February 17, 2011 at 09:52:12

Obama's Change: More Tyranny and Oppression

By Nathan Janes (about the author)

Nathan Janes

PUPAGANDA.com

In January of 2009, as the American economy teetered on the brink of economic collapse, the most prominent story within the mainstream media, called "the greatest mystery since Watergate," was the selection of the Obama family pet. With the election of Barak Obama, many Americans, relieved that "change" was on the way, focused their attention on such trivial matters as the Presidential dog rather than the state of continual economic decline within our country. This phenomenon came on the heels of a successful election campaign where Americans were sold the Obama brand through terrific marketing and public relations. Everyone was buying "hope" and "change" with not only their votes but with their time and energy. The Obama campaign recruited well over 2 million volunteers, a number unprecedented by any other election campaign within US history. Before Obama even won the election, he seemed to be assigned Messianic status, normally associated with royalty and totalitarian leaders. As part of his public relations campaign, celebrities openly pledged "service" to the Obama administration and asked Americans to also become "agents of change."

Although Obama was to be the administrator of change, much of what his administration would bring would be more of the same. The democratic presidential elect was expected to reverse the assaults to the constitution that occurred over the previous eight years under the republican president. However, under the Obama Administration, warrantless wiretapping, secret arrests, indefinite detention of citizens, and the use of torture have all been expanded. The Obama administration effectively expanded the gains of tyranny and oppression achieved by the previous administration. Obama supported the Banker Bailout allowing bankers to make off with trillions in taxpayer's money, bankrupting the future of our country for generations to come. His administration doled out taxpayers' money to Wall Street, causing rampant inflation, a lowering of living standards and the destruction of the dollar. An engineered deconstruction of the economy is occurring; our manufacturing industry, civil liberties, and monetary foundations are all rapidly eroding. America has been reduced from an industrial economy to a service economy selling the goods of other nations.

Within his election campaign, Obama made a number of promises that would soon be broken. Among these, he pledged to end NAFTA and GATT but once in office expanded both. He promised to have the most transparent administration ever but instead many aspects of his presidency have been cloaked in secrecy. Obama's first official act as president was to seal the release of his personal records with an executive order. He made the names of visitors to the White House private, protecting the identity of those who visit and may influence policy decisions. Obama, a constitutional lawyer, stated that he would not control congress with signing statements the way that his predecessor had. However, Obama has used signing statements on several occasions to manipulate legislation passed by Congress. Since his executive order imposing a two-year waiting period for lobbyists entering his administration, more than 40 ex-lobbyists have populated top jobs in the administration. Obama pledged to wait five days before signing bills passed by Congress to allow review by the public. Since Obama's election, bills have been rushed through congress and voted on before anyone has an opportunity to read them. Congress was given less than an hour to read the revisions to the 1,070 page Stimulus Bill. Obama stated the Stimulus Bill was so urgent that it had to be passed before Congress could read it. The anti-war candidate in the 2008 election, Obama has extended the war and increased the number of troops involved while also expanding the defense budget. He promised to abolish the Patriot Act only to reinstate it while continuing the Bush administration's policy of rendition, the arrest of any citizen labeled an "enemy combatant," and the indefinite detention of citizens without any evidence of crime.

In 1787, at the close of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what type of government the Constitution was bringing into existence. Franklin replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." A republic, a form of government ruled by law, provides for the limitation of government and the protection of the rights of the people. Over the last 50 years, the government system of the US and several other countries has transformed into an oligarchy, rule by a small group of individuals who essentially obtain their power by buying it. Donors of the Obama campaign were a Who's Who of multinational corporations, Wall Street interests, and banks. The influence that these high-level campaign contributors have on legislators and the president shapes the law of the country and the flow of taxpayers' dollars. The powerful few shape the minds of the public through the use of covert public relations techniques disseminated by the mass media so that few citizens are aware of the role these individuals play in shaping the situation of us all.

At the beginning of the 21st Century, we are witnessing the beginnings of a total takeover of the American economy and the micromanagement of all aspects of every citizen's private life. Contrary to its carefully crafted title, the Patriot Act allows for the collection of intelligence on law-abiding American citizens, not just suspected terrorists. The Patriot Act permits those who may resist an accelerated move toward the fascist corporate globalization of a one world government to be effectively subdued. In the years following 9/11, the public has been asked to spy on one another and report suspicious individuals; children in schools have been asked to report bad behavior of their parents and classmates for cash rewards. A report by the Missouri Information Analysis Center stated Ron Paul and Bob Barr supporters were potential terrorists. A climate has been created where anyone that openly disagrees with the direction of the government is demonized, surveilled, and harassed.

America is increasingly resembling Hitler's East Germany and Stalin's Russia. The 2010 Universal National Service Act, H.R.5741, proposed two years of forced national service of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 42. According to Obama, "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded." A domestic security force equaling the size of the US Army would be composed of 500,000 troops and a budget of over $400 billion. This idea was further promoted by Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who advocated mandatory national service in his book, "The Plan," and proposed youth service as a civilian counter part to the military. Homeland Security is recruiting Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts to aid their efforts. The free and open society that our fore fathers envisioned is being replaced by a Police State.

