Source: AP

Spelling out painful priorities, President Barack Obama urged Congress on Monday to quickly approve a huge new shot of spending for recession relief and job creation, part of a record $3.8 trillion budget that would boost the deficit beyond any in the nation's history while only slowly beginning to put Americans back to work.

If Congress goes along with Obama's election-year plan, the nation would still end the year with unemployment pushing double digits at 9.8 percent and this year's pool of government red ink deepening to $1.56 trillion — by the administration's accounting.

The spending blueprint for next year calls for tax cuts for workers and business and more aid for cash-starved state governments as well as the unemployed. The jobs initiative largely mirrors last year's stimulus bill, but is about one-third its size. The president is asking for nearly $300 billion for recession relief and job stimulus.

The budget paints a remarkably dire picture of a federal government that will have to borrow one-third of what it spends next year as it runs a deficit that still would total some $1.3 trillion.

At the same time, Obama is acutely aware that persistent joblessness is the issue most likely to spell political trouble for Democrats in this year's midterm elections — and perhaps for his own re-election chances in 2012.

The president's budget plan sees the deficit coming down by nearly $300 billion next year, and he's offering more than $1 trillion in deficit reduction proposals over the coming decade.

While proposing increases for immediate needs, he urged lawmakers to follow his lead and make cuts, even painful ones in programs dear to them. "I'm asking Republicans and Democrats alike to take a fresh look at programs they've supported in the past to see what's working and what's not, and trim back accordingly," he said.

"What I reject is the same old grandstanding when the cameras are on, and the same irresponsible budget policies when the cameras are off," the president said. "It's time to save what we can, spend what we must, and live within our means once again."

Republicans weren't impressed with the proposals.

"They're not willing to do big ideas. They're doing ideas that create perception but don't do anything big," said New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, senior Republican on the Budget Committee. "The spending freeze for example. You're talking what, $10 billion on a $1.6 trillion deficit?"

Democrats, facing the prospect of major losses in November, are likely to join Republicans in balking at many of Obama's proposals. Moderate Democrats already are wary of another debt-financed economic stimulus program and may also choke on many of the recommended tax increases and spending cuts.

Obama's proposal to cut payments to wealthier farmers, for example is probably dead on arrival and his renewed push to end purchases of new C-17 cargo planes for the military is sure to incite a battle with lawmakers from California, where the planes are assembled.

Proposing a partial spending freeze, tax increases for wealthier people and a new fee on banks, the president's proposal still amounts to just tinkering at the edges of the larger budget problem.

Obama's budget presents a delicate balance between trying to cement the fragile recovery and pivoting to curb deficits that are on the rise not only in dollar figures but also as a political issue that is causing Democrats to lose popularity with independent voters.

So while pledging to tackle deficits, he also said that continuing them in the short term is necessary to help lower unemployment. We will "do what it takes to create jobs," he said. "It's essential."

His budget proposed a job creation tax credit of up to $5,000 for each new worker that businesses hire, another round of one-time $250 checks for senior citizen on Social Security and extended unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the jobless. Obama also wants to extend a $400 "Making Work Pay" tax credit for most workers through 2011.

While White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs spoke Sunday of a $100 billion jobs initiative, these "temporary recovery measures" in fact total $282 billion through the autumn of 2012, according to budget documents.

At the same time, Obama wants to hand off to a commission decisions on the tough steps needed to reduce deficits and slow the growth in the federal debt to levels economists deem prudent. The panel's recommendations wouldn't be due until after the midterm election.

Obama's proposal lays out a path to reduce annual deficits to about $700 billion in four years, but ideas for tax increases or cuts in popular benefit programs like Medicare or Social Security to reduce them an additional $200 million would have to come from the commission.

"We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences, as if waste doesn't matter, as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money, as if we can ignore this challenge for another generation," Obama said.

Balancing the budget or producing surpluses of the kind from 1998 through 2001 is now seen as all but impossible. Instead, many policymakers are for a secondary goal of stabilizing the national debt in relation to the size of the economy. That generally requires keeping the deficit to 3 percent of gross domestic product. Just three years ago, the deficit stood at 1.2 percent of GDP. This year it's 10.6 percent.

Obama dropped his plan into a poisonous election-year atmosphere. Republicans in Congress immediately labeled it as a toxic mix of higher taxes, big spending and debt, saying it would still produce deficits totaling $8.5 trillion over the coming decade.

Obama inherited a difficult deficit situation when taking office amid a severe recession and financial crisis that made tax revenues plummet and caused unemployment benefits and food stamp costs to spike.

"When I first walked through the door, the deficit stood at $1.3 trillion," Obama said, citing the estimates that greeted him a year ago.

Still, Obama now mostly owns the deficit as a political issue after passing last year's $862 billion economic stimulus bill and other major spending legislation that's earned mixed reviews with the public.

Obama would extend most of former President George W. Bush's tax cuts, as they apply to middle-income earners. Married couples making more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,00 would see their marginal tax rates rise to as much as 39.6 percent and also lose some of the benefits they take on itemized deductions like charitable gifts and mortgage interest.

