We Need To Get Pissed Off Damit | Boudica BPI Weblog

We Need To Get Pissed Off Damit | Boudica BPI Weblog.

Dems Admit Obama’s Not Eligible

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Conservative Byte  

Weary of defending in court the Constitutional eligibility of their man at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the Democrat Party has finally admitted Barack Obama is not qualified to be president of the United States– and that it doesn’t matter.

According to a motion filed by Party attorneys in a Tennessee eligibility lawsuit, “…Defendants [the Tennessee Democrat Party and the Democrat National Committee] assert that the Tennessee Democrat Party has the right to nominate whoever it chooses to run as a candidate, including someone who is not qualified for the office.”

In numerous previous lawsuits questioning the Constitutional eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama, Democrats have maintained that voters, not the Constitution, should be the final arbiters of presidential eligibility. Though a disgraceful assertion on its face, such mindless rambling was about all that desperate Democrat attorneys had in their arsenals, apart from the perpetually employed “plaintiffs lack standing” defense.

Continue Reading on www.westernjournalism.com …

 

 

 

From PAN – Barack Obama Foreign Student – American Media Threatened into Silence

COURTESY OF PATRIOT ACTION NETWORK’S  Dianna C.Cotter      A “MUST READ”!

Barack Obama Foreign Student – American Media Threatened into Silence

Posted by Dianna on March 31, 2012 at 1:13pm

By Dianna C. Cotter

On March 7^th, 2012, Pravda called out the U.S. press for its deliberate neglect of the largest scandal in modern American history. Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio released credible forensic evidence that Barack Obama, presumed President of the United States, presented to the world a , on April 27th, 2011.

Since then, the scandal has only expanded. Former United States Postal Service worker Allen Hulton has recently come forward with compelling testimony given under Oath, which leads to only one conclusion: Barack Obama attended College in the United States as a Foreign Student.

In the summer of 2008 the presidential primary season was winding down, and America could not help but note the fervor a significant number of media personalities expressed while supporting the candidacy Barack Obama. Indeed, it was collectively decided within the liberal media, that Obama’s associations with racist pastors and violent domestic terrorists was to be suppressed.

The exposure of the “Journolist” email scandal in 2010 made this glaringly clear: Stories like Obama’s ties to Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. of the Trinity United Church, and more relevant, to Bill Ayers and his radical past in the Weather Underground Organization were to remain largely un-reported and uninvestigated. Any realistic investigation into Barack Obama’s background was to be minimized, inquiries eventually mocked, and investigators labeled racists.

These tactics have isolated honest media who could and should have reported on these and other important stories yet have inexplicably remained silent. Now we know why. More on this in a moment.

The Postman

Retired United States Postal Worker Allen Hulton recently signed a sworn affidavit for the Maricopa County, Arizona Cold Case Posse convened by Sheriff Joe Arpaio, attesting under oath, to conversations with Mary Ayers, the mother of Bill Ayers. He made his testimony public in a three hour long taped interviewed on March 19^th, 2012. Mr. Hutton, by signing an affidavit has subjected himself to laws regarding perjury, not something to be taken lightly as telling the truth is now for him a requirement of law.

His testimony states Mary and Tom Ayers (Parents of Bill ”I don’t regret setting bombs” Ayers) were sponsoring Barack Obama as a foreign student, and financially supporting his education.

This is a huge revelation on not one, but two separate fronts.

Bill Ayers of dubious “Weatherman” fame, was not just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood”, as then candidate Obama brushed aside. The video linked here comes from a televised DNC Debate in the summer of 2008. As Hillary Clinton revealed then, Obama served in a paid position on the Woods Foundation with Bill Ayers and the two were involved in several projects dispersing millions of dollars over several years.

Realistically, the Ayers family could be said to have adopted Barack Obama, if not as a son then certainly as a kindred Marxist spirit, and treated him to one of the finest educations possible.

There is little doubt Mr. Obama has been less than honest with regard to the Ayers family and their significance in his life.

As disingenuous as this is, it is by no means the most important revelation.

If correct, and Obama was introduced to Hulton as a Foreign Student, this means Barack Hussein Obama would have been using a Foreign Passport to get and prove his foreign student status for entrance into Occidental College, Columbia, and later Harvard Universities. Because Hulton has signed an Affidavit, this cannot be disregarded as mere hearsay; it is instead evidentiary in nature.

The significance of this development may not be immediately apparent until one recognizes American law regarding citizenship status. Citizenship laws as expressed in Title 8 of the United States Code states the use of a Foreign Passport constitutes adult recognition of relinquishment of American Citizenship:

8 USC 1481

(a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality—

(1) obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon his own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent, after having attained the age of eighteen years; 8 USC 1481

Using a foreign passport in order to obtain status as a foreign student is precisely that, proof of naturalization in a foreign state.

The child Barack Obama became an Indonesian Citizen when he was adopted by his stepfather Lolo Soetoro and the family’s subsequent relocation to Indonesia. Young Barack by law needed Indonesian Citizenship in order to attend school, and his adoption provided this. Indeed, in young Barack’s situation adoption was necessary to gain it.

In his defense, Obama supporters have claimed for years if the president had lost his American Citizenship as a child, he did not in fact lose it because the actions of a parent cannot permanently remove a child’s American natural born citizenship status. This fallacious argument once had some validity within the confusing morass that is American Citizenship law, the nature of which is a challenge for immigration attorneys even today.

However, Hulton’s story and sworn affidavit would confirm that Barack Obama renounced what American citizenship status he had as an adult over the age of 18, by attending college as a foreign student using a foreign passport.

This would explain the president’s refusal to release his college records. These records will easily prove or disprove his status as a Foreign Student. This is the importance of U.S. Postal worker Allen Hulton’s testimony. Unless Obama formally renounced that foreign citizenship, there is the distinct possibility he is not an American Citizen, let alone a Natural Born Citizen.

In reality, due to his father’s British heritage, Mr. Obama was never a Natural Born Citizen to begin with, and admitted precisely this on his “Fight the Smears” website, stating that he was born under the British Nationality Act of 1948. This website “http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/fightthesmearshome/” has since been removed from the live internet to re-direct to Attackwatch.com “http://www.attackwatch.com/”. Clearly Mr. Obama has relied upon confusing the American people as much as possible in order to make the truth as difficult as possible to ascertain.     MY NOTE – THIS ALONE IS WHY CONGRESS IS COMPLICIT BY INACTION.  “X”

Selective Service Fraud

Equally unreported by the U.S. media is that of the Selective Service Card which registered Barack Obama for the Draft in 1980. Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse released information on March 1^st 2012 that this document is also “Highly Suspicious” of being a forgery, along with Mr. Obama’s “Long Form Birth Certificate” which was released by the president in the White House press room on April 27^th, 2011.

One of the few media outlets reporting fully on the Cold Case Posse is the Tea Party Tribune of Arizona. On March 21^st, the Tribune reported that Sheriff Arpaio has asked the Selective Service headquarters in Virginia for the original card itself in an effort to determine its authenticity within the Selective Service System. According to the Tribune, Sheriff Arpaio expressed his confidence that the agency would investigate the matter. This remains to be seen.

Has the wider American media addressed any of this in context? It may be the largest scandal in American history, certainly the most significant constitutional crisis the nation has faced since the end of the Civil War…

No.

They don’t dare.

 Censorship: It is not a rumor.

Amendment I

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The First Amendment will not prevent a few thugs funded by a private citizen or corporation from paying strategic individuals personal visits though, will it? Now we know why the remaining honest media has remained suspiciously silent.

Rumors of censorship of the American press have circulated at various times over the last several years. It seemed impossible that credible and realistic questions could exist concerning Barack Obama’s qualifications for President, yet be somehow missed by the main stream media. Indeed, the media in general is very aware of these questions, however they cannot ask them, let alone report on them. Just one example is Media Matters, funded by the George Soros Foundation, which has repeatedly and openly threated Talk Radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and his advertisers. Many have given in to the threats merely to stay in business.

In late May 2011 Dr. Jerome Corsi PhD. published “Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not E…”. At about the same time, a concerted behind the scenes effort was made to silence the press with regard to the ever increasing questions about Barack Obama’s eligibility.

A telephone interview March 22^nd with Cold Case Posse Lead investigator Mike Zullo revealed the Posse had received “highly credible” information from three separate, unrelated, credible sources detailing information regarding a nationally syndicated Conservative Talk Radio show. This major very well-known host had a fill-in the day the script called for a discussion of Barack Obama’s persistent and unanswered questions regarding his citizenship status.

The executive producers of the national show, 3 hours before air time, pulled the script literally leaving the temporary host with no script whatsoever.

For a nationally syndicated show, this is absolutely unheard of, particularly with a fill-in doing the show. Programing is scheduled days in advance as hours of work and preparation often go into them; it is after all a business and one which must inform accurately. To have a script tossed just hours before airing is simply not done without explanation or substitution.

Lead Investigator Zullo revealed in this conversation that several individuals have come forth to provide testimony; the identity of these witnesses is being withheld for their protection. They identify producers, reporters, T.V. and radio personalities who have been told specifically by intimidating individuals who state clearly, they are not going to report on this story. These witnesses have been told: “If you breathe a word about it on air, we will make certain you never work in this business again,” said Investigator Zullo. Apparently those making the threats have the power to carry through on them.

Some of these witnesses have been told this along with a sinister inquiry into how a family member is doing over at XYZ (details have been changed to protect witness identity), or some other means of letting that person know the powers that be know exactly where their family members are…

There are a few however with the courage to speak out and report on this story. Talk radio show host Rodger Hedgecock recently had Sheriff Joe Arpaio on his show. “This is probably the biggest censorship blackout in the history of the United States…” said Arpaio, “Why?” he continued, “Because it has to do with the White House? The President?”.

How can the American media possibly pass on a story so huge, and so important – fraud committed by a sitting president? – Simple, it has quite simply been threatened into silence, and law enforcement is now well aware of it.

Those who are threatening the media are apparently dead serious: to the extent that no member of the media who has been threatened is willing to admit publically to it. However, there are several who have given their witness testimony, but have done so under the very strictest of confidentiality agreements. Collectively they are afraid of losing their jobs, or of their employees being further threatened.

This is no game, this is no rumor. Sheriff Arpaio and the Cold Case Posse have the information directly from witnesses who have specific knowledge of the threats, and there are a significant number of informants. Whoever is making these threats has the power to make those threats happen. It is being taken so seriously that no major media outlet has dared to break the silence.

Lead investigator Zullo, mirroring the comments of Sheriff Arpaio commented, “This is probably one of the most concerning aspects of this investigation.” When asked if this was thuggery, the reply came without hesitation, “That’s exactly what it is.”

Media moguls at the levels of a Rupert Murdoch are justifiably nervous. The implicit threat – beyond the direct threats made to their employees – involve investigations of media outlets along with their websites and their parent companies by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

“During our investigation, we actually were told [that media] had been threatened with FTC investigations. Commentators [had been] threatened with their jobs.” Lead Investigator Zullo told Bob Unruh of World Net Daily on March 7^th. These are the auspices of the federal government with the resources of a powerful nation backing them. The justifications for using such power are almost unlimited as RedState pointed out in August of 2011.

These federal agencies can yank broadcasting licenses, or take a variety of other actions which have the effect of making it impossible to do business let alone broadcast. It’s a brutal quid pro quo: don’t breathe a word on Barack Obama’s citizenship issues or constitutional qualifications for the office he has usurped, and we will let you stay in business.

To be brutally clear, the power and backing of the United States Federal Government is being used to silence the press about Barack Obama. Either outright or through coercion, the media is complicit in covering up the crimes of the fraud Barack Obama and his unconstitutional government. These patterns are clear and unmistakable.

Part two of this column will report on 9 State Attorneys General who have taken the unprecedented step of listing the continuing crimes of the Obama Administration with the clear intent to prosecute, which has also received little media attention.

Mrs. Cotter is a senior at American Military University, recipient of the Outstanding Student Essay of 2009, a member of Delta Epsilon Tau and Epsilon Pi Phi Academic Fraternities and on the Dean’s and President’s Lists for academic achievement. She has published at American Thinker, Examiner.com, Accuracy in Media, Family Security Matters, Post and Email, and English Pravda.

The author can be contacted at Cotter.d.c@gmail.com, or at DiannaCotter.com

Lawyers???

SENT VIA E-MAIL FROM A VETERAN FRIEND:

 

I knew they had both lost their law license, but I didn’t know why until I read this. This is legit.  I checked it out at https://www.iardc.org Stands for Illinois Attorney Registration And Disciplinary Committee.  It’s the official arm of Lawyer discipline in Illinois; and they are very strict and mean. (Talk about irony.)

Even I, at the advanced age of almost 65, maintain (at the cost of approximately $600/year) my law license that I worked so hard and long to earn.

Former Constitutional Law Lecturer and U.S. President Makes Up Constitutional Quotes During State Of The Union (SOTU) Address.  Consider this:

1. President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a “lawyer”.  He surrendered his license back in 2008 in order to escape charges he lied on his bar application.  A “Voluntary Surrender” is not something where you decide “Gee, a license is not really something I need anymore, is it?” and forget to renew your license.  No, a “Voluntary Surrender” is something you do when you’ve been accused of something, and you ‘voluntarily surrender” your license five seconds before the state suspends you.

2 Michelle Obama “voluntarily surrendered” her law license in 1993.  After a Federal Judge gave her the choice between surrendering her license or standing trial for Insurance fraud!

3. So, we have the first black President and First Lady – who don’t actually have licenses to practice law. Facts. Source:

http://jdlong.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/pres-barack-obama-editor-of-the-harvard-law-review-has-no-law-license/

4. A senior lecturer is one thing, a fully ranked law professor is another. Barack Obama was NOT a Constitutional Law Professor at the University of Chicago.

5. The University of Chicago released a statement in March 2008 saying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) “served as a professor” in the law school-but that is a title Obama, who taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the school confirmed in 2008.

6. “He did not hold the title of Professor of Law,” said Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, an Assistant Dean for Communications and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago School of Law. Source: http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/03/sweet_obama_did_hold_the_title.html;

7. The former Constitutional Senior Lecturer (Obama) cited the U.S. Constitution the other night during his State of the Union Address.  Unfortunately, the quote he cited was from the Declaration of Independence …  Not the Constitution.

8. The B-Cast posted the video:

http://www.breitbart.tv/did-obama-confuse-the-constitution-with-the-declaration-of-independence/

9. Free Republic: In the State of the Union Address, President Obama said: “We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal”.

10. Um, wrong citing, wrong founding document there Champ, I mean Mr. President.  By the way, the promises are not a notion, our founders named them unalienable rights.  The document is our Declaration of Independence and it reads:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

11. And this is the same guy who lectured the Supreme Court moments later in the same speech?

When you are a phony it’s hard to keep facts straight. Keep this moving — educate others. It is important to forward to your entire address book…   do it now.

Godfather Politics: Homeland Security’s List of Words that Puts You on Their Watch List

Homeland Security Releases List of Keywords That Cheese Them Off

posted on May 28, 2012 by Tad Cronn

 

Let me just get this out of the way right now.

China gangs burn pork on Amtrak while San Diego SWAT busts ice pirates at Target.

Everybody say hello to the nice agents at Homeland Security who are watching us now that I’ve used at least 11 of the keywords they look for on the Internet.

It took a Freedom of Information Act request and a lawsuit by the Electronic Privacy Information Center to get it, but Homeland Security has released its supposedly complete list of words that set off bells in the top secret caves of the DHS.

Among the obvious ones like Al Qaeda, terrorism and nuclear are some oddities like agriculture, incident, smart, Metro, snow and social media.

The keywords are included in the DHS’s Analyst’s Desktop Binder, which also instructs analysts to hunt down media reports that reflect poorly on the department.

It doesn’t include the keyword list used by Obama’s gang of plumbers who troll the Net for negative stories, or the NSA, which represents a whole different set of eyes that are watching you.

I suspect the list released by DHS may be incomplete, however, given Janet Napolitano’s known contempt of conservative groups and the lack of conservative buzz words on the list. It was shortly after Obama entered office that Napolitano’s DHS issued a report lumping the Tea Party and other conservative groups with the KKK, Nazis and al Qaeda.

The release of the list just proves what conservatives have said and liberals denied for years: Big Brother is here, and he is watching.

[use the link to view their list. "X"]

Read more: http://godfatherpolitics.com/5390/homeland-security-releases-list-of-keywords-that-cheese-them-off/#ixzz1wHP90fVj

Israels God Given Right to Exist

Israels God Given Right to Exist.

Breitbart editor: We won’t probe eligibility

 

FORGERY-GATE

‘To my knowledge, there’s no evidence. I just don’t believe it’

Published: 11 hours ago

  by Bob Unruh

A new editor for Breitbart.com, reorganized quickly after the sudden death March 1 of founder and conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, says the issue of Barack Obama’s eligibility simply doesn’t matter.

“To my knowledge, there’s no evidence. I just don’t believe it,” Ben Shapiro, newly named editor-at-large for Breitbart.com, told Mark Gillar during an interview on his BlogTalkRadio program.

 

It was Breitbart who told the Conservative Political Action Conference shortly before his sudden death that he had obtained videos and other information about Obama’s past. Breitbart said he intended to vet the incumbent president before the 2012 election, because the media didn’t do it in 2008.

His organization, which had been on the Internet under the Big Government, Big Hollywood and other names, was in a reorganization at the time Breitbart died, and the new consolidated Breitbart.com site was released only days later.

Shapiro, author of the bestselling “Brainwashed” as well as “Primetime Propaganda,” was named editor-at-large as responsibilities were reassigned. Breitbart.com also announced Stephen K. Bannon was named executive chairman and Laurence G. Solov president.

Solov confirmed he shared Breitbart’s vision and promised the “company will pursue [it] relentlessly.”

Joel B. Pollak was appointed editor-in-chief, and Alex Marlow was named managing editor.

“Our goal in 2012 is to continue Andrew’s project, ‘The Vetting,’ which examines the president, his rivals and the mainstream media,” Pollak said in the company’s announcement. “In this crucial election year and beyond, we will continue to drive the national debate by promoting the ‘citizen journalism’ that was Andrew’s unique vision and his enduring legacy to American media.”

Gillar asked Shapiro about the vetting process, and Shapiro asked that people with tips contact his organization.

But when Gillar asked about evidence suggesting Obama is ineligible to even hold the office of president, Shapiro rejected the suggestions outright:

I obtained this from the YouTube posting. A bit different from the video on the URL reference. (can’t post “iframe”) This -to be kind- naive person chooses to shine on all the concrete evidence. I wish this educated moron was a WASP.

The interview:

 

MUCH MORE AT: http://www.wnd.com/2012/03/breitbart-editor-obama-eligibility-irrelevant/

This is Laughable: America’s Most Anti-Christian, Anti God President sets up Prayer Vigil at Supreme Court Hearing on Obamacare

From  The Twilight’s Last Gleaming

A Voting American Site

This is Laughable: America’s Most Anti-Christian, Anti God President sets up Prayer Vigil at Supreme Court Hearing on Obamacare.

WND: I told you so regarding debt limit

FROM Yahoo news, an excerpt from Reuters: 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government’s debt ceiling to allow the United States to pay its bills on time, according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday.

The approval is expected to go through without a challenge, given that Congress is in recess until later in January and the request is in line with an agreement to keep the U.S. government funded into 2013.                 ROADAPPLES!

Covered by WND:

Posted: December 26, 2011
2:17 am Eastern

© 2011

The panic stories haven’t yet begun – but they’re coming.

Soon you will hear the familiar shrieks from Federal Reserve officials bullying against any opposition to raising the debt limit one more time.

The media, too, will be telling you there is no other option. To stop borrowing endlessly will result in death, chaos and an end to life in America as we know it.

 

Worse yet, Republicans will posture about the need to cut spending, but most will go along with more borrowing – providing Barack Obama with all the funny money he needs to continue his scorched-earth policy of destruction of the U.S. economy.

What am I talking about?

The Treasury is now just $149 billion away from hitting the new debt ceiling set last in September. Without immediate real cuts in the budget, which are highly unlikely, that limit will be reached in January.

So here we go again.

I hate to say it, but I told you so. In fact, besides the 22 House Republicans who voted against the last hike in the debt limit, I am pretty much alone in American public life as an advocate of the “No More Red Ink” philosophy.

I hope that is about to change, because there’s an old adage that says, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” It’s time to stop doing the same thing over and over again.

It’s time for Americans to rise up in anger and demand “No More Red Ink.”

What would that mean? How could it be done? 

It would mean that at least one house of Congress would have to say no to more borrowing. I actually thought that’s why some of us elected Republicans to control the House in 2010. Most of them pledged to do just that. But they caved in to the establishment politics of Washington, which includes their own leadership.

However, they will get another shot to do the right thing very soon. I am determined to do everything I can to lobby the House Republicans to just say no. We need to make it a 2012 campaign issue. We need to get the Republican presidential candidates to weigh in. (At least two of them were among the House Republicans who voted correctly last August.)

But, most of all, we need to organize and lobby the House Republicans very hard.

That’s why I am bringing back, for a second try, the “No More Red Ink” campaign that generated more than 1 million red letters to the House Republicans earlier this year. I believe following the abject failure of House Speaker John Boehner’s compromise with Obama in August, more House Republicans will take a principled stand in opposition to endless borrowing.

What I am saying to you is not something you will hear from the TV talking-head, robot-like pundits. Not borrowing is not the end of the world, it’s the beginning of recovery for America. It’s the beginning of fiscal responsibility and discipline. It’s the beginning of a return to constitutionally limited government. And we can do it overnight – with one simple no vote by House Republicans.

I truly believe this vote is every bit as important as the one we’ll all participate in next November when we choose a president. Why? Because, if you believe Obama is taking a wrecking ball to the Constitution and the economy, this is the way to pull the plug on him right now – with one vote in Congress.

And, let’s face it, if we’re going to trust the Republican Party next November, shouldn’t we expect its members to do the right thing in January?

Is there really a fundamental difference between the parties? Let’s find out now!

Please support the new “No More Red Ink” campaign right now. Help me spread the word far and wide.

Gangster Government (Chapter Twelve, Michele Bachmann: Core of Conviction – My Story, 2011)

Courtesy of Robert Sohn, PAN member 

Robert Sohn

 

”And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.” –Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1781

Gangster Government (Chapter Twelve, Michele Bachmann: Core of Conviction – My Story, 2011)

So Barack Obama was elected to be our forty-fourth president. He didn’t have my vote, but he had my prayers. So much of what he said on the campaign trail was nonsensical platitudes – just meaningless phrases, seemingly produced in a focus-group factory. But he did make one very specific pledge that I took seriously; he called for universal health care – another euphemism for the government control of, and ultimate takeover of, our health-care system.

An early warning sign came in November 2008, right after the election, when Obama announced that Timothy Geithner was his choice for Treasury secretary. As president of the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York, Geithner had been a key player in the Bush-era bailouts, all of which I had opposed. I opposed them because I don’t believe taxpayer money should bail out private businesses, period. I also believe government must not pick winners and losers. I don’t vilify Wall Street; America needs a dynamic and thriving capital-markets system. But I also think that if Wall Street makes bad bets, well, that should be their problem, not the taxpayers’. Those bailouts had been shrouded in secrecy, and I had opposed the secrecy as well. Transparency is vital in any government operation other than one involving national security, and Geithner and the Fed had been anything but transparent. Behind the scenes, out of the public eye, they had been dishing out billions of dollars to favored banks here in the United States and around the world, and to private American companies as well.

As an aside, I can say that this problem is much bigger than just Geithner. It goes also to the leadership of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and to the nature of the Federal Reserve system itself. Interestingly, critics of the Fed across the political spectrum have agreed on the necessity of aboveboard accountability and transparency. On the libertarian right, it’s been my House colleague Ron Paul of Texas, and on the self-declared socialist left, its’ been Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. All of us might not agree on much, but we agree on this: Let’s audit the entire Federal Reserve system and pull away the unnecessary veneer of secrecy.

But in fact, the huge bailouts and shocking lack of transparency were matters of official public policy. It was government policy to allow bailouts, and it was government policy to keep the bailouts secret – so as not to upset or panic the markets, for one reason. I believed, however, that the better public policy was no bailouts at all, as well as complete and total transparency. But my immediate problem with Geithner was more than just policy; it was the problem of integrity. We soon learned that Geithner – the man who would be leading the Treasury Department – hadn’t paid his taxes, the taxes he legally owed to the same U.S. Treasury. And until he was named to the high post – as a successor to the great Alexander Hamilton – he had been perfectly happy to skate away from his personal financial obligations.

So I was disturbed to read that Geithner – during all the time he had been working in Washington for the International Monetary Fund – had failed to pay $35,000 in taxes for the years 2001-2004. The IRS finally caught up with him during a 2006 audit, assessing him for almost $15,000 in additional taxes for the years 2001 and 2002, the statute of limitations had expired, and so he chose not to pay those amounts also due. In other words, Geithner had gotten away with tax evasion; he had beaten the tax man – and that was fine with him.

But then President Obama nominated him for the Treasury post. It was then, only then, that he figured he needed to fix the ”optics” of his nonpayment, and he finally, belatedly, paid in full. And now this man was going to oversee the Treasury? And the IRS? A proven tax scofflaw?

Some will say, of course, that an ethics-challenged cabinet secretary is a small thing. What about a big thing – the 2009 ”stimulus” package, which ultimately totaled $787 billion, before adding interest costs. If interest costs are included, the total cost to the taxpayers rises to well over $1 trillion. We all remember the stimulus. Its premise was simple: Because we had spent so much money and run the economy off a cliff, we should spend even more money. It was perfectly straightforward – and perfectly wrong. Just what would this spending do? What would it accomplish? In January 2009, the chairwoman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, made a bold and optimistic prediction: If the near-trillion dollar stimulus bill was enacted, she declared, unemployment would never reach as high as 8 percent. At the time, the rate was 7.8 percent. So Romer’s prediction sounded soothing. But then the stimulus bill passed – and the unemployment rate went up. It went up above 8 percent, and it stayed that way. In fact, it went as high as 10.1 percent. As of this writing, the unemployment rate has been above 8 percent for more than two and a half years, the longest such period since the 1930s.

Meanwhile, during the debate over stimulus legislation, I gained some insight into the president’s thought process. Early in 2009 Obama came to Capitol Hill to try to persuade Republicans to vote for the stimulus. He is a good speechmaker, less a persuader. Still, during our brief question-and-answer session, he shocked me with one of his responses. When asked how important winning the stimulus vote was to him – how it might rank in comparison to other priorities – he gave a revealing answer. He said he would prefer to pass his agenda and be a one-term president, rather than not pass his agenda and enjoy two terms. Well, if he means it, I told myself, and it sure sounds as if he means it, I know he is firmly committed to his ideology. He’s a genuine left-wing true believer, and so conservatives had better fight to defend his agenda while we have the chance.

I was against the stimulus all along, of course. Or I should say, I was against Obama’s kind of stimulus. I would gladly have voted for a package of incentive-improving tax cuts, along with a program of deregulation and expanded energy production. But Obama and the liberals had their own ideas. And they had the votes: In late January 2009, Speaker Pelosi rammed the stimulus package through the House. I’m proud to say that this misbegotten pile of pork didn’t win the vote of a single one of my House Republican colleagues. It was one of our finest hours; we Republicans were fighting back.

Meanwhile, the whole nation was coming to learn that the ”stimulus” was even more bogus than people had thought. Let me recall now this bit of stimulus folly: In March 2009 President Obama ”deputized” Vice President Biden with a new responsibility: overseeing the proper spending of that $787 billion package. Obama announced, ”To you, he’s Mr. Vice President, but around the White House, we call him the Sheriff, because if you’re misusing taxpayer money, you’ll have to answer to him.” Then, evidently believing his own bravado, Obama went even further: ”I’m also deputizing every single American to visit a new website called recovery.gov so you can see where your tax dollars are going and hold us accountable for results.” All that sounded great – and yet when Americans went to the recovery.gov site, they discovered, to their bewilderment, that billions were listed as having been spent in places that did not in fact exist. For example, recovery.gov listed a ”15th congressional district” of Arizona, giving the good news that thirty jobs had been saved or created in that district, thanks to $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. But there was just one catch: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona. The Grand Canyon State at the time had only eight congressional districts. And, by the way, what is a ”saved” job and how does the government define a ”saved” job? Answer: the same way they computed that Arizona had fifteen districts. Similarly, the recovery.gov site bragged that in Connecticut’s ”42nd congressional district,” the stimulus had created twenty-five jobs. And once again, there is no 42nd congressional district in Connecticut.

So what were the Obama people thinking? How could they make mistakes like this – and then publish them? I can think of two possible answers: First, the Obama administration was so addled by Keynesian theorizing – that is, the notion that you can spend yourself rich – that the ideologues really didn’t care where the money was being spent, just as long as it was being spent. Billions, trillions, the more the merrier. As I have often said, nobody should dare tell the president what number comes after ”trillion.” The second possible answer is a more cynical version of the first: Those in the Obama administration didn’t care where the stimulus money was going, geographically, because what really mattered was spreading money to their friends and political allies – the big-city liberal mayors, the Saul Alinsky nostalgists, the ACORN activists, the taxpayer-subsidy-dependent green-jobs propagandists, and all the other moochers, hustlers, and rent seekers demanding ”a place at the table” when liberals control the White House.

So liberals raided the Treasury and spent money in early 2009, and the rest of us paid for it. They were almost giddy as they pushed money out the door by the bushel basketful. It was as though they didn’t care where the money went: ”Just spend more!” was the motto. This was more than foolish; it was darn near criminal. Moreover, one thing soon became apparent: Obama and the political types surrounding him had no idea how real jobs were actually created. Articles appeared in the media noting the lack of private-sector experience in the president’s cabinet – and this was one time when I believed exactly what I was reading. And so, of course, the stimulus was a flop.

The reality of job creation is simple: It comes from hardworking human action, not from borrowing and printing money. The employer, or prospective employer, is convinced that it’s better to use his or her capital to hire someone to do something than simply to leave that capital in the bank. The act of hiring is a matter of faith – faith in possibilities, faith in the future. Indeed, that’s how Marcus and I started our business; we believed that if we opened our doors and hired people, clients would come, and we’d be able to cover our fixed costs, pay our employees, and, we hoped, even keep a little bit for ourselves. That’s the profit motive, and it’s a good thing.

Yet when regulators, litigators, and tax collectors come along, employers often end up not being employers after all. They are hamstrung, tied up, red taped, restricted, legislated against – and thus no longer able to hire people and keep the economy going. And once a business fears the hydra-headed modern American government, it tends not to stay in business. Over the past three years, hundreds of employers, big and small, have told me that it’s fear of the government – specifically, fear of the Obama administration – that has killed millions of potential jobs. Or as Steve Wynn, the famous casino owner in Las Vegas, said not long ago, the Obama administration is ”the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress, and job creation in my lifetime.”

But of course, jobs were being created in Washington – at least for limousine drivers. According to a 2011 report from the Center for Public Integrity, the number of limousines owned by the federal government rose by 73 percent during the first two years of President Obama’s administration. What an amazing statistic! Just think: All those well-kep bureacrats in their long black cars! Yet despite the increase in nicely uniformed chauffeurs, it was hardly an example of the administration looking out for the little guy. It was, rather, a symbol of Beltway arrogance, economic incompetence, and, of course, the self-indulgence of the ruling class.

And by the way, the same holds true for federal salaries. According to USA Today, in December 2007 precisely one employee at the Department of Transportation earned a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees enjoyed salaries above $170,000. In other words, good times at the DOT. It’s possible to come up with diverging explanations for these huge increases in federal perks and pay. But it’s impossible to deny that the gap between how Washington thinks and acts and how the rest of the country thinks and acts is growing wider.

Moreover, we can’t say that all these excesses were the fault only of liberal Democrats; the imperializing of the capital city has often been bipartisan. All the cliches about Washington, D.C., readily apply to the bright young things in both parties: They come to Washington to do good, and they end up doing pretty well for themselves. Still, it was clear that the Obama administration all by itself was adding new layers of venality and corruption.

Back to cars. In the spring of 2009 the Obama administration seized control of the Chrysler bankruptcy, putting into this private company the sum of $4.5 billion of our money. Actually, we should note, 40 percent of the money was borrowed, so we taxpayers paid to borrow the money, only to ”lend” it to private companies! If they were such a good credit risk or a worthy investment, why didn’t they get their own loans? Why wouldn’t the United Auto Workers lend them the money?

In the final settlement, the White House decreed that Chrysler bondholders, those holding secured debt – that is, those with the first legal claim on Chrysler assets – would receive only thirty-three cents on the dollar, while United Auto Workers retirees, holding unsecured debt, would receive fifty cents on the dollar. Yet it’s a fact: Under the law, secured creditors are entitled to one hundred cents on the dollar, if the money is there; only then, if there is any money left, are the unsecured creditors entitled to anything.

In other words, the politically connected UAW muscled its way to the front of the payout line, barging ahead of the less well-connected bondholders. Bankruptcy, of course, is always a wrenching and painful procedure, but that’s never an argument for breaking the rules of law. We might note that these shunted-aside bondholders included not only individual retirees but also the pension funds that are relied on by average Americans. So to all the financial victims whose private property interests were denied and then given to others, the Obama administration was saying, in effect, ”That’s it. Tough luck. What are you going to do about it?”

Am I putting words in the mouth of the Obama administration? Not at all. Indeed, the truth about the administration’s behavior is worse than that: The administration not only stiffed legitimate creditors but also threatened them if they complained. Here’s what bankruptcy lawyer Tom Lauria, representing the secured creditors, told a Detroit radio station at the time: ”One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.” Those words of threat and intimidation were recorded by Michael Barone in the pages of the Washington Examiner. In May 2009 Michael wrote: ”We have just seen an episode of Gangster Government.” He added: ”It is likely to be a continuing series.” And Michael was right. The estimate of the total cost of all the auto bailouts – covering General Motors as well as Chrysler – has since risen to $14.3 billion. Again, that’s our tax money they’re playing with. The rule of law was steamrolled. If contracting parties can’t rely on the rule of law and the sanctity of contracts, then smart people will prefer to do business where the terms of their contracts will be recognized and upheld – in other words, not in America.

Yet $14.3 billion is peanuts compared with the cost of bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In June 2011 the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the total cost of those subprime-mortgage-lender bailouts came to $317 billion. As I mentioned earlier, the problem of Fannie and Freddie goes way back, back to the days when Uncle Sam was convinced that it was a good idea to pump air into the housing bubble. And both parties were complicit in a further devious practice: paying private-sector level salaries and private-sector-level lobbying fees to people working on behalf of what were ultimately public-sector institutions holding a claim on the public treasury. You’ve heard the phrase ”private gains, public losses”? Well, that was the story of Fannie and Freddie. If their employees made money, they got to keep it. If they lost money, they stuck the federal government with the bill. It was as simple as that. What private business could compete with a government-backed competitor? They couldn’t. And soon, Fannie and Freddie effectively controlled the secondary lending market for home mortgages in the United States.

As a member of the Oversight Subcommitte of the Financial Services Committee, I saw firsthand all the shenanigans as they were happening, and I sounded the alarm. In hearings I raised my voice, demanding more testimony, more documents, more information. And yet the establishment culture of Washington resisted any change in its cushy business as usual; Committee chairman Democrat Barney Frank, for instance, bullied and blustered committee members on both sides of the aisle, telling all of us that we didn’t know what we were talking about, that everything was fine. In other words, he told us to shut up so that his friends and allies at Fannie and Freddie could continue to rake in millions during this ongoing scam.

Little did we know at the time that Frank had already conducted his own personal business as usual. Years earlier, he had pressured Fannie Mae into hiring his romantic partner, a man who would go on to receive a nice, comfortable salary. New York Times reporter Gretchen Morgenson, coauthor of a highly regarded 2011 book about Fannie, Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon, recalled these goings-on in a recent interview; she said that in 1991 Frank ”actually called up the company and asked them to hire his companion.” She added, ”Of course the company was happy to provide a job for his companion and rolled out the red carpet in a series of interviews with a variety of executives, and it ultimately did hire the man.” The obvious question: What did Fannie get in return for this hire? The answer: It got Frank’s powerful help in repelling scrutiny of the organization’s dubious activities. According to Morgenson, Frank was ”very aggressive” when the director of the Congressional Budget Office looked into Fannie’s suspicious dealings – that is, when the CBO director ”was trying to call for increased capital requirements and to call for a focus on safety and soundness at Fannie Mae.” So what happened to the director? What happened, as Morgenson describes, was that ”Frank really took him apart in testimony.” In other words, Frank did Fannie a favor in return for the favor that Fannie had previously done for Frank. Fannie and Frank: not so perfect together. This incident occurred well before Obama came to Washington, and yet it speaks to the culture of Fannie and Freddie – and to the ongoing reality of ”gangster government.”

For his part, Obama came to fit right in with the D.C. culture. Perhaps the corrupt ways of Washington reminded him fondly of Chicago’s legendarily corrupt ways – you know, Obama’s once good friend Tony Rezko, and all the rest. It was obvious that Obama wasn’t fighting for real change or reform; he was simply going along with what the liberals in his administration – and the liberals in Congress – wanted him to do. The president seemed happiest making speeches about mythical economics, holding fund-raisers, hobnobbing with Hollywood celebrities, and hanging out at Martha’s Vineyard.

Yet in Washington, whenever there’s a problem, there’s always a way, it seems, for politicians to make it worse. And that’s how America got saddled with the Dodd-Frank financial ”reform” bill, engineered by Frank and then-senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut. The latter, incidentally, chose not to seek reelection after public revelations that he had received a discounted mortgage from one of the banks he was supposed to be regulating. Meanwhile, the two of them, Dodd and Frank, teamed up in 2010 to enact the not-so-modestly titled ”Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.” I might add that the ”Dodd-Frank” at the beginning isn’t just shorthand; those are the first two words in the formal name of Public Law 111-203.

Obama happily signed the bill into law on July 21, 2010, saying, ”For the last year, Chairmen Barney Frank and Chris Dodd have worked day and night …. to bring about this reform. And I am profoundly grateful to them.” Yet what, exactly, was Obama grateful for? What did this legislation actually do?

The purpose of the legislation, as stated in the preamble, is ”to promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end ’too big to fail,’ to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes.” One rule of thumb that works pretty well is this: Whatever the stated name of a bill is – especially if it’s authored by a liberal – the real purpose is almost always the exact opposite of the stated purpose. But all that fancy wording was, in reality, simply spin-doctored happy speak – the financial equivalent of the failed Goals 2000. Or, to use George Orwell’s term for the deliberate inversion of truth, an update of Newspeak.

The nearly two thousand pages of Dodd-Frank proved to be just another mosh pit for lobbyists, allowing them to jump around from loophole to bailout to special carve-out. Indeed, Dodd-Frank represents yet another explosive expansion of the regulatory state that will continue to cost the U.S. economy trillions, as banks try to cope with new layers of uncertainty, confusion, costs, and court cases. As I have noted, hiring and job creation are functions of business confidence – faith in the future. Yet Dodd-Frank is just the opposite; it’s an old-style haunted house of arbitrary bureaucratic horror. Included among its provisions is a dubious legal hybrid, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, the brainchild of liberal activist Elizabeth Warren. The idea of a ”proconsumer” federal regulatory body, of course, has been a goal of nanny-state Naderites for decades; now, finally, they have their prize. Yet believe it or not, the new bureau is to reside at the Federal Reserve; in other words, an allegedly protransparency outfit will be nestled amid the shadows and fog of the Fed. Isn’t that special? Who says Washington politicos don’t have a sense of humor?

C. Boyden Gray, former counsel to Vice President and then President George H.W. Bush and an expert in regulatory matters, makes a further critique; he argues that Dodd-Frank is unconstitutional. As he wrote in 2010, the bill creates ”a structure of almost unlimited, unreviewable and sometimes secret bureaucratic discretion, with no constraints on concentration – a breakdown of the separation of powers, which were created to guard against the exercise of arbitrary authority.” Yes, Boyden is right: Dodd-Frank is unconstitutional, and if Congress refuses to repeal the bill, it should be struck down by the courts.

