Just some great points by economist Walter Williams...
Sometimes the advocates of socialized medicine claim health care is too important to be left to the market. That's why some politicians are calling for us to adopt health care systems such as those in Canada, the United Kingdom and other European nations. But the suggestion that we'd be better served with more government control doesn't even pass a simple smell test.
Do we want the government employees who run the troubled Walter Reed Army Medical Center to be in charge of our entire health care system? Or, would you like the people who deliver our mail to also deliver health care services? How would you like the people who run the motor vehicles department, the government education system, foreign intelligence and other government agencies to also run our health care system? After all, they are not motivated by the quest for profits, and that might mean they're truly wonderful, selfless, caring people.
As for me, I'd choose profit-driven people to provide my health care services, people with motives like those who deliver goods to my supermarket, deliver my overnight mail, produce my computer and software programs, assemble my car and produce a host of other goods and services I use.
There's absolutely no mystery why our greatest complaints are in the arena of government-delivered services and the fewest in market-delivered services. In the market, there are the ruthless forces of profit, loss and bankruptcy that make producers accountable to us. In the arena of government-delivered services, there's no such accountability. For example, government schools can go for decades delivering low-quality services, and what's the result? The people who manage it earn higher pay. It's nearly impossible to fire the incompetents. And taxpayers, who support the service, are given higher tax bills.
Our health care system is hampered by government intervention, and the solution is not more government intervention but less. The tax treatment of health insurance, where premiums are deducted from employees' pre-tax income, explains why so many of us rely on our employers to select and pay for health insurance. Since there is a third-party payer, we have little incentive to shop around and wisely use health services.
There are "guaranteed issue" laws that require insurance companies to sell health insurance to any person seeking it. So why not wait until you're sick before purchasing insurance? Guaranteed issue laws make about as much sense as if you left your house uninsured until you had a fire, and then purchased insurance to cover the damage. Guaranteed issue laws raise insurance premiums for all.
Then there are government price controls, such as the reimbursement schemes for Medicaid. As a result, an increasing number of doctors are unwilling to treat Medicaid patients.
Before we buy into single-payer health care systems like Canada's and the United Kingdom's, we might want to do a bit of research. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute annually publishes "Waiting Your Turn." Its 2006 edition gives waiting times, by treatments, from a person's referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist. The shortest waiting time was for oncology (4.9 weeks). The longest waiting time was for orthopedic surgery (40.3 weeks), followed by plastic surgery (35.4 weeks) and neurosurgery (31.7 weeks).
As reported in the June 28 National Center for Policy Analysis' "Daily Policy Digest," Britain's Department of Health recently acknowledged that one in eight patients waits more than a year for surgery. France's failed health care system resulted in the deaths of 13,000 people, mostly of dehydration, during the heat spell of 2003. Hospitals stopped answering the phones, and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves.
I don't think most Americans would like more socialized medicine in our country. By the way, I have absolutely no problem with people wanting socialism. My problem is when they want to drag me into it.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Ambitions of Absolute Power
by Jeffrey Robbins
Far from exhaustive are the below. While the references below were taken from numerous sources, I would invite you to search governmental archives on your own under search terms intrigue(s) or conspiracy. There are hundreds of references. These references themselves scratch the surface. Many have not been transcripted unfortunately so difficult to read. Nonetheless, intrigue and conspiracy were of great concern to the Founders. Granted, many of the discussions were of local political intrigues against a particular candidate, however, many were of the state, national, and across ocean variety. Nonetheless, the careful student of history will find the concern worthwhile and demonstrated via empirical historical evidence, as the Founders well knew. Studying ambitious men, their designs, knowing human nature, and the direction and goals of absolute power in the hands of few correctly leads one to discover a history all too ignored at the peril of our future.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
First, a definition: Intrigue, A secret or underhand scheme; a plot. ALL CAPS appeared in lower case in originals.
Conspiracy: a planning and acting together secretly, esp. for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason.
Text below from the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
"But when a long train of ABUSES AND USURPATIONS, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a DESIGN to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."
From Federalist Paper 6:Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States (Alexander Hamilton)
"The AMBITIOUS cardinal, who was prime minister to Henry VIII., permitting his vanity to aspire to the triple crown,5 entertained hopes of succeeding in the acquisition of that splendid prize by the influence of the Emperor Charles V. To secure the favor and interest of this enterprising and powerful monarch, he precipitated England into a war with France, contrary to the plainest dictates of policy, and at the hazard of the safety and independence, as well of the kingdom over which he presided by his counsels, as of Europe in general. For if there ever was a sovereign who bid fair to realize the project of universal monarchy, it was the Emperor Charles V., of whose INTRIGUES Wolsey was at once the instrument and the dupe."
"[T]o exclude foreign INTRIGUES and foreign partialities, so degrading to all countries and so baneful to free ones; to foster a spirit of independence too just to invade the rights of others, too proud to surrender our own, too liberal to indulge unworthy prejudices ourselves and too elevated not to look down upon them in others; to hold the union of the States on the basis of their peace and happiness; to support the Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in its limitations as in its authorities; to respect the rights and authorities reserved to the States and to the people as equally incorporated with and essential to the success of the general... as far as sentiments and intentions such as these can aid the fulfillment of my duty, they will be a resource which can not fail me."
James Madison, Second Inaugural Address, March, 1813
"The history of ancient and modern republics had taught them that many of the evils which those republics suffered arose from the want of a certain balance, and that mutual control indispensable to a wise administration. They were convinced that popular assemblies are frequently misguided by ignorance, by sudden impulses, and the INTRIGUES of AMBITIOUS men; and that some firm barrier against these OPERATIONS was necessary. They, therefore, instituted your Senate."
Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June, 1788
"The history of Germany is a history of wars between the emperor and the princes and states; of wars among the princes and states themselves; of the licentiousness of the strong, and the oppression of the weak; of foreign intrusions, and foreign INTRIGUES; of requisitions of men and money disregarded, or partially complied with; of attempts to enforce them, altogether abortive, or attended with slaughter and desolation, involving the innocent with the guilty; of general inbecility, confusion, and misery."
From Federalist Papers #19:The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison
"In 1788 Jones accepted an offer by Catherine the Great of Russia to enter her navy. He took a leading part in several engagements against the Ottoman Turks, but INTRIGUES on the part of Russian rivals prevented him from receiving proper credit for his successes." in RE: Naval Officer John Paul Jones, taken from History.com
The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799. John C. Fitzpatrick, Editor.
Mount Vernon, October 24, 1798. (letter to George Washington Snyder)
Revd Sir: I have your favor of the 17th. instant before me; and my only motive to trouble you with the receipt of this letter, is to explain, and correct a mistake which I perceive the hurry in which I am obliged, often, to write letters, have led you into.
It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am.
The idea that I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavoured to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of seperation). That Individuals of them may have done it, or that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects; and actually had a seperation of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned.
My occupations are such, that but little leisure is allowed me to read News Papers, or Books of any kind; the reading of letters, and preparing answers, absorb much of my time. With respect, etc.
The following is taken from article "The Founding Fathers & the Classics"
by Dr. Joe Wolverton II
All our Founding Fathers believed that history was a precursor of the future. In the annals of history -- particularly that of the Greek and Roman republics of antiquity -- they believed they could find the key to inoculating America against the diseases that infected and destroyed past societies. Indeed, it has been said that the Founders were coroners examining the lifeless bodies of the republics and democracies of the past, in order to avoid succumbing to the maladies that shortened their lives.
The Founders learned very early in life to venerate the illuminating stories of ancient Greece and Rome. They learned these stories, not from secondary sources, but from the classics themselves. And from these stories they drew knowledge and inspiration that helped them found a republic far greater than anything created in antiquity.
Early Education
Classical training usually began at age eight, whether in a school or at home under the guidance of a private tutor. One remarkable teacher who inculcated his students with a love of the classics was Scotsman Donald Robertson. Many future luminaries were enrolled in his school: James Madison, John Taylor of Caroline, John Tyler and George Rogers Clark, among others. Robertson and teachers like him nourished their charges with a healthy diet of Greek and Latin, and required that they learn to master Virgil, Horace, Justinian, Tacitus, Herodotus, Plutarch, Lucretius and Thucydides. Further along in their education, students were required to translate Cicero's Orations and Virgil's Aeneid. They were expected to translate Greek and Latin passages aloud, write out the translations in English, and then re-translate the passages back into the original language using a different tense.
The standards were no less rigorous for those taught at home. George Wythe, the renowned Virginian who would come to be known as the "Teacher of Liberty," was himself taught to appreciate the writings of the ancients at home by his mother. Tragically, Wythe's mother died when he was very young, but she lived long enough to anchor her son's education on very firm moorings. Before she died she taught Wythe to read and translate both the fundamental languages of antiquity, Greek and Latin. According to one early biographer, Wythe "had a perfect knowledge of the Greek language taught to him by his mother in the backwoods."
Whether at home or in a schoolhouse, the goal of education in the early days of our nation was to instill virtue in the students. The Founders were taught that free societies were sustained by a virtuous populace, and that, if a society were to abandon a study of the classics, that same society would eventually abandon the virtues championed by the classical authors.
There was a more pragmatic side to the Founders' classical education as well. Twenty-seven of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were college educated. Moreover, of the 55 delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, 30 were college graduates. That is an impressive feat given the challenging entrance requirements of 18th-century universities. Fortunately for the young Founding Fathers, the teachers of the day exercised their students in Greek and Latin, so that their pupils could meet the rigorous entrance requirements of colonial colleges. Those colleges stipulated that entering freshmen be able to read, translate and expound the Greco-Roman classical works.
Such requirements were nearly universal in America and remained unchanged for generations. Teachers concentrated their lessons on the works of those classical authors on which students would be tested prior to admission to college. A brief survey of the entrance requirements for colonial colleges will testify to the enlightenment of our Founding Fathers -- as well as to the astounding decline in the educational standards of our day.
In 1750, Harvard demanded that applicants be able to extemporaneously "read, construe, and parse Cicero, Virgil, or such like classical authors and to write Latin in prose, and to be skilled in making Latin verse, or at least to know the rules of Prosodia, and to read, construe, and parse ordinary Greek as in the New testament, Isocrates, or such like and decline the paradigms of Greek nouns and verbs." Of note is the fact that John Trumball, the illustrious artist, passed Harvard's exacting entrance exam at only 12 years of age.
Alexander Hamilton's alma mater, King's College (now Columbia), had similarly stringent prerequisites for prospective students. Applicants were required to "give a rational account of the Greek and Latin grammars, read three orations of Cicero and three books of Virgil's Aeneid, and translate the first 10 chapters of John from Greek into Latin."
James Madison had it no easier when he applied for entrance to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) in 1769. Madison and his fellow applicants were obliged to demonstrate "the ability to write Latin prose, translate Virgil, Cicero, and the Greek gospels and a commensurate knowledge of Latin and Greek grammar."
College lessons were as demanding as the entrance exams. American colonial curricula were based on the Latin "trivium" of rhetoric, logic, and grammar, as well as the "quadrivium" of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. Unlike modern universities, where elective courses are innumerable and often inane, the colleges attended by our Founding Fathers offered very few elective courses and coursework focused chiefly on the study of classical works. And those works were in the languages in which they were originally written! Students were taught lessons in virtue and liberty from the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Sallust, Tacitus and Polybius. Thomas Jefferson's classmates recalled that he studied at least 15 hours a day and carried his Greek grammar book with him wherever he went.
Because of the formidable classical curricula at colonial colleges, the classics became a well from which the Founders drank deeply. In the classics, the Founding Fathers found their heroes and villains, and they also detected warning signs along the road of statecraft on which they would tread.
Heroes and Villains
Ancient history provided the Founders with examples of behavior and circumstances that they could apply to their own circumstances. Their heroes were Roman and Greek republicans and defenders of liberty. All of the Founders' Roman heroes lived at a time when the Roman republic was being threatened by power-hungry demagogues, bloodthirsty dictators and shadowy conspirators. The Founders' principal Greco-Roman heroes were Roman statesmen: Cato the Younger, Brutus, Cassius and Cicero -- all of whom sacrificed their lives in unsuccessful attempts to save the republic -- as well as the celebrated Greek lawgivers Lycurgus and Solon.
Cato the Younger was a Roman of sterling reputation who lived from approximately 95 B.C. to 46 B.C. He is described as being "unmoved by passion and firm in everything," even from his youth. He was renowned for finishing whatever he started and for hating flattery. He embraced every Roman virtue, and he was especially appreciated for his sense of justice and his even temperament. As a senator, Cato was always in attendance when the Senate was in session. A no-nonsense legislator, Cato was hated by Pompey and Caesar for his integrity and for his refusal to aid them in their corrupt plans to usurp power. Although they imprisoned him, the public clamored for his release and Caesar reluctantly complied.
Unable to squelch Cato's attacks on their corrupt policies, Caesar and Pompey sent him to Cyprus. Finally, Cato aligned himself with Brutus against Caesar, a decision that would eventually cost him his life. George Washington admired Cato so greatly that he had Joseph Addison's play about Cato performed in Valley Forge to boost the troops' morale.
Roman heroes very dear to the hearts of the Founders also included Brutus and Cassius. Brutus was admired by his contemporaries for his pleasant disposition and virtuous temper. Even those who opposed his attack on Caesar believed that Brutus was motivated by a genuine concern for the republic and not by personal animosity toward Caesar. Marc Antony himself said that Brutus was "the only man that conspired against Caesar out of a sense of the glory and justice of the action; but all the rest rose up against the man, and not the tyrant ..." America's Founders looked to Brutus and Cassius as role models because their only aim in overthrowing Caesar was to restore the constitutional Roman government and republican liberties.
The most popular Roman hero of the Founding Fathers was Cicero, the silver-tongued Roman orator. Cicero lived from approximately 106 B.C. to 43 B.C. John Adams, in his Defense of the Constitution, said of Cicero: "All of the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero..." First as a lawyer, then as a consul and senator, Cicero boldly defended the republic against the rise of dictators. Cicero delivered his greatest speeches in defense of the republic against the Catilinarian Conspiracy.
The Catilinarian Conspiracy was a plot to overthrow the republic, hatched by aristocrat Lucius Sergius Catiline with the help of a cabal of aristocrats and disaffected veterans. In 63 B.C., Cicero exposed and thwarted the plot, and Catiline was forced to flee from Rome. For his service in saving Rome, Cicero was given the title "Father of his Country" [Pater Patriae] by his countrymen. Like Brutus and Cassius, Cicero's courageous defense of republican liberty in the face of designing conspirators made him a logical model for emulation by our Founding Fathers.
Regarding the Greek classics, the American Founding Fathers greatly admired Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta. Lycurgus lived in the 9th century B.C. and reformed the entire Spartan commonwealth. His most important reform was the establishment of a senate equal in authority with the monarchy in matters of great importance. Prior to Lycurgus' innovation, the Spartan government swayed between monarchy and democracy, depending on whether the king or the people had the upper hand. The senate served as a check on the excesses of both king and subjects. The biographer Plutarch called Lycurgus' institutions "one of the greatest blessings which heaven can send down."
Another Greek famed for his reform of the law was Solon. Born in Athens about 638 B.C., Solon achieved glory as one of the "Seven Sages of Greece." Around 590 B.C., he was given the task of reforming the Athenian constitution. Solon's improvements included the right of trial by jury and the division of society into several bodies that would balance and check each other in governing Athens. After finishing his constitutional reforms, Solon left Athens for 10 years. While he was away, Pisistratus, his former friend, usurped control of the government and fastened tyrannical controls on Athens. Both Lycurgus and Solon appreciated the need for incorporating checks and balances into government, a need that the American Founders understood just as acutely.
Detecting Conspiracy
As the Founders read the histories of the rise and fall of the Greek and Roman republics recorded by Herodotus, Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, Plutarch Polybius and others, they learned that the liberties enjoyed by the citizens of those commonwealths were quite often targeted by conspiracies of men determined to enslave the people and establish themselves as tyrants. The founders recognized that the conspiratorial view of history was not a theory -- it was a fact.
Ancient historians were straightforward in their reports of the secret plots. Surveying the litany of British monarchical abuses, our Founders rightly perceived that the shrouded hand of an evil conspiracy was at work in America and England, just as it had been in the Roman republic they so admired. Famed patriot Charles Carroll of Carrollton invoked the record of Roman historian Tacitus when he wrote that the conspiracy of his own time had led America and England to "that degree of liberty and servitude which [Servius Sulpicius] Galba ascribes to the Roman people in the speech to [Gaius Calpurnius] Piso: those same Romans, a few years after that period, deified the horse of Caligula."
The equally eminent and historically minded John Adams also applied analogies from the Roman republic to the increasingly open threat to the foundations of English liberty by corrupt legislators. The government of England, he said (quoting Roman historian Sallust), had descended to the level where "the Roman republic was when Jugurtha left it, having pronounced it a 'venal city, ripe for destruction if it can only find a purchaser.' " Sallust was a valuable and oft-cited source of warnings as to the consequences of government corruption and intrigue.
Our Founders heeded these warnings about power elites who used corruption, intrigue, and personal immorality to neutralize public concern and dampen zeal for the protection of liberty. From the 18th to the 21st century, it would seem times have changed very little.
James Madison insightfully noted that most of the tyrants of history masqueraded as democrats, and over time revealed themselves to be power hungry dictators and shameless demagogues. Alexander Hamilton, an astute student of classical history, devoted his first contribution to The Federalist Papers to a warning against tyrants or "men who have over-turned the liberties of republics, commencing as demagogues and ending as tyrants."
From such statements, it is evident that Adams, Madison, Hamilton and other Founders understood that, throughout the history of the Greek and Roman republics, tyrants were more likely than not to begin their political careers as populists and democrats and to end them as despots. Such demagogues were men of prominence who used their popular support to force their will upon an unsuspecting and trusting populace. As Greek historian Thucydides remarked, "You may rule over anyone whom you can dominate."
