My good friend and colleague, John Titus, was hosted on the Keiser Report to discuss his film, All The Plenary’s Men, in which Titus documents the process by which the Obama Government enabled the Too Big To Fail Banks to commit crimes in the United States with total impugnity, “which makes them more legally powerful than the Government:”
Tag Archives: Rule of Law
The Deep State Transcends Sovereign Law
The ultimate form of political and economic power is the power to commit crimes with impunity. – John Titus
The Shadow of Truth is pleased to present a preview of, “All The Plenary’s Men,” the new film by John Titus (Best Evidence videos / Bailout Films). The term “plenary” in this context is defined as, “complete in every respect;” as in, “plenary power,” meaning, “absolute power.”
In his spectacularly prophetic dystopian novel, “1984,” George Orwell offered the following observation about power:
Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
The quiet revolution occurring behind the facade that is called “Washington, DC” for several decades has led to the complete hijacking of the U.S. Government by an entity nefariously known as, “The Deep State.” Those who warned about The Deep State previously were labelled conspiracy theorists. Now, with the help of Wikileaks, the idea of the Deep State is openly discussed even in the mainstream media. The Deep State is Orwell’s Big Brother.
The ultimate power is the power to commit crimes with impunity, meaning that the entity committing the crime does so free from fear of punishment. We saw this with the Iraq invasion in several respects. The invasion was never sanctioned by the UN Security Council or in accordance with the UN’s founding Charter. It was an illegal war waged by what has become the world’s most dangerous terrorist: The U.S. Deep State. Big oil is
part of the Deep State. Therefore, when Halliburton was caught charging the U.S. taxpayer $10/gallon for gasoline being sold to the military in Iraq, Halliburton was never punished.
Even more horrifying was watching the Too Big To Fail banks break ev
ery major securities law in the rule book leading up to the financial collapse of 2008 and escape free from any form of prosecution. Not only were these banks allowed to trample all over the law, but the Government used $800 billion of taxpayer money to keep the banks from collapsing and to enable the banks to pay large bonuses that ye
ar.
The primary theme underlying John Titus,’ “All The Plenary’s Men,” is that any entity that can commit crimes with impunity has risen above a nation’s sovereign law. In fact, that entity IS the sovereign authority. Thus, The Deep State is the sovereign authority standing behind the U.S. Government. The Deep State is comprised of not just the NSA, CIA and Pentagon, but also Big Oil, Big Banks, Big Healthcare and Big Technology.
“We’ve been swirling down the toilet as a nation since 2007” (John Titus). The Shadow Truth chatted with John about his upcoming film, for which he provided a thoroughly engrossing, if not chilling, trailer:
Hillary Clinton Could Get Away With Murder – Defining Deviance Down
I don’t even know what to say anymore. The U.S. Government has collapsed into complete Banana Republic status. It’s a free-for-all for those in position to use their position of power for personal gain. Hillary Clinton will go down in the annals as one of the most corrupt politicians in the history of the world. She’s the “Idi Amin” of U.S. politics.
It was announced today that Dept of Justice has closed its investigation of Hillary. For me that decision was telegraphed when Loretta Lynch met with Bill Clinton illegally. I doubt the DoJ even opened a formal investigation. These people could care less if the portion of the public that is paying attention is pissed off. No one will do anything about it and what would you do if you wanted to do something about it? Anyone who votes for Hillary is a complete moron. Anyone who votes, period, is a moron. Your vote does not matter.
My friend/colleague – John Titus, Best Evidence Productions – has written more commentary on the the planetary-sized political abortion called Washington, DC – enjoy:
The FBI’s announcement that it won’t recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton is not only a stunning repudiation of the rule of law, it’s a coronation of American royalty. The FBI told us that Hillary broke the law, but that it’s of no consequence because she, like a queen (or king), is above the law.
You don’t need to look beyond the four corners of the very FBI announcement that exonerates Clinton to see that she committed a crime carrying up to a 10-years sentence in prison. The FBI’s internal inconsistency—concluding that Clinton is above the very law that the FBI just finished showing that Clinton violated—is a glaring rejection of the rule of law, and a formal adoption of a legal system premised on royalty.
What’s so noteworthy is how far the FBI went out of its way to make it clear that while Hillary Clinton is above the law, the rest of us remain very much at its mercy (like serfs in a kingdom).
