Free Community College Will Kill Higher Education in America

    Ah, a new year. A time for new beginnings, right?
    Well, if you're the Obama administration, then fuck no.
    On their everlasting quest to completely destroy America from the inside out, the Obama administration moved on to the next phase of their plan on 1/8/15. They've destroyed the military, (everlasting wars, lowered physical requirements so weaker soldiers will be on the battlefield, thus, a more likely chance of them or others around them dying, etc,), the middle class, (outsourcing millions of jobs, destroying higher education so they can't move up, standard of living way outpacing wages, etc,), the economy, (with Obamacare, tax loopholes for the 1% and the top corporations, banks, strangling small businesses with government red tape overload, etc,), America's reputation abroad, (the endless wars, spying on people of other countries on the internet, giving billions to terrorists, fascist and undemocratic regimes, etc,) the millennial generation, (by making underemployment the norm, thus them having no money to hardly anything in life, suffocating student debt, making it impossible for them to save any money, etc), and the civil liberties of Americans, (with the slow, gradual erosion and elimination of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments).
     (Billy May's voice): But that's not all!!
     Not content with the destruction mentioned above, the Obama administration has been chipping away at higher education for some time now. It is not a new front. From making it too expensive so students have to be in tens of thousands of dollars of debt for a degree that will do them nothing, from making the classes so easy that the students aren't learning the skills they need to know in order to be competitive in the weak, hyper-competitive job market, the Obama administration announced a new program that, if enacted, will spell the end of quality higher education in America:
     Community college will now be "free".

      At first glance, this sounds like a great idea. Higher education will now be more accessible to poor people, who need it the most to gain skills to get better jobs so they can move up in life. Students won't be burdened with so much student loan debt as before. But if you think about it for more than 2 seconds, (which is asking too much of the liberal retards who support this idea), you'll see that this is an absolutely horrible idea. Why? Because when you make something free, it is literally worth nothing. That's what the definition of free is. Think about having a college education that is, by definition, worth nothing. College diplomas will no longer help anyone in finding jobs or doing well in jobs. They'll be free bees, pieces of paper that say "I sat down in desks for a while, and I'm able to read and write."     

http://generationopportunity.org/issues/higher-ed/

    Here is just some of the highlights showing how utter pathetic higher education is in America:

• Only half of all college seniors believe their institution properly prepared them to enter the work force.
•  According to a 2014 USA Today poll, a  quarter of employers do not believe colleges have adequately prepped students for a job in their company, while 41 percent do not believe college graduates are prepared for customer service jobs.

     Having "free" community colleges will exacerbate the problems mentioned in the above article. The quality of higher education is already going down the tubes. Since students have to pay so much to enter classes, professors are afraid to fail anyone, because that would mean the student would have paid a lot of money for nothing. So, they make the classes super ridiculously easy, so that every student passes. But in making the class so easy, they won't be teaching anything. The students will learn nothing, no skills that they need in order to be competitive in the job market. That's how I'm able to get straights A's in my graduate school and at a community college for IT certification, at the same time, without even having to study or crack open a book at all. It's easier than elementary school. At least in elementary school I had to study to get good grades. In college now, I don't have to study at all. But I'm not learning anything, and I actually want to learn, I want to be challenged so that I will learn competitive job skills, but so far, through a whole year in a grad school and in community college, I have yet to learn a single damn thing. I ask the professors about this and they say there is nothing they can do about this because they cannot change how the course is taught.
    Having "free" community college will exacerbate this problem exponentially, damning an entire generation to poverty because there is no way they can learn just about anything in order to get jobs that will allow them to live on their own.      
    There is another major problem with the word "free."

 

    

    There is no such thing as "free." This new "free" community college still has to be paid for. Professors have to be paid, janitors have to be paid, police have to be paid, the electric bill still has to be paid. But student's tuition will no longer pay for those things, because under this new idea, they pay nothing. So, guess who has to foot the bill?

    That's right: Us. The people. The citizens. The poor and middle classes. We will see a tremendous increase in our taxes to pay for this. It will be crushing, as the lower class is ever increasing with people's money being strangled by tax after tax after tax. The middle class is disappearing in front of our eyes because people cannot make enough money, after taxes, to afford a middle class lifestyle anymore. This tax increase will already be on top of the fact that I pay 25% of my entire income in taxes, and I'm in the lowest tax bracket.

    The last thing the struggling American people need is more taxes. We're dying over here as it is, and this new tax will just be more misery. All for people to learn nothing. And you better bet that it will solely the lower and middle class footing this new bill. You see, Obama and his 1% cronies make sure that they and the top corporations have tax loopholes that they can utilize so they pay nothing on millions and billions in profits. So they won't foot the bill. They are privileged, so they can avoid it. So the bill comes to us, the lower and middle class, to pay for it all.

    In conclusion, a better idea would to be to lower college costs, not get rid of them completely. As said before, student debt is a huge and shameful problem in this country. Lowering college costs would go a long way to fix that, but eliminating it entirely would create a whole new set of problems.

Radical Feminists are attacking every aspect of white male culture

     Every week or so I see a new news article or blog, or something on the Internet, in which thoroughly pissed off women, claiming that they are feminists, are attacking something that white people, usually males, do. They are attacking a certain action because they view it to be "racist," or "misogynistic." They conclude that in order for white people to not be racist, they have to stop doing this certain action, or at least, do it differently.
     The problem is that these feminists or "social justice bloggers," (which basically means complaining and bitching about some mystical problem that white men make, and the bloggers write these posts while sipping a $6 coffee while in bed in their mansion, or in college, paid by someone else, usuallly *gasp* a male), have gone overboard. They've gone completely apeshit. They're now labeling dozens and dozens of cultural activities that white people, and everyone for that matter, do as racist or sexist. It seems they don't want white people doing anything except to be submissive and not challenge the feminists and people of color on anything that they do.
      White people don't deserve a voice, apparently. We don't deserve to have an opinion on things. We don't deserve to be able to create things of our imagination as we would like to, like books, movies, T.V. shows, etc.We can only do these things if the feminists and PoCs approve, and we can do them only how they say we can. Otherwise, we're racist and sexist.
      The social justice bloggers are not criticizing actions that are truly racist, like calling black people the N word, or seeing a woman in an office building and assuming she is the receptionist and not the CEO. Those actions should be condemned, and I'll be the first to stand with anyone else on calling people out on that.
     But instead, here are all of the actions that now are apparently racist and sexist, that us white people can't do anymore, or at least, we have to do differently to escape the wrath of feminists and social justice bloggers:

