You can find their phone number, email and mailing address through these links:
Senate:
http://senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
House:
http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml
Call the Capitol Switchboard and ask to be directly connected to your Senator’s office: 202-224-3121.
Showing posts with label unprincipled-politicians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unprincipled-politicians. Show all posts
Monday, November 22, 2010
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
MAKE SURE YOU’RE STILL MAD IN NOVEMBER 2010
From: MC><)))*> Μολών Λaβέ (410301086)
Date: 12/1/2009 9:34:08 AM
Subject: MAKE SURE YOU’RE STILL MAD IN NOVEMBER 2010
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear
arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in
government.
Thomas Jefferson
"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no
matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear
arms ... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against
arbitrary government, one more safeguard, against the tyranny which now
appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always
possible."
-- Hubert H. Humphrey, Senator, Vice President, 22 October 1959
Please keep this going. With God's help, we CAN make a difference!
The 2010 Election Day ...
Your U.S. House & Senate have voted themselves $4,700 and $5,300 raises.
1. They voted to not give you a S.S. cost of living raise in
2010 and 2011.
2. Your Medicare premiums will go up $285.60 for the 2-years
and you will not get the 3% COLA or $660/yr. Your total 2-yr loss and
costs $1,600 or $3,200 for husband and wife. Plain enough??????
3. Every member of Congress will get an added $10,000 which is
putting them very close to $ 200,000 per year. Sounds like an elite class
to us.
4. They vote themselves a raise and better benefits. They only
care about WE THE PEOPLE on election day, right? You never did anything
about it in the past. The time for action is near!!!!
5. Do you really think that Nancy, Harry, Chris, Charlie,
Barnie, et al, care about you? SEND THE MESSAGE-- You're FIRED.
*** THIS IS NOT ABOUT POLITICAL PARTIES!
IN 2010 YOU WILL HAVE A CHANCE TO GET RID OF THE ENTIRE SITTING CONGRESS, Up to 1/3 OF THE SENATE, AND 100% OF THE HOUSE.
The election in 2010 will be a sea-change to the mindset of
any member of Congress who may survive.
MAKE SURE YOU’RE STILL MAD IN NOVEMBER 2010 AND REMIND THE REPLACEMENTS
NOT TO SCREW UP LIKE THE GUYS THEY ARE REPLACING.
THIS IS A MUST DO!
It is ok to forward this to your sphere of influence if you ARE finally
tired of this abuse.
Date: 12/1/2009 9:34:08 AM
Subject: MAKE SURE YOU’RE STILL MAD IN NOVEMBER 2010
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear
arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in
government.
Thomas Jefferson
"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no
matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear
arms ... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against
arbitrary government, one more safeguard, against the tyranny which now
appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always
possible."
-- Hubert H. Humphrey, Senator, Vice President, 22 October 1959
Please keep this going. With God's help, we CAN make a difference!
The 2010 Election Day ...
Your U.S. House & Senate have voted themselves $4,700 and $5,300 raises.
1. They voted to not give you a S.S. cost of living raise in
2010 and 2011.
2. Your Medicare premiums will go up $285.60 for the 2-years
and you will not get the 3% COLA or $660/yr. Your total 2-yr loss and
costs $1,600 or $3,200 for husband and wife. Plain enough??????
3. Every member of Congress will get an added $10,000 which is
putting them very close to $ 200,000 per year. Sounds like an elite class
to us.
4. They vote themselves a raise and better benefits. They only
care about WE THE PEOPLE on election day, right? You never did anything
about it in the past. The time for action is near!!!!
5. Do you really think that Nancy, Harry, Chris, Charlie,
Barnie, et al, care about you? SEND THE MESSAGE-- You're FIRED.
*** THIS IS NOT ABOUT POLITICAL PARTIES!
IN 2010 YOU WILL HAVE A CHANCE TO GET RID OF THE ENTIRE SITTING CONGRESS, Up to 1/3 OF THE SENATE, AND 100% OF THE HOUSE.
The election in 2010 will be a sea-change to the mindset of
any member of Congress who may survive.
MAKE SURE YOU’RE STILL MAD IN NOVEMBER 2010 AND REMIND THE REPLACEMENTS
NOT TO SCREW UP LIKE THE GUYS THEY ARE REPLACING.
THIS IS A MUST DO!
It is ok to forward this to your sphere of influence if you ARE finally
tired of this abuse.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
IRS loses challenge to prove tax liability -2007
From: Irish American Patriot (13778526)
Date: 11/28/2009 2:17:08 PM
Subject: IRS loses challenge to prove tax liability
"The Founding Fathers intentionally restricted the taxing powers of the new federal government as a measure of restraint on its size. By exceeding that limited taxing authority the federal government has been able to obtain resources beyond its intended reach, and that money has enabled the federal government to exceed its authority"
"The Constitution does not allow the government to run your lives, but the money it is stealing from millions of Americans is the fuel for its over-reaching and kibitzing. Take the money back and we and our states and communities can again be free"
IRS loses challenge to prove tax liability
Lawyer is acquitted after arguing income levy lacks legal foundation
Posted: July 26, 2007
By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com
source: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56855
The Internal Revenue Service http://www.wnd.com/redir/r.asp?http://www.irs.gov/localcontacts/index.html has lost a lawyer's challenge in front of a jury to prove a constitutional foundation for the nation's income tax, and the victorious attorney now is setting his sights higher.
"I think now people are beginning to realize that this has got to be the largest fraud, backed up by intimidation and extortion and by the sheer force of taking peoples property and hard-earned money without any lawful authorization whatsoever," lawyer Tom Cryer told WND just days after a jury in Louisiana acquitted him of two criminal tax counts.
And before you consign him to the legions of "tin foil hat brigades" who argue against paying taxes, and then want payment to explain how to do that, he addresses the issue up front.
"These snake oil peddlers have conned millions of dollars out of many well-intended patriots and left a trail of broken lives in their wake. … These charlatans should be avoided, not only because they will lead you to bankruptcy and prison, but because by association they discredit those who are telling the truth," he said.
The truth, he said, is where he comes in, with the launch of a new Truth Attack website that is intended to build on his victory, and create a coalition of resources to defeat – ultimately – the income tax in the United States.
Although the legal citations in the case tend to run the length of paragraphs, Cryer told WND the underlying issue is not that complicated. Essentially, he argued that income is not necessarily any money that comes to a person, but rather categories such as profit and interest.
He said the free exchange of labor for compensation has been upheld as a right by the Supreme Court, but that doesn't necessarily make the compensation income.
If ever such an argument were to be presented widely, Cryer said, the income to the federal government would plummet. But not to worry, he said, the expenses could be reduced equally by eliminating programs, departments and agencies that also have no foundation in the Constitution.
"The Founding Fathers intentionally restricted the taxing powers of the new federal government as a measure of restraint on its size. By exceeding that limited taxing authority the federal government has been able to obtain resources beyond its intended reach, and that money has enabled the federal government to exceed its authority," he said.
For example, he said, the Constitution does not empower the federal government to regulate education, or employment, and agriculture, yet it does so.
The jury in U.S. District Court in Louisiana voted 12-0 to find Cryer, of Shreveport, not guilty of failure to file income taxes for two years. He had been indicted in 2006 on charges of failing to pay $73,000 to the IRS in 2000 and 2001. The next step in his personal case will be up to the IRS and prosecutors, if they choose to continue the issue, he said.
But for the rest of the nation, he's working with Save-a-Patriot http://www.wnd.com/redir/r.asp?http://www.save-a-patriot.org/ ,
the Free Enterprise Society http://www.wnd.com/redir/r.asp?http://freeenterprisesociety.com/ ,
Live Free Now and his own Lie Free Zone http://www.wnd.com/redir/r.asp?http://www.gcstation.net/liefreezone/ to spread the message of the truth.
"There are three points that are important," he told WND. "There's no law making the average working man liable [for income taxes], there's no law or regulation that allows the IRS to contend that earnings are 100 percent profit received in exchange for nothing, and the right to earn a living through any lawful occupation is a constitutionally protected fundamental right, and it is exempt from taxation."
Spokesman Robert Marvin in Washington's IRS office told WND the Internal Revenue Code provides for taxation on salaries or wages, but when pressed for a specific citation, or constitutional provision, he said, "I can't comment."
Cryer's encounter with tax law began more than a decade ago when a friend told him the income tax was sham. Cryer started researching, hoping to keep his friend out of trouble. But his conclusions, after years of research, were exactly what his friend told him.
He researched not only tax laws, but also the documents pertaining to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution as well as the first income tax.
He said throughout his battle, he's offered at every turn to pay taxes if the IRS could show him the authorization, and that never has happened.
"The Criminal Investigation Division and Department of Justice both responded only with 'your position is frivolous.' I had never stated a position, so how could they know whether it was frivolous?" he said. "Imagine my sending you a bill for $1,000 and when you call me and ask what the bill was for I simply said, 'that position is frivolous, just write the check and send it in.'"
His acquittal, he said, was a precedent because it means "people can see and recognize the truth."
He said multiple Supreme Court opinions have affirmed an individual's ownership of his or her own labor, and "exercising your fundamental rights" is not taxable. "It is definitely a trade. What most people receive in the form of wages, salaries or in my case fees that they personally earned for their labor is not received in exchange for nothing."
He said there might be a profit that should be taxable, but there might not.
"The IRS lets Wal-Mart sell a trillion dollars worth of goods, but they can back out their cost of goods [before being taxed,]" he said. "The IRS considers, in the case of a Wal-Mart wage earner, 100 percent of what he takes in is profit."
"But he's using his life, energy and work lifespan, and depleting it as he goes," Cryer told WND. "[Working] is a God-given fundamental right that is protected under the Constitution and can't be taxed any more than exercising freedom of speech."
While he waits to see what, if anything, the IRS and Justice Department will do next in his case, he's working to coordinate the groups that are battling taxation as unconstitutional.
"I have started a campaign to unify [the work] and we've got a number of organizations that are sponsoring and supporting this campaign," he said. The goal is to get everyone "who is aware of the truth" organized so they can spread the word.
He warned without a restoration of constitutional basics, the nation is lost.
"Read your Constitution and you will see that the federal role does not include ANY authority to regulate or tax any citizen directly and that WE expressly reserved the right to rule and govern ourselves as States, not as mere political subdivisions," his website says.
"The Constitution does not allow the government to run your lives, but the money it is stealing from millions of Americans is the fuel for its over-reaching and kibitzing. Take the money back and we and our states and communities can again be free," he said.
The fight is over "our FREEDOM from rule by a DISTANT RULER, just as we fought to free ourselves of a distant England over 200 years ago," he said.
Date: 11/28/2009 2:17:08 PM
Subject: IRS loses challenge to prove tax liability
"The Founding Fathers intentionally restricted the taxing powers of the new federal government as a measure of restraint on its size. By exceeding that limited taxing authority the federal government has been able to obtain resources beyond its intended reach, and that money has enabled the federal government to exceed its authority"
"The Constitution does not allow the government to run your lives, but the money it is stealing from millions of Americans is the fuel for its over-reaching and kibitzing. Take the money back and we and our states and communities can again be free"
IRS loses challenge to prove tax liability
Lawyer is acquitted after arguing income levy lacks legal foundation
Posted: July 26, 2007
By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com
source: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56855
The Internal Revenue Service http://www.wnd.com/redir/r.asp?http://www.irs.gov/localcontacts/index.html has lost a lawyer's challenge in front of a jury to prove a constitutional foundation for the nation's income tax, and the victorious attorney now is setting his sights higher.
"I think now people are beginning to realize that this has got to be the largest fraud, backed up by intimidation and extortion and by the sheer force of taking peoples property and hard-earned money without any lawful authorization whatsoever," lawyer Tom Cryer told WND just days after a jury in Louisiana acquitted him of two criminal tax counts.
And before you consign him to the legions of "tin foil hat brigades" who argue against paying taxes, and then want payment to explain how to do that, he addresses the issue up front.
"These snake oil peddlers have conned millions of dollars out of many well-intended patriots and left a trail of broken lives in their wake. … These charlatans should be avoided, not only because they will lead you to bankruptcy and prison, but because by association they discredit those who are telling the truth," he said.
The truth, he said, is where he comes in, with the launch of a new Truth Attack website that is intended to build on his victory, and create a coalition of resources to defeat – ultimately – the income tax in the United States.
Although the legal citations in the case tend to run the length of paragraphs, Cryer told WND the underlying issue is not that complicated. Essentially, he argued that income is not necessarily any money that comes to a person, but rather categories such as profit and interest.
He said the free exchange of labor for compensation has been upheld as a right by the Supreme Court, but that doesn't necessarily make the compensation income.
If ever such an argument were to be presented widely, Cryer said, the income to the federal government would plummet. But not to worry, he said, the expenses could be reduced equally by eliminating programs, departments and agencies that also have no foundation in the Constitution.
"The Founding Fathers intentionally restricted the taxing powers of the new federal government as a measure of restraint on its size. By exceeding that limited taxing authority the federal government has been able to obtain resources beyond its intended reach, and that money has enabled the federal government to exceed its authority," he said.
For example, he said, the Constitution does not empower the federal government to regulate education, or employment, and agriculture, yet it does so.
The jury in U.S. District Court in Louisiana voted 12-0 to find Cryer, of Shreveport, not guilty of failure to file income taxes for two years. He had been indicted in 2006 on charges of failing to pay $73,000 to the IRS in 2000 and 2001. The next step in his personal case will be up to the IRS and prosecutors, if they choose to continue the issue, he said.
But for the rest of the nation, he's working with Save-a-Patriot http://www.wnd.com/redir/r.asp?http://www.save-a-patriot.org/ ,
the Free Enterprise Society http://www.wnd.com/redir/r.asp?http://freeenterprisesociety.com/ ,
Live Free Now and his own Lie Free Zone http://www.wnd.com/redir/r.asp?http://www.gcstation.net/liefreezone/ to spread the message of the truth.
"There are three points that are important," he told WND. "There's no law making the average working man liable [for income taxes], there's no law or regulation that allows the IRS to contend that earnings are 100 percent profit received in exchange for nothing, and the right to earn a living through any lawful occupation is a constitutionally protected fundamental right, and it is exempt from taxation."
Spokesman Robert Marvin in Washington's IRS office told WND the Internal Revenue Code provides for taxation on salaries or wages, but when pressed for a specific citation, or constitutional provision, he said, "I can't comment."
Cryer's encounter with tax law began more than a decade ago when a friend told him the income tax was sham. Cryer started researching, hoping to keep his friend out of trouble. But his conclusions, after years of research, were exactly what his friend told him.
He researched not only tax laws, but also the documents pertaining to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution as well as the first income tax.
He said throughout his battle, he's offered at every turn to pay taxes if the IRS could show him the authorization, and that never has happened.
"The Criminal Investigation Division and Department of Justice both responded only with 'your position is frivolous.' I had never stated a position, so how could they know whether it was frivolous?" he said. "Imagine my sending you a bill for $1,000 and when you call me and ask what the bill was for I simply said, 'that position is frivolous, just write the check and send it in.'"
His acquittal, he said, was a precedent because it means "people can see and recognize the truth."
He said multiple Supreme Court opinions have affirmed an individual's ownership of his or her own labor, and "exercising your fundamental rights" is not taxable. "It is definitely a trade. What most people receive in the form of wages, salaries or in my case fees that they personally earned for their labor is not received in exchange for nothing."
He said there might be a profit that should be taxable, but there might not.
"The IRS lets Wal-Mart sell a trillion dollars worth of goods, but they can back out their cost of goods [before being taxed,]" he said. "The IRS considers, in the case of a Wal-Mart wage earner, 100 percent of what he takes in is profit."
"But he's using his life, energy and work lifespan, and depleting it as he goes," Cryer told WND. "[Working] is a God-given fundamental right that is protected under the Constitution and can't be taxed any more than exercising freedom of speech."
While he waits to see what, if anything, the IRS and Justice Department will do next in his case, he's working to coordinate the groups that are battling taxation as unconstitutional.
