Freedom from Manipulation, Part 1

Stephen King, George Lucas, the late Roy Orbison, Madison Avenue advertising agencies, and political manipulators—what do they all have in common? They all use similar techniques for generating suspense as a means of manipulating people.

Since political campaigns have already been compared to advertising and brand imaging, you’re probably not surprised to see advertisers and political manipulators mentioned in the same sentence. Actually, political manipulators, such as the ones who gave us the 9/11 false flag terror attack, have more in common with Stephen King than they have with advertisers. Remember, the key word here is suspense.
As a literary term, suspense has been defined as the dynamic that impels the reader or observer to keep reading (or watching) to find out what happens next. Authors, movie makers, and songwriters depend on people’s suspension of disbelief in an illusion. Advertisers and political manipulators depend on people’s belief that the illusion is real.
Let’s take Stephen King as our benchmark. Advertisers have only thirty seconds to do what Stephen King does in a few hundred pages. Roy Orbison had less than three minutes, and movie director George Lucas has about two hours. Political manipulators often have years or even decades to generate suspense as a means of manipulating people for power and profit.
In thirty seconds, advertisers have to cause viewers to identify with the characters in their advertisements (exposition,) convince the viewers that a problem or opportunity for the viewer exists (conflict,) demonstrate the hazards of ignoring the problem or opportunity (rising action,) show him that buying a certain product or service is the only reasonable solution (climax,) and promise happy results (anti-climax.)
If the advertisement relies on fear, the advertiser has to give the false promise of hopelessness, which conflicts with the viewer’s knowledge that the advertiser will offer the solution after all. That’s a certain variety of “false promise” known as the conflict between the “voice of the novel” (saying that there’s no possible resolution) and the viewer’s “voice of experience” (telling him that there must be a resolution or else there can be no “story.”)
Like Stephen King, George Lucas, Roy Orbison, and political operatives, the advertisers create both the problem and the solution in the same laboratory.
My brother-in-law once gave me the following example of this technique:
“A man once spent an entire morning trying to sell toothbrushes on a street corner, but he didn’t have any customers. A slicker came to him and promised him that he could sell all the toothbrushes for five times the list price. The inexperienced salesman allowed him to try.
“An hour later, the slicker returned with a few medicine bottles, which he placed on the table as he put the toothbrushes out of sight. He displayed a sign that read, ‘Doctor McKay’s Magical Pills. Free Sample. They’ll make you smarter and wiser immediately, or we’ll pay you $100 cash.’
“Even the most doubtful of potential customers were willing to try one of the pills. A customer would, of course, ask what was in the pills because he had no way of knowing. He’d take a pill, chew it, spit it out and say, ‘This is rabbit doo-doo!’
“The salesman responded, ‘See there, you’re smarter already. Would you like to take another one?’
“’Of course not!’
“’See there, you’re wiser already. Would you like to buy a toothbrush?’” I’ll later demonstrate how political operatives use similar techniques.
Roy Orbison generated suspense to manipulate his listeners’ feelings with his song “Running Scared.” In the song, a young man had a girlfriend who had been deeply in love with someone she’d previously known. The young man (represented by Roy Orbison) faced a seemingly hopeless situation of hoping against hope that she would never encounter the previous boyfriend. That hope, of course, was a signal—common in literature—that, before the end of the story, she would encounter the previous boyfriend; otherwise, there would be no story. In the climax, she, he, and the previous boyfriend came face to face. Until the last two words of the song, Roy Orbison leaves the outcome in doubt. (If you want to know how the story came out, click here.) As songs go, it was a masterpiece of suspense.
For now at least (I'll say more in the next article) I’ve said most of what I need to say about Stephen King techniques for generating suspense, but let me draw your attention to one in particular that I’ve already mentioned. Near the end of every well-written story—without exception—there’s a false promise telling the reader that the situation is hopeless. Of course the reader of the story knows that the situation isn’t really hopeless. If it were, there wouldn’t be a story.
At that point, the reader is in a state of confusion. He knows that there must be a resolution, but he doesn’t see how it’s possible. The author tugs at his feelings even more by offering the false promise that a resolution is impossible. From that point on, the reader is putty in the writer’s hands.
That’s how political manipulators operate. They hit us with seemingly insoluble crises. Aided and abetted by the controlled “news” media, we’re told that the situation is hopeless. In our state of anxiety, we’re relieved when the political operatives produce a solution—any solution because, at that point, any solution seemed preferable to the suspense we’ve suffered.
There are, however, several significant differences between Stephen King and political manipulators. I’ve mentioned that readers of Stephen King novels choose to suspend disbelief and pretend that the illusion is real; and that political manipulators seek to circumvent the public’s ability to think rationally and convince them that the illusion is real.
Here’s another significant difference: Political manipulators are both the authors and the self-created heroes of their stories. This allows political manipulators (to borrow from commentator James Corbett’s phrase) “to stand on the smoldering rubble and identify themselves as the heroes” of crises of their own making.
In the next article, I’ll describe how people are manipulated by such scams as the 9/11 false flag terrorist attack, the bogus avian flu scare of 2009-2010, and more recently the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

