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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Arnold Ahlert</title>
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		<title>Trouble in Berkeley, Missouri</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/trouble-in-berkeley-missouri/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=trouble-in-berkeley-missouri</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Dec 2014 05:27:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Berkeley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ferguson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[surveillance camera]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248132</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Protestors fight police after another shooting. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/berkeley12.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248135" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/berkeley12-450x253.jpg" alt="berkeley12" width="244" height="137" /></a>Another seemingly justified police shooting near Ferguson, MO briefly followed a sadly predictable script. In nearby Berkeley, a white police officer, aged 34, fired three shots, killing black American Antonio Martin, aged 18. The officer was responding to a report of stealing at a Mobil on the Run gas station. Martin allegedly pulled a 9mm handgun on the six-year veteran, who stumbled backwards as he fired, striking Martin once. &#8220;He will carry the weight of this for the rest of his life, certainly for the rest of his career,&#8221; said St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar, referring to the unidentified officer. &#8220;There are no winners here.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there were plenty of losers. Despite the efforts of Mayor Theodore Hoskins, who <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/missouri-police-officer-shoots-dead-man-who-pulled-gun-1419412121?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories">explained</a> the shooting had been captured on a surveillance camera and a weapon was recovered on the scene, between 200 and 300 protesters <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/berkeley-officer-fatally-shoots-teenager/article_d45db16a-7422-5307-b81d-b45dbdc896ba.html">gathered</a> there and began fighting with police officers. One of three explosive devices (possible fireworks) tossed near gas pumps sent one officer to the hospital with injuries to his leg, while another sustained facial lacerations as a result of bricks thrown at the officers by the mob. Several police cars were also damaged by rocks protesters brought to the area. Four people were arrested for assault.</p>
<p>Belmar said he understood why a crowd would gather, but he noted that &#8220;to come there armed with explosive devices is certainly something that is not safe for our community, is not safe for our businesses and is certainly not safe for our officers.” He also addressed questions from the crowd as to why the officer couldn’t have used pepper spray or a Taser to subdue the victim. He characterized that response as “unreasonable.” &#8220;We had somebody who was pointing a gun at a police officer,” he explained. &#8220;With not a lot of time, I would imagine that most of us would feel like we were in imminent danger of losing our lives at that point. And I think the officer responded with what he thought was commensurate force at the time.”</p>
<p>&#8220;I understand the emotions and I understand these young people are looking for something, but I think we have to understand the context of what happens down there with these kinds of situations,” he added.</p>
<p>The incident occurred at approximately 11:15 p.m. Tuesday night.  The officer encountered two men at the parking lot in the 6800 block of North Hanley Road and began talking to them. Belmar said one of the men approached the drivers side of the police vehicle. According to the police officer&#8217;s attorney, Brian Millikan, the other man kept wandering away despite the officer’s commands to remain close by.</p>
<p>One of the two men &#8220;produced a pistol with his arm straight out, pointing it straight at the officer kind of from across the hood,&#8221; Belmar said, further noting the police officer had a flashlight in his left hand and was near his driver’s side door while the armed man stood near the headlights on the passenger side of the vehicle. The officer proceeded to get his handgun &#8220;and fired what we think is three shots,” Belmar said. One struck Martin, one struck a tire on the police car, and the third shot remains unaccounted for.</p>
<p>After the shooting the officer was placed on administrative leave. Belmar <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/12/24/protesters-near-ferguson-injure-cops-with-bricks-explosives-after-officer-kills-armed-18-yr-old/">revealed</a> the suspect’s “defaced” 9 mm gun “had five rounds in the chamber and one round in the magazine.” He further revealed Martin had a criminal record that included three assault charges, as well as charges for armed robbery, armed criminal action and  multiple unlawful uses of a weapon.</p>
<p>Millikan recounted further details provided to him by the officer hours after the shooting &#8220;The other guy was doing the talking, and as the cop starts talking, the suspect starts walking away again,&#8221; Millikan said. &#8220;At that point, the cop says, &#8216;Hey, come back here,&#8217; and he turns around, pulls a gun from his left pant pocket. He&#8217;s trying to process all of this, and the suspect raises it, points it at him. The cop pulls his weapon and starts backpedaling and fired three or four shots. It happened that quickly. He doesn&#8217;t understand why the suspect&#8217;s gun didn&#8217;t fire. I&#8217;m not sure if he tried to pull the trigger and it jammed,” he added.</p>
<p>Millikan who further characterized the behavior of the two suspects as “bizarre” speculated that his client might have been set up for an ambush because the suspects remained at the scene after store employees called 911. &#8220;Their behavior is certainly bizarre, and it wouldn&#8217;t surprise me at all, in the environment we are in, that&#8217;s for sure,” he contended.</p>
<p>Belmar noted the officer dropped his flashlight when he stumbled while backpedaling, with Mayor Hoskins characterizing that as a blessing in disguise that may have saved the officer’s life. The officer had been given a body camera at the beginning of his shift, but wasn’t wearing it. Belmar said the officer was doing something else when it was handed out and simply forgot to put it on. The police car’s dashboard camera was also inoperative at the time because the car&#8217;s emergency lights were not on, Belmar explained.</p>
<p>All three men were relieved the incident was captured by surveillance cameras. Only the part prior to the shooting has been released so far. &#8220;The video goes on; there’s no reason for the family of this young man to have to see the rest of the video,” Belmar said, adding the department would be distributing more video from the scene, including footage of the officer retreating, to provide transparency.</p>
<p>According to Belmar, the officer was involved in a similar incident in 2011 or 2012, during which he and a suspect struggled for the officer’s gun. To prevent the suspect from using it, the officer purposefully dropped the magazine out of the weapon and fired the chambered round into the floor.</p>
<p>Martin’s family, who couldn’t be located initially, finally emerged. And while his mother admitted he had problems, it &#8220;doesn&#8217;t make any sense for them to kill my son like this,&#8221; Toni Martin-Green <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/24/372903198/son-s-death-doesn-t-make-any-sense-say-antonio-martin-s-parents">contended</a>.</p>
<p>Belmar expressed condolence for both families. &#8220;These are nothing but tragedies,&#8221; he said. &#8220;This is a family right now that, regardless of the decisions that this individual made, are without a family member this Christmas season. This is also a tragedy for the police officer. He will carry the weight of this for the rest of his life, certainly for the rest of his career. This really underscores the task that our police officers across the nation have to deal with day in and day out as they answer these calls in our community,&#8221; he added.</p>
<p>Belmar also praised Berkeley Police Chief Frank McCall for helping to calm the protests that dissipated by 3 a.m., noting he had ordered his commanders to “let this emotion vent. Let this happen.” Hoskins was also adamant, &#8220;You can&#8217;t compare this to Ferguson or the Garner case in New York,” he said emphasizing the videotape showed Martin pointing a gun at the officer. Nonetheless, he promised an investigation would be conducted in addition to the one by the St. Louis County Police.</p>
<p>The Mayor also illuminated the racial breakdown of the department. Out of 31 officers, 17 or 18 are African-American, and approximately 75 percent of the command staff are black, along with the the mayor, police chief and other city officials. The community itself is just over 9,000 residents, 80 percent of whom are black American.</p>
<p>Hoskins made one stumble. &#8220;At this point, our review indicates that the police did not initiate this, like Ferguson,” he stated. Considering the Ferguson grand jury&#8217;s findings, that statement is disingenuous at best, and self-serving at worst. However, the Mayor did stand strong when his press conference was interrupted by black Baptist minister Jason Keith Coleman, who characterized the shooting as another act of aggression by “trigger happy” police officers. &#8220;Everybody don&#8217;t die the same,&#8221; Hoskins snapped back. &#8220;Some people die because they initiate it, and at this point, our review suggests police did not initiate it.”</p>
<p>Earlier that evening Belmar addressed equally spurious assertions, noting that he had &#8220;already seen through social media that this officer stopped (Martin), questioned him, frisked him and then killed him in cold blood — well, that&#8217;s not what you&#8217;re going to see when you see the video.”</p>
<p>Considering what has, and continues to transpire in New York and other hotspots around the nation, one might be forgiven for wondering whether it matters. Despite the successful efforts of local officials, a leftist agenda, replete with false narratives, continues to widen the divide between police and the communities they serve. It is driven by those for whom police officers will forever be “ trigger happy,” irrespective of evidence, because a divided America, along with the eternal victimization of black Americans, is the only thing that separates the racial arsonists from the irrelevance they so richly deserve. That includes our feckless president, who chooses to remain on the golf course in Hawaii while Vice President Joe Biden has been <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/joe-biden-attend-funeral-slain-nypd-officer-rafael-ramos-n274016">dispatched</a> to attend the one of the two funerals of the two <em>minority</em> officers slain in New York City.</p>
<p>President Obama could have sent a powerful message with his attendance. Instead, he sends an equally powerful message with his absence. There is no political mileage to be gained by standing with police officers, even as his ideological fellow travelers stand against them, all of their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. Like his execrable Attorney General Eric Holder, Obama prefers the company of uber race-baiter Al Sharpton. It is this trio of men, along with New York’s equally feckless Mayor, Bill de Blasio, who have cultivated the &#8220;us against them”mentality they see as a vehicle for the &#8220;fundamental transformation&#8221; of America.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Berkeley, MO may prove that such a transformation is far from inevitable. We are a far better nation than the American left would have us believe, and the bet here is most Americans are finally beginning to realize it, one in their face, over the top, cop-bashing—and killing—moment after another.</p>
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		<title>Army Chaplain Punished for Mentioning Faith</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/army-chaplain-punished-for-mentioning-faith/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=army-chaplain-punished-for-mentioning-faith</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Dec 2014 05:52:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[army]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chaplain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[faith]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reprimand]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[suicide prevention]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248031</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Spreading holiday fear.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Praying012807.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248032" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Praying012807.jpg" alt="Praying012807" width="309" height="208" /></a>Apparently, the Obama administration’s ostensible determination to foster “diversity” in the military is a one-way street. Army Chaplain Joseph Lawhorn was <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/12/09/chaplain-punished-for-sharing-his-faith-in-suicide-prevention-class/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">disciplined</span></a> for mentioning his faith and the Bible as part of a November suicide prevention training seminar with the 5th Ranger Training Battalion. “You provided a two-sided handout that listed Army resources on one side and a biblical approach to handling depression on the other side,” wrote Col. David Fivecoat, commander of the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade at Ft. Benning, Georgia, in an official Letter of Concern. “This made it impossible for those in attendance to receive the resource information without also receiving the biblical information.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Lawhorn received the letter following orders to appear in Col. Fivecoat’s office on Thanksgiving Day. The letter <a href="http://www.armytimes.com/story/military/2014/12/10/army-chaplain-joseph-lawhorn-ranger-training-complaint/20213399/?sf34573836=%5B%22%5B'1'%5D%22%5D"><span style="color: #1255cc;">continued</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">As the battalion chaplain, you are entrusted to care for the emotional wellbeing of all soldiers in the battalion. You, above all others, must be cognizant of the various beliefs held by diverse soldiers. During mandatory training briefings, it is imperative you are careful to avoid any perception you are advocating one system of beliefs over another.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">The sequence of events leading to the action taken against Lawhorn should sound familiar. The session took place Nov. 20 at the University of North Georgia. Lawhorn handed out the two-sided document, recited some scripture, and explained how he used the Bible to cope with his <i>own</i> bout of depression. A single soldier was “offended” by Lawhorn’s presentation and reported him to the <a href="http://militaryatheists.org/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers</span></a> (MAAF). Writing on behalf the MAAF, former Army Captain Jason Torpy characterized Lawhorn’s presentation as &#8220;an abuse of power and a violation of regulations.” He further accused Lawhorn of engaging in “conscience protection” which he defined as &#8220;an insidious legal tool designed to allow military chaplains to use their power and authority to evangelize vulnerable military populations.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="https://www.libertyinstitute.org/take-action/give?gclid=CO7q9t_G3MICFYtr7AodBBUAqw">The Liberty Institute</a></span> is defending Lawhorn. Attorney Michael Berry contends the soldier who filed the complaint “exploited” the chaplain’s “vulnerability.” “It took a great amount of courage for Chaplain Lawhorn to discuss his own personal battle with depression,” Berry explained. “At no time did he consider himself to be in a ‘preacher’ role.” Berry further insisted the Letter of Concern violated Lawhorn’s constitutional rights. “Not only is it lawful for a chaplain to talk about matters of faith and spirituality and religion in a suicide prevention training class &#8211; but the Army policy encourages discussion of matters of faith and spiritual wellness,” he told Fox News’s Todd Starnes. “The fact that one person in the class was offended changes nothing.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Berry appears to be on solid ground. The passage of the last two National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA), included provisions expanding the rights of service members and chaplains to express their religious beliefs. Despite that effort, a congressional hearing on the matter taking place the same day Lawhorn was doing the seminar <a href="http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/11/20/pentagons-religious-guidance-spurred-tsunami-of-confusion.html?ESRC=eb.nl"><span style="color: #1255cc;">revealed</span></a> that a &#8220;tsunami of confusion” has been engendered among military commanders, chaplains and personnel attempting to determined the difference between religious practice and proselytization.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It was a hearing that didn’t sit well with former marine pilot Tom Carpenter. In a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-carpenter/religious-accommodation-a_b_6207764.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">piece</span></a> for the Huffington Post, he characterized it as a “set up,” where the outcome is “preordained.” He further insisted the expansion of religious rights is &#8220;an attempt by the ultra conservative Christians in Congress to allow chaplains to witness for Christ to all service members AT ALL TIMES, [emphasis original] without fear of accountability,” and that &#8220;accommodation being considered by this committee is clearly a subterfuge to allow criticizing of LGB service members and proselytizing of all non-Christians.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Ron Crews, a retired <a href="http://www.military.com/Community/Home/0,14700,ARMY,00.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Army</span></a> chaplain and executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, testified at the hearing, citing what he believes was evidence of a double-standard. He noted that an article written by an Ohio Air National Guard member mentioning the importance of his faith and Jesus Christ was removed from an online newsletter, even as no action was taken against an airman writing a piece on atheism for a Moody Air Force Base newsletter.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Crews was quick to defend Lawhorn. “The chaplain did nothing wrong,” he explained. “At no time did he say his was the only or even the preferred way of dealing with depression. And at no time did he deny the validity of any other method. His story involves his faith journey. He was simply being a great Army chaplain &#8211; in ministering to his troops and providing first hand how he has dealt with depression in the past. That’s what chaplains do. They bare their souls for their soldiers in order to help them with crises they may be going through.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Adding weight to that assessment is the fact that Lawhorn is a chaplain who wears the Ranger Tab, meaning his personal stories were more than likely an effort to help his fellow Rangers identify similar tribulations in their own lives.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In an interview with the Daily Signal, Lawhorn <a href="http://dailysignal.com/2014/12/18/punished-referencing-bible-military-chaplain-tells-side-story/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">expressed</span></a> that idea, further insisting he was only doing his job. &#8220;What I had tried to communicate with my audience is that depression can be conquered, depression can be overcome, and there are a myriad of ways of dealing with depression,” he explained. “In this particular case, I had struggled myself personally with the issue at hand I was teaching.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">He pushed back against the disciplinary action taken against him. “When I spoke about faith in particular, and in particular my Christian faith, it was clear that I was speaking from first-person account,” he maintained. “In my particular situation, it was my faith that helped me to persevere and remain resilient in the face of depression. And I was very clear to my audience that that was one way to handle depression and thoughts of suicide, but it certainly was not the only way.” Lawhorn further maintained that “any handout or any resource I provided soldiers who might need help was completely optional. It was up to them whether to take it or leave it.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Col. Fivecoat was unmoved. On Dec. 12 he sent Lawhorn followup missive, “Letter of Concern Filing Determination,” in which he maintained he had “carefully considered” Lawhorn’s rebuttal, but still decided to file the Letter of Concern in the chaplain’s local file. Col. Fivecoat determined that Lawhorn’s assertions “did not disprove nor dissuade me that your actions made it impossible for those in attendance to receive the necessary resource information without also receiving biblical information.” He further insisted the Letter of Concern was a “professional development matter&#8221; and “an administrative action,” as opposed to a “punishment.” Nonetheless the letter will remain in Lawhorn’s file “for one year or until you are reassigned outside the Ranger and Training Brigade, whichever is sooner.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Part of Lawhorn’s rebuttal included 33 letters of support from soldiers who attended the session, and those who know him personally. &#8220;They all almost universally say that he said, &#8216;I&#8217;m not telling you that using faith or religion or spirituality is the only way to deal with it. I&#8217;m not telling you it&#8217;s the correct way to deal with it. I&#8217;m just saying this was what worked for me,&#8217;&#8221; Berry explained. Berry also noted the complaining soldier didn’t give Lawhorn an opportunity to address his concerns. &#8220;Had Chaplain Lawhorn known of this, he would have happily sat down with this soldier and answered any questions or concerns he or she had,” Berry wrote to Col. Fivecoat. &#8220;Unfortunately, Chaplain Lawhorn was not given this opportunity&#8211;a professional courtesy&#8211;because the soldier in question alerted a civilian advocacy group, the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, who apparently then alerted a media outlet, the Huffington Post.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), whose district includes the area where the seminar took place, also sent a letter to the Colonel, taking him to task. “I find it counterintuitive to have someone lead a suicide prevention course but prohibit them from providing their personal testimony,” Collins wrote.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">His consternation was <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/lauretta-brown/gen-boykin-army-violated-its-own-regulations-punishing-chaplain-using"><span style="color: #1255cc;">echoed</span></a> by retired Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, chairman of the Restore Military Religious Freedom Coalition (RMRFC). He insisted Lawhorn’s First Amendment rights were violated and the Col. Fivecoat’s letter was in violation of Army regulation. “You cannot either force a chaplain to do something that violates their conscience or prohibit them from following their faith,” Boykin explained referencing Section 533 of the 2013 NDAA.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The RMRFC has pushed the matter up the chain of command, sending a letter to Secretary of the Army John McHugh. They want the Letter of Concern withdrawn, and Col. Fivecoat reprimanded. “I want somebody in the chain of command to sit him down and explain to him what the Constitution provides for in terms of freedom of religion as well as freedom of speech,” Boykin told CNS News.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Boykin is also vice president of the Family Research Council (FRC) that has created a <a href="https://www.frc.org/get.cfm?c=CHECKOUT&amp;dmy=7B14423A-FFB6-7971-6D293700BDA55783&amp;CFID=31113323&amp;CFTOKEN=7ad9faef490eb7d5-AE4A1494-DF8C-E938-F52FCE2FAD1CF48A">petition</a> requesting the same result. As of Dec. 18, it had 20,000 signatures. “We just simply cannot ignore this nor let it stand,” Boykin declared. “Even if there’s no long-term impact on the chaplain professionally, it can’t stand because commanders cannot abuse their power by abusing their subordinates over their conscience and their faith.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The ultimate outcome remains to be seen, but the larger picture remains rather one-sided. The American left’s determination to socially engineer the military is as steeped in orthodoxy as any religion, yet the tenets of so-called Secular Humanism remain completely above challenge or reproach, irrespective of their effects on cohesion, morale and/or military preparedness. Moreover the notion that a <i>chaplain </i>should be disciplined for employing religion as <i>part</i> of the mix in a suicide prevention seminar is preposterous. It is clear that while the American left purports itself to be tolerant and non-judgmental, nothing could be further from the truth.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s &#8216;Operation Choke Point&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/obamas-operation-choke-point/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-operation-choke-point</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Dec 2014 05:40:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Banks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Discrimination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FDIC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gun manufacturer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[operation choke point]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247698</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the administration's crusade against lawful U.S. businesses won't be discontinued anytime soon.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/fdic.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247700" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/fdic-450x310.png" alt="fdic" width="350" height="241" /></a>Almost unbelievably, the Obama administration is involved in another scandalous abuse of power, one that has largely escaped the public’s attention. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a <a href="http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Staff-Report-FDIC-and-Operation-Choke-Point-12-8-2014.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">report</span></a> December 8 detailing the abuses by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), operating under the auspices of a program known as Operation Choke Point. Run by the Departments of Justice and Treasury, Operation Choke Point was supposed to target illegal businesses and prevent them from obtaining access to the U.S. financial system. Yet damning emails unearthed by investigators <a href="http://dailysignal.com/2014/12/08/these-7-revealing-emails-show-federal-agencies-scheming-to-target-legal-businesses/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reveal</span></a> regulatory officials were motivated by personal animus toward certain businesses. “It’s appalling that our government is working around the law to vindictively attack businesses they find objectionable,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a press release.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">&#8220;Internal FDIC documents confirm that Operation Choke Point is an extraordinary abuse of government power,” Issa. &#8220;In the most egregious cases, federal bureaucrats injected personal moral judgments into the regulatory process. Such practices are totally inconsistent with basic principles of good government, transparency and the rule of law.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Operation Choke Point was <a href="http://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/financial-fraud-enforcement-task-force-executive-director-michael-j-bresnick-exchequer"><span style="color: #1255cc;">publicly introduced</span></a> in March of 2013, when Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force Executive Director Michael J. Bresnickat bought it up in a speech at Washington D.C.’s Exchequer Club. Bresnickat assured his audience the reason the program was &#8220;focused on financial institutions and payment processors is because they are the so-called bottlenecks, or choke-points, in the fraud committed by so many merchants that victimize consumers and launder their illegal proceeds.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Five months later, the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323838204578654411043000772"><span style="color: #1255cc;">revealed</span></a> the troubling reality that one of the first targets of the program were payday lending operations. Peter Barden, spokesman for the Online Lenders Alliance, sounded the initial warning, noting government pressure forcing banks to stop payment processing &#8220;would cut off an important credit choice for millions of underserved consumers&#8221; and &#8220;send a troubling message to banks that at any point regulators can force them to stop processing legal transactions simply because they don&#8217;t like a particular merchant or industry.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In January 2014, Issa, along with Economic Growth Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), sent U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder a letter expressing concern that &#8220;both the goal and mechanisms of Operation Choke Point may constitute a serious mismanagement and abuse of the Department&#8217;s FIRREA [Financial Institution Reform and Recovery Act of 1989] authority.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Issa wanted answers. The DOJ felt it was under no obligation to provide them.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">By the end of May 2014, Issa’s concern had morphed into outrage. He issued a report <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/05/29/House-Committee-Report-DOJ-Must-Disavow-and-Dismantle-Operation-Choke-Point"><span style="color: #1255cc;">contending</span></a> Operation Choke Point was so “flagrantly illegal” it was beyond legal rehabilitation. &#8220;In light of the Department&#8217;s obligation to act within the bounds of the law, and its avowed commitment not to &#8216;discourage or inhibit&#8217; the lawful conduct of honest merchants, it is necessary to disavow and dismantle Operation Choke Point,” the report stated. It further noted that Holder knew about the program prior to its launch, that he knew it was aimed at targeting legal entities—and that he nonetheless fully supported its implementation. Furthermore, the report suggested that once the program became public, the DOJ may have attempted to cover up parts of its operation.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It was also discovered that Operation Choke Point had expanded beyond the payday lending industry, targeting manufacturers, distributors, and dealers of firearms and ammunition, as well as coin dealers. And it was also revealed that a January 23, 2014 deadline regarding Issa’s request for information came and went absent any indication the DOJ had fulfilled it.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Three days later, <a href="http://myfoxdc.com/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">MyFoxdc.com</span></a> <a href="http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/25668177/holders-gun-grab-via-operation-choke-point"><span style="color: #1255cc;">issued</span></a> a report on Operation Choke Point alleging the program targeted the gun industry because Obama failed to get gun control legislation passed by Congress. If such an effort has a familiar ring, it’s because Obama has employed precisely the same Congress-bypassing tactic with regard to illegal immigration. At that time, The National Shooting Sports Foundation revealed many of its members in the firearms and ammunitions manufacturing industries had had their banking relationships wrongfully terminated by the program.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The report released Dec. 8 put the pernicious scope of the program in full perspective. Its key findings reveal the FDIC “equated legitimate and regulated activities&#8230;with inherently pernicious or patently illegal activities,” via “circular argument policymaking”&#8211;an original list of high-risk merchants were determined by FDIC, who then justified formal guidelines for banks by claiming the categories “had been previously noted”—by the FDIC itself.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The most egregious revelations centered around FDIC policymakers whose “personal animus” towards the payday industry was so intense that their senior-most bank examiners &#8220;effectively ordered banks to terminate all relationships with the industry.” An email from Thomas Dujenski, FDIC’s Atlanta regional director, to Mark Pearce, director of the Division of Depositor and Consumer Protection underscores that personal animus:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">I have never said this to you (but I am sincerely passionate about this) … but I literally cannot stand the pay day lending industry … I had extensive involvement with this group of lenders and was instrumental in drafting guidance on stopping abuses.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Another damning email reveals that John Miller, <a href="https://www.fdic.gov/about/comein/bio-panelist/bio-fdic-miller.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Deputy Director</span></a> for Policy and Research in the Division of Depositor and Consumer Protection at the FDIC, was concerned about “taking pornography” out the equation in letters about targeted businesses to Congress. The redacted writer of the email expressed his concern that lumping pornography in with online gambling and payday loan companies might make it appear that the FDIC was making “moral judgments regarding the types of businesses with which our institutions deal.” The email continues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Jonathan heard where we were coming from but nonetheless wants to retain a reference to pornography in our letters/talking points. He thinks it’s important for Congress to get a good picture regarding the unsavory nature of the businesses at issue. He repeated that ‘one is judged by the friends one keeps,’ and he seems to feel strongly that including payday lenders in the same circle as pornographers and on-line gambling businesses will ultimately help with messaging on this issue.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">If you feel there is legal argument beyond the one I made, and would like us to push back on this issue, please let me know.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">The report’s conclusions are unambiguous. &#8220;The practical impact of Operation Choke Point is incontrovertible: legal and legitimate businesses are being choked off from the financial system,” it states, further noting the experiences endured by firearms and ammunition dealers &#8220;is a testament to the destructive and unacceptable impact of Operation Choke Point.” The report’s last paragraph is a testament to the corrupt nature of the Obama administration and its power-abusing impulses:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">&#8220;At a minimum, Operation Choke Point is little more than government-mandated de-risking. FDIC, in cooperation with the Justice Department, made sure banks understood–or in their own language, &#8216;got the message&#8217;–that maintaining relationships with certain disfavored business lines would incur enormous regulatory risk. The effect of this policy has been to deny countless legal and legitimate merchants access to the financial system and deprive them of their very ability to exist. Accordingly, Operation Choke Point violates the most fundamental principles of the rule of law and accountable, transparent government.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Last June, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/senator-rand-paul-tries-to-right-a-wrong-by-the-obama-administration"><span style="color: #1255cc;">filed</span></a> an amendment to the Science Justice Commerce Appropriations bill attempting to cut off the administration&#8217;s efforts to effectively shut down gun stores via Operation Choke Point. It followed the May 2014 passage of a House amendment sponsored by Rep. Blane Luetkeymeyer (R-MO) to <a href="http://www.conservativeactionalerts.com/2014/05/house-defunds-doj-choke-point-bullying-operation/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">defund</span></a> the program. It was ultimately <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2014/06/03/establishment-press-ignores-house-vote-defund-operation-choke-point"><span style="color: #1255cc;">approved</span></a> by 204 Republicans and 117 Democrats. An article published by Human Events on Nov. 17, 2014 <a href="http://humanevents.com/2014/11/17/if-it-walks-like-a-lame-duck/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">indicates</span></a> the program has yet to be addressed in the still Democratically-controlled Senate.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">After trying several senators’ offices, FrontPage contacted a source in Washington, D.C. who requested anonymity. He made a valiant effort to find any mention of the Operation Choke Point in the recently passed $1.1 trillion CRomnibus bill funding the federal government for FY2015. The search proved unsuccessful, indicating that it is more than likely Operation Choke Point remains alive and well. It behooves a GOP-controlled Congress to kill this egregious abuse of power as one of its first orders of business next year. The American public has no use whatsoever for public officials willing to trample the law to satisfy their personal worldview. In short, it’s time to strangle Operation Choke Point.</p>
