Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

Balance of Power and Peace Determined Tuesday

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Israel’s next 22 months

By Caroline Glick

The next 22 months until President Barack Obama leaves office promise to be the most challenging period in the history of US-Israel relations.


Now unfettered by electoral concerns, over the past week Obama exposed his ill-intentions toward Israel in two different ways.
First, the Justice Department leaked its intention to indict Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez on corruption charges. Menendez is the ranking Democratic member, and the former chairman, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is also the most outspoken Democratic critic of Obama’s policy of appeasing the Iranian regime.
As former US federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote this week at PJMedia, “It is perfectly reasonable to believe that Menendez may be guilty of corruption offenses and that his political opposition on Iran is factoring into the administration’s decision to charge him. Put it another way, if Menendez were running interference for Obama on the Iran deal, rather than trying to scupper it, I believe he would not be charged.”
The Menendez prosecution tells us that Obama wishes to leave office after having vastly diminished support for Israel among Democrats. And he will not hesitate to use strong-arm tactics against his fellow Democrats to achieve his goal.


We already experienced Obama’s efforts in this sphere in the lead-up to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the joint houses of Congress on March 3 with his campaign to pressure Democratic lawmakers to boycott Netanyahu’s address.
Now, with his move against Menendez, Obama made clear that support for Israel – even in the form of opposition to the nuclear armament of Iran – will be personally and politically costly for Democrats.
The long-term implications of Obama’s moves to transform US support for Israel into a partisan issue cannot by wished away. It is possible that his successor as the head of the Democratic Party will hold a more sympathetic view of Israel. But it is also possible that the architecture of Democratic fund-raising and grassroots support that Obama has been building for the past six years will survive his presidency and that as a consequence, Democrats will have incentives to oppose Israel.
The reason Obama is so keen to transform Israel into a partisan issue was made clear by the second move he made last week.
Last Thursday, US National Security Adviser Susan Rice announced that the NSC’s Middle East Coordinator Phil Gordon was stepping down and being replaced by serial Israel-basher Robert Malley.
Malley, who served as an NSC junior staffer during the Clinton administration, rose to prominence in late 2000 when, following the failed Camp David peace summit in July 2000 and the outbreak of the Palestinian terror war, Malley co-authored an op-ed in The New York Times blaming Israel and then-prime minister Ehud Barak for the failure of the negotiations.
What was most remarkable at the time about Malley’s positions was that they completely contradicted Bill Clinton’s expressed views. Clinton placed the blame for the failure of the talks squarely on then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s shoulders.
Not only did Arafat reject Barak’s unprecedented offer of Palestinian statehood and sovereignty over all of Gaza, most of Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem including the Temple Mount, he refused to make a counter-offer. And then two months later, he opened the Palestinian terror war.
As Jonathan Tobin explained in Commentary this week, through his writings and public statements, Malley has legitimized Palestinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist. Malley thinks it is perfectly reasonable that the Palestinians refuse to concede their demand for free immigration of millions of foreign Arabs to the Jewish state in the framework of their concocted “right of return,” even though the clear goal of that demand is to destroy Israel. As Tobin noted, Malley believes that Palestinian terrorism against Israel is “understandable if not necessarily commendable.”
During Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, then-senator Obama listed Malley as a member of his foreign policy team. When pro-Israel groups criticized his appointment, Obama fired Malley.
But after his 2012 reelection, no longer fearing the ramifications of embracing an openly anti-Israel adviser, one who had documented contacts with Hamas terrorists and has expressed support for recognizing the terror group, Obama appointed Malley to serve as his senior adviser for Iraq-Iran-Syria and the Gulf states. Still facing the 2014 congressional elections, Obama pledged that Malley would have no involvement in issues related to Israel and the Palestinians. But then last week, he appointed him to direct the NSC’s policy in relation to the entire Middle East, including Israel.
The deeper significance of Malley’s appointment is that it demonstrates that Obama’s goal in his remaining time in office is to realign US Middle East policy away from Israel. With his Middle East policy led by a man who thinks the Palestinian goal of destroying Israel is legitimate, Obama can be expected to expand his practice of placing all the blame for the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians solely on Israel’s shoulders.
Malley’s appointment indicates that there is nothing Israel can do to stem the tsunami of American pressure it is about to suffer. Electing a left-wing government to replace Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will make no difference.
