When Was the Word "Taxes" Replaced with the Word "Revenues"?

Taxes used to be called precisely what they are - TAXES or the plunder forcibly extracted from citizens to fund government and all that government does. However, lately the word TAXES seems to have disappeared from the discourse and the hot new media term is REVENUES. Moreover, the raising of taxes (revenue) is now dubbed comprehensive tax reform by Democrats and progressives because the accurate and meaningful term "tax increase" tends to cause folks to angrily freak out. But heck, so long as the debate is camouflaged in deceptively benign terms like revenue and comprehensive tax reform, the folks just aren't deemed smart enough to notice the truth about what is really going on.

The Huffington Post  had a big blazing headline.

NO MORE REVENUE!

The headline links to an article complaining about how Sen. Mitch McConnell proclaimed that there will be no more new taxes.

Mitch McConnell On Future Debt Deals: 'The Tax Issue Is Finished'

There will be no more increases in tax revenues as part of any debt or deficit-reduction deal, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared in several interviews on Sunday.

“[T]he tax issue is finished, over, completed,” said the Kentucky Republican, during an appearance on ABC’s "This Week."....

The comments represent a deep line in the sand as Congress and the White House approach the debates over replacing the $1 trillion in sequester-related cuts, the raising of the debt ceiling, and the passage of a continuing resolution to fund the government. And they foreshadow another major showdown between congressional Republicans and the administration.

The president has said that he will not make major entitlement reforms or spending cuts during those negotiations unless it is part of a balanced approach. On Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi echoed that view.

“No, no, it is not,” she said, when asked by CBS’ Bob Schieffer if the revenue side was now taken care of. “I mean, the president had said originally he wanted $1.6 trillion in revenue, he took it down to 1.2 as a compromise in this legislation. We get $620 billion dollars, very significant, high-end tax, changing the high-end tax rate to 39.6 percent, but that is not enough on the revenue side.”

The hope, among Democrats, is that another $600 billion in revenue may be raised through comprehensive tax reform.

There can be no question that the Dems are bitterly complaining about how unhappy they are because they didn't get $1.6 trillion in new taxes.  Clearly, the crusade to plunder Americans of every cent they ever earned will continue unabated because the thought of reducing government spending is just too horrifying a thought for the confiscating totalitarian thugs who thrive on folks being forcibly impoverished by the government and reduced to pathetic beggars.

My Two Cents on Benghazi

The right wing media is exploiting the Benghazi disaster as an opportunity to diss President Obama and personally blame him for the entire fiasco.  Fox News is especially all over the story.

EXCLUSIVE: CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack, sources say

Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to "stand down," according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to "stand down."

Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters.

I don't doubt any of the above facts. Most news reports have pretty much included the same information. But here's the problem: the military and the CIA have a long history of hating each other. The CIA is a secretive and covert organization that pretty much operates without any scrutiny whatsoever. Moreover, the CIA literally controls the US State Department and always has. Benghazi was not the US Embassy, which is in Tripoli. The CIA is notorious for creating these consulates as bases of operation for CIA missions, missions that typically include arming and funding radicals and jihadists for the purpose of destabilization of a nation and regime change.  It's been going on at least since the days of Jimmy Carter who funded and armed the Afghan Mujuhadeen, now the Sunni Islamist Taliban, to fight the Soviets.  The CIA was a key 'on the ground' player in Afghanistan during the Cold War and is directly responsible for arming some of the most dangerous folks on the planet.

Unfortunately, the US has a very long history of being in bed with radical Sunni Wahhabist Salafist Islamists and the top of this disturbing pyramid goes straight to the House of Saud, the kingpin of Wahhabist Sunni Islamist terror.  It's no coincidence that 15 of the 19  911 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia.  The foreign policy of the US is to support, fund and arm radical Sunni jihadists and we've been doing it for a long time.  The US government and the CIA backed and supported Pakistan's nuclear arms program, along with Saudi Arabia.  Pakistan used to be a nation teeming with radical Sunni Islamists but now, courtesy of the US and it's Saudi alliance, is a nuclear armed radical Sunni Islamist nation.  It's only a matter of time before some zealot Sunni nutjob seizes control of Pakistan's nukes and starts firing away.  Moreover, Pakistan was once a benign Muslim nation until Saudi and Gulf Sunni money and madrassahs started pouring into the nation to radicalize the population.

