Sticking up for Chick-fil-a’s freedom of speech, freedom of expressive association and freedom of religion is just that. It is not a “hate gays” play. Let us keep this in perspective. The Muslim Brotherhood and other associated Jihadists want gays dead, along with Jews and blacks (think I am wrong, just ask the Sudanese and other North Africans). To sum up – Islamists want gays dead, Republicans want to kill Jihadists. Gays make GREAT Republicans.
They say that the editing doesn’t change the meaning….. like heck it doesn’t. If it didn’t they would state this in every piece with an asterisk and more journalists and campaign staffers would be willing to go on the record to talk about this. They didn’t teach my this in J-School.
Latest Word on the Trail? I Take It Back
By JEREMY W. PETERS
The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative.
They are sent by e-mail from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviewed campaign officials under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name.
Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president’s top strategists, grudgingly agree. After the interviews, they review their notes, check their tape recorders and send in the juiciest sound bites for review.
The verdict from the campaign — an operation that prides itself on staying consistently on script — is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message.
The push and pull over what is on the record is one of journalism’s perennial battles. But those negotiations typically took place case by case, free from the red pens of press minders. Now, with a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations.
Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all midlevel aides in Chicago and at the White House — almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail.
The Romney campaign insists that journalists interviewing any of Mitt Romney’s five sons agree to use only quotations that are approved by the press office. And Romney advisers almost always require that reporters ask them for the green light on anything from a conversation that they would like to include in an article.
From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position. Those officials who dare to speak out of school, but fearful of making the slightest off-message remark, shroud even the most innocuous and anodyne quotations in anonymity by insisting they be referred to as a “top Democrat” or a “Republican strategist.”
It is a double-edged sword for journalists, who are getting the on-the-record quotes they have long asked for, but losing much of the spontaneity and authenticity in their interviews.
Jim Messina, the Obama campaign manager, can be foul-mouthed. But readers would not know it because he deletes the curse words before approving his quotes. Brevity is not a strong suit of David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser. So he tightens up his sentences before giving them the O.K.
Stuart Stevens, the senior Romney strategist, is fond of disparaging political opponents by quoting authors like Walt Whitman and referring to historical figures like H. R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon’s chief of staff. But such clever lines later rarely make it past Mr. Stevens.
Many journalists spoke about the editing only if granted anonymity, an irony that did not escape them. No one said the editing altered the meaning of a quote. The changes were almost always small and seemingly unnecessary, they said.
Those who did speak on the record said the restrictions seem only to be growing. “It’s not something I’m particularly proud of because there’s a part of me that says, ‘Don’t do it, don’t agree to their terms,’ ” said Major Garrett, a correspondent for The National Journal. “There are times when this feels like I’m dealing with some of my editors. It’s like, ‘You just changed this because you could!’ ”
It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly. Organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York Times have all consented to interviews under such terms.
“We don’t like the practice,” said Dean Baquet, managing editor for news at The New York Times. “We encourage our reporters to push back. Unfortunately this practice is becoming increasingly common, and maybe we have to push back harder.”
The Obama campaign declined to make Mr. Plouffe or Mr. Messina available to explain their media practices. “We are not putting anyone on the record for this story,” said Katie Hogan, an Obama spokeswoman, without a hint of irony. She pointed to the many unrestricted interviews with campaign officials every day on television and when the press corps travels with the president.
Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said the White House has made a concerted effort to make more officials available to the news media. “We have a lot more people talking a lot more often now,” he said.
Both presidential campaigns are keenly aware of what can happen when they speak too freely. Damaging sound bites can live on in the news cycle for days. Mr. Obama’s remark last month during a televised news conference that “the private sector is doing fine” landed almost immediately in attack ads. And Eric Fehrnstrom’s “Etch A Sketch” comment on CNN, about softening some of the harder positions Mr. Romney took during the primaries, continues to haunt the Romney campaign five months later.
Reporters who have covered the Obama presidency say the quote-approval process fits a pattern by this White House of finding new ways to limit its exposure in the news media.
“We realize there’s a caution and a wariness about stray comments driving the news cycle,” said Caren Bohan of Reuters, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. “The argument we make is that if a president or a candidate is out there more, I think these things are less likely to be as glaring.”
Modern White Houses have long had “background briefings,” gatherings of top officials who speak to reporters under the condition that they are quoted anonymously. With time, the restrictions have become broader, often bordering on the absurd.
In 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney outed himself in a briefing the White House intended to be anonymous during an overseas trip. “I’ve seen some press reporting says, ‘Cheney went in to beat up on them,’ ” the vice president told reporters, according to the official transcript, adding, “That’s not the way I work.”
Though reporters with him protested, the vice president’s office refused to allow them to identify Mr. Cheney by name — even though it was clear who was speaking.
Under President Obama, the insistence on blanket anonymity has grown to new levels.
The White House’s latest innovation is a variation of the background briefing called the “deep-background briefing,” which it holds for groups of reporters, sometimes several dozen at a time. Reporters may paraphrase what senior administration officials say, but they are forbidden to put anything in quotation marks or identify the speakers.
The White House held such a briefing after the Supreme Court’s health care ruling last month with officials including Mr. Plouffe, Mr. Carney and Dan Pfeiffer, the communications director. But when reporters asked to quote part of the conversation, even anonymously, they were told no. Even the spokesmen were off limits.
Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock Speech at FreePAC:
Dr. Jill Vecchio: ObamaCare forces doctors to violate the Hippocratic Oath (video)
This is THE floor speech of the year! 1,100 pages of government regulations to determine who is a “qualified borrower” at the bank…
Of course, if your health insurance plan is “too good” you run into the “Cadillac Health Plan Tax”. The tax is not indexed for inflation so eventually you are taxed to hell if you do and taxed to hell if you don’t.
Via the Health Insurance Tips and Advice Blog:
Beginning January 1, 2014 the P.P.A.C.A. (a.k.a. ‘Obamacare’) legislation levies a brand new tax – the “Roberts Tax”. A tax aptly named after U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts who created this new tax all by himself. It is neither an excise tax, nor a capital gains tax or any other kind of defined tax. It is instead a new tax, a tax for doing nothing and it will be levied on nearly all Americans including small and large business owners whether they do offer health insurance to their employees or they do not.
The best way to describe this new tax is to imagine walking into a grocery store and the clerk asks if you would like to purchase a pack of gum. You politely decline the offer and are then forced by a new tax law – as defined by John Roberts – to give that clerk a tax for refusing to purchase that pack of gum. This, my fellow Americans, is how unmoored from our Constitution that our Federal Government has become.
One would think that a university that has a law school could grasp something a simple as the First Amendment, but you would be wrong if you thought that. Censorship and discrimination against conservatives, Jews, Christians and other groups not in favor with the radical left are under some form of attack at our public universities. This problem is so huge that there are at least half a dozen civil rights organizations that use most ore all of their resources fighting just this type of illegal discrimination; and they are so overwhelmed with cases that they have to be selective on what cases to draw attention to.
