How dare they? How dare the President pin Latino against Latino by using the Arizona law for his political purposes. Is it fair that Latino immigrants, like my family and immigrants from other countries, who came in the front door legally stand by and watch while illegal aliens are rewarded by letting them jump to the head of the line? Should their illegal behavior be rewarded by giving them all the same benefits as American citizens? Is it fair that illegal aliens who do not have any respect or love for our country…starting with their illegal entry… add to our debt, raise our crime rates, commit terrorist acts on our soil, and even kill Americans? Also, how dare the Mexican President Calderon come here to our country and criticize our laws and our citizens? Mexico is the first country who treats their illegal aliens with cruelty; just ask anyone from Central America. I am tired of watching the local news and seeing Cuban rafters who reach Mexican soil -to escape a communist regime- be put into Mexican prisons and receive abuse. President Calderon can’t even control gangs, drug traffic, and corruption on his soil while he mistreats illegal aliens yet, he sees fit to come here and criticize us! What hypocrisy. First he needs to take care of his own back yard before daring to come to our great sovereign nation and tell us what to do! Even then, he has no right to come here and berate and dictate to us.

Guards search inmates for weapons following a riot at Reclusio Sur jail in Mexico City. Violence erupted after visits were restricted because of the swine flu outbreak, some 18 inmates were injured. Photo: Alberto Gomez

While you lament the inhumane treatment illegal aliens receive in American prisons- food, medical care, dental care, libraries, cable tv to name a few of the atrocities; all at taxpayer expense-  Americans in Mexican prisons must pay for their own meals, toilet paper, water, bed, clothing and any other normal health hygiene or safety items.

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There has been a lot of discussion in recent months regarding the policies and direction the Obama administration is taking. Speculation and quite honestly, good deductive reasoning would lead one to conclude that Cass Sunstein is behind the push for net neutrality and other freedom quelching procedures. A move that Obama is following given his recent speech about the Internet and the “distractions” and “misinformation” it causes.

Cass Sunstein has been a part of both the legal world and academia since he graduated from Harvard Law in 1978. He gave a lecture in 2007 called “He said that, she did what?” a piece where we glean a little more about his own political philosophy. This lecture was in line with his book “On Rumors” and “Going to Extremes.” On Rumors discusses the harm that spreading rumors via the internet, media, or other forms of communication, can cause. In his book he suggests regulation for these sources of information so the truth is known and rumors aren’t spread. This view is controversial, and rightly so, because it is in direct violation of the first amendment. Most political philosophy, for example, is based upon personal beliefs and opinion and not on fact, like mathematics, so how can a regulatory agency enforce certain opinions or belief systems?

Opening his lecture, Sunstein declared that one of his goals was “to drive a wedge between the ‘Marketplace of Ideas’ and ‘Truth.’” Identifying truth specifically with factual accuracy, he outlined three mechanisms by which false rumors gain traction in that marketplace and become widely held beliefs.[…]

Focusing on false rumor propagation, Sunstein voiced two concerns unaddressed by these explanations. First, people tend to be unaware of the bias of the groups in which they are participants. Second, individuals discount the importance of ideologically minded people to willfully mislead. As he explained, “It’s underestimated the extent to which, with respect to certain rumors, there’s a self-interested or ideologically-motivated mover who is starting the information [process].”

Connecting these behavioral observations to issues of freedom of speech, Sunstein discussed certain Supreme Court decisions. Using the example of a case centered on a newspaper’s publication of the name of a rape victim, he noted the Court’s reliance on the argument that, if a fact is already in the public domain, then wide publication of that fact should always be protected. But this sort of publication can cause irreparable damage, he said, which might prompt a more nuanced application of law.

Raising a more recent phenomenon—YouTube—Sunstein warned of the dangers of turning every citizen into “their own Truman Show,” in which the minutiae of everyday life is broadcast to the world. “A life is not an incident or an event, but a series of them,” he explained, a fact which is lost when incidents are broadcast over the Internet or other media, without context. “Sometimes the isolated segment or event will have a kind of defining character, in a way that will be extremely destructive, not only to the individual involved, but also to people trying to make rational judgments about the relevant person.”

The freakiest part of his lecture wasn’t deciding truth from fiction from an already biased source such as himself, but what he said about the freedom of press: (Watch the webcast.)

Sunstein quoted Felix Frankfurter as saying, “Freedom of the press is not an end in itself, but a means to the end of achieving a free society.” After offering some examples in which uninhibited press freedom leads to the destruction of other freedoms, he proposed a reconsideration of the idea of the ‘chilling effect’”:

“Many First Amendment questions in this domain are resolved by reference to the ‘chilling effect’ concern. Indeed, it has become quite clear that references to the ‘chilling effect’ have had a very serious ‘chilling effect’ on engagement with the constitutional question …The question shouldn’t be whether there’s a chilling effect and how to avoid it, but how to achieve the optimal chilling effect.”

“Zero chilling effect, in light of the mechanisms just described, would be profoundly destructive to a host of relevant variables.”

One can only assume that a chilling effect in essence is the regulation of freedom. Chilling something usually slows it down. If I chill a gas does it not start to become a liquid and equally a liquid becomes a solid? I think it’s time to start saying “Hands off my youtube.”

