect him to cut the tension with humor, and that he has already been on a charm offensive before the "SNL" skit, knowing he has relations to repair with the press.

Spicer has reached out to some reporters, in recent days, simply to wish them a happy birthday. Speaking at a forum at George Washington University last week, Spicer was self-effacing, making fun of his first stumble out of the gate, where even his ill-fitting suit was criticized by the boss. ''I looked at my suit choice and made some changes there," he joked.

But Spicer for weeks now has been fighting to repair his troubling first impression behind the lectern '-- he is still operating under a cloud that he created when he took no questions and made false statements about the crowd size at Trump's inauguration, losing some of his credibility with the room of reporters he faces off with every day. Internally, people close to Trump are eager to point out that Spicer was also not Trump's first choice for the high-profile position of press secretary, but that chief of staff Reince Priebus pushed for the former Republican National Committee spokesman to get the job.

Spicer has taken the role seriously; in the final weeks during the transition, he was participating in mock briefing sessions to get ready for his on-camera performances. Since Jan. 20, Spicer has had the added difficulty of doing two jobs at once: He is acting as communications director on top of his job as press secretary, while the administration seeks to fill the former job. Senior White House officials Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks still attend the daily briefings and sit on the side to watch him '-- a move some interpreted as a sign that Spicer still needs supervision.

The ''SNL'' clip was seen by some in Trump's orbit as devastating because it was accurate. ''I thought they had Sean down pretty good,'' said one Trump ally, who thought Spicer has been set up in an impossible position.

In a phone interview on Monday afternoon, Spicer tried to tack away from the skit. "I would much rather have the focus be on the president's agenda and the success he's having,'' he said. ''That's all I'm saying on it." When pressed about what his own reaction to the skit was, he demurred. ''It doesn't really matter what I think.''

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Source: FCW: The business of federal technology

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 12:08

Records Management

Democrats seek answers on private email use at the White HouseBy Chase GunterFeb 07, 2017Two Democratic senators are seeking answers about the nongovernmental e-mail accounts that high-ranking members of the Trump administration reportedly used during their first days in the White House.

The e-mail accounts, first reported by Newsweek in late January, were on a Republican National Committee-maintained system, and reportedly belonged to Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and senior adviser Jared Kushner. They accounts were subsequently deleted.

In a letter to White House Counsel Donald McGahn that was released on Jan. 7, Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) state that such use could be a violation of the Presidential Records Act, which precludes immediate staff and advisers to the president from creating or sending "a Presidential record using a non-official electronic messaging account."

McCaskill is the ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. Carper is also sits on the committee and previously served as the panel's top Democrat.

If a non-official e-mail account is used to conduct government business, the statute requires covered employees to copy those messages to a government system within 20 days to preserve presidential record-keeping.

The messages on the private accounts have been deleted by the RNC, which "did not indicate whether or not any of these e-mail accounts were used to conduct government business," the letter states.

The letter asks McGahn to provide details on which White House officials used the RNC accounts, and whether any senior aids continue to use accounts on that system. Carper and McCaskill also want clarification as to how the White House intends to ensure compliance with the Presidential Records Act, and instructed McGahn to share a copy of the policies and procedures provided to Trump's staff to ensure federal compliance.

Use of a private email account is not necessarily improper -- and senior White House staff can be involved in political matters that do not belong in official government accounts. But in the past, use of similar RNC-run accounts raised suspicions that White House officials under President George W. Bush were deliberately trying to skirt the Presidential Records Act.

The letter seeks a response by Feb. 10.

About the Author

Chase Gunter is a staff writer covering civilian agencies, workforce issues, health IT, open data and innovation.

Prior to joining FCW, Gunter reported for the C-Ville Weekly in Charlottesville, Va., and served as a college sports beat writer for the South Boston (Va.) News and Record. He started at FCW as an editorial fellow before joining the team full-time as a reporter.

Gunter is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where his emphases were English, history and media studies.

Click here for previous articles by Gunter, or connect with him on Twitter: @WChaseGunter

Postcode lottery

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 12:26

Ankara (AFP) - Ankara's outspoken mayor on Tuesday warned that outside forces could be using sophisticated technology to try to trigger a manmade earthquake in a deliberate bid to harm Turkey's fragile economy.

Melih Gokcek, who has been mayor of the Turkish capital since 1994, made the outlandish claims on Twitter where he regularly updates his more than 3.7 million followers, often writing in capital letters.

His comments were made after two quakes hit the western Canakkale province on Monday and Tuesday morning, measuring 5.3 and 5.2 magnitude respectively, the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said.

In these tweets, Gokcek shared a video which claimed there were tools for causing manmade quakes, and he called all submarines and ships with large equipment to be taken under control of the authorities.

Gokcek said he had "researched" the two quakes and suggested they could have been caused by possible foreign interference.

"There was a ship conducting seismic research nearby. What this ship was researching and what country it belongs to must be solved," he wrote.

The ultimate aim, he suggested, was to trigger an earthquake near Istanbul in a bid to stage an economic "coup".

"At this moment, the coup aimed at Turkey is an earthquake near Istanbul to cause Turkey's economic collapse," he claimed.

- 'Genies' behind the coup -

It is not the first time that Gokcek, one of the more colourful members of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has made such fantastic claims.

Following last July's failed coup, he suggested that exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for the putsch, was hypnotising his followers through genies.

The Canakkale region includes the Dardanelles Straits which is the gateway to the Sea of Marmara that leads to the Bosphorus in Istanbul.

Istanbul itself lies in a major earthquake-prone zone and in 1999, a quake northwest of the city left 17,000 dead.

It is not the first time a senior Turkish figure has blamed foreign elements for conspiring to harm the country's economy.

Last month, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself blamed a conspiracy for the recent plunge in value of the lira, without saying who was to blame but saying such actions were akin to that of a "terrorist".

"The purpose is to bring Turkey to its knees. They're using the exchange rate as a weapon," he said.

In the first four weeks of 2017, the lira lost seven percent of its value against the US dollar after losing a quarter in value against the greenback in 2016.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 13:33

donderdag 9 februari 2017, 5:30 NAVO-chef Jens Stoltenberg.. (C) REUTERSDe NAVO heeft een reclamebureau in de arm genomen om haar imago op te poetsen. Het bureau, Boondoggle, is bezig met een analyse van de publieke opinie over het nut van de NAVO. Het militaire bondgenootschap wil zich hiermee als 'merk' opnieuw positioneren bij het publiek.

'žIn een tijd van nepnieuws moeten mensen weten wie we zijn, wat we doen en dat het belangrijk is wat we doen'', zegt een NAVO-woordvoerder. De samenwerking met Boondoggle is 'in een vroeg stadium', zegt hij. Tot wat voor reclame-uiting de samenwerking leidt, is daardoor nog niet duidelijk.

De woordvoerder erkent dat het imago van de alliantie onder druk staat, maar spreekt tegen dat het publiciteitsoffensief iets te maken heeft met de nieuwe Amerikaanse president Trump, die zich kritisch uitliet over de NAVO. Hoeveel geld er met de opdracht is gemoeid, blijft om commercile reden vertrouwelijk.

NAVO-kenner Dick Zandee van instituut Clingendael ziet twee drijfveren achter de publiciteitscampagne. 'žDe eerste is natuurlijk Rusland, dat met trollen (onruststokers, red.) via de sociale media bewust verkeerde informatie verspreidt en zo de publieke opinie probeert te be¯nvloeden. De NAVO beseft dat ze publicitair tegengas moet geven. Strategische communicatie is daardoor prioriteit geworden.'' Als tweede drijfveer is daar 'de factor Trump' bijgekomen.

Het van oorsprong Belgische Boondoggle voerde al eerder opdrachten uit voor de NAVO. Rond de NAVO-top in Warschau legde het bureau de leek in animatievideo's uit hoe het bondgenootschap werkt. Rond de NAVO-missie in Afghanistan probeerde het publiciteitsbureau onder de naam 'Return to Hope' het negatieve beeld van de militaire inval bij te stellen.

Dat was nodig ook, weet Zandee. 'žDe NAVO heeft aan publieke geloofwaardigheid ingeboet omdat het na de Balkan-oorlog in Europa niks meer te doen had. Toen ging ze in Afghanistan optreden, met bijgevolg hoge kosten in geld en mensenlevens, terwijl de missie gheen vrede bracht. Dat deed het imago van de NAVO in de publieke opinie geen goed.''

Ook de verschillende belangen tussen de Oost- en Zuid-Europese lidstaten vormen een uitdaging. Polen en de Baltische staten willen dat de NAVO zich alleen op Rusland richt. In Itali en Spanje zien ze de dreiging eerder met migrantenboten meekomen uit Afrika. Zandee: 'žDe NAVO moet nu helder via openbare diplomatie duidelijk maken wat ze wil.''

Meer artikelen in Nieuws

Link to Article

Archived Version

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 06:53

A just-retired scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has blown the whistle on a scandal of epic proportions involving fake news ginned up by climate ''scientists.'' Dr. John Bates, who until the end of 2016 was one of NOAA's top scientists, told the story to the Daily Mail:

The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world's leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

The report claimed that the 'pause' or 'slowdown' in global warming in the period since 1998 '' revealed by UN scientists in 2013 '' never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world's media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.

But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, 'unverified' data.

NOAA violated its own rules by publishing the report without subjecting it to required verification procedures''procedures that were designed by Dr. Bates himself.

His vehement objections to the publication of the faulty data were overridden by his NOAA superiors in what he describes as a 'blatant attempt to intensify the impact' of what became known as the Pausebuster paper.

Of all the ''fake news'' stories that emerged in the last two years, this is undoubtedly the most important. More:

NOAA's 2015 'Pausebuster' paper was based on two new temperature sets of data '' one containing measurements of temperatures at the planet's surface on land, the other at the surface of the seas.

Both datasets were flawed. This newspaper has learnt that NOAA has now decided that the sea dataset will have to be replaced and substantially revised just 18 months after it was issued, because it used unreliable methods which overstated the speed of warming. The revised data will show both lower temperatures and a slower rate in the recent warming trend.

The land temperature dataset used by the study was afflicted by devastating bugs in its software that rendered its findings 'unstable'.

This is just one of the tricks the NOAA ''scientists'' employed to exaggerate warming:

The sea dataset used by Thomas Karl and his colleagues '' known as Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperatures version 4, or ERSSTv4, tripled the warming trend over the sea during the years 2000 to 2014 from just 0.036C per decade '' as stated in version 3 '' to 0.099C per decade. Individual measurements in some parts of the globe had increased by about 0.1C and this resulted in the dramatic increase of the overall global trend published by the Pausebuster paper. But Dr Bates said this increase in temperatures was achieved by dubious means. Its key error was an upwards 'adjustment' of readings from fixed and floating buoys, which are generally reliable, to bring them into line with readings from a much more doubtful source '' water taken in by ships. This, Dr Bates explained, has long been known to be questionable: ships are themselves sources of heat, readings will vary from ship to ship, and the depth of water intake will vary according to how heavily a ship is laden '' so affecting temperature readings.

Dr Bates said: 'They had good data from buoys. And they threw it out and ''corrected'' it by using the bad data from ships. You never change good data to agree with bad, but that's what they did '' so as to make it look as if the sea was warmer.'

The Earth's surface temperature record has been so hopelessly corrupted by ''adjustments'' made for political purposes by NOAA and other agencies that it likely can never be accurately reconstructed. This is a great loss to science. The Mail story suggests that evidence may have been destroyed to cover the tracks of NOAA's activists:

Then came the final bombshell. Dr Bates said: 'I learned that the computer used to process the software had suffered a complete failure.'

The reason for the failure is unknown, but it means the Pausebuster paper can never be replicated or verified by other scientists.

Sounds like they borrowed the computer from the IRS.

NOAA is a rogue, politicized agency, like so many others. It has defied a Congressional committee's subpoena, and apparently lied to the committee:

NOAA not only failed, but it effectively mounted a cover-up when challenged over its data. After the paper was published, the US House of Representatives Science Committee launched an inquiry into its Pausebuster claims. NOAA refused to comply with subpoenas demanding internal emails from the committee chairman, the Texas Republican Lamar Smith, and falsely claimed that no one had raised concerns about the paper internally.

Heads need to roll. Donald Trump has his work cut out for him, to put it mildly.

Link to Article

Archived Version

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 06:56

Commentary 5 February, 2017

An attack by the 'The Mail on Sunday' on the accuracy and integrity of a recent paper on global warming is based on inaccurate and misleading claims, including a fake graph.

The article by David Rose appears in the 5 February issue of the newspaper under the headline 'Exposed: How world leaders were duped over global warming'. The article was first published on the newspaper's website on 4 February.

The article makes a number of extraordinary claims about a paper by Dr Thomas Karl, a climate scientist formerly employed by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and colleagues, which was published in June 2015.

The paper, which received 'express' online publication after peer review by the journal 'Science' because of the significance of its findings, presented a re-analysis of the record of land and sea surface temperature measurements from around the world, and concluded that there has been no slowdown in the rate of global warming.

In particular, the paper found that measurements of sea surface temperature previously relied on by NOAA in compiling its record of global mean surface temperature since 1880 had not been corrected properly for errors.

The authors of the paper concluded that their analysis showed ''there is no discernable (statistical or otherwise) decrease in the rate of warming between the second half of the 20th century and the first 15 years of the 21st century''.

Some other scientists have subsequently disagreed with the conclusions by Dr Karl and his co-authors. A paper by Dr John Fyfe and co-authors, published in the journal 'Nature Climate Change' in February 2016, argued: ''Newly identified observational errors do not, however, negate the existence of a real reduction in the surface warming rate in the early twenty-first century relative to the 1970s''1990s''.

The paper added: ''This reduction arises through the combined effects of internal decadal variability, volcanic and solar activity, and decadal changes in anthropogenic aerosol forcing''.

However, the paper by Dr Karl and co-authors has been subjected to a concerted campaign by climate change 'sceptics' who have been attempting to discredit it as part of their efforts to prevent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from the consumption of fossil fuels.

The claim that global warming stopped in 1998 became a key talking point for 'sceptics' in 2006 after 'The Sunday Telegraph' published an article by the late Dr Bob Carter, a geologist based in New Zealand.

Although global temperature records compiled by the UK Met Office, NOAA and NASA show that 2005, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2016 have all been warmer than 1998, many climate change 'sceptics' have continued to falsely assert that there has been no real warming over the past 18 years.

The new article in 'The Mail on Sunday' is based entirely on an interview with Dr John Bates, a climate scientist formerly employed at NOAA. Publication of the newspaper article was timed to coincide with a blog by Dr Bates in which he outlines his claims in detail.

Dr Bates' main complaint is that Dr Karl and his co-authors did not follow strict procedures required for NOAA's 'operational' data. It is not yet clear whether Dr Karl should have subjected his research data to the same procedures. Dr Karl, who retired from NOAA in August 2016, has not yet had the opportunity to respond fully to Dr Bates' allegations.

Dr Bates also claims in his blog that Dr Karl had his ''thumb on the scale pushing for, and often insisting on, decisions that maximize warming'', but does not provide any evidence to support this serious allegation.

However, the article by David Rose in 'The Mail on Sunday' contains many demonstrably false statements and misrepresentations about the paper by Dr Karl and co-authors.

The article states: ''None of the data on which the paper was based was properly 'archived' '' a mandatory requirement meant to ensure that raw data and the software used to process it is accessible to other scientists, so they can verify NOAA results''.

But the article fails to admit that the paper by Dr Karl and co-authors has already been subjected to extensive scrutiny by other researchers since it was published in June 2015.

For instance, a paper by Dr Zeke Hausfather and co-authors, published in the journal 'Science Advances' in January 2017, concluded that the analysis by Dr Karl and others ''effectively corrects a significant cooling bias'' in NOAA's record of global measurements of sea surface temperatures.

In a commentary for 'Carbon Brief' on the many serious errors in 'The Mail on Sunday' article, Dr Hausfather states: ''While NOAA's data management procedures may well need improvement, their results have been independently validated and agree with separate global temperature records created by other groups''.

Importantly, Dr Hausfather also points out that Mr Rose's article in 'The Mail on Sunday' uses a fake graph to completely misrepresent the data from the paper by Dr Karl and co-authors.

The graph in the newspaper article purports to compare the record of global mean surface temperature from the paper by Dr Karl and co-authors with that compiled by the Met Office (see below).

However, the newspaper failed to adjust for the fact that the two datasets use different baselines. NOAA, and the paper by Dr Karl and co-authors, use the average for the period between 1902 and 2000, while the Met Office instead uses the average between 1961 and 1990 as its baseline.

Dr Hausfather's commentary shows that the differences are extremely small when the same baseline is used to compare the two datasets (see below).

Hence the newspaper's fake graph wholly misrepresents the differences between the analysis in the paper by Dr Karl and co-authors and the separate record compiled by the Met Office.

There are many other fallacious assertions in the newspaper article, including that ''official delegations from America, Britain and the EU were strongly influenced by the flawed [sic] NOAA study as they hammered out the Paris Agreement''. In fact, the publication of the paper by Dr Karl and co-authors played no significant role in the negotiations about the Paris Agreement, a draft of which already existed.

