www.resistnwo.com - News 7
The Baffling Concept of a One-Time Audit
Tim Shoemaker
Campaign For Liberty
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein (who has not come out either for, or
against, an audit of the Fed) raises the same question many of us at
Campaign for Liberty had when looking at the Sanders amendment…
The amended version of Audit the Fed passed the Senate 96 to 0 today.
A version that was closer to the original — that is to say, it would’ve
created a regular audit rather than a one-time audit — lost, 37 to 62.
I’m a bit confused by a world in which 96 senators think we need to
know what the Fed did in 2008 and 2009 but only 37 think we’ll need
to know what the Fed did in 2012 and 2013.
What the Sanders amendment really called for was a mere one-time
disclosure of some emergency lending powers used by the Federal
Reserve during the most recent fiscal crisis, not an audit.
While this disclosure may be good and a small step in the right direction, it does not go far enough in ensuring a proper check on the use of power by the Federal Reserve.
Senate Votes 96 0 For One Time Audit Of Federal Reserve 140410banner4
As Klein points out in his title, “Take the easy vote,” the Sanders amendment provided a cop out to allow senators to return home claiming they supported transparency at the Federal Reserve.
The simple fact that only 37 senators supported a regular audit shows that transparency was not at all on the minds of the 62 others. There is no such thing as a “one-time audit.” It does not exist. Has anyone ever seen the IRS limit its audits of corporations and private individuals to a one-time only examination of a specific period of time? I know I haven’t.
What happens in the event of the next fiscal crisis? What if the Federal Reserve once again uses its power in a questionable manner? Are we to go through this nearly year and a half long legislative process to once again pass an audit of the Fed? No. Absolutely not. If the government really supports transparency at the Federal Reserve, the only prudent action to take would be to make a regular audit of the Federal Reserve system the law of the land.
Obama’s Supreme Court nominee agrees with Cass Sunstein – wants the state to regulate the First Amendment
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan
is perfect in every way – perfect that is if you think the role
of the highest judicial body in the United States is to ban
free speech, indefinitely detain Americans without trial,
resurrect command and control socialism, while urinating
on everything the Constitution stands for.
We already discovered Kagan’s penchant for treating
Americans as guilty until proven innocent, or in fact just
plain guilty without even the chance to be proven innocent,
when she was quoted as saying, “That someone suspected
of helping finance Al Qaeda should be subject to battlefield
law — indefinite detention without a trial — even if he were
captured in a place like the Philippines rather than a physical
battle zone.”
So under that definition, if you send money to a charity later linked with some nebulous terrorist group then you are financing Al-Qaeda and could be thrown in Gitmo or some other CIA black site never to be seen again. And this is the woman being forwarded to sit on a body that is supposed to safeguard civil liberties? That would be like hiring Charles Manson to coach the high school basketball team.
But it gets worse. Now we learn that Kagan thinks certain expressions of free speech should be ‘disappeared’ if the government deems them to be offensive. On the surface that’s any opinion on racial, sexuality or gender issues, but since criticizing Obama is now deemed racist, where will it all end?
In a 1993 University of Chicago Law review article, Kagan wrote, “I take it as a given that we live in a society marred by racial and gender inequality, that certain forms of speech perpetuate and promote this inequality, and that the uncoerced disappearance of such speech would be cause for great elation.” (emphasis mine).
Kagan: Disappear Free Speech If The Government Deems It Offensive 150410banner1
“In a 1996 paper, “Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine,” Kagan argued it may be proper to suppress speech because it is offensive to society or to the government,” reports World Net Daily.
Kagan also argued as recently as September that corporations shouldn’t be allowed to engage in free speech, and that the government can censor things like newspaper editorials, as well as the political opinions of radio talk show hosts or television reporters.
Chief Justice John Roberts blasted Kagan’s argument at the time, reports Newsmax.
“The government urges us in this case to uphold a direct prohibition on political speech. It asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet, and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern,” he wrote.
Kagan’s standpoint on free speech, that it is subject to regulation and definition by the government, has no place in America, completely violates the fundamental premise of the First Amendment, that even unpopular speech should be protected, and would be better suited for countries like Iran, Zimbabwe or North Korea.
Little surprise therefore when we learn that in her undergraduate thesis at Princeton, Kagan lamented the decline of socialism in the U.S. as “sad” for those who still hope to “change America.”
If Kagan is approved she is going to find an eager ally in White House information czar Cass Sunstein, who in a January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” called for the government to tax and outright censor political viewpoints it deemed unsavory.
Infowars.com
May 11, 2010
Last week several Morgan Hill, California, students were sent home on Cinco de
Mayo for wearing U.S. flag apparel that offended Latino students. The following
day, on May 6, several Latino students walked out of school in response and
held a rally in a nearby park.
“We want respect,” the students chant. In the video below, a group of students
in a pickup truck drive past the marching Latino students waving American flags
. “What followed was an angry confrontation in which both groups of students
shouted obscenities at each other,” Brian Shield writes for KRON 4. “No one
was arrested and there are no reports of injuries.”
It has yet to be explained by school authorities or the Latino students how
wearing or waving American flags “disrespects” them. KRON 4 does not
offer an explanation as to why the Latino students decided to walk out of
school and march.
“The incident on May 5 at Live Oak High School is extremely unfortunate,”
a school administrator explains in a statement. “While campus safety is our
primary concern and administrators made decisions yesterday in an attempt
to ensure campus safety, students should not, and will not, be disciplined for
wearing patriotic clothing. This matter is under investigation and appropriate
action will be taken.”
It appears the Latino students walked out of classes because the students wearing patriotic clothing were not disciplined.
Obviously, the Latino students do not consider themselves Americans. In the above video, the students wave Mexican flags and chant that displaying the American flag is disrespectful of their heritage and sense of Mexican nationalism.
Mexican Students Walk Out of Class, Attack Other Students with American Flags
Why is the American flag offensive to Latino students? More than likely because their elders have taught them that California is not part of the United States. It is part of Mexico. It was stolen by the gringos.
The students probably do not realize (or do their parents and relatives) that their nationalism is inappropriate outside of Mexico. The belief that the Southwest United States is part of Mexico and must be reconquered plays right into the hands of the globalists.
The Ford Foundation supports La Raza. The global elite, however, are not interested returning the Southwest to Mexico or anybody else, least of all a faction of racist Marxists. The global elite are playing a game of divide and conquer. After an American Union is established, the national identities of Mexico, the United States, and Canada will be eradicated. Revolutionary Marxists will be dealt with in the same manner all independence minded factions are dealt with by authoritarian regimes.
The corporate media and public education reaffirm the politically correct fantasy that the American Southwest is the long lost land of Aztlán once populated by Aztecs who are superior to “frail” white people.
In fact, what is now the American Southwest became an ungovernable territory after the Spanish conquistadors planted a flag and eventually went back to Spain. The region was ungovernable until the United States domesticated the Apaches and other fierce tribes that ran the Mexicans off the land for centuries. Only Catholic missionaries and traders dared traverse the territory.
Latino students marching and demanding respect — tribal gang-bangers often make the same demand — will only serve to further polarize the issue and set the stage for race riots and violence. Nobody will benefit from violence, hated, and racial polarization but the global elite who are endeavoring to socially balkanize the country and exploit divisions to further their agenda of world government.
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, May 13, 2010
‘Machete‘ has fallen into controversy, and it’s still months away from its September release. 20th Century Fox, which won a ‘bidding war’ to distribute the film, pulled Rodriguez’ fiery “Illegal” trailer from the web shortly after its special “Cinco de Mayo” message created a storm of controversy and fueled attacks, including one from its sister subsidiary Fox News. Fox News, in turn, pulled the critical article from circulation, entitled “Violent Movie Declares War on Arizona for Immigration Law.”
