Homeless in Arizona

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2 join 2014 race for Arizona Congress

By Rebekah L. Sanders The Republic | azcentral.com Fri May 17, 2013 10:27 PM

Two Republican candidates for Congress are getting an early jump on the midterm election.

Andrew Walter, a former Arizona State University quarterback, and Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, a Tucson activist, have officially launched campaigns for 2014.

Walter, a native of Scottsdale and a political newcomer, is competing for the metro Phoenix district held by freshman Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema. The seat is considered a toss-up.

After college, Walter, 31, spent five years in the NFL, earned a master’s in business administration from ASU, founded a small lending company and worked for MidFirst Bank.

He said his time as a team captain at ASU taught him leadership and teamwork. “That’s exactly what we need today” in Congress, he told The Arizona Republic.

Walter said he is motivated by out-of-control federal spending, a sluggish economic recovery, a poor education system and looming problems associated with implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

“There’s no time to waste on solving any of these issues,” he said. “I don’t think we have that much longer to act.”

Walter doesn’t want to be a “career politician” influenced by “special interests,” he said. When pressed, he said he would term-limit himself and vote for term limits, though he hasn’t decided what length of time a politician should serve. Walter said as far as special-interest donations to political-action committees go, if “it’s individuals or institutions that embrace an economic-freedom agenda, we have a lot to talk about.”

Other Republicans who have filed paperwork to run in District 9 are Wendy Rogers, Vernon Parker and Martin Sepulveda, who all ran last year. Rogers is the only candidate in the race who has raised much campaign cash to date.

But Sinema’s $333,000 haul from January through March has far surpassed the field. [Yes, money is what government is all about!!! And it seems like Kyrsten Sinema will tell you anything to get your vote and your cash!!!]

In southern Arizona, Saucedo Mercer will make a second run at Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat, who defeated her last cycle.

Saucedo Mercer has criticized Grijalva for his 2010 call to boycott Arizona after the state passed the tough immigration-enforcement law known as Senate Bill 1070.

The district is heavily left-leaning, but Saucedo Mercer said in a written statement that Grijalva can be defeated.

“District 3 can elect a real representative to Congress who will work to bring back jobs, improve our education system, and defend our Constitutional rights,” she said. “Together, we can boycott this career politician, his fat cat political allies and special interest groups that are putting District 3 out of work.”

Kyrsten Sinema becomes a Republican???

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Salmon, Sinema agree on key elements of immigration reform

By Gary Nelson The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Apr 3, 2013 10:45 AM

They come from different political perspectives and sit on opposite sides of the aisle, but the Southeast Valley’s two U.S. representatives are in sync on the need for immigration reform.

Matt Salmon, the Republican veteran, and Kyrsten Sinema, the Democratic freshman, shared the platform Tuesday at the 2013 East Valley Statesperson’s Luncheon in Mesa presented by the East Valley Partnership.

Salmon represents Congressional District 5, which includes east Mesa, Gilbert, Queen Creek and parts of Chandler. He was re-elected in November after a 12-year absence from the U.S. House, where he served three previous terms. Sinema’s District 9 cuts a swath from north-central Phoenix through Tempe, west Mesa and Chandler into Ahwatukee.

“I think something will happen” this year on immigration reform, Salmon said, agreeing with Sinema on key elements of a plan that would improve border security while providing legal ways for foreign nationals to work here.

Sinema said legislation is likely to emerge from the House this month, but the end product will have to mesh with a Senate bill being pushed by the so-called “Gang of Eight,” which includes Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake.

Salmon and Sinema both said reform will help the economy, and it’s vital to provide ways for highly educated people to stay.

“One of the worst things we’re doing right now is bringing those folks here, training them, educating them, and then sending them back to their country where they are going to compete with us,” Sinema said.

Salmon agreed. “I’d like to see us operate a little more like the National Basketball Association,” Salmon said: If you can play, you can stay.

The lawmakers also talked about federal budget issues, which continue to make headlines as the so-called sequestration budget cuts slice day-to-day federal operations.

Sinema lamented the lack of bipartisanship on budget issues, but Salmon said the problems are more profound than that. [I think Kyrsten Sinema view is a) if it moves tax it b) if it doesn't move tax it too. I don't think Kyrsten Sinema ever met a tax she didn't love. Kyrsten Sinema is famous in Arizona for that 300 percent tax she tried to slap on medical marijuana in an attempt to flush Arizona's medical marijuana law Prop 203 down the toilet!!!]

It’s vital, he said, to find ways to cut the mandatory portions of the budget — now amounting to 65 percent of all federal spending. Those programs include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and debt service.

Salmon advocates raising the retirement age and other measures to keep future spending in check. “If we don’t, a lot of people are going to get hurt — a lot more than we talk about on the sequestration side,” he said.

Salmon and Sinema also agreed on the need to promote Arizona’s place in the inernational marketplace; Sinema said she has joined a group called the New Democratic Coalition, which includes about a quarter of House Democrats and is specifically interested in promoting global trade. [That's odd, Kyrsten Sinema seems to be your typical Democrat is is back by labor unions and wants to keep foreign workers out of the country. I suspect Kyrsten Sinema plays both sides of this issue in an attempt to grab both the Democratic and Republican votes.]

The biggest threat to that, she said, is America’s vulnerability to cyber-attacks. [Wow!!! Kyrsten Sinema seems to have flipped from an anti-war person to a big fan of the American military. Again I suspect Kyrsten Sinema will say anything to get your vote and is playing both the Democratic and Republican sides of this issue in an attempt to get both the Republican and Democratic votes]

“This is an area that is not talked about very much,” Sinema said, mostly because much of the information is classified. She added:

“But, I will tell you that the threat that our country is facing as a result of cybersecurity breaches is significant. The amount of money that we already have lost as a result of our inability to protect ourselves effectively from cybersecurity threats is literally in the trillions of dollars.”

Hackers in Russia, China and Iran are busily swiping financial data, patents and other sensitive information, Sinema said, and Congress hasn’t done nearly enough to stop them.

Kevin Rogers, president of the Arizona Farm Bureau, asked the lawmakers to intervene in the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to force the Navajo Generating Station in northern Arizona to install expensive air scrubbers.

The resulting higher costs for electricity, he said, will hurt everyone in Arizona.

“I’m scared to death about the EPA proposals,” Salmon said. “It will dramatically increase the costs of water, and then the cost of everything. ...We’ve got to put our best foot forward to stop this from happening.”

Politicians and cops are addicted to Federal pork???

Posted on May 17, 2013 11:27 am

First responders face cutbacks as federal funds dry up

My Turn by SCOTT SOMERS

Once again an American city has been the target of the brutality of terrorism. Our hearts go out to the victims and families affected by the Boston Marathon bombing. [If you ask me the police who flushed the Constitution rights of the people of Boston down the toilet to catch the two Boston bombers were bigger terrorists then the Boston Bombers were.]

Watching the news, we were witness to the value of a unified response by federal, state and local authorities. Videos document Boston firefighters, emergency medical personnel and local hospitals working together to treat the wounded. Pictures show FBI and ATF agents standing with Boston police to investigate the crime and apprehend those responsible.

Homeland security continues to be a highly visible, core responsibility for frontline first responders. [The only good thing about all this "homeland security" is that it make most people realized that America has turned into a police state!!!]

Federal, state and local agencies in the Valley have worked diligently to integrate communications and build regional preparedness capabilities. An example is the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center. ACTIC was one of the first fusion centers to go into operation and is able to tie together intelligence agencies statewide. This partnership prepares the region to better respond to natural or human-caused disasters or terrorist events.

But critical programs face cuts amid a decline in federal preparedness efforts. [I disagree with that 100 percent. We don't need these wasteful police state pork programs any more then we need a hole in the head!!!]

Urban Area Security Initiative grants have been used by fire departments to improve capabilities to respond to hazardous-materials incidents. Some of these resources were used recently to respond to a suspicious letter containing an oily substance at the Phoenix office of Sen. Jeff Flake. [Yea, and I don't ever remember the cops using these megabucks of Federal pork to ever respond to any real threats. They usually end up blowing up a bag of dirty clothing that somebody forgot at a bus stop. And then claiming that they protected us from some imaginary terrorists]

Police have used UASI grants to increase explosive-ordinance disposal and SWAT and intelligence-analyzing capabilities. This equipment was on display when officers investigated a backpack left near 44th Street and McDowell Road. [I don't remember that incident, but if it was like all the others the cops probably ended up blowing up the backpack only to find out it wasn't a bomb, but a bag of dirty clothing.]

But Phoenix UASI decreased more than 50 percent between fiscal 2010 and 2012. [Thank God!!! We need a lot less of this wasteful government pork that has turned American into a police state]

The region is in jeopardy of losing its funding altogether as Congress continues to call for reductions in the number of regions receiving UASI grants. The president’s 2014 budget proposed consolidating state and local preparedness grants without adequate stakeholder input. [Yea, and lets hope they lose 100 percent of this wasteful police state pork!!!]

The Metropolitan Medical Response System grant was all but eliminated last year. MMRS helped strengthen medical surge capacity, mass vaccinations and treatment, decontamination capabilities and regional collaboration. [Translation, like the insane unconstitutional war on drugs, it's a jobs program for cops!!!]

In March, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell, along with council members Daniel Valenzuela of Phoenix and Sammy Chavira of Glendale and myself, met with representatives of the Department of Homeland Security to express concern about the decline in the region’s grant allocation. The issue is under review by DHS. [So it sounds like the author [Scott Sommers], along with Greg Stanton, Mark Mitchell, Daniel Valenzuela, and Sammy Chavira are part of the problem of this wasteful government spending on police state pork and all need to be booted out of office by the voters]

Homeland Security grants are needed to sustain critical capabilities, training and exercises for our first responders and community partners and to continue such successful programs as Terrorism Liaison Officers and Community Emergency Response Teams. These Phoenix regional programs were identified as “innovative best practices” in a 2009 DHS review. [Of course they were. The DHS wants as much government pork as it can get!!!]

Be assured that Valley first responders remain ever vigilant and prepared to prevent and respond to emergencies. But local responders need a committed federal partner to protect our homeland. [That's 100 percent BS. What we need to do is boot the police state politicians who are responsible for this wasteful government spending out of office!!!]

Scott Somers is a Mesa City Council member.

Ron Paul slams Boston police in Marathon bombing

Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston

by Ron Paul

Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down.

These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.

What has been sadly forgotten in all the celebration of the capture of one suspect and the killing of his older brother is that the police state tactics in Boston did absolutely nothing to catch them. While the media crowed that the apprehension of the suspects was a triumph of the new surveillance state – and, predictably, many talking heads and Members of Congress called for even more government cameras pointed at the rest of us – the fact is none of this caught the suspect. Actually, it very nearly gave the suspect a chance to make a getaway.

The “shelter in place” command imposed by the governor of Massachusetts was lifted before the suspect was caught. Only after this police state move was ended did the owner of the boat go outside to check on his property, and in so doing discover the suspect.

No, the suspect was not discovered by the paramilitary troops terrorizing the public. He was discovered by a private citizen, who then placed a call to the police. And he was identified not by government surveillance cameras, but by private citizens who willingly shared their photographs with the police.

As journalist Tim Carney wrote last week:

“Law enforcement in Boston used cameras to ID the bombing suspects, but not police cameras. Instead, authorities asked the public to submit all photos and videos of the finish-line area to the FBI, just in case any of them had relevant images. The surveillance videos the FBI posted online of the suspects came from private businesses that use surveillance to punish and deter crime on their property.”

Sadly, we have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government is to keep us safe, but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties. That is what happened in Boston.

Three people were killed in Boston and that is tragic. But what of the fact that over 40 persons are killed in the United States each day, and sometimes ten persons can be killed in one city on any given weekend? These cities are not locked-down by paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.

This is unprecedented and is very dangerous. We must educate ourselves and others about our precious civil liberties to ensure that we never accept demands that we give up our Constitution so that the government can pretend to protect us.

Source

Ron Paul slams Boston police response to blasts

Catalina Camia, USA TODAY 3:47 p.m. EDT April 29, 2013

Former congressman Ron Paul was no fan of the police presence and manhunt tied to the Boston Marathon bombings.

The libertarian-thinking, former GOP presidential candidate slammed what he called the "military-style takeover" of Boston on April 19, the day Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick asked residents of Boston and its nearby suburbs to "shelter in place."

"The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city," Paul wrote on the website of Lew Rockwell, a libertarian writer. "This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself."

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been charged in connection with the blasts that left three people dead and more than 260 injured. His older brother, Tamerlan, died in a firefight with police hours before Dzhokhar was tracked down.

Paul served in Congress for 23 years, before retiring in January. The Texan was well known for criticizing what he believed was big government intrusion, in everything from tax and financial policy to national security. The scenes in Boston of police going door-to-door, closed businesses and public transportation shut down were more appropriate for "a military coup in a far off banana republic," Paul wrote.

Patrick last week defended the "shelter in place" decision. "I think we did what we should have done and were supposed to do with the always-imperfect information that you have at the time," he is quoted as saying in The Boston Globe.

Source

Ron Paul criticizes Marathon bombing response

Globe Staff

April 29, 2013

WASHINGTON — Former US representative Ron Paul has a warning for Americans after the Boston Marathon bombings, and it may come as a surprise.

The prominent libertarian says citizens should perhaps be more frightened by the police response to the attack — which killed three and injured scores more — than by the explosions themselves.

In an article called “Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston,” the former Republican representative and two-time presidential candidate compares the intense April 19 search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to “scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic.”

“The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city,” Paul writes. “This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.”

Paul argues that the Boston case sets a dangerous precedent, recounting scenes of “paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.”

“Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties,” Paul writes. “That is what happened in Boston.”

During the search, authorities encouraged residents in the Boston area to stay inside their homes.

It created surreal scenes on the Friday after the attack, with eerily quiet streets.

Governor Deval Patrick last week defended the decision to shut down the Boston area.

“I think we did what we should have done and were supposed to do with the always-imperfect information that you have at the time,” Patrick said at a news conference Friday.

— MATT VISER

<SNIP>

Project Vote Smart

Source

Here are a few things that Project Vote Smart has to say about Arizona Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema

Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)

Kyrsten Sinema refused to tell citizens where she stands on any of the issues addressed in the 2012 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart, national media, and prominent political leaders. [That seems to confirm my statement that Kyrsten Sinema will say anything to get your vote]

Recent Interest Group Ratings

On the Issues

Kyrsten Sinema on Gun Control

• Supports background checks, gun licenses, and enforcement. (Nov 2006)
• Supports restrictions on gun purchases. (Sep 2012)

Sinema indicates support of the following principles regarding guns.

• Maintain and strengthen the enforcement of existing state restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns.
• Require background checks on gun sales between private citizens at gun shows.
• Require a license for gun possession.

Mayor Lewis and Barney sound like tax and spend terrorists.

In most city governments the salaries of the police account for about 40 percent of the budget, while the fire department accounts for about the next 20 percent, with police and fire departments salaries accounting for about 60 percent of the budget.

Gilbert Mayor John Lewis and Queen Creek Mayor Gail Barney seem to want you to think they are not going to spend your hard earned tax dollars on cops and firemen, but rather on roads and sewers, which is a lie.

Sadly America is the worlds biggest police state and we jail a higher percentage of our population then any other country in the world.

And the number one reason most of these people in American prisons are their for victimless drug war crimes.

If Gilbert Mayor John Lewis and Queen Creek Mayor Gail Barney really wanted to save your tax dollars they would order their police to stop arresting people for victimless crimes and concentrate on real criminals that hurt people, like robbers, burglars, muggers and rapists, not harmless pot smokers.

