Professor reveals how Zika may have been genetically modified
Infowars.com - JANUARY 30, 2016
International law professor Francis A. Boyle breaks down the federal government’s involvement in biowarfare and terrorism.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Friday, January 29, 2016
Paul Is The Only Liberty Vote
PAUL DECLARES HE IS ONLY CANDIDATE FOR THE ‘LIBERTY VOTE’
Commanding debate performance from the libertarian Senator
Steve Watson | Infowars.com - JANUARY 29, 2016
Most accounts from last night’s GOP debate, the official one, not the Trump one, had Rand Paul down as the winner, including TIME, declaring “Paul took full advantage of his primetime slot.”
Perhaps Paul’s most powerful spot came when he declared that he is the only candidate for the “liberty vote.”
Paul took a swipe at Ted Cruz, noting that the Texas Senator skipped the Audit the Fed vote after Cruz claimed that he could attract libertarian support.
Paul urged that the liberty vote will “stay in the family,” a direct nod to his father Ron Paul.
When asked by moderator Bret Baier “Did you make a mistake by not more fully embracing your father politically at the beginning of the campaign?” Paul provided a commanding answer.
“There’s probably no person I respect more in the country or in recent history than my father,” Paul said.
“I think he was probably the most honest man in politics that we’ve ever seen in a generation, and so in no way have I ever said that I don’t embrace my father or love my father or appreciate everything that he’s done for the country.”
Paul then clarified his ‘liberty vote’ credentials by criticizing bulk National Security Agency (NSA) metadata collection, saying that “the bulk collection of your phone data and the invasion of your privacy did not stop one terrorist attack. If we want to collect the records of terrorists, let’s do it the old-fashioned way,” by using the fourth amendment.
Paul also slammed the war on drugs, saying it has “disproportionately affected our African American community.”
“Drug use is about equal between white and black,” Paul said, “but three out of four people in prison are black or brown.”
The Kentucky Senator also spoke about the government engaging in overcriminalization, noting “I’ve been a believer in Congress about trying to bring about criminal justice reform.”
Paul was the only candidate qualified to give a detailed and nuanced answer to a question regarding criminal justice.
“I’ve been trying to look for solutions to our criminal justice system,” he noted. “One thing I discovered in Ferguson was that one-third of the budget in the city of Ferguson was getting reaped by civil fines.” He continued, “People were being fined to death. You or I, or many people in this audience, if we get [a] $100 fine, we can survive it. If you’re living on the edge of poverty and you get [a] $100 fine, or your car towed, a lot of times you lose your job.”
Other Paul highlights included Paul’s thoughts on abortion, which he said is “always wrong.”
“I think it would be better the less abortions we have, so the more states that we have that made abortion illegal, the better, as far as trying to save and preserve lives,” Paul said.
Paul also blasted Hillary Clinton, noting that she has taken “millions and millions of dollars from regimes in the middle east that treat women like cattle.”
“she can’t be a champion of women’s rights at the same time she’s got this that is always lurking out there, this type of behavior.” Paul stated.
While the other candidates used their final statements to attack each other, Paul focused on his fiscal policy.
“I’ve gotten to do some incredible things. Got to be on the floor of the Senate. And it has been amazing to me,” Paul said. “But the thing that is most important to me and caused me to run for office is I’m worried about the country and how much debt we’re adding.” he concluded.
Most accounts from last night’s GOP debate, the official one, not the Trump one, had Rand Paul down as the winner, including TIME, declaring “Paul took full advantage of his primetime slot.”
Perhaps Paul’s most powerful spot came when he declared that he is the only candidate for the “liberty vote.”
Paul took a swipe at Ted Cruz, noting that the Texas Senator skipped the Audit the Fed vote after Cruz claimed that he could attract libertarian support.
Paul urged that the liberty vote will “stay in the family,” a direct nod to his father Ron Paul.
When asked by moderator Bret Baier “Did you make a mistake by not more fully embracing your father politically at the beginning of the campaign?” Paul provided a commanding answer.
“There’s probably no person I respect more in the country or in recent history than my father,” Paul said.
“I think he was probably the most honest man in politics that we’ve ever seen in a generation, and so in no way have I ever said that I don’t embrace my father or love my father or appreciate everything that he’s done for the country.”
Paul then clarified his ‘liberty vote’ credentials by criticizing bulk National Security Agency (NSA) metadata collection, saying that “the bulk collection of your phone data and the invasion of your privacy did not stop one terrorist attack. If we want to collect the records of terrorists, let’s do it the old-fashioned way,” by using the fourth amendment.
Paul also slammed the war on drugs, saying it has “disproportionately affected our African American community.”
“Drug use is about equal between white and black,” Paul said, “but three out of four people in prison are black or brown.”
The Kentucky Senator also spoke about the government engaging in overcriminalization, noting “I’ve been a believer in Congress about trying to bring about criminal justice reform.”
Paul was the only candidate qualified to give a detailed and nuanced answer to a question regarding criminal justice.
“I’ve been trying to look for solutions to our criminal justice system,” he noted. “One thing I discovered in Ferguson was that one-third of the budget in the city of Ferguson was getting reaped by civil fines.” He continued, “People were being fined to death. You or I, or many people in this audience, if we get [a] $100 fine, we can survive it. If you’re living on the edge of poverty and you get [a] $100 fine, or your car towed, a lot of times you lose your job.”
Other Paul highlights included Paul’s thoughts on abortion, which he said is “always wrong.”
“I think it would be better the less abortions we have, so the more states that we have that made abortion illegal, the better, as far as trying to save and preserve lives,” Paul said.
Paul also blasted Hillary Clinton, noting that she has taken “millions and millions of dollars from regimes in the middle east that treat women like cattle.”
“she can’t be a champion of women’s rights at the same time she’s got this that is always lurking out there, this type of behavior.” Paul stated.
While the other candidates used their final statements to attack each other, Paul focused on his fiscal policy.
“I’ve gotten to do some incredible things. Got to be on the floor of the Senate. And it has been amazing to me,” Paul said. “But the thing that is most important to me and caused me to run for office is I’m worried about the country and how much debt we’re adding.” he concluded.
Hitler Was A Socialist Liberal
MYTH BUSTED: ACTUALLY, YES, HITLER WAS A SOCIALIST LIBERAL
If you take nothing else from this post, just remember Hitler was a socialist
Louder With Crowder | COURTNEY KIRCHOFF - JANUARY 29, 2016
A favorite tactic employed by leftists is to describe the Nazis as “right wing,” with Adolf Hitler, their leader, as the grand leader of this “right wing” movement. Rewriting history is pretty common for leftists, as their history is littered with injustice (the KKK was founded by Democrats, did you know?). Injustices they claim to fight against today. Awkward.
But thanks to this nifty thing called “history” in combination with “the internet,” we can bust this myth once and for all. Thoroughly. Or until a leftist insists on ignoring it. Then we’ll hold them down and tape their eyes open. Just kidding, that’s only what a leftist would do.
Adolf Hitler wasn’t “right wing.” If you take nothing else from this post, just remember Hitler was a socialist. With terrible facial hair. There’s an easy way to remember it, too. NAZI stands for National Socialist GermanWorkers‘ Party. Associate it with blunt mustaches.
What does National Socialist German Worker’s Party mean? Glad you asked. Is it different from “Democratic socialism”? Only in semantics. A Democracy is mob rule, which is why America is actually a constitutional, representative republic, NOT a democracy. A representative republic protects the minority from the majority, whereas a democracy is the rule of the majority. Leftists get caught up in words, getting tripped up over “National Socialism” as opposed to “Democrat Socialism.” But it’s just that. Semantics. So when Hitler ginned up hatred for the Jews, he could get the mob to agree with him. He could get the mob to believe him. There were no representatives to stop Hitler. He was one man helming the desperation of a majority of people. Spot the difference?
When we examine Hitler’s Nazi Germany through the lens of history, most, if not all of us, think of the Holocaust. In fact the holocaust might be theonly thing we associate with Hitler’s Nazis. We’ve all been told of the Jews being marched off to death camps where they were worked, tortured, then gassed. We’ve also heard of the experiments conducted by Hitler’s Dr. Mengele. All terrible practices which we rightly find horrifying. Unless you’re one of those people who think Planned Parenthood is great.
What we don’t often hear or learn about is how Hitler ruled the rest of Germany, what his domestic policies were for the German people he didn’t march off to death camps. Hitler’s domestic, socialist policies will be the focus of this post. Trigger warning: they’re eerily similar to what American Democrats tout today. Double trigger warning? He initially had the support of the mob of people. So replace many of Hitler’s policies with something you hear from Bernie Sanders…
Brief Historical Background on Hitler…
Germany lost World War I. As such, Germany was in a state of economic and national depression. Not totally unusual for losing a giant war. But the depression was a long, drawn out one (15 years) leaving the German people poor, hungry, desperate, lacking any confidence. Then along came a young man named Adolf Hitler…
Hitler was a powerful and spellbinding speaker who attracted a wide following of Germans desperate for change. He promised the disenchanted a better life and a new and glorious Germany. The Nazis appealed especially to the unemployed, young people, and members of the lower middle class (small store owners, office employees, craftsmen, and farmers).
Human beings may advance technologically, but spiritually? Not so much. In fact I’d contest we rarely learn our lessons when choosing our leaders. Especially charismatic ones. If a man (or woman) can speak eloquently, with confidence, we cannot help but be enthralled. We often follow along, like the town’s children following the pied piper.
Employment for All
After that depression, Hitler made a huge promise to his people: employment for all. How did he do it? Roads and infrastructure:
As Fuhrer, Hitler’s first priority was jobs, or the lack of them. German unemployment had peaked at 6 million due to the Depression devastating the economy. With innovative public works schemes such as the building of autobahns, Hitler put every German back to work. He also advocated schemes such as KdF – Strength Through Joy – which gave workers increased benefits for increased levels of production. This policy was popular and increasingly with the proletariat who had seen their country decimated by the depression…
By putting people back to work and making huge public spending, inflation was bound to happen. However, Hitler kept this under control by not allowing wages to rise with prices. This may have been one unpopular aspect of Hitler’s economic policy but there were many that the people supported.
So Hitler created jobs…through government. While at the same time, he criticized certain segments of the population, demeaning them, blaming the countries woes upon them. The rich, they just ruin everything. Sound familiar?
Big Education
If you haven’t seen it yet, go watch WW2 Surivor’s Account Draws Chilling Similarities between Nazism and Liberalism.
When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.
Public education, where children are at school all day long, with state-funded and state-sponsored curriculum… convinced yet?
Nationalized Healthcare
Also from the WW2 Surivor’s accounting of Nazism:
After Hitler’s health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.
As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80% of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.
Do I really need to write commentary on this one? Really?
Gun Control
Yes, Germany had gun control. It started before Hitler with a national gun registry:
…in the 1920s in the chaos of Germany’s Weimar Republic, which opted for gun registration. Law-abiding persons complied with the law, but the Communists and Nazis committing acts of political violence did not.
Here’s what happened as a result:
In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.” The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group.
Finally, Hitler just took the guns from Jews. An armed citizenry is a dangerous one, after all. Hitler even said this about guns in the hands of the people: “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.”
In Breslau in 1933, Jews were ordered to “surrender [their] weapons forthwith to the police authorities” on the basis that “Jewish citizens have allegedly used their weapons for unlawful attacks on members of the Nazi organization and the police.” This was a regular occurrence all over Germany until the Waffengesetz of 1938, which effectively banned Jewish firearm ownership in all of Germany (though this had been something of a reality for a while, as in 1935 the Gestapo had ordered no weapons permits to be issued to Jews without the approval of the Gestapo itself).
So excuse us Second Amendment supporters when we here Obama, Sanders and Clinton talking about regulating guns more than they’re regulated today. Call us paranoid. We’ll keep our guns.
Abortion
The great sacrament of the left, abortion. You’ll be pleased to know that Hitler was pro-choice:
Dr. Tessa Chelouche goes on to quote Hitler’s 1942 policy statement on the application of abortion to Slavic people, which is chillingly similar to modern Planned Parenthood propaganda:
“In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-German population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman’s health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics.”
Compare the Nazi’s application of abortion to how Planned Parenthood (a government-funded organization) operates. Also read up on Margaret Sanger, who echoed much of Hitler’s sentiment.
Blaming the One Percent Jews
Hitler used the Jews as a scapegoat, blaming them for everything, including economic hardship, even though the Jewish population in Germany was less than one percent…
Jews in Germany made up less than one percent of the German population. But held According to the census of June 1933, the Jewish population of Germany consisted of about 500,000 people. Jews represented less than one percent of the total German population of about 67 million people.
Despite that, Hitler insisted on taking their money…
Nearly 120 billion Reich marks – over £12 billion at the time – was plundered from German Jews by laws and looting.
The official study commissioned by the ministry examined the years from 1933 to 1945. Hans-Peter Ullmann, a Cologne history professor, said the tax authorities under the Nazis actively worked to “destroy Jews financially” and to loot wealth in the nations the Germans occupied.
Even Jews who managed to escape from Germany before the Holocaust had to leave part of their wealth behind in the form of an “exit tax”. Tax laws discriminated against Jews from 1934 onwards.
And boycotting their businesses…
APRIL 1, 1933 NATIONWIDE BOYCOTT OF JEWISH-OWNED BUSINESSES
At 10:00 a.m., members of the Storm Troopers (SA) and SS (the elite guard of the Nazi state) stand in front of Jewish-owned businesses throughout Germany to inform the public that the proprietors of these establishments are Jewish. The word “Jude,” German for “Jew,” is often smeared on store display windows, with a Star of David painted in yellow and black across the doors. Anti-Jewish signs accompany these slogans. In some towns, the SA march through the streets singing anti-Jewish slogans and party songs.
Review: Hitler demeaned the Jews. He blamed the economic and national depression on them. He instituted national boycotts of their business. He then took their money through taxes and outright looting. Hey, maybe they weren’t paying their “fair share.”
The Police State
If you dared oppose the Nazis or Hitler politically, especially with yourwords, you better watch out. The Gestapo was on the hunt for political dissidents, many of whom would simply vanish.
SS chief Heinrich Himmler also turned the regular (nonparty) police forces into an instrument of terror. He helped forge the powerful Secret State Police (Geheime Staatspolizei), or Gestapo; these non-uniformed police used ruthless and cruel methods throughout Germany to identify and arrest political opponents and others who refused to obey laws and policies of the Nazi regime.
Compare the Gestapo with how leftists want to jail people who do not believe in man-made climate change. Compare the Gestapo to the Gaystapo, who fines people who do not agree with gay marriage or the gay lifestyle. Compare the Gestapo to liberal New York, which fines you for not using the right gender pronouns.
In Conclusion
Hitler was a horrible human being. But aside from how he treated the Jews, aside from his monsterous ways, his polcies were anything but “conservative.” He wanted big government, he wanted big eductation, he wanted thought control. He hated political dissidents. He loathed free-speech. He feared an armed citizenry.
So stop saying “Hitler was right-wing.” No, he wasn’t. If anything, he was a full-fledged left-winger. With a horrible mustache.
A favorite tactic employed by leftists is to describe the Nazis as “right wing,” with Adolf Hitler, their leader, as the grand leader of this “right wing” movement. Rewriting history is pretty common for leftists, as their history is littered with injustice (the KKK was founded by Democrats, did you know?). Injustices they claim to fight against today. Awkward.
But thanks to this nifty thing called “history” in combination with “the internet,” we can bust this myth once and for all. Thoroughly. Or until a leftist insists on ignoring it. Then we’ll hold them down and tape their eyes open. Just kidding, that’s only what a leftist would do.
Adolf Hitler wasn’t “right wing.” If you take nothing else from this post, just remember Hitler was a socialist. With terrible facial hair. There’s an easy way to remember it, too. NAZI stands for National Socialist GermanWorkers‘ Party. Associate it with blunt mustaches.
What does National Socialist German Worker’s Party mean? Glad you asked. Is it different from “Democratic socialism”? Only in semantics. A Democracy is mob rule, which is why America is actually a constitutional, representative republic, NOT a democracy. A representative republic protects the minority from the majority, whereas a democracy is the rule of the majority. Leftists get caught up in words, getting tripped up over “National Socialism” as opposed to “Democrat Socialism.” But it’s just that. Semantics. So when Hitler ginned up hatred for the Jews, he could get the mob to agree with him. He could get the mob to believe him. There were no representatives to stop Hitler. He was one man helming the desperation of a majority of people. Spot the difference?
When we examine Hitler’s Nazi Germany through the lens of history, most, if not all of us, think of the Holocaust. In fact the holocaust might be theonly thing we associate with Hitler’s Nazis. We’ve all been told of the Jews being marched off to death camps where they were worked, tortured, then gassed. We’ve also heard of the experiments conducted by Hitler’s Dr. Mengele. All terrible practices which we rightly find horrifying. Unless you’re one of those people who think Planned Parenthood is great.
What we don’t often hear or learn about is how Hitler ruled the rest of Germany, what his domestic policies were for the German people he didn’t march off to death camps. Hitler’s domestic, socialist policies will be the focus of this post. Trigger warning: they’re eerily similar to what American Democrats tout today. Double trigger warning? He initially had the support of the mob of people. So replace many of Hitler’s policies with something you hear from Bernie Sanders…
Brief Historical Background on Hitler…
Germany lost World War I. As such, Germany was in a state of economic and national depression. Not totally unusual for losing a giant war. But the depression was a long, drawn out one (15 years) leaving the German people poor, hungry, desperate, lacking any confidence. Then along came a young man named Adolf Hitler…
Hitler was a powerful and spellbinding speaker who attracted a wide following of Germans desperate for change. He promised the disenchanted a better life and a new and glorious Germany. The Nazis appealed especially to the unemployed, young people, and members of the lower middle class (small store owners, office employees, craftsmen, and farmers).
Human beings may advance technologically, but spiritually? Not so much. In fact I’d contest we rarely learn our lessons when choosing our leaders. Especially charismatic ones. If a man (or woman) can speak eloquently, with confidence, we cannot help but be enthralled. We often follow along, like the town’s children following the pied piper.
Employment for All
After that depression, Hitler made a huge promise to his people: employment for all. How did he do it? Roads and infrastructure:
As Fuhrer, Hitler’s first priority was jobs, or the lack of them. German unemployment had peaked at 6 million due to the Depression devastating the economy. With innovative public works schemes such as the building of autobahns, Hitler put every German back to work. He also advocated schemes such as KdF – Strength Through Joy – which gave workers increased benefits for increased levels of production. This policy was popular and increasingly with the proletariat who had seen their country decimated by the depression…
By putting people back to work and making huge public spending, inflation was bound to happen. However, Hitler kept this under control by not allowing wages to rise with prices. This may have been one unpopular aspect of Hitler’s economic policy but there were many that the people supported.
So Hitler created jobs…through government. While at the same time, he criticized certain segments of the population, demeaning them, blaming the countries woes upon them. The rich, they just ruin everything. Sound familiar?
Big Education
If you haven’t seen it yet, go watch WW2 Surivor’s Account Draws Chilling Similarities between Nazism and Liberalism.
When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.
Public education, where children are at school all day long, with state-funded and state-sponsored curriculum… convinced yet?
Nationalized Healthcare
Also from the WW2 Surivor’s accounting of Nazism:
After Hitler’s health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.
As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80% of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.
Do I really need to write commentary on this one? Really?
Gun Control
Yes, Germany had gun control. It started before Hitler with a national gun registry:
…in the 1920s in the chaos of Germany’s Weimar Republic, which opted for gun registration. Law-abiding persons complied with the law, but the Communists and Nazis committing acts of political violence did not.
Here’s what happened as a result:
In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.” The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group.
Finally, Hitler just took the guns from Jews. An armed citizenry is a dangerous one, after all. Hitler even said this about guns in the hands of the people: “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.”
In Breslau in 1933, Jews were ordered to “surrender [their] weapons forthwith to the police authorities” on the basis that “Jewish citizens have allegedly used their weapons for unlawful attacks on members of the Nazi organization and the police.” This was a regular occurrence all over Germany until the Waffengesetz of 1938, which effectively banned Jewish firearm ownership in all of Germany (though this had been something of a reality for a while, as in 1935 the Gestapo had ordered no weapons permits to be issued to Jews without the approval of the Gestapo itself).
So excuse us Second Amendment supporters when we here Obama, Sanders and Clinton talking about regulating guns more than they’re regulated today. Call us paranoid. We’ll keep our guns.
Abortion
The great sacrament of the left, abortion. You’ll be pleased to know that Hitler was pro-choice:
Dr. Tessa Chelouche goes on to quote Hitler’s 1942 policy statement on the application of abortion to Slavic people, which is chillingly similar to modern Planned Parenthood propaganda:
“In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible. We are not interested in seeing the non-German population multiply…We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on woman’s health… It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics.”
Compare the Nazi’s application of abortion to how Planned Parenthood (a government-funded organization) operates. Also read up on Margaret Sanger, who echoed much of Hitler’s sentiment.
Blaming the One Percent Jews
Hitler used the Jews as a scapegoat, blaming them for everything, including economic hardship, even though the Jewish population in Germany was less than one percent…
Jews in Germany made up less than one percent of the German population. But held According to the census of June 1933, the Jewish population of Germany consisted of about 500,000 people. Jews represented less than one percent of the total German population of about 67 million people.
Despite that, Hitler insisted on taking their money…
Nearly 120 billion Reich marks – over £12 billion at the time – was plundered from German Jews by laws and looting.
The official study commissioned by the ministry examined the years from 1933 to 1945. Hans-Peter Ullmann, a Cologne history professor, said the tax authorities under the Nazis actively worked to “destroy Jews financially” and to loot wealth in the nations the Germans occupied.
Even Jews who managed to escape from Germany before the Holocaust had to leave part of their wealth behind in the form of an “exit tax”. Tax laws discriminated against Jews from 1934 onwards.
And boycotting their businesses…
APRIL 1, 1933 NATIONWIDE BOYCOTT OF JEWISH-OWNED BUSINESSES
At 10:00 a.m., members of the Storm Troopers (SA) and SS (the elite guard of the Nazi state) stand in front of Jewish-owned businesses throughout Germany to inform the public that the proprietors of these establishments are Jewish. The word “Jude,” German for “Jew,” is often smeared on store display windows, with a Star of David painted in yellow and black across the doors. Anti-Jewish signs accompany these slogans. In some towns, the SA march through the streets singing anti-Jewish slogans and party songs.
Review: Hitler demeaned the Jews. He blamed the economic and national depression on them. He instituted national boycotts of their business. He then took their money through taxes and outright looting. Hey, maybe they weren’t paying their “fair share.”
The Police State
If you dared oppose the Nazis or Hitler politically, especially with yourwords, you better watch out. The Gestapo was on the hunt for political dissidents, many of whom would simply vanish.
SS chief Heinrich Himmler also turned the regular (nonparty) police forces into an instrument of terror. He helped forge the powerful Secret State Police (Geheime Staatspolizei), or Gestapo; these non-uniformed police used ruthless and cruel methods throughout Germany to identify and arrest political opponents and others who refused to obey laws and policies of the Nazi regime.
Compare the Gestapo with how leftists want to jail people who do not believe in man-made climate change. Compare the Gestapo to the Gaystapo, who fines people who do not agree with gay marriage or the gay lifestyle. Compare the Gestapo to liberal New York, which fines you for not using the right gender pronouns.
In Conclusion
Hitler was a horrible human being. But aside from how he treated the Jews, aside from his monsterous ways, his polcies were anything but “conservative.” He wanted big government, he wanted big eductation, he wanted thought control. He hated political dissidents. He loathed free-speech. He feared an armed citizenry.
So stop saying “Hitler was right-wing.” No, he wasn’t. If anything, he was a full-fledged left-winger. With a horrible mustache.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
The Market Doesn't Solve Problems; People Do
THE MARKET DOESN’T SOLVE PROBLEMS; PEOPLE DO
Solutions to problems are not offered by the market, they are offered on the market
Louis Rouanet | Mises.org - JANUARY 28, 2016
It is wrongly accepted by many liberals (i.e., libertarians) that most, if not all, social problems can be “solved by the market.” But clearly, the “market” cannot magically solve our problems. Let it be clear that there is no doubt that the best way to have social progress is to have a free market economy. However, free markets are not solutions to problems, per se, but are rather what gives us the opportunity to find our own solutions to our own problems by finding the most valuable way to serve one another. For example, Frédéric Bastiat famously wrote in The Law that: “At whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same thing — the solution of the social problem is in liberty.”
By speaking about the virtues of the market, we tend to forget that markets do not have virtues, only people do. As Murray Rothbard once wrote, “it is overlooked that the ‘market’ is not some sort of living entity making good or bad decisions, but simply a label for individual persons and their voluntary interactions. … The ‘market’ is individual acting.”
The “What Should Government Do?” Bias
During each crisis, politicians and intellectuals systematically presume that “we should do something.” Thus, when liberals emphasize the importance of not violently intervening in the free market order because of the harmful, but yet unseen, consequences of state intervention, they are often accused of favoring inaction. This is a misconception of the liberal argument.
The free market is not superior because it offers solutions. It is superior because its basis is freedom, a freedom that is used by individuals to find new ways for them that are in harmony with the interests of their fellow men. Of course, there are many problems and abuses with the market, but entrepreneurs — if not prevented from entering the marketplace by governments — seek to solve these problems in the pursuit of profits. Through these entrepreneurs, the market is a process that tends to satisfy the most urgent, not-yet-satisfied, needs of the consumers.
To be clear, liberalism — used here to denote the philosophy of laissez-faire — should not be considered as being the utopian opposite of socialism. It is not a magic recipe that guarantees perfect solutions at all times and for all things. Socialists like to imagine that liberals believe the market can cure every ill. In other words, they think liberalism is a mirror reflection of socialism. It is not. True liberalism does not promise perfection, it does not even promise a solution. There will always be problems. Our goal should be to find the best way to improve the situation, not to achieve an ideal world of fantasy.
When a social problem arises and somebody asks a liberal what must be done, he instinctively argues that “we” should free the markets, that “we” should liberalize, or that “we” should commit to deregulation.
But those proposals are not solutions to our problems at all, they are just a necessary step in the process of setting people free to solve problems. By pretending that “the market” is the solution that “we” should adopt, many liberals are victims of the top-down fallacy and deny the polycentric nature of markets. By calling “the market” a solution, we create the illusion that the free market is just another kind of government policy where the rulers offer us a solution. But the real solutions are offered by free individuals, by the free innovator, the free worker, the free capitalist, and the free entrepreneur.
Solutions to problems are not offered by the market, they are offered onthe market. As development economist William Easterly brilliantly writes:
The “what should we do?” industry does not show any signs of going out of business soon. It gives us public intellectuals something to do and it gives politicians something to recommend. Much more positively, it does engage the very welcome idealism of altruists who want to make the world a better place. But the Sustainable Development Goals may be the best demonstration yet that action plans don’t necessarily lead to action, “we” are not necessarily the right ones to act, and that there are alternative routes to progress. Global progress has a lot more to do with the advocacy of the ideal of human freedom than with action plans.
Thus, free markets are a sort of meta-solution. They are the solution to the problem of finding solutions. And it is striking that liberalism might be the only political philosophy that does not have a blueprint for an ideal society.
The “Market Provides Incentives” Myth
As the market is not a solution, the market does not give incentives. Leading institutional economists Acemoglu and Robinson, in their celebrated 2012 book Why Nations Fail, focused mainly on “incentives.” Whereas they — moderately — praise capitalism as an “inclusive institution,” they criticize “extractive institutions” because they “fail to protect property rights or provide incentives for economic activity.” They also write:
As institutions influence behavior and incentives in real life, they forge the success or failure of nations. … Bill Gates, like other legendary figures in the information technology industry … had immense talent and ambition. But ultimately responded to incentives.
There is no doubt that Why Nations Fails is, for the most part, a good book. However, Robinson and Acemoglu’s appraisal of incentives seems to be problematic. First of all, they assume that institutions should give “incentives.” But this is a constructivist fallacy, to use Hayek’s concept. It implicitly supposes that some external force should direct human actions.
Furthermore, it gives too much importance to top-down approaches. Acemoglu, like many other economists, seems to think something — e.g., the government — should incentivize. But what does it mean to say that government, property rights, or institutions give you an incentive? In fact, when wrongly used, the term “incentive” seems to invoke determinism. This is why Acemoglu writes that people “ultimately responded to incentives,” as if a mysterious force called incentives was influencing the choices each one of us make.
Incentives are not something that can be understood as being independent of individuals, they are purely subjective. An incentive can only be understood as the correct discovery of an individual’s own subjective preferences in order to lead him to act as you wish. Therefore incentives are not something you can “give,” it is something you have to discover.
The free market does not “provide” an incentive to work, it lets you work freely. The free market does not “provide” an incentive to invest, it lets you use your savings in order to make a profit by serving the consumer. There is no such thing as a god called “market” that will furnish you some incentive to be productive. However, the market is the best institutional framework to create harmony between the plans of a vast number of individuals — hence the title of Frédéric Bastiat’s magnus opus Economic Harmonies.
Because they are free, different individuals can understand each other’s preferences and exchange. Only in this way do people “give an incentive” to each other in order to commit to exchange and enhance their situation. Therefore, institutions do not provide incentives, people do. The sentence “the market provides incentives” contains the same problem as the sentence “the market is the solution.” It is just not so. The market is merely an institutional framework in which people can make plans freely. As Hayek says in a famous rap song “the question I wonder is who plans for who, do I plan for myself, or I leave it to you? I want plans by the many, not by the few.”
Conclusion
The modern state can be defined as the institution that pretends to have the monopoly of solutions to social problems. But since the state operates like a monopoly, it behaves like a monopoly and therefore exploits the very people it is supposed to serve. In fact, proponents of government action imply that the members of the civil society are not able to find their own solutions nor able to identify what the problems are. But the most competent men do not need the state to answer our problems, they just need freedom. When a problem arises, the right question is not “what can the government or the market do,” the right question is “what can Ido.”
It is wrongly accepted by many liberals (i.e., libertarians) that most, if not all, social problems can be “solved by the market.” But clearly, the “market” cannot magically solve our problems. Let it be clear that there is no doubt that the best way to have social progress is to have a free market economy. However, free markets are not solutions to problems, per se, but are rather what gives us the opportunity to find our own solutions to our own problems by finding the most valuable way to serve one another. For example, Frédéric Bastiat famously wrote in The Law that: “At whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same thing — the solution of the social problem is in liberty.”
By speaking about the virtues of the market, we tend to forget that markets do not have virtues, only people do. As Murray Rothbard once wrote, “it is overlooked that the ‘market’ is not some sort of living entity making good or bad decisions, but simply a label for individual persons and their voluntary interactions. … The ‘market’ is individual acting.”
The “What Should Government Do?” Bias
During each crisis, politicians and intellectuals systematically presume that “we should do something.” Thus, when liberals emphasize the importance of not violently intervening in the free market order because of the harmful, but yet unseen, consequences of state intervention, they are often accused of favoring inaction. This is a misconception of the liberal argument.
The free market is not superior because it offers solutions. It is superior because its basis is freedom, a freedom that is used by individuals to find new ways for them that are in harmony with the interests of their fellow men. Of course, there are many problems and abuses with the market, but entrepreneurs — if not prevented from entering the marketplace by governments — seek to solve these problems in the pursuit of profits. Through these entrepreneurs, the market is a process that tends to satisfy the most urgent, not-yet-satisfied, needs of the consumers.
To be clear, liberalism — used here to denote the philosophy of laissez-faire — should not be considered as being the utopian opposite of socialism. It is not a magic recipe that guarantees perfect solutions at all times and for all things. Socialists like to imagine that liberals believe the market can cure every ill. In other words, they think liberalism is a mirror reflection of socialism. It is not. True liberalism does not promise perfection, it does not even promise a solution. There will always be problems. Our goal should be to find the best way to improve the situation, not to achieve an ideal world of fantasy.
When a social problem arises and somebody asks a liberal what must be done, he instinctively argues that “we” should free the markets, that “we” should liberalize, or that “we” should commit to deregulation.
But those proposals are not solutions to our problems at all, they are just a necessary step in the process of setting people free to solve problems. By pretending that “the market” is the solution that “we” should adopt, many liberals are victims of the top-down fallacy and deny the polycentric nature of markets. By calling “the market” a solution, we create the illusion that the free market is just another kind of government policy where the rulers offer us a solution. But the real solutions are offered by free individuals, by the free innovator, the free worker, the free capitalist, and the free entrepreneur.
Solutions to problems are not offered by the market, they are offered onthe market. As development economist William Easterly brilliantly writes:
The “what should we do?” industry does not show any signs of going out of business soon. It gives us public intellectuals something to do and it gives politicians something to recommend. Much more positively, it does engage the very welcome idealism of altruists who want to make the world a better place. But the Sustainable Development Goals may be the best demonstration yet that action plans don’t necessarily lead to action, “we” are not necessarily the right ones to act, and that there are alternative routes to progress. Global progress has a lot more to do with the advocacy of the ideal of human freedom than with action plans.
Thus, free markets are a sort of meta-solution. They are the solution to the problem of finding solutions. And it is striking that liberalism might be the only political philosophy that does not have a blueprint for an ideal society.
The “Market Provides Incentives” Myth
As the market is not a solution, the market does not give incentives. Leading institutional economists Acemoglu and Robinson, in their celebrated 2012 book Why Nations Fail, focused mainly on “incentives.” Whereas they — moderately — praise capitalism as an “inclusive institution,” they criticize “extractive institutions” because they “fail to protect property rights or provide incentives for economic activity.” They also write:
As institutions influence behavior and incentives in real life, they forge the success or failure of nations. … Bill Gates, like other legendary figures in the information technology industry … had immense talent and ambition. But ultimately responded to incentives.
There is no doubt that Why Nations Fails is, for the most part, a good book. However, Robinson and Acemoglu’s appraisal of incentives seems to be problematic. First of all, they assume that institutions should give “incentives.” But this is a constructivist fallacy, to use Hayek’s concept. It implicitly supposes that some external force should direct human actions.
Furthermore, it gives too much importance to top-down approaches. Acemoglu, like many other economists, seems to think something — e.g., the government — should incentivize. But what does it mean to say that government, property rights, or institutions give you an incentive? In fact, when wrongly used, the term “incentive” seems to invoke determinism. This is why Acemoglu writes that people “ultimately responded to incentives,” as if a mysterious force called incentives was influencing the choices each one of us make.
Incentives are not something that can be understood as being independent of individuals, they are purely subjective. An incentive can only be understood as the correct discovery of an individual’s own subjective preferences in order to lead him to act as you wish. Therefore incentives are not something you can “give,” it is something you have to discover.
The free market does not “provide” an incentive to work, it lets you work freely. The free market does not “provide” an incentive to invest, it lets you use your savings in order to make a profit by serving the consumer. There is no such thing as a god called “market” that will furnish you some incentive to be productive. However, the market is the best institutional framework to create harmony between the plans of a vast number of individuals — hence the title of Frédéric Bastiat’s magnus opus Economic Harmonies.
Because they are free, different individuals can understand each other’s preferences and exchange. Only in this way do people “give an incentive” to each other in order to commit to exchange and enhance their situation. Therefore, institutions do not provide incentives, people do. The sentence “the market provides incentives” contains the same problem as the sentence “the market is the solution.” It is just not so. The market is merely an institutional framework in which people can make plans freely. As Hayek says in a famous rap song “the question I wonder is who plans for who, do I plan for myself, or I leave it to you? I want plans by the many, not by the few.”
Conclusion
The modern state can be defined as the institution that pretends to have the monopoly of solutions to social problems. But since the state operates like a monopoly, it behaves like a monopoly and therefore exploits the very people it is supposed to serve. In fact, proponents of government action imply that the members of the civil society are not able to find their own solutions nor able to identify what the problems are. But the most competent men do not need the state to answer our problems, they just need freedom. When a problem arises, the right question is not “what can the government or the market do,” the right question is “what can Ido.”
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Americans Hate The U.S. Government More Than Ever
Americans hate the U.S. government more than ever
Federal government has joined the ranks of the bottom-of-the-barrel industries
Federal government has joined the ranks of the bottom-of-the-barrel industries
CBS News - JANUARY 26, 2016
A handful of industries are those "love to hate" types of businesses, such as cable-television companies and Internet service providers.
The federal government has joined the ranks of the bottom-of-the-barrel industries, according to a new survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Americans' satisfaction level in dealing with federal agencies --everything from Treasury to Homeland Security -- has fallen for a third consecutive year, reaching an eight-year low.
The declines represent some backsliding for the U.S. government, given that satisfaction saw some improvement in 2011 and 2012, which may have been the result of spending in the wake of the recession. While the comparison with private enterprise isn't apples to apples given the nature of government services, the findings have some implications for bureaucrats.
"Satisfaction is linked to broader goals in the political system that it wants to maximize, like confidence and trust," said Forrest Morgeson, director of research at the ACSI. "It's much more difficult to govern if the entire population dislikes you."
Although satisfaction is down for the federal government as a whole, the research found that consumers have vastly different views of specific agencies. The department that received the highest score was the Department of the Interior, which received a ranking of 75 points. That could reflect Americans' positive feelings toward national parks, which many visit while on vacation, Morgeson noted.
The lowest-ranked department may not be much of a surprise to taxpayers: Treasury, which received a score of just 55 points, or 20 points below the Department of the Interior. Treasury, as a reminder, oversees the IRS.
"If you think about the most contacted government agency, it'll be the IRS," Morgeson said. "If you think about what the IRS does, which is take money from citizens, you'll have low satisfaction."
Despite the overall lower score for the government, there were some signs of improvement in citizens' experiences, with the feds earning improved scores in customer service and information, which means many citizens believe agencies are delivering information in a clearer way than a year ago.
The government report is based on surveys with more than 2,000 people who were surveyed late last year.
The federal government has joined the ranks of the bottom-of-the-barrel industries, according to a new survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Americans' satisfaction level in dealing with federal agencies --everything from Treasury to Homeland Security -- has fallen for a third consecutive year, reaching an eight-year low.
The declines represent some backsliding for the U.S. government, given that satisfaction saw some improvement in 2011 and 2012, which may have been the result of spending in the wake of the recession. While the comparison with private enterprise isn't apples to apples given the nature of government services, the findings have some implications for bureaucrats.
"Satisfaction is linked to broader goals in the political system that it wants to maximize, like confidence and trust," said Forrest Morgeson, director of research at the ACSI. "It's much more difficult to govern if the entire population dislikes you."
Although satisfaction is down for the federal government as a whole, the research found that consumers have vastly different views of specific agencies. The department that received the highest score was the Department of the Interior, which received a ranking of 75 points. That could reflect Americans' positive feelings toward national parks, which many visit while on vacation, Morgeson noted.
The lowest-ranked department may not be much of a surprise to taxpayers: Treasury, which received a score of just 55 points, or 20 points below the Department of the Interior. Treasury, as a reminder, oversees the IRS.
"If you think about the most contacted government agency, it'll be the IRS," Morgeson said. "If you think about what the IRS does, which is take money from citizens, you'll have low satisfaction."
Despite the overall lower score for the government, there were some signs of improvement in citizens' experiences, with the feds earning improved scores in customer service and information, which means many citizens believe agencies are delivering information in a clearer way than a year ago.
The government report is based on surveys with more than 2,000 people who were surveyed late last year.
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Congress Is Writing The President A Blank Check For War
CONGRESS IS WRITING THE PRESIDENT A BLANK CHECK FOR WAR
The legislation makes the unconstitutional Iraq War authorization of 2002 look like a walk in the park
Ron Paul - JANUARY 25, 2016
While the Washington snowstorm dominated news coverage this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was operating behind the scenes to rush through the Senate what may be the most massive transfer of power from the Legislative to the Executive branch in our history. The senior Senator from Kentucky is scheming, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, to bypass normal Senate procedure to fast-track legislation to grant the president the authority to wage unlimited war for as long as he or his successors may wish.
The legislation makes the unconstitutional Iraq War authorization of 2002 look like a walk in the park. It will allow this president and future presidents to wage war against ISIS without restrictions on time, geographic scope, or the use of ground troops. It is a completely open-ended authorization for the president to use the military as he wishes for as long as he (or she) wishes. Even President Obama has expressed concern over how willing Congress is to hand him unlimited power to wage war.
President Obama has already far surpassed even his predecessor, George W. Bush, in taking the country to war without even the fig leaf of an authorization. In 2011 the president invaded Libya, overthrew its government, and oversaw the assassination of its leader, without even bothering to ask for Congressional approval. Instead of impeachment, which he deserved for the disastrous Libya invasion, Congress said nothing. House Republicans only managed to bring the subject up when they thought they might gain political points exploiting the killing of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi.
It is becoming more clear that Washington plans to expand its war in the Middle East. Last week the media reported that the US military had taken over an air base in eastern Syria, and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that the US would send in the 101st Airborne Division to retake Mosul in Iraq and to attack ISIS headquarters in Raqqa, Syria. Then on Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden said that if the upcoming peace talks in Geneva are not successful, the US is prepared for a massive military intervention in Syria. Such an action would likely place the US military face to face with the Russian military, whose assistance was requested by the Syrian government. In contrast, we must remember that the US military is operating in Syria in violation of international law.
The prospects of such an escalation are not all that far-fetched. At the insistence of Saudi Arabia and with US backing, the representatives of the Syrian opposition at the Geneva peace talks will include members of the Army of Islam, which has fought with al-Qaeda in Syria. Does anyone expect these kinds of people to compromise? Isn’t al-Qaeda supposed to be our enemy?
The purpose of the Legislative branch of our government is to restrict the Executive branch’s power. The Founders understood that an all-powerful king who could wage war at will was the greatest threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is why they created a people’s branch, the Congress, to prevent the emergence of an all-powerful autocrat to drag the country to endless war. Sadly, Congress is surrendering its power to declare war.
Let’s be clear: If Senate Majority Leader McConnell succeeds in passing this open-ended war authorization, the US Constitution will be all but a dead letter.
While the Washington snowstorm dominated news coverage this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was operating behind the scenes to rush through the Senate what may be the most massive transfer of power from the Legislative to the Executive branch in our history. The senior Senator from Kentucky is scheming, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, to bypass normal Senate procedure to fast-track legislation to grant the president the authority to wage unlimited war for as long as he or his successors may wish.
The legislation makes the unconstitutional Iraq War authorization of 2002 look like a walk in the park. It will allow this president and future presidents to wage war against ISIS without restrictions on time, geographic scope, or the use of ground troops. It is a completely open-ended authorization for the president to use the military as he wishes for as long as he (or she) wishes. Even President Obama has expressed concern over how willing Congress is to hand him unlimited power to wage war.
President Obama has already far surpassed even his predecessor, George W. Bush, in taking the country to war without even the fig leaf of an authorization. In 2011 the president invaded Libya, overthrew its government, and oversaw the assassination of its leader, without even bothering to ask for Congressional approval. Instead of impeachment, which he deserved for the disastrous Libya invasion, Congress said nothing. House Republicans only managed to bring the subject up when they thought they might gain political points exploiting the killing of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi.
It is becoming more clear that Washington plans to expand its war in the Middle East. Last week the media reported that the US military had taken over an air base in eastern Syria, and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that the US would send in the 101st Airborne Division to retake Mosul in Iraq and to attack ISIS headquarters in Raqqa, Syria. Then on Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden said that if the upcoming peace talks in Geneva are not successful, the US is prepared for a massive military intervention in Syria. Such an action would likely place the US military face to face with the Russian military, whose assistance was requested by the Syrian government. In contrast, we must remember that the US military is operating in Syria in violation of international law.
The prospects of such an escalation are not all that far-fetched. At the insistence of Saudi Arabia and with US backing, the representatives of the Syrian opposition at the Geneva peace talks will include members of the Army of Islam, which has fought with al-Qaeda in Syria. Does anyone expect these kinds of people to compromise? Isn’t al-Qaeda supposed to be our enemy?
The purpose of the Legislative branch of our government is to restrict the Executive branch’s power. The Founders understood that an all-powerful king who could wage war at will was the greatest threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is why they created a people’s branch, the Congress, to prevent the emergence of an all-powerful autocrat to drag the country to endless war. Sadly, Congress is surrendering its power to declare war.
Let’s be clear: If Senate Majority Leader McConnell succeeds in passing this open-ended war authorization, the US Constitution will be all but a dead letter.
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Martial Law Bill Sneaked Through By Senate
BREAKING: MILITARY MARTIAL LAW BILL SNEAKED THROUGH BY SENATE
Bill gives Obama power to deploy military anywhere - including on U.S. soil
Kit Daniels | Infowars.com - JANUARY 22, 2016
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is attempting to fast track a “war powers” bill that will allow President Obama nearly unlimited power to deploy the military anywhere in the world for any length of time – including on U.S. soil.
“The Authorization for Use of Military Force put forward by McConnell would not restrict the president’s use of ground troops, nor have any limits related to time or geography,” Defense One reported.In other words, the authorization allows the president to deploy the military anywhere at his discretion – both foreign and domestic – for as long as he wants.
Several senators, including Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, were surprised by McConnell’s decision to fast-track the bill after a year of deep in-fighting over similar measures in the Senate.
“He did?” he asked the National Journal on Thursday morning when reporters informed him about the bill.
Even some Senate Democrats have an issue with a new authorization without geographical restrictions placed on the president.
“I’m for the Congress voting on an AUMF; of course it depends what the AUMF looks like,” Sen. Robert Menendez said Thursday. “I don’t want a blank check.”
It’s also interesting to note McConnell is trying to push through the bill on a Friday as an unprecedented blizzard slams the northeast U.S., including Washington, D.C.
Bill gives Obama power to deploy military anywhere - including on U.S. soil
Kit Daniels | Infowars.com - JANUARY 22, 2016
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is attempting to fast track a “war powers” bill that will allow President Obama nearly unlimited power to deploy the military anywhere in the world for any length of time – including on U.S. soil.
“The Authorization for Use of Military Force put forward by McConnell would not restrict the president’s use of ground troops, nor have any limits related to time or geography,” Defense One reported.In other words, the authorization allows the president to deploy the military anywhere at his discretion – both foreign and domestic – for as long as he wants.
Several senators, including Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, were surprised by McConnell’s decision to fast-track the bill after a year of deep in-fighting over similar measures in the Senate.
“He did?” he asked the National Journal on Thursday morning when reporters informed him about the bill.
Even some Senate Democrats have an issue with a new authorization without geographical restrictions placed on the president.
“I’m for the Congress voting on an AUMF; of course it depends what the AUMF looks like,” Sen. Robert Menendez said Thursday. “I don’t want a blank check.”
It’s also interesting to note McConnell is trying to push through the bill on a Friday as an unprecedented blizzard slams the northeast U.S., including Washington, D.C.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
How To Get Pregnant Naturally
HOW TO GET PREGNANT NATURALLY
Eliminating toxins from your environment is key
The Alex Jones Show - JANUARY 20, 2016
Alex Jones and Dr. Edward Group discuss why fertility is in free-fall and what you can do to fight back against it.
The Alex Jones Show - JANUARY 20, 2016
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
The War On Cash Leads To Total Financial Surveillance
THE WAR ON CASH LEADS TO TOTAL FINANCIAL SURVEILLANCE
The desire for control is ultimately driving factor behind the war on cash in the United States and in Europe
Paul-Martin Foss | Ron Paul Liberty Report - JANUARY 20, 2016 0 Comments
Inflation-racked Argentina is preparing to issue larger-denomination banknotes to alleviate critical shortages of cash in the country. What a difference between the Argentine government and most other Western governments, which seek to crack down on the use of cash.
Argentina’s 100 peso note is equivalent to a little over $7, and with inflation in Argentina having run in double digits for years, the 100 peso note is becoming too small a denomination to facilitate cash transactions. Therefore the Argentine central bank will be issuing 200 and 500 peso notes this year, and a 1,000 peso note next year. While the devaluation of the peso and the issuance of larger denomination banknotes conjures up images of Weimar hyperinflation, it is refreshing that the Argentine authorities are at least trying to facilitate cash transactions rather than crack down on them.
Compare this to the United States, where the Secretary of the Treasury is required, under Section 16 of the Federal Reserve Act, to print Federal Reserve Notes in denominations of up to $10,000:
In order to furnish suitable notes for circulation as Federal reserve notes, the Secretary of the Treasury shall cause plates and dies to be engraved in the best manner to guard against counterfeits and fraudulent alterations, and shall have printed therefrom and numbered such quantities of such notes of the denominations of $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500, $1,000 $5,000, $10,000 as may be required to supply the Federal reserve banks. Such notes shall be in form and tenor as directed by the Secretary of the Treasury under the provisions of this Act and shall bear the distinctive numbers of the several Federal reserve banks through which they are issued.
In practice, however, the Treasury has not printed notes above $100 since 1945, and the Federal Reserve has not issued notes above $100 since 1969. The ostensible discontinuation of those notes was due to lack of use. However, now that inflation has eroded the value of Federal Reserve notes it makes more sense than ever to issue larger-denomination notes. The $20 Federal Reserve Notes that we receive at ATMs today buys the equivalent of what $3 would have purchased in 1969. And the $100 bill in 1969 would buy the equivalent of $646 today. It would make a lot of sense to begin printing $500 and $1000 bills again.
But due to the war on drugs and the war on cash, US authorities don’t want to issue bills larger than $100, as they claim it would only facilitate money laundering. By maintaining its policy of not printing notes larger than $100 and by increasing the reporting requirements on cash transactions, the Treasury has pushed more and more financial transactions into the electronic arena, where they are easier to monitor and control. The desire for control is ultimately driving factor behind the war on cash in the United States and in Europe. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see Argentina’s new government immediately enacting policies that respond to consumer demands for cash. Let’s hope that President Macri is able to bring the central bank under control so that Argentina won’t need to issue any larger banknotes in the future.
Inflation-racked Argentina is preparing to issue larger-denomination banknotes to alleviate critical shortages of cash in the country. What a difference between the Argentine government and most other Western governments, which seek to crack down on the use of cash.
