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| What Is Man? - ReNew America Forum Question of the Week |
| 02.23.04 (6:21 am) [edit] |
Friends of Alan Keyes,
This week's RenewAmerica Forum asks,
"WHAT IS MAN?"
Our premise is that--in order to address the most troubling social and moral problems of our time--we must first understand the nature of the "human condition."
What does it mean to be "fallen"? How do we personally overcome "human nature" in our own lives? How do we teach our children to do the same? And how do we revive a nation that seems intent of self-destruction, due to the weaknesses inherent in mankind.
It's a challenging issue, especially in view of its implications for society's most basic unit, the family--which tends to magnify the best and worst tendencies of human nature. We'd like to know your thoughts on our . . .
Question of the Week
February 22, 2004
WHAT IS MAN?
"The prospect that the traditional family may now become unraveled by the 'legalization' of same-gender marriages at the hands of dictatorial judges is chilling. Meanwhile, the 50-year-old rise of the feminist movement-- typified by Gloria Steinem's claim that 'a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle'--has increasingly hit the family from the opposite side, setting the sexes at odds and further undermining the foundational unit of society. In the middle of all this is our children--our future--who are constantly bombarded with antisocial notions at school, on television, in books, and in music.
"In the face of such troubling and dangerous social trends, take a moment and reflect on the eternal patterns that God has instituted for all human beings--male and female, old and young, high and low. Realizing that the Founders knew that our country would survive only if we as a people remained moral and God-fearing, what has happened to the American psyche? And to what extent is this decline attributable simply to fallen human nature? If so, how would you propose to institute a national REVIVAL that would bring Americans (who are willing) back to God, so that He might change human hearts and thereby avert our nation's growing moral disaster? What is it in the human heart that needs most to be changed, if our nation is to survive its accelerating downward spiral, and how can this be done? Or are we doomed, due to the weaknesses of fallen man? What are you personally doing to convert those around you to God, and to his immutable laws, assuming that such activity by believers is essential to saving our country? To bring the discussion back to family issues, how would you solve the 'war between the sexes' that feminists seek constantly to exacerbate? Are men and women 'equal'--and if so, how? What about God's instruction to Eve that she was to be 'ruled' by Adam? What does that mean in principle, as well as in practice? What about God's instruction to Adam that he was to eat bread 'in the sweat of his face'? Should the sole breadwinner in a family be the man--or should husband and wife share this duty?
How rigid are gender roles, and what exceptions should be made? What about this question: how do you explain the growing popularity of the gay lifestyle--and is homosexuality inborn, or can gays change? If so, how? Finally, how would you propose to prevent our children from being corrupted by disturbing trends that permeate our society? Just as important, how would you propose to help our children overcome their own 'human condition' and come unto God, so that they might be independently strong and morally influential?"
You can post your response at http://www.renewamerica.us/fo...
Keep faith,
Stefani Stone
National Grassroots Director, RenewAmerica stefani@renewamerica.us
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| Fertile women rate other women as uglier |
| 02.21.04 (4:38 pm) [edit] |
Fertile women rate other women as uglier
00:01 18 February 04
NewScientist.com news service
Women judge the attractiveness other women more harshly when at their most fertile, suggests a new study. The phenomenon could be a strategy to devalue potential rivals, says the psychologist behind the work - being bitchy about others could help a woman win the attention of a desirable man.
Theories of sexual selection in most species usually concentrate on how males compete for females. But recent theories for humans suggest there is intrasexual competition among females as well, as males can vary markedly in their abilities as providers and protectors.
Maryanne Fisher, a psychologist at York University in Toronto, Canada, decided to try to find evidence for female competition by presenting heterosexual students with photos of faces. She found that when women were in the most fertile phase of their menstrual cycles, they rated the attractiveness of other women lower than when they were not.
"Often women are characterised as being very co-operative, very kind-hearted and not competing directly," Fisher told New Scientist. "But there's been a fair bit of work on how women are indirectly aggressive."
For example, she says: "Rather than saying 'I'm going to beat that woman up because she looked at you', it's 'Oh my goodness, look how fat her ankles are'!"
Caring or rugged
Being more combative during a fertile period backs the idea that women are competing for the best mate. "When you're in a high fertility phase, you have to be more able to judge other women as potential rivals," says Fisher.
David Perrett, an expert on facial perception at St Andrew's University, UK, says: "It's a very interesting finding. This is the first study I know of to find attitudes to female faces changing [with the menstrual cycle]."
Perrett's group previously found that women preferred more feminine, caring looking men for most of the month, but preferred more rugged, dominant looking types during the most fertile phase of their cycle.
In contrast, the women's attitudes towards male faces did not appear to vary with the menstrual cycle in this new study.
Neutral expression
The 57 female students tested, along with male controls, were asked to look at colour photos of 35 female and 30 male faces. The models for the photos were asked to display a neutral facial expression, wear a black smock and remove any accessories to help standardise the experiment.
Women with high estrogen levels, in days 12 to 21 of their menstrual cycle, rated other women's attractiveness significantly lower than women in a less fertile, low estrogen period of their cycle.
Fisher does not know exactly how women's heightened sense of competition during ovulation may help them win a mate. "Does putting someone down make you feel better about yourself? Or does saying it to a male make her less attractive to him?" she asks.
She adds that this kind of intrasexual competition could also carry risks - being too bitchy could make a woman look " mean-spirited" to a man. To answer these questions, Fisher is now investigating how men's attitudes are affected by women using such derogatory tactics.
Ben Jones, a psychologist working with Perrett at St Andrew's, points out that Fisher's results may not necessarily reflect simple derogatory tactics. Previous research has shown that women also rate their own attractiveness as higher when their fertility is high.
"Indeed, the fluctuations in women's perception of their own attractiveness may reflect real physical changes caused by estrogen, for example lip colouration and fullness," he says. "So the women may be objectively correct in seeing others as less attractive."
************************* ********
New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994691" title="http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994691" target="_blank"http://www.newscientist.com/n...
Journal reference: Biology Letters (DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2004.0160)
Shaoni Bhattacharya
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| What is Education??? |
| 02.21.04 (1:30 pm) [edit] |
What is Education???
By Karen Pennebaker
SierraTimes.com
Whether it is "No Child Left Behind" or any other buzz-word, do people really understand what education is? I don't think they do! Many people think if you have a high school diploma or a GED, you are somehow "educated". Others consider a Bachelor's Degree necessary for completing an education. Actually, you can be very well educated without any of those things, if you know what education means!
The first time I ever thought about this was in an Art History class, when the professor told us that all education amounts to is knowing how to find out what you need to know. It is the only definition of education I have ever heard that made sense! The professor, Dr. Robert Engass, had a Ph. D. in Art History, but he knew that was not the
reason he was an educated man.
The more you read, the more you find out about things. Reading, in itself, is a way to improve your education. It has nothing to do with school and everything to do with learning what you need to know.
Travel is another way to learn about new things. Some people learn from watching videos or TV; others learn by watching and asking questions. Getting an education involves a lot more than sitting quietly at a desk, listening to someone telling you what to think! In fact, sitting quietly at a desk, listening, is often indoctrination rather than education.
CONTINUE ARTICLE HERE
*************
What is Education??? - Sierra Times.com
.sierratimes.com/homeschool.htm
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| More aliens try to enter for amnesty - The Washington Times |
| 02.20.04 (10:25 pm) [edit] |
More aliens try to enter for amnesty
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published February 20, 2004
The number of illegal aliens caught crossing into the United States increased dramatically just days after President Bush proposed a guest-worker program that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants now in this country, according to the union that represents the Border Patrol's 9,000 field agents.
The National Border Patrol Council said apprehension totals increased threefold in the San Diego area alone, adding that the vast majority of aliens detained along the border told arresting agents that they had come to the United States seeking amnesty.
Most of those arrested and, eventually, deported had no history of immigration violations, the council said.
Law-enforcement authorities, immigration specialists and others -- including the council -- had predicted that the Bush proposal, outlined Jan. 7, would lead to increased illegal immigration by those seeking to take advantage of what many perceived to be an offer of limited amnesty.
The White House painstakingly has denied that the president's guest-worker proposal offers amnesty, saying instead that illegal aliens who hold jobs in the United States would be given only temporary work permits, not placed on the path to citizenship, and that they eventually would have to go home.
Outlined as a set of principles and not as specific legislation, the Bush proposal does not prescribe any penalties for those who entered the country illegally and would allow them to remain in the United States for renewable three-year periods.
Meanwhile, the Border Patrol has canceled a survey of illegal aliens detained at the U.S.-Mexico border that had sought to establish whether "rumors of amnesty" after Mr. Bush proposed his guest-worker program influenced their decision to cross into the United States.
Described as routine information gathering "critical to the better enforcement of immigration laws," the confidential survey -- developed by Border Patrol officials in Washington -- was scrubbed Jan. 27 after its public disclosure. Agency executives determined that the survey, which had begun two weeks earlier, had become compromised.
"The questions are no longer being asked, but the Border Patrol will continue to gather and analyze operational intelligence as necessary," said Mario Villarreal, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Border Patrol's parent agency.
The Border Patrol survey has not been made public nor have any preliminary results, but agents said it contained 13 questions, including one specifically concerning the guest-worker proposal. The agents referred to the survey as the "amnesty questionnaire," although the Border Patrol denied that it was politically motivated or that it was intended to imply that Mr. Bush was calling for a general amnesty.
The government has estimated that 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens, mostly Mexican nationals, are in the United States.
Since the Bush proposal was announced, the administration has rolled out its top immigration officials and several senior Republican senators to endorse it, saying it would fix a broken immigration system, allow U.S. businesses to hire needed workers, bring illegal aliens into the mainstream economy and assure greater homeland security.
Several leading Republicans have questioned the proposal and others have suggested that Mr. Bush needs to do a better job of explaining the proposal to a public overwhelmingly opposed to the legalization of millions of illegal aliens.
Sen. Jon Kyl -- Arizona Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security, and a member of the subcommittee on immigration, border security and citizenship -- said the Bush plan was "subject to misinterpretation" and, as a result, "needed further clarification."
Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican and a member of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, border security and claims, said that the proposal, by definition, is an amnesty program and that past amnesty programs "have not reduced illegal immigration; rather, they have increased illegal immigration."
"Amnesty rewards those who broke our laws, and thus encourages others to do the same," Mr. Smith said. "Our immigration policies should do the opposite -- discourage lawbreakers by sending the message that illegal entry into the United States will not be rewarded."
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has asked Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to explain whether "rumors of amnesty" concerning the Bush proposal had played any role in attempts by illegal aliens to cross the border.
Mr. Grassley told Mr. Ridge in a letter this week he is concerned that illegal aliens are risking their lives and putting their futures in the hands of corrupt alien smugglers in an attempt to gain entry to the United States to cash in on pending immigration reform that could offer them limited amnesty.
He said the "notion of legalization has been erroneously conveyed around the country and even abroad," adding that the Border Patrol questionnaire "raises some questions as to the consequence of the president's reform initiative."
In his letter, Mr. Grassley asked Mr. Ridge to determine who authorized the questionnaire, who tallied the responses, what the preliminary report suggested, how aliens were hearing about "amnesty proposals" and whether those "rumors" were influencing their decision to enter the United States.
The National Border Patrol Council has told its members to challenge the guest-worker proposal, calling it a "slap in the face to anyone who has ever tried to enforce the immigration laws of the United States."
More aliens try to enter for amnesty - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics
Address:http://www.washtimes.com/nati...
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| How Tyranny Came to America |
| 02.19.04 (6:23 pm) [edit] |
How Tyranny Came to America
by Joe Sobran
One of the great goals of education is to initiate the young into the conversation of their ancestors; to enable them to understand the language of that conversation, in all its subtlety, and maybe even, in their maturity, to add to it some wisdom of their own.
The modern American educational system no longer teaches us the political language of our ancestors. In fact our schooling helps widen the gulf of time between our ancestors and ourselves, because much of what we are taught in the name of civics, political science, or American history is really modern liberal propaganda. Sometimes this is deliberate. Worse yet, sometimes it isn't. Our ancestral voices have come to sound alien to us, and therefore our own moral and political language is impoverished. It's as if the people of England could no longer understand Shakespeare, or Germans couldn't comprehend Mozart and Beethoven.
So to most Americans, even those who feel oppressed by what they call big government, it must sound strange to hear it said, in the past tense, that tyranny "came" to America. After all, we have a constitution, don't we? We've abolished slavery and segregation. We won two world wars and the Cold War. We still congratulate ourselves before every ballgame on being the Land of the Free. And we aren't ruled by some fanatic with a funny mustache who likes big parades with thousands of soldiers goose-stepping past huge pictures of himself.
For all that, we no longer fully have what our ancestors, who framed and ratified our Constitution, thought of as freedom — a careful division of power that prevents power from becoming concentrated and unlimited. The word they usually used for concentrated power was consolidated — a rough synonym for fascist. And the words they used for any excessive powers claimed or exercised by the state were usurped and tyrannical. They would consider the modern "liberal" state tyrannical in principle; they would see in it not the opposite of the fascist, communist, and socialist states, but their sister.
If Washington and Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton could come back, the first thing they'd notice would be that the federal government now routinely assumes thousands of powers never assigned to it — powers never granted, never delegated, never enumerated. These were the words they used, and it's a good idea for us to learn their language. They would say that we no longer live under the Constitution they wrote. And the Americans of a much later era — the period from Cleveland to Coolidge, for example — would say we no longer live even under the Constitution they inherited and amended.
I call the present system "Post–Constitutional America." As I sometimes put it, the U.S. Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.
CONTINUE ARTICLE HERE
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| Gunfire pins down cops at border
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| 02.19.04 (3:06 pm) [edit] |
Gunfire pins down cops at border
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
02-19-2004
Police and federal agents were trapped Tuesday morning five miles east of the Naco port of entry by gunfire from men believed to be Mexican drug dealers, officials said.
The incident started when a Bisbee police officer spotted a Chevrolet Tahoe carrying bundles of marijuana traveling with a Ford F-250 west on Arizona 92, said Kevin Hoskins, a detective with the Bisbee Police Department.
The officer chased the trucks onto a border road and the Tahoe escaped into Mexico about six miles east of Naco, he said. The Ford broke down near the border, where the passenger and driver ran into Mexico, said Andy Adame, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson sector.
Within minutes a vehicle pulled up to the border from Mexico and opened fire with automatic weapons, pinning down four officers nearest the Ford.
One of the gunmen ran to the Ford, grabbed a suitcase from inside and ran away as others opened fire on the truck again, Hoskins said.
"It looked like it was an attempt to ignite the vehicle," he said of about 25 rounds that were fired. No one was injured.
Gunfire pins down cops at border
Arizona Daily Star®
Address:
http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/printDS/104 88.php" title="http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/printDS/104 88.php" target="_blank"http://www.azstarnet.com/dail...
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| Disregarding Laws We Oppose -
An Open Letter to San Francisco Civil Authority |
| 02.18.04 (3:33 pm) [edit] |
"Disregarding Laws We Oppose"
An Open Letter to San Francisco Civil Authority
By David Codrea
February 16, 2004
Dear Mayor Newsom (gavin.newsom@sfgov.org), Judge Warren (wsuperiorct@sftc.org) and Acting Chief Fong (sfpdpbaf@pacbell.net),
Mayor, I see you are authorizing city employees to perform homosexual marriages, Judge Warren, you are allowing them to proceed, and Chief Fong, you are allowing California law, as enacted by a vote of the people, to be publicly and repeatedly broken without making any arrests.
I'm not commenting on that issue, per se, so much as observing that you are all three instigating and abetting the violation of that law.
Judge Warren, you went so far as to state that you couldn't issue a restraining order to halt the marriages because, as Reuters reported, "there was not enough evidence presented showing that immediate damage would be done by allowing them."
Which leaves me with an interesting dilemma.
You see, I also belong to a group that is forced by social prejudices to keep a low profile—often times to hide my choices and practices lest I suffer disapproval and ultimately, life-threatening persecution by the state.
I am a gun owner and I live a gun owner life style.
I don't know if I was born with a tendency to be this way, or if it was an acquired disposition. All I know is, I don't see why I should be forced to change. Truth be known, I like owning guns, and am happy with who I am. I hope I suffer no repercussions by "coming out of the safe," but I just can't hide the truth any longer.
We gun owners have been living and working among you. Our kids go to school with yours. We may be your doctor, or minister, or your child's teacher. We may even work in city administration, or the courts, or on the police force. And we are sick of being abused for simply being who we are, all because of hoplophobic* prejudice and fear. We don't see any reason why we should have to put up with it any more.
Which brings me back to my dilemma and the reason I am writing you.
You have shown progressive thinking and tolerance for that which the majority condemns. So I was thinking of coming up to San Francisco and exercising my right to keep and bear arms, maybe showing up at City Hall with a state-banned AR-15 and a couple 30-round magazines, and also carrying several pistols concealed without a permit.
Yes, I know, it will be a violation of California laws, but you've shown that you're willing to disregard those when it serves your goals. And because I am a peaceable citizen, I should easily meet Judge Warren's criterion that no immediate damage would be done by allowing this.
So what do you think, if I visit your city and proudly display my lifestyle choices, can I count on your support? As a private citizen, don't I have as much right to disregard laws I find reprehensible as you public officials? Isn't that what equality is supposed to be all about, where no class of citizen enjoys privileges and immunities not extended to all?
How about it? You wouldn't have me arrested, would you?
Please let me know if I have your support.
Sincerely,
David Codrea
{David Codrea received a phone call from the San Francisco police over this letter, and two local police officers dropped by his home, too.