Source

Sales-tax simplification shouldn’t kill cities, towns

Our Turn by John Lewis and Gail Barney

The Southeast Valley’s explosive growth has municipalities such as Gilbert and Queen Creek scrambling to keep up with such fundamental needs as roads, sewers and public-safety services as developers and home builders erect waves of new homes.

To fund this critical growth-related infrastructure, Arizona cities and towns rely heavily on the construction sales tax, a key component of overall sales-tax revenues. Local sales tax represents approximately 50 percent of general-fund revenues in Gilbert and more than 47 percent in Queen Creek. [And of course almost all of those taxes goes to pay for the cops and firemen, not roads and sewers as Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney want you to think]

With numbers like these, we are alarmed over the continued push in the state Legislature to eliminate the construction sales tax. Special-interest groups are attempting to use Gov. Jan Brewer’s important legislation on tax simplification as the means to achieve this financial windfall no matter the devastation to the state budget or that it will force many development-related costs onto our existing residents and businesses. [Yes, the problem here is SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS, but it's not the unnamed special interest groups mention by Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney. It's the special interest groups called the police union and the fireman union. The police and fire department unions LOVE taxes, because they get about 60 percent of the taxes that most cities collect to pay their salaries]

Gov. Brewer has made tax simplification a top priority and worked tirelessly to develop business-friendly tax reforms to aid economic development and job-creation efforts.

As the mayors of Gilbert and Queen Creek, we are fully supportive. If anyone in the state knows the importance of job creation, it is the leadership of cities and towns. These efforts should not be lost in a legislative battle over special-interest tax breaks.

While the Arizona system of taxation is far from perfect, it does honor the axiom “growth must pay for itself.” The cost of putting in new roads and infrastructure should be shouldered by developments incurring the cost, not by existing homeowners and businesses that already paid their way.

But does tax simplification need to occur? We say yes.

Is eliminating the construction sales tax the best way to achieve this simplification? The answer is clearly no.

We share the objectives behind Gov. Brewer’s tax-simplification legislation but have differing thoughts on how to get there. For this reason, we have been actively engaged in providing feedback, communicating concerns over devastating financial impacts while also spending countless months researching and crafting alternative solutions.

We are almost there.

After months of hard work, with continued guidance from the governor’s office, leaders of cities and towns developed a modified proposal streamlining sales-tax reporting, collection and auditing. We drafted legislative language making Arizona compliant with the federally proposed Marketplace Fairness Act (Internet taxation). [Translation Mayors John Lewis and Queen Creek Mayor Gail Barney want to shake us down for even more taxes with an internet tax!!!]

We are working diligently to find a solution on the construction sales tax that is common-sense, benefits Arizona businesses and taxpayers and doesn’t blow an enormous hole in state or local budgets. And we are almost there. [Translation - Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney are working diligently to shake you down for as many taxes as they can!!!]

No one is certain when this legislative session will end. But we do know it can end abruptly, without notice. When it does end, tax simplification should not get lost in the shuffle, nor should legislation get pushed through that harms communities like Gilbert and Queen Creek. [Sorry guys, taxes don't harm the government, taxes feed government bureaucracies. Taxes harm the people that Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney pretend to be looking out for]

Municipalities are the very economic engines of Arizona. Providing infrastructure is vital to economic development and job creation. We ask for continued partnership and transparency to ensure the ultimate outcome on tax simplification is a win for taxpayers, a win for the state and a win for cities and towns. [Translation - Mayors John Lewis and Gail Barney want to shake you down for as much of your hard earned money as they can get away with]

John Lewis is the mayor of Gilbert and Gail Barney is the mayor of Queen Creek.

Rep. Juan Mendez - I’m an atheist

The good news was the gay community has fought that, so now while a lot of people still hate gays it has become socially unacceptable to terrorize gay folks like it used to be.

Sadly us atheists are in the same position that gays were in 20 years ago. Sadly it's still socially acceptable to terrorize atheists.

I think it's great that Rep. Juan Mendez, D-Tempe has come out and admitted that he is an atheist. While a lot of people will hate him for it, I think that it will help people began to see the fact that atheists should have the same rights as all other people, even if they hate us.

I am still pretty pissed at Arizona US Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema for refusing to admit that she is an atheist. It sure seems like Kyrsten Sinema refuses to tell the public any of her positions if she thinks it may cost her votes, even if it is the truth.

Her official religion at the US Congress is listed as no religion, even though us folks here in Phoenix that know her, know that she is an atheist.

I am also still pretty pissed off at Kyrsten Sinema's attempt to slap an 300 percent tax on medical marijuana when she was in the Arizona Legislator.

I know Kyrsten Sinema never met a tax she didn't love. I a lot of conservative groups consider Kyrsten Sinema the worst legislator in the history of Arizona when it comes to her socialist tax and spending.

I also know that in all of Kyrsten Sinema campaigns for both the Arizona and US Congress she has been supported by the police unions. She says she supports the people, but when she votes, it seems like she supports the police state.

So I don't know if she tried to slap that 300 percent tax on because it is part of her usual love to tax and spend and simply thinks that every penny in your wallet is hers.

Or if she did it for the police unions, in an attempt to flush Prop 203 down the toilet. Prop 203 is Arizona's medical marijuana law.

Oddly Kyrsten Sinema does admit she is a gay, while not admitting she is an atheist, other then saying she doesn't have a religion.

Kyrsten Sinema is also a gun grabber and has been given an F by the NRA with a zero percent rating on a scale of 0 to 100.

Source

Arizona lawmaker: I’m an atheist

By Mary K. Reinhart The Republic | azcentral.com Tue May 21, 2013 10:06 PM

A state lawmaker acknowledged that he is an atheist as he gave the daily House invocation Tuesday, urging legislators to look at each other, rather than bow their heads, and “celebrate our shared humanness.”

Rep. Juan Mendez, D-Tempe, who said it was freeing to be open about his secular views, also introduced about a dozen fellow members of the Secular Coalition for Arizona who watched from the House gallery.

The House and Senate convene with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. Members take turns giving the prayer or inviting a religious leader to do so — similar to practices that have taken place for centuries in Congress, statehouses and city halls throughout the country.

Mendez’s secular invocation comes as the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments on whether prayers can be offered at government meetings.

An appeals court last year ruled unconstitutional the practice in Greece, N.Y., of having Christian pastors give prayers before public meetings. The Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom appealed and the high-court ruling, expected by June 2014, will resolve conflicting appeals-court rulings about religious expression.

Tuesday’s invocation was to have been given by Serah Blain, executive director of the Secular Coalition of Arizona. But Mendez said House staff had no record of his request to allow Blain’s remarks, so he offered the remarks himself.

“This is a room in which there are many challenging debates, many moments of tension, of ideological division, of frustration,” he said. “But this is also a room where, as my secular humanist tradition stresses, by the very fact of being human we have much more in common than we have differences.”

House lawmakers appeared to have no reaction to Mendez’s remarks.

But in a statement Monday on the Supreme Court case, Speaker Andy Tobin, R-Paulden, defended the practice of praying before government meetings.

“The outcome of this case could very well preserve or eliminate one of the great American traditions, which poses no threat to the secular nature of the business of the state,” he said.

Blain leads a growing coalition that represents 17 secular organizations at the Legislature, focused on pushing back against the powerful Christian-based Center for Arizona Policy and promoting a death-with-dignity law and science-based sex education in schools.

A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that people with no religious affiliation make up the third-largest group worldwide, after Christians and Muslims. About 20 percent of people in the U.S. say they are religiously unaffiliated.

Glendale police chief threatens to "Burn down store" of drug dealer

I suspect that Glendale assistant police chief Greg Dominguez is one of the proud cops who support Kyrsten Sinema for her work in giving the police more money to help them terrorize us civilians.

More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters.

According to this articles Glendale assistant police chief Greg Dominguez threatened to “burn the store down” of Spanky’s Smoke Shop for selling spice to his son.

If a civilian had done that he would probably be sitting in prison now. Of this piggy thinks his slap on the wrist punishment was too severe and is appealing it.

Spice, the drug in question was legal in Arizona until just recently. I don't know if spice was legal or illegal when Glendale police chief Greg Dominguez threatened to “burn the store down” of Spanky’s Smoke Shop.

Source

Former Glendale assistant police chief says he regrets actions

By David Woodfill The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Wed May 22, 2013 8:27 PM

Glendale’s former assistant police chief who got demoted after accusations that he threatened a local business he thought sold drugs to his son told The Arizona Republic and 12 News Wednesday he regrets his actions, but acted as a concerned father.

Greg Dominguez was demoted one rank to commander, took a $15,000 pay cut and was suspended for a week following some sort of confrontation he had with an employee at Spanky’s Smoke Shop on Bell Road in Peoria.

The police department has disclosed few details from their internal investigation of the incident, but according to a Peoria police report, someone who worked at Spanky’s said Dominguez threatened to “burn the store down” if he did not stop selling “stuff” to his son. The worker said threat was made during one of two encounters in February.

Dominguez acknowledged going to the store and using curse words, but said he doesn’t know exactly what he said other than “I asked him to stop selling to my son.”

He said he acted out of fear for his son.

He teared up as he described watching his son destroyed his health. At one point, he said he thought his son had died after he walked into the room and saw him laying perfectly still in his bed.

“Scared,” is how Dominguez described his state of mind when he decided to go into Spanky’s to confront the person he thought was selling the drug.

Dominguez said he doesn’t remember the exact date of his encounter with the employee, but said he knew his son had just gone to the store because he used a smart phone tracking application.

He never identified himself as a police officer, he said. "This was me going to try and save my son."

Dominguez said in hindsight he realized that convincing one person to stop selling his son drugs wasn’t going to help.

“I know different things now,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot about addiction, a lot about spice.”

Dominguez said he plans to stay at the Glendale Police Department and was appealing his punishment, which he said was too punitive. [That is 100 percent rubbish!!!! If a civilian had threatened to burn down the business of a police officer who committed a crime against him, the civiilan would almost certainly be convicted of a crime and be sitting for a long time in prison. Glendale police chief Greg Dominguez got a slap on the wrist for a serious felony and is now complaning that his punishment is too severe!!!! That is rubbish. Glendale police chief Greg Dominguez should be sitting in a prison cell, not running the Glendale Police Department]

The rise of the fourth branch of government

And at the same time these members of Congress who are doling out pork and cash can deny giving special treatment to the people who gave them campaign contributions by saying "I didn't write those laws. Those laws were created by some unnamed federal bureaucrat in some unnamed federal agency. I am shocked at how those unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats are wasting out tax dollars [but of course they never will pass any laws to stop it, because they agree with those unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats who are helping them rob us taxpayers blind]"

Government also frequently works like this at the state, county and city levels too. When elected officials can blame unelected bureaucrats for their decisions it makes it a lot easier for them to rob us blind and get reelected at the same time.

Source

The rise of the fourth branch of government

By Jonathan Turley, Published: May 24 E-mail the writer

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

There were times this past week when it seemed like the 19th-century Know-Nothing Party had returned to Washington. President Obama insisted he knew nothing about major decisions in the State Department, or the Justice Department, or the Internal Revenue Service. The heads of those agencies, in turn, insisted they knew nothing about major decisions by their subordinates. It was as if the government functioned by some hidden hand.

Clearly, there was a degree of willful blindness in these claims. However, the suggestion that someone, even the president, is in control of today’s government may be an illusion.

The growing dominance of the federal government over the states has obscured more fundamental changes within the federal government itself: It is not just bigger, it is dangerously off kilter. Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch, an administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency.

For much of our nation’s history, the federal government was quite small. In 1790, it had just 1,000 nonmilitary workers. In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies.

This exponential growth has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined.

The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s lawmaking authority. In fact, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations, crafted largely by thousands of unnamed, unreachable bureaucrats. One study found that in 2007, Congress enacted 138 public laws, while federal agencies finalized 2,926 rules, including 61 major regulations.

This rulemaking comes with little accountability. It’s often impossible to know, absent a major scandal, whom to blame for rules that are abusive or nonsensical. Of course, agencies owe their creation and underlying legal authority to Congress, and Congress holds the purse strings. But Capitol Hill’s relatively small staff is incapable of exerting oversight on more than a small percentage of agency actions. And the threat of cutting funds is a blunt instrument to control a massive administrative state — like running a locomotive with an on/off switch.

The autonomy was magnified when the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that agencies are entitled to heavy deference in their interpretations of laws. The court went even further this past week, ruling that agencies should get the same heavy deference in determining their own jurisdictions — a power that was previously believed to rest with Congress. In his dissent in Arlington v. FCC, Chief Justice John Roberts warned: “It would be a bit much to describe the result as ‘the very definition of tyranny,’ but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed.”

The judiciary, too, has seen its authority diminished by the rise of the fourth branch. Under Article III of the Constitution, citizens facing charges and fines are entitled to due process in our court system. As the number of federal regulations increased, however, Congress decided to relieve the judiciary of most regulatory cases and create administrative courts tied to individual agencies. The result is that a citizen is 10 times more likely to be tried by an agency than by an actual court. In a given year, federal judges conduct roughly 95,000 adjudicatory proceedings, including trials, while federal agencies complete more than 939,000.

These agency proceedings are often mockeries of due process, with one-sided presumptions and procedural rules favoring the agency. And agencies increasingly seem to chafe at being denied their judicial authority. Just ask John E. Brennan. Brennan, a 50-year-old technology consultant, was charged with disorderly conduct and indecent exposure when he stripped at Portland International Airport last year in protest of invasive security measures by the Transportation Security Administration. He was cleared by a federal judge, who ruled that his stripping was a form of free speech. The TSA was undeterred. After the ruling, it pulled Brennan into its own agency courts under administrative charges.

The rise of the fourth branch has occurred alongside an unprecedented increase in presidential powers — from the power to determine when to go to war to the power to decide when it’s reasonable to vaporize a U.S. citizen in a drone strike. In this new order, information is jealously guarded and transparency has declined sharply. That trend, in turn, has given the fourth branch even greater insularity and independence. When Congress tries to respond to cases of agency abuse, it often finds officials walled off by claims of expanding executive privilege.

Of course, federal agencies officially report to the White House under the umbrella of the executive branch. But in practice, the agencies have evolved into largely independent entities over which the president has very limited control. Only 1 percent of federal positions are filled by political appointees, as opposed to career officials, and on average appointees serve only two years. At an individual level, career officials are insulated from political pressure by civil service rules. There are also entire agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — that are protected from White House interference.

Some agencies have gone so far as to refuse to comply with presidential orders. For example, in 1992 President George H.W. Bush ordered the U.S. Postal Service to withdraw a lawsuit against the Postal Rate Commission, and he threatened to sack members of the Postal Service’s Board of Governors who denied him. The courts ruled in favor of the independence of the agency.

It’s a small percentage of agency matters that rise to the level of presidential notice. The rest remain the sole concern of agency discretion.

As the power of the fourth branch has grown, conflicts between the other branches have become more acute. There is no better example than the fights over presidential appointments.

Wielding its power to confirm, block or deny nominees is one of the few remaining ways Congress can influence agency policy and get a window into agency activity. Nominations now commonly trigger congressional demands for explanations of agencies’ decisions and disclosures of their documents. And that commonly leads to standoffs with the White House.

Take the fight over Richard Cordray, nominated to serve as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray is highly qualified, but Republican senators oppose the independence of the new bureau and have questions about its jurisdiction and funding. After those senators repeatedly blocked the nomination, Obama used a congressional break in January to make a recess appointment. Since then, two federal appeals courts have ruled that Obama’s recess appointments violated the Constitution and usurped congressional authority. While the fight continues in the Senate, the Obama administration has appealed to the Supreme Court.