Before showing as much, let’s be clear about what the rule of law is, and about its mortal enemy, the rule of kings. When it comes to governance, there are two and only two systems. They are mutually exclusive. Either the law is reigns supreme over the land, or men do. It’s one or the other.
Since its inception, the U.S. has self-identified as a nation of laws, not of men. The U.S., of course, has never lived up to this impossibly perfect ideal, but there is no dispute whatsoever that the rule of law is the reigning ideal against which justice is measured. The negation of the rule of law is the reign of a king (or queen).
The American implementation of the rule of law has several corollaries, including:
(1) because the law is supreme, no one is above the law;
(2) there isn’t one set of rules for some people and a different set of rules for other people; and
(3) because the same laws must be applied equally in all cases, factually identical cases from the past determine how the law applies in future cases.
The rule of law rejects the notion that anyone is above the law. As such, it stands in diametric opposition to the royalty model, in which the king is the law. This royalty principle was most succinctly expressed by William Blackstone in his legal treatise: “The king can do no wrong.”
The FBI’s announcement openly mocks all three rule-of-law principles, as FBI Director James Comey himself made clear. In each and every instance, Comey bends the law around Hillary Clinton, exactly as a dutiful civil servant of the king would do.
1. No One But Hillary Clinton Is Above the Law
FBI Director James Comey made out a clear-cut case that Hillary Clinton violated 18 U.S.C. 793(f):
2. Gross Negligence Is the Legal Standard for Ordinary People; for Hillary Clinton, the Legal Standard Is “Intent to Violate Laws”
By the express terms of 18 U.S.C. 793(f), criminal culpability exists where there is a finding of “gross negligence.” But James Comey informed us that the legal standard is different for Hillary Clinton and her coterie: “we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information”
3. While Hillary Is Free to Break National Security Laws Because She’s Special, You Aren’t
James Comey: “To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.”
Well, there you have it. We’ve known for some time that the rule of law is dead in the U.S. What we didn’t know is who the new king or queen would be. The FBI just told us in three different ways.
All Hail, Queen Hillary—and keep your own noses clean, serfs.
Now let’s see how many peons, having been apprised by the highest authorities in the land that there is in fact a Queen ruling over them, actually line up to vote for Her Highness so as to advance their own subjugation. This massive public display of abject and willing servility, just 4 months away now, promises to be breathtaking.
The Veneer Of Justice In The Kingdom Of Crime
The only aspect of the 2008 de facto financial system collapse that was more stunning than the fact that NONE of the big banks were prosecuted for crimes that were obvious to a 2nd grader was that fact that the Taxpayers were squeezed for close to a $1 trillion dollars to enable the big banks to continue on their unimpeded crime spree.
My good friend and colleague, John Titus, has produced a documentary which details the methodical manner in which Wall Street – and specifically Goldman Sachs – has completely annexed the Department of Justice.
Titus applies his acute legal mind and painstakingly meticulous research to lay out the case for a legal system that has become hopelessly and irreparably corrupted by Wall Street and the scarcely-publicized DC law firm DC law firm, Covington & Burling.
As you watch this brilliant documentary, see if you think Covington & Burling reminds you of the law firm in the Grisham novel, “The Firm,” and Goldman Sachs reminds you of the Chicago mobster clan depicted in the story.
The underlying theme in this documentary is the manner in which big money has assumed complete control of the United States political and justice system, as our Government progresses further down the road to oligarchic, totalitarian system – Rule by Money has replaced Rule of Law.
SoT Ep 43 – John Titus: The Fed And The Greece-ification Of America
The more I learn, the more I realize that the Fed is nothing but a criminal enterprise, that the guys at the top know it. Everyone within breathing distance of top slots at the NY Fed is a criminal. Remember, the NY Fed shares space with the Exchange Stabilization Fund/Working Group on Financial Markets even though the latter is formally part of the Treasury. – John Titus, one conclusion from reading the 2009 FOMC transcripts
The only difference between Greece and the United States is that the United States can unilaterally print its own money – money that enables unlimited Government funding and allows the big banks to remain solvent. The actual process of money printing and debt creation is implemented by the Federal Reserve and the Too Big To Fail Banks that operate as agents of the Fed.
John Titus is in the process of producing a video about the criminality of the Federal Reserve and its member banks. His researched is derived from reading several of the transcripts from the 2009 FOMC meetings during the early stages of the QE programs. While the “minutes” of the Fed meeting – released three weeks after an FOMC meeting – summarize the FOMC’s policy stance, the transcripts are the most detailed record of FOMC meeting proceedings. The release of the transcripts is delayed for five years.
