11/2/15

Ted Cruz Breaks With Koch Brothers on Crime Bill

Before Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) electrified conservatives with his denunciation of liberal media bias at the GOP presidential debate last week, he took a little-noticed position on a major crime bill before the Senate that set him apart from the politically powerful Koch brothers. Taking the side of law-and-order conservatives on an issue that could emerge as a major focus of the 2016 presidential campaign, Cruz came out against the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act (S. 2123) on the grounds that the legislation, which will retroactively reduce the sentences of thousands of federal prison inmates, could lead to the release of violent criminals, some convicted of using weapons while engaged in other crimes. He said the Senate bill would release “illegal aliens with criminal convictions” when a “major crime wave” is already sweeping the nation.

In an extraordinary development, the Koch brothers decided to publicly go after Cruz. Echoing the views of the libertarian billionaires, whose network of conservative advocacy groups was planning to spend $889 million on the 2016 campaign, Mark Holden, Senior Vice President & General Counsel of Koch Industries, Inc., issued a statement denouncing the Texas senator by name. He said, “We are disappointed that some members, including Senator Cruz, who have supported the need for reform and been strong supporters of the Bill of Rights, did not support this bill.”

While Cruz had indicated support back in February for a Senate bill on “sentencing reform,” he voted against the latest version because he said it would lead to more criminals being released from prison and committing crimes against law-abiding citizens and police.

In dramatic testimony, Cruz said that while he had supported the Smarter Sentencing Act, a previous version of the bill, the final version had been changed and had “gone in a direction that is not helpful.” He said it provides “leniency” for “violent criminals who use guns” and gives lighter sentences to criminals already serving time. Cruz said that letting thousands of criminals out of prison at this time makes no sense “when police officers are under assault right now, are being vilified right now, and when we’re seeing violent crime spiking in our major cities across the country…”

Political observers say that the public attack on Cruz from the Koch brothers, who are seeking to influence the selection of a GOP 2016 presidential nominee, could easily backfire and expose the nefarious influence of the libertarian billionaires’ attempt to affect the outcome of the race for president on the Republican side. In addition to the Kochs, libertarian hedge fund operator Paul Singer has entered the Republican contest, endorsing Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and promising him millions of dollars in campaign contributions through his own network of conservative organizations and allies. Singer, whose son is homosexual, wants the GOP to embrace gay rights and gay marriage.

There are very few organizations active in conservative politics that are not financed by either Koch or Singer. Donald Trump, a billionaire in his own right, doesn’t need their support.

Blogger Tina Trent, who writes and lectures about criminal justice issues, hailed Cruz’s decision to come out against the Koch-backed bill, saying the legislation was “a 100 percent giveaway to some of the most radical anti-incarceration activist groups funded by George Soros,” the billionaire hedge fund operator and backer of the Democratic Party. She said, “I’m happy to see Cruz refuse to obey the Kochs on this one vote, but the fact that they came out and chastised him publicly when he did cross them even slightly points to bigger questions—and bigger problems. Will Cruz go further and completely sever ties with the Kochs?”

Libertarians and their Leftist Allies Push Criminal Justice Reform

Though branded by the media as free market conservatives, the Koch brothers are libertarians on social and foreign policy issues and do business with China and Russia. They chose “criminal justice reform” as their latest high-profile cause, even though this has meant collusion with the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations and his grantees.

We noted in a story last March that the Coalition for Public Safety was playing a leading role in this new “bipartisan” campaign for “criminal justice reform,” and has been financed by $5 million from the Koch brothers and other “core supporters,” such as the liberal Ford Foundation. Soros money for this effort has been mostly funneled through the ACLU, a major “partner” in the group, which received $50 million to cut national incarceration rates and release criminals.

The Coalition for Public Safety is run by Christine Leonard, a former Ted Kennedy Senate staffer once affiliated with the left-wing Vera Institute for Justice. We pointed out that the Vera Institute is so extreme that its Project Concern had a National Advisory Board on Adolescent Development, Safety and Justice that included the former communist terrorist Bernardine Dohrn as an adviser from 1998 to 2003.

