| The term red pill and its opposite, blue pill, are pop culture terms that have become a common symbol for the choice between the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue) and embracing the sometimes painful truth of reality (red). |
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The “Corzine-Dimon Syndrome”
On its best days, the American judicial process is a blindfolded Lady Justice — prosecuting the truly guilty and exonerating the truly innocent. On its worst days, it is a Water Wiggle — whirling around unpredictably, without any apparent connection to guilt, innocence, Constitutionality or the proportionality of alleged crimes to one another.
On good days, guilty parties go to prison; innocent parties do not. On very good days, innocent parties do not even have to go to the trouble of hiring a lawyer and showing up in court. Law enforcement agencies correctly decide to spare them the burden (and potential agony) of proving their innocence before a judge or jury.
On bad days, the exact opposite occurs. Innocent parties go to prison, while guilty parties do not. On very bad days, guilty parties do not even have to go to the trouble of hiring a lawyer and showing up in court. Law enforcement agencies incorrectly decide to withhold charges and spare guilty parties the burden (and potential agony) of defending their guilt before a judge or jury.
Once you string enough bad days together, you get a Water Wiggle — a “system” of law enforcement that investigates and prosecutes alleged crimes capriciously, unfairly and disproportionately. You get a system, for example, that:
1) Prosecutes Hall of Fame pitcher, Roger Clemens, for injecting performance-enhancing drugs into his own body, but does not prosecute a single investment banking executive for fraudulently injecting mortgage-backed securities into the US financial system.
2) Tasers-to-death a Mexican national for sneaking into the US to find work, but provides billion-dollar bailouts to finance company executives whose extreme incompetence causes thousands of individuals to lose their jobs. (Bring us your tired, huddled masses so that we can beat them to death).
3) Threatens to shut down porn film studios for failure to comply with “condom laws,” but turns a blind eye to Wall Street’s serial financial rape of the US taxpayer.
4) Fires a 5-year employee of Wells Fargo for shoplifting when she was a teenager, but does not bother to prosecute M.F. Global’s former CEO, Jon Corzine, for allowing (or causing) $1.6 billion of client funds to disappear from the firm he controlled.
In other words, once you string enough bad days together, you get a “system” that punishes minor crimes and rewards major crimes…consistently. You get a system that punishes entrepreneurial initiative by rewarding cronyism.
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3.6 Million Taxpayer Dollars Being Used To Support The Lavish Lifestyles Of Former Presidents
You are not going to believe how much money is being spent on our former presidents. At a time when U.S. government spending is wildly out of control, a total of 3.6 million dollars is being used to support the lavish lifestyles of former presidents such as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in 2012. For 2013, the plan is to increase that amount to 3.7 million dollars. But do any of them really need this kind of welfare? The truth is that all of them are very wealthy. So what justification is there for giving them so much money? You can see the GSA budget proposal for former presidents for 2013 right here. The 3.7 million dollars for 2013 does not even include the cost of Secret Service protection. Rather, it only covers expenses such as office rentals, travel, phone bills, postage, printing and pension benefits. Certainly it is not unreasonable to grant former presidents a small pension, but should we be showering them with millions of dollars each year? At a time when the federal government is drowning in so much debt, the fact that these former presidents are willing to take such huge amounts of taxpayer money really does make them look like parasites.
So why are these former presidents getting this money?
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Docs prove Iowa FBI’s Wild Rose Rebellion a pretend RNC “Terrorism Enterprise” for great “statistical accomplishment”
By Dan Feidt for Twin Cities Indymedia - More than 300 newly released pages of Iowa FBI investigation files confirm the existence of a busy network of federal agents across the Midwest dedicated to clamping down on political dissenters. A Freedom of Information Act request by Des Moines’ David Goodner revealed two extensive “Terrorism Enterprise” style investigations against dissenters mainly run by the Omaha FBI office into Iowa, including digging through garbage, watching restaurants, advanced data mining and cell phone record collection. The agents involved claimed “statistical accomplishment” of saving our nation from terrorism: this is exactly, how, and why, federal agents endlessly create pretend counterterror campaigns.
