Kevin Talks Politics with Two Insiders!
Are you tired of career politicians? Whatever happened, to “We The People”?
On Tuesday at 1PM CST, Tim Cox stops by the show to talk about his organization, Get Out Of Our House, or GOOOH (pronounced “go”). Mike will discuss what WE can do to rid our House of Representatives of people who don’t truly represent YOUR best interests!
Andrew Young, author of The Politician, has the inside track on what REALLY happened with the John Edwards scandal. Tune in to The Kevin Trudeau Show on Wednesday at 1pm CST for this exclusive interview!
Obama Launches Last Push on Health-Care Overhaul
March 4, 2010 by Brandy
Filed under Government
March 3, 2010
The Wall Street Journal
By Laura Meckler and Janet Adamy
President Barack Obama opened the final act of a year-long drama over health-care legislation Wednesday, calling on Democrats in Congress to approve the sweeping bill despite political risks and Republican opposition.
The president vowed to rally Americans and wavering lawmakers alike. White House aides said a pair of trips next week will be followed by a stream of public and private lobbying. The White House wants final votes by month’s end.
“At stake right now is not just our ability to solve this problem, but our ability to solve any problem,” Mr. Obama told a crowd of white-coated doctors and nurses in the East Room, where a year ago he started the drive for the legislation.
With polls showing that the legislation is unpopular and congressional Democrats bracing for big losses in this fall’s elections, the president urged them to ignore the politics. “I do not know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right,” he said. “Let’s get it done.”
Democrats and the White House are balancing high risks and rewards. Passing the health overhaul would fulfill a decades-old Democratic dream, bringing insurance to some 30 million Americans, and represent the greatest expansion of coverage since Medicare was created in 1965. But if the public judges the overhaul harshly, it is likely to cost some Democrats their seats, and the party’s majority in the House could be at risk.
The White House argues that, despite the negative poll numbers, Americans will like the measure if it becomes law, since the focus then could shift from the legislative process to the measure’s impact. Polling does find stronger support for the bill’s individual provisions than for the package as a whole.
Mr. Obama Wednesday also highlighted a handful of Republican ideas used in the legislation. Republicans dismissed the gesture as insufficient.
“You can’t add a couple of Republican sprinkles on the top of a 2,700-page bill and claim that it’s bipartisan,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio).
Rejecting Republican calls to start again, the president said that given the “honest and substantial differences between the parties,” there was no point. “Everything there is to say about health care has been said,” he said to laughter, “and just about everybody has said it.”
For the first time, the president explicitly called on Congress to use a procedural technique that will let the Senate give its final approval with a simple majority vote. He didn’t use the word for that technique—”reconciliation”—but characterized the process as a way of calling a simple “up or down vote” that has been used for big bills before.
Republicans say the reconciliation process was never intended for such major legislation. “History is clear: Big legislation always requires big majorities,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said on the floor Wednesday.
Democrats need to approve the changes in the Senate through reconciliation because they no longer have 60 Senate votes necessary to end a standard debate, due to the loss last month of the Massachusetts seat long held by the late Edward Kennedy. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs downplayed the significance of the reconciliation measure, calling it a set of “technical corrections” to the original Senate measure. The reconciliation version contains some significant differences from the Senate bill, including taxes on the wealthy and lower levies on high-value health-insurance plans.
Under the Democratic plan, the process would work like this: First, the House would vote on the bill that the Senate approved in late December. House leaders hope to pass both that Senate bill, and then the reconciliation package, by March 17. After that, the Senate would need to pass the reconciliation bill. By month’s end, Democrats hope, the measure would go to the president to be signed into law.
Could Government Be the Largest Threat to Our Freedoms?
March 1, 2010
CNN
By Paul Steinhauser
A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.
Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.
The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.
According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken – though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what’s broken can be fixed.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey.