It would be a mistake to dismiss such conflicts as products of our dysfunctional, partisan times. Today’s political divisions are mild compared with those in the early republic, as when President Thomas Jefferson described his predecessor’s tenure as “the reign of the witches.” Rather, today’s confrontations reflect the serious imbalance in the system.

The marginalization Congress feels is magnified for citizens, who are routinely pulled into the vortex of an administrative state that allows little challenge or appeal. The IRS scandal is the rare case in which internal agency priorities are forced into the public eye. Most of the time, such internal policies are hidden from public view and congressional oversight. While public participation in the promulgation of new regulations is allowed, and often required, the process is generally perfunctory and dismissive.

In the new regulatory age, presidents and Congress can still change the government’s priorities, but the agencies effectively run the show based on their interpretations and discretion. The rise of this fourth branch represents perhaps the single greatest change in our system of government since the founding.

We cannot long protect liberty if our leaders continue to act like mere bystanders to the work of government.

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Transparency isn't coming easily to Obama White House

Sadly it doesn't seem like their is more then a dimes difference between Barack Hussein Obama and George W. Bush.

Sadly with the recent IRS scandal Barack Hussein Obama is now even looking a lot like Richard M. Nixon.

Oh well, at least the American government has the best tyrants and crooks in government that money can buy.

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Transparency isn't coming easily to Obama White House

By Christi Parsons and Kathleen Hennessey, Washington Bureau

May 25, 2013, 6:09 p.m.

WASHINGTON — The White House decided to release internal emails about the deadly attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya — but only after summaries of the exchanges had leaked.

The president's spokesman disclosed details of closed-door discussions about a report that found the IRS targeted conservative groups — but did so in a drip-drip-drip fashion that only raised more questions.

And in a speech meant to expose the top-secret drone program to public examination, President Obama shrouded key details, such as whether the CIA would still use drones.

Caught up in a public relations crisis, White House officials have drawn open a few curtains, revealing once-secret documents and answering queries that they would ordinarily have dismissed with an eye roll.

But the sharing has been selective and done under duress. It has come in fits and starts to an administration that promised to be the most open in American history.

Many allies of the president think that with this burst of sunshine he has arrested the run of bad news and taken charge of the "narrative." Even in some Obama-friendly quarters, though, the sharing is seen as too little and too late, and all the more disappointing for the high hopes Obama had set for transparency at the outset of his presidency.

Civil liberties advocates are disappointed that Obama's drone speech glossed over some of the more difficult legal and moral aspects of targeted killings. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, a Democrat, questioned the candor of former officials at the Internal Revenue Service.

Lanny Davis, who handled scandals for the Clinton White House, has been critical of the Obama administration.

"The nontransparency instinct of the Obama White House is more about not understanding effective, proactive crisis management," said Davis, who remains an Obama supporter. "The idea is to inoculate by being transparent."

President Clinton survived scandals with the help of advisors known for strategically leaking information that was damaging. One tactic was a document "dump" delivered Friday evening in the hope the story would be old news by Monday.

"You help write bad stories," Davis said. "That's counterintuitive. But you know this stuff is coming out, so it's to your advantage to get it all out quickly, all completely, and make sure it's over and done."

Obama set out to do more than just play defense against scandal. Right after taking office, he sent a memo to federal agencies and promised an "unprecedented level of openness in government." His was the first modern administration to release White House visitor logs.

Before long, though, advocates for open government began to complain that the administration was resisting public records requests and going after whistle-blowers and leakers with vigor.

Then news broke that the Department of Justice had subpoenaed phone records of the Associated Press and emails of a Fox News journalist in pursuit of government leakers. The media peppered the White House with questions about its commitment to the 1st Amendment.

Obama aides went to work to allay concerns. They called in veterans of past administrations and campaigns to ask for advice. Democratic strategists say they talked about candor.

Tad Devine, senior advisor to former Democratic presidential nominees Al Gore and John F. Kerry, thinks the Obama team is embracing the idea. "They understand that by putting out a lot of information they reduce the risk that the Republicans can convince people and the press that they are hiding something," Devine said. "They also understand that time is their enemy in dealing with issues of this nature."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has recently entertained a much wider variety of questions, disclosing names of senior staffers involved in internal meetings and even talking about a conversation he had with Obama about media freedoms. He usually declines to "read out" such events.

Still, administration officials let their account of the IRS troubles evolve — particularly regarding the question of when the White House learned the agency was inappropriately targeting groups that sought tax-exempt status by singling out those with the words "tea party" or "patriots" in their applications.

The White House has struggled to "give accurate information on a timely basis," said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University who studies the White House and its relationship with media.

"In this case, you can see they've been slow to gather the facts, and it has damaged them," Kumar said. "It has kept the story rolling and makes it appears as though they're not on top of it."

With his administration's transparency under fire, Obama departed from his focus on drones in his speech last week to address it. He said he was troubled that leak investigations could chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable.

But he also argued that openness isn't always the most important value — that sometimes the nation's security is at stake. The challenge, he said, is in "striking the right balance."

christi.parsons@latimes.com

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

Congressman Harry Mitchell says crook Ben Arredondo is like Abe Lincoln????

Goldwater Institute threatens suit over Phoenix practice of ‘spiking’ pensions

From this article it sure sounds like Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton is a liar who will say anything to get elected.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton Stanton lied to the public when he had campaigned and said he would end this practice in this article.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton also lied to the public when he campaigned and said he would end the temporary Phoenix sales tax, which mostly goes to the Phoenix police and fire departments.

It sure looks like Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton doesn't support the people that elected him, but rather is owned by the special interest groups in the Phoenix Police and Phoenix Fire Department unions.

I suspect those 2,400 retired Phoenix cops and firefighters vote for Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton because he supports their government pork.

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Goldwater Institute threatens suit over Phoenix practice of ‘spiking’ pensions

By Craig Harris The Republic | azcentral.com Tue May 28, 2013 11:23 PM

The Goldwater Institute has threatened to sue Phoenix if the city does not end a legally questionable policy that allows police officers and firefighters to increase the amount of their pensions by cashing in unused sick leave, vacation and other benefits.

The Phoenix-based conservative watchdog group, which has a history of winning suits against municipalities, sent a letter late last week to Mayor Greg Stanton, saying state law is clear that the practice of “spiking” pensions is illegal. The letter also said “attempts to evade the obvious meaning of this law are, at best, erroneous, at worst, dishonest.”

Stanton, who had campaigned on pension reform but has taken no action to end pension spiking by public-safety officers, declined an interview request. [Just like he also campaigned and promised to remove the temporary sales tax which he didn't.]

His spokeswoman, Sarah Muench, issued a statement saying Stanton “will ask for a meeting to bring together the Goldwater Institute and our City Attorney.” [Sounds like Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton is just shoveling the BS to keep the reporters and public at bay for a little bit longer]

“He looks forward to discussing it. He has no further comment at this time,” Muench said.

One Fire Department captain, meanwhile, said Goldwater would be wasting taxpayer funds if it forced Phoenix to defend itself in court. [Of course the only people that benefit from this practice are members of the Phoenix Fire Department and Phoenix Police Department]

If a lawsuit is filed, Goldwater likely will seek a judgment declaring the practice illegal.

In the face of such a judgment, the statewide Public Safety Personnel Retirement System would have no choice but to seek refunds from retired police officers and firefighters who received enhanced pension benefits because of pay spiking, system administrator Jared Smout said.

“We would have to figure out what their pension should have been, and any overpayment, and collect that,” Smout said. “The way we typically collect is by reducing pensions. ... This potentially would affect a large amount of people.”

The city could avoid a legal judgment by voluntarily agreeing to change its policy.

In that case, it is unclear whether the retirement system would try to recoup past overpayments, because it could face a lawsuit by retirees. [Who have been stealing our tax dollars and want to keep the stolen loot]

Smout said the retirement system would prefer to have a court ruling in advance so that whatever steps it takes to recoup overpayments are legally binding and less vulnerable to litigation.

It is unknown how many Phoenix retirees could be affected, but such repayments could be significant.

For example, in one instance, a former assistant fire chief increased his lump-sum retirement check by roughly a quarter of a million dollars, to $795,983, and he increased his annual pension benefits by more than $40,000 — to $130,046 a year.

There are approximately 2,400 Phoenix retirees receiving benefits from the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System. Rank-and-file officers say they have been unfairly criticized by the public as greedy because a few high-ranking executives have significantly enhanced their pensions through spiking. [Have to disagree with that. The retired rank and file police officers and firemen screw the taxpayers just as much as the high ranking ones]

However, there has been no organized movement to curb abuses in the pension system.

Smout said the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System, of which Phoenix is the largest member, has requested information from the city on its justification for allowing police officers and firefighters to spike their pensions.

The pension fund has taken no action against the city and has stated that pension spiking by Phoenix only hurts the city because it results in a larger bill the city must pay to the state pension trust for retirement benefits.

Phoenix budgeted $109 million this fiscal year for public-safety pension costs, and that figure will increase by $20 million for the fiscal year that begins July 1. In fiscal 2003, the city paid $7.2 million.

Pension spiking accounts for only a portion of the increased payment. Substantial investment losses by the pension trust, and other factors such as highly paid and experienced public-safety officers, account for the city’s increased payments.

An inquiry by the state pension system, and Goldwater’s legal threat, come after The Arizona Republic earlier this month reported the city’s pension-spiking policy, which has allowed a few retirees to become millionaires shortly after retirement.

The newspaper also found that the spiking policy allowed a few police officers and firefighters to make more in retirement than when they worked.

The average public-safety pension for a Phoenix retiree is $59,341, about $10,000 more than the statewide average. There are 153 Phoenix public-safety retirees who receive pensions greater than $88,000 — more than two times the average income in Arizona.

The Republic initially reported that pension spiking occurs because the city allows public-safety officers to cash in unused sick leave, vacation and deferred compensation to calculate their pensions.

The Republic has since learned that the city also counts compensation paid for emergency shifts, bonuses and vehicle and cellphone allowances to be calculated into salary totals that determine pension benefits.

State law says “unused sick leave, payment in lieu of vacation, payment for unused compensatory time or payment for any fringe benefits” cannot be used as compensation to compute retirement benefits.

State law also says that only “base salary, overtime pay, shift differential pay, military differential wage pay, compensatory time used by an employee in lieu of overtime not otherwise paid by an employer and holiday pay” may be used to calculate pension benefits.

Final compensation and length of service are the key components in determining the amount of a public pension in Arizona. The more a person makes at the end of a career, the higher the lifetime pension. Salary spiking, therefore, increases pensions and the long-term costs for taxpayers.

The city issued a statement Tuesday saying that its public-safety employees have bargained for fewer vacation and sick days in exchange for a higher salary. It also said that, in certain circumstances, an employee can quit accruing sick and vacation leave in return for additional salary.

The statement also said “whether a public- safety employee’s compensation is pensionable under state statute is a decision to be made by the PSPRS administrators.”

Smout and other public-safety administrators said they do not have the resources to determine whether an employee’s compensation is “pensionable.” Instead, they say, they rely upon the accuracy and honesty of governments that are part of the system to report the accurate compensation of public-safety officers.

Jon Riches, an attorney from Goldwater, said the demand letter was intended to put the city on notice.

“Hopefully, they will take action to change these policies. If the policy remains as it is, it’s difficult to imagine a situation where a lawsuit wouldn’t occur,” Riches said. “Hopefully, Phoenix does the right thing and changes a policy that is abusive and illegal.”

City Councilman Sal DiCiccio, an outspoken critic of the costs of public pensions, agreed.

“Under the best case scenario, the city of Phoenix is purposely circumventing the law. In the worst case, which is the current situation, the city is breaking the law,” he said.

But John Teffy, a Phoenix Fire Department captain, said Goldwater should stand down.

“It seems to me that if the Goldwater Institute took the time to understand how the city works and how contracts work, they would know there is a much simpler way to address this than with (threats of) frivolous lawsuits,” Teffy said.

Police: Scottsdale chef found with marijuana

I suspect the pot was found when the police were in the process of stealing his car. In Arizona if you are stopped by the police and don't have a valid car registration or insurance we have some silly draconian police state laws that allow the police to steal your car until you "prove your innocent". These laws don't serve any valid purpose other then allowing the police to raise money for themselves by legally stealing cars from people.

Source

Police: Scottsdale chef found with marijuana, suspended license

By Matthew Longdon The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Wed May 29, 2013 6:31 AM

Chef Eddie Matney was recently arrested on charges of drug possession and driving on a suspended license, Scottsdale police say.

Matney, owner and executive chef at Eddie’s House in Scottsdale, was stopped last week by Scottsdale police near 68th Street and Camelback Road because of an obscured license plate, according to police.

They say a subsequent check showed Matney’s registration and driving privileges had been suspended. While waiting for a tow truck, police officers say they found marijuana in Matney’s vehicle. [In Arizona if you don't have a valid car registration the police are allowed to steal your car, and hold it hostage till you prove your innocent of the crime. The bottom line is this practice is just a form of legalize theft used by the police to raise money]

In a statement Tuesday night, Matney said “a very small amount of marijuana was found with fishing equipment.”

The same day, Matney told 12 News he doesn’t smoke marijuana and doesn’t know why it was in the vehicle. He also said he didn’t know his license was suspended.

Milton Cormier wants a 23% VAT tax????

When the 16th Amendment was created it only applied to the very rich people. The new income tax started out as 1 percent tax which only applied to rich people who made $3,000 or more a year in 1913 which was about $60,000 in 2013 dollars.

The first income tax maxed out at 6 percent for people making a half million or more. (for a copy of the 2 page 1913 income tax form see http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/1913.pdf)

Congress even debated capping the Federal income tax at 10 percent, because they thought if the tax ever got that high it would be outrageous.

And on top of that back in 1913 America was an agrarian society and most people didn't work at jobs where they received a pay check like they do today, but instead worked on the family farm. And because they made very little money they didn't pay income tax.

In this letter to the editor Milton Cormier wants to shake every American down for a 23 percent tax which seems to be a VAT or value added tax.

Last but not least the term "Fair Tax" is a oxymoron. There is no such thing as a "fair tax" any more then there is a "fair rape" or a "fair robbery". Taxes are stealing and stealing is wrong. Just because a gang of crooks who wear three piece suits and call themselves Congressmen vote to steal your money doesn't make it right.

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Letter: Fair Tax — not Flat Tax — is the way to go

Posted: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 2:53 pm

Letter to the Editor

Tax reform has become an important issue in dealing with the recession and job creation. There is a plan now in committee in the House of Representatives referred to as HR 25 and is fair to all Americans. It is the Fair Tax (not the Flat Tax) and is supported by the best economists in our nation. The Fair Tax is a consumption tax of 23 percent on new goods and services and would eliminate the IRS and all taxes associated with that agency such as the income tax, payroll tax, capital gains tax, the alternative minimum tax, corporate tax, estate and gift taxes. The imbedded tax of 22 percent on all new goods would also be eliminated. American workers would receive their full paycheck. The Fair Tax would bring millions of high paying manufacturing jobs back to America, boosting the economy, and improving the standard of living for the poor and middle class and eliminate tax breaks for the wealthy. The poor would pay 0% tax through a rebate program. The Fair Tax is also revenue neutral.

The Fair Tax would make our laws fairer, simpler, and more transparent. It would unleash American’s economic potential by abolishing the corporate tax and allow the American people to focus on saving and investing. Passage of the Fair Tax would also protect Social Security and Medicare for current and future retirees.

Milton Cormier

Sun Lakes

Uncle Thompson supports the police state in NYC???

