The "Purpose" And "Job" Of Government: Wealth Re-Distribution?

From Floyd Reports:

The “Purpose” and “Job” of Government: Wealth Redistribution?




Posted on February 25, 2011 by Guest Writer





by Dr. Paul G. Kengor







A teachable moment on the purpose of government recently occurred on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, who has picked up the torch for the departed Keith Olbermann. It was Monday, February 7, the day after President Obama sat for an interview with Bill O’Reilly of Fox News.



It was an exchange in the O’Reilly-Obama interview that inspired the teachable moment with O’Donnell. O’Reilly asked Obama a valuable question:



O’Reilly: Do you deny that you’re a man that wants to redistribute wealth?



Obama: Absolutely.



O’Reilly: You deny that?



Obama: Absolutely.



Putting aside the issue of whether Barack Obama is a redistributionist, the teachable moment—for me here today—followed on MSNBC. Lawrence O’Donnell’s guest was Howard Dean. Bear in mind that Dean is a very influential man of the Left. He chaired the Democratic National Committee, spearheading it when the Democrats took down George W. Bush in his second term, recapturing Congress in a landslide. Those victories came after Dean challenged Bush for the presidency in 2004 and, in my opinion, did more than any other figure in ratcheting up the toxic vitriol that ultimately destroyed Bush’s presidency. (Click here.)



In short, Howard Dean’s opinion is not irrelevant.



And so, Lawrence O’Donnell followed the O’Reilly-Obama “redistribution” exchange with this question to Dean:



O’Donnell: Governor [Dean], this is one of those things you can see he’s [Obama] afraid of discussing—what an increase in top tax rate actually does. This for me is—I feel is why Democrats so frequently lose the tax debate. You can see that they’re afraid of the tax debate.



Dean: That [interview] was an unusual thing. The president doesn’t often get mouse-trapped, especially by the likes of Bill O’Reilly…. He laid out a proposition that is we shouldn’t have redistribution. [But] that’s what governments do—is redistribute. The argument is not whether they should redistribute or not, the question is how much we should redistribute…. The purpose of government is to make sure that capitalism works for everybody …. It’s government’s job to redistribute.



There are a bunch of objections I could raise to these statements. Primarily, however, the problem with Dean’s comments on the “purpose” and “job” of government is the complete lack of qualification. Dean gives a definition of government that is a leftist definition, provided by a modern liberal/progressive. Howard Dean cannot, logically, honestly, factually, categorically argue that his definition is anything beyond that.



Dean certainly did not offer a definition grounded in sources we would traditionally expect in America: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, specific writings of Jefferson, Madison, even John Locke. No one, and nothing, is cited. For instance, the Declaration, written by Jefferson, edited by Ben Franklin, John Adams, and the entirety of the first Congress, approved by 56 of our founders, stated that “governments are instituted” for the purpose of securing the “unalienable rights” of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Wealth redistribution is nowhere to be found.



What Howard Dean offered was an expansive modern “progressive” definition of government. That’s fine, but his terms need to be identified as just that.



Taking this a step further, note that Dean and O’Donnell both desire a federal income-tax system based on graduated or progressive rates. They believe such a system reflects and enables government’s “job” and “purpose.” They want a progressive federal income tax for the chief intention of wealth redistribution.



Here, too, this is hardly the spirit of America’s founding principles.



America’s progressive income tax system did not start until nearly 140 years after the American Revolution, with implementation under President Woodrow Wilson—the progressive’s progressive—in 1913, and only after an intense, nasty debate that still rages a century later.



If Dean and O’Donnell want an early document that argues for a graduated or progressive income tax, they need to look overseas and to 1848, decades before Woodrow Wilson, with the publication of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. If you go to page 75 of the Penguin Signet Classics edition of the Manifesto, or page 26 of the on-line version (click here), you can see Marx’s 10-point program. Point two, which follows Marx’s unapologetic call for “abolition of property,” explicitly calls for “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax.”



No, I’m not calling Lawrence O’Donnell and Howard Dean communists, but I am calling them Leftists and redistributionists. That’s what they are, as is their definition of government. Their definition is, first and foremost, theirs—not America’s.

Chaos Summer: Why Wisconsin Is Only The Beginning

From Floyd Reports:

Chaos Summer: Why Wisconsin is Only the Beginning




Posted on February 25, 2011 by Floyd Brown





by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown



I’m going to bankrupt this country by any means necessary, and if you try to stop me or slow me down, I’ll shut the government down and blame it on you. If you try to stop me, you can kiss your political careers good-bye. Isn’t this essentially what Barack Obama and his allies in the U.S. Senate are saying to the Republican leaders in Congress?



One thing is certain: it’s not an idle threat. Obama and his allies control the executive branch of the government and the United States Senate. They also control the mainstream media. On top of that, they control the unions, which they are sending into the streets.



