Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
"Fast And Furious" Just Might Be President Obama's Watergate
Frank Miniter, who wrote this piece, is the author of Saving the Bill of Rights and The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide.
Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself.
But the state of modern journalism aside, this scandal is so inflammatory few realize that official records show the current director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), B. Todd Jones — yes the individual the Obama administration brought in to replace ATF Director Kenneth Melson Aug. 30 in an effort to deflect congressional criticism — also has questions to answer about his involvement in this gunrunning scandal.
Fast and Furious was an operation so cloak-and-dagger Mexican authorities weren’t even notified that thousands of semi-automatic firearms were being sold to people in Arizona thought to have links to Mexican drug cartels. According to ATF whistleblowers, in 2009 the U.S. government began instructing gun storeowners to break the law by selling firearms to suspected criminals. ATF agents then, again according to testimony by ATF agents turned whistleblowers, were ordered not to intercept the smugglers but rather to let the guns “walk” across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
When the Gunrunning Program Began
A Jan. 8, 2010 briefing paper from the ATF Phoenix Field Division Group VII says: “This investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers…. To date (September 2009-present) this group has purchased in excess of 650 firearms (mainly AK-47 variants) for which they have paid cash totaling more than $350,000.”
This is an important fact because the U.S. Justice Department hasn’t made it clear to tell congressional investigators when the Fast and Furious operation began and who authorized it; as a result, this ATF briefing paper’s mention of September 2009 is thus far the earliest we can trace the operation.
The next important event we know of occurred in October 2009 when the ATF’s Phoenix Field Division established a gun-trafficking group called “Group VII.” Group VII began using the strategy of allowing suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns, according to a report from the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the staff of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. The report says, “The purpose was to wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case…. Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy. The case was soon renamed ‘Operation Fast and Furious.’”
This report and later official explanations from the ATF say the Fast and Furious program was created to deal with the problem that arresting low-level suspects doesn’t necessarily help ATF agents get to the heads of Mexican cartels.
On Oct. 26, 2009, a month or so after Fast and Furious seems to have been initiated, a document shows that a teleconference was held between 13 officials. One of the issues discussed was the possible “adoption of the Department’s strategy for Combating Mexican Drug Cartels.” The officials listed to have been in on the call included Kenneth Melson, who was then the director of the ATF, Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI and a number of attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice. B. Todd Jones, the current director of the ATF, was not listed in the document, but the title he held in September 2009 is listed as being in on the conference call. It doesn’t take much reporting to find out that in September 2009 Jones was the chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC) and so was at least supposed to be in on the conference call. (When asked about the teleconference, an ATF spokeswoman told us “we don’t discuss active investigations.”)
Of course, we don’t know precisely what was discussed in the teleconference, but given that the Fast and Furious program likely began a month or more before the teleconference, and given that it was a new program designed to send firearms over an international border, it would seem odd if Fast and Furious was not discussed and therefore that Jones, at the very least, had heard about the program in October 2009; though, unless further documents come out as to what was said, he certainly has deniability.
Gun Storeowners Become Pawns
For political context we now need to step back to April 16, 2009 — four or five months before we think Fast and Furious began. On this day President Barack Obama was visiting Mexico. While there he said, “This war is being waged with guns purchased not here but in the United States … more than 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that lay in our shared border.”
This 90% statistic was, to be kind, math so shoddy a third grader should know better.
The figure was based only on guns the Mexican government sent to the ATF for tracing. On April 2, 2009, Fox News reported that, according to statistics from the Mexican government, only about a third of the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico are submitted to the ATF. The Mexicans, as it turns out, only send guns to the ATF they think came from the U.S. Also, many guns submitted to the ATF by the Mexicans cannot be traced. As a result, the reporters determined that only 17% of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced by the ATF to the U.S.
Now, because President Obama used the made-up 90% figure to push political positions — he was using the statistic to argue that the U.S. needs more gun-control laws — it’s difficult not to sniff politics in what happened next.
Later in 2009 the ATF started the Fast and Furious program by allowing firearms to be smuggled from U.S. gun stores into the arsenals of Mexican criminal gangs. As these guns wouldn’t be seen again until they resurfaced in crimes (there were no tracking devices installed or other means to trace these guns), the only purpose for letting these guns “walk” seems to be to back up the president’s position that guns used in Mexican crimes mostly come from the U.S. (Though the Obama administration insists the gun sales were a part of a new crime-fighting technique.) Also, given the cover up that has ensued since Fast and Furious broke, it doesn’t seem like a conspiratorial leap to conclude that politics mixed with policy to create this crazy program. (But again, administration officials insist this wasn’t about politics.)
Gun storeowners have a right to think it was about politics.
Sometime around September 2009, ATF agents began pressuring gun storeowners in Arizona to sell firearms to people the ATF thought would sell the guns to Mexican cartels and gangs. As gun-storeowners can’t do business without federal licenses, and because the ATF has the authority to shut down a gun store if the establishment’s paperwork isn’t in order, these requests were likely taken as orders. This put the gun storeowners in a catch-22: the law requires them to report suspicious activity and not to sell to people they think are breaking the law, yet the ATF was telling them to sell to suspicious people who wanted to buy AK-47s by the dozen.
Actually, it’s even worse than that: According to court records obtained by Fox News, two of 20 alleged smugglers who were later indicted in the Fast and Furious investigation had felony convictions. As gun-stores must run a person’s name through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) before selling that person a firearm, this should have stopped these felons from buying even one measly.22 rifle.
Congressional and law-enforcement sources say this situation suggests the FBI, which operates the NICS system, had to have knowingly allowed the purchases to go forward after consulting with the ATF. Given that we know the director of the FBI was in on at least one early meeting on this issue, this seems logical.
One store, Lone Wolf Trading Company in Glendale, Ariz., soon became the smuggler’s favorite. Andre Howard, owner of Lone Wolf Trading Company, declined to comment to us about Fast and Furious because he is under a congressional subpoena; however, recordings taped by Howard of him speaking to an ATF agent have been released by the U.S. Department of Justice. One of the suspects the ATF was watching as he bought guns from Lone Wolf Trading Company was Jaime Avila. He allegedly bought AK-47s at Lone Wolf Trading Company that turned up at a crime scene in which drug smugglers killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent (more on this to come). The other was Uriel Patino. As the ATF watched, he bought hundreds of firearms from Lone Wolf Trading Company and reportedly sold them to Mexico’s brutal Sinoloa drug cartel
Meanwhile, on March 10, 2010, an internal e-mail from George T. Gillett Jr., assistant special agent in charge to David Voth, the ATF’s Phoenix Group VII supervisor, and others, said that ATF Acting Director Melson and ATF Deputy Director Billy Hoover “are being briefed weekly on this investigation and the recent success with [redacted] so they are both keenly interested in case updates.”
This email was released by Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) just before a June 15, 2011 investigative hearing of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee to show that officials in Washington, D.C., knew about this program.
As it turns out, ATF leadership was actually able to follow some of these illegal purchases live on closed-circuit television. In a news release in June 2011, Rep. Issa said as much: “Acting Director Melson was able to sit at his desk in Washington and himself watch a live feed of straw buyers entering the gun stores and purchasing dozens of AK-47 variants.”
Given that the director of the ATF, a department that is overseen by the U.S. Justice Department, was watching closed-circuit television of illegal gun sales that officials knew were likely to cross the U.S.-Mexican border, is it even conceivable that Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t know about this secret program? And if he didn’t, shouldn’t he have?
ATF Agents Begin Protesting
ATF field agents soon began to question the sanity of letting guns “walk.”
Evidently to quell internal dissension, on March 12, 2010 David Voth, the ATF’s Phoenix Group VII supervisor, sent an e-mail to field agents that said, “Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case and they also believe we (Phoenix Group VII) are doing what they envisioned the Southwest Border Groups doing.” Voth’s e-mail went on to say, “It may sound cheesy, but we are ‘The Tip of the ATF spear’ when it comes to Southwest Border Firearms Trafficking. We need to resolve our issues at this meeting. I will be damned if this case is going to suffer due to petty arguing, rumors or other adolescent behavior. If you don’t think this is fun you’re in the wrong line of work — period.”
