02/5/17

How About “America First” for College Admissions?

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

In a recent article, “Surge in foreign students may be crowding Americans out of elite colleges,” The Washington Post stumbled on the truth about one of the factors affecting the rising cost of college for American students. The percentage of foreign students enrolling in both public and private colleges and universities has skyrocketed. Their sponsors, Middle East governments and regimes like China, buy their way into American colleges and universities for their own students, forcing up costs for the dwindling number of Americans fortunate enough to gain admission.

It is estimated that over one million international students are enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities. That figure has doubled in 15 years. The growing international enrollment is crowding out qualified U.S. students.

But the Post, staying true to the liberal/libertarian orientation of its owner, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, tried to play down the serious nature of the problem. “International growth has fostered an increasingly cosmopolitan culture on campuses across the country, with academic benefits for domestic and foreign students alike,” the Post claimed. “It gives colleges an additional path toward ethnic and racial diversity, opening doors to students from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. But it also injects pressure into the admissions scramble that U.S. high school seniors are starting to experience this month as schools release early-admission decisions.”

With that final sentence, the paper alluded to how American high school students are losing slots to foreigners. The claims about a “cosmopolitan culture” and “diversity” sound attractive, but the benefits for the American students lucky enough to get into these colleges were not clearly defined.

“American citizens need to stand up for American schools for American students,” says Dr. Tina Trent, who studies and writes about academia. “As foreign students stand at the front of the line, too many American students stand outside the classroom doors, increasingly excluded from the very institutions their parents and grandparents built and subsidize with every paycheck.”

Trent, who contributes to a blog sponsored by the Capital Research Center and writes frequently on education, says that she found that at one university, a faculty member noted that one in 10 of the freshman seats was “going to the children of plutocrats from a repressive, communist state,” Communist China. “This is something that is going on at both public and private universities and colleges,” Trent told Accuracy in Media.

The foreign students are paying the full cost, since money is no problem for the regimes that sponsor them. Yet, their financial contributions do not reduce tuition for the American students lucky enough to get in, and the public dollars continue to flow.

“When these institutions give classroom chairs to foreign students, they are unilaterally choosing to transfer our tax dollars to foreigners,” she explained. “The excuses the schools have given over the years include the virtues of globalization and exposing Americans to ‘diverse’ foreign cultures. But in reality, administrators are mostly motivated by the fact that they can charge foreign students higher tuition.”

Trent said that in Florida, where she taught college classes as an adjunct professor, she watched friends struggle to get their own children into a university system they paid for with their own tax dollars. “Even when they get into schools, certain classes in the hard sciences are extremely hard to access. Yet these schools still manage to find room for rapidly increasing numbers of foreign students,” she added.

She said that with the extra tuition money provided by foreigners, on top of the public funds, administrators are sponsoring and promoting useless and politicized “studies” programs that justify bloated salaries for themselves. A concrete example of this trend is the proliferation of “diversity and inclusion” departments or offices on college campuses. Such departments or offices literally spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on speakers like communist Angela Davis and conferences devoted to feminist or radical black studies.

Trent said the students from totalitarian states, be they Islamic or Chinese, are pouring money into administrators’ pockets, but the anti-American attitudes these students often bring with them are not being corrected. “Nor are the administrators criticizing the regimes from which these students come,” she added. However, white male American students are immediately judged as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., and ordered into “diversity” training sessions.

“So you get this ironic situation where university administrators who find Klansmen under every rock when it comes to their American students, are running cover for plutocrats from China and slave-owners from the Middle East who violently oppress women,” Trent said. For example, “You won’t find many Women’s Studies professors criticizing their own school’s administrations for admitting students from countries that practice female genital mutilation, or forced abortion, or who murder rape victims.”

“As these totalitarian regimes gain footholds in American universities by making direct donations and purchasing larger and larger percentages of classroom seats, those regimes are gaining tremendous influence over the research done by these schools,” she said. “The increasing anti-Israel bent of Middle Eastern Studies programs is just the oldest example of such crudely cash-based ideological colonialization of American higher education.”

Foreign students put other burdens on schools. Trent says that colleges and universities usually use underpaid adjunct lecturers and instructors to teach freshman composition classes and tutor foreigners who don’t speak fluent English. “I know adjuncts, and also graduate students, who spend hours of essentially unpaid labor tutoring scores of such students who don’t speak enough English to be attending an American school in the first place,” she said.