Our great nation is on the verge of bankruptcy. The national debt stands at $14 trillion. When the people cried out and demanded that Washington put a stop to the out-of-control waste and spending, Barack Obama instead responded by proposing a budget that, by his own calculations, doubles our already untenable debt over the next decade.



Americans wrongly assumed that Obama would change accordingly after taking his election “shellacking.” He said the day after the elections, “And I told John Boehner and Mitch McConnell last night, I am very eager to sit down with members of both parties and figure out how we can move forward together.” His compromising rhetoric worked to get Americans to back-off and lower their defenses.



In reality, when the Republican-led House of Representatives put forth legislation to cut our out-of-control deficit by $61 billion — a mere 3.7 percent of our deficit and a scant 0.4 percent of our national debt — Barack Obama and his allies in Congress threatened to shut the government down.



In the days that follow, more protests will break out in a number of states across the nation. It is only the beginning of a prolonged battle for the future of America.



Barack Obama and his allies heard the message voters sent in November loud and clear, and they are striking back. The chaos in Madison, Wisconsin, is precisely the future Barack Obama wishes for every state in the union. It’s the “change” he really promised when he campaigned in 2008, because only economic paralysis can pave the way for him to press forward with his extreme agenda.



If you believe that these Wisconsin protests are a local issue, you’re sorely mistaken. If you believe that these protests are, in actuality, about public-sector union employees demanding more of your hard-earned money during a time of extreme economic distress while the rest of the nation suffers, you’re still missing a huge part of the picture.



These protesters are being used. Vladimir Lenin coined the phrase “useful idiots.” These protesters are dupes. They are pawns in a very dangerous game that Barack Obama is playing with the United States of America. Barack Obama and his allies tell us that they are only supporting the Wisconsin demonstrations because they care about the teachers, because they care about the children, but the end result of Obama’s support for these demonstrations cannot be ignored.



Barack Obama, through his support of the Wisconsin demonstrations, is essentially ensuring that no state that is attempting to balance its budget can do so. It’s not enough for him to bankrupt and indenture the federal government to our foreign creditors and our enemies abroad; he must bankrupt the states, as well. We’re not questioning Obama’s motives; we’re simply looking at the fruits of his actions.



Obama is not just giving these demonstrators rhetorical support. As Senator Jim DeMint recently noted, Obama’s “political machine, Organizing for America, is on the ground ginning up opposition to Wisconsin Republicans who are trying desperately to balance their budget. Make no mistake, the Democrat Party is bought and paid for by the unions.”



Of course, some of our elected officials are giving Obama the benefit of the doubt. They accuse him of a “lack of leadership;” but does Obama really lack leadership?



We believe the actual end-game is to bankrupt the United States of America. And by bringing this country to its knees, he can then remold it from the ground up and move it ever closer to socialism. Former Obama administration “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones put it this way: Revolutions are sold from the “top-down, bottom-up, and inside-out.”



“Top-down, bottom-up, and inside-out.” Are we in the midst of a political revolution?

Wisconsin Debate Puts Focus On Waste, Fraud And Abuse

From Judicial Watch:

Wisconsin Debate Puts Focus on Waste, Fraud and Abuse




On Thursday, February 17, Democratic lawmakers in the Wisconsin Senate fled the state to avoid voting on a proposal by Governor Scott Walker to close the $3.6 billion budget deficit by asking government workers to contribute to their pensions and pay a little more of their healthcare premiums. Governor Walker also intends to levy restrictions on their collective bargaining rights, except on salaries, so the state can save scarce taxpayer funds. “Collective bargaining” is the coercive method that public employee unions use to extract extravagant taxpayer-funded benefits from local and state politicians. No less a liberal than FDR opposed collective bargaining for public employee unions.



And what was the reaction? Democratic Senators simply walked out. And it took a little while to find them, hiding out in a resort in neighboring Illinois. (By the way, Michelle Malkin has coined a new term for these cowardly legislators: “fleebaggers.”)



Meanwhile, union bosses, with help from the Obama White House and the Democratic National Committee, stirred the pot by staging protests. According to Politico, “Organizing for America, Obama’s 2008 grass-roots campaign organization posted a statement on its website late Thursday, announcing it ‘is mobilizing on the ground in Wisconsin to defend the rights of public employees from an attempt by the governor to take away their right to organize.’” This president and his leftist “organizing” allies have a remarkable disdain for republican, constitutional government and the rule of law.



President Obama himself inflamed the debate by incorrectly labeling Governor Walker’s plan as an “assault on unions.”



Now, the brush fire that started in Wisconsin is raging across the country as state governments continue to address their own bloated budgets receiving stiff opposition from powerful union bosses and their leftist political allies. According to CNN:



Legislatures from New Jersey to California are struggling to tackle yawning deficits, longstanding pension obligations and health benefits and some broader questions about how unionized labor will fit into America’s evolving political landscape.



The proposed budget bills of state deficit hawks, whom their critics label union-busters, spawned a second week of demonstrations in at least three states over what protesters view as an attack on workers’ rights.



