Tea Party

Neo-Feudalism Has Officially Arrived – Congressman Suggests Building a Moat Around White House

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Screen Shot 2014-11-19 at 1.46.23 PMWhat has been occurring over the past several years is not a recovery, rather, it’s a painful transition of the U.S. into a neo-feudal society. Earlier this week in the post, Welcome to the Recovery – U.S. Child Homelessness Hits Record as Poverty in Mass. is Highest Since 1960, I wrote:

While the general population is aware something is seriously wrong, people remain extremely confused about the root of the problem. This is because what’s happening all around us isn’t socialism and it isn’t free market capitalism. It is actually a return to something much more ancient and much more oppressive. It is a return to serfdom, neo-fedualism and oligarchy.

Well now we have definitive proof. It can’t get any more in your face than this.

From MarketWatch:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch)—Faced with an increasing number of White House intrusions that led to the resignation of a Secret Service director, a congressman on Wednesday suggested that maybe a moat should be erected around the president’s home.

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Forget “Too Big To Fail”…We Now Have “Too Big To Audit”

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One of the primary themes discussed on this site over the past several years is the growing realization that there is a two-tier injustice system operating in these United States. This fact is more disruptive to the smooth and healthy functioning of a society than anything else. It is more disruptive than financial theft, it is more disruptive that feudalistic levels of wealth inequality, and it is more disruptive than Big Brother illegal spying. Nothing will tear the fabric of a culture apart more decisively than the appearance and recognition of a “justice” system which carves out immunity for the rich and powerful, yet comes down like a ton of bricks on even the slightest of crimes committed by the average peasants.

I have highlighted some examples over the past month or so. See below:

The “War on Street Artists” – Puppeteer Unlawfully Arrested and Harassed in NYC Subway

Charleston Man Receives $525 Federal Fine for Failing to Pay for a $0.89 Refill

The Homeless in NYC Are Now Living in Tiny Spaces in the Frame of the Manhattan Bridge

Additionally, The Guardian published an excellent piece just yesterday on the verdict of Cecily McMillan, an Occupy Wall Street protester who faces an incredible seven years in jail for elbowing a cop who has a history of violent tendencies.

Moving along, we now discover that at the same time the tax collecting agency known as the IRS (with its 89,500 employees) was pestering tea party groups, it failed to audit a single large partnership. Yep, that’s right, the financial oligarchs are not just “Too Big To Jail,” they are also “Too Big To Audit.”

From CNS News:

CNSNews.com – In 2011, while the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was busy scrutinizing the tax-exempt status of 100 percent of Tea Party groups and other conservative non-profits, the tax agency did not audit a single high-value electing large partnership (ELP) with more than $100 million in assets.

That’s according to a preliminary report released to Congress by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) April 17th. (See GAO.pdf) 

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Cancer Patient and ObamaCare Critic Says He Now Faces an IRS Audit

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If this is true, it would be just another example added to the long list of examples demonstrating the rampant cronyism and complete lack of morality that has characterized the Obama Administration from the beginning. It would also serve as further confirmation that the status quo intends to use the IRS as a political weapon against … Read more

What the Ted Cruz Filibuster Really Means – It’s the End of the GOP as We Know It

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There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.  Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.  On such a full sea are we now afloat.  And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

– Brutus in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

A misguided, decrepit, corrupt, warmongering, and surveillance-happy Republican Party was already stumbling around the room; hammered drunk on its decades old power trip, led by mindless cronies with zero direction when Ted Cruz came by and gave it a charitable push to the ground. It fell swiftly with a pathetic thud. The establishment Republican Party died this week. Good riddance. 

Personally, I haven’t put in enough time to look into Ted Cruz to say how I feel about him, but I can certainly support his efforts to destroy the current GOP leadership. More importantly, I can see when political winds are a changin’ and they are blowing with a typhoon’s tempo in 2013.

