ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — Hundreds of armed vigilantes have taken control of a town on a major highway in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, arresting local police officers and searching homes after a vigilante leader was killed. Several opened fire on a car of Mexican tourists headed to the beach for Easter week. (Much of this via Borderland Beat is from NYT, hence the bias. – ST)
Members of the area’s self-described “community police” say more than 1,500 members of the force were stopping traffic Wednesday at improvised checkpoints in the town of Tierra Colorado, which sits the highway connecting Mexico City to Acapulco. They arrested 12 police and the former director of public security in the town after a leader of the state’s vigilante movement was slain on Monday.
A tourist heading to the beach with relatives was slightly wounded Tuesday after they refused to stop at a roadblock and vigilantes fired shots at the car, officials said.
That’s what happens when you run checkpoints in dangerous areas, where community police are having to fight against narcoterrorist cartels and a violently corrupt government.
The vigilantes accuse the ex-security director of participating in the killing of vigilante leader Guadalupe Quinones Carbajal, 28, on behalf of local organized crime groups and dumping his body in a nearby town on Monday. They reported seizing several high-powered rifles from his car, and vigilantes were seen toting a number of sophisticated assault rifles on Wednesday, although it was not clear if all had been taken from the ex-security director’s car.
Sophisticated assault rifles?
They know what’s up.
“We have besieged the municipality, because here criminals operate with impunity in broad daylight, in the view of municipal authorities. We have detained the director of public security because he is involved with this criminals and he knows who killed our commander,” said Bruno Placido Valerio, a spokesman for the vigilante group.
No matter how many times Placido states it and talks about the violence and corruption, the left will not get behind people fighting against corrupt governments and dictators, as evidenced by the Obama administration’s support of Zelaya in Honduras, and the NYT’s bias in the story.
Placido said vigilantes had searched a number of homes in the town and seized drugs from some. They turned over the ex-security director and police officers to state prosecutors, who agreed to investigate their alleged ties to organized crime.
The growing movement of “self-defense” vigilante groups has seen masked townspeople throw up checkpoints in several parts of southern and western Mexico, stopping passing motorists to search for weapons or people whose names are on hand-written lists of “suspects” wanted for crimes like theft and extortion.
If their government wasn’t composed of criminals, they could stay home and all be farmers and merchants and enjoy life.
The groups say they are fighting violence, kidnappings and extortions carried out by drug cartels, but concerns have surfaced that the vigilantes may be violating the law, the human rights of people they detain, or even cooperating with criminals in some cases.
And here the leftism shows up again. Better to have everyone at the mercy of narcoterrorists and corrupt government tyrants than to have the people stand up for themselves. “The law” means nothing where they live, and they’ve reasoned correctly that detaining someone wrongly is better than being beheaded.
Which criminals are they cooperating with, the police or the state government? The situation is abysmal because no one will address it. The people are doing what they must do for themselves – no one else will do it. Maybe a rare few are working with criminals, but more likely the government is just accusing them so they can be targeted later.
Sensitive over their lack of ability to enforce public safety in rural areas, official have largely tolerated vigilante groups.
Officials in Mexico have no authority anywhere, don’t care, and don’t serve or protect.
The people are sick of being terrorized by their own government and the cartels, and they’re using their natural rights to fight back.
Many Americans abhor paternalism. They think that people should be able to go their own way, even if they end up in a ditch. When they run risks, even foolish ones, it isn’t anybody’s business that they do.
The whole piece is a justification for coercion, as the title says, and a justification for destroying individual citizens’ rights to live their own lives. This is an anointed elite deciding that he will change the world so that his will can be forced onto you, the disgusting inferior thing that can’t make good decisions.
This is Orwellian newspeak tyranny used to create a Huxleyan Brave New World where the only life available is the one that the master decides.
For example, many of us show “present bias”: we tend to focus on today and neglect tomorrow. For some people, the future is a foreign country, populated by strangers.Many of us procrastinate and fail to take steps that would impose small short-term costs but produce large long-term gains. People may, for example, delay enrolling in a retirement plan, starting to diet or exercise, ceasing to smoke, going to the doctor, or using some valuable, cost-saving technology. Present bias can ensure serious long-term harm, including not merely economic losses but illness and premature death as well.
People also have a lot of trouble dealing with probability.
