Underground 04-11-14

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California Car Dealer Pleads Guilty For Helping Mexican Billionaire Illegally Fund Democrats In American Elections

Marc Chase the co-owner of a La Jolla car dealership plead guilty to helping funnel funds from a Mexican billionaire to local politicians on Thursday. Politicians that received funds from Chase included disgraced San Diego Mayor Bob Filner (D., California) and Rep. Juan Vargas (D., California).

A San Diego car dealer has pleaded guilty in a campaign finance scandal in which a foreign millionaire is accused of funneling $500,000 into political campaigns. Marc Chase, 52, owner of Symbolic Motor Cars on La Jolla Boulevard, appeared in federal court Thursday and pleaded guilty to 8 misdemeanor counts.
Chase admitted to conspiring to make illegal campaign contributions with cash paid to him by a foreign businessman.
“He made a mistake,” said Chase’s defense attorney Guadalupe Valencia. ” He’s accepting responsibility and he hopes to move forward someday.”
Prosecutors say a billionaire Mexican businessman, identified as Jose Susumo Azano, funneled more than $500,000 into local campaigns. It is illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to U.S. elections.
On Thursday, Chase admitted that, between Dec. 29, 2011 and Jan. 2, 2012, he recruited people to donate $500 each to hide the source of the funds.

Software Bug Implicated in Massive Duplication of Obamacare Enrollees: Actual Enrollment Less Than 4 Million


Initial reports from an independent audit of the Obamacare enrollment records has revealed bad news for the Obama administration. While it was initially reported that enrollment had exceeded the goal of 7 million individuals, it appears that as many as 3 million of those enrollees may simply be duplicated names.
This shocking miscount was revealed in an independent audit performed by the accounting firm Bryce and Brynwalter. In their report, which will be released publicly next week, the firm details the massive miscount and offers some insights as to how it occurred.

While the details remain unclear, it appears that the duplications arose as a result of the enrollment software mishandling middle names and middle initials. Enrollees that entered their middle name or middle initial were logged twice. For example, John T. Smith would be logged both as John Smith and as John T. Smith.

The software bug marks yet another technical failing in the troubled implementation of the health care exchanges. Initially, problems with healthcare.gov led to website crashes, long wait times, and consumer frustration. While the website was eventually fixed and enrollment figures declared a success, revelations of more problems will be a significant setback. The implications of the enrollment shortfalls will be great and will undoubtedly influence Obama’s legacy and the Democrat’s electoral success in years to come. The shortfalls may even rejuvenate Republican calls to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. - See more at: http://nationalreport.net/software-bug-implicated-massive-duplication-obamacare-enrollees-real-enrollment-less-4-million.

Militias Are On Route to Help Cliven Bundy - Face Off With Feds: Will this be the Start of the 2nd American Revolution? 

An area just outside of the little town of Bunkerville, Nevada, with a population of around a thousand people, may go down in history. This little spot in the desert may be compared with Lexington, Massachusetts, the site of the “shot heard round the world” – the first shot fired in the American Revolution. Because it looks like the second American Revolution may start there…and soon.
It has been reported that tensions were running high outside of Bunkerville. It seems that the US government, in all of their infinite wisdom, has declared war on a cattle rancher named Cliven Bundy.

Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/04/militias-route-bunkerville-nv-will-start-2nd-american-revolution/#VyOKUtGHTG5iOVQU.99

An area just outside of the little town of Bunkerville, Nevada, with a population of around a thousand people, may go down in history. This little spot in the desert may be compared with Lexington, Massachusetts, the site of the “shot heard round the world” – the first shot fired in the American Revolution. Because it looks like the second American Revolution may start there…and soon.
It has been reported that tensions were running high outside of Bunkerville. It seems that the US government, in all of their infinite wisdom, has declared war on a cattle rancher named Cliven Bundy.

In a stand-off that has been likened to Ruby Ridge and Waco, the federal government has now deployed armed agents in a case of what the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has deemed “trespass cattle,” escalating a 20-year battle over grazing rights and what actually constitutes “public land” use in Southern Nevada.
Cliven Bundy, a 67-year-old rancher says his family has worked the 600,000-acre Gold Butte area since the late 1800s and that they were there well before the government’s Land Management Bureau ever came along. (source)
Arme

SHOCK CLAIM: Obama Used the IRS to Steal the 2012 Election
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/shock-claim-obama-used-irs-steal-2012-election/#cKCMIzwBgdDK47SZ.99

d federal officers have arrived to steal Bundy’s cattle and close down the land he is using. What’s more, they have declared a zone around the area to be free of the restrictions of the Constitution, specifically, the First Amendment right to assemble and speak freely. They’d like to keep their reprehensible actions quiet and out of the public eye. It’s really difficult to mow down a bunch of protesters ala Waco with the whole world watching.


