Rhetoric on gov. ‘shutdown’ from Fox, MSNBC, Boehner, Reid, et al. bordered on insane viciousness such as heard on Radio Rwanda in the 1990′s-Koire

Polite concerned citizens today are often labeled terrorists. Free speech was once championed by those in government.

10/7/13, “Are we the Hutus and the Tutsis? Democrats vs Tea Party? What’s next?“ Democrats Against UN Agenda 21

The rhetoric coming from Fox, MSNBC, Boehner, Reid and full cast of characters borders on the insane viciousness of Radio Rwanda in the 1990′s that drove neighbors into murderous rage. All orchestrated and it will continue.

“Who is the Tea Party?”

“It seems that just as people in this nation began to become fully engaged in examining their government’s actions they were corralled and claimed…. These people are being vilified. The issues that they are concerned about are being buried under mountains of accusations of obstructionism, racism, and careless cruelty.  It’s starting to feel like ‘The Two Minutes of Hate’ in George Orwell’s ’1984.’

We need to remember that all Americans have a duty to question their government and to demand transparency and full analysis for all programs that affect us.”…

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Comment: One is left to conclude that things are much worse in this country than one can imagine or are of much greater financial import than one can imagine. There's no other explanation for 'powers that be' unleashing such hateful slander to prevent citizens from discussion, examination, and taking stock of what many see as years of bad decisions by government. Being an ordinary concerned citizen today means you're a Tea Party supporter and a terrorist. The establishment can't accept that our government is any of our business. Matters that effect my life and my country should be decided by self appointed royals, not me. To silence us once and for all the bigs have convinced others that people like me are worse than mass-murdering, head slicing, suicide bombing, Muslim terrorists:   

"Among those who Strongly Approve of the president, more fear the Tea Party than radical Muslims."...

6/27/13, "26% of Obama Supporters View Tea Party as Nation’s Top Terror Threat," Rasmussen Reports

"Half of all voters consider radical Muslims the bigger terrorist threat facing the nation, but supporters of President Obama consider the Tea Party to be as big a danger. 

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters consider radical Muslims to be the bigger threat to the United States today. Thirteen percent (13%) view the Tea Party that way, and another 13% consider other political and religious extremists to be the larger danger. Six percent (6%) point to local militia groups. Two percent (2%) see the Occupy Wall Street movement as the bigger terrorist threat. (To see survey question wording, click here.)  

However, among those who approve of the president’s job performance, just 29% see radical Muslims as the bigger threat. Twenty-six percent (26%) say it’s the Tea Party that concerns them most. Among those who Strongly Approve of the president, more fear the Tea Party than radical Muslims.

As for those who disapprove of Obama’s performance, 75% consider radical Muslims to be the bigger terrorist threat. Just one percent (1%) name the Tea Party. 

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on June 22-23, 2013 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Interestingly, while the Occupy movement was allegedly targeting the “one percent”, upper income Americans are more likely than others to see the Tea Party as the bigger terror threat.  

Among those who earn six-figure incomes, 21% consider the Tea Party the bigger threat, while just two percent (2%) say the same of the Occupy movement. Among Americans who earn less than $30,000 a year, 12% see the Tea Party as the bigger threat, and seven percent (7%) say that description best applies to the Occupy movement.

The Tea Party received a boost in popularity earlier this year following revelations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted it and other conservative groups. Most voters believe the targeting was politically motivated and that the decision was made in Washington.

Conservatives overwhelmingly see radical Muslims as the greater terror threat. Liberals are fairly evenly divided between radical Muslims and the Tea Party. 

Twenty percent (20%) of government workers see the Tea Party as the nation’s bigger terror threat. Twelve percent (12%) of private sector workers hold that view.

Most voters today believe the federal government is a threat to individual rights. 

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of voters think it is at least somewhat likely that terrorist groups will soon gain access to nuclear weapons, including 34% who feel it is Very Likely.

However, 57% believe economic challenges represent the biggest threat to the United States. Half as many (27%) see terrorist attacks as the biggest threat." 

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"The vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations, crafted largely by thousands of unnamed, unreachable bureaucrats....The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined."

