NGOs Are Unelected Parts of Governments

NGOs, non-governmental organizations, became an indirect part of governments through art. 71 of the Charter of the United Nations, Chapter X, The Economic and Social Council (1945). This council was tasked to make “suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its competence.” The organizations could be international and national as long as the U.N. member concerned was consulted.

At the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945, there were representatives of 1,200 voluntary organizations. Chapter X: Article 71 — Charter of the United Nations — Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs — Codification Division Publications

In some countries and circles, NGOs are called non-profits, NPOs (non-profit organizations). NGOs are a form of ‘civil society’ partnership, as the U.N. Agenda 2030 calls them, private/public partnership.

NGOs spring up in many ways. They can be controlled by citizens with an agenda of a certain ‘vision’ and mission. Funding can come from private individuals, the state, other NGOs, rich individuals, and small and large companies with an agenda.

Some NGOs claim that they are autonomous and impartial and claim that they receive no official funding but only donations and volunteer work. Each country has different steps and requirements to allow an NGO to exist.

Generally an NGO must state their purpose and ideology; the rules that governs it; how it is operated and governed; must choose a name, find headquarters (many U.N. affiliated NGOs are located in Switzerland); NGOs must choose their scope of action, i.e., local, state, national, international; what activities will be carried out in order to achieve stated objectives; who are the founding members and their roles; where does the financing come from; who makes decisions; is the NGO an association, foundation, or group; draft the founding act, the official document; request a tax number for commercial transactions; and register the NGO with Social Security in order to pay its workers.

NGOs started in the early 1800s. According to Nalinakumari and MacLean, the first structured NGO was the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society which was formed to ban slavery in the British Empire. By 1914 there were 1083 NGOs. Women’s suffrage movement and unions had a significant role in the establishment of NGOs.

Chapter 27 of U.N. Agenda 21 of 1992 recognized the “vital role of NGOs and other major groups in Sustainable Development (SD),” the lynchpin of U.N. Agenda 21 and U.N. Agenda 2030, an U.N. agenda that controls every facet of how we live and how companies operate.

The Globalization of the 20^th century significantly lifted the role of NGOs. Non-governmental organizations were “developed to emphasize humanitarian issues, developmental aid, and sustainable development.”

Social NGOs are seen as “popular movements of the poor.” Others think that NGOs are “imperialist in nature,” and “operate in a racialized manner in third world countries.” Whatever their nature, NGOs are now a powerful transnational network of vast interests and citizens are not invited to participate in their decision-making, they must obey.

How powerful are NGOs? According to insiders, the “NGO sector is now the eighth largest economy in the world valued at over $1 trillion a year globally.” NGOs, alleged to employ 19 million paid workers and numerous volunteers, spend significantly on development each year.

NGOs and trade unions are inter-connected. ‘Civil society’ activism led by trade unions enabled the rise of NGOs. Some NGOs were established by unions and the term “social movement unionism” was coined.

If the labor movement were repressed in a country, NGOs would take over as proxies. Unions and NGOs exchanged money to support each other’s projects.

NGOs are a strange mixture of alliances, government entities, charities, businesses, various denominational churches, radical groups, conservative groups, industry lobby groups such as the International Chamber of Commerce, and other groups. Funding is hard to trace as it comes from many directions.

The first international NGO, the Anti-Slavery Society, was formed in 1839. The Red Cross grew out of the Franco-Italian war and was established in 1863; Save the Children after World War I; and Oxfam and CARE after World War II.

The biggest NGO today is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with almost $30 billion in endowments. Some of the better-known NGOs are:

-         Save the Children

-         Oxfam International

-         Doctors without Borders

-         World Vision

-         International Rescue Committee

-         Catholic Relief Services

-         CARE International

-         Amnesty International

-         Plan International

Recently, NGOs have become tied to governments via funding arrangements and service contracts. Even state and local governments have gotten involved with NGOs in the so-called public-private partnerships.

According to Global Policy, Doctors Without Borders received 46 percent of its income from government sources. CARE International got 70 percent of its budget from government contributions. A substantial portion of Oxfam’s income came from the British government and the EU. World Vision received $55 million from the U.S. government. https://archive.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/176-general/31937.html

NGOs have exploded in numbers in response to globalization. There are few developments today that do not involve some kind of private/public partnership investment by ‘civil society.’ Nobody knows who or what the ‘civil society’ is, but it is not hard to find those involved, i.e., most politicians, D and R, academics, journalists, Hollywood stars, billionaires, rich athletes, United Nations members from third world countries, and famous authors with leftist leanings.

NGOs, with generous funds from our own government, have become tools of control and oppression of populations across the globe, including of American citizens. USAID provided huge funding, using our taxpayer dollars generously funneled by our own government to various programs that were not approved by American citizens.

NGOs facilitate and implement nefarious programs that go against our own interests, including the highly orchestrated illegal immigrant invasion of the United States from the Darien Gap in Panama.

 

 

Illegals Dump Their Trash in the Picnic Area of the Local Park

Plastic pollution in our national parks

Photo: Wikipedia

On sunny weekends and national holidays, the local park closes very early as the parking occupancy reaches its full capacity. The park is then closed to cars and boats but left open to foot traffic. The road leading up to the park entrance becomes crammed on both sides with parked cars. The occupants with their large families drag or carry on their backs coolers on a two-mile trek to the marina side of the park where a large picnic area and a fishing pier are located. Nobody speaks a word of English, only Spanish.

The park happens to be a historical site as the heavily wooded land was donated by illustrious families who have contributed many generations of great Americans to the state and to our country and have left an indelible print in our country’s history.

