November 4 2008
by Patrick Buchanan
After losing control of the Senate and 30 House seats in 2006, the GOP is bracing for losses of six to nine in the Senate and two dozen to three dozen additional seats in the House.
If the party "were a dog food," says Rep. Tom Davis, "they would take us off the shelf."
Bush's approval is 25 percent. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton left office with ratings more than twice as high.
But while John McCain and others have deplored the Bush failures, what, exactly, did he do wrong?
What were the policy blunders to which Republicans vehemently objected at the time?
That Bush is a Big Government Republican is undeniable. His two great social spending initiatives, prescription drug benefits for seniors under Medicare and No Child Left Behind, so testify. But how many Republicans opposed Bush on these initiatives? How many have called for the abolition of either program, or for raising payroll taxes to pay for prescription drugs?
McCain now supports the Bush judges and justices and the Bush tax cuts, as do almost all Republicans.
True, Bush sought amnesty for illegal aliens and backs the free-trade globalism that exported our manufacturing base and 3 million to 4 million jobs. But McCain is even more enthusiastic about both.
Does the party dissent on free trade and mass immigration?
Two-thirds of Americans now believe the Iraq war a mistake. Yet, all but a few Republicans backed the war. At the time of "Mission Accomplished!" in May 2003, the nation gave Bush a 90 percent approval rating, as his father had after Desert Storm.
What turned America against the war was not the decision to invade, oust Saddam, destroy the weapons of mass destruction and depart, but the long, bloody slog, the five-year war, with nearly 5,000 dead, that Iraq became. It was not the lightning war of Tommy Franks, with journalists riding tanks into Baghdad, that soured America, but the unanticipated duration and cost of the war.
Yet, Republicans still believe that the war was not a mistake, only mishandled. And now that Gen. Petraeus got it right in Iraq, they say, we should pursue the Petraeus policy in Afghanistan.
How many Republicans have repudiated the Bush Doctrine that got us into Iraq – the belief that only by making the world democratic can we keep America secure and free?
Americans no longer believe that, if ever they did. And history proves them right – for Iraq has never been democratic, and America has always been free. Yet, the Republican Party has never renounced the Bush Doctrine.
Indeed, it is being applied today in Afghanistan.
That war, too, after we failed at Tora Bora to capture or kill bin Laden, has become a long slog to create a democratic Afghanistan, which, like a democratic Iraq, has never before existed.
In Afghanistan, we are entering the eighth year of war with victory further away than ever. The Taliban grows stronger. U.S. casualties are surging. Opium exports are breaking records. Our NATO allies grow weary. Even the Brits are talking of reconciliation with the Taliban, perhaps accepting a dictator.
These two wars helped to cripple the Bush presidency and end the GOP ascendancy. Yet, at the highest levels of the party, one hears no serious questioning of the ideology that produced these wars. McCain has pledged to stay in Iraq until "victory" and send 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
Nor have Republicans objected to the U.S. air strikes that have killed hundreds of Afghans, or the Predator strikes that have inflamed Pakistan, or the helicopter raid into Syria that humiliated Damascus and enraged the population. If Republicans disagree with these policies and actions, their voices are muted.
Bush is for facing down Russia and bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. Does any Republican disagree? For McCain is more hawkish than Bush when it come to Moscow.
The party says it is losing because the economy went south. But who caused that? Was it not because Republicans colluded with Democrats in pushing "affordable housing," sub-prime mortgages, for folks who could not afford houses?
Is the GOP prepared to demand tough terms for home loans?
Was it not GOP presidents who appointed the Fed chairmen who pumped up the money supply and created the bubble? How many Republicans objected to the easy money when the going was good?
The country wishes to be rid of the Bush policies and the Bush presidency. But where does the Republican Party think Bush went wrong, other than to be asleep at the wheel during Katrina?
The GOP needs to confront the truth: The failure of the Bush presidency lies not in a failed execution of policy but in the policies themselves and the neoconservative ideology that informed them.
Yet, still, the party remains in denial, refusing to come to terms with the causes of its misfortune. One expects they will be given the time and opportunity for reflection soon.
"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves."
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Wackonomics
Posted: October 29, 2008
by Walter Williams
© 2008
For the U.S. Congress, news media, pundits and much of the American public, a lot of economic phenomena can be explained by what people want, human greed and what seems plausible. I'm going to name this branch of economic "science" wackonomics and apply it to some of today's observations and issues.
Since July this year, crude oil prices have fallen from $147 to $64 a barrel. Similarly, average gasoline prices have fallen from over $4 to a national average of $2.69 a gallon. When crude oil and gasoline were reaching their historical highs, Congress and other wackoeconomists blamed it on greedy oil company CEOs in their lust for obscene profits. But what explains today's lower prices? The only answer, consistent with wackonomic theory, is easy: Oil company CEOs have lost their lust for obscene profits. Or, maybe, since many of these CEOs are getting up in years, they might have begun to heed Matthew's warning (19:24), "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
Speaking of CEOs, there's the "unconscionable," "obscene" salaries they receive, in some cases over $10 million a year. Wackonomics has an easy answer for these high salaries: it's greed. However, CEOs don't have the corner on greed. There are other greedy people we don't scorn but hold in high esteem. According to Forbes' Celebrity 100 list, Oprah Winfrey receives $275 million, Steven Spielberg gets $130 million, Tiger Woods $115 million, Jay Leno $32 million and Dr. Phil $40 million. I need to talk to these people and learn their strategy. I've been making every effort to get that kind of money. I go to bed greedy, dream greedy dreams, awaken greedy and proceed through the day greedy. Despite my heroic efforts, it's all been for naught; I earn a pittance by comparison.
Wackonomics can help us understand what some people call the income distribution. The logical extension of wackonomic thought is that the unequal or unfair distribution of income is the handiwork of a dollar dealer who distributes dollars. The dollar dealer might deal one person a million dollars a year while dealing most others a mere pittance like $10, $20 or $30 thousand a year. Thus, the reason why some people are wealthy while others are poor is because the dollar dealer is a racist, sexist, a multi-nationalist, or just plain mean. Economic justice requires a re-dealing of the dollars, income redistribution or spreading the wealth, where the government takes the ill-gotten gains of the few and returns them to their rightful owners. Wackonomics might have a greed-based explanation for income inequality. There is a pile of money called income and greedy people got there first and took their unfair share. Similarly, economic justice requires a redistribution of income.
Wackonomics isn't just practiced by the uninitiated. This year's Nobel Laureate, Princeton University professor Paul Krugman, after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, gave one rendition of wackonomics in his column "After the Horror," New York Times (Sept. 14, 2001). Krugman wrote, "Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack – like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression – could do some economic good." He went on to point out how rebuilding the destruction in New York and Washington, D. C., would stimulate the economy through business investment and job creation. For practitioners of non-wackonomics, this reasoning doesn't even pass the smell test. If professor Krugman's vision is correct, and extending his logic, the terrorists would have made an even larger contribution to our economic well-being had they been able to fly a plane into the White House and destroyed buildings in other cities.
Wackonomics isn't all bad. There's an upside to it. It spares people the bother of having to understand the complexities of the world.
by Walter Williams
© 2008
For the U.S. Congress, news media, pundits and much of the American public, a lot of economic phenomena can be explained by what people want, human greed and what seems plausible. I'm going to name this branch of economic "science" wackonomics and apply it to some of today's observations and issues.
Since July this year, crude oil prices have fallen from $147 to $64 a barrel. Similarly, average gasoline prices have fallen from over $4 to a national average of $2.69 a gallon. When crude oil and gasoline were reaching their historical highs, Congress and other wackoeconomists blamed it on greedy oil company CEOs in their lust for obscene profits. But what explains today's lower prices? The only answer, consistent with wackonomic theory, is easy: Oil company CEOs have lost their lust for obscene profits. Or, maybe, since many of these CEOs are getting up in years, they might have begun to heed Matthew's warning (19:24), "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
Speaking of CEOs, there's the "unconscionable," "obscene" salaries they receive, in some cases over $10 million a year. Wackonomics has an easy answer for these high salaries: it's greed. However, CEOs don't have the corner on greed. There are other greedy people we don't scorn but hold in high esteem. According to Forbes' Celebrity 100 list, Oprah Winfrey receives $275 million, Steven Spielberg gets $130 million, Tiger Woods $115 million, Jay Leno $32 million and Dr. Phil $40 million. I need to talk to these people and learn their strategy. I've been making every effort to get that kind of money. I go to bed greedy, dream greedy dreams, awaken greedy and proceed through the day greedy. Despite my heroic efforts, it's all been for naught; I earn a pittance by comparison.
Wackonomics can help us understand what some people call the income distribution. The logical extension of wackonomic thought is that the unequal or unfair distribution of income is the handiwork of a dollar dealer who distributes dollars. The dollar dealer might deal one person a million dollars a year while dealing most others a mere pittance like $10, $20 or $30 thousand a year. Thus, the reason why some people are wealthy while others are poor is because the dollar dealer is a racist, sexist, a multi-nationalist, or just plain mean. Economic justice requires a re-dealing of the dollars, income redistribution or spreading the wealth, where the government takes the ill-gotten gains of the few and returns them to their rightful owners. Wackonomics might have a greed-based explanation for income inequality. There is a pile of money called income and greedy people got there first and took their unfair share. Similarly, economic justice requires a redistribution of income.
Wackonomics isn't just practiced by the uninitiated. This year's Nobel Laureate, Princeton University professor Paul Krugman, after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, gave one rendition of wackonomics in his column "After the Horror," New York Times (Sept. 14, 2001). Krugman wrote, "Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack – like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression – could do some economic good." He went on to point out how rebuilding the destruction in New York and Washington, D. C., would stimulate the economy through business investment and job creation. For practitioners of non-wackonomics, this reasoning doesn't even pass the smell test. If professor Krugman's vision is correct, and extending his logic, the terrorists would have made an even larger contribution to our economic well-being had they been able to fly a plane into the White House and destroyed buildings in other cities.
Wackonomics isn't all bad. There's an upside to it. It spares people the bother of having to understand the complexities of the world.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Financial Crisis
Note: For the entire article please go to my blog and click on the title for this article there. It will bring you directly to the full article. Sections of the article have been posted below.
By George Reisman, October 21, 2008
The news media are in the process of creating a great new historical myth. This is the myth that our present financial crisis is the result of economic freedom and laissez-faire capitalism.
The attempt to place the blame on laissez faire is readily confirmed by a Google search under the terms “crisis + laissez faire.” On the first page of the results that come up, or in the web entries to which those results refer, statements of the following kind appear:
“The mortgage crisis is laissez-faire gone wrong.”
“Sarkozy [Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France] said `laissez-faire’ economics, `self-regulation’ and the view that `the all-powerful market’ always knows best are finished.”
“`America’s laissez-faire ideology, as practiced during the subprime crisis, was as simplistic as it was dangerous,’ chipped in Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister.”
“Paulson brings laissez-faire approach on financial crisis….”
“It’s au revoir to the days of laissez faire.”[1]
Recent articles in The New York Times provide further confirmation. Thus one article declares, “The United States has a culture that celebrates laissez-faire capitalism as the economic ideal….”[2] Another article tells us, “For 30 years, the nation’s political system has been tilted in favor of business deregulation and against new rules.”[3] In a third article, a pair of reporters assert, “Since 1997, Mr. Brown [the British Prime Minister] has been a powerful voice behind the Labor Party’s embrace of an American-style economic philosophy that was light on regulation. The laissez-faire approach encouraged the country’s banks to expand internationally and chase returns in areas far afield of their core mission of attracting deposits.”[4] Thus even Great Britain is described as having a “laissez-faire approach.”
The mentality displayed in these statements is so completely and utterly at odds with the actual meaning of laissez faire that it would be capable of describing the economic policy of the old Soviet Union as one of laissez faire in its last decades. By its logic, that is how it would have to describe the policy of Brezhnev and his successors of allowing workers on collective farms to cultivate plots of land of up to one acre in size on their own account and sell the produce in farmers’ markets in Soviet cities. According to the logic of the media, that too would be “laissez faire”—at least compared to the time of Stalin.
Laissez-faire capitalism has a definite meaning, which is totally ignored, contradicted, and downright defiled by such statements as those quoted above. Laissez-faire capitalism is a politico-economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and in which the powers of the state are limited to the protection of the individual’s rights against the initiation of physical force. This protection applies to the initiation of physical force by other private individuals, by foreign governments, and, most importantly, by the individual’s own government. This last is accomplished by such means as a written constitution, a system of division of powers and checks and balances, an explicit bill of rights, and eternal vigilance on the part of a citizenry with the right to keep and bear arms. Under laissez-faire capitalism, the state consists essentially just of a police force, law courts, and a national defense establishment, which deter and
combat those who initiate the use of physical force. And nothing more.
The utter absurdity of statements claiming that the present political-economic environment of the United States in some sense represents laissez-faire capitalism becomes as glaringly obvious as anything can be when one keeps in mind the extremely limited role of government under laissez-faire and then considers the following facts about the present-day United States.
1) Government spending in the United States currently equals more than forty percent of national income, i.e., the sum of all wages and salaries and profits and interest earned in the country. This is without counting any of the massive off-budget spending such as that on account of the government enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Nor does it count any of the recent spending on assorted “bailouts.” What this means is that substantially more than forty dollars of every one hundred dollars of output are appropriated by the government against the will of the individual citizens who produce that output. The money and the goods involved are turned over to the government only because the individual citizens wish to stay out of jail. Their freedom to dispose of their own incomes and output is thus violated on a colossal scale. In contrast, under laissez-faire capitalism, government spending would be on such a modest scale that a mere revenue tariff
might be sufficient to support it. The corporate and individual income taxes, inheritance and capital gains taxes, and social security and Medicare taxes would not exist.
2) There are presently fifteen federal cabinet departments, nine of which exist for the very purpose of respectively interfering with housing, transportation, healthcare, education, energy, mining, agriculture, labor, and commerce, and virtually all of which nowadays routinely ride roughshod over one or more important aspects of the economic freedom of the individual. Under laissez faire capitalism, eleven of the fifteen cabinet departments would cease to exist and only the departments of justice, defense, state, and treasury would remain. Within those departments, moreover, further reductions would be made, such as the abolition of the IRS in the Treasury Department and the Antitrust Division in the Department of Justice.
3) The economic interference of today’s cabinet departments is reinforced and amplified by more than one hundred federal agencies and commissions, the most well-known of which include, besides the IRS, the FRB and FDIC, the FBI and CIA, the EPA, FDA, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FTC, FCC, FERC, FEMA, FAA, CAA, INS, OHSA, CPSC, NHTSA, EEOC, BATF, DEA, NIH, and NASA. Under laissez-faire capitalism, all such agencies and commissions would be done away with, with the exception of the FBI, which would be reduced to the legitimate functions of counterespionage and combating crimes against person or property that take place across state lines.
4) To complete this catalog of government interference and its trampling of any vestige of laissez faire, as of the end of 2007, the last full year for which data are available, the Federal Register contained fully seventy-three thousand pages of detailed government regulations. This is an increase of more than ten thousand pages since 1978, the very years during which our system, according to one of The New York Times articles quoted above, has been “tilted in favor of business deregulation and against new rules.” Under laissez-faire capitalism, there would be no Federal Register. The activities of the remaining government departments and their subdivisions would be controlled exclusively by duly enacted legislation, not the rule-making of unelected government officials.
5) And, of course, to all of this must be added the further massive apparatus of laws, departments, agencies, and regulations at the state and local level. Under laissez-faire capitalism, these too for the most part would be completely abolished and what remained would reflect the same kind of radical reductions in the size and scope of government activity as those carried out on the federal level.
What this brief account has shown is that the politico-economic system of the United States today is so far removed from laissez-faire capitalism that it is closer to the system of a police state than to laissez-faire capitalism. The ability of the media to ignore all of the massive government interference that exists today and to characterize our present economic system as one of laissez-faire and economic freedom marks it as, if not profoundly dishonest, then as nothing less than delusional.
In this way the enemies of capitalism and economic freedom are able to proceed in their campaign of economic destruction and devastation. They use the accusation of “laissez faire” as a kind of ratchet for increasing the government’s power. For example, in the early 1930s they accused President Hoover of following a policy of laissez faire, even as he intervened in the economic system to prevent the fall in wage rates that was essential to stop a reduced demand for labor from resulting in mass unemployment. On the basis of the mass unemployment that then resulted from Hoover’s intervention, which they succeeded in portraying as “laissez faire,” they deceived the country into supporting the further massive interventions of the New Deal.
Today, they continue to play the same game. Always it is laissez faire that they denounce, and whose alleged failures they claim need to be overcome with yet more government regulations and controls. Today, the massive interventions not only of the New Deal, but also of the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society, and of all the administrations since, have been added to the very major interventions that existed even in the 1920s and to which Hoover very substantially added. And yet we still allegedly have laissez faire. It seems that so long as anyone manages to move or even breathe without being under the control of the government, laissez faire allegedly continues to exist, which serves to make necessary yet still more government controls.