What comes out loud and clear from the transcripts is that not everybody is on board with policy decisions. For example the purchase of mortgage-backed assets. There’s lot of uneasiness among Fed members but ultimately they all go along with the plan. I’ve read a lot of transcripts – probably thousands – and what comes out of the Fed transcripts is that the plan has been decided on beforehand. The FOMC meetings are only there to hand down that plan, to discuss the plan, to discuss how to implement the plan and to prop up the idea that FOMC meetings are some sort of democratic process. – John Titus
I asserted in 2003 that the elitists running this country would hold the system up with printed money until they have swept every last crumb of middle class wealth off the table and into their own pockets. “Middle class” for this purpose is defined as anyone who does not have enough cash laying around and the appropriate connections to buy their own Congressman. The cut-off level of wealth for this is probably about $100 million in non-real estate wealth.
I always thought that the means to accomplish this was money printing and devaluation of the currency. But true extraction mechanism is debt. Banks and bankers create debt and make it readily available to their victims. It’s no different that dealing heroin. Get your target addicted and then keep selling it to the victim until it dies.
The bankers gained economic and political control in 1913 when the Fed was founded. Ever since then, there’s been a gradual transfer of wealth from the 99.9% to the .1%. There’s also been a slow, methodical dismantling of the Constitution and Rule of Law. In fact the Fed, the big banks and the big corporations have successfully pulled off a de facto coup d’etat of the U.S. Government.
I don’t consider the U.S. Government to be a sovereign Government because if you look at the sovereign function that a Government performs – money printing for instance – we’ve outsourced that to private banks (the Fed is a private bank). There are hardly any sovereign functions left in the U.S. that are performed by the Government. – John Titus
Once the middle class ran of out real income to continue buying “things” – like houses, cars and consumption gadgets – the banks began to make debt readily available. Ever since Nixon closed the gold window, thereby completely removing real money from our economic system, the level of debt has increased at an increasing rate every decade. Over the last decade the total amount of debt in our system – public and private – has gone parabolic.
Even worse, the system of Rule of Law has been usurped by “Rule of Man.” The elitists running the system are outright criminals who are immune from prosecution. Think about it: Eric Holder as Attorney General -the chief prosecutor in the country – stated that “some banks are too big to prosecute;” the CEOs of the five big banks collectively admitted to committing felonies, yet none were prosecuted; the leading candidate to be the next President – for now – has openly committed felonies and treason. These people and corporations are above the law.
While John Titus is still in the process of researching the 2009 Fed transcripts for his video, he’s already concluded that the Fed is a criminal organization that is orchestrating the takeover of this country and is enabling the process of complete wealth extraction from the middle to class:
The basic point of the video is that the Fed will give as much money as the TBTF banks need in order to stay solvent and pay bonuses. The Fed will also do whatever it takes to remove worthless assets, infected by criminal fraud, from big bank balance sheets. The Fed is also monetizing U.S. debt, which it knew as soon as QE started.
The Fed does these things knowing full well that these acts come at the direct expense of the economy. The logical outcome is what’s happening in Greece, where the powers that be insist that debt–which they know to be wholly fraudulent and which cannot be repaid–be paid back, with blood money if necessary. The mere existence of TBTF banks is inconsistent with any number of things, including the Rule of Law and national and individual sovereignty.
The chief enabler of the Greece-ification of the U.S. is, without question, the Federal Reserves and the psychopaths running it…Our choice is stark: We can hang them for treason, or they will kill us. That process formally began with the 2008 bailouts. – John Titus
Happy Fourth Of July?
To begin with, the founders created a republic, and all of the founding debate in the late 18th century used the language of the republic from ancient Athens and Greece. And one of the key qualities of the republic was resistance to corruption. Now, they did not define corruption as bribery. They defined corruption as placing special or personal interests ahead of the common good — or today what we would call national interest. And when you apply that standard to politics in America today, we are a massively corrupt republic. – Gary Hart, former Senator from Colorado and 1984 Presidential candidate – Westword article link
I’m not really sure why we celebrate the 4th of July anymore. What is it exactly that we’re celebrating? The fact that we’ve been stripped of the rights – the Bill of Rights – and the guarantee of those rights – by the most ruthlessly corrupt Government in history? Are we celebrating the fact that the police in this country get away with killing an average of 1 person every 7 hours? Perhaps some of you are cracking a champagne bottle over the fact that the business and political elite running this country are allowed to operate free from any fear whatsoever of violating the legal constraints originally put in place to prevent their unfettererd wanton acts of political rape, financial pillage and unbridled wealth theft.