“Governors all across the United States are talking about cutting billions of dollars,” said Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who defended his budget-repair bill that addresses a $137 million shortfall and increases contributions of public workers to their pensions and health insurance benefits.



Of course the spin from the left is that this is a war between conservatives and the working man. But nothing could be further from the truth. This is about rooting out waste and mismanagement in government and protecting taxpayer dollars. The specifics of any legislation aside, the week’s debate is about reining in taxpayer employee unions who organize not against corporations but against taxpayers. And this is also about stopping rampant public pension abuse, which takes place not only in Wisconsin but across the country.



Did you know, for example, that Iowa Governor Terry Branstad (a Republican, it should be noted) continues to collect a $50,000 pension even though he came out of retirement and banks an annual salary of $130,000? How can he legally do this? Because during a previous term as governor, Branstad presciently signed into law a provision in 1992 that exempts retirees who return as elected officials from pension cuts.



Are we to believe that efforts to curb this sort of nonsense are an affront to the working man? Certainly not! But they are a real and distinct threat to union bosses (the most powerful of which are the public-sector unions)and the liberal political operatives who benefit from their increasing campaign donations.



And that is why you see President Obama, his campaign operation, the DNC, liberal lawmakers and union bosses working together to pull all of the strings with these protests. (This stands, by the way, in stark contrast to the Tea Party protests which organically emanated from the bottom up in response to President Obama’s socialist agenda.)



As many of you know, Judicial Watch is active in several other states, targeting the abuse and out of control spending of taxpayer funds such as are at issue in Wisconsin.



For example, we’ve taken legal action to stop a scheme by Los Angeles County that pays superior court judges in the county approximately $21 million annually in improper perks and supplemental benefits on top of what they already receive from the state. In that case, the judges actually hired a lobbyist to get the California state legislature to change the law after our taxpayer clients beat them in court! So it isn’t just the teachers unions that are out of control, taxpayer-paid judges can treat taxpayers like an ATM, too!



And we also filed a taxpayer lawsuit against the Phoenix Police Pension Board and Phoenix Chief of Police Jack F. Harris to stop the illegal payment of pension benefits to Chief Harris valued at approximately $90,000 per year. (He retired as chief and then came back as chief. So he wants to keep his full-time pay and pension for the same job!)



These are just two examples. Just imagine what takes place in state and local governments across the country. It’s refreshing to see state lawmakers say enough is enough!



Governor Walker has decided to take action to eradicate waste, mismanagement and corruption inside the Wisconsin state government. And his efforts have apparently inspired other governors to do the same. This is a good thing for the working man, and the country.

Socialist AFL-CIO Chief Trumka: Raising Taxes Will Create Jobs

From Yahoo News and Vision to America:

AFL-CIO Chief: Raising Taxes Will Create Jobs


Posted Feb 24, 2011 07:30am EST by Peter Gorenstein

What's the best way to get Americans back to work?



Raise taxes, according to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Specifically, he wants to raise the federal gas tax as a means to fund infrastructure spending. "We need a dedicated source of revenue to create infrastructure in this country," he tells Aaron Task in the accompanying clip.



"We need to create jobs. The best way to do that is through infrastructure development." Simply maintaining the existing infrastructure in this country will cost $2.2 trillion over five years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. That doesn't include Obama's objective of high-speed rails and green energy projects.



Trumka didn't say specifically how much he would raise the gas tax, but mentioned he's shown the President a $256 billion plan to improve infrastructure. If every billion spent on infrastructure creates 35,000 jobs, as he claims, this package would create close to 9 million jobs over the next five years.



The idea would also improve America's fiscal and competitive future, says Trumka. "There's also a downstream effect, you put people back to work, they pay taxes, they don't use services, they're contributing, other jobs are created along the way as well," he explains.



The White House isn't on-board with the plan. Addressing the issue on "Face the Nation" in January, White House Chief of Staff Richard Daley said he isn't in favor of raising taxes right now.



Trumka does have an unlikely supporter for higher gas taxes in the right-leaning Chamber of Commerce. However, the Chamber of Commerce does not support Trumka's other tax initiative: creating a financial transaction tax.



An idea raised by Democrats during the Dodd-Frank bill debate, the transaction tax would charge financial institutions a minimal fee (less than a penny) for each trade they make. Trumka says that could raise another $100 billion in revenue without taking money out of the pockets of the middle class.







.

Communists, Marxists, Socialists, Oh, My! You Won't Believe Who's Really Behind Wisconsin Protests

From World Net Daily and Vision to America:

Communists, socialists, Marxists, Oh my!


You won't believe who's really behind Wisconsin protests



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted: February 24, 2011

12:30 am Eastern





By Aaron Klein

© 2011 WorldNetDaily







Saul Alinsky

One of the main groups organizing the Wisconsin union protests is a spinoff from an activist academy modeled after Marxist community organizer Saul Alinsky and described as teaching tactics of direct action, confrontation and intimidation.