ATF field agents were sending protests up their chain of command, because, as ATF Special Agent John Dodson told the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee on June 15, 2011, he and fellow agents were regularly ordered to abandon surveillance of suspicious gun purchases “knowing all the while that just days after these purchases, the guns that we saw these individuals buy would begin turning up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico.”
ATF Special Agent Olindo James Casa also said at the June hearing that “on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms.”
Meanwhile, Mexican drug cartels were evidently finished sighting in their U.S.-bought AK-47′s and looking for bigger guns. On April 2, 2010, Voth sent an email to a government-redacted recipient that said, “Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during the month of March alone, to include numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles.” These .50-caliber rifles are used for sniping by U.S. Special Forces and are a favorite of long-range shooters in America.
So far ATF officials seemed to be blissfully ignorant of how misguided this strategy would turn out to be.
Just as ATF agents feared, on Dec. 14, 2010, in the dark of night in a remote canyon in Rio Rico, Ariz., some of the firearms sent over the border to arm Mexican drug runners were used in a gun battle with the U.S. Border Patrol. During the gunfight, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, 40, was killed by suspected operatives of a Mexican drug-smuggling organization. After a battle that U.S. Border Patrol officers started by shooting bean bags at smugglers armed with AK-47s, police arrested four suspects and recovered three firearms from the scene that have since been traced to Fast and Furious.
Dodson’s greatest fear had become reality. He said before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee: “We knew the next time we’d see the guns would be at crime scenes. And not the first crime these guns were used in, but at the last.”
When asked how he thought sending guns into Mexico could lead to busts of drug cartels, Dodson replied, “I have never heard an explanation from anyone involved in Operation Fast and Furious that I believe would justify what we did.”
If that wasn’t moving enough, during the same congressional hearing held last June, Josephine Terry — the mother of slain U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry — was asked if there is anything she would like to say to whomever approved Fast and Furious. After taking a moment to regain her composure, she said, “I don’t know what I would say to them, but I would like to know what they would say to me.”
Right after the shooting, we do know what some ATF officials were saying to each other. The day after Agent Terry was killed an e-mail exchange among ATF agents at 7:45 p.m. confirmed that two of the weapons that Jaime Avila had purchased as part of Operation Fast and Furious were found at Terry’s murder scene. The names on the e-mail were redacted by the government, but the email says, “The two firearms recovered by ATF this afternoon near Rio Rico, Arizona, in conjunction with the shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Terry were identified as ‘Suspect Guns’ in the Fast and Furious investigation [REDACTED].” A third gun was later linked to the scene.
The Cover Up Begins
About five weeks before Agent Terry was slain, the 2010 election took place and the U.S. House of Representatives succumbed to Republican control in January 2011. This gave Rep. Issa a chance to investigate as whistleblowers came forward.
Meanwhile, as freshmen congressmen were settling into their new offices, on Jan.19, 2011, the ATF finally arrested the straw purchasers. On Jan. 25, 2011 Phoenix Special Agent in Charge William Newell held a press conference announcing the indictment of 20 people the ATF had been watching purchase firearms. However, when asked if agents purposefully allowed weapons to enter Mexico, Newell said, “Hell, no.” (In a “supplemental statement,” provided to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on July 26, 2011, Newell clarified his statements by saying agents did not knowingly allow thousands of weapons to reach criminal hands.)
Evidence soon showed this to be less than true.
On Jan. 27, 2011, Sen. Grassley wrote a letter to ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson that said: “Members of the Judiciary Committee have received numerous allegations that the ATF sanctioned the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to suspected straw purchasers, who then allegedly transported these weapons throughout the southwestern border area and into Mexico….”
Grassley requested that the ATF brief his staff on the matter.
Days later, on Jan. 31, 2011, Grassley wrote a second letter to Melson that claimed whistleblowers were being targeted. Grassley wrote, “This is exactly the wrong sort of reaction for the ATF. Rather than focusing on retaliating against whistleblowers, the ATF’s sole focus should be on finding and disclosing the truth as soon as possible.”
Despite growing evidence, on Feb. 4, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote Sen. Grassley and denied that the U.S. Justice Department “sanctioned” the sale of guns to people they believed were going to deliver them to Mexican drug cartels.
Then, on Feb. 15, 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata was murdered in Mexico. The Associated Press reported (on Feb. 28), based on an unnamed source, that the weapon used to kill Zapata “was shipped through Laredo with the possible knowledge of the ATF.”
A week later, on Feb. 23, 2011, CBS Evening News ran a story on Operation Fast and Furious that included interviews with ATF whistleblowers who said they’d objected to the program. With pressure building, on March 8, 2011, the U.S. Justice Department told Sen. Grassley that the matter would be reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General; however, this internal investigation seems to have become the official excuse for not giving congressional investigators everything they’re demanding.
On March 22, 2011 President Obama was finally asked about Operation Fast and Furious. The question came from Univision, a Spanish-language network. “Well, first of all,” answered President Obama, “I did not authorize [Fast and Furious]. Eric Holder, the attorney general, did not authorize it. There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made. If that’s the case, then we’ll find — find out and we’ll hold somebody accountable.”
On May 3, 2011, Attorney General Holder testified to the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Darrell Issa and Holder had an exchange about Operation Fast and Furious. After a series of questions, Holder answered, “I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”
Rep. Issa hasn’t been satisfied with this answer. He later said, “Are we confident that Eric Holder knew it much earlier? No. Did he know it earlier than he testified? Absolutely.”
On June 29, 2011 a reporter asked President Obama about the matter at a White House news conference. Obama said in part: “I’m not going to comment on the current investigation…. As soon as the investigation is complete, appropriate action will be taken.”
But just days later, on July 4, 2011, Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson surprised some by speaking to congressional investigators from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Melson met with investigators with his personal attorney present — not Justice Department attorneys.
The next day Rep. Issa and Sen. Grassley wrote a letter to Attorney General Holder about Melson’s testimony. The letter says Melson “claimed that ATF’s senior leadership would have preferred to be more cooperative with our inquiry much earlier in the process. However, he said that Justice Department officials directed them not to respond and took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress.”
Melson was pointing to a cover up at the U.S. Justice Department while refusing to be a scapegoat. However, Tracy Schmaler, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, said to us on Sept. 27, 2011 that no cover up is occurring. He said, “We have turned over thousands of documents, just what documents do you want?
Obviously perplexed with what to do with Melson, the U.S. Justice Department moved Melson to a new post inside the ATF, a position that protects his retirement package. Perhaps this is some of the “appropriate action” President Obama said would be taken, if so, more appropriate action soon followed.
The Obama administration next promoted some of the officials who ran the program. William G. McMahon, who was the ATF’s deputy director of operations in the West, William D. Newell, and David Voth, who were both field supervisors who oversaw the Fast and Furious program out of the agency’s Phoenix office, were promoted to positions in Washington, D.C. Voth is the one who said in an email, “If you don’t think [Fast and Furious] is fun you’re in the wrong line of work — period.” And, when asked if guns were being allowed to cross the southern border, Newell is the one who said, “Hell, no.” Yet both got cushy desk jobs in D.C.
Then, as if to shine a spotlight on how political the Fast and Furious operation always was, last August the Obama administration announced new firearm-reporting regulations that gun stores in southern border states must follow—this when gun storeowners have done everything asked of them and as the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association that represents firearms manufacturers, pays for a longstanding program called “Don’t Lie for the Other Guy” (www.dontlie.org ) that combats illegal gun sales by raising awareness.
Also, the National Rifle Association has been on top of this story from the beginning. Chris W. Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist now says, “It would be a serious miscarriage of justice if no one is held accountable for this deadly scandal. The President and his Justice Department cannot run away from this. The NRA will make sure that every member, hunter, gun owner, and indeed every American, knows the truth about this reckless operation.”
Given all the politics and the cover up that even the former ATF director says has occurred, could operation Fast and Furious have been about anything other than pushing for new gun-control laws? And given all of this obfuscation from the Obama administration, isn’t this scandal comparable to the cover up that surrounded Watergate? After all, both administrations forgot that America is a country that reveres its freedom of the press and that in America officers speak out when misguided policies get cops killed. Here mothers testify before Congress when they find out a secret government program, and a stupid one at that, got their son killed.