Restoration of Americans' rights and freedoms will not come from democrats or republicans, it will only come from American citizens educated about their constitutional rights who demand a government that serves them. Unless we restore our republic, any future president and their administration can further subvert our liberties. When will we realize that voting in the lesser of two evils is not the solution to the problem? We can choose to not vote for evil at all. Over the last 50 years, presidents have not been elected, but selected and sold to us by the mainstream media perception managers, working for the ruling oligarchy. The false left/right paradigm only guarantees a vote away from our unalienable rights and freedoms; it is marching us into a New World Order no matter who the puppet in office. Our fore fathers asked us to fight for liberty in the founding documents of this nation, "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." It is our duty to protect liberty and to usurp control from the tyrannical powers of today.

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While once engaged by the television set and other forms of the mass media, Nathan Janes began to notice that the reality that he was being sold was not his own. In a society saturated with meaningless advertising art with no substance Janes became (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Obama’s Budget: Freezing the Poor

Published on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 by TruthDig.com

Obama’s Budget: Freezing the Poor

by Amy Goodman

President Barack Obama unleashed his proposed 2012 budget this week, pronouncing, proudly: “I’ve called for a freeze on annual domestic spending over the next five years. This freeze would cut the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, bringing this kind of spending—domestic discretionary spending—to its lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.”

Focus on the word “freeze.” That is exactly what many people might do, if this budget passes as proposed. While defense spending increases, with the largest Pentagon funding request since World War II, the budget calls for cutting in half a program called Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP.

LIHEAP offers block grants to states so they can offer financial assistance to low-income households in order to meet home energy needs, mostly for heating. Most of its recipients are the elderly and disabled. The program is currently funded at more than $5 billion. Obama is calling for that to be slashed to $2.57 billion—roughly half. This life-or-death program, which literally can help prevent people from freezing to death, represents less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the proposed $3.7 trillion annual budget.

Compare this with the proposed military budget. “Defense spending” is a misnomer. Until 1947-48, the Pentagon was officially, and appropriately, called the War Department. In the proposed budget released on Valentine’s Day, the Department of Defense request is $553 billion for the base budget, an increase of $22 billion above the 2010 appropriation. The White House has touted what it calls “$78 billion” in cuts that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is considering. But as the Institute for Policy Studies notes: “The Defense Department talks about cutting its own budget—$78 billion over five years—and most reporting takes this at face value. It shouldn’t. The Pentagon is following the familiar tradition of planning ambitious increases, paring them back and calling this a cut.”

The $553 billion Pentagon budget doesn’t even include war. To Obama’s credit, the costs are actually in the budget. Recall, President George W. Bush repeatedly called the expenditures “emergency” needs, and pressured Congress to pass supplemental funding, outside of the normal budget process. The Obama administration, nevertheless, has given the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan the Orwellian moniker “Overseas Contingency Operations,” and is asking for $118 billion. Add to that the $55 billion for the National Intelligence Program (a budget item for which the amount has never before been revealed, according to government secrecy expert Steven Aftergood), and the publicly revealed military/intelligence budget is at close to three-quarters of a trillion dollars.

Obama’s 216-page budget doesn’t mention “Pentagon” once. He does invoke the name of President Eisenhower, though. Two times he credits Eisenhower for creating the national interstate highway system, and, as mentioned, boasts of the proposed spending freeze: “This freeze would be the most aggressive effort to restrain discretionary spending to take effect in 30 years and, by 2015, would lower nonsecurity discretionary funding as a share of the economy to the lowest level since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.”

If he is going to reference his predecessor, he should learn from Eisenhower’s prescient warning, given in his farewell speech in 1961: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Another Eisenhower speech that should guide Obama was given in April 1953, before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, just two weeks after he was inaugurated as president. In it, the general-turned-president said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

This is one of the coldest winters on record. One in eight people in the U.S. is on food stamps, the largest percentage of Americans ever. More, as well, are without health insurance, despite the initial benefits of the health-care reform act passed last year.

Americans are cold, hungry and unemployed. By increasing military spending, already greater than all of the world’s military budgets combined, we are only spreading that misery abroad. We should get our priorities straight.

© 2011 Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 800 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.

On President Obama's Budget: Democrats and Republicans Posture, Capitalism's Crisis Deepens

WEDNESDAY 16 FEBRUARY 2011

On President Obama's Budget

Tuesday 15 February 2011

by: Richard D. Wolff | MR Zine | Op-Ed

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on education and budget priorities, while Jack Lew, director of the US Office of Management and Budget (right), looks on at Parkville Middle School and Center of Technology, in Baltimore, Maryland, on February 14, 2011. (Photo: Drew Angerer / The New York Times)

President Obama's basic budget for fiscal 2012 is mostly a done deal supported by the entire political establishment. The hyped choreography of forthcoming battles between Democrats and Republicans is a very secondary sideshow. The battles clothe basic agreement in a disguise of fierce oppositions perhaps aimed to mollify each party's none-too-discerning militants.

