Washington D.C.: The Land Of Do As I Say, Not As I Do

It has always been a nagging question for me that why do the politicians that make laws and the associated penalties in this country often never have to abide by the very laws they make:

• For example, annual Federal budgets are supposed to be turned in on time but under the Obama administration that deadline has been missed all but one year but no one ever paid the criminal price for missing that deadline. 
• The President is not supposed to be able to start wars without Congressional approval but our military intervention into the Libyan civil war went unpenalized by anyone in the administration. 
• Washington politicians made a grand showing when they passed a law to ban insider trading on stock picks by Washington types and then snuck in a counter law to make it almost impossible to be caught doing insider trading by Washington types. Overall, though, they still made it illegal for you and I do do insider trading.
• The Washington politicians passed OBamaCare legislation that required them and their staffs to be bound by the law and then successfully appealed to Obama to get them illegally exempted by the law they passed.

Other examples abound of “do as I say but not as I do” but you get the idea. This theme popped up after reading a recent article in Reason magazine. In light of the scandal of Hillary Clinton illegally and unethically using a private email process while Secretary Of State, so far without criminal penalties, the article pointed out that she was not the only member of the farcical “most transparent administration ever” to have broken the law...without paying the criminal price:

• On March 17, 2015, the administration quietly deleted the part of the Federal register requiring the White House Office of Administration to be subjected to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
• This past March 18, 2015, the Associated Press reported that the Obama administration had established a new record for having the most FOIA requests denied, with one third of those denials being overturned when appealed.
• Prior to the Obama administration, over half of all speedy processing requests for FOIA claims were granted but by last year only one in eight speedy claims were granted.
• Back in early 2013 EPA head Lisa Jackson resigned after it was discovered she was using a secret, illegal webmail address named “Richard Windsor.”
• Afterwards it was discovered that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Attorney General Eric Holder also used illegal email addresses to hide their actions and communications.
• Adding insult to injury, the Justice Department, the organization led by Holder, had the audacity to claim that these secret hidden email accounts did not “in any way impact compliance with FOIA requests.” Yeah, right, then why did Holder and others think it was a good idea to have those hidden accounts? I hate it when Washington types think we are that stupid.
• Given that Holder fought hard to keep his official communications secret in the botched and deadly Fast and Furious program, one can only imagine the scandals lurking in the emails he tried to keep hidden and secret.
• After five years of trying, The Associated Press finally got FOIA access after it filed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton’s State Department for Clinton’s emails.
• Let’s not forget the fact that tens of thousands of IRS email messages were “lost” after it was discovered that the IRS and possibly the Obama administration used the IRS to hassle political opponents and deny them their First Amendment rights.
• Staying with the First Amendment abuse theme, the administration hassled and spied on journalists including, but not limited to: twenty Associated Press writers and editors, Fox News national security reporter James Rosen, and the prosecution of more whistle blowers than all previous Presidential administrations combined.
• This First Amendment abuse led New York Times reporter James Risen to declare that the Obama Presidency is “the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation.”

Let’s be honest. If we did not file our taxes on time like the Washington politicians failed to file a budget on time, we would be prosecuted and fined and/or in jail. 

If we lied to the IRS about personal documents or hid evidence from law enforcement like Washington types hid their emails from legal and justifiable requests, we would be in jail. 

If we abused others First Amendment rights by denying them freedom of speech or aggressively went after people that told on us like the Obama officials went after whistle blowers, we would be in jail.

We would be in jail but those in Washington that write the laws that would put us in jail somehow always avoid jail or any kind of penalty for breaking the law and violating the Constitution. Which, is often the case, we end up again confronting the need for term limits for all Washington politicians. 

We need to clean house and finally put some honest people into office that actually do and act as they say like the rest of America is required to do. You can help start that process by visiting our term limit website at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.comlhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama, Part 2: Fake Emails and the Failure of HIs Government Transparency Promise

We are going to spend the next week or so reviewing the performance and results of the Obama administration from a number of different perspectives. We will be covering some new ground besides reposting some previous reviews in different areas that we have done on this administration.