President Obama once funded that academy - the radical Midwest Academy. He has been closely tied to the group's founder, socialist activist Heather Booth.



Obama also is closely tied to scores of other radicals behind the Wisconsin opposition protesting Gov. Scott Walker's proposal for most state workers to pay 12 percent of their health care premiums and 5.8 percent of their salary toward their own pensions.



Walker's proposal reportedly would save $300 million in the next two years for a state that faces a financial crisis amid a $3.6 billion deficit..



A slew of radical groups and unions have been organizing the protests against Walker's proposal as well as counter protests to a recent tea party rally in support of the governor's plan.



Obama's own political machine has aided in organizing protests in Wisconsin



Counter protests were led in part by radical groups like Veterans for Peace, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the Workers World Party.



(Story continues below)









One of the main organizers of the recent Wisconsin protests is a group called Moving Wisconsin Forward. An associated group, Citizen Action of Wisconsin, is part of the Moving Wisconsin Forward movement.



Robert Kraig, executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, has been widely quoted in the media as a main protest organizer and opposition leader.



Citizen Action of Wisconsin, part of a larger national Citizen Action chain, sits in a coalition with Americans for Financial Reform, which is led by Midwest founder Booth.



Indeed, Citizen Action is a spinoff of Midwest Academy.



'Redistribution of wealth and power'



Midwest founder Booth has stated building a ''progressive majority'' would help for ''a fair distribution of wealth and power and opportunity."



Booth founded Midwest in the 1970s with her husband, Paul Booth, a founder and the former national secretary of Students for a Democratic Society, the radical 1960s anti-war movement from which William Ayers' domestic Weather Underground terrorist organization splintered.



The Woods Fund, a nonprofit on which Obama served as paid director from 1999 to December 2002, provided capital to the Midwest Academy. WND was first to report Obama sat on the Woods Fund board alongside Ayers.



In 1999, Booth's Midwest Academy received $75,000 from the Woods Fund. In 2002, with Obama still serving on the Woods Fund, Midwest received another $23,500 for its Young Organizers Development Program.



Midwest describes itself as "one of the nation's oldest and best-known schools for community organizations, citizen organizations and individuals committed to progressive social change."



It later morphed into a national organizing institute for an emerging network of organizations known as Citizen Action.



Discover the Networks describes Midwest as "teach[ing] tactics of direct action, confrontation, and intimidation."



Camp Obama



WND was first to report Jackie Kendall, executive director of the Midwest Academy, was on the team that developed and delivered the first Camp Obama training for volunteers aiding Obama's campaign through the 2008 Iowa Caucuses.



Camp Obama was a two-to-four day intensive course run in conjunction with Obama's campaign aimed at training volunteers to become activists to help Obama win the presidential election.



Earlier this week, Obama's Organizing for America sent out a mass e-mail it will train a new team of summer organizers.



"The Summer Organizing Fellowship is a grassroots program that aims to put boots on the ground and help foster a new generation of leaders – not just to help win elections, but to strengthen our democracy in communities across the country," the blast e-mail said.



Aside from helping to fund Midwest, Obama has been tied to Booth in other ways. In August 1998, Obama participated in a panel discussion following the opening performance in Chicago of the play "The Love Song of Saul Alinsky," a work described by the Chicago Sun-Times as "bringing to life one of America's greatest community organizers."



Obama participated in the discussion alongside other Alinskyites, including Booth, political analyst Aaron Freeman, Don Turner of the Chicago Federation of Labor and Northwestern University history professor Charles Paine.



"Alinsky had so much fire burning within," stated local actor Gary Houston, who portrayed Alinsky in the play. "There was a lot of complexity to him. Yet he was a really cool character."



Booth herself is a notorious radical community activist and self-described dedicated disciple of Alinsky, of whom she says: "Alinsky is to community-organizing as Freud is to psychoanalysis."



Booth's vision of uniting various left-leaning organizations and factions also has been the subject of her two books, "Toward a Radical Movement and Citizen Action" and "The New American Populism."



Other radicals behind Wisconsin rallies



The keynote speaker at last week's "Moving Wisconsin Forward" rally was John Nichols, who identifies himself as a "progressive" writer.



Nichols co-authored four books and a number of major articles with Marxist activist Robert W. McChesney, founder of the George Soros-funded Free Press.



McChesney has called for the dismantlement "brick-by-brick" of the U.S. capitalist system, with America being rebuilt as a socialist society.



Free Press openly lobbies for move government control of the news media and Internet. It has been closely tied to the Obama administration.



As WND first reported Ben Scott, the State Department's recently appointed policy adviser for innovation, was policy director at Free Press. Scott authored several articles with McChesney.



The board of Free Press has included a slew of radicals, such as Obama's former "green jobs" czar Van Jones, who resigned after it was exposed he founded a communist organization.