Not that morality ends at the American border. To stress this point, Rep. Issa held a conference call with journalists on September 21 in which he said Marisela Morales, Mexico’s attorney general, is reporting that at least 200 Mexican deaths can now be traced to weapons from the Fast and Furious program.
And so the investigation and the bloody aftermath continue….
Frank Miniter is the author of Saving the Bill of Rights and The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide
Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself.
But the state of modern journalism aside, this scandal is so inflammatory few realize that official records show the current director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), B. Todd Jones — yes the individual the Obama administration brought in to replace ATF Director Kenneth Melson Aug. 30 in an effort to deflect congressional criticism — also has questions to answer about his involvement in this gunrunning scandal.
Fast and Furious was an operation so cloak-and-dagger Mexican authorities weren’t even notified that thousands of semi-automatic firearms were being sold to people in Arizona thought to have links to Mexican drug cartels. According to ATF whistleblowers, in 2009 the U.S. government began instructing gun storeowners to break the law by selling firearms to suspected criminals. ATF agents then, again according to testimony by ATF agents turned whistleblowers, were ordered not to intercept the smugglers but rather to let the guns “walk” across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
When the Gunrunning Program Began
A Jan. 8, 2010 briefing paper from the ATF Phoenix Field Division Group VII says: “This investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers…. To date (September 2009-present) this group has purchased in excess of 650 firearms (mainly AK-47 variants) for which they have paid cash totaling more than $350,000.”
This is an important fact because the U.S. Justice Department hasn’t made it clear to tell congressional investigators when the Fast and Furious operation began and who authorized it; as a result, this ATF briefing paper’s mention of September 2009 is thus far the earliest we can trace the operation.
The next important event we know of occurred in October 2009 when the ATF’s Phoenix Field Division established a gun-trafficking group called “Group VII.” Group VII began using the strategy of allowing suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns, according to a report from the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the staff of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. The report says, “The purpose was to wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case…. Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy. The case was soon renamed ‘Operation Fast and Furious.’”
This report and later official explanations from the ATF say the Fast and Furious program was created to deal with the problem that arresting low-level suspects doesn’t necessarily help ATF agents get to the heads of Mexican cartels.
On Oct. 26, 2009, a month or so after Fast and Furious seems to have been initiated, a document shows that a teleconference was held between 13 officials. One of the issues discussed was the possible “adoption of the Department’s strategy for Combating Mexican Drug Cartels.” The officials listed to have been in on the call included Kenneth Melson, who was then the director of the ATF, Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI and a number of attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice. B. Todd Jones, the current director of the ATF, was not listed in the document, but the title he held in September 2009 is listed as being in on the conference call. It doesn’t take much reporting to find out that in September 2009 Jones was the chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC) and so was at least supposed to be in on the conference call. (When asked about the teleconference, an ATF spokeswoman told us “we don’t discuss active investigations.”)
Of course, we don’t know precisely what was discussed in the teleconference, but given that the Fast and Furious program likely began a month or more before the teleconference, and given that it was a new program designed to send firearms over an international border, it would seem odd if Fast and Furious was not discussed and therefore that Jones, at the very least, had heard about the program in October 2009; though, unless further documents come out as to what was said, he certainly has deniability.
Gun Storeowners Become Pawns
For political context we now need to step back to April 16, 2009 — four or five months before we think Fast and Furious began. On this day President Barack Obama was visiting Mexico. While there he said, “This war is being waged with guns purchased not here but in the United States … more than 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that lay in our shared border.”
This 90% statistic was, to be kind, math so shoddy a third grader should know better.
The figure was based only on guns the Mexican government sent to the ATF for tracing. On April 2, 2009, Fox News reported that, according to statistics from the Mexican government, only about a third of the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico are submitted to the ATF. The Mexicans, as it turns out, only send guns to the ATF they think came from the U.S. Also, many guns submitted to the ATF by the Mexicans cannot be traced. As a result, the reporters determined that only 17% of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced by the ATF to the U.S.
Now, because President Obama used the made-up 90% figure to push political positions — he was using the statistic to argue that the U.S. needs more gun-control laws — it’s difficult not to sniff politics in what happened next.
Later in 2009 the ATF started the Fast and Furious program by allowing firearms to be smuggled from U.S. gun stores into the arsenals of Mexican criminal gangs. As these guns wouldn’t be seen again until they resurfaced in crimes (there were no tracking devices installed or other means to trace these guns), the only purpose for letting these guns “walk” seems to be to back up the president’s position that guns used in Mexican crimes mostly come from the U.S. (Though the Obama administration insists the gun sales were a part of a new crime-fighting technique.) Also, given the cover up that has ensued since Fast and Furious broke, it doesn’t seem like a conspiratorial leap to conclude that politics mixed with policy to create this crazy program. (But again, administration officials insist this wasn’t about politics.)
Gun storeowners have a right to think it was about politics.
Sometime around September 2009, ATF agents began pressuring gun storeowners in Arizona to sell firearms to people the ATF thought would sell the guns to Mexican cartels and gangs. As gun-storeowners can’t do business without federal licenses, and because the ATF has the authority to shut down a gun store if the establishment’s paperwork isn’t in order, these requests were likely taken as orders. This put the gun storeowners in a catch-22: the law requires them to report suspicious activity and not to sell to people they think are breaking the law, yet the ATF was telling them to sell to suspicious people who wanted to buy AK-47s by the dozen.
Actually, it’s even worse than that: According to court records obtained by Fox News, two of 20 alleged smugglers who were later indicted in the Fast and Furious investigation had felony convictions. As gun-stores must run a person’s name through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) before selling that person a firearm, this should have stopped these felons from buying even one measly.22 rifle.
Congressional and law-enforcement sources say this situation suggests the FBI, which operates the NICS system, had to have knowingly allowed the purchases to go forward after consulting with the ATF. Given that we know the director of the FBI was in on at least one early meeting on this issue, this seems logical.
One store, Lone Wolf Trading Company in Glendale, Ariz., soon became the smuggler’s favorite. Andre Howard, owner of Lone Wolf Trading Company, declined to comment to us about Fast and Furious because he is under a congressional subpoena; however, recordings taped by Howard of him speaking to an ATF agent have been released by the U.S. Department of Justice. One of the suspects the ATF was watching as he bought guns from Lone Wolf Trading Company was Jaime Avila. He allegedly bought AK-47s at Lone Wolf Trading Company that turned up at a crime scene in which drug smugglers killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent (more on this to come). The other was Uriel Patino. As the ATF watched, he bought hundreds of firearms from Lone Wolf Trading Company and reportedly sold them to Mexico’s brutal Sinoloa drug cartel
Meanwhile, on March 10, 2010, an internal e-mail from George T. Gillett Jr., assistant special agent in charge to David Voth, the ATF’s Phoenix Group VII supervisor, and others, said that ATF Acting Director Melson and ATF Deputy Director Billy Hoover “are being briefed weekly on this investigation and the recent success with [redacted] so they are both keenly interested in case updates.”
This email was released by Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) just before a June 15, 2011 investigative hearing of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee to show that officials in Washington, D.C., knew about this program.
As it turns out, ATF leadership was actually able to follow some of these illegal purchases live on closed-circuit television. In a news release in June 2011, Rep. Issa said as much: “Acting Director Melson was able to sit at his desk in Washington and himself watch a live feed of straw buyers entering the gun stores and purchasing dozens of AK-47 variants.”
Given that the director of the ATF, a department that is overseen by the U.S. Justice Department, was watching closed-circuit television of illegal gun sales that officials knew were likely to cross the U.S.-Mexican border, is it even conceivable that Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t know about this secret program? And if he didn’t, shouldn’t he have?
ATF Agents Begin Protesting
ATF field agents soon began to question the sanity of letting guns “walk.”