But our picnickers are only interested in cooking outdoors, drinking beer, and fishing. They are legal and illegal aliens who have flooded the area in the last ten years, crossing the border to find Americans who are willing to employ them. Additionally, they receive welfare and earned income tax credit for their children in the U.S. and even for those left behind south of the border.

Most work off the books and never pay income taxes even though the government has created ITIN with the IRS. The Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) was established for the use of individuals who are not U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents.

Illegals pay sales taxes and the fees to wire money via Western Union back to their home countries. But, in one given year, our federal government has paid $4.1 billion in earned income tax credit to foreign nationals who entered our country illegally. The earned income tax credit is not a tax “refund” but a direct, free cash payment from the U.S. Treasury to low-income immigrants who owe no taxes. “It is a dramatic cash transfer from lawful resident to unlawful residents.” https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/immigration/item/20149-illegal-immigrants-eligible-for-earned-income-tax-credit-other-benefits

They enjoy picnics for the day and leave behind a lot of food waste, wrappers, and plastics, which they seldom take to the many garbage bins conveniently located throughout the parking areas. Illegal aliens just leave the trash be – the rivers and creeks are going to carry them out to sea, they think. It is how they grew up – dump garbage out the window into the streets where they live, the creeks, on the side of roads, in the woods, lakes, and wherever they happen to be.

I have seen this irresponsible behavior on my trip to Mexico. In a very busy outdoor restaurant in Tijuana, frequented that day by many locals, there was human feces on the floor of the restaurant, buzzed by flies, but nobody seemed to notice or care and kept eating. The smell of urine and feces was quite pungent around bridges and walls.

When the park closes early in the day to car traffic, American locals who pay taxes for the maintenance of this and other parks cannot take their boats to the marina and put it on water to enjoy the weekend with their families. Canoers cannot take their canoes out for the day either. The fishing pier is crowded as well, even though signs clearly state in English that the fish is not fit for consumption.

The population in our county has grown by leaps and bounds, 40 percent since the last census, and, according to officials, the growth was mostly due to illegal aliens. Wherever they go, they leave trash behind.

Take the beaches in Florida. When they get off work, they picnic on the beach on late afternoons and leave their trash behind. The people hired to clean the beach behind them, know that they are the principal culprits who leave recyclables, cigarette butts, and food packaging behind. The taxpayers in the area dedicate a large budget for beach cleanup from food, drinks, and recyclable containers left behind.

Some Americans leave trash behind as well, especially on beaches. But ours is a culture that teaches children to pick up refuse after themselves. Third world cultures that do not have trash pickup at all and do not emphasize the importance of having a clean environment, contribute greatly to the pollution of rivers and eventually of oceans.

Floating marine debris, at all depths, include plastics, paper, wood, metal, and other manufactured materials. The Ocean Conservancy Trash Free Seas Alliance estimated that “8 million metric tons of plastic such as containers, bottles, shoes, are dumped into the ocean each year.”

Among the items collected during the International Coastal Cleanup Day in 2017: cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic bottles, plastic bottle caps, plastic grocery bags, other plastic bags, straws, stirrers, plastic take-out containers, foam take-out containers, and plastic lids.

Other strange items found were appliances, toothbrushes, shopping carts, mattresses, underwear, toilets, wigs, hair extensions, pregnancy tests, condoms, and even hot tubs. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/06/27/ocean-beach-pollution-plastic-trash/738173002/

Could we possibly educate people of the importance to keep our roads, parks, rivers, and streets clean? It takes generations to change a person’s mentality and what they are used to doing because they think, if it was good for my parents and grandparents, it is good enough for me.

Economically speaking, a beneficial externality such as parks and waterways are not private property and belong to no one in particular. People use waterways and parks as free dumping grounds for their waste. A beneficial externality for the enjoyment of all, i.e., a park or the use of it, becomes a detrimental externality when it is polluted deliberately.

It is a known fact that the centralized, socialist governments that these people have fled from have a dismal environmental record and an equally dismal record in teaching its citizens not to abuse and pollute nature indiscriminately, not caring that they leave a worse environment behind for their children and grandchildren.  Illegals abuse nature because they are not directly responsible for paying for its enjoyment unless one counts the small entrance fee per car. Those who walk in, do not pay.

It is sad to see the beauty of nature surrounding us being spoiled by people who stole into our country but have no interest in “once in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Once in Rome, they carry their bad, third world habits, behavior, and life with them. You cannot force civilized behavior on someone by giving them money, welfare, and the opportunity to evade the law.

Assimilate into American Culture, Important for Our Survival

Photo: Ileana Johnson

When I lived in several towns in rural Mississippi, we had to drive 59-67 miles, about an hour, to get to the nearest decent-sized mall or grocery store, or an hour to two hours to Alabama, to shop in a large mall or to see a medical specialist in Birmingham. They have since built larger local hospitals in rural MS.

Then super Walmart came to town and made grocery shopping much easier. A Costco and Sam’s Club were added an hour away. But driving was a breeze – the highways were good, well-marked with fluorescent paint for night and inclement weather driving, and there was no congestion, or rush hours except at Christmas. Living in the northeast now, I can drive 8 miles and it takes an hour or longer, depending on how clogged highways are.

No restaurant chains could come to town for decades because commercial land was owned by seven wealthy old-moneyed families who also had small mom and pop businesses in town and did not want competition from big chain restaurants or stores.

They had strong allies in the worshipping community.  Besides, nobody wanted to sell the land, they just wanted to lease it. What business would want to build on leased land, knowing that, when the lease ended, they could change their minds about the land and the building owner would have some hard choices to make.

