Jon Christian Ryter -- The Department of Education's S.W.A.T. Team

THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION'S S.W.A.T. TEAM

By Jon Christian Ryter
June 22, 2011
NewsWithViews.com

First, before we look at this bizarre and very troubling story that has already gone viral on the Internet, we need to raise a question that everyone else appears to be ignoring. Since when does the US Department of Education have a SWAT team at their disposal? Official answer: they borrowed it from the Inspector General. Okay. Now, let's rephrase the question. Since when does the US Department of Education's Inspector General have a SWAT team at its disposal? The short answer? Since the enactment of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. President Jimmy Carter and a social progressive Democratic Congress created the Department of Education with Public Law 96-88 on Oct. 17, 1979, and George W. Bush and a Republican Congress armed them in 2002 with an extension of the Patriot Act in what can only be described as the silent creation of the Bully State. And, finally—why? When the other questions are pondered and answered, one nagging question remains. Since the Office of the Inspector General was specifically created to investigate waste and fraud by individual employees in the federal government, why would the IG for any federal agency need a SWAT team?

If there ever was any doubt, at any time in the past, it's now clear that America can no longer trust it elected representatives on either side of the aisle. As Congress frantically seeks ways to limit the private ownership of guns in the United States (a Constitutionally-protected right) while trying to look like they are fighting to preserve that right, it appears to have no problem—in fact, it seems to be working under a sense of urgency—to arm everyy agency of government as if it was anticipating a citizen rebellion at any moment.

Clearly, while the Office of the Inspector General was created specifically to ferret out white collar crime within the federal bureaucracy by government employees and contractors, it appears from what we just witnessed in Stockton, California on June 7, investigators for the Inspector General's office for the US Department of Education have been trained not to investigate and arrest government employees who violate the public trust, but to terrorize US citizens with ostentatious shows of brute force designed to intimidate them into submission. This is reminiscent of Adolph Hitler's Brown Shirts that bullied the German people on Hitler's rise to absolute power. Makes you wonder just whose Brown Shirts the Department of Education's Black Shirts are.

Which is why, when ABC Channel 10 News in Stockton, California broke what became a leading national story about a Department of Education SWAT team breaking into the home of someone suspected of student loan fraud, America was shocked. When the media reported that it was an Education Department SWAT Team that broke down Kenneth Wright's front door, the reaction went from incredulous to disbelief. And the Channel 10 video news clip went viral.

America was unaware that when the 108th Congress armed what America viewed as institutionalized bureaucrats, the Inspector General's bean counter were required to go through the same intensive Special Forces military-assault law enforcement training that federal and State SWAT teams go through. Why?

Does the federal government believe that the nation's employees who are defrauding their agencies are dangerous thugs who can only be subdued by excessive force? Of course not. They believe conspiracy-oriented citizens of the United States are. In 1993 the Southern Poverty Law Center, viewed by the far left as the most authoritative source in the country on rightwing fanaticism issued a 72-page White Paper branding conservative Americans as enemies of the State. The report, False Patriots: The Threat of Anti-Government Extremists declared that "...the Patriot movement is a potpourri of the American right, from members of the Christian Coalition to the Ku Klux Klan." The South Poverty Law Center now claims there are 1,020 conservative hate groups operating in the United States.

Today, 18 years after that 72- page report, returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are grouped with the Christian right and those who oppose the shari'azation of America, as threats to democracy. From that perspective, it's no wonder the social progressive federal bureaucracy are arming themselves with government edicts as America's politicians sell their souls to the princes of industry and the barons of banking. They are both worried about the American people—and, perhaps, with reason.

While the US Department of Education insisted the raid at 3243 Jonathen Street in Stockton, California at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, June 7 was not about collecting unpaid student loans but was about searching for evidence of student loan fraud, the early morning raid remains troubling because even if this was a criminal investigation for suspected student loan application fraud, the agents of the Inspector General's Office for the Department of Education used too much force—and heads need too roll for the Nazi Brown Shirt domestic terrorism tactics of the Obama Administration. Both the House Education and Labor Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education need to fully investigate this incident to find out who, besides the Secretary of Education and the head of the Inspector General's Office of the Education Department need to be fired—and force Obama to fire them under threat of impeachment for using Gestapo tactics against the American people.

