Free Republic

WASHINGTON - The federal government has grown obscenely fat over the years, and under President Obama it's gotten much fatter, eating into our economy and the very foundations that made America great. It has outgrown our incomes and now threatens us with suffocating debt, costly regulations, punishing mandates, and a punitive tax code that's invaded every nook and cranny of our society and our daily lives. You don't hear much about this growing crisis, certainly not in the national news media which never saw a federal domestic program it didn't like. Even a lot less in Congress which enacts our...

Vladimir Putin isn’t the Easter Bunny. On the other hand, he isn’t Joseph Stalin. It takes a truly fevered imagination to see Russian forces in the Crimea as a prelude to Russian tanks rolling across Europe toward Berlin and Paris. Putin is a power player who cares more about Russia’s national interests, and Russian minorities in his near abroad, than in that mythical force known as world opinion. Would that America had a president who cared more about our interests than in promoting globalism and the left’s social agenda. The Crimea’s population is 60% ethnic Russian. For most of the...

Russia's invasion of Ukraine was spurred by American behind-the-scenes actions, says former Ohio Congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday accused Kucinich of being a pacifist because of his opposition to the Iraq War, but Kucinich countered he believed that war was wrong, but not all U.S. military action is so. O'Reilly then asked how Kucinich would have handled the Ukraine crisis had he been elected president. "What I'd do is not have USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy working with U.S. taxpayers' money to knock off an elected government in Ukraine,...

Russia's Black Sea Fleet has told Ukrainian forces in Crimea to surrender by 5.am (0300 GMT) on Tuesday or face a military assault, Interfax news agency quoted a source in the Ukrainian Defence Ministry as saying. The ultimatum, Interfax said, was issued by Alexander Vitko, the fleet's commander.

Move fuels USAID's already exponential growth in Kenya aidNow that an $87 million African trade-promotion project is reaching the end of its five-year run, the Obama administration might spend millions more to decide whether it wisely invested U.S. taxpayer dollars in the venture. If the Competitiveness and Trade Expansion, or COMPETE Trade Hub project, is deemed to have been effective, a follow-up program could receive more cash from the Treasury. In this latest facet of a five-year U.S. Agency for International Development experiment in and around Kenya, the federal government will obtain contractor-conducted project evaluation services before committing additional funding.

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 9, 2014 (C-FAM.org) - Lawyers for U.S. government agencies have failed in an initial attempt to force a watchdog group to remove leaked documents from the group’s website. The documents describe studies showing complications of a long-lasting contraceptive heavily backed by the agencies and the Gates Foundation for use by African women. The U.S. agencies are accused of attempting to conceal their knowledge of studies showing women using the injectable contraceptive Depo Provera are at higher risk of getting HIV/AIDS. Allowing The Rebecca Project to publish the information means “this issue of Depo Provera’s harm now has...

Secretary of State Kerry: promoting gay rights abroad ‘at the very heart’ of U.S. policy by Kirsten Andersen WASHINGTON, D.C., June 10, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – Secretary of State John Kerry wishes homosexuals around the world a “Happy Pride Month.”  That was the message conveyed in a recorded message released Friday to employees of the U.S. State Department, in which he outlined the bureaucracy’s robust approach to promoting homosexual advocacy throughout the world.“I wanted to take a moment to join people around the world in celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride month,” Kerry said in the message.“This month is about...

The United States has increased its financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, but linked this aid to progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported on Wednesday. The American aid will be increased from $426 million in 2013 to $440 million in 2014, said Maen Rashid Areikat, the head of the PLO delegation in Washington DC. Despite the increase, the 2014 US aid is significantly lower than previous years. In 2011, the US provided the PA $545 million in aid money, and $495 in 2012. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) provides funding for economic projects,...

Though the federal government is struggling to make Obamacare functional for Americans, the administration is simultaneously helping to upgrade the health-care system in Kenya. The ambitious plan to expand health-care and social-services access to millions of Kenyans is one of several recent U.S. endeavors to surface, indicating that yet another spike in assistance to Kenya is taking place. As U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor reported, the U.S. Agency for International Development in June 2012 alerted contractors that its Kenyan aid portfolio was growing “exponentially.”Now, the most recent endeavor is the enhancement of an existing “five-year mission supporting the centralized health-care...

Nearly two years after the U.S. military left the country, Iraq is now asking for more American weapons, training and manpower to fight a bloody resurgence of al-Qaida. Violence in Iraq has risen in recent months to levels comparable to the darkest days of the nation’s civil war. …

Though the government shutdown has reached its tenth day, the federal government has deemed the collection of grant proposals for the improvement of reproductive health of women in Pakistan “essential.” The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) created a grant on Thursday seeking applicants to administer “family planning” in the south Asian country through its Maternal and Child Health (MCH) program. “The MCH Program’s overall goal is to dramatically and sustainably improve health outcomes of women and children in target areas, and the MCH Program comprises five components: 1) Family Planning/Reproductive Health; 2) Maternal, Newborn and Child Health; 3) Health...