     1. Having any organization be majority white, and majority female. If you are a HR manager, you hire on the principle of hiring the best person for the job, regardless of sex, race, or religion, or by any other aspect other than how well a person can do this job. That is the rational, logical thing to do, because if you exclude people based on these aspects, you're potentially excluding the person who is best for the job.
     But the social justice bloggers are saying that's racist and/or sexist. If an organization is majority white or majority male, before they even can determine if the hiring decisions were done based on race or gender, they automatically and without question, condemn the organization as racist and/or sexist. For them, equal results is the answer, not an even playing field. They want it to be diverse, no matter of the qualification of any of the workers involved. I illustrated why this is a problem in my January 30th 2014 post: "People are obsessing over the wrong type of diversity": http://noholdsonfreedom.blogspot.com/2014/01/people-are-obsessing-over-wrong-type-of.html
     Here is the part:
     "Let's say 2 grocery stores wants to hire 6 cashiers. 10 people apply to it, and the business ranks them by how good cashiers they are. 1 being the best cashier out of the 10, and 10 being the worst. Next to each number is the race of the person. For the simplicity of the argument, out of the 10 people, all of them are either Black, White, or Hispanic.
     1. Black
     2. White
     3. Hispanic
     4. White
     5. White
     6. White
     7. Black
     8. White
     9. Hispanic
     10. White

      Grocery store #1 has been brainwashed by liberal media. They think having a diverse staff is more important than being a good cashier. So they hire 2 people of every race, being "fair." So they hire numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 9.
     Grocery store #2 respects all races, and doesn't give a flying shit what race you are. They want good cashiers, so they do the logical thing and hire numbers 1-6.
      Now compare the two stores. Grocery store #1 skipped persons 5 and 6, even though they were better cashiers than 7 and 9. They passed up better applicants to be more diverse. So they end up with a worse workforce vs grocery store #2.
     Worse workforce=less work=less products/services= crappier products/services=worse company."
     So this is what the social justice bullshitters want companies to do, and with Affirmative Action, they already are. They want companies to sacrifice getting the best employee in the name of diversity. But they only hold that white people do this. Every other race is exempt from having to have a diverse workforce. For example, there are many organizations and companies throughout the U.S., that, for various reasons, have a majority black or Hispanic workforce. Reasons could be because the organization has a cultural mission that pertains to a certain culture, or because of demographics. These organizations are not racist even though they have a majority workforce of one race, according to the feminists and social justice bloggers. But if an organization is majority white, then obviously it is racist, and must hire minorities to not be considered racist.

     2. Make a movie or a T.V. show with majority white actors/actresses or characters. Social justice bloggers complained that the Disney movie Frozen was "racist" because all of the characters in the movie are white: http://www.reflector-online.com/opinion/article_b54cd090-a319-11e3-89e8-0017a43b2370.html
     That's right, a movie that is set in medieval Scandinavia is racist for having all white characters. No matter that medieval Scandinavia had little to no minorities in many places, and certainly not amongst the ruling classes. So what does Disney get for making this movie realistic in this regard? Oh, it's obviously racist. The social justice bloggers think they have the right to tell Disney directors what they can't and cannot do in their own creative productions. The main point of this is: Random people, who are not in the Disney company at all, have no right to tell Disney directors what they can or cannot do when creating a work of their own imagination.
     If I were a Disney director, here is how I would respond: "This is my money, my time, and my effort that I put into this movie. This movie is a product of my imagination and creativity, and I can make it however I want. It is a free country. I have the right to do this. I don't tell you what you cannot and can write about. I do not tell you how and how you cannot write. Leave me alone, and I'll continue to leave you alone."
     If you want to see a movie with the majority of characters being from minority races, then go ahead and make one yourself. Odds are, you can't do that, so you can support directors that make movies like that. You can exercise consumer choice, and go see movies that you support and like their aspects. But don't go around telling people how and how they can't make their own movies. That's fascist, that's being a tyrant, that's being a whiny sissy brat. So now, according to the social justice blogger Nazis, white people can only make movies if 1. The majority of their staff is non-white, and 2. If the majority of the characters in the movie are non-white.
     They don't hold this standard to any other ethnic group, only whites. Did any of them call Aladdin racist because every single character in that movie was Arab? No, of course not, because it makes sense to have Arabs in that movie, because it takes place in the Middle East in medieval times. But as soon as Disney does the same thing with another movie, they're racist.
      Do the social justice bloggers apply this ridiculous rule to movies coming from, let's say, Africa? Do they see a film out of Liberia, for example, and say "Oh this movie is racist because all of the actors/actresses are black?" Of course they fucking don't, because that would be fucking ridiculous.
     Not only does this apply to movies, but any other form of entertainment and creative productions, such as books or T.V. shows: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/25/minorities-in-movies-and-television. You wanna write a book with the majority of characters being white? Oh, you're racist. You wanna make a T.V. show with the majority of actors/actresses being white? Oh, you're racist. You wanna make a T.V. show that has majority black characters? Oh, you're not racist at all, you're a good white person, we don't have a problem with you!

     3. Stand up for people/issues that don't pertain to you. This only applies to white males. A white female social justice blogger can write all she wants about defending minorities and people of faiths that she is not a part of. She is commended for doing so, as she should be. Anyone, regardless of race or creed, when they stand up for someone else, should be commended. But the social justice bloggers don't want white males, particularly rich white males or male celebrities, to do so. Doing so would be exploiting their "privilege," and therefore, they should just sit down, shut up, and let the wonderful liberal female social justice bloggers and minorities do all the defending.
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/oct/08/afflect-dicaprio-white-male-celebrity-activist
     This defies all logic. One would think that the social justice bloggers would love white males defending other people. After all, that means they aren't racist. But no. We aren't allowed to do that either. I guess that makes me a "privileged white male" because I've defended minorities on this blog before. But yet they still condemn us if we don't stand up for other people. So we're racist no matter what we do. It's like they're assuming all white males are racist and sexist no matter what we do to prove the contrary.  

     4. Make video games with majority male or majority female characters.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/11087308/Women-strike-back-in-the-video-games-sex-war.html#comment-1584308521
     That's right, the feminists and social justice fascists are even stooping down to the lowest of the low to attack white males in their leisure and art activities, (yes, video games are a work of art, at least...the good ones are). The rules of #2 also pertain to video games as well. So if a white person makes a video game with majority white characters, then he's racist. If he makes a video game with little to no female roles, then he's obviously sexist.
     If I was a game developer, I'd reply "It's my money and my time I've invested into making this game. This game is a product of my imagination and creativity, and I can make it however I want. I don't tell you what you can and cannot write about. I do not tell you how and how you can't write." If a feminist or social justice blogger doesn't agree with the morales and values a game puts out, don't buy it. Don't play it. If she wants a game where she can play as a female, then make a game like so, or at least support game developers that do so. But don't go around saying "Oh this video game is sexist because you can't play as a female." Half of gamers may be female but the majority of game developers, you know, the ones who actually make the games, are male, and are free to make them however they want to.

