MSNBC CENSORS SANDERS CONDEMNING TPP

Kit Daniels | Infowars - FEBRUARY 23, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: GAGE SKIDMORE / FLICKR.

MSNBC cut away from live coverage of a Bernie Sanders press conference once he began to condemn the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Social media exploded as a result as viewers felt the break in Monday’s coverage was due to MSNBC’s owner, Comcast, not wanting to air criticism of the TPP because it benefits greatly from the treaty.

Scroll to the 1:40 mark.

“Of the near $16 million Comcast spent lobbying politicians in 2015, $40,000 alone was spent in the first three months of the year targeting the Senate and House of Representatives on issues relating to TPP,” RTreported. “Over an 18-month period between 2013 and 2015, Media Matters found that MSNBC only discussed TPP twice, with the exception of Ed Schultz, who discussed the agreement during 71 broadcasts while he was still hosting The Ed Show for MSNBC.”

Schultz later left MSNBC for RT America.

MSNBC isn’t alone in suppressing TPP coverage; CBS, ABC and NBC also barely mentioned the treaty over an 18-month period despite the TPP’s severe implications on both the U.S. economy and global human trafficking.

For one thing, not long after the White House invited Thailand to join the TPP, the AP reported the country was relying on slave labor to ship shrimp to the U.S.

“For… 16 hours, No. 31 and his wife stood in the factory that owned them with their aching hands in ice water,” the AP revealed. “They ripped the guts, heads, tails and shells off shrimp bound for overseas markets, including grocery stores and all-you-can-eat buffets across the United States.”

“After being sold to the Gig Peeling Factory, they were at the mercy of their Thai bosses, trapped with nearly 100 other Burmese migrants.”

It’s unlikely Thailand’s billion-dollar slave industry would prevent it from joining the TPP considering that President Obama previously removed an anti-slavery provision from the treaty and also allowed Vietnam to join the partnership despite its flourishing slave trade.

Interestingly, Obama quietly removed the TPP’s anti-slavery clause at the same time he was attacking the Confederate flag as a “symbol of slavery” last summer.

Scalia Found Dead With Pillow Over His Face

My San Antonio | By John MacCormack | February 15, 2016

MARFA — A first-time guest to the Cibolo Creek Creek Ranch, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was animated and engaged during dinner Friday night, as one of three dozen invitees to an event that had nothing to do with law or politics, according to the ranch owner.

Just hours later, he would be found dead of apparent natural causes, which media outlets were reporting Sunday was a heart attack.

"He was seated near me and I had a chance to observe him. He was very entertaining. But about 9 p.m. he said, 'it's been a long day and a long week, I want to get some sleep," recalled Houston businessman John Poindexter, who owns the 30,000-acre luxury ranch.

When Poindexter tried to awaken Scalia about 8:30 the next morning, the judge's door was locked and he did not answer. Three hours later, Poindexter returned after an outing, with a friend of Scalia who had come from Washington with him.

"We discovered the judge in bed, a pillow over his head. His bed clothes were unwrinkled," said Poindexter.

"He was lying very restfully. It looked like he had not quite awakened from a nap," he said.
Scalia,79, did not have a pulse and his body was cold, and after consulting with a doctor at a hospital in Alpine, Poindexter concluded resuscitation would have been futile, He then contacted federal authorities, at first encountering a series of answering services because he was calling on a weekend.

"Ultimately they became available and handled it t superbly. They flew in by helicopter. They told me to secure the ranch, which I did until this morning," he said.

Scalia was just the latest newsworthy guest to visit the celebrity hideaway that covers 30,000 acres near the Chinati Mountains. Mick Jagger, Julia Roberts and Tommy Lee Jones have also partaken of its scenic vistas and luxury accomodations.

Established in 1857 by Milton Faver, known as the first Texas cattle baron west of the Pecos, the ranch retains 19th Century constructions, including "El Fortin de Cibolo," a primitive fort designed to protect settlers from Apaches.

In a special guest package offered last month, rooms went for $545 to $565 a night for two people, with a meal package and ranch tour included. Other activities include hiking, horseback riding, bird-watching and ATV tours.

Scalia, who was scheduled to return to Washington on Sunday, had little time to avail himself of the ranch's offerings. Poindexter said he had only met Scalia once before briefly, in Washington. Scalia came to the ranch because he was friends another guest.
Poindexter said he knew the other guests.