Argentina’s 100 peso note is equivalent to a little over $7, and with inflation in Argentina having run in double digits for years, the 100 peso note is becoming too small a denomination to facilitate cash transactions. Therefore the Argentine central bank will be issuing 200 and 500 peso notes this year, and a 1,000 peso note next year. While the devaluation of the peso and the issuance of larger denomination banknotes conjures up images of Weimar hyperinflation, it is refreshing that the Argentine authorities are at least trying to facilitate cash transactions rather than crack down on them.
Compare this to the United States, where the Secretary of the Treasury is required, under Section 16 of the Federal Reserve Act, to print Federal Reserve Notes in denominations of up to $10,000:
In order to furnish suitable notes for circulation as Federal reserve notes, the Secretary of the Treasury shall cause plates and dies to be engraved in the best manner to guard against counterfeits and fraudulent alterations, and shall have printed therefrom and numbered such quantities of such notes of the denominations of $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500, $1,000 $5,000, $10,000 as may be required to supply the Federal reserve banks. Such notes shall be in form and tenor as directed by the Secretary of the Treasury under the provisions of this Act and shall bear the distinctive numbers of the several Federal reserve banks through which they are issued.
In practice, however, the Treasury has not printed notes above $100 since 1945, and the Federal Reserve has not issued notes above $100 since 1969. The ostensible discontinuation of those notes was due to lack of use. However, now that inflation has eroded the value of Federal Reserve notes it makes more sense than ever to issue larger-denomination notes. The $20 Federal Reserve Notes that we receive at ATMs today buys the equivalent of what $3 would have purchased in 1969. And the $100 bill in 1969 would buy the equivalent of $646 today. It would make a lot of sense to begin printing $500 and $1000 bills again.
But due to the war on drugs and the war on cash, US authorities don’t want to issue bills larger than $100, as they claim it would only facilitate money laundering. By maintaining its policy of not printing notes larger than $100 and by increasing the reporting requirements on cash transactions, the Treasury has pushed more and more financial transactions into the electronic arena, where they are easier to monitor and control. The desire for control is ultimately driving factor behind the war on cash in the United States and in Europe. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see Argentina’s new government immediately enacting policies that respond to consumer demands for cash. Let’s hope that President Macri is able to bring the central bank under control so that Argentina won’t need to issue any larger banknotes in the future.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Has The Stage Been Set For Authoritarianism?
HAS THE STAGE BEEN SET FOR AUTHORITARIANISM?
It is the ideas of liberty that are new
Ron Paul | Ron Paul Liberty Report - JANUARY 19, 2016
While I’m very optimistic about the prospects for liberty, we live in dangerous times. It almost appears like the stage has been set for authoritarianism in America. Dictatorial types flourish in an environment of fear, and right now Americans are fearful for their economic futures, and (thanks to 24 hrs of propaganda) of numerous hobgoblins from overseas.
Authoritarianism is nothing new in mankind’s history. Rather it is the ideas of liberty that are new. Freedom tends to appear in short and very powerful bursts, with America’s founding years qualifying as one of those bursts. But tyranny and power do not sleep. Like weeds in a garden, they reappear to strangle everything in their path.
The stage seems to be set, not only for an authoritarian, but for a complete takeover by crony special interests as well. With a strong executive, motivated interests (like the military-industrial-complex) will cozy themselves up with the crown to an even greater degree.
Those of us that believe in free markets and liberty must contend with this environment. We cannot run away, nor shirk our responsibility to battle it intellectually. We must confront it head on, and with an expectation of victory.
The great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises had to face the darkness of fascism and communism that was closing in on civilization. Yet he continued to speak and write the truth despite the odds that were staring him in the face. He left this wonderful quote that can help inspire us as dark clouds loom once again:
“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interest of everyone hangs on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.”
We can turn this thing around.
The ideas of liberty are percolating beneath the surface. Washington DC and the media will never report it, nor do we need them to. We’re extremely fortunate to have tools at our disposal that run circles around the gatekeepers of public opinion.
Our number one task is to use them with passion.
While I’m very optimistic about the prospects for liberty, we live in dangerous times. It almost appears like the stage has been set for authoritarianism in America. Dictatorial types flourish in an environment of fear, and right now Americans are fearful for their economic futures, and (thanks to 24 hrs of propaganda) of numerous hobgoblins from overseas.
Authoritarianism is nothing new in mankind’s history. Rather it is the ideas of liberty that are new. Freedom tends to appear in short and very powerful bursts, with America’s founding years qualifying as one of those bursts. But tyranny and power do not sleep. Like weeds in a garden, they reappear to strangle everything in their path.
The stage seems to be set, not only for an authoritarian, but for a complete takeover by crony special interests as well. With a strong executive, motivated interests (like the military-industrial-complex) will cozy themselves up with the crown to an even greater degree.
Those of us that believe in free markets and liberty must contend with this environment. We cannot run away, nor shirk our responsibility to battle it intellectually. We must confront it head on, and with an expectation of victory.
The great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises had to face the darkness of fascism and communism that was closing in on civilization. Yet he continued to speak and write the truth despite the odds that were staring him in the face. He left this wonderful quote that can help inspire us as dark clouds loom once again:
“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interest of everyone hangs on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.”
We can turn this thing around.
The ideas of liberty are percolating beneath the surface. Washington DC and the media will never report it, nor do we need them to. We’re extremely fortunate to have tools at our disposal that run circles around the gatekeepers of public opinion.
Our number one task is to use them with passion.
Contamination Between GM And Non-GM Crops Are A Problem
USDA STUDY CONFIRMS GM CONTAMINATION BETWEEN GM AND NON-GM CROPS
A problem experienced by many farmers
Christina Sarich | Infowars.com - JANUARY 18, 2016
A USDA study has confirmed the agency’s own original forecast that GM alfalfa would promiscuously contaminate the non-GM crop. This news follows years of contamination incidents, leading to lawsuits between farmers growing organic, non-GM crops and farmers growing genetically modified crops.
The study involved Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa, which, like most GE crops in the U.S., is engineered to survive copious amounts of Roundup, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide. Monsanto’s GE alfalfa has essentially ‘gone wild,’ causing American alfalfa growers millions in lost income.
USDA scientist Stephanie Greene and a team scoured California, Idaho, and Washington for feral (wild) alfalfa strands, and found that one-quarter (27%) of them contained transgenic alfalfa – plants that tested positive for the Roundup Ready gene.
They believe that most of these wild populations likely popped up from seeds spilled during alfalfa production or transport. The team also found evidence that the trans genes were being spread by bees.
As the Center for Food Safety Explains:
“What makes the high (27%) GE contamination rate found in this study so remarkable is how little GE alfalfa produced it. USDA first approved Roundup Ready alfalfa in 2005, and it occupied just 1% of national alfalfa acreage in 2006. A federal court prohibited new plantings starting in 2007, but allowed what had already been planted to remain in the ground (an alfalfa stand is typically grown for about five years).
Because this study was conducted just a few months after the re-approval of GE alfalfa in 2011, all of the feral GE alfalfa the researchers detected arose from the comparatively few fields planted in 2005 and 2006. There is much more GE alfalfa being grown now (Monsanto says 30% of alfalfa seed sold is GE). So there is likely much more feral GE alfalfa today than is suggested by this study.”
The USDA study also contradicts the USDA’s own lies about “co-existence.” The USDA says that co-existence between non-GM and GM crops is possible, when in fact, there is no truth to that claim.
This article originally appeared at Natural Society.
A USDA study has confirmed the agency’s own original forecast that GM alfalfa would promiscuously contaminate the non-GM crop. This news follows years of contamination incidents, leading to lawsuits between farmers growing organic, non-GM crops and farmers growing genetically modified crops.
The study involved Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa, which, like most GE crops in the U.S., is engineered to survive copious amounts of Roundup, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide. Monsanto’s GE alfalfa has essentially ‘gone wild,’ causing American alfalfa growers millions in lost income.
USDA scientist Stephanie Greene and a team scoured California, Idaho, and Washington for feral (wild) alfalfa strands, and found that one-quarter (27%) of them contained transgenic alfalfa – plants that tested positive for the Roundup Ready gene.
They believe that most of these wild populations likely popped up from seeds spilled during alfalfa production or transport. The team also found evidence that the trans genes were being spread by bees.
As the Center for Food Safety Explains:
“What makes the high (27%) GE contamination rate found in this study so remarkable is how little GE alfalfa produced it. USDA first approved Roundup Ready alfalfa in 2005, and it occupied just 1% of national alfalfa acreage in 2006. A federal court prohibited new plantings starting in 2007, but allowed what had already been planted to remain in the ground (an alfalfa stand is typically grown for about five years).
Because this study was conducted just a few months after the re-approval of GE alfalfa in 2011, all of the feral GE alfalfa the researchers detected arose from the comparatively few fields planted in 2005 and 2006. There is much more GE alfalfa being grown now (Monsanto says 30% of alfalfa seed sold is GE). So there is likely much more feral GE alfalfa today than is suggested by this study.”
The USDA study also contradicts the USDA’s own lies about “co-existence.” The USDA says that co-existence between non-GM and GM crops is possible, when in fact, there is no truth to that claim.
This article originally appeared at Natural Society.
Friday, January 15, 2016
Christian Persecution Reaches Historic High
Christian Persecution Reaches Global Historic High, Thanks to Rise of Radical Islam
by DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDS14 Jan 2016
Christian persecution is at an historic high thanks to global rise of religious fundamentalism, most notably by radical Islam, Christian charity Open Doors has found. Persecution has seen the biggest rise in countries such as Pakistan and Eritrea where radical Islam is on the rise, but North Korea still tops the list with its systematic oppression of Christians.
More than 100 million Christians are being persecuted globally, according to the 2016 Open Doors World Watch List, and more than 80 percent of that persecution is down to religious fundamentalism of some kind.
At least 7,000 Christians have been killed for their faith in the last year alone, up from 4,000 in 2014, the report notes. But it admits that the figure is likely to be a significant underestimate as it does not include murders in Iraq, Syria and North Korea, where violent persecution of Christians has become the norm, as accurate records do not exist in those countries.
North Korea, where citizens are required to revere their leader, remains the most dangerous place on earth to be a Christian. It is estimated that around 70,000 Christians are currently imprisoned in labour camps, while others who worship in secret risk death if they are discovered.
An Open Doors partner working with twelve families in North Korea reported: “They have only one Bible in the whole group, and each family must take turns to borrow it. They hide the Bible in a secret place. Once a month, three families get together and worship together; once a year all believers get together in a mountain valley to worship and have secret fellowship.”
However, it is in sub-Saharan Africa where the greatest numbers of Christians are killed for their faith, thanks to the rapid rise of radical Islam. In Nigeria, where Boko Haram is carrying out the systematic slaughter of Christians, more than 4,000 Christians have been killed in the last year, and displaced a further 2.1 million people internally. At least 198 church buildings were also targeted.
The report tracks the persecution of Christians in five different areas: private life, family life, community life, national life and church life, as well as covering violence such as rapes, killings and church burnings.
Director of Research Dr. Ronald Boyd-MacMillan explains: “It is possible for persecution to be so intense in all areas of life that Christians fear to witness at all, and so you may find very low levels of violence as a result since incidents of persecution often result from acts of witness.”
The countries that show where this squeeze was most intensive were Somalia, North Korea, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Maldives, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria; in all of these (excluding North Korea) radical Islam is on the rise.
One church leader from Syria told the authors: “This morning my village was attacked for the third time within a year.
“Either we take up arms and fight, knowing we may die, or we flee, knowing we may never return.”
Another Syrian church leader told an international Christian conference “Don’t make it easy for us to leave, because we want to show we are part of the silent majority in the Middle East who wants peace.”
The highest levels of violence directed against Christians were in Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, Central African Republic, Egypt, Mexico, Sudan and India, illustrating the global nature of violent Christian persecution.
Lisa Pearce, CEO of Open Doors said: “The persecution of Christians is getting worse, in every region in which we work – and it’s getting worse fast. The trend is stark, as are the consequences for real people.”
The scale of that rapid rise can be seen in the points system used to compile the report. While the lowest ranking country in 2013 had 35 points, this year’s lowest ranking country had 53 points – an increase of more than 50 per cent.
The Prime Minister David Cameron has spoken of the need to protect vulnerable Christians, saying: “Standing up for religious freedom is a priority for my Government. We are committed to promoting and protecting the right to freedom of religion or belief as one of the foundations of human rights. No matter what faith we follow, charity, compassion, responsibility and forgiveness are values which speak to us all.”
However, Pearce has called on the British government to do much more in taking a pro-active stance in tackling Christian persecution. “We should not expect [a] change unless we are part of changing the situation,” she said.
“As a key voice within the international community and a generous provider of aid to a number of the countries on the 2016 World Watch List, I urge our government to do everything possible within their spheres of influence to affect what happens next. We will not get these days back.”
by DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDS14 Jan 2016
Christian persecution is at an historic high thanks to global rise of religious fundamentalism, most notably by radical Islam, Christian charity Open Doors has found. Persecution has seen the biggest rise in countries such as Pakistan and Eritrea where radical Islam is on the rise, but North Korea still tops the list with its systematic oppression of Christians.
More than 100 million Christians are being persecuted globally, according to the 2016 Open Doors World Watch List, and more than 80 percent of that persecution is down to religious fundamentalism of some kind.
At least 7,000 Christians have been killed for their faith in the last year alone, up from 4,000 in 2014, the report notes. But it admits that the figure is likely to be a significant underestimate as it does not include murders in Iraq, Syria and North Korea, where violent persecution of Christians has become the norm, as accurate records do not exist in those countries.
North Korea, where citizens are required to revere their leader, remains the most dangerous place on earth to be a Christian. It is estimated that around 70,000 Christians are currently imprisoned in labour camps, while others who worship in secret risk death if they are discovered.
An Open Doors partner working with twelve families in North Korea reported: “They have only one Bible in the whole group, and each family must take turns to borrow it. They hide the Bible in a secret place. Once a month, three families get together and worship together; once a year all believers get together in a mountain valley to worship and have secret fellowship.”
However, it is in sub-Saharan Africa where the greatest numbers of Christians are killed for their faith, thanks to the rapid rise of radical Islam. In Nigeria, where Boko Haram is carrying out the systematic slaughter of Christians, more than 4,000 Christians have been killed in the last year, and displaced a further 2.1 million people internally. At least 198 church buildings were also targeted.
The report tracks the persecution of Christians in five different areas: private life, family life, community life, national life and church life, as well as covering violence such as rapes, killings and church burnings.
Director of Research Dr. Ronald Boyd-MacMillan explains: “It is possible for persecution to be so intense in all areas of life that Christians fear to witness at all, and so you may find very low levels of violence as a result since incidents of persecution often result from acts of witness.”
The countries that show where this squeeze was most intensive were Somalia, North Korea, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Maldives, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria; in all of these (excluding North Korea) radical Islam is on the rise.
One church leader from Syria told the authors: “This morning my village was attacked for the third time within a year.
“Either we take up arms and fight, knowing we may die, or we flee, knowing we may never return.”
Another Syrian church leader told an international Christian conference “Don’t make it easy for us to leave, because we want to show we are part of the silent majority in the Middle East who wants peace.”
The highest levels of violence directed against Christians were in Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, Central African Republic, Egypt, Mexico, Sudan and India, illustrating the global nature of violent Christian persecution.
Lisa Pearce, CEO of Open Doors said: “The persecution of Christians is getting worse, in every region in which we work – and it’s getting worse fast. The trend is stark, as are the consequences for real people.”
The scale of that rapid rise can be seen in the points system used to compile the report. While the lowest ranking country in 2013 had 35 points, this year’s lowest ranking country had 53 points – an increase of more than 50 per cent.
The Prime Minister David Cameron has spoken of the need to protect vulnerable Christians, saying: “Standing up for religious freedom is a priority for my Government. We are committed to promoting and protecting the right to freedom of religion or belief as one of the foundations of human rights. No matter what faith we follow, charity, compassion, responsibility and forgiveness are values which speak to us all.”
However, Pearce has called on the British government to do much more in taking a pro-active stance in tackling Christian persecution. “We should not expect [a] change unless we are part of changing the situation,” she said.
“As a key voice within the international community and a generous provider of aid to a number of the countries on the 2016 World Watch List, I urge our government to do everything possible within their spheres of influence to affect what happens next. We will not get these days back.”
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Ron Paul Speaks Out On Oregon Standoff
RON PAUL SPEAKS OUT ON OREGON STANDOFF
Sadly, but not surprisingly, some progressives who normally support civil liberties have called for the government to use deadly force to end the occupation at the refuge
Ron Paul - JANUARY 11, 2016
The nation’s attention turned to Oregon this week when a group calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom seized control of part of a federal wildlife refuge. The citizens were protesting the harsh sentences given to members of the Hammond ranching family. The Hammonds were accused of allowing fires set on their property to spread onto federal land.