Click here for the full report
Obama Attempts To Save His Health Bill
February 26, 2010 by JP
Filed under Government
February 26, 2010
Yahoo News
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
Cue the cameras. President Barack Obama and his Republican arch foes will argue their case on health care overhaul at a bipartisan summit expected to stretch out for a solid six hours on live, daytime television Thursday for millions of Americans.
Expect them to collide, not come together. Without a no-nonsense referee to slam the gavel on mind-fogging jargon, not to mention apocalyptic rhetoric, some viewers might wish Judge Judy was presiding.
Obama is hoping to resurrect his signature issue and restore his reputation as a different kind of politician who can deliver real results. Congressional leaders of both parties are worried about self-preservation and political control in the November elections.
The goal for Obama is to draw a glaring contrast between the big bill he’s backing and the limited steps Republicans are willing to take, hoping he can fire up anxious Democrats for what may be their last chance in a generation to provide health insurance coverage to nearly all Americans. They have the votes, but do they have the will?
Sen. Chris Dodd, D.-Conn., who will be among the lawmakers participating, worked a rally of supporters on the eve of Thursday’s meeting, scheduled to start at 10 a.m. EST.
“After that meeting, you can either join us or get out of the way,” Dodd said.
Not if Republicans have anything to do with it. Riding a populist backlash against the widening reach of government, they insist that Obama start from scratch, a notion the White House rejects. They’re unified in opposing the Democratic bills passed last year and have pulled back from more ambitious GOP-backed plans that might have provided a foundation for compromise.
With premiums going up by double digits for some consumers, polls show the public wants Congress and the president to deal with spiraling medical costs, shrinking coverage and questionable quality. But Americans are split over the Democratic bills. If Obama and the Democrats can’t get their legislation passed, there may still be a chance for a modest measure this year that smooths the rough edges of the current system but stops well short of coverage for all.
Obama will be the moderator in chief for talks on four topics: revamping insurance, cost containment, expanding coverage and the impact of health care legislation on deficit reduction. The summit will take place at Blair House, the presidential guest quarters across the street from the White House. Here’s a viewer’s guide for consumers on issues critical to working families, seniors and businesses:
• WORKING FAMILIES
While the cost of health insurance is a worry for most Americans, it’s a crisis for the nearly 50 million uninsured and about 27 million who buy their own coverage directly from an insurer. The $1-trillion, 10-year plan Obama and the Democrats have drafted focuses mainly on these two groups.
People with coverage from large employers would get some benefits, like being able to keep children in their late 20s on the company plan — but wouldn’t face major changes unless they lose their jobs or strike out on their own.
People who buy insurance directly, as well as small employers, would be able pick a plan in a new kind of competitive marketplace offering choices similar to what federal employees and Congress members get. But it wouldn’t be a free ride.
Most Americans would be required to carry health insurance and prove it to the IRS.
Obama and the Democrats say their plan would make coverage affordable by providing federal subsidies to help more than 30 million now uninsured. But solid middle-class families may still have to stretch to pay premiums. The help is a lot better for people on the lower income rungs.
Under the plan Obama released Monday — his opening bid at the summit — a family of four making $66,000 would have to pay $6,257 in premiums, close to 10 percent of its income. That’s even after receiving $3,000 in federal tax credits.
By comparison, a similar family making only $44,000 would pay $2,763 — about 6 percent of its income. The estimates come from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
“There’s no question that it’s better than the status quo,” said Larry Levitt, an analyst with Kaiser.
Most Republicans are opposed to an insurance mandate, although they generally like the idea of allowing 20-year-olds to remain on parental coverage. They want to concentrate on stimulating the private market to provide affordable alternatives. One idea: allowing consumers in high-cost states to buy coverage from insurers in low-cost areas.
Republicans also want to help people denied coverage because of medical problems by pumping federal money to high-risk insurance pools run by the states. Obama sees that only as a temporary measure; his plan would ban pre-existing condition denials starting in 2014.
