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WE'RE BARAAACK! The Billionaire Gun-Banners Who Back Obama's "Change"

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Even before he was officially nominated, Barack Obama`s campaign was working to create a “presidential transition team” headed by a powerful member of what has been called a “government in exile”--a man seen as the ultimate Washington insider, totally beholden to globalist gun-ban billionaire GEORGE SOROS.

That man is John Podesta, Bill Clinton`s former White House chief of staff--his point man on gun control, who coordinated federal extortionist lawsuits against the firearm industry and Clinton`s failed last-ditch effort to garner universal firearm-owner licensing.

Today, Podesta is a linchpin in a murky network of radical left-wing political organizations--outgrowths of world citizen George Soros` petulant 2003 effort in which he pitted his personal fortune against American voters in an unsuccessful effort to oust George W. Bush as president and install Sen. John Kerry.

Though Soros lost his bid to control the 2004 presidential election, what his millions actually bought was a complex, secret political infrastructure--now funded not just by Soros, but also by some 70 fellow millionaires and billionaires. So far, they have reportedly lavished more than $100 million on a web of networked organizations such as Podesta`s Center for American Progress (CAP), the anti-gun People For the American Way and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which was Obama`s base in his days as a South Side Chicago “community organizer.”

Podesta is set to play a major role in Obama`s dream of ascension to power. And as a major player in Soros` game, Podesta`s association with an Obama transition team, official or otherwise, bodes ill for the future of the country--especially for the future of the Second Amendment.

As Atlantic.com, in a July 24 scoop headlined “Obama Team Begins Work on Presidential Transition,” put it: “With less than six months to go before he would be sworn in as the nation`s 44th president, Sen. Barack Obama has directed his aides to begin planning for the transition.”

Alarmingly for gun owners, the Atlantic.com item stated, “Podesta`s Center for American Progress is working with the Third Way think tank on a Homeland Security Presidential Transition Initiative.”

The Third Way is, of course, the “radical center” organization run by Jim Kessler--who, in the bleak days of the Clinton administration, was anti-gun Sen. Chuck Schumer`s key staffer on gun control, and ostensibly the author of Schumer`s legislation that became the Clinton gun ban.

For gun owners, Kessler is the co-author of what has become an almost universal “big lie” campaign by anti-gun politicians now waving the flag of the Second Amendment. In what is really a script, “Taking Back the Second Amendment,” Kessler stated, “The problem that progressives have on the gun issue has far less to do with policies” than with “the rhetoric they employ.” (Emphasis added.) Don`t change positions on guns, Kessler advised, just change the language.

Positions? Such as Obama`s outright bans on all manner of semi-autos, bans on handguns, opposition to armed self-defense in the home and, perhaps, a future federal law or executive order trumping hard-won state Right-to-Carry permits?

Obama is successfully following Kessler`s script to a T.

Obama is further connected to the Soros-Podesta-Kessler gun-ban alliance through the creation and function of Soros` brainchild, the Democracy Alliance (DA).

In a detailed article, “Billionaires for Big Government,” authors Matthew Vadum and James Dellinger of the Capital Research Center (CRC) concluded that the goal of Soros and his band of angry “progressive” billionaires is to “create a permanent political infrastructure of nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools and activist groups. … The goal is not merely to elect Democrats this November, but to permanently realign U.S. politics.” (Emphasis added.)

Another word for that is Obama`s favorite: “Change.”

As Vadum and Dellinger described it: “In April 2005, Soros and the other major players assembled a large group for a secret planning session. Seventy millionaires and billionaires met in Phoenix, Arizona, to discuss how to develop a long-term strategy.” (Emphasis added.)

Originally tagged the “Phoenix Project,” ultimately Soros` peers--in an irony doubtless lost on them--called their new medium for change the “Democracy Alliance.” Yet, there is nothing democratic about a cabal of billionaires meeting in secret and funding a web of essentially clandestine organizations with hidden agendas to change virtually every aspect of American political life as we know it.

As a “taxable nonprofit,” the DA is exempt from reporting requirements that would spoil its cloak of super-secrecy.

Soros 101: The Battle Against Gun Owners

FOR THOSE WHO read this article, but are not knowledgeable about George Soros and his domestic and global gun control (read “confiscation”) agenda, here is a short primer.