The hardcore neocon website, familysecuritymatters.org, is accusing Obama of being an ally of Al Qaeda.

Arms Flow to Syria May Be Behind Benghazi Cover-Up

Stevens was tasked with helping to coordinate U.S. assistance to the rebels, whose top military commander, Abdelhakim Belhadj, was the leader of the Al Qaeda affiliate, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). That means that Stevens was authorized by the U.S. Department of State and the Obama administration to aid and abet individuals and groups that were, at a minimum, allied ideologically with Al Qaeda, the jihadist terrorist organization that attacked the homeland on the first 9/11, the one that's not supposed to exist anymore after the killing of its leader, Osama bin Laden, on May 2, 2012.

The above assessment is erroneously ludicrous on several levels.  First, Al Qaeda isn't even an organization with the power to do anything.  Al Qaeda is, however, just one of many, many Islamist groups funded by our friends the Saudis and the CIA. Nothing, however, stops the neocons from accusing Obama of being an appeaser of radical Islamists.  In fact, it was only a few short months after 911 when President Bush entertained Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at his Crawford, TX ranch in April 2002.  Few international dignitaries got invites to the Bush ranch but the Saudis were always welcome.  The Saudi-Bush family connections date back to the days of the George Herbert Walker Bush.

If there's a concern about US presidents and government officials being all warm and cozy with 911 jihad terrorists, look no further than the Bush family affection for radical Sunni jihadists.

The Bush-Saudi Connection

The absolute favorite photo of the neocons is the photo of Obama bowing before the Saudi King according to protocol.  US presidents have bowed before many foreign leaders according to the prevailing custom.  At least Obama wasn't kissing and holding hands with King Abdullah, the King of Islamist Sunni terror.  Bush was being overtly and outwardly affectionate with King Abdullah while Obama was just being polite and respectful.  Big difference!

George Herbert Walker Bush is also a former CIA director with deep ties to the organization and its clandestine operations.  The CIA has been funneling arms and money to dissidents of all religious and political stripes for decades and such folks were probably on the CIA payroll.  This is nothing new.  Again, it's important to note that the US State Department is heavily staffed with CIA, officially, and unofficially through US Aid programs.  Even neocon Glenn Beck chirped in on the issue.

Glenn Beck Explains How Obama Used Ambassador Stevens to Funnel arms to Libya and Syria

It's probably true that Ambassador Stevens was carrying out a CIA mission under the guise of a State Department consulate but this is quite common.  Obviously, something went very wrong and what most probably went wrong is that the Islamists the CIA trusted and were doing business with turned on them when they saw an opportunity to humiliate the US by successfully attacking the Benghazi consulate.  Also, the issue of the mysterious mission of Ambassador Stevens is being raised.

How US Ambassador Chris Stevens May Have Been Linked To Jihadist Rebels In Syria 

....there was a CIA post in Benghazi , located 1.2 miles from the U.S. consulate, used as "a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles" ... and that its security features "were more advanced than those at rented villa where Stevens died."

And we know that the CIA has been funneling weapons to the rebels in southern Turkey. The question is whether the CIA has been involved in handing out the heavy weapons from Libya.

In any case, the connection between Benghazi and the rise of jihadists in Syria is stronger than has been officially acknowledged.

The entire Benghazi fiasco is covered with CIA fingerprints.  But the burning question is this:  why didn't the US military come to the rescue of the CIA?

The CIA kind of functions as its own military, much to the consternation of the US military.  The CIA is also decisive and is not gnerally hampered with too much in the way of chain of command restrains.  Conversely, the US military is heavily a top down chain of command operation.  Getting somebody to make a decision can be very difficult depending the potential blowback of the situation.

The entire attack was over within a matter of hours but during the attack urgent messages were coming out of the Benghazi consulate.  The Benghazi timeline is here.  More interesting is that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta wiggled out of the situation by proclaiming that the military didn't have enough information to warrant putting forces at risk which is the equivalent of Panetta giving a birdie to the CIA.

Panetta on Benghazi attack: 'Could not put forces at risk'

The U.S. military did not get involved during the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, last month because officials did not have enough information about what was going on before the attack was over, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Thursday.

