The American people often complain that the government “isn’t listening.” The Obama administration continually proves it is listening intently to every word uttered about it, and monitoring the speakers. The latest outrage involves the federal government awarding $18,000 in taxpayer dollars to John Brooks Rice to monitor media coverage of Obama’s handling of the BP oil spill. Rice watched news reports from May to July on behalf of Obama, noting whether reporters portrayed his boss in a positive or negative light.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) doled out the cash to Rich via a no-bid contract, the very tool Democrats criticized Republicans for using in Iraq. Now that the program has been exposed, Obama is trying to shove the cost off onto BP. The Associated Press reports, “The Coast Guard expects BP to reimburse the $18,000, Coast Guard spokesman Capt. Ron LaBrec said.” (The government could also have gotten a better deal; Hot Air has more details.)
Those details are virtually all Obama administration officials have given the media. Rice refused to hand over “copies of his reports rating the tone of news stories,” claiming he had already deleted them. Although the AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all the documents Rice produced, it “hasn’t received them.” However, Rice told reporters, “From reading and watching the media I would create reports. I reported either positive coverage, negative coverage, [or] misinformation coverage.”
The word “misinformation” sounds an eerily familiar tone. Earlier this week, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius warned insurance companies to stop peddling “misinformation” that ObamaCare caused insurance rate hikes. It does not matter that this is transparently true; Obama admitted Friday, “We didn’t think that we were going to cover 30 million people for free.” Even the dependably liberal shill Time magazine noted the “overt nature” of Sebelius’ “threat,” extorting insurers that if they continue to exercise their First Amendment right to state the obvious, Obama would shut them out of state insurance exchanges — and possibly the insurance industry altogether — by 2014.
The Obama administration was also keen to monitor “misinformation” when it unveiled flag@WhiteHouse.gov. The White House website asked American snitchizens to e-mail the feds any information “about health insurance reform that seems fishy.”
Congressman Darrell Issa has exposed how this is part of Barack Obama’s systematic, comprehensive, and possibly illegal use of covert, taxpayer-funded propaganda. His 36-page report uncovered numerous instances of potentially impeachable offenses. In one relevant example, Obama spent tax dollars to hire Tracy Russo, a former blogger for John Edwards, to comment on internet articles or bulletin board messages that criticized his adminsitration or agenda, often anonymously. (You can read his full report here.) He attempted to enroll National Endowment for the Arts grant recipients and Hollywood liberals in the push for his agenda.
His Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) “highly recommended” states receiving stimulus funds post highway signs lauding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Obama’s $787 billion stimulus, along construction areas. Some of these advertisements for big government cost up to $10,000 each.
These thuggish, or quasi-Orwellian schemes ignore the blantant waste and misuse of taxpayer dollars inevitable in any government that spends as much as does ours. Senators Tom Coburn, R-OK, and John McCain, R-AZ, compiled an official report listing 100 wasteful projects funded by the stimulus bill. These include hundreds of thousands of dollars to forecast the weather on other planets, nearly three-quarters-of-a-million dollars to invent a joke-telling robot, and $25,000 for the International Accordion Festival.
More menacingly, the stimulus bill allocated $500,000 to put microchips inside recycling bins in Dayton, Ohio. Local authorities insist the chips are benign.
Kevin “Coach” Collins highlights up a little reported story on his website today that $171,300 from the Obama administration’s appliance-rebate program was used to outsource call center jobs from Ohio to El Salvador.
And CNSNews.com reports today that the National Institute of Mental Health spent $823,200 of stimulus funds on a UCLA study “to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex.”
If the waste and bottomless deficit spending were not destructive enough, Obama is simultaneously demonizing and keeping ever-m0re-invasive tabs on his opponents. His Department of Homeland Security has named opponents of abortion, gay marriage, and massive government as public enemy number one. Obama has hauled the state of Arizona before the United Nations over its immigration law. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled the government needs no warrant to attach a GPS device to the vehicle of someone it deems a threat. And vans equipped with full-body scan x-ray technology now travel along U.S. streets, seeking threats. In this context, media monitoring could be more threatening.
Hiring Rice to report on media coverage is either a government PR measure or a means of intimidation. Either is an unconstitutional waste of taxpayer dollars.
American citizens would have far fewer complaints if Obama and his liberal elite brain trust spent less time monitoring our reaction to their misgovernance and more time reading the instruction manual: the U.S. Constitution.
Until they do, they will continue blacklisting every American who shares that wish above a whisper.
What can you say? Either we take our government and our country back peacefully at the polls, or we take it back the way we got it in the first place. The time for "talk" is over.
John F. Kennedy said, Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
This man in the oval office is one BIG nightmare after another. Spending has reached the moon and beyond. IMPEACHMENT is the only answer to remove his daily moves against America and her people. http://www.impeachobamacampaign.com/
POTUS has to be legit to impeach. Treason is the other choice
My God that picture is so scarry!!!!
How did you get a picture? Each time I try to open it, I get that same old sentence: The website cannot display the page.
SO HOW CAN OBAMA COURT-MARTIAL ANYONE?
Gen. Thomas McInerney (Ret.) has called Obama a liar, and former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore said, ““Lt. Col. Lakin has every right to question the lawfulness of the orders of the commander in chief. He’s not only the commander in chief, he dictates the whole war effort, as shown by the recent firing of [Gen. Stanley McChrystal].”
Obama’s team of attorneys have #quashed every effort to obtain his records so that the American people might know whether or not he is constitutionally qualified to serve and not a foreign usurper.
The generals serving under Obama have taken the law into their own hands by denying a criminal defendant the right to discovery so that he might defend himself, thereby violating the U.S. Constitution. They have reportedly even threatened the defendant with bodily harm. http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/09/09/treason-ch…
Am I reading this correctly? You think Obama has every right to do Whatever the He!! he wants? When we don't even know if he is legally the president of OUR United States of America! It could very easily be known, IF he would prove it. NO, the fake BC he continues showing on TV is NOT a legal BC as you and most everyone else should know.
No , I think you did not read it right. I believe the suggestion was that the generals blocking Lakin' s defence by not allowing him to challenge Obama's legitimacy should be Courts Martialed. Even as a retired Army Officer, I agree.
Misinformation is what this Administration is all about. That is the one thing that progressives have got down , but it starting to not work. The big mistake the administration has made is assuming that the electorate that was dumb enough to elect them would stay that way. It did not work. All those independents have seen enough and come back home . Being the first Black POTUS was not enough and unfortunately because of his dismal experience and qualifications he may be last for a while, of his party anyway.