Just as Malley was willing to blame Barak – a leader who went to Camp David as the head of a minority coalition, whose positions on territorial withdrawals were rejected by a wide majority of Israelis – for the absence of peace, so we can assume that he, and his boss, will blame Israel for the absence of peace over the next 22 months, regardless of who stands at the head of the next government.
In this vein we can expect the administration to expand the anti-Israel positions it has already taken.
The US position paper regarding Israeli-Palestinian negotiation that was leaked this past week to Yediot Aharonot made clear the direction Obama wishes to go. That document called for Israel to withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines, with minor revisions.
In the coming 22 months we can expect the US to use more and more coercive measures to force Israel to capitulate to its position.
The day the administration-sponsored talks began in July 2013, the EU announced it was barring its member nations from having ties with Israeli entities that operate beyond the 1949 armistice lines unless those operations involve assisting the Palestinians in their anti-Israel activities. The notion that the EU initiated an economic war against Israel the day the talks began without coordinating the move with the Obama administration is, of course, absurd.
We can expect the US to make expanded use of European economic warfare against Israel in the coming years, and to continue to give a backwind to the anti-Semitic BDS movement by escalating its libelous rhetoric conflating Israel with the apartheid regime in South Africa.
US-Israel intelligence and defense ties will also be on the chopping block.
While Obama and his advisers consistently boast that defense and intelligence ties between Israel and the US have grown during his presidency, over the past several years, those ties have suffered blow after blow. During the war with Hamas last summer, acting on direct orders from the White House, the Pentagon instituted a partial – unofficial – embargo on weapons to Israel.
As for intelligence ties, over the past month, the administration announced repeatedly that it is ending its intelligence sharing with Israel on Iran.
The Hillary Clinton email scandal has revealed that during her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton transferred top secret information regarding Israel’s operations against Iran to the New York Times. We also learned that the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is being fingered as the source of the leak regarding the Stuxnet computer virus that Israel and the US reportedly developed jointly to cripple Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.
In other words, since taking office, Obama has used the US’s intelligence ties with Israel to harm Israel’s national security on at least two occasions.
He has also used diplomacy to harm Israel. Last summer, Obama sought a diplomatic settlement of Hamas’s war with Israel that would have granted Hamas all of its war goals, including its demand for open borders and access to the international financial system.
Now of course, he is running roughshod over his bipartisan opposition, and the opposition of Israel and the Sunni Arab states, in the hopes of concluding a nuclear deal with Iran that will pave the way for the ayatollahs to develop nuclear weapons and expand their hegemonic control over the Middle East.
AMID ALL of this, and facing 22 months of ever more hostility as Obama pursues his goal of ending the US-Israel alliance, Israelis are called on to elect a new government.
This week the consortium of former security brass that has banded together to elect a leftist government led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni accused Netanyahu of destroying Israel’s relations with the US. The implication was that a government led by Herzog and Livni will restore Israel’s ties to America.
Yet as Obama has made clear both throughout his tenure in office, and, over the past week through Malley’s appointment and Menendez’s indictment, Obama holds sole responsibility for the deterioration of our ties with our primary ally. And as his actions have also made clear, Herzog and Livni at the helm will receive no respite in US pressure. Their willingness to make concessions to the Palestinians that Netanyahu refuses to make will merely cause Obama to move the goalposts further down the field. Given his goal of abandoning the US alliance with Israel, no concession that Israel will deliver will suffice.
And so we need to ask ourselves, which leader will do a better job of limiting the danger and waiting Obama out while maintaining sufficient overall US support for Israel to rebuild the alliance after Obama has left the White House.
The answer, it seems, is self-evident.
The Left’s campaign to blame Netanyahu for Obama’s hostility will make it all but impossible for a Herzog-Livni government to withstand US pressure that they say will disappear the moment Netanyahu leaves office.
In contrast, as the US position paper leaked to Yediot indicated, Netanyahu has demonstrated great skill in parrying US pressure. He agreed to hold negotiations based on a US position that he rejected and went along with the talks for nine months until the Palestinians ended them. In so doing, he achieved a nine-month respite in open US pressure while exposing Palestinian radicalism and opposition to peaceful coexistence.
On the Iranian front, Netanyahu’s courageous speech before Congress last week energized Obama’s opponents to take action and forced Obama onto the defensive for the first time while expanding popular support for Israel.
It is clear that things will only get more difficult in the months ahead. But given the stakes, the choice of Israeli voters next Tuesday is an easy one.

