Bringing Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother Us

By DAVE LINDORFF

Gov. Spitzer's bust should give pause to those in Congress who are ready to hand President Bush a free pass to continue his six-year campaign of warrantless spying on Americans.

We now know from yesterday's Wall Street Journal article that the spyingBush has been doing through the National Security Agency since early 2001 has included vast computer sweeps of not just internet and phone activity,but also bank and credit card transactions. These are sweeps of ordinary everyday people, with computers looking for odd transactions, or for code words, or for transactions involving specific targeted organizations or addresses.

What nailed Spitzer, we now learn, was a series of bank transactions he had with the bank account of the Emperor's Club VIP call girl operation.

Now reportedly, this particular probe was being conducted by the IRS, which allegedly was investigating the Emperor's Club. Once the IRS discovered it had caught the New York governor in its web, it forwarded thecase to the US Attorney General's Office, where it was pursued by the FBI, apparently on the instructions of AG Michael Mukasey. The investigation moved from monitoring the bank to monitoring phones, and Spitzer was captured talking to the Emperor's Club dispatcher. Bingo. Promising Democratic political career ruined.

Now the monitoring of the Emperor's Club was reportedly done with acourt-ordered warrant. That's fine.

But this case shows us how people can get caught up by this kind ofinvestigation really quickly.

Now imagine that instead of a call-girl operation, this had been a mosque oran international charity organization, and suppose you were someone who hadmade a call to ask about making donations to help the victims of the last earthquake in Indonesia? If that mosque, or charity, happened to be on thelist of outfits being monitored by the NSA's computers, your call might well have been picked up. Then the focus would shift to your phone and your internet server, and conceivably every communication you made would bewatched.

This is the America we now live in. According to the Wall Street Journal,after a wave of national outrage forced the Bush administration to shut down its Total Information Awareness project at the Pentagon, Bush and Cheney simply moved their scheme to subject all telecommunications and bank transactions to computer monitoring over to the NSA.

Since none of this spying activity is subject to court supervision andwarrant requirements, we are left having to trust the personnel at the NSA,the so-called Justice Department, and the president and his administration, not to abuse it.

Right. And think of the temptations!

Want to know what the House leadership strategy is regarding renewal of the NSA wiretap authorization? Want to know whether the Congress is serious about imposing a time limit on troops in Iraq? Just start monitoring their emails and phones.

Want to make sure Democratic members of Congress go along with a war onIran? Just monitor their phones and emails and catch them in conversations that are suitable for a little blackmail.

Is this kind of thing happening? Well, I keep marvelling at the cowardlybehavior of leading members of Congress like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and HouseJudiciary Chair John Conyers. Maybe something is being held over theirheads.

We know that the prosecution and conviction of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was an administration hit on a popular Democratic official. Siegelman is now in jail. Ditto Wisconsin state employee Georgia Thompson. These blatant political prosecutions certainly weigh on the minds of allDemocratic elected officials.

Who, after all, is safe in this kind of environment, where the Bill of Rights has been set aside?

Spitzer no doubt made use of phone taps himself in his day, and was ruthless as New York's attorney general in bringing down many of his own targets. But the way he was ensnared, via the secret monitoring of a bank's activity, and via phone taps, should put us all on guard.

With that kind of power, unchecked in the hands of an intensely politicaladministration, it's almost a certainty that it is being used and used inappropriately for political ends.

So if it wasnt for the fact that his bank records got intercepted he might not of got caught.The government has way too much power to snoop into your affairs

At least find a legitimate source:

Under the Bank Secrecy Act, financial institutions are required to report suspicious activity in their customer accounts and file an aptly named "Suspicious Activity Report" to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Agency (Fincen). Fincen collects the information in a database, which is accessible by law-enforcement agencies including the I.R.S., the F.B.I., the D.E.A., and various state regulatory agencies.

