By William Warren
It appears that unlawful spying and high-tech personal infiltration isn’t the only tactic Big Brother employs to achieve his nefarious ends. Sometimes tried and true, old fashion mobster tactics are worked into the modus-operandi.
In a recent development, the same Ohio Obama-advocates who authorized an illegal child support computer check on Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher during the campaign season are now under fire for bullying and threatening one of their lower-level employees.
Their purpose? Covering up an emerging national scandal.
According to a recent Columbus Dispatch article, Vanessa Niekamp, an administrator for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services’ Office of Child Support, was forced to write an email and subsequently threatened after unknowingly assisting in the illegal probe of Mr. Wurzelbacher’s personal life. Deputy Director Doug Thompson, Mrs. Niekamp’s superior, apparently entered her office and nervously shut the door behind him. As the article describes:
“Thompson told her she must write an e-mail to the agency’s information-security officer, and then ‘dictated word for word’ what she wrote, Niekamp said. He also reminded her that she could be fired at any time, she said.”
This incident occurred a week after Mrs. Niekamp was ordered to conduct the search on Joe Wurzelbacher—a name who, at the time, Mrs. Niekamp didn’t recognize. When Mr. Thompson later revealed that Joe Wurzelbacher was the “Joe the Plumber” of John McCain campaign fame, the cover up attempt—and mob-like threatening—began:
“Doug then told me I must write an e-mail to our agency’s information-security officer to explain why [Mr. Wurzelbacher’s] file had been accessed. He turned my computer screen so he could see it and dictated word for word what he wanted me to write. …
“He then told me that we needed to make sure that we answer questions about what happened the same way, so that our versions were not different from each other. Before he said that, he reminded me that I was an unclassified employee — which, as you may know, is someone who can be fired without cause.”
In addition to the bullying and threatening, another dirty mob-trick these Ohio Obama-advocates employed was using an uniformed pawn to do the masters’ dirty work. According to Mrs. Niekamp, despite the fact that Mr. Thompson and others could easily access his file on their own, she was asked to perform the search on Mr. Wurzelbacher. As Mrs. Niekamp says:
“To this day, I do not understand why they asked me to look at this information when they could have easily done this themselves.”
It’s actually rather simple to understand. Mr. Thompson, Job and Family Services Director Helen Jones-Kelley and the rest didn’t want to get their hands dirty. Unfortunately for them, there was no clean getaway.
Regrettably for the victims of this criminality, however, Mr. Thomson and Co. didn’t receive much in terms of punishment. He, Mrs. Jones-Kelley and a number of others received a month’s probation—a mere slap on the wrist considering the magnitude of these offenses.
Nevertheless, shouldn’t we expect this?
After all, this recent development represents yet another disturbing iteration in a long-lasting and increasingly vile trend on behalf of Barack Obama. When it comes to supporting and protecting the President-elect from any political threats, his advocates appear willing to go to any extreme.
And how extreme it has become.
In the name of Obama, they have committed such offenses as spying on innocent civilians, falsely accusing citizens of making death threats, assembling anti-free speech “truth squads,” wielding weapons at polling places, and jettisoning fair-minded journalists from the Obama campaign plane.
Although it is tempting to label incoming administration as one based on Big Brother tactics, a different family analogy—such as a Godfather—might be more appropriate.
William Warren is a contributing editor of ALG News Bureau.