Sunstein’s other book is “Going to Extremes” in which he believes that people become more and more polarized when they associate with like-minded people on a continuous basis like the internet, social networks, specific organizations and of course talk radio. I find it interesting that talk radio was mentioned specifically. I must also believe that he probably thinks there is no perfect time like the present to enforce his social and philosophical experiments on the masses when organizations and powerful grassroots movements like the Tea Party are shaping the political landscape.

It was Cass Sunstein, now a Harvard constitutional law professor, who first alerted a broad public to the kind of polarization that has preoccupied us most in recent years. Society, with the help of the Web, was sorting people by ideology in a way that eroded fellow-feeling and fostered mindless partisanship. Almost a decade ago, his Republic.com lamented that while daily newspapers confront people with all kinds of material they didn’t ask for, the Web allows them to dodge what they disagree with. This was an alarming refutation of our smug claims about the Internet. In theory, the Internet opens people up to new ways of looking at things. In practice, it lets people wall themselves off in informational micro-environments of their own design. It makes them not more cosmopolitan but more parochial.

Now Sunstein has written Going to Extremes, a short book about the nature and roots of extremism. It is meant to unsettle us in the way his earlier work did. He finds that sitting people down to deliberate does not necessarily lead them to compromise or to converge on their mean opinion. They tend to radicalize in the direction of whatever bias they had to begin with. Teams of doctors, deciding collectively, are more likely to support the “extreme” strategy of heroic efforts to save terminally ill patents than the average individual doctor among them. Juries tend to vote, after discussion, for much more “extreme” monetary awards than the average individual juror among them would. Talking things over isn’t necessarily wrong. But it doesn’t lead reliably to moderation, either.

An additional source can be found at the Harvard Law Record:

Sunstein stated that extremism in multiple domains (labor unions, corporations, environmental protection, gay rights, and more) “is a product of a distinctive kind of crippled epistemology resulting from group polarization.” In other words, individuals tend to come to more extreme views if they deliberate a given issue with like-minded people.

From Sunstein’s essay: “Delibrative Trouble? Why Groups Go to Extremes” [can’t you just hear Billy Joel singing as you read this?]

Polarization is also likely to be produced by magazines with identifiable political convictions, such as the American Prospect, the Weekly Standard, the New Republic, and the National Review; by Pat Robertson and his special television programs devoted to his preferred causes; and by talk radio hosts with distinctive positions that are generally shared by their audiences. Because the results of group polarization cannot be evaluated in the abstract, nothing need be dishonorable in these efforts.

What can be said, in the abstract, is that attempts to ensure discussion among people with similar predispositions may succeed in increasing the confidence of individual participants and also in moving them toward more extreme positions. Thus would-be social reformers do well to create forums, whether in person, over the air, in cyberspace, or in print, in which people with similar inclinations frequently speak with one another and can develop a clear sense of shared identity.

[…]

An understanding of group polarization raises more general issues about communications policy. Under the “fairness doctrine,” now largely abandoned, broadcasters were required to devote time to public issues and to allow an opportunity for opposing views to speak. The second prong of the doctrine was designed to ensure that listeners would not be exposed to any single view. When the FCC abandoned the fairness doctrine, it did so, on the ground that this second prong often led broadcasters to avoid controversial issues entirely, and to present views in a way that suggested a bland uniformity. Subsequent research has suggested that the elimination of the fairness doctrine has indeed produced a flowering of controversial substantive programming, frequently with an extreme view of one kind or another; consider talk radio. Typically this is regarded as a story of wonderfully successful deregulation. But from the standpoint of group polarization, things are more complicated. The growth of issues-oriented programming with a strong, often extreme view may create group polarization, and all too many people might be exposed to louder echoes of their own voices, resulting in social fragmentation, enmity, and misunderstanding. Perhaps it is better for people to hear fewer controversial views than for them to hear a single such view stated over and over again.

It is not clear what can be done about this situation. But it certainly makes sense to consider communications initiatives that would ensure that people are exposed to a range of reasonable views, not simply one. This was the original inspiration for the fairness doctrine, and there is reason to encourage media outlets to implement the same goal today. Thus Habermas’s suggestion: (Harbermas’ tenets are described as Marxist in nature)

The diffusion of information and points of view . . . is not the only thing that matters in public processes of communication, nor is it the most important. . . . [T]he rules of a shared practice of communication are of greater significance for structuring public opinion. Agreement on issues and contributions develops only as the result of more or less exhaustive controversy in which proposals, information, and reasons can be more or less rationally dealt with.

Perhaps a code of fair programming could promote voluntary self-regulation in this direction. With respect to the Internet, Andrew Shapiro has suggested public subsidy of a civic icon that would promote exposure to substantive discussions from a variety of viewpoints. An appreciation of group polarization suggests the need for creative approaches designed to ensure that people do not simply read their “Daily Me.”

[…]

The answer is that we often do know enough to see which views count as reasonable, without knowing which view counts as right, and this point is sufficient to allow people to construct deliberative processes that should correct for the most serious problems potentially created by group polarization. What is necessary is not to allow every view to be heard, but to ensure that no single view is so widely heard, and reinforced, that people are unable to engage in critical evaluation of the reasonable competitors.

When did it become the government or even one czar’s job to assess and regulate whether people decide to congregate with like-minds or with differing views? Is that not the freedom of choice we were given as a people when this country was founded? This is what is most disconcerting, although an intention may be good (and I still do not believe that is the case), ultimately all human beings have a bias. As a member and friend to an ideological Democrat, it can only be assumed that the regulatory czar, himself, is biased (especially when he was also a contributing editor to The New Republic). Ultimately, whatever party is in power would lean towards their ideological principles, especially if it came to enforcing a policy like net neutrality.

