Showing posts with label Hidden Agendas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hidden Agendas. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

State Department Records Show Obama Administration Helped Fund George Soros’ Left-Wing Political Activities in Albania





Judicial Watch obtained 32 pages of records showing the Obama administration sent U.S. taxpayers’ funds to a group backed by billionaire George Soros, which used the money to fund left-wing political activities in Albania, including working with the country’s socialist government to push for highly controversial judicial “reform.” The records also detail how the Soros operation helped the State Department review grant applications from other groups for taxpayer funding....

“The Obama administration quietly spent at least $9 million in U.S. taxpayers’ dollars in direct collusion with left-wing billionaire George Soros’ backing of a socialist government in Albania. It is particularly outrageous that the State Department allowed the Soros operation to help direct taxpayer funds to other groups,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “George Soros is a billionaire and he shouldn’t be receiving taxpayer support to advance his radical left agenda to undermine freedom here at home and abroad.”

Friday, December 30, 2016

Nearing exit, Obama seeks to tie Trump's hands... Unleashes 3,853 regs, 18 for every law, record 97,110 pages of red tape...









Friday, July 1, 2016

A group of Nobel Prize-winners have signed onto a campaign demanding activist groups and their seemingly willing accomplices in the press refrain from spreading misinformation about the science behind genetically modified foods.



"The media very often likes to present a supposedly balanced argument," Sir Richard Roberts, who is spearheading the campaign along with fellow Nobel Prize-winner Philip Sharp, told the Washington Examiner's media desk Thursday.

"They present it as though it's a 50/50 deal, rather than the fact that it's a 99-to-1 percent. The media have to do a better job. They just have to do a better job of estimating where is the consensus and if you want to bring another view in, you have to point out it's a minority view," he added.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

The Obama administration siphoned $500 million that could have gone toward combating the Zika virus into a U.N. effort aimed at mitigating climate change.



Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.) wrote in an op-ed published in the Daily Signal that the Senate last year granted Obama the authority to pay for a response to Zika, but his administration chose instead to allocate those funds toward the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund.

Lankford wrote:
Congress last December provided the Obama administration with authority to pull money from bilateral economic assistance to foreign countries. They can use those funds to combat infectious diseases, if the administration believed there is an infectious disease emergency. In the middle of the Zika epidemic, the administration did use their authority to pull money from foreign aid and spend it, but they didn’t use it for Zika. … In March, President Obama gave the United Nations $500 million out of an account under bilateral economic assistance to fund the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund. Congress refused to allocate funding for the U.N. Climate Change Fund last year, so the president used this account designated for international infectious diseases to pay for his priority.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Friday, March 13, 2015

FCC Cites Soros-Funded, Neo-Marxist-Founded Group 46 TIMES In New "Net Neutrality' Regs

New internet regulations finally released by the Federal Communications Commission make 46 references to a group funded by billionaire George Soros and co-founded by a neo-Marxist. - Chuck Ross/Daily Caller

...The FCC received more than 4 million public comments as it was weighing the net neutrality initiative, but Free Press and other activist groups have received the most attention by pressuring the FCC and the White House on behalf of their cause.

One argument made against the FCC’s regulatory push is that the general public is largely happy with its internet service. Support for net neutrality was seen as the domain of special interest groups like Free Press.

The activist group has big money behinds its effort. It has received $2.2 million in donations from progressive billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and $3.9 million from the Ford Foundation.

And one of Free Press’ co-founders, Robert McChesney, a communications professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has not been shy about his desire to see the internet regulated heavily....

But internet regulation appears to be only part of McChesney’s more radical agenda of completely revamping how the media operate in the U.S.

“In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles,” McChesney wrote in a 2009 essay.

“Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism,” he said.

“The news is not a commercial product. It is a public good, necessary for a self-governing society. Once we accept this, we can talk about the kind of media policies and subsidies we want,” McChesney once argued.

Sentiments such as these have raised questions about whether the FCC’s new regulations will eventually lead to oversight of internet content.

“The unthinkable has become thinkable, and the free-market Internet – one of freedom’s greatest triumphs – is set to be reduced to a public utility, subject to pervasive economic regulation and, in turn, to content control,” American Commitment’s Kerpen wrote in an open letter to McChesney after the FCC voted 3-2 in favor of the regulations.... KEEP READING

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Scandal Rocks the U.N.

