February 7, 2012

Source: Counterpunch

On September 25, 2011, just eight days after the Occupy Wall Street protests began in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, the much acclaimed CBS News program, 60 Minutes, aired a fawning look at the thousands of surveillance cameras affixed to buildings and lampposts throughout New York City.  The cameras feed live images of people going about their everyday lives to a $150 million computer center equipped with artificial intelligence to integrate and analyze the daily habits of what are, for the most part, law-abiding Americans.

The thrust of the 60 Minutes  program was the fine job of counter terrorism being done by the NYPD and its Commissioner, Raymond Kelly. It was a triumph in public relations for a police department about to go on an assault spree –  pepper spraying and punching  peaceful protestors;  kicking, ramming and arresting journalists attempting to cover the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

On air, the reporter, Scott Pelley, said the surveillance center was “housed in a secret location,”  as one would expect of a real counter terrorism program — as opposed to a program to simply quash dissent.  Mr. Pelley also said the program was run by the NYPD.  As it turns out, neither of those assertions were accurate.

The New York Times, the worldwide news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), Wired Magazine, the New York City Council had all previously reported the location of the supposedly super secret counter terrorism  center on their public web sites: 55 Broadway in the bowels of the financial district.  What was a secret about the operation, and not reported by 60 Minutes to its viewers, despite being well aware of the facts, is that the center is jointly staffed and operated by the NYPD along with the largest Wall Street firms – the same firms under investigation in 50 states for mortgage and foreclosure fraud and widely credited with causing the Nation’s economic collapse.  The Wall Street firms that were involuntarily  bailed out by the 99% are now policing the 99%.

In a telephone conversation with the co-producer of the program, Robert Anderson, he conceded that he was aware of the presence of the Wall Street firms in the center.  It would have been hard to miss them.  The facility is designed with three long rows of computer workstations.  The outside of each cubicle bears a brass plaque with the names of the occupants: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorganChase, etc.

You won’t find photographs showing these firms in the surveillance center in any U.S. corporate news outlet, but a foreign news service has them openly displayed – a news organization servicing countries of the former Soviet Union.  These photos were taken during a large gathering of reporters and photographers at the invitation of the NYPD.  As shown in the photos, the event was hosted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Very secret counter terrorism operation, indeed, with global reporters and photographers coming and going in both 2010 and 2011.

As we reported in October, the surveillance plan became known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and the facility was dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. It operates round-the-clock with 2,000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firms and other corporations, together with approximately 1,000 more owned by the NYPD.  At least 700 additional cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown center where all film is integrated for analysis.  The $150 million of taxpayer money that’s funding this corporate/police spying operation comes from both city and Federal sources, with the cost rising daily as more technology is added.

Not only is it unprecedented for corporations under serial and ongoing corruption probes to be allowed to spy on law abiding citizens under the imprimatur of the largest police force in the country, but the legality of the operation by the NYPD itself is highly questionable.

During the 60 Minutes program (at elapsed time 8:50), the following exchange takes place between the reporter Scott Pelley and Jessica Tisch, the NYPD Director of Counterterrorism Policy and Planning who played a significant role in developing the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. (Tisch is in her early thirties and did not come up through the ranks of counter terrorism or law enforcement. She is the granddaughter and one of the heirs to the fortune of now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch, who built the Loews Corporation.  Her father, James Tisch, is the CEO of the Loews Corporation and was elected by Wall Street banks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank of  New York until 2013,  representing the public’s interest.  Ms. Tisch is apparently standing in for the public’s interest in this surveillance operation:  rather than public hearings, Ms. Tisch drafted the guidelines for the program herself.)

Pelley: “Tisch showed us how the system can search for a suspicious person based on a description – a red shirt for example.”

Tisch: “And I can call up in real time all instances where a camera caught someone wearing a red shirt.”

Pelley: “So the computer looks essentially through all the video, finds all of the red shirts and puts it together for you.”

Tisch: “Video canvasses that used to take days and weeks to do, you’ll now be able to do with the snap of a finger.”

Tisch snaps her fingers for added emphasis.

Read More…

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Source: Think Progress

The biggest critic of a massive prison privatization scheme in Florida was stripped of his chairmanship of the Budget Subcommittee on Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriation for opposing Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) plan to outsource prison oversight to the lowest bidder.

Sen. Mike Fasano (R) is one of ten Senate Republicans who opposes the plan to give private, for-profit vendors control over 26 prisons, but his vocal criticism provoked retribution from one of the bill’s biggest supporters, Senate President Mike Haridopolos (R):

Amid the mounting tension, Senate President Mike Haridopolos refused to bring up the bill for debate, a sign that it faced defeat. Ten of 28 Senate Republicans have voiced strong reservations or opposition to such a major policy shift, a serious rift in the GOP caucus.

The drama intensified as Haridopolos stripped Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, of his chairmanship of a budget subcommittee overseeing prisons, saying Fasano “was not rowing in the same direction” as Senate leaders on budget decisions.

“It’s become clear to me that Sen. Fasano was not willing to make these choices,” Haridopolos said.

Fasano said Haridopolos told him he was being punished for his anti-privatization comments in an MSNBC interview Monday.

Read More…

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January 30, 2012

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Linn Washington Jr.