The logical stopping point of this process is that one day everyone will end up being shackled to a wall, or at the very least being compelled to do something comparable to living in a zip code that matches his social security number. Then the government will know who everyone is, where he is, and that he can do nothing whatever without its approval and permission. And then the world will be safe from anyone attempting to do anything that benefits him and thereby allegedly harms others. At that point, the world will enjoy all the prosperity that comes from total paralysis.
By George Reisman, October 21, 2008
The news media are in the process of creating a great new historical myth. This is the myth that our present financial crisis is the result of economic freedom and laissez-faire capitalism.
The attempt to place the blame on laissez faire is readily confirmed by a Google search under the terms “crisis + laissez faire.” On the first page of the results that come up, or in the web entries to which those results refer, statements of the following kind appear:
“The mortgage crisis is laissez-faire gone wrong.”
“Sarkozy [Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France] said `laissez-faire’ economics, `self-regulation’ and the view that `the all-powerful market’ always knows best are finished.”
“`America’s laissez-faire ideology, as practiced during the subprime crisis, was as simplistic as it was dangerous,’ chipped in Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister.”
“Paulson brings laissez-faire approach on financial crisis….”
“It’s au revoir to the days of laissez faire.”[1]
Recent articles in The New York Times provide further confirmation. Thus one article declares, “The United States has a culture that celebrates laissez-faire capitalism as the economic ideal….”[2] Another article tells us, “For 30 years, the nation’s political system has been tilted in favor of business deregulation and against new rules.”[3] In a third article, a pair of reporters assert, “Since 1997, Mr. Brown [the British Prime Minister] has been a powerful voice behind the Labor Party’s embrace of an American-style economic philosophy that was light on regulation. The laissez-faire approach encouraged the country’s banks to expand internationally and chase returns in areas far afield of their core mission of attracting deposits.”[4] Thus even Great Britain is described as having a “laissez-faire approach.”
The mentality displayed in these statements is so completely and utterly at odds with the actual meaning of laissez faire that it would be capable of describing the economic policy of the old Soviet Union as one of laissez faire in its last decades. By its logic, that is how it would have to describe the policy of Brezhnev and his successors of allowing workers on collective farms to cultivate plots of land of up to one acre in size on their own account and sell the produce in farmers’ markets in Soviet cities. According to the logic of the media, that too would be “laissez faire”—at least compared to the time of Stalin.
Laissez-faire capitalism has a definite meaning, which is totally ignored, contradicted, and downright defiled by such statements as those quoted above. Laissez-faire capitalism is a politico-economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and in which the powers of the state are limited to the protection of the individual’s rights against the initiation of physical force. This protection applies to the initiation of physical force by other private individuals, by foreign governments, and, most importantly, by the individual’s own government. This last is accomplished by such means as a written constitution, a system of division of powers and checks and balances, an explicit bill of rights, and eternal vigilance on the part of a citizenry with the right to keep and bear arms. Under laissez-faire capitalism, the state consists essentially just of a police force, law courts, and a national defense establishment, which deter and
combat those who initiate the use of physical force. And nothing more.
The utter absurdity of statements claiming that the present political-economic environment of the United States in some sense represents laissez-faire capitalism becomes as glaringly obvious as anything can be when one keeps in mind the extremely limited role of government under laissez-faire and then considers the following facts about the present-day United States.
1) Government spending in the United States currently equals more than forty percent of national income, i.e., the sum of all wages and salaries and profits and interest earned in the country. This is without counting any of the massive off-budget spending such as that on account of the government enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Nor does it count any of the recent spending on assorted “bailouts.” What this means is that substantially more than forty dollars of every one hundred dollars of output are appropriated by the government against the will of the individual citizens who produce that output. The money and the goods involved are turned over to the government only because the individual citizens wish to stay out of jail. Their freedom to dispose of their own incomes and output is thus violated on a colossal scale. In contrast, under laissez-faire capitalism, government spending would be on such a modest scale that a mere revenue tariff
might be sufficient to support it. The corporate and individual income taxes, inheritance and capital gains taxes, and social security and Medicare taxes would not exist.
2) There are presently fifteen federal cabinet departments, nine of which exist for the very purpose of respectively interfering with housing, transportation, healthcare, education, energy, mining, agriculture, labor, and commerce, and virtually all of which nowadays routinely ride roughshod over one or more important aspects of the economic freedom of the individual. Under laissez faire capitalism, eleven of the fifteen cabinet departments would cease to exist and only the departments of justice, defense, state, and treasury would remain. Within those departments, moreover, further reductions would be made, such as the abolition of the IRS in the Treasury Department and the Antitrust Division in the Department of Justice.
3) The economic interference of today’s cabinet departments is reinforced and amplified by more than one hundred federal agencies and commissions, the most well-known of which include, besides the IRS, the FRB and FDIC, the FBI and CIA, the EPA, FDA, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FTC, FCC, FERC, FEMA, FAA, CAA, INS, OHSA, CPSC, NHTSA, EEOC, BATF, DEA, NIH, and NASA. Under laissez-faire capitalism, all such agencies and commissions would be done away with, with the exception of the FBI, which would be reduced to the legitimate functions of counterespionage and combating crimes against person or property that take place across state lines.
4) To complete this catalog of government interference and its trampling of any vestige of laissez faire, as of the end of 2007, the last full year for which data are available, the Federal Register contained fully seventy-three thousand pages of detailed government regulations. This is an increase of more than ten thousand pages since 1978, the very years during which our system, according to one of The New York Times articles quoted above, has been “tilted in favor of business deregulation and against new rules.” Under laissez-faire capitalism, there would be no Federal Register. The activities of the remaining government departments and their subdivisions would be controlled exclusively by duly enacted legislation, not the rule-making of unelected government officials.
5) And, of course, to all of this must be added the further massive apparatus of laws, departments, agencies, and regulations at the state and local level. Under laissez-faire capitalism, these too for the most part would be completely abolished and what remained would reflect the same kind of radical reductions in the size and scope of government activity as those carried out on the federal level.
What this brief account has shown is that the politico-economic system of the United States today is so far removed from laissez-faire capitalism that it is closer to the system of a police state than to laissez-faire capitalism. The ability of the media to ignore all of the massive government interference that exists today and to characterize our present economic system as one of laissez-faire and economic freedom marks it as, if not profoundly dishonest, then as nothing less than delusional.
In this way the enemies of capitalism and economic freedom are able to proceed in their campaign of economic destruction and devastation. They use the accusation of “laissez faire” as a kind of ratchet for increasing the government’s power. For example, in the early 1930s they accused President Hoover of following a policy of laissez faire, even as he intervened in the economic system to prevent the fall in wage rates that was essential to stop a reduced demand for labor from resulting in mass unemployment. On the basis of the mass unemployment that then resulted from Hoover’s intervention, which they succeeded in portraying as “laissez faire,” they deceived the country into supporting the further massive interventions of the New Deal.
Today, they continue to play the same game. Always it is laissez faire that they denounce, and whose alleged failures they claim need to be overcome with yet more government regulations and controls. Today, the massive interventions not only of the New Deal, but also of the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society, and of all the administrations since, have been added to the very major interventions that existed even in the 1920s and to which Hoover very substantially added. And yet we still allegedly have laissez faire. It seems that so long as anyone manages to move or even breathe without being under the control of the government, laissez faire allegedly continues to exist, which serves to make necessary yet still more government controls.
The logical stopping point of this process is that one day everyone will end up being shackled to a wall, or at the very least being compelled to do something comparable to living in a zip code that matches his social security number. Then the government will know who everyone is, where he is, and that he can do nothing whatever without its approval and permission. And then the world will be safe from anyone attempting to do anything that benefits him and thereby allegedly harms others. At that point, the world will enjoy all the prosperity that comes from total paralysis.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Finally, the Story of the Whistleblower Who Tried to Prevent the Iraq War
by Norman Solomon September 26, 2008
Of course Katharine Gun was free to have a conscience, as long as it didn't interfere with her work at a British intelligence agency. To the authorities, practically speaking, a conscience was apt to be less tangible than a pixel on a computer screen. But suddenly – one routine morning, while she was scrolling through e-mail at her desk – conscience struck. It changed Katharine Gun's life, and it changed history.
Despite the nationality of this young Englishwoman, her story is profoundly American – all the more so because it has remained largely hidden from the public in the United States. When Katharine Gun chose, at great personal risk, to reveal an illicit spying operation at the United Nations in which the U.S. government was the senior partner, she brought out of the transatlantic shadows a special relationship that could not stand the light of day.
By then, in early 2003, the president of the United States – with dogged assists from the British prime minister following close behind – had long since become transparently determined to launch an invasion of Iraq. Gun's moral concerns were not unusual; she shared, with countless other Brits and Americans, strong opposition to the impending launch of war. Yet, thanks to a simple and intricate twist of fate, she abruptly found herself in a rare position to throw a roadblock in the way of the political march to war from Washington and London. Far more extraordinary, though, was her decision to put herself in serious jeopardy on behalf of revealing salient truths to the world.
We might envy such an opportunity, and admire such courage on behalf of principle. But there are good, or at least understandable, reasons why so few whistleblowers emerge from institutions that need conformity and silence to lay flagstones on the path to war. Those reasons have to do with matters of personal safety, financial security, legal jeopardy, social cohesion and default positions of obedience. They help to explain why and how people go along to get along with the warfare state even when it flagrantly rests on foundations of falsehoods.
The e-mailed memorandum from the U.S. National Security Agency that jarred Katharine Gun that fateful morning was dated less than two months before the invasion of Iraq that was to result in thousands of deaths among the occupying troops and hundreds of thousands more among Iraqi people. We're told that this is a cynical era, but there was nothing cynical about Katharine Gun's response to the memo that appeared without warning on her desktop. Reasons to shrug it off were plentiful, in keeping with bottomless rationales for prudent inaction. The basis for moral engagement and commensurate action was singular.
The import of the NSA memo was such that it shook the government of Tony Blair and caused uproars on several continents. But for the media in the United States, it was a minor story. For the New York Times, it was no story at all.
At last, a new book tells this story. The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War packs a powerful wallop. To understand in personal, political and historic terms – what Katharine Gun did, how the British and American governments responded, and what the U.S. news media did and did not report – is to gain a clear-eyed picture of a military-industrial-media complex that plunged ahead with the invasion of Iraq shortly after her brave action of conscience. That complex continues to promote what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism."
In a time when political players and widely esteemed journalists are pleased to posture with affects of great sophistication, Katharine Gun's response was disarmingly simple. She activated her conscience when clear evidence came into her hands that war – not diplomacy seeking to prevent it – headed the priorities list of top leaders at both 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and 10 Downing Street. "At the time," she has recalled, "all I could think about was that I knew they were trying really hard to legitimize an invasion, and they were willing to use this new intelligence to twist arms, perhaps blackmail delegates, so they could tell the world they had achieved a consensus for war."
She and her colleagues at the Government Communications Headquarters were, as she later put it, "being asked to participate in an illegal process with the ultimate aim of achieving an invasion in violation of international law."
The authors of The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War, Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, describe the scenario this way: "Twisting the arms of the recalcitrant [U.N. Security Council] representatives in order to win approval for a new resolution could supply the universally acceptable rationale." After Katharine Gun discovered what was afoot, "she attempted to stop a war by destroying its potential trigger mechanism, the required second resolution that would make war legal."
Instead of mere accusation, the NSA memo provided substantiation. That fact explains why U.S. intelligence agencies firmly stonewalled in response to media inquiries – and it may also help to explain why the U.S. news media gave the story notably short shrift. To a significant degree, the scoop did not reverberate inside the American media echo chamber because it was too sharply telling to blend into the dominant orchestrated themes.
While supplying the ostensible first draft of history, U.S. media filtered out vital information that could refute the claims of Washington's exalted war planners. "Journalists, too many of them – some quite explicitly – have said that they see their mission as helping the war effort," an American media critic warned during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. "And if you define your mission that way, you'll end up suppressing news that might be important, accurate, but maybe isn't helpful to the war effort."
Jeff Cohen (a friend and colleague of mine) spoke those words before the story uncorked by Katharine Gun's leak splashed across British front pages and then scarcely dribbled into American media. He uttered them on the MSNBC television program hosted by Phil Donahue, where he worked as a producer and occasional on-air analyst. Donahue's prime-time show was cancelled by NBC management three weeks before the invasion – as it happened, on almost the same day that the revelation of the NSA memo became such a big media story in the United Kingdom and such a carefully bypassed one in the United States.
Soon a leaked NBC memo confirmed suspicions that the network had pulled the plug on Donahue's show in order to obstruct views and information that would go against the rush to war. The network memo said that the Donahue program would present a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war." And: "He seems to delight in presenting guests who are antiwar, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." Cancellation of the show averted the danger that it could become "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."
Overall, to the editors of American mass media, the actions and revelations of Katharine Gun merited little or no reporting – especially when they mattered most. My search of the comprehensive LexisNexis database found that for nearly three months after her name was first reported in the British media, U.S. news stories mentioning her scarcely existed.
When the prosecution of Katharine Gun finally concluded its journey through the British court system, the authors note, a surge of American news reports on the closing case "had people wondering why they hadn't heard about the NSA spy operation at the beginning." This book includes an account of journalistic evasion that is a grim counterpoint to the story of conscience and courage that just might inspire us to activate more of our own.
This article was adapted from Norman Solomon's foreword to the new book by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, "The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion."
Of course Katharine Gun was free to have a conscience, as long as it didn't interfere with her work at a British intelligence agency. To the authorities, practically speaking, a conscience was apt to be less tangible than a pixel on a computer screen. But suddenly – one routine morning, while she was scrolling through e-mail at her desk – conscience struck. It changed Katharine Gun's life, and it changed history.
Despite the nationality of this young Englishwoman, her story is profoundly American – all the more so because it has remained largely hidden from the public in the United States. When Katharine Gun chose, at great personal risk, to reveal an illicit spying operation at the United Nations in which the U.S. government was the senior partner, she brought out of the transatlantic shadows a special relationship that could not stand the light of day.
By then, in early 2003, the president of the United States – with dogged assists from the British prime minister following close behind – had long since become transparently determined to launch an invasion of Iraq. Gun's moral concerns were not unusual; she shared, with countless other Brits and Americans, strong opposition to the impending launch of war. Yet, thanks to a simple and intricate twist of fate, she abruptly found herself in a rare position to throw a roadblock in the way of the political march to war from Washington and London. Far more extraordinary, though, was her decision to put herself in serious jeopardy on behalf of revealing salient truths to the world.
We might envy such an opportunity, and admire such courage on behalf of principle. But there are good, or at least understandable, reasons why so few whistleblowers emerge from institutions that need conformity and silence to lay flagstones on the path to war. Those reasons have to do with matters of personal safety, financial security, legal jeopardy, social cohesion and default positions of obedience. They help to explain why and how people go along to get along with the warfare state even when it flagrantly rests on foundations of falsehoods.
The e-mailed memorandum from the U.S. National Security Agency that jarred Katharine Gun that fateful morning was dated less than two months before the invasion of Iraq that was to result in thousands of deaths among the occupying troops and hundreds of thousands more among Iraqi people. We're told that this is a cynical era, but there was nothing cynical about Katharine Gun's response to the memo that appeared without warning on her desktop. Reasons to shrug it off were plentiful, in keeping with bottomless rationales for prudent inaction. The basis for moral engagement and commensurate action was singular.
The import of the NSA memo was such that it shook the government of Tony Blair and caused uproars on several continents. But for the media in the United States, it was a minor story. For the New York Times, it was no story at all.
At last, a new book tells this story. The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War packs a powerful wallop. To understand in personal, political and historic terms – what Katharine Gun did, how the British and American governments responded, and what the U.S. news media did and did not report – is to gain a clear-eyed picture of a military-industrial-media complex that plunged ahead with the invasion of Iraq shortly after her brave action of conscience. That complex continues to promote what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism."
In a time when political players and widely esteemed journalists are pleased to posture with affects of great sophistication, Katharine Gun's response was disarmingly simple. She activated her conscience when clear evidence came into her hands that war – not diplomacy seeking to prevent it – headed the priorities list of top leaders at both 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and 10 Downing Street. "At the time," she has recalled, "all I could think about was that I knew they were trying really hard to legitimize an invasion, and they were willing to use this new intelligence to twist arms, perhaps blackmail delegates, so they could tell the world they had achieved a consensus for war."
She and her colleagues at the Government Communications Headquarters were, as she later put it, "being asked to participate in an illegal process with the ultimate aim of achieving an invasion in violation of international law."
The authors of The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War, Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, describe the scenario this way: "Twisting the arms of the recalcitrant [U.N. Security Council] representatives in order to win approval for a new resolution could supply the universally acceptable rationale." After Katharine Gun discovered what was afoot, "she attempted to stop a war by destroying its potential trigger mechanism, the required second resolution that would make war legal."