The Wall Street Journal has reported on another problem—how cheating among international students is rampant. “Faculty and domestic students interviewed said it appears that substantial numbers of international students either don’t comprehend or don’t accept U.S. standards of academic integrity,” the paper said.

As President Trump grapples with such issues as the high cost of college and student debt, Trent says Congress and the states should be holding “America First” hearings “to determine the size of this new influx of foreign students and its specific effect on the ability of American students to gain access to higher education.”


Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

02/25/15

Betrayal Papers Part 2: In Plain Sight: A National Security “Smoking Gun”

The first article of the Betrayal Papers asserted that the Muslim Brotherhood was not only influential in the United States government, but in fact dominated the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama. This article will name several key people who were or are in the Obama administration and who have various, documented associations with organizations which are directly tied to and/or funded by the Muslim Brotherhood and the State of Qatar (home to Brotherhood’s Spiritual Leader, Yusuf al-Qaradawi). These individuals have helped dictate national security policies that have crippled counterterrorism efforts at home and abroad.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Network of Civic Organizations: Apologists for Terror

Muslim Brotherhood Control of US GovtIn 1963, the first Muslim Brotherhood front group established itself in the United States and Canada: the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), a group based on college campuses in North America. Through this organizational foothold, the Brotherhood has recruited and indoctrinated generations of American and Canadian Muslims into an Islamic belief system that pits Islam against the world. In more than a few cases, Muslims who join MSA chapters at their colleges have taken this ideology to its logical extreme: terrorism.

For example, it was recently reported by the Canadian Military Association that eleven (11) of Canada’s highest profile terrorists were tied to the MSA.

The Muslim Students Association (MSA): The MSA, the first Muslim Brotherhood organization to gain a foothold in the United States, was founded in 1963. Many founding members were Muslim Brothers or had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The three most significant founders of MSA were Hisham al Talib, Jamal Barzinji, and Ahmed Totanji, and all of whom were MB leaders of Iraqi descent. While a student at George Washington University, Hillary Clinton’s personal aide Huma Abedin was on the Executive Board of her MSA.

Since the early 1960s, the Muslim Brotherhood’s MSA has birthed a large number of purported “civic organizations,” which are anything but civil. We shall now name some of the groups, and establish the facts that link them to their parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR): CAIR was founded by two individuals with close ties to a Hamas operative. Hamas, according to its own charter, is the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. In 2007, founder Omar Ahwad was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing trial. In November 2014, CAIR was designated a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates.

Muslim American Society (MAS): MAS was founded in 1992 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to MAS secretary-general Shaker Elsayed. MAS, and the Muslim Brotherhood, advocate for Sharia law in the United States. MAS identifies the Islamic Society of North American (ISNA) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) as organizations with the same goal: the “Islamic revival movement.” In November 2014, MAS was designated a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates.

Islamic Society of North America (ISNA): ISNA was created out of four Islamic organizations, including the Muslim Students Association. Its former president Mohamed Magid was appointed an advisor to DHS and the National Security Council by Barack Obama in 2011, and was a recent guest at the White House.

Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC): MPAC was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, specifically Hassan and Maher Hathout, both whom were acolytes of Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan al-Banna. MPAC supports the Tunisian Ennahda (Muslim Brotherhood) Party leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, whom they termed “one of the most important figures in modern Islamic political thought and theory.” Its current President is Salam Al-Marayati, who represented the US to the United Nations and UNESCO in 2010.

Additionally, a 1991 internal memorandum of the Muslim Brotherhood specifically identifies CAIR, ISNA, and the MSA in “A list of our organizations and organizations of our friends.” (Note: CAIR’s organizational predecessor, the Islamic Association of Palestine, is named.)

Finally, CAIR and ISNA were named un-indicted co-conspirators which materially supported terrorism by a federal court, in connection with the infamous Holy Land Foundation trial, an alleged humanitarian charity for Palestine. An incorporating member of MAS, Dr. Jamal Badawi, was named an unindicted co-conspirator. MPAC and MSA members are on the record supporting the Holy Land Foundation against government terrorism charges.

This evidence begs some questions from the honest reader:

  • If these are all independent organizations, why is it that each of them is so neatly tied to the same parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood?
  • Why are most of them named by the Muslim Brotherhood in their own memorandum?
  • Why were all involved, directly as unindicted co-conspirators or indirectly as ardent supporters of the accused, with the Holy Land Foundation trial?