A report on human-rights violations has been compromised not once but twice. - Anne Bayefsky/National Review

Four days ago, on February 2, the head of a U.N. commission of inquiry created to investigate war crimes in Gaza was forced to resign after it was revealed that he had taken money from the PLO for providing legal advice. William Schabas’s U.N. job was to expose war criminals and recommend how to hold them “accountable.” William Schabas’s PLO job was to show them how to use the International Criminal Court (ICC) to hold Israeli war criminals accountable. He didn’t think there was a problem.

His conflict of interest did not surface, however, until after the inquiry he was heading had “largely completed” its evidence-gathering, and the writing of the requisite report had begun, according to Schabas himself. But instead of taking the only legitimate route and setting aside the whole tainted exercise, the president of the U.N. Human Rights Council, Joachim Rücker of Germany, claimed he was “preserving the integrity” of the inquiry simply by accepting Schabas’s resignation....

Hence, the Schabas inquiry’s mandate was to examine human-rights violations “in the occupied Palestinian territory,” not “in Israel.” The date cited for the beginning of the inquiry was June 13, 2014, because Palestinian terrorists had kidnapped (and later murdered) three Israeli teenagers the day before — and Israeli aggression was a given of the investigation. The mandate never mentioned “Hamas” or its terror tunnels, almost half of which opened into Israel.

With the terms of the “inquiry” set to ensure the desired outcome, Schabas and two others became the council’s tools. They were selected by President Rücker “in consultation” with the Palestinians in the belief that they could be counted upon to deliver a guilty verdict.

Friday, December 12, 2014

Obama Justice Department Was Involved In IRS Targeting, Lerner Emails Reveal

Sadly, the 18 month investigation into the IRS targeting of conservative groups isn’t over, and it may be worse than anyone thought. A federal judge has broken loose more emails that the DOJ had surely hoped would never surface. The picture it reveals isn’t pretty. - Forbes

The documents prove that Lois Lerner met with DOJ’s Election Crimes Division a month before the 2010 elections.

It has to be embarrassing to the DOJ, which may not be the most impartial one to be investigating the IRS. In fact, the DOJ withheld over 800 pages of Lerner documents citing “taxpayer privacy” and “deliberative privilege.” Yet these internal DOJ documents show Ms. Lerner was talking to DOJ officials about prosecuting tax-exempt entities (yes, criminally!) two years before the IRS conceded there was inappropriate targeting....

“No wonder the Department of Justice under Eric Holder has done no serious investigation of the Obama IRS scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These new documents dramatically show how the Justice Department is up to its neck in the IRS scandal and can’t be trusted to investigate crimes associated with the IRS abuses that targeted Obama’s critics,” he said. “Richard Nixon was impeached for less.”

Perhaps the latter is an overstatement. Yet it is getting harder and harder to simply accept President Obama’s ‘no smidgen of corruption’ remark made to Fox News in February, no matter how sincere and forthright his delivery.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Meet the Radical DOJ Unit Investigating Ferguson Shooting

PJ Media has been covering the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division for years. This is the unit that will be investigating the shooting in Ferguson and deciding whether to charge the police officer with civil rights crimes. - by J. Christian Adams/PJ Media

PJ Media had to sue Eric Holder to obtain the resumes of the lawyers he hired to populate this unit. No wonder. The “Every Single One” series at PJ Media revealed that all of Holder’s attorney hires were leftists, some even with a history of anti-police activities. ◼ Read the detailed biographies of the lawyers here.

Why does it matter that the DOJ unit that will investigate the Ferguson police is stacked with leftists and ideologues? Because anti-police biases of lawyers in this unit have resulted in gross prosecutorial misconduct against police officers.

United States District Judge Kurt Engelhardt issued this blistering 129-page opinion documenting prosecutorial misconduct by DOJ lawyers seeking to convict New Orleans police officers of civil rights violations.

...As Holder moves forward in Ferguson, keep the documented misconduct of his lawyers in mind.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Who Are ‘Texans for Public Justice,’ and Why Does Their Role in the Perry Case Matter?

