3 Whoppers from Obama's Big Economic Speech
President Obama sure was excited about his speech yesterday. He talked for more than an hour in sweeping, grandiose terms about everything that's happened since he became President, and everything that's still going to happen.
If only more of it were true.
Here are three major whoppers Obama tried to sell yesterday.
1. Obamacare is going great.
He's said this before, and each time, it's actually less true. To hear the President tell it, Obamacare is all about security, free things, and discounts.
But the daily march of Obamacare is bringing higher premiums, new taxes, and fewer choices. The Obama Administration has already delayed the employer mandate—only the latest in a string of delays and failures to implement the law.
In his speech yesterday, Obama said, "There are folks out there who are actively working to make this law fail." Nope, the law is failing just fine on its own. And that's why Congress should not fund it with taxpayer dollars.
2. I cut the deficit in half.
This was one of Obama's big first-term promises, so he would like to show that he's delivered on it. But this claim ignores the huge deficit he ran up during his first few years in office.
Congress had to pass Obamacare before we could see what was in it. Maybe Obama had to run up the deficit before he could cut it?
"Public debt doubled under his watch," says Romina Boccia, Heritage's Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs. "Deficits projected at $642 billion by the Congressional Budget Office for this year are 'low' only when compared to their trillion-dollar-plus levels over the past four years. The U.S. deficit and debt situation actually worsened since before the recession."
3. Middle-class income is stuck in the '70s.
The President paints himself as the savior of the middle class—and it's the nefarious 1 percent he's going to save us from, so he has to drive a wedge between the classes.
His claim: "The income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, while the typical family's barely budged."
But in fact, incomes across the board have been rising. Heritage's David Azerrad dispatches Obama's falsehood:
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, after-tax income has risen for all Americans, albeit by very different margins, during this timeframe. For those in the middle three quintiles—i.e. the "typical families"—income has increased by almost 40 percent.American workers today are more productive and better compensated. Their problem is a lack of jobs. And for that, we have President Obama's policies to thank.
As Ron Hasking and Scott Winship of the Brookings Institution conclude: "There is no disappearing middle class in these data; nor can household income, even at the bottom, be characterized as stagnant, let alone declining."
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/07/25/morning-bell-3-whoppers-from-obamas-big-economic-speech/?roi=echo3-16363037528-13853011-35bbb766c56ca9a3d0e5fce1bb508f67&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
President Alinsky Threatens Americans with Rising ‘Social Tensions’
You can take the community organizer out of the South Side, but you can’t take the community organizer out of the community organizer.
Today, America heard threats from the increasingly predictable President Alinsky.
“The position of the middle class will erode further,” Mr. Obama said. “Inequality will continue to increase, money’s power will distort our politics even more. Social tensions will rise, as various groups fight to hold on to what they have, start blaming somebody else for why their position isn’t improving. That’s not the America we know.”This is standard-fare Das Kapital by Karl Marx. Obama doesn’t even attempt to disguise it, leaving out only the original author’s name. Obama merely adds the threat of social tensions.
For that, thank speech co-author Saul Alinsky.
Alinsky saw social tensions as a necessary circumstance to effective community organizing. Without anger, without the have-nots blaming the haves, it is harder to accumulate power. Alinsky considered the creation of social tensions, or the exploitation of them, as essential to move wealth and power from those who have it to those who don’t.
Once “social tensions” are stoked, all that is left is the tactical organization.
Compare how conversant President Obama is in the ominous language of the economically illiterate left with President Reagan’s faith in the economic power of American freedom. Obama’s economic worldview flows from Marx and Alinsky, when the free-market oxygen of Reagan is so badly needed. Instead of uplifting Americans, Obama threatens them.
Republicans must match Obama’s dark vision with something equally aggressive and directly confrontational. One idea? Defund Obamacare instead of another in a series of phony House votes to repeal it.
The Founders gave the House the power of the purse for times like these. Defund Obamacare and watch the economy accelerate overnight.
Unfortunately for now, it seems some in the GOP don’t understand their opponent. Speaker John Boehner gravely misunderstands the situation if he truly believes Obama’s address was devoid of content — a mere “Easter egg with no candy in it.”