Madison's study of the ancient Greek confederacies revealed to him that almost every one of these republics came to an end as a result of conspiracy among domestic demagogues and foreign allies. Hamilton called these insidious cabals the "Grecian Horse to a republic." Both men worried that the same scheme would eventually destroy the American union. This fear, coupled with a thorough understanding of history, made the Founders vigilant guardians against the rise of such combinations in their own nascent republic.
Madison, James Wilson and others who systematically studied the ancient republics and confederacies noted that conspiracies were rampant among them. Those who were successful in carrying out such evil designs would expose and vehemently rail against similar acts on the part of others, thus painting themselves as guardians of liberty. The source of all this evil was an unquenchable thirst for power. Power was the end, and conspiracy was the means commonly used to satisfy the rapacious appetite for dominion.
From Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Jefferson, Adams, Dickinson, Madison, Hamilton and other diligent patriot-scholars learned of a particularly pernicious deception practiced by tyrannically minded conspirators. These instigators would place their fellow conspirators in leadership positions on both sides of a controversy, constantly inciting the "opposing" factions against one another until the innocent citizens didn't know what to believe. Our American republic in the 21st century is little different, as Democrats and Republicans adamantly "oppose" one another, while between their rival policies lurks not a dime's worth of difference.
A companion evil to the conspiracies that contaminated and eventually annihilated the ancient commonwealths was the gradual erosion of liberty by seemingly harmless and legal acts. In Demosthenes' writings, the Founders read of how Philip of Macedon -- by slow and nearly imperceptible means -- dismantled Athenian freedom. Philip was an enemy even to those who fancied themselves his allies. He used "legal" means to subvert the constitution and rob Athens of her liberty. His favorite tactic was to create frivolous diversions and provide luxuries to lull the Athenians into a false sense of security and distract them from noticing Philip's usurpations.
Unfortunately, Philip succeeded in gaining control of Athens and in making her formerly freedom-loving citizens slaves to his will. Jefferson described such gradual and planned usurpations this way: "Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery." Will we prove wiser and more zealous protectors of our sacred liberties?
One of the best ways of demonstrating our respect for our Founding Fathers, and our dedication to the principles of liberty they bequeathed to us, is to study the books they studied. By so doing, we will come to appreciate, as they did, that republics are as fragile as they are glorious. We will also more fully recognize that unassailable personal virtue and vigilant loyalty to constitutional principals are the only hope for perpetuation of the freedom that our forebears bought with their blood. May we learn from the successes and failures of the ancients and not allow the "lamp of experience" to be extinguished in our lives. Source. The New American. 20 September 2004. pp. 35 - 39.
Far from exhaustive are the below. While the references below were taken from numerous sources, I would invite you to search governmental archives on your own under search terms intrigue(s) or conspiracy. There are hundreds of references. These references themselves scratch the surface. Many have not been transcripted unfortunately so difficult to read. Nonetheless, intrigue and conspiracy were of great concern to the Founders. Granted, many of the discussions were of local political intrigues against a particular candidate, however, many were of the state, national, and across ocean variety. Nonetheless, the careful student of history will find the concern worthwhile and demonstrated via empirical historical evidence, as the Founders well knew. Studying ambitious men, their designs, knowing human nature, and the direction and goals of absolute power in the hands of few correctly leads one to discover a history all too ignored at the peril of our future.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
First, a definition: Intrigue, A secret or underhand scheme; a plot. ALL CAPS appeared in lower case in originals.
Conspiracy: a planning and acting together secretly, esp. for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason.
Text below from the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
"But when a long train of ABUSES AND USURPATIONS, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a DESIGN to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."
From Federalist Paper 6:Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States (Alexander Hamilton)
"The AMBITIOUS cardinal, who was prime minister to Henry VIII., permitting his vanity to aspire to the triple crown,5 entertained hopes of succeeding in the acquisition of that splendid prize by the influence of the Emperor Charles V. To secure the favor and interest of this enterprising and powerful monarch, he precipitated England into a war with France, contrary to the plainest dictates of policy, and at the hazard of the safety and independence, as well of the kingdom over which he presided by his counsels, as of Europe in general. For if there ever was a sovereign who bid fair to realize the project of universal monarchy, it was the Emperor Charles V., of whose INTRIGUES Wolsey was at once the instrument and the dupe."
"[T]o exclude foreign INTRIGUES and foreign partialities, so degrading to all countries and so baneful to free ones; to foster a spirit of independence too just to invade the rights of others, too proud to surrender our own, too liberal to indulge unworthy prejudices ourselves and too elevated not to look down upon them in others; to hold the union of the States on the basis of their peace and happiness; to support the Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in its limitations as in its authorities; to respect the rights and authorities reserved to the States and to the people as equally incorporated with and essential to the success of the general... as far as sentiments and intentions such as these can aid the fulfillment of my duty, they will be a resource which can not fail me."
James Madison, Second Inaugural Address, March, 1813
"The history of ancient and modern republics had taught them that many of the evils which those republics suffered arose from the want of a certain balance, and that mutual control indispensable to a wise administration. They were convinced that popular assemblies are frequently misguided by ignorance, by sudden impulses, and the INTRIGUES of AMBITIOUS men; and that some firm barrier against these OPERATIONS was necessary. They, therefore, instituted your Senate."
Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June, 1788
"The history of Germany is a history of wars between the emperor and the princes and states; of wars among the princes and states themselves; of the licentiousness of the strong, and the oppression of the weak; of foreign intrusions, and foreign INTRIGUES; of requisitions of men and money disregarded, or partially complied with; of attempts to enforce them, altogether abortive, or attended with slaughter and desolation, involving the innocent with the guilty; of general inbecility, confusion, and misery."
From Federalist Papers #19:The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison
"In 1788 Jones accepted an offer by Catherine the Great of Russia to enter her navy. He took a leading part in several engagements against the Ottoman Turks, but INTRIGUES on the part of Russian rivals prevented him from receiving proper credit for his successes." in RE: Naval Officer John Paul Jones, taken from History.com
The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799. John C. Fitzpatrick, Editor.
Mount Vernon, October 24, 1798. (letter to George Washington Snyder)
Revd Sir: I have your favor of the 17th. instant before me; and my only motive to trouble you with the receipt of this letter, is to explain, and correct a mistake which I perceive the hurry in which I am obliged, often, to write letters, have led you into.
It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am.
The idea that I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavoured to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of seperation). That Individuals of them may have done it, or that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects; and actually had a seperation of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned.
My occupations are such, that but little leisure is allowed me to read News Papers, or Books of any kind; the reading of letters, and preparing answers, absorb much of my time. With respect, etc.
The following is taken from article "The Founding Fathers & the Classics"
by Dr. Joe Wolverton II
All our Founding Fathers believed that history was a precursor of the future. In the annals of history -- particularly that of the Greek and Roman republics of antiquity -- they believed they could find the key to inoculating America against the diseases that infected and destroyed past societies. Indeed, it has been said that the Founders were coroners examining the lifeless bodies of the republics and democracies of the past, in order to avoid succumbing to the maladies that shortened their lives.
The Founders learned very early in life to venerate the illuminating stories of ancient Greece and Rome. They learned these stories, not from secondary sources, but from the classics themselves. And from these stories they drew knowledge and inspiration that helped them found a republic far greater than anything created in antiquity.
Early Education
Classical training usually began at age eight, whether in a school or at home under the guidance of a private tutor. One remarkable teacher who inculcated his students with a love of the classics was Scotsman Donald Robertson. Many future luminaries were enrolled in his school: James Madison, John Taylor of Caroline, John Tyler and George Rogers Clark, among others. Robertson and teachers like him nourished their charges with a healthy diet of Greek and Latin, and required that they learn to master Virgil, Horace, Justinian, Tacitus, Herodotus, Plutarch, Lucretius and Thucydides. Further along in their education, students were required to translate Cicero's Orations and Virgil's Aeneid. They were expected to translate Greek and Latin passages aloud, write out the translations in English, and then re-translate the passages back into the original language using a different tense.
The standards were no less rigorous for those taught at home. George Wythe, the renowned Virginian who would come to be known as the "Teacher of Liberty," was himself taught to appreciate the writings of the ancients at home by his mother. Tragically, Wythe's mother died when he was very young, but she lived long enough to anchor her son's education on very firm moorings. Before she died she taught Wythe to read and translate both the fundamental languages of antiquity, Greek and Latin. According to one early biographer, Wythe "had a perfect knowledge of the Greek language taught to him by his mother in the backwoods."
Whether at home or in a schoolhouse, the goal of education in the early days of our nation was to instill virtue in the students. The Founders were taught that free societies were sustained by a virtuous populace, and that, if a society were to abandon a study of the classics, that same society would eventually abandon the virtues championed by the classical authors.
There was a more pragmatic side to the Founders' classical education as well. Twenty-seven of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were college educated. Moreover, of the 55 delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, 30 were college graduates. That is an impressive feat given the challenging entrance requirements of 18th-century universities. Fortunately for the young Founding Fathers, the teachers of the day exercised their students in Greek and Latin, so that their pupils could meet the rigorous entrance requirements of colonial colleges. Those colleges stipulated that entering freshmen be able to read, translate and expound the Greco-Roman classical works.
Such requirements were nearly universal in America and remained unchanged for generations. Teachers concentrated their lessons on the works of those classical authors on which students would be tested prior to admission to college. A brief survey of the entrance requirements for colonial colleges will testify to the enlightenment of our Founding Fathers -- as well as to the astounding decline in the educational standards of our day.
In 1750, Harvard demanded that applicants be able to extemporaneously "read, construe, and parse Cicero, Virgil, or such like classical authors and to write Latin in prose, and to be skilled in making Latin verse, or at least to know the rules of Prosodia, and to read, construe, and parse ordinary Greek as in the New testament, Isocrates, or such like and decline the paradigms of Greek nouns and verbs." Of note is the fact that John Trumball, the illustrious artist, passed Harvard's exacting entrance exam at only 12 years of age.
Alexander Hamilton's alma mater, King's College (now Columbia), had similarly stringent prerequisites for prospective students. Applicants were required to "give a rational account of the Greek and Latin grammars, read three orations of Cicero and three books of Virgil's Aeneid, and translate the first 10 chapters of John from Greek into Latin."
James Madison had it no easier when he applied for entrance to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) in 1769. Madison and his fellow applicants were obliged to demonstrate "the ability to write Latin prose, translate Virgil, Cicero, and the Greek gospels and a commensurate knowledge of Latin and Greek grammar."
College lessons were as demanding as the entrance exams. American colonial curricula were based on the Latin "trivium" of rhetoric, logic, and grammar, as well as the "quadrivium" of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. Unlike modern universities, where elective courses are innumerable and often inane, the colleges attended by our Founding Fathers offered very few elective courses and coursework focused chiefly on the study of classical works. And those works were in the languages in which they were originally written! Students were taught lessons in virtue and liberty from the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Sallust, Tacitus and Polybius. Thomas Jefferson's classmates recalled that he studied at least 15 hours a day and carried his Greek grammar book with him wherever he went.
Because of the formidable classical curricula at colonial colleges, the classics became a well from which the Founders drank deeply. In the classics, the Founding Fathers found their heroes and villains, and they also detected warning signs along the road of statecraft on which they would tread.
Heroes and Villains
Ancient history provided the Founders with examples of behavior and circumstances that they could apply to their own circumstances. Their heroes were Roman and Greek republicans and defenders of liberty. All of the Founders' Roman heroes lived at a time when the Roman republic was being threatened by power-hungry demagogues, bloodthirsty dictators and shadowy conspirators. The Founders' principal Greco-Roman heroes were Roman statesmen: Cato the Younger, Brutus, Cassius and Cicero -- all of whom sacrificed their lives in unsuccessful attempts to save the republic -- as well as the celebrated Greek lawgivers Lycurgus and Solon.
Cato the Younger was a Roman of sterling reputation who lived from approximately 95 B.C. to 46 B.C. He is described as being "unmoved by passion and firm in everything," even from his youth. He was renowned for finishing whatever he started and for hating flattery. He embraced every Roman virtue, and he was especially appreciated for his sense of justice and his even temperament. As a senator, Cato was always in attendance when the Senate was in session. A no-nonsense legislator, Cato was hated by Pompey and Caesar for his integrity and for his refusal to aid them in their corrupt plans to usurp power. Although they imprisoned him, the public clamored for his release and Caesar reluctantly complied.
Unable to squelch Cato's attacks on their corrupt policies, Caesar and Pompey sent him to Cyprus. Finally, Cato aligned himself with Brutus against Caesar, a decision that would eventually cost him his life. George Washington admired Cato so greatly that he had Joseph Addison's play about Cato performed in Valley Forge to boost the troops' morale.
Roman heroes very dear to the hearts of the Founders also included Brutus and Cassius. Brutus was admired by his contemporaries for his pleasant disposition and virtuous temper. Even those who opposed his attack on Caesar believed that Brutus was motivated by a genuine concern for the republic and not by personal animosity toward Caesar. Marc Antony himself said that Brutus was "the only man that conspired against Caesar out of a sense of the glory and justice of the action; but all the rest rose up against the man, and not the tyrant ..." America's Founders looked to Brutus and Cassius as role models because their only aim in overthrowing Caesar was to restore the constitutional Roman government and republican liberties.
The most popular Roman hero of the Founding Fathers was Cicero, the silver-tongued Roman orator. Cicero lived from approximately 106 B.C. to 43 B.C. John Adams, in his Defense of the Constitution, said of Cicero: "All of the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero..." First as a lawyer, then as a consul and senator, Cicero boldly defended the republic against the rise of dictators. Cicero delivered his greatest speeches in defense of the republic against the Catilinarian Conspiracy.
The Catilinarian Conspiracy was a plot to overthrow the republic, hatched by aristocrat Lucius Sergius Catiline with the help of a cabal of aristocrats and disaffected veterans. In 63 B.C., Cicero exposed and thwarted the plot, and Catiline was forced to flee from Rome. For his service in saving Rome, Cicero was given the title "Father of his Country" [Pater Patriae] by his countrymen. Like Brutus and Cassius, Cicero's courageous defense of republican liberty in the face of designing conspirators made him a logical model for emulation by our Founding Fathers.
Regarding the Greek classics, the American Founding Fathers greatly admired Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta. Lycurgus lived in the 9th century B.C. and reformed the entire Spartan commonwealth. His most important reform was the establishment of a senate equal in authority with the monarchy in matters of great importance. Prior to Lycurgus' innovation, the Spartan government swayed between monarchy and democracy, depending on whether the king or the people had the upper hand. The senate served as a check on the excesses of both king and subjects. The biographer Plutarch called Lycurgus' institutions "one of the greatest blessings which heaven can send down."
Another Greek famed for his reform of the law was Solon. Born in Athens about 638 B.C., Solon achieved glory as one of the "Seven Sages of Greece." Around 590 B.C., he was given the task of reforming the Athenian constitution. Solon's improvements included the right of trial by jury and the division of society into several bodies that would balance and check each other in governing Athens. After finishing his constitutional reforms, Solon left Athens for 10 years. While he was away, Pisistratus, his former friend, usurped control of the government and fastened tyrannical controls on Athens. Both Lycurgus and Solon appreciated the need for incorporating checks and balances into government, a need that the American Founders understood just as acutely.
Detecting Conspiracy
As the Founders read the histories of the rise and fall of the Greek and Roman republics recorded by Herodotus, Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, Plutarch Polybius and others, they learned that the liberties enjoyed by the citizens of those commonwealths were quite often targeted by conspiracies of men determined to enslave the people and establish themselves as tyrants. The founders recognized that the conspiratorial view of history was not a theory -- it was a fact.
Ancient historians were straightforward in their reports of the secret plots. Surveying the litany of British monarchical abuses, our Founders rightly perceived that the shrouded hand of an evil conspiracy was at work in America and England, just as it had been in the Roman republic they so admired. Famed patriot Charles Carroll of Carrollton invoked the record of Roman historian Tacitus when he wrote that the conspiracy of his own time had led America and England to "that degree of liberty and servitude which [Servius Sulpicius] Galba ascribes to the Roman people in the speech to [Gaius Calpurnius] Piso: those same Romans, a few years after that period, deified the horse of Caligula."
The equally eminent and historically minded John Adams also applied analogies from the Roman republic to the increasingly open threat to the foundations of English liberty by corrupt legislators. The government of England, he said (quoting Roman historian Sallust), had descended to the level where "the Roman republic was when Jugurtha left it, having pronounced it a 'venal city, ripe for destruction if it can only find a purchaser.' " Sallust was a valuable and oft-cited source of warnings as to the consequences of government corruption and intrigue.
Our Founders heeded these warnings about power elites who used corruption, intrigue, and personal immorality to neutralize public concern and dampen zeal for the protection of liberty. From the 18th to the 21st century, it would seem times have changed very little.
James Madison insightfully noted that most of the tyrants of history masqueraded as democrats, and over time revealed themselves to be power hungry dictators and shameless demagogues. Alexander Hamilton, an astute student of classical history, devoted his first contribution to The Federalist Papers to a warning against tyrants or "men who have over-turned the liberties of republics, commencing as demagogues and ending as tyrants."
From such statements, it is evident that Adams, Madison, Hamilton and other Founders understood that, throughout the history of the Greek and Roman republics, tyrants were more likely than not to begin their political careers as populists and democrats and to end them as despots. Such demagogues were men of prominence who used their popular support to force their will upon an unsuspecting and trusting populace. As Greek historian Thucydides remarked, "You may rule over anyone whom you can dominate."