If you thought college was a place for young people to speak out, challenges one another’s deeply-held beliefs and grow intellectually, chances are you’ve never been to Indiana University Southeast.
The school, located just 10 miles north of Louisville, Ky., is the latest college to see its speech code come under fire from a group that advocates freedom of speech on campuses. One stipulation in the code requires that students may only “express opinions” within a free speech zone, which is antithetical to what a college should stand for, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), an advocacy organization which defends the free speech and due process rights of college students.
“It’s the price you pay for living in a free society,” Robert Shibley, Senior Vice President of FIRE, told FoxNews.com.”The entire enterprise of a university is to express scholarly thoughts and opinions…restraints on that are impossible.”
The broad regulation probably doesn’t even state what its clumsy crafters meant it to say, said Samantha Harris, FIRE director of speech code research.
“IUS almost certainly doesn’t mean this–if you want to tell your friend that you think it’s hot outside, you have to go to the zone to do it…it’s an indicator of just how poorly written and unconstitutional this policy is,” she said.
IUS’s code also requires university approval for acts of ‘expressed opinions’ by submitting an application at least five days in advance.
But the school defended the speech code, expressing concern the exercise of First Amendment rights outside designated zones could disrupt others’ pursuit of an education.
“[The guidelines] were intended to provide some guidance on the issue so that those wishing to gather and express an opinion could do so without endangering people or property,” the school told FoxNews.com in a statement. “The guidelines also were intended to protect the rights of all students to have unfettered access to educational activities on campus (in other words, the exercise of free speech rights should not result in blocking access to buildings or disrupting classes or campus events).”
The university also said that it has never had any complaints about the policy since its implementation in 2004, and it welcomes the FIRE’s feedback.
“We have to regulate other groups who come from off campus. Some come and preach a lot of hate. We just can’t have them wandering around campus with bullhorns over here,” Joseph Wert, associate professor of Political Science and Dean of the School of Social Sciences at Indiana University Southwest, told FoxNews.com.
Yup, and Joseph Wert had to get a PhD. to come up with that one. Professor Wert you are an idiot, and you are even more of an idiot if you think that anyone is going to fall for such an excuse. First of all, the First Amendment has never been construed by the courts to allow what is known as a “heckler’s veto” meaning that the speech in question is not so much about content as it is about disrupting the lawful activities of others. Your university speech code is written in such a way to adjust the universities illegal reaction depending on the content of the speech; meaning that “Students for Pushing Israel Into the Sea” get a prominent place to hold their speech event, but “Students Against Abortion” get to have their event in a tiny room no one can find. College administrators and professors like Joeseph Wert gets lots of practice making the totally unreasonable sound reasonable.
That is why the policy is written so broadly and poorly, so that it can be used for selective enforcement. There are countless cases of FIRE and other groups helping students who have had such speech codes used against them illegally. This is why FIRE in league with other groups have been suing universities to have such speech codes thrown out by the courts. Universities know about these lawsuits, but too often they go to court anyways knowning full well they are going to lose only for the purpose of forcing civil rights groups to expend more resources. After all it’s only your tax dollars funding your local university.
Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa:
“Communism is dead,” people shouted in 1989, when the Berlin Wall began to come down. Soviet Communism is indeed dead as a form of government. But Marxism is on the rise again, and people are not paying attention. Why not? Because most people do not seem to be familiar with the undercover forms of Marxism we are facing today.
Absolutely. When the wall came down 100,000 million dedicated communists didn’t suddenly become libertarians. They took over tax free foundations, took control of most public universities, environmental pressure groups, most union leadership positions and much of Hollywood. Not to mention the leadership of the Democratic Party.
I usually do not publish articles from WND, because what appears there is not as reliable as I would like, but some pieces there are still very good and this is one of them. This interview is an important piece of history so we are glad to help preserve it here.
WND:
Please tell me, did America win the Cold War? If so, why are we fighting Marxism in our own country today? And if not, what really happened?
Pacepa: Yes, we won the Cold War, but unlike other wars the Cold War did not end with an act of surrender and with the defeated enemy throwing down his weapons. But no, we are not fighting Marxism in our country, because the American people have not yet been warned that their country is being contaminated by Marxism. A few conservative luminaries like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly have warned that Marxism is infecting the United States, but neither the Republicans’ “Pledge to America” nor the Tea Party’s “Contract from America” has mentioned the word Marxism.
So far, to the best of my knowledge, only your “Marxism, American-Style” (June 2012 Whistleblower magazine) and PJ Media’s “Say No To Socialism” have called attention to the looming dangers of Marxism, a heresy that killed some 94 million people and transformed a third of the world into feudal societies in the middle of the 20th century.
There is still a widely popular belief in the U.S. and Western Europe that the nefarious Marxist legacy was uprooted in 1991 when the Soviet Union was abolished, just as the Nazi legacy was extirpated in 1945 when World War II ended. That is simply wishful thinking. There is a considerable difference between these two historical events.
In the 1950s, when I headed Romania’s foreign intelligence station in West Germany, I witnessed how Hitler’s Third Reich had been demolished, its war criminals put on trial, its military and police forces disbanded and the Nazis removed from public office. I also saw how West Germany’s economy was being rebuilt with the help of Marshall Plan money and how the country had become a multi-party democracy and a close friend of the United States. In 1959, when I returned to Romania, West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) made it the leading industrial power in Europe.
None of those things have happened in the former Soviet Union. No individual has been put on trial, although its Marxist regime killed many more millions than the Nazis did. Most Soviet institutions, under new names, have been left in place and are now run by many of the same people who guided the Marxist state. The KGB and the Red Army, which instrumented the Cold War, have also remained in place with new nameplates at their doors.
“Communism is dead,” people shouted in 1989, when the Berlin Wall began to come down. Soviet Communism is indeed dead as a form of government. But Marxism is on the rise again, and people are not paying attention. Why not? Because most people do not seem to be familiar with the undercover forms of Marxism we are facing today.
Hiding the ugly face of Marxism behind a smiling mask has become a Marxist science, which I described in a large piece recently published in PJ Media. Here let me just say that until 1963, Marxism was mostly camouflaged as “socialism.” The 1962 missile crisis generated by the socialist República de Cuba gave the socialist mask of Marxism a dirty name in the West and few Marxists wanted to be openly associated with it anymore. They therefore began hiding their Marxism under a new cover called “economic determinism,” which became all the rage among leftists who no longer wanted to be labeled socialists.
Economic determinism is a theory of survival rooted in Marx’s “Manifesto” (another theory of survival), but it pretends that the economic organization of a society, not the class war, determines the nature of all other aspects of life. Over the years, economic determinism has assumed different names. Khrushchev’s dogonyat i peregonyat (catching up with and overtaking the West in 10 years) and Gorbachev’s perestroika are the best known.
