Palin: Schweizer Book a 'Slap Upside the Head' to Media's Blindness to D.C. Corruption

By Sarah Palin 22 Oct 2013

  Governor Palin posted this to her Facebook page on Tuesday night with a link to the review she wrote for Breitbart News about Peter Schweizer's new book, Extortion. We are reposting what she wrote in its entirety because we feel she makes an excellent point drawn from her personal experience. Look, I’ll keep this brief because I want to spend quality time getting kids to bed tonight. Doubt I’ll get much sleep though because the recent proof of government corruption makes me nauseated. If it doesn’t you, and you can blindly ignore the status quo embraced by our politicians and low information voters, then I unapologetically call out your disloyalty to the ethical foundation of the greatest nation on earth.

When you have a moment, please read my review of a jaw dropping, searing new book that provides the proof that Washington, D.C. has strayed so far from the planks in both major political parties' platforms that we are fools for trusting any who have refused to fight against cronyism and extortion. This is the stuff Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin and a few others have railed against so boldly. It's the stuff “tea party” patriots of all stripes rallied against to grow the grassroots movement that is the only political solution to defend our republic! “60 Minutes” covered some of this on Sunday, Sean Hannity had an outstanding interview with the book’s author tonight, and other mediums are doing right by not ignoring these revelations.

Here’s the deal: all politics is local. And personal. Let me personalize this. It is UNBELIEVABLE that the press would investigate every nook and cranny of my life; send gullible reporters to my little town to kick over every rock any family member ever tread underfoot; scour every email I’ve written; research every Palin campaign disclosure like junkyard dogs; sic 12 AP reporters to fact check my book; breathlessly report about my wardrobe and an old used tanning bed I bought to get some sun during Alaskan winters as if these were vital national news stories; hound friends, personal doctors, strangers, and just downright strange people, etc., etc., etc., to know everything we do (and they still get the story wrong!). They blew and still blow all those resources “investigating” the irrelevant hockey mom from Wasilla. Meanwhile our government goes to hell in a hand basket right before the “elite media’s” closed eyes, and it took my friend Peter Schweizer to slap you upside the head to see any of this corruption? Good God. Be ashamed, media, be very ashamed.

Now, I think I’ll go read “Green Eggs and Ham” to my little boy, then we’ll all say a prayer for our country as I join you in readying for tomorrow’s battle for America.

Here’s my review of Peter Schweizer’s new book “Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets”: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/21/Extortion
Photo credit: Shealah Craighead

Big Government

D.C.'s 'Corrupt Bastards Club'

The Corrupt Bastards Club. They said it. I didn’t.

 

 

In Alaska we had a group of politicos who chuckled as they dubbed themselves the “CBC,” which stands for “Corrupt Bastards Club.” But it was no laughing matter. I, and many others, took them on. We won.

When I served as chairman of our state’s Oil and Gas Commission, I reported on the cronyism of the chair of my own Party, who had been appointed by our governor to that same energy regulating commission. (Click here to see a reporter’s reaction to a short Newt Gingrich interview on the matter.) The whistle blowing resulted in him receiving the largest ethics fine in the state’s history. But that was just the tip of the oily iceberg. The FBI investigated Alaskan lawmakers for taking bribes from the oil industry in exchange for votes favorable to that industry, and politicos ended up in jail.* The lawmakers actually called themselves the Corrupt Bastards Club and even emblazoned the CBC initials on baseball caps they gifted each other – that’s how untouchable they believed they were. But average, concerned citizens said, “enough is enough,” and shook things up. Though some of the CBC members ended up in horizontal pinstripes, much of the compromised party apparatus stayed in power.

I’ll never forget standing at the podium during our state GOP convention and asking delegates to stand up with me and oust the status quo because the political environment had to change for Alaska to progress toward her manifest destiny as a more productive—and ethical—state to help secure our union. Only about half stood up. The rest looked around gauging the political winds and sat on their thumbs. Our federal delegation was incensed at me. Their influence resulted in much of the party machine staying put, but I’ll never be sorry I fought it.

Today, doesn't it seem like we have a Corrupt Bastards Club in D.C.? On steroids? It might not be as oily and obvious as its Alaska counterpart, but it’s just as compromised because its members, too, are indifferent to what their actions mean for We the People.

I’m prepared to be attacked for suggesting this comparison of the D.C. political establishment with the CBC. But I call it like I see it. And lived it. The fight over defunding socialized healthcare, aka Obamacare, should have opened everyone’s eyes to call it the same.

From the very start, we knew that any health care reform could move us in one of two directions: closer to a genuine free market and patient-centered system to allow choices, affordability, and continued economic freedom, or closer to full socialized healthcare in the form of a single-payer system. President Obama and many Democrats have always openly admitted they want socialized medicine in the form of a single-payer system.

It can be argued that Obamacare isn’t full socialized medicine… yet. Right now it is a sort of corporatism, which is the collusion of big government with big business. With Obamacare, the government has taken over an industry that comprises a sixth of our economy, radically changed the way it operates, and is mandating that we purchase the services of that industry. This is unprecedented. It’s radical.