     5. Making any type of media, be it movie, show, or book, that has a minority as the villain. That's right, we're no longer allowed to show that there are good and bad people of every race, because that would be racist. We have to show minorities, and women, in a positive role 100% of the time. 

      http://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/01/arts/minority-villains-are-touchy-network-topics.html

     So if you want to be certain that your media is not labeled racist, better make a white guy the bad guy. After all, white men are the only bigoted group around here, (as so the social justice bloggers say). Now, if a piece of media had a minority as the villain, and the reason why he was the villain was because of his race, then THAT would be racist. But if there is a villain, who just so happens to be a minority, that is not racist. But the social justice bloggers are saying it is. http://www.racebending.com/v4/blog/olympus-fallen-white-nativism/
      The above blog link is so, so wrong. The movies "Olympus has Fallen" and "Red Dawn" is not saying that, because the villains are Asian, that makes them non-American. The movie does not say nor hint anything remotely at all. I have no idea where the blog writer is getting this idea from. Oh wait, yes I do, out of her own asshole. It's complete fucking bullshit. In "Olympus has Fallen," the reason why the villain is not American is not because he is Asian, but because the character, the villain, is a North Korean Spy. You can be Korean and be an American, but you can't be a Korean who only has North Korean citizenship and be a North Korean spy. That's not racist, it's just his character. Same thing with "Red Dawn." The villain's ethnicity is not what makes him non-American, it's the fact that his character does not have American citizenship: he is a North Korean military officer with North Korean citizenship only. Duh. Fucking duh.
     So villains can no longer be women or minorities, because that would be racist or sexist.

     6. (Updated 2/2/2015)
     Apparently there's something ELSE us racist white people can't do anymore. We can't nominate people for Academy Awards solely based on their talent and the movie they were in. No, now we got to give a certain amount of nominations to minorities, otherwise, we're racist.
     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/a-b-wilkinson/oscars-2015-so-hollywood-_b_6550568.html
     The author is bitching that no actor or actress in "Selma" got an Academy Award nomination. Not satisfied that the film itself got a nomination, no, that's not enough to satisfy the social justice bloggers who demand that every single damn thing in existence follow their specific rules in regards to race and sex. The author loved the actors and actresses in this movie, fine, that's her opinion. But she's so intolerant that she can't possibly comprehend how anyone could not love them as much as she does. If they don't like them enough to give it a nomination, then they must be racist!
      This is another example of an extremist racist liberal who wants everyone to have the exact same opinion on everything that she does. So now we have to take into account the ethnicity of people getting nominated for Academy Awards, making sure that every ethnicity is accounted for, otherwise, we're racist. No longer is the Academy Awards about the honest opinions that the people have for movies, no, now good actors and actresses will be ignored for others who may/may not be as good, but for their race.
     I don't even like the Academy Awards. I think they're a bunch of rich snobs giving awards to God awful movies while ignoring really good movies. But just because I disagree with them doesn't mean that I don't think they don't have the right to voice their opinion. See, that's the difference between me and the radical liberals. If someone says something I don't agree with, I say "Okay, I don't agree with that, but I do agree with your right to say it. As long as its not infringing on someone's human rights, then I don't care what you say." A radical liberal would say "Oh, you don't agree with me on mundane and unimportant issues, (as such the Academy Awards,)? Well, I'm just going to do everything in my legal power, use the media, etc, to make it impossible for everyone to have any other opinion other than my own!"

 

     In conclusion, these points may not seem as significant by themselves. One of these in isolation is not limiting one's creative practices or hiring practices that much. But combined together, they reveal the feminist and social justice blogger's world view: They don't want white males, particularly masculine white males, to do able to do anything. We can't hire employees how we see fit. We can't produce any work of culture, unless it meets their stringent rules that they feel that they are able to shove down on us. In essence, they want us to sit down, don't move, and shut up when it comes to doing things our way, which ironically, is the exact same thing they accuse masculine white males of doing to everyone else. I'm an author, yet to be published. I'll be damned if someone tells me I can't write my book the way I want to. My first book, the majority of the characters are Arab, and the main character is a woman: http://noholdsonfreedom.blogspot.com/2014/04/an-excerpt-from-my-book-battalions-of.html. But my second book, the book I'm writing right now, the main characters are white. Does that make me a racist for doing so?
     News flash, you stupid social justice blogger brats: People tend to produce works of art and culture about the culture they're a part of. It isn't racist or sexist to do so. Africans tend to write books and make movies about Africans. Asians tend to make T.V. shows about Asians. Are they racist for doing so? Of course not. White people are no different. Are there some racist white people? Of course, there's racist white people out there in the world. There are racists of every race out there in the world. We shouldn't have a set of standards for whites to follow, and then a set of standards that everyone else follows. Cuz you know why? Because that's racist and bigoted, the very crimes that social justice bloggers claim to be fighting, when in fact, they're perpetuating.  
   