I wrote the script of Nicolae Ceausescu’s determinism, which was hidden behind the nickname “New Economic Order.” Most Americans, who are not used to dealing with undercover Marxists, have problems recognizing one. In April 1978, President Carter publicly hailed Ceausescu as a “great national and international leader who [had] taken on a role of leadership in the entire international community.” At the time, I was standing next to Ceausescu at the White House – and I just smiled.
Three months later, I was granted political asylum in the United States, and I informed President Carter how Ceausescu had been feeding him a pack of lies. The admiration for Ceausescu’s undercover Marxism had, however, taken on such a life of its own that the U.S. Congress, dominated by President Carter’s Democratic Party, brought the United States a sui-generis version of Ceausescu’s economic determinism. That move generated double-digit inflation. The U.S. prime rate hit 21.5 percent, the highest in U.S. history, and people had to spend long hours in line waiting to buy gas for their cars.
Laura D’Andrea Tyson, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton and later an economic adviser to President Obama, has kept that undercover Marxism alive in the U.S. She even wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on the merits of the allegedly “mixed” socialist-capitalist economies in Ceausescu’s Romania and Tito’s Yugoslavia. Two American presidents went to Bucharest to pay tribute to Ceausescu’s Marxism disguised as economic determinism. None had ever gone there before.
A few months ago, when the devastating economic crisis in Greece exploded, economic determinism lost credibility and our Democratic Party replaced it with “progressivism,” which is the current cover name for American Marxism. The real Progressive Movement was born after the U.S. financial crisis of 1893, which the country tried to solve by redistributing America’s wealth. The progressives pushed through the first federal income tax and they created a string of labor standards that opened up the floodgates of corruption and financial excess that generated the Great Depression. A new Progressive Movement, dubbed the New Deal, led to steep top tax rates, strict financial regulations, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, eventually generating the current economic crisis.
Today’s Progressive Movement was born in New York’s Zuccotti Park. It was first known as the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and advocated the abolition of “capitalist America.” The Democratic Party strongly embraced it and made “Progressive” its new byword. “God bless them,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the U.S. Congress. “It’s young, it’s spontaneous, it’s focused and it’s going to be effective.”
WND: You have said, “In the Soviet Union, the KGB was a state within a state. Now the KGB is the state.” Please explain that.
Pacepa: General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, the Soviet gauleiter of Romania, who afterwards rose to head the almighty Soviet espionage service for 15 years of the Cold War, used to tell me that “every society reflects its own past.” Sakharovsky, who was a Russian to the marrow of his bones, believed that someday “our socialist camp” might wear an entirely different face, and that even the Communist Party might have become history, but that would not matter. The party was a foreign organism introduced by Lenin into the Russian body, and sooner or later it would be rejected. One thing, though, was certain to remain unchanged: “our gosbezopasnost” (the state security service).
Sakharovsky used to point out that “our gosbezopasnost” had kept Russia alive for the past 500 years, “our gosbezopasnost” would guide her helm for the next 500 years, “our gosbezopasnost” would win the war with “our main enemy, American Zionism,” and “our gosbezopasnost” would eventually make Russia the leader of the world.
Sakharovsky was right. Marxism triumphed in feudal Russia, which had been a police state since the 16th century’s Ivan the Terrible. There Marxism evolved into a secret samoderzhaviye or autocracy, the historical Russian form of one-man totalitarian dictatorship, in which the new Marxist tsar’s political police first exterminated the entire leadership of Lenin’s Communist Party and then, behind a facade of Marxism, quietly took precedence over the original tools of ideology and the Communist Party for running their country.
Only a handful of people working in extremely close proximity to the Soviet and East European rulers knew that after Lenin died his Communist Party gradually became a scramble of bureaucrats, playing no greater role in the Soviet Union than did Lenin’s embalmed corpse in the Kremlin mausoleum.
So far, Sakharovsky has proved to be a dependable prophet. His successor, Vladimir Kryuchkov, who later authored the August 1991 coup that briefly deposed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, clearly shared the same fanatical belief in gosbezopasnost. Kryuchkov’s successor, Yevgeny Primakov, who was an undercover KGB officer under Sakharovsky, rose to become Russia’s prime minister.
On Dec. 31, 1999, Russia’s first freely elected president, Boris Yeltsin, stunned the world by announcing his resignation.
“I shouldn’t be in the way of the natural course of history,” Yeltsin explained, speaking in front of a gaily decorated New Year’s tree and blue, red and white Russian flag with a golden Russian eagle.
“I understand that I must do it and Russia must enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with new intelligent, strong, energetic people.”
Yeltsin then signed a decree “On the execution of the powers of the Russian president,” which stated that under Article 92 Section 3 of the Russian Constitution, the power of the Russian president should be temporarily performed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Yeltsin also announced that a special presidential election would be held around March 27, 2000, and he made a strong appeal for people to vote for Putin, who was “a strong person worthy of becoming president.” For his part, the newly appointed president signed a decree pardoning Yeltsin, who was rumored to be connected to massive bribery scandals, “for any possible misdeeds” and granted him “total immunity” from being prosecuted (or even searched and questioned) for “any and all” actions committed while in office. Putin also gave Yeltsin a lifetime pension and a state dacha.
To me, that had all the appearances of a KGB palace putsch.
Indeed, as of June 2003, some 6,000 former KGB officers were holding positions in Russia’s central and regional governments. Among them:
Vladimir Putin, elected president of Russia; Vladimir Osipov, head of the Presidential Personnel Directorate; Sergey Ivanov, defense minister; Igor Sergeyevich Ivanov, minister of foreign affairs; Viktor Ivanov and Igor Sechin, deputy directors in the Presidential Administration; Vyacheslav Soltaganov, deputy secretary of the Security Council; Viktor Vasilyevich Cherkesov, chairman of the State Committee on Drug Trafficking; Vyacheslav Trubinkov, deputy foreign minister; Vladimir Kozlov, deputy media minister; Gennady Moshkov, first deputy transport minister; Nikolay Negodov, deputy transport minister; Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, deputy minister for economic development; Vladimir Makarov, Leonid Lobzenko and Igor Mezhakov, deputy chairmen of the State Customs Committee; Sergey Verevkin-Rokhalsky and Anatoly Sedov, deputy taxes and duties ministers; Anatoly Tsybulevsky and Vladimir Lazovsky, deputy directors of the of the Federal Tax Police Service; Alexander Grigoriev, general director of the Russian Agency for State Reserves; Alexander Spiridonov, deputy chairman of Russia’s Financial Monitoring Committee; Vladimir Kulakov, Voronezh governor; Viktor Maslov, Smolensk governor.
Can you imagine a democratic Germany run by Gestapo officers?
Putin is indeed trying to make Russia the first intelligence dictatorship in history. In 2004, nearly half of all top governmental positions were held by former officers of the KGB. The Soviet Union had had one KGB officer for every 428 citizens. In 2004, Russia had one intelligence officer for every 297 citizens.
