President Barack Obama made the historic announcement of sending Elana Kagan into the Supreme Court. If she is confirmed by the Senate, she will apart of 3 women in the Court (including herself). Kagan's legal temperment and views on controversial issues isn't known. What is true is that Kagan is a Democratic person. She worked in the Clinton and Obama adminstrations for numerous years. She was the Solicitor General. She was a lawyer, but not a judge. She is set to replace John Paul Stevens. John Paul Stevens was the center-left Supreme Court Justice who is about to retire from the Court. Kagan is from New York City and went into Harvard Law School. She argued 6 cases since 2009. Kagan sat on a Goldman Sachs advisory council between 2005 and 2008. She did analysis and advice to Goldman Sachs and its clients. Goldman Sachs has been accused of financial corruption. She is linked to Larry Summers, who worked in the derivatives film called D.E. Shaw and was paid around 5 million dolars. Summers, Robert Rubin, etc. facilitated the destruction of the Glass-Steagall Act that existed during the last Great Depression to preven the commerical and investment banking system from merging together. Kagan was once in support of radical socialism back then. In her undergraduate thesis at Princeton entitled “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933,” Kagan wrote: “In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness.” As history proves socialism and cartel capitalism doesn't work fully to help all people since each either prevent safeguards to help people & ban nearly all public services (or restrict any form of private business actions or any form of free enterpise to exist. This doesn't mean that the free enterpise entities can do whatever they want as Austrian economic extremists desire though). Once again, the words of the late Gary Allen come to mind: “If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of superrich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead it becomes the logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite.” Communism is much worse than socialism since communism just restricts totally any individual liberties and freedoms. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said that Kagan will serve the interests of average Americans. Kagan supports the unitary executive concept of the President acting almost like a dictator in executing their political policies. She supported the Bush adminstration's policies on how to treat detainees. Her supporter claim that Kagan is fair, smart, and teach strongly from the Socratic method.
Joseph Lieberman and others want to strip the citizenship of many Americans without a charge or trial. This comes after the exaggerated Times Square incident. His bill is totally against the precepts of the Bill of Right. It tries to close loopholes that allow individuals on the FBI's terror watch list purchase firearms, explosives, and to have the basic right of due process if and when they are tried for a crime. The problem with this proposal is that the FBi's terror watch list include the names of innocent people. They include children, people of mistaken identity, and individuals whose only crime was to attend an anti-war rally. The media is pushing this agenda over anyone who is accused of being a terrorist should have any right at all. The problem is that these innocent people haven't been charged with a crime or found guilty by a trial of their peers. Nearly 1.5 million Americans would have their rights stripped without a trial or without without resource. America is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. You don't strip people of their civil rights based on their political or religious beliefs. If we strip children of their God-given rights based on names on a list (and provide any legal recourse or action of defense for these people), then we are not a true free society. President Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex in his farewell speech. These people who are innocent on the list aren't terorist. Justice should be done in the realm of evidence of due process, real evidence, and other authentic legal parameters. Fear mongering is common today. One example is about the Hutaree militia. They were accused of planning to kill police officers. The judge presiding over the case questioned the government's case against the men. The Judge said that there is no evidence linking such a plot to the Hutaree Militia. The media won't recant or reconsider the smear campaign against Americans who are active in legitimate militas. The media in many quarter push fear. This is evident in the Hurtaree case and the Times Square incident (when the package dealt with a cooler and instrument that can't explode). There are vast dangers of Lieberman's legislation. There are laws and the Military Commissions Act that allows for indefinite detention of Americans deemed an "enemy combatant." With Lieberman's legislation if passed, Americans can be called an "enemy combatant" without even committing a crime. They can be stripped of their rights, convicted using secret evidence or anonymous testimony and shipped to a secret "black site" prison. There is no legal action or appeals process. Only a direct act of Congress to reverse the law would save them if it was even known who was being held where. This bill crosses a line. This could be the final nail in the coffin of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We shouldn't sacrifice our liberties for security. The concepts of individual justi ce and equal justice are based in the foundation of our government. The government should be oppressing the people, but they should be monitored and controlled by the people. As Benjamin Franklin said: “Those who would surrender their liberty for security, deserve neither."