Translation: You’re stupid and short sighted and need to be dominated.
Emphasizing these and related behavioral findings, many people have been arguing for a new form of paternalism, one that preserves freedom of choice, but that also steers citizens in directions that will make their lives go better by their own lights. (Full disclosure: the behavioral economist Richard Thaler and I have argued on behalf of what we call libertarian paternalism, known less formally as “nudges.”)
The amount of contempt I have for Cass Sunstein at this point is difficult to convey without using colorful metaphors.
Liberal used to mean that one favored liberty, it favored the greatest amount of freedom. Somehow liberal has come to mean an expansion of the state. Here, word-twisting corruptor of truth Cass Sunstein says there is “libertarian paternalism”, which goes into his idea of “choice architecture”. He, the almighty anointed dominator of men, simply changes the rules so the only choices are state-approved choices. There is the illusion of choice, but there is none.
It has nothing to do with liberal, liberty, or libertarian. It has everything to do with twisting words and changing the language so that evil deeds can be couched in what used to be good words.
This is even more sinister because it deletes alternatives – it reduces choices and then convinces people they have the freedom to choose. It creates willing slavery. Do you want to work in the field or the house? They’re both “good for you”.
And those are your two choices.
Default rules are merely one kind of “choice architecture,” a phrase that may refer to the design of grocery stores, for example, so that the fresh vegetables are prominent; the order in which items are listed on a restaurant menu; visible official warnings; public education campaigns; the layout of websites; and a range of other influences on people’s choices. Such examples suggest that mildly paternalistic approaches can use choice architecture in order to improve outcomes for large numbers of people without forcing anyone to do anything.
Just slowly dissolve the “bad” choices until the master conveys his will to the serf.
You want to smoke? Tax it, reduce the places you can smoke, ban it outright, then the “good” choice is made. Individual choice is meaningless – the master has made his decision.
You want to own a gun? Tax it, reduce the places you can shoot, increase the regulations and restrictions on where you can and when you can use it and own it, make it a difficult right to exercise, and then ban it, and the “good” choice is made. Individual choice is meaningless – the master has made his decision and enforces his will.
You want to have sex? Make it shameful, make one type acceptable, another type not. Increase the social stigma, create blue laws and the like, and then only the “good” choice is left, so only the “good” choice can be made. Individual choice is meaningless – the master has made his decision and the only choices left to the serf are to do as the master wishes.
For another example of “choice architecture” and the destruction of choice a bit more specifically, Thomas Sowell often notes that he and his wife didn’t have the money to pay for the birth of their first child, so the hospital put them on a payment plan for services. He joked with his wife when the bill was paid that they finally owned their child. Destruction of private health care options and mandating insurance drove prices up and took away the option to simply pay the hospitals directly. Replacing direct payment with health insurance and created higher costs, but it mandated “good”. Replacing optional health insurance with mandatory employer health care created higher costs, but mandated “good”. The “good” of single payer has been created as other choices that worked better for individuals were slowly deleted.
Conly is quite aware that her view runs up against widespread intuitions and commitments. For many people, a benefit may consist precisely in their ability to choose freely even if the outcome is disappointing. She responds that autonomy is “not valuable enough to offset what we lose by leaving people to their own autonomous choices.”
Your right to live your own life isn’t valuable. Your freedom isn’t valuable. Your freedom to live your own life means you might not make all the best decisions, so you must be dominated into the correct decisions. Subtly, but you will bow to the master.
To Mill’s claim that individuals are uniquely well situated to know what is best for them, Conly objects that Mill failed to make a critical distinction between means and ends. True, people may know what their ends are, but sometimes they go wrong when they choose how to get them. Most people want to be healthy and to live long lives. If people are gaining a lot of weight, and hence jeopardizing their health, Conly supports paternalism—for example, she favors reducing portion size for many popular foods, on the theory that large, fattening servings can undermine people’s own goals. In her words, paternalism is justified when
the person left to choose freely may choose poorly, in the sense that his choice will not get him what he wants in the long run, and is chosen solely because of errors in instrumental reasoning.Because of her focus on the means to the ends people want, Conly’s preferred form of paternalism is far more modest than imaginable alternatives.