Instead of mere accusation, the NSA memo provided substantiation. That fact explains why U.S. intelligence agencies firmly stonewalled in response to media inquiries – and it may also help to explain why the U.S. news media gave the story notably short shrift. To a significant degree, the scoop did not reverberate inside the American media echo chamber because it was too sharply telling to blend into the dominant orchestrated themes.
While supplying the ostensible first draft of history, U.S. media filtered out vital information that could refute the claims of Washington's exalted war planners. "Journalists, too many of them – some quite explicitly – have said that they see their mission as helping the war effort," an American media critic warned during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. "And if you define your mission that way, you'll end up suppressing news that might be important, accurate, but maybe isn't helpful to the war effort."
Jeff Cohen (a friend and colleague of mine) spoke those words before the story uncorked by Katharine Gun's leak splashed across British front pages and then scarcely dribbled into American media. He uttered them on the MSNBC television program hosted by Phil Donahue, where he worked as a producer and occasional on-air analyst. Donahue's prime-time show was cancelled by NBC management three weeks before the invasion – as it happened, on almost the same day that the revelation of the NSA memo became such a big media story in the United Kingdom and such a carefully bypassed one in the United States.
Soon a leaked NBC memo confirmed suspicions that the network had pulled the plug on Donahue's show in order to obstruct views and information that would go against the rush to war. The network memo said that the Donahue program would present a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war." And: "He seems to delight in presenting guests who are antiwar, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." Cancellation of the show averted the danger that it could become "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."
Overall, to the editors of American mass media, the actions and revelations of Katharine Gun merited little or no reporting – especially when they mattered most. My search of the comprehensive LexisNexis database found that for nearly three months after her name was first reported in the British media, U.S. news stories mentioning her scarcely existed.
When the prosecution of Katharine Gun finally concluded its journey through the British court system, the authors note, a surge of American news reports on the closing case "had people wondering why they hadn't heard about the NSA spy operation at the beginning." This book includes an account of journalistic evasion that is a grim counterpoint to the story of conscience and courage that just might inspire us to activate more of our own.
This article was adapted from Norman Solomon's foreword to the new book by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, "The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion."
Thursday, October 02, 2008
The Politics of Presidential Spending
I advise you click on the title above and go directly to the article. The article contains some great graphs not included below.
by R.W. Bradford
Most people believe that Democrats are big spenders and that Republicans are tight-fisted. The evidence leads to a very different conclusion.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How do various political regimes affect government spending and, hence, the size of government's intrusion into our lives? This is a fundamental issue in political and economic theory.
R.W. Bradford is editor and publisher of Liberty.
Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in economics and one of our era's greatest advocates of liberty, recently entered the debate on the historical background of the question. Dr. Friedman wrote to Liberty challenging my claim that "government spending grew rapidly" during the Reagan presidency. Friedman offered as evidence a graph showing "Federal non-defense spending as a percentage of National Income" from 1960 to 2003. This graph showed a leveling off of such spending in 1983. Friedman stated that "the record speaks for itself" and offered no further argument or data.
I couldn't see why "government spending" should be limited to "federal non-defense spending." Nor could I see why spending should be normalized by national income, unless one believes that the government is somehow entitled to a certain portion. It made more sense to me to consider "government spending" to refer to all the money government spends, to adjust the actual spending figures for inflation, and to normalize spending for changes in population.
I searched in vain for figures on government spending per capita, corrected for inflation. But I found on the Census Bureau's website annual government spending for each fiscal year from 1947 to 2003 as well as annual population figures, and, of course, the Consumer Price Index is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So it was just a matter of putting the numbers into a spreadsheet and doing relatively simple calculations to determine annual government spending per capita, and to see whether it grew more slowly during the Reagan years than before or since. The data verified my earlier claim: spending grew a little faster during the Reagan years than during the Carter and Ford years that preceded his terms in office, and at a much faster rate than during the Bush I and Clinton years that followed. I wrote a brief response to Friedman, which was published in the October Liberty.
Since 1970, spending has grown 64% faster when a Republican sits in the White House than when a Democrat does.
It quickly occurred to me that the data I had developed might help answer questions like these:
Does spending grow more slowly during Republican presidencies than during Democratic presidencies?
Does spending grow more slowly when Republicans control the House? the Senate?
Does divided government (in which one party controls Congress and the other party controls the White House) result in lower spending growth? If so, does spending grow faster under Republican presidents with Democratic congresses than under Democratic presidents with Republican congresses?
So I added fields to my database for the political affiliation of the president and the party which controlled each house of Congress during each fiscal year, and began to look for correlations. A summary of the data can be found in the chart below.
It quickly became evident that the more recent data are quite different from the earlier data in two significant ways:
During the earlier years, annual changes in government spending were much greater than in later years. During the first six years of available data, during which Harry Truman was president, the average annual variation in per capita spending was 14.6%. The highest average annual change in any six-year period since Truman was president was 5.6%. As you can see from the graph below, which shows the year-to-year absolute change in spending, spending has become much less volatile over the years, and especially after 1970.
During the years before the presidency of Republican Richard Nixon (i.e., before fiscal year 1970), there was a strong correlation between the Republicans and lower growth in government spending, and between the Democrats and higher growth. Since 1970, this correlation has hardly existed.
Prior to 1970, the correlation was strong:
When a Republican held the White House, spending fell by an average of 0.70% per year; with a Democrat in the White House, it grew by an average of 5.98%.
With Republican control of Congress, spending fell by an average of 2.12% per year; with Democrats in control, spending rose by an average of 4.82% annually.
With the GOP in control of both the White House and Congress, spending fell by an average of 6.85% per year. It is worth noting that this is a very small sample — just two years (fiscal years 1954–55). During the twelve years that the Democrats controlled Congress and the White House, spending rose by an average of 6.55% per year.
During the six years of split government with a Republican White House, spending grew at an average rate of 4.92%. During the two years (fiscal years 1948–49) of split government with a Democrat in the White House, spending grew by 1.46%.
When Democrats controlled the White House plus both houses of Congress, spending grew at 1.70% per year, slightly below the average growth rate of 1.83% for the entire period.
This strong correlation between spending growth and the party affiliation of the president disappeared with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968.
A New Era Begins
Starting in 1968, a very different pattern emerges. Government continued to grow, but year-to-year spending changes became much less volatile. Part of the reason is that during the 1947 to 1969 period, government spending more than doubled, so that absolute changes resulted in much smaller changes expressed as percentages. We can hypothesize about other factors causing this drop in volatility; for example, the abandonment among Republicans of opposition to the welfare state.
But much more importantly, the correlations between spending and political parties changed radically. Prior to fiscal year 1970, there were very strong correlations between fiscal restraint and Republican control of the White House and Congress, and between spending increases and Democratic control of those institutions. Since then, there has been hardly any correlation, despite the fact that Republican candidates for office generally claim to favor fiscal restraint and Democratic candidates for office generally claim to favor the expansion of government.
Consider the following:
In the twelve years that a Democrat has sat in the White House, spending has increased at an average rate of 1.29% per year; during the 22 years of Republican presidencies, government spending has risen at an average rate of 2.12%. In other words, spending has grown 64% faster when a Republican sits in the White House than when a Democrat does.
During the 20 years Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress, spending has grown at an average rate of 1.84% per year, more than double the average rate of 0.89% per year during the six years the GOP ran Congress. (During the other eight years, when control of Congress was split between the two parties, spending grew at an average rate of 2.52%. The split-control years all occurred during Republican presidencies.)
When Democrats controlled the White House plus both houses of Congress, spending grew at 1.70% per year, slightly below the average growth rate of 1.83% for the entire period.
The slowest spending growth occurred when a Democrat sat in the White House and Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Spending rose by an average of just 0.89% during the six years of this situation, which all occurred with Bill Clinton as president and Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House.
During the 14 years Republicans controlled the White House and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, spending grew at an average annual rate of 1.92%. During the eight years with a Republican president and a split Congress, spending grew at 2.54% per year.
All this must come as a shock to the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe that Democrats are spenders and Republicans want to cut government spending. The simple fact is that during the past 34 years, government spending has grown significantly faster when a Republican has sat in the White House.
But the old prejudice still seems to have some validity regarding Congress: Democratic-controlled congresses have increased spending at a rate more than twice the rate that Republican congresses have.
Government spending has grown fastest when a Republican was in the White House and Democrats controlled Congress. It has grown most slowly when a Democrat was president and Republicans controlled Congress.
* * *
To this point, everything I've written is strictly factual, derived from figures published by the Bureau of the Census and the Department of Labor. So far as I am able to determine, these facts cannot be unchallenged.
But they are open to interpretation, and what follows is an attempt to provide background and explanation for why the growth in government spending in relation to political control of Congress and the presidency has taken the course I've described above.
The Early Post-War Years (1947–1969)
The strong correlations between Democrats and spending and between Republicans and restraint during the early postwar period make perfect sense. The Democratic administrations of Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson were characterized by war and the expansion of the welfare state, both of which are expensive projects, while the single GOP presidency was a time of peace and restraint.
Although Ike was criticized by many conservatives for not slashing government enough, government spending per capita actually fell during his presidency.
The domestic policy of President Harry Truman (fiscal years 1947–53) called for federal subsidies for (and control) of medical care, housing, and education, as well as other expansions of government programs, under the slogan of "The Fair Deal." Not all of Truman's ambitious program was enacted, but enough of it was implemented that in combination with the Korean War (which began in fiscal year 1950) government spending increased at an average rate of 6.77% during Truman's second administration.
John F. Kennedy (fiscal years 1962–65) was elected on a platform calling for increased government spending domestically and an aggressive anti-communist foreign policy. But a coalition of conservative southern Democrats and old-line Republicans made it difficult to enact his domestic program and, with the exception of his abortive invasion of Cuba in 1962, his war against communism didn't really come to fruition until after his untimely death. Spending grew at an average of 3.27% per year during his brief administration.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1965–69) called for a massive increase in the welfare state, under the slogan of the "Great Society," and greatly escalated the war in Vietnam, which Eisenhower had almost entirely avoided and for which Kennedy had laid the groundwork. Unsurprisingly, government spending increased rapidly during his presidency. During his only full term, spending rose at an average rate of 6.46% per year.
The only Republican to capture the White House during this period was World War II hero Dwight D. Eisenhower. Although he was criticized by many conservatives for not rolling back government as much as they wanted, his is the only administration since World War II in which government spending per capita actually fell. He combined fiscal restraint on domestic programs with an inclination to disentangle America from wars abroad: he presided over the end of the Korean War, refused to get involved in the wars in the Middle East, and did what he could to keep America from greater involvement in Vietnam. During the first two years of his administration, when he had the support of a GOP Congress, spending fell by more than 13%, but during the final two years, with the Democrats firmly in control of both houses of Congress, spending rose at an annual rate of 1.46%. Even with these increases, spending fell at an average annual rate of 0.70% during his administration.
The New Era (1970–2003)
The fact that Republican presidents have been bigger spenders than Democratic presidents during the past 34 years startles many people. This is probably a product of people's greater inclination to listen to the rhetoric of the candidates than to pay attention to what winning candidates actually do once they are in office.
Consider the case of Ronald Reagan. He called for cutting back government, but presided over a massive increase in the size and power of government, at least as measured by government spending per capita. Government spending during his administration grew at an average rate of 2.28%, nearly three times as fast as during the administration of Democrat Bill Clinton.
George W. Bush is establishing himself as the biggest spender since Lyndon Johnson.
Similarly, Richard Nixon was elected based on his promises to cut back government, but spending increased during his administration at a faster rate than during any subsequent administration except that of George W. Bush. Nixon pursued policies that he thought would maximize his chances for reelection and his historic reputation. He had no interest in repealing any of the Great Society measures. His "de-escalation" of the Vietnam War proceeded very slowly, and involved sending more troops and dropping more bombs. His legacy includes such expansions of government power as the War on Drugs and the Environmental Protection Agency. The result? During his years in the White House, government spending grew at an average rate of 2.31%, virtually identical to the rate during the Reagan years.
George W. Bush was elected on the strongest and most explicit conservative platform ever, yet he supported massive increases in military spending, created a whole new bureaucracy to fight the War on Terror, invaded two countries, and pushed through the largest single increase in welfare spending in decades. Not surprisingly, spending has grown the fastest during his years of any presidency since Lyndon Johnson's.
The other two Republican presidencies were different cases. Gerald Ford, who assumed the powers of the presidency when Nixon resigned in disgrace, was an old-line, fiscally conservative Republican who faced a very hostile and overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. Ford responded by using his veto power more frequently than any president before or since. The result was the lowest average annual spending increases of any presidency since Eisenhower.
George H. W. Bush was also a special case. He presided over a country that favored fiscal restraint and was elected largely because of his promise not to raise taxes. When he broke that promise, many Congressional Republicans treated him as if he were their enemy. Meanwhile, the Democratic majority in Congress, smelling blood, focused on making him look bad, sensing a victory of the White House for them. They succeeded. The result: spending grew at 1.15% per year during his presidency, the lowest rate of increase of any post-war president except Eisenhower.
The two Democratic presidents of this era faced radically different situations. Jimmy Carter was elected during post-Vietnam public cynicism about the military, and his years saw actual cuts in military spending. He eschewed most of the traditional Democratic calls for increases in welfare programs. Not surprisingly, spending grew at a relatively low 1.70% annual rate during his administration.
Bill Clinton is perhaps the most interesting case. He was elected very narrowly, on a platform that included a government takeover of the entire health-care system, the largest expansion of government power any president had proposed in decades. But he got only 43% of the vote, with the remaining 57% going to candidates who plainly opposed the measure and portrayed themselves as fiscal conservatives. Upon his wife's advice, he pursued the take-over of medicine in a manner so high-handed that, in combination with strong opposition from conservatives and libertarians, the entire package was abandoned.
After Republicans won both houses of Congress in 1994, Clinton, having no real political convictions, proclaimed that the "era of big government is over," and embraced other elements of the GOP agenda, such as welfare reform. The result was that spending grew at a rate of just 0.81% during his administration, the lowest growth rate since Eisenhower.
What can we learn about the future from this study? Past experience is not a perfect predictor of the future, but it seems far more likely that America's government will become larger, more powerful, and more expensive if George W. Bush is reelected than if he is defeated. A Democratic victory in either (or both) houses of Congress would likely accelerate this trend. Republican congresses combined with Republican presidencies during the past 34 years have consistently resulted in faster spending growth than Democratic presidencies. Democratic congresses have tended to increase spending faster than Republican congresses. And spending has grown faster with a Republican president and Democratic control of one or both houses of Congress than in any other situation. In addition, Bush is establishing himself as the biggest spender since Lyndon Johnson.
The election of John Kerry as president would likely result in slower spending growth, especially if Congress remains in control of the GOP, which seems overwhelmingly likely. Government spending grows most slowly with a Democrat in the White House and the Republicans in control of Congress. While John Kerry's positions have been all over the place during the campaign, ranging from pro-war to anti-war, from support for the traditional Democratic tax-and-spend policies to "Bush lite" reforms, his record in the Senate is generally one of fiscal responsibility. And the Republicans, particularly those in the House of Representatives, have shown a strong inclination against all sorts of spending. But you never know.
by R.W. Bradford
Most people believe that Democrats are big spenders and that Republicans are tight-fisted. The evidence leads to a very different conclusion.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How do various political regimes affect government spending and, hence, the size of government's intrusion into our lives? This is a fundamental issue in political and economic theory.
R.W. Bradford is editor and publisher of Liberty.
Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in economics and one of our era's greatest advocates of liberty, recently entered the debate on the historical background of the question. Dr. Friedman wrote to Liberty challenging my claim that "government spending grew rapidly" during the Reagan presidency. Friedman offered as evidence a graph showing "Federal non-defense spending as a percentage of National Income" from 1960 to 2003. This graph showed a leveling off of such spending in 1983. Friedman stated that "the record speaks for itself" and offered no further argument or data.
I couldn't see why "government spending" should be limited to "federal non-defense spending." Nor could I see why spending should be normalized by national income, unless one believes that the government is somehow entitled to a certain portion. It made more sense to me to consider "government spending" to refer to all the money government spends, to adjust the actual spending figures for inflation, and to normalize spending for changes in population.
I searched in vain for figures on government spending per capita, corrected for inflation. But I found on the Census Bureau's website annual government spending for each fiscal year from 1947 to 2003 as well as annual population figures, and, of course, the Consumer Price Index is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So it was just a matter of putting the numbers into a spreadsheet and doing relatively simple calculations to determine annual government spending per capita, and to see whether it grew more slowly during the Reagan years than before or since. The data verified my earlier claim: spending grew a little faster during the Reagan years than during the Carter and Ford years that preceded his terms in office, and at a much faster rate than during the Bush I and Clinton years that followed. I wrote a brief response to Friedman, which was published in the October Liberty.
Since 1970, spending has grown 64% faster when a Republican sits in the White House than when a Democrat does.
It quickly occurred to me that the data I had developed might help answer questions like these:
Does spending grow more slowly during Republican presidencies than during Democratic presidencies?
Does spending grow more slowly when Republicans control the House? the Senate?
Does divided government (in which one party controls Congress and the other party controls the White House) result in lower spending growth? If so, does spending grow faster under Republican presidents with Democratic congresses than under Democratic presidents with Republican congresses?
So I added fields to my database for the political affiliation of the president and the party which controlled each house of Congress during each fiscal year, and began to look for correlations. A summary of the data can be found in the chart below.
It quickly became evident that the more recent data are quite different from the earlier data in two significant ways:
During the earlier years, annual changes in government spending were much greater than in later years. During the first six years of available data, during which Harry Truman was president, the average annual variation in per capita spending was 14.6%. The highest average annual change in any six-year period since Truman was president was 5.6%. As you can see from the graph below, which shows the year-to-year absolute change in spending, spending has become much less volatile over the years, and especially after 1970.
During the years before the presidency of Republican Richard Nixon (i.e., before fiscal year 1970), there was a strong correlation between the Republicans and lower growth in government spending, and between the Democrats and higher growth. Since 1970, this correlation has hardly existed.
Prior to 1970, the correlation was strong:
When a Republican held the White House, spending fell by an average of 0.70% per year; with a Democrat in the White House, it grew by an average of 5.98%.
With Republican control of Congress, spending fell by an average of 2.12% per year; with Democrats in control, spending rose by an average of 4.82% annually.
With the GOP in control of both the White House and Congress, spending fell by an average of 6.85% per year. It is worth noting that this is a very small sample — just two years (fiscal years 1954–55). During the twelve years that the Democrats controlled Congress and the White House, spending rose by an average of 6.55% per year.
During the six years of split government with a Republican White House, spending grew at an average rate of 4.92%. During the two years (fiscal years 1948–49) of split government with a Democrat in the White House, spending grew by 1.46%.
When Democrats controlled the White House plus both houses of Congress, spending grew at 1.70% per year, slightly below the average growth rate of 1.83% for the entire period.
This strong correlation between spending growth and the party affiliation of the president disappeared with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968.
A New Era Begins
Starting in 1968, a very different pattern emerges. Government continued to grow, but year-to-year spending changes became much less volatile. Part of the reason is that during the 1947 to 1969 period, government spending more than doubled, so that absolute changes resulted in much smaller changes expressed as percentages. We can hypothesize about other factors causing this drop in volatility; for example, the abandonment among Republicans of opposition to the welfare state.
But much more importantly, the correlations between spending and political parties changed radically. Prior to fiscal year 1970, there were very strong correlations between fiscal restraint and Republican control of the White House and Congress, and between spending increases and Democratic control of those institutions. Since then, there has been hardly any correlation, despite the fact that Republican candidates for office generally claim to favor fiscal restraint and Democratic candidates for office generally claim to favor the expansion of government.
Consider the following:
In the twelve years that a Democrat has sat in the White House, spending has increased at an average rate of 1.29% per year; during the 22 years of Republican presidencies, government spending has risen at an average rate of 2.12%. In other words, spending has grown 64% faster when a Republican sits in the White House than when a Democrat does.
During the 20 years Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress, spending has grown at an average rate of 1.84% per year, more than double the average rate of 0.89% per year during the six years the GOP ran Congress. (During the other eight years, when control of Congress was split between the two parties, spending grew at an average rate of 2.52%. The split-control years all occurred during Republican presidencies.)
When Democrats controlled the White House plus both houses of Congress, spending grew at 1.70% per year, slightly below the average growth rate of 1.83% for the entire period.
The slowest spending growth occurred when a Democrat sat in the White House and Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Spending rose by an average of just 0.89% during the six years of this situation, which all occurred with Bill Clinton as president and Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House.
During the 14 years Republicans controlled the White House and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, spending grew at an average annual rate of 1.92%. During the eight years with a Republican president and a split Congress, spending grew at 2.54% per year.
All this must come as a shock to the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe that Democrats are spenders and Republicans want to cut government spending. The simple fact is that during the past 34 years, government spending has grown significantly faster when a Republican has sat in the White House.
But the old prejudice still seems to have some validity regarding Congress: Democratic-controlled congresses have increased spending at a rate more than twice the rate that Republican congresses have.
Government spending has grown fastest when a Republican was in the White House and Democrats controlled Congress. It has grown most slowly when a Democrat was president and Republicans controlled Congress.
* * *
To this point, everything I've written is strictly factual, derived from figures published by the Bureau of the Census and the Department of Labor. So far as I am able to determine, these facts cannot be unchallenged.
But they are open to interpretation, and what follows is an attempt to provide background and explanation for why the growth in government spending in relation to political control of Congress and the presidency has taken the course I've described above.
The Early Post-War Years (1947–1969)
The strong correlations between Democrats and spending and between Republicans and restraint during the early postwar period make perfect sense. The Democratic administrations of Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson were characterized by war and the expansion of the welfare state, both of which are expensive projects, while the single GOP presidency was a time of peace and restraint.
Although Ike was criticized by many conservatives for not slashing government enough, government spending per capita actually fell during his presidency.
The domestic policy of President Harry Truman (fiscal years 1947–53) called for federal subsidies for (and control) of medical care, housing, and education, as well as other expansions of government programs, under the slogan of "The Fair Deal." Not all of Truman's ambitious program was enacted, but enough of it was implemented that in combination with the Korean War (which began in fiscal year 1950) government spending increased at an average rate of 6.77% during Truman's second administration.
John F. Kennedy (fiscal years 1962–65) was elected on a platform calling for increased government spending domestically and an aggressive anti-communist foreign policy. But a coalition of conservative southern Democrats and old-line Republicans made it difficult to enact his domestic program and, with the exception of his abortive invasion of Cuba in 1962, his war against communism didn't really come to fruition until after his untimely death. Spending grew at an average of 3.27% per year during his brief administration.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1965–69) called for a massive increase in the welfare state, under the slogan of the "Great Society," and greatly escalated the war in Vietnam, which Eisenhower had almost entirely avoided and for which Kennedy had laid the groundwork. Unsurprisingly, government spending increased rapidly during his presidency. During his only full term, spending rose at an average rate of 6.46% per year.
The only Republican to capture the White House during this period was World War II hero Dwight D. Eisenhower. Although he was criticized by many conservatives for not rolling back government as much as they wanted, his is the only administration since World War II in which government spending per capita actually fell. He combined fiscal restraint on domestic programs with an inclination to disentangle America from wars abroad: he presided over the end of the Korean War, refused to get involved in the wars in the Middle East, and did what he could to keep America from greater involvement in Vietnam. During the first two years of his administration, when he had the support of a GOP Congress, spending fell by more than 13%, but during the final two years, with the Democrats firmly in control of both houses of Congress, spending rose at an annual rate of 1.46%. Even with these increases, spending fell at an average annual rate of 0.70% during his administration.
The New Era (1970–2003)
The fact that Republican presidents have been bigger spenders than Democratic presidents during the past 34 years startles many people. This is probably a product of people's greater inclination to listen to the rhetoric of the candidates than to pay attention to what winning candidates actually do once they are in office.
Consider the case of Ronald Reagan. He called for cutting back government, but presided over a massive increase in the size and power of government, at least as measured by government spending per capita. Government spending during his administration grew at an average rate of 2.28%, nearly three times as fast as during the administration of Democrat Bill Clinton.
George W. Bush is establishing himself as the biggest spender since Lyndon Johnson.
Similarly, Richard Nixon was elected based on his promises to cut back government, but spending increased during his administration at a faster rate than during any subsequent administration except that of George W. Bush. Nixon pursued policies that he thought would maximize his chances for reelection and his historic reputation. He had no interest in repealing any of the Great Society measures. His "de-escalation" of the Vietnam War proceeded very slowly, and involved sending more troops and dropping more bombs. His legacy includes such expansions of government power as the War on Drugs and the Environmental Protection Agency. The result? During his years in the White House, government spending grew at an average rate of 2.31%, virtually identical to the rate during the Reagan years.
George W. Bush was elected on the strongest and most explicit conservative platform ever, yet he supported massive increases in military spending, created a whole new bureaucracy to fight the War on Terror, invaded two countries, and pushed through the largest single increase in welfare spending in decades. Not surprisingly, spending has grown the fastest during his years of any presidency since Lyndon Johnson's.
The other two Republican presidencies were different cases. Gerald Ford, who assumed the powers of the presidency when Nixon resigned in disgrace, was an old-line, fiscally conservative Republican who faced a very hostile and overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. Ford responded by using his veto power more frequently than any president before or since. The result was the lowest average annual spending increases of any presidency since Eisenhower.
George H. W. Bush was also a special case. He presided over a country that favored fiscal restraint and was elected largely because of his promise not to raise taxes. When he broke that promise, many Congressional Republicans treated him as if he were their enemy. Meanwhile, the Democratic majority in Congress, smelling blood, focused on making him look bad, sensing a victory of the White House for them. They succeeded. The result: spending grew at 1.15% per year during his presidency, the lowest rate of increase of any post-war president except Eisenhower.
The two Democratic presidents of this era faced radically different situations. Jimmy Carter was elected during post-Vietnam public cynicism about the military, and his years saw actual cuts in military spending. He eschewed most of the traditional Democratic calls for increases in welfare programs. Not surprisingly, spending grew at a relatively low 1.70% annual rate during his administration.
Bill Clinton is perhaps the most interesting case. He was elected very narrowly, on a platform that included a government takeover of the entire health-care system, the largest expansion of government power any president had proposed in decades. But he got only 43% of the vote, with the remaining 57% going to candidates who plainly opposed the measure and portrayed themselves as fiscal conservatives. Upon his wife's advice, he pursued the take-over of medicine in a manner so high-handed that, in combination with strong opposition from conservatives and libertarians, the entire package was abandoned.
After Republicans won both houses of Congress in 1994, Clinton, having no real political convictions, proclaimed that the "era of big government is over," and embraced other elements of the GOP agenda, such as welfare reform. The result was that spending grew at a rate of just 0.81% during his administration, the lowest growth rate since Eisenhower.
What can we learn about the future from this study? Past experience is not a perfect predictor of the future, but it seems far more likely that America's government will become larger, more powerful, and more expensive if George W. Bush is reelected than if he is defeated. A Democratic victory in either (or both) houses of Congress would likely accelerate this trend. Republican congresses combined with Republican presidencies during the past 34 years have consistently resulted in faster spending growth than Democratic presidencies. Democratic congresses have tended to increase spending faster than Republican congresses. And spending has grown faster with a Republican president and Democratic control of one or both houses of Congress than in any other situation. In addition, Bush is establishing himself as the biggest spender since Lyndon Johnson.
The election of John Kerry as president would likely result in slower spending growth, especially if Congress remains in control of the GOP, which seems overwhelmingly likely. Government spending grows most slowly with a Democrat in the White House and the Republicans in control of Congress. While John Kerry's positions have been all over the place during the campaign, ranging from pro-war to anti-war, from support for the traditional Democratic tax-and-spend policies to "Bush lite" reforms, his record in the Senate is generally one of fiscal responsibility. And the Republicans, particularly those in the House of Representatives, have shown a strong inclination against all sorts of spending. But you never know.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
T. Boone hard-wired for subsidies
Jerry Taylor, Financial Post
Published: Thursday, July 24, 2008
Virtually every claim made by T. Boone Pickens to justify the lavish subsidies he is seeking for his wind energy investments is flat wrong.
First, oil imports are not the cause of high gasoline prices. On the contrary, oil imports serve to keep gasoline prices down. After all, we import oil for a reason -- it's cheaper than the domestic alternative. If we were to restrict our energy diet to energy produced in the United States, it would make domestic energy producers (like Mr. Pickens) far richer and energy consumers (the rest of us) far poorer, and GDP would be reduced as well. While one can understand why Mr. Pickens is attracted to the idea of "energy independence," for the rest of us, keeping the country open to imported goods is pro-consumer, whether we're talking about oil, steel, textiles or athletic shoes.
Second, we are no more forced to rely on the "goodwill" of foreign oil producers when we shop for petroleum than we are forced to rely on the "goodwill" of supermarkets when we shop for eggs and milk. Oil producers export crude oil because it's a great way to make money -- and for many, the only way to make money. And once that oil is in the global marketplace, market actors, not oil producers, dictate where it goes. Hence, we are betting on producer greed -- which is a pretty safe bet.
Third, if wind energy were a sensible economic investment, it would not need the lavish federal and state subsidies already in place or the additional largesse sought after by Mr. Pickens. Likewise, if compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles are an economically sensible alternative to conventional gasoline-powered vehicles, then no government "master plan" is necessary to deliver them to market. Price signals will induce investors to invest and consumers to buy, without government having to lift a finger. The same goes for all the other energy-related R&D Mr. Pickens would like the taxpayer to dole out. If that R&D is promising, it will be pursued, whether government subsidizes it or not.
Fourth, if reducing our carbon footprint is the goal, then the most direct and efficient means of reducing that footprint is to impose a tax on carbon emissions and then leave it to the market to sort out how to most efficiently order affairs under those new prices. Maybe it will mean windmills and CNG, but maybe not. Perhaps it will mean more nuclear power, new hydrogen-powered fuel cells, "clean" coal, the emergence of cellulosic ethanol, battery-powered cars or hybrids -- or a continuation of the existing energy base but less consumption as a consequence.
Of course, if the market were to go into any of those directions, Mr. Pickens would be out a lot of money, which is probably why he wants to hard-wire the market to consume the things he's investing in and have the government lavish him with subsidies in the course of doing so. I wish Mr. Pickens well in his wind energy business, but I see no reason why taxpayers, ratepayers or consumers ought to be forced to sacrifice in order to fatten his already ample bank account.
- Jerry Taylor is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
Published: Thursday, July 24, 2008
Virtually every claim made by T. Boone Pickens to justify the lavish subsidies he is seeking for his wind energy investments is flat wrong.
First, oil imports are not the cause of high gasoline prices. On the contrary, oil imports serve to keep gasoline prices down. After all, we import oil for a reason -- it's cheaper than the domestic alternative. If we were to restrict our energy diet to energy produced in the United States, it would make domestic energy producers (like Mr. Pickens) far richer and energy consumers (the rest of us) far poorer, and GDP would be reduced as well. While one can understand why Mr. Pickens is attracted to the idea of "energy independence," for the rest of us, keeping the country open to imported goods is pro-consumer, whether we're talking about oil, steel, textiles or athletic shoes.
Second, we are no more forced to rely on the "goodwill" of foreign oil producers when we shop for petroleum than we are forced to rely on the "goodwill" of supermarkets when we shop for eggs and milk. Oil producers export crude oil because it's a great way to make money -- and for many, the only way to make money. And once that oil is in the global marketplace, market actors, not oil producers, dictate where it goes. Hence, we are betting on producer greed -- which is a pretty safe bet.
Third, if wind energy were a sensible economic investment, it would not need the lavish federal and state subsidies already in place or the additional largesse sought after by Mr. Pickens. Likewise, if compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles are an economically sensible alternative to conventional gasoline-powered vehicles, then no government "master plan" is necessary to deliver them to market. Price signals will induce investors to invest and consumers to buy, without government having to lift a finger. The same goes for all the other energy-related R&D Mr. Pickens would like the taxpayer to dole out. If that R&D is promising, it will be pursued, whether government subsidizes it or not.
Fourth, if reducing our carbon footprint is the goal, then the most direct and efficient means of reducing that footprint is to impose a tax on carbon emissions and then leave it to the market to sort out how to most efficiently order affairs under those new prices. Maybe it will mean windmills and CNG, but maybe not. Perhaps it will mean more nuclear power, new hydrogen-powered fuel cells, "clean" coal, the emergence of cellulosic ethanol, battery-powered cars or hybrids -- or a continuation of the existing energy base but less consumption as a consequence.
Of course, if the market were to go into any of those directions, Mr. Pickens would be out a lot of money, which is probably why he wants to hard-wire the market to consume the things he's investing in and have the government lavish him with subsidies in the course of doing so. I wish Mr. Pickens well in his wind energy business, but I see no reason why taxpayers, ratepayers or consumers ought to be forced to sacrifice in order to fatten his already ample bank account.
- Jerry Taylor is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
'Global warming' scheme to push global tax
Note: Both major parties push the view of global warming and its causes in spite of thousands of scientists believing the contrary. Why?
Posted: June 19, 2008
By Bob Unruh
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
A scientist whose reservations about "global warming" have been officially endorsed by tens of thousands of other scientists is accusing the U.N. of using "mob rule" to generate fear-mongering climate change reports intended to scare national leaders into submitting to its worldwide taxation schemes.
"Science has always progressed on the basis of observations, experiments, and thoughts published by individual scientists and sometimes pairs or small groups of scientific coworkers," Art Robinson, a research professor of chemistry and co-founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, said in a recent column in Human Events.
Except at the U.N., he said.