Evidently to quell internal dissension, on March 12, 2010 David Voth, the ATF’s Phoenix Group VII supervisor, sent an e-mail to field agents that said, “Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case and they also believe we (Phoenix Group VII) are doing what they envisioned the Southwest Border Groups doing.” Voth’s e-mail went on to say, “It may sound cheesy, but we are ‘The Tip of the ATF spear’ when it comes to Southwest Border Firearms Trafficking. We need to resolve our issues at this meeting. I will be damned if this case is going to suffer due to petty arguing, rumors or other adolescent behavior. If you don’t think this is fun you’re in the wrong line of work — period.”
ATF field agents were sending protests up their chain of command, because, as ATF Special Agent John Dodson told the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee on June 15, 2011, he and fellow agents were regularly ordered to abandon surveillance of suspicious gun purchases “knowing all the while that just days after these purchases, the guns that we saw these individuals buy would begin turning up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico.”
ATF Special Agent Olindo James Casa also said at the June hearing that “on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms.”
Meanwhile, Mexican drug cartels were evidently finished sighting in their U.S.-bought AK-47′s and looking for bigger guns. On April 2, 2010, Voth sent an email to a government-redacted recipient that said, “Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during the month of March alone, to include numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles.” These .50-caliber rifles are used for sniping by U.S. Special Forces and are a favorite of long-range shooters in America.
So far ATF officials seemed to be blissfully ignorant of how misguided this strategy would turn out to be.
Just as ATF agents feared, on Dec. 14, 2010, in the dark of night in a remote canyon in Rio Rico, Ariz., some of the firearms sent over the border to arm Mexican drug runners were used in a gun battle with the U.S. Border Patrol. During the gunfight, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, 40, was killed by suspected operatives of a Mexican drug-smuggling organization. After a battle that U.S. Border Patrol officers started by shooting bean bags at smugglers armed with AK-47s, police arrested four suspects and recovered three firearms from the scene that have since been traced to Fast and Furious.
Dodson’s greatest fear had become reality. He said before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee: “We knew the next time we’d see the guns would be at crime scenes. And not the first crime these guns were used in, but at the last.”
When asked how he thought sending guns into Mexico could lead to busts of drug cartels, Dodson replied, “I have never heard an explanation from anyone involved in Operation Fast and Furious that I believe would justify what we did.”
If that wasn’t moving enough, during the same congressional hearing held last June, Josephine Terry — the mother of slain U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry — was asked if there is anything she would like to say to whomever approved Fast and Furious. After taking a moment to regain her composure, she said, “I don’t know what I would say to them, but I would like to know what they would say to me.”
Right after the shooting, we do know what some ATF officials were saying to each other. The day after Agent Terry was killed an e-mail exchange among ATF agents at 7:45 p.m. confirmed that two of the weapons that Jaime Avila had purchased as part of Operation Fast and Furious were found at Terry’s murder scene. The names on the e-mail were redacted by the government, but the email says, “The two firearms recovered by ATF this afternoon near Rio Rico, Arizona, in conjunction with the shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Terry were identified as ‘Suspect Guns’ in the Fast and Furious investigation [REDACTED].” A third gun was later linked to the scene.
The Cover Up Begins
About five weeks before Agent Terry was slain, the 2010 election took place and the U.S. House of Representatives succumbed to Republican control in January 2011. This gave Rep. Issa a chance to investigate as whistleblowers came forward.
Meanwhile, as freshmen congressmen were settling into their new offices, on Jan.19, 2011, the ATF finally arrested the straw purchasers. On Jan. 25, 2011 Phoenix Special Agent in Charge William Newell held a press conference announcing the indictment of 20 people the ATF had been watching purchase firearms. However, when asked if agents purposefully allowed weapons to enter Mexico, Newell said, “Hell, no.” (In a “supplemental statement,” provided to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on July 26, 2011, Newell clarified his statements by saying agents did not knowingly allow thousands of weapons to reach criminal hands.)
Evidence soon showed this to be less than true.
On Jan. 27, 2011, Sen. Grassley wrote a letter to ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson that said: “Members of the Judiciary Committee have received numerous allegations that the ATF sanctioned the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to suspected straw purchasers, who then allegedly transported these weapons throughout the southwestern border area and into Mexico….”
Grassley requested that the ATF brief his staff on the matter.
Days later, on Jan. 31, 2011, Grassley wrote a second letter to Melson that claimed whistleblowers were being targeted. Grassley wrote, “This is exactly the wrong sort of reaction for the ATF. Rather than focusing on retaliating against whistleblowers, the ATF’s sole focus should be on finding and disclosing the truth as soon as possible.”
Despite growing evidence, on Feb. 4, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote Sen. Grassley and denied that the U.S. Justice Department “sanctioned” the sale of guns to people they believed were going to deliver them to Mexican drug cartels.
Then, on Feb. 15, 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata was murdered in Mexico. The Associated Press reported (on Feb. 28), based on an unnamed source, that the weapon used to kill Zapata “was shipped through Laredo with the possible knowledge of the ATF.”
A week later, on Feb. 23, 2011, CBS Evening News ran a story on Operation Fast and Furious that included interviews with ATF whistleblowers who said they’d objected to the program. With pressure building, on March 8, 2011, the U.S. Justice Department told Sen. Grassley that the matter would be reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General; however, this internal investigation seems to have become the official excuse for not giving congressional investigators everything they’re demanding.
On March 22, 2011 President Obama was finally asked about Operation Fast and Furious. The question came from Univision, a Spanish-language network. “Well, first of all,” answered President Obama, “I did not authorize [Fast and Furious]. Eric Holder, the attorney general, did not authorize it. There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made. If that’s the case, then we’ll find — find out and we’ll hold somebody accountable.”
On May 3, 2011, Attorney General Holder testified to the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Darrell Issa and Holder had an exchange about Operation Fast and Furious. After a series of questions, Holder answered, “I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”
Rep. Issa hasn’t been satisfied with this answer. He later said, “Are we confident that Eric Holder knew it much earlier? No. Did he know it earlier than he testified? Absolutely.”
On June 29, 2011 a reporter asked President Obama about the matter at a White House news conference. Obama said in part: “I’m not going to comment on the current investigation…. As soon as the investigation is complete, appropriate action will be taken.”
But just days later, on July 4, 2011, Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson surprised some by speaking to congressional investigators from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Melson met with investigators with his personal attorney present — not Justice Department attorneys.
The next day Rep. Issa and Sen. Grassley wrote a letter to Attorney General Holder about Melson’s testimony. The letter says Melson “claimed that ATF’s senior leadership would have preferred to be more cooperative with our inquiry much earlier in the process. However, he said that Justice Department officials directed them not to respond and took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress.”
Melson was pointing to a cover up at the U.S. Justice Department while refusing to be a scapegoat. However, Tracy Schmaler, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, said to us on Sept. 27, 2011 that no cover up is occurring. He said, “We have turned over thousands of documents, just what documents do you want?
Obviously perplexed with what to do with Melson, the U.S. Justice Department moved Melson to a new post inside the ATF, a position that protects his retirement package. Perhaps this is some of the “appropriate action” President Obama said would be taken, if so, more appropriate action soon followed.
The Obama administration next promoted some of the officials who ran the program. William G. McMahon, who was the ATF’s deputy director of operations in the West, William D. Newell, and David Voth, who were both field supervisors who oversaw the Fast and Furious program out of the agency’s Phoenix office, were promoted to positions in Washington, D.C. Voth is the one who said in an email, “If you don’t think [Fast and Furious] is fun you’re in the wrong line of work — period.” And, when asked if guns were being allowed to cross the southern border, Newell is the one who said, “Hell, no.” Yet both got cushy desk jobs in D.C.
Then, as if to shine a spotlight on how political the Fast and Furious operation always was, last August the Obama administration announced new firearm-reporting regulations that gun stores in southern border states must follow—this when gun storeowners have done everything asked of them and as the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association that represents firearms manufacturers, pays for a longstanding program called “Don’t Lie for the Other Guy” (www.dontlie.org ) that combats illegal gun sales by raising awareness.
