Tag Archives: IRS

08/9/16

Obama Administration IRS Scandal Back in the News

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

Obama

The mainstream media have gone to great lengths to avoid reporting on controversies with the potential to damage President Obama’s reputation or legacy. The endeavor to politicize the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) became an article of impeachment against Richard Nixon in 1974. But the actual politicization of the IRS under Barack Obama is treated as a phony scandal ginned up by Fox News, talk radio and the tea party movement. So it’s no surprise that recent news stories about the IRS scandal have been met with nearly complete silence from the mainstream media. The goal is clear: if the media ignore this scandal long enough, it will be treated and dismissed as old news.

There was a major development last Friday, but the media, for the most part, continue to look the other way. As The Washington Times reported, “A federal appeals court slapped the IRS with yet another rebuke Friday, ruling that it did, in fact, discriminate against tea party groups and insisting the tax agency prove that it’s permanently stopped the unconstitutional targeting of groups because of their political leanings.”

The IRS was seeking to get a lawsuit dropped, claiming they had voluntarily stopped such targeting. But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit—considered the second most powerful court after the U.S. Supreme Court—ruled unanimously that the lawsuit should be sent back to a lower court for a more thorough ruling. In a previous ruling earlier in the year, Judge David Sentelle, one of the members of the three-judge panel, said, “It’s hard to find the IRS to be an agency we can trust,” and suggested that it had infringed on the constitutional rights of some tea party groups.

There were hundreds of conservative groups targeted for intense scrutiny that liberal and leftist groups were not subjected to. Last year the Justice Department announcedthey were ending their criminal investigation of the matter, in what looks more and more like a politically motivated decision, much the same as the decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her repeated instances of sending and receiving classified material on an unsecured server.

Days before the appeals court rebuked the IRS on August 5, The Hill published an article in which current IRS Commissioner John Koskinen characterized Congress’ push to impeach him as sending a message that people should not take government posts. Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) “has said Koskinen did not comply with a subpoena and made false and misleading statements under oath during a congressional investigation into the IRS’s scrutiny of conservative groups’ applications for tax-exempt status,” reports The Hill. The remainder of this article discusses Koskinen’s comments out of context—glossing over the details of the IRS scandal, so that readers are not well informed by the article.

Commissioner Koskinen is no innocent victim. His IRS erased over 400 backup tapes which could have contained Lois Lerner’s missing emails in March 2014, “a month after the IRS realized it was missing some of Lerner’s emails,” reported CNN in 2015.

“The IRS’s strategy was the stuff of banana republics: Organizations that were critical of the president’s signature health-care law were to be targeted, as were those making statements critical of the general direction of government under the Obama administration,” wrote the Editors of National Review in June, calling for Koskinen’s impeachment. “Those with ‘tea party’ or ‘9/12’ in their names (the latter refers to groups associated with conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck) were to be targeted. Hundreds of such organizations were subjected to improper harassment and invasive requests for financial and political information.”

Lerner staged an exchange with a reporter in 2013, in which she apologized for the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups at an American Bar Association conference in Washington, DC. “Lerner, who retired in September, said of the agency’s Cincinnati employees, ‘They didn’t have the appropriate level of sensitivity about how this might appear to others and it was just wrong,’” reported Eliana Johnson for National Review in 2013.

“… [then-IRS Commissioner Steven] Miller and Lerner both initially blamed ‘low-level employees’ for the targeting, FBI documents show,” reports The Daily Caller. “Miller, in fact, called the Cincinnati IRS officials who handled the tax exemption cases ‘maroons’—his humorous way of saying ‘morons.’”

President Obama later also claimed there wasn’t a “smidgeon of corruption” at the IRS and that news organizations like Fox News were deliberately keeping the controversy alive.

The Cincinnati rogue IRS agent myth that has been perpetuated can now be fully laid to rest. Judicial Watch recently released the 302s, the 2013 summaries of FBI interviews of both IRS personnel and individuals who applied for non-profit status.

In these summaries the Cincinnati IRS employees repeatedly state that they feel they had been thrown under the bus by Lerner.

“When Lois Lerner made her public comments, he believes she threw them under the bus, backed over them, and ran over them again,” states the FBI summary, which communicates that this employee followed the necessary procedures and “elevated questions at the time as they should have.”

In other words, the Cincinnati office sent applications that needed higher-level scrutiny on to the DC-based Exempt Organization (EO) Technical. This black hole of a bureaucracy provided little reply. “Nobody told him directly where the delay was in resolving the Tea Party issue. DC is like a black hole,” states the FBI summary. Whether true or not, Cincinnati employees have blamed Washington for the errors.