Officials say the suspicious activity in the case of Governor Eliot Spitzer was a money-laundering technique known as "structuring." Banks are required to file different forms for all customer transactions totaling $10,000 or more. In order to catch the bad guys who think they can fly under the radar by making a series of sub-$10,000 withdrawals, banks have developed systems to flag patterns of unusual activity like this.
Spitzer Money Trail - Portfolio.com

I REALLY feel for this assclown. Like the current New York Governor....the ex New York attorney general.....didn't have a clue about this procedure? LMAO!!! Poor Dems caught in Bush's web...what a joke!:lol5:

Have a good one!:s4:

I absolutely love how even when it is a Democrat who messes up it all somehow is George Bush's fault in the loony world of the leftist media..... :stoned:

Here's some pictures of the girl that Spitzer lost his career and self-respect over.

If he had used cheap DC hookers, and paid cash, none of this would have happened.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ldg420

I absolutely love how even when it is a Democrat who messes up it all somehow is George Bush's fault in the loony world of the leftist media..... :stoned:

---

you realize almost every mainstream media source is owned by......republicans....right?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FeedmeWeed

you realize almost every mainstream media source is owned by......republicans....right?

---

LMAO!!! That MUST be the reason why ABC, CBS, NBC and MSNBC are, and were so reluctant to mention that this was the DEMOCRAT Governor of New York. :rolleyes:

Have a good one!:s4:

this bank secrecy act you speak of is a product of the war on drugs. so i lets not blame bush here lets blame nixon

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by yokinazu

this bank secrecy act you speak of is a product of the war on drugs. so i lets not blame bush here lets blame nixon

---

How true! Also remember that both Carter and Clinton had 12 years combined to get rid of this act. Bi-partisan........

Have a good one!:s4:

If the money laundering is true he should go to jail. There should be no such crime as prostitution. What 2 adults do among themselves that hurts no one else is none of the governments business. Just like weed.

Reading more I find that this case has nothing to do with money laundering. I do the exact thing he's acused of doing. Withdrawing cash from the bank to make purchases. How can that be money laundering?
We have got to somehow put any end to our oppresive government. Every year they take a little bit more of our privacy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by killerweed420

I do the exact thing he's acused of doing.

---

You bang high-priced prostitutes? Dude, you're gonna lose your job as Governor!

Just joking.

The purpose of the SAR reports of transactions over $10,000 are not usually to catch "money laundering." They are to flag suspicious transactions of large amounts of cash. Right or wrong, the government wants to know if you make large transactions in cash, becuase they think they might be "suspicious" in some way. It might not be right, but it does make some sense from the government's point of view --- I would guess most illegal transactions are handled with cash to avoid a paper trail.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Psycho4Bud

LMAO!!! That MUST be the reason why ABC, CBS, NBC and MSNBC are, and were so reluctant to mention that this was the DEMOCRAT Governor of New York. :rolleyes:

Have a good one!:s4:

---

I think everyone is pretty aware that the Gov. of NY was a Democrat...

And everyone is also pretty aware that the majority of the large networks are not nearly as biased as some people claim them to be, either way, left or right..

If they were, you would see a lot more stories on "the evils of abortion" from the "right" stations... and stories about how the Gov was involved in 9/11 from "left" media stations...

In reality, the stations all show the same news and are never seen attacking other stations like they would be doing if the media was really so bi-partisan..

And the poster who said most of the stations are owned by republicans, he is fairly accurate... as the owners of most gigantic, money hoarding corporations vote in a manner that benefits the finances of their gigantic corporations... it is common sense that wealthy people are much, much, more likely to vote red. The GOP is composed of moralizers and enterprisers, with the latter category usually being the most influential...

He is very hypocritical, yes. But, it is a bloody shame that the were tapping his phone... and then accusing him of being immoral.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by melodious fellow

I think everyone is pretty aware that the Gov. of NY was a Democrat...

---

My parents called me up on this story assuming that it was a Rep. Gov.. No, the major news networks failed to mention that he is a Dem.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by melodious fellow

And everyone is also pretty aware that the majority of the large networks are not nearly as biased as some people claim them to be, either way, left or right..

---

Cable Channel Nods to Ratings and Leans Left
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/bu...6msnb.html?_r=

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by melodious fellow

In reality, the stations all show the same news and are never seen attacking other stations like they would be doing if the media was really so bi-partisan....