At the same time, Conly insists that mandates and bans can be much more effective than mere nudges. If the benefits justify the costs, she is willing to eliminate freedom of choice, not to prevent people from obtaining their own goals but to ensure that they do so.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
Conly is right to insist that no democratic government can or should live entirely within Mill’s strictures. But in my view, she underestimates the possibility that once all benefits and all costs are considered, we will generally be drawn to approaches that preserve freedom of choice. One reason involves the bluntness of coercive paternalism and the sheer diversity of people’s tastes and situations. Some of us care a great deal about the future, while others focus intensely on today and tomorrow. This difference may make perfect sense in light not of some bias toward the present, but of people’s different economic situations, ages, and valuations. Some people eat a lot more than others, and the reason may not be an absence of willpower or a neglect of long-term goals, but sheer enjoyment of food. Our ends are hardly limited to longevity and health; our short-term goals are a large part of what makes life worth living.
According to him. He will decide what your life is worth.
All of this is contrary to natural law, all of this is contrary to the dignity and rights of mankind. Of course the tyrants love it, though.
–
From a practical standpoint, there’s also this:
True, people may know what their ends are, but sometimes they go wrong when they choose how to get them. Most people want to be healthy and to live long lives. If people are gaining a lot of weight, and hence jeopardizing their health, Conly supports paternalism—for example, she favors reducing portion size for many popular foods, on the theory that large, fattening servings can undermine people’s own goals.
Sunstein’s shared view with Conly that food must be controlled because people are too stupid to eat what’s good for them fails not only because it insults the individual (and no amount of his weaseling changes what his intent is); but also because from a purely practical standpoint, deprivation leads to binges, denial leads to excess. There are some nutritionists who’ve outlined this quite clearly – one of the reasons that diets fail is because people deprive themselves and don’t eat what their body wants them to – eating either too little or too much.
When there’s an authority figure engineering your choices – even when it’s your own mind through a diet, you tend not to respond so well. The human body doesn’t want to starve itself, and doesn’t like it when it’s forced to starve itself. The body responds no matter what the mind wants.
At the point that she decides not to try to control everything, she can just eat a burger without caring, without budgeting calories, and just eating when it’s right.
The soft tyranny of paternalism, manipulation of language, and destruction of free will ultimately lead to destruction of the individual – like all leftist plots, it requires more and more power and domination and subjugation to succeed. That’s the only way it can succeed in its own goals – and at that point, the master has decided that slavery is for your own good.
In all this “new national debate on gun violence”, which is really just a big propaganda event against citizens rights, some things have gone almost totally forgotten. Namely, how the Obama administration sent guns to Mexico with the intent of finding them at crime scenes in order to “prove” that US guns were going south. Operation Fast and Furious ended up with hundreds (if not thousands) of dead Mexicans and two US federal agents dead (that we know of so far) – all because Obama and his DOJ wanted to push for more gun control. After their scheme was found out, anti-gun forces still wanted to use their own murderous scheme by government to destroy US citizens’ rights. It’s like a wife-beater getting caught and then beating his wife twice as hard because she “made him do it”.
Remember – they were mandated by the ATF to let guns go to Mexico, the Mexican authorities and the ATF in Mexico knew nothing. This was the US government supplying guns to the cartels to “find” them at murder scenes:
Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have asked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law.
Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”
The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that Holder’s and Obama’s desire to continually hide these Fast and Furious documents is “ironic” now that they’re so gung-ho on gun control. “It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an anti-gun violence push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about its very own Fast and Furious gun walking scandal,” Fitton said in a statement. “Getting beyond the Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a very simple principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and countless others in Mexico. The American people are sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to rewrite FOIA law to protect this president and his appointees. Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies.”
So each time you hear about Obama calling for more gun bans, remember – his administration intentinally murdered over 10 times the people at Sandy Hook in order have an excuse to try to take away your rights.
Congrats to Democrats and union supporters for acting like the moron goons we all know you are:
I’ve heard the point made in the last few days, though, that the thuggery is not just endemic to unions, but important to them. When there are real threats put out there, people understand that they really mean it. Though “it”, as always, is merely preserving their racket, while painting a picture of cackling mustachioed robber barons whipping child slave labor, and the idea that it was unions and not the free market that created the wholly subjective “living wage”.
