radical common sense, HOWLINWOLF's Blog

Union Leader Fraud & Corruption
http://www.unionfacts.com/articles/crimeFraud.cfm

Union Leader Fraud & Corruption

  OLMS Enforcement Statistics Financial Integrity
  FY 2001  FY 2002  FY 2003  FY 2004  FY 2005  
Indictments  98 166 132 109 114
Convictions 102 90 152 111 97
Embezzlement, False Reports, Violence, And More …

Most people don't know just how many crimes are committed every year through which union officials hurt their own members.

 The number of reputed and verified crimes is staggering. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the hundreds of indictments of union officials for violations of the Labor Management and Reporting Disclosure Act. According to the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), those crimes include “embezzlement, filing false reports, keeping false records, destruction of records, extortionate picketing and deprivation of rights by violence.” The OLMS notes:

In fiscal year 2005, OLMS completed 325 criminal cases. Indictments increased to 114, a 16 percent increase from FY 2001. The number of convictions dropped to 97. In addition, in FY 2005 court-ordered restitution amounted to $23,244,979.

That's $23 million in restitution ordered for victimizing union members and others.

  Labor Racketeering Investigations
   FY 2001   FY 2002   FY 2003   FY 2004   FY 2005  
 Cases Opened 105  125  124  135  103  
 Cases Closed 109  130  144  115  107  
 Cases referred
 for prosecution  57  74  66  87  88  
 Indictments 161  218  181  260  322  
 Convictions 92  154  120  143  196  
 Fines, restitutions,
 forfeitures,  & civil
 monetary actions
$ 42.5 million
$ 105.9 million
$ 27.9 million  
$ 36.5 million
 $ 187.9 million  

Source: Department of Labor Office of Inspector General  

Labor
Racketeering
The Department of Labor's Office of Inspector General oversees, among other things, cases of labor racketeering -- and it stays busy. Union officials have continued to earn their reputation for greed, corruption, and mismanagement of union dues.

In 2005, criminal charges and fines resulting from racketeering investigations hit five-year highs. During that time, more than 1,100 indictments have been issued, and more than $400 million in fines and restitution has been awarded. Many of these cases involve union officials failing to protect their members from unethical pension scams, but the OIG also reports that it saw a three-fold increase in the number of convictions in internal union racketeering cases between 1998 and 2004.

According to a 2004 Zogby International poll, 71% of union members said the government ought to do more to protect union members from corrupt union officials, and that unions should be required to give detailed reporting of union finances to discourage abuse.

According to the FBI, four of the last eight Teamsters presidents have been criminally indicted.

   Nearly 50% of the U.S. Department of Labor Inspector General's labor racketeering investigations involve pensions and employee welfare benefit plans.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, "Schemes involving bribery, extortion, deprivation of union rights by violence, and embezzlement used by early racketeers are still employed to abuse the power of unions." 

Center for Union Facts Exposes How Public-Sector
Union Bosses Bleed Taxpayers Dry
http://www.unionfacts.com
stimulus MONEY FOR NUMBER 2 DEM DONOR, UNIONS
The Center for Union Facts recently launched a new advertising campaign to

educate Americans about public-sector union abuses that should have

taxpayers hopping mad. One thing’s for sure: we've definitely ticked off

government union bosses! Go to our new ads on unionfacts.com right now to

see all of our new ads!

And why are we running these ads?

The New York Times reported on August 8, 2006 that state and local

governments may owe roughly $375 billion (on top of current budgeting) in

order to pay out pensions. "Barclays Global Investments has calculated that

if America's state pension plans were required to use the same methods as

corporations," the Times reported, taxpayer liability would double.

Between federal, state, and local government pension obligations, USA

TODAY reported on May 24, 2006, every household in America owes public

employees more than $27,500.


And what do taxpayers get for this eye-popping expense? "Service" with a

smile. Click here to see the ad we ran in newspapers across the country.
 
We've certainly gotten the attention of government union bosses, as

indicated by stories about us in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Eugene

(OR) Register-Guard, the Fort Worth (TX) Star-Telegram, and multiple

Montana newspapers, among others. What's getting their attention? Our

new print ads running in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Detroit Free

Press, and The Oregonian (to name a few papers), not to mention our new

television ads in cities as wide-ranging as Detroit, Las Vegas, and Portland.

Make sure to click here and check out our humorous new radio ads on

unionfacts.com too!

WE CAN’T DO IT WITHOUT YOUR HELP! PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO

DONATE TO THE CENTER FOR UNION FACTS AT UNIONFACTS.COM.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO CONTINUE EXPOSING PUBLIC-SECTOR LABOR

BOSSES' DETERMINATION TO TAKE EVERY DOLLAR THEY CAN GRAB.

GIVE NOW!
-----------
http://www.unionfacts.com/articles/unionPolitics.cfm
Labor leaders have made the use of employee money for political causes a

popular practice — but it's far less popular among the public and the

members themselves.
Use of Member Money for Politics is Unpopular and Misunderstood

    * Use of members' money for political goals was second only to

corruption as the reasons Americans disapproved of unions, according to a

2004 Zogby poll.

    * That poll also found that 63 percent of all employees, and 61 percent

of unionized employees, agreed that union members shouldn't be forced to

contribute.

    * A McLaughlin & Associates poll indicated that 67 percent of workers

were unaware of their right to withhold mandatory dues for politics (to see

how to keep your dues, learn more about resigning your union membership).

Against Members' Politics

    * CNN exit polls showed that 38 percent of union members voted for

President Bush in the 2004 election, but more than 95 percent of union

funds went to support Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.

    * A 1999 Zogby poll found a majority of union members—nearly 55

percent—thought people should be given a choice of investing their Social

Security taxes in some form of personal retirement accounts. But union

officials spent millions of dollars to oppose private accounts in the Social

Security system.

    * The San Francisco Chronicle reported: "California unions spent

$88,000 (public employee unions' share was $68,000) in opposing Proposition

22, a 2000 ballot initiative that defined marriage as between a man and a

woman"; a Los Angeles Times exit poll found that 58 percent of union

households had voted yes on the measure. The Chronicle added: "California

unions spent $32.7 million (public employee unions' share was $25.7 million)

to oppose the recall of former Gov. Gray Davis, yet exit polls found half of

union members voted for the recall and 56 percent voted for a Republican

candidate to replace him—43 percent for Schwarzenegger and 13 percent

for Tom McClintock."

    * In 1992, the Teamsters reportedly gave a massive amount of political

money to the presidential candidate it knew its membership did not support.

According to author Duke Zeller, "As for the actual amount of Teamster

money poured into the Clinton-Gore campaign, Gene Giacumbo, a former

elected member of [former Teamsters president Ron] Carey's board,

believes the total figure to be even higher. 'Carey himself bragged to me

that the union gave $56 million to Clinton,' he confirmed, 'and this was

after an independent, outside poll the union paid for showed the membership

responses preferred Perot, then Bush, with Clinton in third place.'"

Do Teachers Have a Lot to Learn?

    * Between 1990 and 2004, 94 percent of donations made by National

Education Association political action committees and individual officers went

to Democrats, according to OpenSecrets.org. According to the NEA's own

"Status of the American Public School Teacher 2000-2001," only 45 percent

of public school teachers are Democrats.

    * A Wall Street Journal editorial revealed that the National Education

Association -- the nation's largest teachers union -- "is spending the

mandatory dues paid by members who are told their money will be used to

gain better wages, benefits and working conditions. According to the latest

filing, member dues accounted for $295 million of the NEA's $341 million in

total receipts last year. But the union spent $25 million of that on 'political

activities and lobbying' and another $65.5 million on 'contributions, gifts

and grants' that seemed designed to further those hyper-liberal political

goals."

    * The Journal added that the NEA's financial disclosure forms "expose

the union as a honey pot for left-wing political causes that have nothing to

do with teachers, much less students."

For more information about the political donations of a specific union, click

here.http://www.unionfacts.com/unions/index.cfm
 

ACLU CASES, GAGGING OWN MEMBERS
---------
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_I
D=41751
ACLU fulfilling communist agenda
Posted: December 03, 2004
1:00 am Eastern

By Devvy Kidd
© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com

Every day, the headlines scream with some new threat from the American

Civil Liberties Union. I believe it's important to look behind the curtain and

discover the origins of groups and organizations to better understand their

activities.

The ACLU was founded in the 1920s by Roger Baldwin and Crystal Eastman,

described as a "progressive" and "the perfect feminist."

Earl Browder was general secretary of the Communist Party of the United

States from 1930 through its dissolution in 1944. When the party was

reconstituted as the Communist Political Association later that year,

Browder was chosen as its president. Browder proudly proclaimed that the

ACLU functioned as "a transmission belt" for the party. To deny the

ACLU's founding was attached at the hip to communist organizations is to

deny what can easily be proven as truth.

For the past few decades, the ACLU has been on a major crusade to

destroy Christianity in America, promote filth under "freedom of speech

and expression," and of course, vigorously defend the homosexual culture of

death. On Jan. 10, 1963, Congressman Albert S. Herlong Jr., D-Fla., read

a list of 45 communist goals into the Congressional Record. Below are the

communist goals being implemented by the ACLU in their quest to destroy

America's culture and traditions:

    * Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American

institutions, by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

    * Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for

socialism and current communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get

control of teachers associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

    * Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all form of artistic

expression. An American communist cell was told to "eliminate all good

sculpture from parks and buildings," substituting shapeless, awkward and

meaningless forms.

    * Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to

promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

    * Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and

a violation of free speech and free press.

    * Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography

and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and television.

    * Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural

and healthy."

    * Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social"

religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual

maturity, which does not need a "religious crutch."

    * Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on

the grounds that it violates the principle of "separation of church and

state."

    * Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of

American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of "the big

picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the communists took

over. Obliterating the American past, with its antecedents in principles of

freedom, liberty and private ownership is a major goal of the communists

then and now.

    * Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any

part of the culture – education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental

health clinics, etc.

    * Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy

divorce.

Anyone who has been following the destructive path of the ACLU can easily

see how effective these communist goals have been implemented to "promote

democracy" and protect your "civil rights." Lenin stated: "Communism alone

is capable of providing really complete democracy." (See Tucker, "The Lenin

Anthology"). James Madison, known as the "Father of the Constitution" had

something different to say about a democracy:

    Democracy is the most vile form of government ... democracies have

ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found

incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have in

general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their

deaths.

Perhaps it's time to recognize the ACLU as the American Communist

Lawyers Union instead of their disingenuous "civil rights" stage name.

No organization can exist without memberships and funding. It is

inconceivable to me how anyone who claims to be a Christian, lawyer or

layman, could belong to such an anti-American organization as the ACLU.

Burn your card and get out. Organizations like Working Assets, tobacco

companies and big corporations all donate to the ACLU, which in turn uses

that money to buy the favors of those who serve in Congress – who vote to

unconstitutionally fund the activities of the ACLU under the Civil Rights

Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976.

If Americans really want to put the ACLU out of business, remove yourself

as a member of their organization, boycott companies that donate to them

and demand these public servants in Congress repeal the unconstitutional

funding of this subversive organization.

There is no justification under Art. 1, Sec. 8, to steal from the people's

treasury to give money to the ACLU or any other organization for "civil

rights" lawsuits. Your Congress critter will be in your district during the

month of December – make the most of it.
DEVVY'S IN TEXAS NOW, GO GIRL, BUT MARRIED, SIGH
Devvy Kidd authored the booklet, "Why A Bankrupt America and Blind

Loyalty," which has over 2 million copies in distribution. She has been a

guest more than 1,600 times on radio shows, run for Congress twice and is

a highly sought after public speaker. To learn more about Devvy, please

visit her website.
---------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_U
nion
Founded in 1920 by Crystal Eastman, Roger Baldwin and Walter Nelles,[4]

the ACLU was the successor organization to the earlier National Civil

Liberties Bureau founded during World War I.[5] The ACLU reported over

500,000 members at the end of 2005.

Lawsuits brought by the ACLU have been influential in the evolution of

Constitutional law.[6] The ACLU provides legal assistance in cases in which it

considers civil liberties to be at risk. Even when the ACLU does not provide

direct legal representation, it often submits amicus curiae briefs.

Outside of its legal work, the organization has also engaged in lobbying of

elected officials and political activism.[7] The ACLU has been critical of

elected officials and policies of both Democrats and Republicans.
History

Roger Nash Baldwin became head of the National Civil Liberties Bureau

(NCLB) in 1917, AKA AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY. An independent

outgrowth of the American Union Against Militarism, the Bureau opposed

American intervention in World War I. The NCLB provided legal advice and

aid for conscientious objectors and those being prosecuted under the

Espionage Act of 1917 or the Sedition Act of 1918. In 1920, the NCLB

changed its name to the American Civil Liberties Union, with Baldwin

continuing as its director and Walter Nelles as chief counsel. Jeannette

Rankin, Jane Addams, Crystal Eastman, Albert DeSilver, Helen Keller, along

with other former members of the NCLB, assisted Baldwin with the

founding of the ACLU.[1] Among the founding members was Felix

Frankfurter, who later became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court

of the United States.[8] DeSilver and Nelles were Baldwin's closest

associates.[9][10]

The ACLU was formed to protect aliens threatened with deportation, along

with U.S. nationals threatened with criminal charges by U.S. Attorney

General Alexander Mitchell Palmer for their communist or socialist activities

and agendas[11] (see Palmer Raids). It also opposed attacks on the rights

of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and other labor unions to

meet and organize.

In 1940, the ACLU formally barred communists from leadership or staff

positions, and would take the position that it did not want communists as

members either. The board declared that it was "inappropriate for any

person to serve on the governing committees of the Union or its staff, who

is a member of any political organization which supports totalitarianism in

any country, or who by his public declarations indicates his support of such

a principle."[12] The purge, which was led by Baldwin, himself a former

supporter of communism, began with the ouster of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a

member of both the Communist Party USA and the Industrial Workers of

the World.[13]

Conservatives and Republicans have frequently criticized the ACLU. One

well-known example occurred during the 1988 presidential election: then-

Vice President George H. W. Bush noted that his opponent Michael Dukakis

had described himself as a "card-carrying member of the ACLU" and used

that as evidence that Dukakis was "a strong, passionate liberal" and "out of

the mainstream."[14] The phrase subsequently was used by the organization

in an advertising campaign.[15]

After the September 11, 2001 attacks and the ensuing debate regarding

the proper balance of civil liberties and security, including the passage of

the USA PATRIOT Act, the membership of the ACLU increased by 20%,

bringing the group's total enrollment to 330,000.[16] The growth continued,

and by August 2008 ACLU membership was greater than 500,000.[17]

Leadership, funding and organizational structure

Leadership
Nadine Strossen, Former President (1991-2008)

Currently, the leadership of the ACLU includes Executive Director Anthony

Romero[18] and President Susan Herman.[19] The national board of

directors consists of representatives elected by each state affiliate as well

as at-large delegates elected by boards of each affiliate. Each state

affiliate has an Executive Director and Board of Directors.

Notably, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a current Justice of the Supreme Court, was

the first director of the ACLU's Women's Rights Project.[20] And Judith

Krug, Director of the American Library Association Office for Intellectual

Freedom[21] since 1967,[22] was for three years concurrently on the Board

of Directors of the Illinois Division of the ACLU. "She has been very

successful in promulgating the ACLU's views within the country's libraries,

and the ACLU has honored her with awards."[23]

In 2005, in response to increasing internal strife, the ACLU national board

attempted to impose what many critics labeled a "gag rule" on its

employees. The proposal included the rule that "a board member may

publicly disagree with an ACLU policy position, but may not criticize the

ACLU Board or staff." The measures proved highly unpopular with free

speech advocates within the ACLU, and were eventually shelved.[24]

Funding

The ACLU receives funding from a large number of sources. For example, in

2004, the ACLU and its affiliate, the American Civil Liberties Union

Foundation reported revenues totaling $85,559,887. Of that total, 87% was

from donations and dues from the public, 1.8% from program services,

including awards of legal fees, royalty income, and literature sales, and the

remainder from investment income and income from sale of assets. The

distribution and amount of funding for state affiliates varies from state to

state. For example, the ACLU of New Jersey reported $1.2 million in

income to both the ACLU-NJ and its affiliated tax-exempt foundation in

the 2005 fiscal year. Of that income, 46% came from contributions, 19%

came from membership dues, 18% came from court awarded attorney fees,

12% came from grants, 4% came from investment income and the remainder

from other sources. Its expenses in the same period were $800,000, of

which 12% went to administration and management. Smaller affiliates with

fewer resources, such as that in Nebraska, receive subsidies from the

national ACLU.[25]

Foundations

In October 2004, the ACLU rejected $1.5 million from both the Ford and

Rockefeller Foundations. The Foundations had adopted language from the

USA PATRIOT Act into their donation agreements, including a clause

stipulating that none of the money would go to "underwriting terrorism or

other unacceptable activities." The ACLU views this clause, both in Federal

law and in the donors' agreements, as a threat to civil liberties, saying it is

overly broad and ambiguous.[26]

Court awarded damages and attorney's fees

In 2004, court-awarded damages and attorney fees composed a 3% (net) of

ACLU Foundation funding; state affiliates also receive money from such

fees, although the national headquarters does not.[27]

Recovery of attorney's' fees by non-profit legal advocacy organizations is

common practice. The pro-life Thomas More Law Center, for example,

generally seeks, and is successful in, recovery of attorney's fees in the

same manner as the ACLU.[28][29] In 2005, the Thomas More law center

derived 4.8% of its funding from court-awarded legal fees in this manner.