"All the guests were friends of mine, I paid for all of them. There were no politics, no jurisprudence in the slightest," he said.

"This was strictly a group of friends that the judge decided to join. He was coming with his son who had to drop out for reasons I don't' know.

"It was an honor to have him. He was widely admired. There were no speeches. He wasn't asked any hard questions, it was all about the outdoors and Texas, and what it's like to being a Supreme Court Justice," he said.

Scalia's personal financial disclosures show no previous trips to the ranch. The disclosures, posted on OpenSecrets.Org show that the justice made several trips to Texas since 2005 to speak at colleges and universities, including St. Mary's University in 2008.

Poindexter, 71, said Scalia's sudden death was both a "personal tragedy" for those at the ranch, and for the nation.

"All of us here saw him as a stalwart defender of our way of life in Texas, in a real sense," he said.
"It's a great loss. Having made that statement, if it was his time to go, he was surrounded by friends, in fairly nice setting, with a full tummy too. He said he was very happy to be invited so it could have been in worse circumstances," he said.

"It's caused all of us here to stop and think about life, how precious it is, and how it is so unexpectedly lost," he added.

The body of the Supreme Court justice was moved to an El Paso funeral home early Sunday.
The body was driven from Marfa and arrived around 2:30 a.m. at Sunset Funeral Homes, according to spokesman Chris Lujan.

Lujan said the funeral home was chosen by family of the justice, and at the advice of a family friend.

The El Paso County medical examiner's office said they hadn't received any information regarding the possibility of performing an autopsy.

Staff Writer David Saleh Rauf contributed to this report

NYPD TRACKED CITIZENS’ CELLPHONES 1,000 TIMES SINCE 2008 WITHOUT WARRANTS

Ciara McCarthy | The Guardian - FEBRUARY 11, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: FLICKR, 49770271@N08.

New York City police have tracked citizens’ cellphones over 1,000 times since 2008 without using warrants, according to public records obtained by the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The organization announced on Thursday that the NYPD has typically used “stingrays” after obtaining lower-level court orders, but not warrants, before using the devices. The department also does not have a policy guiding how police can use the controversial devices. This is the first time that the scope of stingray use by the nation’s largest police agency has been confirmed.

The devices, generically known as stingrays, work by mimicking cell towers and tracking a cellphone’s location at a specific time. Law enforcement agencies can use the technology to track people’s movements through their cellphone use. Stingrays can also detect the phone numbers that a person has been communicating with, according to the NYCLU. The devices allow law enforcement to bypass cellphone carriers, who have provided information to police in the past, and can track data about bystanders in close proximity to the intended target.

Mariko Hirose, the NYCLU attorney who filed the records request, said the records reveal knowledge about NYPD’s stingray use that should have been divulged before police decided to start using them.

Read more

Reporter Took Orders from Hillary Clinton’s Staff, Down to Specific Adjective

Breitbart | by JOHN SEXTON | 9 Feb 2016

AP PHOTO

A newly revealed email exchange shows a reporter for a major political magazine agreeing to use the exact word suggested by a member of Hillary’s staff to write positive coverage of her speech.

The email exchange between the Atlantic‘s Marc Ambinder and Hillary Clinton’s aide at the State Department, Philippe Reines, took place in 2009. It was published Tuesday byGawker.

Ambinder wrote to Reines asking for an advance copy of a speech Hillary was set to deliver to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Reines replied that he would make the speech available on three conditions:

1) You in your own voice describe them as “muscular” 

2) You note that a look at the CFR seating plan shows that all the envoys — from Holbrooke to Mitchell to Ross — will be arrayed in front of her, which in your own clever way you can say certainly not a coincidence and meant to convey something 

3) You don’t say you were blackmailed!

Ambinder immediately responded, “got it.” As promised, Ambinder wrote coverage of the CFR speech which opened:

When you think of President Obama’s foreign policy, think of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That’s the message behind a muscular speech that Clinton is set to deliver today to the Council on Foreign Relations. The staging gives a clue to its purpose: seated in front of Clinton, subordinate to Clinton, in the first row, will be three potentially rival power centers: envoys Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell, and National Security Council senior director Rep. Dennis Ross.