"Let there be peace, and let it begin with me." The brotherhood of man transcends sovereignty of nations. May people of all religious faiths, nationalities and cultural groups pray together. Pray any day or every day. On November 1, the day before congressional elections, pray for the American people, rather than voting on the basis of political party or ideology, will vote for wise and virtuous leaders.

Light a Candle Endeavor

Terrorist Group Using Jews as Human Shields

(This is part two of a three-part series.)

It’s hard to imagine a group—any group, terrorist or otherwise—using innocent human beings as human shields in their criminal activities. We’ve all heard of this practice, and it fills every decent human being with shock and disgust.
When a gang of criminals uses innocent people as human shields, they’re cynically taking advantage of the fundamental sense of decency found in almost every human heart—that is, every human heart except those of the despicable cowards who adopt this practice. A sense of compassion toward the victims of the criminals makes it more difficult for honorable people to take the necessary actions to stop or correct the evils perpetrated by the criminals.
The American Action Report has learned that a Middle Eastern terrorist group routinely uses Jews as human shields in carrying out their criminal enterprises. No, they’re not al Qaeda; they’re much better funded and far better organized than al Qaeda. They’re not even jihadists; there’s nothing holy about their struggle. The terrorist group in question is the Israeli government.
Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, Israel—meaning both the Israelis and their government—needed the Palestinians for low-wage labor. Possibly for this reason, Shimon Perez, the only Israeli prime minister to have suffered from the Holocaust rather than benefited from it, took sincere steps to advance the Middle East peace process. (He would not have become prime minister except that no political party was able to form a majority. As a compromise, three parties took two-year turns at holding that position.)
After the Soviet Union fell and Israel received a flood of immigrants with tenuous claims to being Jewish, the Palestinians became expendable. Israel had a new source of low-wage labor. To use a familiar phrase, the Palestinians were seen as “useless eaters.”
Maybe you’ve heard of the guns-and-caviar index. Some economist found that, for 17 years in a row, there was an inverse relationship between the worldwide sales of fighter jets (guns) and corporate executive jets (caviar.) As long as the guns-and-caviar index was valid, a rising tide lifted all (or most) boats.
When nations (Israel was one of the first) shifted over to the disaster capitalist model (in which disasters of all kinds become profitable), however, we saw a different dynamic. Under the disaster capitalist model, the sales of fighter jets and corporate executive jets rise or fall together. Not only that, but profits are concentrated into the hands of the disaster capitalists, while lower living standards are the lot of everyone else.
I stress this point because it shows a divide between the “haves” favored by the Israeli government on one hand, and the Jewish majority on the other. Many Jews and Jewish groups have protested Israel’s often illegal policies, but their voices are largely ignored by the controlled media. When non-Jews criticize Israel’s behavior, they’re accused of anti-Semitism. In this manner, the relatively few criminals at the top of the Israeli government are using Jews as human shields to further their criminal enterprises.
Israel’s spy group Mossad created the Palestinian group Hamas to undermine Yassir Arafat’s support from Palestinians. (Click here.) Once Israel created Hamas, they secretly supported them and built them up while further undermining Arafat. (Click here.)

