Homelessness: The Low Income Housing Scandal

Poverty in America

Frontline (2017)

Film Review

Poverty in America is about the massive corruption scandal behind homelessness and the dearth of affordable housing for low income Americans.

Despite the nearly ten years that have passed since the 2008 economic crisis, 2.5 million Americans are made homeless through home eviction every year. The limited stock of affordable housing has no way of absorbing this many new renters. This, in turn, drives up rents at a time when real wages are decreasing. In many cities, families are forced to pay over 50% of their income in rent – a precarious situation leaving them one family emergency away from the streets.

This documentary focuses on two grossly inadequate federal programs dedicated to increasing access to affordable housing. The first is the Section 8 voucher program enacted in 1968. Under this program, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awards vouchers to low income renters that pay the different between the rent a landlord charges and the rent a tenant can afford based on income.

There are currently 2 million Americans on the waiting list for Section 8 vouchers and only 25 percent will ever receive vouchers. The filmmakers follow three women who have waited six years or longer to qualify for Section 8 vouchers. None of them can find a landlord willing to accept their voucher within the 90 day limit they are given.

The second federal program Frontline explores is one in which the IRS allocates tax credits to states to grant to developers – who, in turn, sell the credits to investors. An entire tax credit industry has grown up around this scheme. Owing to inadequate IRS monitoring (only seven companies have been audited in 29 years), the scheme has been plagued by bribery and kickback scandals.

In Florida, for example, developers routinely cheat the program by over inflating the cost of development projects and either pocketing the difference of siphoning it off to shell companies (including one in Costa Rico specifically created for this purpose).

Despite heroic efforts of a handful of Department of Justice attorneys and Senator (R) Charles Grassley from Iowa, there seems to be little interest on the part of federal or state authorities to end this corruption. The IRS and HUD declined to be interviewed for this program.

Exposing Scientology as a Cult

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

Directed by Alex Gibney (2015)

Film Review

Last night Maori TV aired Alex Gibney’s startling expose Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. People can view it free at the Maori TV website for the next two weeks:  Going Clear

This documentary leaves absolutely no doubt that the Church of Scientology is a cult, founded (in 1954) and tyrannically run by science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard and following his death (in 1986) by David Miscavage.

Gibney begins by tracing Hubbard’s early life as a science fiction writer and naval officer. A clear weakness of the film is its failure to mention Hubbard’s background in naval intelligence. Ex-intelligence officer Fletcher Prouty has always maintained Hubbard’s military records were falsified to conceal his intelligence activities

The documentary does, however, detail his bizarre relationship with Jet Propulsion Lab scientist Jack Parsons. Together they engaged in bizarre black magic rituals Parsons had learned from Alistair Crowley (best known as the founder of modern occultism), who worked for British intelligence.

Most of Going Clear centers around the testimonials of long time high level Scientology officers who became disenchanted and left the organization – some after 20 years or more. They all describe a highly evolved system of brainwashing, mind control and cultic manipulation, coupled with systematic emotional, physical and sexual abuse, financial extortion, psychological harassment, blackmail, stalking, covert break-ins, kidnapping and involuntary imprisonment in “rehabilitation centers.” These more extreme measures kicked in whenever long time high level officers express doubts or attempt to leave.

Describing Scientology as the largest intelligence operation in the world, the film depicts how they used these capabilities to muscle the IRS into granting them non-profit status (as a “church”) in 1993. The organization keeps massive personal files on all their members, who are required to undergo frequent “auditing” sessions. During auditing, they’re pressured to reveal their deepest personal secrets and innermost feelings an “auditor” who keeps detailed records of these sessions on behalf of the leadership.

For new members, on the surface auditing appears to resemble Freudian-style catharsis directed at resolving traumatic memories that hold people back in their lives. However as advanced Scientologists work themselves up the ranks (at great personal expense), they eventually engage in OT (Operation Thetan) level audits. At OTIII, which is only reached after many years of dedication and financial investment (OT sessions typically cost $1,000 or more each), initiates are finally brought into Scientology’s carefully guarded creation myth. The latter involves the possession of the human species by alien demons known as “thetans.” From this point forward, members are expected to use their auditing sessions to rid themselves of these thetans.

Typically it’s at this point members begin to have doubts about Scientology and are subjected to escalating coercive tactics to prevent them from leaving.

Gibney also explores John Travolta’s and Tom Cruise’s bizarre and troubled relationship with Scientology – as well as the vicious attach of the organization’s intelligence arm against Cruise’s ex-wife Nicole Kidman.

 

CIA Cocaine Trafficking, Bill Clinton and the Mena Airport

The Mena Connection

Directed by Terry Reed (1985)

Film Review

The Mena Connection establishes unequivocally that both Vice-president George H. W. Bush and Governor Bill Clinton had direct involvement in the CIA’s cocaine smuggling operation at Arkansas’ Mena Airport during the 1980s. Aircraft loaded with illegal weapons for the Contras in Honduras returned to Mena with tons of Columbia cocaine used to finance the operation. Reprising documentary evidence Reed presents in his 1994 bestselling book, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA , the film also establishes that Clinton also deliberately obstructed investigations into Mena by local and federal prosecutors and the IRS.

Half the documentary is devoted to exposes a local Arkansas TV reporter and a WMAQ (Chicago) reporter did on cocaine smuggling at Mena during the congressional investigation into Iran Contra.* The other half consists of lengthy interviews with whistleblower Terry Reed and his wife Janis.

An experienced Vietnam War pilot, in 1983 Oliver North recruited Reed to participate in The Enterprise, a CIA operation to assemble and deliver untraceable weapons to Contra rebels fighting to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Reed also trained Contra pilots in “night flying” – landing without runway lights – on a remote mountainous airstrip eleven miles from Mena.

According to Reed, the CIA shut down the Mena operation shortly Iran Contra scandal broke in 1986, shortly after movingthe guns-for-cocaine operation to Mexico. Soon after Reed moved his family to Guadalajara, his CIA control order him to participate in the cocaine smuggling side of the operation. Things got nasty when he refused to comply and submitted his resignation. The Department of Justice attempted to frame him and his wife for drug smuggling.

They spent the next two years fighting the conviction. Following their 1991 acquittal, Reed filed suit against Arkansas law enforcement and Clinton administration officials who had framed him. Both Reed and Arkansas Congressman Bill Alexander, whose efforts to obtain a General Accounting Office investigation into Mena were blocked by the CIA, believed the lawsuit would lead to Clinton’s impeachment.

In a roundabout way it did. Owing to CIA interference, it proved impossible to impeach Clinton for cocaine smuggling or money laundering. Ultimately the only charge Congress could make stick was lying under oath about a sexual affair with a White House intern.

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*The Iran Contra Affair was a political scandal in which senior Reagan administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran (an enemy state) to secure funding for CIA-sponsored Contras in Nicaragua.