SHOCK CLAIM: Obama Used the IRS to Steal the 2012 Election

In the early days of the IRS scandal, charges were leveled by conservatives—and some moderates—that the Tea Party was targeted in order to steal the 2012 presidential election. With the two mammoth House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reports released recently, containing hundreds of emails of Lois Lerner and her cronies plotting the take down of the Tea Party—a force that almost singlehandedly regained the House of Representatives for Republicans in 2010—that is exactly what it looks like happened. Now with the massive voter fraud discovered that took place during the 2012 election—a million invalid votes just in North Carolina—one fact remains crystal clear: Barack Hussein Obama stole the 2012 election.
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/shock-claim-obama-used-irs-steal-2012-election/#cKCMIzwBgdDK47SZ.99

In the early days of the IRS scandal, charges were leveled by conservatives—and some moderates—that the Tea Party was targeted in order to steal the 2012 presidential election. With the two mammoth House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reports released recently, containing hundreds of emails of Lois Lerner and her cronies plotting the take down of the Tea Party—a force that almost singlehandedly regained the House of Representatives for Republicans in 2010—that is exactly what it looks like happened. Now with the massive voter fraud discovered that took place during the 2012 election—a million invalid votes just in North Carolina—one fact remains crystal clear: Barack Hussein Obama stole the 2012 election.

Wow! House Defeats Obama’s Budget 413-2

President Obama’s call for increased government spending has failed miserably. With a vote of 413-2, the president’s 2015 budget that called for increased government spending fueled by tax increases was soundly rejected by the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

The 2015 budget was largely considered to be rejected as it effectively served as a Democrat wish-list, a means of aiming high and whittling down. However, Wednesday’s vote signals a thorough rejection of the fiscally irresponsible budget.

Obama offered his budget proposal a month late in March and it was met with a lack of interest from Democrats who are enduring the choppy waters in an election year complicated by the Obamacare disasters. With so much political capital tied up in Obamacare, the Democrats did not readily embrace the 2015 budget proposal that called for increased government spending and called for a breaking of an agreement between the House and the Senate with regards to discretionary spending.

The House vote was a staged vote that reflected Obama’s 2015 budget proposal with Republican Rep. Mick Mulvaney a substitute amendment to the House GOP budget that reflected the president’s budget.

In 2012, Obama’s budget was unanimously defeated in the House. In 2013, President Obama’s budget came so late that the House didn’t even vote at all on it.

Reps. Jim Moran of Virginia and Marcy Kaptur of Ohio were the two Democrats who voted for the plan.

The House will continue debating certain budget proposals as caucuses continue to offer budgets based on lofty goals. Obama’s budget called for $3.14 trillion in government spending while the Congressional Black Caucus’ 2015 budget called for $3.26 trillion in government spending. The budget called for restoration of cuts to food stamps and extended unemployment insurance and was soundly defeated 116-300.

“This Republican budget rigs the system so that only the children of the well-off and well-connected can get ahead,” said Rep. Jim Clyburn.

  

WSJ's Jason Riley: Media have known about Sharpton's shady background for a long time 

Why would the news media ignore information about Al Sharpton's shady past? It is liberal media bias? In part, yes, but that also combines with some basic truths about the day-to-day nature of reporters' jobs - especially the way it worked at the time when Sharpton first rose to prominence.
The Wall Street Journal's Jason Riley exposes the media's complicity in the coverup of Sharpton's real background:

Way back in 1988, New York Newsday reported that Mr. Sharpton had given the FBI information on black leaders. In other words, a man who refers to blacks who disagree with him as sellouts was himself selling out blacks. FBI agents first contacted him in 1983 about a videotape that apparently showed Mr. Sharpton discussing a drug deal with an undercover agent. The account also appears in the 1990 book "Outrage: The Story Behind the Tawana Brawley Hoax," which was authored by six New York Times reporters. "As Sharpton told it, the agents warned him that he could be in a lot of trouble and suggested he cooperate with the government," the authors write. "The tape was never made public, but Sharpton insisted that it would not incriminate him."
Despite this shady history, Mr. Sharpton has lost no credibility with the civil rights establishment and members of the press, who with few exceptions continue to indulge his theatrics, help him build his brand and treat him as a respectable spokesman for black people. "The media, particularly television, needed him for his access to the movement," write the authors of "Outrage." "It was easier to reach Sharpton than to seek out diverse views among blacks; reporters didn't waste time wondering whom he spoke for. And the various civil rights groups, in turn, needed him for access to the media. For nobody knew better what buttons to push to get on the six o'clock news, to get on Oprah and Phil and Downey and Koppel."

