Jim Garrison - Martial Law by Executive Order

President Obama's National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order of March 16 does to the country as a whole what the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act did to the Constitution in particular -- completely eviscerates any due process or judicial oversight for any action by the Government deemed in the interest of "national security." Like the NDAA, the new Executive Order puts the government completely above the law, which, in a democracy, is never supposed to happen. The United States is essentially now under martial law without the exigencies of a national emergency.

Even as the 2012 NDAA was rooted in the Patriot Act and the various executive orders and Congressional bills that ensued to broaden executive power in the "war on terror," so the new Executive Order is rooted in the Defense Production Act of 1950 which gave the Government powers to mobilize national resources in the event of national emergencies, except now virtually every aspect of American life falls under ultimate unchallengeable government control, to be exercised by the president and his secretaries at their discretion.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-garrison/martial-law-under-another_b_1370819.html

Jonathan Benson - IRS wants 4,000 new agents, $300 million budget to enforce Obamacare

More than quadrupling an estimate it put forth last year for new agents, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) now says that it will need more than 4,000 new agents to enforce the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare. And in addition to these new agents, the IRS is also asking for more than $300 million in new funding to help fortify the infrastructure it will supposedly need to unconstitutionally force Americans to purchase government healthcare.

The constitutionality of Obamacare is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, and yet the IRS is already acting as though the overhaul is definitive law. According to IRS budget requests, the agency says it needs a massive cash infusion to "continue the development of new systems and modifications of existing systems required to support new tax credits." But in reality, this money will more than likely be used to spy on Americans and fine them for failing to purchase adequate health coverage.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/z035409_IRS_Obamacare_agents.html

Glen Ford - Why Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil

No matter how much evil Barack Obama actually accomplishes during his presidency, people that call themselves leftists insist on dubbing him the Lesser Evil. Not only is Obama not given proper credit for out-evil-ing George Bush, domestically and internationally, but the First Black President is awarded positive grades for his  intentions  versus the presumed intentions of Republicans. As the author says, this "is psycho-babble, not analysis. No real Left would engage in it."

Glen Ford at the Left Forum

BAR executive editor Glen Ford made the following presentation at the Left Forum, Pace University, New York City, March 17. On the panel were Gloria Mattera, Margaret Kimberley (BAR), Suren Moodliar, John Nichols, and Victor Wallis. The discussion was titled,  The 2012 Elections: Lesser Evil or Left Alternative?

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Barack-Obama-is-the-Mo-by-Glen-Ford-120324-930.html

Bill Black - How the Jumpstart Obama’s Bucket Shops Act is Just Another in a Long Series of Fraud-Promoting Legislation

The Washington Post reports tonight that there is some pushback about the decried-by-anyone-who-knows-bupkis-about-securities-markets-and-isn’t-on-take JOBS Ac, which appears to be certain to be signed into law. Bill Black reminds us that tons of absolutely terrible financial regulation (as in deregulation) over the last 25 years have passed with large margins.

The imminent passage of the fraud-friendly JOBS Act caused me to reflect on the fact that the worst anti-regulatory travesties in the financial sphere have had broad, bipartisan support. The Garn-St Germain Act of 1982, which deregulated savings and loans (S&Ls) and helped drive the debacle, was passed with virtually no opposition. The Texas and California S&L deregulation acts – the two states that “won” the regulatory “race to the bottom” – passed with virtually no opposition. Texas S&L failures caused over 40% of total S&L losses and California failures caused roughly 25% of total losses. In 1984, a majority of the members of the House of Representatives, including Newt Gingrich and most of the leadership of both parties, co-sponsored a resolution calling on us to cease our reregulation of the S&L industry.

The Competitive Equality in Banking Act of 1987 (CEBA) was the product of two cynical political deals. The context was that the Reagan administration refused to allow the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) to admit that there was a crisis requiring governmental funds and refused to allow FSLIC to draw any funds on its Treasury credit line. We had spent all but $500 million in the FSLIC fund closing some of the worst S&L control frauds. The S&L industry had over $1 trillion in liabilities and was deeply insolvent, so we were running the insurance fund on fumes and dreading a potential nationwide run. Treasury and FSLIC ginned up a convoluted means of FSLIC receiving the proceeds of a $15 billion (FICO) bond issuance. The repayment of the FICO bonds rested in large part on taking capital and future earnings from the Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs). The industry owned the FHLBs, so the S&Ls’ interest in the FHLBs’ capital was treated on their financial statements as an asset. Using the FHLBs’ capital to “defease” the FICO bonds refduced every S&L’s reported capital. The exceptionally powerful S&L trade association (the “League”) opposed the plan. It preferred that the government, rather than the healthier members of the industry, pay to resolve failed S&Ls. Trade associations also do not want to lose members through government closures.

Read More:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/bill-black-on-how-the-jumpstart-obamas-bucket-shops-act-is-just-another-in-a-long-series-of-fraud-promoting-legislation.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Matthew Rothschild - Obama’s Creepy Executive Order: Permanent War Economy

Entitled “National Defense Resources Preparedness,” [1] it authorizes the President and cabinet officials to take over crucial aspects of the national economy not only during emergencies but also in peacetime.

The order relies on a Korean War-era statute, the Defense Production Act of 1950, to further entwine the domestic industrial economy with the military. It talks of fostering “cooperation between the defense and commercial sectors.”

The stated purpose is to strengthen “the domestic industrial and technological base” so as “to ensure it is capable of responding to the national defense needs of the United States.” 

This amounts to putting the economy on permanent war footing, even when there isn’t an emergency.

For instance, the Executive Order talks of the need for the economic base “to satisfy [defense] requirements in peacetime and times of national emergency.” And cabinet officials are authorized to “issue regulations to prioritize and allocate resources . . . to promote the national defense, under both emergency and non-emergency conditions.”

Read More:

http://www.progressive.org/permanent_war_economy.html

Jim Garrison - Martial Law by Executive Order

President Obama's National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order of March 16 does to the country as a whole what the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act did to the Constitution in particular -- completely eviscerates any due process or judicial oversight for any action by the Government deemed in the interest of "national security." Like the NDAA, the new Executive Order puts the government completely above the law, which, in a democracy, is never supposed to happen. The United States is essentially now under martial law without the exigencies of a national emergency.

Even as the 2012 NDAA was rooted in the Patriot Act and the various executive orders and Congressional bills that ensued to broaden executive power in the "war on terror," so the new Executive Order is rooted in the Defense Production Act of 1950 which gave the Government powers to mobilize national resources in the event of national emergencies, except now virtually every aspect of American life falls under ultimate unchallengeable government control, to be exercised by the president and his secretaries at their discretion.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-garrison/martial-law-under-another_b_1370819.html?utm_source=Update+from+Jim+Garrison&utm_campaign=Reminder+re+Mar+2012+Chartres+Call&utm_medium=email

Mijin Cha - Obama Picks Sides on Tar Sands: TransCanada Wins. Earth, Everyone Else Loses

A lesson in how not to reduce gas prices: the White House is backing TransCanada’s bid to build the southern portion of the controversial pipeline Keystone XL pipeline. The section to be built will run from Cushing, Oklahoma to Texas and carry crude oil pumped in the Midwest to refineries in Texas and be completed by late 2013—so it will have virtually no impact on the current high gas prices

Nor is there any evidence that it will have any impact on future gas prices. As we’ve highlighted continually, there is no guarantee that any of this refined oil will stay in the U.S. In fact, most likely, Keystone will be an export pipeline that will send oil to whoever pays the most for it, like India or China. Building the southern part of it certainly sets the stage for the full pipeline to be built. TransCanada says it will reapply for the cross-border permit soon and the decision to reapply has been welcomed by the White House.

President Obama’s move may be an attempt to fight back against Republican criticism but in doing so, he is sending a signal to environmentalist that despite his rhetoric on clean energy, it really is business as usual and dirty fossil fuels will continue to receive support and preference. On the issue of Keystone, there is no middle ground. The negative environmental and economic consequences outweigh any gains. The construction of the pipeline will not create permanent jobs. The portions already built have spilled tens of thousands of gallons of oil. Tar sands spills on the Kalamazoo River cost over $700 million to clean up, not to mention the impact on residents’ health and the local economy.

Read More:

http://www.policyshop.net/home/2012/3/21/white-house-picks-sides-in-keystone-xl-and-transcanada-is-th.html

Deepak Tripathi - Delusions of Power: Obama Is No Gandhi

First the video of United States Marines urinating on bodies of Afghans who had been killed. Then the revelation that copies of the Quran had been burned at Bagram Air Base, which also serves as an American prison camp in Afghanistan. Nearly thirty Afghans and several NATO troops died in the violent reaction. The BBC Kabul correspondent described these events, and the violent public reaction to them, as the tipping point for NATO in the Afghan War.

Just as the U.S. commander Gen. John Allen and President Obama hoped that apologies from them would help calm the situation comes another disaster. If official accounts are to be believed, an American soldier left his base in the middle of the night, entered villagers’ homes, woke up Afghan families from sleep and shot his victims in cold blood. The soldier was reported to have turned himself up to U.S. commanders, and was flown out of the country. He has since been named as St. Sgt. Robert Bales. Other reports tell a different story, indicating that a group of soldiers was involved. Looking drunk and laughing, they engaged in an orgy of violence, while helicopters hovered above.

Read More:

http://countercurrents.org/tripathi250312.htm

Chris Hedges - The Polite Conference Rooms Where Liberties Are Saved and Lost

I spent four hours in a third-floor conference room at 86 Chambers St. in Manhattan on Friday as I underwent a government deposition. Benjamin H. Torrance, an assistant U.S. attorney, carried out the questioning as part of the government’s effort to decide whether it will challenge my standing as a plaintiff in the lawsuit I have brought with others against President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta over the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), also known as the Homeland Battlefield Bill.

The NDAA implodes our most cherished constitutional protections. It permits the military to function on U.S. soil as a civilian law enforcement agency. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to selectively suspend due process and habeas corpus for citizens. The law can be used to detain people deemed threats to national security, including dissidents whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, and hold them until what is termed “the end of the hostilities.” Even the name itself—the Homeland Battlefield Bill—suggests the totalitarian concept that endless war has to be waged within “the homeland” against internal enemies as well as foreign enemies.

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_polite_conference_rooms_where_liberties_are_saved_and_lost_20120326/

Michelle Alexander - The New Jim Crow

Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.”  Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America. 

Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality.  There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you.  If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you.  Trust us.  Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars.  You, too, can get to the promised land.

Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand.  Racial caste is alive and well in America.

Most people don’t like it when I say this.  It makes them angry.  In the “era of colorblindness” there’s a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have “moved beyond” race.  Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:

*There are more African American adults under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175520/