|
Written by Ann Shibler
|
|
Monday, 30 March 2009 09:52 |
|
 For decades, major newspapers in the U.S. have been the mouthpieces for the liberal agenda, so why not make it official, bail out the practically extinct dinosaurs, nationalize them, and and create a media system openly controlled by government?
Many major newspapers are facing financial woes, either due to poor management or the current economic squeeze. Ad revenues have fallen dramatically. Some are shedding staff; others reducing services in an effort to make ends meet.
Gannett, publishers of USA Today and hundreds of small-town papers, forced their employees into taking a week-long furlough, saving millions. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a Hearst corporation holding, stopped printing and went with an online edition only just this month. The San Francisco Chronicle says they might have to shut down. And the Tribune Company which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, and others filed for bankruptcy last December, and on and on it goes.
In the nationalization spirit of the day, this has sparked Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland to introduce legislation to bail out privately owned, for-profit U.S. newspapers. "We are losing our newspaper industry," Cardin was quoted as saying. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy."
Cardin is hopeful that these once private enterprises will operate as non-profits, just like public television. His Newspaper Revitalization Act [PDF Download], currently before the Senate Finance Committee, would allow newspaper companies to report on all issues including political issues, but the endorsement of political candidates would be disallowed.
For years Americans have sneered at the Russians for their state-controlled media. But that’s exactly what we’ll have if this passes, to a much greater extent than we now have. Just think, the New York Times could soon officially be the equivalent of Pravda.
It’s almost laughable to hear the liberals citing Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy on a free press, twisting and spinning it away from it’s original meaning. Jefferson knew that over time principles are corrupted, warning us to ever be on guard against such corruption and the tyranny that follows.
Tom Fiedler, the former executive editor of the Miami Herald and current dean of Boston University’s College of Communication, quipped: "I truly believe that no democracy can remain healthy without an equally healthy press. Thus it is in democracy's interest to support the press in the same sense that the human being doesn't hesitate to take medicine when his or her health is threatened."
That was echoed by Cardin while bemoaning the death of newspapers when he said it “is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy."
The worst is from Robert Schlesinger who has the audacity to blog under the name of Thomas Jefferson. He praised the fourth estate’s role, supposedly unbiased, in presenting to Americans the news of the day saying, “The media plays a key role not only on informing the citizenry in terms of literally reporting the day’s events, but also in getting behind them and and in watch-dogging the institutions and people who have huge power over our lives -- be they public officials, corporate titans, other journalists and so fourth.” And then he added, “Maybe it’s time for local governments to declare eminent domain and start making the local papers public property.” (There’s an understanding of constitutional principles, goodness!)
In actuality, Jefferson understood that a free press, not a nationalized, government-controlled press, was necessary to a free nation. He was the ultimate believer in the free exchange of ideas where truth would eventually triumph. Here’s just a few of his quotations:
[This is] a country which is afraid to read nothing, and which may be trusted with anything, so long as its reason remains unfettered by law. --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Milligan, 1816
Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe. --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816
I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents. --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799
Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it. --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786
The materials now bearing on the public mind will infallibly restore it to its republican soundness... if the knowledge of facts can only be disseminated among the people. --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1799
And while championing a free press, Jefferson also knew to what extent the press could fail in it’s duties to the country by becoming a voice for propaganda.
The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper. --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807
The Chief Magistrate cannot enter the arena of the newspapers. --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1811
It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807.
Read them and weep. |
|
|
Written by Becky Akers
|
|
Monday, 30 March 2009 01:29 |
|
 From the beginning, America’s rulers have fought their War on Terror against two enemies: foreign “terrorists” (as those rulers define them) and the American people. Alas, our public servants are seldom honest enough to confess their hostility towards taxpayers. Nor do they often admit to spending much of our money on ferreting out something, anything, to use against us. After all, we might take enough offense to decide we’d be safer and freer without such persecution. And so they usually cloak their offensives against us with assurances that they’re spying on us solely to keep us safe.
That may partly explain why a report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement” from the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) raised so many hackles. Not only did it imply that Americans who disagree with politicians on any issue from abortion to the UN – especially those who disagree enough to vote for a third-party candidate – are terrorists, it neglected to include the usual claptrap about the threat these rebels pose to other citizens. No, such dissidents endanger cops and, in the voting booth, Republicans and Democrats. The implication that the malcontents bear watching was deliberate. It was not a mistake, nor should apologies lull us. The report is a naked attempt by the two parties that split the world’s biggest pot of political power to protect themselves and the bullies who force their will on us. Indeed, Lt. John Hotz of the Missouri State Highway Patrol waxed explicit: "Troopers have been shot by members of [dissident] groups,” he said with blithe disregard for the facts, “so it's our job to let law enforcement officers know what the trends are in the modern militia movement."