---

I watch these other stations....FOX news is ALWAYS on their hit list. Likewise, one of the FOX morning shows had a person on stating how many times the "Democrat" word was mentioned on these other stations....like he stated, if this were a Republican, it would have been mention alot more than 1 time/day.

Why is it also that the Dems refused to debate on FOX? FOX is well known for leaning to the right and the rest have their reps for leaning to the left...some WAY MORE than others.

Have a good one!:s4:

The Soros media connections include:

An investor in the Times Mirror Company, Soros funded the Project on Media Ownership, headed by Professor Mark Crispin Miller at New York University. Whose purpose was expose "media concentration." A total of $300,000 over several years came from George Soros' Open Society Institute (OSI). In 1999, a survey commissioned by the Project on Media Ownership and the Benton Foundation and paid for by OSI found that seventy-nine percent of adults would favor a law requiring commercial broadcasters to pay 5 percent of their revenues into a fund for public broadcasting.

Eric Alterman of The Nation has hailed Soros for spending millions on "education campaigns with America Coming Together, voter mobilization drives with MoveOn.org and research activities with the Center for American Progress (CAP)--where I am a senior fellowâ?¦" Alterman says his own magazine, The Nation, is viewed as out of the mainstream in part because of "the continued appearance in its pages of a long-time Stalinist communist, Alexander Cockburn, whose unabashed hatred for both America and Israel ... tarnish the reputation of its otherwise serious contributors." Alterman's mentor, I.F. Stone, was a paid agent of the KGB and a Stalinist.

In the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Orville Schell said that Soros had written a "succinct and well-reasoned book," The Bubble of American Supremacy, which ought "to provide a welcome template for how the candidates might begin to think their way through to a more coherent view of America's place in the world." Soros had spoken on March 3 at the Goldman Forum on the Press and Foreign Affairs, sponsored by UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. The event was a conversation between Soros and Journalism Dean Orville Schell.

OSI gave $60,000 to the Independent Media Institute , whose executive director, Don Hazen, is a former publisher of Mother Jones. Hazen has called Soros a "progressive philanthropist." A story carried by the Independent Media Institute on its AlterNet project says Soros "believes in democracy, positive international relations and effective strategies to reduce poverty, among other things."

OSI gave a $75,000 grant to the Center for Investigative Reporting. The group's board of advisers includes prominent journalists.

OSI gave $246,528 to the Center for Public Integrity, headed by former CBS News producer Charles Lewis, "to support the continuing expansion of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists." A total of $1 million went for "the Global Access Project." In total, it is estimated that the group has received $1.7 from Soros.

OSI gave $200,000 to the Fund for Investigative Journalism. This group, too, features prominent journalists on its board.

OSI's "Network Media Program" gave $22,157 to Investigative Reporters & Editors.

Soros Foundations have provided $160,000 to MediaChannel.org, a so-called "media issues supersite, featuring criticism, breaking news, and investigative reporting from hundreds of organizations worldwide." The executive editor is Danny Schecter, a former news program producer and investigative reporter at CNN and ABC. It was created by Globalvision News Network, whose board includes "Senior executives from the world's leading media firms."

OSI has contributed $70,000 toward the far-left Independent Media Center, or Indymedia, known as an "independent newsgathering collective," whose servers were seized by a federal law enforcement agency on October 7. The action was apparently related to an investigation into international terrorism, kidnapping or money laundering.

OSI provided $600,000 to the Media Access Project, a so-called telecommunications public interest law firm critical of conservative influence in the major media.

OSI provide $30,000 to the Media Awareness Project, a "worldwide network dedicated to drug policy reform" and promoting "balanced media coverage" of the drug issue.

OSI provided $200,000 to the Association for Progressive Communications, "an international networkâ?¦working for peace, human rights, development and protection of the environmentâ?¦"


Considering all of the money that Soros or his organizations have provided to news organizations, it should be no surprise to learn that journalists love him. His web site advises visitors to "read about George Soros from The New York Times, USA Today, Time Magazine, et al.," all of which are reprinted on the site and highly favorable. His new web site features several complimentary statements about Soros from articles in the press and media figures.
The Hidden Soros Agenda: Drugs, Money, the Media, and Political Power

Left wing media has been bought and paid for.......

Have a good one!:s4: