Pension Crisis II

3 Reasons Cities Should Switch To 401ks, by John Sullivan, 5/29/17

Debt-laden pension obligations continue to weigh on state and city governments around the country, with Chicago, Illinois as the most recent example.

All told, municipalities and states owe a combined $3.85 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities, The Hill recently reported. One solution to prevent such situations in the future is, of course, switching from defined benefit to defined contribution 401k-style plans, as seen with their private sector counterparts.

While once feared for the political fallout, voters are now stamping ballot-box approval on reform-minded candidates willing to address these massive retirement shortfalls, as they place entire budgets at risk (see Illinois). Scott Walker’s contentious reign in Wisconsin comes to mind, as does Gina Raimondo in Rhode Island.

Wayne Winegarden with EfficientGov, a website that “tracks innovative solutions to fiscal and operational challenges facing cities and towns,” offers up three reasons to consider a defined contribution move and save municipalities that are “headed to pension-derived bankruptcy.”

No. 1: Funding falls short

State and local governments have only contributed 88 percent of the required annual contributions into their public pension funds between 2001 and 2015 Winegarden writes, citing stats from the Brookings Institution. Additionally, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts, public pension plans in total need an additional $1.1 trillion just to meet current expected obligations. “This 28 percent funding gap understates the problem because it does not account for the unfunded repayment risks that taxpayers are bearing on behalf of public employees,” Winegarden adds.

No. 2: Unrealistic returns

Public pension funds currently assume an unrealistic return on their investments. “Compared to their private sector counterparts who assume an annual return a bit over 4 percent, public sector funds are, on average, assuming they can annually earn around 7.5 percent. Assuming a better outcome does not make it so. Should the overly optimistic returns not come to fruition, then the dire financial state of the state and local public pension systems is even worse.”

No. 3: Risky business

Public pension funds are carrying too much risk in their investment portfolios. “During the 1970s, public pensions used to invest one-quarter of their assets in riskier ‘equity-like’ investments such as stocks, real estate, hedge funds and other assets subject to substantial investment risk,” Winegarden writes. “Today, public pension systems invest two-thirds of their assets into these types of riskier investments.”

He concludes by arguing that in order to start the transition to 401k plans, “all new employees should be ineligible for the current defined benefit programs, and should instead be enrolled in a defined contribution retirement system that meets the average standards of large company defined contribution plans. These standards should include no minimum length of service requirement for eligibility, immediate vesting on matching contributions, and the government’s matching and non-matching contributions equal to 6.5 percent of pay.”

“For current employees,” he adds, “the current defined benefit programs should be frozen, specifically a hard freeze. Under a hard freeze, no public employee would accrue any more benefits in the defined benefit program.”

https://401kspecialistmag.com/3-reasons-cities-switch-401ks/#.WS0TVcm1tE4

Bond Bubble Ahead

Beware the Municipal Bond Bubble, by Martin Armstrong, 5/30/17

Municipal Bonds are in trouble in Europe as well as the United States. The local level cannot print money, nor are they ever capable of managing their economies. The general view is when short, just raise taxes. Everything comes to an end and we are looking at the end of a Muni-Bond Bubble. The strongest possible recommendation is get out before it is too late. Sure, not every municipality or state/province is in trouble – YET! Once the muni bond bubble bursts, there will be a contagion so even the ones that are not yet insolvent will tip over.

In the States, sell California and New England. The higher the tax rate, the deeper their debt will fall. Connecticut, for example, is hopeless as is New Jersey, New York, and just about all New England States. I was flying home from Hong Kong and upon landing in Newark, the next leg was back to Florida. I sat next to a woman from Connecticut who was going to visit her brother. She had a 1950s house 1600 square feet with taxes over $8,000 and could no longer afford to stay there for retirement. She was leaving as most people these days in what I call the Great Migration.

Connecticut’s general-obligation bonds are in deep trouble. The state’s tax collections are collapsing as people are getting out of town. Their debt is being downgraded and a $2.3 billion budget deficit is beyond hope. Tax receipts for the current fiscal year ending in June will be about $451 million short of estimates. Here too, it is the government employee pensions that are blowing everything apart at the seams. Public employees at least agreed to accept a 3-year wage freeze and to contribute more for their pension and health-care benefits under a tentative deal that would save more than $1.5 billion over the next two years. But that is just not enough.

The taxation has never been ending. Hedge fund managers are permanently relocating to Florida have been leaving New Jersey and Connecticut. When you count on taxing the rich, then one man can move out of and put the entire state budget at risk. Taxing the rich has its limits.