I will be honest upfront and tell you that I see very little positive coming out of this administration. I believe, based on the discussion that we will have over the next week or so, that this is the most inept, corrupt, illegal, and dysfunctional Presidential administration in my lifetime, worse even than the Carter administration. General categories of incompetence include the following broad categories:

• Promises not kept or that were originally never meant to be kept and were just deceptions from the start.
• Government functions that are dysfunctional, obese, inefficient, and ineffective but very expensive from a taxpayer perspective.
• Constitutional violations that are widespread and destructive.
• Law breaking by many different members of this administration that are widespread and destructive.
• Government spending that is out of control, threatening the fundamental existence of this country; economy and democracy.
• Major issues that have not been addressed in any strategic or tactical way, e.g. failing public education, leaky borders, a lots war on drugs, crumbling infrastructure, etc.
• A Presidential leadership team that would rather play golf, attend political fund raisers, appear in nonsensical videos, host athletic teams, and take worldwide and expensive vacations but not resolve ANY issue facing the country.

Now, before any readers get crazy partisan and start accusing me of a hatchet job, consider the following:

• I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life.
• Up until 2010, I had never voted for a Republican for national office in my life (I am over 60 years old). 
• Most of my votes through the decades for local, county, and state offices have not been Republican.

Thus, by no stretch of the imagination am I anti-Obama because I am a Republican. I am an American who has looked at the facts and realities of this Presidency, facts and realities that we will lay out over the next week, and have come to the conclusion that this has been the worst, most secretive, most ineffective, most destructive, and most illegal Presidential administration my lifetime and possibly in the country’s lifetime. As someone recently said, the Obama Presidency is a Presidency that Nixon aspired to from a corruption and illegality perspective, certainly not a compliment.

Yesterday, we focused on the multitude of lies, deceptions, and broken promises that President Obama has made over the first six years of his Presidency. The impact, size, and audacity of his deceptions was impressive, the good they did for the country and his integrity is negligible. Today, we will shift the focus a little and talk about the illegal activities of many members of his administration in the area of email hijinks.

Apparently, if you are working for the Federal government, you have to use official government issued, protected, and maintained email accounts and computers. It is my understanding that failure to do so is a criminal activity and a violation of existing law.

The rationale, as far as I can tell, is sound for such a policy and law:

1. The government should be accountable to the citizens of the country and their accountability and activities in this electronic age has to include their electronic communications to ensure that laws and the Constitution are being followed.
2. There is no secret that the world is full of computer hackers. Thus, by not using official government email accounts and computers, government secrets and activities are more likely to be hacked and published if not protected by government security protocols. And even this precaution is not fool proof, given that Eric Snowden was able to capture and release thousands and thousands of secret government documents. Imagine how much easier it would be to get U.S. government secrets that were not as well protected.
3. And from a policy and public relations perspective, it made super sense for the Obama administration to adhere to the letter and spirit of this law since he promised us he would run the most transparent Presidential administration ever which presumably means that government executives and employees would not be sneaking around and using secret email accounts.

Despite this sound, three part rationale, it appears that many within the administration went off the plan and ended up, and got caught, using private, unofficial email accounts to conduct secret government business. We saw the first inkling of this rogue behavior from the previous head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson several years ago. 

She got caught when it was revealed that she was using a private email account, which I think was named after a dog from her life, to conduct secret EPA business. By using a secret, unofficial email account, she could hide agreements, deals, law breaking from Congress and the American people since any audit of her official email accounts would obviously not show what she was doing in the shadows of her unofficial email communications. 

But this type of illegal behavior really hit the fan hard recently when it was revealed that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had also indulged herself in the use of private, non-government email accounts to conduct official State Department business. Even worse, it is now established that she used these secret email accounts via a computer server that she installed IN HER HOUSE! 

This is obviously much more dangerous behavior vs. the EPA hiding of communications. The State Department deals with the relationships of the U.S. with the rest of the world’s countries. Lord knows what kind of secret deals and communications were going on with the rest of the world that Congress and Americans might never had known about.

Plus, and probably even more important, did her use of a secret computer and secret email accounts put the security of the country at risk? Again, there are hackers all over the world, both private and government sponsored hackers, that what have loved to get access to the Secretary of State’s emails. 

Did the Chinese, Russian, Iranian, or other governments hack her emails as they were sent out? If she was operating her own server, again, out of HER HOUSE, I am pretty sure it would be a safe bet that it was nowhere as secure than government maintained and protected computers and email accounts. If foreign hackers hacker her emails, did that put the strategies and interests of the country at risk? 