Where was the military and why didn't it respond to CIA calls for help?  Panetta claims the military didn't have enough time.  Another critical factor that is missing in the analysis is the location of the US military presence in Libya.  Nobody seems to know if the military was anywhere on the ground in Libya, obviously something that neither the US government or the military wanted disclosed.

What is known is that the Benghazi consulate was a CIA front engaged in weapon smuggling to Syrian Jihad rebels.  President Obama knows what the CIA does, even if he doesn't know what the CIA is actually doing because that's how the secretive and unaccountable CIA has always operated.  The CIA is one of those things that nobody in government ever wants to talk about because, well, the CIA is very dangerous, it kills folks, it arranges assassinations and exactly who it reports to isn't exactly clear although formally the CIA Director reports to the president.  It's been speculated by many CIA observers that the CIA is really nothing more than the private and personal military of the New World Order, the banksters and resource seeking corporatists.  It's also widely believe that the CIA is self-funding through the drug trade.

The CIA is the Biggest Drug Dealer on the Planet

President Kennedy said he wanted to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind.  According to James Douglass who wrote JFK and the Unspeakable, Why He Died and Why it Matters, the CIA murdered JFK.  Douglass writes "We have no evidence as to who in the military-industrial complex may have given the order to assassinate President Kennedy.  That the order was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency is obvious.  The CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it."

That the CIA is feared by the political class is an understatement.  But what makes Benghazi so intriguing is that it's increasingly more difficult to cover-up dastardly CIA deeds given the explosion of non-government controlled alternative media.   The Benghazi cover-up, bungled and clumsy as it was, was solely to protect the CIA and its mission, whatever the cost.  Ambassador Stevens and those who worked with him were not victims but were active participants in the CIA's work.  Most probably, Stevens wasn't an ambassador at all, just a CIA operative masquerading as an ambassador.  Moreover, it's probably also true that the military just didn't want to get involved, assuming it could have done something, because of its natural hostility toward the CIA.

I  believe that Obama was probably horrified by what happened in Benghazi but when your lust for power is so great that you decide to bed down with the CIA spooks and spies, anything can happen.  At the end of the day, Benghazi was just another Fast and Furious gone bad.  Republican attempts to capitalize on the Benghazi fiasco are indeed shabby and reckless.  If anything, Republicans worship the CIA and its evil and secretive missions far more than the Obama and the Democrats.

The Party of No Ideas Smacks Down the Party of Bad Ideas

Looks like Clint Eastwood's empty chair skit at the RNC Convention turned into a prophecy, at least in the context of a presidential debate performance. As a liberty activist, I happily avoided the appallingly incomprehensible contest between Statist Clown A and Statist Clown B. However, I followed Twitter because that's where the laughs were, along with the agony of some apoplectic liberals and Democrats.

Mark Hemingway@Heminator That wasn't a debate so much as Mitt Romney just took Obama for a cross country drive strapped to the roof of his car. (Hemingway was quoting the Weekly Standard).

Todd Kincannon @ToddKincannon Somebody call Todd Akin. Analyzing this debate requires a rape expert.

Bill Maher @billmaher Obama made a lot of great points tonight. Unfortunately, most of them were for Romney

Bill Maher @billmaher i must say, of all the Romneys i've seen, this Debate Romney is my favorite 

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald MSNBC tonight seems like a group therapy session for the deeply depressed and people with anger issues. It's actually disturbing to watch

Todd Kincannon @ToddKincannon Right now, David Axelrod is asking a crying Barack Obama: "Show me on the doll where the bad man touched you."

Brian Sack@brian_sack MSNBC's flag at half mast.

VANITY FAIR @VanityFair Good LORD Obama wouldn't win a student council election against a chubby nerd with that closing argument.

As if the Twitter zingers weren't bad enough, there was the epic Chris Matthews meltdown.

Chris Matthews’ Epic Meltdown Over Obama Performance: ‘What Was He Doing Tonight?’

Clearly, Romney cleaned Obama's clock and he did it without even offering any solutions to any of our immense problems.  Only in America can somebody win a debate by offering no solutions to big problems, no cuts in government spending and advocating for perpetual war!

Oh well, it's America where substance is never ever on the table because it's all about packaging, party propaganda and one liners.  Still, Obama absolutely earned the thrashing he got from the left and the right.  An Obama super PAC donor may have summed it up best.