For those Obama voters who are now flummoxed by the rise in their health care premiums, let me explain why they went up. Obamacare has changed the very nature of insurance, which is a hedge against a future possibility. A 27-year-old marathon runner is much less likely to suffer a major illness than a 57-year-old obese chain smoker with a pickled liver. But Obamacare has ruled that there be no adjusted costs for pre-existing conditions, which means we threw out the actuarial data and everyone is now required to pay more to cover those who are more likely to be sick. But now average Americans – especially those healthy 20somethings who probably don’t even want to buy insurance – can’t afford to pay for Obamacare.
Obamacare in its current corporatist form isn’t meant to last. It’s meant to push us towards full socialized medicine with a single-payer system. How do I know this? Simple. Let’s compare Obamacare with the Canadian single-payer system.

With Obamacare we have crappier health care (fewer choices, fewer doctors, and an IPAB rationing panel of faceless bureaucrats, aka the ol' “death panel” that has been admitted to existing in Obamacare), but it is very expensive for the individual American. For instance, you’ll find that the so-called Bronze Plans are just as expensive as the Platinum Plans when you factor in the $5,000-$10,000 deductible in addition to the monthly payments you’ll shell out. And those Americans who aren’t being pushed onto the Obamacare exchanges are still seeing their insurance premiums skyrocket as the industry shifts onto consumers the cost of not factoring in various conditions.

Now let’s look at what Canadians have. I dare say our good neighbor to your north, and my east, has even worse health care coverage, but at least it’s “free” for the individual.
Americans, if you’re faced with a 300% increase (or even a 65% increase like my family) in your health care premiums for crappier coverage, doesn’t “free” socialized medicine all of a sudden sound appealing?

And that’s how Americans will be led down the primrose path to a single-payer system. People will be frustrated, worn out, and broke under this new government burden. Many will end up concluding they’ll settle for – then demand – full socialized medicine because they’ll see how the unworkable Obamacare will break our health care system (where, presently, no one is turned away from emergency rooms and we have many public and private safety nets for people in need), along with busting our personal bank accounts. The cry will go out, “Can’t you just put us all in a sort of Medicaid-like system? It’ll be much less confusing than these awful exchange websites and a lot less expensive!” As things stand, many who are getting slammed by Obamacare will inevitably settle for less out of necessity. And that’s the left’s declared plan: a single-payer system. They said it. I didn't.

Of course, the Canadian system isn’t really “free." It comes with high taxes and even more rationing, which is precisely why the Obama-friendly economist Paul Krugman makes a point of reminding us that we’ll only bring health care costs “under control” by employing “death panels and sales taxes.” And, of course, our already broke country will go bankrupt even faster under the unsustainable strain of this expanding welfare state, and our economy will suffer under the stagnation of permanently higher taxes.

When Harry Reid laughs and says, “Yes, yes! Absolutely, yes!” when asked if his goal was to move Obamacare to a single-payer system of full socialized medicine, he’s spilling the truth. The evidence is right before our eyes. Please open yours, GOP establishment.

The broken websites and botched Obamacare rollout help push things to that inevitable conclusion by causing frustration and confusion that only the government can “fix.” In fact, these unusable Obamacare websites make a reasonable person wonder how this administration could have made such a colossal bungle of the rollout when they are, after all, the same savvy experts who had the most sophisticated and precise campaign websites ever built. They could pinpoint voters down to a city block, but they messed up a website that cost the government over $200 million more than it cost Apple to develop the first iPhone. Purposeful?

The full implementation of Obamacare puts us firmly on the path to the left’s desire of a single-payer system of socialized medicine. That was the end game for Obama and the Democrats all along. The end is now in sight for them, and the media doesn’t even ask about it.

So what was the GOP establishment’s game plan to fight this march towards socialism? They’ve been busy denouncing Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and their supporters, along with the good House Members who fought for our one chance to defund Obamacare. But what were the wayward Republicans’ alternative plans? They thought we could ignore the implementation of Obamacare and simply focus on some future electoral victories in the hope that some day the stars will align and we’ll have super majorities in the House and Senate along with a Republican president who would hopefully repeal this disastrous soon-to-be set in stone new “entitlement.”

There’s a big problem with that scenario. It overlooks the everyday reality before our eyes. As Obamacare is being implemented, Americans can’t afford to pay for it. We can’t even sign up for it on the impossibly cumbersome websites, but the IRS will fine us for not doing so anyway! Obama gave his pals, and Congress gave themselves, tickets off this train wreck via waivers. Cruz and Lee fought for us to get the same relief the big guys got. The media and disloyal politicians turned on them and, divided, we lost. Now we little guys are stuck on this train, which will soon collide with hardship and real-world economics that don’t pencil out.

