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Video: USDA Whistleblower Speaks Out About Controversial ‘Culteral Sensitivity Training’ Seminar

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Photo Credit: TheBlazeTVA whistleblower from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) joined Glenn Beck on TheBlaze TV Tuesday to discuss a disturbing “Cultural Sensitivity Training” program that encouraged federal workers in attendance to chant racially-charged and controversial phrases. The training was reportedly part of “a broader effort towards cultural transformation at USDA.”

As TheBlaze previously reported, video of the sensitivity training session, conducted by the USDA, was published last week by Judicial Watch after the group was tipped by a whistleblower. Critics have accused the USDA of allowing their workers to be indoctrinated.

Beck began Tuesday’s show by recapping some of the most outrageous statements made by the seminar’s diversity awareness trainer Dr. Samuel Betances. Here’s your refresher course:

“I want you to say, America was founded by outsiders. Say that. Who are today’s insiders, who get very nervous about today’s outsiders. I want you to say, the pilgrims were illegal aliens. Say the pilgrims never gave their passports to the Indians.”

Many of the federal employees at the “diversity” sessions chanted back at him. Watch the shocking footage below:

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Crime Does Pay: Convicted Felon Gets $104 Million from IRS

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Bradley Birkenfeld, the former UBS AG (UBSN) banker who went to prison after telling the Internal Revenue Service how the bank helped thousands of Americans evade taxes, secured a whistle-blower award of $104 million, the largest individual federal payout in U.S. history.

Birkenfeld told authorities how UBS bankers came to the U.S. to woo rich Americans, managed $20 billion of their assets and helped them cheat the IRS. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2008, a year after reporting the bank’s conduct to the Justice Department, U.S. Senate, IRS and Securities and Exchange Commission. He left prison on Aug. 1.

“The IRS sent 104 million messages to whistle-blowers around the world — that there is now a safe and secure way to report tax fraud,” Birkenfeld’s attorney Stephen M. Kohn said today at a news conference in Washington. He is seeking a presidential pardon for Birkenfeld, who is under home confinement.

Birkenfeld’s disclosures preceded UBS’s decision to pay $780 million to avoid prosecution, admit it fostered tax evasion from 2000 to 2007 and turn over data on 250 Swiss accounts. UBS later agreed to provide information on another 4,450 accounts. Since then, at least 33,000 Americans have voluntarily disclosed offshore accounts to the IRS, generating more than $5 billion.

The UBS case led to an erosion of the use of Swiss bank secrecy by wealthy Americans to cheat the IRS. At least 11 banks are under criminal investigation in the U.S. Two dozen offshore bankers, lawyers and advisers, as well as 50 American taxpayers, have been charged with crimes.

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Whistle-blower: state employees forced to attend political event with Pelosi, Jackson

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Photo credit: Leader Nancy Pelosi

Documents and a whistle-blower affidavit obtained by The Daily Caller charge that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., and Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., participated in an unethical — and possibly illegal — effort to force 76 employees of an Illinois state agency to engage in political activity on the taxpayers’ dime.

According to the whistle-blower, Rev. Jackson also encouraged the government employees to load first-generation and low-income college students up with student loan debt — because Democrats in Congress, he allegedly promised, would eventually pass laws to forgive that debt later. “[T]hose people will continue to vote Democratic,” Jackson Sr. said, according to the whistle-blower.

On March 3, Pelosi flew to Chicago to endorse Rep. Jackson Jr., 17 days ahead of a heated March 20 Democratic primary he later won. Pelosi was scheduled to make the endorsement at a press conference later in the day, after she participated in an hour-long “forum” hosted by the elder Jackson at the headquarters of his progressive Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

Pelosi politicized that forum, jumping the gun and endorsing Jackson Jr. earlier than planned.

“One of the reasons I am here, and I will do this following this wonderful meeting, is to publicly state my endorsement of Jesse Jackson Jr. for re-election,” Pelosi said at the Rainbow PUSH forum. “I do so with great pride. I remember when he came to the Congress with a great name and a great tradition of his parents. But he came and he made his own mark in the Congress from his own generation.”