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recently awarded a $24.5 million contract in a program whose stated aim is to "build a more effective and competent Palestinian justice sector that is accountable to the public and responds to citizens' needs." According to the solicitation: The program will support the Palestinian Authority's commitment to strengthen and reform government institutions, and will focus on supporting visible improvements in the delivery of services that contribute towards increased public confidence. USAID noted that "Ethics and anti-corruption will be cross-cutting themes of the program." Chemonics will provide the Palestinians with a combination of equipment,...

Also giving Indonesians more college scholarships Budget deficits, spending limits, the sequester and economic headwinds all seem to fall by the wayside for Barack Obama’s overseas spending program. Now that a $305 million U.S. initiative has built and renovated hundreds of Pakistani schools – including private Islamic madrassas in addition to public institutions – the Obama administration is set to infuse $25 million to improve student reading skills in those schools. Using congressionally authorized FY 2010-FY 2012 funds, a pair of U.S. Agency for International Development initiatives will embark upon the literacy phase of the massive educational project, according to...

Nearly two months after Egypt’s June 30 Revolution, it is interesting to note how the final dialogue between ousted President Morsi and General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi—full of threats and vows of determination on both sides—have all come to pass, including in the very details, specifically the U.S. government’s role. On July 5, the Arabic language, Egyptian newspaper El Watan published what it said were the final words between the two Egyptian men, as transcribed by an eyewitness, before the general put the president in prison. The relevant portions of the dialogue between Sisi and Morsi follow, interspersed with my retrospective...

A U.S. government effort to discourage students from dropping out of secondary and even primary school has been extended, giving a federal contractor two more years to achieve the Obama Administration's goals in this program. The initiative, however, focuses on students in the Middle East and Asia. Creative Associates International since 2010 has carried out the School Dropout Prevention Pilot program (SDPP) in Cambodia, India, Tajikistan, and Timor Leste on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which awarded Creative a three-year task order with a $51.5 million maximum ceiling. The contract balance is projected to remain around...

Plan suggests more public spaces for inter-ethnic minglingThe Obama administration intends to leverage U.S. leadership in lowering racial tensions in the U.S. by making such ethnic-peacemaking expertise available globally. Obama’s most recent endeavor specifically wants to “increase constructive inter-ethnic cooperation and interaction” among people in the Balkans region of southeastern Europe. Although this approximately $15 million U.S. Agency for International Development venture arguably could benefit the minority Christian Serb population, its scope is notably miniscule in contrast to other ethnic and tribal peacemaking initiatives around the globe, particularly in Africa. In and around Nigeria, for example, USAID is engaged in...

Up to $500 million is slated for improvements that the U.S. Agency for International Development seeks to achieve in its global-health resources network. USAID's Global Health Supply Chain Program is seeking contractor help in modernizing how the agency manages and secures its health-specific supply system. The half-billion cap on procuring technical assistance, or TA, is for "supply chain management and commodity security" in foreign assistance recipient-nations. "Since 2005, USAID has procured and delivered more than 4,300 different products valued at $2.4 billion and has provided more than $500 million in supply chain technical assistance in more than 50 countries," according...

Allegations of corruption, praise for terrorists not obstaclesThe U.S. government recently awarded a batch of contracts worth up to $300 million to Palestinian construction companies, including a firm targeted in a Palestinian Authority corruption probe. PA Prosecutor-General Ahmed al-Mughni, likewise, survived the investigation, having escaped a car-bomb assassination attempt related to his probe of Tarifi Contracting & Reconstruction Co., other companies and PA officials, the Jerusalem Post reported at the time. The chairman of Tarifi Contracting is H. E. Jamil Al Tarifi, the former PA civil affairs minister. At the time of the investigation, he reportedly co-owned the firm with...

Project is to assess south-of-the-border social conditionsThe Obama administration intends to keep contractors on stand-by to help officials evaluate conditions on the Mexican side of the U.S. border, but U.S. companies are not allowed to apply for the work. Tracking remittances – funds sent over a distance – from the U.S. to Mexico is one of several possible research and consulting services that Obama through the U.S. Agency for International Development may solicit. Such a task will not support, for example, tax- or drug-enforcement operations. Instead, it would help determine the extent to which the funds subsequently are “invested into...

(Family Research Council) - If the president doesn't respect America's views on marriage, what makes us think he would respect other countries'? Certainly not his latest USAID project. In April, to relatively little fanfare, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) embarked on one of the most shocking abuses of taxpayer dollars in the last five years. With help from the Levi Strauss Foundation and millionaire liberal Tim Gill, the U.S. government is spending $11 million to train homosexual activists in other countries. The Washington Blade, D.C.'s gay newspaper, praised the Obama administration for creating an army of international lobbyists...