In Gaza’s 2007 election, the Palestinians chose Hamas to represent them. Israel then used Palestinian support for the “terrorist” group Hamas as a pretext for building a wall around Palestinian territories to choke off their means of living. (Click here, here, and here.)
Israel’s apartheid policy against the Palestinians differs from South Africa’s former policy in one major respect. South Africans build barriers to keep workers from escaping to better lives. Israel’s wall was built to keep Palestinians from getting to their farms or other places of work, and receiving necessities of life.
On June 8, 2010, the United Nations Security Council declared that Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza was illegal. (Click here for official United Nations statement.)
It’s not the purpose of this article to go into Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza, but it is necessary to demonstrate that the government of Israel is committing criminal acts, mainly against innocent people; and using charges of anti-Semitism (using Jews as human shields) as a cloak for their criminal aggression.
One can’t honestly say that all Palestinians are terrorists, although paid Internet trolls are filling the chat rooms and meet-up groups with the accusation that all Palestinians are supporters of terrorism if not terrorists themselves. (Click here.) Remember, as well, that Israeli tax dollars were used to create Hamas and build Palestinian support for Hamas.
Here’s the sticking point: Whenever someone criticizes the criminality of Israeli leaders, paid Internet trolls and well-funded Israeli lobby groups accuse that person of being anti-Semitic—that is, anti-Jewish. Is this reasonable, or are terrorists—the Israeli government leaders—using Jews as human shields for their criminality?
Can we reasonably assume that everyone in Israel supports every action of the Israeli government? Of course not. Can we reasonably assume that every Jew in the world supports every action of the Israeli government? Of course not.
Many well-meaning Christians automatically support the Israeli government because of the Lord’s biblical promises to the descendants of Abraham and Isaac. They should read the whole Bible instead of limiting themselves to a few comforting verses.
The Old Testament mentions every person who served as king of Israel and Judah. It says of most of them, “And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” Major portions and even entire books of the Old Testament, such as Jeremiah and Hosea condemn the evils of Israelite kings and citizens. Were the writers of the Old Testament anti-Semitic? Of course not.

Israeli citizens, Jews, and Old Testament prophets have freely criticized Israel’s leaders when they were wrong. When Israel’s leaders, lobbyists, and internet trolls hurl accusations of anti-Semitism against critics of those leaders, they’re using Jews as human shields for their criminal acts.
In the first part of this series, I described how Israel uses Internet trolls to influence public opinion. In this part of the series, I described how Israel hypocritically uses accusations of anti-Semitism as a shield for criminal aggression in stark violation of Jewish law. In the third and final part of this series, I'll give proof of Israeli Mossad agents impersonating Arabs, committing terrorist acts, and blaming those terrorist acts on Israel's enemies.
Here’s a final thought. In ancient times, Rabbi Hillel said that the commandments, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself,” were the very essence of Jewish thought, and “All else is commentary.” (Click here for Jewish commentary on Hillel quote.)
If those two commandments are the essence of Jewish thought, just how “Jewish” are Israel’s leaders?
(To go back to part 1 of this series, click here.)
(To read part 3 of this series, click here.)

"Let there be peace, and let it begin with me." The brotherhood of man transcends sovereignty of nations. May people of all religious faiths, nationalities and cultural groups pray together. Pray any day or every day. On November 1, the day before congressional elections, pray for the American people, rather than voting on the basis of political party or ideology, will vote for wise and virtuous leaders.

Light a Candle Endeavor

Coincidence or Conspiracy?

(This is the first article in a three-part series.)
The title of this article suggests a paradigm that’s familiar to all of us. Regardless of whether you explain events by coincidence or conspiracy, you perceive that there’s often a link between the two. I believe that the paradigm is too small. Please bear with me as I propose a broader paradigm.
Studies have shown that coincidences are far more common than most people realize. An understanding of just how common coincidences really are can lead us to previously unseen possibilities.