Both sides agree that the US private economy is in such a poor and dangerous condition that it needs massive fiscal stimulus from the federal budget: classic Keynesian policy. Washington thus plans to spend roughly $3.5 trillion while taking in tax revenues of roughly $2 trillion: hence a deficit of $ 1.5 trillion. In the light of such numbers, the debates of Democrats and Republicans over spending cuts likely to be between $40 and 60 billion are inconsequential. They become yet more inconsequential in light of the fact that the federal budget's projected deficit of $1.5 trillion will carry an annual interest cost of $40 to 60 billion. That interest will be an additional budget outlay offsetting the likely cuts arrived at the end of loudly publicized debates over spending reductions.

Both sides agree that government spending will continue to follow the old "trickle down" theory, despite its failure to date. Massive federal outlays on the largest banks, insurance companies, and selected other large corporations produced a "recovery" for them but not in the rates of unemployment, home foreclosures, and state and local austerity budgets that keep crippling the US economy. Federal largesse has yet to trickle down, but both parties proceed on the assumption that it eventually will. Neither party tallies the economic and social costs of massive unemployment, home loss, and state and local austerity budgets. Neither party offers any alternative to "trickle down" as if no alternative exists or is worth debating.

Also See Video: Richard D. Wolff | "Austerity" Comes to America

Yet of course there are alternatives. In the 1930s, capitalism's last major global breakdown, then President Roosevelt eventually pursued the alternative "bubble up" theory. Between 1934 and 1940 he created and filled 11 million federal jobs with unemployed workers. Their incomes enabled them to maintain mortgage payments and buy goods and services that provided jobs to millions of others and profits to many US businesses. That alternative to trickle down economics did not suffice to overcome the Great Depression. However, it certainly alleviated more of the economic damage and individual suffering of that breakdown than Bush's and Obama's trickle down economics have achieved in this one. Then too there is the alternative of taxing corporations and the rich to finance federal stimulus without huge deficits and increasing costly national debts. That alternative is even more taboo in Washington than a bubble up government employment program.

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Politically, Roosevelt's bubble up approach won him the greatest outpouring of electoral support ever achieved by any US president. So it might today for Obama. Why then would a politically besieged President hesitate to repeat some variant of Roosevelt's successful strategy? During the 1930s, a powerful labor movement (the CIO was successfully recruiting millions of workers into unions) and influential and growing socialist and communist parties organized pressure from below. Today those movements are either gone or extremely weakened. Then, the flow of money into US politics from corporations and the rich was relatively less powerful than it has now become in terms of campaign contributions and legislative lobbying funds dependent on those sources. Republicans and Democrats alike depend on them. No wonder they and the President agree on so much and dare not consider or debate alternatives that their benefactors might disapprove.

Of course, the groups immediately affected by specific federal budget cuts will suffer. Democrats will posture as their defenders and, by extension, defenders of the environment or poor people or pregnant women that those groups champion. Republicans will posture as the punishers and reducers of an arrogant, outsized, and inefficient state as well as champions of reduced tax burdens on businesses and people. No matter what their sideshow yields, the basic prognosis for the fiscal 2012 federal budget combined with the current crisis in state and local budgets is grim. The social safety net is being further frayed; public employee layoffs will increase and thereby worsen unemployment; ecological concerns will continue to be neglected, and no significant individual tax relief is anywhere on the horizon.

In the US, the federal government is the tail that definitely does not wag the dog. This capitalist crisis is being "resolved" the way crises usually are. As unemployment deepens and lasts, wages and benefits decline. As businesses close, the costs of second-hand machines, the rents for office and factory space, the fees of business-serving professionals (accountants, lawyers, etc.) drop. Eventually, when those cost declines proceed far enough, capitalists will see enough profit in resuming production to generate a broad and sustainable economic upturn. In short, just as the crisis was brought on by the profit-seeking investments and speculations of the private sector, so now we wait until the private sector sees a profit in resuming production and thus ending this crisis. The federal government fusses and fumes about it all. It throws public money at the private sector to keep it afloat. It debates details with great fanfare. But all the while the mass of people tighten their belts, do without, and wait for this economic system to rebound. The vast social and personal costs of this irrational economic absurdity -- tens of millions unemployed, one third of US productive capacity unutilized (rotting and rusting), and vast quantities of needed output foregone and lost -- are ignored lest they raise the uncomfortable question: why do we retain a system as dysfunctional as this?

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and currently a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. He has a PhD in Economics from Yale University as well as degrees from Harvard University (history BA) and Stanford University (economics MA). Wolff has authored or co-authored 10 books and over 50 scholarly articles and 75 popular articles. His recent work has concentrated on analyzing the causes and alternative solutions to the current global economic crisis.

His documentary film on that crisis, Capitalism Hits the Fan, can be previewed at www.capitalismhitsthefan.com. He also published a book of essays on the current crisis in 2010 entitled Capitalism Hits the Fan: the Global Economic meltdown and What to Do About it. Detailed information on and copies of his many writings, audios and videos of his media interviews, lectures, and classes, and his speaking schedule are all available at his website: www.rdwolff.com.