Something that is grinding my gears

   This is going to be a short post because the topic is really so mind numbingly simple, and it bugs the living shit out of me that people refuse to fucking see it. Topic: Celebrities' nudes got hacked from the iCloud and distributed throughout the Internet, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Kristen Dunst. There seems to be two camps of opinion on this issue.
    One: It's the celebs' fault that this happened.
    Two: The celebs didn't do anything wrong, and it's all the hackers fault.
    What I think of it: The hacker committed a huge crime, but, BUT, the celebs could've taken easy, god damn easy steps to make this significantly less likely to happen to them.
     The people in camp two will immediately and without question condemn me as a victim blamer, a women hater, a "privileged" male, etc, etc, all the usual feminist bullshit insults they sling around without even listening to what the other person has to say.
     But just fucking read what I wrote: A crime happened. The hackers committed a crime. <----- Okay?! It is not victim blaming to say that the celebs could've done a couple of things that would've prevented this. It's just like if a person walked down the street of a crime ridden neighborhood, waving handfuls of cash to people, saying "Wow, just look at how much MONEY I have!" If I was a police officer responding to that person getting robbed, I would say to him "Wow, you are a dumbass, what did you think was going to happen?! But, BUT, these robbers have committed a crime against you. You are a victim of robbery, and I will pursue them with all of my resources."
    This is just common sense. There are plenty of actions that can reduce the likelihood of a certain crime being committed against you. Our parents teach us this, teachers tell us this, the police tell us this, etc. Saying a simple concept of common sense is not victim blaming, nor is it denying a crime took place.    
      The concept of the Cloud is a horrible, terrible idea. To store sensitive, personal, or top secret information in the Cloud is just like wearing a T-shirt saying "Rob me." Hackers always can adapt faster than industry standards and defenses. You wonder why you hear of a massive credit card breach or the stealing of sensitive information more and more every day? You wonder why identity theft is rising and rising each year? Because more and more companies and organizations are storing their information in the Cloud because it is cheaper, completely forgoing the fact that it significantly more at risk to be stolen just to save a few bucks. Once again, people trade convenience for security in a heartbeat, then get all surprised when their personal information is stolen.
     Taking nude pictures of yourself is stupid, and quite frankly, narcissistic. Who the fuck are you gonna send them to? Your boyfriend/girlfriend? Why the fuck would you do that? Just do it in front of them, that's what people have been doing for thousands of years and no one's had a god damn problem with it. Are you going to send them to a co-worker, classmate, etc? Even a dumber idea! Your morales are out the fucking god damn door! Taking nude pictures of yourself and posting them to a storage place that is so god damn easy to hack into is even more stupid.
    What the people in camp two want to do is to do whatever they want to do in life, whether it be taking nudes of themselves, getting shitfaced at a party, or showing thugs a bunch of money, and not face any consequences for their dangerous and risky actions. Sorry, the world is suddenly not going to rid itself of all criminals just to fit your happy "the whole world is sunshine and butterflies" outlook. Everyone has to take actions to defend themselves against criminals. Stating this basic fact of life is not victim blaming. Get that through your god damn heads. Take responsibility for your risky and stupid actions. Man the fuck up.
    Again, a reminder for the people in camp two, hacking peoples' information is illegal. IT IS A CRIME. The police should catch these criminals and bring them to justice. Nothing in those past three sentences contradicts the fact that the celebs did something really stupid.     
     

It Seems Obama Has Broken Nearly Every Campaign Promise He Made

      I wonder if Obama supporters feel stupid now. They elected him on the premises that he would end America's disastrous wars, fix the economy, end racial and class divisions and inequalities, close Guantanamo Bay, etc, etc. And guess what.
     HE HASN'T DONE ANY OF THAT.
     If I was a Obama supporter I'd be mad as hell, (wait a minute, I'm not an Obama supporter and I'm still mad as hell!). He's a freaking liar. He says whatever sounds nice at the moment, and then later, just does whatever will benefit him and his 1% supporters the most. I mean, how much of a freaking dick do you have to be to do that?!
     Let's just go through the list of things he'd said he would do once he became president, and hasn't:

     1. End the war in Iraq.
     He just launched us into another war in Iraq against ISIS not a week ago! One of his pillars of his election campaign was that he would end the war in Iraq. Well now we're bombing people and sending in hundreds of soldiers on the ground. And don't give me that "Oh ISIS would commit a genocide, we have to stop them in Iraq otherwise they'll attack us here!" Do you guys have amnesia or something? Don't you remember the justifications for the Iraq War in 2003?! It was the same fucking bullshit! You guys act like since this is a "humanitarian" mission, suddenly we "have" to do it, and all past promises about NOT fighting in Iraq are looked over because of the "selflessness" of our character and the "direness" of the situation.  You people are so easily fooled by the government and the mainstream media.
     Wake-up call. America cannot be the world's police. Look at where it's gotten us today. We're riddled in debt and we're the laughing stock of the world. Millions and millions of people downright despise us because of our disastrous foreign policy that wrecks the lives of literally hundreds of millions of people around the world. We cannot save every single group of people that are about to die. We do not have the money or manpower to do so. We're trillions and trillions of dollars in debt, and yet we're spending billions more for jet fighters and bombs. So, yes, I feel sorry for the Yazdis, and we should give them and the Kurds weapons, but airstrikes and boots on the ground is a violation of Obama's promise to end the war in Iraq. It's not a different war, it's just a continuation of the same war we blundered into in 2003. Our actions caused this fucking mess in the first place, and now we're back at it. It's like Hercules continuing to cut off the Hydra's heads. When one is cut, two takes it's place. And yet we're still hacking away, thinking the same policy that failed before will magically work now.    

     2. Eliminate all oil and gas tax loopholes.
     During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to eliminate "special tax breaks for oil and gas companies, including repealing special expensing rules, foreign tax credit benefits, and manufacturing deductions for oil and gas firms."
      None of these things were included in the major tax bill that avoided the "fiscal cliff” in January 2013, and when we asked the American Petroleum Institute whether they had been enacted earlier, he said that none have been changed under Obama. (The spokesman also took issue with Obama"s characterization of these as "special tax breaks,” saying that some of the tax provisions Obama cited, such as foreign tax credit benefits, affect many businesses, not just the oil and gas sector.)
     Well OF COURSE Obama didn't do that. That would hurt the 1% that finances and supports his insane rule. He said that back in 2008 to sound all "anti big business" and "for the people." And now, WHAT A SURPRISE, once he's in power, he doesn't do what he said he would. He lets these loopholes exist so the 1% can get away with paying close to nothing in taxes, while the common folk, (hint that's ME and YOU!) are stuck paying a sizable chunk of our meager paycheck in taxes, leaving us close to nothing to live on.

     3. Allow imported prescription drugs.
     During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to "allow Americans to buy their medicines from other developed countries if the drugs are safe and prices are lower outside the U.S." But such a provision was not included in the final health care law that passed both chambers of Congress and was signed by the president.
     The motivation for the promise came from an existing trend of Americans crossing the Canadian border to buy cheaper prescription drugs. Yet for the most part, it remains illegal for Americans to buy prescription drugs there -- for "safety reasons," the Food and Drug Administration says.
     But in the wake of negotiations with the prescription drug industry -- one of the first big health industry players to support the White House's health care reform effort -- Obama's drug importation promise faded into the background. Now, with passage, it's officially off the table.
     Instead, the drug industry will pay billions of dollars annually in new fees beginning in 2012, and brand-name drugmakers will provide a 50 percent discount on prescriptions filled through the Medicare Part D coverage gap beginning in 2011. 
     OF COURSE he wouldn't keep his promise, that would miss out in an opportunity to tax billions and billions of more dollars for him to waste! Who cares if Americans can't get the medicine they need, he's got the ones he needs!