I will again draw the point that the tea parties are a huge contingent and based upon the writing of Sunstein and his views on “extremism” and “group-think,” or as he likes to call it, “polarization,” the tea party movement is a prime target of his regulatory experimentation. Sunstein would love nothing more than to decide which voices and views should be heard. A regulatory agency or an individual would decide which opinions are reasonable – with a liberal deciding those things, the tea party would never have a voice.

The exact arguments that Sunstein makes in the second paragraph of Sunstein’s preface to Republic.com 2.0 ‘Revenge of the Blogs,’ is that staying in like-minded circles is like 1984, when it reality, having some bureaucrat legislate what is extreme, enforcing multiple viewpoints, or deciding what is a rumor is more Orwellian than free. Extremism can be both good and bad, but it is within the individual to decide what they will do with it. Human nature can, and never should be legislated. It is something the founders knew, but it is something that progressives seem to cannot grasp.

So wouldn’t it make sense that the FCC is going to find a backdoor way to “nudge” this policy into place? Sunstein is also associated with FreePress.net, the Soros-funded group that advocates for, what they consider media diversity, localism, ownership caps and other regulations that restrict free speech. FreePress.net is pushing for Net Nuetrality and in 1995 published Sunstein’s work, “Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech.” A snippet:

Sunstein writes that an overhaul or requalification of the existing judicial, academic, and social interpretations of the First Amendment would lead to a greater understanding of the actual intent of the framers. He argues from a Madisonian standpoint that the First Amendment is above all designed to promote self-government, and that current free speech law compromises the intent of Madison and other founders.

The FCC:

This week, the FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, from many and various sources intends to change the classification of the Internet from Title I, which is an information utility, to Title II telecommunication’s utility. The new reclassification will allow the Title II regulatory authority to enforce Net Neutrality. At this time is doesn’t quite make a whole, more like a half change. The agency will not be enforcing the regulations to the fullest of extent, against broadband providers, immediately, though, it seems odd that the push would be to re-title, in order to enforce at some future point. Oddly enough, by this reclassification, the FCC is going against the last 10 years of its own legal rulings.

In order to sidestep the recent court’s rulings against the FCC’s authority to enforce Net Neutrality, and to be able to watchdog the internet, broadband usage, etc. the FCC is doing this unprecedented move. This will allow more ability for them to regulate what occurs on the Internet. Since the court’s decision on Net Neutrality and it’s stance that the FCC had no right or authority to enforce Net Neutrality, it is almost expected that this will open the door to further litigation by those affected by this decision that the FCC has chosen to make.

For your viewing pleasure I have included a fun little diddy from the movie “The Best Little Whore House in Texas” – “I like to do a little sidestep”

Wouldn’t it also make sense that Elena Kagan, a fellow colleague and an admirer of Cass Sunstein would follow in these same philosophies that academia so loves to experiment with? Kagan wants to suspend Miranda Rights for American citizens, wants to control gun rights, and give more power to the executive branch when it comes to REGULATION: PERFECT for both Obama and Sunstein, who see the Supreme Court as too right-wing, and find their rulings to be more ‘fundamentalist’ than ‘minimalist’ as Sunstein writes in his book “Radicals in Robes.” Sunstein also believes, and I would assume his former boss Kagan does as well, that the Regulatory State needs to be reconsidered in his Harvard Law Review article in 1989 “Interpreting Statutes in The Regulatory State,” and his 1993 book, After the Rights Revolution:

In this provocative and lively book, Sunstein argues that the Reagan adminstration’s vigorous attack on government regulation was misplaced, contending that government regulation is superior to the behavior of private markets…Sunstein thus offers a spirited defense of the ‘rights revolution’ embodied in the new social and economic regulation–from clean air and water to antidiscrimination rules–that have swept government since the New Deal, and especially since the 1960s…The result is a careful, prescriptive study positioned among theorists’ visions of justice, laywers’ concepts of due process, and politicians’ imperatives for effective policy. (American Library Association )

Over the past decade Cass Sunstein has emerged as one of the country’s most prolific and provocative legal scholars. After the Rights Revolution is a rich discussion of how the courts have handled–and should handle–the plethora of regulatory statutes enacted since 1932. It deserves to be read widely by students of politics.

Liberals really have issues when it comes to the imperfections that human nature gives us. Rather than seeing the beauty in the imperfections, they want to eradicate them so society becomes as homogenous and equal as possible. Take for example Sunstein’s view on American Exceptionalism and its false notion in regards to the Constitution:

The third explanation Sunstein rejects is a cultural one that he refers to as the story of “American exceptionalism.” This explanation proposes that America’s culture is hostile to the idea of positive rights because of America’s unique history, which has never included any significant experiment with socialism. Sunstein rejects the cultural argument because he believes that “it is utterly implausible to suggest that something in the [nation's] culture foreordains our practices, present and future.” Additionally, Sunstein points out that although the political left in America is relatively conservative in comparison to almost all other developed countries, America is not without its own social welfare tradition. He cites Roosevelt’s New Deal, the movement for female equality, and the recent movement for recognition of gay and lesbian rights as examples of the flexibility of American culture, and, therefore, the falsity of the cultural argument.

Come to think of it, that certainly sounds similar to what Elena Kagan recently said regarding socialism.

