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-Great Cultural Revolution
Clarice Feldman: This Week's Underreported News
2025-12-21
[AT] Much of the mainstream news this week has been, in my opinion, partisan or devoted to less-than-significant matters. Does it really matter if the Trump-appointed board that saved the Kennedy Center from going to wrack and ruin has added his name to the building? Were you really surprised that Bill Clinton, not Trump, was pictured in the released Epstein files cavorting with women whose faces were blacked out because they were either minors or victims? Were you so daft that you thought Biden, who had these files, was protecting his arch-enemy Trump from exposure?

On the internet, the focus was on the shootings at Brown University and Brookline and the manifest incompetence of the Providence police force and the grossly bloated and overcompensated Brown administration. A Reddit poster broke the case, having observed suspicious behavior by the perpetrator. The poster was a homeless Brown grad living in the basement of the engineering building who stands to receive a $50,000 reward for breaking the case. The question remains, if the police had been competent and given consideration to the first report, would the shooter, who finally committed suicide, have been free to murder a second time? The other hot topic was how Ben Shapiro, speaking at a major TPUSA event, eviscerated the grifting Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. It remains to be seen how J.D. Vance extricates himself from Tucker’s embrace, essential, in my view, if he runs for the presidency.

I think the important and underreported stories of the week, are different -- the growing fractures in the European Union and the Administration’s lowering the boom on richly rewarded migration sponsors.

IMMIGRATION SPONSOR BOONDOGGLE
It’s no secret that Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have been cleaning up on bringing migrants into the country and placing them on a variety of welfare plans to the detriment of taxpayers and the communities which are forced to host them. Respecting the unaccompanied children program:

The Free Press examined three of the most prominent NGOs that have benefited: Global Refuge, Southwest Key Programs, and Endeavors, Inc. These organizations have seen their combined revenue grow from $597 million in 2019 to an astonishing $2 billion by 2022, the last year for which federal disclosure documents are available. And the CEOs of all three nonprofits reap more than $500,000 each in annual compensation, with one of them -- the chief executive of Southwest Key -- making more than $1 million.

The picture is the same for adult migrants. Via the departments of Homeland Security and HHS, these NGOs have raked in billions of dollars under the prior administrations.

Compensation packages for executives of these organizations tend to be lavish. The latest account I can find, i.e., for Catholic Charities, reports that the CEO receives almost $1 million per annum. Doubtless there are other financial perks.

That’s about to come to an end. The Department of Justice reversed a Clinton era interpretation of welfare laws and is seeking recompense from these sponsors for welfare and other tax-funded benefits, Deputy Secretary of HHS Jim O’Neill, relying on this reinterpretation of the regulations, demanded repayment from these sponsors.

“Am I,” Cain once innocently asked, “my brother’s keeper?” Until very recently, the answer was ‘no’ for the highly compensated commercial sponsors of foreign aliens resettled here under Biden’s various dumb plans. That may have changed yesterday. An article from the New American (selected because corporate media is ignoring the story) was headlined, “HHS to Immigrant Sponsors: Pay What You Owe for Immigrants Who Use Medicaid or Face Collection.”

Under various laws and programs, foreign citizens can ‘permanently reside’ in the U.S. as non-citizens. It’s not U.S. citizenship, but it’s not not citizenship, either. Biden used one of these programs, for example, to submerge midwestern towns with Haitians who can’t drive. (Ditto for Somalis and many other failed-state refugees.) The rules are complex and arcane, which is why Biden also paid lawyers to help the migrants.

One of the rules requires each permanent resident to have a sponsor, an individual who demonstrates sufficient assets and income to support the person if they ever become a financial burden on the state.

There’s even a sponsor form, the I-864, which includes a contract. The contract puts the sponsor on the hook for any welfare given to the immigrant by any local, state, or Federal agency. [snip]

Right about now, you’re probably thinking this sounds great, and wondering why you never heard of it before. The reason is simple. The Democrats passed this law to ‘prove’ immigrants wouldn’t be a burden, and then promptly broomed it via their favorite tactic: selective non-enforcement. Two tiers of justice are better than one!

So far as I can tell from court records, the government has never before sued a sponsor. After all, the contract only says the agency “may ask for reimbursement.” May. Not “must.”

FISSURES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION
The leaders of the EU tried to sequester frozen Russian funds to support Ukraine. That move failed. The U.S. is no longer funding Ukrainian kleptocrats in a war Ukraine cannot possibly win, and now the Europeans can prolong the war only by using their own money. Zelensky should be worried, as Wolfgang Munchau notes.

“There is a lot of sugar-coating going on this morning. The sequestration deal is truly dead. The EU will pay the €90bn for Ukraine out of its own pockets. Now that it is the EU’s own money at stake, diplomacy is already starting to shift. Macron said last night EU should reconnect with Putin. The war-mongering in the EU was to a large extent a money illusion -- other people paying for it. Now that the EU is having to put its own money where its mouth is, expect to hear a lot more people calling for peace.”
Posted by:Frank G

#1  comments); ?>werwer
Posted by: Grom the Affective   2025-12-21 13:24  

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