Take for example a series of simple coin tosses—heads or tails. According to one study, reported in the book Freakonomics, people guessing the outcomes of a series of coin tosses tend to limit their guesses to no more than two heads (or tails) consecutively. In actual fact, three or four heads (or tails) in a row are far more common than the guessers imagined.
Take another situation. Imagine two people in a crowd having the same birth date. How large a crowd would it have to be before this coincidence would occur? Most people would say 183 or 184, which would be one person for over half the days in a year. Actually, you’d need only 22 people for the odds to be in favor of two sharing the same birth date.
Coincidences are all around us. A friend from Columbia, South Carolina, once visited New York City for a few days and had a chance encounter with a Columbia resident she hadn’t seen in years.
In Vietnam, I happened to meet someone in my high school graduating class (of 40 students.) Neither of us had known that the other was there. On a bus in California, while I was reading the autobiography of Will Rogers, I happened to meet an elderly lady who had known Will Rogers.
I’ve had other chance encounters and experienced other surprising coincidences, and you probably have as well.
(In case anyone wonders, it was no coincidence that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig's Disease.)
I said earlier that the paradigm “coincidence or conspiracy” was too small. Here’s where we begin thinking out of the box.
Coincidences are so common that I’ve learned to be suspicious when I observe a complete absence of coincidences over time. Over time, coincidences are to be expected. When they don’t occur, I want to know why. A complete absence of coincidences may sometimes be taken as evidence of conspiracy.

Imagine this: You regularly post messages to an Internet meet-up group and often repost to them messages you’d found in your email box. On a particular day, you haven’t checked your meet-up group in a few days, open your account and repost a message. Ten minutes later, you open the post of someone else in the group and find that he had posted that message two days earlier.
It’s a little embarrassing because it suggests that you don’t read that person’s posts. It’s just a coincidence, and it happens to almost everyone who regularly reposts materials. After all, you can’t know specifically what’s in someone else’s post until you open it.
Now imagine this: Suppose three or more people each repost as many as five items a day on the same narrow subject. That’s over 5,400 posts a year on the same subject. What if not one of them ever reposted the same material as one of the other two?

They’re working together as a team, aren’t they? They’re being fed their materials by an invisible “other” party, aren’t they? Who’s that other party and what do they gain from this ruse?
Welcome to the world of disinformation. These disinformation agents aren’t singling out your particular meet-up group. One of them recently got careless and sent out a post without using the bcc (blind carbon copy) feature. He was sending the same disinformation to around three dozen groups.
What does the disinfo agent feel he has to gain from deceiving people in this manner? Well, the answer is not ideological.
Many years ago, the late actor Robert Mitchum suggested an answer to that question. An interviewer asked him why he became an actor and why he continued. He replied, “Where else could a no-talent bum like me earn a comfortable living?”

I’ve seen how disinfo agents write when they’re provoked into using their own words and not words provided to them by their handlers. Where else could someone with no talent, no skills, no education, no conscience, minimal intelligence, and minimal training hope to earn a comfortable living?
I said that disinfo agents have a minimum of training. To recognize the work of disinfo agents (they often work in teams), it’s helpful to know the 25 strategies of disinfo agents and the 8 traits (Thanks to this article, there are now 9—you heard the ninth one from me first.) (Click here.)
Now let’s get to the question of who is spending millions of dollars to pay the trolls to disinform people in Internet meet-up groups and why they’re doing it.

A few decades ago, the flow of information we charitably call news was dominated by 88 companies—that’s worldwide. Now there are 6. All of them get most of their information from only two sources: the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters. (Click here.)
The Internet changed all that to some extent. More and more people, distrustful of the propaganda from those six corporations, are turning to the Internet for news. That’s a gap the architects of the New World Order are trying to plug.
I observed their efforts while researching for an article last week. A few months ago, I found a site proving, by the Flight 77 manifest, that there were no Arabs on the plane that supposedly crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.

When I looked for that information last week, it was hard to find. The first few pages were filled with sites claiming to debunk that claim. Not one of them disputed the information on the flight manifest; instead, they provided other information that could easily have been manufactured. Interestingly, CNN, which was the original Internet source of the manifest information, had removed it from their site.