It all really started in back in March, when freshman Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky started the recent GOP filibuster trend by standing up against Barack Obama’s (and indeed bipartisan Congress’) drone policy. I spent a lot more time writing and commenting about the Rand Paul filibuster as opposed to Ted Cruz’ because it is far more significant for a Republican to stand against aggressive, unconstitutional military action than for a Republican to stand against ObamaCare. The latter they are expected to do, the former not so much. At the time, I wrote a post that got a huge amount of traction titled: #StandwithRand: The Filibuster that United Libertarian and Progressive Activists. Back then I wrote:

What Rand Paul did yesterday was finally bring the public debate to where it needs to be.  In doing so, he united activists that are quite opposed on many issues (less than they think, but that’s for another day).  This is extremely significant and we need this momentum to continue.  Those of us that care about the core principles that made this country great need to stick together, find common ground and not allow the establishment to control the debate any longer.

It’s quite fitting that as Rand Paul stood for 13 hours in an impassioned attempt to call attention to the systematic dismantling of The Bill of Rights occurring in America, President Obama was having dinner with many establishment Republicans.  These included the two Senators that have done more to destroy the GOP than any one else; John McCain and Lindsey Graham.  Two guys who would drone their own grandmothers if it made them feel tough for a minute.

Fortunately, the momentum of libertarian and progressive activists to defend the Bill of Rights has continued, largely thanks to the revelations of Edward Snowden, as decent folks from both sides of the aisle have stood up to protect the 4th Amendment. ObamaCare is not one of those issues, nor should we expect it to be. While I think many Democrats understand the bill was basically written by insurance companies and is another crony capitalist handout, many in the party feel they need to support their puppet President Obama on something and they’ve decided ObamaCare is it. Everyone gets that. What is really significant about Ted Cruz’ filibuster is that it has finally exposed the Republican establishment for what it is. A rotting carcass of nothingness. No matter what happens with the cloture vote later today, it doesn’t really matter. It’s already over. The knives are in. The GOP leadership is dead.

The best article I have read on the subject of what the Cruz filibuster really means was written by Michael Walsh in the National Review. He wrote:

In the aftermath of Senator Ted Cruz’s epic performance on the Senate floor, a few observations:

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Harry Reid on the Senate Floor Proclaims: “The Anarchists Have Taken Over”

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We’re diverted totally from what this bill is about. Why? Because the anarchists have taken over. They’ve taken over the House and now they’ve taken over the Senate.  People who don’t believe in government — and that’s what the Tea Party is all about — are winning, and that’s a shame. – Harry Reid on … Read more

Why the Collection of Metadata is a Very, Very Big Deal

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Some people seemed strangely relieved in the wake of the NSA spying scandal when Obama said “no one is listening to your phone calls.” First of all, while they are clearly not listening to everyone’s phone calls, they certainly are listening to certain people’s calls and that isn’t acceptable in a free society.  Second of all, it’s pretty obvious that the one reason they aren’t listening to everyone’s calls is because it wouldn’t be practical or effective.  As Matt Blaze notes in this great article from Wired, the government isn’t primarily tracking metadata rather than content in an attempt to protect privacy, but rather because metadata is the most efficient and effective way in which to spy on and preempt domestic political dissent.  From Wired:

We now know that every day, U.S. phone companies quietly send the government a list of who called whom and when — “telephony metadata” — for every call made on their networks, because of a secret order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It turns out that this has been going on for seven years (and was even reported by USA Today then); the difference now is that the government — uncharacteristically for such a secret intelligence operation — quickly acknowledged the authenticity of the leaked order and the existence of the metadata collection program.

Should we be worried? At least “nobody is listening to our telephone calls” (so the president himself assured us). People breathed a sigh of relief since first learning of the surveillance because surely there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to such seemingly innocuous information — it’s just metadata, after all. Phew!

With today’s communications technology, is metadata really less revealing than content? Especially when we’re dealing with metadata at the scale that we now know the NSA and FBI are receiving?

Because at such a scale, people’s intuition about the relative invasiveness of content and metadata starts to fail them. Phone records can actually be more revealing than content when someone has as many records and as complete a set of them as the NSA does.

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IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office

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I’d like to say that the following is unbelievable, but it’s not.  Unfortunately, it is all too believable.  From ABC:

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

USA! USA!

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.

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Jon Stewart’s Brilliant and Hilarious Commentary on the IRS Scandal

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While the video below is scathing and hilarious, it is much, much more than that.  Jon Stewart is well aware that the IRS being caught targeting groups for political reasons represents a major turning point in the psyche of the nation.  In the past, whenever anyone was targeted by the IRS the masses would generally … Read more