The details of our disgust and review can be accessed at:
http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/06/government-gone-wild-part-1-verizon.html
Today, we will focus on notable quotes but failed promises from this President as it relates to the current and massive privacy intrusions by his administration and the subsequent lack of trust in any thing this administration says. The bottom line is why should we trust him and his administration now when his history of promising but always falling short or reneging on his promises is so strong.
Tomorrow, we will review a set of insightful tyranny quotes from people living today and in the past that will put this assault on the Constitution by the Obama administration into perspective. But before we do any of this, let’s set the stage:
- As we reviewed yesterday, the government has obtained millions and millions of call log information from Verizon.
- The administration has been using the IRS to harass, sabotage, and deny the rights of Tea Party and conservative Americans to exercise their freedom of speech.
- The administration has been using the IRS to harass, sabotage, and deny the rights of various religious organizations to exercise their freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
- The administration denied “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to about two dozen Americans during the siege of the U.S. consulate at Benghazi by denying rescue support during a terrorist attack, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of four brave Americans.
- The administration was caught secretly obtaining and tracking down information on news journalists.
- The administration has made a habit of denying Freedom of Information Act requests and viciously going after brave government whistleblowers who report government's illegal acts.
- According to news reports from several weeks ago, the IRS apparently illegally obtained the health records of about 10 million Americans, including every California state judge, and now faces a California class action suit.
- According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the National Security Agency’s (NSA) monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks, not just Verizon, and also includes emails and Web searches, the NSA has also has confiscated and cataloged credit-card transactions records, and the NSA has also obtained data from Internet-service providers such as data about email or website visits, several former government officials said.
- As if confiscating American’s electronic activities is not enough, Britain's Guardian newspaper, which broke the original story on the NSA snooping, has reported that it has seen documents showing how the British eavesdropping agency GCHQ has had access to America's "Prism" system since at least June 2010 and thus, had access to American citizens‘ calling habits.
- At the behest of a Freedom Of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Department of Homeland Security has released a long-awaited 2011 assessment of the civil liberties impact of its policy of conducting “suspicionless” searches (i.e. the seizing and searching of American electronic devices within border areas without just cause, due process, or a warrant) of electronic devices at any U.S. border; not surprisingly, the ACLU calls the results of the DHS assessment “disappointing” for civil liberties advocates.
- "As President, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act and adhere to the Geneva Conventions." Four years later, Gitmo is still open, the American taxpayer continues to pay billions of dollars to manage and expand the facilities there, long time inmates are in the midst of a hunger strike and forced feeding, and the President recently promised to again to close the facility but admitted he had no idea how to do it. Failed promise.
- "After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home [in June 2011]… [O]ur troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended – because the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own." Thus, this promise would have had most of our troops and financial resources out of the country by Afghanistan by December, 2012 if the President was able to hit the 18 month target. The U.S. military will be in Afghanistan at least until 2014, and possibly longer, along with the associated taxpayer cost. Troop withdrawals have been modest since these statements. Failed promise.
- President Obama's stimulus package passed in 2009 and cost the American taxpayer over $800 billion. The administration boldly stated that if the stimulus package was not implemented, the U.S. unemployment rate would go as high as 8%. His stimulus program promised to get unemployment under 5% by May 2013 without millions dropping out of the labor force to get to that level. Well, the stimulus package was passed and the unemployment soared over 8% and stayed there for a record number of months, only recently dipping below 8% and only because so many Americans stopped looking for a job. Failed promise.
- "Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected," said the President in one of the bigger understatements of his administration. One of the biggest catch words of the stimulus program was that the money would be put to work immediately in so-called “shovel-ready” jobs. These jobs would be good paying, solid, long term jobs that built roads, repaired bridges, retrofitted schools, and did other good for society immediately. Several years later, even the President realized that there were no shovel ready jobs. Instead, the administration spent taxpayer wealth on replacing windows in a national park building that had been shut down and would never be reopened, a study of insects on an island half way around the world, and hundreds of other equally inane and useless programs, none of which were shovel ready jobs. Failed promise.
- "I won't stop fighting to open up government... we have put in place the toughest ethics laws and toughest transparency rules of any administration in history." Unfortunately, the Obama administration is even more secretive and unethical than the Bush administration. Failed promise.
- "But I want you all to know, I will not rest until anybody who's looking for a job can find one -- and I'm not talking about just any job, but good jobs that give every American decent wages and decent benefits and a fair shot at the American Dream." The Independent Journal Review claims that the President has taken at least 57 vacation days since making this statement in late 2009. But worse, he has held dozens of photo op meetings with NFL, NHL, NBA, college, and other sports teams that have been crowned champions in their respective sports. He has spent hours and hours talking about his college basketball picks during March Madness. He has probably attended hundreds of political fund raisers, including one within 24 hours after the attack and deaths at the Benghazi consulate. The overwhelming, most critical issue facing the President was the economy and jobs and he spent a lot of wasteful time on useless activities that had nothing to do with being President and reducing the unemployment rate. Failed promise.
- “Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you. First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.” But the Congressional Budget Office estimates that at least 7 million Americans will lose their current health insurance coverage as a result of his so-called health care reform legislation. Failed promise.
- “Now, add it all up, and the plan (Obama Care) I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion.” But the latest reputable estimates put the current cost not at $900 billion but almost double that amount, over $1.7 TRILLION. Failed promise.
- "This Administration (Bush administration) puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide…I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our Freedom. That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens, no more National Security letters to spy on American citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient." These words came from Senator Obama back in 2007. Looks like he really blew this promise, given his approval of wiretapping every Verizon customer, the seizing of Americans’ electronic devices in border areas, the confiscation of internet records, etc. Failed promise.
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/06/58005-president-obamas-broken-campaign-promises/1/
In light of all these disgraceful invasions of privacy and the multitude of failed promises by Obama and his administration, he now has the audacity of putting forth this quote this past week: "If you can't trust us, we're going to have some problems." WE are not going to have problems, you, Mr. President, have a canyon wide trust and integrity problem. How can we believe anything you tell us, given your administration’s recent anti-liberty actions and your history of failed promises?
This is truly the face of tyranny. Government intrusion and abuse of privacy in a democracy. The silencing of whistleblowers. Using government agents and agencies to silence political opponents and religious freedom. And then accusing the governed of having a trust problem. Despicable and disgusting.
But possibly we can learn from others, from today and in the past, when it comes to tyranny and how to handle it since tyranny of this scope has never been seen to this degree in this country. This education process starts tomorrow as we continue this series of “government gone wild.”
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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