"Change" We Can Believe In

[IronRanger]

It's my personal opinion that the only "Change" we got with Barack Obama is a change in skin tone- he's not much different than Bush.  On the surface, they appear to have different policies but where it actually counts, they're the same.

That being said:

"Obama Signs One Year Extension of Patriot Act (which he used to oppose)"

President Obama just signed a one year extension of the Patriot Act. As a Senator, he had criticized the Patriot Act. Had he done nothing–something Obama is supremely gifted at–the provisions of the Patriot Act would have expired this Sunday.

From the AP:

   President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation's main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act.

   Provisions in the measure would have expired on Sunday without Obama's signature Saturday.

   The act, which was adopted in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, expands the government's ability to monitor Americans in the name of national security.

   Three sections of the Patriot Act that stay in force will:

   -Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.

   -Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.

   -Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.

   Obama's signature comes after the House voted 315 to 97 Thursday to extend the measure.

   The Senate also approved the measure, with privacy protections cast aside when Senate Democrats lacked the necessary 60-vote supermajority to pass them. Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government's authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.

(emphasis added)

The LA Times notes that:

   As a senator from Illinois, Barack Obama was a critic of the Patriot Act. Last week, however, the Obama administration asked the House and Senate to extend the three provisions. "The administration is willing to consider . . . ideas [for modifying the law], provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities," Assistant Atty. Gen. Ronald Weich said in a letter to Congress.

One might also recall then Sen. Hillary Clinton's accusation against Obama (in the New Hampshire primary debate) that he was an unknown, flip-flopper:

   "You said you were against the PATRIOT Act–you came to the Senate and voted for it."

It turns out Hillary was right back in January, 2008. Obama is a first-class flip-flopper for in 2005, as a Senator, Obama opposed the core principles of the Patriot Act. In a 2005 speech on the Senate floor Obama himself said:

   This is legislation that puts our own Justice Department above the law...When National Security Letters are issued, they allow federal agents to conduct any search on any American, no matter how extensive or wide-ranging, without ever going before a judge to prove that the search is necessary. They simply need sign-off from a local FBI official. That's all."

   ...And if someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document – through library books they've read and phone calls they've made – this legislation gives people no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law.

   No judge will hear their plea, no jury will hear their case. This is just plain wrong.

Not only is Obama a gold medal winner in flip-flopping, not only does he lack core ideals from the Democratic side of the Democratic party, he also has no leadership skills, at least leadership for progressive values. So once again, as in health care reform and on a score of other issues, the Obama administration had a real chance to propose fundamental changes of its own to the Patriot Act, but failed to do so. Again, as in health care reform, Obama has passed the buck to Congress where, of course, he knows that nothing will happen even though his own party has overwhelming majorities in both the Senate and the House and where his own administration has effectively undercut efforts for change.

Nor were other Democrats in Congress firmly committed to the Constitution and individual rights. The House Committee on the Constitution deliberated on this only since this past Tuesday before it overwhelmingly voted to extend the Patriot Act's provisions:

   Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), its chairman, said the law had "aroused a great deal of controversy and concern" but nonetheless "remains a useful tool" in investigating and preventing terrorism.

Over in the Senate, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy showed that he can outdo hapless Harry Reid in passivity to Republican wishes:

   "I would have preferred to add oversight and judicial review improvements to any extension of expiring provisions in the USA Patriot Act," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "But I understand some Republican senators objected."

So the Republicans did not even need to object (according to Glenn Greenwald's account, the bill was passed in the Senate by voice vote with no debate) on the record, they just had to kinda "be there" for the Democrats to cave in. With this kind of attitude, would it make any difference if there were 90 Democratic Senators? If so, the supermajority number required would certainly be 91.

One of the lone voices against this travesty comes from the only Senator who originally voted against the Patriot Act: Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin. According to the LA Times article above, Feingold served notice that he would join with other Senate liberals to make "fixes" to the Patriot Act. The bill Feingold supports, called the Justice Act, also would allow lawsuits against telecommunications firms that cooperated with the Bush administration and supplied information on their customers.

With Obama in office, fat chance that anything Feingold wants will pass. In fact, Obama and the Obama administration in the past months have actively undermined Feingold's efforts to reform the Patriot Bill:

   ...Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) had worked to place language in the bill strengthening civil liberties protections, but in the judiciary committee the Obama administration worked with Republicans to craft seven amendments, effectively watering down Feingold's work.

   Feingold said the bill that emerged from the judiciary committee left him "scratching his head."