It’s interesting to read the leftist point of view on this topic. From HuffPo:
LANSING, Mich. — Over the chants of thousands of angry protesters, Republican lawmakers made Michigan a right-to-work state Tuesday, dealing a devastating and once-unthinkable defeat to organized labor in a place that has been a bastion of the movement for generations.
The GOP-dominated House ignored Democrats’ pleasto delay the final passage and instead approved two bills with the same ruthless efficiency that the Senate showed last week. One measure dealt with private-sector workers, the other with government employees. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed them both within hours, calling them “pro-worker and pro-Michigan.”
“This is about freedom, fairness and equality,” House Speaker Jase Bolger said during the floor debate. “These are basic American rights – rights that should unite us.”
After the vote, he said, Michigan’s future “has never been brighter, because workers are free.”
The state where the United Auto Workers was founded and labor has long been a political titan will join 23 others with right-to-work laws, which ban requirements that nonunion employees pay unions for negotiating contracts and other services.
Supporters say the laws give workers more choice and support economic growth, but critics insist the real intent is to weaken organized labor by encouraging workers to “freeload” by withholding money unions need to bargain effectively.
Protesters in the Capitol gallery chanted “Shame on you!” as the measures were adopted. Union backers clogged the hallways and grounds shouting “No justice, no peace.” And Democrats warned that hard feelings over the legislation and Republicans’ refusalto hold committee hearings or allow a statewide referendum would be long lasting.
Emphasis obviously added. They wouldn’t just go out and say “Republicans bad, they hate workers, Democrats good, they love workers, and scabs are evil scum”. Because, y’know, there’s nothing more democratic than getting forced by government to pay to an organization you don’t want to belong to, just for the priviledge of owning your own work.
But as always, unions aren’t about helping workers, they’re about pitting one group of workers against another group of workers.
Now, if you do happen to be a union guy, or a union girl (though they don’t like women or blacks or hispanics or chinese or ______ minority depending on the shop, and used unions to keep shops closed to non-white males, but I digress…), you’ll note that they said the problem is it will allow non-union workers to not have money stolen out of their pockets to pay for union negotiation. Thing is, a company probably doesn’t have to hire somebody at the union rate if they aren’t a union member. Also, union member dues don’t go to negotiation (except when they’re busy killing tire plants and bakeries) so much, and as visibly, as they go here. Note that these are the top all-time donors, and unions are all boxed in blue. Notice that their support goes overwhelmingly, if not absolutely, to Democrats:
Now if you go back and really look at the list, you’ll see that not only do unions make up over a third of the list there, they contribute almost exclusively to Democrats, and when you look at other “heavy hitters” that donate, they aren’t split anywhere near the way the unions are. The most “even” distribution of union support is a split of 75% Dem, 17% Rep.
Of course Democrats will be mad about this. If people don’t have to pay dues each month to support Democrats, they might have to turn to some of their other overwhelmingly powerful political action committees to get elected rather than just pick the pockets of voters while blaming Republicans for the failures the Democrats cause – The Curley Effect again.
MATT LAUER, TODAY: So bottom line, would raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans have a chilling effect on hiring in this country?
WARREN BUFFETT: No, and I think would have a great effect in terms of the morale of the middle class, who have seen themselves paying high payroll taxes, income taxes. And then they watch guys like me end up paying a rate that’s below that, you know, paid by the people in my office.
Eat the rich!
Bill Whittle’s Firewall covers the practical problems and why it makes no sense even if the arch-left got everything they want – even if everyone was liquidated, it wouldn’t work:
Though that’s from last year, it’s worth noting that blaming “the rich” is sure easy to do.
Seeing as how Warren Buffet is a multi-billionaire, his idea of pushing for a higher income tax would hurt up-and-coming businesses – not Berkshire Hathaway, which unless you’re rich, you can’t even buy a real share of – is only going to act as a barrier to entry for new businesses. This is just good ol’ crony capitalism. The ultra-big business makes deals with government that make it more difficult for new businesses to threaten them. This is why, for example, Obamacare affects companies with 50 employees. It keeps small business small, while big business gets a waiver. The business currying favor with the government gets to use the government’s monopoly on force against the up-and-coming business, making sure they never make it up.