"I have started a campaign to unify [the work] and we've got a number of organizations that are sponsoring and supporting this campaign," he said. The goal is to get everyone "who is aware of the truth" organized so they can spread the word.
He warned without a restoration of constitutional basics, the nation is lost.
"Read your Constitution and you will see that the federal role does not include ANY authority to regulate or tax any citizen directly and that WE expressly reserved the right to rule and govern ourselves as States, not as mere political subdivisions," his website says.
"The Constitution does not allow the government to run your lives, but the money it is stealing from millions of Americans is the fuel for its over-reaching and kibitzing. Take the money back and we and our states and communities can again be free," he said.
The fight is over "our FREEDOM from rule by a DISTANT RULER, just as we fought to free ourselves of a distant England over 200 years ago," he said.
The Richest Members of the USA Congress 2009
Money is the "Root of All Evil" and Here is One Trail!
~LisaMarie~
The Richest Members Congress
Recently, the Center for Responsive Politics http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/
(CRP) analyzed the financial assets of US lawmakers based on required annual disclosures, and found that there are 237 millionaires in the US Congress. The CRP determines estimated net worth based on some 40 asset and liability categories.
Each has a value range, such as $5 million to $25 million. Assets, for instance, include non-government income, asset transactions, spouse's income, gifts and more.
Listing of Non-income generating property (including a primary residence) is not required under disclosure rules. Assets listed were held by members of Congress in 2008. So, who are the richest members of the US Congress?
By Paul Toscano Posted 17 Nov 2009
http://www.cnbc.com/id/33993791?slide=1
.jpg)
15. Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.)
Avg Net Worth: $48.29 million
Range: $12.9 million to $83.6 million
Ranks 7th in the House
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Lummis Livestock
- $5 million to $25 million
2. Old Horse Pasture Inc
- $5 million to $25 million
3. ArpeHammand Hardware
- $5 million to $25 million
.jpg)
14. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.)
Avg Net Worth: $52.35 million
Range: $8.3 million to $96.4 million
Ranks 8th in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Corker Properties X LP
- $6 million to $27 million
2. Corker Properties I Ltd
- $5 million to $25 million
3. Pointer QP LP
- $5 million to $25 million
.jpg)
13. Sen. James E Risch (R-Idaho)
Avg Net Worth: $53.33 million
Range: $19 million to $87.8 million
Ranks 7th in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets
1. 24+ Acres-Land/Canyon County, ID
- $5 million to $25 million
2. 40+ Acres-Land/Ada County, ID
- $5 million to $25 million
3. Farm & Ranch Land/40 Acres
- $5 million to $25 million
.jpg)
12. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.)
Avg Net Worth: $54.45 million
Range: $30.9 million to $77.9 million
Ranks 6th in the House
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Derivion Claims
- $25 million to $50 million
2. AMG Trust
- $5 million to $25 million
3. Annaly Capital Management
- $250,000 to $600,000
.jpg)
11. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas)
Avg Net Worth: $69.62 million
Range: $38 million to $101.2 million
Ranks 5th in the House
Biggest Reported Assets*
*Individual asset data not available from The Center for Responsive Politics
.jpg)
10. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
Avg Net Worth: $72.38 million
Range: $42.9 million - $101.8 million
Ranks 6th in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Carlton Hotel Properties
- $5 million to $25 million
2. Federated Government Reserves*
-$1 million to $5 million
3. Princeville Condominium/Kauai, HI*
- $1 million to $5 million
*Feinstein has disclosed a total of 5 assets in the $1 million - $5 million range.
.jpg)
9. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Avg Net Worth: $74.74 million
Range: $47.6 million to $101.9 million
Ranks 5th in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets*
*Individual asset data not available from The Center for Responsive Politics
.jpg)
8. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa)
Avg Net Worth: $94.31 million
Range: $60.2 million to $128.4 million
Ranks 4th in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Wachovia Bank Trustee
- $25 million to $50 million
2. United National Bank
- $5,000,001 to $25,000,000
3. Rockefeller Financial Services
- $1.5 million to $2 million
.jpg)
7. Rep. Vernon Buchanan (R-Fla.)
Avg Net Worth: $142.43 million
Range: -$68.3 million to $353.2 million
Ranks 4th in the House
Biggest Reported Assets*
1. VB Motor Yachts
- $5 million to $25 million
2. Jarrell Properties
- $5 million to $25 million
3. Aircraft ownership & leasing operation
- $5 million to $25 million
*Buchanan has disclosed a total of 8 assets in the $5 million - $25 million range.
.jpg)
6. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.)
Avg Net Worth: $158.17 million
Range: $50.7 million to $265.6 million
Ranks 3rd in the House
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Goldman Sachs Bank Deposit
- $25 million to $50 million
2. Asia Investment Partners
- $5 million to $25 million
3. WCMA Money Fund
- $5 million to $25 million
.jpg)
5. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.)
Avg Net Worth: $208.80 million
Range: $158.6 million to $258.9 million
Ranks 3rd in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Dreyfus Treasury Prime Cash Mgmt.
- $6.5 million to $9 million
2. Pennsylvania State Bond
- $4.1 million to $4.25 million
3. Aberdeen Emerging Markets
- $2 million to $3 million
.jpg)
4. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.)
Avg Net Worth: $209.70 million
Range: $73.3 million - $346.1 million
Ranks 2nd in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets*
*Individual asset data not available from The Center for Responsive Politics
.jpg)
3. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.)
Avg Net Worth: $214.57 million
Range: $163.5 million - $265.6 million
Ranks 1st in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Ranch & Ranch Buildings/Horse Breeding
- $5 million to $25 million
2. Vacant Land (Includes Residential Lots)
- $1 million to $5 million
3. Northridge Co
- $1 million to $5 million
.jpg)
2. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.)
Avg Net Worth: $244.80 million
Range: $112 million to $377.4 million
Ranks 2nd in the House
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Harman International Industries
- $32 million to $85.1 million
2. UBS Select Prime Institutional Fund
- $7.1 million to $35.3 million
3. Sail Pacific Explorer Fund LLC
- $1.5 million to $6 million
.jpg)
1. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)
Avg Net Worth: $251.03 million
Range: $164.7 million - $337.4 million
Ranks 1st in the House
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Greene Properties
- $25 million to $50 million
2. California Various Purpose Bond
- $7, million to $35 million
3. BlackRock Summit Cash Reserves Fund
- $5 million to $25 million
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/index.php
This site also shows Their Annual Banking Transactions.
~LisaMarie~
The Richest Members Congress
Recently, the Center for Responsive Politics http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/
(CRP) analyzed the financial assets of US lawmakers based on required annual disclosures, and found that there are 237 millionaires in the US Congress. The CRP determines estimated net worth based on some 40 asset and liability categories.
Each has a value range, such as $5 million to $25 million. Assets, for instance, include non-government income, asset transactions, spouse's income, gifts and more.
Listing of Non-income generating property (including a primary residence) is not required under disclosure rules. Assets listed were held by members of Congress in 2008. So, who are the richest members of the US Congress?
By Paul Toscano Posted 17 Nov 2009
http://www.cnbc.com/id/33993791?slide=1
.jpg)
15. Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.)
Avg Net Worth: $48.29 million
Range: $12.9 million to $83.6 million
Ranks 7th in the House
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Lummis Livestock
- $5 million to $25 million
2. Old Horse Pasture Inc
- $5 million to $25 million
3. ArpeHammand Hardware
- $5 million to $25 million
.jpg)
14. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.)
Avg Net Worth: $52.35 million
Range: $8.3 million to $96.4 million
Ranks 8th in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Corker Properties X LP
- $6 million to $27 million
2. Corker Properties I Ltd
- $5 million to $25 million
3. Pointer QP LP
- $5 million to $25 million
.jpg)
13. Sen. James E Risch (R-Idaho)
Avg Net Worth: $53.33 million
Range: $19 million to $87.8 million
Ranks 7th in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets
1. 24+ Acres-Land/Canyon County, ID
- $5 million to $25 million
2. 40+ Acres-Land/Ada County, ID
- $5 million to $25 million
3. Farm & Ranch Land/40 Acres
- $5 million to $25 million
.jpg)
12. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.)
Avg Net Worth: $54.45 million
Range: $30.9 million to $77.9 million
Ranks 6th in the House
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Derivion Claims
- $25 million to $50 million
2. AMG Trust
- $5 million to $25 million
3. Annaly Capital Management
- $250,000 to $600,000
.jpg)
11. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas)
Avg Net Worth: $69.62 million
Range: $38 million to $101.2 million
Ranks 5th in the House
Biggest Reported Assets*
*Individual asset data not available from The Center for Responsive Politics
.jpg)
10. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
Avg Net Worth: $72.38 million
Range: $42.9 million - $101.8 million
Ranks 6th in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Carlton Hotel Properties
- $5 million to $25 million
2. Federated Government Reserves*
-$1 million to $5 million
3. Princeville Condominium/Kauai, HI*
- $1 million to $5 million
*Feinstein has disclosed a total of 5 assets in the $1 million - $5 million range.
.jpg)
9. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Avg Net Worth: $74.74 million
Range: $47.6 million to $101.9 million
Ranks 5th in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets*
*Individual asset data not available from The Center for Responsive Politics
.jpg)
8. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa)
Avg Net Worth: $94.31 million
Range: $60.2 million to $128.4 million
Ranks 4th in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Wachovia Bank Trustee
- $25 million to $50 million
2. United National Bank
- $5,000,001 to $25,000,000
3. Rockefeller Financial Services
- $1.5 million to $2 million
.jpg)
7. Rep. Vernon Buchanan (R-Fla.)
Avg Net Worth: $142.43 million
Range: -$68.3 million to $353.2 million
Ranks 4th in the House
Biggest Reported Assets*
1. VB Motor Yachts
- $5 million to $25 million
2. Jarrell Properties
- $5 million to $25 million
3. Aircraft ownership & leasing operation
- $5 million to $25 million
*Buchanan has disclosed a total of 8 assets in the $5 million - $25 million range.
.jpg)
6. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.)
Avg Net Worth: $158.17 million
Range: $50.7 million to $265.6 million
Ranks 3rd in the House
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Goldman Sachs Bank Deposit
- $25 million to $50 million
2. Asia Investment Partners
- $5 million to $25 million
3. WCMA Money Fund
- $5 million to $25 million
.jpg)
5. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.)
Avg Net Worth: $208.80 million
Range: $158.6 million to $258.9 million
Ranks 3rd in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Dreyfus Treasury Prime Cash Mgmt.
- $6.5 million to $9 million
2. Pennsylvania State Bond
- $4.1 million to $4.25 million
3. Aberdeen Emerging Markets
- $2 million to $3 million
.jpg)
4. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.)
Avg Net Worth: $209.70 million
Range: $73.3 million - $346.1 million
Ranks 2nd in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets*
*Individual asset data not available from The Center for Responsive Politics
.jpg)
3. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.)
Avg Net Worth: $214.57 million
Range: $163.5 million - $265.6 million
Ranks 1st in the Senate
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Ranch & Ranch Buildings/Horse Breeding
- $5 million to $25 million
2. Vacant Land (Includes Residential Lots)
- $1 million to $5 million
3. Northridge Co
- $1 million to $5 million
.jpg)
2. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.)
Avg Net Worth: $244.80 million
Range: $112 million to $377.4 million
Ranks 2nd in the House
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Harman International Industries
- $32 million to $85.1 million
2. UBS Select Prime Institutional Fund
- $7.1 million to $35.3 million
3. Sail Pacific Explorer Fund LLC
- $1.5 million to $6 million
.jpg)
1. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)
Avg Net Worth: $251.03 million
Range: $164.7 million - $337.4 million
Ranks 1st in the House
Biggest Reported Assets
1. Greene Properties
- $25 million to $50 million
2. California Various Purpose Bond
- $7, million to $35 million
3. BlackRock Summit Cash Reserves Fund
- $5 million to $25 million
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/index.php
This site also shows Their Annual Banking Transactions.
Friday, November 27, 2009
THE IRON FIST BEHIND THE INVISIBLE HAND
This is a really Good article. Have finished reading the org one from the link i found.
http://attackthesystem.com/the-iron-fist-behind-the-invisible-hand/
Shows a lot of how these "Better than Everyone Else" rich A-Holes got us all in this mess in the first place. Thanks Todd ;-)
~LisaMarie~
From: todd alan smith (36888045)
Date: 11/27/2009 12:04:46 PM
Subject: Kevin Carson "The Iron Fist..." (attackthesystem.com)
Excerpt from an excellent review of Kevin Carsons book, THE IRON FIST BEHIND THE INVISIBLE HAND
Taken from attackthesystem.com
(American Revolutionary Vangaurd)
the article CAPITALISM VS FREE ENTERPRISE
Keith Preston and company dish some of the most thoughtful political philosophy to be found in America today.
peace out for now,
Talansmith
Carson traces the development of modern corporate states all the way back to the late medieval period. In those days, the feudal structure, which originated from the military conquest of traditional agricultural communities and the imposition of an artificial aristocracy of external state-privileged exploiters, was in the process of breaking down. The free cities of the era began to appear as points of light on the broader feudal map. The market economy was growing, innovative technologies were coming into existence and the common people were obtaining more opportunities to claim their rightful status as free individuals. The ruling class was put on the defensive and sought to reestablish itself by fully expropriating traditional peasant lands and militarily conquering the free cities. The dispossessed peasants, no longer having any means of autonomy or self-sufficiency, were forced to migrate towards industrial centers and into the slave-like factory system. The state intervened to make sure that labor discipline was maintained by such methods as severly restricting the freedom of migration and suppressing efforts at self-organization by the laborers. The old feudal elites reinvented themselves as a new industrial capitalist ruling class by means of mercantilist economic policies which tended to concentrate wealth. In early America, for example, it was the northeastern mercantilists consisting of banking, shipping and land magnates led by Alexander Hamilton who initiated the Federalist coup against the libertarian Articles of Confederation and established the centralist presidential state for the purpose of advancing mercantilist commercial interests.
Carson’s central thesis is that “capitalism”, defined in the traditional Marxist/socialist/left-anarchist sense of separation of labor from ownership and the subordination of labor to capital, would largely be impossible under genuine free market arrangements. Most Americans are accustomed to thinking of capitalism and free enterprise as being one and the same. This is certainly the perspective taught in the state’s educational institutions and promoted by the corporate media. Carson lambasts fake populism of the type promulgated by corporate-sponsored afternoon talk radio which ignores the role of corporations, banks and other elite economic interests in fostering statism and instead works to channel the hostility of the working and middle classes away from the elites for whom most state intervention is actually done and towards the lower classes and the urban poor in a type of “divide and conquer” strategy. According to this ideology, the real enemies of free enterprise and proponents of statism are welfare recipients and the residents of homeless shelters and public housing projects. But it is the ruling class that is the primary beneficiary of state intervention. The primary role of such intervention is to redistribute wealth upward and centralize economic power. The tools used to obtain these objectives are as old as modern corporate states themselves. These tools include the state-imposed money monopoly, patents and subsidies.
Under the present system of federal government monopoly on the issuance of legal tender and central banking via the Federal Reserve, interest rates are kept artificially high, an artificial shortage of credit is maintained and access to finance capital is constricted. These arrangements centralize wealth and concentrate economic power in a myriad of ways. Carson argues that under a system of free banking, cooperative banks would be able to form and issue private bank notes as credit against the output of future production. Genuine competition among free banks would dramatically reduce interest rates, perhaps to the cost of administrative overhead. Access to cheap credit would make self-employment possible for nearly any industrious person with marketable skills or services. As the price of capital diminished, interest upon bonds, dividends upon stock and rents upon land and buildings would also fall. The proliferation of new businesses and the increased viability of self-employment would greatly enhance the bargaining power of workers, both individually and collectively. Workers would have a wider variety of potential employers to choose from in addition to greater opportunities to work for themselves. Employers would be forced by market pressures to make their workplaces more attractive to prospective employees. Workers would gain the collective power to demand the right of self-management in the workplace and could pool their credit to buy out their employers if they wished. This greatly enhanced bargaining power would essentially allow workers to control industries, even industries that remained nominally stockholder-owned. The virtual elimination of interest through market competition would also significantly lower mortage payments and credit card debt. The cost of housing would drop and overall workers’ savings would increase. Part-time employment would become a more viable option for many workers as would earlier retirement. Involuntary unemployment would also shrink.