5/24/13, "The rise of the fourth branch of government," Washington Post, Jonathan Turley, opinion
 
"The growing dominance of the federal government over the states has obscured more fundamental changes within the federal government itself: It is not just bigger, it is dangerously off kilter. Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch, an administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency.
 
This exponential growth has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined.

For much of our nation’s history, the federal government was quite small. In 1790, it had just 1,000 nonmilitary workers. In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies.

The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s lawmaking authority. In fact, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations, crafted largely by thousands of unnamed, unreachable bureaucrats. One study found that in 2007, Congress enacted 138 public laws, while federal agencies finalized 2,926 rules, including 61 major regulations.

This rulemaking comes with little accountability. It’s often impossible to know, absent a major scandal, whom to blame for rules that are abusive or nonsensical. Of course, agencies owe their creation and underlying legal authority to Congress, and Congress holds the purse strings. But Capitol Hill’s relatively small staff is incapable of exerting oversight on more than a small percentage of agency actions. And the threat of cutting funds is a blunt instrument to control a massive administrative state — like running a locomotive with an on/off switch.

The autonomy was magnified when the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that agencies are entitled to heavy deference in their interpretations of laws. The court went even further this past week, ruling that agencies should get the same heavy deference in determining their own jurisdictions — a power that was previously believed to rest with Congress. In his dissent in Arlington v. FCC, Chief Justice John Roberts warned: “It would be a bit much to describe the result as ‘the very definition of tyranny,’ but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed.”

The judiciary, too, has seen its authority diminished by the rise of the fourth branch. Under Article III of the Constitution, citizens facing charges and fines are entitled to due process in our court system. As the number of federal regulations increased, however, Congress decided to relieve the judiciary of most regulatory cases and create administrative courts tied to individual agencies. The result is that a citizen is 10 times more likely to be tried by an agency than by an actual court. In a given year, federal judges conduct roughly 95,000 adjudicatory proceedings, including trials, while federal agencies complete more than 939,000.

These agency proceedings are often mockeries of due process, with one-sided presumptions and procedural rules favoring the agency. And agencies increasingly seem to chafe at being denied their judicial authority. Just ask John E. Brennan. Brennan, a 50-year-old technology consultant, was charged with disorderly conduct and indecent exposure when he stripped at Portland International Airport last year in protest of invasive security measures by the Transportation Security Administration. He was cleared by a federal judge, who ruled that his stripping was a form of free speech. The TSA was undeterred. After the ruling, it pulled Brennan into its own agency courts under administrative charges.

The rise of the fourth branch has occurred alongside an unprecedented increase in presidential powers — from the power to determine when to go to war to the power to decide when it’s reasonable to vaporize a U.S. citizen in a drone strike. In this new order, information is jealously guarded and transparency has declined sharply. That trend, in turn, has given the fourth branch even greater insularity and independence. When Congress tries to respond to cases of agency abuse, it often finds officials walled off by claims of expanding executive privilege.

Of course, federal agencies officially report to the White House under the umbrella of the executive branch. But in practice, the agencies have evolved into largely independent entities over which the president has very limited control. Only 1 percent of federal positions are filled by political appointees, as opposed to career officials, and on average appointees serve only two years. At an individual level, career officials are insulated from political pressure by civil service rules. There are also entire agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — that are protected from White House interference.

Some agencies have gone so far as to refuse to comply with presidential orders. For example, in 1992 President George H.W. Bush ordered the U.S. Postal Service to withdraw a lawsuit against the Postal Rate Commission, and he threatened to sack members of the Postal Service’s Board of Governors who denied him. The courts ruled in favor of the independence of the agency....

The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined. The marginalization Congress feels is magnified for citizens, who are routinely pulled into the vortex of an administrative state that allows little challenge or appeal. The IRS scandal is the rare case in which internal agency priorities are forced into the public eye. Most of the time, such internal policies are hidden from public view and congressional oversight. While public participation in the promulgation of new regulations is allowed, and often required, the process is generally perfunctory and dismissive.
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In the new regulatory age, presidents and Congress can still change the government’s priorities, but the agencies effectively run the show based on their interpretations and discretion. The rise of this fourth branch represents perhaps the single greatest change in our system of government since the founding.
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We cannot long protect liberty if our leaders continue to act like mere bystanders to the work of government."

"Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University."


 



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