The FBI began COINTELPRO—short for Counterintelligence Program—in 1956 to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States. In the 1960s, it was expanded to include a number of other domestic groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Socialist Workers Party, and the Black Panther Party. All COINTELPRO operations were ended in 1971. Although limited in scope (about two-tenths of one percent of the FBI’s workload over a 15-year period), COINTELPRO was later rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging first amendment rights and for other reasons.
This is a clear representation that the United States’ ELECTED officials care nothing for the Constitution and what it stands for. They are most likely embarrassed or ashamed of their stance on these relevant issues due to pay-offs, blackmail, insider stock trading, and their central banking ‘handlers’ that motivate them to stay silent on these most important issues. For them, it is easier to bury their heads in the sand, and pretend that this doesn’t require their input nor action. -Max Maverick, DCMX Editor
In what was supposed to be a symbolic gesture of the enduring greatness of the US Constitution, and the rights it outlines for all Americans, the House read the entire document out aloud on the chamber floor yesterday. However, the symbolism backfired somewhat when only a fraction of representatives bothered to show up.
In the midst of the Obama administration’s ongoing efforts to eviscerate the Second Amendment by executive order, it was extremely telling that so few members of the House took the time to show their respect for the Constitution.
The document was divided into 120 sections, with GOP House leaders believing that at least that many members would show up to each read a section.
When all was said and done, however, only 74 members attended. The Washington Times notes that the House ran out of Democrats before they even got past Article IV, which is less than halfway through the document.
Just 25 Democrats valued the idea enough to turn up for the reading, while a meager 49 Republicans attended. This meant that each reader had to take two or three sections.
The entire reading took around 66 minutes.
During the Preamble to the reading, Virginia Republican Bob Goodlatte, who organised the event, stated “We also hope that this will demonstrate to the American people that the House of Representatives is dedicated to the Constitution and the system it establishes for limited government and the protection of individual liberty.”
When two Democrats shuffled in as the final reader was speaking, Goodlatte attempted to put a brave face on the situation, stating “We ran out of Constitution before we ran out of readers,”.
The Times also notes that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi seemed embarrassed that so few Democrats showed up, at one point she “gestured with a shrug to the nearly empty chamber”. Her Republican counterpart, Speaker of the House John Boehner was initially present but left before the end of the reading and did not take part.
The Second Amendment was read by Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kan., who also read the First and Third Amendments.
This was only the second time that the Constitution has been read in its entirety, without sections that were amended after the document was ratified in September 1787.
The first occasion was just two years ago, when 137 lawmakers attended.
It is to be expected that some members cannot always be present on the House floor, but with 435 representatives having sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution, it is pitiful, and a very telling sign of the times, that only around one sixth cared enough to participate in reading out the founding document.
And Congress’ Rich Get Richer
Net Worth of Lawmakers Up 25 Percent in Two Years, Analysis Demonstrates
Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total, according to a Roll Call analysis of Members’ financial disclosure forms.
Nearly 90 percent of that increase is concentrated in the 50 richest Members of Congress.
Two years ago, Roll Call found that the minimum net worth of House Members was slightly more than $1 billion; Senators had a combined minimum worth of $651 million for a Congressional total of $1.65 billion. Roll Call calculates minimum net worth by adding the minimum values of all reported assets and subtracting the minimum values of all reported liabilities.
According to financial disclosure forms filed by Members of Congress this year, the minimum net worth in the House has jumped to $1.26 billion, and Senate net worth has climbed to at least $784 million, for a Congressional total of $2.04 billion.
These wealth totals vastly underestimate the actual net worth of Members of Congress because they are based on an accounting system that does not include homes and other non-income-generating property, which is likely to tally hundreds of millions of uncounted dollars. In addition, Roll Call’s tally is based on the minimum values of assets reported by Members on their annual financial disclosure forms; the true values of those assets may be much higher.
While wealth overall is scattered fairly evenly between the two parties, there is an interesting divide in the two chambers. Democrats hold about 80 percent of the wealth in the Senate; Republicans control about 78 percent of the wealth in the House.
And as protesters around the country decry the supposed consolidation of wealth in America, the trend can be seen starkly in Congress, a comparison suggested by American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar Mark Perry. The 50 richest Members of Congress accounted for 78 percent of the net worth in the institution in 2008 ($1.29 billion of the $1.65 billion total); by 2010 the share of the 50 richest had risen to 80 percent ($1.63 billion of the $2.04 billion total). The pie of Congressional wealth got bigger, and the richest Members are getting a bigger slice.
