I have seen the following article several times over the last few years, and each time, it was always attributed to the famous football coach we all love, Mr. Lou Holtz. While I feel certain Lou would have said all that the article exposes had he had the chance, it was actually an essay written by Bob Lonsberry and published on his website on 9 December 2013 shortly after the Street Hustler gave his speech on our Nation’s income inequality. No matter the author, every word, every phrase, every concept still rings so true.  God bless the United States of America and HER Marines. Semper Fi, JB

Two Americas

The America that contributes and the America that doesn’t. It’s not the haves and the have nots, it’s the dos and the don’ts. Some people do their duty as Americans, obey the law, support themselves, contribute to society and others don’t. That’s the divide in America.

It’s not about income inequality, it’s about civic irresponsibility. It’s about a political party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization in order to win elective office. It’s about a political party that loves power more than it loves its country.

That’s not invective, that’s truth, and it’s about time someone said it.  The politics of envy was on proud display a couple weeks ago when President Obama pledged the rest of his term to fighting “income inequality.” He noted that some people make more than other people, that some people have higher incomes than others, and he says that’s not just. That is the rationale of thievery. The other guy has it, you want it, Obama will take it for you. Vote Democrat. That is the philosophy that produced Detroit .

It is the electoral philosophy that is destroying America . It conceals a fundamental deviation from American values and common sense because it ends up not benefiting the people who support it, but a betrayal.

The Democrats have not empowered their followers, they have enslaved them in a culture of dependence and entitlement, of victim-hood and anger instead of ability and hope. The president’s premise “ that you reduce income inequality by debasing the successful“ seeks to deny the successful the consequences of their choices and spare the unsuccessful the consequences of their choices. Because, by and large, income variations in society are a result of different choices leading to different consequences.  Those who choose wisely and responsibly have a far greater likelihood of success, while those who choose foolishly and irresponsibly have a far greater likelihood of failure.

Success and failure usually manifest themselves in personal and family income. You choose to drop out of high school or to skip college – and you are apt to have a different outcome than someone who gets a diploma and pushes on with purposeful education.  You have your children out of wedlock and life is apt to take one course; you have them within a marriage and life is apt to take another course. Most often in life our destination is determined by the course we take.

My doctor, for example, makes far more than I do. There is significant income inequality between us. Our lives have had an inequality of outcome, but, our lives also have had an inequality of effort. While my doctor went to college and then devoted his young adulthood to medical school and residency, I got a job in a restaurant. He made a choice, I made a choice, and our choices led us to different outcomes. His outcome pays a lot better than mine. Does that mean he cheated and Barack Obama needs to take away his wealth? No, it means we are both free men in a free society where free choices lead to different outcomes.

It is not inequality Barack Obama intends to take away, it is freedom. The freedom to succeed, and the freedom to fail. There is no true option for success if there is no true option for failure. The pursuit of happiness means a whole lot less when you face the punitive hand of government if your pursuit brings you more happiness than the other guy. Even if the other guy sat on his arse and did nothing. Even if the other guy made a lifetime’s worth of asinine and short-sighted decisions.

Barack Obama and the Democrats preach equality of outcome as a right, while completely ignoring inequality of effort.  The simple Law of the Harvest “ as ye sow, so shall ye reap“ is sometimes applied as, “The harder you work, the more you get.”

Obama would turn that upside down. Those who achieve are to be punished as enemies of society and those who fail are to be rewarded as wards of society. Entitlement will replace effort as the key to upward mobility in American society if Barack Obama gets his way. He seeks a lowest common denominator society in which the government besieges the successful and productive to foster equality through mediocrity. He and his party speak of two Americas , and their grip on power is based on using the votes of one to sap the productivity of the other. America is not divided by the differences in our outcomes, it is divided by the differences in our efforts.

It is a false philosophy to say one man’s success comes about unavoidably as the result of another man’s victimization.

What Obama offered was not a solution, but a separatism. He fomented division and strife, pitted one set of Americans against another for his own political benefit. That’s what socialists offer. Marxist class warfare wrapped up with a bow. Two Americas , coming closer each day to proving the truth to Lincoln ‘s maxim that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

“Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.”

Originally posted 2016-05-22 10:59:31.