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Obama’s Ironic Legacy Might be That He Continued an Unconstitutional Act

by Walter Brasch / February 11th, 2011

The U.S. House of Representatives this week did something it should have done years ago—it blocked the continuation of three of the more controversial parts of the PATRIOT Act. The vote was 277–148 to continue the Act, but a 2/3 majority (284 of those voting) was necessary for the bill to move forward. The PATRIOT Act sections are scheduled to expire February 28 unless further action is taken by Congress.

The Republican leadership had placed the bill on an expedited agenda, believing it had the necessary votes. It didn’t count on a loose coalition of liberals and extreme conservatives to oppose the Act. Twenty-six Republicans, including seven who are allied with the Tea Party, voted against the bill. Had those seven Tea Party members voted for the continuation, the bill would have passed.

The PATRIOT Act was passed about six weeks after the 9/11 attacks. The 342-page bill was drafted in secret by the Bush Administration, had minimal discussion, and most members of Congress hadn’t even read it when they voted for it. Only one of 100 senators and 66 of 435 representatives voted against it, claiming that it sacrificed Constitutional protections in order to give Americans a false sense of security. Most of the Act is non-controversial, an umbrella for previous federal law; the controversial parts taint the entire document.

The PATRIOT Act’s “sunset” clause required 16 of the most controversial parts to expire unless Congress renewed them before December 31, 2005. However, in July 2005, Congress voted to extend the entire law.

The PATRIOT Act butts against the protections of six Constitutional amendments: the 1st (freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances), 4th (freedom from unreasonable searches), 5th (right against self-incrimination and due process), 6th (due process, the right to counsel, a speedy trial, and the right to a fair and public trial by an impartial jury), 8th (reasonable bail and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment), and 14th (equal protection guarantee for both citizens and non-citizens).

The PATRIOT Act also violates Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to petition the courts to issue a writ of habeas corpus to require the government to produce a prisoner or suspect in order to determine the legality of the detention. Only Congress may order a suspension of the right of the writ, and then only in “Cases of Rebellion or Invasion.” Congress did not suspend this right; nothing during or subsequent to the 9/11 attack indicated either a rebellion or invasion under terms of the Constitution.

Among the provisions of the PATRIOT Act, which 277 House members apparently believe is necessary for American security, is Section 215, which allows the government to seize all library records of any individual. Apparently, the government believes that reading is just another part of a wide terrorist conspiracy. A white-haired grandmother who checks out murder mysteries from the library could be a serial killer according to the government’s logic.

Several federal court cases, including decisions by the Supreme Court, with most of its members politically conservative, ruled that provisions of the PATRIOT Act are unconstitutional. Implementation of those rulings are slow or under appeal.

Among organizations that oppose the PATRIOT Act are the ACLU, American Bar Association, American Booksellers Association, American Library Association, and the National Council of Churches. Among liberals who have led opposition to the Act are Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). Among conservatives opposing the Act are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who had been a U.S. attorney, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Among conservative organizations that oppose the PATRIOT Act are the American Conservative Union, Free Congress Foundation, and the Second Amendment Foundation.

Some of society’s denser citizens have claimed that not only must the nation sacrifice some of its civil liberties in order to defeat terrorism, but that they personally have never had their own rights suppressed. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of cases of persons whose civil liberties have been threatened. In only the first three years after the PATRIOT Act was placed into law, there were about 360 arrests, with only 39 convictions, half resulting in jail sentences of less than 11 months, indicating minor infractions. Reports from the inspector general of the Department of Justice revealed that the government had consistently exceeded its authority to investigate and prosecute civilians under guise of the PATRIOT Act. Numerous arrests for non-terrorist activity include a couple aboard a flight who were charged as terrorists for having engaged in “overt sexual activity,” and a woman who was jailed three months in 2007 as a terrorist for raising her voice to a flight attendant.

In March 2010, President Obama signed a one-year extension on the Act, and now says he wants the Act to continue through 2013.

And that may be the worst part of the President’s legacy. The constitutional law scholar and professor, who has strong beliefs for human rights but who has not been forceful in speaking out against the Act’s most heinous sections, is now a leading proponent to extend the very document that conflicts with his principles and the nation’s Bill of Rights.

Walter Brasch is a professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University. His current books are "Unacceptable": The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina and Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush. They are available through amazon.com and other on-line sources. He can be reached through his website. Read other articles by Walter, or visit Walter's website.

This article was posted on Friday, February 11th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Legal/Constitutional, Obama.

February 10, 2011 at 13:02:58

Obama's Ironic Legacy Might be That He Continued an Unconstitutional Act

By Walter Brasch (about the author)

opednews.com

by Walter Brasch

The U.S. House of Representatives this week did something it should have done years ago--it blocked the continuation of three of the more controversial parts of the PATRIOT Act. The vote was 277--148 to continue the Act, but a 2/3 majority (284 of those voting) was necessary for the bill to move forward. The PATRIOT Act sections are scheduled to expire Feb. 28 unless further action is taken by Congress.