Did terrorist hackers know that the consulate at Benghazi was under protected since a lot of the communications from murdered ambassador Chris Stevens involved his pleas for increased security? Did that embolden the terrorists to attack and murder four Americans because they knew from Clinton’s email accounts that security was not adequate? Did Clinton cut deals with the Muslim Brotherhood or other shady organizations to help topple the Qaddafi regime, using the private emails to hide her collusion with known terrorist groups?

Did Clinton use the private emails to cut deals with foreigners and foreign governments who many obviously contributed millions and millions of dollars to the Clintons’ foundation in exchange for diplomatic favors, favors that were meant to be hidden from Congress and the American people? 

As you can see, the potential list of bad things that could have happened, either intentionally or unintentionally, by Clinton using secret email accounts and her own computer server in HER HOUSE, is long and potentially damaging to the country.

That is why such behavior was ruled illegal and punishable by a court of law. But that day may not come right away if ever. Clinton is dodging and blaming and weaving, trying to extricate herself out of this serious breach of security and law. She has admitted to deleting tens of thousands of emails that she alone deemed private and not State Department related. I am assuming this was easy to do since the emails were on a computer server IN HER HOUSE. But it certainly raises suspicions that if they were harmless, why delete them? 

She is trying to put the onus back on the State Department to give the emails to Congress. There are rumors and stories starting to circulate that Obama and his cohorts are behind the leaking of the existence of the emails since the Obamas and Clintons supposedly to not like each other. All kinds of rumors, stories, and accusations about this serious reach of national security and established law are likely to come up in the following months. However, what is not in doubt is that 1) she broke existing law and 2) she had the computer server located IN HER HOUSE.

But Ms. Clinton and Ms. Jackson are not the only Obama officials to break existing law by using private, off the books email accounts. The Huffington Post recently reported that Attorney General Eric Holder has also used secret emails and various aliases even though he was the nation’s top law enforcement officer. One of the aliases was “Henry Yearwood” in additional to at least two others.

Unlike Clinton’s secret email accounts, at least Holder’s secret accounts were Federal government email accounts which hopefully had better protection and security than Clinton’s accounts which ran through a computer server IN HER HOUSE. Of course, Holder’s office claimed that his use of secret accounts and different aliases did not interfere with the production of Holder emails demanded by Congressional committees and investigators or any other Freedom of Information requests. Right...nothing to see here, just move along.

But really, he is the top law enforcement official in the country and here he is breaking the law from a private email perspective. What does that say for the integrity of the Obama administration and Holder’s administration of the Justice Department? Not much. Pretty sure that if we as citizens destroyed and hid sensitive documents we would end up behind bars.

So the head of the EPA illegally hid communications and plans from Congress and the country with fake email accounts. 

The Associated Press reported in 2013 that the former head of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, illegally used private email accounts to hide plans and communications from Congress and the country. 

The top diplomat in the U.S. and the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton, used illegal and fake email accounts to hide her dealings with worldwide leaders via a computer server IN HER HOUSE. 

And the top law enforcement official in the Obama administration also used fake email accounts and aliases to hide communications from the country.

Illegal, deceptive, suspicious, endangering national security, possibly enriching one’s self or one’s foundation, etc., are certainly not descriptors that a noble and honest Presidency wishes to be known as. But really, anyone that knows the realities of this administration is not likely to use the words noble and honest in praise of it. 

Which is especially disappointing since, as we pointed out yesterday, Obama promised the most transparent Presidency of all time. Instead, fake email accounts and rogue computer servers give the impression that this administration has more things to hide than any other administration in recent and not so recent history. A failure of historical proportions.

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science Update, Part 5: More Global Warming Scientists Turn to the Doubter Side and How 1970 Doomsday Climate Forecasts Failed Miserably

This will be final post in the latest update to our continuing series, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” In this series we present solid scientific evidence, research, and findings that prove that there are serious counterpoints to the global warming mania and that the “science is not settled” on man made global warming and climate change, despite what Al Gore says.

The first post in this update series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/05/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.html

Let’s finish up with the latest news and research from those that doubt but still believe in science.

1) Mother Jones, a publication that leans left politically, would be expected to be “pro” man made global warming and climate change. In fact, in a recent article, the Mother Jones editors made fun of the state of Oklahoma because the state government officials there recently voted against new science education standards that give credibility and legitimacy to the global warming theories.