A new generation of Russians is now struggling to demolish the barriers Soviet Marxism spent over 70 years erecting between themselves and the rest of the world, and to develop a new national identity. If history – including that of the last 22 years – is any guide, these Russians, who are now enjoying their regained nationalism, will not truly turn westward. They will struggle to rebuild a kind of an Old Russian Empire by inspiring themselves from old Russian traditions and by using old Russian ways and means.
This does not mean Russia cannot change, but for that to happen, it will need help. In order for us to help, we should first fully understand what is now going on behind the veil of secrecy that still surrounds the Kremlin. Man would not have learned to walk on the moon if he had not first studied what the moon was really made of and where it lay in the universe.
WND: Gen. Pacepa, you are credited with playing a pivotal role in waking up the Romanian people and inspiring the overthrow of the tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu. Why is it that a communist nation like Romania could hear and heed your message, but not America?
Pacepa: Emil Constantinescu, the second post-Communist president of Romania, once said:
The missiles that destroyed Communism were launched from Radio Free Europe, and this was Washington’s most important investment during the Cold War. I do not know whether the Americans themselves realize this now, seven years after the fall of Communism, but we understand it perfectly.
The serialization of my book “Red Horizons” by Radio Free Europe was just one of the missiles fired against the Romanian version of Marxism during the Cold War years. We need a kind of Radio Free America. Let’s hope that others, many others, will join our efforts to help the new generation of Americans – who have no longer been taught real history in schools and know little if anything about America’s 44 years of war against Marxism – to understand the deadly danger of this heresy.
American essayist George Santayana, an immigrant like me, used to say that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Let’s hope that others, many others, will help America understand this truism.
WND: Many Americans would roll their eyes at the phrase “Marxism in America,” even though with every passing year we are becoming more and more Marxist. Why are so many Americans so blind?
Pacepa: They are not blind. They just do not really know what Marxism is. Few Americans will roll their eyes hearing the world “Nazism.” Why? Because the hideous crimes committed by Nazism were publicly exposed and their main authors were publicly tried and hanged. Unfortunately, there was no trial of Communism, although this Marxist heresy had killed 10 times more people than Nazism killed. Nazi archives have been opened to the public, who could learn about Nazism’s atrocities from the horse’s mouth. Most Soviet archives are still sealed.
Stalin was famously quoted as saying: If it is not written, it did not happen. But Marxism did happen, it generated a dreadful empire of gulags and it spawned a 44-year Cold War. Let’s open that Pandora’s box. The United States of America is a unique country of freedom, built by people who came to this land of opportunity in search of religious, economic and personal freedom. Once Americans know the truth, they will never allow themselves to become puppets of Marxism.
WND: General, you were the head of Romania’s Presidential House – the equivalent in the U.S. of being White House chief of staff and director of the CIA, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security – but you ultimately defected to the West. You radically changed, and gave your loyalty to America. What woke you up? What changed you?
Pacepa: Michelle Obama once confessed in front of television cameras broadcasting her statement worldwide: “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” When I was Michelle’s age I also liked to believe that history started with me. It took me a very long time to see the light. Power can generate blindness and it did in my case. It took me many more years to find the courage to renounce my exorbitantly luxurious existence and to face up to the truth about the hidden face of Marxism. Communist rulers have always been very generous with their spy chiefs – that is until they tire of them and kill them off.
It was noon when the U.S. military plane that was bringing me to freedom landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, D.C., on that memorable July 28, 1978, and I was sitting up front in the cockpit with the pilots. It was a glorious, sunny day outside, which only magnified the fireworks popping off inside of me. For many, many years I had learned to hide my personal feelings. For that was the way of life in a Marxist society, where the government had its informants everywhere and where microphones covered you everyplace you went, from the office to the bedroom. But on that unforgettable day I had an overwhelming desire to dance around in a jig all by myself.
I was a free man! I was in America! The joy of finally becoming part of this magnanimous land of liberty, where nothing was impossible, was surpassed only by the joy of simply being alive.
It was my desperate hunger for freedom that woke me up.
WND: What will it take for Americans to wake up?
Pacepa: A “Campaign of Truth” like the one unleashed by President Harry Truman in 1950. I still keep the declassified version of his NSC 68/1950 on my desk. That 58-page document put together by the U.S. National Security Council set forth the strategy of exposing and containing Marxism and Soviet Communism.
“The issues that face us are momentous,” the document stated, “involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself.” Truman reasoned that Marxism and Soviet Communism were the mortal enemies of freedom and religion – of all religions – and he believed their expansion could be stopped only “through a concerted effort” that would place the superiority and strength of what he called “truth and freedom” before the peoples of the world.
Marxism is now threatening our country again. Let’s unleash another Truman-style campaign of truth. Let’s remind the leaders of the Democratic Party that Truman was a Democrat. Let also remind them that John F. Kennedy, another Democrat, was ready to start a nuclear war in order to protect the United States from the danger of Marxism. And let’s remind America that the peace and freedom of the world depend on the economic power of United States and the united resolve of its public opinion, as was always the case.
If our capitalist economy and national unity go, so will our prosperity, our security and the peace of the world.
The constant blurring of distinctions and the rewriting of history in political communications get really old.
The economy suffered after the Clinton tax increases and that is one reason why the Republican Revolution hit him in 1994 (along with gays in the military and HillaryCare which featured federal health care police with guns). Bill Clinton had campaigned on a tax cut to help get the economy growing again. He delivered just the opposite.
It is important to keep in mind that President Bush 41 went along with Democrats in increasing taxes in violation of his “read my lips no new taxes” promise. At the time Democrats praised President Bush saying “he had grown”, but when the tax increase resulted in a short 1-2 quarter recession the Democrats blasted him for reneging on his no new taxes pledge. Clinton ran against that tax increase and promised to lower them again.
But what about the Clinton economy and the surplus? Well that was in Clinton’s second term when Newt and the House Republicans balanced the budget, passed welfare reform over Clinton’s initial VETO threats and of course, the new GOP majority in Congress cut taxes.
The Dangerous Myth About the Clinton Tax Increase
One of the most dangerous myths that has infected the current debate over the direction of tax policy is the oft repeated claim that the tax increases under President Bill Clinton led to the boom of the 1990s. In their Wall Street Journal Op-Ed last Friday, for example, Clinton campaign manager James Carville and Democratic pollster and Clinton advisor Stanley Greenberg write the increase in the top tax rate to 39.6% “produced the one period of shared prosperity in this past era (since 1980).”
While this myth is now a central part of liberal Democratic folklore, it is contradicted by the political disaster and poor economic results that followed the tax increase. The real lesson of the Clinton Presidency is the way back to prosperity lies not through increased taxes on “the rich,” but through tax and regulatory reform and a return to a rules based monetary policy that produces a strong and stable dollar.