Asked about having Hillary’s PR people write his columns, Ambinder now claims he does not remember the exchange and adds that he is not interested in defending it. “It made me uncomfortable then, and it makes me uncomfortable today,” he tells Gawker.

The Atlantic is not the only news site which covered Clinton’s CFR speech exactly as her staff wanted it covered. In an amazing coincidence, Mike Allen of Politico wrote about the speech in a piece that opened, “In a muscular first major address as secretary of state….” And midway through the story Allen writes, “A look at the CFR’s guest seating chart shows that arrayed in the front row will be top members of her team — the envoys she has called her “force multipliers”: Richard Holbrooke, George Mitchell, Dennis Ross, Philip Goldberg and Stephen Bosworth.”

Similarly, the New York Times’ Mark Landler seemed to be working from the same script. In his second paragraph he writes, “But with its muscular tone and sweeping scope, it was also an effort to recapture the limelight….” And in his fourth paragraph, he mentions the attendees, “She even marshaled a cheering section of special envoys and other senior American diplomats in the first few rows at the Council on Foreign Relations.” Neither of these details appeared in the Associated Press story about the speech which the New York Times linked.

There’s no proof that Allen or the Landler spoke with Reines or anyone else working for Clinton before filing their stories, but the details are remarkably similar. And, in the case of Politico‘s Mike Allen, other emails show he has willing to offer a guaranteed “no risk” interview of Chelsea Clinton, seemingly as a way to ingratiate himself with Hillary Clinton.

Government Employees Spent Almost $1 Million in Taxpayer Money at Casinos

Daily Signal - FEBRUARY 9, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: WIKI COMMONS.

The federal government is no stranger to waste—some examples are egregious. From July 2013 through June 2014, over 4,000 transactions, worth just short of $1 million, were conducted at casinos using the Department of Defense’s government travel cards.

Furthermore, nine hundred transactions, totaling $96,576, were made at “adult entertainment establishments.” As of May, 2015, only 41 percent of such actions went punished, with possible punishments including a “letter of reprimand.”

Originally adopted in 1998, the Travel and Transportation Reform Act sought to simplify the process of paying for the travel of federal employees by mandating usage of travel cards. These credit cards, managed by individual government agencies, have repeatedly proven to be a primary source of bureaucratic fraud against the American taxpayer.

Five short years after travel card implementation, reports of widespread misuse began to surface. Examples include unauthorized first-class trips to Hawaii funded by the Department of State and tens of thousands of dollars in “training” at golf and tennis resorts using funds meant to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina.

According to the Project on Government Oversight, a non-profit and non-partisan organization intent on exposing government misconduct, over $600,000 in funding allocated to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts was “considered unauthorized, lost, or stolen” through the abuse of government purchase cards.

Furthermore, the Internal Revenue Service has also reported instances of their government-issued credit cards being used to purchase everything from diet pills to alcohol and pornography.

Congress attempted to reform the clearly broken system in 2012, with the Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act of 2012, but this did little to actually quell such abuses. This legislation attempted to integrate control measures such as preventing double-reimbursement, requiring semi-annual reports and annual audits, and instituting outlined penalties for violating parties.

Unfortunately, it proved ineffective. The act’s policies did not implement systems capable of catching all (or even a majority of) fraud and were oftentimes poorly enforced.

These failures became apparent almost immediately after the act’s implementation. A recent report by the Department of Defense painted a fuller picture of particularly egregious abuse.

A second attempt at reform is currently underway.

In December, the Senate passed a bill with bipartisan support mandating the establishment of an Office of Federal Charge Card Analytics and Review. Intent on providing both analytical tools and human-driven oversight, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., has called the bill “commonsense legislation.”

This abuse also raises the larger question of overall fiscal responsibility. With our nation’s debt at an all-time high, repeated abuse of taxpayer dollars demonstrates that agency budgets are not as lean as they could (and should) be.

Congress should not shy away from enforcing the discretionary cap reductions imposed by sequestration to reduce federal agency budgets. One blunt tool to encourage better internal controls by agencies of their travel cards is to increase the motivation of bureaucrats to better monitor how dollars are spent by tightening their budgets.

Taxpayers who’ve had to tighten their belts deserve no less from their government.