I would consider the Internet, blogs, talk radio all innovative examples of American Exceptionalism, where people have aspired to and become successful bloggers, online investigative journalists, talk radio hosts or large Internet companies. Content will not always be fair and equal, to the chagrin of Sunstein, because we have the freedom of speech and of press. Sunstein and his ilk, however, would prefer that equality is forced upon his “subjects.” Would the forcing of equality actually become an oxymoron? How can one enforce equality but then make it appear that freedom of choice, which gives us the most equality, is being adhered to?

Sunstein would also prefer that average citizens don’t do their homework on elected officials, lest it ruins a liberal’s reputation or give us information to work from in order to investigate. Most truths start out as conspiracies. They only become fact when they are proven. That means it’s time to sign off before Sunstein scrubs my post, which would probably be deemed a conspiracy theory – something he abhors.

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As Alanis Morisett would say, “Isn’t ironic doncha think?” that every ideological liberal in Chicago is intertwined in some shape or form? Well, Elena Kagan is no different. I think we need to come up with a new 6 degrees of separation game; Kevin Bacon is getting old anyhow.

Since Sunstein may be the driving force behind many of Obama’s decisions, I could only note his views on the Supreme Court within his own essay, “The Myth of the Balanced Court,” where he contends that the so-called liberals that exist on today’s Supreme Court are not really liberal but moderate, and those who are considered to the right, are radically to the right. In Sunstein’s mind, although past liberal justices may not have acted appropriately when interpreting the constitution or legislation, they were at least liberal. Sunstein wants more liberal judges on courts to combat what he sees as a far right tendency when interpreting law. I personally feel his views are radically skewed to the left mainly due to the fact that legal circles have embraced liberalism so fully, moderate looks conservative and liberal looks moderate, and so on.

Here’s what he thinks about Constitutionalists or those he derogatorily refers to as ‘Fundamentalists’ or ‘Originalists’:

Fundamentalist constitutional theory is based on the idea that the proper approach to constitutional law is discerning and applying the intent behind the Constitution when it was ratified in 1789, the intent behind the Bill of Rights when it was ratified in 1791 or when the Fourteenth Amendment (through which much of the Bill of Rights has been applied to the states) was adopted in 1868. This approach is most often advocated by conservatives. In particular, Sunstein associates it with a movement known as the Constitution in Exile. Proponents of that view contend that decisions dating from the 1930s have erased the original intent behind the Constitution and that it’s true meaning needs to be restored.

Sunstein views the constitution as nonexistent prior to 1925 since it would leave out minorities, women and homosexuals. He states that there is no way that a female, a homosexual or a person of color could associate or understand a 200 year old document and relate it back to the ratifier’s intent. [I take offense to that narrow-mindedness].

If one intellectual admits that they are upset that positive rights were never included in the Constitution, but that only intellectuals considered positive rights a hobby/pastime to debate and ponder, why should we not believe that one of Sunstein’s colleagues and a pure intellectual with no working experience would not feel the same? The constitution as it stands is not good enough for intellectuals, in fact it is just a major hindrance.

The explanation for America’s rejection of constitution protection for positive rights that Sunstein accepts is what he refers to as the “legal realist” argument. Sunstein posits that America’s current non-recognition of positive constitutional rights results from an unfortunate twist of fate in the 1968 presidential election. According to Sunstein’s view, had Hubert Humphrey, rather than Richard Nixon, won the 1968 election, America would have a catalog of judicially created, positive constitutional rights today. However, Nixon won the election, and he was able to use his presidential appointment power to reshape the Supreme Court and, according to Sunstein, effectively eliminate any chance of the recognition of positive constitutional rights in the near future.

Sunstein supports this thesis by noting that through its so-called “new property” cases of the late 1960s, the Supreme Court came very close to interpreting some positive rights into the Constitution. The term “new property” originated in an influential law review article by the same name written by Charles Reich. Reich defines the “new property” as the “the jobs we hold, plus benefits, credentials, licenses, public welfare and all of the other kinds of valuables that come from large organizations and government” that provide the economic security that is necessary for the exercise of liberty. Reich argues that these entitlements served the same role as land and more traditional personal property- securing the liberty of the individual-and therefore should receive a similar level of protection. Sunstein sees the post-New Deal period and the “new property” movement as evidence that Americans are not as opposed to the idea of positive rights as many have assumed. The implication of Sunstein’s legal realist explanation is that “[w]ith modest shifts in the future, parts of the second bill of rights could well be included in our constitutional understandings, and certainly in the nation’s constitutive commitments.”

Cass Sunstein believes his nudge principle applies not only in regulatory affairs, but also in law. He feels that a court could gradually become liberal by nudging decisions leftwards every so often.

Elena Kagan, may not have specifically written in terms of nudging or minimalism as Cass Sunstein describes in his book “Radicals in Robes,” but she holds the same type of liberal ideals as Sunstein and Obama. Sunstein wrote in an article on The New Republic, of which he co-edits, that Obama is a visionary minimalist.

Barack Obama is widely regarded as a visionary because of his emphasis on “change” and his soaring rhetoric, but he also has strong minimalist tendencies. In his victory speech in Iowa, Obama went out of his way to say that it is time for a president who will “listen to” those who disagree, and also “learn from” them. In The Audacity of Hope, he asks for a politics that accepts “the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point.” In a crucial passage, he refers to “the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion, and the Christian woman who paid for her teenager’s abortion.” In this way, he suggests that across one of the nation’s least tractable divides, Americans have far more in common than we tend to think.