Madison's study of the ancient Greek confederacies revealed to him that almost every one of these republics came to an end as a result of conspiracy among domestic demagogues and foreign allies. Hamilton called these insidious cabals the "Grecian Horse to a republic." Both men worried that the same scheme would eventually destroy the American union. This fear, coupled with a thorough understanding of history, made the Founders vigilant guardians against the rise of such combinations in their own nascent republic.
Madison, James Wilson and others who systematically studied the ancient republics and confederacies noted that conspiracies were rampant among them. Those who were successful in carrying out such evil designs would expose and vehemently rail against similar acts on the part of others, thus painting themselves as guardians of liberty. The source of all this evil was an unquenchable thirst for power. Power was the end, and conspiracy was the means commonly used to satisfy the rapacious appetite for dominion.
From Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Jefferson, Adams, Dickinson, Madison, Hamilton and other diligent patriot-scholars learned of a particularly pernicious deception practiced by tyrannically minded conspirators. These instigators would place their fellow conspirators in leadership positions on both sides of a controversy, constantly inciting the "opposing" factions against one another until the innocent citizens didn't know what to believe. Our American republic in the 21st century is little different, as Democrats and Republicans adamantly "oppose" one another, while between their rival policies lurks not a dime's worth of difference.
A companion evil to the conspiracies that contaminated and eventually annihilated the ancient commonwealths was the gradual erosion of liberty by seemingly harmless and legal acts. In Demosthenes' writings, the Founders read of how Philip of Macedon -- by slow and nearly imperceptible means -- dismantled Athenian freedom. Philip was an enemy even to those who fancied themselves his allies. He used "legal" means to subvert the constitution and rob Athens of her liberty. His favorite tactic was to create frivolous diversions and provide luxuries to lull the Athenians into a false sense of security and distract them from noticing Philip's usurpations.
Unfortunately, Philip succeeded in gaining control of Athens and in making her formerly freedom-loving citizens slaves to his will. Jefferson described such gradual and planned usurpations this way: "Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery." Will we prove wiser and more zealous protectors of our sacred liberties?
One of the best ways of demonstrating our respect for our Founding Fathers, and our dedication to the principles of liberty they bequeathed to us, is to study the books they studied. By so doing, we will come to appreciate, as they did, that republics are as fragile as they are glorious. We will also more fully recognize that unassailable personal virtue and vigilant loyalty to constitutional principals are the only hope for perpetuation of the freedom that our forebears bought with their blood. May we learn from the successes and failures of the ancients and not allow the "lamp of experience" to be extinguished in our lives. Source. The New American. 20 September 2004. pp. 35 - 39.
Former Soviet Dissident Warns For EU Dictatorship
by Paul Belien
Vladimir Bukovksy, the 63-year old former Soviet dissident, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech he delivered in Brussels last week Mr Bukovsky called the EU a “monster” that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a fullfledged totalitarian state.
Mr Bukovsky paid a visit to the European Parliament on Thursday at the invitation of Fidesz, the Hungarian Civic Forum. Fidesz, a member of the European Christian Democrat group, had invited the former Soviet dissident over from England, where he lives, on the occasion of this year’s 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. After his morning meeting with the Hungarians, Mr Bukovsky gave an afternoon speech in a Polish restaurant in the Trier straat, opposite the European Parliament, where he spoke at the invitation of the United Kingdom Independence Party, of which he is a patron.
An interview with Vladimir Bukovsky about the impending EUSSRIn his speech Mr Bukovsky referred to confidential documents from secret Soviet files which he was allowed to read in 1992. These documents confirm the existence of a “conspiracy” to turn the European Union into a socialist organization. I attended the meeting and taped the speech. A transcript, as well as the audio fragment (approx. 15 minutes) can be found below. I also had a brief interview with Mr Bukovsky (4 minutes), a transcript and audio fragment of which can also be found below. The interview about the European Union had to be cut short because Mr Bukovsky had other engagements, but it brought back some memories to me, as I had interviewed Vladimir Bukovsky twenty years ago, in 1986, when the Soviet Union, the first monster that he so valiantly fought, was still alive and thriving.
Mr Bukovsky was one of the heroes of the 20th century. As a young man he exposed the use of psychiatric imprisonment against political prisoners in the former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1917-1991) and spent a total of twelve years (1964-1976), from his 22nd to his 34th year, in Soviet jails, labour camps and psychiatric institutions. In 1976 the Soviets expelled him to the West. In 1992 he was invited by the Russian government to serve as an expert testifying at the trial conducted to determine whether the Soviet Communist Party had been a criminal institution. To prepare for his testimony Mr Bukovsky was granted access to a large number of documents from Soviet secret archives. He is one of the few people ever to have seen these documents because they are still classified. Using a small handheld scanner and a laptop computer, however, he managed to copy many documents (some with high security clearance), including KGB reports to the Soviet government.
An interview with Vladimir Bukovsky
Listen to it here
Paul Belien: You were a very famous Soviet dissident and now you are drawing a parallel between the European Union and the Soviet Union. Can you explain this?
Vladimir Bukovsky: I am referrring to structures, to certain ideologies being instilled, to the plans, the direction, the inevitable expansion, the obliteration of nations, which was the purpose of the Soviet Union. Most people do not understand this. They do not know it, but we do because we were raised in the Soviet Union where we had to study the Soviet ideology in school and at university. The ultimate purpose of the Soviet Union was to create a new historic entity, the Soviet people, all around the globe. The same is true in the EU today. They are trying to create a new people. They call this people “Europeans”, whatever that means.
According to Communist doctrine as well as to many forms of Socialist thinking, the state, the national state, is supposed to wither away. In Russia, however, the opposite happened. Instead of withering away the Soviet state became a very powerful state, but the nationalities were obliterated. But when the time of the Soviet collapse came these suppressed feelings of national identity came bouncing back and they nearly destroyed the country. It was so frightening.
PB: Do you think the same thing can happen when the European Union collapses?
VB: Absolutely, you can press a spring only that much, and the human psyche is very resilient you know. You can press it, you can press it, but don’t forget it is still accumulating a power to rebound. It is like a spring and it always goes to overshoot.
PB: But all these countries that joined the European Union did so voluntarily.
VB: No, they did not. Look at Denmark which voted against the Maastricht treaty twice. Look at Ireland [which voted against the Nice treaty]. Look at many other countries, they are under enormous pressure. It is almost blackmail. Switzerland was forced to vote five times in a referendum. All five times they have rejected it, but who knows what will happen the sixth time, the seventh time. It is always the same thing. It is a trick for idiots. The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting. Why stop? Let us continue voting. The European Union is what Americans would call a shotgun marriage.
PB: What do you think young people should do about the European Union? What should they insist on, to democratize the institution or just abolish it?
VB: I think that the European Union, like the Soviet Union, cannot be democratized. Gorbachev tried to democratize it and it blew up. This kind of structures cannot be democratized.
PB: But we have a European Parliament which is chosen by the people.
VB: The European Parliament is elected on the basis of proportional representation, which is not true representation. And what does it vote on? The percentage of fat in yoghurt, that kind of thing. It is ridiculous. It is given the task of the Supreme Soviet. The average MP can speak for six minutes per year in the Chamber. That is not a real parliament.
Transcript of Mr Bukovsky’s Brussels speech
Listen to it here
In 1992 I had unprecedented access to Politburo and Central Committee secret documents which have been classified, and still are even now, for 30 years. These documents show very clearly that the whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev in 1988-89 called our “common European home.”
The idea was very simple. It first came up in 1985-86, when the Italian Communists visited Gorbachev, followed by the German Social-Democrats. They all complained that the changes in the world, particularly after [British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher introduced privatisation and economic liberalisation, were threatening to wipe out the achievement (as they called it) of generations of Socialists and Social-Democrats – threatening to reverse it completely. Therefore the only way to withstand this onslaught of wild capitalism (as they called it) was to try to introduce the same socialist goals in all countries at once. Prior to that, the left-wing parties and the Soviet Union had opposed European integration very much because they perceived it as a means to block their socialist goals. From 1985 onwards they completely changed their view. The Soviets came to a conclusion and to an agreement with the left-wing parties that if they worked together they could hijack the whole European project and turn it upside down. Instead of an open market they would turn it into a federal state.
According to the [secret Soviet] documents, 1985-86 is the turning point. I have published most of these documents. You might even find them on the internet. But the conversations they had are really eye opening. For the first time you understand that there is a conspiracy – quite understandable for them, as they were trying to save their political hides. In the East the Soviets needed a change of relations with Europe because they were entering a protracted and very deep structural crisis; in the West the left-wing parties were afraid of being wiped out and losing their influence and prestige. So it was a conspiracy, quite openly made by them, agreed upon, and worked out.
In January of 1989, for example, a delegation of the Trilateral Commission came to see Gorbachev. It included [former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro] Nakasone, [former French President Valéry] Giscard d’Estaing, [American banker David] Rockefeller and [former US Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger. They had a very nice conversation where they tried to explain to Gorbachev that Soviet Russia had to integrate into the financial institutions of the world, such as Gatt, the IMF and the World Bank.
In the middle of it Giscard d’Estaing suddenly takes the floor and says: “Mr President, I cannot tell you exactly when it will happen – probably within 15 years – but Europe is going to be a federal state and you have to prepare yourself for that. You have to work out with us, and the European leaders, how you would react to that, how would you allow the other Easteuropean countries to interact with it or how to become a part of it, you have to be prepared.”
This was January 1989, at a time when the [1992] Maastricht treaty had not even been drafted. How the hell did Giscard d’Estaing know what was going to happen in 15 years time? And surprise, surprise, how did he become the author of the European constitution [in 2002-03]? A very good question. It does smell of conspiracy, doesn’t it?
Luckily for us the Soviet part of this conspiracy collapsed earlier and it did not reach the point where Moscow could influence the course of events. But the original idea was to have what they called a convergency, whereby the Soviet Union would mellow somewhat and become more social-democratic, while Western Europe would become social-democratic and socialist. Then there will be convergency. The structures have to fit each other. This is why the structures of the European Union were initially built with the purpose of fitting into the Soviet structure. This is why they are so similar in functioning and in structure.
It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similary, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organisation which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU. When you look at the type of EU corruption, it is exactly the Soviet type of corruption, going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top.
If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union. Of course, it is a milder version of the Soviet Union. Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that it has a Gulag. It has no KGB – not yet – but I am very carefully watching such structures as Europol for example. That really worries me a lot because this organisation will probably have powers bigger than those of the KGB. They will have diplomatic immunity. Can you imagine a KGB with diplomatic immunity? They will have to police us on 32 kinds of crimes – two of which are particularly worrying, one is called racism, another is called xenophobia. No criminal court on earth defines anything like this as a crime [this is not entirely true, as Belgium already does so – pb]. So it is a new crime, and we have already been warned. Someone from the British government told us that those who object to uncontrolled immigration from the Third World will be regarded as racist and those who oppose further European integration will be regarded as xenophobes. I think Patricia Hewitt said this publicly.
Hence, we have now been warned. Meanwhile they are introducing more and more ideology. The Soviet Union used to be a state run by ideology. Today’s ideology of the European Union is social-democratic, statist, and a big part of it is also political correctness. I watch very carefully how political correctness spreads and becomes an oppressive ideology, not to mention the fact that they forbid smoking almost everywhere now. Look at this persecution of people like the Swedish pastor who was persecuted for several months because he said that the Bible does not approve homosexuality. France passed the same law of hate speech concerning gays. Britain is passing hate speech laws concerning race relations and now religious speech, and so on and so forth. What you observe, taken into perspective, is a systematic introduction of ideology which could later be enforced with oppressive measures. Apparently that is the whole purpose of Europol. Otherwise why do we need it? To me Europol looks very suspicious. I watch very carefully who is persecuted for what and what is happening, because that is one field in which I am an expert. I know how Gulags spring up.
It looks like we are living in a period of rapid, systematic and very consistent dismantlement of democracy. Look at this Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. It makes ministers into legislators who can introduce new laws without bothering to tell Parliament or anyone. My immediate reaction is why do we need it? Britain survived two world wars, the war with Napoleon, the Spanish Armada, not to mention the Cold War, when we were told at any moment we might have a nuclear world war, without any need for introducing this kind legislation, without the need for suspending our civil liberaties and introducing emergency powers. Why do we need it right now? This can make a dictatorship out of your country in no time.
Today’s situation is really grim. Major political parties have been completely taken in by the new EU project. None of them really opposes it. They have become very corrupt. Who is going to defend our freedoms? It looks like we are heading towards some kind of collapse, some kind of crisis. The most likely outcome is that there will be an economic collapse in Europe, which in due time is bound to happen with this growth of expenses and taxes. The inability to create a competitive environment, the overregulation of the economy, the bureaucratisation, it is going to lead to economic collapse. Particularly the introduction of the euro was a crazy idea. Currency is not supposed to be political.
I have no doubt about it. There will be a collapse of the European Union pretty much like the Soviet Union collapsed. But do not forget that when these things collapse they leave such devastation that it takes a generation to recover. Just think what will happen if it comes to an economic crisis. The recrimination between nations will be huge. It might come to blows. Look to the huge number of immigrants from Third World countries now living in Europe. This was promoted by the European Union. What will happen with them if there is an economic collapse? We will probably have, like in the Soviet Union at the end, so much ethnic strife that the mind boggles. In no other country were there such ethnic tensions as in the Soviet Union, except probably in Yugoslavia. So that is exactly what will happen here, too. We have to be prepared for that. This huge edifice of bureaucracy is going to collapse on our heads.
This is why, and I am very frank about it, the sooner we finish with the EU the better. The sooner it collapses the less damage it will have done to us and to other countries. But we have to be quick because the Eurocrats are moving very fast. It will be difficult to defeat them. Today it is still simple. If one million people march on Brussels today these guys will run away to the Bahamas. If tomorrow half of the British population refuses to pay its taxes, nothing will happen and no-one will go to jail. Today you can still do that. But I do not know what the situation will be tomorrow with a fully fledged Europol staffed by former Stasi or Securitate officers. Anything may happen.
We are losing time. We have to defeat them. We have to sit and think, work out a strategy in the shortest possible way to achieve maximum effect. Otherwise it will be too late. So what should I say? My conclusion is not optimistic. So far, despite the fact that we do have some anti-EU forces in almost every country, it is not enough. We are losing and we are wasting time.
More on this topic, see:
Czech President Warns Against Europeanism, 27 August 2005
Attachment Size
bukovsky-interview.mp3 1.76 MB
bukovsky-speech.mp3 7.11 MB
Vladimir Bukovksy, the 63-year old former Soviet dissident, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech he delivered in Brussels last week Mr Bukovsky called the EU a “monster” that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a fullfledged totalitarian state.
Mr Bukovsky paid a visit to the European Parliament on Thursday at the invitation of Fidesz, the Hungarian Civic Forum. Fidesz, a member of the European Christian Democrat group, had invited the former Soviet dissident over from England, where he lives, on the occasion of this year’s 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. After his morning meeting with the Hungarians, Mr Bukovsky gave an afternoon speech in a Polish restaurant in the Trier straat, opposite the European Parliament, where he spoke at the invitation of the United Kingdom Independence Party, of which he is a patron.
An interview with Vladimir Bukovsky about the impending EUSSRIn his speech Mr Bukovsky referred to confidential documents from secret Soviet files which he was allowed to read in 1992. These documents confirm the existence of a “conspiracy” to turn the European Union into a socialist organization. I attended the meeting and taped the speech. A transcript, as well as the audio fragment (approx. 15 minutes) can be found below. I also had a brief interview with Mr Bukovsky (4 minutes), a transcript and audio fragment of which can also be found below. The interview about the European Union had to be cut short because Mr Bukovsky had other engagements, but it brought back some memories to me, as I had interviewed Vladimir Bukovsky twenty years ago, in 1986, when the Soviet Union, the first monster that he so valiantly fought, was still alive and thriving.
Mr Bukovsky was one of the heroes of the 20th century. As a young man he exposed the use of psychiatric imprisonment against political prisoners in the former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1917-1991) and spent a total of twelve years (1964-1976), from his 22nd to his 34th year, in Soviet jails, labour camps and psychiatric institutions. In 1976 the Soviets expelled him to the West. In 1992 he was invited by the Russian government to serve as an expert testifying at the trial conducted to determine whether the Soviet Communist Party had been a criminal institution. To prepare for his testimony Mr Bukovsky was granted access to a large number of documents from Soviet secret archives. He is one of the few people ever to have seen these documents because they are still classified. Using a small handheld scanner and a laptop computer, however, he managed to copy many documents (some with high security clearance), including KGB reports to the Soviet government.
An interview with Vladimir Bukovsky
Listen to it here
Paul Belien: You were a very famous Soviet dissident and now you are drawing a parallel between the European Union and the Soviet Union. Can you explain this?
Vladimir Bukovsky: I am referrring to structures, to certain ideologies being instilled, to the plans, the direction, the inevitable expansion, the obliteration of nations, which was the purpose of the Soviet Union. Most people do not understand this. They do not know it, but we do because we were raised in the Soviet Union where we had to study the Soviet ideology in school and at university. The ultimate purpose of the Soviet Union was to create a new historic entity, the Soviet people, all around the globe. The same is true in the EU today. They are trying to create a new people. They call this people “Europeans”, whatever that means.
According to Communist doctrine as well as to many forms of Socialist thinking, the state, the national state, is supposed to wither away. In Russia, however, the opposite happened. Instead of withering away the Soviet state became a very powerful state, but the nationalities were obliterated. But when the time of the Soviet collapse came these suppressed feelings of national identity came bouncing back and they nearly destroyed the country. It was so frightening.
PB: Do you think the same thing can happen when the European Union collapses?
VB: Absolutely, you can press a spring only that much, and the human psyche is very resilient you know. You can press it, you can press it, but don’t forget it is still accumulating a power to rebound. It is like a spring and it always goes to overshoot.
PB: But all these countries that joined the European Union did so voluntarily.