Click here for the full report
Internet Overloaded With Advertising, Misinformation, and Hate
February 22, 2010
Organic Consumers Association
By Chris Hedges
The Internet has become one more tool hijacked by corporate interests to accelerate our cultural, political and economic decline. The great promise of the Internet, to open up dialogue, break down cultural barriers, promote democracy and unleash innovation and creativity, has been exposed as a scam. The Internet is dividing us into antagonistic clans, in which we chant the same slogans and hate the same enemies, while our creative work is handed for free to Web providers who use it as bait for advertising.
Ask journalists, photographers, musicians, cartoonists or artists what they think of the Web. Ask movie and film producers. Ask architects or engineers. The Web efficiently disseminates content, but it does not protect intellectual property rights. Writers and artists are increasingly unable to make a living. And technical professions are under heavy assault. Anything that can be digitized can and is being outsourced to countries such as India and China where wages are miserable and benefits nonexistent. Welcome to the new global serfdom where the only professions that pay a living wage are propaganda and corporate management.
The Web, at the same time it is destroying creative work, is forming anonymous crowds that vent collective rage, intolerance and bigotry. These virtual slums do not expand communication or dialogue. They do not enrich our culture. They create a herd mentality in which those who express empathy for “the enemy”-and the liberal class is as guilty of this as the right wing-are denounced by their fellow travelers for their impurity. Racism toward Muslims may be as evil as anti-Semitism, but try to express this simple truth on a partisan Palestinian or Israeli website.
Jaron Lanier, the “father of virtual reality technology,” in his new book “You Are Not a Gadget,” warns us of this frightening new collectivism. He notes that the habits imposed by the Internet have reconfigured how we relate to each other. He writes that “Web 2.0,” “Open Culture,” “Free Software” and the “Long Tail” have become enablers of this new collectivism. He cites Wikipedia, which consciously erases individual voices, and Google Wave as examples of the rise of mass collective thought and mass emotions. Google Wave is a new communication platform that permits users to edit what someone else has said in a conversation when it is displayed as well as allow collaborators to watch each other as they type. Privacy, honesty and self-reflection are instantly obliterated.
Tastes and information on the Internet are determined by the crowd, what Lanier calls the hive mentality. Music, books, journalism, commercials and bits of television shows and movies, along with inane YouTube videos, are thrust onto our screens and into national consciousness because of the statistical analysis of Internet crowd preferences. Lanier says that one of the biggest mistakes he and other computer scientists made when the Internet was developed was allowing contributions to the Internet to go unpaid. He says decisions such as this have now robbed people, especially those who create, of their ability to make a living and ultimately the capacity for dignity. Digital collectivism, he warns, is destroying the dwindling vestiges of authentic creativity and innovation, including journalism, which takes time, investment and self-reflection. And while there are a few sites that do pay for content-Truthdig being one-the vast majority are parasites. The only income left for most of those who create is earned through self-promotion, but as Lanier points out this turns culture into nothing but advertising. It fosters a social ethic in which the capacity for crowd manipulation is more highly valued than truth, beauty or thought.
Click here for the full report
New Study Provides Insight Into Chicago Political Corruption
February 22, 2010 by joel
Filed under Government
February 22, 2010
NBC
Cook County has been a “dark pool of political corruption” for more than a century, a new study by the University of Illinois at Chicago says.
Nearly 150 employees, politicians and contractors in the nation’s second-largest county have been convicted on corruption charges since 1957, according to a report released Thursday by the university and the Better Government Association.
The 33-page study gives a history of corruption, starting from 1869 when county commissioners were jailed for rigging a bid to paint City Hall. It also details hiring scandals, including some under Cook County Board President Todd Stroger. Stroger hasn’t been charged with any crime.
In the last 36 years, 31 sitting or former Chicago alderman have been convicted of corruption or other crimes. The last was Ike Carothers (29th), who earlier this month plead guilty to charges he accepted gifts in exchange for his votes on zoning issues.