Big Super PAC Donor on Obama: 'Looks Like He Took My Million and Spent it All on Weed'

Obama even dipped on Intrade, the online gambling site, here. Still, Obama remains comfortably ahead on Intrade with a 65.2% probability of winning to Romney's 35.1.  However, polls are tightening in the critical swing states.  The general consensus of the pollsters and pundits is that the deal that was sealed for an easy Obama re-election is presently no longer a foregone conclusion.

To what extent the race is truly competitive remains unclear and will largely depend on the result of future debates.

As for America, the American people, the economy and our future, the prognosis remains quite grim because the endless wars and big bad government will prevail regardless of who wins in November.

Meanwhile, the bread and circuses continue because America really is the incarnation of the Roman Empire.   

Frick and Frack, Dis and Dat - Drain the Swamp and Vote Third Party

As a Ron Paul supporter, many of us have been frustrated with the anarcho-capitalist voluntarist wing of the Libertarian movement because many of these folks simply refuse to politically engage or even vote.  They make a perfectly valid point "why bother to vote when nothing ever changes".  It's tough to argue with such logic.  The more things change, the more they remain the same.  Americans keep voting for change but the change never comes.

To be sure, there won't be any change if Obama is re-elected or even if Romney manages to pull off a miracle and defy the odds in a race where he is a clear underdog.  The polls are not looking good for Romney and every major election pundit agrees that the advantage definitely goes to Obama.  Moreover, the gamblers at Intrade.com give Obama a comfortable probability of being elected of 58.1% to a 41.7% probability for Romney.  No one should knock the Intrade gamblers.  They beat every pundit in 2008 and by a wide margin.  Intrade predicted that Obama would win with 364 electoral votes, he got 365.  Nobody got that close.

So here we are again.  It's another presidential election year and the choices are miserable.  Well, they really aren't all that miserable and the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, is a very decent candidate who shares a lot of Ron Paul's views.  Yeah, Gary Johnson isn't Ron Paul but who is?  Nobody.

For those among us who consider themselves liberty activists, it's best to vote for the strongest liberty candidate because this strikes a blow at the entrenched power structures of the corrupt RNC and DNC machines that tend to cavalierly marginalize 3rd parties as irrelevant because they just haven't taken off in big enough numbers to signal any real threat to the two party system.

No third party in America stands any chance of winning a presidential election.  But voting third party shouts "I'm here, I'm politically active and I intend to fight the corrupt two party system".  If anything, the third party voters take away votes from both the Republican and Democratic Parties and disemboweling the two headed monster is the act of self-preservation.  .

The Republican and Democratic Parties don't care if folks don't vote so long as they don't vote third party.  However, if third parties start to register alarming percentages that constitute a real threat to R and D absolute power, the grassroots within both parties will be vastly strengthened as will the power of independent voters.  

While I understand why folks refuse to vote and accept that I cannot possibly change their minds, those of us who do vote and participate in the political cesspool have a lot at stake here.  Defeating Romney strikes a most deserving blow at the GOP.  Four more years of Obama and Gang is better than 8  years of worthless statist neocon Republican socialists.

My choice:  Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party.

Obama Wants to Bailout Everybody!

Statists, socialists and Marxists were euphoric when Obama boldly proclaimed "If You've Got A Business, You Didn't Build That".

The underlying ideology is that only government is god and only government can create prosperity and jobs. Individual liberty, free markets, a work ethic and individual creativity are irrelevant. Obama wasted no time in following up on the theme that government really is god by stating that he wants to bailout everybody.

Obama recently said "I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back. Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.", here.

Obama was referencing the government bailout of General Motors, a bailout that cost taxpayers over $100 billion.

GM, a failed investment

The federal government has put in well over $100 billion into shoring up General Motors...

The only real winners from the GM bailout were unions, who were protected from pay cuts, from losing their right to overtime pay after less than 40 hours per week, and from cuts in their extremely generous benefits. They only faced minor tweaks in their inefficient union work rules.

Having just $36 billion to show after a $100 billion-plus investment would get a chief executive of any private company fired. Unfortunately, Obama does not seem to understand how this money has been wasted.