VB: No, they did not. Look at Denmark which voted against the Maastricht treaty twice. Look at Ireland [which voted against the Nice treaty]. Look at many other countries, they are under enormous pressure. It is almost blackmail. Switzerland was forced to vote five times in a referendum. All five times they have rejected it, but who knows what will happen the sixth time, the seventh time. It is always the same thing. It is a trick for idiots. The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting. Why stop? Let us continue voting. The European Union is what Americans would call a shotgun marriage.
PB: What do you think young people should do about the European Union? What should they insist on, to democratize the institution or just abolish it?
VB: I think that the European Union, like the Soviet Union, cannot be democratized. Gorbachev tried to democratize it and it blew up. This kind of structures cannot be democratized.
PB: But we have a European Parliament which is chosen by the people.
VB: The European Parliament is elected on the basis of proportional representation, which is not true representation. And what does it vote on? The percentage of fat in yoghurt, that kind of thing. It is ridiculous. It is given the task of the Supreme Soviet. The average MP can speak for six minutes per year in the Chamber. That is not a real parliament.
Transcript of Mr Bukovsky’s Brussels speech
Listen to it here
In 1992 I had unprecedented access to Politburo and Central Committee secret documents which have been classified, and still are even now, for 30 years. These documents show very clearly that the whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev in 1988-89 called our “common European home.”
The idea was very simple. It first came up in 1985-86, when the Italian Communists visited Gorbachev, followed by the German Social-Democrats. They all complained that the changes in the world, particularly after [British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher introduced privatisation and economic liberalisation, were threatening to wipe out the achievement (as they called it) of generations of Socialists and Social-Democrats – threatening to reverse it completely. Therefore the only way to withstand this onslaught of wild capitalism (as they called it) was to try to introduce the same socialist goals in all countries at once. Prior to that, the left-wing parties and the Soviet Union had opposed European integration very much because they perceived it as a means to block their socialist goals. From 1985 onwards they completely changed their view. The Soviets came to a conclusion and to an agreement with the left-wing parties that if they worked together they could hijack the whole European project and turn it upside down. Instead of an open market they would turn it into a federal state.
According to the [secret Soviet] documents, 1985-86 is the turning point. I have published most of these documents. You might even find them on the internet. But the conversations they had are really eye opening. For the first time you understand that there is a conspiracy – quite understandable for them, as they were trying to save their political hides. In the East the Soviets needed a change of relations with Europe because they were entering a protracted and very deep structural crisis; in the West the left-wing parties were afraid of being wiped out and losing their influence and prestige. So it was a conspiracy, quite openly made by them, agreed upon, and worked out.
In January of 1989, for example, a delegation of the Trilateral Commission came to see Gorbachev. It included [former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro] Nakasone, [former French President Valéry] Giscard d’Estaing, [American banker David] Rockefeller and [former US Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger. They had a very nice conversation where they tried to explain to Gorbachev that Soviet Russia had to integrate into the financial institutions of the world, such as Gatt, the IMF and the World Bank.
In the middle of it Giscard d’Estaing suddenly takes the floor and says: “Mr President, I cannot tell you exactly when it will happen – probably within 15 years – but Europe is going to be a federal state and you have to prepare yourself for that. You have to work out with us, and the European leaders, how you would react to that, how would you allow the other Easteuropean countries to interact with it or how to become a part of it, you have to be prepared.”
This was January 1989, at a time when the [1992] Maastricht treaty had not even been drafted. How the hell did Giscard d’Estaing know what was going to happen in 15 years time? And surprise, surprise, how did he become the author of the European constitution [in 2002-03]? A very good question. It does smell of conspiracy, doesn’t it?
Luckily for us the Soviet part of this conspiracy collapsed earlier and it did not reach the point where Moscow could influence the course of events. But the original idea was to have what they called a convergency, whereby the Soviet Union would mellow somewhat and become more social-democratic, while Western Europe would become social-democratic and socialist. Then there will be convergency. The structures have to fit each other. This is why the structures of the European Union were initially built with the purpose of fitting into the Soviet structure. This is why they are so similar in functioning and in structure.
It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similary, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organisation which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU. When you look at the type of EU corruption, it is exactly the Soviet type of corruption, going from top to bottom rather than going from bottom to top.
If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union. Of course, it is a milder version of the Soviet Union. Please, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that it has a Gulag. It has no KGB – not yet – but I am very carefully watching such structures as Europol for example. That really worries me a lot because this organisation will probably have powers bigger than those of the KGB. They will have diplomatic immunity. Can you imagine a KGB with diplomatic immunity? They will have to police us on 32 kinds of crimes – two of which are particularly worrying, one is called racism, another is called xenophobia. No criminal court on earth defines anything like this as a crime [this is not entirely true, as Belgium already does so – pb]. So it is a new crime, and we have already been warned. Someone from the British government told us that those who object to uncontrolled immigration from the Third World will be regarded as racist and those who oppose further European integration will be regarded as xenophobes. I think Patricia Hewitt said this publicly.
Hence, we have now been warned. Meanwhile they are introducing more and more ideology. The Soviet Union used to be a state run by ideology. Today’s ideology of the European Union is social-democratic, statist, and a big part of it is also political correctness. I watch very carefully how political correctness spreads and becomes an oppressive ideology, not to mention the fact that they forbid smoking almost everywhere now. Look at this persecution of people like the Swedish pastor who was persecuted for several months because he said that the Bible does not approve homosexuality. France passed the same law of hate speech concerning gays. Britain is passing hate speech laws concerning race relations and now religious speech, and so on and so forth. What you observe, taken into perspective, is a systematic introduction of ideology which could later be enforced with oppressive measures. Apparently that is the whole purpose of Europol. Otherwise why do we need it? To me Europol looks very suspicious. I watch very carefully who is persecuted for what and what is happening, because that is one field in which I am an expert. I know how Gulags spring up.
It looks like we are living in a period of rapid, systematic and very consistent dismantlement of democracy. Look at this Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. It makes ministers into legislators who can introduce new laws without bothering to tell Parliament or anyone. My immediate reaction is why do we need it? Britain survived two world wars, the war with Napoleon, the Spanish Armada, not to mention the Cold War, when we were told at any moment we might have a nuclear world war, without any need for introducing this kind legislation, without the need for suspending our civil liberaties and introducing emergency powers. Why do we need it right now? This can make a dictatorship out of your country in no time.
Today’s situation is really grim. Major political parties have been completely taken in by the new EU project. None of them really opposes it. They have become very corrupt. Who is going to defend our freedoms? It looks like we are heading towards some kind of collapse, some kind of crisis. The most likely outcome is that there will be an economic collapse in Europe, which in due time is bound to happen with this growth of expenses and taxes. The inability to create a competitive environment, the overregulation of the economy, the bureaucratisation, it is going to lead to economic collapse. Particularly the introduction of the euro was a crazy idea. Currency is not supposed to be political.
I have no doubt about it. There will be a collapse of the European Union pretty much like the Soviet Union collapsed. But do not forget that when these things collapse they leave such devastation that it takes a generation to recover. Just think what will happen if it comes to an economic crisis. The recrimination between nations will be huge. It might come to blows. Look to the huge number of immigrants from Third World countries now living in Europe. This was promoted by the European Union. What will happen with them if there is an economic collapse? We will probably have, like in the Soviet Union at the end, so much ethnic strife that the mind boggles. In no other country were there such ethnic tensions as in the Soviet Union, except probably in Yugoslavia. So that is exactly what will happen here, too. We have to be prepared for that. This huge edifice of bureaucracy is going to collapse on our heads.
This is why, and I am very frank about it, the sooner we finish with the EU the better. The sooner it collapses the less damage it will have done to us and to other countries. But we have to be quick because the Eurocrats are moving very fast. It will be difficult to defeat them. Today it is still simple. If one million people march on Brussels today these guys will run away to the Bahamas. If tomorrow half of the British population refuses to pay its taxes, nothing will happen and no-one will go to jail. Today you can still do that. But I do not know what the situation will be tomorrow with a fully fledged Europol staffed by former Stasi or Securitate officers. Anything may happen.
We are losing time. We have to defeat them. We have to sit and think, work out a strategy in the shortest possible way to achieve maximum effect. Otherwise it will be too late. So what should I say? My conclusion is not optimistic. So far, despite the fact that we do have some anti-EU forces in almost every country, it is not enough. We are losing and we are wasting time.
More on this topic, see:
Czech President Warns Against Europeanism, 27 August 2005
Attachment Size
bukovsky-interview.mp3 1.76 MB
bukovsky-speech.mp3 7.11 MB
U.S. tax dollars for China nukes
by Joseph Farah
What would you say if I told you U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for at least $5 billion to help the totalitarian Communist Chinese government build 70 new nuclear plants in the next 13 years?
Would you believe it?
Would you say it is impossible?
Would you wonder why you've never heard any debate about this in our country?
Unfortunately, it is all very true. More than two years ago, the Export-Import Bank, an agency of your federal government, gave preliminary approval for a $5 billion subsidy to the China National Nuclear Corporation, an arm of the Communist government.
Why would the U.S. government do such a thing?
Actually, it is just what the Export-Import Bank does all the time – give your money to foreign governments and businesses as a way of subsidizing U.S. exports. Remarkably, we call this "free trade" in 2007. It's "free" because you pick up the tab.
In this case, the U.S. government is not interested in keeping jobs in the U.S. It is interested in helping to procure a lucrative contract for a multinational corporation called Westinghouse, which wants to be involved in building some of those 70 nuke plants in China.
To truly appreciate what a profoundly bad, not to mention unconstitutional, idea this is, consider the breadth of the political opposition to the plan.
Those opposed in Congress include Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, on the right, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, socialist of Vermont, on the left.
Understand that by subsidizing China's nuclear power industry we are also subsidizing – and approving – China's nuclear weapons industry. China has a long history of spreading nuclear weapons technology throughout the world.
CNNC is the Chinese government agency that oversees nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Beijing makes no distinction between peaceful uses of nuclear power and military uses.
As Timothy Carney reported in Human Events last month, "CNNC is a known serial proliferator of nuclear weapons materials. In the late 1990s, the U.S. intelligence agencies discovered that the CNNC had sold 5,000 ring magnets to Pakistan's A.Q. Khan Research Laboratory. Later, the CIA found that the CNNC sold Pakistan high-temperature furnaces. Both the furnaces and the ring magnets are crucial tools used in enriching uranium to produce fissionable – i.e., weapons-grade – uranium. Shortly after these sales, Pakistan test-fired its first nuclear weapon."
What's going on here?
What kind of madmen are running our country?
Why would we give 10 cents of U.S. taxpayer money to the Chinese government for any purpose – let alone the building of nuclear power plants that will have military and strategic value to a country that has already threatened us with nuclear annihilation?
Why do we need an Export-Import Bank giving away U.S. taxpayer dollars to any foreign entity?
I hope you have not become so desensitized to the irrationality of government that this report doesn't affect you in your heart and soul.
Something is terribly wrong with U.S. government policy. It's time for some sunshine. It's time to engage the people in this representative form of government. It's time for open debates out in public, not behind closed doors and in secret.
You killed the amnesty plan.
You killed the Dubai Ports deal.
You killed the nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court.
We can make a difference when we try.
It's time to make that kind of difference when it comes to hopelessly, misguided giveaways to tyrannical foreign governments.
What would you say if I told you U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for at least $5 billion to help the totalitarian Communist Chinese government build 70 new nuclear plants in the next 13 years?
Would you believe it?
Would you say it is impossible?
Would you wonder why you've never heard any debate about this in our country?
Unfortunately, it is all very true. More than two years ago, the Export-Import Bank, an agency of your federal government, gave preliminary approval for a $5 billion subsidy to the China National Nuclear Corporation, an arm of the Communist government.
Why would the U.S. government do such a thing?
Actually, it is just what the Export-Import Bank does all the time – give your money to foreign governments and businesses as a way of subsidizing U.S. exports. Remarkably, we call this "free trade" in 2007. It's "free" because you pick up the tab.
In this case, the U.S. government is not interested in keeping jobs in the U.S. It is interested in helping to procure a lucrative contract for a multinational corporation called Westinghouse, which wants to be involved in building some of those 70 nuke plants in China.
To truly appreciate what a profoundly bad, not to mention unconstitutional, idea this is, consider the breadth of the political opposition to the plan.
Those opposed in Congress include Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, on the right, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, socialist of Vermont, on the left.
Understand that by subsidizing China's nuclear power industry we are also subsidizing – and approving – China's nuclear weapons industry. China has a long history of spreading nuclear weapons technology throughout the world.
CNNC is the Chinese government agency that oversees nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Beijing makes no distinction between peaceful uses of nuclear power and military uses.
As Timothy Carney reported in Human Events last month, "CNNC is a known serial proliferator of nuclear weapons materials. In the late 1990s, the U.S. intelligence agencies discovered that the CNNC had sold 5,000 ring magnets to Pakistan's A.Q. Khan Research Laboratory. Later, the CIA found that the CNNC sold Pakistan high-temperature furnaces. Both the furnaces and the ring magnets are crucial tools used in enriching uranium to produce fissionable – i.e., weapons-grade – uranium. Shortly after these sales, Pakistan test-fired its first nuclear weapon."
What's going on here?
What kind of madmen are running our country?
Why would we give 10 cents of U.S. taxpayer money to the Chinese government for any purpose – let alone the building of nuclear power plants that will have military and strategic value to a country that has already threatened us with nuclear annihilation?
Why do we need an Export-Import Bank giving away U.S. taxpayer dollars to any foreign entity?
I hope you have not become so desensitized to the irrationality of government that this report doesn't affect you in your heart and soul.
Something is terribly wrong with U.S. government policy. It's time for some sunshine. It's time to engage the people in this representative form of government. It's time for open debates out in public, not behind closed doors and in secret.
You killed the amnesty plan.
You killed the Dubai Ports deal.
You killed the nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court.
We can make a difference when we try.
It's time to make that kind of difference when it comes to hopelessly, misguided giveaways to tyrannical foreign governments.
Tonkin Gulf II and the Guns of August?
Interesting article by Patrick Buchanan. Another website reports that the USS Enterprise in underway with orders that it will not be relieving one of the two carrier groups off Iran, it will be in addition to...(from Debka File)...
July 17, 2007
by Patrick Buchanen
Is the United States provoking war with Iran, to begin while the Congress is conveniently on its August recess?
One recalls that it was in August 1964, after the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater, that the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred.
Twice it was said, on Aug. 2 and Aug. 4, North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked the U.S. destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy in international waters. The U.S. Senate responded by voting 88 to 2 to authorize President Johnson to assist any Southeast Asian nation whose government was threatened by communist aggression.
The bombing of the North began, followed by the arrival of U.S. Marines. America's war was on.
As Congress prepares for its August recess, the probability of U.S. air strikes on Iran rises with each week. A third carrier, the USS Enterprise, and its battle group is joining the Nimitz and Stennis in the largest concentration of U.S. naval power ever off the coast of Iran.
And Tonkin Gulf II may have already occurred.
In Baghdad, on July 1, Gen. Kevin J. Bergner charged that Iranians planned the January raid in Karbala, using commandos in American-style uniforms, that resulted in the death of five U.S. soldiers.
As the New York Times reports, this "marks the first time that the United States has charged that Iranian officials have helped plan operations against American troops in Iraq and have had advance knowledge of specific attacks that have led to the death of American soldiers."
The Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards is using Hezbollah to train Shiites to attack our soldiers and providing them with enhanced IEDs that have killed scores of U.S. troops, Bergner charged. He says we have captured a veteran Hezbollah agent and documents pointing to direct Iranian complicity in the Karbala raid.
Iran has denounced the charge as "ridiculous." But the Senate has voted 97-0 to censure Iran for complicity in killing the Americans.
If what Bergner alleges is true, President Bush has not only the right but appears to have the blessing of Congress to attack Iran. And he now has the naval and air forces at hand. What is stopping him?
For it is surely not Congress, which buried a resolution last spring declaring that Bush must come to Congress before taking us into a new war in the Middle East. Congress appears to be signaling Bush: "If you want to hit Iran, you have the green light. No need to consult us."
Is this yet another abdication by Congress of its moral and constitutional duty to decide when and whether America goes to war?
And something smells awfully fishy here.
Iran has no interest in a war with the United States, which it seems to be toying with. Iran supports the pro-American Shia regime in Baghdad. And the al-Qaida umbrella group in Iraq, which is our mortal enemy, has just warned Iran it faces terror attacks if it does not stop supporting Shiites in Iraq.
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who leads the al-Qaida group known as the Islamic State in Iraq, says his fighters have been preparing for four years for war on Iran:
"We are giving the Persians, and especially the rulers of Iran, a two-month period to end all kinds of support for the Iraqi Shiite government and to stop direct and indirect intervention – otherwise a severe war is waiting for you," al-Baghdadi said in a 50-minute videotape.
Al-Baghdadi also warned Arab Sunnis in the region who do business with Shiites in Iran that they were inviting assassination.
Query: If Iran's ally, the Maliki government, is our ally, and if Iran's enemy, al-Qaida in Iraq, is our enemy, why would Iran use the Quds Force to attack Americans and risk U.S. retaliation?
Killing Americans in Iraq is not going to defeat the United States. But it could trigger heavy U.S. retaliation, not only on the Quds Force, but on Iran's nuclear facilities – and a war with the United States. Yet Iran's diplomatic behavior suggests it wishes to avoid such a war.
Another explanation comes to mind. Iran is not initiating, but is responding to U.S.-inspired attacks inside Iran, in the Kurdish north, the Arab southwest and the Baluchi southeast of its country. Was Karbala an attempted kidnapping to exchange U.S. soldiers for the five Iranian "diplomats" we are holding?