Thank you Obama, keep bringing them in so we can meet your goal of becoming a third-rate country infested with diseases that we should have eradicated by now. Unbelievable! Hello mainstream media, are you asleep, or do you think Jenner’s coming out was more important? The Chicago Street Hustler does. Does anyone out there care besides me? Comments welcome if you do, or even if you don’t, it would be interesting to learn why you don’t.

Twenty-Two Percent of Resettled Refugees in Minnesota Test Positive for Tuberculosis

One of every five refugees resettled in Minnesota by the federal government tested positive for latent tuberculosis in 2014, according to the state’s Department of Health.

Only 4 percent of the general population in the United States tested positive for latent tuberculosis in the most recent report provided by the Centers for Disease Control.

The April 2016 edition of the Refugee Health Quarterly, published by the Minnesota Department of Health reports that:

Minnesota had 150 cases of TB in 2015, compared to 147 cases in 2014 (a 2 percent increase). The most common risk factor for TB cases in Minnesota is being from a country where TB is common.

TB screening is offered to all refugees during the domestic refugee health exam.

In 2014, 22 percent of refugees screened tested positive for LTBI (latent tuberculosis infection).

26 percent of all foreign born cases of tuberculosis in Minnesota were from people born in Somalia. Somalians almost exclusively enter the state through the refugee resettlement program.

More than 70,000 refugees have been resettled in the United States annually for the past three decades by the federal government. It’s not just tuberculosis being brought in by these resettled refugees. Measles, whooping cough, diptheria, and other diseases that were on their way to eradication are also coming in across the borders of the United States.

A recent outbreak of measles in Memphis, Tennessee, a center for refugee resettlement, began at a local mosque, as Breitbart News reported previously.

The alarming public health report from Minnesota comes on the heels of news from the Centers for Disease Control that in 2015, the incidence of tuberculosis in the United States increased.

“Data from 2015 show that the number of TB cases has increased (by 1.7 percent) nationally [in the United States] for the first time in 23 years, with a total of 9,563 TB cases reported,” the Minnesota Department of Health reports.

As the Star Tribune, Minnesota’s largest daily newspaper, reports:

The CDC is still trying to determine the reason for the uptick.

The goal set by the CDC, in 1989, of eliminating TB by 2010 — defined as less than one case in a million people — remains elusive. Even if the trend of declining cases had continued, the United States would not have eliminated TB by the end of this century, the CDC said.

“We are not yet certain why TB incidence has leveled off, but we do know it indicates the need for a new, expanded approach to TB elimination,” said Dr. Philip LoBue, director of the CDC’s Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, in an email.

A dual approach is needed: continue to find and treat cases of disease and evaluate their contacts, as well as identify and evaluate other high-risk persons for latent TB infection, he said.

There may be a positive correlation between the increase in the number of refugees resettled in the United States during this period and the sudden increase in the incidence of tuberculosis, a disease that many thought was on the path to eradication in the United States.

As the Centers for Disease Control report:

In 2014, a total of 66% of reported TB cases in the United States occurred among foreign-born persons. The case rate among foreign-born persons (15.4 cases per 100,000 persons) in 2014 was approximately 13 times higher than among U.S.-born persons (1.2 cases per 100,000 persons).

“Today four states – California, New York, Texas and Florida – have more than half the nation’s active TB cases, though they have only a third of the country’s population. The four states have the highest numbers of foreign-born residents,” according to the Star Tribune.

A person with latent tuberculosis is not infectious and does not have symptoms of the disease. A person with active tuberculosis is infectious and has symptoms of the disease.

Ten percent of those with latent tuberculosis develop active tuberculosis if not treated,according to the World Health Organization.

As the Star Tribune reports:

TB is an airborne infectious disease caused by bacteria that spreads through the air, person to person, when someone coughs or sneezes. One in three people worldwide have latent TB, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, up to 13 million people have been exposed to TB and could develop the disease.

Every year, tuberculosis claims 1.5 million lives worldwide and 500 to 600 in this country.

“Tuberculosis (TB) has surpassed HIV as the leading cause of death from infectious disease worldwide,” the Minnesota Department of Health reports.

Tuberculosis is airborne and can be spread when a person active tuberculosis coughs, sneezes, or otherwise transmits the infection to a previously uninfected individual.

Treatment for tuberculosis is long and expensive. If caught early, it typically takes about nine months for a person with active tuberculosis to improve to latent tuberculosis. Not everyone diagnosed with active tuberculosis, however, improves. Mortality rates for those with active tuberculosis are much higher than health professionals would like, even in the United States.

