Please remove your Democrat or Republican baseball cap. Sit on it for a minute.
This surveillance stuff the government is doing is nasty. And it should trouble you. No matter what your political persuasion.
As you know, the accusations have been flung far and wide. Trump’s people did this and that with the Russians. The counter accusations are that prominent Democrats did worse. That they distributed stuff gathered on citizen Donald Trump and his crew by various spy agencies. That is a felony.
Now, maybe you have seen solid “proof” of collusion between the Russians and Trump or his people. Big media has assigned hundreds of reporters to snoop and dig through these allegations. Thus far, they have come up with very little. And some Democrats have backed off their earlier accusations.
Maybe they will still find stuff. We’ll see.
Meanwhile the Republican counter charges have recently gained flesh. There seems to be a lot of substance to their charges. We will see how that pans out as well.
Today, let’s not worry about Who. Or which party Who belongs to. It seems clear at this point that somebody surveilled Trump and his people for many months.
Maybe not directly. But the info they gathered indirectly they spread around. They revealed names. Again, that’s a felony.
This does not mean the Democratic Party was behind this. Or that President Obama was behind it — although he signed an unusual order just before he left office. It allowed this very information to be dealt around to various spy agencies.
Forget about party. What should trouble us is that people used their political power to mess with political opponents. People in power abused that power — in an attempt to damage another American.
This is also what went on over at the IRS. Raise your hand if you truly believe the IRS did not mess with conservative groups. I don’t think we will see many hands go up. The evidence is extensive. And the IRS clearly destroyed other evidence — in defiance of court orders and subpoenas. Lois Lerner beat it out of town.
Somebody in power used the IRS to harm American citizens.
In the Cold War, we proclaimed we were the good guys. The evil empire guys were the Soviets. They spied on their citizens, their opponents, and their families. They employed secret surveillance everywhere. They fed fake news to their people. Propaganda. They ignored significant news that would make government look bad.
Hello, hello?
Today, we have big-time surveillance in the U.S. Apparently one spy agency has everything down to your shoe size. Stored in the cloud. Everything you say on the phone. Probably your pillow talk.
Looks like we have people in power who used info gathered in surveillance. Used it to harm their political enemies.
We certainly have huge doses of fake news. And exaggerated and highly biased “news.” We have cases in which big media ignores major scandals. When those scandals will tarnish their favorite party or political pals.
We clearly have big media following the party line. It is ridiculously easy to see. In the midst of a big political story, suddenly 25 different reporters and columnists use the same terms to describe it. The same few choice words or phrases. Do they collaborate? Yes. A few years ago, somebody uncovered an email club of reporters, called JournoList, which did, in fact, collaborate for political purposes. It had about 400 left-leaning members.
It should trouble us. That our country has taken up the disgusting habits of the old USSR. We had many beefs with Communism. One of the biggies was that people in power abused the power. To abuse their people. We freedom-loving Americans never did that sort of thing.
Those days are gone. It is not an exaggeration to say we’ve got a whole lot of abuse going on.
From Tom…as in Morgan.
Tom Morgan writes about political, financial and other subjects from his home near Oneonta. Several upstate radio stations carry his daily commentary, Tom Morgan’s Money Talk. Contact him at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com