I wonder if they'll stop by all those houses of people who have illegal marriage certificates to confiscate them?}
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| Seperation of Church{'s Money} & State |
| 02.17.04 (10:40 pm) [edit] |
Amen to This
by Tom Buchanan
Separation of church and state is an outdated expression. Have you ever wondered why churches have ceased fighting immorality? The explanation is quite simple; money and the 501(c)(3) tax exemption.
Issues of morality used to be confined to churches and individuals. Over the past few decades morality has found its way into the legal system. Two loud examples are abortion and homosexuality. Once laws are on the books like Roe vs. Wade the issue enters the world of politics rather than morality.
Yes, churches are perfectly free to engage in political speech, unless of course it accepts a 501(c)(3) exemption. If the church, or any other organization accepts this exemption they cannot, by law, express or engage in the political process.
They prostitute themselves to the state by agreeing with the political ideology of the party in power. They have no choice. Speaking out may result in the loss of their precious 501(c)(3) tax exemption.
By accepting a 501(c)(3) tax exemption the church has agreed to an alliance with the state and must follow the rules as mandated by the state. It must not speak out against the state. Yet as we watch the decline of religious celebration in America the churches remain bound and gagged.
This is done so that the members of the church can claim a tax deduction for their tithing. So my question to all people that belong to a church is "If you truly believe that whatever deity you believe in is supreme and bigger than any government entity why is your voice muffled for a few pieces of silver?
So relinquish your 501(c)(3) tax exemption and let your voices be heard and let there truly be a separation of church and state! It will be money well spent. What are you afraid of?
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| Sick Federal War on Pain Relief |
| 02.17.04 (5:11 pm) [edit] |
Sick Federal War on Pain Relief
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
Before the US House of Representatives, February 12, 2004
Mr. Speaker, the publicity surrounding popular radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh's legal troubles relating to his use of the pain killer OxyContin hopefully will focus public attention on how the federal drug war threatens the effective treatment of chronic pain. Prosecutors have seized Mr. Limbaugh's medical records to investigate whether he violated federal drug laws. The fact that Mr. Limbaugh is a high profile, controversial, conservative media personality has given rise to speculation that the prosecution is politically motivated. Adding to this suspicion is the fact that individual pain patients are rarely prosecuted in this type of case.
In cases where patients are not high profile celebrities like Mr. Limbaugh, it is pain management physicians who bear the brunt of overzealous prosecutors.
Faced with the failure of the war on drugs to eliminate drug cartels and kingpins, prosecutors and police have turned their attention to pain management doctors, using federal statutes designed for the prosecution of drug dealers to prosecute physicians for prescribing pain medicine.
Many of the cases brought against physicians are rooted in the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's failure to consider current medical standards regarding the use of opioids, including OxyContin, in formulating policy. Opioids are the pharmaceuticals considered most effective in relieving chronic pain. Federal law classifies most opioids as Schedule II drugs, the same classification given to cocaine and heroin, despite a growing body of opinion among the medical community that opioids should not be classified with these substances.
Unfortunately, patients often must consume very large amounts of opioids to obtain long-term relief. Some prescriptions may be for hundreds of pills and last only a month. A prescription this large may appear suspicious. But according to many pain management specialists, it is medically necessary in many cases to prescribe a large number of pills to effectively treat chronic pain.
However, zealous prosecutors show no interest in learning the basic facts of pain management.
This harassment by law enforcement has forced some doctors to close their practices, while others have stopped prescribing opioids altogether – even though opioids are the only way some of their patients can obtain pain relief. The current attitude toward pain physicians is exemplified by Assistant US Attorney Gene Rossi's statement that "Our office will try our best to root out [certain doctors] like the Taliban."
Prosecutors show no concern for how their actions will affect patients who need large amounts of opioids to control their chronic pain. For example, the prosecutor in the case of Dr. Cecil Knox of Roanoke, Virginia, told all of Dr. Knox's patients to seek help in federal clinics even though none of the federal clinics would prescribe effective pain medicine!
Doctors are even being punished for the misdeeds of their patients. For example, Dr. James Graves was sentenced to more than 60 years for manslaughter because several of his patients overdosed on various combinations of pain medications and other drugs, including illegal street drugs. As a physician with over thirty years of experience in private practice, I find it outrageous that a physician would be held criminally liable for a patient's misuse of medicine.
The American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), one of the nation's leading defenders of medical freedom, recently advised doctors to avoid prescribing opioids because, according to AAPS, "drug agents set medical standards." I would hope my colleagues would agree that doctors, not federal agents, should determine medical standards.
By waging this war on pain physicians, the government is condemning patients to either live with excruciating chronic pain or seek opioids from other, less reliable, sources – such as street drug dealers. Of course opioids bought on the street likely will pose a greater risk of damaging a patient's health than opioids obtained from a physician.
Finally, as the Limbaugh case reveals, the prosecution of pain management physicians destroys the medical privacy of all chronic pain patients. Under the guise of prosecuting the drug war, law enforcement officials can rummage through patients' personal medical records and, as may be the case with Mr. Limbaugh, use information uncovered to settle personal or political scores. I am pleased that AAPS, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, has joined the effort to protect Mr. Limbaugh's medical records.
Mr. Speaker, Congress should take action to rein in overzealous prosecutors and law enforcement officials, and stop the harassment of legitimate physicians who act in good faith when prescribing opioids for relief from chronic pain. Doctors should not be prosecuted for using their best medical judgment to act in their patients' best interests. Doctors also should not be prosecuted for the misdeeds of their patients.
Finally, I wish to express my hope that Mr. Limbaugh's case will encourage his many fans and listeners to consider how their support for the federal war on drugs is inconsistent with their support of individual liberty and constitutional government.
Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.
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| IRS Income Taxes Are Not What You Think!
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| 02.15.04 (10:33 pm) [edit] |
IRS Income Taxes Are Not What You Think!
By: Scott Eric Rosenstiel
Most people in America today feel that the federal system of taxation isn't working very well, from the collection techniques to how tax dollars are spent, and even the president and many memebers of congress admit that many items in the budget are there just to please various special-interest groups. It's also universally admitted that, despite the high levels of taxation, both the deficit and the national debt and growing at an ever- increasing rate.
To reduce this problem, President Ronald Reagan created a commission to study government waste entitled: The President's Private-Sector Survey On Cost Control, popularly known as the "Grace Commission," named after its chairman, J. Peter Grace.
In his opening letter to the president in volume one of the report, Chairman Grace revealed that "...all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government."
This comes as a great shock to many, but the truth of the matter is that IRS taxes as we known them today were never intended to pay for any government services.
The concept of the withholding tax was invented during the World War II-era by Beardsley Ruml, who at the time was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. To explain the new tax, and its purposes, Chairman Ruml wrote an article which appeared in the January 1946 issue of "American Affairs." Appropriately enough, the article was entitled, "Taxes For Revenue Are Obsolete."
In summarizing the points of his article, the editors of "American Affairs" wrote, "...a sovereign national government is finally free of money worries and need no longer levy taxes for the purpose of providing itself with revenue." Chairman Ruml himself does admit though that "...a century and a half ago, the national government required revenues in order to pay its bills."
So taxes aren't needed for running the federal government anymore. This leaves many asking, "Why does the government take so much of what I earn?" Chairman Ruml, under the heading "What Taxes Are Really For," gave the following answers:
"Federal taxes can be made to service four principle purposes of a social and economic character. These purposes are:
As an instrument of fiscal policy to help stabilize the purchasing power of the dollar;
To express public policy in the distribution of wealth and of income, as in the case of the progressive income and estate taxes;
To express public policy in subsidizing or in penalizing various industries and economic groups;
To isolate and assess directly the costs of cretain national benefits, such as highways and social security.
In the recent past, we have used our federal tax program consciously for each of these purposes. In serving these purposes, the tax program is a means to an end.
To summarize, here is what IRS taxes are and are not used for:
They are used to help implement economic policies designed by the federal government,
They are used for social purposes (who should, and should not, in the opinion of congress, have such-and-such amount of money), and
They are used to subsidize various groups and interests, such as private banks, but
They are not used to pay for any government services.
This means that if all IRS tax laws were repealed tomorrow, there would be no effect on government services. The only thing that would change is that the federal government wouldn't be able to exert the social and economic control that it currently does.
There are more and more people saying that we'd be better off without the regulated economy we currently have. Certainly having the federal government involved in every aspect of the economy was something never contemplated by the framers of the federal constitution.
Among those who've said that our federal tax system doesn't work is T. Coleman Andrews, who actually served as the commissioner of Internal Revenue back in the 1950's. After he left office, he began to speak out against what he perceived as being "rapacious tax enactments." In an article he wrote for the April 22, 1956 issue of "The American Weekly," he shared these reflections:
"As Commissioner of Internal Revenue I often thought how far we had gone toward coming ourselves "through excessive and unjust taxation. We have failed to realize, it seems to me, that through our tax system we have been playing right into the hands of the Marxists, who gleefully hail the income tax as the one sure instrument that will bring capitalism to its knees."
On this point, it's interesting to note that a graduated income tax is one of the planks of "The Communist Manifesto." He also explained how special-interest groups have exempted themselves fom taxation, and that the true targets of IRS tax laws are the middle class:
"Whether you believe it or not, everybody is being overtaxed and the middle class is being taxed out of existence, and the nation, thereby, is being robbed of its surest guarantee of continued sound economic development and growth and its staunchest bulwark against the ascendancy of socialism."
Almost every American, whether he's interested in current affairs or not, believes that taxes are simply too high.
Some justify this to themselves by saying that IRS taxes are absolutely necessary to pay for needed government services, and that everyone is paying just as much as they are. These arguments would undoubtedly disappear if more people knew that IRS taxes are specifically targeted on the middle-class and don't pay for any government services.
This is where Sovereign Citizenship comes in. As a Citizen, most IRS tax laws simply won't apply to you. You won't have to hope that congress "gives you a break." You won't have to change the tide of public opinion to keep what you earn.
You'll simply use the law, as it's written, to your advantage, instead of allowing it to be used advantageously against you. It's perfectly alright to do this. Even the federal courts approve:
"Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes." Helvering v. Gregory, Federal Reporter, 2nd series, Vol. 69, Page 810 (1934)
There's no patriotic duty to pay a lot in taxes. But isn't there a duty to yourself and your loved ones to reduce your costs, while justly supporting your community with your increased purchasing power?
IRS Income Taxes Are Not What You Think!
http://igps.org/liveround/patriot/irs .html" title="http://igps.org/liveround/patriot/irs .html" target="_blank"http://igps.org/liveround/pat...
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| Forgotten Quotes |
| 02.15.04 (9:47 pm) [edit] |
"The current world situation has been deliberately created by these elites who
manipulate both the so-called 'right' & the so-called 'left." By controlling
the resulting 'synthesis'-the end result of Hegelian 'thesis' & 'antithesis'-a
Globalist New World Order is produced. You can call it techno-fascism or
techno-feudalism, but the result is the same-a global consolidation &
mega-corporate transnational centralization of power, capital & resources. And
how does it work? By using 'managed conflict' or 'crisis management'. A crisis
or problem is produced. Then the crisis is 'managed' & the problem is 'solved'
with an outcome that is invariably favorable to the goals & agendas of the
Global Power Elite." -- Anthony Sutton, America's Secret Establishment.
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| Sen. Hatch's Attorney Sees 16th Amendment as Bogus After Investigation |
| 02.15.04 (8:34 pm) [edit] |
Sen. Hatch's Attorney Sees 16th Amendment as Bogus After Investigation
Source: Right On The Mark
Address: http://rightonthemark.com/
WARREN S. RICHARDSON, J.D. Attorney at Law
May 5, 2000
Mr. William J. Benson Constitutional Scholar
1128 East 160th Place South Holland, IL 60473
www.thelawthatneverwas.com
Dear Mr. Benson:
You may address me simply as Warren and I'll call you Bill. My first comment is to applaud you for the tremendous amount of work you have done in bringing to light the enormous volume of factual data-over 17,000 pages of certified government documents from each of the 48 states (the number in 1913) as well as from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. In fact, the whole project, which includes your two books, is truly monumental.
In case you wish to know a little about my background, let me give you a brief overview. I was honored to serve my nation in World War II as a Naval Aviator.
Since my college career at the University of Rochester had been interrupted by the war, I went back to the U. of R. and obtained my A.B. degree in history. That was followed by a B.S. in accounting. By then I was married and we moved to the Washington, D.C. area so that my wife could continue her college work while I attended law school. Upon receiving my law degree, I was honored to be chosen for the first class of Honor Law Graduates at the Justice Department. (This program was started in 1953 while Eisenhower was president.) Because of my law and accounting background, I moved to the legal department at the General Accounting Office. After 5 years as a government attorney, I left for the private sector, where I have been ever since. Two years of that time was spent in a law firm and the rest has been working in the lobbying profession.
Before going to the subject of your books - the 16th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America was not properly ratified-I wish to lay some groundwork. In 1895 the United States Supreme Court ruled a direct income tax to be unconstitutional in the case of Pollock v. Farmer's Loan and Trust Company (158 U.S. 601). Since our forefathers who established our form of government (a republic, not a democracy) by splitting the federal power into three equal branches (legislative, judicial, and administrative), it was clearly within the Court's discretion to render their verdict in the Pollock case.
The Supreme Court's decision in that case can only be changed by one of two methods:
1. The Supreme Court, assuming it has valid reasoning, could reverse the Pollock case; or,
2. An Amendment to the Constitution authorizing a direct income tax could be passed by a vote of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and then ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the States.
Following the procedure of item 2, above, the Secretary of State has the duty of announcing to the public, the President, and the Congress that a proposed amendment has been accepted or rejected.
The people who wished to overturn the Pollock case chose the second alternative.
In my professional opinion your two books demonstrate, at least to me, that the 16th Amendment was not properly ratified even though the Secretary of State made the public announcement that it had been properly ratified. When only four states of the required 38 ratified it properly, how could it be considered valid? In view of the facts, how could it become a valid part of our Constitution? Since the Pollock case has not been reversed by the Supreme Court, what is the legal framework upon which the current income tax law is based?
Although I am a lawyer, it is important to note that I am not a constitutional scholar; therefore I do not speak as one. As noted above, it is my opinion that, based on your overwhelming evidence, the 16th Amendment was not properly ratified.
Furthermore, I believe that it is imperative to have legal scholars in constitutional law study this matter deeply and render their opinions on whether the 16th Amendment was properly ratified. Provided they come to the same conclusion we do (that it was not properly ratified), what would be the logical next move? That last question is a real tough one because of the politics involved. Assume that the Supreme Court rules upon a case properly brought before it that the tax system of the U.S. is not legal. Can you even visualize the reaction of the Members of Congress?
Bill, you have done a magnificent job in providing the factual data about whether the 16th Amendment was properly ratified. I am hopeful that we can find the scholars who will go to the next step and suggest what should be done now.
Thanks for your hard work. You have done a great service to your country.
Sincerely,
/S/ Warren S. Richardson
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| U.S. Civil Flag History |
| 02.15.04 (3:32 pm) [edit] |
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 The united states Civil Flag. The banner
of the Republic! In-law under the Constitution.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin
From the loftiest point of its roof, during precisely
three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or
droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic;
but with the thirteen stripes turned vertically,
instead of horizontally, and thus indicating that a
civil, and not a military, post of Uncle Sam's
government is here established.
-Nathaniel Hawthorne
Scarlett Letter
US Civil Flags is seeking the restoration of a Common-Law government as defined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of these united states of America; and the re-institution of a debt and usury-free Gold-based currency coined by the Treasury of
these united states.
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U.S. Civil Flag History
We the People of these united states, actually have two national flags, a military flag and a civil flag for peacetime. They have several important distinctions and meanings. Almost all Americans think of the Stars and Stripes "Old Glory" as their only flag.
U.S. CIVIL FLAG.ORG
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| THE CRUMBLING FOUNDATION OF HATE - The NAACP |
| 02.15.04 (2:03 pm) [edit] |
THE CRUMBLING FOUNDATION OF HATE - The NAACP
by Joe Miller
IS THERE A LINGERING CONCERN
ABOUT WHERE WE ARE HEADED WITH THE SOUTHERN HERITAGE PRESERVATION MOVEMENT AND/OR "THE SOUTHERN CAUSE"? IF SO, LET'S TALK ABOUT IT SOME MORE.............
All of today's honorable and ethical Southern heritage preservation groups have absolutely nothing in this life to fear but fear itself.
There is a very good reason for that. The reason is simple: Those Southern Heritage Preservation groups are built on the solid foundation of loyalty, dedication, devotion and compassionate love of the Sacred Spirit and honorable memory of each and every one of their past kin. There is not one single aspect of malice in their honorable cause.
Within the bounds of decency, the ethical Southern Heritage Preservation Organizations have no agenda of banning or censoring any aspect of other ethical organizations. Their faith in their cause assures the lasting heartfelt devotion to that cause all the way into eternity.
On the other hand:
Any cause or proposition that has hate and/or revenge as its foundation, is doomed to fall into the pit of failure and public humiliation and disgrace, and ultimately will do so when left to the veracity of their merits. The SPLC and the NAACP are two of such groups.
The much ballyhooed practice of "affirmative-action", a policy that is widely spread across this nation, was built entirely on a foundation of spiteful vengeance to "get even". And it is propped up by the left-over "Reconstruction" policies of our corrupt yankee government of liars and cheats.