Both the DHS and the supposedly non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) claim that the centers’ impetus comes from “ states and larger cities” who want “to share information and intelligence within their jurisdictions as well as with the federal government.” DHS funded this scuttlebutt to the tune of “$254 million from FY 2004-2007” – though that’s only a fraction of what such espionage costs us: “Fusion centers are state-created entities largely financed…by the states,” says the CRS. By themselves, the centers could obliterate what little privacy remains to us; between them and Leviathan’s myriad other incursions, we have become a population under constant surveillance – worse than Soviet Russia ever was thanks to technological advances. Nor is the Federal maw sated, however much it knows about us. "There is never ever enough information when it comes to terrorism" says Maj. Steven G. O'Donnell, deputy superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police. "That's what post-9/11 is about." The centers differ in the information they collect and how; as the CRS puts it, “…there is no one ‘model’ for how a center should be structured.” But they all share the same outcome and justification: they spy on us to protect us. For that they require an army 1/3 the size of China’s, the world’s largest. Monitoring us are “ 700,000 local and state police officers across the country, as well as private security guards and others being courted by the centers.” No activity is too innocuous to escape those omnivorous eyes. Los Angeles’ police department is converting its cops from flatfeet “trained to gather evidence to prove crimes” into spies who “cultivate and analyze intelligence to prevent terrorists from striking.” Fusion centers aren’t alone in this. For decades, the belief that authorities should root out criminals before they act, rather than apprehending them afterwards, has fundamentally transformed government’s relationship to us. Because anyone could be plotting a crime, authorities scrutinize everyone. To that end, some of the LAPD’s honchos listed 65 “kind[s] of potential terrorist-related activity. …[O]fficers are now required to fill out…forms if they observe suspicious activity, whether or not a crime was committed.” Those “forms” live forever in cyberspace, regardless of how mistaken Barney Fife was about what he saw and the conclusions he drew. And what do our rulers consider “potential terrorist-related activity”? Deeds many of us commit each day: “abandoning,” i.e., parking, your car anywhere other than your driveway or the mall; forgetting the 6-ounce bottle of Listerine in your carry-on bag and “smuggling” it past an airport’s checkpoint; “stockpil[ing] unexplained large amounts of currency” since only terrorists rescue their life’s savings from failing banks. Obviously, as the ACLU points out, “This overbroad reporting authority gives law enforcement officers justification to harass practically anyone they choose, to collect personal information, and to pass such information along to the intelligence community." Of course, information passes only one way. Fusion centers, like the rest of Leviathan, are adamantly close-mouthed about their own activities: it undermines national security when taxpayers can knowledgeably protest that their money’s being squandered. The centers also hew to government’s M.O. in their mission creep. "Fusion centers are vital to state and local efforts to fight crime, including terrorism," says Sue Reingold of the federal Information Sharing Environment Office. And Charles E. Allen, a “chief intelligence officer” at DHS, describes the centers’ turf as “all hazards, all crime, all threats…” Adding insult to injury is Harvey Eisenberg, an assistant U.S. attorney who “helps oversee” Maryland’s center: " You need to educate cops, firefighters, health officials, transportation officials, sanitation workers, to understand the nature of the threat. And not to become super-spies. . . . Constitutionally, they see something, they can report it." Really? Constitutionally, how do the Feds spy on citizens, let alone establish centers to which lesser governmental snitches can report? So are some of the nation’s critical databanks – and fusion centers are busily mining them. That affords “ access to personal information about millions of Americans, including unlisted cellphone numbers, insurance claims, driver's license photographs and credit reports”; one center even logs into “top-secret data systems at the CIA.” “Like most police agencies,” fusion centers subscribe “to private information-broker services that keep records about Americans' locations, financial holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses and the like,” including “Accurint, ChoicePoint's Autotrack or LexisNexis.” Maryland “rel[ies] on a little-known data broker called Entersect, which claims it maintains 12 billion records about 98 percent of Americans,” while Pennsylvania scans drivers-license photos with face-recognition software. Other states use LocatePlus, “the most comprehensive cell phone, unlisted and unpublished phone database in the industry." Abolition is the only solution – not only for the centers but for the DHS. Otherwise, politicians will continue their war against us. And win.
Becky Akers, an expert on the American Revolution, writes frequently about issues related to security and privacy. Her articles and columns have been published by Lewrockwell.com, The Freeman, Military History Magazine, American History Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Post, and other publications. |
|
Thursday, 26 March 2009 11:40 |
|
Freedom Index
H.R. 1105: Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009
Omnibus Spending. H.R. 1105 is a +1,130 page consolidation of nine FY2009 appropriations bills that were unfinished business from the previous Congress. Total spending in the bill is $1.05 trillion, comprised of $410 billion in discretionary funding plus $637.5 billion in "mandatory" spending for entitlement programs, i.e. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This spending is over and above the recent $787 billion stimulus plan and last fall's $700 billion bank bailout. Discretionary spending increased by 8%, the largest percentage increase in decades for discretionary spending in regular appropriations. The legislative branch is provided $4.4 billion, about an 11 percent increase. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, the bill contains $7.7 billion in over 8,500 earmarks. Democrats defensively pointed out that 40 percent of the earmarks were requested by Republicans.