The Hammonds were prosecuted under a federal terrorism statute. This may seem odd, but many prosecutors are stretching the definition of terrorism in order to, as was the case here, apply the mandatory minimum sentences or otherwise violate defendants’ constitutional rights. The first judge to hear the case refused to grant the government’s sentencing request, saying his conscience was shocked by the thought of applying the mandatory minimums to the Hammonds. Fortunately for the government, it was able to appeal the decision to judges whose consciences were not shocked by draconian sentences.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, some progressives who normally support civil liberties have called for the government to use deadly force to end the occupation at the refuge. These progressives are the mirror image of conservatives who (properly) attack gun control and the PATRIOT Act as tyrannical, yet support the use of police-state tactics against unpopular groups such as Muslims.
Even some libertarians have joined the attacks on the ranchers. These libertarians say ranchers like the Hammonds are “corporate welfare queens” because they graze their cattle on federal lands. However, since the federal government is the largest landholder in many western states, the ranchers may not have other viable alternatives. As the Oregon standoff shows, ranchers hardly have the same type of cozy relationship with the government that is enjoyed by true corporate welfare queens like military contractors and big banks. Many ranchers actually want control of federally-held land returned to the states or sold to private owners.
Situations like the one in Oregon could become commonplace as the continued failure of Keynesian economics and militaristic foreign policy is used to justify expanding government power. These new power grabs will increase the threats to our personal and economic security. The resulting chaos will cause many more Americans to resist government policies, with some even turning to violence, while the burden of government regulations and taxes will lead to a growing black market. The government will respond by becoming even more authoritarian, which will lead to further unrest.
Fortunately, we still have time to reverse course. The Internet makes it easier than ever to spark the ideas of liberty and grow the liberty movement. Spreading the truth and making sure we can care for ourselves and our families in the event of an economic collapse must be our priorities.
We must help more progressives understand that allowing the government to run the economy not only leads to authoritarianism, it impoverishes the lower classes and enriches the elites. We must also show conservatives that militarism abroad inevitably leads to tyranny at home. We also need to continue exposing how the Federal Reserve feeds the welfare-warfare state while increasing economic instability and income inequality. This week’s Senate vote on Audit the Fed is important to our efforts to help the American people learn the full truth about our monetary system.
One thing my years in Washington taught me is that most politicians are followers, not leaders. Therefore we should not waste time and resources trying to educate politicians. Politicians will not support individual liberty and limited government unless and until they are forced to do so by the people.
The nation’s attention turned to Oregon this week when a group calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom seized control of part of a federal wildlife refuge. The citizens were protesting the harsh sentences given to members of the Hammond ranching family. The Hammonds were accused of allowing fires set on their property to spread onto federal land.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, some progressives who normally support civil liberties have called for the government to use deadly force to end the occupation at the refuge. These progressives are the mirror image of conservatives who (properly) attack gun control and the PATRIOT Act as tyrannical, yet support the use of police-state tactics against unpopular groups such as Muslims.
Even some libertarians have joined the attacks on the ranchers. These libertarians say ranchers like the Hammonds are “corporate welfare queens” because they graze their cattle on federal lands. However, since the federal government is the largest landholder in many western states, the ranchers may not have other viable alternatives. As the Oregon standoff shows, ranchers hardly have the same type of cozy relationship with the government that is enjoyed by true corporate welfare queens like military contractors and big banks. Many ranchers actually want control of federally-held land returned to the states or sold to private owners.
Situations like the one in Oregon could become commonplace as the continued failure of Keynesian economics and militaristic foreign policy is used to justify expanding government power. These new power grabs will increase the threats to our personal and economic security. The resulting chaos will cause many more Americans to resist government policies, with some even turning to violence, while the burden of government regulations and taxes will lead to a growing black market. The government will respond by becoming even more authoritarian, which will lead to further unrest.
Fortunately, we still have time to reverse course. The Internet makes it easier than ever to spark the ideas of liberty and grow the liberty movement. Spreading the truth and making sure we can care for ourselves and our families in the event of an economic collapse must be our priorities.
We must help more progressives understand that allowing the government to run the economy not only leads to authoritarianism, it impoverishes the lower classes and enriches the elites. We must also show conservatives that militarism abroad inevitably leads to tyranny at home. We also need to continue exposing how the Federal Reserve feeds the welfare-warfare state while increasing economic instability and income inequality. This week’s Senate vote on Audit the Fed is important to our efforts to help the American people learn the full truth about our monetary system.
One thing my years in Washington taught me is that most politicians are followers, not leaders. Therefore we should not waste time and resources trying to educate politicians. Politicians will not support individual liberty and limited government unless and until they are forced to do so by the people.
Monday, January 11, 2016
The Fed Is Crippling America
Sen. Rand Paul: The Fed Is Crippling America
Sen. Rand Paul and Mark Spitznagel Jan. 10, 2016
Rand Paul is a U.S. senator from Kentucky and a Republican presidential candidate. Mark Spitznagel is the chief investment officer of Universa Investments and senior economic adviser to the Paul campaign.
The country deserves to understand the extent of its balance sheet
On Jan. 12, Congress is scheduled to vote on the “Audit the Fed” legislation (H.R. 24/S. 264), which, if passed, would bring to an end to the Federal Reserve’s unchecked—and even arguably unconstitutional—power in the financial markets and the economy.
We aren’t the first to be wary of the powers of central banks. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson viewed the powers of central banks as being contrary to the protections of the Constitution. As Jefferson wrote: “I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
In a similar vein, the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises also recognized that limiting government power in the realm of money was a matter of liberty, not merely economics. Mises explained that “the idea of sound money … was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.”
How far we have come as a country that these words from Jefferson and Mises sound so foreign today. Perhaps we have all been blinded by the credit and equity bubbles that surround us. But what better wake-up call to rally support for legislation that would shine a bright light on the government institution that today has created these bubbles, subsidizes small subsets of the population (thus amplifying wealth inequality), and enables endless government debt?
The Fed was intended to be an apolitical body, a concession to placate the naysayers. But today, the Fed isn’t even shy about entering the political fray: witness Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s income inequality speechriddled with Democratic talking points during the 2014 elections.
The Fed is, indeed, a political, oligarchic force, and a key part of what looks and functions like a banking cartel. During the 2007-08 financial crisis, the Fed’s true nature was clear to anyone paying attention. As the Treasury began bailing out the investment banks from the consequences of their profligate risk-taking (and in some cases fraudulent schemes), the Fed moved in tandem, further purchasing the underwater assets of these institutions, as well as actually paying interest to the commercial banks (hemorrhaging from risky loans) for reserves they kept parked at the Fed.
To be sure, Fed officials came up with opaque jargon to describe such operations, but the stark reality is that the Fed was treating risky assets as good collateral, and in the fall of 2008 began literally paying banks to notmake loans to their customers.
Even today, the recent policy announcement has doubled the rate of this massive implicit taxpayer subsidy to the banks—what they call “interest on reserves.” In the textbook rate-hike case, the Fed sells off assets (or slows the rate of purchases) in order to reduce the supply of reserves. Then, the equilibrium price of borrowing reserves (i.e., fed funds rate) rises. In contrast, now and for the foreseeable future, as indicated by the Fed’s guidance statements, the Fed is raising rates by increasing interest on reserves.
As of Dec. 17, the Fed is paying 50 basis points on both required and excess reserves. So the Fed, itself, is increasing how much it will pay to “borrow” reserves from the commercial banks. Given the estimated $2.6 trillion in excess reserves, at 50 basis points that means the Fed will be paying commercial banks some $13 billion in annual income. Right now, the Fed is paying the same on required and excess reserves, though that in principle could differ.
As the Fed keeps raising interest rates through this same mechanism, the amount paid to commercial banks will only mushroom. You can forgive analysts for not discussing this; it was not even mentioned in the Fed’s Dec. 16 announcement.
As the Fed pays commercial bankers more in interest payments, there is dollar-for-dollar less for the Treasury; in other words, for a given level of federal expenditures, the deficit is that much higher. Therefore, the U.S. taxpayer is subsidizing commercial banks to not make loans to their customers—or rather bribing them to charge their customers higher interest rates on loans. And, the U.S. taxpayer is going deeper into debt to provide this bank subsidy.
This is but one aspect of the farce that is today’s Fed policy. In addition, we actually don’t know the full extent of or the precise recipients of the Fed’s asset purchases and bailouts as its balance sheet exploded from about $900 billion in August 2008 to almost $4.5 trillion today.
Now, the Fed has painted itself into a corner. It can’t sell off its bloated balance sheet for fear of crashing the mortgage-backed securities market—and, indirectly, real estate—and it can’t sell off its treasury holdings because that would push up treasury yields and increase the servicing cost of U.S. debt. This is partly the reason the Fed has chosen to raise rates by paying bankers more.
If treasury yields rise, then the market value of existing treasury securities goes down. The Fed currently holds about $2.5 trillion (all maturities) of treasuries. At the same time, the Fed’s capital is at most $67 billion or so. Given that the Fed is levered to the hilt, if treasury yields go up too much, Fed is bankrupt in an accounting sense.
Most dangerous of all, global credit and equity markets have been manipulated by central bank policies to levels that are unsustainable and highly crash-prone.
Clearly, the country needs to understand fully the extent of the Fed’s balance sheet: what it holds and from whom it was acquired, as well as allof the Fed’s other activities and conceivably even more dangerous shenanigans afoot.
We can’t really know what we don’t know until we look. We owe it to the “swindled futurity” of the next generation to take a long, hard look through a full and independent audit of the Fed.
Sen. Rand Paul and Mark Spitznagel Jan. 10, 2016
Rand Paul is a U.S. senator from Kentucky and a Republican presidential candidate. Mark Spitznagel is the chief investment officer of Universa Investments and senior economic adviser to the Paul campaign.
The country deserves to understand the extent of its balance sheet
On Jan. 12, Congress is scheduled to vote on the “Audit the Fed” legislation (H.R. 24/S. 264), which, if passed, would bring to an end to the Federal Reserve’s unchecked—and even arguably unconstitutional—power in the financial markets and the economy.
We aren’t the first to be wary of the powers of central banks. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson viewed the powers of central banks as being contrary to the protections of the Constitution. As Jefferson wrote: “I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
In a similar vein, the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises also recognized that limiting government power in the realm of money was a matter of liberty, not merely economics. Mises explained that “the idea of sound money … was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.”
How far we have come as a country that these words from Jefferson and Mises sound so foreign today. Perhaps we have all been blinded by the credit and equity bubbles that surround us. But what better wake-up call to rally support for legislation that would shine a bright light on the government institution that today has created these bubbles, subsidizes small subsets of the population (thus amplifying wealth inequality), and enables endless government debt?
The Fed was intended to be an apolitical body, a concession to placate the naysayers. But today, the Fed isn’t even shy about entering the political fray: witness Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s income inequality speechriddled with Democratic talking points during the 2014 elections.
The Fed is, indeed, a political, oligarchic force, and a key part of what looks and functions like a banking cartel. During the 2007-08 financial crisis, the Fed’s true nature was clear to anyone paying attention. As the Treasury began bailing out the investment banks from the consequences of their profligate risk-taking (and in some cases fraudulent schemes), the Fed moved in tandem, further purchasing the underwater assets of these institutions, as well as actually paying interest to the commercial banks (hemorrhaging from risky loans) for reserves they kept parked at the Fed.
To be sure, Fed officials came up with opaque jargon to describe such operations, but the stark reality is that the Fed was treating risky assets as good collateral, and in the fall of 2008 began literally paying banks to notmake loans to their customers.
Even today, the recent policy announcement has doubled the rate of this massive implicit taxpayer subsidy to the banks—what they call “interest on reserves.” In the textbook rate-hike case, the Fed sells off assets (or slows the rate of purchases) in order to reduce the supply of reserves. Then, the equilibrium price of borrowing reserves (i.e., fed funds rate) rises. In contrast, now and for the foreseeable future, as indicated by the Fed’s guidance statements, the Fed is raising rates by increasing interest on reserves.
As of Dec. 17, the Fed is paying 50 basis points on both required and excess reserves. So the Fed, itself, is increasing how much it will pay to “borrow” reserves from the commercial banks. Given the estimated $2.6 trillion in excess reserves, at 50 basis points that means the Fed will be paying commercial banks some $13 billion in annual income. Right now, the Fed is paying the same on required and excess reserves, though that in principle could differ.
As the Fed keeps raising interest rates through this same mechanism, the amount paid to commercial banks will only mushroom. You can forgive analysts for not discussing this; it was not even mentioned in the Fed’s Dec. 16 announcement.
As the Fed pays commercial bankers more in interest payments, there is dollar-for-dollar less for the Treasury; in other words, for a given level of federal expenditures, the deficit is that much higher. Therefore, the U.S. taxpayer is subsidizing commercial banks to not make loans to their customers—or rather bribing them to charge their customers higher interest rates on loans. And, the U.S. taxpayer is going deeper into debt to provide this bank subsidy.
This is but one aspect of the farce that is today’s Fed policy. In addition, we actually don’t know the full extent of or the precise recipients of the Fed’s asset purchases and bailouts as its balance sheet exploded from about $900 billion in August 2008 to almost $4.5 trillion today.
Now, the Fed has painted itself into a corner. It can’t sell off its bloated balance sheet for fear of crashing the mortgage-backed securities market—and, indirectly, real estate—and it can’t sell off its treasury holdings because that would push up treasury yields and increase the servicing cost of U.S. debt. This is partly the reason the Fed has chosen to raise rates by paying bankers more.
If treasury yields rise, then the market value of existing treasury securities goes down. The Fed currently holds about $2.5 trillion (all maturities) of treasuries. At the same time, the Fed’s capital is at most $67 billion or so. Given that the Fed is levered to the hilt, if treasury yields go up too much, Fed is bankrupt in an accounting sense.
Most dangerous of all, global credit and equity markets have been manipulated by central bank policies to levels that are unsustainable and highly crash-prone.
Clearly, the country needs to understand fully the extent of the Fed’s balance sheet: what it holds and from whom it was acquired, as well as allof the Fed’s other activities and conceivably even more dangerous shenanigans afoot.
We can’t really know what we don’t know until we look. We owe it to the “swindled futurity” of the next generation to take a long, hard look through a full and independent audit of the Fed.
Saturday, January 9, 2016
Hardcore Muslim History
MUSLIMS ENGAGE IN SEXUAL TERRORISM ACROSS EUROPE
Migrants rape women and demand welfare
The Alex Jones Show - JANUARY 9, 2016
Alex Jones talks with Stefan Molyneux about the migrant crisis in Europe and how the “migrants” are raping their way through the countries that are taking them in.
Friday, January 8, 2016
Congress Finally Send Health Law Repeal To Obama's Desk
Congress sends health law repeal to Obama's desk for first time
Published January 06, 2016
FoxNews.com
Congress sent an ObamaCare repeal bill to the president’s desk for the first time on Wednesday, marking an election-year victory of sorts for Republicans who have tried since 2010 to scrap the law.
The bill repealing most of President Obama's signature health care law was approved in a final 240-181 House vote Wednesday afternoon, after clearing the Senate late last year. The legislation also would strip federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
The measure still faces certain doom at the White House, and Democrats derided the vote Wednesday as pointless. The president is sure to veto, and Republicans do not have the votes to override.
But the political theater marks the opening volley in a fresh ObamaCare fight under the Paul Ryan-led House, and one likely to energize the party’s election-year efforts.
“I fully anticipate the president will veto this, but I mean, how many times have we been saying we want to put bills on his desk that say who we are, what we believe versus what he believes, and that he will veto,” Speaker Ryan, R-Wis., told Fox News Tuesday night before the vote.
The new speaker’s next goal is to engineer and pass a bill – also for the first time – to replace the Affordable Care Act. Doing so could help Republicans respond to Democrats’ allegations that they have no viable alternative.
Ryan is tempering expectations for the GOP in this exercise.
In a recent meeting with reporters, the speaker indicated that the House was practically obligated to pass a health care reform replacement bill. He was confident the House could do so this year but underscored that he didn’t say the president would sign the legislation into law.
But this is still part of Ryan’s effort to contrast Republicans’ plans with the Obama agenda. Democrats have long hectored Republicans for failing to cough up a bill to replace the current health care law even as they try to repeal it. If they at least draft a bill, and even pass it, then the parties can argue over a concrete policy choice.
“We need to win the election, and the best way to win the election is give people a choice,” Ryan told Fox News, speaking generally about the two parties’ platforms.
Republicans have held more than 60 votes so far to repeal all or part of the health care law.
They only cleared this one past the Senate because they used a special set of budget rules known as “reconciliation.” This allowed the measure to pass with a simple majority – typically, Republicans would have needed to muster 60 votes to pass it.