Obama's "Internet czar," Susan P. Crawford, spoke at a Free Press's May 14, 2009, "Changing Media" summit in Washington, D.C.



Crawford's pet project, OneWebNow, lists as "participating organizations" Free Press and the controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.



Crawford and Kevin Werbach, who co-directed the Obama transition team's Federal Communications Commission Review team, are advisory board members at Public Knowledge, a George Soros-funded public interest group.



In February 2009 McChesney wrote in a column, "In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick-by-brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles."



Communists into union protest organizer



Another main Wisconsin protest organizer has been the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest union.



In November , Obama gave the presidential Medal of Freedom – the nation's highest civilian honor – to John Sweeney, the AFL-CIO's president emeritus who retired last year.



Sweeney is a socialist activist and a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, the principal American affiliate of the Socialist International. The DSA has demonstrated a close relationship with Obama over the years.



Sweeney is a member of the DSA's Boston chapter. He served as president of AFL-CIO from 1995 until his retirement last September.



He previously served for four terms as president of the controversial Service Employees International Union, or SEIU. During his administration, Sweeney famously aligned the SEIU with ACORN and other leftist groups.



Activist and author Joel Kotkin, a fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, observed how Sweeney brought communists into his union leadership.



"The public-sector unions have pushed the entire labor movement to the left," he said. "The [SEIU] has embraced organizations with a New Left origin, such as ACORN and Cleveland's Nine to Five, and has even set up its own gay and lesbian caucus. ... The rise of these unions led to the elevation of SEIU's boss, John Sweeney, to head of the labor federation.



"No George Meaney-style bread-and-butter unionist, Sweeney is an advocate of European-style democratic socialism," said Kotkin. "He has opened the AFL-CIO to participation by delegates openly linked to the Communist Party, which enthusiastically backed his ascent. The U.S. Communist Party [CPUSA] says it is now 'in complete accord' with the AFL-CIO's program. 'The radical shift in both leadership and policy is a very positive, even historic change,' wrote CPUSA National Chairman Gus Hall in 1996 after the AFL-CIO convention."



Upon assuming the office of the AFL-CIO in 1995, Sweeney was quick to rescind one of the union's founding rules that banned Communist Party members and loyalists from leadership positions within the federation and its unions. Sweeney welcomed Communist Party delegates to positions of power in his federation.



Linda Chavez and Daniel Gray, in their book "Betrayal: How union bosses shake down their bosses and corporate America," state Sweeney placed a number of DSA allies in his union office.



The DSA's official website carries an endorsement from Sweeney: "I'm proud to a member of a movement for change that puts the cause of working people at the heart of the matter."



With research by Brenda J. Elliott





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The Obama Administration's War On Civil Liberties And Free Speech

From Global Research.ca:

The Obama Administration's War on Civil Liberties and Free Speech


As Clinton Hawks 'Freedom to Connect,' Justice Department Shields 'War on Terror' Fraudsters, Targets WikiLeaks





by Tom Burghardt





Global Research, February 21, 2011

Antifascist Calling...





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While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was praising the role that the internet played in toppling oppressive regimes (ironically enough, close U.S. allies), the Justice Department was in court in Alexandria, Virginia seeking to invade the privacy and political rights of WikiLeaks supporters even as it shields well-connected "War on Terror" fraudsters.



Scarcely batting an eyelash, Madame Clinton told her audience at George Washington University that "the goal is not to tell people how to use the internet any more than we ought to tell people how to use any public square, whether it's Tahrir Square or Times Square."



Rich with rhetorical flourishes that should have evoked gales of laughter but didn't (this is America, after all), Clinton averred that "together, the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association online comprise what I've called the freedom to connect. The United States supports this freedom for people everywhere, and we have called on other nations to do the same."



Really?



Has the honorable Secretary attended a demonstration of late, or found herself on the receiving end of a police baton, a rubber bullet, a jolt from a taser or ear-piercing blast from a "nonlethal" sonic weapon?



Or perhaps Madame Clinton has been served with a National Security Letter that arrives with its own built-in, permanent gag order, had her organization infiltrated by provocateurs, been the focus of "spear phishing" attacks by a secret state agency, say the FBI or one of their private contractors, who've implanted surveillance software on her laptop or smart phone, or summoned by subpoena to appear before a Star Chamber-like grand jury?



I didn't think so.



The Secretary's hypocrisy and mendacity would be amusing if the American people hadn't already lived through a decade where the cheapening of constitutional rights, particularly First and Fourth Amendment guarantees, hadn't been eroded to the point of savage annihilation by all branches of government and by both capitalist parties.



After all, in the filthy Washington trough where money rules, "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans alike are joined at the hip and outdo one another in paying obeisance to the National Security State.



Indeed, just a hop, skip and a jump across the icy Potomac, an Alexandria courthouse witnessed the "change" regime's Justice Department move to seize the contents of private Twitter accounts, including those of left-wing Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, and other WikiLeaks supporters.