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		<title>Taliban School Slaughter</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/taliban-school-slaughter/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=taliban-school-slaughter</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Dec 2014 05:54:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Taliban]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247651</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Islamic child sacrifice reaches grisly new low in Pakistan. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/635543241836764189-AP-Pakistan-002.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247656" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/635543241836764189-AP-Pakistan-002-450x316.jpg" alt="635543241836764189-AP-Pakistan-002" width="313" height="220" /></a>The mind-numbing savagery of radical Islam plumbed new depths in Pakistan yesterday. Taliban terrorists shouting &#8220;Allahu akbar&#8221; <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/pakistan-school-massacre/pakistan-school-attack-taliban-militants-kill-more-140-peshawar-n269011"><span style="color: #1255cc;">attacked</span></a> the Army Public School and Degree College in Peshawar, slaughtering 142 people, including 132 children <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/taliban-storms-pakistani-military-school-kills-20-students-article-1.2046714"><span style="color: #1255cc;">between</span></a> the ages of six and 16. Another 10 staff members, including the principal, were also murdered. &#8220;They didn&#8217;t take any hostages initially and started firing in the hall,” said Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa, a military spokesman.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The details of the slaughter are horrific. “We were in the education hall when militants barged in, shooting,” <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/world/asia/taliban-attack-pakistani-school.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> Zeeshan, a student, speaking at a hospital. “Our instructor asked us to duck and lay down and then I saw militants walking past rows of students shooting them in the head.” Another student confirmed those shootings. &#8220;The gunmen entered class by class and shot some kids one by one,” he told local media. Jamshed Khan, a school bus driver, also described the scene. &#8220;We were standing outside the school and firing suddenly started and there was chaos everywhere and the screams of children and teachers,” he said.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/peshawar-school-attack-taliban-burn-teacher-alive-front-pupils-behead-children-1479767?">According</a></span> to the <i>International Business Times</i>, the Taliban monsters allegedly stooped even lower to satisfy their bloodlust. &#8220;They burnt a teacher in front of the students in a classroom,&#8221; an unnamed military source revealed. &#8220;They literally set the teacher on fire with gasoline and made the kids watch.” Moreover, Pakistani officials revealed that many of the dead children brought to the hospital had their heads chopped off.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The assault began around 11 a.m. local time (1 a.m. EST)  when <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30491435"><span style="color: #1255cc;">seven terrorists</span></a> wearing police uniforms and suicide vests scaled the wall of the school. They immediately began lobbing hand grenades and shooting indiscriminately at a time when approximately 1,000 of the school’s 2,500 male and female students in grades one through 10 were in attendance. The siege lasted more than eight hours, with Pakistani security forces forced to deal with five “heavy” explosions heard around 5 a.m. EST, in a seeming attempt to hinder rescue efforts. All seven attackers were ultimately killed, with the <i>Daily News</i> reporting that once they were finally cornered by Pakistani commandos &#8220;they blew themselves up rather than surrender.&#8221; A sweep of the compound for additional explosives was subsequently undertaken.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">An unnamed security official illuminated the one and only objective of these savage thugs. “These attackers were not in the mood to take hostages,” he said. “They were there to kill and this is what they did.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The killers <a href="http://pamelageller.com/2014/12/126-dead-in-taliban-attack-on-school-hundreds-of-children-held-hostage.html/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">were</span></a> part of the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) group, a Pakistani terrorist organization attempting to over throw the Pakistani government, and the same group to which wannabe 2010 Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad belonged. TTP spokesman Mohammed Khurasani <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/807564/gunmen-target-school-in-peshawar/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> the Karachi-based <i>Express Tribune</i> the attack was an act of revenge. “We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females,” he said, referring to Pakistan’s ongoing military offensive taking place on the Afghan border. “We want them to feel the pain.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Gen. Bajwa confirmed that almost all of the children killed belonged to members of the Pakistani military. Army chief of staff General Raheel Sharif called the killers “inhuman beasts.” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who arrived in Peshawar where authorities have declared a three-day mourning period, promised certain reprisal. “Those behind the heinous act will not be spared,” he vowed.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Sharif also announced a meeting of all government parties scheduled for today. Its comes amidst political turbulence orchestrated by opposition leader Imran Khan whose political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), controls the provincial government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Khan has led a series of protests in a effort to unseat Sharif, because he believes the Prime Minister’s supporters rigged the 2013 election, and because he disagrees with the army’s ongoing effort against terrorists in tribal areas. That effort, known as Operation Zarb-e-Azb, has killed approximately 1,800 terrorists operating in North Waziristan, an epicenter of Taliban terrorist activity. And while public support for that campaign has been described as “lukewarm,” due to what by government policy-makers attribute to &#8220;lack of consensus&#8221; and &#8220;large pockets of sympathy” for terrorists, Khan&#8217;s belief the government should negotiate with the terrorists instead of fighting them has garnered considerable criticism.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unfortunately, he is not alone in that regard. The same day President Obama insisted the Taliban had &#8220;once again shown their depravity,&#8221; Breitbart News <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/12/16/Obama-2012-My-Administration-is-Negotiating-With-The-Taliban"><span style="color: #1255cc;">revealed</span></a> a statement made in 2012 by Obama at Bagram Airfield Base, home of the U.S. Air Forces Central Command in Afghanistan. &#8220;We&#8217;re pursuing a negotiated peace. In coordination with the Afghan government my administration has been in direct discussions with the Taliban &#8230; Many members of the Taliban, from foot soldiers to leaders, have indicated an interest in reconciliation,” he said at the time.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The BBC wonders whether this heinous attack will constitute a “watershed” moment for the Pakistani government. Americans might be forgiven for wondering the same thing with regard to the Obama administration.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Other world leaders issued forceful condemnations of the slaughter. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon referred to it as &#8220;an act of horror and rank cowardice.” British Prime Minister David Cameron characterized it as “deeply shocking,” adding that it was “horrifying that children are being killed simply for going to school.<i>” </i>Indian prime minister Narendra Modi called it “cowardly,” and a &#8220;senseless act of unspeakable brutality that has claimed lives of the most innocent of human beings&#8211;young children in their school.”<i> </i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Nobel Prize winner<i> </i><a href="http://www.dailyworth.com/posts/3014-10-fast-facts-about-malala-yousafzai"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Malala Yousafzai</span></a>, the young girl shot in the head by would-be Taliban assassins in 2012 when she was only 15, also added her voice to the mix. “Innocent children in their school have no place in horror such as this,” she said in a statement. “I, along with millions of others around the world, mourn these children, my brothers and sisters — but we will never be defeated.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Pakistan has <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/16/pakistan-taliban-peshawar-massacre-attack"><span style="color: #1255cc;">already responded</span></a> to the tragedy. Gen. Shariff tweeted that “massive air strikes” had been carried out in the Khyber region of the country, and Sharif insisted that Operation Zarb-e-Azb &#8220;will continue until the terrorism is rooted out from our land.” The latest attack is part of a bloody track record in a nation where 50,000 people have been killed by terrorist violence in the past 13 years.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Devastated parent Tahir Ali expressed the grief undoubtedly shared by every parent victimized by this brutality. &#8220;My son was in uniform in the morning, he is in a casket now,” Ali said. “My son was my dream. My dream has been killed.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">One would hope the world’s denial about radical Islam, pockmarked by occasional outbursts of horror whenever the next atrocity occurs, will suffer the same fate. We are two days removed from the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/lindt-chocolat-cafe-hostage-drama-in-martin-place-sydney-20141215-1278cx.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">attack</span></a> in Sydney, one of many where the mainstream media and feckless politicians seek the false comfort of the “lone wolf” theory that amounts to nothing more than a willful refusal to connect the dots.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">An Obama administration that refers to the war on terror as “an overseas contingency operation” and applauds the conclusions of a one-sided report denigrating the CIA, hardly inspires confidence that the status quo will change. Thus, the only question is when the next horrific atrocity will occur. Should Americans have confidence that it won&#8217;t be in their own shopping malls, train stations, airports and city squares? The answer is a clear &#8220;no.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>Budget Battle Royale</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/budget-battle-royale/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=budget-battle-royale</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Dec 2014 05:25:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247279</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The “CRomnibus" bill pushes through. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/141027-electionpoll-editorial.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247280" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/141027-electionpoll-editorial-450x300.jpg" alt="As Deadline On Debt Reduction Impasse Looms, Super Committee Meets Over Weekend" width="353" height="235" /></a>Thursday was filled with chaos in the capital. By a razor thin margin, the Republican-controlled House voted in favor of the $1.1 trillion “CRomnibus” funding bill. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) was forced to cajole conservative GOPers to switch their votes after it appeared it was headed for defeat earlier in the day. All of the machinations were aimed at preventing a government shutdown beginning at midnight.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">For a brief moment in time early Thursday, the nay votes outnumbered the yeas for the current <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/12/11/Boehner-Omnibus-Bill-Size-Grows-An-Extra-171-Pages-Overnight-Now-1774-Pages-Long"><span style="color: #1255cc;">1,774-page bill</span></a> allocating $1.01 trillion of federal spending for FY2015. That’s because conservative Republicans remain infuriated by the reality ObamaCare remains <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/12/09/whats-in-the-spending-bill-we-skim-it-so-you-dont-have-to/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">fully funded</span></a>, save for a $10 million budget cut for Independent Payment Advisory Board, and the president’s executive amnesty program remains funded until February. Nonetheless, $948 million has been allocated for the Department of Health and Human Service’s (DHS) unaccompanied children program, increasing that budget by $80 million, and another $14 million is aimed at helping school districts absorb new immigrant students. Adding insult to conservative injury, the State Department is on track to receive $260 million to assist the Central American countries responsible for the onslaught of children crossing the Southwest border over the summer.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“The fix is in, which I’ve been saying all along,” <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/12/10/Conservatives-Express-Anger-That-Amnesty-Not-Defunded-In-Omnibus-The-Fix-Is-In"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) following the Republican conference Wednesday morning. “Promises around here&#8211;regardless of who they are made by&#8211;don’t seem to mean anything,” he added, further explaining that lawmakers’ phones have been “lighting up” with constituents asking them to “do what [they] were elected to do.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Salmon was one of sixteen Republicans, including Reps. Justin Amash (R-MI), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Dave Brat (R-VA), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Paul Broun (R-GA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), Walter Jones (R-NC), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Steve King (R-IA), Raul Labrador (R-ID), Tom Massie (R-KY), Bill Posey (R-FL), and and Steve Stockman (R-TX) who refused to accommodate GOP leadership on the debate vote.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Democrats were equally resistant, with most of their opposition aimed primarily at two riders. The <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/226788-dems-to-boehner-change-the-bill"><span style="color: #0433ff;">first one</span></a> waters down the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, allowing Wall Street banks to trade the risky derivatives banned by that bill. The second provision allows wealthy political donors to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/12/09/spending-deal-would-allow-wealthy-donors-to-dramatically-increase-giving-to-national-parties/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">dramatically increase</span></a> the amount of money they can donate to national political parties. &#8220;Stakeholders from across the progressive community&#8211;including the AFL-CIO, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Public Citizen, Communications Workers, Common Cause, and many others&#8211;have expressed their opposition to passing a funding bill that includes these dangerous provisions,” said leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), who were urging Democrats to vote no.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet many Democrats remained ambivalent due to the 2014 election that eliminated their Senate majority and increased Republican numbers in the House. While they don’t like the CRomnibus, some see it as their last chance to exert any influence over spending while they still retain their Senate majority. Furthermore, they were all aware of the reality that if the bill failed, GOP leadership was prepared to move forward with a shorter alternative.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">President Obama offered his support for the package both <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/finance/226817-white-house-signals-support-for-cromnibus-ahead-of-critical-vote"><span style="color: #1255cc;">before</span></a> and <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/113/saphr83h_20141211.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">shortly after</span></a> the vote took place. GOP leadership needed 50-60 Democrats to make up for the likely conservative defectors in their own party, and it appeared the president was well aware of that reality.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet even as Obama expressed his support, several Senate Democrats <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/226824-liberal-senators-threaten-to-oppose-omnibus"><span style="color: #1255cc;">rallied</span></a> around Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), viewed by many as that party’s newest star, to express their opposition to the aforementioned provisions for Wall Street and political donors. &#8220;It’s a very black mark on the omnibus if it comes over to the Senate with that in it. I certainly would consider voting no on it,&#8221; said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) also contended there would be a “problem” if the current language on Dodd-Frank remained intact. Warren remained adamant. “A vote for this bill is a vote for future taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street,” she insisted.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Warren might have a tad more credibility were it not for the reality that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two lending giants at the center of the housing meltdown, will once again be <a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2014/12/09/mortgage-down-payments"><span style="color: #1255cc;">offering</span></a> 3 percent down payments on mortgages to “qualified” home buyers. Those would be the same Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae left <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/272368/dodd-frank-s-fannie-trap-john-berlau"><span style="color: #1255cc;">untouched</span></a> by Dodd-Frank.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Two upsides for conservatives in the package includes a $60 million cut in the EPA’s budget to $8.1 billion. That brings the agency’s budget down a total of 21 percent since 2010, and staffing to its lowest level since 1989. The IRS also takes a $345.6 million hit, and the bill includes a future ban on their now infamous efforts to target organizations seeking tax-exempt status based on their ideological beliefs.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At 2 p.m. the drama intensified, when House leaders <a href="http://www3.blogs.rollcall.com/218/lacking-sufficient-support-house-gop-leaders-delay-cromnibus-vote/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">called</span></a> for a recess instead of a vote, with a GOP aide insisting “leadership teams are still talking to their respective members. We still plan to vote this afternoon,” the aide added. At that point, whether they were voting on the CRomnibus package or a short-term Continuing Resolution remained unclear. The delay indicated GOP leadership was having trouble corralling enough of their own membership, while Nancy Pelosi sought to undercut support by Democrats and Obama with a fiery floor speech, saying she was “enormously disappointed” with the Obama administration.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Ironically, it was a Tea Party congressman defeated by the GOP establishment who <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/394438/reindeer-farmer-saves-boehner-dramatic-procedural-vote-joel-gehrke"><span style="color: #1255cc;">managed</span></a> to get Boehner past the initial hurdle. With the vote tied at 213-213, Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI) change his no vote to a yes. The outgoing reindeer farmer saved Boehner from enduring a major embarrassment that not only had forced Boehner to cast a vote himself (a rarity), but forced him to keep the vote going after time had officially expired. Frustrated Democrats shouted, “Call the vote,” but the Speaker ignored them until he got the result he wanted.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Irrespective of that vote, Obama’s immigration excesses and the healthcare bill remain sticking points for the GOP. Regarding immigration, GOP leadership <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/226737-government-shutdown-would-not-stop-obama-action-on-immigration"><span style="color: #1255cc;">posits</span></a> they’ll be better positioned to take on de facto amnesty a month from now, when they get their Senate majority and larger share of the House. “If you’re gonna start a bar fight, start it when you’ve got as many friends in the bar as you can possibly have. Why would you start it now?” said Boehner ally Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK). A leadership aide echoed that contention, insisting the GOP has an “array of legislative and legal options” they can employ—without specifying any of them. The two flies in the proverbial ointment include an Obama veto, and regardless of funding or lack thereof, how many DHS workers could be deemed “essential,” preventing them from being furloughed. That’s why conservative GOPers preferred to fight using the entire budget as a hammer.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">ObamaCare is a different story. Obama still has veto power, but several Democrats, including Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Harry Reid (D-NV), have <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/04/after-midterm-drubbing-senior-dems-voicing-regret-over-obamacare/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">expressed</span></a> regret regarding its passage, and ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber embarrassed himself <a href="http://qpolitical.com/thats-the-best-you-got-trey-gowdy-embarrasses-gruber-on-his-insulting-comments-about-americans/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">during</span></a> testimony on Capitol Hill. There was also <i>another</i> video released yesterday in which he <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/11/in-a-new-video-jon-gruber-boasted-that-he-helped-write-obamacare/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">claimed</span></a> he “helped write” the bill. Moreover, the Supreme Court is <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/how-the-supreme-court-can-kill-obamacare-without-overturning-it-20141117"><span style="color: #1255cc;">poised to rule</span></a> on <i>King v. Burwell, </i>a case where the plaintiffs contend only healthcare exchanges “established by the state” can provide IRS tax subsidies to ObamaCare enrollees. If the Court rules according to the law as written, the roughly 4 to 5 million people now receiving financial assistance would lose it in the 36 states that didn’t set up their own exchanges. And the law, as <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/poll-obamacare-approval-112948.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">unpopular as ever</span></a> with the public, would essentially be gutted. All of this may provide impetus for a bipartisan effort to make majors changes to the law—even changes that might garner enough support to override a veto by Obama.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At around 5:30 p.m. Democrats <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/2015-gop-budget-back-up-plan-113498.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">convened</span></a> a closed meeting to discuss the bill following a series of phone calls from Obama and Vice President Biden, urging party members to vote for it. Pelosi remained against it, insisting Republicans &#8220;don’t have enough votes,” while GOP leadership indicated they could either pass a three-month stop-gap measure avoiding a shutdown, or a weeklong measure giving Boehner more time to marshal support. “We expect the bill to pass with bipartisan support today, but if it does not, we will pass a short-term CR to avoid a government shutdown,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The American public? <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/11/amnesty-protestors-crash-capitol-hill-switchboard/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Jamming</span></a> the congressional switchboard with calls most likely opposed to even a temporary funding of Obama’s de facto amnesty, much like a similar wave of calls opposing immigration legislation attempted by both parties in 2006 and 2007.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In the end, the status quo—the member-added pork, the absurd outlays for outrageous inanities, the deficit spending adding to a national debt that now tops $18 trillion, and the public-insulting passage of bills unread by the people who pass them—remains undisturbed. The express train to fiscal oblivion, in a country where national sovereignty is becoming an anachronism in pursuit of cheap labor and cheap votes, and the concerns of the elitist few overwhelm those of an outraged public deemed too “stupid” to know what’s good for them, remains on track.</p>
