{"id":366147,"date":"2018-06-20T22:45:42","date_gmt":"2018-06-20T21:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=366147"},"modified":"2018-06-20T22:45:42","modified_gmt":"2018-06-20T21:45:42","slug":"how-the-new-york-times-lies-about-lies-obama-v-trump-as-example","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/how-the-new-york-times-lies-about-lies-obama-v-trump-as-example\/","title":{"rendered":"How the New York Times Lies About Lies: Obama v. Trump as Example"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Although the New York Times<\/i> says that President Donald Trump lies vastly more than did President Barack Obama, the definite liar in that comparison \u2014 based on the factual record, to be presented here \u2014 is the New York Times<\/i> itself. It lies in alleging this, which isn\u2019t to say that either President lies more frequently than the other, but instead, that the Times\u2019<\/i>s calculation fails to count, at all, but instead altogether ignores, some of President Obama\u2019s very worst lies \u2014 ones that were real whoppers. These were lies that were essential to his maintaining support among Democrats (such as the owners of this corporation, the NYT, are), and that would keep Democrats\u2019 support only if they judged him by his words and not by his deeds: failed to judge him by his actual decisions and actions (such as the NYT\u2019s owners do \u2014 or else they secretly know<\/i> the truth on this, but prevent this truth from being published by their employees). Even to the present day, Obama is evaluated by Democrats on the basis of his lies instead of on the basis of his actions. He\u2019s admired for his stated intentions and promises, which were often the opposite of what his consistent actual decisions and actions turned out to be on those very same matters, on which he had, in retrospect, quite clearly lied (though this was covered-up at the time \u2014 and still is). <\/span><\/p>\n

For example, among the list of lies that the NYT<\/i> counts from Obama<\/span><\/a>, is excluded<\/b> Obama\u2019s having asserted on 20 May 2009, at the signing into law of both the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act and the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act: \u201cThis bill nearly doubles the FBI\u2019s mortgage and financial fraud program, allowing it to better target fraud in hard-hit areas. That\u2019s why it provides the resources necessary for other law enforcement and federal agencies, from the Department of Justice to the SEC to the Secret Service, to pursue these criminals, bring them to justice, and protect hardworking Americans affected most by these crimes. It\u2019s also why it expands DOJ\u2019s authority to prosecute fraud that takes place in many of the private institutions not covered under current federal bank fraud criminal statutes \u2014 institutions where more than half of all subprime mortgages came from as recently as four years ago.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Also not counted, but excluded<\/b>, by the NYT,<\/i> as having been an Obama lie, was his 24 January 2012 State of the Union Address assertion: \u201cTonight, I\u2019m asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. (Applause.) This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans. Now, a return to the American values of fair play and shared responsibility will help protect our people and our economy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But both<\/b> statements were lies. The Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice issued on 13 March 2014 its “Audit of the Department of Justice’s Efforts to Address Mortgage Fraud,”<\/span><\/a> and reported that Obama\u2019s promises to prosecute turned out to be just lies. DOJ didn’t even try; and they lied even about their efforts. The IG found: \u201cDOJ did not uniformly ensure that mortgage fraud was prioritized at a level commensurate with its public statements. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal Investigative Division ranked mortgage fraud as the lowest criminal threat in its lowest crime category. Additionally, we found mortgage fraud to be a low priority, or not [even] listed as a priority, for the FBI Field Offices we visited.\u201d Not just that, but, \u201cMany Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSA) informed us about underreporting and misclassification of mortgage fraud cases.\u201d This was important because, \u201cCapturing such information would allow DOJ to … better evaluate its performance in targeting high-profile offenders.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Privately, Obama, early in his Administration, had told Wall Street executives that he would protect them. That statement, made in private to the leaders of Wall Street, turned out to have been honest. Though he lied often to the public, he never (so far as the available public record has shown) did so in private (except that he lied in private to Vladimir Putin<\/span><\/a>, but neoconservatives such as the NYT\u2019<\/i>s owners and executives and editors don\u2019t mind that at all \u2014 but they also don\u2019t count<\/b> it, at all). <\/span><\/p>\n