While Mrs. Clinton hypocritically praised the role of social networking sites in helping to bring down torture-friendly, corrupt regimes in Egypt and Tunisia (close U.S. allies in the multibillion dollar kabuki dance known as the "War on Terror"), a grand jury was investigating whether there are grounds for filing criminal charges against WikiLeaks, its founder Julian Assange, and the heroic Bradley Manning, the incarcerated Army private suspected of leaking compromising files to the organization.



Outraged by revelations of American war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Apache helicopter gunship murder of a dozen people, including two Reuters journalists, as well as the release of thousands of diplomatic cables, the secret state is bringing the full weight of its formidable machinery down upon anyone, anywhere who have the temerity to challenge the lies of our militarist masters.



Denouncing the Obama regime's latest assault, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argued that forcing Twitter to turn over users' data to the government would hand the state a veritable road map of people connected to WikiLeaks, including journalists who may have communicated with the group, and would seriously chill free speech.



EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn pointed out that "Twitter is a publication and communication service, so the information sought by the government relates to what these individuals said and where they were when they said it. This raises serious First and Fourth Amendment concerns. It is especially troubling since the request seeks information about all statements made by these people, regardless of whether their speech relates to WikiLeaks."



Public knowledge of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's criminal probe recently surfaced when U.S. Magistrate Theresa Carroll Buchanan, granted a motion by three Twitter clients that partially unsealed some government filings in the case.



Plaintiffs' attorneys argued that Buchanan should overturn her earlier ruling ordering Twitter "to disclose its clients' data, as well as unseal documents in the case, including requests from prosecutors to get information from other technology companies," the The Washington Post reported.





When news of the federal government's fishing expedition first broke in January, The New York Times reported that what made the case unusual weren't de rigueur secret state subpoenas, but the fact that Twitter challenged the Justice Department's gag order "and won the right to inform the people whose records the government was seeking."



The Times noted that "WikiLeaks says it suspects that other large sites like Google and Facebook have received similar requests and simply went along with the government."



Such demands, and long-suspected capitulation by internet behemoths Google and Facebook, are at the heart of current debates over data retention.



As security analyst and surveillance critic Christopher Soghoian pointed out last month, "The hypocrisy of the government's push for such data retention is clear when compared to the extreme efforts that government agencies go to in order to shield their own communications, documents and other records from the American people."



Particularly when lawbreaking by favored contractors are cloaked by bogus claims of "national security."



Shielding a "War on Terror" Fraudster





One sordid example among hundreds of similar cases which have come to light was recently uncovered The New York Times.



Investigative journalists Eric Lichtblau and James Risen disclosed that for "eight years, government officials turned to Dennis Montgomery, a California computer programmer, for eye-popping technology that he said could catch terrorists."



Montgomery's "eye-popping technology" was a fraud, a multimillion grift that bamboozled the Pentagon's Special Operations Command and other secret state agencies and almost resulted in the 2003 shoot-down of passenger planes heading towards the U.S.



Hardly the "smartest guy in the room," Montgomery is awaiting trial in Nevada on charges "of trying to pass $1.8 million in bad checks at casinos." However, "he has not been charged with wrongdoing in the federal contracts, nor has the government tried to get back any of the money it paid."



In the last few months Obama's Justice Department, Lichtblau and Risen inform us, have "gotten protective orders from two federal judges keeping details of the technology out of court," and "says it is guarding state secrets that would threaten national security if disclosed."



According to the Times, the software suite Montgomery sold the Pentagon was chock-a-block with snake-oil claims that it "could find terrorist plots hidden in broadcasts of the Arab network Al Jazeera; identify terrorists from Predator drone videos; and detect noise from hostile submarines."



These claims "prompted an international false alarm that led President George W. Bush to order airliners to turn around over the Atlantic Ocean in 2003."



In a famous incident of Bush administration fear mongering that coincided with the Christmas holidays for maximum effect, and hyped of course by the media as the latest in a series of "grave threats" to the heimat, Montgomery reported the alarming news to his CIA contacts.



But as Global Research analyst Michel Chossudovsky pointed out at the time, the Bush administration had "chosen the Christmas holiday to wage a campaign of fear and intimidation. Its ultimate objective consists in manipulating Americans into accepting a de facto military government, as a means to 'protect their civil liberties'."



Chossudovsky averred, and facts that came to light years later proved beyond all reasonable doubt that "the terrorist alert was fabricated by the CIA." A cynical deceit facilitated by "War on Terror" fraudster Montgomery.



According to the Times, Montgomery had claimed that "hidden in the crawl bars broadcast by Al Jazeera, someone had planted information about specific American-bound flights from Britain, France and Mexico that were hijacking targets."



CIA officials then "rushed the information to Mr. Bush, who ordered those flights to be turned around or grounded before they could enter American airspace."



"Senior administration officials," the Times revealed, "even talked about shooting down planes identified as targets because they feared that supposed hijackers would use the planes to attack the United States, according to a former senior intelligence official who was at a meeting where the idea was discussed."