Internet meet-up groups are other ripe targets of opportunity for disinformation agents and their trolls. Here’s how Pak Alert Press describes it:

“Because the MSM’s bag of tricks has been so exhausted over such a long period of time, many bitter and enraged consumers of information are now turning to alternative news sources, most of which exist on the collective commons we call the internet. At first, it appears, the government and elitists ignored the web as a kind of novelty, or just another mechanism they could exploit in spreading disinformation. As we all now well know, they dropped the ball, and the internet has become the most powerful tool for truth history has ever seen.
“That being said, they are now expending incredible resources in order to catch up to their mistake, utilizing every trick in their arsenal to beat web users back into submission. While the anonymity of the internet allows for ascertain immunity against many of Saul Alinsky’s manipulative tactics, it also allows governments to attack those trying to spread the truth covertly. In the world of web news, we call these people “disinfo trolls.” Trolls are now being openly employed by governments in countries like the U.S. and Israel specifically to scour the internet for alternative news sites and disrupt their ability to share information.”
Their article on disinformation tactics is worth reading in full. (Click here.)
There we have it: the motive, the means, and the opportunity. The motive behind the motive is money and power, no matter how many innocent civilians are killed in unjust wars, deliberate oil spills, or other highly profitable disasters. Thus it has ever been.
We can defend ourselves from the dangerous criminals who hire these pathetic losers by familiarizing ourselves with the trolls' tactics, and by acquiring critical thinking skills. Challenge them.
On one occasion, I offered an unexpected challenge to a troll regarding his messages. I asked something like, “When you get people stirred up to hate other people because of their religion, which is your obvious intention, what do you want your readers to do? “ His response was vague and almost incoherent.
That’s just it. They don’t want our action; they want our acquiescence. The architects of the New World Order will provide the action. We should, instead, do the very things they don’t want us to do: work with each other instead of against each other; turn on the New World Order and their trolls instead of accepting the fate "those people" have planned for us.
(To read part 2 of this series, click here.)
(To read part 3 of this series, click here.)

Pray for wisdom in the 2010 elections.
Click here: Light a Candle Endeavor

What Happened to Flight 77's Passengers?