A well known Southern subversive hate group that is sworn to the vengeful overthrow of our beloved Southern culture and tradition is the intolerant snoop, snipe and snitch low-life group with a high falutin' name, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the most notoriously hypocritical frauds ever inflicted on the American public. It was conceived, conspired, constructed and created on the prospects of potential profits to be made from the hatred involved in "getting even" and spewing venomous hatred for the Southern patriots who choose to Constitutionally assemble fraternally with other patriotic Southerners and share their traditional Southern values and exercise their Constitutional rights of free speech and expression in the loyal and dedicated celebration of their Honorable Southern heritage.
There is no penalty too severe for the trickery the SPLC is perpetrating on the honest, hard-working, unsuspecting American people and the publicly funded devious, corruption-laden government agencies that contribute to the continuation of this deceitful enterprise.
The despicable and repulsive Southern Poverty Law Center finds it profitable to view an all white family-reunion as a "racist" event, with the probability of placing them on their "racist-hate-group" list that they can peddle to a publicly funded bunch of dupes. Their disgusting group of reprehensible and phony misfits represents the two faces of deceit as they preach tolerance while, in fact, practicing bigoted intolerance. "The people" are beginning to wise-up to the SPLC confidence game and their slimy syndicate of fraud will fall hard one day soon.
And the blatantly racist-hate group of malcontents whose very name explicitly expresses racial favoritism and special treatment, the poisonous, conniving National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the political darlings of the Democratic party and a detestable home-grown terrorist group that uses threats, boycotts and extortion instead of bombs, to make gains in their divisive and subversive agenda of hate and rabble-rousing tactics to destroy the roots of every white family tree in the South. They are a repulsive product of very deep-seated hatred and unbridled vengeance. Theirs is one organization that would be doomed to immediate failure if our government of pathetic wimps withdraw their extorted sympathy and support.
The vengeful NAACP declaration of war against our beautiful and glorious Confederate Battle Flag is totally based on their hate-filled ignorance and psychopathic delusions that have led to their deranged crusade of intolerance and despicable lies about the world's leading emblem of courage and honor and beloved symbol of the Sacred Spirit of the proud South.
The NAACP deliberately fails to mention that the institution of slavery had been in existence hundreds of years before the Flag was created to identify our brave Southern soldiers on the battlefield, defending their families, homes and independence from the overwhelming numbers of brutal savages and evil-driven invaders from the North.
The largest hate group in the nation, the biggest political powerhouse in the world, the one and only U.S. Government sponsored extortionists ever, the NAACP, will never win their battle to eliminate the glory-filled Confederate Battle Flag. That Flag is too well entrenched in the minds, hearts and souls of decent, law-abiding Southerners who know that the very fabric of that Flag was woven with the blood, sweat and tears of our past Southern kin-folks who struggled, suffered, bled and died to defend their loved ones, homes, honor and independence while serving under that Flag. If it is temporarily removed from Confederate cemeteries and memorials by a few unconscionable dupes of political correctness, the more concentrated the image of that Flag becomes in the independent minds of healthy, strong and determined Southern descendants of kinfolks who were victims of shamefully vicious and inhumane acts of atrocities in an unlawful invasion of their Southern homeland.
Further, our Southern culture, represented by that Confederate Battle Flag, will never be replaced by the hip-hop culture, a part of which was recently on display at the Super Bowl.
Semper Fi and Deo Vindice,
Joe Miller
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| Canada's Den of Thieves |
| 02.13.04 (8:45 pm) [edit] |
Found this while surfin'.
Seems Canucks have a crooked government, too.
I wonder how much tar and feathers we would need to...? Why did citizens stop punishing their govmt. officials?
Canadian Politics and Boondoggles
Address:http://www.sticksite.com/thef...
Canada has been ROBBED!
I am a Canadian and would not want to be anything else. I love Canada. But, like other countries, Canada has problems. Always did, always will. But now, a crisis of MONUMENTAL PROPORTIONS has arisen. The country has been ROBBED........... by its own GOVERNMENT! If you can imagine that!
The crimes committed by top government officials are staggering. On February 10, 2004, the Auditor General for Canada released her much-feared report of the wrong-doings. Clearly, there is no reason why the parties involved should not be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and be forced to repay every cent stolen.
After that, jail-time would be quite in order.
If you can imagine it, get this: the man in charge of Canada's finances at the time of the offences, Paul Martin, is now the Prime Minister. It is no wonder the former Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, stepped down before the damning report was released. He had planned to retire in February but knew what was coming so quit early.
I'm not smart enough to follow all the lurid details but others can do that and I'll refer you to their reports.
First, Linda Leatherdale's report:
http://money.canoe.ca/Columnists/Leatherdale /2004/02/11/344031.html" title="http://money.canoe.ca/Columnists/Leatherdale /2004/02/11/344031.html" target="_blank"http://money.canoe.ca/Columni...
CTV has this:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/st ory/CTVNews/1076532572313 _56///?hub=TopStories" title="http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/st ory/CTVNews/1076532572313 _56///?hub=TopStories" target="_blank"http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/Art...
CBC news reports:
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/02/11/pub lic_accounts040211" title="http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/02/11/pub lic_accounts040211" target="_blank"http://www.cbc.ca/stories/200...
and
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/groupa ction/" title="http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/groupa ction/" target="_blank"http://www.cbc.ca/news/backgr...
and
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/02/11/new auditor040211" title="http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/02/11/new auditor040211" target="_blank"http://www.cbc.ca/stories/200...
and
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/02/10/fra ser_report040210" title="http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/02/10/fra ser_report040210" target="_blank"http://www.cbc.ca/stories/200...
More on the Auditor General's Report:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/audito rgeneral/report2004.html" title="http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/audito rgeneral/report2004.html" target="_blank"http://www.cbc.ca/news/backgr...
We keep paying more and more taxes, including that horrible "Gouge and Screw Tax" (a.k.a. "GST") while they waste it as fast as they get it.
PLEASE encourage the news media to KEEP AT IT and not just let it die.
Already, as expected, the Prime Minister is saying that steps will be put into place to make sure this never happens again.
THAT is what they ALWAYS say! That, they think, will make us shut up and let them keep rolling in their ill-gotten gains.
Prime Minister Paul Martin is seen today on TV saying "I JUST DON'T ACCEPT THIS ARGUMENT." That was well-put, Mr. Martin. I emailed the P.M. today, Feb. 11 with this:
Mr. Prime Minister, like "the man" said, "I JUST DON'T ACCEPT THIS ARGUMENT."
I do not accept YOUR arguments. Do you take all Canadians for fools?
The buck stops with the Minister of Finance and YOU WERE IT!!
And now you blatantly tell Canadians "We acted at once......!" BULL!!!
Come on, Mr. Martin, YOU must be charged with flagrant disregard for your duties as Minister of Finance for Canada.
YOU and the others need to be charged and forced to pay back to us poor Canadians all the money your poured into the pockets of your friends. PLUS penalties and JAIL TIME!
I hope a class-action lawsuit is soon started against you and the others responsible for this, the greatest scandal of all time in the Canadian government. I want to be part of it.
I had high hopes that you would be everything Jean was not. Too bad.
And I added my complete snail-mail address.
Please send your letters and emails to the guilty and the members of the opposition.
Here are a few addies you can use:
CTV television: news@ctv.ca
CBC television: letters@cbc.ca
Prime Minister: pm@pm.gc.ca
Government of Canada Internet Addresses: http://canada.gc.ca/directori...
Alphabetical list of all MPs:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/senmemb/house/m embers/CurrentMemberList.asp?Language=E&Parl=37&Se s=1&Sect=hoccur&Order=Per sonOfficialLastName" title="http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/senmemb/house/m embers/CurrentMemberList.asp?Language=E&Parl=37&Se s=1&Sect=hoccur&Order=Per sonOfficialLastName" target="_blank"http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/...
The Hon. Gary Breitkreuz (Conservative MP) Breitkreuz.G@parl.gc.ca
The Hon. John Williams MP: willij@parl.gc.ca and see his website at http://www.johnwilliams.ca/ AND you can sign up to receive his free "Waste Report" by email and/or snailmail.
The Hon. Rahim Jaffer: Jaffer.R@parl.gc.ca and see his Waste
Report at http://www.rahimjaffer.com/fi...
And note that you can write letters, the "Old-Fashioned" way to Members of Parliament, and you don't even need to put a postage stamp on the envelope:
House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
And if that is not terrible enough, on Feb. 13, 2004, CTV Newsnet reports that our "Governor General" Clarkson just blew $5,300,000 to take a trip on taxpayer's expense. That lady has an awful habit of going through (our) money like it was her own. AND WE DON'T EVEN *NEED* HER! A completely USELESS position.
WHY DO WE ALLOW THIS LUNACY TO CONTINUE?
http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=canada_home&art icleID=1528186" title="http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=canada_home&art icleID=1528186" target="_blank"http://www.mytelus.com/news/a...
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| Teresa Heinz Kerry:
Bag Lady for the Radical Left
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| 02.13.04 (10:05 am) [edit] |
Teresa Heinz Kerry:
Bag Lady for the Radical Left
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | 02-13-04
With Matt Drudge's recent revelation that John Kerry is as faithful to his second wife as he was to his old Vietnam "brothers," the senator's presidential campaign may depend more than ever on the actions of his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. While the mainstream media has thus far overlooked the alleged infidelity, media outlets have also overlooked a far more important story: The former Mrs. John Heinz is also in bed – financially – with the radical Left.
Teresa Heinz Kerry has financed the secretive Tides Foundation to the tune of more than $4 million over the years. The Tides Foundation, a "charity" established in 1976 by antiwar leftist activist Drummond Pike, distributes millions of dollars in grants every year to political organizations advocating far-Left causes.
The Tides Foundation and its closely allied Tides Center, which was spun off from the Foundation in 1996 but run by Drummond Pike, distributed nearly $66 million in grants in 2002 alone. In all, Tides has distributed more than $300 million for the Left. These funds went to rabid antiwar demonstrators, anti-trade demonstrators, domestic Islamist organizations, pro-terrorists legal groups, environmentalists, abortion partisans, extremist homosexual activists and open borders advocates.
During the years 1995-2001, the Howard Heinz Endowment, which Heinz Kerry chairs, gave Tides more than $4.3 million. The combined Heinz Endowments (composed of the Howard Heinz Endowment and the Vira I. Heinz Endowment) donated $1.6 million to establish the Tides Center for Western Pennsylvania, a Pittsburgh office of the San Francisco-based Tides Center. Since that time, the local branch has tirelessly pushed an anti-business agenda in the name of "preserving the environment."
However, it is the Tides Foundation's national organization whose connections are most disconcerting.
The Tides Foundation is a major source of revenue for some of the most extreme groups on the Left. Tides allows donors to anonymously contribute money to a host of causes; the donor simply makes the check out to Tides and instructs the Foundation where to forward the money. Tides does so, for a nominal fee.
Drummond Pike told The Chronicle of Philanthropy, "Anonymity is very important to most of the people we work with." That becomes understandable when one views the list of Tides grant recipients. And who are the beneficiaries of this money?
The Antiwar Movement
Senator John F. Kerry has gone far with his nuanced view of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He voted for the war resolution but specified a litany of conditions the Bush administration must meet before he would support combat, then proceeded to vote against funding troops already in harm's way – then claimed he had always supported the president when Saddam Hussein was captured. The grant recipients of the Tides Foundation, to which Kerry's wife has steered more than $4 billion in "charitable" funds, understand no such nuance.
Tides established the Iraq Peace Fund and the Peace Strategies Fund to fund the antiwar movement. These projects fueled such hysterical protest organizations as MoveOn.org, the website that recently featured two separate commercials portraying George W. Bush as Adolf Hitler. (Howard Dean, not Kerry, won MoveOn.org's "virtual primary.")
The antiwar movement often boasted that MoveOn.org and the radical website Indymedia provided them "alternate media coverage." Indymedia, an enormous news and events bulletin board with local pages in most of the world's major cities, provided a vital link for radical activists often with violent agendas to coordinate their protests. Indymedia received $376,000 from the Tides Foundation.
The Institute for Global Communications is another leftist communications facilitator that received Tides grant money. IGC, which during the 1990s was the leading provider of web technology to the radical Left, links to "recommended sites" such as the War Resisters League (a group whose purpose is enabling peaceniks to refuse to pay taxes) and the leftist American Friends Service Committee. Most disturbing is the link to Ramsey Clark's International Action Center, which has supported Slobodan Milosevic and North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Il. The IAC is the force behind International ANSWER, which sponsored the major antiwar (and anti-Bush) rallies before the invasion of Iraq. When ANSWER was outed as a Communist organization, United for Peace and Justice, headed by longtime Communist Party member Leslie Cagan was created as a "moderate" alternative. UFPJ is also a Tides grant recipient.The Tides-funded "A Better Way Project," which opposed war in Iraq, also coordinated efforts of United for Peace and Justice and the Win Without War Coalition. The celebrity-laden Win Without War Coalition, along with the Bill Moyers-funded Florence and John Schumann Foundation, ran full-page ads in the New York Times opposing the War on Terrorism. This will not be the last overlapping of far-Left causes.
The Islamist Front
Immediately after 9/11, Tides formed a "9/11 Fund" to advocate a "peaceful national response" to the opening salvos of war. Part of the half-million dollars in grants the 9/11 Fund dispersed went to the New York Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project to protect the rights of homosexual Arabs. The Foundation replaced the 9/11 Fund with the "Democratic Justice Fund," which was established with the aid of George Soros' Open Society Institute. (Currency speculator and pro-drug advocate Soros is, like Teresa Heinz Kerry, a major contributor to Tides, having donated more than $7 million.) The Democratic Justice Fund seeks to ease restrictions on Muslim immigration to the United States, particularly from countries designated by the State Department as "terrorist nations."
Tides has also given grant money to the Council for American Islamic Relations. Ostensibly a "Muslim civil rights group," CAIR is in fact one of the leading anti-anti-terrorism organizations within the Wahhabi Lobby, with links to Hamas. CAIR regularly opposes and demonizes American efforts to fight terrorism, claiming, for instance, that Homeland Security measures are responsible for an undocumented surge in "hate crimes."
CAIR officials have reason to fight Bush's anti-terrorism measures: all too many CAIR officials are on the record supporting terrorism. CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad openly stated in 1994, "I am a supporter of the Hamas movement." Community Affairs Director Bassem K. Khafagi has been arrested for visa and bank fraud. Randall Royer, a Communications Specialist and Civil Rights Coordinator at CAIR, was arrested along with a group of Islamic radicals in Virginia for allegedly planning jihad. CAIR has defended terrorist "charities" shut down by the Bush administration. Every few months some CAIR campus official is arrested for aiding and abetting terrorism.
The Legal Matrix
The Tides Foundation has funded a number of the pillars of the radical legal establishment. Chief among these is the National Lawyers Guild, which began as a Commnist front organization and is proud of its lineage. At its recent convention last October, the concluding speaker was Lynne Stewart, an indicted terrorist NLG lawyer arrested for helping her client – convicted 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman – communicate with his terrorist cells in Egypt. In her speech, Stewart said she and her NLG comrades were carrying on a proud tradition of their forebears, past and present:
And modern heroes, dare I mention? Ho and Mao and Lenin, Fidel and Nelson Mandela and John Brown, Che Guevara who reminds us, "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love." Our quests like theirs are to shake the very foundations of the continents.
More recently, the NLG has endorsed the March 20 call to End Colonial Occupation from Iraq to Palestine & Everywhere" organized by International ANSWER, and has posted a petition for "Post-Conviction Relief" for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Tides' Peace Strategies Fund has funneled money to the Center for Constitutional Rights. The CCR was stablished by Sixties radical William Kunstler, defender of the Chicago 8, and Arthur Kinoy. The two also had plans to establish a new Communist Party. Executive Director Ron Daniels has been honored by the Communist Party USA for his work. Daniels also has a long and cordial relationship with racist, anti-Semitic "poet laureate" Amiri Baraka. Since 9/11, CCR has channeled its efforts into fighting every effective Homeland Security measure. They have opposed increasing the government's ability to wiretap Islamists suspected of plotting terrorism and moaned the sequestering of terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay was an unexcusable form of "racial profiling." CCR President Michael Ratner has portrayed American soldiers as the offenders, guilty of 9/11 by their Middle East policy and guilty of keeping Islamist killers "shackled, hooded and sedated during the 25 hour flight from Afghanistan." CCR has also defended Lynne Stewart's "innocence" in aiding Sheikh Rahman's Islamic Jihad.
Tides also funds the Alliance for Justice, a group dedicated to stopping Bush judicial appointees (a cause John Kerry can agree wholeheartedly endorse). Other Tides grants have gone to the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the Asian Law Caucus.
Environmental Extremism
The Tides Foundation has funded the Ruckus Society, a group of anarchist Greens who rioted and looted Seattle during the 1999 World Trade Organization riots. The Tides Center of Western Pennsylvania, established in Pittsburgh with Heinz Family funds, advocates for environmentalist measures that have helped put holes in the Rust Belt's economy.
Tides money has also squashed free speech. Thanks to complaints generated by the Tides-funded Environmental Working Group, ABC cancelled a John Stossel piece exposing the misleading nature of environmental advocacy in public elementary schools.
Greenpeace is a well-known Tides grant recipient. Greenpeace is best known for its illegal actions, endangering humans in order to make a point about the environment. Tides gave Greenpeace a quarter of a million dollars over ten years.