In an accompanying editorial, the newspaper calls for ''cold facts and cool heads'', claiming ''as The Mail on Sunday reveals today, there are serious doubts about recent research '' research which was used to thrust aside scepticism about the rate of warming, so as to intensify costly efforts to combat it''.

David Rose and the editors of 'The Mail on Sunday' have a track record of unreliable reporting on climate change and of misrepresenting the science. They have published numerous articles wrongly claiming that sea ice extent has stopped declining in the Arctic.

Mr Rose has established a very cosy relationship with the UK's main club for climate change 'sceptics', the Global Warming Policy Foundation, whose propaganda he has frequently promoted.

In November 2016, Mr Rose quoted the Foundation's ''science editor'', Dr David Whitehouse, in an article wrongly claiming that the record global mean surface temperature in 2016 was mainly due to El Ni±o and not global warming.

Mr Rose's article stated: ''David Whitehouse, a scientist who works with Lord Lawson's sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the massive fall in temperatures following the end of El Nino [sic] meant the warming hiatus or slowdown may be coming back''.

The article does not point out that Dr Whitehouse's doctorate is in astrophysics, not climate science. The Foundation's lobbying arm, the Global Warming Policy Forum, in December posted a video of Mr Rose and Dr Whitehouse discussing complaints from climate scientists about their suggestions of a continuing ''pause'' in global warming.

In January 2017, the Forum published on its website an article by Dr Whitehouse which included a fake graph purporting to show that, when the impacts of El Ni±o are removed from annual global mean surface temperature measurements for 2015 and 2016, there is still a ''pause'' in global warming since 1997. However, Dr Whitehouse did not attempt to remove the impact of El Ni±o from any other previous year, hence hiding the true rate of global warming that has occurred.

The new article by Mr Rose demonstrates that 'The Mail on Sunday' is still using fake news to mislead the public and policy-makers about the scientific evidence for climate change.

Bob Ward is policy and communications director at theGrantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environmentat the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Link to Article

Archived Version

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 06:57

by John Bates

A look behind the curtain at NOAA's climate data center.

I read with great irony recently that scientists are ''frantically copying U.S. Climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump'' (e.g., Washington Post 13 December 2016). As a climate scientist formerly responsible for NOAA's climate archive, the most critical issue in archival of climate data is actually scientists who are unwilling to formally archive and document their data. I spent the last decade cajoling climate scientists to archive their data and fully document the datasets. I established a climate data records program that was awarded a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal in 2014 for visionary work in the acquisition, production, and preservation of climate data records (CDRs), which accurately describe the Earth's changing environment.

The most serious example of a climate scientist not archiving or documenting a critical climate dataset was the study of Tom Karl et al. 2015 (hereafter referred to as the Karl study or K15), purporting to show no 'hiatus' in global warming in the 2000s (Federal scientists say there never was any global warming ''pause''). The study drew criticism from other climate scientists, who disagreed with K15's conclusion about the 'hiatus.' (Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown). The paper also drew the attention of the Chairman of the House Science Committee, Representative Lamar Smith, who questioned the timing of the report, which was issued just prior to the Obama Administration's Clean Power Plan submission to the Paris Climate Conference in 2015.

In the following sections, I provide the details of how Mr. Karl failed to disclose critical information to NOAA, Science Magazine, and Chairman Smith regarding the datasets used in K15. I have extensive documentation that provides independent verification of the story below. I also provide my suggestions for how we might keep such a flagrant manipulation of scientific integrity guidelines and scientific publication standards from happening in the future. Finally, I provide some links to examples of what well documented CDRs look like that readers might contrast and compare with what Mr. Karl has provided.

Background

In 2013, prior to the Karl study, the National Climatic Data Center [NCDC, now the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)] had just adopted much improved processes for formal review of Climate Data Records, a process I formulated [link]. The land temperature dataset used in the Karl study had never been processed through the station adjustment software before, which led me to believe something was amiss. When I pressed the co-authors, they said they had decided not to archive the dataset, but did not defend the decision. One of the co-authors said there were 'some decisions [he was] not happy with'. The data used in the K15 paper were only made available through a web site, not in digital form, and lacking proper versioning and any notice that they were research and not operational data. I was dumbstruck that Tom Karl, the NCEI Director in charge of NOAA's climate data archive, would not follow the policy of his own Agency nor the guidelines in Science magazine for dataset archival and documentation.

I questioned another co-author about why they choose to use a 90% confidence threshold for evaluating the statistical significance of surface temperature trends, instead of the standard for significance of 95% '-- he also expressed reluctance and did not defend the decision. A NOAA NCEI supervisor remarked how it was eye-opening to watch Karl work the co-authors, mostly subtly but sometimes not, pushing choices to emphasize warming. Gradually, in the months after K15 came out, the evidence kept mounting that Tom Karl constantly had his 'thumb on the scale''--in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets'--in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.

Defining an Operational Climate Data Record

For nearly two decades, I've advocated that if climate datasets are to be used in important policy decisions, they must be fully documented, subject to software engineering management and improvement processes, and be discoverable and accessible to the public with rigorous information preservation standards. I was able to implement such policies, with the help of many colleagues, through the NOAA Climate Data Record policies (CDR) [link].

Once the CDR program was funded, beginning in 2007, I was able to put together a team and pursue my goals of operational processing of important climate data records emphasizing the processes required to transition research datasets into operations (known as R2O). Figure 1 summarizes the steps required to accomplish this transition in the key elements of software code, documentation, and data.

Figure 1. Research to operations transition process methodology from Bates et al. 2016.

Unfortunately, the NCDC/NCEI surface temperature processing group was split on whether to adopt this process, with scientist Dr. Thomas C. Peterson (a co-author on K15, now retired from NOAA) vigorously opposing it. Tom Karl never required the surface temperature group to use the rigor of the CDR methodology, although a document was prepared identifying what parts of the surface temperature processing had to be improved to qualify as an operational CDR.

Tom Karl liked the maturity matrix so much, he modified the matrix categories so that he could claim a number of NCEI products were ''Examples of ''Gold'' standard NCEI Products (Data Set Maturity Matrix Model Level 6).'' See his NCEI overview presentation all NCEI employees [ncei-overview-2015nov-2 ] were told to use, even though there had never been any maturity assessment of any of the products.

NCDC/NCEI surface temperature processing and archival

In the fall of 2012, the monthly temperature products issued by NCDC were incorrect for 3 months in a row [link]. As a result, the press releases and datasets had to be withdrawn and reissued. Dr. Mary Kicza, then the NESDIS Associate Administrator (the parent organization of NCDC/NCEI in NOAA), noted that these repeated errors reflected poorly on NOAA and required NCDC/NCEI to improve its software management processes so that such mistakes would be minimized in the future. Over the next several years, NCDC/NCEI had an incident report conducted to trace these errors and recommend corrective actions.

Following those and other recommendations, NCDN/NCEI began to implement new software management and process management procedures, adopting some of the elements of the CDR R2O process. In 2014 a NCDC/NCEI Science Council was formed to review new science activities and to review and approve new science products for operational release. A draft operational readiness review (ORR) was prepared and used for approval of all operational product releases, which was finalized and formally adopted in January 2015. Along with this process, a contractor who had worked at the CMMI Institute (CMMI, Capability Maturity Model Integration, is a software engineering process level improvement training and appraisal program) was hired to improve software processes, with a focus on improvement and code rejuvenation of the surface temperature processing code, in particular the GHCN-M dataset.

The first NCDC/NCEI surface temperature software to be put through this rejuvenation was the pairwise homogeneity adjustment portion of processing for the GHCN-Mv4 beta release of October 2015. The incident report had found that there were unidentified coding errors in the GHCN-M processing that caused unpredictable results and different results every time code was run.

The generic flow of data used in processing of the NCDC/NCEI global temperature product suite is shown schematically in Figure 2. There are three steps to the processing, and two of the three steps are done separately for the ocean versus land data. Step 1 is the compilation of observations either from ocean sources or land stations. Step 2 involves applying various adjustments to the data, including bias adjustments, and provides as output the adjusted and unadjusted data on a standard grid. Step 3 involves application of a spatial analysis technique (empirical orthogonal teleconnections, EOTs) to merge and smooth the ocean and land surface temperature fields and provide these merged fields as anomaly fields for ocean, land and global temperatures. This is the product used in K15. Rigorous ORR for each of these steps in the global temperature processing began at NCDC in early 2014.Figure 2. Generic data flow for NCDC/NCEI surface temperature products.

In K15, the authors describe that the land surface air temperature dataset included the GHCN-M station data and also the new ISTI (Integrated Surface Temperature Initiative) data that was run through the then operational GHCN-M bias correction and gridding program (i.e., Step 2 of land air temperature processing in Figure 2). They further indicated that this processing and subsequent corrections were 'essentially the same as those used in GHCN-Monthly version 3'. This may have been the case; however, doing so failed to follow the process that had been initiated to ensure the quality and integrity of datasets at NCDC/NCEI.

The GHCN-M V4 beta was put through an ORR in October 2015; the presentation made it clear that any GHCN-M version using the ISTI dataset should, and would, be called version 4. This is confirmed by parsing the file name actually used on the FTP site for the K15 dataset [link]; NOTE: placing a non-machine readable copy of a dataset on an FTP site does not constitute archiving a dataset). One file is named 'box.12.adj.4.a.1.20150119', where 'adj' indicates adjusted (passed through step 2 of the land processing) and '4.a.1' means version 4 alpha run 1; the entire name indicating GHCN-M version 4a run 1. That is, the folks who did the processing for K15 and saved the file actually used the correct naming and versioning, but K15 did not disclose this. Clearly labeling the dataset would have indicated this was a highly experimental early GHCN-M version 4 run rather than a routine, operational update. As such, according to NOAA scientific integrity guidelines, it would have required a disclaimer not to use the dataset for routine monitoring.

In August 2014, in response to the continuing software problems with GHCNMv3.2.2 (version of August 2013), the NCDC Science Council was briefed about a proposal to subject the GHCNMv3 software, and particularly the pairwise homogeneity analysis portion, to a rigorous software rejuvenation effort to bring it up to CMMI level 2 standards and resolve the lingering software errors. All software has errors and it is not surprising there were some, but the magnitude of the problem was significant and a rigorous process of software improvement like the one proposed was needed. However, this effort was just beginning when the K15 paper was submitted, and so K15 must have used data with some experimental processing that combined aspects of V3 and V4 with known flaws. The GHCNMv3.X used in K15 did not go through any ORR process, and so what precisely was done is not documented. The ORR package for GHCNMv4 beta (in October 2015) uses the rejuvenated software and also includes two additional quality checks versus version 3.

Which version of the GHCN-M software K15 used is further confounded by the fact that GHCNMv3.3.0, the upgrade from version 3.2.2, only went through an ORR in April 2015 (i.e., after the K15 paper was submitted and revised). The GHCN-Mv3.3.0 ORR presentation demonstrated that the GHCN-M version changes between V3.2.2 and V3.3.0 had impacts on rankings of warmest years and trends. The data flow that was operational in June 2015 is shown in figure 3.

Figure 3. Data flow for surface temperature products described in K15 Science paper. Green indicates operational datasets having passed ORR and archived at time of publication. Red indicates experimental datasets never subject to ORR and never archived.

It is clear that the actual nearly-operational release of GHCN-Mv4 beta is significantly different from the version GHCNM3.X used in K15. Since the version GHCNM3.X never went through any ORR, the resulting dataset was also never archived, and it is virtually impossible to replicate the result in K15.

At the time of the publication of the K15, the final step in processing the NOAAGlobalTempV4 had been approved through an ORR, but not in the K15 configuration. It is significant that the current operational version of NOAAGlobalTempV4 uses GHCN-M V3.3.0 and does not include the ISTI dataset used in the Science paper. The K15 global merged dataset is also not archived nor is it available in machine-readable form. This is why the two boxes in figure 3 are colored red.

The lack of archival of the GHCN-M V3.X and the global merged product is also in violation of Science policy on making data available [link]. This policy states: ''Climate data. Data should be archived in the NOAA climate repository or other public databases''. Did Karl et al. disclose to Science Magazine that they would not be following the NOAA archive policy, would not archive the data, and would only provide access to a non-machine readable version only on an FTP server?

For ocean temperatures, the ERSST version 4 is used in the K15 paper and represents a major update from the previous version. The bias correction procedure was changed and this resulted in different SST anomalies and different trends during the last 15+ years relative to ERSST version 3. ERSSTV4 beta, a pre-operational release, was briefed to the NCDC Science Council and approved on 30 September 2014.

The ORR for ERSSTV4, the operational release, took place in the NCDC Science Council on 15 January 2015. The ORR focused on process and questions about some of the controversial scientific choices made in the production of that dataset will be discussed in a separate post. The review went well and there was only one point of discussion on process. One slide in the presentation indicated that operational release was to be delayed to coincide with Karl et al. 2015 Science paper release. Several Science Council members objected to this, noting the K15 paper did not contain any further methodological information'--all of that had already been published and thus there was no rationale to delay the dataset release. After discussion, the Science Council voted to approve the ERSSTv4 ORR and recommend immediate release.

The Science Council reported this recommendation to the NCDC Executive Council, the highest NCDC management board. In the NCDC Executive Council meeting, Tom Karl did not approve the release of ERSSTv4, noting that he wanted its release to coincide with the release of the next version of GHCNM (GHCNMv3.3.0) and NOAAGlobalTemp. Those products each went through an ORR at NCDC Science Council on 9 April 2015, and were used in operations in May. The ERSSTv4 dataset, however, was still not released. NCEI used these new analyses, including ERSSTv4, in its operational global analysis even though it was not being operationally archived. The operational version of ERSSTv4 was only released to the public following publication of the K15 paper. The withholding of the operational version of this important update came in the middle of a major ENSO event, thereby depriving the public of an important source of updated information, apparently for the sole purpose of Mr. Karl using the data in his paper before making the data available to the public.

So, in every aspect of the preparation and release of the datasets leading into K15, we find Tom Karl's thumb on the scale pushing for, and often insisting on, decisions that maximize warming and minimize documentation. I finally decided to document what I had found using the climate data record maturity matrix approach. I did this and sent my concerns to the NCEI Science Council in early February 2016 and asked to be added to the agenda of an upcoming meeting. I was asked to turn my concerns into a more general presentation on requirements for publishing and archiving. Some on the Science Council, particularly the younger scientists, indicated they had not known of the Science requirement to archive data and were not aware of the open data movement. They promised to begin an archive request for the K15 datasets that were not archived; however I have not been able to confirm they have been archived. I later learned that the computer used to process the software had suffered a complete failure, leading to a tongue-in-cheek joke by some who had worked on it that the failure was deliberate to ensure the result could never be replicated.

Where do we go from here?

I have wrestled for a long time about what to do about this incident. I finally decided that there needs to be systemic change both in the operation of government data centers and in scientific publishing, and I have decided to become an advocate for such change. First, Congress should re-introduce and pass the OPEN Government Data Act. The Act states that federal datasets must be archived and made available in machine readable form, neither of which was done by K15. The Act was introduced in the last Congress and the Senate passed it unanimously in the lame duck session, but the House did not. This bodes well for re-introduction and passage in the new Congress.

However, the Act will be toothless without an enforcement mechanism. For that, there should be mandatory, independent certification of federal data centers. As I noted, the scientists working in the trenches would actually welcome this, as the problem has been one of upper management taking advantage of their position to thwart the existing executive orders and a lack of process adopted within Agencies at the upper levels. Only an independent, outside body can provide the needed oversight to ensure Agencies comply with the OPEN Government Data Act.

Similarly, scientific publishers have formed the Coalition on Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences (COPDESS) with a signed statement of commitment to ensure open and documented datasets are part of the publication process. Unfortunately, they, too, lack any standard checklist that peer reviewers and editors can use to ensure the statement of commitment is actually enforced. In this case, and for assessing archives, I would advocate a metric such as the data maturity model that I and colleagues have developed. This model has now been adopted and adapted by several different groups, applied to hundreds of datasets across the geophysical sciences, and has been found useful for ensuring information preservation, discovery, and accessibility.

Finally, there needs to be a renewed effort by scientists and scientific societies to provide training and conduct more meetings on ethics. Ethics needs to be a regular topic at major scientific meetings, in graduate classrooms, and in continuing professional education. Respectful discussion of different points of view should be encouraged. Fortunately, there is initial progress to report here, as scientific societies are now coming to grips with the need for discussion of and guidelines for scientific ethics.

There is much to do in each of these areas. Although I have retired from the federal government, I have not retired from being a scientist. I now have the luxury of spending more time on these things that I am most passionate about. I also appreciate the opportunity to contribute to Climate Etc. and work with my colleague and friend Judy on these important issues.

Postlude

A couple of examples of how the public can find and use CDR operational products, and what is lacking in a non-operational and non-archived product

NOAA CDR of total solar irradiance '' this is the highest level quality. Start at web site '' https://data.nodc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/iso?id=gov.noaa.ncdc:C00828Here you will see a fully documented CDR. At the top, we have the general description and how to cite the data. Then below, you have a set of tabs with extensive information. Click each tab to see how it's done. Note, for example, that in 'documentation' you have choices to get the general documentation, processing documents including source code, data flow diagram, and the algorithm theoretical basis document ATBD which includes all the info about how the product is generated, and then associated resources. This also includes a permanent digital object identifier (doi) to point uniquely to this dataset.