It doesn’t take a super sleuth to realize that these organizations are in fact fronts and subsidiaries of one organization, the Muslim Brotherhood. All one has to do is glance at the published information on their backgrounds, and the fact reveals itself.

The Anschluss (“Annexation”) of Georgetown and the Brookings Institution

You know the sayings. Money makes the world go ’round, and Follow the money, and Money is the root of all evil. These are important to keep in mind when considering the influence that Qatari money has had on two institutions as American as apple pie: Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution.

In 2005, Georgetown University established a new campus for their prestigious School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar (SFS-Q). (It bears stating here that the State of Qatar was the driving Arab force behind the Arab Spring, which resulted in the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.) Today they have a faculty of more than 35 academics.

As part of Qatar’s Education City, Georgetown has had all SFS-Q campus development costs covered by the Qatar Foundation, a charity with noted links to terrorism. May this, perchance, have some influence over the education that Georgetown is giving to future American diplomats in Qatar? At the very least, it may explain some of the blatant anti-Semitic comments in Georgetown’s student newspaper.

The Brookings Institution is also heavily funded by Qatar. In 2013, they received $14.8 million; in 2012, $100,000; and in 2011, $2.9 million. This explains why Obama had Brookings Vice President (and purported diplomat) Martin Indyk, negotiating the ‘peace terms’ between Israel and Hamas. Today, Indyk is busy negotiating with an aggressive and nuclear-aspiring Iran.

Is it any wonder why Israel doesn’t trust this administration? By all reasonable logic, they are on the side of Qatar and Hamas, which is officially the Palestinian franchise of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Obama Administration’s Agents

Given that these organizations function in a coordinated ideological manner, indeed they derive from the same root, it follows naturally that an individual associated with one organization would likely be associated with many, if not most of the others – not to mention the proxies of Georgetown and Brookings.

An experiment: Let’s choose seven Obama administration appointees with suspected ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Where to pluck these seven from? In December 2013, the Egyptian political magazine Rose El-Youssef, in an article titled Not Huma Abedin Alone, named six additional Obama appointees it claimed were operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood. You can read an English translation of the article here. Let’s see if their claims stack up, based on the information above.

Here are the six named operatives (plus Human Abedin) and their titles in the Obama administration:

Arif Alikhan – Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security for Policy Development. 2009-2010.

Eboo Patel – Member of the President’s Advisory Council to the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. 2009-Present.

Huma Abedin – Personal Aide/Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 2009-2013.

Mohamed Magid – DHS Countering Violence and Extremism Working Group. 2011-Present.

Mohammed Elibiary – Senior Member of DHS’s Homeland Security Advisory Council. 2010-2014.

Rashad Hussain – U.S. Special Envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). 2010-Present. Deputy Associate Counsel to Barack Obama. 2009-2010.

Salam Al-Marayati – Administration representative to UNESCO and United Nations. 2010.

(Dates in administration are best efforts based on publicly available information.)

Now let’s compare their affiliations and associations, officially and less formally, across the above named organizations. We’ll also include the Department of Homeland Security, which earlier this week was praised by CAIR for identifying “right-wing sovereign citizen extremist groups,” not Islamic terrorism, as the prime terrorist threat facing the United States.

Color Chart Muslim Brotherhood Influence on US Govt

Color Key

Green: Has worked or works in an official capacity for organization; is a named member of the organization.

Yellow: Has been associated with org., e.g., authored paper on their behalf; spoke on their behalf and/or at their events; proven personal relationship between the individual and organization’s leadership, etc.

Gray: No known or documented association.

No Coincidences

Notice the heavy concentration of green and yellow boxes, including for Georgetown and Brookings, in the table above. Notice the relatively few gray boxes. Individually these associations mean little; likewise, had this been just one random appointee in the entire administration, this story wouldn’t warrant the attention of the American public.

The intersection of individuals, organizations, Muslim Brotherhood money, and policy recommendations paint a picture of a carefully constructed conspiracy operating in plain sight.   The Muslim Brotherhood has hijacked the American government and military and is using them as a tool to build a global Islamic Caliphate. The conspirators are changing the culture at home to accommodate sharia law and using law enforcement to demonize ordinary American citizens as national security threats.

These are Barack Hussein Obama’s appointees. This is Barack Hussein Obama’s administration and these are people chosen to advise him on national security and Islam.