Specifically, Mother Jones said: "As much as any state in the U.S., Oklahoma is a victim of climate change. In 2011, notes the newly released U.S. National Climate Assessment, the state suffered from its hottest summer on record ... And the report states as plainly as you can that climate change was involved."

But are we dealing in theory or reality when they make such statements? In a recent article in the American Thinker by Sierra Rayne, this writer appears to deal with real data and realities than the theories espoused by Mother Jones (note: Ms. Rayne is a native Oklahoman):

• First of all, keep in mind that “climate change” in the 1930s, before the current global warming rage, resulted in the Great Dust Bowl era with little rain and half of the state’s residents moving out of the state to find better lives. 
• Rayne states: "The Sooner State has a statistically significant increasing -- not decreasing -- trend in annual precipitation since records begin in 1895. That would be the complete opposite of 'drying up.'" 
• "There are no negative trends in annual precipitation for any of Oklahoma's nine climate sub-regions, either, over the past 120 years. None.”
• "There are no declining trends in summertime precipitation for the state as a whole, nor in any of its climate sub-regions, since 1895. None.”
• "You may also be interested to know that there are also no significant trends in Oklahoma's statewide average annual or summertime temperatures since 1895."
• Rayne’s underlying data and research were collected over the years by the Federal government’s National Weather Service. These government tracking numbers show Oklahoma getting wetter, not drier, over time.

So who do you believe? Mother Jones who based their conclusions on the an organization that appears to need the global warming and climate change debate to continue to perpetuate their existence the Federal government’s own data as collected by Rayne? In a rare case, I choose to believe the cold hard government data rather then the shaky theoretical inferences of global warming advocates.

2) Dr. Lennart Bengtsson is the former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. He probably is a pretty good scientist/ Apparently, Dr. Bengtsson is a prominent and leading climate modeler and research scientist…but one that has come around to the other side of the argument when it comes to giving an credence to the failed forecasts of global warming advocates over the years:

I think the climate community shall be more critical and spend more time to understand what they are doing instead of presenting endless and often superficial results and to do this with a critical mind. I do not believe that the IPCC machinery is what is best for science in the long term. We are still in a situation where our knowledge is insufficient and climate models are not good enough. What we need is more basic research freely organized and driven by leading scientists without time pressure to deliver and only deliver when they believe the result is good and solid enough. It is not for scientists to determine what society should do. In order for society to make sensible decisions in complex issues it is essential to have input from different areas and from different individuals. The whole concept behind IPCC is basically wrong.

Doubter words from a SCIENTIST who used to be a global warming advocate. Want to bet that Dr. Bengttson never gets invited to an Al Gore event any more?

3) I get a kick out of global warming advocates who lecture us on reducing our personal carbon footprint and then jet all over the world attending global warming conferences and reinforcing their own narrow views. This type of hypocrisy was recently pointed out by a short article on the Heritage Foundation website. Gina McCarthy is the head of the EPA and is on public record in her belief that we all need to drastically reduce our carbon footprint.

Well, maybe not all of us. Seems that Ms. McCarthy maintains two homes, one in Boston and one in the DC area. According to the article, she usually flies home to Boston every weekend. Thus, she is probably spewing out many, many times more of carbon than the typical American by maintaining two homes and burning up a lot of airplane fuel every weekend. If she really walked the talk, she would move to her job in DC and sell the Boston area house, which would also reduce her airline carbon spewing. Hypocrisy of the advocates.

4) The following points fall into a general train of thought, paraphrased from the Hillary Clinton Benghazi scandal, “what difference does it make:”

• According to research done by the Science And Public Policy Institute (http://sppiblog.org/news/updated-paper-at-sppi-puts-lie-to-carbon-taxes), what difference does it make if the U.S. goes it alone in the global warming battle since, according to their research, if U.S. carbon emissions went to zero overnight, i.e. no driving, no flying, no operating factories or homes unless they ran on only nuclear power, the Earth’s temperatures would warm by only 0.08 degrees Celsius by 2050. Seems like very little pay back for the disruption of every Americans’ life and the collapsing of our economy if the rest of the world does not follow our lead.
• According to former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, what difference does it make if the U.S. goes it alone since U.S. efforts by themselves would not meaningfully impact global CO2 levels (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2009/07/08/huge-co2-emissions-disagreement-between-epa-energy-dept-ignored-msm). 
• According to Robert Samuelson, writing in the Washington Post, what difference does it make since there is no solution to climate change or global warming since 1) we will need a 40% reduction in in overall carbon emissions to meet the global warming advocates’ expectations and 2) carbon intensive economies like China and India are more focused on expanding their economies and reducing their countries’ poverty levels than melting ice caps, which means that carbon spewing coal uses will actually increase by 50% in the coming decades regardless of what the U.S. does. He concludes that “whatever the U.S., does will make little difference.”