We reported in 2013 that the IRS scandal may extend up to the White House, given that Kathryn Ruemmler, White House Chief Counsel, and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough were aware of the brewing scandal a month before Lerner’s comments.

Now, with the release of the 302s, the lingering question is whether the IRS EO Technical unit, based in Washington, DC, was politicized and deliberately chose not to process conservative group applications.

Statements by Cincinnati workers do raise some suspicions. One summary states that “The Tea Party cases started to backlog since [redacted] was no longer responding.” In fact, “[Redacted] cannot remember having a conversation with [redacted] after August 15, 2010. She saw this backlog as a ‘ticking time bomb.’”

This ticking time bomb is now treated as a phony scandal by the press, which often take their cue from White House elites who believe that the damage caused by targeting conservative groups should be overlooked. But only by investigating and exposing those who decided to target these groups in the first place can we prevent future abuses. As in so many other instances, the press is derelict in its duty to hold the Obama administration accountable.

Roger Aronoff

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

08/27/15

The Email Issue Goes Beyond Just Hillary Clinton

By Frank Salvato

As scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton’s illegal use of unsecured email servers to access classified information during her time as US Secretary of State continues to unravel her presidential aspirations, a more comprehensive overview of the many email issues related to the Obama Administration presents a more sinister possibility. From the State Department to the Internal Revenue Service, the Environmental Protection Agency to the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy to the White House itself, everywhere you turn in the Obama Administration there has been an issue with high-ranking personnel using alternative email accounts and/or servers for government business and then refusing access to those communications to oversight authority.

In 2010, President Barack Obama, speaking in Elyria, Ohio, bragged,

“We have put in place the toughest ethics laws and toughest transparency rules of any administration in history…in history! And by the way, this is the first administration since the founding of the country where all of you can find out who visits the White House. First time in history! And that’s just one example.”

In fact, Mr. Obama’s claim to open visitor’s logs was first trumpeted in 2009. It sounded good, like his claim that his was the most transparent administration in history. Alas, as usual, what sounds good during his “speechifying” never quite pans out to be the truth. The Obama Administration actually vetted which visitors to include on those “transparent” visitor’s logs and in 2013 pulled the logs from public access completely during its budget battle with Congress saying, “Due to Congress’s failure to pass legislation to fund the government, the information on this web site may not be up to date,” the placeholder on the visitor’s log page reading, “This dataset is currently private.”

But the visitor’s log duplicity pales in comparison to the administration’s use of alternative email accounts and servers for official communication where the claim of being the most transparent administration in American history is concerned. In fact, if you examine the many instances of the abuse of email communications protocol a pattern is evidenced; a pattern that serves plausible deniability and political opportunity, while denying transparency, accountability and oversight.

The instance most in the public eye is the use of – and subsequently the cleansing of – Hillary Clinton’s personal email server during her time as Secretary of State. This attention is only awarded by the media because she is a candidate for the presidency. Many in media didn’t give much attention to the fact she was using a private email server when she was corresponding with aides, States Department personnel and the White House before, during and after the assassination of a sitting US ambassador and his security team in Benghazi, Libya.

I won’t even get into the disingenuous manipulation of talking points memos that circulated from White House Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes about the cause of the Benghazi attacks.

But Mrs. Clinton isn’t the only high-ranking State Department official who has used a personal email account to perform official US government business. Caroline Kennedy, US ambassador to Japan, has been cited by the State Department’s Inspector General – as has the entirety of her staff at that embassy location – for using personal email accounts to receive and transmit communications regarding official business.

CNN reported:

“Senior embassy staff, including the ambassador, used personal email accounts to send and receive messages containing official business…In addition, (investigators) identified instances where emails labeled sensitive but unclassified were sent from, or received by, personal email accounts…The watchdog report said that Kennedy’s practices were against State Department policy and put the agency at risk.”

Then there is the issue of Environmental Protection Agency senior staff – both during Lisa Jackson’s tenure and Gina McCarthy’s – using email aliases and emails from those alias accounts being destroyed in direct violation of federal records preservation policies. Breitbart.com describes the EPA’s goal thusly:

“The point of this scheme was to evade public accountability, to conduct official government business under the table, outside of the public eye. When Congress and others asked for [senior officials’] EPA correspondence and email, the [alias] e-mails would fall outside that request and, eventually, be destroyed allowing official EPA business to be conducted secretly. That falls well short of conducting business in the open and in a transparent fashion. It also falls well short of the standards required by federal law.”