The bill is packed with funding for federal activity not authorized by the Constitution, involving such matters as foreign aid, education, and welfare programs which the states should manage, not a central government. An omnibus bill is a catchall monstrosity that evades clear accountability and masks widespread unconstitutional spending. Such a bill should always be opposed. Passage of a continuing resolution at the previous year's levels would have been preferable until Congress could pass separate annual spending bills that were appropriately reduced in cost in accordance with the Constitution. The House passed the bill 245-178 on February 25, 2009 (Roll Call #86), thus sending it to the Senate.
The John Birch Society opposed this bill.
The final result: Passed
Related Links
Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN): We are stealing from our children, 02-25-2009
Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA): Layer upon layer of spending, 2-25-2009
Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN): Freeze federal spending, 2-25-2009
Click here to see how your representative and senators voted
on this and other Freedom Index votes. First-time users
must provide an address to identify their elected officials.
|
|
Thursday, 26 March 2009 11:34 |
|
Freedom Index
H.R. 1105: Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009
Omnibus Spending. H.R. 1105 is a +1,130 page consolidation of nine FY2009 appropriations bills that were unfinished business from the previous Congress. Total spending in the bill is $1.05 trillion, comprised of $410 billion in discretionary funding plus $637.5 billion in "mandatory" spending for entitlement programs, i.e. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This spending is over and above the recent $787 billion stimulus plan and last fall's $700 billion bank bailout. Discretionary spending increased by 8%, the largest percentage increase in decades for discretionary spending in regular appropriations. The legislative branch is provided $4.4 billion, about an 11 percent increase. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, the bill contains $7.7 billion in over 8,500 earmarks. Democrats defensively pointed out that 40 percent of the earmarks were requested by Republicans.
The bill is packed with funding for federal activity not authorized by the Constitution, involving such matters as foreign aid, education, and welfare programs which the states should manage, not a central government. An omnibus bill is a catchall monstrosity that evades clear accountability and masks widespread unconstitutional spending. Such a bill should always be opposed. Passage of a continuing resolution at the previous year's levels would have been preferable until Congress could pass separate annual spending bills that were appropriately reduced in cost in accordance with the Constitution. The Senate agreed 62-35 on March 10 (Roll Call 96) to a cloture motion to end debate, enabling a voice vote shortly afterwards that passed the bill, thus clearing it for the president.
The John Birch Society opposed this bill.
The final result: Passed
Related Links
Rep. Tom Coburn (R-OK): Enumerated powers abandoned, 3-4-2009
Click here to see how your representative and senators voted
on this and other Freedom Index votes. First-time users
must provide an address to identify their elected officials.
|
|
Written by Jim Capo
|
|
Wednesday, 18 March 2009 07:44 |
|
 Recently, the Missouri State Police put out a report warning police officers in the state about militia and terrorist threats coming from people who like the Constitution, may have supported Ron Paul or Chuck Baldwin, or who doubt that the Federal Reserve is a valuable institution.
This, however, is not a Missouri specific issue. The Missouri outfit is part of a network of DHS "Fusion Centers" around the country. One of their primary "deliverables" is to share their work with each other. It is quite possible that this same report, ones based off it, or similar ones are being distributed in other states.
Individuals in any state with a fusion center should be working up a formal request to their state police or other appropriate office to seek equal time for a professional presentation of a patriotic, pro-freedom, pro-Constitution position on this to the same law enforcement professionals who got this report or any one like it. The thrust of such a presentation should be that patriotic citizens are on the side of the rule of law and those who defend it. A person who demands an audit of the FED or displays concern about our country following the path of the EU should not be profiled by law enforcement officers as a potential terrorist.
In 2007, USA Today provided a partial list of Department of Homeland Security Fusion Centers by state and organization name. This list is a good starting point for those at the local level who wish to begin working with law enforcement in their states to emphasize to them that we are working on the same side regarding defense of the rule of law.
One state not in the USA Today list was North Carolina. However, valuable contact information for that state can be found in a 2006 press release on NC's fusion center from the Attorney General's office. Similar public information likely exists for the more than two dozen fusion centers across the country.
Please work with the JBS staff coordinator for your state to pursue contacts with fusion centers. We need to work in a concerted fashsion to emphasize the professional approach we are taking to the issue of fusion center profiling of potential terrorist threats. |
|
|