Lest one think only Tides' money is going to radicals, not funds directly controlled by Teresa Heinz Kerry, remember that Heinz money has repeatedly found its way to the Earth Island Institute. On September 14, 2001, the Institute's website bore the headline "U.S. Responds to Terrorist Attacks with Self-Righteous Arrogance."
Heinz family philanthropic funds have also had some dubious effects on the presidential race. The League of Conservation Voters has recently endorsed John Kerry's presidential campaign. The Heinz Family Foundation gave LCV at least $20,000 and donated almost $250,000 to a member of the LCV board.
Perhaps this circular rotation of cash and endorsements should not surprise anyone. The grant-making institutions of the Left and their feverish recipients ultimately form an amorphous, leftist entity. One never needs to search very far to find connections between a leftist foundation and extreme advocacy groups. Teresa Heinz Kerry, George Soros, Bill Moyers and the Ford Foundation fund the Tides Foundation/Center; Tides funds the National Lawyers Guild, CAIR, MoveOn.org and United for Peace and Justice; those organizations then unite in fluid coalitions to protest against their common political enemies (Republicans).
Ultimately, their representatives end up on Bill Moyers' PBS programs or active within the Democratic campaigns of their fundraisers. Between now and the election, these organizations will run constant interference for the Democratic presidential nominee (presumably Kerry himself): they will march en masse against the Bush administration again and again; they will file more lawsuits against the administration's Homeland Security measures, decry any effective response to terrorism, claim the United States is guilty of slaughtering Iraqi civilians and petition leftist judges to open America's borders to Islamist terrorists. After they help his election, President Kerry will be indebted to them. And then they will insist he begin implementing their political agenda.
Moreover, they will have a close ally in the East Wing of the White House, an ally more intimately tied to them than she is to her (second) husband. (She only adopted his last name and political party registration less than 18 months ago.
"Politically, it's going to be Heinz Kerry," she recently said. "But I don't give a sh-t, you know?") Teresa Heinz Kerry will play a potent role in saving her second husband's presidential campaign now – as Hillary Clinton did in 1992, and again during her husband's impeachment. Like Hillary, in return for her service, Heinz may demand a place at the table for her pet causes. Caveat emptor
CLICK LINK TO READ ARTICLE and to see links to stories.
FrontPage magazine.com
Address:http://www.frontpagemag.com/A...
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| LAWMAKER ARROGANCE |
| 02.11.04 (11:59 am) [edit] |
Lawmaker Arrogance - State and National
Commentary by Steve Scroggins
A core goal of the Georgia Heritage Coalition is to promote and restore good government for Georgia and all Americans.
The 2004 Georgia Flag FAIR VOTE bill is just one example. We are demanding that our Georgia lawmakers represent us, the people of Georgia, rather than outside special interests. We are demanding that they implement OUR will, not theirs. The elections of 2002 were a state-wide mandate for a Fair Vote on the Georgia State Flag. Specifically, the people want a chance to restore the 1956 Flag of Honor that was stolen in 2001 by way of corrupt back-room deals in which the lawmakers of our State defied the will of the people and just did what they wanted in exchange for 30 pieces of silver.
Certain lawmakers were and are unwilling to simply repeal the act that removed our flag of honor. Instead, they crammed another flag down our throats in 2003, and adding insult to injury, they're calling the March 2004 referendum a "choice." Please.
It's not asking too much to let the people decide in a referendum. With a Fair Vote, the General Assembly can clearly see the will of the people and enact it.
Clearly, we the people of Georgia, must show the folks in Atlanta just who is in charge. Is it us? Or them? The 2002 election was just a warm up. The anger remains and it grows and the shockwaves of surprise will be even larger in 2004.
We have a similar "arrogance" situation at the national level. It's a different issue, but the arrogance, elitism and the core question are the same. Does the U.S. Congress represent the American people and their constituents? Or do they act only on self-interest and accordingly on behalf of the special interests that own them?
We have some politicians who will sell out anything or anyone to hold onto their power and privilege. They are, after all, human beings and sinners like the rest of us. AND…they have a really sweet deal.
(More on this below.)
Social Security has been a major concern for some time. It's been called the "third rail of American politics." Anyone who has dared to propose serious reform (touching that rail) has been politically destroyed. Few issues have more demagoguery and fear-mongering associated with them. Reform has been promised for decades and promises proliferate as demographic projections paint the financial doom of the system as inevitable. (Remember the "lockbox" joke? Where did that Lockbox go?)
There is NO incentive for anyone in the U.S. Congress to risk any true reform. Not yet, at least. They won't do what's right for the people if that requires them to take too much risk. Any sense of honor and duty they have is tossed aside in favor of political survival. Besides, the members of the U.S. Congress have a really sweet deal. See the text below. This message is circulating on the Internet in a number of forms. Members of Congress are counting on the hope that Americans will continue to let them skate on the issue and not deal with it.
Even with millions of signatures on a petition, do you think anyone in the U.S. Congress would introduce a bill to place Congress on Social Security? And even if one maverick had the nerve, would it ever get out of committee and on the floor for a vote?
Sounds familiar at the Georgia level, doesn't it? In the last ten days, we've heard rhetoric from Georgia politicians that basically comes down to…"We defied the people of Georgia on the state flag vote. So what? Can't we just move on?"
How do we overcome this arrogance and elitism in our Government? By changing the people we elect to run it. Talk is cheap. The politicians must be shown---with action---that defiance has real consequences in elections. Just ask Roy Barnes. Ask Tom Murphy.
We need to show (apparently repeatedly) the people in Atlanta that Georgians really are in charge. Some of these politicians remain convinced that some issues will blow over and that special interest money will win their elections. It's our duty as citizens and it's in our self-interest to give them the lessons they need. You see, folks, corporations and money don't vote. People do. And votes are what win elections, not campaign war chests. Just ask Roy Barnes.
Send the suggestion below to your U.S. Representative and your U.S. Senators.
I'm betting that they won't even acknowledge or respond to it. If they do, it'll be with empty platitudes and form letters. Tell them you want them to lay down their "ten foot poles" and to put their hands on this issue.
When they ignore you, the question remains: What are you going to do about it? We know this is Georgia and it ain't Missouri…but these politicians are saying,
"Show me." This is what we do in grass-roots organizations like Georgia Heritage Coalition. We put together a team, bring in players with various talents, and then we show them. Join us and, together, we'll show them.
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Internet Message on Social Security
GET A BILL STARTED TO PLACE ALL POLITICIANS ON SOC. SEC.
2004 Election Issue!!
This must be an issue in "2004." Please! Keep it going.
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SOCIAL SECURITY:
(This is worth reading. It is short and to the point.)
Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years.
Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social Security and, of course, they do not collect from it.
You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their rare elevation in society. They felt they should have a special plan for themselves. So, many years ago they voted in their own
benefit plan.
In more recent years, no congress person has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan.
For all practical purposes their plan works like this:
When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die.
Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments.
For example, former Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect to draw $7,800,000.00 (that's Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand Dollars), with their wives drawing $275,000.00 during the last years of their lives.
This is calculated on an average life span for each of those two Dignitaries.
Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more during the rest of their lives.
Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00.
NADA....ZILCH....
This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan. The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds;
"OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK"!
From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid) into, -every payday until we retire (which a mount is matched by our employer)- we can expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement.
Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal Senator Bill Bradley's benefits!
Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made.
That change would be to jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us ... then sit back and watch how fast they would fix it.
If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe good changes will evolve.
How many people can YOU send this to?
Keep this going clear up thru the 2004 election!! We need to be heard.
Have a great day
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(Ed. Note: Are you aware that U.S. Supreme Court justices DO NOTPAY INCOME TAX?
You can guess why, right? Congress was told, If they were not declared exempt, they would rule the income tax "UNCONSTITUTIONAL"!
Why, oh why, do we let them get away with constantly screwing US?
TURN 'EM OUT! All of them, and all their lifetime employees, too! Bureaucrats for damn sure, OUT!
Put the citizens, 'we the people' back in Washington D.C., your state capital, county and local governing bodies too! )
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| Starting a Brush Fire for Freedom |
| 02.11.04 (9:39 am) [edit] |
Starting a Brush Fire for Freedom
An interview with US Rep. Ron Paul
by John W. Whitehead
RUTHERFORD.ORG
When asked what advice he would give to Americans concerned about the growing power of the federal government and the various threats to our liberties,
Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.) quoted Samuel Adams: "Every individual has a responsibility to be informed, to know what is going on and to know the issues."
As Samuel Adams once said, "Go out and start a brush fire." And you can do that with one individual or many. You can become a teacher or a writer or help somebody in politics. But you can only start a brush fire for freedom if you feel confident that you understand the issues and really can defend liberty as being the best system for all of us.
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Ron Paul graduated from Gettysburg College and the Duke University School of Medicine, before serving as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force during the 1960s. He and his wife Carol moved to Texas in 1968, where he began his medical practice in Brazoria County as a specialist in obstetrics / gynecology.
While serving in Congress during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dr. Paul's limited-government ideals were not popular in Washington. While serving on the House Banking Committee, he was a strong advocate for sound monetary policy and an outspoken critic of the Federal Reserve?s inflationary measures. Dr. Paul consistently voted to lower or abolish federal taxes, spending, and regulation, and used his House seat to actively preserve, protect, and defend our constitutional principles of government. In fact, in Congress he is known as 'Dr. No' because he refuses to accept any legislation that does not pass strict constitutional muster.
In 1984, Dr. Paul voluntarily relinquished his House seat and returned to his medical practice in Texas. However, in 1997 he returned to Congress and has continued to advocate a dramatic reduction in the size of the federal government and a return to constitutional principles.
Since the 9/11 tragedy, Dr. Paul has been an outspoken critic of the USA Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which he believes are a threat to liberty and a sign that our country is becoming more like a police sate. "The idea that search warrants could be granted so easily under the Patriot Act," says Dr. Paul. "..with sneak and peak searches and going into libraries and other places to find out what people are doing is wrong. It's total surveillance."
Dr. Paul has also been a strong critic of the war in Iraq, going so far as to call it "unconstitutional" because there was no formal declaration of war, and "immoral" because there was no direct attack on our country. "Iraq is a Third World Nation that couldn't defend itself," says Dr. Paul. "This has been proven to be correct. We had been bombing them, flying over their air space, intimidating them and controlling them for 12 years. They have been trying to shoot our airplanes down, and never have been able to. Iraq simply could not defend itself."
Obviously, opinions like this have made Ron Paul somewhat of a lone wolf in Congress. But as one writer pointed out, "There has always been one politician in Washington who has never been a politician. That man is Congressman Ron Paul from the 14th District in Texas who has always been a throwback to the original 'citizen statesman' that the Founders promoted as the ideal type of leader for the Republic they had formed."
Indeed, Dr. Paul is quick to point out that we have 'drifted away' from the original idea of a Republic and have more of a centralized government which presents a threat to individual liberty. Still, he remains cautiously optimistic about the future of America. "I am not optimistic in the short run," Paul admits. "I have a lot of concerns. But we will have to wait and see what evolves. However, I am optimistic enough to believe that if we put the time and energy into fighting for our country and the Constitution, there is as good a chance of winning this fight as losing it."
Rutherford Institute President John W. Whitehead interviews Ron Paul to talk about his lone wolf status in Congress, the USA Patriot Act, the war in Iraq, and the rise of big government under Republican leadership.
READ INTERVIEW
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| "God-Given" Right to Federal Money |
| 02.09.04 (2:57 pm) [edit] |
The government knows best how to take and spend our money. It can't be trusted to individuals to spend it themselves.
"God-Given" Right to Federal Money
J. Justin Wilson - collegiatenetwork.org
On the heels of Stanley Kurtz's congressional testimony about biased Middle Eastern Studies professors, Congress is set to take action on the issue by creating an advisory board to oversee programs receiving federal money under Title VI. Meanwhile, academics are decrying the measure as an academic "witch hunt" aimed at pushing a pro-west, pro-Israel agenda.
Title VI was created to help increase the number of graduate students studying Middle Eastern languages. The program, which now distributes $95 million dollars in grants to Middle Eastern Studies programs, aims to foster more qualified government experts in the field. To do so, Title VI subsidizes foreign language and cultural programs for graduate students.
The proposed panel would serve as an oversight board and peer-to-peer committee to better allocate Title VI funding to programs actively pursuing the program's goals. The committee is not a new manifestation. A similar committee existed during the Regan administration to serve the same process.
Yet despite taking millions of federal dollars, some professors actively dissuade students from entering government work upon graduation.
Nezar AlSayyad, chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, told the Chronicle of Higher Education: "We get money from the federal government. That does not mean we do what the federal government says. As academics, we have academic freedom. That's our God-given right. Being in the academy means that we're allowed to form opinions actually based on intellectual discourse, not on political position."
Perhaps Prof. AlSayyad should take Kenneth D. Whitehead's advice. Whitehead, a former director of educational programs at the Department of Education, asked "What does whether or not you're competent in Arabic or Chinese or Farsi have to do with academic freedom?"
Prof. AlSayyad and his comrades seem to think that they are entitled(by God, or should I say Allah) to federal money with no strings attached -- but that is not the case. Across academia, grants, both federal and otherwise, aim to achieve certain goals. If those goals aren't met, let alone actively opposed, then the professors violated the terms of the contract.
Whitehead went on to tell the Chronicle: "If the centers are worried, he says, 'maybe they shouldn't be taking the money.'"
The Collegiate Network - The Home of Conservative College Journalism
Address:http://www.collegiatenetwork....
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| AMERICAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE - Renew America Forum |
| 02.09.04 (7:56 am) [edit] |
This week's question -- RenewAmerica Forum
Friends of Alan Keyes,
This week's RenewAmerica Forum deals with
AMERICAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
This vital question isn't meant as an "academic exercise." We'd sincerely like to know what you think of current language trends in American culture that are becoming prevalent. Do you see or hear things that offend or concern you--on the job, at home, in the theatre, out and about? Do you personally use language that you shouldn't? Is communication in our country becoming too crude, coarse, and offensive? Where do we draw lines of propriety in language, so as to preserve our nation's virtue and integrity as a society?
We'd like to know your thoughts on our . . .
Question of the Week
February 8, 2004
AMERICAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
Anyone who has tried to learn a second language knows that language is wedded to culture. In fact, it's often hard to tell the difference between language and culture--especially when we think of language broadly to include all possible forms of expression and communication within a given cultural tradition.
That said, what does our use of language in America today suggest about the current state of our society? Do you see significant indications--as some observers note--that our language is declining, and what do these indications suggest about American culture? The much-recognized malaise in public education over the past 40 years has focused mainly on the rise of illiteracy, but are there other "social" indications that our language is seriously deteriorating?
How do you personally respond when you hear friends, associates, co-workers, or public figures use vulgar, obscene, or crude language, especially openly? How do you explain the growing use of such language throughout our society--in education, the workplace, the arts, the home, and other settings? What kind of language do you, yourself, resort to when you can't "find the right words"--and do you condone the use of offensive or coarse language in certain situations? What do you think of the notion that people turn to profanity or vulgarity because of their verbal and linguistic inadequacies?
If that observation is true, how do explain the apparent popularity of crude language in academia, bureaucracy, the professions, and other "educated" sectors of American society?
Finally, if indeed our language is going down the tubes, because our culture is declining, what do you propose to counter the trend, and can that trend even be turned around? Or are we doomed to hear four-letter words take over our nation's vocabulary?
Please post answers here and
you can also post your response at http://www.renewamerica.us/fo...
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| Congress AWOL;
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
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| 02.08.04 (11:13 pm) [edit] |
Congress AWOL
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
Before the US House of Representatives, February 4, 2004
There is plenty of blame to go around for the mistakes made by going to war in Iraq, especially now that it is common knowledge Saddam Hussein told the truth about having no weapons of mass destruction, and that Al Qaida and 9/11 were in no way related to the Iraqi government.
Our intelligence agencies failed for whatever reason this time, but their frequent failures should raise the question of whether or not secretly spending forty billion taxpayer dollars annually gathering bad information is a good investment. The administration certainly failed us by making the decision to sacrifice so much in life and limb, by plunging us into this Persian Gulf quagmire that surely will last for years to come.
But before Congress gets too carried away with condemning the administration or the intelligence gathering agencies, it ought to look to itself. A proper investigation and debate by this Congress – as we're now scrambling to accomplish – clearly was warranted prior to any decision to go to war. An open and detailed debate on a proper declaration of war certainly would have revealed that U.S. national security was not threatened – and the whole war could have been avoided. Because Congress did not do that, it deserves the greatest criticism for its dereliction of duty.
There was a precise reason why the most serious decision made by a country – the decision to go to war – was assigned in our Constitution to the body closest to the people. If we followed this charge I'm certain fewer wars would be fought, wide support would be achieved for just defensive wars, there would be less political finger-pointing if events went badly, and blame could not be placed on one individual or agency. This process would more likely achieve victory, which has eluded us in recent decades.
The president reluctantly has agreed to support an independent commission to review our intelligence gathering failures, and that is good. Cynics said nothing much would be achieved by studying pre-9/11 intelligence failures, but it looks like some objective criticisms will emerge from that inquiry. We can hope for the best from this newly appointed commission.
But already we hear the inquiry will be deliberately delayed, limited to investigating only the failures of the intelligence agencies themselves, and may divert its focus to studying intelligence gathering related to North Korea and elsewhere. If the commission avoids the central controversy – whether or not there was selective use of information or undue pressure put on the CIA to support a foregone conclusion to go to war by the administration – the commission will appear a sham.
Regardless of the results, the process of the inquiry is missing the most important point – the failure of Congress to meet its responsibility on the decision to go, or not go, to war. The current mess was predictable from the beginning.
