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  1. Atypical is offline
    12-25-2015, 07:50 PM #271
    For some time I have been reading of massive police abuse, and other kinds of mistreatment leveled against citizens around the country.

    I could have posted many examples but chose not to, however, since there is no decrease in the number of occurrences I've decided it's time to publicize what is going on.

    This is one site that provides evidence of the severity of the problem that is really not getting the attention it deserves.

    I suggest signing up for daily emails (I have for some time) for at least thirty days. The stories will make you sick.

    http://thefreethoughtproject.com/

    12/29/15

    An example...

    Sadistic Cops Make K-9 Maul Unarmed Suicidal Teen – Caught Planning and Celebrating It in Texts

    Florida police department has a pattern of commanding K-9 dogs to attack people without provocation.

    By Justin Gardner / The Free Thought Project

    North Port, FL — Months after the Herald-Tribune exposed the North Port Police Department for routinely commanding their K-9 dogs to attack people without provocation, the department has done nothing to address the problem. In fact, it defends its officers even in the most egregious cases, including the mutilation of unarmed juveniles.

    There is clearly a culture within the North Port PD that encourages and applauds this cowardly form of brutality, as revealed by messages sent between K-9 handlers involving the case of 18-year-old Jared Lemay.

    Lemay’s mother had called the North Port PD when she learned that her son was apparently about to commit suicide. Keith Bush, the leader of their K-9 unit, responded to the scene, but not before telling a fellow K-9 handler to come join in the fun:

    “On this day, before he or any other officer reached Jared Lemay’s home, Bush sent a message to fellow K-9 handler Michael Dietz: “COME GET UR BITE.”

    Minutes later, records show, Bush messaged Dietz again: “IM GONNA TAKE UR BITE IF U DONT HURRY UP.”

    Lemay, who was found unarmed and hiding in a trash can in his garage, was bitten in the face and back by Dietz’s dog, a Belgian Malinois named Cammo.”

    After he was taken to the emergency room, another cop, William Carter, messaged Dietz “CONGRATS,” commending him for his dog’s first bite.

    Another dialogue between Officers Bush and Brandon McHale further reveals the culture of brutality.

    “YOUR BITE OR (Dietz’s)?” McHale inquired.

    “I LET (Dietz) HAVE IT,” Bush replied.

    “NICE, HOW BAD?” McHale asked.

    “BAD,” Bush wrote. “FACE AND BACK.”

    “SKIN GRAFT BAD?” McHale asked.

    “NO,” Bush wrote.

    “COULDA BEEN WORSE THEN, HE SHOULD HAVE COMPLIED,” McHale said, ending the conversation.”

    According to Lemay, who was hiding in a trash can after contemplating suicide, the cops entered the garage, peeked inside the trash can and closed the lid, and then pushed it over and sicced the dog on Lemay before he could do or say anything. The Belgian Malinois latched onto Lemay’s face and dragged him from the trash can, and then bit him on the back before an officer stopped the attack.

    As a result of this barbaric attack, Lemay could not eat for a week and is permanently scarred.

    This premeditated attack on an unarmed, suicidal juvenile was approved by North Port police supervisors, and no investigation was done on the attack or the messages sent through the police cruisers’ mobile messaging system.

    The Herald-Tribune found that “North Port’s K-9 handlers commanded their police dogs to attack more people from 2010 through 2014 than did the police K-9 handlers of neighboring municipalities Sarasota, Bradenton, Palmetto, Venice and Punta Gorda during the same period – combined.

    Close to 37 percent of apprehensions made by the K-9 unit ended with a dog attack, which was higher than a 30 percent threshold that many American law enforcement agencies use to monitor their K-9 units’ performance for potential misconduct.”

    In response to the paper’s investigation, the North Port PD quickly whipped up a “memorandum of counseling” (the least severe form of discipline) and gave it to Officer Bush, two years after the attack. It said Bush’s messages via the mobile digital terminal were “unprofessional,” but said the attack on Lemay was “found to be within policy.”

    The department is unabashed in defending its K-9 culture of commanding their dogs to attack unarmed, defenseless citizens, saying:

    “We have reviewed all current legal authority and have found our K-9 handlers and the animals which we rely on to keep our community safe, to have acted in accordance within the law and in keeping with best practices.”

    Officer Bush, the North Port PD’s senior K-9 handler, has racked up what would be considered by his colleagues an admirable count of 25 dog bites since the start of 2012. Three civil rights lawsuits have been filed in federal court against the department, two involving Bush and his K-9. Lemay intends to file his own suit.

    Charles Mesloh, a former K-9 handler for the Venice Police Department, called Bush’s messages to Dietz “horrifying” and said a serious investigation is warranted.