Echoing Rothbard, Carson demonstrates how patents are nothing more than government grants of monopoly privilege. The function of patent law is to create monopolies on the marketing of particular products thereby establishing an artificial pricing system where such products are marked up dozens of times beyond their actual market value. This has been particularly true of pharmaceuticals where prices are often marked up 40 times or more. The effect of this arrangement is to eliminate competition and innovation by others seeking to improve upon an original product. Patent privilege pertaining to drugs and medical technologies sharply increase the cost of health care to the average consumer, effectively pricing many of forms of health care out of the range of many consumers. The restrictions on competition involved in patent privileges also constrict economic growth and increase unemployment. International patent privileges established by global trade agreements also tend to concentrate wealth in the advanced nations and stifle growth, competition and innovation in the Third World. Patents serve as a mercantilist tool utilized to maintain lesser developed nations as economic colonies.
Subsidies are probably the most egregious form of state favors to economic elites. Virtually all major U.S. industries are heavily dependent in some way on direct or indirect government financing. Throughout U.S. history, federal subsidies to transportation from the railway system to interstate highways to civil aviation have served to centralize wealth and control over a wide assortment of industries ranging from electrical utilities to petroleum to finance to retail sales. Much is made in some circles about the way large corporate retail chains such as Wal-Mart undercut local small businesses and run them out of the market. But this would be impossible without the massive government subsidies to shipping and transportation that benefit large national chains. So-called “defense spending” frequently amounts to a corporate welfare program. Most defense analysts estimate that a defense budget of approximately $100 billion would be required to effectively defend the territory of the United States. Yet overall military spending is nearly three and a half times that amount and increasing. The primary beneficiaries of such spending are arms manufacturers, the telecommunications industry, defense contractors and petrochemicals industries whose profits are guaranteed via the Pentagon system. This arrangement creates a tremendous concentration of wealth in the hands of de facto state protected monopolies. Tax breaks to corporations that subsidize R&D centralize wealth even further. Carson notes that some free market economists, including Rothbard, object to the characterization of tax breaks as subsidies, an understandable argument, but the problem here is that the burden of making up for this lost revenue is shifted onto the small businessman and rank and file worker.
Carson also engages in a rather thorough analysis of how the state creates an ideological superstructure to conceal its true nature and intentions. Outrageous amounts of “defense” spending are justified by demonizing one local tinpot dictator in the Third World after another, most of whom are the direct creation of U.S. imperialism, subversion, interventionism and aggression. Poor nations with no history of imperial ambition outside of their immediate borders, such as China, are held up as grave threats to world security. Currently, the beleagured nation of Iraq, which has never acted aggressively against a single American, is attacked as the Second Coming of Nazi Germany and the American public is bombarded with exaggerations and outright lies regarding Iraq’s weapons capabilities. Those who criticize and speak out against these lies are denounced as “un-American” under the cover of a pseudo-patriotic ideology while the state controlled media and educational system seeks to remove the authentic patriotism of Jefferson, Madison and Henry from public consciousness. Domestically, corporate sponsored think tanks and other propaganda outlets attack the urban poor as the source of the nation’s extensive fiscal problems and pretend that state aid to corporate and financial interests is non-existent. Elite class interests play to public hysteria over crime and scapegoat immigrants, drug users, the homeless and other marginal groups in order to justify the creation of a massive police state apparatus for the purpose of social control.
http://attackthesystem.com/the-iron-fist-behind-the-invisible-hand/
Shows a lot of how these "Better than Everyone Else" rich A-Holes got us all in this mess in the first place. Thanks Todd ;-)
~LisaMarie~
From: todd alan smith (36888045)
Date: 11/27/2009 12:04:46 PM
Subject: Kevin Carson "The Iron Fist..." (attackthesystem.com)
Excerpt from an excellent review of Kevin Carsons book, THE IRON FIST BEHIND THE INVISIBLE HAND
Taken from attackthesystem.com
(American Revolutionary Vangaurd)
the article CAPITALISM VS FREE ENTERPRISE
Keith Preston and company dish some of the most thoughtful political philosophy to be found in America today.
peace out for now,
Talansmith
Carson traces the development of modern corporate states all the way back to the late medieval period. In those days, the feudal structure, which originated from the military conquest of traditional agricultural communities and the imposition of an artificial aristocracy of external state-privileged exploiters, was in the process of breaking down. The free cities of the era began to appear as points of light on the broader feudal map. The market economy was growing, innovative technologies were coming into existence and the common people were obtaining more opportunities to claim their rightful status as free individuals. The ruling class was put on the defensive and sought to reestablish itself by fully expropriating traditional peasant lands and militarily conquering the free cities. The dispossessed peasants, no longer having any means of autonomy or self-sufficiency, were forced to migrate towards industrial centers and into the slave-like factory system. The state intervened to make sure that labor discipline was maintained by such methods as severly restricting the freedom of migration and suppressing efforts at self-organization by the laborers. The old feudal elites reinvented themselves as a new industrial capitalist ruling class by means of mercantilist economic policies which tended to concentrate wealth. In early America, for example, it was the northeastern mercantilists consisting of banking, shipping and land magnates led by Alexander Hamilton who initiated the Federalist coup against the libertarian Articles of Confederation and established the centralist presidential state for the purpose of advancing mercantilist commercial interests.
Carson’s central thesis is that “capitalism”, defined in the traditional Marxist/socialist/left-anarchist sense of separation of labor from ownership and the subordination of labor to capital, would largely be impossible under genuine free market arrangements. Most Americans are accustomed to thinking of capitalism and free enterprise as being one and the same. This is certainly the perspective taught in the state’s educational institutions and promoted by the corporate media. Carson lambasts fake populism of the type promulgated by corporate-sponsored afternoon talk radio which ignores the role of corporations, banks and other elite economic interests in fostering statism and instead works to channel the hostility of the working and middle classes away from the elites for whom most state intervention is actually done and towards the lower classes and the urban poor in a type of “divide and conquer” strategy. According to this ideology, the real enemies of free enterprise and proponents of statism are welfare recipients and the residents of homeless shelters and public housing projects. But it is the ruling class that is the primary beneficiary of state intervention. The primary role of such intervention is to redistribute wealth upward and centralize economic power. The tools used to obtain these objectives are as old as modern corporate states themselves. These tools include the state-imposed money monopoly, patents and subsidies.
Under the present system of federal government monopoly on the issuance of legal tender and central banking via the Federal Reserve, interest rates are kept artificially high, an artificial shortage of credit is maintained and access to finance capital is constricted. These arrangements centralize wealth and concentrate economic power in a myriad of ways. Carson argues that under a system of free banking, cooperative banks would be able to form and issue private bank notes as credit against the output of future production. Genuine competition among free banks would dramatically reduce interest rates, perhaps to the cost of administrative overhead. Access to cheap credit would make self-employment possible for nearly any industrious person with marketable skills or services. As the price of capital diminished, interest upon bonds, dividends upon stock and rents upon land and buildings would also fall. The proliferation of new businesses and the increased viability of self-employment would greatly enhance the bargaining power of workers, both individually and collectively. Workers would have a wider variety of potential employers to choose from in addition to greater opportunities to work for themselves. Employers would be forced by market pressures to make their workplaces more attractive to prospective employees. Workers would gain the collective power to demand the right of self-management in the workplace and could pool their credit to buy out their employers if they wished. This greatly enhanced bargaining power would essentially allow workers to control industries, even industries that remained nominally stockholder-owned. The virtual elimination of interest through market competition would also significantly lower mortage payments and credit card debt. The cost of housing would drop and overall workers’ savings would increase. Part-time employment would become a more viable option for many workers as would earlier retirement. Involuntary unemployment would also shrink.
Echoing Rothbard, Carson demonstrates how patents are nothing more than government grants of monopoly privilege. The function of patent law is to create monopolies on the marketing of particular products thereby establishing an artificial pricing system where such products are marked up dozens of times beyond their actual market value. This has been particularly true of pharmaceuticals where prices are often marked up 40 times or more. The effect of this arrangement is to eliminate competition and innovation by others seeking to improve upon an original product. Patent privilege pertaining to drugs and medical technologies sharply increase the cost of health care to the average consumer, effectively pricing many of forms of health care out of the range of many consumers. The restrictions on competition involved in patent privileges also constrict economic growth and increase unemployment. International patent privileges established by global trade agreements also tend to concentrate wealth in the advanced nations and stifle growth, competition and innovation in the Third World. Patents serve as a mercantilist tool utilized to maintain lesser developed nations as economic colonies.
Subsidies are probably the most egregious form of state favors to economic elites. Virtually all major U.S. industries are heavily dependent in some way on direct or indirect government financing. Throughout U.S. history, federal subsidies to transportation from the railway system to interstate highways to civil aviation have served to centralize wealth and control over a wide assortment of industries ranging from electrical utilities to petroleum to finance to retail sales. Much is made in some circles about the way large corporate retail chains such as Wal-Mart undercut local small businesses and run them out of the market. But this would be impossible without the massive government subsidies to shipping and transportation that benefit large national chains. So-called “defense spending” frequently amounts to a corporate welfare program. Most defense analysts estimate that a defense budget of approximately $100 billion would be required to effectively defend the territory of the United States. Yet overall military spending is nearly three and a half times that amount and increasing. The primary beneficiaries of such spending are arms manufacturers, the telecommunications industry, defense contractors and petrochemicals industries whose profits are guaranteed via the Pentagon system. This arrangement creates a tremendous concentration of wealth in the hands of de facto state protected monopolies. Tax breaks to corporations that subsidize R&D centralize wealth even further. Carson notes that some free market economists, including Rothbard, object to the characterization of tax breaks as subsidies, an understandable argument, but the problem here is that the burden of making up for this lost revenue is shifted onto the small businessman and rank and file worker.
Carson also engages in a rather thorough analysis of how the state creates an ideological superstructure to conceal its true nature and intentions. Outrageous amounts of “defense” spending are justified by demonizing one local tinpot dictator in the Third World after another, most of whom are the direct creation of U.S. imperialism, subversion, interventionism and aggression. Poor nations with no history of imperial ambition outside of their immediate borders, such as China, are held up as grave threats to world security. Currently, the beleagured nation of Iraq, which has never acted aggressively against a single American, is attacked as the Second Coming of Nazi Germany and the American public is bombarded with exaggerations and outright lies regarding Iraq’s weapons capabilities. Those who criticize and speak out against these lies are denounced as “un-American” under the cover of a pseudo-patriotic ideology while the state controlled media and educational system seeks to remove the authentic patriotism of Jefferson, Madison and Henry from public consciousness. Domestically, corporate sponsored think tanks and other propaganda outlets attack the urban poor as the source of the nation’s extensive fiscal problems and pretend that state aid to corporate and financial interests is non-existent. Elite class interests play to public hysteria over crime and scapegoat immigrants, drug users, the homeless and other marginal groups in order to justify the creation of a massive police state apparatus for the purpose of social control.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
The Congress now tells The Supreme Court what to do?
When did this start happening?
I had thought that "The Supreme Court" is the Law of the Land.
just Wondering ~LisaMarie~
Congress set to keep abuse photos hidden
10-10-2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is set to allow the Pentagon to keep new pictures of foreign detainees abused by their U.S. captors from the public, a move intended to end a legal fight over the photographs' release that has reached the Supreme Court.
Federal courts have so far rejected the government's arguments against the release of 21 color photographs showing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq being abused by Americans.
The Obama administration believes giving the imminent grant of authority over the release of such pictures to the defense secretary would short-circuit a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The White House is asking the justices to put off consideration of the case until after a vote on the measure in the House and Senate, as early as next week. The provision is part of a larger homeland security spending bill and would allow the defense secretary to withhold photographs relating to detainees by certifying their release would endanger soldiers or other government workers.
The ACLU said the court should not disturb a ruling by the federal appeals court in New York ordering the photographs' release. The pending congressional action "does not supply any reason for delay," Jameel Jaffer, director of ACLU's national security project, told the court.
The dispute is on a list of cases the Supreme Court could act on Tuesday.
Lower courts have ruled that a provision of FOIA allows documents to be withheld from the public for security reasons only in instances where there are specific threats against individuals.
President Barack Obama initially indicated he would not fight the release of the photographs. He reversed course in May and authorized an appeal to the high court.
The president said he was persuaded that disclosure could further incite violence in Afghanistan and Iraq and endanger U.S. troops there.
The photographs at issue were taken by service members in Iraq and Afghanistan and were part of criminal investigations of alleged abuse. Some pictures show "soldiers pointing pistols or rifles at the heads of hooded and handcuffed detainees," Solicitor General Elena Kagan said in the appeal to the high court.
In one, "a soldier holds a broom as if 'sticking its end into the rectum of a restrained detainee,"' Kagan said, quoting from an investigation report prepared by the Pentagon. Two investigations led to criminal charges and convictions, she said.
Kagan said the military has identified more than two dozen additional pictures that could be affected by the court's ruling.
The government made much the same argument to prevent the release of 87 photographs and other images of detainees at detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
International outrage resulted when photographs from the Iraqi prison showing physical abuse and sexual humiliation of inmates that took place under the Bush administration were revealed. One picture showed a naked, hooded prisoner on a box with wires fastened to his hands and genitals.
The government dropped its appeal related to those photographs after they were made public and posted on the Internet.
The ACLU, in seeking the other pictures, said the government had long argued that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was isolated and was an aberration. The new photos would show that the abuse was more widespread, the ACLU said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-10-10-abuse-photos-congress_N.htm?csp=34
Comments:
LisaMarie
Oct 10, 2009 10:24 AM
Yes Mary Jane... payoffs and sellouts. Just FKN Disgusting!
Mary Jane
Mary Jane Moore-Wright
Oct 10, 2009 10:17 AM
Hmmmm, you are right...something is fishy here. They are suppose to keep each other in check. It seems as if payoffs are involved.
I had thought that "The Supreme Court" is the Law of the Land.
just Wondering ~LisaMarie~
Congress set to keep abuse photos hidden
10-10-2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is set to allow the Pentagon to keep new pictures of foreign detainees abused by their U.S. captors from the public, a move intended to end a legal fight over the photographs' release that has reached the Supreme Court.
Federal courts have so far rejected the government's arguments against the release of 21 color photographs showing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq being abused by Americans.
The Obama administration believes giving the imminent grant of authority over the release of such pictures to the defense secretary would short-circuit a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The White House is asking the justices to put off consideration of the case until after a vote on the measure in the House and Senate, as early as next week. The provision is part of a larger homeland security spending bill and would allow the defense secretary to withhold photographs relating to detainees by certifying their release would endanger soldiers or other government workers.
The ACLU said the court should not disturb a ruling by the federal appeals court in New York ordering the photographs' release. The pending congressional action "does not supply any reason for delay," Jameel Jaffer, director of ACLU's national security project, told the court.
The dispute is on a list of cases the Supreme Court could act on Tuesday.
Lower courts have ruled that a provision of FOIA allows documents to be withheld from the public for security reasons only in instances where there are specific threats against individuals.
President Barack Obama initially indicated he would not fight the release of the photographs. He reversed course in May and authorized an appeal to the high court.
The president said he was persuaded that disclosure could further incite violence in Afghanistan and Iraq and endanger U.S. troops there.
The photographs at issue were taken by service members in Iraq and Afghanistan and were part of criminal investigations of alleged abuse. Some pictures show "soldiers pointing pistols or rifles at the heads of hooded and handcuffed detainees," Solicitor General Elena Kagan said in the appeal to the high court.