UN Facts on Syrian Crisis

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Syria is entering the 5th year of a civil war. Repeat 5 years and still no proactive solution to remove Bashir al Assad much less to address epic refugees no longer in the country. The crisis in Syria is fully owned by Barack Obama walking away from his Red Line, deferring the solutions to Iran and Russia. So, when it comes to the United Nations and their intelligence on Syria which is correct, no member country seems to care.

Here is a factual symptom of the problem.

Turkey seizes cargo ship carrying hundreds of Syrian refugees

(Reuters) – Turkish coastguards found more than 300 refugees, mostly Syrians, when they seized a cargo ship they had opened fired on for failing obey an order to stop off Turkey’s western coast, the regional governor said on Friday.

Refugee trafficking in the seas around Turkey is a major problem. Turkey itself has kept its borders open to refugees since the start of Syria’s civil war four years ago, and around 2 million people have fled across the frontier.

Police arrested three crew and found the 337 immigrants after seizing the 59-meter-long vessel late on Thursday as it passed through the Dardanelles strait.

The passengers were taken to a nearby sports hall for questioning and health checks, the local governor’s office said.

Canakkale Governor Ahmet Cinar told reporters the coastguards were only able to stop the ship by opening fire on the engine room and locking the rudder.

Nobody was injured during the operation and the ship was docked at the Gelibolu port, Turkish media said.

***

What does the United Nations report on Syria? Of particular note, many countries have the same conditions including Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico. This is proving failed policy by the U.S. State Department, the White House National Security Council as well as other allied nations.

GENEVA, March 12 (UNHCR) – As the Syrian conflict enters its fifth year, the UN refugee agency warned on Thursday that millions of refugees in neighbouring countries and those displaced within the country are caught in deteriorating conditions, facing an even bleaker future without more international support.

“With no political solution to the conflict in sight, most of the 3.9 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt see no prospect of returning home in the near future, and have scant opportunity to restart their lives in exile,” a UNHCR statement released in Geneva said.

It added that well over half of all Syrian refugees in Lebanon live in insecure dwellings – up from a third last year – posing a constant challenge to keep them safe and warm. A survey of 40,000 Syrian families in Jordan’s urban areas found that two-thirds were living below the absolute poverty line.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres reiterated that much, much more needed to be done to pull Syrians out of their nightmare of suffering. “After years in exile, refugees’ savings are long depleted and growing numbers are resorting to begging, survival sex and child labour. Middle-class families with children are barely surviving on the streets: one father said life as a refugee was like being stuck in quicksand – every time you move, you sink down further,” he said.

“This worst humanitarian crisis of our era should be galvanizing a global outcry of support, but instead help is dwindling. With humanitarian appeals systematically underfunded, there just isn’t enough aid to meet the colossal needs – nor enough development support to the hosting countries creaking under the strain of so many refugees,” Guterres added.

The High Commissioner pointed out that with the massive influx of Syrian refugees over the past four years, Turkey had now become the world’s biggest refugee hosting country and had spent more than US$6 billion on direct assistance to refugees.

But faced with growing security concerns and insufficient international support, several of Syria’s neighbours have taken measures in recent months to stem the flow of refugees, from new border management regulations to more onerous and complex requirements to extend their stay.

“More and more Syrians are losing hope. Thousands have tried to reach Europe by taking often deadly land or sea routes after paying their life savings to smugglers. Many have not made it. Those who do, face rising hostility as refugees are conflated with security concerns in a climate of rising panic,” the UNHCR statement said.

High Commissioner Guterres said that “refugees are made scapegoats for any number of problems from terrorism to economic hardship and perceived threats to their host communities’ way of life. But we need to remember that the primary threat is not from refugees, but to them.”

Inside Syria, the situation is deteriorating rapidly. More than 12 million people are in need of aid to stay alive. Almost 8 million have been forced from their homes, sharing crowded rooms with other families or camping in abandoned buildings. An estimated 4.8 million Syrians inside the country are in places that are hard to reach, including 212,000 trapped in besieged areas.

Millions of children are suffering from trauma and ill health. A quarter of Syria’s schools have been damaged, destroyed or taken over for shelter. More than half of Syria’s hospitals are destroyed.

