The list of crimes committed by the Bush administration, many with help from his enablers in Congress, grows on a steady basis — more allegations of illegal spying and lies from Bush and the NSA, torture authorized by memos from the White House, violations of the Hatch Act by the Bush administration trying to ensure Republicans are re-elected to Congress in 2006, threatening to cut public funding to the Public Broadcasting System if they aired a documentary regarding the Bush administration’s approval and use of torture, illegal detention and trials of ‘suspected terrorists,’ most of which are created and funded by the CIA, fearmongering while threatening Marshall Law to pass the fraudulent bailout of Wall Street for the criminals who caused the financial meltdown to begin with — the list goes on and on.
Too much presidential power and corruption, aided by a corrupt, complicit Congress has done a lot of potentially irreparable damage to America and all who live here, as well as other parts of the world. The American public has had no representation or say in the destruction of their civil rights and freedoms while being methodically and steadily bankrupted by the failed, corrupted leadership of our Washington establishment.
A highly politicized Justice and Judicial system unwilling to uphold the law, choosing instead to allow the criminal actions of the Bush administration along with a nonexistant system of checks and balances, illegal propaganda and political theater have all played a major role in the destruction of Democracy and freedom. Some major ‘News’ outlets have played a major role in furthering illegal actions of the Bush administration while pushing illegal propaganda for major profits that we the people have all paid for in more ways than one.
The federal government has failed the public they’ve sworn to serve. A provision in Article V of the Constitution allows for the temporary creation of a fourth branch of government in the form of a convention of state delegates that operates outside of the control of Congress, the President and the Courts. It’s time for an Article V convention to put an end to the deceit and corruption of our federal government.
List of Bush Administration Crimes Keeps Growing
The House Oversight Committee issued a report revealing that the White House orchestrated a huge, taxpayer-funded campaign — in violation of the Hatch Act — to ensure that Republican candidates were elected into office during the mid-term elections in November, 2006. The White House reportedly threatened the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) with cutting funding if they aired an expose on the White House’s use of torture. Memos from the White House endorsing CIA waterboarding was also reported.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee — who has been deeply involved in several of the crimes committed by the Bush administration, who has known about and covered up numerous Bush administration crimes for years — is suddenly accusing the White House of stonewalling an interrogation probe and withholding documents showing it authorized the CIA to use waterboarding and other tough interrogation tactics on suspected terrorists. Give us a break Senator Rockefeller. You’ve known all along that torture was authorized by the White House. You can drop the charades now.
Unlawful torture procedures used in Guantanamo were also used on U.S. soil against ‘suspected terrorists.’ Terror suspects in Guantanamo were tortured and abused, denied all rights and any semblance of fair trials and subject to numerous acts of inhumanity courtesy of the corruption and fantasies of the Bush administration.
Political corruption and deception has reached unprecedented levels under the Bush administration. Illegal spying on U.S. citizens that began when Bush took office has gone unpunished. The NSA was so concerned about terrorists in the U.S. military that they monitored and transcribed phone sex between a U.S. military officer stationed overseas and his wife. National Security has been redefined to mean covering Bush’s illegal acts and has nothing to do with the safety of Americans. It has everything to do with destroying rights and civil liberties. The NSA lied — undoubtedly under orders from the Bush administration — about their illegal surveillance. Political theater performed by Congressional committees has repeatedly resulted in nothing being accomplished and nobody being held accountable for their illegal actions. The Bush regime has been nothing but one lie after another.
With the prospect of Senator Obama being swept into the White House by a landslide coming closer to being a reality — putting an end to the neocon fantasy of a New American Century by ninety two years thanks to the inept corrupted delusions of an unqualified criminal being illicitly appointed to the highest office in the U.S. courtesy of 5 U.S. Supreme Court Justices — one has to wonder why Bush’s army of neocons have been eerily silent. An Obama presidency would end the neocon rule that has turned Democracy into fascism and destroyed America these past 8 years. Do not assume Obama has won yet and do not let your guard down.
The Republican party keeps trying to claim voter fraud as a distraction, which is rather ironic considering the fact that lately most of the voter fraud, intimidation and disenfranchisement has been conducted by the Republican party. Starting wars with lies and propaganda, destroying the Constitution, racial prejudice and profiling, depriving people of their rights, robbing and pilfering the treasury, the constant use of terrorism and threats against Americans and in many other parts of the world, politicizing the Judicial and Justice systems…it never ceases. After almost 8 years of fraudulent, corrupted dictatorial leadership, it’s hard to believe that the Republican neocons, many of which have dual citizenship, are going to drop everything and walk away. Most if not all of the Bush administration, and entirely too many in Congress could and should be locked up for their willing, deceitful destruction of America and everything she has stood for for well over 200 years. It’s impossible to believe that the neocons aren’t up to something after all they’ve put us through since they have so much to lose.