Worst of all, Robert Rodriguez’ incendiary race film ‘Machete‘ was made, in part, with help from tax incentives and location access provided by the Texas Film Commission, a division of Governor Rick Perry’s Office. A spokesperson from the organization confirmed that Rodriguez indeed applied for the program and that all of his Troublemaker Studios films have been part of it.
The film, originally based on a largely satirical mock-trailer inserted into Rodriguez & Taratino’s Grindhouse, has expanded into full production, and developed a message that many have criticized as glorifying a race war. Among those critics are two anonymous crew members from the production– who happen to be Hispanic– that came forward to warn Alex confidentially about the upsetting script. Further, two individuals who were privy to early screenings of ‘Machete’ have warned that the film is far more racially inflammatory than either the trailer or leaked script have indicated.
By contrast, films like Waco were denied taxpayer-funded resources for fears that it cast Texas in a bad light. Attempting to shed the light of truth on one of Texas’ most infamous and controversial episodes is bad, but stoking the fires of racial conflict somehow does Texas “good”?
Yet, no issue has been made of using Texas Film Commission resources to fund Rodriguez’ racist treatise. Why does such a production warrant the support of the people of the State of Texas? Will people standby as as tax breaks and other value resources are poured into the creation of divisive, reductive and ultimately offensive portrayal of Mexicans and Americans, white, black, brown or otherwise.
In addition to state funds, Robert Rodriguez has long had use of the state & city funded studios based at the former Austin airport. His Troublemaker Studios utilizes the Austin Studios facilities, which is managed by the Austin Film Society. Are racial-revenge fantasies the intended use of such publicly and community supported institutions?
Let the Texas Film Commission and other related entities know whether or not you support taxpayer funds going towards the production of ‘Machete’ and other films like it:
http://www.governor.state.tx.us/film/
CONTACT:
Mailing Address
P.O. Box 13246
Austin, TX 78711
(512) 463-9200
(512) 463-4114 FAX
film@governor.state.tx.us
Ken Klukowski
Lux Libertas
May 13, 2010
A third instance of Elena Kagan opposing Americans’ Second Amendment
right to own a gun has now become public, and is sure to become a major
issue in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. And it confirms that
President Obama’s gun-control agenda is to create a Supreme Court that
will “reinterpret” the Second Amendment until that amendment means
nothing at all.
This year, no case on the Supreme Court docket is more important than
McDonald v. Chicago, where the Court is deciding whether the Second
Amendment right to keep and bear arms is only a right you have against
the federal government, or instead if the Second Amendment (like most
of the Bill of Rights) also secures a right you can assert against state and
local governments. At issue is whether Chicago’s law banning all guns—
even in your own home—is constitutional.
When the Supreme Court considered its last Second Amendment case, District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, then-U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement filed a brief in the case, and then requested and received time to argue the federal government’s position in that case as to the meaning of the Second Amendment.
When the McDonald case was argued before the Court on March 2 of this year, current Solicitor General Kagan argued… Nothing. Not only did she not ask for time during oral argument, she didn’t even file a brief (which the solicitor general routinely does in important constitutional cases—and the McDonald case is monumentally important).
If someone asserts that the solicitor general shouldn’t file a brief because it’s a state matter as to whether the Second Amendment is “incorporated” to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment (which is the issue in McDonald) the record speaks to the contrary. The last time the Supreme Court “incorporated” a right from the Bill of Rights to the states, in the 1969 case Benton v. Maryland, the solicitor general filed a brief, and then (just like Heller in 2008) got divided argument time to express the government’s views in front of the Court.
Why wouldn’t Kagan file a brief expressing the view of over 75% of Americans that the Second Amendment is an individual right, one that every American citizen has against all levels of government?
Aside from her shocking decision not to file a brief in McDonald, we’ve learned that Elena Kagan was part of the Clinton White House’s gun-control efforts, where a Clinton staffer said, “We are taking the law and bending it as far as we can to capture a whole new class of guns.”
Then it became public that when the Supreme Court was asked in 1987 to decide if the D.C. gun ban was unconstitutional (the same law that the Court eventually struck down in Heller), Kagan wrote to Justice Marshall on the Court that she was “not sympathetic” toward the argument that the Second Amendment doesn’t allow D.C. to completely ban all guns.
Three anti-gun decisions. Three strikes, and you’re out.
The bottom line is that Barack Obama supports the Chicago gun ban, a position he publicly repeated as recently as June 26, 2008 (the day the Heller decision was released). President Obama believes that there’s nothing unconstitutional about the city—or even the whole state—where you live completely banning you from having any firearms for hunting or self-defense, even in your own home.
As my coauthor Ken Blackwell and I discuss in our new bestselling book, The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, President Obama’s gun-control agenda is to create a Supreme Court that will repeatedly rule that whatever gun-control laws come before it are okay. No matter how severe the anti-gun measure is, the Court will say, “This is constitutional.”
President Obama—the most anti-gun president is American history—has nominated for our highest court a close personal friend of his. And now we see that Obama has every reason to believe that his close personal friend shares his radical view on the Second Amendment, one that will work against the constitutional rights of 90 million American gun owners.
Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings this summer could get very interesting. America’s gun owners have a way of making their voices heard.
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
May 16, 2010
Two articles on the FDL website detail the intimate and incestuous
relationship between the Barry Obama administration and Goldman
Sachs. FDL names names and provides expansive detail on the
Goldie administration.
“At a time when Congressional hearings are set to call testimony from
some Goldman Sachs employees, it is vital to understand how wides-
pread that institution’s ties are to the Obama administration. This
diary shows the pervasive influence of Goldman Sachs and Goldman
created institutions (like the Hamilton Project embedded in the
Brookings Institution), employees and influence peddlers in the
Obama administration,” FDL wrote on April 27.
It is not simply Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Rahm Emanuel,
Gary Gensler and Mark Patterson who are Goldies, but a long list of
others. “But that’s just the tip of the Goldman Sachs iceberg. Here
you will find, I believe, the most comprehensive list of people-groups
yet available to show how Obama’s administration has really become the Goldman Sachs administration.”
Elena Kagan is merely the latest addition, although her ties to Goldman are downplayed if not completely ignored by the corporate media.
FDL notes that the “Obama administration is not the first administration that Goldman has infiltrated, although it is perhaps the one that has been most completely co-opted from top to bottom. Recall that former Secretary of the Treasury Paulson in the George W. Bush era came from — Goldman Sachs where he was its chief. Recall too that the brilliant, late economist John K. Galbraith has written an entire chapter of a book devoted to the Great Depression and the economic collapse of Wall St. that accompanied it to the role of Goldman Sachs.”
Goldman had sponsored trusts such as Blue Ridge and Shenandoah, speculative Ponzi schemes that made the market collapse of October 1929 possible. Goldman and others “whip(ped) up a speculative fever in shares, reaping (highly leveraged) capital gains with other people’s money.” They were fraudulent pyramid schemes, a “Charles Ponzi-Bernie Madoff scam,” writes L. Randall Wray.
It was not mere greed and short sightedness that created the Great Depression. “To think that the scientifically engineered Crash of ‘29 was an accident or the result of stupidity defies all logic. The international bankers who promoted the inflationary policies and pushed the propaganda which pumped up the stock market represented too many generations of accumulated expertise to have blundered into ‘the great depression,’” writes the late Gary Allen.
“The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as the rulers of us all,” lamented Congressman Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee at the time.