January 20, 2012 Those intent on tormenting now ex-death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal have done it again, this time perhaps even exceeding their past efforts to painfully harass this man widely perceived as a political prisoner. The latest punitive slap involves Pennsylvania prison authorities throwing Abu-Jamal into “Administrative Custody,” more commonly known as ‘The Hole.’ The draconian constraints of AC placement surpass the harsh restrictions of the death row isolation Abu-Jamal has endured for over a quarter century. A jury sentenced Abu-Jamal to death following a controversial July 1982 conviction for killing a Philadelphia policeman. No surprise that this latest punitive assault against Abu-Jamal has his worldwide support movement in an uproar. Supporters see AC placement as retaliation by those incensed that Abu-Jamal is no longer facing execution. Energizing supporters is the opposite of what Philadelphia’s District Attorney Seth Williams said he desired when he announced last month that his office would not seek reinstitution of Abu-Jamal’s death sentence. At the time, DA Williams said he hoped avoiding a rehearing on the death sentence would consign Abu-Jamal to obscurity. Free Mumia rally in London (photo by Linn Washington) Pennsylvania’s governor and the president of Philadelphia’s police union also used the word obscurity when voicing their hopes that the life sentence for Abu-Jamal would decimate his cause célèbre status among death penalty abolitions worldwide. Instead, however, Prison officials rejected the standard procedure of placing Abu-Jamal in general population, the status for all inmates not sentenced to death. They removed Abu-Jamal from death row only to transfer him to an Administrative Custody cell block inside the death row housing Greene maximum security prison located more than 300-miles from Philadelphia in southwest Pennsylvania, thus assuring that his case would again be on the front burner. Inmates in general population have full privileges to visitation (contact, not conjugal contact), telephone and commissary, along with access to all prison programs and services, but in administrative custody, which is punitive in nature, prisoners are permitted only a limited number of visits, no telephone calls (except legal or emergency), and the even get only limited access to legal materials needed for appeals. Sue Bensinger, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, declined comment on Abu-Jamal’s case citing the Department’s “security and privacy” regulations. Bensinger did confirm that authorities now hold Abu-Jamal in Mahanoy, a medium security prison about 100 miles from Philadelphia in central Pennsylvania. Mahanoy cannot hold death row prisoners according to DoC regulation. DoC personnel moved Abu-Jamal to Mahanoy from Greene during an unannounced pre-dawn transfer on December 14, 2011. Abu-Jamal’s December removal from death row was in belated compliance with federal court rulings voiding Abu-Jamal’s death sentence. That sentence launched Abu-Jamal’s decade’s long grind on Pennsylvania’s death row – an ordeal that a string of federal court rulings since 2001 have declared to have been reached illegally and unconstitutionally. When a federal District Court judge voided Abu-Jamal’s death sentence in December 2001, converting it to a life sentence, Pennsylvania prison authorities refused to remove him from death row. Authorities justified their refusal to transfer Abu-Jamal into general population from death row in 2001 as extending a “courtesy” to Philadelphia’s District Attorney’s Office, to that city’s police union (the Fraternal Order of Police) and to the widow of the slain officer. The FOP, the widow and the DA’s Office, including Williams and his predecessor Lynne Abraham, actively lobbied year after year for Abu-Jamal’s continuance on death row during the DA’s unsuccessful appeals of that 2001 ruling ending his capital sentence. Those malicious demands for Abu-Jamal’s continued death row confinement succeeded in inflicting increased suffering through keeping Abu-Jamal mired in the deprivations of death row isolation. That “courtesy” also cost taxpayers at least $100,000, because it costs Pennsylvania’s prison system an extra ten thousand dollars per year to handle each death row inmate, according to prison system spokespersons. That “courtesy” cost adds to the enormous expenditures Philadelphia prosecutors have made fighting in courts to block Abu-Jamal’s efforts to win a retrial where a jury could hear what that 1982 jury did not: evidence of innocence withheld by police and prosecutors. As an example of the addional restrictions administrative custody imposes on Abu-Jamal, the acclaimed prison author/journalist now has no access to books, a radio and a typewriter – all items he utilized on death row for his writings. A federal appeals court in 1998 stated Abu-Jamal had a First Amendment right to write while imprisoned. That ruling derailed efforts by detractors to bar Abu-Jamal’s writing. Legal experts familiar with Abu-Jamal’s plight say some of those current Administrative Custody restrictions – particularly those blocking his ability to write – arguably violate that 1998 appeals court ruling. Under current AC status, authorities force Abu-Jamal to wear shackles during the limited visits he’s permitted. Under administrative custody restrictions, his visits are actually less frequent and of shorter duration than were his highly restrictive death row visitations. Prison authorities had stopped shackling Abu-Jamal during death row visits a few years ago, following complaints from Noble Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Tutu, during a visit to the famous inmate, refused to see him until the shackles, which Tutu declared were a gratuitous torture, were removed. In an interesting twist, Maureen Faulkner, the slain officer’s widow, expressed her desire in December for having Abu-Jamal placed in general population where, she said, he would live among the “criminals that infest” Pa prisons instead of the “protective cloister” of death row. Faulkner has been at the forefront of past punitive efforts against Abu-Jamal, including a legal rights- robbing onslaught that led to the 1998 federal appeals court ruling. That 1995 onslaught was retaliation for the publication of Abu-Jamal’s book Live From Death Row, and it substantially sabotaged his pivotal hearing that year appealing his conviction. The book features essays on prison life Abu-Jamal had prepared for an NPR program that detractors successfully intimidated NPR into cancelling before it could air. This perverse Administrative Custody confinement, the latest link in the chain of injustices lashing Abu-Jamal since his 1981 arrest, is just the latest violation by the Department of Corrections of the Pennsylvania prison system’s own written regulations for placing inmates into that harsh disciplinary status. Abu-Jamal does not meet any of the 11 specific circumstances listed in Pennsylvania Department of Corrections regulations for justifying administrative custody placement. A model prisoner, Abu-Jamal does not constitute “a threat” to life, property, himself, staff, other inmates, the public or orderly prison operations as the policy declaration for AC placement states. Indeed, prison staff evaluations of Abu-Jamal since his December death row removal, sources said, list him as “polite [and] respectful.” Those positive evaluations do not evidence incorrigibility or other serious misbehaviors usually triggering AC placement. Among the ever-changing rationales prison authorities advance for keeping Abu-Jamal in AC is their curious and Kafkaesque claim that they are awaiting legal clarification that the courts have formally replaced Abu-Jamal’s death sentence with life in prison. That claim contradicts the Department of Corrections’ own documents specifically acknowledging that federal courts have vacated the death sentence (requiring a life sentence) and that the Philadelphia’s DA has dropped appeals to reinstate the death sentence and is accepting life imprisonment. Since DoC documents clearly reference a vacated death sentence, how can prison officials also claim they need clarification for what is objectively obvious, unless they are using that need-for-clarification explanation to cover-up continued punitive harassment? The mammoth legal battles raging around Abu-Jamal’s conviction obscure smaller little-known skirmishes Abu-Jamal constantly has to fight over mundane matters like the types of food he can eat, what newspapers he can read and the permissible length of his dreadlock hair style. In 2003 Abu-Jamal and other inmates at Greene prison asked authorities for healthier diets, prompting hundreds of activists from Germany and other countries to send letters to prison authorities supporting that dietary request which came arrived containing garlic cloves in the envelopes. Activists used garlic because it’s widely recognized for its medicinal properties and it makes a pungent statement. Abu-Jamal’s current AC status once again limits his ability to obtain the food he needs for his vegetarian diet from the prison commissary. In the late 1980s Abu-Jamal mounted an unsuccessful lawsuit against prison authorities for barring his death row receipt of a newspaper published by a socialist organization. Prison authorities barred that newspaper by speciously deeming it a “danger” to prison security, despite their allowing non-isolation-cell inmates to receive white racist hate literature and pornography. Those racist and pornographic publications then approved for general population inmates clearly harmed security throughout the prison system by spurring interracial tensions and homosexual rapes – unlike a leftist newspaper sent to one inmate in death row isolation in one prison. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, prison authorities disciplined Abu-Jamal for refusing to cut his dreadlocks (he cited religious reasons for his hair style). Authorities ultimately relented, allowing him to leave his locks uncut. Authorities now cite Abu-Jamal’s hair length as a reason for keeping him in punitive isolation, though suspiciously, they only first offered that excuse five long weeks after his December AC placement. While Abu-Jamal’s detractors indignantly dismiss all claims of his being a political prisoner, his post-arrest ordeals, still continuing, provide a compelling case of a person specifically targeted by authorities for being who he is politically more than for the crime he is supposedly serving time for. Source

