Government – Page 894 – Public Intelligence Blog

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends

My good friend Marshall Auerbach has one answer — can you “refudiate” it?

Which Party Poses the Real Risk to Social Security’s Future?

NewDeal2.0.org, Monday, 08/16/2010 – 5:02 pm by Marshall Auerback

Hint: it’s not Republicans.

Social Security remains one of the greatest achievements of the Democratic Party since its creation 75 years ago. Although Republicans have historically fulminated against the program (Ronald Reagan once likened it as something akin to “socialism”), they have actually made little headway in touching this sacred “third rail” in American politics. President Bush pushed for partial privatization of the program in 2005, but the proposal gained no policy traction (even within his own party) because Social Security continues to be hugely popular with American voters. It’s a universal program that benefits all Americans, not a government handout to a few privileged corporations.

Which is why it’s odd that Democrats seem almost embarrassed to continue to champion the legacy of FDR. The party frets about long-term deficits and the corresponding need to “save” Social Security from imminent bankruptcy and, in doing so, opens the gate to radical cuts in entitlements that will do nothing but further destroy incomes and perpetuate our current economic malaise.

FULL STORY ONLINE

Continue reading “Journal: Social Security Being Set Up for a Fall”

2010/08/152010/08/17

Institutions of Higher Education Ineligible for Federal Funds (because they disallow military recruiters)

04 Education, Government, Military

+ Vermont Law School
+ South Royalton, Vermont
+ William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota.

12 August 2010

From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr12au10-41]                         

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Office of the Secretary
 
List of Institutions of Higher Education Ineligible for Federal 
Funds

AGENCY: Department of Defense (DoD).

ACTION: Notice.

 Continue reading "Institutions of Higher Education Ineligible for Federal  Funds (because they disallow military recruiters)"

2010/08/15

Journal: Incoherence of US Government Continues…

07 Health, Government, Military

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

(COMMENT: The drumbeat to screw retirees continues…)

Tacoma News Tribune
August 14, 2010
Pg. 14

Military Update

Higher Health Premiums On Gates' Cost-Cutting Agenda

By Tom Philpott

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has signaled that the department’s fiscal 2012 budget request to be sent to Congress early next year will include recommendations to raise TRICARE premiums for some beneficiaries.

If past proposals are a reliable guide, the target of higher fees is likely to be military retirees rather than active duty families.

Continue reading “Journal: Incoherence of US Government Continues…”

2010/08/152010/08/17

Journal: Untrained Doctor Uses “Scalpel” with Abandon

Government, Military

August 14, 2010

Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents

By SCOTT SHANE, MARK MAZZETTI and ROBERT F. WORTH

WASHINGTON — At first, the news from Yemen on May 25 sounded like a modest victory in the campaign against terrorists: an airstrike had hit a group suspected of being operatives for Al Qaeda in the remote desert of Marib Province, birthplace of the legendary queen of Sheba.

But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province’s deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight. Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accepted responsibility for the death and paid blood money to the offended tribes.

The strike, though, was not the work of Mr. Saleh’s decrepit Soviet-era air force. It was a secret mission by the United States military, according to American officials, at least the fourth such assault on Al Qaeda in the arid mountains and deserts of Yemen since December.

FULL STORY ONLINE

2010/08/122010/08/23

CIA Deceives Supreme Court + Former Guantanamo Detainee Running For Office in Afghanistan

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Corruption, Government, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

CIA hid terrorism prisoners from US Supreme Court

August 12, 2010 by JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

The Central Intelligence Agency purposefully concealed at least four terrorism detainees from the US legal system, including the Supreme Court, according to an exclusive report by the Associated Press. The news agency has revealed that the CIA secretly transported the four to Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp on Cuba in 2003, two years before it publicly admitted their capture. It then secretly transferred them again to other sites in its black site prison network in various countries around the world, just three months before their prolonged stay at Guantánamo would entitle them to legal representation. While at Guantánamo, the four prisoners, Abd al-Nashiri, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah, were kept at a facility known as ‘Strawberry Fields’, which is detached from the main prison site at the bay. By hiding the four, the Bush Administration managed to keep them under CIA custody while denying them legal representation for two years longer than allowed by US law.

Former Guantanamo Detainee Running For Office in Afghanistan

Quil Lawrence, August 10, 2010 | wgbh.org |

Izatullah Nusrat, 42, was held at the U.S. facility in Guantanamo for nearly five years. Now he is back in Afghanistan and running for election to Parliament in the Sept. 18 election. Nusrat has harsh words for Americans, but he favors working with the current government over the Taliban and says he wants the fighting to stop.

2010/08/102010/08/11

Video: MAD AS HELL (by the late Aaron Russo) about a Republic of Corporations, Banking, and the Dying Breed of Individual Freedom

Civil Society, Corporations, Corruption, Government, Media, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

This is the first video part of eleven parts on YouTube. This video (1990's) by the late Aaron Russo earned him a visit from Nicholas Rockefeller around the time Russo was running for governor of Nevada as stated in this video interview before he died in 2007. Part two reveals Russo's commentary on “totalitarianism” disguised as anti-terrorism long before 9/11 with the passage of the Clinton anti-terrorism bill in the 90's.

Continue reading “Video: MAD AS HELL (by the late Aaron Russo) about a Republic of Corporations, Banking, and the Dying Breed of Individual Freedom”

2010/08/092010/08/09

Journal: The Unconstitutional Empire

Corruption, Government

Today we have a Pentagon that is spending more money (in inflation adjusted dollars) on defense than at any time since WWII, yet it can not pass the relatively simple audits required by the Chief Financial Officer's Act of 1990. This law was intended to put teeth into the Accountability and Appropriations clauses of the Constitution. The audits required by the CFO Act are “checks and balances” audits — they merely describe whether or no any agency of the federal government spends the money Congress appropriated on the items Congress authorized for appropriations — essentially the line between where the money comes from and where it goes. The attached article helps to put the implications of this travesty into a frightening perspective. CS

An Empire, If You Can Keep It

BY JUSTIN LOGAN, American Conservative, 1 Mar 2010

Periodically, it is worth remembering just how much the American Founders detested the signs of a bloated state: standing armies, a large fiscal-military federation, and a capacious national bureaucracy. It may be going too far to say that today’s conservatives would denounce the Founding Fathers as unpatriotic conservatives—but not much too far. While members of the Right now flutter like schoolgirls at the mention of military leaders like Gen. David Petraeus, the Founders scorned the prospect of military leaders becoming figures of worshipful esteem. As the historian Arthur Ekirch has highlighted, aversion to standing armies and centralism was at the heart of the American founding.

Full Source Online

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