11/7/15

The Soros-Koch Brothers Criminals Lobby

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

At a time of rising crime across the nation, Dr. Tina Trent exposes how George Soros and the Koch Brothers have joined forces to empty the prisons of illegal aliens and other criminals. Trent says the Koch Brothers are libertarians, not conservatives, and that “They’re more like George Soros than not.” The bills they are pushing are S. 2123 and H.R. 3713. Trent, an advocate for victims of crime, says the “criminal justice reform” legislation will modify the mandatory minimum sentences that have been put hardened criminals in jail and reduced crime. But many conservatives are silent about this because they take Koch Brothers money.

11/2/15

Ted Cruz Breaks With Koch Brothers on Crime Bill

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

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.

10/14/15

Putin’s Paid and Unpaid Liars

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The Dutch Safety Board has issued a report indicating that a Russian BUK missile destroyed Malaysian flight MH17, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board, in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. The only question is whether the missile was fired by Russian troops or terrorists under Russian control. In any case, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered an invasion of eastern Ukraine, has blood on his hands.

The Dutch took the lead because most of the dead were from the Netherlands.

The results were not surprising, since circumstantial evidence already pointed to the Russians as the culprits. Russia refused to cooperate with the investigation (led by the Netherlands, Ukraine, Malaysia, Australia and Belgium) and vetoed a U.N. tribunal established to try those responsible.

At the time of the mass murder, Kremlin-financed Russia Today (RT) television tried to obscure the truth about Russian terrorists bringing down the Malaysian plane, even though the facts known at the time implicated the terrorists in eastern Ukraine in the mass murder of nearly 300 people.

RT is carried by such giant media companies as Comcast. But in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the channel is not carried with disclaimers identifying the material as foreign propaganda. President Obama’s Justice Department is refusing to enforce the law.

As part of the disinformation campaign to divert attention away from Moscow’s bloody hands, RT released a “documentary” entitled “MH-17: the untold story,” claiming that a BUK missile did not hit the MH-17 plane. Instead, it was suggested that the plane went down because of cannon fire from a Ukrainian jet.

The lies were too much to take for Sara Firth, who had worked at Russia Today for five years. She told The Guardian that the channel’s coverage suggesting Ukraine was to blame for the crash was the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” She quit, saying, “It was the most shockingly obvious misinformation and it got to the point where I couldn’t defend it anymore.”

A variation of the Putin propaganda held that Ukraine downed the plane, thinking Putin was on it. Hence, it was an assassination attempt. We noted at the time, “This bizarre piece of disinformation surfaced on RT…[and] was linked to by the popular Drudge Report, used by many conservatives as their homepage, and then picked up by the Alex Jones’ Infowars.com site, a reliable outlet for pro-Russian propaganda.”

We reported in 2010 that RT has been eager to publicize Alex Jones and his various anti-American conspiracies because “they divert attention from the increasingly totalitarian nature of the Russian regime and the military threat that Russia still poses to American interests.” Jones was a regular guest on the RT propaganda channel, and defended Moscow’s invasion of its former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2008.

Matt Drudge, who made his name by posting the story about the stained dress, implicating President Bill Clinton in adultery, is considered a major player in the conservative media but has been living as a virtual hermit and rarely makes public appearances. However, he recently gave an interview to Jones and his Infowars.com show. Drudge, who didn’t allow his face to be seen, raised rumors about Hillary Clinton’s sex life and talked at length about the control of the flow of information, wondering if his website would be shut down. He was concerned that copyright laws could close down his popular site because he links to the work of others. “I had a Supreme Court Justice tell me it’s over for me,” said Drudge. “They’ve got the votes now to enforce copyright law, you’re out of there. They’re going to make it so you can’t even use headlines.”

In one interesting foreign policy exchange in the conversation that lasted about 45 minutes, Jones wondered if Putin was looking good in the Middle East, by claiming to target Islamic terrorists. This time, Drudge didn’t take the bait, and he moved on to other topics. Tina Trent, a commentator who has written about the impact of the Drudge Report, says it appears that Drudge is “dialing back” on his use of pro-Putin material supplied by Jones and other sources like Russia Today. “Maybe he’s travelled the world a bit and understands more about totalitarianism now,” she said.

Picking up the slack, another player in the Putin disinformation network is Don Hank, who claims to be a Christian conservative activist and runs a website. He distributed material claiming that the name of the Oregon killer had been included on a list of 87,000 “known/suspected” Islamic terrorists that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) had “refused last month to accept from Russia.”

Hank told his followers that Putin “was concerned enough about you and me to take time out of his busy day to warn us of a real and present danger!” But the U.S. government, he said, wanted us to die and ignored the warning.

The source of the information was said to be the Russian secret police, the FSB, making the whole thing suspect to begin with. However, the embedded link was to a different story on the FSB website that had nothing to do with the Oregon massacre.

Hank, who lives in Panama, said that the story had appeared in a “filthy rag” known as the European Union Times, and that he should have known better.

When the Dutch Safety Board pointed fingers at a Russian missile for the destruction of MH 17, Hank was up to his old tricks, telling his email list that the government of Ukraine brought down the plane, not the Russian terrorists. His source for this claim was the Moscow-funded RT channel.

The use of dubious sources like RT is what threatens the credibility and viability of legitimate websites that are truly independent and offering real facts and information.

04/4/15

The Soros-Koch Criminals Lobby

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

The Koch Brothers are working hand-in-glove with the Obama Administration and the “progressives” to empty the prisons. Van Jones, a former activist with the group, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), has emerged as a point man for Koch Industries in a multi-million dollar campaign for “criminal justice reform.” This campaign used to be financed by billionaire hedge fund operator George Soros. Watch this show to understand how Republicans like Georgia Governor Nathan Deal and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are part of this effort.

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.”