Also, the National Rifle Association has been on top of this story from the beginning. Chris W. Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist now says, “It would be a serious miscarriage of justice if no one is held accountable for this deadly scandal. The President and his Justice Department cannot run away from this. The NRA will make sure that every member, hunter, gun owner, and indeed every American, knows the truth about this reckless operation.”
Given all the politics and the cover up that even the former ATF director says has occurred, could operation Fast and Furious have been about anything other than pushing for new gun-control laws? And given all of this obfuscation from the Obama administration, isn’t this scandal comparable to the cover up that surrounded Watergate? After all, both administrations forgot that America is a country that reveres its freedom of the press and that in America officers speak out when misguided policies get cops killed. Here mothers testify before Congress when they find out a secret government program, and a stupid one at that, got their son killed.
Not that morality ends at the American border. To stress this point, Rep. Issa held a conference call with journalists on September 21 in which he said Marisela Morales, Mexico’s attorney general, is reporting that at least 200 Mexican deaths can now be traced to weapons from the Fast and Furious program.
And so the investigation and the bloody aftermath continue….
Frank Miniter is the author of Saving the Bill of Rights and The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide
ObamaCare: It Can Only Get Worse
By Debra Saunders
On Tuesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan gave a talk at Stanford's Hoover Institution on what should become the Republican Party's template behind its bid to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. Ryan cited the unintended consequences that employer-paid health care plans have delivered: "The system that shields us from the cost of services has actually left us paying much, much more."
On the same day, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a report that bolstered Ryan's argument. Over the past year, average annual cost for employer-sponsored health care plans rose 9 percent. Premiums have more than doubled since 2001. The average annual premium is now $15,073 per family -- and that doesn't include out-of-pocket payments.
With premiums rising higher than inflation, those numbers are biting into workers' paychecks. And there's little employers can do other than raise employee contributions from an average of $1,787 per family 10 years ago to $4,129 today.
The Affordable Care Act, signed by President Barack Obama, was supposed to rein in runaway health care costs. How's that going? Not as advertised. Even before the ACA takes full effect in 2014, today's mandates -- such as a requirement that employers offer coverage for adult children up to the age of 26 and that some plans provide free preventive care -- must be a factor in the cost spurt. The Kaiser report estimates that 2.3 million adult children were added to their parents' employer-sponsored plans because of the law.
Democrats complain about employers choosing to sit on their money and not hire. But their health care mandates serve as a tax on hiring workers.
It can only get worse. As providers consolidate, consumers' options decrease. Ryan told reporters after his talk that he sees a future in which, as with utilities, there are a mere "handful" of providers. That can't be good for consumers.
Ryan is probably the bravest Republican in Washington, because he trusts voters enough to lay out a GOP alternative. He crafted a budget, passed by the House, that would change Medicare into a "defined contribution" program in 2022. In essence, seniors would receive vouchers to purchase their own health plans.
The idea was to give seniors a stake in holding down health costs and the options necessary to do so. (Obamacare tries to control Medicare costs through the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which can set payments -- and arguably drive doctors out of Medicare.)
The Hoover talk brought the defined-contribution approach to employer-sponsored health care.
Under the status quo, many employees have neither the motivation nor the wherewithal to shop for the best care at the best price. The GOP plan would provide a $5,700 refundable tax credit to families, but workers would pay income tax on their employers' contributions.
Savings could result in one of two ways. Employers would have more flexibility in choosing coverage. Or employees could choose their own plan -- and take it with them if they wanted to start a business.
The result would be universal care but in a system, Ryan told me in an interview, that "reconnects the buyer and the seller." The downside: It could be more work for consumers. The upside: Employees actually might be able to pocket future raises instead of handing them over to an insurance company.
dsaunders@sfchronicle.com
On Tuesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan gave a talk at Stanford's Hoover Institution on what should become the Republican Party's template behind its bid to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. Ryan cited the unintended consequences that employer-paid health care plans have delivered: "The system that shields us from the cost of services has actually left us paying much, much more."
On the same day, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a report that bolstered Ryan's argument. Over the past year, average annual cost for employer-sponsored health care plans rose 9 percent. Premiums have more than doubled since 2001. The average annual premium is now $15,073 per family -- and that doesn't include out-of-pocket payments.
With premiums rising higher than inflation, those numbers are biting into workers' paychecks. And there's little employers can do other than raise employee contributions from an average of $1,787 per family 10 years ago to $4,129 today.
The Affordable Care Act, signed by President Barack Obama, was supposed to rein in runaway health care costs. How's that going? Not as advertised. Even before the ACA takes full effect in 2014, today's mandates -- such as a requirement that employers offer coverage for adult children up to the age of 26 and that some plans provide free preventive care -- must be a factor in the cost spurt. The Kaiser report estimates that 2.3 million adult children were added to their parents' employer-sponsored plans because of the law.
Democrats complain about employers choosing to sit on their money and not hire. But their health care mandates serve as a tax on hiring workers.
It can only get worse. As providers consolidate, consumers' options decrease. Ryan told reporters after his talk that he sees a future in which, as with utilities, there are a mere "handful" of providers. That can't be good for consumers.
Ryan is probably the bravest Republican in Washington, because he trusts voters enough to lay out a GOP alternative. He crafted a budget, passed by the House, that would change Medicare into a "defined contribution" program in 2022. In essence, seniors would receive vouchers to purchase their own health plans.
The idea was to give seniors a stake in holding down health costs and the options necessary to do so. (Obamacare tries to control Medicare costs through the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which can set payments -- and arguably drive doctors out of Medicare.)
The Hoover talk brought the defined-contribution approach to employer-sponsored health care.
Under the status quo, many employees have neither the motivation nor the wherewithal to shop for the best care at the best price. The GOP plan would provide a $5,700 refundable tax credit to families, but workers would pay income tax on their employers' contributions.
Savings could result in one of two ways. Employers would have more flexibility in choosing coverage. Or employees could choose their own plan -- and take it with them if they wanted to start a business.
The result would be universal care but in a system, Ryan told me in an interview, that "reconnects the buyer and the seller." The downside: It could be more work for consumers. The upside: Employees actually might be able to pocket future raises instead of handing them over to an insurance company.
dsaunders@sfchronicle.com
Holding Obama's Party Accountable
Barack Obama is on a far worse political trajectory than Jimmy Carter was. First, the Democrats lost Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat to a Republican in ultraliberal Massachusetts who campaigned against Kennedy's signature issue of national health insurance. Nothing that dramatic happened while Carter was President.
Then Democrats suffered historic, grievous losses in the 2010 midterm elections, with a New Deal size loss in the House of 63 seats, and a loss of 6 seats in the Senate. In Jimmy Carter's 1978 midterms, Democrats lost only 15 seats in the House and 3 seats in the Senate.
Now in the recent special election in New York City, Democrats have begun to lose seats they haven't lost since before the New Deal.
That is so fitting, because President Obama is not an anomaly in today's Democrat party. Quite to the contrary, he represents the party's heart and soul today, which is well to the Left now even of George McGovern in 1972. Witness the reelection of Far Left San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi as House Democrat leader even after the historic voter repudiation of the Pelosi Democrat House majority in 2010. Witness the choice of Far Left screamer Debbie Wasserman Schultz as leader of the Democratic National Committee. Witness Obama EPA Chief Lisa Jackson, Obama Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and the numerous similar, utterly clueless, ideologically rigid, far left appointees throughout the Obama Administration.
That is also so well deserved, because of what the Democrats are doing to our nation, even as their power starts to wane. Historically, for the American economy, the deeper the recession the stronger the recovery. Based on that historical record, we should be nearing the end of the second year of a booming recovery by now.
But almost four years after the last recession started, there still has been no real recovery. Unemployment is stuck over 9%, with unemployment among African-Americans, Hispanics, and teenagers at depression level double-digit rates for at least 2 years now. Real wages and incomes are falling, back to levels last seen over 30 years ago. Poverty is soaring to new records as well, with more Americans suffering in poverty than any time since the Census Bureau started keeping records over 50 years ago.
As a result, we are on track now for an historic conservative victory in 2012, far bigger even than in 1980.
The Do-Nothing Senate
In the Democrat majority-controlled Senate, 23 Democrat seats are subject to elections in 2012, with 6 of those open seats involving a retiring incumbent. Only 10 Republican seats are subject to election, with only two retirements from safe seats in Texas and Arizona. Let's compare the record of this Democrat-controlled Senate with the record of what the Republican-controlled House has already accomplished this year.
The first act of the Republican House was to pass repeal of Obamacare, reducing future taxes and spending by trillions. The Senate has failed to act on this at all.
The Republican House passed the budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, which would cut federal spending by $6.2 trillion over the first 10 years alone, and permanently balances the budget soon after that, as scored by CBO. Government spending as a percent of GDP would ultimately be reduced by 40% from current levels.
The Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to pass any budget at all, as required by law, for the second consecutive year now. At least they had the good sense to vote down Obama's proposed runaway budget, 97-0. But the failure to pass any budget leaves the government subject to possible shutdown this fall.
The Democrat Senate has also fought tooth and nail against every spending cut. They even threatened to shut down the entire government last week because the House Republicans funded emergency FEMA disaster relief spending with $1.5 billion in offsetting spending cuts, half of one thousandth of the entire federal budget. The cuts were to a Department of Energy corporate welfare loan program, like the program that just lost half a billion in taxpayer funds in the Solyndra bankruptcy scandal. Senate Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid said this microscopic spending cut to a program with no valid justification was "not an honest effort at compromise," as quoted in USA Today on Monday. The shutdown was averted only because FEMA decided it didn't need the emergency funding after all, meaning the Senate Democrats were successful in nullifying the negligible spending cut.
The House also passed a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would eliminate the government's power to run a deficit and increase the national debt. The Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to pass it.
To restore the creation of new jobs, the House passed the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act, which would stop the imposition of federal regulatory burdens on farmers and small businesses that would impede job creation. The Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to do anything to stop the runaway regulatory burdens of the Obama Administration, killing jobs and the economy.
The House has also passed the Energy Tax Prevention Act, prohibiting any federal agency from imposing a national energy tax, which would only further destroy jobs and shortcircuit economic recovery. But the Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to act on it.
To restore the production of American energy, creating new high paying jobs and producing increased federal revenues from the resulting increased economic growth, the House has passed the Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, the Reversing President Obama's Offshore Moratorium Act, the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act, and the Jobs and Energy Permitting Act. The House has also passed the North American-Made Energy Security Act, which would require the federal government to determine by a date certain whether to allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline bringing Canadian oil to America's Gulf refineries. That would produce tens of thousands of new jobs and billions in increased federal revenues, but approval has been pending for the entire nearly 3 years of the Obama Administration.
But the Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to act on any of these bills either.
The House has also passed The Consumer Financial Protection and Soundness Improvement Act, which would restrict the new unelected Consumer Financial Protection Bureau adopted in Obama's Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill from imposing any regulations that hurt job growth. Once again, no action from the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Obama, now campaigning for reelection non-stop around the country, is already trying to blame a Do-Nothing Congress for his failures. But the Republican-controlled House has already been quite active in passing legislation to address the nation's problems. It is the Do-Nothing Democrat-controlled Senate that has failed to act on any of the House's accomplishments or even pass a budget as required by law, effectively failing to show up for work.
It is the 23 Democrats whose seats are up for election this year, almost half of all Senate Democrats, that make this Senate record possible, fighting to the bitter end even the smallest budget cut. Make sure your friends, neighbors and relatives know that by the time the election rolls around next year. Make sure they don't get fooled again by Democrat candidates claiming they are different, and not Obamanistas. Every one of those Democrat Senate seats make the Obama record of trashing America possible.
Keeping Faith with the Voters, to Their Political Risk
House Republicans, indeed, fought bravely and successfully in insisting this past summer on spending cuts equal to the debt limit increase, forcing some major spending cuts on President Obama and Senate Democrats. But the Republicans have suffered in the polls for doing so. How dare they demand such spending cuts instead of just routinely approving the debt increase as in the past?
But the House Republican majority was elected precisely to end business as usual in Washington in regard to spending, deficits and debt. What they did during the debt limit fight only kept faith with the voters that overwhelmingly elected them in 2010.
The Washington Post, however, reported on September 24, "Polls showed that voters were appalled by what they viewed as a naked display of political brinkmanship that risked destabilizing the U.S. economy." GOP pollster Bill McInturff was cited as concluding that "Voters lost faith [during the debt limit fight] in the ability of both President Obama and Congressional Republicans to 'make the right decisions about the economy.'" But McInturff said, "congressional Republicans had taken the bigger hit…with 81 percent of those surveyed saying they had little or no confidence in the judgment of the GOP."
The Post also cited veteran political analyst Charlie Cook as saying over the debt limit fight that "if lawmakers continue down this path, the 2012 election could bring the biggest, broadest anti-incumbent year of postwar history, with voters indiscriminately tossing out lawmakers in both parties." Cook is quoted as saying, "I don't know what these guys think they're doing, but it looks like they're committing political suicide."
Even some libertarians I know who have condemned Republicans in the past for failing to cut spending think they went too far in demanding spending cuts in the debt limit fight. Yet some Tea Party grassroots activists condemn House Republicans for too easily giving in without getting enough in spending cuts.
A Paul Revere Moment: America at Risk
This raises an important, fundamental question. Is the Right becoming too fractured to hold together to give Obama and the Democrats the beating in 2012 they have so richly earned? The decentralized Tea Party has so far been mostly brilliant in maintaining political effectiveness while not breaking apart the opposition to Obama. Libertarians have to recognize as well we are dealing with a new, mortal danger to the nation in the Obamanistas. Every patriot has to think through how to be most effective politically in reversing the Left's so far soft authoritarian coup in Obama’s Democrat party.
House Speaker John Boehner and his House majority need to stop being so passive in taking the verbal broadsides of Obama and the Democrat-controlled media. They have one unexploited advantage. They each have home districts all across the country where they are all well known and have thorough access to the media. They need to pursue a more aggressive campaign mode media strategy in getting the word out now on their record and the issues to their local districts. They need to recognize Obama has started campaign 2012 now and start competing on the issues.
The voters have a responsibility too not to be so easily misled by the Democrat-controlled media, and to help spread the word locally to those who are not paying enough attention. This is a Paul Revere moment. America is fundamentally at risk. Patriots need to act now with effective, organizing political action to save the country from an ongoing Marxist takeover.
A crucial battle is going on right now in the Republican presidential race, which the conservatives are presently losing. Too many conservatives in the race are dividing up the conservative vote and leaving the lead to the more moderate. Republicans need to nominate an articulate leader who can take on Obama in debate, and who will make the most of the sweeping conservative victory in store, like Reagan did. We need to have more focus both on who is credible in taking on Obama, and who has the principled spirit and experienced effectiveness in making the most of the coming historic victory with New Deal-sized Republican Congressional majorities.
Grassroots patriots also need to take the battle to the enablers. Publicly challenge and hold accountable the Obama corporate cronies funding the Obama campaign in return for taxpayer funded payoffs. Locally challenge and hold accountable the brain dead Obamanista supporters who so fundamentally misunderstand the roots of American prosperity that they would vote for a Marxist takeover that would mean the decline and fall of America.
Most fundamentally, blame the entire Democrat party for Obama and what he is doing to America. Don't let your friends, neighbors and relatives fall for shysters claiming that they are different from Obama and the other Democrats. If they are different, let them run as independents or Republicans, and be part of the solution rather than part of the gravely threatening problem.
Then Democrats suffered historic, grievous losses in the 2010 midterm elections, with a New Deal size loss in the House of 63 seats, and a loss of 6 seats in the Senate. In Jimmy Carter's 1978 midterms, Democrats lost only 15 seats in the House and 3 seats in the Senate.
Now in the recent special election in New York City, Democrats have begun to lose seats they haven't lost since before the New Deal.
That is so fitting, because President Obama is not an anomaly in today's Democrat party. Quite to the contrary, he represents the party's heart and soul today, which is well to the Left now even of George McGovern in 1972. Witness the reelection of Far Left San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi as House Democrat leader even after the historic voter repudiation of the Pelosi Democrat House majority in 2010. Witness the choice of Far Left screamer Debbie Wasserman Schultz as leader of the Democratic National Committee. Witness Obama EPA Chief Lisa Jackson, Obama Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and the numerous similar, utterly clueless, ideologically rigid, far left appointees throughout the Obama Administration.