Unfortunately, Congress voluntarily gave up its prerogative over war and illegally transferred this power to the president in October of 2002. The debate we are having now should have occurred here in the halls of Congress then. We should have debated a declaration of war resolution. Instead, Congress chose to transfer this decision-making power to the president to avoid the responsibility of making the hard choice of sending our young people into harms way, against a weak, third world country. This the president did on his own, with congressional acquiescence. The blame game has emerged only now that we are in the political season. Sadly, the call for and the appointment of the commission is all part of this political process.
It is truly disturbing to see many who abdicated their congressional responsibility to declare or reject war, who timidly voted to give the president the power he wanted, now posturing as his harshest critics.
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Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.
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Congress AWOL
by Rep. Ron Paul
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul154.html" title="http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul154.html" target="_blank"http://www.lewrockwell.com/pa...
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| So, Who Wants My Vote? |
| 02.08.04 (5:35 pm) [edit] |
So Who Wants My Vote?
Paula Devlin, 09/30/03
AmericanDaily.com
As the political sweepstakes wax frenetic, little attention is paid to the basic issues so near and dear to the hearts of ordinary citizens. Squeezed out of the equation by big government, big business and the whacky NGOs' agendae, the bottom line for the vast majority remains: to own their own home, have a family and to have the means to provide for it without interference from a whole lot of people (starting with the in-laws).
The politicians see the voter as their source of power and untold wealth. Big business sees voters as production machinery. Many NGO's see voters as something to be curbed, herded and enslaved (maybe even exterminated) after easing their property and cashflow away from them.
In the meantime, the proletariat gets up every morning, brushes its teeth, combs its hair and heads off to keep the nation strong. It's these ordinary things, done by the ordinary people that make this country great. Sometimes we are even blessed with good leaders who see this and recognize that it is the product of individual freedom, not of overbearing government. The ordinary voter might not have the sophistication and polish to have tea with the queen or play boardroom politics, but these people are there, day in and day out, delivering. Good leadership is grateful for the ordinary millions and acknowledges them. Bad leadership whines that "It feels your pain."
Politicians seem to have vast hoards of idealistic young people and Machiavellian old people searching for "campaign issues" the way clothing designers put out a fall line. "What will sell? What do they want to hear that will make them vote for me?" More often than not, they are off the mark. They create problems then come forward with messianic schemes, costing billions, to solve the alleged problems.
A good many voters don't know what they want. They are seduced by empty promises for Uncle Sugar to take care of them cradle-to-grave. They don't want to know about the corruption or make hard choices. Hitler used that tactic to get where he wanted to go. It's the campaign-promise path of least resistance.
In the wildly deviant hope that any politician will hear this cry from afar, I would like to state my personal questions for the vast hoard of elitist, messianic politicians, on the off-chance that they care.
1. Are you a globalist? (If so, I won't vote for you.)
2. What is your position on the ownership of private property? (If you don't think private property is right numero uno, I will buy you a one way ticket to Havana, Beijing or Moscow.)
3. What do you intend to do to curb the unconstitutional ownership of land by the Federal Government and the unjust, over-regulation of privately owned land? (See #2)
4. Will you work to reclaim the lands illegally given to the UN as Biospheres? (See #2)
5. Do you believe in the sovereignty of the United States? (See #2)
6. At what point do you feel we should dramatically reduce or cease our involvement in the United Nations? (Wrong answer wins a ticket to Liberia, no meals.)
7. How do you anticipate dealing with an unfavorable ruling against the United States by the International Criminal Court? (Wrong answer wins a ticket to Zimbabwe to enjoy their justice.)
8. How do you see curbing judicial tyranny where judges impose their private ideologies rather that adhering to the American legal and constitutional code? (Impeachment would be a good place to start. Wrong answer wins trip to Gulag. One way. No appeal.)
9. How do you plan to cut the cost and intrusiveness of the Federal Government in the over-regulation of businesses? (Have breath-a-lator tests for all going onto the floor of Congress, then have the government employees' pension plan assets put into Social Security.)
10. How do you see bringing the rich and/or famous to justice if they are guilty of wrongdoing? Would you strip them of their ill-gotten goods? (Include yourself in this. Wrong answer wins trip to N. Korea to live for all eternity with their rich and famous.)
11. How do you plan to deal with the exportation of manufacturing jobs and equipment that has been going on for the past 20 years? (Wrong answer wins an abandoned house in an old coal mining town, no car but an old Radio Flyer bicycle, and 26 weeks unemployment. You will never be able to leave.)
12. Have you read, and do you understand, The Art of War by Sun-tzu? (Wrong answer gets you a lifetime job as a stevedore with Hutchinson Whampoa.)
I'm waiting.
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So Who Wants My Vote? - Paula Devlin
Address:http://www.americandaily.com/...
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The Government Becomes Totalitarian - Paula Devlin
Address:http://www.americandaily.com/...
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| SKULL VS. BONES IN '04 |
| 02.08.04 (2:55 pm) [edit] |
SKULL VS. BONES IN '04
Looks like this will be the Plurocratic Party ringmasters line up for the Constitutional
National Wrestling Championship of 2004.
No matter which contender wins the belt, the Plurocrats still control the events.
( and, if you watch WWF, the results. )
They win, 'we the people' lose. I hope they both take the count, flat on the mat.
I'm not going to vote against Bush. I'll not vote for Kerry.
They don't play in the 'truly' correct association.
I will not be casting my throw of the dice, on either of these guys. Either way, we crap out.
I will vote for someone that will uphold the oath of office. Someone that would return us to the Constitutional Republic of our Founding Fathers. The only 'special interest' represented, should be that of the Constitution.
We all should do the same.
Y'all have some fun with this one.
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THIS IS THEIR CHOICE?--- SKULL VS. BONES IN '04
Dave Franklin - etherzone.com
Let's consider a so-called "alternative" that Democrats have coughed up this year, John F. Kerry. This leftist Ivy League rich boy offers much to widen the scope of our debate, including his success in getting more money from lobbyists than any other U.S. Senator. Only rivaled by his ability to collect Chinese red army money, we have what must be his message when Kerry promised to "take on the special interests in Washington".
This is just what America needs, a skull and bones election. "Bring it on," says John Kerry. Bring on expanded government to socialize health care. Bring on the final plan to federalize our entire school system. Bring on the United Nations (struggling to survive the loss of its Iraq "oil for food" dollars) to take over the U.S. Department of Defense. Bring on "a comprehensive service plan that includes requiring mandatory service for high school students" in his "New Army of Patriots".
That last one is particularly disturbing. Senator Kerry plans to enslave our kids. We can only imagine what kinds of "mandatory service" John Kerry wants to extract from teenagers. When most of us went to high school, we took part-time jobs so we could save enough money to buy a cheap car and afford tuxedo rental for the prom. Now you can forget about the car and the promenade. You'll be forced to "volunteer" by Washington politicians.
Then we have our would-be Democrat nominee's outright worship of the left's radical gay agenda. Calling it "civil unions", Kerry says yes to gay marriage.
He promises to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military. Coupled with his support for defining sexual behavior as a protected class, Kerry pushes for "hate crimes" legislation that pretty much outlaws the Holy Bible on that subject.
The 2004 election is utterly amazing. That such a complete bunch of leftist cooks can control one of the major parties on the ballot this year is almost surreal. But the same ideology has infected Democrat party politics for decades. Today, it is easier to expose.
Right from the johnkerry.com web site, "Kerry believes that we don't need a President who will walk away from the world or a President who will walk alone." Well, President Bush did propose a mission to Mars, so we can't argue about the accusation against a "President who will walk away from the world".
But the candidate's objection
isn't about NASA. He is arguing that the United States must subject itself to world opinion when it comes to taking on those who would kill all of us if they could. For that matter, world opinion is on target to be the first patron of a President Kerry. Not only trade, but also environmental laws are set to become the purview of global government.
Once again from johnkerry.com, "John Kerry understands that some of our most serious environmental challenges – and opportunities – are taking place on an international stage and that they require American leadership in the international community." The Democrat sees a true difference between himself and his opponent. "Unlike the Bush Administration, John Kerry will not abdicate this responsibility and opportunity."
Not only does Kerry criticize; he offers his solutions. "When John Kerry is president, the U.S. will reengage in the development of an international climate change strategy to address global warming, and identify workable responses that provide opportunities for American technology and know-how."
Are you scared yet? Well, consider yourself lucky if you don't like to eat fish.
The rest of it from johnkerry.com, "And a Kerry Administration will meet new challenges associated with the global exploitation of marine resources and the global crisis of access to fresh water supplies."
Be afraid, very afraid, unless you are a United Nations con artist who can turn an extreme environmental global agenda into a deep personal treasure chest. We know you are out there, limousine liberal. You are just aching to get your hands on some of those global enviro-dollars.
No matter how far to the left Clinton stood, Kerry will be worse. One or two terms with him in the White House are likely to be catastrophic for the United States. It would put us under an International Court and Kyoto plus. The United Nations once again would be perched on the American people's back.
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ETHER ZONE... "THE INTELLIGENT ALTERNATIVE NEWS AND OPINION SOURCE"
"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."
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THIS IS THEIR CHOICE?--- SKULL VS. BONES IN '04
http://www.etherzone.com/2004/frank020604.shtml" title="http://www.etherzone.com/2004/frank020604.shtml" target="_blank"http://www.etherzone.com/2004...
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| Campus Free Speech? |
| 02.08.04 (11:25 am) [edit] |
Oklahoma U Crushes A Prof's Free Speech
By David Deming
FrontPageMagazine.com | 2-4-04
I am associate professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. I receive teaching evaluations that run from average to outstanding. I have more scholarly publications than half the full professors in my department. But as I sit here writing, three of my four classes have been cancelled. I am scheduled to be moved out of the office I have occupied for the last twelve years into a dank hole in the basement that was never intended to be used as office space. Recent events are the culmination of four years of retaliation, intimidation, and harassment. You see, I don't have the right politics. What's worse is that I'm not submissive and I refuse to be bullied and intimidated.
My troubles began in March of 2000 when I published a "letter to the editor" in the campus newspaper that some people found offensive. Responding to a female columnist who claimed that possession of a firearm made every gun owner a potential murderer, I pointed out by way of analogy that her possession of an unregistered sexual organ made her a potential prostitute. For writing this letter, twenty-five charges of sexual harassment were filed against me by people I had never met. My attitudes, convictions, and beliefs were put on trial in a secret Star Chamber proceeding. After I admitted (gasp) that I was a member of the National Rifle Association, I was asked this question: do you think the Nazis were bad people?
For publishing "the letter," I received a formal letter of reprimand from Dean John T. Snow. After receiving the reprimand, I asked Dean Snow how the publication of my controversial letter would affect my position at OU with regard to issues such as promotion and raises. Instead of reassuring me that my expression of a political opinion would not affect my professional career, Snow said that the answer was "unclear." In a statement that I believe was intended to intimidate me, Snow said that in making future decisions he would "weigh in" how much I had learned from past experiences.
I forwarded a copy of Dean Snow's letter of reprimand to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Alan Kors, co-founder of FIRE, read Snow's remarks and said he found them to be "alarming." He wrote to Dean Snow:
(Y)our letter and other communications to Professor Deming strike at the heart of his, the university's, Oklahoma's, and this nation's freedom of thought and expression.
Dean Snow retaliated for the FIRE letter by refusing to forward a routine application I made for funding. If I had received the funding, it would have benefited not just me but Snow's own College.
This was not my first experience with Dean Snow's intolerance. Years earlier, I had attended a College faculty meeting where Snow suggested that the University of Oklahoma should model itself after Pennsylvania State University. I naively pointed out that the expectation was unrealistic, as Pennsylvania was a much wealthier and populous state than Oklahoma. In retort, Snow glared at me and said that what was wrong with the College was attitudes held by "people like you." In other words, anyone who disagreed with John Snow was a problem—dissent would not be tolerated in Dean Snow's College.
Other faculty members at the University of Oklahoma have had similar experiences with Dean John T. Snow. A few years ago, the unanimous faculty of the Geology Department sent a letter to Dean Snow that said, "We question your willingness to work with us rather than dictate to us, and your respect for us as a faculty and as individuals." A professor who is now at a different institution said that he left OU because he was told bluntly that if he criticized the administration of Dean Snow's College he would "never get tenure" no matter how good his teaching and research were. When I questioned Snow's commitment to intellectual diversity, a colleague warned me that he expected Snow to "put your severed head on a spike."
In April of 2001, OU President David Boren proclaimed that a policy of "complete free speech" applied to the entire OU campus, but Boren's policy is nothing but empty rhetoric and public relations. Under David Boren's leadership, the degree to which academic freedom and free speech at OU have been suppressed is breathtaking, and perhaps unprecedented at an American university.
The archives for the campus newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily, that published my original letter and articles on the resulting controversy, have been deleted from the Daily's website. The records for the months covered by the controversy, February, March, and April, of the year 2000 are conspicuous by their absence. Columnist Wendy McElroy wrote that this was one example of "a politically-correct pattern of purging conservative views from student newspapers [that] seems to be spreading across American campuses." She went on to note that a central theme of George Orwell's classic novel 1984 was the falsifying of history by the Ministry of Truth. People who said or wrote the wrong things were simply purged from the historical archives.
OU vigorously pursued sexual harassment charges against me for writing the aforementioned "letter to the editor." The charges were only dismissed when my attorneys threatened a First Amendment lawsuit. OU agreed not to retaliate against me, but I have never been treated the same since. Now, when I write a "letter to the editor," it is cut out of the newspaper and placed in my personnel file.
On my professional evaluation for 2001, the Chairman of the OU Geology Department, Roger Slatt, marked me down for publishing a letter in the Oklahoma City newspaper that criticized OU's sexual harassment policy. In his words, my rhetoric showed "contempt and resentment" toward the University. I am sure there are numerous instances where a professor has claimed political bias in matters such as promotion, raises, and tenure. But I have never heard of another instance where an administrator openly discussed a professor's politics on his professional evaluation.
On October 15, 2002, several OU faculty published a letter in the campus newspaper that criticized President Bush's policy on Iraq. None of them were punished for doing so. The letter began with the statement that the signers were "dedicated to the idea that the university is one of the last places where free speech and open debate and dissent are possible.…" I noted with some astonishment that at least one of the signatories was a professor who had filed sexual harassment charges against me for doing the same thing she was now doing—expressing a controversial opinion.
That same year, it was shown to me in no uncertain terms what was expected of me. I published a letter in the campus newspaper that complimented President Boren's free speech policy. But my statement was interpreted by Geology Chairman Roger Slatt as a personal compliment for President Boren. He promptly rewarded me with an "outstanding" evaluation for "praising President Boren." I am not aware of any other American university where faculty are rewarded on their professional evaluations for publicly praising the university president. I know this sounds unbelievable, but it was done in writing—and I can produce copies.
In the spring of 2003 I went through post-tenure review. My "letters to the editor," written on political subjects totally unrelated to my professional work, were cut out of the newspaper and appended to my dossier by Geology Chairman Roger Slatt. They are still there. This unprecedented action was completely analogous to a professor stapling a student's political letters to their examinations. In a subsequent meeting, Dr. Slatt told me that in his opinion it is impossible for a faculty member to speak as an individual. I protested to OU Provost Nancy Mergler. She admitted to me that if I had used a student's political views as the basis for assigning a grade I would have been crucified. But she refused to reprimand Dr. Slatt or even ask him to apologize.
On November 21, 2003, Dean Snow's office circulated by e-mail an article that claimed there were not enough women faculty in the geosciences. The authors argued that women should not have to meet the same standards as men. I responded by circulating—on the same email list—an editorial I had written that argued against Affirmative Action for women. The gist of my argument was that inequalities in numbers do not necessarily imply inequities. I pointed out that although there may be relatively few women in disciplines like geoscience and engineering, females have advantages in other areas. For example, women live longer than men, receive higher grades in college, and are much less likely than men to end up in prison. Instead of addressing the issues, Geology Chairman Roger Slatt responded to my editorial with a personal attack. Acting with the imprimatur of his administrative authority, Roger Slatt circulated to all faculty, staff, and students in the College of Geoscience a statement that implied because I was against affirmative action I had dysfunctional relationships with women. I protested to Dean John Snow. But Chairman Slatt was not punished—I was.
Seven days before Christmas, I was summoned into the office of Dean John T. Snow. My tenure in the geology department was abrogated without due process. My geophysics class—for which I receive outstanding student evaluations—was taken from me without explanation. I was stripped of my right to supervise graduate students in geology and geophysics. I was evicted from my office and relegated to a small, dark room in a corner of the basement. No other faculty member in the entire College has office space assigned in the basement. Dean Snow glared at me and said that the fundamental problem was that I was not submissive to authority
The administration of the University of Oklahoma seems to want a generation of faculty that are servile, apathetic, and obsequious. No doubt that is what they will get.
After I contacted the media, two of my remaining classes were taken from me. Dean Snow has informed me that he nevertheless expects me to remain fully productive. The situation is not without precedent. The Egyptian Pharaoh punished rebellious Israelite slaves by requiring them to "make bricks without straw."
After taking office several years ago, OU President David Boren announced that the new mission of the University of Oklahoma was to attain "excellence," a goal which heretofore had been more commonly associated with companies that manufacture small kitchen appliances. For hundreds of years, it was universally understood that the mission of our universities was to pass on the core values of Western civilization through liberal education. The most important of these values are freedom of speech and thought; without them no scholarly pursuit or education is possible. My experience indicates that these values are now foreign to the University of Oklahoma.