Planned Parenthood has come under attack since videos surfaced last year of graphic discussions about harvesting fetal tissue.
Wednesday's vote, meanwhile, provided fresh fodder for the Democratic presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton warned in Iowa earlier this week that the vote shows the high stakes at play in the 2016 race. She, too, accused Republicans of offering no alternative.
“They have no plan. The Republicans just want to undo what Democrats have fought for decades and what President Obama got accomplished,” she said.
FoxNews.com
Congress sent an ObamaCare repeal bill to the president’s desk for the first time on Wednesday, marking an election-year victory of sorts for Republicans who have tried since 2010 to scrap the law.
The bill repealing most of President Obama's signature health care law was approved in a final 240-181 House vote Wednesday afternoon, after clearing the Senate late last year. The legislation also would strip federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
The measure still faces certain doom at the White House, and Democrats derided the vote Wednesday as pointless. The president is sure to veto, and Republicans do not have the votes to override.
But the political theater marks the opening volley in a fresh ObamaCare fight under the Paul Ryan-led House, and one likely to energize the party’s election-year efforts.
“I fully anticipate the president will veto this, but I mean, how many times have we been saying we want to put bills on his desk that say who we are, what we believe versus what he believes, and that he will veto,” Speaker Ryan, R-Wis., told Fox News Tuesday night before the vote.
The new speaker’s next goal is to engineer and pass a bill – also for the first time – to replace the Affordable Care Act. Doing so could help Republicans respond to Democrats’ allegations that they have no viable alternative.
Ryan is tempering expectations for the GOP in this exercise.
In a recent meeting with reporters, the speaker indicated that the House was practically obligated to pass a health care reform replacement bill. He was confident the House could do so this year but underscored that he didn’t say the president would sign the legislation into law.
But this is still part of Ryan’s effort to contrast Republicans’ plans with the Obama agenda. Democrats have long hectored Republicans for failing to cough up a bill to replace the current health care law even as they try to repeal it. If they at least draft a bill, and even pass it, then the parties can argue over a concrete policy choice.
“We need to win the election, and the best way to win the election is give people a choice,” Ryan told Fox News, speaking generally about the two parties’ platforms.
Republicans have held more than 60 votes so far to repeal all or part of the health care law.
They only cleared this one past the Senate because they used a special set of budget rules known as “reconciliation.” This allowed the measure to pass with a simple majority – typically, Republicans would have needed to muster 60 votes to pass it.
Planned Parenthood has come under attack since videos surfaced last year of graphic discussions about harvesting fetal tissue.
Wednesday's vote, meanwhile, provided fresh fodder for the Democratic presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton warned in Iowa earlier this week that the vote shows the high stakes at play in the 2016 race. She, too, accused Republicans of offering no alternative.
“They have no plan. The Republicans just want to undo what Democrats have fought for decades and what President Obama got accomplished,” she said.
Thursday, January 7, 2016
List Of Obama's Crimes
75 TIMES OBAMA BROKE LAW DURING PRESIDENCY
An extensive list of Obama's crimes showing why Congress must impeach him now
Kit Daniels | Infowars.com - JANUARY 7, 2016
Here’s a list of at least 75 times President Obama violated the Constitution and/or broke federal law during his presidency, which also doubles as a list of at least 75 reasons why Congress must impeach the president now:
1) Illegally armed Mexican drug cartels and ISIS militants
In Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration facilitated the sale of thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels and stopped tracking those weapons once they crossed the border so the administration could later blame the Second Amendment.
“The Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel,” the New York Postreported. “Let that sink in: After months of pretending that ‘Fast and Furious’ was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.”
Even more shocking, President Obama authorized a shipment of guns to the Syrian opposition, a.k.a. ISIS-linked militants, on the exact same day he demanded more gun control in response to the Oregon shooting.
“…The President also emphasized to his team that the U.S. would continue to support the Syrian opposition as Russia enters the war-torn country,” CNN reported in October.
But virtually all of the rebels in Syria have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State since at least 2013.
“The Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Council, the vaunted bulwarks of the moderate opposition, only really exist in hotel lobbies and the minds of Western diplomats,” journalist Ben Reynolds wrote in November. “There is simply no real separation between ‘moderate’ rebel groups and hardline Salafists allied with al-Qaeda.”
2) Attempting to shut down gun stores outside of law
In a classic case of criminal racketeering, the U.S. Department of Justice was pressuring banks to refuse service to gun stores in a program entitled Operation Choke Point.
Under the program started in 2014 if not before, the DOJ was attempting to shut down legal gun dealers by coercing financial institutions to close the bank and merchant accounts associated with their businesses.
In 2012, Bank of America told a gun company, McMillan Group International, that because the company was expanding into firearms manufacturing, the bank no longer wanted McMillan’s business.
“We have to assess the risk of doing business with a firearms-related industry,” the bank’s representative told operations director Kelly McMillan.
And not long after, BitPay, a U.S.-based bitcoin processor, likewise refused to do business with gun dealer Michael Cargill of Central Texas Gunworks due to a similar policy.
3) Spent tax dollars to re-settle illegals inside U.S.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has been purchasing bus tickets and vouchers for illegal immigrants in order to ship them deeper into the country at taxpayers’ expense, according to a McAllen, Texas city official.
“They’re not bringing them here, they’re bringing them to our bus terminals because that’s where the Border Patrol understands that they have transportation to go to the interior,” McAllen, Texas City Attorney Kevin Pagan said in an interview with Infowars. “So they’re dropping them off and it’s our understanding that they were dropped off with tickets or with vouchers for tickets, but it turns out that some of them tonight didn’t have their tickets or their vouchers for tickets, or like I said their buses are tomorrow, so they have no where to stay.”
Several months earlier, Obama ordered the Border Patrol to stand down from protecting the border and enforcing immigration laws.
“We are simply being ordered to stand down and stop tracking and trying to apprehend the criminals,” Shawn Moran, Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council, told Breitbart.
4) Using executive action to restrict Second Amendment
Obama decided to use his “pen and his phone” to enact gun control without Congressional approval.
“Without a Democratic majority in Congress, and faced with a GOP that is firmly against any form of gun control measures, Obama has repeatedly warned that he would act on his own,” Zero Hedge reported.
For one thing, Obama is attempting to require private sellers to conduct background checks.
“The action, officials explained, would include guidance on how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives will now determine who is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms under federal law and, therefore, who is required to obtain a license to sell firearms,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Obama may also try and prevent people on the no-fly list from being able to purchase guns, which violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process by allowing the government to deprive people of their rights based only on suspicion.
Additionally, numerous law-abiding Americans have been wrongly placed on the No-Fly list due to false information, clerical errors or political persecution.
“The U.S. government maintains a massive watchlist system that risks stigmatizing hundreds of thousands of people – including U.S. citizens – as terrorism suspects based on vague, overbroad, and often secret standards and evidence,” the ACLU reported. “The consequences of being placed on a government watchlist can be far-reaching; they can include questioning, harassment, or detention by authorities, or even an indefinite ban on air travel.”
5) Illegally targeted conservative groups via IRS
Obama’s IRS had illegally targeted conservative groups for additional “reviews” of their tax status applications.
Organizations with the phrases “tea party” or “patriot” in their names were singled out for harassment, such as requiring them to provide information about their family members, their social media posts and a list of donors.
Obama had met with a key IRS official who was involved in the targeting just two days before the key official told his colleagues how to target conservative groups. The Daily Caller reported:
The Obama appointee implicated in congressional testimony in the IRS targeting scandal met with President Obama in the White House two days before offering his colleagues a new set of advice on how to scrutinize tea party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, visited the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 24, 2012, according to White House visitor logs.
On April 25, 2012, Wilkins’ office sent the exempt organizations determinations unit “additional comments on the draft guidance” for approving or denying tea party tax-exempt applications, according to the IRS inspector general’s report.
During Obama’s first four years as President, IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman made 157 visits to the White House.
“This is more visits to the White House – by a very large margin – than any other cabinet member during Obama’s first term,” journalist Tim Brown revealed. “By comparison, during the four years that Mark Everson was IRS commissioner when Bush was president, Everson made only one visit to the White House.”
6) Secretly obtained phone records from Associated Press journalists
In May 2013, Associated Press reported:
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of calls.
In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
Obtaining these phone records required approval from former Attorney General Eric Holder.
7) Carried out military interventionism in Libya without Congressional approval
Obama violated the Constitution when he launched military operations inLibya without Congressional approval.
8) Expanded Bush’s unconstitutional government faith-based programs
Obama actually expanded the federal government’s faith based programs which had been started by President George W. Bush.
9) Supported Bush’s unconstitutional Patriot Act
Obama renewed the Patriot Act in 2011.
10) Agrees with Bush’s support of unconstitutional, indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without filing any charges
Obama signed an unconstitutional bill that gave the U.S. government the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without any charges being filed or any trial taking place.
11) Supports unconstitutional, warrantless wiretapping
President Obama is a huge supporter of warrantless wiretapping.
12) Had four U.S. citizens killed without judicial process
Obama had four U.S. citizens killed without judicial process, to which then-U.S. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) said was an impeachable offense.
13) Ordered private company to fire 1,000 employees
After Boeing hired 1,000 new employees to work at its new factory in South Carolina in 2011, the Obama administration ordered the company to close it down because the factory was non-union.
14) Stole money from retired teachers and police officers
During the Chrysler bankruptcy, Obama violated the Fifth Amendment and more than 150 years of bankruptcy law by illegally treating secured creditors worse than unsecured creditors.
“Upsetting this fixed hierarchy among creditors is just an illegal taking of property from one group of creditors for the benefit of another, which should be struck down on both statutory and constitutional grounds,” according to Richard A. Epstein, a law professor at New York University School of Law.
15) Fired Inspector General for discovering that Obama’s friend had embezzled government funds
Obama fired Inspector General Gerald Walpin in 2009 after Walpin accused Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, an Obama supporter, of misusing AmeriCorps funding to pay for political activities.
Later on, a bipartisan group of 145 current and former public officials and legal scholars signed a letter stating Walpin’s firing was politically motivated.
16) Lied about letting people keep their health insurance
Before Obamacare was passed, Obama said:
“No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people… If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
But once it was passed, the Congressional Budget Office said Obamacare would cause at least seven million people to lose their insurance.
17) Lied about the cost of Obamacare
Before Obamacare was passed, Obama promised:
“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period. And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.”
However, not long after Obama signed it, the Washington Post reported it would add over $340 billion to the budget deficit over the next decade.
18) Gave tax dollars to campaign contributors and lobbyists, and falsely claimed the money was for “green energy”
In 2009 the Obama administration gave $535 million to green-energy company Solyndra, claiming that it would create 4,000 new jobs, but the company soon went bankrupt.
It was later revealed the company’s executives had made substantialdonations to Obama’s campaign and that Solyndra executives had had many meetings with White House officials.
19) Had “off the record” meetings with lobbyists
In June 2010, the New York Times said the Obama administration officials had held hundreds of meetings with lobbyists at coffee houses near the White House to avoid the disclosure requirements for White House visitors.
20) Had armed SWAT agents raid a law-abiding guitar factory because it was owned by a Republican
President Obama had an armed SWAT team raid the Gibson guitar factory and seized guitars and other property from the factory – without any charges being filed.
Obama’s so-called justification for the raid was that Gibson had broken environmental laws from India regarding the imported wood that Gibson had been using, but C.F. Martin & Company, Gibsons’s competitor, had used the exact same imported wood.
The difference? Henry E. Juszkiewicz, the CEO of Gibson, was a Republicandonor, whereas Chris Martin IV, the CEO of Martin, was a Democraticdonor.
21) Ignored constitutional requirements for appointees
Late U.S. Senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat, expressed concerns that Obama’s dozens of czars appointed in 2009 might violate the U.S. Constitution because they were not approved by the U.S. Senate.
Another Democrat, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, shared a similar sentiment.
22) Tried to outlaw family farms
The Obama administration wanted to eradicate family farms in 2012 by trying to prohibit farm children under 18 from working in various farm-related activities.
23) Auctioned off ambassadorship to the Netherlands
Obama nominated Timothy Broas to be U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands after Broas donated at least $500,000 to Obama’s 2012 campaign.
24) Made the TSA even more abusive and ridiculous than it had been under Bush
Under the Obama administration, the TSA has been giving very invasive pat-downs on young children which would otherwise constitute child molestation.
25) Illegally demanded monetary payment for Freedom of Information Act request
The Obama administration demanded the Goldwater Institute pay nearly $79,000 before it would share public records via the Freedom of Information Act.
26) Stole money from retired Delphi employees
Obama eliminated the pensions of 20,000 retired Delphi employees in 2009.
27) Used “off the books” funding for military interventionism
Anti-war activists who helped elect Obama accused him of using the same “off-the-books” funding as his predecessor George W. Bush when the president requested over $83 billion from Congress for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
28) Tried to silence criticism of auto-bailouts
The Obama administration pressured the Ford Motor Company to stop criticizing Obama’s bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler in a TV ad.
29) Tried to silence video on YouTube
Obama actually asked a Jewish singing group to take down its video from the Internet in 2011.
30) Illegally gave Obamacare exemptions to unions that supported the passage of Obamacare
Obama gave some of his favorite organizations an exemption from some Obamacare requirements.
Many of these organizations were unions that had supported the passage of Obamacare, but then afterwards wanted exemptions from the very same law they forced on everyone else.
The Constitution, however, requires the law to treat everyone as equals.
The Washington Times said of this:
“Selective enforcement of the law is the first sign of tyranny. A government empowered to determine arbitrarily who may operate outside the rule of law invariably embraces favoritism as friends, allies and those with the best-funded lobbyists are rewarded. Favoritism inevitably leads to corruption, and corruption invites extortion. Ultimately, the rule of law ceases to exist in any recognizable form, and what is left is tyranny.”
“The now-familiar monthly trickling down of new waivers is, at best, a tacit admission that Obamacare is a failure. So far, seven entire states and 1,372 businesses, unions and other institutions have received waivers from the law. The list includes the administration’s friends and allies and, of course, those who have the best lobbyists.”
“More than 50 percent of the Obamacare waiver beneficiaries are union members, which is striking because union members account for less than 12 percent of the American work force. The same unions that provided more than $120 million to Democrats in the last two elections and, in many cases, openly campaigned in favor of the government takeover of your health care, now celebrate that Obamacare is not their problem.”
31) Defended Bush administration’s unconstitutional, unwarranted use of GPS device
The Obama administration opposed the U.S. Supreme Court for ruling against the Bush administration over the installation of a GPS tracking device on someone’s car without a warrant.
32) Was cited by nine states for committing 21 illegal acts
Attorneys General from nine states listed 21 illegal acts which had been committed by the Obama administration.
33) Tried to seize hotel because some of its customers had used illegal drugs
The Obama administration tried to shut down a mom-and-pop bed-and-breakfast because some if its guests had used illegal drugs.
34) Made recess appointments when Congress was not in recess
Obama violated the Constitution by making four recess appointments when Congress was not in recess in Jan. 2012.
A federal appeals court later ruled that Obama’s appointments had violated the Constitution.
35) Supports guns for himself and his wife, but opposes them for everyone else
President Obama signed a 2013 bill providing armed guards for himself and his wife for the rest of the lives.
But when Obama was an Illinois state senator in 2004, he voted againstcitizens keeping guns in their own homes to protect themselves and their families.
36) Approved giving 20 F-16 fighter jets to a Sharia dictatorship
Obama once gave 20 F-16 fighter jets to Egypt while it was under a Sharia dictatorship.
37) Violated the very same campaign finance laws that he claims to support
Obama’s 2012 campaign was fined $375,000 by the Federal Election Commission for violating campaign finance laws.
38) Encouraged employers to switch their employees from full time to part time
The New York Times said Obamacare “sharply penalizes full-time employment in favor of part-time employment.”
In response to the employer mandate of Obamacare, many businesses and even colleges switched some of their employees from full time to part time.
Leaders of the Teamsters, UFCW, and UNITE-HERE penned a 2013 letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi stating that Obamacare will “destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class… the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week. Numerous employers have begun to cut workers’ hours to avoid this obligation.”
39) Had Freedom of Information Act record worse than Bush’s
when it came to honoring requests under the Freedom of Information Act, Obama’s record was far worse than that of George W. Bush.
40) Supports installation of hidden cameras on private property without a search warrant
Obama’s Justice Department once argued in favor of installing hidden cameras on private property without a search warrant.
41) Accepted illegal campaign contributions from foreign citizens
During an experiment, a non-U.S. citizen attempted to make two $5 donations to both Obama’s campaign and Mitt Romney’s campaign.
While the Romney campaign rejected both donations, the Obama website accepted them cheerfully.