Certainly all military activity since WW2 has been based on rampant U.S. imperialism seeded in the U.S. Government’s attempt to rule the globe – to impose our “exceptional” code of values and ethics (note the sarcasm) on the rest of the world. The principles and Rule of Law upon which this country was founded have been smashed and usurped by an uncontrollable, filthy band of criminal elitists and the corrupted politicians they have purchased. This specifically and especially includes “President” Obama, who is perhaps the most pathetic political sock-puppet in history.
The theme of the ruling elite this year is “beware of terrorists.” The news this morning was advising viewers to “report anything suspicious.” The fear-mongering propagated by our Government has become beyond ridiculous. Bankers and corporate America commit felonies – and in some cases have admitted it – yet, they go unpunished. In fact, at tthe absurd extreme, the front-running candidate to be the next President has openly committed treason and multiple felonies. Go figure that one.
In the context of the global community, it’s outright embarrassing, if not pathetic to be an American…I wanted to re-print this interview with Gary Hart published in Westword magazine, Denver’s version of New City’s “Village Voice.” Hart delivers a brutal assessment of this country’s lapse into Dante’s Inferno.
Westword: Can you give a quick synopsis of The Republic of Conscience?
Gary Hart: It’s a contrast between what the founders of our country envisioned and what we have become in the 21st century, especially in the field — I guess you would call it — of political ethics. To begin with, the founders created a republic, and all of the founding debate in the late 18th century used the language of the republic from ancient Athens and Greece. And one of the key qualities of the republic was resistance to corruption. Now, they did not define corruption as bribery. They defined corruption as placing special or personal interests ahead of the common good — or today what we would call national interest. And when you apply that standard to politics in America today, we are a massively corrupt republic. [This is] because of the explosive growth of the lobbying industry in Washington, including now over 400 former members of Congress…and the connection of that industry to the staggering increase in campaign-financing costs, and the amount of money that candidates for office raise from those special interests and lobbyists. And then finally, [we’re] creating a kind of closed political system in Washington, in which you have to be part of that political elite to get anything done or try to pursue what’s best for the country. And that’s my analysis in 200 pages as to why there is such frustration with a stalemated government.
Westword: The Supreme Court ruling on the Citizens United case comes to mind when you speak of the growing influence of money in the political system. What have been some of the other developments that have given more power to wealth and special interests?
The time while I was in office, which was in the ’70s and ’80s, [witnessed] the beginning of the merging of office holders with lobbyists, and as I’ve mentioned earlier, the transference of former members of Congress, whether retired or defeated, into the ranks of lobbyists, so that they could use their contacts in Washington…to get what they want for their largely corporate clients, and then, when they were successful, reward the members of Congress who voted for them…with heavy campaign contributions. What the Supreme Court managed to do was legalize and legitimize this kind of institution of corruption. So it’s been a phenomenon of the last thirty, no, more than forty years, and has occurred in my lifetime. And what it does is take away the idealism of young people who want to work in government to help their country, when they see first-hand as members of staff, or as young elected officials, how this system works and how corrupted it is. And it erodes that idealism, and it causes people to say, “Okay, if everybody is making a lot of money doing this, then I’m going to make a lot of money doing it as well.”
Westword: Can you offer a comparison between what it takes financially to run a political campaign today with what was required when you ran for President in 1984 and 1988?
Well, let’s start with the Senate. It draws a laugh now when I tell people this: When I ran for the Senate in 1974, and there was a contested primary among Democrats to run [against] a very wealthy, two-term, Republican incumbent… the entire race from beginning to end cost $375,000 dollars, and the average contribution was $17. By 1980, when I ran for reelection, I had to raise $1.1 million, three times the amount six years before, and I was outspent, even though I won. By today’s time, a Senate seat in Colorado, a state of five million people, costs roughly $25 million to $30 million — or even more. So you can see the contrast between 1974 and 2015, just in that fairly short period of time in American history. On the national level, I ran a close second to Vice President Mondale for the Democratic nomination in 1984 and I think the total amount in fifty states — we campaigned in all fifty states and the contest went to the convention in San Francisco — our entire campaign was $20 million to $25 million, which I thought was a staggering amount at the time…. Well, today Hillary Clinton says she’s going to raise at least $1 billion, and possibly, her staff says, as much as $2.5 billion. So that’s happened in this country in thirty years — it’s staggering.