According to the Star Tribune:

Treating TB patients is labor intensive. To ensure that TB patients complete the course of drugs that lasts six months or longer, Directly Observed Therapy programs require a health care worker – not a family member – to watch patients with active TB swallow every dose. If a patient cannot get to a clinic, a health care worker goes to the person’s home. The worker monitors patients for side effects and other problems.

Care also involves communication and cultural challenges. In Michigan, where the number of active TB cases rose from 105 in 2014 to 130 last year, the health department reaches out to Detroit’s large Arab and Bangladeshi populations. In other parts of the state, Burmese immigrants have different needs, said Peter Davidson, Michigan TB control manager.

“Some local health departments have strong partnerships with translation services. Some rely on a less formal mechanism – a private physician or someone on staff at the hospital who speaks the language,” Davidson said.

The cost of treating an active TB case that is susceptible or responsive to drugs averages $17,000, according to the CDC. Care of patients with drug-resistant TB, which can result from taking antibiotics prescribed before TB was properly diagnosed, costs many times more: $134,000 for a multi-drug-resistant patient and $430,000 for an extensively drug-resistant one.

Minnesota public health officials point to the high treatment rate of those refugees diagnosed with latent tuberculosis as a reason for optimism.

“Eliminating TB in the U.S. will require increased attention to the diagnosis and treatment of latent TB infection (LTBI),” the April 2016 Refugee Health Quarterly reports.
“Minnesota’s LTBI treatment completion rate for refugees who start treatment is one of the highest in the nation at 86 percent in 2013,” the report adds.

An alternative public health policy–one that the United States used for decades in the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century–is to test immigrants and refugees for infectious disease before they are allowed into the country.

In that earlier era, those who tested positive were sent home. Today, however, many are welcomed in and pose a risk of infecting the rest of the American population.

(Note: Valley News Live in Fargo, North Dakota was the first broadcast outlet to report on the 22 percent incidence of latent tuberculosis among refugees in Minnesota.)

Originally posted 2016-05-17 14:24:32.

Someone please help me out here. What happened to my once great nation while I grew older and busied myself with small-time cattle ranching, fly fishing Montana rivers, traveling this beautiful land in our RV, raising Siberian Cats, and spoiling grand children? Why is my country becoming so multicultural to the point that I am already having difficulty recognizing it from some of the cesspools I was sent to as an active duty Marine. I’m sick and saddened by it all. If you see nothing wrong with what’s going on, I feel for sorry for you, especially if you are a young millennial, for you will surely experience the results of all this, I won’t. Semper Fi, JB

Ten things your town needs to know when (if!) “welcoming” refugees for the first time

Posted by Ann Corcoran in the Refugee Resettlement Watch.

As we have been writing ad nauseam lately, the Obama Administration is now out of the shadows with its plan to “seed” towns and cities across America with diversity.

‘Seed’ is their word!  Your community is the soil into which the migrants of all sorts (legal and illegal) are being planted according to Obama’s Task Force on New Americans.   It begs the questions:  Are we being colonized?  Do they plan to replace us some day?  Sound far-fetched?  Knowing Obama, are you willing to gamble on that?

President Barack Obama, flanked by Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, left, and senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett are changing the people by ‘planting’ immigrant “seedlings” in towns across America!

We have long maintained a ‘fact sheet’ about how the UN/US State Department’s Refugee Admissions and Resettlement Program works, click here to learn more.

But, I realized yesterday, while thinking about the newest proposed seed community*** in Rep. Trey Gowdy’s backyard in Spartanburg, SC, that we needed a quick primer on what elected officials and citizens should know if they are being pressured to ‘welcome the stranger‘ (this guilt-tripping language is one way they pressure your town!).

So here are my Ten Things you need to know!

1)  In most cases, the United Nations is choosing our refugees.  Topping the list right now are Iraqis, Burmese, Congolese, Somalis and Bhutanese.  The UN is pressuring the US to take a large number, 10,000 or so, Syrians.  We are bringing in refugees from countries which hate us.  Your town does not get to choose who you get!  You will receive racially, culturally and religiously diverse people, usually very different from your local population and very different from each other.  That old ‘melting pot’ concept is dead because the numbers are too high.