The Republican leadership had placed the bill on an expedited agenda, believing it had the necessary votes. It didn't count on a loose coalition of liberals and extreme conservatives to oppose the Act. Twenty-six Republicans, including seven who are allied with the Tea Party, voted against the bill. Had those seven Tea Party members voted for the continuation, the bill would have passed.

The PATRIOT Act was passed about six weeks after the 9/11 attacks. The 342-page bill was drafted in secret by the Bush Administration, had minimal discussion, and most members of Congress hadn't even read it when they voted for it. Only one of 100 senators and 66 of 435 representatives voted against it, claiming that it sacrificed Constitutional protections in order to give Americans a false sense of security. Most of the Act is non-controversial, an umbrella for previous federal law; the controversial parts taint the entire document.

The PATRIOT Act's "sunset" clause required 16 of the most controversial parts to expire unless Congress renewed them before December 31, 2005. However, in July 2005, Congress voted to extend the entire law.

The PATRIOT Act butts against the protections of six Constitutional amendments: the 1st (freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances), 4th (freedom from unreasonable searches), 5th (right against self-incrimination and due process), 6th (due process, the right to counsel, a speedy trial, and the right to a fair and public trial by an impartial jury), 8th (reasonable bail and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment), and 14th (equal protection guarantee for both citizens and non-citizens).

The PATRIOT Act also violates Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to petition the courts to issue a writ of habeas corpus to require the government to produce a prisoner or suspect in order to determine the legality of the detention. Only Congress may order a suspension of the right of the writ, and then only in "Cases of Rebellion or Invasion." Congress did not suspend this right; nothing during or subsequent to the 9/11 attack indicated either a rebellion or invasion under terms of the Constitution .

Among the provisions of the PATRIOT Act, which 277 House members apparently believe is necessary for American security, is Section 215, which allows the government to seize all library records of any individual. Apparently, the government believes that reading is just another part of a wide terrorist conspiracy. A white-haired grandmother who checks out murder mysteries from the library could be a serial killer, according to the government's logic.

Several federal court cases, including decisions by the Supreme Court, with most of its members politically conservative, ruled that provisions of the PATRIOT Act are unconstitutional. Implementation of those rulings are slow or under appeal.

Among organizations that oppose the PATRIOT Act are the ACLU, American Bar Association, American Booksellers Association, American Library Association, and the National Council of Churches. Among liberals who have led opposition to the Act are Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). Among conservatives opposing the Act are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who had been a U.S. attorney, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Among conservative organizations that oppose the PATRIOT Act are the American Conservative Union, Free Congress Foundation, and the Second Amendment Foundation.

Some of society's denser citizens have claimed that not only must the nation sacrifice some of its civil liberties in order to defeat terrorism, but that they personally have never had their own rights suppressed. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of cases of persons whose civil liberties have been threatened. In only the first three years after the PATRIOT Act was placed into law, there were about 360 arrests, with only 39 convictions, half resulting in jail sentences of less than 11 months, indicating minor infractions. Reports from the inspector general of the Department of Justice revealed that the government had consistently exceeded its authority to investigate and prosecute civilians under guise of the PATRIOT Act. Numerous arrests for non-terrorist activity include a couple aboard a flight who were charged as terrorists for having engaged in "overt sexual activity," and a woman who was jailed three months in 2007 as a terrorist for raising her voice to a flight attendant.

In March 2010, President Obama signed a one-year extension on the Act, and now says he wants the Act to continue through 2013. And that may be the worst part of the President's legacy. The constitutional law scholar and professor, who has strong beliefs for human rights but who has not been forceful in speaking out against the Act's most heinous sections, is now a leading proponent to extend the very document that conflicts with his principles and the nation's Bill of Rights.

[Dr. Walter Brasch is author of the critically-acclaimed America's Unpatriotic Acts , the first book to look in-depth at the PATRIOT Act and its effect upon American citizens. The book is available through amazon.com, as are his 15 other books, most on history and contemporary social issues.]

Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist and university professor. His current books are America's Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights, and 'Unacceptable': The Federal response to (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Published on Friday, February 4, 2011 by Pro Publica

Dems: Obama Broke Pledge to Force Banks to Help Homeowners

by Paul Kiel and Olga Pierce

Before he took office, President Obama repeatedly promised voters and Democrats in Congress that he'd fight for changes to bankruptcy laws to help homeowners-a tough approach that would force banks to modify mortgages.

Candidate Obama had portrayed homeowners in a sympathetic light. But the president struck a cautious note when he unveiled the plan in February 2009. While the government had been relatively undiscriminating in its bank bailout, it would carefully vet homeowners seeking help. HAMP was written to exclude homeowners seen as undeserving, limiting the program’s reach to between 3 million and 4 million homes.

"I will change our bankruptcy laws to make it easier for families to stay in their homes," Obama told supporters at a Colorado rally on September 16, 2008, the same day as the bailout of AIG.

Bankruptcy judges have long been barred from lowering mortgage payments on primary residences, though they could do it with nearly all other types of debt, even mortgages on vacation homes. Obama promised to change that, describing it as exactly "the kind of out-of-touch Washington loophole that makes no sense."