There were many churches and parishioners objected to new buildings going up too close to them, especially restaurant establishments that had the potential to sell alcoholic beverages. Liquor laws were strict, nobody could sell alcohol within so many hundred feet from a church, or so we were told. Nobody bothered to check, we just believed the preachers.

There was one Mexican restaurant that ran a good business and very few foreigners like me and mom. We were ostracized as “European trash” and by extension our daughters were ostracized as well. Parents seldom allowed their children to socialize with ours because their grandmother spoke a foreign tongue and we were neither Baptist, nor Methodist, nor Episcopalian.

Some parents were more open-minded and allowed their children to forge friendships with ours, but they were few and far-between. They were the punished children of the “exotic” me who did not look like them and came from a communist country they had no idea where it was located on a map.

One Chinese man who opened a popular and very successful restaurant in town, tried to build a home he designed in an affluent neighborhood where homes were quite pricey. He encountered problems turning his dream home into reality as the resident objected to the height of his “mansion” and the possibility that he would bring in too many red Chinese among them.

Today in northeastern neighborhoods of relatively pricey homes, some owners transfer to other jobs, towns, and states, and have no choice but to rent their property if it does not sell quickly. Several south of the border families and Muslim families rent one home, trashing the place, its yard and surroundings, and filling the street with garbage. One Mexican illegal woman, in order to avoid deportation, converted from Catholicism to Islam. She then sub-leased the basement of her rented home to a Muslim family of ten.

Many litter the local parks when they picnic there even though there are plenty of trashcans posted nearby. In their culture, they have no garbage cans or garbage pickup, so they throw their refuse out the door, out the window, into the street, parks, etc. They think that water and rivers will cleanse it all. Except it all dumps into the Chesapeake Bay.

The other day, a Spanish speaking man was changing his car’s oil and dumping the dirty oil into the nearby drain, even though the posted signs clearly said in English, “do not dump anything into the drain.” Perhaps our government should have translated those signs into Spanish too, they do translate everything else.

A former academic colleague from Venezuela said to me years ago (she was a member of the local La Rasa), “they are just too dumb to learn English, they are illiterate in their own language, so, we must teach our American children to speak Spanish in order to help them function in our society.”

To show their benevolence, the local southern Baptists sponsored a few defectors from countries like China, Poland, East Germany, and the former Czechoslovakia. They paraded them in church every Sunday as if they were the heathens saved from the clutches of atheistic communism. Mom and I made a point in befriending them and truly helping them to get a better start and to understand what expected them in a southern town leery of foreigners. In the south then, you could also be from another part of America and not be fully accepted either. That is probably true of many places in the world who do not like outsiders.

They stayed just long enough to learn some English and a place to live, then started job hunting, saved enough cash, and left for greener pastures and opportunities as soon as they were financially able. A town with high unemployment rate and high welfare rates was no place to set roots, especially since they would be forever looked upon as outsiders.

Since then, the south, like other parts of the country, has been invaded by illegal aliens, Catholics from the south of the border, and Muslims from other parts of the world, some brought in by Obama as economic refugees, others crossing the border illegally, posing as Mexicans.

I cannot imagine what the city leaders and the town’s residents think about these new arrivals who have no intention of assimilating and becoming Americans, or respecting its traditions, on the contrary, want to change them to the life and culture where they fled from.

Mom and I were “Euro trash” forty years ago when we became Americans and contributed to society, respecting and embracing its culture, its traditions, its people, and its history. If I could only see some of these people face to face and ask them, what now? We were not good enough for you, what are you going to do to protect your precious American culture and children now? How long can you ostracize and ignore these new arrivals, who refuse to assimilate, before they overwhelm you through demographics of the womb?

Maria and Our Immigration Problem

The short and stocky Salvadoran woman was very talkative in her unschooled English. She’s been in this country for twenty years. She had fled her native country for economic reasons; she paid a coyote $1,000 to bring her across the southern border with Mexico, her family’s savings.  She had promised to send money back every month and, once able to marry and have babies, she would wait patiently until she could claim legal residence and bring her extended family to the United States via chain migration.

She and Juan had four children and now, at the age of 40, her 18 year old daughter has given birth to an out of wedlock child who became an automatic U.S. citizen the moment he took his first breath, thanks to the anchor baby ruling twisted by liberal courts into a birthright citizenship under the 14^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

She has kept her promise and some. She has brought to the United States her mom, dad, sisters, brothers, and cousins from her large extended family.  She has recently taken in a stranger, an eight-year little girl, who had been sent to the United States unaccompanied by her parents on the government’s promise that she would be allowed into the U.S., no questions asked.

Many such children were brought in the middle of the night and dispersed to centers around the country in communities willing to take them in and shelter them with our government’s money.  Maria was grateful to Obama for bringing in small and unaccompanied minors even though most were male, way past the age of adulthood, and sporting gang tattoos.

El Salvador, with approximately 6.34 million people, is the smallest and most densely populated nation in Central America. The Salvadoran economy produces about $4,000 worth of goods and services per capita. The official currency is the U.S. dollar which makes it quite convenient when the illegal Salvadorans in this country send home tax-free money to their relatives. It is a social security net that their government cannot possibly replace.

They had a home in El Salvador with glassless windows to allow some air circulation from the humid and overpowering heat. Tropical critters, including snakes, plagued them often. Depression and a sense of hopelessness surrounded her and suffocated any desire to try and make things better. Her mom had told her that she would do fine so long as she did not irritate the police and the gangs that roved in all neighborhoods asking for and seizing food, clothing, and whatever valuables a family may have had. Nobody dared to infuriate them or else they would wind up dead.  It never crossed mothers’ minds that it was up to them to change the culture of crime and fear by raising good sons who could oppose the criminal life that ruled them daily.

