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Firm tied to voter registration ‘scheme’ goes dark

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2 months ago

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From left, Lancaster County Commissioner Alice Yoder, Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams, Commissioners Ray D’Agostino and Josh Parsons. The officials held a press conference on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024, to discuss voter registration fraud detected in the county.

From The Center Square

By 

Everybody Votes runs an office in Lancaster County, where election workers recently found suspicious registration forms among a batch of 2,500 applications delivered last week. Investigators there said at least 60% of those reviewed were fraudulent.

The media and consulting firm linked to fraudulent voter registration forms in Pennsylvania earlier this week has gone dark as of Saturday.

Field and Media Corps – the website and social media accounts of which are now defunct – is an Arizona-based company that contracts with Everybody Votes to run a canvassing operation in Pennsylvania and other states that target low-income minority residents unregistered to vote.

The Monroe County District Attorney’s Office confirmed Wednesday that 30 registration forms contained fraudulent information, including an application submitted on behalf of a dead resident.

Everybody Votes runs an office in Lancaster County, where election workers recently found suspicious registration forms among a batch of 2,500 applications delivered last week. Investigators there said at least 60% of those reviewed were fraudulent. So far, the campaign has not been tied directly to the investigation.

Not so in nearby York County, where law enforcement continues reviewing another delivery from the operation leading up to the Oct. 22 deadline to register.

On Wednesday, the America First Policy Institute, a conservative-leaning research nonprofit,  demanded a federal investigation into the company.

“Where there’s fire, there’s fire,” said Hogan Gidley, vice chairman of the institute’s Center for Election Integrity. “Thousands of instances of reported voter registration fraud have now been confirmed throughout Pennsylvania.”

He described Field and Media Corps, established in 2017, as a “high-powered left-wing organization” that may have launched similar “schemes” across the country that require state-level investigations.

“Submitting fraudulent registrations right at the voter deadline to overwhelm election officials is exactly the kind of scheme that the Department of Justice should be using their force and resources to stop,” he said.

Evidence also exists that Everybody Votes is linked to a left-wing super political action committee intent on expanding registration numbers for Democrats in battleground states.

According to public tax records shared with The Center Square, The Voter Registration Project, also known as Everybody Votes, describes itself as a public charity that helps low-income minority citizens register to vote and provides technical assistance to voter registration drives.

The organization reported $45.8 million in total revenues in 2022, a “substantial portion of which comes from a governmental unit or the general public.”

A 2023 report from Capital Research Center, a conservative nonprofit, says left-wing donors together raised $190 million for the campaign to register 5.1 million voters across the country – all in violation of federal law that bars 501(c)(3) from engaging in such activity.

The strategy, detailed in a 2019 leaked memo from Mind the Gap, the liberal super PAC in question, entices investors by promising a more cost-effective strategy to boost vote counts for Democrats – namely through voter registration drives.

The group pointed to its direct role in flipping the U.S. House blue in 2018 as “proof of concept.”

Detailed further in the report are signed tax forms from donors that link their grants to the Voter Registration Project in direct support of Mind the Gap. The Capital Research Center estimates President Joe Biden collected between 1 million and 2.7 million swing state votes in the 2020 election as a result.

Biden defeated then-incumbent President Donald Trump 306-232 in electoral college votes; the popular vote was Biden 81.2 million to 74.2 million.

Francisco Heredia, who runs Field and Media Corps, told Votebeat earlier this week he’d not heard from county officials in Pennsylvania, but would cooperate with the investigation. He said the company trains workers how to legally complete registration forms and has no tolerance for fraud.

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Ottawa’s avalanche of spending hasn’t helped First Nations

Published on November 19, 2024

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From the Fraser Institute

By Tom Flanagan

When Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015, he memorably said that the welfare of Indigenous Canadians was his highest priority. He certainly has delivered on his promise, at least in terms of shovelling out money.

During his 10 years in office, budgeted Indigenous spending has approximately tripled, from about $11 billion to almost $33 billion. Prime Minister Trudeau’s instruction to the Department of Justice to negotiate rather than litigate class actions has resulted in paying tens of billions of dollars to Indigenous claimants over alleged wrongs in education and other social services. And his government has settled specific claims—alleged violations of treaty terms or of the Indian Act—at four times the previous rate, resulting in the award of at least an additional $10 billion to First Nations government.

But has this avalanche of money really helped First Nations people living on reserves, who are the poorest segment of Canadian society?

One indicator suggests the answer is yes. The gap between reserves and other communities—as measured by the Community Well-Being Index (CWB), a composite of income, employment, housing and education—fell from 19 to 16 points from 2016 to 2021. But closer analysis shows that the reduction in the gap, although real, cannot be due to the additional spending described above.

The gain in First Nations CWB is due mainly to an increase in the income component of the CWB. But almost all of the federal spending on First Nations, class-action settlements and specific claims do not provide taxable income to First Nations people. Rather, the increase in income documented by the CWB comes from the greatly increased payments legislated by the Liberals in the form of the Canada Child Benefit (CCB). First Nations people have a higher birth rate than other Canadians, so they have more children and receive more (on average) from the Canada Child Benefit. Also, they have lower income on average than other Canadians, so the value of the CCB is higher than comparable non-Indigenous families. The result? A gain in income relative to other Canadians, and thus a narrowing of the CWB gap between First Nations and other communities.

There’s an important lesson here. Tens of billions in additional budgetary spending and legal settlements did not move the needle. What did lead to a measurable improvement was legislation creating financial benefits for all eligible Canadian families with children regardless of race. Racially inspired policies are terrible for many reasons, especially because they rarely achieve their goals in practise. If we want to improve life for First Nations people, we should increase opportunities for Canadians of all racial backgrounds and not enact racially targeted policies.