In one, "a soldier holds a broom as if 'sticking its end into the rectum of a restrained detainee,"' Kagan said, quoting from an investigation report prepared by the Pentagon. Two investigations led to criminal charges and convictions, she said.
Kagan said the military has identified more than two dozen additional pictures that could be affected by the court's ruling.
The government made much the same argument to prevent the release of 87 photographs and other images of detainees at detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
International outrage resulted when photographs from the Iraqi prison showing physical abuse and sexual humiliation of inmates that took place under the Bush administration were revealed. One picture showed a naked, hooded prisoner on a box with wires fastened to his hands and genitals.
The government dropped its appeal related to those photographs after they were made public and posted on the Internet.
The ACLU, in seeking the other pictures, said the government had long argued that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was isolated and was an aberration. The new photos would show that the abuse was more widespread, the ACLU said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-10-10-abuse-photos-congress_N.htm?csp=34
Comments:
LisaMarie
Oct 10, 2009 10:24 AM
Yes Mary Jane... payoffs and sellouts. Just FKN Disgusting!
Mary Jane
Mary Jane Moore-Wright
Oct 10, 2009 10:17 AM
Hmmmm, you are right...something is fishy here. They are suppose to keep each other in check. It seems as if payoffs are involved.
30 Pro-Rape Senators (All GOP)
By Daniel Tencer
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 -- 9:48 pm
GOP votes against measure to help victims of rape at govt. contractors
Political commentators are accusing Senate Republicans of hypocrisy -- and even outright support of rape -- after thirty of them voted against a measure to de-fund military contractors who prevent rape victims from seeking justice.
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) introduced an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would prevent the federal government from funding contractors whose employee contracts prevent workers from pursuing allegations of rape against co-workers.
The measure passed the Senate by a vote of 68 to 30, with all 30 'no' votes being cast by Republicans. Notably, 10 Senate Republicans voted for the measure, including all four female Republican senators.
Franken was inspired to push the amendment by the story of Jamie Leigh Jones, who was an employee of KBR -- at the time a subsidiary of Halliburton -- working in Baghdad's Green Zone when she was allegedly gang-raped by other KBR workers.
In a harrowing expose, ABC News recounted how Jones was locked in a shipping container, denied access to communication with the outside world, and told she would lose her job if she left Iraq or sought medical attention.
As RAW STORY reported last month, Jones recently won the right to sue KBR over her ordeal.
Until 2007, KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company run by Dick Cheney until he resigned as CEO to become vice-president of the United States. It was that connection to partisan politics that evidently led a majority of Senate Republicans to vote against the measure.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, called Franken's measure "a political attack directed at Halliburton."
Indeed, Franken's amendment names Halliburton and KBR directly, but also states the regulation applies to "any other contracting party."
But that has not stopped political commentators from attacking Senate Republicans for what they see as a vote for rape, and against justice for women.
At his DailyKos blog, Markos Moulitsas writes:
This is interesting. According to Republicans, a fake pimp and ho, reported to the police, was apparently so beyond the pale that they've worked to strip ACORN of all federal funding. But denying employees actual redress from gang rapes is no big deal?
Will the GOP soon introduce a new Constitution Amendment that reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting the ability of corporations to gang rape their employees"? Is support for corporate gang rape already in the GOP platform, or does it need to be added at their next meeting? Is there a huge corporate gang rape lobby that is funneling millions into GOP pockets, or did they vote this way out of personal conviction?
Laura Clawson, also writing at DailyKos, states:
To summarize the Republican position: As women, we are not "average Americans," and gang rape is not a "serious" issue. As women, no matter how powerful we become on our own merits, the Republican establishment will still be hoping for a man to come along and put us in our place.
You don't have to go very far beneath the Republican surface claims of equality-but-not-really to get to the rock-bottom sense that women just don't count, that our rights and our wellbeing are always subordinate to whatever interest of men they might conflict with. When it comes to it, even the (themselves sexist) notions of chivalry and protecting women come behind protecting the right of corporations to imprison their female employees to shield their male employees from rape charges and still get government contracts.
For her part, Jamie Leigh Jones seems pleased that Franken's amendment passed, regardless of who voted against it.
"It means that every tear shed to go public and repeat my story over and over again to make a difference for other women was worth it," she said on Tuesday outside the Senate chamber, after hugging Sen. Franken and telling him: "Way to go."
http://rawstory.com/2009/10/gop-votes-against-prevent-rape/
-------
Senator Al Franken’s Bill: Justice for Rape Victims; 30 Repubs Vote Against
By: acquarius74
Thursday October 8, 2009
In my opinion, a new low has been reached by the 30 Republican senators who voted against Senator Al Franken's Bill to deny funding to Government contractors who deny their employees' rights to seek justice in court when they have been raped by co-workers. "A new low" is too mild; my thoughts are too strong to print. Below is an excerpt from rawstory and the names of the 30 Repubs who voted against:
Political commentators are accusing Senate Republicans of hypocrisy -- and even outright support of rape -- after thirty of them voted against a measure to de-fund military contractors who prevent rape victims from seeking justice.Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) introduced an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would prevent the federal government from funding contractors whose employee contracts prevent workers from pursuing allegations of rape against co-workers.The measure passed the Senate by a vote of 68 to 30, with all 30 'no' votes being cast by Republicans. Notably, 10 Senate Republicans voted for the measure, including all four female Republican senators...Franken was inspired to push the amendment by the story of Jamie Leigh Jones, who was an employee of KBR -- at the time a subsidiary of Halliburton -- working in Baghdad's Green Zone when she was allegedly gang-raped by other KBR workers.
Snip > (all emphasis mine)
Names of the scumbags were furnished by lapdogd in comments at rawstory.
Alexander (R-TN) Barrasso (R-WY) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Gregg (R-NH) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Kyl (R-AZ) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS)
Of the 48 comments at rawstory, I really like this comment best:
jimbo92107 22 minutes ago
Well, you can't say Republicans are against everything. They're pro-gun violence, pro-war, pro-torture, pro-sickness, pro-domestic spying, pro-murder, pro-..executions, pro-..corruption, pro-racism, pro-bigotry, pro-child abuse, pro-theocracy, pro-ignorance, pro-..corporatism, and now they're officially pro-rape
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8832
------------- Bulletin Message --------------
From: Rise Against Corporate Predators (149376875)
Subject: 30 Pro-Rape Senators (All GOP)
From: Corporations_ate_my_BABY! (14892249)
Subject: 30 Pro-Rape Senators (All GOP) please repost
Senator Al Franken's first legislative victory, which was to deny private contractors from using private arbitration in cases of rape and sexual abuse of their employees. However, 30 GOP Senators voted against the amendment! In other words, they would rather deny victims of rape their day in court then get in the way of private defense contractors from making money! Who are they kidding?
We have to call each one of these Senators and let them have it! Below is a list of all the Senators who voted no and their office phone numbers. Call them and ask why don't they care about women's rights? Despicable!
List of Senators and Phone Numbers:
Alexander (R-Tennessee) DC: (202) 224-4944 State: Memphis Office: (901) 544-4224
Barrasso (R-Wyoming) DC: 202-224-6441 State: Cheyenne Office: 307-772-2451
Bond (R-Missouri) DC: (202) 224-5721 State: St. Louis Office: (314) 725-4484
Brownback (R-Kansas) DC: (202) 224-6521 State: Topeka Office: (785) 233-2503
Bunning (R-Kentucky) DC: 202.224.4343 State: Louisville Office: 502.582.5341
Burr (R-NC) DC: (202) 224-3154 State: Asheville Office: (828) 350-2437
Chambliss (R-Georgia) DC: 202-224-3521 State: Atlanta Office: 770-763-9090
Coburn (R-OK) DC: 202-224-5754 State: Ok City: 405-231-4941
Cochran (R-MS) DC: 202-224-5054 State: Jackson office: 601-965-4459
Corker (R-TN) DC: 202-224-3344 State: Nashville office: 615-279-8125
Cornyn (R-TX) DC: 202-224-2934 State: Dallas office: 972-239-1310
Crapo (R-ID) DC: (202) 224-6142 State: Boise office: (208) 334-1776
DeMint (R-SC) DC: 202-224-6121 State: Columbia office: 803-771-6112
Ensign (R-NV) DC: (202) 224-6244 State: Las Vegas office: (702) 388-6605
Enzi (R-WY) DC: (202) 224-3424 State: Cheyenne Office: (307) 772-2477
Graham (R-SC) DC: (202) 224-5972 State: Columbia Office: (803) 933-0112
Gregg (R-NH) DC: (202) 224-3324 State: Concord office: (603) 225-7115
Inhofe (R-OK) DC: (202) 224-4721 State: Ok City: (405) 608-4381
Isakson (R-GA) DC: (202) 224-3643 State: Atlanta Office: (770) 661-0999
Johanns (R-NE) DC: (202) 224-4224 State: Lincoln Office: (402) 476-1400
Kyl (R-AZ) DC: 202-224-4521 State: Phoenix office: 602-840-1891
McCain (R-AZ) DC: (202) 224-2235 State: Phoenix Office: (602) 952-2410
McConnell (R-KY) DC: (202) 224-2541 State: Louisville office: (502) 582-6304
Risch (R-ID) DC: 202-224-2752 State: Boise office: 208-342-7985
Roberts (R-KS) DC: (202) 224-4774 State: Wichita office: (316) 263-0416
Sessions (R-AL) DC: 202-224-4124 State: Birmingham office: 205-731-1500
Shelby (R-AL) DC: (202) 224-5744 State: Montgomery office: (334) 223-7303
Thune (R-SD) DC: 202-224-2321 State: Sioux Falls office: 605-334-9596
Vitter (R-LA) DC: (202) 224-4623 State: Baton Rouge Office: 225-383-0331
Wicker (R-MS) DC: 202-224-6253 State: Jackson office: (601) 965-4644
For further information on contacting these Senators please visit this website:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
====
I posted a video about this early this morning... above is the list of those who should not be able to get away from this vote. They prefer corporate rights over the rights of the young women raped by contractors in Iraq... or anywhere.
UNBELIEVABLE.
....
Thanks to:
-------------- Bulletin Message ---------------
From: Lisa & BG (122999945)
Date: 10/8/2009 3:17:31 PM
Subject: These Senators are horrible human beings
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 -- 9:48 pm
GOP votes against measure to help victims of rape at govt. contractors
Political commentators are accusing Senate Republicans of hypocrisy -- and even outright support of rape -- after thirty of them voted against a measure to de-fund military contractors who prevent rape victims from seeking justice.
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) introduced an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would prevent the federal government from funding contractors whose employee contracts prevent workers from pursuing allegations of rape against co-workers.
The measure passed the Senate by a vote of 68 to 30, with all 30 'no' votes being cast by Republicans. Notably, 10 Senate Republicans voted for the measure, including all four female Republican senators.
Franken was inspired to push the amendment by the story of Jamie Leigh Jones, who was an employee of KBR -- at the time a subsidiary of Halliburton -- working in Baghdad's Green Zone when she was allegedly gang-raped by other KBR workers.
In a harrowing expose, ABC News recounted how Jones was locked in a shipping container, denied access to communication with the outside world, and told she would lose her job if she left Iraq or sought medical attention.
As RAW STORY reported last month, Jones recently won the right to sue KBR over her ordeal.
Until 2007, KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company run by Dick Cheney until he resigned as CEO to become vice-president of the United States. It was that connection to partisan politics that evidently led a majority of Senate Republicans to vote against the measure.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, called Franken's measure "a political attack directed at Halliburton."
Indeed, Franken's amendment names Halliburton and KBR directly, but also states the regulation applies to "any other contracting party."
But that has not stopped political commentators from attacking Senate Republicans for what they see as a vote for rape, and against justice for women.
At his DailyKos blog, Markos Moulitsas writes:
This is interesting. According to Republicans, a fake pimp and ho, reported to the police, was apparently so beyond the pale that they've worked to strip ACORN of all federal funding. But denying employees actual redress from gang rapes is no big deal?
Will the GOP soon introduce a new Constitution Amendment that reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting the ability of corporations to gang rape their employees"? Is support for corporate gang rape already in the GOP platform, or does it need to be added at their next meeting? Is there a huge corporate gang rape lobby that is funneling millions into GOP pockets, or did they vote this way out of personal conviction?
Laura Clawson, also writing at DailyKos, states:
To summarize the Republican position: As women, we are not "average Americans," and gang rape is not a "serious" issue. As women, no matter how powerful we become on our own merits, the Republican establishment will still be hoping for a man to come along and put us in our place.
You don't have to go very far beneath the Republican surface claims of equality-but-not-really to get to the rock-bottom sense that women just don't count, that our rights and our wellbeing are always subordinate to whatever interest of men they might conflict with. When it comes to it, even the (themselves sexist) notions of chivalry and protecting women come behind protecting the right of corporations to imprison their female employees to shield their male employees from rape charges and still get government contracts.
For her part, Jamie Leigh Jones seems pleased that Franken's amendment passed, regardless of who voted against it.
"It means that every tear shed to go public and repeat my story over and over again to make a difference for other women was worth it," she said on Tuesday outside the Senate chamber, after hugging Sen. Franken and telling him: "Way to go."
http://rawstory.com/2009/10/gop-votes-against-prevent-rape/
-------
Senator Al Franken’s Bill: Justice for Rape Victims; 30 Repubs Vote Against
By: acquarius74
Thursday October 8, 2009
In my opinion, a new low has been reached by the 30 Republican senators who voted against Senator Al Franken's Bill to deny funding to Government contractors who deny their employees' rights to seek justice in court when they have been raped by co-workers. "A new low" is too mild; my thoughts are too strong to print. Below is an excerpt from rawstory and the names of the 30 Repubs who voted against:
Political commentators are accusing Senate Republicans of hypocrisy -- and even outright support of rape -- after thirty of them voted against a measure to de-fund military contractors who prevent rape victims from seeking justice.Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) introduced an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would prevent the federal government from funding contractors whose employee contracts prevent workers from pursuing allegations of rape against co-workers.The measure passed the Senate by a vote of 68 to 30, with all 30 'no' votes being cast by Republicans. Notably, 10 Senate Republicans voted for the measure, including all four female Republican senators...Franken was inspired to push the amendment by the story of Jamie Leigh Jones, who was an employee of KBR -- at the time a subsidiary of Halliburton -- working in Baghdad's Green Zone when she was allegedly gang-raped by other KBR workers.
Snip > (all emphasis mine)
Names of the scumbags were furnished by lapdogd in comments at rawstory.
Alexander (R-TN) Barrasso (R-WY) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Gregg (R-NH) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Kyl (R-AZ) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS)
Of the 48 comments at rawstory, I really like this comment best:
jimbo92107 22 minutes ago
Well, you can't say Republicans are against everything. They're pro-gun violence, pro-war, pro-torture, pro-sickness, pro-domestic spying, pro-murder, pro-..executions, pro-..corruption, pro-racism, pro-bigotry, pro-child abuse, pro-theocracy, pro-ignorance, pro-..corporatism, and now they're officially pro-rape
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/8832
------------- Bulletin Message --------------
From: Rise Against Corporate Predators (149376875)
Subject: 30 Pro-Rape Senators (All GOP)
From: Corporations_ate_my_BABY! (14892249)
Subject: 30 Pro-Rape Senators (All GOP) please repost
Senator Al Franken's first legislative victory, which was to deny private contractors from using private arbitration in cases of rape and sexual abuse of their employees. However, 30 GOP Senators voted against the amendment! In other words, they would rather deny victims of rape their day in court then get in the way of private defense contractors from making money! Who are they kidding?
We have to call each one of these Senators and let them have it! Below is a list of all the Senators who voted no and their office phone numbers. Call them and ask why don't they care about women's rights? Despicable!