Having no education beyond eighth grade, Maria works hard for $18 an hour, cleaning a few homes of the wealthy, earning an untaxed living while her extended family takes advantage of the U.S. taxpayers’ generosity who provide them with welfare and Medicaid insurance. She is not the best cleaner, she added, but she tries, never admitting when she brakes things in some of the homes that hires her.

The work ethic in her country is vastly different than here and she does not understand the American obsession with work and the lack of the three-hour siesta. Perhaps that is what makes Spain the happiest country to live in, their extended siesta. Family and their needs are most important to her, not the needs of an employer who hired her.

She changed employers often – breaking their stuff while cleaning and using cleaning methods that were not up to par with our western standards. She did not quite understand the issue of germs and cross-contamination. She thought Americans to be obsessed with cleanliness and disinfectants. What could possibly be wrong using rags to clean commodes by hand and then use the same rags to clean countertops?

She explained that her countrymen are not so generous as the Americans are – they only give up their possessions and hard-earned money if MS-13 gangs and police come around demanding to be paid, confiscating their valuables. Whoever dares to say no, winds up dead.

The small country struggles with excessive poverty, inequality, and crime. Mostly agricultural, depending heavily on coffee production at one point (as much as 90%) and the indigo plant during the colonial period, El Salvador is now turning to other sectors (finance, industry) to improve its GDP.

The fact that Maria knows nothing about civics and government in our country, does not stop her from voting for the party that has given many immigrants like her welfare – the Democrat Party. There is an occasional Democrat Party drive in her Hispanic community to rally the vote and those who do not have transportation are offered rides. They are always coached how to vote and for which candidate, always Democrat.

She is just smart enough to know how to manage her family’s budget but not knowledgeable how the free market economy works in our country. Like all third world citizens who come to this country illegally with stars in their eyes, she thinks money grow on trees in the United States and there is an endless supply of it because it comes from the generous government. She does not see any connection between the funding source of government and the “rich” American taxpayers who fund it. By the rest of the world’s standards, any American with a job is filthy rich and should share their wealth with the world.

I asked her if it bothered her that she is voting for the Democrat politicians who want open borders and are bringing in the MS-13 gangs she escaped from El Salvador, turning this country into the unsafe country she left behind for the wellbeing and economic prosperity here. She raised her shoulders with a deer in the headlights look on her face and said nothing.

It would only take ten percent of the millions of the flotsam and jetsam of the world currently residing illegally in the U.S. to vote Socialist Democrat, fundamentally transforming this country into a ruling regime diametrically opposed to our U.S.  Constitution and Christian roots.

It’s Snowing Again, It Must be Global Warming

Photo: Ileana Johnson

For the fifth time in seven days snow began to fall in large flakes, cold kisses from heaven that built into a 12-inch blanket of pristine white, wet and heavy carpet of global warming that my husband is going to have to shovel multiple times. It would freeze overnight when the temperatures are expected to dip into low single digits.

My friend Joe K., who spent five years in Romania serving our country during Ceausescu’s draconian regime, commented that “every time it would freeze in Bucharest, water in our radiators would freeze up. We never had heat when we needed it.”

His comment was nothing new to me, we froze all the time in our communist-subsidized reinforced steel concrete and drab grey apartments covered with dingy air pollution. We lived on the fifth floor and radiator steam seldom reached that high up. I was never warm in winter except when I went to see my grandparents in the nearby village.

The village was located about 9 km from the outskirts of town. Even though they were so close, they might as well have lived in the 18^th century. They never got electricity until late 70s but they had a wood-burning mud brick stove that kept things toasty warm during the day in the two tiny rooms. Grandpa’s bed was close by the stove which served as a heat source and for cooking over the three eyes with removable and adjustable cast iron covers to fit any size cast iron pot.

Temperatures dropped precipitously at night as the fire died out. We were sleeping snug in sea weed and straw mattresses and heavy wool quilted comforters made by grandma’s hand. We always woke up in the morning flea-bitten to a cold room until grandpa stoked a new fire in the stove and the crackling burning logs warmed us enough to get out of bed and put our warm and scratchy hand-made wool clothes on. The cats came down from the warm attic to be fed; they were the mouse catchers and a constant source of fleas and furry hugs.

We always helped our extended family as we were all equally poor under the boot of communism. The socialist rhetoric was long on failed promises that never materialized and short on providing for the starving and cold proletarian masses.

The arctic air has rolled over our north-eastern area and the Hawk is blowing something fierce. We are snug in the comfort of our homes where we can easily adjust the temperature, have warm water, thick comforters and blankets, and plenty of warm clothes and socks.
I worry about domesticated animals left outdoors to fend for themselves and for our fellow humans who are homeless by no fault of their own and how they are going to protect themselves in these frigid temperatures.

Corrupt politicians on both sides of the isle seem to be more concerned about the welfare of foreign individuals, potential Democrat voters, who are overrunning our borders illegally, than they are about our own poor people, veterans, and the elderly.

I hope there are enough shelters open to protect our homeless population from frigid temperatures. We should provide apartments for them instead of the illegal aliens, who are bussed into our country with non-governmental organizations (NGO) and Democrat taxpayer funding, demanding free housing, healthcare, food, electricity, education, and the right to vote at the expense of Americans.

