Democrats Try To Ram Through Big Brother Transport Bill
April 27, 2012 by William
Filed under Government
April 27, 2012
Prison Planet
By Paul Joseph Watson
Democrats are trying to ram through a notorious transportation bill stuffed with Big Brother measures, including empowering the IRS to revoke passports of accused tax delinquents and enforcing mandatory black boxes in all new cars from 2015 onwards, by forcing the Republican-controlled House to pass the Senate version of the legislation.
Late yesterday afternoon, “the House turned away an attempt by Democrats to speed up the conference by instructing House negotiators to accept the Senate-passed bill. That bill, S. 1813, would fund federal highway programs for two years, a plan Democrats prefer over the House-passed bill that only extends funding through September,” reports the Hill.
The Senate bill, also known as the ‘Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act’ (MAP-21), is very different from the House version in that it not only outlines funding for federal highway programs but also includes innumerable nightmarish provisions that butcher privacy rights. The bill will now go to conference and lawmakers will attempt to come to an agreement on the final version of the legislation.
A list of the conferees who will work with the bill’s chief sponsor Barbara Boxer to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill includes Jay Rockefeller, who advocated warrantless spying on American citizens back in 2008.
Should lawmakers from both sides of the aisle be unable to come to a compromise, “Congress could pass the Senate-approved bill, S. 1813, and then pass a technical corrections bill to address these differences,” according to Transportation and Infrastructure Committee ranking member Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.).
CISPA Passes with Fourth Amendment Busting Provisions
April 26, 2012 by William
Filed under Government
April 27, 2012
Info Wars
By Kurt Nimmo
“It is time to vote these people out of office.” –KTRN
Sudden action on CISPA today signals that the House was instructed to pass the legislation despite overwhelming opposition. It was rushed to the floor a day early and quickly brought to a vote with additional amendments.
Alex Jones reports on the passage of CISPA. As of this writing, the corporate media has not bothered to post a video.
“Pushing the bill through is bad enough, but what’s worse are the amendments that Rep. Ben Quayle (R – AZ) managed to get added. These amendments make CISPA infinitely worse than it already was,” writes Game Politics.
The amendments converted the supposed “cybersecurity” bill into an outright Big Brother surveillance tool that completely nullifies Fourth Amendment protection online.
From Techdirt:
Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for “cybersecurity” or “national security” purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been added: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA.
Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a “cybersecurity crime”. Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. Moreover, the government could do whatever it wants with the data as long as it can claim that someone was in danger of bodily harm, or that children were somehow threatened—again, notwithstanding absolutely any other law that would normally limit the government’s power.
Dirty tricks were used to pass CISPA. The legislation allows the national security state to circumvent the Constitution and allow carte blanche surveillance of the internet – from computer networks to private computers and devices to the emerging “internet of things.” Passage of CISPA is a milestone for the high-tech surveillance police state now going in place.
The Truth Behind President Obama’s ‘Slow Jam’ Student Loan Propaganda
April 26, 2012 by William
Filed under Government
April 27, 2012
Info Wars
By Patrick Henningsen
“Everyone who has half a brain cell should know this is just an election stunt by Obama. Don’t be fooled by his cool.” –KTRN
A desperate White House is pulling out all the stops this week, a sign of things to come for the next 6 months. It’s not just about the dumbing down of politics, as it is the further dumbing down of our national conversation.
The White House took over comedian Jimmy Fallon’s late night talk show last night, in order to push its latest sound-bite policy propaganda, in the hopes of securing student votes. Obama was fawned by a crowd of 8,000 students at the University of North Carolina. This effort will be followed-up on Friday, as the White House has also organized Obama’s image on the cover of trendy Rolling Stone Magazine.
Failing in the polls, the White House has opted for the lowest common entertainment denominator – a cynical ploy to make America’s student-debt-ridden youth feel like they have a stake in the 2012 election, or to put it in trendy White House terms – to make them believe they have ‘some skin in the game’.