The study says reforms could turn things around, including stricter campaign finance laws and amending a county ethics ordinance.
Click here for the full report
Australia Could Censor Political YouTube Videos
February 12, 2010
The Age
By Asher Moses
Google says it will not “voluntarily” comply with the government’s request that it censor YouTube videos in accordance with broad “refused classification” (RC) content rules.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy referred to Google’s censorship on behalf of the Chinese and Thai governments in making his case for the company to impose censorship locally.
Google warns this would lead to the removal of many politically controversial, but harmless, YouTube clips.
University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt, one of Australia’s top communications experts, said that to comply with Conroy’s request Google “would have to install a filter along the lines of what they actually have in China”.
As it prepares to introduce legislation within weeks forcing ISPs to block a blacklist of RC websites, the government says it is in talks with Google over blocking the same type of material from YouTube.
YouTube’s rules already forbid certain videos that would be classified RC, such as sex, violence, bestiality and child pornography. But the RC classification extends further to more controversial content such as information on euthanasia, material about safer drug use and material on how to commit more minor crimes such as painting graffiti.
Google said all of these topics were featured in videos on YouTube and it refused to censor these voluntarily. It said exposing these topics to public debate was vital for democracy.
In an interview with the ABC’s Hungry Beast, which aired last night, Conroy said applying ISP filters to high-traffic sites such as YouTube would slow down the internet, “so we’re currently in discussions with Google about … how we can work this through”.
“What we’re saying is, well in Australia, these are our laws and we’d like you to apply our laws,” Conroy said.
“Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government; they filter an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Thai government.”
Google Australia’s head of policy, Iarla Flynn, said the company had a bias in favour of freedom of expression in everything it did and Conroy’s comparisons between how Australia and China deal with access to information were not “helpful or relevant”.
Google has recently threatened to pull out of China, partly due to continuing requests for it to censor material.
“YouTube has clear policies about what content is not allowed, for example hate speech and pornography, and we enforce these, but we can’t give any assurances that we would voluntarily remove all Refused Classification content from YouTube,” Flynn said.
“The scope of RC is simply too broad and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information. RC includes the grey realms of material instructing in any crime from [painting] graffiti to politically controversial crimes such as euthanasia, and exposing these topics to public debate is vital for democracy.”
Asked for further comment, a Google Australia spokeswoman said that, while the company “won’t comply voluntarily with the broad scope of all RC content”, it would comply with the relevant laws in countries it operates in.
However, if Conroy includes new YouTube regulations in his internet filtering legislation, it is not clear if these would apply to Google since YouTube is hosted overseas.
“They [Google] don’t control the access in Australia – all their equipment that would do this is hosted overseas … and I would find it very hard to believe that the Australian government can in any way force an American company to follow Australian law in America,” Landfeldt said.
“Quite frankly it would really not be workable … every country in the world would come to Google and say this is what you need to do for our country. You would not be able to run the kind of services that Google provides if that would be the case.”
This week the Computer Research and Education Association (CORE) put out a statement on behalf of all Australasian computer science lecturers and professors opposing the government’s internet filtering policy.
They said the filters would only block a fraction of the unwanted material available on the internet, be inapplicable to many of the current methods of online content distribution and create a false sense of security for parents.
CORE said the blacklist could be used by current and future governments to restrict freedom of speech, while those determined to get around the filters and access nasty content could do so with ease.
Click here for the full report
Swine Flu ‘Pandemic’ Was a Hoax
February 11, 2010
Prison Planet
By Paul Jospeh Watson
Appearing on The Alex Jones Show, outgoing Chair of the Council of Europe’s Sub-committee on Health Wolfgang Wodarg said that his panel’s investigation into the 2009 swine flu outbreak has found that the pandemic was a fake hoax manufactured by pharmaceutical companies in league with the WHO to make vast profits while endangering public health.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a 47 nation body encompassing democratically elected members of parliament, began hearings last month to investigate whether the H1N1 swine flu pandemic was falsified or exaggerated in an attempt to profit from vaccine sales.