Poverty exists everywhere and people have a right to seek a better life in a legal way. They also have the responsibility to make their own countries better, especially the men. But they do not have the right to demand welfare from our hard-earned tax dollars.

The 1970s America Is Gone Not by the Tides of Change

The Swamp
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

The first Americans I’ve met, Pam and her husband James from Chicago worked with my dad at the refinery.  He was an engineer from a small family and she followed him to this God-forsaken country where everyone seemed to be a prisoner. They appeared friendly in a plastic way, smiling all the time for no apparent reason, totally unconcerned about the misery of the oppressed Romanians around them, barely surviving under communism.

The couple relished in their monthly shopping trips – it was their escape from the depressing life around them. They would fly to places in the West that were forbidden to us, Hungary, Austria, and Germany. She would come back each time with expensive gifts for herself and her family. She could not wait to return to the land of plenty, far from “this dirty, drab and awful country where nobody smiled.”  

Insulated from reality, shopping at their special stores, treated by American doctors, Pam never really understood the pain and suffering white-washed by clean streets, summer flowers in well-manicured parks, and beautiful monuments erected to the dear leader.  The long lines for food, she said, must have been because the cashiers were really slow and ineffective. Americans did not stand in line for anything except tickets for games and rock concerts.

John came for the opportunity to share his skills in a communist country and to meet new people. In our conversations in English (they never tried to learn Romanian), the word opportunity seemed to crop up all the time. I did not understand what opportunity meant because such a word did not translate exactly into our vocabulary and into our lives, literally and figuratively. You were born in the proletariat class and that is where you remained for the rest of your life, no chance at anything else. The communist elites had any opportunity they chose to take for themselves by force.

America is the land of opportunity where immigrants dream to find success through hard work and a lifestyle with a picket fence, a nice home, plenty of food, and a traditional family comprised of mother, father, and children. Nineteen-seventy America was still the land of opportunity where, if one worked hard, one could reach whatever he/she was willing to sacrifice in order to achieve their goals. But Christianity, God, faith, and family were at the center of a successful life.

There were no pedestrians in the southern town where I lived. Americans were trapped inside large metal gas guzzlers that drank gasoline like water. Nobody strolled outdoors except in the square downtown. If anyone saw you walk on the side of the road, since sidewalks did not exist except in large cities, they would stop and offer you a ride. It was done from a sense of pity as well as concern for your safety, walking in 90-degree oven-like heat coupled with unbearable humidity that kept everyone’s face looking young and shiny.

Many foreigners who dared or were allowed to travel to America came by boat as it was still much cheaper than flying. Once here, some took the Greyhound bus across the U.S. and others, like me, flew everywhere or crisscrossed the country by car or truck, seldom taking the train.

In a very small southern town of 3,000, church was the center of life for young and old. I counted over 100 churches stretching as far away as a ten mile radius in the county. Many youth trips, activities, and summer camps were sanctioned or sponsored by the church.

There was a drive-in theater, and one grocery store, locally owned and operated. The closest chain grocery store was over 60 miles away. A tiny mall with boutiques and a Sears store is where people bought their washers and dryers, TVs, lawn mowers, bikes, toys, Christmas gifts, and clothing. Fancier TVs could be purchased in a Curtis Mathis store. There was no Super Walmart, Target, or such retailers.

Some cross-roads had a small convenience store that the local farmers frequented for their daily necessities, milk, bananas, ice cream, and candy bars. Americans of all ages consumed, I thought, way too much sugar then. The owners knew everybody and, if they just came from the field and did not have their wallets, the items purchased were put on an account which the farmer could pay later.

There was a level of trust that I have never seen anywhere else – nobody needed a credit card. People did not dare write bad checks and credit cards were hard to obtain and seldom accepted. My Egyptian friend Lula remarked that we bought everything with checks, not cash. She did not understand the western concept of banking.

People dressed simply, the local seamstress made a good living with Simplicity patterns and fabrics purchased by the yard at Hancock’s Fabrics. She charged $20 to make a dress at a time when minimum wage was $3.10.

The local beauty shop was a wooden building on the side of an empty highway, no sign, every lady in the county knew where it was, just big enough for a couple of chairs, a sink, and the window air conditioner. A southern belle dressed in jeans and a country shirt did her hair on Friday for $10 and then went to the grocery store and bought the week’s $20 supply of food for the family. Americans could buy a lot of food for $20 in the seventies and still only spent about 15 percent of their income to fill their refrigerators.

I was mesmerized how homes in the middle of a pasture had running water and a septic tank. In my Romania at the time, country folks still had smelly and unsanitary out-houses.

Eating out was unheard of unless you counted going to the Rexall Drug counter for a soda float or getting a Mickey Mouse ice cream bar at Vaughn’s country store. The small town had a Sonic drive-in but no McDonalds and no pizza parlor.

Locals bought their blue jeans at Varney’s Department Store on the square and Elegant Ladies, each the size of a master bedroom today, or at the Co-op store where you could pretty much purchase anything you needed to run a farm, including the tough Wrangler jeans for $10.

If you were willing to drive over 60 miles to buy food in a chain grocery store, you could also shop in a real Sears or J.C. Penney store, today’s dinosaurs. Catalogs came in every year but ordering by phone and receiving packages in the mail took time and effort and the shipping and returns were costly. The post office was not conveniently located either. Walking in the heat and the unforgiving sun to retrieve packages or mail from the mailbox on the side of the country road, far away from any farm house, was a sweat-drenching proposition.