All of which leaves only two options:

1. President Obama needs to rally the world around his global warming and climate change visions since the whole world needs to get into the act, not just the U.S. For every coal burning plant that Obama shuts down in this country, dozens if not hundreds of new ones will spring up in China, India and elsewhere. Given how weak his foreign policy talents have been and how weak the rest of the world now judges him, his ability to pull this option off is next to impossible.
2. The second option, as Mr. Samuelson points out is based on, of all things, science: “The only real hope is to find a new technology that produces energy as cheaply as fossil fuels but with no carbon emissions.” 

This is the way to use science for the good and the benefit of mankind rather than to abuse it to limit and restrict mankind. That is why I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science: science has given us such wonderful technology to increase our potential and our freedom. 

We should be focused on that strategic, scientific approach rather than the governmental policy and control approach preached and shouted by the Al Gores of the world, despite the overwhelming evidence that manmade global warming and climate change are becoming myths to be used for societal control than science used for societal improvements.

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:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Transparent Failure Of Obama's Transparency Promise

One of President Obama’s greatest assets is that he makes grandiose, bold commitments of what his administration is going to do for the American people and the nation. When he came into office, he promised to “usher in a new era of open government” and “act promptly” to make information public.

One of President Obama’s greatest liabilities is that he rarely, if ever, fulfills those promises. Consider his track record:

• One of the first acts he was going to do when elected in 2008 was to shut down the prison facility at Guantanamo since it was a symbol of U.S. repression. As of today, nearly four years later, the prison is still open with no sign it will be shut down any time soon.
• He promised, that unlike George Bush, he would not go around Congress and appoint any high ranking government bureaucrat without Congressional approval and hearings, a promise that he has broken numerous times.
• He promised that his economic stimulus program would get unemployment well below 6% and prevent it from ever going over 8%. Unfortunately, his administration oversaw an all time record for consecutive months having an unemployment rate over 8%.
• He promised that he would slash the annual Federal government spending deficit in half by the end of his first term but ended up setting sky high record deficits every year of his first term, incurring a total national debt of over $5 TRILLION in just four short years.
• He promised that he would never raise taxes in a weak economy on any American, something he canot wait to do now.
• He promised he would quickly disengage U.S. forces in Iraq and ended up taking three years to do it and using the existing Bush exit plan.
• He promised to slash earmarks, thinly disguised misuses of taxpayer wealth by incumbent politicians to finance their reelection campaigns, but was unable or unwilling to do so.
• At his swearing in ceremony, he swore to uphold the Constitution and laws of the land and then ignored both during his first four years in office by engaging our military in the Libyan civil war without Congressional approval, ignoring court orders by a Federal judge relative to the Gulf oil drilling moratorium, unilaterally declining to enforce the tenets of the DOMA law (a law that should have never been passed but was the law of the land, requiring the administration to enforce it), and sanctioned the first official government assassination of an American citizen without due process of law.

We could go on with other broken promises but you get the idea. Great at promising, pitiful in delivering on those promises. But probably his biggest lie/disappointment has been the promise to operate the most transparent Presidential administration ever. No secrets, open government, high transparency. Not surprising, this is also a failed promise, a very large failure across all Federal entities:

1) Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA, is involved in the latest Obama administration embarrassment over transparency when it came to light that she has been conducting EPA business using two email accounts. One account is a publicly known and used, official email account.
Another email account that she has been reportedly using for private EPA business is listed under the Richard Windsor, a moniker that very few people knew was actually Ms. Jackson. Richard Windsor is a family dog from Ms. Jackson’s childhood. Obviously, at least on the surface, this appears to be a way for a top Obama administration official to bypass those nasty laws on transparency, freedom of information requests, and Congress.