Goldman is now strategically placed in the White House as the Greatest Depression inexplicably unfolds all around us. McFadden was on the right track — the banksters are positioned to emerge as rulers of us all… and most of us, thanks to the corporate media, are completely unaware.
Here are the FDL articles: A List of Goldman Sachs People in the Obama Government: Names Attached to the Giant Squid’s Tentacles and An Updated List of Goldman Sachs Ties to the Obama Government Including Elena Kagan.
see below
A List of Goldman Sachs People in the Obama Government:
Names Attached to the Giant Squid’s Tentacles
By: fflambeau
At a time when Congressional hearings are set to call testimony from some Goldman
Sachs employees, it is vital to understand how widespread that institution’s ties are
to the Obama administration. This diary shows the pervasive influence of Goldman
Sachs and Goldman created institutions (like the Hamilton Project embedded in the
Brookings Institution), employees and influence peddlers in the Obama administration.
While many of the people listed below formerly worked for Goldman Sachs or its
offshoots (like the Hamilton Project, including all three of that project’s first Directors)
influence can be exerted not only through people but through money, awards, spon-
sored scholarship, and creation of an agenda favorable to Goldman Sachs (which is
where Brookings and the Hamilton Project come in and have proved especially useful
to Goldman Sachs).
It is further of note that although Goldman Sachs has been the center of attention
especially since Matt Taibbi’s insightful investigative journalism, that I have not been
able to find a comprehensive list of the influence of Goldman Sachs in this administration.
Recently in the New York Post, for instance, Michelle Malkin wrote a good article called
"All the President’s Goldman Men" but she only listed the usual suspects like Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Rahm Emanuel, Gary Gensler and Mark Patterson.
But that’s just the tip of the Goldman Sachs iceberg. Here you will find, I believe, the most comprehensive list of people-groups yet available to show how Obama’s administration has really become the Goldman Sachs administration. But I need your help. I suspect there are far more people out there with such ties that I have missed even though I have spent lots of time researching this issue. If you know of other people who should be on this list, please help out and give the details in a comment to this diary.
One further caveat. The Obama administration is not the first administration that Goldman has infiltrated, although it is perhaps the one that has been most completely co-opted from top to bottom. Recall that former Secretary of the Treasury Paulson in the George W. Bush era came from–Goldman Sachs where he was its chief. Recall too that the brilliant, late economist John K. Galbreath has written an entire chapter of a book devoted to the Great Depression and the economic collapse of Wall St. that accompanied it to the role of Goldman Sachs.
Law professor William Black, who participated in actions against individuals in the Savings and Loan collapses decades ago, recently told Bill Moyers recently that:
"The highest return on assets is always a political contribution."
In this spirit we name the first two links between Goldman entities and the Obama administration: they are out of alphabetical order for obvious reasons. All the others are in alphabetical order.
Let’s look at the Goldman Sachs government that we have in place now, that is masked by Barack Obama. Fittingly, we begin with Obama:
OBAMA, BARACK.
Although to my knowledge he has never directly worked for Goldman, he has taken boatloads of their money (an investment repaid many times) and he calls Robert Rubin, the former head of Goldman Sachs "my friend Bob". (See the video clip of then Senator Barack Obama’s address to the Goldman-Rubin funded Hamilton Project in a link below where he uses these words and calls for cuts in entitlements and more NAFTA-type agreements).
Jesse Unruh, the late California politician and political thinker, once called "money the mother’s milk of politics." Certainly, Obama sucked at the teats of Goldman Sachs more than any other politician in recent times. It began for him as little-known Senator from Illinois with a razor- thin resume whose ambitions outshine his accomplishments. Obama’s eloquent, heavily prepped address to the Democratic National Convention caught not only the eyes of the Democratic top brass, but that of the big bankers. As early as the Spring of 2006, Senator Barack Obama was intimately involved with Bob Rubin and Goldman Sachs through his involvement with the Hamilton Project.
Fittingly, Senator Obama was chosen by Rubin and the Hamilton Project to give the inaugural address of the Hamilton Project in April, 2006. An excellent, seminal discussion of the Hamilton Project by Dr. Kirk James Murphy, M.D., can be found here. A video clip of then Senator Barack Obama speaking at the inauguration of the Hamilton Project in April, 2006 can be found here and here (with an excellent discussion) and here. Here Obama heaps lavish praise on Robert Rubin ("my friend Bob") and on the Hamilton Project while setting out its (and his subsequent administration’s agenda) of cuts in entitlements, the need for more NAFTA-type free trade pacts and a pro-big corporation government. In 2006 then, Obama was a Goldie and articulating its desires and policies.
Little wonder then, that Goldman and Rubin heavily funded Obama as a Senator (his biggest campaign contributor) and as a presidential candidate. Goldman Sachs employees (and they were not the floor cleaners) contributed $994,795 to Obama’s presidential bid, almost four times the amount they gave to his Republican opponent, according to OpenSecrets. Over Obama’s entire career, Goldman has been his second biggest contributor, according to OpenSecrets, giving him more than $1,051,000. Goldman not only wanted Obama to win, they paid lots of money to insure that their man would occupy the White House. Again, as William Black noted:
"The highest return on assets is always a political contribution."
Goldman’s 30 pieces of silver investment in Obama reaped them billions of dollars in returns as the TARP bailouts and the subsequent news about Goldman Sachs has shown. So although Obama may never have "worked for" Goldman in the traditional sense, he’s one of Robert Rubin’s boys and on Goldman’s books.
University of Minnesota political scientist Prof. Lawrence Jacobs, described the giant squid’s attachment to the Obama administration:
almost everything that the White House has done has been haunted by the personnel and the money of Goldman . . . as well as the suspicion that the White House, particularly early on, was pulling its punches out of deference to Goldman and its war chest.
BIDEN, JOE.
Is it any wonder that between his service as "Senator Credit Card", his efforts to limit busing for desegregation, and his five draft deferments at the height of the Vietnam War that Joe Biden is attached to one of Goldman’s tentacles? Goldman has been a major campaign contributor to Biden and according to OpenSecrets, Biden in 2007 alone took almost $25,000 from the Robert Rubin related Citigroup (Rubin was its head as well as being a former head of Goldman).
And guess who was the keynote speaker at the Hamilton Project 2010 kickoff event a few days ago (April 20th, 2010) Tuesday morning at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel? That’s right: Vice President Joe Biden spoke at Goldman Sachs/Robert Rubin’s Rosemary’s Baby. You can see some pics of Biden at the Hamilton Project event along with who else–Robert Rubin–here.
As described by the Huffington Post:
Biden was speaking at the relaunch of the Hamilton Project, a think tank founded by ultimate Wall Street Democrat Robert Rubin to publicly despair about the deficit and other things bankers worry about the most.
Note too that in his address Biden paid tribute to Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission, something that the Hamilton Project and Robert Rubin (and Goldman) have been pushing for years because it really means cuts in entitlements (again, have a look at Sen. Obama’s 2006 speech at the Hamilton Project where he calls for entitlement cuts).
ALTMAN, ROGER.
Interestingly, the man who introduced Joe Biden at the Hamilton Project’s relaunch (described above) was none other than Roger Altman, who is connected to the Hamilton Project.
Altman may not hold down a desk job in the Obama administration–he’s too big a fish for that just as is Robert Rubin–but he is one of those power brokers with all encompassing contacts within the Democratic Party. Altman is a Hamilton Project member, according to Dan Frumkin’s excellent article in the Huffington Post, as well as having served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under none other than Mr. Goldman Sachs, Robert Rubin. He is now now Chairman of Evercore Partners, which the Hamilton Project program described as "the most active investment banking boutique in the world." (and the Obama administration is trying to sell itself as one that is getting tough on big banks and Goldman?).