Some members of Congress have concerns about the military promoting the morning after pill. Plan B is being promoted by the Defense Department. Plan B is the morning after bill. In February, the Obama administration began requiring all U.S. military health facilities to stock the drug, which can sometimes cause an abortion. Congressman Jeff Fortenberry and 13 pro-life members of Congress have sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to seek clarification on its policy. Fortenberry's office provided Lifenews.com a copy of the letter. The letter states that: "...It is our understanding that the Department (DoD) announced plans to add the morning after pill to the Basic Core Formulary by recommendation of the DoD Pharmacy and Therapeutics (P&T) Committee and is in the process of implementing a comprehensive policy regarding the mandatory stocking of the morning after pill that would encompass all facilities under the DoD's jurisdiction in the United States and abroad..." They noted that the FDA has approved the morning after pill as an over the counter drug, but it still required women under the age of 18 to get a prescription for it. The pro-life lawmakers warn that the FDA that approved the drug will have adverse health consequences for women and girls. These concerns remain unresolved. Pro-life people note that the abortifacient properties of the morning after pill gives additional concerns about the adequacy of informed consent standards regarding the communication of Plan B's potential abortifacient effects to propsective users. They advise the military that they should be worried about the potential for both girls under 17 to gain access to the drug from an adult without a physician or for the drug to be used to cover up potential cases of sexual abuse. “For these reasons, some pharmacists and physicians throughout the United States refuse to prescribe, dispense, or refer for Plan B,” they said. “We urge you to ensure that any directive from DoD provides adequate conscience protections for any personnel who may be in a position to prescribe or dispense the morning after pill.” The letter requests the Defense Department explain that the counseling informed consent and prescirption procedures whether women will be informed about the health risks of using the drug without medical supervision and how the Department plans to integrate conscience protections for pro-life medical workers opposed to the drug. Pro-life people want to see how many people have obtained the drug at home and abroad at military medical bases. The pro-life members of Congress who signed the letter include Republicans Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska, Mark Souder and Mike Pence of Indiana, Pete Olson of Texas, Chris Smith of New Jersey, Trent Franks of Arizona, Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, Jim Jordan and Robert Latta of Ohio, J. Gresham Barrett of South Carolina, Doug Lamborn of Colorado, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan and Donald Manzullo of Illinois. It isn't a secret that Plan B is dangerous and abortion is still murder.
Greg Palast has been apart of the economic populist movement for years. Palast recently talked about the Greek crisis and the global debt crisis. Palast is an investigative reporter. He exposed the globalists in the IMF, the WTO, and the World Bank using financial corruption to harm the citizenry worldwide. There are transnational economic parasites that try to being nations to ruin. He found World Bank documetns that laid out the banksters' game plan of using their power to harm sovereign nations. Palast wrote that the elite use briberty in proverty stricken nations for the sale of public assets to oligarchical corporations and private foreign banks. This illegal money of the traitorous leaders are sent into secret Swiss bank accounts many miles away from the citizens of those nations (whose livelihoods and incomes are stripped in the process). The 2nd step is caused the hot money cycle called by Stiglitz. This is how the cycle works, as described by Palast, “Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation’s reserves can drain in days, hours. And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation’s own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.” Step two is mainly about hijacking of pension funds, gutting employment benefits, and other social safety nets that people work all their lives for. Theefore, the criminal oligarch hypnotize a nation to sleep, strip its clothes, and then rape it. This relationship is about economic rape by transnational bankers. They rape of public assets, rape of pension funds, rape of electrical and water systems, stealing currencies (and other resources that makes a nation alive and securie. When a nation wakes up about this relation, then some people cause panic in the streets because of desperation. The IMF and the World Bank has been involved in corruption too (causing a rise in food and gas prices). There was other commodities that kept a nation running from day to day on an even