    “This is people deciding in advance deciding how they’re going to hurt someone,” said Mesloh. “In my opinion it should be investigated by the Department of Justice. I have defended agencies accused of civil rights violations in the past, and I have never seen anything that has approached what I have seen in this report.”

    ___________________________

    Happy New Year, just like the old year and likely worse.
    Last edited by Atypical; 12-29-2015 at 06:35 PM.

  2. Atypical is offline
    01-07-2016, 07:32 PM #272
    7 kinds of government subsidies those angry ranchers get that you don’t

    By Katie Herzog on 6 Jan 2016

    One of the central complaints of the cracker terrorists currently holed up at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon is about “government overreach.”

    That phrase is commonly used on the right — applied to everything from income tax to background checks for gun sales — and it’s unavoidable if you follow the Republican presidential primary. Ben Carson, for example, wrote that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a government agency that helps protect people from banks, debt collectors, payday lenders, and other predatory financial institutions — is “the ultimate example of regulatory overreach, a nanny state mechanism asserting its control over everyday Americans that they did not want, did not ask for and do not need.” Ted Cruz also has a problem with government overreach, which, he says, includes dozens of programs like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts. Oddly, neither Carson nor Cruz think that forcing a woman seeking an abortion to listen to her fetus’ heartbeat counts as overreach, but that’s because they like the idea. Basically, “overreach” just means anything the government does that these guys don’t like.

    The rogue ranchers in Oregon misuse the term in the same way. The Bundy family, which is spearheading this little terrorist sit-in, is pissed off that the government won’t let them graze their cattle on public lands for free because of this perceived “overreach.” They’re also mad that Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond were sentenced to five years in prison for violating the law by setting fire to federal lands; that’s overreach too. When, however, government action benefits them, the armed cowboys don’t see any overreach at all.

    In fact, the Bundys and Hammonds have been generously subsidized by the Big Government they claim to oppose. Here are just a few examples of welfare programs these families and other ranchers receive:

    . The Hammonds, whose arson conviction inspired the action in Malheur, received almost $300,000 in federal disaster payments and subsidies from the mid-90s to 2012.

    . Ammon Bundy, spokesperson for the Malheur action, got a $530,000 Small Business Administration loan in 2010, costing taxpayers more than $22,000. And we don’t know if he’s even paid the loan back.

    . The Hammonds benefited from a government program that kills predators so they won’t attack ranchers’ and farmers’ livestock, Reveal reports. Specifically, the U.S. government shot five coyotes from the air for the Hammonds between 2009 and 2011, which, according to one expert’s estimate, would have cost taxpayers about $8,000. In fact, USDA Wildlife Services — an opaque and ironically named agency — spends $100 million annually to kill millions of animals, much of that in support of ranching and agricultural interests.

    . The Bundys graze cattle on federal land, a privilege for which the government charges a dirt-cheap price. Federal grazing fees were just $1.35 for a cow and calf per month in 2012, while the going rate on private land was about $20 — that’s a 93 percent discount for ranchers using federal land, as FiveThirtyEight points out. (And even that wasn’t good enough for the Bundys; family patriarch Cliven Bundy has grazed his cattle on federal land without a permit since 1993, and refused to pay more than $1 million in fines and fees, which led to his infamous standoff last year.)

    . Half of the grazing fees that ranchers pay the federal government come right back to benefit the ranchers. As U.S. News reported last year, “50 percent of grazing fees collected by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service (or $10 million, whichever is greater) go to a range betterment fund in the Treasury. According to the bureau, these so-called ‘Range Improvement Funds’ are used ‘solely for labor, materials, and final survey and design of projects,’ presumably benefiting ranchers.”

    . Ranchers can cash in on a federal drought disaster relief program. In a particularly ironic case last year, some Nevada ranchers illegally grazed their cattle on public land that been closed to protect it during the ongoing Western drought, denying that the drought existed at all. But it turns out that two of the families leading that rebellion had received $2.2 million in federal drought relief funds the previous year.

    . The U.S. Bureau of Land Management routinely removes wild horses from public lands to make way for cattle. In 2015, according to the BLM, this program cost the American public $75 million.

    All of these subsidies to ranchers also cost the environment. The Center for Biological Diversity sums up the ecological costs of cattle grazing: “By destroying vegetation, damaging wildlife habitats and disrupting natural processes, livestock grazing wreaks ecological havoc on riparian areas, rivers, deserts, grasslands and forests alike — causing significant harm to species and the ecosystems on which they depend.”