But when it came time to fight for the measure, he didn't show up. Some Democrats now say his administration actually undermined it behind the scenes.

"Their behavior did not well serve the country," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who led House negotiations to enact the change, known as "cramdown." It was "extremely disappointing."

Instead, the administration has relied on a voluntary program with few sticks, that simply offers banks incentives to modify mortgages. Known as Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, the program was modeled after an industry plan. The administration also wrote it carefully to exclude millions of homeowners seen as undeserving.

The administration launched the program with a promise that it would help 3 million to 4 million homeowners avoid foreclosure, but it's likely to fall far short of that goal. The Congressional Oversight Panel now estimates [1] fewer than 800,000 homeowners will ultimately get lasting mortgage modifications.

Over the past year, ProPublica has been exploring why the program has helped so few homeowners. Last week, we reported how the Treasury Department has allowed banks to break the program's rules with few ramifications [2]. The series is based on newly released data, lobbying disclosures, and dozens of interviews with insiders, members of Congress and others.

As the foreclosure crisis grew through 2008, the large banks that handle most mortgages were slow to offer modifications to struggling homeowners. Homeowners were left to navigate an onerous process that usually did not actually lower their mortgage payment. More than half of modifications kept the homeowner's payment the same or actually increased it.

Many in Congress and elsewhere thought that mortgage servicers, the largest of which are the four largest banks, would make modifications only if they were pressured to do so.

Servicers work as intermediaries, handling homeowners' mortgage payments on behalf of investors who own the loans. Since servicers don't own the vast majority of the loans they service, they don't take the loss if a home goes to foreclosure, making them reluctant to make the investments necessary to fulfill their obligations to help homeowners.

To force those servicers to modify mortgages, advocates pushed for a change to bankruptcy law giving judges the power not just to change interest rates but to reduce the overall amount owed on the loan, something servicers are loath to do [3].

Congressional Democrats had long been pushing a bill to enact cramdown and were encouraged by the fact that Obama had supported it, both in the Senate and on the campaign trail.

They thought cramdowns would serve as a stick, pushing banks to make modifications on their own.

"That was always the thought," said Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC), "that judicial modifications would make voluntary modifications work. There would be the consequence that if the lenders didn't [modify the loan], it might be done to them."

When Obama unveiled his proposal to stem foreclosures a month after taking office, cramdown was a part of the package [4]. But proponents say he'd already damaged cramdown's chances of becoming law.

In the fall of 2008, Democrats saw a good opportunity to pass cramdown. The $700 billion TARP legislation was being considered, and lawmakers thought that with banks getting bailed out, the bill would be an ideal vehicle for also helping homeowners. But Obama, weeks away from his coming election, opposed that approach and instead pushed for a delay. He promised congressional Democrats that down the line he would "push hard to get cramdown into the law," recalled Rep. Miller.

Four months later, the stimulus bill presented another potential vehicle for cramdown. But lawmakers say the White House again asked them to hold off, promising to push it later.

An attempt to include cramdown in a continuing resolution got the same response from the president.

"We would propose that this stuff be included and they kept punting," said former Rep. Jim Marshall, a moderate Democrat from Georgia who had worked to sway other members of the moderate Blue Dog caucus [5] on the issue.

"We got the impression this was an issue [the White House] would not go to the mat for as they did with health care reform," said Bill Hampel, chief economist for the Credit Union National Association, which opposed cramdown and participated in Senate negotiations on the issue.

Privately, administration officials were ambivalent about the idea. At a Democratic caucus meeting weeks before the House voted on a bill that included cramdown, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner "was really dismissive as to the utility of it," said Rep. Lofgren.

Larry Summers, then the president's chief economic adviser, also expressed doubts in private meetings, she said. "He was not supportive of this."

The White House and Summers did not respond to requests for comment.

Treasury staffers began conversations with congressional aides by saying the administration supported cramdown and would then "follow up with a whole bunch of reasons" why it wasn't a good idea, said an aide to a senior Democratic senator.

Homeowners, Treasury staffers argued, would take advantage of bankruptcy to get help they didn't need. Treasury also stressed the effects of cramdown on the nation's biggest banks, which were still fragile. The banks' books could take a beating if too many consumers lured into bankruptcy by cramdown also had their home equity loans and credit card debt written down.

While the Obama administration was silent, the banking industry had long been mobilizing massive opposition to the measure.

"Every now and again an issue comes along that we believe would so fundamentally undermine the nature of the financial system that we have to take major efforts to oppose, and this is one of them," Floyd Stoner, the head lobbyist for the American Bankers Association, told an industry magazine.

With big banks hugely unpopular, the key opponents of cramdown were the nation's community bankers, who argued that the law would force them to raise mortgage rates to cover the potential losses. Democratic leaders offered to exempt the politically popular smaller banks from the cramdown law, but no deal was reached.

"When you're dealing with something like the bankruptcy issue, where all lenders stand pretty much in the same shoes, it shouldn't be a surprise when the smaller and larger banks find common cause," said Steve Verdier, a lobbyist for the Independent Community Bankers Association.

