Dylan Ratigan Gropes for the Truth on CNBC

A breath of fresh air on CNBC: Congress is bought, political parties are irrelevant, the nation is being brought down by a cancer.

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Feds Visit Blogger Who Was Critical of Congressman

This is intimidation, pure and simple. Fundamental legal protections have been swept away in the “war on terror”—whose putative purpose was to go after scary bearded men living in caves—and the state is now going after citizens who speak out against government corruption. When will they come knocking on “Government Against the People”‘s door? When will they come knocking on your door?

A local blogger who was critical of Rep. Billy Long during last year’s congressional campaign has been interviewed by the FBI about his encounters with the congressman.

Clay Bowler, who lives in Christian County, says he was shocked to find an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation at his doorstep. Accompanying the agent was Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott.

The agent asked Bowler if he was a threat to Long, a notion Bowler finds laughable.

“I’m not a threat to Billy Long,” Bowler said Thursday. “I find the whole thought very funny, because I’m such an advocate for constitutional rights that I would never do anything that would put in jeopardy those constitutional rights like the Second Amendment.”

Read the rest at KSPR Television.

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U.S. Drifting from Financial Crisis to Social Crisis

The inevitable consequence of the looting of the American people is upon us. The ruling class controls the wealth while the impoverished masses scrounge for sustenance. Expect more outbursts, more security clampdowns, more abuse of citizens by agents of the state, and more restrictions of speech.

There is a telling detail in the US retail chain store data for December. Stephen Lewis from Monument Securities points out that luxury outlets saw an 8.1pc rise from a year ago, but discount stores catering to America’s poorer half rose just 1.2pc.

Tiffany’s, Nordstrom, and Saks Fifth Avenue are booming. Sales of Cadillac cars have jumped 35pc, while Porsche’s US sales are up 29pc.

Cartier and Louis Vuitton have helped boost the luxury goods stock index by almost 50pc since October. Yet Best Buy, Target, and Walmart have languished.

Such is the blighted fruit of Federal Reserve policy. The Fed no longer even denies that the purpose of its latest blast of bond purchases, or QE2, is to drive up Wall Street, perhaps because it has so signally failed to achieve its other purpose of driving down borrowing costs.

Yet surely Ben Bernanke’s `trickle down’ strategy risks corroding America’s ethic of solidarity long before it does much to help America’s poor.

The retail data can be quirky but it fits in with everything else we know. The numbers of people on food stamps have reached 43.2m, an all time-high of 14pc of the population. Recipients receive debit cards – not stamps — currently worth about $140 a month under President Obama’s stimulus package.

The US Conference of Mayors said visits to soup kitchens are up 24pc this year. There are 643,000 people needing shelter each night.

Jobs data released on Friday was again shocking. The only the reason that headline unemployment fell to 9.4pc was that so many people dropped out of the system altogether.

Read the rest at The Telegraph.

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Homeland Security Hasn’t Made Us Safer

The author of this column claims that the sole purpose of the Dept. of Homeland security is to provide bonanzas for favored congressional districts. Its purpose goes further than that: To maintain a constant mood of low-level fear so the people will continue going along with government abuses of power.

Hardly anyone has seriously scrutinized either the priorities or the spending patterns of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its junior partner, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), since their hurried creation in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Sure, they get criticized plenty. But year in, year out, they continue to grow faster and cost more — presumably because Americans think they are being protected from terrorism by all that spending. Yet there is no evidence whatsoever that the agencies are making Americans any safer.

DHS serves only one clear purpose: to provide unimaginable bonanzas for favored congressional districts around the United States, most of which face no statistically significant security threat at all. One thinks of the $436,504 that the Blackfeet Nation of Montana received in fiscal 2010 “to help strengthen the nation against risks associated with potential terrorist attacks”; the $1,000,000 that the village of Poynette, Wisconsin (pop. 2,266) received in fiscal 2009 for an “emergency operations center”; or the $67,000 worth of surveillance equipment purchased by Marin County, California, and discovered, still in its original packaging, four years later. And indeed, every U.S. state, no matter how landlocked or underpopulated, receives, by law, a fixed percentage of homeland security spending every year.

As for the TSA, I am not aware of a single bomber or bomb plot stopped by its time-wasting procedures. In fact, TSA screeners consistently fail to spot the majority of fake “bombs” and bomb parts the agency periodically plants to test their skills. In Los Angeles, whose airport was targeted by the “millennium plot” on New Year’s 2000, screeners failed some 75 percent of these tests.

Read the rest at Foreign Policy.