Dovetailing on the EPA email malfeasance is the refusal of John Holdren to honor a FOIA request relating to policy emails he maintained on the private servers of his former employer, the high-pressure eco-zealot group Woods Hole Research Center, as he sits as the director of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. Holdren, you may recall, is a man-made “global warming” believer with a penchant for smearing scientists who disagree with him. About the OSTP emails, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s senior attorney, Hans Bader, writes:

“The use of such non-official accounts for agency business frustrates federal open-government laws, and undermines government accountability, since such accounts are generally not searched in response to FOIA or congressional oversight requests seeking work-related communications or agency records. Moreover, the use of email accounts at a former employer that lobbies the federal government gives such pressure groups direct access to and control over public records, including highly sensitive information.”

But the most damning instance of unethical and criminal abuse of email correspondence lies with Lois Lerner, the former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service. Not only did Ms. Lerner conspire with other IRS operatives to marginalize the First Amendment free speech rights – as well as the guaranteed right to redress of government – of TEA Party and other Conservative organization members, she attempted to conceal and destroy any and all email evidence that proved her criminal acts. More recent revelations indicate that Ms. Lerner not only had contact with White House policy adviser Jeanne Lambrew that served to collude about Conservative targets, but that she, too, like her counterparts at the EPA, used alias emails to avoid detection by oversight authorities.

So, while the country remains rightfully obsessed with the Hillary Clinton email scandal (I prefer to call her actions “crimes”), there appears, to any honest broker, to be evidence pointing to a systemic issue with alternative communications and transparency in the Obama Administration. This evidence – a chronicle of criminal and unethical acts from the State Department to the Environmental Protection Agency to the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy to the Internal Revenue Service and the White House itself – must serve as proof of a pattern establishing an early effort by the Obama Administration to circumvent the legislated communications and information sharing protocol in federal government in an effort to control the informational narrative for political and ideological reasons. The evidence is overwhelming and, by virtue of the pattern’s existence, proves a conscious mandate from the highest levels.

What we have here, if you look at the evidence before you, is proof of a concerted conspiracy to deceive entities that execute governmental oversight, from the Inspector Generals of affected agencies all the way to the hall of Congress. What we have here is a direct attack by the Executive Branch of the United States on the authorities, rights and privileges of the co-equal branches of government. What we have here is a direct attack on the sovereign rights of the American people.

Yes, the emails scandals being exposed today are bigger than Watergate. Now, what are we going to do about it?

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject.org a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His opinion and analysis have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, The Jewish World Review, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, Townhall.com and are syndicated nationally. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is the author of six books examining Islamofascism and Progressivism, including “Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam”. Mr. Salvato’s personal writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com.

07/14/15

Iran Deal: Be sure of this much – With Obama’s help, Evil is Winning

By: William Palumbo
The American Report

What began in 2012 with secret negotiations between Valerie Jarrett and Iran has now borne its toxic, likely nuclear, fruit. It is now all but certain, excepting an unlikely Congressional intervention, that the Obama administration will officially legitimize the world’s most prolific sponsor of Islamic terror. This follows on the heels of a surprise announcement that Obama would normalize relations with Cuba.

From Tehran to Havana, evil is winning, and Obama is leading the way.

Let’s recall a few things about the Iranian and Cuban deals, and their negotiators:

Obama’s Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran in 1956. A personal friend of Barack and Michelle since she introduced the couple, Jarrett is widely assumed to be the most powerful person in the White House. The subject of an FBI investigation, Jarrett’s family is connected with old guard Chicago Communists, including Obama’s political mentor, Frank Marshall Davis.

If that weren’t enough to make you question this “deal,” Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter is married to an Iranian man with family in Iran. Conflict of interest, anyone?

Barack Obama is the president who backed the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood into power during the Arab Spring. After issuing Presidential Study Directive Eleven (PSD-11), Obama allied the U.S.A. with terrorists in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and is still backing anti-Assad terrorists in Syria. His administration, through the DOJ, has purged all mention of “Islam” and “Muslims” from counter-terrorism. With Obama’s approval, the Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service have been weaponized against conservatives and Republicans. Yes, that means Obama views American citizens, not Islamic terrorists, as the most dangerous threat to national security.