NOAA CDR of mean layer temperature '' RSS '' one generation behind in documentation but still quite good '' https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdr/fundamental/mean-layer-temperature-rssHere on the left you will find the documents again that are required to pass the CDR operations and archival. Even though it's a slight cut below TSI in example 1, a user has all they need to use and understand this.

The Karl hiatus paper can be found on NCEI here '' https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/recent-global-surface-warming-hiatusIf you follow the quick link 'Download the Data via FTP' you go here '' ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/scpub201506/

The contents of this FTP site were entered into the NCEI archive following my complaint to the NCEI Science Council. However, the artifacts for full archival of an operational CDR are not included, so this is not compliant with archival standards.

Biosketch:

John Bates received his Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1986. Post Ph.D., he spent his entire career at NOAA, until his retirement in 2016. He spent the last 14 years of his career at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (now NCEI) as a Principal Scientist, where he served as a Supervisory Meteorologist until 2012.

Dr. Bates' technical expertise lies in atmospheric sciences, and his interests include satellite observations of the global water and energy cycle, air-sea interactions, and climate variability. His most highly cited papers are in observational studies of long term variability and trends in atmospheric water vapor and clouds.

NOAA Administrator's Award 2004 for ''outstanding administration and leadership in developing a new division to meet the challenges to NOAA in the area of climate applications related to remotely sensed data''. He was awarded a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal in 2014 for visionary work in the acquisition, production, and preservation of climate data records (CDRs). He has held elected positions at the American Geophysical Union (AGU), including Member of the AGU Council and Member of the AGU Board. He has played a leadership role in data management for the AGU.

He is currently President of John Bates Consulting Inc., which puts his recent experience and leadership in data management to use in helping clients improve data management to improve their preservation, discovery, and exploitation of their and others data. He has developed and applied techniques for assessing both organizational and individual data management and applications. These techniques help identify how data can be managed more cost effectively and discovered and applied by more users.

David Rose in the Mail on Sunday

David Rose of the UK Mail on Sunday is working on a comprehensive expose of this issue [link].

Here are the comments that I provided to David Rose, some of which were included in his article:

Here is what I think the broader implications are. Following ClimateGate, I made a public plea for greater transparency in climate data sets, including documentation. In the U.S., John Bates has led the charge in developing these data standards and implementing them. So it is very disturbing to see the institution that is the main U.S. custodian of climate data treat this issue so cavalierly, violating its own policy. The other concern that I raised following ClimateGate was overconfidence and inadequate assessments of uncertainty. Large adjustments to the raw data, and substantial changes in successive data set versions, imply substantial uncertainties. The magnitude of these uncertainties influences how we interpret observed temperature trends, 'warmest year' claims, and how we interpret differences between observations and climate model simulations. I also raised concerns about bias; here we apparently see Tom Karl's thumb on the scale in terms of the methodologies and procedures used in this publication.

Apart from the above issues, how much difference do these issues make to our overall understanding of global temperature change? All of the global surface temperature data sets employ NOAA's GHCN land surface temperatures. The NASA GISS data set also employs the ERSST datasets for ocean surface temperatures. There are global surface temperature datasets, such as Berkeley Earth and HadCRUT that are relatively independent of the NOAA data sets, that agree qualitatively with the new NOAA data set. However, there remain large, unexplained regional discrepancies between the NOAA land surface temperatures and the raw data. Further, there are some very large uncertainties in ocean sea surface temperatures, even in recent decades. Efforts by the global numerical weather prediction centers to produce global reanalyses such as the European Copernicus effort is probably the best way forward for the most recent decades.

Regarding uncertainty, 'warmest year', etc. there is a good article in the WSJ: Change would be healthy at U.S. climate agencies (hockeyshtick has reproduced the full article).

I also found this recent essay in phys.org to be very germane: Certainty in complex scientific research an unachievable goal. Researchers do a good job of estimating the size of errors in measurements but underestimate chance of large errors.

Backstory

I have known John Bates for about 25 years, and he served on the Ph.D. committees of two of my graduate students. There is no one, anywhere, that is a greater champion for data integrity and transparency.

When I started Climate Etc., John was one of the few climate scientists that contacted me, sharing concerns about various ethical issues in our field.

Shortly after publication of K15, John and I began discussing our concerns about the paper. I encouraged him to come forward publicly with his concerns. Instead, he opted to try to work within the NOAA system to address the issues ''to little effect. Upon his retirement from NOAA in November 2016, he decided to go public with his concerns.

He submitted an earlier, shorter version of this essay to the Washington Post, in response to the 13 December article (climate scientists frantically copying data). The WaPo rejected his op-ed, so he decided to publish at Climate Etc.

In the meantime, David Rose contacted me about a month ago, saying he would be in Atlanta covering a story about a person unjustly imprisoned [link]. He had an extra day in Atlanta, and wanted to get together. I told him I wasn't in Atlanta, but put him in contact with John Bates. David Rose and his editor were excited about what John had to say.

I have to wonder how this would have played out if we had issued a press release in the U.S., or if this story was given to pretty much any U.S. journalist working for the mainstream media. Under the Obama administration, I suspect that it would have been very difficult for this story to get any traction. Under the Trump administration, I have every confidence that this will be investigated (but still not sure how the MSM will react).

Well, it will be interesting to see how this story evolves, and most importantly, what policies can be put in place to prevent something like this from happening again.

I will have another post on this topic in a few days.

Being retired sure is liberating . . .

Moderation note: As with all guest posts, please keep your comments civil and relevant.

Hey Adam I am an athlete at The University of Arkansas majoring in buisness and marketing. One of the classes that I am required to take is sociology, we were given a quiz in which I scored a 100%. THEY ARE TRYING TO BRAINWASH US! Attached are the two questions I am reffering to. Thank you for your media assination.

Link to Article

Archived Version

Thu, 09 Feb 2017 02:47

German originsEditThis tactic was developed following increased use of police force following the 1977 Brokdorf demonstration[5][6][7] by the German police in 1980, particularly aimed at anti-nuclear activists and squatters. Key areas for this development were HafenstraŸe, Hamburg, and Kreuzberg, Berlin. These were social spaces occupied by dissidents who preferred to create their own social institutions based on communal living and alternative community centres. In June 1980, the German Police forcefully evicted the Free Republic of Wendland, an anti-nuclear protest camp in Gorleben, Wendland. This attack on 5,000 peaceful protesters led many former pacifists to become willing to use violent methods. By December 1980 the Berlin City Government organised an escalating cycle of mass arrests, followed by other local authorities across West Germany. The squatters resisted by opening new squats, as the old ones were evicted. Following the mass arrest of squatters in Freiburg, demonstrations were held in their support in many German cities. The day was dubbed Black Friday following a demonstration in Berlin at which between 15,000 and 20,000 people took to the streets and destroyed an expensive shopping area. The tactic of wearing identical black clothes and masks meant that the autonomen were better able to resist the police and elude identification. The German media labeled them der schwarze Block ("the black block").

In 1986 Hamburg squatters mobilised following attacks on the HafenstraŸe. A demonstration of 10,000 took to the streets surrounding at least 1,500 people in a black bloc. They carried a large banner saying "Build Revolutionary Dual Power!" At the end of the march, the black bloc then engaged in street fighting that forced the police to retreat. The next day 13 department stores in Hamburg were set alight, causing nearly $10 million in damage. Later that year, following the Chernobyl disaster, militant anti-nuclear activists used the tactic.

On 1 May 1987, demonstrators in Berlin-Kreuzberg were confronted by West Germanpolice.[8] After this, thousands of people attacked the police with rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails. The riots became famous after the police had to completely pull out of the so-called "SO 36" Neighborhood in Kreuzberg for several hours, and rioters looted shops together with residents.[9]

When Ronald Reagan came to Berlin in June 1987, he was met by around 50,000 demonstrators protesting against his Cold War policies. This included a black bloc of 3,000 people. In November 1987, the residents were joined by thousands of other protesters and fortified their squat, built barricades in the streets and defended themselves against the police for nearly 24 hours. After this the city authorities legalised the squatters residence.

On 1 May 1988, radical left groups organised a May Day demonstration through Berlin-Kreuzberg, ending in riots even heavier than the year before. The police were attacked with steel balls fired by slingshots, stones, fireworks and Molotov cocktails. On 2 May, headline of the Berlin newspaper BZ was "Beirut?? Nein, das ist Berlin!" (Beirut?? No, it's Berlin!). The riots finally became a tradition in Berlin-Kreuzberg and have recurred every 1 May since, but never as fatally as in the first two years.[10] When the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund met in Berlin in 1988, the autonomen hosted an international gathering of anti-capitalist activists. Numbering around 80,000, the protesters greatly outnumbered the police. Officials tried to maintain control by banning all demonstrations and attacking public assemblies. Nevertheless, there were riots and upmarket shopping areas were destroyed.[11][12]

21st centuryEditIn the period after the Berlin Wall, the German black bloc movement continued traditional riots such as May Day in Berlin-Kreuzberg, but with decreasing intensity. Their main focus became the struggle against the recurring popularity of Neo-Nazism in Germany. The "turn" came in June 2007, during the 33rd G8 summit. A black bloc of 2,000 people built barricades, set cars alight and attacked the police during a mass demonstration in Rostock.[13] 400 police officers were injured, and also about 500 demonstrators and activists. According to the German Verfassungsschutz, the weeks of organisation before the demonstration and the riots themselves were amounted to a revival for the militant left in Germany. Since the "Battle of Rostock", traditional "May Day Riots" after demonstrations every 1 May in Berlin, and since 2008 also in Hamburg, became more intense, and violence of the autonomen against police officers and political enemies at demonstrations of radical left groups have dramatically increased.[14] In Egypt after the Egyptian revolution in year 2013 Egyptian Black Bloc Movement appeared to protest against President Mohamed Morsi policies and protect protesters from the police violence.[citation needed]

On the day of PresidentDonald Trump's inauguration, the strategy was employed at Washington D.C. and at other protests. This was reported by the Washington Post, by independent people on social networks and the British online newspaper The Independent.[15][16][17]

On February 1st, 2017, controversial conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos was forced to cancel an event at the University of California, Berkeley, after members of a black bloc broke windows, shot fireworks, and caused a light fixture to catch fire.[18] The cancellation of the event brought mainstream attention to anarchism and black bloc tactics,[19] while also triggering a larger conversation about the role of violence in protest movements.[20]

International developmentEditNorth AmericaEditThe first recorded use of the tactic in United States of America occurred at the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C. on 17 October 1988. Over one thousand demonstrators'--a small number consisting of a black bloc'--called for the end to U.S. support for the right wing death squads in El Salvador.[21] Other early use in the US were the Earth Day Wall Street Action in 1990 and the February 1991 protests against the Gulf War.[citation needed] These were initiated by Love and Rage, a North American revolutionary anarchist organization active in New York. Black blocs gained significant media attention when a black bloc caused damage to property of GAP, Starbucks, Old Navy, and other retail locations in downtown Seattle during the 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations.[22] They were a common feature of subsequent anti-globalization protests.[23] During the 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto, a black bloc riot damaged a number of retail locations including an Urban Outfitters, American Apparel, Adidas Store, Starbucks and many banking establishments.[24][25]

BrazilEditDuring the June''July 2013 mass public demonstrations, a group of people who identified themselves as "Black Blocs" started attending demonstrations, especially those held across the street from governor of Rio de Janeiro State S(C)rgio Cabral's residence and the state government palace.[26][27] Police face accusations of infiltrating the movement and, at times, acting as agents provocateurs by starting confrontations. Many leftists claim that video footage shows an infiltrated police officer throwing a molotov cocktail that wounded a riot policeman, although this has been denied by the police and hasn't been proven until today (2017).[28] Protester violence occurred regularly during the Brazilian protests (particularly the week of 17 to 21 June) even when not linked with the black bloc, or with police infiltration.[29][30]

Despite the denunciations by media, police, and even some activists, the black bloc tactic persisted in the movement. By October 2013, "The mask-wearers were welcomed by the protesters who wanted to wreak havoc during manifestations...Indeed, this sense of solidarity amidst the demonstrations, this shared manning of barricades, inspires a common determination to fight against the fear of repression." According to a report by two Brazilian leftists published in Al Jazeera, this coincided with a revival in the breadth of the street protests that had not been seen since its early days in June.[31] On 10 October, the Rio teacher's union (Sepe) officially declared support for the recent black bloc actions, stating that the bloc were "welcome" at their demonstrations. Postings on teacher Facebook groups praised bloc participants as "fearless."[32][33]

United KingdomEditA group of about 400 black bloc demonstrators took part in the 2011 London anti-cuts protest where they attacked various high end retail outlets; according to journalist Paul Mason this may have been the largest ever black bloc assembly in the UK. Mason says some of the participants were anarchists from Europe, others were British students radicalised after participation in the 2010 UK student protests.[34]

EgyptEditOn 25 January 2013, on the second anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution, black blocs made an appearance in the Egyptian political scenes where they have reportedly[35] attacked various Muslim Brotherhood headquarters and government buildings and stopped traffic and metro lines in more than 8 cities.[36][37][38][39][40] A group of young protesters, who identified themselves as the "Black Bloc", have marked the second anniversary of the Egyptian revolution by blocking the tramway tracks in Alexandria on Friday.[41][42][43] Egyptian Prosecutor General Talaat Abdallah ordered the police and armed forces to arrest any participant in the Black Bloc, pointing out that the group was carrying out "terrorist activities"[44] and is considered by the government and under the new Constitution a violent radical outlaw group.[45]

ItalyEdit

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it.(February 2013)Police infiltrationEditOn occasion, police and security services have infiltrated black blocs, apparently for purposes of investigation. Allegations first surfaced after several demonstrations. At the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, amongst the many complaints about the police[46] there was mention of video footage which "suggests that men in black were seen getting out of police vans near protest marches."[47] In August 2007, Quebec police admitted that "their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators" in Montebello. However, the officers purportedly did not engage in violence, and claimed that they were carrying rocks because other protesters were doing so. They were identified by genuine protesters because of their police-issue footwear.[48][49] According to veteran activist Harsha Walia, it was other participants in the black bloc who identified and exposed the undercover police.[50]

There is no evidence that the black bloc tactic is particularly vulnerable to infiltration, however, as investigatory '' and even agent provocateur '' activity has taken place regularly among completely nonviolent, non-"black bloc" campaigns. In 2003, the Oakland, California Police Department infiltrated a group of demonstrators protesting police brutality and the war in Iraq at the port; subpoenaed private comments by Captain Howard Jordan indicate that his plan was to steer the march away from the police station in order to avoid confrontation. In internal documents, Jordan mentioned this strategy was common in other police departments, including San Francisco and Seattle."[51]

When we smash a window, we aim to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that surrounds private property rights '... After N30 [30 November], many people will never see a shop window or a hammer the same way again. The potential uses of an entire cityscape have increased a thousand-fold. The number of broken windows pales in comparison to the number of spells'--spells cast by a corporate hegemony to lull us into forgetfulness of all the violence committed in the name of private property rights and of all the potential of a society without them. Broken windows can be boarded and eventually replaced, but the shattering of assumptions will hopefully persist for some time to come.

ACME Collective, quoted in Paris (2003)[52]Tactics of a black bloc primarily include offensive measures such as street fighting, vandalism of private property, rioting, and demonstrating without a permit. Tactics can also include use of defensive measures such as misleading the authorities, assisting in the escape of people arrested by the police ("un-arrests' or "de-arrests"), administering first aid to persons affected by tear gas, rubber bullets and other riot control measures in areas where protesters are barred from entering, building barricades, resisting the police, and practicing jail solidarity.[53][54][55] Property destruction carried out by black blocs tends to have symbolic significance: common targets include banks, institutional buildings, outlets for multinational corporations, gasoline stations, and video-surveillance cameras.[56]

There may be several blocs within a particular protest, with different aims and tactics.[57] As an ad hoc group, blocs often share no universally common set of principles or beliefs[57] apart from an adherence to'--usually'--radical left or autonomist values, although some anarchist groups have called for the Saint Paul Principles to be adapted as a framework in which diverse tactics can be deployed.[56] A few radical right-wing groups, like some of the "autonomous nationalists" of Europe[58] or the Australian so-called "National-Anarchists"[59] have adopted "black bloc" tactics and dress.

