Category: Corruption Corner

Witch Hunt Failed to Find Any Witches

The New York Police Department (NYPD) have been performing witch hunts for terrorists since 9/11 by spying on Muslims. After spending more than six years secretly spying on every Muslim they could find NYPD failed to find any witches:

In more than six years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloguing mosques, the New York Police Department’s secret Demographics Unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation, the department acknowledged in court testimony unsealed late Monday.

The Demographics Unit is at the heart of a police spying program, built with help from the CIA, which assembled databases on where Muslims lived, shopped, worked and prayed. Police infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants in mosques, monitored sermons and catalogued every Muslim in New York who adopted new, Americanized surnames.

I know this will come as a shock to many Americans who believe the state’s lies about every communist Muslim being a threat to liberty terrorist but for those of us that actually look beyond the state’s propaganda the result of NYPD’s witch hunt aren’t at all surprising. A vast majority of Muslims are everyday people who wish no harm on their fellow man. Condemning every Muslim for the actions of a handful of extremists is no different than claiming every Christian is a murdered because of the Crusades.

It’s doubtful that NYPD will cease spying on Muslims although they may begin weighing Muslims to see if they weigh the same as ducks.

Obama Campaign Spending Stimulus Money

The amount of corruption involved in the money given out by the state to stimulate the economy is mind boggling. Untold sums of money found their way into the pockets of the politically well connected but this story really takes the corruption to a new level:

The Labor Department paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal stimulus funds to a public relations firm to run more than 100 commercials touting the Obama administration’s “green training” job efforts on two MSNBC cable shows, records show.

Obama’s campaign spent stimulus money to air ads for, well, Obama’s campaign. That’s a fairly effective way to get a little extra campaign money without having to raise it from suckers donors. What’s even funnier is that the money failed to create any jobs:

The commercials ran on MSNBC on shows hosted by Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann in 2009, but the contract didn’t report any jobs created, according to records reviewed recently by The Washington Times.

That has to be slightly embarrassing.

Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking Ruled Legal

Last week the state ruled it could perform warrantless wiretaps, today it has ruled that it can track your location through your cellular phone without a warrant:

On Tuesday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that law enforcement officials don’t need a warrant to track suspects via cellphones. Attorneys argued to overturn Skinner’s many convictions, citing that the GPS location information that led to the defendant’s arrest was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures. This didn’t wash with the majority of judges over the case, who voted in a 2-1 ruling.

“When criminals use modern technological devices to carry out criminal acts and to reduce the possibility of detection, they can hardly complain when the police take advantage of the inherent characteristics of those very devices to catch them,” wrote Judge John Rogers in the majority opinion that will affect future cases in a huge chunk of the country.

So much for the Fourth Amendment. Unfortunately if one tries to argue this case on constitutional grounds they’re faced also accepting another constitutional idea, that the courts maintain a monopoly on interpreting the Constitution. Therefore when one says warrantless tracking of cell phones is unconstitutional they much also accept that they don’t actually have a say in whether or not such acts are unconstitutional as the Constitution grants such authority to the state’s courts. I think Lysander Spooner was correct when he said the following:

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

Fast and Furious Just Got More Interesting

Operation Fast and Furious has been one of the most entertaining episodes of Politics: The Reality Television Show for Suckers but many viewers have been expressing concern that the writers are running out of fresh ideas. The end of season cliffhanger has been Eric Holder’s refusal to comply with Congress’s investigation and people have been trying to figure out what the Attorney General is so afraid of having revealed. My friend Kurtis has brought some information to my attention that could tell us what’s in store for next season. A high ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel has come forward with claims that the United States government has been arming the cartel and allowed them to sell drugs unhindered:

A high-ranking Mexican drug cartel operative currently in U.S. custody is making startling allegations that the failed federal gun-walking operation known as “Fast and Furious” isn’t what you think it is.

It wasn’t about tracking guns, it was about supplying them — all part of an elaborate agreement between the U.S. government and Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel to take down rival cartels.