keel. This step eventually leads to what Palast calls “Step-Three-and-a-Half,” and what Stiglitz brands as “The IMF riot.” It is attributed to the IMF because they basically engineer the collapse through their crippling policies and proposals for social spending cuts, which create the conditions for riots, public rage and civil unrest. These riots have occured in Indonesia, Argentina, and now in Greece in 2010. There are violence and mayhem. Then, troops beat up kids and protesters. The corporations keep the assets and leave these areas in many cases. The 4th step of this evil according to Greg Palast deals with monopoly corportatist trade police under the rules of the WTO and the World Bank. This is the poverty reduction strategy under the guise of a free market capitalism system. This systematic tearing nations apart was done by the IMF/World Bank/WTO policies. Some of them have done it to African and Latin American nations and now they want to handle the European and North American nations. Thier new tricks are backed up by the military. Recently, Germany, America, England, and France supported the IMF’s call for a global bank tax, which would be dedicated to a fund that would secure the payment of future bank bailouts. Canada is the only nation in the Western hemisphere to oppose the tax. But it is not the only nation in the world. Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, and Australia are also voicing their dissent. Even Simon Nixon from the Wall Street Journal wrote that proposed IMF bank tax doesn't address the structural problems in the global financial system (and should not be implemented). Nixon wants proper regulation of the sector. Nixon want higher capital requirements and radical structural reform to handle our economic crisis. Allister Heath doesn't want the IMF plans either. There should be a democratically mature reform like smart regulation of credit and financial institution. There ought to be the the reintroduction of public banking, the reduction of public subsidies to undeserving corporations and banks, the reinstatement of the principles of free economic competition, and lastly, the termination of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO. The IMF, the World Bank, and the IMF want an oligarchical grip on nations and peoples. They want to deprive them of all prosperity and economic plus political independence.
The British Prime Minster election has been interesting. Some people believe that the 3 candidates have more similarities to each other than differences. Some feel that the voter turnout will be low. There has been public apathy and antipathy toward the 3 major political parties. These parties are the incumbent Labour govenrment, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats. The Liberal Democrats are running at all time highs, there is a real prospect that the British general election of 2010 will see as many citizens forfeiting their democratic right as those turning out to vote. There is high unemployement, povertyand debt in Britain. The The budget deficit is estimated to be around £163 billion, which, some commentators say, puts Britain on a par with Greece in terms of its gravity. Some feel that all 3 parties are very similar. Some in the Labour Party from 1945-1997 tries to promote working and lower middle class people's interests. Later, Tony Blair and his successor Gordon Brown came on the scene. Brown is apart of the New Labour that has been indistinguishable from the other main parites in terms of submitting to big business and the wealthy elite. Prior to the 1997 election, which brought Labour to government, one senior Conservative smugly noted that, in terms of economic policy, there was “not a cigarette paper between” the Thatcherite Tory Party and Blair’s New Labour. CVoter participation after WWII dropped down fast. The gap between the rich and the poor increased even in the years of the Labour governnent. This surpassed the notoriously pro-wealthy previous 19 years of Conservative government. A recent Rich List compiled by the British Sunday Times found that Britain’s 1,000 super-rich saw their wealth increase by one-third – or £77 billion – to a total £334 billion during 2009 alone. Evidently, the only thing that a large chunk Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s £1,000 billion stimulus package achieved was stimulating the assets of the already wealthy. All 3 major political parties have done economic austerity to try to solve Britain's fiscal condition. Yet, this doesn't work since these policies only cut public services (stop programs, cut jobs, etc.). Ruled out from the outset, it seems, are imminently sensible and workable options, such as taxing the super-rich whose combined wealth is more than twice than of Britain’s budget deficit, or immediately ending budget-draining criminal wars of foreign occupation. That's taboo, but economic populism is getting more popular because of the craziness of the economy. That is why independent parties are growing.
By Timothy
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