   "The Patriot Act reauthorization bill passed by the Judiciary Committee falls far short of adequately protecting the rights of innocent Americans," Feingold said in a statement. "Among the most significant problems is the failure to include an improved standard for Section 215 orders (getting personal information through national security letter requests), even though a Republican controlled Judiciary Committee unanimously supported including the same standard in 2005."

   Feingold said what was most upsetting to him was the willingness of too many members of the Democratic-controlled committee to defer to behind-the-scenes complaints from the FBI and the Justice Department.

   "We should, of course, carefully consider their perspective, but it is our job to write the law and to exercise independent judgment," Feingold said. "After all, it is not the prosecutors' committee; it is the judiciary committee. And while I am left scratching my head trying to understand how a committee controlled by a wide Democratic margin could support the bill it approved, I will continue to work with my colleagues to try to make improvements to this bill."

(emphasis added)

Dennis Kucinich also spoke out (and voted against) the extension of the Patriot Act's provisions:

   This legislation extends three problematic provisions of the PATRIOT Act and, at the same time, leaves some of the most egregious provisions in place, absent any meaningful reform and debate...As Members of Congress sworn to protect the rights and civil liberties afforded to us by the Constitution, we have a responsibility to exercise our oversight powers fully, and significantly reform the PATRIOT Act, ensuring that the privacy and civil liberties of all Americans are fully protected...

   More than eight years after the passage of the Patriot Act, we have failed to do so.

Obama proves once again he's little more than Bush Lite. The Democrats prove once again they are little more than the second branch of the Corporate Party.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/32373

[RainDog]

Change We Can Believe In
by Victor Davis Hanson

So, fellow critics of Obama, what would we do instead? It is easy to harp, as Obama did in 2007-8, but hard to govern, as Obama learned in 2009. So for all the criticism, let us put up some sample proposals of our own.

Try the following:

1. Pay as you go, balanced budget—whatever you wish to call a return to fiscal sanity. Conservatives need to stop talking about tolerable deficits in terms of GDP; and liberals should cease the charade that trillion-plus annual borrowing is great stimulus.

The psychological effect on the American people of paying down the debt through annual surpluses would be incalculable. "Decline" is as much psychological as real, and begins with perceptions of financial insolvency. We have an $11 trillion economy, so balancing the books is not impossible. Note how Obama intends to "address the deficit" only after he has set two budgets that will increase it by nearly four trillion dollars. Note how Bush's sin of running up large annual deficits is used to excuse Obama's mortal sin of doubling them. Note how Democrats, after lining up for a trillion-dollar federal takeover of healthcare, are worried about a multi-billion dollar expense in Afghanistan. Cuts in defense, as the later Romans knew, are always the first reaction to profligate domestic spending and entitlement.

2. Freeze federal spending at the present rate, and let increased revenues balance the budget. The idea that we could ever cut outright the budget seems long ago impossible — given the culture of complaint and the melodramatic rants about starvation and murder if another entitlement is not granted. Still, some sort of leadership is required to remind the American people that much of what their government does is not just unnecessary, but counter-productive and they would be better off without it.

Apparently, Obama simultaneously believes (a) he can create a permanent loyal constituency of millions who either receive or disperse federal "stimulus," in the fashion of the old Roman turba; (b ) he can borrow so much money that higher taxes will be seen as vital and therefore the original intent of income redistribution accomplished; (c) that, having had little experience in the private sector, but much financial success as a community or government employee, he can assume that money comes out of thin air and is to be dispersed non-stop through public benefaction; (d) the upper-middle class, which strives to be as rich as he is, is somehow culpable. A common theme throughout history is a paradoxical hatred of the equestrian, productive class, by both the idle aristocratic and entitlement constituents, who hand in glove need each other.

3. Some sort of fair or flat tax that ends the trillion-dollar industry of tax preparation, avoidance, and fraud. For about a quarter of the population April 15 is a spooky sort of Halloween. Instead, we need a tax system in which one can complete the necessary preparation in about 2 hours. Whose bright idea was it to excuse nearly half the American households from income tax exposure (Clinton and Bush, and now Obama?) — a fact that explains why in Pavlovian fashion recently Senators have been saying that we can add on a new war tax, a health-care surcharge, and a new high rate on "them"? The justification of a 40% income tax, 10% state income tax, 15.3% payroll tax, and new war and healthcare surcharge taxes can only be that one's income was undeserved, ill-gotten, and thus better "rectified" by more enlightened federal redistributors.

4. Close the borders to illegal immigration, through completion of the fence, biometric IDs, employer sanctions, beefed up enforcement — coupled with a radical change in legal immigration law that favors education and skill, rather than simply family ties. The present mockery of existing law undermines the sanctity of every law. Those who knowingly break immigration laws, and know that they will not in the future be enforced, naturally assume that other laws likewise will not apply to them, from tax reporting to the vehicle code. We really must ask — why the national outcry over whether illegal aliens will be included in the new healthcare plan when $50 billion is sent back as remittances to Latin America each year? In rough math, each of the supposedly 11 million illegal aliens sends on average around $4000-5000 per year southward. Perhaps we could tax remittances to fund their healthcare? Something is strange about the attitude of "I must send $400-500 a month home to support my family, but now I am broke and need someone to pay for my care at the emergency room, etc."

5. A can-do energy plan. Offer tax incentives for development of nuclear power. Promote exploitation of gas and oil reserves in, and off, the United States, as a way to transition over 20 years to next generation fuels without enriching our enemies or going broke in the process. I never understood why nuclear power for electricity and natural gas/hybrids for transportation — we could be nearly energy independent through both — were declared environmentally incorrect when dotting pristine fields, deserts, and mountain passes with ugly wind turbines, acres of solar panels, and miles of access roads was considered "green." Does Obama really think that the truther Van Jones knows more about power production than the head of a natural gas or oil company, or the engineer of a nuclear power plant?

Now the symbolic and randomly odd suggestions:

1. For grades 8-12, teachers could choose either the traditional credential or the MA degree in an academic subject. Few laws would have wider ramifications in curbing the power of the education lobby and its union partners, and vastly improve classroom teaching performance.

It would cost nothing and do more for educational progress than anything of the last three decades (high school students can sense who wrote a MA thesis on the Civil War and who got a teaching credential taking Bill-Ayers-like courses on race, class, and gender stereotyping). Why can PhDs and MAs in American history walk into a JC classroom, but not a high-school history class? Eliminate tenure for teachers and professors, replaced by 5-year renewable contracts, subject to completion of contracted targets on classroom performance and continuing education. The combination of a therapeutic curriculum, with an increasingly illiterate student, has resulted in a national disaster. Hint: when students arrive ill-prepared from dysfunctional families as was common in the last few decades, they need more math, grammar, and basics, not more self-esteem and "I am somebody" pep courses. Each year I taught, I was struck by the ever more common phenomenon of students ever less prepped in grammar, syntax, and "facts," but ever more ready to expound on something — anything really — about themselves, usually with the theme of their own victimhood.

2. Transfer the U.N. headquarters to an African or South American capital closer to the problems of hunger, disease, and poverty. I suggest either Lagos or Lima. Global elites could not walk from five-star hotels to the CBS studios to grandstand about U.S. pathologies. But delegates could match their solidarity rhetoric by concretely living with the other. We would get away from the "U.S. did it". U.N. forces could ring U.N. headquarters when a nearby Chavez or Mugabe was rumored to be saber-rattling and crossing borders. When the Kofi Annans of the world got upset stomachs from their luncheon salads, perhaps they could address world sanitation and government corruption rather than Israel.

3. An end to affirmative action based on race. If "help" is needed, it should be based on class and income. Why should Eric Holder's children be classed as in need while someone from the Punjab (of darker hue) or Bakersfield (with less capital) is considered ineligible? Why should a Carmel female at the corporate level be seen as progress, but not a son of Appalachian coal miners? The entire corrupt system is redolent of the 1/16 laws of the Old Confederacy, as almost every American is conning some sort of Ward-Churchill-like heritage to pull off what Ward Churchill did — get some edge over the competition for something that they otherwise might not obtain. Whether intended or not, affirmative action has become the pet project largely of elites, who feel their own capital and insider connections will ensure their own do not suffer from the unspoken quotas they impose on others — as a sort of cheap psychological penance for their own guilt over their own privilege.

4. Return of the U.S. Homestead Act and expand it to urban areas. Instead of redevelopment for wealthy insider grandees who tear down neighborhoods for convention complexes, state and local government should be encouraged to deed over idle properties to individuals willing to build homes and stay 10 years on the property. Shedding, not adding to, government land-owning makes more sense. Who knows, one might find self-help recolonization projects in downtown Detroit. Maybe Californians and some of their industries might move to the empty top third of their state, rather than families paying $1 million for an 800-square-foot bungalow in congested Menlo Park.