I spent enough time working in newsrooms, and later in media relations, that I know exactly what Riley is talking about.
Reporters who work on certain kinds of stories are constantly under pressure to get "both sides of the story," which often comes down to sources you can get ahold of quickly - sometimes very quickly depending on the nature of your deadlines - who will not only talk to you willingly but will give you interesting quotes to pepper up the nature of your story.
Sources who will always take your calls, or will call you back quickly, and will always have something interesting to day, are worth their weight in gold to reporters operating under these kinds of requirements. Unfortunately, this means that attention-hungry demagogues often make the most useful sources - not in the sense that they add news value, but in the sense that they make life easier for the reporter.

Obama is at Two Dozen Scandals and Counting

President Obama claims that Republicans are busy probing “phony scandals.” But the sheer number of scandals suggests that misbehavior, abuse of power, and possibly corruption are not something being dreamed up by the GOP, but a defining characteristic of the Obama administration.
Here is a full list of the administration’s most egregious scandals. The ones we know about, at least. I’ve added four since the last time we ran the list – an increase of 20 percent!
CLICK HERE FOR LIST

 Darrell Issa says emails suggest Elijah Cummings prompted IRS targeting of True the Vote

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has accused the panel's top Democrat of prompting the Internal Revenue Service in 2012 to target a conservative organization applying for non-profit status.

Issa said records obtained last week from the IRS show communications from the office of ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., about True the Vote, a Texas-based, non-profit conservative group that aims to prevent voter fraud.


The communications at one point involved Lois Lerner, the ex-IRS official whom Issa's panel is poised to hold in contempt of Congress on Thursday for refusing to provide testimony about her involvement in targeting conservative groups.

“The IRS and the Oversight Minority made numerous requests for virtually identical information from True the Vote, raising concerns that the IRS improperly shared protected taxpayer information with Rep. Cummings’ staff,” a statement from the Oversight panel reads.

According to Issa, Cummings and his staff sought “copies of all training materials used for volunteers, affiliates, or other entities,” from True the Vote.

Five days after the Cummings inquiry, the IRS sent True the Vote an email requesting “a copy of [True the Vote’s] volunteer registration form,” “… the process you use to assign volunteers,” “how you keep your volunteers in teams,” and “how your volunteers are deployed … following the training they receive by you.”

Issa said Cummings and his office asked for more information in January 2013 about True the Vote, this time getting Lerner involved.

At one point, an email revealed, Lerner asked her deputy, “Did we find anything?”
When the deputy said she had not received any new information, Lerner responded, “thanks – check tomorrow please.”

Issa said Cummings had previously denied asking the IRS about True the Vote.
At a February subcommittee hearing, when Issa asked whether his office may have put True the Vote “on the radar screen” of the IRS, Cummings said the accusation was “absolutely incorrect and untrue.”

Issa and other GOP panel members have sent a letter to Cummings, asking him to respond to the newly uncovered emails.

In his response, Cummings said the GOP has falsely accused him of wrongly contacting the IRS about True the Vote. Cummings said in the letter that he has publicly stated his interest in finding more about True the Vote, which supports voter ID laws that Cummings opposes.

Sharyl Attkisson: When I'd Begin Getting Under Surface of an Obama Scandal, CBS Would Pull Me Off

"There is unprecedented, I believe, influence on the media, not just the news, but the images you see everywhere. By well-orchestrated and financed campaign of special interests, political interests and corporations. I think all of that comes into play."

One month ago. long-time investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson left CBS amid rumors that she had grown frustrated with the network stifling her investigations. Thursday night on Bill O' Reilly's Fox News program she confirmed those rumors. "There is unprecedented, I believe, influence on the media, not just the news, but the images you see everywhere. By well-orchestrated and financed campaign of special interests, political interests and corporations. I think all of that comes into play."
After introducing his guest, O'Reilly asked Attkisson about her investigation into the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal. 
The former CBS reporter asserted that she began to make inroads into the story but had to drop it:

Attkisson: I found out that we had to quit pursuing the story more or less due to lack of interest well before we found answers to a lot of questions. Including what about all the other cases besides the one you know as Fast and Furious that were also using similar strategies to transfer weapons down to Mexico. And how did this, if at all, play into a strategy the United States may be using to draw support or give support towards one of the cartels in Mexico against one of the others much like they had done in Columbia and other places.
O'Reilly: Playing one off against the other. You said something interesting that you had to abandon the story for lack of interest. Can you clarify that?
Attkisson: It just came to be that, I don't think on the viewers' part, but on the people that decide what stories go into the broadcast and what there is room for, they felt fairly early on that this story was over when I felt as though we had barely begun to scratch the surface. They didn't ask me what was left to report. They decided on their own the story was done.

