Rand Paul(R-TN) Exploits Drones Grandstanding With Fake Fundraising Letter

Rand Paul(R-TN) Exploits Drones Grandstanding With Fake Fundraising Letter

Though foes of drones on the right and left cheered Sen. Rand Paul's filibuster this week, with the tea partier delaying confirmation of CIA director John Brennan for a day, Paul's rant targeted a nonexistent dispute: whether or not Obama administration officials believed they could use drones (or other weapons) to kill American citizens within the borders of the United States without due process. Take away all Paul's hyped-up hysteria—watch out, Jane Fonda!—and he didn't truly disagree with the administration's position that in an extraordinary circumstance, such as an ongoing terrorist attack, the US government can deploy lethal force against evildoers who happen to be American citizens. So why did Paul go ballistic? Here's a clue: The day after he ended one of the longest filibusters in US history, he tried to cash in on his stunt by zapping out a fundamentally inaccurate fundraising email for his 2016 reelection campaign.

The note begins:

    Dear Patriot,

    My 13-hour filibuster yesterday is being called one of the longest in U.S. history.

    I had been trying for more than a week to get a straight answer on whether or not the Obama administration believed it had the authority to use drones to target and kill American citizens on American soil – without due process.

    And after receiving a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder claiming they DO have that authority, I could no longer sit silently at my desk in the U.S. Senate.

    So I stood for thirteen-straight hours to send a message to the Obama administration, I will do everything in my power to fight their attempts to ignore the Constitution!

    Millions of Americans chose to stand with me and put President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and Congress in the spotlight...

    And the good news is, it worked!

    Just hours ago, I received a letter from Attorney General Holder declaring the President DOES NOT have the authority to use drones to kill Americans on U.S. soil.

    Patriot, this shows what we can do when stand together and fight.

    So won't you help me continue the fight to protect our Constitutional liberties today?

This is a false account. In his first letter to Paul, Holder noted the obvious: If the United States were under attack from within, the president might have to order the use of lethal military force within the territory of the United States. This is how Holder put it:

    [T]he US government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so. As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat…The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States. For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.

Consider a Mumbai-style attack on Washington, DC; as the assault is under way perhaps military force—with or without drones—might be used against the perpetrators, which could include terrorists holding American citizenship. In fact, during his filibuster, Paul conceded the point: "Nobody questions if planes are flying towards the Twin Towers whether they can be repulsed by the military. Nobody questions whether a terrorist with a rocket launcher or a grenade launcher is attacking us, whether they can be repelled."

So just as he did on the Senate floor, in this email, Paul is ginning up a quarrel that did not exist. Then the give-me-money note goes on to claim that due to Paul's heroic filibuster, Holder wrote a second note to the senator stating the president cannot use drones to kill Americans on US soil. That's wrong.

On Thursday, Holder sent Paul a curt two-sentence letter:

    It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: "Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?" The answer to that question is no.

Funny how Paul was an anti-Iraq invasion conservative-libertarian, yet uses the same mentality to juice up his wacko supporters and their endless paranoia. Tomorrow it will be Chinese military hiding  int eh sewers of new York waiting directions to invade America from below. Is there such a thing as a conservative who is not one part wacky and one part evil.

Herman Cain and Friends Typify The Moral Rot of Conservatism

Herman Cain and Friends Typify The Moral Rot of Conservatism

Federal authorities have opened an investigation into two Wisconsin-based corporations founded and run by Mark Block, a veteran political operative who ran Herman Cain's unsuccessful presidential campaign.

"They are very interested in Mark and these groups," said a source familiar with the probe. "It is not my sense, right now, that Cain is a target."

In recent weeks, FBI agents have been talking to donors and other individuals connected with Prosperity USA and Wisconsin Prosperity Network. Block and Linda Hansen, Cain's deputy chief of staff, were the two primary people running those groups.

No Quarter reported last year that Prosperity USA helped Cain get his fledgling campaign off the ground by originally footing the bill for such items as iPads, chartered flights and travel to Iowa and Las Vegas, according to internal records.

Expenses totaling nearly $40,000 are listed in Prosperity USA's internal documents as "due from FOH," a reference to Friends of Herman Cain, the name of his campaign committee.

A number of election law experts have said these payments for campaign events appeared to cross the line.

Prosperity USA also borrowed as much as $150,000 from two unnamed individuals and then gave the bulk of those funds to the Con gress of Racial Equality , a conservative civil rights group, in January 2011. Shortly after that payment was made, Cain - who had just entered the presidential race - was a featured speaker at the group's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Celebration dinner.

Sources said the loans, which don't appear to have been repaid, were obtained under questionable circumstances.

In addition, it does not appear that either organization was granted tax-exempt status, even though contributors were told they could write off their donations. Both groups received substantial support from major conservatives in the state.

Block did not return texts, emails or calls asking for comment on Thursday. He is now working for Cain's Solutions Revolution, a group promoting the former candidate's 9-9-9 tax plan.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Frohling, who is spearheading the probe, also declined to comment, refusing even to acknowledge that there is an investigation.

Last year, several liberal advocacy groups filed complaints with federal election and tax regulators urging them to investigate Block and the two Wisconsin corporations. The Cain campaign responded by saying it had retained two law firms to look into the allegations.

Cain, the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, has never disclosed the results of the internal investigation. He dropped out of the race in early December after being pummeled by allegations of infidelity.