From expunging DHS training materials of the threat posed by Islamic doctrine, to corrupting American foreign policy – the policy ramifications of these and similar appointments will be explored in the next articles.

* This analysis was completed after a careful survey of available press releases, news reports, and credible published information. They will be published in an upcoming report. Source is material available upon request.

The Betrayal Papers is a collaborative effort by the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, which includes: Andrea Shea King, Dr. Ashraf Ramelah, Benjamin Smith, Bethany Blankley, Brent Parrish, Charles Ortel, William Palumbo, Denise Simon, Dick Manasseri, Gary Kubiak, Gates of Vienna, Hannah Szenes, IQ al Rassooli, Jeff Bayard, Leslie Burt, Marcus Kohan, Mary Fanning, General Paul E. Vallely, Regina Thomson, Scott Smith, Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, Colonel Thomas Snodgrass, Trever Loudon, Wallace Bruschweiler, and William Palumbo.

01/3/15

‘Economics professors’ trash entrepreneurs, argue for taxing the rich

By: Renee Nal
New Zeal

Occupy

Photo Source: commons.wikimedia.org

An OpEd posted at the Tampa Bay Times by Economics professors William L. Holahan and Charles O. Kroncke (retired) begins with the sentence: “It is a common misconception that entrepreneurs create jobs.” Instead, they argue, taxpayer funded “investments” into education and infrastructure is what empowers the “true job creator: the workings of the market.”

The roads and bridges argument has been used by President Obama in his infamous “You didn’t build that” speech, where he argued that entrepreneurs are powerless without the help of others:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

He continued to tout the power of the government:

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

This is a common argument used by advocates of big government and yes, contrary to the Constitution.

The federal government has no business spending money on local roads and schools. At least if one considers the Constitution, which many do not, of course. After a law passed for federal funding to build the Erie Canal, for example, President James Madison said that although the project was needed and valuable, he was “constrained” by the Constitution and he vetoed the bill.

But the canal was still built anyway. How?

…the New York State legislature took the matter into its own hands and approved state funding for the canal in 1816, with tolls to pay back the state treasury for upon completion.

As professor of history at Hillsdale College Burt Folsom observes:

The Constitution does not grant Congress the right to appropriate funds for infrastructure. Therefore, the Founders usually argued that states or private companies should do the work; neither good government nor just results occurred when the people in Georgia could be taxed to pave a road or build a canal in New York.

While speaking of the size of government, James Madison wrote in Federalist 48,

It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.

The authors continue,

The fixation on the ‘job-creator’ myth also distorts recession-fighting measures. For example, cutting business taxes when the problem is inadequate demand will not encourage employers to restore lost jobs or to hire more people.

If the problem is “inadequate demand,” the employers should be a bit more entrepreneurial… or fail. That is the beauty of the free market and why government intervention in industries always (always) fails. If an individual can provide a good or service that fulfills a need, he or she is on the way to job creation despite the federal government, which helps to keep innovators from success with their endless regulations and tax requirements. The government, in other words, only serves as an obstacle to true entrepreneurship.

While testifying that the website for the Affordable Care Act was getting closer to being fully functional, Kathleen Sebelius, former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said something very telling:

While there is more work to be done, the team is operating with velocity and effectiveness that matches high performing private sector organizations.

The private sector simply does it better.

The economists quote Nick Hanauer, billionaire venture capitalist and strong supporter and higher taxes, as saying:

Taxing the rich to make investments in the middle class is the single smartest thing we can do for the middle class, the poor and the rich.

Hanauer loves taxes, as evidenced by this recent tweet:

Holahan and Kroncke have written several articles previously and co-wrote the book “Economics for Voters.” In September, the dynamic duo also argued for a minimum wage increase, which has been found by numerous studies to have a negative effect on low-skilled workers. As reported at Politifact,

The last three federal minimum wage increases (2007, 2008 and 2009) were followed by significant job losses, but that was all taking place amidst the global financial crisis. [emphasis added]

It is not a stretch to consider that raising the wage is really just a political ploy, consequences be damned. The double bonus for the federal government (with their unpaid interns, exempting themselves from the Fair Labor Standard Act), is that minimum wage increases equate to higher taxes. Big government supporters continually and desperately attempt to justify the value of big government, but continually come up short.

This article has been cross-posted at Broadside News.

12/28/14

Jihad vs We The People