On 27 March 2009, Obama assembled the top executives of the bailed-out financial firms in a secret meeting at the White House, and he assured them<\/span><\/a> that he would cover their backs; he promised them “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks”<\/span><\/a>. It was never on the White House website; it was leaked out, which is one of the reasons Obama hates leakers (such as Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange). What the DOJ’s IG indicated was, in effect, that Obama had kept his secret promise to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here<\/a><\/span> is the context in which he had said that (from page 234 of Ron Suskind’s 2011 book, Confidence Men<\/i><\/span><\/a>, with boldfacings<\/b> by me):<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy administration is the only thing between you and the <\/i>pitchforks<\/i><\/b>.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It was an attention grabber, no doubt, especially that carefully chosen last word.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

But then Obama\u2019s flat tone turned to one of support, even sympathy. \u201cYou guys have <\/i>an acute public relations problem<\/i><\/b> that\u2019s turning into a political problem,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd <\/i>I want to help.<\/i><\/b> But you need to show that you get that this is a crisis and that everyone has to make some sacrifices.\u201d According to one of the participants, he then said, <\/i>\u201cI\u2019m not out there to go after you. I\u2019m protecting you. But if I\u2019m going to shield you<\/i><\/b> from public and congressional anger, you have to give me something to work with on these issues of compensation.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

No suggestions were forthcoming<\/i><\/b> from the bankers on what they might offer, and the president didn\u2019t seem to be championing any specific proposals. He had none: neither Geithner nor Summers believed compensation controls had any merit.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

After a moment, the tension in the room seemed to lift: <\/i>the bankers realized he was talking about voluntary limits on compensation until the storm of public anger passed. It would be for show.<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Obama said \u201cEveryone has to make sacrifices,\u201d but he was talking to people who simply refused to be included in that \u201ceveryone.\u201d As the mega-crooks who had been profiting from the crimes that had brought about the global economic collapse, those \u201csacrifices\u201d should have been life-imprisonments. Only by means of such accountability, would their successors not try anything of the sort that these banksters had done. But such was not to be the case. So, the crimes continued.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama kept his word to them. The banksters got off scot-free, and kept their personal hundreds of millions of dollars \u2018earned\u2019.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

He had been lying to the public, all along. Not only would he not prosecute the banksters, but he would treat them as if all they had was \u201can acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem.\u201d And he thought that the people who wanted them prosecuted were like the KKK who had chased Blacks with pitchforks before lynching. According to the DOJ<\/span><\/a>, their Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force (FFETF) was \u201cestablished by President Barack Obama in November 2009 to wage an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes.\u201d But, according to the Department’s IG, it was all a fraud: a fraud that, according to the DOJ, itself had been going on since at least November 2009.<\/span><\/p>\n