The explosive allegations are being made by Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, known as the Sinaloa Cartel’s “logistics coordinator.” He was extradited to the Chicago last year to face federal drug charges.

Zambada-Niebla claims that under a “divide and conquer” strategy, the U.S. helped finance and arm the Sinaloa Cartel through Operation Fast and Furious in exchange for information that allowed the DEA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies to take down rival drug cartels. The Sinaloa Cartel was allegedly permitted to traffic massive amounts of drugs across the U.S. border from 2004 to 2009 — during both Fast and Furious and Bush-era gunrunning operations — as long as the intel kept coming.

The pleadings in The United States of America vs. Vicente Jesus Zambada-Neibla [PDF] are an interesting read. Needless to say this entire political fiasco would begin to make sense if Zambada-Neibla’s accusations hold up. The United States government has a long history of working with enemies of enemies. They went so far as to provide military training and money to the Khumer Rouge regime, which was noted for having killed between 1.4 million and 2.2 million civilians. Furthermore the United States government loves granting and then protecting monopolies. Considering those two facts it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that Fast and Furious was done to armed the Sinaloa Cartel in order to help them secure their monopoly against other drug cartels. The fact that Fast and Furious could also be used to advance the cause of gun control may have been seen as a happy benefit.

After reading this I believe people will be tuning in for the next season of Fast and Furious.

Lawsuit File to Force Executive Branch to Comply in Fast and Furious Investigation

House Republicans have filed a lawsuit in federal count in an attempt to force Eric Holder and his staff to comply with the Fast and Furious investigation:

A civil lawsuit filed Monday by House Republicans asks a federal court to enforce a congressional subpoena of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in his refusal to turn over documents sought in an investigation by a House committee into the failed Fast and Furious gunrunning operation.

Things would be much simpler if Obama and Holder would just fess up to the fact that they signed off on an operation to arm the Mexican drug cartels and the operation lead to the American government being accomplices in numerous murders. You would think the Obama administration would try to get this entire matter settled as soon as possible so resources could be used to build more weapons to kill Middle Easterners instead of running investigations into other government misdeeds.

Do you know what the saddest part about this story is? I wouldn’t be surprised if the courts ruled against the House Republicans. The House Republicans have a stake in making Holder comply with their investigation since it could cause the Democrats some headaches in November’s election. On the other hand the federal courts have no stake in the outcome of the investigation and the default behavior of state entities is to help one another coverup wrongdoings.

Ademo Freeman Found Guilty

Ademo Freeman, the man brought up on felony wiretapping charges for recording incidents of police brutality, has been found guilty:

Twelve individuals today decided that Ademo Freeman was guilty of three counts of felony wiretapping for recording his conversations with public officials per his attempt to bring accountability to a situation where it was noticeably absent – the assault of 17-year-old Frank Harrington, a student at Manchester’s West High School at the hands of Darren Murphy, the school resource officer and employee of the Manchester Police Department.

Ademo is ordered to spend 12-months in the so-called “House of Corrections” with 9-months suspended. He’ll then be under “good behavior” for the next three-years, which, if violated, means strangers with guns will force him into a cage at state prison in Concord for one-to-three-years. With “good time” he should be out in mid-October.

There isn’t much to say, the situation really speaks for itself. If individuals can be found guilty of felony charges for holding police officers accountable then justice truly is dead in this country. In essence Ademo will spend time in a cage because he witnessed police officers brutalizing other human beings and told anybody willing to listen about it.

Disappearing We the People Petitions

After Obama’s election the executive branch spent a lot of money to create the We the People site. We the People is supposed to be a site where anybody can submit a petition and, if it gets enough votes within a span of time, have it addressed by the White House. In reality these petitions are ignored although writing up bullshit reasons for ignoring them must have been too much work because the White House is now deleting petitions they don’t want to deal with:

At approximately 11:30 am EDT, the White House removed a petition about the TSA airport screening procedures from the White House “We the People” website. About 22,500 of the 25,000 signatures necessary for a response from the Administration were obtained when the White House unexpectedly cut short the time period for the petition. The site also went down for “maintenance” following an article in Wired that sought support for the campaign.

