Another Example of the Democratic Party Treating Their "Base" Like Dirt

Here's a brief item (four paragraphs in total) from the Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire" column under the heading "Government Ethics," titled "IRS Scrutiny Hooks Left-Leaning Groups." I have annotated it with facts omitted from the piece, and with the larger political context. [1]

Some nonprofit groups received scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service through the use of screening terms that would single out left-leaning groups, according to an inspector general's report released Thursday. [October 5.]

What happened to those groups from 2004 to 2013 [i.e under both Bush the Younger and Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama] was similar to the treatment that tea-party groups received from 2010 to 2012. [Except that the tea-party groups were only targeted by a Democratic regime, and only for no more than three years- and there was a huge political brouhaha over it, and calls for criminal prosecutions of IRS officials, and forced resignations, whereas there was no reaction at all to the persecution of "leftists" for nine to ten years, and just a little article years later in a business paper.] A report from the same inspector general about conservative groups in 2013 led to the resignation of then-acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller. [And of IRS official Lois Lerner, who had to hire criminal defense lawyers to deal with the threat of indictment as Republican politicians and the rightwing media mob were demanding.]

"Democrats should be outraged," said Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Texas), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, about the new report. "The IRS targeted Americans based on their political beliefs, both parties."

Some Democrats have said the report shows that there wasn't political bias or targeting at the IRS. They said the problem was poor management and unclear rules about how to define political activity and how much is acceptable for different types of nonprofits. [End.]

Notice the essential unity of the two corporate imperialist parties that form a political cartel, both persecuting "leftists" whether it's a Democratic or Republican regime. Of course, throughout U.S. history, progressives of all stripes have been systematically surveiled, harassed, persecuted, subjected to various "dirty tricks" like thefts and sabotage of every stripe, imprisoned, and murdered by state agents and institutions, while reactionaries have had almost entirely free rein, including to commit thousands of acts of terrorism. (Examples: the Ku Klux Klan, the lynchings of thousands of blacks, the reign of terror against the civil rights movement in the 1950's and '60's, the thousands of attacks on abortion clinics, assassinations of anti-establishment activists by rightwing terrorists the secret police use as cut-outs, and more.)

Whether it's anti-abortion fanatics, Christian fundamentalists, gun fetishists, or people who want to shrink government down small enough to drown it in a bathtub, the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) always obsequiously panders to its base, at least in rhetoric. And it serves most of those groups' interests, passing laws (especially on the state level) making abortions relentlessly more onerous to obtain, loosening gun laws to the point that the Texas state government has forced universities in that state to allow students to carry guns on campus, against the objections of those institutions allegedly dedicated to education and free thought. And in league with the Democrats, passing draconian laws that in practice target blacks and Hispanics for imprisonment, and tax laws that grossly favor the rich and large corporations.

1] Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2017, page A5.

Evidence Anthony Weiner May Have Been Targeted To Sabotage Clinton's Election Campaign

Smack in the middle of a Wall Street Journal article about Anthony Weiner's sentencing hearing for his conviction on the Federal charge of "transferring obscene material to a minor" (a 15-year-old teenager) were these startling paragraphs:

Mr. Weiner's attorneys, Arlo Devlin-Brown and Erin Monju, have said the teenager targeted Mr. Weiner for personal profit and "to influence the U.S. presidential election." On Wednesday, Mr. Devlin-Brown declined to comment on the prosecutors' filing. [The prosecutors' filing that called for a prison sentence of 21 to 27 months for Weiner.]

The public exposure in September 2016 of Mr. Weiner's conduct with the teenager triggered a re-examination, days before the U.S. presidential election, of the federal probe concerning the private email server used by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. [Translation: Provided the FBI with a pretext for reigniting the Clinton secret email server scandal.] FBI agents seized a laptop from Mr. Weiner that had been used by both him and his wife, Mrs. Clinton's longtime aide Huma Abedin.

But prosecutors wrote in their filing that the teenager's motivation should be irrelevant to his sentence. [That's convenient. Sweep it under the rug.] ("Prison proposed for Weiner," Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2017, page A12A.)

So those who comb through media with a fine-tooth comb may have come across this tantalizing hint of a plot to sabotage the Clinton campaign.

It was just ten days before the November 7, 2016 presidential election when then-FBI secret police chief James Comey hurled a grenade into the Clinton campaign, announcing a "reinvestigation" of "new" (actually just copies of previously-obtained and scrutinized ) emails from Clinton's computer server. Clinton had been ahead of Trump by a comfortable 14% in polls, in the wake of the revelation of a video of Trump boasting of sexually assaulting women by grabbing their genitals and forcibly kissing them. Strangely, the churning up of the previously-closed investigation into Clinton's circumvention of Federal record-keeping rules by using a private computer server in her home to conduct her State Department business, caused her lead over Trump to evaporate, illustrating the fickleness and irrationality of a segment of the public.

When Comey had previously announced the conclusion of the lengthy investigation, he pronounced that no crime had been committed, but also publicly excoriated Clinton for her action, which allegedly jeopardized "classified" information. Clinton of course has been thoroughly dishonest throughout the scandal.