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Take, for example, the claim that one or more passengers on Flight 77, with the help of the U.S. Government, faked their deaths on September 11, 2001? Let’s start with what we know. That would require a high degree of evidence because accepting this claim would require some changes within our view of an event that affects us today.
Let’s separate the events of September 11 into causes and results. In the minds of most Americans, the results of 9/11 are beyond question. Around 3,000 people died (more or less), three buildings were destroyed, one other building—the Pentagon—was damaged, and three commercial airliners are no longer in service, at least not under the same call signs.
Causes are another matter. Of the hundreds, if not thousands, of events (apart from what was then the usual routine) causing 9/11, not one of them has been honestly reported by the 9/11 Commission. Not one of them actually happened.
Let’s look at only two of them. Flight 77 was supposedly hijacked by Muslims shouting Hollywood-style “Islamic extremist” slogans. The truth is, the flight manifest revealed that there were no Arabs or passengers with Muslim-sounding names on Flight 77. (Click here.) (Note: Since then, efforts have been made to indicate Muslim-sounding names on Flight 77 even though they weren’t on the manifest.)
Secondly, Flight 77 supposedly crashed into the Pentagon. It has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the Pentagon was hit by a missile and not by an airliner. (Click here and here.)
That brings us to an uncomfortable question: If Flight 77 didn’t crash into the Pentagon, where is it now, and where are the passengers? For years, I had supposed that they probably were murdered and their bodies hidden where they’d never be found.
Believing that Dick Cheney, Halliburton, Blackwater, and others would do something like that must sound crazy to some people. It would be as crazy as supposing that they had deliberately lied about Iraq in order to get us into (for them) a highly profitable war that, incidentally, claimed the lives of over a million civilians, killed thousands of American servicemen, and ruined the emotional health of tens of thousands of other servicemen and their families.
In the pages of the Vatic Project, I ran across an article that suggested that one of the passengers, Barbara Kay Bracher Olson (attorney at law), has resurfaced as Lady Evelyn Booth Olson, attorney at law.
The photos above were posted by the Vatic Project. I used Photoshop to compare them.
First, I matched them for size so that one could be layered over the other. Then, to minimize color distraction, rendered them to black and white.
By changing the layer order (one over the other, then the other over the one), I could test each finding against the other. I reduced the opacity of the top layer to 50% so I could see the bottom layer photo beneath the upper one.
I then aligned the eyes. This allowed me to see how the rest of the faces aligned. I was struck by the fact that both women had unusually wide-set eyes; that is, set far apart. Lady’s eyes were wider than Barbara’s but that’s not surprising, since Barbara is flashing a fuller smile. The eyes still suggest differences that could have been due to plastic surgery.
The jaw lines on the two women, from the right temple to the left jaw, line up perfectly. So do the lengths of their necks. Below, take a look at how well the two faces line up. In this photo, Barbara’s face is superimposed over Lady’s and set at 50% opacity.
I took the comparison a step further by cutting and pasting each woman’s eyes and mouth over the others eyes and mouth with no change in opacity. I wanted to compare bone structures and underlying muscle tissue.
On the left, Barbara has Lady’s mouth and eyes; Lady has Barbara’s mouth and eyes. Look at the bone structure extending from the eyebrows to the base of the nose in both photos. You’ll see one continuous line.
When I superimposed Lady’s eyes over Barbara’s, I cut off half of the left eyebrow. Look at Barbara’s left eyebrow. Lady’s are a little thinner, but you can scarcely tell where Barbara’s eyebrow ends and Lady’s begins.
The fleshy part of Lady’s nose (the cartilage) is a little broader than that of Barbara’s, but the bone structures line up perfectly.
When I switched mouths, I included the nasal-labial folds (the folds extending from the corners of the mouth to the sides of the nose). The nasal-labial folds line up perfectly.
How difficult is it to line up photos in this manner? I’ve been doing this for about five years, and this is only the second time I’ve found that close a match between one photo and another—any photos. I haven’t been able to match any photo of me with any other photo of me. There are too many differences in expression, pose, tilt of the head, the photographers, and so on.
The only other match I’d ever found was between the face of Saint John in Da Vinci’s Last Supper and that of the Virgin Mary in Da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rock(a.k.a. Virgin of the Rocks, painted several years earlier. I concluded from that that Da Vinci didn’t use a live model for Saint John’s face; he used his drawings of the model he’d used in Madonna of the Rocks. No match-up could otherwise have been the perfect match I saw between the two faces.
There’s one more objection to the theory that Barbara Olson and Lady Olson are the same person. Skeptics claim that Lady Evelyn Booth had a history that pre-dated 9/11. After a diligent search, I found only one indication that she even existed prior to December 2001. Records indicate that, in 1988, someone by that name was licensed to practice law in New York, and she was said to have practiced law for 21 years. (Click here.) The telephone number listed as hers, (703) 389-2842, was for an address in Vienna, Virginia, a few miles from CIA Headquarters in McLean, Virginia. (Click here.) During the early 1990’s, Barbara Bracher (later Barbara Olson) also lived in McLean. (Click here.)
Both Ted Olson and Barbara Olson were big neoconservative players. Ted was a solicitor general appointed by George W. Bush after Olson had successfully argued Bush's 2000 election case before the Supreme Court. (Click here.) Barbara was a neoconservative writer and commentator as well as a lawyer for neoconservative causes. They were both faithful players on the Bush/Cheney team. If you need further convincing as to Ted Olson's credentials, take a look at who was among the wedding guests when he married Lady Evelyn Booth. (Click here.)
Now go back to the question I asked at the beginning of this article: If Flight 77 didn’t crash into the Pentagon, where is it now, and where are the passengers? At least one of the passengers may be alive, well, and prospering.

Other September 11, 2001, articles in this blog

James Clyburn: Poster Child for Corruption

Suppose your congressman were about half as corrupt as South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn. Would you be pleased with that? To some of y’all, that may depend on how corrupt James Clyburn is.