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		<title>The Senate CIA Report and Democratic Treachery</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-senate-cia-report-and-democratic-treachery/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-senate-cia-report-and-democratic-treachery</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-senate-cia-report-and-democratic-treachery/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Dec 2014 05:55:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CIA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Interrogation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Torture]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247157</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Putting American lives on the line for a political payout.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/feinstein.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247160" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/feinstein-432x350.png" alt="feinstein" width="315" height="255" /></a>On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released the 500-page executive summary of the report on the CIA’s enhanced interrogation of terrorist detainees. Democrats, the media and Republican Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) are using it as an opportunity to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/09/politics/cia-torture-report/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hammer</span></a> the CIA and the Bush administration, while American embassies, military units and other U.S. interests are <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/us-prepares-security-risks-torture-report-080155482--politics.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">preparing</span></a> for possible reprisals. But adding further threats to Americans already in harm&#8217;s way matters not. Beleaguered congressional Democrats are desperate for a political boon and have turned to an old standby: sabotaging national security and sacrificing American lives.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Since their betrayal of the Iraq war, Democrats, particularly in the Senate, have panned the techniques used by the CIA to garner critical information in the days following 9/11 as “torture,” and have claimed that they yielded no useful intel. Though the use of these techniques was long known to Democrats — with virtual indifference toward them at the outset — many Democrats have since claimed they were unaware of what was occurring, which explains their lack of opposition to their government supposedly engaging in “torture.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Leading the way on the latter fabrication was then-House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Her ongoing denials regarding knowledge of the CIA&#8217;s waterboarding of terrorists were ultimately undone by Pelosi herself in 2009, when she finally <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/pelosi-cia-misled-congress-over-waterboarding/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">admitted</span></a> she had known about the program since 2003. Yet even as she admitted it, she continued to promote the “Bush lied, people died” lie, insisting that &#8220;the C.I.A. was misleading the Congress and at the same time the administration was misleading the Congress on weapons of mass destruction.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Those would be the same weapons of mass destruction whose existence was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html?smid=tw-share&amp;_r=3"><span style="color: #1255cc;">acknowledged</span></a> by the <i>New York Times</i> last October.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">As for so-called torture, the report <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-intelligence-committee-cia-torture-report.html?emc=edit_na_20141209&amp;nlid=23627335&amp;_r=0"><span style="color: #0433ff;">cited</span></a> sleep deprivation, threatening subjects with death, “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” described by the CIA&#8217;s chief of interrogations as a way to exert “total control over detainees,” and waterboarding, as in simulating near drowning. The report further stated that former CIA directors George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden hyped the value of those techniques in secret briefings with the White House and Congress.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein admitted that she “could understand the C.I.A.&#8217;s impulse to consider the use of every possible tool to gather intelligence and remove terrorists from the battlefield, and the C.I.A. was encouraged by political leaders and the public to do whatever it could to prevent another attack,” but that “such pressure, fear and expectation of further terrorist plots do not justify, temper or excuse improper actions taken by individuals or organizations in the name of national security. The major lesson of this report is that regardless of the pressures and the need to act, the intelligence community’s actions must always reflect who we are as a nation, and adhere to our laws and standards.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The hypocrisy is breathtaking. While the Left wrings its collective hands about “torture,” they remain silent to Barack Obama’s <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team-obama-justifies-the-killing-of-a-16-year-old-american/264028/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">drone program</span></a>. One that has not only killed terrorists, but America citizens, Samir Khan, and Anwar al-Awlaki. Both men were traitors, but they were executed without the due process the Left supposedly reveres so much in the case of terrorist detainees. So was Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, as well as innocents who were victims of collateral damage. No one was reported to have been killed by the Bush administration&#8217;s enhanced interrogation techniques, yet somehow Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney are routinely <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Bush+Cheney+war+criminals&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8"><span style="color: #1255cc;">referred</span></a> to as “war criminals” while Obama largely gets a pass.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The <i>Washington Post’s</i> Bill Gerson cuts right through the double-standard, noting intelligence personnel now being excoriated received the same “direction and protection,” consisting of presidential approval, congressional briefing, lawfulness determined by the U.S. Attorney General and target value determined by the CIA Director as those currently participating in the drone program. &#8220;Some may argue a subtle moral distinction between harshly interrogating a terrorist and blowing his limbs apart,” Gerson writes. &#8220;But international human rights groups and legal authorities generally look down on both. The main difference? One is Obama’s favorite program. A few years from now, a new president and new congressional leaders may take a different view.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">This double standard puts the lie to Democrats’ seriousness toward the claim that the Bush administration engaged in “torture,” illegality and human rights abuses in its mission to thwart terrorist attacks against the homeland. In truth, the campaign against tough interrogation is a political cudgel that Democrats have employed to bludgeon their political enemies, no matter the national security cost. It amounts to nothing less than a revisionist effort to turn those entrusted with protecting the country in the immediate aftermath of the worst domestic attack in American history into pariahs, even as the war remains ongoing. As Gerson so rightly notes, the report’s release is an act of &#8220;exceptional congressional recklessness” engineered by Feinstein, whose &#8220;legacy is a massive dump of intelligence details useful to the enemy in a time of war.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Our allies are equally appalled. ”Foreign leaders have approached the government and said, &#8216;You do this, this will cause violence and deaths,&#8221;&#8217; <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/08/house-intelligence-chairman-rogers-report-will-spur-attacks/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">warned</span></a> Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. &#8220;Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged such concerns, but insisted the administration &#8220;strongly supports the release of this declassified summary of the report.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">No doubt. The release neatly coincided with ObamaCare mega-consultant Jonathan Gruber’s Congressional <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/09/politics/gruber-hearing/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">testimony</span></a> regarding his contempt for the American public, and the deception employed to get the ACA passed. Thus, the administration has once again employed a bait and switch effort to distract the public, despite the fact that distraction imperils Americans and our allies.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">CIA veteran Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who ran the enhanced interrogation program, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/todays-cia-critics-once-urged-the-agency-to-do-anything-to-fight-al-qaeda/2014/12/05/ac418da2-7bda-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">destroys</span></a> the contention that Democrats were out of the loop, and that the enhanced interrogation techniques yielded no useful information. &#8220;The leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and of both parties in Congress were briefed on the program more than 40 times between 2002 and 2009,” he reveals, noting those same lawmakers &#8220;urged us to do everything possible to prevent another attack on our soil.” He was equally forthright about the intel that was garnered. &#8220;After extraordinary CIA efforts, aided by information obtained through the enhanced-interrogation program, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed architect of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in Pakistan,&#8221; he explains.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">He is especially critical of “hypocritical&#8221; Democrats. He cites Feinstein&#8217;s 2002 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/weekinreview/all-fronts-getting-more-than-one-step-ahead-of-an-attack.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">assertion</span></a> that &#8220;we have to do some things that historically we have not wanted to do to protect ourselves,” as well as an <a href="http://votesmart.org/public-statement/15557/cnn-late-edition-with-wolf-blitzer#.VIdvyifFm3d"><span style="color: #1255cc;">interview</span></a> between CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WVA), then the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. In response to Blitzer’s question about whether Khalid Sheik Mohammed might be turned over to friendly countries with no restrictions on torture, the Senator admitted it was possible. “I wouldn’t take anything off the table where he is concerned, because this is the man who has killed hundreds and hundreds of Americans over the last 10 years,” he replied.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Rodriguez then adds a dose of devastating perspective to the mix. &#8220;If Feinstein, Rockefeller and other politicians were saying such things in print and on national TV, imagine what they were saying to us in private….Our reward, a decade later, is to hear some of these same politicians expressing outrage for what was done and, even worse, mischaracterizing the actions taken and understating the successes achieved,” he states.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Current and former CIA leaders <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/defense/226465-spies-push-back-on-senate-report"><span style="color: #1255cc;">bitterly contested</span></a> the report. Bush-era CIA Director George Tenet labeled it &#8220;biased, inaccurate, and destructive,” adding that it &#8220;does damage to U.S. national security, to the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency, and most of all to the truth.” CIA Director John Brennan said the agency made mistakes, but insisted &#8220;the record does not support the study’s inference that the agency systematically and intentionally misled each of these audiences on the effectiveness of the program.” A <a href="http://ciasavedlives.com/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">website</span></a> launched by a number of intelligence officials blasted the report:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>The recently released Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) Majority report on the CIA&#8217;s Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program is marred by errors of facts and interpretation and is completely at odds with the reality that the leaders and officers of the Central Intelligence Agency lived through. It represents the single worst example of Congressional oversight in our many years of government service.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Cheney also remains <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/us/politics/white-house-and-gop-clash-over-torture-report.html?emc=edit_th_20141209&amp;nl=todaysheadlines&amp;nlid=62431058&amp;_r=1"><span style="color: #1255cc;">resolute</span></a> about the necessity and legality of the program. “What I keep hearing out there is they portray this as a rogue operation, and the agency was way out of bounds and then they lied about it,” he said in a telephone interview with the <i>New York Times</i>. “I think that’s all a bunch of hooey. The program was authorized. The agency did not want to proceed without authorization, and it was also reviewed legally by the Justice Department before they undertook the program.” Cheney also had nothing but praise for those who participated. “As far as I’m concerned, they ought to be decorated, not criticized,” he added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The alternative viewpoint? &#8220;Showing respect even for ones enemies. Trying to understand and in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view,” <a href="http://www.ijreview.com/2014/12/212850-hillary-remarks-beat-enemies-may-just-killed-chances-presidency/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> Secretary of State and likely presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Americans have a choice to make between competing worldviews. The wrong choice will have deadly consequences.</p>
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		<title>Rushing the National Defense Authorization Act</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/rushing-passage-of-the-national-defense-authorization-act/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rushing-passage-of-the-national-defense-authorization-act</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2014 05:10:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[gender]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[National Defense Authorization Act]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246741</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A lame-duck Congress puts military lives on the line. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Army-legs.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246742" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Army-legs-450x300.jpg" alt="Army-legs" width="363" height="242" /></a>A lame duck Congress is on the verge of <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/hughhewitt/2014/12/03/memo-to-the-senate-gop-class-of-2016-what-are-you-nuts-n1926861/page/full"><span style="color: #1255cc;">sticking it</span></a> to America’s troops. Before they leave for recess they will attempt to pass the FY2015 version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It is a compendium of ill-advised ideas seemingly aimed at advancing the Obama administration’s continuing effort to “fundamentally transform” the finest fighting force in the world into something more closely resembling a social-outreach organization. Sadly, Republicans, apparently oblivious to the mandate just handed to them by the electorate, are on board.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unsurprisingly, the effort to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/us/politics/pentagon-plans-to-shrink-army-to-pre-world-war-ii-level.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">shrink</span></a> the military to its smallest size since WWII will be borne in large part by those who do the fighting and dying. A scheduled pay raise of 1.8 percent will be <a href="http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/benefits/pay/allowances/2014/12/02/ndaa-deal-pay-raise/19784183/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reduced</span></a> to one percent, there will be reduced growth in the troops’ Basic Housing Allowance (BHA) for those who cannot be accommodated on military bases, and a $3 copay will be added to the cost of prescription medication. For Americans who think this is no big deal, here is the <a href="http://www.militaryrates.com/military-pay-charts-e1_e5_2014"><span style="color: #1255cc;">2014 Military Pay Chart</span></a> revealing the troops’ relatively meager pay levels, even for those with decades of service to our nation.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet it is the ever-reliable Center for Military Readiness (CMR) that <a href="http://cmrlink.org/content/home/37616/problematic_proposals_in_national_defense_authorization_act_for_2015_ndaa"><span style="color: #1255cc;">details</span></a> the far more pernicious agendas advanced in this bill. While troops bear the aforementioned reductions, pork still prevails. Sections in a version of the bill conceived by the Senate Armed Services Committee would establish a feminist-oriented entity to be known as the &#8220;Defense Advisory Committee on Investigation, Prosecution, and Defense of Sexual Assault in the Armed Forces.&#8221; As the CMR explains, this &#8220;would establish yet another power base in the Pentagon for feminists who believe that a person accused of sexual misconduct is automatically guilty, unless he is somehow (against all odds) found innocent because of &#8216;anti-women&#8217; legal procedures that must be ‘fixed.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Even as the military is enduring cuts that shrink every branch of our armed forces, a large increase in gender quotas, aimed at increasing the recruitment of women into military service academies by an additional 20 percent, is also part of the agenda. There is nothing wrong with recruiting women, but as indicated by both the Defense Department and the left-leaning RAND corporation, there has been no evidence of insufficient efforts to do so. What this is really all about is the ongoing effort to integrate women into direct ground combat (DGC) units, despite extensive <a href="http://www.cmrlink.org/data/sites/85/CMRDocuments/InterimCMRSpecRpt-100314.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">evidence</span></a> that standards of effectiveness would be compromised in the process. Regardless of biological reality, the Obama administration has embraced “gender diversity metrics,” allowing more qualified personnel to be replaced by those meeting minimum standards laughably referred to as “lower but equal.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">An October article in The Hill<a href="http://thehill.com/policy/defense/219685-enlisted-women-to-begin-serving-on-submarines"><span style="color: #1255cc;"> announcing</span></a> the effort to integrate a fixed percentage of women onto ballistic missile submarines, is illustrative of the current thinking. Navy Cmdr. Renee Squier, head of the Office of Women&#8217;s Policy for the Chief of Naval Personnel, explains that &#8220;the goal is to have each unit have 20 percent,” in order to build a &#8220;good ecosystem&#8221; for female submariners. As the CMR <a href="http://www.cmrlink.org/articles/print/35896?author=0&amp;image=0&amp;domain=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reveals</span></a> this is being done despite evidence that submarine “ecosystems,” that include &#8220;prolonged exposure to chemical contaminants in the constantly recirculated air” pose unique health risks for female sailors. As told to Front Page by CMR president Elaine Donnelly, her organization filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to determine whether female sailors had been made aware of those potential health risks. In keeping with this administration’s contemptible track record, the CMR was stonewalled.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The CMR also blows up the notion that women need to be in direct ground combat units to advance their careers. &#8220;For decades, women have been promoted at rates equal to or faster than men,” CMR explains, further citing a Defense Department report submitted to Congress in 2012 that states<i> &#8220;</i>there is no indication of women having less than equitable opportunities to compete and excel under current assignment policy…&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Quotas are only part of the equation here. As <a href="http://dailysignal.com/2014/12/02/congresss-sneaky-tactic-grab-u-s-land-government/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">revealed</span></a> by the Daily Signal, the 2015 NDAA may also include a provision adding as much as &#8220;250,000 additional acres of wilderness, four new national parks and seven national park studies (future parks-to-be)” to the federal government’s real estate portfolio. That would be a portfolio of federally-owned property that, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/4/this-land-is-whose-land-ranch-standoff-reveals-ext/?page=all"><span style="color: #1255cc;">according</span></a> to a 2012 Congressional Research Survey, now totals approximately 640 million acres comprising approximately 28 percent of the nation’s entire land mass. As the Signal notes, &#8220;the importance of the NDAA to the defense budgeting process and its traditional status as a &#8216;must-pass&#8217; piece of legislation makes it an inviting target for pet projects and wasteful spending,” one where &#8220;lawmakers are trying to end-run the normal legislative process in a rushed, closed-door approach.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Why the rush? Vanity appears to be an integral part of the equation. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI), both of whom are retiring, are reportedly jamming this bill through the lame duck session &#8212; so the bill can be named after them. To further that effort, a mechanism known as <a href="https://www.senate.gov/reference/glossary_term/unanimous_consent.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Unanimous Consent</span></a>, defined as setting aside a specified rule of procedure so as to expedite proceedings—as in everyone agreeing not to add amendments to the bill that would require time-consuming votes—is being employed.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Ms. Donnelly was critical of the lack of transparency that has surrounded passage of the NDAA in previous cycles, in addition to this one. &#8220;A process that is not transparent, like the ObamaCare bill for example, invites big policy mistakes which have serious consequences,” she warned. &#8220;The primary offense is not what’s there but what’s not: appropriate oversight.” With regard to many of the sexual issues that concern the CMR, Donnelly see an ongoing “emphasis on social change,” much of which is being pushed using what she refers to as “perception management,” a term <a href="http://davidbaldacci.com/book/the-whole-truth/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">coined</span></a> by author David Baldacci. “The military is attempting to create a (gender-based) reality that doesn’t exist and getting people to believe it,” she explains.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Nothing illuminates that perception management better than the aforementioned phrase “lower but equal,” and one is left to wonder why Republicans, who will have far more leverage over the process in January, are collaborating with Democrats to rush the passage of the NDAA before then. The American electorate, and the men and women who have volunteered to defend this nation, deserve more thought, more transparency and more pushback against an Obama administration and a Democratic Party all determined to make the American military virtually indistinguishable from politically correct American society. In a world fraught with danger, it is a fatal mistake to do so.</p>
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		<title>Amnesty Showdown</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/amnesty-showdown/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=amnesty-showdown</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/amnesty-showdown/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Dec 2014 05:54:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246547</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How will the GOP respond to Obama's executive power grab? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/obama-immigration.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246550" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/obama-immigration-401x350.jpg" alt="Barack Obama" width="343" height="299" /></a>On Tuesday, Republicans <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/12/01/Scalise-Boosts-Yoho-Bill"><span style="color: #1255cc;">met</span></a> behind closed doors to plot their response to President Obama’s unilateral decision to grant de facto amnesty and work permits to five million illegal aliens. That response centers around the House’s control of government spending, and according to sources that contacted Breitbart news, the GOP rank-and-file will be setting the agenda. “It&#8217;s not just for show,” said Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ). “[Party leaders] don&#8217;t want to get something to the floor and then have some big rebellion, they really want to get it right the first time. And they&#8217;ve learned the hard way that the way to do that is to build everything from the bottom up instead of shoving it from the top down.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">A number of different options are being considered, but all of them are seemingly aimed at avoiding a government shutdown. That’s because a government shutdown of any kind, regardless of who initiated it, is invariably blamed on the GOP, according to inside-the-beltway thinking.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Columnist Charles Krauthammer <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/01/krauthammer-to-gop-see-a-psychiatrist-for-rage-over-exec-amnesty-dont-vote-for-govt-shutdown-video/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">illuminated</span></a> that reasoning Monday on Fox’s “Special Report” with Bret Baier. &#8220;There’s reality, and there’s the way reality is reported in the media,” he explained.</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">We know that you’re right, if there were a government shutdown under these circumstances, it would be Obama being the one shutting it down with a veto. However, we also know that as night follows day, it will be reported everywhere as a Republican shutdown and they will suffer as they suffered last October, 2013, and it was a disaster. Republicans are finally ahead of Democrats in the poll about who do you favor, and this would be the worst time to blow it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">However, one cannot discount the impact the previous government shut down had on the 2014 elections &#8212; which was seemingly not very much. The GOP <a href="http://www.electionprojection.com/2014-elections/races/2014-senate-races.php"><span style="color: #1255cc;">picked</span></a> up at least 8 Senate seats to capture a majority and 11 House seats to strengthen one.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">On the other hand, there is little doubt the media would indeed blame Republicans for any shutdown. Most Republicans apparently understand this and were said to be discussing a normal “omnibus” spending bill, a hybrid “cromnibus” bill that provides a temporary funding extension for immigration, and a number of options for each. The omnibus part of the package would fund most of the government at current spending levels for ten months through September 15, while the cromnibus portion provides the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the government agency that oversees service related to immigration, funding for only a few months. House Speaker Boehner (R-OH) envisions a <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/225690-boehner-backs-two-step-plan"><span style="color: #1255cc;">two-step</span></a> process for passage, holding a vote on the omnibus bill this week, and the cromnibus bill next week.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">One of the options being considered was introduced late last month by staunch conservative Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL). The sophomore lawmaker <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/20/Republicans-Leave-Town-Without-A-Plan-To-Fight-Obama"><span style="color: #1255cc;">proposed</span></a> a bill that would rescind the discretion by the executive branch to exempt entire categories of illegal aliens from prosecution and deportation. Though the gesture is chiefly symbolic, Boehner and other GOP leaders have reportedly embraced it as a way to simultaneously assuage conservative GOPers concerns with Obama’s unconstitutional overreach, and move them away from demanding a government shutdown.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In addition, Salmon wants to add language to the omnibus bill preventing the president from issuing work visas to illegals. It is an omnibus package House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) said would include 11 appropriation bills, with the separate funding for the DHS maintained on a continuing resolution (CR) that would last until “sometime in March.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Time is of the essence. The current emergency funding keeping the government open expires on Dec. 11, giving the GOP six more days to get their strategic ducks in a row. And despite their cleverness, they still must contend with the reality that outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will scuttle any effort that would accrue to the GOP’s benefit. While Reid <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/house-gop-unveils-omnibus-plan-to-keep-immigration-pressure-on-obama-20141202"><span style="color: #1255cc;">agreed</span></a> to consider a spending package that only funds DHS through March, he said he would only do so if the deal didn’t include any riders unacceptable to his party.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Reid stood in stark contrast to the position taken by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. She insisted it would be &#8220;dangerous and irresponsible to engage in stunts and gimmicks affecting funding for the agencies under the Department of Homeland Security.” She was echoed by DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, who testified at a House hearing Tuesday morning. He claimed temporary funding would make it harder to run his department in an efficient manner. As for Obama, White House Press Secretary John Earnest said the president would prefer a bill covering all spending for the entire year. But he <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/02/us-usa-congress-shutdown-boehner-idUSKCN0JG1MH20141202"><span style="color: #1255cc;">refused</span></a> to say whether the president would veto a bill with short-term funding for the DHS.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Both Houses of Congress are scheduled to go on recess December 12, but Reid <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/225597-reid-senate-might-work-the-week-before-christmas"><span style="color: #1255cc;">warned</span></a> the Senate that it might be necessary to extend their time in Washington through Dec. 19. “We have a lot to do and not a lot of time to accomplish it,” Reid said.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">One effort is aimed at passing a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/lawmakers-divided-over-renewing-tax-breaks-1417481046"><span style="color: #0433ff;">short-term extension</span></a> of approximately 50 tax breaks benefiting businesses, individuals and nonprofits. The vast majority of them expired at the end of 2013. The extension would last only until the end of the year, but that would allow those breaks to be claimed during next year’s tax-preparation period. The move was precipitated by a veto threat from Obama, <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/finance/225584-house-moves-toward-vote-on-expired-tax-breaks"><span style="color: #1255cc;">undermining</span></a> a two-year, $400 billion deal being worked out between Reid and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI). It would have extended some of those tax breaks for two years and others indefinitely. “We were making really good progress until the president issued a veto threat,” Camp said Monday. “That brought a halt to everything,”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Obama objected to the deal because he considered it too favorable to business, and because it failed to extend an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit set to expire in 2017. The GOP contends those tax breaks have been illegally exploited by taxpayers and illegal aliens fraudulently claiming those credits, further insisting Obama’s recent action on immigration exacerbated the problem. Hence the House&#8217;s $45 billion extension, which could be voted on as early as today.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Democrats have mixed feelings regarding the proposed legislation. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) remained non-committal, Committee member Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WVA) was adamantly against it, and Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, was in favor.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In other words, like everything else being proposed here, the outcome remains in limbo.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Some GOP conservatives still remained wedded to addressing Obama’s lawlessness, regardless of the consequences. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) wants even a short-term extension for the DHS to cut off funding for the president’s immigration agenda, even if the government shuts down as a result. &#8220;It isn’t us bringing about a shutdown,” he insisted. &#8220;We fund everything else, and then the president has to argue that he’s going to shutdown the government in order for him to carry out his lawless, unconstitutional act.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wasn’t buying it. &#8220;We need to quit, you know, kind of rattling the economy with things that are perceived by the voters as disturbing,&#8221; he told a Washington conference.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Voters themselves apparently agree. A Qunnipiac <a href="http://www.quinnipiac.edu/images/polling/us/us11252014_uh2ddgk.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">poll</span></a> released Nov. 25 shows they oppose shutting down “major activities of the federal government&#8221; as a means of blocking Obama’s agenda by a 68-25 percent margin. Even Republican voters oppose the idea by a 47-44 percent margin. “Americans seem divided on immigration, but they agree on one thing: They don’t want a government shutdown over President Obama’s action on immigration,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Those same voters, however, mostly oppose Obama’s immigration agenda. Democrats favor it by a 74-18 percent margin, but Republicans and independent voters oppose it by margins of 75-20 percent, and 51-40 percent, respectively. In short, ambivalence prevails.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">How long it prevails is hard to say. Much of it depends on how far next year&#8217;s GOP congressional majority is willing to go to illuminate the ideological differences between the two parties, and whether they are willing to frame an agenda, or continue reacting to the one proposed by Obama and a Democrat minority.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Immigration aside, it is worth noting that on Monday, America’s national debt <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-01/total-us-debt-rises-over-18-trillion"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reached</span></a> $18 trillion. That number represents a 70 percent increase in the debt amassed during Obamas’s tenure. On Tuesday it was revealed Social Security will become <a href="http://www.mrctv.org/blog/chart-social-security-s-end-date-fast-approaching-far-earlier-expected"><span style="color: #1255cc;">insolvent</span></a> by 2024. That’s 34 years earlier than originally projected. In other words, we remain on an unsustainable trajectory, one driven overwhelmingly by the exponential expansion of government championed by Democrats. Spending cuts aren’t popular, but genuine statesmen propose ideas that put the good of the nation above the good of the party. Embracing such statesmanship seems like a pretty good point of departure for next year’s GOP majority. If nothing else it would stand in stark contrast to the president’s me-first agenda and a Democratic party extremely comfortable with putting its own interests above those of the nation.</p>
