"Obama didn't care about the Clintons' funneling money meant for the poor in Haiti to a Clinton donor. Obama watched as the Clintons got massive amounts of money from foreigners and others for "access."
HILLARY & BILLARY: Their Looting of the Poor of Haiti
HILLARY & BILLARY: Their Looting of the Poor of Haiti
“The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in “public service” into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes. The basic components of the operation are lavishly paid speeches to Wall Street and Fortune 500 audiences, corporate campaign contributions, and donations to the ostensibly philanthropic Clinton Foundation.”
U.S. Spends $90 Million to Help a few Dozen Afghan Women Get Jobs
The U.S. government has blown almost $90 million on a doomed project to help Afghan women enter the workforce with a big chunk of the money going to a Clinton-aligned “development” company that reaped big bucks from Uncle Sam while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
The cash flows through the famously corrupt U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID), which is charged with providing global economic, development and humanitarian assistance. In this case USAID allocated $216 million to supposedly help tens of thousands of Afghan women get jobs and gain promotions over five years. Known as “Promoting Gender Equity in National Priority Programs,” the endeavor was launched in 2014 and tens of millions of dollars later it’s proven to be a major failure.
Someone must be pocketing the cash because the costly program has helped between zero and 60 women. This isn’t a joke, though it sounds like a bad one. All the dirty details are laid out in a scathing federal audit released this month by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
Investigators found that around 55 women got “new or better” jobs in three years and they can’t even fully credit the U.S.-backed program for the women’s prosperities. SIGAR writes that it found “multiple problems” in the program, including security, staffing and economic conditions in Afghanistan.
“In addition, SIGAR found that USAID/Afghanistan’s records on the contractors’ required deliverables were incomplete and inaccurate because the agency’s management did not give contracting officer’s representatives enough guidance on record keeping,” the report states. Of interesting note is that one of the biggest contracts went to a company, Chemonics International, with close ties to the Clintons. The Washington-based development firm was awarded $38 million, according to the figures included in the SIGAR report.
“Chemonics thrived during Clinton’s tenure, nabbing more contracts during the Haiti reconstruction effort than any other company,” a 2015 news report reveals. “Peter Schweizer noted the extensive Clinton connections to development failures in Haiti in his book, Clinton Cash.”
Here’s a nugget from this month’s SIGAR report that illustrates how poorly this boondoggle was planned by the government; even when the Afghan women complete the program, there are not jobs waiting for them. The audit reveals that the Afghan government won’t sustain the program, referred to as Promote, because it can’t hire all the graduates.
“It is also unclear whether the graduates will obtain jobs in the private sector in large numbers due to the country’s low projected economic growth rate,” the report states. “This raises questions about whether Promote is sustainable at all and could put USAID’s investment in the program in jeopardy.” So, the U.S. government is spending enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars to train women in a crime-infested, third-world country for jobs that don’t exist. Afghanistan has a poverty rate of 39.1 %, according to the World Bank, and an unemployment rate of 22.6%.
The security situation has worsened and civilian casualties are at their highest since 2002, with an unprecedented level of conflict-induced displacement.
Nevertheless, in the summer of 2013 the Obama administration announced it was launching the “largest women’s empowerment program in [USAID] history.” The goal was to advance opportunities for Afghan women to become political, private sector, and civil society leaders and to build upon existing and previous programs for women and girls. Of course, this requires a lot of money so the administration allocated the $216 million to get the job done.
The money was supposed to educate, promote and train a new generation of Afghan women in order to increase their contributions to the country’s development. “Promote strengthens women’s rights groups,” USAID proclaims, and boosts female participation in the economy while increasing the number of women in decision making positions within the Afghan government. It also helps women gain business and management skills. The SIGAR report identifies Promote as the “largest single investment to advance women globally.”
A few years ago, Judicial Watch reported on another scandalous USAID program aimed at helping women in Afghanistan escape repression. After spending a whopping $64.8 million on 652 projects, programs and initiatives, a federal audit determined lack of accountability and follow up made it impossible to know if they made a difference. That disastrous project was also funded by the departments of State and Defense and federal investigators found that none of the three agencies had effective mechanisms for tracking the funding associated with the projects.
The travesty of Obama's award for 'ethics in government'
The University of Illinois inexplicably gave the extremely corrupt, unethical, and immoral Obama the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government. I assume that their next award will go to Bill, Hillary, and Harvey Weinstein for their respectful treatment of women.
My guess is that the students and employees at the U of I who listened to Obama's self-righteous speech believe that Obama is ethical because most of the media intentionally hid the mass corruption, or if they reported on it, they downplayed it. The corruption and unethical behavior started as soon as Obama took office.
Screen grab: CBS.
Obama immediately violated bankruptcy law when he gave preferential treatment to unsecured unions over more secure bond-holders and other unsecure creditors. It is certainly immoral, unethical, and corrupt for a president to ignore settled law to buy votes.
Reporting from Washington – House Republicans lashed out at what they called preferential treatment the Obama administration gave to certain union pensions in the bailout of General Motors Corp. during the 2008 financial crisis.During a subcommittee hearing Wednesday, Republicans accused the administration of favoring union employees of Delphi Corp., the largest U.S. supplier of auto parts, and leaving many nonunion, salaried employees empty-handed.The government took over Delphi's pension plan during the company's reorganization in Bankruptcy Court. Roughly 21,000 salaried employees lost up to 70% of their pensions, as well as life and health insurance.
Then, as Obama preached against big money in politics, he took taxpayer funds to reward his big political donors with jobs, contracts, and loans.
More than two years after President Obama took office vowing to banish "special interests" from his administration, nearly 200 of his biggest donors have landed plum government jobs and advisory posts, won federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests or attended numerous elite White House meetings and social events, an investigation by iWatch News has found.These "bundlers" raised at least $50,000 and sometimes more than $500,000 in campaign donations for Obama's campaign.
The Justice Department was investigating Uranium One and had found substantial evidence that Russian nuclear officials had engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion, and money-laundering, yet the Obama administration approved selling the uranium to the Russians anyway.
We are told by the complicit media that over $100 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation had nothing to do with the deal going through, and now we are getting speeches from the flexible Obama about Trump cozying up to Russia.
[T]he Clinton Foundation, had accepted $145 million in donations from Uranium One investors in exchange for the deal getting green lit[.]
Obama didn't care about the Clintons' funneling money meant for the poor in Haiti to a Clinton donor. Obama watched as the Clintons got massive amounts of money from foreigners and others for "access."
The Clintons also funneled $10 million in federal loans to a firm called InnoVida, headed by Clinton donor Claudio Osorio. Osorio had loaded its board with Clinton cronies, including longtime Clinton ally General Wesley Clark[.]Normally the loan approval process takes months or even years. But in this case, a government official wrote, "Former President Bill Clinton is personally in contact with the company to organize its logistical and support needs."
When Obamacare was short of funds, Obama just robbed other funds. Obama seemed to believe that all the money was his to do as he pleased.
The executive branch tried everything from deceptive accounting to shell games to move money from one pot of government funds to the Obamacare till. Ultimately, a federal judge stepped in and ruled that the Department of Health and Human Services could not redirect other federal funds to pay for the subsidies.Within weeks, however, the subsidies were miraculously funded, against the will of Congress.Recently revealed documents appear to confirm that the sudden influx of Obamacare funds was money the Obama administration diverted from Fannie and Freddie.
How immoral and corrupt is it when a president searching for a legacy (who says he didn't have anything to do with the Justice Department) stops an investigation into a drug-running terrorist organization? He and his administration obviously don't care about all the people killed by terrorists and opiates. He also shipped bribes in the form of unmarked bills to the corrupt Iran leaders.
A covert DEA investigation into a Hezbollah drug smuggling operation was halted, allegedly, to aid the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran.
The Obama administration had slush funds at the Justice Department, EPA, and CFPB, where they shook down businesses to give money to liberal donors. So liberal groups donated to Democrats, and Democrats shook down businesses and funneled kickbacks to the liberal groups, some of which came back to Democrats. I wonder if journalists can spot the pure corruption, unethical behavior, and immorality in those slush funds.
President Barack Obama's Justice Department created a "slush fund" of nearly $1 billion using legal settlements with banks and steered those funds to political allies on the left while excluding conservative groups, internal documents show.
One of the most corrupt things I have seen in my life is when the DNC and Hillary paid over $10 million for a fictitious document; hid the information from the FEC; and then, in collusion with the Obama administration, Justice Department, complicit media, State Department, and intelligence agencies, continue to use it to take down a duly elected president.
Obama was corrupt long before the media supported him to be president, but since his name wasn't Palin and he was a Democrat, the media didn't care.
After Barack Obama became an Illinois state legislator, his wife moved up as well, scoring a job as 'vice president of community relations' at the University Of Chicago Hospital for a very generous salary of $121,910. When Obama became a senator in 2005, her 'salary' leapfrogged to $316,962 for the same job...and one of Senator Obama's first acts in office was to see to it that the hospital received over a million dollars of your tax dollars as an earmark.Well, Michelle has moved on, and guess what...that vital job of hers, worth a salary of over $300 K has been quietly eliminated.
The Obamas pretend to care about the poor as they willingly treat the poor as pawns.
The First Lady helped create a notorious program that dumped poor patients on community hospitals, yet the national media ignore the story. Imagine if her husband were a Republican.
I have trouble thinking of anything as corrupt, unethical, and immoral as a politician and wife who want an expensive house but can't afford it and then take taxpayer money to get a kickback in the form of a higher salary and then still can't afford the property so hit up a corrupt donor for some of the money.
In sharp contrast to his tough talk about ethics reform in government, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., approached a well-known Illinois political fixer under active federal investigation, Antoin "Tony" Rezko, for "advice" as he sought to find a way to buy a house shortly after being elected to the United States Senate.The parcel included an adjacent lot which Obama told the Chicago Tribune he could not afford because "it was already a stretch to buy the house."On the same day Obama closed on his house, Rezko's wife bought the adjacent empty lot, meeting the condition of the seller who wanted to sell both properties at the same time.
The corruption was so rampant that it is hard to know where to stop, but Democrats, journalists, Hollywood, and the Justice Department didn't care.
The true threat to our constitutional Republic is when the Justice Department and journalists pick which party to protect and which party to destroy with made up dossiers and anonymous sources.
It is truly pathetic to listen to Obama lecture about anything, let alone integrity, and watch him and others pretend his administration was scandal-free when it is clear that the Justice Department was in the tank.
If journalists are so willing to ignore massive corruption in their reporting in order to elect people, couldn't they fairly be called enemies of the people or enemies of the truth? Maybe they should just be called tools of the Democratic Party.
UN report on food security
One in every nine human beings goes hungry
By Patrick Martin
13 September 2018
The number of hungry people in the world continues to grow, reaching 821 million in 2017, or one in every nine people, according to the report, “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018,” released Tuesday in Rome by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and other groups.
The figures are horrific: 151 million children under five years old, 22 percent of the world’s total, are “stunted” by malnutrition; one in every ten children in Asia is described as “wasting,” with weights well below what they should be given their heights; a staggering one in three women of child-bearing age suffers from anemia, in large measure from poor diet.
The report’s authors warn of “alarming signs of increasing food insecurity and high levels of different forms of malnutrition,” but offer no prescription to resolve the deepening crisis except the pious wish that more should be done to bring an end to the military conflicts, including civil wars, which are the primary cause of food insecurity, and to counteract climate change, the second most important cause.
The 821 million hungry people in the world include an estimated 515 million in Asia, 256.5 million in Africa, 39 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and perhaps 20 million in the rest of the world.
The last figure is undoubtedly a gross underestimate, since it largely accepts the claims of governments in the advanced capitalist countries that hunger and malnutrition are non-existent. If accurate figures could be obtained for the number living on the brink of starvation in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the European Union, the total for the world would likely top 1 billion people.
Credit: World Food Program
These figures demonstrate the utter failure of capitalist system. The productive forces—land, machinery, agricultural technique—are more than adequate to feed the human race. There is a super-abundance of food on the planet. But the profit drive of giant agribusiness corporations, and the reactionary nation-state system, dividing humanity with its artificial and completely outmoded boundaries, keep a billion human beings from obtaining the food they need as a minimum condition of a decent existence.