More than 2.4 million children inside Syria are not in school. Among refugees, nearly half of all children are not receiving an education in exile. In Lebanon, there are more school-age refugees than the entire intake of the country’s public schools, and only 20 per cent of Syrian children are enrolled. Similar numbers can be seen among refugees living outside of camps in Turkey and Jordan.

“We have only a narrow opportunity to intervene now as this potentially lost generation confronts its future. Abandoning refugees to hopelessness only exposes them to even greater suffering, exploitation and dangerous abuse,” Guterres warned.

There are more Syrians under UNHCR’s care today than any other nationality on earth. Yet by the end of last year, only 54 per cent of the funding needed to assist refugees outside Syria had been raised. Inside Syria, humanitarian organizations received even less.

In December, the UN launched the largest aid appeal ever for $8.4 billion. Fully funded, this would cover basic needs for refugees, while also helping host communities to bolster their infrastructure and services. UNHCR is hoping significant pledges will be made at a funding conference in Kuwait on March 31.

“Further abandoning host countries to manage the situation on their own could result in serious regional destabilisation, increasing the likelihood of more security concerns elsewhere in the world,” Guterres stressed.

Immigration Scams, Tourism and Colleges

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The numbers are staggering when it comes to fraudulent scams as they relate to immigration. We cant begin to know all of them, but it should challenge our imagination and then we must begin to ask questions calling for more research. Here are but two symptoms of problems that rarely hit media radar.

What is more chilling is members of Congress are well aware of the two conditions below as is the Governor of California. Since the White House learns about issues and situations in the news. perhaps help out by sharing this post with the Obama team as it seems the full news media cant seem to report it.

Children born in the US automatically qualify for citizenship, one of the reasons behind the popularity of ‘maternity tourism’

Row over US-born immigrant children heats up
Federal agents in California have raided more than a dozen hotels that cater to pregnant foreigners who want their children to be born US citizens.

The “birth tourism” hotels hosted mainly Chinese women who paid between $15,000 (£9,756) to $50,000 for the services.

The raids focused on hotels suspected of engaging in visa fraud.

Court records said companies would coach women to falsify records and claims for their visa screening.

Birth tourism is not always illegal and many agencies openly advertise their services as “birthing centres”.

The raids represent a rare federal crackdown against the widespread practice of foreign nationals giving birth in the US.

Undercover operation

It is estimated that 40,000 of 300,000 children born to foreign citizens in the US each year are the product of birth tourism, according to figures quoted in court documents filed to obtain search warrants for the schemes.

In one of the investigations into an Irvine “birthing centre”, an undercover agent posed as a pregnant mother.

She was helped to provide false proof of income and a college diploma, told to enter through popular US destinations like Hawaii or Las Vegas and make reservations with hotels and tours.

A China-based “trainer” assigned to help put together the visa application asked for full-length frontal and side photo of the undercover agent’s belly to see how visible her pregnancy was, according to agents.

Agents were also concerned that the schemes defrauded hospitals. Even though the women were paying birth tourism operators between $15,000 and $50,000 for their service, they paid local hospitals nothing or a reduced sum for uninsured, low-income patients, according to the affidavit.

No arrests were expected on Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles Times, but authorities said investigators would be seizing evidence and interviewing the mothers to build a criminal case against scheme operators.

*** Going Further:

Businesses engaged in maternity tourism, also known as “birth tourism,” are believed to have been operating for several years, relying on websites, newspaper advertising and social media to promote their services, immigration officials said.

Based on the results of previous investigations, the women who subscribe apparently pay cash for pre-natal medical treatment and actual delivery of their babies.

As part of the package, clients were promised they would receive Social Security numbers and U.S. passports for their infants – documentation the mothers would take with them when they returned to their home countries, ICE said.

Once the children, who by birth are U.S. citizens, reach adulthood they can apply for visas for family members living abroad.

More expensive packages “include recreational activities, such as visits to Disneyland, shopping malls and even an outing to a firing range,” the ICE statement said.

The practices came to public attention in California in recent years when residents of some Los Angeles-area communities complained about what they said were maternity hotels springing up in their neighborhoods, causing sanitation and other issues.

Ah, but hold on there is more.
Federal Agents Raid Suspected Fake Schools
Foreigners on U.S. student visas allegedly paid millions but didn’t take classes
LOS ANGELES—Amid a widening crackdown on immigration fraud, federal agents on Wednesday raided a network of schools alleged to be part of a scheme to collect millions of dollars from foreigners who came to the U.S. on student visas but never studied.

Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations arrested three individuals who ran four schools in the Los Angeles area alleged to serve as a front for the purported scheme.

Hee Sun Shim, 51 years old, was arrested at his Beverly Hills home, and his alleged associates, Hyung Chan Moon and Eun Young Choi, were arrested in their offices near downtown Los Angeles.

They were taken into custody and charged in Los Angeles federal court with conspiracy to commit visa fraud, money laundering and of other immigration offenses, U.S. authorities said. They weren’t immediately available for comment and their attorneys weren’t known.

Wednesday’s action was the latest in a series targeting visa fraud nationwide.

“It’s a priority for us,” said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge of HSI in Los Angeles. “It is something that can be exploited by types who want to do harm to the country.”

He added that authorities haven’t seen any evidence in this case that suspected terrorists used the alleged scheme to enter the country.

The main school in the alleged scam is Prodee University, located in Los Angeles’s Koreatown neighborhood. It is affiliated with three other schools: Walter Jay M.D. Institute and American College of Forensic Studies in Los Angeles and Likie Fashion and Technology College in nearby Alhambra.

Catering primarily to Korean and Chinese nationals, the schools enrolled 1,500 students, the government said, most of whom live outside of Los Angeles, including in Texas, Nevada and Hawaii. They generated as much as $6 million a year in purported tuition payments, authorities said.

Sham colleges across the U.S. are believed to attract thousands of foreigners who pay fees, some of them with the promise of an education they don’t receive and others with assurance that no classes need be taken.

“It’s never clear to what extent the students are victimized or are in on the scheme,” said Barmak Nassirian, policy analysis director at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

The crackdown comes at a time when U.S. colleges and universities are attracting a record number of foreign students—about one million currently.

The spate of student-visa scams has prompted some lawmakers to call for better government monitoring of both schools and students. In recent years, authorities have raided schools in Virginia, New Jersey and California, the state considered the center of the illicit activity.

A 2012 Government Accountability Office report concluded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was failing in its mission to detect fraud by school operators.

The agency last year began deploying field representatives to foster compliance with regulations; a compliance unit makes surprise visits to schools and a new risk-assessment tool helps identify suspicious activity at schools. ICE also says it has enhanced electronic record keeping of students.

“We have been working to fix vulnerabilities,” said Rachel Canty, deputy director of ICE’s Student Exchange and Visitor program, which certifies schools that enroll foreigners.

Concern about the legitimacy of foreign students and institutions they attend first surfaced after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Since then, schools have been required to provide information about students to an online government database, the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, overseen by ICE.

The Sevis contains a student’s personal record, including country of origin, age, coursework and U.S. address and other details. Schools that fail to comply can lose their certification.

More than three-quarters of some 9,000 certified schools have fewer than 50 international students, which makes it more challenging to comply with regulations. “People think foreign students come to UCLA and Harvard. We have a lot of mom-and-pop schools,” said Ms. Canty.

Security concerns resurfaced in 2013 after the deadly Boston Marathon bombing. Authorities learned that Azamat Tazhayakov, who hid evidence about the attack, had entered the U.S. on a student visa that was no longer valid. Since then, the government has integrated the SEVIS database into the screening process at airports. Mr. Tazhayakov, a Kazakhstan national, was convicted last July of obstruction of justice in the bombing.

Investigators say the defendants misrepresented students on federal forms, enabling them to secure student visas in what amounted to a pay-to-stay scheme. In exchange for the so-called Form I-20, a student made “tuition” payments for up to $1,800 to “enroll” for six months in one of the schools, according to the indictment.

As part of the suspected conspiracy, the defendants allegedly created bogus student records, including transcripts, for the purpose of deceiving immigration authorities.

The indictment further alleges that purported students often were transferred from one school to another to avoid arousing suspicion of immigration authorities about individuals in the country for long periods.

“We have nothing to indicate the students were getting education for anything,” said Mr. Arnold, the special agent.

After Wednesday’s raid, the schools’ access to Sevis was ended and authorities are seeking to withdraw the schools’ certification to enroll foreign students, ICE said.