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		<title>Illegal Alien Benefit Free-for-All</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/illegal-alien-benefit-free-for-all/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=illegal-alien-benefit-free-for-all</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Nov 2014 05:56:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246137</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How Obama's amnesty will give non-citizen law-breakers access to a “wide array” of programs -- and an advantage in the job market. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/obama-immigrationjpeg-0107f_c0-67-2700-1640_s561x327.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-246138 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/obama-immigrationjpeg-0107f_c0-67-2700-1640_s561x327.jpg" alt="obama-immigrationjpeg-0107f_c0-67-2700-1640_s561x327" width="315" height="285" /></a>Apparently President Obama’s unilateral decision to grant de facto amnesty to five million illegal aliens was insufficiently outrageous. On Tuesday, a White House official <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/illegal-immigrants-could-receive-social-security-medicare-under-obama-action/2014/11/25/571caefe-74d4-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> the <i>Washington Post</i> that many illegals now protected from deportation will be eligible to receive a “wide array” of government benefits, including Social Security and Medicare.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The admission verifies that, once again, Americans are forced to endure another lie perpetrated by the president. When he announced his <a href="http://politics.suntimes.com/article/washington/obama-immigration-executive-order-speech-transcript/thu-11202014-903pm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">executive action</span></a> last Thursday, Obama was adamant. &#8220;It does not grant citizenship, or the right to stay here permanently, or offer the same benefits that citizens receive—only Congress can do that. All we’re saying is we’re not going to deport you,” he insisted.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Not exactly. The status conferred by the president activates the <a href="https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0300204010"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996</span></a>, which states that the government &#8220;will pay monthly title II and title XVIII benefits to a claimant/beneficiary who is present in the U.S. and who is a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or <i>lawfully present alien</i> as determined by the Attorney General” (italics mine). It further states that payment provisions &#8220;apply to retirement, survivors or disability benefits. This rule also applies to payments made for Medicare services rendered.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Illegals would be required to pay a <a href="http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc751.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA)</span></a> tax, which includes separate payments made to Medicare and Social Security. Once they do that, benefits await. “If they pay in, they can draw,” White House spokesman Shawn Turner told the <i>Post</i> by e-mail.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Turner further noted that such eligibility does not extend to benefits such as student financial aid, food stamps, housing subsidies or ObamaCare. Yet as critics of the president’s plan rightly explain, this administration’s “flexible” approach to the rule of law and the Constitution leaves the door wide open for additional “adjustments” to the program.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“Deferred action and parole-in-place don’t fit neatly into statutory definitions that prohibit access to benefits, mostly because deferred action and parole-in-place have no statutory basis themselves,” Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) communications director Bob Dane <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/17/Exclusive-Report-Obama-s-Executive-Amnesty-Will-Put-Illegal-Aliens-On-Welfare-Public-Benefits-Like-Obamacare-and-More"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> Breitbart News. “Congress has never imagined a rogue president pulling rabbits out of a hat to justify a broad, transformational makeover of the country by way of amnesty. There will always be thousands of loopholes in the law and backdoor methods to achieve a desired agenda, but ultimately the intent of Congress is preeminent. It may be that the courts will have to review that.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">If a recent <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/11/25/court-denies-arizona-request-to-block-drivers-licenses-for-undocumented-immigrants/?wp_login_redirect=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">ruling</span></a> by a three-judge panel at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is any indication, there may be little relief in sight. On Monday, they rejected Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s request to rehear a case related to her 2012 executive order denying about 20,000 illegals access to drivers’ licenses. The Court determined that the Obama administration&#8217;s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), allowing illegals brought here as children before June 15, 2007, and born after 1981 to be protected from deportation, included the right to obtain those licenses.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In other words, we <i>already</i> <i>have</i> exactly the kind of court-sanctioned “extrapolation&#8221; of a constitutionally-dubious executive order that completely belies Turner’s assertion. Thus it is more than likely a president interested in a “fundamental transformation” of the nation—one that includes the transparent attempt to make the Democrat Party an unassailable power—would be more than OK with pulling a few more “rabbits out of a hat” to realize that agenda.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">According to the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector, the current level of benefit access <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/24/Robert-Rector-Amnestied-Illegal-Immigrants-to-Cost-Taxpayers-2-Trillion-Over-Their-Lifetime"><span style="color: #1255cc;">imposes</span></a> a staggering cost on the nation. &#8220;The net cost&#8211;which is total benefits minus total benefits paid in&#8211;of the amnesty recipients I estimate will be around $2 trillion over the course of their lifetime,” Rector <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/24/Robert-Rector-Amnestied-Illegal-Immigrants-to-Cost-Taxpayers-2-Trillion-Over-Their-Lifetime"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> Breitbart News Monday. “What [Obama] is doing is he is putting these 4 million people&#8211; who on average have a 10th grade education&#8211;into the Social Security and Medicare programs. Given their expected earnings, from someone that has a 10th grade education, they will draw about three dollars worth of benefits out of those programs over their lifetimes for every dollar they put into them. But the overall cost in outlays will be around a trillion dollars for those programs alone,” he added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Rector’s calculations were based on a figure of 4 million illegals living an average of 50 years each. The additional trillion dollars of his estimate is based on an assumption that is the mother’s milk of the American left: incrementalism. Rector assumes that additional legislation—or another executive order—will eventually grant amnestied illegals unrestricted access to America’s welfare state. He further envisions that once the citizen children of the amnestied illegals turn 21, they could petition the government for green cards to be granted to their parents, without those parents having to leave the country to get them. “After 5 years with a green card status they are eligible for all the welfare programs,” he explained.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Ironically—or perhaps more accurately, inevitably—the push to expand amnestied illegals access to benefits will be driven by ObamaCare. As the <i>Washington Times</i> <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/25/obama-amnesty-obamacare-clash-businesses-have-3000/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">explains</span></a>, the current executive order gives up to 5 million illegal immigrants three years of legal presence in the country that includes the ability to obtain work permits—but not ObamaCare. As a result businesses that hire amnestied illegals will not have to pay the $3000 ObamaCare penalty for denying them healthcare coverage. Since that penalty would apply to native-born workers, ObamaCare has established a perverse incentive to favor illegal employees over American employees</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Rep. Lamar Smith lamented that reality. “If it is true that the president’s actions give employers a $3,000 incentive to hire those who came here illegally, he has added insult to injury,” he contended. “The president’s actions would have just moved those who came here illegally to the front of the line, ahead of unemployed and underemployed Americans.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Or as mentioned earlier, it would provide the administration with a springboard to expand ObamaCare coverage to include amnestied illegals. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to envision the administration pursuing mainstream media-assisted sales pitch that such a scenario is a “win-win” for illegals who get healthcare coverage, and American workers who no longer have to worry about that perverse incentive.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Republicans were ostensibly surprised that amnestied illegals would be eligible for Social Security and Medicare. “First with Obamacare we were told we should pass it and then read it to find out what was in it,” noted Republican National Committee (RNC) spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski. “Now Obama overreached and acted unilaterally on immigration, which should have been vetted and authorized by Congress, and we’re finding out there’s more to the story than Obama and the Democrats originally told Americans.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">All well and good, but one suspects Americans have little sympathy for a reactive GOP, one “finding out” that the same president and party who lie on a regular basis would once again engage in subterfuge to further their agenda. Credit the normally clueless Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for having a clue this time around. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said the best way to get rid of the loophole is to get rid of the employer mandate itself, adding that next year’s GOP majority should hold a vote on such a proposal.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That would theoretically put the president between a rock and a hard place—unless he unilaterally decided to grant temporary access to ObamaCare to amnestied illegals. There is little doubt a president who makes it up as he goes along would dismiss such an idea out of hand. Another solution would be to once again postpone the business mandate. Again, in the age of the Imperial President, all things are possible.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In the meantime, Obama reminded the nation why he remains one of the most divisive individuals to ever occupy the Oval Office. “There have been periods where the folks who were already here suddenly say, ‘Well, I don’t want those folks,’ even though the only people who have the right to say that are some Native Americans,” he <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/immigration/august_2014/voters_strongly_oppose_obama_s_amnesty_plan_for_illegal_immigrants"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> a Chicago audience Monday, completely dismissing the concerns of millions of Americans, including <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/immigration/august_2014/voters_strongly_oppose_obama_s_amnesty_plan_for_illegal_immigrants"><span style="color: #1255cc;">62 percent</span></a> of likely voters who opposed his unilateral efforts. He further insisted migrants “will boost wages for American-born workers.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">There are <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/09/immigration-boost-economy-widens-wealth-gaps-says-harvard-report/?print=1"><span style="color: #1255cc;">conflicting reports</span></a> with regard to that statement, depending on whose ideology is being served. Yet the most basic rule of supply and demand cannot be ignored: when you have more of something, as in a larger pool of foreign and native-born workers competing for jobs, each unit of that something, in this case wage levels, are worth less. Yet as far as this president and his party are concerned, the well-being of Americans and illegals are now inseparable agendas. One is left to wonder how long American citizens will put up with that.</p>
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		<title>Obama and the Roots of the Ferguson Rage</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/obama-and-the-roots-of-the-ferguson-rage/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-and-the-roots-of-the-ferguson-rage</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 26 Nov 2014 05:56:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Darren Wilson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ferguson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[grand jury]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indictment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lynch mob]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Riot]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The lynch mob politics embraced by the Obama administration hit the streets of America.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ap_ferguson_4_kb_141125_2_4x3_992.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-246094 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ap_ferguson_4_kb_141125_2_4x3_992-450x337.jpg" alt="ap_ferguson_4_kb_141125_2_4x3_992" width="362" height="271" /></a>And so the whirlwind, cultivated by Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, the mainstream media and the army of thugs they enabled, is now being reaped. As the result of a St. Louis County grand jury <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/24/ferguson-grand-jury-deliberations/19474907/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">refusing</span></a> to indict officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown, Ferguson, MO has become Ground Zero, in what irresponsible Missouri State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadali <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/11/24/State-Senator-This-Is-St-Louis-Race-War"><span style="color: #1255cc;">referred</span></a> to on MSNBC as “St. Louis’s race war.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">One of the race war’s architects <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2848308/Obama-begs-calm-rioters-set-fires-attack-police-cars-Ferguson-grand-jury-refuses-indict-police-officer-Michael-Brown-case.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">pleaded for calm</span></a> shortly after the decision was announced. Yet even as Obama spoke about that &#8220;need for calm” and that there was “no excuse for violence,” he insisted, “We have to try to understand&#8221; the anger of those who demanded nothing less than a murder charge absent an ounce of evidence as an &#8220;understandable reaction&#8221; from people who believe &#8220;the law is being applied in a discriminatory fashion.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Where did those people get that belief? Leave it to Obama to omit that critical information &#8212; the same President Obama who <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/us/groups-in-ferguson-prepare-for-grand-jury-decision.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss&amp;smid=tw-nytimes&amp;_r=1"><span style="color: #1255cc;">met</span></a> with protest leaders and Sharpton on Nov. 5 at the White House. It was at that unscheduled meeting the president was ostensibly &#8220;concerned about Ferguson staying on course in terms of pursuing what it was that he knew we were advocating,&#8221; according to Sharpton. &#8220;He said he hopes that we’re doing all we can to keep peace.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">One is left to marvel at one of two realities. Either we have a president so utterly naive he believes a <a href="http://freebeacon.com/politics/sharpton-cant-admit-tawana-brawley-hoax/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hoax-perpetrating</span></a>, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/rev-al-caught-protest-tape-called-mart-owner-white-interloper-article-1.693222"><span style="color: #1255cc;">riot-inciting</span></a> Al Sharpton, who <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/al-sharpton-high-alert-ferguson-decision/story?id=27025757"><span style="color: #1255cc;">denigrated</span></a> the grand jury process, <i>pre</i>-organized <a href="http://www.westernjournalism.com/heres-agitator-al-sharpton-just-revealed-will-spread-protests-far-beyond-ferguson/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">protest rallies</span></a> in 25 American cities, and <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/25/al-sharpton-s-conflicting-roles-in-the-trayvon-martin-case.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">uses</span></a> his MSNBC platform to fire up racial unrest, is a man of peace. Or the president, who once <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/25/obama-tells-latinos-to-punish-our-enemies-the-gop/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">urged</span></a> his Latino followers to “punish our enemies,” remains as wedded to the same racial &#8220;us against them&#8221; mentality as America’s foremost racial arsonist. Is it really possible to believe the former?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Despite Obama&#8217;s superficial condemnations of violence, at least 25 businesses were set ablaze, many of which are total losses—and most of which were <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/25/Most-Businesses-Destroyed-in-Ferguson-Minority-Owned"><span style="color: #1255cc;">minority owned</span></a>.  Ten cars were burned at a dealership, and a &#8220;lot of gunfire,” as Ferguson Asst. Fire Chief Steve Fair put it, made maintaining control of the streets highly problematic, if not impossible. Reporters were <a href="http://deadline.com/2014/11/ferguson-grand-jury-decision-verdict-networks-cut-primetime-1201292322/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">assaulted</span></a>, the store Michael Brown robbed prior to his confrontation with Wilson was <a href="http://deadline.com/2014/11/ferguson-grand-jury-decision-verdict-networks-cut-primetime-1201292322/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">looted</span></a>, and at least 61 people have been <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/in-ferguson-police-cars-businesses-on-fire-much-worse-than/article_47fc89b3-b0d2-5c41-a1fa-f4636673aac0.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">arrested</span></a>. “What I&#8217;ve seen tonight is probably much worse than the worst night we ever had in August, and that&#8217;s truly unfortunate,” said St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar Monday at a 1:30 a.m press conference. Belmar further noted that there was “nothing left” along West Florissant between Solway Avenue and Chambers Road, that he heard at least 150 gun shots, and that he was surprised he and Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson, who “got lit up,” as they drove through the area, weren’t hit by that gunfire.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“We talked about peaceful protest, and that did not happen tonight,” Johnson said. &#8220;We definitely have done something here that&#8217;s going to impact our community for a long time&#8230;that&#8217;s not how we create change.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Sharpton continued to stir the pot, criticizing <span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/prosecutor-democrat_819853.html">Democratic</a></span> Prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s handling of the case, and <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/25/sharpton-grand-jury-announcement-an-absolute-blow/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">demanding</span></a> to know who voted for or against indicting Wilson, even though the law prohibits that information from being released. Sharpton’s motives are transparent. The grand jury was <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/11/24/366370100/grand-jury-reaches-decision-in-michael-brown-case"><span style="color: #1255cc;">comprised</span></a> of nine white and three black jurors, seven of whom were men, and five of whom were women. Agreement by nine of 12 jurors was necessary to file criminal charges, and there is no doubt Sharpton was attempting to exacerbate the racial divide with the implication that race was the over-riding, if not sole, factor in the decision.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The grand jury <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/grand-jury-reaches-decision-in-case-of-ferguson-officer/2014/11/24/de48e7e4-71d7-11e4-893f-86bd390a3340_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">met</span></a> 25 times over the course of three months and heard testimony from 60 witnesses. They contemplated charges ranging from first-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter, and the bar for indictment was &#8220;probable cause,&#8221; not the far more onerous standard of determining &#8220;beyond a reasonable doubt” whether a crime had been committed. A plethora of evidence from the proceedings was released, demonstrating how the jury came to the conclusions it did. It included testimony from Wilson himself, physical evidence, and other eyewitness testimony, including some from black Americans who corroborated Wilson’s version of events. ”They determined that no probable cause exists to file any charge against Officer Wilson, and returned a ‘No True Bill’ on each of the five indictments,” <a href="http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2014/11/24/ferguson-police-officer-darren-wilson-not-indicted/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">explained</span></a> McCulloch.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">None of it mattered to the mob—or seemingly the media either. McCulloch faced a hostile press during his post-announcement interview, one that has <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/24/bob-mcculloch-ferguson_n_6215986.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">characterized</span></a> that interview as “bizarre,” no doubt in response to his contention the media&#8217;s &#8220;insatiable appetite for something, for anything to talk about, following closely behind with the non-stop rumors on social media,” contributed to the firestorm surrounding this case.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That would be the same media that initially lionized Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, whose thoroughly debunked eyewitness testimony about Brown being <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michael-brown-and-dorian-johnson-the-friend-who-witnessed-his-shooting/2014/08/31/bb9b47ba-2ee2-11e4-9b98-848790384093_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">shot in the back</span></a> while holding his hands up in surrender, epitomized the sensationalism that ignited the national firestorm. Johnson’s lie propelled much of the violence and unrest that followed, initiating the “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” meme that remains prevalent to this day. It was the same media that <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/08/15/Robbery-Tape-Humiliates-Media-Gentle-Giant-Narrative"><span style="color: #1255cc;">perpetrated</span></a> the “gentle giant” meme to <a href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/18943-ferguson-s-michael-brown-the-tall-tale-of-the-gentle-giant"><span style="color: #0433ff;">describe</span></a> the 6’4’’ nearly 300-pound Brown, only to see it undone by his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2z5-H8NSGA"><span style="color: #1255cc;">participation</span></a> in a strong-arm robbery of a much smaller store owner just prior to his confrontation with Wilson. It was the media who <a href="http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/doj_denounces_irresponsible_leaks_in_ferguson_police_shooting_case"><span style="color: #1255cc;">leaked</span></a> information during the grand jury proceedings, drawing a rebuke from an “exasperated” Holder, despite the reality that <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/shakeup-ferguson-police-force-expected"><span style="color: #1255cc;">MSNBC</span></a>, The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/ferguson-case-officer-is-said-to-cite-struggle.html?_r=2"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><i>New York Times</i></span></a> and the <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/29/eric-holder-to-ferguson-leakers-shut-up-video/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Daily Caller</span></a> all cited the administration and the Justice Department itself as sources of those leaks. That would be the same Eric Holder who ginned up mistrust of the police when he spoke to 50 community leaders, not just as Attorney General of the United States, but “as a black man” who remembers how “angry&#8221; he was when police stopped him for speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That would also be the same Eric Holder, who like his efforts in the Trayvon Martin case, initiated <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2848622/Federal-investigation-Ferguson-cops-ongoing-says-Attorney-General-Holder.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">two separate</span></a> DOJ investigations, one of potential civil rights violations allegedly committed by Wilson, and the other regarding practices of the Ferguson police force. &#8220;While the grand jury proceeding in St. Louis County has concluded, the Justice Department’s investigation into the shooting of Michael Brown remains ongoing,” he said. &#8220;In addition, the Department continues to investigate allegations of unconstitutional policing patterns or practices by the Ferguson Police Department.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">As for social media, the Twitterverse is currently <a href="http://twitchy.com/2014/11/25/twitter-lynch-mob-calls-for-murder-of-officer-darren-wilson/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">inundated</span></a> with calls for the murder of Officer Wilson.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Thus it is unsurprising the protests have spread beyond Ferguson. In Oakland, CA, hundreds of protesters bearing signs that read &#8220;The People Say Guilty!&#8221; and &#8220;Missouri, Palestine, Justice Now!” (an illuminating linkage to say the least) <a href="http://abc7news.com/news/group-marches-on-i-580-to-protest-ferguson-decision/409119/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">blocked</span></a> a major highway and other streets, starting fires, breaking the window of a bank, and spray painting a police cruiser with graffiti. In New York City, three bridges were <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/thousands-rally-ferguson-decision-article-1.2022628"><span style="color: #1255cc;">blocked</span></a>, there were marchers in Times Square and the Police Commissioner had fake blood thrown at him. A total of 90 cities across the nation were <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2848203/Protesters-gather-90-cities-U-S-grand-jury-decides-Officer-Darren-Wilson-won-t-charged-death-Michael-Brown.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">besieged</span></a> by protesters who were seemingly united by a trio of themes: Michael Brown was innocent, Darren Wilson was guilty, and police departments deliberately and disproportionately target black America.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And once again, a mainstream media still interested in fanning the racialist flames is leading the way. The same CNN that <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/08/19/damned-if-they-do-tapper-rips-ferguson-police"><span style="color: #1255cc;">ripped</span></a> the heavy police presence in Ferguson last August is the CNN whose morning co-anchor Michaela Pereira <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/11/25/ferguson-riot-media-live-blog"><span style="color: #1255cc;">spoke</span></a> about the community’s &#8220;frustration the police didn&#8217;t do more to protect those businesses.” Vox columnist Ezra Klein, who apparently considers himself more knowledgable than the grand jury, penned a column whose title says it all: “Officer Darren Wilson’s story is unbelievable. Literally.” Why? &#8220;None of this fits with what we know of Michael Brown,” Klein <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7281165/darren-wilsons-story-side"><span style="color: #1255cc;">insists</span></a>, even as he admits the encounter with Wilson happened shortly after the aforementioned robbery. <a href="http://salon.com/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Salon.com</span></a> pushed the envelope to the max, <a href="http://weaselzippers.us/206293-lib-rag-salon-calls-america-a-white-supremacist-state-over-ferguson-decision/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">declaring</span></a> the jury’s decision “reaffirmed what we already knew: America is a white supremacist state.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Even Brown’s immediate family, who initially <a href="http://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/ferguson-verdict-grand-jury-decides-not-to-charge-darren-wilson-over-killing-michael-brown/story-fnh81jut-1227134388237"><span style="color: #1255cc;">expressed</span></a> “profound disappointment with the decision, but asked that the protests “be kept peaceful,” had their wishes <a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/ferguson/burn-this-bitch-down-879056"><span style="color: #1255cc;">undermined</span></a> by stepfather Louis Head. Shortly after the decision was reached, he urged the crowd 10 times to “burn this bitch down.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Those four words aptly describe the agenda of those with a vested interest in keeping Americans divided, angry and completely convinced the nation is a cesspool of racism where law enforcement must be considered the “enemy.” A nation where there are no longer irrefutable facts backed by witnesses and evidence, but a nation where reason and truth can only be determined after the filter of race is applied. One where the narrative must be served, even when that narrative assumes the characteristics of a lynch mob calling for the death of a police officer.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is a narrative that dismisses the reality of a disproportionate amount of <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">homicides</span></a> and <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/21/family-secret-what-the-left-wont-tell-you-about-bl/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">other crimes</span></a> committed by black Americans (overwhelmingly against other black Americans) relative to their population, even as it has <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2006-01-17/news/0601170177_1_black-men-countdown-kimberly-jones"><span style="color: #1255cc;">long glorified</span></a> the thug culture that engenders most of it. It is the narrative that <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/new-black-panthers.jpg"><span style="color: #1255cc;">demands</span></a> police forces who “reflect the racial demography of the community,” even as many black Americans have been &#8220;taught from the time that you could speak, from the time that you could understand speech, that police are to be feared and that they’re part of an occupying force that is there to circumvent the democratic processes and to strip you of your rights,” <a href="http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2014/09/14/achieving-diversity-among-police-ranks-not-easy/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">according</span></a> to Phillip Atiba Goff, co-founder and president of the Center for Policing Equity at the University of California, Los Angeles.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Saddest of all, it is the narrative supported by a president whose track record extends from his past with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his racist rantings and <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/DemocraticDebate/story?id=4443788"><span style="color: #1255cc;">assertions</span></a> the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” when they arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., to his efforts to exacerbate racial discord <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/19/obama-goes-full-race-baiter/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">during and after</span></a> the Trayvon Martin saga. He is joined by an Attorney General who believes Americans are a “nation of cowards” when it comes to discussing race, one who insists voter ID is <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/eric-holder-voter-id-used-to-depress-the-vote-of-people-who-dont-support-gop/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">tantamount</span></a> to “black disenfranchisement,” and continues to run the most racially polarized DOJ in recent history.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Even worse, both men have <a href="http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/obama-headline-al-sharptons-nan-conference"><span style="color: #1255cc;">unduly elevated</span></a> the status of race huckster Al Sharpton, showing up at National Action Network (NAN) galas to sing his praises. That odious reality is tantamount to a Republican president showing up at a meeting of the <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/52672"><span style="color: #1255cc;">European-American Unity and Rights Organization</span></a> and singing the praises of its white supremacist founder, David Duke. The fact that such as comparison is never made obscures the depths of the racial polarization embraced by the nations’s top two law enforcement officials. It is both an ongoing tragedy and a national disgrace that will only be assuaged when Sharpton and every other person who profits from the misery of millions is ejected from the national stage.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Until then, America will seethe. Well-meaning Americans on both sides of the color line will tread warily, remaining ultimately distrustful of each other, lest they be branded sellouts to “the cause.&#8221; The mob and its media enablers will continue to foment violence, looting, death and destruction, based largely on the notion that such mayhem is a “reasonable” price to be extracted from an irredeemably racist nation in need of “fundamental transformation.” One family will mourn for a son who could not resist the siren song of thug culture, while another family will continue to live in terror perhaps forever, or at least until the mob finds another bogeyman at whom it can channel its orchestrated blood-lust. The thin blue line that separates America from the anarchists will be stretched to its limits.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And the promise of a post-racial society that once propelled this president into the White House now more closely resembles the division and racialist bean-counting that epitomizes the community organizer mindset. In short, hope and change is going up in flames in Ferguson, MO.</p>