The current case against Perry was brought through a complaint filed by Texans for Public Justice. Media inside Texas are occasionally mentioning TPJ’s role, but they are not detailing what TPJ actually is. - Bryan Preston/PJMedia
Even a cursory glance at their website is revealing. TPJ claims to be a public integrity watchdog, but their quest for integrity is entirely one-sided. They never take on Democrats. TPJ exists to attack Republicans, and they have been doing nothing but that for years. TPJ is even trying to get Delay’s convictions re-instated.

There is more to TPJ than mere partisanship masquerading as “public integrity.”

According to its own 2013 annual report, Texans for Public Justice is funded by the hard left....

The Open Society Foundations and the Sunlight Foundation are both funded by leftwing billionaire and convicted felon George Soros. Why is a group that sells itself as a public integrity watchdog accepting funds from a man who was convicted of insider trading? Why is no one in the Texas media asking TPJ that very question?

Texans for Public Justice is part of a larger network of money and operatives that the Texas Democrats in exile set up with one goal — to recapture power that the voters took away from them. They set themselves a deadline of electing a Democrat speaker of the Texas House of Representatives by 2010. They failed in that goal. The Texas Republicans expanded their hold on the House that year.

But the network, run by out-of-state leftwing operative Matt Angle, never went away. It won’t as long as money keeps rolling in....learn MORE, at the link.
Networks Ignore that Group Behind Perry’s Indictment Got $500K from Soros - Mike Ciandella/Newsbusters
...In what appeared to have been a slip of the tongue, Texans for Public Justice Director Craig McDonald told CNN “the governor again, in his defense yesterday, said this is merely a partisan, political witch hunt. Nothing could be closer to the truth.”
The weirdest part of the Rick Perry indictment - Philip Klein/Washington Examiner @philipklein

t didn't take long for it to become widely accepted — and not just among conservatives — that Friday's indictment of Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, rests on a razor-thin legal premise. MSNBC host Ari Melber called the case "very weak" while Jonathan Chait of New York magazine declared the indictment "unbelievably ridiculous." Even former senior advisor to President Obama, David Axelrod, wrote on Twitter that the indictment seemed "pretty sketchy." But perhaps the weirdest part about the indictment isn't just that it's without merit, but that the underlying dispute it highlights actually makes Perry look good.

Politics as Combat - Andrew C. McCarthy/National Review

It has come to this after six years of Barack Obama’s Chicago-style community-organizer governance: The hard Left no longer believes it necessary to pretend that the rule of law matters. It is politics as combat....

Under Texas law, Perry has incontestable constitutional authority to veto legislation — he doesn’t need a reason. But in this instance, he had abundant reason. Quite apart from the pernicious, politicized law enforcement for which the Travis County district attorney’s office is notorious, Rosemary Lehmberg, the district attorney, was arrested last year for drunken driving. Though she is hardly fit to run a public corruption unit, Democrats in the Texas state legislature nevertheless pushed through a $7.5 million appropriation. Perry responded with an ultimatum: Either Lehmberg would tender her resignation, or he would veto the funds.

Mind you, if Perry had said nothing and simply vetoed the measure, no one would have a plausible objection. Instead, he reasonably explained his position and indicated that Austin could have the money if the compromised district attorney stepped down. But somehow, in the telling of Austin’s partisan prosecutors, such a veto is no longer a political exercise; it’s felony extortion for which Perry could be sentenced to decades in prison.

The Founders gave us a republican democracy which, at the federal and state levels, divides authority among the political branches and assumes — indeed, demands — that the branches flex the muscles they’ve been given to check each other’s excesses. The competition plays out at the ballot box, not in the courts — much less the criminal courts. Perry’s veto, to block funding for a prosecutor’s office with a checkered record and an unfit leader, is plainly what the founders contemplated: an exercise of legitimate political authority to rein in the excesses of a competing branch. Yet, the politicized Austin prosecutors depict it not as normal political give and take; they frame Perry as if he were a mafia don.

Friday, August 8, 2014

Just in time for summer beach reading: a tale of environmental-activist intrigue

Senator David Vitter (R-LA) released a minority staff report from the U.S. Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPWC) titled “The Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA.” - Pacific Legal Foundation

"[T]he operation of our government is often more interesting than fiction." PLF's Todd Gaziano talks about the "revolving door between individuals who work for environmental activist groups that seek greater government regulation and the federal agencies that produce such regulations."