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Federal Prosecutor to Take 5th Amendment in Fast and Furious Probe

January 20th, 2012

Via: Politico:

A senior federal prosecutor in Arizona intends to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights rather than testify before a House committee next week looking into the Justice Department’s handling of the Fast and Furious gunrunning investigation, the prosecutor’s attorney told Congress in a letter on Thursday.

On Wednesday, House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa issued a subpoena to Patrick Cunningham, the chief of the criminal section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona. The deposition subpoena came after a plan to have Cunningham appear for a less formal interview fell apart.

Sources say Cunningham is concerned that he’s caught in a pincer of sorts between senior Justice Department officials in Washington eager to shift blame to lower-ranking staffers and Congressional investigators eager to see heads roll over the investigation, which allegedly allowed more than 1000 weapons to cross the border into Mexico despite suspicions they were destined for drug cartels.

“Department of Justice Officials have reported to the Committee that my client relayed inaccurate information to the Department upon which it relied in preparing its initial response to Congress. If, as you claim, Department officials have blamed my client, they have blamed him unfairly,” Cunningham’s personal attorney, Tobin Romero of Williams & Connolly, wrote to Issa.

“As a professional courtesy and to avoid needless preparation by the committee and its staff for a deposition next week, I am writing to advise you that my client is going to assert his constitutional privilege not to be compelled to be a witness against himself,” Romero wrote. “My client is, in fact, innocent, but he has been ensnared by the unfortunate circumstances in which he now stands between two branches of government. I will therefore be instructing him to assert his constitutional privilege.”

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January 13, 2012

Source: The American Dream

Wouldn’t it be great if a Republican presidential candidate could just buy the support of just about every major conservative talk show host in America?  Well, it may not be as far-fetched as you may think.

Clear Channel owns more radio stations (850) than anyone else in the United States.  They also own Premiere Radio Networks, the company that syndicates the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, among others.  Needless to say, Clear Channel basically owns conservative talk radio in the United States.  So who owns Clear Channel?  Well, it turns out that Bain Capital is one of the primary owners of Clear Channel.  Yes, you read that correctly.  The company that Mitt Romney ran for so long is one of the “big bosses” over virtually all conservative talk radio in America.  Of course Mitt Romney is not running Bain Capital anymore.  He is a “retired partner”, but he still has a huge financial stake in Bain Capital.  We’re talking about millions upon millions of dollars.  If you doubt this, just check out page 34 of this public financial disclosure report.  So if you have been wondering why so many conservative talk show hosts are being so incredibly kind to Mitt Romney, this just might be the answer.

In the media world, there is a clear understanding that you simply do not bite the hand that feeds you.  Some of the most prominent conservative talk radio hosts are earning tens of millions of dollars a year.

If you were making tens of millions of dollars a year, wouldn’t you be very careful to avoid offending your boss?