But there is still plenty to go around. Overall, 219 Members of Congress reported having assets worth more than $1 million last year; subtracting the minimum value of their liabilities brings the total number of millionaires in Congress down to 196 — again not counting any value on their homes or other non-income-producing property. If one were to assume that every Member of Congress has $200,000 worth of equity in real estate, the total number of millionaires would rise to 220 Members, just more than 40 percent of the Congress.
As with the general U.S. population, a few exceedingly wealthy people skew the averages for the rest of the membership. But still, by almost any measure, the average Member of Congress is far wealthier than the average U.S. household.
For example, dividing the total wealth of Congress by the number of Members creates a mean (average) net worth for each Member of about $3.8 million (excluding non-income-producing property such as personal residences). By comparison, for the rest of the country, based on statistics released by the Federal Reserve, average household net worth is around $500,000 this year (including personal residences), according to David Rosnick, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
But a handful of Members of Congress are worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars — the richest Member of Congress this year, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), is worth a minimum of $294 million, meaning that McCaul’s own wealth has the effect of raising the average of every Member of Congress by about $500,000.
So a better number for comparison is the median, the number where half the group is above and half the group is below. For Congress, the median net worth in 2010 was about $513,000. For regular households, the Federal Reserve Board pegged that number at about $120,000 in 2008, and that number this year is probably around $100,000, Rosnick said.
While it is hard to make an exact comparison between Congress and the rest of the nation, what is clear is lawmakers “are all a lot richer than anything you would call a typical American,” Rosnick said.
And Congress appears to be getting richer faster than the rest of the nation. Citing Federal Reserve data, Rosnick said, “From the end of 2008 to end of 2010, aggregate household worth increased
12 percent.” That is about half the increase Congress achieved during the same time period.
The cautionary note in any Congressional wealth analysis is that significant changes in apparent wealth of Members do not necessarily represent an actual change in net worth.
For example, Rep. Darrell Issa reported this year that his 2010 assets were worth at least $295 million, nearly double what they were the year before. The reason for the change appears to be in part because the California Republican moved some properties from a single account into separate accounts. An account that Issa had listed as having a minimum value of $50 million in 2009 dropped to a minimum value of $25 million in 2010, but he added 11 accounts with a minimum combined value of $38.2 million. Even if none of the actual account (or property) values increased, the minimum value of those assets on paper rises by $13.2 million, or more than 25 percent.
Alan Ziobrowski, a professor of real estate at Georgia State University, has produced studies of Congressional investment patterns indicating that lawmakers in both chambers tend to fare better in their investment portfolios than the average American, in part because “[t]here is no doubt in my mind that they are trading in some way on information that is there.”
But he also points out that the Membership of Congress has turned over since 2008, making it difficult to compare wealth over time. “You’ve got different people,” he said.
In the aftermath of the 2010 elections that swept Republicans to power, about 20 percent of the Members included in the 2010 survey were not included in the 2008 survey.
Anonymous Hacktivists: ‘Bigger and Stronger Than Ever’
NSA’s Marching Orders to Congress: Deceive the Public, Praise NSA Effusively
Next generation of airport scanners will scan every single molecule in your body
Review: Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet by Julian Assange with Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Müller-Maguhn and Jérémie Zimmermann. OR Books, New York, 2012, 186 pages, Paper.
Sentry System Combines a Human Brain with Computer Vision
TSA chief will be a ‘no show’ at congressional hearing
West Bank and East Jerusalem buses are already segregated
Jesuit-Trained Knight of Malta Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense
Secretary of War (pardon me, Secretary of Defense) Leon Panetta has begun the great impeachment agitation. Yes, this “Italian-American” Roman Catholic, Jesuit-trained Knight of Malta has stated that he values permission of the “International Community” (as represented in the pope’s United Nations) to wage war on Iran over “Congressional Approval.” This is the same Leon Panetta who served during the Clinton Administration, President Bill Clinton having also been trained by the Jesuits at Georgetown University in Washington at whose command Clinton bombed “heretic” Orthodox Serbia for seventy-seven days. This is the same Leon Panetta who is an undeniable darling of the Jesuits, this Temporal Coadjutor having earned his JD at the Order’s Santa Clara University School of Law in California.