Westord: In 2014 an article out of Princeton caused some stir by implying that the United States is an oligarchy, not a democracy — nor a republic, for that matter. Would you confirm that notion?
Well, make sure that everybody understands what that means. It basically is a term applied to countries where there are very few ruling families, as in much of – in the past, at least – Latin America and other parts of the world. Well, if we get down to a Bush-Clinton race, this will be the fourth presidential campaign for a Clinton, two of which have been successful, and the fourth or fifth race for a member of the Bush family for the presidency, three of which have been successful. That comes very very close to any definition of oligarchy you want to mention. Now somebody’s going to say, “There’s fifteen people on the Republican side.” This is more or less true. But that includes not only a Bush whose father and brother were presidents, but a number of candidates who, right out of the starting block, have their own billionaire sponsors – whether a casino mogul or some other extremely wealthy person. If that’s what we’ve gotten down to, that is a form of oligarchy.
Westword: Given your open lament of political dynasties in America, who would you want to see as Democratic candidate for the upcoming presidential race?
Someone who understands the dramatic changes going on the world in the 21st century. I’m not going to name any names. 2015 is dramatically different from the 1990s. Even if you were first lady in the 1990s, you need to think about an almost totally different world, and not govern with the same people, the same ideas, the same policies that your husband pursued 15, 20 or 25 years ago. That’s a roundabout way of saying I’m hoping one of the Democratic candidates – and the field is not yet closed, I don’t think – will reveal an understanding of the world in which we live: of globalization, of the information revolution, of the changing nature of warfare, of trade, of immigration, of all of these 21st century new realities and propose policies specifically to address them. Not just say “immigration is a big issue” or “trade is a complicated issue” — that’s not enough. The people of this country are smart, and they want candidates who can say, “And here’s what I think we should do about it,” in very specific terms.
Westword: Going back to the 18th century, what are some of the principles you speak of that inspired you to write Republic of Conscience?
I started twenty or so years ago studying the history of the republic. We’re taught in America about – and we use the language of -democracy. But as I said earlier, if you read the founding documents and the debates, they used the language of the republic, and if you stopped ten people on the street and said, “What is a republic?” they probably couldn’t tell you because it’s not taught in our schools.
So I did my own study, including getting an advanced degree on the history of the republic and the American Republic. And since Athens in the fourth or fifth century BC, there have been four qualities of republics. First of all, what’s called popular sovereignty, that is to say, the power belongs to the people: no king, no potentate, no strong-person. The power of the republic belongs to the people. That’s very important. It sounds like a bumper-strip slogan, but it’s powerful. It’s a powerful idea and has been for 2,500 years. The second thing is what they call civic virtue, and what that meant was citizens owe some of their energy to the maintenance and promotion of the republic. More than just voting, or more even than just volunteering for military service — but engagement and participation in the political issues of the day. Going to town meetings, participating in debates, reading, thinking, staying current and trying to help seek solutions, even at the local level, not necessarily at the presidential level. And then, I mention the sets of the commonwealth, what we have in common, not what we as individuals want, or what our group wants, but what we as Americans have in common. And it’s a lot. It’s transportation systems, it’s natural resources, it’s the environment, it’s national parks and recreation, it’s the military, and the list goes on. If you add up all of the things that belong to all of the people of the United States, its pretty impressive, and it means you have to pay attention to the preservation of that commonwealth. And finally I mentioned resistance to corruption. And those are the four qualities that our founders believed in very strongly, and they believed most strongly in the fourth one. And that’s why I wrote the book.
Westword: Is there a potential critique of the American Republic, given that such oppressive conditions existed at the founding of the United States, such as slavery and the inability of women to vote? Does this belie the principles that underlie the idea of the Republic?
Well, I deal with those in the book, and I say we have made huge progress in those areas. Not only in the Civil War, which abolished slavery, and all the Civil Rights movements that occurred thereafter, but in the empowerment of women, the increasing protection of the environment, the openness of government: There’s much ability now, at least on CSPAN and so forth, for everyday Americans to see what’s going on in the House or Senate if they care to, and a lot of people do. So, yes, there has been progress, I’m not saying it’s all been downhill. We’ve done very well in many respects.