Has Bush secretly authorized covert attacks inside Iran? Are U.S. and Israeli agents in Kurdistan behind the attacks across the border to provoke Iran? On July 11, Iranian troops clashed with Kurd rebels inside Iran, and the Iranians fired artillery back into Iraq.
Why is Congress going on vacation? Why are a Democratic-controlled House and Senate not asking these questions in public hearings? Why is Congress letting Bush and Vice President Cheney decide whether we launch a third war in the Middle East?
Or is Congress in on it?
July 17, 2007
by Patrick Buchanen
Is the United States provoking war with Iran, to begin while the Congress is conveniently on its August recess?
One recalls that it was in August 1964, after the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater, that the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred.
Twice it was said, on Aug. 2 and Aug. 4, North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked the U.S. destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy in international waters. The U.S. Senate responded by voting 88 to 2 to authorize President Johnson to assist any Southeast Asian nation whose government was threatened by communist aggression.
The bombing of the North began, followed by the arrival of U.S. Marines. America's war was on.
As Congress prepares for its August recess, the probability of U.S. air strikes on Iran rises with each week. A third carrier, the USS Enterprise, and its battle group is joining the Nimitz and Stennis in the largest concentration of U.S. naval power ever off the coast of Iran.
And Tonkin Gulf II may have already occurred.
In Baghdad, on July 1, Gen. Kevin J. Bergner charged that Iranians planned the January raid in Karbala, using commandos in American-style uniforms, that resulted in the death of five U.S. soldiers.
As the New York Times reports, this "marks the first time that the United States has charged that Iranian officials have helped plan operations against American troops in Iraq and have had advance knowledge of specific attacks that have led to the death of American soldiers."
The Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards is using Hezbollah to train Shiites to attack our soldiers and providing them with enhanced IEDs that have killed scores of U.S. troops, Bergner charged. He says we have captured a veteran Hezbollah agent and documents pointing to direct Iranian complicity in the Karbala raid.
Iran has denounced the charge as "ridiculous." But the Senate has voted 97-0 to censure Iran for complicity in killing the Americans.
If what Bergner alleges is true, President Bush has not only the right but appears to have the blessing of Congress to attack Iran. And he now has the naval and air forces at hand. What is stopping him?
For it is surely not Congress, which buried a resolution last spring declaring that Bush must come to Congress before taking us into a new war in the Middle East. Congress appears to be signaling Bush: "If you want to hit Iran, you have the green light. No need to consult us."
Is this yet another abdication by Congress of its moral and constitutional duty to decide when and whether America goes to war?
And something smells awfully fishy here.
Iran has no interest in a war with the United States, which it seems to be toying with. Iran supports the pro-American Shia regime in Baghdad. And the al-Qaida umbrella group in Iraq, which is our mortal enemy, has just warned Iran it faces terror attacks if it does not stop supporting Shiites in Iraq.
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who leads the al-Qaida group known as the Islamic State in Iraq, says his fighters have been preparing for four years for war on Iran:
"We are giving the Persians, and especially the rulers of Iran, a two-month period to end all kinds of support for the Iraqi Shiite government and to stop direct and indirect intervention – otherwise a severe war is waiting for you," al-Baghdadi said in a 50-minute videotape.
Al-Baghdadi also warned Arab Sunnis in the region who do business with Shiites in Iran that they were inviting assassination.
Query: If Iran's ally, the Maliki government, is our ally, and if Iran's enemy, al-Qaida in Iraq, is our enemy, why would Iran use the Quds Force to attack Americans and risk U.S. retaliation?
Killing Americans in Iraq is not going to defeat the United States. But it could trigger heavy U.S. retaliation, not only on the Quds Force, but on Iran's nuclear facilities – and a war with the United States. Yet Iran's diplomatic behavior suggests it wishes to avoid such a war.
Another explanation comes to mind. Iran is not initiating, but is responding to U.S.-inspired attacks inside Iran, in the Kurdish north, the Arab southwest and the Baluchi southeast of its country. Was Karbala an attempted kidnapping to exchange U.S. soldiers for the five Iranian "diplomats" we are holding?
Has Bush secretly authorized covert attacks inside Iran? Are U.S. and Israeli agents in Kurdistan behind the attacks across the border to provoke Iran? On July 11, Iranian troops clashed with Kurd rebels inside Iran, and the Iranians fired artillery back into Iraq.
Why is Congress going on vacation? Why are a Democratic-controlled House and Senate not asking these questions in public hearings? Why is Congress letting Bush and Vice President Cheney decide whether we launch a third war in the Middle East?
Or is Congress in on it?
Saturday, July 07, 2007
The globalists vs. us all
Posted: June 29, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Andrew Longman
The creation of a permanent, slave underclass is the goal of the open-borders globalists, the global capitalists, and you would think liberals would not only realize this, but be incensed.
Consider the minimum wage as a doctrine. It was created and championed by liberals as a bulwark against in the boundless exploitation of the working and uneducated classes. Forged in the belly of the populist furnace, the minimum wage has been a constant of American society, begrudgingly accepted by conservatives as an unnecessary evil that seems to be … necessary. All the arguments in favor of it bear keenly on the illegal immigration debate, but we never hear Washington liberals publicly grasp it, because race-bait constructions have trumped the true "little guy" populism that used to be the heart and soul of Democrats.
If a man is paid $1.36 per hour to pick cabbage in California, we are told no one would possibly ever be paid $7.40 per hour, because Taco Bell needs those staff people critically. But the argument that "guest workers" are necessary because we must pay someone $1.36 per hour is, essentially, an argument that a slave-underclass must always be preserved. Yet it is frequently beltway Democrats who make the argument in favor of guest workers. This runs opposite of their supposed defense of the little guy and the preservation of social equality. Yet the huge economic disparity that drives workers across the border, polluting law and order and trammeling the sovereignty of territory, violates traditional conservatism as well. A borderless division between massive wealth and massive poverty is not something a true conservative would leave alone without putting an army in the middle.
So, what would happen if we closed the borders and made all cabbage pickin' California farms pay minimum wage to their workers? The profitability of corporate agri-business would go down, the price of cabbage would change by 2 percent, and the lowest classes of American society would all be able to afford Korean imported cars. That is not the desire of globalists, because it damages corporate profits and damages their plans for forced dissolution of American, Mexican and Canadian sovereignty. When we parse the oft-thrummed mantra of necessity for California cabbage pickers, we must hear instead that the globalists need a slave-underclass, denied equal rights, wages, and benefits, to perpetuate the dissolution of sovereignty and the padding of the bottom line. In short, illegal immigration is everything liberals are supposedly against and rabid globalists are for. But additionally, controlling the border would bring back law and order, territorial sovereignty, limiting of entitlement welfare – things traditional conservatives are for.
Why, then, do we have a bunch of Democrats pushing for open borders? Why do we have a bunch of Republicans supporting them?
The forced and obvious conclusion is that the people in Washington are neither Democrats nor Republicans. Some of those species are still found endangered, inhabiting the crevasses in the House of Representatives, but a few score mating pairs is not a lot. But there are no Republicans nor Democrats left in the Executive or the Senate. These people are exclusively globalists, and the next election is important because of that party.
So, the 2008 election will be fought out between globalists on one hand (Romney, Giuliani, McCain, Thompson, Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Biden and Dodd) and American sovereign parties on the other (Tancredo, Hunter, Paul and Kucinich). It will be a mistake and a mirage for Americans to believe any longer in the Democrat-Republican political theatre, which has been mass packaged by the media for our consumption. These Grammy-winning musicals only exist to play the masses off one another so the globalists, who have dictated the entire top money-tiers of both parties, may forge ahead with their plan to obliterate American sovereignty and crush the peoples beneath their plans for high profits and the global police state. To again gain the privilege of actually having the liberal-conservative contest, populists on both sides must throw out the tops of both parties. What happens in political reality today is a dumb show of convenience, that the puppeteers might install that most beautiful globalist who gets chosen "best actor."
Hope says that real people still vote in the primaries. We, The People, must make a vow not to be influenced by the big-money TV and standard media that seek to install yet another globalist actor candidate. We must hang tough for the real thing. And we must give our money to the Tancredos and the Kuciniches – both of whom are pariahs of their money-elite leadership.
When we look at the illegal-immigration debate through an example of the minimum wage, or other traditionally held positions, we see clearly that liberals in Washington are not liberals and conservatives in Washington are not conservatives. It is time we embrace that fact, recognize that they are treasonous to the sovereignty of the USA and start to work together to throw out all of them, regardless of their façade.
You may think the debate is left vs. right. It isn't. It's top vs. bottom.
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Andrew Longman
The creation of a permanent, slave underclass is the goal of the open-borders globalists, the global capitalists, and you would think liberals would not only realize this, but be incensed.
Consider the minimum wage as a doctrine. It was created and championed by liberals as a bulwark against in the boundless exploitation of the working and uneducated classes. Forged in the belly of the populist furnace, the minimum wage has been a constant of American society, begrudgingly accepted by conservatives as an unnecessary evil that seems to be … necessary. All the arguments in favor of it bear keenly on the illegal immigration debate, but we never hear Washington liberals publicly grasp it, because race-bait constructions have trumped the true "little guy" populism that used to be the heart and soul of Democrats.
If a man is paid $1.36 per hour to pick cabbage in California, we are told no one would possibly ever be paid $7.40 per hour, because Taco Bell needs those staff people critically. But the argument that "guest workers" are necessary because we must pay someone $1.36 per hour is, essentially, an argument that a slave-underclass must always be preserved. Yet it is frequently beltway Democrats who make the argument in favor of guest workers. This runs opposite of their supposed defense of the little guy and the preservation of social equality. Yet the huge economic disparity that drives workers across the border, polluting law and order and trammeling the sovereignty of territory, violates traditional conservatism as well. A borderless division between massive wealth and massive poverty is not something a true conservative would leave alone without putting an army in the middle.
So, what would happen if we closed the borders and made all cabbage pickin' California farms pay minimum wage to their workers? The profitability of corporate agri-business would go down, the price of cabbage would change by 2 percent, and the lowest classes of American society would all be able to afford Korean imported cars. That is not the desire of globalists, because it damages corporate profits and damages their plans for forced dissolution of American, Mexican and Canadian sovereignty. When we parse the oft-thrummed mantra of necessity for California cabbage pickers, we must hear instead that the globalists need a slave-underclass, denied equal rights, wages, and benefits, to perpetuate the dissolution of sovereignty and the padding of the bottom line. In short, illegal immigration is everything liberals are supposedly against and rabid globalists are for. But additionally, controlling the border would bring back law and order, territorial sovereignty, limiting of entitlement welfare – things traditional conservatives are for.
Why, then, do we have a bunch of Democrats pushing for open borders? Why do we have a bunch of Republicans supporting them?
The forced and obvious conclusion is that the people in Washington are neither Democrats nor Republicans. Some of those species are still found endangered, inhabiting the crevasses in the House of Representatives, but a few score mating pairs is not a lot. But there are no Republicans nor Democrats left in the Executive or the Senate. These people are exclusively globalists, and the next election is important because of that party.
So, the 2008 election will be fought out between globalists on one hand (Romney, Giuliani, McCain, Thompson, Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Biden and Dodd) and American sovereign parties on the other (Tancredo, Hunter, Paul and Kucinich). It will be a mistake and a mirage for Americans to believe any longer in the Democrat-Republican political theatre, which has been mass packaged by the media for our consumption. These Grammy-winning musicals only exist to play the masses off one another so the globalists, who have dictated the entire top money-tiers of both parties, may forge ahead with their plan to obliterate American sovereignty and crush the peoples beneath their plans for high profits and the global police state. To again gain the privilege of actually having the liberal-conservative contest, populists on both sides must throw out the tops of both parties. What happens in political reality today is a dumb show of convenience, that the puppeteers might install that most beautiful globalist who gets chosen "best actor."
Hope says that real people still vote in the primaries. We, The People, must make a vow not to be influenced by the big-money TV and standard media that seek to install yet another globalist actor candidate. We must hang tough for the real thing. And we must give our money to the Tancredos and the Kuciniches – both of whom are pariahs of their money-elite leadership.
When we look at the illegal-immigration debate through an example of the minimum wage, or other traditionally held positions, we see clearly that liberals in Washington are not liberals and conservatives in Washington are not conservatives. It is time we embrace that fact, recognize that they are treasonous to the sovereignty of the USA and start to work together to throw out all of them, regardless of their façade.
You may think the debate is left vs. right. It isn't. It's top vs. bottom.
'HILLARYCARE' IS ALREADY HERE
original article source unknown
June 28, 2007 -- THERE is no need to wait until a new president is elected next year for the great national health-care debate. It's underway right now, disguised as a rou tine extension of an immensely popular, non-controversial 10-year-old program of providing coverage to poor children. In fact, this proposal is the thin edge of the wedge to achieve the longtime goal of government-supplied universal health insurance and the suffocation of the private system.
The Senate Finance Committee was scheduled to mark up this portentous legislation expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) today, but disagreement over the size of the program and how to pay for it forced postponement. Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller's version would triple SCHIP's current five-year cost of $25 billion to $75 billion. That would grant federal largesse to more than just poor kids. An estimated 71 percent of all American children in families of four making as much as $82,000 a year would become eligible, with states also continuing present coverage of adults under SCHIP.
But where to find money to cover the massive cost? Senators of both parties want to raise tobacco taxes, but that well isn't bottomless, as existing taxes have reduced cigarette smoking. Instead, House Democrats want to take money from private elements of Medicare instituted by the Bush administration. The overall effect would make three out of four American children accustomed to relying on government care no matter what course their parents take. In sum, SCHIP turns out to be socialized medicine for "kids" (and many adults).
A principal sponsor of the $75 billion program is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose hand is detected in health-care struggles the past 15 years. After the Clinton administration's sweeping "Hillarycare" failed in 1994, the first lady miniaturized her goals by limiting coverage to poor children. Republicans, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, had lost their revolutionary zeal after the government shutdown of 1995 and accepted SCHIP as a fallback position at a beginning outlay of $4 billion a year. It was the bargaining chip given President Bill Clinton in return for him signing the Deficit Reduction Act of 1997.
SCHIP over the last decade has been a beloved "kids" program whose faults were overlooked. The federal government has granted waivers to permit 14 states to cover adults under SCHIP, which now cost $5 billion a year. Minnesota led the way, with 92 percent of money spent under the program going to adults.
Sen. Clinton proposed the massive expansion this year, furthering her promise of "step by step" advancement toward universal health care. Her proposal extends SCHIP to families at 400 percent of poverty (or $82,000 a year). Hatch is back again supporting a Democratic program along with Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Finance Committee's ranking Republican. But they want a mere $55 billion, compared with Rockefeller's $75 billion, causing the postponement of today's markup.
The Democratic congressional majority now faces the consequence of its "paygo" mandate to account for higher spending. The Senate's preference for tobacco taxes runs into the reality of reduced smoking typified by a 19 percent decline in New York City. More creative funding comes with Rep. Pete Stark's scheme in the House Ways and Means Committee for slashing the popular private Medicare program. That not only would fund an expanded SCHIP but move toward government monopoly over all health insurance.
An indirect but pervasive effect of Clinton's design would be the impact in families with government-insured children whose parents are covered privately. Would the children become accustomed to Washington taking care of them? Would the adults drop private insurance? The future is now for universal health-care coverage, and President Bush may soon face the decision of whether or not to veto it going into the election year.
June 28, 2007 -- THERE is no need to wait until a new president is elected next year for the great national health-care debate. It's underway right now, disguised as a rou tine extension of an immensely popular, non-controversial 10-year-old program of providing coverage to poor children. In fact, this proposal is the thin edge of the wedge to achieve the longtime goal of government-supplied universal health insurance and the suffocation of the private system.
The Senate Finance Committee was scheduled to mark up this portentous legislation expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) today, but disagreement over the size of the program and how to pay for it forced postponement. Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller's version would triple SCHIP's current five-year cost of $25 billion to $75 billion. That would grant federal largesse to more than just poor kids. An estimated 71 percent of all American children in families of four making as much as $82,000 a year would become eligible, with states also continuing present coverage of adults under SCHIP.
But where to find money to cover the massive cost? Senators of both parties want to raise tobacco taxes, but that well isn't bottomless, as existing taxes have reduced cigarette smoking. Instead, House Democrats want to take money from private elements of Medicare instituted by the Bush administration. The overall effect would make three out of four American children accustomed to relying on government care no matter what course their parents take. In sum, SCHIP turns out to be socialized medicine for "kids" (and many adults).
A principal sponsor of the $75 billion program is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose hand is detected in health-care struggles the past 15 years. After the Clinton administration's sweeping "Hillarycare" failed in 1994, the first lady miniaturized her goals by limiting coverage to poor children. Republicans, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, had lost their revolutionary zeal after the government shutdown of 1995 and accepted SCHIP as a fallback position at a beginning outlay of $4 billion a year. It was the bargaining chip given President Bill Clinton in return for him signing the Deficit Reduction Act of 1997.
SCHIP over the last decade has been a beloved "kids" program whose faults were overlooked. The federal government has granted waivers to permit 14 states to cover adults under SCHIP, which now cost $5 billion a year. Minnesota led the way, with 92 percent of money spent under the program going to adults.
Sen. Clinton proposed the massive expansion this year, furthering her promise of "step by step" advancement toward universal health care. Her proposal extends SCHIP to families at 400 percent of poverty (or $82,000 a year). Hatch is back again supporting a Democratic program along with Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Finance Committee's ranking Republican. But they want a mere $55 billion, compared with Rockefeller's $75 billion, causing the postponement of today's markup.
The Democratic congressional majority now faces the consequence of its "paygo" mandate to account for higher spending. The Senate's preference for tobacco taxes runs into the reality of reduced smoking typified by a 19 percent decline in New York City. More creative funding comes with Rep. Pete Stark's scheme in the House Ways and Means Committee for slashing the popular private Medicare program. That not only would fund an expanded SCHIP but move toward government monopoly over all health insurance.