The deal in which Bain Capital became one of the owners of Clear Channel was initiated just a short time before Mitt Romney’s first run for president.  The following comes from Wikipedia….

On November 16, 2006, Clear Channel announced plans to go private, being bought out by two private-equity firms,Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners for $18.7 billion, which is just under a 10 percent premium above its closing price of $35.36 a share on November 16 (the deal values Clear Channel at $37.60 per share).

The deal was finalized in 2008.  Today, Bain Capital is still one of the primary owners of Clear Channel.

One of the subsidiaries of Clear Channel is Premiere Radio Networks.

Premiere Radio Networks distributes a whole host of conservative talk radio shows.  Everyone in the conservative world knows names such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.  Clear Channel also controls some other conservative talk radio hosts (such as Michael Savage and Mark Levin) that are not part of the Premiere Radio family.

The power that Premiere Radio Networks has is absolutely staggering.  The following is directly from the official Clear Channel website….

Premiere Radio Networks Inc., a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, syndicates 90 radio programs and services to more than 5,000 radio affiliations and reaches over 190 million listeners weekly.  Premiere Radio is the number one radio network in the country and features the following personalities:  Rush Limbaugh, Jim Rome, Casey Kasem, Ryan Seacrest, Glenn Beck, Bob (Kevoian) & Tom (Griswold), Delilah, Steve Harvey, Blair Garner, George Noory, John Boy and Billy, Big Tigger, Dr. Dean Edell, Bob Costas, Sean Hannity and others. Premiere is based in Sherman Oaks, California, with 13 offices nationwide.

So do you think that any of those hosts is going to risk viciously attacking Mitt Romney and Bain Capital during this election season?

Not likely.

One of the controversies that has plagued Premiere Radio Networks in recent years has been the uproar over their use of paid actors to call in to their radio shows.

The following comes from Wikipedia….

Clear Channel, through its subsidiary, Premiere Radio Networks, auditions and hires actors to call in to talk radio shows and pose as listeners in order to provide shows, carried by Clear Channel and other broadcasters, with planned content in the form of stories and opinions. The custom caller service provided by Premiere Radio ensures its clients they won’t hear the same actor’s voice for at least two months in order to appear authentic to listeners who might otherwise catch on.

So perhaps that explains where some of the “Romney callers” come from.

There is nothing illegal about what Romney and Bain Capital have done, but it sure does not pass the “smell test”.

Conservative talk radio has the potential to sway millions of conservative voters in one direction or another, and it is just not proper for Bain Capital and Romney to have such an overpowering financial interest in conservative talk radio.

And yes, Mitt Romney is still bringing in lots of money from Bain Capital.  The following comes from a Wikipedia article about Mitt Romney….

At the time of his departure, Romney negotiated an agreement with Bain Capital that allowed him to receive a passive profit share as a retired partner in some Bain Capital entities, including buyout and investment funds.^[62][57] With the private equity business continuing to thrive, this deal would bring him millions of dollars in income each year.^[57] As a result of his business career, by 2007 Romney and his wife had a net worth of between $190 and $250 million, most of it held in blind trusts.^[62] An additional blind trust existed in the name of the Romneys’ children and grandchildren that was valued at between $70 and $100 million as of 2007.^[63] The couple’s net worth remained in the same range as of 2011, and was still held in blind trusts.

In addition, Bain Capital and Bain & Company continue to pour huge amounts of money into Romney’s campaign coffers.

Just check out the following list of the biggest donors to the Romney campaign.  These numbers come from opensecrets.org….

Goldman Sachs $367,200
Credit Suisse Group $203,750
Morgan Stanley $199,800
HIG Capital $186,500
Barclays $157,750
Kirkland & Ellis $132,100
Bank of America $126,500
PriceWaterhouseCoopers $118,250
EMC Corp $117,300
JPMorgan Chase & Co $112,250
The Villages $97,500
Vivint Inc $80,750
Marriott International $79,837
Sullivan & Cromwell $79,250
Bain Capital $74,500
UBS AG $73,750
Wells Fargo $61,500
Blackstone Group $59,800
Citigroup Inc $57,050
Bain & Co $52,500

As with anything, whenever you want to get to the real truth you just need to follow the money.

Earlier this week, Sean Hannity told Rick Perry that his attacks on Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital sounded like something that “Occupy Wall Street” would say.

Just the other day, Rush Limbaugh compared Rick Perry to Fidel Castro and rabidly defended Mitt Romney on his radio program….

“There’s no way you can try to dress that up,” Limbaugh fumed. “I don’t understand it. Well, politically I understand it, but that’s just absurd. It’s sad. ‘Cause I really, really, really like Rick Perry! I really do. I had such hopes! I did. I’ll tell you, I did, but all of this talk about “corporate raiders,” and as I listen to politicians start talking about capitalism, lights are going off in my head. “Maybe they don’t really know what it is. Maybe they’re under some misconception about what capitalism is, because this characterization of it? A distinction with venture capitalism and vulture capitalism? This bite from Perry doesn’t compute.”

So why are these conservative talk show hosts defending Mitt Romney so furiously?

I think now we know.

It is all about the money.

When you have enough money, you can get conservative talk show hosts to promote an extremely liberal candidate.

Yes, of course Bain Capital does not “control” what these talk show hosts say.

Yes, of course some of the talk show hosts toss some light criticism at Romney from time to time.

But they simply do not go after Romney like they should be.

The truth is that Mitt Romney is really a Democrat that is masquerading as a Republican.  When you closely examine his record, he is very similar to Obama.

There is no way in the world that any self-respecting conservative should ever cast a single vote for him.

But right now Mitt Romney is running away with the race for the Republican nomination.

If Republicans can be fooled this badly, is there any hope for the future of the Republican Party?

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December 29, 2011

Source: CNS News

A Mexican drug trafficker awaiting trial in a Chicago federal court claims that the notorious Sinaloa cartel received weapons from “Operation Fast and Furious” under an alleged immunity agreement that the U.S. government made with cartel leaders, in exchange for information on rival gangs.

The defendant in a trafficking case before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Vicente Jesus Zambada-Niebla, also claims the immunity deal allowed the criminal cartel to “continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs” into the United States.

He wants the U.S. government to provide documents relating to the botched gun running sting operation along the southwest border, arguing that it would benefit his defense.

Operation Fast and Furious, which began in September 2009, saw the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives supervise the sale of guns to straw purchasers with the intent of tracing the guns to Mexican drug trafficking organizations and prosecuting their members. The ATF allowed about 2,000 guns to be sold in this manner.

Read More…

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December 28, 2011

Source: The American Dream

If our founding fathers could see the cesspool that the U.S. Congress has become today, they would roll over in their graves.  Most Americans don’t realize this, but we already have a “part-time Congress”.  Members of Congress only “work” a little over a third of the days on the calendar.  The rest of the time they have off.  It is no wonder why so many members of Congress are involved in so much corruption – they have so much free time on their hands that they are bound to get into trouble.  Many members of Congress also use their positions of power and the information they learn during the course of their duties to become fabulously wealthy.  At a time when incomes nationally are actually declining, our Congress critters are becoming stinking rich at a staggering pace.  Yes, politics in America has always been a game that is funded and played by wealthy individuals, but things have gotten so extreme that it is hard to argue that average Americans have any control over Congress at all at this point.  Instead of a government “of the people, by the people and for the people”, we now have a government “of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy”.  If you doubt this, just keep on reading.

Over the past couple of decades, the “wealth gap” between members of Congress and average Americans has grown to ridiculous proportions.  Things have gotten so bad that now even the New York Times is reporting on these things….

“Largely insulated from the country’s economic downturn since 2008, members of Congress — many of them among the “1 percenters” denounced by Occupy Wall Street protesters — have gotten much richer even as most of the country has become much poorer in the last six years”

So how wealthy have members of Congress become?

Many of you won’t believe the statistics posted below.  The truth is that Congress has become all about money.  It takes huge piles of money to get elected to Congress, it takes huge piles of money to stay in Congress, and most members of Congress seem to be able to accumulate gigantic piles of money while “serving” their country….

-Today, there are 250 members of Congress that are millionaires.

-According to the Wall Street Journal, the median net worth of members of Congress is now $913,000.

-The collective net worth of all of the members of Congress increased by 25 percent between 2008 and 2010.  Meanwhile, the standard of living in the United States has fallen farther over the past three years than at any other time that has ever been recorded in U.S. history.

-After adjusting for inflation, between 1984 and 2009 the median net worth of members of Congress rose from $280,000 to $725,000 while the median net worth of all Americans actually declined slightly over that same time period.

-The collective net worth of all of the members of Congress is now slightly over 2 billion dollars.  That is “billion” with a “b”.

-In 2009, Congress was only scheduled to be in session for 137 days out of the 365 days of the year.  In 2010, Congress was also only scheduled to be in session for 137 days out of the entire year.  For much more on the pathetic “work schedule” of the U.S. Congress, just check out this video.

-The net worth of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi increased by 62 percent from 2009 to 2010.  In 2009 it was reported that she had a net worth of 21.7 million dollars, and in 2010 it was reported that she had a net worth of 35.2 million dollars.

-The top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, saw his wealth grow by 29 percent from 2009 to 2010.  He is now worth approximately 9.8 million dollars.

-U.S. Representative Darrell Issa is worth approximately 220 million dollars.  His wealth grew by approximately 37 percent from 2009 to 2010.

-The wealthiest member of Congress, U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, is worth approximately 294 million dollars.

-Those that won U.S. Senate seats during the last election spent an average of nearly $10 million on their campaigns.

-More than 5 billion dollars was spent on political campaigns back in 2008, and it is being projected that 8 billion dollars will be spent on political campaigns in 2012.

-When it comes to federal elections, the candidate that raises the most money wins about 90 percent of the time.

-Since 1964, the reelection rate for members of the U.S. House of Representatives has never fallen below 85 percent.

It is also amazing how deeply corrupt Congress has become.  In a previous article, I detailed how a number of Congress critters used confidential information about the coming financial crisis that they received from U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in September 2008 to make beneficial stock market moves before the stock market crashed later that fall….

On September 16, 2008 Paulson and Bernanke held “closed door meetings” with members of Congress and warned them that the financial system was about to totally collapse.

But instead of racing out to save the financial system, author Peter Schweizer says that many of our representatives in Congress raced out to save their stock portfolios.

In his new book, Schweizer alleges the following….

*Schweizer says that U.S. Senator Dick Durbin sold $74,715 worth of stock on September 17th and $42,000 worth of stock on September 18th.

*Schweizer says that U.S. Representative Jim Moran sold off shares in 90 different corporations on September 17th.

*Schweizer says that U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse sold off at least $250,000 worth of stock between September 18th and September 24th.

*Schweizer says that U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus bet very heavily against the stock market in the days following the September 16th meeting and made tens of thousands of dollars doing so.

*Schweizer says that U.S. Senator John Kerry bought up approximately $350,000 of Bank of America stock and approximately $550,000 of Citigroup stock during October 2008 and November of 2008.  It was during this time period that the bailout programs for the big banks were being developed and debated.