According to a recent article on the same topic from the Washington Times on November 17, 2012, government open-records laws are supposed to make information available to the public now and for posterity at the National Archives, the government agency that gathers official correspondence. There are strict rules on the use of email addresses, and the rules prohibit using private emails to try to bypass open-records laws.

The EPA claims nothing was amiss here, just an EPA official doing business like many of her predecessors that also may have had alternative, secretive emails. Obviously, there are two problems with this excuse. First, just because previous people had secret email accounts does not make it right, legal, or transparent, as promised by Obama.

And second, experts in this area of governance are not buying this somewhat lame excuse, quoting from a recent article from Politico:

• “I don’t know any other agency that does this,” said Anne Weismann, chief counsel of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which asked EPA’s inspector general on Tuesday to investigate the matter. Even if Jackson needs a separate email account, Weismann asked, “why would you pick a fictitious name of someone of different gender? To me it smacks of ... trying to hide.”
• Another expert, Bradley Blakeman, a former senior Bush aide who later Freedom's Watch, stated in a broadcast interview that the EPA arrangement “smells.”
• “What good reason, if we use common sense, would there be for a high government official to have a fictitious email account?” he asked.

Good question, Mr. Blakeman. Congress is investigating, as are some government inspector generals, to see if this was an actually attempt to undermine and undercut government transparency rules, regulations, and promises.

2) But the intrigue of hidden emails to possibly avoid transparency does not stop at the EPA. The Washington Times article cited above reported on similar hanky-panky at the Department of Energy. According to the article, a Congressional committee, the Science committee, investigating this hidden email scandal found that Jonathan Silver, the Energy Department’s loan officer, “explicitly directed others to keep loan guarantee communications secret by not linking public and private email accounts, and sent emails detailing official government business using his private email account.”

One instance of using hidden emails to conduct secret business might be an accident. However, two departments using hidden emails to conduct secret business is a trend. If we find another department doing the same shenanigans, we have a scandal and a confirmed broken promise of the Obama administration.

3) A November 21, 2012 article on the Info Wars website cited a Washington Post story which reported the Obama administration had secretly signed off on a secret cyber security Presidential directive that would allow intelligence agencies, like the National Security Agency (NSA), to secretly operate on the networks of private companies, such as Google and Facebook.

This directive would greatly expand the NSA’s authority and ability to spy on citizens and companies. In response to this obvious direct hit on freedom and privacy, lawyers from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request demanding that the Obama administration release the text of the directive for review.

Unfortunately, for liberty and transparency, the NSA denied the FOIA request. The NSA contends that it does not have to release the directive since it is a confidential Presidential communication and it is classified. So much for transparency.

The EPIC plans to continue the legal battle for transparency on this issue, which we wish them luck on. However, this is not the first time that the EPIC and this not-so-transparent administration have clashed over the release of government information:

• In testimony to Congress earlier this year, EPIC explained that the NSA has been a “black hole for public information about cybersecurity.”
• EPIC is also currently involved in an ongoing lawsuits involving the secret nature of the NSA’s secretive relationship with Google
• Another EPIC lawsuit, this one four years old dating back to in 2008, is also being pursued relative the NSA’s cybersecurity authority.

Again, so much for transparency, a concept that is critically important when it comes to freedom and the authority of government to spy on its own citizens without debate, without judicial overview, and without consent.

4) If you are like most Americans, you are probably not aware of what the government calls “fusion centers. These “centers” are regional government centers that collect information on American citizens. Quite simply, they are domestic spying operations, as defined by Wikipedia: “A fusion center is an information sharing center, many of which were created under a joint project between the Department of Homeland Security and the US Department of Justice‘s Office of Justice Programs between 2003 and 2007."

They are designed to promote information sharing at the Federal level between agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Justice, US Military, and state and local level government. As of July 2009, the Department of Homeland Security recognized at least seventy-two fusion centers.
In other words, fusion centers are domestic spying and analysis centers located around the country. Now, I understand there are reasons for secrecy and security when it comes to protecting citizens. However, not unexpected, given what we have already discussed, earlier this year the Department of Homeland Security has more or less unilaterally decided that fusion centers will be exempt from Freedom Of Information request and other inquiries.