Too Much Presidential Power
An interesting article from AlterNet entitled “Too Much Presidential Power” brings up some interesting points, including the fact that we need to address the concept of the “Unitary Executive,” and we need to know what Democratic Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama, and Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain think of the concept.
During the vice presidential debate, Senator Joe Biden reminded us that vice president Dick Cheney has become “the most dangerous vice president we’ve probably had in American history” because of his attempts to create a super-powerful unitary executive.
The theory of the unitary executive was proposed under President Reagan and expanded upon by every president since. Reagan asserted that only a strong president would be able to dramatically limit big government, possibly modeling the unitary executive theory after a model for unitary corporate leadership where the CEO also serves as chairman of the board, promising undivided presidential control of the executive branch and its agencies, expanded unilateral powers and avowedly adversarial relations with Congress. We’ve experienced first hand the misconceptions and disasters that arise due to such assertions.
Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society conservatives have worked hard to provide a constitutional cover for the theory, producing thousands of pages in the 1990s claiming — more often times erroneous and misleading than not — that the framers of the constitution themselves intended this model for the office of the presidency.
Destroying The System of Checks and Balances
Under the Bush administration, Cheney has expanded too many existing uncheckable executive powers — executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and signing statements allowing presidents to dictate foreign and domestic policy without consent from Congress, insisting that there are times when the president should be able to operate above the law — justifying the unitary executive with a convoluted interpretation of Article II of the Constitution, complaining about the inherent system of checks and balances in the Constitution and trying to justify everything in the name of ‘national security.’
George W. Bush has issued over 1,100 signing statements, many of which are classified as top secret, most recently reportedly asserting that he had the executive power to bypass several parts of two bills: a military authorization act and a measure giving inspectors general greater independence from White House control and claiming that he has complete control of Iraqi oil. The American Bar Association denounced the practice of issuing signing statements because of the “grave harm to the seperation of powers doctrine, and the system of checks and balances, that have sustained our democracy for more than two centuries.”
Once Congress gives powers to the executive branch, it rarely gets them back. When Congress authorized Bush to use military force against terrorists in 2001 and passed a bipartisan anti-torture bill five years later to take some of that authority back, Bush issued a signing statement insisting that he would uphold the law in a manner consistent with ‘the constitutional authority of the president to supervise the unitary branch and as commander in chief.’ Bush decided he would ignore the provisions of the bill if he felt they limited his authority. Obviously Bush believes he is above the law, but he isn’t.
Instead of enforcing the Constitution they’ve sworn to uphold, Congress has sat by and done nothing. Having a politicized Justice Department who illicitly interprets the law and allows the president to literally get away with murder has helped create a lot of the problems America faces today. When Congress unconstitutionally passed the bailout bill, they granted unprecedented powers to the executive branch and to an unelected and unaccountable secretary of the Treasury. It’s long past time for Congress to reinstitute a system of checks and balances. More information about presidential power and the unitary executive can be found in the article from AlterNet.
Propaganda and Political Theater
The media hype behind the $700 billion bailout, as noted by AlterNet, was so intense that it sometimes verged on hysteria. The news media played an important role in stampeding Congress, despite protests from many of their constituents, into passing a bailout that was both unwise and unjust. The bill has done nothing to prevent the stock market from falling at a record pace.
Wall Street will be given virtually unlimited access to federal cash — at taxpayer expense — without any restrictions on how the money is used, including how big a share will go directly into the pockets of those responsible for the crisis in the first place. As noted by the World Socialist Web Site, the livelihoods of billions of people are being held hostage to the demands of a handful of Wall Street bankers and speculators to guarantee their personal incomes and assets.
Remember Pelosi’s little speech about the party being over on Wall Street and no more golden parachutes? Not that it will come as any surprise, considering the fact that Pelosi is one of the leaders of the crime ring in Washington, but she lied. Goldman Sach’s CEO will reportedly be paid $70.3 million courtesy of money from the bailout. Paulson is doing nothing more than taking care of the crooks who caused this financial crisis to begin with. America was once again subject to political puppetry and theater that does nothing but make the rich richer while bankrupting the rest of us. More information on the ongoing bailout drama can be found from The International Herald Tribune. The deceptive tactics being utilized by the federal government — with help from corporately owned media, who also utilized falsehoods to encourage invading Iraq — continue hiding problems that have caused the financial crisis are growing old.
Washington Corruption & The Fraudulent Bailout
As noted by Rense, the bailout was designed to rescue the banks and their corporate co-conspirators, not the taxpaying public who is paying for it. The European bailout is working because in order for their banks to participate, corporate officers of those banks were forced to resign, which proves that this was always about saving the same people who created this financial disaster in the first place. The Bush administration reportedly hired a Wall Street firm to lead the $700 billion bailout plan, but, in keeping with Bush administration tradition, how much the U.S. is paying the firm is being kept secret.