Friends, by the time the electoral stars align for this hoped-for GOP hat trick the country will be out billions, if not trillions, more of our tax dollars and will have already begged D.C. to relieve us of this corporatist nightmare even if it means a socialized single-payer system. And once there, do you think we’ll ever go back and strip this “entitlement”? Unarguable history proves otherwise.

The only credible plan of action was to do everything in our power to delay the implementation of Obamacare – defund it, postpone it, whatever – while at the same time work to elect a majority to repeal it.

That is what Cruz and Lee and those Tea Party aligned House Members were doing. There was no other credible alternative plan to seize the constitutionally appropriate opportunity to legislatively close the purse strings to stop the juggernaut of full socialized medicine.

You have to wonder whether the permanent political class in D.C. really wants to get rid of Obamacare at all. We’re finding out it’s good business for them.

The same lobbyists who wrote Obamacare are now busy selling their wares to anyone with enough dough who wants to get around the law. Meanwhile politicians are busy collecting campaign donations and other favors while carving out the lobbyists’ requested exemptions for various cronies. Then every election cycle they get to capitalize on fundraising off Obamacare shenanigans while telling voters back home about how hard they’re fighting to stop it. Don’t be fooled. Too many of them merely took meaningless symbolic votes that could never have repealed this, and they sat on their thumbs without standing united in the fight for us.
GOP politicians claim they’re against Obamacare and promise to repeal it. But when it came time to stand up and use the Constitutional tools they have – the power of the purse strings – to finally halt the implementation, they balked, waved the white flag, and joined the lapdog media in trashing the good guys who fought for us.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, these same politicians are covertly pushing through amnesty despite evidence that the 33 million newly legalized voters will overwhelmingly lean Democrat! Obviously this makes the likelihood of a GOP hat trick electoral victory, and hence the repeal of socialized healthcare, even more improbable.

The media wants you to believe that the partial government shutdown “fractured” the Republican machine from grassroots commonsense conservatives who go by the acronym TEA Party (that stands for “Taxed Enough Already”). No, Tea Party patriots rose up because the Republican machine “fractured” itself years ago by marginalizing its conservative base. The recent “slimdown” didn’t cause the fracture. It happened because of the fracture – because wayward Republicans have refused for years to stand up and fight for economic freedom and limited government, despite campaigning on those principles every election cycle.

That’s how we got into this debt-ridden mess in the first place. They campaigned one way, but governed another.

It’s the establishment’s choice whether this fracture remains unfixed because the conservative grassroots will never give up the fight for freedom. Never. Never. Generations of our sons and daughters sent off to war to protect our freedom have paid too high a price for us to ever give up the fight.

The conservative grassroots is rising up just like some did all those years ago at the GOP convention in Alaska. We’re rising up and calling on the rest of the Party to stand up with us against corruption and indifference – the twin causes of failure. Stand up, America! A great awakening is needed now more than ever. And it can happen in this most exceptional nation. By the grace of God it will happen!

President Reagan warned about socialized medicine, and ironically I quoted his warning in my closing remarks during the 2008 Vice Presidential debate: “If you don’t do this and if I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

You deserve the best, America. And the best is God-given freedom.

*I encourage readers to see Stephen K. Bannon’s documentary “The Undefeated” for a full explanation of the Corrupt Bastards Club and how we took them on in Alaska.

Headline image: Shealah Craighead

Big Government

Dangerous Times: Obama The Crisis-Monger

October 5, 2013
By James Lewis

 Obama thrives on crises, not solutions.

That's the key to this whole administration.

The budget crisis today is the direct result of five years of over-the-top deficit spending, all demanded by Obama, who doesn't really care if the economy gets better or not.  Either way, he will blame the Republicans, with the unanimous support of our Soviet-style media.  He believes that politically he can't lose with a completely obedient media spinning everything his way.

As long as Americans are suckered by our monopoly media, we will never solve any real problems.  Instead, we will be drawn into phony crises instigated by Obama and the Democrats.  Any real dangers, like nuclear proliferation and the Jihad War, will be ignored as long as Democrats are in power.

The only permanent solution is to fire the mendacious media, and that is completely up to you.

Republicans are treated worse in this administration than mass-murdering Mullah Rouhani, who led Iran's truck-bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1984, killing 299 young Marines and French peacekeepers.  That truck-bombing led to Hezb'allah, Iran's terrorist arm, taking over the nation of Lebanon.

Mullah Rouhani is now treated as a reasonable peacemaker by this endlessly mendacious administration.

Obama operates the same way domestically, where white and black unemployment is peaking, and he doesn't even bother to express concern.  The nation's crisis is his opportunity.

From tip to toe, Obama is a crisis-maker, not a healer.  He stirs up trouble every chance he gets.  Ask yourself how any U.S. president could willfully try to worsen race relations in the United States by flipping the judicial verdict in the Zimmerman trial, and you will begin to see the real Obama.  He doesn't care whether justice was done.  He only whips up more racial rage.