[30]

Due to the nature of its legal work, the ACLU is often involved in litigation

against governmental bodies, which are generally protected from adverse

monetary judgments: a town, state or federal agency may be required to

change its laws or behave differently, but not to pay monetary damages

except by an explicit statutory waiver.[31][32]

In some cases, the law permits plaintiffs who successfully sue government

agencies to collect money damages or other monetary relief. In particular,

the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Award Act of 1976 leaves the government

liable in some civil rights cases. Fee awards under this civil rights statute

are considered "equitable relief" rather than damages, and government

entities are not immune from equitable relief.[33] Under laws such as this,

the ACLU and its state affiliates sometimes share in monetary judgments

against government agencies.[34]

The ACLU has received court awarded fees in numerous church-state cases.

The Georgia affiliate was awarded $150,000 in fees after suing a county

demanding the removal of a Ten Commandments display from its

courthouse;[35] a second Ten Commandments case in the State, in a

different county, led to a $74,462 judgment.[36] Meanwhile, the State of

Tennessee was required to pay $50,000, the State of Alabama $175,000,

and the State of Kentucky $121,500, in similar Ten Commandments cases.

[37][38] The Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005, introduced by

Representative John Hostettler, sought to alter the rules put in place by

the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Award Act of 1976 to prevent monetary

judgments in the particular case of violations of church-state separation.

[39] Also, groups such as the American Legion have taken stances opposing

the ACLU's right to collect fees under such legislation.[40]

Organizational structure
Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida chapter, joins in a protest

of the Guantanamo Bay detentions with Amnesty International.

The national headquarters of the ACLU is located in New York City.

Positions

While the bulk of the ACLU's cases involve the First Amendment (FOR

COMMUNISTS ONLY), Equal Protection, due process, and the right to

privacy,[41] the organization has taken positions on a wide range of issues.

According to the ACLU, it supports:
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa speaking at an ACLU event.

Villaraigosa is a former board member and president of the ACLU Southern

California affiliate.

    * Religious liberty: Defends the individual rights of Americans of all

religions to practice and/or display affirmations of their faith in public, but

not on public property with government sponsorship or endorsement.[42][43]
    * The decriminalization of drugs such as heroin, cocaine and marijuana.

[44]
    * Separation of church and state; under this mandate, the ACLU:
          o Opposes the government-sponsored display of religious symbols

on public property.
          o Opposes official prayers, religious ceremonies, and some kinds of

"moments of silence"[45] in public schools or schools funded with public

money.
    * Full freedom of speech and of the press, including school newspapers.
    * Abolition of capital punishment.[46]
    * Reproductive rights, including access to contraception and abortion.
    * Full civil rights for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender)

people, including government benefits for same-sex couples equal to those

provided for heterosexual ones.
    * Affirmative action as a means of redressing past discrimination and

achieving a racially diverse student body.[47]
    * The rights of defendants and suspects against unconstitutional police

practices.
    * Privacy as it "works to preserve the American tradition that the

government not track individuals or violate privacy unless it has evidence of

wrongdoing."[48]
    * Immigrants' rights by "challenging unconstitutional laws and practices,

countering the myths upon which many of these laws are based."[49]
    * Concerning the Second Amendment, specifically gun control, the ACLU

embraces the States' Right Model interpretation of the Second Amendment,

which only recognizes a state's right to possess firearms, the organization

officially declares itself "neutral" on the issue of gun control, pointing to

previous Supreme Court decisions such as United States v. Miller to argue

that the Second Amendment applies to the preservation or efficiency of a

well-regulated militia, and that "except for lawful police and military

purposes, the possession of firearms by individuals is not constitutionally

protected."[50]

The ACLU has opposed some campaign finance reform laws such as the

Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which it considers an inappropriate

restriction upon freedom of expression. It does not have a policy of blanket

opposition to all laws on campaign finance.[51]

While the ACLU does oppose the use of crosses in public monuments,[52]

[53] there have been false allegations that the ACLU has urged the removal

of cross-shaped headstones from federal cemeteries and has opposed

prayer by soldiers; such charges have been deemed to be urban legends.

[54]

Controversial stances
Sister project     Wikinews has related news: ACLU President Strossen on

religion, drugs, guns and impeaching George Bush

The ACLU has for years been a controversial organization by nature,[55]

with most of their support coming from the left and opposition from the

right. The reasons for opposition are varied, although conservatives often

view the ACLU stance of separation of church and state as anti-religious,

[56] and their defense of both accused and convicted criminals as

undermining law and order. Furthermore, the nature of the ACLU is that

they defend even the most unpopular forms of speech and expression,

notably those with which most other organizations would not wish to

associate themselves. Often, its clients are notoriously unpopular such as

Neo-Nazi organizations and the North American Man/Boy Love Association

(NAMBLA), a group which supports lifting all age restrictions on pederasty.

In the case of NAMBLA, the ACLU's Massachusetts affiliate represented

the organization, on first amendment grounds, in a wrongful death civil suit

that was based solely on the fact that a man who raped and murdered a

child had visited the NAMBLA website.[57] Although the ACLU does not

endorse NAMBLA's message, its defense of the group has been widely

criticized. Additionally, the ACLU has initiated several court cases involving

government funding of organizations that discriminate against homosexuals

and atheists, prominently including the Boy Scouts of America.[58]

Among the most notable controversial cases which involved the ACLU are

the following:

    * The ACLU currently opposes, under the ex post facto clause of the

Constitution, the retroactive application of Megan’s Law (which requires law

enforcement authorities to identify convicted sex offenders to the public at

large through various media outlets) to persons convicted before the law

was passed.[59][60] The ACLU initially opposed the bill in its entirety,

considering it "misguided political posturing that [would] do nothing to

reduce sex crimes,"[61] but has not advocated that position recently.

[citation needed]
    * The ACLU also defended Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North,[57] whose

conviction was tainted by coerced testimony — a violation of his fifth

amendment rights.[62]
    * The ACLU fought for the Westboro Baptist Church and Shirley

Phelps-Roper after legislation prevented the group from picketing outside of

veterans' funerals.[63] The Westboro Baptist Church is infamous for their

picket signs that contain messages such as, "God Hates BLEEP," "Thank God

for Dead Soldiers" and "Thank God for 9/11." The ACLU issued a

statement calling the legislation a "law that infringes on Shirley Phelps-

Roper's rights to religious liberty and free speech."[64] The suit was

successful.[65]
    * The ACLU has filed 6 lawsuits against the Tangipahoa Parish,

Louisiana school board over what the group sees as teacher-led prayer in

school activities.[66]
    * The ACLU defended Frank Snepp, formerly of the Central Intelligence

Agency, from an attempt by the government agency to enforce a gag order

against him.[67]
    * The ACLU has aided the Florida Justice Institute and

WriteAPrisoner.com in supporting prisoner's rights, especially what the

ACLU sees as the First Amendment right to post online profiles seeking pen

pals during their incarceration and jobs upon their release.
    * In 2006, the ACLU of Washington state and the Second Amendment

Foundation jointly filed a lawsuit[68] against the North Central Regional

Library District (NCRL) in Washington State for its policy of refusing to

disable restrictions upon an adult patron's request. Library patrons

attempting to access pro-gun web sites were blocked, and the library

refused to remove the blocks.

Much ACLU work is done in the political arena where it faces frequent

controversy as well.

    * The ACLU has been a vocal opponent of the USA PATRIOT Act of

2001, the PATRIOT 2 Act of 2003, and associated legislation made in

response to the threat of domestic terrorism. The ACLU believes such

legislation violates either the letter or the spirit of the U.S. Bill of Rights.

In response to a requirement of the USA PATRIOT Act, the ACLU

withdrew from the Combined Federal Campaign.[69] The requirement was

that ACLU employees must be checked against a federal anti-terrorism

watch list. The ACLU has stated that it would "reject $500,000 in

contributions from private individuals rather than submit to a government

'blacklist' policy."[69]

See also: American Civil Liberties Union v. Ashcroft (2004)

    * The ACLU opposes the use of capital punishment, calling it "the

ultimate denial of civil liberties."[70] The ACLU claims that the death

penalty is unfairly applied to racial minorities and the poor, and considers it

"cruel and unusual" punishment.[71] The organization often opposes

executions on the grounds that the present method of lethal injection

sometimes goes awry.[72]

    * The ACLU's position on spam is considered controversial by a broad

cross-section of political points of view. In 2000, Marvin Johnson, a

legislative counsel for the ACLU, stated that proposed anti-spam legislation

infringed on free speech by denying anonymity and by forcing spam to be

labeled as such: "Standardized labeling is compelled speech." He also

stated, "It's relatively simple to click and delete."[73] The debate found

the ACLU joining with the Direct Marketing Association and the Center for

Democracy and Technology in criticizing a bipartisan bill in the House of

Representatives in 2000. As early as 1997 the ACLU had taken a strong

position that nearly all spam legislation was improper,[74] although it has

supported "opt-out" requirements in some cases. The ACLU opposed the

2003 CAN-SPAM act[75] suggesting that it could have a chilling effect on

speech in cyberspace.

Notable historical cases
Main article: List of court cases involving the American Civil Liberties Union

Since its founding, the ACLU has been involved in many cases. A few of the

most significant are discussed here.

1920–1960

In 1925, the ACLU persuaded John T. Scopes to defy Tennessee's anti-

evolution law in a court test. Clarence Darrow, a member of the ACLU

National Committee, headed Scopes' legal team. The prosecution, led by

William Jennings Bryan, contended that the Bible should be interpreted

literally in teaching creationism in school. The ACLU lost the case and

Scopes was fined $100. The Tennessee Supreme Court later upheld the law

but overturned the conviction on a technicality.[76][77]

In 1954, the ACLU filed an amicus brief in the case of Brown v. Board of

Education, which led to the ban on racial segregation in U.S. public

schools.[78]

1960–2000

In 1967, the ACLU successfully argued against state bans on interracial

marriage, in the case of Loving v. Virginia.[79]

In 1973, the ACLU was the first major national organization to call for the

impeachment of President Richard Nixon, giving as reasons the Nixon

administration's violations of civil liberties.[11] That same year, the ACLU

was involved in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, in which the

Supreme Court held that the constitutional right of privacy extended to

women seeking abortions.

In 1977, the ACLU filed suit against the Village of Skokie, Illinois, seeking

an injunction against the enforcement of three town ordinances outlawing

Neo-Nazi parades and demonstrations. Skokie, Illinois at the time had a

majority population of Jews, totaling 40,000 of 70,000 citizens. A federal

district court struck down the ordinances in a decision eventually affirmed

by the Supreme Court. The ACLU's action in this case led to a rift between

the Jewish Defense League and the ACLU. According to David Hamlin,

executive director of the Illinois ACLU, "...the Chicago office which chose

to provide legal counsel to neo-Nazis who have been planning to march in

Skokie, has lost about 25% of its membership and nearly one-third of its

budget." 30,000 ACLU members resigned in protest.[80][81][82] In his

February 23, 1978 decision overturning the town ordinances, US District

Court Judge Bernard M. Decker described the principle involved in the case

as follows: "It is better to allow those who preach racial hatred to expend

their venom in rhetoric rather than to be panicked into embarking on the

dangerous course of permitting the government to decide what its citizens

may say and hear ... The ability of American society to tolerate the

advocacy of even hateful doctrines ... is perhaps the best protection we

have against the establishment of any Nazi-type regime in this

country."[83]

In the 1980s, the ACLU filed suit to challenge the Arkansas 1981

creationism statute, which required the teaching in public schools of the

biblical account of creation as a scientific alternative to evolution. The law

was declared unconstitutional by a Federal District Court.[84]

In 1982, the ACLU became involved in a case involving the distribution of

child pornography (New York v. Ferber).[85] In an amicus brief, the ACLU

argued that the law in question "has criminalized the dissemination, sale or

display of constitutionally protected non-obscene materials which portray

juveniles in sexually related roles," while arguing that child pornography

deemed obscene under the Miller test deserved no constitutional protection

and could be banned.[86]

2000–present

In a 2002 letter, the ACLU stated that it "opposes child pornography that

uses real children in its depictions," but that material "which is produced

without using real children, and is not otherwise obscene, is protected under

the First Amendment."[87]

During the 2004 trial regarding allegations of Rush Limbaugh's drug abuse,

the ACLU argued that his privacy should not have been compromised by

allowing law enforcement examination of his medical records.[88]

In June 2004, the ACLU received numerous phone calls from angry parents

after the Dover Area School District in Dover, Pennsylvania passed a

curriculum change requiring that its high school biology students be read a

one-minute statement saying that the theory of evolution is not fact and

mentioning intelligent design as an alternative theory. Believing that the

school was promoting a religious idea in the classroom and violating the

Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, several Dover parents called

the ACLU to discuss a possible lawsuit against the school. The ACLU, along

with Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Pepper

Hamilton, LLP, went on to represent the parents, the plaintiffs, in Kitzmiller

v. Dover Area School District. After a more than 40-day trial, Judge John

E. Jones III ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding that intelligent design

is not science and permanently forbidding the Dover school system from

teaching intelligent design in science classes.[89]

In January 2006, the ACLU filed a lawsuit, ACLU v. NSA, in a federal

district court in Michigan, challenging government spying in the NSA

warrantless surveillance controversy.[90] On August 17, 2006, that court

ruled that the warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and

ordered it ended immediately.[91] However, the order is stayed pending an

appeal. The Bush administration did suspend the program while the appeal

was being heard.[92] In February 2008, the US Supreme Court "turned

down an appeal from the [ACLU] to let it pursue a lawsuit against the

program that began shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks."[93]

The ACLU and other organizations also filed separate lawsuits around the

country against telecommunications companies. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in

Illinois (Terkel v. AT&T) which was dismissed because of the State Secrets

Privilege[94] and two others in California requesting injunctions against

AT&T and Verizon.[95] On August 10, 2006, the lawsuits against the

telecommunications companies were transferred to a federal judge in San

Francisco.[96]

After the town of Hazleton, Pennsylvania passed an ordinance to punish

landlords who rented to illegal immigrants and businesses who hired illegal

immigrants, the ACLU and Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund

sued Hazleton, saying the ordinance was unconstitutional.[97][98] On July

26, 2007, a federal court agreed and struck down the Hazleton ordinance;

Hazleton's mayor promised to appeal the decision.[99]

In 2008, the ACLU stated that it would represent defendants arrested in

Flint, Michigan for disorderly conduct when sagging (wearing pants low

enough to show underwear), partly on the basis of unconstitutional racial

profiling.[100]

After the City of Indianapolis, Indiana began cracking down on when, where

and how homeless persons can solicit donations, the ACLU sued Indianapolis,

claiming the city's police unconstitutionally forced homeless persons to

produce identification without probable cause.[101]

Bibliography, SEE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_U
nion
--------------
ACLU Gags Its Own Members

http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2006/05/aclu_bids_t
o_ga.html
Since its inception, the American Civil Liberties Union has been about

contributing to the corrosion of American civilization, with the ultimate

objective of bringing about its demise. Or maybe you thought it had

something to do with liberties? Certainly not for Christians. Not even for

ACLU members themselves.

True to its communist roots, the ACLU is considering new measures to stifle

internal dissent. Proposed new standards include the following language:

Where an individual director disagrees with a board position on matters of

civil liberties policy, the director should refrain from publicly highlighting

the fact of such disagreement. ... Directors should remember that there is

always a material prospect that public airing of the disagreement will affect

the ACLU adversely in terms of public support and fund-raising. ... A

director... may not criticize the ACLU board or staff.
Naive liberals and libertarians who have been drawn to the ACLU by its

free speech rhetoric are showing early signs of waking up to smell the

coffee. Clearly misjudging the purpose of the organization, former board

member Nat Hentoff gasped:

For the national board to consider promulgating a gag order on its members

— I can't think of anything more contrary to the reason the ACLU exists.
But executive director Anthony Romero points out that it's hardly novel that

the ACLU would attempt to suppress speech it doesn't care to hear:

Take hate speech. While believing in free speech, we do not believe in or

condone speech that attacks minorities.
Of course, this depends on the minority. White Baptists who live in the

South are a minority. But we can rest easy in the knowledge that the ACLU

will go to any length to defend our right to make fun of them.

Behind the scenes, things are getting ugly, as some board members begin to

realize the nature of their own organization. They don't like the

sophisticated data-mining techniques used to recruit members, or the

tactics employed to silence abortion opponents.

Those in favor of the gag order are right to worry that if the public knew

more, fundraising would suffer. As too few people are aware, the ACLU

was founded by a radical named Roger Baldwin, who summed up his motives

and objectives like this:

I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied

class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the

goal.
Now that communists are no longer the primary threat to this country, the

ACLU has found a new ally in radical Islam. The organization has impeded

the war on terror every step of the way, actively encouraging municipalities

not to comply with the Patriot Act and even working with the likes of

Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist Sami Al-Arian and the Hamas front group

CAIR.

Communism and Islamic extremism would have limited appeal to a group truly

devoted to civil liberties. But the ACLU is not on the side of the angels —

as they would like to prevent disillusioned members from letting the world

find out.

With thanks to V the K.


ACLU head Anthony Romero.
Posted by Van Helsing at May 24, 2006 9:41 PM

Comments
I don't know why this strikes me as funny, but perhaps you should crop the

picture so it only shows him from the neck up, then title it, "The head of

the ACLU, Anthony Romero."

Posted by: Steve at May 24, 2006 10:04 PM

He looks like an illegal alien,anybody check him out?


Posted by: mickey at May 25, 2006 12:00 AM

VtK Tip o' The Day presents the Number One Reason to Oppose Bush's

Amnesty Plan: Carter praises Bush's immigration stance

Posted by: V the K at May 25, 2006 11:09 AM

Well, it seems only fair. They've been making the rest of us gag for

years...