There was plenty of content in that speech, if you know what to listen for. Boehner’s response might have worked during more civil times. But with soaring debt and a new muscular federal government, sweet quips don’t cut it.
http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2013/07/24/president-alinsky-threatens-americans-with-rising-social-tensions/
The Inequality President
The rich have done fine under Obamanomics, not so the middle class.
President Obama made his fourth or fifth, or maybe it's the seventh or eighth, pivot to the economy on Wednesday, and a revealing speech it was. We counted four mentions of "growth" but "inequality" got five. This goes a long way to explaining why Mr. Obama is still bemoaning the state of the economy five years into his Presidency.The President summed up his economic priorities close to the top of his hour-long address. "This growing inequality isn't just morally wrong; it's bad economics," he told his Galesburg, Illinois audience. "When middle-class families have less to spend, businesses have fewer customers. When wealth concentrates at the very top, it can inflate unstable bubbles that threaten the economy. When the rungs on the ladder of opportunity grow farther apart, it undermines the very essence of this country."
Then the heart of the matter: "That's why reversing these trends must be Washington's highest priority. It's certainly my highest priority."
Which is the problem. For four and a half years, Mr. Obama has focused his policies on reducing inequality rather than increasing growth. The predictable result has been more inequality and less growth. As even Mr. Obama conceded in his speech, the rich have done well in the last few years thanks to a rising stock market, but the middle class and poor have not. The President called his speech "A Better Bargain for the Middle Class," but no President has done worse by the middle class in modern times.
By now the lackluster growth figures are well known. The recovery that began four years ago has been one of the weakest on record, averaging a little more than 2%. And it has not gained speed. Growth in the fourth quarter of 2012 was 0.4%. It rose to a still anemic 1.8% in the first quarter but most economists are predicting even slower growth in the second quarter.
We hope the predictions of a faster growth in the second half will be right, but the Obama Treasury and Federal Reserve have been predicting for four years that takeoff was just around the corner. Stocks are doing great, and housing prices are rising, but job growth remains lackluster. What has never arrived is the 3%-4% growth spurt during typical expansions.
The official excuse is that recoveries coming out of recessions caused by financial crises are always slow. But then why have we been told every few months for five years that faster growth would soon be coming? Perhaps readers recall former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's famous 2010 op-ed, "Welcome to the Recovery." Mr. Obama wants it both ways: Take credit for recovering from recession, but blame that recession ad infinitum for the slow pace of the recovery.
![[image]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AR043_1econs_NS_20130724181803.jpg)
And that's the good news. The bad news is that median real household income is $2,718, or 5%, lower than the $54,218 median in June 2009 when the recession officially ended. Median incomes typically fall during recessions. But the striking fact of the Obama economy is that median real household income has fallen even during the recovery.
While the declines have stabilized over the last two years, incomes are still far below the previous peak located by Sentier of $56,280 in January 2008. No wonder Mr. Obama is now turning once again to his familiar political narrative assailing inequality and blaming everyone else for it. He wants to change the subject from the results on his watch.
The core problem has been Mr. Obama's focus on spreading the wealth rather than creating it. ObamaCare will soon hook more Americans on government subsidies, but its mandates and taxes have hurt job creation, especially at small businesses. Mr. Obama's record tax increases have grabbed a bigger chunk of affluent incomes, but they created uncertainty for business throughout 2012 and have dampened growth so far this year.
The food stamp and disability rolls have exploded, which reduces inequality but also reduces the incentive to work and rise on the economic ladder. This has contributed to a plunge in the share of Americans who are working—the labor participation rate—to 63.5% in June from 65.7% in June 2009. And don't forget the Fed's extraordinary monetary policy, which has done well by the rich who have assets but left the thrifty middle class and retirees earning pennies on their savings.
Mr. Obama would have done far better by the poor, the middle class and the wealthy if he had focused on growing the economy first. The difference between the Obama 2% recovery and the Reagan-Clinton 3%-4% growth rates is rising incomes for nearly everybody.
House Republicans have put a check on Mr. Obama's most destructive economic policies, but the President could do more to help growth if he crossed party lines to pass tax reform the way Reagan did in his second term, or to work out a budget deal as Bill Clinton did in his fifth year.