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NSA whistleblowers: Feds spying on every single American

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Testimonies delivered in recent weeks by former employees of the National Security Agency suggest that the US government is granting itself surveillance powers far beyond what most Americans consider the proper role of the federal government.

In an interview broadcast on Current TV’s “Viewpoint” program on Monday, former NSA Technical Director William Binney commented on the government’s policy of blanket surveillance, alongside colleagues Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, the agency’s respective former Senior Official and Senior Analyst.

The interview comes on the heels of a series of speeches given by Binney, who has quickly become better known for his whistleblowing than his work with the NSA. In their latest appearance this week, though, the three former staffers suggested that America’s spy program is much more dangerous than it seems.

In an interview with “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer, Drake said there was a “key decision made shortly after 9/11, which began to rapidly turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for dragnet blanket electronic surveillance.”

These powers have previously defended by claims of national security necessity, but Drake says that it doesn’t stop there. He warns that the government is giving itself the power to gather intel on every American that could be used in future prosecutions unrelated to terrorism.

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Photo credit: DonkeyHotey

FDA Conducted Massive Surveillance Effort Against Whistleblower Scientists

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An extraordinary surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against their own scientists involved secretly recording thousands of emails the employees sent to members of Congress, journalists and even President Obama, newly revealed records show.

The Washington Post reported earlier this year that several FDA scientists were suing the agency after their emails had been read. However, the full extent of the spying operation was previously unknown.

A discovered cache of 80,000 documents regarding the surveillance effort show the vast scale and possibly illegality of the investigation, reported The New York Times.

Although the government agency is permitted to monitor activity on its own computers it may have broken the law by intercepting specifically protected confidential information, including ‘attorney-client communications, whistle-blower complaints to Congress and workplace grievances filed with the government’, reported the Times.

The operation’s scale was only revealed when a ‘document-handling contractor’ for the FDA inadvertently posted 80,000 pages of documents relating to the investigation on the internet.

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Photo credit: ianmunroe

Planned Parenthood Hit With Massive Fraud Suit, Alleging Medicaid Overbilling, Substandard Medical Practices

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A former Planned Parenthood abortion clinic manager has filed a lawsuit against the nation’s biggest abortion business accusing it of engaging in massive fraudulent activities. The lawsuit follows a new investigation of Planned Parenthood in Illinois and Planned Parenthood abortion companies in other states having been found to have engaged in overbilling and Medicaid fraud.

Planned Parenthood clinic director Sue Thayer filed the lawsuit against the abortion giant’s Iowa affiliate accusing it of submitting “repeated false, fraudulent, and/or ineligible claims for reimbursements” to Medicaid and failing to meet acceptable standards of medical practice. Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) filed the suit for Thayer in March 2011, but it only became public yesterday.

“Americans deserve to know if their hard-earned tax money is being funneled to groups that are misusing it,” said Senior Counsel Michael Norton, a former United States Attorney who is handling the lawsuit for ADF. “People may hold different views about abortion, but everyone can agree that Planned Parenthood should play by the same rules as everyone else. It certainly isn’t entitled to any public funds, especially if it is defrauding Medicaid and the American taxpayer.”

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed the suit under a federal law that allows “whistleblowers” with inside information to expose fraudulent billing by government contractors. By law, such cases may not be made public until a court unseals them. In March, a federal court unsealed a similar Alliance Defending Freedom lawsuit against a Texas Planned Parenthood affiliate.

“During my last years working at Planned Parenthood, it became increasingly clear to me that not all of their policies and protocols were completely legal and ethical. After much thought, I contacted the Alliance Defending Freedom,” Thayer said about the lawsuit. “I believe that it is an important piece in the nationwide effort to shed light on the darkness and deception surrounding America’s largest abortion provider – Planned Parenthood.”

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Photo credit: stevendamron