FrontPage magazine.com
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12003" title="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12003" target="_blank"http://www.frontpagemag.com/A...
F.I.R.E.
http://www.thefire.org/index.php" title="http://www.thefire.org/index.php" target="_blank"http://www.thefire.org/index....
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| General Welfare |
| 02.07.04 (11:29 pm) [edit] |
THE "GENERAL WELFARE" CLAUSE
James Madison on the General Welfare Clause
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents...." --James Madison
"Money cannot be applied to the General Welfare, otherwise than by an application of it to some particular measure conducive to the General Welfare. Whenever, therefore, money has been raised by the General Authority, and is to be applied to a particular measure, a question arises whether the particular measure be within the enumerated authorities vested in Congress. If it be, the money requisite for it may be applied to it; if it be not, no such application can be made." - James Madison
James Madison, Report on Resolutions, in 6 WRITINGS OF JAMES MADISON, quoted in Roger Pilon, Freedom, Responsibility, and the Constitution: On Recovering Our Founding Principles, 68 Notre Dame L. Rev. 507, 530.
Thomas Jefferson on the General Welfare Clause
"[O]ur tenet ever was, and, indeed, it is almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the republicans, that Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money."
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin (June 16, 1817), in 10 WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON at 90, 91 (Paul Leicester Ford ed., 1899) quoted in Roger Pilon, Freedom, Responsibility, and the Constitution: On Recovering Our Founding Principles, 68 Notre Dame L. Rev. 507, 530.
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Should the Oath of Office Be Changed?
Walter E. Williams - January 7, 2000
Members of Congress take a sworn oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic" and "bear true faith and allegiance to the same." I'm guessing that if Congressmen actually "bore true faith and allegiance" to the Constitution, we wouldn't have a federal budget of $1.7 trillion, not to mention those congressionally-mandated 1.6 gallon flush toilets. Just about everyone of the 535 members of Congress have contempt for or ignorance of our Constitution. What's worse is, if they knew they routinely violated their oaths of office, they wouldn't care. Getting elected and re-elected is what counts.
In 1997, Congressman John Shadegg (R.AR) introduced the Enumerated Powers Act, H.R. 292. Basically, the Act says that Congress must heed the limitations placed on it by the Constitution: the federal government cannot do anything that the Constitution does not authorize it to do. Two things. You'd wonder why the Enumerated Powers Act would be necessary in the first place. After all congressmen swore to uphold the Constitution. Second, if we're naive enough to think congressmen respect our Constitution, we'd see them jumping at the opportunity to support the Enumerated Powers Act.
Of course they didn't but there was a tiny step toward the goal of getting Congress to obey the Constitution. The 105th House of Representatives adopted the following rule: "Each report of a committee on a bill or joint resolution of a public character shall include a statement citing the specific powers granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact the law proposed by the bill or joint resolution."
The response was predictable. Congressmen cite the "general welfare" clause in the Constitution as giving them authority to pass laws dealing with education, farm handouts, student loans, foreign aid and fighting street crime. But here's what James Madison, the father of the Constitution said about the "general welfare" clause: "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, The Government is no longer a limited one . . . ." Thomas Jefferson echoed the same sentiment saying that Congress does not possess "unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated. . . ." Moreover, if the Framers intended that the "general welfare" clause have the interpretation placed on it by today's congressmen, they could have spared themselves considerable grief and contentiousness during that hot, humid Philadelphia summer in 1787. They could have simply said: Congress shall promote the general welfare. That would be our Constitution.
Forget all that business about separation of powers, prohibitions against Congress interfering with freedom of speech, and assembly and religion, taking private property and speedy trials. Congress would just promote what a majority of its members saw as the general welfare.
Let's at least be honest with ourselves.
Since neither Congress, the President, nor our U.S. Supreme Court Justices obey their oaths of office to "bear true faith and allegiance" to the Constitution, there are at least several alternatives. The first is to dispense with the pretense and get rid of our 200-year-plus oath. Substitute that oath with something like: I accept the office of congressman, or president, or justice of the court. The second, and more preferable alternative is for we Americans to learn what the Constitution authorizes, and recognize that what it doesn't authorize is forbidden. Then we should force our representatives to obey the Constitution. Another alternative is for Americans to ignore acts of Congress that are constitutionally unauthorized.
Should the Oath of Office be Changed?
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics /wew/articles/00/oath.html" title="http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics /wew/articles/00/oath.html" target="_blank"http://www.gmu.edu/department...
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The "General Welfare"
By Joseph Sobran - 11/23/99
This column is for serious conservatives only. No cheap off-color Clinton jokes today. We're going deep. You may want to put on your thinking cap for this one.
As you presumably know, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to impose taxes to "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." But since the New Deal, this clause has been pretty much boiled down to one phrase: "general welfare." It is now generally assumed that Congress may pass any law it deems in the "general welfare" of the United States.
Strict constructionists have always objected that this broad and vague interpretation endows the federal government with an unlimited range of power, making redundant nonsense of the rest of Section 8, which lists the particular powers of Congress. In Federalist No. 41, James Madison asked rhetorically: "For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power?"
Madison was replying to anti- Federalist writers who had warned that the "general welfare" clause opened the way to unlimited abuse. He haughtily accused those writers of "labour[ing] for objections" by "stooping to such a misconstruction" of the obvious sense of the passage, as defined and limited by those powers explicitly listed immediately after it.
Like so many things the Federalists said could never, ever happen, it happened.
The "general welfare" clause is constantly abused in just the way the pessimists predicted. The federal government exceeds its enumerated powers whenever it can assert that other powers would be in the "general welfare."
The Federalist Papers are one of our soundest guides to what the Constitution actually means. And in No. 84, Alexander Hamilton indirectly confirmed Madison's point.
Hamilton argued that a bill of rights, which many were clamoring for, would be not only "unnecessary," but "dangerous."
Since the federal government was given only a few specific powers, there was no need to add prohibitions: it was implicitly prohibited by the listed powers. If a proposed law — a relief act, for instance — wasn't covered by any of these powers, it was ipso facto unconstitutional.
Adding a bill of rights, said Hamilton, would only confuse matters. It would imply, in many people's minds, that the federal government was entitled to do anything it wasn't positively forbidden to do, whereas the principle of the Constitution was that the federal government is forbidden to do anything it isn't positively authorized to do.
Hamilton too posed some rhetorical questions: "For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?" Such a provision "would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power" — that is, a power to regulate the press, short of actually shutting it down. {Ed. Note: Which Abe Lincoln once di do.-RR}
We now suffer from the sort of confusion Hamilton foresaw. But what interests me about his argument, for today's purpose, is that he implicitly agreed with Madison about the narrow meaning of "general welfare."
After all, if the phrase covered every power the federal government might choose to claim under it, the "general welfare" might be invoked to justify government control of the press for the sake of national security in time of war.
For that matter, press control might be justified under "common defense." Come to think of it, the broad reading of "general welfare" would logically include "common defense," and to speak of "the common defense and general welfare of the United States" would be superfluous, since defense is presumably essential to the general welfare.
So Madison, Hamilton, and — more important — the people they were trying to persuade agreed: the Constitution conferred only a few specific powers on the federal government, all others being denied to it (as the Tenth Amendment would make plain).
Unfortunately, only a tiny fraction of the U.S. population today — subtle logicians like you — can grasp such nuances. Too bad. The Constitution wasn't meant to be a brain-twister.
The "General Welfare"
http://www.constitutionparty.com/the_general_welfare.htm" title="http://www.constitutionparty.com/the_general_welfare.htm" target="_blank"http://www.constitutionparty....
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| Wanted: New candidates who uphold Constitution |
| 02.07.04 (12:05 pm) [edit] |
Wanted: New candidates who uphold Constitution
Henry Lamb
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
There are only two systems of governance available to society. In the first system, government is the absolute authority and grants (or denies) rights and freedoms to the people. Throughout history, most people have lived under some variation of this system of governance.
In the other system of governance, the people have absolute authority, recognizing that certain rights and freedoms are endowed by the Creator, including the right to invent a government and limit its power and authority. This system of governance began to nudge its way into existence relatively recently, in historic terms, and reached maturity in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
There can be no doubt that government in the United States was created by the people, who limited the power of government to those powers enumerated in the Constitution, and specifically retained all other rights and powers to the states or to the people.
Both major political parties pay tribute to this American system of governance.
Neither of the major political parties, however, is the least bit reluctant to ignore the limitations of governmental power imposed by the Constitution – and consolidate power to the government at the expense of the peoples' freedom.
They do so because the people allow it and even seem to want it. The people can stop the encroachment of government into individual freedoms by electing representatives who pledge to uphold constitutional limitations of government power. The candidates who make such a pledge are rarely elected. Instead, the people tend to elect candidates who promise to provide even more government power and control, along with increased social programs.
In the current presidential election campaign, the choice is not between a candidate who pledges to honor the constitutional limitations on government power and one who does not. It is a contest between two candidates who promise different degrees of even more government power and control.
Change at the top of the ticket will not come from the top. It will come from the bottom. But change is not happening at the bottom of the political ladder. In fact, it is from the city, county, state and congressional levels that the top of the ticket is determined. City, county and state government officials who believe government is the solution to all problems are consistently elected. It is little wonder that this attitude is reflected in Congress and in the White House.
If America is ever to return to the system of governance created by the Founding Fathers, it will have to begin at the local level, where city councils and county commissions honor and respect the limitations of government power, rather than continually striving to expand government power. State and congressional candidates often move up the political ladder from these positions. Consequently, the current crop of officials and candidates do, in fact, represent the will of the people who elected them.
Too often, the people who complain most bitterly about the direction of the country and the failure of politicians are the people who are not involved in the selection or the election of candidates.
Too few people are involved in political parties at the county and state level, where the candidates are groomed. Too few people ever get involved in an election campaign.
The simple truth is that the people who believe that government should abide by the limits imposed by the Constitution have been outworked and outnumbered by the people who want government to ignore those limitations.
Franklin Roosevelt completely ignored the constitutional limitations of governmental power and was re-elected again and again. Since then, the nation has moved further and further away from the system of government created by the Founders.
Roosevelt was re-elected because he used the power of government to take money from those who had it and give it to those who had none. During the Roosevelt years, this was a very popular system of governance, especially among the recipients, who always outnumber – and out vote – those from whom money is taken.
Just how far the nation has strayed from the Founders' vision is reflected in the campaign speeches of every candidate. The promise from all the candidates is more government and less freedom. It will likely remain so unless a new generation of candidates can be cultivated, starting in every city, county and state.
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WorldNetDaily: Wanted: New candidates who uphold Constitution
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36985" title="http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36985" target="_blank"http://www.worldnetdaily.com/...
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| Humanitarian Clashes In Immigration
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| 02.06.04 (8:58 am) [edit] |
I have recieved a small amount of pro-immigration dissent, toward my articles on immigration. Since all I recieved in support of that side of the issue were the words 'human rights', I will present the pro sides of the issue as well as others.
This data is from 1997, so some figures will have changed.
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Sorting Through Humanitarian Clashes In Immigration
The Social Contract (Fall 1997)
by Roy Beck
The issues of immigration often are couched in considerable discussion about humanitarianism. An appeal to set policy based on humane grounds carries with it intrinsic ethical clashes. An action that is humane to one category of persons deemed deserving of compassion can harm another category also deserving of compassion. Thus, there are ethical dilemmas that must be confronted in establishing a humane immigration policy.
A humane policy would consider four primary classes of people:
(1) those seeking to immigrate,
(2) needful people left behind in the sending country,
(3) disadvantaged citizens of the receiving country, and
(4) the general citizenry of the receiving country.
Interests of those four classes inevitably will clash, and so will interests of sub-groups within each class. The effort to create an ethically humane policy requires decision-makers to assign different moral weight to the needs of each of those classes and sub- groups so that priorities can be set.
Writing immigration policy is an act of favoring one group over another. Which group wins? Which loses? How does a country maximize benefits and minimize harm? Those are the questions that any immigration policy must answer.
I usually ask my audiences to go through several exercises that point up the ethical dilemmas in devising immigration policy.
First, however, I have them look at three philosophies of immigration. Many of the values that guide one through the later exercises are exposed in this discussion.
I. Open-immigration Philosophy
The first ethical issue of immigration is whether any community - - especially a nation or country -- has a right to place the needs of its own residents ahead of the needs of people outside the community. Open-immigration advocates answer in the negative. They essentially are globalists who see people more as citizens of the world than as members of more localized communities in which they enjoy special rights from and bear special responsibilities for the other members of their own community.
In the United States, most advocates of the open-immigration philosophy can be found in two groups:
Free-market Libertarians
Their emphasis on the individual suggests that everybody in the world should have the opportunity to rise as high as their talents and energy allow, without the restriction of borders.
It is not right to deny consumers the opportunity for lower-cost goods that might arise from the free flow of lower-cost goods and labor from other countries. Neither is it right to restrict the owners of capital from the additional profits that might be gained from cross-border movements of goods and labor. And, thus, it is not right to protect the workers of one country from wage and job losses due to competition of foreign workers through either trade or immigration barriers. Restricting the access of the lower-wage foreign worker from jobs in this country not only would deny that worker the right to upward economic mobility, it would deny American owners the right to further upward mobility for themselves.
Religious and Secular Globalists on the Left
In general, these believe that the needs of people in the Third World have priority over the needs of people in more advanced nations when it comes to questions of whether migrants should cross borders. Underlying this is the assessment that most would-be immigrants come from conditions that are worse than those for the Americans who may be hurt by their entry.
Unlike the libertarians, these people often favor open borders only for immigrants, not for goods. Hence, the name, "open-border philosophy," is not an accurate one for everybody who adheres to the open-immigration philosophy. The globalists on the left tend to believe in protecting American workers from unfair competition from goods produced by low-wage labor in foreign countries, but they do not favor protecting American workers from low-wage foreign workers entering the country and competing with them directly at their workplace.
The open-immigration philosophy challenges -- but doesn't necessarily call for the elimination of -- the nation-state and its borders. Except among purely utopian thinkers, most open-immigration advocates concede the appropriateness of some controls at the border for factors such as disease, crime and certainly military intervention. Most will also concede that there probably are some upper limits to how many immigrants could enter a country each year without creating debilitating anarchy. But that limit is thought to be so far above present limits as to make it a rather abstract issue.
Powerful appeals for a version of open borders have come in recent years from some high-profile religious leaders who say that although a country has a right to control its borders, workers without jobs have a higher right to cross the borders in search of work. That would qualify hundreds of millions of people around the world to immigrate. A similar view espoused by many secular and religious philosophers contends that countries with low birth rates and lower population pressures on their natural resources have an obligation to take the excess population of the most congested and impoverished countries with high birth rates.
Many open-immigration globalists contend that borders and communities are barriers to a just world; any person anywhere in the world should be allowed to go anywhere else in the world if that will advance that person's well-being -- even if it creates a decline of the well-being of residents of the receiving community. The justice of this is based primarily on the assumption that migrants would not move into a community unless the conditions there were better. Therefore, residents of that community can lose some of their standard of living and still not be worse off than the arriving migrant. Global egalitarianism appears to be the goal.
Open-immigration advocates point to the universalist appeals of various religions in their discussions of the brotherhood and sisterhood of all humankind.
No government in the world today practices an open-immigration philosophy. Support for open borders among the American public in general is almost non-existent, according to polls. Yet, the United States and several other of the world's newest countries had virtually open borders into the beginning of the 20th century. The primary rationale then was to use immigration to help settle the relatively open lands that at the time were marginally controlled by the indigenous peoples, to establish a nation across the continent, and -- in a purpose still reflected by today's free-market libertarians -- to assist the owners of industry.
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II. Closed-immigration Philosophy
Most nations today essentially bar all immigration except for emergency refugee movements and persons considered to be "returning home." .......
Please continue reading at below link:
The Social Contract Press - Sorting Through Humanitarian Clashes In Immigration
Address:http://www.thesocialcontract....
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| Welcome Mat is Threadbare |
| 02.05.04 (9:16 pm) [edit] |
The Welcome Mat is Threadbare
Yeh Ling-Ling
Los Angeles Times Op-Ed
April 13, 1994
When the Statue of Liberty was erected in 1886, this country had 60 million people and plenty of resources. Today, the United States has 260 million residents, of whom 37 million are poor, 8.7 million unemployed, more than 35 million without health insurance, hundreds of thousands homeless. We have a $4.5-trillion national debt. Our schools are overcrowded and underfunded and our freeways more congested than ever.
Seeing this nation in distress, the Clinton Administration promises that it will provide health care to all Americans, cut our welfare rolls, put our unemployed back to work, trim our national debt and improve our public schools. Yet how can these goals be achieved without first controlling the population growth in this country?
I am a first-generation immigrant. I also have 10 years' experience as an immigration paralegal. I recently joined the staff of Population-Environment Balance out of a recognition that the United States must encourage a replacement-level fertility rate of 2.1 or lower, concurrently adopt a replacement-level immigration policy of 200,000 people a year and enforce our immigration laws.
These measures are necessary to protect the quality of life of Americans of all racial backgrounds.
Immigration contributes nearly 50% of U.S. population growth, considering immigrants' higher-than-average fertility rates.
Every year, about 1 million immigrants enter the United States legally, while an estimated 300,000 arrive and stay illegally. The projected cost of providing universal health care to all existing Americans and legal immigrants is already alarming. Who will finance the cost of future legal immigrants and their U.S.-born children?