That is also so well deserved, because of what the Democrats are doing to our nation, even as their power starts to wane. Historically, for the American economy, the deeper the recession the stronger the recovery. Based on that historical record, we should be nearing the end of the second year of a booming recovery by now.
But almost four years after the last recession started, there still has been no real recovery. Unemployment is stuck over 9%, with unemployment among African-Americans, Hispanics, and teenagers at depression level double-digit rates for at least 2 years now. Real wages and incomes are falling, back to levels last seen over 30 years ago. Poverty is soaring to new records as well, with more Americans suffering in poverty than any time since the Census Bureau started keeping records over 50 years ago.
As a result, we are on track now for an historic conservative victory in 2012, far bigger even than in 1980.
The Do-Nothing Senate
In the Democrat majority-controlled Senate, 23 Democrat seats are subject to elections in 2012, with 6 of those open seats involving a retiring incumbent. Only 10 Republican seats are subject to election, with only two retirements from safe seats in Texas and Arizona. Let's compare the record of this Democrat-controlled Senate with the record of what the Republican-controlled House has already accomplished this year.
The first act of the Republican House was to pass repeal of Obamacare, reducing future taxes and spending by trillions. The Senate has failed to act on this at all.
The Republican House passed the budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, which would cut federal spending by $6.2 trillion over the first 10 years alone, and permanently balances the budget soon after that, as scored by CBO. Government spending as a percent of GDP would ultimately be reduced by 40% from current levels.
The Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to pass any budget at all, as required by law, for the second consecutive year now. At least they had the good sense to vote down Obama's proposed runaway budget, 97-0. But the failure to pass any budget leaves the government subject to possible shutdown this fall.
The Democrat Senate has also fought tooth and nail against every spending cut. They even threatened to shut down the entire government last week because the House Republicans funded emergency FEMA disaster relief spending with $1.5 billion in offsetting spending cuts, half of one thousandth of the entire federal budget. The cuts were to a Department of Energy corporate welfare loan program, like the program that just lost half a billion in taxpayer funds in the Solyndra bankruptcy scandal. Senate Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid said this microscopic spending cut to a program with no valid justification was "not an honest effort at compromise," as quoted in USA Today on Monday. The shutdown was averted only because FEMA decided it didn't need the emergency funding after all, meaning the Senate Democrats were successful in nullifying the negligible spending cut.
The House also passed a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would eliminate the government's power to run a deficit and increase the national debt. The Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to pass it.
To restore the creation of new jobs, the House passed the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act, which would stop the imposition of federal regulatory burdens on farmers and small businesses that would impede job creation. The Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to do anything to stop the runaway regulatory burdens of the Obama Administration, killing jobs and the economy.
The House has also passed the Energy Tax Prevention Act, prohibiting any federal agency from imposing a national energy tax, which would only further destroy jobs and shortcircuit economic recovery. But the Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to act on it.
To restore the production of American energy, creating new high paying jobs and producing increased federal revenues from the resulting increased economic growth, the House has passed the Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, the Reversing President Obama's Offshore Moratorium Act, the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act, and the Jobs and Energy Permitting Act. The House has also passed the North American-Made Energy Security Act, which would require the federal government to determine by a date certain whether to allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline bringing Canadian oil to America's Gulf refineries. That would produce tens of thousands of new jobs and billions in increased federal revenues, but approval has been pending for the entire nearly 3 years of the Obama Administration.
But the Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to act on any of these bills either.
The House has also passed The Consumer Financial Protection and Soundness Improvement Act, which would restrict the new unelected Consumer Financial Protection Bureau adopted in Obama's Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill from imposing any regulations that hurt job growth. Once again, no action from the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Obama, now campaigning for reelection non-stop around the country, is already trying to blame a Do-Nothing Congress for his failures. But the Republican-controlled House has already been quite active in passing legislation to address the nation's problems. It is the Do-Nothing Democrat-controlled Senate that has failed to act on any of the House's accomplishments or even pass a budget as required by law, effectively failing to show up for work.
It is the 23 Democrats whose seats are up for election this year, almost half of all Senate Democrats, that make this Senate record possible, fighting to the bitter end even the smallest budget cut. Make sure your friends, neighbors and relatives know that by the time the election rolls around next year. Make sure they don't get fooled again by Democrat candidates claiming they are different, and not Obamanistas. Every one of those Democrat Senate seats make the Obama record of trashing America possible.
Keeping Faith with the Voters, to Their Political Risk
House Republicans, indeed, fought bravely and successfully in insisting this past summer on spending cuts equal to the debt limit increase, forcing some major spending cuts on President Obama and Senate Democrats. But the Republicans have suffered in the polls for doing so. How dare they demand such spending cuts instead of just routinely approving the debt increase as in the past?
But the House Republican majority was elected precisely to end business as usual in Washington in regard to spending, deficits and debt. What they did during the debt limit fight only kept faith with the voters that overwhelmingly elected them in 2010.
The Washington Post, however, reported on September 24, "Polls showed that voters were appalled by what they viewed as a naked display of political brinkmanship that risked destabilizing the U.S. economy." GOP pollster Bill McInturff was cited as concluding that "Voters lost faith [during the debt limit fight] in the ability of both President Obama and Congressional Republicans to 'make the right decisions about the economy.'" But McInturff said, "congressional Republicans had taken the bigger hit…with 81 percent of those surveyed saying they had little or no confidence in the judgment of the GOP."
The Post also cited veteran political analyst Charlie Cook as saying over the debt limit fight that "if lawmakers continue down this path, the 2012 election could bring the biggest, broadest anti-incumbent year of postwar history, with voters indiscriminately tossing out lawmakers in both parties." Cook is quoted as saying, "I don't know what these guys think they're doing, but it looks like they're committing political suicide."
Even some libertarians I know who have condemned Republicans in the past for failing to cut spending think they went too far in demanding spending cuts in the debt limit fight. Yet some Tea Party grassroots activists condemn House Republicans for too easily giving in without getting enough in spending cuts.
A Paul Revere Moment: America at Risk
This raises an important, fundamental question. Is the Right becoming too fractured to hold together to give Obama and the Democrats the beating in 2012 they have so richly earned? The decentralized Tea Party has so far been mostly brilliant in maintaining political effectiveness while not breaking apart the opposition to Obama. Libertarians have to recognize as well we are dealing with a new, mortal danger to the nation in the Obamanistas. Every patriot has to think through how to be most effective politically in reversing the Left's so far soft authoritarian coup in Obama’s Democrat party.
House Speaker John Boehner and his House majority need to stop being so passive in taking the verbal broadsides of Obama and the Democrat-controlled media. They have one unexploited advantage. They each have home districts all across the country where they are all well known and have thorough access to the media. They need to pursue a more aggressive campaign mode media strategy in getting the word out now on their record and the issues to their local districts. They need to recognize Obama has started campaign 2012 now and start competing on the issues.
The voters have a responsibility too not to be so easily misled by the Democrat-controlled media, and to help spread the word locally to those who are not paying enough attention. This is a Paul Revere moment. America is fundamentally at risk. Patriots need to act now with effective, organizing political action to save the country from an ongoing Marxist takeover.
A crucial battle is going on right now in the Republican presidential race, which the conservatives are presently losing. Too many conservatives in the race are dividing up the conservative vote and leaving the lead to the more moderate. Republicans need to nominate an articulate leader who can take on Obama in debate, and who will make the most of the sweeping conservative victory in store, like Reagan did. We need to have more focus both on who is credible in taking on Obama, and who has the principled spirit and experienced effectiveness in making the most of the coming historic victory with New Deal-sized Republican Congressional majorities.
Grassroots patriots also need to take the battle to the enablers. Publicly challenge and hold accountable the Obama corporate cronies funding the Obama campaign in return for taxpayer funded payoffs. Locally challenge and hold accountable the brain dead Obamanista supporters who so fundamentally misunderstand the roots of American prosperity that they would vote for a Marxist takeover that would mean the decline and fall of America.
