Larry Flynt's Blog, page 20

Cash Offer Up to $1 Million

As seen in THE WASHINGTON POST Sunday, March 4, 2012

Is America Becoming an “Elective Dictatorship”?

BIG BROTHER GETS EVEN BIGGER WITH THE NEXT GENERATION IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM.

by Nat Hentoff for HUSTLER Magazine

I keep learning never to underestimate the FBI’s endless passion for finding new ways to track us. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is a frequent source of mine on Constitutional issues, and two of its attorneys— Sunita Patel and Scott Paltrowitz—have now jolted me with a CommonDreams.org report titled “How Far Will the Government Go in Collecting and Storing All Our Personal Data?” Patel and Paltrowitz focus on “the FBI’s everexpanding Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which collects and stores all aspects of our personal physical characteristics—our biometric data.” This is the first time I’ve heard of NGI. Have you?

I’ve often written about my FBI file, started by the late J. Edgar Hoover because he had become irritated by my criticisms of him. The fanciful surmises in it are chump change compared to what is being collected these days (unknown to me) in—as attorneys Patel and Paltrowitz point out—the FBI’s “massive database program that collects and stores personal identifying information such as fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans, scars, marks, tattoos, facial characteristics and voice recognition” and who knows what else.

The Center for Constitutional Rights began to find out about this operation as a result of a lawsuit it filed under the Freedom of Information Act. (NGI makes George Orwell look like a true visionary with his Big Brother-is-watching novel 1984.) If this makes any of you a little uneasy, dig this: Patel and Paltrowitz warn that “when NGI becomes fully operational in 2014, other federal agencies will gain access to the bio-data without your knowledge or consent.”

By now,many of us have a general and vague sense of living in a surveillance society. But many young Americans of the next generation have yet to realize—as the CCR attorneys caution—that this country is getting ever closer to becoming an “inescapable surveillance state where we blindly place our hands on electronic devices that capture our digital prints, stare into iris scanning devices that record the details of our eyes and have pictures taken of different angles of our faces so that the FBI and other federal agencies can store and use such information.”

Not just the feds will be busily involved in this endless tracking. In the March 21, 2011, online edition of the Charleston Gazette, Eric Eyre reported on the scope of the FBI’s $1-billion NGI project:“Under the system, state and local police officers will eventually use hand-held devices to scan suspects’ fingerprints [and other physical characteristics] and send the images electronically to the FBI center.” That’s the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division in Clarksburg,West Virginia.

Stephen Morris, a deputy assistant director at the FBI’s information center, proudly states, “It increases capacity and accuracy.” According to Morris, the Next Generation Identification system has another supposed benefit: “It’s a quick scan to let police officers know if they should let the person go or take him into custody.”

At least if you’re busted thanks to NGI, you will know why. ArsTechnica.com posted an article by Joel Hruska that noted a major shortcoming with the FBI’s database. It stated,“At this point, the FBI’s proposed [and now partially functioning] biometric identification system contains no recourse for citizens who are misidentified, no formal method for the update and correction of biometric information, and no indication that citizens would even be allowed to view their own biometric profiles.”

Hruska also chillingly revealed that “in 2003, the FBI exempted its National Crime Information Center, the Central Records System, and the National Center for Analysis of Violent Crime from subsection [552a](e)(5) of the 1974 Privacy Act. That particular subsection mandates that each agency that maintains a system of records shall ‘maintain all records which are used by the agency in making any determination about any individual with such accuracy, relevance, timeliness and completeness as is reasonably necessary to assure fairness to the individual in the determination.’”

But even if the FBI had not exempted itself from the Privacy Act—without, of course, ever telling us—how can any citizen be assured “fairness” under this insatiably omnivorous New Generation Identification system if we are forbidden from actually seeing what information has been collected and stored?

I’ve been covering all the debates among Republican aspirants for the Presidency, and not once have I heard anything about We the People being meshed covertly into the Next Generation Identification system’s massive database. One of the debaters did say something that affects every one of us—not to mention future generations, but Ron Paul only focused on the executive orders by which President Obama has ignored Congress, the courts and the U.S. Constitution. As the Daily Caller reported on November 2, 2011, Paul accused the Obama Administration of becoming “dangerously close to an elective dictatorship.”

Wake up, Ron! Move on to organize against NGI’s destruction of what little is left of our right to privacy. If, as you say, executive orders are “dictatorial,” what do you call the federal government’s creation of a biometric database?

I’m sure it would have rankled George Washington, who proclaimed that “arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.” And 14 years after Washington’s death, Thomas Jefferson recalled how our first President had confided to him that he considered America’s new Constitution to be “an experiment…with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good.” No matter who is elected President in 2012, how many of our personal liberties will remain?

Did Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis write America’s obituary? “The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people. Public discussion is a public duty.”

Never before have we had so many ways to conduct public discussion while our personal liberties are being extinguished by our “elective” leader.

Is America Becoming an "Elective Dictatorship"?