The motto of make the rich pay doesn’t work when the rich pick up and leave. You do not want to be the one still sitting. This game works opposite of the musical chairs game as a kid. This time, the one still sitting will have to pay the taxes for everyone who left. Then they will be unable to sell their house and leave because nobody wants to buy it because of the taxes.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/taxes/beware-the-muni-bond-bubble/

Russian Ruse II

The maniacal delusion that Putin helped Trump steal the election from Hillary is the most laughable lie Democrats have made since Obama insisted that Climate Change was the most serious threat faced by the US.

It makes no sense for Putin to prefer Trump over Hillary. Putin needs to expand his oil and gas export lifeline and this would have been easier with Hillary. She would have shut down oil and gas production in the US to keep the UN happy and keep US citizens broke from paying 5 times more for electric power. Hillary also proved that she would do things she shouldn’t do for the Russians, like give them the rights to mine uranium in the US.  Finally, Hillary would have kept the same hapless military approach Obama had and would have let him take the Ukraine. 

Trump is building pipelines and getting ready to export US gas and oil around the world.  Trump will most probably export this to Europe.  Putin would have serious competition.

As for Hillary, she lost the election because she forgot “it’s the economy, stupid”.  Her “together” message meant we would all go broke “together”.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

More Refugees Ahead

HuffPo: Refugee processing pipeline being restarted, contractors optimistic, by Ann Corcoran 5/31/17

When I looked at this article (Huffington Post) more carefully, I see it only sends a garbled message about whether the refugee pipeline is being geared up to start seriously flowing again or is only trickling.

But, it does appear that the resettlement contractors are getting excited that it will flow with gusto soon since they are rehiring staff they let go shortly after Trump put out his first Executive Order.

Limbaugh: “Does he know that it’s the Republicans that are the roadblock here?” I think the Trump team made a big mistake by placing the refugee moratorium (to assess the adequacy of our  security screening) and a reduction in the CEILING for refugee admissions in an Executive Order with the so-called travel ban for all those coming from the terror hot-spot countries. It is my view, that Trump did not need an EO to slow the flow of refugees across the board!

By combining the two (the ceiling cap and the ban) and the subsequent rogue court decisions, Trump has lost (given up?) his power (the power the President is given in the Refugee Act of 1980 to set the admissions limit on refugees).  And, thus everyone is confused, apparently even within his Administration.

To add to the confusion the Republicans in Congress funded the US Refugee Admissions Program at a level for 75,000 refugees to be admitted by September 30th (the last day of this fiscal year), AND Trump signed it!

75,000 would be the second highest admission number in ten years! (see chart below) Indeed, Rush Limbaugh was right yesterday when he asked (on a different issue): “Does he know that it’s the Republicans that are the roadblock here?” 

Again, the President has the power to set the ceiling in “consultation” with Congress. If Trump wanted to take them on he could ask for a rescission of those funds to admit the numbers he wants—which he said would be UNDER 50,000! Every day that the White House is silent on the stunning news we heard last week says to me that the White House agrees with the 75,000 admissions this year.

Why do the Republicans in Congress want to keep the pipeline going? It is because most of them work for their big business donors and the Chamber of Commerce to guarantee a steady supply of cheap immigrant labor! Adding insult to injury, your tax dollars support refugee families through the welfare system because wages are too low! You pay for the importation of the labor and for the laborers’ support once here!

It is really quite a difficult obstacle for us (who wish to see the USRAP reformed) to overcome—big businesses and global corporations pushing cheap labor in conjunction with so-called ‘religious’ charities (paid by taxpayers!) claiming this is all about humanitarianism while essentially acting as ‘head hunters’ for big business.

Anyway, here is the HuffPo’s latest on the pipeline flowing: The United States appears to be resuming its longstanding efforts to resettle refugees after the program was derailed and almost completely upended abroad for several months. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services “has begun to expand its interview schedule in the 3rd quarter of the fiscal year,” public affairs officer Marilu Cabrera told HuffPost in a statement on Friday. The Department of Homeland Security is working with the State Department to plan for a “further expansion” through the end of fiscal year 2017, she added.

Jen Smyers is a lobbyist for Church World Service in Washington, DC. “Director of Advocacy” is just a fancy name for lobbyist. https://cwsglobal.org/jen-smyers/

Even though both orders were blocked in federal court, the administration quietly pumped the brakes on various steps of the resettlement process that occur overseas. Vetting and screening refugees is an 18- to 24-month process, involving interviews with many branches of the U.S. government as well as various security and medical clearances. USCIS noted in its statement that circuit rides ― a technical term that refers to DHS agent travel to different countries to conduct refugee interviews ― were suspended on Jan. 25, just prior to Trump’s first executive order, and continued on a reduced schedule from January through March.