It was through Soros` Open Society Institute (OSI) that he bankrolled world gun-ban strategist Rebecca Peters to oversee the May 2000 Million Mom March (MMM). Soros brought Peters, called “our fairy godmother” by MMM organizers, to the United States from Australia to work on both domestic and international gun control schemes. Peters had leapt to the world gun-ban stage as the individual who created Australia`s shameful 1996-97 collection and destruction of virtually all registered semi-auto and pump long guns from licensed collectors, shooters and hunters.

Peters bragged that this firearm roundup was “very, very moderate” and mirrored her plans for a global effort. Here`s how she had earlier described her “moderate” disarmament program, which naturally followed her licensing and registration schemes: “The National Firearms Agreement recognized the inherent inappropriateness of these highly dangerous weapons and took away nearly 700,000 of them to be melted down into soup cans and bus-stop benches.” (Emphasis added.)

As a reward for Peter`s work in America, Soros helped to create and fund her International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) to take the civil disarmament crusade worldwide and to concentrate on the United Nations as Soros` instrument for civilian arms destruction.

In the meantime, OSI and Soros poured millions of dollars into punitive lawsuits to bankrupt America`s firearm industry. Those suits were ultimately overturned in the federal appeals courts, yet they still have cost consumers millions of dollars.

If Al Gore had won the 2000 election, it is extremely likely that Soros and Peters would

have succeeded in effecting a global gun-ban treaty trumping American sovereignty. But George W. Bush`s election--and his representative to the United Nations, John Bolton--foiled the Soros-Peters plans, and the treaty was shelved.

Yet, like the Terminator, the treaty will “be back” if Barack Obama assumes the presidency.

Bolton`s bold defense of the Second Amendment from international attack most likely inspired Soros operatives in successfully blocking his Senate confirmation as President Bush`s U.N. ambassador in 2006. (Ultimately, Bolton served at that U.N. post temporarily for the duration of one Congress only--as a “recess appointee.”)

Under the heading “United Nations Reform” on Soros` OSI website was a well-funded campaign titled “Stop Bolton!”--which involved a raft of domestic organizations and individuals lobbying the U.S. Senate--on Soros` nickel--and raising a huge cloud of major media dust.

Among those successfully creating a “progressive” grassroots firestorm opposing Ambassador Bolton`s nomination was--surprise!--Podesta`s Center for American Progress.

A U.N. gun-ban treaty is important to Soros. Very, very important.

If Obama wins, you can bet the U.S. will be rolling over for a sovereignty-busting treaty as a down payment on a huge political debt.

How about Rebecca Peters--who claims American citizenship--sitting as an Obama representative to the United Nations?

Very scary--yet very possible.

“Members of the Democracy Alliance may want to impose Big Government bureaucracy and red tape on Americans, but the friends of George Soros are too rich to be bothered,” wrote Vadum and Dellinger.

(You can read their entire report, originally published in the January 2008 issue of Foundation Watch, online at www.capitalresearch.org/news/news.html?id=551. Additional information can be found on David Horowitz`s www.discoverthenetworks.org.)

Amazingly, while most of the so-called “mainstream” media ignored these billionaires` secret alliance, The Washington Post was on the job.

A July 17, 2006, article, headlined “A New Alliance of Democrats Spreads Funding,” described the DA as “made up of billionaires and millionaires who are accustomed to calling the shots,” and quoted a California mega-rich trial attorney as saying, “Like a lot of elite groups, we fly beneath the radar.”

The Post reported that 25 or more such groups have been funded by the DA.

“The goal was to invest in groups that could be influential in building what activists call ‘political infrastructure`--institutions that can support Democratic causes not simply in the next election, but for years to come.” (Emphasis added.)

“Those who make the cut have prospered,” The Post said. Example: “The Center for American Progress (CAP), which is led by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, received $5 million in the first round.”

Because of the extreme secrecy of the Democracy Alliance and its components, it is impossible to know today its direct involvement in Soros` obsession with banning private ownership of firearms worldwide. The only way we will find out is if Barack Obama wins the election.

The game plan, until political power is rendered into government power, is to hunker down. The gun-ban crowd is merely biding its time right now and hoping firearm owners are lulled into inaction.

Enacting a gun ban, or submitting our constitutional rights to global oversight, can only happen in a vacuum of public response from the grass roots. And that is part of the billionaire junta`s plans.

A key element in the alliance between Soros` billionaires and Obama, in their mutual effort to permanently realign our society, centers on controlling the way conservative Americans communicate.

If Obama takes the White House, a key element in the “change” he has in store for NRA members is cutting off a critical avenue of communication that reaches tens of millions of unaffiliated gun owners nationwide daily--conservative talk radio.