An indirect but pervasive effect of Clinton's design would be the impact in families with government-insured children whose parents are covered privately. Would the children become accustomed to Washington taking care of them? Would the adults drop private insurance? The future is now for universal health-care coverage, and President Bush may soon face the decision of whether or not to veto it going into the election year.
Russian Diplomat Passes Fake $100 Bill
PORTSMOUTH — A Russian man attempted to pass off a phony $100 bill at the New Hampshire State Liquor store shortly before 8 p.m. Thursday, according to the store manager, who said a cashier discovered the bill was bogus.
No arrest was made, according to police, but the incident was the talk of the store because Russians are known to be staying in the city ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin's scheduled visit with President Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine, on Sunday.
Russian diplomat pulled overBush greets Griffin after landing for summit with PutinBush protestors may affect small town businessCounterfeit scams on rise Liquor store manager Mike Smith said the man, accompanied by four other Russian men, attempted to purchase two bottles of Scotch whiskey with the bum $100. The cashier used a special pen to mark the bill to test its authenticity.
"It turned a color that it's not supposed to, and when he saw that, he grabbed the bill back and left," said Smith.
Portsmouth police received a call from the liquor store that the man and his friends were on foot, headed to the nearby Holiday Inn. Police responded to the scene. A dispatch message on the police scanner said diplomatic immunity might be involved.
But Police Lt. Dante Puopolo said that diplomatic immunity was not invoked because police did not make any arrests. "We have no evidence of any kind," he said. "We don't have the $100 bill."
However, he said there are currently Russians staying in town who are entitled to diplomatic immunity. "Their version of the secret service are staying here in Portsmouth," he said. Putin will arrive at the Pease Air National Guard Base on Sunday en route to his summit with Bush.
Approximately a dozen Russian men were congregated in front of the Holiday Inn shortly after the incident Thursday night. One said he spoke no English but indicated he was there in connection with the Putin visit. The men went into the Holiday Inn shortly afterward.
No arrest was made, according to police, but the incident was the talk of the store because Russians are known to be staying in the city ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin's scheduled visit with President Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine, on Sunday.
Russian diplomat pulled overBush greets Griffin after landing for summit with PutinBush protestors may affect small town businessCounterfeit scams on rise Liquor store manager Mike Smith said the man, accompanied by four other Russian men, attempted to purchase two bottles of Scotch whiskey with the bum $100. The cashier used a special pen to mark the bill to test its authenticity.
"It turned a color that it's not supposed to, and when he saw that, he grabbed the bill back and left," said Smith.
Portsmouth police received a call from the liquor store that the man and his friends were on foot, headed to the nearby Holiday Inn. Police responded to the scene. A dispatch message on the police scanner said diplomatic immunity might be involved.
But Police Lt. Dante Puopolo said that diplomatic immunity was not invoked because police did not make any arrests. "We have no evidence of any kind," he said. "We don't have the $100 bill."
However, he said there are currently Russians staying in town who are entitled to diplomatic immunity. "Their version of the secret service are staying here in Portsmouth," he said. Putin will arrive at the Pease Air National Guard Base on Sunday en route to his summit with Bush.
Approximately a dozen Russian men were congregated in front of the Holiday Inn shortly after the incident Thursday night. One said he spoke no English but indicated he was there in connection with the Putin visit. The men went into the Holiday Inn shortly afterward.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Candidate Paul assigns reading to Giuliani
A Reuters story
Paul barely registers in opinion polls of Republicans hoping to win their party's nomination to contest the November 2008 presidential election.
An obstetrician-gynecologist from the Houston area, Paul frequently strays far outside the Republican mainstream.
He voted against the Iraq war resolution in 2002 and has proposed abolishing the Homeland Security Department and diminishing the Federal Reserve. His 1988 bid for president as the Libertarian candidate drew just slightly more than 400,000 votes nationwide.
Paul said it was irresponsible of Giuliani and other leaders to not examine the motivations of al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups.
Among the books on Paul's reading list were: "Dying to Win," which argues that suicide bombers only mobilize against an occupying force; "Blowback," which examines the unintended consequences of U.S. foreign policy; and the 9/11 Commission Report, which says that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was angered by the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
Another book on the list was "Imperial Hubris," whose author appeared at the press conference to offer support for Paul.
"Foreign policy is about protecting America," said author Michael Scheuer, who used to head the CIA's bin Laden unit. "Our foreign policy is doing the opposite."
A Giuliani campaign official could not confirm whether he had read any of the books on Paul's list.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Longshot Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Thursday gave front-runner Rudy Giuliani a list of foreign-policy books to back up his contention that attacks by Islamic militants are fueled by the U.S. presence in the Middle East.
"I'm giving Mr. Giuliani a reading assignment," the nine-term Texas congressman said as he stood behind a stack of books that included the report by the commission that examined the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.
Giuliani was mayor of New York when Islamic militants slammed two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, a role that has vaulted him to the front of the Republican presidential pack despite his liberal social positions.
"I don't think he's qualified to be president," Paul said of Giuliani. "If he was to read the book and report back to me and say, 'I've changed my mind,' I would reconsider."
Paul advocates a limited U.S. foreign policy, including an end to the war in Iraq and a reduction in troop levels abroad.
Paul said he was unfairly attacked during last week's debate by 10 Republican presidential hopefuls, when Giuliani dismissed his contention that U.S. policies in the Middle East had contributed to the attacks in New York and Washington.
"I don't think I've ever heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th," Giuliani said to wild applause.
A spokeswoman for Giuliani derided Paul's latest comments.
"It is extraordinary and reckless to claim that the United States invited the attacks on September 11th," Maria Comella said in an e-mail
Paul barely registers in opinion polls of Republicans hoping to win their party's nomination to contest the November 2008 presidential election.
An obstetrician-gynecologist from the Houston area, Paul frequently strays far outside the Republican mainstream.
He voted against the Iraq war resolution in 2002 and has proposed abolishing the Homeland Security Department and diminishing the Federal Reserve. His 1988 bid for president as the Libertarian candidate drew just slightly more than 400,000 votes nationwide.
Paul said it was irresponsible of Giuliani and other leaders to not examine the motivations of al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups.
Among the books on Paul's reading list were: "Dying to Win," which argues that suicide bombers only mobilize against an occupying force; "Blowback," which examines the unintended consequences of U.S. foreign policy; and the 9/11 Commission Report, which says that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was angered by the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
Another book on the list was "Imperial Hubris," whose author appeared at the press conference to offer support for Paul.
"Foreign policy is about protecting America," said author Michael Scheuer, who used to head the CIA's bin Laden unit. "Our foreign policy is doing the opposite."
A Giuliani campaign official could not confirm whether he had read any of the books on Paul's list.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Longshot Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Thursday gave front-runner Rudy Giuliani a list of foreign-policy books to back up his contention that attacks by Islamic militants are fueled by the U.S. presence in the Middle East.
"I'm giving Mr. Giuliani a reading assignment," the nine-term Texas congressman said as he stood behind a stack of books that included the report by the commission that examined the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.
Giuliani was mayor of New York when Islamic militants slammed two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, a role that has vaulted him to the front of the Republican presidential pack despite his liberal social positions.
"I don't think he's qualified to be president," Paul said of Giuliani. "If he was to read the book and report back to me and say, 'I've changed my mind,' I would reconsider."
Paul advocates a limited U.S. foreign policy, including an end to the war in Iraq and a reduction in troop levels abroad.
Paul said he was unfairly attacked during last week's debate by 10 Republican presidential hopefuls, when Giuliani dismissed his contention that U.S. policies in the Middle East had contributed to the attacks in New York and Washington.
"I don't think I've ever heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th," Giuliani said to wild applause.
A spokeswoman for Giuliani derided Paul's latest comments.
"It is extraordinary and reckless to claim that the United States invited the attacks on September 11th," Maria Comella said in an e-mail
Truth and Curiosity on The Trans-Texas Corridor
by Thom White
NOTE: Of interest is that Gov. Perry is focused on strengthening border security in his re-election campaign, but Wednesday he emphasized support for a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants and said a fence along the border with Mexico is a "preposterous" idea.
Perry also said proposed legislation designed to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants is divisive.
Texas Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has added his voice to those who believe Texas Governor Rick Perry should be investigated for a criminal violation of the Logan Act after he jetted off to meet with foreign elites yesterday at the Bilderberg Group conference in Istanbul.
Perry’s trip to Turkey is a clear violation of the Logan Act which states that “Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
Since Perry has not received authorization from Congress, the U.S. government or the American people to meet with Bilderberg luminaries, where policy that impacts the world is secretly discussed in a wholly undemocratic fashion, his visit represents a criminal act.
Texas Congressman Ron Paul and a whole lot of Texans believe Gov. Rick Perry should be criminally investigated for possible violation of the Logan Act for his participation in the secret meetings known as Bilderberger. The mainstream media, including cable, broadcast their conspiracy theories about these Bilderberger meetings: they're just a bunch of leaders getting together to discuss world events. The NAU is just a modern day rumor!
AUSTIN, Tex. February 5, 2007 -- Gov. Rick Perry announced the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) project in 2002. Perry's grand 4,000 mile scheme encompasses 11 separate corridors that will criss-cross the state. The corridors will cost $180 billion to build, will take 50 years to complete and, according to Gov. Perry, will greatly benefit Texans.
Although Gov. Perry says this massive project is being carried out to meet the needs of growth and commerce in Texas, critics say that Texans in fact don't want the Trans-Texas Corridor and see "TTC-35" (the first leg of the corridor running parallel to I-35) instead as the first piece of an international NAFTA-inspired highway, intended to increase trade with Mexico, and speed the importation of goods from Asia into Eastern North America.
The AP's Jim Vertuno reported that the purpose of the Trans-Texas Corridor is to "enable freight haulers to bypass heavily populated urban centers on straightshot highways that cut across the countryside." The corridors will also allow corporations to transport their toxic industrial waste through the state without directly endangering residents in populated urban and suburban areas.
Along with land, some critics say Americans in Texas are also surrendering another important possession: national sovereignty. Rick Perry's rail/truck/pipeline network for Texas is only the first segment of a new international corridor meant to bind Canada, Mexico, and these united States together into a previously unthinkable, massive superstate: The North American Union.
Dr. Robert A. Pastor's 2005 report to the Council on Foreign Relations includes the Trans-Texas Corridor as part of a grand network envisioned for a proposed "North American Community." According to the CFR plan, Canada, the USA, and Mexico will be joined together with a common perimeter and "harmonized" trade and security laws that will allow easier penetration of Chinese produce and manufactures to Eastern North America. Instead of going through Washington State, Long Beach, CA, or the Panama Canal, goods will be deposited at deep-sea loading stations off the southwest coast of Mexico (the port of Lazaro Cardenas), and then shipped on a non-stop route through Mexico, Texas and up to Kansas.
NOTE: Of interest is that Gov. Perry is focused on strengthening border security in his re-election campaign, but Wednesday he emphasized support for a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants and said a fence along the border with Mexico is a "preposterous" idea.
Perry also said proposed legislation designed to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants is divisive.
Texas Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has added his voice to those who believe Texas Governor Rick Perry should be investigated for a criminal violation of the Logan Act after he jetted off to meet with foreign elites yesterday at the Bilderberg Group conference in Istanbul.
Perry’s trip to Turkey is a clear violation of the Logan Act which states that “Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
Since Perry has not received authorization from Congress, the U.S. government or the American people to meet with Bilderberg luminaries, where policy that impacts the world is secretly discussed in a wholly undemocratic fashion, his visit represents a criminal act.
Texas Congressman Ron Paul and a whole lot of Texans believe Gov. Rick Perry should be criminally investigated for possible violation of the Logan Act for his participation in the secret meetings known as Bilderberger. The mainstream media, including cable, broadcast their conspiracy theories about these Bilderberger meetings: they're just a bunch of leaders getting together to discuss world events. The NAU is just a modern day rumor!
AUSTIN, Tex. February 5, 2007 -- Gov. Rick Perry announced the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) project in 2002. Perry's grand 4,000 mile scheme encompasses 11 separate corridors that will criss-cross the state. The corridors will cost $180 billion to build, will take 50 years to complete and, according to Gov. Perry, will greatly benefit Texans.
Although Gov. Perry says this massive project is being carried out to meet the needs of growth and commerce in Texas, critics say that Texans in fact don't want the Trans-Texas Corridor and see "TTC-35" (the first leg of the corridor running parallel to I-35) instead as the first piece of an international NAFTA-inspired highway, intended to increase trade with Mexico, and speed the importation of goods from Asia into Eastern North America.
The AP's Jim Vertuno reported that the purpose of the Trans-Texas Corridor is to "enable freight haulers to bypass heavily populated urban centers on straightshot highways that cut across the countryside." The corridors will also allow corporations to transport their toxic industrial waste through the state without directly endangering residents in populated urban and suburban areas.
Along with land, some critics say Americans in Texas are also surrendering another important possession: national sovereignty. Rick Perry's rail/truck/pipeline network for Texas is only the first segment of a new international corridor meant to bind Canada, Mexico, and these united States together into a previously unthinkable, massive superstate: The North American Union.
Dr. Robert A. Pastor's 2005 report to the Council on Foreign Relations includes the Trans-Texas Corridor as part of a grand network envisioned for a proposed "North American Community." According to the CFR plan, Canada, the USA, and Mexico will be joined together with a common perimeter and "harmonized" trade and security laws that will allow easier penetration of Chinese produce and manufactures to Eastern North America. Instead of going through Washington State, Long Beach, CA, or the Panama Canal, goods will be deposited at deep-sea loading stations off the southwest coast of Mexico (the port of Lazaro Cardenas), and then shipped on a non-stop route through Mexico, Texas and up to Kansas.
Illegitimacy has risen despite--indeed, because of--legal abortion
BY JOHN R. LOTT JR.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
The abortion debate usually centers on the morality of the act itself. But liberalizing abortion rules from 1969 to 1973 ignited vast social changes in America. With the perennial political debate over abortion again consuming the presidential campaign and the Supreme Court, it might be time to evaluate what Roe v. Wade has meant in practical terms.
One often misunderstood fact: Legal abortions just didn't start with Roe, or even with the five states that liberalized abortion laws in 1969 and 1970. Prior to Roe, women could have abortions when their lives or health were endangered. Doctors in some states, such as Kansas, had very liberal interpretations of what constituted danger to health. Nevertheless, Roe did substantially increase abortions, more than doubling the rate per live birth in the five years from 1972 to 1977. But many other changes occurred at the same time:
• A sharp increase in pre-marital sex.
• A sharp rise in out-of-wedlock births.
• A drop in the number of children placed for adoption.
• A decline in marriages that occur after the woman is pregnant.
Some of this might seem contradictory. Why would both the number of abortions and of out-of-wedlock births go up? If there were more illegitimate births, why were fewer children available for adoption?
As to the first puzzle, part of the answer lies in attitudes to premarital sex. With abortion seen as a backup, women as well as men became less careful in using contraceptives as well as more likely to have premarital sex. There were more unplanned pregnancies. But legal abortion did not mean every unplanned pregnancy led to abortion. After all, just because abortion is legal, does not mean that the decision is an easy one.
Many academic studies have shown that legalized abortion, by encouraging premarital sex, increased the number of unplanned births, even outweighing the reduction in unplanned births due to abortion. In the United States from the early 1970s, when abortion was liberalized, through the late 1980s, there was a tremendous increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock births, rising from an average of 5% of all births in 1965-69 to more than 16% two decades later (1985-1989). For blacks, the numbers soared from 35% to 62%. While not all of this rise can be attributed to liberalized abortion rules, it was nevertheless a key contributing factor.
With legalization and women not forced to go through with an unplanned pregnancy, a man might well expect his partner to have an abortion if a sexual encounter results in an unplanned pregnancy. But what happens if the woman refuses? Maybe she is morally opposed to abortion; or perhaps she thought she could have an abortion, but upon becoming pregnant, she decides that she can't go through with it. What happens then?
Many men, feeling tricked into unwanted fatherhood, will likely wash their hands of the affair altogether, thinking, "I never wanted a baby. It's her choice, so let her raise the baby herself." What is expected of men in this position has changed dramatically in the last four decades. The evidence shows that the greater availability of abortion largely ended "shotgun" marriages, where men felt obligated to marrying the woman.
What has happened to these babies of reluctant fathers? The mothers often end up raising the child on their own. Even as abortion has led to more out-of-wedlock births, it has also dramatically reduced adoptions of children born in America by two-parent families. Before Roe, when abortion was much more difficult, women who would have chosen an abortion but were unable to get one turned to adoption as their backup. After Roe, women who turned down an abortion were also the type who wanted to keep the child.
But all these changes--rising out-of-wedlock births, plummeting adoption rates, and the end of shotgun marriages--meant one thing: more single parent families. With work and other demands on their time, single parents, no matter how "wanted" their child may be, tend to devote less attention to their children than do married couples; after all, it's difficult for one person to spend as much time with a child as two people can.
From the beginning of the abortion debate, those favoring abortion have pointed to the social costs of "unwanted" children who simply won't get the attention of "wanted" ones. But there is a trade-off that has long been neglected. Abortion may eliminate "unwanted" children, but it increases out-of-wedlock births and single parenthood. Unfortunately, the social consequences of illegitimacy dominated.
Children born after liberalized abortion rules have suffered a series of problems from problems at school to more crime. The saddest fact is that it is the most vulnerable in society, poor blacks, who have suffered the most from these changes.
Liberalized abortion might have made life easier for many, but like sex itself sometimes, it has had many unintended consequences.