Wodarg said that governments were “threatened” by special interest groups within the pharmaceutical industry as well as the WHO to buy the vaccines and inject their populations without any reasonable scientific reason for doing so, and yet in countries like Germany and France only around 6 per cent took the vaccine despite enough being available to cover 90 per cent of the population.
Wodarg said he was alarmed when the WHO cited early cases in Mexico as a threat and quickly moved to pandemic status, despite the fact that the cases were relatively mild and the virus was not new.
“This was the mildest flu ever and the people were much more clever than the government so we have to find out what was going on with WHO – why did they do this pandemic alarm,” asked Wodarg, noting that pharmaceutical interests within the World Health Organization were instrumental in creating the panic and reaping the financial dividends.
“We don’t know what really happened, we only know that they changed the definition of a pandemic, which was a very dangerous thing before and now is just a normal flu, and this is why business for pharmaceutical companies was open,” said Wodarg, adding that select pharmaceutical companies were handed a monopoly on creating the vaccine.
“It is their trick that they always try to monopolize this and we pay much more like this,” said Wodarg, noting that if patents were left open, vaccines would be produced much quicker and far cheaper.
Wodarg said there was “no other explanation” for what happened than the fact that the WHO worked in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture the panic in order to generate vast profits, agreeing with host Alex Jones that the entire farce was a hoax.
He also explained how health authorities were “already waiting for something to happen” before the pandemic started and then exploited the virus for their own purposes.
Wodarg said that the investigation was likely to recommend an end to the undue influence of pharmaceutical companies on public health institutions in Europe.
However, Wodarg pointed out, “There is no law for WHO, there is no one who punishes those people in WHO, we only have national law, so this is very important that we collect the information and on the national level we try to find those people responsible and we try to punish them.”
“Have investigations, have a deep look, we cannot tolerate such a development, we cannot have this next winter again, we don’t want such fake pandemics,” concluded Wodarg.
Wodarg said that vast quantities of unused vaccines were now being dumped on the third world and that other countries were simply trying to push ahead with vaccination programs even though the virus has proven not to be a major threat.
“The Japanese bought vaccines for 110 million people and they cannot return from this vaccine contract so they are in a very big political dilemma now and they already have problems because the Japanese people already know it wouldn’t be necessary to get vaccinated,” Wodarg told The Alex Jones Show.
Click here for the full report
WH Claims Some Critics Are ‘Serving the Goals of al Qaeda’
February 9th, 2010
ABCNews.com
By Jake Tapper
John Brennan — Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism — responds to critics of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies by saying “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.”
Brennan writes that, “Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill.”
In the oped, titled “‘We need no lectures’: Administration disrupts terrorists’ plots, takes fight to them abroad,” Brennan writes that politics “should never get in the way of national security. But too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points, instead of coming together to keep us safe.”
The administration op-ed is in response to a USA Today editorial entitled “National security team fails to inspire confidence; Officials’ handling of Christmas Day attack looks like amateur hour.”
Brennan provides a detailed defense of the administration’s handling of failed Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab whom, he says, was “thoroughly interrogated and provided important information.”
He suggests that many critics are hypocritical and clueless.
The most important breakthrough in the interrogation occurred “after Abdulmutallab was read his rights, which the FBI made standard policy under Michael Mukasey, President Bush’s attorney general,” he writes, noting that failed shoe bomber Richard Reid “was read his Miranda rights five minutes after being taken off a plane he tried to blow up. The same people who criticize the president today were silent back then.”
Brennan said anyone who wants to change the policy would be casting aside lessons learned “in waging this war” on extremists.
“Terrorists such as Jose Padilla and Saleh al-Mari did not cooperate when transferred to military custody, which can harden one’s determination to resist cooperation,” he writes.