Like all minimalists, Obama believes that real change usually requires consensus, learning, and accommodation–a belief directly reflected in many of his policies.

I don’t believe for a second what Cass Sunstein mentions above, but I do believe that what is happening behind the scenes is the gradual transformation of the United States into the “Utopia” that is envisioned by liberals. The Saul Alinsky tactics, conform to become “The Man” and enact change, and tear down traditional institutions is reminiscent of Gramsci Marxism which proposes the same route for transformation.

Elena Kagan believes in more executive powers in the government. She prefers that the executive branch regulate more than the legislative. This view would fit perfectly with both Obama and Sunstein, who believe in legislating morals, ethics, and human nature. They think that perfection (in their minds) can be regulated and the government can oversee it. Elena Kagan would fit perfectly into this mold and she would be incredibly malleable seeing as how she has had no prior judicial experience.

Both Kagan and Sunstein also lament the fact that more liberalism doesn’t exist or that socialism has failed to be implemented.

“In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness,” wrote Kagan, Obama’s solicitor general.

“Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties?” she asked.

“Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP [Socialist Party] exhausted itself forever and further reduced labor radicalism in New York to the position of marginality and insignificance from which it has never recovered.

“The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism’s decline, still wish to change America,” she wrote. “Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one’s fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope.”

Kagan brought Sunstein over to Harvard Law from Chicago in 2007 and in so doing had the following to say about him:

Introducing Sunstein before the talk, Dean Elena Kagan ’86 described him as “the world’s pre-eminent legal scholar,” one who “challenges our assumptions and changes the way we think about legal issues.” Suggesting that Frankfurter was a forebearer of what she called “Sunsteinian Minimalism,” Kagan noted that the Justice, who was sometimes accused of being too leftist, brought to the Supreme Court a strong belief in judicial restraint. “He believed more in the institutions of democracy than in the courts,” said Kagan. “He also insisted … on respect for Federalism, for the decisions of state governments.”

“Cass Sunstein is the preeminent legal scholar of our time, the most wide-ranging, the most prolific, the most cited, and the most influential,” Elena Kagan, dean of the Harvard Law School, said in a statement released yesterday.

“His work in any one of the fields he pursues – administrative law and policy, constitutional law and theory, behavioral economics and law, environmental law, to name a nonexhaustive few – would put him in the very front ranks of legal scholars,” Kagan said.

It would appear as if somebody had an idol, and how else would one better flatter their idol by exemplifying him?

America doesn’t need political ideologues on the Supreme Court, but rather those who interpret the law and are independent thinkers that have the experience and knowledge to back it up–Just being a legal wonk, a dean, connected to Democrats, Larry Summers, and Goldman Sachs isn’t enough.

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After much talk about Goldman Sachs, Al Gore, CCX, GIM and other miscreants of the corporate and political world, it’s interesting that the name of Maurice Strong hasn’t surfaced.

In order to understand his role in Crime Inc., maybe this movie clip will put it into perspective:

Maurice Strong is a huge United Nations guy who is a big advocate of the dreaded One World Order conspiracy but, more accurately, is pushing hard along with Al Gore for global environmental regulations which, of course, means cap and trade.

Many believe that Strong is behind the United Nations’ current reputation, which carries with it numerous scandals such as Oil for Food, funneling money to North Korea, shady dealings with Tongsun Park and Kofi Annan, procurement fraud, and rape cover-ups.

Report from 2007 [Strong just turned 81]:

Strong, now 77, is best known as the godfather of the environmental movement, who served from 1973-1975 as the founding director of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) in Nairobi. UNEP is now a globe-girdling organization with a yearly budget of $136 million, which claims to act as the world’s environmental conscience. Strong consolidated his eco-credentials as the organizer of the U.N.’s 1992 environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro, which in turn paved the way for the controversial 1997 Kyoto Treaty on controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

But his green credentials scarcely begin to do justice to Strong’s complicated back-room career. He has spent decades migrating through a long list of high-level U.N. posts, standing behind the shoulder of every U.N. secretary-general since U Thant. Without ever holding elected office, he has had a hand in some of the world’s most important bureaucratic appointments, both at the U.N. and at the World Bank. A Canadian wheeler-dealer with an apple face and pencil mustache, Strong has parlayed his personal enthusiasms and connections into a variety of huge U.N. projects, while punctuating his public service with private business deals.

It would seem as though Maurice Strong and George Soros could be twins separated at birth.  Neither are American citizens by birth but have a strong hand in the current conduct of liberal politics in the United States.  He is also another one of those shadow financiers who is connected to everyone and no one.

If you look up Maurice Strong at muckety.com you will find nothing, however, he has his tentacles in practically everyone at the United Nations, the CCX, the ECX, environmental companies, institutions and grassroots organizations, as well as other shady characters.

After Maurice Strong scurried away during the Annan, Ghali, Park and Oil for Food scandals, he wound up in China, where he currently resides and has even teamed up with Soros to build the “every-man’s” car; the Chery.  Strong, surprisingly, is a partner and good friend to the lovely and ever so talented Mr. Gorbachev.

Maurice Strong’s sister was once a translator for Anita Dunne’s idol, Chairman Mao, and Strong has advised not only the Rockefeller and Rothschild Trusts, which are connected to everything political, but also the World Bank, another partner in the great circle of malfeasance; the CCX.