  

     4. Require employers to provide employees seven paid sick days per year.

     President Barack Obama began his term with significant union support due to the many promises that he made about expanding workers' rights and benefits. Among these promises was Obama's commitment to require employers to provide their workers with seven paid sick days annually. No such requirement currently exists on a national level.
      To accomplish this goal the administration has expressed support for the Healthy Families Act. The bill mandates that employers grant their employees one hour of leave for each 30 hours worked. Workers can use this leave if they are ill, to care for a dependent, or recover if they are a victim of domestic violence. The requirement applies to all businesses with over 15 employees.
      Rep. Rose DeLauro, D-Conn., and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., introduced versions of the bill in 2005 and 2009. On both occasions the bill stalled in committee and expired after the new session of Congress began.
      DeLauro reintroduced the Healthy Families Act in May 2011. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, did the same in the Senate. History seems to be repeating itself, however, as both bills are awaiting action in committee.  

     Who cares if the working people, a.k.a. the people who actually create wealth in this country, have any time to rest? Obama can take a break anytime he wants. Congress works 1/3 of the fucking year. Democrats shell out unemployment benefits to their stooges, oh, I mean, "voters," for years. You know who pays for your lazy ass neighbor to sit on his ass and watch T.V. all day? That's right, I do. You do, unless you're that lazy neighbor. 

    5. Grant habeas corpus rights to "enemy combatants." 

    When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, he told voters he strongly supported efforts to restore habeas corpus rights to people the U.S. government had deemed enemy combatants.
      Habeas corpus is the legal right, embedded in the U.S. Constitution, which allows any prisoner held by the American government to challenge his or her imprisonment. A president may suspend that right only "when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it,” according to the Constitution.
       Protecting habeas rights was a priority for Obama early in his career as a U.S. senator. Project Vote Smart, a website that collects public statements by politicians, shows 21 instances where he mentioned it in press releases, stump speeches, media interviews and presidential debates.
      "This is an extraordinarily difficult war we are prosecuting against terrorists. There are going to be situations in which we cast too wide a net and capture the wrong person,” Obama said in speech on the Senate floor in 2006. "By giving suspects a chance -- even one chance -- to challenge the terms of their detention in court, to have a judge confirm that the Government has detained the right person for the right suspicions, we could solve this problem without harming our efforts in the war on terror one bit.”
      At the time of Obama's comments, roughly 400 terrorism suspects were locked up in the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base prison in southern Cuba, down from nearly 700 in 2003. President George W. Bush's administration had held those prisoners indefinitely without charging them or trying them beginning in 2002 -- in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Prisoners did have access military tribunals, but the tribunals did not allow detainees to see, hear and contest all evidence being used against them.
      Supreme Court rulings in 2004, 2006 and 2008 confirmed that prisoners at Guantánamo did have habeas rights and the military tribunals were not sufficient substitutes. The U.S. government transferred more than 500 prisoners before Obama took office (166 remained in November 2012). Under the Obama administration, however, the force of those rulings have weakened.
      "President Obama is steadily returning Guantanamo to the secretive and hopeless internment camp that he vilified as a candidate,” wrote Azmy Baher, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, in an August op-ed in The Washington Post.

     Who cares about the rights of people, who, legally, have not been charged with anything, nor have been convicted of any crime? Obama don't have time for that, he's too busy blowing up weddings in Pakistan or protecting dictators in the West Bank or Iraq. 

    6. Raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour. 

     Who cares about the working poor, the people who slave out in the sun or over a hot stove hours on end just to put food on the table for their family?! Obama and his supporters got all what they want, screw everyone else! Minimum wage has to keep up with inflation, otherwise, people cannot live off it. In these hard economic times, there are plenty of adults and people who need to be the #1 breadwinner in the house that can ONLY find minimum wage jobs. In a strong economy, only teenage kids work minimum wage jobs, but in a recession, that is no longer the case.   

     7. Close Guantanamo Bay. 

      Obama loves breaking peoples' human rights. I swear he does it so often and to hundreds and hundreds of millions of people that he must get off to it. He's obsessed with it. And what better way to break peoples' human rights by:

• Kidnapping them all over the world.
• Not charging them with anything in over a decade.
• Not giving them access to a lawyer or a diplomatic representative from their country, or visits from their family. 
• Giving them no trial. 
• Torturing them. 

    I mean, that's his fucking wet dream!!

    Yes, I insulted the president. Why? Because he's a despicable, vile person. If you commit murder, torture, and oppression, then yes, anyone has the right to insult you and call you out on your crimes. We can insult Saddam. We can insult Bin Laden. Why the fuck can't we insult Obama? Just because he's the president? Just give him a free pass on all of his crimes just because of his title? Nope, I don't care who the fuck you are, if you commit a crime, I'll get in your God damn face and say "You have committed this crime." That's no better than giving a policeman a free pass to beat the shit out of an innocent bystander, "Oh he's a policeman so we won't say anything." It's an abuse of power! Call him out on it! What kind of world do we live in that we allow a man to murder, torture, and oppress hundreds of millions of people, don't say anything about it, but then AS SOON as one person insults him, OH, that's suddenly barbaric and unacceptable?!?!  

     

   

What should the U.S. do about ISIS's advance in Iraq? Absolutely nothing.

     The hot topic of the month is how Iraq is falling to Al-Qaida, but even that headline isn't exactly correct and is problematic at best. Everyone, including several people who no one should pay attention to, (we'll get that), is giving their opinion about what the U.S. should do in Iraq. You know my answer is?
      Absolutely nothing. Here's why.
      First of all, let's get something out of the way. Do not listen to any advice given by the likes of Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Sean Hannity, etc, about what we should do in Iraq now. Given how utterly disastrous the Iraq war was, why the fuck would anyone listen to the same people who orchestrated it and supported it? It's like watching a drunk person crash a car, them get right out, and say "Okay let me teach you how to drive a car."
      Okay, so now that we're done with that tangent, let's go onto the actual reasons.

     1. There is no one that, morally, we can back in this fight. Both sides are awful, disgusting, terrible, bloodthirsty, and power hungry organizations that do not care about how many people they have to oppress or kill to get what they want. Both ISIS, (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), and the Maliki government have committed acts of terrorism, oppression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. ISIS has killed hundreds of unarmed civilians, oppressed the people they rule with a harsh and brutal mockery of Sharia law, oh, and they share the same ideology as Al-Qaida, as if you didn't need more reason to hate these people.
     Contrary to what the media implies by its sheer silence on this, the Maliki government is not any better than ISIS. That's right: the government we put into power and have wasted billions of dollars on is just as bad as Al-Qaida. Now you wonder why people hate us, and don't want us to "help" anywhere else in the world with our money and guns? I mean, imagine if another country kept on overthrowing distant and weak governments to put in Al-Qaida puppet governments.
       See what some human rights organizations have to say about this wonderful Maliki government we've imposed on the Iraqi people in the name of "freedom and democracy":
      "30,000 Iraqis are held without trial or charge. Some are denied access to doctors and medications, and many are tortured. The Iraqi government has yet to investigate allegations of torture, especially in the cases forced confessions which led to death sentences." http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/iraq
     "Methods included suspension by the limbs for long periods, beatings with cables and hosepipes, the infliction of electric shocks, breaking of limbs, partial asphyxiation with plastic bags, and sexual abuse including threats of rape. Torture was used to extract information from detainees and “confessions” that could be used as evidence against them at trial." http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/annual-report-iraq-2013?page=2
    "Iraqi authorities are detaining thousands of Iraqi women illegally and subjecting many to torture and ill-treatment, including the threat of sexual abuse. Iraq’s weak judiciary, plagued by corruption, frequently bases convictions on coerced confessions, and trial proceedings fall far short of international standards. Many women were detained for months or even years without charge before seeing a judge." http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/02/06/iraq-security-forces-abusing-women-detention
      Does this seem like the type of government you want your tax money to be going to? Too bad, we already give them millions of dollars every year.

     Critics will say "Well, the Iraqi government and ISIS may be bad, but the Iraqi government doesn't have evil world domination on it's agenda, so it's less of a threat than ISIS, so it's okay to support them." That doesn't mean anything. To the Iraqi citizen being brutalized by either side, it doesn't make a difference to his/her suffering whether their tormentor has world domination on their mind or not. North Korea and Syria don't want world domination, but they are still evil, sadistic tyrannical regimes that we cannot morally support. 

     2. Anything we try to do would just increase suffering. No matter whatever noble intentions the U.S. may or may not have, whatever they have done to Iraq in the past has just screwed up the country even more. Take a look at the country's history of interactions with Iraq:

•      1980-1988: Iran-Iraq war, in which the U.S. government gave and sold millions of dollars worth in military hardware and weapons to Iraq. Iraq used all of this not only to fight Iran, but to oppress and kill its own citizens. This is a prime example of the U.S. financing the suffering and oppression of foreign civilians. 
• 1990-1991: Gulf War. We bombed the shit out of them. 
• 2003-2011? Iraq War: Do I even need to say anything about this? This war fucked over Iraqis for decades to come. Over what? Over a bunch of lies that evil rich men made up so they could get more power and money.  

    Think about it. All of the options that the war-mongers and naive liberals are advocating for would only make the situation worse, and contribute to #1 of this list.

• Aerial bombing to support Iraqi ground troops: This is the most discussed about option, considering how well it worked in Libya. But this option is rife with negatives. We'll mostly likely hit civilians/friendly armed irregulars/Iraqi soldiers, either because ISIS is embedded in civilian areas, or our pilots can't aim worth shit. That's bad. It's going to cost a bunch of money that we don't have. Aerial bombings means we're going to have to have bases where the planes come back after a run. That's a target for ISIS. Bombing requires eyes on the ground to identify targets, that means more boots on the ground. Aerial bombing is directly attacking ISIS, which gives them the right to attack us back in legitimate self-defense. You cannot bomb the fuck outta people, and then when they hit back, cry "Oh terrorism!" They can attack us in Iraq, or they can attack us anywhere over the globe. Do we really need to piss off more violent extremists?
•  Military advisors to Iraq still puts our troops in harms way. Iraq can use the tactics and strategies we teach them in counter-insurgency against their population. They already use our money, weapons, and facilities to oppress their population without repercussion, so why wouldn't they use our knowledge?  
• Military aid. Already said why that was a bad idea in #1. 

      3. If we attack ISIS, then ISIS will attack us back. This expands on a point made in the 4th bullet point of #2.  You can't say "oh cuz they're terrorists they don't have rights, and certainly not the right to self-defense." Sorry, just because you call someone a terrorist, doesn't mean that suddenly logic doesn't apply to them and they don't have any rights. If it was that way, then a country could start any war with any country, call that country a terrorist, and then proceed to do whatever it wants to it. Oh wait, the U.S. already does that, and it makes no fucking sense.
     9/11/12 Benghazi was a direct consequence of us bombing Libya in 2011. Some Libyans who were still loyal to the Gaddafi regime saw an opportunity to get back at us for our role in overthrowing Gaddafi. So if we bomb ISIS, guess what they're going to do? Probably the same thing, only it'll be on a much bigger scale because ISIS is a lot more powerful than the remnants of Gaddafi's army.

     4. It'll be expensive. Bombing Libya cost us, on average, $2 billion a day, http://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2011/03/28/the-real-cost-of-u-s-in-libya-two-billion-dollars-per-day/. Since we did that for 220 days, guess what, that is an estimated cost of $440 billion. Do we fucking look like we have $440 billion to support a fascist government's death grip on power? With our economy still wrecked, infrastructure crumbling, education system in shambles, border open to thousands of illegal immigrant crossings every year, I can think of 10 good places I'd rather put that $440 billion than in a bombing campaign against ISIS.     

     5. It won't hurt us if the Iraq state breaks apart, or if ISIS takes over. Contrary to the fear mongering of the warmongers, the world will not freeze over if ISIS takes control of Iraq. Nations that have hated us have existed for decades without bothering us, or, at the most, a mild annoyance, like North Korea, Vietnam doesn't particularly like us, Sudan, Pakistan, etc. If the new Iraq hates us, who the fuck cares? For the average Iraqi, their situation won't change. They'll go from being under the boot of radical fascists to being under the boot of radical religious extremists. Feels exactly the same. If ISIS wants to attack us, they'll attack us. Having a country won't change a thing. You don't need a country to launch an attack, you need one house, or one cave. And if you expect U.S. troops to be everywhere in the world to avoid terrorists from using one room to plan a terrorist attack, then you might be a fascist, (Jeff Foxworthy accent).

      6. ISIS isn't Al-Qaida. News flash: not every Muslim guy with a beard and an AK-47 is Al-Qaida. I know that breaks your fragile little way of looking at the world, but there's these pesky things called facts and reality. ISIS is only inspired by certain pieces of Al-Qaida ideology. That's it. That's the only link. But the media will never, ever say what this inspiration exactly is. My guess is that they're not saying because it's probably next to nothing. It's like saying Neo-Nazis are the Nazis that we actually fought in the 1940's. ISIS actually broke away from Al-Qaida over certain undisclosed reasons that again no one feels like telling us. 

      In conclusion, people who will say that this opinion is "isolationist" clearly don't know what the word means. Please tell me how not picking and actively assisting a side between a terrorist group and a fascist government is "isolationist." That's like saying that not getting into a fist fight with every third person you see is being a "coward." Give me a fucking break people. It's not being an isolationist, it's called minding your own fucking God damn business and not actively killing thousands of people every fucking year.

          

How Over-Zealous and Overly Aggressive Homeland Security Policies Can Backfire

(The following was my research paper for my final project for my grad class).

How Over-Zealous and Overly Aggressive Homeland Security Policies Can Backfire

          In response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. federal government created new departments, gave more power to and expanded existing ones, and wrote into law new acts. These include creating the Department of Homeland Security, (DHS), passing the Patriot Act, (and later, passing the National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA), and augmenting the size, force, and power of local police forces. The government claimed to take these measures to combat terrorism. However reports from news agencies, human rights organizations, think-tanks, and scholarly research have shown that terrorism has never been and is not a major threat to Americans, certainly, there are at least a dozen other causes of death that have caused more American deaths than terrorism. The first part of this paper will analyze the threat and death rate of terrorism against Americans, compared to the threat and death rate of the government against the American people. It will also go into how Homeland Security policy makers dealt with these issues. The second part of this paper will analyze the rights of the American people taken away or being taken away from terrorism, compared to the rights taken away or being taken away by the government, from a Homeland Security perspective. Lastly, this research paper will explore a case study of Homeland Security in action.

          Before delving into the topics, first it is necessary to identify the actors in this issue. The principal actors are government agencies, as they are the ones that enforce the policies. These include DHS, the National Security Agency, (NSA), the Department of Justice, (DOJ), Customs and Border Protection, (CBP), FBI, and all local and state police and sheriffs offices. 

          The two main concerns that privacy advocates and human rights organizations have in relation to federal agencies and local police forces’ actions in Homeland Security is the militarization of police, and the taking away of peoples’ human rights.  The first one is important when talking about the threat and death rate of terrorism against Americans, compared to the threat and death rate of the government against the American people. Here are some statistics that will illustrate this concept:

·         Americans are 8 times more likely to get killed by police than by a terrorist. All emotions and political slants aside, strictly statistically speaking, the American police is more of a threat to the American people than terrorists are, (www.huffingtonpost.com). Not counting 9/11, that statistic jumps to Americans are 29 times more likely to get killed by police than by a terrorist.   

·         SWAT Teams invade more than 100 private homes every day, (www.abajournal.com).

·         The number of police raids has jumped from 30,000 in 1995 to 45,000 in 2001, (same source as the one above).

·         DHS will purchase 450 million bullets over the next 5 years, including 75 million in 2014 alone, (www.businessinsider.com).

·         DHS also purchased 2,500 mine resistant APCs.

          DHS coordinates with the FBI and state and local police forces to achieve its goals of stopping terrorist attacks and disaster response. Some of DHS’s mission statements that pertain to this topic are as followed: prevent terrorism and enhancing security; secure and manage our borders; enforce and administer our immigration laws; and ensure resilience to disasters. Behind the statistics are the policies that result in the statistics. The problem is that current homeland security efforts undermine preparedness every bit as much as they support it. Homeland Security officials and local and state police chiefs also involved top-down management systems and military-style command and control strategies in planning and implementation, often focusing on a doctrine of offense and preemption, (Bach). They are so focused on offense that they lose hindsight of the main goal of homeland security: to protect citizens’ lives and human rights.

          This leads to the first of two articles that form the backbone of looking at the actors’ approach to Homeland Security. Robert Bach and David Kaufman say in the very first sentence of their article that federal, state, and local authorities must work with citizens to achieve security. Constantly attacking citizens, taking away their guaranteed human rights, and ultimately creating a narrative or implying that they are the enemy is not working with them in any sense of the definition. That is why Bach and Kaufman say security has eluded us since the “War on Terror” started.

          So focused on offense that policies set by agencies such as the FBI and DOJ can break trust between the government and its citizens, the fundamental concept that Homeland Security relies on. Citizens cannot trust a government whose policies can be seen as making the citizens the enemy of the government. Such a policy would be the FBI’s and DOJ’s guidelines as what actions could be done by a “potential terrorist”:

Ø  Purchasing anything with cash most of the time instead of a credit or debit card.

Ø  Opposition to war.

Ø  Opposition to abortion.

Ø  Frustration with the two main political parties.

Ø  Buying a large amount of bullets, (doesn’t say what a “large amount” qualifies as).

Ø  Being concerned about your privacy from the government.

Ø  Complaining about the quality of tap water.

(www.publicintelligence.net)

       These actions are what ordinary, non-terrorists do every day. These are actions that many FBI and DOJ employees do. Is the FBI and DOJ calling their own employees potential terrorists? If government agencies want to protect Americans and their rights, a peaceful engagement of communities in collaboration would be much more effective in enhancing the resiliency and security of the nation, (Frazzano).

       This is what the second article talks about: government agencies redefining their cultural and operational identities to accurately combat new and emerging threats. It also introduces a concept called “The Whole Community,” in which “shared understanding of community risks, needs, and capabilities leads to an increase in resources through the empowerment of community members.” Nowhere in the article or in this concept does it suggest that the large majority of American citizens are potential terrorists due to doing ordinary tasks. DHS policies must incorporate the concept of The Whole Community, as this shows that DHS is working with the communities, not against them. 

       In comparing the amount and severity of the American people’s human rights taken away by terrorists and taken away by the government, the only right the terrorists took away have been the 3,000+ peoples’ right to life that they have killed since 9/11 to the present. The rights that the government has taken, is taking, and has the power to take away if it wants to, are:[1]

§  Freedom of speech. For example, protesting certain government policies is called “terrorism,” for which the government can kill U.S. citizens for. Talking against certain police actions or simply asking a police officer questions is called “assault,” or “resisting arrest.” There is no need for the government to convict a person of terrorism, they only label them a “suspected terrorist” and then kill them.

§  Freedom of the press. There have been 7 instances in which a government official has been criminally charged with leaking classified information to the news media, the most during any U.S. presidential administration in history. In comparison, it has only been used 3 times before Obama took office. It has stolen emails, phone records, and tracked the movements of journalists, (Fox News reporter James Rosen, for example), it secretly seized records for telephone lines and switchboards used by more than 100 Associated Press journalists, and prosecuted sources of journalists with felony charges, (Zongker).