The 1993 Clinton tax increase raised the top two income tax rates to 36% and 39.6%, with the top rate hitting joint returns with incomes above $250,000 ($400,000 in 2012 dollars). In addition, it removed the cap on the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax, raised the corporate tax rate to 35% from 34%, increased the taxable portion of Social Security benefits, and imposed a 4.3 cent per gallon increase in transportation fuel taxes.
If these tax increases were good for the middle class, then they should have been popular. Yet, in the 1994 elections, the Democratic Party suffered historic losses. Even though Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell had declared the unpopular HillaryCare dead in September of that year, the Republican Party gained 54 seats in the House and 8 seats in the Senate to win control of both the House and the Senate for the first time since 1952.
Second, Messrs. Carville and Greenberg are contradicted by their former boss. Speaking at a fund raiser in 1995, President Clinton said: ”Probably there are people in this room still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much, too.”
During the first four years of his Presidency, real GDP growth average 3.2%, respectable relative to today’s economy, but disappointing coming as it did following just one year of recovery from the 1991 recession, the end of the Cold War and the reduction in consumer price inflation below 3% for the first time (with the single exception of 1986) since 1965.
For example, it was a half a percentage point slower than under Reagan during the four years following the first year of the recovery from the 1982 recession.
Employment growth was a respectable 2 million a year. But real hourly wages continued to stagnate, rising only 2 cents to 7.43 an hour in 1996 from $7.41 in 1992. No real gains for the middle class there.
However, with his masterful 1995 flip-flop on taxes, President Clinton took the first step toward a successful campaign for re-election and a shift in policy that produced the economic boom that occurred during his second term.
- Welfare reform, which he signed in the summer of 1996, led to a massive reduction in the effective tax rates on the poor by ameliorating the rapid phase out of benefits associated with going to work.
- The phased reduction in tariff and non-tariff barriers between the U.S., Mexico and Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement continued, leading to increased trade.
- In 1997, Clinton signed a reduction in the (audible liberal gasp) capital gains tax rate to 20% from 28%.
- The 1997 tax cuts also included a phased in increase in the death tax exemption to $1 million from $600,000, and established Roth IRAs and increased the limits for deductible IRAs.
- Annual growth in federal spending was kept to below 3%, or $57 billion.
- The Clinton Administration also maintained its policy of a strong and stable dollar. Over his entire second term, consumer price inflation averaged only 2.4% a year.
The boom was on. Between the end of 1996 and the end of 2000:
- Economic growth accelerated a full percentage point to 4.2% a year.
- Employment growth nudged higher, to 2.1 million jobs per year as the unemployment rate fell to 4.0% from 5.4%.
- As the tax rate on capital gains came down, real wages made their biggest advance since the implementation of the Reagan tax rate reductions in the mid 1980s. Real average hourly earnings were (in 1982 dollars) $7.43 in 1996, $7.55 in 1997, $7.75 in 1998, $7.86 in 1999, and $7.89 in 2000.
- Millions of Americans shared in the prosperity as the value of their 401(k)s climbed along with the stock market, which saw the price of the S&P 500 index rise 78%.
- Revenue growth accelerated an astounding 59%, increasing on average $143 billion a year. Combined with continued restraint on government spending, that produced a $198 billion budget surplus in 2000.
Shared prosperity indeed! But one created not by raising tax rates on high income but not yet rich middle class families, and certainly not by raising the capital gains tax rate or by imposing the equivalent of the Buffett rule, a new alternative minimum tax of 30% on incomes over $1 million, nor by massively increasing federal spending.
Rather, it was a prosperity produced by freeing America’s poor from a punitive welfare system, lowering tariffs, reducing tax rates on the creators of wealth, limiting the growth of federal government expenditures, and providing a strong and stable dollar to businesses and families in America and throughout the world.
Chelsea Gruenwald at Resist 44 wrote this lovely piece about eight things you should do when dealing with liberals:
The 8 Simple Rules for Defeating Liberals (And Remaining Sane in the Process):
1. Keep calm. One of my grandmother’s favorite sayings is, “Never discuss religion or politics in polite company.” This is because both topics are often accompanied with strong opinions and even stronger emotions. Because of the emotional connection it is easy to get lost in the moment and lose your temper. However, losing your temper rarely wins over the opposition. If you are able to keep your cool during a political debate, it shows leadership and maturity and people are more likely to take your message seriously.
2. Expose the lies but focus on promoting the truth. As with many campaigns, attacks and smears ran ramped in the Wisconsin recall election. The most famous attack came from the Barrett campaign claiming Wisconsin finished last in job creation. Governor Walker produced federally verified numbers proving this claim to be wrong. While acknowledging the falsity of Barrett’s claim, Governor Walker did not dwell on it. Instead, he launched a series of messages to promote the truth. The average American admits to distrusting politicians, so dwelling on a false claim won’t increase support and trust, but producing the truth will.
3. Do not stoop to their level. Yes, liberals are notorious for playing dirty tricks in elections. They are also famous for their “the ends justify the means” mentality. Do not be like them. What’s good for the goose is not good for the gander. Even if you are not running, you are a member of a community, act accordingly.
4. Actions speak louder than words. I have had several extremely liberal friends recently convert to conservatism and they always cite people’s actions as a reason. For example, compare the Wisconsin union protest to the Tea Party rally that happened at the same time. The union protesters surrounded the Tea Party rally, booed during the national anthem, threatened and degraded tea partiers, and left a trail of trash and trampled flowers behind. The tea partiers stuck to their side, were courteous, cleaned up after themselves, and took the time to clean up after the union protesters as well. So while the unions were preaching solidarity, brotherhood, and kindness, it was the tea partiers who actually practiced those values. And people took notice. One friend described that very event as the reason for his conversion.
5. Get involved. One of the powers of the Left is their ability to organize and create a sense of community. There is nothing more defeating than feeling alone. This is why it is essential to reach out to others like you. Volunteer on a campaign, attend a Tea Party; even reaching out to others online can make all the difference.
6. Don’t preach. Engage yourself. Just like a child being scolded by a parent, people are less likely to absorb a message if their thoughts and concerns are ignored. Even if you don’t have the solution, engaging and addressing the concerns of others shows you care. People are more likely to vote for a candidate (or party) if they think they truly care about them. Governor Walker mastered this skill. While Barrett was busy giving speeches and holding rallies, Governor Walker was visiting local businesses, churches, and events to talk with people individually.
7. Know what you are up against. Any psychologist will tell you that personal accounts have much more meaning than statistics. This is because humans can relate to a personal story (and all the emotions that come with it) better than impersonal numbers. Hearsay can only get you so far, but a first hand account, video, and pictures of an event leave a much bigger impact. This is why it is important to have first hand experience with your opponent. I have attended dozens of Wisconsin Union protests, marches, and sing-a-longs. These experiences not only allowed me to develop better-informed opinions, but also to share my experiences with others.
8. Vote. This might be the most important rule. All of your hard work engaging others, promoting the truth, and community involvement will be wasted if you don’t actually vote. Barrett and the unions learned this important lesson on June 5th. While the unions were able to make a lot of noise, cause a fuss, and bring about the recall, they had difficulty getting those same people to vote. This eventually led to their defeat.
Conservatives have been dubbed “the silent majority” for a reason. While liberals beat conservatives 10-to-1 in protest enthusiasm, conservatives continue to show their dominance at the voting booth. You don’t need to be loud and carrying a sign to get your message across, instead practice what you preach, talk to an elderly neighbor, or get involved in a local campaign. The Revolution wasn’t won by occupying a British ship, but by people, big and small, coming together as a community. This holds true for the election in November: we can’t win an election as an individual; we must work together as a team.
Just when you thought this was bad enough…
By Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit:
It’s as if Solyndra never happened. The Obama Administration is giving $737 million to a Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve. PCG is an investment partner with SolarReserve. Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law happens to be the number two man at PCG.
Via the RSC:
Why weren’t even more jobs created during the Bush years? Because we were at full employment for 5.5 years. John Merline says “A key attack line in President Obama’s campaign stump speech these days is to claim that the country has tried Mitt Romney’s economic policies already, and they were a dismal failure. ‘The truth is,’ Obama says, ‘we tried (that) for almost a decade, and it didn’t work.’ . . .
“The month after Bush signed that 2003 law, jobs and the economy finally started growing again. From June 2003 to December 2007, the economy added 8.1 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“The unemployment rate fell to 5% from 6.3%. Real GDP growth averaged close to 3% in the four-plus years after that, and the budget deficit fell steadily from 2004 to 2007.
“What’s more, the rich ended up paying a larger chunk of the federal income tax burden after Bush’s tax cuts went into effect [This is true, I wrote about this in 2006 HERE – PoliticalArena Editor]. Obama is correct that the country has tried a combination of deregulation and tax cuts before; that took place under President Reagan.
“Reagan aggressively deregulated entire industries, while putting the brakes on new federal rules. As a result, regulatory compliance costs fell 8% during his time in office, and staffing dropped almost 7%. At the same time, Reagan’s tax cuts knocked taxes as a share of GDP down by 6%.
“The result was an almost eight-year economic boom in which real quarterly GDP growth averaged 4.3%. That’s nearly double the average growth rate Obama’s economic policies produced during the 3-year-old recovery.”
Retired police officer “Wild Bill for America”
I will never forget how the elite media gave sympathetic treatment to Major Nidal Hasan. The Obama administration has worked to prevent his victims from getting the Purple Heart and defined his act of Islamic terrorism as “workplace violence”.
Some recovery… Obama and the Democrats have been running two trillion dollar deficits and economically we have so little to show for it.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America’s poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.
Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.
The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.
Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.
My latest creation for our Political Arena visitors!
People in government do not behave this way because they fear Republicans….
Newsmax:
The FBI was too concerned about political correctness and did not launch an investigation into a man who was later charged with killing 13 people in a 2009 attack at the Fort Hood military installation in Texas, despite significant warning signs that he was an Islamic extremist bent on killing civilians, according to a lawmaker briefed on a new report about the terrorist attack.
In emails to a known terrorist, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan expressed his support for suicide bombings and killing civilians, while the terrorist, Anwar al-Awlaki, encouraged Hasan to stay in touch, Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, told The Associated Press on Wednesday after he was briefed on the findings of a new review of the attack.
The review was done by former FBI Director William Webster and was more than two years in the making. FBI Director Robert Mueller asked that Webster conduct an independent review, and the bureau is expected to release an unclassified version this week.
Much was already known about the series of oversights and missteps the government made leading to the terror attack at the Fort Hood Army post.
Soon after the attack, it was revealed that members of two FBI anti-terrorism task forces saw emails between the Army psychiatrist and al-Awlaki beginning in December 2008. Those task forces reviewed the communications and decided they were in keeping with Hasan’s research at the time, and as a result, no formal investigation of Hasan was opened. Hasan was writing a research paper about the effects of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But McCaul said Webster’s report offers some new details that show the FBI was concerned about investigating an American Muslim in the military, and that is why an investigation was not pursued.
Read more on Newsmax.com: Report: FBI Didn’t Probe Ft. Hood Shooter Over ‘Political Correctness’
by Chuck Norton
I know what the Romney camp is thinking: They have conservatives locked up so they don’t need Palin; since she is polarizing some independents won’t like her. That thinking while having some merit is still very wrong headed.
Independents have voted for TEA Party candidates in droves in 2009 and 2010. Sarah Palin was the driving force behind it. People tell pollsters what they want to hear very often. People who intend to vote GOP and don’t want their friends to know have a history of lying to pollsters. On the other hand I know LOTS of conservatives who intend to stay home this November. The travesty from Chief Justice Roberts helped to motivate them, but make no mistake, there is still a real problem that true conservatives have with Mitt Romney.
If Palin is a master of one thing it is political payback. When Gov. Christie said something stupid about her she let him have it so hard that he never did it again. If Sarah Palin is not invited to the convention with a prominent roll there will be a price to pay and she WILL exact it. She may even stage her own event nearby to suck the wind out of a key Romney event. Palin is far more charismatic than Romney, she knows it and so does the media. She may even rip up the Republican establishment “Good Ole Boy” network at her event. Palin has a long and very effective history of doing just that.
Canadian Free Press:
In the roughly three years since she quit as the state’s chief regulator of the oil industry, Palin has crushed the Republican hierarchy (virtually all male) and nearly every other foe or critic. Political analysts in Alaska refer to the “body count” of Palin’s rivals.
“The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who crossed Sarah,” says pollster Dave Dittman, who worked for her gubernatorial campaign. It includes Ruedrich, Renkes, Murkowski, gubernatorial contenders John Binkley and Andrew Halcro, the three big oil companies in Alaska, and a section of the Daily News called “Voice of the Times,” which was highly critical of Palin and is now defunct.
The bottom line is that Sarah Palin is still the most powerful figure in the Republican Party and too many in the beltway still haven’t managed to accept that. Palin is also a fund raising machine who can help Romney raise funds for the election. In either case, if you guys at the Romney camp think you can out-smart her, you can’t. Just the attempt will raise her ire and you will only end up paying a heavier price.
Wow, the gloves have come off. Bill Whittle at his best.
Senator Rubio: Obama was just saying what he really believed when he said that small business owners didn’t build their businesses.
Obama’s Press Secretary says that Obama hasn’t met with his Jobs Council in over six months because “He has a lot on his plate”. Indeed, like 106 fund raisers and if memory serves about two dozen golf outings.
Several Reagan statues have appeared in Poland. It makes you wonder what the Poles know that too many of our public school teachers don’t.
A new statue of President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II that was unveiled in Gdansk, Poland, on Saturday, July 14, 2012. Both late leaders are highly revered in Poland for their role in helping to topple communism.