One Soros-funded group, Critical Resistance, was founded by communist Angela Davis and says it seeks “to end the prison industrial complex (PIC) by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe. We believe that basic necessities such as food, shelter, and freedom are what really make our communities secure.” It got $100,000 from the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations.

An all-day “Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform” that was sponsored in part by the Coalition for Public Safety featured former Obama official and Marxist Van Jones as a major speaker. Jones appeared at a podium emblazoned with the company name “Koch Industries.” Obama’s then-Attorney General Eric Holder also spoke to the event.

Cruz was joined in his opposition to the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act by Republican Senators Orrin Hatch (UT), David Perdue (GA), Jeff Sessions (AL), and David Vitter (LA). Nevertheless, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Assistant Democratic Leader Dick Durbin pushed the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act through the Senate Judiciary Committee in a 15-5 vote. A Cruz amendment to fix the bill was voted down.

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning said that Senate Republicans, “in a quest for bipartisanship,” have passed a bill that will “retroactively reduce more federal prison sentences, resulting in an additional flooding of our cities with thousands more convicted criminals out of penitentiaries.” He asked, “Given the volatile mix of massive increases of Muslim refugees, the influx of Central American gangs and Mexican drug cartel members, and the disarming of our police, what could go wrong with releasing tens of thousands of convicted criminals early into the already violent cities? Why would Republicans vote for that?”

Law Enforcement Groups Weigh in on Pending Crime Legislation

Unwilling to let the Koch brothers and George Soros have their way on the crime legislation, organizations representing law enforcement are making their views known. Groups opposing the bill include the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, National Sheriffs’ Association, National Immigration & Customs Enforcement Council, Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, National Narcotic Officers’ Associations’ Coalition, National District Attorneys Association, Major County Sheriffs’ Association, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association.

Major figures opposing the bill include Ed Meese, Former Attorney General of the United States; Ron Hosko, Former Assistant Director of the FBI; and Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum.

Senator Sessions, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee and former federal prosecutor, quoted Steven Cook, the President of the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, as saying that the bill “threatens to reverse many of the gains we have made by making thousands of convicted and imprisoned armed career criminals, serial violent criminals, and high-level drug traffickers eligible for early release.” Cook added that “it would seriously weaken the very tools that federal prosecutors, working with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners, have used to keep our communities safe.”

“In reality,” Tina Trent told Accuracy in Media, “there is no big public groundswell of support for releasing recidivist criminals back onto the streets. The urgency around this issue has been almost entirely manufactured by paid activists in the leftist and libertarian camps—aided by the media, of course. This is why they’re being so intentionally secretive about the process and the people who would be released and how the releases would be implemented. It’s also why they’re not making it easy, or even possible, to see state-by-state information about the specific inmates who would be released, nor can the public view the full criminal arrest and conviction records for these inmates.”

Taking on libertarian rhetoric about alleged “nonviolent” drug offenders supposedly populating the prisons, she noted there are several ways an offender can be classified as “non-violent” even when he or she has a long rap sheet of arrests for violent crimes and even convictions for violent crimes. In such cases, defense lawyers will have their clients plead to a drug charge in exchange for charges of violent crimes being dropped.

The “Ferguson” Effect?

Despite the serious flaws in the bill and questions about the radicals backing it, aCongressional Criminal Justice and Public Safety Caucus has been created to make similar legislation a reality on the House side. Representatives Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Raul Labrador (R-ID), Cedric Richmond (D-LA) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) will serve as co-chairs of this newly-formed body.

Jessica Berry, Deputy Director of the Coalition for Public Safety, thanked Chaffetz and the other Republicans for partnering with Democrats as well as President Obama, for the purpose of “getting criminal justice reform done.”

Berry’s praise for Republicans should give them concern. She is a former top Democratic Party staffer on Capitol Hill, having served as the principal law enforcement and criminal justice advisor to Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and an adviser to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

If the “bipartisan” bill passes Congress, Republicans may eventually be blamed for helping to put more criminals back on the streets, producing more of the “Ferguson effect” that Obama’s FBI director James Comey says has put the lives of police officers and innocent members of the community in greater danger.