I made fun of New York mayor candidate William C. Thompson Jr. by calling him an "Uncle Tom", but he isn't any different then the other politicians that sell out the people they pretend to serve for the special interest groups that help get them elected.

It doesn't matter if we are White, Black or Latino, the politicians still sell us out for the special interest groups that help them get into power. And one of the biggest of those special interest groups are the men in Blue, the cops, along with their union brothers the firemen.

Here in Arizona US Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema seems to know that having the support of the police state, oops, I mean the police unions can help you get elected.

In every election I have seen US Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema run in here campaign signs have always said she is supported by the police.

That is despite the fact that US Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema seems to say she supports the little people who are typically oppressed by the police.

Source

Thompson Sees No Need to Bar a Police Tactic

By MICHAEL BARBARO

Published: May 29, 2013

The aggressive era of stop-and-frisk policing in New York City is, in every sense of the word, on trial: the subject of a high-stakes federal court case, scorching denunciations from civil rights leaders and emotional calls for its dismantlement by liberal lawmakers.

But in a stand that is surprising black leaders and worrying some allies, William C. Thompson Jr., the sole African-American candidate for mayor, is steadfastly unwilling to join the tear-it-down chorus.

Instead, Mr. Thompson is embracing elements of the polarizing crime-fighting strategy and winning praise from an unlikely duo deeply associated with it: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

On Wednesday, Mr. Thompson’s restrained approach paid by far its biggest political dividend when a coalition of unions representing about 100,000 city law enforcement officials voted to endorse his Democratic campaign, making clear that what appealed to its members was his comparatively conservative posture on criminal justice, according to people told of the decision.

But in a city whose racial politics are never far from view, Mr. Thompson’s moderate stance on an issue that has consumed the city’s black and Latino community is inflaming a number of high-profile African-American Democrats, even holding up the endorsement of a party stalwart, the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Mr. Sharpton, who likens opposition to stop-and-frisk tactics to a snowballing social movement, has let Mr. Thompson know that he is displeased with his views on policing and should not assume that black voters will automatically support his candidacy.

“I don’t think it’s wise to be distant from a social movement if you are going to run for mayor of this city, especially as a black candidate,” Mr. Sharpton said in an interview. “I have expressed this to Thompson.”

“This,” Mr. Sharpton added, “is not a marginal issue.”

Mr. Thompson’s message, more law-and-order than reactive liberal activist, is upending assumptions about a black candidate for mayor in a city where David N. Dinkins struggled with the perception that he could not control crime and urban decay in the early 1990s.

In an interview, Mr. Thompson spoke of an “overreaction to stop and frisk” that he said glossed over its usefulness as a police tool, even as he forcefully criticized its excesses over the past few years.

As rivals call for the abolition of stop-and-frisk tactics as a routine police procedure, and an independent inspector general to monitor the police, Mr. Thompson said the right way to curb abuses was by asserting his values on the Police Department when he becomes mayor, not through a patchwork of quick fixes that could hamstring him once in office.

His criminal justice platform, he said, “isn’t about running for mayor; it’s about governing.”

Still, Mr. Thompson is now bucking the left wing of his party on three fronts: by pledging to keep stop-and-frisk operations as a crime-fighting tool; proposing an inspector general who operates within the Police Department, rather than outside of it (“I don’t want to create additional bureaucracy,” he said); and opposing a City Council bill that would open state courts to legal claims of racial profiling by the Police Department. (He said it would divert precious city finances to endless legal bills.)

In each case, at least one of his rivals in the mayor’s race — and in some cases, several of them — has staked out territory to his left, forcing Mr. Thompson to defend his Democratic credentials on what are possibly the most emotional questions of the 2013 campaign.

During a candidate forum a few weeks ago, John C. Liu, a Democratic candidate, called on Mr. Thompson to join him in demanding the abolition of stop-and-frisk policing.

The exchange that followed produced the most memorable — and poignantly personal — exchange in the mayor’s race.

“I’m the one who has to worry about my son getting shot on the street,” Mr. Thompson thundered.

In the interview, Mr. Thompson said he was deeply affected watching crime overtake and oppress neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where he grew up, in the early 1990s.

But his personal experiences cut both ways, simultaneously fueling his fury over what he calls the “misuse and abuse” of the stop-and-frisk policy. Friends and acquaintances have been stopped by police “for no other reason than who you are,” he said.

And Mr. Thompson recalled his discomfort at having to prepare his stepson, then 13, for the likelihood that he could be stopped by the police, a conversation that Mr. Thompson said his own father never had to have with him. “Be calm,” Mr. Thompson counseled.

“Why am I having this conversation with a 13-year-old, who really is just a child?” he recalled thinking to himself.

Though it has won him new political partners, like the United Uniformed Workers of New York, the coalition of 20 law enforcement unions, Mr. Thompson’s measured police plan may have cost him old friends.

On Wednesday, District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal labor union, decided to endorse Mr. Liu, after backing Mr. Thompson in 2009. Mr. Liu’s outspoken opposition to the stop-and-frisk policy played a role, according to a union official involved in the discussions, who said rank-and-file members saw less courage in Mr. Thompson’s position.

The question, for Mr. Thompson, is whether black and Latino voters, who will prove crucial to his Democratic campaign, will share those reservations.

A Quinnipiac University poll, released last month, showed that while 59 percent of white voters approved of the stop-and-frisk tactic, 72 percent of black voters and 58 percent of Latino voters disapproved of it.

Those numbers, combined with the surging rates of police stops in recent years, have left several black leaders scratching their heads over Mr. Thompson’s policies.

Jumaane D. Williams, a city councilman from Brooklyn who has sponsored legislation against stop-and-frisk tactics, bluntly suggested that Mr. Thompson was taking the allegiance of black voters for granted.

“I think he believes that the color of his skin is what’s needed to get to communities of color, rather than standing on the correct substance of issues,” he said.

Mr. Thompson dismissed that claim as “ridiculous.” He added: “I would never take support of black voters for granted. Ever.”

As he outlines his position, Mr. Thompson at times echoes the oratory of Mr. Bloomberg, stop-and-frisk policing’s biggest champion, who has said: “I understand that innocent people don’t like to be stopped. But innocent people don’t like to be shot and killed, either.”

Unlike Mr. Bloomberg, however, he also gives voice to the anger and pain of those who find the tactic dehumanizing.

And, underscoring his desire to reassure those uneasy about a return to lawlessness in post-Bloomberg New York, he has pushed for the hiring of 2,000 additional police officers.

“It’s an extremely tricky balance,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from Brooklyn and Queens, who is black and has yet to make an endorsement in the mayor’s race. Mr. Jeffries has repeatedly spoken out against excessive use of stop-and-frisk policing.

“He has to convince one set of New Yorkers that he will continue dramatic declines in crime and keep our city one of the safest in the country,” Mr. Jeffries said, “and on the other hand, he has to convince an aggrieved community of color that the Police Department on his watch will behave in a dramatically different fashion.”

Inside Mr. Thompson’s political operation, there have at times been open disagreements over his policies on policing.

But Mr. Thompson has argued back that every neighborhood deserves the sense of security that has become the new normal in the city’s wealthier precincts. “I haven’t been shy,” he said, “about making sure that all communities in this city are entitled to safety.”

Elected officials delegate their authority to unelected, unnamed government bureaucrats???

I suspect the reason our elected official delegate their powers to unnamed, unelected bureaucrats in obscure government agencies is because it makes them easier to steal our money and give it to the special interest groups that helped get them elected.

If Congressman Harry Mitchell passes a law that gives millions of dollars of government welfare to the special interest groups that helped him get into power his actions are usually a matter of public record and the media will cover the story and sometimes it will tick off the voters enough that the boot him out of office.

On the other hand if Congressman Harry Mitchell delegates the authority to some unnamed team of bureaucrats in some obscure government agency, it's usually pretty easy for Congressman Harry Mitchell to go to those unnamed government bureaucrats and get them to shove the pork to the special interest groups that helped him get elected. And of course that makes it much more difficult for the media to document the connection between Congressman Harry Mitchell giving millions of dollars of pork to the special interest groups that helped him get elected.

Sure to the general public those people who doled out the pork are unknown bureaucrats in an obscure government agency and the public is clueless to who they are.

But Congressman Harry Mitchell knows those unknown bureaucrats in an obscure government agency very well and probably had a hand in giving them their job. And of course with that in mind it is probably pretty easy for Congressman Harry Mitchell to get them to shovel the pork to his special interest groups.

Source

Fifteen Bureaucrats Are Better Than One

Posted on May 30, 2013 | Author: Christina Sandefur

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have announced that they will not recommend candidates to serve on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, the federal health care law’s panel of 15 bureaucrats tasked with reducing Medicare costs. In a letter to the president explaining their decision, Boehner and McConnell said they “believe Congress should repeal IPAB” and “hope establishing this board never becomes a reality.”

The Board has vast power over the entire health care market to set price controls, levy taxes, and even ration care. In fact, it can propose anything its members determine is “related to the Medicare program.” IPAB’s proposals automatically become law unless Congress and the president quickly enact a substitute plan with an equal reduction in spending, and the Board’s decisions aren’t subject to review by administrative judges or courts. To add insult to injury, the Board is virtually unrepealable.

The Goldwater Institute is suing over the constitutionality of the Board, arguing that it is a violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine. Lawmakers are right to call for its demise. But will refusing to recommend board members do the job?

No. While the president must seek recommendations from Congress, the ultimate decision of whom to appoint to the Board is his. And there’s no requirement that IPAB be bipartisan. So refusing to participate in the appointment process just gives President Obama more say in the Board’s makeup.

Worse yet, stalling member appointments and confirmations may mean no one gets chosen for IPAB. To opponents of the Board, that may sound desirable. But as the Congressional Research Service recently confirmed, if no one is selected to fill the board member slots, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will wield IPAB’s powers unilaterally.

While lawmakers should work to repeal IPAB, washing their hands of the appointment process is a step in the wrong direction. When it comes to making health care decisions, the only thing worse than 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats is one unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat.

Cops are paid very well and have cushy jobs????

First any job that required driving an automobile is a dangerous job. Thousands of Americans die every year in auto accidents. Thus any jobs that requires driving an automobile is usually more dangerous then one that doesn't.

And police officers like mailmen, taxi cab drivers, ice cream sales truck drivers, bus drivers, pizza delivery guys, UPS and FEDEX delivery guys and meter readers drive automobiles, which makes their job a dangerous job.

But cops don't risk their lives to protect us everyday any more then mailmen, taxi cab drivers, ice cream sales truck drivers, and pizza delivery guys risk their lives for us to bring us packages and junk food.

The really dangerous jobs in American are fishermen, loggers or lumberjacks and constructions workers. Year in and year out these three jobs are usually in the top 3 most dangerous jobs according to statistics compiled by the US government.

I have only seen the job of a police officer in the top 10 once and they were seventh.

And when it comes to people being murdered on the job, again cops are not even close to the top of the list.

The jobs with the highest chance of being murdered while at work are convenience store clerks like at Circle Ks and 7/11s, along with liquor store clerks.

Yes, every now and then a cop gets murdered, but not any where near the rate that store clerks do. Criminals are usually smart enough only to rob unarmed people that can't defend themselves and for that reason avoid robbing armed police officers who can defend themselves.

Last I think Bill Richardson is also a little biased when he sings the blues on how underpaid cops are.

The police and fire unions are very powerful unions and have done an excellent job in getting police and firemen very high pay rates along with excellent retirement benefits.

In the Phoenix area most police forces start their entry level cops at about $50,000 a year. That is comparable to the starting pay of a computer science engineer who is just getting out of college. But cops in Arizona don't need a college degree.

If you look at the public databases which list the salaries for cops in Phoenix, Mesa and Tempe and other valley city there are a very large number of cops making $100,000 or even $150,000 a year.

And of course the retirement benefits for cops are fantastic.

I believe that a cop can retire after 20 years and get 80 percent of his highest pay for the rest of his life.

How many other jobs can you be hired as a 21 year old rookie at $50,000 and after 20 years retire at 41 and make $80,000 a year for the rest of your life.

Source

Richardson: ‘Selective scrutiny’ over police, fire pension programs a dangerous game

Posted: Friday, May 31, 2013 5:47 am

Guest Commentary by Bill Richardson

‘Selective scrutiny’ over police, fire pension programs a dangerous game

May 2013 will go down as one of the worst periods in Arizona history when it comes to the loss of first responders.

On May 6, Department of Public Safety officer Tim Hoffman was murdered while investigating an accident near Yuma. Twelve days later, Phoenix firefighter Bradley Harper was killed at a fire scene. The next day, Phoenix Police officer Daryl Raetz was murdered while arresting a drunk driver.

Three dead in two weeks.

The last time this kind of tragedy struck Arizona was in 1970-71, when two Phoenix police officers died on Dec. 28, 1970, two Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputies died Jan. 18, 1971, and two DPS officers Feb. 5 and Feb. 7. Five were murdered and one died while responding to a dying officer’s call for help. One of the murdered deputies was the father of one of the Phoenix officers who died.

Many widows and orphans were made in that five-week period.

No one ever told us being a cop or firefighter was going to be without risk or danger. Doing police work or fighting fires right is dirty, dangerous and where there’s always a chance of dying and leaving behind a widow and orphans. We just expected that our families would be taken of as promised if anything ever happened to us. Sadly promises were broken and contracts breached by the Arizona State Legislature.

Over the last two years the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System, Arizona’s police and fire pension plan, has come under selective scrutiny by powerful media interests and the Legislature.

Tales of a handful of pension abuses and a few double and triple dippers made headlines and became the catalyst for the legislature to climb onboard the pension reform train following years of plumping up their own pension plan, part-time elected officials get better pensions than police officers and firefighters, the same elected officials giving their retirement fund administrator a nearly quarter million dollar annual pension all while failing in their fiduciary and legislative responsibilities that threw the once nationally heralded public safety pension fund into mismanagement and underfunding.

Following a series of newspaper stories, the legislature led by its own in-house double and triple dippers looked more like cats covering up feces in a sand box than a responsible elected body trying to fix a broken pension system.

In its zeal and fear of being targeted by the media as against pension reform, the legislature enacted drastic changes in a few short months instead of taking a long and hard look at what had worked exceptionally well until its members fell asleep at the switch. Their repair effort looked more like using duct tape to fix a failed bridge instead of studying the problem and fixing it right once they had good advice and all the facts. Already their patch is showing signs of failure.

While the legislative leadership and their minions can boast to the media of taking on the pension abusers and pro-labor forces, you don’t hear them bragging about cutting survivor’s benefits to the widows and orphans of police officers and firefighters killed in the line of duty. You see that the legislature wiped out the paltry annual cost living adjustments given to widows and orphans — many of who are unable to obtain Social Security survivor’s benefits because their spouse’s employers didn’t enroll public safety employees in Social Security.

As usual legislators will tout their support for police officers and firefighters killed in the line of duty following the recent deaths of Huffman, Harper and Raetz. If they supported them so much then why did create a situation that would hurt their survivors?

It’s time for the state legislature to fix what they broke and restore benefits to the widows and orphans of those fallen police officers and firefighters our legislator’s profess to the cameras and newspapers they respect so much and thank for their service.

Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

Police union leaders don't like to be called "union bosses"

I suspect that is because she is willing to shovel the pork in the form of pay raises and fantastic retirements to the cops and firemen, in exchange for their votes.

The term "union bosses" would be better called "police union bosses", because the money paid to police officers account for about 40 percent of the Phoenix budget. I guess the term "union bosses" could also refer to "police and fireman union bosses" because when you throw in firemen along with the cops they account for about 60 percent of the Phoenix budget.

If you look at the letter from the "union bosses" to the city of Phoenix at the end of the article half of the unions have the term police or fire as part of their names.