42) Lied about the Benghazi attack
After four U.S. citizens were killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in Sept. 2012, the Obama administration falsely claimed the attack was a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim video at YouTube.
Even more, the Obama administration took an entire week before it acknowledged the attacks as terrorism.
And although the Obama administration made a dozen revisions to its versions of the incident, then-White House Press Secretary Jay Carneyfalsely claimed that only a “single adjustment” had been made.
ABC News later published a complete list of all the changes to the White House talking points.
43) Complained to YouTube about an anti-Muslim video
The Obama administration actually phoned YouTube in 2012 to complain about an anti-Muslim video.
“It does make us nervous when the government throws its weight behind any requests for censorship,” Ben Wizner of the ACLU said.
44) Falsely said that Fast and Furious was started when Bush was President
Obama lied when he said Fast and Furious had “begun under the previous administration” in 2012.
Fast and Furious actually began around September 2009, months after Bush left office.
45) Illegally refused to fire Kathleen Sebelius after she violated campaign finance laws
Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, was caught violating campaign finance laws in 2012, but despite federal lawrequiring Obama to fire her over the illegal activity, he refused to do so.
46) Gave special access to people who raised or donated $500,000
People who raised or donated at least $500,000 to Organizing for Action, a pro-Obama political group, would be given “the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along with other meetings at the White House.”
47) Adopted harmful new restrictions on prescription painkillers – even though the House had already voted against them
The Obama administration ignored the House’s rejection of new restrictions on prescription painkillers by adopting them anyway.
48) Illegally refused to submit a budget on time during four of his first five years
Despite being legally required to submit a budget by the first Monday in February, Obama broke this law at least four times.
In contrast, since 1921, no President had missed this deadline more than once.
49) Fined UPS $40 million because some of its customers had used UPS to ship illegal drugs
Obama forced UPS to pay $40 million in 2013 because some of its customers had used the company to ship illegal drugs.
50) Added 20,000 extra pages to Obamacare without Congressional approval
After Obamacare was passed, Obama added 20,000 extra pages to it even though those extra pages were not voted on by Congress.
51) Waited until after the 2012 election to release unpopular Obamacare rules
The New York Times reported in 2013:
… even fervent supporters of the law admit that things are going worse than expected.
… the Obama administration didn’t want to release unpopular rules before the election.
Everything is turning out to be more complicated than originally envisioned.
A law that was very confusing has become mind-boggling… Americans are just going to be overwhelmed and befuddled. Many are just going to stay away, even if they are eligible for benefits.
52) Tried to rig federal auctions of radio spectrum space
The Obama administration was trying to rig federal auctions of radio spectrum space in a manner that would favor Sprint and T-Mobile over its competitors.
53) Put someone in jail for making an anti-Muslim video
Politico reported in 2013:
“Nakoula Basseley Nakoula deserves a place in American history. He is the first person in this country jailed for violating Islamic anti-blasphemy laws.”
“You won’t find that anywhere in the charges against him, of course. As a practical matter, though, everyone knows that Nakoula wouldn’t be in jail today if he hadn’t produced a video crudely lampooning the prophet Muhammad.”
“In the weeks after the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, the Obama administration claimed the terrorist assault had been the outgrowth of a demonstration against the Nakoula video. The administration ran public service announcements in Pakistan featuring President Barack Obama saying the U.S. had nothing to do with it. In a speech at the United Nations around this time, the president declared – no doubt with Nakoula in mind – ‘The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.'”
54) Rewarded one of his biggest campaign fundraisers by nominating him for the ambassadorship to Canada
Obama nominated Bruce Heyman to be the ambassador to Canada in 2013after Heyman raised more than $1 million for Obama.
55) Asked contractors to disclose their political donations before bidding on government contracts
Obama asked contractors to disclose their political donations before bidding on federal contracts in 2011.
56) Falsely accused a law abiding news reporter of being “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation
The Obama administration falsely labeled Fox contributor James Rosen as “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation when it applied for a warrant to read his emails.
The New York Times reported:
With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible “co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.
Leak investigations usually focus on the source, not the reporter. But, in this case, federal prosecutors also asked a federal judge for permission to examine Mr. Rosen’s personal e-mails, arguing that “there is probable cause to believe” Mr. Rosen is “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in the leak.
Though Mr. Rosen was not charged, the F.B.I. request for his e-mail account was granted secretly in late May 2010. The government was allowed to rummage through Mr. Rosen’s e-mails for at least 30 days.
The Washington Post also said:
The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush’s administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of.
To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job – seeking out information the government doesn’t want made public – deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are based. Guns? Privacy? Due process? Equal protection? If you can’t speak out, you can’t defend those rights, either.
Beyond that, the administration’s actions shatter the president’s credibility and discourage allies who would otherwise defend the administration against bogus accusations such as those involving the Benghazi “talking points.” If the administration is spying on reporters and accusing them of criminality just for asking questions – well, who knows what else this crowd is capable of doing?
57) Asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate himself for lying under oath
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder lied under oath when he said he had nothing to do with monitoring the emails of Fox reporter James Rosen, even though his own signature on the search warrant.
In response, Obama asked Holder to investigate himself!
58) Used Obamacare to illegally give the IRS additional powers without approval from Congress
The Washington Post reported in 2013:
[Obamacare] allows the Department of Health and Human Services to set up federal health exchanges in the holdout states. But the statute makes no mention of the IRS providing credits and subsidies through federal exchanges.
The IRS resolved this conundrum by denying its existence. In a May 2012 regulatory ruling, it asserted its own right to provide credits outside the state exchanges as the reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous law. But the language of the law is not ambiguous. And health scholars Jonathan Adler and Michael Cannon, in an exhaustive recent analysis, find no justification for the IRS’s ruling in the legislative history of Obamacare….
So: The IRS seized the authority to spend about $800 billion over 10 years on benefits that were not authorized by Congress.
59) Illegally solicited donations from health insurers
In May 2013, Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius illegally solicited donations from health insurers to help pay for Obamacare.
60) Proposed military interventionism in Syria
Obama proposed the U.S. oust the Syrian government in 2013 by military action.
61) Refused to fire or prosecute more than 1,000 IRS employees who illegally used their IRS credit cards for their own personal use
Obama refused to fire or prosecute more than 1,000 IRS employees illegally used their IRS credit cards for personal purchases.
62) Had the Secret Service visit a law abiding citizen who had criticized his policies on Twitter
Obama ordered the Secret Service to visit the home of Tom Francois, a law abiding citizen who had criticized Obama’s policies on Twitter in 2013.
The Secret Service later admitted that Francois had not made any threats against the president.
63) Had the IRS grant special, illegal favors for his brother’s so-called “charity”
The Daily Caller reported the IRS had taken the “unprecedented” step of approving a non-profit application within just one month from the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a so-called “charity” which was headed by Malik Obama, Barack Obama’s brother.
Additionally, the IRS illegally gave retroactive approval for the organization’s tax exempt status and had illegally solicited tax deductible donations even though it did not have legal approval to do so.
64) Illegally bypassed Congress to delay Obamacare’s employer mandate
In July 2013, Obama delayed the employer mandate part of Obamacare until January 2015, even though Congress set it to begin a year prior.
Obama effectively rewrote a law without approval from Congress, which is highly illegal.
65) Illegally forced 2,200 privately owned auto dealerships to close, which destroyed 120,000 jobs
Obama cost 120,000 people their jobs by illegally forced 2,200 privately owned auto dealerships to close in 2009.
66) Gave 23,994 tax refunds worth a total of $46,378,040 to illegal aliens who all used the same address
The IRS gave nearly 24,000 tax refunds worth a total of nearly $47 million to illegal aliens in 2011 using the same address in Atlanta, Ga.
67) Used tax money to pay federal employees to organize protests against George Zimmerman
Obama actually used tax money to pay federal employees to organizeprotests against George Zimmerman in 2012.
68) Illegally continued giving foreign aid to Egypt after it had a coup
The Obama administration said it would illegally continue giving foreign aid to Egypt after its coup.
69) Broke promise to end Bush’s surveillance of U.S. citizens who were not suspected of committing a crime
Obama lied when he said he would end Bush’s illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens not suspected of committing a crime.
70) Falsely guaranteed that people could keep their doctor
Before Obamacare was passed, Obama said:
“Here is a guarantee that I’ve made… If you’ve got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor.”
This was a complete lie.
71) Illegally seized a privately owned gun from a law abiding citizen
After a jury found George Zimmerman not guilty, the Obama administrationannounced it would seize his gun anyway, a violation of both the double jeopardy clause of the U.S. Constitution and the Fifth Amendment.
72) Illegally prevented individual employees of small businesses from choosing their own plan during the first year of Obamacare
Obamacare requires that individual employees of small businesses be allowed to choose their own insurance plan during the first year of Obamacare, but the Obama administration kept them from doing so.
73) Illegally avoided enforcing the required income verification of people who receive subsidies for Obamacare exchanges
The Obama administration refuses to verify the income of people whoreceive subsidies for Obamacare exchanges.
74) Illegally delayed the caps on out of pocket health care payments without Congressional approval
Obama once again illegally rewrote Obamacare by delaying payment caps for one year.
75) Falsely said the NSA review was being conducted by an “independent” body</strong
Obama assigned National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who had falsely testified to Congress that the NSA was not collecting information on U.S. citizens, to establish an “independent” investigation of NSA surveillance.
The list doesn’t need to end at 75:
76) Nominated a telecommunications lobbyist and Obama fundraiser to head the FCC
Obama nominated former cable TV lobbyist and Obama fundraiser Tom Wheeler to head the FCC in 2013. Wheeler had previously been the head of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which is a lobbying organization for the cable TV industry.
77) Tried to violate defendants’ right to a fair trial
In August 2013, Reuters reported:
A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.
Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.
The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.
78) Threatened internet service providers with contempt of court if they did not install surveillance software
The Obama administration had pressured internet service providers to install surveillance software in 2013 so that it could monitor internet traffic without a warrant, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The ISPs who refused were later threatened by the administration with contempt of court.
This list was compiled with help from Freedom Outpost’s Tim Brown.
Here’s a list of at least 75 times President Obama violated the Constitution and/or broke federal law during his presidency, which also doubles as a list of at least 75 reasons why Congress must impeach the president now:
1) Illegally armed Mexican drug cartels and ISIS militants
In Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration facilitated the sale of thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels and stopped tracking those weapons once they crossed the border so the administration could later blame the Second Amendment.
“The Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel,” the New York Postreported. “Let that sink in: After months of pretending that ‘Fast and Furious’ was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.”
Even more shocking, President Obama authorized a shipment of guns to the Syrian opposition, a.k.a. ISIS-linked militants, on the exact same day he demanded more gun control in response to the Oregon shooting.
“…The President also emphasized to his team that the U.S. would continue to support the Syrian opposition as Russia enters the war-torn country,” CNN reported in October.
But virtually all of the rebels in Syria have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State since at least 2013.
“The Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Council, the vaunted bulwarks of the moderate opposition, only really exist in hotel lobbies and the minds of Western diplomats,” journalist Ben Reynolds wrote in November. “There is simply no real separation between ‘moderate’ rebel groups and hardline Salafists allied with al-Qaeda.”
2) Attempting to shut down gun stores outside of law
In a classic case of criminal racketeering, the U.S. Department of Justice was pressuring banks to refuse service to gun stores in a program entitled Operation Choke Point.
Under the program started in 2014 if not before, the DOJ was attempting to shut down legal gun dealers by coercing financial institutions to close the bank and merchant accounts associated with their businesses.
In 2012, Bank of America told a gun company, McMillan Group International, that because the company was expanding into firearms manufacturing, the bank no longer wanted McMillan’s business.
“We have to assess the risk of doing business with a firearms-related industry,” the bank’s representative told operations director Kelly McMillan.
And not long after, BitPay, a U.S.-based bitcoin processor, likewise refused to do business with gun dealer Michael Cargill of Central Texas Gunworks due to a similar policy.
3) Spent tax dollars to re-settle illegals inside U.S.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has been purchasing bus tickets and vouchers for illegal immigrants in order to ship them deeper into the country at taxpayers’ expense, according to a McAllen, Texas city official.
“They’re not bringing them here, they’re bringing them to our bus terminals because that’s where the Border Patrol understands that they have transportation to go to the interior,” McAllen, Texas City Attorney Kevin Pagan said in an interview with Infowars. “So they’re dropping them off and it’s our understanding that they were dropped off with tickets or with vouchers for tickets, but it turns out that some of them tonight didn’t have their tickets or their vouchers for tickets, or like I said their buses are tomorrow, so they have no where to stay.”
Several months earlier, Obama ordered the Border Patrol to stand down from protecting the border and enforcing immigration laws.
“We are simply being ordered to stand down and stop tracking and trying to apprehend the criminals,” Shawn Moran, Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council, told Breitbart.
4) Using executive action to restrict Second Amendment
Obama decided to use his “pen and his phone” to enact gun control without Congressional approval.
“Without a Democratic majority in Congress, and faced with a GOP that is firmly against any form of gun control measures, Obama has repeatedly warned that he would act on his own,” Zero Hedge reported.
For one thing, Obama is attempting to require private sellers to conduct background checks.
“The action, officials explained, would include guidance on how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives will now determine who is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms under federal law and, therefore, who is required to obtain a license to sell firearms,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Obama may also try and prevent people on the no-fly list from being able to purchase guns, which violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process by allowing the government to deprive people of their rights based only on suspicion.
Additionally, numerous law-abiding Americans have been wrongly placed on the No-Fly list due to false information, clerical errors or political persecution.
“The U.S. government maintains a massive watchlist system that risks stigmatizing hundreds of thousands of people – including U.S. citizens – as terrorism suspects based on vague, overbroad, and often secret standards and evidence,” the ACLU reported. “The consequences of being placed on a government watchlist can be far-reaching; they can include questioning, harassment, or detention by authorities, or even an indefinite ban on air travel.”
5) Illegally targeted conservative groups via IRS
Obama’s IRS had illegally targeted conservative groups for additional “reviews” of their tax status applications.
Organizations with the phrases “tea party” or “patriot” in their names were singled out for harassment, such as requiring them to provide information about their family members, their social media posts and a list of donors.
Obama had met with a key IRS official who was involved in the targeting just two days before the key official told his colleagues how to target conservative groups. The Daily Caller reported:
The Obama appointee implicated in congressional testimony in the IRS targeting scandal met with President Obama in the White House two days before offering his colleagues a new set of advice on how to scrutinize tea party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, visited the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 24, 2012, according to White House visitor logs.
On April 25, 2012, Wilkins’ office sent the exempt organizations determinations unit “additional comments on the draft guidance” for approving or denying tea party tax-exempt applications, according to the IRS inspector general’s report.
During Obama’s first four years as President, IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman made 157 visits to the White House.
“This is more visits to the White House – by a very large margin – than any other cabinet member during Obama’s first term,” journalist Tim Brown revealed. “By comparison, during the four years that Mark Everson was IRS commissioner when Bush was president, Everson made only one visit to the White House.”
6) Secretly obtained phone records from Associated Press journalists
In May 2013, Associated Press reported:
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of calls.
In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
Obtaining these phone records required approval from former Attorney General Eric Holder.
7) Carried out military interventionism in Libya without Congressional approval
Obama violated the Constitution when he launched military operations inLibya without Congressional approval.
8) Expanded Bush’s unconstitutional government faith-based programs
Obama actually expanded the federal government’s faith based programs which had been started by President George W. Bush.
9) Supported Bush’s unconstitutional Patriot Act
Obama renewed the Patriot Act in 2011.
10) Agrees with Bush’s support of unconstitutional, indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without filing any charges
Obama signed an unconstitutional bill that gave the U.S. government the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without any charges being filed or any trial taking place.
11) Supports unconstitutional, warrantless wiretapping
President Obama is a huge supporter of warrantless wiretapping.
12) Had four U.S. citizens killed without judicial process
Obama had four U.S. citizens killed without judicial process, to which then-U.S. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) said was an impeachable offense.
13) Ordered private company to fire 1,000 employees
After Boeing hired 1,000 new employees to work at its new factory in South Carolina in 2011, the Obama administration ordered the company to close it down because the factory was non-union.
14) Stole money from retired teachers and police officers
During the Chrysler bankruptcy, Obama violated the Fifth Amendment and more than 150 years of bankruptcy law by illegally treating secured creditors worse than unsecured creditors.
“Upsetting this fixed hierarchy among creditors is just an illegal taking of property from one group of creditors for the benefit of another, which should be struck down on both statutory and constitutional grounds,” according to Richard A. Epstein, a law professor at New York University School of Law.
15) Fired Inspector General for discovering that Obama’s friend had embezzled government funds
Obama fired Inspector General Gerald Walpin in 2009 after Walpin accused Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, an Obama supporter, of misusing AmeriCorps funding to pay for political activities.