Warren Buffet will never find his wealth taken away anyway, and whatever he earns in income from a salary or wages is meaningless. He earns money from investments and capital gains. The small husband and wife business that does $300,000 and that they file together suddenly becomes the target as “the rich”. He wants to raise income tax on those people as a means to crush them, and prevent them from getting to where he is. As the expression goes, he’s pulling the ladder up behind him.
The left loves wealth. Obama’s rich, Boxer, Feinstein, Edwards, Durbin, Schumer, the Kennedy clan, Kerry, the Clintons, and so on and so forth are all incredibly rich. Boxer made money on oil which she then pushed to tax, Feinstein made money by steering government contracts to her husband (as well as other investments), John Edwards made his in frivolous lawsuits, Kerry made his by marrying a billionaire, the Kennedys made theirs through bootlegging and influence peddling, the Clintons made theirs through criminal deals and now speaking engagements, and so on and so forth. They have their money, and they love it. They’re on top, and now they need to tell you how to live.
It’s also like Al Gore, who has a mansion, jets around the country, is a multi-millionaire set up to profit from a carbon exchange, and yet lives by none of his own rules. Because, you see, he’s too important.
Socialism is for the people, not the socialist. Taxes are for the people, not Warren Buffet.
They are the Ruling Class. You are not. And they set up institutions to keep things that way. But they want you to hate the “evil rich” as they hold you down - pitting you against your fellow Country Class citizens who are improving their own lot in life – and yours.
The greatest threat to the social order of the royalty of Europe were the rise of the burghers and merchants, who weren’t peasants or serfs tied to the land and owned by their lord, nor nobility.
While reading up about the super-convenient timing of General Petraeus being outed as CIA chief just as he was about to testify about Benghazi, I stumbled over this.
The wikipedia entry for it is decidedly unflattering, but that’s not really much of a surprise. Even though some may be exaggerated, much of it isn’t in question any more at all. It’s just a matter of “telling the truth slowly”.
Interesting stuff, and interesting to think about the information that we currently know about both Gunwalker/Fast and Furious and Benghazi; not to mention our current presidents’ prior associates and inner circle. Weird to think about how things that are going on now will be remembered, as well as how some of them already are remembered, or simply forgotten about.
WASHINGTON – Using a Pakistani Internet Protocol and proxy server, a disposable credit card and a fake address, “Osama bin Laden” has successfully donated twice to Barack Obama’s presidential re-election campaign.
The “Bin Laden” donations, actually made by WND staff, included a listed occupation of “deceased terror chief” and a stated employer of “al-Qaida.”
“Bin Laden” is currently set up on the official campaign website to contribute more to Obama’s campaign. The name is also registered as a volunteer.
Since the “foreign” contribution was sent, “Bin Laden’s” email address has received several solicitations from Obama’s campaign asking for more donations.
It’s a very sharp sting by the WND staff. Obama’s campaign has been noted for accepting overseas donations and for not bothering to check to see if the money coming in is from legitimate sources. Every time the campaign is asked, they dodge the question and work around it. They’re all about taking foreign money and illegal campaign contributions.
To the left, the end always justifies any means. In fact, it’s considered unethical not to use every means in order to achieve victory.
The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.
Emails reveal Justice Dept. regularly enlists Media Matters to spin press
Internal Department of Justice emails obtained by The Daily Caller show Attorney General Eric Holder’s communications staff has collaborated with the left-wing advocacy group Media Matters for America in an attempt to quell news stories about scandals plaguing Holder and America’s top law enforcement agency.
Dozens of pages of emailsbetween DOJ Office of Public Affairs Director Tracy Schmaler and Media Matters staffers show Schmaler, Holder’s top press defender, working with Media Matters to attack reporters covering DOJ scandals. TheDC obtained the emails through a Freedom of Information Act request.
An email chain from Sept. 9, 2011, shows Gertz (ST: Media Matters’ Matt Gertz) and Schmaler expressing concern over an upcoming Fox News segment on Fast and Furious.
“This is Vanderboegh, who broke the story in the first place and has contacts in the media and at [the House] Oversight [commission]. Any idea what it’s about?” Gertz wrote to Schmaler at 8:29 a.m. that day in an email that quoted conservative blogger Mike Vanderboegh’s website: “FOX Got ‘Em. Huge Gunwalker Story Breaking Later This Morning.”
