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Below are the video and transcript of an interview with Rocky Anderson, former mayor of Salt Lake City and 2012 presidential nominee of the recently formed Justice Party, from the Real News Network.

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Washington.

Well, if you watch television these days, you’d think there will only be two candidates for president, President Obama and Mitt Romney—the most likely Republican representative. But in fact there is another serious challenge, serious at least in terms of his ideas. I guess it’s yet to be determined how serious it can be in terms of actual effect. That person is Rocky Anderson. Rocky is the leader of a new Justice Party. He’s running for president, and he was the mayor of Salt Lake City. Thanks very much for joining us, Rocky.ROCKY ANDERSON, U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, JUSTICE PARTY: It’s great to be with you. Thank you.JAY: So a lot of our viewers may have seen some of your interviews on some of the other, I guess, alternative networks. You’ve also been on some mainstream television when you announced the Justice Party. So instead of going over your whole program again—and we may even link to some of those interviews—I want to jump into one point that you’ve been focusing on, and that is the issue of money in politics. And you’ve been talking a lot about the need for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. But that money in politics certainly existed before such a decision. You know, the 1 percent of the 1 percent has been more or less dominating U.S. politics, almost, maybe, since there was a United States of America. And you talk about the need for new paradigm, sort of addressing the system, not just changing the faces of the president. So how do you grapple with this sort of deeper problem?ANDERSON: Well, our system has been rotten to the core for many years. The Citizens United case just made it so clear how bad it really is. Finally the American people are sitting up and paying attention.I was on the board of directors of Utah Common Cause for a number of years, going up to our state legislature, urging them to pass legislation to prohibit gifts by lobbyists to legislators year after year. They acted toward us with such utter disdain, as if there weren’t a problem with legislators sitting on the front row of Utah Jazz games or being given golf packages or ski packages. It is just amazing how bribery has taken over our system of government, how those with the wealth really are in control. And it is at the bottom of every major public policy disaster in this country.Why are we the only industrialized nation on the face of the planet without a central health care coverage for every citizen? It’s because of the corrupting influence of money in our system, from the health insurance industry, from pharmaceutical companies. Same reason why we have these high drug prices. Why do people go to Canada to get the same drugs that they could buy in this country, but at much lower prices in Canada? It’s because of the corrupting influence of money from the pharmaceutical industry.JAY: Now, one of the—at the core of a lot of this is the control of the banking sector. And when it came time to—when the banking sector, after their own casino activities essentially led them to collapse and they needed a public bailout, that seemed to be a moment where there could have been some real challenge to that power, ’cause certainly the power of money in politics comes from this concentration of ownership. And when the big banks were on their knees and they needed the public money, one would have thought that was an opportunity to do something about it. So if you’d been president in 2008, what would you have done differently?ANDERSON: Well, certainly we needed to stabilize our financial system, but there should not have been this carte blanche given by Congress and the White House as we’re giving the banking sector billions of dollars, but without conditions. Nobody said you’ve got to be providing this money for loans for small businesses, for people who are trying to get into their first homes, pay off their mortgages, all these millions of people that are underwater in their homes. There were none of those protections for the American people. It was just another bailout for the banks, and then these folks kept stuffing their own pockets with millions of dollars.How anybody that got us into these problems in the first place, much of it through financial fraud—and we know that now—how they even maintain their positions of power in these entities, let alone getting the bonuses that they’ve taken away with taxpayer money—. And I blame not the greed on Wall Street so much, because we expect people on Wall Street to be greedy, and especially if they’re playing by the rules, to take advantage. But we have hired, through our elections, people in Washington and Congress and the White House who are supposed to be protecting our interests, and instead they’ve been betraying us every single day, as they’ve been the lap dogs for the financial industry.JAY: Well, how do you assess, then, Dodd-Frank and whatever regulations have actually come out of Dodd-Frank? What do you make of those efforts?ANDERSON: Well, I think it’s a good first step, obviously, but it’s in a sense window dressing. Why have we not brought back Glass-Steagall? Why do we allow there to be any banks that are considered too large to fail? That’s the whole problem is they know that they can engage in these very risky, sometimes illegal, sometimes fraudulent activities and there’s not going to be accountability. How do they get to that point? Well, they give more, for instance, to President Obama’s campaign than ever before in the history of this country, and so the Obama administration, they have not prosecuted one person for the illegal conduct that helped lead to our economic disaster, from which people are still reeling in this country.How is it that Goldman Sachs can be selling to their customers these perverse products, and at the same time betting billions of dollars against them without disclosing that to their own customers, to their own clients, and nobody pays a penalty for that? How can they market these instruments with these toxic mortgages, mortgages that they had to have known would not be paying off? How do they market those as AAA investments, the lowest-risk investments possible? How do they do that? And then the bottom falls out and not one person brought to account. That’s a pretty good return on their investments [crosstalk]JAY: Now, one of the things that’s been suggested by some of the economists we’ve been talking to is that there needs to be some way—an alternative form of banking, in other words—that one of—the power of the banking sector on Wall Street is partly in their ability to, you know, as you say, finance political campaigns, and especially if you look at what happened at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission when they tried to develop position limits. The lobbying effort was about 100 to 1 pro-Wall Street lobbyists to reformers. And they bring to bear massive resources. So very little gets done, both in terms of legislation and regulation. And some people are suggesting what there needs to be is some form of public banking so that there isn’t this form of blackmail. You know, this too-big-to-fail is essentially blackmail: you don’t come bail us out, your economy will be destroyed. So what’s your sense of this proposal of some form of banking as a public utility?ANDERSON: Well, I think there should be a people’s bank, in effect, where we’re not dependent on these large banks anymore. And I do think that these—any bank that’s considered too large to fail, that there ought to only be one thing that’s too large to fail, and that’s the American middle class. We should be breaking up these banks. Glass-Steagall should be put back into law so that you don’t have investment banks and lending banks and insurance companies all together, because that—without that, we would not have faced this economic crisis. And we owe it to the American people. Our government ought to be serving the public interest, rather than simply the interest of the folks at Goldman Sachs and the rest on Wall Street.But what do we expect when the president of the United States has surrounded himself with these folks? He’s not surrounding himself with public advocates. He’s surrounding himself, in terms of policy, with these Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street folks who go through this revolving door in government. And so there is so much that we can do if our government, if Congress and the White House were really focused on the public interest.The control of the Fed, for instance: why is it that the Federal Reserve can be basically under the table without disclosure, without congressional oversight, without congressional approval, be pushing out billions of dollars to the banks that are essentially controlling the Fed? It is the most corrupt system. Alan Greenspan going to Congress and saying publicly—and everybody treating him as if he was some kind of oracle—encouraging people to go to adjustable-rate mortgages, and then almost immediately he starts raising interest rates. I think there were 17 increases in a row in the interest rates, so that people who were going out, following his advice, getting those adjustable-rate mortgages, were absolutely getting hosed, when the banks once again were cleaning up.So we know of these problems. It’s time that we respond and that those who are elected to represent our interests start doing that. And we need—at the very top, we need somebody in the White House that’s going to make this case very clear to the American people and create the political demands so that nobody in Congress can ever get away with doing what they’ve done in the past, where there will be a real political price to be paid for those who continue to serve as the lackeys for the financial institutions who have taken such gross advantage of deregulation at the detriment, to the detriment of the American people and so many other millions of people around the world.JAY: Thanks very much for joining us, Rocky.ANDERSON: Thanks so much.JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