The IG’s report continued by pointing out the Obama-appointed Attorney General\u2019s lies, noting that on 9 October 2012, \u201cthe FFETF held a press conference to publicize the results of the initiative,\u201d and:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Attorney General announced that the initiative resulted in 530 criminal defendants being charged, including 172 executives, in 285 criminal indictments or informations filed in federal courts throughout the United States during the previous 12 months. The Attorney General also announced that 110 federal civil cases were filed against over 150 defendants for losses totaling at least $37 million, and involving more than 15,000 victims. According to statements made at the press conference, these cases involved more than 73,000 homeowner victims and total losses estimated at more than $1 billion.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShortly after this press conference, we requested documentation that supported the statistics presented. … Over the following months, we repeatedly asked the Department about its efforts to correct the statistics. … Specifically, the number of criminal defendants charged as part of the initiative was 107, not 530 as originally reported; and the total estimated losses associated with true Distressed Homeowners cases were $95 million, 91 percent less than the $1 billion reported at the October 2012 press conference. …<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDespite being aware of the serious flaws in these statistics since at least November 2012, we found that the Department continued to cite them in mortgage fraud press releases. … According to DOJ officials, the data collected and publicly announced for an earlier FFETF mortgage fraud initiative \u2013 Operation Stolen Dreams \u2013 also may have contained similar errors.”<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Basically, the IG\u2019s report said that the Obama Administration had failed to enforce the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. This bill had been passed overwhelmingly, 92-4 in the Senate, and 338-52 in the House. All of the votes against it came from Republicans. (Perhaps Obama was secretly a Republican<\/span><\/a>.) The law sent $165 million to the DOJ to catch the executive fraudsters who had brought down the U.S. economy, and it set up the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, and had been introduced and written by the liberal Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy. President Obama signed it on 20 May 2009. At that early stage in his Presidency, he couldn\u2019t afford to display publicly that he was far to the right of every congressional Democrat, so he signed it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Already on 15 November 2011, Syracuse University’s TRAC Reports<\/i> had headlined “Criminal Prosecutions for Financial Institution Fraud Continue to Fall,”<\/span><\/a> and provided a chart showing that whereas such prosecutions had been running at a fairly steady rate until George W. Bush came into office in 2001, they immediately plunged during his Presidency and were continuing that decline under Obama, even after the biggest boom in alleged financial fraud cases since right before the Great Depression. And, then, on 24 September 2013, TRAC Reports<\/i> bannered “Slump in FBI White Collar Crime Prosecutions,”<\/span><\/a> and said that \u201cprosecutions of white collar criminals recommended by the FBI are substantially down during the first ten months of Fiscal Year 2013.\u201d This was especially so in the Wall Street area: \u201cIn the last year, the judicial District Court recording the largest projected drop in the rate of white collar crime prosecutions \u2014 27.8 percent \u2014 was the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).\u201d On 29 July 2015, Syracuse University\u2019s TRAC Reports headlined\u00a0\u201cFederal White Collar Prosecutions At 20-Year Low,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and linked to\u00a0their full study,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0which showed that, whereas in fiscal year 2004-2005, under George W. Bush, \u201cBank Fraud\u201d had been the #1 most-prosecuted of all \u201dwhite collar crime matters,\u201d it was, in the latest fiscal year, 2014-2015, only #3.<\/span><\/p>\n

These were extremely serious crimes: they crashed the world\u2019s economy in 2008. But there was no White House interest in pursuing them. Instead, the Obama Administration blocked any such prosecutions, or even investigations into specific cases. An example: In January 2011, there was “The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report”<\/span><\/a> from the Commission (FCIC, or Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission) that was appointed by the President and the leaders of both political Parties in Congress. It was rigged. An instance of this rigging appeared even in the NYT<\/i>. On 21 September 2013, a non-NYT<\/i> reporter, William D. Cohan, formerly of Wall Street but now an independent investigative journalist, managed to headline there, “Was This Whistle-Blower Muzzled?”<\/span><\/a> and he described how Richard M. Bowen III, who had testified to the FCIC, was muzzled by them. Bowen’s attorney told him that Bradley J. Bondi, the FCIC\u2019s deputy general counsel, demanded changes in his testimony, and personally threatened that he \u201cthinks that the way it\u2019s written now, Citi will declare war on both you and the F.C.I.C., and it will primarily consist of an effort to discredit you.\u201d Bowen was advised by his attorney, \u201cRemove the names of people at Citi,\u201d as the way to prevent further retaliation. It was done.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, when a bilked federal agency sued the banksters, quashing the crimes wasn\u2019t quite so easy. Shahien Nasiripour, at huffingtonpost, bannered, on 16 May 2011,\u00a0\u201cConfidential Federal Audits Accuse Five Biggest Mortgage Firms Of Defrauding Taxpayers,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and he reported that the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had carried out audits of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Ally Financial, and found, in each case, that they had swindled the Federal Government. \u201cThe internal watchdog office at HUD referred its findings to the Department of Justice, which had to decide whether to file charges\u201d under \u201cthe False Claims Act, a Civil War-era law crafted as a weapon against firms that swindle the government.\u201d All of \u201cthe audits conclude that the banks effectively cheated taxpayers by presenting the Federal Housing Administration with false claims: They filed for federal reimbursement on foreclosed homes … using defective and faulty documents.\u201d Obama\u2019s \u2018Justice\u2019 Department refused even to prosecute, much less to pursue, any of these mega-crooks, who had cheated the U.S. Government \u2014 ultimately U.S. taxpayers.<\/span><\/p>\n