    Clearly, the vigilante ranchers — and Republican presidential hopefuls — are only concerned about “government overreach” when they see it as a threat to their own agendas. When it’s lining their pockets? Well, that’s just good government.

    http://grist.org/article/7-kinds-of-...=daily-horizon
    _____________________________________

    If hypocrisy were illegal most of these cretins, politicians, religious and business "leaders" would be in prison.
    Last edited by Atypical; 01-07-2016 at 07:40 PM.

  3. Atypical is offline
    02-27-2016, 10:30 PM #273
    New Book Exposes Koch Brothers' Guide to Infiltrating the Media

    Saturday, 27 February 2016 00:00

    By Denise Robbins, Media Matters for America | Book Review

    A new book by New Yorker writer Jane Mayer lays out how the oil billionaire Koch brothers rose to the powerful position they are in today, where they wield unquestionable political influence and have shaped public opinion in drastic ways. Titled Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, the book brings to light many tactics that the Koch brothers and others in their network of like-minded millionaires and billionaires have used over the years to push their agenda while hiding the true motivations behind it.

    The book examines the influence of several of the country's wealthiest conservative donors, but it pays particular attention to the activities of Charles and David Koch, who have organized their network and spearheaded the group's political efforts. "Few had waged a more relentless or more effective assault on Americans' belief in government," Mayer wrote of the Kochs.

    A key element of the Koch brothers' strategy is influencing the media. Through media, they have advanced their political and ideological goals and attacked those who stand in their way. The Koch brothers and their network have paid conservative media figures to promote their message, bankrolled front groups that run aggressive anti-environmental media campaigns, and even created their own right-wing "news" outlets. Meanwhile, they've garnered some favorable mainstream media coverage by tightly controlling reporter access to their summits and other events, while attacking and otherwise intimidating journalists who dare to shine a light on their activities.

    Here is how the Koch brothers and their network have infiltrated the media:

    Buying A Conservative Media Echo Chamber

    Creating Their Own Media Outlets

    Funding Front Groups That Run Deceptive Media Campaigns

    Tightly Controlling Reporter Access to Their Events and Activities

    Intimidating Journalists Who Seek to Uncover Their True Agenda

    "Instead of earning the media, they were paying for it."

    This is how former Republican Rep. Dick Armey of Texas described the activities of the Koch front group he once chaired. Indeed, Mayer lays out several ways that Koch-backed front groups have spent money to create a "national echo chamber" in the conservative media. Most notably, she highlights two Koch-backed organizations that directly paid conservative pundits to promote the Koch agenda on air.

    The first group is FreedomWorks, which originated from the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy. Mayer reported that FreedomWorks "quietly cemented a deal" in 2011 with Glenn Beck, who was a Fox News host at the time. Beck read "embedded content" written by FreedomWorks staff in exchange for an annual payment "that eventually topped $1 million." Mayer further explained: "They told him what to say on the air, and he blended the promotional material seamlessly into his monologue, making it sound as if it were his own opinion." Because of this deal, Politico reported, FreedomWorks saw "50,000 new email sign-ups."

    Americans for Prosperity (AFP) -- the other Koch front group that formed out of Citizens for a Sound Economy and has received significant funding from Koch foundations -- forged a contract with conservative radio host Mark Levin to promote AFP's attacks on climate scientist Michael Mann, thereby "copying the deal that FreedomWorks had struck with Glenn Beck." Levin attacked Mann and other climate scientists, Mayer wrote, accusing "enviro-statists" of "inventing global warming in order to justify a tyrannical government takeover."

    In addition to the deals between Koch front groups and conservative pundits that are identified in Mayer's book, the Heritage Foundation, which has received millions from Koch foundations, has spent millions to sponsor the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, according to Politico.

    Additionally, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the central group in the Kochs' financial network, paid Republican strategist Frank Luntz's firm $1.5 million for messaging work in 2014. Luntz then used his media platform as an analyst at CBS News to praise the Kochs and defend their spending without disclosing his own financial ties to them.

    And in 2011, Koch Industries hired Republican political operative Michael Goldfarb to improve the company's image while Goldfarb was working as opinion editor for the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard. Shortly thereafter, The Weekly Standard published a long piece defending the Kochs, which was described by investigative reporter Lee Fang in a Think Progress piece as "8,000 words of hagiography." Goldfarb is still listed as one of The Weekly Standard's contributing editors, and the conservative magazine has published several articles in recent weeks criticizing Jane Mayer and her book.

    The Koch brothers and their network have had a hand in creating several "news" outlets that echo the Kochs' conservative, anti-government message: The Daily Caller, The Washington Free Beacon, and the Franklin Center.