Civil rights in the ’50s and ’60s we had to do, because we were combatting communism and they were dragging us over the coals in Latin America and Africa and Asia for being a segregationist society. So we couldn’t fight the Cold War in the Third World without achieving greater equality here at home. And as you can see, in the debate over the Confederate flag, we still haven’t gotten it totally right.
But the fact that we’ve made progress in those areas doesn’t mean we’ve also drifted away from some very vital foundational principles. And I make both those arguments. INTERVIEW LINK
Harry Reid Is The Real Domestic Terrorist
By now most if not all of you are varying degrees familiar with the stand-off between the Federal Government/Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Cliven Bundy. I had been observing the developments with a mixture of amusement and disgust until Harry Reid very publicly labelled the large group of citizens helping Bundy defend his cattle as “domestic terrorists.” That’s a pretty strong statement from someone who has a history of abusing his power for the benefit of himself and the business interests who put him in office and filled his bank account with a lot of money.
Harry Reid’s mouth told me immediately that there was something going on with this dispute that went well beyond the battle between the Federal Government trying to remove cattle that were grazing on BLM land in southeastern Nevada. With the help of a colleague, an attorney who has been a partner in two of America’s elite litigation firms, I discovered that the BLM’s motive to get Bundy’s cattle off its land is seeded in business development interests which have helped fund Harry Reid’s Senate seat.
Unfortunately Fox News, CNN and most, if not all, of the mainstream media has turned this whole ordeal into a grand-scale Broadway musical production replete with the standard devices of misinformation, disinformation and absurd partisan rhetoric. Ironically, thieves like Harry Reid use this to their advantage to help deflect attention from and cover-up the real story.
The area of the dispute is the Gold Butte region in Nevada, which sits slightly northeast of Las Vegas between Lake Mead and the western border of the Grand Canyon. While we’ve all heard about unpaid cattle grazing fees, protected turtle habitats, confiscated cattle, angry citizen “militia,” etc, the real story is derived from understanding why Harry Reid has publicly pushed his way into this Government/citizen dispute.
If you want to educate yourself on the history, timeline and events which led up to confrontation between the Government and the Bundy clan, I’ve determined that the most polemically-free information can be found HERE and HERE.
The bottom-line on the surface is that Bundy owes several years of grazing fees and has been court-ordered to remove his cattle from the BLM land. The court-order permitted the Feds to impound Bundy’s cattle if he did not comply. Bundy has resisted the court order and the Feds moved to impound Bundy’s cattle.
The problem with the way in which the events have unfolded have to do with timing and Rule of Law. To be sure, Bundy was given a court order to remove his cattle from the BLM land. But he was never ordered to pay past-due grazing fees. Furthermore the Government attempted to sell the cattle it impounded from Bundy, which makes the Government’s action outright theft.
I want to make one thing clear, I am not taking sides here with Bundy on the issue of cattle grazing or unpaid fees. Bundy was clearly ordered to remove his cattle from the land, which he did not. Bundy was not ordered to pay fees in the court-order and he has not. The Government did try to sell the impounded cattle, a course of action for which it was not legally entitled. I wanted to layout as succinctly as possible this situation as it is being reported by the media and then shift the focus to where the REAL story is.
The other issue has to do with, “why is this all of a sudden a big issue now?” After all, this situation with the land and Bundy’s cattle has been going on for decades. Why is the Government taking action now?
The Government violated the court-order, ignored Rule of Law and took the law into its own hands when the Feds tried to sell Bundy’s impounded cattle. My colleague dug up the actual Nevada District Court order and provided a superb synopsis of the legal issues, along with an explanation as to why the BLM should be criminally prosecuted for attempted grand larceny:
The federal district court opinion in the case of U.S. v. Bundy. This is the legal authority on which the rightfulness of the BLM’s actions hinge. Nowhere in the court’s order does the judge so much as mention taxes or fees. Thus, the issue of Bundy’s alleged grazing fee delinquency has never been adjudicated, and the allegations to the contrary are just so much armchair lawyering by mainstream media cue card readers, which I’ve suspected all along. What this means is that to the extent the BLM has been rationalizing its behavior on the basis of grazing fees, it has unequivocally deprived Bundy of due process. Here’s the order, which runs just 3 pages, giving the BLM the right to impound Bundy’s cattle without conveying the rights needed to sell the cattle, i.e. title: U.S. v. Cliven Bundy.