Robinson's concern over the political manipulation of science earlier led him to launch the Petition Project, a compilation of more than 31,000 scientists – with more names arriving daily – who have voluntarily signed their names to the following statement:
"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
He said the scientific process begins with the results of individuals' work and their distribution of their ideas.
"A few of these published articles are especially valuable; a greater number, while not remarkable, provide relative mundane studies that add to the infrastructure of science; many are not useful at all; and some are completely wrong. As individual scientists read these articles, they use their own wisdom, knowledge, and judgment to separate new information that they find valuable from information that they find of no use," Robinson said. Eventually, the good, accurate and valuable information is advanced.
"Always, scientific progress is a result of a large number of individual decisions that trend in a specific direction," he said.
Not so, however, at the United Nations. Especially with the organization's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has generated many of the claims of catastrophic results of man's use of hydrocarbon fuels, including submerged coastlines and a deadly, massive expansion of African deserts.
The IPCC website boasts of sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore Jr. for "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change." It also notes its goals are to eradicate poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve mothers' health, combat HIV/AIDS, ensure environmental sustainability and others.
"The IPCC provides its reports at regular intervals and they immediately become standard works of reference, widely used by policymakers, experts and students," the organization itself says. .
The IPCC conferences do, in fact, feature "a few hundred" people, including some with formal educations in science, some actively engaged in scientific work, some retired, holding discussions on "the entirely unsolved problem of climate prediction for time periods decades and even centuries in the future," said Robinson, who also publishes the Access to Energy newsletter. In 1973, Robinson co-founded the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine with Linus Pauling.
"The primary requirement for selection is a willingness to participate in the United Nations' new 'process' and the agenda behind it," Robinson said. "These people study and discuss the current and past research literature concerning climate and climate prediction. … These emanations are closely observed by a very select small group of United Nations operatives."
At the end of the meetings, "this small group of observers combines the products of the meeting into a large important-looking report – carefully editing the report so that it supports United Nations political objectives," Robinson said. "At no time is this report submitted to the 600-plus 'scientists.'"
The results then are distributed as "settled science," he said, "regardless of the fact that the scientists involved do not agree upon the text. … The elite few who oversaw the meeting and interpreted its results are special. They are the U.N.'s anointed messengers of the truth."
A spokeswoman for the United Nation's Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon declined to respond to WND questions about the process, referring those questions to the IPCC office in Geneva. There a spokeswoman confirmed for WND the process that has a small number of specially appointed U.N. operatives write reports following "scientific" meetings.
Robinson's petition, which includes the names of leading experts in fields such as atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and dozens of other specialties, also features the names of more than 9,000 Ph.D.s in their areas of expertise.
But Robinson said the U.N. operatives have fallen victim to "a peculiar and dangerous virus" infecting American public discourse.
Victims of that disease, which robs words of their meaning, also believe that "democracy" means "republic," "gambling" becomes "investment" and "vice" becomes the "virtue of diversity," Robinson said.
Also, "science" has become devalued.
"And nowhere is it more abused than in the United Nations, where institutionalized mob rule is called 'science,'" he said.
"In its headlong drive to gain the power to tax and ration world energy (and thereby control world technology – sharing taxation authority with other governments in return for their support) the United Nations has created a 'process,' which it calls 'science,'" he said.
In real science, however, "truths are never determined through such meetings; unsolved scientific questions are never resolved by such meetings; and scientific articles are never published unless every putative or listed author has personally approved every word of the publication," Robinson said. "Scientific truth is never decided by meetings organized to decide which ideas are true and which are false.
"If the mob rule process of the United Nations worked, many great unsolved scientific questions could be quickly solved. United Nations observers could attend scientific meetings of cancer scientists and determined the causes and cures of cancer. With the 'science settled,' this scourge could be eliminated. Likewise Alzheimer's disease, human aging, the origin of the universe, and other great unsolved problems could be solved," Robinson wrote.
"In the present case in which United Nations apparatchiks have proclaimed that human activity is catastrophically warming the planet, the human cost of error is so great than many other scientists have become motivated to individually examine the evidence. Now, a total of more than 9,000 Americans with Ph.D.s in science and therefore professional educational credentials that, on average, equal or surpass the United Nations 600 – and a total of more than 31,000 Americans with at least B.S. degrees in science have signed a petition to the U.S. government specifically rejecting the United Nations claim that human use of hydrocarbon energy is injuring the climate," Robinson said.
"In fact, the 31,000 scientists state that carbon dioxide released by energy production is actually beneficial to the environment," he said.
"It is time to kill this counterproductive virus that has sickened American science and engineering, and get on with the job of expanding the American hydrocarbon and nuclear energy industries. To do less poses a terrible risk to America's prosperity and to her future," he said.
WND reported a surge of names was submitted to Robinson's petition project following the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" by Gore.
The film was widely distributed and preached about the "settled science" of U.N. global warming prognosticators, Robinson said.
"Unfortunately, Mr. Gore's movie contains many very serious incorrect claims which no informed, honest scientist could endorse," Robinson said at the time.
The late Professor Frederick Seitz, the past president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and winner of the National Medal of Science, concluded U.N. pronouncements notwithstanding, "Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful."
The Petition Project's website includes both a list of scientists by name as well as a list of scientists by state.
Posted: June 19, 2008
By Bob Unruh
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
A scientist whose reservations about "global warming" have been officially endorsed by tens of thousands of other scientists is accusing the U.N. of using "mob rule" to generate fear-mongering climate change reports intended to scare national leaders into submitting to its worldwide taxation schemes.
"Science has always progressed on the basis of observations, experiments, and thoughts published by individual scientists and sometimes pairs or small groups of scientific coworkers," Art Robinson, a research professor of chemistry and co-founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, said in a recent column in Human Events.
Except at the U.N., he said.
Robinson's concern over the political manipulation of science earlier led him to launch the Petition Project, a compilation of more than 31,000 scientists – with more names arriving daily – who have voluntarily signed their names to the following statement:
"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
He said the scientific process begins with the results of individuals' work and their distribution of their ideas.
"A few of these published articles are especially valuable; a greater number, while not remarkable, provide relative mundane studies that add to the infrastructure of science; many are not useful at all; and some are completely wrong. As individual scientists read these articles, they use their own wisdom, knowledge, and judgment to separate new information that they find valuable from information that they find of no use," Robinson said. Eventually, the good, accurate and valuable information is advanced.
"Always, scientific progress is a result of a large number of individual decisions that trend in a specific direction," he said.
Not so, however, at the United Nations. Especially with the organization's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has generated many of the claims of catastrophic results of man's use of hydrocarbon fuels, including submerged coastlines and a deadly, massive expansion of African deserts.
The IPCC website boasts of sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore Jr. for "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change." It also notes its goals are to eradicate poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve mothers' health, combat HIV/AIDS, ensure environmental sustainability and others.
"The IPCC provides its reports at regular intervals and they immediately become standard works of reference, widely used by policymakers, experts and students," the organization itself says. .
The IPCC conferences do, in fact, feature "a few hundred" people, including some with formal educations in science, some actively engaged in scientific work, some retired, holding discussions on "the entirely unsolved problem of climate prediction for time periods decades and even centuries in the future," said Robinson, who also publishes the Access to Energy newsletter. In 1973, Robinson co-founded the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine with Linus Pauling.
"The primary requirement for selection is a willingness to participate in the United Nations' new 'process' and the agenda behind it," Robinson said. "These people study and discuss the current and past research literature concerning climate and climate prediction. … These emanations are closely observed by a very select small group of United Nations operatives."
At the end of the meetings, "this small group of observers combines the products of the meeting into a large important-looking report – carefully editing the report so that it supports United Nations political objectives," Robinson said. "At no time is this report submitted to the 600-plus 'scientists.'"
The results then are distributed as "settled science," he said, "regardless of the fact that the scientists involved do not agree upon the text. … The elite few who oversaw the meeting and interpreted its results are special. They are the U.N.'s anointed messengers of the truth."
A spokeswoman for the United Nation's Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon declined to respond to WND questions about the process, referring those questions to the IPCC office in Geneva. There a spokeswoman confirmed for WND the process that has a small number of specially appointed U.N. operatives write reports following "scientific" meetings.
Robinson's petition, which includes the names of leading experts in fields such as atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and dozens of other specialties, also features the names of more than 9,000 Ph.D.s in their areas of expertise.
But Robinson said the U.N. operatives have fallen victim to "a peculiar and dangerous virus" infecting American public discourse.
Victims of that disease, which robs words of their meaning, also believe that "democracy" means "republic," "gambling" becomes "investment" and "vice" becomes the "virtue of diversity," Robinson said.
Also, "science" has become devalued.
"And nowhere is it more abused than in the United Nations, where institutionalized mob rule is called 'science,'" he said.
"In its headlong drive to gain the power to tax and ration world energy (and thereby control world technology – sharing taxation authority with other governments in return for their support) the United Nations has created a 'process,' which it calls 'science,'" he said.
In real science, however, "truths are never determined through such meetings; unsolved scientific questions are never resolved by such meetings; and scientific articles are never published unless every putative or listed author has personally approved every word of the publication," Robinson said. "Scientific truth is never decided by meetings organized to decide which ideas are true and which are false.
"If the mob rule process of the United Nations worked, many great unsolved scientific questions could be quickly solved. United Nations observers could attend scientific meetings of cancer scientists and determined the causes and cures of cancer. With the 'science settled,' this scourge could be eliminated. Likewise Alzheimer's disease, human aging, the origin of the universe, and other great unsolved problems could be solved," Robinson wrote.
"In the present case in which United Nations apparatchiks have proclaimed that human activity is catastrophically warming the planet, the human cost of error is so great than many other scientists have become motivated to individually examine the evidence. Now, a total of more than 9,000 Americans with Ph.D.s in science and therefore professional educational credentials that, on average, equal or surpass the United Nations 600 – and a total of more than 31,000 Americans with at least B.S. degrees in science have signed a petition to the U.S. government specifically rejecting the United Nations claim that human use of hydrocarbon energy is injuring the climate," Robinson said.
"In fact, the 31,000 scientists state that carbon dioxide released by energy production is actually beneficial to the environment," he said.
"It is time to kill this counterproductive virus that has sickened American science and engineering, and get on with the job of expanding the American hydrocarbon and nuclear energy industries. To do less poses a terrible risk to America's prosperity and to her future," he said.
WND reported a surge of names was submitted to Robinson's petition project following the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" by Gore.
The film was widely distributed and preached about the "settled science" of U.N. global warming prognosticators, Robinson said.
"Unfortunately, Mr. Gore's movie contains many very serious incorrect claims which no informed, honest scientist could endorse," Robinson said at the time.
The late Professor Frederick Seitz, the past president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and winner of the National Medal of Science, concluded U.N. pronouncements notwithstanding, "Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful."
The Petition Project's website includes both a list of scientists by name as well as a list of scientists by state.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Shooting the Messenger (The Story of Sibel Edmonds)
Note: A great introductory story about a Patriot, Sibel Edmonds, former contract translator with the FBI. For more information there is a link at the bottom of the article with a great interview transcript.
By: William F. Jasper
July 7, 2008
For six years, Sibel Edmonds has been carrying out an heroic crusade to protect her adopted country from national security threats within the top levels of the American government. Hired as an FBI translator in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, Edmonds, a Turkish American, threw herself into the daunting task of translating thousands of hours of recordings of backlogged intercepts in Turkic, Farsi, and Azerbaijani. What she heard on the tapes was alarming: Turkish agents in the United States bribing high-level U.S. officials and obtaining our military and intelligence secrets. What she witnessed at the FBI was even more appalling: translators who were intentionally filing false translations and passing information to foreign powers; and, what’s even worse, FBI superiors who did nothing about it when these serious breaches were brought to their attention.
Unwilling to settle for the bureaucratic “don’t rock the boat” response she faced from immediate supervisors, Sibel Edmonds decided to take her concerns higher up the FBI chain of command. The result? She was fired, and those she tried to have investigated got off scot-free; some fled the country to avoid potential prosecution, while others continued their alleged criminal and treasonous activities. Some of the FBI colleagues who blocked her efforts were promoted.
How could this be, especially in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, when “homeland security” was our number one concern? And especially since FBI Director Robert Mueller had expressly promised that the agency’s notorious penchant for punishing whistle-blowers was now a thing of the past.
In a November 2001 memorandum to all FBI employees, Director Mueller stated: “I will not tolerate reprisals or intimidation by any bureau employee against those who make protected disclosures, nor will I tolerate attempts to prevent employees from making such disclosures.”
However, Director Mueller’s assurances notwithstanding, the case of Sibel Edmonds is Exhibit A in a long line of examples indicating that reprisal and intimidation against whistle-blowers continues to be standard operating procedure at the FBI and other federal agencies. The public may be tempted to wonder: “Well, if the national security compromises Mrs. Edmonds alleges are as grave as she claims, why doesn’t she go the Congress, or the courts, or the media?” She has attempted to do all of that, but has been blocked at every turn by a smothering gag order imposed by the Bush administration under the “State Secrets Privilege.” The gag order not only classified all of Edmonds’ testimony to the 9/11 Commission, to the investigative staffs of congressional committees, and to the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), but even letters by members of Congress requesting information from the executive branch.
Turkish Spy in the FBI?
Governments, obviously, have a legitimate interest in protecting secrets vital to national security. But as history abundantly shows, governments frequently invoke “national security” to avoid embarrassment or to protect those guilty of criminal negligence, corruption, or treason.
Sibel Edmonds has been threatened with prosecution and imprisonment if she reveals what she knows. Plain and simple, the administration has been trying to make her disappear into a black hole. However, the petite, plucky whistle-blower refuses to be bowed or intimidated.
Considering the meat of Sibel Edmonds’ charges, we may be fortunate indeed that she has been so tenacious and unyielding before the fearsome threat of a retaliatory indictment. The information she reportedly was privy to on nuclear proliferation alone is, literally, explosive, of the kind that has to do with the ultimate nightmare terrorist scenario: a nuke attack inside the United States.
Since Edmonds herself has been prevented from publicly naming names and providing details, most of what is now in the public domain about her case has come from leaks of documents by anonymous sources in government and the investigative work of “alternative media” journalists and Internet activists.
In December 2001, Sibel and her husband, Matthew Edmonds, received a surprise visit to their Alexandria, Virginia, home by one of Sibel’s co-workers, Melek Can Dickerson, and her husband, Douglas. Like Sibel Edmonds, Melek was a Turkish translator for the FBI and carried a Top Secret security clearance. Her husband Douglas is a major in the U.S. Air Force who had served as a military attaché in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. According to Sibel and Matthew Edmonds, Maj. Dickerson proposed that the Edmonds become members of a certain Turkish “semi-legitimate organization,” as Sibel Edmonds put it.
It has since been revealed (by others) that the organization referred to is the American Turkish Council (ATC), a lobbying and cultural organization that also allegedly functions as an intelligence front for the Turkish government.
Maj. Dickerson’s mention of the “semi-legitimate organization” and high-level friends at the Turkish embassy in Washington, D.C., immediately set off Sibel’s internal alarms; the ATC and some of the individuals he named were subjects of FBI counterterrorism investigations that she was working on.
It sounded to the Edmonds like they had just been propositioned to spy against their country for payoffs by a foreign power. According to Sibel Edmonds, she recounted the incident, both verbally and in writing, to her FBI superiors.
Long story short: in March 2002, the FBI fired Sibel Edmonds for having a “disruptive effect” on the agency; Melek Can Dickerson, on the other hand, kept her job. No criminal charges were brought against the Dickersons and no known counterintelligence investigation was opened on them. Indeed, it appears the government did everything possible to shield them from investigation. When attorneys for Sibel Edmonds prepared to depose the Dickersons in a civil suit in August 2002, the Air Force conveniently transferred the Dickersons beyond legal reach, to a NATO assignment in Belgium.
Vindication and Warning
In July 2004, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General finished its investigation of the Edmonds’ case — but it was immediately classified, assuring that its contents would not reach the public. Finally, in January 2005, the Office of the Inspector General released an unclassified summary of its report, which, at least partially, vindicated her claims. The OIG report reads, in part:
We found that many of Edmonds’ core allegations relating to the co-worker were supported by either documentary evidence or witnesses other than Edmonds. Moreover, we concluded that, had the FBI performed a more careful investigation of Edmonds’ allegations, it would have discovered evidence of significant omissions and inaccuracies by the co-worker related to these allegations. These omissions and inaccuracies, in turn, should have led to further investigation by the FBI.
The OIG found that “the FBI should have investigated the allegations more thoroughly” and that “the FBI’s handling of these allegations reflected an unwarranted reluctance to vigorously investigate these serious allegations or to conduct a thorough examination of Edmonds’ allegations.”
Moreover, the Inspector General’s report noted, “The FBI did not, and still has not, conducted such an investigation.” (Emphasis added.) Finally, the OIG reported, “Rather than investigate Edmonds’ allegations vigorously and thoroughly, the FBI concluded that she was a disruption and terminated her contract.”
Senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), both of whom sit on the Judiciary Committee and have heard Sibel Edmonds’ classified testimony, express confidence in her. “She’s credible,” Grassley told CBS 60 Minutes, in a 2002 interview, one of the few broadcasts about Edmonds’ case by the major media. “And the reason I feel she’s very credible,” the senator continued, “is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.” Does her case fall into any pattern of conduct on the part of the FBI, he was asked. “The usual pattern,” Senator Grassley responded. “Let me tell you, first of all, the embarrassing information comes out, the FBI reaction is to sweep it under the rug, and then eventually they shoot the messenger.”
A ray of hope seemed to appear in 2005 when Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) promised Edmonds that if the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, he would hold hearings on her case. “But you know what happened,” Edmonds told THE NEW AMERICAN in a recent interview, “the Democrats did win the House and Rep. Waxman did become chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. But nothing has changed; there has been no investigation.” Rep. Waxman seems to have developed selective amnesia, a common affliction on the Potomac. He has not responded to any of her calls or inquiries.
Bipartisan Obstruction
Perhaps, she suggested to THE NEW AMERICAN, Rep. Waxman is aware that Democrats could be as damaged by the revelations of bribery and espionage as the Republicans. “This didn’t start with the Bush administration,” she reminds us. “Many of the wiretaps I was translating at the FBI were from the 1990s, during the Clinton administration.”
Following up on her revelations, independent researchers have begun putting names on some of the “high-level officials” Edmonds had been referring to, but not identifying, over the past few years.
Late last year, Edmonds decided the stalling game had gone on long enough. In December 2007, she approached the British newspaper, the Sunday Times, which ran an explosive story, “For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets,” on January 6. Edmonds described for the paper how “foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.” She told how “one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.”
This same State Department official, she told the Times, “was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”
The above-mentioned official, whom Edmonds and the Times did not identify, was outed in an article in the American Conservative by retired CIA officer Philip Giraldi. According to Giraldi, the official in question is Marc Grossman, a career State Department bureaucrat, who served as ambassador to Turkey under Bill Clinton, and retired in 2006 after serving as Under Secretary of State (the Number 3 position at the State Department) for George Bush.
In retirement, Grossman has followed a familiar career trajectory, accepting a lucrative “consulting” position at The Cohen Group, the lobbying outfit set up by former Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen that counts Turkey as one of its chief clients.
Other former high officials who now openly ride the Turkey gravy train as paid lobbyists/consultants include former Democratic House Speaker Richard Gephardt and former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Hastert, allegedly, is one of the officials identified in FBI intercepts as receiving multiple cash payoffs through the American Turkish Council.
“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case,” Edmonds told the Times, “you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials.” Perhaps that explains why top Republicans and Democrats would rather see Sibel Edmonds locked up with a permanent gag order.
Interview of Sibel Edmonds conducted June 12 2008
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=13002
By: William F. Jasper
July 7, 2008
For six years, Sibel Edmonds has been carrying out an heroic crusade to protect her adopted country from national security threats within the top levels of the American government. Hired as an FBI translator in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, Edmonds, a Turkish American, threw herself into the daunting task of translating thousands of hours of recordings of backlogged intercepts in Turkic, Farsi, and Azerbaijani. What she heard on the tapes was alarming: Turkish agents in the United States bribing high-level U.S. officials and obtaining our military and intelligence secrets. What she witnessed at the FBI was even more appalling: translators who were intentionally filing false translations and passing information to foreign powers; and, what’s even worse, FBI superiors who did nothing about it when these serious breaches were brought to their attention.
Unwilling to settle for the bureaucratic “don’t rock the boat” response she faced from immediate supervisors, Sibel Edmonds decided to take her concerns higher up the FBI chain of command. The result? She was fired, and those she tried to have investigated got off scot-free; some fled the country to avoid potential prosecution, while others continued their alleged criminal and treasonous activities. Some of the FBI colleagues who blocked her efforts were promoted.
How could this be, especially in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, when “homeland security” was our number one concern? And especially since FBI Director Robert Mueller had expressly promised that the agency’s notorious penchant for punishing whistle-blowers was now a thing of the past.
In a November 2001 memorandum to all FBI employees, Director Mueller stated: “I will not tolerate reprisals or intimidation by any bureau employee against those who make protected disclosures, nor will I tolerate attempts to prevent employees from making such disclosures.”
However, Director Mueller’s assurances notwithstanding, the case of Sibel Edmonds is Exhibit A in a long line of examples indicating that reprisal and intimidation against whistle-blowers continues to be standard operating procedure at the FBI and other federal agencies. The public may be tempted to wonder: “Well, if the national security compromises Mrs. Edmonds alleges are as grave as she claims, why doesn’t she go the Congress, or the courts, or the media?” She has attempted to do all of that, but has been blocked at every turn by a smothering gag order imposed by the Bush administration under the “State Secrets Privilege.” The gag order not only classified all of Edmonds’ testimony to the 9/11 Commission, to the investigative staffs of congressional committees, and to the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), but even letters by members of Congress requesting information from the executive branch.
Turkish Spy in the FBI?
Governments, obviously, have a legitimate interest in protecting secrets vital to national security. But as history abundantly shows, governments frequently invoke “national security” to avoid embarrassment or to protect those guilty of criminal negligence, corruption, or treason.
Sibel Edmonds has been threatened with prosecution and imprisonment if she reveals what she knows. Plain and simple, the administration has been trying to make her disappear into a black hole. However, the petite, plucky whistle-blower refuses to be bowed or intimidated.
Considering the meat of Sibel Edmonds’ charges, we may be fortunate indeed that she has been so tenacious and unyielding before the fearsome threat of a retaliatory indictment. The information she reportedly was privy to on nuclear proliferation alone is, literally, explosive, of the kind that has to do with the ultimate nightmare terrorist scenario: a nuke attack inside the United States.
Since Edmonds herself has been prevented from publicly naming names and providing details, most of what is now in the public domain about her case has come from leaks of documents by anonymous sources in government and the investigative work of “alternative media” journalists and Internet activists.
In December 2001, Sibel and her husband, Matthew Edmonds, received a surprise visit to their Alexandria, Virginia, home by one of Sibel’s co-workers, Melek Can Dickerson, and her husband, Douglas. Like Sibel Edmonds, Melek was a Turkish translator for the FBI and carried a Top Secret security clearance. Her husband Douglas is a major in the U.S. Air Force who had served as a military attaché in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. According to Sibel and Matthew Edmonds, Maj. Dickerson proposed that the Edmonds become members of a certain Turkish “semi-legitimate organization,” as Sibel Edmonds put it.
It has since been revealed (by others) that the organization referred to is the American Turkish Council (ATC), a lobbying and cultural organization that also allegedly functions as an intelligence front for the Turkish government.
Maj. Dickerson’s mention of the “semi-legitimate organization” and high-level friends at the Turkish embassy in Washington, D.C., immediately set off Sibel’s internal alarms; the ATC and some of the individuals he named were subjects of FBI counterterrorism investigations that she was working on.
It sounded to the Edmonds like they had just been propositioned to spy against their country for payoffs by a foreign power. According to Sibel Edmonds, she recounted the incident, both verbally and in writing, to her FBI superiors.
Long story short: in March 2002, the FBI fired Sibel Edmonds for having a “disruptive effect” on the agency; Melek Can Dickerson, on the other hand, kept her job. No criminal charges were brought against the Dickersons and no known counterintelligence investigation was opened on them. Indeed, it appears the government did everything possible to shield them from investigation. When attorneys for Sibel Edmonds prepared to depose the Dickersons in a civil suit in August 2002, the Air Force conveniently transferred the Dickersons beyond legal reach, to a NATO assignment in Belgium.
Vindication and Warning
In July 2004, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General finished its investigation of the Edmonds’ case — but it was immediately classified, assuring that its contents would not reach the public. Finally, in January 2005, the Office of the Inspector General released an unclassified summary of its report, which, at least partially, vindicated her claims. The OIG report reads, in part:
We found that many of Edmonds’ core allegations relating to the co-worker were supported by either documentary evidence or witnesses other than Edmonds. Moreover, we concluded that, had the FBI performed a more careful investigation of Edmonds’ allegations, it would have discovered evidence of significant omissions and inaccuracies by the co-worker related to these allegations. These omissions and inaccuracies, in turn, should have led to further investigation by the FBI.
The OIG found that “the FBI should have investigated the allegations more thoroughly” and that “the FBI’s handling of these allegations reflected an unwarranted reluctance to vigorously investigate these serious allegations or to conduct a thorough examination of Edmonds’ allegations.”
Moreover, the Inspector General’s report noted, “The FBI did not, and still has not, conducted such an investigation.” (Emphasis added.) Finally, the OIG reported, “Rather than investigate Edmonds’ allegations vigorously and thoroughly, the FBI concluded that she was a disruption and terminated her contract.”
Senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), both of whom sit on the Judiciary Committee and have heard Sibel Edmonds’ classified testimony, express confidence in her. “She’s credible,” Grassley told CBS 60 Minutes, in a 2002 interview, one of the few broadcasts about Edmonds’ case by the major media. “And the reason I feel she’s very credible,” the senator continued, “is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.” Does her case fall into any pattern of conduct on the part of the FBI, he was asked. “The usual pattern,” Senator Grassley responded. “Let me tell you, first of all, the embarrassing information comes out, the FBI reaction is to sweep it under the rug, and then eventually they shoot the messenger.”
A ray of hope seemed to appear in 2005 when Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) promised Edmonds that if the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, he would hold hearings on her case. “But you know what happened,” Edmonds told THE NEW AMERICAN in a recent interview, “the Democrats did win the House and Rep. Waxman did become chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. But nothing has changed; there has been no investigation.” Rep. Waxman seems to have developed selective amnesia, a common affliction on the Potomac. He has not responded to any of her calls or inquiries.
Bipartisan Obstruction
Perhaps, she suggested to THE NEW AMERICAN, Rep. Waxman is aware that Democrats could be as damaged by the revelations of bribery and espionage as the Republicans. “This didn’t start with the Bush administration,” she reminds us. “Many of the wiretaps I was translating at the FBI were from the 1990s, during the Clinton administration.”
Following up on her revelations, independent researchers have begun putting names on some of the “high-level officials” Edmonds had been referring to, but not identifying, over the past few years.
Late last year, Edmonds decided the stalling game had gone on long enough. In December 2007, she approached the British newspaper, the Sunday Times, which ran an explosive story, “For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets,” on January 6. Edmonds described for the paper how “foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.” She told how “one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.”
This same State Department official, she told the Times, “was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”
The above-mentioned official, whom Edmonds and the Times did not identify, was outed in an article in the American Conservative by retired CIA officer Philip Giraldi. According to Giraldi, the official in question is Marc Grossman, a career State Department bureaucrat, who served as ambassador to Turkey under Bill Clinton, and retired in 2006 after serving as Under Secretary of State (the Number 3 position at the State Department) for George Bush.
In retirement, Grossman has followed a familiar career trajectory, accepting a lucrative “consulting” position at The Cohen Group, the lobbying outfit set up by former Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen that counts Turkey as one of its chief clients.
Other former high officials who now openly ride the Turkey gravy train as paid lobbyists/consultants include former Democratic House Speaker Richard Gephardt and former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Hastert, allegedly, is one of the officials identified in FBI intercepts as receiving multiple cash payoffs through the American Turkish Council.
“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case,” Edmonds told the Times, “you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials.” Perhaps that explains why top Republicans and Democrats would rather see Sibel Edmonds locked up with a permanent gag order.
Interview of Sibel Edmonds conducted June 12 2008
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=13002
Sunday, July 06, 2008
McCain meets with Hispanic leaders
Jun 19, 11:22 PM (ET)
By MICHAEL TARM
CHICAGO (AP) - Republican presidential John McCain assured Hispanic leaders he would push through Congress legislation to overhaul federal immigration laws if elected, several people who attended a private meeting with the candidate said Thursday.
Democrats questioned why the Arizona senator held the meeting late Wednesday night in Chicago. But supporters who were in the room denied that McCain held the closed-door session out of fear of offending conservatives, many of whom want him to take a harder line on immigration.
Both McCain and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama support giving legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, but neither has made the issue a centerpiece of the campaign. At one time, McCain's campaign suffered because of his stance on the issue.
"This was not a secret meeting," said Rafael Rivadeneira, a vice chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Illinois, who was among more than 150 Chicago-area Hispanic leaders who attended. "There was nothing he said that they wouldn't want people to hear."
Other attendees said they were not so sure.
"He's one John McCain in front of white Republicans. And he's a different John McCain in front of Hispanics," complained Rosanna Pulido, a Hispanic and conservative Republican who attended the meeting.
Pulido, who heads the Illinois Minuteman Project, which advocates for restrictive immigration laws, said she thought McCain was "pandering to the crowd" by emphasizing immigration reform in his 15-minute speech.
"He's having his private meetings to rally Hispanics and to tell them what they want to hear," she said. "I'm outraged that he would reach out to me as a Hispanic but not as a conservative."
After the event, McCain met privately with Martin Sandoval, an Illinois state senator and Democratic convention delegate for former candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sandoval said he left open the possibility of backing McCain, citing his immigration stance and pledge to keep business taxes low.
By MICHAEL TARM
CHICAGO (AP) - Republican presidential John McCain assured Hispanic leaders he would push through Congress legislation to overhaul federal immigration laws if elected, several people who attended a private meeting with the candidate said Thursday.
Democrats questioned why the Arizona senator held the meeting late Wednesday night in Chicago. But supporters who were in the room denied that McCain held the closed-door session out of fear of offending conservatives, many of whom want him to take a harder line on immigration.
Both McCain and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama support giving legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, but neither has made the issue a centerpiece of the campaign. At one time, McCain's campaign suffered because of his stance on the issue.
"This was not a secret meeting," said Rafael Rivadeneira, a vice chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Illinois, who was among more than 150 Chicago-area Hispanic leaders who attended. "There was nothing he said that they wouldn't want people to hear."
Other attendees said they were not so sure.
"He's one John McCain in front of white Republicans. And he's a different John McCain in front of Hispanics," complained Rosanna Pulido, a Hispanic and conservative Republican who attended the meeting.
Pulido, who heads the Illinois Minuteman Project, which advocates for restrictive immigration laws, said she thought McCain was "pandering to the crowd" by emphasizing immigration reform in his 15-minute speech.
"He's having his private meetings to rally Hispanics and to tell them what they want to hear," she said. "I'm outraged that he would reach out to me as a Hispanic but not as a conservative."
After the event, McCain met privately with Martin Sandoval, an Illinois state senator and Democratic convention delegate for former candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sandoval said he left open the possibility of backing McCain, citing his immigration stance and pledge to keep business taxes low.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
John McCain: Good for the Supreme Court?
By Jeffrey Robbins
I often find that one last objection of many conservatives who continue to vote Republican for President is often on the grounds of the potential harm that a Democrat would bring to pass on the Supreme Court. For those readers who have not yet read the first writings that appeared here regarding this possible myth that Republicans have been good for the Court, you may want to review two earlier posts,
here:
http://wiconstitutionalist.blogspot.com/2008/01/are-republicans-conservative-part-ii.html
and here:
http://wiconstitutionalist.blogspot.com/2008/01/are-republicans-conservative-part-iii.html
Since the time is quickly eroding until we take to the polls in November to decide who among the many candidates will receive our rightful vote for President (Baldwin, Barr, Obama, McCain, and Nader for example), it may be an important time to review the harm John McCain (and many of his fellow Repubicans) has possibly wrought on the Supreme Court.
In 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed by a vote of 96 to 3. The only votes against her came from three conservative Republicans: Helms (R-NC), Nickles (R-NC) and Smith (R-NH). Senator Donald W. Riegle Jr., a Michigan Democrat, did not appear for the vote.
In 1994, Stephen Breyer was confirmed by a 87-9 vote. Burns (R-MT), Coats (R-IN), Coverdell (R-GA), Helms (R-NC), Lott (R-MS), Lugar (R-IN), Murkowski (R-AK), Nickles (R-OK), Smith (R-NH) were the votes against his confirmation. There were four non-voters, two from each party.
John McCain assumed his Senate seat on January 3, 1987.
As we can see, John McCain votes Left when a Democrat is picking the US Supreme Court nominees, as he did with Clinton picks Ginsberg and Breyer. His other votes have been for Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Souter, and Bork. So based on his actual votes (not his rhetoric) we have zero idea what principles guide him in voting for Justices as these Justices range from what most would consider the most liberal to moderate to conservative.
What happened when the Democrats filibustered one Bush nominee to the federal court of appeals after another in 2005? McCain's reaction? Annouce on Chris Matthews' Hardball program that he would vote with Teddy Kennedy, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin and vote to let the, then, minority Democrats retain the judicial filibuster.
McCain tries to explain his tendency for voting with Ted Kennedy and the Left by saying, "If the Democrats win the White House, we need to retain our option to filibuster liberal nominees."
McCain was just wanting to preserve the judicial filibuster so that he could filibuster a Left Wing judicial nominee if a Democrat became president in the future, right?
If that's the case, why did McCain vote for Ruth Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer?
One also cannot offer the following excuse others have offered: "That was when we judged nominees on their qualifications only, not ideology." Votes for Ginsberg and Breyer, occuring in 1993 and 1994 happened after the Democrats sunk the Robert Bork nomination in 1987 and nearly sunk the Clarence Thomas nomination four years later, in 1991.
In fact, don't consider this necessarily an indictment of simply McCain. It could be an indictment of the vast majority of Republican Senators. It strikes me as odd that the two generally accepted most conservative nominees in Bork and Thomas had the closest confirmation votes, indicating the Democrats voted on ideology. Yet, the Republican Senators who claim rhetorically that they want strict constitutionalists fall short somehow when we look at the confirmation votes for seemingly very liberal Justices as the votes overwhelmingly and inexplicably pour in from Republicans. Perhaps, just perhaps, a review of the following will turn your head on this topic.
Breyer and Ginsberg, our two examples above, coasted through 87-9 and 96-3, respectively. Conversely, Thomas was confirmed with a vote of 52-48 and Bork's nomination failed 42-58.
The same pattern occurs with Attorney General nominees: 42 votes against John Ashcroft, 36 against Alberto Gonzales, and zero against Janet Reno. Why? (When you go back and read the two posts mentioned in the first paragraph of this post you will note that Ashcroft and Gonzales were not necessarily conservative or freedom-loving once in office.)
What if we look at the votes of the disappointing moderates to liberals nominated by Republicans? Souter was confirmed 90-9. O'Conner was confirmed 99-0. Stevens 98-0. If Republicans do not put up a wimper when liberal nominees such as Ginsberg are nominated. If Republicans themselves nominate and vote for a number of moderates (cloaked as "conservatives" for the nomination hearings - only to find out later...)...is it any wonder we have a myth brewing that Republican presidents have been great for the Court and freedom?
Perhaps when McCain said he was "disappointed" with the US Supreme Court (Alito, Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy and Thomas were in the majority) decision that struck down McCain's anti-1st Amendment McCain-Feingold legislation he is giving us a much better clue than his rhetoric as to his thoughts on the Court and why he votes for the likes of Ginsburg. That is the very same Ruth Bader Ginsberg who was the former ACLU General Counsel on record endorsing reducing the age of sexual consent to age 12 as well as Co-ed prisons.
Do you not believe McCain is proud of his Supreme Court votes? He is certainly using them to 'woo' Hillary Clinton Democrats. See this link: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0608/McCain_mingles_with_Clinton_supporters.html
Of course as noted in other articles posted here, a vote for McCain is a vote for a liberal. Here below are just some of the problems a conservative should have in casting a vote for John McCain. There are other, better candidates. I would point to former Republican Congressman Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party and Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party. Why continue voting for the evil of two lessers and betraying your priciples?
1) Tax cuts. In 2001 and 2003, McCain was one of 2 and then 3 Republicans, in the US Senate to vote with the Democrats against the Bush tax cuts. McCain is now I understand preaching that he did so because the tax cuts did not come along with appropriate spending cuts. That is simply disingenous. Why? Senator McCain not only voted against the Bush tax cuts, he joined leading liberal senators in offering and voting for amendments designed to undermine them. All in all, Senator McCain voted on the pro-tax side of 14 such amendments in 2001 and 2003. These included such odious measures as:
An amendment sponsored by Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-WV) to prohibit a reduction in the top tax rate until Congress enacted legislation to provide a prescription drug benefit.
An amendment sponsored by Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) against full repeal of the Death Tax. This vote is in keeping with Senator McCain's 2002 vote against repealing the Death Tax.
An amendment sponsored by Tom Daschle (D-SD) and co-sponsored by Senator McCain to limit tax reduction in the top tax bracket to one percentage point.
Well, okay, maybe his rhetoric (as it sometimes is) was conservative at least:
"I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief." quoting John McCain, Washington Times, 06/09/01
How different was McCain's excuse for voting against the 2001 Bush tax cuts from some (other) liberals?
Here's Ted Kennedy on the 2001 Bush tax cuts:
"Now, they are proposing more of the same, more tax breaks benefiting only the wealthiest among us." Sen. Ted Kennedy, Press release, 06/08/06
Democratic Representative Maxine Waters (CA): "I voted against the Republican tax cut plan, which is an irresponsible tax cut that will further undermine the nation's struggling economy at the expense of middle-class American families." The Los Angeles Sentinel, 05/29/03
(2) McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. They don't call John McCain "McAmnesty" for nothing.
(3) McCain-Kennedy-Edwards "Patients' Bill of Rights". There's a bill that would have enriched the Trial Lawyers and severely damaged the private health insurance market.
I often find that one last objection of many conservatives who continue to vote Republican for President is often on the grounds of the potential harm that a Democrat would bring to pass on the Supreme Court. For those readers who have not yet read the first writings that appeared here regarding this possible myth that Republicans have been good for the Court, you may want to review two earlier posts,
here:
http://wiconstitutionalist.blogspot.com/2008/01/are-republicans-conservative-part-ii.html
and here:
http://wiconstitutionalist.blogspot.com/2008/01/are-republicans-conservative-part-iii.html
Since the time is quickly eroding until we take to the polls in November to decide who among the many candidates will receive our rightful vote for President (Baldwin, Barr, Obama, McCain, and Nader for example), it may be an important time to review the harm John McCain (and many of his fellow Repubicans) has possibly wrought on the Supreme Court.
In 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed by a vote of 96 to 3. The only votes against her came from three conservative Republicans: Helms (R-NC), Nickles (R-NC) and Smith (R-NH). Senator Donald W. Riegle Jr., a Michigan Democrat, did not appear for the vote.
In 1994, Stephen Breyer was confirmed by a 87-9 vote. Burns (R-MT), Coats (R-IN), Coverdell (R-GA), Helms (R-NC), Lott (R-MS), Lugar (R-IN), Murkowski (R-AK), Nickles (R-OK), Smith (R-NH) were the votes against his confirmation. There were four non-voters, two from each party.
John McCain assumed his Senate seat on January 3, 1987.
As we can see, John McCain votes Left when a Democrat is picking the US Supreme Court nominees, as he did with Clinton picks Ginsberg and Breyer. His other votes have been for Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Souter, and Bork. So based on his actual votes (not his rhetoric) we have zero idea what principles guide him in voting for Justices as these Justices range from what most would consider the most liberal to moderate to conservative.
What happened when the Democrats filibustered one Bush nominee to the federal court of appeals after another in 2005? McCain's reaction? Annouce on Chris Matthews' Hardball program that he would vote with Teddy Kennedy, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin and vote to let the, then, minority Democrats retain the judicial filibuster.
McCain tries to explain his tendency for voting with Ted Kennedy and the Left by saying, "If the Democrats win the White House, we need to retain our option to filibuster liberal nominees."
McCain was just wanting to preserve the judicial filibuster so that he could filibuster a Left Wing judicial nominee if a Democrat became president in the future, right?
If that's the case, why did McCain vote for Ruth Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer?
One also cannot offer the following excuse others have offered: "That was when we judged nominees on their qualifications only, not ideology." Votes for Ginsberg and Breyer, occuring in 1993 and 1994 happened after the Democrats sunk the Robert Bork nomination in 1987 and nearly sunk the Clarence Thomas nomination four years later, in 1991.
In fact, don't consider this necessarily an indictment of simply McCain. It could be an indictment of the vast majority of Republican Senators. It strikes me as odd that the two generally accepted most conservative nominees in Bork and Thomas had the closest confirmation votes, indicating the Democrats voted on ideology. Yet, the Republican Senators who claim rhetorically that they want strict constitutionalists fall short somehow when we look at the confirmation votes for seemingly very liberal Justices as the votes overwhelmingly and inexplicably pour in from Republicans. Perhaps, just perhaps, a review of the following will turn your head on this topic.
Breyer and Ginsberg, our two examples above, coasted through 87-9 and 96-3, respectively. Conversely, Thomas was confirmed with a vote of 52-48 and Bork's nomination failed 42-58.
The same pattern occurs with Attorney General nominees: 42 votes against John Ashcroft, 36 against Alberto Gonzales, and zero against Janet Reno. Why? (When you go back and read the two posts mentioned in the first paragraph of this post you will note that Ashcroft and Gonzales were not necessarily conservative or freedom-loving once in office.)
What if we look at the votes of the disappointing moderates to liberals nominated by Republicans? Souter was confirmed 90-9. O'Conner was confirmed 99-0. Stevens 98-0. If Republicans do not put up a wimper when liberal nominees such as Ginsberg are nominated. If Republicans themselves nominate and vote for a number of moderates (cloaked as "conservatives" for the nomination hearings - only to find out later...)...is it any wonder we have a myth brewing that Republican presidents have been great for the Court and freedom?
Perhaps when McCain said he was "disappointed" with the US Supreme Court (Alito, Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy and Thomas were in the majority) decision that struck down McCain's anti-1st Amendment McCain-Feingold legislation he is giving us a much better clue than his rhetoric as to his thoughts on the Court and why he votes for the likes of Ginsburg. That is the very same Ruth Bader Ginsberg who was the former ACLU General Counsel on record endorsing reducing the age of sexual consent to age 12 as well as Co-ed prisons.
Do you not believe McCain is proud of his Supreme Court votes? He is certainly using them to 'woo' Hillary Clinton Democrats. See this link: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0608/McCain_mingles_with_Clinton_supporters.html
Of course as noted in other articles posted here, a vote for McCain is a vote for a liberal. Here below are just some of the problems a conservative should have in casting a vote for John McCain. There are other, better candidates. I would point to former Republican Congressman Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party and Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party. Why continue voting for the evil of two lessers and betraying your priciples?
1) Tax cuts. In 2001 and 2003, McCain was one of 2 and then 3 Republicans, in the US Senate to vote with the Democrats against the Bush tax cuts. McCain is now I understand preaching that he did so because the tax cuts did not come along with appropriate spending cuts. That is simply disingenous. Why? Senator McCain not only voted against the Bush tax cuts, he joined leading liberal senators in offering and voting for amendments designed to undermine them. All in all, Senator McCain voted on the pro-tax side of 14 such amendments in 2001 and 2003. These included such odious measures as:
An amendment sponsored by Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-WV) to prohibit a reduction in the top tax rate until Congress enacted legislation to provide a prescription drug benefit.
An amendment sponsored by Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) against full repeal of the Death Tax. This vote is in keeping with Senator McCain's 2002 vote against repealing the Death Tax.
An amendment sponsored by Tom Daschle (D-SD) and co-sponsored by Senator McCain to limit tax reduction in the top tax bracket to one percentage point.
Well, okay, maybe his rhetoric (as it sometimes is) was conservative at least:
"I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief." quoting John McCain, Washington Times, 06/09/01
How different was McCain's excuse for voting against the 2001 Bush tax cuts from some (other) liberals?
Here's Ted Kennedy on the 2001 Bush tax cuts:
"Now, they are proposing more of the same, more tax breaks benefiting only the wealthiest among us." Sen. Ted Kennedy, Press release, 06/08/06
Democratic Representative Maxine Waters (CA): "I voted against the Republican tax cut plan, which is an irresponsible tax cut that will further undermine the nation's struggling economy at the expense of middle-class American families." The Los Angeles Sentinel, 05/29/03
(2) McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. They don't call John McCain "McAmnesty" for nothing.
(3) McCain-Kennedy-Edwards "Patients' Bill of Rights". There's a bill that would have enriched the Trial Lawyers and severely damaged the private health insurance market.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Oklahoma to feds: Don't tread on me
State House defends its sovereignty from D.C. intrusion
June 16, 2008
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
Steamed over a perceived increase in federal usurping of states' rights, Oklahoma's House of Representatives told Washington, D.C., to back off.
Joint House Resolution 1089, passed by an overwhelming 92-3 margin, reasserts Oklahoma's sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and, according to the resolution's own language, is "serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates."
The Tenth Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
Traditionally, this language has meant that the federal government is limited in its scope and cannot usurp the sovereign powers of states. In recent decades, however, as the size and reach of the federal government has expanded, many have come to question whether Washington has stepped on states' rights and gotten too big for its breeches.
Charles Key, the Republican state representative who authored the resolution, told WND that he introduced it because he believes the federal government's overstepping of its bounds has put our constitutional form of government in danger.
"The more we stand by and watch the federal government get involved in areas where it has no legal authority, we kill the Constitution a little at a time," he said. "The last few decades, the Constitution has been hanging by a thread."
Specifically, Resolution 1089 says the following:
"The State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States."
The resolution resolves that Oklahoma will "serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers."
It also instructs that "a copy of this resolution be distributed to the president of the United States, the president of the United States Senate, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate of each state's legislature of the United States of America, and each member of the Oklahoma congressional delegation."
The resolution does not, as some have speculated, amount to secession, but it does send a warning signal to Washington: Oklahoma does not intend to be bullied by big brother government.
The Sooner State became a hotbed of federal vs. state authority clashes earlier this month when a federal judge blocked a portion of Oklahoma's tough immigration laws, ruling that plaintiffs would likely establish that the state mandates preempted federal immigration laws.
Oklahoma's immigration statute, known as the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007, originated as House Bill 1804 (co-authored, incidentally, by Key). It has been characterized by USA Today as "arguably the nation's toughest state law targeting illegal immigration."
The statute prohibits illegal immigrants from receiving tax-supported services and makes it a state crime to transport or harbor illegal immigrants. It also mandates that businesses take measures to verify the work eligibility of employees and independent contractors.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and individual chambers of commerce in Oklahoma challenged the latter mandates, set to go into effect July 1, in court.
On June 4th, U.S. District Judge Robin J. Cauthron issued an injunction against enforcing the July 1 mandates.
"We've just had a federal judge say that our immigration law's employer provisions are unconstitutional, claiming it as federal government territory," said Key in response. "That goes right to the issue of (Resolution 1089). The federal government doesn't have the right to have sole domain over that issue or many of the issues it has spilled over into."
Though House Joint Resolution 1089 received great support in Oklahoma's House of Representatives, it has now hit a roadblock. In the state's Senate, where the seats are split, 24-24, between Republicans and Democrats, the resolution was sent to the Senate's rules committee, where it languished without action until the legislature adjourned.
According to Key, the Senate has worked out agreements on how to manage the political tie, including power given to the Democratic senators to not hear certain bills. Those senators, says Key, refuse to even hear Resolution 1089.
In the House, where Republicans enjoy a 57-44 majority, Resolution 1089 received a hearing and was supported overwhelmingly on both sides of the aisle.
"I was on the Democratic side of the floor," said Key, "and one member went off talking about how far we've gotten, how bad (federal overreaches of power) are getting – it's the kind of thing you hear in coffee shops."
Key said his bill "is making a difference" in the way legislators in Oklahoma are talking and thinking about state's rights. "I think it will make even more of a difference," he said, "when I bring it up again." He vows to put the pressure on Oklahoma's Senate to pass a resolution like 1089, and he plans to begin communicating the cause with legislators around the country, urging them to bring up the issue in their states.
Key passed a similar resolution in 1994, when he was serving a previous tenure in the legislature. But that attempt was only a House resolution. He authored 1089 as a joint resolution because, he said, he wanted to increase its exposure. "As people who believe in this constitutional form of government," he said, "we need to bring this issue to a national level and debate."
June 16, 2008
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
Steamed over a perceived increase in federal usurping of states' rights, Oklahoma's House of Representatives told Washington, D.C., to back off.
Joint House Resolution 1089, passed by an overwhelming 92-3 margin, reasserts Oklahoma's sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and, according to the resolution's own language, is "serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates."
The Tenth Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
Traditionally, this language has meant that the federal government is limited in its scope and cannot usurp the sovereign powers of states. In recent decades, however, as the size and reach of the federal government has expanded, many have come to question whether Washington has stepped on states' rights and gotten too big for its breeches.
Charles Key, the Republican state representative who authored the resolution, told WND that he introduced it because he believes the federal government's overstepping of its bounds has put our constitutional form of government in danger.
"The more we stand by and watch the federal government get involved in areas where it has no legal authority, we kill the Constitution a little at a time," he said. "The last few decades, the Constitution has been hanging by a thread."
Specifically, Resolution 1089 says the following:
"The State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States."
The resolution resolves that Oklahoma will "serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers."
It also instructs that "a copy of this resolution be distributed to the president of the United States, the president of the United States Senate, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate of each state's legislature of the United States of America, and each member of the Oklahoma congressional delegation."
The resolution does not, as some have speculated, amount to secession, but it does send a warning signal to Washington: Oklahoma does not intend to be bullied by big brother government.
The Sooner State became a hotbed of federal vs. state authority clashes earlier this month when a federal judge blocked a portion of Oklahoma's tough immigration laws, ruling that plaintiffs would likely establish that the state mandates preempted federal immigration laws.