Maurice Strong has been tracked heavily by the Canadian Free Press, a conservative Canadian publication that doesn’t receive enough credit, in my opinion.

Strong, the silent partner [at CCX], is a man whose name often draws a blank on the Washington cocktail circuit.  Even though a former Secretary General of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the much hyped Rio Earth Summit) and Under-Secretary General of the United Nations in the days of an Oil-for-Food beleaguered Kofi Annan, the Canadian born Strong is little known in the United States.  That’s because he spends most of his time in China where he has been working to make the communist country the world’s next superpower.

The nondescript Strong, nonetheless is the big cheese in the underworld of climate change and is one of the main architects of the failing Kyoto Protocol.

Full credit for the expose on the business partnership of Strong and Gore in the cap-and-trade reduction scheme should go to the investigative acumen of the Executive Intelligence Review (EIR).

The tawdry tale of the top two global warming gurus in the business world goes all the way back to Earth Day, April 17, 1995 when the future author of “An Inconvenient Truth” traveled to Fall River, Massachusetts, to deliver a green sermon at the headquarters of Molten Metal Technology Inc. (MMTI). MMTI was a firm that proclaimed to have invented a process for recycling metals from waste.  Gore praised the Molten Metal firm as a pioneer in the kind of innovative technology that can save the environment, and make money for investors at the same time.

The Investigative “experts” in the MSM, appeared to have missed the connection between MMTI, the DOE, and Strong.

Upon tracking down several organizations of interest that are mentioned in connection with Maurice Strong, I find that muckety.com does not bring up results, or somebody doesn’t want them to bring up results. Those organizations are the Earth Council Alliance, the University for Peace, or UPEACE, a private entity that Strong used to funnel money to the United Nations, and Oil for Food.

However, the organizations I could find were the United Nations Foundation [a creation of Ted Turner’s] and the Global Environmental Facility, which was the catalyst for the Kyoto Protocol, Agenda 21 and the Rio Conference.

Muckety only connects the GEF to Mohamed El-Ashry, who is associated with Resources for the Future. Resources for the Future has trustees and chairmen like Lawrence Linden and Deutch, who are both partners respectively at Goldman Sachs and Citibank, mega-banks that are involved with the CCX and GIM.

Connecting the dots with CCX:

CCX owes its existence in part to the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago-based liberal foundation that provided $347,000 in grant support in 2000 for a preliminary study to test the viability of a market in carbon credits. On the CCX board of directors is the ubiquitous Maurice Strong, a Canadian industrialist and diplomat who, since the 1970s, has helped create an international policy agenda for the environmentalist movement. Strong has described himself as “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.” His former job titles include “senior advisor” to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, “senior advisor” to World Bank President James Wolfensohn and board member of the United Nations Foundation, a creation of Ted Turner. The [then] 78-year-old Strong is very close to Gore.

CCX has about 80 members that are self-confessed emitters of greenhouse gases. They have voluntarily committed themselves to reduce their emissions by the year 2010 to a level 6% below their emissions in 2000. CCX members include Ford Motor Company, Amtrak, DuPont, Dow Corning, American Electric Power, International Paper, Motorola, Waste Management and a smattering of other companies, along with the states of Illinois and New Mexico, seven cities and a number of universities. Presumably the members “purchase” carbon offsets on the CCX trading exchange. This means they make contributions to or investments in groups or firms that provide forms of “alternative,” “renewable” and “clean” energy.

More about Strong may be understood in this 1972 BBC interview:

In Strong’s own words:

Strong in his statement at the opening session of the Rio Conference (Earth Summit II) stated: “It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing — are not sustainable.”

Strong stated: “”The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.”

The European Union was an experiment, whereby every country lost more of its sovereignty every year, and fortunately, we are seeing the results of that experiment unfold today. The euro is on the brink of collapse because every European country is intertwined in a convoluted web of enablement, debt, and socialism.

So, as much as liberals and progressives decry the wrongs of Capitalism, they really are still involved in the practice, however, rather than being proponents of pure Capitalism as Adam Smith had intended, they want to apply a new form of ‘Selective Capitalism’ that circulates wealth among the already wealthy and the Elite.

It seems to me that half of these wealthy elites are selfish hogs, who are happy that they were able to use the Capitalist system to earn their money, but now that they are content with their piece of the pie, they would prefer to keep it to themselves and shut the doors off to any type of upward mobility for the rest of us, the way real Capitalism should work.

As much as people cringe at the mention of Marxism, because let’s face it, it’s scary to admit it may be true, the same basic philosophy applies. The elite class rules while the middle class is destroyed and the rest remain poor.

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TOWN HALL MEETING NOTICE

Do you live in Florida’s 24th Congressional District?

Do you believe that your voice is ignored by Rep. Suzanne Kosmas?

In fact, since her election, Suzanne Kosmas has not held a single town hall meeting providing any accountability to the people of the 24^th District.

Ok, what has she done since she was elected?

•  She has failed us miserably by voting for huge deficit spending that adds to our already   overwhelming National Debt, payable by us and our children.
•  She has failed us miserably by voting to increase the power and size of an already over-burdensome and non-accountable Federal Government.
•  She has failed us miserably by voting in favor of a failed and pork-filled stimulus scheme & a bloated, pork-filled budget.
•  She has failed us miserably by voting in favor of a “cap & trade” tax scheme that would increase cost of all produced goods, utilities and gasoline for everyone.
• She again failed us miserably by voting “yea” on a job killing, budget busting, liberty robbing, government growing, health care scheme opposed by the majority.
• Were all that not enough, unemployment in the state of Florida has risen 50% from an level in January 09 to over 12.2% in February 2010, all on her watch.