At lower levels of the Federal Government, there was a desire to prosecute banksters. The official\u00a0“2010 Mortgage Fraud Report”<\/span><\/a>\u00a0by the FBI analyzed \u201cthe breadth and depth of mortgage fraud crimes perpetrated against the United States and its citizens during 2010,\u201d and found that, \u201cMortgage fraud continued at elevated levels in 2010, consistent with levels seen in 2009.\u201d However, the FBI is only an investigative arm of the U.S. Government, not actually a prosecutorial agency. Only the Executive is that: the President, via his chosen U.S. Attorney General, refused to prosecute banksters.<\/span><\/p>\n

So: if these sorts of lies weren\u2019t outright frauds against the American public, then what could possibly be?<\/span><\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not all of what belongs in the \u201cwhopper\u201d or \u201cBig Lie\u201d category from Obama: he lied constantly about Ukraine, and about Syria, and about Russia and about his intentions toward Russia, and about his proposed international-trade treaties: TPP. TTIP, and TISA. <\/span><\/p>\n

None<\/b> of these whoppers was included in the listing that the NYT<\/i> presented in their 14 December 2017 article \u201cTrump\u2019s Lies vs. Obama\u2019s\u201d<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, Obama lied massively<\/span><\/a> regarding his foreign-policy intentions<\/span><\/a> and actions<\/span><\/a>, and the NYT<\/i> (like other U.S. \u2018news\u2019media<\/span><\/a>) hid and hide the truth and asserted, and they continue to assert, his lies on those matters, even though they were often blatantly false<\/span><\/a>; so that the NYT\u2019<\/i>s \u2018news\u2019-reports on those key matters of U.S. foreign relations \u2014 not only on the U.S. Government\u2019s actions, but even on its intentions \u2014 constitute egregiously false \u2018history\u2019 on those key matters of Obama\u2019s foreign policies, and no historian (but only, at best<\/i>, a \u2018historian\u2019) can unquestioningly trust that newspaper regarding those matters. Especially, a citation of the NYT<\/i> as presenting truth regarding either Syria or Ukraine should elicit strong suspicion from a reader, not trust. This is not to say that other American newspapers are any better<\/span><\/a>, nor that highly respected American journalists who are employed by other U.S. media deserve to be trusted<\/span><\/a>, but only that the NYT<\/i> isn\u2019t, and doesn\u2019t. No intelligent person can trust it. The record of its deceitfulness is clear, especially on important political matters.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am nonpartisan toward persons and toward political parties, and consider all of America\u2019s Presidents since 1981 (if not since 1968, but with the exception of Carter) to be and have been loathsome people (not even well-intentioned), but \u2018news\u2019media such as the New York Times<\/i> aren\u2019t any more trustworthy (nor more honest) than these Presidents have been, and the pontifications from such \u2018news\u2019media (in both their \u2019news\u2019-reporting and opinion-pieces) are just propaganda, mixtures of truths with lies \u2014 and more and more of the public are coming to recognize this disgusting fact, so these media\u2019s pretenses to honesty and trustworthiness are having fewer and fewer believers. But these media claim that fake \u2018news\u2019 comes only<\/i> from their non<\/i>-mainstream competitors (some of which are actually far more honest than they). Preserving their cartel is crucial to them. And it\u2019s crucial to the people who benefit from this cartel.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org Although the New York Times says that President Donald Trump lies vastly more than did President Barack Obama, the definite liar in that comparison \u2014 based on the factual record, to be presented here \u2014 is the New York Times itself. It lies in alleging this, which isn\u2019t to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":116420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,519],"tags":[30,96,535,1034,541,526,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-366147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-newswire","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cover-up","11":"tag-global-news","12":"tag-independent-media","13":"tag-media","14":"tag-propaganda","15":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":366148,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366147\/revisions\/366148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}