Oklahoma's immigration statute, known as the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007, originated as House Bill 1804 (co-authored, incidentally, by Key). It has been characterized by USA Today as "arguably the nation's toughest state law targeting illegal immigration."
The statute prohibits illegal immigrants from receiving tax-supported services and makes it a state crime to transport or harbor illegal immigrants. It also mandates that businesses take measures to verify the work eligibility of employees and independent contractors.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and individual chambers of commerce in Oklahoma challenged the latter mandates, set to go into effect July 1, in court.
On June 4th, U.S. District Judge Robin J. Cauthron issued an injunction against enforcing the July 1 mandates.
"We've just had a federal judge say that our immigration law's employer provisions are unconstitutional, claiming it as federal government territory," said Key in response. "That goes right to the issue of (Resolution 1089). The federal government doesn't have the right to have sole domain over that issue or many of the issues it has spilled over into."
Though House Joint Resolution 1089 received great support in Oklahoma's House of Representatives, it has now hit a roadblock. In the state's Senate, where the seats are split, 24-24, between Republicans and Democrats, the resolution was sent to the Senate's rules committee, where it languished without action until the legislature adjourned.
According to Key, the Senate has worked out agreements on how to manage the political tie, including power given to the Democratic senators to not hear certain bills. Those senators, says Key, refuse to even hear Resolution 1089.
In the House, where Republicans enjoy a 57-44 majority, Resolution 1089 received a hearing and was supported overwhelmingly on both sides of the aisle.
"I was on the Democratic side of the floor," said Key, "and one member went off talking about how far we've gotten, how bad (federal overreaches of power) are getting – it's the kind of thing you hear in coffee shops."
Key said his bill "is making a difference" in the way legislators in Oklahoma are talking and thinking about state's rights. "I think it will make even more of a difference," he said, "when I bring it up again." He vows to put the pressure on Oklahoma's Senate to pass a resolution like 1089, and he plans to begin communicating the cause with legislators around the country, urging them to bring up the issue in their states.
Key passed a similar resolution in 1994, when he was serving a previous tenure in the legislature. But that attempt was only a House resolution. He authored 1089 as a joint resolution because, he said, he wanted to increase its exposure. "As people who believe in this constitutional form of government," he said, "we need to bring this issue to a national level and debate."
Monday, June 16, 2008
Agent: FBI Can't Protect United States From Terror
Note: The article below really understates the problems...read Triple Cross by Peter Lance. My notes from the book: Book is RE: Ali Mohamed, Ramzi Yousef, others. US knew of 9/11 plot by 1995 via Yousefs laptop captured by phillipines govt. PDB's prior to 9/11 also shows they knew (not exact day). some of perps (the 20 hijackers, and other planners) were in custody multiple times. All released. Mohamed's Commanding Officer at Ft Bragg re: Afghan trip. Release of AliM per hapless FBI agent in CA from Canadian prison. the CA agent was AliM handler and was embrioled in 6 year triple homicide w/ personal links? tie to OKC (terry Nichols-Phill.). tie to TWA 800. 1994 wet test on PAL434. NYC Fire dept accountant secured all blueprints for key NYC buildings including WTC, this was known prior to 9/11. fbi and govt lies to preserve Scarpa investigation and charges against many mafioso. at what point does it cross to criminal negligence or worse? the number of warnings by low and mid level agents numbered hundreds. "wall memo" created after many of these warnings as a convenient hindsight excuse. very key agents, etc. who stopped imp warnings from being heard at imp junctures were promoted with bonus and/or increased salary after 9/11 commission's stonewalling was success. over 1/2 of 9/11 commission from staff of govt agencies being investigated (wolf/hen house). data mine project(Able Danger) prior to 9/11 in 2000 ylds 2.5 TB of data including a link chart with nearly all known conspirators, yet no action even then. on 9/11 there were at least 3 mock war exercises ongoing that day. at least one involved fighters and another involved SATS. including long island planes scrambled instead of OH. Systemic problem to FBI/CIA or worse? admission in private by key FBI figure to author: we are good at criminal, but terrible in defending against terrorism, predictive analysis.
By JUSTIN ROOD and VIC WALTER
May 21, 2008
The FBI is unable to protect the United States from another major attack by al Qaeda or other Middle Eastern extremists, an FBI counterterrorism official says.
FBI whistle-blower Bassem Youssef, right, addresses the American Library Association meeting in Philadelphia on Jan. 12, 2008. Youssef, a decorated FBI supervisor who was born in Egypt and speaks fluent Arabic, said that jealousy, discrimination and flawed directives hinder the agency's attempts to fight terrorism.
One key problem: In the FBI section dedicated to tracking international terrorists like al Qaeda, close to four out of every 10 supervisory positions are vacant, according to prepared testimony from Bassem Youssef, unit chief for the bureau's Communications Analysis Unit.
As a result, the FBI has recruited managers who have "no experience in counterterrorism and who did not even want to work in these positions," Youssef alleges in material prepared in advance of a congressional hearing this afternoon.
An FBI spokesman Wednesday morning declined to answer questions about Youssef's prepared testimony, noting the bureau was preparing a statement to respond to issues expected to be raised at the hearing.
The bureau's well-publicized troubles hiring and promoting talented foreign language speakers has also crippled its counterterrorism efforts, Youssef warned. FBI managers "rely exclusively on translation services" to understand communications from Middle Eastern terrorist operations, and FBI personnel "continue to make major mistakes" because they lack expertise in Arabic, he said.
As one consequence of these shortcomings, the bureau has "irresponsibl[y]" misidentified threats, Youssef said, adding that he was prepared to testify on the topic.
As another, Youssef said, it has come to depend too heavily on technological solutions, including aggressive electronic surveillance, which has "the potential of undermining American civil liberties."
The bureau said in January it had 46 agents and 285 language analysts who speak at least conversational Arabic.
"We have enough language qualified personnel to do our job, but that doesn't mean we don't want more, and we are continuing our recruiting efforts in this area," spokesman Richard Kolko said then.
Youssef, the FBI's highest-ranking Arab-American agent, is suing the bureau for discrimination, claiming he was passed over for promotions despite his successes and awards, including infiltrating a radical Islamic group whose leader masterminded the 1993 World Trace Center bombing. The FBI has denied his allegations.
By JUSTIN ROOD and VIC WALTER
May 21, 2008
The FBI is unable to protect the United States from another major attack by al Qaeda or other Middle Eastern extremists, an FBI counterterrorism official says.
FBI whistle-blower Bassem Youssef, right, addresses the American Library Association meeting in Philadelphia on Jan. 12, 2008. Youssef, a decorated FBI supervisor who was born in Egypt and speaks fluent Arabic, said that jealousy, discrimination and flawed directives hinder the agency's attempts to fight terrorism.
One key problem: In the FBI section dedicated to tracking international terrorists like al Qaeda, close to four out of every 10 supervisory positions are vacant, according to prepared testimony from Bassem Youssef, unit chief for the bureau's Communications Analysis Unit.
As a result, the FBI has recruited managers who have "no experience in counterterrorism and who did not even want to work in these positions," Youssef alleges in material prepared in advance of a congressional hearing this afternoon.
An FBI spokesman Wednesday morning declined to answer questions about Youssef's prepared testimony, noting the bureau was preparing a statement to respond to issues expected to be raised at the hearing.
The bureau's well-publicized troubles hiring and promoting talented foreign language speakers has also crippled its counterterrorism efforts, Youssef warned. FBI managers "rely exclusively on translation services" to understand communications from Middle Eastern terrorist operations, and FBI personnel "continue to make major mistakes" because they lack expertise in Arabic, he said.
As one consequence of these shortcomings, the bureau has "irresponsibl[y]" misidentified threats, Youssef said, adding that he was prepared to testify on the topic.
As another, Youssef said, it has come to depend too heavily on technological solutions, including aggressive electronic surveillance, which has "the potential of undermining American civil liberties."
The bureau said in January it had 46 agents and 285 language analysts who speak at least conversational Arabic.
"We have enough language qualified personnel to do our job, but that doesn't mean we don't want more, and we are continuing our recruiting efforts in this area," spokesman Richard Kolko said then.
Youssef, the FBI's highest-ranking Arab-American agent, is suing the bureau for discrimination, claiming he was passed over for promotions despite his successes and awards, including infiltrating a radical Islamic group whose leader masterminded the 1993 World Trace Center bombing. The FBI has denied his allegations.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Are Americans pro-slavery?
June 11, 2008
© 2008 by Walter Williams
Let's do a thought experiment asking whether Americans are for or against slavery. You might say, "What are you talking about, Williams? We fought a war that cost over 600,000 lives to end slavery!" To get started, we might find a description that captures the essence of slavery. A good working description is: Slavery is a set of circumstances whereby one person is forcibly used to serve the purposes of another person and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor.
The average American worker toils from Jan. 1 to the end of April, and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor for that period. Federal, state and local governments, through the tax code, take what he produces. A small portion of the fruits of his labor is used to provide for the constitutional functions of government. Most of what's taken, up to two-thirds, is given to some other American in the forms of farm and business subsidies, Social Security, Medicare, welfare and hundreds of other government handout programs. As in slavery, one person is being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another person.
You might ask, "Williams, aren't you a bit off base? Slavery means that you are owned by another person." Who owns a person is not nearly important as who has the rights to use that person. In other words, a plantation owner having the power to force a black to work for him would have been just as well off, and possibly better off, not owning him. Not owning him means not having to bear medical expenses and loss of wealth if the slave died. During World War II, Nazis didn't own Jews, but they had the power to force them to labor for them. Not owning Jews meant that working and starving them to death had little cost to the Nazis. The fact that American slaves were owned, with prices sometimes ranging from $800 to $1,300, meant that owners had a financial stake in the slave's well-being and they were not worked and starved to death.
You might argue that my analogy is irrelevant because unlike American slaves and Nazi concentration camp inmates, we can come and go as we please, live where we want, buy a car, clothes and other things with the money left over after the government gets four months' worth of our earnings. But, does that make much of a difference?
During slavery, visitors to the South often observed "a great many loose negroes about." Officials in Savannah, Mobile, Charleston and other cities complained about "nominal slaves," "virtually free negroes" and "quasi-free negroes" who were seemingly oblivious to any law or regulation. Frederick Douglass, a slave, explained this phenomenon when he was employed as a Baltimore ship's caulker: "I was to be allowed all my time; to make bargains for work; to find my own employment, and to collect my own wages; and in return for this liberty, I was … to pay him (Douglass' master) three dollars at the end of each week, and to board and clothe myself, and buy my own caulking tools."
There are some benefits to being a quasi-free person such as Frederick Douglass. There are two ways U.S. Congress might force me to serve the purposes of another American. They might force me spend a couple of hours each day actually working, without compensation, for another American. Or, they might forcibly take a portion of my earnings so that American can hire someone. I see myself as being better off with Congress doing the latter – taking a portion of my earnings and giving it away.
Some might be put off by my thought experiment and consider it an illegitimate use of the term "slavery." At what point should we consider ourselves a quasi-free American – when government takes two-thirds or three-quarters of our earnings?
© 2008 by Walter Williams
Let's do a thought experiment asking whether Americans are for or against slavery. You might say, "What are you talking about, Williams? We fought a war that cost over 600,000 lives to end slavery!" To get started, we might find a description that captures the essence of slavery. A good working description is: Slavery is a set of circumstances whereby one person is forcibly used to serve the purposes of another person and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor.
The average American worker toils from Jan. 1 to the end of April, and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor for that period. Federal, state and local governments, through the tax code, take what he produces. A small portion of the fruits of his labor is used to provide for the constitutional functions of government. Most of what's taken, up to two-thirds, is given to some other American in the forms of farm and business subsidies, Social Security, Medicare, welfare and hundreds of other government handout programs. As in slavery, one person is being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another person.
You might ask, "Williams, aren't you a bit off base? Slavery means that you are owned by another person." Who owns a person is not nearly important as who has the rights to use that person. In other words, a plantation owner having the power to force a black to work for him would have been just as well off, and possibly better off, not owning him. Not owning him means not having to bear medical expenses and loss of wealth if the slave died. During World War II, Nazis didn't own Jews, but they had the power to force them to labor for them. Not owning Jews meant that working and starving them to death had little cost to the Nazis. The fact that American slaves were owned, with prices sometimes ranging from $800 to $1,300, meant that owners had a financial stake in the slave's well-being and they were not worked and starved to death.
You might argue that my analogy is irrelevant because unlike American slaves and Nazi concentration camp inmates, we can come and go as we please, live where we want, buy a car, clothes and other things with the money left over after the government gets four months' worth of our earnings. But, does that make much of a difference?
During slavery, visitors to the South often observed "a great many loose negroes about." Officials in Savannah, Mobile, Charleston and other cities complained about "nominal slaves," "virtually free negroes" and "quasi-free negroes" who were seemingly oblivious to any law or regulation. Frederick Douglass, a slave, explained this phenomenon when he was employed as a Baltimore ship's caulker: "I was to be allowed all my time; to make bargains for work; to find my own employment, and to collect my own wages; and in return for this liberty, I was … to pay him (Douglass' master) three dollars at the end of each week, and to board and clothe myself, and buy my own caulking tools."
There are some benefits to being a quasi-free person such as Frederick Douglass. There are two ways U.S. Congress might force me to serve the purposes of another American. They might force me spend a couple of hours each day actually working, without compensation, for another American. Or, they might forcibly take a portion of my earnings so that American can hire someone. I see myself as being better off with Congress doing the latter – taking a portion of my earnings and giving it away.
Some might be put off by my thought experiment and consider it an illegitimate use of the term "slavery." At what point should we consider ourselves a quasi-free American – when government takes two-thirds or three-quarters of our earnings?
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control
Note: As posted here before, if anyone is under impression that the government, regardless of which major establishment candidate wins, is leaving Iraq, well, you will be wrong. McCain has since rescinded his "100 years" comment, but...,the Korean War was in what year again? The funding for the permanent bases has been voted on from both sides of the aisle per previous posts.
Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors
By Patrick Cockburn
Thursday, 5 June 2008
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.
The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.
America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military "surge" began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.
The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. "It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty," said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.
The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: "This is just a tactical subterfuge." Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its "war on terror" in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.
Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called "strategic alliance" without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said yesterday that such a deal would create "a permanent occupation". He added: "The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans."
Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without US backing.
The deal also risks exacerbating the proxy war being fought between Iran and the United States over who should be more influential in Iraq.
Although Iraqi ministers have said they will reject any agreement limiting Iraqi sovereignty, political observers in Baghdad suspect they will sign in the end and simply want to establish their credentials as defenders of Iraqi independence by a show of defiance now. The one Iraqi with the authority to stop deal is the majority Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2003, he forced the US to agree to a referendum on the new Iraqi constitution and the election of a parliament. But he is said to believe that loss of US support would drastically weaken the Iraqi Shia, who won a majority in parliament in elections in 2005.
The US is adamantly against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be voted down. The influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to demonstrate every Friday against the impending agreement on the grounds that it compromises Iraqi independence.
The Iraqi government wants to delay the actual signing of the agreement but the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney has been trying to force it through. The US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, has spent weeks trying to secure the accord.
The signature of a security agreement, and a parallel deal providing a legal basis for keeping US troops in Iraq, is unlikely to be accepted by most Iraqis. But the Kurds, who make up a fifth of the population, will probably favour a continuing American presence, as will Sunni Arab political leaders who want US forces to dilute the power of the Shia. The Sunni Arab community, which has broadly supported a guerrilla war against US occupation, is likely to be split.
Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors
By Patrick Cockburn
Thursday, 5 June 2008
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.
The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.
America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military "surge" began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.
The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. "It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty," said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.
The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: "This is just a tactical subterfuge." Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its "war on terror" in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.
Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called "strategic alliance" without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said yesterday that such a deal would create "a permanent occupation". He added: "The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans."
Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without US backing.
The deal also risks exacerbating the proxy war being fought between Iran and the United States over who should be more influential in Iraq.
Although Iraqi ministers have said they will reject any agreement limiting Iraqi sovereignty, political observers in Baghdad suspect they will sign in the end and simply want to establish their credentials as defenders of Iraqi independence by a show of defiance now. The one Iraqi with the authority to stop deal is the majority Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2003, he forced the US to agree to a referendum on the new Iraqi constitution and the election of a parliament. But he is said to believe that loss of US support would drastically weaken the Iraqi Shia, who won a majority in parliament in elections in 2005.
The US is adamantly against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be voted down. The influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to demonstrate every Friday against the impending agreement on the grounds that it compromises Iraqi independence.
The Iraqi government wants to delay the actual signing of the agreement but the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney has been trying to force it through. The US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, has spent weeks trying to secure the accord.
The signature of a security agreement, and a parallel deal providing a legal basis for keeping US troops in Iraq, is unlikely to be accepted by most Iraqis. But the Kurds, who make up a fifth of the population, will probably favour a continuing American presence, as will Sunni Arab political leaders who want US forces to dilute the power of the Shia. The Sunni Arab community, which has broadly supported a guerrilla war against US occupation, is likely to be split.
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