REAL AMERICANS 4, THE FOUNDING FATHERS 2
http://www.foundingfathers.com/individual.htm
 WHAT CAN AN INDIVIDUAL DO?

flagbanr  
The problem of big government is immense.

But no more so today than it was in 1775!

Americans must educate themselves and all that will listen.  This was once

called the land of the free and home of the brave.  It definitely takes

brave souls to win freedom and remain free.

I have put my 35+ years of experience and 3 1/2 years of deep research

into 208 pages of a book titled -
 
HOW GOVERNMENTS DISARM CITIZENS : WHEN LAWS REPLACE

RIGHTS

It is "THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE

TRUTH, SO HELP ME GOD."

GET A COPY -- STUDY IT  --  TEACH IT  --  SHARE IT  -  with many

as you can. Time is very, very short. The "chains of the Constitution" that

Thomas Jefferson referred to as binding down the government - are about

to be chained to the people of America - and bondage and slavery to BIG

GOVERNMENT will be chained in place.
--------------
 WHAT CAN A GROUP DO?

flagbanr     
The problem of big government is immense.

But no more so today than it was in 1775!

Americans must educate themselves and all that will listen.  This was once

called the land of the free and home of the brave.  It definitely takes

brave souls to win freedom and remain free.

I have put my 35+ years of experience and years of deep research into 208

pages of a book titled -

HOW GOVERNMENTS DISARM CITIZENS : WHEN LAWS REPLACE

RIGHTS

It is "THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE

TRUTH, SO HELP ME GOD."

Gun clubs, hunting clubs, shooting ranges and political organizations

concerned about the loss of RIGHTS must learn -

HOW GOVERNMENTS DISARM CITIZENS - WHEN LAWS REPLACE

RIGHTS

GET A COPY -- STUDY IT  --  TEACH IT  --  SHARE IT  -  with many

as you can. Time is very, very short. The "chains of the Constitution" that

Thomas Jefferson referred to as binding down the government - are about

to be chained to the people of America - and bondage and slavery to BIG

GOVERNMENT will be chained in place.

Volume discounts are available - and I am available for speaking and

teaching sessions.
-------------------
 The "UNITED STATES"

flagbanr     
The most misunderstood phrase in the English language is the "United

States."  The misunderstanding comes from the fact that there are actually

3 different and legally separate entities referred to as the "United States."

Many people in this country today are proud to be citizen's of the United

States, but that is not what our Founding Fathers intended for us.  They

intended us to be citizens of our state, and the it was the states that

formed the united States of America. (the States of America that united).

The Bill of Rights was written to protect the state citizens from the

centralized government, but it does not protect the citizens of the United

States from the laws of the U.S. Congress.  Only "citizens of the several

states" enjoy the protection of the Bill of Rights.

To enjoy the intended private and personal rights that create the freedoms

and liberty of America, one must understand the legal scheme that

government is and how it relys on the citizens misunderstanding of the term

"United States." 

REAL AMERICANS 4, THE FOUNDING FATHERS
http://www.foundingfathers.com/brain.htm
 BRAIN WASHING

flagbanr

America has been brainwashed. The methods used are easily identified, and the success is obvious.  Hitler's mass appeal techniques have been studied and are used by government and the media.  Our schools, movies, and media have dumbed-down the populace to the point that real Americans who support limited government, limited taxation, gun ownership, etc. are considered the oddballs in America today.

During the American Revolution, the pro-big-government citizen was called as a Tory. In 1777, George Washington was told that several Tories had hanged themselves, and he replied,   "One or two have done what a great number ought to have done long ago - committed suicide. By all accounts there never existed a more miserable set of beings than these wretched creatures now are."  When the Patriotic Americans won the Revolutionary war, many thousands of Tories (liberals) were stripped of their property, and many tens-of-thousands fled the country.

American now has the biggest central government the world has ever seen.  Our military has over 700 bases in more than 100 countries.

Our national government has become the very same bloated bureaucratic democracy that once controlled us from England.
----------------
 NATURAL RIGHTS
ALL FROM FOUNDINGFATHERS.COM
flagbanr      
The Declaration of Independence declares that "the laws of Nature and Nature's God" are the source of man's rights - not government. The natural rights listed and protected by the Bill of Rights existed before government, and in no way depend on government for their existence. The U.S. Supreme Court has declared this fact.

America was founded as a republic - a "nation of laws." In a republic the government is formed by - and constrained by - laws.  But America has decayed into a democracy.  In a democracy voters can pass any law they please, and government is virtually unlimited in its ability to make laws, interpret the laws as it sees fit, and apply the laws with increasing force - to control the citizens.

An individual must know his RIGHTS, and claim them, or they simply cease to exist.
--------------
 RIGHTS VS LAWS

flagbanr      
The Declaration of Independence declares that each man has natural rights that emanate from God.  Natural rights are declared in the Declaration of Independence to be "unalienable," meaning these rights cannot be separated from the individual.  By establishing a republic, our Founding Fathers declared "unalienable" rights for each individual that cannot be altered by civil laws.

The government of the United States was created by the Constitution, which transferred 17 limited powers to the national government of the new "Republic." The Founding Fathers added a common law attachment to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, which further clarified and limited the intended powers of government.

Man's laws are known as civil law, from the Latin root word civilus, meaning citizen. Bouvier's Law Dictionary states, "the civil law is what a people establishes for itself."  In a democracy there is no such thing as a natural right also know as God-given right, since laws can be passed to control, limit or eliminate anything.  In a democracy there are "civil rights" established by civil law which are, legally speaking, civil privileges granted by man's government.

Yet today government can and does pass laws as it pleases without limitation and control. The laws of government now clearly override the natural rights of American individuals.  America is no longer a republic - it is a democracy.
-------------
 THE MILITIA

flagbanr

America's freedom and liberty was established by anti-big government gun owners  with "unregistered assault rifles," the individual men of the local militias of the several states.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle proclaimed 2,300 years ago that the prevalence of privately owned weapons was the best indicator of whether a nation was free. It is still a true measure of freedom today.  Free men own guns, slaves do not.

The United States Code (the laws of Congress) states in 10 USC 311(a) that, "The Militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age..." The US Supreme Court ruled in US v. Miller that when called into action the militia was to show up "bearing arms supplied by themselves..." Black's Law Dictionary defines militia as, "The body of citizens in a state" and not the "regular troops of a standing army." The militia is distinctly different from the National Guard or the US military forces.    

Our Founding Fathers warned that the militia must never be replaced by a standing army.  Today, our nation has the world's most powerful military; 57 government agencies carry guns and most have their own SWAT teams; and local police are trained in para-military operations.

As our Founding Fathers warned - the demise of the militia and rise of a standing army would spell the end of freedom and liberty.
-----------------
 INTENT of the FOUNDING DOCUMENTS

flagbanr      
America's founding concepts written down on paper are referred to as the founding documents.  Four of these documents are:

The Declaration of the Causes & Necessity of Taking Up Arms

The Continental Congress wrote the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms on June 6, 1775. It explains why Americans were at war with the legal, constitutional government of the American colonies. This occurred 13 months prior to the Declaration of Independence, a document possible only because the colonists did not submit their "unregistered assault weapons" to government control at Lexington and Concord.

In order to retain their natural rights, Americans were forced to take up arms.  25,000 American died carrying "unregistered assault rifles" in the 8 years of war that established American independence. The document states -   "The arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume…We will…employ for the preservation of our liberties, being with one mind resolved to die freemen, rather than to live as slaves."

The Declaration of Independence

The war for independence was 13 months old when the Declaration of Independence was written. Independence was not the reason that the minutemen had fired on government troops at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The minutemen were defending their God-given right to have firearms, being fully aware that a heavily armed citizenry was the only source of freedom.  It had became clear to the Continental Congress that the British government would not stop its assault on the rights of the colonists - independence was the only option.

The 56 members of the Continental Congress that signed the Declaration of Independence could be hung for this treasonous anti-government act. These men pledged "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor" in support of the Declaration. Some paid with their "Lives" and their "Fortunes," but none gave up their Sacred Honor.  The Declaration of Independence established "God" as the source of natural rights, and declared a "Duty" and "Right" of the people "to throw off such government" that abuses and usurps natural, God-given rights.

The Constitution for the United States of America

The Articles of Confederation were replaced by the Constitution for the United States of America, primarily to give the federal government more power over taxation and commerce.   The "united STATES of AMERICA" (as it appears on the Declaration of Independence) authored both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for the United States of America. Note that the STATES were "united," and the Constitution was written to establish a government for the union of the states, to be called the United States of America.

Only 39 of the 55 Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution.  Sixteen refused and warned that the powers being transferred to the new government could be used to take away the freedoms just established.  They were right - the power to tax and the power to control "commerce" are being used to override the Bill of Rights - to control Americans, their rights, and soon, their guns.  

The Constitution only limits government if citizens actively enforce government limitations.

The Bill of Rights

Since the Constitution only assigned 17 limited powers to the new government many of the Founding Fathers considered a bill of rights unnecessary. But the anti-Federalists feared the power being transferred by the Constitution and wanted no misunderstanding - government was severely limited, and natural rights were not to be "infringed.".

The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to clarify that "unalienable rights," which existed before government was formed, could not and would not be "infringed" by the federal government in any way - PERIOD!  But, as many of the Founding Fathers warned, the Bill of Rights has been trampled by the unchallenged power of the government of the United States.

The 2nd Amendment "right to keep and bear arms," the true source of America's freedom and liberty, is about to disappear at the hands of the once limited government formed to protect and defend the rights of all Americans. The Bill of Rights only limits government if Americans understand and claim their rights.

To The current generation of Americans From The Founding Fathers
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/donfeder/df20010704.
shtml
Don Feder (archive)

July 4, 2001

A Letter From The Founding Fathers

From: The Founding Fathers
To: The current generation of Americans

On this the 225th anniversary of our independence, those of us you call the Founding Fathers have assembled in Continental heaven to assess the condition of the republic we bequeathed to you.

It's true America has become the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth. But so was the British Empire in 1776.

Before we get specific, we must confess that we are annoyed by your habit of misinterpreting our words. Take the First Amendment, where we said Congress shall make no law "respecting an establishment of religion." You usually neglect the other half of the injunction, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

As anyone in the first Congress, which passed the amendment, could have told you, "establishment of religion" means an established church, which all are forced to support. We never intended to create a virtue-less republic, by prohibiting public expressions of faith.

In the Declaration of Independence, we acknowledged that rights are endowed by our Creator. Absent a Creator, there are no inalienable rights.

In the Second Amendment, we said the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. In our day, if private citizens hadn't owned guns there would have been no Lexington and Concord.

Why would we bother guaranteeing a collective right to arm state militias? The rights enumerated in the first 10 amendments are restraints on government, not grants of power to it.

If you ever wake up to what's going on, your leaders will have cause to fear an armed citizenry. We viewed elective office as a sacrifice. For your politicians, it's an opportunityr. We rid America of a monarchy. You've established an elected aristocracy. We were farmers, merchants and professionals who resumed our careers after a brief term of service and never lost touch with our constituents.

You are governed by an elite so different from you as to almost constitute a separate species. Your elected rulers hold office for 20 or 30 years, becoming increasingly detached from their roots, while rewarding themselves lavish emoluments and pensions.

We revolted over a modest tax on tea. Your tax burden is staggering. Despite the enormous expenditures of your prodigal politicians, even they can't spend it all. And still, many resist returning the federal surplus to its rightful owners. We rejected taxation without representation. You condone your own serfdom.

In the Declaration, we complained that King George III had "sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." You complacently tolerate a bureaucracy that resembles all Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Eat out their substance? Today, almost one in 13 Americans works for a branch of government. Harass our people? There are bureaucrats to tell you how to run your business, build on your property and raise your children. Government makes decisions for you regarding your health, safety and welfare.

We envisioned the judiciary as a coequal branch of government that interprets laws based on the clear meaning of language. Your courts have become a law unto themselves -- raising taxes, deciding elections, ordering private relationships and substituting their will for that of legislators.

We warned you against entangling alliances. You are eager to form defensive pacts with postage-stamp countries whose security couldn't conceivably be related to your own. This will only serve to drag you into their petty quarrels, sapping your strength.

We recognized that government and society must rest on divine wisdom. George Washington observed, "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

You cultivate national immorality, in the apparent belief that abortion, adolescent access to pornography, cohabitation, public distribution of prophylactics and compulsory acceptance of perversion will somehow lead to a society whose citizens have the self-discipline to sacrifice for the common good.

Benjamin Franklin said we gave you a republic "if you can keep it." From our vantage point, it does not look promising. Were we alive today, we'd raise another rebellion.

©2001 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

SOCIALISM TODAY, THREE KEY SOCIALISTS
STRAIGHT FROM THE HEARSE'S MOUTH, HELLO USSA
http://www.dsausa.org/about/DTH.html
Three Key US Socialists
DSAers from a certain tradition think of themselves as being in the lineage

of three socialist leaders: Eugene Debs who founded the Socialist Party of

America, Norman Thomas who led it from the 1920s through the 1950s,

and Michael Harrington, who led a majority of Socialist Party members to

form the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee in 1973.

Eugene V. Debs

Eugene V. Debs announced that he had become a socialist in 1897, when he

was 42. Debs had already spent his lifetime as an active trade unionist and

political activist in his home city of Terre Haute, Indiana. He had served

six months in jail as a result of his forceful leadership during the great

Pullman Strike of 1894. Many AFL unions can trace their beginnings to

Eugene Debs' early career. After 1897, his devotion to American socialism

and socialist idealism placed him at the center of many of the political and

labor struggles of the early part of the century, including the founding of

the IWW. He ran for President as the Socialist Party candidate five times,

the last time from his jail cell where he was serving a sentence for

encouraging Americans to resist induction into the Army during World War

One.

Norman Thomas

Graduate of Princeton, Presbyterian minister Norman Thomas became a

socialist and a pacifist at the age of 33, as a result of a long and gradual

process. Already involved in social justice and political work in New York,

Norman Thomas became America's First Socialist, continually advancing the

causes of social justice. An inherently public man, his six presidential

campaigns and five other attempts at public office were almost incidental to

his lifetime of work in civil rights, labor, and peace groups, including the

ACLU, NAACP, CORE and SANE. In his later years, Norman Thomas was

often called America's Conscience, due to his stirring love of his country

and its people. In a famous speech on the steps of the Capitol Building in

1968 Thomas proclaimed, "I come to cleanse the American Flag, not to burn

it."
 Norman Thomas became America's First Socialist, his lifetime of work in

civil rights, labor, and peace groups, including the ACLU, NAACP, CORE and

SANE.
Michael Harrington

During Michael Harrington's four decades as America's leading socialist

thinker, writer and speaker, he contributed to every progressive movement.

One of the first of his twenty books, The Other America, is credited with

spurring the Great Society anti-poverty programs. From his organizing with

the student and civil rights movements in the 50's and 60's, to his

leadership of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in the 70's and 80's, he

consistently urged socialists to reach beyond isolation and build coalitions

with labor and progressive groups in day-to-day struggles. As DSOC and

DSA's representative to the Socialist International, he earned the respect,

and the ear, of socialist leaders throughout the world. His death in 1989

did nothing to silence his thundering denunciation of injustice, for his voice

lives on through us.

---------------
SERVICES USSA TOMORROW
, April 14, 2008
http://www.socialism2008.com/
Comrade Obama Gets In Touch With His Inner Marxist
Sometimes here at Socialism2008 we think that maybe, just maybe,

someone else out there recognizes that a few people haven't realized that

the Cold War is over, and that Capitalism and Freedom won it. Sometimes

we think there might be others out there who ask, "Why is a member of

the Soviet Politburo running for President?" Today is one such joyous day.

Bill Kristol, our hat is off to you:

"It's one thing for [Marx] to assert that 'religion is the sigh of the

oppressed culture.' It's another thing for an American presidential

candidate to claim that we 'cling to ... religion' out of economic

frustration."

Next he'll be advocating for a "Permanent Revolution." Or maybe he's been

advocating for that all along.
Posted by politburo2008 at 1:08 PM 0 comments   
Labels: Kristol, Marx, Obama, Socialism
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Comrade Obama Gets A Marxist Shout-Out!
This just in from PRAVDA: Sandanista and Marxist, President of Nicaragua

Daniel Ortega has given his blessing to the Obama insurgency!

Obama's America-hating pastor, who blamed 9/11 on the United States,

must have put in a good word.

Ortega took time out of his busy schedule of pining for the days of the

Soviet Union and funneling money, troops and logistical support to the FARC

(Columbian narco-terrorists) to proclaim that Obama is "Laying the

groundwork for revolutionary change."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

Posted by politburo2008 at 11:23 PM 0 comments   
Monday, September 3, 2007
Will John Edwards's Secret Police Be Checking Up On Us?
The Sultan of Socialism is back at it! This time, proposing that Americans

be forced to go to the doctor, under his new health plan . "It requires that

everybody be covered... [and would] cover preventative, chronic and long-

term health care... mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage

for all Americans... The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from

birth to death." Great, and who is going to pay for this? Who is going to

foot the bill for 40 million Americans who have chosen to spend their money

on things other than health care?

What is his justification? "In my view, everybody is worth health care."