The report is an interesting read and shines some light on phony, supposedly “local,” grassroots campaigns that are directed by many of the same national entities and interests.

The section that most intrigued me covers the revolving door between individuals who work for environmental activist groups that seek greater government regulation and the federal agencies that produce such regulations. See pp. 23-32. It lists a number of individuals who recently obtained or held influential positions with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and were previously employed by the National Resource Defense Council, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Public Interest Research Groups, Union of Concerned Scientists, and elsewhere. These organizations regularly lobby and sue federal agencies seeking ever-increasing government regulation of economic and social activity.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Sea Change Foundation, a $124 million organization whose one-page website contains no helpful information about the group, shifts this money around so that it ends up (directly or indirectly) in the hands of groups involved in political and policy activities – groups like the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, and the Blue-Green Alliance.

Look who's been getting millions in secret foreign cash! Examiner Editorial - Washington Examiner

The Bermuda-based corporation, Klein Ltd., for which there is almost no public information available, gave $23 million in 2010 and 2011 to the Sea Change Foundation. The Klein money could come from anywhere – old ladies in Florida, Mexican drug dealers, or foreign governments with a financial interest in stopping U.S. fossil fuel exploration. There is no way of knowing.

..."This is clearly a deceitful way to hide the source of millions of dollars that are active in our system, attempting to effect political change. ... It appears that Klein exists on paper only. ..."

Americans' donations for advocacy and politics should be both legal and encouraged. That's not the problem. What is stunning in this situation is the raw hypocrisy required to operate a movement this way while calling for laws that curtail others' First Amendment rights. In the ongoing IRS scandal, for example, conservative groups with comparatively tiny annual budgets faced a Spanish Inquisition when they dared to seek official nonprofit status from the IRS. Democrats in Congress have excused the actions of senior IRS bureaucrats, arguing that these Tea Party groups threaten to flood the political system with money from undisclosed sources.

Yet at the same time, Democrat politicians benefit from millions in Big Green cash that goes toward groups with similarly political and policy-based goals, and some of that money comes from at least one shadowy foreign source. There's a lesson in here somewhere.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Almost 80 million with employer health care plans could have coverage canceled, experts predict

Their losses would be in addition to the millions who found their individual coverage cancelled for the same reason. Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute said that in addition to the individual cancellations, "at least half the people on employer plans would by 2014 start losing plans as well." - Jim Angle/FOX
It is possible to march carrying a drumstick in one hand and a torch in the other. - Discussion at Lucianne
Obamacare's Looming Landmine - Lewis Dovland/American Thinker
Now THIS is depressing. - Discussion at Lucianne

We've all heard the "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" statements -- statements that now are being admitted to even by the administration as knowingly false when first made. We all know about the much higher premiums and deductibles faced by individuals, due in large part by the coverage mandated by the law.

What is being overlooked is the new and higher deductibles and total annual out-of-pocket expenditures, especially in the Bronze and Silver plans. The amount of these greatly exceeds the ability of most individuals and families to pay, thus providing the real possibility of personal bankruptcies due to medical bills and high losses for providers who cannot collect....

So what will happen? The family, being responsible citizens, will initially try to pay the bills, but that will soon prove impossible. They will ultimately default. And in any case, they will most likely end any college planning or retirement savings they were working toward.

But -- and this is the big but -- the entity chasing them for the money is not the government. Rather, it is the provider -- the doctor, hospital, lab, radiologist, etc. This permits the government to stand on the sidelines and shrug at the dastardly situation that government itself caused in the first place.

Once enough patients face this crisis, the provider will be painted as the devil, hurting all these working Americans and their finances. First there will be restrictions on how much the provider can ultimately collect. Eventually, providers will be eating a large portion of any of the money they don't collect at the point of service.

The government will neatly sidestep the mess they've set up on purpose, will be able to demonize the providers (who end up not getting paid), and can step in to "save the day." And saving the day means taking over the now-bankrupt assets of the provider side of the health care delivery system. Bingo: a full single-payer and provider system, under government control, without even having to fire a shot.

