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Illiberal Charade

While campaigning across the 9th District, I, Mark Greene, have been finding that the gap between the perception of our public officials and the reality of their actions is quite wide, such as there seems to be this persistent belief in the 9th that Rep. Adam Smith is a liberal Democrat when, in fact, he is one of the most hawkish, globally interventionist-minded and conservative members of Congress, period.  Although, Congressional Democrats, generally, are more conservative than what most believe, and decisively to the  right of Eisenhower/Nixon-era Republicans, and pretty much like Reagan-era Republicans. 

Most voters in the 9th don't realize that Smith voted to effectively dismantle the Glass-Steagall Act, the bank regulatory act from the 1930's that kept the banks from conducting reckless policies with the public's money.  As a result of Smith and the majority of his colleagues' votes (and Bill Clinton's signing of this de-regulatory bill), the banks went wild during the Bush II-era, thus sending the country into a depression that the government propagandized as just a "great recession."  Smith has also been an enabler of the globalization pacts, and the international organizations that came with them, organizations that now give orders to the U.S. about trade policies. 

This is what Ralph Nader recently wrote about globalization: "The corporate law firms for these big corporations were the architects of global trade agreements that make it easy and profitable to ship jobs and industries to fascist and communist regimes abroad while hollowing out U.S. communities and throwing their loyal American workers overboard. It’s not enough that large corporations are paying millions of American workers less than workers were paid in 1968, adjusted for inflation."

Smith, who has supported the fraudster Barack Obama administration to the hilt, naturally, has backed Obama's tearing down of the Bill of Rights, which explains his vote for the proviso to the National Defense Authorization Act that unconstitutionally gives authority to the government to arrest American citizens and others without due process, and therefore without the judges, lawyers, juries and trials that go with it.  This "law," in direct conflict with the Constituon, is on the books, today, thanks to Obama, Smith & Co.   A lot of Americans, if not most, don't even realize that this breakdown of some of the most fundamental rights of the Constitution has occurred.

The false caricature of liberalness that Democrats like Adam Smith have erected has suited their electoral ambitions for a long time.  It's time to blow the cover on this charade.
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Congressman Adam Smith has voted for the following (pretty much not in accordance with his district):
  • the 2002 Iraq War resolution
  • Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act (the law that dismantled the Glass-Steagall Act)
  • Wall Street bail-outs
  • Nuclear Energy Deal with India (despite that this involves the energy sector, the deal undermined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)   
  • 2001 USA "PATRIOT" ACT
  • 2011 "PATRIOT" EXTENSION ACT

[Originally posted on Commoner on 4/4/2013 and revised on 4/6/2013.]

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