He calls it “naive to think that transferring Abdulmutallab to military custody would have caused an outpouring of information. There is little difference between military and civilian custody, other than an interrogator with a uniform. The suspect gets access to a lawyer, and interrogation rules are nearly identical.”
Moreover, Brennan says, hundreds of terrorists have been convicted in criminal courts while only three have been convicted in the military tribunal system.
The former CIA official also asserts that the Obama administration is doing a better job than the Bush administration did in taking the fight to al Qaeda. “This administration’s efforts have disrupted dozens of terrorist plots against the homeland and been responsible for killing and capturing hundreds of hard-core terrorists, including senior leaders in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond — far more than in 2008.”
“We need no lectures about the fact that this nation is at war,” he says.
USA Today’s editorial writers see it all a bit differently, of course, writing that though “the Obama administration’s national security officials have struggled to assure the public that they know exactly what they’re doing,” they are so far “achieving the opposite, and they’re needlessly adding some jitters in the process.”
The editorial writers fault the Obama administration for announcing “last week that an attack by al-Qaeda is likely in the next three to six months. The warning is bound to frighten the public, with no obvious benefit beyond the ability to say ‘I told you so.’”
They also refer to National Intelligence Director Admiral Dennis Blair (ret.) as having “had a ‘Duh!’ moment” for acknowledging that “authorities fumbled the initial questioning of Abdulmutallab by failing to call in the high-value interrogation group, which was created to question terrorism suspects. Refreshingly candid, yes, but not a statement that inspires confidence. Especially when the same day, at another Senate hearing, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified that the high-value unit was still in its ‘formation stages’ and that ‘there was no time’ to get it to Detroit.”
USA Today’s editorial writers say that when senior administration officials revealed Abdulmutallab’s cooperation with authorities, “the news pretty much negate(d) earlier claims that no intelligence was lost when Abdulmutallab was prematurely read his rights.”
Click here for the full report
You truly are an American Hero & a living example for us all…
February 8, 2010 by Brandy
Filed under Testimonials
Kevin,
I have listened to every one of your radio shows since it started and have enjoyed each and every episode. The most important part of the show is your “no nonsense” approach to giving real news and practical information. Not only is the show entertaining, but I love how you expose the corruption and the deception of the government, the media, and the corporations. This is what people need to hear and how they need to hear it. You make it clear that it is time for everyone to wake up.
You are one of the few celebrities who actually do what you suggest other people should do and you have the results to prove it works. Since you really believe in what you are doing, it gets the listeners to believe, as well. I love the fact that the show not only presents the real issues, it also provides solutions. You always remind the listeners that there is nothing to fear and to take control and focus on what you want. You get people to use good old fashioned common sense. You have nicely managed to stay relatable to the listeners, despite your extensive life experience. This is especially reflected in the way you handle the callers. You also have a talent for telling true stories with respect to the given topic, which makes the topic more interesting.
I really enjoy the diversity of topics, such as, health and wellness, economics, politics, government, the laws, new books, special products, business opportunities, travel, and more. This gives the listeners a broader perspective of how the world really works and how to make it better by making better choices. The guests are all phenomenal. They always give in-depth information about the benefits of what they are promoting. This also demonstrates what kind of connections you have, which brings the show to higher level.
The interactive resources that support the show are excellent, such as, the website with all the news stories, links to the sponsors, the archived shows, the email club, and the book club. I know this only functions with a highly qualified staff. I commend them on a job well done. The fact that you are demonstrating tremendous courage every time you put on a show is inspiring. You really are fearless, which adds a unique quality to the show! This is the only talk show I have ever consistently followed because the quality of information allows me to make better decisions for myself and my family. I am very grateful that you made the decision to expose this kind of information, even though you do it at tremendous personal risk. You truly are an American Hero and a living example for us all. Please keep up the fight for freedom. I am looking forward to meeting you in person.
Mark DiNino
Rockland, MA