5. Outlaw the naming of federal projects after any living politicians. Don't laugh. Without their names on highway stretches, bridges, and "centers," most of these projects would not be built. Once a senator or congress-person accepted that there would never, never be "The Hon. Tadd Burris Community Center" or "Mt. Bud Jones Wilderness Area," much of the earmarks would cease. What is the logic behind the notion that we immortalize a senator or congresswoman who uses someone else's money to build a bridge, or lobbies for an earmark for his district, or, at best, simply does his job? Should carpenters get every fourth tract house named in their honor for their work? Should teachers have their classrooms forever emblazoned with their own names (Instead of "room 11," we would get The "Skip Johnson English room"?)? Should doctors have surgery rooms with their own names on the door? People who give their own money have a right to eponymous monuments, but not those who do it as part of their job descriptions and with someone else's capital. Our political class, not content with being increasingly corrupt, is now buffoonish as well. The career of the court-jester John Murtha is emblematic of the age.

There! — some modest suggestions for change we can believe in.

http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson120509B.html

[pagan]

The only change I believe in is when my niece and nephew get their poopy diapers changed.

[cabinfever]

"If you believe either party is the solution, you're part of the problem."

[zion-diy]

"If you believe either party is the solution, you're part of the problem."

Amen

[glenn kangiser]

Both parties are owned by the elite.  It matters not which one you vote for.  As we can see from the new White House resident policies, nothing has changed except the distribution of cannon fodder (US sons and daughters) fighting for oil and abusing, trespassing on, torturing and murdering middle eastern and other civilians along with those who protest the occupation of their countries.  It is all done in the interest of big business, oil, war machines, money.  The elite laugh at us scurrying around like cattle at their every whim as all sides go and kill for them so they can make money from both sides and cut the population at the same time.  

This is done in our names courtesy of the criminals running our government, no matter what party.  It is the war party of big business and never ending war for never ending profit.  Guess we better get back to making meat to fill the empty slots in the war machine left vacant by the quest for oil and riches for the elite, eh?

Which party.,.. the choice is only there to pacify the sheeple and make them believe they actually had a say in the running of the country.  What if you want the killing of innocents in our name to stop?  What if "collateral damage" is not a term you will accept?  There is no real choice because we are not free to choose peace.  No money to be made with peace.

If you believe the scare tactics that keep you controlled by the elite... the fake Bin Ladens ... the false flag attacks directed by the world elite and assisted by the leadership of all countries run by the world bankers and elite, then there is little hope that you will ever see, unless for some reason something begins to make sense and you open your eyes.  

Voting for either party is an exercise in futility.  Guys like Ron Paul, while they are allowed to talk a good line are simply a diversion to allow the illusion to another group of sheeple that they actually have a choice.  They always peter out in the end but --- it keeps the masses pacified a bit more and continues the illusion that they are free.  Politics and voting for one party or the other will never solve anything.  It will only enable the elite for another term.

[cabinfever]

So Glenn - I agree with you this far: The powerful always find a way to protect their power. I'm disinclined to buy into conspiracies, but I see none here. There are a lot of people with a lot of money working together to protect their various gravy trains.

So what's the answer?

[glenn kangiser]

I see no answer through government or politics.  I am not political.  I am anti-authoritarian or anti-political.  I just want them to leave me alone.  Understanding what they are up to helps me to plan for the future.  My uncle told me, a few years before he died that he tried to do it by politics all of his life, but the political system is just too corrupt.  It cannot be fixed.

We take care of our own up here in the mountains.  Help each other  look out for each other, - and are trying to work toward being as self reliant as we can, without supporting the elite and their plans much.  Being self employed allows me to have the equipment I want to be able to make a steady living and have enough deductions to keep from paying any significant amount of taxes, thereby not supporting their endless wars.  It also  gives me enough to have a head start if the system breaks.  People in the cities are pretty much doomed and many of them know it.  3 days food in the stores IF panic buying does not break out.  A former NBA player with a hobby ranch up here is worried about what will happen to LA where his main house is if the system breaks and water does not flow.  LA is done for.

We are off grid and not dependent on the system.  It can break and we will still survive.  We have a well on solar and a spring for backup.  We have a thousand gallons of diesel , soon to be 1500.  It will not last forever but it will be a good start if things must change. We have enough canned dry goods - food to last for several years.  We continue adding to our fruit trees and garden so we can help others too.   I am not paranoid.  I just want to be prepared.

The best I can say for myself is I don't support the elite and their murderous wars for fun and profit.  I will not vote for their puppets and give my approval to their actions abroad in our name.  When we have a true threat here I will fight if necessary.  What if the threat is internal?

I encourage others to garden and become self sufficient.  I teach others how to do as I am doing, sometimes via e-mail even.  I say take care of ourselves and do not rely on the system and its greedy elite owners.  They cannot give us anything that they do not take at least twice as much for.  Government benefits are like the lottery -- they take from all who will pay and give to the chosen few to make it look like they are doing something, all the while feathering their pockets with every scam they pull.  They just want to fleece us of more and more money - there is never enough for them.

Our job is to shut up, ber stupid, stay entertained and produce babies for them to send to war.  Our soldiers get a pittance for guarding their oil and power interests with their lives while even the elites contractors get more than ten times as much.

If there is a solution, it is not by the hand of man...

[cabinfever]

<<If there is a solution, it is not by the hand of man...>>

Well, I don't believe in God, so I figure any solution has to come from us. Though I suppose one well-placed asteroid would also do the trick.

Nonetheless, I'm sorta at the same place. Banding together into communities did wonders for us as as species, but I think we began to loose our way when the majority of us gave up self-sufficiency and outsourced our lives to others. Then came corporations, myriad forms of debt, and marketing. We're way in over our heads now, and the only solution I see is to begin to untangle myself from the system as much as possible.

But I don't plan on taking it quite so far as you seem to advocate for. I'm paying cash for the land and the cabin, and we've already gotten to the point where the only debt we carry is the mortgage and (sometimes) one car payment. We live within our means and have a good chunk of savings built up, though it has been painful through the years to look like the poorest of our friends despite a decent income (we like to think they are awash in debt, but who knows?). We got sick of continually cleaning out the house a few years ago and have simply stopped buying 'stuff'. Our books and movies come from the library, and we don't have cable. I'm planning on starting a garden this year, and we've plugged into the local farms for meat and produce. We've begun looking at what we can do to our house to make it as energy efficient as possible. I like to think that we're going to check out of suburbia and move to the cabin, but I doubt it will ever happen. If it all goes to hell, though, we could, and that's something.

I don't think it would ever come to that. The people in power have too much invested in the system to ever let it fall apart. Given what happened in fall of 2008, we should by all rights be in the greatest depression the world has ever seen. The powerful, however, managed to engineer the mother of all bailouts, and they'll find a way to head of the next cataclysm, too. So my own personal strategy is the play the system for as much as I can get out of it, while not being too closely tied to it. If I need to, I've got a place to retreat to. If not, I've got a nice little vacation cottage.

As for politics, I think I agree with you - there's no hope for the average guy to change things. It will take an uprising as has happened over and over again throughout history. And all that ever does is set the stage for the next revolution...

[glenn kangiser]

Well, possibly for you, it could just fail and we would all have to re-evolve to the best of our abilities, but preparation will help that also.

I don't go overboard on religion but I do believe in God.  I do not agree with most men who say they represent God or their loud hypocritical rants that serve to stir the sheeple into sending them money.  Next week we find that Reverend Randy was caught in bed  with Brother Jim's wife... shucks, and right after everyone sent him the kids college money like he asked them to. ( Some names have been changed to protect the unknown....)

I am with you thinking that they at least need us as breeding stock, and they will continue to pull rabbits out of their ..... um... hats, to keep us as serfs, but if you are prepared for whatever comes along you will not get caught with your pants down.

Good friends you can trust and good neighbors are a valuable asset.  

[Windpower]

IMO we are in the Great Depression II

In the first depression when banks failed people instantly lost money

"Sorry we don't have your life savings anymore"

The current bank failures are tracking Depression I but instead of instantly loosing our life savings it is being spread out over time ---the savings are still lost but we will take longer to 'feel' it.

I agree with you Glenn, but I still think it is worth trying to wake up sheeple if only to irrate the elite vampires

 

[Windpower]

Burial at Sea


http://www.rense.com/general90/burial.htm

[glenn kangiser]

Heck of a story at that link, Windpower.

Too bad that most of the lives are being hijacked and used for the interests of oil, greed and power rather than in the way they were offered...... for the protection of our country.

Freedom needs to be translated as the ability to use all of the oil, have all of the power and empire that the elite want, taken by force rather than negotiation of treaties and fair prices, so that the elite may profit not just by the oil but by the war machinery production, sales, use and lives of our children expended to obtain and protect it.