The lobbying by the community banks and credit unions proved fatal to the measure, lawmakers say. "The community banks went bonkers on this issue," said former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT). With their opposition, he said, "you don't win much."

"It was a pitched battle to get it out of the House," said Rep. Miller, with "all the effort coming from the Democratic leadership, not the Obama administration."

The measure faced stark conservative opposition. It was opposed by Republicans in Congress and earlier by the Bush administration, who argued that government interference to change mortgage contracts would reduce the security of all kinds of future contracts.

"It undermines the foundation of the capitalist economy," said Phillip Swagel, a Bush Treasury official. "What separates us from [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin is not retroactively changing contracts."

After narrowly passing the House, cramdown was defeated when 12 Democrats joined Republicans [6] to vote against it.

Many Democrats in Congress said they saw this as the death knell for the modification program, which would now have to rely on the cooperation of banks and other mortgage servicers to help homeowners.

"I never thought that it would work on a voluntary basis," said Rep. Lofgren.

At the time that the new administration was frustrating proponents of cramdown, the administration was putting its energies into creating a voluntary program, turning to a plan already endorsed by the banking industry. Crafted in late 2008, the industry plan gave banks almost complete freedom in deciding which mortgages to modify and how.

The proposal was drafted by the Hope Now Alliance, a group billed as a broad coalition of the players affected by the mortgage crisis, including consumer groups, housing counselors, and banks. In fact, the Hope Now Alliance was headquartered in the offices of the Financial Services Roundtable, a powerful banking industry trade group. Hope Now's lobbying disclosures were filed jointly with the Roundtable, and they show efforts to defeat cramdown and other mortgage bills supported by consumer groups.

The Hope Now plan aimed to boost the number of modifications by streamlining the process for calculating the new homeowner payments. In practice, because it was voluntary, it permitted servicers to continue offering few or unaffordable modifications.

The plan was replaced by the administration's program after just a few months, but it proved influential. "The groundwork was already laid," said Christine Eldarrat, an executive adviser at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. "Servicers were onboard, and we knew their feelings about certain guidelines."

As an official Treasury Department account of its housing programs later put it, "The Obama Administration recognized the momentum in the private sector reflected in Hope Now's efforts and sought to build upon it." It makes no mention of cramdown as being needed to compel compliance.

Ultimately, HAMP kept the streamlined evaluation process of the Hope Now plan but made changes that would, in theory, push servicers to make more affordable modifications. If servicers chose to participate, they would receive incentive payments, up to $4,000, for each modification, and the private investors and lenders who owned the loans would also receive subsidies. In exchange, servicers would agree to follow rules for handling homeowner applications and make deeper cuts in mortgage payments. Servicers who chose not to participate could handle delinquent homeowners however they chose.

The program had to be voluntary, Treasury officials say, because the bailout bill did not contain the authority to compel banks to modify loans or follow any rules. A mandatory program requires congressional approval. The prospects for that were, and remain, dim, said Dodd. "Not even close."

"The ideal would have been both [cramdown and HAMP]," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), then the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. But given the political constraints, HAMP on its own was "better than nothing."

"We designed elegant programs that seemed to get all the incentives right to solve the problem," said Karen Dynan, a former senior economist at the Federal Reserve. "What we learned is that the world is a really complicated place."

The program was further limited by the administration's concerns about using taxpayer dollars to help the wrong homeowners. The now-famous "rant" by a CNBC reporter [7], which fueled the creation of the Tea Party movement, was prompted by the idea that homeowners who had borrowed too much money might get help.

Candidate Obama had portrayed homeowners in a sympathetic light. But the president struck a cautious note when he unveiled the plan in February 2009 [8]. The program will "not rescue the unscrupulous or irresponsible by throwing good taxpayer money after bad loans," said Obama. "It will not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they would never be able to afford."

While the government had been relatively undiscriminating in its bank bailout [9], it would carefully vet homeowners seeking help. HAMP was written to exclude homeowners seen as undeserving, limiting the program's reach to between 3 million and 4 million homes.

In order to prove their income was neither too high nor too low for the program, homeowners were asked to send in more documents than servicers had required previously, further taxing servicers' limited capacity. As a result, some servicers say eligible homeowners have been kept out. According to one industry estimate [10], as many as 30 percent more homeowners would have received modifications without the additional demands for documentation.

A lot of the program is focused on "weeding out bad apples," said Steven Horne, former Director of Servicing Risk Strategy at Fannie Mae. "Ninety percent is not focused on keeping more borrowers in their homes."