While the anonymous official later called the idea "crazy," nevertheless snake-oil salesman Montgomery had convinced intelligence officials that the fabricated threat was "real and credible."



Despite the fact the United States was a hair's breath from blasting commercial airliners from the skies and killing hundreds of innocent people, the CIA "never did an assessment to determine how a ruse had turned into a full-blown international incident, officials said, nor was anyone held accountable."





"In fact," the Times reports, "agency officials who oversaw the technology directorate--including Donald Kerr, who helped persuade George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, that the software was credible--were promoted, former officials said."



""Nobody was blamed," a former CIA official told the Times. "They acted like it never happened."



Kerr, a long-time fixture in the national security establishment, was formerly an executive vice president with the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). After serving as the CIA's Deputy Director for Science of Technology, he was rewarded for his role in the "planes incident" fiasco with an appointment by Bush as the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the top secret Pentagon satrapy that flies America's fleet of intelligence satellites. And since being well-connected means never having to say your sorry, Kerr is currently the Deputy Director of U.S. National Intelligence where he continues to labor mightily to "keep us safe."



Despite serious misgivings about Montgomery's firm, eTreppid Technologies, the secret state was eager to buy his company's dodgy software. Why? As it turns out, Montgomery was, as they say, juiced.



Along with partner Warren Trepp, described as a former "top trader for the junk-bond king [and convicted fraudster] Michael Milken," Montgomery's company "with the help of Representative Jim Gibbons, a Republican who would become Nevada's governor and was a longtime friend of Mr. Trepp's, the company won the attention of intelligence officials in Washington."



Some of Montgomery's "friends" also included "Edra Blixseth, a onetime billionaire who with her former husband had run the Yellowstone Club in Montana."



Back in October, the Associated Press reported that the FBI had opened a criminal probe and was investigating the former co-owner of the swank Yellowstone Club, whose members include Bill Gates and former Vice President Dan Quayle, over charges that she bilked creditors at the time of her messy divorce.



A well-connected Republican insider, according to AP, investigators are probing "a massive real estate scheme fueled by greed, fraud and hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-advised loans."



"The current federal inquiry into Edra Blixseth," AP informed us, "involves a series of multimillion dollar loans she took out or guaranteed around the time of her divorce, according to an attorney familiar with the matter."



"Court records show," according to AP, that "she claimed to be worth $782 million at the time of another loan, for $950,000. Within months, she filed for personal bankruptcy owing creditors at least $157 million."



Like her pal Montgomery, Blixseth claims she did "nothing wrong." What's that old saw about birds of a feather?









"Hoping to win more government money," the Times reported, "Ms. Blixseth turned to some influential friends, like Jack Kemp, the former New York congressman and Republican vice-presidential nominee, and Conrad Burns, then a Republican senator from Montana. They became minority stakeholders in the venture, called Blxware."



Burns told the Times he was "impressed" by a video presentation Montgomery gave to an unnamed "cable company." The former senator told Lichtblau and Risen that the security grifter "talked a hell of a game."



For his part, Kemp leveraged his connections with war criminal and then-Vice President Dick Cheney, "to set up a meeting in 2006 at which Mr. Kemp, Mr. Montgomery and Ms. Blixseth met with a top Cheney adviser, Samantha Ravich, to talk about expanding the government's use of the Blxware software."



When Ravich didn't jump fast enough and hand over more taxpayer boodle, Montgomery's former attorney Michael Flynn "sent an angry letter to Mr. Cheney in May 2007" and "accused the White House of abandoning a tool shown to 'save lives'," the Times reported.



But Montgomery and Blixseth still had a card to play and had some powerful friends in the Air Force who helped play them.









Lichtblau and Risen disclosed that "an Air Force contracting officer, Joseph Liberatore," who described himself as a "believer," despite skepticism from other secret state agencies including the CIA, was concerned by "problems with the no-bid contract."



According to an email obtained by the Times, Liberatore wrote that if other agencies examined the deal "we are all toast."



"In 2009," Lichtblau and Risen inform us, "the Air Force approved a $3 million deal for his technology, even though a contracting officer acknowledged that other agencies were skeptical about the software."



As Montgomery's firm crashed and burned, the Bush and now, the Obama administration, sought to cover their ass-ets and "declared that some classified details about the use of Mr. Montgomery's software were a 'state secret' that could cause grave harm if disclosed in court."



"The secrecy was so great that at a deposition Mr. Montgomery gave in November," Lichtblau and Risen report, that "two government officials showed up to monitor the questioning but refused to give their full names or the agencies they worked for."



Bottom line: while the U.S. government affirms that the private communications of American citizens are fair game to be trolled by secret state snoops, fraud and serious crimes carried out under the dark banner of an endless "War on Terror" are treated, like evidence of torture and other crimes against humanity, as if they "never happened."