Source

Phoenix labor leaders asking for a ban on the term “union bosses”

In the latest bizarre twist over at Phoenix city hall, the city’s public employee unions are going after Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio for name calling, asking for “an immediate censure and sanction” against him..

It seems they don’t like being referred to as “union bosses” and they want Mayor Greg Stanton and the rest of the City Council to tell him to cut it out.

“Councilman DiCiccio’s language is truly inflammatory and insulting,” the presidents of the city’s public employee unions wrote, in their letter sent Monday to the council. “His continued use of the word ‘union bosses’, a phrase with both historical and racially bigoted overtones, is deliberately and repeatedly chosen by him because it’s (sic) very meaning can be nothing other than offensive and derogatory to anyone who hears it.”

The letter goes on to ask the Phoenix City Council to “make a public declaration that such conduct among its members is not condoned by them, is unacceptable and that an immediate end to the use of this offensive and deliberately inflammatory phrase shall ensue.”

No seriously, that’s what they’re asking.

The unions have good reason to despise DiCiccio. He has questioned employee pay raises. He has loudly and repeatedly called for an end to the food tax that coincidentally is roughly equal to the general-fund amount needed to fund those raises during the recession. He’s no fan of public pensions and he is gearing up for the next big fight at city hall – over the longstanding and probably illegal practice of pension spiking.

I’ve long suspected that one or more of the unions are the moneybags behind the Campaign for Better Neighborhoods, a stealth group that, from the cover of darkness, is attempting to unseat DiCiccio in this year’s council race. They desperately want him gone.

What I can’t figure out is why they think that decrying his use of the union boss label would hurt DiCiccio in his district, which covers Ahwatukee, the Biltmore and Arcadia. If anything, I’m guessing their complaint will wind up in DiCiccio’s campaign ads this summer.

DiCiccio, in a statement e-mailed over this afternoon, sounds delighted by the labor leaders’ letter.

“I will not be bullied into silence by labor representatives of the City of Phoenix (a.k.a. union bosses),” he wrote. “The letters and the social media posts will not deter me from doing the right thing for the taxpayers. … These Chicago-style intimidation tactics are clearly why Mayor Stanton is afraid to keep his campaign promises of repealing the food tax and stopping pension spiking.”

Any bets on how many of the union groups will join Stanton in supporting DiCiccio’s opponent, Karlene Keogh Parks?

–

Below is the full text of their letter:

Mayor Greg Stanton and Council,

This is a joint letter from labor representatives of the City of Phoenix [ie. police and firemen union bosses] requesting an immediate censure and sanction against Councilman Sal DiCiccio for his continued use of offensive and derogatory language towards elected labor representatives of the City.

It is one thing to disagree on the course of the city and its finances, and to debate the merits of a budget proposal or tax. However, it should never be acceptable for any one of us speaking at a public Council meeting or other public arenas to use offensive language towards one another, employees or elected officials.

Councilman DiCiccio’s language is truly inflammatory and insulting. His continued use of the word ‘union bosses’, a phrase with both historical and racially bigoted overtones, is deliberately and repeatedly chosen by him because it’s (sic) very meaning can be nothing other than offensive and derogatory to anyone who hears it. Elected labor representatives are as much ‘bosses’ over their unions as Mr. DiCiccio is a ‘boss’ over District 6.

It is as much an honor to serve as a democratically elected representative of workers in this city as it is for Mr. DiCiccio to serve as an elected councilperson. His continued attempt at degrading both the leadership and members of our city’s [police and firemen] unions with inflammatory rhetoric is beneath the dignity and the office of Councilperson and shows ignorance of the true purpose of our associations.

The long history of defending workers rights and safety, establishing FMLA, Social Security, Medicare, ending child labor, establishing sick days, minimum wage laws, bringing the 40 hour work week to fruition and above all bringing dignity to workers is well established. [Give me a break, most police officers in the Phoenix metro area START at around $50,000 a year which is about $25 and hour. Arizona police officers can retire after 20 years at 80 percent of their highest pay which is far better then most of the taxpayers who pay their wages]

Perhaps Mr. DiCiccio is not aware that it was in Memphis, Tennessee that sanitation workers, aspiring to become labor union representatives and members picked up signs and declared proudly, ‘I Am a Man,’ and that this moment was the backgrop for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ speech.

While we can disagree and debate on the many financial [Bingo - It's about MONEY. The unions always want more money, and calling them unions bosses makes them sound like money grubbing thieves, which is why they don't like to be called union bosses] and other issues affecting our city a basic decorum f respect and civility should be the norm. The council deserves it, we deserve it, and certainly those citizens who have elected all of us deserve it.

Therefore, we request that the Mayor and council make a public declaration that such conduct among its members is not condoned by them, is unacceptable and that an immediate end to the use of this offensive and deliberately inflammatory phrase shall ensue.”

Signed:

Frank A. Piccioli, president, AFSCME 2960

Ran Ramirez, president, Administrative Supervisory Professional & Technical Employees Association

Joe Clure, president Phoenix Law Enforcement Association

Sean Mattson, president, Phoenix Police Sergeants and Lieutenants Association

Luis Schmidt, president, AFSCME 2384

Bill Higgins, chapter president, Laborers International Union of North America Local 777

Pete Gorraiz, president International Association of Firefighters 493; and Rebekah Friend, executive director, Arizona AFL-CIO

Rebekah Friend, executive director, Arizona AFL-CIO

Uncle Sam reads your email and listens to your phone calls

Monumental phone, Internet monitoring laid bare in reports

Sure the jackbooted thugs in the FBI, Homeland Security, DEA, BATF, and ICE who created this program are the problem, but the real problem is the members of the US Congress and US Senate who passed the unconstitutional laws such as the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which allow the police thugs in those government agencies to do this.

The article didn't mention this but in addition to monitoring our phone conversations and reading our emails the government at both the Federal, state, county and city levels routinely monitor our websites, chat rooms, Facebook, Tweeter and other internet activities.

Every day some of my web pages get a visit from an IP address in Shady Grove, Maryland, which I suspect is the home of some Federal police agency. On a map Shady Grove, Maryland looks like a suburb in the Washington, D.C. metro area and I suspect it is the home of one branch or another of the US Department of Homeland Security.

I have read a number of articles in the Arizona Republic about people who have been arrested by police from the cities of Tempe, Phoenix and the Arizona Department of Public Safety who troll the internet pretending to be horny underage girls who want to have sex with older men.

Source

Monumental phone, Internet monitoring laid bare in reports

Associated Press Fri Jun 7, 2013 7:42 AM

A leaked document has laid bare the monumental scope of the government's surveillance of Americans' phone records — hundreds of millions of calls — in the first hard evidence of a massive data collection program aimed at combating terrorism under powers granted by Congress after the 9/11 attacks.

At issue is a court order, first disclosed Wednesday by The Guardian newspaper in Britain, that requires the communications company Verizon to turn over on an "ongoing, daily basis" the records of all landline and mobile telephone calls of its customers, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries. Intelligence experts said the government, though not listening in on calls, would be looking for patterns that could lead to terrorists — and that there was every reason to believe similar orders were in place for other phone companies.

Some critics in Congress, as well as civil liberties advocates, declared that the sweeping nature of the National Security Agency program represented an unwarranted intrusion into Americans' private lives. But a number of lawmakers, including some Republicans who normally jump at the chance to criticize the Obama administration, lauded the program's effectiveness. Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said the program had helped thwart at least one attempted terrorist attack in the United States, "possibly saving American lives."

Separately, The Washington Post and The Guardian reported Thursday the existence of another program used by the NSA and FBI that scours the nation's main Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs to help analysts track a person's movements and contacts. It was not clear whether the program, called PRISM, targets known suspects or broadly collects data from other Americans.

The companies include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. The Post said PalTalk has had numerous posts about the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war. It also said Dropbox would soon be included.

Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple said in statements that they do not provide the government with direct access to their records.

"When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law," the company said.

The leaks about the programs brought a sharp response from James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. In an unusual statement late Thursday, Clapper called disclosure of the Internet surveillance program "reprehensible" and said the leak about the phone record collecting could cause long-lasting and irreversible harm to the nation's ability to respond to threats.

Clapper said news reports about the programs contained inaccuracies and omitted key information. He declassified some details about the authority used in the phone records program because he said Americans must know the program's limits. Those details included that a special national security court reviews the program every 90 days and that the court prohibits the government from indiscriminately sifting through phone data. Queries are only allowed when facts support reasonable suspicion, Clapper said.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said of the phone-records collecting: "When law-abiding Americans make phone calls, who they call, when they call and where they call is private information. As a result of the discussion that came to light today, now we're going to have a real debate."

But Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Americans have no cause for concern. "If you're not getting a call from a terrorist organization, you've got nothing to worry about," he said. [Yea, and if this were Nazi Germany, I am sure Sen. Lindsey Graham would have said the Jews shouldn't be alarmed at some of the things Hitler was doing, after all they were aimed at Jews, but rather at helping the Nazis catch bad criminals.]

A senior administration official pointed out that the collection of communication cited in the Washington Post and Guardian articles involves "extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court [FISA courts, secret courts created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which are normally not open to the public, and which don't keep records of their decisions that are open to the public, and which meet in location which the public is not allowed], to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons." The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and requested anonymity, added that Congress had recently reauthorized the program.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the order was a three-month renewal of an ongoing practice that is supervised by federal judges who balance efforts to protect the country from terror attacks against the need to safeguard Americans' privacy. The surveillance powers are granted under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, which was renewed in 2006 and again in 2011.

While the scale of the program might not have been news to some congressional leaders, the disclosure offered a public glimpse into a program whose breadth is not widely understood. Sen. Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat who serves on the Intelligence Committee, said it was the type of surveillance that "I have long said would shock the public if they knew about it."

The government has hardly been forthcoming.

Wyden released a video of himself pressing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on the matter during a Senate hearing in March.

"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Wyden asked.

"No, sir," Clapper answered.

"It does not?" Wyden pressed.

Clapper quickly softened his answer. "Not wittingly," he said. "There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect — but not wittingly."

There was no immediate comment from Clapper's office Thursday on his testimony in March.

The public is now on notice that the government has been collecting data — even if not listening to the conversations — on every phone call every American makes, a program that has operated in the shadows for years, under President George W. Bush, and continued by President Barack Obama.

"It is very likely that business records orders like this exist for every major American telecommunication company, meaning that if you make calls in the United States the NSA has those records," wrote Cindy Cohn, general counsel of the nonprofit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, and staff attorney Mark Rumold, in a blog post.

Without confirming the authenticity of the court order, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said such surveillance powers are "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats," by helping officials determine if people in the U.S. who may have been engaged in terrorist activities have been in touch with other known or suspected terrorists.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., stressed that phone records are collected under court orders that are approved by the Senate and House Intelligence committees and regularly reviewed.

And Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada played down the significance of the revelation.

"Everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn't anything that's brand new," he said. "This is a program that's been in effect for seven years, as I recall. It's a program that has worked to prevent not all terrorism but certainly the vast, vast majority. Now is the program perfect? Of course not." [Yea, and Harry Reid probably would have said the same things to the Jews in Nazi Germany. Trust your government, these laws are not aimed at murdering Jews, but at catching criminals. Trust the government, we are here to help you, not harm you!!!]

But privacy advocates said the scope of the program was indefensible.

"This confirms our worst fears," said Alexander Abdo, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project. "If the government can track who we call," he said, "the right to privacy has not just been compromised — it has been defeated."

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who sponsored the USA Patriot Act that governs the collection, said he was "extremely troubled by the FBI's interpretation of this legislation." [Another government liar who will say anything to get elected??? If this tyrant is so concerned about the Patriot Act he created why doesn't he pass a law to repeal it??? Probably because he is getting money from the special interest groups in the FBI and other Homeland Security agencies]

Attorney General Eric Holder sidestepped questions about the issue during an appearance before a Senate subcommittee, offering instead to discuss it at a classified session that several senators said they would arrange.

House Speaker John Boehner called on Obama to explain why the program is necessary.

It would "be helpful if they'd come forward with the details here," he said.

The disclosure comes at a particularly inopportune time for the Obama administration. The president already faces questions over the Internal Revenue Service's improper targeting of conservative groups, the seizure of journalists' phone records in an investigation into who leaked information to the media, and the administration's handling of the terrorist attack in Libya that left four Americans dead. [I have always said Obama is a carbon copy clone of George W. Bush, now it seems like Obama is also a clone of Richard M. Nixon!!!]

At a minimum, it's all a distraction as the president tries to tackle big issues like immigration reform and taxes. And it could serve to erode trust in Obama as he tries to advance his second-term agenda and cement his presidential legacy.

The Verizon order, granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and good until July 19, requires information on the phone numbers of both parties on a call, as well as call time and duration, and unique identifiers, according to The Guardian.

It does not authorize snooping into the content of phone calls. But with millions of phone records in hand, the NSA's computers can analyze them for patterns, spot unusual behavior and identify "communities of interest" — networks of people in contact with targets or suspicious phone numbers overseas.

Once the government has zeroed in on numbers that it believes are tied to terrorism or foreign governments, it can go back to the court with a wiretap request. That allows the government to monitor the calls in real time, record them and store them indefinitely.

Rogers said once the data has been collected, officials still must follow "a court-approved method and a series of checks and balances to even make the query on a particular number." [From what I have read these FISA courts are secret courts created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which are normally not open to the public, and which don't keep public records of their decisions. So that really isn't a system of checks and balances to prevent government abuses, in fact it's an invitation to government abuses]

But Jim Harper, a communications and privacy expert at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, questioned the effectiveness of pattern analyses to intercept terrorism. He said that kind of analysis would produce many false positives and give the government access to intricate data about people's calling habits.

Verizon Executive Vice President and General Counsel Randy Milch, in a blog post, said the company isn't allowed to comment on any such court order.

"Verizon continually takes steps to safeguard its customers' privacy," he wrote. "Nevertheless, the law authorizes the federal courts to order a company to provide information in certain circumstances, and if Verizon were to receive such an order, we would be required to comply."

The company listed 121 million customers in its first-quarter earnings report this April — 98.9 million wireless customers, 11.7 million residential phone lines and about 10 million commercial lines. [That is about one third of American's population of 310 million people]

The NSA had no immediate comment. The agency is sensitive to perceptions that it might be spying on Americans. It distributes a brochure that pledges the agency "is unwavering in its respect for U.S. laws and Americans' civil liberties — and its commitment to accountability."

Under Bush, the NSA built a highly classified wiretapping program to monitor emails and phone calls worldwide. The full details of that program remain unknown, but one aspect was to monitor massive numbers of incoming and outgoing U.S. calls to look for suspicious patterns, said an official familiar with the program. That official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

After The New York Times revealed the existence of that wiretapping program, the data collection continued under the Patriot Act, the official said. The official did not know if the program was continuous or whether it stopped and restarted at times.

The FISA court order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compelled Verizon to provide the NSA with electronic copies of "all call detail records or telephony metadata created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls," The Guardian said.

The law on which the order explicitly relies is the "business records" provision of the Patriot Act.

Seizing cellphone records abuses liberty

Source

Seizing cellphone records abuses liberty

Our View: Data mining is legal, useful - but not a blank check

By Editorial board The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jun 7, 2013 7:44 AM

There is a rich vein of irony in Wednesday’s revelation by a London newspaper that the National Security Agency is collecting millions of telephone records from Verizon every day and has a court’s approval to do it.

This is the Obama administration’s NSA, after all. The administration that arrived in 2008 on a mission to repudiate and abandon all the “war on terror” transgressions of its predecessor.