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Obama and Egypt: Some History

by Paul Street / February 1st, 2011

The recent remarkable and revolutionary unrest in the Arab world and particularly in Egypt has created an awkward dilemma for the Obama administration. Despite his campaign rhetoric of “change,” Barack Obama has continued the basic George W. Bush policy of encouraging an anti-Iran alliance between Israel and so-called moderate Arab states. These “moderate” states include Egypt’s atrocious police-state dictatorship and Saudi Arabia’s misogynist theocracy, which is perhaps the most reactionary government on earth. All of these states have continued to be lavishly funded by the United States under Obama—ironically enough given Obama’s following comment in his (not-so) anti-Iraq war speech in Chicago in the fall of 2002: “You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope…” Six and a half years later, Obama as U.S. president refused even to call Egypt’s dictator Hosni Mubarak “authoritarian” (much less a dictator). He praised the Egyptian government as “a force for stability and good in the region.” He claimed to have been “struck” by the “wisdom and graciousness” of Saudi king Abdullah, the head of state in a nation that regularly practiced public beheadings. These comments amounted to a clear endorsement of torture, martial law, secret police, and worse in the Middle East.¹

As feared and predicted by many Middle Eastern democracy activists, Obama’s much ballyhooed trip to the Middle East in early June of 2009 blessed repression in the Middle East. Obama used his high-profile diplomatic visit to Cairo, the heart of the Arab world, to call for a cooperative era of ambitious regional diplomacy. He made no far-reaching calls for political reform, reflecting his determination to tolerate repression on the part of Middle East allies willing to assist the U.S. on “regional issues” (the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the general U.S. support for Israel and its vicious oppression of the Palestinians, and the U.S. campaign against Iran). President Mubarak and other Middle Eastern authorities naturally interpreted Obama’s reluctance to raise questions of democracy as a green light to crack down on regime critics.

It was depressing for many who sought peace in the Middle East to hear Obama’s Cairo speech buy heavily into the language of an epic global conflict between the Judeo-Christian world and the Muslim world. As left Middle East scholar Gilbert Achcar noted the day after the address:

[Obama’s] speech was lamentably constrained within the parameters of the “clash of civilizations” paradigm—whose main theoretician, the late Samuel Huntington, did not advocate the clash, as his non-readers believe, but warned of it. The paradigm was one of a world divided into blocs, the majority of which are constituted around a single religious criterion. Thus, Obama in Cairo exclusively addressed the “Muslims,” scattering his speech with quotes from the Koran, expressing a view of the world dominated by religion—and only Abrahamic religions at that, forgetting that in his own country there are millions who do not belong to any [sects] of Christianity, Judaism or Islam, not to mention those who refuse to belong to any religion at all. In doing so, he paid an unintended tribute to the man whom he mentioned at the beginning of his speech and built up as its main target: Osama bin Laden.²

Jon Alterman, a State Department Middle East advisor under George W. Bush, offered an interesting perspective on the unchanged bipartisan and imperial continuities beneath and beyond Obama’s trip to the Arab world. “Our policies,” Alterman explained at a forum in Washington, “are a reflection of our interests and our alliances and while they may change moderately from administration to administration, the underlying interests are simply not allied with the policies that many Muslims around the world would like to see the United States pursue. We’re going to have to agree to disagree, and that’s the first task for the President—to frame U.S. policy in a way that takes some of the passion out of the widespread hostility for the United States [emphasis added].”³ Obama’s real task, Alterman felt, wasn’t to change actual U.S. policy in the Middle East; it was rather to take the dangerous sting out of how those policies were perceived across the predominantly Muslim and Arab region. It was about public relations and re-branding.

Here we are a year and a half later. The alienated, drastically under-employed and hopeless Arab and Egyptian youth that Obama claimed to care for in 2002 have led an epic outpouring of protest that challenges the power of the arch-authoritarian governments the U.S. continues to bankroll under Obama. Contrary to the president’s religious-civilization-clash rhetoric, the struggles in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and elsewhere are not being waged by and for Muslim extremism but in the name of the modern, secular- democratic values that Washington claims to support and embody (notwithstanding its captivity to its own unelected and interrelated dictatorships of money and empire). Insofar as Obama now appears to be cautiously willing to appear to side with the people in the streets in Cairo and Alexandria, the primary administration motive is clearly imperial-strategic. It arises from the fear that the American and Obama brand will be irrevocably poisoned in Egypt and the Middle East if the U.S. appears to have stayed to the end with a doomed dictator. But then, American foreign policy has never supported democracy overseas for other than contingent and highly qualified reasons. Beneath its claim to represent and advance universal democratic values, Washington has long sponsored, protected, and equipped authoritarian and dictatorial regimes that it has seen as favorable to the U.S. corporate sector’s economic interests and the American military’s related global designs. When those regimes collapse under the weight of popular rebellion the U.S. never wanted to see, Washington does the best it can to identify itself with and control the opposition

1. Michael Brull, “Obama Just Updated U.S. Double-Speak,” New Matilida, June 11, 2009; U.S. Liberals, “Barack Obama’s Stirring 2002 Speech Against the Iraq War,” October 2002. [↩]
2. Gilbert Achcar, “Obama’s Cairo Speech,” ZNet, June 6, 2009. [↩]
3. Jon Alterman quoted in Michael Scherer, “Obama Seeks to Win Muslim Hearts and Minds,” Time, June 3, 2009. [↩]

Paul Street (paulstreet99@yahoo.com) is a veteran radical historian and independent author, activist, researcher, and journalist in Iowa City, IA. He is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Paradigm 2005); Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Routledge 2005): and Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis (Rowman&Littlefied 2007). Street's new book Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics can now be ordered. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.

This article was posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Egypt, Imperialism, Middle East, Obama