The New York City field office of the FBI was furious with Comey's decision not to recommend criminal charges to the Department of "Justice," which brings Federal prosecutions of crimes. Their anger at the decision to let Clinton off the hook has been reported by various bourgeois media sources. This office is staffed and run by rightwing extremists, reactionary political fanatics.

The FBI New York City field office is the largest in the U.S. it has long indulged in nefarious conspiracies against both politicians and against any and all people and groups considered "leftwing." They are a lawless gang that wiretaps, bugs, burglarizes and steals routinely without any warrants, targeting people they don't like. Mail is monitored and sometimes stolen, including certified mail. (I have suffered all of this personally, to my detriment.) This FBI office has long been tasked with carrying out political skulduggery, including espionage and counterespionage. It is tasked with spying on the UN, and the UN missions of various nations, including Cuba, an object of malign assault by the U.S. since 1959, including all manner of terrorism, sabotage, murder, economic warfare and espionage.

Rudolph Giuliani, formerly NYC mayor, and previous to that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (i.e. chief Federal prosecutor for much of New York State, including Manhattan, the key borough of New York City where high finance and media are centered) has maintained close connections, dating to his days as U.S. attorney, with the reactionary elements of the FBI field office. He has frequently been an conduit for unattributed "information" from those FBI agents, manipulating public opinion and trying to cause certain political outcomes.

Giuliani was and is a Trump ally, before and after Trump's "election" by the Electoral College. (Trump lost the "popular" vote to Clinton by 2.9 million votes, which Trump claimed were all illegal aliens voting unlawfully.) After Trump assumed the presidency, Giuliani went on television to boast about how he crafted Trump's order banning Muslims from 7 countries entry to the U.S. to better withstand legal challenge. Giuliani's name has repeatedly been publicly bruited about as a possible Trump choice for high government office in the Trump regime.

So IF Weiner was set up, the primary suspects have to be Giuliani and his political hit squad inside the FBI's New York City field office. (Weiner lives in NYC.) Weiner's sexual compulsion, and his vulnerability, was well known. It would have been simple to recruit a malleable teenager to be their pawn in a plot aimed at Clinton, using Weiner as a patsy and collateral victim of their scheme. Others have commented that Comey's hand was forced by the NYC FBI office to go public with the "new" emails taken off the shared laptop of Weiner and Abedin. FBI agents in New York could have "leaked" (planted) the news of finding Clinton State department emails on the Weiner/Abedin laptop, along with derogatory comments about Comey, had Comey not acted. Or they could have fed the information to Giuliani, who could have gone on television (as he often does) and reveal it.
Now, where is the story on what information Weiner's attorneys have to substantiate their claim? (Hel-lo, corporate propaganda system!)

 

















  

Trashy NYC Tabloids Had Great Fun Mocking Weiner

With Juvenile Headlines

Background: Anthony Weiner was a U.S. Congressman representing part of Brooklyn (one of five boroughs of New York City in New York State) when he was publicly exposed as having a habit of sending images of his penis to strange women via the Internet. Driven from office, he attempted a political comeback by running for Mayor of New York City in 2013.

But the establishment media and the shadowy power structure weren't through with Weiner yet.
He actually wasn't doing badly in the polls when he was outed as continuing the behavior that cost him his previous office. This ended his chances of being elected Mayor.

Then came Abedin divorcing him, and the criminal case around the 15-year-old.

The UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter was another victim of a sex trap. A cop pretended online to be a teenage girl, and exchanged sexual messages with Ritter. That was enough to arrest and convict him. In his case also his sexual proclivities were already known. Ritter's crime was contradicting the Bush II and media propaganda campaign that falsely asserted that Iraq still had "weapons of mass destruction." Ritter begged to differ, and could speak with authority.

Expecting men not to be sexually attracted to teenage girls is fighting biology. Before "civilization," life expectancy might be 25 years. People mated at puberty. Even today, in many societies girls are married off in their teens. I think that is not good, and people should evolve out of such practices- and best not to trade sex talk with teenagers, even imaginary ones. In the U.S., the thought itself is a crime, since "attempted" crime is criminal. And the Supreme Court, in an infamous case, affirmed that possession of a video of pre-pubescent girls in swimsuits dancing "suggestively" is a felony- namely possession of "child pornography." The Clinton regime took that one all the way to the high court to enforce that Saudi-style conviction, and set a precedent for extreme repression that comes in handy as yet another weapon against people who run afoul of the government.

The Wall Street Journal is, as its title makes clear, a newspaper for financiers and businessmen. Its editorials and opinion pieces are consistently hard-core reactionary, but the reporting sections are more or less normal for a U.S. establishment newspaper. Rupert Murdoch bought its parent company, Dow Jones, from the Bancroft family and promptly put its website behind a paywall.

Oh You KRAAAZY Ex-Congressman, You!

(Anthony Weiner, he of the uncontrollable sexual compulsion. "SAD!" as a certain President of the U.S. would say.)