This is fantastic. After everybody is deemed worthy of health care, what

is next on the Edwards list of what every American deserves? A big-screen

TV? How about a new car? Free gasoline? $400 haircuts? 28,000-square

foot homes? How about a few million dollars to run for President? Which

doctors, or businessmen is he going to sue in order to mooch enough money

to pay for that?
Posted by politburo2008 at 11:49 AM 0 comments   
Sunday, September 2, 2007
All Drivers Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others
A gem from a man who made his millions suing doctors into bankruptcy:

John Edwards. Get rid of your SUV's he says to "greedy" Americans, who

he claims are the root of the world's supposed environmental evils. What

isn't he saying? That he himself is still "allowed" to drive an SUV (though

others shouldn't), and that he lives in a home that could accommodate a

small Home Depot. What's his justification? "I have no apologies

whatsoever for what I've done with my life." Well, Comrade Edwards,

neither do we! So go back to your dacha and get a thousand-dollar haircut;

we'll go back to our apartments, and lets call it even." Price check on

hypocracy, aisle six!"

Posted by politburo2008 at 3:43 PM 0 comments   
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Are You Smarter Than A Twelfth Grader?
For the Democrat Presidential field, the answer is a resounding NO! This

revelation (which we've known all along) comes following the release of the

latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a yearly

examination of twelfth graders' knowledge in various subject areas. This

year's test looked at macro- and microeconomics, as well as international

trade.

The result of the NAEP was astounding: 79% of high school seniors passed

the economics test, compared with 54% who passed the science test in 2006

and 47% who passed the history test in 2005.

In responding to the question, "Which has been most important in reducing

poverty over time: a) taxes, b) economic growth, c) international trade, or

d) government regulation?," 53% of students correctly chose answer "b."

Great society be damned, it seems that the "flower power" of the 1960s

social welfare programs may be wearing off, at least among America's

youths. Tax and spend liberals, watch out.

These new voters aren't buying into the pro-union protectionist rhetoric

either, much to the chagrin of Kucinich et al. When asked about the effect

of breaking down trade barriers between countries, the majority responded

that the price of goods would decrease rather than "the quality of goods

available would decrease."

Check out the full article here.

While 18-25 year old voters skew heavily towards the Democrats, the

NAEP spells trouble for socialist candidates in the future. Watch for a

gradual shift away from blind support for Democrats as this age group

becomes more aware of what the Democrat candidates really stand for.

How will this key demographic learn about the socialist tendencies of the

Democrat field, you ask? By reading Socialism2008 of course!
Posted by Socialism 2008 at 8:32 AM 0 comments   
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Billing Taxpayers For Illegal Immigrants' Citizenship Applications
The new "San Francisco Treat" is Socialist-style Big Brother government! In

its infinite wisdom, City Supervisor Chris Daly is proposing to raise taxes on

law-abiding citizens in order to subsidize citizenship applications of the

illegal immigrants who work in the city. What they don't realize is that by

raising taxes they're encouraging more people to use illegal immigrants, and

thereby avoid paying more taxes.

Not to be outdone, City Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval issued a "resolution"

condemning a popular radio personality for exercising his Constitutional right

to free speech.
Posted by politburo2008 at 1:13 PM 0 comments   
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Bonkers with Gompers
You would think Jimmy Hoffa was standing backstage with an army of angry

teamsters by the way the Democrat candidates pandered to protectionist

interests at the AFL-CIO debate last night. I'm sure they made AFL

founder Samuel Gompers smile in his grave when the candidates promised to

withdraw from NAFTA and the WTO. Here are some selected quotes from

last nights event:

Hillary Clinton:

I think its absolutely essential that we get rid of all of the contracting out

of government jobs which is really undermining the quality of services. But

you know I think it is also the case, uh, that I have fought for all of these

issues against a lot of special interests for a very long time. I fought the

drug companies and the insurance companies in '93 and '94, and I fought

them again on the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, I fought the banks

on bankruptcy reform, so I think that my record on standing up and fighting

for people really speaks for itself.
NAFTA and the way it's been implemented has hurt many American

workers... we have to have a broad reform in how we approach trade...

trade that has labor and environmental standards... that tries to lift up not

only American workers but workers around the world... It's important that

we have an idea of how to maximize the benefits from the global economy

while minimizing the impact on American workers. That includes things like

real trade adjustment assistance and other support...
Denis Kucinich:

Olberman: "Congressman Kucinich, scrap NAFTA or fix it?"
Kucinich: "You asked a direct question I think it deserves a direct answer.

In my first week in office I will notify Mexico and Canada that the United

States is withdrawing from NAFTA, I will notify the WTO that we're

withdrawing from the WTO. We need a president who knows what the right

thing is to do the first time, not in retrospect. And I think that we need

to go back to trade, excuse me, we need to go forward to trade that's

based on workers' rights, human rights, and environmental quality principles.

No one else on this stage could give a direct answer because they don't

intend to scrap NAFTA. We're gonna (sic) be stuck with it and I'm your

candidate if you want to get out of NAFTA. Let's hear it! Do you want out

of NAFTA! [Applause and cheers] Do you want out of the WTO! [Applause

and cheers] Tell these candidates! Listen to the workers! Listen to the

workers of America!
The debate was really quite a sight. Check it out here.
Posted by Socialism 2008 at 8:44 PM 0 comments   
Hillary To Free Market: Buzz Off!
Senator Clinton must have been too busy reading Marx to finish (or even

start) Adam Smith while at Wellesley College. Any one of her Economics

101 teacher's assistants would have told her that a key part of a free

market is the ability to enter, and exit. Perhaps it was a simple four-letter

word that gave her trouble: no, not "free" (Ms. Clinton's problems with

that particular concept will be documented in the coming days), but "exit".

It means "fail". When you let people take financial risks of their own

accord, you give them the opportunity to fail. In so doing, they expose

themselves to risks, which they must hazard in order to reap rewards.

So when people with poor credit started buying homes a few years ago on

loans with flexible rates, they were taking a simple risk: that they would be

able to continue to pay off their mortgages, and that rates would stay low.

For the sake of brevity, we shall merely say the past few weeks have

demonstrated that this was a poor decision.

When those rates started going up, and people started defaulting on their

loans, Hillary's old Econ101 TA would have said "this is why markets work".

Only Senator Clinton wants, instead, to make the American tax-payers

(most of whom didn't expose themselves to high-risk loans in order to buy

homes) foot the bill to bail out these financial libertines. From CNN:

"The New York senator, on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, also

proposed a $1 billion fund to supplement state programs that help

homeowners catch up on mortgage payments, renegotiate loan terms or

provide financial counseling."

"We can look at the statistics, wring our hands, and continue to do nothing,

or we can do what America has always done in times of difficulty:

acknowledge that we face a real challenge, and confront it head-on with

real solutions," Clinton said."

"The statistics" = "the facts". Senator Clinton's "real sloutions" = socialist

economic policy of market intervention.

The good Senator can, of course, be forgiven for her oversight. She came

of age in an era when every well-meaning but naive college student had to

ask themselves if they wanted to be a socialist when they grew up. Ms.

Clinton's final decision has so far gone unreported.
Posted by politburo2008 at 4:12 PM 1 comments   
In all of human history, words have never congealed to form a house.
Want to encourage developers to build apartment buildings in New York

City? Let them do their jobs, don't tax and regulate them. Somewhere in

the æther Adam Smith is crying because of the regulations placed on the

New York housing market (not to mention the state of taxes, trade and

education).

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decided that the best way to

take care of this political hangnail is to rip it off at the cuticle. Re-jigger

the regulations. Granted, the agreement will result in more housing

construction, just as kicking a man in the back will produce foreward

momentum in the victim. But wouldn't it just be better to pay him to take a

few steps forward?

If only the Mayor had the guts to stand up to the political moochers and

demand they roll back the useless housing regulations erected by decades of

political "do-gooders." Their efforts yielded nothing, save the destruction

of the incentives for any but the wealthiest developers to operate in the

City, constructing only the most extravagant structures for the wealthiest

individuals, since (due to all the regulation) that was the only way they could

make money.

Note in the article how the new regulations require builders to include

apartments at certain price points in all new buildings. What will this do?

Lower the margins a developer can expect to make on a project, and reduce

the overall appeal to prospective buyers. Imagine if the legislature passed a

new regulation mandating that every new housing development in the

Hamptons include a trailer park!

Here's a thought: developers want to make money by building apartments

that people will buy for the highest price possible. As they should.

Deregulate. Once the marketplace for $30-million dollar lofts is saturated,

they'll move on to building lofts that cost $10 million, and then $1 million.

And then, once they realize that the luxury marketplace is saturated,

they'll move on, with all of their profits, to building housing that is

affordable to people who cannot pay $1 million for an apartment.
Posted by Socialism 2008 at 12:14 AM 0 comments   
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
What else can we get taxpayers to pay for? How about elections!
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin is trying to save some time. Nowadays he

has to spend his days calling his constituents, asking for their money to

allow him to run for the Senate again. His new plan is to pass a law that

will allow him to take their money by force, leaving him free to think about

more similarly ingenious ways to increase their taxes all day.

The children of the Red Brigades are now campaigning not only to destroy

our economy, but also to be given the right to expropriate our hard-earned

money in order to fuel their political jihad against capitalism.
Posted by Socialism 2008 at 11:14 PM 0 comments   
Sup, B?
From Mayor Michael Bloomberg's city comes this little attempt at socialist

control over our lives:

The New York City Council, which drew national headlines when it passed a

symbolic citywide ban earlier this year on the use of the so-called n-word,

has turned its linguistic (and legislative) lance toward a different slur: BLEEP.

The term is hateful and deeply sexist, said Councilwoman Darlene
Mealy of Brooklyn, who has introduced a measure against the word, saying

it creates “a paradigm of shame and indignity” for all women.
But conversations over the last week indicate that the “b-word” (as it is

referred to in the legislation) enjoys a surprisingly strong currency — and

even some defenders — among many New Yorkers.

And Ms. Mealy admitted that the city’s political ruling class can
be guilty of its use. As she circulated her proposal, she said, “even council

members are saying that they use it to their wives.” ...

While the bill also bans the slang word “BLEEP,” the b-word appears to have

acquired more shades of meaning among various groups, ranging from a term

of camaraderie to, in a gerund form, an expression of emphatic approval.

Ms. Mealy acknowledged that the measure was unenforceable, but she

argued that it would carry symbolic power against the pejorative uses of

the word. Even so, a number of New Yorkers said they were taken aback

by the idea of prohibiting a term that they not only use, but do so with

relish and affection.

Bitches n' hoes, man. Yo Ms. Mealy, wat bout dat First Amendment thang?

Posted by Socialism 2008 at 8:18 AM 0 comments   
Monday, August 6, 2007
Mother Government's Health Care: " 'Isn't this Socialism?' Senator Gore

demanded"
All we need to do is install a socialized medical system, make Michael Moore

the next head of Health and Human Services, and start paying doctors less.

Then everything will be fine!

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic presidential candidate,

scoffed at the Republican rush for the ideological barricades. “We can start

getting into an ideological argument about whether we’re slipping into

socialism,” he said...“But as long as there are nine million children in the

United States of America with no health insurance, it is a betrayal of our

ideals that we hold as Americans. It’s not who we are.”

See: Logical Fallacy, Informal.

Barack is either proposing a socialist solution to a problem or he isn't. And

he is.
Posted by Socialism 2008 at 10:05 AM 0 comments   
"To Fix Health Care, Pay Doctors Less" ???
Stalin would often propose that people be payed less for high-risk jobs that

took a long time to learn, and he always experienced success. Though if

memory serves, he was willing to do something that Americans find

somewhat distasteful... oh yeah, that's right, execute his own citizens on a

whim.


HOW to fix the health care system?

by Alex Nabaum

Easy, liberals say. If Washington would just force cuts in prescription drug

prices and insurance company profits, plenty of money would be left over to

cover the uninsured.

Conservatives prefer to argue that the answer lies in forcing people to pay

more of their own medical costs.

But many health care economists say both sides are wrong. These

economists, some of whom are also doctors, say the partisan fight over

insurers and drug makers is a distraction from a bigger problem: the

relatively high salaries paid to American doctors...


It should read "These economists, some of whom are socialists".

Thoughts to take away: if you want people to do something, offer to pay

them more money, not less.
Posted by Socialism 2008 at 9:55 AM 0 comments   
Taxing the Oil Companies into submission
Following Hillary's pronouncement in February that she would like to "take

[the oil companies] profits and I want to put them in an alternative energy

fund", this little piece of news hit the wire earlier today:

Declaring a new direction in energy policy, the House on Saturday approved

$16 billion in taxes on oil companies, while providing billions of dollars in tax

breaks and incentives for renewable energy and conservation efforts.

Republican opponents said the legislation ignored the need to produce more

domestic oil, natural gas and coal. One GOP lawmaker bemoaned "the pure

venom ... against the oil and gas industry."

The House passed the tax provisions by a vote of 221-189. Earlier it had

approved, 241-172, a companion energy package aimed at boosting energy

efficiency and expanding use of biofuels, wind power and other renewable

energy sources.

"We are turning to the future," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The two bills, passed at an unusual Saturday session as lawmakers prepared

to leave town for their monthlong summer recess, will be merged with

legislation passed by the Senate in June. Read the full story here.

NOW, OBAMA

WHO OR WHAT CAUSED THIS FINANCIAL CRISIS
BEEN WARNING YA'LL FOR TWO YEARS DEMS WOULD DO THIS TO

GET WHITE HOUSE, TOTALLY TURN AMERICA COMMUNIST
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/09/18/who-or-what-ca
used-this-

financial-crisis/2#c14405230
  .Companies A-B Companies C-D Companies E-K Companies L-R Companies

S-Z Stock Picks Opinion Financial Countries Send Feedback ..Who or what

caused this financial crisis?
Posted Sep 18th 2008 2:49PM by Joseph Lazzaro
Filed under: Other issues, Politics

Investors and readers are no doubt aware of the benefits of the free

enterprise system as practiced in the United States: entrepreneurship,

innovation, ingenuity, dynamism, risk taking, wealth building, and commerce

are chief among these benefits.

But readers also know that corporate capitalism has its drawbacks, including

(but not exclusively) financial crises that have resulted in devastating

economic and social upheavals.

1893, 1929, 1987, 20??

Moreover, despite technological change, productivity increases, and massive

increases in wealth, it's remarkable how similar both the crises and the

public policy responses have been over the hundred-plus year period:

excesses occur, bad debts mount, some regulatory changes are implemented

by the U.S. Government (and sometimes by state governments), and then

corporate capitalism resumes.

Further, whether it's due to America's culture, its vast natural resources,

something innate in Americans, human nature in general, or some other

factor, or a combination, every time a crisis occurs, the American people,

by and large, reach the same conclusion regarding what caused the crisis or

problem: bad decisions or incorrect decisions. Basically, that people, mainly

executives and other business leaders (sometimes federal/state regulators),

made mistakes or bad decisions.

But we're in the globalization era now, with a myriad of changes, hence

there's no guarantee that the changes the American people favored, say,

20 years or 80 years ago, will be the changes they support now.

In the months and quarters ahead, federal officials, and others, will be

weighing a series of reforms, but keep in mind they're not likely to

implement changes the public does not support, so it makes sense to find

out what investors and readers think.

In your view, what caused the current financial crisis? Was it:

a) Bad decisions/mistakes

b) Bad/incompetent executives

c) Flawed economic system -- the economic system needs to be fixed.

d) A combination

e) None of the above/something else.


**

Let us know what you think.
PermalinkEmail thisComments [39]
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)

219-18-2008 @ 7:16PM

JOSE A. APONTE said...
a,b,c
A GOVERMENT OF THE PEOPLE,FOR THE PEOPLE,BY THE

PEOPLE,REMEMBER?
NOW WE HAVE A GOVERMENT OF THE FEW,FOR THE FEW,BY THE

FEW,UNDERSTAND?


 
229-18-2008 @ 7:23PM

Pam said...
Why is it that the government bails out the big corps. in trouble, but when

the poverty, high tax paying citizens of the United States get into trouble,

there is NO help? Maybe one of the reasons for their troubles is because

of the 6 figure income they receive, the big bonus checks they get. They

are saying the American people caused this by not paying back loans, well,

if the government wouldn't raise the gas prices, utility prices, food prices,

taxes, etc. then we would be able to pay our bills. We don't get a large

cost of living raise to support the governments demands on prices. People

are being forced out of their homes, jobs are going overseas and the big

corps. get huge tax breaks...Where are our tax breaks, were are our jobs,

where is our help? The government wants us under their thumbs so they can

tell us what, when, where and how we are to live. WE SHOULD NOT BE

AFRAID OF THE GOVERNMENT, THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE AFRAID

OF THE AMERICAN CITIZENS WHO SUPPORT THEM. Without our tax

dollars where would they be? The big business and or the government

screws up and that's ok, they are bailed out, we screw up and it's off to

jail or penalized to death by penality fees, late charges, high interest fees.

We need help and we need it now, but the government doesn't care, just

hand us your tax dollars and hard earned money and things are

great..BULL....


 
239-18-2008 @ 7:30PM

jerry marcus said...
Many of the comment made here are correct. However there are a few

points that need to be made. The most important distructive activity that

destroyed Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and probably AIG

was caused by the SEC removing the uptick rule on short sales allowing

fraud to occur as traders conspired to spread false rumors of doom while

they sold stock driving the companys into the biggest disaster to ever

happen on Wall Street since 1927. Without the run on the bank that

occured in each case, all of these firms could have brought in additional

capital and survived. This is a terrible loss to our country.

What the SEC did, and then did not do, is criminal and the failure of our

leaders in Washington, who are generally ignorant of economics and finance

sat on their butts, not aware, and not capable of making necessary dicisions

to have proper oversite.

Also, the fact that Moodys and Standard and Poors gave AAA rating to

junk was also criminal as it led banks all over the world to buy our junk and

suffer billions in losses. Those in managment of these two firms should have

been arrested.