So has anyone gotten into trouble for any of that?

Of course not.

Congress critters play by an entirely different set of rules than the rest of us do.

At this point, the American people are absolutely disgusted with Congress.  According to the latest polls, the approval rating for Congress is sitting at about 12 percent.

But of course the vast majority of our Congress critters will be re-elected over and over and over again.

Most members of Congress do not care about you.  What they do care about is taking care of their political careers and taking care of their big donors.  As noted earlier, it takes enormous amounts of money to win national elections in America, and most members of Congress are not about to do anything that will threaten the gravy train.

Our system is fundamentally broken.  It is time to quit pretending.

But of course the mainstream media will never admit this, because mainstream media outlets are owned by many of the same corporations and wealthy individuals that fund political campaigns.  For the establishment, the current system is working just fine.

So until the American people wake up and start demanding fundamental reforms, our Congress critters are going to continue to live the high life and we are going to keep on getting the same pathetic results out of Washington.

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December 26, 2011

By John C Dvorak

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December 15, 2011

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/15/indefinite-military-detention-bill-passes_n_1152114.html

Exactly 220 years to the date after the Bill of Rights was ratified, the US Senate today voted 86 to 13 in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, allowing the indefinite detention and torture of Americans. After a back-and-forth in recent days between both the Senate and House yielded intense criticism from Americans attempting to hold onto their Constitutional rights, NDAA FY2012 is now on its way to the White House, where yesterday the Obama administration revealed that the president would not veto the legislation, cancelling a warning he offered less than a month earlier.

…

The Senate passed a defense bill Thursday that authorizes indefinite detentions of American terrorism suspects, coincidentally acting on the controversial measure on the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights.

The bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, passed 86 to 13 and is expected to be signed quickly by President Obama, who withdrew a veto threat against the bill Wednesday. Six Democrats, six Republicans and one independent opposed the bill.

Though the legislation passed overwhelmingly, several senators argued that it was threatening fundamental provisions of the Bill of Rights, which is celebrated every Dec. 15.

“We as Americans have a right to a speedy trial, not indefinite detention,” said Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). “We as Americans have a right to a jury of our peers, which I would argue is … not enlisted or military personnel sitting in a jury. You cannot search our businesses or place of business or our homes without probable cause under the Bill of Rights.”

“You cannot be deprived of your freedom or your property without due process of law, and that, I would say, is not indefinite detention,” added Kirk, who voted for the bill. “I would actually argue that no statute and no Senate and no House can take these rights away from you.”

The 13 senators who voted against the bill were Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).

Read More…

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December 16, 2011

Source: Guardian

The founder of a newspaper that investigated government corruption has been shot dead outside the newspaper’s office in Russia’s North Caucasus region, police say.

A gunman shot Gadzhimurat Kamalov as he was leaving the offices of the newspaper Chernovik in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan province, shortly before midnight on Thursday, the regional interior ministry said.

Police said Kamalov was shot eight times and pronounced dead on the way to hospital.

The New-York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said journalists at Chernovik, known for reporting on corruption in the provincial administration, had been “routinely persecuted for their work”.

Read More…

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The resolution was backed by Move to Amend, a national coalition working to abolish corporate personhood and overturn U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United ruling. The decision gave corporations and unions the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, so long as their actions are not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign.

“Move to Amend’s proposed amendment would provide the basis for overturning the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,” stated Mary Beth Fielder, Co-Coordinator of LA Move to Amend. “The Supreme Court has no legitimate right to grant people’s rights to corporations. We must clearly establish that it is we, The People, who are meant to rule.”

City Council President Eric Garcetti sponsored the resolution, according to the Los Angeles Times. He said the largely-symbolic legislation was necessary because “big special interest money” was causing gridlock in Washington.

Move to Amend hopes that to get similar resolutions approved across the nation through city councils and direct vote by ballot initiative.

“Our plan is build a movement that will drive this issue into Congress from the grassroots,” stated Mary Beth Fielder, Co-Coordinator of LA Move to Amend. “The American people are behind us on this and these campaigns help our federal representatives see that we mean business. Our very democracy is at stake. Our goal is for 50 towns and cities to put Move to Amend’s resolution on the ballot for the Presidential election in November, 2012.”

Democratic Sens. Tom Udall of New Mexico and Michael Bennet of Colorado have introduced a constitutional amendment that would overturn Citizens United by granting Congress and the states the authority to regulate the campaign finance system. The amendment would not dictate any specific policies or regulations, Udall said, so that it could garner some support from Republicans, who have blocked attempts to overturn the ruling in the past.

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New Army Jobs: Internment / Resettlement Specialist (31E)

12-08-2011  •  http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs 

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November 30, 2011

By Maddison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie

Recently I reported on the highly controversial bill S. 1253, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the fiscal year of 2012 which was introduced back in June.

This bill was replaced by the one introduced on the 15^th of November, S. 1867. Today Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Senator John McCain of Arizona faced off on the floor of the Senate over a proposed amendment to S. 1867.

The minimal coverage this bill is getting in the corporate-controlled establishment media, especially when it comes to the massive danger it poses to everything America was built upon, is nothing short of deplorable.

This amendment would, according to Senator Paul, put “every single American citizen at risk.” Paul rightly pointed out that if the amendment were to pass, “the terrorists have won.”

I couldn’t agree more and this is the major fact that McCain and far too many others in Washington seem to miss. Or, equally likely, McCain and others are well aware of the erosion of civil liberties and have no interest in stopping it.