When government gets in the business of picking and choosing which companies get funding and which companies don't get taxpayer cash, the entire free market mechanism is destroyed as politics and cronyism takeover.  Taxpayers end up with nothing but a big pile of Solyndra's, another taxpayer funded bankrupt boondoggle that was a big fail costing taxpayers over $500 million, here.

The Obama economic plan is to create more taxpayer funded businesses just like GM and Solyndra because according to Obama and gang, private industry really doesn't exist or shouldn't exist.  Such a plan is not without precedent and is fairly common in Europe where many nations are in various states of economic collapse because of state funded industries and union protectionism.  

Progressive/Liberals/Dems are the Original Neocons

I've literally spent years and years pondering "How in the heck did the Republican Party morph into the warmongering, big spending and anti-liberty nightmare that it is today?"

Who got us into WW I, WW II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Balkan Wars? All progressive liberal Democrats - Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson and Clinton.

How much blood is on the hands of the Democrat warmongers?  A lot and they left a bloody trail of carnage that consumed over 100 million lives.

Let’s Do War by the Numbers Because We Love to Kill

WW I resulted in the deaths of 35,000,000...

Of course, WW I only set the stage for WW II that killed at least another 50,000,000 folks (many historians put the WW II death toll at 60-70 million)....

Wikipedia estimates the deaths from the Korean War at 2,500,000 – 3,500,000 and the deaths from the Vietnam War at 2,500,000-6,000,000...

Since the end of WW II, another 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 folks have died as a direct result of U.S. foreign interventionism.

It was Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats who gave us the Federal Reserve and the 16th Amendment (income tax) in 1913. It was no accident that WW I broke out in 1914 and the details of that sordid 'bailout the rich' scheme are well documented.  Without the Federal Reserve, there would have been no WW I.  Moreover,  the Federal Reserve Act was indeed the enabling legislation that actually birthed the military industrial complex and not by accident.  It was all about war profits for America's wealthiest families and the 1% (the only beneficiaries of any war).

World War I, the Banksters, the Lusitania and Bailing Out America’s Wealthiest Families

Interestingly, I witnessed my own Democratic Irish Catholic family abandon the Democratic Party and become Reagan Republicans, largely because blue collar working class families such as mine were sick and tired of having their kids who were drafted into the US military come home from Vietnam in body bags or badly mangled from combat and war injuries.  They not only feared Democrat foreign policy, they were also extremely fearful of the growth in government power and spending.

When the Republican Party was pro-peace and anti-foreign intervention, it experienced the support of the people. How much support? Reagan's 489 electoral votes to Carter's 49 in 1980 and a 51% to 41% victory speaks volumes!

Source: US Election Atlas

Reagan was viewed as the great hope to restore America to fiscal and foreign policy sanity. Unfortunately, he was a big fail. Few Americans are even aware of the extent to which taxes and the Federal Reserve fund the wars and foreign policy.

Taxes are US. The Biggest Tax Increases in US History

The largest tax increases were imposed by Truman (Revenue Act of 1950, Revenue Act 1951 and Excess Profits Tax of 1950) to fund the Korean War. Johnson's two taxes, the Temporary Surcharge of 1968 and the Tax Increase of 1966, were imposed on the American people to fund the Vietnam War.

Reagan, revered by Republicans for his extensive taxation and spending, piled on 5 new and substantial tax increases and is probably the biggest taxing president in US history.

Reagan taxes:

Tax Increase of 1983

Deficit Reduction Act of 1984

Tax Reform Act of 1986

Budget Reconciliation of 1987

The largest Social Security Tax Hike in US history - the Reagan Social Security Tax of 1983.

While taxes are a direct hit to the American people that comes right out of their paychecks, by far the biggest tax is the hideous, invisible and unnoticed inflation tax that gave us this:

If America is ever going to be restored to peace, liberty and prosperity for the people, we need drastic changes, starting with severely cutting spending, ending the damn wars that are bankrupt us and reducing government power at all levels. Meanwhile, I'll be pondering why the warmongering foreign policy hawk Mitt Romney, who has vowed to spend trillions more on foreign policy, isn't sending his own sons off to die in neocon wars or come home limbless and minus their junk.