The students’ fate is unclear. Foreign pupils enrolled at the schools should contact the Student Exchange Visitor Program office in Washington, officials said.

The largest student-visa fraud case, involving Tri-Valley University in northern California, left more than 1,000 students in limbo and sparked protests in India. The school’s president, Susan Su, was imprisoned in 2013 for making millions of dollars in the scheme.

That scandal prompted U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa) and others to call for action.

“The potential for bad actors to abuse the student-visa program has increased significantly over recent years,” Ms. Feinstein said, noting that a Senate-passed bill to overhaul immigration in 2013 included a provision to combat such fraud.

Where Were You America on Net Neutrality?

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Going back as far as 2010, for the Federal government to take over the internet has been a building coup and while America did not care….the FCC assumed control.

After McCain-Feingold passed, several of the foundations involved in the effort began shifting their attention to “media reform”—a movement to impose government controls on Internet companies somewhat related to the long-defunct “Fairness Doctrine” that used to regulate TV and radio companies. In a 2005 interview with the progressive website Buzzflash, Mr. McChesney said that campaign-finance reform advocate Josh Silver approached him and “said let’s get to work on getting popular involvement in media policy making.” Together the two founded Free Press.

Free Press and allied groups such as MoveOn.org quickly got funding. Of the eight major foundations that provided the vast bulk of money for campaign-finance reform, six became major funders of the media-reform movement. (They are the Pew Charitable Trusts, Bill Moyers’s Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.) Free Press today has 40 staffers and an annual budget of $4 million.

 

 

FCC Cites Soros-Funded, Neo-Marxist-Founded Group 46 TIMES In New Regs

New internet regulations finally released by the Federal Communications Commission make 46 references to a group funded by billionaire George Soros and co-founded by a neo-Marxist.

The FCC released the 400-page document on Thursday, two weeks after it passed new regulations, which many fear will turn the internet into a public commodity and thereby stifle innovation.

“Leveling the playing field” in that way has been a clear goal of Free Press, a group dedicated to net neutrality which was founded in 2003.

As Phil Kerpen, president of the free-market group American Commitment, first noted, Free Press is mentioned repeatedly in the FCC document. Most of the references are found in footnotes which cite comments by Free Press activists supporting more internet regulation.

The term “Free Press” is mentioned 62 times in the regulations. Some are redundant mentions referring to the same Free Press activists’ comments in favor of more oversight. In total, the FCC cited Free Press’ pro-net neutrality arguments 46 times.

The FCC received more than 4 million public comments as it was weighing the net neutrality initiative, but Free Press and other activist groups have received the most attention by pressuring the FCC and the White House on behalf of their cause.

One argument made against the FCC’s regulatory push is that the general public is largely happy with its internet service. Support for net neutrality was seen as the domain of special interest groups like Free Press.

The activist group has big money behinds its effort. It has received $2.2 million in donations from progressive billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and $3.9 million from the Ford Foundation.

And one of Free Press’ co-founders, Robert McChesney, a communications professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has not been shy about his desire to see the internet regulated heavily. (RELATED: A Leading Net Neutrality Activist’s Neo-Marxist Views)

But internet regulation appears to be only part of McChesney’s more radical agenda of completely revamping how the media operate in the U.S.

“In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles,” McChesney wrote in a 2009 essay.

“Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism,” he said.

“The news is not a commercial product. It is a public good, necessary for a self-governing society. Once we accept this, we can talk about the kind of media policies and subsidies we want,” McChesney once argued.

Sentiments such as these have raised questions about whether the FCC’s new regulations will eventually led to oversight of internet content.

“The unthinkable has become thinkable, and the free-market Internet – one of freedom’s greatest triumphs – is set to be reduced to a public utility, subject to pervasive economic regulation and, in turn, to content control,” American Commitment’s Kerpen wrote in an open letter to McChesney after the FCC voted 3-2 in favor of the regulations.

McChesney, who is currently on Free Press’ board of directors, made a series of progressive proposals in a 2010 book, “The Life and Death of American Journalism.” He suggested spending $35 billion on federal subsidies for public media outlets. He also proposed creating a journalism branch of AmeriCorps and said it would be a good idea to give each American a $200 news voucher which could be given only to publicly-owned media outlets.