The chaotic launch of O'Care was done without adequate planning and testing.  Nobody knows if this thing could ever work, because it was passed, as Nancy Pelosi famously said, without anyone even reading the bill -- using unrelenting demagoguery in the media.  Nobody in the Democratic Party understood the bill, because no human being can understand 10,500 pages of technical jargon.  Like the 37,000 pages of the federal tax code, this law is not meant to be understood.  It is meant to give essentially unlimited powers to a bureaucracy that does not understand it, either, but which will use pieces of the giant law to implement what it wants.

Ordinary Americans don't even understand the United States Constitution, which can be printed on twenty pages, and O'Care is a hulking monstrosity by comparison.  It is intended to drive the best health care system in the world out of business.  That is perverse and malignant.

Every computer programmer knows that even "simple" programs can grow so complex that nobody can figure them out.  They become bloatware, with endless bells and whistles and a lifetime of bugs.  They can't be fixed, because their design is fundamentally flawed.  But nobody has ever planned for anything as complicated as one seventh of the U.S. economy.  This is a moon launch without any knowledge of basic physics or engineering.  It has all the arrogant presumption and ignorance of Soviet central planning.  Stay out of it if you can.

Obama doesn't care.  O'Care must go through, no matter what.

This is Obama's standard operating procedure: make a rigid demand; drive it through Congress, come hell or high water; and blame Republicans for the crash.  Or, in foreign affairs, undermine the Arab nations, blame Israel for all the trouble in the ever-violent Middle East, and praise the murderous mullahs for their peaceful intentions.

All American values are turned upside-down in this administration, which is why it has to tell an endless stream of lies.  Nobody can trust a single word.

In the Middle East, Obama insisted on the resignation of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, the pillar of peace for four decades.  That was done without regard for the suffering it would bring to the people of Egypt and its neighbors -- not just Israel, but also Saudi Arabia, which relies on Egypt for its defense.  The Muslim Brotherhood was slated as the likely winner of the next election, and now it turns out that for years, the MBs have been feeding uncounted millions of dollars directly to Obama, to the looming Hillary campaign, and to weirdos like Anthony Weiner in New York City.  New York's Democratic candidate for mayor, Bill de Blasio, is an old unrepentant Communist.  Chances are that he won the money race with a mix of leftist and Islamist dollars.  Naturally, de Blasio has the support of hopelessly corrupt media like the New York Times.

In Egypt, modernist Egyptians rebelled against Obama's Muslim Brotherhood pals, who were trying to impose sharia law.  But it took an Egyptian and Saudi rebellion against the MBs to counter Obama's penchant for supporting the worst characters in sight.  Obama favors instability because he can get his way only through crises.  That is his ideology.  That is also why he sneers at the U.S. Constitution, the great stabilizing foundation of America for two whole centuries.  

As long as this president controls the U.S. media, it doesn't matter how much disaster he creates.  His corrupt media servants will tell their Lo-Fos that he is not responsible.  The news media may be going out of business, but last week Al Jazeera advertised 800 openings for job-hungry American journalists.  Guess where their loyalties now lie.  Not to this country.  Only to the tiny oil sheikhdom of Qatar and its war theology.

In Syria we are giving arms to the Qaedist rebels, who have been torturing and decapitating women and children in Christian villages like Ma'aloula, the way they have done since Mohammed raided the Jewish Qureisha tribe in the 6^th century.  In Kenya we are seeing the same mass murders of civilians at a modern mall, the pride of Nairobi.  Ordinary people taking cell phone pictures and videos are showing us the reality of America's bestial "allies" under Obama.

Yes, we are running arms to the worst murder gangs in the world, no matter how demonic they are.  That was the big secret of Benghazi: the United States was sending shiploads of Libyan arms to al-Qaeda in Syria.  Why?  Nobody in the media has even dared to ask that question.  If Obama does it, it has to be good.  But the media knew enough to bury the facts during the election.

In Syria, Sunni rebels are now an estimated 60,000 fighters, coming from the peace-loving Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, and Salafists.  Iran has poured in 20,000 fighters on Assad's side, from Hezb'allah and Iran itself.  Assad has his own army, supported by Russia, while the CIA has trained some thousands of "moderate rebels."  Guess who will win.  Not the outnumbered moderates, for sure.

The Center for Policy Studies has now exposed secret money streams from the Muslim Brotherhood to the Democrats.  That hidden flow of cash explains everything that made no sense before, going back to 9/11/01.  The MBs run layers of shell corporations to hide money for the Democrats from the IRS -- which isn't looking very hard.  The Clinton Center is one major conduit.  The Obama campaign is another.  The Democrats have a long history of corruption, going back to Boss Tweed; Joseph Kennedy, Sr.; and the Daley Machine in Chicago.  Today's "transnationalist" (socialist) Democrats are copying the European Union, which dances to the tune of Gulf oil money.  That is the seductive side of jihad, the propaganda war, which has rendered the American media deaf, dumb, and blind to the danger of Iran's suicide cult, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudis, and al-Qaeda.