O' Reilly moved to her investigation into Benghazi.

Attkisson: Benghazi I was assigned to look into about three weeks after the attacks happened by management, and pursued that aggressively, and as I felt we were beginning to scratch beneath the surface on that scandal as well which I think had many legitimate questions yet to be asked and answered. Interest was largely lost in that story as well on the part of the people that are responsible for deciding what goes on the news.
O'Reilly: So did they tell you, look, we don't want you to spend any more time on this? Was it that direct?
Attkisson: No. It's more as though there is no time in the broadcast. They really, really liked the story but you start to hear from, you know, other routes that "why don't you just leave it alone," "you know, you are kind of a troublemaker because you are still pursuing it." It kind of goes from hot to cold in one day, sometimes. Where they are asking you to pursue something heavily and then it's almost as if a light switch goes off and look at you all of the sudden, "Why are you bringing this story?"

O'Reilly: Is it possible because CBS News is third in the ratings that they are just doing stories that they think are going to get them audiences? Is that possible?
Attkisson: I suppose there could be differences of opinion as to what the audience wants to see. But I think there are larger things at play in the industry. Broadly there are overarching concerns about, I would say just fear over original investigative reporting. There is unprecedented, I believe, influence on the media, not just the news, but the images you see everywhere. By well- orchestrated and financed campaign of special interests, political interests and corporations. I think all of that comes into play.

Hercules Actor Kevin Sorbo: Hollywood, Media Ignoring ‘The Crime of the Century’


Although the news media and Hollywood relish telling stories about horrific crimes and serial killers, they are strangely silent about Dr. Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist who killed living, viable babies by snipping their spinal cords with scissors, and who is “America’s most prolific serial killer,” said actor Kevin Sorbo and his wife Sam Jenkins in a video to promote funding for a movie about Gosnell.
“Kermit Gosnell is America’s most prolific serial killer,” says Kevin Sorbo, who starred in the TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. “For more than three decades he was an abortion doctor in Philadelphia, where he delivered live, viable babies, who cried and fought for their life before he murdered them by severing their spinal cords with a scissors. He called it snipping. It’s the crime of the century, but most of the media and Hollywood have ignored the story.”


Mall rats desert sinking ship: Inside the abandoned shopping centers that were once a beacon of the American Dream

When they were built in the 1970s these two gleaming Ohio malls were symbols of the boom years in the U.S., and their wide walkways were filled with shoppers.
Now the verdant foliage that decorated them has died off and the fountains inside are dry as store after store deserted the out-of-town malls.
The demise of the Rolling Acres and and Randall Park Mall have been documented by photographer Seph Lawless, who remembers visiting them when he was a child and even had his first job at one of the them.

'The goal was to show the world a different side of America. A vulnerable side. I think an abandoned mall is symbolic of the economic decline of America and is a true indication of what happens when cities like Cleveland suffers massive population loss due to loss of manufacturing jobs,' he told Mail Online.
'Cleveland has lost nearly half its population since these malls opened in the mid 1970,' Lawless added. 'We're not talking white flight here. People fled the state to find jobs and the problem hasn't gotten any better.
'My city is not only losing jobs. We're are losing people and it's frightening. During my recent art curation at the City Club last month I spent most of that time urging Cleveland residents and city officials to adopt a plan to merge East Cleveland with Cleveland so we can maintain our population, because doing nothing is no longer an option.'

Lawless returned to the malls, which were closed in 2008 and 2009, to document them before demolition crews move in and flatten the buildings later this year. He explained that when North Randall mall was built it was the largest in the world, with 5,000 employees.
'It was such an intricate part of the city that the town is represented by the two shopping bags appearing in the municipal seal,' he said.
The powerful images make up the basis of his book, Black Friday: The collapse of the American Mall - a powerful piece of photojournalism that documents the broken parts of the U.S.
PHOTOS OF ABANDONED MALLS
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