Thus, most, if not all, Americans will never know if they are under investigation or if their names and personal information have somehow gotten identified and stored by one of these fusion centers, making them a perennial suspect in the government’s eyes. The concept of freedom of information was to ensure that these types of domestic spying activities were open to the air and sunshine of disclosure and discussion in our democracy.

To unilaterally decide not to share the processes and information that the government is collecting on innocent Americans (remember the quaint concept of “innocent until proven guilty”) is not consistent with the concept of liberty. It is certainly not consistent with the concept of government transparency.

  5) But apparently this lack of transparency in the Obama administration is not related to just national security and spying. Bloomberg ran an investigation that they ran in an article in late September regarding the utter failure of the Obama administration of fulfill a simple FOIA request:

• Nineteen of 20 cabinet-level agencies disobeyed the law requiring the simple disclosure of public information unrelated to national security.
• The request was the travel cost of top government officials.
• Bloomberg found that just eight of the 57 Federal agencies met Bloomberg’s request for those documents within the 20-day window required by the Act.
• Nineteen of the twenty Cabinet level requests were not fulfilled in time to be in compliance with Federal disclosure laws.
• In an ironic twist of government incompetence and secrecy, the Department of Justice, which is charged with monitoring how well Federal entities react to FOIA requests, also failed to release the travel details of top officials at three of its affiliated agencies, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in according to the legal requirements and law.
• Some agencies tried to minimize FOIA compliance by illegally trying to charging requestors of information thousands of dollars for the information.
• According to the article, the Obama administration claimed almost half a million exemptions to the FOIA laws and guidelines in 2009, about 50% more exemptions claimed than in the final year of the Bush administration.

According to experts on government disclosure compliance:

• “When it comes to implementation of Obama’s wonderful transparency policy goals, especially FOIA policy in particular, there has been far more ‘talk the talk’ rather than ‘walk the walk,’” said Daniel Metcalfe, director of the Department of Justice’s office monitoring the government’s compliance with FOIA requests from 1981 to 2007.
• “I don’t think the administration has been very good at all on open-government issues,” said Katherine Meyer, a Washington attorney who has been filing open records requests since the late 1970s. “The Obama administration is as bad as any of them, and to some extent worse.”
• “In a 24/7 world, it should take two days, it should take two hours. If it’s public, it should be just there,” according to Eric Newton, senior adviser at the Knight Foundation, a Miami-based group that promotes citizen engagement, said agencies have no excuse not to rapidly disclose travel costs.

So it is not just national security that the Obama administration officials think should be shielded form the daylight of disclosure. Hardly the behavior you could have expected form a Presidential administration that claimed it would be the most transparent ever. Given these five sets of examples, it is clear that this group of politicians and bureaucrats, from Obama on down to most government agencies, will never receive an award for their transparency.

But wait...the Obama administration did get recognized for his transparency back in March of 2011:

(http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0311/not_a_secret_anymore_a00ccd98-0d9e-4822-8936-168f3a51b959.html).

But we do not know anything about the transparency award since the ceremony was closed to the press and the public, totally consistent with Obama‘s transparency failures. Another promise broken, to the detriment of freedom and liberty.

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

Another 1,900 Reasons Why No American, Rich Or Poor, Should Pay An Additional Penny In Taxes

Many times in this blog we have successfully, forcefully, and mathematically made the case that no American, rich or poor, should be an extra penny in Federal taxes because of the rampant waste inefficiency, and criminal fraud currently going on in every Federal entity:

• Medicare and Medicaid lose anywhere from $110 to $150 billion a year to waste and criminal activity.
• Social Security loses about $125 billion a year to waste and criminal activity.
• The IRS admits that it fails to collect about $385 billion a year from tax evaders who do not pay their fair share of taxes.
• Federal unemployment and food stamp programs lose about $25 billion a year to waste and criminal activity.
• Multiple, overlapping, and inefficient Federal programs in a wide range of areas (job training, teacher training, food safety, etc.) wastes tens of billions of dollars every year without any discernible taxpayer benefits.
• Over staffed, over paid, and excessive benefits to Federal workers and politicians waste tens of billions of dollars every year.
• Unnecessary and expensive deployments of U.S. troops around the world waste tens of billions of dollars every year.