Criminalizing Whistleblowing





The National Security State's assault on our right to privacy comes hard on the heels on moves in Congress, spearheaded by troglodytic Republicans (with "liberal" Democrats running a close second) to criminalize whistleblowing altogether.



Last week, the Muslim-hating Rep. Peter King (R-NY) introduced the SHIELD Act in the House, a pernicious piece of legislative flotsam that would amend the Espionage Act and make publishing classified information, and investigative journalism, a criminal offense.



Also last week, legislation was introduced in the Senate that "would broadly criminalize leaks of classified information," Secrecy News reported.



Sponsored by Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), the bill (S. 355) "would make it a felony for a government employee or contractor who has authorized access to classified information to disclose such information to an unauthorized person in violation of his or her nondisclosure agreement," Secrecy News disclosed.



In an Orwellian twist, Cardin, who received some $385,000 in campaign swag from free speech advocates such as Constellation Energy, Goldman Sachs and Patton Boggs (Mubarak's chief lobbyist in Washington) according to OpenSecrets.org, said that the bill would "promote Federal whistleblower protection statutes and regulations"!



As Secrecy News points out, the bill "does not provide for a 'public interest' defense, i.e. an argument that any damage to national security was outweighed by a benefit to the nation." In other words, you don't need to know about government high crimes and misdemeanors. Why? Because we say so.



In November, shortly after WikiLeaks began publishing Cablegate files, King fired off a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that WikiLeaks be declared a "foreign terrorist organization" and the group's founder declared a "terrorist ringleader."



We know the fate reserved for "terrorists," don't we?



As the United States sinks ever-deeper into a lawless abyss where the corporate state is lowering the boom on democracy altogether, is the day far off when Madam Clinton's avowal that we ought not "tell people how to use any public square, whether it's Tahrir Square or Times Square," come back with a vengeance to haunt America's venal ruling class?









Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.





Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Tom Burghardt

New CBO Report Proves We Cannot Afford ObamaCare

From The Heritage Foundation:

New CBO Report Proves We Cannot Afford Obamacare








Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released its report on H.R. 2, the House-passed legislation that would fully repeal Obamacare. The takeaway message was that American taxpayers simply cannot afford Obamacare.



CBO’s initial scoring of Obamacare analyzed its effects from 2010 to 2019, including only six years of full implementation, since main spending provisions do not go into effect until 2014. The new document reports on 2012 to 2021, including an additional two years of full implementation.

The Scoop



Secretary Sebelius Questioned Before the Senate Finance Committee



Order the New Book from Heritage's Robert Moffit and Other Health Experts



Evaluate Obamacare's Impact



How to Limit the Damage from Obamacare



States Fight Back Against Obamacare





This still fails to show the true 10-year cost of the law, but gets a little closer. Over eight years, the gross cost of Obamacare’s coverage provisions jumps from $938 billion to $1.39 trillion, which includes $677 billion to create a new health entitlement offering generous subsidies to the middle class to purchase health insurance.



It also includes an expansion of Medicaid, which will cost $674 billion. Initially, the federal government will almost entirely fund the expansion, but will pass costs on to the states starting in 2020. This will have serious consequences, as states already face tough choices to tackle mounting deficits. The combined increase in states’ Medicaid costs will be $60 billion. CBO’s initial score showed the Medicaid expansion costing states just $20 billion. The addition of just two extra years increased this number threefold, revealing the crippling effect the expansion will have on state budgets.



Obamacare proponents say the new law cuts the deficit. But the CBO report pulls the mask off the bill and reveals what it really is: a massive tax increase that, on paper at least, is slightly greater than the massive spending hike it also contains. Obamacare thus indisputably represents a massive new burden on current taxpayers and future generations.



Finally, several of Obamacare’s “pay-fors” are unlikely to ever become reality. One example is the excise tax on “Cadillac” health plans, an unpopular change that isn’t supposed to occur until 2018—after President Obama is safely out of office. If the Congress and White House responsible for creating this tax weren’t willing to put it into effect, it is unlikely that future lawmakers will do so. Without the Cadillac tax, Obamacare loses $111 billion of offsets for new spending.



Unsustainable cuts to the Medicare program are also expected to pay for new spending. Both the CBO director and Medicare’s Chief Actuary have warned that these cuts to Medicare provider payments could reduce access to care for seniors and reduce quality of care. Congress’s past behavior proves its hesitance to allow similar changes to the program, so savings within Medicare will likely not materialize.



The reality is that the offsets for Obamacare spending cannot occur without serious negative consequences, and without them, it adds significantly to deficit spending. CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf’s letter to Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan last week stated that repeal would reduce the deficit if these provisions don’t occur.



So the facts are in. Obamacare includes tremendous new levels of federal spending at a time when lawmakers are seeking ways to reduce the unaffordable size of government. It pays for new spending by increasing taxes on the American people, burdening individuals and businesses and putting further strain on the economy. And, as we explain further in recent research, a realistic scoring of Obamacare shows that it is certain to increase deficits.







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