The usage of welfare by elderly resident aliens, not including naturalized citizens, increased 400% from 1982 to 1992. In 1992 alone, more than 90,000 legal immigrants age 55 and over entered the United States. If we continue to admit elderly immigrants at this rate, how can we keep our welfare and Medicare rolls from soaring?
Almost every week, we hear about thousands of our workers losing their jobs. Yet in 1992, more than 750,000 legal immigrants of working age were admitted to this country. In addition, we admit annually more than 60,000 foreign professionals on extended work visas.
Many of these "temporary workers" enter skilled occupations, such as computer programming and engineering, where there have been massive layoffs. If the United States continues with an immigration policy that operates as if we had a labor shortage, how can we expect unemployed Americans and welfare recipients to find jobs? Donald Huddle of
Rice University estimates that 2 million American workers were displaced by 1992 as a result of immigration since 1970, at a cost of $11.9 billion paid to U.S. workers in unemployment and other benefits. Huddle also estimates that in 1992 alone, immigrants used services costing $42.5 billion in excess of taxes they paid.
The economy of the past 200 years was mostly labor-intensive. With advances in technology, our economy now requires highly skilled workers to prosper. Yet nearly two-thirds of the legal immigrants entering this country every year are low-skilled. Half of them enter occupations that are disappearing, where they compete mostly with poor minority workers.
This country does not even have the resources to provide an adequate education for current residents so that they may acquire the necessary skills to help the United States remain competitive. Where are we going to find tax dollars to educate the hundreds of thousands of legal immigrant children we invite to this country every year?
Even if all newcomers were to bring economic assets to this country, how can a state like California, which absorbs almost half of the U.S. immigrant population, deal with the growing problems such as water shortages and farmland loss? Nationally, an average of 1.5 million acres of arable land are lost annually to erosion and development due to rapid population growth. Our underground aquifers are being depleted 25% faster than the recharge rates.
Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) has introduced a bill to reduce the legal immigration ceiling to a base figure of 500,000 a year--a commendable action, but the ceiling should be much lower.
Given our finite fiscal and natural resources, we must aim for an all-inclusive ceiling--legal immigration, amnesty, refugees, etc.--of 200,000 a year.
In opinion polls, the majority of Americans, including 78% of Latino Americans, say they support a reduction in immigration, legal as well as illegal.
Until our national leaders recognize that our current level of immigration far exceeds this country's carrying capacity, no real remedies to America's problems will be found.
Yeh Ling-Ling is California outreach coordinator for Population-Environment Balance, a Washington-based group.
Article found here: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu...
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| Affordable Health Care? |
| 02.05.04 (6:57 pm) [edit] |
We Can Have Affordable Health Care
by Jarret B. Wollstein
ISIL - 1993
Affordable medical care is now a major concern for most Americans. Nearly 80% agree that our "health care system is headed toward a crisis because of rising costs."
In the last five years, the cost of health insurance has increased over 2½ times faster than inflation. But if you don't have health insurance, you risk bankruptcy if someone in your family has a serious illness or accident.
Consequently, many of us face agonizing choices: How can I pay for medical care and still provide for the other needs of my family? Can I accept a new job if it means losing coverage for a pre-existing condition?
As a solution, Bill and Hillary Clinton have proposed government health alliances and health care taxes - in effect, nationalized medical care. And many states are also considering their own form of government medical care, particularly a "single-payer" system, like Canada's.
But how well would government-run medicine really work? We can learn from the experience of Canada, England, and other countries that have had national health insurance for decades.
THE WORLDWIDE FAILURE OF
NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE
According to Michael Walker of Canada's prestigious Fraser Institute, the claimed administrative cost-savings in Canada are an illusion: "The Canadian system controls costs not through efficiency, but by rationing health-care delivery."
Long waiting lists and chronic shortages of equipment and services have resulted in waits of up to 4 years for elective surgery. The delay for coronary bypass surgery is now nearly 6 months. Overall, there are now 250,000 Canadians on waiting lists for government-approved operations - and 45% say they are in pain.
Britain's National Health Service also "controls" costs by rationing care. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, over 1 million Britons are now on waiting lists for operations. For those over 65, nearly half of government hospitals refuse to provide kidney dialysis. Over 9,000 elderly people a year die because they're denied dialysis.
In every country with government-run medicine, the elderly and severely ill are treated like a drain on society and given the minimum possible care. In Sweden, "the delay for coronary bypass operations is more than a year, during which time 30% of the patients will die." [Private Practice, April 1989] In Italy many people now die because of a shortage of beds in government hospitals. [Washington Post, 4/4/94] In Germany, "free" government medicine is used only as a "last resort."
A government takeover of medicine has made conditions worse in every country in which it's been imposed. But how else can we control costs?
FOUR REASONS WHY MEDICAL CARE
COSTS TOO MUCH IN AMERICA
Few of us pay our own medical bills, so we have little incentive to economize or comparison shop. Ironically, a key reason why Americans spend too much on medical care is that for individual consumers, medical care costs too little.
Eighty-seven percent of our medical bills are paid by insurance companies. That means there's little incentive for patients or doctors to restrain their consumption of medical resources. As patients, we seldom ask how much a medical procedure costs, or turn down suggested tests for treatments.
Over 50% of us also receive government medical care "entitlements" - such as Medicare and Medicaid. Again, someone else pays, so we don't care how much it costs!
Federal regulations and state mandates. According to the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association, it now costs $359 million and takes 12 years to get a single new drug approved by the FDA. The introduction of some life-saving drugs - which have long been used safely in Europe - have been delayed for years or decades. FDA delays on just one drug - Propranolol, used to treat angina and hypertension - resulted in at least 30,000 avoidable deaths.
Insurance companies are also forced to comply with over 800 state medical mandates. These include forcing health insurers to cover toupees, psychiatric services, and teeth-whitening. Although these mandates provide additional income for toupee manufacturers, psychiatrists, and dentists, they increase the cost of health insurance enormously for everyone. The Heartland Institute estimates that eliminating state mandates would cut medical insurance costs at least 30%, making medical insurance affordable to tens of millions of uninsured Americans.
Medical Licensing. US doctors are among the most regulated in the world. The declared purpose of medical licensure is to assure quality medical care. But the actual effect has been to drastically limit the number of doctors and greatly increase the cost of medical care.
Our Litigious Society. Unfortunately, present laws and the attitude of judges and juries make it easy to sue honest doctors. Our law books are full of cases in which patients have been awarded hundreds of thousands - even millions of dollars - simply because a doctor was unable to cure them. So the cost of liability insurance has sky-rocketed. Many doctors now pay premiums of $70,000, $150,000, even $250,000 a year. These costs are necessarily passed along directly to you. In some medical specialties - like obstetrics - the high cost of liability insurance has created a national shortage of qualified physicians. And most doctors are now forced to run you through batteries of costly tests, just to make sure they're not sued.
HOW WE CAN HAVE AFFORDABLE MEDICAL CARE
Fortunately, we can reduce your medical costs up to 75% without a government takeover. The solution is to empower you - not the government or insurance companies. Here are five ways:
Restore Tax Equity. Unfair tax laws are a major reason why few of us can afford to buy medical insurance outside of our jobs. Your employer pays for health insurance with pre-tax dollars. But you have to pay with what's left of your paycheck after taxes have been deducted. It can cost you twice as much to buy medical insurance as it does your employer.
The solution: Change the tax laws so health insurance is 100% tax-deductible for you. You also should be able to form insurance-purchasing pools with others, further cutting your costs. These changes will also make your medical insurance completely transportable between jobs.
Individual Medical Savings Accounts. If someone suggested that we should triple the cost of your auto insurance so it would cover oil changes and tune-ups as well as major repairs, you'd probably tell them they were crazy. But that's exactly what we've done with medical insurance.
It now costs $50 for an insurance company to process a claim for a routine $50 visit to a doctor's office, doubling the cost. You are unaware of this cost because it's hidden in your medical premiums. The solution is to create 100% tax-deductible, interest-bearing individual Medical Savings Accounts. You or your employer would put $1,000-$2,000 into a Medisave Account each year for routine medical expenses. That's your money, to spend as you choose on basic medical expenses.
Because it's your money, you'd have an incentive to comparison shop and economize in selecting a doctor, deciding on tests and treatments. In Indiana, the Golden Rule Insurance Company has reduced their medical costs by 64% since setting up Medical Savings Accounts for their employees a few years ago - and their employees love them for it.
Replace the FDA with private certification. There is no excuse for the Food and Drug Administration forcing manufacturers to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to prove the safety and efficacy of drugs used for decades in Europe. There is no excuse for allowing the FDA to ban high-potency vitamins (as it's trying to do) or to mount armed raids on alternative medical practitioners (over 200 such raids were staged in 1993). Private companies can certify the safety of drugs at a fraction of the cost of the FDA. Then it should be your decision (in consultation with your doctor) - not the government's - to decide what drugs to use.
Privatize Medicare and Medicaid. Charitable aid for the poor is certainly desirable, but as 80% of doctors agree, Medicare and Medicaid is intrusive and often harms patients' health. Paperwork requirements alone are causing many doctors to quit medicine.
Medicare is too expensive, too bureaucratic, and is impoverishing young workers. It's also on the verge of bankruptcy. What's the alternative? For the poor, provide voluntary charitable aid so they can purchase private medical insurance - saving us all Medicare's enormous bureaucratic cost and the horrendous book-keeping requirements (and legal threats) imposed upon doctors and insurers.
Curtail Damage Awards. Outrageous malpractice awards are a major cause of escalating medical premiums. Our laws, judges, and juries must distinguish between true negligence, which should be legally actionable, and "acts of God" and human imperfection, which are unavoidable.
MEDICAL FREEDOM OR SLAVERY?
If you want to know how government medicine would work in America, we have lots of examples.
For over 60 years, the Veterans Administration has handled the medical needs of millions of former servicemen. Investigations of the VA have found abominable conditions bordering on cruelty: long delays for surgery, filthy hospitals, severe shortages of staff and medicines, and hostile and indifferent staff.
In January 1992, CBS News reported that Walter Reed Army/Navy Medical Hospital was refusing to provide amputees returning from the Gulf War with modern, artificial limbs. Walter Reed even refused to accept donations of modern limbs.
When reporters demanded to know why soldiers were treated so callously, a Medical Services colonel replied: "I am not going to spend the taxpayers' money if you will just be sitting at home . . . we are the primary health-care providers. And the patients belong to us."
That's the medical future for all of us, if government takes over medical care. The last thing we need is a government-run medical system with the "compassion of the IRS, the efficiency of the Post Office, at Pentagon pricing." [Quote from HHS official]
We can have affordable medical care. But the solution is to get government out of medicine and to give you complete medical freedom of choice.
ISIL -- We Can Have Affordable Health Care
Address: http://www.isil.org/resources...
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| AFGHAN IMPASSE - Russian View |
| 02.05.04 (6:10 pm) [edit] |
This article gleaned from newsletter of:
CDI Russia Weekly--6 February 2004
#292
Edited by David Johnson
Center for Defense Information
1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington DC 20036
The CDI Russia Weekly is an e-mail newsletter that carries news and analysis on all aspects of today's Russia, including political, economic, social, military, and foreign policy issues. With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and from it's readers, the CDI Russia Weekly is a project of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information (CDI), a nonprofit research and education organization.
CDI Russia Weekly web page (with archive): http://www.cdi.org/russia/
Visit CDI's web site: http://www.cdi.org
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RIA Novosti
February 4, 2004
THE AFGHAN IMPASSE
Viktor LITOVKIN
RIA Novosti military observer
In late January, the central command of the US armed forces announced the deaths of seven US servicemen in Afghanistan in an explosion at an ammunition depot in Ghazni, 100 km southwest of Kabul. In addition to the dead, three soldiers were wounded and another was reported missing. The cause of the explosion has not been made public, but it is clear, though, that Taleban members were involved in the incident.
On the two days prior to this tragic event at the Ghazni depot, two similar attacks took place: a Taleban suicide bomber killed a Canadian serviceman and wounded three others in Kabul, while the next day a Palestinian blew himself up, though an Algerian passport was found later among his remains. A British soldier was fatally wounded, and his five colleagues were only saved thanks to British surgeons working in a field hospital.
These are just a few of the latest reports from Afghanistan that have broken the silence over the real situation for the US and Nato armies in this country. In stark contrast to the events in Iraq, the media hardly devotes any coverage to developments in Kabul and its surroundings. This is perhaps due to the fact that no palpable progress has been made in establishing peace and stability either in the capital or in the provinces.
Another possible reason is that the international community is focusing on other, more significant events, such as the guerrilla war in Iraq, where between 20 and 25 people, including US servicemen, die every day. The US has received over 500 coffins from Iraq in comparison to 100 from Kabul. The presidential campaign in the United States and many other events have diverted the public's attention as well.
The main question in Afghanistan just as in Iraq is the meaning and price of US and Nato losses. Financial expenditures are another controversial issue: the Pentagon spends about $1 billion every month maintaining its forces in Afghanistan. As many as 8,500 GIs and 5,000 peacekeepers under NATO command are stationed there. However, the situation has still not stabilised. Although al-Qaeda and Taleban members do not hold any leading posts in the country, they still play a huge role in the country's life, especially in the provinces.
Indeed, democracy remains a distant prospect. A constitution has not been agreed, as the debates in the national Jirga hit a deadlock due to constant disputes and ethnic controversies. Provincial feudalists and leaders of tribal armies are not going to disarm and obey the central government. Moreover, the flows of drugs out of the country has not abated and new terrorist groups are being trained.
The task of eliminating the social roots of the terrorist threat, i.e. crushing poverty, illiteracy and the local population's lack of rights, is an unfeasible task for military contingents. A long-term comprehensive international action plan is required for dealing with Afghanistan as one of the most problematic countries in the world.
To this end, it would be sensible to return to the starting point of international Afghanistan-related efforts.
Moscow backed the US and NATO campaign against the Taleban and al-Qaeda not only because it was authorised by the UN and its Security Council. Moscow expected the military operations and other measures to stop the spread of the Taleban ideology to Central Asia and consequently to the heart of Russia. Therefore, Moscow shared intelligence information with its partners, supported Washington and Brussels' request to allow their bases to be temporarily stationed in Central Asia, and provided the Nato military with an air corridor over its territory. Moreover, it lent its hardware and weapons and ammunition to the Northern Alliance, which, along with the Americans, took an active part in the toppling the Taleban regime. How does Russia assess the result of these efforts?
It does not like most of the developments on the southern boundaries of the former Soviet Union. The main point is that the anti-Taleban forces have taken no active measures to prevent drug trafficking, and therefore the flow of heroin from Afghanistan across CIS borders is continuing unabated. Every year, about ten tonnes of heroin are confiscated in Tajikistan alone, while the rest of it goes to Russia and other CIS countries and to Europe. Drug trafficking remains the most important source of financing for terrorists, including in Chechnya.
The Kremlin has not welcomed the United States' aspirations to establish itself in Central Asia for good. There is no end in sight for the coalition forces' anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan, which allegedly required temporary military bases in Hanabad and Manas. Nor has a timeframe for pulling out US and Nato forces from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan been set. According to military experts, this pushed Moscow to set up a Russian military base at Kant aerodrome near Bishkek. Along with the 201st motorised infantry division in Tajikistan, which has not received the status of a military base yet, it is designed to counterbalance the US and Nato forces in these republics and on the outskirts of Kabul.
Proceeding above all from the same considerations, Moscow and Dushanbe made proposals to India's military leaders to modernise the air base in Aini, Tajikistan, and to station Indian aircraft there.
However, the high death toll in Afghanistan and the complications in Iraq might prompt the United States to pull out from Kabul, moving its forces closer to Baghdad and leaving its Nato allies to complete the operation to search for and eliminate bin Laden, Mullah Omar and other al-Qaeda and Taleban terrorists.
For many experts, including the former chairman of the third State Duma defence committee, General Andrei Nikolayev, the crux of the matter is obvious. They claim that the US military presence in
Afghanistan and Central Asia, its ambition to deploy bases in Azerbaijan and preserve its presence in Georgia by forcing out Russian troops, is all part of the ultimate goal to prepare a stronghold for comprehensive pressure, including the military factor, on Tehran. The issue does not even concern fighting against terrorism or creating favourable conditions for Caspian oil and gas transportation.
Besides the desire to gain easy access to the richest oil deposits, the war in Iraq and Saddam's overthrow were motivated by the same long-term target. To all appearances, George Bush and his successors will be unable to solve their problems in Baghdad, Kabul and the Middle East in general without replacing the incumbent anti-American authorities in Iran.
However, Moscow and many other capitals are determined to provide no support for these ambitions. And this "muted" standoff is the reason for the present uncertainty in Afghanistan.
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Russian Information Agency Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm" title="http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm" target="_blank"http://en.rian.ru/rian/index....
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| Defend the Global Commons! |
| 02.04.04 (5:02 pm) [edit] |
[WATERFORALL] New issue of Defend the Global Commons!
{To whom it may concern. Information of possible interest to some.}
News from Public Citizen's Water For All Campaign
**********
Defend the Global Commons is the voice of water movements and organizations around the world that work to protect water as a common resource and to provide clean and affordable water to all.
The January issue is now available for free in four languages on http://www.citizen.org/cmep/W...
English: http://www.citizen.org/docume...
Portuguese: http://www.citizen.org/docume...
Spanish: http://www.citizen.org/docume...
French: http://www.citizen.org/docume...
If you are unable to read the PDF version or print please contact the address below for a hard copy.