Like so many of the Goldman people, Altman has a touch of scandal/criminality about him. According to Wikipedia, Altman was forced from his position as Assistant Treasury Secretary because of a records keeping scandal.
Altman is a co-author, along with Robert Rubin, of the Hamilton Project’s "From Recession to Recovery to Renewal: An Economic Strategy to Achieve Broadly Shared Growth." Some of Altman’s ties to the Goldman-Rubin funded Hamilton Project can be seen here.
BRAINARD, LAEL.
Brainard is the United States Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in the administration of President Barack Obama. She is an associate and protege of Mr. Goldman Sachs, Robert Rubin. She has written numerous articles and bookson the joys of outsourcing work overseas.
Brainard also worked at Brookings which has embedded within in Goldman Sachs and Robert Rubin’s Hamilton Project. Goldman was clever in doing this because they hid a conservative thinking, pro business group like a Trojan Horse in what is generally perceived as a liberal think tank.
Like Timothy Geithner, who is her boss, Brainard is a brainy person who had trouble with income tax rules and regulations, thus joining quite a lengthy list of Goldies who ape the law. The Washington Post reported that:
Brainard’s nomination was held up by Republican concerns over allegations that she failed to pay property taxes on time. (What is it with Treasury and tax problems?)
BUFFETT, WARREN.
Speaking of big fish, Warren doesn’t need to work for the US government or for Goldman. But he’s invested billions in Goldman expecting even greater returns. Obama has also admitted in the debates to "pal’in around" with the Sage of Omaha and Buffett is one of Obama’s fundraisers and economic advisers.
For more on Buffett see this written by Michael Winship at Truthout:
On Friday, Susan Pulliam reported on the front page of The Wall Street Journal that, "A Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director tipped off a hedge-fund billionaire about a $5 billion investment in Goldman by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. before a public announcement of the deal at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, a person close to the situation says."
As the Journal notes, the Buffet deal came at a key point in the Wall Street collapse, restoring confidence in the markets and lifting Goldman’s stock from a 40 percent slide to a 45 percent surge. The hedge-fund billionaire in question is Raj Rajaratnam, whose Galleon Group currently is embroiled in one of the biggest insider trading scandals in history: 21, including Rajaratnam, have been charged; 11 already have pled guilty.
(emphasis added)
CLINTON, HILLARY.
Although Barack Obama was the overwhelming favorite of Goldman Sachs to be president in 2008, for he could serve as their Trojan Horse, they were smart enough to hedge their bets, so to speak and back Hillary too. According to the Washington Examiner, Goldman Sachs in 2008 alone gave:
($415,595.63 inflation adjusted), which was itself almost three times as much as Bush received as well.
And of course, it was Hillary’s hubby Bill Clinton who chose ex-Goldman chief Robert Rubin to serve in his White House. Bill, Hillary and Bob Rubin are Washington, D.C. kissing cousins.
CRAIG, GREGORY.
Another example of the revolving door between Goldman Sachs and Obama’s administration. Craig served as Obama’s White House Counsel and after resigning, has taken on a position as Goldman Sach’s chief lawyer in defending against its SEC suit. A former Goldie, Robert Hormats, sits at the top of SEC’s enforcement group too. What a hoot!
Note that Craig is a lawyer and lawyer’s rules of professional responsibility prohibit not only direct conflicts of interest but anything that hints at a conflict of interest.
Here is doubtlessly why Goldman wanted Craig as its top lawyer in the SEC complaint:
Greg Craig, Obama’s first White House counsel, has joined Goldman, we learned this week. He may not have too much pull in the West Wing, which drove him out for hewing too close to Obama’s campaign promises, but as a former insider he will provide valuable intelligence to the world’s largest investment bank.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Is-Goldman-Obamas-Enron-No-its-worse-91613449.html#ixzz0mHKfS3hl
DONILON, THOMAS.
Thomas Donilon is Deputy National Security Adviser to Barack Obama (despite having a career that is mostly involved with domestic politics). Donilon was a lawyer at O’Melveny and Myers and made almost $4 million representing meltdown clients including Penny Pritzker (of Chicago) and Goldman. This from Michelle Malkin’s article RealClearPolitics. More information is available on Donilon over at Whorunsgov.com.
DUDLEY, BILL.
Joined Goldman in 1986; partner and managing director until 2007. Federal Reserve Bank of New York President since January 2009 (replacing none other than Timothy Geithner, his Goldman compadre). This all from the Wall Street Journal.
ELMENDORF, DOUGLAS.
Elmendorf became Obama’s Director of the Congressional Budget Office in January 2009. Elmendorf previously was the Director of the Hamilton Project; it’s third.
Note too that the first 3 Directors of the Hamilton Project ALL serve in the Obama administration. While other journalists/writers have explored the links between Goldman Sachs and Obama, few have looked at the connection between the Hamilton Project and the Obama administration. Note again that the Hamilton Project was funded by Robert Rubin and Goldman Sachs. Note too that the current director of the Hamilton Project, its 4th since its founding in 2006, is Michael Greenstone. How long will it be before Greenstone goes to the Obama administration, making it a perfect 4 for 4 for Directors of the Goldman funded Hamilton Project? To show that there is a revolving door between the Obama Administration and Goldman/Rubin/Hamilton Project, Greenstone served as of Obama’s chief economic advisers.
EMANUEL, RAHM.
Rahm, of course, is Obama’s Chief of Staff, the very first person Obama selected to be in his administration. Rahm has lengthy and fruitful ties to Goldman, and vice versa. Rahm took in about $75,000 from Goldman Sachs as a Congressman and was on a $3,000 a month retainer from Goldman while he worked as Bill Clinton’s chief fund raiser.
Timothy Carney has explored some of the links between Emanuel and Goldman Sachs:
…one of Barack Obama’s top sources of funds in this past election, Goldman has always had some particularly strong allies within government. Emanuel is one such ally.
An interesting early chapter in the Goldman-Emanuel relationship took place in the setting of Bill Clinton’s campaign for the White House in 1992. Clinton hired Emanuel as his chief fundraiser.
At the same time, however, Emanuel was on the payroll of Goldman Sachs, receiving $3,000 per month from the firm to “introduce us to people,” in the words of one Goldman partner at the time. This is certainly a noteworthy relationship, but it’s one that has almost entirely escaped scrutiny.
Corporations and partnerships are and were at the time prohibited by law from contributing to federal candidates out of the corporate coffers. So, while Rahm tapped Goldman employees personally for six figures in gifts to Clinton’s candidacy—more than any other firm—Goldman, as a company, was helping keep Clinton’s top fundraiser well-fed.
…
In his four terms in Congress, Emanuel has raised $74,750 from Goldman, making the firm his number four source of funds. Goldman has helped Emanuel. How has Emanuel helped Goldman?
The most obvious answer, as mentioned in this column two weeks ago, is in Emanuel’s lead role in shepherding the “$700 billion” bailout—first proposed by former a Goldman CEO, Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson—through the skeptical House.
Of course, back in the Clinton days, Goldman benefited from NAFTA and the bailout of the Mexican currency, with Emanuel pushing NAFTA through Congress, and Rubin hammering out the peso bailout.
McClatchey newspaper’s Greg Gordon, in his article entitled, "Goldman’s White House Connections Raise Eyebrows" also noted how Rahm and Goldman worked together to make money:
One White House insider who knows something about how Wall Street does business is chief of staff Emanuel, who earned millions of dollars in investment banking after he left the Clinton White House. His work for the Chicago-based financial services firm Wasserstein Perella & Co. intersected with Goldman in at least one deal.
