Sunday, June 16, 2013

The Corruption Starts And Ends With Obama, Trickles Down Through Agencies

By Susan Duclos


From 2009 to 2013, there is one common denominator with the DOE, IRS, NSA, DOJ, State Department and the EPA scandals that have rocked Washington, and that is the man that sits at the top, Barack Obama.

THE SCANDALS

Department of Energy (DOE)- Solyndra- Washington Post has the key coverage on the Solyndra scandal all on one page, and the timeline, as well as the proof that the White House knew more than it originally claimed to know.

Obama tried to cast blame on the Bush administration and that turned out to be misleading, according to ABC News, that reported at the time "However, he incorrectly suggests Solyndra received its financing from that same 2005 program.  Instead, the company’s $500 million in fast-tracked loan guarantees came from an entirely new section of the program created under Obama by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the stimulus."


Internal Revenue Service (IRS)-  Admits to Targeting Conservatives- According to the investigations the targeting of Obama's political opponents, Tea Party, Patriot and 9/12 groups, started in 2010 and continued into 2013. Pro-Israel groups were also targeted for additional scrutiny if their positions contradicted the Obama administration's. Pro-Life groups were forced to sign away their right to protest in front of the Obama supported Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider. Also claims swirl that Romney donors were targeted for IRS audits immediately after Barack Obama publicly targeted those donors on his website.

 Obama claimed, " I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.  I think it was on Friday."

The congressional investigation is ongoing.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-  FOIA Request Fees- The EPA is accused of trying to charge conservative groups fees while largely exempting liberal groups. The fees applied to Freedom of Information Act requests -- allegedly, the EPA waived them for liberal groups far more often than it did for conservative ones.

The congressional investigation is ongoing.

State Department- Benghazi- On 9/11/12, terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate and safe house in Benghazi, Libya, murdering four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya. Secretary of State (at the time) Hillary Clinton as well as Barack Obama, and Obama administration officials, publicly told Americans the attack was part of demonstrations and protests over a controversial video clip. They continued to maintain that even after the story was debunked. Investigations have included testimony from whistle-blowers, emails and documents showing forces were told to "stand down" when preparing to provide assistance to those being attacked. The Obama administration has also been accused, by Congress, of hiding the Benghazi survivors from investigators. The scandal continues to grow as others agree to testify.

White House, via Joe Biden, claimed "We weren't told they wanted more security. We did not know they wanted more security."

The congressional investigation is ongoing.

Department of Justice (DOJ)- Fast and Furious- A federal operation dubbed Fast and Furious allowed weapons from the U.S. to pass into the hands of suspected gun smugglers so the arms could be traced to the higher echelons of Mexican drug cartels. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which ran the operation, has lost track of hundreds of firearms, many of which have been linked to crimes, including the fatal shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

The LA Times has a pretty good run-down of the Fast and Furious scandal as more and more information was revealed.

As Congress was investigating, AG Eric Holder was caught in multiple lies and the Obama administration refused to provide the specified documents to investigators and when they issued subpoenas, Barack Obama claimed executive privilege to prevent damaging documents from being obtained by Congress.

At the time White House spokesman, Jay Carney said " ....everyone knows the President did not know about this tactic until he heard about it through the media...."
 

Department of Justice (DOJ)- AP Phone Scandal and Attack Against the Free Press-  The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.

Directly following that revelation, it was reported and confirmed that the DOJ also tracked the movements and correspondence of a Fox News reporter, James Rosen. To justify obtaining the data on Rosen they labeled him a "aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator," in court papers, for accepting leaked information and doing his job as a reporter and reporting on it.

According to Obama's mouthpiece, Jay Carney, "Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP."

The congressional investigation is ongoing.

National Security Agency (NSA)- Domestic Surveillance-  First it was revealed the US government is collecting the phone records of millions of US customers of Verizon under a top secret court order. Read the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order at The Guardian.

The order requires Verizon, one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies, on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries. 

On the heels of that bombshell, it was revealed that the NSA also has a secret program called Prism, in which, using secret FISA court orders, the Obama administration was collecting private data, in bulk, from at least nine major tech companies about their users, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple.

A class action lawsuit has already been filed against  Obama, NSA, Verizon and the DoJ.

(See- lawsuit, embedded here)

The congressional investigation is ongoing.

Other scandals, not as well publicized, listed at White House Dossier

 As I said at the beginning of this post, the only common denominator in all the scandals, from each of the agencies listed above, where the heads of those agencies were appointed by the man at the top, is Barack Obama.

The corruption starts with Obama and trickles down throughout his whole administration and all the agencies below.