Further, Vice President Joe Biden has threatened to lead a movement in congress for the impeachment of President Barry Davis Obama if “Toby” does not seek “Congressional Approval” to wage the impending war on “infidel Shia” Iran. Well, Joe, the real master of the pope’s mulatto and political creation of the CIA (ruled by the Knights of Malta), is also another Jesuit Temporal Coadjutor. Sporting two honorary degrees conferred by the Jesuits, one from the University of Scranton and the other from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, “Irish-American” Roman Catholic Joe Biden stands on the other side of the Order’s political Hegelian dialectic. Thus, Panetta is openly for Obama and Biden is against his political master, while Barry has been groomed for the presidency by none other than socialist-communist Greg Galluzzo, the Jesuit of Chicago having acted in sync with his brethren at Loyola University Chicago! All three, Panetta, Biden and Davis/Obama are all agents of the Jesuit Order obediently carrying out their parts of a screen play loaded with impending bloodshed and disaster for the country.
The question is: “Where are the Jesuits taking us via this agitation?”
To discover the answer we must review the Order’s quest, its final endgame for apostate Protestant/apostate Baptist White Anglo-Saxon-Celtic America. We know the Order seeks to impose a fascist military dictatorship as was attempted in 1934 via Knights of Malta John J. Raskob and Joe Kennedy not to mention Knight of Columbus Al Smith. They failed thanks to the bravery of General Smedley Butler; but the endgame would continue underground until now! Further, the Order seeks to wage a war on Shia Islam, and later upon Sunni Islam (including Turkey) after the Shia are mass-murdered, a war intended to unite the entire Sunni Muslim world against the pope’s “Holy Roman” Fourteenth Amendment, Corporate-Fascist, Socialist-Communist American Empire (1868-Present). Further, this unity among Sunni Islamic nations (including filthy rich Kuwait, the UAE and “Saudi” Arabia thanks to American technology given by the pope’s Knights) will then create a revived Sunni Caliphate, the forerunner of the pope’s Revived Kingdom of Babylon as per Jeremiah 50 and Revelation 18. So again, where are the Jesuits taking us via this agitation in Washington?
Your Editor proposes the following possibilities:
1. Obama is to be given another four more years. This agitation, in the end will create sympathy for the “re-election” of “Toby.” The pope’s script decrees Democrats begin the wars via the U.S. Navy and the Republicans either continue them while appearing to loathe the very war inherited from their predecessor. Remember, this present “War on Terror” is in fact no declared war on a specific enemy. As Jesuit Tom Clancy has rightly stated: there is no true cause of war, and thus there is no declared war on a specific nation. Legally, the empire is not at war—yet! And why should it so do? The empire has been under Emergency War Powers since March 6, 1933!
2. Biden made it clear. If there is a nuclear/biological attack within the US then the president could launch an immediate attack/retaliation on the declared “enemy” without any congressional approval whatsoever—and the majority of congress would not dissent. Therefore, there is the possibility, yea, an absolute certainty of imminent attack (not “if,” but “when”) planned by the pope’s CIA/NSA/FBI/DIA/DHS/ONI/etc., all acting in collusion to detonate a nuclear device sometime this Summer or Fall on the mainland that would accomplish several critical goals. Or, the sinking of the USS Enterprise would provide the essential cause for war, while no damage to the American commercial infrastructure would enable the “War Effort” to proceed full force. Either way, Obama would remain president/dictator/commander-in-chief with the consent of nearly the entire Black American population, Majority Savage Blacks and Minority Civil Blacks. There would be no Fall election since martial law would be in effect which includes the suspension of Congress, a Congress described by the late Knight of Malta J. Peter Grace back in the 1980s as “535 clowns.”
3. Obama would win the Fall election by a landslide (the pope’s Republican candidates having done their best to re-elect the pope’s Mulatto Sunni-Islamic usurper), the Order having manipulated its CFR-controlled press making a martyr out of a monster. (If the Order did so with Martin Lucifer King, “so mote it be” with Masonic Brother Obama!)
4. Obama would be impeached by the House of Representatives, Biden to be given the Democratic nomination backed by the aggrieved White Middle Class Tea Party—as no Republicans have called for Obama’s impeachment during this present agitation. And if Obama was assassinated by a Shia “Iranian terrorist” and if a mini suitcase-nuke was detonated in a predominantly Black American city such as Detroit spilling over into Windsor, Canada, Biden most assuredly would be president via Martial Law backed by the entire country as well as Canada, both “right and left” then to continue the policy of his predecessor—”constitutionally.” Democrats will hold the pope’s White House vaginal “Oval Office” of the Virgin Mary while war is declared on Iran!