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		<title>Keystone Killed</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/keystone-killed/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=keystone-killed</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/keystone-killed/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Nov 2014 05:30:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Keystone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mary landrieu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pipeline]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vote]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245564</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Desperate Sen. Mary Landrieu loses the vote, and likely her Senate seat as well.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/r1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245574" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/r1-450x299.jpg" alt="A TransCanada Keystone Pipeline pump station operates outside Steele City, Nebraska" width="307" height="204" /></a>The ongoing theatrics surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/18/senate-backers-keystone-pipeline-scramble-for-last-vote/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">continued</span></a> in earnest Tuesday. Desperate Democrat incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) spent the afternoon trying to secure the critical 60th vote necessary for the filibuster-proof majority that would get the legislation through the Senate and onto Obama’s desk, while her fellow Democrats weighed the pros and cons of alienating their radical environmentalist constituency. Democrats chose to stand with the radicals, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/us/politics/keystone-xl-pipeline.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">defeating</span></a> the bill by a 59-41 vote.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">By the middle of the afternoon, Landrieu’s chances of winning over one more Democrat looked increasingly slim. Every one of the Senate’s 45 Republicans were on board, but Democrat support that included those who cosponsored Landrieu’s bill, as well as those who had publicly voiced their commitment to its passage, brought the overall total to 59 votes. On Monday, two Senators Landrieu thought she might flip, Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Carl Levin (D-MI), both reaffirmed their intention to vote against the project. They were <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/18/us-usa-keystone-idUSKCN0J20EQ20141118"><span style="color: #1255cc;">joined</span></a> Tuesday by Sen. Angus King (I-ME). &#8220;Congress is not – nor should it be – in the business of legislating the approval or disapproval of a construction project,” he said in a news release.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Landrieu’s motives were politically transparent. She faces a Dec. 6 runoff against GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy, and her ongoing effort to get Keystone through the Senate was aimed at demonstrating her political clout as chairwoman of the Senate Energy Committee. Yet despite a long <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/mary-landrieu-makes-last-ditch-pitch-for-a-vote-on-keystone-20141112"><span style="color: #1255cc;">speech</span></a> made within minutes of the lame-duck session beginning last Wednesday, during which she contended Keystone was &#8220;clearly supported by sixty or more members of this body,” her message ultimately failed to resonate with her Democrat colleagues.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Landrieu’s future is likely to mirror the Senate vote. On Election Day she was the frontrunner in a <a href="http://elections.nytimes.com/2014/louisiana-elections"><span style="color: #1255cc;">four-way race</span></a> against three Republicans, including Cassidy, Rob Maness and Thomas Clements. Yet she only secured 42 percent of the vote, necessitating the runoff against Cassidy, who finished a point behind. More tellingly, Landrieu finished well behind the overall Republican vote total of 56 percent.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Since that day, a series of inconvenient realities have further diminished Landrieu’s chances of getting reelected. When the GOP takes control of the Senate in January, Landrieu, assuming she survives, will be forced to relinquish her post as chairwoman of the Energy Committee. It was that power position that provided much of the impetus for her campaign. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pushed the knife in deeper, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/apnewsbreak-gop-promises-cassidy-committee-seat-26851561"><span style="color: #1255cc;">promising</span></a> to put Cassidy on the Energy Committee if he wins. Cassidy also sponsored the House version of the pipeline bill that elicited <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/11/14/house-keystone-pipeline-vote/19021085/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">overwhelming</span></a> support in the GOP-controlled chamber, sailing through on a 252-161 vote.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In other words, Cassidy prevailed while Landrieu failed.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Adding to Landrieu’s woes, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has virtually <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/democrats-ads-mary-landrieu-112647.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">abandoned</span></a> spending any money on her runoff election, canceling more than $1.8 million worth of broadcast buys, even as the National Republican Senatorial Committee (RNSC) remains on track to spend $2.3 million on broadcast ads to put Cassidy over the top. It shows. Of the 26 surveys <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2014/senate/louisiana_senate_race.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">cited</span></a> by Real Clear Politics, Cassidy leads in 20, Landrieu in 5, with one tie. The Senate vote will undoubtedly make those numbers worse for Landrieu. If Cassidy wins the runoff, the GOP will have gained 9 Senate seats in the 2014 mid-term election.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The number nine is also one that puts the lie to the media-promulgated notion that Republicans are the “obstructionist” party: the House’s latest vote to authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/11/14/house-keystone-pipeline-vote/19021085/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">marks</span></a> the <i>ninth</i> time they have done so. The eight prior approvals were sent to the Senate where the nation’s foremost obstructionist, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/mary-landrieus-keystone-lifeline-1415923975"><span style="color: #1255cc;">allowed</span></a> them to languish over the course of the last four years. The <i>Wall Street Journal </i>mocks Reid’s sudden interest in a pipeline vote he has routinely thwarted. &#8220;Call it the Save Mary Landrieu Act of 2014,” the paper states.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Reid is not alone. Liberal Democrats who worship at the Church of Global Warming are also against the pipeline being built. One of them, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) sent an email blast to his supporters asking them to sign a petition rejecting the project. All of them are beholden to the radical environmentalists, including protesters who <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/17/environmentalists-protest-outside-mary-landrieus-capitol-hill-home/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">swarmed</span></a> Landrieu’s Capitol Hill townhouse on Monday, as well as big-bucks donors like California billionaire Tom Steyer, who ended up <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/198214/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">spending</span></a> $74 million to support a “green” agenda and oppose Keystone.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Steyer’s hypocrisy is monumental. Prior to his “green conversion” he was one of the world’s <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/the-epic-hypocrisy-of-tom-steyer.php"><span style="color: #1255cc;">largest funders</span></a> of coal projects. He is also an unabashed rent-seeker. At one point his hedge fund, Farallon Capital Management, had $40 million <a href="http://freebeacon.com/columns/gas-attack/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">invested</span></a> in Kinder Morgan, an entity building a competitor to Keystone. That revelation elicited a promise to sell his stock shares and donate the profits to charity. Regardless, Democrats—the very same ones who rail about corrupting effect of too much money in politics &#8212; stand with him and a raft of other donors who have, as the <i>WSJ</i> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/little-green-machine-1415319154"><span style="color: #1255cc;">puts</span></a> it, &#8220;made opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline a litmus test of their support for Democrats.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is a litmus test wholly embraced by President Obama, who has spent six years stonewalling the project, hiding behind the excuse that he wants the State Department’s seemingly endless environmental evaluations to continue. That would be the same State Department that released a review last January <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/01/31/269529696/state-dept-delivers-unwelcome-news-for-keystone-opponents"><span style="color: #1255cc;">revealing</span></a> there would be no significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions if the pipeline were approved because the oil will be produced regardless of America’s involvement or lack thereof. Nonetheless, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest <a href="http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2014/11/18/white-house-suggests-obama-veto-keystone-bill/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">indicated</span></a> Tuesday Obama would veto the project, irrespective of the Senate vote. “There is a process that’s underway that’s going through it’s regular course.” he said. “The State Department is the proper venue for reaching this determination.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Obama himself indicated his opposition as well during a speech in Burma on Nov. 14 when he <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/392913/obamas-keystone-madness-robert-zubrin"><span style="color: #1255cc;">insisted</span></a> that &#8220;we should judge this pipeline based on whether or not it accelerates climate change or whether it helps the American people with their energy costs and their gas prices,” further insisting he has to &#8220;constantly push back against this idea that somehow the Keystone pipeline is either this massive jobs bill for the United States, or is somehow lowering gas prices.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The first bit puts Obama at odds with uncomfortable reality. There’s been no global warming for <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/17/what-the-mainstream-media-wont-tell-you-about-global-warming/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">over 18 years</span></a>, the oil will be obtained and sold even if it ends up in China, and Obama himself has <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/5/editorial-the-high-price-of-hope/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">promised</span></a> to continue forging ahead with an agenda that would cause energy prices to “skyrocket.” Moreover despite the private enterprise fracking boom, (which Obama likes to take credit for, even though he had nothing to do with it) America still imports nearly <a href="http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec3_7.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">30 percent</span></a> of its oil. This leaves us vulnerable to a cadre of South American and Middle East thugs who yearn for our demise—and use oil revenues to facilitate it.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The last bit seemingly puts the president at odds with the State Department, which <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/11/17/364727163/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-keystone-xl-oil-pipeline"><span style="color: #1255cc;">estimates</span></a> 42,000 direct and indirect jobs generating about $2 billion in earnings would be created during the construction phase of the pipeline. After the construction, only around 50 permanent jobs would remain, primarily for maintenance.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Perhaps more to the point is the president’s effort to rather casually dismiss part time jobs. Obama is the same president who was touting his administration’s job creation efforts in 2013—despite the fact that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/part-time-job-creation_n_3788365.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">75 percent</span></a> of<i> all</i> net jobs created that year were part time.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Despite the Senate’s rejection, the American public stands firmly behind Keystone. A <i>USA Today</i> survey shows they <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/11/17/usa-today-poll-immigration-isis-keystone-pipeline/19165331/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">support</span></a> the construction of the pipeline by a whopping margin, with 60 percent in favor, versus 25 percent who oppose it. A Pew survey <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2014/11/12/little-enthusiasm-familiar-divisions-after-the-gops-big-midterm-victory/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reveals</span></a> almost identical support at 59 percent overall, but Democrat support has dropped from 54 percent to 43 percent since 2013.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Republicans have also made up their minds. While Obama is off the veto hook temporarily, there is no doubt whatsoever a Republican-controlled Congress will send a continuing stream of bills his desk approving the pipeline, forcing him to veto them over and over again. Or perhaps once a soon-to-be Democratic congressional minority gets more time to reflect on their second electoral wipeout in four years, as well as the politics involved in the 2016 races, they might conclude that defying a president who told the electorate they were running on his policies in the mid-terms is the sensible thing to do.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In other words, a veto-proof majority approving the pipeline might be a possibility.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">An Associated Press <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WORLDS_LARGEST_SOLAR_PLANT?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2014-11-17-14-33-47"><span style="color: #1255cc;">story</span></a> on alternative energy sources demonstrates why. The highly-touted Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the world’s largest of it type, is producing only half the amount of energy its green cheerleaders predicted it would. Why? &#8220;The sun isn&#8217;t shining as much as expected,” the AP reports. &#8220;Factors such as clouds, jet contrails and weather have had a greater impact on the plant than the owners anticipated,” the California Energy Commission said in a statement. In other words, as far as radical environmentalists are concerned, whether or not American have enough electricity to light their homes should be based on accurate, long-term weather predictions&#8211;and fewer jets flying overhead. One suspects most Americans want a tad more reliability than that.</p>
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		<title>Truthy: The Tax-Funded Speech Monitoring and Suppression Project</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/truthy-the-tax-funded-speech-monitoring-and-suppression-project/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=truthy-the-tax-funded-speech-monitoring-and-suppression-project</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Nov 2014 05:30:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Filippo Menczer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245260</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One professor's million-dollar campaign against conservatives, courtesy of the taxpayer. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/5582_h.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245261" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/5582_h-393x350.jpg" alt="5582_h" width="311" height="277" /></a>Leftist speech suppressors are at it again, but this time they’re apparently being subsidized by the American taxpayer. On Monday, House Committee on Science, Space and Technology Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) sent a <a href="http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/Letters/Smith%20Letter%20to%20NSF%20Director%20re%20Truthy%20Project.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">letter</span></a> to the head of the National Science Foundation (NSF), demanding information about the nearly $1 million spent on the “Truthy” data-mining project that monitors political speech on Twitter. “The committee and taxpayers deserve to know how NSF decided to award a large grant for a project that proposed to develop standards for online political speech and to apply those standards through development of a website that targeted conservative political comments,&#8221; Smith wrote to NSF Director France Cordova.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The letter continues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">While some have argued that Truthy could be used to better understand things like disaster communication or to assist law enforcement, instead it appears Truthy focused on examples of &#8220;false and misleading ideas, hate speech, and subversive propaganda&#8221; communicated by conservative groups.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Then comes the kicker that should infuriate Americans who believe in the First Amendment. “Whether by amazing coincidence or on purpose, it appears that several media accounts that were highlighted by Truthy were subsequently terminated by the owners of the social media platforms, effectively muzzling the political speeches of the targeted individuals and groups.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Smith also references a book, <i>The Death of the Internet, </i>co-written by Filippo Menczer, professor of Informatics and Computer Science at Indiana University. Menczer is the project’s lead researcher. The book was released in 2012 and contains a <span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ABUSE-OF-SOCIAL-MEDIA-AND-POLITICAL-MANIPULATION-copy.pdf">chapter</a></span> titled &#8220;Abuse of Social Media and Political Information,” in which Menczer notes that “Truthy was originally deployed in the run up to the 2010 US midterm elections with the explicit purpose of detecting and tracking political astroturfing attempts in real time.” According to Menczer, astroturfing is the employment of “deceptive tactics” that can be used to &#8220;gain a large numberers of followers and obtain a voice of importance within the community.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">For Menczer and his ilk, the idea that Americans should have the freedom to determine which messages are true or false is a bridge too far: he writes how he and his team managed to get Twitter accounts suspended.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Washington Free Beacon <a href="http://freebeacon.com/issues/house-committee-demands-answers-on-truthy-project-2/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reveals</span></a> the original scope of the project, noting that &#8220;Truthy tracked up to 8 million tweets per day in the run up to the 2010 midterms, and stored 600,000 political tweets in their database.” Menczer <a href="http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/how_misinformation_goes_viral.php"><span style="color: #1255cc;">denied</span></a> that database’s existence. “The headlines are saying something that is completely false and fabricated,” he insisted. “We are not defining hate speech. We are not tracking people. We don’t have a database.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The project began in 2011 at Indiana University following the awarding of $919,917 <a href="http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1101743&amp;HistoricalAwards=false"><span style="color: #1255cc;">grant</span></a> &#8220;aimed at modeling the diffusion of information online and empirically discriminating among models of mechanisms driving the spread of memes. We explore why some ideas cause viral explosions while others are quickly forgotten….Additionally, we will create a web service open to the public for monitoring trends, bursts, and suspicious memes. This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">False and misleading idea, hate speech and subversive propaganda, <i>according to whom?</i> Menczer&#8217;s personal political activity shows support for radical leftist groups, <a href="http://freebeacon.com/issues/feds-creating-database-to-track-hate-speech-on-twitter/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">including</span></a> Organizing for Action, <a href="http://moveon.org/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Moveon.org</span></a>, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority. And he has <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2014/11/12/big-truthy-is-watching-some-of-you-n1917391"><span style="color: #1255cc;">admitted</span></a> that Truthy was inspired by the Twitter bombing campaign against Senate Democratic candidate Martha Coakley in 2010. Coakley lost that election.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Furthermore, in presentations to academic groups, Menczer has highlighted his research efforts focused on conservative groups, individuals and hashtags. Examples include the conservative Heritage Foundation’s use of #obamacare, pro-Sarah Palin tweets, and tweets using the hashtag “#tcot,” which stands for &#8220;Top Conservatives on Twitter.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Menczer&#8217;s self-stated goal? To detect the dissemination of particular <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/what-defines-a-meme-1904778/?no-ist"><span style="color: #1255cc;">memes</span></a> (transmitted cultural ideas, symbols, etc.) &#8220;early before damage is done&#8211;that is what we&#8217;re trying to do.” He also insists that while the project is non-partisan, &#8220;almost all of the most popular hashtags, the most active accounts, and the most tweeted URLs, are from the right. We looked really hard for any &#8216;truthy&#8217; memes from the left.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Columnist Michelle Malkin cuts right through that ridiculous assertion, citing the #StopRush smear campaign where a total of 10 Twitter users accounted for 70 percent of the campaign-related tweets to advertisers that were amplified by “illicit software.” And the Beacon cites two accounts Truthy got suspended. One was that of health insurance broker <a href="http://csteventucker.wordpress.com/about/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">C. Steven Tucker</span></a>, who used the hashtag “American Patriots,” or #ampat, and the other was @PeaceKaren_25, an account suspended after expressing support for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Tellingly, this story has reached critical mass at the same time President Obama revealed he is intent on <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/10/7185933/fcc-should-reclassify-internet-as-utility-obama-says"><span style="color: #1255cc;">regulating</span></a> the Internet, reclassifying it as a utility in order to bring it under the increasingly tighter yoke of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). &#8220;To put these protections in place, I&#8217;m asking the FCC to reclassify internet service under Title II of a law known as the Telecommunications Act,&#8221; Obama <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKcjQPVwfDk"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> in a statement released Nov. 10. &#8220;In plain English, I&#8217;m asking [the FCC] to recognize that for most Americans, the internet has become an essential part of everyday communication and everyday life.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Obama and his followers also support “net neutrality,” which is the idea that every “packet&#8221; of information sent across the Internet be treated equally, regardless of source, destination, or content—with very limited exceptions made for illegal, malicious, or unwanted transmissions. The public utility model would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to wire up every house in the country irrespective of cost, with the FCC granted the power to set prices offsetting the additional regulatory burdens, and allowing the ISPs to make money.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In other words, the Internet would no longer be subject to market forces of supply and demand. Obama and his supporters ostensibly don’t want that to happen, but <a href="http://www.laweconcenter.org/images/articles/tf-icle_nn_legal_comments.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">legal obstacles</span></a> abound, the foremost of which should sound quite familiar to most Americans:</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“In its proposed rules the FCC is essentially doing what can only be proposed by Congress: invent a new legal regime for broadband.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://reason.com/">Reason.com</a></span>’s Grant Babcok reveals why the Obama administration is obsessed with getting more control over the Internet, noting that &#8220;the federal government is attempting to use the Internet to build a global Panopticon, capable of accessing everyone&#8217;s personal information at any time for any reason or no reason,” and that &#8220;securing the cooperation of private companies” is part of that effort. He explains the government bullying that would be necessary to obtain that cooperation has happened before during the financial crisis, when the Federal Reserve forced banks to take TARP money they didn’t want. &#8220;The threat to Internet freedom is government control,” he concludes. &#8220;That means that if you care about liberty, you should oppose Net neutrality and Title II reclassification.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Despite all denials to the contrary, the objectives of Truthy and net neutrality—and let’s not forget the IRS’s targeting scandal as well—bear a striking resemblance to each other: suppression of speech on one end of the equation, buttressed by greater government control over one of the foremost engines of that speech dissemination on the other.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Tellingly, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/10/ted-cruz-net-neutrality-is-obamacare-for-the-inter/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">labeled</span></a> net neutrality as “ObamaCare for the Internet.” That would be the same ObamaCare that <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/11/10/aca-architect-the-stupidity-of-the-american-voter-led-us-to-hide-obamacares-tax-hikes-and-subsidies-from-the-public/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">relied</span></a> on “the stupidity of the American voter” to secure its passage, according to MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, one of its chief architects.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Americans need to be very clear here: leftists like Menczer, Gruber and Obama, along with countless others who share their bankrupt ideology, have nothing but <i>contempt</i> for their fellow Americans. It is a contempt buttressed by unrelenting arrogance that drives all of them towards imposing ever-increasing amounts of government control over the “benighted” masses they see as fundamentally incapable of making rational decisions on their own.</p>
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		<title>Bureaucracy Clouds Justice on Veterans Day</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/bureaucracy-clouds-justice-on-veterans-day/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bureaucracy-clouds-justice-on-veterans-day</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Nov 2014 05:50:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244985</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The red tape nightmare of firing those responsible for putting our nation's heroes on death lists. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/veteras-affairs.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244986" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/veteras-affairs.jpg" alt="veteras-affairs" width="299" height="263" /></a>In a long-overdue effort, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/10/politics/va-reforms-and-restructuring/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced</span></a> yesterday that the scandal-plagued agency would undergo the &#8220;largest reorganization of the Department of Veterans Affairs since its establishment,” as he told CNN.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">McDonald took charge of the VA three months ago following the resignation of his predecessor, Eric Shinseki.  Shinseki’s <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-va-shinseki-seeks-to-tackle-disability-claims-backlog-homelessness/2013/11/10/a5909a66-34eb-11e3-8a0e-4e2cf80831fc_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">tenure</span></a> at the VA lasted over five years, longer than any previous Secretary, and under his watch an enormous backlog of claims reached a peak of 900,000 in March 2013. Even as the backlog lessened, more than 100,000 veterans were left waiting nearly a year to get treatment.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The scandal reached its zenith last June, when an <a href="http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&amp;File_id=577d9e90-ee2a-4eee-a52d-2cf394420761"><span style="color: #1255cc;">oversight report</span></a> from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) revealed the combination of malpractice and bureaucratic ineptitude was far deadlier than the agency had previously acknowledged. “Over the past decade, more than 1,000 veterans may have died as a result of VA malfeasance, and the VA has paid out nearly $1 billion to veterans and their families for its medical malpractice,” the report stated, far surpassing the 23 deaths for which the VA initially took responsibility. The report further noted that the &#8220;waiting list cover-ups and uneven care are reflective of a much larger culture within the VA, where administrators manipulate both data and employees to give an appearance that all is well.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is that culture McDonald is finally getting around to addressing—sort of. In an <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/robert-mcdonald-cleaning-up-the-veterans-affairs-hospitals/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">interview</span></a> that aired Sunday on CBS’s &#8220;60 Minutes,” McDonald revealed a decidedly underwhelming number of potential terminations at an agency that employs more than 330,000 people, second only to the Defense Department in size. The Secretary told Scott Pelley that &#8220;the report we&#8217;ve passed up to the Senate Committee and House Committee” names 35 people who should be fired, and a second report recommends terminating as many as 1000 more employees &#8220;who violated our values.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet even those paltry totals have bureaucratic baggage attached to them. &#8220;Bob McDonald can&#8217;t punish or fire a thousand people right now,” he admitted, referring to himself in the third person. &#8220;He&#8217;s discovering how different the Capitol is from capitalism. To fire a government manager he has to put together a case and prove it to an administrative judge….So we propose the action, the judge rules and the individual has a time to appeal. That&#8217;s why we have a lot of people on administrative leave. We&#8217;ve moved them out because we don&#8217;t want any harm to our veterans,” he added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That would be apparently be <i>paid</i> administrative leave, a reality <a href="http://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-seeks-details-administrative-leave-over-veterans-affairs-scandal"><span style="color: #1255cc;">addressed</span></a> last May by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). He wanted to know how many employees were on administrative leave due to the scandal, and what the policies were regarding the length of paid administrative leave. Last month the <i>Washington Post</i> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/thousands-of-federal-workers-on-extended-paid-leave/2014/10/20/c1c963bc-53e3-11e4-ba4b-f6333e2c0453_story.html?hpid=z1"><span style="color: #1255cc;">revealed</span></a> the big picture of such abuse, part of which undoubtedly includes the VA. During a three-year period ending last fall, a whopping 57,000 employees were put on administrative leave for <i>at least</i> a month, costing taxpayers more than $775 million, just for their salaries alone.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Thus, when McDonald told CNN Monday that the VA has undertaken &#8220;disciplinary action&#8221; against 5,600 employees in the past year, he is taking about a process that could yield far different numbers of people who are actually terminated, terminations the <i>Post</i> explains that could take &#8220;a year or more” to realize in some cases.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Adding insult to injury, the paper also reveals that employees who stay home can not only collect paychecks, but build up their pension accruals, vacation and sick days, and continue climbing the federal pay scale ladder.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">McDonald acknowledged those disturbing realities at a breakfast with reporters in Washington last Thursday. “The law didn’t grant any kind of new power that would suddenly give me the ability to walk into a room and simply fire people,” he admitted. “Our Constitution provides for due process, and we are following the due process.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">McDonald’s heart seems to be in the right place. After his Senate confirmation in July, he promised to take “immediate action” to reform the VA. Since then, more than 100 investigations of VA facilities have been undertaken, according to the agency. But once again bureaucracy rears its byzantine approach to such investigations, with separate entities, such as the VA Office of the Inspector General, the FBI, the Department of Justice and others, conducting their own efforts.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Those efforts are hardly encouraging. As of today <i>only one </i>senior VA leader has been fired: James Talton, who was director of the central Alabama VA. The termination process was undertaken against four other senior leaders, but two of them, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer Susan Taylor, and John Goldman, Director of the Dublin, Georgia VA, retired in the interim—with their pensions intact. The other two are Sharon Helman, the director of the Phoenix VA hospital, where 1,700 patients were <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/05/28/316712039/report-finds-evidence-of-secret-wait-lists-at-va-hospital"><span style="color: #1255cc;">put</span></a> on secret wait lists delaying their treatment for more than 115 days; and Pittsburgh VA director Terry Gerigk Wolf, who is being <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/us/va-ejects-4-executives-over-scandal.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">fired</span></a> for “conduct unbecoming a senior executive,” following a department review of a Legionnaire’s disease outbreak that sickened 16 and killed six at that facility.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Helman has been on paid administrative leave for more than six months, Wolf for more than five. The restructuring announced by McDonald is occurring a full year after the abuses of America’s veterans reached critical mass—and more than <i>five years</i> after the Obama administration was <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/18/obama-warned-about-va-wait-time-problems-during-20/#ixzz32C3f"><span style="color: #1255cc;">warned</span></a> by VA officials that VA facilities were playing it fast and loose with waiting times and appointment scheduling.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unsurprisingly that inconvenient reality, discovered via a Freedom of Information Act filed by the <i>Washington Times</i>, didn’t stop our president from doing what he seems to do best when faced with a scandal: feign surprise. &#8220;If these allegations prove to be true, it is dishonorable, it is disgraceful, and I will not tolerate it, period,” he <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/21/politics/va-waiting-lists/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> last May, adding that he needed more time to find out what was going on.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Everyone in America knows what’s going on: a giant, inept and callous bureaucracy that failed thousands upon thousands of veterans, even as hacks like Sharon Helman were <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/as-veterans-waited-for-medical-treatment-va-executives-got-bonuses/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">getting</span></a> bonuses, has been revealed for the fraud it truly is.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">McDonald has acknowledged as much, insisting that restoring trust is his first priority. Aside from working to terminate the bad actors, he will move to hire as many as 28,000 medical professionals, including 2,500 mental health workers, to join the VA hospitals and clinics nationwide. He will also restructure the VA’s “too confusing” Web sites, aimed at giving veterans a single point of contact for getting care. Ultimately he promises to make the VA an organization &#8220;centered on the veteran.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It remains an uphill battle. Despite moving against 40 senior officials, including 30 case referrals made by the VA&#8217;s inspector general to the Justice Department, the DOJ has declined to prosecute at least 17 of them. And despite Obama <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/08/07/president-obama-signs-bill-give-va-resources-it-needs"><span style="color: #1255cc;">signing</span></a> the Veterans’ Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014 in August, the first batch of <a href="http://www.stripes.com/news/veterans/how-choice-card-and-15b-will-help-veterans-get-care-1.296110"><span style="color: #1255cc;">“choice cards&#8221;</span></a> allowing veterans to use non-VA healthcare providers to shorten waiting times and get to more conveniently located health facilities, weren&#8217;t mailed out until <i>this month</i>. And they were mailed only to veterans who live more than 40 miles from a VA facility.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Apparently the government still can’t fathom the idea that serious health problems don’t go into remission waiting for bureaucracy to catch up. And despite McDonald’s seemingly good intentions, there is the uneasy sense that more veterans will pay a deadly price for additional delays that are virtually inevitable.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">For decades, the American left has promoted the idea that ever-increasing bureaucracy, especially one centralized in Washington, D.C., is the ultimate answer to the nation’s needs. The VA scandal explodes that myth, revealing such bureaucracy as a labyrinth of calculated unaccountability with layers upon layers of unseemly protection, designed to insulate thousands of freckles bureaucrats from the consequences of their ineptitude at best, and outright malfeasance at worst. In short, over 1000 dead veterans over the course of a decade, courtesy of that bureaucracy, is <i>not</i> an administrative problem. It’s a national disgrace. More is <i>not</i> better. It’s just more.</p>
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		<title>Israel-Bashing from Amnesty International</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/israel-bashing-from-amnesty-international/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israel-bashing-from-amnesty-international</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 05:25:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[amnesty international]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[operation defensive edge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[war crimes]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A new report turns the victim into the villain. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/aarm8tfmfr6zgsx6l3na.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244737" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/aarm8tfmfr6zgsx6l3na-450x332.jpg" alt="Amnesty raises awareness for human rights situation in Mali" width="344" height="254" /></a>In a predictable development, Amnesty International (AI) has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/world/middleeast/amnesty-international-says-israel-showed-callous-indifference-to-gaza-civilians.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">accused</span></a> Israel of committing war crimes during its 50-day engagement with Hamas this past summer. The report, <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/032/2014/en/613926df-68c4-47bb-b587-00975f014e4b/mde150322014en.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">&#8220;Families Under the Rubble: Israeli Attacks on Unihabited Homes,&#8221;</span></a> claims the Israeli military demonstrated a “callous indifference” with regard to civilians. It further insists &#8220;the onus is on Israel to provide information concerning the attacks and their intended targets.”</p>
<p>AI gives the game away early in the report. First, in a 49-page report detailing eight specific cases of alleged &#8220;war crimes&#8221; and violations of international law committed by Israel, there is but a single paragraph acknowledging that &#8220;Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups fired thousands of indiscriminate rockets and mortar rounds into civilian areas of Israel.” A second paragraph notes that AI &#8220;has documented and is continuing to document serious violations of international humanitarian law, including unlawful killings and injures to civilians and destruction of civilian property, both by Israel and by and Palestinian armed groups,” but it is clear from this report that taking Israel to task first and foremost is the group’s priority.</p>
<p>AI’s primary indictment against Israel centers around the feckless notion of “disproportionate&#8221; response. It is the pernicious nonsense that posits higher rates of casualties and property damage in Gaza than Israel is de facto evidence of human rights violations. Conspicuously missing from that argument is the reality that Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups bear the lion’s share of the blame for the damage and casualties, because they <i>routinely</i> use their own civilians as human shields. And ostensibly civilian locations such as mosques and schools are <i>routinely</i> used as weapons depots.</p>
<p>That reality was driven home during the conflict, when the United Nations found terrorist rockets <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/31/why-hamas-stores-its-weapons-inside-hospitals-mosques-and-schools/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hidden</span></a> in at least three of its own schools—one of which sat adjacent to other schools used to accommodate displaced Palestinians. Moreover, <i>Washington Post</i> reporter William Booth observed a “group of men” moving small rockets into a mosque, even as he further noted that Shifa Hospital in Gaza City had “become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.”</p>
<p>Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) explained the dual motivation for such <i>genuine</i> callousness. “Hamas chooses to use these protected areas for military purposes in order to shield itself from IDF strikes,” they said at the time. “And to draw international condemnation of Israel if the IDF is forced to respond.”</p>
<p>AI’s take on terrorist inclinations? In a section of the report entitled “Precautions and ‘Human Shields,’” they explain that warring parties have &#8220;an obligation to protect civilians and civilian objects under their control against the effects of an attack by the adversary,” and the those adversaries must, to the extent feasible, “avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas.” They use a Red Cross definition of feasibility, indicating that “no one can be required to do the impossible,” and that a party to the conflict &#8220;cannot be expected to arrange its armed forces and installations in such a way as to make them conspicuous to the benefit of the adversary.”</p>
<p>That’s a remarkable statement&#8211;one that seems to imply that AI is actually <i>endorsing</i> the use of human shields as a means of making military targets &#8220;less feasible” to attack. AI seemingly doubles down on this notion, insisting, &#8220;the fact that Palestinian fighters are located within civilian areas does not in any way negate Israel’s obligations to those citizens…”</p>
<p>Palestinian obligations to <i>their own</i> citizens, or the reality that they do in fact use them for human shields? Not even mentioned. Furthermore, AI dismisses as insufficient Israel’s unprecedented effort to minimize civilian casualties, despite the reality the IDF drops pamphlets, makes phone calls, <a href="http://etc.to/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">etc.</span></a> to warn Palestinian civilians (and by extension the terrorists) of impending attacks. Few armies on earth go to such lengths to protect the civilian population of their sworn enemy.</p>
<p>Israeli officials were <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/11/05/amnesty-international-accuses-israel-war-crimes-against-civilians/7f2kv4m77ZE8HGHcGgRxxI/story.html?comments=all&amp;sort=NEWEST_CREATE_DT"><span style="color: #1255cc;">quick to notice</span></a> the blatant discrepancy. “The report does not mention the word terror in relation to Hamas or other armed Palestinian groups, nor mention tunnels built by Hamas to infiltrate Israel and perpetrate terror attacks,” read a statement from Israel’s embassy in London, where AI’s report was released. “By ignoring the nature of the enemy Israel faced in Gaza — a terror group recognized as such by the European Union, the United States, and others — Amnesty’s report fails to contribute to the important discussion needed to solve the conflict. Instead Amnesty serves as a propaganda tool for Hamas and other terror groups.”</p>
<p>At the end of the report, AI issues a series of recommendations for both sides and other states. The only recommendation for the Palestinians is that they should accept the International Criminal Court&#8217;s jurisdiction over crimes committed since 2002, and accede to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Court"><span style="color: #1255cc;">“Rome Statute”</span></a> of that Court, which has established four international crimes, defined as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.</p>
<p>The list of recommendations for Israel includes that one, as well as granting AI access to Gaza, revising their military doctrines and tactics—and providing reparations to all victims of “serious violations of international law, including victims whose homes and properties were unlawfully destroyed or damaged during Operation Protective Edge.”</p>
<p>There is tremendous irony attached to that last recommendation. It is Israel, bowing to pressure from the international community following Israel’s <i>and</i> Egypt’s closure of its borders with Gaza, who supplied the territory with most of the cement used to build a series of <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/180007/concrete-facts-about-hamas#undefined"><span style="color: #1255cc;">terror tunnels</span></a> with exits located in the Jewish State &#8212; terror tunnels built by Palestinian children, costing at least <a href="http://palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/42605"><span style="color: #1255cc;">160 of them</span></a> their lives, according to Hamas officials. Eighteen of the tunnels discovered by Israel used more than 800,000 tons of concrete, an amount more than enough to construct eight skyscrapers as big as Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest. Egypt <a href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=680987"><span style="color: #1255cc;">discovered and destroyed</span></a> additional tunnels under its border with the Gaza strip.</p>
<p>One thousand, three hundred and seventy of them.</p>
<p>AI’s recommendations to other states include similar legal suggestions, yet one other stands out: they believe all other nations should suspend shipping arms, munitions, weapons and military equipment to Israel until it is held accountable for its previous humanitarian violations, and mechanisms are put it placed to prevent future ones. Again no mention whatsoever of ongoing Iranian <a href="http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Cyprus-and-Egypt-stop-Iranian-ships-with-weapons-for-Hamas-and-Hezbollah-14358.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">efforts</span></a> to supply Hamas with weapons, or the Syrian-made <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/middle-east-unrest/hamas-firing-china-designed-syria-made-m-302-rockets-israel-n152461"><span style="color: #1255cc;">rockets</span></a> that have boosted Hamas&#8217;s missile capability from a range of three or four miles, to approximately 70 miles.</p>
<p>This extended range puts the entire nation of Israel at risk of missile attack.</p>
<p>Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of <span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.ngo-monitor.org/articles.php?type=about">NGO Monitor</a>,</span> an organization that monitors non-governmental organizations “claiming to advance human rights and humanitarian agendas,” adds some much needed perspective to AI’s claims. &#8220;Amnesty&#8217;s claims had no validity when they were first made, without evidence, during the fighting, and they have no more credibility now, despite the façade of &#8216;research&#8217; and ‘investigations,’” he declared. &#8220;For many years, we have shown that Amnesty&#8217;s &#8216;reports&#8217; on Israel lack credibility and are based on double standards that reflect a radical ideological agenda under the façade of universal human rights.”</p>
<p>It is far worse than that. AI suffers from a staggering level of self-inflicted myopia. Iran is in the middle of its latest round of human rights violations, including the <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/14/iran-executions-surge-amid-us-nuclear-talks/?page=all"><span style="color: #1255cc;">execution</span></a> of 560 citizens with dubious convictions over the past nine months. Several of those victims were minors. Acid attacks against women are also on the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-iran-politics-women-attacks-idUSKBN0IP15K20141105"><span style="color: #1255cc;">upswing</span></a>, likely in response to an initiative allowing private citizens to enforce &#8220;morality&#8221; laws. ISIS has cut one of modern history’s bloodthirstiest swaths, torturing, raping and executing innocent men, women and children, and <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/10/26/james_foley_other_isis_hostages_suffered_horrific_torture_before_execution.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">conducting</span></a> a series of high-profile beheadings. Boko Haram has <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-nigeria-schoolgirls/boko-haram-kidnaps-dozens-more-young-girls-n232641"><span style="color: #1255cc;">kidnapped</span></a> more young girls, many of whom have been “married” or <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-nigeria-schoolgirls/boko-haram-nigerian-terror-group-sells-girls-slavery-n93951"><span style="color: #1255cc;">sold</span></a> into slavery. And <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-genocide-of-mideastern-christians-1410474449"><span style="color: #1255cc;">genocide</span></a> is being perpetrated against Middle East Christians.</p>
<p>Yet AI chooses to focus on the efforts of Israel to <i>defend</i> itself against Hamas, a terror group whose charter of existence calls for Israel’s destruction. By contrast, Hamas gets a virtual free pass on that reality, as well as its determination to use its fellow Palestinians as cannon fodder whenever they deem it necessary. And we’re all supposed to wait for “continuing” documentation of humanitarian rights violations that may—or may not&#8211;get around to detailing the depredations of Hamas.</p>
<p>At a later date, of course. Until that time, the libelous assault on Israel will continue—even as the cavalcade of atrocities committed in the name of Islam are conspicuously ignored by the ideologically bankrupt organization known as Amnesty International.</p>
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		<title>Judge Rejects the &#8216;Disparate Impact&#8217; Fraud</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Nov 2014 05:45:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attorney general]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Discrimination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disparate impact]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tom Perez]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Attorney General hopeful Tom Perez's race-based justice scheme surfers a major setback. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/113_2014_thomas-perez8201_c0-112-3670-2251_s561x327.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-244578 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/113_2014_thomas-perez8201_c0-112-3670-2251_s561x327-450x262.jpg" alt="113_2014_thomas-perez8201_c0-112-3670-2251_s561x327" width="352" height="205" /></a>On Monday, one of the Obama administration’s foremost racial arsonists was given his comeuppance by a federal judge. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, who is on the American left’s short list for replacing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, was informed by Judge Richard J. Leon that his effort to find housing discrimination where none existed <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/finance/222690-judge-tosses-hud-discrimination-rule"><span style="color: #1255cc;">amounted</span></a> to “wishful thinking on steroids.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Perez sought to apply the policy of “disparate impact” to housing. Judicial Watch <a href="http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/jw-sues-hud-for-records-of-obama-administration-involvement-in-controversial-minnesota-new-jersey-disparate-impact-discrimination-cases/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">explains</span></a> this contemptible concept. &#8220;Under the theory of &#8216;disparate impact,&#8217; a defendant can be held liable for discrimination for a race-neutral policy that <i>statistically</i> disadvantages a specific minority group even if that negative ‘impact&#8217; was neither foreseen nor intended,” they write. &#8220;In such cases, defendants can be forced to pay for harm caused not by their own actions, but by economic and statistical realities, even if beyond their control.” (italics original)</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Leon wasn’t buying it. He characterized the attempt to legitimize disparate impact as a vehicle to expand the possibility of filing discrimination cases as “hutzpah (sic) (bordering on desperation).” “This is yet another example of an administrative agency trying desperately to write into law that which Congress never intended to sanction,” he wrote, adding that the arguments made by Obama administration attorneys were “nothing less than an artful misinterpretation” of the law.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The law to which Leon referred is the <a href="http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/FHLaws/yourrights"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Fair Housing Act</span></a>, administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In February 2013, HUD <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/finance/281997-hud-finalizes-discriminatory-lending-rules-opposed-by-financial-industry"><span style="color: #1255cc;">made</span></a> disparate impact a policy tool, one the administration employed to build discriminatory cases against mortgage lending institutions that garnered them hundreds of millions of dollars.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In July of that year, Wells Fargo paid a $175 million settlement after the Department of Justice (DOJ) accused the bank of discriminating against thousands black and Hispanic borrowers—based on loan analyses made by the bank and its independent brokers from the years 2004 and 2009. Wells Fargo admitted no wrongdoing, claiming it was settling to avoid even costlier litigation expenses. That windfall was topped by a record-setting $335 million settlement made by Bank of America in 2011, following allegations of discrimination by Countrywide Lending, purchased by Bank of America in 2008. Once again the feds used disparate impact to allege that minority borrowers had received less favorable borrowing terms than whites.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Perez is an <a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/051211-572091-holders-anti-bank-witch-hunt.htm?p=2"><span style="color: #1255cc;">old hand</span></a> at this shakedown racket. In 2011, the DOJ created the Fair Lending Unit staffed with more than 20 lawyers, economists and statisticians, determined to ferret out discriminatory lending practices at the more than 60 banks that were targeted at the time. The man in charge of that division was Special Counsel for Fair Lending Eric Halperin. Halperin ultimately answered to none other than Tom Perez, who headed the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That would be the same Tom Perez who compared bankers to KKK Klansmen, insisting the only difference between the two groups was that bankers discriminate &#8220;with a smile&#8221; and &#8220;fine print,” but were nonetheless &#8220;every bit as destructive as the cross burned in a neighborhood.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That would also be the same Tom Perez who in 2010 <a href="http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/06/23/perez-calls-for-reining-in-wild-wild-west-in-lending/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">railed</span></a> against the housing meltdown &#8220;fueled in large part by risky and irresponsible lending practices that allowed too many Americans to get unsustainable or unaffordable home loans.” It was then he promised that once the Fair Housing Unit was up and running, it &#8220;will use every tool in our arsenal, including, but not limited to, disparate impact theory.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Perez is determined to protect disparate impact theory from being adjudicated by the Supreme Court. On Nov. 7, 2011 the Court agreed to hear <i>Magner</i> v. <i>Gallagher, </i>a case about racial discrimination in housing. As the Weekly Standard <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/thomas-perez-makes-deal_724692.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reveals</span></a>, a Supreme Court decision on the theory was utterly anathema to Perez, whose effort to make the case “go away” became his self-admitted “top priority.” The case was about several property owners who alleged that St. Paul, Minnesota’s ramped up enforcement of the city’s housing code for rental units reduced the availability of low-income rentals, creating a disparate impact affecting black Americans. The district court tossed the suit, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reinstated it, complete with the concept of disparate impact. The city appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, which was poised to decide for the first time whether disparate impact cases pursued under the auspices of the Fair Housing Act can be brought before the courts.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Perez, who has referred to disparate impact as the “lynchpin” of his civil rights agenda, didn’t want to take that chance. He managed to get the city to drop its case from the Supreme Court docket. Judicial Watch provided some of the sordid details, noting they had obtained documents &#8220;under the Minnesota Data Practices Act, showing that St. Paul City Attorney Sara Grewing arranged a meeting between the then-chief of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, current Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, and Mayor Chris Coleman a week before the city’s withdrawal from the case, captioned <i>Magner v. Gallagher</i>. Following Perez’s visit, the city withdrew its case and thanked DOJ and officials at HUD for their involvement.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In June of 2013, the Supreme Court agreed to hear another case revolving around disparate impact. <i>Township of Mount Holly v. Mount Holly Gardens Citizens</i> concerned the town’s efforts to redevelop a blighted neighborhood. A group of renters <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323566804578551270111594516"><span style="color: #1255cc;">filed suit</span></a> alleging the move violated the FHA because the majority of the renters were non-white and they were unable to afford the new mid-priced, single-family dwellings. The district court dismissed the argument ruling all the renters were equally affected. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed that ruling, basing their decision on disparate impact.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Once again Perez prevailed, <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/mount-holly-settlement-spares-fair-housing-act-for-now"><span style="color: #1255cc;">getting</span></a> Mt. Holly to drop the case, and once again preventing the Supreme Court from issuing a ruling on disparate impact.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Judge Leon noticed. In a stunning rebuke of Perez himself, Leon accused the Labor Secretary of gaming the system, timing cases and arranging the aforementioned settlements he found “particularly troubling.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It ought to trouble every American that the Obama administration remains determined to codify racial discrimination based on the idea that statistics can be a viable substitute for actual intent. To image how absurd this theory truly is, one need only apply it to the National Basketball Association where a “disproportionate&#8221; number of black American athletes, relative to the percentage of the nations’s overall population, earn a living.  Should white college basketball players who weren’t drafted by the NBA be able to file a lawsuit alleging discrimination, based on nothing more than that statistical discrepancy? Absent the necessity of proving intent to discriminate, the power of the government to file discrimination charges become virtually unlimited.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Leon noted there was nothing in the wording of the FHA or anything he read regarding Congress’s intent when it passed the FHA that supported HUD’s interpretation of the law. He further noted that complying with disparate impact theories would force various entities to compile information on a number of factors, including race, religion, gender, etc., that those entities are often banned from obtaining under state law.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Perez may be forced to work overtime yet again. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear <i>Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project.</i> State officials have been <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-02/texas-housing-bias-case-gets-u-s-supreme-court-review.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">sued</span></a> by the Inclusive Communities Project, a Dallas-based group advocating integrated housing. The ICP alleges the state allocated a disproportionate number of federal low-income housing tax credits to minority neighborhoods, a practice that “makes dwellings unavailable in particular areas, thereby perpetuating residential segregation in the Dallas area,” the group said in court papers. The federal appeals court that ruled in favor of the plaintiffs is one of 11 that have determined the Fair Housing Act allows disparate-impact claims. Texas officials, led by Attorney General Greg Abbott, are eager to have the Supreme Court hear the case. “The far-reaching scope of disparate-impact liability makes this a question of exceptional importance,” they said in their appeal.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Equal Credit Opportunity Act used to hammer Wells Fargo and Bank of America may also be affected by the ruling. Miami attorney Paul Hancock, who filed a brief backing the Lone Star state on behalf of business groups led by the American Bankers Association, illuminated the implications if the Court decides to leave the theory of disparate impact intact. “It really pushes more toward advancement of racial quotas as the only way to avoid legal claims,” he said in a phone interview.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Disparate impact may do <i>far</i> more than that. After the election, the Obama administration intends to push its “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” agenda. It requires HUD to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/08/obama-administration-using-housing-department-to-compel-diversity-in/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">gather data</span></a> on segregation and discrimination. That data that will be used to racially diversify every city and suburb in America, <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/10/26/obamas-plans-for-a-secret-radical-agenda-after-the-elections/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">superseding</span></a> all local zoning ordinances and forcing those cities and suburbs to accept subsidized housing. “Geospatial data” will pinpoint alleged segregation hotspots that will be forced to comply with HUD&#8217;s efforts to racially balance the entire nation. &#8220;Unfortunately, in too many of our hardest hit communities, no matter how hard a child or her parents work, the life chances of that child, even her lifespan, is determined by the zip code she grows up in. This is simply wrong,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan when he unveiled the federal rule at the NAACP convention in July.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That’s nothing less than an <i>exponential expansion</i> of the disparate impact theory.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">By the time you read this, it is likely we will know which party controls the Senate. If it is Republicans, one of the first orders of business should be making it clear that Tom Perez’s chance of succeeding Eric Holder are zero. It will send a clear message that racial huckstering based on dubious legal theories will no longer be tolerated. After that, pruning as many race-addled zealots from HUD as possible would be a nice follow up.</p>