This week, we also found out about Malik Obama, yet another half-brother of the president's, who turns out to be a big muckety-muck in -- you guessed it -- the radical Muslim Brotherhood.  Their slogan is "Our ambition is to die in the way of Allah!"  And naturally to commit murder and torture in the way of Allah, too.  This is an ancient evil come alive, with the active aid of the radical left in Europe and America.  Without the Western left, there would be no huge Muslim immigration flow into Europe and the U.S.  That is why famous "feminist" Naomi Wolf has signed on with Al Jazeera, the voice of the ancient desert patriarchy itself.

So here we see Malik Obama, with a big smile on his face and a dozen "wives" tucked away in his harem.
Want to see a real war against women?  Wherever sharia takes over, women are systematically intimidated, brainwashed, beaten, raped, murdered, jailed in their homes, and treated with contempt.  American feminists are so utterly deluded that they can't see crimes against women all over Dar al Harb, the House of War, right in front of their unseeing eyes.  And Obama's "alter ego," Valerie Jarrett, born and raised in Iran, can't be in any doubt about the facts.  She knows the facts, Obama knows the facts, and the only explanation is purposeful crisis-mongering: things have to get worse before they can get better.

That perverse logic failed for seven decades in the Soviet Union.  Under the glorious reign of Obama, it isn't working, either.  Leninism is nothing but personal animosity turned into government policy.

In civilized Iran, the mullahs just passed a pedophile-enabling law, allowing men to "adopt" young girls and then to officially "marry" them.  This is all fine according to the barbaric laws of the formerly great land of Persia, where child sex slavery, drugs, and pervasive tyranny are par for the course.

From the New York Post:

Iranian news reports (in 1992) said (Rouhani's) son shot himself with his father's pistol in 1992. But now Iranian dissident Ali Reza Nuri reports that the son wrote a suicide note. Writing in the London-based, Saudi-owned pan-Arab newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat, he says the note read: "I hate your government, your lies, your corruption, your religion, your double standard and your hypocrisy."  

This is the man Obama is so eager to "negotiate" with.

In five critical years, Obama has done nothing to stop Iranian nukes, while telling Israel and the Saudis he would never let it happen.  Obama's goal was to trap Israel into a no-win do-or-die dilemma.  The Saudis are even more scared of the Iranians, who tried to overthrow the Saudi royal family when Khomeini was alive.  Saudi Arabia has a tiny population and a huge desert to protect, along with Mecca and Medina.  They are much more vulnerable than Israel, which packs a big retaliatory punch.

Obama has consistently lied to our allies.  None of them trust us today, under a man who was called "aliéné" by France's Nicholas Sarkozy -- meaning "alienated from reality."  Like all intelligence agencies, the French Sûreté has psychiatrists on its staff, and you can even look up Obama's personality on Wikipedia.

More than any nation on Earth, America has made war, when there were no good alternatives, with a clear sense of moral purpose.  Historians always argue about wartime decisions after the fact.  The Declaration of Independence makes the case for the American revolution in moral and legal terms.  The Civil War was fought as a last resort against the spread of slavery and to keep the "last, best hope of mankind" alive.  World Wars I and II were fought to defend civilized values against tyranny, and the Cold War had a convincing rationale explained by John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Obama is the first American president to have abandoned the moral high ground in his foreign policy.  Like Bill Clinton and unlike George W. Bush, Obama has never used the bully pulpit of the presidency to explain why we are at war.  Because don't doubt for a moment that war has been declared on us by every jihadist regime from Ayatollah Khomeini to Muhammed Morsi.

The Obama presidency pre-emptively surrenders to the enemy whenever it gets a chance.  It has appointed Muslim Brotherhood loyalists to high positions in this administration.  It has swept under the rug jihadist assaults on our military and our civilian population.  It has failed to stop the aggressive jihadist regime in Iran in its assault -- not just on Israel, but on America itself.

Prime Minister Netanyahu just pointed out that the Iranians are building ICBMs with enough range to hit the United States.  The mullahs already have missiles able to hit Israel and the Sunni oil regimes across the Gulf.

Why does a war theocracy build long-range nukes and missiles while impoverishing its own people?  No sane person doubts the answer.  But as long as Obama is president, the United States will act like a helpless giant.  We have the best military in the world, and the most inane and flabbiest leadership.

A British saying from the Cold War goes:

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. But three times is enemy action."

American Thinker

Exclusive: Judicial Watch Announces Ambitious 2013 Investigative Agenda

by Tony Lee 11 Feb 2013

 

  Judicial Watch, the independent government watchdog organization that has held Republicans and Democrats to account, announced on Monday its list of investigative priorities for 2013. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that the organization will focus on issues such as Benghazi, illegal immigration, President Barack Obama's use of executive orders and actions, gun control, green energy boondoggles, election fraud, and national security leaks over the next year. 

Fitton said he did not expect Obama to "admit to any wrongdoing" in Tuesday's State of the Union speech and said it is up to independent organizations to hold Obama to account because Congress will not. He challenged Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to bring up these concerns in his response to Obama's State of the Union address.

"The big test is for Sen. Rubio," Fitton said. "Will he address American concerns about a corrupt and out-of-control government?"

Last year, Judicial Watch, in partnership with Breitbart News, commissioned an election night survey of voters conducted by Public Opinion Strategies that "found that corruption in the federal government is a serious concern among voters, with 85% saying they are 'concerned' and of that number 53% saying they are 'very concerned.'"

"The Obama administration is less transparent than the Bush administration," Fitton said. "Transparency advocates on the Left and Right agree that the Obama administration has failed to live to President Obama’s promise to be the most transparent in history. There’s good reason we’ve filed over 100 open records lawsuits against the Obama administration."

In regards to Obama's decision to keep Attorney General Eric Holder around for his second term, despite scandals associated with him and the Justice Department such as Fast and Furious, Fitton said, "one would have to go back to RFK to find an attorney general as close to the White House as Holder."

"He is not independent, he is not ethical, and it has turned his Justice Department to taxpayer-funded legal battering ram for outside leftist groups," Fitton said. "Holder’s remaining at Justice also help guarantees no thorough investigation of the various Obama scandals."

Judicial Watch produced, with director Stephen K. Bannon, The District of Corruption movie, which was a companion to Fitton's best-selling book on the same topic, The Corruption Chronicles.

Here is the full list of Judicial Watch's 2013 investigative priorities:

• Rule by Executive Fiat: President Obama’s decision to bypass Congress, often contrary to the U.S. Constitution, and implement his agenda via executive fiat on a wide range of issues from undermining the Second Amendment to rewriting immigration law, to controlling free speech on the Internet.

• Benghazi-gate: The Obama administration’s attempts to deceive the American people regarding the terrorist connection to the murder of four Americans, including a U.S. Ambassador, at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi; the decision by the State Department to deny support for U.S. forces during the attack and the Obama administration’s refusal to bolster security at the consulate in the lead up to the anniversary of 9/11.

• Bin Laden Raid Leaks and Secrets: The Obama Department of Defense’s (DOD) decision to leak classified details at the behest of the Obama White House to the filmmakers behind Zero Dark Thirty, a Hollywood film detailing the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden; the refusal of the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the leaks despite a criminal referral from the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General; the leaking of the names of military operatives involved in the raid by DOD Undersecretary Mike Vickers; the connection of John Brennan, Obama’s pick to head the CIA, to the leaks; the decision by the Obama DOD to withhold from the American people the videos and photos detailing the raid.

• Election Fraud: The DOJ’s refusal to enforce provisions of the National Voter Registration Act, that requires states to maintain clean voter registration lists; DOJ’s campaign to threaten, intimidate and sue states that attempt to implement election integrity provisions consistent with the law, such as voter ID laws; DOJ’s collusion with radical leftist and corrupt special interest groups such as Project Vote and other ACORN-connected groups. 

• Threats to Second Amendment Protections: The Obama administration’s closed-door discussions with anti-gun activists designed to craft policies that restrict gun ownership and undermine the Second Amendment, including new policies that would seek to pressure businesses to toe the administration’s gun agenda; policy recommendations that “suggest” doctors ask patients about gun ownership; efforts to compile federal registries on gun ownership; and efforts to use EPA regulations to restrict gun ownership. 

• Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s highly controversial June 20, 2012, assertion of “executive privilege” to protect Attorney General Eric Holder from being prosecuted for failing to provide Congress with documents pertaining to the Obama administration’s deadly gunrunning operation known as Operation Fast and Furious; Obama’s invocation of executive privilege moves the legal and political questions surrounding the deaths of more than 300 Mexicans directly into the Oval Office; efforts by the Holder DOJ and top Justice officials to conceal their knowledge and participation in the Fast and Furious scandal and to escape accountability while blaming the scandal on low level officials.

• Ongoing Government Bailouts: The government’s continued control of private sector institutions through bailouts of private financial institutions; government decisions regarding the ongoing Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailouts; the role of the Federal Reserve in supporting European Union bailouts and the continued financing of our nation’s public debt; and the government takeover of the American automotive industry.

• Green Energy Boondoggles: The Obama Department of Energy’s decision to funnel $16.4 billion to “green energy” companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers; the half-a-billion taxpayer dollars given to the now-bankrupt Solyndra, a green energy boondoggle financially backed by Tulsa billionaire Georg Kaiser, an Obama campaign fundraiser; the decision by the Obama White House to fast-track the Solyndra loan through the approval process; bailouts given to other failing “green pork” companies, such as Fisker Automotive, Ener1, Abound Solar, and Beacon Power.

• Illegal Immigration: The President’s amnesty scheme for illegal aliens imposed via executive fiat; deteriorating security on the nation’s border with Mexico; the Obama administration’s unwillingness to enforce federal immigration laws and attacks against states attempting to confront the illegal immigration crisis.

• National Security: Unanswered questions concerning the relationship of the FBI and CIA to American-born militant Imam Anwar al-Aulaqi and his assassination per the order of Barack Obama in 2011; the Obama administration’s determined efforts to censor speech about the threat of radical Islam. 

• Obama Czars: Barack Obama’s repeated attempts to bypass the “advice and consent” authority of the U.S. Senate and appoint unaccountable and corrupt czars to control major aspects of government policy and programs outside of the reach of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA); the decision by Obama to improperly employ a controversial recess appointment to install radical leftist Richard Cordray at the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau(CFPB) after the Senate had blocked his nomination; Obama’s decision to use recess appointments to appoint three members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a move which exceeded his constitutional authority per a recent appeals court ruling.

• Obamacare: Obamacare’s mandate to evaluate medical treatments based solely on cost; the Obama administration’s secrecy regarding the distribution of Obamacare waivers; the Obama administration’s use of taxpayer dollars to produce and distribute Obamacare propaganda; and the regulation and funding of Obamacare in general.

• Unprecedented Secrecy: The Obama administration’s withholding of records pertaining to Obamacare to the continued funding of the criminal ACORN network; from tracking Wall Street bailout money to the unconstitutional use of czars; to withholding the Secret Service’s White House visitor logs; to the attacks on the integrity of our nation’s elections. (Judicial Watch has had to file almost 1,000 FOIA requests and nearly 100 FOIA lawsuits against the Obama administration.)

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Pew Poll: Majority of Americans See Government as Threat to Freedom

by Dr. Susan Berry 1 Feb 2013
 

 According to a new Pew Research Center poll, the majority of Americans say the federal government threatens their personal rights. The poll, conducted from Jan. 9^th-13^th among 1,500 adults, found that 53% of those surveyed think the federal government threatens their own personal rights and freedoms, the highest level found since Pew began polling on this subject in 1995. This outcome also represents the first time since Pew began polling that a majority of Americans saw the government as a threat. In March of 2010, 47% of those polled said that they viewed government as a threat to freedom.

The latest Pew survey also included questions about gun laws. Not surprisingly, given the current national controversy about gun control and Second Amendment rights, 62% of gun owners believe that the federal government poses a fundamental threat to their constitutional rights and freedom.

In addition, the survey found that, over the past two years, the percentage of conservative Republicans who view the government as a threat to freedom has jumped from 62% to 76%. 54% of conservatives consider government to be a “major threat” to their constitutional rights.

Also not surprising are the views of liberal Democrats, as expressed through the Pew poll. During President George W. Bush’s second term, 44% of liberal Democrats said they were “angry” at the federal government, yet in the latest survey, that number has dropped to 8%.

Another interesting aspect of the poll was how it teased out some of the issues Americans have with Congress. While many polls simply ask participants to rate Congress’ job performance (the most recent Rasmussen poll gives Congress a 9% job performance approval rating), the Pew poll asked questions that attempted to differentiate the institution of Congress as a political structure from the members of the nation’s legislative branch.

Results showed that, when asked if the current problem with Congress is a broken political system, or the members themselves, most of those surveyed pointed to the lawmakers. 56% said that the political system works fine, but that the members of Congress are the problem. Only 32% said that lawmakers have good intentions and that the political system is broken. Virtually identical majorities of Republicans (58%), Democrats (57%) and Independents (56%) said that lawmakers, rather than the political system, are the problem with Congress.

This outcome is encouraging in that it appears that, across party representation, Americans have faith in the political system designed by the nation’s founders. Also, they are, albeit slowly, becoming increasingly attuned to exactly who will be representing them in Congress.

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Government Scientist Fired for Telling the Truth

by David Spady 18 Jan 2013

 
 Something’s amiss at the Department of Interior. Eight government scientists were recently fired or reassigned after voicing concerns to their superiors about faulty environmental science used for policy decisions. Which begs the question, “Are some government agencies manipulating science to advance political agendas?” Fictional book authors operate in a convenient world, unconstrained by facts and experiences of the real world. The antithesis of works of fiction are scientific findings solely based on provable facts and experience.

For agenda-driven environmental science, facts can sometime prove inconvenient. It’s far easier to advance an agenda with agreeable science, even if that means creating science fiction or fictional science. Fictional science thus becomes the pseudo-reality of environmentalist’s absolutism, and any science that disagrees with their predetermined conclusions of man-made harm to the environment is ignored or distorted.

Now we learn that in some government agencies, scientists who question the veracity and validity of scientific evidence used to formulate environmental regulations and policies are shunned, kept quiet, and purged.

The purpose of fictional environmental science is to sway public opinion through what amounts to propaganda. Intransigent purveyors of “green” propaganda know their greatest enemy is truth. One of the most famous propaganda experts was Germany’s Joseph Goebbels, who taught that if a lie is repeated often enough it will eventually be accepted as truth.

Goebbels also knew that truth has to be suppressed if it contradicts the objectives of the propaganda. Goebbels wrote, “It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Over the past three decades, government has unleashed an unprecedented wave of environmental rules and regulations that affect nearly every aspect of American life, and for the most part the public has tolerated it. Public embrace of environmental propaganda and fear mongering about the apocalyptic consequences of mankind’s abuse of the planet has elevated environmentalism to a status above national security. The public is now more likely to give up rights and freedoms for the cause of saving the planet than for security reasons.

Rural America has long been a target of environmentalists. Government agencies such as the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and the DOI (Department of Interior) have been hijacked by extreme elements the of environmentalist movement, and rural America is feeling the heat. When environmental protocol is pitted against the welfare of a rural community, these agencies almost exclusively side with the environmental cause, and adverse consequences to the human element are considered last, if at all.

The Department of Interior refers to itself as the nation's landlord. It controls almost 30% of the nation's 2.27 billion acres of land and its natural resources, and, as a regulatory agency, it creates policies to govern how public land and these resources are used. Under the leadership of Secretary Ken Salazar, the agency has engaged in an aggressive crusade to obstruct and undermine the use of natural resources, restrict human access to public lands, and increase its influence over private property.

Decisions made by the agency are presumed to be based on sound scientific analysis, but often times it is policy that is driving the science. This has led to harmful decisions and a violation of the public trust.
 
A case in point is the story of DOI science adviser and scientific integrity officer, Dr. Paul Houser, who found out that simply doing his job can be hazardous to one’s career.

Dr. Houser is an expert in hydrology who was hired by DOI’s Bureau of Reclamation to evaluate scientific data used in the department’s decision making process. He was assigned several Western State projects including a scheme to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in Northern California--the largest dam removal project in U.S. history.

When a summary of science posted on the web to support DOI’s claim for removal of the dams omitted several crucial factors from expert panel reports, Dr. Houser brought his concerns to his superiors. He was repeatedly told to refrain from sharing his concerns through electronic communication, which could be subject to Freedom of Information Act discovery.

Dr. Houser learned firsthand that policy was driving the science, rather than the other way around, when he was told by his superiors at DOI, “Secretary Salazar wants to remove those dams. So your actions here aren’t helpful.”

According to the DOI the premise for Klamath River dams removal is to restore Coho salmon spawning habitat above the dams. However, official DOI documents reveal scientific concerns that dam removal may, in fact, result in species decline based on millions of tons of toxic sediment build-up behind the dams that will make its way to the ocean. Water temperature increases without the dams could also negatively impact the salmon.

These studies were ignored. Concerns about the human toll and impact to local Klamath Basin communities were also brushed aside. Those most interested in the well-being of the environment they live and work in were given a backseat to special interests thousands of miles away.

The Klamath hydroelectric dams provide clean inexpensive energy to thousands of local residents who will be forced to pay much higher premiums if the dams are removed because California has strict new laws for use of renewable energy. The town of Happy Camp sits on the banks of the Klamath River and could be wiped out by seasonal flooding without the dams.

Once Coho salmon are introduced into the upper Klamath, farmers and ranchers will be faced with water use restrictions and invasive government regulation of private land. The economic impact will be devastating, property values will depreciate, and the agriculture community, often operating on slim profit margins, will be subjected to the fate of the once-vibrant logging industry which fell victim to the spotted owl crusades.

Last year, Dr. Houser raised these concerns and was subsequently fired by the DOI. “I put my concerns forward and immediately thereafter I was pushed out of the organization,” he stated. The agency sent a clear message to the rest of their employees and scientists--Salazar’s dam-busting agenda cannot be subject to any internal scientific scrutiny. Truth must be repressed when it contradicts the objective.

Dr. Houser did the right thing. He did his job. His integrity as a scientist was more important than a paycheck. But he remains concerned about his colleagues in DOI:

There are a lot of good scientists that work for the government but they are scared, they are scared that what happened to me might happen to them. This is an issue (about) the honesty and transparency of government and an issue for other scientists in government who want to speak out. 

A few weeks ago Dr. Houser settled a wrongful discharge case with the DOI. Terms of his settlement are not public.

Now, seven more DOI scientists working on the Klamath Project have filed a complaint with PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility), claiming they have been reassigned or terminated for disagreement with the integrity of the science used to support dam removal. They have charged DOI’s Bureau of Reclamation’s management with “coercive manipulation, sublimating science to political priorities, censorship, and scientific misconduct.”

The government’s use of fictional science in the Klamath dam removal project should concern every American. Our public servants at DOI are brazenly advancing their own agendas at the expense of the truth and regardless of adverse impacts on the environment, humans, and on rural communities. 

Environmental and human interests are not incompatible. We have to find solutions that work to the benefit of both. That requires agendas be put aside and allow complete science to determine policy.
DOI Secretary Ken Salazar is stepping down in March. His replacement needs to be someone who can be trusted to end the culture of fictional science as a means to advance environmental agendas.
Photo credit: Patrick McCully/Flickr

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