What actually happened was criminal and pre-meditated. Millions of people have lost trillions of dollars because our government did not maintain oversight over any of the financial community’s most notorious thieves and con-artists, including our Treasury secretary, which Congress just gave unprecedented powers to. Our government failed to protect the public from worthless investments, bogus mortgage acquisitions and completely fraudulent transfers of junk securities while telling the public — all along — that “American markets are sound and reliable, there is nothing to worry about.” Yet again, our federal government lied to us. Nothing has been done to hold those people responsible for this crisis — a crisis that is bigger than the Enron scandal — accountable for their actions. Control and ownership of Wall Street remains in the private hands of the richest people in the country at the expense of the people.
Many in Congress have received hundreds of thousands of dollars and more from Wall Street. Troops have been deployed on U.S. soil in case there is civil unrest due to the intentional crisis created by our federal government, led by corruption in the White House. Once the public sees through the smoke & mirrors and realizes how we’ve been deceived, it will take a lot more than one batallion of troops to restore calm and quell the rage. Being taxpayers, our soldiers are also affected by the illicit actions of our corrupted leadership in Washington, especially when it comes to being stuck in the illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. AIG, one of the large companies that was saved is now reportedly lobbying to relax oversight. Information on the ongoing drama created by the bailout is available from The International Herald Tribune.
While America was threatened with Marshall Law and transfixed on the fraudulent bailout, Congress passed a $612.5 billion defense budget bill for fiscal year 2009 with no debate. The bill was loaded with all kinds of pork and gifts for our military-industrial complex. The $2.3 trillion dollars that disappeared from the Pentagon still hasn’t been accounted for, nor has any effort been made to find it. Bush’s buddies in the defense and oil industries have made billions thanks to secret no-bid contracts. America is paying for their riches and the bailout. America will be paying the bill for generations to come.
Thanks to Pelosi’s refusal to impeach Bush and Cheney — due to her complicity in crimes committed by the White House — the crimes and lies continue running rampant while the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. Congress has repeatedly, illegally and unconstitutionally, created legislation to cover illegal actions of the Bush administration and Congressional leadership. If you’re in the Bush administration, you can break the law and Congress will try to retroactively make sure it’s legal, despite the fact that it isn’t.
Federal Government Has Failed The People
All three branches of the federal government have failed the people. Miserably. As noted by Media With Conscience, electing a new president and many new members of Congress will at best provide band-aids when what is needed is nothing less than a political revolution. All three branches are so corrupt and perverted they can no longer meet the hopes and aspirations embedded in our Constitution. We the people have been sold out to greedy corporations.
A provision in Article V of the Constitution allows for the creation of a temporary fourth branch of the government — in the form of a convention of state delegates — that operates outside the control of Congress, the President and the Supreme Court, that has only one single function: to consider proposals for constitutional amendments, just like Congress does, that must be ratified by a three-quarter majority of the states.
Why have we never had an Article V convention? The one and only requirement is that two-thirds of state legislators apply to Congress for a convention. That requirement was satisfied long ago with over 600 such state applications from all 50 states. Congress has refused to honor the exact constitutional mandate that it “shall” call a convention when that requirement has been met.
Congress has broken the law of the land by not calling a convention because of the corruption running rampant, and because they fear an independent convention of state delegates could propose serious Constitutional amendments that would reform our government and political system by removing special interests and compelling all three branches of government to follow the Constitution. It’s time to demand that Congress allow an Article V convention. Our political system is in major need of repair. More information on Article V conventions can be found from Media With Conscience and from The Friends of the Article V Convention.
There is more than enough evidence to impeach those in charge and to imprison those who were so complicit in allowing the treasonous, murderous actions to degrade America and the rest of the world to put an end to all of this. Too many innocent men, women and children have died to further the greedy, treacherous delusions of those who claim to protect their citizens, democracy, rights and freedoms while intentionally perpetrating acts of terrorism to destroy them. Get involved and make sure you cast your vote and make your voice heard.
Despite the rhetoric of change from the Obama campaign, most things will remain the same until our political system is changed and reformed. Putting McCain in office won’t change a thing, it will only make things worse. The only way to enact real change is to rid politics of the two party system. Democrats and Republicans have played major roles in the corruption we’re witnessing today. People need to demand their money back and put an end to the corruption that has destroyed what was once the greatest country in the world. Our government needs to repay the theft it has enabled and the thieves need to be put in prison. The only way you’ll see change is by removing the corrupted politicians — which is most of the current ones there — in Washington and getting involved. The time for accountability is now.
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