After all, it isn’t the sycophantic corrupt politicians in Washington that have to endure being groped by TSA goons or surreptitiously blasted with X-Rays by a passing DHS van; it is the everyday Americans like you and me that are subjected to such absurd “counterterrorism” measures.

John McCain is a man who revels in death and suffering in true sociopathic style: joking about bombing Iran, calling for military operations in Syria, and supporting the murderous and thoroughly racist al Qaeda-affiliated Libyan rebels.

McCain is the epitome of Washington doublethink: in Libya, al Qaeda is good. Yet, al Qaeda is still the biggest threat to humanity, so much so that it justifies turning the entire world into a theater of war in which all rights are suspended in the name of the war on terror?

Senator Paul argued against the amendment to S. 1867 that McCain co-sponsored by saying, “Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well then the terrorists have won. [D]etaining American citizens without a court trial is not American.”

Unfortunately, the PATRIOT Act has already removed “some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism,” but there are very few politicians who will put their careers on their line in saying this fact.

McCain quickly attempted to defend the amendment he’s been peddling on the Senate floor by saying, “Facts are stubborn things. If the senator from Kentucky wants to have a situation prevail where people who are released go back in to the fight to kill Americans, he is entitled to his opinion.”

This is the typical, “Either you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists,” fallacious logic employed by those in Washington who will take every opportunity to exploit the non-threat of terrorism as a method of control and erosion of civil liberties.

McCain, who is the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a member of the camp of individuals who either lie on a regular basis while knowing the facts or are so deluded and removed from reality that they actually fear the al Qaeda boogeyman.

Senator McCain, just like the non-profit groups that are directly linked to the Department of Homeland Security, promotes a fear of terrorism that is completely at odds with the facts, using this climate of fear and paranoia to justify otherwise unacceptable legislation like S. 1867 and the PATRIOT Act.

McCain’s proposed amendment would allow the executive branch, which has already murdered American citizens abroad without so much as a single charge, to have power over if a suspect was put through the civilian court system or through the military tribunal system.

Military tribunals are the complete antithesis of the civilian justice system and putting American citizens through such a system would signal the death of everything the American justice system was built upon.

The most dangerous aspect of S. 1867 is not only that it could subject American citizens to military tribunals and detention, but also that individuals could be imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial.

Even if this was not used on American citizens, it represents a deplorable move that would only make the rest of the world hate us that much more, knowing that it is explicitly allowed for the American government to snatch up people and detain them forever without charge or trial.

If any other government were to even consider engaging in such behavior, people like Hillary Clinton who laughably claim to support human rights, would likely decry such moves.

Yet, the nonsensical logic of American exceptionalism makes people like McCain think that America has the right to operate outside of the rule of law (not to mention common decency and respect for other human beings) at home and abroad, so long as it is supposedly to combat terrorism.

Senator Paul countered McCain’s absurd assertion by saying, “I don’t think it necessarily follows I am arguing of the release of prisoners. I am simply arguing that particularly American citizens should not be sent to a foreign prison without due process.”

It amazes me that any such thing would have to even be argued. The Constitution is supposed to protect us from such egregious breaches of our inalienable rights and our so-called representatives take an oath to protect the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic.

It is now clear that the true enemies of the Constitution, the ones that truly put our liberties in danger, are domestic.

They wear expensive suits and happily stroll through the halls of power in Washington, seemingly confident that they will not be treated as the traitorous criminals that they are.

McCain is one of these traitors who are launching an all-out assault on our way of life and our civil rights, S. 1867 is just the most recent, and most virulent, manifestation of this.

“An individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat,” McCain said in defense of his attack on our rights.

“We need to take every stop necessary to prevent that from happening, that’s for the safety and security of the men and women who are out there risking their lives … in our armed services,” McCain added.

The real people who put the men and women in our armed services at risk are warmongers like McCain who happily put Americans in the line of fire in order to keep their war profiteering cronies satisfied.

44 Republican Senators and 15 Democrats along with one Independent voted to keep the new detainee provisions in the NDAA, with Senator Paul and Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois being among the few Republicans who broke party ranks and sided with a majority of Democrats who voted to block the new provisions.

Paul argued, “If these provisions pass, we could see American citizens being sent to Guantanamo Bay,” while Republican Senator Lindsey Graham countered, “To be clear: These provisions do not apply to U.S. citizens.”

Did that stop the American government from murdering a citizen of the United States in Yemen in a drone attack?

No, in fact, the National Security Council’s secret death panel makes these decisions outside of all legislation and accountability, so Graham’s claim that it wouldn’t apply to American citizens is hollow, at best.

A couple of days ago Glenn Greenwald, a journalist for Salon and a former Constitutional and civil rights lawyer tweeted a very similar sentiment:

“With very few exceptions, the McCain-Levin bill, awful though it is, doesn’t create any powers beyond what the O[bama] Admin[istration] thinks it now has.”

The problem is that this bill would make it explicitly legal for the United States to conduct the horrific operations they have already been carrying out.

If this were to pass, there would be absolutely nothing standing in the way of the government rounding up dissidents who they could easily label terrorists or individuals planning/supporting terrorism (given the absurdly broad definition used).

They could then imprison them without charge or trial for however long they please, and if they have their way, they would be able to openly torture them, not just the torture deceptively labeled “enhanced interrogation” but torture that can go by no other name.

Of course, that is not to diminish the fact that the tactics now employed by the CIA and others are indeed torture. Just ask people like conservative radio host Mancow who was waterboarded and came to the conclusion that it is indeed torture after having held the complete opposite opinion previously.

Or if that isn’t enough proof, take the Vanity Fair article written by Christopher Hitchens in which he describes his experience being waterboarded which brought him to the exact same conclusion: waterboarding is torture.