The United States is not Nazi Germany. Nor is it the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, Cuba, North Korea or any number of banana republics or Muslim theocracies that use domestic terrorism to keep their populations in submission. Under the US rule of law, our government does not have the authority to terrorize its people and, whenever they do, the ultimate authority over those following the orders and those who issued them needs to be fired—and prosecuted. As I said, this is not Nazi Germany. Barack Hussein Obama is now emulating Adolph Hitler while pretending to be Franklin D. Roosevelt when what he is, is a Chicago street activist who is completely outside his element of expertise when it comes to solving the problems of this nation and the world. Obama, sadly, has surrounded himself with other inept social progressive activists who are also out of their areas of expertise. This is a worst case scenario example of the blind leading the blind. And, what's most scary, the rest of us are sitting in the Obama Movie Theater with all of the exit doors locked and with someone else about to scream "Fire!"

Okay. Now that I have that off my chest, let's look at the constitutionally prohibited—but federal judge-sanctioned—"rap-and-ram" forcible entry search warrant issued to agents of the Department of Education to enter and search Kenneth Wright's home on Jonathen Street.

Before continuing, it should be noted that the US Supreme Court authorized "rap and ram" entries when police have evidence that the suspects in the dwelling have quantities of illegal drugs which they will dispose of if police have to wait for them to come to the door. And, second, where police have reason to believe the occupants of the dwelling are armed and dangerous, and waiting for someone to answer the door would pose a risk to the lives of the police officers. Theoretically, police aren't supposed to 'rap and ram" simultaneously.

The legal notion was to give the occupant a reasonable amount of time to reach, and open, the door while making the assumption that a normal Olympic marathon runner should be able do that in five seconds flat even though it might take a father of three, sleeping in a bedroom upstairs, one or two minutes or more to descend the stairs and get to the front door before a battering ram destroyed it. Particularly in this instance where the IG agents knew the "suspect" in the house wasn't disposing of illegal drugs, hiding a cache of counterfeit money, or plotting to blow up the White House. They suspected his wife of falsifying an application for a student loan. That is something a sane government sends one IG agent and a local police officer to investigate and, if needed, to exercise a search warrant.

By the way. I wonder if it means anything that Barack Obama signed legislation on March 30, 2010 which ended a 45-year old program under which banks and private sector lenders like Sallie Mae received federal subsidies for making government-guaranteed college loans and where the federal government was a minority shareholder in the loan? Effective July 1 last year, the US Department of Education, which began making student loans under the Federal Family Education Loan Program in 1994, assumed 100% of them. Under the 1965 federal student loan program, the rate of interest charged by banks and other private sector lenders was 8.5% while the Department of Education loans were financed at 7.9%. When the Department of Education took over the student loan program, they assured borrowers they will continue to get the same loans?including Stafford Loans for students and Plus Loans for parents and graduate students on largely the same terms. Only the Department of Education has a more sophisticated collection system.

Regardless if the early morning raid on Kenneth Wright's home was about unpaid student loans or an attempt by Michelle Wright, the estranged wife of the home's occupant, to defraud the government by providing them with inaccurate or even blatantly false information when she applied for a student loan, the government did not need to do what neighbors said happened.

At least a dozen federal agents crashed through his front door. They dragged Wright out of the house in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt, handcuffed him and threw him to the ground before finally putting him in the back seat of a police car—where he remained for some 66 hours. But, once again, the most shocking statement in the bizarre media news report was whose SWAT team it was. The armed federal agents, Stockton Channel 10 ABC News reported, were agents from the US Department of Education. And remember this—just because Congress authorizes something does not necessarily mean their actions are Constitutional. Remember this also. Two US District Courts found provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 to be unconstitutional, and a three judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is now weighing the constitutionality of Obamacare.

When everything else is said and done, the question tossed about over the last decade or two by the Southern Poverty Law Center's designated rightwing extremists: "Has America become a police state?" may have been answered on June 7. With the enactment of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act [USA Patriot Act] Congress began the covert task of dismantling the Bill of Rights by making the inherent rights of US citizens conditioned on the needs and mandates of government. With the reauthorization of the Patriot Act on May 26, 2011, Congress drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating six of the first 10 amendments: the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Amendments. America should have heeded the words of the Founding Fathers, particularly Thomas Paine who said: "It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government."

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And now you know why the Department of Education sent a SWAT team to 3243 Jonathen Street in Stockton, California at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, June 7. Ironically, the Department of Education was educating the masses of America to fear their government more than the government fears them. And, of course, condition them to obey the edicts of government without questioning whether or not they are constitutional.