More incidents keep spilling out: yet another report from the Department of Justice oversight office (ZIP 2.4MB), the Office of the Inspector General, spelled out the FBI’s deception towards Congress in spying on antiwar activists in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. The DOJ-OIG report focuses on FBI spying against meetings at Pittsburgh’s Thomas Merton Center, the friendly group which houses Twin Cities Indymedia’s counterpart, PGH Independent Media Center, and hosted many IMCers during the 2009 G20. And of course they cheated on tests about surveillance!
Download Cointelpro Gothic – the Iowa investigation, proving the existence of a national FBI Domestic Terrorism “Anarchists Team”: 300 pages FBI FOIA [9MB PDF/ Browse]. Related coverage: Iowa FBI investigation in Des Moines Register | ACLU files new PGH G20 lawsuit | PGH Trib-Review: Lawsuit planned after terror list | Docs show anti-drill PA tracking | OIG: FBI Inappropriately Tracked Domestic Advocacy Groups – The Atlantic. Below the fold: How FBI launches counterterror snooping, adds dissidents to terror watchlists!
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Obama signature creates ‘continental perimeter’
Move described as key step in advance of North American Union.
Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper quietly have taken a major step toward erasing the border between the two nations with a new “Beyond the Border” bilateral declaration.
In a ceremony designed to remain below the radar of national public opinion, Obama and Harper bypassed Congress to sign on the basis of their executive authority a declaration that put in place a new national security vision defined not by U.S. national borders, but by a continental view of a “North American perimeter.”
It happened Friday, the day the Obama administration usually pushes through issues that it prefers the media ignore.
By signing the declaration, the Obama administration has implemented without congressional approval a key initiative President Bush began under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, moving the United States and Canada beyond the North American Free Trade Agreement, commonly known as NAFTA, toward a developing North American Union regional government.
The declaration signed by the two heads of state and titled “Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness,” was described as “For Immediate Release” on the websites of the White House and the Canadian chief executive.
Harper followed Obama’s lead in signing the declaration as a form of executive order, deciding to bypass the Canadian parliament, much as Obama had decided against taking a proposed bilateral “Beyond the Border” declaration to Congress for prior review and approval.
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What They Got Away With
Chief executives at big banks take on big risks, and for that, they are paid millions. But what happens when the risks don’t pay off? Should CEOs still get to walk away from the wreckage with gilded severance packages while employees lumber off with boxes and broken dreams? Don’t taxpayers deserve a refund of multi-million-dollar payouts for paying billions to bail out these firms? Almost all these CEOs say no, but lately, Congress and federal regulators seems to be saying yes. Some compensation has been cut, and some could be capped under proposed regulations. Some ex-CEOs may face fraud charges, and a few have been hauled before Congress–such as those at AIG, which was lambasted by lawmakers for sending executives to a $440,000 junket after getting an $85 billion government bailout. Despite all this scrutiny, plenty of chiefs are still walking away with mountains of money. A look at some of these golden parachuters.
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The Chicago Way: Justice for Sale at Holder’s DOJ
In an explosive Newsweek article set to rock official Washington, reporter Peter Boyer and Breitbart contributing editor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer reveal how Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice are operating under a “justice for sale” strategy by forgoing criminal prosecution of Wall Street executives at big financial institutions who just so happen to be clients of the white-shoe law firms where Holder and his top DOJ lieutenants worked.
There’s more.
Even as President Barack Obama and Holder co-opt the Occupy Wall Street rhetoric of getting “tough” on the Big Banks and Big Finance, the Newsweek investigative report reveals that Eric Holder has not criminally charged or prosecuted a single top executive from any of the elite financial institutions thought responsible for the financial crash. And why would they? As Boyer and Schweizer report, “through last fall, Obama had collected more donations from Wall Street than any of the Republican candidates; employees of Bain Capital donated more than twice as much to Obama as they did to Romney, who founded the firm.”