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		<title>Holder Pushing to Oust Ferguson Police Chief?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/holder-pushing-to-oust-ferguson-police-chief/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=holder-pushing-to-oust-ferguson-police-chief</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/holder-pushing-to-oust-ferguson-police-chief/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 31 Oct 2014 04:36:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Darren Wilson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eric Holder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ferguson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indictment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Brown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[police chief]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[resign]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244188</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[While the lynch mob promises death and destruction if an indictment isn't delivered.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ferguson-st-louis-protest-police-shooting-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244190" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ferguson-st-louis-protest-police-shooting-1-433x350.jpg" alt="Activists Protest For Justice After Police Shootings" width="323" height="261" /></a>It would appear that unnamed Obama administration officials, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and their media cheerleaders have coordinated a narrative with regard to the Ferguson, MO Police Department. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/28/us/ferguson-police-chief/index.html?hpt=hp_t2"><span style="color: #1255cc;">According</span></a> to CNN, &#8220;government officials familiar with the ongoing discussions between local, state and federal officials&#8221; are saying Police Chief Thomas Jackson is expected to step down &#8220;as part of the effort by city officials to reform the Police Department.&#8221; The proverbial fly in the ointment? Jackson and Mayor James Knowles deny any such plan exists.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">&#8220;Nobody in my chain of command has asked me to resign, nor have I been terminated,&#8221; said Jackson in a phone call with the news network. Knowles affirmed that statement and dismissed the notion that pressure was brought to bear by the feds. &#8220;People have been saying that for months, I mean for him to step down, Knowles explained. &#8220;But we&#8217;ve stood by him this entire time. So there is no change on that.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Apparently Eric Holder has a <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/michael-brown-shooting/holder-wholesale-change-needed-ferguson-pd-n236731"><span style="color: #1255cc;">different</span></a> agenda. &#8220;I think it&#8217;s pretty clear that the need for wholesale change in that department is appropriate,&#8221; he said Wednesday, during an appearance at the Washington Ideas Forum. &#8220;Exactly what the form of that change will be, I think, we&#8217;ll wait until we complete our inquiry.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Holder reiterated his exasperation with the leaks that have been emerging from the various investigations in the case that garnered national attention &#8212; as well as ongoing civil demonstrations often deteriorating in lawless mayhem &#8212; following the shooting of teenager Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson last August. The AG declared that the attempt to shape public opinion while the investigation remained ongoing was inappropriate. &#8220;I&#8217;ve said I&#8217;m exasperated. That&#8217;s a nice way of saying &#8216;I&#8217;m mad,&#8217; because that&#8217;s just not how things should be done,&#8221; he declared. &#8220;Whoever the sources of the leaks are needs to shut up.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The irony is rich. Holder is calling for wholesale changes in the police department prior to the ultimate determination of Wilson&#8217;s guilt or innocence, yet somehow the leader of perhaps the most politicized Justice Department in modern history doesn&#8217;t see that statement as a blatant attempt to shape public opinion.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Furthermore, MSNBC has <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/shakeup-ferguson-police-force-expected"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reported</span></a> at least one of those leaks comes courtesy of &#8220;a source within the Obama administration,&#8221; the <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/ferguson-case-officer-is-said-to-cite-struggle.html?_r=1"><span style="color: #1255cc;">cited</span></a> &#8220;government officials&#8221; as their source in detailing leaks about Wilson&#8217;s testimony, and Daily Caller reporter Chuck Ross <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/29/eric-holder-to-ferguson-leakers-shut-up-video/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reveals</span></a> that Mayor Knowles told the Caller that he was told by CNN &#8220;that the DOJ was the source of their information.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Could it be that Eric Holder himself &#8220;needs to shut up&#8221;? Or is he in the process of fashioning yet another capitulation to the mob that has been so threatening that five felony cases have been <a href="http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/10/30/72918.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">dropped</span></a> because Wilson, characterized as an &#8220;indispensable witness&#8221; in all of them, can&#8217;t appear due to threats on his life?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is a mob that has regularly chanted, &#8220;Who do we want? Darren Wilson! How do we want him? Dead!&#8221; It is a mob that has rioted on several occasions, looted and burned down businesses, shot at police and news helicopters, and threatened the lives and property of many innocents. It has been egged on by professional race-baiters and radical leftist organizations, <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/08/breaking-new-black-panthers-rally-at-st-louis-county-courthouse-over-michaelbrown-killing/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">including</span></a> the Tauheed Youth Organization, the pro-Hamas Organization for Black Struggle, the Moorish Science Temple, the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) and racial arsonist Al Sharpton. The NBPP and Sharpton both presented a <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/new-black-panthers.jpg"><span style="color: #1255cc;">list of demands</span></a> that must be met, with the NBPP insisting that Wilson, who had yet to be identified at that point, much less charged, &#8220;be fired and charged with murder,&#8221; and that the Ferguson Police Department must be re-made to &#8220;reflect the racial demography of the community.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Diversifying a police department is a legitimate desire, but easier said than done. &#8220;We hire everyone that we can get,&#8221; Knowles <a href="http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/ferguson-missouri-protest-increasing-diversity-among-police-officers-isnt-enough-88671/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">insisted</span></a>. &#8220;There&#8217;s also the problem that a lot of young African American people don&#8217;t want to go into law enforcement.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Not just in Ferguson. The <a href="http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2014/09/14/achieving-diversity-among-police-ranks-not-easy/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">authors</span></a> of the Law Enforcement Recruitment Toolkit, published by the U.S. Department of Justice, spoke to the reality of peer pressure. “Some nonwhites may view policing as a white-dominated and racist profession and may reject the idea of working for the police because they fear being perceived by their peers as selling out,” they noted. Phillip Atiba Goff, co-founder and president of The Center for Policing Equity at the University of California, Los Angeles echoes that assertion. “If you were taught from the time that you could speak, from the time that you could understand speech, that police are to be feared and that they’re part of an occupying force that is there to circumvent the democratic processes and to strip you of your rights, then it’s very difficult for that department to come into your neighborhood and tell you that they respect you and that you should join their team,” he said, adding that diversity is “no pancea.” Malcolm D. Holmes and Brad W. Smith, co-authors of “Race and Police Brutality: Roots of an Urban Dilemma,&#8221; further explained that diversifying police forces “have not curbed police violence in communities of color” or removed the unique challenges of policing deprived neighborhoods.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Regardless, the mob may get at least one of their wishes fulfilled. In addition to the purported ouster of Chief Jackson, MSNBC is reporting that Officer Wilson is also expected to be &#8220;eased out&#8221; of his job. Both moves are ostensibly a prelude to a &#8220;full-scale take over of the Ferguson force by the St. Louis County police.&#8221; The announcement of these steps could occur as early as next week, according to CNN.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">CNN legal analyst Mark O&#8217;Mara was quick to jump on the bandwagon. &#8220;The animosity that existed in Ferguson were way before Mike Brown&#8217;s shooting, justified or not. So, unfortunately, the leadership in the Police Department has to change,&#8221; he insisted. &#8220;And if [Jackson's] sort of a sacrificial lamb to get this started, it&#8217;s going to have to be. Ferguson&#8217;s going to have to move forward. And it doesn&#8217;t seem they can move forward with this police chief in place.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">O&#8217;Mara was likely taking his cue from Holder, who voiced a similar dissatisfaction last month when he <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/justice/ferguson-justice-department-investigation/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced</span></a> the Justice Department was conducting an investigation of the force. &#8220;People consistently expressed concerns stemming from specific alleged incidents, from general policing practices and from the lack of diversity on the Ferguson police force,” Holder told reporters at the time. &#8220;These anecdotal accounts underscore the history of mistrust of law enforcement in Ferguson that has received a good deal of attention.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That would be predominantly media-driven attention, and their initial effort to frame the narrative in this case was reprehensible. Their <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/08/15/Robbery-Tape-Humiliates-Media-Gentle-Giant-Narrative"><span style="color: #1255cc;">description</span></a> of Michael Brown as a college-bound &#8220;gentle giant&#8221; was shattered by a video-tape depicting him committing a strong-arm robbery against a far smaller store clerk. Also debunked were the initial reports that Brown was shot in the back. That allegation was made by witnesses Dorian Johnson, Piaget Crenshaw and and Tiffany Mitchell. Johnson was Brown&#8217;s partner in crime, and Crenshaw <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/19/hands-up-story"><span style="color: #0433ff;">changed</span></a> her story following the family autopsy conducted by Dr. Michael Baden.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet the trio’s other allegation, that Brown had his hands up when he was shot— <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/official-autopsy-shows-michael-brown-had-close-range-wound-to/article_e98a4ce0-c284-57c9-9882-3fb7df75fef6.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">unsupported</span></a> by the official autopsy—was far more problematic. While several other witnesses contradicted that assessment, the &#8220;hands up&#8221; narrative went national, and remains largely embedded among a portion of black America and their white, leftist enablers who are either uninterested in the truth, or working feverishly to gain as much political mileage as they can from the incident, prior to the grand jury&#8217;s ultimate determination.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">CNN analyst Michael Smerconish believes that the attempt to oust Jackson is another orchestrated sop to the mob that may indicate the grand jury is not going to indict Wilson. &#8220;To me this is all calibrated and intended to take the temperature down of the community,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I&#8217;m absolutely convinced we&#8217;re headed for no indictment in this case.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The evidence leaked so far points in that direction. The official autopsy <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/new-evidence-supports-officers-account-of-shooting-in-ferguson/2014/10/22/cf38c7b4-5964-11e4-bd61-346aee66ba29_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">backs</span></a> Wilson&#8217;s version of the events, as do seven or eight black American witnesses &#8212; who won&#8217;t speak publicly because they fear for their own safety. And the infamous hacker group Anonymous <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2810141/Drug-case-dropped-Ferguson-officer-no-show.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">cites</span></a> yet another &#8220;government source&#8221; indicating that Wilson will not be indicted, adding that the grand jury&#8217;s announcement to that effect, originally slated for January 7, may now be made in as little as 10 days.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In the meantime, Americans ought to ponder the &#8220;chicken or the egg&#8221; order of events if and when such a scenario unfolds. As a simple Google <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=+riots+will+occur+in+Ferguson+if+Wilson+not+indicted&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;gws_rd=ssl"><span style="color: #1255cc;">search</span></a> reveals, much of the media consider it a virtual given that Ferguson, and perhaps several other communities as well, will erupt in unrestrained violence if Darren Wilson is acquitted. The <i>LA Times </i>offers a <a href="http://www.latimes.com/.../la-na-ferguson-shooting-201409"><span style="color: #1255cc;">quote</span></a> from Kevin Seltzer, who lives at an apartment complex near where Brown was shot. “They’re not going to be looting next time,” he warns. “They’re going to burn the city down.” CNN gots in on the act. &#8220;If there is not an indictment, excuse my French, all hell is going to break loose,” says an unnamed protester. &#8220;Ferguson and St. Louis will be in a state of emergency if Wilson is not indicted,” grad student Jaleah Williams <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/23/ferguson-protesters-darren-wilson_n_6036584.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> the Huffington Post. &#8220;If he’s not indicted, Ferguson will never be same. At the end of the day, the amount of times Wilson shot Mike Brown was excessive. So, if no charges come down, that’s saying it’s okay for police to kill our kids,” he added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Guardian <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/08/ferguson-protest-leaders-rally-new-york-michael-brown-shooting"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reports</span></a> that protesters are &#8220;warning police that they are prepared to die on the streets for their cause,” with Millennial Activists United co-founder Ashley Yates insisting that if Wilson is not indicted &#8220;people have every right to go out and express their rage in a manner that is equal to what we have suffered.” Hands Up United activist Tef Poe was far more direct. &#8220;Don’t come to Ferguson if you aren’t ready to die,” he warned. &#8220;Stay at home, as it could happen.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">If it does happen, the blood will be on the hands of the aforementioned race-baiters and their media enablers, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder, whose role in this tragedy cannot be understated. It was Holder who went to Ferguson last August and, absent any evidence of what actually occurred, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/08/21/holder-says-understands-mistrust-police-as-ferguson-protests-dwindle/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">sympathized</span></a> with the residents&#8217; “mistrust” of police because he is not only the attorney general, but a “black man” &#8212; one who proceeded to tell the crowd about his own experience of being stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike and accused of speeding. &#8220;I remember how humiliating that was and how angry I was and the impact it had on me,&#8221; Holder said &#8212; without ever mentioning whether or not he had in fact been speeding. And now, even with the facts as yet unannounced, he has essentially indicted an entire Ferguson Police Department that requires “wholesale change.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is America itself that requires wholesale change. The nation has reached the point where the politics of division embraced by this administration and its enablers in the Democratic party, egged on by their corrupt cheerleaders in the media, must be forcefully rejected. The race card is maxed out, and only those who profit from the misery of others wish to see the divisiveness continue.</p>
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		<title>When Leftist Race Hatred Meets Islamism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/when-leftist-race-hatred-meets-islamism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=when-leftist-race-hatred-meets-islamism</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 29 Oct 2014 04:54:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ax]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hatchet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Police]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Racist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[White]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zale Thompson]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243997</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ax-wielding NYC jihadist a "crusader seeking justice" for the New Black Panthers -- and ISIS. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/BN-FF082_NYOFFI_WN_20141024180755.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243998" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/BN-FF082_NYOFFI_WN_20141024180755-450x253.jpg" alt="BN-FF082_NYOFFI_WN_20141024180755" width="318" height="179" /></a>Apparently the hatchet-wielding maniac who assaulted two New York City policemen in Queens had ambitions in addition to his twisted jihadist sympathies. Attacker Zale Thompson’s father <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/10/25/pro-jihadi-ax-attacker-wanted-white-people-to-pay-for-slavery/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> the <i>New York Post</i> that killing white people was also on would-be murderer’s agenda.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“He wanted white people to pay for all that slavery and all that racism,” said father Ralph Thompson. “I think he committed suicide — and he was taking one of y’all with him.” Asked if “one of y’all&#8221; referred to whites, Thompson answered in the affirmative. “He just said, ‘They have to pay for all their unfairness,’” the father explained. “Unfairness for the way they treat black people.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Zale Thompson assaulted three white and one light-skinned Hispanic police officers while they posed for a photograph on Jamaica Avenue in Queens. White officers Kenneth Healey, 25, and Joseph Meeker, 24, were struck by the hatchet. Meeker was cut on the arm, and rookie cop Healey was struck on the back of his skull, nearly killing him. The other two officers on the scene <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/10/23/man-shot-dead-after-striking-cop-in-the-head-with-ax/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">shot</span></a> Thompson dead. Sadly, innocent bystander LaToya Jones, 29, was also shot and <a href="http://www.news.com.au/world/axe-attack-on-new-york-police-officers-was-a-terrorist-act-carried-out-by-selfradicalized-muslim-convert-zale-thompson/story-fndir2ev-1227101917370"><span style="color: #0433ff;">might be</span></a> paralyzed.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Thompson’s 2013 comment on Google+ <a href="https://plus.google.com/106459523311239638618/posts"><span style="color: #1255cc;">revealed</span></a> the animus to which his father referred. &#8220;It&#8217;s ok for white people to draw pictures of a white jesus, and then colonize Africa, and enslave the negro in America, wipe out the native American, and invade the middle east,” he wrote. &#8220;They call black people racist for rejecting the oppression they suffered from whites. Listen, when black people have colonized the entire continent of Europe, enslaved its people, and sold them into bondage to foreign lands, then you can call them racist.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Additional comments were uncovered by the <a href="http://ent.siteintelgroup.com/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">SITE Intelligence Group</span></a>, an entity that monitors extremist activity. On Facebook and YouTube, Thompson <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/25/nyregion/man-who-attacked-police-with-hatchet-ranted-about-us-officials-say.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">characterized </span></a> Christians as “aggressive and violent” and chastised the “Christianized Negro” for adhering to the faith “his slave master gave him.” He was apparently the commenter named Zale Thompson who also offered his opinion on a YouTube <a href="https://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=pA5CExFcTP4&amp;lc=6oB6OnCVZGQmZla5LZk6bb9DFcIYTqmQHb-a8_Tv6CUhttp://"><span style="color: #1255cc;">video</span></a> entitled, “Uprise of the Khilafah (Caliphate) World Wide&#8221;:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">If you’re looking for “perfect” muslims who never make any mistakes in their Jihad, then you will be looking in vain! If the Zionists and the Crusaders had never invaded and colonized the Islamic lands after WW1, then there would be no need for Jihad! Which is better, to sit around and do nothing, or to Jihad fisabeelallah (for allah’s sake)!</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">There were additional <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2806731/Was-terror-attack-Police-probe-extremist-links-online-rants-New-York-hatchet-attacker-emerge-shot-dead-attack-group-cops-Queens.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">comments</span></a> on his Facebook page, one that that featured a man dressed as a Muslim warrior taken from the cover of a book <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/10/24/man-who-struck-cop-with-ax-supported-isis/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">entitled</span></a> “Golden Age of the Moor,” and contained Arabic writing from the Quran that spoke to following “the straight path” through Allah.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">They were equally incendiary. &#8220;The solution is to fight. Armed struggle. Simple,” he wrote, before advocating all-out guerrilla warfare on the streets of America. &#8220;America&#8217;s military is strong abroad, but they have never faced an internal mass revolt. … They are weaker at home. We are scattered and decentralized, we can use this as an advantage. They will not be able to defeat our people if we use guerilla warfare. Attack their weak flanks&#8230; If you get wounded who cares. If you die who cares. Eventually they will surrender and then the war will be over.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">After Thompson was identified as the attacker last Friday, the page was taken down.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">If Thompson’s rant sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because it is a virtual echo of two Islamic extremist statements published on September 16 and 21. The first statement, entitled “To 2.6M Muslims in USA: A Call to Arms to Defend Islam and Avenge the Slaughter of Muslims” called for the killing of law enforcement officials. “Knocking off a police, military or any other law-enforcement officer sends a chilling message to the so-called ‘civilians’ and fills their hearts with consternation,” it declares.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The second statement is by ISIS spokesman Aub Mohammad al-Adnani. “Strike their police, security and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents,” he urges. “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him or poison him.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Police have been searching back as far as five years to determine if anyone Thompson communicated with was a threat. A law enforcement source explained why. “This guy spent every waking moment on the Internet,” the source stated. Subsequent reports revealed much of that Internet time was spent watching ISIS beheading videos, along with propaganda and recruitment videos from terrorist groups ISIS, al Qaeda and al-Shabaab.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Thompson had no criminal record in New York, but was arrested six times in the city of Oxnard, CA, and pleaded guilty for leaving the scene of an accident in 2003. That was the same year Thompson was involuntarily discharged after serving two years in the Navy, possibly because of drug use, according to investigation leader Chief Robert K. Boyce. He spent the last decade “adrift” according to the <i>New York Times</i>, and after he was evicted from his East New York, Brooklyn apartment in January, he alternated crashing with his mother and father, who lived a short distance from each other in Queens.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unsurprisingly, his attack was <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/10/27/new-black-panther-group-hails-ax-attacker/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">supported</span></a> by head of the local New Black Panther Party (NBPP) where Thompson attended meetings. Queens chapter leader Frank Sha Francois referred to Thompson as “a crusader seeking justice,” and he warned of additional attacks that are likely to arise. “It probably won’t be the last [attack on police] because you have a lot of frustrated people out here,” he told the <i>Post</i>. He revealed that Thompson wasn’t an official member of the group, but nonetheless attended meetings where they talked about “police brutality” cases that have yet to be officially designated as police brutality cases.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“I don’t condone violence, but something needs to be done,” Francois said. “We need to have some type of deterrent and real oversight to deter the police from violating the laws and to know they are not above the laws.” He added that he didn’t agree with Thompson’s methods. “I tell people that to go up against law enforcement in this country is suicide,” Francois explained. “Our main way to deal with it is to rally and boycotting.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Not exactly. When racial animosity was fomented by the usual suspects after Trayvon Martin was killed, the NBPP put a <a href="http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/03/25/new-black-panther-party-offers-10000-bounty-for-george-zimmerman/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">$10,000 bounty</span></a> on the head of George Zimmerman, with NBPP party leader Mikhail Muhammad warning that he should be &#8220;fearful for his life.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Family and friends described Thompson as an all-around hater, in sympathy with jihadists, and directing his animus towards cops in particular and white people in general. That animus aligns itself with the racist and conspiratorial theory of &#8220;<a href="http://www.tolerance.org/article/racism-and-white-privilege"><span style="color: #1255cc;">white privilege</span></a>” and its laundry list of perceived grievances, all based on the wearisome victimist mentality cultivated among black Americans by the American left for more than a half-century. Hence a hater becomes a crusader with only the method for expressing that hatred &#8212; wielding an ax, for example &#8212; at issue. And as the ongoing mayhem in Ferguson, MO so amply indicates, it is a victimist mentality unresponsive to logic and lawfulness, or waiting for the facts to emerge before reaching conclusions about what “really” happened.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That’s because the unbroken narrative of “unfairness” justifies anything and everything.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is a narrative egged on by an Obama administration that has granted an unseemly and wholly unwarranted level of credence to racial arsonists like Al Sharpton, with both Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/04/12/obama-praises-sharpton-amid-mob-snitch-revelations/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">attending</span></a> Sharpton’s annual National Action Network galas, and heaping <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/eric-holder-praises-left-wing-activist-al-sharpton-says-facts-law-will-guide-trayvon"><span style="color: #1255cc;">praise</span></a> on the tax-evading, hoax-perpetrating rabble-rouser.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Couple this reality with the administration’s flaccid and largely <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/us-searching-credible-allies-syria-26251422"><span style="color: #1255cc;">incoherent</span></a> response to ISIS—a response necessitated by the president’s premature withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011, based on the campaign-fueled <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/us/politics/a-president-whose-assurances-have-come-back-to-haunt-him.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">lie</span></a> that “the tide of war is receding”—and the nation is facing a perfect storm. One of the administration’s own making, and one that <i>facilitates</i> the cultivation of domestic jihadists and racist thugs. The longer ISIS remains a threat, the greater the chance of more “lone wolves” being enchanted by its resiliency. The more this administration gins up racial animosity in a pathetic attempt to get out the minority vote in the short term, and keep black Americans on the Democrat plantation over the long haul, the more likely “crusading” cop-killer, jihadist wannabes will take their best shot.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Thompson &#8220;Googled the words ‘jihad against police,’ ” said the <i>Post’s</i> law enforcement source. ISIS is extremely well-versed on how to “hit a lot of different kinds of people’s buttons,” explained David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center of Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University. “I didn’t know it would get that serious,” said Thompson’s father. “I didn’t know he was going to carry on a mission on his own.” Thompson was hardly alone. He had plenty of enablers, both foreign and domestic.</p>