In 1999, Emanuel was a key player representing Unicom Corp., the parent of Commonwealth Edison, in forging its merger with Peco Energy Co. to create utility giant Exelon Corp. Goldman was also advising Unicom.
The White House declined immediate comment on that connection.
So how real is the Obama/Democratic party’s supposed new toughness on big banks when the administration’s point guard was on the Goldman payroll and become a multi-millionaire through big banks and Wall St. deals?
FARRELL, DIANA.
Diana Farrell is Deputy Director of the National Economic Council (since January, 2009) in the administration of President Barack Obama. She formerly worked for two years at Goldman Sachs in New York according to Whorunsgov.com.
In 2003, Farrell was the author of a paper, "Perspective on Outsourcing" in which she argued that sending American jobs overseas might be "as beneficial to the U.S. as to the destination country, probably more so." In a book titled “The Economists’ Voice: Top Economists Take on Today’s Problems,” Farrell wrote a chapter titled “U.S. Offshoring: Small Steps to make it Win-Win.” Her chapter, published in 2008, centered on offshoring.
In the Obama administration, Farrell works with a coven of Goldies including Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, who is her boss.
FRIEDMAN, STEPHEN.
Chairman of Obama’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
According to Wikipedia, Friedman worked for much of his career with Goldman Sachs, holding numerous executive roles. He served as the company’s co-chief operating officer from 1987 to 1990, was the company’s co-chairman from 1990 to 1992, and the sole chairman from 1992 to 1994; he still serves on the company board.
Friedman was another Goldie involved in controversy, as many of the Goldies have been in government service, involving his former employer. His actions, like other affiliated with Goldman, show scant respect for rules, regulations or laws.
Wikipedia notes:
Wikipedia notes:
On May 7, 2009 Friedman resigned as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in response to criticism of his December 2008 purchase of $3 million of stock in Goldman Sachs. Friedman, who remains a member of Goldman Sachs’ board, came into violation of Federal Reserve policy when Goldman was converted to a bank holding company in September 2008, thereby placing it under the regulatory authority of the New York Fed. Friedman requested a waiver from this violation when the conversion occurred, which was granted roughly two and a half months later.
FROHMAN, MICHAEL.
Robert Rubin’s Chief of Staff while Rubin served as Secretary of the Treasury and an Obama “head hunter” according to “Rubin Proteges Change Their Tune as They Join Obama’s Team” in the New York Times.
FURMAN, JASON.
Furman served as the second Director of the Hamilton Project after Peter Orszag’s departure for the Obama administration and he in turn left the Hamilton Project in June 2008 to direct economic policy for the Obama Presidential Campaign.
FUDGE, ANNE.
Obama just appointed Fudge to his budget deficit reduction committee. Fudge has been the pr craftsman for some of America’s largest corporations. She sits, according to the Washington Post, as a Trustee of the Brookings Institution within which the Hamilton Project is embedded.
GALLOGLY, MARK.
Gallogly sits on the Hamilton Project’s advisory council. He is also, according to Wikipedia, currently a member of President Barack Obama’s President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
GEITHNER, TIMOTHY.
He’s one of the most documented of all people within the Obama administration while serving as Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury. He was named head of the New York Fed by none other George W. Bush, again perhaps underscoring Gore Vidal’s observation that American is run by one corporate party and it has two wings: Republican and Democratic.
While at the head of the New York Fed, Geithner prior to the crisis not only failed to see storm clouds on the horizon, he also in 2008 ordered the bailed out AIG not to disclose its sweetheart payments to big banks including, you guessed it, Goldman Sachs. Geithner also worked with W’s Treasury Secretary Paulson to fashion the TARP agreements whereby billions were handed out to Wall St.
Geithner is a protoge of both Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.
Like other Goldies, Geithner has had trouble with rules, tax regulations and various. Recall that he had trouble at his confirmation hearings over his tax returns. Whorunsgov sums them up:
At the end of the Clinton administration, Geithner moved to the International Monetary Fund, where he was director of policy development. That period led to a blot on his personal record. The IMF, unlike most employers, does not pay the employer match on Social Security and Medicare taxes. Geithner was responsible for paying those taxes himself. He did not to do so until he was audited in 2005, and even then only paid the back taxes for 2003 and 2004. He did not pay the back taxes for 2001 and 2002 until after Obama tapped him to be Treasury secretary at the end of 2008.
Many of Geithner’s actions profited Goldman Sachs directly or indirectly, such as Geithner’s decision to deny Goldman’s competitor the same treatment he gave Goldman. As Time magazine noted:
[Geithner]Would not grant Lehman Brothers the right to become a bank-holding company — a status given to both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs just days after Lehman filed for bankruptcy
Lehman Brothers collapsed, leaving Goldman Sachs with fewer competitors and a greater market share.
GENSLER, GARY.
Gensler was a Goldman Sachs partner who is Obama’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission head. Gensler is the guy who as a former Treasury official exempted the $58 trillion credit default market from oversight. Those financial instrumentals played a key role in the global economic downturn and led to billions of dollars in profits for banks like Goldman Sachs.
GREENSTONE, MICHAEL.
Greenstone is the 4th Director of the Hamilton Project. Just as attorney Craig went from advising Obama to defending Goldman Sachs against the SEC complaint, Greenstone has used the revolving door to go from went an economic adviser position to Obama to one of the Goldman Sachs outlets, in this case its think tank embedded in the Brookings Institution and funded by Goldman and Robert Rubin. All 3 previous Directors of the Hamilton Project work in the Obama administration.
HAMILTON PROJECT, THE.
The pro-corporatist think group funded by Goldman Sachs and Robert Rubin and cleverly hidden in the Brookings Institution as their Rosemary’s Baby/Trojan Horse. Espouses cutbacks in entitlements, strict budgetary thinking applied to all social programs (but not the defense department); outsourcing of American jobs overseas; more NAFTA-type agreements. Three of the first 4 Directors of the Hamilton Project serve in the Obama Administration. The fourth went from an economic adviser to Obama to the Hamilton Project.
It might also help to recall that the name "Hamilton Project" is significant. Recall that Alexander Hamilton, after whom the institute was named, had as his most famous dictum that "the people are a great beast." Hamilton espoused a powerful state bank and centralized government and presidency.
Note too that Sen. Barack Obama was the inaugural speaker at the Hamilton Project and lavished praise on "my friend Bob [Rubin]" and called for cuts in entitlements (Social Security) and more NAFTA agreements. This is the same guy who lied to the electorate, then, in union states like Ohio and Pennsylvania during the Democratic primaries when he said "NAFTA needs rethinking." He is firmly and totally behind NAFTA and has done no "rethinking" of it while President and with his party in firm control of Congress.
For more information, see the reading listed below on this subject and the Project’s web site.
HORMATS, ROBERT.
The top economics official at Obama’s State Department, Hormats spent the prior 27 years at Goldman Sachs, including as the Vice Chairman of Goldman’s international arm.
Hormat’s appointment to the Obama administration led Glenn Greenwald to this observation:
A Goldman executive as COO of the SEC’s enforcement division. This is all consistent with the observation of Desmond Lachman — previously chief emerging market strategist at Salomon Smith Barney and IMF deputy director — regarding "Goldman Sachs’s seeming lock on high-level U.S. Treasury jobs," which he cited as but one of the many "parallels between U.S. policymaking and what we see in emerging markets."
Imagine how this will play out. The SEC has lodged a complaint against Goldman Sachs. Goldman’s former Vice President in charge of Business Intelligence sits in the SEC’s enforcement division while Obama’s former top lawyer, White House Counsel Gregory Craig, has gone to defend Goldman Sachs!