Part of Obama`s “change” precisely adopts a singular goal of Podesta and the Center for American Progress--to remove conservative talk radio from the airwaves and replace hugely successful talkers such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity with left-wing drones like those on the liberal Air America. (Incidentally, Air America, which went bankrupt in 2006 with more than $20 million in unpaid debt, has received massive funding to stay on the air from--you guessed it--Soros` Democracy Alliance.)

Obama has not repeated outright what CAP espouses--destroying the free market of the airwaves that has created massive audiences for conservative talkers. But his website coyly embraces as his “plan” the methods CAP would use to accomplish that end.

It is taken virtually word-for-word from Podesta`s blueprint for pulling the plug on conservative talk radio. Under Obama`s plan for “change” involving technology is this: “Barack Obama believes that the nation`s rules ensuring diversity of media ownership are critical to the public interest. Unfortunately, over the past several years, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has promoted the concept of consolidation over diversity.” (Emphasis added.)

This is straight from Soros` and Podesta`s attack plan to kill talk radio by destroying the networks (read “consolidation”) that allow audiences in every corner of America to tune in to conservative talk radio.

But there is more: “Barack Obama believes that providing opportunities for minority-owned businesses to own radio and television stations is fundamental to creating the diverse media environment that federal law requires and the country deserves and demands.

“As president, he will encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation`s spectrum. An Obama presidency will promote greater coverage of local issues and better responsiveness by broadcasters to the communities they serve.”

“Diversity?” Let Podesta`s CAP translate that for you.

Among the major efforts of CAP is this one, spelled out in a June 2007 manifesto--highly touted in the so-called “mainstream” media--titled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.”

Citing figures that broke down the number of hours of talk radio in all markets--conservative versus “progressive”--the report concluded in so many words that the free market, where listeners vote with their radio dials by choosing what they want to listen to, is somehow unfair.

Their answer is to create “diversity” in broadcasting by taking broadcast licenses away from stations running conservative talk and giving them to … well, here`s how CAP puts it: “[W]e

believe that minority and female owners, who tend to be more local, are more responsive to the needs of their local communities and are therefore less likely to air the conservative hosts because this type of programming is so far out of step with their local audiences. Additionally, minority-owned stations are more likely to be found in areas with high minority populations--areas that also report high percentages of progressives and liberals.”

But, in today`s free market of open broadcasting, “progressive” programming such as Air America already failed in urban areas that fit CAP`s description. In Washington, D.C., where Rush Limbaugh has a huge audience, Air America`s audience was so tiny that ratings firms couldn`t even rate it! And ratings were almost that bad in liberal bastions such as Madison, Wis.

The Soros-funded CAP report concluded: “Ultimately, these results suggest that increasing ownership diversity, both in terms of the race/ethnicity and gender of owners, as well as the number of independent local owners, will lead to more diverse programming, more choices for listeners and more owners who are responsive to their local communities and serve the public interest.”

In addition to embracing what amounts to socialist collectivization of broadcasters, Obama has favored the return of the Fairness Doctrine--something being agitated for by a host of other Soros fronts.

That 1949 regulatory scheme required broadcasters to provide time for opposing views when airing matters of controversy. As a result, broadcasters didn`t air anything controversial and, by the 1980s, radio was a dead medium. After the Reagan administration`s FCC shelved the Fairness Doctrine, free market radio speech blossomed.

With Obama`s plan for “change” in mass communication, it won`t take an act of Congress to change what`s available on America`s radio dials. It will only require action by an Obama FCC, or perhaps by executive order.

Pulling the plug on the free market of conservative talk radio is essential for Obama`s shared agenda with Soros` “progressive” front groups. Soros` failure to win the 2004 election by pitting his money against individual voters was due in large measure to the ability of individual Americans to make up their minds given information and discussion on the open airwaves.

The same holds true for Second Amendment issues.

Following the November 2006 mid-term elections, Podesta, in response to questions about Soros` Democracy Alliance, was quoted by The Washington Post: “We still haven`t cracked the ubermessage. We still haven`t gotten into people`s minds a picture of what a progressive America would look like.”

That was before Obama and his mantra of change, his dream of painting the political map of America with his campaign color--blue.

“Change” is indeed the “ubermessage” Podesta and Soros have been looking for. And Soros` vision of change centers on “permanently realigning” our Second Amendment.

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Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the "lobbying" arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.