The UN report found that 2017 was the third year in a row in which the number of people who aren’t getting enough to eat has risen. This figure has risen from 783.7 million in 2014, for a total rise of more than 38 million. In 2017, severe food insecurity, defined as a family running out of food and going at least a day without eating, was up in every region of the world except Europe and North America.
The sharpest increases in malnutrition were in Africa and South America, as well as in the country of Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula across the Red Sea from East Africa, which has been ravaged by war and a blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with US backing. High levels of malnutrition were found in South Asia as well, but these were largely unchanged from 2016 to 2017.
Over a longer time frame, since 2005, the FAO found that the number of malnourished people in Africa had increased by 60 million, while the number in Asia declined significantly.
Particularly striking was the change in North Africa, once a comparatively prosperous area, where the number facing malnutrition fell from 9.7 million in 2000 to 8.5 million in 2010, before soaring to 20 million last year. Similarly, the number facing malnutrition in Western Asia—the Middle East—rose from 20.1 million in 2010 to 30.2 million in 2017.
The combined increase across this vast region, extending from Morocco to Iran, is more than 20 million people added to the rolls of those on the brink of starvation, during the period that coincides with the US-NATO attack on Libya, the revolutionary uprising and its bloody suppression in Egypt, the ongoing civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and the aftermath of the war in Iraq.
The FAO’s 2017 report on food security focused largely on the impact of these wars, as well as similar conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and Somalia in driving up the number facing hunger. The agency’s 2018 report focuses mainly on the impact of the second most important cause of hunger in the twenty-first century, climate change.
According to the report, “climate variability—extreme droughts and floods—are already undermining production of wheat, rice and maize in tropical and temperate regions, and that the trend is expected to worsen as temperatures increase and become more extreme.”
It continued, “Hunger is significantly worse in countries with agricultural systems that are highly sensitive to rainfall and temperature variability and severe drought, and where the livelihood of a high proportion of the population depends on agriculture.”
Drought, linked to the long-term changes in weather patterns associated with climate change, has devastated four different population centers: southern Africa, including South Africa, the enclaves of Lesotho and Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Madagascar; the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda; West Africa, from Mali to Senegal; and parts of the Indian subcontinent, especially southern Sindh province in Pakistan and neighboring regions in India, which are densely populated.
Wasting is a syndrome that has the most pernicious effect on children’s health, both short-term and long-term. Children affected by wasting accounted for 875,000 deaths in 2013, the last year when studies are available, 12.6 percent of all deaths of children under five years of age. Of these, 516,000 were related to severe wasting, essentially deaths by starvation and related diseases.
Half of all the children afflicted by wasting live in South Asia, and the countries with a prevalence of 15 percent or more include India and Sri Lanka. Also in this category are Papua New Guinea, Yemen, and four countries in East Africa: Eritrea, Djibouti, South Sudan, and Sudan.
What all these countries have in common—although there is not a word of this in the UN report—is that they are former colonies of the world’s imperialist powers, which continue to dominate the world economy and exploit the resources of the “less developed countries,” whether through direct investment, loans, or austerity demands enforced by the International Monetary Fund.
Among the worst-off countries are those like Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia, subjected to imperialist wars and imperialist-instigated civil wars, which in some cases have extended for more than a generation.
Nutrition is an increasing concern, not just for the billions in Asia, Africa and Latin America, who constitute the majority of the world’s population, but for the working class in the advanced capitalist countries, where living standards have been driven down for more than three decades.
According to the UN report, the second-largest nutritional crisis involves the spread of obesity, particularly in North America. This too is a disease of poverty. “Food insecurity contributes to overweight and obesity, as well as undernutrition, and high rates of these forms of malnutrition coexist in many countries,” the report explains. “The link between food insecurity and overweight and obesity passes through diet, which is affected by the cost of food. Nutritious, fresh foods often tend to be expensive. Thus, when household resources for food become scarce, people choose less expensive foods that are often high in caloric density and low in nutrients, particularly in urban settings and upper-middle- and high-income countries.”
Some 13 percent of the world’s adults, or 672 million, are medically obese, about one person in eight, with the highest rates by far in the United States. The lowest rates of obesity are in Africa and Asia, although rates are rapidly increasing.
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