Homes were sprawling and comfortable, simply decorated, with A/C units in the windows or the occasional central air heating and cooling. Poorer folks lived in trailers who rocked, rattled, and shook during the frequent Tornado Alley storms that seemed to crack the sky in two with thunder and lightning.  Powerful winds whipped and ripped old and venerable trees from the roots and occasional tornadoes demolished and flattened the forest, ripping anything else apart that stood in its path, and sending cows and humans flying through the air.

People dressed in their best for Wednesday and Sunday church services, followed by picnics and potluck suppers when everyone brought their best dishes to share with the congregation. And during football and baseball season, people attended the high school games and prayed before each game, cheering for the home team.

A stream of friends and acquaintances visited my in-laws to meet the Romanian girl who was lucky enough to escape Ceausescu’s communism while the Romanian was bewildered by all these well-meaning strangers who had no idea what kind of world she had left behind.

Without a myriad of TV channels of today, the drive-in was the only cinema that offered the latest movies. If your car broke down in the middle of the road, kind strangers stopped to help, change a tire, give you a lift home or to the nearest garage.

Cell phones did not exist in our bucolic lives and land lines were expensive. Many country folks had rotary dials with four parties on one phone line. You had to wait your turn to make a call or, in an emergency, ask the other parties to get off so that you can make the call. Everybody knew anybody else’s latest news and gossip as it was easy to listen in on conversations, intentionally or not.

Foreigners like me, an oddity from the communist world Americans despised, were a rarity in the South and Americans opened their homes to them but did not really accept them as part of their social milieu, they kept them at arm’s length and on the fringes because communists were not to be trusted. Yet foreigners like me learned the language and integrated into society, and became naturalized Americans who were contributing to its well-being and paid taxes.

Today’s Americans embrace communism and desire to change their society to that utopian failed state. They take in with open arms the real flotsam and jetsam of the third world who are often anti-Christian and unwilling to ever integrate into society, learn English, and assimilate. They are only interested in the generous welfare.

In the 70s, it was a shame to accept welfare. You had to be really down on your luck and prayed to improve quickly so you could get off welfare. There was shame and dishonor associated with accepting handouts. Today that shame is gone and it has morphed into an entitlement to everything other people own and had worked hard for.

The local high schools would invite foreign speakers who survived and escaped oppressive regimes to educate young Americans about the evils of totalitarianism/communism and how dear leaders like Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, and Ceausescu have tortured and killed 100 million of their own people, citizens kept prisoners in their own countries and often starved to death.

After decades of telling teachers and students that one cannot mix Christian religion and state, the k-12 Common Core curriculum adopted is indoctrinating students into Islam and into sexual deviance. It is sad to watch today’s public schools, some private schools, and many colleges in the U.S. preach communism, intolerance of everyone who loves America, the pillars of Islam, and anti-Christianity even though many well-informed parents object.

And those who object to this indoctrination are labeled immediately – intolerant, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic, racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, islamophobic, misogynist, or whatever “hate” label the Left has chosen for the rest of us who fell in love with 1970s America.

With a few areas here and there, small towns that did not have enough money or resources to accommodate the welfare-seeking invasion of illegal immigrants and government-allotted mostly male refugees, 1970s America is unrecognizable today. The rule of law and borders long forgotten, is the country still yours?

Say good-bye to what you grew up with and hello to 2018 America altered not by the normal change that the passage of time creates but a socially-engineered globalist entity spawned by the communist Left over the last five decades.

 

 

 

 

Trump's Wall

President Trump proposed a 20 percent tariff on imports from Mexico in order to pay for the wall he plans to build on the southern border. It is assumed that the 20 percent tariff is a negotiating starting point. A tariff is a tax on imports which will make a product more expensive and favor domestically produced goods over imports, while raising revenue for the government of our country.

Tariffs were a major government revenue source during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but today we are a low tariff country, with a few exceptions. Other countries protect their domestic industries by charging heavy tariffs and some as much as 100 percent.

A tariff helps those companies and countries that can supply goods most cheaply, presumably because they are more efficient, but some governments provide their companies with export subsidies in order to allow them to reduce the selling price of their goods on foreign markets.

Dan Lombard argued that “a 3% transit tax over three years would pay for a wall.” Infuriated by the economically illiterate commentators who claim that the tariff would be passed on entirely to the consumer, Lombard said that a $700 washing machine crosses the border with a price tag of $400, but time transit charges, warehousing expenses, sales commissions, overhead markup, and profit are added onto the $400 price, pricing the washer at $700 but the tariff is applied onto the $400 price tag. Customers will pay a certain amount more for that brand produced in Mexico but the company that makes the washing machine “will absorb the cost as the price of doing business.”

What exactly does Mexico export to us? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-does-the-u-s-import-from-mexico-a-whole-lot/

According to government trade data, Mexico exported $295 billion worth of goods to the U.S. in 2015: autos (74 billion), electrical machinery (63 billion), machinery (49 billion), agricultural products (21 billion), fuels (14 billion), plastics (17 billion), optical and medical instruments (12 billion).  In the agricultural products category Mexico exported to the U.S. corn, soybeans, dairy products, pork and pork products, beef and beef products.  https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/americas/mexico

On January 27, 2017, President Trump tweeted that “Mexico has taken advantage of the U.S. for long enough. Massive trade deficits and little help on the very weak border must change, NOW!”

A trade deficit with Mexico is the excess of our imports over exports. U.S. goods trade deficit with Mexico was $58 billion in 2015 and U.S. services trade surplus with Mexico in 2015 was $9.2 billion. Mexico was the third largest supplier of goods to the U.S. in 2014 and supplied services in transportation, travel, and intellectual property (software). https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/americas/mexico

U.S. foreign investment in Mexico totaled $107.8 billion in 2014 by nonbank holding companies, manufacturing, and finance/insurance.

Texas Congressman Louis Gohmert told Fox News that billions of dollars had been appropriated for a virtual wall on the southern border during the Bush administration but Janet Napolitano disregarded Congress and “we let her get away with disobeying the law.”  http://investmentwatchblog.com/funds-already-appropriated-for-wall-its-going-to-happen/

According to the Daily Caller, “The transition team is planning big spending negotiations with Congress, which will include money for the wall.” President Trump “plans to make Mexico pay for the wall directly or indirectly by increasing fees on visas and border crossing cards, enforcing trade tariffs and taxing money transfers abroad.” The pre-cast concrete wall will be 35-50 feet tall, costing an estimated $8-$12 billion. Of the 2,000 mile border with Mexico, 650 miles are already fenced and illegals have no problem climbing the existing barrier. http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/10/trumps-plan-for-the-wall-on-the-mexican-border-materializes/

It is obvious to any traveler that Mexico must repair their own country and must stop using the United States as their social security blanket at the expense of American taxpayers. Drug cartels operate across the border back and forth unimpeded, and illegals send home billions of dollars of untaxed money to Mexico.

As many have suggested, a tax should be levied on money wired to Mexico via Western Union, Money Gram, etc. On the average, money wires are only charged a service fee of $10.99 to transfer a few hundred dollars.

Most illegals, who do work hard and long hours, request to be paid in cash which means that they evade paying state and federal income taxes, Social Security taxes, etc.  At the same time, they benefit from our free medical care and other forms of welfare. As they consume goods and services in this country, they do pay sales taxes.

Some Illegals pay tax via ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number) also known as W7. The earned income tax credit they receive based on reported income on W7 is far greater than the actual state and federal taxes they pay. Some even claim children who are not even theirs or do not reside in the United States. Tax refunds amount to $4.2 billion according to a 2011 audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2015/08/20/trump-bashes-4-billion-in-irs-refunds-to-illegals/#4945c4de7025

Let’s assume that the 11 million illegal aliens that apparently have not grown in numbers in 20 years since the MSM has championed their cause, send home south of the border $1,000 per month, a sum total of one billion untaxed income earned while illegally in the U.S., a cool $12 billion a year. Some may send less, some may send more. To save money, several illegals rent one apartment and use one common van as transportation. The money sent to Mexico support their families left behind for years and helps them save for building a nice home.

Michael Savage made the argument on his radio show that you cannot and should not deport law-abiding illegals (although when they cross the border of another country illegally, technically they are not law-abiding), that only criminal illegal aliens should be deported. Quoting data from the Government Accountability Office, 25 percent of the prison population is made up of illegal aliens and “criminal illegal aliens are arrested on the average 7 times.” https://www.numbersusa.org/pages/incarcerated-illegal-aliens-0

One of the reasons Savage cited for not deporting “law-abiding” illegals was that many work diligently and very hard in construction and in restaurants. “Who is going to wash the dishes,” he asked rhetorically. “And who is going to pick the crops? You?” This argument is weak as humans no longer need to pick crops, there are machines that can pick any kind of crop – back-breaking manual labor is no longer necessary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6VKBb9MmJc

The assumption is also made that millions of low-skilled Americans who are unemployed are either too educated for the job, lazy, or are unwilling to work in the restaurant business or construction industry.

But, for every illegal alien who is gainfully employed, if they are not here alone, he has a wife and children at home who are dependent on Medicaid and some or all of the thirteen U.S. Welfare Programs, costing American taxpayers plenty. And anchor babies make their parents eligible to stay in the U.S. and eventually the extended family.

The welfare programs include: http://federalsafetynet.com/us-welfare-programs.html

-          Negative income Tax (Earned Income Tax Credit or EITC, and the Child Tax Credit)

-          SNAP (food program, formerly food stamps, but is now a debit card which is often abused)

-          Housing assistance

-          SSI (cash to low-income individuals)

-          Pell Grants (up to $5,500 in grants to students from low-income households)

-          TANF (cash for individuals moving from welfare to work)

-          Child nutrition

-          Head Start (pre-school program to low-income families)

-          Job training programs

-          WIC (healthy food to pregnant women and children up to five years of age)

-          Child care (block grants to states and private agencies who administer child care programs to low-income families)

-          LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program for heating and cooling)

-          Lifeline (Obama Phone) – discounted phone service to low-income individuals.

Savage argued that Americans must tread lightly in withdrawing these benefits to Mexicans as it would destabilize their economy and would create a vacuum of financial support of the population, leaving it open perhaps to a country like China to become the Big Brother provider which might not be in the best interest of the United States.

Even though Democrats and their leftist cohorts are lobbying against the southern border wall, and shrieking that it cannot be built, that it is inhumane, that it is being escalated anyway, that it would take a long time to build, and states like Texas, California, and New Mexico are rightfully Mexico’s anyway, they build tall security armed fences around their mansions and properties. The wall worked for China and it works for Israel. A former Mexican president even went as far as saying that Mexico is wherever there are Mexicans. However, if anyone crosses their borders illegally, they go straight to jail.

Would President Trump Fix the "Broken" Immigration?

We keep hearing that our current immigration system is broken and it must be overhauled to better serve the immigrants, especially the illegal ones. And in this process, it seems that immigration, whether legal or illegal, is not necessarily run in the best interest of the American people, but in the best interest of crony capitalists and the ruling elites.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency with the Department of Homeland Security, was created in 2002 and assumed its functions on March 1, 2003, as a result of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. USCIS has over 200 offices around the world and staffs 19,000 employees and contractors in four directorates and nine program offices. Applications are processed in four major USCIS Service Centers and 83 Field Offices in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Guam.