“Advertising is the voice of capital,” McChesney said in a 2009 interview with the Socialist Project. “We need to do whatever we can to limit capitalist propaganda, regulate it, minimize it, and perhaps even eliminate it. The fight against hyper-commercialism becomes especially pronounced in the era of digital communications.”

FCC commissioner Ajit Pai blew the whistle on the agency’s attempt to sneak the new regulations in under the radar. He pressed FCC chairman Tom Wheeler to release the proposed regulations so that the public could view them before the commission voted on the measure. Wheeler refused.

In his dissent, Pai, a Republican, slammed the commission’s secrecy and also mentioned Free Press as one of the activist groups which received special attention on the matter.

“What the press has called the “parallel FCC” at the White House opened its doors to a plethora of special-interest activists: Daily Kos, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Free Press, and Public Knowledge, just to name a few,” Pai wrote.

Indeed, even before activists were blocking Chairman Wheeler’s driveway late last year, some of them had met with White House officials. But what about the rest of the American people? They certainly couldn’t get White House meetings. They were shut out of the process. They were being played for fools.”

 

Swell, Eric Holder had Email Aliases Too

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It is an epidemic in government, all kinds of powerbrokers in the Federal government are using alias emails. The very agency bound to enforce law and the very top lawyer at the agency, the Department of Justice, is in violation himself.

There is a U.S. Criminal Code where government business transactions including emails, text messages, photos, documents and more belong to the Federal government, not the individual. This must be certified upon leaving office and Eric Holder has tendered his resignation. There is a separation notice (Form OF; 109) under penalty of perjury that all materials are turned over.

Per Shannen Coffin, lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson LLP:

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) adopted regulations in 1995 which required the preservation of official e-mails created on non-official accounts. The Archivist interpreted the Federal Records Act to apply to e-mail records and further provided that “[a]gencies with access to external electronic mail systems shall ensure that federal records sent or received on these systems are preserved in the appropriate recordkeeping system . . .” So as early as 1995, all federal agencies were required to preserve official e-mails, including those created or maintained on “external electronic mail systems.” Later NARA regulations merely clarified this requirement. In 2009, after a Government Accountability Office report indicated that certain agencies had lax e-mail practices, the NARA adopted new regulations that provided that any emails created on private e-mail accounts must be preserved. But that regulation merely restated, in perhaps slightly different language, what the 1995 regulation had already mandated, requiring that “[a]gencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system.” More here.

Eric Holder Used Email Aliases. DOJ Says It Wasn’t A Transparency Dodge.

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder has used three email aliases to conduct government business over the past six years, a Justice Department official revealed Tuesday.

All three email aliases, including the one Holder currently uses, are official Justice Department addresses on the @usdoj.gov domain, the official told The Huffington Post. Holder has used the aliases to prevent spam and to keep his inbox from being overwhelmed by the public, not to avoid transparency, the official said. The addresses were known to DOJ officials handling Freedom of Information Act requests and congressional inquiries, according to the official.

“The Attorney General uses a Justice Department email address to conduct official business. As with many Cabinet officials, he does not use his given name in the handle of his email address,” Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement. “This practice is similar to using initials or numbers in an email address and helps guard against security risks and prevent his inbox from being needlessly inundated. It does not in any way impact compliance with FOIA requests. The Attorney General’s email address is known to the individuals who process FOIA requests, and his emails are regularly produced, albeit with his exact address redacted.”

Holder’s first alias, Henry Yearwood, was a combination of his mother’s maiden name and the first name of another family member. His second alias, David Kendricks, came from the names of two members of the Temptations: singers David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks.

Fallon, who described Holder’s choice of email addresses as “soulful,” declined to provide Holder’s third and current email alias, but said it is based on the name of an athlete.

The aliases were changed twice over Holder’s tenure, once when the email address was accidentally exposed by another federal agency responding to a FOIA request.

The email practices of top officials in the Obama administration have come under increased scrutiny due to Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email as secretary of state. Former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson pointed to indications that Holder used an email alias in a recent post on The Daily Signal. Attkisson noted that the names associated with Holder’s email address were redacted in documents disclosed by the Justice Department, with his name replaced by “Attorney General.”

Many high-ranking government officials use email addresses that are not readily available to the general public. Lisa Jackson, for example, came under scrutiny for using an email alias during her tenure as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Although an EPA Inspector General report found a lack of internal agency controls for identifying such email addresses, it found no evidence the practice was intended to dodge federal record-keeping rules.