Jimmy Fallon billed Obama’s speech as a “Slow Jam with the President”, with his band playing smooth R&B in the background of his ‘low interest’ student loan pitch. Upon close examination however, it seems that Obama’s student policies are a series of lies, stacked on top of other lies. The President starts off with a standard propaganda line:
“What we said is simple: now is not the time to make school more expense for our young people.“
There’s only one problem with his grand sweeping statement – college tuition rates have been skyrocketing in recent years and that phenomenon has been a direct result of federal government pushing unlimited student loans, and pumping-up federal student entitlement money – a move that colleges admit has enabled them to raise tuition some 25% in the last 3 years. Research shows that the expansion of the grants and other federal aid has a counterproductive effect — giving colleges and universities a green light to soak-up the gains by increasing their tuition and other costs.
Ron Paul Wins Iowa & Minnesota!
April 26, 2012 by William
Filed under Government
April 27, 2012
Rachel Maddow Show
“Wow – a mainstream media program covering Ron Paul possibly winning Iowa and Minnesota. Don’t count Ron Paul out just yet. There could still be a major upset at the convention.” –KTRN
Obama Slow Jammin’ The News With Jimmy Fallon
April 25, 2012 by William
Filed under Government
April 26, 2012
NPR
By Mark Memmott
“It may be hard not to like this, but remember Obama is doing this for one reason only – to win votes. This is an election stunt.” –KTRN
President Obama took his push to keep the cost of student loans from rising to NBC-TV’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show early today, and in the latest of his crossovers into the music world was part of Jimmy’s latest “slow jammin’ the news” series.
Check out how the “preezie of the United Steezie … the Barackness Monster … the POTUS with the mostus” did in this video from the show.
FOX News Admits Ron Paul Could Win Iowa
April 25, 2012 by William
Filed under Government
April 26, 2012
FOX News
“Everyone in the media are only only talking Mitt Romney. The last time we checked, Ron Paul has not dropped out of the race.” –KTRN
White House Threat to Veto CISPA Is a Crude Stunt
April 25, 2012 by William
Filed under Government
April 26, 2012
Prison Planet
By Paul Joseph Watson
“Don’t get too excited that Obama might veto CISPA. This is the same guy who signed the NDAA.” –KTRN
Even as drones are deployed domestically to spy on American citizens, Barack Obama is posing as a champion of privacy and civil liberties by threatening to veto the CISPA web snooping bill, just as his administration pretended to be hostile to the National Defense Authorization Act before signing it anyway.
An email released by the White House this afternoon claims the administration is unhappy with the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act because it fails to include proper “privacy, confidentiality, and civil liberties safeguards.”
“If H.R. 3523 were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill,” states the email.
This is another crude stunt to lull civil libertarians on the left into a false sense of security.
As we documented earlier, Obama pulled precisely the same trick with the NDAA ‘indefinite detention’ bill, when for months he threatened to veto it while his administration secretly lobbied for the most draconian provisions to be added. When push came to shove, Obama signed the bill on New Year’s Eve while everyone’s attention was diverted.
Indeed, the real reason behind the administration’s hostility to CISPA is revealed later in the email – that it doesn’t give the Department of Homeland Security enough power over Internet traffic.
“H.R. 3523 effectively treats domestic cybersecurity as an intelligence activity and thus, significantly departs from longstanding efforts to treat the Internet and cyberspace as civilian spheres. The Administration believes that a civilian agency – the Department of Homeland Security – must have a central role in domestic cybersecurity, including for conducting and overseeing the exchange of cybersecurity information with the private sector and with sector-specific Federal agencies,” states the email.
Obama’s Stolen Election
April 25, 2012 by William
Filed under Government
April 26, 2012
Info Wars
By Kurt Nimmo
Revisiting the Wikileaks Stratfor trove, we get an inkling of how politics work in America, circa 2008. An internal email exchange at the intelligence front operation (with honest to god CIA cronies) reveals vote fraud in Ohio and Philadelphia during the election.