In 2000, some months after the Battle of Seattle and the A16 protests against the IMF in Washington DC, the Green Mountain Anarchist Collective (based out of rural Vermont), called for Black Bloc activities to be coordinated on the tactical level, through the temporary election of street officers democratically empowered to make fast tactical decisions, especially concerning movement, while in confrontation with state police forces. This collective also called for Black Bloc actions to entail reserve groups, who could be called into a clash by these elected officers. These proposals were mapped out in the first edition of the pamphlet Communique on Tactics. The pamphlet was controversial within the anarchist community. Some anarchists attacked this approach be being too formal and bordering on Leninist in structure. The Green Mountain Anarchist Collective countered that the direct election of tactical officers was historically in line with the CNT and FAI anarchist militias during the Spanish Civil War. Of those early segments of the anarchist scene that agreed, in principle, with these assertions were the Barricada Collective (Boston, MA) and Columbus Anti-Racist Action (Ohio). The Barricada Collective, in their publication of the same name, published the pamphlet, and also wrote their own essays calling for a more nuanced and more militant use of the Black Bloc in the North American anarchist movement. In July 2001 the Green Mountain Anarchist Collective would go on to produce a second edition of the Communique on Tactics[60] pamphlet in cooperation with Columbus ARA. This second edition further refined the proposal to suggest, among other things, that large Black Blocs, composed of numerous affinity groups, could reach a further level of tactical sophistication by each affinity group further specializing their capabilities (i.e. offense, defense, recon, etc.) and by investing coordinating ability to the elected officer core. This pamphlet, like the first, was debated among anarchists. Aspects of these tactical reforms were field tested with some success at the Festival De La Pueblo 5 May March in Boston in 2002, and the siege of the Lewiston Armory (in opposition to a failed neo-Nazi organizing meeting), Maine, 2003. Both these actions were organized largely by the Northeast Federation of Anarcho-Communist (whom the Green Mountain Anarchist Collective and Barricada were then affiliated).

Link to Article

Archived Version

Thu, 09 Feb 2017 04:29

The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, ensuring that there is no prohibition on the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble, or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights was originally proposed to assuage Anti-Federalist opposition to Constitutional ratification. Initially, the First Amendment applied only to laws enacted by the Congress, and many of its provisions were interpreted more narrowly than they are today. Beginning with Gitlow v. New York (1925), the Supreme Court applied the First Amendment to states'--a process known as incorporation'--through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the Court drew on Thomas Jefferson's correspondence to call for "a wall of separation between church and State", though the precise boundary of this separation remains in dispute. Speech rights were expanded significantly in a series of 20th and 21st-century court decisions which protected various forms of political speech, anonymous speech, campaign financing, pornography, and school speech; these rulings also defined a series of exceptions to First Amendment protections. The Supreme Court overturned English common law precedent to increase the burden of proof for defamation and libel suits, most notably in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). Commercial speech, however, is less protected by the First Amendment than political speech, and is therefore subject to greater regulation.

The Free Press Clause protects publication of information and opinions, and applies to a wide variety of media. In Near v. Minnesota (1931) and New York Times v. United States (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected against prior restraint'--pre-publication censorship'--in almost all cases. The Petition Clause protects the right to petition all branches and agencies of government for action. In addition to the right of assembly guaranteed by this clause, the Court has also ruled that the amendment implicitly protects freedom of association.

TextThe amendment as adopted in 1791 reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[1]

The hand-written copy of the proposed Bill of Rights, 1789, cropped to just show the text that would later be ratified as the First AmendmentBackgroundIn 1776, the second year of the American Revolutionary War, the Virginia colonial legislature passed a Declaration of Rights that included the sentence "The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic Governments." Eight of the other thirteen states made similar pledges. However, these declarations were generally considered "mere admonitions to state legislatures", rather than enforceable provisions.

After several years of comparatively weak government under the Articles of Confederation, a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia proposed a new constitution on September 17, 1787, featuring among other changes a stronger chief executive. George Mason, a Constitutional Convention delegate and the drafter of Virginia's Declaration of Rights, proposed that the Constitution include a bill of rights listing and guaranteeing civil liberties. Other delegates'--including future Bill of Rights drafter James Madison'--disagreed, arguing that existing state guarantees of civil liberties were sufficient and that any attempt to enumerate individual rights risked the implication that other, unnamed rights were unprotected. After a brief debate, Mason's proposal was defeated by a unanimous vote of the state delegations.

For the constitution to be ratified, however, nine of the thirteen states were required to approve it in state conventions. Opposition to ratification ("Anti-Federalism") was partly based on the Constitution's lack of adequate guarantees for civil liberties. Supporters of the Constitution in states where popular sentiment was against ratification (including Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York) successfully proposed that their state conventions both ratify the Constitution and call for the addition of a bill of rights. The U.S. Constitution was eventually ratified by all thirteen states. In the 1st United States Congress, following the state legislatures' request, James Madison proposed twenty constitutional amendments, and his proposed draft of the First Amendment read as follows:

The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed. The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable. The people shall not be restrained from peaceably assembling and consulting for their common good; nor from applying to the Legislature by petitions, or remonstrances, for redress of their grievances.[4]

This language was greatly condensed by Congress, and passed the House and Senate with almost no recorded debate, complicating future discussion of the Amendment's intent. The First Amendment, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, was submitted to the states for ratification on September 25, 1789, and adopted on December 15, 1791.[7][8]

Establishment of religionThomas Jefferson wrote with respect to the First Amendment and its restriction on the legislative branch of the federal government in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists (a religious minority concerned about the dominant position of the Congregationalist church in Connecticut):

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.[9]

In Reynolds v. United States (1878) the Supreme Court used these words to declare that "it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured. Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere [religious] opinion, but was left free to reach [only those religious] actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order." Quoting from Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom the court stated further in Reynolds:

In the preamble of this act [. . .] religious freedom is defined; and after a recital 'that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty', it is declared 'that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere [only] when [religious] principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order.' In these two sentences is found the true distinction between what properly belongs to the church and what to the State.

Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government, and some states continued official state religions after ratification. Massachusetts, for example, was officially Congregationalist until the 1830s.[10] In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the U.S. Supreme Court incorporated the Establishment Clause (i.e., made it apply against the states):

The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion to another . . . in the words of Jefferson, the [First Amendment] clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and State' . . . That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.[11]

In Torcaso v. Watkins (1961), the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution prohibits states and the federal government from requiring any kind of religious test for public office. In the Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994),[12] The Court concluded that "government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion."[13] In a series of cases in the first decade of the 2000s'--Van Orden v. Perry (2005), McCreary County v. ACLU (2005), and Salazar v. Buono (2010)'--the Court considered the issue of religious monuments on federal lands without reaching a majority reasoning on the subject.[14]

SeparationistsEverson used the metaphor of a wall of separation between church and state, derived from the correspondence of President Thomas Jefferson. It had been long established in the decisions of the Supreme Court, beginning with Reynolds v. United States in 1879, when the Court reviewed the history of the early Republic in deciding the extent of the liberties of Mormons. Chief Justice Morrison Waite, who consulted the historian George Bancroft, also discussed at some length the Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by James Madison,[16] who drafted the First Amendment; Madison used the metaphor of a "great barrier".[17]

In Everson, the Court adopted Jefferson's words.[15] The Court has affirmed it often, with majority, but not unanimous, support. Warren Nord, in Does God Make a Difference?, characterized the general tendency of the dissents as a weaker reading of the First Amendment; the dissents tend to be "less concerned about the dangers of establishment and less concerned to protect free exercise rights, particularly of religious minorities."[18]

Beginning with Everson, which permitted New Jersey school boards to pay for transportation to parochial schools, the Court has used various tests to determine when the wall of separation has been breached. Everson laid down the test that establishment existed when aid was given to religion, but that the transportation was justifiable because the benefit to the children was more important. In the school prayer cases of the early 1960s, (Engel v. Vitale and Abington School District v. Schempp), aid seemed irrelevant; the Court ruled on the basis that a legitimate action both served a secular purpose and did not primarily assist religion. In Walz v. Tax Commission (1970), the Court ruled that a legitimate action could not entangle government with religion; in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), these points were combined into the Lemon test, declaring that an action was an establishment if:[19]

the statute (or practice) lacked a secular purpose;its principal or primary effect advanced or inhibited religion; orit fostered an excessive government entanglement with religion.The Lemon test has been criticized by justices and legal scholars, but it remains the predominant means by which the Court enforces the Establishment Clause.[20] In Agostini v. Felton (1997), the entanglement prong of the Lemon test was demoted to simply being a factor in determining the effect of the challenged statute or practice.[21] In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the opinion of the Court considered secular purpose and the absence of primary effect; a concurring opinion saw both cases as having treated entanglement as part of the primary purpose test.[20] Further tests, such as the endorsement test and coercion test, have been developed to determine whether a government action violated the Establishment Clause.[22][23]

In Lemon the Court stated that the separation of church and state could never be absolute: "Our prior holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total separation is not possible in an absolute sense. Some relationship between government and religious organizations is inevitable", the court wrote. "Judicial caveats against entanglement must recognize that the line of separation, far from being a 'wall', is a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship."[24]

AccommodationistsAccommodationists, in contrast, argue along with Justice William O. Douglas that "[w]e are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being".[25] This group holds that the Lemon test should be applied selectively.[25] As such, for many conservatives, the Establishment Clause solely prevents the establishment of a state church, not public acknowledgements of God nor "developing policies that encourage general religious beliefs that do not favor a particular sect and are consistent with the secular government's goals."[26][27]

Free exercise of religion"Freedom of religion means freedom to hold an opinion or belief, but not to take action in violation of social duties or subversive to good order."[28] In Reynolds v. United States (1878), the Supreme Court found that while laws cannot interfere with religious belief and opinions, laws can be made to regulate some religious practices (e.g., human sacrifices, and the Hindu practice of suttee). The Court stated that to rule otherwise, "would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government would exist only in name under such circumstances."[29] In Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940), the Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendmentapplied the Free Exercise Clause to the states. While the right to have religious beliefs is absolute, the freedom to act on such beliefs is not absolute.[30]

In Sherbert v. Verner (1963),[31] the Supreme Court required states to meet the "strict scrutiny" standard when refusing to accommodate religiously motivated conduct. This meant that a government needed to have a "compelling interest" regarding such a refusal. The case involved Adele Sherbert, who was denied unemployment benefits by South Carolina because she refused to work on Saturdays, something forbidden by her Seventh-day Adventist faith.[32] In Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the Court ruled that a law that "unduly burdens the practice of religion" without a compelling interest, even though it might be "neutral on its face", would be unconstitutional.[33][34]

The need for a compelling governmental interest was narrowed in Employment Division v. Smith (1990),[35] which held no such interest was required under the Free Exercise Clause regarding a neutral law of general applicability that happens to affect a religious practice, as opposed to a law that targets a particular religious practice (which does require a compelling governmental interest).[36] In Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah (1993),[37] the Supreme Court ruled Hialeah had passed an ordinance banning ritual slaughter, a practice central to the Santer­a religion, while providing exceptions for some practices such as the kosher slaughter. Since the ordinance was not "generally applicable", the Court ruled that it needed to have a compelling interest, which it failed to have, and so was declared unconstitutional.[38]

In 1993, the Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), seeking to restore the compelling interest requirement applied in Sherbert and Yoder. In City of Boerne v. Flores (1997),[39] the Court struck down the provisions of RFRA that forced state and local governments to provide protections exceeding those required by the First Amendment, on the grounds that while the Congress could enforce the Supreme Court's interpretation of a constitutional right, the Congress could not impose its own interpretation on states and localities.[40] According to the court's ruling in Gonzales v. UDV (2006),[41] RFRA remains applicable to federal laws and so those laws must still have a "compelling interest".[42]

Freedom of speech and of the pressThe wording of the clauseThe First Amendment bars Congress from "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press'...." U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens commented about this phraseology in a 1993 journal article: "I emphasize the word 'the' in the term 'the freedom of speech' because the definite article suggests that the draftsmen intended to immunize a previously identified category or subset of speech." Stevens explained that, otherwise, the clause might absurdly immunize things like false testimony under oath.[43] Like Stevens, the journalist Anthony Lewis wrote: "The word 'the' can be read to mean what was understood at the time to be included in the concept of free speech." But what was understood at the time is not 100% clear. In the late 1790s, the lead author of the speech and press clauses, James Madison, argued against narrowing this freedom to what had existed under English common law:

The practice in America must be entitled to much more respect. In every state, probably, in the Union, the press has exerted a freedom in canvassing the merits and measures of public men, of every description, which has not been confined to the strict limits of the common law.[46]

Madison wrote this in 1799, when he was in a dispute about the constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Laws, which was legislation enacted in 1798 by President John Adams' Federalist Party to ban seditious libel. Madison believed that legislation to be unconstitutional, and his adversaries in that dispute, such as John Marshall, advocated the narrow freedom of speech that had existed in the English common law.[46]

Speech critical of the governmentThe Supreme Court declined to rule on the constitutionality of any federal law regarding the Free Speech Clause until the 20th century. For example, the Supreme Court never ruled on the Alien and Sedition Acts; three of the Supreme Court's justices (riding circuit) presided over resulting sedition trials without indicating any reservations. The leading critics of the law, Vice President Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, argued for the Acts' unconstitutionality based on the First Amendment and other Constitutional provisions. Jefferson succeeded Adams as president, in part due to the unpopularity of the latter's sedition prosecutions; he and his party quickly overturned the Acts and pardoned those imprisoned by them. In the majority opinion in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964),[50] the Court noted the importance of this public debate as a precedent in First Amendment law and ruled that the Acts had been unconstitutional: "Although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history."[51]

World War IDuring the patriotic fervor of World War I and the First Red Scare, the Espionage Act of 1917 imposed a maximum sentence of twenty years for anyone who caused or attempted to cause "insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States". Specifically, the Espionage Act of 1917 states that if anyone allows any enemies to enter or fly over the United States and obtain information from a place connected with the national defense, they will be punished.[53] Hundreds of prosecutions followed. In 1919, the Supreme Court heard four appeals resulting from these cases: Schenck v. United States, Debs v. United States, Frohwerk v. United States, and Abrams v. United States.

In the first of these cases, Socialist Party of America official Charles Schenck had been convicted under the Espionage Act for publishing leaflets urging resistance to the draft. Schenck appealed, arguing that the Espionage Act violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. In Schenck v. United States, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected Schenck's appeal and affirmed his conviction.[57] This conviction continued to be debated over whether Schenck went against the right to freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.[58] Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., writing for the Court, explained that "the question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."[59] One week later, in Frohwerk v. United States, the court again upheld an Espionage Act conviction, this time that of a journalist who had criticized U.S. involvement in foreign wars.

In Debs v. United States, the Court elaborated on the "clear and present danger" test established in Schenck.[61] On June 16, 1918, Eugene V. Debs, a political activist, delivered a speech in Canton, Ohio, in which he spoke of "most loyal comrades were paying the penalty to the working class '' these being Wagenknecht, Baker and Ruthenberg, who had been convicted of aiding and abetting another in failing to register for the draft."[62] Following his speech, Debs was charged and convicted under the Espionage Act. In upholding his conviction, the Court reasoned that although he had not spoken any words that posed a "clear and present danger", taken in context, the speech had a "natural tendency and a probable effect to obstruct the recruiting services".[63] In Abrams v. United States, four Russian refugees appealed their conviction for throwing leaflets from a building in New York; the leaflets argued against President Woodrow Wilson's intervention in Russia against the October Revolution. The majority upheld their conviction, but Holmes and Justice Louis Brandeis dissented, holding that the government had demonstrated no "clear and present danger" in the four's political advocacy.

Extending protectionsThe Supreme Court denied a number of Free Speech Clause claims throughout the 1920s, including the appeal of a labor organizer, Benjamin Gitlow, who had been convicted after distributing a manifesto calling for a "revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". In Gitlow v. New York (1925), the Court upheld the conviction, but a majority also found that the First Amendment applied to state laws as well as federal laws, via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Holmes and Brandeis dissented in several more cases in this decade, however, advancing the argument that the Free Speech Clause protected a far greater range of political speech than the Court had previously acknowledged. In Whitney v. California (1927),[68] in which Communist Party USA organizer Charlotte Anita Whitney had been arrested for "criminal syndicalism", Brandeis wrote a dissent in which he argued for broader protections for political speech:

Those who won our independence . . . believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.

In Herndon v. Lowry (1937), the Court heard the case of African American Communist Party organizer Angelo Herndon, who had been convicted under the Slave Insurrection Statute for advocating black rule in the southern United States. In a 5''4 decision, the Court reversed Herndon's conviction, upholding Holmes' "clear and present danger" test for the first time and arguing that the state of Georgia had not demonstrated that Herndon's actions met this standard.

In 1940, Congress enacted the Smith Act, making it illegal to advocate "the propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force and violence".[71] The statute provided law enforcement a tool to combat Communist leaders. After Eugene Dennis was convicted in the Foley Square trial for attempting to organize a Communist Party, he petitioned for certiorari, which the Supreme Court granted.[72] In Dennis v. United States (1951),[73] the Court upheld the law, 6''2.[a] Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson relied on Holmes' "clear and present danger" test as adapted by Learned Hand: "In each case [courts] must ask whether the gravity of the 'evil', discounted by its improbability, justifies such invasion of free speech as necessary to avoid the danger."[75] Clearly, Vinson suggested, clear and present danger did not intimate "that before the Government may act, it must wait until the putsch is about to be executed, the plans have been laid and the signal is awaited."[76] In a concurring opinion, Justice Felix Frankfurter proposed a "balancing test", which soon supplanted the "clear and present danger" test:

The demands of free speech in a democratic society as well as the interest in national security are better served by candid and informed weighing of the competing interests, within the confines of the judicial process.

In Yates v. United States (1957), the Supreme Court limited the Smith Act prosecutions to "advocacy of action" rather than "advocacy in the realm of ideas". Advocacy of abstract doctrine remained protected while speech explicitly inciting the forcible overthrow of the government was punishable under the Smith Act.[77]

During the Vietnam War, the Court's position on public criticism of the government changed drastically. Though the Court upheld a law prohibiting the forgery, mutilation, or destruction of draft cards in United States v. O'Brien (1968),[79] fearing that burning draft cards would interfere with the "smooth and efficient functioning" of the draft system,[80][81] the next year, the court handed down its decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969),[82] expressly overruling Whitney v. California. Now the Supreme Court referred to the right to speak openly of violent action and revolution in broad terms:

[Our] decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not allow a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or cause such action.[84]

Brandenburg discarded the "clear and present danger" test introduced in Schenck and further eroded Dennis.[85] In Cohen v. California (1971),[87] the Court voted 5''4 to reverse the conviction of a man wearing a jacket reading "Fuck the Draft" in the corridors of a Los Angeles County courthouse. Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote in the majority opinion that Cohen's jacket fell in the category of protected political speech despite the use of an expletive: "one man's vulgarity is another man's lyric."

Political speechAnonymous speechIn Talley v. California (1960),[89] the Court struck down a Los Angeles city ordinance that made it a crime to distribute anonymous pamphlets. Justice Hugo Black wrote in the majority opinion: "There can be no doubt that such an identification requirement would tend to restrict freedom to distribute information and thereby freedom of expression . . . . Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind."[90] In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995),[91] the Court struck down an Ohio statute that made it a crime to distribute anonymous campaign literature.[92] However, in Meese v. Keene (1987),[93] the Court upheld the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, under which several Canadian films were defined as "political propaganda", requiring their sponsors to be identified.[94]

Campaign financeIn Buckley v. Valeo (1976),[95] the Supreme Court reviewed the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and related laws, which restricted the monetary contributions that may be made to political campaigns and expenditure by candidates. The Court affirmed the constitutionality of limits on campaign contributions, stating that they "serve[d] the basic governmental interest in safeguarding the integrity of the electoral process without directly impinging upon the rights of individual citizens and candidates to engage in political debate and discussion."[96] However, the Court overturned the spending limits, which it found imposed "substantial restraints on the quantity of political speech."[97]

The court again scrutinized campaign finance regulation in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003).[99] The case centered on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), a federal law that imposed new restrictions on campaign financing. The Supreme Court upheld provisions which barred the raising of soft money by national parties and the use of soft money by private organizations to fund certain advertisements related to elections. However, the Court struck down the "choice of expenditure" rule, which required that parties could either make coordinated expenditures for all its candidates, or permit candidates to spend independently, but not both, which the Court agreed "placed an unconstitutional burden on the parties' right to make unlimited independent expenditures."[100] The Court also ruled that the provision preventing minors from making political contributions was unconstitutional, relying on Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.

In Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (2007),[101] the Court sustained an "as applied" challenge to BCRA, holding that issue ads may not be banned from the months preceding a primary or general election. In Davis v. Federal Election Commission (2008),[102] the Supreme Court declared the "Millionaire's Amendment" provisions of the BCRA to be unconstitutional. The Court held that easing BCRA restrictions for an opponent of a self-financing candidate spending at least $350,000 of his or her own money violated the freedom of speech of the self-financing candidate.[103]

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010),[104] the Court ruled that the BCRA's federal restrictions on electoral advocacy by corporations or unions were unconstitutional for violating the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The Court overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990),[105] which had upheld a state law that prohibited corporations from using treasury funds to support or oppose candidates in elections did not violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments. The Court also overruled the portion of McConnell that upheld such restrictions under the BCRA.[106] In other words, the ruling was considered to hold that "political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment".[107]

In McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014),[108] the Court ruled that federal aggregate limits on how much a person can donate to candidates, political parties, and political action committees, combined respectively in a two-year period known as an ''election cycle,'' violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.[109]

Flag desecrationThe divisive issue of flag desecration as a form of protest first came before the Supreme Court in Street v. New York (1969).[110] In response to hearing an erroneous report of the murder of civil rights activist James Meredith, Sidney Street burned a 48-star U.S. flag. Street was arrested and charged with a New York state law making it a crime "publicly [to] mutilate, deface, defile, or defy, trample upon, or cast contempt upon either by words or act [any flag of the United States]."[111] In a 5''4 decision, the Court, relying on Stromberg v. California (1931),[112] found that because the provision of the New York law criminalizing "words" against the flag was unconstitutional, and the trial did not sufficiently demonstrate that he was convicted solely under the provisions not yet deemed unconstitutional, the conviction was unconstitutional. The Court, however, "resist[ed] the pulls to decide the constitutional issues involved in this case on a broader basis" and left the constitutionality of flag-burning unaddressed.[113]

The ambiguity with regard to flag-burning statutes was eliminated in Texas v. Johnson (1989).[115] In that case, Gregory Lee Johnson burned an American flag at a demonstration during the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas. Charged with violating a Texas law prohibiting the vandalizing of venerated objects, Johnson was convicted, sentenced to one year in prison, and fined $2,000. The Supreme Court reversed his conviction in a 5''4 vote. Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. wrote in the decision that "if there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable."[116] Congress then passed a federal law barring flag burning, but the Supreme Court struck it down as well in United States v. Eichman (1990).[117] A Flag Desecration Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been proposed repeatedly in Congress since 1989, and in 2006 failed to pass the Senate by a single vote.[119]

Falsifying military awardsWhile the unauthorized wear or sale of the Medal of Honor has been a punishable offense under federal law since the early 20th century,[120][121] the Stolen Valor Act made criminal the act of not only wearing, but also verbally claiming entitlement to military awards that a person did not in fact earn.[122] In United States v. Alvarez (2012), the Supreme Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act, ruling that the law violated the right to free speech for the government to punish people for making false claims regarding military service or honors.[123] The decision was a 6''3 ruling, but the six justices in the majority could not agree on a single rationale for it.[124]

Commercial speechCommercial speech is speech done on behalf of a company or individual for the purpose of making a profit. Unlike political speech, the Supreme Court does not afford commercial speech full protection under the First Amendment. To effectively distinguish commercial speech from other types of speech for purposes of litigation, the Court uses a list of four indicia:[125]

The contents do "no more than propose a commercial transaction".The contents may be characterized as advertisements.The contents reference a specific product.The disseminator is economically motivated to distribute the speech.Alone, each indicium does not compel the conclusion that an instance of speech is commercial; however, "[t]he combination of all these characteristics . . . provides strong support for . . . the conclusion that the [speech is] properly characterized as commercial speech."[126]

In Valentine v. Chrestensen (1942),[127] the Court upheld a New York City ordinance forbidding the "distribution in the streets of commercial and business advertising matter."[128] Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Owen Roberts explained:

This court has unequivocally held that streets are proper places for the exercise of the freedom of communicating information and disseminating opinion and that, though the states and municipalities may appropriately regulate the privilege in the public interest, they may not unduly burden or proscribe its employment in their public thoroughfares. We are equally clear that the Constitution imposes no such restraint on government as respects purely commercial advertising.[129]

In Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council (1976),[130] the Court overruled Valentine and ruled that commercial speech was entitled to First Amendment protection:

What is at issue is whether a State may completely suppress the dissemination of concededly truthful information about entirely lawful activity, fearful of that information's effect upon its disseminators and its recipients . . . . [W]e conclude that the answer to this one is in the negative.[131]

In Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Association (1978),[132] the Court ruled that commercial speech was not protected by the First Amendment as much as other types of speech:

We have not discarded the "common-sense" distinction between speech proposing a commercial transaction, which occurs in an area traditionally subject to government regulation, and other varieties of speech. To require a parity of constitutional protection for commercial and noncommercial speech alike could invite a dilution, simply by a leveling process, of the force of the [First] Amendment's guarantee with respect to the latter kind of speech.[133]

In Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission (1980),[134] the Court clarified what analysis was required before the government could justify regulating commercial speech:

Is the expression protected by the First Amendment? Lawful? Misleading? Fraud?Is the asserted government interest substantial?Does the regulation directly advance the governmental interest asserted?Is the regulation more extensive than is necessary to serve that interest?Six years later, the U.S. Supreme Court, applying the Central Hudson standards in Posadas de Puerto Rico Associates v. Tourism Company of Puerto Rico (1986),[135] affirmed the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico's conclusion that Puerto Rico's Games of Chance Act of 1948, including the regulations thereunder, was not facially unconstitutional. The lax interpretation of Central Hudson adopted by Posadas was soon restricted under 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island (1996),[136] when the Court invalidated a Rhode Island law prohibiting the publication of liquor prices.

School speechIn Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969),[137] the Supreme Court extended free speech rights to students in school. The case involved several students who were punished for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. The Court ruled that the school could not restrict symbolic speech that did not "materially and substantially" interrupt school activities. Justice Abe Fortas wrote:

First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate . . . . [S]chools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students. Students . . . are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State.[139]

In Healy v. James (1972), the Court ruled that Central Connecticut State College's refusal to recognize a campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society was unconstitutional, reaffirming Tinker.

However, since 1969 the Court has also placed several limitations on Tinker interpretations. In Bethel School District v. Fraser (1986),[141] the Court ruled that a student could be punished for his sexual-innuendo-laced speech before a school assembly and, in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988),[142] the Court found that schools need not tolerate student speech that is inconsistent with their basic educational mission. In Morse v. Frederick (2007),[144] the Court ruled that schools could, consistent with the First Amendment, restrict student speech at school-sponsored events, even events away from school grounds, if students promote "illegal drug use".[145]

Obscenity[146]

The federal government and the states have long been permitted to limit obscenity or pornography. While the Supreme Court has generally refused to give obscenity any protection under the First Amendment, pornography is subject to little regulation. However, the definitions of obscenity and pornography have changed over time.[10]

In Rosen v. United States (1896), the Supreme Court adopted the same obscenity standard as had been articulated in a famous British case, Regina v. Hicklin (1868).[147] The Hicklin test defined material as obscene if it tended "to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall".[148] In the early twentieth century, literary works including An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser, 1925) and Lady Chatterley's Lover (D.H. Lawrence, 1928) were banned for obscenity. In the federal district court case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses (1933), Judge John M. Woolsey established a new standard to evaluate James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922), stating that works must be considered in their entirety, rather than declared obscene on the basis of an individual part of the work.[149]

The Supreme Court ruled in Roth v. United States (1957)[150] that the First Amendment did not protect obscenity.[149] It also ruled that the Hicklin test was inappropriate; instead, the Roth test for obscenity was "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest".[151] This definition proved hard to apply, however, and in the following decade, members of the Court often reviewed films individually in a court building screening room to determine if they should be considered obscene. Justice Potter Stewart, in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964),[153] famously stated that, although he could not precisely define pornography, "I know it when I see it".[154]

The Roth test was expanded when the Court decided Miller v. California (1973).[155] Under the Miller test, a work is obscene if:

(a) . . . 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find the work, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest . . . (b) . . . the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) . . . the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.[156]

Note that "community" standards'--not national standards'--are applied whether the material appeals to the prurient interest, leaving the question of obscenity to local authorities.[149]Child pornography is not subject to the Miller test, as the Supreme Court decided in New York v. Ferber (1982) and Osborne v. Ohio (1990),[157][158] ruling that the government's interest in protecting children from abuse was paramount.[159]

Personal possession of obscene material in the home may not be prohibited by law. In Stanley v. Georgia (1969),[161] the Court ruled that "[i]f the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch."[162] However, it is constitutionally permissible for the government to prevent the mailing or sale of obscene items, though they may be viewed only in private. Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002)[163] further upheld these rights by invalidating the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, holding that, because the act "[p]rohibit[ed] child pornography that does not depict an actual child" it was overly broad and unconstitutional under the First Amendment[164] and that:

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.[165]

In United States v. Williams (2008),[166] the Court upheld the PROTECT Act of 2003, ruling that prohibiting offers to provide and requests to obtain child pornography did not violate the First Amendment, even if a person charged under the Act did not possess child pornography.[167][168]

Memoirs of convicted criminalsIn some states, there are Son of Sam laws prohibiting convicted criminals from publishing memoirs for profit.[169] These laws were a response to offers to David Berkowitz to write memoirs about the murders he committed. The Supreme Court struck down a law of this type in New York as a violation of the First Amendment in the case Simon & Schuster v. Crime Victims Board (1991).[170] That statute did not prohibit publication of a memoir by a convicted criminal. Instead, it provided that all profits from the book were to be put in escrow for a time. The interest from the escrow account was used to fund the New York State Crime Victims Board '' an organization that pays the medical and related bills of victims of crime. Similar laws in other states remain unchallenged.[171]

DefamationAmerican tort liability for defamatory speech or publications traces its origins to English common law. For the first two hundred years of American jurisprudence, the basic substance of defamation law continued to resemble that existing in England at the time of the Revolution. An 1898 American legal textbook on defamation provides definitions of libel and slander nearly identical to those given by William Blackstone and Edward Coke. An action of slander required the following:

Actionable words, such as those imputing the injured party: is guilty of some offense, suffers from a contagious disease or psychological disorder, is unfit for public office because of moral failings or an inability to discharge his or her duties, or lacks integrity in profession, trade or business;That the charge must be false;That the charge must be articulated to a third person, verbally or in writing;That the words are not subject to legal protection, such as those uttered in Congress; andThat the charge must be motivated by malice.An action of libel required the same five general points as slander, except that it specifically involved the publication of defamatory statements. For certain criminal charges of libel, such as seditious libel, the truth or falsity of the statements was immaterial, as such laws were intended to maintain public support of the government and true statements could damage this support even more than false ones. Instead, libel placed specific emphasis on the result of the publication. Libelous publications tended to "degrade and injure another person" or "bring him into contempt, hatred or ridicule".

Concerns that defamation under common law might be incompatible with the new republican form of government caused early American courts to struggle between William Blackstone's argument that the punishment of "dangerous or offensive writings . . . [was] necessary for the preservation of peace and good order, of government and religion, the only solid foundations of civil liberty" and the argument that the need for a free press guaranteed by the Constitution outweighed the fear of what might be written. Consequently, very few changes were made in the first two centuries after the ratification of the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court's ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964)[50] fundamentally changed American defamation law. The case redefined the type of "malice" needed to sustain a libel case. Common law malice consisted of "ill-will" or "wickedness". Now, a public officials seeking to sustain a civil action against a tortfeasor needed to prove by "clear and convincing evidence" that there was actual malice. The case involved an advertisement published in The New York Times indicating that officials in Montgomery, Alabama had acted violently in suppressing the protests of African-Americans during the civil rights movement. The Montgomery Police Commissioner, L. B. Sullivan, sued the Times for libel, stating that the advertisement damaged his reputation. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the $500,000 judgment against the Times. Justice Brennan suggested that public officials may sue for libel only if the publisher published the statements in question with "actual malice"'--"knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not."[175] In sum, the court held that "the First Amendment protects the publication of all statements, even false ones, about the conduct of public officials except when statements are made with actual malice (with knowledge that they are false or in reckless disregard of their truth or falsity)."[177]

While actual malice standard applies to public officials and public figures,[178] in Philadelphia Newspapers v. Hepps (1988),[179] the Court found that, with regard to private individuals, the First Amendment does "not necessarily force any change in at least some features of the common-law landscape."[180] In Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc. (1985)[181] the Court ruled that "actual malice" need not be shown in cases involving private individuals, holding that "[i]n light of the reduced constitutional value of speech involving no matters of public concern . . . the state interest adequately supports awards of presumed and punitive damages'--even absent a showing of 'actual malice.'"[182][183] In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974), the Court ruled that a private individual had to prove actual malice only to be awarded punitive damages, but not to seek actual damages.[184][185] In Hustler Magazine v. Falwell (1988),[186] the Court extended the "actual malice" standard to intentional infliction of emotional distress in a ruling which protected parody, in this case a fake advertisement in Hustler suggesting that evangelist Jerry Falwell's first sexual experience had been with his mother in an outhouse. Since Falwell was a public figure, the Court ruled that "importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern" was the paramount concern, and reversed the judgement Falwell had won against Hustler for emotional distress.[187]

In Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co. (1990),[188] the Court ruled that the First Amendment offers no wholesale exception to defamation law for statements labeled "opinion", but instead that a statement must be provably false (falsifiable) before it can be the subject of a libel suit.[189] Nonetheless, it has been argued that Milkovich and other cases effectively provide for an opinion privilege.[190] In consequence a significant number of states have enacted state opinion privilege laws.[citation needed]

Private actionState constitutions provide free speech protections similar to those of the U.S. Constitution. In a few states, such as California, a state constitution has been interpreted as providing more comprehensive protections than the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has permitted states to extend such enhanced protections, most notably in Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins.[191] In that case, the Court unanimously ruled that while the First Amendment may allow private property owners to prohibit trespass by political speakers and petition-gatherers, California was permitted to restrict property owners whose property is equivalent to a traditional public forum (often shopping malls and grocery stores) from enforcing their private property rights to exclude such individuals.[192] However, the Court did maintain that shopping centers could impose "reasonable restrictions on expressive activity".[193] Subsequently, New Jersey, Colorado, Massachusetts and Puerto Rico courts have adopted the doctrine;[194][195] California's courts have repeatedly reaffirmed it.[196]

Freedom of the pressThe free speech and free press clauses have been interpreted as providing the same protection to speakers as to writers, except for wireless broadcasting which has been given less constitutional protection.[197] The Free Press Clause protects the right of individuals to express themselves through publication and dissemination of information, ideas and opinions without interference, constraint or prosecution by the government.[198][199] This right was described in Branzburg v. Hayes as "a fundamental personal right" that is not confined to newspapers and periodicals.[200] In Lovell v. City of Griffin (1938),[201] Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes defined "press" as "every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion".[202] This right has been extended to media including newspapers, books, plays, movies, and video games.[203] While it is an open question whether people who blog or use social media are journalists entitled to protection by media shield laws,[204] they are protected equally by the Free Speech Clause and the Free Press Clause, because both clauses do not distinguish between media businesses and nonprofessional speakers.[198][199][205][206] This is further shown by the Supreme Court consistently refusing to recognize the First Amendment as providing greater protection to the institutional media than to other speakers.[207][208][209] For example, in a case involving campaign finance laws the Court rejected the "suggestion that communication by corporate members of the institutional press is entitled to greater constitutional protection than the same communication by" non-institutional-press businesses.[210]

A landmark decision for press freedom came in Near v. Minnesota (1931),[211] in which the Supreme Court rejected prior restraint (pre-publication censorship). In this case, the Minnesota legislature passed a statute allowing courts to shut down "malicious, scandalous and defamatory newspapers", allowing a defense of truth only in cases where the truth had been told "with good motives and for justifiable ends". In a 5''4 decision, the Court applied the Free Press Clause to the states, rejecting the statute as unconstitutional. Hughes quoted Madison in the majority decision, writing, "The impairment of the fundamental security of life and property by criminal alliances and official neglect emphasizes the primary need of a vigilant and courageous press".

However, Near also noted an exception, allowing prior restraint in cases such as "publication of sailing dates of transports or the number or location of troops". This exception was a key point in another landmark case four decades later: New York Times Co. v. United States (1971),[215] in which the administration of President Richard Nixon sought to ban the publication of the Pentagon Papers, classified government documents about the Vietnam War secretly copied by analyst Daniel Ellsberg. The Court found, 6''3, that the Nixon administration had not met the heavy burden of proof required for prior restraint. Justice Brennan, drawing on Near in a concurrent opinion, wrote that "only governmental allegation and proof that publication must inevitably, directly, and immediately cause the occurrence of an evil kindred to imperiling the safety of a transport already at sea can support even the issuance of an interim restraining order." Justices Black and Douglas went still further, writing that prior restraints were never justified.[216]

The courts have rarely treated content-based regulation of journalism with any sympathy. In Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo (1974),[217] the Court unanimously struck down a state law requiring newspapers criticizing political candidates to publish their responses. The state claimed that the law had been passed to ensure journalistic responsibility. The Supreme Court found that freedom, but not responsibility, is mandated by the First Amendment and so it ruled that the government may not force newspapers to publish that which they do not desire to publish.[218]

Content-based regulation of television and radio, however, have been sustained by the Supreme Court in various cases. Since there is a limited number of frequencies for non-cable television and radio stations, the government licenses them to various companies. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that the problem of scarcity does not allow the raising of a First Amendment issue. The government may restrain broadcasters, but only on a content-neutral basis. In Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation,[219] the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Communications Commission's authority to restrict the use of "indecent" material in broadcasting.

State governments retain the right to tax newspapers, just as they may tax other commercial products. Generally, however, taxes that focus exclusively on newspapers have been found unconstitutional. In Grosjean v. American Press Co. (1936),[220] the Court invalidated a state tax on newspaper advertising revenues, holding that the role of the press in creating "informed public opinion" was vital. Similarly, some taxes that give preferential treatment to the press have been struck down. In Arkansas Writers' Project v. Ragland (1987),[222] for instance, the Court invalidated an Arkansas law exempting "religious, professional, trade and sports journals" from taxation since the law amounted to the regulation of newspaper content. In Leathers v. Medlock (1991),[223] the Supreme Court found that states may treat different types of the media differently, such as by taxing cable television, but not newspapers. The Court found that "differential taxation of speakers, even members of the press, does not implicate the First Amendment unless the tax is directed at, or presents the danger of suppressing, particular ideas."[224]

In Branzburg v. Hayes (1972),[225] the Court ruled that the First Amendment did not give a journalist the right to refuse a subpoena from a grand jury. The issue decided in the case was whether a journalist could refuse to "appear and testify before state and Federal grand juries" basing the refusal on the belief that such appearance and testimony "abridges the freedom of speech and press guaranteed by the First Amendment".[226] The 5''4 decision was that such a protection was not provided by the First Amendment. However, a concurring opinion by Justice Lewis F. Powell, in which he stated that a claim for press privilege "should be judged on its facts by the striking of a proper balance between freedom of the press and the obligation of all citizens to give relevant testimony with respect to criminal conduct. The balance of these vital constitutional and societal interests on a case-by-case basis accords with the tried and traditional way of adjudicating such questions.", has been frequently cited by lower courts since the decision.[227]

Petition and assemblyThe Petition Clause protects the right "to petition the government for a redress of grievances".[14] This includes the right to communicate with government officials, lobbying government officials and petitioning the courts by filing lawsuits with a legal basis.[206] The Petition Clause first came to prominence in the 1830s, when Congress established the gag rule barring anti-slavery petitions from being heard; the rule was overturned by Congress several years later. Petitions against the Espionage Act of 1917 resulted in imprisonments. The Supreme Court did not rule on either issue.[228]

In California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508 (1972), the Supreme Court stated that the right to petition encompass "the approach of citizens or groups of them to administrative agencies (which are both creatures of the legislature, and arms of the executive) and to courts, the third branch of Government. Certainly the right to petition extends to all departments of the Government. The right of access to the courts is indeed but one aspect of the right of petition." Today thus this right encompasses petitions to all three branches of the federal government'--the Congress, the executive and the judiciary'--and has been extended to the states through incorporation.[228][229] According to the Supreme Court, "redress of grievances" is to be construed broadly: it includes not solely appeals by the public to the government for the redressing of a grievance in the traditional sense, but also, petitions on behalf of private interests seeking personal gain.[230] The right not only protects demands for "a redress of grievances" but also demands for government action.[228][230] The petition clause includes according to the Supreme Court the opportunity to institute non-frivolous lawsuits and mobilize popular support to change existing laws in a peaceful manner.[229]

In Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri (2011),[231] the Supreme Court stated regarding the Free Speech Clause and the Petition Clause:

It is not necessary to say that the two Clauses are identical in their mandate or their purpose and effect to acknowledge that the rights of speech and petition share substantial common ground . . . . Both speech and petition are integral to the democratic process, although not necessarily in the same way. The right to petition allows citizens to express their ideas, hopes, and concerns to their government and their elected representatives, whereas the right to speak fosters the public exchange of ideas that is integral to deliberative democracy as well as to the whole realm of ideas and human affairs. Beyond the political sphere, both speech and petition advance personal expression, although the right to petition is generally concerned with expression directed to the government seeking redress of a grievance.[14]

The right of assembly was originally distinguished from the right to petition. In United States v. Cruikshank (1875),[232] the Supreme Court held that "the right of the people peaceably to assemble for the purpose of petitioning Congress for a redress of grievances, or for anything else connected with the powers or duties of the National Government, is an attribute of national citizenship, and, as such, under protection of, and guaranteed by, the United States. The very idea of a government, republican in form, implies a right on the part of its citizens to meet peaceably for consultation in respect to public affairs and to petition for a redress of grievances."[233] Justice Morrison Waite's opinion for the Court carefully distinguished the right to peaceably assemble as a secondary right, while the right to petition was labeled to be a primary right. Later cases, however, paid less attention to these distinctions.[228]

In two 1960s decisions collectively known as forming the Noerr-Pennington doctrine,[b] the Court established that the right to petition prohibited the application of antitrust law to statements made by private entities before public bodies: a monopolist may freely go before the city council and encourage the denial of its competitor's building permit without being subject to Sherman Act liability.[234]

Freedom of associationAlthough the First Amendment does not explicitly mention freedom of association, the Supreme Court ruled, in National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama (1958),[235][236] that this freedom was protected by the Amendment and that privacy of membership was an essential part of this freedom.[237] The U.S. Supreme Court decided in Roberts v. United States Jaycees (1984) that "implicit in the right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment" is "a corresponding right to associate with others in pursuit of a wide variety of political, social, economic, educational, religious, and cultural ends".[238] In Roberts the Court held that associations may not exclude people for reasons unrelated to the group's expression, such as gender.[239]

However, in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston (1995),[240] the Court ruled that a group may exclude people from membership if their presence would affect the group's ability to advocate a particular point of view.[241] Likewise, in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000),[242] the Court ruled that a New Jersey law, which forced the Boy Scouts of America to admit an openly gay member, to be an unconstitutional abridgment of the Boy Scouts' right to free association.[243]

See alsoReferencesNotes

Citations

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Retrieved April 4, 2013. ^"Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists - The Final Letter, as Sent on January 1, 1802". Library of Congress. Retrieved 13 February 2014. ^ abEugene Volokh. "First Amendment". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Archived from the original on April 11, 2013. Retrieved April 11, 2013. ^Daniel L. Driesbach, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State NYU Press 2002, unpaginated.^Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet, 512U.S.687 (1994)^Grumet, at 703^ abc"BOROUGH OF DURYEA, PENNSYLVANIA, et al., PETITIONERS v. CHARLES J. GUARNIERI". Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School. 20 June 2011. Retrieved 26 August 2013. ^ ab"In the words of [Thomas] Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect "a wall of separation between church and State." from the Everson decision^Madison, James (20 June 1785). "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious AssessmentsPapers". The Founders' Constitution. University of Chicago Press. pp. 8:298''304. Retrieved 26 January 2017. ^Edward Mannino: Shaping America: the Supreme Court and American society, University of South Carolina Press, 2000; p. 149; Daniel L. Driesbach, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State NYU Press 2002, unpaginated; Chap. 7.^Warren A. Nord, Does God Make a Difference?, Oxford University Press, 2010.^"Excerpts From Ruling on Use of Education Money". The New York Times. June 11, 1998. Archived from the original on May 3, 2013. Retrieved May 3, 2013. ^ abKritzer, H. M.; Richards, M. J. (2003). "Jurisprudential Regimes and Supreme Court Decisionmaking: The Lemon Regime and Establishment Clause Cases". Law & Society Review. 37: 827''840. doi:10.1046/j.0023-9216.2003.03704005.x. ^Freedom of Religion^For the Endorsement test see Lynch v. Donnelly, 465U.S. 668 (1984).^For the coercion test see Lee v. Weisman, 505U.S. 577 (1992).^Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971)^ abDavid Shultz. Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court. Infobase Publishing. p. 144. Retrieved December 31, 2007. Accommodationists, on the other hand, read the establishment clause as prohibiting Congress from declaring a national religion or preferring one to another, but laws do not have to be shorn of morality and history to be declared constitutional. They apply Lemon only selectively because "[w]e are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being" as Justice DOUGLAS wrote in ZORACH V. CLAUSON. 343 U.S. 306 (1952). ^Warren A. Nord. Does God Make a Difference?. Oxford University Press. Retrieved December 31, 2007. First Amendment Politics: At the risk of oversimplifying a very complicated situation, I suggest that conservative justices tend to favor a weak reading of both the Free Exercise and Establishment clause, while liberals tend to favor strong readings. 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ISSN 1069-0565. ^Empresas Puertorrique±as de Desarrollo, Inc. v. Hermandad Independiente de Empleados Telef"nicos, 150 D.P.R. 924 (2000).^Golden Gateway Ctr. v. Golden Gateway Tenants Ass'n, 26 Cal. 4th 1013 (2001); Costco Companies, Inc. v. Gallant, 96 Cal. App. 4th 740 (2002); Fashion Valley Mall, LLC, v. National Labor Relations Board, 42 Cal. 4th 850 (2007)^Volokh, Eugene. The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, p. 409 (Forte and Spalding, eds., The Heritage Foundation 2014).^ ab"First Amendment: An Overview". | Wex Legal Dictionary / Encyclopedia. Legal Information Institute of the Cornell University. Retrieved 18 April 2014. ^ abMcConnell, Michael W. (November 2013). "Reconsidering Citizens United as a Press Clause Case". The Yale Law Journal. 123 2013-2014 (2 November 2013 Pages 266-529). Retrieved 19 April 2014. ^408U.S.665 (1972)^Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303U.S.444 (1938)^Lovell, at 452^Adam Liptak (June 27, 2011). "Justices Reject Ban on Violent Video Games for Children". 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Cowles Media Co., 501 U.S. 663 (1991) where the U.S. Supreme Court held that the press gets no special immunity from laws that apply to others, including those'--such as copyright law'--that target communication.^See also Henry v. Collins, 380 U.S. 356, 357 (1965) (per curiam) (applying Sullivan standard to a statement by an arrestee); Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 67''68 (1964) (applying Sullivan standard to statements by an elected district attorney); New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. at 286 (applying identical First Amendment protection to a newspaper defendant and individual defendants).^First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435U.S.765 (1978)^Near v. Minnesota, 283U.S.697 (1931)^New York Times Co. v. United States, 403U.S.713 (1971)^Frederick Schauer (January 1, 2000). "New York Times Co. v. United States 403 U.S. 713 (1971)". Encyclopedia of the American Constitution. '' via HighBeam Research(subscription required). Retrieved April 19, 2013. ^Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418U.S.241 (1974)^Dennis Hevesi (February 2, 2010). "Dan Paul, 85, leading lawyer for press freedom". The Boston Globe. '' via HighBeam Research(subscription required). Retrieved April 19, 2013. ^Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, 438U.S.726 (1978)^Grosjean v. American Press Co.297U.S.233 (1936)^Arkansas Writers' Project v. Ragland, 481U.S.221 (1987)^Leathers v. Medlock, 499U.S.439 (1991)^Leathers, at 453^Branzburg v. Hayes, 408U.S.665 (1972)^Branzburg, 667^"Branzburg v. Hayes 408 U.S. 665 (1972)". Encyclopedia of the American Constitution. '' via HighBeam Research(subscription required). January 1, 2000. Retrieved April 19, 2013. ^ abcd"Rights of Assembly & Petition - First Amendment U.S. Constitution - Findlaw". findlaw.com. Retrieved October 5, 2012. ^ ab"Frequently Asked Questions - Petition". First Amendment Center. Archived from the original on April 19, 2013. Retrieved April 19, 2013. ^ abEastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc.,365U.S.127 (1961)^Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri, 131 S.Ct. 2488 (2011)^United States v. Cruikshank, 92U.S.542 (1875)^Cruikshank, at 552^William Cooney (January 1, 2003). "Competition and the Noerr-Pennington doctrine: When should political activity be barred under European community competition law?". The George Washington International Law Review. '' via HighBeam Research(subscription required). Retrieved April 19, 2013. ^National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama, 357U.S.449 (1958)^Wayne Batchis, Citizens United and the Paradox of "Corporate Speech": From Freedom of Association to Freedom of The Association, 36 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 5Archived May 13, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. (2012).^"National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama 1958". Supreme Court Drama: Cases That Changed America. '' via HighBeam Research(subscription required). January 1, 2000. Retrieved April 13, 2013. ^Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468U.S.609 (1984)^Shiffrin, Seana Valentine (January 1, 2005). "What is Really Wrong with Compelled Association?". Northwestern University Law Review. '' via HighBeam Research(subscription required). Retrieved April 13, 2013. ^Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston,515U.S.557 (1995)^"Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, And Bisexual Group of Boston 515 U.S. 557 (1995)". Encyclopedia of the American Constitution. '' via HighBeam Research(subscription required). January 1, 2000. Retrieved April 13, 2013. ^Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530U.S.640 (2000)^"Boy Scouts of America v. Dale". Gender Issues and Sexuality: Essential Primary Sources. '' via HighBeam Research(subscription required). January 1, 2006. Retrieved April 13, 2013. Bibliography

Abrams, Floyd (April 4, 2006). Speaking freely. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-303675-3. Retrieved April 4, 2013. Beeman, Richard (2009). Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution. Random House. ISBN 978-1-58836-726-6. Retrieved April 4, 2013. Jasper, Margaret C. (1999). The Law of Speech and the First Amendment. Oceana Publications. ISBN 978-0-379-11335-8. Retrieved April 4, 2013. Nelson, William Edward (1994). Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760-1830. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-1587-4. Retrieved April 19, 2013. Newell, Martin L. (1898). The Law of Libel and Slander in Civil and Criminal Cases: As Administered in the Courts of the United States of America. Callaghan. Retrieved April 19, 2013. Lewis, Anthony (2007). Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01819-2. Further readingCurtis, Michael Kent (2000). Free Speech, "The People's Darling Privilege": Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History. Duke University Press. ISBN 0822325292. Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall. The Sacred Rights of Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund Press, 2009.Daniel L. Dreisbach, Mark David Hall, and Jeffry Morrison. The Forgotten Founders on Religion and Public Life Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.Thomas I. Emerson, "Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment", Yale Law Journal, vol. 72, no. 5 (1963), pp. 877''956. In JSTOR.Godwin, Mike (2003). Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age. MIT Press. ISBN 0262571684. P. Irons, A People's History of the Supreme Court New York: Penguin, 1999.McLeod, Kembrew (2007). Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property. foreword by Lawrence Lessig. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0816650314. Kabala, James S., Church-State Relations in the Early American Republic, 1787-1846. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013.J. Kilman and G. Costello (eds.), The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation. (2000).Lewis, Anthony (2007). Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment. Basic Books. pp. 173''176. ISBN 978-0-465-03917-3. OCLC 173659591. Nicholas P. Miller, The Religious Roots of the First Amendment: Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.Nelson, Samuel P. (2005). Beyond the First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech and Pluralism. The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801881730. External linksThis audio file was created from a revision of the "First Amendment to the United States Constitution" article dated 2006-06-30, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 03:54

In Late-Night Metered-Market Ratings for Saturday Night:

· "Saturday Night Live" has matched the show's highest adult 18-49 rating in Nielsen's local people meters since Nov. 12.