It is sad that our problems started with Clinton, who may have had the

right idea to increase home ownership; however, for those who followed not

to moniter and supervise the activity and results, and not to stop the

stupidity when they saw loans with no money down, and no financial ability

to pay, before it became a disaster, is a terrible indictment of our

President, Congress, the Treasury Dept, The Fed, and the SEC.

Maybe the root cause of our problems is that our best and our brightest

are not running Washington (who would want those jobs) and we are making

the kind of mistakes that idiots make. (Just look at Iraq). It used to be

that Presidents surrounded themselves with bright, educated advisors. Who

is advising President Bush, and does he listen to their advise. A very

serious question. By the way, do you really think our current candidates

understand any of this? I would hope so, but I fear othewise.


 
249-18-2008 @ 7:47PM

Louise Kling said...
Greed--I see that word in several of these posts. You're on the right

track. I am no economist but it does seem to me that greed has played a

large role in our economic woes.


 
259-18-2008 @ 8:06PM

william lindblad said...
Who or what caused this financial crisis?

That is the heading of this blog:
Lot's of comment and most have some merit, but all fail to address the

root problem.

Root problem is GREED. Since this has been around since Biblical times the

human race has set rules to prevent it's abuse and put people in charge as

overseers. So, what is the cause - simple.
There are two committees in Congress that are charged with the nations

finance.
THEY ARE THE REGULATORS. BARNEY FRANK IS CHAIR OF THE HOUSE

AND MAX BAUCUS THE SENATE. THEY, AND THEIR COMMITTEE

MEMBERS ARE YOUR CULPRITS. I would like them to tell the public how

they all could not have seen 100% financing, "0" down, unbridled home sales

and building and price escalations running at 50% or more per year and not

feel a reason for alarm.
The old sec. of HUD (Al. Jackson)was at a hearing about 10 months ago,

started to speak on this subject as a warning and was put off. Jackson may

have been accused of mis-conduct, but he was the only one in Washington

with eyesight, for he saw this coming.
This is the same thing as having a traffic officer at a red light who closes

his eyes every time someone runs it.
My statements are non-partisan and non-political in intent - they are simply

my disgust as if the root cause was stopped this situation would not be.

True, the bankers,mortgage brokers, builders, speculators and everyone

else involved are also to blame, but let us not forget that their actions are

the result of a laissez faire attitude - on the part of the government

officials in charge of our finance. What I really want to know is what the

hell did we elect them to do?
(answer - screw all)

Joe: you need a history lesson.
1987 = minor

Real dates: 1816,1857,1893,1929,1972
You can also include 1776.
Each are very bad times
1776, the Revolution
1816, volcanic eruption (starved over 1/2 the world)
1857, banking embezzlements and sinking of the S.S. Central America (boat

full of gold)
1893, flood of cheap imports/labor unrest
Pres. Cleveland declared Labor Day as penitence. It took until 1910 to really

clear up. (1909 we had another round of bank failures)
1929, lack of government intervention in financial markets and the massive

drought in the bread basket States.
1972, Oil embargo. I lived through it and it was quite unpleasant
2008, Those in charge asleep or in debt to special interests in the financial

sector.


 
269-18-2008 @ 8:18PM

Migbird said...
The current situation was caused by governmental social-induced

interference in the economy. It started when Pres. Carter & a democratic

congress passed the 1977 COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT ACT, mandating

bank loans to all. It was accelerated in 1995 when Clinton imposed very

stringent regulations to force banks to loan to low-income/poverty areas,

over banking objections. To reduce risk to themselves, banks bundled the

bad loans with good loans & sold to investors to cleanse their risk....caused

by Government mandating them to make loans to people who had no

capability to handle the loans. As long as house prices were escalating...the

problem was hidden.


 
279-18-2008 @ 8:18PM

studpup775 said...
Iridium i admire your comment and i seek advice my email is

studpup775@aol.com


 
289-18-2008 @ 8:26PM

Dianne Lee said...
I have no idea what caused the problem. But I got a real clear message as

to who knew what to do about it.
Barack Obama immediately stood up, pulled a list out of pocket and said; "

I've been afraid this was going to happen. Here is what I've been saying

we need to do about it."
John Mccain said he would set up a commission like the one Bush set up

after 9/11 to study the problem. Of course, Bush has actually implemented

20% of those recommendations.
We need the Democrats.


 
299-18-2008 @ 8:48PM

seneca said...
The economy is failing do to bush and the rest of the crooks in washington.

and people is losing their homes for anyone who need help i found this site

helpful www.mortgagehelpline.com very useful


 
309-18-2008 @ 8:49PM

Phil said...
Most of you are right. However, after 40 years as a banker, I have seen

this before - from the inside. The disease is "greego". A combination of

ego and greed with no rational value system. This time it is

"mathematicians" who are not bankers and bankers who are not

mathemeticians who schemed to get returns that were otherwise irrational.

These goofy math wizzes never made a loan and couldn't think about what

if these people who did not qualify for a regular mortgage defaulted and

what's the likelyhood they would? The rules of banking that real bankers

know and understand were muted by this generations crop of geniuses -

same as the 80's crop of "young turks" and off we go. As was stated - no

one forced the greedy dopey consumer to hock their house for whatever.

We sold second mortgage products & equity lines of credit - for "whatever"

you needed. After all why should you waste that equity - buy a car and

take 25 years to pay for it - fool? The real crisis is yet to come. We tax

payers will pay for this too. (Remember "Resolution Trust"? Here it comes

again. Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat its mistakes

and use its successes. ) Today LIBOR increased by almost 100%. That's

the first pitch by the international investment community at the integrity of

of Uncle Sam. If the rest of the world starts in and our national debt

interest burden doubles - we're done. To paraphrase Everett Dirkson,"A

trillion here and a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking about real

money"! Pray my friends - pray.


 
319-18-2008 @ 10:33PM

DRH said...
Capitalism, by it's very nature, is predatory. It is basically set up like a

biological food chain where the little guys who work hard and forage for a

living are the bottom feeders, and the meat eating sharks who are at the

top of the food chain are the corporate elitests who reap the end benefits

of the entire system. That is why the elite capitalists do not want the

system regulated.

The reason why we are in this crisis is because our economy is heavily

serviced on debt. Our number one industry in the U.S. is the lending

industry! We have become a society of indentured servants, and it is no

surprise to see everyone in debt up to their eyeballs and drowning. Yet

corporate execs are making so much money, they literally don't know what

to do with it. That is why the bottom feeders can't afford to pay the bills

or their mortgages, and consequently why the banks and mortgage companies

who service you bottom feeders are going broke. With the help of the Bush

administration, the corporate elites succeeded in robbing your government's

Treasury, and now all of you bottom feeders are saddled with paying the

debt they left you, collected by your own government's hated IRS. It is

amazing to see economic analysts only focusing on the mortgage market as

the culprit, while not seeing the underlying problems of our capitalistic

system. It is also amazing to see many Americans standing helplessly

unengaged, or in self denial of the situation, yet continue allowing

themselves to be prey for the sharks at the top of the food chain. It is

rather apparent they have been conditioned to think that way.

Capitalism is a system that no one wins at, except the corporate elitests.

Think about it, where are you in the food chain? You deserve what you get!


 
329-18-2008 @ 10:37PM

Janice said...
GREED. Pure and simple greed.

When our liberal white-guilt government (read "Democrats") forced the

mortgage lenders to loan money to those poor poor people who couldn't

afford a house on their own.

When people were able to finance a house based on their "declared" (instead

of proven) income.

What did they think would happen? Did the lenders think they would lose

THEIR money when the bad loans went south? No. They knew they would be

bailed out by Uncle Sam (read "the American tax payer").

When will people ever learn? Every time the government "helps" the poor

folks, it actually hurts them. Look at what welfare has done to the black

community -- forced the man out of the house, destroyed the shame of

being on public assistance, and literally destroyed generations of welfare

families.

The only way for capitalism to work is to LET it work! If you loan money to

people who cannot repay that money, you lose. Sounds simple to me.


 
339-18-2008 @ 11:04PM

jerry mcdonald said...
the fed,congress,presidents(reagan,bush,clinton,bush),and the sec. They are

all thieves,liars,and treasonists.Vote-throw them all out.You vote for these

scumbags,they talk world economy,who elected them to represent the

world.Bring home the troops,surround washington,and hang every

lobbyist,congressman,and president since reagan,Throw all the ceo's,sec,and

fed injail


 
349-18-2008 @ 11:06PM

Ed said...
When Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac decided with Congress's guidance that

people with no/low income should be able to buy houses with nothing down

and pay only interest it created a cliff that the finance houses just fell off

of...it was a bad policy and a bad program. Combine this with greedy

people at Lehman, etc. who paid off Congressmen to not pull the plug on

their scheme I think it was criminal. They should prosecute all of the top

management who raked in millions of dollars through fraud and while they

are at it get the government officials who got paid off including Dodd,

Clinton and Obama.


 
359-18-2008 @ 11:09PM

Louise Kling said...
Greego- greed and ego. I will remember that word next time I get a

teaching job (and it might be awhile). Thank you, Phil. I agree with you on

many points, especially the one about noone forcing people to get equity

loans. Unfortunately, there were several companies that made it sound

awfully tempting. Lucky for me I didn't bite. I feel awful for those who

did. My neighborhood is one of those that is rapidly emptying out.

So - compassion, people. Be good to each other. Don't mean to preach but

there is no other way in these hard times. I'm old enough to remember

stories of the Great depression from my elders, and I'm hangin' on.


 
369-18-2008 @ 11:55PM

john chauvin said...
The ratings agencies.

The ratings agencies were asleep at the wheel.



 
379-19-2008 @ 2:46AM

Claude DeMoss said...
A combination of all reasons listed, plus the Middle East wars draining our

resourses, plus greedy lenders (banks, S&Ls, Wall Street & Investors that

created the ARM & Sub-Prime loans.
Don't forget government officials that condoned all this activity!


 
389-19-2008 @ 5:21AM

sal said...
they should have all the excutings in jail and take there money to instead of

paying big bonuses to them


 
399-19-2008 @ 10:04AM

jasonM said...
Quite simply basics - the economy has been running on air for the last few

years. Bush's best decision was getting Hank Paulson to run treasury since

no one has minded money in the country since he got into power. Moronic

advisors advanced the lunacy that you could run a $10 billion a week war

and still carry on collecting profits on the street as though everything was

fine. Hedge Funds and other short sellers quickly exploited and drained any

remaining liquidity out of the system. Our country and financial system is

built on confidence and competence when they leave confidence tricksters

and idiots take over. After exploiting credit cards, ruining energy, housing

and food why would they not ruin the banks and the economic system? A

country is a system, ours is broke and we need to fix it! Bush must keep

Paulson until he leaves or we will be rolling in misery for decades



 
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BUSH IS EVIL? THE CLINTON HIT LIST
NOTICE HILLARY WENT FIRST TO COMMUNIST COUNTRIES
http://www.ssqq.com/archive/intern03.htm
 This is pretty creepy . . .

The following is a partial list of DEATHS, DEAD of persons connected to and/or during President CLINTON’s tenure as Governor of Arkansas and as President of the United States. DEAD, DEAD, DEAD...

Read The List and judge for yourself.

DEAD-JAMES MCDOUGAL. Clinton’s convicted Whitewater partner died of an apparent heart attack, while in solitary confinement. McDougal was a key witness in Kenneth Starr’s investigation.

DEAD-MARY MAHONEY- A former White House intern was murdered July 6, 1997 at a Starbucks Coffee Shop in Georgetown. The murder happened during the pre-trial publicity surrounding the Paula Jones lawsuit. days after Newsweek’s Mike Isakoff dropped hints that a former White House staffer was about to go public with her story of sexual harassment in the White House.

DEAD-VINCENT FOSTER- Former White House counselor, and former colleague of Hillarv Clinton at Little Rock’s Rose law firm. Foster was found dead July 20, 1993 of a gunshot to the head ruled a suicide.

DEAD-RON BROWN-Secretary of Commerce and former DNC Chairman. Reported to have died by impact in a plane crash. A pathologist close to the investigation reported to the Bob Grant Radio Show a "hole" in top of Brown’s skull resembling a gunshot wound. At the time of his death Brown was being investigated and spoke publicly of his willingness to cut a deal with prosecutors.
JUST EXAMPLES OF HOW LIBERALS "FIX" PROBLEMS: KERRY NEXT?

DEAD-C. VICTOR RAISER II -Former National finance Go-Chairman, Clinton for President Campaign and son MONTGOMERY RAISER died in a private plane crash in Alaska, July30th,1992. Raiser was described as a "major player" in the Clinton organization by Dee Dee Meyers.

DEAD-PAUL TULLEY. Democrat National Committee Political Director found dead in a hotel room in Little Rock, Arkansas September 24, 1992, Described by Clinton as a "Dear friend and trusted advisor".  WITH FRIENDS LIKE THAT....

DEAD-ED WILLEY-Clinton fund raiser-found dead November 30, 1993 deep in the woods in Virginia of a gunshot wound to the head. Ruled a suicide?, Willey died on the same day his wife Kathleen Willey claimed that Bill Clinton groped her in the oval office in the White House. Ed Willey was involved in several Clinton fund raising events.

DEAD-JERRY PARKS-Head of Clinton’s gubernatorial security team in Little Rock. Gunned down in his car at a deserted intersection outside Little Rock. Park’s son said his father was building a dossier on Clinton. He allegedly threatened to reveal this information.  After he died the files were MYSTERIOUSLY REMOVED from his house

DEAD-JAMES BUNCH-Died from a gunshot suicide. Reported to have a "black book" of people containing names of INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE  who visited HOOKERS in Texas and Arkansas.
HOW STUPID CLINTON IS, IF YOU WANT TO GET LAID, YA DON'T SHOOT THE PIMP

DEAD-JAMES WILSON-Was found dead May 18, 1993 from an APPARENT HANGING SUICIDE. Was reported to have ties to Whitewater.
THESE ARE ALL CLINTON'S BUDDIES, DEAD

The following is a partial list of DEATHS, DEAD of persons connected to and/or during President CLINTON’s tenure as Governor of Arkansas and as President of the United States. DEAD, DEAD, DEAD..

DEAD-KATHY FERGUSON- Ex-wife of Arkansas Trooper Danny Ferguson died in May,1994 was found DEAD in her living room with a gunshot wound to her head. It was ruled a suicide even though there were several packed suitcases, as if she was going somewhere. Danny Ferguson was a co-defendant along with Bill Clinton in the Paula Corbin Jones lawsuit. She was reported a possible corroborating witness for Paula Jones case.
 Arkansas Trooper Danny Ferguson
SHOT THE MAN AT HIS FIANCEE'S GRAVE

DEAD-(ANOTHER DEMOCRAT BITES THE DUST) GANDY BAUGH -Attorney for Clinton friend Dan Lassater died by JUMPING out a window of a tall building January , 1991. His client was a convicted drug distributor.

DEAD-FLORENCE MARTIN-Accountant subcontractor for the CIA related to the Barry Seal Mena Airport drug smuggling case. Dead of three gunshot wounds.

ILLEGAL DRUG DEALERS, NUMBER 3 DONOR TO DEMOCRATS, AFTER UNIONS AND TRIAL LAWYERS

DEAD-SUZANNE COLEMAN. Reportedly has an affair with Clinton when he was Arkansas Attorney General, Died of a gunshot wound to BACK  of head, ruled a SUICIDE?, was pregnant at the time her death.  LITTLE WILLIE IN THERE?

DEAD-PAULA GROBER - Clinton’s SPEECH INTERPRETER FOR THE DEAF?  from 1978 until her death December 9, 1992. She died in a one car accident.

DEAD-DANNY CASOLARO. Investigative reporter. Investigating Mena airport and Arkansas Development Finance Authority. He SLIT HIS WRISTS?, apparent suicide in the middle of his investigation.

DEAD-PAUL WILCHER-Attorney investigating corruption at Mena Airport with Casolaro and the 1980 "October Surprise" was FOUND DEAD ON A TOILET (DIDN'T LET HIM FINISH?)
THAT'S HOW COLD LIBERALS ARE, MAN CAN'T TAKE A DUMP WIHOUT GETTING SHOT
June 22, 1993 in his Washington DC Apartment. Had delivered report to JANET RENO 3 weeks before his death.
50 of clinton's "friends" and associates dead, see the rest at:
http://www.ssqq.com/archive/intern03.htm
DEAD-JON PARNELL WALKER-Whitewater Investigator for Resolution Trust Corporation. "JUMPED" to his death from his Arlington, Virginia apartment balcony August 15, 1993. Was investigating Morgan Guarantee scandal.

DEAD-BARBARA WISE-Commerce Department Staffer-worked closely with Ron Brown and John Huang. CAUSE OF DEATH UNKNOWN? (CSI?) Died November 29, 1996. Her bruised NUDE  body was found locked in her OFFICE at the Department of Commerce.

DEAD-CHARLES MEISSNER-Assistant Secretary of Commerce who gave John Huang special security clearance, died shortly thereafter in a small plane crash.


The following is a partial list of DEATHS, DEAD of persons connected to and/or during President CLINTON’s tenure as Governor of Arkansas and as President of the United States. DEAD, DEAD, DEAD..

DR. STANLEY HEARD. Chair National Chiropractic Heath Care Advisory committee died with his attorney .
DEAD-
STEVE DICKSON in a small plane crash. Heard, in addition to serving on Clinton’s advisory council personally treated Clinton’s mother, stepfather and brother.

BARRY SEAL. drug running pilot out of Mena, Arkansas, DEATH WAS NO ACCIDENT .