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		<title>Releasing Criminally Convicted Illegals onto Our Streets</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/releasing-criminally-convicted-illegals-onto-our-streets/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=releasing-criminally-convicted-illegals-onto-our-streets</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/releasing-criminally-convicted-illegals-onto-our-streets/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2014 04:54:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Criminal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[illegal alien]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[murder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[release]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Violent]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243679</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Killers and sexual predators let loose in America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/arrests1-25855073b79ecfce6f39e800d04801e52308fc1d-s6-c30.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243680" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/arrests1-25855073b79ecfce6f39e800d04801e52308fc1d-s6-c30-450x337.jpg" alt="arrests1-25855073b79ecfce6f39e800d04801e52308fc1d-s6-c30" width="355" height="266" /></a>In a <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/22/immigration-detainees-released-criminal-records/17714925/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">revelation</span></a> that will surprise almost no one at this point, the Obama administration has been caught in another lie. Records obtained by <i>USA Today</i> contradict the administration’s assertions the 2,228 people freed from immigration jails in 2013 only included those with minor criminal records. Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials released a number of illegal aliens facing serious criminal charges that include &#8220;kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking and homicide,” the paper reports.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Despite last year’s furor surrounding the release, the administration continued to insist that only &#8220;<a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1312297-redacted-part3.html#document/p18/a183451"><span style="color: #1255cc;">low-risk offenders who do not have serious criminal records</span></a>,” had been set free. That statement was part of the hundreds of emails and spreadsheets obtained by the newspaper showing that while two-thirds of those released had no criminal records, several had significant criminal records.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">These realities blatantly contradict <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113hhrg80066/pdf/CHRG-113hhrg80066.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">testimony</span></a> by then-ICE Director John Morton before the House Judiciary Committee on March 19, 2013. Morton assured the Committee there were “no mass releases of dangerous criminals underway or any planned for the future, just efforts to live within our budget.&#8221; He also had the following exchange with Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-VA):</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Forbes: Let me ask you this question. On the aggravated felonies that you talked about, I am looking at the list here, and I am just running through a couple of them. But no one on that list was charged or convicted with murder, rape, or sexual abuse of a minor, were they?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Morton: They were not.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>USA Today, </i>which obtained the ICE data via a Freedom of Information Act request, reveals the fraudulence of Morton’s claims, noting there was &#8220;one person in Texas charged with aggravated kidnapping and sexually assaulting a child, as well as others charged with armed assaults or assaulting police officers,” the paper states. &#8220;Another immigrant released from Miami had been charged with conspiracy to commit homicide. Two detainees from Boston had been charged with aggravated assault using a weapon.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Lying aside, the reference to living within ICE’s budget is a key component of the discussion. Morton, the Obama administration, Democrats, and their media cheerleaders would all like Americans to believe the “draconian” budget cuts engendered by sequestration left the agency no other choice. Those “cuts&#8221; represented just over 2 percent of the 2013 budget, while federal spending in 2013 was <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/341106/sequester-proportion-yuval-levin"><span style="color: #1255cc;">$15 billion</span></a> <i>higher</i> than in 2012.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Nonetheless, the Obama administration sought to portray the sequester as the ultimate undoing of American’s massive welfare state. Thus a massive scare campaign was promoted, including <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-obamas-sequester-sleight-of-hand/2013/05/02/35155df0-b28f-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">warnings</span></a> from Obama that thousands of layoffs would ensue, airport delays would be massive, hundreds of thousands of Americans would lose access to healthcare, meat would not be properly inspected, federal prosecutors would have to close cases allowing criminals to go free, immigration control would be forced to allow more illegal aliens to enter the country—and ICE would be forced to undertake &#8220;a mass release of immigrants,” <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/us/immigrants-released-ahead-of-automatic-budget-cuts.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">warned</span></a> the <i>New York Times</i>.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Thus it was completely unsurprising that <i>USA Today </i>would frame the ICE’s unconscionable felon release program as one engendered by an agency faced with &#8220;steep, across-the-government spending cuts in February 2013.” ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen maintained the ongoing charade, insisting that &#8220;discretionary releases made by ICE were of low-level offenders. However, the releases involving individuals with more significant criminal histories were, by and large, dictated by special circumstances outside of the agency&#8217;s control.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Those special circumstances were not explained.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The former head of ICE&#8217;s detention operation, Gary Mead, doubled down as well, insisting there was no deliberate attempt to deceive the public. He claimed the release of the 2,228 detainees happened so quickly ICE managers were unaware of who they freed until they heard about it in the media. &#8220;We had been asking for some time whether we would have enough money to sustain the level of detention we had, and we didn&#8217;t get an answer,&#8221; Mead said. &#8220;When we did get an answer, it was that we had to start releasing people today.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Inspector General (IG) also circled the wagons. Despite reporting in August that ICE’s cost-cutting efforts were so rushed and mismanaged the agency never informed then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano or the White House of the mishandled detainee release, the IG’s audit ultimately concluded the agency had acted “appropriately” when determining who should be freed.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At the congressional hearing, Morton confirmed that ICE’s blasé attitude regarding illegal alien criminal records started right at the top, telling Rep. Forbes that while he had “reviewed the summaries of all 2,228” he had “not looked at the actual conviction records personally on such a number.” Furthermore, he inadvertently revealed the conclusion reached by the IG was nonsensical: under questioning, he couldn’t explain why the agency had made no preparation whatsoever for the sequester before January 2013, despite the fact that it had been passed in August of 2011.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Morton also revealed something else equally as telling. When asked if he opposed statutory language in the 2012 and 2013 budget requests mandating that ICE maintain at least 34,000 detention beds on a daily basis, Morton acknowledged that President Obama’s budget called for a lower number of 32,800 beds. The Appropriations Committee eventually insisted otherwise, maintaining the 34,000 bed limit. In other words it was Obama himself who sought to hamstring ICE even more than the sequester ostensibly did.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The would be the very same sequester that was <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-fanciful-claim-that-congress-proposed-the-sequester/2012/10/25/8651dc6a-1eed-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_blog.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Obama’s idea</span></a>, all denials to the contrary notwithstanding.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Of the 2,228 detainees released, 629 had criminal records, according to Morton’s testimony. Yet he characterized those released as people charged with misdemeanors &#8220;or other criminals whose prior conviction did not pose a violent threat to public safety.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">This story is undoubtedly a revelation for many Americans. Unfortunately, it represents the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Last May, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released a detailed <a href="http://cis.org/ICE-Document-Details-36000-Criminal-Aliens-Release-in-2013"><span style="color: #1255cc;">report</span></a> revealing that in 2013, ICE freed an eye-popping <i>36,007 criminal aliens</i> &#8220;convicted of hundreds of violent and serious crimes, including homicide, sexual assault, kidnapping, and aggravated assault.” CIS further explained that the “vast majority of these releases from ICE custody were discretionary, not required by law,” and in some cases &#8220;apparently contrary to law.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At the time, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) framed that release in no uncertain terms. “This would be considered the worst prison break in American history, except it was sanctioned by the president and perpetrated by our own immigration officials,” he declared.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And while the left-leaning <i>USA Today,</i> which referred to the 2,228 released individual as “undocumented immigrants” rather than the illegal aliens that they truly are, provides nothing more than the aforementioned handful of details regarding their criminal records, CIS was far more forthcoming. The 36,007 convicted criminal aliens released accounted for a whopping 88,000 convictions that included 193 for homicide, 436 for sexual assault, 303 for kidnapping, and 1,075 for aggravated assaults. Other offenses apparently considered “non-serious” by ICE included 1,160 stolen vehicle convictions, 9,187 dangerous drug convictions, 16,070 drunk or drugged driving convictions, and 303 flight escape convictions.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Adding insult to injury, CIS further noted that &#8220;ICE declined to bring immigration charges in 68,000 cases of criminal aliens they encountered in 2013.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is critical to remember the same Obama administration orchestrating this chaos is the one that plans to allow as many as 100,000 Haitians entry in to the United States in 2015 <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/17/obama-admin-to-allow-haitians-into-us-before-visas/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">without a visa</span></a> under its Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program. This &#8220;irresponsible overreach of the executive branch’s authority” as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) characterizes it, will be followed shortly after the 2014 election by the president’s <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/25/Report-Obama-Expected-to-Enact-Exec-Amnesty-for-Nearly-5-Million-Illegals-After-European-Trip-Next-Week"><span style="color: #1255cc;">promise</span></a> to grant amnesty to millions of illegals again via executive order, possibly precipitating the most serious constitutional crisis in modern history.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And make no mistake: it is a constitutional crisis <i>wholeheartedly supported</i> by a Democratic Party more than willing to sell out millions of American citizens and legal immigrants in a fevered quest for unassailable power.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"> “Well, look, here’s the bottom line,” <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-dems-running-away-him-these-are-all-folks-who-vote-me_816522.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> Obama during a recent interview with Al Sharpton. “We’ve got a tough (election) map. A lot of the states that are contested this time are states that I didn’t win. And so some of the candidates there, you know, it is difficult for them to have me in the state because the Republicans will use that to try to fan Republican turn-out. The bottom line is, though, these are all <i>folks who vote with me”</i> (italics mine). Truer words were never spoken, and Americans heading to the voting booth should take them to heart.</p>
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		<title>Paul Krugman Uncovers a Right-Wing Conspiracy at Amazon.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/paul-krugman-uncovers-a-right-wing-conspiracy-at-amazon-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=paul-krugman-uncovers-a-right-wing-conspiracy-at-amazon-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 04:45:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amazon.com]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conspiracy]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Paul Krugman]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Times columnist suggests a government crackdown for selling conservative books too quickly. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/paul_krugman.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243517" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/paul_krugman-450x345.jpg" alt="Professor of Economics at Princeton University Krugman attends The Russia Forum 2012 in Moscow" width="320" height="245" /></a>Big-government aficionado Paul Krugman is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/opinion/paul-krugman-amazons-monopsony-is-not-ok.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">calling</span></a> for “public action to curb the power” of an entity he can’t quite bring himself to call a monopoly, even as he nonetheless compares its “abuses&#8221; to those of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil company. The subject of his ire? &#8220;<a href="http://amazon.com/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Amazon.com</span></a>, the giant online retailer, has too much power, and it uses that power in ways that hurt America,” Krugman whines.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">&#8220;Does Amazon really have robber-baron-type market power? When it comes to books, definitely,” Krugman insists. &#8220;Amazon overwhelmingly dominates online book sales, with a market share comparable to Standard Oil’s share of the refined oil market when it was broken up in 1911. Even if you look at total book sales, Amazon is by far the largest player.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is the largest player that even Krugman is forced to admit &#8220;has not tried to exploit consumers.” Yet he posits the notion that keeping its prices “systematically low” is not a benefit for those consumers, as much as it allows Amazon to “reinforce its dominance.” That dominance is used to “squeeze” publishers to lower the price of book sales to Amazon, and despite the fact that Krugman has already admitted Amazon passes those savings on to its customers, he remains adamant that one of the most basic concepts of free-market competition is a bad thing. &#8220;In economics jargon, Amazon is not, at least so far, acting like a monopolist, a dominant seller with the power to raise prices,” he writes. &#8220;Instead, it is acting as a monopsonist, a dominant buyer with the power to push prices down.” Despite Krugman’s hand-wringing, one is inclined to think the public would look favorably on this effect on the marketplace.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">He notes that people buy books because they’ve heard about them, other people are reading them, they’re a topic of conversation, they‘ve made the best-seller list, and writers are promoting them. Yet Amazon’s “immense” power gives it the ability to “kill the buzz.” &#8220;It’s definitely possible, with some extra effort, to buy a book you’ve heard about even if Amazon doesn’t carry it,” Krugman concedes, &#8220;but if Amazon doesn’t carry that book, you’re much less likely to hear about it in the first place.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Not exactly. There are innumerable ways for authors and publishers to promote books. One of those ways is known as “advertising,” a concept one hopes is self-explanatory. The other is promotion. Perhaps Krugman forgets that before Amazon, there was Oprah Winfrey, whose power was also so “immense” the book <a href="http://www.salon.com/2007/03/05/the_secret/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">promotions</span></a> she did on her daytime show virtually guaranteed best-seller status. In fact Krugman’s own newspaper <a href="http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/the-return-of-the-oprahs-book-club/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">described</span></a> the former daytime talk show queen as &#8220;the publishing industry’s unrivaled tastemaker,” further noting that over the years &#8220;a book’s selection as an Oprah-sanctioned title translated into instantly skyrocketing sales of more than a million copies, extraordinary numbers for any title.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In 2012, Winfrey revived her book club after a two-year break using her own 24-hr. cable network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), as the vehicle for doing so. One is hard-pressed to recall any column by Krugman advocating public action to curb the power of OWN.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Regardless, with regard to Amazon, Krugman sees a conspiracy at work. &#8220;So can we trust Amazon not to abuse that power?” he wonders. &#8220;The Hachette dispute has settled that question: no, we can’t.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That dispute, the result of failed negotiations in which Amazon was seeking better terms, is described in another <i>Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/10/technology/writers-feel-an-amazon-hachette-spat.html?module=Search&amp;mabReward=relbias%3As%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%253"><span style="color: #1255cc;">column</span></a> by David Streitfeld. He characterizes it as a case of Amazon “bullying” Hachette. That bullying consists of Amazon charging more for Hachette-published books, suggesting readers might enjoy books from other authors, and in some cases, taking weeks to deliver a Hachette book if one was ordered.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet even Streitfeld was forced to admit Amazon’s dominance consists of controlling only a third of the book business, and that some Hachette writers remain “unscathed by the dispute.” Furthermore, he is forced to reveal the most likely reason for Amazon’s increasingly hard-line stance with publishers: Amazon’s &#8220;shares are down sharply this year and analysts are cutting earnings forecasts.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Business realities apparently aside, Krugman describes the penalty imposed by Amazon on Hachette as being animated by a &#8220;curious selectivity.&#8221; &#8220;Last month the Times’s Bits blog documented the case of two Hachette books receiving very different treatment,” Krugman complains. &#8220;One is Daniel Schulman’s &#8216;Sons of Wichita,&#8217; a profile of the Koch brothers; the other is &#8216;The Way Forward,&#8217; by Paul Ryan, who was Mitt Romney’s running mate and is chairman of the House Budget Committee. Both are listed as eligible for Amazon Prime, and for Mr. Ryan’s book Amazon offers the usual free two-day delivery. What about &#8216;Sons of Wichita&#8217;? As of Sunday, it &#8216;usually ships in 2 to 3 weeks.&#8217; Uh-huh.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">What a difference a couple of days apparently makes. Here is the Tuesday <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sons-Wichita-Brothers-Americas-Powerful/dp/1455518735"><span style="color: #1255cc;">listing</span></a> for “Sons of Wichita” at Amazon’s website. &#8220;Want it Thursday, 23 Oct.? Order it within 22 hrs 3 mins and choose One-Day Delivery at checkout,” the site states.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Uh-huh.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In a <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/10/20/behind-a-nyt-call-to-bust-up-amazon/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">column</span></a> for the <i>NY Post, </i>author and editor<i> </i>Ira Stoll takes Krugman to task, asking readers to imagine &#8220;if Krugman’s argument were applied to another ‘immense’ power in the book industry — The New York Times itself.” Stoll reveals that “Sons of Wichita” a book that attacks the Koch brothers, who are this year’s leftist bogeymen, &#8220;got a full-length Sunday review by Nicholas Lemann, was featured in the Times Book Review podcast, and was mentioned yet again in the Sunday Book Review as an &#8216;Editors’ Choice.’”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Ryan’s book? &#8220;When it showed up at No. 5 on the Times bestseller list, the book review deigned to mention it in a two-paragraph item that denounced the book as being &#8216;full of your basic agitprop&#8217; and inaccurately described it as Ryan’s &#8216;first book,&#8217; a distinction that in fact belongs to the 2010 book &#8216;Young Guns,&#8217; which the Times itself handled back in 2010 with a four-sentence review that managed to be about 100 percent wrong,” Stoll explains.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Moreover, the “curious selectivity” of the <i>NY Times</i> best-seller list is hardly a new development. Conservative author David Limbaugh’s latest book, “Jesus on Trial,” was <a href="http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/09/18/ny-times-best-seller-list-ignoring-new-david-limbaugh-book-despite-sales-numbers/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">banished</span></a> despite sales better than 17 other books on the list. The same treatment was <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/21/dinesh-dsouzas-america-left-new-york-times-best-se/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">afforded</span></a> to Dinesh D’Souza’s “America: Imagine a World Without Her,” which had sales higher than 13 other books that made the <i>Times</i> best-seller list back in June.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Stoll whacks Krugman for his hypocrisy, noting that if his standard for demanding government intervention &#8220;is a powerful book-industry force treating two different books differently&#8230;the Times columnist ought to be calling for the Justice Department to rush into Midtown Manhattan and take dramatic action.” Stoll suspects Krugman’s self-righteousness concerns far more germane realities: the fact that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos now owns the <i>Washington Post</i>, which competes with the <i>Times</i>, and the allegation that Bezos has a libertarian-oriented political view, which is at odds with Krugman’s statism.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That would be the statism that animates Krugman’s totalitarian impulses. He isn&#8217;t worried that Amazon is too &#8220;powerful.” The aforementioned example he uses to accuse Amazon of “curious selectively” is nothing more than a thinly-veiled example of a “right wing conspiracy.” In reality he&#8217;s concerned that Amazon sells too many conservative books&#8211;and wants the government to crush them for doing so.</p>
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		<title>EU Hangs On with Hookers, Drug Dealers &amp; Gun Runners</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/eu-hangs-on-with-hookers-drug-dealers-gun-runners/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=eu-hangs-on-with-hookers-drug-dealers-gun-runners</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 04:43:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[black market]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The questionable accounting gimmick countries are using to claim economic progress. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20140531_FNP0021.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243252" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20140531_FNP0021.jpg" alt="20140531_FNP002" width="302" height="247" /></a>Karl Marx was wrong about virtually everything, but he was spot on when he <a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/k/karlmarx382655.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">said</span></a>, &#8220;history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.&#8221; For the <a href="http://business.financialpost.com/2014/08/25/triple-dip-recession-for-the-european-union/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">third time</span></a> in six years, the European Union (EU) is on the verge of recession, a tragedy fueled by slow or non-existent growth, a strong possibility of continent-wide deflation, and debt burdens that remain onerous, if not catastrophic. Enter farce: the economic doyens of the EU have determined that Italy is no longer in recession due to a new way of measuring economic growth and GDP—one that <a href="http://en.mercopress.com/2014/06/06/italy-planning-to-boost-economy-by-including-shadow-economy-as-part-of-gdp"><span style="color: #1255cc;">counts</span></a> illegal activities such as drug trafficking, prostitution and arms smuggling as part of the mix.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The new method of measuring economic data is called <a href="http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/esa_2010/introduction"><span style="color: #1255cc;">SEC2010</span></a> (also known as ESA2010) and is occasioned by the differing laws individual EU nations have regarding the legality of dubious activities. SEC2010 was originally published in June 2013, but it was implemented beginning last month. It is aimed at realizing &#8220;developments in measuring modern economies, advances in methodological research and the needs of users,” according to a statement by Eurostat.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">As a result, the third largest EU economy has seen its “growth” rate revised by the Italian National Institute of Statistics from a 0.1 percent first quarter decline, to zero. Italy also had a 0.2 percent <a href="http://www.independent.ie/business/world/europe-italy-revises-gdp-and-is-out-of-recession-30667594.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">decline</span></a> in the second quarter which was left unrevised. But because of the first quarter’s revision, the two consecutive quarters of negative growth necessary to define a recession has now been averted.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The move ostensibly gives Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi a brief respite in his effort to boost the economy, while staying below European Central Bank’s (ECB) <a href="https://www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/eaec/fiscal/html/index.en.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">requirements</span></a> that budget deficits not exceed 3 percent of GDP, and gross debt not exceed 60 percent of GDP. Italy is one for two in that regard as its national debt remains more than double the ECB limit at 132 percent, even when black market activity is taken into account.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Renzi is attempting to reform Italy’s economy with a budget containing tax cuts for businesses and lower-income individuals, which he characterizes as “the biggest tax cut ever done by a government in a year,” and &#8220;a sign of Italy’s great strength, solidity, and determination.” But the government will remain saddled with debt and despite spending reductions to fight it, the budget deficit will rise from 2.2 percent to 2.9 percent. Moreover, Italy still intends to maintain its delay in reaching a structurally-adjusted balanced budget until 2017.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Italy is far from the EU’s only basket case. Germany, the EU’s largest economy, has seen its recovery falter and it endured an economic contraction of its own in the second quarter. France, the EU’s second largest economy, was flat over the same period, and growth in the EU as a whole was near zero.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Adding fuel to the debt-laden EU fire is an <a href="http://rt.com/business/196540-europe-recession-inflation/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">anemic rate</span></a> of inflation, moving precipitously towards deflation. It has fallen to 0.3 percent in Sept. in the 18-member Eurozone, a level not seen since 2009. It is only marginally better in the EU as a whole at 0.4 percent. By comparison, inflation in the Eurozone in Sept. 2013 was 1.1 percent, with the EU at 1.3 percent during the same time frame, Eurostat <a href="http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/2-16102014-AP/EN/2-16102014-AP-EN.PDF"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reported.</span></a> This marks the 20th straight month the ECB has missed its target inflation rate of 2 percent. Moreover, it looks like the region’s GDP will contract in the third quarter, precipitating the aforementioned triple-dip recession.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">During an August 7 press conference, ECB president Mario Draghi promised the bank’s monetary policies would <a href="http://business.financialpost.com/2014/08/25/triple-dip-recession-for-the-european-union/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">remain</span></a> “highly accommodative.” “We are strongly determined to safeguard the firm anchoring of inflation expectations over the medium to long term,” he said. And once again, and equally as farcical, the ECB will embrace quantitative easing to “fix” the problem, which is also once again being blamed on too much “austerity.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">As Steve H. Hanke, professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-h-hanke/eu-austerity-you-must-be-_b_5948476.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">explains</span></a>, the EU definition of austerity is a joke. &#8220;The leading political lights in Europe&#8211;Messrs. Hollande, Valls and Macron in France and Mr. Renzi in Italy&#8211;are raising a big stink about fiscal austerity,” he writes. &#8220;They don&#8217;t like it. And now Greece has jumped on the anti-austerity bandwagon. The pols have plenty of company, too. Yes, they can trot out a host of economists&#8211;from Nobelist Krugman on down&#8211;to carry their water.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Hanke supplies a <a href="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2014-10-07-EUandUSGeneralGovtExpasofGDP.PNG"><span style="color: #1255cc;">chart</span></a> showing a continent sinking “under the weight of the State,” with the percentage of government spending relative to GDP that comes in at 58.5 percent for Greece, 57.1 percent for France, and 50.6 percent for Italy. In fact, out of the 30 European nations listed, only Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Romania and Slovakia spend less than 40 percent of their respective GDPs on government.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In a column for Bloomberg News, Leonid Bershidsky <a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-08-19/european-austerity-is-a-myth"><span style="color: #1255cc;">presents</span></a> an equally compelling chart. It reveals that between 2007 and 2013, spending in the 28-member EU &#8220;reached 49 percent of gross domestic product in 2013, 3.5 percentage points more than in 2007,” Bershidsky writes. He further notes it was slightly higher than 50 percent in 2009, but the subsequent decline had nothing to do with spending cuts. &#8220;Rather, the spending didn&#8217;t go down as much as the economies collapsed, and then didn&#8217;t grow in line with the modest rebound,” he explains.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">So much for austerity and spending “cuts.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Which brings us to why the EU <i>really</i> fears deflation. As economic correspondent Ambrose Evans-Pritchard <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11154553/Dam-breaks-in-Europe-as-deflation-fears-wash-over-ECB-rhetoric.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">illuminates</span></a> in an Oct. 10 column for <i>The Telegraph, </i>it is debt-addled governments that need inflation to manage their irresponsible debt burdens. All of this is framed in “eco-speak,” such as &#8220;demand stimulus&#8221; and &#8220;deflationary traps,” but the bottom line is clear: unless many of these governments can “inflate away their debt&#8221; with monetization, sovereign default becomes a genuine possibility.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Investment advisor Peter Schiff puts this lunacy in terms most people can understand, noting that &#8220;politicians and central bankers (and their academic, journalistic, and financial apologists) have concocted a variety of tortured theories as to why inflation is not just good for overly indebted governments, but an essential economic good for all. In a propaganda victory that even Goebbels would envy, it is now widely accepted that purchasing power must decrease for an economy to grow,” he writes.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The clearest current example of this propaganda is the semi-hysteria surrounding the fall in global oil prices. CBS News <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/falling-oil-prices-shake-up-global-economies/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">speaks</span></a> to worldwide &#8220;economic and political shockwaves” related to government “budget shortfalls,” even as it is forced to admit such price cuts are an absolute boon for fuel consumers. One suspects most ordinary Europeans (and Americans as well) prefer lower fuel prices than “taking one for the government/banker team” desperate to substitute inflation for the kind of staggering tax increases and genuine cutting it would take to balance budgets throughout the EU. Thus, Andrew Roberts, credit chief at the Royal Bank of Scotland, sounds the predictable alarm. “We are reaching the end game in Europe,” he warns. &#8220;If they don’t launch real QE and start reflation by the end of the year or soon after, the consequences are too awful to contemplate.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Compared to what? In Greece, the current unemployment rate is 26.7 percent. In Spain, it is 25.3 percent. Even in “recovering” Ireland, 11.8 percent of the workforce remains unemployed. What Roberts is really talking about is a massive debt crisis, one where the proverbial can must be continually kicked down the road—lest the true scope of the fiscal fecklessness engendered by years of unsustainable government spending be revealed.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Hence the continuing desire to mask the truth by literally throwing money at the problem, all in the name of saving the Euro and in turn the European Union, despite the reality that the marriage of spendthrift nations such as Greece, Spain and Portugal, with the relatively level-headed nation of Germany is a triumph of politically-motivated fantasy over fiscal reality. And while the bankers and politicians undoubtedly bear the lion’s share of the blame for the current predicament, the people themselves are hardly blameless. Their appetite for big government knows no bounds, and thus, what constitutes “courageous” behavior by politicians to get a handle on the problem assumes comical proportions. The Economist <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21611154-parliamentary-workers-are-facing-cut-their-generous-pay-high-class-errand-boys?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/highclasserrandboys"><span style="color: #1255cc;">cites</span></a> a great example, noting that Italy employs ushers in gold-braided uniforms at the Italian Parliament whose top salary for carrying messages to lawmakers used to be $181,590 a year, before Renzi imposed “austerity” by cutting it—to $140,000. Using email is apparently out of the question.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">So is genuine austerity. Instead, the specter of deflation will be held up as the ultimate bogeyman, and the debt crisis that never really went away, despite the mainstream media’s lack of attention, will continue. And if it becomes necessary to calculate the economic output of hookers, gunrunners and drug dealers to boost GDP, so be it.</p>
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