· The Feb. 4 telecast, with host Kristen Stewart and musical guest Alessia Cara, and featuring an appearance by Melissa McCarthy as White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, scored a 5.0 rating, 13 share in "live plus same day" household results from the 56 local markets metered by Nielsen Media Research and a 2.5/13 in adults 18-49 in the 25 markets with local people meters.

· The 2.5 in 18-49 equals the strongest "Saturday Night Live" local-market rating since the Nov. 12 telecast, which was the first "SNL" to follow the Presidential election.

· The 5.0 in metered-market households makes this the second highest rated "SNL" by that measure since Nov. 12, trailing over that span only the Jan. 21 edition hosted by Aziz Ansari with musical guest Big Sean (5.1). That Jan. 21 episode is also the only other "SNL" since Nov. 12 to generate a 2.5 in 18-49 in the local people meters.

· The Nov. 12 telecast, featuring host Dave Chappelle and musical guest A Tribe Called Quest, averaged a 6.2 household rating and a 3.9 in 18-49 in the local people meters.

· Versus what "Saturday Night Live" averaged with originals for the month of February last year, last night's 5.0 rating in meter-market households is up +4% (5.0 vs. 4.8) and the 2.5 in 18-49 in the local people meters is up +9% (2.5 vs. 2.3 for the month of February 2016).

· The 5.0 rating in households beats results for the final 10 "Saturday Night Live" originals from last season, while the 2.5 in 18-49 in the local people meters tops last season's final 11 first-runs.

· Last night's "Saturday Night Live" was the #1 telecast of the night on the broadcast networks in both metered-market households and in 18-49 in the local people meters, outrating every Saturday primetime telecast on those nets in both categories.

· Note that "SNL" adds significant viewership via time-shifting, with originals so far this season growing by +58% in 18-49 and +3.214 million persons or +44% in total viewers nationally going from "live plus same day" Nielsens to "live plus seven day" figures. In L+SD, "SNL" this season has averaged a 2.19 rating in 18-49 nationally and 7.386 million viewers overall, and in L+7, "SNL" grew to a 3.46 in 18-49 and 10.600 million viewers.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 13:45

The Virginia Commonwealth University's Office of Multicultural Affairs has decided to publish a very helpful ''LBGTQQIAAPP Terminology Guide'' to assist their confused snowflakes with the very complicated task of determining their own gender. While the guide may seem fairly thorough, VCU notes that gender ''language is constantly evolving, and these definitions are not by any means comprehensive'' before warning that ''terms of self-identification should not be used to label others without their consent.''

Luckily, the terminology guide even has some very easy to understand illustrations to help students debunk the lifelong, evil myth that gender is somehow binary'...

Physical Gold & Silver in your IRA. Get the Facts.

Here are some of the definitions that we found particularly helpful and we sincerely hope that our readers will take this opportunity to read, learn and reflect on their lives of ''Cis Privilege.'' And for those of you still living in the dark ages, Cisgendered refers to the 99.7% of the population where ''a person's gender identity, gender expression, and biological sex'' all miraculously align.

Biological Sex/ Natal Sex/ Birth Sex/ Sex: The medical term used for the identification of male, female, or intersex sex i.e. chromosomes, gonads, and/or genitalia

Cisgender/ Cis/ Gender Normative/ Gender Straight: a person who has a normative gender presentation, when a person's gender identity, gender expression, and biological sex align. A person who is not transgender.

Cisgender Privilege/ Cis privilege: The societal assumption and norm that all people are cisgender. There are basic civil rights and social privileges that a cisgendered person automatically receives that are systematically denied to transgender persons, simply because of their gender identity/ gender presentation

Demisexual: a person who is not immediately sexually attracted to other people. A person who's sexual attraction to another person develops after developing a relationship (not necessarily romantic). Often considered within the asexuality spectrum

Gender Confirmation surgery: any surgery to make a person's outward appearance more closely align with their gender rather than biological sex, also known as gender reassignment surgery, many have transitioned to Gender Confirmation Surgery as it utilizes more positive language.

Heterosexual Privilege/Heteronormativity: The societal assumption and norm that all people are heterosexual. There are basic civil rights and social privileges that a heterosexual person automatically receives that are systematically denied to queer persons, simply because of their sexual orientation.

Of course, while VCU asserts that there are ''basic civil rights and social privileges'' afforded to ''cisgendered'' people that are constantly denied other people based on their ''gender identity/ gender presentation'', the university fails to define exactly which privileges to which they are referring.

For those of you looking for even more enlightenment on this very important topic plaguing roughly 0.3% of the population, please see the complete LBGTQQIAAPP Terminology Guide below:

Reprinted with permission from Zero Hedge.

The Best of Tyler Durden

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Mon, 06 Feb 2017 23:09

An FBI whistleblower estimates ''close to 30% of the political spectrum'' in Washington D.C. is connected to the elite pedophile ring that has been infiltrated by law enforcement, with ''high level arrests of close to three dozen pedophile politicians'' expected next week.

The insider at the Federal Bureau of Investigation says that the FBI finished submitting paperwork to the Department of Justice in preparation for the ''Pizzagate'' arrests which will begin as soon as Jeff Sessions is confirmed as Attorney General.

Mr. Sessions has been briefed on the investigation and all of the evidence three weeks ago.

''We expect some movement next week. Another 42 people also expected to be arrested in the drag net. 72 in all.''

When asked why he was pre-announcing the sting, the insider claimed that rather than compromise the operation, the pre-announcement actually helps negate the ''furious push back to not make arrests'' from within the establishment.

''There are internal and nefarious forces attempting to thwart the operation. The cesspool called DC is one big extortion arena. Our politicians are either being extorted for being pedophiles, or they are in the pocket of Bankers, Big Oil, Israel or Saudi Arabia.''

''If Israel and the Saudis can no longer extort politicians for their sexual deviance, where do they make their money and wield their influence?''

''If bankers cannot stop the destruction of their puppet politicians, how do they keep the ''fix'' in place? Our alphabet agencies are compromised. Our homeland security and defense apparatus has become politically corrupted.How can we stand by while our powerful leaders impose law on one hand, and sexually abuse our children with another?''

The FBI insider gained the respect of internet communities during the election season by explaining mysterious behind-the-scenes actions and making predictions which '' however unlikely they seemed at the time '' were all proved true. Explaining further why he is choosing to come forward, he explained that FBI agents determined to bring down the elite pedophile ring ''need the American people to join in this fight.''

''Do you want our children targeted, raped, damaged? Do we want our politicians belonging to some Saudi, or some Israeli extortionist? Do we want our politicians to be owned by Goldman Sachs? Do you want your daughter to end up alone with a Jeffery Epstein, Alan Dershowitz, or Anthony Wiener?''

The FBI insider explained that there are pedo rings in every state, however ''the main concentration is in the East and in the West. In the East, NYC, the resort towns, and of course DC. Out west, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Napa Valley, Marin County.''

When asked how they can get away with committing crimes that outrage ordinary citizens, the insider said, ''It's covered up. Law Enforcement takes their orders from the DC power brokers. AG's, police chiefs, etc, are ordered to cover up the pedophile rings and their players. Lawmakers are allowed to be law breakers, because they create the law and rule over those that enforce the law.''

In related news, it has been confirmed that President Trump is aware of the investigation. A verified friend of Trump's confirmed the information during an Ask Me Anything on Reddit yesterday, replying ''Can confirm'' after being asked if the President was up to speed with the investigation.

Baxter DmitryPassionate about motor sports, military history and the truth, Baxter has travelled in over 80 countries and won arguments in every single one.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 02:50

Tue Feb 7, 2017 | 1:36 PM EST

ByAnastasia Moloney

BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Haitian police have arrested nine people in connection with sex trafficking, involving girls as young as 13, highlighting the dangers facing children in the Caribbean nation where human trafficking is rife and the crime often goes unpunished.

The sting raid by police on Sunday at a resort hotel, Kaliko Beach Club, near the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, led to the rescue of at least 31 women and girls, police authorities said.

"These people are suspected of trafficking in minors and of sexual exploitation," said Gary Desrosiers, national police deputy spokesman, in an interview with local media.

The victims were rescued following a two-month investigation, he said.

During the operation, police seized Haitian and U.S. cash, a computer containing pornographic images of children, and drugs including cocaine, the authorities said.

Hotel owner Fritz Paret said the hotel does not tolerate the sexual exploitation of children and had no knowledge about what was going on.

"We were not aware because they were just like our regular guests coming in," Paret told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

He said a group of American and Canadian tourists checked into the hotel and booked 22 rooms and paid for day passes for the children to use.

"The children came in dribs and drabs under a day pass," Paret said.

According to the U.S. State Department's 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report, Haiti is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children sold into forced labor, domestic servitude and prostitution.

Traffickers are known to sell children into the sex trade in Haiti and across the porous border into the Dominican Republic.

In 2016, the U.S. State Department downgraded Haiti to its lowest grade - tier 3 - for human trafficking centers, meaning Haiti is not making significant efforts to meet the minimum standards to combat trafficking and prosecute perpetrators.

Under Haiti's 2014 anti-trafficking law, those convicted of human trafficking can face from seven years up to life imprisonment.

(Additional reporting by Sebastien Malo in New York, Editing by Ros Russell.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org)

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Wed, 08 Feb 2017 12:48

Feb. 5, 2017 10:10 p.m. ET If the Securities and Exchange Commission approves a bitcoin exchange-traded fund next month, it might set off a speculative rush into bitcoin.

An easily accessed ETF that tracks the value of bitcoin could cause money to flood into the fledgling bitcoin market, analysts say. Indeed, what some see as a chance for average investors to participate in one of the great financial innovations of recent years could set off a trading frenzy in an already wild market.

''My concern is that the launch of an ETF could lead to irrational exuberance if the price of bitcoin appreciates dramatically,'' says Christopher Burniske, blockchain-products lead at money manager and research firm ARK Investment Management. ARK invests in Bitcoin Investment Trust, an ETF-like fund that already trades over the counter but currently is only available to wealthy investors.

Winklevosses readyAfter a nearly four-year wait, the SEC faces a deadline of March 11 to decide on a rule change that would allow the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust ETF to trade on the Bats Global Market exchange.

Two other funds have filed similar applications that would offer ordinary investors broader access to bitcoin investing as well: Bitcoin Investment Trust, run by tech entrepreneur Barry Silbert, and SolidX Bitcoin Trust, run by SolidX Partners, are waiting for the SEC to rule on their applications to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

There's no guarantee that any of these applications will succeed. But most bitcoin observers say that a bitcoin ETF is an inevitability eventually.

If Bitcoin Investment Trust obtains SEC approval, it would likely mark Mr. Silbert as a new style of Wall Street wunderkind. Similarly, if the Winklevoss twins, Tyler and Cameron, succeed with their ETF, they would see vindication after they were elbowed out of social-networking phenomenon Facebook.

Further, the Winklevosses stand to gain from any price increase caused by the ETF as they are among the largest individual holders of bitcoin'--alongside Mr. Silbert's fund.

The Winklevosses declined to comment, through a representative; Mr. Silbert said, in an email, that his lawyers had put him on ''total lockdown'' with the press since filing for his fund's NYSE listing.

How bitcoin worksThe novel nature of bitcoin'--essentially a chain of numbers linked to another number on a public ledger stored in the internet cloud'--intrigues investors but has given the SEC pause.

Andrew Odlyzko, a mathematician at the University of Minnesota, compares bitcoin to the Pacific island of Yap, where long ago the people carved giant stone currency and ferried it across the ocean in canoes. On one voyage, according to an anthropologist's work, a boulder fell off the boat. The community decided to recognize the value of the stone at the bottom of the sea, making it a virtual currency.

''Everybody knew it was there; nobody could see it; nobody could touch it...but it was there,'' Mr. Odlyzko says.

Once a bitcoin is created in a computer ''mining'' process, the community recognizes ownership of the invisible abstraction through two numbers produced in that process. One is the public key, which is like the owner's PayPal address. Anyone can send bitcoin to this address. The other is the private key, a number that is mathematically linked to the public key but is revealed only to the owner of the bitcoin.

Bitcoin has proved useful as a low-cost way of moving money around the world. But its price is volatile. Last year alone, bitcoin closed in a daily trading range between $358 and $993, according to data provider CoinDesk.

SEC's taskSince the Winklevosses applied for approval of their ETF in 2013, the SEC has teased out the many, often bizarre risks of a bitcoin ETF. Among the issues: Could robots hijack more than half of the mining capacity and bring the whole system down? Could the bitcoin universe split in two as a rival cryptocurrency did? Could the fund be hacked?

(Closely held SolidX, based in New York City, and the smaller entrant in the race, distinguishes itself from the other two by promising to insure its bitcoin.)

Spencer Bogart, an analyst who follows bitcoin for boutique brokerage Needham & Co., says the Winklevosses have addressed security concerns'--planning, for example, to keep private keys locked inside offline computers, which would themselves be locked away in secure locations. Multiple individuals in multiple locations would have to grant access simultaneously to a bad actor wanting to see the keys, he says, for a theft to occur'--an event he considers unlikely.

Still, Mr. Bogart figures the SEC could refuse approval on more pedestrian grounds: a perceived conflict of interest because the Winklevosses have kept so many important fund functions in-house.

''I don't believe there's any ETF that trades in the U.S. where a single entity is the sponsor of the ETF, the provider of reference price for the underlying asset and the custodians of underlying asset, and that is what the Winklevosses are proposing,'' says Mr. Bogart, adding that the Winklevosses likely used proprietary indexes and security for reasons of design rather than personal gain.

In a November letter to the SEC, Kyle Murray, a lawyer for Bats, argued that the disclosure of the Winklevosses' multiple roles and the involvement of independent auditors and administrators mitigated any potential conflicts.

The small size of the bitcoin market, however, could still be an impediment to orderly fund trading. Across all U.S. exchanges tracked by data provider CoinDesk, the average daily volume of bitcoin traded is about $30 million. Much more trading occurs in China, but those exchanges wouldn't be used by a U.S. fund, Mr. Bogart says, because they function in an opaque manner.

Mr. Bogart estimates that at least $300 million would come into any approved ETF in the first week, as a convenient door to bitcoin opens up to investors. Institutional investors like pension funds haven't been able to partake in bitcoin because many of their charters require that portfolio securities are registered with authorities.

Mr. Burniske says it's impossible to buy $2 million of bitcoin on any given day on U.S. exchanges without moving the market.

Yet, for every share of the ETF sold, an ''authorized participant'''--the fund's market maker'--will have to buy an equivalent amount of bitcoin.

''The market will feel the effect of authorized participants going out there and looking to source [$300 million,] 10 times more than the daily volume that goes through any of the exchanges,'' says Bobby Cho, who trades bitcoin in ''institutional sizes'' for proprietary trading firm Cumberland Mining, a bitcoin-focused unit of Chicago-based proprietary trading firm DRW.

''It's just really difficult to grab that amount of bitcoin quickly,'' says Mr. Bogart.

If the Winklevoss fund isn't approved, the closest thing to an ETF will be Bitcoin Investment Trust, which uses a private-trust structure and is managed by Grayscale Investments LLC, a unit of Digital Currency Group Inc. Only accredited investors can buy the shares on the primary private market, where they are priced in line with bitcoin. The investors must keep holdings for a lockup period of a year. Then they can sell on a secondary market, the over-the-counter OTCQX, where they currently sell at a 15% premium to the value of the underlying bitcoin, a margin that has been even wider in the past.

Strong demand and perhaps a lack of sophistication are causing OTC traders to overpay for the shares, Mr. Bogart and others say. The private trust had $162 million in assets under management as of Dec. 31. This size makes its actions influential in bitcoin markets.

For his part, ARK's Mr. Burniske says he is preparing for March 11 by reading a history of financial bubbles.

Mr. Curran, a writer in Denton, Texas, is a regular contributor to Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. Email him at rob.curran@dowjones.com.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 12:20

NEWS FLASH: Radiation levels measured inside the containment and shielding of a damaged nuclear reactor are HIGH. That is about as unexpected as finding out that the temperatures inside a coal-fired furnace are high enough to cause instant death to any unprotected living creature, including human beings.

There is absolutely no reason for the public to be concerned about high radiation levels measured inside a nuclear reactor.