Maj Fiil-Flynn
Senior Policy Analyst
Water for All Campaign
Public Citizen
215 Pennsylvania Av SE
Washington DC 20003
Ph. +1.202.546.4996
Ph. (dir) +1.202.454.5178
Fax +1.202.547.7392
mfiil@citizen.org
www.wateractivist.org
**********
To subscribe to Water For All, send an email to listserv@listserver.citizen.org with "subscribe Waterforall" in the message.
For more information on the Water For All Campaign please visit http://www.citizen.org/cmep/
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| Nations do not have the power to 'give' rights?"
Land of the Free, Home of the Slave |
| 02.02.04 (1:24 pm) [edit] |
"Rights are inherent and equal in all men. Nations do not have the power to 'give' rights. "...Reader's comment
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Land of the Free, Home of the Slave
by Steven Greenhut
America is such a wonderfully free country that I thoroughly understand why the Bush administration, like the Clinton administration before it, is so eager to take our freedoms and spread them across the globe. Without the U.S. government, backwards peoples will have to labor on in their own delusions, never understanding what true liberty is all about.
I am so free. If I want to paint my house, or build a deck out back, or install a new air-conditioning system, I am free to call the building inspector and get his approval first. If I want to put a new toilet in the bathroom, I am free to buy only the low-flow toilets the government approves. I am free to buy a property near the beach, provided the government Coastal Commission approves whatever I want to do with that property. That approval might take decades, and the final thing that I build will be what the commissioners want there, not what I want, but I am free nonetheless.
I know I am free because this is America. And America is a free country – the best one in the whole darned world. If you don't like our freedoms, you should move somewhere else.
Any other questions?
Unlike those pathetic souls in other less-free and non-free countries, I am free to open my own business, provided I pay my employees the minimum salary demanded by the government, and give them overtime in the exact proportion stated by the government, and offer them breaks that conform exactly to the standards set by government. I can operate my business in complete freedom, provided that I meet every one of the hundreds of pages of air-quality standards promulgated by the state and federal governments.
I am free to offer my employees any benefits I choose, provided they are ones approved by the government. I am free to operate my building in compliance with all the building codes and standards defined by the government. I am free to place a sign on that business provided it conforms to the city's sign ordinance. I am free to hire a lawyer to defend against the government's charges that I discriminate because I have fewer minority employees than the government says I should have. I am free to pay a $100,000 fine if I complain that a male employee suddenly is showing up in dresses.
I am free to have exactly the same number of parking spaces the government says I should have, and to follow the specific standards the government established when it gave me a conditional-use permit. True freedom always has conditions. I am free to vote in elections, provided that the ethnic balance of those elected conforms to the dictates of the Justice Department. I am free to invest money in the stock market provided I don't take advice from anyone who knows any real information about the stock. If I do, I am free to spend several years behind bars. I am free to pay half my earnings in taxes. You know what they say, taxes are what we pay for a civilized society. Civilized and free. What more could a person ask for?
I am free to get to work on government-built and managed roads, in a car that meets government safety and pollution standards. I am free to pay hundreds of dollars a year in car taxes and gas taxes. I am free to borrow money from a bank to pay these taxes provided that the lender meets every government code and offers special terms to those people the government says should get special terms. I am free to send my children to the government-run schools, where they are taught whatever the government wants them to learn. I am free to raise them exactly as the government demands, or watch child protective services take them from me and give them to a foster parent.
I am free to get on an airplane and fly anywhere I want in this free country, provided that I let a government employee search my stuff and even my person. I am free to tell the federal government exactly how much I earn and let agents audit me and take me off to jail if I fail to tell them every source of income.
I am free to take any drug I need or please provided it is sold by a pharmacist or a drug store. I am free to work in any sort of profession, provided that I gain the proper government-granted licenses. If I work in manufacturing, I am free to give a union a lot of money or am free to find another job. I am free to hand over my property and take a pittance in return for it when the government uses eminent domain on behalf of a politically well-connected developer.
I am free to have a dog provided I buy him a government-issued license. I am not free to own a ferret, although in truth I hate those nasty little critters and don't really want one. I am free to let a police officer search my car for any reason. I am free to let federal agents search my property, tap my phone lines, look at my library records.
I am free to live my life in total freedom provided that all my choices are approved by government, all my earnings are taxed by government, and all my moves are subject to close examination by government. No wonder the Iraqi people are so eager for their American overseers to show them how this freedom thing is done.
September 18, 2003
Land of the Free, Home of the Slave
by Steven Greenhut
http://www.lewrockwell.com/greenhut/greenhut15.html" title="http://www.lewrockwell.com/greenhut/greenhut15.html" target="_blank"http://www.lewrockwell.com/gr...
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| DOMESTIC WAR |
| 02.02.04 (12:08 pm) [edit] |
DOMESTIC WAR:
To Hell With Iraq – And Immigration!
By John Attarian
Confession being good for the soul, I confess that I barely followed the controversy about making war on Iraq; that after the first day or two I followed the fighting for a few minutes a day, and have given it about two minutes daily ever since. Nor have I cluttered my mind with the recriminations about the non-discovery of weapons of mass destruction or whether Bush lied us into war.
Why should I? Compared to our real problems, Iraq is a trifle.
While pundits speculate on whether Saddam Hussein is still alive, multiple catastrophes are unfolding at home. To name a few: The federal budget is plunging into red ink. Entitlement and health care costs are exploding, and will soon become unaffordable as aging baby boomers flood Medicare and Medicaid. Like quacks bleeding a hemophiliac, our dunderhead politicians want to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. The Social Security time bomb ticks toward explosion -and our "leaders" want to worsen the coming blast with a "totalization" i.e. subsidy agreement with Mexico. The natural gas crisis emphasizes that our way of life depends rapidly depleting fossil fuels. And the Jacobin left's holy war of hate against white people grinds relentlessly on.
And one of our worst problems is immigration.
We are drowning in immigrants.
According to the Census Bureau's March 2002 Current Population Survey,[PDF] 1.5 million immigrants arrive each year. This works out to 4,110 immigrants every day, 171 an hour, three a minute (2.85 for those of you who like precise figures), one every 21 seconds. There are 750,000 births to immigrant women a year: 2,055 a day, 86 an hour, one every 42 seconds.
Our annual population growth from immigration, then, is 2.25 million, over two-thirds of total annual population growth of about 3.3 million, which is 1.2 percent of our 2002 population of 282 million. At this rate, America's population will double in 59 years.
Immigration is exacerbating just about every other problem we have.
The economic argument for immigration is a self-serving lie. Immigration enthusiasts brag that immigration holds inflation down. They appear to mean that it increases the labor supply and causes wages to stagnate. Great. But immigrants also increase the demand for services, pushing up their cost. They use maternity wards and emergency rooms without paying for them. Hospitals push the costs onto Americans, whose health insurance premiums rise accordingly. So immigration squeezes American workers at both ends: worsening the health care crisis and driving up the cost of living while making labor incomes stagnate. The only Americans who benefit are immigration lawyers, vote-hungry politicians, and employers of cheap labor.
Immigration adds demographic clout to militant Islamic and Hispanic Fifth Columns. The huge influx of people to whom our European heritage is alien is breaking up our political and cultural cohesion; the celebration of Columbus Day has become controversial;
Christmas is becoming a de-Christianized "holiday season." Immigration provides a handy rationalization for multiculturalist agendas such as diversity, affirmative action and the stigmatization and dispossession of whites. Immigration plus political correctness is a witch's brew of mischief and malefaction. Can you say "Balkanized"? How about "conquered"?
Ecologically, immigration spells catastrophe. Immigration is the major force driving our exploding population growth. It chronically strains our supply of housing, infrastructure, and public goods.
We are forced to develop huge amounts of rural real estate to provide these things for the additional millions. And more people not only use more resources, but generate more pollution. Immigration will wreck America's environment as surely as breakneck economic growth is wrecking China's.
One of the most important concepts in ecology is "carrying capacity": the maximum population of a species which a habitat can sustain indefinitely. Signs are everywhere that America is not only populated far beyond carrying capacity, but is actually reducing it: the drawdown of aquifers faster than they are being recharged; recurring droughts and water shortages; our collapsing oil output (most American wells now pump ten barrels or less a day); the accelerating depletion of natural gas wells; our dependence on imports of oil and natural gas; widespread soil erosion and salinization. Since immigration is driving our population growth, it is also driving this ruinous trend.
Not only is immigration an economic, political, and cultural disaster, then, but the immigration-driven population explosion is wrecking America's ecosystem. And then what? Can you say "die-off?"
I couldn't care less about Saddam and his "weapons of mass destruction." But I care plenty about losing the Southwest to militant Mexicans. I care that the ranchers along the border aren't safe in their own homes. I care that the population boom is turning America into a human anthill. I don't want my little niece and nephew (and my still-hypothetical wife and children, if God's that good to me) members of a persecuted white minority dwelling in a Balkanized nation of depleted aquifers, ruined soil, and scarce energy, in an overloaded land lurching toward depopulation.
Immigration is far more of a threat to my country and everything I cherish than Saddam Hussein ever was. I don't care whether Bush was right about the war, either. This amnesty-seeking, pandering pol is as wrong as two left shoes about immigration. And that's the issue that matters.
Forget Iraq. Stop immigration—now.
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Please go to link, for MUCH MORE INFO
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SIDEBAR:
The Pilgrims had no 'civilized' culture to assimilate into. Remember, 'they' came here to better themselves, and that of any culture they entered into. There's really no sense in getting into that time in history. That debate serves no purpose in today's 'real' world.Let's not compare apples to oranges.
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| Mexico Deports Illegal Aliens |
| 02.01.04 (11:08 pm) [edit] |
Mexico Deports Illegal Aliens
Wednesday, January 21
Topic Letters
Between January and May 2003, the Mexican government apprehended and deported more than 30,000 illegal aliens.
Mexico offered no amnesty, no guest worker regularization process, no free health care, no free housing, no free education, no reduced tuition for college, no job training, no food stamps, no affirmative action to move ahead of Mexicans -- none of that.
Instead, Mexico just kicked them out.
Imagine that.
Perhaps the U.S. should adopt a little multiculturalism after all, apply it to its immigration policy, and start acting like Mexico.
Art Larson, Springville
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A6.
This article comes from The Daily Herald
http://www.harktheherald.com/" title="http://www.harktheherald.com/" target="_blank"http://www.harktheherald.com/...
The URL for this story is:
http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News& file=article&sid=12070" title="http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News& file=article&sid=12070" target="_blank"http://www.harktheherald.com/...
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| FEDERALIST #2 |
| 02.01.04 (4:02 pm) [edit] |
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QUOTATION:
"With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.
This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties."---Publius
...(John Jay)..The Federalist No. 2
OF..course, President Jay ( John Jay served as President from 1778 to 1779: READ ARTICLE was refering, at the end, to separate 'states', but, I certainly feel that it easily could apply to the 'divisiveness' we experience 'today' in most of our everyday lives. Replace "alien sovereignties" with ",unsocial, jealous and alien ancestors, cultures, languages, religions, principles of government, customs and manners."
Now, apply that to the entire context of the quote.
Now do you understend how diversity and multi-culturalism ain't what the globalist, 'progressive-liberal' (socialist) "PC" crowd, crack it up to be? NO DOUBT..it sure ain't what the Founding Fathers' had in mind!
I like to say we are "NED" {a NATION EQUALLY DIVIDED}.
I really don't "like" to say it, but it's true. We find it's true on numerous issues; abortion, Bush v Gore for President '00 (perfect example of the country truly being "NED". BTW: A. Lincoln was elected by an overwhelming majority of 36% ), etc..
Let's call this one PCBS: MULTICULTURALISM / IMMIGRATION:
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| Move on? Let's Not! - Welcome to the Uncivil War |
| 02.01.04 (2:27 pm) [edit] |
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable."
--H. L. Mencken
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Welcome to the Uncivil War
Commentary by Steve Scroggins
Georgia Heritage Coalition
Brent Bozell's January 8th column (link below at bottom) describes the modern arena of ideological battle and laments the verbal brutality and hyperbole in use. Word-gladiators have always tried to slay their opponent's ideas, but now it's more personal and the warriors attempt to disembowel one another with rusty blunt weapons.
One specific example Bozell cites is MoveOn.org's advertisements that compare President Bush to Adolph Hitler. While I agree that such is "over the top," it certainly is not a new phenomenon.
Columnist Ellen Goodman, the Boston liberal feminist, wrote a column in the mid-1990s complaining about the lack of civility in political discourse. She didn't like the fact that people tended to "Nazify" their opponent at the sligtest provocation.
Her complaints followed public reports of the federal debacles at Waco's Branch Davidian "compound" and in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. One Congressman referred to ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) agents as "jack-booted thugs."
Bozell and Goodman are right in the sense that excessive hyperbole cheapens the language. Just as false claims of rape tend to discredit authentic cases of rape and false claims of racism tend to trivialize and cheapen legitimate cases of racism, calling someone a Nazi or Hitler can be construed as trivializing the millions of victims who suffered and died at the hands of an evil monster.
Bozell heads a media watchdog group and he has access to tons of research and documentation which proves media bias in the ideological battle for the hearts and minds of the American people.
I agree with Bozell that leftists, liberals and Democrats tend to escalate each battle sooner than their opponents. Many of their ideas and premises are based on emotion and feelings, and therefore rely on hyperbole and exaggeration to compensate for a lack of factual and logical merit.
In today's PC environment, anyone who criticizes the behavior or ideas of a minority is often labeled a "racist" and dismissed without any effort whatsoever to rebut or contest the substance of the original criticism. This is an intellectually shallow mode of debate, but they nevertheless get at least an equal if not greater percentage of publication ink and broadcast airtime. And the worst part, these demagogues who cry "racism" almost never get called on it by the "mainstream" media. Instead, outlandish and outrageous accusations and innuendo are reported as straight-faced news.
Southerners are for the most part a polite people who tend to be courteous by nature and avoid offending others where it's practical to do so.
Heritage haters have taken advantage of this tendency for decades now, to the point that many southerners are completely fed up with it. Make no mistake, the level of anger is growing.
We are annoyed that the media continues to give any credence to the frequent and unsubstantiated shrieks of "racism!" I wrote a column for The Macon Telegraph in the mid-1990s defending the honor and meaning of the Confederate Battle Flag. Five years later, a student informed me that a local high school teacher (who has never met me) was using that laminated column as an example in his class. Yes, he is black. Reportedly, he informed his class without caveat or reservation that I am a racist. What a crock!
I can ignore local idiots like this teacher. Although I have grounds to press slander charges, I cannot prove damages because most of his students think he's an idiot and disregard his opinion anyway. But there are some buffoons and idiots who demand a reaction.
Al Sharpton is one such idiot. Sharpton has a long history of reckless, outrageous and criminal behavior and yet a half dozen men who want to be President of the United States are willing to stand on the same stage with such a lying race hustler and treat him like a viable candidate. Let's not forget that this buffoon spent a few weeks in jail (for trespassing on a Navy base in Puerto Rico) and pretended to hold a "hunger strike" in protest. Since he had obviously not lost any weight when released, we can only conclude that he was force-fed Twinkies while he was incarcerated.
Columnists Jeff Jacoby and Pat Buchanan detail the character (or rather lack) of Al Sharpton in their columns following Howard Dean's "Confederate trucks" remarks.
While I generally agree that Nazifying one's opponent is way overused, and usually inappropriate, I believe it certainly fits in certain situations...like Al Sharpton.
Last November, when Sharpton stood on the debate stage and called the Confederate flag an "American swastika," not one pathetic pandering creampuff on the debate stage had the courage to challenge Sharpton for his hate speech and extremism. These Democratic candidates for President want us to elect them to the most powerful office in the world...but none has the courage to challenge an immoral demagogue like Sharpton. Sorry, boys, the Office of President is not for weak-kneed pansies and neither is it the place for the morally and ethically challenged or those who enable demagogues. You pantywaists need not plan on getting many votes from down South. Ya hear?
As a Christian, I believe we should all strive to forgive and "turn the other cheek"...up to a point. My parents taught me and I teach my children that you cannot tolerate a bully. It's not doing the bully any favors to let them practice their hurtful behaviors. In fact, one could argue that hitting back teaches the bully a valuable lesson. And there's no doubt that allowing the bully to inflict injury without resistance will encourage him to continue.
Southerners have had a belly full, folks. Many of us are starting to hit back when racist bullies defame our southern symbols and southern heroes.
It's time to stand up for truth, folks. Our 1956 flag of honor was stolen under false pretenses----OK, a mountain of lies. Our government officials have defied the will of the people---at the behest of the Heritage Haters and their corporate lackies. It's time to stand tall for our heritage and our self-government, for if we don't, we will surely lose them...like sand slipping between our fingers. And we will bear the shame and infamy of letting them take it from us.
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"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." --The - Samuel Adams
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Welcome to the Uncivil War
http://www.georgiaheritagecoalition.org/site2/commentary/scro ggins-uncivil-heritage-wa rs.phtml" title="http://www.georgiaheritagecoalition.org/site2/commentary/scro ggins-uncivil-heritage-wa rs.phtml" target="_blank"http://www.georgiaheritagecoa...
Jeff Jacoby: The race-baiter in the campaign
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby /jj20031110.shtml" title="http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby /jj20031110.shtml" target="_blank"http://www.townhall.com/colum...
Pat Buchanan: It's Al's party now
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35508" title="http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35508" target="_blank"http://www.worldnetdaily.com/...
Brent Bozell: Move on? Let's not
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brentbozel l/bb20040108.shtml" title="http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brentbozel l/bb20040108.shtml" target="_blank"http://www.townhall.com/colum...
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