Funding USCIS operations largely from user fees, less than 4 percent of its FY2014 budget came from Congressional appropriations. According to William A. Kandel, writing in a Congressional Service Report in May 2015, $124 million USCIS funding came from direct congressional appropriations and $3.097 billion came from user fees in 2014. http://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R44038.pdf

Over twenty years ago, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was transformed by creating the Immigration Examinations Fee Account (IEFA) in 1988 to fund the agency’s activities. “The agency has two other small accounts that were created to support specific purposes both within and outside USCIS: the H-1B Non-Immigrant Petitioner Fee Account; and the H-1B Fraud Prevention and Detection Fee Account.”

When DHS receives its annual funding, USCIS also receives its direct appropriations. In previous years, Congress also funded special projects through direct appropriations such as backlog reduction. In recent years, according to CRS, appropriations have exclusively funded E-Verify and immigrant integration grants. E-Verify is a system that electronically confirms if individuals have proper authorization to work in the United States.

INS was legally allowed to charge fees for immigration services even before the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA). When the Immigration Examinations Fee Account (IEFA) was created, USCIS collected most of its budget from user fees, and its budget was no longer subject to annual congressional approval. Congress has little or no influence on our immigration policies and enforcement.

Our President issued on November 20, 2014 the Immigration Accountability Executive Action which included provisions such as an expansion of the existing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program started in 2012, and the new Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) program that “grants certain unauthorized aliens protection from removal, and work authorization, for three years.”

Applicants submit petitions and pay user fees to USCIS which “would purportedly pay for the cost of administering the program.” This executive action benefited 5 million unauthorized aliens living in the United States. “The deferred action programs of the President’s executive action have been temporarily enjoined.”

Some Congressmen, reflecting the wishes of their constituents, oppose deferred action programs but have little or no options to stop the programs using the annual funding process. They cannot control an agency which is largely independent of Congress. To change this situation, an enactment of law would be required which Congress does not seem interested in pursuing, as the illegal immigration debacle continues unabated despite the recent violent attacks in Paris by “refugees” from Syria and elsewhere who were allowed into EU unrestricted.

While some are happy that USCIS reduces the burden of cost to American taxpayers, others are concerned over the lack of congressional oversight on its activities and its lack of accountability to Congress.

Additional potential issues include the level of fees that may prevent potential applicants from seeking benefits or deter lawful permanent residents from becoming citizens; the pace and progress of information technology modernization may not serve legal petitioners efficiently, causing huge backlogs of 4 million legal applications; and the inability of Congress to oversee the adequacy of personnel management and resources.

With the leading purpose of processing immigrant petitions, USCIS handled in 2014 six million petitions for immigration-related services and benefits. USCIS performs other functions:

-          Adjudication of immigration and naturalization petitions

-          Refugee and asylum claims and related humanitarian and international concerns

-          Immigration-related services such as issuing employment authorizations

-          Petitions of nonimmigrant change-of-status

“Humanitarian functions have no associated fee” but the following do levy user fees:

-          Immigration adjudication

Of the 6 million petitions processed each year, 1 million are for permanent status and 5 million are for temporary non-immigrant status; adjudicators determine if immediate relatives and family members of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent resident (LPRs) are eligible; if employees U.S. businesses demonstrate they are needed and no other Americans are available; they also determine if foreign nationals on a temporary visa are eligible to change to another non-immigrant status or LPR status

-          Work authorization

Screens aliens for work under certain conditions

-          Employment verification

Checks lawful status to work in the United States (since FY2007, congressional appropriations have funded the E-Verify)

-          International Services

USCIS Office of International Affairs “adjudicates refugee applications and conducts background and record checks related to some immigrant petitions abroad;” a component of this program is the asylum officer corps who interview and screen asylum applicants; according to USCIS, “a person seeking asylum is applying for protection from persecution for the same reasons as a refugee but, unlike a refugee, is present in the United States”

-          Fraud Detection and National Security

This office flags applications and petitions that trigger national security and criminal database notifications; such duties, formerly performed by INS enforcement, are now under the responsibility of DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

-          Civic Integration

Instructing and training on citizenship rights and responsibilities via a Citizenship Resource Center website and via the Immigrant Integration Grants Program “which assists public or private nonprofit organizations that provide citizenship instruction and naturalization application services to LPRs

-          Naturalization

Granting U.S. citizenship to LPRs; adjudicators must check if aliens have continuously resided in the U.S. for a specific period of time, have good moral character, are able to read, write, speak, and understand English, and have a basic knowledge of U.S. civic and history;

Do unsavory characters who are not worthy of American citizenship or of refugee status slip through the adjudication process? Of course they do, the terrorist Tsernaev brothers come to mind.

One of the biggest criticisms of USCIS is that petitions are still processed in the “outmoded” paper form and there are constant complaints of lost files. Since 2008 USCIS has embarked on IT Modernization and Client Services in order to “improve information sharing, workload capacity, and system integrity.” Eventually the system will be “paperless, centralized, and consolidated, ensuring national security and integrity, customer service, operational efficiency, and quality in immigration benefit decisions.” (Fiscal Year 2016 Congressional Budget Justifications, p. 3357)

Since Congress is so weak and unwilling to protect our borders, our American interests, and our sovereignty, would a President Trump be ready to use his executive pen to stop the flood of illegal immigrants by building a fence, enforcing current immigration laws, and deporting criminal illegal aliens?