Obama’s use of thugs to intimidate voters in the City of Brotherly Love (and stuffed ballot boxes) is hardly a secret, although it was scantily reported by the establishment media at the time. Team Obama used “falsified delegate counts, falsified documents, and other violations” to steal the primary out from under Hillary Clinton, a dirty process documented by Democratic Party activist Gigi Gaston in her documentary, “We Will Not Be Silenced.”
“The black Dems were caught stuffing the ballot boxes in Philly and Ohio as reported the night of the election and Sen. McCain chose not to fight,” notes the Stratfor dump at Wikileaks.
Of course, it wasn’t McCain’s job to expose the vote fraud of Democrats. Both parties have done this for decades. Mitt Romney faces the same allegation this time around. Expect next to zero coverage by the Mockingbird corporate media.
It was McCain’s job to pretend he was actually an alternative to Obama despite the fact both served as tools for the bankers. McCain’s contributors included JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Wachovia (notorious for funding murderous Mexican drug cartels), Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and (naturally) Goldman Sachs.
This is almost a mirror of the folks who funded Obama.
How Liberty Was Lost
April 24, 2012 by William
Filed under Government
April 25, 2012
Institute For Political Economy
By Paul Craig Roberts
“If you think liberty is alive and well in America, think again.” –KTRN
When did things begin going wrong in America?
“From the beginning,” answer some. English colonists, themselves under the thumb of a king, exterminated American Indians and stole their lands, as did late 18th and 19th century Americans. Over the course of three centuries the native inhabitants of America were dispossessed, just as Israelis have been driving Palestinians off their lands since 1948.
Demonization always plays a role. The Indians were savages and the Palestinians are terrorists. Any country that can control the explanation can get away with evil.
I agree that there is a lot of evil in every country and civilization. In the struggle between good and evil, religion has at times been on the side of evil. However, the notion of moral progress cannot so easily be thrown out.
Consider, for example, slavery. In the 1800s, slavery still existed in countries that proclaimed equal rights. Even free women did not have equal rights. Today no Western country would openly tolerate the ownership of humans or the transfer of a woman’s property upon her marriage to her husband.
It is true that Western governments have ownership rights in the labor of their citizens through the income tax. This remains as a mitigated form of serfdom. So far, however, no government has claimed the right of ownership over the person himself.
Ron Paul: CISPA is the New SOPA
April 24, 2012 by William
Filed under Government
April 25, 2012
Ron Paul
By Ron Paul
“Why isn’t the Republican party getting behind Ron Paul? He is their only hope.” –KTRN
Earlier this year, strong public opposition led by several prominent websites forced Congressional leaders to cancel votes on two bills known in Washington as “SOPA” and “PIPA.” Both of these bills threatened search engines and websites with possible shutdowns if the Justice Department deemed them insufficiently cooperative with our phony “war on terror,” or if they were merely accused of copyright infringement. Fortunately the American public flooded Capitol Hill with phone calls and Congressional leaders dropped both bills.
But we should never underestimate the federal government’s insatiable desire to control the internet. Statists of all parties, persuasions, and nationalities hate the free, unbridled flow of information, ideas, and goods via the internet. They resent the notion that ordinary people can communicate and trade across the world without government filters or approvals. So they continually seek to impose controls, always under the guise of fighting terrorism or protecting “intellectual property” rights.
The latest assault on internet freedom is called the “Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act,” or “CISPA,” which may be considered by Congress this week. CISPA is essentially an internet monitoring bill that permits both the federal government and private companies to view your private online communications with no judicial oversight–provided, of course, that they do so in the name of “cybersecurity.” The bill is very broadly written, and allows the Department of Homeland Security to obtain large swaths of personal information contained in your emails or other online communication. It also allows emails and private information found online to be used for purposes far beyond any reasonable definition of fighting cyberterrorism.