Even Bahrain ostensibly has more democratic accountability for torture, although I think we all know that is about as legitimate as calling waterboarding “enhanced interrogation.”

McCain laughably claimed that the changes would “help defend our nation against the threat posed by al Qaeda while upholding our values and honoring our Constitution.”

This is especially hilarious given that McCain said that the al Qaeda-affiliated Libyan rebels “inspired the world” in carrying out their bloody revolution.

Does McCain actually believe that he has the power to pick and choose when individuals and groups directly linked to al Qaeda are good or bad?

How can they actually reconcile such absurdist moral relativism? Personally, I don’t think that McCain can actually believe the things he says unless he has actually been able to eliminate every bit of sense and logic that is innate in human beings.

To the many people commenting and emailing me claiming that this is overblown and it will not apply to American citizens, you might want to listen to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s own words on the Senate floor.

“In summary here, [section] 1032, the military custody provision, which has waivers and a lot of flexibility doesn’t apply to American citizens. [Section] 1031, the statement of authority to detain does apply to American citizens, and it designates the world as the battlefield including the homeland,” Graham said.

Is there really anything even remotely unclear here? Our government is making the final strides towards turning the brutal military apparatus that has slaughtered so many people abroad in the name of “freedom” back to our own people.

What we are witnessing now is truly historic, the American government is trying to explicitly codify the ability to detain Americans without trial or charge in a military facility under military rule with military tribunals.

While I argue that we already live in a police state, based on the citizen spying programs, ludicrous amounts of domestic surveillance, collection and storage of massive amounts of biometric information, and the Department of Homeland Security’s invisible surveillance state (just to mention a few) the passage of this bill would bring about a new dangerous paradigm in America.

Even if it was sold as something that wouldn’t apply to American citizens, like the PATRIOT Act was sold as a counterterrorism bill, it would undoubtedly be used against us regardless of these claims, just as the PATRIOT Act has been utilized in cases wholly unrelated to terrorism.

Even the officials from the Department of Justice readily admit that the PATRIOT Act is being used against non-terrorist American citizens.

As you will see in the above video, they admit that the PATRIOT Act is used in cases completely unrelated to terrorism.

Is anyone really naïve enough to believe that the government will actually restrict the usage of S. 1867 to terrorists and not Americans who stand up to their corrupt, out of control, and wholly illegitimate criminal government?

To make matters even worse, the usage of drones in the United States is being considered by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the FAA plans to propose new rules this coming January, which would give free license to police departments and other domestic agencies to use them in the United States.

Yet, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, have been used by law enforcement in the United States for some time now.

In fact, The Washington Post reported on the usage of aerial drones domestically in January of this year along with Homeland Security News Wire.

Currently, law enforcement agencies supposedly have to seek out emergency authorization from the FAA to use drones, which, according to The Washington Post is “only occasionally” granted.

The new FAA regulations coupled with turning the United States into a battlefield in which all Americans could be enemy combatants is dangerous, to say the least.

Given the fact that our current administration under the traitorous warmonger Barack Obama has no problem killing children with drones abroad, do we really think that they wouldn’t conduct such operations at home?

To an administration that commits extrajudicial executions of American citizens – and their 16-year-old child who was born in Denver, Colorado – is anything off the table?

The unfortunate and thoroughly disturbing reality is that our government has no problem carrying out such operations and S. 1867 would just make it that much easier by codifying it and creating an explicit legal apparatus through which they can operate.

I highly recommend that you explore at least some of the 344 proposed amendments for S. 1867 in the Library of Congress’ Thomas system which can be found here.

You can track all of the updates on the act with the amendments organized by date on this Library of Congress page.

As you can tell, the 28^th was by far the busiest day so far in the life of S. 1867 with over 100 amendments considered in that single day, although this very well might be beat in coming days when our so-called representatives continue to debate turning the United States into a giant battlefield.

UPDATE: If the ridiculous assault on our inalienable rights embodied by S. 1867 wasn’t enough, the Senate is also considering repealing the anti-torture measures currently in place (lax though they may be).

This flies in the face of the fact that torture does not provide actionable intelligence or anything even remotely reliable unless you’re looking for a false confession to anything from terrorism to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

This bill must be stopped if we want to preserve anything that America is supposed to stand for. The PATRIOT Act was a crippling blow to the Constitution but S. 1867 would be the death of every last bastion of hope and freedom that was left after the vicious attacks on our civil liberties that have brought us to this point.

UPDATE 2: Updated throughout with more information. If I missed anything please do not hesitate to contact me right away at [email protected]

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Senator Joe Lieberman Asks Google for a Terrorist Flagging Button on Blogger

November 26th, 2011

lol

Via: The Verge:

Well, Joe’s at it again, and this time, it really is as embarrassing as it sounds. The Senator has taken pen to paper and written a letter to Google asking that its blogging platform Blogger be equipped with a flagging feature… for terrorists. This is largely because Jose Pimental, a man suspected of attempting to build a pipe bomb to attack the US military hosted his blog on Blogger. Now, there are a lot of terrible Blogger blogs to be sure, but is this really the best way to deal with such a problem?

Talking Points Memo acquired the letter and published it earlier today. “Pimentel’s Internet activity — both his spreading of bomb-making instructions links and his hate-filled writings — were hosted by Google” writes Lieberman, going on to add that, unlike YouTube, “Blogger’s Content Policy does not expressly ban terrorist content nor does it provide a ‘flag’ feature for such content.”

Google has not yet responded to Senator Lieberman’s request for the Blogger kill switch.

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