2)  Often the US State Department’s chosen resettlement contractor for your town, sounds like a church group, or other benign-sounding non-profit.  They may have a religious-sounding name, but know that they are being paid by the head from the federal treasury to bring refugees to your town.  It is not the case that they are passing a plate on Sunday morning to pay for this very expensive program. Here are the nine major contractorswhich have 350 subcontractors working for them (headquartered in over 180 cities so far).

3)  The contractor’s job is to get the refugee family their “services.”  That means they hold the refugees’ hands until they are settled usually in tax-payer subsidized housing, get them signed up for most forms of welfare including food stamps and other cash assistance, sign them up for health care and enroll the kids in school. This special class of legal immigrant is entitled to welfare!  The contractor is also paid with your tax dollars to give refugees job counseling and training.  The contractor may also be working closely with some big business (and the Chamber of Commerce) nearby which is looking for cheap labor.

4)  The contractor’s job ends in 3-6 months at which point they move on to bringing in the next fresh group of “clients,” often the relatives of the first group.  Earlier, and still struggling, refugees are left in the care of your social services department. At this point the contractors are entrenched in your town and will call you racists, rednecks and xenophobes if your citizens want to slow the flow.

5)  Your town will never get out of the program once the contractor has an office set up and staff to pay.  Many cities are trying to get out now and can’t:  Manchester, NH, Springfield and Lynn, Mass, Amarillo, TX come to mind. Because there have developed “pockets of resistance” (their words), the State Department is desperately out scouting for fresh territory.

6)  The greatest impact on your local social and economic welfare will be felt first in the school system, followed usually by the shortage of government subsidized housing.  Your school system may end up with 50 or more languages represented in the student population.  The number-one language of refugees entering the US right now is Arabic, Somali is number four.

7)  Refugees are permitted entry into the US with HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis among other medical problems.  Physical and mental health challenges will most likely overburden your local health department.

8)  Your local government is responsible (Clinton-era Executive Order) for providing costly interpreters for the myriad languages being spoken in the school system, the health system and the criminal justice system should problems arise.

9)  Refugees who do find work, work at entry level jobs and minimum wage so they will still be able to benefit from many welfare programs open to low-income Americans.  Elder refugees are eligible for SSI.   The refugees are Legal Permanent Residents and can begin the citizenship process quickly.

10)  If they say they are coming to your town with the first group of refugees, there is only one thing you can do!  ASK QUESTIONS IN PUBLIC.  Demand that your elected officials get involved. Demand that a community meeting be held, for the US State Department, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (in HHS), your state refugee office (if there is one) and their contractors, to answer questions from the citizens of the town or city. Get your Member of Congress and US Senators involved too!  Don’t forget your state legislators!   The State Department and its contractors HATE to answer questions!  Tell your local elected officials you want a public hearing!  Tell your elected officials that you want the federal government and its contractors to provide a plan!

You want them to answer questions such as these below. 

Remember you have every right to know what is being planned for your town. They will bully you, call you names and say you can’t stop them anyway, but refuse to be bullied!

Demand answers (in public)!

Who is coming?  From where and how many?

Will they stop the resettlement if the town is becoming economically or socially stressed?

What security and health screening have the refugees undergone?

How many will come each year?

Who is paying for their health care?

Who is paying to educate the children who don’t speak English and may never have attended school?

Does your town have an adequate supply of government-supported housing?  Will demands for housing crowd out American elderly, poor or disabled citizens?

Where will they work?  Do we have high unemployment already?

I’m sure you can think of others.  After getting answers (good luck!) and having a vigorous public discussion, then your town can decide based on all the factswhether you will eagerly “welcome” New Americans to your community, or not.

Endnote:  There are other refugee experts in the country, so let me know if I’m missing anything here and I’ll add it!

Update!!!  Call this #11: an experienced researcher just reminded me that concerned citizens must form a citizens’ group to research the structure of the program in your state to obtain the FISCAL and legal facts about the program as the structure can vary from state to state.

*** This post (on Spartanburg) brought in the highest number of readers we have ever had for one post over a brief two days!  P.S.  I will be in South Carolina this coming weekend, here.

An afterthought:  If you should get a public meeting/hearing be sure to educate yourselves on the Delphi Technique, a strategy often used by government agencies wishing to control the outcome of a meeting.  Go here to see what Judy said about it in advance of the public meeting held in Hagerstown, MD in September 2007.

Originally posted 2016-05-17 10:07:26.