Secret Sovereignty Slashing Treaty Being Negotiated in Secret

Liberty activists are accustomed to knowing acronyms like SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, NDAA, LOST and many other liberty slashing legislative and treaty initiatives. Apparently, there's a new nightmare being brewed in DC called TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Yesterday, The Huffington Post alarmingly wrote about TPP.

Obama was warned, frankly, about the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Given his status as a center-left president, the public's burgeoning disapproval of free-trade agreements, and the fact that he criticized such agreements when President Bush made them, he really should have known that such treaties were not for him.

And yet he chose to plow ahead. As I noted last year, the omens were not good. After the failed promises of NAFTA, a job-destroying trade deficit that has grown despite a long series of free-trade agreements, and ever-more-aggressive foreign mercantilism, it really should have been obvious that America needed a new trade strategy.

Now, thanks to a leak, we get to see that the Trans-Pacific Partnership really is as bad as feared. The text of the treaty had been kept from the public during two years of closed-door negotiations, and now we know why: It does not reflect any of the changes that Obama promised as a candidate. It's more Bush-era same-old, same-old.

The proposed agreement would embrace Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam to start. Eventually, its advocates hope, it will include every nation on the Pacific rim, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and China.

Read the rest here

The Huffington Post 

Apparently, something super sneaky is going on and it's so sneaky and backhanded that even Congress Critters are complaining because they've been shut out of the super secret, super sneaky deal. Imagine that! Really, Congress is notorious for being a most willing and compliant accomplice to their masters; the usual suspects include banksters, defense contractors, campaign coffer filling corporatist rent seekers, The CFR, the Bilderbergs etc.

One of my favorite blogs, washingtonsblog.com, provides details on why some in Congress are quite upset with TPP.

Treaty Threatens Global Government … Run by Giant Corporations

The normally-reserved Yves Smith asks whether Obama should be impeached over it.

Democratic Senator Wyden – the head of the committee which is supposed to oversee it – is so furious about the lack of access that he has introduced legislation to force disclosure.

Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is so upset by it that he has leaked a document on his website to show what’s going on.

What is everyone so furious about?

An international treaty being negotiated in secret which would not only crack down on Internet privacy much more than SOPA or ACTA, but would actually destroy the sovereignty of the U.S. and all other signatories.

It is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Wyden is the chairman of the trade committee in the Senate … the committee which is supposed to have jurisdiction over the TPP. Wyden is also on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and so he and his staff have high security clearances and are normally able to look at classified documents.

And yet Wyden and his staff have been denied access to the TPP’s text.

Read the rest here

Washington's Blog

Nobody really knows what's in the TPP because no one has been briefed on the specifics of the treaty nor have relevant legislative bodies, like Congress, been provided with copies of the document.

The Constitution is very clear on the treaty ratification process. A treaty must be ratified by 2/3 of the Senate. But President Obama is deliberately bypassing the treaty ratification process by classifying treaties as 'Executive Agreements' that he alone has the power to negotiate and ratify.

About the same time the American people, civil liberties activists and tech companies were fighting SOPA at the beginning of 2012, Obama signed ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.  Obama effectively and unilaterally ratified a significant treaty with an executive agreement.  This is what The New American said about ACTA:

Before the American people were protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, the president managed to sign an international treaty which would permit foreign companies to demand that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) remove web content in the United States without any legal oversight. Entitled the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA ), the treaty was signed by Obama on October 1, 2011, but it is currently a subject of discussion because the White House is circulating a petition demanding that senators ratify the treaty.

What’s worse is that the White House has done some maneuvering — characterizing the treaty as an "executive agreement" — thereby bypassing approval by members of Congress. Concerned by this action of the administration, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore., above left) sent a letter to President Obama in which he declared:

"It may be possible for the U.S. to implement ACTA or any other trade agreement, once validly entered, without legislation if the agreement requires no change in U.S. law. But regardless of whether the agreement requires changes in U.S. law ... the executive branch lacks constitutional authority to enter a binding international agreement covering issues delegated by the Constitution to Congress' authority, absent congressional approval."

Read the rest here

The New American

Treaties are very important agreements because they affect US sovereignty and relationships with foreign nations. Shockingly, we no longer have treaties with individual nations and have resorted to these hideous multi-national treaties that are typically and specifically drafted to advance global governance under the UN and its governing bodies. Our founders envisioned the treaty process as a contractual mechanism to accommodate mutually beneficial relationships to both nations, like ending tariffs to promote free trade.  But our founders never supported the massive give away of US sovereignty - it would have been unthinkable for them to defer to an international body after having just waged a successful revolution against the most power military empire on the planet at the time.