List of Senators and Phone Numbers:
Alexander (R-Tennessee) DC: (202) 224-4944 State: Memphis Office: (901) 544-4224
Barrasso (R-Wyoming) DC: 202-224-6441 State: Cheyenne Office: 307-772-2451
Bond (R-Missouri) DC: (202) 224-5721 State: St. Louis Office: (314) 725-4484
Brownback (R-Kansas) DC: (202) 224-6521 State: Topeka Office: (785) 233-2503
Bunning (R-Kentucky) DC: 202.224.4343 State: Louisville Office: 502.582.5341
Burr (R-NC) DC: (202) 224-3154 State: Asheville Office: (828) 350-2437
Chambliss (R-Georgia) DC: 202-224-3521 State: Atlanta Office: 770-763-9090
Coburn (R-OK) DC: 202-224-5754 State: Ok City: 405-231-4941
Cochran (R-MS) DC: 202-224-5054 State: Jackson office: 601-965-4459
Corker (R-TN) DC: 202-224-3344 State: Nashville office: 615-279-8125
Cornyn (R-TX) DC: 202-224-2934 State: Dallas office: 972-239-1310
Crapo (R-ID) DC: (202) 224-6142 State: Boise office: (208) 334-1776
DeMint (R-SC) DC: 202-224-6121 State: Columbia office: 803-771-6112
Ensign (R-NV) DC: (202) 224-6244 State: Las Vegas office: (702) 388-6605
Enzi (R-WY) DC: (202) 224-3424 State: Cheyenne Office: (307) 772-2477
Graham (R-SC) DC: (202) 224-5972 State: Columbia Office: (803) 933-0112
Gregg (R-NH) DC: (202) 224-3324 State: Concord office: (603) 225-7115
Inhofe (R-OK) DC: (202) 224-4721 State: Ok City: (405) 608-4381
Isakson (R-GA) DC: (202) 224-3643 State: Atlanta Office: (770) 661-0999
Johanns (R-NE) DC: (202) 224-4224 State: Lincoln Office: (402) 476-1400
Kyl (R-AZ) DC: 202-224-4521 State: Phoenix office: 602-840-1891
McCain (R-AZ) DC: (202) 224-2235 State: Phoenix Office: (602) 952-2410
McConnell (R-KY) DC: (202) 224-2541 State: Louisville office: (502) 582-6304
Risch (R-ID) DC: 202-224-2752 State: Boise office: 208-342-7985
Roberts (R-KS) DC: (202) 224-4774 State: Wichita office: (316) 263-0416
Sessions (R-AL) DC: 202-224-4124 State: Birmingham office: 205-731-1500
Shelby (R-AL) DC: (202) 224-5744 State: Montgomery office: (334) 223-7303
Thune (R-SD) DC: 202-224-2321 State: Sioux Falls office: 605-334-9596
Vitter (R-LA) DC: (202) 224-4623 State: Baton Rouge Office: 225-383-0331
Wicker (R-MS) DC: 202-224-6253 State: Jackson office: (601) 965-4644
For further information on contacting these Senators please visit this website:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
====
I posted a video about this early this morning... above is the list of those who should not be able to get away from this vote. They prefer corporate rights over the rights of the young women raped by contractors in Iraq... or anywhere.
UNBELIEVABLE.
....
Thanks to:
-------------- Bulletin Message ---------------
From: Lisa & BG (122999945)
Date: 10/8/2009 3:17:31 PM
Subject: These Senators are horrible human beings
Friday, October 2, 2009
Why Would We Let Them Rig the Game?
From: The Man Common
Dylan Ratigan
September 29, 2009
Why Would We Let Them Rig the Game?
Why is health insurance the only business that has an exemption from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act other than Major League Baseball? If the delivery of taxpayer trillions by our politicians to the banks to support their fraudulently paid bonuses hasn't shown you what our current government's values are, check this link out.
Through the governmental negligence that we as voters allowed, a health care system was created in which a single health care company controls at least 30 percent of the insurance market in 95% of the country, including states like the following:
Maine, where Wellpoint controls 71% of the market.
North Dakota, where Blue Cross controls 90% of the market.
Arkansas, where Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 75% of the market.
Alabama, where Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 83% of the market.
This monopoly, combined with the misaligned incentives that trap people in employer-based health care, is causing the skyrocketing health care costs that are hurtling our nation towards bankruptcy.
I don't know what's worse: that most Republicans seem to be against ending this unfair legal protection for an entrenched industry that is ruining our country with their non-competitive practices, or that most Democrats seem to be threatening this arrangement only as a bargaining chip to push for a meaningless public option that wouldn't be accessible to almost 85% of the population?
Instead of improving our country, through creating and enforcing free and fair markets, our politicians are currently engaging in backroom deals, most of which protect the very companies who profit the most from these disastrous outdated systems -- industries like health insurance and big Pharma.
While we clearly have the ability as a group of 305 million to update the system that is American Health Care and move our country into the 21st century in the process, it's becoming clear that we may not have the leaders to do it.
Instead of seeking answers to the problem of paying for and providing medicine, we are doing the exact opposite. Taxpayers' money is being played with by politicians who are desperately trying to protect the competition-stifling, false security of the monopolistic employer-based health care system and its outdated, over-charging, under-delivering ways. Given the least consideration are those affected the most -- the patients and the doctors who care for them.
This country's founders built an ingenious system of checks and balances for a reason: to ensure that no special interest or group could use government power to commandeer the creative and economic wealth of our nation to their own ends. How much longer must we live in a country where the citizens are subservient to the banks, health insurance companies and any other special interest able to control our government at the expense of our the most basic principles of fairness, our future as a nation and, as a result, our freedom?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratigan/why-would-we-let-them-rig_b_302480.html
Dylan Ratigan
September 29, 2009
Why Would We Let Them Rig the Game?
Why is health insurance the only business that has an exemption from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act other than Major League Baseball? If the delivery of taxpayer trillions by our politicians to the banks to support their fraudulently paid bonuses hasn't shown you what our current government's values are, check this link out.
Through the governmental negligence that we as voters allowed, a health care system was created in which a single health care company controls at least 30 percent of the insurance market in 95% of the country, including states like the following:
Maine, where Wellpoint controls 71% of the market.
North Dakota, where Blue Cross controls 90% of the market.
Arkansas, where Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 75% of the market.
Alabama, where Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 83% of the market.
This monopoly, combined with the misaligned incentives that trap people in employer-based health care, is causing the skyrocketing health care costs that are hurtling our nation towards bankruptcy.
I don't know what's worse: that most Republicans seem to be against ending this unfair legal protection for an entrenched industry that is ruining our country with their non-competitive practices, or that most Democrats seem to be threatening this arrangement only as a bargaining chip to push for a meaningless public option that wouldn't be accessible to almost 85% of the population?
Instead of improving our country, through creating and enforcing free and fair markets, our politicians are currently engaging in backroom deals, most of which protect the very companies who profit the most from these disastrous outdated systems -- industries like health insurance and big Pharma.
While we clearly have the ability as a group of 305 million to update the system that is American Health Care and move our country into the 21st century in the process, it's becoming clear that we may not have the leaders to do it.
Instead of seeking answers to the problem of paying for and providing medicine, we are doing the exact opposite. Taxpayers' money is being played with by politicians who are desperately trying to protect the competition-stifling, false security of the monopolistic employer-based health care system and its outdated, over-charging, under-delivering ways. Given the least consideration are those affected the most -- the patients and the doctors who care for them.
This country's founders built an ingenious system of checks and balances for a reason: to ensure that no special interest or group could use government power to commandeer the creative and economic wealth of our nation to their own ends. How much longer must we live in a country where the citizens are subservient to the banks, health insurance companies and any other special interest able to control our government at the expense of our the most basic principles of fairness, our future as a nation and, as a result, our freedom?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratigan/why-would-we-let-them-rig_b_302480.html
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Energy Saving Lightbulbs: MERCURY W-A-R-N-I-N-G
Everything He says about the lightbulbs are True.
I just Checked for myself at home. ~LisaMarie~
Hg - LAMP CONTAINS MERCURY
Manage in Accord with Disposal Laws.
See www.lamprecycle.org/ or 1-800-435-4448
right down to the actual Bulb printed with 'Made in China'.
GE Energy Smart (tm) General Purpose 40 watt equivalent
Energy Star rating 10 watt
RoHS Compliant
in a Recyclable Package!
I just Checked for myself at home. ~LisaMarie~
Hg - LAMP CONTAINS MERCURY
Manage in Accord with Disposal Laws.
See www.lamprecycle.org/ or 1-800-435-4448
right down to the actual Bulb printed with 'Made in China'.
GE Energy Smart (tm) General Purpose 40 watt equivalent
Energy Star rating 10 watt
RoHS Compliant
in a Recyclable Package!
Comment: AssilemakaMelissa:
Symptoms of Mercury Poisoning
By the Environmental Protection AgencyImpairment of the peripheral vision Disturbances in sensations ("pins and needles" feelings, numbness) usually in the hands feet and sometimes around the mouth Lack of coordination of movements, such as writing Impairment of speech, hearing, walking; Muscle weakness Skin rashes Mood swing Memory loss Mental disturbance
Mercury is an extremely reactive toxic element,can cause a number of hazardous effects on your health:severe damage to central nervous system & kidneys,gastrointestinal, respiratory systems,can lead to inflammation of mouth,loose teeth,ulcerated & bleeding gums,certain digestive tract problems such as diarrhea, inflamed colon and stomach cramps, respiratory problems such as persistent coughing and emphysema,cardiovascular problems such as blood pressure changes, weak pulse and chest pain.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
THE BIGGEST AND MOST CORRUPT OPERATION IN CA HISTORY
From: ♥MASTERING THE ART OF SELF-LOVE♥
Date: 8/30/2009
♥♥♥♥♥EMERGENCY.. BULLETIN FOR AMERICANS... PLEASE READ!♥♥♥♥♥
PLEASE visit this brave woman's myspace, to read about "THE BIGGEST AND MOST CORRUPT OPERATION IN CA HISTORY".
http://www.myspace.com/marlalk4
♥♥♥
Marla writes:
Gov. Schwarzenegger declared CA being in "bankruptcy." He recently declared our water crisis a Federal Disaster. Behind the smokescreen, plans are underway for CA to become the next Las Vegas!
As a matter of interest, Fresno has been stripped and pillaged. If it is true that a Katrina-like disaster is being planned, imagine who will collect the insurance claims behind all the real estate theft behind this operation. While covering up all the evidence of what has taken place.
Reports of poisoning,
To keep residents obedient and oblivious.
As innocent people are being killed,
Seizing property to secretly alter the city water system.
Pharmaceutical testing of tap-water is not allowed;
Reports of suspected homicide dismissed.
Facts behind unsolved murders refused;
As trail of forged, fraudulent legal documents continue.
Removal of structures,
Expansion of others;
Altered parcel maps and aerial views
To cover the evidence.
Upon being caught,
Perjury by city employees,
Followed by death threats,
Demanding that reports are stopped.
There is no help,
Only more lies and more death.
We are being annihilated,
Our families, homes, businesses taken from us.
UPCOMING WATER DIVERSION!
Stripped of a means of survival, left unemployable, isolated, prohibited from help as the hell continues. $350 Tele-Tap verifies my phones still tapped; $900 r.f. detector indicates devices throughout my home. I am monitored, sabotaged, discredited, prohibited from help. One person informed me, "You may have made it further than the others but for you there is no way out." They are not done with me - they do not leave witnesses behind. I cannot survive this much longer - PLEASE HELP ME!
♥♥♥
Let's work together, to bring justice to Americans! Come on, do you really want to drink and bathe in sewer waste?
http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LnBldGl0aW9ub25saW5lLmNvbS9NYXJsYUM3L3BldGl0aW9uLmh0bWw=
Thank you! May God keep you safe from these evil politicians.
♥♥♥
Date: 8/30/2009
♥♥♥♥♥EMERGENCY.. BULLETIN FOR AMERICANS... PLEASE READ!♥♥♥♥♥
PLEASE visit this brave woman's myspace, to read about "THE BIGGEST AND MOST CORRUPT OPERATION IN CA HISTORY".
http://www.myspace.com/marlalk4
♥♥♥
Marla writes:
Gov. Schwarzenegger declared CA being in "bankruptcy." He recently declared our water crisis a Federal Disaster. Behind the smokescreen, plans are underway for CA to become the next Las Vegas!
As a matter of interest, Fresno has been stripped and pillaged. If it is true that a Katrina-like disaster is being planned, imagine who will collect the insurance claims behind all the real estate theft behind this operation. While covering up all the evidence of what has taken place.
Reports of poisoning,
To keep residents obedient and oblivious.
As innocent people are being killed,
Seizing property to secretly alter the city water system.
Pharmaceutical testing of tap-water is not allowed;
Reports of suspected homicide dismissed.
Facts behind unsolved murders refused;
As trail of forged, fraudulent legal documents continue.
Removal of structures,
Expansion of others;
Altered parcel maps and aerial views
To cover the evidence.
Upon being caught,
Perjury by city employees,
Followed by death threats,
Demanding that reports are stopped.
There is no help,
Only more lies and more death.
We are being annihilated,
Our families, homes, businesses taken from us.
UPCOMING WATER DIVERSION!
Stripped of a means of survival, left unemployable, isolated, prohibited from help as the hell continues. $350 Tele-Tap verifies my phones still tapped; $900 r.f. detector indicates devices throughout my home. I am monitored, sabotaged, discredited, prohibited from help. One person informed me, "You may have made it further than the others but for you there is no way out." They are not done with me - they do not leave witnesses behind. I cannot survive this much longer - PLEASE HELP ME!
♥♥♥
Let's work together, to bring justice to Americans! Come on, do you really want to drink and bathe in sewer waste?
http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LnBldGl0aW9ub25saW5lLmNvbS9NYXJsYUM3L3BldGl0aW9uLmh0bWw=
Thank you! May God keep you safe from these evil politicians.
♥♥♥
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Lawmaker faces angry Pa. crowd on health care
By ERICA WERNERThe Associated Press
Tuesday, August 11, 2009; 4:50 PM
LEBANON, Pa. (AP) — Voter fears of a government takeover of health care and rampant costs were on stark display Tuesday at a longtime senator's noisy town hall, a session that underscored the challenge for President Obama and Democrats in overhauling the nation's system.
Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter faced hostile questions, taunts and jeers as he gamely tried to explain his positions. It was likely a moment of deja vu for the five-term lawmaker facing a tough re-election next year. Just a week ago, Specter encountered a tough crowd at a Philadelphia town hall.
VIDEO: Sen. Specter faces angry crowd at town hall
HEALTH CARE: Obama pitches plan to the insured
At a crowded community college, Specter heard from speaker after speaker who accused him of trampling on their constitutional rights, adding to the federal deficit or allowing government bureaucrats to take over health care. "You'll be gone, by God the bureaucrats will still be here," said one man." "My children and grandchildren are going to pay for this," said another. "One day God will stand before you and judge you!" shouted a third man before security guards approached and he left the room.
Specter said he wouldn't vote for a bill that adds to the deficit. He also said he wouldn't support a bill that extends coverage to illegal immigrants. None of the bills in Congress would provide health insurance to illegal immigrants.
Specter explained repeatedly that there is no single Senate bill yet for him to talk about since the Finance Committee hasn't finished writing one. That explanation was usually met by boos from the crowd. Many had read portions of a bill passed by three committees in the House and tried to get Specter to respond to that.
One woman tried to make it personal for Specter, alleging the Democrats' plan would not provide care to a man in his 70s with cancer, like Specter had.
"You're here because of the plan we have now," she said. Specter showed some heat at that.
"Well you're just not right," he said. He called her claim a "vicious, malicious" rumor.
The passions of the crowd illustrated the problems for Democratic lawmakers around the country as they try to use the month-long August recess to promote Obama's health care overhaul agenda. There's not a single plan to promote, which Specter later told reporters made his job harder, along with the complexity of the issue. The House bill is more than 1,000 pages long.
And, Specter said: "The objectors have gotten ahead of the curve." Asked why, he cited talk radio, among other factors.