The Obama administration, he said, would move toward handling drug addiction as a medical problem, moving away from the brash enforcement tactics that hallmarked prior administrations.

"We're not at war with people in this country," Kerlikowske told The Wall Street Journal in May.

However, if the Office of National Drug Control Policy's (ONDCP) budget for fiscal year 2011 is to be believed, Kerlikowske was full of hot air.

According to 2011 funding "highlights" released by the ONDCP (PDF link), the Obama administration is growing the drug war and tilting its funds heavily toward law enforcement over treatment.

The president's National Drug Control Budget also continues the Bush administration's public relations tactic of obscuring the costs of prosecuting and imprisoning drug offenders. "Enron style accounting," is how drug policy reform advocate Kevin Zeese described it, writing for Alternet in 2002.

The budget places America's drug war spending at $15.5 billion for fiscal year 2011; an increase of 3.5 percent over FY 2010. That figure reflects a 5.2 percent increase in overall enforcement funding, growing from $9.7 billion in FY 2010 to $9.9 billion in FY 2011. Addiction treatment and preventative measures, however, are budgeted at $5.6 billion for FY 2011, an increase from $5.2 billion in FY 2010.

In short, the Obama administration's appropriations for treating drug addiction are just short of half that dedicated to prosecuting the war.

A ONDCP press release describes these figures as "balanced."

"The new budget proposal demonstrates the Obama Administration's commitment to a balanced and comprehensive drug strategy," Kerlikowske added, in the advisory. "In a time of tight budgets and fiscal restraint, these new investments are targeted at reducing Americans' drug use and the substantial costs associated with the health and social consequences of drug abuse."

"It sure was an encouraging signal when Drug Czar Kerlikowske declared that the 'war on drugs' was over shortly after he took the job last year," commented Tom Angel, spokesman for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. "But until the budget numbers match up with rhetoric, it looks like the war is still being waged."

Dissatisfied with the botched efforts of underwear bomber patsy Umar Abdul Muttalab, military-industrial complex promises to try again

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Using information gleaned from the blatantly set-up underwear bomber patsy Umar Abdul Muttalab, intelligence chiefs have assured us that their bosses will stage another terror attack in the U.S. within the next three to six months.

“According to the nation’s intelligence chiefs, a terror attack in the United States will likely be launched within the next six months, reports WLS.

“ABC News has learned some of the intelligence has come from the accused Christmas Day bomber,” states the report.

Despite the fact that the official story behind the Christmas Day bombing has been discredited beyond all recognition, the establishment is still constantly invoking it as yet another reason for Americans to obediently line up for naked body scans in fear of whatever boogeyman is being waved in front of their faces this week.

Since federal and state authorities apparently now consider libertarians, Ron Paul supporters, gun owners and basically anyone with two brain cells left to rub together as potential domestic terrorists, whatever tricks they do decide to pull over the next six months will undoubtedly be used to tighten the screws against American dissidents that they have consistently characterized as extremist threats.

Authorities last week quietly reversed the official story behind the Christmas Day underwear bomber attack and acknowledged that an accomplice was involved, despite weeks of denial and derision of eyewitness Kurt Haskell’s description of a sharp-dressed man who helped Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab board Flight 253 in Amsterdam.

Detroit lawyer Kurt Haskell maintained from the beginning that he saw a well-dressed Indian man aid the accused bomber to board the plane despite the fact that he had no passport and was on a terror watch list.

“While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, ‘He’s from Sudan and we do this all the time,’” reported the Michigan Live news website.

FBI agents interviewed Haskell and he told them about the sharp-dressed man but officials refused to admit that a wider conspiracy was at hand, stoically maintaining the official story that Abdulmutallab had acted alone. Authorities claimed that videotapes did not show a second man accompanying Abdulmutallab and yet they refused to release any footage of the alleged bomber.

There seems little doubt that Abdulmutallab had at least one accomplice if not more. Authorities have remained silent on other eyewitness reports which described a man intently filming the alleged terrorist throughout the whole flight, a connection that strongly suggests the attempted bomber was involved in some kind of drill and that his strings were being pulled by people in more senior positions.

The ludicrous spectacle of long-deceased boogeyman Osama bin Laden apparently claiming responsibility for the attempted attack last weekend only confirmed that a fairytale was being contrived which was totally at odds with what eyewitnesses described.

The glaringly obvious truth that Mutallab was at best a patsy and at worst an informant who was duped into believing he was involved in a drill renders fraudulent any supposed information attributed to him, specifically the notion that America faces the threat of another terrorist attack from anyone other than the only entity that always benefits from such attacks – the military-industrial complex itself.
Hundreds of terror suspects (read: patsies and mental deficients) have been convicted in civilian federal courts, including convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid who attended the Finsbury Park Mosque in North London. The Finsbury imam at the time was Abu Hamza al-Masri who began working with British Security Services in 1997. A large number of the supposed terrorists convicted in American courts were entrapped by the FBI in classic COINTELPRO fashion and did not have links to the CIA-created al-Qaeda. The entrapped were often fuzzy on al-Qaeda or what it represents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kurt Nimmo & Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, January 21, 2010

Glenn Beck is once again parroting White House talking points by invoking Information Czar Cass Sunstein’s rhetoric about 9/11 truthers being dangerous extremists, proving his anti-establishment image is a manufactured fraud.