End

DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

Independent Political Report

Reason.TV Inteview

Wayne Allyn Root is a former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee. He now serves as Chairman of the Libertarian National Congressional Committee. He is the best-selling author of “The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gold & Tax Cuts.” His web site: www.ROOTforAmerica.com

Independent Political Report

We all know that big business can wave a fistfull of money at a senator and change his mind.     Now we find out specially trained PSY-OPS troops can manipulate their thoughts with the presentation of controlled materials.     What we have been reluctant to ask is  “How hard do you have to twist the truth to get over on a senile old warrior like John McCain?”     We have all seen Johnny have one of his old age fits and deny facts and reality. Would any man with a functional mind dump Sarah Palin on America?

                           You are such a manly man Joe.

Those reportedly singled out in the  “information operations” campaign included Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; Jack Reed, D-R.I.; Al Franken, D-Minn.; and Carl Levin, D-Mich.     Other diplomats and think-tank analysts were also targeted.     The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 was passed by Congress to prevent the State Department from using propaganda techniques against U.S. citizens.      This law seems not to be followed and as of yet there is no protection against politicians selling out for money and other favors from big business.

How can we the people elect someone to go to Washington and represent our interest?     Is such a thing possible any longer and if someone discovers a way to do this how long will it be before the Supreme Court strikes it down and returns control of everything to big business?


This type of thing begs the question of why the military and most of our politicians are so hell bent on perpetual war?     They keep the fear machine going 24/7 and constantly tell us there is no other option.     No progress is made and lives and money are spent fighting for what exactly?      War is and always has been big business.

In the above photo Gen. David Petraeus is attempting to use mind control on John McCain and failing due to McCain’s advanced years.     John is so old he can’t control his own mind.

Gen. David Petraeus has ordered an investigation into claims that a top Army official instructed a military team to manipulate visiting U.S. dignitaries using  “psychological operations”  so they would approve more resources for the Afghanistan war.     Our country is so broke we can’t pay teachers and cops and somebody is running an illegal PSY-OPS operation to get more war money.     Its time to shut the defense contractors down.

Rolling Stone reported that the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who is in charge of training Afghan troops, tried to tap members of the military’s  “information operations”  unit to use their skills on visiting senators and congressmen, among others.     The goal, according to the article, was to convince the officials to provide more troops and money.


Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said Thursday that the investigation will seek to determine whether the actions taken were inappropriate or illegal and will conclude they weren’t.     For some reason I see a cat in a sand box and the cat is very busy.


Lapan, while not offering any denial of the claims, said it’s not unusual for “psy-ops” personnel to be asked to do things outside their normal duties.     For instance, it would not be inappropriate for Caldwell to ask one of the officers in the unit to get data on visiting congressional delegations.    We do this on a frequent and regular basis.    The critical question concerns what information was being gathered and how it was intended to be used.

The Rolling Stone article centered on allegations by Holmes, a leader of the “information operations”  unit.     He said Caldwell was looking for more than typical background information about visiting senators.      Holmes told the magazine the office wanted a “deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds.”


A senior U.S. military official whose unit deals with “psy-ops” said Holmes was not officially trained by the Army in this kind of warfare.     Is the key phrase not officially trained by the Army? Does that mean the CIA trained him or some other as yet unknown government agency or just that the Army familiarized him with the techniques but did not officially train him?

The amazing thing here is that the military still grants interviews to Rolling Stone Magazine since they end up revealing all kinds of messy truths to RS.     It appears the writer for Rolling Stone has some special OPS training of his own and the ability to make the military put its combat boot in its own mouth.      Seriously the military should be embarrised to be so easily done in by its own words.      Here’s the key to their bad luck, lying is harder than it at first seems so you must keep it a secret in the first place.
All of the politicians said they were unaware of any pressure or trickery being used on them however Joe Lieberman and John McCain said they could read the serial number on a fifty dollar bill from a football field away.     They also stated that everytime they saw a brown paper bag their hearts skipped a beat until they could get a peek at what was inside.

Here’s a brainwashing tip.     On old codgers like Joe and John knock the dust and spider webs off them first.     After that success is just a soft soaping away.


Here’s a snippit of the published story.


A high-ranking U.S. General in Afghanistan illegally ordered psychological operations officers to influence political figures, Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings reports.

Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, the man charged with the training of the Afghan government’s troops, ordered a group of  “information operations”  specialists led by Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes to help influence visiting Senators and Congressmen and garner more political support for the unpopular war.      Holmes tells the magazine that when he and his fellow intelligence officers resisted the order, Caldwell’s staff and military investigators set out to ruin their careers.


“My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave,”  Holmes says.     “I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people.     When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line.”      An officer attached to another psy-ops team in Afghanistan agreed:   “Everyone in the psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you’re not supposed to target Americans.     It’s what you learn on day one.”

If Senator AL were still on SNL he would have a blast with this story.      Al is amused by McCain sleeping on the senate floor.     Naps are the right of senators and it is the duty of the pages to wake them up to vote.

                 John is dreaming about being a maverick.

According to Holmes, his unit’s targets included Senators Jack Reed, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Al Franken and Carl Levin;   Congressman Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee;  the Czech Republic’s ambassador to Afghanistan and Germany’s interior minister; and even Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen.

Holmes says that Caldwell, an ambitious three-star general, ordered him to profile members of visiting congressional delegations and provide  “deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds.”      The general’s chief of staff also asked Holmes what they would need to  “plant inside their heads”  to get more troops sent to the country.


“We called it Operation Fourth Star,”   Holmes says.     “Caldwell seemed far more focused on the Americans and the funding stream than he was on the Afghans.     We were there to teach and train the Afghans.     But for the first four months it was all about the U.S. Later he even started talking about targeting the NATO populations.”


Federal law forbids the use of psychological operations on U.S. citizens, and every defense authorization bill includes a “propaganda rider”  reiterating the point.      Holmes also suspected that Caldwell’s orders were in violation of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, passed by Congress to ensure that U.S. citizens would never become subject to Soviet-style propaganda campaigns. Col. Gregory Breazile, the spokesperson for Caldwell’s operation, disagreed with Holmes’ assessment.      “It’s not illegal if I say it isn’t!”      Holmes recalls Breazile shouting when the two discussed the legality of Caldwell’s order.

Caldwell’s chief of staff then launched an investigation of Holmes that reported the Colonel drank alcohol, dressed in civilian clothing, improperly tried to start a business, made jokes of a sexual nature (“LTC Holmes’ comments about his sexual needs are even more distasteful in light of his status as a married man”), and carried on an “ inappropriate” relationship with a Maj. Laurel Levine. According to the Maj. Levine, who has received 16 service awards in her 19 years with the military and has a spotless record, Caldwell’s vendetta against Holmes “will probably end my career.”      In civilian life this is dropping a dime on somebody, destroying an enemy with a mountain of charges that are hard to defend.      When you are accused of dressing in civilian clothing, having a drink and trying to start a business What Do You Say?


The whole experience has left Holmes seemingly heartbroken by the military he served in.     “My father was an officer, and I believed officers would never act like this,”   he says.     “I was devastated.     I’ve lost my faith in the military, and I couldn’t in good conscience recommend anyone joining right now.”


A spokesperson for Caldwell denied all of Holmes’ charges to the magazine.

ACVDN Bottom Line,  Lt. Gen. William Caldwell is on track for a quick return to civilian life.     I am amazed at how poorly these folks are at keeping secrets.     Beyond this incident the Rolling Stone Magazine has used their own loose lips to sink their boat before and there are hunreds of thousands of secret memos and emails floating around the net courtesy of WIKI Leaks.     It appears that if our top brass are ever captured by the enemy the whole story is just one talk with one reporter away from daylight.     Is this what all the tax money we send to the military buys?

The Two Obamas….The Two Obamas

Campaign Obama
“If American workers are being denied their right to organize when I’m in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes and I will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States.”

Whats wrong, can’t find your shoes?

President Obama
“Some of what I’ve heard coming out of Wisconsin, where you’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally seems like more of an assault on unions.    And I think it’s very important for us to understand that public employees, they’re our neighbors, they’re our friends…… And I think it’s important not to vilify them or to suggest that somehow all these budget problems are due to public employees.”

This is lame and wimpish.    This is a man backing down and walking back his words.


Did you spot the difference in these two statements?

Campaign Obama is about action and taking a clear stance and working for a solution.

President Obama is just a lot of words and no follow thru.    Is this guy the Hot Air Kid?     If you couldn’t see the difference in the two statements how about the differences in the two photos?

Remember when Obama said,  ” I’d rather be a good one-term president than a mediocre two-termer.”     Who does Obama think

he’s kidding?     He is a medicore one termer at the moment and it will require some spine from him to rise above that level.


The First Lady ought to have a talk with the President and let him know the word good doesn’t go in a sentence with his name unless he puts it there.     To put it there he will have to do some work.

Living up as President to what he lipped off about while campaigning would go a long way toward improving Democrats thoughts about him.      Nothing he can do will make Republicans like him so any gesture in that direction is wasted effort.     Obama needs to concentrate on pleasing the Democratic members of the Democratic party.      They are the ones who got him elected the first time.      Without them there is no second time.

Let me take a crack at some new bumperstickers for Obamas next run.

“Disreguard My Words, They’re Just Hot Air”


“Forget What I said but Believe I Care”

“Yes I Could but Not For Union People” 

“I didn’t mean it then and I won’t do it now”

“I was running then, I’m elected now”

“Don’t Despair, Imagine I ‘m There”

President Obama, If You Want to become a laughing stock go for it.    I’m pretty sure you’ll make it.

ACVDN Bottom Line,  Sometimes you gotta rise to the occasion and deliver the goods.    Especially if your mouth has committed you.    A promise to a group of people at election time is not a statement you walk back with a finely crafted statement.    It is something you live up to.    What kind of joke do you want to be?

Amherst County Virginia Democratic News

The Colorado Statesman this week published a massive interview with Colorado GOP Chair Dick Wadhams. The reading is good but, for the most part, the information he relates is not that new.

It’s a good read, and the first major interview he’s given since the election but there’s not much there to make either his friends or enemies slap their foreheads with an “ah hah.”

He does imply that former Congressman Scott McInnis might have been able to win the nomination for governor and the general election had he not blamed his plagiarism scandal on an elderly researcher working for him. He also says Jane Norton’s original campaign manager gave her bad advice in her primary contest with Ken Buck for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate.

He again discounts the notion that the Democrats utilized a strong ground game in keeping Michael Bennet’s U.S. Senate seat in Democrats’ hands.

Instead, he points to Republican Ken Buck’s own mistakes and “reprehensible” ads by liberal groups for turning the tide toward Bennet in the weeks leading to the election.