The controversy over Comey’s remarks could complicate the President’s push “to loosen the nation’s sentencing laws,” the Hill newspaper reported. Another potential complication is that the outspoken Cruz and others may put pressure on Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) to stop the bill from coming up for a vote so that Republicans don’t further embarrass themselves by partnering with soft-on-crime Democrats in hock to Soros-funded activist groups.

Leftist groups are hoping McConnell will bring the bill to a full Senate vote, in order to demonstrate how Republicans can work with Democrats on an issue dear to the Obama administration.

03/30/15

Marxist Van Jones Praises Koch Brothers

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

When he left the Obama Administration in disgrace, the expectation was that “former” communist Van Jones would return to Oakland, California, and resume his duties as an anti-police street activist. Instead, Jones, a former activist with the group, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), was hired as a “liberal” co-host of a new version of CNN’s debate show “Crossfire.” Now, Jones has emerged as a point man for Koch Industries in a multi-million dollar campaign for “criminal justice reform.”

The spectacle of Jones appearing at a podium emblazoned with the company name “Koch Industries” became a reality last Thursday when the ACLU and the billionaire Koch brothers joined forces to sponsor an all-day “Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform.” Jones orchestrated most of the conference, serving as a moderator and speaker.

While the conference included a few Republicans, there was clear evidence that the new “bipartisan” campaign is being directed from the Obama White House. Attorney General Eric Holder and senior White House officials had met with several prominent leaders of the effort on March 2.

In addition to Jones, who was forced to resign as White House “Green Jobs Czar” after his extremist background came to light, Holder was a featured speaker, calling for “a fundamental shift in our criminal justice system,” and “historic change.”

Known for his lawless actions, such as refusing to enforce federal anti-drug laws, Holder was held in contempt by Congress for withholding documents from them about Fast and Furious, the scandal involving a gun-running operation that put deadly weapons in the hands of narcotics traffickers from Mexico. He is also known for the “open borders” policy that has prevented a vigorous enforcement of immigration laws on the federal and state level.

Addressing an audience of about 500 people, Holder spoke of a “rare consensus emerging across the country,” adding, “Recently, we have seen conservative stakeholders like Koch Industries and Americans for Tax Reform join with progressive voices like the Center for American Progress to form a new coalition dedicated to this cause.”

The “cause,” based on what we witnessed at the all-day event, is to reduce prison populations in the name of fiscal restraint and liberal compassion.

The financial support from the Koch brothers gives this left-wing campaign a bipartisan appearance and may be intended to buy some goodwill from the “progressives” who normally target these billionaires.

But knowing of Holder’s involvement in the event and the evidence that he, in fact, helped orchestrate this conference, it was troubling to some conservative observers that members of Congress, such as Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Republican governors such as Nathan Deal of Georgia, participated in this event.

Holder argued that the criminal justice system was racist against minorities, while Deal said the system was too costly and that many criminals can be re-educated, rehabilitated and released.

Although Americans for Tax Reform was indeed listed as a sponsor, its head, Grover Norquist, was in the news for another reason. He is embroiled in a controversy over his alleged ties to Islamists, and gave an interview to Glenn Beck defending himself against the charges.

The Center for American Progress, another major player in the new “criminal justice reform” effort, is funded by the Open Society Foundations of billionaire hedge-fund operator George Soros.

The new group Holder spoke about is called the Coalition for Public Safety, financed by $5 million from the Koch brothers and other “core supporters,” such as the liberal Ford Foundation. The group is run by Christine Leonard, a former Ted Kennedy Senate staffer once affiliated with the left-wing Vera Institute for Justice.

The Vera Institute is so extreme that its Project Concern had a National Advisory Board on Adolescent Development, Safety and Justice that included the former communist terrorist Bernardine Dohrn as an adviser from 1998 to 2003. Dohrn was accused of bombing a police station and killing a San Francisco police sergeant. However, she has never been brought to justice for her alleged role in this crime.

Though it tilted heavily toward the left, the new coalition and the conference had a sprinkling of conservatives, most notably former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. His firm, “Gingrich Productions,” was an official sponsor. Gingrich apparently became a friend of Van Jones when they appeared together on CNN’s “Crossfire.” Other conservatives or libertarians in attendance included Matt Kibbe, President/CEO of FreedomWorks, and Tim Head, Executive Director of the Faith & Freedom Coalition.

In a joint statement, Gingrich and Jones declared, “Our over-reliance on prisons has failed America. It is past time for both political parties to come together and fix a bad system of their own making. We believe this moment offers a once-in-a generation opportunity for reforms that will save entire communities and transform the lives of millions of Americans. We must not let it pass.”

However, the well-documented book, Why Crime Rates Fell, by John E. Conklin, argues persuasively that crime reduction is due in large measure to putting more criminals in prison.

On one panel at the event, John Malcolm of The Heritage Foundation disputed the liberal notion advanced by Nicole Austin-Hillery of the Brennan Center for Justice that increased incarceration had no role in the drop in crime. He noted that economist Steven Levitt has estimated that approximately 25 percent of the decline in violent crime can be attributed to increased incarceration, and that Professor William Spelman has estimated that increased incarceration may be responsible for as much as 35 percent of the reduction in violent crime.

Following Governor Nathan Deal as a speaker was Piper Kerman, a convicted drug-money launderer who wrote, Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, a book made into a television series by Netflix.

Dr. Tina Trent, an advocate for victims of crime, is watching this campaign go forward with a lot of questions and suspicion. She was writing about the campaign for “criminal justice reform” when it was primarily underwritten by Soros. She discovered that the group, Critical Resistance, a Soros-funded activist group founded by long-time communist Angela Davis, had invented the “cop-watch concept” that would be popularized by Jones in Oakland through a group called Bay Area Police Watch. Davis wrote, Are Prisons Obsolete?, a book arguing that criminals are victims of capitalist society.

Trent says the campaign is well underway and aims to eliminate the death penalty, life without parole sentences, “three strikes” laws, mandatory minimum sentencing laws, and other changes that states have passed over the last 20 years to reduce violent crime. Another goal is to expand voting rights for felons, who are expected to show their gratitude by voting Democratic.

She says the movement also aims to “ban the box”—a reference to removing the criminal record question from job applications—and legalize dangerous mind-altering drugs. In this context, the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance was another “partner” in the “bipartisan summit.”

Trent has also highlighted the Soros-funded effort to “radicalize” prisoners while they are incarcerated.

The campaign to target the prisons for revolutionary purposes is actually an old one. The House Internal Security Committee in 1973 published a report, “Revolutionary Target: The American Penal System,” which examined how “groups committed to Marxist revolutionary theories and tactics were exploiting the popular issue of prison reform and had become a source of the unrest then afflicting many of the nation’s prisons.”

A different approach and analysis of what has to be done about the crime problem is being taken by veteran journalist Colin Flaherty, in his new book, Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry. Flaherty argues that the Obama/Holder narrative of the alleged “racial victimization” of blacks by whites ignores the black-on-white violence that has become an epidemic across the country.

Rather than empty the prisons, he argues, more criminals need to be apprehended and punished.

Black crime rates are “astronomically out of proportion” to their presence in the population, he points out. But the media “ignore, condone and deny it.” Obama, he adds, is a “willing partner” in the deception.

01/14/15

Notorious Red Exploits King Legacy

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Janel Davis of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a “noted scholar, author and veteran civil rights activist” by the name of Angela Davis will deliver the keynote address January 18 at Kennesaw State University’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance. This is the same Angela Davis “who supported the imprisonment of Soviet political dissidents (calling them common criminals), cheered on the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize (formerly the International Stalin Peace Prize) by communist East Germany,” as noted by another paper, the British Telegraph.

The differences reflect the abysmal state of our media today, as compared to a foreign newspaper that conducted some basic research. Janel Davis is obviously a young reporter who has not been trained to properly investigate a subject she is writing about. As a result, she misleads her audience and makes a fool out of herself.