The list goes on and on, with the following examples of other government waste just a small sample:

• http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/09/now-it-is-huds-turn-to-waste-taxpayer.html
• http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/now-veterans-affairs-bureaucracy-gets.html
• http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/wastebook-2012-wasteful-federal.html

That is why no American should be forced to give up any more of their wealth, the Federal government and the politicians that operate it will just end up wasting the additional tax revenue like they do with the current tax revenue they collect.

In addition, according to a recent, October 22, 2012 article from the Washington Guardian, there are at least another 1,900 reasons why American should not pay any more in taxes than they currently do:

• According to the article, the Federal government has about 1,900 investigations underway into the misspending and criminal fraud involved with the Economic Stimulus program.
• These 1,900 investigations have already resulted in the arrest of over 600 people according to an online Federal government Internet post in September.
• Since that online blog post, several Federal inspectors generals have announced new convictions, prosecutions, or audits, a sign that some of the investigations are growing closer to decisions and actions.
• Federal investigators have already identified over $11 billion of waste taxpayer money and with 1,900 investigations underway, that number is expected “to balloon in the coming months.”
• For example, the Energy Department inspector general announced in mid-October that it had found that the California energy commission collected two duplicate payments under the stimulus program that cost taxpayers $678,000.
• The Health and Human Services inspector general recently found that a Louisiana group which had gotten funds for Head Start programs for children had inappropriately spent nearly $1.2 million in Federal funds to constrict a new building that was not approved by Federal officials, a conclusion the group is contesting.
• The Energy Department inspector general warned in its recent semiannual report that the Western Area Power Administration, which received $3.25 billion in borrowing authority to help build transmission lines under the stimulus program, is at risk of losing significant money on a transmission project for wind power in Montana that it funded.
• A former superintendent of a Montana construction company was charged last month with making false statements regarding the quality of work his firm performed on a Federal bridge project in Idaho, a project that was funded with $21.6 million in stimulus money.
• Federal inspectors and auditors discovered that veterans seeking stimulus related benefits had claimed more than 16,000 dependents with Social Security numbers matching those of dead people.
• Other audits found more than 150 potential shell companies may have improperly received Recovery funds set aside just for the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business program.
• The audits also identified more than four hundred recipients of stimulus funds, from 15 different Federal agencies, who had previously been terminated for default, most getting the money after falsely certifying they had not been terminated for default.

There are about 1,900 more cases of potential fraud and waste that inspector generals, auditors, and eventually prosecutors will be going through in the coming months and years. Given that the Economic Stimulus failed miserably in attaining its stated goal of reducing unemployment to well under 6% and never allowing it to exceed 8%, these examples of fraud and wasteful, criminal spending just add insult to injury when it comes to taxpayer wealth.

But wait, there’s more! Recent government waste is not restricted only to stimulus funding. Consider these recently reported, totally unnecessary, wasteful expenditures of taxpayer money that went to vain, selfish top level government bureaucrats. Keep in mind that these expenses were incurred while 23 million Americans are unemployed or under employed and our national debt is now well over $16 TRILLION (these findings were posted at the Against Crony Capitalism website as reported by the Washington Times):

• The Environmental Protection Agency recently spent nearly $40,000 on a portrait of EPA top administrator Lisa P. Jackson.
• A painting of Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley will cost $41,200, according to Federal purchasing records.
• The price tag for a 3-by-4-foot oil portrait of Agriculture Department Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack will cost taxpayers $22,500. A 3 feet by 4 feet portrait, really? Talk about excessive spending and vanity.
• In total, the government has paid out at least $180,000 for official portraits just in the past year, based on an analysis of Federal expense records by The Washington Times of Federal agencies and military offices across government.

These are Federal bureaucrats. They have not saved people’s lives by running into a burning building. They have not heroically saved their fellow comrades lives in combat. They have not come up with a cure for cancer. They are not outstanding teachers making life long positive impacts on kids’ lives. Given how ineffective every Federal entity is, they have obviously not turned their respective organizations into a finely tuned, efficient government organization.

They are hum drum, short term, Federal bureaucrats who will be in their current jobs for only a few years. But that does not stop them from using taxpayer money to feed their egos and vanity to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year just to get their portrait painted.

Wasteful spending. Criminal fraud. Vanity expenses. Yes, no American, rich or poor, should have to pay another penny in taxes until these and a myriad of other atrocities of wasted taxpayer wealth are addressed and eliminated.

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