In addition to stalled DHS interviews, security and medical checks expire after several months and “none of them [were] being re-run, said Jen Smyers, the associate director of immigration and refugee policy at Church World Service*** one of nine domestic resettlement agencies. “Also, our understanding is that for a while, [medical clearances] were not happening, with some exceptions for emergency cases.” [BTW, I don’t think they do any mental health screening as we learned here! —ed]

Because both of Trump’s executive orders attempted to lower the refugee admissions quota from 110,00 to 50,000 for the 2017 fiscal year, “the State Department and USCIS assessed that it was not necessary to interview large numbers of refugee applicants in order to meet the new ceiling,” the USCIS statement said.

Resettlement experts said they’re cautiously optimistic about the expanded interview schedule. “We’re waiting to celebrate until we see the pipeline of refugee processing look healthier,” Smyers said. “All of this is really preliminary.” But they are already in the process of hiring back some of the almost 600 staffers they had to lay off worldwide during the executive order legal limbo.

Congress recently passed a budget with enough funding to resettle a total of 75,000 refugees through the end of the fiscal year. This should mean significant increases in the number of refugee arrivals in the coming weeks. More here. By the way, in a report on Trump’s original idea of choosing Christian refugees as a first priority, Smyers called it “shameful.”

See my most recent post on Church World Service finances. 67% of their budget comes from you—taxpayers!

No refugee “clients” means no payola for them!  For new readers here are the nine contractors:

·       Church World Service (CWS)

·       Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)

·       Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)

·       Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)

·       International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)

·       US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)

·       Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)

·       United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)

·       World Relief Corporation (WR)

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/huffpo-refugee-processing-pipeline-being-restarted-contractors-optimistic/

Trump's Refugees II

15,726 refugees admitted to US since Inauguration Day, see where they went, by Ann Corcoran on May 31, 2017

I recommend that all of you interested in the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program have some fun at the Refugee Processing Center (aka Wrapsnet).  Play around with the databases and you can learn a lot about what is happening in your state and of course in the country.

Because Donald Trump has not put his people in place in the DOS, Simon Henshaw, a career official, is in charge of the US Refugee Admissions Program. 

https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/bureau/213334.htm

Today I wanted to see exactly who are the Trump refugees and where were they placed.

Here (below) is the breakdown of nationalities (top 12) admitted by the Trump Department of State which is still largely being run by the bureaucrats because, at least for the department of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), there is still no Trump appointee running the bureau.

Henshaw, at right, would have been the person responsible for the shocking announcement last week that the number of refugees arriving per week are going to jump dramatically.***

Here are the top 12 sending countries:

DR Congo (2,579) The Obama Administration promised the UN we would take 50,000 and we are getting pretty close now.

Burma (2,083) A whopping 541 of these are Muslim Rohingya

Iraq (1,711)

Syria (1,626)

Somalia (1,564)

Ukraine (1,275)

Bhutan (1,104)

Eritrea (765)

Iran (751)

Sudan (406)

El Salvador (392) Not refugees, these are the result of a special illegal program Obama set up!

Afghanistan (385)

So where did Trump’s 15,726 refugees go: 15,726 is about 874 refugees a week entering the US since Trump was inaugurated. We are told that the number will be jumping to 1,500 a week shortly.

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/15726-refugees-admitted-to-us-since-inauguration-day-see-where-they-went/

The Assassination of Fox News

Dick Morris Video

It started with Glen Beck, when advertisers were harassed to quit, then Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes, now Sean Hannity is under attack by advertiser withdrawals.  This began when Rupert Murdock loosened the reins and let his sons take over.

http://www.dickmorris.com/assassination-fox-news-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism

by George C. Leef, The Freeman, 2/16/12

What do the following have in common: hungry Venezuelans, starving North Koreans, ecological devastation in the former Soviet Union, and functionally illiterate students in Washington, D.C., high schools? Give up? They are all consequences of socialism.

In his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, economics professor and National Review editor Kevin Williamson gives the reader an easily understood yet highly informative disquisition on the nature of socialism, its inherent flaws, and the reasons it continues to spread. In connection with that last point, two of Williamson’s chapters cover the political infatuation with “energy independence,” which he argues is socialist in essence, and the push to saddle Americans with the politicized medical care system known as Obamacare.