§  Second Amendment. The Obama administration, and many past administrations, has repeatedly infringed on American citizens’ right to bear arms. While it is not DHS policy that affects this right, the police forces are the ones that enforce states’ laws relating to this amendment. Whether it has been trying to ban magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, or trying to reinstate the 1994 “assault weapons ban,” (www.whitehouse.gov), Obama has made it clear, through his actions and words, that he does not believe that the second amendment means that Americans can own guns.

§  Fourth Amendment. From allowing home invasions by police and SWAT teams without a warrant, to having the NSA steal personal information from customers of many U.S. companies, to stealing emails and phone calls from ordinary American citizens who haven’t committed terrorism, nor committed any other crime. Some statistics related to this would be, for example, that the NSA surveys 75% of all American Internet traffic, (www.reuters.com), and collected near 100% of American phone calls in 2006, down to 30% today, (www.digitaltrends.com).

§  The Fifth Amendment: The Patriot Act, and later, the NDAA, gives the government to hold an American citizen in prison indefinitely, without charges, or access to an attorney. That effectively destroys the 5^th amendment.

§  Sixth Amendment: Those same two pieces of legislation also takes away an American’s right to a trial, nullifying the 6^th Amendment.

          Examples of some of these rights being taken away from American citizens can be seen in the case study of this paper, which is the case of Sarah Abdurrahman. Sarah, her family, and some friends were returning from Canada to the United States through the Niagara Falls border crossing on September 2^nd, 2013. Sarah, and everyone in her party, are American citizens. They had been attending a wedding of another family member in Toronto, Canada, and now were returning home on Labor Day.

Sarah Abdurrahman

           When they got to the border crossing, they were immediately detained by CBP agents, with no explanation. They were held in a freezing cold room without bathrooms for six hours. Sarah repeatedly asked an agent why they were being held, but he answered “It is not your right to know.” Then they took all of their cellphones after demanding they unlock them. They didn’t get their cellphones back. After about five and half hours in detainment, one of the detained men, Khaled Ahmed, was put into handcuffs, without warning, taken from his family and put into a jail cell. The officers did not inform either Ahmed or his family why he was being taken. The rest of the family was soon released but CBP refused to tell them where Ahmed was. Eventually, they told the family that another “agency” was coming to pick Ahmed up. The agency ended up being the Michigan State Police, picking up Ahmed for an unpaid ticket for a crooked license plate (i.e. not screwed on right) from 2006. After Sarah got home, she tried to contact CBP and DHS to demand an explanation, but they never picked up the phone. Since CBP never gave Sarah a reason for doing all of this, she can only assume it was because of her and her party’s religion, (Sarah wears a hijab), (Reuters). 

          It is illegal for law enforcement officers to perform searches or detentions based solely on your race, national origin, religion, sex or ethnicity. The CBP officers infringed on Sarah’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. CBP and other Homeland Security officers are allowed to conduct stops and searches with no probable cause or arrest warrants at the border, under what is known as the "border search exception." The exception allows for routine searches. However, once you start holding citizens for prolonged detentions, it falls under non-routine searches. For that, the officer needs a particular and objective basis for suspecting that person of illegal activity, (Reuters).

          There are a number of conclusions and observations that can be made from this story. One is that the rapid expansion of and the lack of oversight over CBP contributed to Sarah being treated the way that she was. CBP has grown so fast in the decade that it has existed that government oversight has not kept pace. CBP had 10,817 in 2004. Today, it has 63,560. Therefore, there is no logical reason for CBP to not treat Muslims like they did Sarah. None of the CBP agents in the example even got a harsh comment from any supervisor. Nothing bad happened to them, so in their minds, they are thinking: why should we change our behavior?

          This is not the only time something like what Sarah experienced has happened. Human rights groups, such as the ACLU, have seen that these human rights abuses happen regularly, i.e. it is not an isolated incident that can be blamed on just a few bad CBP agents. No, they infringe on Americans’ human rights daily, meaning it is a DHS policy; the policy makers at DHS and CBP, along with training instructors, are teaching the CBP to act this way. That means certain DHS policies run contrary to the Constitution. There is no other reason why this problem is so widespread and across agencies, not just in CBP. This case study could not capture an agency breaking more Amendments than the Fourth and Fifth. But that doesn’t mean that at other times, in other situations, that DHS and local police forces are not breaking the other Amendments listed on the fifth and sixth and pages.      

          CBP’s actions run in line with the narrative and training that DHS’s approach has to Homeland Security. An overly aggressive Homeland Security doctrine saw Sarah and her party as potential terrorists, hence, their human rights being broken. Citizens are the first line in Homeland Security. Many terrorist attacks have been stopped because concerned citizens report what they heard/saw someone doing to police. That is the vital link between authorities and the communities that Bach and Kaufman talked about. If that link is broken by human rights abuses, and aggressive and rude behavior by the authorities, then the nation as a whole will not be as effective in stopping terrorist attacks and achieving security.  

Works Cited

          “American journalist and family detained and harassed at US border.” September 24^th, 2013. http://rt.com/usa/abdurrahman-npr-border-detain-291/

          Bach, Robert and David Kaufman. “A Social Infrastructure for Hometown Security: Advancing the Homeland Security Paradigm.” Homeland Security Affairs, Volume V, NO. 2 (May 2009). 

          Balko, Radley. “How did America’s police become a military force on the streets?” ABA Journal, 1/8/2013.

          Erman, Michael. “NSA surveillance covers 75 percent of U.S. Internet traffic: WSJ.” Reuters. 8/20/2013.   

          “FBI “Communities Against Terrorism” Suspicious Activity Reporting Flyers.” February 1^st, 2012. https://publicintelligence.net/fbi-suspicious-activity-reporting-flyers/

          Frazzano, Tracy, and Matthew Synder. “Hybrid Targeted Violence:

Challenging Conventional “Active Shooter” Response Strategies.” Homeland Security Affairs, Volume 10 Article 3 (February 2014).

          Johnson, Robert. “The Department Of Homeland Security Is Buying 450 Million New Bullets.” Business Insider, 4/5/2014.  

          Nield, David. “New reports say NSA phone tracking covers 20-30 percent of calls.” Digital Trends. 2/8/2014.

          Whitehead, John. “Vigilantes With a Badge: The War Against the American People.” Huffington Post, 2/26/2014.

          White House. “Now is the Time to Do Something About Gun Violence.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/preventing-gun-violence

          Zongker, Brett. “Report: Obama brings chilling effect on journalism.” The Associated Press. 10/13/2013.  

---

[1] The following bullet points are merely quick summaries of the rights the government has taken away from us, as a whole paper can be written just one of these bullet points.