BIG BROTHER GETS EVEN BIGGER WITH THE NEXT GENERATION IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM.

by Nat Hentoff for HUSTLER Magazine

I keep learning never to underestimate the FBI's endless passion for finding new ways to track us. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is a frequent source of mine on Constitutional issues, and two of its attorneys— Sunita Patel and Scott Paltrowitz—have now jolted me with a CommonDreams.org report titled "How Far Will the Government Go in Collecting and Storing All Our Personal Data?" Patel and Paltrowitz focus on "the FBI's everexpanding Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which collects and stores all aspects of our personal physical characteristics—our biometric data." This is the first time I've heard of NGI. Have you?

I've often written about my FBI file, started by the late J. Edgar Hoover because he had become irritated by my criticisms of him. The fanciful surmises in it are chump change compared to what is being collected these days (unknown to me) in—as attorneys Patel and Paltrowitz point out—the FBI's "massive database program that collects and stores personal identifying information such as fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans, scars, marks, tattoos, facial characteristics and voice recognition" and who knows what else.

The Center for Constitutional Rights began to find out about this operation as a result of a lawsuit it filed under the Freedom of Information Act. (NGI makes George Orwell look like a true visionary with his Big Brother-is-watching novel 1984.) If this makes any of you a little uneasy, dig this: Patel and Paltrowitz warn that "when NGI becomes fully operational in 2014, other federal agencies will gain access to the bio-data without your knowledge or consent."

By now,many of us have a general and vague sense of living in a surveillance society. But many young Americans of the next generation have yet to realize—as the CCR attorneys caution—that this country is getting ever closer to becoming an "inescapable surveillance state where we blindly place our hands on electronic devices that capture our digital prints, stare into iris scanning devices that record the details of our eyes and have pictures taken of different angles of our faces so that the FBI and other federal agencies can store and use such information."

Not just the feds will be busily involved in this endless tracking. In the March 21, 2011, online edition of the Charleston Gazette, Eric Eyre reported on the scope of the FBI's $1-billion NGI project:"Under the system, state and local police officers will eventually use hand-held devices to scan suspects' fingerprints [and other physical characteristics] and send the images electronically to the FBI center." That's the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division in Clarksburg,West Virginia.

Stephen Morris, a deputy assistant director at the FBI's information center, proudly states, "It increases capacity and accuracy." According to Morris, the Next Generation Identification system has another supposed benefit: "It's a quick scan to let police officers know if they should let the person go or take him into custody."

At least if you're busted thanks to NGI, you will know why. ArsTechnica.com posted an article by Joel Hruska that noted a major shortcoming with the FBI's database. It stated,"At this point, the FBI's proposed [and now partially functioning] biometric identification system contains no recourse for citizens who are misidentified, no formal method for the update and correction of biometric information, and no indication that citizens would even be allowed to view their own biometric profiles."

Hruska also chillingly revealed that "in 2003, the FBI exempted its National Crime Information Center, the Central Records System, and the National Center for Analysis of Violent Crime from subsection [552a](e)(5) of the 1974 Privacy Act. That particular subsection mandates that each agency that maintains a system of records shall 'maintain all records which are used by the agency in making any determination about any individual with such accuracy, relevance, timeliness and completeness as is reasonably necessary to assure fairness to the individual in the determination.'"

But even if the FBI had not exempted itself from the Privacy Act—without, of course, ever telling us—how can any citizen be assured "fairness" under this insatiably omnivorous New Generation Identification system if we are forbidden from actually seeing what information has been collected and stored?

I've been covering all the debates among Republican aspirants for the Presidency, and not once have I heard anything about We the People being meshed covertly into the Next Generation Identification system's massive database. One of the debaters did say something that affects every one of us—not to mention future generations, but Ron Paul only focused on the executive orders by which President Obama has ignored Congress, the courts and the U.S. Constitution. As the Daily Caller reported on November 2, 2011, Paul accused the Obama Administration of becoming "dangerously close to an elective dictatorship."

Wake up, Ron! Move on to organize against NGI's destruction of what little is left of our right to privacy. If, as you say, executive orders are "dictatorial," what do you call the federal government's creation of a biometric database?

I'm sure it would have rankled George Washington, who proclaimed that "arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." And 14 years after Washington's death, Thomas Jefferson recalled how our first President had confided to him that he considered America's new Constitution to be "an experiment…with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good." No matter who is elected President in 2012, how many of our personal liberties will remain?

Did Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis write America's obituary? "The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people. Public discussion is a public duty."

Never before have we had so many ways to conduct public discussion while our personal liberties are being extinguished by our "elective" leader.

The Education Crisis

College students and recent graduates are carrying nearly a trillion dollars in student debt. According to a recent report, college graduates in 2010 walked away owing an average of $25,250 in loans; 9.1% of them were unable to find work. Others were forced to take low-wage jobs that did not reflect their skill level. Add to that the escalating cost of a college education— California public universities increased tuition by 21%—and you all but eliminate low-income students from the collegiate ranks. It's a scandal that America has done so little to make higher education affordable to every citizen.

To those who have been frozen out of the education system, I say don't give up. I left school in the eighth grade. When I was 15, I joined the Navy (with a fake ID). Painfully aware of my lack of education, I subscribed to a book-of-the-month club. That was followed by a series of correspondence courses. And more reading— everything I could get my hands on. My message is this: You can teach yourself everything you need to know to be successful. You just have to want it. Being self-taught won't open any doors for you, but it will teach you how to go around them.