DEAD-----JOHNNY LAWHON Jr.- Mechanic, found a CHECK made out to Clinton in the trunk of a car left in his repair shop. Died when his car hit a utility pole.

DEAD-STANLEY MUGGINS-Suicide. Investigated Madison Guarantee. BUT...
His report was never released.

DEAD-HERSHELL FRIDAY-Attorney & Clinton fund raiser died March 1, 1994 when his plane exploded. (HERSHELL'S CHOCOLATE)

DEAD TEENAGERS-KEVIN IVES & DON HENRY-Known as "The boys on the track" case. Reports say the boys may have stumbled upon the Mena Arkansas Airport Drug operation. Controversial case where initial report of death was due to falling asleep on railroad track. Later reports claim the two had been slain before being placed on the tracks. Many people linked to the case died before their testimony could come before a Grand Jury.

THE FOLLOWING SIX PERSONS HAD INFORMATION ON THE IVES/HENRY CASE:

KEITH CONEY. Died when his motorcycle slammed into the back of a truck in July, 1988:

KEITH McMASKLE. Died, stabbed 113 times, November 1988.

GREGORY COLLINS-Died from a gunshot wound, January 1989. JEFF RHODES-He was shot, mutilated and found burned in a trash dump in April 1989.

JAMES MILAN. Found decapitated-Coroner ruled death due to natural causes. )terrorist training(
clinton a jeffrey dahmer fan?

JORDAN KETTLESON-Was found shot to death in the front seat of his pickup truck in June 1990.

RICHARD WINTERS . Winters was a suspect in the Ives/Henry deaths.
Was killed in set-up robbery in July 1989.


The following is a partial list of DEATHS, DEAD of persons connected to and/or during President CLINTON’s tenure as Governor of Arkansas and as President of the United States. DEAD, DEAD, DEAD..

THE FOLLOWING FORMER CLINTON BODYGUARDS ARE DEAD:

MAJOR WILLIAM S. BARKLEY JR.

CAPTAIN SCOTT J.REYNOLDS

SGT. BRIAN HANEY

SGT. TIM SABEL

MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM ROBERTSON

COL. WILLIAM DENSBERGER

COL. ROBERT KELLY

SPEC. GARY RHODES

STEVE WILLIS

ROBERT WILLIAMS

CONWAY LeBLEU

TODD McKEEHAN

What's this I see on Newsmax about Agent Parks and his wife now both being murdered....

death in arkansas, to be continued.....

DEMOCRATS PUSHING US TO ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT
http://www.redstate.com/warner_todd_huston/2009/02/07/b
oxer-urges-quick-handover-of-us-power-to-un/
Boxer Urges Quick Handover of U.S. Power to UN

Posted by Warner Todd Huston (Profile)

Saturday, February 7th at 5:40AM EST
4 Comments

Senator Barbara Boxer (D, CA) wants to speed the process of handing power over U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations as soon as possible by urging the State Department to come out in support of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

The UNCRC imposes on all treaty signatories power over laws concerning children and, by extension, families. The largest portion of laws concerning children and families in the U.S. are state statutes so this treaty would, in actual fact, eliminate all family laws in the various states and hand the power over this area of law to the U.N. as per the Supremacy Clause to the U.S. Constitution (Article V1) that states that treaties preempt state laws.

Boxer is eager to destroy the entire lot of family laws throughout the country supposedly to protect “the most vulnerable people of society.”

But even the new left-wing U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, is aware of how difficult this process could be. Calling it a “complicated treaty” and worried over the “challenges of domestic implementation,” Rice would not commit to any time table to proceeding with consideration of the UNCRC. Senator Boxer, however, demanded a 60-day timeframe for the State Department to complete its review so that ratification can move forward.

Naturally, Boxer is in favor of destroying U.S. sovereignty by implementing this unAmerican treaty.

Sphere: Related Content
Category: Barbara Boxer, UN 

BIG BROTHER COMMUNISM, SPYCHIPS IN CLOTHES
http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/08/14/spy-shoes-rf
id-to-be-embedded-directly-into-clothing/
goodhumored
Homeland stupidity threat:
HIGH
Potential Threat To The Nation
Homeland Stupidity
EDITED OUT COMMENTS, SEE PAGE
Spy shoes: RFID to be embedded directly into clothing
Homeland Stupidity Exclusive
By Michael Hampton
Posted: August 14, 2008 7:05 pm

Protesters gathered Wednesday afternoon at the opening of the RFID in Fashion conference in New
York City to urge clothing manufacturers and retailers not to embed tracking chips into articles of
clothing.

The industry conference, one of several hosted by RFID Journal magazine, allows clothing
manufacturers to learn the state of the RFID industry and meet with RFID suppliers and industry
executives. RFID, or radio frequency identification, is a small chip with a unique identifying number
which can be read from as far away as 30 feet. The RFID in Fashion conference is being held
Wednesday and Thursday at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

But at this conference, the industry is urging clothing manufacturers to embed RFID chips directly
into their clothing for purposes of inventory control and loss prevention, known in the industry as
item-level tagging, according to consumer privacy expert Katherine Albrecht, who co-authored the
book on RFID, Spychips. And that raises what she calls a “privacy nightmare.”

“We’re here to let the industry know that consumers don’t want tracking devices in their clothing,”

Albrecht said. “When they embed [RFID] into clothing, or shoes, or other items people wear or

carry, they can also put the readers to pick up those signals into floors, doorways, ceiling tiles,

anywhere people go, and use them to track and identify people.”

Retailers would create databases linking individual RFID chips to consumers at the point of purchase,

creating a database of what each person bought which would allow businesses or governments to

keep tabs on every individual passing through a given area. The technology to accomplish this

tracking, Albrecht says, has already been developed.

A conference attendee who could not be identified because he is not authorized to speak for his

company said that such tags would be decommissioned before the customer left the store. But

Albrecht responded that the tags would merely be placed in a dormant state and could be

reawakened at any time, as it would be too expensive to use tags which could be deactivated

permanently.

“You can’t put your clothing in the microwave to kill these chips, because it could catch fire,” she

said.

Some attendees actually stopped to talk with the 14 protesters and present their case. An

attendee who could not be identified because he is not authorized to speak for his employer spent

nearly an hour talking to protesters and pointing out that RFID has good uses as well. “There’s

potential for abuse in everything,” he said. “All of those retailers, all they care about is making

sure they have the right products at the right time, and actually saving money.”

Police did not interfere with the protest at all. One off-duty NYPD officer who could not appear on

camera for personal safety reasons showed his police ID and pointed out that it contains a tracking

device which allows the officer to be located in the event of an emergency. Security staff spoke to

Albrecht and told her that they agreed with the protest, she said.

The trouble with databases is that despite every possible precaution, they can fall into the wrong

hands. These databases will be an inviting target for today’s criminals, for whom obtaining data is

the first step to committing a crime. In addition, once such a database is created, the tracking will

inevitably follow. Government will be unable to resist having yet another way to track, monitor and

control people, built by hapless companies who are just trying to save a few bucks.

Video of some of the protest follows:

Raw video of Albrecht interview by Chinese-language broadcaster NTDTV:

2 Trackbacks/Pingbacks

   1.
      RFID Technology and Targeted Individuals. « Gang Stalking World
      August 24, 2008 7:56 pm
   2.
      Advanced Services are Never Really Free - We Trade Our Freedom For Them |

GROWMAP.COM
      September 11, 2008 8:04 am

Janet Cooke Award
http://www.mrc.org/mediawatch/1991/watch19910901.asp
archive, but unchange
FAIR AND IMPOTENT MEDIA
SATISFIED SOVIET PEOPLE

If elections were held in the Soviet Union, the Communist Party would win by a landslide, because the Soviet people want "security" and "order," not freedom. Sound like Pravda before Gorbachev? Actually, it's American network news before the August coup.

Nearly everyone was surprised by the coup, but when reporters spent the preceding years claiming that the Soviet people did not aspire to freedom, that they were fully satisfied with communism or only wished it were harsher, they were not only wrong: they were insulting the many thousands who resisted the coup, repudiated the Communist Party and demanded freedom and democracy. For their misstatements, the journalists quoted here all share the September Janet Cooke Award.


On March 4, 1986 CBS Evening News reporter Bernard Goldberg announced that "The Soviets call it a worker's paradise. Americans call it a police state. And we think if only the Iron Curtain were lifted, they'd be at the border in a New York minute. Well, we'd be wrong." Instead, "Freedom to most Russians is living in a country where the unemployment rate is zero, where state health care costs nothing, where nobody is homeless and crime is not epidemic....Security is one of this nation's highest ideals. Not freedom, security. They may look like us, but they are not like us." He concluded: "They have made a deal with their rulers: Take care of us from cradle to grave, and we will be satisfied."


CBS continued this string of lucid analysis with reporter Bruce Morton, who told the country on November 12, 1986 that Soviet workers "are satisfied people" who are "less free than workers in the West, but more secure." Dan Rather followed up on July 17, 1987: "Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy."


ABC reporter Walter Rodgers naysayed freedom for the Soviet people on December 23, 1986: "The problem is many Soviets don't want Western-style human rights, which they tend to equate with anarchy."


Then-CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Stuart Loory wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal published on February 3, 1986: "I can say without reservation that if the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were to submit itself to the kind of free elections held in South Vietnam in the 1960s or El Salvador in the 1980s, it would win an overwhelming mandate. But that's not saying much. If suddenly a true, two-party or multi-party system were to be formed in the Soviet Union, the Communist Party would still win in a real free election. Except for certain small pockets of resistance to the communist regime, the people have been truly converted in the past 68 years." Reached in Moscow by MediaWatch, Loory disavowed the quote: "Let's not get into that. Obviously that's out of date." But when asked if he believed he was right at the time, he responded "That's correct." Loory is now a CNN Vice President and the Turner Broadcasting System's Executive Director of International Relations.


Even after Eastern Europe was liberated in late 1989, reporters still insisted the Soviet people preferred totalitarianism. In a February 9, 1990 column, USA Today founder Al Neuharth asserted "Marx and Lenin are still revered heroes. Never mind that communism as they conceived it didn't work. Most Soviets don't want to dump it, just improve on it." Two days later, Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes calmly pronounced: "Many Soviets viewing the current chaos and nationalist unrest under Gorbachev look back almost longingly to the era of brutal order under Stalin."


On May 24, 1990, CNN Moscow reporter Steve Hurst assured viewers: "Soviet people have become accustomed to security if nothing else. Life isn't good here, but people don't go hungry, homeless; a job has always been guaranteed. Now all socialist bets are off. A market economy looms, and the social contract that has held Soviet society together for 2 years no longer applies. The people seem baffled, disappointed, let down. Many don't like the prospect of their nation becoming just another capitalist machine."

In the last issue of 1990, Time reporter Bruce W. Nelan predicted: "There may be even more significant backers for a crackdown: the general public. After five years of waiting for perestroika to bear fruit, most Soviet citizens have lost faith. Appalled by the disintegrating economy and the sharp rise of violent crime, convinced that the country is falling into the hands of the black market mafia and fearful that the dissolution of the union will bring deeper chaos and poverty, they are ready to sacrifice -- or at least postpone -- the pursuit of lofty democratic goals so that order can be restored."


As in Eastern Europe, reporters wrongly believed that what the people were willing to say publicly represented their true views, as if they could speak freely without fear. But don't expect any apologies. These reporters are counting on the public's short memory.


NewsBites

CLUBBING CLARENCE. Two days before the Clarence Thomas hearings began, NBC's Sunday Today told viewers they were providing the pros and cons of Thomas. Their pro-Thomas argument consisted of one question in a profile of Rep. Gary Franks (R-CT) in which Garrick Utley presented Franks as dishonest: "Like Clarence Thomas, Gary Franks went to Yale under an affirmative action program. Yet today, he battles against the Democratic civil rights bill in Congress, echoing the President's insistence that, even though it outlaws quotas, it is a quota bill."


But when they turned to the anti-Thomas side, Sunday Today gave NBC reporter Bob Herbert two minutes to deliver an unopposed editorial: "Who is this guy, Clarence Thomas, and why should we want him on the Supreme Court? I can't think of any good reasons. The man is not distinguished and he doesn't seem to have a heart." He concluded: "Let's be straight about this. Clarence Thomas is a tool of the rich and powerful. His supporters include Dan Quayle, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms. Even David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader, is crazy about Clarence Thomas. Make no mistake, old people, poor people, black people, women, forget about it. Clarence Thomas is not your friend."


FLOUTING THOMAS. As his hearings approached, The Boston Globe continued its one-sided reporting on Clarence Thomas. "The Constitution envisions the Supreme Court as the neutral arbiter of disputes between the executive and legislative branches of government, but Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas has often expressed a one-sided view on the issue," reporter Walter V. Robinson began an August 15 "news" story. He quoted legal scholars Cynthia Farina and Erwin Chemerinsky, who called the idea of an encroached executive "troubling, almost silly." Robinson didn't make room for a conservative legal scholar to defend Thomas.


When the liberal People for the American Way finished its search for Thomas travel "scandals" during the Reagan years, the Globe was the first paper to report it on September 7.


Robinson didn't give readers the source of the report until the eighth paragraph, after the story had jumped from the front page to page 17. Washington Post staff writer Ruth Marcus, in contrast, started her September 8 story with the partisan source of the report. People for the American Way knew where to send its press release.


WICHITA WAILING. Guess which side CBS News came down on in the Wichita abortion controversy. In an August 5 Evening News segment reporter Scott Pelley found time to quote anti-Operation Rescue Judge Patrick Kelly, Peggy Jarman of the Pro-Choice Action League and Kevin Wray, a member of a group upset by police overtime costs, but had no time for anyone on the pro-life side.

CBS reporter Bruce Morton, in an August 17 Evening News commentary supporting civil disobedience, nevertheless took a swipe at the protesters. "Some, on videotape, have seemed to want to scuffle with police," Morton claimed. But the videotape playing as he spoke showed protesters being wrestled to the ground by police officers, and he did not mention that no one has been charged with fighting the police. "Some have sent their children toward police lines and barricades and cars. The civil rights people never stooped to that." But his own videotape showed teenagers protesting. Are these "children" old enough to get free condoms in school but not old enough to protest abortion?


DEREGULATION DOUBTERS. The announcement that Pan Am sold most of its major routes allowed ABC's Bob Jamieson to perpetuate airline deregulation myths on World News Tonight. On August 12 he reported, "Some industry analysts say the real problem is the 1978 deregulation...designed to promote competition, lower fares and better service. But critics say deregulation has done just the opposite." Bunk, according to two sources Jamieson ignored, the Air Transport Association (ATA) and the Brookings Institution.


Jamieson claimed: "A single carrier now dominates airports in 16 of our largest cities," and that "fares are 27 percent higher at these airports." But ATA studies show competition is increasing in the airline industry, with average prices at two-thirds of the nation's hub airports declining between 1984 and 1988. In fact, the Council of Economic Advisors calculated consumers have saved a whopping $100 billion since 1978 due to cheaper ticket prices and service improvements.


Jamieson ended by claiming "Deregulation has cost the loss of 40,000 jobs this year alone." Actually, since deregulation, the airline industry has boomed, setting new traffic records for five consecutive years, with annual traffic soaring from 275 million passengers in 1978 to 447 million in 1987. There are 39 percent more people now employed by the airlines than before deregulation.


WHERE'S WELD? Notably absent from media reporting on governors grappling with budget problems is Massachusetts Republican Governor William Weld. Maybe that's because Weld has balanced his state's budget not by raising taxes, but by cutting spending. Meanwhile, California Governor Pete Wilson and Connecticut Governor Lowell Weicker receive accolades for their tax-and-spend tendencies.


In the March 12 issue, Time magazine's Priscilla Painton seemed encouraged by more state taxes, noting, "In Connecticut, where the idea of a state income tax has been practically banned from political discourse, incoming Governor Lowell Weicker, Jr. has boldly called for one." In the July 15 Time, reporter Jordan Bonfante nearly canonized Wilson: "On one side are die-hard anti-tax conservatives. On the other are moderate pragmatists like Wilson....Putting his state on the road to fiscal sanity would burnish Wilson's credentials as a can-do politician with the guts to cast aside ideology for the sake of better government." On the August 25 Fox Off the Record, Boston Globe reporter Michael Frisby declared: "My star of the week is Connecticut Governor Lowell Weicker. He forced the legislature to institute an income tax for the first time in that state."

But according to columnist Warren Brookes, Weld has cut $770 million from the state budget and slashed the state payroll by 7,000 employees, while 1992 should see a net surplus in state coffers, all without tax increases. But no reporters are making Weld a "star of the week."


SCHOOL REFORM BLUES. Curiously, network reporters seem convinced that federal education spending is on the decline. "Educators faced with doing more with less say...in the end improving standards will take money," asserted CBS reporter Mark Phillips on September 3. Phillips' only experts were three educators demanding more money, and he ignored all other solutions, concluding: "And money, or the lack of it, seems to be making a big difference in the education of those going back to school this week." The same night, NBC's Andrea Mitchell finished her report: "With federal cuts, states and cities just don't have money, parents are copping out and kids are falling further and further behind."


But the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported that education funding has been rising steadily since 1985. President Bush's 1992 budget called for a 4 percent increase, a hike of almost $1.2 billion. But more spending didn't stop Scholastic Aptitude Tests from slipping last year in verbal scores and, for the first time in 10 years, in math scores.


Phillips and Mitchell failed to mention the President's 1992 budget included $690 million to implement education reform strategies. Both House and Senate Democratic leaders have stalled the President's spending pro-grams until liberal alternatives can be offered.

JUDGING JESSE. Conservatives may have fallen out of their chairs when they read Gloria Borger's latest story in the August 26/September 2 edition of U.S. News & World Report subheadlined, "Jesse Helms is right: Move in outside judges." Outlining the debate over whether judges should be brought in to review Senate ethics cases, Borger did what few reporters have done -- she agreed with Helms. "Members of Congress often fail miserably when passing judgment on their own. They would do better to pass the buck instead -- handing ethics rulings over to retired judges or to former members not interested in re-upping or lobbying."

Borger concluded, "Senators Dennis DeConcini of Arizona and Donald Riegle of Michigan, two of the members most involved with Keating, got off with rebukes for poor judgment. Their defense: This is the way Washington works. Now Cranston is looking to avoid censure with the same argument, one that Helms refuses to accept. The committee is still wavering. Any reputable panel of outside judges would have dispensed with the matter long ago."


LABOR PAINS. When Labor Secretary Lynn Martin announced results of a Labor Department study on the so-called "glass ceiling," the level at which women are no longer promoted, CBS reporter Wyatt Andrews quickly blamed the administration for being soft on business. On the August 8 Evening News, he asserted "Business groups...were delighted with Martin's handling of this today. And why not? She proposed no new laws or regulations. In fact, Martin refused to name any company by name, cited no one for discrimination, but did say she got nine of those secret companies to sign promises they wouldn't do it again."

Andrews concluded his report: "The political pattern here sounds just like the controversy over the civil rights bill. Here again is an administration loudly trumpeting the evils of discrimination, while still opposing moves that might make it lucrative for victims to sue."

Ken Prewitt of ABC's Good Morning America offered a different spin on August 26: "And the Feminist Majority Foundation says the old boy network has held women to just 2.6 percent of the top jobs in corporate America. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that's because women didn't enter the corporate world until the 1970s and are jut now becoming eligible for the top jobs."


CENSORSHIP SNAFU. You'd think that after all of the media posturing against "censorship" by the Department of Defense during the Gulf War, news executives would be the last to practice censorship, right?

Wrong. During the war, CBS' Walter Cronkite fumed: "Sanitizing the war for the purpose of keeping American morale, interest in the war, support for the war high is almost criminal."


Funny how times change. In the August 28 New York Post some local news chiefs claimed it is justifiable to edit and censor anti- Semitic comments made by the Reverend Al Sharpton and other radical black activists during the recent rioting in New York. WCBS-TV news director Dean Daniels explained, "We are cautious to air anything that is attacking a group of people. We feel pressure not to make a bad situation worse." And WNBC-TV news director Bret Marcus reasoned, "While we are journalists we are also citizens of this community who are trying to encourage peace and a lessening of tensions."


MISSING MANDELA'S MONEY. Last month, MediaWatch described how the networks avoided African National Congress (ANC) President Nelson Mandela's trip to Cuba to celebrate the anniversary of Castro's revolution. They did, however, air 22 stories on the "Inkathagate" scandal, in which the South African government supplied $90,000 to the two-million-member, pro-democracy, anti- apartheid Inkatha Freedom Party and more to Inkatha-affiliated unions. Reporters also discussed South African aid to Namibian anti-communist parties.


But Namibia, through its self-proclaimed Marxist President, Sam Nujoma, gave one million rand ($390,000) to its ANC comrades on January 31 of this year. Although the story appeared on the wire services, none of the networks carried a single story on this substantial source of ANC funding.


On the July 20 CBS Evening News, reporter Martha Teichner charged that the Inkatha revelations "raise questions about South Africa's real commitment to end apartheid." Teichner didn't ask whether Mandela's acceptance of aid from Nujoma and Castro raised questions about the ANC's commitment to democracy and freedom.


CLOAK THE RICH. Here they go again. Last month ABC's Cokie Roberts and CBS' Bruce Morton sang the usual refrain that passes for analysis about the 1980s. In a September 4 Evening News "Eye on America" segment, Morton asserted, "In fact the rich have gotten richer and the middle-class is shrinking. The question is can the Democrats make that case against a popular incumbent President?" No, the question is: can Morton add? As columnist Warren Brookes recently explained, the share of those making $50,000 or more, in constant 1989 dollars, has jumped from 21.6 percent in 1981 to 29 percent in 1989. The middle-income shift was 58.6 percent to 52.9 percent, but the lower-income share fell from 19.9 to 18 percent. So the middle-class did shrink. People moved up!


On the discussion segment of This Week With David Brinkley August 18, Roberts took the tax fairness track: "The rich are paying smaller taxes than they were at the beginning of the 1980s, when you paid 70 percent on unearned income and 50 percent on earned income. Now that is way down from there, so rich people are paying less." Well, not exactly. Again, Brookes showed that when the tax rate for the rich dropped, their money came out of shelters so the amount collected by the IRS from the upper ten percent leaped by nearly 70 percent in real terms from 1981 to 1988.


ALL WET ON WETLANDS. President Bush's decision to reconsider the definition of a wetland drew easy condemnation from environmentalists, and from their supporters at the networks. On World News Tonight, ABC reporter Ned Potter predictably focused his August 9 report on criticizing Bush: "The White House says not all wetlands are genuinely valuable. Business groups say that's a step in the right direction." Potter concluded: "George Bush gets reminded on days like this that he pledged to be the environmental President. He's likely to face stiff opposition from some Congressmen who says he's just caving in to business."


But on August 11, NBC Nightly News reporter Henry Champ went beyond the usual black hat-white hat story and presented a tide of wider public opposition to wetlands policy, and the facts behind their outrage at government intervention with their property: "Suddenly thousands of people who thought themselves bystanders saw themselves as victims: vacation homeowners, retirees, rural homeowners. For example, even though the Maryland coast is dotted with farms centuries old, building lots were now being reclassified as wetlands. This wooded lot, with housing on both sides, couldn't get a building permit -- all because the new Army Corps of Engineers regulations said land with any amount of water lying on the surface for seven consecutive days, or land with moisture found 18 inches below surface for the same seven days, was to be called wetlands." Potter should call Champ for reporting lessons.


SACRED SAGAN SCORCHED. Remember how the oil fires in Kuwait could cause a worldwide catastrophe? On January 20, Carl Sagan, the astronomer and self-appointed climatologist, told Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes about the fires' possible consequences: "That means the obscuration of the sun over large areas, maybe some ten percent of the northern hemisphere will last into the growing season." Wallace set Sagan up: "And people could conceivably starve." Sagan agreed: "You might have massive agricultural failures in the United States as a result of this."

More than seven months later, the fires still burn, but have had a miniscule impact on global climate, the sun has not been obscured, and massive agricultural failures have not occurred in the United States. Sagan compared the impact of the fires to the volcano at Mount Tambora in 1815, but that volcano is much like Mount Pinatubo this year. That eruption, with a force many times the Kuwaiti fires, did cause a global cooling. With Sagan now proven brazenly wrong, will the media continue to consult him for his opinion? Unfortunately, his disproven "nuclear winter" theories didn't stop him from appearing in January.

Page Five

More Pre-Coup Media Misinterpretations

WAS THE COLD WAR OVER?

Before the coup, reporters often talked about the potential threat of a coup against Gorbachev, but some reporters did not question what military or diplomatic implications a coup would have. For many, the liberation of Eastern Europe meant the cold war was over, and the Soviet threat was no longer important. But the coup proved a very real threat remained.


Boston Globe defense reporter Fred Kaplan exemplified this cavalier attitude in a dismissive "news analysis" on May 21, 1990: "One can imagine [Gorbachev] thinking something like this: 'Look, the cold war is over. Who cares how many cruise missiles you have or how far they can fly? There isn't going to be a war. These weapons aren't going to be used. Let's cut a deal and move onward to the new age.'" Less than two weeks later, on June 2, Kaplan added: "It simply no longer matters who has how many of what; such bean-counting exercises contribute little to a real-world calculus of power."


The coup also exposed the phony public-relations campaign waged around the world by the leadership of the KGB. On September 8, 1989, even Washington Post reporter David Remnick's highly skeptical news article on Vladimir Kryuchkov's publicity blitz nevertheless echoed the earlier stories on "closet liberal" Yuri Andropov: "Like Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev before him, Kryuchkov has taken the personal route, talking of his fondness for Bellini's opera Norma. He swoons over the piano mastery of Van Cliburn, and hints that he would arrange a Moscow apartment for the pianist if he would only come here more often. Then he sighs over his exhausting workday at Dzerzhinsky Square: 'The KGB Chairman's life is no bed of roses.'"


In an August 2, 1990 Prime Time Live feature on the KGB, Diane Sawyer assured viewers: "The officers of the KGB, in fact, decided reform was necessary long before Gorbachev came to power." The September 9 Newsweek reported that "sources in Western intelligence" told them that "the masterminds of the coup were KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, 67, and Oleg Baklanov, 59, a leader of the Soviet military-industrial complex."

Study

LABELING LEFT AND RIGHT

The Soviet coup caused a surge in the adjective "right-wing" to describe hard-line communists. Formerly reserved for conservative Americans and Latin military dictators, the reporters and columnists at The Washington Post picked the term "right wing" to describe the coup plotters 11 times in the first five days of the coup. On August 22, reporter Fred Hiatt called them a "right-wing junta." But when reformers like Boris Yeltsin quit the Communist Party to form a new party last July 13, reporter Michael Dobbs dubbed it "left-wing."


Why? In her last-page Newsweek column on May 12, 1989, Post Editorial Page Editor Meg Greenfield suggested: "Every time there is a confrontation in the world, we manage to dub the good guys liberals and the bad guys conservatives and pretty soon that is the common currency."


But does Greenfield's argument extend to the slightly different ideological terms "right-wing" and "left-wing"? To find out, MediaWatch analysts reviewed every use of the terms "right-wing" and "left-wing" by Washington Post reporters in news stories during the year 1990. The study determined that "right-wing" and "left-wing" were mostly saved by Post reporters for bad guys -- terrorists, guerrillas, or politicians that reporters feel safe presenting as undesirable or extreme, such as the members of Germany's neo-Nazi Republican Party.


Applied to these terms, Greenfield's theory is at least half- correct: "right-wing" villains were plentiful. But left-wingers weren't good guys; they often didn't have a label at all. Post reporters used "right-wing" 394 times, but "left-wing" only 87 times, a ratio of about 9 to 2. When analysts studied "extreme" variants of these terms (such as "far right" and "extreme left"), Post reporters referred to the right 106 times, the left only 24.


Extremists bring out the labeling instinct in reporters, but the Post found most of its extremists on the right. Analysts calculated the number of mentions of "far right" (6), "extreme right" (30), "hard right" (3), "radical right" (1), "ultra-conservative" (7), "archconservative" (1), and "ultra-right" (2). On the opposite side, analysts added the labels for "far left" (7), "extreme left" (4), "hard left" (3), "radical left" (11), and "archliberal," "ultraliberal," and "ultra-left" (zero).


In fact, most designations of "right-wing" and "left-wing" are not applied in coverage of American politics, but in foreign stories. Out of 394 mentions of "right-wing," only 38 referred to the U.S. political scene. Post reporters described American liberals as "left-wing" only three times. But "radical left" appropriately accompanied four stories on the All Peoples' Congress, an affiliate of the Workers World Party, which supported the Tiananmen Square massacre. In U.S. stories, extreme right terms edged out extreme left terms, eight to seven. But the term "far left" appeared more often as an instruction in photo captions (19) than as a label in news stories (7).


By far, the largest number of labels come from Post coverage of Israel, written mostly by reporter Jackson Diehl. The Post applied the term "right-wing" 151 times, mostly to describe Yitzhak Shamir's Likud government. "Left-wing" appeared in 36 stories, mostly in reference to the opposition Labor Party. A similar contrast emerged in extreme terms: the Post tagged Israeli politicians as "far right" nine times and "extreme right" eight times, but never found anyone on the "far left" or "extreme left" in Israel, despite the radicalism of left-wing parties or the PLO.

In fact, Diehl reported a coming "narrow" right-wing coalition four times, and reporter Glenn Frankel explained what that meant: "Shamir will head a narrowly based government dependent for its survival on right-wing extremists and religious fundamentalists that will dramatically increase Jewish settlements and crack down harder on Palestinians -- moves that are likely to provoke more violence."


South Africa, reported primarily by David Ottaway ad Allister Sparks, came in second in the number of labels, but first in imbalance. The Post gave the "right-wing" label 71 times, but mentioned "left-wing" only once, and then to describe a white journalist. The African National Congress, often described as "the main anti-apartheid group," whose President posed for pictures with Fidel Castro, was never labeled.


On June 27, Ottaway reported that white right-wing leaders objected to negotiations with the "communist" ANC, with "communist" in quotes, despite its interlocking alliance with the South Africa Communist Party. But later in the same article, he cited "the growing militancy of extreme right-wing groups." Like Israel, Post reporters tossed the "far right" label 14 times, and "extreme right" four times, but never found anyone on the "extreme left" or "far left."


While Post reporters liked describing Soviet hard-liners as "right-wing" in the last month, only ten stories on the Soviet Union included the term last year, and used "left-wing" five times. The Post did once use "ultraconservative" to describe the anti-Semitic group Pamyat. But reporter David Remnick noted the problem of labeling on May 5, when he quoted Soviet legislator Ilya Zaslavski poking fun at Gorbachev adviser Alexander Yakovlev: "What does he mean by right-wing? I guess in the Western sense it is right-wing: pro-market, anti-communist. But here we call that left-wing, don't we?"


In her 1989 article, Meg Greenfield concluded: "My humble point is that in addition to new policies and initiatives, what this country sorely needs is a new political vocabulary and a revised political map." By that standard, the Post is already two years behind. Its reporters find "right-wing" an appropriate description not only for hard-line communists and staunch capitalists, but Israeli Zionists and Soviet anti-semites, apartheid-loving bigots and Clarence Thomas supporters. If the Post cannot define a proper label for the polar opposites on its "right," it should at east appropriately label its "left." Otherwise, they reinforce the suspicion that labels function as warnings to readers, and that the "right" is five times more worth fearing than the "left."

1991 Archive
 MRC Home MediaWatch Archive
 

always said, ENVIRONMENTALISTS STUPID, clean water, shark attacks
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090213/od_nm/us_sharks_odd
_1
Cleaner waters attract sharks

By Michael Perry Michael Perry – Fri Feb 13, 3:43 pm ET
Two surfers walk as lifeguards set up Reuters – Two surfers walk as lifeguards set up 'dangerous current' signs at the iconic Bondi beach in Sydney, …

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Environmental protection of Sydney's beaches and harbor has created a cleaner marine environment, but is attracting sharks closer to shore chasing fish, say marine experts, after two shark attacks in two days.

Fishermen say shark numbers are on the rise, but marine scientists say while there have been more sightings it is unclear whether there are more sharks off Sydney.

A shark almost severed a surfer's arm in an attack just before dark at Sydney's famous Bondi Beach Thursday. The first attack at Bondi since 1929.

A navy diver was attacked in Sydney Harbor near the Opera House Wednesday, losing his hand and he may lose his leg.

New South Wales state Primary Industries Minister Ian MacDonald said Friday he would order a survey of shark numbers off Sydney, after the attacks and as a result of more sightings.

"I think you'll find that the protective measures that have been put in place by governments in recent years have halted the decline of many species of sharks," MacDonald said on Friday.

"Coupled with some improved environment conditions, plus a reduction in fishing efforts in parts of the state, would mean shark numbers could enhance," MacDonald told local radio.

"The reports I am getting from people spotting sharks, there seems to be a build up in sharks in the estuaries, as well as along the ocean shore," he said.

PATROLS INCREASED, BONDI CLOSED

Many shark species, including the Great White, are protected in Australian waters. There are 30 sharks, including the Great White, on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's threatened species list.

Beach rescue helicopter patrols were increased along Sydney's beaches Friday and Bondi Beach was closed for the morning, but some surfers still ventured out into the waves.

"Shark sightings have increased, particularly in the past five to six years," said Harry Mitchell who conducts aerial shark patrols over Sydney's beaches.

Mitchell said cleaner ocean waters had made it easier to spot sharks from the aerial patrol. "Shark sightings do not necessarily mean shark numbers have increased," he said.

Bondi Beach lifeguard Bruce Hopkins said sharks regularly swam into Bondi, despite shark nets aimed at protecting swimmers.

"We usually get all types of sharks come through Bondi. We get hammerheads and the grey nurse ... with the occasional tiger or bull shark. It's nothing out of the ordinary," he said.

NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service said sharks were increasingly common in Sydney Harbor, particularly in February and March as they chase seasonal fish into the harbor.

"I guess it's the downside of the environmental controls ... 20 or 30 years ago the harbor was a very difficult place to be for a fish, these days it's actually quite beautiful," said the service's John Dengate.

In the past 10 years Sydney Harbor has become a much clearer marine environment due to a reduction in commercial shipping, less foreshore marine industry, a ban on waste discharge and boat paint containing lead, and better stormwater control measures.

Sydney's beaches have also become cleaner due to the installation of offshore sewage treatment plants and better stormwater controls. While large stretches of Sydney's coastline are now protected marine sanctuaries to encourage marine life.

Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA), whose volunteers patrol beaches, called for calm Friday.

"It is important to recognize that there is always some inherent risk when using an environment inhabited by sharks," said Barry Bruce, a scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization and SLSA shark advisor.

"The risk of shark-related incidents varies according to the time of day, time of year, the geographic location and species of shark in the area," said Bruce.

The SLSA advises people not to swim at dawn and dusk, when sharks usually feed, or in known shark feeding areas, such as estuaries or harbors.

The last fatal attack occurred in December 2008, when a Great White attacked a 51-year-old man while he was snorkeling off a beach south of Perth in Western Australia.

There have only been a total of 56 fatal shark attacks in Australia in the past 50 years, or an average of about 1 a year, says the Australian Shark Attack File.

(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

THE INSANE TRAITOR SENATOR BARBARA BOXER COLLECTION

DEMOCRATS PUSHING US TO ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT
http://www.redstate.com/warner_todd_huston/2009/02/07/b
oxer-urges-quick-handover-of-

us-power-to-un/
Boxer Urges Quick Handover of U.S. Power to UN

Posted by Warner Todd Huston (Profile)

Saturday, February 7th at 5:40AM EST
4 Comments

Senator Barbara Boxer (D, CA) wants to speed the process of handing power over U.S.

sovereignty to the United Nations as soon as possible by urging the State Department to

come out in support of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

The UNCRC imposes on all treaty signatories power over laws concerning children and, by

extension, families. The largest portion of laws concerning children and families in the U.S.

are state statutes so this treaty would, in actual fact, eliminate all family laws in the various

states and hand the power over this area of law to the U.N. as per the Supremacy Clause to

the U.S. Constitution (Article V1) that states that treaties preempt state laws.

Boxer is eager to destroy the entire lot of family laws throughout the country supposedly to

protect “the most vulnerable people of society.”

But even the new left-wing U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, is aware of how

difficult this process could be. Calling it a “complicated treaty” and worried over the

“challenges of domestic implementation,” Rice would not commit to any time table to

proceeding with consideration of the UNCRC. Senator Boxer, however, demanded a 60-day

timeframe for the State Department to complete its review so that ratification can move

forward.

Naturally, Boxer is in favor of destroying U.S. sovereignty by implementing this unAmerican

treaty.

Sphere: Related Content
Category: Barbara Boxer, UN
--------------
http://www.conservapedia.com/Liberal
COMMUNIST PRETENDING TO BE LIBERAL, REAL LIBERALS NOW ARE CONSERVATIVES
A liberal is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing.

A liberal supports many of the following political positions and practices.

    * Taxpayer-funded and/or legalized abortion
    * Censorship of teacher-lead prayer in classrooms and school sponsored events
    * Support for gun control
    * Support of obscenity and pornography as a First Amendment right[1]
    * Income redistribution, usually through progressive taxation
    * Government-rationed medical care, such as Universal Health Care
    * Taxpayer-funded and government-controlled public education
    * The denial of inherent gender differences
    * Insisting that men and women have the same access to jobs in the military
    * Legalized same-sex marriage
    * Implementation of affirmative action
    * Political correctness
    * Support of labor unions
    * Teaching acceptance of promiscuity through sexual "education" rather than teaching abstinence from sex.[2]
    * A "living Constitution" that is reinterpreted as liberals prefer, rather than how it was intended
    * Government programs to rehabilitate criminals
    * Abolition of the death penalty
    * Environmentalism[3]
    * Disarmament treaties
    * Globalism
    * Opposition to an interventionalist American foreign policy [4]
    * Opposition to full private property rights[5]
    * Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine
    * In 2005, it was reported by CBS News that liberals were the most likely supporters of the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution is a key component of atheistic ideologies in the Western World.
    * Opposition to domestic wire-tapping as authorized in the Patriot Act
    * Calling anyone they agree with a "professor" regardless of whether he earned that distinction based on a real peer review of his work (see, e.g., Richard Dawkins and Barack Obama).
********** Original meaning: Classical Liberalism

Liberalism is a political philosophy with freedom as its core value. The term was originally applied to supporters of individual liberties and equal rights, but, in America, the term has come to represent a movement of social change that often conflicts with conservative values such as moral values and tradition. TODAY'S LIBERAL IS FASCIST, COMMUNIST, ATHIEST
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http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.as
p?indid=1346
By contrast, Kerry's lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union (ACU), which is

essentially the AFDA's political opposite, stands at just 5 percent - the third lowest figure in

the entire Senate, higher only than the ACU ratings for Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer.

The ACU ratings for some other notable Democrats are: 13 percent apiece for Richard

Gephardt, Hillary Clinton, and Tom Daschle; 14 percent for John Edwards; 15 percent for

Dennis Kucinich; and 19 percent for Joe Lieberman. Senator John Breaux, one of the upper

chamber's few moderate Democrats, has a 46 percent ACU rating.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/search/?cx=013255222
075609514560%

3Avfcebs4vcuo&q=barbara+boxer&sa=Search&cof=FORID%

3A11&cx=013255222075609514560%3Avfcebs4vcuo#895
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http://www.conservapedia.com/Barbara_Boxer
In January 2007, Senator Boxer was the subject of controversy after criticizing U.S.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for not having children. "Who pays the price?" Boxer

asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids

are too old and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a personal price, as I

understand it, with an immediate family." The New York Post and White House Press

Secretary Tony Snow considered this an attack on Rice's status as a single, childless female

and referred to Boxer's comments as "a great leap backward for feminism."
Criticism
http://www.conservapedia.com/Barbara_Boxer
Boxer was involved in the House banking scandal, in which a number of Representatives

bounced checks written on their accounts in the House Bank. Boxer wrote 143 overdraft

checks over a period of three years that totalled $41,417.
----------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Boxer
The environment

Boxer successfully led the 2003 Senate floor battle to block oil drilling in the Arctic National

Wildlife Refuge.[37] In 2005, Boxer voted again to block oil drilling at ANWR.

Boxer has introduced the National Oceans Protection Act (NOPA) of 2005.[38] Some of the

provisions of this act are: strengthen ocean governance; protect and restore marine wildlife

and habitats; address ocean pollution; improve fisheries management. The bill also addresses

needs regarding marine science, research and technology, marine mammals, coastal

development, and invasive species.

Boxer is an original cosponsor of Senator Jim Jeffords’ (I-VT) Clean Power Act.[39] This

legislation would reduce emissions of four pollutants coming from power plants; sulfur dioxide,

nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and mercury. killing mom and pop businesses

As the new head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in January 2007,

Boxer wants to reduce energy consumption. She is trying to curb global warming by leading

pilot programs. The few things that she and some of her fellow Senators are doing could cut

electricity consumption by as much as 50 percent in their Capitol Hill offices.[40]

Senator Boxer was the Senate sponsor of the Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage

Wilderness Act, which was signed in to law by President George W. Bush on October 17,

2006. The bill protected 275,830 acres (1,116 km2) of federal land as wilderness and 21

miles (34 km) of stream as a wild and scenic river, including such popular areas as the King

Range and Cache Creek.[41] Senator Boxer worked with Senator Dianne Feinstein and

Representative Mike Thompson (the bill's House sponsor) in the five-year effort to pass the

legislation.

Boxer along with her colleague Dianne Feinstein voted in favor of subsidy payments to

conventional commodity farm producers at the cost of subsidies for conservation-oriented

farming.[42]

[edit] Abortion
Boxer speaking at an ACLU event.

Boxer authored the Freedom of Choice Act of 2004 and participated in the floor fight for

passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

Boxer is an original cosponsor of the Title X Family Planning Services Act of 2005, S.844, by

Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY). This legislation aims to improve access to women's health

care. It authorizes funding for family planning services grants; allows states to provide such

services to individuals who may not be eligible for Medicaid; prohibits health insurance

providers from excluding contraceptive services, drugs or devices from benefits; establishes a

program to disseminate information on emergency contraception; requires hospitals receiving

federal funding to offer emergency contraception to victims of sexual assault; provides grants

to public and private entities to establish or expand teen pregnancy prevention programs; and

requires that federally funded education programs about contraception be medically accurate

and include information about health benefits and failure rates.

Boxer does not support restrictions on the availability of abortion, such as late-term

("partial-birth") abortion procedures, and parental notification requirements.

[edit] Victims of violence

As a member of the House of Representatives, Boxer authored the original Violence Against

Women Act. Later in 1994, she cosponsored, and the Senate passed, the Violence Against

Women Act, which provided reforms to the criminal justice system to better prosecute

violent crimes against women, and provided Federal funding to local law enforcement agencies

for training and equipment necessary for prosecution. Boxer has also authored the Violence

Against Children Act, based on the successful VAWA. (Boxer has been a consistent advocate

of the death penalty until recently. In 2006 she introduced a bill calling for a moratorium on

the death penalty.)

[edit] Social Security

Boxer supports the current system of Social Security, and opposed President George W.

Bush's plan for partial privatization of Social Security.[43][44] She introduced the 401(k)

Pension Protection Act to protect retirement by requiring the diversification of 401(k) plans.

A modified version of the bill was signed into law as part of the 1997 tax bill.

Following the Enron scandal, Boxer again worked to ensure that retirement plans are

diversified. She also introduced a bill to prohibit accounting firms from auditing and

consulting for the same company.

[edit] National security

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Boxer authored a bill to protect commercial airliners

against attacks by shoulder-fired missiles, and wrote the law allowing airline pilots with

special training to carry guns in the cockpit.
Senator Boxer has lunch with California Marines during her visit to Iraq. (2005-03-22)

Boxer wrote the High-Tech Port Security Act, and sponsored the Chemical Security Act to

address terrorist threats against chemical plants. Senator Boxer also cosponsored

comprehensive rail security legislation.

[edit] Iraq War

In October 2002 Boxer voted against the joint resolution passed by the U.S. Congress to

authorize the use of military force by the Bush Administration against Iraq.[45][46][47]

Later on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart she characterized that vote as "The best vote of

my life."

In June 2005, Senators Boxer and Russ Feingold (D-WI) cosponsored Senate Resolution 171

calling for a timeframe for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Boxer's petition demanding an exit strategy from Iraq drew 107,218 signatures.[48]

[edit] Surveillance

In June 2008 Boxer spoke in the Senate in opposition to the FISA Amendments Act of

2008,[49] a pending bill in the United States Congress to amend the Foreign Intelligence

Surveillance Act,[50] and later broke with her counterpart Sen. Dianne Feinstein and voted

against it.[51]

[edit] Election reform
Senators Boxer and Clinton unveil the Count Every Vote Act. (2005-02-18)

On 18 February 2005 Senators Boxer, Hillary Clinton, and Representative Stephanie Tubbs

Jones introduced the Count Every Vote Act of 2005, which would provide a voter verified

paper ballot for every vote cast in electronic voting machines and ensure access to voter

verification for all citizens. The bill mandates that this ballot be the official ballot for

purposes of a recount. The bill sets a uniform standard for provisional ballots and requires

the Federal Election Assistance Commission to issue standards that ensure uniform access to

voting machines and trained election personnel in every community. The bill also mandated

improved security measures for electronic voting machines.[52] The bill did not pass.

[edit] Bush nominees

During the confirmation hearings for the United States Secretary of State nominee

Condoleezza Rice in January 2005, Boxer challenged her to admit to alleged mistakes and

false statements made by the Bush Administration in leading the United States into the 2003

invasion of Iraq, and ultimately voted against confirmation, along with twelve other senators.

[53][54] The dissent was the highest vote against a Secretary of State nominee since 1825

when Henry Clay was so named.[55]

Boxer voted against John Bolton's nomination for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in

the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and filibustered him on the Senate floor. As a result

of the strong Democratic opposition Bolton could not obtain Senate approval. However,

President Bush bypassed the Senate by employing the constitutional right of recess

appointment, only the second time such an appointment has been used for a United States

ambassador to the United Nations since the UN's founding in 1945. Recess appointments

themselves have been used numerous times by various presidents.

Boxer voted against the confirmation of Chief Justice of the United States nominee John

Roberts, and against the confirmation of Associate Justice nominee Samuel Alito.[56][57] Her

votes against these two nominees were motivated by concerns over their record on abortion,

women's rights, and the proper role of executive authority.

[edit] Foreign policy

In 1997 the Senate passed a Boxer resolution calling on the United States not to recognize

the Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan because of its human rights abuses

against women.
Senator Boxer meets Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. (2005-03-30)

In 2002, Senator Boxer voted against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. She has subsequently

referred to that vote as the best vote of her career. She also voted against the first Gulf

War (Operation Desert Storm) while a member of the House in 1991[58] and was a very vocal

protester against the Vietnam War in the 1970s.[59]

Boxer is a cosponsor of S. 495, or the Darfur Accountability Act of 2005, which would

impose sanctions against perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Darfur.

[edit] The Internet

Along with former Republican Senator George Allen (R-VA), Boxer authored the Jumpstart

Broadband Act. This bill would make more spectrum available for use by devices that

incorporate new broadband technology, such as WiFi. The Federal Communications Commission

is now implementing the Boxer-Allen bill.

Boxer opposes access and sales taxes on the Internet, co-authoring a bill with Republican

Sen. George Allen in 2001 to extend the Internet tax moratorium for five years.

[edit] Gun control

Senator Boxer joined colleagues to pass a Federal ban on various semi-automatic firearms and

established the COPS program. She supports reauthorization of both programs.

[edit] LGBT issues

The Human Rights Campaign gave Boxer ratings of 100%, 88% and 100% for the 107th,

108th, and 110th sessions of Congress, respectively, indicating a support of the HRC's slate

of pro-gay legislative issues.[60] In 1996, she was one of fourteen Senators to vote against

the Defense of Marriage Act[61] and also voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in

2004 and 2006,[62] although when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom issued a directive to

the city-county clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples she stated that she

supported California's domestic partnership law but agreed with its definition that marriage

was between a man and a woman.[63] She has also co-sponsored the Matthew Shepard Act,

[64] which would expand the federal definition of hate crimes to include crimes based on the

victim's sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as the Uniting American Families Act.

[65] She opposed Proposition 8, which eliminated the right of same-sex couples to marry in

California.

[edit] India-U.S. nuclear deal

Boxer is one of the most outspoken critics of the nuclear energy deal between the United

States and India. Boxer is of the opinion that India should not get help from the U.S. in the

civilian nuclear energy sector until it breaks its relationship with Iran.[66]

[edit] Indian gaming

The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, formerly the Federated Coast Miwok, was

officially recognized by the U.S. government on 27 December 2000, pursuant to an act of

Congress. California 6th District Representative Lynn Woolsey introduced the Graton

Rancheria Restoration Act (105th CONGRESS, 2d Session, H.R. 4434) 6 August 1998. It was

ultimately approved and signed by President Clinton as Title XIV of the Omnibus Indian

Advancement Act (Public Law No. 106-568).

Representative Woolsey's original bill (H.R. 4434, later H.R. 946) would not have permitted

the FIGR to have a casino. Senator Boxer removed that prohibition when she included

Woolsey's bill in the Omnibus Act.

BIG BROTHER COMMUNISM, SPYCHIPS IN CLOTHES
http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/08/14/spy-shoes-rf
id-to-be-embedded-directly-into-

clothing/
goodhumored
Homeland stupidity threat:
HIGH
Potential Threat To The Nation
Homeland Stupidity
EDITED OUT COMMENTS, SEE PAGE
Spy shoes: RFID to be embedded directly into clothing
Homeland Stupidity Exclusive
By Michael Hampton
Posted: August 14, 2008 7:05 pm

Protesters gathered Wednesday afternoon at the opening of the RFID in Fashion conference in New

York City to urge clothing manufacturers and retailers not to embed tracking chips into articles of

clothing.

The industry conference, one of several hosted by RFID Journal magazine, allows clothing

manufacturers to learn the state of the RFID industry and meet with RFID suppliers and industry

executives. RFID, or radio frequency identification, is a small chip with a unique identifying number

which can be read from as far away as 30 feet. The RFID in Fashion conference is being held

Wednesday and Thursday at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

But at this conference, the industry is urging clothing manufacturers to embed RFID chips directly

into their clothing for purposes of inventory control and loss prevention, known in the industry as

item-level tagging, according to consumer privacy expert Katherine Albrecht, who co-authored the

book on RFID, Spychips. And that raises what she calls a “privacy nightmare.”

“We’re here to let the industry know that consumers don’t want tracking devices in their clothing,”

Albrecht said. “When they embed [RFID] into clothing, or shoes, or other items people wear or

carry, they can also put the readers to pick up those signals into floors, doorways, ceiling tiles,

anywhere people go, and use them to track and identify people.”

Retailers would create databases linking individual RFID chips to consumers at the point of purchase,

creating a database of what each person bought which would allow businesses or governments to

keep tabs on every individual passing through a given area. The technology to accomplish this

tracking, Albrecht says, has already been developed.

A conference attendee who could not be identified because he is not authorized to speak for his

company said that such tags would be decommissioned before the customer left the store. But

Albrecht responded that the tags would merely be placed in a dormant state and could be

reawakened at any time, as it would be too expensive to use tags which could be deactivated

permanently.

“You can’t put your clothing in the microwave to kill these chips, because it could catch fire,” she

said.

Some attendees actually stopped to talk with the 14 protesters and present their case. An

attendee who could not be identified because he is not authorized to speak for his employer spent

nearly an hour talking to protesters and pointing out that RFID has good uses as well. “There’s

potential for abuse in everything,” he said. “All of those retailers, all they care about is making

sure they have the right products at the right time, and actually saving money.”

Police did not interfere with the protest at all. One off-duty NYPD officer who could not appear on

camera for personal safety reasons showed his police ID and pointed out that it contains a tracking

device which allows the officer to be located in the event of an emergency. Security staff spoke to

Albrecht and told her that they agreed with the protest, she said.

The trouble with databases is that despite every possible precaution, they can fall into the wrong

hands. These databases will be an inviting target for today’s criminals, for whom obtaining data is

the first step to committing a crime. In addition, once such a database is created, the tracking will

inevitably follow. Government will be unable to resist having yet another way to track, monitor and

control people, built by hapless companies who are just trying to save a few bucks.

Video of some of the protest follows:

Raw video of Albrecht interview by Chinese-language broadcaster NTDTV:

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