At 9:19 a.m., Schmaler replied: “So far, no one’s got an idea … unless it’s something that’s already been out. Let’s stay in touch…”
Vanderboegh is of course, Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars, one of the original outlets (along with David Codrea) to break the Operation Gunwalker/Fast and Furious story.
In a Jan. 31, 2012, email chain titled “per our conversation,” Schmaler and Gertz are seen cooperating on an article attacking House oversight committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa. At 12:18 p.m. that day, Schmaler sent Gertz two paragraphs of text from Issa’s comments during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Dec. 8, 2011. Schmaler underlined a portion of the text in those paragraphs in which Issa discussed the differences between Fast and Furious and similar — but different in crucial respects — programs from the George W. Bush administration.
“The difference in the previous administration is there was coordination with the Mexican government,” Schmaler quoted Issa as saying in her email to Gertz. “They made a real effort under [Operation] Wide Receiver [in the George W. Bush administration] to pass off a small amount of weapons and track them. This program [Fast and Furious], just the opposite. Even knowing the drug cartels that were going to receive them, they simply allowed them to go to the stash house.”
Just hours after Schmaler sent Gertz that highlighted Issa quote, it appeared in a Media Matters article titled “Rep. Issa Ties Himself In Fast And Furious Knots.” Gertz wrote the piece for Media Matters Action Network’s “Political Correction” blog.
In his article, Gertz referenced a just-released Democratic House oversight committee staff report that he said concluded “there is no evidence that senior officials in the Obama Department of Justice authorized gunwalking in that case.”
Yeah, right.
Schmaler reached out to Gertz on March 12, 2012 seemingly to suggest an article attacking Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips for his public comments about Operation Fast and Furious. At the time, Phillips was pressing GOP leadership to take action on the gunwalking scandal. During a Fox News interview, Phillips said Fast and Furious “should be investigated, but we also have to remember the program itself was a partisan program.”
“This was never a law enforcement sting, as you described it earlier. This was purely a political operation,” Phillips added during the Fox segment.
“You send the guns down to Mexico, therefore you support the political narrative that the Obama administration wanted supported; that all these American guns are flooding Mexico; that they’re the cause of the violence in Mexico and therefore we need draconian gun control laws here in America. So because the whole operation itself was political, yes, by all means Congress should be all over this.”
Schmaler obtained a transcript of Phillips’ whole broadcast segment and sent it to Gertz in an 11:55 a.m. email on March 12, asking, “You see this?”
“[C]ompletely false,” Schmaler wrote of Phillips’ allegation. “[W]ide receiver and Hernandez put this to a lie. There’s been lots of coverage on previous bush operations…”
“Thanks,” Gertz responded one minute later.
“Hernandez” was a reference to Fidel Hernandez, the subject of DOJ’s first – and failed — attempt to direct a “controlled delivery of weapons” across the Mexican border by arms traffickers for the purpose of tracking them to their eventual destination.
At 4:05 p.m. the same day Gertz and Schmaler were emailing about Judson Phillips, Media Matters’ Chris Brown wrote a blog entry attacking Phillips for his televised appearance.
“Not surprisingly, Phillips spent the interview promoting the right-wing conspiracy theory that Fast and Furious was a plot to promote gun control instead of a failed law enforcement investigation,” Brown wrote, adding a mention of what Schmaler had emailed: “Further, Phillips refers to Fast and Furious as a ‘partisan program’ despite the fact that Bush-era investigations featured similar ‘gun walking’ tactics as those used in Fast and Furious.”
Throughout the email exchanges TheDC obtained through the FOIA request are numerous examples of Gertz and other Media Matters staff sending the full text of Media Matters blog entries attacking the DOJ’s political opponents in the media.
Among others, Gertz sent Schmaler attack pieces he wrote about Townhall Magazine’s Katie Pavlich, who also authored a book on Operation Fast and Furious; Breitbart.com writers Joel Pollak and Ken Klukowski; Fox News Channel’s William LaJeunesse, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Megyn Kelly, Martha MacCallum, Bill Hemmer, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity; Sipsey Street Irregulars blogger Mike Vanderboegh; DirectorBlue blogger Doug Ross; National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy; and this reporter.
You have direct communication between DOJ Public Affairs Director Schmaler and left wing shills at Media Matters, specifically to go out and spin their stories. This isn’t just favoring a media outlet, this is having people go out and write leftist propaganda nonsense to obfuscate the issue. Schmaler and Gertz comparing F&F to Wide Receiver has been a consistent story from the Democrat left, and has been called out by those on the Oversight Committee, notably when Congressman Trey Gowdy called for everyone to have their day – calling out the Democrats, Republicans, Whigs and Bull Moose parties. The Republican side of the Oversight & Reform Committee has made it consistently clear they want to find everyone involved. The Democrat side has made it consistently clear that they want to find no one involved, unless they can somehow pin it on Bush.
SPRINGFIELD — State Rep. Monique Davis’ Democratic friends in the Illinois House Tuesday spared her from a tax bill of at least $444,500.
By a 60-54 vote, with Davis voting present, the House entered into the legal dispute between the longtime South Side lawmaker and the Chicago Board of Education over her refusal to pay back rent and leaseholder taxes on her district office, which is in a school-owned building.
And screenshots from WTTW, a visual breakdown of the vote:
60 Democrat yeas, 3 Democrat nays, 1 Democrat (for whom the bill is erasing almost half a million in tax evasion) not voting.
Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady released the following statement on the Illinois General Assembly passage of the special tax bailout for state Rep. Monique Davis.
“During the worst fiscal crisis in Illinois history Speaker Mike Madigan is throwing Chicago Public Schools under the (school) bus in order to give a tax bailout to Madiganville resident state Rep. Monique Davis. Rep. Davis’ inability to pay property taxes on her government office will burden Chicago Public Schools with a $450,000 bill and will take up state resources; Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is representing Rep. Davis during the dispute with CPS in the state Court of Claims. Davis has refused to pay property taxes on her office, which is owned by Chicago Public Schools, for the better part of a decade. During that time she has voted for countless tax increases on Illinois citizens, including the recent 67% tax increase the Governor signed into law last year.”
Not that this is a surprise, especially in the land where dead vote (many times) for Democrats every election, it’s just another illustration that socialism is for the people, not the socialist; and indicates the quality and character of the Democrat party, and their constant hypocrisy.
It would be interesting to know why those Republicans were absent, rather than voting against this corrupt bill.
The Department of Justice is using the liberal “watchdog” group Media Matters for America to deflect questions about the Fast and Furious scandal, including those regarding a gun that might have been used in the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
A new book raises questions as to whether the FBI hid the existence of a weapon recovered at the scene of murdered U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Conservative commentator and author Katie Pavlich lays out evidence she says points to a FBI cover-up to protect a confidential informant in her recently released book, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-up,
In response to an inquiry from the Free Beacon, a Justice Department spokeswoman said in an email that she “was told to direct your questions to the FBI, and also to provide you with a link to this story: http://mediamatters.org/research/201204190011”
The link was to a story at the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America supposedly refuting many of Pavlich’s claims. Media Matters is a partisan organization whose founder, David Brock, is also running a pro-Obama super PAC.
In Operation Fast and Furious, federal agents allowed more than 2,000 weapons to be smuggled across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hand of violent drug cartels, with the intent of tracking them to learn more about the cartels.
Two weapons connected to Fast and Furious were discovered at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, who was gunned down in the Southern Arizona desert in 2010 by five criminals armed with AK-47s.
However, Pavlich asserts there was a third gun. The book details three separate pieces of evidence that point to a third weapon being recovered and then covered up by the FBI and the Justice Department.
Border Patrol agents, who have since been issued gag orders, were overheard at Terry’s funeral discussing the third gun.
The White House redirected people to Media Matters, infamous for being so far left that they’re treading in traditional socialist anti-semitic waters, and now they’re referring to it to slander Ms. Pavlich. From Media Matters lie center:
In her new book, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and its Shameless Cover-up, Townhall news editor Katie Pavlich offers up a number of false and misleading claims about the ATF’s fatally flawed Operation Fast and Furious. In doing so Pavlich baselessly suggests that high-ranking Justice Department officials were aware of that operation’s use of the tactic of gunwalking, in which agents knowingly allowed guns to be trafficked across the border to Mexico in order to identify other members of a trafficking network.
Of course, Media Matters lies. All the things they’re trying to refute with lies have been proven over and over and over and over again.
ShortTimer
JBH