Moreover, racial policies are also fraught with unintended consequences. In this case, the flood of federal money has made First Nations more dependent rather than less dependent on government. In fact, from 2018 to 2022, “Own Source Revenue” (business earnings plus property taxes and fees) among First Nations bands increased—but not as much as transfers from government. The result? Greater dependency on government transfers.

This finding is not just a statistical oddity. Previous research has shown that First Nations who are relatively less dependent on government transfers tend to achieve higher living standards (again, as measured by the CWB index). Thus, the increase in dependency presided over by the Trudeau government does not augur well for the future.

One qualification: this finding is not as robust as I would like because the number of band governments filing reports on their finances has drastically declined. Of 630 First Nation governments, only 260 filed audited statements for fiscal 2022. All First Nations are theoretically obliged by the First Nations Financial Transparency Act, 2013, to publish such statements, but the Trudeau government announced there would be no penalties for non-compliance, leading to a precipitous decline in reporting.

This is a shame, because First Nations, as they often insist, are governments, not private organizations. And like other governments, they should make their affairs visible to the public. Also, most of their income comes from Canadian taxpayers. Both band members and other Canadians have a right to know how much money they receive, how it’s being spent and whether it’s achieving its intended goals.

Author:

Tom Flanagan
Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Distinguished Fellow, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary
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espionage

Nearly 1,100 known, suspected terrorists apprehended at US northern border, equivalent to U.S. Army battalion

Published on September 1, 2024

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Foreign nationals illegally enter the U.S. from Canada through the Swanton Sector
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Swanton Sector BP

From The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley

Canada officials express alarm about terrorism threats, Americans about impact on US

In addition to members of Congress expressing alarm about national security threats at the U.S.-Canada border, members of the Conservative Party of Canada are blaming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government for being responsible for creating them.

A Canadian House of Commons hearing was held Wednesday to investigate how the Trudeau government granted citizenship to a member of ISIS who allegedly plotted a terrorist attack against Canadians.

An Egyptian father and son were arrested last month for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack in the Toronto area after the father was admitted into Canada in 2018 and granted citizenship in 2024. This was after in 2015 the father allegedly appeared in an ISIS propaganda video, which was shown during the hearing.

Canadian authorities claimed to have thoroughly vetted him before granting him citizenship in May 2024 even though he had aggravated assault charges on his record from 2015 “for the benefit of the Islamic State somewhere outside Canada,” according to the hearing.

Members of the Conservative Party blasted Trudeau and his government, arguing a member of ISIS should not “have been allowed into Canada, let alone granted Canadian citizenship. Canadians deserve to feel safe in their own communities.”

A senior official of the Canada Border Services Agency told MPs that CBSA officers “made the best decisions that we could at that moment in time based on the information we had. Can we do a better job of collectively gathering some of that information? I don’t know. We need to determine that,” CBC reported.

The father and his son, who is not a Canadian citizen, face nine charges, including conspiracy to commit murder for the benefit or at the direction of a terrorist group, ISIS.

The father, Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi, was granted a visitor visa by the Trudeau government in 2018. He later filed a refugee claim, which was granted. Next, he was granted permanent resident status in 2021 and citizenship in May 2024, according to the hearing.

“This was allowed to happen even though Eldidi is alleged to have appeared dismembering a prisoner in an ISIS video published in 2015,” the Conservative Party of Canada said.

Canadian authorities also claimed the video “wasn’t available to officials who were screening” him, CBC reported. Canada’s Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said there was “no way” Canadian officials could have known about the video.

The video was reportedly posted on Jihadology.net in June 2015, an American-based website that catalogues ISIS propaganda, according to information from the hearing.

In July, the pair were arrested only after French authorities alerted Canadians about alleged terrorist ties, first reported by Global News.

“If not for that late tip from a foreign government, it’s highly likely many innocent Canadians would be dead today,” the Conservative Party of Canada said. “Justin Trudeau has repeatedly claimed that his government has thorough screening at our borders, he has claimed he takes terrorism and national security seriously, but this foiled terror attack shows that this isn’t the case.”

The hearing was held one month after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested a Canadian woman on terrorism-related offenses. The arrest stemmed “from an ongoing criminal investigation regarding allegations that the individual left Canada and traveled to Syria in 2015 to join ISIS,” the RCMP said in statement.

It was also held after MPs demanded answers about the arrest of a reporter when asking a Canadian minister why the Iranian Islamist Revolutionary Guard Corps hadn’t been designated as a terrorist organization. RCMP security detail reportedly grabbed and arrested the individual; the RCMP officer was reportedly put “under review.”

The reporter “was arrested and accosted on trumped-up charges by the RCMP,” Marilyn Gladu, a Conservative MP, said, adding the Trudeau government “has created a climate where journalists can face criminal charges for demanding answers on critical subjects.”

IRGC is a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization.

Members of Congress have called on the Biden administration to strengthen the U.S.-Canada border after the Trudeau government expanded entry to Gazans after the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, The Center Square reported. The majority of Gazans voted Hamas into power and violent attacks against Jews in America and threats of terrorism have increased. While the Canadian Consul General in New York Tom Clark told The Center Square the Canadian government has “taken every step to ensure the security of Canadians and Americans is in no way jeopardized,” several U.S. and Canadian officials disagree.

Members of Congress have called for stronger security measures after the greatest number of known or suspected terrorists, including an Iranian with terrorist ties, have been apprehended by U.S. officials at the northern border under the Biden and Trudeau administrations since fiscal 2021, The Center Square first reported.

They total nearly 1,100, slightly more than one U.S. Army battalion.

Americans have expressed concerns about why a record number on the U.S. terrorist watch list are in Canada, aren’t being stopped by Canadian authorities prior to attempting to enter the U.S. and question how many more entered the U.S. from Canada who evaded capture.

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