Williamson’s arguments are sharp and his examples illuminating. His book is like a wrecking ball going to work on the already feeble edifice of socialism.

“Hold on a minute,” some will say. “You can’t compare the bad things that happen in a totalitarian state like North Korea with our well-intended and generally popular public school system in America.” Williamson shows, however, that the crucial element of socialism is present in both, namely governmental control over the provision of goods and services that would otherwise be done by private enterprise. That invariably leads to waste and inefficiency—or even worse.

Williamson does a first-rate job of explaining why those arrangements stifle productivity, depress quality, and hinder innovation. It is because government officials (and the type of government is immaterial) do not know what consumers want. That information only comes from the market’s price system, which socialism prevents from working. It is also because government officials have no incentive to satisfy consumer wants since their money is not given by buyers but taken from taxpayers. Starving peasants in Korea and illiterate students in the United States—the roots are the same.

The poverty of India has been compared to the remarkable wealth enjoyed by the people of Hong Kong and Singapore before, most famously by Milton Friedman, but that is no reason not to emphasize it again. Following World War II, Williamson observes, India was seemingly poised for great economic expansion, having suffered little from the war and benefiting from infrastructure built by the British. India’s economy, however, remained stagnant due to the naive socialism of Nehru, the first prime minister, who admired Soviet central planning. Grinding poverty gripped most of the country.

Singapore and Hong Kong, in contrast, had suffered considerable war damage. Nevertheless both enjoyed rapidly rising incomes for all income classes. The fact that prosperity was widespread is important in heading off the common objection that capitalism only helps a few. Those two city-states were able to escape from poverty by rejecting socialism and adopting laissez faire: prices were free, investors could seek profitable opportunities without government interference and keep their earnings (or swallow their losses) and taxes and regulations were minimal.

Williamson also points out that in recent years India has begun rapid economic development, but only because new leaders have lightened the heavy yoke of socialism.

Defenders of socialism almost always point to Sweden and say that its experience proves that socialism can work.

Williamson’s chapter “Why Sweden Stinks” refutes that notion. Sweden seemed to have the best of all possible worlds—a high standard of living combined with an expansive “safety net” and generous government benefits. The trouble is that socialism is unsustainable because it erodes the human qualities that built up the wealth that the socialist state consumes. Williamson writes that Sweden “is rapidly transforming itself into the sort of society that will not be able to support the relatively successful welfare-state arrangements that characterized it throughout most of the twentieth century.” As Hayek observed, socialism changes the character of the people gradually, undermining habits of work, thrift, and self-reliance. We are seeing that in Sweden.

Speaking of Hayek, another of his famous insights regarding socialism was that under it, the worst people usually rise to the top. I wish that Williamson had included a chapter on that point. We hear so often from socialism’s advocates that their system would work beautifully if it were controlled by good people rather than murderous dictators like Stalin. It would have been worth several pages to attack the idea that there is some magic formula to keep vicious, power-mad people from scheming their way to the top of a system that gives them what they crave.

Finally, although I applaud Williamson’s effort, he has bundled together under the label “socialism” several policies better labeled “corporatist” or “collectivist” since they don’t entail government ownership or abolition of the market economy—only interventions that hamper it. Ethanol subsidies are bad, but we don’t have a federally owned energy sector and “public education” doesn’t prevent (though it surely hampers) home and private schooling. Such distinctions are important.

---

George Leef is book review editor of The Freeman

http://selfeducatedamerican.com/2012/02/16/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-socialism/

Welfare Reform

US Welfare program eligibility should be limited to US citizens. Refugees and immigrants should not receive any welfare benefits. This will remove the incentive welfare immigrants have had and will result in many of these welfare immigrants to return to their home countries.  It is more expensive to live in the US than it is in most of the countries these welfare immigrants came from. They will return to their families and their culture. The cost of supporting these welfare immigrants is $384 billion per year.  This includes federal and State expenses for welfare, healthcare and schooling.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

NATO was Obsolete

Yes, they did participate in the Middle East Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but European nations were unable to stop the destabilization of the Arab Spring or the Syrian War and suffered the plague of refugees thanks to the UN as it continues to try to advance UN Agenda 21.

Now terrorist attacks in the EU and the spread of ISIS needs to be addressed.  The real enemy of Europe is the UN and the EU and Europe needs to quit the EU and the UN. NATO needs to be expanded by adding Israel and other Western-oriented countries on the continent. 