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Senator Obama on Illegal Domestic Surveillance

In May 2008, before he became president, I wrote to the junior senator from my state, Barack Obama, with a direct question:

“Why is Congress doing nothing about the crimes committed by the current administration? In particular, why are you and your colleagues doing nothing in response to the abduction and outsourced torture of foreign nationals and the broad surveillance of U.S. citizens in flagrant violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act?”

Sen. Obama had nothing to say on the subject of abducting foreign nationals, but he–or anyway his office–had a few things to say about the Bush administration’s criminal violations of FISA. Two years into the Obama presidency, it’s interesting to reread what Obama had to say back then and to ask ourselves if his administration is doing things any differently—or indeed is merely accelerating the wholesale violations of privacy and liberty that had begun in earnest during the Bush administration.

Thank you for contacting me concerning the President’s domestic surveillance program. I appreciate hearing from you.

Providing any President with the flexibility necessary to fight terrorism without compromising our constitutional rights can be a delicate balance. I agree that technological advances and changes in the nature of the threat our nation faces may require that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), enacted in 1978, be updated to reflect the reality of the post 9/11 world. But that does not absolve the President of the responsibility to fully brief Congress on the new security challenge and to work cooperatively with Congress to address it.

As you know, Congress has been considering the issue of domestic surveillance since last year. The debate continues, but the shift in party control on Capitol Hill has clearly had an impact on this critical discussion over the balance of power in our system of government. On January 17, 2007, after conducting its wiretapping program without court approval for over 5 years, the Justice Department announced that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court had approved its program to listen to communications between people in the U.S. and other countries if there is probable cause to believe one or the other is involved in terrorism. Then, in early February, the Justice Department announced that it would give the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees of both chambers of Congress access to previously withheld documents on the NSA program. The congressional committees with jurisdiction over this issue hailed the agreement as a step in the right direction.

However, there is still significant work to be done. Just before the August recess in 2007, Congress passed hastily crafted legislation to expand the authority of the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to conduct surveillance of suspected foreign terrorists without a warrant or real oversight, even if the targets are communicating with someone in the United States. This legislation was signed into law by the President on August 5, 2007, and expires after six months.

As you are aware, Congress is working on reforms to the FISA bill to be enacted before the expiration of the current legislation. On November 15, 2007, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3773, the Responsible Electronic Surveillance That is Overseen, Reviewed, and Effective Act of 2007 (RESTORE Act) by a vote of 227-189. The House bill does not provide retroactive immunity for private companies that may have participated in the illegal collection of personal information, nor does it provide immunity for Administration officials who may have acted illegally.

On February 12, 2008, the Senate passed S. 2248, making its own reforms to FISA. I am disappointed that S. 2248, if signed into law, will grant an unprecedented level of immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the President’s warrantless wiretapping program. I was proud to cosponsor several amendments, including the Dodd-Feingold amendment to strike the immunity provision, which would have enhanced privacy protections while maintaining the tools to fight terrorism. However, with the defeat of this amendment, telecom companies will not be held accountable even if it could be proven that they clearly and knowingly broke the law and nullified the privacy rights of Americans. I am frustrated by the President’s decision to play politics by threatening to veto any legislation not containing immunity. Why the President continues to try to hold this important legislation captive to that special interest provision defies explanation. The House and Senate must reconcile differences between the two versions of the bill before being signed into law.

The American people understand that new threats require flexible responses to keep them safe, and that our intelligence gathering capability needs to be improved. What they do not want is for the President or the Congress to use these imperatives as a pretext for promoting policies that not only go further than necessary to meet a real threat, but also violate some of the most basic tenets of our democracy. Like most members of Congress, I continue to believe that the essential objective of conducting effective domestic surveillance in the War on Terror can be achieved without discarding our constitutionally protected civil liberties.

Thank you again for writing. Please stay in touch as this debate continues.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

United States Senator

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State Dept. Friendly towards Suspected Organ Trafficker

If the U.S. cares about human rights and wishes to fight “terrorism,” then why is someone like Thaci considered a friend?

Kosovo’s prime minister is the head of a “mafia-like” Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.

Hashim Thaçi is identified as the boss of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the runup to the 1998-99 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country’s government since.

The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted “violent control” over the heroin trade. Figures from Thaçi’s inner circle are also accused of taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a number of Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.

Read more at the Guardian.

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Nigeria Accepts Halliburton Bribe to Drop Bribery Charge

Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, is paying a bribe to clear Cheney of bribery charges. Huh?