The grand master Mockingbird operative Glenn Beck said yesterday on his nationally syndicated radio show that there are 9/11 truth activists in the White House and they threaten the life of Obama. “He has invited 9/11 truthers into the White House and into his administration… he is in danger.”

Beck said Obama should never be left alone and the Secret Service needs to pay special attention to this absurd threat.

In fact, there are no 9/11 truth activists in the White House.

Indeed, Obama’s own regulatory czar Cass Sunstein published a white paper in which he labeled 9/11 conspiracy theorists “extremists” and outlined methods to infiltrate their ranks, entrap them into committing criminal acts and ban their free speech.

There is not a single instance of a 9/11 truther committing a violent act. As a rule of thumb, the 9/11 truth community adheres to the principles of Gandhi, namely non-violent civil disobedience.

Beck’s hijacking of White House talking points once again underlines the fact that, while he posing as an anti-government conservative, his most venomous vitriol is spewed against the very bedrock of the genuine movement against big government – most notably Ron Paul supporters who Beck has repeatedly smeared as dangerous lunatics intent on violence.

Beck’s comment is apparently a reference to Obama’s “green jobs” adviser Van Jones who signed a petition in 2004 calling for an investigation into the Bush administration’s knowledge of an impending attack. Jones  resigned from his position as Special Adviser in September 2009 after WorldNetDaily, Americans for Prosperity, and other groups criticized his membership in a socialist group and support for the convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal who is serving a life sentence.

Representative Mike Pence (R-Indiana), the chairman of the Republican Conference in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, publicly criticized Jones. Senator Kit Bond (R-Missouri) urged Congress to investigate Jones’ “fitness” for the position. Another critic was Bob Beckel, formerly an official in the Carter administration and currently a political analyst for the Fox News Channel and a columnist for USA Today, who may have been the first and most prominent liberal or Democrat to call for Jones’ resignation.

“I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever,” Jones said after evidence of his signature on the 9/11 petition surfaced.

The Obama administration is not linked in any way to the 9/11 truth movement. Obama ignored a highly publicized call by actor Charlie Sheen to re-investigate the events of September 11, 2001.

In regard the al-Qaeda, 9/11, and the so-called war on terror the Obama administration is essentially a carbon copy of the previous administration. Obama peddles the supposed al-Qaeda threat and has vowed to escalate the occupation of Afghanistan. He has significantly increased illegal attacks inside Pakistan and has not eliminated CIA torture or dismantled Guantánamo as promised. His administration is a virtual roster of Wall Street insiders and he has kept on Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.

In addition, the 9/11 truth movement is not part of the “uber-left,” as Beck claimed on his radio show. Many members of the foundation supported and financed “uber-left” — most notably Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn — have dismissed 9/11 truth out of hand, making them inseparable from the neocons in this regard.

Many 9/11 truth activists and supporters are avowed pacifists and their events are peaceful. They have championed the cause of 9/11 victim families (  Beck claims to hate them) and the shamefully neglected cause of 9/11 first responders.

Glenn Beck’s assigned task is to characterize the movement as violent and dangerous. On June 10, 2009, he declared 9/11 truthers are in league with al-Qaeda and white supremacists, an assertion so absurd as to be almost laughable. He said 9/11 truth activists consider the late James Von Brunn a hero. Von Brunn allegedly shot to death a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Beck did not provide any evidence of this.

Unfortunately, many if not most of the people who watch and listen to Glenn Beck are ill-informed and believe his absurdist COINTELPRO propaganda.

Beck’s dichotomy is a pre-planned charade. He claims to be a constitutionalist — he titled his latest book after the patriot Thomas Paine’s screed in favor of liberty, Common Sense — and then advocates punitive taxation on the American people in order to pay off a national debt owed to bankers. He tells us he is a Libertarian and yet dismisses Ron Paul as dangerous (and subsequently sidled up to Paul after his failed presidential bid). Beck has called Paul’s supporters dangerous terrorists on numerous occasions. The corporate media continually claims Beck is the leader of the Tea Party movement (that is to say the Tea Party movement hijacked from Libertarians by Republican operatives).

As Alex Jones has noted on numerous occasions, Glenn Beck takes his talking points from him. Media Matters, the supposed media watch dog group linked to the globalist George Soros, said as much in October. “In his response to the announcement that President Obama had been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, Glenn Beck sounded at times like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, all while continuing to willfully ignore the currents of racially motivated violence flowing within the 9-12 ‘movement’ he is working to build,” said John V. Santore, a former Obama campaign organizer and congressional speech writer.

Beck’s assertion that 9/11 truth activists are in the White House and pose a threat to the life of Obama — a fiction so fantastic it should be characterized as a imponderable fantasy — is merely another attempt to discredit the movement and convince his easily hoodwinked followers that a peaceful political movement is a threat to national security on par with the imagined threat posed by the CIA designed non-organization al-Qaeda.

Alex addresses Beck’s latest attack on January 20, 2010.