Democrats are trying desperately to regain control of the debate, with the White House posting a new website designed to dispel what it called "the misinformation and baseless smears that are cropping up daily." House Democratic aides have set up a health care war room out of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office designed to help lawmakers answer questions about the legislation.
Though his popularity is slipping in polls, Obama himself is repeatedly trying to make the case to the public for passage of comprehensive legislation this year to bring down costs and extend coverage to many of the 50 million uninsured.
Specter said that in a long life in politics he hadn't seen anything like what he witnessed Tuesday and at a town hall last weekend that turned even uglier.
"There is more anger in America today than at any time I can remember," Specter said. Many in the crowd said they came of their own accord, and several told Specter they objected to Democrats characterizing them as mobs or organized opposition shipped in by lobbyists or the Republican Party. National conservative groups are encouraging people to attend town halls, but liberal groups are doing the same — with less apparent success.
Several in the crowd wore T-shirts proclaiming: "Proud Member of the Mob."
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-08-11-specter-health-meeting_N.htm?csp=34#uslPageReturn
Tuesday, August 11, 2009; 4:50 PM
LEBANON, Pa. (AP) — Voter fears of a government takeover of health care and rampant costs were on stark display Tuesday at a longtime senator's noisy town hall, a session that underscored the challenge for President Obama and Democrats in overhauling the nation's system.
Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter faced hostile questions, taunts and jeers as he gamely tried to explain his positions. It was likely a moment of deja vu for the five-term lawmaker facing a tough re-election next year. Just a week ago, Specter encountered a tough crowd at a Philadelphia town hall.
VIDEO: Sen. Specter faces angry crowd at town hall
HEALTH CARE: Obama pitches plan to the insured
At a crowded community college, Specter heard from speaker after speaker who accused him of trampling on their constitutional rights, adding to the federal deficit or allowing government bureaucrats to take over health care. "You'll be gone, by God the bureaucrats will still be here," said one man." "My children and grandchildren are going to pay for this," said another. "One day God will stand before you and judge you!" shouted a third man before security guards approached and he left the room.
Specter said he wouldn't vote for a bill that adds to the deficit. He also said he wouldn't support a bill that extends coverage to illegal immigrants. None of the bills in Congress would provide health insurance to illegal immigrants.
Specter explained repeatedly that there is no single Senate bill yet for him to talk about since the Finance Committee hasn't finished writing one. That explanation was usually met by boos from the crowd. Many had read portions of a bill passed by three committees in the House and tried to get Specter to respond to that.
One woman tried to make it personal for Specter, alleging the Democrats' plan would not provide care to a man in his 70s with cancer, like Specter had.
"You're here because of the plan we have now," she said. Specter showed some heat at that.
"Well you're just not right," he said. He called her claim a "vicious, malicious" rumor.
The passions of the crowd illustrated the problems for Democratic lawmakers around the country as they try to use the month-long August recess to promote Obama's health care overhaul agenda. There's not a single plan to promote, which Specter later told reporters made his job harder, along with the complexity of the issue. The House bill is more than 1,000 pages long.
And, Specter said: "The objectors have gotten ahead of the curve." Asked why, he cited talk radio, among other factors.
Democrats are trying desperately to regain control of the debate, with the White House posting a new website designed to dispel what it called "the misinformation and baseless smears that are cropping up daily." House Democratic aides have set up a health care war room out of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office designed to help lawmakers answer questions about the legislation.
Though his popularity is slipping in polls, Obama himself is repeatedly trying to make the case to the public for passage of comprehensive legislation this year to bring down costs and extend coverage to many of the 50 million uninsured.
Specter said that in a long life in politics he hadn't seen anything like what he witnessed Tuesday and at a town hall last weekend that turned even uglier.
"There is more anger in America today than at any time I can remember," Specter said. Many in the crowd said they came of their own accord, and several told Specter they objected to Democrats characterizing them as mobs or organized opposition shipped in by lobbyists or the Republican Party. National conservative groups are encouraging people to attend town halls, but liberal groups are doing the same — with less apparent success.
Several in the crowd wore T-shirts proclaiming: "Proud Member of the Mob."
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-08-11-specter-health-meeting_N.htm?csp=34#uslPageReturn
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Look who uncovered more lies re: CA water / agriculture
www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?p=2206695
New Water Regulations = Fresno CA Federal Disaster
Area & Mendota 41% Unemployment 7/12/09
http://www.hd.net/danrather_epguide.html
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Severe food shortage coming - eyewitness in California
Man Made Water Shortage = Food Shortages From Corporate and Political Land and Water Grabbing GREEDY TYRANTS IN CONTROL OF THE WORLD!
Severe food shortage coming - eyewitness in California
Posted by: "Esther Cook"
Sun Jul 26, 2009 5:56 pm (PDT)
Each of you is precious to me. Take heed!
Date: Wednesday, July 22, 2009, 9:45 AM
Oh... you are going to like this personal observation of food that is not growing in California. Not growing you say? Yup!! At the bottom of the article, Clint is going to be my second witness as to why you had better store up on some provisions, and do it pronto. What you are about to read, will be in a journey style version of being with Clint as he made his trip from Utah down into the vast crop growing area of California. Imagine yourself, sitting in the passenger seat and seeing with your own two eyes what Clint is going to relate to you. What is here now!! And what you had best do if you want to survive what is looking you right in the face.
Dr. James P. Wickstrom, D. Litt.
By: Clint Richardson
I've driven the almost 400 mile stretch of Interstate 5 from L.A. to Sacramento dozens of times. Quite honestly, it's as boring as it gets. with only the usual gas stations, mini-marts, fast-food, home-cookin' restaurants, and strangely a newer batch of Starbuck's Coffee shops sprouting up everywhere. In between... farms, orchards, cattle, and dirt.
On July 15th, as I began my trip to Utah, I came off the Grapevine decline and hit the flat 250 or so mile stretch of interstate which begins the farming belt in the valley. Almost immediately I noticed what I had only heard about on the radio and in the papers. Where once there were vast fields of green, now there where empty, barely recognizable rows of unplanted dirt and growing weeds. Only sporadically at first, but once I passed Bakersfield and for about a 200 mile stretch, I could not believe my eyes. Field after field laid fallow. And not really fallow, but unattended as if it was not going to be planted in the near future either.
Signs were staked in the ground on almost every patch of barren farmland. The most common one, which was yellow and obviously a group effort to wake up the sleeping travelers of their future plight, read:
"CONGRESS CREATED DUST BOWL"
Others, which looked more homemade were posted on non-operational farm equipment parked as close to the
freeway as possible, stated things like:
"FOOD ONLY GROWS WHERE WATER FLOWS" -and-
"NO WATER = NO JOBS = NO FUTURE"
At one point, after 150 miles or so of seeing this horror, I broke down in tears and had to pull over to the side of the road. I saw the aqueduct, which followed Interstate 5 most of the way, and large fields of dead trees which were planted just a few feet from the flowing cement river. I imagined how those trees would feel, imprisoned in the dying dirt by their own roots, if they could indeed comprehend that their source of life was just a stones throw away.
It was like some horrific story-book come to life; science fiction in real time. I was thinking of the farmers and their families and wondering what would become of them and their land. I was thinking about the consequences of hundreds of miles of food no longer being grown, and adding together the other states like Campo, Colorado which have the same situation... only planting 60% of their crops this year.
This deadness went on until the brink of civilization once again began to show. When I approached the Stockton/Modesto highway interchange area the carnage seemed to stop, and the fields appeared to be healthy and bountiful. I can only guess that this is because more people drive on that stretch of the freeway, and so the powers that be are trying to keep up appearances. No other explaination came to mind.
To the readers of this, I can only say that living in the city has literally blinded me to the truth, even though I knew it was happening. I wonder how many other things I ignore? Many economists and trends predictors have called for food shortages and food riots in the fall, and with what I saw last week, I have new reason to believe them.
But then, that's the real problem isn't it? Belief...
If you believe that the food will continue to flow (magically appearing on store shelves in a grocery store near you) and just dismiss the very real claims of shortages worldwide, including a severe wheat shortage in this country due to a harmful fungus, then I might boldly say that you
deserve whatever fate befalls you.
I challenge you all to take a drive up the 5 and see this for yourself. Please! Don't let this go unseen. If you are camera or video savy, I think it would be a really great photo exibit or website showing the true nature of our common problem. And you better believe, as you take your daily shower, flush your toilet, and water your fertilized-..non- edible grassy yards, that this is indeed a Congress created crisis. So please tell as many people about it as possible.
Lastly, if you haven't already... buy storable food! Go to the dollar store and buy rice and beans. Buy pasta, canned and jar foods, or anything with a shelf-life of more than 6 months.
What's the worse that can happen? You'll have food for 6 months.
What's the best that can happen? You'll have food for 6 months.
Take care. Spread this information. Get mad. Fight tyranny. And...
Don't be a sheep.
Clint Richardson
Severe food shortage coming - eyewitness in California
Posted by: "Esther Cook"
Sun Jul 26, 2009 5:56 pm (PDT)
Each of you is precious to me. Take heed!
Date: Wednesday, July 22, 2009, 9:45 AM
Oh... you are going to like this personal observation of food that is not growing in California. Not growing you say? Yup!! At the bottom of the article, Clint is going to be my second witness as to why you had better store up on some provisions, and do it pronto. What you are about to read, will be in a journey style version of being with Clint as he made his trip from Utah down into the vast crop growing area of California. Imagine yourself, sitting in the passenger seat and seeing with your own two eyes what Clint is going to relate to you. What is here now!! And what you had best do if you want to survive what is looking you right in the face.
Dr. James P. Wickstrom, D. Litt.
By: Clint Richardson
I've driven the almost 400 mile stretch of Interstate 5 from L.A. to Sacramento dozens of times. Quite honestly, it's as boring as it gets. with only the usual gas stations, mini-marts, fast-food, home-cookin' restaurants, and strangely a newer batch of Starbuck's Coffee shops sprouting up everywhere. In between... farms, orchards, cattle, and dirt.
On July 15th, as I began my trip to Utah, I came off the Grapevine decline and hit the flat 250 or so mile stretch of interstate which begins the farming belt in the valley. Almost immediately I noticed what I had only heard about on the radio and in the papers. Where once there were vast fields of green, now there where empty, barely recognizable rows of unplanted dirt and growing weeds. Only sporadically at first, but once I passed Bakersfield and for about a 200 mile stretch, I could not believe my eyes. Field after field laid fallow. And not really fallow, but unattended as if it was not going to be planted in the near future either.
Signs were staked in the ground on almost every patch of barren farmland. The most common one, which was yellow and obviously a group effort to wake up the sleeping travelers of their future plight, read:
"CONGRESS CREATED DUST BOWL"
Others, which looked more homemade were posted on non-operational farm equipment parked as close to the
freeway as possible, stated things like:
"FOOD ONLY GROWS WHERE WATER FLOWS" -and-
"NO WATER = NO JOBS = NO FUTURE"
At one point, after 150 miles or so of seeing this horror, I broke down in tears and had to pull over to the side of the road. I saw the aqueduct, which followed Interstate 5 most of the way, and large fields of dead trees which were planted just a few feet from the flowing cement river. I imagined how those trees would feel, imprisoned in the dying dirt by their own roots, if they could indeed comprehend that their source of life was just a stones throw away.
It was like some horrific story-book come to life; science fiction in real time. I was thinking of the farmers and their families and wondering what would become of them and their land. I was thinking about the consequences of hundreds of miles of food no longer being grown, and adding together the other states like Campo, Colorado which have the same situation... only planting 60% of their crops this year.
This deadness went on until the brink of civilization once again began to show. When I approached the Stockton/Modesto highway interchange area the carnage seemed to stop, and the fields appeared to be healthy and bountiful. I can only guess that this is because more people drive on that stretch of the freeway, and so the powers that be are trying to keep up appearances. No other explaination came to mind.
To the readers of this, I can only say that living in the city has literally blinded me to the truth, even though I knew it was happening. I wonder how many other things I ignore? Many economists and trends predictors have called for food shortages and food riots in the fall, and with what I saw last week, I have new reason to believe them.
But then, that's the real problem isn't it? Belief...
If you believe that the food will continue to flow (magically appearing on store shelves in a grocery store near you) and just dismiss the very real claims of shortages worldwide, including a severe wheat shortage in this country due to a harmful fungus, then I might boldly say that you
deserve whatever fate befalls you.
I challenge you all to take a drive up the 5 and see this for yourself. Please! Don't let this go unseen. If you are camera or video savy, I think it would be a really great photo exibit or website showing the true nature of our common problem. And you better believe, as you take your daily shower, flush your toilet, and water your fertilized-..non- edible grassy yards, that this is indeed a Congress created crisis. So please tell as many people about it as possible.
Lastly, if you haven't already... buy storable food! Go to the dollar store and buy rice and beans. Buy pasta, canned and jar foods, or anything with a shelf-life of more than 6 months.
What's the worse that can happen? You'll have food for 6 months.
What's the best that can happen? You'll have food for 6 months.
Take care. Spread this information. Get mad. Fight tyranny. And...
Don't be a sheep.
Clint Richardson
Council On Foreign Relations - by James Perloff
Council On Foreign Relations
Written by James Perloff
Thursday, 23 July 2009
During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama consistently promised Americans “change.” Such promises aren’t new to the voting public.
When Jimmy Carter ran for president, he said: “The people of this country know from bitter experience that we are not going to get … changes merely by shifting around the same group of insiders.” And top Carter aide Hamilton Jordan promised: “If, after the inauguration, you find a Cy Vance as Secretary of State and Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of National Security, then I would say we failed. And I’d quit.” Yet Carter selected Vance as Secretary of State and Brzezinski as National Security Adviser; the “same group of insiders” had been shifted around; and Jordan did not quit.
Carter’s administration was dominated by members of the Trilateral Commission, which had been founded by Brzezinski and David Rockefeller. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was campaigning against Carter, he protested:
I don’t believe that the Trilateral Commission is a conspiratorial group, but I do think its interests are devoted to international banking, multinational corporations, and so forth. I don’t think that any Administration of the U.S. Government should have the top nineteen positions filled by people from any one group or organization representing one viewpoint. No, I would go in a different direction.
Yet after his election, President Reagan picked 10 Trilateralists for his transition team, and included in his administration such Trilateralists as Vice President George Bush, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, U.S. Trade Representative William Brock, and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. Yet the entire North American membership of the Trilateral Commission has never numbered much over 100.
The reason that presidential candidates’ promises of “change” go largely unfulfilled once in office: they draw their top personnel from the same establishment groups — of which the Trilateral Commission is only one.
Chief among these groups is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most visible manifestation of what some have called the American establishment. Members of the council have dominated the administrations of every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the cabinet and sub-cabinet level. It does not matter whether the president is a Democrat or Republican. As we will later see, Barack Obama is no exception to CFR influence.
Power Behind the Throne
In theory, America’s government is supposed to be “of the people, by the people, for the people.” While this concept rang true in early America, and many individuals still trust in it, the last century has seen the reality of power increasingly shift from the people to an establishment rooted in banking, Wall Street, and powerful multinational corporations. Syndicated columnist Edith Kermit Roosevelt, granddaughter of Teddy Roosevelt, explained:
The word “Establishment” is a general term for the power elite in international finance, business, the professions and government, largely from the northeast, who wield most of the power regardless of who is in the White House. Most people are unaware of the existence of this “legitimate Mafia.” Yet the power of the Establishment makes itself felt from the professor who seeks a foundation grant, to the candidate for a cabinet post or State Department job. It affects the nation’s policies in almost every area.
Roosevelt added that this group’s goal is “a One World Socialist state governed by ‘experts’ like themselves.”
David Rockefeller, the longtime chairman (and now chairman emeritus) of the CFR, acknowledged the role of the establishment in trying to lead America in the one-world direction in his 2002 book Memoirs:
For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.