Wait a second: Isn’t Halliburton in effect bribing Nigerian anti-corruption officials to drop bribery charges? The Nigerian government is essentially saying, “If you’re going to bribe anyone, you must bribe our government agency, not that other government agency.” If a bribe is called a fine, it’s no longer a bribe, apparently. See how language affects perception?

Reports are dribbling in that Nigeria may drop charges against former U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney and Halliburton over alleged bribery.

AFP and Reuters each reported that Nigerian anti-corruption officials met with representatives for Cheney and Halliburton in London. Reuters reported that the company offered to pay up to $250 million to clear the charges.

Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission said to Reuters that the offer had to be cleared by the government and a decision would be made by the end of the week.

Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal.

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New Jersey Cops Pumped up on Illegally Obtained Steroids

Hey, these guys need to bulk up if they’re going to keep the slaves in line.

On a rainy August morning in 2007, the news rippled through New Jersey’s law enforcement ranks, officer to officer, department to department.

Joseph Colao was dead.

The 45-year-old physician had collapsed in his Jersey City apartment, the victim of heart failure.

Within hours, officers were calling the Hudson County public safety complex.

“Is it true?” they asked, recalled Detective Sgt. Ken Kolich, who’d drawn the routine assignment to look into the death. “Did Dr. Colao die?”

Kolich didn’t suspect foul play, but he found it odd — and a little disturbing — that so many officers were interested in the fate of a man with no official ties to any police agency.

Today, it’s clear Colao was more than just a doctor, friend or confidant to many of the officers.

He was their supplier.

A seven-month Star-Ledger investigation drawing on prescription records, court documents and detailed interviews with the physician’s employees shows Colao ran a thriving illegal drug enterprise that supplied anabolic steroids and human growth hormone to hundreds of law enforcement officers and firefighters throughout New Jersey.

Read more at the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger.

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Cops Beat Woman for Refusing to Pick Up Dog Crap

She says the dog crap in question hadn’t even come from her dog. She was beaten for refusing to subject herself to the humiliation of picking it up at the order of a uniformed thug on a power trip. These cops are your overlords, lady. When they tell you to pick up dog crap, you pick up dog crap. Simple as that. Or suffer the consequences.

Ann Stanczyk had a Black Friday she’ll never forget – the 49-year-old Queens woman says she was humiliated and beaten by two NYPD cops in a dispute over dog droppings.

Pictures taken by her son a day after the Nov. 26 incident show Stanczyk with a welt under one eye and a garish purple bruise on her breast, plus injuries to her hands and knee.

Yesterday, the Polish immigrant filed a complaint with the Civilian Complaint Review Board and plans to sue.

“I just doing it to protect other people from police brutality,” Stanczyk told the Daily News. “I don’t want what happened to me happen to anyone else. I want to protect the others. If it can happen to me it can happen to other people.”

Stanczyk, a married housewife from Rockaway Beach, was walking her terrier, Psotka – Polish for “prankster” – when she wound up in a confrontation with two uniformed officers from the 100th Precinct, Shaun Grossweiler and Richard DeMartino.

“They saw my dog and they said I didn’t clean up,” said Stanczyk, fighting back tears as she spoke in halting English. “I said, ‘No, she only pee.’ They, of course, not agree with me and I say, ‘Show me. Where is it?’”

The officers found dog feces nearby, she said.

“Pick it up,” she said one cop ordered her. “I got scared. I pick up. I said, ‘It’s cold, not belong to my dog.‘ When I smiled and said I didn’t do anything, that made them very upset.”

Read more at the New York Daily News.

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City Seizes $190,000 from Two Men for No Reason

When we say that government is engaging in the open robbing of citizens, do you think we’re exaggerating? This is simply a case of government goons taking money from people by force. That’s how flagrant the theft has become.

The government is attempting to keep a little more than $190,000 it seized from two brothers after one of them was pulled over in a traffic stop that didn’t even result in a traffic ticket.

Jesus Martinez, 27, had $190,040 in his possession when his pickup truck was stopped by an Aurora police officer about 8:30 p.m. Oct. 18 near Indian Trail and Timberlake roads.

The police officer confiscated the cash, and the city has informed Martinez and his brother, Jose, 34, that Aurora will seek to keep it through civil forfeiture, a procedure that allows police agencies to seize property where the legal standard is lower than proof needed in a criminal forfeiture.

The brothers are home remodelers. Neither has been charged with a crime in this case, and neither has a criminal record, according to Kane County court records.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in 30 years of practice,” said Aurora attorney Patrick Kinnally, who is representing the brothers.

Read more at the Chicago Tribune.

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