These multi-national treaties are defined as supranational governing bodies and they pose extremely grave threats to US sovereignty because once we enter into these treaties, US sovereignty automatically becomes subordinate to an international governing body that holds massive powers over America and the American People.

The June Chantilly, VA meet-up of the Bilderberg group was attended by anti-NWO activists but there was virtually no mainstream media reporting on the protesters.  The folks advancing a totalitarian global governance agenda are very powerful and extremely determined.  They make it perfectly clear that their goal is the abolition of the nation state and its sovereignty.  It's all about forcibly and militarily demanding that every nation on earth submit to its powers.  Jim Tucker, a guy who has been following the Bilderbergs and its players for years, wrote a piece describing the Chantilly, VA event and its power players.

Internationalists at the annual Bilderberg confab in Chantilly, Va. gathered to press on for integrating the world under one global government....

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) was denounced by a gang of Bilderberg boys wolfing down cocktails in the lobby on Thursday, May 31. Paul has been denounced for years because he opposes U.S involvement in foreign wars....

“It would be much easier to get the world to accept our policies if Paul and other ‘nationalists’ would disappear,” said one. “I’d like to charter a jet, hire a Muslim suicide pilot and give them all a free ticket to hell.”

Read the rest here

Fat Cats Running Scared

American Free Press 

Most Americans remain clueless when it comes to international treaties and their governing bodies.  I sincerely doubt that many Americans have even heard of ACTA.  Yet, ACTA has the raw and absolute power to instruct the US government to shut down websites it doesn't like and/or remove website content.

Despite the wars, oppressive government, the miserable economy, bankster bailouts, the wholesale slashing of civil liberties, the militarized police state and never ending corporate welfare, the Internet has been a godsend for the people.  For the first time in human history the people have this incredibly magnificent tool at their fingertips and it enables us to communicate, share information, blog, educate each other and even build a powerful alternative media.

I remember being young and confused back in the 1970's and 1980's.  Back then we only had government controlled ABC, CBS and NBC.  The 1960's were tumultuous times that bore witness to the murders of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the Vietnam War and the civil rights marches.   Young Americans were shocked and appalled by these unfolding horrors.  We wanted to understand.  We wanted answers. We wanted justice.   Many gravitated to the libertarian movement in the early 1970's because it brought intellectual clarity to a world otherwise gone mad.  By exposing precisely why governments are inherently anti-liberty and why they always morph into something evil, vile and hideous, these early liberty activists kept the flame of the liberty candle burning through the dark pre-Internet era.

Now we've got the Ron Paul Revolution that has successfully advanced the liberty movement beyond small groups engaged in intellectual discourse.  The Revolution is now a full blown political movement that is encircling the Republican Party while even drawing in sane Dems fed up with endless wars and Banksters Gone Wild.

In America, we no longer have the constitutionally mandated 3 branches of government to create even the slightest semblance of a  balance of powers.  We've got an elected absolute monarch who is above the law, above the constitution and vested with so much unaccountable power that he, along with his partners in crime, have wiped out the middle class of the freest and most prosperous nation ever to exist.  America is no long a free or prosperous nation.  From a proud creditor nation  with the strongest middle class in human history to a pathetically bankrupt debtor nation on its deathbed, the politicians display remarkable 'Oscar' quality acting skills when they speak of American exceptionalism with a straight face.  

What destroyed America?  The concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the banksters, military and the fascist corporatists has not only destroyed America but is also creating a global industrial feudalism that is rapidly eradicating liberty in America and everywhere.  Yet, we as voters complacently submit to their will and are like wax for them to mold  into whatever they want us to be because we only exist to serve them and their agenda.

I though Bush was an absolute horror.  Obama is even worse. And if Romney wins the election in November, he will be Obushma on steroids.

A secret shadow government has ruled America for a very long time.  It won't be long before we turn on our computers, smart phones and TV's and are welcomed to the Orwellian UN media.   The industrial feudal plantation has gone global as the merger of big business and big government stretches its oppressive tentacles over every nook and cranny of the planet.