Likewise, domestic counter-terrorism efforts have been hampered against Muslim Brotherhood front Islamic organizations, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who are now regarded as friends and invited to the White House. Finally, Obama has crippled the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and left the southern border completely open to whatever murderer, rapist, or terrorist wants to walk in.

Iran, for its part, has been the preeminent sponsor of Islamic terrorism since 1979. Its current leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, personally translated into Farsi the works of Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brother who developed the ideology of modern Islamic terror. Iran funds both Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran has a friendly relationship with the terrorist regime of Omar Bashir in the Sudan, where there is ongoing Christian genocide.

Through Hezbollah, they operate narcotics and terrorist networks around the world, including in Latin America. Hezbollah is remarkably powerful in Venezuela and Mexico, and was behind the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which targeted Argentine Jews.

Cuba, an Iranian ally, is home to another other rogue anti-American regime that welcomes Hezbollah terrorists. Bill Ayers, the domestic terrorist who launched Obama’s political career, helped organize trips to Cuba for the Students for a Democratic Society with the infamous Venceremos Brigade.

Not only have the Ayatollahs and Castro brothers been rewarded for their treachery, they are being rewarded handsomely: Cuba will now have full diplomatic relations with the United States, and Iran is expected to receive $100 billion in previously frozen funds.

Do you now start to get a picture of what Obama and the U.S. State Department have accomplished?

Obama-Rouhani

2016: A Vote for Republicans, or more Terrorists

In a rare show of wise solidarity, GOP Presidential candidates have denounced the disastrous Iranian deal. Indeed, to listen to Republicans today is almost like listening to former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, who has publicly blamed Obama for ruining the close relationship between the United States and Israel.

Hillary, who will almost assuredly be the Democratic nominee, is supportive of the deal. Unsurprising, as Clinton was a fellow architect of the Arab Spring, and her personal aide Huma Abedin is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood through her immediate family.

For Americans at all concerned with the future of their country, it should be very clear that the Democrat Party stands with terrorists. Choose wisely in 2016.

07/12/15

Maybe Kevin D. Williamson Should be Writing for Politico

Doug Ross @ Journal

The Passion of the Trump
UnsavoryAgents

The usually brilliant and stalwart Kevin D. Williamson of National Review appears at last to have fallen victim to the virus known as Beltway Insider-itis. In doing so, he joins the likes of David Brooks and Jen Rubin, so-called “conservatives” who act as the unofficial PR wing of the Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove, and the Republican National Committee.

We fully expect the Left to tar Constitutional Conservatives and Tea Party activists as racists (no matter their love and support of Allen West, Ben Carson, Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, Israel, et. al.); most recently the progressive sissy-boy (which is the term he prefers, I hear) Damon Linker of The Week labeled the conservative base a bunch of Birchers who hate, among others, “negroes, elites, decadent city folk, Catholics [and] Jews”.

We do not expect the likes of Williamson, however, to channel Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Karl Rove and Tom Donohue and slam the very group of Americans who handed the Republican Party massive midterm wins at every level of government in 2010 and 2014.

Thus, it was with great surprise that I read Williamson’s latest (“WHINOS: On the Martyrdom of the Holy, Holy Base“), a full-throated attack on you and I, who he terms “WHINOS”.

Never mind the Democrats, economic realities, Putin, ISIS, the geographical facts of the U.S.-Mexico border — all would be well and all manner of things would be well if not for the behind-the-scenes plotting of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and their enablers, who apparently can be bribed with small numbers of cocktail weenies. The WHINO is a Republican conspiracy theorist, in whose fervid imaginings all the players — victims, villains — are Republicans.

Why the vitriol (and patently false vitriol at that)?

Williamson, like many Beltway insiders, has panicked at the latest polls showing Donald Trump (no, not Donald Trump!) atop the current GOP field.

Recall, however, that at this same moment in the prior election cycle, Rudy Giuliani sat in Trump’s position.

Williamson also insists Romney was a wonderful candidate and anyone who couldn’t see the difference between the former Massachusetts governor and Obama was either a “fanatic or extraordinarily ill-informed”. Or perhaps nominating the Godfather of Obamacare made the dominant policy issue of 2012 a moot point?

And why do I call Williamson’s insipid arguments patently false?

He need look no further than his own website to read the sobering wisdom of Andrew C. McCarthy (“Republicans Have Needlessly Undermined their Ability to Resist the Iran Deal”), which effectively shreds every last molecule of Williamson’s diatribe.