Two major means the establishment employs for controlling government policy: (1) through its influence within the two major parties and the mass media, it can usually assure that both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates will be its own hand-picked men; (2) by stacking presidential cabinets with CFR members at key positions — especially those involving defense, finance, foreign policy, and national security — it can assure that America will move in the direction it wants. Since the council’s founding in 1921, 21 secretaries of defense or war, 19 secretaries of the treasury, 17 secretaries of state, and 15 CIA directors have hailed from the Council on Foreign Relations.
Background
Prior to the CFR’s founding, what Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr. (the father of the famous aviator) called the “Money Trust” — a cabal of international bankers including the houses of Rockefeller, Morgan, and Rothschild — conspired to create the Federal Reserve System. Their agents, such as Paul Warburg and Benjamin Strong, who had secretly planned the Fed at a nine-day meeting on Jekyll Island, were then put in charge of the system itself. This gave them control of American interest rates, and, by virtue of this, control of the stock market, as well as the capacity to have the U.S. government spend without limit by having the Fed create money from nothing. The result has been decades of inflation and skyrocketing national debt. (For full details, see the April 13, 2009 New American or www.thenewamerican.com/history/american/946.)
Not just an accumulation of wealth, but a consolidation of political power was involved. The Money Trust had backed Woodrow Wilson in the presidential elections, and then controlled him through their front man, Edward Mandell House, who lived in the White House. The trust recognized how the power of government could be used to advance their own interests.
Wilson, surrounded by the bankers, traveled to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which was settling the aftermath of World War I. His chief proposal there, of course, was the League of Nations — a first step toward world government. However, although the League was established by the Versailles Treaty, the United States did not join because the Senate refused to ratify the treaty.
In response to this rejection, the bankers’ circle, still in Paris, held a series of meetings and proposed to establish a new organization in the United States, whose purpose would be to lead America into the League. This organization was incorporated in New York City two years later as the Council on Foreign Relations.
Architects of a New World Order
The CFR’s goal was formation of an incrementally stronger world government. Admiral Chester Ward, former Judge Advocate of the U.S. Navy, was a CFR member for 16 years before resigning in disgust. He stated: “The main purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting the disarmament of U.S. sovereignty and national independence, and submergence into an all-powerful one-world government.”
After World War II, the League’s successor, the United Nations, was born. Contrary to what the public is commonly told, the UN was not founded by nations who had tired of war. The UN was conceived by a group of CFR members in the State Department calling themselves the Informal Agenda Group. They drafted the original proposal for the UN, and secured the approval of President Roosevelt, who then made establishing the UN his highest postwar priority. When the UN held its founding meeting in San Francisco in 1945, 47 of the American delegates were CFR members.
Though the UN was not initially set up as a world government, the intent was that it would develop into one over time. John Foster Dulles (CFR), an American delegate to the UN founding meeting who later became Secretary of State under Eisenhower, acknowledged as much in his book War or Peace: “The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization.”
Two other postwar institutions, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, were technically created at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference. But the initial planning was done by the CFR’s Economic and Finance Group, part of their wartime War and Peace Studies Project. The World Bank and IMF act as a loan-guarantee scheme for multinational banks. When a loan to a foreign country goes awry, the World Bank and IMF step in with taxpayer money, ensuring that the private banks continue to receive interest payments. Furthermore, the World Bank and IMF dictate conditions to the countries receiving bailouts, thus giving the bankers a measure of political control over indebted nations.
Despite what Americans were told, the postwar Marshall Plan was not invented by General George Marshall, though he did announce it in a 1947 Harvard commencement speech. The Marshall Plan was dreamed up at a CFR study group with David Rockefeller as its secretary. Marshall was simply selected to announce the plan because, as a general, he would be perceived as politically neutral and help garner bipartisan congressional support for the plan. Unknown to the public, Marshall Plan funds were circuitously rerouted by John J. McCloy — appointed U.S. High Commissioner to Germany — to Jean Monnet, founder of the Common Market, which evolved into today’s European Union, a microcosm of world government. McCloy returned home to become chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1953.
The tragic Vietnam War was run almost entirely by CFR members. William P. Bundy (CFR) drafted the Tonkin Gulf Resolution before the now-discredited Tonkin Gulf Incident even took place. Bundy’s father-in-law, Dean Acheson (CFR), as leader of a senior team of advisers nicknamed “the Wise Men,” persuaded Lyndon Baines Johnson to dramatically escalate the war beginning in 1965. And Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (CFR) helped develop the “rules of engagement” (e.g., preventing the Air Force from attacking critical targets) that guaranteed the war’s disastrous prolongation. This generated a huge slide to the left among American college students. When Bundy left the State Department, David Rockefeller appointed him editor of the CFR’s journal Foreign Affairs. And McNamara, one of the leading architects of the Vietnam War debacle, became president of the World Bank.
Broadening the Scheme
The CFR is not a uniquely American phenomenon. It has counterpart organizations throughout the world — e.g., the Royal Institute of International Affairs in England, the French Institute of International Relations, etc.
To help coordinate policy on an international scale, CFR chairman David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973. “Trilateral” refers to the coordination of three global regions: North America, Europe, and Asia. The commission’s meetings allow the gathering together of heads of state, banks, multinational corporations, and media. Republican Senator Barry Goldwater called the commission “David Rockefeller’s newest cabal,” and said, “It is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States.” The commission, like the annual secretive meetings of the Bilderbergers and the notorious Bohemian Grove, enables the international power elite to privately assemble and plan our destiny.
Jimmy Carter was a member of the commission, hand-picked to be president after meeting with Brzezinski and Rockefeller at the latter’s Tarrytown, New York, estate. Carter filled his administration with CFR members and Trilateralists. Indeed, Brzezinski noted in his memoirs that “all the key foreign policy decision makers of the Carter Administration had previously served in the Trilateral Commission.” Carter then embarked on a destructive course of foreign policy that included betraying the Shah of Iran, leading to the installment of Ayatollah Khomeini and the U.S. hostage crisis; betraying President Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, resulting in a Marxist dictatorship under the Sandinistas; and betraying Taiwan in order to recognize Communist China — a move previously set up by Richard Nixon’s overtures to China, dictated by his own CFR advisers.
Under Bill Clinton (a CFR member who selected 12 CFR members for his cabinet), the United States enacted NAFTA, an economic alliance with Mexico and Canada. This arrangement was created by the establishment, not by the American people, who did not suspect the game being played on them. Not only did NAFTA swamp us with cheap, job-destroying imports, but it was designed to be the foundation for a continental economic union leading to political union. Robert Pastor (CFR), a key architect of North American integration, acknowledged in the January/February 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs: “NAFTA was merely the first draft of an economic constitution for North America.” And Andrew Reding of the World Policy Institute said: “NAFTA will signal the formation, however tentatively, of a new political unit — North America. With economic integration will come political integration. By whatever name, this is an incipient form of international government. Following the lead of the Europeans, North Americans should begin considering formation of a continental parliament.” [Emphasis added.]
A similar stratagem had been used against the peoples of Europe — by first deceptively hooking them into an “economic” alliance called the Common Market, which then, requiring common laws to regulate trade, transformed via a series of steps into the European Union, the super-national government of Europe that is swallowing up national sovereignty.
Following the initial step enacted under Clinton, President George W. Bush, whose father was a CFR director, moved toward politicizing the NAFTA alliance. On March 23, 2005, he met Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to launch the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), the rudiments of a North American Union. CNN’s Lou Dobbs said of it: “President Bush signed a formal agreement that will end the United States as we know it.”
Furthermore, regional alliances such as the European Union and proposed North American Union are not ends, but only steppingstones to world government. As CFR/Trilateralist Zbigniew Brzezinski stated: “We cannot leap into world government in one quick step. The precondition for genuine globalization is progressive regionalization.”
In furtherance of this, on April 30, 2007, President Bush stood at the White House beside Angela Merkel, president of the European Council, and José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, and announced the signing of a new agreement to “strengthen transatlantic economic integration.” It called for “joint work in the areas of regulatory cooperation, financial markets, trade and transport security, innovation and technological development, intellectual property rights, energy, investment, competition, services, and government procurement,” and various other steps toward economic integration. But as usual, “economic integration” is the predecessor of political integration. CFR members have dreamed of a political union between the United States and Europe since the 1950s, when the CFR-dominated Atlantic Union Committee promoted a merger they called “Atlantica.”
Enter Obama
Candidate Barack Obama revealed he would proceed with the Bush initiatives. In a speech in Berlin on July 24, 2008, he stated:
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.... Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together.... In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more — not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.
Obama had only been president for a little over two months when he traveled to Europe for a series of meetings with European leaders. He attended the G20 Summit, which ended with a tentative agreement to launch a new global financial system, using as the rationale for this major step toward global government the recent Fed- and government-spawned financial meltdown.
Henry Kissinger — foreign policy mouthpiece of the establishment for four decades — wrote an article for the January 12, 2009 issue of the International Herald Tribune entitled “The Chance for a New World Order.” He stated:
As the new U.S. administration prepares to take office amid grave financial and international crises, it may seem counterintuitive to argue that the very unsettled nature of the international system generates a unique opportunity for creative diplomacy....
Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources. Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being....
The alternative to a new international order is chaos.
Kissinger also stated on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”: “The president-elect is coming into office at a moment when there is upheaval in many parts of the world simultaneously.... His task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when, really, a new world order can be created. It’s a great opportunity, it isn’t just a crisis.”
Past statements reveal that the establishment wants a single currency for the world, just as the EU has consolidated its currencies into the “euro.” As far back as the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, John Maynard Keynes proposed a world currency he dubbed bancor. Richard L. Gardner (CFR) wrote in the Fall 1984 Foreign Affairs: “I suggest a radical alternative scheme for the next century: the creation of common currency for all the industrial democracies and a joint Bank of Issue to determine that Monetary Policy.”
In March of this year, Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown met with reporters at the White House. Brown announced that “there is the possibility in the next few months of a global new deal that will involve all the countries of the world in sorting out and cleaning up the banking system.” Obama added that
Globalization can be an enormous force for good.... But what is also true is … we still have a 1930s regulatory system in place in most countries designed from the last great crisis, that we’ve got to update our institutions, our regulatory frameworks, so that the power of globalization is channeled for the benefit of ordinary men and women.
If trends continue, however, the changes can be expected to benefit a tiny handful of the global elite, not “ordinary men and women.” Further evidence that Obama’s administration will simply continue the globalist agenda is indicated by his appointments.
CFR Domination Continues
During his campaign, Obama selected the ubiquitous Zbigniew Brzezinski (CFR), promoter of the “regional” approach to world government, as one of his top foreign policy advisors. Obama called Brzezinski “one of our more outstanding thinkers” and “somebody I have learned an immense amount from.” Presumably Brzezinski’s teachings included the world government he advocates.
For Treasury Secretary, Obama chose Timothy Geithner: Senior Fellow in International Economics at the CFR, Bilderberger, former head of the New York Federal Reserve, and former employee of both the IMF and Kissinger Associates. One doesn’t get more establishment than that! It is Geithner who is managing the bailout of Wall Street with taxpayer dollars. Assisting Geithner at Treasury in overseeing the auto industry bailout is fellow CFR member Stephen Rattner.
For Director of the National Economic Council — a U.S. government agency created by a Bill Clinton executive order — Obama selected Lawrence Summers (CFR, Bilderberger). Former Chief Economist at the World Bank, his last position was at the investment firm of D. E. Shaw & Co, where he earned $5.2 million in one year while working one day per week. Henry Kissinger had said Summers should “be given a White House post in which he was charged with shooting down or fixing bad ideas.”
For Defense Secretary, Obama elected to continue with Bush pick Robert Gates (CFR, Bilderberger). During the Carter administration, Gates served as a special assistant to Zbigniew Brzezinski. In 2004, he co-chaired a CFR Task Force on Iran with Brzezinski, who lauded Gates in Time in 2008. Joining Gates in the Defense Department are fellow CFR members Michele Flournoy (Under Secretary of Defense for Policy), Jeh C. Johnson (Defense Department General Counsel), and Kathleen Hicks (Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Forces).
For Secretary of State, Obama chose Hillary Clinton, who has attended the top-secret Bilderberger meetings. Hillary is not a CFR member, but husband Bill is, and her State Department is laden with CFR members, including James B. Steinberg (Deputy Secretary of State), William J. Burns (Under Secretary for Political Affairs), Susan Rice (U.S. Ambassador to the UN), Jacob J. Lew (Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources), Todd Stern (Special Envoy for Climate Change), and many others.
The Department of Homeland Security, which many Americans fear may turn our country into an Orwellian surveillance society, was conceived before 9/11 by a task force called the U.S. Commission on National Security, nine of whose 12 members belonged to the CFR. The administration of the department under Obama is particularly heavy with CFR members, including Janet Napolitano (Secretary), Jane Holl Lute (Deputy Secretary), Juliette Kayyem (Assistant Secretary, Office of Intergovernmental Programs), and Alan Bersin (Assistant Secretary, Office of International Affairs).
Thus the CFR continues to dominate our government’s key areas: finance, defense, foreign policy, and security. To this may be added various other Obama CFR appointees, such as Mona Sutphen (White House Deputy Chief of Staff), Paul Volcker (Chairman, Economic Recovery Advisory Board), Peter Cowhey, (Senior Counsel, Office of U.S. Trade Representative), and Eric Shinseki (Secretary of Veterans Affairs).
The Future
The idea that Barack Obama became president from a “grass-roots” movement is illusory. American government policy continues to be largely dictated by the rich and the few. This is generally unknown to the public — not because it is a bizarre conspiracy theory, but because the same power elite who run our government, mega-banks, and multinational corporations also run the major media, as an inspection of the CFR membership roster would reveal.
Membership in the CFR, of course, is not an automatic condemnation. A few people are added as “window dressing” to give the group distinction and a veneer of diversity. An example is movie star Angelina Jolie. No one suspects Jolie knows much about foreign affairs or is a conspirator for world government. But within the CFR are hardcore globalists who, linked with their foreign counterparts through the Bilderbergers and Trilateral Commission, head the drive for one-world government.
Though numerically small (less than 1,000 members during the Kennedy years, less than 4,500 today), this organization has dominated every administration for over seven decades.
As long as the CFR controls our government, we can anticipate more of the same: diminishing national sovereignty; free flow of immigration (which confuses national identity and weakens national loyalties); increasing jobs losses through multinational trade agreements; further internationalization of law (Law of the Sea Treaty, Kyoto Protocol, World Court, global taxation, etc.); increasing loss of freedoms in a “surveillance society”; progressive organization of the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a North American Union; and ultimately, broader merger into a world government where all power will be concentrated in the hands of the elite.
Eternal vigilance continues to be the price of freedom.
source: http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/foreign-policy/1462
Written by James Perloff
Thursday, 23 July 2009
During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama consistently promised Americans “change.” Such promises aren’t new to the voting public.
When Jimmy Carter ran for president, he said: “The people of this country know from bitter experience that we are not going to get … changes merely by shifting around the same group of insiders.” And top Carter aide Hamilton Jordan promised: “If, after the inauguration, you find a Cy Vance as Secretary of State and Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of National Security, then I would say we failed. And I’d quit.” Yet Carter selected Vance as Secretary of State and Brzezinski as National Security Adviser; the “same group of insiders” had been shifted around; and Jordan did not quit.
Carter’s administration was dominated by members of the Trilateral Commission, which had been founded by Brzezinski and David Rockefeller. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was campaigning against Carter, he protested:
I don’t believe that the Trilateral Commission is a conspiratorial group, but I do think its interests are devoted to international banking, multinational corporations, and so forth. I don’t think that any Administration of the U.S. Government should have the top nineteen positions filled by people from any one group or organization representing one viewpoint. No, I would go in a different direction.
Yet after his election, President Reagan picked 10 Trilateralists for his transition team, and included in his administration such Trilateralists as Vice President George Bush, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, U.S. Trade Representative William Brock, and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. Yet the entire North American membership of the Trilateral Commission has never numbered much over 100.
The reason that presidential candidates’ promises of “change” go largely unfulfilled once in office: they draw their top personnel from the same establishment groups — of which the Trilateral Commission is only one.