    The Daily Caller was founded by financial investor Foster Friess, a major Koch donor who has attended many of the Kochs' annual summits and donated at least $1 million to conservative causes that the Kochs support. Friess provided $3 million in seed funding to The Daily Caller, a conservative website which, according to Mayer, has "functioned more as an outlet for opposition research paid for by the donor class." Charles Koch's foundation would later back the website, and the Daily Caller News Foundation is currently listed as a "partner organization" of the Charles Koch Institute. Tucker Carlson, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller, also has other ties to the Kochs: He joined the Cato Institute in 2009, which the Koch brothers co-founded, and he is currently listed as a senior fellow there. The Cato Institute has received millions of dollars from the Koch family, and David Koch currently sits on Cato's board of directors. Mayer notes that The Daily Caller was "the chosen receptacle" for the Kochs' retaliatory attacks on her after The New Yorker published an exposé she wrote on the Kochs in 2010.

    After the Kochs started receiving some bad publicity, Koch Industries hired Michael Goldfarb to improve the company's image. Later, in 2012, Goldfarb founded The Washington Free Beacon, and he remains its chairman. The website has published articles defending the Kochs, attacking their opponents, advancing the Kochs' criticisms of President Obama and Sen. Harry Reid, and promoting their agenda. Plus whatever this is.

    Cont'd Below

  4. Atypical is offline
    02-27-2016, 10:41 PM #274
    Cont'd (From Above)

    The Franklin Center, which runs Watchdog.org, is the "investigative news" service for the State Policy Network, a network of conservative think tanks that are largely funded by Koch-backed dark money groups DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. The Franklin Center itself received 95 percent of its revenue from Donors Trust in 2011, and it was receiving millions from Donors Capital Fund as of 2013. Mayer writes that the Franklin Center frequently "attacked government programs, particularly those initiated by Obama," adding that it "claimed to be a neutral public watchdog, but much of its coverage reflected the conservative bent of those behind it." As Mayer pointed out, a couple of journalists have "t[aken] issue with the Franklin Center's labeling of its content as 'news.'" Yet the Franklin Center continues to reach far and wide, with 40 state news websites and writers in 34 states as of 2013, and its reporting appearing in state and local newspapers at times.

    Key to the Kochs' success has been the "growing fleet of nonprofit groups" that "mobilized public opinion" behind their agenda, writes Mayer, particularly against action on climate change. The Koch brothers "had built and financed a private political machine," backing "[e]ducational institutions and think tanks all over the country" that "promoted [their] worldview." Mayer cited Harvard scholar Theda Skocpol, who noted: "Climate denial got disseminated deliberately and rapidly from think tank tomes to the daily media fare of about thirty to forty percent of the U.S. populace."

    Mayer focused on two organizations in particular: Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and the Cato Institute. In addition to "spearhead[ing] a national drive to block action on climate change," AFP "took a lead role in organizing the Tea Party rebellion." But the Kochs insisted that they were not involved in the tea party movement, and as Mayer noted, "such denials helped shape the early narrative" in the media "of the Tea Party movement as an amateur uprising by ordinary citizens."

    The Cato Institute, which was co-founded by the Koch brothers, took a lead role in attacking the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. Cato published "a steady stream" of misleading reports, which were frequently criticized by experts yet "echoed throughout the network of Koch-funded groups." Cato also "energetic[ally]" promoted the faux Climategate scandal -- falsely claiming that climate scientists deceitfully manipulated data -- in the mainstream media, where Cato officials were often "respectfully quoted as nonpartisan experts." One Cato scholar gave more than 20 interviews pushing the contrived scandal, spreading the story "from obviously slanted venues to the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, adding mainstream credence."

    AFP and Cato have continued to promote their anti-environment agenda in the media without disclosing their oil industry ties. And those groups are just the tip of the iceberg; Media Matters has identified dozens of groups backed by fossil fuel interests that are working to attack the Environmental Protection Agency's climate change plan. One tactic commonly employed by these groups is to run op-ed campaigns promoting false and misleading attacks on environmental policies in state and local newspapers, as Media Matters and others have detailed.

    The Kochs' political activities have largely been "shrouded in secrecy," writes Mayer, and such secrecy is a key to their success. When they do make media appearances, it is to "portray themselves as disinterested do-gooders and misunderstood social liberals."