It’s time to hold her accountable for her votes, and since she

refuses to meet WITH us, we will be sure that she hears FROM us!

Come to the 24^th Congressional District Town Hall and be heard. Make comments and ask questions as you would in any typical town hall setting. We will feature an empty podium with Rep. Kosmas nameplate on it as a symbol of how she has turned a deaf ear to our district and our will. We will have the entire meeting recorded on video to share with Rep Kosmas and to post on “youtube” (and other sites). We believe it’s important to document how we feel about her  non-representation of us, and to share that with media outlets and the voters in our district between now and Election Day.

 WHEN:

Friday, April 9^th 2010 – 7PM to 9:15

WHERE:

Oviedo Memorial Building (Next to the Firehouse – Downtown Oviedo) 38 S. Central Avenue Oviedo, FL 32765

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Throughout the blogsphere and all over the internet, people have been tearing Glenn Beck down for an article in USA Weekend in which he seems to say he believes in global warming.  As far as I know, not one of these presumed bloggers tried to contact Glenn Beck or one of his producers to get to the bottom of the rumors.  Truth be known, were any of these supposed bloggers actual Glenn Beck listeners, they would have known what Glenn Beck’s position is on Global Warming and wouldn’t have fallen prey to the Lame Stream Media’s covert attack on Beck.

During a commercial break on his show today, Stu and Glenn discussed the internet rumors on mic so that the Insiders could hear. Below is the video of the discussion.

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The recent Supreme Court decision to allow corporations unlimited spending on political ads was the right decision in the case. It is not something we should be cheering for in the larger sense of what it means for American politics.
 
One good thing about this decision is that it levels the playing field by granting corporations the same advantages Unions and other organizations have when it comes to political campaigns and support of candidates. Another positive twist is that the level of awareness and debate could increase significantly; specifically by exposing a segment of the population who would otherwise be ill-informed in general about politics because what they know is only what they see in TV advertisements in their respective markets.
 
But this case is an isolated one, which does not address the real problem…the fact that too much money in politics not only adds to corruption but also makes it virtually impossible for the average citizen to campaign and compete in elections.
 
Many people on the right argue that this is about the First Amendment right to free speech. I don’t agree with that. The corporation is not an individual that can participate in rights. For example, does a corporation (remember it’s a piece of paper) have the right to keep and bear arms? How about the right to a speedy trial, why would it need that if it is never put in a jail cell? How about the right to the pursuit of happiness? Is a piece of paper capable of being happy or sad?
 
We have structures in place to allow individuals of a political opinion or ideology to band together and fund the propagation of their ideas. That is a healthy way of getting the opinion of the people into the public view. But I doubt very seriously that Nike will be concerned with individual tax rates if they can find a politician who will grant them special privileges for their business.
 
I think most Americans would agree that special interests, corporations and lobbyists already have way too much influence over politics and the legislative process. The Court’s decision opens the floodgates for corporations to increase their influence without limits. How does that serve the people? How does that help the people make their voices heard? Will this ratchet up the polarization of debate, further fueling the divisions in the electorate?
 
Insurance companies are corporations. How on earth will letting them spend freely on politics increase competition in the marketplace allowing us to negotiate lower prices and policies that fit our lifestyles and budgets. What about multinational corporations, which have no allegiance to America but will now have the opportunity to influence our political process through unlimited funding to promote ideologies that serve their particular interests? Think about the potential hazards this could lead to…special interests on steroids. Corporations will be able to fund the people who are friendly to them regardless of what it means to this society and our freedom.
 
The case I would like the Supreme Court to decide is if the current campaign finance laws are constitutional and actually serve the people. I would argue that we need significant limits on campaign financing activities. We should have a system that encourages average individuals to serve in public office. Today we have a system that encourages wealthy lawyers who can rarely avoid scandal as their power and influence is auctioned to the highest bidder(s).
 
In short, the money should be funneled through individuals, have low limits and be tax-free. Corporate profits should be directed to equity growth, dividends and R&D; allowing individual investors the opportunity to participate in the wealth generating machine that corporations are capable of being.

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A few days ago, as I sat at the computer trying to get a handle on the latest political pulse of America, I had a random thought and it gave me some real hope for taking our great Country back again. Often times random thoughts and feelings take a back burner to life, but for some reason I decided to write this one down. Happily, this random thought has been able to help a few good patriots and I sincerely hope it will continue to do so. Recently, several email exchanges came to my attention and I thought perhaps my random thought may help some of these patriots who are feeling bummed, scared, angry, etc.  So here goes my two cents for what it’s worth.

I think the Massachusetts Special Election taking place today, would have been very different in the recent past, mainly because it would not be receiving the attention it is getting today. The American People are finally doing their job, yes they are doing their job as citizens today much more so than yesterday. Yesterday, we the people would not have known about this special election…media would have perhaps mentioned it briefly, however it really would not have been thought about much by us folks, after all it’s not in “our State” what can we do???? We probably would have sat back and watched, not taking the bold steps we’re taking to help.  I see this as a true awaking for a lot of Americans. I have several liberal friends in the Boston area, and I personally sent emails to them asking for help with saving our Republic. I would have never done that a couple of years ago.  I am no longer a politically correct person, too much is on the line.