Later on, a bipartisan group of 145 current and former public officials and legal scholars signed a letter stating Walpin’s firing was politically motivated.
16) Lied about letting people keep their health insurance
Before Obamacare was passed, Obama said:
“No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people… If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
But once it was passed, the Congressional Budget Office said Obamacare would cause at least seven million people to lose their insurance.
17) Lied about the cost of Obamacare
Before Obamacare was passed, Obama promised:
“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period. And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.”
However, not long after Obama signed it, the Washington Post reported it would add over $340 billion to the budget deficit over the next decade.
18) Gave tax dollars to campaign contributors and lobbyists, and falsely claimed the money was for “green energy”
In 2009 the Obama administration gave $535 million to green-energy company Solyndra, claiming that it would create 4,000 new jobs, but the company soon went bankrupt.
It was later revealed the company’s executives had made substantialdonations to Obama’s campaign and that Solyndra executives had had many meetings with White House officials.
19) Had “off the record” meetings with lobbyists
In June 2010, the New York Times said the Obama administration officials had held hundreds of meetings with lobbyists at coffee houses near the White House to avoid the disclosure requirements for White House visitors.
20) Had armed SWAT agents raid a law-abiding guitar factory because it was owned by a Republican
President Obama had an armed SWAT team raid the Gibson guitar factory and seized guitars and other property from the factory – without any charges being filed.
Obama’s so-called justification for the raid was that Gibson had broken environmental laws from India regarding the imported wood that Gibson had been using, but C.F. Martin & Company, Gibsons’s competitor, had used the exact same imported wood.
The difference? Henry E. Juszkiewicz, the CEO of Gibson, was a Republicandonor, whereas Chris Martin IV, the CEO of Martin, was a Democraticdonor.
21) Ignored constitutional requirements for appointees
Late U.S. Senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat, expressed concerns that Obama’s dozens of czars appointed in 2009 might violate the U.S. Constitution because they were not approved by the U.S. Senate.
Another Democrat, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, shared a similar sentiment.
22) Tried to outlaw family farms
The Obama administration wanted to eradicate family farms in 2012 by trying to prohibit farm children under 18 from working in various farm-related activities.
23) Auctioned off ambassadorship to the Netherlands
Obama nominated Timothy Broas to be U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands after Broas donated at least $500,000 to Obama’s 2012 campaign.
24) Made the TSA even more abusive and ridiculous than it had been under Bush
Under the Obama administration, the TSA has been giving very invasive pat-downs on young children which would otherwise constitute child molestation.
25) Illegally demanded monetary payment for Freedom of Information Act request
The Obama administration demanded the Goldwater Institute pay nearly $79,000 before it would share public records via the Freedom of Information Act.
26) Stole money from retired Delphi employees
Obama eliminated the pensions of 20,000 retired Delphi employees in 2009.
27) Used “off the books” funding for military interventionism
Anti-war activists who helped elect Obama accused him of using the same “off-the-books” funding as his predecessor George W. Bush when the president requested over $83 billion from Congress for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
28) Tried to silence criticism of auto-bailouts
The Obama administration pressured the Ford Motor Company to stop criticizing Obama’s bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler in a TV ad.
29) Tried to silence video on YouTube
Obama actually asked a Jewish singing group to take down its video from the Internet in 2011.
30) Illegally gave Obamacare exemptions to unions that supported the passage of Obamacare
Obama gave some of his favorite organizations an exemption from some Obamacare requirements.
Many of these organizations were unions that had supported the passage of Obamacare, but then afterwards wanted exemptions from the very same law they forced on everyone else.
The Constitution, however, requires the law to treat everyone as equals.
The Washington Times said of this:
“Selective enforcement of the law is the first sign of tyranny. A government empowered to determine arbitrarily who may operate outside the rule of law invariably embraces favoritism as friends, allies and those with the best-funded lobbyists are rewarded. Favoritism inevitably leads to corruption, and corruption invites extortion. Ultimately, the rule of law ceases to exist in any recognizable form, and what is left is tyranny.”
“The now-familiar monthly trickling down of new waivers is, at best, a tacit admission that Obamacare is a failure. So far, seven entire states and 1,372 businesses, unions and other institutions have received waivers from the law. The list includes the administration’s friends and allies and, of course, those who have the best lobbyists.”
“More than 50 percent of the Obamacare waiver beneficiaries are union members, which is striking because union members account for less than 12 percent of the American work force. The same unions that provided more than $120 million to Democrats in the last two elections and, in many cases, openly campaigned in favor of the government takeover of your health care, now celebrate that Obamacare is not their problem.”
31) Defended Bush administration’s unconstitutional, unwarranted use of GPS device
The Obama administration opposed the U.S. Supreme Court for ruling against the Bush administration over the installation of a GPS tracking device on someone’s car without a warrant.
32) Was cited by nine states for committing 21 illegal acts
Attorneys General from nine states listed 21 illegal acts which had been committed by the Obama administration.
33) Tried to seize hotel because some of its customers had used illegal drugs
The Obama administration tried to shut down a mom-and-pop bed-and-breakfast because some if its guests had used illegal drugs.
34) Made recess appointments when Congress was not in recess
Obama violated the Constitution by making four recess appointments when Congress was not in recess in Jan. 2012.
A federal appeals court later ruled that Obama’s appointments had violated the Constitution.
35) Supports guns for himself and his wife, but opposes them for everyone else
President Obama signed a 2013 bill providing armed guards for himself and his wife for the rest of the lives.
But when Obama was an Illinois state senator in 2004, he voted againstcitizens keeping guns in their own homes to protect themselves and their families.
36) Approved giving 20 F-16 fighter jets to a Sharia dictatorship
Obama once gave 20 F-16 fighter jets to Egypt while it was under a Sharia dictatorship.
37) Violated the very same campaign finance laws that he claims to support
Obama’s 2012 campaign was fined $375,000 by the Federal Election Commission for violating campaign finance laws.
38) Encouraged employers to switch their employees from full time to part time
The New York Times said Obamacare “sharply penalizes full-time employment in favor of part-time employment.”
In response to the employer mandate of Obamacare, many businesses and even colleges switched some of their employees from full time to part time.
Leaders of the Teamsters, UFCW, and UNITE-HERE penned a 2013 letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi stating that Obamacare will “destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class… the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week. Numerous employers have begun to cut workers’ hours to avoid this obligation.”
39) Had Freedom of Information Act record worse than Bush’s
when it came to honoring requests under the Freedom of Information Act, Obama’s record was far worse than that of George W. Bush.
40) Supports installation of hidden cameras on private property without a search warrant
Obama’s Justice Department once argued in favor of installing hidden cameras on private property without a search warrant.
41) Accepted illegal campaign contributions from foreign citizens
During an experiment, a non-U.S. citizen attempted to make two $5 donations to both Obama’s campaign and Mitt Romney’s campaign.
While the Romney campaign rejected both donations, the Obama website accepted them cheerfully.
42) Lied about the Benghazi attack
After four U.S. citizens were killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in Sept. 2012, the Obama administration falsely claimed the attack was a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim video at YouTube.
Even more, the Obama administration took an entire week before it acknowledged the attacks as terrorism.
And although the Obama administration made a dozen revisions to its versions of the incident, then-White House Press Secretary Jay Carneyfalsely claimed that only a “single adjustment” had been made.
ABC News later published a complete list of all the changes to the White House talking points.
43) Complained to YouTube about an anti-Muslim video
The Obama administration actually phoned YouTube in 2012 to complain about an anti-Muslim video.
“It does make us nervous when the government throws its weight behind any requests for censorship,” Ben Wizner of the ACLU said.
44) Falsely said that Fast and Furious was started when Bush was President
Obama lied when he said Fast and Furious had “begun under the previous administration” in 2012.
Fast and Furious actually began around September 2009, months after Bush left office.
45) Illegally refused to fire Kathleen Sebelius after she violated campaign finance laws
Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, was caught violating campaign finance laws in 2012, but despite federal lawrequiring Obama to fire her over the illegal activity, he refused to do so.
46) Gave special access to people who raised or donated $500,000
People who raised or donated at least $500,000 to Organizing for Action, a pro-Obama political group, would be given “the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along with other meetings at the White House.”
47) Adopted harmful new restrictions on prescription painkillers – even though the House had already voted against them
The Obama administration ignored the House’s rejection of new restrictions on prescription painkillers by adopting them anyway.
48) Illegally refused to submit a budget on time during four of his first five years
Despite being legally required to submit a budget by the first Monday in February, Obama broke this law at least four times.
In contrast, since 1921, no President had missed this deadline more than once.
49) Fined UPS $40 million because some of its customers had used UPS to ship illegal drugs
Obama forced UPS to pay $40 million in 2013 because some of its customers had used the company to ship illegal drugs.
50) Added 20,000 extra pages to Obamacare without Congressional approval
After Obamacare was passed, Obama added 20,000 extra pages to it even though those extra pages were not voted on by Congress.
51) Waited until after the 2012 election to release unpopular Obamacare rules
The New York Times reported in 2013:
… even fervent supporters of the law admit that things are going worse than expected.
… the Obama administration didn’t want to release unpopular rules before the election.
Everything is turning out to be more complicated than originally envisioned.
A law that was very confusing has become mind-boggling… Americans are just going to be overwhelmed and befuddled. Many are just going to stay away, even if they are eligible for benefits.
52) Tried to rig federal auctions of radio spectrum space
The Obama administration was trying to rig federal auctions of radio spectrum space in a manner that would favor Sprint and T-Mobile over its competitors.
53) Put someone in jail for making an anti-Muslim video
Politico reported in 2013:
“Nakoula Basseley Nakoula deserves a place in American history. He is the first person in this country jailed for violating Islamic anti-blasphemy laws.”
“You won’t find that anywhere in the charges against him, of course. As a practical matter, though, everyone knows that Nakoula wouldn’t be in jail today if he hadn’t produced a video crudely lampooning the prophet Muhammad.”
“In the weeks after the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, the Obama administration claimed the terrorist assault had been the outgrowth of a demonstration against the Nakoula video. The administration ran public service announcements in Pakistan featuring President Barack Obama saying the U.S. had nothing to do with it. In a speech at the United Nations around this time, the president declared – no doubt with Nakoula in mind – ‘The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.'”
54) Rewarded one of his biggest campaign fundraisers by nominating him for the ambassadorship to Canada
Obama nominated Bruce Heyman to be the ambassador to Canada in 2013after Heyman raised more than $1 million for Obama.
55) Asked contractors to disclose their political donations before bidding on government contracts
Obama asked contractors to disclose their political donations before bidding on federal contracts in 2011.
56) Falsely accused a law abiding news reporter of being “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation
The Obama administration falsely labeled Fox contributor James Rosen as “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation when it applied for a warrant to read his emails.
The New York Times reported:
With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible “co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.
Leak investigations usually focus on the source, not the reporter. But, in this case, federal prosecutors also asked a federal judge for permission to examine Mr. Rosen’s personal e-mails, arguing that “there is probable cause to believe” Mr. Rosen is “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in the leak.
Though Mr. Rosen was not charged, the F.B.I. request for his e-mail account was granted secretly in late May 2010. The government was allowed to rummage through Mr. Rosen’s e-mails for at least 30 days.
The Washington Post also said:
The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush’s administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of.
To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job – seeking out information the government doesn’t want made public – deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are based. Guns? Privacy? Due process? Equal protection? If you can’t speak out, you can’t defend those rights, either.
Beyond that, the administration’s actions shatter the president’s credibility and discourage allies who would otherwise defend the administration against bogus accusations such as those involving the Benghazi “talking points.” If the administration is spying on reporters and accusing them of criminality just for asking questions – well, who knows what else this crowd is capable of doing?
57) Asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate himself for lying under oath
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder lied under oath when he said he had nothing to do with monitoring the emails of Fox reporter James Rosen, even though his own signature on the search warrant.
In response, Obama asked Holder to investigate himself!
58) Used Obamacare to illegally give the IRS additional powers without approval from Congress
The Washington Post reported in 2013:
[Obamacare] allows the Department of Health and Human Services to set up federal health exchanges in the holdout states. But the statute makes no mention of the IRS providing credits and subsidies through federal exchanges.
The IRS resolved this conundrum by denying its existence. In a May 2012 regulatory ruling, it asserted its own right to provide credits outside the state exchanges as the reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous law. But the language of the law is not ambiguous. And health scholars Jonathan Adler and Michael Cannon, in an exhaustive recent analysis, find no justification for the IRS’s ruling in the legislative history of Obamacare….
So: The IRS seized the authority to spend about $800 billion over 10 years on benefits that were not authorized by Congress.
59) Illegally solicited donations from health insurers
In May 2013, Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius illegally solicited donations from health insurers to help pay for Obamacare.
60) Proposed military interventionism in Syria
Obama proposed the U.S. oust the Syrian government in 2013 by military action.
61) Refused to fire or prosecute more than 1,000 IRS employees who illegally used their IRS credit cards for their own personal use
Obama refused to fire or prosecute more than 1,000 IRS employees illegally used their IRS credit cards for personal purchases.
62) Had the Secret Service visit a law abiding citizen who had criticized his policies on Twitter
Obama ordered the Secret Service to visit the home of Tom Francois, a law abiding citizen who had criticized Obama’s policies on Twitter in 2013.
The Secret Service later admitted that Francois had not made any threats against the president.
63) Had the IRS grant special, illegal favors for his brother’s so-called “charity”
The Daily Caller reported the IRS had taken the “unprecedented” step of approving a non-profit application within just one month from the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a so-called “charity” which was headed by Malik Obama, Barack Obama’s brother.
Additionally, the IRS illegally gave retroactive approval for the organization’s tax exempt status and had illegally solicited tax deductible donations even though it did not have legal approval to do so.
64) Illegally bypassed Congress to delay Obamacare’s employer mandate
In July 2013, Obama delayed the employer mandate part of Obamacare until January 2015, even though Congress set it to begin a year prior.
Obama effectively rewrote a law without approval from Congress, which is highly illegal.
65) Illegally forced 2,200 privately owned auto dealerships to close, which destroyed 120,000 jobs
Obama cost 120,000 people their jobs by illegally forced 2,200 privately owned auto dealerships to close in 2009.
66) Gave 23,994 tax refunds worth a total of $46,378,040 to illegal aliens who all used the same address
The IRS gave nearly 24,000 tax refunds worth a total of nearly $47 million to illegal aliens in 2011 using the same address in Atlanta, Ga.
67) Used tax money to pay federal employees to organize protests against George Zimmerman
Obama actually used tax money to pay federal employees to organizeprotests against George Zimmerman in 2012.
68) Illegally continued giving foreign aid to Egypt after it had a coup
The Obama administration said it would illegally continue giving foreign aid to Egypt after its coup.
69) Broke promise to end Bush’s surveillance of U.S. citizens who were not suspected of committing a crime
Obama lied when he said he would end Bush’s illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens not suspected of committing a crime.
70) Falsely guaranteed that people could keep their doctor
Before Obamacare was passed, Obama said:
“Here is a guarantee that I’ve made… If you’ve got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor.”
This was a complete lie.
71) Illegally seized a privately owned gun from a law abiding citizen
After a jury found George Zimmerman not guilty, the Obama administrationannounced it would seize his gun anyway, a violation of both the double jeopardy clause of the U.S. Constitution and the Fifth Amendment.
72) Illegally prevented individual employees of small businesses from choosing their own plan during the first year of Obamacare
Obamacare requires that individual employees of small businesses be allowed to choose their own insurance plan during the first year of Obamacare, but the Obama administration kept them from doing so.
73) Illegally avoided enforcing the required income verification of people who receive subsidies for Obamacare exchanges
The Obama administration refuses to verify the income of people whoreceive subsidies for Obamacare exchanges.
74) Illegally delayed the caps on out of pocket health care payments without Congressional approval
Obama once again illegally rewrote Obamacare by delaying payment caps for one year.
75) Falsely said the NSA review was being conducted by an “independent” body</strong
Obama assigned National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who had falsely testified to Congress that the NSA was not collecting information on U.S. citizens, to establish an “independent” investigation of NSA surveillance.
The list doesn’t need to end at 75:
76) Nominated a telecommunications lobbyist and Obama fundraiser to head the FCC
Obama nominated former cable TV lobbyist and Obama fundraiser Tom Wheeler to head the FCC in 2013. Wheeler had previously been the head of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which is a lobbying organization for the cable TV industry.
77) Tried to violate defendants’ right to a fair trial
In August 2013, Reuters reported:
A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.
Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.
The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.
78) Threatened internet service providers with contempt of court if they did not install surveillance software
The Obama administration had pressured internet service providers to install surveillance software in 2013 so that it could monitor internet traffic without a warrant, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The ISPs who refused were later threatened by the administration with contempt of court.
This list was compiled with help from Freedom Outpost’s Tim Brown.
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