    The Kochs' biannual donor summits, where they have "succeeded in persuading hundreds of the other richest conservatives in the country to give them control over their millions of dollars in contributions," have historically been closed-door affairs. Only in recent years have the Kochs invited a handful of mainstream media reporters to attend the summits, but just in "snippets," and under tightly controlled conditions. Reporters had to agree to refrain from identifying conference attendees without their consent or approaching donors for interviews, and they were allowed in to only a select number of sessions, according to a copy of the conditions for the August 2015 summit obtained by ThinkProgress. That summit thereafter received positive coverage in publications including Politico, USA Today, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

    But these conditions also drew some criticism from media ethicists. Jane Kirtley, professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, told ThinkProgress that the terms were "outrageous," and suggested that news organizations should "refuse to attend under these circumstances." Robert Drechsel, a professor and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found it "remarkable" that news organizations "would agree to in effect become complicit in facilitating such secrecy and anonymity." Huffington Post media reporter Michael Calderone questioned whether the rules "still allow for reporting in the public's interest" or are "so rigid that the resulting coverage will primarily benefit the Kochs." Calderone noted in a separate article that the rules "could restrict journalists from reporting what's right in front of their eyes," and that "it's possible journalists end up reporting largely what the event sponsors want ... but less on the power brokers attending who play key behind-the-scenes roles in the 2016 election."

    Mother Jones' Daniel Schulman told Calderone that the rules allow the Kochs to "closely control their images." And indeed, at the most recent conference, Undercurrent's Lauren Windsor overheard that a USA Today reporter was "prepped" by the Koch's communication staff hours before an article was published that Windsor said "dutifully relayed Koch talking points" about the new Koch group that is purportedly aiming to address poverty and education. Bloomberg News was recently prompted by a Koch spokesperson to remove a linefrom an article in which the reporter stated that Charles Koch "warned that climate change's worst effects would fall on people in poorer parts of the world." The article was changed to say that according to a Koch spokesman, Koch was "referring to the impact of bad climate policies or programs, not the negative effects of climate change itself."

    Ever since her first long-form article on the Koch brothers in The New Yorker in 2010, Mayer has faced intimidation tactics and efforts to discredit her by the Koch network.

    Koch operatives formed a "boiler room operation," seeking to discredit the New Yorker story by "undermining" Mayer. They hired a private investigation firm looking for "dirt" on Mayer, who was told by a well-informed source: "If they couldn't find it, they'd create it." After their search for dirt turned up nothing, Mayer learned that The Daily Caller intended to publish a "hit piece" accusing her of plagiarism. But Mayer reached out to the reporters she was supposedly plagiarizing, and they "offered to make public statements" supporting her, so The Daily Caller dropped the story.

    Cont'd Below
    Last edited by Atypical; 02-28-2016 at 12:05 AM.

  5. Atypical is offline
    02-27-2016, 10:41 PM #275
    Cont'd (From Above #273)

    Mayer is not the only journalist to experience intimidation from the Kochs (though hers may be the most extreme example). At the American Legislative Exchange Council's annual meeting, Greenpeace researcher Connor Gibson was confronted by Koch Industries government affairs director Mike Morgan. Gibson captured a partial video of the interaction, but Morgan then took Gibson's phone away from him, until Morgan was forced to return it by police. Rolling Stone reporter Tim Dickinson called Koch Industries "the most hostile and paranoid organization I've ever engaged with." Mayer also wrote that Koch security threatened to arrest Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel after catching him in a cafe at one of their summits, "[u]nless he left the premises immediately."

    Koch Industries also utilizes its website KochFacts.com to combat negative reports. Mayer notes that KochFacts.com "wage[s] ad hominem attacks, questioning the professionalism and integrity of reporters whose work the company found unflattering, ranging from The New York Times to Politico." The website has blasted David Sassoon of the Pulitzer Prize-winning InsideClimate News as a "professional eco-activist" and "agenda-driven activist." It also frequently posts personal email exchanges with journalists, "sometimes to the reporter's shock," according to The Washington Post. This includes email exchanges with reporters and editors at The New York Times, MSNBC, Politico, and more.

    Hopefully, Jane Mayer herself is a testament to the fact that reporters will not back down from exposing the true extent of the Kochs' influence and how it is shaping our country for the worse. There is surely more to the story not yet uncovered.

    http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track....yR58so/sRFtoP/

    _________________________________
    If you've read this carefully the lying by media "stalwarts" and the infiltration of propaganda into what passes for independent media should frighten you.

    Even if you're in the top 5-10 percent is this the type of country you want to live in? If you say yes, and you like the rich controlling a large part of the public discourse, you should realize that it is likely that your concerns one day will be ignored by those in power. And, if you are NOT rich, should you accept someone feeding BS about you, or the country you live in, to shape opinion against you and your life? If you are honest the answer has to be no!

    Welcome to the world of the monied few. If it is not stopped YOU will be FKD eventually.
    Last edited by Atypical; 02-28-2016 at 12:06 AM.

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