But the feds went a lot farther than that by attempting to sell the cattle in Utah. That’s an act of dominion that requires a title to the cattle, which the ruling unequivocally does NOT grant the feds. This means that feds are guilty of attempted grand larceny (farm animals are a particular no-no) when it entered into a sales contract.
Furthermore, my colleague also pointed out that the court ruling is silent on the matter of the grazing fees: “Bundy may owe them, but the Feds have not obtained any judicial ruling that would entitle them to a lien on the cattle. By attempting to do exactly that, sell the cattle, the Feds deprived Bundy of due process. The media’s silence on this point is as stunning as it is telling.”
The legal battle and the Government/Bundy stand-off has been the focus of the media and the politicians. But the real issue is seeded in the reasons why Harry Reid is now pro-actively involved and is attempting to align the public on his side by associating the Bundy people with actual terrorists. The truth is, Harry Reid is using his position and his control of the BLM to terrorize public citizens and abuse the taxpayers.
It turns out that areas of BLM land in Nevada and 5 other western States have been designated as Solar Energy Zones (SEZs). You can read about it here: SEZs. It also turns out that Harry Reid is connected with a company called BrightSource Energy, which is seeking to develop solar energy projects.
Reid became intimate with BrightSource via his connection to Nevada developer Harvey Whittemore. Currently Wittemore is appealing a conviction for making illegal contributions to Harry Reid. Whittemore is the developer of Coyote Springs. Reid pro-actively arranged for land swap deals with the BLM that enabled Whittemore to start developing Coyote Springs, a Whittemore development estimated to cost $30 billion. There’s a golf course there but the development has never gotten off the ground. Ironically, the Coyote Springs development trampled all over a desert turtle protected area, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone.
This map with my edits shows the area in question:
You can see where Gold Butte is situated in relation to Las Vegas and Harvey Whittemore’s semi-defunct Coyote Springs development.
On April 9th, the Senate confirmed the appointment of Neil Kornze to head the BLM. This is significant because Kornze – who’s 35 yrs old – was one of Harry Reid’s senior advisers. In other words, Kornze is nothing but a puppet running the BLM for the power-abusing Harry Reid, who will turn the Solar Energy Zones into a device for his own personal gain and the gain of his financial supporters.
In fact, the area where Bundy was grazing his cattle was part of what is known as the Dry Lake North SEZ. There is a BLM study linked on the BLM website which identified the Gold Butte area as the “Bundy Cattle Tresspass Overview.” As the Bundy battle moved into the national media spotlight, the BLM removed a document which identifies Bundy’s cattle as an impediment to making Gold Butte a location for solar energy development projects. This article shows the BLM map with the Bundy Cattle Trespass Overview and a document that was removed from the BLM website which describes the cattle dilemma.
The blogosphere correctly fingered Harry Reid and his son for representing a Chinese company that wanted to develop a $5 billion solar project near Laughlin, NV. Harry Reid applied heavy pressure to NV Energy, Nevada’s primary utility compnay, to agree to buy power from the Chinese solar project. The Chinese scrapped the deal when NV Energy declined and Reid couldn’t find another utility company willing to buy the solar energy.
Now, with BrightSource Energy donating cash to Harry Reid’s political slush fund, and with Harry Reid in control of the BLM via Neil Korntze, it should be pretty clear why Harry Reid has pro-actively taken a public stand and unleashed verbal violence on the BLM/Bundy battle. I have a good hunch he’s close to getting a big solar deal clinched from which he’ll stand to make a lot of money eventually and he needs the Gold Butte piece to cement the deal.
Recall that Obama has recently reiterated his mandate for the development of alternative energy and I would bet good money that there’s plenty of Federal money available to subsidize this, despite the legacy of Obama’s colossal waste of taxpayer money in this arena. Everyone knows there are loads of easy money to be made getting Federal contracts and Federal grants. Obama has made a several billion in funds available to alternative energy deals.
This explains why the BLM/Bundy battle came to head now and why Harry Reid has taken an active role in trying to get Bundy’s cattle out of the Gold Butte BLM land. In other words, the real story is about high-level political corruption and powerful politicians using the avenues made available to them by their position for enormous personal gain.
That truth is, given Harry Reid’s history of abusing the power of his Senate seat – see this article, for instance – Reid is the one who is the terrorist.