Mr. Obama's only pro-growth proposal is immigration reform, and we're not sure he wants even that to pass. Judging by the partisan tenor of his Wednesday speech, he may be setting it up to use as a campaign wedge in 2014. If only Mr. Obama understood that before a government can redistribute wealth, the private economy has to create it.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323610704578626142861572144.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Top 10 Signs Scandals Aren't 'Phony'
"But with this endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball. And I am here to say this needs to stop. (Applause.) This needs to stop."
- President Barack Obama, Speech on the Economy and 'Phony Scandals,' Galesburg, IL, July 24, 2013
10. Someone pleads the Fifth. Lois Lerner, IRS
Director of Exempt Organizations, invoked her Fifth Amendment right
against self-incrimination during an oversight hearing. She was also
suspended (with pay).9. Documents go missing, officials fake e-mail addresses. Records of tax inquiries into Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell are gone; the former EPA chief made emails tough to find by using an alias.
8. You announce drastic policy shifts to minimize damage. When the Department of Justice was found to be snooping on the AP and Fox's James Rosen, Obama suddenly embraced a media shield law.
7. You make a show of "forcing" an official to resign. Obama theatrically announced the resignation of IRS chief Steven Miller; though his term was almost over, the gesture sent a clear signal of disapproval.
6. You try to arrest a low-level leaker. Though Obama himself minimizes the effort to catch Edward Snowden, the federal government is desperately trying to have him extradited for exposing NSA programs.
5. You assert dubious executive privilege to stop investigations. Obama exercised that option to protect Attorney General Eric Holder and the disastrous Operation Fast and Furious from scrutiny.
4. You intimidate whistleblowers. Hillary Clinton's State Department intimidated officials who knew the truth of what happened in Benghazi--and others who knew about gross misconduct in the agency.
3. Your Department of Justice opens criminal investigations. Theoretically, anyway, Attorney General Holder is seeing to it that the IRS's conduct is being scrutinized for alleged federal crimes.
2. You yourself have condemned the misconduct. Whether calling the IRS's behavior "inexcusable," or condemning civil liberties violations before 2008, Obama set the standard by which he is being judged.
1. Even the friendly media have run out of patience. When even journalists who made sure Obama was elected--twice--begin to feel threatened and irritated by the administration, there is no denying reality.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/07/24/Top-10-Signs-Your-Scandals-Aren-t-Phony
Key Benghazi witness found
Testifying to Congress today behind closed doors
A highly sought witness in the Benghazi investigation is scheduled to testify this morning behind closed doors in Congress, WND has learnedMarine Col. George Bristol is considered a key witness because he may be able to shed light on why no U.S. military help was sent when the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, came under attack on Sept. 11, 2012.
The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans died in the attack.
Congressional investigators have been trying to locate Bristol for months. As commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara, he knew what military options the U.S. had when the compound in Benghazi came under attack.
Bristol is scheduled to testify this morning before a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee.
Investigators could not find him because Defense Department officials told members of Congress he had retired in March and could not be forced to testify.
However, about a week ago, the Marine Corps Times discovered Bristol had not retired .
The paper quoted Marine spokeswoman Maj. Shawn Haney as saying Bristol would be on active duty through the end of July.
That contradicted statements Pentagon officials had issued to both Congress and the media.
A member of Congress told WND it was imperative to find Bristol before he retires at the end of the month, in case the colonel is forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement upon leaving active duty.
WND located Bristol and passed his contact information on to Congress.
It is not known if Congress used the information to track down Bristol or if investigators found him independently.
http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/key-benghazi-witness-found/
Energy Department officials prohibited subordinates from speaking
with congressional investigators about their probe into illicit hiring
practices and related whistleblower retaliation allegations, according
to the lead investigator.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, revealed in a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon that the deputy secretary of energy issued the gag order following a scathing inspector general report last week.
The report revealed that the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a division of the Department of Energy (DOE), had violated DOE hiring guidelines in ways that disadvantaged military veterans.
BPA employees who cooperated with the IG’s investigation, the report found, were fired, suspended, or otherwise sanctioned.
Issa revealed in a Wednesday, July 17, letter that Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman “verbally instructed Elliot Mainzer, the individual [Poneman] chose to serve as acting administrator of BPA, that no BPA employees were to talk with anyone regarding these allegations, including congressional investigators.”
Issa suggested that such a gag order could be illegal.
“Obstructing a congressional investigation is a crime,” he noted. “Additionally, denying or interfering with employees’ rights to furnish information to Congress is against the law.”
Transparency advocates raised similar concerns.
“Any attempt to ‘gag’ employees from communicating with Congress would be a gross violation of law,” said Stephen M. Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblower Center, in an email.
“It is highly illegal for any federal agency to attempt to prevent employees or contractors from communicating whistleblower concerns with Members of Congress or an Inspector General,” Kohn said. “If true, this conduct by government officials would be intolerable.”
Oversight Committee spokesman Ali Ahmad told the Oregonian that a senior BPA official had informed the committee of Poneman’s gag order.
Issa requested a response from Poneman by noon on Wednesday. The committee could not confirm whether it had received a response by press time.
“BPA employees have the right to talk with Congress and to provide Congress information free from interference by the Department of Energy,” he wrote. “These employees also have a right to be free from fear of retaliation for sharing information with Congress.”
A BPA spokesman referred questions to DOE’s press office, which did not respond to a request for comment.
http://freebeacon.com/darrell-issa-energy-department-whistleblowers-gagged/
Obama Admin Colludes with Sierra Club to Make Arizona Energy Prices Skyrocket, Against DoE’s Own Science
During his big economics speech today, President Barack Obama declared that America is open for business. Laying aside the fact that the president stole that line from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, even as he made the statement he was surely aware that it is not true. The Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama continues to scuttle through political procrastination, springs to mind. ObamaCare’s devastating impact on unemployment wins the argument.
The fact is, the Obama administration is colluding with environmental lobby Sierra Club on a closed-door deal that will drive energy prices in Arizona skyward for the sake, supposedly, of improving visibility at the Grand Canyon. The proposed new EPA rule on the Navajo Generating Station would double or triple water rates, cause electric rates to skyrocket and partially shut down a vital energy plant – despite a federal study that says the rule won’t do anything to help the environment. Jim Thompson, writing in Coal & Energy Price Report, says the EPA-Sierra secret deal is “imminent.” Thompson also names names:
The DoE study is here, and the relevant part begins on page 5. The DoE found that the “body of research to date…is inconclusive as to whether removing approximately two-thirds of the current NOx emissions from Navajo GS would lead to any perceptible improvement in visibility at the Grand Canyon and other areas of concern.”
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/07/24/obama-admin-colludes-with-sierra-club-to-make-arizona-energy-prices-skyrocket-against-does-own-science/
The IRS targeting reportedly began as early as 2010. Three years later, no one has been held accountable and the facts continue to drip out in slow motion.
Last week, for instance, as the Daily Caller reported, retiring IRS lawyer Carter C. Hull testified before California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and implicated Obama appointee, IRS Chief Counsel William J. Wilkin, in addition to the Washington-based head of the IRS’s exempt organizations office, Lois Lerner, in the IRS targeting scandal. Lerner already has pled the Fifth. Hull made it clear that the targeting of conservatives and Tea Party groups started in Washington.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department declined to prosecute a government employee who apparently knowingly improperly accessed former Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell tax records. Does anyone really believe they will see justice from the Obama administration in these cases?
The bottom line is this. You can’t get justice within the political system in America anymore because the politicians own it. What ultimately stopped the mafia? The Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). What can stop the Obama administration, starting with holding corruption at the IRS accountable? RICO.
For years, as documented in The Whistleblower: How the Clinton White House Stayed in Power to Reemerge in the Obama White House & World Stage, Washington’s ruling elite have comprised a protected class, with rules that don’t apply to everyday Americans. If you or I lied before Congress or to federal investigators we would have been charged with perjury long ago.
In Washington, Attorney General Holder and National Security Director James Clapper can lie to Congress and hold onto their powerful positions without consequence.
People forget how the Office of Independent Counsel Special Prosecutor Robert Ray used his prosecutorial discretion when he declined in the 1990’s to charge Hillary Clinton with perjury and obstruction of justice. Others might not know that additional potential crimes were not included in the articles of impeachment during former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings which might have prevented the Clintons and the Clintonistas from re-emerging in the Obama administration and on the world stage. People have failed to recall how the Bush administration declined to prosecute quid-pro Pardongate in which Eric Holder was knee deep in.
Aside from the occasional PR-savvy fall-guy resignations the federal justice system has been dead for decades.
This is why RICO — the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act is the solution for Americans to use to see some long overdue justice in Washington. RICO provides a peaceful way to hold corruption accountable.
Successful cases against organized crime have been built around RICO, which was enacted in 1970 to target the mafia. What is needed is to use RICO to specifically hold corrupt politicians and federal officials accountable.
RICO has already held corrupt politicians like former mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick, and his childhood friend Bobby Ferguson, accountable. Under the RICO statute, they were convicted on March 11, 2013 of using Kilpatrick’s office to run a criminal organization to extort bribes in exchange for city contracts. It can be done.
According to 18 USC § 1961, crimes under RICO include everything from extortion, obstruction of justice, obstruction of a criminal investigation, and witness tampering, to kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, dealing in obscene matter and financial institution fraud. RICO also permits a private individual harmed by the actions of an enterprise to file a civil suit, and if successful, to collect treble damages (damages in triple the amount of actual/compensatory damages).
In the U.S. the act of engaging in criminal activity as a structured group is referred to as “racketeering.” In short, RICO requires at least two acts of racketeering activity, establishing a pattern which occurred within ten years after the commission of a prior act of racketeering activity. It’s clear based on the number of conservatives and Tea Party groups that were targeted by the IRS that a pattern exists. It’s also clear from the testimony before Congress and in the Inspector General report that a number of officials were involved who were following orders from above. The evidence of a pattern and conspiracy already has been established. It’s time to use it.
Americans who have been targeted by the IRS or deprived of their rights by other government agencies should consider filing civil RICO suit under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 – Civil Remedy for Deprivation of Rights and RICO: Civil Remedies for Conspiracies to Deprive Rights. Civil RICO does not rely on the politicized criminal justice system to work. This is especially critical considering those politics appear to have corrupted justice within AG Holder’s own department.
This American University Law Review report called, Using the Master’s Tools: Fighting Persistent Police Misconduct with Civil RICO, by Steven P. Ragland, could serve as a blueprint. This case shows how civil RICO was successfully used to root out corrupt policemen in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and can be applied to corrupt officials at the IRS and other agencies where corruption exists. Substitute the bad cops with the individual corrupt government workers, LAPD with the government agency in question and off you go.
Remember, the beauty of RICO is it can begin at the local and state level, and be brought as a civil RICO action first that doesn’t require the federal government to participate. It “provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization.” That means state and local lawyers, sheriffs, attorney generals, and prosecutors can bypass the corrupted Federal justice system. From there, as these civil RICO suits evolve and new potential criminal information is brought to light through the discovery process, these suits can merge and potentially become criminal actions that can be brought before a grand jury and spread to D.C. But victims of IRS targeting can and should start throwing down the gauntlet now.
Congressional investigators have been trying to locate Bristol for months. As commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara, he knew what military options the U.S. had when the compound in Benghazi came under attack.
Bristol is scheduled to testify this morning before a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee.
Investigators could not find him because Defense Department officials told members of Congress he had retired in March and could not be forced to testify.
However, about a week ago, the Marine Corps Times discovered Bristol had not retired .
The paper quoted Marine spokeswoman Maj. Shawn Haney as saying Bristol would be on active duty through the end of July.
That contradicted statements Pentagon officials had issued to both Congress and the media.
A member of Congress told WND it was imperative to find Bristol before he retires at the end of the month, in case the colonel is forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement upon leaving active duty.
WND located Bristol and passed his contact information on to Congress.
It is not known if Congress used the information to track down Bristol or if investigators found him independently.
http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/key-benghazi-witness-found/
Darrell Issa: Energy Department Whistleblowers Gagged
Whistleblowers warned against cooperating with congressional investigators
Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, revealed in a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon that the deputy secretary of energy issued the gag order following a scathing inspector general report last week.
The report revealed that the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a division of the Department of Energy (DOE), had violated DOE hiring guidelines in ways that disadvantaged military veterans.
BPA employees who cooperated with the IG’s investigation, the report found, were fired, suspended, or otherwise sanctioned.
Issa revealed in a Wednesday, July 17, letter that Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman “verbally instructed Elliot Mainzer, the individual [Poneman] chose to serve as acting administrator of BPA, that no BPA employees were to talk with anyone regarding these allegations, including congressional investigators.”
Issa suggested that such a gag order could be illegal.
“Obstructing a congressional investigation is a crime,” he noted. “Additionally, denying or interfering with employees’ rights to furnish information to Congress is against the law.”
Transparency advocates raised similar concerns.
“Any attempt to ‘gag’ employees from communicating with Congress would be a gross violation of law,” said Stephen M. Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblower Center, in an email.
“It is highly illegal for any federal agency to attempt to prevent employees or contractors from communicating whistleblower concerns with Members of Congress or an Inspector General,” Kohn said. “If true, this conduct by government officials would be intolerable.”
Oversight Committee spokesman Ali Ahmad told the Oregonian that a senior BPA official had informed the committee of Poneman’s gag order.
Issa requested a response from Poneman by noon on Wednesday. The committee could not confirm whether it had received a response by press time.
“BPA employees have the right to talk with Congress and to provide Congress information free from interference by the Department of Energy,” he wrote. “These employees also have a right to be free from fear of retaliation for sharing information with Congress.”
A BPA spokesman referred questions to DOE’s press office, which did not respond to a request for comment.
http://freebeacon.com/darrell-issa-energy-department-whistleblowers-gagged/
Obama Admin Colludes with Sierra Club to Make Arizona Energy Prices Skyrocket, Against DoE’s Own Science
During his big economics speech today, President Barack Obama declared that America is open for business. Laying aside the fact that the president stole that line from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, even as he made the statement he was surely aware that it is not true. The Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama continues to scuttle through political procrastination, springs to mind. ObamaCare’s devastating impact on unemployment wins the argument.
The fact is, the Obama administration is colluding with environmental lobby Sierra Club on a closed-door deal that will drive energy prices in Arizona skyward for the sake, supposedly, of improving visibility at the Grand Canyon. The proposed new EPA rule on the Navajo Generating Station would double or triple water rates, cause electric rates to skyrocket and partially shut down a vital energy plant – despite a federal study that says the rule won’t do anything to help the environment. Jim Thompson, writing in Coal & Energy Price Report, says the EPA-Sierra secret deal is “imminent.” Thompson also names names:
Discussions of this “deal” have been taking place behind closed doors with the federal government, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, Salt River Project, the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, and select tribes since March – without allowing all Arizonans to participate.The Department of Energy conducted a study that shows that the stunt that the EPA and activists are pulling in Arizona won’t do what they claim that they intend for it to do. So what’s really going on: They’re enacting Obama’s war on coal behind closed doors. Arizonans get to foot the bill through sharply higher rates on their utilities, without being heard on the EPA’s new rule. Obama’s EPA and the lobbying groups have shut citizens out of their talks, despite the fact that the Clean Air Act mandates open processes and dialogue when the EPA considers new rules.
The DoE study is here, and the relevant part begins on page 5. The DoE found that the “body of research to date…is inconclusive as to whether removing approximately two-thirds of the current NOx emissions from Navajo GS would lead to any perceptible improvement in visibility at the Grand Canyon and other areas of concern.”
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/07/24/obama-admin-colludes-with-sierra-club-to-make-arizona-energy-prices-skyrocket-against-does-own-science/
RICO: The real way to hold the IRS accountable
If you are looking for a political-judicial solution, such as congress, impeachment, or a special prosecutor to hold accountable the unlawful acts coming out of the Obama administration, beginning with the Internal Revenue Service’s abuse and targeting of conservatives, Tea Party groups, and Christians, you are looking in the wrong place. What the IRS did tilted President Barack Obama’s re-election in his favor.The IRS targeting reportedly began as early as 2010. Three years later, no one has been held accountable and the facts continue to drip out in slow motion.
Last week, for instance, as the Daily Caller reported, retiring IRS lawyer Carter C. Hull testified before California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and implicated Obama appointee, IRS Chief Counsel William J. Wilkin, in addition to the Washington-based head of the IRS’s exempt organizations office, Lois Lerner, in the IRS targeting scandal. Lerner already has pled the Fifth. Hull made it clear that the targeting of conservatives and Tea Party groups started in Washington.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department declined to prosecute a government employee who apparently knowingly improperly accessed former Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell tax records. Does anyone really believe they will see justice from the Obama administration in these cases?
The bottom line is this. You can’t get justice within the political system in America anymore because the politicians own it. What ultimately stopped the mafia? The Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). What can stop the Obama administration, starting with holding corruption at the IRS accountable? RICO.
For years, as documented in The Whistleblower: How the Clinton White House Stayed in Power to Reemerge in the Obama White House & World Stage, Washington’s ruling elite have comprised a protected class, with rules that don’t apply to everyday Americans. If you or I lied before Congress or to federal investigators we would have been charged with perjury long ago.
In Washington, Attorney General Holder and National Security Director James Clapper can lie to Congress and hold onto their powerful positions without consequence.
People forget how the Office of Independent Counsel Special Prosecutor Robert Ray used his prosecutorial discretion when he declined in the 1990’s to charge Hillary Clinton with perjury and obstruction of justice. Others might not know that additional potential crimes were not included in the articles of impeachment during former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings which might have prevented the Clintons and the Clintonistas from re-emerging in the Obama administration and on the world stage. People have failed to recall how the Bush administration declined to prosecute quid-pro Pardongate in which Eric Holder was knee deep in.
Aside from the occasional PR-savvy fall-guy resignations the federal justice system has been dead for decades.
This is why RICO — the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act is the solution for Americans to use to see some long overdue justice in Washington. RICO provides a peaceful way to hold corruption accountable.
Successful cases against organized crime have been built around RICO, which was enacted in 1970 to target the mafia. What is needed is to use RICO to specifically hold corrupt politicians and federal officials accountable.
RICO has already held corrupt politicians like former mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick, and his childhood friend Bobby Ferguson, accountable. Under the RICO statute, they were convicted on March 11, 2013 of using Kilpatrick’s office to run a criminal organization to extort bribes in exchange for city contracts. It can be done.
According to 18 USC § 1961, crimes under RICO include everything from extortion, obstruction of justice, obstruction of a criminal investigation, and witness tampering, to kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, dealing in obscene matter and financial institution fraud. RICO also permits a private individual harmed by the actions of an enterprise to file a civil suit, and if successful, to collect treble damages (damages in triple the amount of actual/compensatory damages).
In the U.S. the act of engaging in criminal activity as a structured group is referred to as “racketeering.” In short, RICO requires at least two acts of racketeering activity, establishing a pattern which occurred within ten years after the commission of a prior act of racketeering activity. It’s clear based on the number of conservatives and Tea Party groups that were targeted by the IRS that a pattern exists. It’s also clear from the testimony before Congress and in the Inspector General report that a number of officials were involved who were following orders from above. The evidence of a pattern and conspiracy already has been established. It’s time to use it.
Americans who have been targeted by the IRS or deprived of their rights by other government agencies should consider filing civil RICO suit under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 – Civil Remedy for Deprivation of Rights and RICO: Civil Remedies for Conspiracies to Deprive Rights. Civil RICO does not rely on the politicized criminal justice system to work. This is especially critical considering those politics appear to have corrupted justice within AG Holder’s own department.
This American University Law Review report called, Using the Master’s Tools: Fighting Persistent Police Misconduct with Civil RICO, by Steven P. Ragland, could serve as a blueprint. This case shows how civil RICO was successfully used to root out corrupt policemen in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and can be applied to corrupt officials at the IRS and other agencies where corruption exists. Substitute the bad cops with the individual corrupt government workers, LAPD with the government agency in question and off you go.