Remember, Obama and Biden have promised to defend Israel, the pope’s “Revived Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem”—and they will. Both have promised to wage a war with no limits on Iran if Iran develops nuclear “weapons of mass-destruction”—and they will. Both have promised to put the country under Martial Law in a time of a national emergency—and they will. So how could the agents of the Black Pope manipulate the divided American masses of all races and religions into fighting this war on Iran? For this present agitation against Barry Davis Obama must facilitate this end!
If your Editor were the Black Pope he would continue this agitation throughout the Summer. Then in July or August (when the harmonic windows for on-ground atomic detonations are open), he would use his Roman Catholic-led American Intelligence Community to carry out four simultaneous acts. First, Obama (or one of his doubles) would be assassinated, his murderer to be an Iranian Shia. Secondly, and at the same time, he would detonate a nuclear device in Black American Detroit now gutted of all industry once owned by the Knights of Malta. These two crimes blamed on Iranian Muslims would unite and incite the entire Black American population (90 million people) to devotedly fight a war to the death against Iran. Thirdly, your Editor would detonate the capitol building in Washington (as depicted in the movie Live Free and Die Hard “starring” Knight of Malta Bruce Willis), accomplishing three things: universal incitement of the entire White population (especially the Roman Catholic/apostate Protestant “New Right” Tea Party) to war on Iran; the end of the American Congress, the empire’s dictator to be in absolute power; and the movement of the capital to Denver! And finally, I would sink the USS Enterprise thus uniting the entire American military to make total, merciless war on Shia Iran, Tehran hosting 20,000 racial Jews also to be slaughtered. Yes, blaming the Iranians for the the murder of Obama, the blowing of Detroit and Washington, D.C., and the sinking of the Enterprise—all covertly facilitated by the united American Intelligence Community overseen by its Intelligence Czar, the infamous Jesuit Temporal Coadjutor Admiral Michael McConnell—would do the trick.
May the risen Lord Jesus Christ frustrate the plots of these incorrigible sinners, this dastardly military Company of Jesus ruling Rome, Tehran and Washington!
Telling people that the men and women in Congress sometimes vote with special interests in mind is like telling people that pro wrestling is staged. We all know it happens but it’s just an inevitable part of the process. While there are sources to see who gives money to your representatives, there’s not an immediate and easy way to see which side they take with voting. A relatively new Web site aims to give you that power.
Sopatrack was started back in December of last year to let citizens know where their congressional representatives stood on SOPA. It also gave them a venue to contact their members of Congress through phone or social media. After SOPA was killed though, the creator of the site, Randy Meech, only had one thing left to do – apply his site to all bills currently going through Congress.
This is where the current Sopatrack comes in. It allows concerned citizens to see the bills that have recently been passed by Congress to see whether their members of Congress voted with or against the money for that bill. It also allows citizens to see the percentage of which their members of Congress vote with or against the money.
Sopatrack is built using the Maplight and SunlightLabs APIs. Both Web sites seek to make Congress more open by tracking the influence of money on politics or making government more transparent through technology.
To give an example, let’s take a lot at my home state of Kentucky. By clicking the red button on the top right corner, you can find your local congresspeople immediately. It then brings up a list of your local senators and representatives to see where they stand. Unsurprisingly, Senator Mitch McConnell and Senator Rand Paul both vote with the money most of the time at 75 and 91 percent respectively. Our single representative – Ben Chandler – votes with the money 53 percent of the time.
The home page is by far the most interesting though. It lists the top 10 states that vote with the money alongside the top 10 states voting against the money. It does the same thing with congresspeople. The top 10 congresspeople voting with the money are all Republican except for Senator Joseph Lieberman who is an Independent. The top 10 congresspeople voting against the money are Democrats but their lowest statistic is at voting with the money only 46 percent of the time. Take the information as you will, the point is that money still plays a major role in politics regardless of party affiliation.
The home page also lists the 10 most recent bills alongside the top fundraising bills. It then lists whether the bill’s passing or rejection was with or against the money. To use its namesake, the rejection of SOPA was voting against the money.
As a final note, the majority of Congress as of right now is voting with the money at 73 percent. That shouldn’t be too big of a surprise though. That number will be updated throughout the year as congresspeople vote for and against bills. If you want to keep tabs on your representatives,check out Sopatrack and become informed.