Most fundamentally, blame the entire Democrat party for Obama and what he is doing to America. Don't let your friends, neighbors and relatives fall for shysters claiming that they are different from Obama and the other Democrats. If they are different, let them run as independents or Republicans, and be part of the solution rather than part of the gravely threatening problem.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Sir Alex Ferguson claims football has sold soul to TV 'devil'
Sir Alex Ferguson has accused football of selling its soul to television and claimed that broadcasters do not pay enough money given the amount of control they exert over the game.
The Manchester United manager used his first in-depth BBC interview for almost a decade to berate the corrosive influence of television on the fixture list, despite the hundreds of millions of pounds it contributes to Manchester United's bottom line and its centrality to the business plan of the club's controversial owners.
"When you shake hands with the devil you have to pay the price. Television is God at the moment," said Ferguson, who agreed that broadcasters had "too much power". "It shows itself quite clearly because when you see the fixture lists come out now, they can pick and choose whenever they want the top teams on television," he added.
"You get some ridiculous situations when you're playing on Wednesday night in Europe and then at lunchtime the following Saturday. You ask any manager if they would pick that themselves and there'd be absolutely no chance."
Ferguson also said that broadcasters should pay more for the rights to live football, given the Premier League sold its product to more than 200 countries. "When you think of that I don't think we get enough money," he said.
The Premier League secured around £3.5bn from its most recent round of television deals, which run until the end of next season. About £2.1bn was generated from domestic rights sales, including about £1.8bn for live rights from BSkyB and ESPN, and £1.4bn from overseas broadcasters.
BSkyB refused to comment on Ferguson's observations but sports broadcasting insiders pointed out that Ferguson's views did not reflect the fact that each club must be shown live a minimum of 10 times and a maximum of 26, nor that other factors affected the scheduling of matches. They include policing issues and the ongoing tussle over the fixture calendar between domestic football bodies, Uefa and Fifa.
"Sir Alex's comments always have to be taken seriously – he is a very wise and experienced football man," Brian Barwick, a former FA chief executive and controller of sport at ITV, told the BBC.
"But on this one, I do think Manchester United have almost had a lion's share of TV revenue over a period of time and it has helped build a fantastic stadium in Old Trafford and helped build Sir Alex's teams with star players." Others pointed to the explosion in broadcasting income over the past two decades and the degree to which it drives Manchester United's commercial strategy, which relies on international TV exposure to drive its global sponsorship strategy.
Under the Premier League's distribution formula, which includes an equal share plus a merit payment and facility fees depending on the number of times each club is shown, Manchester United earned £60.4m from domestic TV last season.
The club's most recent financial results, to the year ending June 2011, showed that media income amounted to the club's biggest revenue stream, bringing in £119.4m. Commercial income, increasingly driven by overseas exposure on TV, rose to £103.4m from £81.4m the previous year.
The global reach afforded to the club by TV has been claimed as a major driver behind the plan to float a minority stake in Manchester United on the Singapore stock exchange.
The Football Supporters' Federation backed Ferguson's stance, albeit for different reasons. "The contract with Sky and ESPN ought to leave more control with the Premier League over the fixture calendar," said its chairman, Malcolm Clarke. "They should try and minimise the disruption to the number of matches being played on Saturday at 3pm. And they should be trying to minimise the number of long journeys for supporters on a Monday night.
"If you gave the Premier League more control, it might reduce the value of the rights in the marketplace but that should be a price football is prepared to pay."
Despite Ferguson's comments, there is no suggestion that the Glazers are planning to try to break away from the Premier League's collective selling model in order to maximise revenues.
In contrast to Spain, where the big two clubs do their own deals with television companies, the Premier League's income is shared out on a more equitable basis. Real Madrid recorded £129.9m in media revenues and Barcelona £145.8m, according to to the 2011 Deloitte Money League. United were the Premier League's highest earners last year, with and Blackpool the lowest with £39.1m.
The Glazers are believed to be convinced of the merits of the collective model but are determined to better exploit the limited rights that clubs have within their control by signing deals with international telecom and media companies.
In remarks that are likely to come as little surprise to those who have been on the receiving end of the Scot's famously fiery temper, David Beckham and Paul Ince included, Ferguson also admitted in the same interview: "I'm a confrontational character. I don't like people arguing back with me. I maybe have a short fuse."
The Manchester United manager used his first in-depth BBC interview for almost a decade to berate the corrosive influence of television on the fixture list, despite the hundreds of millions of pounds it contributes to Manchester United's bottom line and its centrality to the business plan of the club's controversial owners.
"When you shake hands with the devil you have to pay the price. Television is God at the moment," said Ferguson, who agreed that broadcasters had "too much power". "It shows itself quite clearly because when you see the fixture lists come out now, they can pick and choose whenever they want the top teams on television," he added.
"You get some ridiculous situations when you're playing on Wednesday night in Europe and then at lunchtime the following Saturday. You ask any manager if they would pick that themselves and there'd be absolutely no chance."
Ferguson also said that broadcasters should pay more for the rights to live football, given the Premier League sold its product to more than 200 countries. "When you think of that I don't think we get enough money," he said.
The Premier League secured around £3.5bn from its most recent round of television deals, which run until the end of next season. About £2.1bn was generated from domestic rights sales, including about £1.8bn for live rights from BSkyB and ESPN, and £1.4bn from overseas broadcasters.
BSkyB refused to comment on Ferguson's observations but sports broadcasting insiders pointed out that Ferguson's views did not reflect the fact that each club must be shown live a minimum of 10 times and a maximum of 26, nor that other factors affected the scheduling of matches. They include policing issues and the ongoing tussle over the fixture calendar between domestic football bodies, Uefa and Fifa.
"Sir Alex's comments always have to be taken seriously – he is a very wise and experienced football man," Brian Barwick, a former FA chief executive and controller of sport at ITV, told the BBC.
"But on this one, I do think Manchester United have almost had a lion's share of TV revenue over a period of time and it has helped build a fantastic stadium in Old Trafford and helped build Sir Alex's teams with star players." Others pointed to the explosion in broadcasting income over the past two decades and the degree to which it drives Manchester United's commercial strategy, which relies on international TV exposure to drive its global sponsorship strategy.
Under the Premier League's distribution formula, which includes an equal share plus a merit payment and facility fees depending on the number of times each club is shown, Manchester United earned £60.4m from domestic TV last season.
The club's most recent financial results, to the year ending June 2011, showed that media income amounted to the club's biggest revenue stream, bringing in £119.4m. Commercial income, increasingly driven by overseas exposure on TV, rose to £103.4m from £81.4m the previous year.
The global reach afforded to the club by TV has been claimed as a major driver behind the plan to float a minority stake in Manchester United on the Singapore stock exchange.
The Football Supporters' Federation backed Ferguson's stance, albeit for different reasons. "The contract with Sky and ESPN ought to leave more control with the Premier League over the fixture calendar," said its chairman, Malcolm Clarke. "They should try and minimise the disruption to the number of matches being played on Saturday at 3pm. And they should be trying to minimise the number of long journeys for supporters on a Monday night.
"If you gave the Premier League more control, it might reduce the value of the rights in the marketplace but that should be a price football is prepared to pay."
Despite Ferguson's comments, there is no suggestion that the Glazers are planning to try to break away from the Premier League's collective selling model in order to maximise revenues.
In contrast to Spain, where the big two clubs do their own deals with television companies, the Premier League's income is shared out on a more equitable basis. Real Madrid recorded £129.9m in media revenues and Barcelona £145.8m, according to to the 2011 Deloitte Money League. United were the Premier League's highest earners last year, with and Blackpool the lowest with £39.1m.
The Glazers are believed to be convinced of the merits of the collective model but are determined to better exploit the limited rights that clubs have within their control by signing deals with international telecom and media companies.
In remarks that are likely to come as little surprise to those who have been on the receiving end of the Scot's famously fiery temper, David Beckham and Paul Ince included, Ferguson also admitted in the same interview: "I'm a confrontational character. I don't like people arguing back with me. I maybe have a short fuse."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)