… the Bennet campaign embarked on a very smart strategy the last three weeks — in conjunction with massive spending by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the National Education Association, ASCME, and some other 527s — zooming in on a very specific message to attack Buck on his Personhood support, his abortion stand, which did not include exceptions for rape and incest, and the fact that he had — and they honed in on that rape case that became controversial in the end. By doing that, what they did, they made Ken unacceptable to that narrow slice of the electorate that was still up for grabs. And it is always the demographic group that waits until the last minute to decide who to vote for: unaffiliated women, particularly in the suburbs of Jeffco and Arapahoe.

While blaming some of the independent liberal groups for making Buck “unacceptable” to voters, Wadhams also notes that Buck did it to himself with his own comments.

So what I do know is that the Democrats employed a very smart strategy at the end, taking advantage of comments and positions that Buck had taken. And given the voters that were still up for grabs, it worked. And it’s unfortunate, because I think many of the ads were reprehensible and deceitful and made Buck into something he is not. But you know what? Unfortunately, Ken gave them a lot of the ammunition to shoot back.

Talking about Buck’s support for the Personhood Amendment, Wadhams notes that many prominent Republicans opposed Personhood, either this year or when it was on the ballot in the past.

You will recall two years ago, Archbishop Chaput and Bob Schaffer both opposed Personhood. In fact, there was a huge split within the pro-life community itself. Many pro-life leaders opposed that amendment. If he had taken just a few minutes to sit back and make a phone call to somebody or check it out. And so that was too bad.

On the subject of Republican nominee for governor Dan Maes, Wadhams was blunt: “Frankly I have nothing to say to Dan Maes.”

Asked if he thought Maes had a future in the party, he said he does not. “No, I do not. Maybe he does with some people, but he doesn’t, as far as I’m concerned.”

On Republican Scott Tipton’s victory over incumbent John Salazar in the 3rd District, Wadhams said he knew that if Republicans could shift the discussion from whether people like Salazar to how he voted, then Tipton would have a pretty good shot.

I felt coming into this election year, after watching Salazar stand there and cheerfully vote for the Stimulus Bill and then he was right — he was standing — and probably the moment I realized that Salazar was probably vulnerable was the day after the first health care vote in the House. And there in the photo op was John Salazar proudly standing just behind Nancy Pelosi. And I remember thinking, you know what? If we can move this election from whether we like John Salazar to how John Salazar votes, we can win this thing. Because, if the question was, do we like John Salazar, well, we lose, because everybody likes John Salazar. I like John Salazar — everybody likes John. And he’s a good person and you know, you can’t — wonderful personal attributes, all that stuff. But he honestly was cavalierly voting for this Pelosi/Obama agenda that his district opposed and so I always felt — And that’s why when Scott Tipton called me whenever he started to get to wanting to run and was just asking my opinion, as he was asking many people, if I thought the race was winnable, I told him I thought it was. But nobody thought it — not many people thought it was at that point. But I said, “Scott, because now people are going to be focusing on his votes and not whether they like John.” And I said, “If you can hammer away on the votes…” Even Cap and Trade, which he voted against, remember how he did it? He wouldn’t tell anybody how he was going to vote.

On campaign finance reform, Wadhams said it won’t happen until people become more fed up than they are now, but that when it happens it will be sweeping.

CS: Full disclosure?
DW: Any amount of money from any entity any time with full, immediate disclosure and let the people decide. It will be self-enforcing, we won’t have to have the bureaucracy of the Federal Election Commission or the Secretary of State’s office telling us what is bad for us. I mean the bottom —

CS: And you have the technology, with the Internet, to do it.
DW: Exactly, exactly. And you know what, there will be enough public scrutiny of contributions that candidates and parties will have to say, “Do I really want to take this amount of money from this entity?” And it will be self-enforcing. And then the voters will decide on Election Day. That will be part of their decision making process. Because these campaign reformers — and there are plenty of Republicans who voted for McCain-Feingold — they think voters are stupid, that they have to be protected from themselves. That voters are just not smart enough to figure this out, to understand when a candidate or a party is unduly influenced by contributions. And it’s just dumb, it’s just stupid. So I mean the system is going to continue to get worse and worse and worse and worse as long as we have any of these campaign finance laws on the books. My hope is that it becomes so hopelessly lost and that it might have to reach a total breaking point and finally, my campaign finance reform plan (laughs) — and I’m not the only one who talks about this obviously — but it will finally come to fruition.

Wadhams also disputes the notion that he or the party should do a better job of vetting candidates and denies having any role in forcing Josh Penry from the race for governor.

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