Michelle Malkin has commentary:
George Santayana said those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, and the people of Poland have not forgotten:
Polish officials unveiled a statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II on Saturday, honoring two men widely credited in this Eastern European country with helping to topple communism 23 years ago.
The statue was unveiled in Gdansk, the birthplace of Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement, in the presence of about 120 former Solidarity activists, many of whom were imprisoned in the 1980s for their roles in organizing or taking part in strikes against the communist regime.
The bronze statue, erected in the lush seaside President Ronald Reagan Park, is a slightly larger-than-life rendering of the two late leaders. It was inspired by an Associated Press photograph taken in 1987 on John Paul’s second pontifical visit to the U.S.
[…]
Reagan and John Paul shared a conviction that communism was a moral evil, not just a bad economic system. And Lech Walesa, founder of the Solidarity movement that led the anti-communist struggle in Poland, has often paid homage to both men and told the AP in a recent interview that he deeply respected Reagan.“Reagan should have a monument in every city,” Walesa said.
The money for the statues (about $59,000 US dollars) was raised from former Solidarity members, “many of whom are today living on small pensions and could only afford the smallest of donations” according to the AP.
This is what bothers me about these two candidates. While Obama’s attacks are far less honest today, Mitt Romney is not innocent either and in the primary Romney’s attacks on the other GOP candidates were often sickeningly dishonest.
Interesting how the Democrat brings up the Swiftboat Vets Ads from when John Kerry ran for President as an example of a distraction. But he leaves out a fundamental truth – John Kerry made the three months he spent in Vietnam in the Navy a cornerstone of his campaign. At the convention Kerry had it military themed and he was saluting and the whole nine yards. The problem is that John Kerry misrepresented his service in his campaign and the people he served with and other veterans took issue with it. John Kerry, in a most unpatriotic way in the view of many war heroes, took the side of Jane Fonda when he came back and the North Vietnamese used John Kerry’s actions for great propaganda value.
With that said, the economy at the end of President Bush’s first term was doing rather well and national security and military policy was front and center which is another reason why the Swiftboat ads were no mere attempt at distraction. The economy today is a disaster and the Obama campaign wants to talk about anything but. And why the Obama Administration is declaring executive privilege to delay the release of documents relation to huge scandals such as “Fast & Furious” and is still hiding all sorts of documents form his past, all they want to talk about is how Mitt Romney had not released his tax returns from ten years ago? THAT is a distraction.
The simple truth is that most people are outraged at what Obama and the Democrats have done with our money and are not overly concerned with what Mitt Romney did with his own money ten years ago.
Is this the change you voted for?
The Mexican government has been working with the United States Department of Agriculture to increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps.
USDA has an agreement with Mexico to promote American food assistance programs, including food stamps, among Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals and migrant communities in America.
“USDA and the government of Mexico have entered into a partnership to help educate eligible Mexican nationals living in the United States about available nutrition assistance,” the USDA explains in a brief paragraph on their “Reaching Low-Income Hispanics With Nutrition Assistance” web page. “Mexico will help disseminate this information through its embassy and network of approximately 50 consular offices.”
The partnership — which was signed by former USDA Secretary Ann M. Veneman and Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista in 2004 — sees to it that the Mexican Embassy and Mexican consulates in America provide USDA nutrition assistance program information to Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals working in America and migrant communities in America. The information is specifically focused on eligibility criteria and access.
The goal, for USDA, is to get rid of what they see as enrollment obstacles and increase access among potentially eligible populations by working with arms of the Mexican government in America. Benefits are not guaranteed or provided under the program — the purpose is outreach and education.
Some of the materials the USDA encourages the Mexican government to use to educate and promote the benefit programs are available free online for order and download. A partial list of materials include English and Spanish brochures titled “Five Easy Steps To Snap Benefits,” “How To Get Food Help — A Consumer’s Guide to FNCS Programs,” “Ending Hunger Improving Nutrition Combating Obesity,” and posters with slogans like “Food Stamps Make America Stronger.”
When asked for details and to elaborate on the program, USDA stressed it was established in 2004 and not meant for illegal immigrants.
[Political Arena Editor Responds – That is what the Obama Administration said about Fast & Furious; the documentation revision for this program is dated Feb, 16, 2012.]
Union Bosses: “Green Jobs” – a lot of it is “Bullshit” like digging ditches and just refilling them…
James O’Keefe strikes again! This is how your public funds all too often get spent….
“Don’t use shovels, use spoons. It takes longer.” – Liberal economist Paul Krugman
According to Obama and far left Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (the one who was caught lying about her heritage) people who own businesses and such are not entitled to the fruits of their labor because we had roads; therefore they didn’t do anything to deserve any profit form their work.
In 2008 I wrote a long series of articles about the mortgage collapse, who engineered it, who got paid and who is lying.
Related: House Oversight Committee: Members of Congress Received Special Favors from Mortgage Lenders – LINK
Our dear friend Michelle Malkin has put out a column that takes us through memory lane on who was getting paid by the big banks, who was peddling influence, and who was engaging in a pattern of government corruption that is becoming all too familiar. And what is below is only HALF of her column as the examples are almost unending….
Your guide to sleazy Democratic Party-backed banks
Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod and his hatchet people are still yammering about GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney’s overseas investments. It’s time for the Romney campaign to educate voters about all the shady financial institutions embraced by Democrats right here on American soil.The fat-cat narrative attacks on Republicans won’t go away by making nice with the White House — or by relying on Beltway journalists to drop their double standards and vet the president’s own bad bank entanglements. Indeed, The New York Times admitted this week that their staff and other political journalists from every major media outlet submit their work to the White House for unprecedented review, editing and “veto power.”
Fortunately, the truth manipulators and message massagers haven’t gotten to this column yet. So, let’s talk sleazy Democratic Party-backed banks, shall we?
Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. Forget Switzerland. The mother and father of all financial industry outrages are rooted in Washington, D.C. And Obama Democrats are among the biggest winners of lavish, out-of-control compensation packages from fraud-plagued Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama confidante James Johnson raked in $21 million. Former Obama chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel “earned” at least $320,000 for a brief 14-month gig at Freddie Mac. And Clinton Fannie Mae head and Obama economic confidante Franklin Raines bagged some $90 million in pay and stock options earned during the government-sponsored institution’s Enron-style accounting scandal on the public dime.
Self-appointed banking policewoman and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has, uncharacteristically, kept her mouth shut about these wealthy barons.
Superior Bank. One of the Obamas’ oldest Chicago friends and wealthiest billionaire bundlers, former Obama national finance chairwoman Penny Pritzker, headed up this subprime lender. Even after it went under in 2001 and left 1,400 customers destitute, Pritzker was pushing to expand its toxic subprime loan business. Pritzker and her family escaped accountability by forking over $460 million over 15 years. Obama happily accepted the nearly $800 million in campaign and inaugural funding Pritzker drummed up for him. To protect her family’s multibillion dollar fortune, Pritzker’s enterprises park their money in the very same kind of offshore trusts her candidate is attacking Romney over.