Block was asked last month at a public forum if the Federal Election Commission was investigating the Cain campaign and the questionable donations from Block's private organizations.

"Not to my knowledge," he said.

The question, interestingly, came from Milwaukee attorney Walt Kelly, who was at the center of the last major controversy involving Block.

In 1997, Block was the campaign manager for then-Supreme Court Justice Jon Wilcox in a hotly contested race against Kelly. After the race was over, state regulators accused Block of election-law violations, including coordinating a mass mailing with an outside group.

Block settled his part of the case by agreeing to stay out of Wisconsin politics for three years and to pay a $15,000 fine.

More recently, Block ran the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit cofounded by the conservative Koch brothers that helped organize the tea party movement in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

It was through Americans for Prosperity that Block met Cain and encouraged him to run for national office. Block's role with the Cain campaign became a point of national interest late last year when the campaign released a bizarre online ad featuring the chain-smoking Wisconsin operative.

Records show Block was paid more than $182,000 in total compensation during his year running Cain's failed campaign. He pulled down $84,605 in the final three months of 2011, even though his candidate dropped out of the race in early December.

Hansen, Block's political and business sidekick, received a little less than $88,000 in total compensation in 2011. Like Block, she deposited her biggest paychecks during the final three months of the year, taking in $56,430 during that span.

It's not surprising that they were paid the most at the end of last year.

That's also when the campaign had the most money.

Riding a short-lived wave of publicity and popularity, Cain received $11.3 million in donations between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31. But the GOP candidate spent all of that, plus $500,000 more, over the same period.

Not much of a surprise: conservatives+money+right-wing sugar daddies+violation of campaign finance laws+failure to fail correct statements about where money came from or how it was spent+campaign staffers using campaign money to enrich themselves+the general conservative tendency towards corruption and immoral behavior while also being sanctimonious hypocrites. Just another day. They will wave the flag and quote from the Bible to make it all sound like patriotism.

Why America's Wealthy Should Be Paying More Taxes

Why America's Wealthy Should Be Paying More Taxes

Before getting into the best reason, here are some of the usual -- and always good -- reasons. First of all, for every dollar the richest 1% earned in 1980, they've added three more dollars. The poorest 90% have added ONE CENT.

The richest million families have not worked three times (let alone 300 times) harder than the other 99 million families.

The richest 10% own 80% of the stock market, providing billions in "unearned income" that is taxed at less than half the rate of income earned through real work. The richest million families may have actually worked LESS than the other 99 million families.

A number of individuals have had one-year incomes over a billion dollars, enough to pay the salaries of 25,000 teachers or health care workers or emergency responders. It's questionable whether a guy who makes a billion betting on a mortgage collapse is worth even one teacher or health care worker or emergency responder.

Next is the woeful state of tax collections on the people making most of the money. Mitt Romney pays 15%, Warren Buffett 17.4%. The richest 400 Americans, 16.6%. The whole top 1% (a million families) paid less than 23% in 2006.

Average Americans pay more than that. Studies show that when state and local taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and excise taxes are tallied up, low-income people can be paying a higher percentage of taxes than the rich, perhaps up to 40% of their incomes.

Average Americans are also paying more than corporations. For every dollar of workers' payroll tax paid in the 1950s, corporations paid three dollars. Now it's 16 cents.

Whew. A lot of good reasons for the rich to be paying a lot more in taxes.

But here's the BEST REASON. The super-rich like to believe their own initiative and creativity have been the primary drivers of growth in technology and science and business and medicine. Some innovative business leaders deserve credit for putting the pieces together on specific initiatives. But the pieces themselves were put together over many years by thousands of less conspicuous people. As Elizabeth Warren said, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody."

Consider just a simple communications device. The pieces were put together by a procession of chemists, physicists, chip designers, programmers, engineers, production-line workers, market analysts, testers, troubleshooters, etc., etc. They, in turn, couldn't have succeeded without another layer of people providing sustenance and medical support and security and administrative assistance and transportation and office maintenance for the technologists. ALL of them contributed to the final product.

You say a lot of them DID get paid? Well, then, something's wrong, because few of the profits over the last 30 years went to this "middle class" of people to keep them financially secure, and to keep them educated in all the new technologies that are replacing their jobs.

The long-term dependency on the supporting members of society is the best reason for the most fortunate among us to care about everyone else. Sadly, research suggests that wealthy people have less empathy for people unlike themselves, because they no longer have reason to associate with them.

This psychological gap between the rich and the rest of us naturally diminishes the incentive for the 1% to support anyone beneath their economic class. Thus less tax revenue and more cutbacks. Cuts in federal spending have been accompanied by an onslaught of social ills, including the highest poverty and homicide and incarceration and obesity and mental illness rates, an increasing child mortality rate, the highest health care costs, low global rankings in math and science scores. We continue to cut the programs that support a stable society.

The most fortunate among us have succeeded because all of America has supported them for 60 years. Yet they've somehow come to believe that they did it all on their own. Nothing could be further from the truth. They should be thanking all the people who contributed to their success.

Thanking them by paying taxes.
Paul Buchheit

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org),

Conservatives are a literal endless factory of myths. That the wealthy are the producers and the rest of us hard working Americans are the leechers is just one of them. No nation can survive for long - not as a prosperous and culturally enlightened nation - with most of the Gross Domestic Product being redistributed to those who do the least work.