Unfortunately, even well-resourced and established publications like the Washington Post cannot resist the lure of using a scary headline '' Japanese nuclear plant just recorded an astronomical radiation level. Should we be worried? '' to introduce a typically ''balanced'' news report that turned what could have been an opportunity to spread knowledge into a ''he said, she said'' opinion piece that leaves most readers in the dark about who to believe.

After quoting several experts who provided credible responses and interpretations about the recently announced radiation dose rate measurements, the reporter chose to conclude with the following statement from one of the usual suspects.

Indeed, Ai Kashiwagi, an energy campaigner at Greenpeace Japan, said the findings showed how little the government and Tepco knew about what was happening inside the reaction.

''The prime minister said everything was under control and has been pushing to restart nuclear plants, but no one knew the actual state of the plant and more serious facts could come out in the future,'' she said. ''It's important to keep an eye on radiation-monitoring data and how Tepco's investigations go.''

Relatively Routine Progress Report Of A Continuing Effort Turned Into NEWS!TEPCO, the Japanese utility company that owns the severely damaged electricity generation station known as Fukushima Dai-ichi continues to issue reports about its progress in cleaning up the industrial site. It has been nearly six years since a 45 foot high tsunami washed over the installed barrier to destroy the plant's emergency generators and external power connections.

The resulting damage to the four reactor units that lost power to all cooling and indication systems for several days was unprecedented and extensive. As has been known for years, the site clean up effort is expected to take several decades. There will be new discoveries and learning opportunities throughout that period. Some of the progress reports will provide information that surprise some or most of the people who read them.

One part of TEPCO's planned work has always been to eventually send cameras and sensors into inaccessible areas of the damaged reactor units at the station.

On January 30, 2017, Tepco released a several page presentation with illustrations that described results of sending a small remote controlled camera into the primary containment vessel (PCV) in the pedastal area directly under the reactor pressure vessel (RPV).

BWR-6-Reactor Assembly

The camera not only senses photons (light) to produce images, but it also senses gamma radiation with a +- 30% accuracy. At the levels expected for a device that would be placed closer to the damaged reactor fuel core than any other previous device, that accuracy is good enough. For such a high range measuring device, the key characteristic is to be able to produce a measurement without becoming saturated with an off-scale radiation dose rate.

The remote inspection showed that the control rod drive housings, the position indicator cables and the control rod drive exchange mechanism had not moved from their normal locations in an undamaged plant. There were some deposits on some surfaces and parts of the grating that is located under the CDM housings was deformed.

Investigators noticed some water dripping, presumably from the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel. The RPV and the PCV were reported as being stably cooled.

The measured radiation level was 530 Gy/hr. (Note: Tepco and the media reported it as 530 Sv/hr, but Gy (Gray) and Sv (Sievert) are equivalent units for gamma dose rate.)

There are no external impacts from the radiation levels measured inside the PCV under the damaged core because they are adequately shielded by the containment vessel and the buildings.

New KnowledgeContrary to what many observers believed, the preliminary inspection showed that there was little or no corium (melted mixture of reactor fuel and structural materials) outside of the reactor pressure vessel. If there had been any large scale melt through, the CDM housings and position indication cables would not be in undisturbed locations.

Aside: This was the really exciting and interesting news item. End Aside.

The deformation in the grating indicates that there was a period of time when the pedastal area got hot enough to warp the steel tendons used in typical grating.

The dripping water noted indicates that there are some tiny penetrations, most likely in the areas where the CDM housings are welded to the pressure vessel. If the penetrations were any size at all, water would be flowing, not dripping.

The surprisingly high radiation readings indicate that there is a large amount of radioactive cesium in the pedastal area. That low melting point, soluable element would have escaped from fuel rods when they were damaged. It would have dissolved into water used to keep the reactor stably cooled over the past 6 years and would have been able to drip down to accumulate in the pedastal area.

Radiation levels measured under an undamaged core are far lower, even though undamaged cores contain just as much cesium. The difference is that the radiation flux from cesium that is retained inside fuel pellets, inside fuel cladding, and in the designed core configuration has a lot of distributed shielding and distance between it and a radiation detector located in the CDM housing area.

Cesium that has left the fuel rods and accumulated under the reactor pressure vessel is virtually unshielded. The dose rate is lower now than it was six years ago because short lived Cs-134 is mostly decayed away. However, the longer lived Cs-137 has only gone through one fifth of its first 30 year half life. Radiation doses measured in the pedastal area of Fukushima Dai-ichi Unit 2 will not decrease anytime soon, but they will also not hurt anyone because there is sufficient distance and shielding to reduce the radiation to safe levels.

Additional ReadingANS Nuclear Cafe Feb 7, 2017 '' Radiation Levels Not Soaring At Fukushima Daiichi

Atomic energy expert with small nuclear plant operating and design experience. Financial, strategic, and political analyst. Former submarine Engineer Officer. Founder, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc. Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast. Resume available here.

Please subscribe to the Atomic Show RSS feed.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 16:01

BERKELEY (KPIX 5) '-- While marijuana itself may be a medicinal blessing, what lands in a consumer's hand is far more complicated.

''You cannot tell by looking at your cannabis if it's contaminated with pesticides, residual solvents, molds,'' says Dr. Donald Land, a researcher at Steep Hill Lab in Berkeley.

If you really do want to know what's in your marijuana, just ask their team to take a look.

Related: Fungus In Medical Marijuana A Possible Cause In California Man's Death

''We see cannabis that comes through the lab that would have to be destroyed in other states,'' explains Tony Daniel, one of the Steep Hill Lab members that have been analyzing California's marijuana since the 1990s.

As more states have moved towards more legal markets for cannabis, they have developed more stringent methods for quality control.

Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Nevada have either set limits on or banned certain pesticides for use on marijuana. In Colorado, one such pesticide has received a lot of attention.

Myclobutanil. It's a fungicide, often sold under the name Eagle 20.

It is approved for use on things like grapes and hops because if humans happen to eat some of it, it is considered harmless.

''If you smoke it, if you heat it,'' Land explains, ''it produces a chemical call hydrogen cyanide. It's very toxic to humans.''

That's exactly why the federal government prohibits the use of Myclobutanil on tobacco, but California currently has no such pesticide rules when it comes to medical marijuana.

In a statement to KPIX 5, Dow AgroSciences '-- the manufacturer of Eagle 20 '-- said the fungicide has not been approved for and should not be used on marijuana.

''Dow AgroSciences, without exception, will not seek regulatory approvals or support the use of its products on marijuana,'' the statement read. ''Eagle 20 is not approved for use nor should it be used under any circumstances on marijuana.''

Daniel believes the state also needs to put in some kind of regulations.

''People have an expectation that the stuff they get from a dispensary is going to be safe and clean and well tested,'' he said.''But the fact is, this is an unregulated environment up till now.''

So how much Myclobutanil might you find on California's medical marijuana? KPIX 5 purchased samples from five different Bay Area dispensaries, and since not everyone gets their marijuana from a dispensary we also arranged for the acquisition of some marijuana sold on the streets of San Francisco. All of it was sent to the lab.

''Only one of those six had no detectable pesticides,'' says Land.

There was just one clean dispensary sample, while three more had enough pesticide traces to make them ''test failures'' in Massachusetts or Nevada.

As for the black market sample, it failed on nine different pesticide tests. That, however, wasn't the low point in this marijuana challenge.

The last dispensary sample, a product sold as medicine, was far and away the most contaminated, riven almost entirely by Myclobutanil levels more than thirteen times the amount allowed under Oregon law.

Now the clock is ticking for California to come up with it's own safety standards; what pesticides will be allowed, at what levels, and how will it all be tested safe for consumption?

When Daniel sees California's marijuana landscape, he sees a terrain where ''there hasn't been the level of rigor applied to the industry that's coming down the pike.''

As of now, most of California's marijuana is being grown no-questions-asked, and the result is plenty of products you would rather not smoke.

As Land sees it, ''unfortunately, without any regulations requiring testing it's up to the purveyor whether they want to or not, and it's basically caveat emptor, right? Let the buyer beware.''

Wilson Walker joined KPIX 5 in July of 2007. His television career started at WSOC-TV in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1999. There, he covered the departure of the Charlotte Hornets, The Rae Carruth case, and the devastating East Coast Ice Storm of...

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Double Down13:41 07.02.2017(updated 13:42 07.02.2017) Get short URL

Voters appear to be making yet more 'wrong choices' in the upcoming Dutch election. Is 'fake news' to blame? Or is the absence of economic issues on many mainstream political platforms to blame? What about the fact that corporate media continues to say the economy is doing great, when many at the bottom of the income scale don't observe this in their daily lives? Double Down talks to Ancilla van de Leest for her take on how it is even remotely possible that a 'fringe' right wing politician/troll is able to command the lead in most major polls in Holland and whether or not more media attention to a broader range of economic issues might halt the rise of the far right.

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 14:17

Image caption Some Conservative MPs applauded after the result was announced MPs have overwhelmingly agreed to let the government begin the UK's departure from the EU as they voted for the Brexit bill.

The draft legislation was approved by 494 votes to 122, and now moves to the House of Lords.

Shadow business secretary Clive Lewis was one of 52 Labour MPs to defy party orders to back the bill and he resigned from the front bench.

PM Theresa May wants to trigger formal Brexit talks by the end of March.

She will do this by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, but requires Parliament's permission before doing so.

Mr Lewis, who earlier said he was undecided on whether to support the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, announced his resignation as MPs began voting for the final time.

He said he "cannot, in all good conscience, vote for something I believe will ultimately harm the city I have the honour to represent, love and call home".

Leader Jeremy Corbyn said he understood the difficulties the vote presented some of his MPs but said they had been ordered to back the Article 50 because the party would not "block Brexit".

Media captionShadow home secretary Diane Abbott votes for Brexit billShadow home secretary Diane Abbott, who missed last week's initial vote on the bill, backed it this time.

She told the BBC she had "a lot of misgivings about the idea of a Tory Brexit" and predicted the UK would "come to regret it", but added: "I'm a loyal member of the shadow cabinet and I'm loyal to Jeremy Corbyn."

The Labour rebellion was five MPs up on last week's vote, while former Chancellor Ken Clarke was again the only Conservative to vote against the two-clause bill.

During the voting, SNP MPs were reprimanded by deputy speaker Lindsay Hoyle after they started singing Ode to Joy, the European Union anthem.

Media captionDeputy Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said he did "not want a sing-off within the chamber"Afterwards, Brexit Secretary David Davis hailed the "historic vote", adding: "It is now time for everyone, whichever way they voted in the referendum, to unite to make a success of the important task at hand for our country."

Peers will now consider the draft legislation, and a government source told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg: "If the Lords don't want to face an overwhelming public call to be abolished they must get on and protect democracy and pass this bill."

Earlier the bill survived several attempts to change its wording and add extra conditions.

These included Labour MP Harriet Harman's bid to protect the residence rights of EU citizens in the UK, which was outvoted by 332 votes to 290, with three Conservative MPs rebelling.

A Liberal Democrat bid for a referendum on the terms of the UK leaving the EU was defeated by 340 votes to 33.

Image caption Clive Lewis announced he was resigning shortly before the third reading vote Afterwards, Mr Corbyn tweeted: "Real fight starts now. Over next two years Labour will use every opportunity to ensure Brexit protects jobs, living standards and the economy."

But Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon accused him of giving the Conservatives a "blank cheque".

She tweeted: "You didn't win a single concession but still voted for the bill. Pathetic."

The bill will be debated in the House of Lords after it returns from recess on 20 February.

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron vowed the party's peers would seek to amend the bill in the Lords, including another attempt to ensure a referendum on the final Brexit deal.

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With CNN's recent boasting of increased sales of George Orwell's 1984 in response to President Donald Trump, and with their accusations of the administration gaslighting the country, it's quite hypocritical of them to have a panelist on that appears the be practicing his own doublespeak. During Sunday's Inside Politics, Washington Post writer Ed O'Keefe hammered the president and Republicans for daring to use the words ''illegals'' and ''illegal aliens.''

Towards the end of a discussion about Trump's persistent use of dubious claims of voter fraud by illegal immigrants in the 2016 election, O'Keefe became a little irritated at the fact that the GOP still uses the term ''illegals.'' ''I want to call him out on one thing here. Cause this continues to be a problem here that afflicts the president and other people in this debate,'' he asserted, ''He continues to use the word 'illegals.'''

''It is about as offensive as it gets for immigration advocates and for Hispanics in this country,'' he whined.

O'Keefe then set his sights on Fox News' Bill O'Reilly for using the dreaded words in an interview with the president. ''And for O'Reilly to use the term ''illegal aliens,'' that also is a no-no in journalism. You know, the AP Style is not that anymore,'' he chided, ''Still a legal term for the government, but that kind of talk distracts and people will hear that and that alone is disqualifying.'' Host John King agreed, noting CNN's policy, ''Our style is 'undocumented' here.''

King provided very little pushback against his guest, simply explaining, ''There are people who think you should call it out, that they did come into the country illegally and you should continue to say so. That is a debate that you get.''

O'Keefe responded with a warning for those who use the argument King laid out, ''Plural, though, ''illegals'' is the problem and that's going to get him and Republicans in trouble yet again with immigration advocates. And it's offensive.'' But his claim of danger makes absolutely zero sense since the GOP has been unafraid to use the term and they've eroded Democratic control in both federal and state governments.

What one gets disqualified from after saying ''illegals'' O'Keefe never said. But it's probably safe to assume (as with most things that offend the left) it means to be taken seriously as a person with an opinion on the issue.

Ironically, before King called on O'Keefe to share his opinion, the CNN host was criticizing Trump, saying ''We have a chance to have in this city now to have real debates'... Instead, we get down these rabbit holes.''

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 04:20

Monday on Good Morning America, ABC entertainment contributor Larry Hackett appeared to give his take on the Super Bowl's halftime show with Lady Gaga. Hackett whined that Gaga's performance wasn't political, admitting he was disappointed she didn't do anything ''incredibly provocative'' during the show.

Read more on Newsbusters here

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Thu, 09 Feb 2017 03:51

See more in the cross-post on the NewsBusters blog.

Saturday Night Live couldn't have drawn it up any better, folks. On Monday's New Day, Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter and CNN media analyst Bill Carter sang the comedy show's praises following Melissa McCarthy's parody of Sean Spicer, spinning that the skit represents ''a problem for the White House [and Spicer] going forward.''

''Okay, Brian, Melissa McCarthy. I mean, she embodied Sean Spicer. I mean, in that she became a man. She became '-- she took on some of his expressions. It was really a tour de force performance,'' co-host Alisyn Camerota gushed to Stelter at the start of the segment.

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See more in the cross-post on the NewsBusters blog.

CNN and MSNBC each did their parts on Tuesday afternoon to advance the narrative that Saturday Night Live has claimed White House press secretary Sean Spicer's scalp as their own, hyping that Tuesday's press briefing showed how Melissa McCarthy's impersonation has harmed him.

CNN's chief political analyst Gloria Borger admitted minutes after the briefing that ''it was a little more subdued'' and ''[h]e seemed a little bit '-- very clear that the McCarthy improvisation on Saturday Night Live really affected Sean and I think he was trying to kind tone it down today to a great deal.''

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Wed, 08 Feb 2017 12:07

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Tue, 07 Feb 2017 13:16

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) '-- Some East Bay conservatives say they live a secret life. They can never tell anyone what they really feel like in fear of their safety.

Robert Ward is coming out conservative, but in a place he says is risky for those who share his beliefs.

''If you witness what happened in Berkeley, actually they are so violent on top of it. I mean being a conservative in the Bay Area is like being a heretic,'' says Ward. ''You lead a double life. You can never tell your friends and co-workers.''

Robert says several Bay Area conservatives have secret meet ups like the one KPIX 5 was invited to visit in the East Bay.

Organizers asked not to disclose their location or the faces of anyone who attended, but insist this is the way it has to be in a liberal state.

''They seem to pride themselves on being diverse, and they are diverse about everything but their ideology,'' says Ward. ''I hope that in the future when people see Trump isn't as scary as they think he is and a lot of the good things that happen and the prosperity comes back and the jobs come back, every one calms down a little bit.''

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Mon, 06 Feb 2017 23:09

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Mon, 06 Feb 2017 11:59

When media reports on media reports of media reports, the concentric circles of self-serving sanctimony expand toward the endless horizon of nothingness'... /SDMedia columnist Michael Wolff was invited on CNN's show, ''Reliable Sources,'' to discuss the media and Donald Trump. Specifically, Wolff was asked about his recent Newsweek article entitled ''Why the media keeps losing to Donald Trump'', because Wolff rightly pointed out the sanctimonious nature of a pearl-clutching media consistently defending it's own ridiculous narratives.

The resulting interview is quite funny as chief sanctimony promoter, Brian Stelter, was told to his face how ridiculous he looks clutching his pearls and hiding behind CNN's apron. Watch:

Here's the Newsweek article referenced during the segment:

['...] The media strategy is to show Trump to be an inept and craven sociopath. The Trump strategy is to show that media people are hopeless prigs out of touch with the nation (e.g., CNN's media correspondent, Brian Stelter, who turns to the camera every Sunday morning and delivers a pious sermon about Trump's perfidiousness) and nursing personal grudges. (read more)