It would be pretty difficult to argue against a petition that demanded the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) obey the law so the only way to deal with it was to toss it down the memory hole.

What the State Does

What happened to the 13 year-old entrepreneur who, in an attempt to make ends meet for his family, purchased a food cart and was shutdown by the state? He and his family are now homeless:

Several weeks after a city zoning officer shut down his hot dog business, 13-year-old Nathan Duszynski and his parents are homeless.

The family was hoping Nathan’s hot dog cart could help them through a difficult time. Nathan’s mother, Lynette Johnson, suffers from epilepsy and his stepfather, Doug Johnson, has multiple sclerosis. Their illnesses have restricted them from finding permanent, full-time work.

The family receives about $1,300 a month in disability payments, Medicaid and food assistance. The three are having a hard time staying together. MLive confirms what the Mackinac Center learned Thursday — Nathan and his mother are staying at the Holland Rescue Mission.

“Nate and I are now in a shelter,” Lynette Johnson said. “Doug can’t stay with us because he takes prescription narcotics to deal with his pain and the shelter does not allow him with those kinds of drugs.”

This shouldn’t surprise anybody, making families of 13 year-old entrepreneurs homeless in order to protect the politically well-connected from competitors is what the state does. In factm in a rare demonstration of honesty, the state simply admitted to protectionism instead of trying to wrap a layer of regulatory bullshit around their misdeed:

Last week, Nathan and his family made an appeal to the Holland City Council. Mayor Kurt Dykstra defended the city’s ordinance, saying it was to protect downtown restaurant owners, who asked that the “success of the downtown district not be infringed upon by those who don’t share in the costs of maintaining the attractiveness of that space.”

It’s a good thing we have a big powerful violent state in place to protect the “success of the downtown district” from dangerous 13 year-old entrepreneurs.

Taking Your Stuff is Big Business

I complain about civil forfeiture laws from time to time. United States Code 881(a)(6) grants the state the legal ability to sieze property that the owner can’t prove isn’t involved in a drug crime:

(a) Subject property

The following shall be subject to forfeiture to the United States and no property right shall exist in them:

[…]

(6) All moneys, negotiable instruments, securities, or other things of value furnished or intended to be furnished by any person in exchange for a controlled substance or listed chemical in violation of this subchapter, all proceeds traceable to such an exchange, and all moneys, negotiable instruments, and securities used or intended to be used to facilitate any violation of this subchapter.

Needless to say the state makes big money on stealing peoples’ shit:

The Justice Department’s asset forfeiture fund under President Obama is the largest it’s ever been, having grown from $500 million in 2003, to $1.8 billion in 2011, according to a new report from the GAO.

In addition to the fund’s size, payments from the fund to local law enforcement agencies totalled $445 million in 2011, another all-time high. These payouts are part of the DOJ’s “equitable sharing agreement,” which incentivizes local cops to conduct federal raids. They then get a portion of the assets seized during the raid (more money if they contribute more resources). That money is then used to finance SWAT and paramilitary training, as well as the acquisition of military grade weapons and equipment.

$1.8 billion of property were stolen by the state through these civil forfeiture laws in 2011. That’s nothing short of mind boggling.

Renovating Gitmo

Remember when Obama said he was going to close Gitmo:

I wonder how the $40 million renovation of Gitmo fits into his plan to shut it down:

The U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be getting an estimated $40 million communications upgrade, signaling it will continue its mission of holding top suspected terrorists and as a major humanitarian aid base in the region.

The base, also known as Gitmo, will upgrade its limited satellite communications system to an underwater fiber optic line that will stretch from the base to the coast of Florida, according to Pentagon spokesman Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale.

I guess one does have to be a pathological liar in order to become president so this shouldn’t surprise anybody.