Mr. Lott is the author of "Freedomnomics,"
Tuesday, June 19, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
The abortion debate usually centers on the morality of the act itself. But liberalizing abortion rules from 1969 to 1973 ignited vast social changes in America. With the perennial political debate over abortion again consuming the presidential campaign and the Supreme Court, it might be time to evaluate what Roe v. Wade has meant in practical terms.
One often misunderstood fact: Legal abortions just didn't start with Roe, or even with the five states that liberalized abortion laws in 1969 and 1970. Prior to Roe, women could have abortions when their lives or health were endangered. Doctors in some states, such as Kansas, had very liberal interpretations of what constituted danger to health. Nevertheless, Roe did substantially increase abortions, more than doubling the rate per live birth in the five years from 1972 to 1977. But many other changes occurred at the same time:
• A sharp increase in pre-marital sex.
• A sharp rise in out-of-wedlock births.
• A drop in the number of children placed for adoption.
• A decline in marriages that occur after the woman is pregnant.
Some of this might seem contradictory. Why would both the number of abortions and of out-of-wedlock births go up? If there were more illegitimate births, why were fewer children available for adoption?
As to the first puzzle, part of the answer lies in attitudes to premarital sex. With abortion seen as a backup, women as well as men became less careful in using contraceptives as well as more likely to have premarital sex. There were more unplanned pregnancies. But legal abortion did not mean every unplanned pregnancy led to abortion. After all, just because abortion is legal, does not mean that the decision is an easy one.
Many academic studies have shown that legalized abortion, by encouraging premarital sex, increased the number of unplanned births, even outweighing the reduction in unplanned births due to abortion. In the United States from the early 1970s, when abortion was liberalized, through the late 1980s, there was a tremendous increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock births, rising from an average of 5% of all births in 1965-69 to more than 16% two decades later (1985-1989). For blacks, the numbers soared from 35% to 62%. While not all of this rise can be attributed to liberalized abortion rules, it was nevertheless a key contributing factor.
With legalization and women not forced to go through with an unplanned pregnancy, a man might well expect his partner to have an abortion if a sexual encounter results in an unplanned pregnancy. But what happens if the woman refuses? Maybe she is morally opposed to abortion; or perhaps she thought she could have an abortion, but upon becoming pregnant, she decides that she can't go through with it. What happens then?
Many men, feeling tricked into unwanted fatherhood, will likely wash their hands of the affair altogether, thinking, "I never wanted a baby. It's her choice, so let her raise the baby herself." What is expected of men in this position has changed dramatically in the last four decades. The evidence shows that the greater availability of abortion largely ended "shotgun" marriages, where men felt obligated to marrying the woman.
What has happened to these babies of reluctant fathers? The mothers often end up raising the child on their own. Even as abortion has led to more out-of-wedlock births, it has also dramatically reduced adoptions of children born in America by two-parent families. Before Roe, when abortion was much more difficult, women who would have chosen an abortion but were unable to get one turned to adoption as their backup. After Roe, women who turned down an abortion were also the type who wanted to keep the child.
But all these changes--rising out-of-wedlock births, plummeting adoption rates, and the end of shotgun marriages--meant one thing: more single parent families. With work and other demands on their time, single parents, no matter how "wanted" their child may be, tend to devote less attention to their children than do married couples; after all, it's difficult for one person to spend as much time with a child as two people can.
From the beginning of the abortion debate, those favoring abortion have pointed to the social costs of "unwanted" children who simply won't get the attention of "wanted" ones. But there is a trade-off that has long been neglected. Abortion may eliminate "unwanted" children, but it increases out-of-wedlock births and single parenthood. Unfortunately, the social consequences of illegitimacy dominated.
Children born after liberalized abortion rules have suffered a series of problems from problems at school to more crime. The saddest fact is that it is the most vulnerable in society, poor blacks, who have suffered the most from these changes.
Liberalized abortion might have made life easier for many, but like sex itself sometimes, it has had many unintended consequences.
Mr. Lott is the author of "Freedomnomics,"
Former U.N. chief Waldheim had admitted major powers knew he was Nazi even while he was UN leader
June 14, 2007
MSNBC: VIENNA, Austria - Kurt Waldheim, a former United Nations secretary-general and Austrian president who became tainted by revelations that he hid his past in Nazi Germany's officer corps, died Thursday aged 88.
The Austrian presidency and a Waldheim family spokesman revealed his death, saying it came after a short illness. The domestic APA news agency said he had died of heart failure, quoting Waldheim's son-in-law.
Waldheim admitted concealing his service with Hitler's Wehrmacht in the Balkans but always denied knowing of Nazi war crimes committed there at the time, including deportations of thousands of Greek Jews.
A significant number of top Nazis were Austrian, including Adolf Hitler.
"If my life story has contributed to a new approach to history (in Austria), then it is positive — of course at the price of damage to me personally," Waldheim said in an interview with Austrian daily Der Standard in January 2006.
He said the intelligence services of major powers certainly knew about his past when he was UN leader in 1971-82, but that his economy with the truth was in retrospect "certainly a mistake," while reiterating that he was fundamentally innocent.
Until 1986, Waldheim was largely seen as a somewhat aloof, bland statesman without skeletons in his closet, a man who had served a decade as U.N. secretary-general after a career in Austria's diplomatic service dating back to 1945.
During Austria's 1986 presidential election, newsmagazine Profil published his old military registration card with stamps suggesting he had belonged to the Nazi Brownshirts, Hitler's paramilitary street force, before World War II.
Profil said it had also found evidence Waldheim had served in the Balkans in 1942-45, much of this under General Alexander Lohr, who was executed for war crimes in 1947.
MSNBC: VIENNA, Austria - Kurt Waldheim, a former United Nations secretary-general and Austrian president who became tainted by revelations that he hid his past in Nazi Germany's officer corps, died Thursday aged 88.
The Austrian presidency and a Waldheim family spokesman revealed his death, saying it came after a short illness. The domestic APA news agency said he had died of heart failure, quoting Waldheim's son-in-law.
Waldheim admitted concealing his service with Hitler's Wehrmacht in the Balkans but always denied knowing of Nazi war crimes committed there at the time, including deportations of thousands of Greek Jews.
A significant number of top Nazis were Austrian, including Adolf Hitler.
"If my life story has contributed to a new approach to history (in Austria), then it is positive — of course at the price of damage to me personally," Waldheim said in an interview with Austrian daily Der Standard in January 2006.
He said the intelligence services of major powers certainly knew about his past when he was UN leader in 1971-82, but that his economy with the truth was in retrospect "certainly a mistake," while reiterating that he was fundamentally innocent.
Until 1986, Waldheim was largely seen as a somewhat aloof, bland statesman without skeletons in his closet, a man who had served a decade as U.N. secretary-general after a career in Austria's diplomatic service dating back to 1945.
During Austria's 1986 presidential election, newsmagazine Profil published his old military registration card with stamps suggesting he had belonged to the Nazi Brownshirts, Hitler's paramilitary street force, before World War II.
Profil said it had also found evidence Waldheim had served in the Balkans in 1942-45, much of this under General Alexander Lohr, who was executed for war crimes in 1947.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Will Congress Turn Its Back on You When It Comes to Immigration?
a great article on how alarming this bill really is...
By R. Cort Kirkwood
Way back in 1986, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), then, as now, the principal agent of leviathan leftism in the Senate, sponsored an immigration bill. Then, as now, illegal aliens had flooded the country. And then, as now, the Senate had an answer: amnesty. Kennedy said a few things worth remembering: “This amnesty will give citizenship to only 1.1 to 1.3 million illegal aliens. We will secure the borders henceforth. We will never again bring forward another amnesty bill like this.”
“Never again” is a mighty long time, much longer than the 21 years that have elapsed since Kennedy made his fulsome promise. Illegal aliens are 10 times the number they were then. Americans are angry about them, want to build a wall at what used to be the border with Mexico, and seek punishment for employers who hire illegals. Legislators such as Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., have proposed legislation to do those things.
Yet now, Kennedy, with President Bush, offers the “compromise” hatched in the Senate on May 17, while the U.S. House of Representatives, shunning Tancredo and his supporters, cobbled together the STRIVE Act (H.R. 1645). Though the Senate bill’s sponsors deny the truth, Rep. Elton Gallegly of California quickly summed up what the Senate’s monstrosity is: “amnesty, amnesty, and amnesty,” for at least 12 million aliens who illegally crossed the border with Mexico.
That apt description also fits the STRIVE bill. Both bills, Americans are told, “solve” the problem of illegal immigration, which legislators promised to do, in an efficient if novel and bold manner. In mid-May, we learned just how bold the Senate solution was: it would stop illegal immigration and deal with illegal aliens by legalizing the 12 million illegals, and, for all intents and purposes, dissolving the border with Mexico.
The ultimate object of the political elites pushing amnesty is not simply amnesty to legalize the illegals, of course, but something far more subversive, given the language of the STRIVE bill. “Immigration reform” is a Trojan horse in the plan to create a North American Union modeled after the European Union.*
Reform or Revolution?
“Reform,” of course, is the word politicians use when they want to slip one by the people who elected them, and on that note it’s worth rehearsing the old adage that Americans are safest when Congress has adjourned. The immigration legislation before the Senate, and the so-called STRIVE bill before the House, prove that one a dozen times over.
The Senate “compromise” was announced by Ted Kennedy, who was surrounded by nine senators (seven of them Republican!) and two Bush administration Cabinet secretaries. President Bush swiftly burbled his approbation: “I want to thank the members of the Senate who worked hard [on the compromise legislation]. I appreciate the leadership shown on both sides of the aisle.” He added: “Immigration is a tough issue for a lot of Americans. The agreement reached today is one that will help enforce our borders, but equally importantly, it will treat people with respect. This is a bill where people who live here in our country will be treated without amnesty, but without animosity.”
The president lied. Americans can only hope that patriotic members of Congress derail this train before it leaves the station. If the Senate bill passes intact, or in some invidious amalgamation with the STRIVE bill in the House, we can say hasta la vista to the border with Mexico. Unsurprisingly, the world’s greatest deliberative body did not have a copy of their 380-page bill ready for public inspection, but enough details have emerged to let us know that if stopping illegal immigration is its purpose, it’s a dog that just won’t hunt.
According to the Associated Press, the bill’s major provisions fall into four categories. Perhaps the bill’s worst provisions apply to illegal aliens already here. “They could come forward immediately and receive probationary legal status,” AP reports, and the bill creates a new “four-year ‘Z’ visa” for all illegals who landed here before January 1. Illegals can “adjust status to lawful permanent residence” simply by paying a $5,000 fine, but the head of a family must first return home. How the government would ensure these people return home is anyone’s guess, given that it claims it cannot deport them now, but at any rate, the bill also permits anyone under 30, brought here as a minor, to procure a green card in three years instead of eight. “Undocumented farmworkers who can demonstrate they have worked 150 hours or three years in agriculture can apply for green cards.” But green cards for “Z visa” holders won’t be issued until the border and workplace security measures are in place, which will take about 18 months.
The bill also includes a new “guest-worker” program. These workers will hold “Y” visas, renewable three times. Nearly a half-million could get them initially, but that figure will change “with annual adjustments based on market fluctuations.” The bill requires a worker to go home before renewing it, but again, one wonders how or whether the government will enforce this provision.
Nor does the bill forget “future immigrants,” and it will continue, at least partially, the insidious practice of “chain migration,” which enables an immigrant to pack his entire family across the border. Though an immigrant could bring a spouse and minor child, he could not bring adult children and siblings.
The bill simply assumes a line of customers from the border to Mexico City. The government will pass out 380,000 visas a year “based on a point system, with about 50 percent based on employment criteria, 25 percent based on education, 15 percent on English proficiency and 10 percent on family connections.” This last measure upsets liberals and some religious activists because “family unification principles,” leftist House Speaker Nancy Pelosi avers, “have been fundamental to American immigration.”
As border security goes, the bill would require the federal government to hire 18,000 new border patrol agents, build 370 miles of fence along the border with Mexico, create 200 miles of vehicle barriers and take other security measures, including installing radar and camera towers, adding unmanned aerial vehicles and banning the catch-and-release policy for illegal aliens nabbed at the border. The bill would also require providing for the detention of 27,500 illegals per day annually and creating identification measures to prevent them from working.
As far as work goes, the bill would require employers to verify, electronically, the eligibility of new employees, and it would increase penalties for employers who break the law.
What the bill doesn’t explain, of course, is how any of this benefits the American people. Then again, the debate over immigration always turns on what’s good for the immigrants, not what’s good for the American people. That might be one reason, as the Washington Post reported, the Senate gave militant Hispanic groups — “Latinos” in the euphemistic jargon of the immigration debate — “virtual veto power” over the bill.
Reported the Post,
When Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) declared last week that unnamed “stakeholders” would decide whether Congress overhauls immigration law this year, Latino organizations in Washington understood exactly what he meant.
After laboring in obscurity for decades, groups such as the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the National Immigration Forum are virtually being granted veto power over perhaps the biggest domestic issue coming before Congress this year....
“There’s a real sense that the Latino community is key to the solution in this debate, so now they are reaching out to us more than ever,” said Eric Gutierrez, lead lobbyist for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF. “Neither party wants to make a misstep politically.”
Such groups were practically in the room yesterday, maintaining contact as Democratic and Republican senators tried to hammer out a new immigration bill.
The National Council of La Raza is just one of many “Latino” groups whose militant policies are starkly anti-American and baldly racist, yet Senator Kennedy just as frankly admitted such groups controlled the bill.
The long and short of the bill is this: most of its provisions benefit illegal aliens, not Americans. A greater burden is placed on employers to ferret out illegals, who shouldn’t be here in the first place, for instance, and the bill does not address some other important issues.
Writing at the website of National Review, George Borjas at Harvard University explained what the bill really means: “Any ‘reform’ that gives amnesty to 12 million illegal immigrants without taking care of the underlying illegal-immigration problem is a lemon. After all, what guarantees that the current batch of 12 million illegal immigrants will not be replaced by another 12 million in just a few years? What guarantees that guest workers will not stay illegally in the United States after their visa expires? What guarantees that border enforcement will be taken seriously by the Bush administration in the next two years or by the Democratic administration after that?”
Borjas asks a key question: what guarantees that the illegals who are supposed to go back home and apply for legal status will leave? Consider this remark from one illegal immigrant who spoke to Agence France Presse. “I don’t really understand that much about the bill,” he said, “but I’d have to be crazy to go back to Mexico to apply for visa now that I am already in the US. They wouldn’t give me a visa there.” Smart thinking. Surely, this muchacho isn’t the only one of his ilk, and just as surely no one believes the head of a household will pack up and leave his family to return home and begin the long process of legalization. On that count alone, the bill is absurd. Its premise is that people with no respect for current immigration law will respect its reincarnation. Truth is, if they do not obey the law now, they will not obey it in the future.
So the answers to Borjas’ questions, to borrow from Gallegly, are nothing, nothing, and nothing. Americans have no guarantee that illegal aliens won’t continue surging across the border and set up another crisis in five or 10 years requiring yet another “reform” that is actually amnesty.
“An amnesty is an amnesty,” Borjas wrote, “no matter how it is packaged and spun. The guest-worker program will surely enrich employers, but will exacerbate the downward trajectory in the economic status of poorer workers.” This, of course, doesn’t matter to the elites, who claim they need those poor workers “to do the jobs Americans won’t do.”
The Real Plan: North American Union
Of course, the United States doesn’t “need” to legalize 12 million illegal aliens for a non-existent labor shortage, which raises the question of why the political elite want to do so. On VDARE.com, immigration analyst Juan Mann, who also runs the DeportAliens.com website, explained the amnesty clauses in the STRIVE bill and something even more ominous: its creation of a supranational border-control policy. Among the amnesty provisions in STRIVE, are a new worker program, and amnesty for children under 16 years old, farm and forestry workers, and illegal aliens related to victims killed on 9/11. Persecuted religious minorities will receive enhanced asylum and the bill also creates a non-immigrant worker program.
Still, Mann wrote, “My advice [is to] keep your eye on the ball … and the ball is called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) plan.” The STRIVE Act would move us closer to a common North American passport, he concludes, “but even more radical, H.R. 1645 also intends a common immigration policy for the United States, Canada and Mexico.” The explanation for the continental immigration policy appears in Section 113. Apparently, Congress is no longer concerned with American national security; the section is titled, “Reports on Improving the Exchange of Information on North American Security.”
Section 113 requires “developing and implementing an immigration security strategy for North America that works toward the development of a common security perimeter by enhancing technical assistance for programs and systems to support advance automated reporting and risk targeting of international passengers.”
Stop the Insanity
But that isn’t all. Section 113 mandates “working with Canada and Mexico to encourage foreign governments to enact laws to combat alien smuggling and trafficking, and laws to forbid the use and manufacture of fraudulent travel documents and to promote information sharing.” Incredibly, the section also requires exploring methods for Canada, Mexico, and the United States to waive visa requirements for nationals and citizens of the same foreign countries.
In the post-9/11 world, one wonders what would possess any thinking member of Congress to suggest waiving visa requirements for any foreign national, much less those flowing across a border completely lacking security. No one knows how many terrorists have crossed the border with Mexico since 9/11. If the purpose of immigration legislation is securing the borders, waiving visa requirements certainly won’t help if foreigners can cross them freely without harassment. Then again, the United States will not have borders. Rather, it will have a common “security perimeter,” within which any foreign national from any country could travel once the SPP waives visa requirements. Nothing would stop a terrorist from landing in a country within the “security perimeter,” but even if by some miracle the countries within the security perimeter were good partners in “perimeter control,” American sovereignty will still have been lost.
Having parsed the gobbledygook, Mann rightly asks, “What exactly will be the ‘immigration security strategy for North America?’ And will this new regional immigration policy have anything whatsoever to do with the interests of the United States?”