Vincent Bugliosi – Divinity of Doubt

THE ONETIME CRIME FIGHTER WAGES WAR WITH BUSH AND RELIGION

Interview by Kimberly Cheng for HUSTLER Magazine

As a Los Angeles County prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi had a perfect record in murder convictions. He is best remembered for the Sharon Tate/ Charles Manson case. Of the 106 felony cases he tried, Bugliosi lost only one. Since leaving public service, he has written 11 books on crime, three of which have topped the New York Times bestsellers list. His first, Helter Skelter—which chronicled every aspect of the Manson Family's gruesome 1969 killing spree—went on to become the biggest-selling true-crime book in publishing history. Also enjoying critical acclaim, Bugliosi is a threetime recipient of the Edgar award, the highest literary honor devoted exclusively to the crime-and-mystery genre. Outraged by the deaths of U.S. servicemen and civilians during the Iraq War, Bugliosi penned The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. In a startling departure from the subjects of law and government, Bugliosi's latest book— Divinity of Doubt: The God Question—takes aim at organized religion, specifically the Bible. He stopped by HUSTLER recently to discuss his efforts to indict Bush and why he believes Divinity of Doubt will shake the very foundations of Christianity.

HUSTLER: What has happened since The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder was published in 2008?

VINCENT BUGLIOSI: This project about prosecuting Bush for murder is still very much alive. We have a documentary based on the book that will be going into postproduction very soon, hopefully for the big screen. But much more importantly than the book or the documentary is a 96-page report on every conceivable legal defense that George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice and [Dick] Cheney could possibly raise to a criminal indictment against them.

I don't want this to be misinterpreted in any way, but you should not be shocked if, within a year, there's an article saying a criminal grand jury investigation has been launched against George W. Bush. It will not be on a federal level. [President Barack] Obama has already shown he has no courage to do this. He told George Stephanopoulos, "I don't want to look at the past. I want to look at the future." What Obama calls looking at the past, I call justice. Every criminal prosecution, without exception, is for past criminal behavior. I mean you can't prosecute someone for what they might do in the future.

I want to make clear: I have no firm commitment on this. I'm not saying there's going to be a prosecution. What I'm telling you is I'm making progress, and it's very much alive. I do not want this guy to get away with murder.

George W. Bush, in my opinion, is responsible for the murder of over 4,500 American soldiers and well over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, children and babies—and he's enjoying life to the fullest.

You said a grand jury investigation isn't going to be conducted at the federal level. What does that mean?

Preferably it would be done on a federal level, but [U.S. Attorney General Eric] Holder and Obama are totally out of it. The 50 state attorneys general I've contacted aren't willing to go ahead. If this happens, it will be at a local level. It will be from one of the district attorneys in this country.

If this is taken to a grand jury—and I would probably be the one doing that— almost assuredly after the indictment, this case would go all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. They don't have the power in their legal arsenal to prevent the indictment, as far as I know. They would have the power to prevent the case from going forward by coming up with some cockamamie legal argument like they did in Bush v. Gore, the [Equal] Protection Clause, which was nonsense and didn't apply. But they can't just say we don't like this case. So this case would be taken under submission, and when the [Supreme] Court issues an opinion—probably the longest opinion in the history of the Court—we'll already have at least two against us: Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas. I can say publicly that they're disgraces to the legal profession.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito most likely will be against us. It will probably come down to Justice Anthony Kennedy. I guess the nation would be divided at that point. The main thing is getting this guy [George W. Bush] into a courtroom and letting an American jury decide whether he is guilty or not of murder.

Tell us about your new book.

Divinity of Doubt: The God Question is the most explosive, revolutionary book that's come down, within memory, in the area of God and religion. In my book, I demolish Richard Dawkins, who is the number one atheist in the world—the ayatollah of atheism, according to the L.A. Times. He wrote The God Delusion and sold a million-and-a-half copies.

He's trying to be serious, and this is what he said: "Since the universe is so extremely complex, for there to be a God, he'd have to be more complex than the universe he created. I find that highly improbable." That is such a vapid argument. It's childlike.

You've said your book will shake the very foundations of Christianity.

If accepted as true, yes. I'm not the brightest guy in the world, but for whatever reason I seem to see what's right in front of me in its pristine condition, uninfluenced by reputation or hoopla whereas most people see what they expect to see, what they want to see, what conventional wisdom tells them to see.

Frank Schaeffer, one of the founders of the Religious Right, grew up in a family that was immersed in Christianity, God, etc. His father was a top theologian when he died; [President Ronald] Reagan praised him to the heavens. Frank Schaeffer's mother was a missionary. Schaeffer himself was a theologian and a preacher. He gave a review of my book, and it's very telling what he said: "I found myself walking around the house following my wife reading passages to her." Schaeffer left the Religious Right years ago because he found out something that I've been saying for years. They [the Religious Right] are anti- American.

I testified before the House Judiciary Committee for the Bush book. Republicans tried to shut me down, so members of the media came up to me later and asked why. I said, "I'll tell you why: They're more Republican than they are American. They pledge allegiance to the Republican Party, not the American flag."

Divinity of Doubt challenges the concept of free will.

You hear people say all the time that God gives all of us free will. If you challenge them, they say, "It's in the Bible." Well, in doing research for this book, I found out that contrary to popular belief, the Bible does not say there's free will. In fact, it says the precise opposite. Do you recognize the enormous ramifications of this?