And it is led by a president who just two weeks ago in a major national-security speech expressed concerns about the “expanded surveillance” brought about by the war on terror. He spoke of the need to re-establish balance “between our interests in security and our values of privacy.”

This current NSA “data mining” of millions of phone records is a practice indistinguishable from those conducted at the height of the Patriot Act-authorized war on terror — unchanged except in the scope of the surveillance, which appears far more sweeping than any snooping authority sought by the George W. Bush administration.

Not a lot of “balance” there.

Still, there needs to be some balance struck regarding the meaning of the NSA data-mining story itself. It is not the horrifying, new intrusion on privacy it appears to be.

First, the practice is legal and has been for a long time. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1979 concluded in Smith vs. Maryland that because phone records are held by phone companies, the data about those phone records (as opposed to the content of the phone calls) is not privileged information. The government’s right to access the data for national-security purposes is explicitly authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

Just as during the Bush administration’s post-9/11 pursuit of terror suspects, the Obama administration’s interest in acquiring the data is almost certainly an effort to prevent terrorist attacks.

We can say “almost certainly” with fair confidence. The court that approved the data mining was the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was created in 1978 precisely for this purpose.

Further, the court orders, however sweeping, appear to have been witnessed by (and tacitly approved by) congressional Intelligence Committee members.

That hasn’t made the government’s habit of gathering the data any less controversial. For many civil libertarians and critics of the Bush administration, data mining of phone records was evidence of the unconstitutional, unchecked power of the “unitary executive.”

That concern continues today.

Two Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, have been cryptically expressing grave concerns for years about what they saw as the administration’s overuse of its surveillance powers. This widespread phone-snooping story is at least part of what they were hinting at.

But it is especially troubling for this administration, given the recent revelations about its willingness to use — which is to say, abuse — the enormous powers of government against political enemies.

The Internal Revenue Service treatment of conservative non-profit organizations may not have been explicitly ordered by the administration. But there is ample evidence the IRS was enthusiastically encouraged by the president and his aides to single out “tea partyers” for special scrutiny.

And the Obama Justice Department’s grim labeling of a Fox News reporter as a suspected espionage co-conspirator underscores the view that the administration is not shy about using its power politically.

There most certainly is a necessary “balance” to be struck between national security and individual liberty. President Barack Obama has not found that balance. He needs to.

Obama defends phone data collection program

F*ck you Obama, I will take 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience any day of the year over having your police thugs spy on me to protect me from enemies which YOUR foreign policies created!!!!

As H. L. Mencken said:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Obama defends phone data collection program

Josh Lederman and Donna Cassata Fri Jun 7, 2013 10:08 AM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama vigorously defended sweeping secret surveillance into America’s phone records and foreigners’ Internet use, declaring “we have to make choices as a society.”

Taking questions Friday from reporters at a health care event in San Jose, Calif., Obama said, “It’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.”

It was revealed late Wednesday that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone records of hundreds of millions of U.S. phone customers. The leaked document first reported by the Guardian newspaper gave the NSA authority to collect from all of Verizon’s land and mobile customers, but intelligence experts said the program swept up the records of other phone companies too. Another secret program revealed Thursday scours the Internet usage of foreign nationals overseas who use any of nine U.S.-based internet providers such as Microsoft and Google.

In his first comments since the programs were publicly revealed this week, Obama said safeguards are in place.

“They help us prevent terrorist attacks,” Obama said. He said he has concluded that prevention is worth the “modest encroachments on privacy.” [Yea, and modest violations of the Bill of Rights, as if a modest violations are OK]

Obama said he came into office with a “healthy skepticism” of the program and increased some of the “safeguards” on the programs. He said Congress and federal judges have oversight on the program, and a judge would have to approve monitoring of the content of a call and it’s not a “program run amok.” [Yea, oversights by secret FISA courts that meet in secret locations and keep secret records!!!!]

“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” he said. “That’s not what this program’s about.”

He said government officials are “’’looking at phone numbers and durations of calls.”

“They are not looking at people’s names and they are not looking at content. But by sifting through this so-called metadata they might identify potential leads of people who might engage in terrorism,” Obama said. [per the 4th Amendment you have to have "probable cause" to spy on people and when you say "might" you don't have "probable cause"]

The president’s remarks followed an unusual late-night statement Thursday from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who denounced the leaks of highly classified documents that revealed the programs and warned that America’s security will suffer. He called the disclosure of a program that targets foreigners’ Internet use “reprehensible,” and said the leak of another program that lets the government collect Americans’ phone records would change America’s enemies behavior and make it harder to understand their intentions.

“The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation,” Clapper said of the phone-tracking program.

At the same time, Clapper offered new information about the secret programs.

“I believe it is important for the American people to understand the limits of this targeted counterterrorism program and the principles that govern its use,” he said.

Among the previously classified information about the phone records collection that Clapper revealed:

—The program is conducted under authority granted by Congress and is authorized by the Foreign intelligence Surveillance Court which determines the legality of the program. [Yea, oversights by secret FISA courts that meet in secret locations and keep secret records!!!!]

—The government is prohibited from “indiscriminately sifting” through the data acquired. It can only be reviewed “when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization.” He also said only counterterrorism personnel trained in the program may access the records.

—The information acquired is overseen by the Justice Department and the FISA court. Only a very small fraction of the records are ever reviewed, he said. [Yea, oversights by secret FISA courts that meet in secret locations and keep secret records!!!!]

—The program is reviewed every 90 days. [Yea, by secret FISA courts that meet in secret locations and keep secret records!!!!]

The Obama administration’s defense of the two programs came as members of Congress were vowing to change a program they voted to authorize and exasperated civil liberties advocates were crying foul, questioning how Obama, a former constitutional scholar who sought privacy protections as a U.S. senator, could embrace policies aligned with President George W. Bush, whose approach to national security he had vowed to leave behind.

Clapper alleged that articles about the Internet program “contain numerous inaccuracies.” He did not specify.

Senior administration officials defended the programs as critical tools and said the intelligence they yield is among the most valuable data the U.S. collects. Clapper said the Internet program, known as PRISM, can’t be used to intentionally target any Americans or anyone in the U.S, and that data accidentally collected about Americans is kept to a minimum. [Yea, and secret FISA courts that meet in secret locations and keep secret records will guarantee that!!!]

Leaders of Congress’ intelligence panels dismissed the furor over what they said was standard three-month renewal to a program that’s operated for seven years. Committee leaders also said the program recently helped thwart what would have been a significant domestic terrorist attack.

The NSA must collect the phone data in broad swaths, Clapper said, because collecting it narrowly would make it harder to identify terrorism-related communications. [Why not just add a section to the Patriot Act that requires every American to give the keys to their home so an FBI agent can stop in any time and spy on them just to make sure they are not up to no good??? Hey, it's not flushing the 4th Amendment down the toilet any more then the rest of the Patriot Act does!!!!]

But the widespread notion of a government dragnet ensnaring terror suspects and innocent Americans pushed typical political foes to stand together against Obama as he enforces what many likened to Bush-era policies.

“When law-abiding Americans make phone calls, who they call, when they call and where they call from is private information,” [yea, between them the FBI, NSA and only a few thousand other people in the government] said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. “As a result of the disclosures that came to light today, now we’re going to have a real debate in the Congress and the country and that’s long overdue.”

Officials from Clapper’s office, the Justice Department, NSA and FBI briefed 27 senators for some two hours late Thursday at a hurriedly convened session prompted by severe criticism and uncertainty about the program.

“The National Security Agency’s seizure and surveillance of virtually all of Verizon’s phone customers is an astounding assault on the Constitution,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. “After revelations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted political dissidents and the Department of Justice seized reporters’ phone records, it would appear that this administration has now sunk to a new low.”

Paul said he will introduce legislation ensuring that the Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures apply to government search of phone records. [Well at least he actually admits the Patriot Act has made the 4th Amendment null and void and he will pass legislation to un-repeal the 4th Amendment for a few purposes]

The surveillance powers are granted under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, which was renewed in 2006 and again in 2011. Republicans who usually don’t miss a chance to criticize the administration offered full support.

“I’m a Verizon customer. I could care less if they’re looking at my phone records. … If you’re not getting a call from a terrorist organization, you got nothing to worry about,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. [So if I associate with somebody the government considers a terrorist I have something to worry about??? Like my cousin who is an immigrant from Syria???]

The disclosures come at a particularly inopportune time for Obama. His administration already faces questions over the Internal Revenue Service’s improper targeting of conservative groups, the seizure of journalists’ phone records in an investigation into who leaked information to the media, and the handling of the terrorist attack in Libya that left four Americans dead.

At a minimum, it’s all a distraction as the president tries to tackle big issues like immigration reform and taxes. And it could serve to erode trust in Obama as he tries to advance his second-term agenda and cement his presidential legacy.

The Verizon order, granted by the secret FISA court on April 25 and good until July 19, requires information on the phone numbers of both parties on a call, as well as call time and duration, and unique identifiers, The Guardian reported.

It does not authorize snooping into the content of phone calls. But with millions of phone records in hand, the NSA’s computers can analyze them for patterns, spot unusual behavior and identify “communities of interest” — networks of people in contact with targets or suspicious phone numbers overseas.

Once the government has zeroed in on numbers that it believes are tied to terrorism or foreign governments, it can go back to the court with a wiretap request. That allows the government to monitor the calls in real time, record them and store them indefinitely.

House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said that once the data has been collected, officials still must follow “a court-approved method and a series of checks and balances to even make the query on a particular number.” [Yea, checks and ballances by secret FISA courts that meet in secret locations and keep secret records!!!!]

The steps are shrouded in government secrecy, which some lawmakers say should change.

“The American public can’t be kept in the dark about the basic architecture of the programs designed to protect them,” said Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn. [Yea and secret FISA courts that meet in secret locations and keep secret records are part of the architecture designed to protect us!!!!]

Verizon Executive Vice President and General Counsel Randy Milch, in a blog post, said the company can’t comment on any such court order. He said Verizon take steps to protect customers’ privacy, but must comply with court orders. Verizon listed 121 million customers in its first-quarter earnings report this April.

The NSA is sensitive to perceptions that it might be spying on Americans. It distributes a brochure that pledges the agency “is unwavering in its respect for U.S. laws and Americans’ civil liberties — and its commitment to accountability.”

Emerging from the briefing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Intelligence committee, said the government must gather intelligence to prevent plots and keep Americans alive. “That’s the goal. If we can do it another way, we’re looking to do it another way. We’d like to.”

She said Congress is always open to changes, “but that doesn’t mean there will be any.”

Using the government to rob rich folks!!!!

Well I don't think that, but that is what EJ Montini seems to be saying in this editorial.

And sadly many of our elected officials use that line to buy votes from poor people to get themselves elected.

I suspect Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema agrees with this editorial 100 percent.

And of course if you are one of those lazy slobs who doesn't like working and think you have a God give right to steal stuff from hard working rich people I am sure that Kyrsten Sinema is willing to pass laws to help rob the rich and give you lazy bums their money if you vote for her.

Sure that's not right, but that's how government works.

Of course the Republicans are just as crooked as the Democrats.

The Republicans seem to think they have a God given right to use the government to steal from the poor and middle classes and give it to rich folks.

Source

EJ Montini | azcentral opinions

Posted on June 10, 2013 1:54 pm by EJ Montini

A ‘second Bill of Rights’ in Arizona?

I’ve never believed that politicians were much interested in reading history — other than checking a book’s index for their names. (The truth is, most of them won’t even make the footnotes.)

As Arizona legislators debate a proposed expansion of Medicaid that affords health care coverage for our most needy brothers and sisters it might be useful for those politicians who oppose the idea to read a excerpt from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s final inaugural address, from January 1944, in which the president lays out what he refers to as a “second Bill of Rights.”

FDR points out in the most eloquent terms what “freedom” actually means and how to achieve it. And he identifies the thing that most threatens it: Need.

Gov. Jan Brewer, who is pushing for the expansion, understands what Roosevelt was getting at. Arizona legislators would be wise to read the speech, which means there’s no chance of that happening.

The rest of you might enjoy it, however.

President Roosevelt said in part:

“We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

“In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

“Among these are:

“The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

“The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

“The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

“The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

“The right of every family to a decent home;

“The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

“The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

“The right to a good education.

“All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

“America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.”

Nearly 70 years later the nation hasn’t realized Roosevelt’s goal. But in small ways, as with the expansion of Medicaid, we’re still trying.

We "MUST" be able to trust our Valley law enforcement officials

Source

Richardson: We must be able to trust our Valley law enforcement officials

Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

Posted: Thursday, June 13, 2013 11:15 am

Guest Commentary by Bill Richardson

You can’t pick up the paper or turn on the news without hearing about yet another Arizona police officer being fired or investigated for a crime or violating their department’s rules of conduct. [And you never hear about the hundreds more that commit crimes against the people they pretend to serve and don't make it to the news]

Last Saturday’s Arizona Republic told about a member of the Phoenix Police Department’s DUI unit being investigated for filing a false police report and insurance fraud. He reportedly lied about his stolen truck. Last July a Phoenix sergeant was caught on video stealing cash from a business during a burglary investigation.

On Friday the Republic reported an ex-con who was friendly with deputies at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office obtained a sheriff’s badge and access to county vehicles, uniforms and was impersonating a deputy. The list of misconduct at MCSO is lengthy. Last April a deputy pled guilty to stealing $5,000. Another deputy just pled guilty to beating a man and faces prison.

Last week an ex-Tempe officer was jailed for stealing city property. Earlier in the year a Tempe detective pled guilty to stealing evidence from the police station. A few weeks ago a Tempe officer was allowed to retire after he lied to get a search warrant. [Instead of being fired like he should have been, and slapped with criminal charges of perjury like a civilian would have been.] In December a Tempe detective reportedly violated internal policies and procedures, lied to a murder victim’s mother and botched a murder investigation along with several other serious felonies. He still has his job.

A Mesa police sergeant was indicted last summer. A Coolidge sergeant was arrested for beating his wife and a Pinal deputy was investigated for homicide.

In December it was reported a police motorcycle gang was involved in a drunken melee that sent a citizen to the hospital. Criminal charges are pending. [Yea, but don't count on it. Crooked cops are rarely charged with crimes. Of course if a civilian had committed the same crime he would still be in jail waiting to go to trial]

For whatever reason Arizona seems to be plagued with excessive police misconduct. The problems aren’t just with lower ranking officers. [You forgot to mention Sheriff Joe, he is the biggest criminal in Maricopa County]

In my April 20, 2012 column (Arizona lacking in good, honest law enforcement leaders,” evtnow.com/5ju) I wrote about the reported integrity and conduct issues of two sheriffs, the MCSO ex-chief deputy, the ex-Glendale, Quartzite and Glendale police chiefs, the current Tempe chief, the Arizona Attorney General and the head of the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Since I wrote that column a Glendale assistant police chief has been demoted for intimidating a business owner.

Law enforcement officers are only as good as their leadership. Weak and corruptive leadership can trickle down and negatively affect an agencies organizational integrity and effectiveness.

The Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, or AZPOST, is the agency that licenses officers and operates under the wing of DPS. AZPOST has no standards for what it takes to be a police chief and has been hit and miss when it comes to holding some officers accountable for their conduct. In many cases new police chiefs and command officers aren’t required to submit to a polygraph or a new background investigation. [Look Bill, even though I hate corrupt cops, a lie detector test or polygraph test is a subjective tool that is worthless in rooting out corrupt cops. That is why it's not allowed to be used as evidence in courts]

AZPOST allowed a fired Chandler officer who cost the city millions after his negligence resulted in the deaths of two people to keep his officer’s license. They refused to take action against the Tempe detective who botched the murder case I mentioned above. Lying by a police officer in Arizona is no longer sure grounds to lose your license. Lying by an officer can’t be tolerated in any form. [But of course it is a crime for us civilians to lie to cops and people who do it are routinely arrested and punished. On the other hand the Supreme Court has said a number of times it is OK for cops to lie to civilians to trick them into confession to crimes. And the "9 Step Reid Method" which is used by most police departments across the USA and world is based on using LIES to get suspects to confess!!!!]