Broadway Bank. In 2010, President and Mrs. Obama personally raised money for their Chicago friend and fundraiser Alexi Giannoulias, who ran unsuccessfully for Obama’s old Illinois Senate seat. As I reported then, Giannoulias’ Greek immigrant family founded Chicago-based Broadway Bank, a now-defunct financial institution that loaned tens of millions of dollars to convicted mafia felons and faced bankruptcy after decades of engaging in risky, high-flying behavior. It’s the place where Obama parked his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign funds. And it’s the same place where a mutual friend of Obama and Giannoulias — convicted Obama fundraiser and slumlord Tony Rezko — used to bounce nearly $500,000 in bad checks written to Las Vegas casinos.
Chicago’s former inspector general blasted Giannoulias and his family for tapping $70 million worth of dividends in 2007 and 2008 as the real estate crash loomed. Broadway Bank was sitting on an estimated $250 million in bad loans. The cost to taxpayers after the bank was shut down two years ago: an estimated $390 million.
ShoreBank. The “progressive” Chicago-based community development bank, a “green” financial institution whose mission was to “create economic equity and a healthy environment,” folded in August 2010. Obama personally had endorsed the politically connected bank and appeared in a video promoting its Kenyan microlending project. But it was a doomed social justice experiment. After regulators shut it down, Obama crony companies including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs took over the mess courtesy of taxpayer subsidies.
Countrywide/Bank of America. Earlier this month, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report on corruption-plagued Countrywide Financial Corp., which was bailed out by taxpayer-bailed-out Bank of America. The House investigation confirmed the notorious favor-trading scheme, which involved sweetheart home loan deals for members of Congress and their staff, top government officials and executives of doomed mortgage giant Fannie Mae.
“These relationships helped (Countrywide CEO and Democratic subprime loan king Angelo) Mozilo increase his own company’s profits while dumping the risk of bad loans on taxpayers,” according to the new report. Mozilo copped a $67.5 million plea to avert a high-stakes public trial in the heat of the 2010 midterm election season. Since then, Obama’s Justice Department has taken no action to prosecute Countrywide officials on federal bribery charges.
Among the influence-peddling operation’s most prominent beneficiaries: the aforementioned Obama top adviser Jim Johnson, who accepted more than $7 million in below-market-rate Countrywide loans, and former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, whose ill-fated 2010 re-election bid was personally endorsed by Obama. Obama stood by Dodd even as sordid details of his two discounted Countrywide loans and record Countrywide PAC donations mounted.
Bank of Democratic America, which raked in $45 billion in Obama-supported TARP bailout funds and billions more in secret emergency federal loans, footed the $50 million restitution payment bill for Mozilo and another Countrywide official. In 2008, BofA’s political action committee gave its biggest contributions to Obama, totaling $421,000. And as I noted in January, Bank of America supplied the Democrats with a $15 million revolving line of credit, along with an additional $17 million loan during the 2010 midterms.
Embarrassed by the party’s ties to shady Bank of America, progressives are now trying to rebrand the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., where Obama will give his nomination acceptance address. They’re referring to it as “Panthers Stadium” instead.
And the elite media was busy making up false quotes from Sarah Palin’s hair dresser….
See the amazing piece from CDN that this video is based on HERE.
There is out of touch and then there is OMGWTF out of touch. Just when you thought it was bad enough when Obama’s Energy Secretary testified to Congress that gas should be $8.00 a gallon….
The Daily Caller:
As gas prices continue to soar around the country, Joe Kennedy III, the Democratic candidate for Rep. Barney Frank’s seat, wrote an online letter to supporters calling for an end to “cheap oil.”
“Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama — they’ve all talked about the same thing: the need to wean ourselves off our debilitating dependence on foreign oil,” Kennedy wrote.
“The cycle that allows cheap oil to trump tough choices has to stop,” he continued. “Forty years is enough.”
In the week before Kennedy posted, AAA Southern New England reported that the price of gas in Massachusetts had risen a further two cents. The Worchester Business Journal reported that at an average of $3.899 a gallon for regular unleaded gas, the price is currently 24 cents higher than it was one year before.
Kennedy is running against Sean Bielat, a former Marine who lost to 16-term Rep. Barney Frank by 10 points in the 2010 election.
“It’s kind of stunning that he’s so out of touch that he would say it that way,” Bielat Communications Director Sarah Rumpf told The Daily Caller. “Democrats, Republicans and independents — everybody is paying for higher gas right now.”
Though Kennedy has said that he is not running on his name — which represents a liberal political dynasty — critics have attacked him for not putting forth policy positions. His campaign website does not have an issues section.
Also see – Obama invested heavily with outsourcers, after accusing Romney of doing the same… – LINK
President Obama accused Mitt Romney of being responsible for shutting down this American Steel plant, saddling it with debt, and screwing the employees out of their pensions, but Mitt Romney left Bain Capital two years before this happened to run the Olympics. So who was in charge of Bain Capital when this happened? You guess it, Obama’s top campaign money bundler John Levine. Does it get any better than this?
Our friends Chuck Slowe and Jim Hoft have a great report on this. Be sure add their websites to your daily reading:
The Obama campaign blamed Governor Mitt Romney for the demise of GST Steel company in a video they released in May. The plant closed in 2001. Mitt left Bain in 1999.
[Political Arena Editor’s Note – I ripped this video to my hard drive just in case it vanishes from Obama’sYoutube Channel]
For some reason the Obama camp forgot to mention this…
Obama’s top bundler Jonathan Lavine was in charge of Bain during the BST layoffs.Chuck Slowe reported:
Blaming Governor Romney for any issues surrounding the failure of GST is wrong and it is a blatant lie. Mitt Romney had been long gone when the company started to fail and subsequently closed it doors. When are the President and his campaign hacks going to get the story correct? When are they going to get back to their economy and its dreadful condition? Mr. President, you can run but you cannot hide.
It turns out that Jonathan Lavine, current Obama bundler, was actually in charge, at Bain, during that period, when the layoffs occurred. Oops, that isn’t right, is it? Yes, that story is the one that needs to be reported on. Sorry Mr. President, your lies are just getting to be more than many of us are able to handle.
And, Jonathan Lavine is not your average Obama Bain donor. Lavine is one of Barack Obama’s top bundlers.
ABC reported:While Democrats assail presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital business practices, Republicans note that President Obama has not been bashful about accepting cash from Bain executives or other high-profile figures in the corporate buyout business…
…One of Obama’s top campaign financiers – Jonathan Lavine – is also managing director at Bain, bundling between $100,000 and $200,000 in contributions for the 2012 Obama Victory Fund, according to estimates released by the Obama campaign. The president has also relied on other leading figures in the private equity sector as hosts for high-dollar fundraisers and as members of his Jobs Council.
Maybe someday the liberal media will report on this.
Political Arena 