This is a main reason why the PPACA law is so bad. It is health insurance reform, not health industry reform. It does nothing to fix the cost problems we have in the delivery of health care. It addresses a nonexistent problem (lack of insurance) instead of the real problem (making health care affordable for all). All planned with an eye to wrecking the system from the bottom up.

The Front Man - Kevin D. Williamson/National Review Online

In an important sense, the American people have no political say in the health-care law, for example, because Congress did not pass a law reforming the health-care system; instead, Congress passed a law empowering the Obama administration, through its political appointees and unelected time-servers, to create a new national health-care regime.

It's Official: Obama Knew He'd Ruin Our Health Care - Rush

Monday, September 9, 2013

Environmental Protection Agency officials have from the beginning of President Obama's tenure in the Oval Office "pursued a path of obfuscation, operating in the shadows, and out of the sunlight," according to a Senate report.

UPDATED: Lengthy Senate report details EPA FOIA abuses - Mark Tapscott/Washington Examiner

The report by Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee provides a detailed description of violations of the Freedom of Information Act and other federal laws and regulations meant to encourage transparency and accountability in the government.

"The agency established an alias identity to hide the actions of the former administrator; has purposefully been unresponsive to FOIA request, oftentimes redacting information the public has a right to know; and mismanaged its electronic records system such that federal records have been jeopardized," the report said.

"Moreover, EPA’s leadership abandoned the historic model of a specialized public servant who seeks to fairly administer the law and has instead embraced a number of controversial tactics to advance a secretive agenda," the report said.

In addition to multiple abuses of the FOIA, the Senate report claims EPA officials have sought to cover up such activities when challenged by congressional oversight officials.

"As Congress has raised questions about EPA’s lack of transparency, the agency has steadfastly ignored its constitutional obligation to subject itself to congressional oversight, apparently in an effort to prevent the public from knowing what is going on behind closed doors," the report said.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Finally unearthed: The stunning, toxic origins of Obamacare

A book...documents for the first time the radical origins of President Obama’s health-care law, revealing the principal author of the foundation for the legislation while tracing the law itself to a group funded by George Soros. - WND

“Red Army: The Radical Network that must be defeated to save America” also finds the founders of the controversial Apollo Alliance, run by a slew of radicals, helped craft the marketing campaign behind the health-care initiative.

The new book, by authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott, exposes what is characterized as “the radical socialist network that seized political power in Washington over decades, shaped Obama’s presidential agenda and threatens the very future of the U.S.”

On Obamacare, “Red Army” documents how the legislation, deliberately masked by moderate, populist rhetoric, was carefully crafted and perfected over the course of decades and is a direct product of laborious work by a coalition of radical groups and activists, many with socialist designs....

“Red Army” documents how a little-known marketing outfit called the Herndon Alliance helped to market Obamacare, even providing suggestions on which words supporters should use the promote the bill.

Acceptable phrases include “quality affordable health care”; “American solutions”; “giving security and peace of mind”; “fair rules”; “government as watchdog”; “smart investments, investing in the future”; and “affordable health plans.”

Unacceptable words include “universal health care”; “Canadian-style health care”; “Medicare for All”; “regulations”; “free”; “government or public health care”; and “wellness.”

“Red Army” found the research component of the Herndon Alliance was provided by Celinda Lake, who teamed up with a marketing research firm, American Environics. AE uses social-values surveys to gauge public opinion.

Lake, herself, worked for a number of leftist institutions and unions, including the AFL-CIO and the SEIU. She also serves on the board of directors of the Progressive Congress Action Fund alongside Robert Borosage, whose Healthcare for America Now anticipated spending $42 million in its final push for passage of Obamacare.

AE was founded in 2004 by a team of American strategists and Canadian researchers. In April 2005, current AE managing partners Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger started AE’s American branch. One year before, Shellenberger did imaging for Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger co-founded the Apollo Alliance sometime around 2002 and were two of its original national board members.

“Red Army” exposes how Apollo helped draft not only the president’s green jobs programs, but also the $787 billion economic stimulus bill and other proposed new energy legislation.

Apollo is led by a slew of radicals, including Van Jones...

Media Cronyism: “Where are the health care all-stars?” - MediaChecker

Huge Compilation of links and sources, connecting the dots.