If there's no free will, then a murderer can't be held accountable because God directed him to do it.

Absolutely. How do you explain God's punishment of evildoers—not just in our life here, but in the afterlife—if what they did was preordained by God? Romans 11:32 goes so far as to say that God "consigns all men to disobedience."

Here's another point in the book: the immortality of the soul. It turns out immortality of the soul was a pure invention of Plato in the 4th century B.C. that Christianity was forced to embrace because without the immortality of the soul, there's no life after death. The body doesn't survive, and without life after death there's no Heaven and Hell. I would pose the rhetorical question: How does Christianity survive without Heaven and Hell? This is what they offer or threaten their followers with.

Is it your position that the Bible is BS?

No. I'm simply saying that if you base what you're saying—the free will—on the Bible, well, that's not what the Bible says. I'm not attacking the Bible. I'm attacking Christianity.

But you're pointing out discrepancies within the Bible.

That raises an interesting point because Judaism and Christianity believe that every word of the Bible is inspired by God. The problem there is, if every word is inspired by God, how can there be so many contradictions? How can he inspire one author of one Bible book to say something that is in direct contradiction with another passage he [God] also supposedly inspired?

I think the Bible is certainly the most important and influential book ever written. It tells the greatest story, fictional or otherwise, ever told. It's a book of enormous wisdom and profundity, no question about it. On the other hand, the question has to be asked: If what I say is true, how do you keep the doors to these churches—thousands upon thousands around the world—open?

Maybe it's not a question of what's logical but what's comforting. Religion offers comfort.

Of course! I think Petronius, the Roman satirist, said the gods came into the world out of fear, fear of the unknown. People want to believe in this stuff, and I don't denigrate faith. [Russian author Leo] Tolstoy said it's the biggest force in nature. It's lit many candles of warmth throughout the years, softened pangs of fear. But let's not confuse faith with the object of the faith. They're not synonymous.

You're wedded to logic.

That's right. It's my only master. The book is based on the evidence. It's pretty hard to attack it because I give several biblical citations for everything I say.

I eliminate prayer for all intents and purposes. If someone prays for something and they get it, they say, "God answered my prayers." That means he's got the power to answer prayers. He's all-powerful. Well, if he has the power to answer prayers, how can we possibly say he's all good when we know to a 100% certainty that he nearly always turns down the praying party when that party needs him the most?

Doesn't that tell us that not only is God not all good, but when we happen to get something as a result of our prayer, it had nothing to do with him? All Jewish and Christian theologians that I know of agree that God either caused or allowed everything to take place. They almost have to say it because if they didn't, they're saying God isn't all-powerful.

The Holocaust, Hurricane Katrina, I don't know who caused them, but God allowed it.We have catastrophes like 9/11, and people immediately run to their church or synagogue, and they pray for the victims to the entity who either caused or allowed this horror to take place. I don't understand that.

Maybe it's because religious people feel they're playing some role in the healing process. They're doing their part. It's partially self-serving.

My view is that Christianity, if it insists, can have its God. But if it has any respect for logic, it's got to redefine who he is. He can't be all good and all-powerful at the same time. The Christians' comeback is that God gives all of us—including Hitler and Stalin—free will. He's not responsible for how we exercise it. God is supposed to be all good.

You were raised Catholic?

Yeah. My first confrontation in the area of God and religion was with this monsignor. He was a gray-haired eminence. He'd come into our class maybe once every two weeks, and he'd talk about God, the all good, the all-powerful, the all knowing. I was maybe nine at the most. I said to him, "Monsignor, if God is allpowerful, all good and all knowing, why does he put people on this Earth he already knows are going to end up in Hell?"

He said, "Well, that's a good question for someone your age, and I have the answer for you. God gives all of us free will. When we come to that fork in the road, it's up to us to decide. He's not responsible for whether we take the road that leads to Heaven or the one that leads to Hell."

I came back with, "Yes, but if you say that he's all knowing, he already knows what direction we're going to go in, so I still can't figure out why he puts people on Earth who he already knows are going to end up in Hell." The monsignor kind of coughed nervously and said, "We'll take it up at a later time."

Can we bait you into discussing the bigger question of whether God exists?

I'm an agnostic. Atheists do not believe in God, and I'm very harsh on atheism. I like to tell people I have someone rather bright on my side. His name is [Albert] Einstein. Einstein was an agnostic. Interestingly enough, [Charles] Darwin was also an agnostic even though most evolutionists are Atheists. I believe that the question of whether or not God exists is an impenetrable mystery beyond human comprehension.

Einstein said, "The problem is too vast for our limited minds." And I just feel the most responsible and reasonable position to take on the issue of God's existence is that of agnosticism. I love Gertrude Stein's great nonliterary articulation. She said: "There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer.That's the answer." And then Clarence Darrow, the great criminal defense attorney in the '30s, said, "I don't purport to know what ignorant men are sure of."

What is your most fervent hope that Divinity of Doubt will accomplish?

I'm always educating people in my books. I lecture to people who are brighter than I am and older than I am. I believe in the Socratic imperative that the truth is more important than anything else. I'm not trying to throw a wrench in anything. I'm just pursuing what I perceive to be the truth. But this book is so revolutionary and stunning that people refuse to accept it. It's extremely powerful. You will never think about God or religion in the same way ever again.