In June 2011, Thomas Boyle, vice-chairman of State Bank of Countryside, in Countryside, Illinois, shared too his grave concerns about Dodd-Frank, testifying before the House Small Business Committee:

 

I am deeply concerned that this (Dodd-Frank) model will collapse under the massive weight of new rules and regulations. The vast majority of banks never made an exotic mortgage loan or took on excessive risks. They had nothing to do with the events that led to the financial crisis and are as much victims of the devastation as the rest of the economy. We are the survivors of the problems, yet we are the ones that pay the price for the mess that others created. Banks are working every day to make credit and financial services available. Those efforts, however, are made more difficult by regulatory costs and second-guessing by bank examiners. Combined with hundreds of new regulations expected from the Dodd-Frank Act, these pressures are slowly but surely strangling traditional community banks, handicapping our ability to meet the credit needs of our communities.

In other words, as Dodd-Frank plays out in real-world America, it will wrap red tape around banks that had nothing to do with the crisis in the first place. It will throttle credit to small businesses; it will keep unemployment high. That’s the bad news. Meanwhile, the legislation will make Beltway lobbyists rich. But that’s not good news. That’s not good news at all.

In my own House committee, I opposed Dodd-Frank as it made its way through the committee. I opposed it once more as it went through the House as a whole; I voted against its final passage, and I immediately introduced a bill to repeal Dodd-Frank.

Okay, now let’s turn to the Obama environmental policy. Here we see, as always, the usual green liberalism. But underneath it all, we see something more – corruption through government connections. As an example, I’ll repeat what everyone knows: The Obama administration has declared war on carbon dioxide. Its ”experts” say we need to block CO2 in order to save the penguins. I might note, of course, that CO2 is what makes plants grow, so surely it can’t be all bad. Moreover, the whole science of ”climate change” is ultimately unknown, scarcely even knowable – as well as riddled with its own academic corruption, as in the ”climate-gate” fiasco. And so it would be supremely foolish to legislate caps on carbon. Let’s ask ourselves this question: If the problem is too much carbon, then why is the answer taxing ourselves to give more money to the government?

Yet in 2009, as the economy worsened, the Obama administration chose to push its ”cap-and-trade” plan. It was touted as a way to save penguins and polar bears, but what it really would have done, if put in place and enforced, is create a new Enron-like carbon-speculation scheme, to the delight of insider wheeler-dealers. Like all bubbles puffed up by the government, the system would have blown up eventually, as did Enron, but the smartest sharpies in the room would have taken out their gains first; too much potential exists for corrupt market manipulation – and that’s why they loved the whole scheme. Cap-and-trade managed to pass the Nancy Pelosi House – without my vote, of course – but it was so awful that even the Harry Reid Senate wouldn’t vote for it.

So what happened then? What did the Obama green bureaucrats do when Congress wouldn’t do as they wished? They went ahead and tried to regulate carbon emissions anyway, blithely ignoring Congress’s constitutional prerogative. That’s why the Environmental Protection Agency should be renamed the Job Killing Agency of America.

So this is the Obama pattern. It’s a pattern of gangster government. And it has spread widely, its malefic stain infiltrating the entire federal establishment. It follows four basic rules, I might add.

First: ”Never let a crisis go to waste.” Such are the famous words of Obama’s first White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. What they mean is that leaders should intimidate the populace so as to achieve political ends. That is, they should stoke a sense of crisis, so that the panicked population will gratefully bow down to Washington bureacrats, hailing its beneficent rescuers. And often the tactic works; examples include the ”stimulus,” the auto bailout, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank. That’s also what Obama managed to accomplish in the summer of 2011, when, in the midst of the showdown with Congress over the debt ceiling, he struck fear into the hearts of senior citizens: Well, you know, he told them, I’m not sure that people will get their Social Security checks. That created a real scare. It was pure political gangsterism, of course.

Second: Make legislation so complicated that ordinary Americans can’t understand it. That’s why we see all these multithousand-page bills, unintelligible in their bureacratic jargon – the bureacrats and lobbyists know exactly what they are doing when they write them all in ”bureauglyphics.” And here’s the corollary: When they fail in their understanding, they’ll give up and submit to the state. Or those who are more resourceful will hire a lobbyist to explain it to them; most likely, of course, the lobbyist will be part of the same D.C. gang, so even more money will stay in ”the family.” That’s the way that the IRS has always operated, and it works – I’ve seen it firsthand. And the same money-milking model extends to the rest of the federal leviathan. The root of all this is the level of disrespect that the administration displays toward the American people. When bills are indecipherable, when money and terms are hidden in subsequent rules and regulations, such actions trample on the consent of the governed. That is to say, on us! How can we consent to the laws that we live under if the president and other top leaders willfully hide their meaning from us?

Third: Assume that laws are only for ”little people,” not for Beltway types. As we have seen, Treasury Secretary Geithner was happily playing that double game. By the way, we can add: The fun of being an Obama ”czar” is that they can do whatever they want.

Fourth: Even when the country and Congress say no, go ahead and do it anyway. Yes, damn the Constitution, full speed ahead. That rule has worked consistently for the EPA, and someday, if the greens get their wish, we’ll be reduced to a third world lifestyle.

From border security to homeland security to national security we can see the administration’s gangster tactics. All I can say is that the founders gave us a glorious Constitution, replete with careful checks and balances, and they gave it to us for good and sensible reasons. In Federalist No. 51, James Madison outlined one particular of the Constitution, the separation of governmental powers, protecting us against undue concentration of power in any one branch:

The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.

In other words, each federal branch checks the power of the other two federal branches. That’s the only way to preserve our constitutional freedoms, to limit the arbitrary and abusive power of Big Government. Thus each generation, in turn, must remain ever vigilant.

The stakes today are high, because the Obama administration has launched a wide-ranging assault on our constitutional system. Yet throughout our history, the stakes have often been high. As a very young Abraham Lincoln said in 1838, speaking to the Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois: ”At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”

The future sixteenth president was right. Although I pray everyday for the safety of our great nation – and I am sure many Americans do the same – I share Lincoln’s concern that the destruction of America is most likely to come from within.

And so I oppose gangster government and vigorously fought it on the House floor.