An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.
The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee’s official website.
The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.
The bi-partisan amendment is sponsored by Rep. Mark Thornberry from Texas and Rep. Adam Smith from Washington State.
In a little noticed press release earlier in the week — buried beneath the other high-profile issues in the $642 billion defense bill, including indefinite detention and a prohibition on gay marriage at military installations — Thornberry warned that the current law “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way.”
The bill’s supporters say the informational material used overseas to influence foreign audiences is too good to not use at home, and that new techniques are needed to help fight Al-Qaeda.
Critics of the bill say there are ways to keep America safe without turning the massive information operations apparatus within the federal government against American citizens.
“Clearly there are ways to modernize for the information age without wiping out the distinction between domestic and foreign audiences,” says Michael Shank, Vice President at the Institute for Economics and Peace in Washington D.C.”That Reps Adam Smith and Mac Thornberry want to roll back protections put in place by previously-serving Senators – who, in their wisdom, ensured limits to taxpayer–funded propaganda promulgated by the US government – is disconcerting and dangerous.”
“I just don’t want to see something this significant – whatever the pros and cons – go through without anyone noticing,”
“ says one source on the Hill, who is disturbed by the law. According to this source, the law would allow “U.S. propaganda intended to influence foreign audiences to be used on the domestic population.”
The new law would give sweeping powers to the State Department and Pentagon to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. “It removes the protection for Americans,” says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. “It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”
According to this official, “senior public affairs” officers within the Department of Defense want to “get rid” of Smith-Mundt and other restrictions because it prevents information activities designed to prop up unpopular policies—like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Critics of the bill point out that there was rigorous debate when Smith Mundt passed, and the fact that this is so “under the radar,” as the Pentagon official puts it, is troubling.
The Pentagon spends some $4 billion a year to sway public opinion already, and it was recently revealed by USA Today the DoD spent $202 million on information operations in Iraq and Afghanistan last year.
In an apparent retaliation to the USA Today investigation, the two reporters working on the story appear to have been targeted by Pentagon contractors, who created fake Facebook pages and Twitter accounts in an attempt to discredit them.
(In fact, a second amendment to the authorization bill — in reaction to the USA Today report — seeks for cuts to the Pentagon’s propaganda budget overseas, while this amendment will make it easier for the propaganda to spread at home.)
The evaporation of Smith-Mundt and other provisions to safeguard U.S. citizens against government propaganda campaigns is part of a larger trend within the diplomatic and military establishment.
In December, the Pentagon used software to monitor the Twitter debate over Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing; another program being developed by the Pentagon would design software to create “sock puppets” on social media outlets; and, last year, General William Caldwell, deployed an information operations team under his command that had been trained in psychological operations to influence visiting American politicians to Kabul.
The upshot, at times, is the Department of Defense using the same tools on U.S. citizens as on a hostile, foreign, population.
A U.S. Army whistleblower, Lieutenant Col. Daniel Davis, noted recently in his scathing 84-page unclassified report on Afghanistan that there remains a strong desire within the defense establishment “to enable Public Affairs officers to influence American public opinion when they deem it necessary to “protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit US national will,” he wrote, quoting a well-regarded general.
The defense bill passed the House Friday afternoon.
Joe Banister is the first and thus far only IRS Criminal Investigation Division Special Agent ever to conduct, while serving as a special agent, an investigation into allegations that the IRS illegally administers and enforces the federal income tax. He respectfully reported the results of his investigation to his IRS superiors, up to and including the IRS Commissioner. Rather than address the legitimate concerns raised by one of their own distinguished investigators, his IRS superiors suspiciously refused to address the chilling evidence of IRS wrongdoing raised in his report and instead encouraged him to resign from his position. Observing that IRS management intended to cover up the deceit and illegal conduct alleged in his report, Banister chose to resign from his position so that he could report his findings to the American public. In effect, Banister had to resign from his position in order to abide by his oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution.
The FBI began COINTELPRO—short for Counterintelligence Program—in 1956 to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States. In the 1960s, it was expanded to include a number of other domestic groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Socialist Workers Party, and the Black Panther Party. All COINTELPRO operations were ended in 1971. Although limited in scope (about two-tenths of one percent of the FBI’s workload over a 15-year period), COINTELPRO was later rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging first amendment rights and for other reasons.