In fact, on the most important national security question in possibly all of American history, the Obama-Kerry nuclear Iran agreement (McCarthy terms it “a disastrous deal that would end sanctions against the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism while paving its way to a nuclear-weapons arsenal”), John Boehner and Mitch McConnell conspired with Barack Obama to simply cede Congressional oversight of a deal that will reward Iran with $150 billion and allow it (easily) to build nuclear weapons.

That legislation … enacted as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, shifts the burden of persuasion away from President Obama and onto opponents of the Iran deal, thus making the deal virtually impossible to stop or undo…

…Iran, of course, is not just an accused party; it is an incorrigible recidivist. In overt contempt for our nation and president, Tehran is already in flagrant violation of the “Joint Plan of Action” it agreed to with the administration. The mullahs see that, even as they systematically flout this interim deal, Obama is hell-bent on looking the other way. It is therefore certain that they will violate the final deal — which will be so frontloaded with carrots (e.g., a $150 billion signing bonus in the form of immediate sanctions relief) that the sticks can be laughed off…

…Under the Constitution, the president must persuade a two-thirds supermajority of senators to approve an agreement with a foreign power. That is, as I’ve repeatedly contended in connection with the Iran negotiations, the Constitution’s presumption is against legally binding international pacts…

…Under the Constitution’s burden of persuasion, then, the Iran deal did not have a prayer of becoming law … In the final Iran deal, the burden of persuasion is key. Enter the Corker legislation. It undermined the Constitution’s presumption against international agreements by shifting the burden of persuasion: Rather than forcing the president to persuade two-thirds of the Senate to approve the deal, it imposes on opponents the burden of persuading two-thirds of the full Congress to reject it.

In other words, the Corker bill (and, remember, Bob Corker is simply a puppet of Mitch McConnell in this and many other matters) surrendered full control of the most dangerous deal imaginable — handing cash and nuclear weapons to a terror state whose unofficial slogan is “Death to America” — to Barack Hussein Obama.

I don’t know whether McCarthy wrote his piece as a direct assault on Williamson, but suffice it to say that it appears purpose-built.

Williamson must also ignore the fact that, in order to get elected, men like Boehner and McConnell pledged fiscal responsibility, a full repeal of Obamacare, and investigations of Barack Obama’s high crimes and misdemeanors.

In fact, a Republican Congress has aided and abetted the most massive expansion of government since World War II; an act of fiscal irresponsibility so unhinged and detrimental to society that Mark Levin’s new book on the topic (Plunder and Deceit) is already a #1 bestseller weeks before it hits the shelves.

In fact, a Republican Congress has done nothing of import to repeal the disastrous Obamacare law, even as the Supreme Court and the Department of Health and Human Services rewrites it at will.

In fact, a Republican Congress has failed to name a Select Committee to investigate the weaponization of the IRS (the mere suggestion of which was outlined in Richard Nixon’s prospective articles of impeachment); it has permitted Hillary Clinton to destroy her government records that were under subpoena with virtually no repercussions; and it has failed to diligently pursue any one of dozens of other scandals (e.g., Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the UAW bailout, the violation of the War Powers Act, etc.) that should be front and center every single day.

Is it any wonder that the conservative base is frothing at the mouth?

Williamson concludes with the pithy phrase “[w]hining is no substitute for winning”; unfortunately his beloved Establishment has done very little winning, whether in general elections or on the most important policy questions of the day.

In order to win, Kevin, you have to fight.

Feckless, cowardly boobs like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have surrendered at every opportunity without even considering a fight, insisting before the battle is even joined, for instance, that they’ll never shut down the government.

The American people need a Presidential candidate who will fight. Whether that man is Donald Trump or, more realistically, someone like Ted Cruz, Americans want a candidate who will not hesitate to face our enemies, whether they be foreign or domestic.

06/7/15

As Obama Toots His Own Horn, Judge Jeanine Rips Him a New One

Hat Tip: BB

06/6/15

Obama Administration Cover-ups Continue

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

President Obama’s administration has blocked more than half a million Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in the last six years, reports WorldNetDaily. This blatant circumvention of the law is causing some in the mainstream media to finally voice their concerns about how President Obama is running the government.

That is, unless you’re David Brooks of The New York Times. “And I have my disagreements, say, with President Obama, but President Obama has run an amazingly scandal-free administration, not only he himself, but the people around him,” Brooks declared on the PBS Newshour on May 29. “He’s chosen people who have been pretty scandal-free.”

That’s simply absurd. Perhaps, for the Obama administration, it’s proven easier to deny the media’s access to information that might reveal further scandals than to admit the truth about its own deep-seated corruption. But as we’ve written, the derelict mainstream media leave “many scandals uninvestigated, minimized, or outright ignored,” including Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS scandal, and even the maltreatment of veterans or endangerment of our air travel.

FOIA is one tool for discovering the truth. Newsweek investigative reporter Leah Goodman recently “said there were no Washington-based editors or reporters from major publications on the panel testifying before the [House Oversight Committee] because they were afraid it would have a ‘chilling effect’ on their relations with the federal departments they cover,” according to WND’s Garth Kant.

“Goodman said that was also the reason no one had done a major story on the problems with government agencies stonewalling FOIA requests.”

At Accuracy in Media, we have a lot of experience dealing with the government on FOIA issues, over many years. And they sometimes take years to resolve. As a matter of fact, we currently have filed dozens of such cases in our effort to fill out the record surrounding the terrorist attacks in Benghazi in 2012. What we already know based on previously released information through other FOIA requests and lawsuits, as well as from the public record and individuals who have brought information to our Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, is chilling, and points to a systematic government cover-up.

Leah Goodman, Sharyl Attkisson and others laid bare the record of Obama administration stonewalling and corruption on FOIA at the House oversight hearing this week on Capitol Hill. The most transparent administration in history has been anything but. Even New York Times’ Assistant General Counsel David McCraw complained that the Times has to fight and sue at every turn to get the Obama administration to release information that the public has every right to know. That is ironic, considering that the Times is usually doing all it can to protect and defend the Obama administration. But there are exceptions, as we have cited before, such as New York Times reporter David Sanger who said, “This is the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered,” and James Risen of the Times, who said that the Obama administration has been “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.”

“When Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, her staff scrutinized politically sensitive documents requested under public-records law and sometimes blocked their release, according to people with direct knowledge of the activities,” reported The Wall Street Journal last month. Records that Clinton and her aides held back included documents regarding the Keystone XL pipeline and President Bill Clinton’s speaking engagements.

Years later, these very same issues are still inciting controversy, as further Clinton and Obama administration corruption has been uncovered by authors such as Peter Schweizer. “As Clinton Cash makes clear, speech payments by Keystone XL investor TD Bank to Bill Clinton occurred at critical moments when Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. was making key decisions affecting the pipeline,” reports Breitbart News. “Moreover,” citing Schweizer, “Canadian corporations with an interest in the project hired several senior aides from Hillary’s presidential campaign to assist them in their efforts.” Millions of dollars flowed to the Clintons personally for “speeches,” and TD Bank got the decision it was hoping for from Hillary’s State Department. Smoking gun? You decide.

No matter how much journalists like David Brooks try to boldly and falsely assert that this administration remains scandal free, it is clear that the Obama administration is hiding as much information about its corrupt activities as it can, including those brought about by its former Secretary of State. By stonewalling, delaying, and blacking out as much information as possible, this administration is doing its best to conceal the scandalous actions that it has perpetrated.

05/30/15

The Americans

By: Paul E. Vallely and Charles Jones
The American Report

Published by Stand Up America

For: Limited Distribution

The AMERICANS strongly believe that life, liberty, citizenship and the pursuit of happiness are the unalienable RIGHTS of every American Citizen that cannot be taken or transferred. However, not until We the People become brutally frank with ourselves and with each other will the Constitution be taken off the shelf and once again become operational. Only then can the Republic can be restored and preserved in its original ordained Constitutional Power and form.

We The People have suffered enormously since 1913 under the combined rule of two domineering political parties of 536 elected politicians along with those they have appointed. Tax and Spend, along with whatever it takes to rule, is the quest of one of the domineering parties. In the opposing party, weak backbones, failing to stand up and lead for what a majority of citizen voters want, coupled with the elite of the party stealthfully blending in with the tax and spend party, have destructively allowed the confiscation of far too much of the wages and retirement incomes from the citizens who pay income taxes.

These facts are now becoming more recognized with the most recent dastardly additions of: countless political deceptions, lies, national economic destruction, purposeful job-killing, the stealthful demise of America’s middle class, no Administration help for the massive unemployment of Black Americans plus the politically purposeful illegal alien invasion of the United States. Along with forty percent of the people within the fifty state borders who are receiving food stamps. This all is treason to each separate state and to the citizens within the several states and it is perpetuated by the elected and appointed inside the Washington DC beltway.

The Constitution requires that all laws must be faithfully executed, but far too many are not and have not been – – – specifically by the Executive Branch. Nor has the Oversight Power of Congress been exercised to ensure Executive Leadership enforcement of United States laws. These self-serving political failures have become destructive to the well-being, liberty and happiness of most American citizens. It must be recognized that “New Guards” for future personal safety and National Security must peacefully be put into place by citizens beginning with votes at the ballot box. Failed leadership can no longer stand if the Constitution and the Republic are to be preserved for our children and all future generations.

A deep look has been taken into the several national crises by “The Americans” leadership who care greatly about the Republic, the People and the Constitution. Necessary and workable solutions have been developed to help solve and fix what has without question stunted our Nation’s ability to clearly, legally and peacefully function as a Constitutional Republic.

KEY NATIONAL ISSUES that must be solved if the separate and collective States of The United States of America are to become economically solvent, remain peaceful and nationally secure are:

  • The Constitution of the United States as originally established and amended will remain in absolute and total effect. The original XIII Amendment as written and ratified is an operational Amendment and will be adhered to immediately. (The original XIII Amendment was falsely hidden by less than honorable men of the times). Congress shall make all laws necessary for carrying into execution the Powers authorized in the Constitution and that all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives. Constant Congressional leadership oversight will be maintained at all times. All Laws requiring Executive action will be faithfully executed upon receipt from Congress by the President and appropriate departments and selected agencies of Government under the President’s sworn responsibility and authority.
  • A strong National Defense of well-trained Active Duty, Guard and Reserve Forces maintained with proper equipment that can deter any enemy activism, or fight and win if deterrence fails will be assured by both the House and Senate of the US Congress for the protection of “We the People” and the preservation of the Constitution and the Republic. Readiness at all times will include a nuclear capability to win if Congress declares war against an enemy aggressor. The United States Military will in no way be used against United States Citizens. To do so will trigger expeditious Congressional actions to immediately and permanently remove anyone exercising such orders from elected or appointed office.
  • The United States Government cannot rebound from the man-made economic crises without satisfactory employment for a majority of American citizens. In turn, satisfactory and sustainable employment for American citizens simply cannot be achieved with the excessive tax rates that now exist for US businesses and the American people. All political plundering of the people’s wealth via taxation will be stopped. Our banking system and wealth management has been corrupted with the 1913 establishment of the Federal Reserve System, placing monetary and economic control in the hands of a few (now partisan) individuals. The Federal Reserve System will be abolished and all US Government financial and economic functions will be turned over to the US Treasury including the coining and printing of currency and the issuing of currency. US green-back bills will be printed and a one –for- one exchange to replace Federal Reserve notes will take place.
  • The IRS will immediately be abolished and that form of US government taxation will cease and desist. A zero-interest National Debt will be established at the US Treasury and a GDP annual growth limit not to exceed 3% will be tied to the previous year GDP growth.  A transition to a “fair or flat” tax must be accomplished as a priority.
  • The Illegal Alien Invasion of the United States will be stopped with a Secured Borders Double Fence on The US Southern Border and more Border Guards stationed on the Northern Border. All US borders will be further controlled and severe penalties (financial and incarceration) for employers who hire illegal aliens. Foreign countries will have named financial and trade restriction obligations to the United States for all of their citizens who come over US Borders illegally. There will be absolutely no jobs, no social services, no welfare nor medical services allowed to be provided to illegal alien invaders. (Emergency medical care only will be provided until they deported to home from which departed). American jobs are for US citizens, returning military veterans, part time high school students and the elderly. When US employers cannot find workers and can fully justify seeking foreign workers, Government permission will be granted for hiring temporary foreign workers.
  • The DHS with functions for national security and FEMA for emergencies have both grown far beyond the intentions of reasonable and responsible leadership control, budgeting, manpower, equipment and facilities. Deceptive political intentions for the potential use of facilities, weapons, massive purchases of ammunition plus military-type vehicles and railroad cars are greatly objectionable to American citizens and an insult to the economic deficit of the Nation. America’s leadership needs to be well-versed with the Active Military, County Sheriffs, Local Law Enforcement and National Guard overall capabilities within the continental limits of the United States that can handle any and all emergency situations, foreign or domestic, that might be faced. The DHS will be disbanded and certain functions will be merged into the Department Of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Interior (DOI). The FEMA name will be changed to “The National Emergency Agency” (TNEA) and manpower will be greatly reduced and merged into the DOI to be used for national emergency situations only. Their budget and emergency dispatch activities in the east, central and western parts of the country will be managed through the three numbered Air Forces of the Air Force Reserve Command.  All weapons, munitions and military-type vehicles will be transferred to the DOD immediately. All holding and or compound-type facilities will be closed and transferred permanently to local governments for non-detention uses only.
  • The Department of Energy will be abolished and certain specified oversight functions would be moved to the Department of Commerce.
  • The Department of Education will be abolished and its functions and all funding responsibility will be returned to each individual state, territory and the District of Columbia.
  • The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be abolished with responsibilities and functions removed to each individual state. Conflicts will be resolved at the Department of Commerce while working with the states.
  • In addition, selected Agencies will be moved from the National Capitol area and disbursed into the interior for cost-effective and long-term security reasons as well as seeking more diversified hiring of high quality civilian personnel throughout a larger portion of the Nation. (Rust-belt areas of high unemployment in the mid-west and other locations of far greater physical expansion capability will be given priority consideration for these moves and jobs.
  • The partisan and destructive Democrat Affordable Health Care Plan will be repealed and pre-2009 Medicare Programs will be fully reconstituted. Necessary changes and revisions to the existing Social Security System to ensure self-funding.
  • The Executive order that allows unions to exist in government and do collective bargaining in any and all tax-payer funded government jobs will be rescinded.
  • It will be the policy and understanding within the entire Republic to recognize each County Sheriff as the Elected Senior Law Enforcement Officer in each respective County and that a well-regulated militia, if formed, will be responsive to his Constitutional Sworn Oath as necessary requirements for security of a free state.
  • The United Nations will be defunded from the excessive monetary proportions US taxpayers have been forced to fund and a strong effort will be made to move this overbearing activity out of the United States. Politicians must come to realize that no United Nations deliberations can override the US Constitution.
  • Education, kindergarten through grade twelve, is a fundamental right for American school-age children and is a responsibility of county or city taxpayers to insure funding for that right. Citizen school children in far too many public schools have been denied that fundamental right to an education due to handicaps in classroom and interferences caused by countless non-English speaking children plus overcrowding and scarce tax dollars used to accommodate illegal alien school children. In addition to US Borders becoming secure, the 5 to 4 decision by the Burger Supreme Court that allowed all who choose to attend American taxpayer-funded schools regardless of citizenship will be revisited using Chief Justice Burger’s dissenting opinion as grounds for new litigation.
  • Defund the United Nations and have moved from New York to a location such as Athens, Greece, where the original nation-state was established.
  • Begin a systematic process to reorganize the Department of Defense into an organization of National Security that can prepare us for today and tomorrow with “forward strategies” that secure America.