As Benjamin Franklin said so long ago in response to the question by Mrs. Powell in 1787,

“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded,
“A republic, if you can keep it.”

Perhaps the American people truly want to keep the Republic our Founding Fathers gave us, today much more so than yesterday!

Personally, I am thanking God for awakening the people. We have reached a turning point yet again in our great history.

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…the Hondurans, Cubans, and Venezuelans:

As you most know, my family escaped from Cuba in 1967 to escape a communist regime and start a new life in freedom in the United States. Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans were among the first Latinos to thrive in the United States. Today we see Latinos of all walks of life from all different countries from all over Latin America. Why should we as Americans care? Simple….Latinos number in the millions here in the United States and invest billions of dollars in our economy. Also, and most importantly; we have Latinos participating in policies in the U.S. government that shape our nation. That translates into millions of votes and citizens involved in shaping our society.

We must watch our neighbors. For example, Venezuela and Hugo Chavez who constantly try to provoke the United States. Honduras with Zelaya who wanted to change the Honduran Constitution so he could rule indefinitely so, Micheletti took power. What is our government doing? Turning a blind eye and not supporting Micheletti and continuing to allow Chavez to disrespect, berrate and bully the United States.

Another case in point…look what happened in Cuba 1961. The Bay of Pigs was a total disaster and fiasco of the Kennedy administration turning his back on Cuba. The result? Thousands of Cubans murdered by a weak Cuban airforce thanks to John F. Kennedy leaving them out alone to dry after promising to back up those valiant freedom fighters and then going back on that promise…thereby missing our window of opportunity to remove Castro from power without threat from the Russians. Cuba is only 90 miles away! We must worry because many people are coming from these places and that means they are also bringing their political ideas. The White House now has a site in Spanish to indoctrinate and bring in Latinos. We must get these important voters on our side…the side of freedom. Why? Because they come to this country,then become American citizens who vote and shape our agendas and have American children who are the future of this country and it won’t be long before we have the first Latino president. And God help us that his or her policy isn’t the same as Barrack Hussein Obama. We must attract these minority groups who, just like us, share in family values and have high morals but, bought the promise of immigration reform which will never be delivered. How does the White House respond? They shut up the Latino minority group by buying us off with Sonya Sotomayor no less! Wake up America! Sotomayor is the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants with a leftist agenda who sees the Constitution as something to be changed and amended. So me must care about the Latino group and care about what is going on in our backyard to avoid anymore “change” from what our Founding Fathers intended.

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We Conservatives are virtually all angry that Congress doesn’t give a rat’s behind about us these days. The House passed their version of the unconstitutional health care bill and are enjoying gloating about it before our angry, red faces. We would all like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Louise ‘Slaughter-of-the-innocents,’  Charlie ‘Don’t-pay-my-taxes’ Rangel, Dingell, and not to mention Obama, to go away; or worse.

We know, the Republicans did their best to oppose this 2000-page behemoth but, they don’t get that passing ANY bill like this is still unconstitutional. The fact that we are out-numbered by the liberal socialists in Congress causes a feeling of helplessness among most of us. We’re itching to do something, but we don’t know what that is. Some of us are ready to “lock and load” and start “The Revolution.”  I understand completely! But the government hasn’t sent in the troops yet to collect our weapons as in the battle of Lexington and Concord. Hopefully, that day never comes. We are also scattered all over the country. It’s not like we are all located in one town where we are able to meet and devise a plan of action. We’re looking for that “one” leader who understands what life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness actually mean; knows the Founding Fathers; and will rise up so we can follow him or her—and patience is not one our virtues lately.

Now take a deep breath! After the anger passes and common sense and logic begin to kick in, there are still some things left we can do:

- Call your Senators and tell them that if they pass this or any unconstitutional health care bill and it is signed into law, you’re not going to follow it or comply with it. It is “unlawful” and they don’t have to power to pass such a law. The U.S. Government has been operating unconstitutionally for a hundred years and it’s time they stop! If you need help, go this site DownSizeDC.org where you’ll find all the tools you need to communicate to your senators and representatives.

- Boycott all companies who pander to liberal socialists and give them lots of lobbying money and bribes for their campaigns, and for persuading them to write unconstitutional laws. Check with OpenSecrets for information on who’s lobbying whom and how much money is being given to whom.

- Continue to participate in the protests whether that be with the Tea Party movement, Town Hall meetings, 9/12 Project, or just getting together with a large group to protest at your state capitol.

- Educate yourself on the Constitution and the Federalist Papers (which illustrate the original intent of the Founders in drafting the Constitution.) Don’t be ignorant when you’re faced with a Congressman or woman who asks you why the government’s health care plan is unconstitutional, and you stand there and say, “You are taking our rights away!”. They’re going to ask you “what rights are we taking away?” and if you can’t answer, how do you think that makes you look?  The prophet Isaiah wrote: “my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” The left thinks you are a bunch of backwoods hicks in fly-over country clinging to your bibles and guns. Show them they are dead wrong!

- Continue to network with patriots on Twitter or other social networks.

- Don’t give up and never give in! We still have the elections of 2010!

Remember, we must give all men and women a chance to make things right first. When we’ve exhausted all possibilities, then be at inner peace with yourself that you’ve done everything you could do. Then wait patiently and see what happens next.

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