With the serious corruptive influences from Mexican Drug Cartels ever present in Arizona, the integrity of our police should be of utmost concern.

Several officers who work for a department with a history of problems told me they’re proud to wear the badge, but ashamed of the departmental patch.

Just one bad officer can cause the public to distrust the police. [Sadly it ain't just ONE corrupt cop, the police have more corrupt cops then honest ones] It’s not fair to the officers who serve honorably to be painted with the same brush as the crooked officers who continually make the news. It’s also not fair to us. If we want a safe community to live in we must be able to trust the police and their leadership unequivocally. [And that isn't going to happen. So if you want to keep the system from screwing you you should figure out right now that the police are corrupt to the core and can't be trusted for ANYTHING]

• Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

PGP - Pretty Good Privacy - Use it to encrypt your data

Personally I suspect that if you can encrypt it the government can decrypt it. The only question is how long will it take for the government to decrypt it and how much will it cost the government to decrypt it.

When Phil Zimmermann first invented PGP the US government threatened to put him in jail if he gave people outside of the USA copies of the software. The government says PGP is a munition and therefor subject to the governments control.

Phil Zimmermann got around that problem and put the source code on the internet and the cat has been out of the bag since then. The government didn't carry out it's threat to put him in jail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security of e-mail communications. It was created by Phil Zimmermann in 1991.

http://www.gnupg.org/

The free version of PGP

http://www.pgpi.org/

More free PGP software

http://www.symantec.com/encryption

The commercial version of PGP

http://cryptography.org/getpgp.htm

Where to get PGP

http://www.openpgp.org/

http://philzimmermann.com/EN/findpgp/

Lawmakers concerned over US surveillance programs

Translation - I love these programs because of the bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions I get from the military, industrial complex. But I want to get re-elected, so I will pretend to be shocked about them and have a sham investigation which will pretend to stop them.

Translational - I will say ANYTHING to get elected!!!!!

Source

Lawmakers concerned over US surveillance programs

KIMBERLY DOZIER, Associated Press, By KIMBERLY DOZIER and LARA JAKES, Associated Press

Updated 8:42 am, Wednesday, June 12, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers voiced their confusion and concern over the sweeping secret surveillance programs revealed recently, after receiving an unusual briefing on the government's yearslong collection of phone records and Internet usage.

"People aren't satisfied," Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., said as he left the briefing Tuesday. "More detail needs to come out."

The phalanx of FBI, legal and intelligence officials who briefed the entire House was the latest attempt to soothe outrage over National Security Agency programs that collect billions of Americans' phone and Internet records. Since they were revealed last week, the programs have spurred distrust in the Obama administration from around the world.

House members were told not to disclose information they heard in the briefing because it is classified.

While many rank-and-file members of Congress have expressed anger and bewilderment, there is apparently very little appetite among key leaders and intelligence committee chiefs to pursue any action. Most have expressed support for the programs as invaluable counterterror tools and some have labeled the leaker who disclosed them a "traitor."

That man, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, said in an interview published Wednesday that he had fled to Hong Kong not to hide from justice but to "reveal criminality." Snowden said he would ask "the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide his fate."

"I am neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American," he told the South China Morning Post.

Congressional leaders and intelligence committee members have been routinely briefed about the spy programs, officials said, and Congress has at least twice renewed laws approving them. But the disclosure of their sheer scope stunned some lawmakers, shocked foreign allies from nations with strict privacy protections and emboldened civil liberties advocates who long have accused the government of being too invasive in the name of national security.

Some lawmakers complained that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had misled a Senate committee in March by denying that the NSA collects data on millions of Americans. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., called for Clapper to resign immediately.

"Congress can't make informed decisions on intelligence issues when the head of the intelligence community willfully makes false statements," Amash, a tea partyer, wrote on Facebook.

Some Congress members acknowledged they'd been caught unawares by the scope of the programs, having skipped previous briefings by the intelligence committees.

"I think Congress has really found itself a little bit asleep at the wheel," Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said.

Many leaving the forum declared themselves disturbed by what they'd heard — and in need of more answers.

"Congress needs to debate this issue and determine what tools we give to our intelligence community to protect us from a terrorist attack," said Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and a backer of the surveillance. "Really it's a debate between public safety, how far we go with public safety and protecting us from terrorist attacks versus how far we go on the other side."

He said his panel and the House Judiciary Committee will examine what has happened and see whether there are recommendations to be made for the future.

The Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee will get to question the head of the NSA, Gen. Keith Alexander, on Wednesday, and the Senate and House intelligence committees will be briefed on the programs again Thursday.

The country's main civil liberties organization wasn't buying the administration's explanations, filing the most significant lawsuit against the massive phone record collection program so far. The American Civil Liberties Union and its New York chapter sued the federal government Tuesday in New York, asking a court to demand that the Obama administration end the program and purge the records it has collected.

The ACLU is claiming standing as a customer of Verizon, which was identified last week as the phone company the government had ordered to turn over daily records of calls made by all its customers.

Polls of U.S. public opinion show a mixed response to the controversy. A poll by The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center conducted over the weekend found Americans generally prioritize the government's need to investigate terrorist threats over the need to protect personal privacy.

But a CBS News poll conducted June 9-10 showed that while most approve of government collection of phone records of Americans suspected of terrorist activity and Internet activities of foreigners, a majority disapproved of federal agencies collecting the phone records of ordinary Americans. Thirty percent agreed with the government's assessment that the revelation of the programs would hurt the U.S.' ability to prevent future terrorist attacks, while 57 percent said it would have no impact.

A law enforcement official said prosecutors were building a case against Snowden on Tuesday and weighing what charges might be brought. But it was unlikely Snowden would be charged with treason, which carries the death penalty as a punishment and therefore could complicate extradition from foreign countries. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because there had been no final decision on charges.

___

Associated Press writers Donna Cassata, Frederic Frommer, Alan Fram, Andrew Miga, Pete Yost and Connie Cass contributed to this report.

Into the mind of ... Kyrsten Sinema

Kyrsten Sinema shovels the BS???

Kyrsten Sinema shovels the BS???

Remember Kyrsten Sinema is the Arizona Senator who introduced a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana. Kyrsten Sinema is now a US Congresswoman.

I guess the title of this article should have been "Vote for me and I will give you free stuff"

Source

Into the mind of ... Kyrsten Sinema

The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 5, 2013 6:27 PM

The first-term congresswoman reflects on her first six months in Washington.

After six months in Congress, what’s the No. 1 thing you’ve learned about the place?

I’ve learned I can still get a lot done for Congressional District 9 even though leaders in Congress aren’t accomplishing much. [I suspect Kyrsten Sinema means that she has accomplished tons of stuff while her fellow slackers have accomplished nothing. Of course if you ask me I would have said none of them have accomplished anything - well other then robbing us blind and micro-managing our lives]

In our district office, social workers help constituents solve problems every day. In our D.C. office, we help businesses access federal agencies, support local groups seeking federal grant funding, and advocate for the issues important to CD9 residents and businesses. [Translation - vote for ME and I will give you free stuff - lots of free government pork!!!!!]

What’s the biggest difference between the Legislature and Congress?

I’ve always believed that relationships are key to solving problems.

In the Legislature, my relationships with Republicans and Democrats alike helped me serve my constituents well. In Congress, I’m working to build bipartisan relationships as well, though it’ll take a bit longer to make friends with all 537 of my colleagues! [Kyrsten, you didn't answer the question. It was "What’s the biggest difference between the Legislature and Congress?" - But I guess the main purpose of this article is to tell the voters that if they vote for you, you will give them free stuff, so who cares if you answer the question]

What’s the biggest frustration? The biggest satisfaction?

Unfortunately, issues that shouldn’t be partisan, like military sexual trauma and college affordability, have been stymied by political posturing in Congress. Leaders in Congress should stop playing games and get to work solving our country’s challenges.

However, our office has been able to make a tremendous difference in the lives of CD9 residents.

For example, we recently helped Glen in Phoenix, who has a brain tumor. Last month, Glen had to choose to either buy expensive medicine to treat his tumor or buy a replacement bed for his home.

We worked with local charities and the pharmaceutical company to help him get both a bed and his life-saving medication. [Again - vote for ME and I will give you free stuff - lots of free government pork!!!!!]

As a member of the minority party, it’s hard to get a bill passed. What have you been able to accomplish?

Congress is pretty divided right now and sadly, they’re not getting much done.

I’m proud to be one of the founding members of the United Solutions Caucus. We’re a group of 38 freshmen, Democrats and Republicans, working together to solve our fiscal crisis and reduce our debt and deficit. [Don't make me laugh Kyrsten, when it comes to taxing and spending in the Arizona legislator you were number #1. I am sure that in the US Congress you are also the #1 Congresswoman when it comes to taxing and spending. You reduce our debt??? Again don't make me laugh!!! Kyrsten, as the debt goes up you will probably cause it to increase more then any other Congressperson!!!!]

We’ve introduced the SAVE Act, which cuts $200 billion in wasteful spending. Earlier this year, I helped pass the Violence Against Women Act.

Are there any issues you’re working on with other Arizona members? [Well other then that "vote for ME and I will give you free stuff" nonsense]

I’m working with Reps. Matt Salmon and Raul Grijalva on a bill to prevent the NSA from gathering innocent civilians’ private data. [Give me a break Kyrsten, on every election sign of your you have the fact that you are supported by the police unions on the signs. I find it hard to believe that you are trying to reduce the police state, when the police unions helped you get elected!!!] Reps. Ron Barber, Ann Kirkpatrick and I are working on legislation to help veterans get quicker and better access to VA services. [More of the old "vote for ME and I will give you free stuff" nonsense]

You and Salmon, a Republican, have made several joint appearances. What’s the connection?

Our offices work closely together on constituent cases, and Matt and I share similar views on issues like global competitiveness, increasing foreign investment in Arizona companies, and increasing trade and exports. Plus, he’s a good guy and we get along.

What will immigration reform look like when the House is finished with it?

It’s too early to predict, but I’m committed to a bill that secures our border [so you do support the police state - 20,000 new Border Patrol cops???], creates a workable plan for a future flow of workers into the United States, and settles the status of “dreamers” and hard-working families living in the U.S. Compromise must be a part of any viable solution, and I hope the House is ready to get to “yes.” I certainly am! [Kyrsten, when a politician like you says "compromise" it means "if you vote for my pork, I will vote for your pork". Kyrsten with that in mind, I suspect you know how to compromise better then any other Congressman or Senator in Washington D.C.]

Arizona Originals: Persistent | Kyrsten Sinema

Arizona Originals: Persistent | Kyrsten Sinema

By Jane Larson Special for the Republic|azcentral.com Mon Jul 8, 2013 10:40 AM

Kyrsten Sinema, 36, jumped into the fray early — she started accumulating college credits in high school and earned a bachelor’s degree in social work from Brigham Young University when she was 18. [Although for her credit she did figure God was just another silly superstition and is now an atheist] She has earned a master’s degree in social work, a law degree and a Ph.D in justice studies from Arizona State University in the years since. She has held positions as a social worker, an attorney and as an adjunct ASU instructor in social work.

“I always like doing things fast,” she said in a 2007 interview with The Arizona Republic.

Sinema, who was born in Tucson, has overcome notable odds to accomplish her goals. For a couple of years, she says, her family lived in an abandoned gas station with no electricity or running water. She became a social worker to help struggling families. Her involvement in politics grew as she realized that their problems — poverty, homelessness, job loss, abuse — were common to many people, and that solving these problems meant thinking bigger than one family at a time.

Since her early 20s, she has been active in political causes, winning election to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2004 and to the Arizona Senate in 2010. In 2012, she won a hard-fought race against former Paradise Valley Mayor Vernon Parker for the congressional seat. She is the first openly bisexual person elected to Congress. [And she is one of the few atheists in Congress, although she doesn't admit she is an atheist and claims instead she doesn't have a religion.]

Her work on two statewide ballot initiatives, including one against a ban on gay marriage, shows her ability to mobilize voters. She helped organize a massive immigrant-rights march, supports the Dream Act and same-sex-marriage legislation, and recently took her seat on the influential House Financial Services Committee, which affects housing, insurance and other issues important to Arizona.

Businesses expanding in the district and the jobs they generate are on Democrat Sinema’s mind as a new member of the House committee, and its housing, insurance and oversight subcommittees. She’s looking at ways the committee’s work can help businesses and wage earners in Arizona. [And critics will she she is playing the Republic side of the field here asking for "campaign contributions" in exchange for "corporate welfare"]

“Every time I meet with a business, particularly some of these guys who are doing such innovative work in science, technology and biotech, the passion is evident,” she says. “And when we’re talking about technological advancement, you’ve got to have both patience and persistence because you hit so many bumps before you hit the eureka.”

Sinema represents a district that starts in north-central Phoenix, home to much of the state’s financial-services industry, and runs east and south to include defense contractors such as Honeywell Inc. in Phoenix and General Dynamics Corp. in Scottsdale, tech startups in Tempe and high-tech manufacturing giant Intel Corp. in Chandler. The district also has ideas incubating on Arizona State University’s campus and along the Price Road corridor through Tempe and Chandler.

One subcommittee is examining how to strengthen the Federal Housing Administration, which insures home mortgages, and Sinema hopes the work will help stabilize Arizona’s housing market and get more middle-class families back into homes. [Translation - It seems like she is saying "vote for me and I will give you a cheap, low cost government loan"] The panel also is considering reforms to the government-controlled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“Now that many folks in our community are getting their lives back on track … we’re going to help them get back into home ownership,” [Again the translation here seems to be "vote for me and I will give you a cheap government loan"] Sinema says. “We know that home ownership is good for the whole local economy. When people have stable jobs, they’re investing and they’re spending their money with local businesses.”

As implementation of 2010’s Dodd-Frank financial reform act continues, Sinema also wants to make sure that the regulations don’t overburden Arizona’s community banks. [Wow!!! She now sounds like a Republican who will dole out "corporate welfare" in exchange for "campaign contributions"] And she hears small businesses’ pleas for Congress to stop governing by crisis and start creating a stable, predictable business climate.

Beyond those needs, she’s also concerned about the “Valley of Death,” where good inventions are said to die because their creators either don’t have the skills or the financing to convert their knowledge into marketable products. [Now back to the Democratic line of "little people vote for me and I will give you free stuff???"] Sinema hopes Congress has room to support crowd-sourcing, a type of financing in which multiple investors put minimal sums into startups, although she adds that any action needs to protect both those who invest and those who receive funds. [Sounds like she can instantly flip flop between the Republican and Democratic lines to get votes]

“We’re always looking for opportunities to figure out how to make it easier for people to invest,” she says, “and to choose Arizona as a creative outpost.”

Standing up for alternative ideas is what Sinema does. In 2007, she introduced a bill that would have equated Minutemen, a citizens group monitoring illegal immigration at the Mexico border, with domestic terrorists. [Now she sounds like a police state Republican. Or is that a police state Democrat???]

Sinema stood up for her proposal as the kidnapping and rape threats piled up and as the blogosphere buzzed with personal attacks. In the Legislature, she proposed dozens of other ideas, including repealing the death penalty and requiring Arizona to significantly slash its greenhouse-gas emissions. [They forgot to mention that 300 percent tax on medical marijuana that she tried to pass.]