The sole purpose of NATO since its founding was to protect Europe from the USSR, but now the emphasis needs to be shifted to combat terrorists and eradicate this threat.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Globalism vs Nationalism

The problem the Democrats have with Trump and Putin is that they are “nationalists”. The both believe in the role of nation-states. They both participate in the corrupt UN to protect themselves. They know if you’re not seated at the table you will likely end up on the menu. All countries were duped into signing on to UN Agenda 21 in 1992, before global warming was exposed as a hoax.

Despite signing on to UN Agenda 21, several developed countries refused to impose carbon taxes including the US and Russia joined by China, India and others, who continued to use coal-fired power-plants.  The undeveloped countries also ignored the ban on carbon and looked forward to becoming the recipients of the carbon tax.

When the “global economy” slowed in 2014, nation-states began to look after their own economies and returned to more nationalist approaches. This was bad news for dedicated Communists embedded in the governments of most countries.

In the US, the Democrats carried the Communist flag and the Brexit vote and the Trump election were serious setbacks.  They have attacked Trump and will continue to do so.  Trump poses a threat to Democrat-imposed Socialism, State-ism and Internationalism.

The selection of Russia as the strawman in this farce was prompted by Trumps invitation to Russia to join in the war on ISIS. The drop in oil prices made Russia nervous, because they are overly dependent on their oil revenue and unlike the Saudis, don’t have much money in the bank. Trump also didn’t attack the Russians for their take-over in Crimea, because the vote was 80% to join Russia. Thus we have the Russian Ruse as a weapon of choice our American Communists can use against Trump.

The global corporations who jumped on board with the globalism scam are peeling off to join the nationalist movement wherever it is taking hold. This is more bad news for the globalist communists. Corporations like the promise of taking the US tax rate from 35% to 15%, but don’t like Trump messing with their supply chains.

It is clear that globalism will fail and nationalism will spark the economies of nation-states that participate in bi-lateral trade agreements and take control of their own laws.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Trump’s Refugees

45,732 refugees admitted this fiscal year so far, 45% are Muslim, by Ann Corcoran 5/29/17

I’ve been asked frequently what the numbers look like for which religions are practiced by refugees entering the US right now.

Unless Donald Trump tells us that the New York Times story was fake news last week, see here, and that we are not shooting for 70,000 refugees this year, we will assume it is true (and report the numbers as they come in).  Just a reminder that any number in excess of 70,000 will put Trump ahead of most Bush years and ahead of several of Obama’s years.

It doesn’t matter what religion the alleged Burmese biter practices, the questions you should ask are, how did he get through “extreme vetting” and can we afford ‘refugees’ with this degree of apparent mental illness? 

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2017/05/28/burmese-biter-was-headed-for-new-bern-nc-are-we-importing-mentally-ill-in-refugee-program/

Before I give you the list, I want to emphasize that religion should not be the main criteria for your assessment of whether the refugee is good or bad for America. First, these people are all supposed to have been PERSECUTED?   Do we take some who are really simply economic migrants, those who need work? If so, that is not the purpose of the Refugee Act of 1980.

Can we afford large numbers with mental illness, or illnesses such as TB? Can we afford those who have no hope of getting off welfare for a generation? Can we afford those who might already have criminal tendencies that do not become evident in those personal interviews (when no data is available from failed nation states)?

Are we to take into consideration the need by big companies and the Chamber of Commerce for a steady supply of cheap immigrant labor (supported by your tax dollars)?

Are we taking some supposed ‘refugees’ for other purposes of the US State Department, to ‘help-out’ some country that is having a security or economic problem? Or, as we have done in some cases (Uzbeks? Meskhetians?), where we want something from that country Again, religion should not be the primary reason we admit or deny anyone, unless they can prove they are being persecuted for it!

Here is a list of some of the religions recorded at Wrapsnet and the refugees who practice those religions (data for this fiscal year from October 1, 2016 to today).  Note: This program operates on a fiscal year basis!

Again, I do not include below all of the religions listed. These are the larger (or more interesting to me) numbers and these are not my categories, they are how they are categorized at Wrapsnet.  45% of those entering the US in this fiscal year practice some form of Islam.  

Since Trump was inaugurated on January 20th, the percentage of Muslims entering the US has dropped to 39%.

Numbers for the fiscal year 2017 (so far):

Baptists (1,591)

Buddhists (1,380)

Catholics (2,713)

Christians (6,890)

Evangelical Christians (364)

Hindu (979)

Jehovah Witness (388)

Jewish (149)

Moslem Suni (9,663)

Moslem Shiite (2,509)

Moslem (8,180) These must not have designated a sect

No religion (369)

Orthodox (983)

Pentecostalist (3,901)

Protestant (1,918)

Yezidi (416)

Total refugees this fiscal year:  45,732

Like it or not, these will be Trump’s refugees because years from now (especially if we reach the 70,000 mark by September 30th), no one will remember that Obama presided over 3 1/2 months of the fiscal year.

Again, the data base goes on for 22 pages and I’ve picked those with the largest numbers, or in a few cases ones that interested me like the small number of Jews entering as refugees.  If HIAS (formerly Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) still focused on Jewish refugees they would be out of business by now!

One last thing! We have been admitting mostly Burmese Christians for probably a decade, but the number of Burmese Muslims (Rohingya) are on the rise and I note that, for this fiscal year, 1,108 of the ‘Moslems’ are from Burma.  I was also surprised to see how large a number of ‘Moslems’ there were from the DR Congo (325) when that whole flow was supposed to have been, we were led to believe, Christians.

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/45732-refugees-admitted-this-fiscal-year-so-far-45-are-muslim/

Refugee Attacks Warden

Idaho Uzbek convicted terrorist indicted in attempt to kill prison warden, by Ann Corcoran 5/29/17

For all of the refugee contractors and their groupies busily spreading propaganda that refugees never commit crimes, take note of Muslim Fazliddin Kurbanov who was already in prison, convicted on terrorism charges, and then tried to kill the prison warden a year ago this week!

Obama’s US Attorney for Idaho, Wendy Olson, was concerned with American rabble that might act up during Kurbanov’s 2015 trial! Where the heck was (is!) the national media on this story? 

We surely would have heard about the attempted murder by one of our star refugee criminals if anyone had reported it before now. What do you think? Should I give the refugee advocates the benefit of the doubt and when they say there are no refugee criminals, maybe it’s because the media rarely reports those stories. See a few of our recent ones, here, here and here (yesterday!).

You might want to see our archive on Fazliddin Kurbanov by clicking here. Don’t miss this story where Idaho US Attorney Wendy Olson suggested that Americans might demonstrate “acts of bias” during his 2015 trial! (You will see that the Idaho Statesman story is now gone!) Olson showed her bias as she attempted to tamp down the controversy surrounding the Refugee sexual assault case in Idaho as well, here.  (But, I digress!)

From KTVB-7  titled (LOL! just a “man”): Indictment: Boise man serving terrorism sentence tried to kill prison warden RIVERSIDE, California — A Boise man who was convicted in 2015 of terrorism-related crimes has been indicted after prosecutors say he attacked the warden at the federal prison where he was held.

Fazliddin Kurbanov, 34, was just months into a 25-year sentence when the attack happened May 31, 2016 at the Federal Correctional Institute in Victorville, California. He was indicted Wednesday on charges of attempted murder of a federal officer, assault on a federal officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon, and possession by an inmate of a prohibited object intended to be used as a weapon.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Kurbanov used a prison-made knife to attack Calvin Johnson, seriously injuring him. According to the Amercian Federation of Government Employees, the warden needed more than 80 staples to close wounds on his torso. The indictment describes the knife as “a metal blade or ‘shank’ approximately three to four inches in length.” Kurbanov was moved to FCI Terminal Island in San Pedro after the attack. Johnson, who recovered from his injuries, is also now working at a different prison.

Kurbanov, an Uzbek national, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization, one count of attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization and one count of possession of an unregistered destructive device in November 2015.

Prosecutors in that case outlined how Kurbanov communicated online with members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, promising to send money and supplies, and expressing interest in carrying out an attack in the United States.

Kurbanov told FBI informants that he was considering Ann Morrison Park or Mountain Home Air Force Base as possible attack sites. Although he did not carry out any attack before his arrest, Kurbanov had stockpiled explosive ingredients including including fertilizer, Tannerite, ammonium nitrate, acetone and aluminum powder in his Curtis Road apartment before his arrest.

Typical! no mention of the ‘R’ word! REFUGEE! Interesting! The Daily Mail has a story on Kurbanov and mentions that he considered attacking West Point as well. There is something very fishy about the admission of Uzbeks during the Bush and early Obama years, wish we knew the full story.

Readers: Let me know if the latest on this charming refugee (who will be costing us a fortune to keep in prison for life!) makes it to any national news story or any cable news outlet!

https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/idaho-uzbek-convicted-terrorist-indicted-in-attempt-to-kill-prison-warden/