Remember, the beauty of RICO is it can begin at the local and state level, and be brought as a civil RICO action first that doesn’t require the federal government to participate. It “provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization.” That means state and local lawyers, sheriffs, attorney generals, and prosecutors can bypass the corrupted Federal justice system. From there, as these civil RICO suits evolve and new potential criminal information is brought to light through the discovery process, these suits can merge and potentially become criminal actions that can be brought before a grand jury and spread to D.C. But victims of IRS targeting can and should start throwing down the gauntlet now.
Liberal media love new Jesus book 'Zealot', fail to mention author is Muslim
Reza Aslan, author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
”
has been interviewed on a host of media outlets in the last week.
Riding a publicity wave, the book has surged to #2 on Amazon's list.Media reports have introduced Aslan as a “religion scholar” but have failed to mention that he is a devout Muslim.
His book is not a historian’s report on Jesus. It is an educated Muslim’s opinion about Jesus -- yet the book is being peddled as objective history on national TV and radio.
“Zealot” is a fast-paced demolition of the core beliefs that Christianity has taught about Jesus for 2,000 years.
He is a bright man with every right to hold his own opinion about Jesus—and to proselytize his opinion.
As a sincere man, Aslan’s Muslim beliefs affect his entire life, including his conclusions about Jesus. But this is not being disclosed. “Zealot” is being presented as objective and scholarly history, not as it actually is—an educated Muslim’s opinions about Jesus and the ancient Near East.
“Zealot” is a fast-paced demolition of the core beliefs that Christianity has taught about Jesus for 2,000 years. Its conclusions are long-held Islamic claims—namely, that Jesus was a zealous prophet type who didn’t claim to be God, that Christians have misunderstood him, and that the Christian Gospels are not the actual words or life of Jesus but “myth.”
These claims are not new or unique. They are hundreds of years old among Muslims. Sadly, readers who have listened to interviews on NPR
, "The Daily Show," Huffington Post or MSNBC
may pick up the book expecting an unbiased and historic report on Jesus
and first century Jewish culture. (I will let my Jewish friends address
Aslan’s statement on MSNBC that, “there were certainly a lot of Jewish
terrorists in first century Palestine.”)As a journalist and author who is Christian I cannot imagine penning a so-called objective biography of Muhammad and then concealing my conflict of interest in national media interviews.
In world history there are no religions more violently and anciently opposed than the crusading, fighting, at times blood-shedding rivals of historic Islam and historic Christianity. Even non-violent Muslims and Christians, like Aslan and myself, understand that we hold aggressively oppositional views—particularly about Jesus. National news coverage of “Zealot” has ignored this conflict of interest.
“Zealot” is written with the self-assumed authority of groundbreaking revelation from a historian. In reality, it is a religious person’s opinion about Jesus—from an adherent to the religion that has been in violent opposition to Christ for 1,400 years.
Aslan informs us that we cannot trust the Gospel of Mark--because it was written 40 years after Jesus’ death. He then chides us to trust his new book, written almost 2,000 years later.
I believe in Aslan’s right to hold and propagate any opinion. It’s a right that, ironically, Christians do not have in many Muslim countries.
My concern is that national media coverage be smart and forthright about this conflict of interest, just as it would be if I—a Christian author and pastor—wrote a book about Muhammad.
Pouring praise onto “Zealot” as new information about Jesus, without explaining its author’s devotion to a combatting religion, is blatant bias. This same bias would be unthinkable if the Christian and Muslim roles were reversed.
With its riveting demolition of Jesus, “Zealot” will continue to attract interviews—some from reporters who want to see Jesus deconstructed. Many more interviews will come from reporters who simply don’t understand that Reza Aslan has a horse in this race. He is not an objective observer, but, to use his own word, a zealot, with religious motivation to destroy what Western culture has believed about its central figure for hundreds of years. In many ways, this conflict is larger than Christianity and Islam. It is a conflict of Western and Middle Eastern foundations. These are great and important debates that we should welcome, but let’s be honest about our motivations, positions and conflicts of interest as we dialogue.
Let’s hope reporters in future interviews will, being informed, mention the glaring conflict of interest in this Islamic opinion of Jesus. It is no more objective than my educated views about Muhammad, as a Christian.
“Zealot” is not new work from a historian. It is a sophisticated presentation of views that Muslims have held about Jesus for more than 1,000 years.
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