It is the general consensus of The Americans Project that If the Republican Party does not hold the line in the US House of Representatives to secure the Southern US Border, plus demand existing immigration laws be faithfully executed by the Executive Branch, then stop all Senate Immigration Reform and also stand firm for defunding Obama-care, the results will be the demise of the Republican Party in the 2014 and 2016 elections. The 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections were lost because many Republican and Independent voters stayed home. There must be Honest National Leadership in place for the America First voters who care about the Constitution, the Republic and a secure future for their children.

Independent Constitutional Leadership selected by The Americans Project will be that Leadership. It will also become more evident to the voters that the course the Democrats have planned for America is destructive far beyond the imagination. This nation is being torn apart daily as the crises facts become known. Also most disturbing to Americans who care is the fact many are not confident We the People have a Constitutional Government in place because to this date absolutely no one has seen one document verifying Constitutional qualification of the person occupying the White House. Congress ignores all petitions for a redress of grievances and the Judiciaries at all levels of government have dismissed every attempt at addressing a legal option. The Democrat Party leadership signed two separate and different documents certifying eligibility to run for office as well as re-election eligibility. This is pure and simple elected and appointed sworn politicians run amuck. Enough is enough. If the United States of America and the separate states are to survive these greedy self-serving destructive political onslaughts, new leadership in existing elective offices is a must for every citizen.

Our government (all branches) of, by and for the people has lost control and has led us down a very destructive path of tyranny, corruption, cover-ups and deceit. We have to a degree lost the necessary checks and balances designed to provide an essential balance of power. That has led to a far-reaching federal government and an infringement on states’ rights. We must save the Republic and the country before we get to the point of no return. A National Call to Action is required by all of us to get our country on track! God save the Republic!

THE AMERICANS PROJECT

Paul Vallely
Major General, US Army (Ret)

Charles Jones
Brigadier General US Air Force (Ret)