Such an “immigration strategy” is not in the interests of the United States. It is, however, in the interests of the global corporate and political elites who want to create the North American superstate. They can accomplish that by altering the relationship between the United States and its neighbors, i.e., by erasing the borders.
That is why neither bill flatly suggests deporting illegal aliens, but rather simply accepts their ubiquity, the excuses being that the government could not deport them if it wanted to, but it doesn’t want to anyway because “they do the jobs Americans won’t do.” Again, Borjas and others have repeatedly refuted this falsehood, which means the politicians pushing “immigration reform” have something else in mind. That would be the SPP.
So the real purpose of both bills is not stopping illegal immigration, but exacerbating it by legalizing the criminal aliens already here, which requires convincing Americans their economy cannot survive without them. And once these 12 million are legalized, others will get the message. As well, “guest-worker” provisions would create an unimpeded flow of Mexicans into the United States, which would lower wages to the benefit of the SPP’s corporate and political backers.
Thus does the seemingly unsolvable “crisis” of immigration provide the opportunity the elites require to take the next irreversible step toward the North American Union. Without borders, illegal immigration is no problem. And neither are American law, sovereignty, and citizenship, which currently thwart the political and corporate elites pushing these two amnesty bills.
The immigration legislation before Congress casts the die not only for cultural and national ruin, but also for North American Union. It would dissolve the United States. The American people can stop it if they wish, but how badly they wish to stop it is another matter. Some senators said they will vote for the bill because constituents are silent about it. If true, the country is lurching toward ruin faster than the most gloomy pessimist might think, which means now is the time for the American remnant to scale the ramparts. Recalling Kennedy’s infamous promise back in 1986, now is the time to say “never again.” And mean it. This treason can be stopped.
By R. Cort Kirkwood
Way back in 1986, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), then, as now, the principal agent of leviathan leftism in the Senate, sponsored an immigration bill. Then, as now, illegal aliens had flooded the country. And then, as now, the Senate had an answer: amnesty. Kennedy said a few things worth remembering: “This amnesty will give citizenship to only 1.1 to 1.3 million illegal aliens. We will secure the borders henceforth. We will never again bring forward another amnesty bill like this.”
“Never again” is a mighty long time, much longer than the 21 years that have elapsed since Kennedy made his fulsome promise. Illegal aliens are 10 times the number they were then. Americans are angry about them, want to build a wall at what used to be the border with Mexico, and seek punishment for employers who hire illegals. Legislators such as Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., have proposed legislation to do those things.
Yet now, Kennedy, with President Bush, offers the “compromise” hatched in the Senate on May 17, while the U.S. House of Representatives, shunning Tancredo and his supporters, cobbled together the STRIVE Act (H.R. 1645). Though the Senate bill’s sponsors deny the truth, Rep. Elton Gallegly of California quickly summed up what the Senate’s monstrosity is: “amnesty, amnesty, and amnesty,” for at least 12 million aliens who illegally crossed the border with Mexico.
That apt description also fits the STRIVE bill. Both bills, Americans are told, “solve” the problem of illegal immigration, which legislators promised to do, in an efficient if novel and bold manner. In mid-May, we learned just how bold the Senate solution was: it would stop illegal immigration and deal with illegal aliens by legalizing the 12 million illegals, and, for all intents and purposes, dissolving the border with Mexico.
The ultimate object of the political elites pushing amnesty is not simply amnesty to legalize the illegals, of course, but something far more subversive, given the language of the STRIVE bill. “Immigration reform” is a Trojan horse in the plan to create a North American Union modeled after the European Union.*
Reform or Revolution?
“Reform,” of course, is the word politicians use when they want to slip one by the people who elected them, and on that note it’s worth rehearsing the old adage that Americans are safest when Congress has adjourned. The immigration legislation before the Senate, and the so-called STRIVE bill before the House, prove that one a dozen times over.
The Senate “compromise” was announced by Ted Kennedy, who was surrounded by nine senators (seven of them Republican!) and two Bush administration Cabinet secretaries. President Bush swiftly burbled his approbation: “I want to thank the members of the Senate who worked hard [on the compromise legislation]. I appreciate the leadership shown on both sides of the aisle.” He added: “Immigration is a tough issue for a lot of Americans. The agreement reached today is one that will help enforce our borders, but equally importantly, it will treat people with respect. This is a bill where people who live here in our country will be treated without amnesty, but without animosity.”
The president lied. Americans can only hope that patriotic members of Congress derail this train before it leaves the station. If the Senate bill passes intact, or in some invidious amalgamation with the STRIVE bill in the House, we can say hasta la vista to the border with Mexico. Unsurprisingly, the world’s greatest deliberative body did not have a copy of their 380-page bill ready for public inspection, but enough details have emerged to let us know that if stopping illegal immigration is its purpose, it’s a dog that just won’t hunt.
According to the Associated Press, the bill’s major provisions fall into four categories. Perhaps the bill’s worst provisions apply to illegal aliens already here. “They could come forward immediately and receive probationary legal status,” AP reports, and the bill creates a new “four-year ‘Z’ visa” for all illegals who landed here before January 1. Illegals can “adjust status to lawful permanent residence” simply by paying a $5,000 fine, but the head of a family must first return home. How the government would ensure these people return home is anyone’s guess, given that it claims it cannot deport them now, but at any rate, the bill also permits anyone under 30, brought here as a minor, to procure a green card in three years instead of eight. “Undocumented farmworkers who can demonstrate they have worked 150 hours or three years in agriculture can apply for green cards.” But green cards for “Z visa” holders won’t be issued until the border and workplace security measures are in place, which will take about 18 months.
The bill also includes a new “guest-worker” program. These workers will hold “Y” visas, renewable three times. Nearly a half-million could get them initially, but that figure will change “with annual adjustments based on market fluctuations.” The bill requires a worker to go home before renewing it, but again, one wonders how or whether the government will enforce this provision.
Nor does the bill forget “future immigrants,” and it will continue, at least partially, the insidious practice of “chain migration,” which enables an immigrant to pack his entire family across the border. Though an immigrant could bring a spouse and minor child, he could not bring adult children and siblings.
The bill simply assumes a line of customers from the border to Mexico City. The government will pass out 380,000 visas a year “based on a point system, with about 50 percent based on employment criteria, 25 percent based on education, 15 percent on English proficiency and 10 percent on family connections.” This last measure upsets liberals and some religious activists because “family unification principles,” leftist House Speaker Nancy Pelosi avers, “have been fundamental to American immigration.”
As border security goes, the bill would require the federal government to hire 18,000 new border patrol agents, build 370 miles of fence along the border with Mexico, create 200 miles of vehicle barriers and take other security measures, including installing radar and camera towers, adding unmanned aerial vehicles and banning the catch-and-release policy for illegal aliens nabbed at the border. The bill would also require providing for the detention of 27,500 illegals per day annually and creating identification measures to prevent them from working.
As far as work goes, the bill would require employers to verify, electronically, the eligibility of new employees, and it would increase penalties for employers who break the law.
What the bill doesn’t explain, of course, is how any of this benefits the American people. Then again, the debate over immigration always turns on what’s good for the immigrants, not what’s good for the American people. That might be one reason, as the Washington Post reported, the Senate gave militant Hispanic groups — “Latinos” in the euphemistic jargon of the immigration debate — “virtual veto power” over the bill.
Reported the Post,
When Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) declared last week that unnamed “stakeholders” would decide whether Congress overhauls immigration law this year, Latino organizations in Washington understood exactly what he meant.
After laboring in obscurity for decades, groups such as the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the National Immigration Forum are virtually being granted veto power over perhaps the biggest domestic issue coming before Congress this year....
“There’s a real sense that the Latino community is key to the solution in this debate, so now they are reaching out to us more than ever,” said Eric Gutierrez, lead lobbyist for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF. “Neither party wants to make a misstep politically.”
Such groups were practically in the room yesterday, maintaining contact as Democratic and Republican senators tried to hammer out a new immigration bill.
The National Council of La Raza is just one of many “Latino” groups whose militant policies are starkly anti-American and baldly racist, yet Senator Kennedy just as frankly admitted such groups controlled the bill.
The long and short of the bill is this: most of its provisions benefit illegal aliens, not Americans. A greater burden is placed on employers to ferret out illegals, who shouldn’t be here in the first place, for instance, and the bill does not address some other important issues.
Writing at the website of National Review, George Borjas at Harvard University explained what the bill really means: “Any ‘reform’ that gives amnesty to 12 million illegal immigrants without taking care of the underlying illegal-immigration problem is a lemon. After all, what guarantees that the current batch of 12 million illegal immigrants will not be replaced by another 12 million in just a few years? What guarantees that guest workers will not stay illegally in the United States after their visa expires? What guarantees that border enforcement will be taken seriously by the Bush administration in the next two years or by the Democratic administration after that?”
Borjas asks a key question: what guarantees that the illegals who are supposed to go back home and apply for legal status will leave? Consider this remark from one illegal immigrant who spoke to Agence France Presse. “I don’t really understand that much about the bill,” he said, “but I’d have to be crazy to go back to Mexico to apply for visa now that I am already in the US. They wouldn’t give me a visa there.” Smart thinking. Surely, this muchacho isn’t the only one of his ilk, and just as surely no one believes the head of a household will pack up and leave his family to return home and begin the long process of legalization. On that count alone, the bill is absurd. Its premise is that people with no respect for current immigration law will respect its reincarnation. Truth is, if they do not obey the law now, they will not obey it in the future.
So the answers to Borjas’ questions, to borrow from Gallegly, are nothing, nothing, and nothing. Americans have no guarantee that illegal aliens won’t continue surging across the border and set up another crisis in five or 10 years requiring yet another “reform” that is actually amnesty.
“An amnesty is an amnesty,” Borjas wrote, “no matter how it is packaged and spun. The guest-worker program will surely enrich employers, but will exacerbate the downward trajectory in the economic status of poorer workers.” This, of course, doesn’t matter to the elites, who claim they need those poor workers “to do the jobs Americans won’t do.”
The Real Plan: North American Union
Of course, the United States doesn’t “need” to legalize 12 million illegal aliens for a non-existent labor shortage, which raises the question of why the political elite want to do so. On VDARE.com, immigration analyst Juan Mann, who also runs the DeportAliens.com website, explained the amnesty clauses in the STRIVE bill and something even more ominous: its creation of a supranational border-control policy. Among the amnesty provisions in STRIVE, are a new worker program, and amnesty for children under 16 years old, farm and forestry workers, and illegal aliens related to victims killed on 9/11. Persecuted religious minorities will receive enhanced asylum and the bill also creates a non-immigrant worker program.
Still, Mann wrote, “My advice [is to] keep your eye on the ball … and the ball is called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) plan.” The STRIVE Act would move us closer to a common North American passport, he concludes, “but even more radical, H.R. 1645 also intends a common immigration policy for the United States, Canada and Mexico.” The explanation for the continental immigration policy appears in Section 113. Apparently, Congress is no longer concerned with American national security; the section is titled, “Reports on Improving the Exchange of Information on North American Security.”
Section 113 requires “developing and implementing an immigration security strategy for North America that works toward the development of a common security perimeter by enhancing technical assistance for programs and systems to support advance automated reporting and risk targeting of international passengers.”
Stop the Insanity
But that isn’t all. Section 113 mandates “working with Canada and Mexico to encourage foreign governments to enact laws to combat alien smuggling and trafficking, and laws to forbid the use and manufacture of fraudulent travel documents and to promote information sharing.” Incredibly, the section also requires exploring methods for Canada, Mexico, and the United States to waive visa requirements for nationals and citizens of the same foreign countries.
In the post-9/11 world, one wonders what would possess any thinking member of Congress to suggest waiving visa requirements for any foreign national, much less those flowing across a border completely lacking security. No one knows how many terrorists have crossed the border with Mexico since 9/11. If the purpose of immigration legislation is securing the borders, waiving visa requirements certainly won’t help if foreigners can cross them freely without harassment. Then again, the United States will not have borders. Rather, it will have a common “security perimeter,” within which any foreign national from any country could travel once the SPP waives visa requirements. Nothing would stop a terrorist from landing in a country within the “security perimeter,” but even if by some miracle the countries within the security perimeter were good partners in “perimeter control,” American sovereignty will still have been lost.
Having parsed the gobbledygook, Mann rightly asks, “What exactly will be the ‘immigration security strategy for North America?’ And will this new regional immigration policy have anything whatsoever to do with the interests of the United States?”
Such an “immigration strategy” is not in the interests of the United States. It is, however, in the interests of the global corporate and political elites who want to create the North American superstate. They can accomplish that by altering the relationship between the United States and its neighbors, i.e., by erasing the borders.
That is why neither bill flatly suggests deporting illegal aliens, but rather simply accepts their ubiquity, the excuses being that the government could not deport them if it wanted to, but it doesn’t want to anyway because “they do the jobs Americans won’t do.” Again, Borjas and others have repeatedly refuted this falsehood, which means the politicians pushing “immigration reform” have something else in mind. That would be the SPP.
So the real purpose of both bills is not stopping illegal immigration, but exacerbating it by legalizing the criminal aliens already here, which requires convincing Americans their economy cannot survive without them. And once these 12 million are legalized, others will get the message. As well, “guest-worker” provisions would create an unimpeded flow of Mexicans into the United States, which would lower wages to the benefit of the SPP’s corporate and political backers.
Thus does the seemingly unsolvable “crisis” of immigration provide the opportunity the elites require to take the next irreversible step toward the North American Union. Without borders, illegal immigration is no problem. And neither are American law, sovereignty, and citizenship, which currently thwart the political and corporate elites pushing these two amnesty bills.
The immigration legislation before Congress casts the die not only for cultural and national ruin, but also for North American Union. It would dissolve the United States. The American people can stop it if they wish, but how badly they wish to stop it is another matter. Some senators said they will vote for the bill because constituents are silent about it. If true, the country is lurching toward ruin faster than the most gloomy pessimist might think, which means now is the time for the American remnant to scale the ramparts. Recalling Kennedy’s infamous promise back in 1986, now is the time to say “never again.” And mean it. This treason can be stopped.
Gouging by the Oil Industry? More likely, your government
by Jeffrey Robbins
Some interesting info from article I came across over weekend. Doesn't get to specifics of the environmental regs, but helpful in understanding why the government is the problem in regards to gasoline prices. Write your local congressman and Senators.
One gallon of oil can produce up to 2/3 gallon of gasoline pending formulation, grade of octane desired, etc.
Between 1977 and 2005, the rate of return on investment in gas refining was <7% (Carol Dahl, economist, Colorado School of Mines) compared to >11.5% for the S&P 500 Industrials.
From 1994-2003 refiners spent $47.4 Billion just to bring existing refineries up to compliance with environmental regs.
1980 U.S. had 300+ refineries. Today, less than 150!
In 1990 there were still 194.
Even with the government enacting such legislation, U.S. refiners have managed to grow refining capacity by about 1%/year over past decade by doing small add-ons at existing refineries.
Highest state tax is NY at 60.8 per gallon. Nationwide average was 45.8 as of spring 2007. It is estimated that the oil industry is making about .13 per gallon-some estimates are closer to .10. So all states with one exception, Alaska, are making more in tax revenue per gallon than the oil companies are in profits!
The Cato Institute points out that federal govt mandates oil refiners use at least 4 Billion gallons of ethanol regardless of cost of the ethanol product and regardless of cost to produce ethanol. At the height of summer 2006, wholesale ethanol was TWICE the price of wholesale conventional gasoline.
One interesting reason we didn't think about for cost increases is all the "boutique, government-mandated gasoline formulations" as the author of the article put it, that the refiners are required to produce, sometimes on a state by state basis, especially CA. So refining capacity is sucked up by specialty formulations that cannot be distributed in all states. You can't just produce three or four different (87,89,91,93), 100% oil derived octane fuels and sell them anymore. And anyone who runs large production lines will tell you cost involved with bringing a line up to produce on thing and then shutting down, and producing another product on that same line. there are also regs dictating a certain amount of low sulfer diesel formulation.
Some interesting info from article I came across over weekend. Doesn't get to specifics of the environmental regs, but helpful in understanding why the government is the problem in regards to gasoline prices. Write your local congressman and Senators.
One gallon of oil can produce up to 2/3 gallon of gasoline pending formulation, grade of octane desired, etc.
Between 1977 and 2005, the rate of return on investment in gas refining was <7% (Carol Dahl, economist, Colorado School of Mines) compared to >11.5% for the S&P 500 Industrials.
From 1994-2003 refiners spent $47.4 Billion just to bring existing refineries up to compliance with environmental regs.
1980 U.S. had 300+ refineries. Today, less than 150!
In 1990 there were still 194.
Even with the government enacting such legislation, U.S. refiners have managed to grow refining capacity by about 1%/year over past decade by doing small add-ons at existing refineries.
Highest state tax is NY at 60.8 per gallon. Nationwide average was 45.8 as of spring 2007. It is estimated that the oil industry is making about .13 per gallon-some estimates are closer to .10. So all states with one exception, Alaska, are making more in tax revenue per gallon than the oil companies are in profits!
The Cato Institute points out that federal govt mandates oil refiners use at least 4 Billion gallons of ethanol regardless of cost of the ethanol product and regardless of cost to produce ethanol. At the height of summer 2006, wholesale ethanol was TWICE the price of wholesale conventional gasoline.
One interesting reason we didn't think about for cost increases is all the "boutique, government-mandated gasoline formulations" as the author of the article put it, that the refiners are required to produce, sometimes on a state by state basis, especially CA. So refining capacity is sucked up by specialty formulations that cannot be distributed in all states. You can't just produce three or four different (87,89,91,93), 100% oil derived octane fuels and sell them anymore. And anyone who runs large production lines will tell you cost involved with bringing a line up to produce on thing and then shutting down, and producing another product on that same line. there are also regs dictating a certain amount of low sulfer diesel formulation.
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