KASHKARI, NEEL.
Former Vice President of Goldman Sachs in San Francisco where he where he led Goldman’s Information Technology Security Investment Banking practice. Kashkari served under Treasury Secretary Paulson and was kept on by Obama after his inauguration for a limited period to work on TARP oversight.
KORNBLUH, KAREN.
Sometimes called "Obama’s brain", she serves as Obama’s Ambassador to the OECD. Kornbluh was Deputy Chief of Staff to Mr. Goldman Sachs, Robert Rubin.
LEW, JACOB (AKA "JACK") J.
Lew is the United States Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources. According to Wikipedia, Lew sits on the Brookings-Rubin funded Hamilton Project Advisory Board. He also served with Robert Rubin in Bill Clinton’s cabinet as Director of OMB.
Like many affiliates of the Hamilton Project, along with Barack Obama, Lew believes that fiscal discipline needs to be applied to Social Security (not much talk about runaway costs in the military budget). According to the New York Times, Lew has testified that:
“Fiscal discipline is essential to protect Social Security and strengthen Medicare, so that both will be there in the years ahead. Reducing the accumulated federal debt will help us to protect these important programs.” (Congressional testimony in March 2000.)
Also like Robert Rubin, Lew has worked with Citicorp. The New York Times reported (same link as above) that:
As executive vice president of New York University, he tangled with a union representing graduate students who help teach courses.
LIPTON, DAVID A.
According to Paul Krugman, Lipton is at now at Obama’s National Economic Council and the National Security Council. Lipton worked with Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, again according to Krugman, on the US response to the Asian financial crisis of the 1990’s. MergeFoundations reports that Lipton worked closely with Robert Rubin:
[he] advised and assisted Secretary Rubin on many key aspects of international economic policy.
MINDICH, ERIC.
Eric Mindich, while not officially serving in the Obama administration, is a strong Obama supporter with extensive ties to the President, according to a Ben Smith/Politico article. Mindich is a hedge fund manager and sits on the Advisory Council of the Hamilton Project and has worked at Goldman Sachs. In fact, he was the youngest ever partner with Goldman Sachs at the age of 27.
According to Wikipedia:
Prior to forming Eton Park in 2004, Mindich spent 15 years at Goldman Sachs in two main roles: leading the firm’s equities risk arbitrage business and managing the firm’s equities division. He joined the firm in 1988 in the equities arbitrage department and ran that department from 1992 until 2000.[1] In 1994, at age 27, he became the youngest partner ever in the history of Goldman Sachs.[1] In 2000, he became co-chief operating officer of the equities division and in 2002 became co-head of the equities division and a member of the Goldman Sachs Management Committee. In 2003, Mindich joined the Executive Office as senior strategy officer and chair of the Firmwide Strategy Committee.
Another website, Operational Due Diligence at Checkfundmanager, indicates the following about Mindich:
In March of 2009, Eton Park’s [hedge fund founded by him] assets under management were estimated to be around $13 billion.
An article from April of 2009 lists Mr. Mindich among the “inner circle” of economic advisors to Lawrence H. Summers, who is the current chief economic adviser to President Barack Obama. Mr. Mindich is also listed in another article as being a top level Democrat fundraiser.
…Eric Mindich, founder of Eton Park fund, reportedly supports Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy (2007).
…A February 2005 article rattles off a number of impressive credentials for Eric Mindich, including launching the largest hedge fund in history, graduating summa cum laude from Harvard, becoming the youngest ever partner at Goldman Sachs, and being endorsed by former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin.
ORSZAG, PETER.
Obama’s Budget Director was the founding director of the Hamilton Project, funded by Goldman Sachs and Robert Rubin. Furthermore, Wikipedia indicates that Robert Rubin, Goldman’s ex-head, was one of Orszag’s mentors.
A BBC article notes Orsag’s commitment to Hamilton Project ideals like cutting the budget (mostly by cutting entitlements) and his ties to Goldman Sachs:
Mr Obama has signalled his determination to keep the budget deficit in check by appointing Peter Orszag, the head of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
It is the OMB, rather than the Treasury, that allocates government spending and estimates the size of future budget deficits.
His appointment could help ease the new president’s relations with Congress.
Peter Orszag is well-known as a fiscal conservative, who is concerned to keep spending and tax cuts in check.
He was one of the first directors of the Hamilton Project, a Brookings think tank initiative backed by Robert Rubin…
The BBC failed to point out that Goldman Sachs also contributed to funding the Hamilton Project, and he was not "one of the first directors of the Hamilton Project" he was its first Director.
PATTERSON, MARK.
former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs who serves under Timothy Geithner as his top deputy and overseer of TARP bailout funds, $10 billion of which went to Goldman.
RATTNER, STEVE.
Ratner is the shady billionaire financier who Obama appointed as his “car czar” and who resigned after it was revealed that his company, the Quadrangle Group, was apparently involved in “pay to play” for a billion dollars or so of New York State pension funds, and was under possible indictment by the New York AG and the SEC, also sits on the Advisory Council of the Goldman funded Hamilton Project.
Rattner is yet another Goldie-Hamilton Project person in trouble with the law. He was the main financial supporter of Harold Ford’s aborted New York Senate run and speculation was that Rattner wanted a Senator to help protect him.
REISCHAUER, ROBERT D.
He was a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission from 2000-2009 and was its vice chair from 2001-2008. He too sits on the Hamilton Project’s advisory board.
From this excellent discussion at "Meet Robert Rubin" here’s more information on Reischauer and his extensive links to Robert Rubin:
Robert Reischauer, another policy insider who penned a memo in 2009 with fellow Brookings Institution elites calling for Obama to take "action to stem the growth of Social Security and Medicare," were recently nominated by Obama to be Social Security Trustees. (The Blahous pick he apparently owed to Senator Mitch McConnell.)
Reischauer has close ties to economic wrecking ball Robert Rubin—the Goldman Sachs chairman who became Clinton Treasury Secretary and pushed through radical deregulatory banking laws, then went to Citigroup to score $120 million for driving his company into the ground. Rubin and Reischauer knew each other at both the Harvard Corporation and the Clinton White House, where Reischauer was director of CBO. Reischauer is on the advisory board of Rubin’s Hamilton Project, and the two most recent CBO directors have come straight from Hamilton.
NOTE: since writing this, it appears the above (and the quote below on Alice Rivkin) comes word for word from an Alternet article by Matthew Skomarovsky found here.
RIVLIN, ALICE.
Obama just named in March Alice Rivlin to his so called deficit reduction commission. Have a look at her background and you’ll see why and that Obama has stacked that commission with people who want cuts in entitlements.
Again, an excellent summary of her Goldman-Brookings (read Hamilton Project) Obama connections:
One of Reischauer’s co-signers of the Brookings memo, Alice Rivlin, is another fox Obama has put in charge of the Social Security henhouse. Former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve under Greenspan at the peak of the tech bubble, and also a Hamilton Project board member, Rivlin will likely make another great Wall Street ally on the commission. In 2004 Rivlin co-authored (with Obama’s current Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, among others) a 138-page Brookings report titled "Restoring Fiscal Sanity" advocating $47 billion in entitlement cuts, including an "increase in the retirement age under Social Security" and "more accurate inflation adjustments to Social Security benefits."
Wikipedia also says of her:
She is currently on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange.
Wikipedia also notes that she has extensive Brookings Institution connections (within which the Hamilton Project is now embedded) including from 1957–66, 1969–75, 1983–93, and 1999 to the present.
Rivlin is a frequent speaker at the Hamilton Project as shown by this page at the Hamilton Project’s web site; you can see videos of her talks and the subjects of her papers here.
RUBIN, JAMES.
Son of Robert Rubin (see next entry). Served as a headhunter for Obama per the New York Times article, "Rubin Proteges Change Their Tune as They Join Obama’s Team".
RUBIN, ROBERT.
Mr. Goldman Sachs and co-funder, along with Goldman, of the Hamilton Project. Served as the 70th U.S. Sect. of the Treasury under Bill Clinton and spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs becoming its Co-Chairman from 1990-1992. He also served as Chairman of Citigroup. Along with Goldman Sachs, Rubin funded the Hamilton Project embedded in the Brookings Institution. In other words, he embedded within what is perceived as a liberal think tank a Trojan Horse that espouses cutbacks in entitlements (but not Defense budgets), more NAFTA like agreements, outsourcing of jobs overseas and strict budget consciousness applied to health care. Rubin used the same tactic with Barack Obama: choosing an essentially ambitious yet cautious conservative and turning him into a Trojan Horse for his causes and those of Goldman’s/the Hamilton Project’s. Rubin is the de facto President of the United States and he and the Hamilton Project tell Obama and his administration what to do. Obama gets to ride on Air Force One.
According to a recent Politico article:
Behind the scenes, Rubin still wields enormous influence in Barack Obama’s Washington, chatting regularly with a legion of former employees who dominate the ranks of the young administration’s policy team. He speaks regularly to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who once worked for Rubin at Treasury.
SPERLING, GENE.
Prior to advising Timothy Geithner on bailouts, Sperling was paid the paltry sum of $887,727 by Goldman Sachs for one year of consulting work. Sperling, another acolyte of Robert Rubin’s raked in even more that year, according to William Grieder at the Nation:
[he was paid in addition] $480,051 as a director of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, plus $250,000 for his quarterly briefings to two hedge funds, plus the speaking gigs [$158,000] (including an appearance before the Stanford Group in Houston subsequently charged with running a Ponzi scheme). Meantime, his day job at the Council on Foreign Relations paid $116,653. A busy, busy wonk.
STORCH, ADAM.
Storch worked for Goldman Sachs for 5 years reaching the position of Vice President in the Business Intelligence Group. He is Obama’s Managing Executive of the Security and Exchange Commission’s Division of Enforcement.
SUMMERS, LARRY.
It didn’t take Larry Summers long to land a big time job after he crashed and burned as Harvard’s President. He sits at Obama’s right hand as Obama’s chief economic adviser and head of the National Economic Counsel. Summers’s boss at Goldman was non other than Robert Rubin, former co-Chairman of Goldman and also former head of Citicorp.
Summers has reaped nearly $2.8 million in speaking fees to banks and institutions he is now supposed to be helping to regulate and oversee.
Goldman Sachs paid him $135,000 for a single speech he gave in April, 2008, a very good investment repaid many times to Goldman.
>CONCLUSION.
Although a lot of work and research was put into this list, I am sure I missed many people. But it gives the most comprehensive look ever published at how extensive the Goldman Sachs ties are in the Obama administration and the revolving door between the two (See attorney Craig’s description above).
It also shines light on a subject that has virtually received no mainstream media attention: the importance of the Hamilton Project (funded by Robert Rubin and Goldman Sachs) as the policy voice for their pro-corporate interests. While Matt Taibbi has dissected Goldman, no journalist has looked at the Hamilton Project (Taibbi misses it too) despite the fact that all three of its first directors serve now in the Obama administration. Its current director, its fourth, worked as an economic adviser to Obama Administration and at MIT. It formulate the pro-big business that Goldman wants and spreads it through academia and the Obama administration.
Robert Rubin and Goldman Sachs cleverly disguished their Rosemary’s baby, the Hamilton Project, within the essentially liberal Brookings Institution. Lots of journalists (including the BBC) have been misled by this, thinking that if it comes out of Brookings, it must be liberal or even progressive. Discussing Peter Orszag, the BBC made this blunder:
He was one of the first directors of the Hamilton Project, a Brookings think tank initiative backed by Robert Rubin which aimed to combine fiscal responsibility with progressive politics.
(emphasis added)
Not so! The clear message from the Hamilton Project is this:
1) entitlements must be cut, including Social Security;
2) more jobs must be outsourced overseas;
3) more NAFTA-type agreements must be drafted and entered into;
4) strict budgetary policies must be applied to entitlements and especially health care "reform" (whereas the defense department is skirted).
One only has to look at the Hamilton Project, at Obama’s speech to that group in April, 2006, and the numerous articles and books that they have peddled to see that their outlook is overwhelmingly corporatist and pro-big business. It is, then, ant-iprogressive not liberal and certainly not progressive.
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
If you live in Long Beach, California, you may think the city is under attack by terrorists today.
The Long Beach exercise is another example of the engineered demise of Posse Comitatus.
The Adler Realty Investment company in Long Beach has sent a notice
to residents (see below) informing them that “response agencies,”
including the U.S. Coast Guard, the local police and fire department
along with the military will be conducting a training exercise in the
city. “Port Protector 2010,” an attachment to the notice states, will
consist of a training exercise in response to a “terrorist threat”
including a “hostage scenario” and Hazmat training.
“A United States Coast Guard helicopter will be flying overhead as
part of the training exercise,” the attachment continues. “Weapons
will be brandished (NO GUNFIRE). Long Beach motor officers will be
patroling outer permiter (sic) areas of exercise for safety and to keep
non-exercise participants out of exercise area.”
The Long Beach exercise is another example of the engineered demise
of Posse Comitatus and an usurpation of the right of the states to
control their police, emergency services, and National Guard under
the guise of the manufactured war on terror.
“The war on terrorism has made the U.S. armed forces active participants
in homeland defense and, in the process, has prompted changes in the responsibilities and mission scope of the Defense Department. Assuming that the military forces serve a supporting and supplementary role, working in conjunction with law enforcement authorities, prohibitions against military involvement in anti-terror operations are generally moot — or even irrelevant… It is in this context that the military’s post-September 11 homeland security initiatives must be analyzed vis-á-vis Posse Comitatus,” writes Juliette Kayyem for National Defense Magazine.
In short, Posse Comitatus is dead so far as the government and the Pentagon are concerned. Increasingly there is little divide between the military and local law enforcement.
Obama signed Executive Order 13528 on January 11 establishing a Council of Governors, described as an “advisory panel” that will allow the Pentagon to implement contingency plans designed to seize control of state National Guard in the event of a “national emergency.”
Bush began the process in 2008 when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act. “The President shall establish a bipartisan Council of Governors to advise the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the White House Homeland Security Council on matters related to the National Guard and civil support missions,” the legislation states.
Pentagon, Police Stage Terror Attack Exercise in Long Beach 140410banner4
The “terror threat” on the water and shoreline of Long Beach does not specify al-Qaeda or scary Muslim terrorists.
In late April, we reported on the U.S. Military in Kentucky training to confront Tea Party protesters and anti-government demonstrators, who in official intelligence advisories are described as bomb-making terrorists. “Anti-Government – Health Care Protesters have stated that they would join the TEA Party as a sign of solidarity” during a protest at Fort Knox. The Tea Party “groups are armed, have combative training and some are former Military Snipers. Some may have explosives training / experience,” an intel report connected to the exercise stated.
A report issued in 2008 by the U.S. Army War College discussed the use of American troops to quell civil unrest brought about by a worsening economic crisis. The report from the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute warned that the U.S. military must prepare for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.”
For more than a decade the Pentagon has endeavored to acclimate Americans to the presence of troops on the streets. Instances of the Pentagon putting troops on the streets are numerous and have increased in frequency over the last few years.
In March of 2009, Infowars reported on U.S. Army soldiers dispatched in Samson, Alabama, supposedly in response to a rampaging gunman.
In December, 2008, the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center and the local California Highway Patrol worked together “in a joint effort to reduce accidents and drinking and driving” in San Bernardino County, a blatant violation of Posse Comitatus.
The Iowa National Guard planned an exercise in the small town of Arcadia but rolled back the invasion after citizens complained about soldiers patrolling the streets of an American town.
Military police were positioned at the 2009 Kentucky Derby and in April of the same year 400 National Guard Combat Support Battalion troops were dispatched to “maintain public order” at the Boston Marathon.
In April of 2009, an Infowars reader sent a page taken from the Hardeman County, Tennessee, Bulletin Times announcing a seat belt checkpoint to be conducted on April 4 “in conjunction with a Homeland Security training exercise by the 251st Military Police in Bolivar who recently returned from Iraq.”
On April 15, 2009, we reported on how the Maryland National Guard was put on alert in anticipation of Tax Day nationwide Tea Party protests. A Force Protection Advisory issued on April 11 instructed the National Guard to be on alert during the Tea Party protests because Guardsmen and Guard facilities might become “targets of opportunity.” It was later learned that the Department of Homeland Security had put the protesters under surveillance.
Joint military, Department of Homeland Security, and local police and emergency exercises are an integral part of this ongoing effort to acclimate the American people to the prospect of troops and heavily armed cops on the streets.
Trilateral Commission co-founder says infighting amongst elite, combined with awakening of humanity worldwide, is hampering move towards one world government
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
At a recent Council on Foreign Relations speech in Montreal, co-founder
with David Rockefeller of the Trilateral Commission and regular Bilderberg
attendee Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that a “global political awakening,” in
combination with infighting amongst the elite, was threatening to derail the
move towards a one world government.
Brzezinski explained that global political leadership had become “much more
diversified unlike what it was until relatively recently,” noting the rise of China
as a geopolitical power, and that global leadership in the context of the G20 was
“lacking internal unity with many of its members in bilateral antagonisms.”
In other words, the global elite is infighting amongst itself and this is hampering efforts to rescue the agenda for global government, which seems to be failing on almost every front.
Brzezinski then explained another significant factor in that, “For the first time in all of human history mankind is politically awakened – that’s a total new reality – it has not been so for most of human history.”
Watch the clip.
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Brzezinski continued, “The whole world has become politically awakened,” adding that all over the world people were aware of what was happening politically and were “consciously aware of global inequities, inequalities, lack of respect, exploitation.”
“Mankind is now politically awakened and stirring,” said Brzezinski, adding that this in combination with a fractured elite “makes it a much more difficult context for any major power, including currently the leading world power, the United States.”
During a subsequent question and answer session, Brzezinski was asked if he thought another organization should replace the United Nations as the de facto “one world government,” to which Brzezinski responded, “There should be such an organization,” before pointing out that the UN was not it in its current role.
Brzezinski Decries Global Political Awakening During CFR Speech 150410banner1
As the text at the end of the video makes clear, Brzezinski’s admission that humanity has undergone a political awakening is not a positive development in the eyes of the elite.
In his 1970 book Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, Brzezinski wrote the following.
“The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”
The “elite” to which Brzezinski refers included many of those who were in attendance for his speech at the CFR meeting. The global political awakening which Brzezinski discussed represents part of the resistance to that very elite dominated society and the systems of control, subjugation and surveillance that they have imposed upon the human race in pursuit of a “more controlled society” and a one world government.
Washington incumbents woefully out of step in dismissing anti-establishment politicians
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010
DNC Chairman: Rand Paul Is A Far Right Extreme Candidate
Commenting on Rand Paul’s historic victory in the Kentucky primary, the
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine called the would be
Senator an “extreme candidate”, while other Democrats suggested Paul
would be an easy target for them in the November general election.
While Kaine was happy to note that the result was a “stunning loss” and a
“show of weakness” for the GOP establishment in the form of Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell and the hand picked candidate, Kentucky Secretary
of State Trey Grayson, the DNC head also took the opportunity to slur Rand
Paul’s anti-establishment credentials.
“Unfortunately for Republicans, ordinary Americans are unlikely to be
receptive to extreme candidates like Rand Paul in the general election
this November,”Kaine said in a statement.
“Rand Paul’s positions fail to resonate beyond the far-right Republican
segment of the electorate that supported him tonight,” Kaine also stated.
Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Sen. Robert
Menendez, echoed Kaine’s sentiments by stating that he believes Paul is
an easier opponent to defeat in the general election.
“Rand Paul would abolish the Department of Education, would disband the
Federal Reserve, and would end farm subsidies for Kentucky’s farmers,” Menendez said in a statement.
Paul responded in typical fashion by defying his critics and sticking steadfast to his principals.
“People are already saying now you need to weave and dodge, now you need to switch,” Paul said in his victory speech. “Now you need to give up your conservative message. You need to become a moderate. You need to give up the tea party. … The tea party message is not a radical message. It’s not an extreme message. What is extreme is a $2 trillion deficit.”
Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C), a prominent fiscal conservative who endorsed Paul, said that “The Washington establishment threw everything they had at him and yet he prevailed.” DeMint said Paul’s victory represented an “American awakening” and predicted that voters would send more fiscal conservatives to Washington this year.
Paul also repudiated claims that his anti-establishment position represents a fatal division in Republican ranks in Kentucky.
“We’re going to unify. I’m going to meet with Senator McConnell on Saturday. We’ve been talking, actually, for weeks now about unifying. I’ve been talking with the Republican party structure, and I think we will be unified going in to the fall,” Paul told CBS
Both McConnell and Grayson also rallied round Paul.
“Now Kentucky Republicans will unite in standing against the overreaching policies of the Obama administration,” McConnell said Tuesday evening. “We are spiraling further into unsustainable debt and Kentucky needs Rand Paul in the U.S. Senate because he will work every day to stop this crippling agenda.”
“We’ll be standing side by side on Saturday at the unity rally,” Grayson said, referring to an upcoming Republican rally in Frankfort.
Paul noted that in addition to unified GOP support, the attraction his position offers to independent voters puts him in a strong position going into the race for the Senate.
“I say, bring it on, and please, please bring President Obama to Kentucky. We’d love for him to campaign down here…. The Democrats will have to run away from President Obama if they are to have any chance down here.” Paul added.
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Rand Paul’s opponent for the Senate seat, state Attorney General Jack Conway, who has been described as a rubber stamp for President Obama, also hit out at Paul’s anti-establishment position using somewhat inflammatory language.
“We have a fundamental decision to make in this most important of Senate races,” Conway said. “Are we going to use that passion to heat the building? Or are we going to use that passion to burn it down?”
Washington incumbents are displaying just how ignorant they are of the feelings of American voters by rounding on independent, anti-establishment and tea party candidates. They are beyond foolish if they still truly believe that candidates such as Rand Paul represent a fringe minority.
Multiple recent national scientific polls indicate that the portrayal of the tea party / the libertarian movement / the freedom movement – call it what you will – as a lunatic right wing fringe group is a complete fallacy.
The American people have woken up to the false left-right political paradigm and the woes of the two party state. They also now crucially realise that in addition to operating outside that system, they can also use it to their advantage by advancing anti-establishment candidates within it.
If it is the objective of the establishment to continue to play the lunatic fringe card, even in the face of the huge victories of Rand Paul and others, then he and those like him will effectively waltz their way into Washington.
Rand’s father, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, said the outcome signaled that “the country is shifting in our direction.” adding that establishment Republicans and Democrats “ought to pay close attention to the grass roots.”