Chief among these groups is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most visible manifestation of what some have called the American establishment. Members of the council have dominated the administrations of every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the cabinet and sub-cabinet level. It does not matter whether the president is a Democrat or Republican. As we will later see, Barack Obama is no exception to CFR influence.
Power Behind the Throne
In theory, America’s government is supposed to be “of the people, by the people, for the people.” While this concept rang true in early America, and many individuals still trust in it, the last century has seen the reality of power increasingly shift from the people to an establishment rooted in banking, Wall Street, and powerful multinational corporations. Syndicated columnist Edith Kermit Roosevelt, granddaughter of Teddy Roosevelt, explained:
The word “Establishment” is a general term for the power elite in international finance, business, the professions and government, largely from the northeast, who wield most of the power regardless of who is in the White House. Most people are unaware of the existence of this “legitimate Mafia.” Yet the power of the Establishment makes itself felt from the professor who seeks a foundation grant, to the candidate for a cabinet post or State Department job. It affects the nation’s policies in almost every area.
Roosevelt added that this group’s goal is “a One World Socialist state governed by ‘experts’ like themselves.”
David Rockefeller, the longtime chairman (and now chairman emeritus) of the CFR, acknowledged the role of the establishment in trying to lead America in the one-world direction in his 2002 book Memoirs:
For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.
Two major means the establishment employs for controlling government policy: (1) through its influence within the two major parties and the mass media, it can usually assure that both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates will be its own hand-picked men; (2) by stacking presidential cabinets with CFR members at key positions — especially those involving defense, finance, foreign policy, and national security — it can assure that America will move in the direction it wants. Since the council’s founding in 1921, 21 secretaries of defense or war, 19 secretaries of the treasury, 17 secretaries of state, and 15 CIA directors have hailed from the Council on Foreign Relations.
Background
Prior to the CFR’s founding, what Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr. (the father of the famous aviator) called the “Money Trust” — a cabal of international bankers including the houses of Rockefeller, Morgan, and Rothschild — conspired to create the Federal Reserve System. Their agents, such as Paul Warburg and Benjamin Strong, who had secretly planned the Fed at a nine-day meeting on Jekyll Island, were then put in charge of the system itself. This gave them control of American interest rates, and, by virtue of this, control of the stock market, as well as the capacity to have the U.S. government spend without limit by having the Fed create money from nothing. The result has been decades of inflation and skyrocketing national debt. (For full details, see the April 13, 2009 New American or www.thenewamerican.com/history/american/946.)
Not just an accumulation of wealth, but a consolidation of political power was involved. The Money Trust had backed Woodrow Wilson in the presidential elections, and then controlled him through their front man, Edward Mandell House, who lived in the White House. The trust recognized how the power of government could be used to advance their own interests.
Wilson, surrounded by the bankers, traveled to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which was settling the aftermath of World War I. His chief proposal there, of course, was the League of Nations — a first step toward world government. However, although the League was established by the Versailles Treaty, the United States did not join because the Senate refused to ratify the treaty.
In response to this rejection, the bankers’ circle, still in Paris, held a series of meetings and proposed to establish a new organization in the United States, whose purpose would be to lead America into the League. This organization was incorporated in New York City two years later as the Council on Foreign Relations.
Architects of a New World Order
The CFR’s goal was formation of an incrementally stronger world government. Admiral Chester Ward, former Judge Advocate of the U.S. Navy, was a CFR member for 16 years before resigning in disgust. He stated: “The main purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting the disarmament of U.S. sovereignty and national independence, and submergence into an all-powerful one-world government.”
After World War II, the League’s successor, the United Nations, was born. Contrary to what the public is commonly told, the UN was not founded by nations who had tired of war. The UN was conceived by a group of CFR members in the State Department calling themselves the Informal Agenda Group. They drafted the original proposal for the UN, and secured the approval of President Roosevelt, who then made establishing the UN his highest postwar priority. When the UN held its founding meeting in San Francisco in 1945, 47 of the American delegates were CFR members.
Though the UN was not initially set up as a world government, the intent was that it would develop into one over time. John Foster Dulles (CFR), an American delegate to the UN founding meeting who later became Secretary of State under Eisenhower, acknowledged as much in his book War or Peace: “The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization.”
Two other postwar institutions, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, were technically created at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference. But the initial planning was done by the CFR’s Economic and Finance Group, part of their wartime War and Peace Studies Project. The World Bank and IMF act as a loan-guarantee scheme for multinational banks. When a loan to a foreign country goes awry, the World Bank and IMF step in with taxpayer money, ensuring that the private banks continue to receive interest payments. Furthermore, the World Bank and IMF dictate conditions to the countries receiving bailouts, thus giving the bankers a measure of political control over indebted nations.
Despite what Americans were told, the postwar Marshall Plan was not invented by General George Marshall, though he did announce it in a 1947 Harvard commencement speech. The Marshall Plan was dreamed up at a CFR study group with David Rockefeller as its secretary. Marshall was simply selected to announce the plan because, as a general, he would be perceived as politically neutral and help garner bipartisan congressional support for the plan. Unknown to the public, Marshall Plan funds were circuitously rerouted by John J. McCloy — appointed U.S. High Commissioner to Germany — to Jean Monnet, founder of the Common Market, which evolved into today’s European Union, a microcosm of world government. McCloy returned home to become chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1953.
The tragic Vietnam War was run almost entirely by CFR members. William P. Bundy (CFR) drafted the Tonkin Gulf Resolution before the now-discredited Tonkin Gulf Incident even took place. Bundy’s father-in-law, Dean Acheson (CFR), as leader of a senior team of advisers nicknamed “the Wise Men,” persuaded Lyndon Baines Johnson to dramatically escalate the war beginning in 1965. And Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (CFR) helped develop the “rules of engagement” (e.g., preventing the Air Force from attacking critical targets) that guaranteed the war’s disastrous prolongation. This generated a huge slide to the left among American college students. When Bundy left the State Department, David Rockefeller appointed him editor of the CFR’s journal Foreign Affairs. And McNamara, one of the leading architects of the Vietnam War debacle, became president of the World Bank.
Broadening the Scheme
The CFR is not a uniquely American phenomenon. It has counterpart organizations throughout the world — e.g., the Royal Institute of International Affairs in England, the French Institute of International Relations, etc.
To help coordinate policy on an international scale, CFR chairman David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973. “Trilateral” refers to the coordination of three global regions: North America, Europe, and Asia. The commission’s meetings allow the gathering together of heads of state, banks, multinational corporations, and media. Republican Senator Barry Goldwater called the commission “David Rockefeller’s newest cabal,” and said, “It is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States.” The commission, like the annual secretive meetings of the Bilderbergers and the notorious Bohemian Grove, enables the international power elite to privately assemble and plan our destiny.
Jimmy Carter was a member of the commission, hand-picked to be president after meeting with Brzezinski and Rockefeller at the latter’s Tarrytown, New York, estate. Carter filled his administration with CFR members and Trilateralists. Indeed, Brzezinski noted in his memoirs that “all the key foreign policy decision makers of the Carter Administration had previously served in the Trilateral Commission.” Carter then embarked on a destructive course of foreign policy that included betraying the Shah of Iran, leading to the installment of Ayatollah Khomeini and the U.S. hostage crisis; betraying President Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, resulting in a Marxist dictatorship under the Sandinistas; and betraying Taiwan in order to recognize Communist China — a move previously set up by Richard Nixon’s overtures to China, dictated by his own CFR advisers.
Under Bill Clinton (a CFR member who selected 12 CFR members for his cabinet), the United States enacted NAFTA, an economic alliance with Mexico and Canada. This arrangement was created by the establishment, not by the American people, who did not suspect the game being played on them. Not only did NAFTA swamp us with cheap, job-destroying imports, but it was designed to be the foundation for a continental economic union leading to political union. Robert Pastor (CFR), a key architect of North American integration, acknowledged in the January/February 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs: “NAFTA was merely the first draft of an economic constitution for North America.” And Andrew Reding of the World Policy Institute said: “NAFTA will signal the formation, however tentatively, of a new political unit — North America. With economic integration will come political integration. By whatever name, this is an incipient form of international government. Following the lead of the Europeans, North Americans should begin considering formation of a continental parliament.” [Emphasis added.]
A similar stratagem had been used against the peoples of Europe — by first deceptively hooking them into an “economic” alliance called the Common Market, which then, requiring common laws to regulate trade, transformed via a series of steps into the European Union, the super-national government of Europe that is swallowing up national sovereignty.
Following the initial step enacted under Clinton, President George W. Bush, whose father was a CFR director, moved toward politicizing the NAFTA alliance. On March 23, 2005, he met Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to launch the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), the rudiments of a North American Union. CNN’s Lou Dobbs said of it: “President Bush signed a formal agreement that will end the United States as we know it.”
Furthermore, regional alliances such as the European Union and proposed North American Union are not ends, but only steppingstones to world government. As CFR/Trilateralist Zbigniew Brzezinski stated: “We cannot leap into world government in one quick step. The precondition for genuine globalization is progressive regionalization.”
In furtherance of this, on April 30, 2007, President Bush stood at the White House beside Angela Merkel, president of the European Council, and José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, and announced the signing of a new agreement to “strengthen transatlantic economic integration.” It called for “joint work in the areas of regulatory cooperation, financial markets, trade and transport security, innovation and technological development, intellectual property rights, energy, investment, competition, services, and government procurement,” and various other steps toward economic integration. But as usual, “economic integration” is the predecessor of political integration. CFR members have dreamed of a political union between the United States and Europe since the 1950s, when the CFR-dominated Atlantic Union Committee promoted a merger they called “Atlantica.”
Enter Obama
Candidate Barack Obama revealed he would proceed with the Bush initiatives. In a speech in Berlin on July 24, 2008, he stated:
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.... Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together.... In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more — not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.
Obama had only been president for a little over two months when he traveled to Europe for a series of meetings with European leaders. He attended the G20 Summit, which ended with a tentative agreement to launch a new global financial system, using as the rationale for this major step toward global government the recent Fed- and government-spawned financial meltdown.
Henry Kissinger — foreign policy mouthpiece of the establishment for four decades — wrote an article for the January 12, 2009 issue of the International Herald Tribune entitled “The Chance for a New World Order.” He stated:
As the new U.S. administration prepares to take office amid grave financial and international crises, it may seem counterintuitive to argue that the very unsettled nature of the international system generates a unique opportunity for creative diplomacy....
Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources. Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being....
The alternative to a new international order is chaos.
Kissinger also stated on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street”: “The president-elect is coming into office at a moment when there is upheaval in many parts of the world simultaneously.... His task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when, really, a new world order can be created. It’s a great opportunity, it isn’t just a crisis.”
Past statements reveal that the establishment wants a single currency for the world, just as the EU has consolidated its currencies into the “euro.” As far back as the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, John Maynard Keynes proposed a world currency he dubbed bancor. Richard L. Gardner (CFR) wrote in the Fall 1984 Foreign Affairs: “I suggest a radical alternative scheme for the next century: the creation of common currency for all the industrial democracies and a joint Bank of Issue to determine that Monetary Policy.”
In March of this year, Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown met with reporters at the White House. Brown announced that “there is the possibility in the next few months of a global new deal that will involve all the countries of the world in sorting out and cleaning up the banking system.” Obama added that
Globalization can be an enormous force for good.... But what is also true is … we still have a 1930s regulatory system in place in most countries designed from the last great crisis, that we’ve got to update our institutions, our regulatory frameworks, so that the power of globalization is channeled for the benefit of ordinary men and women.
If trends continue, however, the changes can be expected to benefit a tiny handful of the global elite, not “ordinary men and women.” Further evidence that Obama’s administration will simply continue the globalist agenda is indicated by his appointments.
CFR Domination Continues
During his campaign, Obama selected the ubiquitous Zbigniew Brzezinski (CFR), promoter of the “regional” approach to world government, as one of his top foreign policy advisors. Obama called Brzezinski “one of our more outstanding thinkers” and “somebody I have learned an immense amount from.” Presumably Brzezinski’s teachings included the world government he advocates.
For Treasury Secretary, Obama chose Timothy Geithner: Senior Fellow in International Economics at the CFR, Bilderberger, former head of the New York Federal Reserve, and former employee of both the IMF and Kissinger Associates. One doesn’t get more establishment than that! It is Geithner who is managing the bailout of Wall Street with taxpayer dollars. Assisting Geithner at Treasury in overseeing the auto industry bailout is fellow CFR member Stephen Rattner.
For Director of the National Economic Council — a U.S. government agency created by a Bill Clinton executive order — Obama selected Lawrence Summers (CFR, Bilderberger). Former Chief Economist at the World Bank, his last position was at the investment firm of D. E. Shaw & Co, where he earned $5.2 million in one year while working one day per week. Henry Kissinger had said Summers should “be given a White House post in which he was charged with shooting down or fixing bad ideas.”
For Defense Secretary, Obama elected to continue with Bush pick Robert Gates (CFR, Bilderberger). During the Carter administration, Gates served as a special assistant to Zbigniew Brzezinski. In 2004, he co-chaired a CFR Task Force on Iran with Brzezinski, who lauded Gates in Time in 2008. Joining Gates in the Defense Department are fellow CFR members Michele Flournoy (Under Secretary of Defense for Policy), Jeh C. Johnson (Defense Department General Counsel), and Kathleen Hicks (Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Forces).
For Secretary of State, Obama chose Hillary Clinton, who has attended the top-secret Bilderberger meetings. Hillary is not a CFR member, but husband Bill is, and her State Department is laden with CFR members, including James B. Steinberg (Deputy Secretary of State), William J. Burns (Under Secretary for Political Affairs), Susan Rice (U.S. Ambassador to the UN), Jacob J. Lew (Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources), Todd Stern (Special Envoy for Climate Change), and many others.
The Department of Homeland Security, which many Americans fear may turn our country into an Orwellian surveillance society, was conceived before 9/11 by a task force called the U.S. Commission on National Security, nine of whose 12 members belonged to the CFR. The administration of the department under Obama is particularly heavy with CFR members, including Janet Napolitano (Secretary), Jane Holl Lute (Deputy Secretary), Juliette Kayyem (Assistant Secretary, Office of Intergovernmental Programs), and Alan Bersin (Assistant Secretary, Office of International Affairs).
Thus the CFR continues to dominate our government’s key areas: finance, defense, foreign policy, and security. To this may be added various other Obama CFR appointees, such as Mona Sutphen (White House Deputy Chief of Staff), Paul Volcker (Chairman, Economic Recovery Advisory Board), Peter Cowhey, (Senior Counsel, Office of U.S. Trade Representative), and Eric Shinseki (Secretary of Veterans Affairs).
The Future
The idea that Barack Obama became president from a “grass-roots” movement is illusory. American government policy continues to be largely dictated by the rich and the few. This is generally unknown to the public — not because it is a bizarre conspiracy theory, but because the same power elite who run our government, mega-banks, and multinational corporations also run the major media, as an inspection of the CFR membership roster would reveal.
Membership in the CFR, of course, is not an automatic condemnation. A few people are added as “window dressing” to give the group distinction and a veneer of diversity. An example is movie star Angelina Jolie. No one suspects Jolie knows much about foreign affairs or is a conspirator for world government. But within the CFR are hardcore globalists who, linked with their foreign counterparts through the Bilderbergers and Trilateral Commission, head the drive for one-world government.
Though numerically small (less than 1,000 members during the Kennedy years, less than 4,500 today), this organization has dominated every administration for over seven decades.
As long as the CFR controls our government, we can anticipate more of the same: diminishing national sovereignty; free flow of immigration (which confuses national identity and weakens national loyalties); increasing jobs losses through multinational trade agreements; further internationalization of law (Law of the Sea Treaty, Kyoto Protocol, World Court, global taxation, etc.); increasing loss of freedoms in a “surveillance society”; progressive organization of the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a North American Union; and ultimately, broader merger into a world government where all power will be concentrated in the hands of the elite.
Eternal vigilance continues to be the price of freedom.
source: http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/foreign-policy/1462
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