I ask this question because, assuming that degrees of corruption may be measured along a bell-shaped curve, the average United States congressman is probably a little more than half as corrupt as James Clyburn. Of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, only 50 congressmen have grafted more money for family and cronies than James Clyburn. Figured in dollars that congressional corruption is costing us, we may divide the cost of Clyburn’s corruption in half and multiply it by 535—the number of senators and “representatives” in the U.S. Congress. That’s at least how much it’s costing American taxpayers.
Of course, we’d have to add the cost of the Wall Street embezzlement bills, the Big Pharma/health insurance scams, and various other multi-trillion-dollar acts of collective congressional embezzlement. Only in Congress is the misappropriation of several million dollars considered, at worst, petty theft.
The Myrtle Beach (South Carolina) Sun News and other newspapers have been running articles on Congressman James Clyburn’s corruption. Clyburn’s excuses have been inconsistent.
In an interview, he said he saw nothing wrong with his graft. In 2008, the Sun News quoted him in a classic case of misdirection: “I have a bushel of family members. I earmark stuff for the State of South Carolina, and my daughter works for the state. I earmark stuff for Sumter, and several of my nieces and nephews work for Sumter. I’ve earmarked millions of dollars for I-73. Should I not do that because my son is an engineer with the highway department?”

Clyburn didn’t mention the $3 million earmarked for a golf course program named after Clyburn, although that program is already funded by Fortune 500 companies. He didn’t mention the two projects on which his nephew Derrick Ballard was one of the lead architects: one for $784,000 and one for $145,000. In the latter case, known as Five Rivers, executives faced 15 felony charges that they had stolen public money.
On July 3, 2010, all five executives pleaded guilty, were sentenced to five years in prison, and were ordered to pay restitution. (Click here for link.)
Regarding those two acts of graft, Clyburn said that he didn’t know that his nephew was involved. Excuse me, but what are the odds of that happening twice? I expect it’s about the same as a blindfolded man hitting the bulls-eye in a game of darts twice in a row. Oh, by the way, the Five Rivers community center that Ballard was paid for designing was never built. (Then his Uncle James used tax dollars to pay him for the $784,000 job.)
Here’s a quick run-down on just some of Clyburn’s nepotism:
$784,000: nephew (architect)
$145,000: same nephew
$69,663: same nephew (though this figure may refer only to his cut of the abovementioned $145,000.)
$229,000: daughter (marketing director at an obesity clinic)
$990,000: daughter (same as above—another bulls-eye twice in a row)
$282,000: sister-in-law (housing coordinator for a corporation)
$670,000: brother (trainer for YouthBuild program at a corporation)
$16,600: brother (consultant)
$2.5 million: brother, lobbyist for airport; the brother personally received $60,000.
$131,000: former aide
$250,000: same as above (yet another bulls-eye twice in a row)
$1.3 million: Benedict Shogaolu, a former business partner convicted of four felony charges.
(Notice how many of Clyburn’s business associates go to prison.) (Click here)
It goes on and on.
More recently, the Charleston Post (reposted by the Sun News) reported that there’s now an investigation of the money Clyburn steered toward the James Clyburn Transportation Center of South Carolina State University. Of approximately $50 million allocated, several millions are missing. http://www.thesunnews.com/2010/07/02/1565525/clyburn-center-missing-millions.html
According to the Herald On-line, South Carolina state legislators are demanding an audit of South Carolina State University to determine what happened to the “missing millions.” Have they tried auditing Clyburn’s freezer? (Check it out.)
Recently, James Clyburn defended his actions, saying that the Constitution “mandated” his corrupt behavior. Last year, earmarks of this sort cost the taxpayers $17.2 billion. (Click here for the sordid details.)
James Clyburn makes a perfect poster boy for the American Action Report’s efforts to clean all the rats from Congress this November. If your congressman is only half as corrupt as James Clyburn, multiply that by 535 and see how much personal corruption in Congress is costing us. Check some of the Recommended Links at the top right corner of this page to find out if your congressman truly represents you.
I would like to thank the friend who sent me the links on James Clyburn. I would thank him by name, but I’d like for him to live a few more years. Chicago doesn’t have a monopoly on politically motivated murders.

Pray for wisdom in the 2010 congressional elections.
Click here: Light a Candle Endeavor