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality

FARTS IN THE WIND from HUSTLER Magazine

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has caused a big stink thanks to accusations that it censored information about global warming in a report about Galveston Bay. This included an article written by the Houston Advanced Research Center's John B. Anderson, a professor of oceanography at Rice University. Anderson says the state agency deleted all references to climate change and sea-level rise. "I don't think these are contentious points—that's the sad part," he told the New York Times. "This is information that needs to be out there for the general public, for schoolteachers when they teach their kids." After a Texas lawmaker voiced concerns about watering down the report "without a valid explanation or alternative," TCEQ spokesman Andy Saenz countered, "Why should we include questionable information we don't agree with?" He failed to mention that the panel's members are appointed by Governor Rick Perry, who derides global warming as "an unproven scientific theory." We agree with Anderson's assessment: "It's all politics."

Equal-Opportunity Poverty

DOWNSIZING THE MIDDLE CLASS IS A RISKY BUSINESS.

by Robert Scheer for HUSTLER Magazine

Poverty is not just for the poor anymore. Ever greater numbers among the 99% being screwed by the top 1%, who control more than 40% of the wealth in this country, should stop pretending to be middle-class and admit that they are on the deep, losing end of America's fierce class struggle.

We used to think poverty was just for urban ghetto folk who looked, talked and acted differently than the rest of us. No more. Poverty has been democratized, and the poor are everywhere. "Funny, you don't look poor" is what you might say to your neighbor in that white suburb who is surviving on food stamps and skipping mortgage payments until eviction. But when it comes to poverty, America is now an equal-opportunity society. Sure, folks don't go around in rags and visibly malnourished.

Thanks to Walmart's steady supply of Chinese sweatshop-produced clothes and our own government's vastly expanded food stamp program, poverty is disguised.

In the past ten years, poverty in suburban America has jumped an astounding 53%, twice its rise in urban centers. For the first time in U.S. history, poverty in the suburbs exceeds that of the cities they surround. While the superrich scurry for safety in their fortress enclaves, suburbs across the country feature boarded-up houses with mortgages that are deeply underwater.

Six months before the appearance of an Occupy Wall Street encampment, Joseph E. Stieglitz wrote an article for Vanity Fair— titled "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%"— that provided the movement with its essential manifesto. In a prescient prediction of the protests to come, the Nobel Prize-winning economist issued a warning to the power elite that tends to read Vanity Fair : "Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1% of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."

What they will regret, if they retain a shred of caution born of common sense, is that despite an economic meltdown caused by bankers run wild and requiring massive taxpayer-financed government intervention to avoid another Great Depression, the financial overlords continued to pay themselves enormous bonuses while ordinary folk went bankrupt. Hiding behind the fig leaf of Adam Smith's freemarket capitalism, they invented gimmicks never before known in the financial world that destroyed the real estate market and turned peoples homes into gambling chips in the Wall Street casino.

Thanks to the Republicans in Congress back in the 1990s and Democratic President Bill Clinton, who became their water boy, the rules of the regulatory road were changed. Swindles called collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps—transactions that would have been judged patently illegal if the Mafia had invented them—were made legal as a matter of federal law. The result was a boom-and-bust cycle that vastly increased the gap between America's superwealthy and the rest of the nation. In the process, the bedrock of the American Dream—an ever better-off middle class— was demolished.

Even during the Clinton years, which many Americans now think of as good times, the class divide in America was growing with a vengeance. As I document in my book The Great American Stickup, the income of the top 1% increased 10.1% per year under Clinton, while it rose only 2.4% for the other 99% of the population. Things got worse under George W. Bush. Even before the banking meltdown of 2007, the top 1% enjoyed an 11% annual rise in income, while the rest received the crumbs—sharing in a 1% increase. With the imminent collapse of their Ponzi scheme, the bankers were saved. In the meantime, their victims were thrown under the bus.

As libertarian Ron Paul, the Republicans' only honest Presidential candidate, put it: "The bailouts came from both parties. Guess who they bailed out? The big corporations, the people who were ripping off the people in the derivatives market.… But who got stuck? The middle class got stuck…they lost their jobs, and they lost their houses. If you had money to give out, you should have given it to the people who were losing their homes, not to the banks."

In his Vanity Fair article, Stieglitz hit the nail on the head: "The top 1% have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99% live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1% eventually do learn. Too late."

—————

Before serving almost 30 years as a Los Angeles Times columnist and editor, Robert Scheer spent the late 1960s as Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. Now editor of TruthDig.com, Scheer has written such hardhitting books as The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America and his latest, The Great American Stick-Up: Greedy Bankers and the Politicians Who Love Them.

How Smart Are Humans?

Scientists tell us that dolphins and porpoises have a complicated language and can actually learn to use an iPad. An octopus can build its own house, birds sing complicated melodies, and parrots can remember as many as a thousand words. Monkeys can be taught sign language, how to drive a car and smoke cigarettes. I'm told that dogs, which possess the intellectual capacity of a three-year-old child, can understand more than 50 words, although from my experience, none of those words include "Don't shit in the house!"

On the other hand, many humans don't believe in global climate change, evolution or that President Barack Obama was born in America. They do, however, believe in astrology, angels, virgin birth, a God with a long white beard (whom they should thank when winning an Emmy) and the ability to cure homosexuality through prayer. My question is this: Just how much smarter are we than our animal cousins? From my point of view we humans have very little to be smug about.

High Treason

HOW OUR COUNTRY WAS BETRAYED BY THREE PRESIDENTS

by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman for HUSTLER Magazine

The not-so-slow death of our nation by betrayal, bankruptcy and despair has not happened by accident. Three treasonous backstabs by Republicans Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan (in cahoots with George H.W. Bush) and George W. Bush have poisoned our body politic and bled us into chaos. The first act of treason came in 1968 as the Vietnam War reached a critical turning point. Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson was desperate for a truce between North and South Vietnam. His Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, was in a tight Presidential race against Richard Nixon. With demonstrators in the streets, Humphrey needed a cease-fire to get himself into the White House.

Johnson had it all but wrapped up. With a combination of gentle and iron-fisted persuasion, he forced the leaders of South Vietnam into an all-but-final agreement with the North. A truce was imminent, and Humphrey's election seemed assured. But at the last minute the South Vietnamese pulled out.

In his 1983 book The Price of Power, Seymour Hersh revealed that Henry Kissinger—then LBJ's adviser on Vietnam peace talks—secretly alerted Nixon's staff that a cease-fire was looming. According to Hersh, Nixon "was able to get a series of messages to the [President Nguyen Van] Thieu government, making it clear that a Nixon presidency would have different [more favorable] views on the peace negotiations," hence South Vietnam's abrupt withdrawal from the Paris peace talks.

Johnson was livid. He even called the Republican Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen, to complain that "they oughtn't be doing this. This is treason." "I know," Dirksen feebly replied.

Johnson blasted Nixon about this on November 3, 1968, just prior to Election Day. As Robert Parry of ConsortiumNews.com has written, "When Johnson confronted Nixon with evidence of the peace-talk sabotage, Nixon insisted on his innocence but acknowledged that he knew what was at stake."

Said Nixon: "I would never do anything to encourage…Saigon not to come to the table. … Good God, we've got to get them to Paris or you can't have peace."

With the war still raging, Nixon claimed a narrow victory over Humphrey. He then named Kissinger as his National Security Advisor.

During Nixon's first term, more than 20,000 U.S. troops died in Vietnam. More than 100,000 were wounded. More than a million Vietnamese were killed. But in 1973, Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the same settlement in 1972 he'd helped sabotage four years earlier.

According to Parry, Johnson wanted to go public in 1968 with Nixon's treason. But Clark Clifford, an architect of the CIA and a pillar of the Washington establishment, dissuaded him. In particular, Clifford told LBJ (in a taped conversation) that "some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I'm wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected. It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country's interests."

In other words, Clifford told LBJ that the country couldn't handle the reality that its President was a certifiable traitor eligible for the death penalty. Fittingly, Clifford's upper-crust career ended in disgrace thanks to his entanglement with the crooked Bank of Credit and Commerce, which financed the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

Tormented by the disastrous war that destroyed his Presidency, Johnson died just four years after leaving the White House. Nixon was reelected in 1972, again with a host of dirty dealings, then became the first U.S. President to resign in disgrace. But along the way, Nixon trained a new generation of dirty tricksters that included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, William Casey and George H.W. Bush.

It was this Bush who engineered a second act of treason that put Ronald Reagan into the Oval Office with him as Vice President. What became known as "the October surprise" began in 1979 when Iranian revolutionaries seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 American hostages, holding them deep into this country's 1980 Presidential campaign. As Election Day neared, incumbent President Jimmy Carter announced he had a deal to bring them home.

Suddenly, however, the deal evaporated. The 52 Americans remained in Iran, and Reagan overcame unfavorable preelection polls to win a landslide victory. "Coincidentally" the hostages were released on January 20, 1981, as Reagan was being sworn in.

Very quickly a wide range of credible sources claimed the GOP had pulled off another game-changing act of treason. Gary Sick, a member of the National Security Council under Presidents Ford and Carter, wrote in the New York Times that the Reagan campaign had illegally interfered with Carter's negotiations to bring the hostages home.

Sick's devastating allegations were confirmed by Abholhassan Bani-Sadr, who was elected president of Iran during the hostage crisis. In his book My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution and Secret Deals With the U.S., Bani-Sadr said ex-CIA Director George H.W. Bush and future CIA Director William Casey conspired with Iranian leaders to sabotage President Carter's attempts to free the hostages.

According to what Bani-Sadr told author Barbara Honegger— a former Reagan-Bush campaign staffer and GOP White House a n a l y s t — t h e Iranians "made a deal with Reagan that the hostages should not be released until after Reagan became President. So then, in return, Reagan would give them arms. We have published documents which show that U.S. arms were shipped, via Israel, in March [1981], about two months after Reagan became President."

Sergei V. Stepashin, a high-ranking Russian official, made the same claims and—according to reporter Robert Parry—released corroborating files to the U.S. Congress documenting the treason. (It was Parry who broke the Iran-Contra story for Newsweek and the AP.)

Arms dealer and CIA contract employee Richard Brenneke testified that he had flown Reagan's campaign director, William Casey, to Paris for a series of secret meetings with the Iranians while Carter was also negotiating with them. Brenneke said Casey did the deal to keep the hostages captive until Reagan was sworn in.

Brenneke's assertions were tested in court when he was found not guilty after being charged with perjury. Jury foreman Mark Kristoff said in an interview, "We were convinced that, yes, there was a meeting, and he [Brenneke] was there, and the other people listed in the indictment were there. … There never was a guilty vote. … It was 100%."

Ari Ben-Menashe, purportedly an Israeli intelligence agent, swore under oath before Congress that he saw Bush in Paris over the weekend of October 18-19, 1980. Ben- Menashe told Congress that Bush and Casey were in a hotel and headed into negotiations with radical Iranian cleric Mehdi Karroubi. Parry points out in his book Trick or Treason that the late Yasser Arafat—head of the Palestine Liberation Organization—disclosed to President Carter that Republicans seeking help in arranging the logistics of the October surprise arms-for-hostages deal had contacted the PLO in 1980. Alexandre de Marenches, former chief of French intelligence, confided to his biographer that the French secret service had aided Casey in meeting with the Iranians in Paris in 1980.

It is legally treasonous for private citizens to interfere with official negotiations between the U.S. government and a foreign power. Thus, Reagan's sabotage of Carter's attempts to bring the embassy hostages home from Tehran—like Nixon's sabotage of LBJ's Vietnam peace talks—clearly qualifies as a capital crime.

George W. Bush threw his hat in the ring of "aiding and abetting the enemy" by illegally outing a covert CIA agent in 2003. The felony came as part of the cover-up of the lies he'd employed to suck America into an illegal war.

In the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush declared he would bring al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to justice. Not long after that, however, Bush all but abandoned the search for Bin Laden. Instead, he told the American public, war was needed to rid Iraq's U.S.-sponsored dictator, Saddam Hussein, of "weapons of mass destruction."

Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. In fact, he was Bin Laden's sworn enemy. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has since confirmed that Bush knew full well Hussein had no such WMDs. In his recent autobiography, Rumsfeld reveals that Bush's real reason for going after the Iraqi dictator was to settle a deep psychological score with his father, George H.W. Bush.

Among other things, the younger Bush ordered Secretary of State Colin Powell to lay out before the United Nations a series of blatant falsehoods meant to win support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. The key lie was a fabricated scenario in which Hussein supposedly tried to obtain uranium for nuclear weapons from an African country. As Bush put it in his infamous 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

That White House lie led to a horrific war that has cost the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis—not to mention a trillion or more U.S. dollars. The lie was accompanied by an impeachable felony—a blatantly illegal betrayal of a CIA agent.

On July 6, 2003—almost six months after Bush's deceitful State of the Union address— former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV wrote a New York Times op-ed refuting Bush's cover story for the Iraq War. In "What I Didn't Find in Africa," Wilson—who had been sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate the supposed British claims—said he had "little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Wilson contradicted Bush's claim that Hussein had obtained yellowcake uranium from Niger to build a radioactive weapon. As Wilson put it, "Selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired." To cover the lie he had told to get the United States into war, Bush decided to discredit and destabilize Wilson—by putting the life of the diplomat's wife, covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, in jeopardy. But as stipulated by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (passed while Bush's father was Vice President), it is a felony to identify an undercover CIA agent.

The law reads in part that "whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent…shall be…imprisoned not more than ten years." George H.W. Bush himself stated that any American revealing such info would be committing treason.

After Wilson's op-ed appeared, senior White House adviser Karl Rove indirectly confirmed for syndicated Washington Post columnist Robert Novak that Plame was a CIA agent. On July 11, Rove did the same for Time magazine's Matthew Cooper, according to the reporter's subsequent grand jury testimony. Cooper had previously confirmed hearing about Plame from Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, but that Libby hadn't mentioned her by name.

In his July 14, 2003, column titled "Mission to Niger," Novak denounced Ambassador Wilson's claim that the Bush Administration was manipulating data to sell an unjust war. Novak wrote: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan denied that Rove was Novak's anonymous source. Following an FBI investigation and a grand jury hearing, Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice, making false statements and two counts of perjury. Neither Libby nor Rove was ever indicted for disclosing Plame's status as a covert CIA agent to Novak. Cheney later publicly excoriated Bush for not protecting Libby. And in 2008 McClellan toured the nation with his tell-all book What Happened , charging that Bush had authorized the unmasking of Plame's identity. McClellan told CNN that Cheney should be forced to testify under oath about the Plame leak.

In his book Daybreak, David Swanson writes that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who prosecuted Libby, had direct evidence—including a handwritten note by Cheney—that both the President and Vice President were involved in the Plame scandal. According to Swanson, Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence "directly interfered with the Special Counsel's ongoing investigation of Plame's 'outing' and therefore constituted obstruction of justice."

In all, George W. Bush lied to America and the world about weapons of mass destruction he knew were nonexistent. He then feloniously outed a CIA agent, putting her life and the lives of other intelligence agents at risk, an impeachable crime. Next, he abused his Presidential power by covering it all up, another impeachable offense.

Does this constitute treason? If it doesn't, what does?

Despite knowing about Richard M. Nixon's 1968 act of treason, Lyndon B. Johnson chose to remain silent. Although the realities of 1980's October surprise have been widely published, Jimmy Carter has said nothing, and Bill Clinton took no action while he was President. Now Barack Obama has refused to prosecute George W. Bush and his henchmen Cheney and Rove for Plamegate and their treasonous crimes in Iraq. Through it all the United States has been transformed from the world's most prosperous country to the most debt-ridden. From a nation built on hopeful democratic ideals to one dominated by large corporations that care about nothing but power and profit.

What it will take to reverse the damage remains to be seen—if indeed it's even possible. But a good start would be to charge those who committed the acts of treason that made this nightmare happen.

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Ohio-based investigative reporters Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, who write columns for FreePress.org, have coauthored a number of books on the George W. Bush era and election theft. For more, visit Fitrakis.org and HarveyWasserman.com.

REMEMBER WHO CREATED THIS MESS!

AMERICA DESPERATELY NEEDS A NEW DEAL FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, BUT DON'T ROLL OUT THE RED CARPET FOR ANOTHER REPUBLICAN.

by Robert Scheer for HUSTLER Magazine

The "lost decade" is the way Harvard economics professor Lawrence Katz refers to the ten-year downslide of the U.S. economy since the election of Republican George W. Bush in November 2000. The road to ruin was paved by Bush, who impoverished the nation by waging two unnecessary trillion dollar wars while cutting taxes for the superrich. Yet, despite the fact that the Republicans created the mess, an all-too-easily-fooled public seems destined to put another one back in the White House.

The worst that can be said about President Barack Obama is that his response to the deep financial crisis he inherited from Bush was to continue the GOP strategy of throwing money at the banks instead of letting them go bankrupt. The banks were saved, but it was their victims—the suckers swindled into phony mortgages—who went bankrupt.

When Obama attempted to help ordinary folks with a relatively small stimulus check and save jobs in the automobile industry, before the last one of them went abroad, the Republicans and their allies among the Wall Street lobbyists branded him a socialist. Instead, we got socialism for the superrich when the Republicans seized control of the House of Representatives and prevented any further help for the foreclosed and unemployed.

The result of Republican power from the time of Bush has allowed 1% percent of the population to control 40% of this country's wealth. In the past decade of greed run wild, the income of that 1% rose 18%, while that of the middle class declined. The total worth of the average American has been cut in half thanks to the banking/housing meltdown; an all-time-record 46.2 million people—including 22% of America's children—are living below the government's official poverty level ($22,350 for a family of four); and good jobs are going, going, gone.

"This is truly a lost decade," Professor Katz told the New York Times. "We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we're looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s."

Nor will it get better in the foreseeable future. The Federal Reserve estimates that the housing crisis that is at the root of the meltdown will go unabated for years to come. With 50 million Americans losing their homes, you can't expect consumer confidence—now at record lows—to be restored; and since those consumers account for 70% of economic activity, forget the job situation improving anytime soon.

Yet dumb and dumber American voters look set to restore full power to the Republicans, who favor welfare for the superrich and Big Business. What voters can't seem to grasp is that the days are over when the average Joe could legitimately hook his future to the prosperity of large corporations.

Those companies are called multinational for a reason: The bulk of their profits are sheltered abroad. Take GE, that old American-as-apple-pie company that had Ronald Reagan as a shill before Big Business needed him to run for President in 1980. Now two-thirds of GE's workforce is abroad, along with 82% of the company's profits. In addition, GE has paid no U.S. taxes for the past three years.

The multinational corporations are awash in cash, sitting on at least $2 trillion in funds they refuse to invest in creating jobs. Meanwhile, the big banks that were bailed out by the Federal Reserve—which took trillions of dollars of toxic mortgages off their books—refuse to make loans to deserving small businesses and creditable would-be home buyers.

The investments the multinational corporations do make are abroad, where they send the good-paying jobs that once were the basis of America's economic leadership of the world. In September, Citigroup—the bankrupted banking giant bailed out by the American taxpayers—held its board of directors meeting, not in Chicago or Los Angeles, but in Singapore. Apparently, Citigroup chose that location because 30% of its profits are now derived from the Asian market, where the bank expanded using U.S. taxpayer dollars.

As the Wall Street Journal reported, "Citi's business in Asia will likely help it as the West slows down." But the West that they are ignoring, in case you didn't happen to notice, is where the U.S. taxpayers who bailed out the bank happen to live and try to find work. Citigroup and other financial institutions were made whole by Republican-inspired bailouts, but fully 25 million Americans who are looking can't find full-time work.

The only Republican candidate who can make any kind of claim to a record of job creation is Texas Governor Rick Perry. But when you realize that Texas leads the nation in the number of workers earning the minimum wage or less, you learn all you need to know about the GOP's view of job creation. Republican politicians always make it a point to pin a little American flag on their jacket lapel, but they are false patriots conspiring to ship the American Dream abroad.

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Before serving almost 30 years as a Los Angeles Times columnist and editor, Robert Scheer spent the late 1960s as Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. Now editor of TruthDig.com, Scheer has written such hard-hitting books as The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America and his latest, The Great American Stick-Up: Greedy Bankers and the Politicians Who Love Them.