A photograph of Davis shaking hands with the Stalinist East German dictator, Erich Honecker, is not that difficult to find on the Internet.

Davis, a two-time candidate for vice-president on the Communist Party ticket, is getting paid $20,000 by Kennesaw State University for giving a speech. Earlier in her career she beat a murder rap and was a college professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

In a 2012 speech, she spoke of the “planetary euphoria” she felt when Barack Obama was elected president. Davis said Obama’s presidency had resulted in “an upsurge of activism” that would not have taken place “if the Republican candidate had been elected.”

In addition to the International Lenin Peace Prize, she received an honorary degree from the Karl Marx University of Leipzig, East Germany.

The transformation of a communist apologist for the old Soviet Union and East Germany into a “scholar” and “civil rights activist” is on the same level as Davis pretending to be a working class hero while making big bucks on the lecture circuit. Nevertheless, she still talks and acts like a communist true believer and participated in the “Occupy” movement at events in various cities.

Those who believe communism is dead might be surprised to learn that in 2012 she gave a speech calling for “combating anti-communism.” At the same time, she has adopted the cause of radical Islam, declaring “Islamophobia” to be a major threat, the communist People’s World reported.

The paper went on to say that Davis “spoke at length about [the] centrality of the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people to the discontent in the Muslim world,” and challenged the audience to recognize “that Israeli apartheid…is just as bad” as South African apartheid.

Davis concluded her address by saying that “we need peace, justice, equality, and socialism for us all.”

A Google search finds that Davis’s Marxist speeches are being offered for fees that range from $10,000 to $20,000. It looks like Kennesaw, located about 20 miles outside Atlanta, got stuck with the higher rate.

Most of those offering her services as a speaker provide an extreme make-over of her career, in order to mask her decades of serving the interests of the secret police in the Soviet Union and East Germany.

For example, the American Program Bureau calls Davis a “Feminist & Writer,” whose topics include “The Role of Art in Society.”

The Keppler Speakers Bureau calls her a “living legend” who will “recount her experience as one of the country’s most prominent activists for social justice.”

The Lavin Agency calls Davis a “Legendary Human Rights Activist” who is “internationally known for her ongoing work to combat all forms of oppression in the U.S. and abroad.”

The latter claim is most definitely a lie, since Davis was an ardent proponent of the Soviet/East German system of oppression and ignored the victims of communism—some 100 million of them.

Now Davis is claiming the mantle of Dr. Martin Luther King, a man honored by Americans for his commitment to peaceful change. Many young blacks may be duped into believing that Davis is somehow in the same league as Dr. King, as a result of papers like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) sanitizing her career. The Davis speech is sponsored by the Kennesaw State African-American Student Alliance.

Phil Kent’s piece, “AJC Omits KSU Speaker’s Communist Background,” was the first indication that the Davis appearance at Kennesaw was not going to take place without some critical comment. He went into some detail about Davis, even noting that she once told an ACLU meeting that she “believes in the violent overthrow of America’s government.”

But that government is now showering her with student and taxpayer dollars through state universities. It is quite a racket.

Julian March of the Wilmington Star-News reports that Davis is going from Kennesaw to speak on January 20 at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), also as part of a Martin Luther King Jr. event. The article mentions her communist past but quotes Todd McFadden, a UNCW instructor and director of the Upperman African American Cultural Center, as saying “the controversy associated with Davis’ name has faded” over the years.

He says, “Martin Luther King was controversial in his day but obviously is a much more accepted figure. Things like that change.”

One thing that has changed is that we have a media which censors the truth about people like Davis who rip off the system in order to destroy it.

In addition to pocketing tens of thousands of capitalist dollars from colleges and universities, the Angela Davis group called Critical Resistance, notes writer Tina Trent, gets funding from the super capitalist hedge-fund operator George Soros through his Open Society Foundation.

Critical Resistance aims to empty the prisons of the United States, since criminals are considered victims of a capitalist society.

This campaign is one reason why, according to the AJC, Davis has emerged as a “scholar” on the issue of “imprisonment.”