“I’m not afraid to take a stand on the issues that are important,” Sinema said in the 2007 interview. [Translation - I will say ANYTHING to get your vote]

More lies and double talk from Congress.

Congress blames nameless bureaucrats for police state laws Congress passed

Lawmakers say administration’s lack of candor on surveillance weakens oversight

These are the typical lies and double talk that come out of Congress and other elected officials at all levels of government from the US Congress down to city level governments.

They passed these unconstitutional laws which have turned America into a police state. And now they want to deny responsibility for the harm the laws have caused by blaming it on the people they gave the power to enforce the unconstitutional police state laws.

Source

Lawmakers say administration’s lack of candor on surveillance weakens oversight

By Peter Wallsten, Published: July 10

Lawmakers tasked with overseeing national security policy say a pattern of misleading testimony by senior Obama administration officials has weakened Congress’s ability to rein in government surveillance.

Members of Congress say officials have either denied the existence of a broad program that collects data on millions of Americans or, more commonly, made statements that left some lawmakers with the impression that the government was conducting only narrow, targeted surveillance operations.

The most recent example came on March 12, when James R. Clapper, director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the government was not collecting information about millions of Americans. He later acknowledged that the statement was “erroneous” and apologized, citing a misunderstanding.

On three occasions since 2009, top Justice Department officials said the government’s ability to collect business records in terrorism cases is generally similar to that of law enforcement officials during a grand jury investigation. That comparison, some lawmakers now say, signaled to them that data was being gathered on a case-by-case basis, rather than the records of millions of Americans’ daily communications being vacuumed up in bulk.

In addition, two Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee say that even in top-secret briefings, officials “significantly exaggerated” the effectiveness of at least one program that collected data on Americans’ e-mail usage.

The administration’s claims are being reexamined in light of disclosures by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, reported by The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, of broad government surveillance of Americans’ Internet and phone use authorized under secret interpretations of law.

At least two Republican lawmakers have called for the removal of Clapper, who denied the widespread surveillance of Americans while under questioning by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and issued his apology after the surveillance programs became public two months later.

A letter to Clapper sent two weeks ago from 26 senators from both parties complained about a series of statements from senior officials that “had the effect of misleading the public” and that will “undermine trust in government more broadly.”

Some Democrats and civil libertarians have expressed disappointment in what they say is a pattern of excessive secrecy from President Obama. He had pledged to run a more transparent administration than his predecessor, George W. Bush, who signed off on the NSA’s controversial warrantless wiretapping program and, with the authorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, launched the bulk data-collection program that has continued.

“The national security state has grown so that any administration is now not upfront with Congress,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee. “It’s an imbalance that’s grown in our government, and one that we have to cleanse.”

Administration officials say they have been as transparent as they could be in disclosing information about sensitive classified programs. All House and Senate members were invited to two classified briefings in 2010 and 2011 at which the programs were discussed, officials said.

Defenders of the surveillance programs in Congress, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence panel, have said the programs were fully explained. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) pointed to “many, many meetings” where surveillance was discussed and said members had “every opportunity to be aware of these programs.”

But some lawmakers say they feel that many of the administration’s public statements — often couched in terms that offered assurances of the government’s respect for civil liberties and privacy — seemed designed to mislead Americans and avoid congressional scrutiny. [Look Mr. Congressman or Congresswoman in the case of Kyrsten Sinema, you passed these laws, now you should take responsibility for them being abused. Don't blame your henchmen for abusing the laws you passed for them. You ARE the problem Mr. Congressman, now accept responsibility for the mess you created]

Wyden said that a number of administration statements have made it “impossible for the public or Congress to have a genuinely informed debate” about government surveillance. [Again Mr. Congressman you passed these laws, and YOU are the problem. Don't blame your henchmen for abusing the laws that passed] The Oregon senator, whose membership on the Senate Intelligence Committee gives him access to the classified court rulings authorizing broad surveillance, has tried in recent years to force a public discussion of what he has called “secret law.”

“These statements gave the public a false impression of how these authorities were actually being interpreted,” Wyden said. “The disclosures of the last few weeks have made it clear that a secret body of law authorizing secret surveillance overseen by a largely secret court has infringed on Americans’ civil liberties and privacy rights without offering the public the ability to judge for themselves whether these broad powers are appropriate or necessary.”

At the time that Justice Department officials appeared at public hearings in 2009 and 2011, the White House was pushing Congress to reauthorize provisions of the USA Patriot Act, including Section 215, which allows for the collection of “business records” and has since drawn attention as the justification for the bulk surveillance of phone records.

Two top Justice Department officials — Todd M. Hinnen and David S. Kris — told lawmakers in separate appearances that the government’s authority in national security cases was “roughly analogous” to that available to FBI agents investigating crimes using grand jury subpoenas. Both officials cited data showing the number of surveillance orders that had been issued under the law, and both offered a caution, as Hinnen said in 2009, that, “as many members are aware,” a portion of the orders “were used to support important and highly sensitive intelligence collections.” Both invited lawmakers to learn more in classified sessions.

Hinnen, now a lawyer in private practice, said in an interview that the analogy was a direct reference to a provision in the business records law that says the government can collect information only if that data “can be obtained with a subpoena . . . issued by a court of the United States in aid of a grand jury investigation.”

Senior lawmakers have also cited the grand jury analogy, including Feinstein, who said in 2011 that the law “provides the government the same authority in national security investigations to obtain physical records that exist in an ordinary criminal case through a grand jury subpoena.”

Brian Fallon, a Justice Department spokesman, on Wednesday stood by the officials’ testimony. “The statute itself describes the program in this way,” he said.

Still, some lawmakers now say the testimony offered no clear indication that all Americans were subject to surveillance under the administration’s broad standard.

“I don’t know if it was an outright lie, but it was certainly misleading to what was going on,” said Nadler, who was chairman of the committee that heard from Hinnen in 2009.

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), a key author of the Patriot Act who presided over a 2011 House hearing where Hinnen appeared, wrote this month to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that the Justice Department’s description “left the committee with the impression that the administration was using the business records provision sparingly and for specific materials.”

In an interview, Sensenbrenner, former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he had thought that he and his colleagues had created a sufficiently narrow standard for seeking information. The provision allows the government to collect only data that is “relevant” to an authorized terrorism investigation. Some lawmakers, warning of government abuse, tried unsuccessfully in 2005 to tighten the standard.

The relevancy requirement “was intended to be limiting,” Sensenbrenner said. “Instead, what we’re hearing now is that ‘relevant’ was expanding.” Sensenbrenner called it a “stretch of the English language” for the administration to consider millions of Americans’ phone records to be “relevant.”

Sensenbrenner, who had access to multiple classified briefings as a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he does not typically attend such sessions. He called the practice of classified briefings a “rope-a-dope operation” in which lawmakers are given information and then forbidden from speaking out about it. Members are not permitted to discuss information disclosed in classified briefings.

“It’s the same old game they use to suck members in,” he said.

Referring to public testimony from officials, Sensenbrenner added: “How can we do good oversight if we don’t get truthful and non-misleading testimony?”

The allegation of misleading statements even during classified sessions comes from Wyden and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Their concerns arose from closed-door discussions in 2011 regarding a top-secret program that was collecting data about Americans’ e-mail usage.

The existence of the e-mail surveillance program, which was shut down in 2011, was first disclosed publicly late last month in The Post and the Guardian. After that disclosure, Wyden and Udall took the unusual step of releasing a statement describing classified interactions with intelligence officials. The senators said they had been “quite familiar” with the program and had devoted much of their time in 2011 to questioning officials about it.

Lawmakers say administration’s lack of candor on surveillance weakens oversight

“Intelligence officials have noted that the bulk email records program was discussed with both Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” Wyden and Udall said. “In our judgment it is also important to note that intelligence agencies made statements to both Congress and the court that significantly exaggerated this program’s effectiveness.”

The senators said that their experience demonstrated that intelligence agencies’ assessments “are not always accurate.” The senators added that their exchanges with officials about the e-mail program “led us to be skeptical of claims about the value of the bulk phone records collection program in particular,” a reference to administration arguments that the ongoing surveillance efforts have been crucial in thwarting terror plots.

“We believe that the broader lesson here is that even though intelligence officials may be well-intentioned, assertions from intelligence agencies about the value and effectiveness of particular programs should not simply be accepted at face value by policymakers or oversight bodies any more than statements about the usefulness of other government programs should be taken at face value when they are made by other government officials,” the senators added.

Wyden’s March question to Clapper was part of a broader effort on the senator’s part to use carefully worded public statements and questions to draw attention to the existence of classified programs — and the administration’s lack of transparency — without revealing secret information in the process.

Clapper’s statement prompted some lawmakers to allege what Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) called a “double standard” in which a top official could deliver false testimony without fear of penalty.

“If the administration has a policy to lie to Congress about classified materials in unclassified hearings, then you have to ask yourself what value the hearings have and whether or not anyone else is doing it,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.).

Some are calling for a major overhaul of the current oversight system, including the intelligence committees and the surveillance court, which were created in the late 1970s amid growing concern about U.S. spy practices following Watergate, the Vietnam War and revelations about CIA efforts to overthrow foreign governments.

Congress “tried to make agencies which have to operate in secret accountable nevertheless to the law,” said former vice president Walter F. Mondale, who as a senator was a member of the Church Committee, which led the efforts to overhaul the system.

Now, Mondale said, “that system has totally collapsed.” He said Clapper’s willingness to mislead the public during Senate testimony “is what happens when there’s no accountability. . . . What is the consequence of fibbing to the American people?”

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Our government masters will say ANYTHING to get re-elected!!!!

Source

Elizabeth Warren’s claim that the U.S. earns $51 billion in profits on student loans

Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:00 AM ET, 07/11/2013 E-mail the writer

“While students are paying more, the federal government is boosting its own profits — $51 billion from our student loan programs in 2013 alone.”

— Sen. Elizabeth Warren, floor speech, July 8, 2013

But there’s a reason why accountants will one day inherit the earth. The numbers look dramatically different — tens of billions of dollars different — depending on which arcane method of accounting you use.

The Facts

Lacey Rose, Warren’s press secretary, was quick to turn up a source for this figure: the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. She pointed us to a CBO spreadsheet showing that outlays in the student loan program will be a negative $51 billion (in other words, a gain for the government). This figure includes $15 billion from a re-estimate of the cost of the student loans disbursed in previous years.

A technical point: these are actually “negative subsidies,” not profits as one would understand in the business world.

But here’s the bigger problem: CBO has suggested that it doesn’t like these figures because they potentially underestimate the cost of the loans to the American taxpayer.

By law, CBO must abide by rules established by the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990, meaning that the cost of the loan is recorded in the federal budget the year the loan is made, with the cash flows discounted to a present value using interest rates on Treasury Securities. There’s now a large gap between the cost of student-loan rates (6.8 percent or 7.9 percent, unless Congress acts) and the rates on 10-year Treasury notes (estimated to be 2.1 percent), so voila, big “negative subsidies” are recorded.

Before the 1990 law was passed, the government simply tallied only the outlays and receipts for federal loans. That was considered too simplistic, because it masked long-term costs. (The Congressional Research Service offers an excellent history of the reasons for the law and the concepts contained in it.)

But CBO suggests the post-1990 method is just an accounting gimmick obscuring tens of billions of dollars in potential losses. In particular, the agency says that the current rules do not “consider some costs borne by the government,” such as fully accounting for the risk of default, especially in hard economic times.

So CBO has offered arguments for considering replacing the current accounting method with what it calls “fair-value accounting.” Essentially, this method would assess the risk as private firms would if they made the same types of loans.

According to a 1989 General Accounting Office report, CBO argued for a “market-valuation-oriented” approach back when the 1990 law was first crafted, but a 1989 CBO study does not appear to take a definitive position. CBO’s lengthy report last year weighed both the pros and cons of making a shift, but it’s fairly clear it would prefer to change the accounting rules. (As a general matter, CBO does not take a position except on budget process issues.)

“None of the differences between the federal government and private investors changes the fact that investments with returns that are correlated with the performance of the economy as a whole are risky in a way that other investments are not,” CBO said. “Federal credit programs expose taxpayers to that market risk.”

Last month, in response to a Republican request, CBO issued fair-value estimates for virtually every federal credit program, including the subsidized Stafford loans that have been subject of congressional debate this week. The spreadsheet CBO included as part of the report makes for scary reading.

Under the mandated accounting approach, the federal government is estimated to gain $184 billion from issuing federal student loans between 2013 and 2023, CBO says. But under fair-market accounting, the government would lose $95 billion in the same period, though it would make a small “profit” in 2013.

In other words, that’s swing of nearly $280 billion depending on which accounting method you use.

The CBO’s spreadsheet, meanwhile, shows that the Stafford loan program in 2013, now pegged to earn $4.6 billion in “profit,” would actually lose $3.5 billion under fair-value accounting. Presumably those losses would climb sharply if interest rates were cut as Warren demands. (She would drop the rate to as low as 0.75 percent.)

Obviously, when so much money is at stake, people disagree vehemently over this issue. Adjusting the accounting rules potentially means less money in the budget for other programs.

The left-leaning Center for American Progress has labeled the fair-value concept as “dangerous,” saying it would create phantom budget deficits, because the current system already accounts for credit risk. Critics maintain also that the federal government is significantly different from private firms, with more tools at its disposal to recover defaulted debts. Indeed, in another report, CAP claims that, looking back over the past 20 years, nonemergency federal credit programs generally cost less than expected.

The Education Department, for instance, estimates that the cash default rate on Stafford loans is 23 percent, but the cash recovery rate is better than 110 percent. Overall, taking in net present value (such as the dollar value of missed payments), the net recovery rate is about 87 percent.

Critics of fair-value accounting, which include the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) and former CBO Director Robert Reischauer, say it would add imaginary costs that the government would never need to pay. In other words, it would tip the scales on the cost side of the ledger because it adds nothing to the benefit side.

Former Obama aide Jared Bernstein lays out the arguments against fair-value accounting in an amusing article in which he labels it the “spinal tap” approach to accounting. (Update: Bernstein wrote a rebuttal to this column.)

Paul van de Water, who worked on the issue at CBO and is now at the CBPP, noted that the current system allows for annual re-estimates to account for what happened to the loans, which is why an additional $15 billion turned up in the accounts this year.

It is worth noting, however, that Congress mandated that fair-value accounting be used to score policies related to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Warren headed the TARP congressional oversight board.

“The Congressional Budget Office projects that the government will make $51 billion on this year’s student loans,” Rose said. “Those projections are done in accordance with rules laid out by Congress -- rules that have been in place for estimates of federal credit programs for more than 20 years, and rules that have been shown to reasonably measure government costs from these programs during that time. While House Republicans and other opponents of real reform may seek to change accounting rules to paper over federal profits on student loans, the only effective way to reduce them in the real world is to bring down interest rates on student loans.”

The Pinocchio Test

We obviously are not going to take a position on the correct accounting method. And ordinarily a CBO projection is worth its weight in gold.

But this is an unusual situation. The respected and nonpartisan budget agency clearly has concerns about the method mandated by Congress — and the differences over the next 11 years are stunning.

Yet Warren has seized on the $51-billion figure to decry, somewhat inaccurately, “obscene profits” and argue for a dramatic cut in student loan rates, making it the centerpiece of her floor speech. We wavered between One and Two Pinocchios, but the stakes are high given the possible impact on the budget. The debate may be arcane but she and other Democrats should use more caution in citing these figures--especially when the source Warren cites, CBO, says there are problems. It may not be money in the bank.

Two Pinocchios

More articles on Congressman Kyrsten Sinema

And here are some more articles on US Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema.